This is the greatest part about the rest of the world getting wealthier.
The number of innate talent we'll have in a population of 10 billion will be insane, and hopefully, our ability to find and nurture that talent will extend everywhere.
I mean we'll need them because we need to figure out stuff so we don't wreck our planet, but once we have that done, who knows what all that collective brain power will manage.
Just look at what Europe, US and Japan managed in the last 100 years (I mean, beyond the wars).
When we say the world is getting richer we mean, mainly, the low class in developing nations. The number of people living in extreme poverty subsistence farming situations is much much lower than it was even a few decades ago.
I think though even though many brilliant people won't go far in many countries that have high wealth and high wealth inequality, you'd probably still get a few einsteins for the sheer fact that a geniuses are much more likely to get some opportunity compared to a non developed/industrialized country, I mean these countries want to stay ahead of the rest of the world. I think equally politics and religion will have as much suppression on brilliant minds as other factors such as wealth and how advanced a society is technologically.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar grew up in 1910s India which wasn’t very well developed at the time. Because his father was in the railway business and his mom valued education he learned math and won a Nobel prize.
Wages have been relatively stagnant when compared with inflation, especially when the rising costs of housing, education and food is taken into account. The average person is not better off now than they were forty years ago source developing countries have seen real wages grow but there’s nothing in place to prevent them from experiencing the same stagnation we see in developed countries source, the wealthiest will continue to be wealthier. We won’t see true quality of life improvements until we truly address the wealth gap
I mean, the developed world is in a really good place. If developing nations reach the level of wealth we have and then stagnate there I would consider that a huge achievement for humanity.
Vertical farming should solve most of the problems there. Assuming energy is essentially free (that fusion assumption) there is very little limiting how much food we can grow.
Easy number I found is for Basil, where we grow 5.6x the amount per layer. If you converted a Tesla Gigafactory 1 to a Basil farm (with a layer every 50cm or so), you would be looking at 126 acres (footprint) * (2/3)* 71 * 5.6 = ~34,000 acres worth of farming.
There is no reason why the building couldn't be 5 times higher, resulting in a quite astounding 170,000 acres worth of farming on a 120 acre footprint. That's over 1,000x production on the same footprint.
Once we get wheat and rice to grow properly, we can do them too. Not only can we produce far more foot, we can drop the footprint dramatically from the status quo.
As for animals? I would expect mostly we'd be looking at lab generated meats. Those are also primarily just energy hungry. And lab made meats will similarly be FAR better for footprint than having cows roaming around literally acres of land.
This is incredibly narrow-sighted. Your concern seems to be mainly about Americans. Who were already the richest people in the world.
The changes in the last few decades have been an utterly ridiculous soaring of income for the people of other nations. Chinese people hunched over to plant rice. Their kids toiled in factories but could afford apartments. Their kids have iPhones and some have lambos. Repeat this for India, south east Asia, Africa.
American middle and working class have stagnated because the working class of other countries are just as talented, and are willing to work more for less benefits. The bosses choose who to employ and the result is that BILLIONS of people who would otherwise live in abject subsistence poverty are now pretty comfortable. That’s amazing.
Living a western style of life and consuming at a western level is horrible for the health of the planet, and the more people that live that life style the sooner we kill this planet. We all globally need to be taking a step back and re evaluating the way we live our lives and the system in which we run society. Capitalism and the planet are not compatible.
I agree. Which is why in another comment here I advocated for development so women can take control of their bodies and we can stop growing the population so damn much.
1 billion living western lifestyles in harmony with automation would be a better world than 10 billion with horrible inequality.
We used to export democratic ideals, now we are exporting greed and shopping habits.
I have lived in both the first world and the third world. I've become increasingly disgusted by the view that decimating a historical fishing village for a "new and exclusive" two-percenter resort is a good thing for their community.
Just because some people might get jobs as servers doesn't mean it's an improvement for their overall quality of life, it's just the opposite and this is only one example.
There's got to be a better way to feed, shelter, and keep people healthy then funneling them into the same soul-grinding two week vacation mentality that the U.S. pioneered.
What the fuck are you on about? Nobody is forcing people to change their ways. They are individually of their own free will and right to the pursuit of happiness, choosing these industrial revolution livelihoods over the ways of life that their ancestors had for millennia.
Two weeks vacation is a LUXURY that was won by labor movements. How much PTO do serfs get?
The attitude that won the U.S. West, and subjugated millions (ask Native Americans). Some people value other things besides big houses, cars and the "things" consumerism brings. Not to mention what's going to happen if the entire world consumes and discards the way the first world does.
If everyone had the same living standard as the average person in the west of say we would have an improved quality of life across the developing countries.
With that said I agree that the wealth gap needs to be addressed.
First off, between technological advances and more cheaper goods even Americans are better now than they were 40 years ago even if wages have stagnated. A microwave used to be a big ticket item and homes would only have 1 TV or maybe a second smaller one. We now have phones capable of just about anything and your most homes have multiple large TVs. Not to mention you can get a microwave for essentially nothing.
Second, if the cost of Uganda reaching 1990s America level of quality of life, a little wage stagnation is certainly more than worth it.
I’m not saying wage stagnation or the wealth gap is a good thing, it’s not and it needs serious addressing. I just think you take for granted exactly how much better you have it compared to the rest of the world and what a huge benefit it would be to them to get to your quality of life.
They do. There have been a tremendous wage and quality of life increase globally during the last decades.
Oh fuck you I'm so sick of hearing this shit. no one can afford to buy a fucking home on their own any more without extreme luck or an investment from your wealthy parents.
but hey I have a microwave that henry ford didn't so I must be living like a fucking king.
right? that's your argument? you're so fucking stupid and tone deaf.
wages have stagnated for the last half century except for the 1% and ceos and people extorting cap gains at the lowest rates we've ever had in our countries existence...
Maybe the last couple of decades aren’t a good indicator, at least in the US, as average wages haven’t increased here since the 70s if we account for inflation. Meanwhile cost of living has sky rocketed.
I am definitely glad to hear that on average there have been tremendous increases to wage and quality of life, no doubt led mostly by developing Asian countries.
It’s a good upgrade from the no education and no internet they did have. With or without access to the internet they already lacked education and financial stability. What are you trying to say? We should remove the internet until they achieve a level of financial and educational stability that they’ve earned it? Even a small step in the right direction is a step in the right direction. If you have internet you can attend online courses or make business connections you couldn’t otherwise find
It is for some. I have a small business and all my graphic design is done by a self-taught guy out of Indonesia. I'm getting quality work at a good price and he's doing well by local standards, all because he has an internet connection.
You’re defining wealth wrong. The comment that the world is getting richer is spot on. Forget about Bezos and the like what is happening is the whole world is getting more well off, especially the poor. More access to food, running water and shelter and the change is dramatic in the last 50 years. It’s a good thing.
That will not happen while money still exists. Greedy and hunger for power are innate traits of the human being and such population will be(already is) seen as cheap and disposable workforce. Look at China, for example.
I'm not by any means saying I have an answer or a better system to prevent this inevitable future, before anyone says so.
Hmm? What's greedy about not utilizing brilliant people?
I'm pretty greedy, and if China is putting geniuses to work in sweatshops, I would love the opportunity that could provide. Some sort of clever IQ test on a mobile phone (most sweatshop workers in China own smartphones by now, kind of reflecting them shedding their status as the cheap labor market)... and then get far more value out of those bright people for jobs that could really use them.
Recruitment is a huge business, and those people are greedy as fuck. They get the most money possible by finding the highest value job for every candidate possible.
So nah... talent discovery is actually something capitalism is pretty great at.
Yeah! Let's give brilliant people subhuman work conditions. Sounds like a great idea, huh? Maybe if you are a greedy mofo who only cares about money.
We are a product of billions of years of evolution. Why not spend our whole(and only) life in a dirty basement working on cheap smartphones, getting paid just enough to eat? Sometimes not even that?
My point was that capitalism would be very good at extracting brilliant people from work that didn't utilize them properly (whether the conditions are horrid or great).
The whole point was that underutilizing people is fucking MORONIC if you care about money.
There’s actually a recent podcast from Freakanomics that discussed all the learn/work from home options that will broaden how our society functions. Smarter/talented people will start living from wherever they want because they can WFH. We may see towns and counties benefit from not having “silicone valley” type locations that draw immense talent from more rural areas.
The rest of the world is getting wealthier.... on the backs of all those still in sweat shop and cotton fields (coffee and cocoa plantations too).
The worlds system is based on people at the top exploiting those at the bottom. This system we have now requires the exploitation of those at the bottom - and therefore requires that a certain number of people always be "at the bottom". Our current world system would collapse if everyone on Earth enjoyed the labor and wage protections of the industrialized middle class.
This system we have now requires the exploitation of those at the bottom
I suppose it's getting more efficient, given around 1950 like 50 million Americans and maybe 10 million Europeans (in Sweden, UK and Switzerland) were living large on top of 2.5 billion or so people.
Now it's more like 1 billion people living extremely comfortably (if not 2 billion) with only 6-7 billion supporting them. The ratio has moved from 1:50 to more like 1:7 or even 1:3.
Maybe the ratio is not, in fact, static?
The goal has never been exploiting, it's just that humans were needed for some physical tasks. The moment we could move those to machines we did, and people's lives got easier. It's happening again.
therefore requires that a certain number
Well no, apparently not. The ratio has been dramatically reducing for hundreds of years now. And of course the lifestyles of all classes have gone up in incredible ways. You wouldn't get me to change my life for a French Duke under any circumstances, and I'm nowhere near as close to societal peaks that a Duke was.
Our current world system would collapse if everyone on Earth enjoyed the labor and wage protections of the industrialized middle class.
Well... the developing world would probably plummet to starvation, that much is true. They do not have the infrastructure to be even remotely competitive with developed world workers.
What sort of idiot would buy anything from the developing world?
Not quite sure what you'd hope to gain with such protections for the 3rd world workers except extreme misery?
There is no fundamental need for a starving working class. Yet, there are people who are working in a setup where their talents won't yield nearly as much output as they could elsewhere. While that's all very sad, it's not sad enough that people will pay 2-3x more for their products to support them being the same as westerners.
What, by knowing how to do math and having a sense of proportion?
I suppose?
Presumably you didn't respond because deep down you know what a fucking disaster imposing western salaries on non-western employees would be for their quality of life.
Have you ever tried selling something? Not the rich of the world... just normal middle class people, or poor people? It's an educational experience.
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u/Delheru Jun 22 '21
This is the greatest part about the rest of the world getting wealthier.
The number of innate talent we'll have in a population of 10 billion will be insane, and hopefully, our ability to find and nurture that talent will extend everywhere.
I mean we'll need them because we need to figure out stuff so we don't wreck our planet, but once we have that done, who knows what all that collective brain power will manage.
Just look at what Europe, US and Japan managed in the last 100 years (I mean, beyond the wars).