I used to be a big Human Progress guy — published my first humanprogress.org story over six years ago, and I was miiiightily proud when I did. In total, I count 25 articles for that outlet, and they get progressively less optimistic as time goes on... and more time in between. I just can't make myself write positively about the world's development.
Not sure if it's because I can't see it, or because there is less of it than there used to be, or because there are so many more backlashes these days that the raw-raw improvements chanting rings more hollow than it used to. (Or, @siggy47..., I just got old and jaded in the meantime?!) (update: COVID and the betrayal of the elites...? fall of institutions, etc.)
I keep thinking about that interview I did with Knut Svanholm last year (#1236935)
JB: What gives you hope? Where do you see the light? I don’t think the future is dark — it’s bright af — but the more you look out into fiatland, the worse things look.
Knut: That’s because the future isn’t in fiat — it’s in Bitcoin. The future is bitcoin. It’s definitely this “Which Way, Western Man” meme. Either we’re in a world where everyone cooperates — like [Jeff] Booth says, eight billion people in service of eight billion people — or we’re going further down totalitarian oppression, darker and darker.
"If we didn’t have Bitcoin, I’d be much less hopeful for the future.""If we didn’t have Bitcoin, I’d be much less hopeful for the future."
Exactly. And bitcoin isn't in the stories and numbers out there about how the world is getting better, so looking out there I'm left with all the ways in which the world is getting worse. And that's kind of sad.
A humanprogress friend of mine reached out today and told me about the TEDx lecture he just gave. Amazing, I said, and read the transcript he shared. I'm happy for his success and his enthusiasm... but immediately couldn't help myself starting to see major holes in the story. I wrote down some reflections, and then decided to share them with the schtackers too:
TL;DR: the meaningful improvements are old and long-since incorporated in our expectations, the current improvements (if any) are minor, pretty invisible, and completely dominated by other, more pressing matters.TL;DR: the meaningful improvements are old and long-since incorporated in our expectations, the current improvements (if any) are minor, pretty invisible, and completely dominated by other, more pressing matters.
- A lot of these improvements are old: as in, they didn't happen in the last 5, 10, or 20 years, the bulk of the benefits that humanprogress types (Pinker, Tupy, Pooley, Crawford etc) invoke lay a generation or more back. What we have now (certainly in the West) isn't obviously, undeniably better than, say, 2006 — with other issues pressing on us, making the previous achievements/stagnating economic growth less impressive.
As it so were, I have precisely a humanprogress story about that from a few years back... it's a backhanded compliment/nod, and you can read between the lines that I'm not really too convinced by my own argument:
“Take away styles and fashion—and the computer screens,” said mathematician Eric Weinstein in a recent interview, “how do you know you’re not in 1973?”
The observation is classic for pointing to the slowing down of inventions that radically improve our lives. It does carry some punch: at least in the West, most major improvements over recent decades seem to have happened through computers and what their screens have allowed us to do—communication, internet, streaming, and globally expanding supply chains.
Point taken... progress, in the sense of meaningful improvement, used to be explosive:
From flush toilets to radios to refrigerators to TVs and microwaves, it took only a few decades for these technologies to become used by everyone. A world with these household appliances is incomparably different from one without them.
While planes haven’t gotten faster in the past 50 years, they’ve become much safer, much more affordable, and (government regulations and TSA hassle aside) more convenient.
Yeah, we don't have that anymore -- other than smartphone adoption, social media, Netflix subscriptions, and ChatGPT use... and the jury is DEF out on whether those are life-improving _progress_ for humans.
- The benefits of life expectancy is medical and mostly from childhood, a one-off gain; once you're at Iceland/Slovenia/Norway level, an infant mortality rate of 2 (per 1,000 births), there just isn't much more improvement to be had. And at the other end of the life cycle, lots of the expended life span isn't health span, but maintaining pretty painful (and frankly useless) life in old age — hashtag, bash the boomers (sry, couldn't resist; boomers must be bashed).
- on the contrary, the West suffers from crises of meaning and sustenance, of mental health, manifesting most obviously in collapsing fertility and labor force participations (clip I saw recently: "you know how much you need to brainwash a population to NOT want to reproduce?"); of public and private indeptedness; of societal insecurities (war, immigration, trust, fabric of society; U.S.-specific, opioid epidemic and homelessness).
Even if, and these are big ifs, we had real economic growth and better command over economic resources of ~2% or whatever, most people in most places at most times would part ways with that largely invisible gain in order to rid us of some of these other, very visible ills. - The numbers just suck: some of the figures that e.g., Marian and Chelsea at HP churn out (e.g., cost of a Thanksgiving dinner adjusted by a median wage) are
a) hypersensitive to the exact price index used (and the result flips if you use e.g., money supply or Alchien-style, incorporate moving-value-to-the-future into the basket)
b) not felt by most people, wage gains concentrating in the already well-off segments,
c) completely dwarfed by losses elsewhere, see money/savings/stocks/housing.
That last point I don't have to belabor for an SN audience.
- cheap airfare with Ryanair or Easyjet to Spain is kind of immaterial when taxes, public sector, and inflation bleed you dry. The impressive improvements in tech and human welfare in the last 20 years are digital and in communication, and the jury is still out on whether Netflix to the masses and social media was, on net, a good or bad thing for humanity.
Perfect illustration (from recent tweet)
Chelsea thinks this is an obvious win — because, look at the graph, down and to the right! — except that it (=working hours) hasn't been falling or trending down for about 20 years. (And the outlier of Germany isn't a case in your favor... it's taxes, regulations, and self-imposed energy expenses making work less possible or profitable, and a cushy welfare state/disability benefits making people opt out.)
Maybe we have the ability or conditions for progress in the West (...not Europe), but we spend our time and tech and resources hypnotizing one another and trying to sell ads, or fucking around with financialization efforts that routinely blow up in our faces or enforcing self-imposed energy restraints to placate climate doomerism.
I am, on a daily basis, acutely aware of many ways in which life is shockingly different from when I was a child. They more or less all have to do with availability of information.
I could keep going on. These may seem like small changes in convenience rather than real progress, but I think that humans have hugely revolutionized the way the world is organized by making information massively more available. This progress will continue.
Very very good summary, nice examples for the pro case <3
Hm... Actually thought about this some more. These are trivial in comparison (specifically the airbnb/Uber which is just a slightly different flavor of the same thing... Increasingly worse with woke/annoying/dominating hosts too).
The recipe, fair, and generations past had to do more cognitive work to organize/save/keep things — my mother still has a library of recipes the size of a small house, knows where they all are.
Same with maps; we had to know and remember opening hours and recall how and where to go.
With these new tech, we're relieved of some unnecessary that cognitive workload... but are you telling me that the difference/improvement in standard of living or the way we can enjoy life is even remotely in the same ballpark as electricity, refrigeration, internal combustion engine etc etc?
Update: aaah, the meme!
I misread that last one as landmine. I need new glasses. 😆
which word did you read as landmine?!
landline
OF COURSE; hahah omg
I've heard that one before:
Fuuuunnny...
Do you think that's a fair comparison? Screens Vs Sanitation/wine/roads blahblahblah
No, there's more truth in there. That clip just came to mind.
But I suspect there's plenty we don't give enough credit for.
Seems like you basically pointed out the issues? No question in my mind that Cantillonization of the economy is one of the big factors. Heap on top of that a healthy layer of Malthusianism and Cultural Nihilism and you get the modern western youth
ok, fine, but I'm left with wondering WHYYYY?!
Like, how did this happen and why do we choose those bad things... unforced errors
From my understanding, the marxism was literally a soviet strategy from decades ago, still playing out in western schools today, and taking ourselves off the gold standard was because we needed to fund our wars bro.
Consensus collapse
It might be that the main way things are getting worse is just that people believe things are getting worse.
or that they aren't getting better in flashy way? (dude, where's my flying car?)
The entertainment we take for granted is pretty damn flashy compared to what they had 50 years ago
All problems are coordination problems. When the systems through which consensus emerges fail no new problems are solvable. This has a ratcheting effect until new consensus mechanisms emerge and dominate, creating periods of stability. It doesn't matter how wealthy we are or how productive the mean employee is, because the structures created to solve past problems cannot foresee or account for the problems that emerge subsequently, either by themselves or from the very success of historical systems (e.g. social media, so called "first world problems).
When people cannot imagine viable solutions to intractable or wicked problems because it's impossible for consensus to form around them they feel increasingly impoverished and pessimistic. In the west we imagine solutions coming from rugged individualism, and the beauty of bitcoin is that is that it solved a collective a problem, a problem with the commons, through rugged individualism and self interest, but that is rare. Most problems aren't like that.
The west has lost its sense of unity and purpose.
Why?
Because the wealth it built has created a sense of entitlement and selfishness.
This amoral materialist selfishness is codified in the neoliberal markets rule approach which has risen to dominate political and economic thought and action over the last 50 years.
The neoliberal markets rule approach argues there is no such thing as 'society' (Thatcher) and that we must all be individuals acting out of self interest to maximise overall productivity.
This has lead to much greater inequality and the decline of government involvement in the economy - what were formerly recognised as strategic assets, to be managed for the overall benefit of the nation have been transferred to private purely profit motivated hands.
To given example, here in New Zealand power generation and distribution was privatised into the hands of four major generators. What they have done is to reduce investment in new power generation and raised prices to maximise profits. This imposes higher costs on all consumers and businesses- but its great for the shareholders of the power generators. Because the generators also own most of the retail market for electricity they are making huge profits and face no incentive to increase generation.
There are many other examples of this failure of neoliberal 'trust in markets' and they have resulted in western productivity especially in manufacturing to decline significantly in comparison to China where a mixed model has been employed- where strategic elements in the productive economy are carefully managed and developed with the primary objective to make China as a whole more competitive against other competing economies.
As a result China has won the trade war- it pays more for commodity inputs and sells manufactured goods for less than western manufacturers.
The neoliberal mythology is now so deeply embedded in the western narrative the concept of a collective purpose and directed strategic economy approach has almost disappeared.
Trumps 'reshoring' and tariffs are a belatedly effort to reverse this dangerous decline in western manufacturing competitiveness but at best only scratch the surface of the systemic changes needed.
China now has a massive lead in productive efficiency.
It is leading or close to leading most of the high tech areas crucial to the post industrial economy.
Yet still most western economists remain blinded by their neoliberal narrative of free markets and less government are all you need.
Sadly the neoliberal narrative is one that is fundamentally flawed and over simplifies what builds strong markets and strong economies.
The truth is a combination of factors are involved including culture, government and market structures.
https://twiiit.com/chellivia/status/2043896443883163902