471–480 of 483 posts
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Your bravado is charming, but since when is it up to you?
I always get to choose whether or not to be content.
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His core arguments focus on geography and demographics, both of which are “hard” problems. Declining populations simply cannot maintain the “grow at all costs” current economic order. Even an advanced country like Japan with plenty of automation and high productivity rates hasn’t see any growth in two decades since its population itself doesn’t grow anymore. Even if you don’t go by his more alarmist arguments, you ha…
Not sure if you’ve been to Japan within the last twenty years but it’s neither advanced or highly automated. People do everything. Edit Anyone down voting please supply some practical examples of how Japan is advanced and highly automated. Also it wasn't meant as a criticism of Japan, I love the place. I just believe that the stereotype of Japan being in the future isn't accurate or helpful. It's overused.
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Dude you are so incorrect here, its unbelievable. Why don't you go sit down in the corner before you hurt yourself
"You're wrong" + insult is not the kind of reply we are looking for here on HN. Either post a constructive argument explaining how they are wrong in your opinion, or abstain from commenting.
Interesting to combine this line of thinking with the transition from nation-states to market-states: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1744057060106386... The power vacuum that's arisen from populism & isolationism is about to create a gigantic untapped market for firms that provide the services of a state - defense, dispute resolution, and currency - for a fee, to gigantic multinational corporations. At t…
This is basically the premise of Metal Gear Solid 4.
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Pundits? Maybe some did. There are lots of pundits and I'm sure many of them get a lot wrong and some get things right by pure chance. On the other hand, US intelligence was shouting loud and clear in mid-February that an invasion was immanent. In any case, making a claim in October 2014 that at some point Russia would continue its invasion of Ukraine is not a particularly impressive feat.
It is impressive, as entire nations have literally gambled their (energy) security against this to happen. This is like saying it wasn't impressive to predict and time the GFC. Yeah sure, in retrospect it looks all totally obvious and simple.
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individual losses are a financial matter and not existential threat That's entirely a function of the loss rate. If 50% of voyages are seized by pirates, that's not just a financial matter.
Sure, but at that point the military of course steps in... (long before that point...) so again I'm confused...
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That’s just a rephrasing of what I said to make it sound less bad. Also, fuck no.
I don't understand where you're coming from. Can you explain?
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“We should content ourselves with being poorer than our parents were”. Fuck no.
It would be more palatable if it were an objective economic reality we all had to accept, but right now it's marching orders from the wealthy neoliberals holding year after year record profits.
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Adding more inputs to a production process generally increases output. But many parts of the world are already suffering from soil depletion because of intensive farming, and the fertilizers and fossil fuels which we use to raise yields will run out eventually. Innovation has been able to outrun resource depletion for the last 300 years of industrialism, but that is no guarantee that it will last forever. Even a lot…
> Innovation has been able to outrun resource depletion for the last 300 years of industrialism. It did over hundreds of years of EXTREMELY high growth (both in terms of number of people and wealth per person). If growth falls to a positive-but-very-low level, it will make it a lot easier for innovation to keep up. Also, keep in mind that apart from Uranium, all the atoms on Earth remain here. We don't "use up" atoms…