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Page added on September 20, 2015
You Call this Progress?
One of the prevailing narratives of our time is that we are innovating our way into the future at break-neck speed. It’s just dizzying how quickly the world around us is changing. Technology is this juggernaut that gets ever bigger, ever faster, and all we need to do is hold on for the wild ride into the infinitely cool. Problems get solved faster than we can blink.
But I’m going to claim that this is an old, outdated narrative. I think we have a tendency to latch onto a story of humanity that we find appealing or flattering, and stick with it long past its expiration date. Many readers at this point, in fact, may think that it’s sheer lunacy for me to challenge such an obvious truth about the world we live in. Perhaps this will encourage said souls to read on—eager to witness a spectacular failure as I attempt to pull off this seemingly impossible stunt.
The (slightly overstated) claim is that no major new inventions have come to bear in my 45-year lifespan. The 45 years prior, however, were chock-full of monumental breakthroughs.
A Tale of Three Times
Before diving into the defense of my bold claim, let’s set the stage with a thought experiment about three equally-separated times, centered around 1950. Obviously we will consider the modern epoch—2015. The symmetric start would then be 1885, resulting in 65-year interval comparisons: roughly a human lifetime.
So imagine magically transporting a person through time from 1885 into 1950—as if by a long sleep—and also popping a 1950 inhabitant into today’s world. What an excellent adventure! Which one has a more difficult time making sense of the updated world around them? Which one sees more “magic,” and which one has more familiar points of reference? The answer is obvious, and is essentially my entire point.
Take a moment to let that soak in, and listen for any cognitive dissonance popping inside your brain.
Our 19th Century rube would fail to recognize cars/trucks, airplanes, helicopters, and rockets; radio, and television (the telephone was 1875, so just missed this one); toasters, blenders, and electric ranges. Also unknown to the world of 1885 are inventions like radar, nuclear fission, and atomic bombs. The list could go on. Daily life would have undergone so many changes that the old timer would be pretty bewildered, I imagine. It would appear as if the world had blossomed with magic: voices from afar; miniature people dancing in a little picture box; zooming along wide, hard, flat roads at unimaginable speeds—much faster than when uncle Billy’s horse got into the cayenne pepper. The list of “magic” devices would seem to be innumerable.
Now consider what’s unfamiliar to the 1950 sleeper. Look around your environment and imagine your life as seen through the eyes of a mid-century dweller. What’s new? Most things our eyes land on will be pretty well understood. The big differences are cell phones (which they will understand to be a sort of telephone, albeit with no cord and capable of sending telegram-like communications, but still figuring that it works via radio waves rather than magic), computers (which they will see as interactive televisions), and GPS navigation (okay: that one’s thought to be magic even by today’s folk). They will no doubt be impressed with miniaturization as an evolutionary spectacle, but will tend to have a context for the functional capabilities of our gizmos.
Telling ourselves that the pace of technological transformation is ever-increasing is just a fun story we like to believe is true. For many of us, I suspect, our whole world order is built on this premise.
On the flip side, I can think of loads of things about modern life that would have been perfectly familiar even to an ancient Egyptian. These are on the side of what it means to be human: laughter, drama, jealousy, shelter, bodily functions, family, jerk-wads, motherly love, tribalism, scandal, awe over the stars, etc. Because these are such constants, it is not hard for me to imagine key elements of the far future of humanity (see previous list). As far as technology goes: buzzing electric toothbrushes? I’d be foolish to count on them. But I’d bet on the wheel remaining important.
Space Leaps
Another interesting consideration: the 65-year time span we considered before is very similar to the amount of time it took to go from the first airplane to landing people on the Moon (in 65.6 years, we went from no powered flight to Moon-walking). Prior to the flight era, humans might have been able to get tens of meters off of terra firma without risking likely death. The Moon landings extended this pre-flight scale by seven orders of magnitude, so a pace of about an order-of-magnitude per decade. Not only have we not kept pace—we should have seen humans twice as far as Pluto by now and at the light-year scale by 2040—but we stopped our upward/outward march completely! Try convincing someone in 1965 that the U.S. would not have a human space launch capability 50 years later, or that we would retreat from far-flung human exploration after 1972 and they would think you to be stark-raving mad.
In My Life
I was born 9.5 days after the epoch of Unix Time, at the beginning of 1970. It’s very convenient for several reasons. 1-9-70 is 1970. President Nixon’s birthday is the same, and I was born when he was in office. It doesn’t make me a crook. Remembering my age in a particular year is easy math, especially so close to the New Year. And if I want to know my age in seconds, I just grab Unix time from any computer programming language’s time library function call. Answer: 1.44 billion seconds.
So my claim is that I was born into a post-invention world. I can’t possibly mean this in the extreme. I myself invented the first cryogenic image slicer, and co-invented a nifty airplane detector that is selling to observatories. But these are not big deals—just derivative products.
The big deals are: the computer revolution, the internet, mobile phones, GPS navigation, and surely some medical innovations. But I would characterize these as substantial refinements in pre-existing gizmos. It’s more an era of hard work than of inspiration. I’m not discounting the transformative influence of the internet and other such refinements, but instead pointing out that the fundamental technological underpinnings—the big breakthroughs— were in place already.
Computers existed before I was born, and even talked to each other over (local) networks. Mobile phones have a long history predating my birth. GPS navigation is a space-based refinement of the older LORAN system, which is also based on timing of signal receipt from transmitters at known locations. Lasers (now important for optical drives and many other devices) were invented before I was born and were even used to measure the Earth-Moon distance to few-decimeter precision in 1969. The microwave oven was invented just after World War II; the first countertop model became available in 1967.
Medically?
Before my birth it was understood that vitamin C fixes scurvy, and vitamin D rickets. Prior to the 20th Century we already had vaccines for smallpox, cholera, anthrax, and rabies. The 1920′s saw insulin, penicillin, and vaccines for Diphtheria, tuberculosis, whooping cough, scarlet fever, and tetanus. In later years, we got vaccines for Yellow Fever, Polio, Measles, Mumps, and Rubella. Since my birth, we’ve seen vaccines for chicken pox, Hepatitis A and B, meningitis, Lyme disease, rotavirus, and possibly malaria and ebola this year. Obviously we have not stopped the march, and that’s encouraging. But consider that the amount of funding poured into medical research has skyrocketed in my lifetime, so that the progress per dollar spent surely is going down. The easy battles were fought first, naturally. Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, and a raft of other pernicious diseases resist cures despite large continuing investments. But I admit a lack of expertise when it comes to medical research/progress (see overview here), so take this one with some Epsom salt.
Energy
I am more familiar with—and concerned about—energy technologies. What’s new on the table since my birth? Solar, wind, hydro/tidal, geothermal, nuclear fission (including thorium), wave, biofuels, fuel cells, etc.: all were demonstrated technologies before I was born. Where are the new faces? It’s not as if we have lacked motivation. Energy crises are not unknown to us, and there have been times of intense interest, effort, and research in my lifetime. Tellingly, the biggest energy innovation in my time is enhanced recovery techniques for fossil fuels: perhaps not the most promising path to the future.
We continue to work on nuclear fusion (note that we have succeeded in producing fusion in Tokamaks, for instance, and also in the spectacular explosions of hydrogen bombs). Should we succeed at controlled, sustained, net-positive fusion, we would qualify it as a new face at the table. I might characterize it as the most expensive way to create electricity ever devised (and electricity is not the hard nut to crack). If that’s our only substantial hope for game-changing innovation, we risk losing this game.
The true game changers would turn sunlight into liquid fuels. Agricultural routes compete for food and require substantial sustained labor (low EROEI), and algae may have water and gunk problems (see post on the biofuel grind). Artificial photosynthesis remains a favorite fantasy for me, but there may also be thermo-chemical approaches using concentrated sunlight.
But I digress: I’m trying to make a point about lack of fundamental inventions in my lifetime, and the energy domain fits the same pattern.
Social Progress
One realm that has seen substantial progress in my lifetime is not technological, but social. Tolerance for different races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and other conditions/choices marking individuals as “different” has improved in most parts of the world. This is not without exception, and at times appears to lurch backwards a bit. But there is no doubt that the world I live in today is more tolerant than the one I grew up in. And only part of that involves moving from Tennessee to California.
The one caution I cannot resist raising is that I view this tolerance as stemming from a sated world. In times of plenty, we can afford to be kind to those who are different. We are less threatened when we are comfortable. If our 21st Century standard of living peaks—coincident with a peak in surplus energy (i.e., fossil fuels)—then we may not have the luxury of viewing our social progress as an irreversible ratchet. Hard times revive old tribal instincts: different is not welcome.
Down with the Narrative
To me, this is all the more reason to raise awareness that we ought not take our future for granted. I believe that the narrative we have elected to believe—that progress is an unstoppable force and ever-accelerating technology will save us—is ironically the very attitude that can bring “progress” crashing down.
I think we should admit that our hypothetical 1885 person would be more bewildered by the passage of 65 years than the 1950 “modern” human. I think we should admit that the breathtaking pace of major breakthroughs has actually declined. That’s different from stopping, note. I think we need to take our energy predicament seriously, and acknowledge that we have few new ideas and don’t have any consensus on how to design our future infrastructure given the pieces we already know very well.
Note to commenters
I can predict that this post will be offensive to many and that the comments will be loaded with anecdotes and “what about X, you moron” sorts of posts—but hopefully more politely put. I will likely have little time to respond to each such thing. Just know I am not downplaying how transformative refinements (internet, computers, etc.) can be. But also know that the odd counterexample has a hard time dismantling the larger picture: just imagine that I could lob three pre-1950 inventions back for every post-1950 offered if I deemed it worth the time to play that game. Now, if you find yourself in this “offended” category, ask yourself: why is this so upsetting to you? How reliant are you on the narrative of progress for your sanity and understanding of our world and its future? I’m just sayin’—you might want to have that looked at.
39 Comments on "You Call this Progress?"
apneaman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 12:59 pm
Man do you guys ever come up with the most awesome links.
jjhman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 1:30 pm
I’m in the middle of reading Daniel Boorstein’s “The Americans, the Democratic Experience”. It was published in 1970 and recounts the growth of US culture and technology from about the Civil War to mid-20th century.
The book truly punctuates Tom Murphy’s assertion about change. For example last night I was reading about packaging. According to Boorstein virtually no “grocery store” products were packaged until the 1920s. Imagine the effect just on landfills! Fertilizer, antibiotics and pesticides have changed the world, all before the 1970s. Now we have incredibly cheap food compared to the 19th century along with soil degradation, dead zones in the oceans and population beyond the breaking point.
Nothing but nothing invented since 1970 has or can have the impact on humanity and the biosphere as the developments in the first half of the 20th century.
Hello on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 2:19 pm
Never before was technology so defining of our lives as in this age. Yet hardly anybody understands is.
peterev on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 2:44 pm
>> no “grocery store” products were packaged until the 1920s.<<
and the flies have been protesting ever since!!
Seriously, with all the plastics floating in the Atlantic and Pacific Gyres and let alone all the other places they end up at, we do have a serious problem. How do you think we should go about getting safely protected food to people? Cheeses can be wrapped in wax, a potential fuel. Fruits come in their own wrappers. Stems are biodegradable.
Eggs are in fragile shells that need protection. I have seen them delivered in sytrofoam, hard plastic, and cardboard. Outlaw everything but cardboard?
Boat on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 3:01 pm
The biggest change is the much better life style millions have because of tech. Most of the US plumbing took place from the 20’s to the 50’s. This was no small undertaking. Now you can go to Home Depot and buy PVC pipe a hacksaw some glue a few fittings and do it yourself. Put in a manifold and turn off one valve if there is a problem. Instant hot water instead of heating the copper or galvanized line. Most of all industry went through thousands of small improvements.
Solar to out perform cheap FF is hard to do and took decades to do it. The tipping point is close. Many small changes equals the invention as innovation over the decades improves on it.
Plantagenet on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 3:13 pm
There have been no new technologies developed since 1970 claims the author, as he types his screed on his personal computer and posts it on the internet.
Cheers!
apneaman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 3:22 pm
He did not say “NO” new technologies planty, O master of reading comprehension and fuck wad liar extraordinaire. Every time you do this after we all read the article it just reaffirms you as a scummy little liar.
apneaman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 3:31 pm
Boat, do you mean “much better life style millions have because of tech” like this one?
U.S toddler diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes
Increasing number of children getting disease due to poor diet and lack of exercise
“A three-year-old American girl has been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes — a condition linked to obesity — making her one of the youngest people ever detected with the disease.
Type 2 diabetes used to be known as “adult-onset” because it is most common among the middle-aged and elderly, but in the last two decades increasing numbers of children have succumbed, due to poor diets and lack of exercise.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/u-s-toddler-diagnosed-with-type-2-diabetes-1.3232076
Thank the good lord that we also have the medical technology to keep her consuming and medicated in the only lifestyle she and all the other children has ever known for decades and decades………..for a price. Sorry kiddies – progress has it’s price. Here, here’s another device – go play alone in your room.
rockman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 3:37 pm
Plant – A valid observation of course. OTOH folks were typing out and reproducing Word documents long before the first computer. And done with a keyboard laid out exactly. as the one I’m using to write this message. Similarly I could have shared this message with others long before the Internet existed. Of course the computer and net allow a much more efficient and extremely faster delivery. But the net result is the same: this article could have been written in 1955 and read by all of us that picked up whatever publication it might have been seen in.
Yes…a vast improvement of a centuries old communications system…the written word. But not exactly the same leap forward as driving from NY in a convered waggon to making the trip in a 747. LOL.
yeahbut on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 3:41 pm
“There have been no new technologies developed since 1970 claims the author, as he types his screed on his personal computer and posts it on the internet.
Cheers!”
What a nuisance it is to actually read an article, much better to read the title, maybe half of the first para and then just get down to the important business of going off half-cocked 😀
If you had bothered to read on:
“The big deals are: the computer revolution, the internet, mobile phones, GPS navigation, and surely some medical innovations. But I would characterize these as substantial refinements in pre-existing gizmos. It’s more an era of hard work than of inspiration. I’m not discounting the transformative influence of the internet and other such refinements, but instead pointing out that the fundamental technological underpinnings—the big breakthroughs— were in place already.”
Cheers!
Boat on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 3:50 pm
Yep apeman,
In America parents can kill their children with the food of their choice.You would be full of blame for everyone except who is at fault. The parents. And you would give them a pension cause they were hairdressers.
apneaman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 3:50 pm
yeahbut, you have the most awesome handle ever. It sums the entirety of infinite ape rationalizations and excuses not to change in the face of every self inflicted disaster in our history. The Limbic system drives the bus.
rockman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 3:55 pm
apnea – Ttue: poor lifestyle choices are taking their toll. OTOH technology has allowed the childhood (1 to 5 yo) mortality rate to drop in 1935 from 440 per 100,000 to 35 per 100,000 today. Of course the downside is an extra 400 kids per 100,000 surviving whose parents might CHOOSE to feed crap to. LOL.
apneaman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 4:42 pm
Rockman, so once again it all boils down to poor choices? So if that young daughter of yours come down with asthma from you choosing to live in a fossil fuel polluted metro area, that’s on you? Doubly your fault for working in the EXTRACTION industry too? It’s no secret that the food industry employs scientists to create substances that produce something the industry itself calls the “bliss point”. That means the point at which the greatest amount of dopamine and serotonin are released in the brains of the largest swath of the consumers. This is chemistry were talking here specifically designed to manipulate ape brains. None of these substances are designed to nourish – only to keep you craving more. How is it any different than what is done in a meth lab? Same principle same science. Sure the meth is more powerful, but the fact remains that the levels of dopamine and serotonin released by today’s frankenfoods do not appear in nature – not even close. It’s called super hyper stimuli and we did not evolve with it. These people are nothing but legalized drug dealers. Add in extremely powerful psychological effects of advertising (especially on developing brains) and most people and their kids don’t have a fucking chance no matter how much “will power” they apply against it. Have you looked at the obesity numbers? They are in the majority and growing yearly in spite of all medical intervention and a $100 billion diet industry. Add up all the spin off diseases from obesity and it is already a genuine social crisis. In the face of all the evidence to the contrary do you expect any rational person to believe your bullshit “personal choices” rhetoric? Within half a lifetime an entire society has opted for poor choices and there are no other factors? This is happening in every western country to varying degrees and all the diseases of modernity are seen within a decade after a society adopts industrialization and neo liberalism. There are no exceptions. If it’s all about personal choice then why make anything illegal or regulate it? Lets go full libertarian and decriminalize all substances and we’ll have heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine stores just like liquor stores eh? It’s just another lifestyle choice and who’s to say what’s right or wrong. Let freedom reign!
Food cravings engineered by industry
How Big Food keeps us eating through a combination of science and marketing
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/food-cravings-engineered-by-industry-1.1395225
Michael Moss: How the Food Giants Hooked Us
“Salt, sugar, and fat: a powerful trio deployed with sophisticated precision by the processed food industry. The result? The average American eats 33 pounds of cheese and 70 pounds of sugar annually, and 8,500 milligrams of salt each day. In industry terms, “mouthfeel” has been perfected and our sugary “bliss points” have been hit. The New York Times investigative reporter Michael Moss sits down with Steve Paikin to talk about his book, “Salt, Sugar, and Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us”.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs2auTOPUxE
BobInget on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 4:47 pm
“Nothing but nothing invented since 1970 has or can have the impact on humanity and the biosphere as the developments in the first half of the 20th century”.
Apart from Japan’s LED lighting there’s
Google USA. PC’s USA, drones USA,
digital watches USA, medical devices-micro computers USA, graphene USA.
How about Facebook? Twitter?
Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA, DFBCS (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web.
apneaman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 4:57 pm
BTW, obesity along with overpopulation and pollution is just another part of the carbon trap and is ultimately self correcting, although it’s going to be rather unpleasant methinks.
GregT on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 4:58 pm
I thought Al Gore invented the WWW?
GregT on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 5:04 pm
Anyhow Bob,
Thank the good Lord for LED lighting, Google, PC’s, drones, Facebook, and Twitter. Without them all, humanity would have devolved into a state of mindless stupidity.
Plantagenet on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 5:50 pm
@Apey
Your potty mouth is full to brim and overflowing again. Please flush ….count to ten….and then flush again.
Maybe that will work.
CHEERS!
apneaman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 6:00 pm
And your is endlessly full of feces in spite of your constant swallowing it.
GregT on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 6:30 pm
You’re a sad excuse for a human being Claudia. You need help.
Plantagenet on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 6:42 pm
@Apey
Your potty mouth is still overflowing. Won’t it flush down?
Cheers!
GregT on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 6:47 pm
You’re a sad excuse for a human being Claudia. You need help.
JuanP on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 7:06 pm
Hello, Boat, and Plant prove once more that you can’t fix stupid! How ignorant and arrogant do these fools have to be to pretend to understand science and technology better than a very distinguished physics professor.
Anyone worth their salt who’s been to Professor Tom Murphy’s website and read his work through the years like I have knows that this guy has really done his research and knows his stuff.
I consider his assessment extremely accurate. During the last 50 years we have been mostly perfecting technologies that already existed, and none of these refinements can compare to the big discoveries and applications that came before in their impacts on nature. Most of the most important scientific discoveries and technological advances were made more than fifty years ago.
What would computers be without electricity? An Abacus! What would cars be without an ICE? A horse buggy! 😉
apneaman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 7:27 pm
It’s long list of all the technologies that are decades old and have merely been tweaked, yet even longer, way longer, is the list of empty technological promises. Like flying cars and such.
Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit
David Graeber
“A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise we were given as children about what our adult world was supposed to be like. I am referring not to the standard false promises that children are always given (about how the world is fair, or how those who work hard shall be rewarded), but to a particular generational promise—given to those who were children in the fifties, sixties, seventies, or eighties—one that was never quite articulated as a promise but rather as a set of assumptions about what our adult world would be like. And since it was never quite promised, now that it has failed to come true, we’re left confused: indignant, but at the same time, embarrassed at our own indignation, ashamed we were ever so silly to believe our elders to begin with.
Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any child growing up in the mid-to-late twentieth century assumed would exist by now? Even those inventions that seemed ready to emerge—like cloning or cryogenics—ended up betraying their lofty promises. What happened to them?”
http://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit
JuanP on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 7:31 pm
LEDs were already in use in 1962: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode
Computers have been around since at least the year 2,400 BC: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware
And you can’t eat, drink, or burn Google, Facebook, or Twitter. Anyone considering these things great technological advances has to be a moron. Vaccines, antibiotics, electricity, and the wheel were great advances. Twitter? Give me a frigging break! I have never used Twitter or Facebook in my life, and I most likely never will.
Davy on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 7:59 pm
I really enjoyed Murphy back in the TOD days when he picked apart AltE’s false promises. He is not anti-AltE just anti-false promises. I am the same way. I can’t stand false promises. I have a nose that sniffs them out.
The cornucopian comments here are so lame. They struggle to spout off achievements that are in reality duds. Sure we all have been enamored by the digital revolution but we are also all seeing the side effects. Digital is dumbing people down. Digital is adding needless complexity to multiple applications. We know about the consumer revolution of all those electronic devises we don’t need that end up in the landfill. Our technological culture is a joke when it comes to real quality of life.
We are waking up from a hangover to see our society further gutted. The more we try to develop the less we have to show for it. Every year wonderful ecosystems are consumed and digested into this process. Our medical system is scary. When you go to the hospital you don’t know if you will get out in one piece financially. That is because the wonders of progress combined with the medical system. We could have had simple and basic health care serving all instead we have elaborate health care serving a few. Much of the reasons for this imbalance is the excessively fancy medical tech toys and drugs.
This is the wrong road taken. This is evident to anyone who can look at life critically in an unbiased way. What is sad is it is irreversible in the sense of getting out of this society and economy in one piece. When we stop this technological dopamine drip it is over. Society and the economy will crash. When this way of life breaks down, as it surely will, we will be in poverty. We will be hungry. We will have a destroyed ecosystem and climate.
This is what technology has given us yet we still have idiots on this board who crow about how good everything is because of progress. I spit on you all because you have no respect for life.
apneaman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 8:14 pm
Yabut, Davy, they made a pill that can keep my dick hard forever and meds that can keep me alive for decades while I continue poisoning myself with copious amounts of Frankenfood and carbonated high fructose drinks…………. and it’s good for the economy/god too.
How Many Die From Medical Mistakes in U.S. Hospitals?
“Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, the study says.
That would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease, which is the first, and cancer, which is second.”
http://www.propublica.org/article/how-many-die-from-medical-mistakes-in-us-hospitals
BC on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 8:19 pm
Decelerating productivity and slowing innovation:
https://youtu.be/PYHd7rpOTe8
http://bigthink.com/collective-intelligence/peter-thiel-what-happened-to-innovation
http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/530901/technology-stalled-in-1970/
Marxian falling RATE of profits:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch13.htm
http://davidharvey.org/2014/12/debating-marxs-crisis-theory-falling-rate-profit/
The decelerating rate of growth of profits has been kept from contracting by offshoring production to foreign slave labor, importing a majority share of oil consumption, and replacing wages gains for the working class with increasing debt to wages and GDP. This process has run its course.
Now no growth of real, after-tax profits implies no growth of private investment, production, wages, gov’t receipts, and demand for energy outside the energy and energy-related transport sectors. Firms that can afford to do so will merge, spin off assets, and reduce capacity and employees.
Joseph Schumpeter made the case in the 1930s-50s that entrepreneurial capitalism gave way to industrial capitalism’s “creative destruction” and the increasing scale of booms and busts that resulted in increasing gov’t intervention and partnering between large firms and gov’t that would lead to a kind of technocratic corporate socialism or statism. Most people quote the “creative destruction” part but not the corporate-statism prediction, which has largely occurred.
But the corporate-state is dominated by finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE), especially large TBTE commercial and primary dealer banks and their top 0.001% owners.
The top 0.001% owners no longer need the economy to grow to maintain their wealth, income, privilege, and power, which also implies that they don’t need profits to grow, as they have disengaged from productive economic activity and are primarily concerned with keeping their wealth and buying the gov’t to maintain the status quo indefinitely.
The likes of Thiel don’t realize how productivity and the falling rate of profits are affected by falling labor share of GDP, demographic drag effects, and inequality. His outsized success is in part contributing to the falling rate of profit, investment, innovation, and productivity.
Novelty and convenience made possible by nifty gizmos do not necessarily translate to increasing productivity, real GDP per capita, and overall wealth and well-being of the society.
apneaman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 8:25 pm
BC, well said – great insight.
Makati1 on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 8:27 pm
There has been nothing new since at least 1950. Just tweaked old ideas.
Now even movies are mostly re-worked old ones or themes from old novels or classics. When there is a new idea (rare) it is sequeled to death, often getting worse and worse with each new addition.
Conscious, intelligent, rational thought is now extinct in most areas of the West.
Davy on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 8:36 pm
Yea, Ape Man, BC nailed it.
GregT on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 8:46 pm
“Now even movies are mostly re-worked old ones or themes from old novels or classics.”
And music has been regurgitated over and over since the 18th century. Nothing new to see here, move along….
apneaman on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 11:49 pm
If I was an econ 101 priest, I would have to spin this as “Negative Progress”.
Antibiotics Are Spreading Like Crazy—and a Lot of Them Are About to Stop Working
“Antibiotic resistance is now clearly a problem in both the developed world and developing countries,” coauthor Ramanan Laxminarayan told National Geographic. “Things are about to get a lot worse before they get better.”
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, of the roughly 2 million people in the United States afflicted every year with illnesses caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, 23,000 of them will die. These illnesses cost around $20 billion each year, and lead to an additional $35 billion in productivity losses.”
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/09/antibiotic-resistance-report?google_editors_picks=true
Drug-resistant gonorrhoea outbreak sparks England-wide alert
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/18/drug-resistant-gonorrhoea-outbreak-sparks-england-wide-alert
Outcast_Searcher on Sun, 20th Sep 2015 11:58 pm
GregT said: “And music has been regurgitated over and over since the 18th century. Nothing new to see here, move along….”
Right, because Pink FLoyd was exactly like Mozart. Sure.
idontknowmyself on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 1:59 am
The first commercially successful internal combustion engine was created by Étienne Lenoir around 1859[1] and the first modern internal combustion engine was created in 1864 by Siegfried Marcus.
There has not been that much new idea since 1950. Just more tweaking. I would agreed with that.
Combustion engine was invented in 1864. We just improved it by adding computer to it and better injection system.
Same thing with transistor that were invented in 1947.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor
Computer memory are just transistor made smaller.
http://www.i-programmer.info/babbages-bag/359-memory-2.html
Humans have run out of ideas and imagination.
GregT on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 5:33 am
“Right, because Pink FLoyd was exactly like Mozart. Sure.”
Waters happens to be one of my most influential musicians. You could say that he has been my mentor.
I started playing the piano at 4, and the guitar at 6. I also play bass, the trumpet, and started vocal training when I was 8, as a soprano. Your comment O_S makes it very clear to me that you have never studied music, because you obviously don’t have the foggiest clue what I am talking about. Music theory and composition are basic mathematics. There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to music.
seen from sirius on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 6:26 am
It’s funny I had the same thought as the OP relaxing in my bathtub last evening. I was thinking : 50 years ago, at 10, O had a tub in exactly the same kind of bathtub, in exactly the same kind of apartment I’m living now (except back then my dad was the landlord, not me). Back the we had TV (don’t remember if it was color already), telephone,modern kitchen appliances, a car, etc. The only difference now is that we have Internet and an iPhone (and a microwave oven in the kitchen)-things we could easily live without. I bet there was (much ) more difference between a 1915 household than a 1965 household!
Davy on Mon, 21st Sep 2015 6:33 am
Good for you Greg! The music future in a collapsed world is instruments without electricity of course. If we are lucky enough to have civilization people will get together to socialize and enjoy music in small groups without the mind numbing electric amplifications. The idiot radio stations and stereo systems will be gone or decay quickly. This is a positive to collapse there are others but music is one of the most important. It will be one of the few leisure activities available other than sex and alcohol.