
The greatest economic boom ever? - pg
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/07/23/100134937/index.htm?postversion=2007071209
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patrickg-zill
I think a large part of it is related to Internet-enabled service delivery, so
that for instance, HP can hire people in Manila to provide services to
companies in USA and Europe.

Another part of it is the economic modernizing going on - 2 years ago when I
was in Manila, Philippines, you needed to have cash when shopping or eating
out, and houses/condos were sold for cash (you had 48 monthly payments at 0%
interest at the end of which you owned the place).

When I was there a few months ago, you could get mortgages up to 20 years long
and the bug bundle of cash I brought was irrelevant - every store except
street vendors took credit cards.

Danger is that the increases in real estate worldwide could give us the mother
of all asset bubbles, everywhere, simultaneously.

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ivankirigin
To a certain extent, we should have expected this for some time. An
introduction to economics will teach you about productivity. Clearly, sending
a tractor back 1000 years would do wonders for local productivity. The boost
from the marginal US tractor would be orders of magnitude smaller.

This is pretty obvious.

What isn't obvious is why the developing world grows so slowly in spite of the
multitude of available improvements from the first world. The article mentions
looking for 20% growth in some countries. Is that really a high number
considering people in the US is 40X richer than Eritrea?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita)

Increasing freedom is important here, clearly. Increased ease of communication
must be playing a roll.

One thing I've never understood is why it seems people don't try to make much
money off of the poorest 5B people. If you tap that market, the growth
potential is ginormous. This reminds me of an excellent article about design
for the world's poor.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/science/29cheap.html?ex=11...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/science/29cheap.html?ex=1184904000&en=3c586de4efc78ca5&ei=5087)

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euccastro
Did you expect it to be obvious? It's a very complex problem and we are badly
informed at best. Two _excellent_ presentations on these lines:

<http://www.okananter.com/wordpress/?p=21>

<http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/140>

As for marketing to the poor, I don't follow your reasoning. It strikes me as
obvious that it's easier and a better ROI to make money from those who have
some to spare than from those who don't. As currently underdeveloped countries
get richer, more people will try and sell to them.

Are you talking about _positioning_ now so you'll reap the rewards when these
countries get richer? That's not making money on the poor; it's investing
money on advertising to them so you can hopefully get it back when they get
rich enough to be potential customers. I wonder how many of the people in the
position to make such a decision will look that far into the future. They
should be looking to maximize shareholder value, and who invests looking for a
ROI event 50 years from now?

[Edit: Of course I see why serving this market would be motivating, and I'm
not saying it can't be profitable.]

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mynameishere
The first greatest economic boom came with the mass replacement of animal
power with steam power.

The second greatest economic boom started around 1910 with the coming
widespread deployment of automobiles, airplanes, indoor plumbing,
refrigeration, radio and telephones.

~~~
pg
The first was probably the use of language or tools. (Hard to say which came
first, since other animals use tools too after a fashion.) After that the
control of fire, the domestication of animals, agriculture, the city...

Fortunately they seem to occur at increasingly small intervals.

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lkozma
If they occur at increasingly small intervals, they are probably also
decreasingly important and far-reaching. Probably we see those that are closer
to us more important as they are.

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dfranke
I don't think that's the case. Due to exponential population growth, the
majority of humans that have ever lived are still alive, so it would seem to
be a natural hypothesis that most of the progress that has ever been made has
been made in the past century.

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lkozma
According to most estimates the nr. of people who have ever lived is around
100 billion. People alive today are between 6 and 7 billion.

