The last paragraph is particularly depressing – the author blames it on a lack of religion (passionate intensity out procreates reasonableness). Personally I blame it a little on the dramatic increase in old people through better living standards and the over taxing of the middle aged to support them – decreasing spare capacity for procreation (wealth transfer away from procreation).
One possible solution is to phase out pensions in favor of sickness/unemployment benefits as needed. I see no good reason why a long holiday at the end of life as better than a long holiday at any other time in life, or no holiday at all – depending on individual choice (as long as they pay for it). People probably need to transition out of work much as they transition into it – gradually as their circumstances allows.
As an aside, I read above that August Comte first said “Demographics is destiny.” Any idea what he referred to at the time? Google isn’t helpful in this regard.
I see no good reason why a long holiday at the end of life as better than a long holiday at any other time in life, or no holiday at all – depending on individual choice (as long as they pay for it).
Very often, the faculties go long before the heartbeat, and one simply cannot compete for any job other than greeting folks at WalMart. So even if one does not bilk one’s neighbor for retirement, a man must still set aside ~15% of his wealth throughout his life for that purpose on top of the 13% that SS takes for his neighbors and 27% total taxes for all other purposes. That’s a slim 45% left over for his living expenses and discretionary procreation.
“At the same time, the Eurostat data show that Europe’s population is aging at a rapid rate.”
I’d be willing to bet that the “rapid rate” is exactly one year per year…
I’d be willing to bet that the “rapid rate” is exactly one year per year…
You sure ’bout that? Maybe Moore’s Law applies to people, too…
I also wonder if, as people of procreating age grow older (before procreating), they transition more into society supporting non breeding behavior patterns. That is, as people grow older, they become less inclined to breed.
A number of species with small family groups have a few breeding alpha animals with non breeding beta animals acting as secondary parents – I expect this also happens with people. I further suspect the older one gets the more inclined one becomes to adopt such a supporting role.
Point being, the average age of procreation has increased dramatically in places like Europe (breeding age is a factor in reduced procreation), and this might be accompanied by a significant drop in inclination to breed and the number of likely offspring.
It’s not just Europe and it’s not about an aging population so much. ESR pegs that it’s a worldwide systemic problem…
Between 1880 and 1943, beginning with Bismarck and ending with Roosevelt’s New Deal, the modern West abandoned the classical-liberal model of a minimal, night-watchman state. But the redistributionist monster that replaced it was unsustainable, and it’s now running out of other peoples’ money.
Don’t get cocky. America and Britain aren’t much better. We only have postive population growth because we import more immigrants than the Continental Europeans do. Our native population growth is better than Old Europe, but it’s still non-replacement. Even in the Anglosphere feminism has done its damage.
Moreover, we’re replacing high-earning caucasians and asians with low-earning latinos (and Arab’s, in the UK’s case). There’s no biological law I’m aware of that says Latinos and Arabs can’t become high earners in subsequent generations, but without the proper education and cultural imprinting that the Anglosphere used to be good at (but no longer is) they never will. That means median wages will continue to fall for the forseeable decades, putting pensions and entitlements further into the red.
Still, though, America and the UK has the dubious distinction of being the least worst of the lot. Europe and Japan are in a death spiral, with only Russia and Ukraine really putting them in the shade for demographic disaster charts. China’s one-child policy is aging its population faster than any other nation on Earth, which will catch up on them very, very soon and make them worse off even than the English Speaking peoples. Of the large nations only India has good demographics, but they aren’t investing in the sort of education infrastructure necessary to turn those rural peasant children into productive modern city-dwellers.
Not sure about Brazil, Mexico, Turkey or Indonesia off the top of my head. They are nations to watch though.
I’m fond of a Mark Steyn quote: “The future belongs to those who show up for it.”
It seems odd to me that you folks in particular can talk about the future without considering the impact of technological change.
Vernor Vinge covered both an extreme example, and a moderate one: You needn’t believe in a rapture for the nerds ( see Vernor Vinge’s Singularity essay), just a cure for what ails old people (see Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End, in which an alzheimer’s victims are treated and choose to go back to school in search of meaningful employment).
Well, s–t, if we’re talking immortality, then replacement rate mostly becomes a “don’t care” condition — just Malthusian Nightmare GO GO GO!
So which comes first, we get immortality and have to expand into space or we get immortality so we have to download into microchips?
Then we’ll outlaw babies and only babies with have outlaws. Well that’s not so different from now… (yes, I thought it funny to put the cart in front of the horse, sue me.)
I suppose first world countries could find a high productivity solution to having and raising children. Develop an automated low cost mass production baby factory and child raising system. Perhaps what is really lacking is automated teaching, health care and day care systems.
Although I suppose it would be easier to just out source it to a low wage country (surrogacy). If people in a first world country had a choice where they could afford to say raise one child (or none), or send money to a low wage country where they could have say five children raised for them (with their genes and cultural/educational inputs), would some choose to do so? A lot of childless couples could suddenly afford to have children. Unmarried career women/men could have children brought up for them, in a manner they deemed appropriate, importing them when they get a little older. The first world countries would then get a large supply of base educated children. Many immigrant communities already effectively do this – the concept is not new, nor ethically unprecedented.
Well Bob, what does that have to do with reproducing? You know, the point of the post. Many old people can’t work for reasons other than their mental state. But even if you are correct. You either have old people keeping jobs and unemployed young people or you a shortage of young people trying to take care of even MORE old people.
Whatever problems that you imagine you’ll have via population shortages, population disparities, or population growth might be solved by some application of technology (including medicine). We simply don’t know what the future holds, but I’m willing to bet that technological innovation will occur and will make “demography is destiny” predictions look silly.
Considering the impact of technological change is one thing — getting it right is another thing altogether.
Or are we living in “The Jetsons” and I just didn’t notice?
Don’t worry, McGehee — cybermarxism will solve everything. Then won’t you look silly?
Titus, you’re right! From each non-sentient machine according to its abilities, to each machine according to its needs.
Googling, I see that Karl Marx actually did say this: “Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.”
I don’t call such people idlers – I call them free (and retired people and well-to-do people I know tend to be plenty productive). If technological advances enabled the entire human population of earth to consist of the leisure class, free to pursue whatever makes them feel happy and productive, I’d be very happy – wouldn’t you?
Of course the question is if everyone can do what they want, who builds the machines?
Ah, Utopia! Where unicorns shit skittles and Marxist enjoy their leisure lives.
If technological advances enabled the entire human population of earth to consist of the leisure class, free to pursue whatever makes them feel happy and productive, I’d be very happy – wouldn’t you?
Yes, but Bahb, have you observed that this has not happened even one tiny little bit, yet? Ancient Rome had a leisure class in AD 1, and we’ve got one now in AD 2010. Have you noticed that people not in it are not one jot less envious and cross about that fact, even though technological change has ensured that even the most desperately “poor” American lives a life of health, security and ease that would be envy of any Roman Senator from the ancient world?
To feel “at leisure” is to be able to command the labor of others, without yourself doing labor, or not doing very much. By definition that equation doesn’t change with technological advance. The disparity in what my labor is worth and what yours is worth will never change, no matter how roboticized and computerized our economic life gets. To put it crudely, even in the far future when robots do all the heavy work, it will still be the case that I will be much better at programming robots than you, and so 1 hour of my labor will continue to be worth 10 hours of yours. That means I’ll continue to feel at leisure and you’ll continue to feel like a galley slave.
Carl, I completely disagree with you — I know a number of independently wealthy scientists who want nothing more than to be left to their telescopes (or electron microscopes in one case) and computers. They aren’t envious of those richer than themselves, they lead very middle class lives (one of them has a house with two bedrooms for him, his wife, and their daughter). They publish in academic journals (always a hoot to see a home address where a university affiliation would usually go), they are productive members of society, but they vaction when they want, they don’t feel like galley slaves.
Leland, asks ” everyone can do what they want, who builds the machines?”
The answer is that some people like building machines. Many people are particularly interested in machines that can build other machines.
But this is all far afield. My point, which had nothing at all to do with Marxism, was simply that technological innovation (including medicine) should be taken into account when considering the societal effects of lower fertility and/or an aging population. Fewer people may be required for greatly increased productivity, and the aging might be able to just as useful (or more useful) as young people.
Bob-1,
productivity growth rates have been remarkably stable for
quite a while and have even been declining lately. The suspicion is that youth are more likely to create the disruptive innovations that actually foment productivity.
Now something totally unpredictable might happen in the technology realm. We can’t know, that’s why its unpredictable. Or maybe an asteroid will hit, killing us all, and then won’t the demography-is-destiny folks look silly.
The point is that *and then a miracle happens* is a bad way to plan. Miracles do happen, but you don’t know when or how or what effect they’ll have.
In a world where the unexpected happens, the best preparation, it turns out, is people with high personal capital, the more, the better.
Demographics and the redistributionist monster can make the unsustainable more rapid. Technology can influence that too. What neither can do is kill the monster.
The worst thing is, the tipping point is not observable. It’s like the event horizon of a black hole. First you’re outside of it, then you’re not. The gravity at that point can be in a vast range, not just shred your atoms strong. It could even be a bit less than normal euphoric feeling. But you’re still inside and doomed.
The numbers are scary to anyone sane. Bob? Are you scared yet?
Demographics and the redistributionist monster can make the unsustainable more rapid.
The evidence of history is that making people more productive will not reshape the pyramid — it expands proportionally. Thus we have the single greatest wealth ever owned by any person (the height of the pyramid) coupled with the largest poorest population ever (the base). This is indeed facilitated with redistribution — sending money to poor Africans mostly nets you another, much larger, generation of poor Africans.
Humans are prolific, and even if one created the greatest cybertopia, they would still reproduce until resources became strained again (land, if nothing else…), the bottom fills up, the peasants revolt…you know the rest. The game cannot change while humans, especially the poorest are allowed to reproduce unchecked, and since ethical solutions still evade us (tell us how that’s addressed, cybermarxist prophet!), the problem remains.
I became happier about AI when it began reducing the market for lawyers.
Blogger James Nicoll summed up the following article by asking “Is Africa threatened by Peak Poverty?”
African Poverty is Falling…Much Faster than You Think!
Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Maxim Pinkovskiy
NBER Working Paper No. 15775
Issued in February 2010
The conventional wisdom that Africa is not reducing poverty is wrong. Using the methodology of Pinkovskiy and Sala-i-Martin (2009), we estimate income distributions, poverty rates, and inequality and welfare indices for African countries for the period 1970-2006. We show that: (1) African poverty is falling and is falling rapidly; (2) if present trends continue, the poverty Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people with incomes less than one dollar a day will be achieved on time; (3) the growth spurt that began in 1995 decreased African income inequality instead of increasing it; (4) African poverty reduction is remarkably general: it cannot be explained by a large country, or even by a single set of countries possessing some beneficial geographical or historical characteristic. All classes of countries, including those with disadvantageous geography and history, experience reductions in poverty. In particular, poverty fell for both landlocked as well as coastal countries; for mineral-rich as well as mineral-poor countries; for countries with favorable or with unfavorable agriculture; for countries regardless of colonial origin; and for countries with below- or above-median slave exports per capita during the African slave trade.
It’s not far afield to point out that at some point, somebody will be tasked with doing the unpleasant work. What is far afield is assuming the issues is as simple as people wanting to do the fun stuff, and hoping, as MrMandias puts it, that some miracle happens. The miracle in this case is the “singularity” in which the AI of machines take over, and they happily go forward to: pick up the trash left be leisure humans, build telescopes for leisure humans, build printing presses for leisure humans, refine the ink for leisure humans, dig the quarries for leisure humans, and cook the meals for the leisure humans.
The reality is that societies that have become overly leisurely (such as much of mainland Western Europe), bring in immigrants to do their dirty work for low wages. They encourage migration by promising a great future after a time of servitude. The problem is that great future is not so great. Eventually, the nation ends up like Greece, where the guarantors can no longer deliver the promised future. At that point, civil war breaks out. And this shouldn’t be surprising, because the history of mankind replays this scenario over and over; particular so in Europe.
Machines are doing more and more of the unpleasant work — no miraculous singularity is necessary for this trend to continue. Leland, look at your examples: telescopes — do you think everyone grinds lenses by hand? Printing presses — the very example suggests automation, no? Printing presses aren’t yet themselves printed, but they soon will be. Ink — do you think ink is made by hand, maybe by squeezing berries and octopus guts? Quarries – yes, lets have a bunch of migrant workers use shovels. Once again: I think this blog is a particularly strange place to have point out that technology needs to be considered when predicting the future.
In other words: see Rand’s arguments for why Peak Oil is silly.
And what of Bob’s research in Africa:
if present trends continue, the poverty Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people with incomes less than one dollar a day will be achieved on time;
The value of the dollar is in decline. It’s not very hard to improve income to $1 a day, when the value of that dollar is less. Quantitative Easing is printing more dollars for the purposes of devaluing debt. This makes more dollars available for everyone to earn, but lowers the purchasing price of each dollar. If you actually read the MDG goals, the point of $1 a day is to build purchasing power parity. That doesn’t happen when the value of the dollar goes down. In fact this can be understood by the second point made:
the growth spurt that began in 1995 decreased African income inequality instead of increasing it
This is a bad economic assumption made by the writer; but in simple terms, it is correct. The more you have of something, in this case Africans, the less they are valued (income decreases). The reason this is a bad economic assumption is that each African represents potential growth in the economy. See African’s aren’t about to build human replacing robots to do the work for them. But with more people to do work, they can improve their economic condition.
But all of what is written in Bob’s link is shot to hell with this statement:
African poverty reduction is remarkably general: it cannot be explained by a large country, or even by a single set of countries possessing some beneficial geographical or historical characteristic.
This is a qualifier statement that says “my numbers are good, so long as you don’t look at standardized performance, but rather consider poverty to be different for each individual local.” The problem with that statement is: MDG is a standardized measure for improving poverty. When you change the standard to mean something less; then it is very easy to write an essay saying that your meeting the goal faster.
The paper used constant dollars.
The paper used constant dollars.
Yep. And obviously that constant is not 2015 or 2020 value, because we don’t know what that value is. To say poverty in Africa is improving because people in Africa are making more than $1 a day in 2000 dollar values is ludicrous. The fact that more people are getting closer to earning the value of a dollar in 2000 tells us nothing about whether the purchasing parity power (the actual standard MDG uses) is actually improved. Again, if you change the standard, by lowering it, then it is very easy to say things are getting better.
Re Bob and his incredible machines… Once again, reading comprehension is a problem for Bob. For example, yes printing presses suggest automation. Printing presses are a machine. As I said earlier, for which I was told I was “far afield”, who is building the machine (i.e. printing press). To say that printing presses are automated ignores the fact that they had to come from somewhere. Same with telescope lenses, sure a machine may grind the lense, but who is operating the machine? Who loads it with the glass? Who made the glass? How did the glass get from its manufacturing location (aside: manufacturing may suggest automation, but that’s not what manufacturing means) to the telescope manufacturing location?
Finally:
Once again: I think this blog is a particularly strange place to have point out that technology needs to be considered when predicting the future.
It’s not that people aren’t considering technology. It’s that none of us believe technology is some panacea that will eventually solve all the worlds ills and result in utopia. The point about Peak Oil is that a new solution for energy will be utilized before we run out of oil. We know we are not at peak oil because no one is seriously utilizing the alternate energy sources. No, the Chevy Volt is not serious and neither is the Prius. Texas wind generation is a bit more serious, but until a better system of energy storage is developed, it is not a replacement for stored potential energy in oil. Nuclear power would be better, but go back to my point that its not seriously being utilized. Then ethanol is actually generating more problems with famine than it is solving the energy problem. So we see that hybrid/battery cars, wind power, nuclear energy, and ethanol have not resulted in the panacea that people like Bob are predicting.
I thought Rand’s argument about Peak Oil was that technological innovation will allow us to keep getting better at finding and extracting oil. Not sure where techniques like thermal depolymerization fit in, but the point is: no peak oil even if we keep using oil.
You seem to have missed my point about printing presses will themselves be printed. Also: as for how people with time on their hands choose to spend it, free open-source projects like Gimp and Inkscape (alternatives to Adobe’s expensive Photoshop and Illustrator) must really blow your mind.
You seem to have missed my point about printing presses will themselves be printed.
You seemed to miss my point about unicorns shitting skittles. Or if you prefer MrMandias’ “and then some miracle happens”.
(something Bob likes but otherwise nobody else cares about) must really blow your mind.
I’m sure free candy makes you happy. I have no doubt that it would. What might blow your mind even more is that the images you are manipulating (there’s that sense of automation that fails to understand the word being used) were taken by a camera operated by a person, built by a person, maintained by a person, but most importantly cost money because those other people want their fair share. But hey, enjoy the free candy, because that means utopia is almost here! The unicorns will make more.
Carl, I completely disagree with you — I know a number of independently wealthy scientists who want nothing more than to be left to their telescopes
You missed the point, Bob. The key here is that phrase “independently wealthy.” What does that mean? You need to think this out very carefully to see the point.
What being “wealthy” means, in practical terms, divorced from accounting irrelevancies like the number of zeros in your bank account, is simply this: you can command the labor of other people without exchanging your own labor in return, or at least with exchanging very little of it.
For example, your “independently wealthy” scientist needs to eat, needs a place to sleep, needs the latest telescope with which to pursue his hobby. Other people need to labor to provide him with those things. Ordinarily, the scientist can acquire their labor by offering to exchange his own. He works hard at discovering cool things about the cosmos and someone pays him for that. The medium of exchange isn’t important — he can be paid in dollars, yen, Galactic credits, or chickens. Whatever it is, it represents a labor IOU others will redeem — he can use his stored dollars, yen, Galactic credits or chickens to acquire the labor of others he needs.
Now pay attention. Here’s the critical point: not everyone’s labor is equally generally valued. 1 hour of the scientist’s labor might buy 10 hours of a plumber’s or lensgrinder’s labor. Or it might be the other way around.
And what determines whether the scientist feels wealthy? It is exactly the relative value of his own labor. If he can exchange 1 hour of his labor for 10 hours of a plumber’s, then he feels wealthy relative to the plumber, and by any reasonable definition, he is.
Now if your scientist is “independently wealthy,” then what that implies is that he needn’t work at all to acquire the labor of others. The value of his labor has risen (or at some point in the past rose) so much higher than everybody else’s that he can afford to offer almost none of it now to acquire hours and hours of everybody else’s labor.
The only way your “technological advance” could change this fundamental equation is if everyone’s labor becomes equally valuable and nearly infinite in value. Your problem in understanding my points is you are focussed on the average value of labor, and saying my gosh, technology could increase that enormously! Yes it could, Bob, but in fact it’s the differences between the value of different people’s labor that cause us to feel “rich” and “poor” — not the average value of labor overall. That is why a trailer-park striver in Mississippi today feels “poorer” than a wealthy Roman Senator of 1 AD, although by any objective standards that is ridiculous.
Imagine, say, a future in which anything you want can be had merely for the asking — powerful Obots will search out the raw materials on distant planets and manufacture it to spec using solar energy and unicorn piss.
Ah ha, but consider this: every person is not going to be equally adept at asking for what he wants. One person might have a talent for phrasing the commands in such a way that the magic Obots understand better, are more likely to deliver precisely what is wanted, rather than something close. (Geez! If I’d wanted my new car in puke green, I would have said so! I’ve always had a blue car! How was I supposed to know the new default was this awful shade?)
That lucky person might well start selling his services, of course. Hey, if you organize my car collection and polish the Rolls, I’ll order your next 10 cars for you, make sure you get exactly what you want. Both parties will be better off by this transaction — and away we go. Sooner or later the fact that X can labor for 10 minutes, forming perfect requests for the Obots, and gain 3 hours of his less gifted neighbor Y‘s labor, will make X feel rich compared to Y. And by any reasonable definition, he is.
So technological progress will never erase the distinction between rich and poor, by the only important definition, which is how people feel at the time.
So that Bob isn’t still confused…
if you organize my car collection and polish the Rolls
Y’s labor in this case would be telling the Obots to polish the Rolls, which means X can spend his more valuable labor on specifying other Obots tasks.
It doesn’t affect your argument, but Carl I have one nit…
Now if your scientist is “independently wealthy,” then what that implies is that he needn’t work at all to acquire the labor of others. The value of his labor has risen (or at some point in the past rose) so much higher than everybody else’s that he can afford to offer almost none of it now to acquire hours and hours of everybody else’s labor.
…and I wouldn’t have noticed it at all except Sowell hits the point pretty hard. Which is that your scientist can become independently wealthy (one state) without his labor value (another state) being particularly great. As a matter of fact, when he does become independent his labor value may be lower that those he can now employ. This is the fallacy of class in that people move through these classes rather than being a part of them.
Bob, when enough people say you aren’t seeing reality, shouldn’t you at least question your fantasy? When people tell me I’m wrong I am greatly appreciative regardless of what the truth turns out to be. The reason? Everybody is wrong about some things and it’s a favor when others help you find those things you would not tend to question of yourself. Take advantage.
The last paragraph is particularly depressing – the author blames it on a lack of religion (passionate intensity out procreates reasonableness). Personally I blame it a little on the dramatic increase in old people through better living standards and the over taxing of the middle aged to support them – decreasing spare capacity for procreation (wealth transfer away from procreation).
One possible solution is to phase out pensions in favor of sickness/unemployment benefits as needed. I see no good reason why a long holiday at the end of life as better than a long holiday at any other time in life, or no holiday at all – depending on individual choice (as long as they pay for it). People probably need to transition out of work much as they transition into it – gradually as their circumstances allows.
As an aside, I read above that August Comte first said “Demographics is destiny.” Any idea what he referred to at the time? Google isn’t helpful in this regard.
Very often, the faculties go long before the heartbeat, and one simply cannot compete for any job other than greeting folks at WalMart. So even if one does not bilk one’s neighbor for retirement, a man must still set aside ~15% of his wealth throughout his life for that purpose on top of the 13% that SS takes for his neighbors and 27% total taxes for all other purposes. That’s a slim 45% left over for his living expenses and discretionary procreation.
“At the same time, the Eurostat data show that Europe’s population is aging at a rapid rate.”
I’d be willing to bet that the “rapid rate” is exactly one year per year…
You sure ’bout that? Maybe Moore’s Law applies to people, too…
I also wonder if, as people of procreating age grow older (before procreating), they transition more into society supporting non breeding behavior patterns. That is, as people grow older, they become less inclined to breed.
A number of species with small family groups have a few breeding alpha animals with non breeding beta animals acting as secondary parents – I expect this also happens with people. I further suspect the older one gets the more inclined one becomes to adopt such a supporting role.
Point being, the average age of procreation has increased dramatically in places like Europe (breeding age is a factor in reduced procreation), and this might be accompanied by a significant drop in inclination to breed and the number of likely offspring.
It’s not just Europe and it’s not about an aging population so much. ESR pegs that it’s a worldwide systemic problem…
Between 1880 and 1943, beginning with Bismarck and ending with Roosevelt’s New Deal, the modern West abandoned the classical-liberal model of a minimal, night-watchman state. But the redistributionist monster that replaced it was unsustainable, and it’s now running out of other peoples’ money.
Don’t get cocky. America and Britain aren’t much better. We only have postive population growth because we import more immigrants than the Continental Europeans do. Our native population growth is better than Old Europe, but it’s still non-replacement. Even in the Anglosphere feminism has done its damage.
Moreover, we’re replacing high-earning caucasians and asians with low-earning latinos (and Arab’s, in the UK’s case). There’s no biological law I’m aware of that says Latinos and Arabs can’t become high earners in subsequent generations, but without the proper education and cultural imprinting that the Anglosphere used to be good at (but no longer is) they never will. That means median wages will continue to fall for the forseeable decades, putting pensions and entitlements further into the red.
Still, though, America and the UK has the dubious distinction of being the least worst of the lot. Europe and Japan are in a death spiral, with only Russia and Ukraine really putting them in the shade for demographic disaster charts. China’s one-child policy is aging its population faster than any other nation on Earth, which will catch up on them very, very soon and make them worse off even than the English Speaking peoples. Of the large nations only India has good demographics, but they aren’t investing in the sort of education infrastructure necessary to turn those rural peasant children into productive modern city-dwellers.
Not sure about Brazil, Mexico, Turkey or Indonesia off the top of my head. They are nations to watch though.
I’m fond of a Mark Steyn quote: “The future belongs to those who show up for it.”
It seems odd to me that you folks in particular can talk about the future without considering the impact of technological change.
Vernor Vinge covered both an extreme example, and a moderate one: You needn’t believe in a rapture for the nerds ( see Vernor Vinge’s Singularity essay), just a cure for what ails old people (see Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End, in which an alzheimer’s victims are treated and choose to go back to school in search of meaningful employment).
Well, s–t, if we’re talking immortality, then replacement rate mostly becomes a “don’t care” condition — just Malthusian Nightmare GO GO GO!
So which comes first, we get immortality and have to expand into space or we get immortality so we have to download into microchips?
Then we’ll outlaw babies and only babies with have outlaws. Well that’s not so different from now… (yes, I thought it funny to put the cart in front of the horse, sue me.)
I suppose first world countries could find a high productivity solution to having and raising children. Develop an automated low cost mass production baby factory and child raising system. Perhaps what is really lacking is automated teaching, health care and day care systems.
Although I suppose it would be easier to just out source it to a low wage country (surrogacy). If people in a first world country had a choice where they could afford to say raise one child (or none), or send money to a low wage country where they could have say five children raised for them (with their genes and cultural/educational inputs), would some choose to do so? A lot of childless couples could suddenly afford to have children. Unmarried career women/men could have children brought up for them, in a manner they deemed appropriate, importing them when they get a little older. The first world countries would then get a large supply of base educated children. Many immigrant communities already effectively do this – the concept is not new, nor ethically unprecedented.
Well Bob, what does that have to do with reproducing? You know, the point of the post. Many old people can’t work for reasons other than their mental state. But even if you are correct. You either have old people keeping jobs and unemployed young people or you a shortage of young people trying to take care of even MORE old people.
Whatever problems that you imagine you’ll have via population shortages, population disparities, or population growth might be solved by some application of technology (including medicine). We simply don’t know what the future holds, but I’m willing to bet that technological innovation will occur and will make “demography is destiny” predictions look silly.
Considering the impact of technological change is one thing — getting it right is another thing altogether.
Or are we living in “The Jetsons” and I just didn’t notice?
Don’t worry, McGehee — cybermarxism will solve everything. Then won’t you look silly?
Titus, you’re right! From each non-sentient machine according to its abilities, to each machine according to its needs.
Googling, I see that Karl Marx actually did say this: “Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.”
I don’t call such people idlers – I call them free (and retired people and well-to-do people I know tend to be plenty productive). If technological advances enabled the entire human population of earth to consist of the leisure class, free to pursue whatever makes them feel happy and productive, I’d be very happy – wouldn’t you?
Of course the question is if everyone can do what they want, who builds the machines?
Ah, Utopia! Where unicorns shit skittles and Marxist enjoy their leisure lives.
If technological advances enabled the entire human population of earth to consist of the leisure class, free to pursue whatever makes them feel happy and productive, I’d be very happy – wouldn’t you?
Yes, but Bahb, have you observed that this has not happened even one tiny little bit, yet? Ancient Rome had a leisure class in AD 1, and we’ve got one now in AD 2010. Have you noticed that people not in it are not one jot less envious and cross about that fact, even though technological change has ensured that even the most desperately “poor” American lives a life of health, security and ease that would be envy of any Roman Senator from the ancient world?
To feel “at leisure” is to be able to command the labor of others, without yourself doing labor, or not doing very much. By definition that equation doesn’t change with technological advance. The disparity in what my labor is worth and what yours is worth will never change, no matter how roboticized and computerized our economic life gets. To put it crudely, even in the far future when robots do all the heavy work, it will still be the case that I will be much better at programming robots than you, and so 1 hour of my labor will continue to be worth 10 hours of yours. That means I’ll continue to feel at leisure and you’ll continue to feel like a galley slave.
Carl, I completely disagree with you — I know a number of independently wealthy scientists who want nothing more than to be left to their telescopes (or electron microscopes in one case) and computers. They aren’t envious of those richer than themselves, they lead very middle class lives (one of them has a house with two bedrooms for him, his wife, and their daughter). They publish in academic journals (always a hoot to see a home address where a university affiliation would usually go), they are productive members of society, but they vaction when they want, they don’t feel like galley slaves.
Leland, asks ” everyone can do what they want, who builds the machines?”
The answer is that some people like building machines. Many people are particularly interested in machines that can build other machines.
But this is all far afield. My point, which had nothing at all to do with Marxism, was simply that technological innovation (including medicine) should be taken into account when considering the societal effects of lower fertility and/or an aging population. Fewer people may be required for greatly increased productivity, and the aging might be able to just as useful (or more useful) as young people.
Bob-1,
productivity growth rates have been remarkably stable for
quite a while and have even been declining lately. The suspicion is that youth are more likely to create the disruptive innovations that actually foment productivity.
Now something totally unpredictable might happen in the technology realm. We can’t know, that’s why its unpredictable. Or maybe an asteroid will hit, killing us all, and then won’t the demography-is-destiny folks look silly.
The point is that *and then a miracle happens* is a bad way to plan. Miracles do happen, but you don’t know when or how or what effect they’ll have.
In a world where the unexpected happens, the best preparation, it turns out, is people with high personal capital, the more, the better.
Demographics and the redistributionist monster can make the unsustainable more rapid. Technology can influence that too. What neither can do is kill the monster.
The worst thing is, the tipping point is not observable. It’s like the event horizon of a black hole. First you’re outside of it, then you’re not. The gravity at that point can be in a vast range, not just shred your atoms strong. It could even be a bit less than normal euphoric feeling. But you’re still inside and doomed.
The numbers are scary to anyone sane. Bob? Are you scared yet?
The evidence of history is that making people more productive will not reshape the pyramid — it expands proportionally. Thus we have the single greatest wealth ever owned by any person (the height of the pyramid) coupled with the largest poorest population ever (the base). This is indeed facilitated with redistribution — sending money to poor Africans mostly nets you another, much larger, generation of poor Africans.
Humans are prolific, and even if one created the greatest cybertopia, they would still reproduce until resources became strained again (land, if nothing else…), the bottom fills up, the peasants revolt…you know the rest. The game cannot change while humans, especially the poorest are allowed to reproduce unchecked, and since ethical solutions still evade us (tell us how that’s addressed, cybermarxist prophet!), the problem remains.
I became happier about AI when it began reducing the market for lawyers.
Blogger James Nicoll summed up the following article by asking “Is Africa threatened by Peak Poverty?”
African Poverty is Falling…Much Faster than You Think!
Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Maxim Pinkovskiy
NBER Working Paper No. 15775
Issued in February 2010
The conventional wisdom that Africa is not reducing poverty is wrong. Using the methodology of Pinkovskiy and Sala-i-Martin (2009), we estimate income distributions, poverty rates, and inequality and welfare indices for African countries for the period 1970-2006. We show that: (1) African poverty is falling and is falling rapidly; (2) if present trends continue, the poverty Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people with incomes less than one dollar a day will be achieved on time; (3) the growth spurt that began in 1995 decreased African income inequality instead of increasing it; (4) African poverty reduction is remarkably general: it cannot be explained by a large country, or even by a single set of countries possessing some beneficial geographical or historical characteristic. All classes of countries, including those with disadvantageous geography and history, experience reductions in poverty. In particular, poverty fell for both landlocked as well as coastal countries; for mineral-rich as well as mineral-poor countries; for countries with favorable or with unfavorable agriculture; for countries regardless of colonial origin; and for countries with below- or above-median slave exports per capita during the African slave trade.
http://www.columbia.edu/~xs23/papers/pdfs/Africa_Paper_VX3.2.pdf
It’s not far afield to point out that at some point, somebody will be tasked with doing the unpleasant work. What is far afield is assuming the issues is as simple as people wanting to do the fun stuff, and hoping, as MrMandias puts it, that some miracle happens. The miracle in this case is the “singularity” in which the AI of machines take over, and they happily go forward to: pick up the trash left be leisure humans, build telescopes for leisure humans, build printing presses for leisure humans, refine the ink for leisure humans, dig the quarries for leisure humans, and cook the meals for the leisure humans.
The reality is that societies that have become overly leisurely (such as much of mainland Western Europe), bring in immigrants to do their dirty work for low wages. They encourage migration by promising a great future after a time of servitude. The problem is that great future is not so great. Eventually, the nation ends up like Greece, where the guarantors can no longer deliver the promised future. At that point, civil war breaks out. And this shouldn’t be surprising, because the history of mankind replays this scenario over and over; particular so in Europe.
Machines are doing more and more of the unpleasant work — no miraculous singularity is necessary for this trend to continue. Leland, look at your examples: telescopes — do you think everyone grinds lenses by hand? Printing presses — the very example suggests automation, no? Printing presses aren’t yet themselves printed, but they soon will be. Ink — do you think ink is made by hand, maybe by squeezing berries and octopus guts? Quarries – yes, lets have a bunch of migrant workers use shovels. Once again: I think this blog is a particularly strange place to have point out that technology needs to be considered when predicting the future.
In other words: see Rand’s arguments for why Peak Oil is silly.
And what of Bob’s research in Africa:
if present trends continue, the poverty Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people with incomes less than one dollar a day will be achieved on time;
The value of the dollar is in decline. It’s not very hard to improve income to $1 a day, when the value of that dollar is less. Quantitative Easing is printing more dollars for the purposes of devaluing debt. This makes more dollars available for everyone to earn, but lowers the purchasing price of each dollar. If you actually read the MDG goals, the point of $1 a day is to build purchasing power parity. That doesn’t happen when the value of the dollar goes down. In fact this can be understood by the second point made:
the growth spurt that began in 1995 decreased African income inequality instead of increasing it
This is a bad economic assumption made by the writer; but in simple terms, it is correct. The more you have of something, in this case Africans, the less they are valued (income decreases). The reason this is a bad economic assumption is that each African represents potential growth in the economy. See African’s aren’t about to build human replacing robots to do the work for them. But with more people to do work, they can improve their economic condition.
But all of what is written in Bob’s link is shot to hell with this statement:
African poverty reduction is remarkably general: it cannot be explained by a large country, or even by a single set of countries possessing some beneficial geographical or historical characteristic.
This is a qualifier statement that says “my numbers are good, so long as you don’t look at standardized performance, but rather consider poverty to be different for each individual local.” The problem with that statement is: MDG is a standardized measure for improving poverty. When you change the standard to mean something less; then it is very easy to write an essay saying that your meeting the goal faster.
The paper used constant dollars.
The paper used constant dollars.
Yep. And obviously that constant is not 2015 or 2020 value, because we don’t know what that value is. To say poverty in Africa is improving because people in Africa are making more than $1 a day in 2000 dollar values is ludicrous. The fact that more people are getting closer to earning the value of a dollar in 2000 tells us nothing about whether the purchasing parity power (the actual standard MDG uses) is actually improved. Again, if you change the standard, by lowering it, then it is very easy to say things are getting better.
Re Bob and his incredible machines… Once again, reading comprehension is a problem for Bob. For example, yes printing presses suggest automation. Printing presses are a machine. As I said earlier, for which I was told I was “far afield”, who is building the machine (i.e. printing press). To say that printing presses are automated ignores the fact that they had to come from somewhere. Same with telescope lenses, sure a machine may grind the lense, but who is operating the machine? Who loads it with the glass? Who made the glass? How did the glass get from its manufacturing location (aside: manufacturing may suggest automation, but that’s not what manufacturing means) to the telescope manufacturing location?
Finally:
Once again: I think this blog is a particularly strange place to have point out that technology needs to be considered when predicting the future.
It’s not that people aren’t considering technology. It’s that none of us believe technology is some panacea that will eventually solve all the worlds ills and result in utopia. The point about Peak Oil is that a new solution for energy will be utilized before we run out of oil. We know we are not at peak oil because no one is seriously utilizing the alternate energy sources. No, the Chevy Volt is not serious and neither is the Prius. Texas wind generation is a bit more serious, but until a better system of energy storage is developed, it is not a replacement for stored potential energy in oil. Nuclear power would be better, but go back to my point that its not seriously being utilized. Then ethanol is actually generating more problems with famine than it is solving the energy problem. So we see that hybrid/battery cars, wind power, nuclear energy, and ethanol have not resulted in the panacea that people like Bob are predicting.
I thought Rand’s argument about Peak Oil was that technological innovation will allow us to keep getting better at finding and extracting oil. Not sure where techniques like thermal depolymerization fit in, but the point is: no peak oil even if we keep using oil.
You seem to have missed my point about printing presses will themselves be printed. Also: as for how people with time on their hands choose to spend it, free open-source projects like Gimp and Inkscape (alternatives to Adobe’s expensive Photoshop and Illustrator) must really blow your mind.
You seem to have missed my point about printing presses will themselves be printed.
You seemed to miss my point about unicorns shitting skittles. Or if you prefer MrMandias’ “and then some miracle happens”.
(something Bob likes but otherwise nobody else cares about) must really blow your mind.
I’m sure free candy makes you happy. I have no doubt that it would. What might blow your mind even more is that the images you are manipulating (there’s that sense of automation that fails to understand the word being used) were taken by a camera operated by a person, built by a person, maintained by a person, but most importantly cost money because those other people want their fair share. But hey, enjoy the free candy, because that means utopia is almost here! The unicorns will make more.
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/05/what_happened_t.html
Ah yes… SQUIRREL!
Carl, I completely disagree with you — I know a number of independently wealthy scientists who want nothing more than to be left to their telescopes
You missed the point, Bob. The key here is that phrase “independently wealthy.” What does that mean? You need to think this out very carefully to see the point.
What being “wealthy” means, in practical terms, divorced from accounting irrelevancies like the number of zeros in your bank account, is simply this: you can command the labor of other people without exchanging your own labor in return, or at least with exchanging very little of it.
For example, your “independently wealthy” scientist needs to eat, needs a place to sleep, needs the latest telescope with which to pursue his hobby. Other people need to labor to provide him with those things. Ordinarily, the scientist can acquire their labor by offering to exchange his own. He works hard at discovering cool things about the cosmos and someone pays him for that. The medium of exchange isn’t important — he can be paid in dollars, yen, Galactic credits, or chickens. Whatever it is, it represents a labor IOU others will redeem — he can use his stored dollars, yen, Galactic credits or chickens to acquire the labor of others he needs.
Now pay attention. Here’s the critical point: not everyone’s labor is equally generally valued. 1 hour of the scientist’s labor might buy 10 hours of a plumber’s or lensgrinder’s labor. Or it might be the other way around.
And what determines whether the scientist feels wealthy? It is exactly the relative value of his own labor. If he can exchange 1 hour of his labor for 10 hours of a plumber’s, then he feels wealthy relative to the plumber, and by any reasonable definition, he is.
Now if your scientist is “independently wealthy,” then what that implies is that he needn’t work at all to acquire the labor of others. The value of his labor has risen (or at some point in the past rose) so much higher than everybody else’s that he can afford to offer almost none of it now to acquire hours and hours of everybody else’s labor.
The only way your “technological advance” could change this fundamental equation is if everyone’s labor becomes equally valuable and nearly infinite in value. Your problem in understanding my points is you are focussed on the average value of labor, and saying my gosh, technology could increase that enormously! Yes it could, Bob, but in fact it’s the differences between the value of different people’s labor that cause us to feel “rich” and “poor” — not the average value of labor overall. That is why a trailer-park striver in Mississippi today feels “poorer” than a wealthy Roman Senator of 1 AD, although by any objective standards that is ridiculous.
Imagine, say, a future in which anything you want can be had merely for the asking — powerful Obots will search out the raw materials on distant planets and manufacture it to spec using solar energy and unicorn piss.
Ah ha, but consider this: every person is not going to be equally adept at asking for what he wants. One person might have a talent for phrasing the commands in such a way that the magic Obots understand better, are more likely to deliver precisely what is wanted, rather than something close. (Geez! If I’d wanted my new car in puke green, I would have said so! I’ve always had a blue car! How was I supposed to know the new default was this awful shade?)
That lucky person might well start selling his services, of course. Hey, if you organize my car collection and polish the Rolls, I’ll order your next 10 cars for you, make sure you get exactly what you want. Both parties will be better off by this transaction — and away we go. Sooner or later the fact that X can labor for 10 minutes, forming perfect requests for the Obots, and gain 3 hours of his less gifted neighbor Y‘s labor, will make X feel rich compared to Y. And by any reasonable definition, he is.
So technological progress will never erase the distinction between rich and poor, by the only important definition, which is how people feel at the time.
So that Bob isn’t still confused…
if you organize my car collection and polish the Rolls
Y’s labor in this case would be telling the Obots to polish the Rolls, which means X can spend his more valuable labor on specifying other Obots tasks.
It doesn’t affect your argument, but Carl I have one nit…
Now if your scientist is “independently wealthy,” then what that implies is that he needn’t work at all to acquire the labor of others. The value of his labor has risen (or at some point in the past rose) so much higher than everybody else’s that he can afford to offer almost none of it now to acquire hours and hours of everybody else’s labor.
…and I wouldn’t have noticed it at all except Sowell hits the point pretty hard. Which is that your scientist can become independently wealthy (one state) without his labor value (another state) being particularly great. As a matter of fact, when he does become independent his labor value may be lower that those he can now employ. This is the fallacy of class in that people move through these classes rather than being a part of them.
Bob, when enough people say you aren’t seeing reality, shouldn’t you at least question your fantasy? When people tell me I’m wrong I am greatly appreciative regardless of what the truth turns out to be. The reason? Everybody is wrong about some things and it’s a favor when others help you find those things you would not tend to question of yourself. Take advantage.