[HN Gopher] It's So Over, We're So Back: Doomer Techno-Optimism ...
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It's So Over, We're So Back: Doomer Techno-Optimism (2024)
Author : Multicomp
Score : 22 points
Date : 2025-05-21 20:10 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (americanaffairsjournal.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (americanaffairsjournal.org)
| Multicomp wrote:
| I enjoyed reading this article, particularly it's review of the
| new lunar society book. That society reminds me of what excited
| me when I watched the Windows XP tour for the first time: this is
| a device intended to be a digital power tool for you to be able
| to do things you couldn't do before and do them better and faster
| and easier than before.
|
| While Windows of today is deceptive and buggy, the value that it
| has is because it still has pieces of that now discarded design
| philosophy.
|
| Zooming out from a particular technology platform, I don't know
| how to build that new lunar society but boy do I want to live in
| that world, innovation for its own sake to increase human
| flourishing so that we can all live the good life in a human
| focused technologically advanced world.
|
| In short: building the sci Fi flying cars future.
| keybored wrote:
| > American productivity had basically been flat since 1973 and
| was under further strain from unproductive spending in
| government, health care, and education.
|
| The last graph I saw showed American productivity going up at the
| same rate all since post-WWII to now.
|
| Please don't say that the stagnation refers to worker wages
| starting to stagnate sometime in the 1970's.
| WalterGR wrote:
| _American productivity had basically been flat since 1973_
|
| By all measures I've seen, "productivity" has almost doubled, and
| it's wage growth that has been flat.
|
| How does this journal measure productivity?
| Animats wrote:
| In the US, manufacturing and agricultural productivity did
| great. The result was manufacturing and agriculture dropping to
| around 10% of the work force.[1] Job growth is in low-
| productivity jobs. Largest area of growth is "healthcare
| support occupations".
|
| This is the conundrum of productivity.
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/emp-by-major-occupational-
| gro...
| lucas_membrane wrote:
| So improvements in healthcare and the rapid surge in
| lifespans resulting from spending on medical care
| improvements so that more people could enjoy what they looked
| forward to for many years, a long, happy and healthy
| retirement, ruined America? This is the kind of perverse
| analysis that typically arises as an unwelcome emergent
| property of systems controlled by people facing inflexible
| deadlines to meet equally inflexible and arbitrary
| constraints and goals.
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| The article says (paraphrasing Thiel): "The world of bits
| (information technology) may have been on an upward
| trajectory, but the world of atoms (physical products) had
| been stagnant for decades."
|
| It's not wrong, but also there's a strange sort of value
| judgment hidden within the phrasing, and maybe within yours
| as well. We seem to be saying that this sort of growth is
| bad, or at least inferior to the kind where more "Stuff" is
| made. The article even directly refers to healthcare as
| "unproductive." It doesn't FEEL unproductive to the people
| who get to live longer, happier lives.
| WalterGR wrote:
| That may well be the case - but that's not how the number
| called Productivity is measured.
| bamboozled wrote:
| How can American productivity have doubled if basically
| everything American companies sell (and buy) is made in China
| et al?
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| Productive does not equal production.
|
| *EDIT* To clarify, we can be economically more productive
| without physically manufacturing more widgets. Physical junk
| is only one small part of the economy.
| Animats wrote:
| It's an OK, but not great article.
|
| It doesn't discuss some of the biggest bubbles, those in housing.
| The US, Japan, and China have all had housing and land price
| bubbles. They unwound in different ways. In the US it was
| primarily a credit bubble. Japan had a huge real estate bubble,
| and it collapsed so hard that the Nikkei index didn't recover for
| decades.
|
| China's bubble resulted in large numbers of half-finished
| buildings. That's because China allows selling yet-to-be-built
| mortgaged apartments to consumers. In the US, you have to get
| construction financing at a higher rate, and can only get a
| mortgage on a completed structure. Banks that do construction
| financing pay out as work progresses, not all up front.
|
| Fracking isn't a bubble. Fracking is a cost reduction technology
| in an existing market. No need to create a market.
|
| Railways had the "railway mania" period, but track was laid and
| trains were run. More like a growth spurt than a bubble.
| Centigonal wrote:
| Great comment in general, but I have a minor correction:
| Railway Mania was definitely a bubble. Valuations were
| overinflated, investors were irrationally exuberant, charlatans
| funneled up a bunch of dumb money, many rail lines were
| ultimately not built, and the unwinding of the bubble wiped out
| many smaller investors and railway companies.
|
| The resulting infrastructure created a lot of value for the UK
| (similar to the 90s telecom bubble in the US and Canada), but
| there was definitely a crash that destroyed a lot of people's
| bank account and represented a big dip in the value of the
| market.
| whall6 wrote:
| Agree that housing was a missed bubble, but disagree that
| fracking shouldn't be considered a bubble.
|
| Fracking certainly is a technology, but the author is using the
| word to describe the very real market bubble that popped in
| 2016-2017. It wasn't as apparent in the public markets (and it
| is no surprise why you may not have noticed it) but several
| private operators spent far in excess of generated cash flow,
| ran out of cash and defaulted. In turn, many of their private
| equity sponsors blew up or left the space.
| CalChris wrote:
| TL, did read. Cowan and Thiel were bummed that Obama was
| President. Hobart and Mindell are enthusiastic that America has
| seen the errors of her ways and embraced the new insanity.
| yesbut wrote:
| We'd all be better off if we just ignored the Doomer Techno-
| Optimism prophets and their visions of the future.
|
| For one, they want to establish "Constitution Free Zones" outside
| of democratic control of nation states. All to create tax havens
| and increase their own profits.
|
| These are scam artists. Reject them and their self-serving
| "vision of the future". You all are being had because you refuse
| to read history books.
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