Working Class consciousness (in other words envy and covetousness) runs into economics: “The Chamley-Judd Redistribution Impossibility Theorem†which tells us that redistribution from capitalists to workers is impossible, and trying to do so merely buggers the economy making everyone worse off. This conflict between reality and ideology brings you nazism and communism. The Chamley-Judd Redistribution Impossibility theorem is economists admitting Ayn Rand was right while trying to sound as if …
Category: economics
Sunshine Mary nails it
We have been discussing the demographic transition – the tendency of peoples to fail to reproduce, examining varying nations, religious groups and such to see what makes a difference and what does not. Sunshine Mary has proposed a theory which I think fits all our data. Ten changes that need to happen in order to promote society-wide traditional sex roles. The only way that it is safe for women to engage …
The collapse of fertility
Spandrel has a post wondering where all the babies went, and whenever I propose one of the usual suspects, for example no fault divorce, denormalization of masculinity, and such, he says “Ah, but many Muslim countries also have fertility collapseâ€. Good point. So let us look at a Muslim country with dramatic fertility collapse, and see if we can find any of the usual suspects.
Darkness is the norm
Copper production shows three peaks: The Roman Empire in the west, the Song Dynasty, and modernity. The Roman Empire in the west and the Song Dynasty had about seven times the preceding and following level of copper production, thus while those civilizations were going concerns, they had far more production and wealth than the rest of the world put together. When the Roman Empire in the West fell, its GDP …
No real AI progress
AI is a hard problem, and even if we had a healthy society, we might still be stuck. That buildings are not getting taller and that fabs are not getting cheaper and not making smaller and smaller devices is social decay. That we are stuck on AI is more that it is high hanging fruit. According to Yudkowsky, we will have AI when computers have as much computing power as …
mens rea
I have been arguing that social decay is ending technological and scientific progress. In most areas it has strikingly slowed, in some areas, going backwards in the west, as we forget how to do what once we could do. Others, however, argue that technological and scientific progress is still running hot, or that if it has slowed, it is that we ran out of low hanging fruit. But a big …
Tall buildings and the social order
To make and keep the upper stories of a tall building habitable requires routine high technology. The lifts have to work, the water needs to be pumped, the toilets have let the poop down one hundred stories without shattering violence. It is not all that expensive. Current office space costs in the centers of major cities are so high that very tall buildings are immensely profitable. It is simply difficult …
Global Warming Scientists trapped in Antarctic Denial
This expedition to Antarctica is led by global warming scientist Chris Turney, whose company, Carbonscape, sells carbon indulgences. If you sin by emitting carbon, Chris Turner will, for a suitable payment, offset your sin with his carbon offset credits. In the course of this expedition, they have repeatedly smacked up hard against ice that their ideology said could not possibly be there, and then proceeded to act as if the …
No peak oil
Inflation adjusted price of oil shows no obvious trend, suggesting that limits on oil production reflect social decay and technological slowdown, rather than physical exhaustion of resources. Oil prices rose, and rose, to 2008, and in 2008, it looked like the peak oilers were, like a stopped clock, finally correct. And then prices fell, a lot. They have risen since, but not to their 2008 peaks. From 2010 to the …
Equal opportunity
Whenever someone announces that they are in favor of equal opportunity, in favor of equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome, they have usually a few paragraphs, or a few comments away, defended some outrageously unjust inequality of opportunity implemented and enforced by state power to destroy group X, as punishment for group X privilege. Everyone is in favor of equality of opportunity. I am in favor of equality …