when I read a productivity-doomer article like this, I become contrarian and kinda wish AGI does come online soon and free us from the misery of flesh.
>In 1898, as the United Kingdom joined other powers in carving up the once mighty Qing empire, British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury warned a London audience that the world was dividing into “living” and “dying” nations. The living were the rising powers of the industrial age—states with growing populations, transformative technologies, and militaries of unprecedented range and firepower. The dying were stagnant empires, crippled by corruption, clinging to obsolete methods, and sliding toward ruin. Salisbury feared that the ascent of some, colliding with the decline of others, would hurl the world into catastrophic conflict.
>Now, that era of power transitions is ending. For the first time in centuries, no country is rising fast enough to overturn the global balance. The demographic booms, industrial breakthroughs, and territorial acquisitions that once fueled great powers have largely run their course. China, the last major riser, is already peaking, its economy slowing and its population shrinking. Japan, Russia, and Europe stalled more than a decade ago. India has youth but lacks the human capital and state capacity to turn it into strength. The United States faces its own troubles—debt, sluggish growth, political dysfunction—but still outpaces rivals sinking into deeper decay. The rapid ascents that once defined modern geopolitics have yielded to sclerosis: the world is now a closed club of aging incumbents, circled by middle powers, developing countries, and failing states
Aware-Computer4550 on
Is this what happened to the Marvel MCU movies also
SenranHaruka on
The part about technology speaks to me because it’s increasingly feeling like Smartphones were the last truly great invention and that after them there’s basically nothing else. We finished the tech tree and are now just repeating “future technology” over and over, getting some new disease cures which is great but like, trains are still the same speed they were in 1980 as the article says. Moore’s Law is dying. “Everything has already been invented” feels like such an inherently pompous thing to say so I wont’t say it, but let’s be realistic here. There’s never going to be FTL travel, there’s never going to be flying cars or space elevators, there’s never going to be actual AGI, and what possible computer innovation could be remotely more convenient than your smartphone? Invention is gonna just look different from now on, the list of deadly or even just inconvenient chronics and diseases will keep slowly shrinking but few aspects of your daily life will change.
mockduckcompanion on
> Over the next decade, it fought two of the three longest wars in its history, **costing hundreds of thousands of lives**, including those of thousands of Americans
I really hate this framing. A war “costs,” the lives of *your* people.
Everyone else who dies isn’t a “cost,” especially when the “hundreds of thousands” in question are largely innocent Iraqi civilians
WilliamLiuEconomics on
There are so many basic economics errors made in this article that I was actually surprised at the article length and how the author is a social sciences professor.
> MICHAEL BECKLEY is Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, Director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
I think the error that stood out most to me for its egregiousness was this one, where the author just straight up confuses absolute and relative numbers:
> And a withering workforce is shrinking the government’s revenue base: tax receipts have fallen from 18.5 percent of GDP in 2014 to under 14 percent in 2022
Honestly, it’s kinda bizarre to me how many non-economists enthusiastically write econbabble.
ConnectAd9099 on
“The 2020s have been harsher still. India is the only major economy still keeping pace with the United States. From 2020 to 2024, China’s GDP fell from 70 to 64 percent of U.S. GDP. Japan’s plunged from 22 to 14 percent. The economies of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all slid further, while Russia’s is sputtering after a brief wartime bump. The combined economies of the countries of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia have also shrunk—from about 90 percent of U.S. GDP a decade ago to just 70 percent in 2023. “The rise of the rest” has not merely slowed; it is reversing.”
9 Comments
when I read a productivity-doomer article like this, I become contrarian and kinda wish AGI does come online soon and free us from the misery of flesh.
as always, everything is decaying into weird slop
https://preview.redd.it/gtom7t7vwfwf1.jpeg?width=622&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f0e49c51c4e4931cf53589f51700e539c3a3dfc5
This is like the heat death of History
>In 1898, as the United Kingdom joined other powers in carving up the once mighty Qing empire, British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury warned a London audience that the world was dividing into “living” and “dying” nations. The living were the rising powers of the industrial age—states with growing populations, transformative technologies, and militaries of unprecedented range and firepower. The dying were stagnant empires, crippled by corruption, clinging to obsolete methods, and sliding toward ruin. Salisbury feared that the ascent of some, colliding with the decline of others, would hurl the world into catastrophic conflict.
>Now, that era of power transitions is ending. For the first time in centuries, no country is rising fast enough to overturn the global balance. The demographic booms, industrial breakthroughs, and territorial acquisitions that once fueled great powers have largely run their course. China, the last major riser, is already peaking, its economy slowing and its population shrinking. Japan, Russia, and Europe stalled more than a decade ago. India has youth but lacks the human capital and state capacity to turn it into strength. The United States faces its own troubles—debt, sluggish growth, political dysfunction—but still outpaces rivals sinking into deeper decay. The rapid ascents that once defined modern geopolitics have yielded to sclerosis: the world is now a closed club of aging incumbents, circled by middle powers, developing countries, and failing states
Is this what happened to the Marvel MCU movies also
The part about technology speaks to me because it’s increasingly feeling like Smartphones were the last truly great invention and that after them there’s basically nothing else. We finished the tech tree and are now just repeating “future technology” over and over, getting some new disease cures which is great but like, trains are still the same speed they were in 1980 as the article says. Moore’s Law is dying. “Everything has already been invented” feels like such an inherently pompous thing to say so I wont’t say it, but let’s be realistic here. There’s never going to be FTL travel, there’s never going to be flying cars or space elevators, there’s never going to be actual AGI, and what possible computer innovation could be remotely more convenient than your smartphone? Invention is gonna just look different from now on, the list of deadly or even just inconvenient chronics and diseases will keep slowly shrinking but few aspects of your daily life will change.
> Over the next decade, it fought two of the three longest wars in its history, **costing hundreds of thousands of lives**, including those of thousands of Americans
I really hate this framing. A war “costs,” the lives of *your* people.
Everyone else who dies isn’t a “cost,” especially when the “hundreds of thousands” in question are largely innocent Iraqi civilians
There are so many basic economics errors made in this article that I was actually surprised at the article length and how the author is a social sciences professor.
> MICHAEL BECKLEY is Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, Director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
I think the error that stood out most to me for its egregiousness was this one, where the author just straight up confuses absolute and relative numbers:
> And a withering workforce is shrinking the government’s revenue base: tax receipts have fallen from 18.5 percent of GDP in 2014 to under 14 percent in 2022
Honestly, it’s kinda bizarre to me how many non-economists enthusiastically write econbabble.
“The 2020s have been harsher still. India is the only major economy still keeping pace with the United States. From 2020 to 2024, China’s GDP fell from 70 to 64 percent of U.S. GDP. Japan’s plunged from 22 to 14 percent. The economies of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all slid further, while Russia’s is sputtering after a brief wartime bump. The combined economies of the countries of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia have also shrunk—from about 90 percent of U.S. GDP a decade ago to just 70 percent in 2023. “The rise of the rest” has not merely slowed; it is reversing.”
Thanks Biden