
The End of the Future (2011) - simonster
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/278758
======
wam
"Today’s aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between
the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in
their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general
progress everywhere. Because of these ideological conflations and commitments,
the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually might be getting
worse. I wonder whether the endless fake cultural wars around identity
politics are the main reason we have been able to ignore the tech slowdown for
so long."

Any sufficiently deluded rhetoric is indistinguishable from trolling.

The "progressive left" has no such blinders. Nor does the "right," in my
experience, or most other people. But you could easily reverse this and say
that to Peter Thiel, technological progress automatically leads to progress in
quality of life for everyone. Or, more disturbingly, that social justice is an
irrelevant invention of identity politics. No: those are in actual conflict.
The trick of identity politics is to subsume and trivialize real social
problems, and it's Thiel who has fallen for it. This is essay is just weird.

Thiel sees economic growth being appropriated to justify misguided and
counterproductive social policies. That's not even wrong, it's just mundane to
the point that it's disingenuous to say that anybody doesn't see that.

Is this guy going to stockpile real nuclear waste under his house until a
better solution is invented? No, he actually wants to build a floating city
where he can make his own rules. A ten year old's fantasy, described by a man
who can afford to ignore the practical consequences of his ideal future.

This is antithetical to the hacker ethic. Good hackers look at big social and
technological problems and think "how do we hack that into something better"
instead of whining about how nobody else accepts their top-down solution.

Real problems to attack: The pitfalls of implementing representative democracy
via legislators who develop strong social ties with each other; how to build
infrastructure without becoming Robert Moses; techniques for balancing
competing basic needs in a large population; p=np; obesity epidemics;
vaccination against destructive ideological memes like this one.

~~~
ramanujan

      he actually wants to build a floating city where he can 
      make his own rules
    

Well, suppose just for the sake of argument that seasteading is
technologically feasible (you might consider cruise ships a proof of concept).
Wouldn't it be good if there was a mechanism for people who strongly and
irreconcilably disagree to separate?

We have mechanisms for that on an individual level, as people can move from a
city or job to a new city or job. We have mechanisms on the level of couples,
like divorce. Perhaps most interestingly, we have mechanisms on the level of
small to medium size organizations, in that one can start a new company. But
right now there is no frontier, no way to peacefully start a new country.

If you do believe that there are multiple stable equilibria for societal
organization, then it should be a good thing if all the reds and the blues
could just separate and self-govern rather than endlessly squabble. Apple is
not Google, but both are successful; Singapore is not Sweden, but both are
very nice countries. Things that are legal in one jurisdiction are illegal in
another (e.g. porn is legal in Sweden but prostitution is not; it's the other
way around in Singapore).

Similarly, wouldn't it be better if all the fundamentalists could have their
own island and teach prayer in their own schools without trying to make my
child read the Bible? Or if the blue state residents could actually have a
country in which stem cell research was legal without having to do backflips
to accomodate religious objections?

I ask only that you reconsider the theoretical merits of seasteading as a
peaceful means for separation. If nothing else, it'll mean that all these guys
go off and drown and stop trying to influence US elections :)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
>Well, suppose just for the sake of argument that seasteading is
technologically feasible (you might consider cruise ships a proof of concept).
Wouldn't it be good if there was a mechanism for people who strongly and
irreconcilably disagree to separate?

The trouble is that it isn't even a good mechanism. Let's suppose for sake of
argument that major governments are prepared to recognize a new country's
sovereignty and let them exist. Putting that country in the middle of the
ocean is pointless. There are thousands of square miles of empty land in the
American West and other locations all over the world that could be sold to a
new country if doing so was actually desirable.

Furthermore, even if it was a good mechanism, it isn't desirable for the same
reason that secession isn't. Because sure, it would be nice to be able to do
stem cell research or educate children about evolution without zealots
objecting. But you're assuming that you would end up in the country that Does
The Right Thing, and that the other countries will leave you alone. What about
the country that decides it has no objections to genetic engineering for the
purpose of racial purity? Or that _bans_ educating children about science and
promotes militarism, leading to a future in which there are millions of young
men with no prospects for gainful employment other than to start a war to try
to gain resources through conquest? Or that, like the former Soviet Union,
develops nuclear weapons (and other dangerous things) and then falls apart and
fails to secure them, leaving the risk they end up in the hands of terrorists
or rogue nations?

You can't just ignore idiots and insane leaders. You have to fight them and
you have to win. This is true even when they aren't part of your own country,
but it's _especially_ true when they are. "We'll leave and start our own
country" is not a solution, it's just running away and hoping the blast radius
on the explosion you leave behind isn't large enough to hit you.

~~~
ramanujan

      and other locations all over the world that could be sold 
      to a new country
    

My understanding is that relatively few if any countries will sell federal
land. The interesting thing about international waters is that by definition
they don't belong to any country.

    
    
      You can't just ignore idiots and insane leaders. You have 
      to fight them and you have to win.
    

But it would arguably have been better for everyone (American and especially
Iraqi) in terms of net deaths if we had ignored Saddam Hussein in 2003. I'm
not sold on the idea that need to fight with every country that has an idiot
or insane leader. If they attack us, sure, but that's now a much smaller set.

    
    
      But you're assuming that you would end up in the country 
      that Does The Right Thing
    

I guess the idea would be more that you would move from the country if it
wasn't doing the right thing, in the same way you leave a neighborhood or a
job or a little league group if you have evidence that things are really going
in the wrong direction. Tongue in cheek: this does presume less of a role for
patriotism in one's decisions, but if immigration is unpatriotic then most
patriotic Americans are descended from unpatriotic people :)

    
    
      and that the other countries will leave you alone. What 
      about the country... 
    

I may not understand why these issues relate to seasteading. Are you arguing
that new countries are particularly likely to do such things, more so than old
ones? For what it's worth, the way in which new countries have been created
over the last few centuries has heavily enriched for founders who started
and/or won wars. This would seem to be at least one argument in favor of the
concept that seasteading founders would be less militant.

    
    
      it's just running away and hoping the blast radius on the 
      explosion you leave behind isn't large enough to hit you
    

Most of our ancestors left their home countries to come to the US. I think you
may be overstating the impact of their emigration on their home countries.
Poland did not go supernova because millions of Poles emigrated to the US in
search of a better life. The UK didn't burn down when the Puritans left for
the US. No?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
>My understanding is that relatively few if any countries will sell federal
land. The interesting thing about international waters is that by definition
they don't belong to any country.

That still doesn't really help you get recognized as a sovereign nation rather
than a bunch of pirates with a funny looking pirate ship. Moreover, everyone
has their price, even governments. Federal land is "not for sale" only because
no one willing to pay what it would cost has showed themselves. It's worth
more than the value of the underlying real estate. But go to a nation with a
small economy and a large land mass and offer a sizable chunk of their GDP for
a piece of land the size of Rhode Island and you're liable to get an
affirmative response.

>But it would arguably have been better for everyone (American and especially
Iraqi) in terms of net deaths if we had ignored Saddam Hussein in 2003. I'm
not sold on the idea that need to fight with every country that has an idiot
or insane leader. If they attack us, sure, but that's now a much smaller set.

I don't mean fight in a strictly military sense. Soap, ballot, jury, ammo.
Ammo is last for a reason, and it goes the same for international relations.
The first step is diplomacy. The problem in Iraq was that we didn't give
diplomacy a chance, we just started dropping bombs in response to Saddam's
empty saber rattling.

>I guess the idea would be more that you would move from the country if it
wasn't doing the right thing, in the same way you leave a neighborhood or a
job or a little league group if you have evidence that things are really going
in the wrong direction.

There is a difference between a country and a little league group. When a
little league group goes bad, enough people leave that the group is no longer
sustainable and it shuts down, in almost every case with no bloodshed. When a
country goes bad, not everyone _can_ leave, so if anyone with the resources to
leave does so then you're left with a country in decay and its people starving
and dying. Even if you don't care about that, you might start to care after
they've started a few wars and generally set fire to the world.

Re: the comparisons to immigration for a better life, I would make a
distinction between leaving for a relative improvement in opportunity vs.
leaving because where you are now is considered a lost cause. There is no real
"opportunity" in seasteading other than the opportunity to be rid of a failed
government. A sea platform doesn't have new job opportunities or natural
resources not available at home. It doesn't even have the things we now take
for granted, like arable land or a reliable power grid. The only reason to do
it is if the existing _government_ is considered too damaged to repair. But if
it's really that bad then we have an obligation to fix it, because unchecked
pathological governments inevitably commit atrocities. And if it's not really
that bad then what's the point of moving to a sea platform in the middle of
the ocean?

------
guylhem
I am quite sorry to say I agree with most of the article. The problem is not a
lack of progress, but a very perceptible slowdown.

If you prefer to take it that way, we are no longer accelerating. Trace our
economic progress on a plot, and the derivative will not be positive.

The problem is not so much in social programs or the leftist liberals, it's
the burden they now represent and that we may not be able to afford for long
if we do not start accelerating again.

Watch the parallel with the decline of the Roman empire:

"The historian Lactantius, who lived from 240 to 320, tells us that the
problem was a bloated welfare state: The number of [welfare] recipients began
to exceed the number of contributors [taxpayers] by so much that, with
farmers' resources exhausted by the enormous size of the requisitions, fields
became deserted" ([http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/14/venezuela-inflation-
price-c...](http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/14/venezuela-inflation-price-
controls-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html))

It would be _great_ to be accelerating again, if only to be able to pay for a
welfare state since it does not seem possible to agree on dismantling it when
we can't keep affording it.

I may be ideologically biased, but I would much prefer an acceleration of
progress (and to pay for a welfare state) than matching my ideological beliefs
in the current slowdown and cutting the welfare state.

Maybe it is cyclical - there have beens periods of slowdown before. In Atlas
Shrugged, behind the libertarianism, you can see the same very dim view of the
future when fascism and communism seemed like the only ways forward for the
masses, a moment which must have frightened a lot of people (I sure would have
been frightened!)

Maybe our problem is the lack of hope in the future, which is reducing our
will to live? I like the author conclusion a lot, because it catches the
moment in our time when this happened - the hippies.

He may be wrong in framing it on their political views - the ignition of
culturals wars may have been a strong factor, but at least it contained a hope
for a better future.

------
Xcelerate
Maybe I'm a little biased, but I think we're headed toward a new revolution in
science. My work in molecular dynamics has convinced me that we aren't too far
away from enough computing power to completely _simulate_ many phenomena that
are too complex to otherwise understand.

Biology in particular is very complex, and I'm not entirely sure researchers
can come up with models that are subtle and complete enough to accurately
describe significant processes without becoming too mind-boggling for a human
mind to grasp.

On the other hand, if you can just simulate all these processes, drug
development becomes a series of algorithms that optimize the desired effect
while minimizing undesired effects.

Some types of technology will require quantum computers. To simulate a system
of N qubits using a classical computer requires 2^N states which quickly
overpowers even the most advanced supercomputers. But if we can make even
rudimentary quantum computers our simulation efforts will be significantly
advanced (hey, we can factor the number 21, so it's a start!).

To give you an idea of the current state of simulation research, we still
require a lot of approximation models. What would you do if you wanted the
most accurate simulation of a system you could get? Well, you would create one
wavefunction of all the particles in the system and simulate its time
evolution (Dirac equation).

Of course, we can barely do this for simple atoms right now, so instead
combinations of experimental data and basic QM simulations are used to get
information about atomic/molecular interactions. For a large molecular system,
these interactions are studied to create a new approximation model (like
coarse-grain simulations). The problem is that each higher abstraction loses
touch with experimental reality. Current biological simulations are really
only "suggestive" instead of predictive. On the other hand, argon and nitrogen
simulations match up almost exactly with experimental data.

Again, as computing power develops, less abstractions will be necessary and
simulations will become closer and closer to their experimental counterparts.

To give an analogy for some of you computer graphics people, consider the huge
number of "tricks" used in rasterization engines for video games to make the
images look photorealistic. However, even a simple global illumination
algorithm (bidirectional path tracing, photon mapping, Metropolis light
transport) give incredibly realistic results but require far more time. It's a
tradeoff between models (hard to come up with good ones) and computational
capacity (but doesn't require much thinking).

------
truethurts
"Leverage is not a solution for scientific progress."

But neither is PayPal an example of scientific progress.

It's squarely in the same category as credit. A way of separating people from
their money.

Science is about learning and, hopefully, improving life through that which
you find. Of course if you are involved with science for the sheer joy of
discovery, improvement of life, yours, is virtually guaranteed.

Theil needs to live life as a postdoc in a hard science before he can start
invoking science as a call to action to get people to support his investments.

National Review is not what it used to be. What would William F. Buckely Jr.
say about posers like Theil? I'm pretty sure I know and it wouldn't be very
flattering.

~~~
washedup
That's true, but it doesn't make the statement less valid.

~~~
truethurts
But the statement is not applicable to PayPal nor many of Thiel's "Web 2.0"
investments. Yet it is used in the column as if it were. NB Section III. Do
you understand?

~~~
washedup
Yea I get that. He shouldn't use that statement to defend what he has done,
and I agree with that. It got me thinking about many of the Web 2.0 funding
and if is has been used for developments that improve society as a whole. Many
times yes, but not always. Either way, that simple statement holds a lot of
weight and is very interesting, regardless of how he uses it to defend his own
ventures. You just have to ignore that part and think about the idea he is
presenting. I guess I would categorize his defense of his own funding as
"fluff", because it adds nothing to his arguments, but only makes himself seem
a little selfish.

------
washedup
The most important point I gathered from this is that the pumping of stimulus
in the form of fiat currency has no meaning if it doesn't spur new forms of
technological breakthroughs. The value of the currency comes from a
foundation, and through many convoluted layers of society, that is built on
education, discovery, and passionate individuals. We have many such people in
America, but that population has not been growing fast enough to hold up the
rest of the country. The economy is simply a way to try and measure the value
of those individuals and the advancements they create for everyone else. The
problem starts once we assume that more money fixes the economic measurement.
It depends on where the funds are directed, and I believe that supplementing
these funds to banks is how the Fed tries to create "perceived" value and
growth. This creates a loop in the financial world that comes in the form of
inflation. Inflation isn't good or bad, it is a by product of the real
problem: trying to increase the value of an economy without actually
supporting the creation of economic value. Economy is a measure of growth and
innovation, and using fiat currency to increase the value of the economy, or
more simply put, the "measurement" of economy, is a convenient way of fudging
the numbers. The value or measure of economy then becomes based on societal
beliefs instead tangible truths (increase in knowledge, health, etc).

~~~
makomk
I actually suspect inflation does fix aspects of the economy that do actually
matter, just not ones that most of us think about because we're so used to
them being the norm. Remember that money has no worth in itself - they're
effectively tokens of exchange.

Now, inflation is effectively a tax on sitting on your money and not actually
putting it to use. If a lot of people do that it causes problems for the parts
of the economy that are actually doing useful trade - suddenly there aren't
enough tokens to go around to represent the actual business they're doing, and
you get some really _weird_ economic effects that neither I nor anyone else
can wrap their heads around because we've never actually experienced them. (I
believe this may have actually happened in the past.)

~~~
washedup
True, there is certainly a level of healthy or optimal inflation. Careful
though, trade is only useful if people are willing to spend their money on it.
If they choose to hold their money because they believe that the
good/service/trade isn't beneficial to them or others, they should hold their
money or put it somewhere else. If society decides that the good/service/trade
isn't beneficial to itself, then it will work to extinguish it. It is
dangerous to create artificial demand. I don't think society should be so
afraid of losing jobs or industries, because it frees up labor and resources
that can be devoted to more important ventures (importance in society's eyes,
which isn't always the optimal solution, but adequate. Similar process that
happens in evolution).

------
anuraj
That Peter Thiel is surprisingly blind to India and China's technological
progress says it all. There are two forces at work here 1) world GDP growth
deceleration 2) massive shift of economic base to emerging economies. The
realignment can surely be expected to bring about massive innovations into
these economies and that is not a bad thing at all.

~~~
PKop
You haven't seen much from Thiel it seems. He addresses the lage growth of
economies such as China extensively, and identifies that much of their growth
is not adding new science or technology to collective knowledge but simply
"catching up" to the U.S., others, with much "copying" of technological
process. This, he says, implies that eventually once they reach parity, there
will be inevitable slowdown and in addition does not solve the overall
situation of slowdown in worldwide technological and scientific innovation.

2008 <http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9302>

2010
[http://lockerz.com/u/20643924/decalz/7182285/charlie_rose_pe...](http://lockerz.com/u/20643924/decalz/7182285/charlie_rose_peter_thiel_interview)

EDIT:

From summer 2012, very good:
[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/17/transcript-schmidt-
th...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/17/transcript-schmidt-thiel/)

~~~
anuraj
I have, but I don't think the analysis is worth it. He seems really shallow at
it. The massive transformation technology has brought about in India and China
cannot just be termed catchup. There are many innovations to list that western
economies have not witnessed so far.

------
calinet6
Peter Thiel. Enough said.

Spare us your fantasy-world rhetoric, Peter. Nothing is worse than a
libertarian who thinks his success is anything more than a statistically
probable anecdote.

“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing
exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-
housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.” —Herman Melville

------
zerostar07
If you start with false premises, you end up with false conclusions. How is
faster travelling a gauge of human progress today? If anything, we need to
travel a lot less than we did in previous decades for reasons other than
leisure. We can counter energy needs with green and sustainable living. 'More'
is not necessarily better. The author may be unaware, but amazing and exciting
things are happening in science, just not in computers or physics anymore (or
alchemy, or agriculture, or psychoanalysis for that matter). We have more
scientists and better tools than ever. There will be leaps, but they take
decades to build up, genetic therapies and brain computer interfaces being 2
of them.

~~~
drumdance
Yeah, the travel thing struck me as weird too. Even without supersonic travel,
compared to even 10 years ago it's still much easier and cheaper for me to
pick a destination anywhere in the world and be there within 72 hours. And in
the developed world traveling with a smartphone is nirvana compared to before
2006 or so.

------
adaml_623
"Modern Western civilization stands on the twin plinths of science and
technology. " central tenant of the article but kind of debateable. Western
civilisation was around before the industrial revolution and esentially before
science became science.

I would say Western civilisation stands quite firmly on the plinth of a its
primary forms of social organisation. Most notable and most important of these
structures is the corporation. And it is the export of the corporation to
other cultures that has enabled their major advances in the last century.

------
guard-of-terra
"We are no longer moving faster" This is weird, because right now you are
reading my comment moments after I have typed it in, and we're likely are not
even on the same continent.

------
corporalagumbo
This is just hokum. Collapse of art and literature? Soft totalitarianism of
political correctness? The "sordid worlds" of popular entertainment? Thiel
sounds likes just another rich guy losing all connection to reality and
morphing into a know-it-all railing against popular tastes. What does he know?
And all of this "nature red in tooth and claw" shit - "most human beings
through the millennia have existed in a naturally brutal, unchanging, and
impoverished state" - who is he to spit on thousands of generations of living,
breathing people, and say their lives were shit? What gives him that right?

The other thing I find strange is his talk of a still-to-come "energy
revolution." Thiel sounds like just another false prophet of growth. I'm
pretty sure we already had an energy revolution - fossil fuels. Massive
reservoirs of stored energy that we discovered, learnt how to extract,
process, and utilise, leading to a bewildering array of techniques and
technologies. Does it dissapoint Thiel that the fruits of these achievements
have gone to relatively simple things - more homes, cars, appliances, holidays
and health care for more people. Does it disappoint him too that population
and desire expansion soak up our technological advances? We live in the most
resource-intensive society in history - and apparently it's still not enough.
We need to grow some more. It hasn't worked before, but next time, it'll be
enough, for sure.

So what does Thiel want? Science to break the fundamental rules of physics?
Science to break the fundamental principles of living species? Seems like
Thiel is pretty uncomfortable with human eistence. He wants that 50s vision -
clean, pristine, glowing, perfect, anxiety-free (a vision invented to sell
vacuum cleaners to the most anxious generation in history, if I recall
correctly.) Thiel is the classic modern: living in the most disease, conflict,
death and accident-free society of all time, terrified of the physical
realities of human existence, callously dismissive of 99% of all that humans
have experienced on this planet, bitterly dismissive of the achievements of
modern technology, blithely dismissive of popular tastes, wanting to have his
cake (liberal human rights and the free market system) and eat it (techno-
transcendence and mass adoption of his political views) too.

My advice to Thiel would be to decide exactly what it is that he wants (more
fundamental physics research, better solar/wind/algae, more noble pop culture,
authoritarian domination by a cultural elite, space resource extraction,
better education, better sci-fi novels), figure out what's at the heart of his
chosen problem and (just like a good hacker) go and come up with an innovative
solution to transform the problem himself. Either research or advocate or fund
or all three. But he should stop trying to preach like this on the failures of
our civilization, because he is just talking out of his ass.

~~~
s_tec
Many people assume that we can spend money we don't have today because we will
just earn more tomorrow. This is especially true on capitol hill, but you can
see the assumption pretty much everywhere. Thiel's is basically pointing out
that this assumption may no longer be true. Without technological progress,
tomorrow _won't_ be better than today.

If a society borrows from the future in times of growth, the additional
prosperity will cover the debt payments and nobody really suffers. If society
borrows from the future in times of stagnation or decline, however, both the
debt payments and the cost of living now come from the same fixed income, so
the quality of life suffers. This not only applies to financial debt, but to
infrastructure, educational, and other kinds of non-monetary debt.

In other words, Theil's piece is a warning that we need to get our act
together. We re-start the technological growth engine, stop borrowing from the
future, or tighten our belts and prepare for a general decline in our standard
of living. We may not be at the tipping point yet, but it is coming if we
don't change course.

~~~
makomk
Funny. There are actually a whole bunch of libertarians of Thiel's ilk whose
views have the same flaw but in reverse. They assume that if they can stop the
government from "debasing" money and "devaluing" their savings, they can sit
on money today safe in the knowledge that it will be worth more tomorrow. Of
course, without technological innovation that won't happen either. Worse, if
this were possible it'd be far more toxic to technological progress than any
"welfare state" could ever be; taxes merely make it slightly less profitable,
whereas this libertarian idea is pretty much guaranteed to drive returns on
all but a handful of investments into the negative compared to just sitting on
the money. With no financial incentive to innovate, why bother?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Exactly. What libertarians want sounds very similar to a feudal society where
the landed gentry are able to live comfortable lives on their perpetual
(across generations) investments while the have nots (and there have to be
many of these...) become virtual serfs just to survive.

A dynamic economy where you can't just sit on wealth is necessary to promote
technological innovation as well as economic mobility. If you look at history,
we didn't really start moving forward very quickly until we got that (around
the renaissance time frame).

------
drumdance
He lost me at "the collapse of art and literature after 1945"

------
nhashem
The National Review is a conservative publication. It's unfortunate that an
interesting hypothesis -- our society is no longer innovating and advancing as
much as it used to -- is backed up by obviously conservative partisan points
that are loosely based in fact at best, or otherwise complete fabrications. I
was actually tempted to flag this post but instead, I think it will be more
productive to respond.

The power of government over private enterprises is the ability to guide
innovation that may not provide any benefits in the short-term. There is a
line of thinking that any spending on government projects is wasteful and
inefficient, and for established technologies, that's true. I wouldn't want to
have a government search engine instead of Google/Bing/Yahoo/DDG/et al all
pushing themselves to get better and better. But do they exist without
ARPANET? Does SpaceX exist without NASA? I doubt it.

Also, for government spending on technology projects, the ROI is not based on
the single project's performance but any ancillary benefits as well. Even if
you think spending billions of dollars just to put a man on the moon is a
waste, I doubt you can argue with the other technological innovation that
spawned as a result (often by the private sector), such as LEDs, artifical
limbs[0].

And for Thiel to address stagnant wages without mentioning income equality is
so completely disingenuous. This graph --
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IncomeInequality7.svg> \-- represents
exactly what Thiel is talking about, except notice how two of the lines didn't
plateau but increased quite dramatically. Did Thiel's wages only increase 0.7%
per year? Again, I doubt it.

My opinion is that the dramatic tax cuts starting in the 1980s have fed this
income inequality, because the current design of our private sector is pretty
much optimized to concentrate wealth. As a software engineer, if you've
delivered a project that brought them thousands or millions of additional
profits with little to no impact on your paycheck, there ya go. For our
profession we're wisening up to not tolerating this (such as Patrick
McKenzie's blog posts[1]), but other people aren't so lucky.

For some sobering data points, look at these two graphs showing average
Fortune 500 CEO pay from 1989 to now, and the value of the S&P 500 from 1989
to now -- [http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-pay-20-year-
historic...](http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-pay-20-year-historical-
chart.html)
[https://www.google.com/finance/historical?cid=626307&sta...](https://www.google.com/finance/historical?cid=626307&startdate=1%2F1%2F1989&enddate=Sep+24%2C+2012&num=30&ei=671fUIiaLsigiALBeA).
The S&P 500 is up about 550% during this time, and so is CEO compensation. So
our executives have had their paychecks increase exactly as much as the value
of their companies, and the typical worker gets their annual 2.7% raise that
barely beats inflation and gets fucked. Stagnant wages have nothing to do with
the "end of the future," they have to do with executives getting paid in
stock, thus need to optimize quarterly profits, thus have a _direct incentive_
to pay their employees as little as possible because that would decrease
profits, and thus their stock price. Henry Ford paid his employees well above
the market rate at the time because he wanted them to be able to buy his cars
-- that brand of capitalist is pretty much endangered now, and now a CEO
sharing $3 million with his employees is considered big news[2].

Lastly, how does Thiel not mention the impact of corporate donations to
political campaigns as hamstringing innovations? You think all the oil
companies are just twiddling its thumbs, assuming at some point we'll stop
wanting to run on our cars by burning prehistoric goo and they'll just shut
down the business and go golfing? No, they're making sure as many politicians
as it can will protect its interests, and that means pretty much blocking any
government investment in renewable energy whenever possible. Do you think Mitt
Romney is against Obama's new car MPG efficiency standards because of "onerous
regulations," or that it will lead to less profits for his Republican friends
at Haliburton?[5]

Obama's much maligned "stimulus" -- the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
of 2009[3] -- allocated $27 billion towards renewable energy. While Bill
O'Reilly and Sean Hannity smugly bring up Solyndra every time they can, they
don't mention how the US increased the total amount of renewable energy
production more in 2009-2011 than it did from 2002-2008[4]. Makes me wonder
how much farther we'd be if we still lived in the days where we lauded the
government for for making major technological bets that paid off with things
like nuclear power, space travel, and the internet, instead of calling it "out
of control government spending" in order to justify more tax cuts.

Sorry to go all Rachel Maddow on you. For what it's worth, I'm not a communist
or a socialist. I believe strongly in the free market and private enterprise.
In the technology sector, we see countless examples of free market principles
and competition giving us faster software, smarter phones, and cheaper
computers.

 _But I've always seen this as complementary to innovation funded by
government._ If VCs as we know them today existed in the 1960s, can you
imagine one of them scratching his chin and saying, "So you want to put a man
on the moon. How are you going to make money? Actually, don't worry about
that, I'm sure it'll be awesome, here's billions of dollars."

I tried to write a TL;DR here trying to sum up my points in this wall of text,
but the TL;DR itself ended up being -- yep, too long -- so I'm just going to
go with this:

TL;DR: There's a lot of misinformation in Thiel's article that ended up
reading to me as mostly conservative partisan bullshit, and I already get
enough exposure to Fox News every time I visit my wife's parents.

[0] <http://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html>

[1] <http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/>

[2] [http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/07/ceo-of-
lenovo-g...](http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/07/ceo-of-lenovo-
gives-3-million-in-bonuses-to-employees/)

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009#Energy_efficiency_and_renewable_energy_research_and_investment)

[4]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_States#Current_trends)

[5][http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/08/28/744811/romney-
op...](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/08/28/744811/romney-opposes-fuel-
efficiency-standards-actually-moving-us-toward-energy-independence/)

~~~
simonster
> The National Review is a conservative publication.

This is a circumstantial attack. I am a liberal. The person who referred me to
this article is a well-respected liberal-leaning science professor at a major
research university; I do not read the National Review. Still, I found the
article compelling and balanced until somewhere around section 6. In my
personal view, it's thoughtful and thought-provoking, and I honestly don't
understand why you would flag it beyond that you don't agree with its author's
political views or with the venue in which it was published.

> The power of government over private enterprises is the ability to guide
> innovation that may not provide any benefits in the short-term.

If I'm reading the last section of the article right, Thiel seems to recognize
this (although it's not standard conservative doctrine), but he also seems to
think that politicians and the public are no longer interested in science and
takes a cheap shot at "today's aged hippies" instead of suggesting a solution.

> And for Thiel to address stagnant wages without mentioning income equality
> is so completely disingenuous.

"Mean incomes outperformed median incomes (inflation-adjusted in both cases),
and there was a trend towards greater inequality." You're right that he
doesn't engage it, and that's part of what makes the last sections of the
piece less compelling, but given that this is the first point he uses to
demonstrate post-1973 economic stagnation, he's hardly trying to sweep it
under the rug.

> Lastly, how does Thiel not mention the impact of corporate donations to
> political campaigns as hamstringing innovations?

This is not the reason progress has stagnated (if one believes Thiel's main
argument). Corporate donations cannot affect funding for universities and
research institutes, since those funding decisions are (rightly) in the hands
of scientists at NSF/NIH/DARPA and not politicians. Additionally, it's hard to
imagine that the kind of large-scale corruption necessary to halt economic
growth could go undetected for decades.

The two main questions raised by this article are whether there's a science
slowdown, and, if so, why it's happening. These aren't partisan questions (or
if they are, the stock conservative answer is definitely not Thiel's), and
they made me think, hence my posting this here. The last section seems to be
tacked on to appeal to National Review readers, and I'd prefer to ignore it.

------
felanthropop
tl;dr summary: We're all screwed and the hippie progressives and tea partiers
can't save us because they aren't being really innovative and getting to the
heart of the problem.

So first off- I agree. Second, this post is way too long, pisses off the left,
and doesn't provide solutions that I had the attention for.

So, I'll provide some. Put money into education and infrastructure, and teach
our kids to be innovative, then get our debt fixed in a way that doesn't cause
massive change and disable business. That isn't the Libertarian stance, but it
is a the moderate stance, which no party supports these days.

~~~
corporalagumbo
I agree in principle. But I think the assumption that pumping more money into
fields like education will generate a substantive improvement has failed. The
problem with our education systems is cultural, not fiscal. School does not
teach children how to think and argue, it teaches them how to pass tests and
coast.

This article is a good example of the many many things that could be done
other than pumping in more money to improve ed.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4557023>

