Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
In the latest episode of the COMMENTARY Podcast, John Podhoretz, Noah Rothman, and Abe Greenwald examine the perception that America is in crisis, which conflicts with the data. Is the chaos associated with the 2016 election really the growing pains associated with 100-year cycles of technological and economic progress? If so, what are the best and most effective ways to mitigate that pervasive sense of unease?
Subscribe to The Commentary Magazine Podcast in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
Published in: Podcasts
It was alluded to, but not much credence was given to the idea that we are not experiencing anything in productivity so disruptive that it requires a complete revamp of society. In fact, productivity has not been growing as much as it has in the past. Occam’s razor suggests that the problem now is what it has always been before: the government, via significantly increased regulation and mandates, has made the baseline costs too high in most cases. People do not need extraordinary intelligence to become skilled; they need experience, which they cannot get with government locking the market in place.
This reminds me very much of the “peak oil” mirage of a decade ago.
These guys are becoming my favorite podcast. On the scale of 1 – 10, I’m at about 4.5 although I would agree with John that USA is still (by a fair bit) the “place to be”. On a much improved planet (materially), I think. I guess my “halfway-to-hell” rating is based too much on a relatively high news absorption rate. Thanks to Ricochet, Commentary, and NRO, I get enough wisdom and humor to “hope for the best” while doing that other thing.
Life is rather interesting. Up until recently, we were told that we were in crisis because the fertility rate in the West was far below replacement levels (we’re having too few kids), and now the crisis is too many people given the increases in productivity, and what are we going to do with them all and how can they afford to live with no employment!
I don’t think that is actually the argument. I believe that it is more about the ratio of people who are needed to work for a given population. For example, if there are 100 people, but, in order to provide all the necessary goods for those 100 people, only 75 people are needed to work. 1 farmer, 2 of this and some more of whatever industry is needed, all producing 100 persons worth of goods while only employing 75 of them. Leaves 25 people who become systematically unemployed. What if there were 100 billion people, but needed only 25 billion people years of work to produce a years worth of goods?
Of course, the fault in the argument might be that this situation should be impossible since those workers should work less hours which would let the unemployed take up those hours. However, this would still mean that people are not as employed in the sense that there would be more free time that people don’t know what to do with and could be less satisfying as productive jobs. Also, the flaw with the flaw is that the economy would be unlikely to perfectly allocate the jobs since hiring fewer people to train is often more affordable than spreading the work load and other factors.
So, maybe the Europeans have it right about the vacations?
“…in a year where sort of incautious blabbing is the coin of the realm”
I like that!
I was partly joking, but if a population has more people than it needs to be productive, you can argue that it has more people than needed period (excepting children, and those too old to work). So, if we’ll actually need fewer workers in the near future due to productivity growth, it now seems ironic that people were fretting about the declining birthrates just a year or so ago.
In a a world of 100 billion people, the fact that 3/4’s of them don’t have a productive purpose could lead to a lot of problems.
I have been a loyal listener, but I sometimes shake my head at how “East Coast” this group is. John Podhoretz actually referred to hillbilly’s during the podcast. I have lived throughout the United States. It’s a big, complex country with sophisticated and brilliant thinkers scattered throughout. The island of Manhattan is not the center of this country’s universe.
I agree that this indeed a sound argument. However, I would ask whether you would accept that we are not there yet. I think that the big complaint about declining birth rates has to do with the ponzi scheme that is government programs like social security and medicare. These programs need more current workers to pay the increased cost (due to increased standards and inflation) of the retired leading to an ever increasing need for more people. Also, we have not yet reached a overly productive state yet. Though that is possibly more of an educational phenomenon; the need for low skill labor is decreasing while the need for high skill labor ( or at least long training time carriers like doctors) is dramatically increasing, creating an imbalance.
On another note, I am of the opinion that my 75% unneeded population scenario has a solution in yet undiscovered needs so it is possible that the whole argument is flawed. I emphasize, however, that there will likely be difficulties in allocating an efficient and stable economy in that type of situation. I think that some government regulations like zoning and licensing could be significant impediments to progress.
Concern about declining birthrates is not primarily economic. It has much more to do with the survival of the society in the face of other societies with competing values. It has very little bearing on the current argument, if for no other reason than the ratio argument presented.
I reiterate that this concern for not enough work to go around is a 150 year old Luddite argument given a boost by the advent of artificial intelligence. It is highly speculative, and I suspect just as wrong now as is was 150 years ago.
I agree with this aspect, that the argument that there will not be enough work to do is most likely false, forever. However, I do want to say that there is an argument which is really interesting to consider about distribution.
What I am saying is that while we can always use more theoretical scientists, the number of low skill jobs will, I feel (agreed that no-one actually knows of any real problem in the foreseeable future), become less numerous. I claim that diminishing demand for low skill labor will create further inequality.
Therefor, I believe that we should consider what will allow those of the lowest skill to pay for what society may consider “the basics” like our current health care insurance requirements. And I am not just talking about obamacare, I am talking about how we expect minimum wage workers to pay 10000, 50% of yearly income, to a hospital just for operations like a birth or a broken bone. I believe that type of economic situation is disastrous.
On this, I reject the argument. There is a finite number of people that earth can sustain with current technology. Our goal should not be to outnumber the opponent ideologies, but rather to reform them through superior reasoning.
Discussion of low-skill jobs highlights a major problem with the argument, which comes from “smart” people who probably couldn’t do many of the so-called “low-skill” jobs. And most people are surprised how well a person with an 80 IQ can learn to master complex, apparently high-skill jobs (skills come with experience; current government policies prevent this). Also, the last thing we need are a surfeit of “theoretical” scientists.
You’ve taken the losing side in the Simon/Ehrlich bet, and against your own arguments I might add; but, regardless, going extinct is not a path to victory. Failing to reproduce adequately is a symptom of moral decay, not superior reasoning. You may reject my argument, but your position lacks any evidentiary examples to support it.