[HN Gopher] What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)
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What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)
Author : yamrzou
Score : 656 points
Date : 2022-01-06 11:14 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.loc.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.loc.gov)
| tdeck wrote:
| I vividly remember reading this book as a 90s kid with
| predictions about what the home would look like in 2020:
|
| https://y2kaestheticinstitute.tumblr.com/post/143836250779/v...
| henvic wrote:
| oh man, had he predicted that a lot of people would be going nuts
| on digital stamps that might be copied for free, that'd be
| hilarious...
| haunter wrote:
| >Similar reforms apply to cooking, a great deal of which will
| survive among old fashioned people, but a great deal more of
| which will probably be avoided by the use of synthetic foods.
|
| This is very interesting especially if you think "synthetic
| foods" not just literally but as take out, processed products and
| such. I know a lot of young professional people who technically
| never cook. Like almost never and whatever they have at home is
| just snacks, if you hungry > order. There are a lot people like
| these. >It is conceivable, though not certain,
| that in 2022 a complete meal may be taken in the shape of four
| pills. This is not entirely visionary; I am convinced that corned
| beef hash and pumpkin pie will still exist, but the pill lunch
| will roll by their side.
|
| Well Soylent do exist so that's not far fetched either.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The "lunch will be a pill" stuff is always funny to me. There's
| a major volume issue unless you're gonna have me eat chunks of
| uranium or neutron star or something.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I thought it was goofy until I remembered that some people
| eat pills for lunch.
| awhitby wrote:
| This was my initial reaction too: it doesn't seem to pass
| basic conservation of mass.
|
| But actually how much mass must you _necessarily_ lose to
| stay alive each day? Most of it is probably water, so if we
| allow "four pills plus as much water" at a meal then it's
| harder to rule out the pill diet.
|
| Maybe a better way to bound it: apparently we exhale around 1
| kg of CO2 each day, which has 370g of carbon in it so unless
| we can radically reengineer our metabolism I guess you need a
| minimum of 370g daily to maintain carbon levels. 370g / 3
| meals / 4 pills = 30g per pill. Even with the density of
| diamond that would be (picking a convenient rough number) 8
| cm3 or 2x2x2cm.
|
| Which is... a hard pill to swallow. Maybe not impossible
| though.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There's Soylent and similar meal replacements, but that's a
| diet shake for people who try to min-max their life for some
| reason.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I was excited about the kickstarter because while a
| recovering alcoholic can completely stop using alcohol, a
| food addict always has to eat a little. Something bland,
| and quick I didn't think about was a plus. But afyer the
| Kickstarter they replaced the fish oil with polyunsaturated
| vegetable oil in powder form and dropped the rice protein
| content for more carbs. My triglycerides shot through the
| roof after the first few months of that recipe.
| 2snakes wrote:
| Just replacing one meal like breakfast with Soylent is
| probably preferred over replacing 3-4.
| krupan wrote:
| You could try keto chow. They started with the Soylent
| recipe and made it carb free (if you don't count fiber as
| carbs).
|
| https://www.ketochow.xyz/
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I'm not against carbs, I just like macro ratios more like
| the earlier versions. Lots of carbs and polyunsaturated
| oils are in the literature as triglyceride boosters. If
| they offered a version with the fish oil back in and the
| old protein ratios I'd be interested, especially if the
| replaced the rice protein with the collagen or fish meal
| from the bait fish the oil came from. At least as
| sustainable as giant fields of rice and safflower and
| probably lower in heavy metals too. Rice sucks up the
| cadmium.
| krupan wrote:
| There are several other Soylent mods out there. Super
| Body Fuel, Huel, and Tsogo are a few others I tried. Not
| a drink, but Meal Squares and Greenbelly Meals are a
| similar idea too. No idea if any of them meet your needs.
| I think there was a website that had a huge list of meal
| replacements.
|
| (Edit typo fix)
| krono wrote:
| Thinking outside the box, that pill could be part of a more
| involved system where it triggers the release of nutrition
| that was consumed earlier.
|
| It doesn't have to be a completely self-contained solution.
| scrollaway wrote:
| I love where your head's at. Project: Chipmunk. Stuff those
| cheeks :)
| mc32 wrote:
| If NASA[1] could have this, they would do this. They'd prefer
| it if they could give their *nauts pill-like nutrition
| delivery systems.
|
| [1] Also armed forced with deployed troops would love this
| too as it makes food logistics much easier.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The closest we can get volume-wise is a cup of olive oil
| for about 2k calories. Stuffing any more calories into the
| same volume would require using materials we can't
| currently digest.
|
| (NASA does not like the side-effects of an all-oil diet on
| space toilets, I suspect.)
| mstade wrote:
| > This is very interesting especially if you think "synthetic
| foods" not just literally but as take out, processed products
| and such. I know a lot of young professional people who
| technically never cook. Like almost never and whatever they
| have at home is just snacks, if you hungry > order. There are a
| lot people like these.
|
| Anecdata - I'm on of these people. I live in central Stockholm,
| Sweden, and almost any hour of the day I'm able to either order
| in or go out and buy a meal. I don't even recall last time I
| cooked at home. Last time anyone cooked at my place was when a
| friend of mine who's also a chef stopped by for a visit. My
| kitchen is fully equipped, there's no want for tooling or
| space. I more or less never go grocery shopping, and when I do
| shop it's for whatever snacks and fruits I might want at home.
| Sometimes I buy bread and other things to make sandwiches, but
| that's maybe once every couple of months and it's the extent to
| which I shop for groceries.
|
| But when I go to my summer home on a small island with no
| grocery store, I cook every single day. I think it's a
| combination of necessity (you have to buy groceries and
| anything else back on the mainland, and it's a trek) and the
| fact that usually I'm not alone in the summer house, my brother
| is usually there too so I have someone to cook for.
|
| I really enjoy cooking, I can spend hours doing it and I don't
| even mind the tedious tasks like peeling potatoes or chopping
| onions and other things. I just never do it at home, for
| myself. Why should I, when I can just as easily order in? That
| way I don't have to throw out groceries that inevitably go bad
| because as a single person it's hard to shop just what I need,
| everything is in large multi packs. Even a loaf of bread will
| go bad before I'm able to eat it all.
|
| It's odd, but for me it really is very location dependent. It
| was the same when I lived in London, I don't think I cooked at
| home even once during those years.
| davemp wrote:
| I live in a place were I could easily order / go out for
| every meal as well. If I cook ~2-3 times a week for myself
| and box up the leftovers, I get high quality meals for
| $2-5/meal vs $10-30/meal. This can save ~$8k per person per
| year just cooking 10 meals a week.
|
| This may not be worth it for some, but I've found the time
| savings of ordering in/carryout is marginal or actually worse
| than cooking and reheating leftovers. Waste and grocery trips
| generally sort themselves out in a couple weeks as you figure
| out a schedule. This obviously scales with number of people
| so for a family of 2-4 you'd save $16-32k/yr for little extra
| effort.
|
| These sort of home economics seem to have really fallen out
| of favor in my sphere, even in 2+ person households where
| $40k+ in maintenance/service/food costs can be saved (factor
| in childcare/education and I image the number can get to
| $100k+). I don't understand why people leave so much money on
| the table. There aren't many ways you can make $16k/year for
| a <5hr/week moonlighting position.
|
| ---
|
| > That way I don't have to throw out groceries that
| inevitably go bad because as a single person it's hard to
| shop just what I need, everything is in large multi packs.
| Even a loaf of bread will go bad before I'm able to eat it
| all.
|
| You have to cook larger batches and eat the leftovers. I've
| had bad luck with bread too tbh. I might just start making my
| own smaller loafs, because the quality is also just bad.
|
| EDIT: it's also worth pointing out that savings values are
| post tax
| danans wrote:
| > My kitchen is fully equipped, there's no want for tooling
| or space. I more or less never go grocery shopping, and when
| I do shop it's for whatever snacks and fruits I might want at
| home. Sometimes I buy bread and other things to make
| sandwiches, but that's maybe once every couple of months and
| it's the extent to which I shop for groceries. > But when I
| go to my summer home on a small island with no grocery store,
| I cook every single day.
|
| The incentive to cook yourself instead of ordering food is
| multi-factorial, but a significant part is financial. People
| who only cook "touristically" like you describe are people
| for whom daily food expenses are a rounding error, whether
| ordered or cooked by themselves. This could include single
| well compensated people or very wealthy families. This is
| further amplified by the fact that food consumes a smaller
| portion of household income than it has historically.
|
| In contrast, when working and middle class families decide
| that they need to save more, the first place they usually
| economize is in their restaurant expenditures.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > Why should I, when I can just as easily order in?
|
| Because
|
| > I really enjoy cooking, I can spend hours doing it
|
| ?
|
| Also if you are even just an average/mediocre cook, you can
| usually cook more tasty and interesting food than what you
| typically find on Uber eats, unless you order from a
| different high end restaurant every single day.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I'm a reasonably good cook and this isn't terribly true for
| me. There are entire classes of foods I can't do as well as
| restaurants can. Be that because of a lack of equipment, or
| a lack of ingredients. I.e, I can make great pizza, but it
| doesnt' compare to the stuff I can get from the wood fired
| pizza place down the street. Same goes for India, Thai,
| Chinese, wings, etc, etc.
| spurgu wrote:
| If you extend this into making/mending your own clothing,
| doing your own plumbing, electricity etc., suddenly all
| your time goes to these "maintenance" tasks.
|
| Sure if you're growing food as well on the side so that you
| can sustain yourself completely, it could be a happy way of
| living life. But if you have to work 8 hours per day to
| make a living, the spare time is valuable and subject to
| prioritization. Some people do _some_ of these things on
| the side, as a pleasant hobby, but practically no "modern
| person" does all of them.
| mstade wrote:
| You're right, I wasn't very clear - my apologies. What I
| meant to say was I really enjoy cooking for others, but
| cooking for myself isn't at all the same.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I enjoy cooking, but I enjoy other things more, and time is
| not infinite. I notice that when my wife and I go on
| vacation we cook much more and try out new recipes because
| at the airbnb there are fewer competing tasks or
| activities. And while I can cook and bake decently, there
| are some dishes I don't always want to put the time in for,
| or I haven't quite gotten right yet, or require fresh
| ingredients that I can't buy within a 30min drive. But the
| thai restaurant a few blocks away will have fresh keffir
| lime leaves and lemongrass brought in in bulk every day.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| Yeah, I cooked less when I didn't have flatmates to share
| with, even though I do like cooking. Cooking for yourself
| does feel like a chore.
| distances wrote:
| I feel tossing together some basic meal is so simple I can't
| bother to go pick anything from outside even though I live in
| the middle of great restaurant concentration. A bit of frozen
| veggies heated on pan, with pasta or couscous on the side.
| Takes literally ten minutes and costs less than one euro.
|
| Or a large casserole that takes an hour to cook but gives
| eight portions. Quick heat-up for lunch during the week saves
| time too, and you stay in control of the salt intake unlike
| with ready meals. So cheaper, healthier, faster. Downside is
| that those meals are pretty basic and repetitive, but then
| again eating out feels a bit more special if you don't do it
| every day.
|
| I do cook "real" recipes too with more steps and more flavor,
| but only with my partner as I don't care to do it just for
| myself for weekday meals.
| Server6 wrote:
| I did this for a decade and gained 60lb. I've since lost it,
| mainly from cooking at home.
| frockington1 wrote:
| Reduced sodium probably lowered your blood pressure as well
| ipiz0618 wrote:
| I guess it depends on the location and wealth. Eating healthy
| is wayyyy more expensive than cooking healthy in some cities,
| even when you can buy a meal virtually everywhere.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| It's important to remember that 77 percent of U.S. adults take
| dietary supplements. We all eat "corned beef hash and pumpkin
| pie" yet the majority of people already use supplements as pill
| as needed. Living in the north, everyone I know uses Vitamin D
| pills. This is a must to survive the winter and I can't imagine
| how it would be if that wasn't as available.
| [deleted]
| smcl wrote:
| Interesting, I didn't imagine there would be such a
| noticeable effect. Can I ask what sort of difference do you
| see if you don't take it?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| I go to work while the sun has yet to rise and when I come
| back home the sun is already away (at the peak of the
| winter, the sun is gone around 4pm). If I do go out for a
| walk, it's behind a heavy coat, scarf and hat. Often with
| sunglasses to protect against snow blindness and the wind.
|
| This means that for about half of the year, my body does
| not see the sun. Glass windows will prevent vitamin D
| production so sitting by a window during the day will not
| help.
|
| Between 70% and 97% of Canadians demonstrate vitamin D
| insufficiency. It's also important to highlight that people
| with darker skin need even more sun exposure to produce
| vitamin D as skin pigmentation negatively influences
| vitamin D synthesis.
|
| Contrary to popular belief, vitamin D is a hormone. It
| impacts calcium absorption, which is the most known side
| effect. But it's way more than that. Many of the body's
| process simply cannot happen properly without vitamin D and
| the only way to get it naturally is from the sun.
|
| One relevant symptoms these days is a weakening of the
| immune system. Many studies already show that vitamin D
| deficiency is one of the main factor behind the severity of
| covid infections.
|
| Other symptoms are bone density loss, muscle pains, cancer
| risks, heart disease, nerve issues, blood pressure.
|
| Another very important issue related to vitamin D is
| Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is similar (but
| different) to clinical depression.
|
| ---
|
| Edit:
|
| I was wondering when Vitamin D supplements and enriched
| milk came around, since the current conversation in the
| context of this 1992 event.
|
| There's a nice goldmine of information here:
| https://timelines.issarice.com/wiki/Timeline_of_vitamin_D
|
| "1930 - Drug launch: Vitamin D prodrug dihydrotachysterol
| is developed as a method of stabilizing the triene
| structure of one of the photoisomers of vitamin D. This
| represents the oldest vitamin D analog."
|
| "1952 - Product launch: Synthetic vitamin D2 and D3
| compounds start being produced."
| smcl wrote:
| Yep it's the same for me - dark when I go to work and
| after I finish. But I'm not taking any supplements at all
| so I'm just wondering if you personally notice a
| difference between when you do and don't take it.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Yes, I am on prescribed Vitamin D due to low results from
| a blood test. The difference being the dose. I do not see
| the sun at all for all winter. Difference is night & day
| (pun intended).
| teatree wrote:
| As a person who has been exclusively on something similar to
| soylent for entire 2021, it is certainly possible today albeit
| not via 4 pills.
| alex_duf wrote:
| Out of complete curiosity: any particular reason to avoid
| traditional food?
| beeboop wrote:
| It is tremendously difficult to eat a balanced, healthy
| diet for people who lack the motivation or desire to cook
| and eat subjectively boring foods. I know this will
| probably strike a nerve in some people that perfectly enjoy
| salads, chicken, and brown rice. But not every feels the
| same about those foods.
| seafoam wrote:
| Ok I will bite, what are you on ?
| aembleton wrote:
| Probably Huel
| bagacrap wrote:
| the marketing team
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I know that "funny quips" are generally discouraged on
| HN, but this is quality content that made me chuckle.
|
| Thanks :)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > I know a lot of young professional people who technically
| never cook.
|
| I think there is a distinction here between people who buy
| meals-and-snacks as opposed to people who buy ingredients. When
| my partner and I shop, apart from the fruit and similar, there
| are very few things that you would directly eat. When my niece
| and her partner shop, there are numerous packets of biscuits
| and other snacks as well as prepared ready meals that can be
| microwaved / oven heated with no other effort required. They
| generate a lot more plastic waste, as well.
| wuliwong wrote:
| I think that a powdered shake is pretty similar to the pill
| idea. Protein or meal replacement shakes are widespread in use
| in 2022.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > This is very interesting especially if you think "synthetic
| foods" not just literally but as take out, processed products
| and such. I know a lot of young professional people who
| technically never cook. Like almost never and whatever they
| have at home is just snacks, if you hungry > order. There are a
| lot people like these.
|
| Isn't that just having servants?
| paxys wrote:
| The idea of communal kitchens is nothing new. Young unmarried
| professionals weren't cooking their own meals a hundred years
| ago either. In urban areas you'd have landladies providing
| supper, food carts, delivery boys, even subscription meal
| plans. So not much has changed in that regard.
| westcort wrote:
| Another fragment from 1922 (found with
| https://www.locserendipity.com/Google.html):
|
| A HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW Mary A. Ford
|
| O mighty human brotherhood! why fiercely war and strive,
|
| While God's great world has ample space for everything alive?
|
| Broad fields uncultured and unclaimed, are waiting for the plow
|
| Of progress that shall make them bloom, a hundred years from now.
|
| Why should we try so earnestly in life's short, narrow span,
|
| On golden stairs to climb so high above our brother man?
|
| Why blindly at an earthly shrine in slavish homage bow?
|
| Our gold will rust, ourselves be dust, a hundred years from now.
|
| Why prize so much the world's applause? Why dread so much its
| blame?
|
| A fleeting echo is its voice of censure or of fame;
|
| The praise that thrills the heart, the scorn that dyes with shame
| the brow,
|
| Will be a long-forgotten dream, a hundred years from now.
|
| O patient hearts, that meekly bear your weary load of wrong!
|
| O earnest hearts, that bravely dare, and, striving, grow more
| strong!
|
| Press on till perfect peace is won; you'll never dream of how
|
| You struggled o'er life's thorny road, a hundred years from now.
|
| Grand, lofty souls, who live and toil that freedom, right, and
| truth
|
| Alone may rule the universe, for you is endless youth!
|
| When 'mid the blest with God you rest, the grateful land shall
| bow
|
| Above your clay in reverent love, a hundred years from now.
|
| Source:
| https://www.locserendipity.com/full/platformpiece00hawn_djvu...
| (written in 1922)
| axegon_ wrote:
| > It does not follow that, scientifically, the year 2022 should
| fail to be amazing.
|
| Well... About that...
| jdlyga wrote:
| It's always interesting to read these. Everyone assumes that
| technological progress will continue along the exact same lines
| as before. And nobody really anticipates the social progress and
| changes that truly set us apart from 1922. If we assume 2122 will
| just be the same world with better electronics, that probably
| wouldn't be very accurate.
| neycoda wrote:
| They didn't predict that I wouldn't be able read their article on
| my phone.
| aronpye wrote:
| I wish the quality of prose as well as underlying journalism of
| today's mainstream media and newspapers matched those of
| yesteryear. When reading the posted article, the decline in
| quality is shown to be immense.
| virgilp wrote:
| Average quality, yes.
|
| Total, and even max quality? Not so clear.
|
| In number of articles/ books that are above a given quality
| bar? I wouldn't bet on 1922.
| standardUser wrote:
| I have always had a strong almost visceral dislike of people
| attempting to predict the future with even a hint of confidence,
| so I really appreciate this author starting off by saying "don't
| worry guys, this is just for fun".
| titzer wrote:
| > The people of 2022 will probably never see a wire outlined
| against the sky...
|
| Haha, so wrong. _All_ I see is power lines everywhere, and I can
| 't unsee them. SO ugly.
| iandanforth wrote:
| Total tangent, but I too _hate_ wires and was pleasantly
| surprised how easy https://cleanup.pictures/ makes it to remove
| them from any and all photos. I'm not affiliated in any way and
| sorry for the random. :)
| kolinko wrote:
| Are you from US? In Europe you see wires only outside of big
| cities.
|
| I was surprised on my recent road trip across US that you've
| got wires in urban/suburban neighborhoods - even the richer
| ones like Palo Alto.
| gumby wrote:
| Pretty common in Japan too, despite all the money spent on
| infrastructure.
| godot wrote:
| From what I've observed, wires outside almost entirely depend
| on how new the city is. Old cities have wires outside, new
| cities don't, that's really it; nothing to do with how rich
| they are. Palo Alto is an old city. I live in a suburb in
| Greater Sacramento that's a newer city and it's most
| certainly not as wealthy as Palo Alto -- not even as wealthy
| as some of the other towns in Sac -- we got no wires outside.
| kseistrup wrote:
| You always know when you see an American film because of all
| the powerlines, and I always wonder why they are not put
| underground.
| beeboop wrote:
| It's expensive, no one wants to pay for it, and our general
| political leadership is inept at best and corrupt at worst
| and is incapable of managing reasonable infrastructure
| projects.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Serious question: what are the benefits of burying cables?
| Purely aesthetic? Losing power less than once a year due to
| a downed line really just isn't a big enough deal to
| justify the expenditure. Even low-prob/high-risk event
| justifications aren't particularly compelling (there are
| much more important ways to harden the grid). If this went
| up for a vote in my muni, I'd probably be a "no". So many
| better ways to spend the money, even if we scope to just
| electricity transmission.
|
| My read on this has always been that the US has above-
| ground cables mostly because it wasn't bombed to hell at
| any point after the discovery that it's nice to bury power
| cables.
| titzer wrote:
| Personally I find it so ugly that it ruins the look of
| everything. It makes me think that nobody gives a damn,
| and it makes me also not give a damn. Like if all the
| houses on my house had broken windows, I'd feel like I
| lived in a dump, and I'd be right. It's like nobody likes
| to look at things.
| beeboop wrote:
| Underground is safer, less prone to accidents (trees
| falling), take less space, reduces deaths and injuries by
| car accident (cars hitting poles), less maintenance due
| to not being exposed to elements, and of course the
| aesthetic aspect.
|
| Honestly the aesthetic aspect alone should be enough. We
| care about the aesthetics of everything else around us
| and a lot of it is also fairly well regulated. Wires are
| absolutely hideous and it's perfectly feasible to bury
| them in most cases
| titzer wrote:
| I know, I grew up in the US, moved to Germany, and moved
| back. There are _so many_. It doesn 't look like a modern
| country at all.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Actually he may have been right - they're still there, but I
| never notice them because they just blend into the background
| now.
| kuczmama wrote:
| This is one of the most insightful articles I've ever read when
| it comes to predicting the future. If you are on the fence of
| whether or not to read this article I highly recommend you read
| it.
| PotatoPancakes wrote:
| Geez, is this really the best OCR we have in 2022? This is the
| text generated by the OCR on that site:
|
| 'p========r^ SECTION SEVEN CL By W. L. George THERE is a good old
| rule which bids us never prophesy unless we know, but, all the
| same, when one cannot prophesy one may guess, especially if one
| is sure of being out of the way when the reckoning comes.
| Therefore it is without anxiety, that I suggest a picture of this
| world a hundred years hence, and venture as my first guess thrt
| the world at that time would be remarkable to one of our ghosts,
| not so much because it was so different as because it was so
| similar. In the main the changes which we may expect must be
| brought about by science. It is easier to bring about a
| revolutionary scientific discovery such as that of the X-ray than
| to alter in the least degree the quality of emotion that arises
| between a man and a maid. There will probably be many new rays in
| 2022, but the people whom they illumine will be much the same.
| From which the reader may conclude that I do not expect anything
| startling in the way of scientific discoverv. That is not the
| case; I am convinced that in 2022 the advancement of science will
| be amazing, but it will be nothing like so amazing as is the
| present day in relation to a hundred years ago. A sight of the
| world today would surprise President Jefferson much more, I
| suspect, than the world of 2022 would surprise the little girl
| who sells candies at Grand Central Station. For Jefferson knew
| nothing of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, automobiles,
| aeroplanes, gramophones, movies, radium, &c.; he did not even
| know hot and cold bathrooms. The-little girl at Grand Central is
| a blase child; to her these things are commonplace; the year 2022
| would have to produce something very startling to interest her
| ghost. The sad thing about discovery is that it works toward its
| own extinction, and that the more- we discover the less there is
| left. % w It does not follow that, scientifically, the year 2022
| should fail to be amazing. I suspect that commercial flying will
| have become entirely commonplace. The passenger steamer will
| survive on the coasts. but it will have disappeared on the main
| routes, and will have been replaced by flying convoys, which
| should cover the distance between London and New York in about
| twelve hours. As I am anxious that the reader should not look
| upon me as a visionary, I would point out that in an airplane
| collision which happened recently a British passenger plane was
| traveling at 180 miles an hour, which speed would have brought it
| across the Atlantic in eighteen hours. It is therefore quite
| conceivable that America may become separated from Europe by only
| eight hours. The problem is mainly one of artificial heating and
| ventilation to enable the aeronauts to survive. The same cause
| will affect the railroads, which at that time will probably have
| ceased to carry passengers except for suburban traffic. Railroads
| may continue to handle freight, but it may be that even this will
| be taken from them by road traffic, because the automobile does
| not have to carry the enormous overhead charges of tracks.
| Certainly food, mails and all light goods will be taken over from
| the railroads by road trucks. As for the horse, it will probably
| no longer be bred In white countries. The people of the year 2022
| will probably never see a wire outlined against the sky: it Is
| practically certain that wireless telegraphy and wireless
| telephones will have crushed the cable system long before the
| century is done. Possibly, too, power may travel through the air
| when means are found to prevent enormous voltages being suddenly
| discharged in the wrong place. Coal will not be exhausted, but
| our reserves will be seriously depleted, and so will those of
| oil. One of the world dangers a century hence will be a shortage
| of fuel, but It is likely that by that time a ureal ueai 01 power
| win ue ooiHineo irom tides, from the sun, probably from radium
| and other forms of radial energy, while It may also be that
| atomic energy will be harnessed. If It is true that matter Is
| kept together by forces known as electrons. It Is possible that
| we shall know how to dls< ?perse matter so as to release the
| electron as a force. This force would last as long as matter,
| thefofore as long as the earth itself. I The movies will be more
| attractive, as long before 2022 they will have been re* i THE I P
| ma
|
| V ' placed by the kinephone, which now exists only in the
| laboratory. That is the figures on the screen will not only move,
| but they will have their natural colors and spaak with ordinary
| voices. Thus, the stage as we know it to-day may entirely
| disappear, which does not mean the doom of art, since the movie
| actress of 2022 will not only not need to know how to smile but
| also how to talk. Hna mttrVif AvianH i ? A ? fi ? i i ?1 vr nn
| tKa V/UO "HftUt V<AtVUU 1UUC nunc 1J uu tuo number of inventions
| which ought to exist and will exist, but the reader can think of
| them for himself, and it is more interesting to ask ourselves
| what will be the appearance of our cities a hundred years hence.
| To my mind they will offer a mixed outlook, because mankind never
| tears anything down completely to build up something else; it
| erects the new while retaining the old; thus, many buildings now
| standing will be preserved. It is conceivable that the Capitol at
| Washington, many of the universities and churches will be
| standing a hundred yearB hence, and that they will, almost
| unaltered, be preserved by tradition. Also, many private
| dwellings will survive and will be inhabited by Individual
| families. I think that they will have passed through the
| cooperative stage, which may be expected fifty or sixty years
| nence, wnen ine servant pruoiem nas oecome completely
| unmanageable and when private dwellings organize themselves to
| engage staffs to cook, clean, and mend for the groups. That
| cooperative stage will be the last kick of the private mistress
| who wants to retain in her household some sort of slave. In 2022
| she will have been bent by circumstances, but sh'e will have
| recovered her private dwelling, being served for seven hours a
| day by an orderly. The woman who becomes an orderly will be as
| well paid as If she were a stenographer, will wear her own
| clothes, be called "Miss," belong to her trade union and work
| under union rulea. Naturally the work of the household, which is
| being reduced day by day, will in 2022 be a great deal lighter. I
| believe that most of the cleaning required to-day in a house will
| have been done away with. In the first place, through the
| disappearance of coal in all places where electricity is not made
| there will be no more smoke, perhaps not even that of tobacco. In
| the second place I have a vision of walls, furniture and hangings
| made of more or less compressed papier mache, bound with brass or
| taping along the edges. Thus, instead of \ VEW YO GAZINE NEW
| YORK, SUNDAY, Witt^L bB
| PotatoPancakes wrote:
| Continued:
|
| scrubbing Its floors, t^e year 2022 will unscrew the brass
| edges or unstitch the tapes and peel off the dirty surface of
| the floor or curtains. Then I every year a new floor board will
| be J laid. One may hope that standard B chairs, tables,
| carpets, will be peeled in the same way. SB Similar reforms
| apply to cooking, a ^B great deal of which will survive ^B
| among old fashioned people, but a SB great deal more of which
| will prob- ^B ably be avoided by the use of syn- ^fl thetic
| foods. It is conceivable, though not certain, that in 2022 a H
| complete meal may be taken in the m shape of four pills. This
| is not en- ^ tirely visionary; I am convinced that corned ^eef
| hash and pumpkin pie will still exist, but the pill lunch will
| ?roll by their side. But at that time few private dwellings
| will be built: in their stenH will rise the community
| dwellings, where the majority of mankind will be living. They
| will probably be located in garden Bpaces and rise to forty or
| fifty floors, housing easily four or five thousand families.
| This is not exaggerated, since in one New York hotel to-day
| three thousand people sleep i every night. It would mean also
| that each ( block would have a local authority of its < own. I
| imagine these dwellings as afford- 1 ing one room to each adult
| of the family | and one room for common use. Such cook- l ing
| as then exists will be conducted by the < local authority of
| the block, which will also i undertake laundry, mending,
| cleaning and will provide a complete nursery for the i children
| of the tenants. i Perhaps at that time we shall have at- j
| tained a dream which I often nurse, name- 1 ly, the city roofed
| with glass. That city < would be a complete unit, with
| accommoda- | Hons for houses, offices, factories and open j
| spaces, all this carefully allocated. The | root would
| completely do away with < weather and would maintain an even
| tern- ; perature to be fixed by the taste of the ( period.
| Artificial ventilation would sup- ] press wind. As for the open
| spaces, if the temperature were warm they would ex- l hibit a
| continual show of flowers, which < would be emancipated from
| wlifter and i summer; In other words, winter would not t come
| however long the descendants of Mr. l Hutchinson might wait. t
| The family would still exist, even though ] it is not doing
| very well to-day. It Is in- , conceivable that some sort of
| feeling be* r RK HE] SECTl MAY 7, 1922. nT/*A T<^ jo 1
|
| ,cF ' w^f^i JBPpl|p^^jMi W. L. GEORGE, the distinguished
| British autt tween parents and children should not persist,
| though I am of course unable to tell what that feeling will be.
| I Imagine that the link will be thinner than it Is to-day,
| because the child is likely to be taken over by the State, not
| only schooled but fed and ?lad, and at the end of Its training
| placed In a post suitable to Its abilities. This may be
| affected by birth control, which In 2022 will be legal all over
| the world. There will be stages: the first results of birth
| control will be to reduce the birth rate; then the State will
| step in. as it loes in France, and make it worth peo pie's
| while to have more children; then the State will discover that
| it has made things too easy and that people are having children
| recklessly; finally some sort of balince will establish Itself
| between the State lemand for children and the national supply.
| Largely the condition of the family will le governed by the
| position of woman, be -ause woman is the family, while man is
| nerely Its supporter. It is practically cer ;ain that In 2022
| nearly all women will lave discarded the idea that they are
| prlnarily "makers of men." Most fit women *111 then he
| following an individual career. Ml positions will he open to
| them and a ;reat many women will have risen high, rhe year 2022
| will probably see a large RALD I [ n J11Z 38 th 8U
|
| y number of women in Con^ - a press, a great many on the
| judicial bench, many m . in civil service posts and is perhaps
| some in the mi President's Cabinet. But it is unlikely that ^
| women will have an ^ achieved equality with T1 i.|" men.
| Cautious feminists At EsS Bk such as myself realize ^f | that
| things go slowly and ^ that a brief hundred tf,i r years win
| noi wipe out im the effects on women of m< 30,000 years of
| slavery. rr1 ar Women will work, partly m( heeausc they want to
| and partly because they will so be able to. Thus women w' tin
| will pay their share in the upkeep of home and t)o family. The
| above sug- bu gestion of community no buildings, where all the
| household work will be u' ca; done by professionals, will
| liberate the average trj wife and enable her out of her wages
| to pay her ^ share of the household work which she dis- nr1
| likes. an Marriage will still exist much as it is Ati to-day,
| for mankind has an Inveterate taste faf for the institution,
| but divorce will prob- nn ag ably be as easy everywhere as it
| Is in Nevada. In view, however, of the lm- Hti proved position
| of woman and her earning Th power, she will not only cease to
| be entitled to alimony, but she will be expected, ^ after the
| divorce, to pay her share of the thl maintenance of her
| children. or As regards the politics of 2022, I should lsr
| expect the form of the State to be much / th< the same. A few
| rearrangements may a8 have taken pla^e on the lines of self-de-
| or termination; for ?Instance, Austria may Bu have united with
| Germany, the South pu American republics may have federated,
| pil Ac., but I do not believe that there will be 1 i a
| superstate. There will still be republics an and monarchies;
| possibly, In 2022, the It Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Norwegian
| tin kings may have fallen, but for a variety of tal reasons,
| either lack of advancement or oci inni titu riiim nii'iup, we
| may export silll vir to And kings in Sweden, .lugo-Slavia, gw
| Greece, Rumania and Great Britain. on On the inside, these
| States may have kli slightly changed, for th9ro prevails a ten-
| an dency to socialization which has nothing to do with
| socialism. Most of the Euro- tht pean governments are
| unconsciously na- dif tionalizing a number of industries, and a
| l TWELVE PAGES
| PotatoPancakes wrote:
| Continued:
|
| t i ti wJ Is will go on. One may therefore preme that in 2022
| most States will have tionalized railways, telegraphs,
| teleones, canals, docks, water supply, gas \ ' any) and
| electricity. Other industries 11 exist much as they do to-
| day, but it likely that the State will be inclined to ntrol
| them, to limit their profits, and to bitrate between them and
| the workers, e find a hint of this in America in the ti-trust
| acts; a hundred years hence e tendency will be much stronger.
| It is >rth noting as an international factor at b/that time
| purely national Industries 11 almost have disappeared, and
| that the >rk of the world will be in the hands of ntrolled
| combines governing the supply a commodity from China to Peru.
| Unfortunately these international relains through trade are
| not likely to have ected political conditions. There will ill
| be war. The wars of that period may a little less frequent
| than they are toy, and be limited by arrangements such the
| Pacific agreement, the agreement tween Canada and the United
| States of rierica to leave their frontier unfortified, ., but
| it will still be there. I suspect at those wars to come will
| be made horle beyond my conception by new poison ses,
| inextinguishable flames and light>of smoke clouds. In those
| wars the airane bomb will seem as out of date as is clay tne
| hatchet. War may ultimately sappear, but this lies beyond the
| limits this article and even beyond those of f mind. \s
| regards the United States in particu, it is likely that the
| country will have me to a complete settlement, with a
| popition of about 240,000,000. The idea of rth and South,
| East and West, will have noet disappeared; by that time the
| Amerin race will have taken so definite a form it immigration
| will not affect it. The nfirican from Key West and the Amerin
| from Seattle will be much the same nd of mic. That is to say
| as regards race, but I feel at mentally the American of 2022
| will ve enormously changed. He is to-day e most enterprising
| creature in the orld, and is driven by a continual urge to
| se, to make money. That is because the odern American lives
| in a country that only partly developed, and where imense
| wealth still lies ready for him to ke. In 2022 that will be
| as finished as s to-day in England. American wealth 11 then
| he eithe.- developed or known, d all of it will belong to
| somebody, lere will he no more opportunity in nerica than
| there is in England to-day. lose Americans will know that it
| is actically certain that they will die much the same
| position as the one in which ey were born. Those Americans
| will erefore be less enterprising and much ire pleasure
| loving. They will have belled against long hours: the chances
| e that in 2022 few people will work >re than seven hours a
| day, if as much. The effect of this, which I am sure unds
| regrettable to many of my readers 11. in my opinion, be good.
| It was essen1 that the American race should be cable of
| intense labor and intense ambin if it was to develop its vast
| country, t one result has been haste, overwork, ise, all of
| which is bad for the nerves. 2022 America will have made her
| forae and will he enjoying it as well as she n. I think that
| she will be a happier counr than she is to-day. The appeal of
| alth will be less because wealth II be difficult to attain,
| so those aericans to come will be producing in t and
| literature infinitely more than they e producing to-day. To-
| day, in fiction, ? aerlca leads the world by sincerity, tli
| and fearlessness, hut the American vel of significance is a
| novel of revolt alnst the thralls of money, of convenn anrl
| of puritanism. In 2022 Ameriran srature will be a literature
| of culture, e battle will he over and the muzzle There will
| be no more things one n't say, and things one can't think No
| ubt there will be In 2022 people who nk as they would have
| thought in 1022, even a little earlier, but a great liberaln
| of mind will prevail, rt is not my business to corgrat ilat"
| > future, and I have no desire to do so. It Is impossible to
| say a thing Is good bad; all one can say is that it exists,
| it in case some of my readers feel relsion when they
| contemplate my lunch Is or my nationalized railroads, to
| those vould say that they are perhaps unduly xious. The world
| takes care of Itself; has been doing so for hundreds of cen
| ries nnri is still spinning; tne worm win te care of Itsplf
| In 2022: that Is Its chlpf r-upatlon. Morp than that. I fppl
| conlcpd that though thp world may Iosp icps, It will dpvolop
| othpr grarps, that the wholp. and as timp goes on. man id
| grows more intelligent, more amiable d more honpst. rhp
| fnturp will bp difficult: what dops it mattpr? So was thp
| past difficult: flcultlps did not prevent Its turning into
| tolerable preser^.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| And in almost one hundred years, we still haven't made much
| progress on the fundamental questions in quantum mechanics, other
| than perhaps Bell's theorem in the 60s.
|
| I wonder if Einstein, Dirac, et al. would have thought in the
| early 1930s that the measurement problem would remain unresolved
| and that there would still not be a consistent theory for QM and
| GR almost a century later.
| luis8 wrote:
| The only thing I wish to see before I die is at least a way to
| communicate faster than light. Something instant like quantum
| entanglement would be ideal or if that is too much to ask at
| least warp like communication.
|
| I'm currently doing software engineering but when I retire I'll
| dedicate all my free time for this. If at least 1% of the
| population follow this route someone will come up with a
| solution eventually.
|
| Imaging exploring the near galaxies with a probe that is
| capable of displaying real time video of whatever is out there
| :)
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| His comments about the slowing pace of scientific advancement
| really struck me. I have felt the same thing, often. That in
| 1922, we were actually somewhat close to the end of discovering
| all the really interesting things about physics: that is, those
| things which really shook up our understanding of the universe,
| but were still somehow comprehensible to our little human
| brains. I'm beginning to think that it wasn't just
| overenthusiasm that led me to be pretty disappointed when I
| went to get a PhD in science - it's that I grew up reading
| about the results of the most interesting period,
| scientifically, that man has ever had, which is now over.
| jerb wrote:
| Scientific progress has slowed, but engineering progress is
| only just beginning. For instance, the electronic transport
| chain of respiration/photosynthesis, is a series of quantum
| tunnels. Man has barely scratched the surface of quantum-
| level control which nature already exhibits.
| thoughtsimple wrote:
| The number of transistors produced in 2021 is a bit mind
| boggling if you do the math. These are nanotechnology
| produced at a rate by humans that rivals any large physics
| number. By my calculation, Apple alone via TSMC produces
| something like 1x10^18 transistors per year. Add up Intel,
| Samsung and the rest of TSMC's customers and the number
| goes far higher. We are so used to it, we don't boggle at
| the concept any more but we should.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| What I find fascinating about these predictions is that a lot of
| them came to pass around 1970 and then fell back. For example
| nationalisation of utilities and railways (here in the UK),
| communal living (tower blocks), and so on.
|
| Not to mention "a great liberalism of mind and the freedom to say
| anything"....
| timeon wrote:
| That idea about 'tower blocks in gardens' reminds me what
| happened 11 years later:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Charter
| tabtab wrote:
| Where's the flying cars, dammit! We were promised flying cars!
| Jail somebody, the future is all rigged.
| datavirtue wrote:
| He landed everything except the peeling furniture (kudos for the
| Ikea prediction) and labor conditions. Interesting how labor
| hasn't advanced much except for women in the workplace (he nailed
| that perfectly).
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I like how the author predicted that a hundred years wouldn't
| be enough to ensure gender equality.
| kierkegaard_s wrote:
| Interesting that the author here made the assumption opposite of
| WaitButWhy's Tim Urban in his AI article (see below). Author
| asserted pretty early that future progress wouldn't advance as
| quickly as past progress has. Or at least that's how I
| interpreted it.
|
| (https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol...)
|
| "Imagine taking a time machine back to 1750--a time when the
| world was in a permanent power outage, long-distance
| communication meant either yelling loudly or firing a cannon in
| the air, and all transportation ran on hay. When you get there,
| you retrieve a dude, bring him to 2015, and then walk him around
| and watch him react to everything. It's impossible for us to
| understand what it would be like for him to see shiny capsules
| racing by on a highway, talk to people who had been on the other
| side of the ocean earlier in the day, watch sports that were
| being played 1,000 miles away, hear a musical performance that
| happened 50 years ago, and play with my magical wizard rectangle
| that he could use to capture a real-life image or record a living
| moment, generate a map with a paranormal moving blue dot that
| shows him where he is, look at someone's face and chat with them
| even though they're on the other side of the country, and worlds
| of other inconceivable sorcery. This is all before you show him
| the internet or explain things like the International Space
| Station, the Large Hadron Collider, nuclear weapons, or general
| relativity.
|
| This experience for him wouldn't be surprising or shocking or
| even mind-blowing--those words aren't big enough. He might
| actually die.
|
| But here's the interesting thing--if he then went back to 1750
| and got jealous that we got to see his reaction and decided he
| wanted to try the same thing, he'd take the time machine and go
| back the same distance, get someone from around the year 1500,
| bring him to 1750, and show him everything. And the 1500 guy
| would be shocked by a lot of things--but he wouldn't die. It
| would be far less of an insane experience for him, because while
| 1500 and 1750 were very different, they were much less different
| than 1750 to 2015. The 1500 guy would learn some mind-bending
| shit about space and physics, he'd be impressed with how
| committed Europe turned out to be with that new imperialism fad,
| and he'd have to do some major revisions of his world map
| conception. But watching everyday life go by in 1750--
| transportation, communication, etc.--definitely wouldn't make him
| die."
| tomxor wrote:
| This is surprisingly accurate, reserved and balanced through the
| lens of society as well as science. I was expecting something
| more fanciful like flying horses or whatnot.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Except that:
|
| > I'm sure that technological advancement in 2022 will be
| amazing, but they will be nothing as amazing as the present day
| than it is over 100 years ago (i.e. 1822).
|
| I don't know about that statement.
| ghc wrote:
| If you think about what they didn't have in 1822 that they
| did have in 1922:
|
| - Radio
|
| - Movies
|
| - Motorized Rail Transit
|
| - Airplanes
|
| - Blimps
|
| - Recorded Audio
|
| - Electrification (esp. lighting)
|
| - Telephony
|
| - Cars
|
| - Subways
|
| - Fax
|
| - Early Television
|
| - Telegraph
|
| - Skyscapers
|
| - Underwater tunnels
|
| - Air Conditioning
|
| - Elevators
|
| - Modern Hospitals
|
| - Machine Guns, Tanks, Dreadnoughts and other tools of modern
| war
|
| - Stock Tickers
|
| - Early computing (Tabulators, IBM, etc.)
|
| - Modern Steel Manufacturing
|
| I would bet that the people of the 1920s would find the world
| of the 2020s much more recognizable than the people of the
| 1820s would find the world of the 1920s.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > I would bet that the people of the 1920s would find the
| world of the 2020s much more recognizable than the people
| of the 1820s would find the world of the 1920s.
|
| Let's start by explaining smartphones, then Twitter and
| Facebook and then on how companies used them to hijack
| elections and destabilize democracies in multiple
| countries.
|
| Or, for an amusing time, try to explain how a
| cryptocurrency works.
|
| My mom, born in 1935, doesn't understand what I do beyond
| that I write computer programs (which isn't even that much
| true anymore).
| tempestn wrote:
| The internet is a big change. Cryptocurrency is not on
| the same scale. But I would be inclined to agree that the
| impact of even computers and internet on the
| recognizability of everyday life is less than that of eg.
| telephony and airplanes.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > I would be inclined to agree that the impact of even
| computers and internet on the recognizability of everyday
| life is less than that of eg. telephony and airplanes.
|
| Remember when we needed to go to a payphone to tell our
| parents we were in the mall and to ask them to pick us
| up? And that they had no way to phone us while we weren't
| home?
| tempestn wrote:
| You're saying the ability to make a phone call from
| anywhere is a more significant change than the ability to
| make phone calls at all?
| Aperocky wrote:
| What you described was the industrialization - what lacked
| in 1922, and would make at least a similar, inexplainable
| change for people of 1922 today is information revolution.
|
| Information still traveled at human recognizable size in
| 1922, largely the same in 1822 (just got a bit faster over
| telegraph). Whereas today the first website you visit
| probably contained more information (bloat) sent to your
| phone than a person in 1922 would have came across in an
| entire year.
|
| In other word, the largest transformation is not on the
| front end, but that doesn't make it less significant.
| Everyone can make a Google landing page - but it's the
| stuff behind it that makes it Google.
| netsec_burn wrote:
| This exact prediction was made in the 1922 article.
| ghc wrote:
| That's what this thread is about. Parent of my comment
| was disputing that prediction from the article, and I
| presented a counter-argument.
| netsec_burn wrote:
| I see! Sorry about the confusion, I misunderstood the
| context.
| another_story wrote:
| Cars, trains, airplanes, electricity used in consumer
| devices, movies, telephones, radio, instantaneous
| intercontinental communication, etc...
|
| We have some cool stuff compared to 1922, but you could argue
| the shift was greater.
| feintruled wrote:
| Reminds me of the Gavin Belson freakout in Silicon Valley
| when his holographic call started freezing and they
| suggested he went to audio only "Fuck you, the audio's
| still working! Audio worked a hundred fucking years ago!"
| Nbox9 wrote:
| I'm really unsure about this. In 1822 canning food was new
| technology. 1822 didn't have electrical generators but 1922
| had radios, and the TV was clearly on the horizon. 1922 has
| the Model-T and airplanes.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Let me ask this question: Is the 777 further from the
| airplanes of 1922 than the airplanes of 1922 are from the
| hot air balloon?
|
| Airplanes _existed_ in 1922. But nobody you knew flew on
| them. You didn 't take them from the US to Europe on
| business trips; you took a ship. You didn't take them from
| New York to LA, either; you took a train. You _sure_ didn
| 't book flights online while sitting in your couch at home.
|
| The same (in fundamentals) technology existed in 1922. But
| all the _social_ change came after that.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > The same (in fundamentals) technology existed in 1922
|
| The first transatlantic flight by Charles Lindberg was
| 1927, 5 years _AFTER_ this article was written.
|
| People were trying to do a transatlantic flight in the
| 1920s the same way as we are trying to make hydrogen
| cars, applicable artificial intelligence (self-driving?),
| or other "nearly true" things today.
|
| There were many notable attempts at a transatlantic
| flight. As such, the article is able to point out the
| issues (ex: the lack of oxygen in the upper atmosphere,
| leading to hypoxia).
|
| An individual pilot can do a transatlantic flight with
| the use of a breathing apparatus, similar to a scuba
| diver. But large-scale flights wouldn't be possible until
| the invention of pressurized cabins (used as a secret-
| weapon during WW2: the US Superfortress Bombers would fly
| so high thanks to pressurized cabins, that other
| airplanes couldn't reach them).
|
| -------
|
| Predicting a successful transatlantic flight would be
| like predicting a self-driving car today. We see lots of
| cool tech demos and people starting to understand the
| issues / technology... but it clearly doesn't exist yet.
| Not in any way that's usable.
|
| We're probably 5 years off from a plausible tech-demo
| (ex: Spirit of St. Louis like attempt), and decades away
| from a commercial offering.
|
| Lindberg's flight was of 33-hours. This article is
| suggesting an 8-hour flight time, well into the realm of
| science-fiction by 1922 standards. The 400+ gallons of
| fuel of "The Spirit of St. Louis" was manually strained
| and manually purified by the team, for no commercial
| process existed yet to make the fuel pure enough for high
| reliability.
|
| A trans-atlantic flight was "inevitable", because the
| march of progress over the last 10 years was so dramatic,
| so incredible, so inspiring, that it almost certainly was
| going to happen. But it absolutely was still science
| fiction by 1922 standards.
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| That is one of the most accurate statements of the whole
| article!!!
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Yeah, I think he had a good understanding of the implications
| of the newer technology of his day.
|
| You don't know what you don't know so there's nothing about
| computers here, but most of this article was really well done.
| apozem wrote:
| These are better than 99% of predictions because the author has
| a good eye for what will change (technology, transportation,
| consumer goods) and what won't (human nature).
| EGreg wrote:
| Dude is describing tenements in Hong Kong...
| overthemoon wrote:
| It's interesting to compare this to the WEF future projections:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s...
|
| Especially with regards to this passage::
|
| "In 2022 [economic development] will be as finished as it is to-
| day in England. American wealth will then be either developed or
| known, and all of it will belong to somebody. There will be no
| more opportunity in America than there is in England to-day.
| Those Americans will know that it is practically certain that
| they will die much in the same position as the ones in which they
| were born. Those Americans will therefore be less enterprising
| and much more pleasure loving. They will have rebelled against
| long hours; the chances are that in 2022 few people will work
| more than seven hours a day, if as much.
|
| The effects of this, which I am sure sounds regrettable to many
| of my readers, will, in my opinion, be good. It was essential
| that the American race should be capable of intense labor and
| intense ambition if it was to develop its vast country. But one
| result has been haste, overwork, noise, all of which is bad for
| the nerves. In 2022 America will have made her fortune and will
| be enjoying it as well as she can."
| mc32 wrote:
| The above sentiment is not altogether wrong.
|
| Once people have certain comfort they cease to be productive
| and look for ways to while away their time. Sometimes its
| neutral, sometimes it may be a productive hobby and sometimes
| it's detrimental (as in they know what needs to change in the
| world and they will make it so).
|
| It's also telling that at the dawn of the XX cent, the US was
| not a wealthy country. Per capita we were more or less on par
| with countries that are today still "developing". Out position
| isn't a foregone conclusion and needs active development to
| remain there.
| pindab0ter wrote:
| What terrible phrasing is "they cease to be productive and
| look for ways to while away their time."
|
| We don't live to work, we work to live. Once less work is
| required to live, more living can be done. Some people may
| 'while away their time', others do valuable things that don't
| produce monetary value.
| mc32 wrote:
| Progress depends on people or, the economy in general,
| progressing. If everyone is happy where they are and want
| no more, there is no need to innovate and progress stops.
| That may be fine if we think we have achieved all we need
| to achieve as a society or species but most think we have a
| bit of a ways to go still before we can declare victory.
| misnome wrote:
| What about people who are made happy by innovating and
| progressing?
| mc32 wrote:
| When social support for that goes away, it's only the
| "crazy" who would do that just because. But without
| societal support it's a dead-end.
|
| There are countries with lots of people --but whose
| contribution to innovation is substandard. There is no
| societal support so innovation is stunted.
|
| It's like thinking justice will happen just because...
| No, it happens because society supports justice. Justice
| or innovation don't just "happen".
| soco wrote:
| Why should innovation lose support? It would fall under
| "people do what they like" so the innovators would go on
| innovating. And if the innovations bring even more to the
| society of course they will be adopted.
| mc32 wrote:
| Let's look at the Soviet Union to Russia transition. The
| state no longer had the same demand for space innovation.
| Their tech sector has stagnated. People didn't carry on
| just because they could.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| Innovation _does_ just happen, but only under
| circumstances that need it. People support it because it
| makes their lives easier. If it doesn 't do that then
| honestly who cares? Don't confuse innovation in general
| with how many startups the country has.
| mc32 wrote:
| There has to be some pull. If people are conditioned to
| be happy with say UBI + Netflix and conditioned to think
| that you should have a small impact on the planet (little
| consumption) and your daily needs met (food, shelter)
| innovation will go down in a generation or so.
|
| [to answer weakfish who appears "dead": no it's not wrong
| to revert to a subsistence existence, but it has trade-
| offs. Just be aware of the trade-offs.]
| weakfish wrote:
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| In the US a lot of people are very, very unhappy.
|
| The _lack_ of real political and economic agency for most
| of the population is one of the defining features of US
| capitalism.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Citation needed. There are all sorts of measures of gross
| happiness out there.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| This is also not a new phenomena but something that has
| been slowly increasing over human history. Before
| agriculture, humans spent almost all of their time hunting
| and gathering. Agriculture freed up some time and every
| major technological revolution has in some way made society
| more productive and efficient allowing us for more time not
| working. At some point in the 19th century the concept of
| leisure time came around and its only been growing.
|
| Reducing the work required by each individual to survive
| and support society is a natural effect of technological
| progression. If people are getting more work then we are
| regressing.
| stocknoob wrote:
| There still are hunter gatherer societies, and they don't
| spend all their time hunting and gathering.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/5510
| 187...
| Clubber wrote:
| >Before agriculture, humans spent almost all of their
| time hunting and gathering. Agriculture freed up some
| time
|
| Agriculture is more work than hunting and gathering, but
| it's a much more consistent food source.
|
| https://www.zmescience.com/science/hunter-gatherer-
| farmer-ti...
| monocasa wrote:
| And agriculture itself is less work than we think of.
| Medieval peasants worked less hours than we do.
|
| https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hou
| rs_...
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > And agriculture itself is less work than we think of.
|
| That depends entirely upon the ratio of agriculture to
| other industries in a society and the level of
| automation.
|
| People operating today's corporate farms in the US
| probably work fewer hours than their 1920s analogues, but
| produce far more output. People operating today's
| small/"family" farms are probably about on par in terms
| of hours worked, but still produce much more and there
| are far fewer of them.
| monocasa wrote:
| It doesn't. People working today's farms (corporate and
| self operated) appear to put in more hours than their
| 1920s analogues as much more of their time is consumed by
| the other parts of the business rather than working the
| fields component.
|
| They do create significantly more for their time, true.
| But this idea that exists that automation has given us
| more free time isn't quite borne out by the evidence.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| I didn't say agriculture gave us leisure, I said it freed
| us up to do other things. You may spend less time hunting
| and gathering but everyone is a hunter and gatherer. With
| agriculture a smaller part of your society is dedicated
| to food production. This allows for specialization and
| civilization.
|
| Leisure, as we understand it is a pretty modern
| development. In that study they are defining leisure as
| the opposite of labor. I wouldn't call that leisure
| personally. Partaking in or consuming entertainment and
| hobbies is leisure.
| mc32 wrote:
| It would seem plausible to claim agriculture put demand
| on innovation; tools to make more efficient agriculture.
| Things like irrigation channels, planting tools,
| harvesting tools, etc.
|
| Maybe technology developed for conflict came first but
| I'd guess peacetime uses also put demands on innovation.
|
| Interestingly, I watched some video somewhere where in
| some part of India[1] there were people who were
| harvesting wheat with a curved knife (sickle) like
| implement rather than a scythe. So people had to bend
| down to harvest a field. Meaning sometimes technology
| doesn't diffuse everywhere --even well known solutions.
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iU0uYeO7XI
| weakfish wrote:
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| I haven't though it through in detail, but I think it has
| to do with the intersection of these two things. Netflix
| and ice cream is pure leisure, toiling in the mines is pure
| work, but there's significant overlap...I'm sure for many
| here working on a personal coding project can be both a joy
| in the sense of leisure and also productive work in the
| sense that other people would pay for it, or it brings
| significant economic value to them.
|
| So...the middle of the Venn is the important part. Insofar
| as leisure is both joyful and productive, good. Insofar as
| we continue the "opiates of the masses" arms race and make
| ever better Netflix + ice cream, bad.
| [deleted]
| atlgator wrote:
| In the context of conquering "the land" from East to West, I
| think the articles sentiments are spot on. The conclusion that
| Americans would settle long term is open to debate. The
| frontier discussed in the article is a physical one, conquered
| by hard labor and sweat. And while Americans did succeed and
| enjoy (physically) lighter days now, the author failed to
| predict we'd find a new frontier, a digital one. The hard labor
| is now done in the mind, even if we spend too much time binging
| Rick & Morty.
| ydlr wrote:
| United States does rank below the UK in terms of social
| mobility. The notion that that is because the economic
| development of the country is "finished" seems weird.
|
| https://www3.weforum.org/docs/Global_Social_Mobility_Report....
| lettergram wrote:
| The world economic forum is largely lead by former nazis and
| communists. They have openly called for the United States to
| decline as a power.
|
| I wouldn't necessarily take anything they say as fact. Lol
| ianai wrote:
| Citation very much needed.
| sebow wrote:
| lettergram wrote:
| You can read the "Great Reset" book to get a wider view
| of their vision.
|
| They've been talking about this for a long time
|
| https://www.salon.com/2010/12/06/america_collapse_2025/
| beaconstudios wrote:
| And predicting the fall of the US... Makes them both
| nazis and communists? I'm confused by your argument.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's really hard to be both far-right and far-left at the
| same time.
| MadeThisToReply wrote:
| What about horseshoe theory?
| rbanffy wrote:
| Nazism is far-right and authoritarian. Socialism is just
| far-left, but not necessarily authoritarian. Soviet-style
| socialism was very authoritarian and that's why it got
| its bad reputation. And you can be authoritarian and not
| even be on the left-right axis - Saudi Arabia is an
| example, as is Afghanistan now.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Both of those countries are theocratic and extremely
| socially conservative, which places them on the far
| right.
| lettergram wrote:
| Read the book, look into the forums content, funding
| sources, history, etc
|
| I was pointing out the anti-United states propaganda has
| been going on for years.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I'm not going to do all that to verify your comment. It
| strikes me as an absurd claim, at least in part because
| nazis and communists are opposites, and everybody is
| predicting the fall of the US' dominance to China these
| days.
|
| The WEF is just liberal capitalism. The trend towards
| technofeudalism (everyone is renting their existence from
| big corps) has been going on for a while, at the hands of
| capitalists. Because its profitable. See: the growth of
| financing/credit, software subscriptions, etc.
| habeebtc wrote:
| If I am not mistaken "The Great Reset" is written by
| Glenn Beck. I may be wrong, as there are several books
| with that name, but the Beck book is the one most likely
| to involve railing against Nazis and Communists.
|
| You can get a sense for Beck's work here:
|
| https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/?s=Glenn+beck
| blackshaw wrote:
| "The Great Reset" is the name of a book by Klaus Schwab,
| who is chairman of the WEF. It was also the name that the
| WEF gave to their 50th annual meeting, which took place
| in 2020.
|
| Conspiracy theories aside, I've read Schwab's book, and
| it's a moronic, badly-written pile of buzzwords and
| corporate jargon that says nothing of interest and reads
| like the work of a hungover undergraduate who's padding
| the wordcount the night before the deadline while hoping
| the professor won't realise he hasn't done the reading.
| I'd tell you to ignore it, except Schwab is a man of
| enormous power and influence, so his apparent inability
| to produce an intelligent thought is really quite
| troubling.
| lettergram wrote:
| Indeed. I was ignoring this stuff until the "build back
| better" was the campaign slogan all over everyone in the
| western world
| hunterb123 wrote:
| I don't see how you can read things like the Great Reset
| and think the things you do.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I'm open to convincing arguments. What do you think the
| Great Reset is? To me it seems like late capitalists
| doing a capitalism as they always do, trying to eke out
| more profit by way of financier feudalism.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Trading that article, I wonder if you are conflating
| prediction and desire for something to happen.
| easytiger wrote:
| Use of the idea that now is an opportunity to be seized I
| think dictates that it's a desire
| ajmurmann wrote:
| So, if I predict something catastrophical will happen and
| I make efforts to prepare for it, I'm part of the
| problem?
| jollybean wrote:
| "United States does rank below the UK in terms of social
| mobility."
|
| It always did, because the US had slaves, and ex-slaves who
| had no much opportunity to 'climb'.
|
| The US now also has a giant class of a specific kind of
| migrant - Latinos from Central America, who are completely
| different than those from Spain or Cuba and the rest of the
| world. They exist in a kind of 'separate' USA and while
| technically might have the opportunities others have, they
| live in a system that is not suited to exploiting them. They
| are happy in their version of he US, they're family oriented,
| patriots - but not going to college or after the white collar
| trades like migrants from 'everywhere else'.
|
| Those two cohorts make the US 'very different' in terms of
| social mobility, and so you have a situation a bit akin to
| Brazil etc..
|
| Canada and Australia are 'Immigrant States' without those
| cohorts, and newcomers do reasonably well or somewhere
| approaching 'normal' after one or two generations.
|
| I'll bet social mobility among non-African American and
| Latino Americans, is about on part with Canada or Australia,
| and maybe even a little bit better than UK, and most of
| Europe (even Sweden) which also have vestiges of class.
|
| Some indicative data here [1]. You can see mobility gap
| between Black and White in the US, it's very crude and
| subject to interpretation, but it does line up with PISA
| standardized testing results which show the same, that non-
| Black/Latino America is actually 'a lot like' Europe or Japan
| in terms of so many outcomes. 2018 PISA test scores here [2]
| (download the PDF).
|
| FYI I'm not 'endorsing' or 'supporting' any kind of system
| here, just pointing out that the the US has a 'multi system
| dynamic' different than other places and it's essential to
| understanding how it works esp. on a comparative basis. FYI a
| lot of E/S European countries are poor, and represent similar
| kind of 'isolated communities' which is why gini coefficient
| etc. for the entirety of the EU is much worse than it is for
| any individual EU state.
|
| From 1922 until today - most of our progress has been
| incremental. Other than satellites, and maybe computers, it
| seems as though they ave predicted a lot. Maybe not quite the
| social impact of them however.
|
| What will change in 2122?
|
| If we have successful Fusion at scale, it could change a lot
| of things.
|
| If not, maybe it won't be that different: longer lives, more
| fashion. Maybe we figure out Climate Change and get plastics
| out of he ocean, but we'll probably still be arguing about
| 'what is normal'
|
| Eventually, we'll be able to colour our skin, eyes, hair very
| readily, we'll have cosmetic limbs (i.e. pair of wings that
| don't to much but flap a bit). And maybe mechanical uterus -
| where you provide the eggs and sperm and it will make a baby
| in 9 months. If the identity wars are a bit complicated now
| just wait.
|
| We will send a probe to Alpha Centuari and they'll be a small
| station on Mars, but it will be boring and young people won't
| even care.
|
| Reduced population in the West and massive population booms
| in Africa and some other spots will crate some odd
| international dynamics. Africa will be much better off, but
| mostly still corrupt with crackpot leaders and nuclear
| weapons. One of them will use one on their neighbouring
| country.
|
| [1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/02/14/no-
| room-a...
|
| [2]
| https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/pisa-2018-results.htm
| dhosek wrote:
| >Latinos from Central America, who are completely different
| than those from Spain or Cuba and the rest of the world.
| They exist in a kind of 'separate' USA and while
| technically might have the opportunities others have, they
| live in a system that is not suited to exploiting them.
| They are happy in their version of he US, they're family
| oriented, patriots - but not going to college or after the
| white collar trades like migrants from 'everywhere else'.
|
| This is so wrong and misinformed it's hard to know what to
| say. This sounds like the happy slaves justification for
| slavery.
|
| The fact of the matter is that Latino immigrants from
| Central/South America follow the same path of assimilation
| as immigrants from anywhere else do. From the outside it
| may not see like it but that's because there's a steady
| flow of new immigrants. I've taught a _lot_ of second-
| generation Latino immigrants who are very much interested
| in college and white-collar trades and not looking to
| continue in low-wage service jobs.
|
| To the extent that there's no opportunity to climb it's
| because of racist attitudes like yours.
| [deleted]
| jollybean wrote:
| "immigrants from Central/South America follow the same
| path of assimilation as immigrants from anywhere else
| do."
|
| Their experience, on the whole is different.
|
| For some obviously much more than others.
|
| Latino Household income is 1/2 that of other recent
| migrant groups of colour i.e. Asians [1], who fare better
| than 'White Americans', a simple fact which makes your
| 'it's all racism' immediately, well, probably wrong.
|
| Latino Americans are more likely to live in a segregated
| version of America almost due to their own choices, much
| like many other groups have historically, and much like
| 'micro enclaves' (i.e. Armenian, Persian, Chinese,
| Turkish) form among migrant communities across North
| America, UK, Australia, Germany etc. - the difference
| being, their cohort is enormous. Entire cities, or
| regions of cities are formed by relative newcomers from
| Central America, that doesn't happen with other migrant
| groups.
|
| Latino Americans fare considerably more poorly in school,
| and in terms of academic achievement; the independent
| test scores (to which I referred) point to that, and
| there's ample evidence of that otherwise.
|
| The 'it's all because of racism argument' holds little
| water, obviously, because other 'migrants of colour' in
| the US do actually very well. Would you imply that
| Latinos face 'racism' but migrants from India don't?
| That's not a very sound argument.
|
| There's even more detailed data to refute your argument,
| right in the 2018 PISA references I provided. While
| migrants across the board fare more poorly in school than
| regular citizens, in the US, Canada, UK (aka Anglosphere)
| - once you normalize for income, migrants overall
| actually do as well as or better than local kids. The
| same is not the case in Germany or Finland (ostensibly #1
| place for education). This is really strong evidence that
| actually, migrants tend to have 'opportunity' at least in
| the Anglosphere, at least the level of education.
|
| China, India, and Europe have high, even elite standards
| for education at least for a minority, and migrants from
| those places are likely to be from the upper tranches of
| that spectrum. Canada mostly accepts only those with a
| University degree.
|
| Migrants from Central America not only come from nations
| with very poor educational standards, but they're also
| individually, very poor. Many people cross the US border
| with literally nothing, often as refugees.
|
| The contrast between Latino Americans and others holds
| even for rates of crime, where Latino Americans are over-
| represented in almost all forms of crime, while their
| counterparts, migrants from other nations, are actually
| underrepresented in crime data.
|
| Latino Americans, unlike African Americans, are not
| represented as much pop culture, music, sports and media
| nearly to the same extent, almost as though 'they don't
| exist' - or rather they do, but in 'their own media'.
| Even during the 'Oscar's So White' uproar, nobody wanted
| to point out that nary 100% of the Latino prize winners
| were not American. Nobody seemed to care.
|
| Go ahead and name for me some Black SNL cast members.
| That's easy. Now name the Latinos ones. Much harder. I
| can't think of a single one other than Fred Armisen who
| has a bit of 'Latino Heritage'.
|
| If you take a moment to visit those areas of Texas and
| California, you'll realize how vast the submersion in
| 'Another America' many of them live in, and that it forms
| an existential artifact of their integration experience,
| which is very much unlike those of other migrants.
|
| (Again, it's not entirely the case, obviously there are
| millions of Latino Americans who live as 'statistically
| normative Americans')
|
| "To the extent that there's no opportunity to climb it's
| because of racist attitudes like yours. "
|
| I think it's probably people screaming about this or that
| and throwing names around that is 'a core problem'.
|
| Latino America is 'different enough' from the other
| cohorts, and they are 'big enough' that this implies
| differing policy measures, approaches etc..
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_i
| n_the_U...
| eganist wrote:
| I'm still amazed the first and last times nukes were used
| against people were in 1945.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I'm convinced that's because of M.A.D. had nukes bwwn on
| only one side, they'd have bwwn used more often.
| delecti wrote:
| I've heard arguments for and against the justifications
| to use nukes against Japan, and while I think it was
| probably unnecessary, at least it only happened at the
| very end of the war. If it had been introduced a couple
| years earlier then I worry our perception might be that
| it's just another thing you use _during_ war.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| If there wasn't a major adversary with similar weapons
| that might have happened. Low-yield tactical are probably
| more effective than things like the "MOP" bunker-busters.
| But the hard-line we've drawn on the application of nukes
| has prevented such a slippery slope in our proxy wars.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| In my eyes, nuclear weapons are both much less and much
| more terrifying that they seem to be considered by most
| people.
|
| The smallest nuclear devices aren't anywhere close to as
| large as commonly believed. An M28 "Davy Crockett" with a
| yield of 20T - 0.02kT - isn't _that_ much different from
| a conventional GBU-43 /B MOAB, which has a yield of 11T.
|
| Tactical nuclear weapons are basically a faster and more
| effective version of conventional strategic bombing.
| "Little Boy", the first weapon used in combat (in
| Nagasaki), had a yield of 15kT. That resulted in an
| estimated 66k deaths and 70k injuries. Compare that to
| the firebombing of Tokyo, which killed ~100k civilians
| and burned the homes of over a million more.
|
| Strategic nuclear weapons... they're in a whole other
| category. Obviously lots of people are killed during
| conventional strategic bombing, but most of the damage is
| ultimately done through fires set by the destruction of
| the intended targets. Some people have a chance to
| escape.
|
| What's more, conventional bombing is WW2 wasn't generally
| a "one-night" affair; it took days or weeks to saturate a
| target to the point of neutralizing it, and after the
| first couple of attacks many people would have left the
| target area. The firebombing of Tokyo resulted in so many
| civilian casualties precisely because it was a (very
| effective) one-night event, and people didn't have a
| chance to flee. That was exceptional even in WW2.
|
| Strategic nuclear weapons are effectively instant.
| They're incredibly powerful. We stopped building bigger
| ones not because we didn't know how, but because _we
| couldn 't see any reason to_. If a 50MT blast won't do
| the job, a 500MT blast isn't going to either... so why
| spend the money to develop, create, and maintain bigger
| ones?
|
| Finally, the idea that even a full nuclear exchange
| between major powers would be an extinction-level event
| is absurd. It would utterly destroy the countries
| involved, devastate the world economy, and poison huge
| swaths of the planet practically in perpetuity. Between
| the direct and indirect damage and the societal impacts
| on the remainder of humanity, it would set us back
| centuries as a species - but we would rebuild and it
| would take much less time to do so than it did to get to
| where we the first time.
| xxpor wrote:
| >Tactical nuclear weapons are basically a faster and more
| effective version of conventional strategic bombing.
| "Little Boy", the first weapon used in combat (in
| Nagasaki), had a yield of 15kT. That resulted in an
| estimated 66k deaths and 70k injuries. Compare that to
| the firebombing of Tokyo, which killed ~100k civilians
| and burned the homes of over a million more.
|
| Two points:
|
| The first bomb was on Hiroshima, and killed many more
| people. The reason why the Nagasaki bomb killed "so few"
| people is because they missed. They were supposed to do a
| visual confirmation of the target, but the weather was
| cloudy so they (probably) used radar targeting, which
| wasn't particularly accurate in 1945. A lot of the energy
| hit the side of a mountain.
|
| Second, there's a huge difference between a conventional
| bomb and a nuke of the same size simply because of the
| fallout. It continues to kill well after it's dropped.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > The first bomb was on Hiroshima, and killed many more
| people.
|
| Ugh. I hate when I do that. I don't know why I reversed
| them, other than the fact that I've been commenting on HN
| all day instead of working and probably just got
| overwhelmed :).
|
| > Second, there's a huge difference between a
| conventional bomb and a nuke of the same size simply
| because of the fallout.
|
| This applies much less to airbursts than groundbursts,
| and airbursts are the norm for modern weapons.
|
| That's not to say it's not there - it is - but it's
| significantly less of an issue than commonly believed.
| antux wrote:
| > Those Americans will know that it is practically certain that
| they will die much in the same position as the ones in which
| they were born. Those Americans will therefore be less
| enterprising and much more pleasure loving.
|
| You can see this today with the anti-work movement and the
| overindulgence in tv shows, movies, porn, junk food, social
| media, and video games. All these things are corrupting the
| future generations of kids.
|
| The corporations that create these have made them too
| accessible. Once kids start indulging at a young age, it's
| harder to control when they get older. Their lives will revolve
| around gaining short-term pleasures, and the world will lose
| out on the potential long-term creative value they could have
| contributed.
| stareblinkstare wrote:
| jahnu wrote:
| Alternatively people have found their own way to be happy and
| want to fill their lives with more experiences and less work
| for someone else's wealth.
| sologoub wrote:
| Some, no doubt, will choose a less creative path, but we also
| have evidence in history that people, who have the privilege
| of not worrying about their daily bread, also choose to spend
| their time in pursuit of sciences, arts, etc and many things
| not practical for them in regular employment and that advance
| all people.
| antux wrote:
| Those activities are fine and well. I never stated anything
| against those things. My point, that you missed, is that an
| overindulgence in modern media entertainment will lead
| people down a spiral of short-term pleasure seeking that
| can compromise their long-term creative potential.
| sologoub wrote:
| I didn't miss that point, just don't agree with it. The
| two outcomes are not mutually exclusive and the
| availability of entertainment isn't a good reason to
| claim people cannot (will not?) be productive if their
| survival no longer depends on that productivity.
|
| In short, I think people adapt and figure out their
| priorities. If someone wants a life of binging Netflix,
| who am I to say that's a wasted life? (So long as that
| person doesn't make me live such a life.)
| lettergram wrote:
| > Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has
| Never Been Better
|
| Let me translate
|
| "you are slaves and you rent everything. We base your ability
| to purchase on a social credit score. But we let you rent
| houses in our artificially limited VR world."
|
| I don't make much of predictions like these. It's ALWAYS a safe
| bet to assume people will lose liberty. To the point the FED
| was created in 1913, research why it was created - not just
| wikipedia, get some books published between the 20 to 60s. When
| was public education first introduced at scale? When was
| eugenics promoted in the United States?
|
| The 1910s - 1920s was the beginning of the major authoritarian
| and progressive movements in the United States. Read about the
| history of Woodrow Wilson.
|
| At the end of the day, the United States during the 20s was
| losing its independence already. It was openly talked about on
| higher-class circles.
|
| In that context all these predictions are really aspirations.
|
| That said, I think the United States is still one of the most
| free and diverse countries on the planet. Has its issues and
| can 100% improve. But the same people and families who are part
| of the WEF are the same families / people in the 1910s - 1920s
| promoting the same general ideas.
| verisimi wrote:
| This is a very hard conversation to have on HN.
|
| It is impossible to consider that the whole of society has
| been created and planned in advance. To think that the upper
| classes manage everyone (they always did), that the schooling
| system produces people that are incapable of seeing the
| outside the box (and yet believe that they are free, nay -
| they 'know' it), that finance is the main weapon in the
| wealth extraction, that it is planned for us to move to
| technocracy (with a bio-medical-wallet-etc-id, tracked
| everywhere in spy-cities, not allowed to even leave your
| 110sqft micro-flat unless the computer says so), that all the
| disasters we face have resulted in incremental steps towards
| this aim (911, covid). Its a lot to consider!
|
| That we have been harnessed and put to work creating someone
| else's heaven on earth (and hardcore slavery for the rest) is
| a bitter pill to swallow. And the techies here have recently
| been the greatest driver of this change. Their livelihoods do
| depend on it.
|
| Anyway, good on you, for bringing some of these issues up.
| throwawayyear22 wrote:
| "This is a very hard conversation to have on HN."
|
| Yes because it implies there is a conspiracy requiring God-
| like abilities to plan the long term outcomes of a
| multitude of decisions and actions many of which have
| conflicting goals.
|
| What is more probable, that the current situation just
| emerged organically or that some elite group has conspired
| and executed flawlessly to make the world just like it is ?
|
| There are subcontractors who work for my CM in China and I
| doubt they are paid much. It wasn't my plan to create wage-
| slaves and if I paid my CM more they would just likely
| pocket the difference. I'll admit I contribute to to
| problems you describe but that's very different than having
| intent and control.
| verisimi wrote:
| No. God-like abilities are not required.
|
| But lots of wealth and a clear long-term plan is.
|
| Do you think that those individuals that own
| corporations, would be interested to gain greater control
| and wealth? Wouldn't it be good to transform society in a
| way that is most beneficial to them? Do you think that
| those individuals would be pretty ruthless in their
| execution of their plans? And that they would also try to
| be secretive? Of course.
|
| Do you think that politicians can be encouraged to vote
| one way or another? Those on the blue team _and_ on the
| reds? Given lots of money, lobbyists, etc? Or threats? I
| think it would be naive to think that they do not.
|
| And if you control governmental policy, what would you
| work on? Education - to train obedient workers? Finance?
| The legal system? All of those.
|
| Would you create or buy the media companies to ensure
| that your message is always provided, and that any
| negative exposure is squashed? Or get people talking
| about all the wrong things? Yes again.
|
| Would you seek to increase dependence on government or
| increase people's self-reliance? Increase dependence on
| government, of course! What is the direction of travel do
| you think?
|
| Would you even create a ready way to smear those who do
| raise the reality of the situation. A handy handle that
| allows you to dismiss those who are sharing information
| that you don't like. This too has been done - and the
| handle is 'conspiracy theorist'. This smear allows you to
| ignore whatever evidence might be being presented, and
| allow you to carry on with your day - no further
| investigation required!
|
| My view is that if you have a good handle on human
| nature, specific goals and lots of wealth, it is actually
| not that hard to create the fish bowl. You will have
| created a class (the majority) of people who are too
| invested (financially, emotionally, spiritually) in the
| unnatural system you have provided. They will go to the
| schools you created, learn the values you want, just like
| their parents.
|
| If you control the terrain, and provide the method that
| people use to "verify" information for themselves (and
| the method is accept the evidence free claims given,
| maybe occasionally double check something on Wikipedia)
| you can really go very far! No one checks anything - we
| are so invested in this we have to trust that "they've
| got this".
|
| The truth is that "they" look at you and I as cattle. And
| they are just executing their best herd-management
| procedures. And - I think - they have been running things
| like this for a long time.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Not that I disagree with the underlying ideas, but I'd
| argue we're not slaves. I'll concede that in practice we
| can definitely be thought something more akin to peasants,
| but what we live in today is not slavery.
|
| Now, is being a peasant, with all the concomitant
| limitations on one's livelihood any better than being a
| slave to the mental health of the bright and ambitious?
| Perhaps not, but it would be significantly more deleterious
| to their physical health.
|
| I also understand that reasonable people can debate whether
| physical or mental health is more important.
| verisimi wrote:
| If I am forced to give any percentage of my income to a
| government I do not want, I think that is slavery. You
| wouldn't think it ok if an individual forced you, or the
| mafia. The government is just big mafia.
|
| But that is not really the nub of it.
|
| Slavery is really a mental state - having been through
| the system we have been propagandised that the government
| is a good thing, it's the right way to manage ourselves -
| anything else is very bad. This is the creation of the
| slave mentality, putting the policeman inside your head,
| so that you feel highly uncomfortable just considering
| non-standard ideas - they are thoughtcrime.
|
| Thoughtcrime egs: that news is just another show, a
| serious type of advert. That pharmaceutical companies
| will run world wide campaigns, seconding governments,
| drafting laws, to poison millions - this will fill up
| their pipeline with sickness for the coming decades.
| xxpor wrote:
| There will always be someone more powerful than you. I
| prefer that I can elect the leaders of the most powerful
| group. This is why anarchy doesn't make any sense: The
| government is simply the most powerful violent group. As
| long as violence exists, any anarchic arrangement is
| inherently unstable.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _If I am forced to give any percentage of my income to a
| government I do not want, I think that is slavery_
|
| This is a good example of what I'm talking about.
|
| Maybe you think of it as slavery, but in reality, it's
| the very definition of peasantry.
|
| Slavery is you get _no_ money. And by the way, if you
| disagree with it, the power holder beats the tar out of
| you. Or maybe s /he just kills you and gets another
| slave. Whatever's most convenient at the time/place.
|
| Other than money, there are also a host of other
| differences between how we live and slavery. Including
| the fact that slaves don't choose their masters. There is
| no right to leave. Less than expected productivity
| results in severe beatings. And on and on and on.
|
| Again, peasantry is its own special form of perdition. No
| need to exaggerate to get that point across. I was only
| saying that it's clearly not slavery.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| > I also understand that reasonable people can debate
| whether physical or mental health is more important.
|
| I'm actually unsure what this means. I take it to imnply
| that physical health is more important, but I'm not
| convinced of that. Physical health impacts the individual
| and loved ones (via emotional labor and support). Mental
| health impacts the community (mass shootings); it's hard
| to predict the outcome of poor mental health per
| individual but it's clear on the whole that it's often
| the community that pays for it.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Knowledge is Bayesian, and while there is finite
| probability for what you said, the probabilities are very
| low based on real events.
|
| Also, the premise that finance people are just naturally
| evil isn't based in reality, its just fetishism.
| godshatter wrote:
| Yes. Those that have the power to trick others into giving
| them even more power have little restraining them from
| doing so.
|
| It's also complicated by the fact that those who push
| against it haven't exactly made a name for themselves as
| reasonable people (at least the most vocal ones haven't)
| leading to derision of "freedumbs" and so forth.
|
| I mourn the dearth of different perspectives and not
| assuming everyone is on a "side".
| 2Xheadpalm wrote:
| 'power to trick' - that hit the nail on the head! The
| oligarchs, higher level bureaucrats, politicians, extreme
| wealthy etc. that is the superpower, at their core, they
| are magicians but not in a good, fun way, more like con-
| man who have mastered the power to _trick_ and deceive. I
| came to the conclusion sometime ago, that all these
| people of power and position are really just charlatans,
| albeit extremely good ones, they are nothing to aspire to
| and respect, they are no better then a grifter using
| 'slight of hand' and deception to remove as much wealth
| and power from others to themselves and when all else
| fails, they will resort to force/war if need be. In a
| nutshell, nothing but liars, cheats, cowards and
| dishonorable megalomaniacs that put on a (good) show for
| us peasants to better rob us blind.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I mean, "liberty" is exactly allowing people to convince
| each other to exchange things. Some people might get the
| short end, but does that mean it's not free exchange? Or
| does that mean liberty itself is not an aim worth
| pursuing?
| godshatter wrote:
| In my personal opinion it is worth it to have liberty,
| even if so many people are fine with giving it up to
| others at the drop of a hat. It's too important not to
| have. I just wish individual independence wasn't so
| derided these days.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| Gun control in the 1880s Old West:
|
| "The laws of Tombstone at the time required visitors, upon
| entering town to disarm, either at a hotel or a lawman's
| office. (Residents of many famed cattle towns, such as Dodge
| City, Abilene, and Deadwood, had similar restrictions.)"
|
| "Dodge City, Kansas, formed a municipal government in 1878.
| According to Stephen Aron, a professor of history at UCLA,
| the first law passed was one prohibiting the carry of guns in
| town, likely by civic leaders and influential merchants who
| wanted people to move there, invest their time and resources,
| and bring their families."
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-
| west-...
| queuebert wrote:
| Probably unconstitutional, but never challenged in the
| Supreme Court, I believe.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| It would have been perfectly Constitutional until the
| Supreme Court changed their interpretation of the 2nd
| Amendment in the Heller case.
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._H
| eller
| queuebert wrote:
| IANAL, but I think there was no interpretation until the
| Supreme Court made that ruling. The Second Amendment was
| in a quantum state before that, both an individual right
| and not. When it becomes necessary to clarify something,
| then SCOTUS collapses the wave function in that
| particular area of law.
| camgunz wrote:
| Nah _Heller_ is the outlier here. Here 's the Wikipedia
| page for its precedent, _Miller_ :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Miller
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| SCOTUS didn't begin to apply the bill of rights to anyone
| besides the federal government until _Chicago,
| Burlington, and Quincy Railroad v. City of Chicago_ in
| 1897. The entire notion of individual rights (in the
| modern sense) guaranteed by the constitution was in its
| nascency in 1878.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| John Paul Stevens was a lawyer and a judge on the Supreme
| Court. He disagrees and includes actual court decisions
| and opinions.
|
| >the Miller Court unanimously concluded that the Second
| Amendment did not apply to the possession of a firearm
| that did not have "some relationship to the preservation
| or efficiency of a well regulated militia." And in 1980,
| in a footnote to an opinion upholding a conviction for
| receipt of a firearm, the Court effectively affirmed
| Miller, writing: "[T]he Second Amendment guarantees no
| right to keep and bear a firearm that does not have 'some
| reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency
| of a well regulated militia.'
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/john-
| paul-...
| jmedefind wrote:
| Back then the Second Amendment was read as a right to an
| Armed Militia. SCOTUS probably would of allowed these
| laws at the time.
|
| It's only the in past few decades that the Second
| Amendment has been perverted into the right to carry any
| gun you want where ever you want.
|
| Ref:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/09/09/why-
| accura...
| queuebert wrote:
| That's an Op Ed, not a reference.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's probably a waste of time to argue this, but the
| arguments for central banking were the same as the arguments
| put forth by Alexander Hamilton. More stability, greater
| resilience, etc.
|
| The arguments against it were vague references to tyranny,
| orchestrated by people whose wealth is generated from
| resource extraction and inherited wealth.
| zionic wrote:
| Central banks and their role in tyranny is hardly "vague".
|
| They can siphon off the wealth of an entire nation by
| printing money. It's an irresistible temptation that I
| don't trust any man to resist long term. That kind of power
| shouldn't be in the hands of any one person or
| organization.
| pydry wrote:
| >They can siphon off the wealth of an entire nation by
| printing money. It's an irresistible temptation
|
| A) Which makes it basically another form of tax.
|
| B) The raising of which always driven the wealthy into
| fits of rage no matter how necessary or beneficial.
| zionic wrote:
| No the wealthy love this because their debt becomes
| cheaper to service while their assets skyrockets.
| Inflation primarily hurts the non-asset owning poor.
| pydry wrote:
| Have you met the non asset owning poor? They have debt.
| LOTS of debt.
| slg wrote:
| >They can siphon off the wealth of an entire nation by
| printing money.
|
| There are a countless other ways a country can do this
| and most of those are more targeted. The tax code is the
| most obvious example. Inflation is a flat tax of a few
| percentage points. If the goal is to wield power, it is
| much more important to control the tax code and move the
| income tax from 0% (generally true before the 16th
| Amendment in 1913) to 91% (1954-1963) or from 91% back
| down to 37% (the current rate). Blaming central banking
| as the primary cause for these issues just doesn't make
| sense to me.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > Inflation is a flat tax of a few percentage points
|
| Flat tax on cash holdings, which poor people don't have.
|
| It's a negative tax on debt, which poor people tend to
| hold. It doesn't apply to assets.
|
| Now if wages don't keep track with inflation, that's not
| a tax, it's an employer reducing wages.
| slg wrote:
| I'm not sure the distinction you are making here. A flat
| tax is called that because it is flat in percentage not
| in nominal value. Yes, debtors will benefit more than
| creditors, but that doesn't mean it isn't a flat tax.
| Also it doesn't just impact cash which should be obvious
| from the last sentence. If inflation decreases the real
| amount owed by debtors, it also decreases the real amount
| that is owed to creditors, and therefore decreases the
| value of their investments.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > If inflation decreases the real amount owed by debtors,
| it also decreases the real amount that is owed to
| creditors, and therefore decreases the value of their
| investments.
|
| I'm sure that's upsetting for wealthy people with
| investments
|
| For the mom working 3 jobs at Macdonalds, as long as
| Macdonalds continues to pay an inflation linked salary,
| her debts being whittled away, that's great news.
|
| Now if Macdonalds can cut salaries relative to inflation,
| that's a whole other problem.
| slg wrote:
| I think you are projecting a moral or political argument
| into my comments. That wasn't my intention. My point is
| that there are more powerful levers in the government
| than the inflation rate.
|
| Sure, having your debt reduced by 6% or whatever is good,
| but the government could also easily forgive all
| federally owned college debt and 100% reduction is
| certainly better than 6%. Increasing the minimum wage is
| another example. That would more directly benefit that
| mom with 3 jobs more than inflation.
|
| Whatever your political goals are, there is likely a much
| more powerful tool to accomplish them than nudging the
| inflation rate up or down a few percentage points.
| zionic wrote:
| > For the mom working 3 jobs at Macdonalds, as long as
| Macdonalds continues to pay an inflation linked salary
|
| Huge assumption. Wages have not kept up with inflation
| since the 1970's. Know what has? Asset prices. Guess who
| owns stocks/gold/real estate?
| long_time_gone wrote:
| >It's a negative tax on debt, which poor people tend to
| hold. It doesn't apply to assets.
|
| Thank you!! This is the first time I've heard someone
| acknowledge this since the "inflation crisis" started.
| Inflation is good for student debt holders.
| nightski wrote:
| Could be, but it makes a lot of assumptions and is loose
| with terminology. Monetary inflation does not equal price
| or wage inflation necessarily. We are definitely seeing
| price inflation which no longer seems to be transitory.
| There does seem to be wage inflation, but that is not
| guaranteed. So while if wage inflation keeps up for those
| holding debt, then yes. I wonder though if those in the
| position of student debt have the least leverage to take
| advantage of the wage inflation.
|
| The other thing is that costs go up. The impact of this
| is much greater if you are poor which could also affect
| your ability to actually pay the loans. One has to eat
| after all.
|
| So imho, it's a lot more complicated for an individual.
| Sure for a corporation that borrows tens of millions for
| a new capital expenditure it makes debt cheaper. But that
| may or may not translate to someone that is poor and
| paying off debt.
| zionic wrote:
| Their student debt might go down but so does their chance
| of ever owning a home.
|
| They hoodwinked an entire generation of children into
| going six-figures in debt, made the high school diploma
| worthless etc.
|
| Before: -HS degree -no debt -immediately start a factory
| job that makes enough for an average home, 2 cars, and a
| spouse that doesn't work
|
| Now: -4 year degree, delaying income in prime years
| -graduate with a small house-worth of debt, with no house
| -your new job's earnings in real terms is barely enough
| to rent -your spouse has to work too -have to make one
| car work
|
| The American people have been robbed of their prosperity
| and sold a bucket of lies.
| toomanydoubts wrote:
| >There are a countless other ways a country
|
| A country? The federal reserve is run by private
| individuals. It is a private bank. Don't let the name
| fool you.
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| Your username is incorrect.
| slg wrote:
| "The Federal Reserve is private" is a meme at this point
| that is largely divorced from our usual meaning of
| public/private. Calling the Federal Reserve Board
| "private citizens" is like calling the Supreme Court
| Justices "private citizens". They are both officials
| appointed by the president, who must be confirmed by the
| Senate, and who collect a public salary. Any profits from
| the Federal Reserve go right back into the US Treasury.
| What more do we need to consider this part of the
| government?
| nightski wrote:
| While all supreme court justices are appointed, from my
| understanding only the chairman is appointed correct?
| Everyone that works for the fed is not necessarily
| appointed?
|
| Maybe we say it is private but the government serves as
| the board :)
|
| Seeing the tension over the years the Chairman, the
| President, and Congress implies to me that the government
| does not have absolute authority over the Fed.
| slg wrote:
| All the board members are appointed. From their
| website:[1]
|
| >The Board of Governors--located in Washington, D.C.--is
| the governing body of the Federal Reserve System. It is
| run by seven members, or "governors," who are nominated
| by the President of the United States and confirmed in
| their positions by the U.S. Senate.
|
| Not everyone who works for the Fed is appointed, but that
| is also true of the Supreme Court, Congress, the FBI, or
| any other part of the government. The leaders are
| political appointees and they oversee a bureaucratic
| system that includes many workers who are ostensibly
| apolitical.
|
| >Seeing the tension over the years the Chairman, the
| President, and Congress implies to me that the government
| does not have absolute authority over the Fed.
|
| Once again, just like the Supreme court. Both of these
| entities are designed to be more independent of the day-
| to-day political squabbles of the president and Congress.
|
| [1] -
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/structure-
| federal...
| toomanydoubts wrote:
| Financial elite finances all candidates, some of them
| win, the winners appoint the financial elite to be board
| members of the organization that is capable of printing
| money and giving bailouts/buying poisoned assets from
| said financial institutions. The money is not made from
| FED profits, the money is made by the financial
| institutions owned by the board members. What's so hard
| to understand about that? It's clearly a scam.
|
| It does not only happen at the central-banking level, but
| it's another tool used by them. Let me give you a similar
| example, not directly involving central banking, from my
| country. Paulo Guedes is the founder of BTG Pactual bank.
| He goes on and funds the candidate Jair Bolsonaro for
| presidency. Once elected, Bolsonaro appoints Guedes to
| Ministry of Economy. His monetary policies decisions
| makes the USD/BRL go from R$3.71 to R$5.70. November/2021
| comes by and pandora papers are released. We find out the
| dude has almost 10 million USD stashed in offshore tax-
| heavens. His decisions made his personal fortune grow by
| 14 million BRL(equivalent to 956 years of minimum wage).
|
| This does not involve central banking directly but the
| idea is the same: put the financial elite in positions
| that allow them to make large scale decisions to grow
| their personal fortunes while affecting the lives of all
| others. It's a scam.
| slg wrote:
| >Financial elite finances all candidates, some of them
| win
|
| Your entire point rests on this premise and once we
| accept this premise we acknowledge the entire government
| is already compromised. Once that happens why does the
| central bank matter when everything that follows could be
| accomplished some other way through that already
| compromised government? That is my fundamental point. It
| isn't that the central banks don't have power. It is that
| a central bank's power pails in comparison to the overall
| government. Therefore conspiracies theories about taking
| over the government to gain control of the central bank
| don't make much sense.
| toomanydoubts wrote:
| >Your entire point rests on this premise and once we
| accept this premise we acknowledge the entire government
| is already compromised.
|
| I agree.
|
| >Once that happens why does the central bank matter
|
| I guess it matters because public awareness is necessary
| for us not to allow history to repeat itself. As Ford
| once said: "It is well enough that people of the nation
| do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if
| they did, I believe there would be a revolution before
| tomorrow morning."
| slg wrote:
| >I guess it matters because public awareness is necessary
| for us not to allow history to repeat itself.
|
| But it is a symptom rather than a cause of the
| corruption. The energy spent on raising public awareness
| about this would likely be better served drawing
| attention to what we both seem to think is the underlying
| problem, the outsized influence that the wealthy have on
| the government.
| toomanydoubts wrote:
| Fair enough.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| No.
|
| It's more akin to a public authority.
| [deleted]
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Inflationary monetary policy is wealth transfer into the
| upper class without most people realizing it. Wealth, be it
| institutions or individuals, will always push for central
| banking as it entrenches their power.
| whakim wrote:
| Inflation is super complicated because it depends on what
| types of assets are held by whom and how susceptible
| those assets are to inflation. For example, high rates of
| inflation during/after WWII were a large contributing
| factor in a net reduction in wealth inequality, because
| much of the wealthy was heavily invested in fixed-return
| war bonds. Much of the rentier economy of the 19th
| century elite depended on predictably low (almost
| nonexistant) inflation in order to sustain their
| fortunes. Theoretically, the financial assets of today's
| wealthy should be somewhat less vulnerable to inflation
| (real returns over the last ~80 years seem to be lower
| during periods of high inflation but it's also sometimes
| hard to untangle inflation from the overall state of the
| economy). Ultimately, inflation is a pretty crude
| instrument in terms of who it affects; I think it's hard
| to make sweeping statements about who it's "good" for
| that hold up well over time.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's why the regulatory environment of the 20th century
| is important... Monetary policy that includes full
| employment provides benefits to the broader population.
|
| "Hard money", gold, Bitcoin, land, etc focused policy
| only benefits the return on assets for the people with
| those assets.
|
| What we have now is the worst of both worlds.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Inflationary monetary policy is wealth transfer into
| the upper class
|
| No, it is a means of wealth transfer to the government
| without raising taxes. Where does the trillions in
| deficit spending come from? Inflation!
|
| The politicians, of course, know this. But they keep up
| the misdirection by blaming it on greedy capitalists
| and/or unions.
|
| The notion that it is for monetary stability is also
| propaganda. Milton Friedman in "Monetary History" showed
| that instability _increased_ after the creation of the
| Fed.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| "Inflationary monetary policy" is wealth transfer _to the
| government_ (which they 're then supposed to spend on
| common infrastructure, and other collaborative projects
| that everybody agrees on but nobody wants to shell out
| for unless everyone else is too). If the government is
| supporting the upper class and leaving everyone else to
| rot, no monetary policy will fix the issue.
| queuebert wrote:
| I think this is supposed to be true, but nowadays when
| the wealthy mostly hold assets that have real value, like
| real estate and equities, as opposed to USD in a bank
| account, I'm not sure how well it works.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That's what tax is for.
|
| Sadly, my internet degree in armchair economics doesn't
| give me the ability to come up with a _functioning_ tax
| system (however much I think I can _beat_ the status quo)
| so I have no further pearls of wisdom.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Is this really the case? Inflation favors debtors over
| creditors, the upper class tends to be the latter not the
| former. While it is the case that the value of savings
| goes down, the lower class are much less likely to save.
| vkou wrote:
| It's not the case, but people keep wringing their hands
| about how inflation robs the poor of the ~$500 they have
| in their savings accounts, while ignoring how much it
| helps the middle-class mortgage owner who is in fixed-
| rate debt for a million dollars.
|
| They get away with it because they don't make the
| distinction between price inflation and asset inflation.
| The cost of bread doubling is a huge problem for the
| poor, but means little to everyone else. The cost of
| assets doubling doesn't matter to the poor, because they
| have never, and will never save enough money to buy
| assets. The cost of assets doubling matters greatly
| against a yuppie who is trying to buy a home. The cost of
| assets doubling matters greatly in favor of someone who
| bought a home last week.
|
| Inflation sucks for you if you earn minimum wage, because
| half the country thinks that raising the minimum wage to
| keep up with inflation means will bring about the
| apocalypse. Inflation doesn't matter much to you if
| you're in a high-demand industry, with wages rising to
| match it. Inflation sucks for you if you're not working,
| but doesn't matter to you if you are, and there's a
| labour shortage, which increases your wage bargaining
| power.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Let's use an example that might look familiar.
|
| If inflation robs the poor person of the $500 and helps
| the middle class person with a mortgage.... all other
| things being equal, we transferred wealth _from_ the poor
| person to the middle class person. yay, with me so far?
|
| By the same account, if the middle class person is helped
| a little bit by inflation, (but also has some cash) the
| rich person who is leveraged many times over into 10
| properties, and has most of their wealth in equities
| (which themselves are leveraged because of corporate
| debt) is going to be even _better_ off after the increase
| in money supply.
|
| Their share of the pie grew and the middle class persons
| maybe grew, but not relative to the rich person.
| Therefore, that is wealth transfer.
|
| The majority of US equities is held by the upper class
| and corporate debt dwarfs consumer debt (including
| mortgages).
| Spooky23 wrote:
| All things are not equal. I know someone who was the CEO
| of a small hospital network.
|
| When he retired, his compensation was greater than the
| sum of salary for the entire company. The company paid
| for his Tesla lease, but orderlies making $12/hr had a
| uniform deposit deducted from their first few checks.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would need a source to believe this. The hospital would
| have had to not have any doctors on staff to come close.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| But you're missing the bigger picture: the rich who
| _issues_ mortgages (or more likely, has stake in a real
| estate company) is having their wealth transferred to the
| lender. Most wealthy people loan more than they owe. If
| you owe more than to loan out then by definitely you 're
| not wealthy, your net worth is negative. Similarly, a
| poor person who owes $20,000 on an auto loan, whose car
| is now worth $25,000 just saw a significant gain.
|
| Inflation helps people who owe more than they lend out
| (most poor and middle class people). People who lend out
| more than they owe, directly or indirectly through stake
| in companies that do lending, are the ones experiencing
| less profit because of inflation.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| You're right that the banking system is a little more
| complicated than I made it out to be, but let's ignore
| that for now. You agree that the majority of the fortune
| 50 is holds more debt than credit, right?
|
| We don't have to speculate about how much debt rich
| people have, you can look at what % of equities is owned
| by the upper class and you can go compare consumer debt
| to corporate debt.
|
| Now as to the banking system, there's a little bit of a
| feedback loop here because they're really the ones
| creating money, so no they're not really a net creditor
| either. I owe my bank 700k on my house, but that's _new_
| money being created in some respects.
| vkou wrote:
| > If inflation robs the poor person of the $500 and helps
| the middle class person with a mortgage.... all other
| things being equal, we transferred wealth from the poor
| person to the middle class person. yay, with me so far?
|
| No, I'm not with you, because it's not the poor person
| who is fronting a million bucks in cash that the middle
| class person borrows, in order to buy the house.
|
| For the obvious reason that he doesn't have a million
| dollars to lend out.
|
| FYI, corporate debt is ~60% of household debt in the
| United States. (~10T vs 15T). Corporate cash balances are
| ~4T, and household cash balances are ~5T. [1] Net
| corporate debt is ~6T, and net household debt is ~10T.
|
| You look at these numbers, and you tell me - who benefits
| more from having debt inflated away?
|
| [1] https://www.valuepenguin.com/banking/average-savings-
| account...
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| You need to stop viewing money in amounts and start
| viewing it as % of total available money in existence.
|
| In our contrived example, now the middle class person
| owns a bigger slice of the pie after the pie doubled in
| size due to their leverage.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Something like 70% of the population has no savings of
| any kind.
|
| You know that the arguments about poor grandma with $500
| life savings are bullshit, because everyone making them
| would happily let grandma die for a buck.
|
| The only reason resource extraction types care about
| inflation is that most use debt to avoid taxation, and
| increase interest rates hurt their return on assets.
| Because the perversion of the US Senate has happened, we
| care more about corn companies, oil drillers, etc than
| anyone else.
| tantaman wrote:
| I'd imagine that wealthy individuals are highly
| leveraged. In other words, rather than selling assets to
| buy things they take loans against those assets to buy
| things. This (1) prevents ever having to pay tax (2)
| gives them benefits from inflation and (3) gives them
| benefits from low interest rates as their assets
| appreciate faster than their interest rate consumes money
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Most sources I read indicate the opposite: poor and
| middle class people are much less likely to be debtors
| rather than creditors. They're more likely to have an
| auto loan rather than own a car outright. Likewise,
| they're more likely to have a mortgage on their home
| rather than own it. The wealthy, by comparison, are more
| likely to invest their money, issuing loans to other
| people.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Yes, the majority of US equities is held by the upper
| class and corporate debt dwarfs consumer debt (including
| mortgages).
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| > inflationary monetary policy is wealth transfer to the
| upper class without people realizing it.
|
| Going to need some evidence to back up that statement.
|
| Without centralized banking you essentially have no set
| policy one way other the other. I can understand why one
| would take issue with the current governance structure,
| but I don't agree that letting money randomly fluctuate
| with no mechanisms for intervention to be a good thing.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| My evidence is arithmetic? Someone who is leveraged with
| debt into assets now owns a larger piece of the pie
| (which we can loosely define as wealth) than they did
| before if the money supply increases compared to people
| who aren't levered into assets or just hold cash.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _no set policy one way other the other_
|
| Isn't that the idea of liberty though? No central
| authority deciding what is a "good thing" - just keeping
| the peace.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That reductionist approach to liberty is a mirage for
| teenage boys and hermits. If I can do whatever I want,
| you can't.
|
| The United States would have been pushed into a deep
| depression, but for JP Morgan's vacation plans being a
| little different. Early 20th century America was not a
| radical place, the fact that the Federal Reserve was
| created underlies how fubar the system was.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > was not a radical place
|
| By what metric? For who? Surely it was good for some and
| bad for others, much like any other place. How
| comfortable people are and how happy they are are
| fundamentally unrelated to how free they are.
|
| > how fubar the system was
|
| All we basically disagree about is how the general
| welfare clause is to be interpreted. It had a narrow
| interpretation for most of US history, and then a broad
| one starting in 1936 with United States v. Butler. The US
| was clearly a good place to live pre-1936, given that so
| many people immigrated there. I don't see why a continued
| narrow interpretation would be catastrophic.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _How comfortable people are and how happy they are are
| fundamentally unrelated to how free they are._ "
|
| That would be false.
|
| " _The US was clearly a good place to live pre-1936,
| given that so many people immigrated there._ "
|
| That would be false, too, unless you were very wealthy.
| Just because it was better than, say, starving in Ireland
| does not mean it was "good". Source: My father's father
| was a sharecropper.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| That's _one_ definition of liberty, but not the only one.
| I 'd propose the alternative: Liberty is the freedom to
| take actions in society as it exists. Therefore a society
| that had greater prosperity has greater Liberty.
|
| You sort of admit as much, what is keeping the piece but
| ultimately deciding which things are good things or not?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Keeping the peace means enforcing nonviolent interaction
| and providing due process for conflict resolution.
| Liberty isn't the same thing as prosperity/economic
| power. They are different words for a reason. You can be
| very poor and very free, or very comfortably enslaved.
| Liberty is fundamentally your relationship with those who
| can use legitimate force against you.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Your definition of liberty here is getting really
| tangled.
|
| If liberty is "fundamentally your relationship with those
| who can use legitimate force against you" then how is
| having a set monetary policy incompatible with liberty as
| long as it comes from a "legitimate" source of power?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Because compliance with that monetary policy is enforced
| with.. force? You must pay taxes in USD, and if you don't
| you go to jail. The government also conveniently controls
| the USD supply, which allows the to debase it as they see
| fit, forcing you to obtain a set amount of USD per year
| to pay taxes. If the government accepted tax revenue in
| gold or bitcoin or anything else they don't totally
| control, you'd be absolutely right.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| But we all agree that the government is legitimate, and
| so it's use of force is legitimate. Additionally, if the
| government forced you to pay it $1000 a year, even if you
| could deposit that in gold, you would still be _forced_
| to pay. The currency seems irrelevant.
|
| It seems like what your saying is you believe taxation is
| legitimate, but requiring taxes to be pain in USD is
| illegitimate. Which, like, is just your opinion man (and
| makes the whole argument circular) I don't see any
| generic argument that makes taxation compatible with your
| definition of liberty but taxation in USD incompatible".
| I don't see really any generic definition of liberty that
| would distinguish between those two actions.
|
| I'm rate limited, but to your example below of a currency
| no one could obtain, the government could equivalently
| apply a greater than 100% wealth tax. Or the government
| could define all speech as force or any number of other
| things. A capricious government can do bad things yes,
| but requiring taxes to be paid in a particular currency
| doesn't give them any more powerful ways to be
| capricious.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| The currency _seems_ irrelevant, but it 's not. Imagine
| my government in Tyrannia only accepted taxes in a
| currency which was impossible to obtain except by
| stealing it (also illegal). The government would then
| hold every citizen in a catch-22, allowing it to
| arbitrarily decide whom to imprison for not paying taxes
| and who to imprison for stealing the currency required to
| pay them.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| It seems like the government issuing their own currency
| still isn't really the issue in this thought
| experiment...
| thegrimmest wrote:
| It is though, since they can debase that self same
| currency as they see fit. This fundamentally changes the
| playing field when negotiating your taxes with the
| government. The only reason USD has any value at all is
| because it's what everyone has to pay taxes to the US
| government in, and what US bonds are paid in.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| What you're saying is essentially "imagine a government
| with the power to create laws that allow arbitrary
| imprisonment with no recourse, that would be tyrannical",
| which, yes, but that only has to do with the currency
| because that's what you chose for your example.
|
| Said government could pass a law stating that all
| citizens must be in two places at once, and achieve the
| same effect.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| As mentioned in a previous comment, I'm saying "Imagine a
| government without broad power over general welfare".
| This was the US government until 1936 with United States
| v. Butler. I don't think it would be a catastrophe to
| reverse this decision again. It seems that in spite of
| best efforts, the US has failed to preserve the very
| meaning of liberty, as it was initially envisioned, from
| total deterioration even in its very definition.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| The material distinction when the United States was
| founded wasn't whether the state in general had broad
| power over the general welfare, but whether the federal
| government would. State government _did_ have such power.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Any centralized authority with a monopoly on force is
| going to have to levy taxes. Otherwise you'd end up with
| people just refusing to pay because they didn't get the
| judgements they desire.
|
| If there is a state _at all_ there is force involved. I
| don't really understand what you believe is possible
| here. What you're discussing is tantamount to assuming
| that American traditions of due process just exist in a
| state of nature when they absolutely do not.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I believe it's possible to have a state whose powers and
| authority are fundamentally limited. I also believe that
| was the original intention of US. I agree taxes must be
| levied. I just disagree it's legitimate to levy them for
| most of what they are spent on today.
|
| If I ask myself "what should the state be allowed to
| do?", it's basically answered by "what would I be
| comfortable holding a gun to someone's head for?". To
| take a popular example: If it's wrong to hold a gun to a
| doctor's head in order to force them to treat a patient
| (which I think it is), and it's wrong to hold a gun to a
| bystander's head to force them to pay the doctor, then
| it's wrong to fund healthcare with taxation.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| You would hold a gun to someone's head over petty theft
| or the violation of a contractual agreement?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _over petty theft_
|
| Yes, I'd have no problem shooting a thief, especially in
| defence of my primary food supply.
|
| > _violation of a contractual agreement_
|
| I'd have no problem holding a gun to someone's head in
| order to extract what compensation is due to me under a
| lawful agreement.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Stealing from your primary food supply isn't really what
| I had in mind when I was referring to petty theft. If
| anything I meant stealing a small amount from a
| significant excess.
|
| > I'd have no problem holding a gun to someone's head in
| order to extract what compensation is due to me under a
| lawful agreement.
|
| So if a doctor enters into a contractual agreement with
| the state to provide healthcare, then it's ok?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Contracts should have monetary penalties only - you can't
| sign yourself into slavery. If the doctor breaches a
| contract, and the contract has provisions for what he
| will pay in breach, then he must pay it or have it seized
| (with force). We've long banned debtors prisons for good
| reason. There's no holding a gun to anyone's head
| required unless they try to stop you from seizing
| property to which you have a lawful claim.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| So as long as I write the laws and excite the laws I can
| do whatever I want. Taxation is lawful because the
| government duly passes laws asserting such claims.
| Taxation therefore cannot be theft.
|
| Unless there is some definition of "lawful" that exists
| outside of writing and enforcing the laws. Which begs the
| question according to who? In this instance that someone
| seems to be you.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > enforcing nonviolent interaction
|
| By ultimately using force or the threat thereof to
| prevent people from using force in disallowed ways,
| right?
|
| > Liberty isn't the same thing as prosperity/economic
| power.
|
| I didn't say they were synonyms. I said prosperity was a
| prerequisite to liberty[1]. A poor person isn't free to
| inhabit a house, and if they try to do so the state will
| use force to prevent or remove them.
|
| [1]: actually I said all else equal, more prosperity
| means more liberty. To use your example (which I don't
| really buy, a rich slave is sort of not a thing), a
| "rich" slave is able to purchase better food for
| themselves than a poor slave whereas a poor slave would
| need to resort to theft, and risk force as a consequence.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| A homeless person can be more free than a person confined
| in a mansion, can they not?
|
| > _By ultimately using force or the threat thereof to
| prevent people from using force in disallowed ways_
|
| Yes, since using force to compel action is basically the
| definition of slavery and decidedly un-free.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > A homeless person can be more free than a person
| confined in a mansion, can they not?
|
| Sure. But a rich homeless person is no longer homeless,
| and a poor person confined in their home is less free
| than a rich person confined on their home. You haven't
| addressed my point.
|
| > Yes, since using force to compel action is basically
| the definition of slavery and decidedly un-free.
|
| Right, so when I said
|
| > You sort of admit as much, what is keeping the piece
| but ultimately deciding which things are good things or
| not
|
| I was correct. The government decides which things are
| good or not (using force in disallowed ways) and prevents
| those. Generally governments high in libetry also do
| things like punish fraud, because fraud is bad and
| misleading people and stealing their money...reduces
| liberty? Or is fraud prevention unrelated to liberty, and
| should the government even do it?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _a poor person confined in their home is less free than
| a rich person confined on their home_
|
| I disagree. The rich person may be more comfortable, but
| they are no more free. Confinement is confinement.
|
| > Or is fraud prevention unrelated to liberty
|
| Fraud is related to securing of property rights, which
| are a part of liberty. How free are you if people can
| remove the food from your pantry? Fraud as a criminal
| offense has been derived from "theft by false pretense".
| But I'm pretty sure we'd be fine if we decriminalized it
| and relegated it to a tort.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| The absolute end to that line of reasoning is that there
| shouldn't be any state at all.
|
| Why does the state need to "keep the peace"? It does so
| through a monopoly on force. Why can't private
| individuals simply work things out on their own however
| they see fit?
|
| The idea of liberty, to me, is the idea that citizens
| have power over collective decision making, ie the rule
| of law, consent of the governed. I realize I am in the
| minority in modern day America though.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| No, the absolute end is that the state should enforce
| negative rights, not positive ones. Liberty is the
| freedom from interference by or obligation to other
| people.
|
| > _Why can't private individuals simply work things out
| on their own however they see fit?_
|
| They can, so long as they do peacefully. What the state
| provides is simply due process for the resolution of
| disputes, and the expectation that this process will be
| used instead of violence.
|
| > _The idea of liberty, to me, is the idea that citizens
| have power over collective decision making_
|
| This is democracy, which is somewhat tangential here. You
| can have a decidedly un-free democracy or (more
| hypothetically) a very free dictatorship.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I define liberty differently than you do.
|
| I don't accept the popular, modern definition of negative
| rights vs positive rights as the bedrock or liberty. It
| leads to nonsensical conclusions.
|
| There is no such thing under my definition as a "free
| dictatorship". A system where rulers aren't bound by
| legitimate laws is by definition un-free.
|
| I don't think my definition is super far off from yours
| though: liberty as non domination, one isn't subject to
| the arbitrary will of another.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| A free dictatorship would be one where the dictator's
| powers are very limited, but he is not democratically
| elected.
|
| > _liberty as non domination, one isn't subject to the
| arbitrary will of another._
|
| Yes exactly. I just see things like "interfering in
| private negotiations/transactions between free, equal
| people" as fundamentally authoritarian/dominating.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| If interference with private transactions is
| fundamentally authoritarian, I still don't understand how
| you see any sort of state as compatible with liberty.
|
| Yes yes, "keeping the peace" but how is such an authority
| deemed to be legitimate? Who gets to define due process?
| How are they funded if not by taxation?
|
| At the end of the day I don't understand how you aren't
| just an anarchist.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| The state is compatible with liberty in so far as it acts
| to secure the liberty of its citizens. Again, liberty
| here meaning, basically, freedom from violence by other
| people. A state which acts to protect its citizens
| liberty is legitimate (in my view) regardless of how its
| members come to authority. Democracy (in one form or
| another) seems to be the least-worst option for
| administering this state (defining the process, etc.),
| but to me, is it not the source of its legitimacy.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| You just said that interference with private transactions
| was by definition a violation of liberty, so any outside
| action of the state would be at best a violation of
| liberty to secure liberty, somehow. Which, is somewhat
| nonsensical. There is no well defined liberty math.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _a violation of liberty to secure liberty_
|
| You've pretty much got it. These are the only legitimate
| violations of liberty. Doesn't seem nonsensical to me.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| "It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal
| liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed hungry person. True
| freedom can only be where there is no exploitation and
| oppression of one person by another; where there is not
| unemployment, and where a person is not living in fear of
| losing his job, his home and his bread. Only in such a
| society personal and any other freedom can exist for real
| and not on paper." - Ronald Reagan
| opo wrote:
| >- Ronald Reagan
|
| For those unaware, the quote is actually from Stalin.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Spoilsport ;-P
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _Ronald Reagan_
|
| you cheeky monkey
| walshemj wrote:
| Unfortunately some of early American politicians had some
| cranky ideas about central banks - which caused some
| economic depressions.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| Any attempt to depict the US as a free country prior to 1920
| is a nonstarter. There was slavery, Jim Crow, and women could
| not vote. Seriously, give me a break.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| my ancestors had property rights and university education
| for women, always anti-slavery.. please do not lump me into
| your vague assertion
|
| edit- the USA was divided strongly between states, which
| had constitutions of their own. There was a very bright
| line between the Massachusetts colonies and the Virginia
| colonies, and then others.. Property rights and real
| education for women were a large topic! slavery was hated
| for good reasons .. the social contract that "my particular
| ancestors" created, specifically are what the PP were
| dismissing.. its inaccurate to dismiss that
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| What do your specific ancestors have to do with anything?
| mbg721 wrote:
| We also had one of the strongest eugenics movements in the
| world, under the same progressive flag as women's suffrage.
| It took the horrors of WWII to snap us out of it.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| And it set us back because we overcorrected. The biggest
| evil of historical eugenics was the non-consensual
| application, not the idea that we should improve the gene
| pool.
|
| This thread is an interesting summary of possible
| "eugenics" type applications and if those surveyed
| consider them moral today:
|
| https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1462824227090976772
| mbg721 wrote:
| The Catholic Church still opposes all of those except for
| offering network support and feeding single mothers (in
| which cases it recommends generosity). I don't think
| that's an overcorrection; I think it's the result of
| thinking very hard about human dignity over many
| generations.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Maybe you mean different things?
| kaesar14 wrote:
| Why is freedom defined differently if you exclude slavery
| and women's rights?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| It was a free country, for a subset of the population. I
| would suggest that the idea of liberty, the definition, was
| as worthy then as it is now. I would also completely agree
| with the expansion of the people who are entitled to it.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| You can't completely discount the past because it doesn't
| meet a modern standard. It's certain that something many
| are doing today will be considered abhorrent in one hundred
| years. So are we all today too evil to bother with? Are you
| no worse than a murderer because you live in our flawed
| times? I doubt it. There were people and institutions
| before 1920 that were terrible and some that should be
| celebrated.
| jollybean wrote:
| Central Banking has been one of the most powerful and
| liberating achievements of civilization.
|
| And you now have the 'freedom' to strike and sue your
| employer, women have the 'freedom' to actually have a job,
| you have the 'freedom' to attend college which only about 5%
| did at the time, you have the 'freedom' to do almost anything
| in life.
|
| And what 'freedoms' have you lost?
|
| Well, there's more taxation.
|
| And you have to sell your car to a Black man if he wants to
| buy it from you.
|
| And you have to prove drugs work before selling them.
|
| You have to pay workers a minimum wage, and make sure they
| don't die on the job.
|
| What other 'freedoms' were are you keen to regain?
| mwint wrote:
| > And you have to sell your car to a Black man if he wants
| to buy it from you.
|
| Never thought about this before: Suppose I'm Black, respond
| to a Craigslist ad for a $10k car for sale by owner, and am
| refused for my skin color. What law do I or the state
| prosecute the seller under?
|
| Most of the anti-discrimination laws I know of apply to
| companies, usually companies with more than N employees.
| tlholaday wrote:
| > What law do I or the state prosecute the seller under?
|
| Start your research with Title VII of the Civil Rights
| Act of 1964.
| mwint wrote:
| https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-
| act-196... - looks like this is all about employment, and
| even then only applies to those employing more than N
| employees:
|
| > The term "employer" means a person engaged in an
| industry affecting commerce who has fifteen or more
| employees [...]
|
| I suppose the root of my question is this: Where is the
| law stating that an individual cannot act with prejudice
| against another individual, outside of an employment
| context? I've always assumed such a law exists, but never
| asked exactly where it is.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Probably more relevant to dealerships
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I'd be keen to be able to employ people without the
| government intervening in negotiations (minimum wage,
| various employment laws, etc.). I don't think the
| government has any place deciding what I can and can't
| offer. I also would like to be able to use my own judgement
| when hiring people, without having to worry about proving
| (the negative) that I'm not being discriminatory.
|
| Workers have always had the freedom to strike. And
| employers should have the freedom to terminate striking
| employees. I don't see the need for regulation here. The
| "freedom" to attend college has created a mountain of
| student debt and an overeducated workforce. I fail to see
| the benefit.
|
| All in all, directly, I'd like to live in a society where
| people are entitled to only what they can negotiate for,
| not more. And one that does not strive to protect people
| from the consequences of their own misfortune or
| inadequacy.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| There is absolutely nothing liberating about central
| banking. It is a monopoly on money creation, and that
| monopoly is enforced through an apparatus of violence
| (police, courts and prisons, used to compel compliance).
|
| It leads to a small elite being in control of trillions of
| dollars in national capital allocations every year, with
| virtually no democratic oversight.
|
| It leads to financial institutions capturing 42% of
| corporate profits since 1973, with all of the growth in
| wealth inequality that goes along with that.
|
| It leads to gigantic corporate welfare programs, like the
| government mortgage guarantee program, where financial
| institutions buy $1.5 trillion worth of government
| guaranteed mortgage backed securities - where profits are
| 100% privatized, and risk is 100% socialized - every year.
|
| >>And you now have the 'freedom' to strike and sue your
| employer,
|
| You always had that freedom. Now you have the power to get
| the state to force the employer to keep you employed, and
| not replace you, while you strike.
|
| This power has given public sector unions total control
| over public finances.
|
| For example, New York has nearly 300,000 unionized public
| sector employees receiving over $100,000 a year:
|
| https://archive.md/JnJQY
|
| In California, emergency workers can retire at 55 with 90%
| of their pension, that averages $108,000 per year.
|
| California now has $1 trillion in pension obligations for
| its unionized public sector workers. That is where all the
| social welfare spending is going.
|
| >>Well, there's more taxation.
|
| Yes, the state now forces you, under pain of imprisonment,
| to work 40% of the year to pay a bloated bureaucracy.
|
| >>And you have to sell your car to a Black man if he wants
| to buy it from you.
|
| And every one has to suffer higher costs, and less
| advancement, as a specialized caste of anti-discrimination
| lawyers extract billions of dollars per year from
| corporations for their failure to comply with impossible-
| to-comply-with anti-discrimination laws [1] while forcing
| the private sector to 1. spend billions more in "anti-
| racism" training, that includes lessons on the supposed
| omnipresence of "white privilege" [2] and 2. institute
| affirmative action programs, that waste resources and lead
| to less competent work forces, respectively.
|
| >>And you have to prove drugs work before selling them.
|
| Yes, you need the approval of a centralized regulatory
| gatekeeper, which is often incompetent, and prevents people
| from accessing life-saving medical products/services in a
| timely manner [3][4] or denies people access to a vaccine
| due to a risk from side effects that is orders of magnitude
| lower than the risk the vaccine mitigates. [5]
|
| >>women have the 'freedom' to actually have a job,
|
| Women had jobs back then. The jobs available to women have
| improved due to the cultural impact of much higher per
| capita productivity, which makes people far more
| independent and assertive.
|
| >>you have the 'freedom' to attend college which only about
| 5% did at the time, you have the 'freedom' to do almost
| anything in life.
|
| That is entirely due to higher per capita productivity,
| which enables more people to be supported through their
| post-secondary schooling years.
|
| The massive per capita productivity growth seen since 1922
| could soon be a thing of the past in the advanced
| economies, as the growing repressiveness of the state has
| steadily reduced per capita GDP growth rates over the last
| several decades, and this trend sees no signs of abatement
| or reversal.
|
| [1] https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/wokeness-as-
| saddam-sta...
|
| [2] https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-
| why-co...
|
| [3] https://www.propublica.org/article/this-scientist-
| created-a-...
|
| [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-
| testing-de...
|
| [5] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/politics/johnson-
| johns...
| didericis wrote:
| Can you explain why the freedoms you mention are the result
| primarily of central banking and not social and
| technological change?
|
| The key freedom lost via central banking (at least
| irresponsible central banking) is the freedom of those in
| the future to do anything other than meet debt obligations.
|
| Debt and credit is obviously necessary, and making money
| easily accessible and keeping markets liquid is a good
| thing, but if debt obligations grow too large, people
| increasingly forfeit their future productivity and the
| future of their children's productivity to paying interest.
|
| No one can enjoy increased freedoms if they are spending
| all their time paying off individual and collective
| interest.
| md_ wrote:
| I'm confused. If you mean _public_ debt, doesn't central
| banking free the public from meeting debt obligations
| when those obligations are denominated in the national
| currency?
|
| Countries can and do issue public debt in other
| currencies. If we all used gold or bitcoin, there's no
| reason to think public debt would be lower. But the
| obligation to pay it back would, in a sense, be harder to
| dodge.
|
| It's worth noting, as an aside, that the trend line on
| cost of servicing public debt in the US has been downward
| (though I would expect this to change):
| https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/us-debt-has-
| increa....
| User23 wrote:
| The primary purposes of central banking are to privatize
| seigniorage[1] revenue and increase bankers' ability to
| control politicians. The former is achieved through the
| Primary Dealer system and the latter should be self-
| explanatory. Needless to say, since most spending is
| electronic transactions, the seigniorage revenue is very
| nearly the entire face value of the created instrument.
|
| It's a blatantly undemocratic power grab, effectively
| allowing a consortium of private banks to limit
| Congress's power of the purse. Or at least that was the
| theory. As we're seeing now, that one putative upside is
| nonexistent and the Fed is happy to cooperate with
| Treasury to spend trillions a year. The rentier class
| appears to be consoling itself with massive asset
| inflation, while still banking the seigniorage.
|
| The United States could just as easily once again fund
| all of its spending by creating new U.S. Notes[2]
| (perhaps without the public debt clause) and then control
| inflation by extinguishing those liabilities through
| taxation.
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/seigniorage.asp
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Note
| md_ wrote:
| It seems like you're defining "central banking" in
| relation to the independence (or maybe ownership of) the
| central bank. That doesn't seem correct to me.
|
| China has a central bank, but it's fully publicly owned
| and is not politically independent of the CCP. The ECB,
| in comparison, is owned by the central banks of
| constituent banks. And on the other extreme, the Swiss
| National Bank is publicly traded and a minority of its
| shares are privately held (i.e., not by governments).
| (Perhaps related or perhaps not, the Swiss Franc also has
| historically had very high trust and very low inflation.)
|
| My point is, there are multiple flavors of "central bank"
| ownership and independence; it seems odd to argue that
| the primary purpose of central banking is to allow
| private bankers to violate political oversight when, in
| some cases, the bank is fully public and not politically
| independent. Conversely, some examples of significantly
| more private central banks than the Fed seem to show a
| history of good management in the public interest.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| The UK has plenty of private banks printing notes - it
| doesn't seem to hurt them.
| MR4D wrote:
| > If we all used gold or bitcoin, there's no reason to
| think public debt would be lower.
|
| For reference, public debt tends to be higher when based
| in currencies that can be more easily debased. This was
| true in Roman times as it is now.
|
| I'm on my phone, so I'd have to look up the book, but
| it's well documented.
| md_ wrote:
| Entirely possible, but defaults tend to be higher when
| debt is in a currency that cannot be debased, for
| somewhat obvious reasons.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| There is a constraint the prevents (some) countries from
| more frequent debasement: if you debase your currency,
| then lenders will increasingly require that future debt
| be issued in an external currency. And even if you find
| lenders, the purchasing power provided in the debased
| currency remains constrained by external trade in non-
| debased currencies.
| MR4D wrote:
| You make a very good point.
|
| I should have noted that this applies only when it's your
| own currency.
| jollybean wrote:
| " why the freedoms you mention are the result primarily
| of central banking and not social and technological
| change?"
|
| I didn't mean to imply that.
|
| Most of those things didn't come from Central Banking.
|
| That said, modern finance has 'enabled everything' just
| like having a highly literate education 'enables
| everything' as well.
| toomanydoubts wrote:
| They have also enabled commercial banks loaning other
| people money irresponsibly and getting obscenous bailouts
| when the loan takers default because "the banks are too
| big to fail". What a great world to live in.
| Aunche wrote:
| > irresponsible central banking
|
| Would you also consider triple bypass surgery done on
| morbidly obese patient as irresponsible? It enables bad
| behavior and arguably the patient may be better off dead
| than living in a life of pain, but it's undeniable that
| emergency heart surgery is a good thing.
| pzo wrote:
| Current situation looks for me more like a surgeon doing
| this triple bypass, and also keep selling junk food and
| cigarettes to this patient on another shift.
| Aunche wrote:
| How exactly the Federal Reserve selling junk food and
| cigarettes? Nothing they do is pressuring Congress to
| increase our deficit.
| toolz wrote:
| > What other 'freedoms' were are you keen to regain?
|
| For me I'd like to not pay money for the "privilege" of
| having a central organization constantly and
| unapologetically spy on me.
| pjbk wrote:
| Interesting to see how sacrificing some freedoms to give
| more freedom to others in the short term, eventually
| enhances your same former freedoms in the medium or long
| term.
| atlgator wrote:
| Has Central Banking been liberating or do we only perceive
| it as such because it has historically aligned with
| American business and political interests? Would a small
| South American country being forced to sell it's natural
| resources or lose it's borrowing power agree? Would Middle
| Eastern countries that tried to form the petro dollar and
| were met with endless wars agree?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| It would be nice if the cost of rungs in the social later
| (housing, education, etc) wasn't so high that only certain
| kinds of people could achieve them.
|
| Many of the "your not allowed to do that"s of the past are
| still in place for entire neighborhoods, only the words
| changed.
| jollybean wrote:
| In 1922 only 5% of people went to University - now 50% go
| on to post secondary which is largely due to cost and
| opportunity.
|
| Only about 50% finished HS - now it's 95%.
|
| Doctors were not very affordable by anyone - now it's
| >90%.
|
| Most people didn't have running water and electricity yet
| now it's almost 100%.
|
| The only thing that's not as nice as 'real estate' -
| housing was cheap, but the houses were crap, and often
| you were isolated.
|
| If you want to go out of major US urban area, and build a
| small home to 1925 standards, then it's affordable.
|
| But if you are young, then I am actually sympathetic to
| you: education and housing costs are 'worse' now than in
| then 1990's. Those are the two things I will say Gen Z
| 'has it hard' with. That, and having to grow up where
| everyone has social media, which is _not_ a social
| benefit, it 's dystopian if you ask me.
| scottLobster wrote:
| All of those facts are meaningless without context.
|
| Higher education is far more necessary for even a middle
| class existence than it was in 1922, and the middle class
| is getting less and less affordable. One of my
| grandfathers worked a family farm. My dad was able to
| grind his way out of the lower classes by working at
| Friendly's and other odd jobs to pay for college (up to
| and including his PhD). My father in law's uncle was a
| high school dropout who started showing people around at
| the local hardware store and was such a good salesperson
| the owner hired him after a few weeks. None of those are
| possible for most Americans these days (good luck pulling
| the leave-it-to-beaver "prove my value to the local store
| owner" at Home Depot or Walmart).
|
| US citizens are now regularly advised to take Uber to the
| hospital if they can survive the trip, as it avoids the
| cost of an ambulance, which is often over a thousand
| dollars in a country where most can't afford a $500
| emergency. I'm not sure how that qualifies as
| "affordable", and certainly not affordable to 90%+.
| Granted this is primarily an American issue.
|
| More important to me than the quality of the house is the
| quality of the school district that it's in (see previous
| remarks about the modern necessity of education). I can
| fix/improve a house, I can't fix/improve schooling short
| of private school, which would probably be more expensive
| than fixing a house over the long term. Good look finding
| an affordable house in a good school district near any
| major metropolitan area with jobs.
| Retric wrote:
| A 1922s "middle class" experience is affordable for a
| most Americans today. As in shelter with heat, phone
| service, and electric lights but no appliances, no car,
| minimal access to effective healthcare etc.
|
| Upward mobility is still available and just as rare. The
| health, intelligence, and drive that allowed someone in
| 1922 to better themselves are the same things that still
| allow someone to better themselves in 2022. It's not
| easy, but it was never easy. Just look at how many people
| in 1922 where held back by the color of their skin.
|
| As to getting a job at Walmart, have you ever actually
| applied? Their standards are incredibly lax.
| scottLobster wrote:
| So? A middle class experience from 1622 is also
| affordable for most Americans today, and now we don't
| have to worry about raids from the natives! Clearly we
| have no right to complain /s
|
| I'm not arguing things are equivalent to 1922 on an
| absolute scale, but on a relative scale they're closer
| than they were in the recent past. The prosperity of the
| previous century has shifted the goal posts for what
| defines upper, middle and lower class. But after a long
| period of shifting the goal posts in a positive
| direction, we've had three or four decades of things
| shifting in the opposite direction, and that trend
| appears to be accelerating for the moment.
|
| As for upward mobility, that largely only exists for
| people with college degrees these days. And even then
| only a few select degrees are really worth anything. And
| college costs are insanely inflated compared to where
| they were in 1980, let alone 1922. Is it possible to
| better oneself in 2022? Sure, but I'd argue there were
| much more opportunities for middle class people just 40
| years ago. A Unionized coal miner with experience could
| make an upper middle class salary without the burden of
| higher education that costs as much as a house. Ditto for
| many factory jobs.
|
| A job at Walmart making minimum wage that hasn't been
| adjusted for inflation for decades does not have anything
| resembling the same purchasing power as a minimum wage
| job 60 years ago. Walmart jobs are notorious for
| requiring food stamps despite working full time hours.
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| A higher percentage of Americans are going to collage in
| 2020. They are also graduating with more debt, so is it
| more or less affordable? That's a more complex question
| than it might appear as students are in many cases
| choosing a very expensive education when more economical
| options are available.
|
| It's similar to how new cars in 2020 are both
| substantially more expensive on average but also of
| vastly higher quality. In both cases the cheapest options
| represent a tiny slice of the overall market suggesting
| cost is generally less an imposition by outside forces
| than a choice.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I'm explicitly not replying to the meat of your comment,
| because I don't feel like I have anything to add to the
| productive discussion in this thread - which, by the way,
| I'm really enjoying reading :)
|
| That said, this stood out to me:
|
| > A job at Walmart making minimum wage [...]
|
| According to Glassdoor[1], a retail cashier at Walmart
| with no experience earns an average of $22,049 / year.
| Assuming 50 weeks @ 40 hours per week, that's $11.05 /
| hour.
|
| That does not include cash bonuses or profit sharing,
| which Glassdoor says adds another ~$1k.
|
| Indeed.com[2] shows the average wage for a Walmart
| cashier is $10.56 - so we're at least in the right
| ballpark above.
|
| My own experience at Walmart was unloading trucks from
| 4pm-1am the summer after I graduated high school (2002).
| I made $7.25 / hour then, when the minimum wage was
| $5.15.
|
| Trying to build a life on that kind of money isn't easy,
| and I'm not trying to say that it is; I _do_ want to
| point out that even Walmart doesn 't pay minimum wage as
| a rule.
|
| That's not to say there aren't other "tricks" that
| employers use, like limiting hours to prevent employees
| from qualifying from full-time benefits and such. There
| are.
|
| The minimum wage in 1982 was $3.25. Today it's $7.25. The
| purchasing power of the minimum wage has certainly
| decreased, but I strongly suspect that many more
| businesses paid minimum wage in 1982 than 2022.
|
| McDonald's in my town of <15k people pays $13/hr with no
| experience, with a $500 signing bonus and a guaranteed
| $1/hr raise at six and twelve months. The largest
| manufacturing employer here produce stamped sheet metal
| parts, and they have a large sign and banners lining the
| road claiming $18/hr, a $1,500 signing bonus, and fully
| paid family benefits. My California-based "healthtech"
| company employer doesn't even have health insurance as
| good as theirs.
|
| 1: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Walmart-Guest-
| Service-Team-...
|
| 2: https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Walmart/salaries
| elhudy wrote:
| Further, healthcare costs are only "affordable" insofar
| as we are adding them to our country's growing debt via
| medicare.
| msikora wrote:
| USA is pretty dystopian. I'm an immigrant from the EU,
| and like most of us here I work in tech where the wages
| and benefits are very good (wages quite a bit better than
| even the richer EU countries and benefits on par I would
| say). But for the lower middle class and below it
| absolutely sucks in the US compared to most other
| countries with similar levels of development...
| mbg721 wrote:
| I would argue, as many would, that a high-school graduate
| now is much worse off now than a high-school dropout a
| century ago. Jobs are much more specialized, you can't
| rely on working on "the family farm", and the prestige of
| a high-school diploma has tanked to "You don't have this,
| what's wrong with you??"
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| All of these improvements, numerically speaking, and yet
| my wife regularly has classes of 40 where none of the
| students have parents that went to college, a quarter of
| them need glasses that they can't afford, and an eighth
| is homeless.
|
| The size of the group that benefits from modernization is
| indeed growing, as your numbers point out, but if you're
| not in that group you're just as stuck as you've ever
| been.
| deeg wrote:
| I couldn't disagree more. Today's American society has way
| more liberty than it did in 1912. Blacks, women, Native
| Americans, LBGTQ+, other minorities: all live better today
| than whatever period you want to choose. Native American
| children were forced from their homes into institutionalize
| schools. In NYC tenements the police conducted midnight raids
| to force people to be vaccinated for smallpox (a worthy end
| but a terrible means). Women didn't have the right to vote.
| As others mentioned, Jim Crow ruled the South. There really
| is no comparison.
| peakaboo wrote:
| I don't think the US is free at all, and would be interested
| in seeing facts that back it up. I see a country run like a
| corporation, where media, tech and science are carrying out
| very specific instructions from their handful of billionaire
| owners to steer the ship where they want it to go.
|
| You can think what you want in the US but you cannot express
| it publicly if you have a significant following. You will get
| blocked, censored, ridiculed etc.
|
| Maybe you mean something else with freedom? Freedom to carry
| out work and get payed for it? Sure.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > the United States is still one of the most free ...
| countries on the planet.
|
| By what metric? More importantly by what magnitude?
|
| Would "in the top 20" count? Axross 200 world countries
| maybe, but to patriotic Americans who speak about freedom
| abstractly, knowing that they are 16th in democracy [0], 44th
| in press freedom [1], and 20th in economic freedom [2],
| probably wouldn't cut it as "one of the top".
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Ranking?wprov=sfla1
|
| [1] https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom?w
| pro...
| jandrese wrote:
| You are looking at this all wrong. If you want maximum
| freedom you need to go to a place like rural Somalia. As
| long as you have the most guns nobody will tell you how to
| live your life. Want to rape children all day long? Nobody
| is going to stop you. Want to kill your neighbors and steal
| their stuff? Total freedom. No nanny state government is
| going to try to take your money to build roads or remove
| the dead bodies.
| p1esk wrote:
| Anyone who has "the most guns" will have "maximum
| freedom" anywhere. Somalia, USA, England, anywhere. The
| difference is it's easier to be the person with the most
| guns in Somalia than in US. However we are talking about
| freedom of ordinary citizens, not about being the most
| powerful individual in your country.
| causality0 wrote:
| Depends on your definition of freedom, certainly. If your
| primary definition is "the range of behaviors for which the
| government will not prosecute you", it's probably the
| highest one not currently involved in a civil war.
| xdennis wrote:
| Those rankings are very biased. The press one used to
| penalize countries at one point for not having journalist
| unions (don't know if they still do).
|
| As an example, the US press was allowed to publish on the
| Snowden leaks but in the UK policemen forced The Guardian
| to smash their hard drives. UK is 11 places above the US:
| https://rsf.org/en/ranking/2021
|
| The freedom ones often pick and choose freedoms. For
| example: none include self defense possession, but do
| include same sex marriage (something that was invented two
| decades ago).
| deanCommie wrote:
| I assure you, same sex marriage wasn't invented two
| decades ago. [0]
|
| What was invented two decades ago is treating gay people
| with enough humanity to begin to CONSIDER giving them the
| same universal freedoms as straight people get.
|
| So yeah, at this point, in 2022, same-sex marriage is an
| objective basic freedom. I am not interested in any
| religion-based counterarguments. Anyone's freedom to hold
| religious beliefs cannot impune on OTHER people's
| freedom, regardless of what religious people will claim.
|
| Self-defense posession is a subjective one, I agree. I
| personally think it's an archaic freedom desire [1]
| (Honestly, to me comparable "I want the freedom to be
| able to beat my slave"). But I understand the alternative
| arguments. This one happens to be something on which the
| US is a massive outlier from the rest of the "developed"
| world.
|
| The main point, though, is I don't think people on
| HackerNews seeking "freedom" are talking about freedom to
| own guns. I might be wrong.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-
| sex_marriage#Ancient
|
| [1] https://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/18000520/gun-risk-death
| long_time_gone wrote:
| >The freedom ones often pick and choose freedoms.
|
| Is there another way to index multiple countries and
| measure against each other?
|
| Sounds like you might disagree with the freedoms they
| chose rather than the process of defining and measuring
| "freedom." That may be an expression of your own bias.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Those rankings have absolutely 0 values. We are currently
| under our 2nd curfew in less than a year, I can't go
| outside after 10pm under the threat of a 2000$ fine (which
| the police is very heavily enforcing) and yet we are way up
| there in the list you linked. Complete joke
| bennysomething wrote:
| Are you in the USA? I didn't know you had curfews!?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| In canada currently. 6th month of curfews this year...
| but at least this time it's until 10 pm and not 8pm like
| the first curfew. So I guess that's something lol
| deanCommie wrote:
| Well, when we're in the middle of a Global Pandemic, with
| the 5th-highest death toll in human history [0], a couple
| things have to change temporarily, don't you think?
|
| Also, this is a Quebec-only curfew. Take it up with your
| provincial government. If separated as a country, perhaps
| Quebec wouldn't make the list. Quebec has plenty of other
| counter-freedom policies including your government-
| endorsed islamophobia.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#By_de
| ath_tol...
| mardifoufs wrote:
| You are contradicting yourself. It's a global pandemic
| yet only quebec is going for these absolutely ridiculous
| measures. Hence why it's _ludicrous_ for canada to be
| higher than the US. And it 's been 2 years, it's not
| exactly temporary, especially since there's literally no
| scientific backing for a _curfew_ in a pandemic and our
| government is not even pretending that there is any. At a
| certain point the "it's a global pandemic" excuse just
| does not work and you get well into the threshold of a
| non free society and I think we are well past that in
| quebec.
|
| Also, quebec is still part of canada. So again, your
| point is just strange. You are just deflecting very
| weakly what I said.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Many non renewable resources are past peak production, and
| declining fast. Austerity will be next. But it will be
| disguised as saving the environment. So that not only do you
| do not blame your politicians for being poorer. You will be
| blamed for over consuming and destroying the environment.
|
| Energy crisis, like running out of heating gas is already
| hitting Europe. And shortages of fertilizer will be here this
| spring. China and Russia are not exporting. US doesn't make
| enough. Farmers will be planting without it. Expect higher
| food prices and possibly food shortages.
|
| Things are running short in the supply chain, from chips to
| little bits and pieces. When things break, they will break
| fast. Make a plan B people. The wave is coming.
| belorn wrote:
| There are trouble brewing in EU over energy and food
| prices, but at the same time there are mitigating factors.
| The cut that middle men get for food has risen sharply the
| last few decades, especially for the kind of food that
| risen most in price. The more the customer pays in stores,
| the more incentive there is from the producers to cut the
| middle men. As an example, around 1/3 of the price for raw
| beef goes to the producer where I live, which is a result
| of low competition among the middle men, strict regulation,
| and a lack of innovation in the direct-to-customer space.
|
| Energy prices was at a historical low just last year. This
| year the price has doubled compared to last year, but
| compared to 10 years ago its the same. People need to have
| a plan B, through hopefully it will involve investments to
| use modern standards and energy efficient heating.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is horribly misguided to say "disguised as saving the
| environment" .. it is conflating real environmental crisis
| with political posturing.. It is intellectually lazy to
| blur two big topics like this..
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I'm not conflating anything that hasn't been done.
| Political posturing around saving thr environment is
| exactly how politician convinced a vast section of the
| professional class that solar is a solution to our energy
| needs. Despite it being much less reliable, producing
| minuscule amounts of energy in large parts of the country
| and requiring a much more complicated supply chain. Even
| solar's claimed environmental benefits are vastly over
| stated.
|
| For poorer people, stuck in older homes with baseboard
| heaters. The rising price of electricity meant they
| couldn't heat their home as much. So they're already
| suffering. While also being told by politicians its
| better for the environment this way.
|
| A better, vastly more reliable, and powerful alternative
| of building new nuclear plants lost out due to political
| posturing around the environment. My province of Ontario,
| killed two nuclear projects, and our electrical prices
| nearly doubled. The professional class deference to "feel
| good" saving the environment experts they see on TV is a
| bummer to see. But they will not be isolated from these
| feel good, but poor decisions into the future. So I don't
| need to convince anyone. The bill will come due.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| It's not just intellectually lazy, it's deadly. The last
| thing we need is to conflate politics with a catastrophe
| that will wipe out our lifestyle, a significant
| proportion of species, and potentially our civilization.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| This reads more like am emotional outburst from somone
| with a belief system than an actual opinion. It's hard to
| argue against belief systems. And it will probably be
| taken by you in entirely the wrong way. It would be like
| trying to convincing a hasidic jew the messiah isn't
| coming. Kind of rude to even try.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I can't tell whether you're describing my own comment or
| my parent comment. Which one are you describing here?
| EGreg wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| You see, "private property" was a step up from Feudalism. It
| allows you to own things. For example, the Web disrupted AOL,
| MSN, Compuserve, cable channels, radio stations, journalism,
| etc. But then, people started to just make their own
| "private" sites bigger. "I built it -- I own it!" OK, so Mark
| Z owns facebook, Jeff Bezos owns Amazon, and so forth. Our
| public discussions take place on "privately owned" platforms
| (really, owned by Wall Street bigwigs, but even they can't
| vote Mark Z out, they try and fail every year).
|
| So basically the current system has led to a bunch of
| surveillance capitalism. That iPhone and Kindle can yank the
| apps and books you "own" out from under you. That Alexa and
| Siri listens to whatever you say all the time. That car you
| "own" will also soon have a bunch of software downloaded to
| make sure you are limited in what you can do -- which is
| probably the scariest thing because some sleeper attack can
| make all cars suddenly crash into gas stations at once.
|
| In short ... your ideas of "private ownership" work on a
| small level but then you get these large corporations that
| continue "owning" things, and not giving them to you
| (infrastructure, backend software, AI data sets, you name it
| -- even "intellectual property" of patents and copyrights).
|
| This IS a feature of capitalism, that we might want to rein
| in. Perhaps there should be a principle that courts would
| enforce private property less and less when it came to scale.
| So on a small scale (enforce my right to chattel property, my
| first 3 houses etc.) it's fine. But just what does it mean
| that I "own" 999 houses, and see no lessening of my ability
| to evict people ACTUALLY living in the house as squatters,
| just because I contracted with a bank and some "People with
| Guns" to enforce some "deed of ownership"? The land used to
| belong to some natives hundreds of years ago, or some other
| group that the current group just "took" from them. What
| moral system are you going to appeal to, that would allow
| unlimited private property ownership? Even John Locke's
| "homsteading" concept had a "proviso" saying that you should
| only own that which you can reasonably use. Even Adam Smith
| writing about the "invisible hand" was _actually_ writing
| about how the Rich are led by an invisible hand to distribute
| goods _equally_ (in his time) because they can only eat so
| much.
|
| We see this pathology in online systems as well. Just like
| Bitcoin and Ethereum allow sending unlimited amounts of money
| in a fixed time for a fixed fee, this necessarily causes a
| bottleneck somewhere (proof of work miner, for instance, or
| everyone storing everything, leading to "flash loans" and
| other crap on the "world computer"). Actually, they charge
| the maximum fee for every transaction (even sending 5 cents)
| because the entire network secures everything. It's built for
| really huge transfers.
|
| It can be summarized like this: "Centralization is bad, and
| happens through enforcement of some rules. The resources to
| enforce rules should therefore not be deployed for unlimited
| value of ownership by accounts, they shouldn't even be
| centralized (e.g. proof of work mining elects one "consensus
| leader", or Facebook has a huge centralized server farm) to
| the point that you get these pathologies: the elites at the
| top are out of touch with the people who are ACTUALLY using
| the products / services. Same with politics / states / etc.
| Keep it decentralized whenever you can.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > You see, "private property" was a step up from Feudalism.
|
| Private property absolutely existed under fuedalism as
| well, albeit in a more limited form for most people. Serfs
| generally worked land privately owned by - or granted by
| the crown to - private individuals. Minor nobles had
| property rights equal to and exceeding those of private
| landowners today.
|
| Property other than real estate was privately owned by
| serfs. This included all of their possession and in many
| cases and countries, their homes. They were usually
| nominnaly free to move elsewhere, though in practice this
| rarely happened for cultural and practical reasons.
|
| > So basically the current system has led to a bunch of
| surveillance capitalism.
|
| I agree completely with this, except for the "capitalism"
| part. Our current system has arisen in an increasingly
| regulatory environment, and most of the issues with it are
| directly attributable to that.
|
| > In short ... your ideas of "private ownership" work on a
| small level but then you get these large corporations that
| continue "owning" things [...]
|
| Ah, this strikes me as important. The concept of the
| corporation - or more specifically, limited liability - is
| 100% a product of our governmental system. One place where
| I break from the mainstream in a big way is that I believe
| that those responsible for a company should be responsible
| personally for damages caused by that company. How that
| breaks down between employees, managers, officers, and
| shareholders is left as an exercise for the reader but
| suffice it to say that when Exxon covers the Gulf of Mexico
| with crude oil I believe the damage caused by that should
| be remedied by everyone involved, including those who
| allegedly own a share of ownership in the company.
|
| > even "intellectual property" of patents and copyrights
|
| My position here is very adequately described by "Against
| Intellectual Property", by Stephan Kinsella
|
| https://mises.org/library/against-intellectual-property-0
|
| > But just what does it mean that I "own" 999 houses, and
| see no lessening of my ability to evict people ACTUALLY
| living in the house as squatters, just because I contracted
| with a bank and some "People with Guns" to enforce some
| "deed of ownership"?
|
| It means that if people don't agree with your practices as
| a landlord, they shouldn't rent from you. If it's that
| egregious, homeowners should decide not to sell to you or
| to demand a higher price.
|
| If people don't want to rent from you, you will have to
| lower your prices to maintain occupancy. If people don't
| want to sell to you, you'll have to increase your offers to
| continue to grow. Both of those things decrease
| profitability. When they intersect, then you'll have to
| start selling those houses to recoup your investment.
|
| > Even John Locke [...] > Even Adam Smith [...]
|
| John Locke and Adam Smith are surely foundational, but they
| are hardly representative of our modern concept of
| "Capitalism".
|
| For that matter, Thomas Paine is usually thought of as one
| of America's Founders; he'd likely be considered a
| Communist today based on the ideas he wrote about.
|
| > It can be summarized like this: "Centralization is bad,
| and happens through enforcement of some rules. The
| resources to enforce rules should therefore not be deployed
| for unlimited value of ownership by accounts, they
| shouldn't even be centralized (e.g. proof of work mining
| elects one "consensus leader", or Facebook has a huge
| centralized server farm) to the point that you get these
| pathologies: the elites at the top are out of touch with
| the people who are ACTUALLY using the products / services.
| Same with politics / states / etc. Keep it decentralized
| whenever you can.
|
| This statement is really interesting to me. I'm an Anarcho-
| Capitalist. Obviously, based on your post here, you and I
| have very different ideas of what an optimal socioeconomic
| system would look like.
|
| ... yet I completely agree with the statements
| "Centralization is bad" and "Keep it decentralized". I
| would go so far as to say that while our policy ideas
| aren't compatible, our worldviews _are_. We could likely
| work together to build something that worked well and that
| we both hated in equal measure. :)
| [deleted]
| cm2012 wrote:
| This is one of the wrongest comments I've ever seen on HN,
| hah.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| This comment adds nothing to the discussion, and hackernews
| isn't the place for comments such as these. If you disagree
| with the ideas, elaborate and disect those you take issue
| with. Additionally, please keep the tone civil, disagreeing
| and adding nothing more that saying "hah" is not really the
| maturity level expected in debates on HN.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Fair point, I've now elaborated in a child comment.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Which part is wrong? Some parts are obviously correct.
|
| The US is definitely one of the most diverse large
| countries. India is probably more diverse along language
| lines. China is definitely not along any dimension. Even
| the EU states (that depend on US for defense and use oil to
| power their economies) are less diverse.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Some parts are correct, true. Mostly "It's ALWAYS a safe
| bet to assume people will lose liberty." is really wrong.
|
| The US is a far more free country now than it was 100
| years ago or at any point since the introduction of
| agriculture.
|
| Compared to one hundred years ago, there's political
| changes:
|
| - Minorities and women can vote
|
| - Labor rights
|
| - Consumer protections (No more debtor prisons, etc.)
|
| And tech changes:
|
| - People aren't stuck on their farms all day
|
| - Families aren't stuck doing chores all day
|
| - Birth control has allowed sexual freedom
|
| - The trains, planes, cars and the internet has allowed
| freedom of location
|
| Etc.
| xdennis wrote:
| Then it should be easy to say what's wrong with it.
| rbanffy wrote:
| My favorite way to characterize this is "it's not even
| wrong".
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Sounds mostly right...
| hooande wrote:
| > They will have rebelled against long hours; the chances are
| that in 2022 few people will work more than seven hours a day,
| if as much.
|
| honestly, with remote work, seven hours a day seems about
| right. A lot of that isn't even lost productivity, it's cutting
| back on the general time overhead of working in an office.
|
| I don't think that Americans are so prosperous that we've
| become less enterprising due to class immobility. but we do
| seem to be getting more efficient with our time
| idiotsecant wrote:
| >honestly, with remote work, seven hours a day seems about
| right.
|
| This is, with the most possible respect, a position of great
| privilege. Most people in the US are _not_ remote workers
| that get to work 7 hours a day. They are expected to be
| physically present doing things like retail service work,
| manufacturing, healthcare, construction, etc.
|
| The average HN user is in a very specific demographic that
| has benefited enormously from recent economic trends, a
| benefit that is not distributed evenly. Many (most?) people
| are working more then they ever did for an increasingly
| smaller piece of the pie.
| sologoub wrote:
| > Most people in the US are not remote workers that get to
| work 7 hours a day. They are expected to be physically
| present doing things like retail service work,
| manufacturing, healthcare, construction, etc.
|
| This is not entirely accurate -- as much as 69% of all
| full-time employees worked remotely during the pandemic:
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/355907/remote-work-
| persisting-t...
|
| While we certainly do have professions that require in-
| person presence, it's not every role in those professions
| and certainly many more people can enjoy the benefits of
| remote work. Those who cannot should be rewarded for that
| and added enjoy benefits/guarantees to compensate.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Those who cannot should be rewarded for that and added
| enjoy benefits/guarantees to compensate.
|
| This is more or less the opposite of what happens to
| these professionals - they are often those who are paid
| the least and work the longest hours under hourly
| contracts on multiple jobs (because, if they worked more
| in a single job, the company would have to give those
| benefits).
| sologoub wrote:
| Yeah it's what happens, but I'm of strong opinion that
| this part needs to change. Unfortunately, some of the
| hardest jobs don't come with enough dignity, let a long
| pay.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's shameful that in the richest country in the world
| there are people being forced to work 12 or more hours a
| day just to survive.
|
| And going to work with COVID symptoms because they can't
| live without payment.
| sologoub wrote:
| > And going to work with COVID symptoms because they
| can't live without payment.
|
| That's a very grotesque illustration of perverse
| incentives. Ask anyone, I doubt they'll tell you that
| it's worth having a sick person show up to work over
| providing sick leave/benefits and yet, here we are.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| While you see plenty of press decrying the shrinking middle
| class ... it still is the majority of the US! Even things
| like living in a detached single family home, still is
| something that 70% of Americans do, even if homeownership
| is down and rents are up. All economic trends happen at the
| margin, 2% here, 5% there. Big shifts, even over decades,
| are rarer.
| krapp wrote:
| I am convinced that in 2022 the advancement of science will be
| amazing, but it will be nothing like so amazing as is the
| present day in relation to a hundred years ago. A
| sight of the world today would surprise President Jefferson
| much more, I suspect, than the world of 2022 would surprise
| the little girl who sells candies at Grand Central Station.
|
| Hubris... hubris never changes.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| Hubris? I think he was right, and that the world of 1822 was
| more different from 1922 than 1922 is to now. Computers seem to
| be the primary novel invention in the last hundred years, but
| long-distance data transfer was normal - and the fax machine
| sending pictures was overseas was just two years away (1924).
|
| 1822 was a horse-drawn, gas-lit world that was in many ways the
| same as it had been for millennia. 1922 was a world where rapid
| transportation (planes , trains, and automobiles),recorded
| images and sounds, electric light, radio broadcasts and
| instantaneous intercontinental communication.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > but long-distance data transfer was normal - and the fax
| machine sending pictures was overseas was just two years away
| (1924).
|
| "Quantity has a quality all its own"
|
| -Joseph Stalin
|
| Saying the fax let us move information long distance is like
| saying global trade was around in the middle ages because
| Macro Polo. The quantity difference is so big it becomes a
| qualitative difference.
|
| I can arrange to have an arbitrary industrial doodad show up
| on my doorstep from literally the other side of the world
| while taking a shit. I can stream 1080p to/from damn near
| anywhere on the planet. In 30sec I can get answers to
| specific technical questions that would have taken hours for
| the president of the US to get an answer to in 1990. The list
| goes on. Communication and information are just so much more
| abundant than they were even 75yr ago.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but I think I disagree. Ordering
| on Amazon from your phone is a much faster experience that
| reaches more products, but it is an analogue to mailing in
| an order from the Sears catalog. I don't think there's an
| 1822 analogue to the Sears catalog.
|
| And the quote was about "surprise". I don't think it'd be a
| complete shock to see that the world got more connected,
| ordering became easier, deliveries became faster. In 1822
| the railroad was very much still in its early stages; the
| Erie Canal had just been completed, the Pony Express and
| the telegraph were still almost 40 years away.
|
| Put differently, a lot of "0 to 1" stuff had happened by
| 1922.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Put differently, a lot of "0 to 1" stuff had happened by
| 1922.
|
| How much of that 0-1 is stuff that existed in some niche
| or experimental capacity prior to 1822 but simply became
| possible at scale?
|
| We had writing for millennia but the printing press
| changed the world.
|
| We've had steel for millennia but the Bessemer process
| changed the world.
|
| We've always been able to send information long distances
| but digital communications changed the world.
|
| You can always pick whatever specific innovations you
| want as the 0-1 transition point but it's the widespread
| availability of something that changes the world.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I don't think I disagree with your point, I just think
| that your point doesn't speak to the "who would be more
| surprised" question. And, thinking about it, maybe 0-1
| wasn't a good way for me to make that case.
|
| To order something from Amazon from your toilet, you need
|
| - indoor plumbing
|
| - computing
|
| - electricity
|
| - industrialized mass production
|
| - global connectivity
|
| - global transportation network
|
| Someone in 1922 could imagine a telephone in a bathroom
| that could be used to contact a Sears-like company to
| order a mass-produced product and have it delivered from
| a faraway place.
|
| In 1822 you barely have the idea of industrialization and
| electricity, let alone anything else. "Write a letter
| from your cesspit to have a product from St. Louis
| delivered to New York, but your letter is instantly
| delivered instead of taking six weeks, production is
| faster and cheaper than your local craftsman (it's not
| being made to order!), and instead of taking six weeks to
| ship it, it takes two days (2022) or a week(?) (1922)."
| It's not just that the same kind of thing is happening at
| a grander scale, it requires a fundamental reorientation
| of how you'd think about consuming products.
|
| So yeah, Amazon's scale in 2022 is astronomically greater
| than Sears's in 1922 and that is significant, but they
| share way more fundamentals than 1822 and 1922 did.
| jameshart wrote:
| "1822 was a horse-drawn, gas-lit world"
|
| In fact, gas light was bleeding edge tech in 1822 - confined
| to a few parts of cities like London and Baltimore. The New
| York City gas company was only chartered in 1823. Chicago
| didn't get gas light until 1850.
|
| Whale oil was still a significant source of illumination
| right through the 19th century, especially in the US.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Of all the science fiction things that I knew when I was a
| kid in the 90s, only one actually happened, and that's
| handheld devices with touchscreens with all the world's
| information accessible through them.
|
| Many others, like humanoid robots (that can do actual stuff
| like independently clean a home), general AI, actual real
| space travel (where people live on different planets or giant
| space wheels), flying cars, replicators, fusion energy, self
| driving cars (those are near though), brain uploads,
| nanobots, curing many diseases, etc... didn't happen and
| won't any time soon, and of course some are physically
| impossible like FTL travel, teleportation, time travel, ...
|
| It's at least nice to have seen one science fiction fantasy
| come true so far :)
| NoGravitas wrote:
| As always, when this kind of things come up, I'd like to
| mention "Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit"
| (2012), by the late David Graeber. There's a reason late
| 20th and early 21st century technological development went
| the way it did, rather than the way it looked like it would
| from the mid 20th century.
|
| https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-
| declini...
| singularity2001 wrote:
| I wouldn't call it hubris but lack of universal knowledge of
| the exponential nature of development. That was before I saw
| the universal lack of just this comprehension in the comments.
|
| What people may mean is that a jump from 10^5 to 10^6 can feel
| bigger than a jump from 10^6 to 10^7? And that we are more
| surprised by large things than by some small piece of 'magical
| paper' which can completely change its display at will.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Yep. Penicilin, Heart transplants, Supersonic travel. Nuclear
| power, Nuclear weapons, Nuclear naval propulsion. Space
| exploration. Artificial Satellites, GPS, Succesful cancer
| treatments, NMR and other imaging diagnostic tools. Wireless
| bi-directional personal television (the 20's name for making a
| zoom call from your phone). And the list goes on.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| Do any of those even come close to 1822-1922 changes of
| aviation, global telecommumications, ubiquitous electricity,
| cars, Quantum Mechanics, and so on? Space exploration,
| nuclear propulsion and satellites are great, but their impact
| on people's daily lives is far smaller than the above, imo.
|
| I think the author was largely correct.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Personal Computers (and smartphones, etc) are the largest
| change by far.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| They are definitely the biggest change in the past
| century and on par with those big innovations I
| mentioned, so I wouldn't want to undersell them as
| they've been a major disruptive change to most / all
| fields.
|
| However, they wouldn't exactly be incomprehensible to
| someone from the early 1900's, since they already had the
| telegraph, telephony, and fax machines which could send
| pictures over a long distance came very soon after this
| article was written.
|
| Whereas I think a person from the early 1800's would
| genuinely struggle with understanding the modern world.
| elzbardico wrote:
| How not? Penicilin alone has a giant impact on the lives of
| people. What about anti-conceptionals too.
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| So did (even to a greater effect) the doctors washing
| their hands. Between 1822-1922, only in Physics humanity
| discovered/developed, the laws of Electromagnetism, the
| laws of Thermodynamics and their microscopic extension:
| Statistical Mechanics, the special theory of relativity,
| quantum mechanics and the General theory of relativity.
|
| The last 100 years have been about doing things in large
| quantities in a cheaper, faster way. Of course there has
| been great progress (the era of the PC/Internet by far
| the most important one) but the rate is significantly
| lower.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| In my earlier reply to GP, I had forgotten about space
| exploration, and I think that is a major technological
| advancement that would amaze someone from 1922. However, I
| still think that someone from 1922 would expect such things
| of 2022 in a way that someone from 1822 would not expect of
| 1922. 1822 - 1922 is the difference between being a barely-
| technological world to being a fully-blown one, in many, many
| fields.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Modern medicin would be nothing short of miraculous from
| the eyes of someone from 1920.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Ditto 1922 medicine compared to 1822.
| [deleted]
| hwers wrote:
| I kinda feel like this will be true in the next 100 years
| though (2122).
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| Yep, bet on an unchanging human nature,keeping things from
| the past around, some social progress in certain areas but
| not as fast as you would like it and that the world of 2122
| will be less alien to a 2022 person than the 2022 world to a
| 1922 person.
| danielrpa wrote:
| Hubris yes, but perhaps not wrong. I'm not sure if the progress
| between 1922-2022 was as significant as the progress between
| 1822-1922. These are two 100-year periods of immense progress.
|
| Have in mind that he's referring to the 100 yr period that
| brought us cars, airplanes, railroads, telephones, light bulbs,
| electricity, electromagnetism, relativity, evolution, etc.
| Macha wrote:
| From a technological perspective, I'm not sure they're wrong?
| 1922 had railways and cars and mass transit which had already
| started increasing urbanisation vs 1822, skyscrapers were
| already being built, passenger air travel was a go, telephones
| and electricity existed in cities.
|
| The internet and computing is certainly a big shift, but from a
| visible changes to the world perspective I think 2022 is more
| alike 1922 than 1922 was alike 1822.
| weisk wrote:
| > The internet and computing is certainly a big shift, but
| from a visible changes to the world perspective I think 2022
| is more alike 1922 than 1922 was alike 1822.
|
| Lolwat? Handheld devices that have the power to process
| millions of calculations a sec, to record Ultra HD videos, to
| establish a video conference instantaniously with anyone in
| the whole world.
|
| Thousands of satellites that orbit the earth constantly.
| Space missions that are already flying past the limits of our
| galaxy.
|
| Bio-mechanical organs, giving the crippled back the ability
| to walk, the blind the ability to see, the deaf to hear.
|
| Welp, I do think that technological progress has been growing
| at a logarithmic rate, and it's probably keep growing at that
| pace...
|
| I think the one point in which the author was super correct
| is, when he says that the progress will be made on
| technology, rather than the "emotion that arises between a
| man and a maid" - as I understand it, emotional intelligence
| - , which will remain stagnant.
| Macha wrote:
| > Lolwat? Handheld devices that have the power to process
| millions of calculations a sec, to record Ultra HD videos,
| to establish a video conference instantaniously with anyone
| in the whole world.
|
| These are a different in quality more so than a different
| in kind. In 1922 you could already talk to someone 100s of
| miles away via the telephone. In 1822 you couldn't. And
| getting there was going to take weeks. So you basically
| couldn't talk to people long distance unless you were rich
| or important.
|
| > Thousands of satellites that orbit the earth constantly.
| Space missions that are already flying past the limits of
| our galaxy.
|
| Means rather than an end here. Google Maps is neat and
| convenient, but again, you _could_ use paper maps for much
| of what people use google maps for. And large paper mapping
| schemes (e.g. ordnance survey maps in countries of the
| british empire) were carried out in the 19th century and
| WW1. Communications could also be done, albeit more
| expensively. Space missions are still currently in the
| scientific curiosity stage, rather than impacting people's
| lives, but who knows maybe commercial near earth space
| missions end up being the one people get to to talk about
| for 2022-2122.
|
| > Bio-mechanical organs, giving the crippled back the
| ability to walk, the blind the ability to see, the deaf to
| hear.
|
| These are technically more accomplished achievements for
| sure, but I'm not sure they have the same sort of societal
| impacts as initiatives against cholera and tubercolosis of
| the late 19th century. Vaccination is probably the 20th
| century achievement to call out here.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> These are a different in quality more so than a
| different in kind._
|
| Sometimes the difference in quality is smaller.
| Communication by mail could have a cadence reminiscent of
| email, for example:
|
| https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/24089/victorian-mail-
| del...
| ben_w wrote:
| The keyword here is "visible"; for most of these things,
| though the change is real, it is also easily missed, with
| the exception of, as you say, thousands of satellites that
| orbit the earth constantly (space missions are _not_
| however already flying past the limits of our galaxy,
| they're just about reaching the heliopause; even just
| leaving the plane of the Galaxy is 200,000 times further
| than that, while leaving the rim of the Galaxy is about 12
| million times further).
|
| Video conferencing worldwide? If you draw attention to it,
| I suspect it would've surprised 1922 people that anyone
| richer than a literal subsistence farmer would also have a
| device of their own for the other end of the call, but the
| existence of the technology itself would not be surprising.
|
| For _visible_ changes between 1922 and 2022? New materials,
| new lighting, new fashion, drones, the public acceptability
| of same-sex relationships, race relations (in particular
| attitudes to those of pre-Colombian, African, and Chinese
| descent), and possibly also visible might be the absence of
| disfiguring illnesses that we have now vaccinated against.
|
| But those are likely less than the changes from 1822 to
| 1922.
|
| (The Blue Marble, or the photos of astronauts walking on
| the moon... I don't know if those would've been shocking or
| not. Jules Verne died in 1905).
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| They had radio and video cameras in 1922, I don't think
| facetime would be all that shocking. 1822 had neither
| telephone nor electric light. Steam trains were just
| getting started; by 1922 they were running regular service
| at over 100 mph.
|
| Evidently its debatable which century saw more change, from
| sailboats to Titanic, or gunpowder rockets to Apollo...
| certainly there have always been cynics and dreamers...
|
| edit: GPS would be pretty shocking to either, I expect
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| If you're curious about the writer, W. L. George, he was hired by
| the Herald to write a daily column in the Women's Page:
|
| https://www.newspapers.com/clip/24655109/new-york-herald/
| thecosas wrote:
| Who's up for writing about what 2122 will look like?
| nojs wrote:
| This is amazingly accurate. It contains several predictions that
| would have been very difficult when extrapolating based on life
| experience at the time.
|
| Consider how difficult it would be to predict how the world will
| look in 2122. I don't think I'd be this close to the mark.
| krupan wrote:
| I was just laughing at the idea of glassed in cities with all our
| gas powered cars with my wife, but then I realized that if the
| cities were well ventilated/filtered that could result in an air
| quality improvement for a lot of places
| nikkinana wrote:
| hereforphone wrote:
| You know what they call a quarter pounder in France?
| gadders wrote:
| " A sight of the world today would surprise President Jefferson
| much more, I suspect, than the world of 2022 would surprise the
| little girl who sells candies at Grand Central Station. For
| Jefferson knew nothing of railroads, telegraphs, telephones,
| automobiles, aeroplanes, gramophones, movies, radium, &c.; he did
| not even know hot and cold bathrooms."
|
| I wonder what we would show the girl of 1922? Space travel and
| obviously the internet & computers come to mind. Antibiotics,
| DNA? Anything else?
| bspammer wrote:
| I'd think somewhere like Times Square, the strip in Vegas, or
| Shinjuku in Tokyo at night would be mindblowing. Then probably
| show her VR, and a modern action movie in 3D.
|
| VR still blows the minds of everyone I show it to. I can't
| imagine what kind of reaction someone from 1922 would give.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| Worldstarhiphop.com
| adrian_b wrote:
| Internet and computers are the most different from what existed
| before 1922, but already then everybody was familiar with
| telegraphy, telephony and wireless communications and various
| fiction works about intelligent robots had existed for
| millennia (starting with the Iliad).
|
| Space travel was also present in many fiction works, the best
| known being several novels of Jules Verne and of H. G. Wells.
|
| Antibiotics were a huge progress, but the concept would not
| have been a surprise for anyone, because searching for
| substances that one would ingest to kill the parasites causing
| various diseases was already a well understood method in
| medicine, e.g. like using quinine against the protozoan that
| causes malaria or organo-arsenic compounds against the bacteria
| that cause syphilis.
|
| Even if already in antiquity some have supposed that many
| diseases are caused by very small invisible parasites, only
| during the 19th century the causes for most common infectious
| diseases have been identified. So also in this domain the
| differences between 1922 and 1822 are much larger than between
| 1922 and 2022.
|
| By 1922, genetics was much better understood than in 1822 even
| if it was not known yet that it is based on information encoded
| in the molecules of nucleic acids.
|
| I cannot find any domain of science and technology where the
| difference between 1922 and 1822 is not much larger than
| between 2022 and 1922.
|
| On the other hand, in 1922 there was still a very large part of
| the human population whose life had not been affected yet by
| the progresses of the 19th century, e.g. who had never used a
| telephone, an automobile or a train, much less an airplane or a
| computing machine or a washing machine.
|
| The main difference between 1922 and 2022 is that all the
| technologies that in 1922 existed only in extremely expensive
| devices or in experimental devices now exist in cheap devices
| that are used by most people and such devices have sizes and
| energy consumptions that are many orders of magnitude less than
| what could have been done with the technologies from 100 years
| ago.
|
| The main progress during the last 100 years has been in
| practical engineering, with much less progress in basic
| science.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| I genuinely can't wrap my head around your perspective on
| genetics. _Literally everything_ we know about genetics was
| learned after 1922. What we knew in 1920 might get you
| through the first half of a one or two week high school
| lesson on genetics.
|
| _> The main progress during the last 100 years has been in
| practical engineering, with much less progress in basic
| science._
|
| I actually think the situation is entirely reversed.
|
| The progress from 1822 to 1922 was largely engineering. The
| industrial revolution cause a violent and visceral change in
| the way that people experienced everyday life.
|
| Take genetics. In 1922 we didn't know that DNA existed. Or,
| we kind of has a vague sense. Since then, we: discovered the
| structure of DNA, sequenced the first human genome, and now
| for less than a month's wages & a vial of spit you can get a
| whole genome fastq. And that's just genetic _sequencing_. We
| have also learned a mind-boggling amount about how DNA
| interacts with other biological processes. And that 's just
| genetics. Proteins. Neuroscience. The vascular system. The
| list goes on and on. Just in life sciences.
|
| And the (bio)engineering implications of that vast amount of
| scientific discovery are immense. More impactful but not as
| visceral as a railroad or an airplane.
|
| Scientifically, the progress from 1922 to 2022 is
| _incredible_ compared to the progress from 1822 to 1922, but
| the engineering progress of 1822 to 1922 was much more
| visceral. Not even more significant in terms of lived
| experience. Just more visceral.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> I wonder what we would show the [candy selling] girl of
| 1922?_
|
| 1. One of the banks of vending machines found in the train
| station where she used to work.
|
| 2. A high school classroom, as the alternative to her life of
| child labor.
|
| You might also show her Spotify, Netflix, and take her on a two
| week flight around the world. But I feel that a machine which
| does her old job and a bookish life for working class youth
| would be the most likely to blow her mind.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| The problem is Thomas Jefferson lived most of his life more
| than a hundred years prior to when this was written. Although
| still alive in 1822, he would have already seen much of the
| progress that would be foreign to his younger self. Such as the
| first steam engines. The author compares the perspective of a
| young girl looking 100 years into the future with that of an
| old man.
| mikestew wrote:
| _I wonder what we would show the girl of 1922_
|
| She can sell those candles on Etsy instead of standing around a
| train station all day. She will not, however, understand the
| enormous amount of change that took place in order to make that
| possible. It will give her a practical understanding of what
| those changes brought about, though.
| hoseja wrote:
| _" There will still be republics and monarchies; possibly, in
| 2022, the Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Norwegian kings may have
| fallen, but for a variety of reasons, either lack of advancement
| or practical inconvenience, we may expect still to find kings in
| Sweden, Jugo-Slavia, Greece, Rumania and Great Britain."_
|
| Funny how among reasonable predictions this one is almost
| completely wrong, only 3/9 guessed right.
| [deleted]
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| This is accurate enough that midway through the article I started
| wondering if it was a prank written recently.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >"It is easier to bring about a revolutionary scientific
| discovery such as that of the X-ray than to alter in the least
| degree the quality of emotion that arises between a man and a
| maid. There will probably be many new rays in 2022, but the
| people whom they illumine will be much the same."
|
| Nailed it.
| dahart wrote:
| > They will have rebelled against long hours; the chances are
| that in 2022 few people will work more than seven hours a day, if
| as much
|
| Bertrand Russell also famously predicted this. I believe I've
| read that in the 1800's people were predicting industrialization
| would do away with labor. People are still predicting this today,
| with the advent of Machine Learning that's good enough to
| automate things like driving.
|
| Will this prediction ever come true, or is there some kind of
| human nature that is going to keep us grinding away no matter
| what we invent?
| krupan wrote:
| "Will this prediction ever come true, or is there some kind of
| human nature that is going to keep us grinding away no matter
| what we invent?"
|
| Seems abundantly clear to me that there indeed is something in
| our nature that keeps us grinding. I do hope that we at least
| continue to increase the freedom to choose what and when we
| grind
| handsaway wrote:
| I'd argue that it's not human nature but rather our socio-
| economic system that keeps us grinding away. It's become
| obvious that for the most part automation does a disservice to
| workers rather than liberating them since they don't have the
| legal ownership of the automating forces. A typical factory or
| whatever if it is able to automate 20% of the current work
| being done will simply lay off 20% of its workforce rather than
| reduce everyone's workload by 20% while maintaining their wage.
|
| Now this creates a bit of a crisis since the automated
| production produces things that need to be bought by the
| workers they displace, who now no longer have any money. The
| outcome as I see it is an extension of credit systems and the
| propagation of tedious nonsense jobs (ala Graeber's Bullshit
| Jobs).
|
| In order to bring about the ideal of automation creating more
| free time for all without diminishing their income you'd have
| to transfer ownership of the automating forces to the workers
| they're replacing. But then I'm just a Marxist looney so what
| do I know.
| jugg1es wrote:
| The most striking to me are passages like this:
|
| "It is practically certain that in 2022 nearly all women will
| have discarded the idea that they are primarily "makers of men".
| Most fit women will then be following an individual career."
|
| ...
|
| "But it is unlikely that that women will have achieved equality
| with men."
| stareblinkstare wrote:
| beeboop wrote:
| He definitely missed the mark about alimony or men not bearing
| the majority of child support
| yurishimo wrote:
| I don't think he did. My mother paid child support to my
| father after the divorce. I think in most instances, it's
| simply more convenient for the mother to take the children in
| a divorce, or the kids are too young to choose, so it ends
| that way by default. There is no rule for it though.
| beeboop wrote:
| The default way still being women that get the children
| doesn't really change that the dynamic that gender versus
| child support is not meaningfully any different than the
| 1920s. Women's share of child support has gone from, I
| assume, ~0% in 1922 (I didn't look it up but I imagine it
| was less than 1%) to around 5% in 2022 in terms of dollars
| paid. Men going from 99% to 95% of child support costs
| isn't really a noteworthy change and doesn't align with a
| prediction that it would be meaningfully different.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I don't think he did.
|
| Alimony and child support _do_ apply to women as well as men
| in the US, though it 's obviously not equally distributed
| today. Even if we assume that's not because of a flawed
| system, I can think of several reasons it might be the case.
| For example, any or all of the following could cause that in
| a fair system:
|
| * wage earners are still disproportionately men
|
| * women tend to be much more likely to retain (and desire)
| custody of children
|
| * women tend to be less likely to work outside the home
|
| While I do believe the system is biased against men, I don't
| think it's nearly as bad as it may seem depending on your own
| view of things. There are plenty of stories out there of men
| who have been unfairly saddled with alimony and child
| support, and those stories get a lot of play. I think it's
| fair to say that the trope of "a woman left penniless, with
| no marketable skills, to care for a family after the man left
| to shirk his responsibilities" is a trope for a reason -
| because it is and always has been a common ocurrance.
| beeboop wrote:
| Men pay ~95% of the dollars given/taken for child support
| in this country. It applies to women but only in a very
| very marginal way. Men going from >99% to 95% of child
| support costs isn't really a noteworthy change and doesn't
| align with a prediction that it would be meaningfully
| different.
| [deleted]
| dav_Oz wrote:
| Somehow ironically the writer of that article, W L George, died 4
| years later aged 43 on "pneumonia and heart failure" and "had
| been ill from the last twelve months" [0].
|
| It reads like a high-school assignment in which "100 years from
| now" is entirely used as a narrative device and the author with
| his literary skill set kind of seemed bored with it and wants to
| just get over with.
|
| He basically mirrows the sentiment of his time by extrapolating -
| with hardly any spin of his own - the low hanging fruits: new
| rays, wireless technology, movies with sound & color, ease of
| housework (compressed papier mache: Ikea?), community dwellings,
| "servant problem", everything you need in a pill, city roofed
| with glass (his own spin?) ...
|
| His view that 1822 (Jefferson) is more dissimilar to 1922 than
| 2022 will be to 1922 (for a little girl) is weirdly off. He does
| not go into detail as to why and in which fundamental ways.
|
| "The more we discover the less is left" seems even more absurd
| and goes contrary to the open-endedness of the scientific inquiry
| (which he praised beforehand): "the more we discover the more
| questions arise".
|
| Finally when turning to political issues his narrating device
| serves only to illuminate his own (political/societal) views:
| emanicaption of women (from 20.000 years of slavery), tendency
| for socializations (not socialism!), (unconscious) nationalizing
| of important industries, "Anti-Trust Acts" in which the State
| limits profits and arbitrages between industries and workers,
| international trade in the hands of "controlled combines"
| (globalization) as a pacifying force, political conditions
| (nations) as a driver for war. Well, as a witness to WWI, WWII
| surely had to be "horrible beyond my conception".
|
| The potential of America to immense wealth ("most enterprising
| creature") away from a euro-centric (and partly his feminist
| views) are imho his most refreshing views.
|
| As a necessary flattery for the reader he goes on to predict an
| american flowering in literature and arts ("infinitely more than
| they are producing today" sounds more like an insult by an
| Englishman ;)).
|
| And by ending with "there will be no more things one can't say
| and things one can't think" and "a great liberalism of mind will
| prevail" I can only reply 100 years later with Goethe's 200 years
| old Wahlverwandschaften[1] and one prominent slogan of Occupy
| Wall Street: "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who
| falsely believe they are free."
|
| ("Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich fur frei halt, ohne es zu
| sein")
|
| [0]http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TS19260408.2.125..
| .
|
| [1]http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Goethe,+Johann+Wolfgang/Roma..
| .
| whiddershins wrote:
| Surprisingly good predictions on a number of fronts.
| almogbaku wrote:
| this is pretty cool to see how he predicted some things pretty
| good
| ekianjo wrote:
| good cherry picking to find someone who was correct about quite
| a few things among an ocean of wrong predictors/predictions :-)
| bramgn wrote:
| True, but also how outlandish certain ideas were about peeling
| your house clean and replacing meals with pills...
| viraptor wrote:
| > how outlandish certain ideas were about peeling your house
| clean
|
| Not that outlandish. My shower glass is covered in high tech
| hydrophobic substance which keeps it clean, but I have to
| replace it every couple of years. My kid's high chair is
| covered in easily washable rubber surface that I can
| literally peel off after a meal, rinse, and replace.
|
| So overall, practical idea that is partially applied.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Hell, my house has vinyl siding. No repainting every 5-10
| years and you can pressure wash it in an hour or two. Close
| enough!
| JofArnold wrote:
| Huel?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Huel / Soylent for nutrition, psyllium pills for filling /
| bowel operation, pretty much that yeah lol
| hwers wrote:
| That's a funny one since Huel and Soylent kinda came about
| _because of_ the 1920s meme idea that pills would replace
| meals in the future. A lot of these might just be self
| fulfilling prophecies.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's generally how things work. Sci-fi and stuff
| influences the thoughts of others to help make the ideas
| turn into creations. I think they even made a documentary
| about all the Star Trek props that became a reality, but
| I don't remember.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/16/world/gallery/science-
| fiction...
| webmaven wrote:
| You might like this book:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dreams_Our_Stuff_Is_M
| ade...
| paradite wrote:
| Yes, the prediction is incredibly accurate.
|
| So my question would be: Is this a case of selection bias
| (survival bias)?
|
| Did we cherry picked one accurate prediction (at the right time)
| out of many different predictions made about the future?
| sovnade wrote:
| That only seems relevant if the author of this had a vast
| number of predictions.
|
| Overall, yeah, there were tons. That doesn't detract from how
| accurate this particular piece was.
| Nbox9 wrote:
| I'm unsure, unless the author is of especially high renown.
|
| If there was two dozen "What life will be like in 100 years"
| articles published per year in decently sized newspapers we
| will have 240 such articles to choose from this decade.
| Surely we would only see the most accurate of these
| predictions, and that is survival bias.
|
| Of course, maybe there was not a large variance between
| predictions, or everyone is accurate to a similar level of
| degree. In that case some other method of selecting which old
| predictions we read will be at play, perhaps based on which
| publications were better archived or random chance.
| sovnade wrote:
| It depends if we're judging the overall predictions of
| everyone, or this specific author's predictions. I always
| tend to look at it at the author-level, because otherwise
| the infinite monkeys theorem applies anyway.
|
| I think this author should be given credit for the
| accuracy. He can't control what everyone else is writing
| and how accurate or inaccurate they were. He can only
| control his own predictions, and they were very good.
| [deleted]
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > It is easier to bring about a revolutionary scientific
| discovery such as that of the X-ray than to alter in the least
| degree the quality of emotion that arises between a man and a
| maid.
|
| The relationship between a man and a maid is a core
| characteristic of a society.
|
| The complexity of changing such relationships is attested to by
| TFA, and yet, in many places, over a hundred years, we see (hard
| fought) change.
|
| A hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, the downfalls of
| Dominic Strauss-Kahn, Jeffrey Epstein, and Harvey Weinstein were
| inconceivable.
|
| So was #MeToo.
|
| But there's as much tech in the hash tag as there is in the
| x-ray, or more if you just count the investment dollars.
|
| Technology and social relations define and redefine each other in
| long epicycles.
| I-M-S wrote:
| If anyone else is interested in the author who exerted such
| prescience, Wikipedia has an article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._George
| evancoop wrote:
| The reality is that no such projection is plausible. Could a
| human being living in 1903, before the Wright Brothers have
| predicted a moon landing only 66 years later? Could anyone in
| 1990 have predicted the smartphone, let alone 1922? Only one
| prediction is worthy of confidence - the world of technology will
| increase at an exponential rate...and the world will improve.
|
| We lament progress, but few of us would choose 1922 over 2022 (I
| mean, the sanitation and medical care alone makes the decision
| trivial on my end). Even fewer would choose 2022 in 2122.
| tempestn wrote:
| Over the broad arc of history things have gotten better over
| the long term. I'm not sure that's always the case though.
| Exponential growth of technology, or anything else, physically
| can't last forever. What does it look like when it stops?
|
| I do agree that whatever complaints we might have about the
| present though, it's better than any time in history save for
| possibly the very recent past. And I think it's a good bet that
| 2122 will indeed be better. I just wouldn't call it a
| certainty.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > Only one prediction is worthy of confidence - the world of
| technology will increase at an exponential rate...and the world
| will improve.
|
| I'm not actually very confident about that last part...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Too many smart (or smart-sounding) people either here or on
| Reddit claim casually that some X will take hundreds of years
| to do. Where X may be artificial intelligence, conquest of
| longevity or whatever else.
|
| The reality is that we do not know. Some things may be out of
| our reach forever, but contemporary world has by far the
| highest count of scientists ever and the talent pool is
| widening as countries such as Bangladesh escape their previous
| crushing poverty. To this comes politics. A second Cold War
| with China may be terrifying and yet enormously scientifically
| productive, much like WWII and the previous Cold War was.
|
| I am personally not willing to make any technical/scientific
| predictions beyond 2030. Political even less so.
| Guillaume86 wrote:
| > Too many smart (or smart-sounding) people either here or on
| Reddit claim casually that some X will take hundreds of years
| to do. Where X may be artificial intelligence, conquest of
| longevity or whatever else.
|
| > The reality is that we do not know
|
| Yeah, but it works both ways, I see a lot of people on reddit
| claiming aging will be solved in X years (usually in their
| lifetime) and it does not sound any smarter.
| lelanthran wrote:
| I have never seen a that claim, but since 2012 I have seen
| not numerous upvoted posts on various forums that full self
| driving cars are only five years away.
|
| I routinely saw similarly outlandish claims about AI in
| general.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| True, it does not sound any better, especially if you take
| into account the progress of other challenges in medicine.
|
| We aren't anywhere close to, say, solving cancer, but we
| are conquering new territory inch by inch, with a massive
| difference of outcomes in last 50 years or so.
|
| I suspect the same is going to happen in the longevity
| field. Dr. Gregory Fahy managed to rejuvenate the thymus in
| several individuals (TRIIM and TRIIM-X trials) and lower
| their epigenetic age. It might have well been the first
| baby step on that journey.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| In none of the hard Sci-Fi I read as a child did they say "I
| needn't worry for light, as I had my portable cellphone"
|
| Will you have AR displays that hide the information an make a
| room otherwise appear devoid of technology? Yes...because
| normal people don't fetishize technology and HGTV tells me it
| should be hidden from sight.
|
| Will it be a display projected on your contact lenses, a mist
| excreted from a rod with lasers shined upon it, or a projector
| with a funky short throw lens? Man, I've got no clue...but all
| the fiction I've seen with fantastic display technology shows:
| We'll will it into existence.
| bluGill wrote:
| Maybe those hard SciFi were set in an age where people have
| advanced beyond the phone.
| Laforet wrote:
| 70s and 80s scifi media frequently depict floppy disks being
| used well into the 22nd century and beyond, despite the fact
| that optical and solid state storage did exist in some form
| back then.
|
| Either is is done to make the scenes relatable to the
| contemporary audience, or human beings really lack the
| abiltiy to imagine things they have no empirical experience
| with.
| ogogmad wrote:
| Do the details of the storage medium matter? It still
| stores ones and zeros - who cares how?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| TV/Movie scifi is mostly the last place you'd look for bold
| imaginings of future technology. Star Trek had a few hits
| with communicators, PADDs, and touch screen controls, but
| generally designs are very much of their time.
|
| It's very obvious with modern scifi where controls are
| usually holographic projections with cyan grids and twirly
| animations. After a while these designs become lazy tropes
| - like villains who wear chunky black leather.
|
| Compare with something like Olaf Stapledon's Last and First
| Men, which is far more adventurous about possible futures.
|
| The background problem is that the 20th century was set up
| for an explosion of invention by the late 19th, with
| Maxwell/Heaviside leading the charge and eventually leading
| to game changer developments like relativity and quantum
| theory. In math Boolean algebra fell out almost by accident
| from attempts to find a theory of computability which
| eventually led to modern computing.
|
| These were all bedrock insights which completely changed
| what was possible in the physical world.
|
| Where's the modern equivalent? There isn't one. Insights at
| that level more or less stopped happening after the
| discovery of DNA and the creation of Shannon's Information
| Theory.
|
| Quantum Gravity _might_ be the next game changer, but it
| also might not, and in any case it 's an unknown distance
| away. The rest is detail work, not ground breaking
| transformation.
| atq2119 wrote:
| The discovery of DNA may well be the Maxwell-style
| foundation for the next game changer. It hasn't been a
| century yet, and we've just deployed the first mRNA
| vaccines last year...
| ogogmad wrote:
| > Where's the modern equivalent? There isn't one.
| Insights at that level more or less stopped happening
| after the discovery of DNA and the creation of Shannon's
| Information Theory.
|
| I think Machine Learning today is equivalent in magnitude
| to the other scientific breakthroughs you mentioned. I
| don't know if you're overlooking it because it's mainly
| engineering-led.
| intrasight wrote:
| A telco executive's astute predictions
|
| "Just what form the future telephone will take is, of course,
| pure speculation. Here is my prophecy: In its final
| development, the telephone will be carried about by the
| individual, perhaps as we carry a watch today. It probably will
| require no dial or equivalent and I think the users will be
| able to see each other, if they want, as they talk. Who knows
| but it may actually translate from one language to another?" -
| Mark Sullivan, April 9, 1953
| dougmwne wrote:
| Of all our technology, I truly think the smartphone is one of
| the most impressive and futuristic things ever invented. It's
| the kind of thing Star Trek thought was hundreds of years in
| the future and that most sci-fi failed to imagine. It is
| individually transformative in a way that space flight will
| probably never be. Our information tech is likely to continue
| racing forward and this current moment will look analog in
| comparison.
| intrasight wrote:
| The future may be analog - if you look far enough.
|
| We are analog.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| There was a great scene in Station 11 which is partially
| set after civilization-destroying pandemic in which one
| character who was born before the pandemic explains to
| someone who was born after how ride sharing apps worked on
| a cell phone. It's magic of you describe it from scratch.
| The tiny device has access to a detailed mail of the entire
| planet, knows where you are and then a car shows up to
| transport you to your destination without exchanging and
| tangible money or even talking about it.
|
| It's also telling that older SciFi gets this all wrong. In
| Asimov's Lucky Starr the protagonist had a space ship that
| can travel through the outer layers of the sun and someone
| had a dwelling on an hollowed out asteroid. Tables use
| energy fields for easier cleaning. Yet, the ships board
| computer doesn't even have a display and needs to print
| everything.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Asimov envisioned printers on spaceships and every
| evening I put on a pair of goggles that lets me interact
| with an omnidirectional volumetric display with
| millimeter accurate head and hand tracking. I think we
| are starting to outrun our own imagination.
| intrasight wrote:
| Someone clearly is still imaging the stuff - and then
| building it!
| rbanffy wrote:
| > The reality is that no such projection is plausible.
|
| It's getting increasingly difficult. The world of 1600 would be
| easily understandable to someone from 1500 or 1400. When I was
| born, no human eyes had seen the far side of the Moon (although
| it was reasonably sure someone would, shortly, as happened in
| december that year) and the closest thing to a cellphone was a
| prop being used by Captain Kirk on the 23rd century.
|
| > the world of technology will increase at an exponential rate
|
| There are physical limits to that, so the exponential factor
| may be reduced for a while. There is also a limit on how fast
| we can develop new things that will give us a hard time (at
| least until we develop a general enough AI, at which point all
| bets are off - because we are literally not smart enough to
| predict what happens next).
|
| BTW, a couple years ago I had an accident that, if it happened
| in 1900, I'd lose my leg.
|
| So, yeah, 2022 is good for me, but I wouldn't turn down a
| chance to last until 2122.
| Macha wrote:
| > Could anyone in 1990 have predicted the smartphone
|
| Yes. It was called a communicator in fiction of the day. Did
| they get the exact details right, or every use case (e.g.
| replacing flashlights and music players)? No. Some of them used
| holograms from watches or big old handsets with a screen
| instead of a keypad but still big ear cups. But a portable
| device that could be used for voice calls, video calls,
| information lookup, note taking, certainly existed in fiction
| prior to the 90s.
| jpindar wrote:
| In the 1950s, comic book detective Dick Tracy wore a two-way
| wrist radio, which later included video.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Still waiting for them to add a camera to the Apple Watch.
| Then it can be a full phone replacement for low tech days.
| heavyarms wrote:
| I've been thinking this since the Apple Watch came out,
| but other than practical limitations (battery life)
| there's always this problem: have you tried to hold your
| arm out in front of your face and stare at your watch for
| a while? It's not the most comfortable position. You
| might have to add some extra arm/shoulder days in your
| exercise routine.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I think a fisheye lens plus face recognition should solve
| that nicely. As long as you can see the watch screen, the
| image could be cropped, skewed and rotated to focus on
| your face.
| jaclaz wrote:
| For the record it appeared in 1946:
|
| https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/2-Way_Wrist_Radio
|
| and the video in 1964:
|
| https://dicktracy.fandom.com/wiki/2-Way_Wrist_TV
|
| More or less both are (fictional) "miniaturization" of
| existing, known technologies.
| amelius wrote:
| Stallman could have.
| ctdonath wrote:
| "When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be
| converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things
| being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able
| to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of
| distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony
| we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we
| were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands
| of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to
| do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present
| telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."
| - Nicola Tesla, 1926
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Jules Verne did a pretty good job.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| > _The reality is that no such projection is plausible. Could a
| human being living in 1903, before the Wright Brothers have
| predicted a moon landing only 66 years later?_
|
| I mean, Jules Verne suggested trips to the Moon earlier than
| that in 1965 via cannon (from the coast of Florida!).
| Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1903, rejecting cannons on technical
| grounds (the speed of gunpowder's gases too slow to break from
| Earth's gravity as well as the impractical extremes in
| acceleration), proposed using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen
| in a multistage rocket for reaching the Moon... Which is what 2
| of the 3 stages of the Saturn V used, so he was pretty
| accurate. He also suggested the need for oxygen, CO2 scrubbers,
| automatic machine guidance, thrust vector control using both
| external fins and fins in the flow of the gases (both methods
| became used on rockets for early spaceflight) as well as
| suggesting the use of a sun sensor (star tracker) and
| gyroscopes for guidance. It's remarkable how many critical
| features of spaceflight were invented by Tsiolkovsky in that
| document. Granted, I don't remember an actual forecasted date
| for these predictions, but he foresaw most of the technical
| features of spaceflight correctly.
|
| https://spacemedicineassociation.org/download/history/histor...
|
| Projections from Nikola Tesla suggested similar things to the
| smartphone around that timeline.
|
| If you look at technical pioneers using logical consequences of
| actual known physics and engineering, they can make pretty
| remarkably prescient predictions.
| pbourke wrote:
| > Could anyone in 1990 have predicted the smartphone, let alone
| 1922?
|
| Yes
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton
| dave333 wrote:
| Article is pretty good and gets a lot of things right. So what
| will the world be like in 2122? Climate catastrophe? Will AI have
| taken over? Will democracy survive? Will people still travel or
| just interact virtually/remotely?
| nottorp wrote:
| He got a lot of things right but, like everyone else, they didn't
| predict the internet and its consequences.
|
| Does anyone know of a proper prediction of the internet? And I
| don't mean predicting handheld devices or wireless networking.
| Predicting the decentralized communication part that makes
| distance irellevant and upgrades point to point communication to
| group.
|
| And its consequence that it's very easy now to find a group that
| shares your biases :)
| arcade79 wrote:
| Not necessarily what you're looking for, but I always found The
| Shockwave Rider to be impressive:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider
|
| 1975 though, so quite recent.
| nottorp wrote:
| If we're talking Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar is even more
| prescient socially. Not 100 years ago though.
| max_ wrote:
| 1950's America had online shopping.[0]. This may be the closest
| thing to today's websites.
|
| [0]https://www.messynessychic.com/2016/01/14/online-shopping-
| in...
| koonsolo wrote:
| In that sense, I really wonder what will be there in 50 or 100
| years, and that we are now completely unable to predict.
| azangru wrote:
| > like everyone else, they didn't predict the internet
|
| Nor the computer, personal or otherwise; nor robotics. It's
| funny to see how he could predict, sometimes with surprising
| accuracy, the trajectory of development of technologies that
| were already in place, but could not fathom what had not yet
| been discovered and thus had not yet entered the public
| discourse.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Yep -- check out Marshall McLuhan & the Global Village, which
| he put out in the 60s. Very prescient.
| nottorp wrote:
| Hmm I read him long ago, but I vaguely recollect he didn't
| catch the decentralization much? If he did I must reread.
|
| Edit. Oh oops. Read the summary for Gutenberg Galaxy on
| wikipedia. Turns out i MUST reread.
| jkestner wrote:
| Not exactly a prediction, but The Victorian Internet is a good
| read: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/victorian-
| internet-97816355739...
|
| That revolution was more about the speed that information
| travels than who has access to it.
| dznodes wrote:
| This is so accurate it seems almost fake.
|
| Who has written something similar about the next 100 years?
|
| Preferably with as much positivity and wisdom as this gentleman
| had.
| viraptor wrote:
| When he mentions the lack of cables, he's pretty close with most
| of them being underground. But also he's incredible close if you
| consider the mess of cables that was the Stockholm telephone
| tower, functioning until 1913
| https://www.amusingplanet.com/2017/09/the-stockholm-telephon...
| worldvoyageur wrote:
| It is an excellent article, I agree. However, it strikes me
| that the author was more likely female than male. (gender
| deliberately obscured in the author's name, 'W.L. George', for
| instance.).
|
| If a male writer, the article is even more impressive given the
| clear sensitivity to, and awareness of, women's issues and the
| likely impact of technology and social changes on women.
|
| That said, the author was likely a person of privilege rather
| than someone more representative of the population of 1922. A
| starving writer was unlikely to have been so focused on the
| challenges of hiring good household staff.
| Maskawanian wrote:
| Author was male: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._George
| worldvoyageur wrote:
| Cool! Excellent predictions for the future, not just for
| technology, but also for social change from a broader
| perspective than just that of the lived experience of the
| author.
|
| (W.L. = Walter Lionel, as revealled by a bit more
| searching)
| macns wrote:
| "Cautious feminist" describes himself as:
|
| _But it is unlikely that women will have an achieved
| equality with men. Cautious feminists such as myself realize
| that things go slowly and that a brief hundred years will not
| wipe out the effects on women of 30,000 years of slavery._
|
| He's definitely on point 100 years later.
| tpmx wrote:
| In the same building, downstairs, a year after the commercial
| launch of the telephone tower in 1887:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Allm%C3%...
| braramod wrote:
| I agree, but some other countries are still not using the
| underground as a cable management system.
| capekwasright wrote:
| That's wild, thanks for sharing. I'd have to imagine it's
| served as some level of inspiration for Simon Stalenhag's work.
|
| Ex:
| http://www.simonstalenhag.se/bilderbig/by_procession_1920.jp...
| paxys wrote:
| Going to be "that guy" and say that almost everything he
| accurately predicted was already commonplace or on the rise in
| the 1920s.
|
| - Commercial flights had started a decade earlier. There were
| even successful transatlantic flights.
|
| - The women empowerment and feminism movement was in full swing.
| Women had just got the right to vote. A large percentage had
| careers and even unions.
|
| - Wireless radio and telegraph were established in most parts of
| the world.
|
| - Cinema, with sound and color, was already a thing.
|
| In fact he missed the mark on his actual predictions - food
| pills, paper mache furniture, no private dwellings, glass domed
| cities, nationalized industries in the US, no more opportunity in
| the US (funny since we are on a SV entrepreneurs forum right
| now).
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| > paper mache furniture
|
| Wait till you find out what that Ikea crap is made of. :)
| RedBeetDeadpool wrote:
| I once put a stool on a coffee table to put up a few curtains
| and the leg of the stool went through the surface of the
| coffee table. That surface is more or less paper mache by my
| book.
|
| Maybe the "paper" in the "mache" is not as finely ground and
| instead made of more granular wood chips, but its definitely
| made of a thin lamination of wood grounds held together by
| some adhesive.
|
| Its light as a feather though, so that's pretty nice.
| jakemoshenko wrote:
| I had to drill a hole for cables with a hole saw in my
| wife's IKEA desk. Imagine my surprise when it was basically
| laminate on top of corrugated cardboard strips arranged
| vertically with actual empty space between them!
|
| It might even be this exact one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vNRY6natiY
| rbanffy wrote:
| I find IKEA's materials work remarkable - their materials
| are finely engineered to be light and pretty enough, and,
| at the same time, being sufficiently strong to bear the
| loads it's designed to. I'm writing this on an IKEA desk
| with 4 big monitors and 2 laptops, plus an assortment of
| external drives and docking stations.
|
| It's certainly not designed to bear my weight on 4 small
| spots, however, so I wouldn't even try that. It's not made
| of solid wood, but the furniture-equivalent of an F-22
| wing.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I have these $5 end tables that are going on 10 years of
| use. They are just basic 4 post tables with square tops,
| but they are light enough that I can pick them up by edge
| with one hand while laying on the couch, but are still
| like 20"x20". They've all been relegated to shop use
| anymore, yet they are still perfect.
|
| All of my previous ikea desks are also spending their
| sunset years toiling away in the shop. The oldest one is
| 20 years old and I use it for assembling heaving parts
| because nothing sticks to whatever plastic coating they
| use on their desktops.
|
| Also, the obligatory note that Ikea does sell solid wood
| furniture. It's made of softwoods, like pine or fir, but
| if you put it together with wood glue, it will absolutely
| outlive you. I have a dresser that's survived six moves
| where I never bothered to unload it.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I haven't bought IKEA in a while; the last time I did,
| they used a lot of MDF, which is rather heavy for its
| strength...
| rbanffy wrote:
| My desk is two thin sheets of MDF with a honeycomb-like
| structure inside. Thicker wall-mounted shelves are more
| or less the same, with supports anchoring the top and
| bottom sheets.
| shuntress wrote:
| While "food pills" are obviously wrong, I think the general
| concept of "prepared food" vs "cooking" is decently accurate.
|
| Paper mache furniture no but disposable furniture, yeah, kind
| of.
|
| Private dwellings you could maybe stretch to make some sort of
| comparison to rates of renting vs owning but that is a stretch.
|
| On nationalized industries and trust busting we seem to have
| gone against his prediction.
|
| Regarding "no more opportunity" I think the possibility of The
| Information Age was not even in the same dimension as this
| guy's RADAR.
| rpowers wrote:
| I agree.
|
| However, having just recently replaced a couch from a chain
| retailer, I can attest that they are pretty much made from
| paper mache.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Is there a text version of this? I'm having trouble navigating
| the pdf with one hand on my phone from this hospital bed.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| There's a button called "Show Text".
| https://i.imgur.com/sf7ztjZ.png
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Top. Thanks!
| jerrre wrote:
| Off-topic but: is "Top" in this context a Dutchism? I only
| know it from Dutch people
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Australian. Short for "top notch".
| raskelof wrote:
| So to the interesting question, what will the world be like in
| 2122?
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Fascinating. I guess about one third of his predictions were
| correct. Eye-opening moments for me:
|
| - "white countries"
|
| - "radial energy"
|
| - "the servant problem"
|
| - no smoke in the house, "perhaps not even tobacco"
|
| - "the child is likely to be taken over by the State"
|
| - His vision of a house filled with frequently replaced
| disposable surfaces
|
| - "king of Jugo-Slavia" [will still reign]
|
| - "the American race [will become homogenous]"
|
| - "there will be no more opportunity [in America]" but that's a
| good thing
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| > "the child is likely to be taken over by the State"
|
| I'd be interested what daycare and school looked like in 1922,
| because arguably childcare is mostly state run at this point
| throwawaygh wrote:
| In 1920,
|
| * the high school graduation rate was around 16%. (Up from
| below 10% in 1910!)
|
| * only 8 million women were in the labor force
|
| * Child labor laws either actually or functionally did not
| exist (the major federal laws were not passed in the 30s.)
|
| * The industrial revolution was in full swing, but huge
| swaths of the labor economy were still _very_ agrarian.
|
| For the working class, early childhood care was provided by
| mothers and beyond that daycare/schooling was provided by the
| factories and farm fields.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I wonder how he expected the American race to be homogeneous
| with segregation. He was probably implicitly meaning all the
| new European immigrants.
| tempestn wrote:
| I think the 'no more opportunity' point was largely correct.
| America _is_ now developed in much the way England was in 1922.
| It does mean the limitless opportunity of 100 years ago is gone
| for the vast majority. But it also means the majority are far
| wealthier than they were. As he predicts, people only work 7-8
| hours a day now, and often only 5 days a week. 50-60 hours a
| week was the norm in 1920. But at the same time, people do feel
| that lack of opportunity.
|
| For a prediction made 100 years out, I'd call it dead accurate.
| askin4it wrote:
| the two preceding pages...situations wanted and help wanted
|
| https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045774/1922-05-07/ed-1/?sp=...
|
| https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045774/1922-05-07/ed-1/?sp=...
| viraptor wrote:
| The "less cleaning due to less coal" part is not something we
| really think much about these days, but the older limestone
| buildings can really show the difference. Here's a view with the
| old and either pressure-washed or redone wall:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/Wso9gae4JPsN6NaG6 and that's on a
| residential side street... Imagine getting your clothes slowly
| covered with it every time you go out.
| glandium wrote:
| Remember how e.g. Notre Dame de Paris looked like before they
| cleaned it?
| adamjb wrote:
| I live in a suburb with a power station that was converted from
| coal to gas in the 70s. My older neighbours have told me that
| they had to careful when hanging clothes out to try, lest they
| got so dirty that they'd have to wash them again.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Years ago (1986) I worked on a project for one of the bigger
| power stations in the UK. We created a digital display which
| showed which way the wind was blowing so they could choose
| which coal to burn. They had been getting complaints about the
| dirt on peoples line dried clothes.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Now it's just an invisible polluter/killer.
| retrac wrote:
| That was one of the most striking differences I noticed when I
| saw a bunch of photos from c. 1970 of my hometown (Toronto).
| Everything that wasn't freshly painted was grubby in a way you
| don't see anymore here.
|
| 1971: https://www.blogto.com/upload/2014/03/20111020-royal-
| alex-f0...
|
| 2009:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Royal_Al...
|
| We phased out most coal in the 70s with the last eliminated in
| the early 2000s. I do not miss the vibrant orange sunsets in
| summer.
| kinbiko wrote:
| Before clicking on this link I was thinking "oh yeah, I know of
| one such example near where I used to live in Bath". And then I
| clicked the link... and now I'm terrified of you.
| viraptor wrote:
| We may have met :-) It was actually hard to find a good
| example on street view today - the whole centre is washed now
| and Cheap/Westgate aren't black for over a decade.
| Aachen wrote:
| That link doesn't work for me, I get an infinitely loading
| spinner (in the address bar, behind the overlay, it says
| something about intent://) and the back button doesn't work so
| I have to kill the browser. Probably because I'm not using
| official chrome or something but a foss webview browser, it
| pops over and disables the app I was coming from but the
| content never loads. Can someone translate it into a regular
| link, or a screenshot of the content?
|
| Edit: it works in Firefox (Fennec), here is the content in a
| normal picture: https://snipboard.io/uxGWaZ.jpg
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There was a great picture of I think Manchester before and
| after a ban on wood / coal and a good cleanup, it went from
| black buildings to a place that looked pretty decent.
| yalogin wrote:
| The popular culture in those days and may be even a few decades
| after that always predicted food intake to minimized to pills.
| Has there ever been attempt to do so? I mean any company or
| university attempting to deliver the same nutrients and
| satisfaction in a much reduced form factor?
| progval wrote:
| Kind of, but still much larger than pills:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(meal_replacement)
| never_a-pickle wrote:
| Certain things the author got completely wrong (rise of racial
| politics, actual liberalism of thought), but his level-headed
| approach got him 75% of the way there.
|
| Though culturally he was eerily correct re: State-as-family.
| gumby wrote:
| > Though culturally he was eerily correct re: State-as-family
|
| That's not particularly surprising as it was one of the key
| philosophies of the age: the Russian revolution was only a few
| years old (and didn't spring from nowhere) while some of the
| competing philosophies, like anarchism and bimetallism, had
| burned out.
| Animats wrote:
| _" There was a time when the mistress of the house, having given
| instructions to the servants, need do nothing at all. Of course,
| the servants had to slave, day in and day out."_
|
| Doordash. Uber. Grubhub. TaskRabbit. All require an underclass.
| Is this progress?
| parksy wrote:
| What stands out to me is the prescience in the speed and
| penetration of technological advancements juxtaposed with an
| apparent blind spot for the advancements in social change. Even
| the most dire or utopian science fiction of the early to mid 20th
| century seems to reasonably accurately predict technological
| changes but somehow expects that future social structures will
| somehow fall into place or adapt to the technology. They imagine
| these wild technological advancements and bludgeon them into
| their current-day social mores.
|
| Thinking about today, where the topic of the day is distributed
| trustless computing and so on, it's easy to imagine now the cat's
| out of the bag that in 100 years, old institutions like banks,
| notaries, record-keeping (Hansards etc) could be obsolete,
| knowledge becomes distributed and every human commands one or
| more nodes in a constant system of cross-referencing - clients
| and servers cease to be relevant as a concept, information is
| just a pool you dip into as needed (with helpful AI assistants to
| bring things to your attention and/or demand your attention). It
| could be so pervasive it wouldn't garner a second's thought in
| the mind of a 2122 individual. Information is just there, always,
| forever, and always cross-checked for correctness. Duh. (not
| saying this is even an ideal future, or likely, but it's a trend
| that's easily extrapolated)
|
| But if that did come to pass, how does that change the fabric of
| society in 2122? Does the relationship between society and the
| products it demands and produces change significantly? Does the
| status-quo stay more or less the same between the workers and the
| organisers? Do we find a way to deal with cultural differences
| globally or adopt the "metaverse" and slowly fragment into
| virtual islands of relative ideological same-ness? These are much
| harder things to predict, just how in 1922 the idea of not having
| servants at home to do the bidding of the family matriarch seemed
| so far-fetched that even an imagined hundred years of progress
| couldn't fully erase the notion; what concepts do we see as being
| so firmly entrenched in our culture(s) today that no upheaval of
| technology could convince us they'd also be on the way out, if
| not obsolete, in 100 years.
|
| I love seeing these old predictions as much for what they got
| right as for what they missed. I showed my 12 year old daughter
| this article and we had a light-hearted conversation about it but
| she said something that struck me; "society probably won't even
| be here in 100 years" - I hope that isn't true, it's not
| something I've directly taught her to believe, but we're
| surrounded on all fronts by media filled with dire predictions of
| humanity's collapse and self-destruction on a daily basis, so I'm
| going to have to work to instil some hope. I am heartened
| slightly as historically it seems we're really bad at predicting
| how society as a whole will change long-term, so I do hope we're
| wrong on the old boiled frogs / status-quo inertia analogies, and
| that our species makes some giant leaps in terms of collective
| environmental and social responsibility in the next 100 years.
|
| Nothing really profound I know just a dad pondering his kids
| futures, fingers crossed we figure some things out.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> where the topic of the day is distributed trustless
| computing_
|
| No one in my circles talks about those things. Even the vast
| majority of crypto investors don't give a shit about
| "distributed" or "trustless" or "computing".
|
| The topics of the day are:
|
| 1. climate change
|
| 2. automation (especially logistics and war)
|
| 3. the tension between nationalism and globalization (both with
| respect to communication, commodity extraction, manufacturing,
| knowledge production, ...).
|
| Flip the ordering of 1 and 3 if you'd like.
|
| _> old institutions like banks, notaries, record-keeping
| (Hansards etc) could be obsolete_
|
| I can't think of a single less exciting thing to say about the
| future.
|
| The average person uses a notary perhaps a few times in their
| life.
|
| The average bank provides the average person with a nearly
| flawless UX. Anything that replaces a bank will look like a
| digital bank account and behave like a digital bank account and
| probably also be regulated like a digital bank account. For
| almost all people, this is literally equivalent to staying "by
| 2122 the IBM COBOL mainframes powering banks will have been
| replaced with Java running on commodity hardware". Even if it's
| true... who cares?
|
| _> knowledge becomes distributed and every human commands one
| or more nodes in a constant system of cross-referencing -
| clients and servers cease to be relevant as a concept,
| information is just a pool you dip into as needed (with helpful
| AI assistants to bring things to your attention and /or demand
| your attention)._
|
| It's not 1999 anymore; we know how the WWW turned out.
| wuliwong wrote:
| From a quick reading of the entire article, I came away impressed
| with how much was quite accurate.
| bambax wrote:
| It's striking that most of his true predictions were already in
| place in the sixties, a mere 40 years after the article was
| written (and some, much earlier). When we think about the distant
| future we simply think about tomorrow.
| golergka wrote:
| > It's striking that most of his true predictions were already
| in place in the sixties
|
| In first world countries, may be. Now more of them are true for
| more and more people all around the globe too.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| "The future is already here - it's just not evenly
| distributed.
|
| The Economist, December 4, 2003"
|
| -- William Gibson
| Damogran6 wrote:
| I think it's very easy to dismiss the creeping surge of the
| future...You have computers EVERYWHERE, and with the Cloud -
| somewhere else...but you also have access to a significant
| percentage of the music recorded over the last 80 years, the
| ability to predict future health issues by sending some spit to
| someone via the mail, the internet from SPACE, and a supply
| chain where it's easier to make a $.62 knicknack half a world
| away, put it in a container on a boat and it can be requested
| and sent to you same day, using your cellphone....while it
| wirelessly sends that music to your ears using devices that
| remove unwanted environmental noise.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| More importantly, what FONTS will be in vogue in 100 years???
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I was fascinated to read about the predictions of communal-living
| skyscrapers with their own management, etc. Eerily similar to the
| Hab Blocks of Mega City 1
|
| I then came to horrifying realisation that 1977 (when Judge Dredd
| first appeared) is only 55 years after the article, and now 45
| years behind us(!!!). More or less halfway. Totally reasonable
| for them to have read this article, and still been far enough
| away from now to assume that this will still happen. This could
| easily have been the inspiration for Blocks.
| bleuchase wrote:
| And now we have Charlie Munger gleefully making faceless,
| windowless monoliths a reality.
| aksgoel wrote:
| Loved the poetic tone in the writing (1992). A lot less try than
| today's writing. What caused writing tone to shift over the
| century?
| paradite wrote:
| People having less attention span (instant gratification),
| favouring utility and efficiency over aesthetics.
| golemotron wrote:
| I can't read the text. Does it say everyone will be overweight,
| inactive, neurotic, trapped in their houses and living lives
| devoid of in-person social interaction?
| shuntress wrote:
| The more things change the they stay the same.
|
| It's really interesting to read this, genuinely prescient,
| starkly logical analysis that seems quite liberal and self-aware
| while also deeply soaked in un-acknowledged bias.
|
| The time this was written was around the peak of the suffrage
| movement a couple years after the 19th amendment. That, perhaps,
| contributes to the placating tone in the author's description of
| how little progress the movement will have made by 2022.
|
| I think especially noteworthy is the apparent blind spot towards
| the speed of information. He spends a lot of space articulating
| the physical characteristics of a City of Tomorrow but no
| consideration of what it might mean to quickly and easily read
| anything that has ever been published.
|
| Really interesting article.
|
| EDIT: Another note regarding his whole segment on work,
| production and leisure: he seems to only conceive of work as
| _labor_. Where, for example, an additional hour spent shoveling
| coal means another hour 's worth of shoveled coal while
| forgetting to consider the possibility of "critical thinking"
| production where an additional hour spent working does not
| necessarily mean an additional hour spent being productive. A
| good prediction here would have touched on what careers in more
| "creative" production might look like.
| js2 wrote:
| The author, W.L. George, passed away in 1926, so he wouldn't live
| long enough to revisit his predictions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._L._George
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Impressively thought-out article, but given the publication date
| I'm also surprised there's no mention of the impacts of the flu
| pandemic of 1918-1920. So much ink is currently being spilled
| about how so many things will change thanks to the COVID
| pandemic, whether architecture or remote work or medical
| breakthroughs. I guess once the flu pandemic subsided it was no
| longer at the forefront of thought?
| wmiel wrote:
| The Spanish flu largely overlapped with the WW1, and since its
| 2nd wave had a high toll among people with strong immune system
| (ex. young male) the perception was to a large degree mixed
| with the perception of war and its casualties, at least in
| Europe.
|
| The name 'spanish flu' itself also stems from the fact that
| most countries involved in the war didn't want to talk too much
| about the Flu, while Spain retained neutrality and didn't have
| incentives to keep it in the dark - this could also be a reason
| that people were putting the aftermath of the pandemic in the
| same bucket as the outcome of the Great War imo.
|
| https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic
| avnigo wrote:
| What I understood from this article is that science and
| technology may be more accurately projected than society and
| politics; I would imagine because those seem to be more chaotic
| processes, but also more easily carry the bias of the writer.
|
| The article also highlights some shortcomings of the 1922
| zeitgeist as there does not seem to be much thought about the
| positive or negative environmental impacts of technology, other
| than on air quality, or any talk on climate change.
| nielsole wrote:
| Pigou had just published the economics of welfare two years
| earlier. The tragedy of the commons would only be published in
| 1968. I wonder how much externalities were a commonly known
| concept in 1922.
|
| Resource exhaustion of oil he got more right than club of Rome
| even in 1972.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Well some of it is what your current standard is. Replacing the
| horse, which puts feces on the road (albeit less smelly than
| human feces, still really bad in the quantity of a city's
| traffic), with the automobile, was actually a great improvement
| in the environment. We don't think of it as such, because we
| never saw horses in the quantity that a modern city has of
| automobiles. But what kind of toxic sludge we would have gotten
| from that much horse manure in a city is difficult for the
| modern mind to imagine.
|
| Similarly, the environmental impact of coal, when it was the
| dominant method of heating a home, was not in some decades-off
| global warming, it was in things like the London Fog
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog), a pretty horrific
| environmental situation. Moving to non-coal methods of heating
| the home (which he mentions) is a big environmental
| improvement.
| mcsoft wrote:
| Some predictions were super accurate (i.e. Europe to America in 8
| hours), some failed (lunch in 4 pills), but, due to immense
| optimism of human nature, one just couldn't envision the most
| influencing events of XX century - the rise of totalitarianism
| resulting in World War II and all its disasters. Something I
| can't escape thinking about when reading modern predictions.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _I have a vision of walls, paper and hangings made of more or
| less compressed papier mache, bound with brass or taping along
| the edges._
|
| Hah, he basically predicted Ikea!
| jameshart wrote:
| Regarding flying:
|
| "The problem is mainly one of artificial heating and ventilation
| to enable the aeronauts to survive."
|
| And indeed, ventilation is the primary concern among air
| passengers in 2022.
| [deleted]
| ctdonath wrote:
| Note that many of the predictions which didn't happen proved
| doable but were a bad idea.
| [deleted]
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