[ExI] The Catholic Impact (was Re: Origin of ethics and morals)

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2011-12-22 13:15, Stefano Vaj wrote:
> On 22 December 2011 11:02, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se
>
>     I'm not entirely convinced. The US has been the main site of
>     technological innovation for a long time, yet it has fairly cheap
>     manpower and a not very communitarian environment. Certainly
>     Scandinavia and Japan have been high-tech (expensive manpower and a
>     communitarian environment), but it seems that the availability of
>     capital in the US has been a far more deciding factor.
>
> This is not a religious dogma for me, so I am ready to review my opinion
> on the subject, but the typical examples of technological stagnation and
> final fall of slavery-based economies would be the Roman Empire, the
> Confederation in the American Civil War and Banana Republics in Latin
> America. The typical examples of higher productivity and growth rate in
> countries with relatively very highly paid manpower would be in fact
> Germany and Japan - not to mention Northern Italy, at least for a while.

Slavery economies have the problem that the leaders lack the incentive 
to innovate, the rigid structure makes entrepreneurship hard, and the 
human capital of the rest of the population is used very inefficiently 
(since it is hard to get creative output on command). This remains true 
even if the system is not direct slavery: rigid, protectionist systems 
where citizens have no opportunity to do things for themselves will also 
tend to stagnate.

The problem with many developed countries is that they have too well 
developed institutions: a strong civil society that gives a high level 
of trust but embodies plenty of unwritten rules, many regulations and 
stakeholders (both sensible and not) that affect projects and 
entrepreneurship, and a high overall level of complexity that requires a 
lot of education to deal with. These factors generally produce useful 
results - trust, safety, efficiency - but also keep many people out 
(those lacking resources, education or have the wrong culture or social 
skills). In a sense they are victims of their own success.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that they naturally must collapse due to 
this. But it would behoove us to figure out new ways of maintaining the 
flexibility of developed societies - especially since if our 
transhumanist visions are even halfway coming real the complexity factor 
is going to go way up.


-- 
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford University