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"The long boom" predicted growth that "could eventually double the world's economy every dozen years". Okay. Consider 30 shekels--a trifle--invested wisely some 2,000 years ago; with doubling every 12 years and assuming my math is aright that's
SBCL> (* 30 (EXPT 2 (/ 2000 12d0))) 4.454379334180428d51
or a value that outstrips a claimed value of the present day global economy by some 38 orders of magnitude. For comparison, the mass of the Sun dwarfs that of Earth by a piddly six orders of magnitude, and the Sun accounts for roughly 99.8% of the mass of the solar system.
So. Question. How is the world economy going to double every 12 years and sustain that? One could quote Professor Al Bartlett who began his one-hour talk with the statement, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." And if one tells only of the boom one might miss the busts and the benefits going mostly to those not less equal than others. How fares the rest of this story?
> Around 2012, a gene therapy for cancer is perfected. Five years later, almost one-third of the 4,000 known genetic diseases can be avoided through genetic manipulation.
Nope.
> The health care system...continues restructuring along the more decentralized, privatized model...The industry becomes a big jobs provider for years to come.
Maybe? But health care in America runs along the lines of be rich or don't get sick.
> The biotech revolution profoundly affects...agriculture. By about 2005, animals are used for developing organs that can be donated to humans.
Nope.
> By 2018, these micromachines are able to do basic cell repair.
Nope.
> By about 2015, nanotech techniques begin to be applied to the development of computing at the atomic level.
Nope.
> By 2010, hydrogen is being processed in refinery-like plants and loaded onto cars that can go thousands of miles
Nope.
> ... but they will be clean fossil fuels. By 2020, almost all new cars are hybrid vehicles, mostly using hydrogen power.
Nope.
One might wonder how "building similarly vast networks" for what sounds like some Carbon to Hydrogen scheme would magically make fossil fuels clean.
> Japan has watched the United States crack the formula for success in the networked economy and begins to adopt the model in earnest. In 2000, it radically liberalizes
Nope.
Lessons from history--the French Revolution, for example--might point to radical changes not always being the best of ideas.
> By about 2005, the mainland Chinese decide to capitalize on this by formalizing the Chinese diaspora. Though the entity has no legal status vis-a-vis other governments, it has substantial economic clout. That date also marks the absorption of Taiwan into China proper.
Nope.
> By 2020, the Chinese economy has grown to be the largest in the world.
Almost!
> In the space of one full 80-year life span, Asia has gone from almost uninterrupted poverty to widespread wealth.
There have been improvements here. And quite a lot of new coal plants.
> Next the more advanced of the eastern European countries--Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic--get integrated, first into NATO, with formal acceptance in 2000, and then into the European Union in 2002.
Pretty close, 2004.
> By about 2005, Europe--particularly in the northern countries like Germany--even has the beginnings of a serious labor shortage as aging populations begin to retire.
This one needs more research. But I do not recall Europe radically restructuring its corporations and govenments along American lines, for better or worse.
> For 15 years, Russia had been stumbling along in its transition to a capitalist economy, periodically frightening the West with overtures that it might return to its old militaristic ways. But after almost two decades of wide-open Mafia-style capitalism, Russia emerges in about 2005 with the basic underpinnings of a solid economy.
Nope.
> By 2005, the world economic growth rate hits an astounding 6 percent
Pretty close, 5% by one dataset, though one might wonder how much of that number was real estate shenanigans or other such fintech chicanery, and what the biosphere cost for all that growth was. Or not.
> By about 2002, an All American Free Trade Agreement is signed--integrating the entire hemisphere into one unified market.
Nope.
> The Middle East, meanwhile, enters crisis.
Plausible. They might have weapons of mass destruction, or anyways something we need to go look at. With bombs.
> The advent of hydrogen power clearly undermines the centrality of oil in the world economy. By 2008, with the auto industry in a mad dash to convert, the bottom falls out of the oil market.
Nope.
And wasn't the oil supposed to be part of a vast new infrastructure for "clean fossil fuels" not too many words ago?
> An even more disturbing crisis hits Africa... In 2015 the introduction of biological weapons...
Not really. I mean Africa could be doing better, but there hasn't been any weapons of mass destruction--maybe those got moved to Iraq?--and humanity isn't exactly singing kumbaya.
> By about 2000, the United States economy is doing so well that the tax coffers begin to swell. This not only solves the deficit problem but ...
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
> Vast numbers of welfare recipients do get jobs, and the great majority eventually move up to more skilled professions. By 2002, the end of the initial five-year transitional period, welfare rolls are cut by more than half.
Nope.
> Beginning around 2001, the widespread use of vouchers triggers a rapid expansion in these types of schools and spurs an entrepreneurial market for education reminiscent of the can-do ethos of Silicon Valley.
Plausible, though voucher programs and other such expansions of private education haven't exactly been all sunshine.
And who would want rational, educated citizens? They make terrible consumers.
> By 2020, the great cross-fertilization of ideas, the never-ending planetary conversation, has begun.
Along with people screaming at one another on Twitter, teens with brain damage from too much Instagram, etc.
And a safe bet is that the coversation ends at some point.
> The excitement spreads far beyond private schools, which by 2010 are teaching about a quarter of all students
Nope.
> Around 2010, all new books come out in electronic form. By 2015, relatively complete virtual libraries are up and running.
"All" is a pretty strong claim; one author with a single non-electronic release would suffice to shoot it down. Maybe had there been an editor to say, hey, Peter, you know what the word "all" means, right?
Google meanwhile did scan a lot of books, and then there were lawsuits, and what of the books? There might be some inequality in the distribution and access to such. And perhaps the growth of e-books isn't (as usual) quite so exponential as claimed.
> In the first decade of the century, Washington finally begins to really reinvent government. It's much the same process as the reengineering of corporations in the 1990s. The hierarchical bureaucracies of the 20th century are flattened and networked through the widespread adoption of new technologies.
The state department did eventually get rid of their Wangs, but that's probably not what the author had in mind here.
> As the century moves on, it becomes clear to most people on the planet that all cultures must coexist in relative harmony on a global scale.
It is still early in this century, but there is Russia and the Brownshirts, impressive numbers of deaths by car--accidents, they call them--and so on. And what is the harmony to those species we serve up "the long boom" to? Music is a trifle dull without discordant notes to dance to...
> In 2020, humans arrive on Mars.
Nope.
I know, my man, you grew up dreaming of "Hiltons... in space!" but that rocket equation isn't getting any less tyrannous even when you lube it up with some Musk oil. Also why is it mindless Amercian consumerism, simply repeated in space?
> 1. Tensions between China and the US escalate into a new Cold War--bordering on a hot one.
Plausible.
> 2. New technologies turn out to be a bust. They simply don't bring the expected productivity increases or the big economic boosts.
Plausible.
> 3. Russia devolves into a kleptocracy run by a mafia or retreats into quasicommunist nationalism that threatens Europe.
Plausible.
> 4. Europe's integration process grinds to a halt. Eastern and western Europe can't finesse a reunification, and even the European Union process breaks down.
Mixed bag? Britain is out, but others want in.
> 5. Major ecological crisis causes a global climate change that, among other things, disrupts the food supply--causing big price increases everywhere and sporadic famines.
Not really major, yet? More like being nibbled to death, by cats. Food prices have been up, for various reasons, with various consequences.
> 6. Major rise in crime and terrorism forces the world to pull back in fear.
Plausible.
> 7. The cumulative escalation in pollution causes a dramatic increase in cancer, which overwhelms the ill-prepared health system.
Nothing so dramatic, but "ill-prepared health system" rings true.
> 8. Energy prices go through the roof. Convulsions in the Middle East disrupt the oil supply, and the alternative energy sources fail to materialize.
Plausible.
> 9. An uncontrollable plague--a modern-day influenza epidemic or its equivalent--takes off like wildfire, killing upward of 200 million people.
COVID is somewhat controllable (if not for those meddling humans) and hasn't killed 200 million. Yet.
> 10. A social and cultural backlash stops progress dead in its tracks.
Plausible.
The accuracy of the "what could go wrong?" section is impressive, if one turns down the volume a bit--America and China are certainly elbowing one another, but there's no pearl-clutching Sputnick panic, nor much "better dead than red", that ire being directed mostly towards those of the wrong political persuasion in America. The positive predictions are mostly a wash: those actually plausible come with huge caveats, plus a few safe bets like the expansion of NATO or the reduction of poverty in Asia. Sure, economy number went up--but at what cost, and where are all the flying cars?
Apparently, according to the author, the author is not actually predicting, but rather imagining with optimism--because, like, folks where, like, you know, so gloomy--with the goal to produce better decisions. At the C Suite level. Suitable things for a courtier to say, in other words, a courtier who is sometimes horrified that the CEO--surprise!--turns out to be a psychopath. Well, this writing certainly won't win any awards for originality, with a plot like that.
The story for nanobots and cures for cancer got us...Theranos? And a healthcare system that is "working as designed" (for continued service, please swipe your card here).
Better development in computing...that might be Intel's tick tock thud thud thud cycle, where they switched to lining the pockets of investors and maybe not so much do right by the consumers. Maybe they'll need taxpayer relief soon, to save them from the ________ (conjured threat).
The story where Hydrogen absolves the sins (that is, makes clean) fossil fuels by way of some sort of ritual transmogrification. The text is contradictory as to whether the oil market is thus damned, or uplifted by massive capital spend.
The you must rework your traditions to be just like those in America and in particular those of Silicon Valley story...how would that even work in Japan? Or China? Why would they go in for such an alien system? Perhaps in time; they accepted (a modified form of) Buddhism, but that took a little bit longer than a laser focus on the next quarter's results.
The "economy number go up" story...hail Mary Mag--I mean, Margaret Thatcher, our lady of progress. Wasn't there a story about some apprentice whose well-meaning magic gets a bit out of hand? Or there's always life in the Faust lane.
That the middle east will be in crisis because they are backwards and reject our true religion of progress. I... I guess you could pin "Satan" on them. Can't imagine any of them being offended.
The America will have embiggened tax coffers from all! that! progress! story. I guess there was something hidden in there about some positive "New Deal" type action for Americans. You-know-who weren't much a fan of Roosevelt when he did that, which might be why that bit was buried in a big paragraph.
The story where education goes full metal private: Mark Fisher in "Capitalist Realism" has some choice words concerning various, um, innovations in the sphere of education. Almost Kafkaesque...
Winston Churchill certainly did not tell the British--oh look what the nazis just did to France, woe is us, I guess we had better just curl up and roll over. Nor did Churchill tell the British, wow! look at how grand things are, why, this is simply no problem at all, and the sun will never set on the British Empire. Times are different, and so are the threats; the nazis du jour are not at full boil, and there is no clear "defeat Hilter" goal for the Western theater. Many of the problems strike at the heart of the modern American way. What do you tell them, that there are limits to growth? That is contrary to their faith.
tags #politics
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