[ExI] Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit

[Mirco Romanato]

Il 19/06/2012 00:16, Anders Sandberg ha scritto:

> It completely misses the possibility that past expectations about the
> *direction* of technology was wrong. The old future was all
> macro-technology: spacecraft, fusion, flying cars and soaring buildings.
> But what we got was micro-technology: biotech, computers, Internet,
> nanotechnology. This is important and powerful stuff, yet it is
> dismissed as mere simulation.

In fact, as Asimov noted long ago, no one foresaw the fax machine in the 
'40 or '50 before its introduction.

The problem with the foresighted technologies was lack of market demand, 
both for genuine lack of it and for government meddling.

The simple fact drug research have moved from Europe to US and now from 
US to China is indicative of a problem first in Europe and then in US. 
If an entire industry need to move to find a place good enough to be 
able to work and earn a profit, there is something wrong.

In Italy, the great stagnation coincided with the raising of the tax 
burden, increase of the government share of GDP, increase of 
regulations, increase of people with invalidity checks (often blatantly 
false), increase of the number of regulatory bodies and city controlled 
enterprises (needed to find a job or give a check to the politicians out 
of their elected positions).

In the end, the market was slowly choked by the governments.
No market, no competition for the clients money, no innovations to 
obtain edges against the competition. I just said politicians hate 
competitions? Just look at the situation in Italy and Greece, both the 
traditional left and right parties are together to support a banker as 
prime minister or to submit the government to the bankers. The were all 
against each other on stage, but in the background they eat the same 
pork and go tot he same restaurant. Now, when the time are hard (for 
them) they show they are one and the same.

> I think the article meshes nicely with Tyle Cowen's "The Great
> Stagnation" and Thiel's worries. I do think we have a problem. But I
> don't think the diagnosis is right. The reason we don't have anti-gravity
> shoes is not that we academics spend too much time writing grant
> proposals.

The problem, paraphrasing Lenin, is not who write the grant proposal but 
who read them: bureaucrats (maybe with outstanding credentials for 
science and technology). The first feature of bureaucrats is to not 
question authority, the second is to never ever take risks unneeded.

> It is because we have no clue how to do it.

If people write requests for grants for researches that don't "rock the 
boat" of the examiners, it is improbable they will clues enough to find 
the bathroom. In the end, the people asking for grants are committed in 
living inside a group. So they must abide to the rules, written and 
unwritten, if they want stay there. This breed uniformity,

> Bureaucracy and
> risk aversion *are* problems, but they are hardly due to capitalism -
> just check the distribution of uncertainty avoidance as per Hofstede in
> the world and cross-correlate with economic freedom.

In fact, stagnation is about the government taking over of vast parts of 
economy, education, research, health care, pension funds and whatever 
and meddling, meddling, meddling. All of them are going to hell in a 
basket case. Someone faster, someone slower, someone first, someone after.

> I think Tyler Cowen gets closer to the point. We have picked all the
> low-hanging fruit,

The problem is we picked up all the hanging fruits and stopped to climb.
There are no more low-hanging fruits because we just stopped to climb.
Truly, climbing with a 400 lbs pig on the neck is not easy nor fast.

Mirco