Peter Thiel warns of upcoming (and current) stagnation

SilasBarta

SIAI benefactor and VC Peter Thiel has an excellent article at National Review about the stagnating progress of science and technology, which he attributes to poorly-grounded political opposition, widespread scientific illiteracy, and overspecialized, insular scientific fields. He warns that this stagnation will undermine the growth that past policies have relied on.

Noteworthy excerpts (bold added by me):

In relation to concerns expressed here about evaluating scientific field soundness:

When any given field takes half a lifetime of study to master, who can compare and contrast and properly weight the rate of progress in nanotechnology and cryptography and superstring theory and 610 other disciplines? Indeed, how do we even know whether the so-called scientists are not just lawmakers and politicians in disguise, as some conservatives suspect in fields as disparate as climate change, evolutionary biology, and embryonic-stem-cell research, and as I have come to suspect in almost all fields? [!!! -- SB]

Grave indictors:

Looking forward, we see far fewer blockbuster drugs in the pipeline — perhaps because of the intransigence of the FDA, perhaps because of the fecklessness of today’s biological scientists, and perhaps because of the incredible complexity of human biology. In the next three years, the large pharmaceutical companies will lose approximately one-third of their current revenue stream as patents expire, so, in a perverse yet understandable response, they have begun the wholesale liquidation of the research departments that have borne so little fruit in the last decade and a half. [...]

The single most important economic development in recent times has been the broad stagnation of real wages and incomes since 1973, the year when oil prices quadrupled. To a first approximation, the progress in computers and the failure in energy appear to have roughly canceled each other out. Like Alice in the Red Queen’s race, we (and our computers) have been forced to run faster and faster to stay in the same place.

Taken at face value, the economic numbers suggest that the notion of breathtaking and across-the-board progress is far from the mark. If one believes the economic data, then one must reject the optimism of the scientific establishment. Indeed, if one shares the widely held view that the U.S. government may have understated the true rate of inflation — perhaps by ignoring the runaway inflation in government itself, notably in education and health care (where much higher spending has yielded no improvement in the former and only modest improvement in the latter) — then one may be inclined to take gold prices seriously and conclude that real incomes have fared even worse than the official data indicate. [...]

College graduates did better, and high-school graduates did worse. But both became worse off in the years after 2000, especially when one includes the rapidly escalating costs of college.[...]

The current crisis of housing and financial leverage contains many hidden links to broader questions concerning long-term progress in science and technology. On one hand, the lack of easy progress makes leverage more dangerous, because when something goes wrong, macroeconomic growth cannot offer a salve; time will not cure liquidity or solvency problems in a world where little grows or improves with time.

HT: MarginalRevolution

Noteworthy excerpts (bold added by me):

In relation to concerns expressed here about evaluating scientific field soundness:

When any given field takes half a lifetime of study to master, who can compare and contrast and properly weight the rate of progress in nanotechnology and cryptography and superstring theory and 610 other disciplines? Indeed, how do we even know whether the so-called scientists are not just lawmakers and politicians in disguise, as some conservatives suspect in fields as disparate as climate change, evolutionary biology, and embryonic-stem-cell research, and as I have come to suspect in almost all fields? [!!! -- SB]

Grave indictors:

Looking forward, we see far fewer blockbuster drugs in the pipeline — perhaps because of the intransigence of the FDA, perhaps because of the fecklessness of today’s biological scientists, and perhaps because of the incredible complexity of human biology. In the next three years, the large pharmaceutical companies will lose approximately one-third of their current revenue stream as patents expire, so, in a perverse yet understandable response, they have begun the wholesale liquidation of the research departments that have borne so little fruit in the last decade and a half. [...]

The single most important economic development in recent times has been the broad stagnation of real wages and incomes since 1973, the year when oil prices quadrupled. To a first approximation, the progress in computers and the failure in energy appear to have roughly canceled each other out. Like Alice in the Red Queen’s race, we (and our computers) have been forced to run faster and faster to stay in the same place.

Taken at face value, the economic numbers suggest that the notion of breathtaking and across-the-board progress is far from the mark. If one believes the economic data, then one must reject the optimism of the scientific establishment. Indeed, if one shares the widely held view that the U.S. government may have understated the true rate of inflation — perhaps by ignoring the runaway inflation in government itself, notably in education and health care (where much higher spending has yielded no improvement in the former and only modest improvement in the latter) — then one may be inclined to take gold prices seriously and conclude that real incomes have fared even worse than the official data indicate. [...]

College graduates did better, and high-school graduates did worse. But both became worse off in the years after 2000, especially when one includes the rapidly escalating costs of college.[...]

The current crisis of housing and financial leverage contains many hidden links to broader questions concerning long-term progress in science and technology. On one hand, the lack of easy progress makes leverage more dangerous, because when something goes wrong, macroeconomic growth cannot offer a salve; time will not cure liquidity or solvency problems in a world where little grows or improves with time.

HT: MarginalRevolution

Of course if he did so, he would be instavoted down into oblivion.

Whenever you make such comments, you are making it impossible for me to upvote you, because if you end up upvoted, that'll by itself show the falseness of your claim, and therefore it would be a post unworthy of an upvote.

I promise an upvote for your comment however, if you edit to remove this sentence, because the remaining points you make are very interesting and worthy of such. (edited to add: Now upvoted, as per promise.)

Now to the content-relevant bits:

One obvious example is decolonization, which killed more people than the nazis. No postcolonial government was as good as the colonial government it replaced.

You are making true claims as far as it goes, but I don't think you're seeing the bigger picture in regards to colonialism and decolonization both. For starters it's my impression that the primary stated objections to colonization are deontological ("They don't have the right to rule us/We don't have the right to rule them") as opposed to utilitarian ("We're better off without them"/"They're better off without us")

Now I'm not a deontologist, but I wouldn't mind calling myself a rule utilitarian. And what I see is that claiming the right to control another nation is still used by even Nazi-sympathisers to excuse Hitler's policies (The argument is "If Britain had the right to rule over the hundreds millions in India, why couldn't the Nazi be allowed to rule over Poland and Czechoslovakia"). It was also used by the Soviets and the Americans to excuse their own interference (in a different way).

In this manner, European colonialism served to justify both German and Japanese imperialism in the eyes of their citizens; thus contributing to World War II -- it possibly had an even more direct effect on World War I, which may have been motivated by a German desire to take some colonies. And conversely after European Colonialism was defeated, and the rule "We must not control other nations by force" firmly established, one gradually sees peace descend on the European continent itself, and eventually a decrease in the amount of interference that the Soviets and Americans applied on their own spheres of influence too (Eastern Europe and South America respectively).

In short: In a world where European colonialism still thrived, would we have seen the Eastern European communist governments collapse? European decolonization had a primarily positive effect on Europe, the way I see it. Perhaps some Africans would want to be controlled by Europe again, I don't see Europeans as willing to accept the offer though.

Lastly in your condemnation of decolonization, i'm not clear if you're truly arguing:
a) It was a wrong choice for the colonized people to seek independence
or
b) it was a wrong choice for the European nations to grant it to them

I think you'll find it hard to argue for (b) -- effectively that France should still be wasting lives and money fighting wars in Algeria and Vietnam, or that the UK should be trying to crush the Indians violently. It's easier to argue for (a) -- especially if you limit your argument to sub-Saharan Africa, where the borders were artificial, the national identity often nil, etc,etc.

For a thousand years before the mid nineteenth century, pretty much everyone agreed that equality between husbands and wives would destroy marriage and fatherhood.

Do you have a citation for that? It would surprise me to learn that such equality was even discussed about a thousand years ago.

For a thousand years before the mid nineteenth century, pretty much everyone agreed that equality between husbands and wives would destroy marriage and fatherhood.

Do you have a citation for that? It would surprise me to learn that such equality was even discussed about a thousand years ago.

The status of women was not a government issue until the nineteenth century, but a private issue for families. In this sense, it was discussed, but not as a political question. Consider, for example the Paxton family quarrel over the right of daughters to choo... (read more)

6sam034515y

That anti colonialism is objecting to "the right to control another nation" fails to describe the situation with Vietnam, Rhodesia and South Africa, where anti colonialism was used as justification to interfere with foreigners. To describe anti colonialism as opposition to the right of one nation to control another is as misleading as describing PC speech controls as courtesy. Anti imperialism is opposition to the right of one country to control another. Anti colonialism was typically the objection of the metropolitan elite to the colonial elite. Anti colonialism was those whose power and wealth derived from the capital, objecting to those whose power and wealth derived from the colonies South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, were supposedly not anti colonialist enough and therefore needed to be ruled by adequately anti colonial outsiders (members of the North Vietnamese communist party who spent most of their lives in Moscow) for their own good. Rhodesia was not under attack from Rhodesian blacks. The Indochinese wars were imperial wars more than they were anticolonialist wars, and the imperialist side (communist) was the anticolonialist side. The same is true of the wars against Rhodesia. Mugabe's powerbase was in London and the UN, not in Rhodesia, his powerbase was the traditional imperial powers. The most celebrated anti colonial conflicts had imperialists fighting colonialism. Many "anti colonial" conflicts seem to involve "anti colonialists" with connections to ruling class universities in the metropolitan country, fighting "colonialists" without such connection,Mugabe comes from London School of Economics: Bishop Muzorewa went to a no name US university. And so the world removed Muzorewa and installed Mugabe, murdering as many Rhodesian blacks as necessary to ensure the right "democratic" outcome. That really does not look much like Rhodesian blacks ruling themselves. [...] France was fighting a colonial war in Vietnam? Surely the events that followed t

7Eugine_Nier15y

Are you sure that's not just war fatigue following the world wars? Notable is that Europe experienced another period of peace of comparable length in the 19th century following the Napoleonic wars and the congress of Vienna. This despite that period being the height of colonialism. [...] You fail to explain why this is obviously a good thing.

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Peter Thiel warns of upcoming (and current) stagnation

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Peter Thiel warns of upcoming (and current) stagnation

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