Thiel has worried that Western civilization had entered a period of long-term stagnation in the 1970s which will continue unless there is a radical shake-up. This stagnation has many dimensions: lower economic growth, fewer world-changing scientific discoveries, and a general cultural malaise.
Imagine looking back at the proud of time where there was literally the most advances in the wildest technology and thinking it’s stagnation. It was from a time period where people remembered refrigeration as new and exciting to the time where your phone has more computing power than the ones that put people on the moon, and it’s in your freaking pocket, and say that technology stagnated.
As for the lower economic growth and the “stagnating” culture, that’s squarely on the shoulders of corporations, and therefore, billionaires.
interestingly, i get the sentiment that the economy has stalled since the 1970s from a surprising number of people, and i figured out that it’s probably because blue-collar jobs have stagnated since the 1970s, and that’s what most people feel. That sentiment coming from Thiel, who invests in software, is very weird though.
The thing is that while people struggle harder and harder for a smaller chunk of scraps, they still have a lot of quality of life improvements over the standard of living back in the 70s.
You almost certainly have decent access to passable air conditioning, which was far from a given back then. Even if you can’t afford decent health care, the sporadic health care you can get is still better than the standard of care then. You can have a 60 inch television and more content provided to it than you could imagine… You can instantly engage with people all over the world.
On the scientific discoveries, we have gotten the low hanging fruit. The twentieth century was remarkable, but the limitations of physics are harsh. A lot of excitement as we went from barely pulling off heavier than air flight to a moon landing in under 50 years. Media naturally imagined space exploration to be just a matter of time. Alas everything is exponentially harder and any further loopholes are supremely elusive.
Probably the one area with a great deal of unrealized potential would be biology, because the ethical easy forward is slow.
Imagine looking back at the proud of time where there was literally the most advances in the wildest technology and thinking it’s stagnation. It was from a time period where people remembered refrigeration as new and exciting to the time where your phone has more computing power than the ones that put people on the moon, and it’s in your freaking pocket, and say that technology stagnated.
As for the lower economic growth and the “stagnating” culture, that’s squarely on the shoulders of corporations, and therefore, billionaires.
interestingly, i get the sentiment that the economy has stalled since the 1970s from a surprising number of people, and i figured out that it’s probably because blue-collar jobs have stagnated since the 1970s, and that’s what most people feel. That sentiment coming from Thiel, who invests in software, is very weird though.
The thing is that while people struggle harder and harder for a smaller chunk of scraps, they still have a lot of quality of life improvements over the standard of living back in the 70s.
You almost certainly have decent access to passable air conditioning, which was far from a given back then. Even if you can’t afford decent health care, the sporadic health care you can get is still better than the standard of care then. You can have a 60 inch television and more content provided to it than you could imagine… You can instantly engage with people all over the world.
On the scientific discoveries, we have gotten the low hanging fruit. The twentieth century was remarkable, but the limitations of physics are harsh. A lot of excitement as we went from barely pulling off heavier than air flight to a moon landing in under 50 years. Media naturally imagined space exploration to be just a matter of time. Alas everything is exponentially harder and any further loopholes are supremely elusive.
Probably the one area with a great deal of unrealized potential would be biology, because the ethical easy forward is slow.
man who hoarded and centralized wealth from software companies concerned about decay of entrepreneurship