
The 2010s Have Been Amazing - Reedx
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-2010s-have-been-amazing-11576540377
======
banach
This guy’s upbeat editorials in the Swedish media have consistently applauded
our transformation from a world leader along just about every metric of human
development, to a country that blindly adopts market solutions to societal
problems whose political leaders settle for goals such as “being on par with
the rest of Europe”. His focus on the positive provides the winners of this
transformation with the conversational ammunition they need not to feel
guilty, and diverts attention away from the glaring issues (growing
inequality, racial tensions, exploitation of employees by employers, etc) that
I’ll assume Norberg doesn’t have much insight into, given his writings.

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rayiner
The comments in this thread trying to complain about things, without
addressing the facts stated in the article, are bizarre. People really need to
believe that things are bad, don’t they? It’s not enough that free people and
free markets are enabling incremental progress toward prosperity. There must
be a problem so that there needs to be a solution.

~~~
useragent86
> It’s not enough that free people and free markets are enabling incremental
> progress toward prosperity. There must be a problem so that there needs to
> be a solution.

To some people, freedom is a problem, and the solution is to convince the
world that everything is terrible, to justify implementing their "solutions."

Here's an interesting video that talks about how poorly informed most people
in the world are about the world situation:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1dvfH3s1Ak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1dvfH3s1Ak)

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spectramax
While all these metrics show progress, nationalism is on the rise. Echo-
chambers are on the rise. People do not listen to each other, especially when
it comes to politics. Social media has eroded privacy. Advertisement is king.
Global warming is a huge "soft" risk to humanity. Surveillance is rampant as
we heard from Snowden in 2013. China is a complete totalitarian state with 6
million cameras and a social credit score. Indian democracy is tearing apart.

Good stuff: Private space industry's progress is jaw dropping. SpaceX,
RocketLab, BlueOrigin, Boeing, etc are all doing incredible things. Incredible
progress in ML/AI. NASA is planning for a moon mission, there is excitement to
go to Mars.

My hope for the 20s: The intellectuals form a world-citizen class movement,
nationalism would be shamed and looked down upon (regardless of nation),
citizens wake up to privacy issues and next round of politicians have
libertarian ideologies. I hope.

~~~
mopsi
> _nationalism would be shamed and looked down upon_

Why should regional self-governance by likeminded people be replaced with
lowest-common-denominator global government?

In tech terms, attitudes like these sound like everyone in the world should
adopt the same set of values and use the same programming language, which
would be Javascript if chosen democratically, or Ada if chosen by experts. :)

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haunter
Wonder how many countries will follow the UK in the next 10 years or so. The
current system won't really work when the next budget debate (2021-27) is up.
More and more western countries and especially the voters are fed up how they
are net contributors to the system (UK, Germany, France, Nordic countries)
while eastern countries like Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria etc are only taking
money out with a staggering rate of corruption as well. And there is also the
whole migration crisis as well which will only be worse as
Syria/Iraq/Kurdistan situation has no ending in sight on top of the global
warming which will move more and more people to Europe. There will be a
fundamental shift in Europe for sure.

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spodek
I find Limits To Growth's view [https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-
H-Meadows/dp/19...](https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-
Meadows/dp/193149858X) more compelling, especially that its business as usual
model is still reasonably accurate based on 2014 research
[https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/publications/research-
pap...](https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/publications/research-papers/is-
global-collapse-imminent).

They didn't intend to predict but only to reveal patterns. One of the main
patterns it found was prosperity in overshoot preceding collapse of population
and standard of living. The Cato Institute and Wall Street Journal describing
a relatively short time is consistent with the LtG view, but lacks the half-
century of accuracy and projection beyond.

WSJ should say about this piece, "Past performance does not indicate future
results."

LtG does suggest what could avoid collapse. At this date it basically reduces
to everyone doing everything possible, which is still possible. At the top is
to change our beliefs and values from pushing growth, faith in technology, and
externalizing costs to enjoying what we have and stewardship.

It's not crazy. Having applied it in my life has improved it.

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m0zg
The entire comment section is full of naysayers who, nevertheless, choose not
to dispute the facts. What's up with doom and gloom? By all _reliable_
accounts the world has never been more prosperous or less violent than it is
today. Why do you feel the need to argue with this? Perhaps some self-
examination is in order?

~~~
happytoexplain
I'm not sure why the opposing opinion is somehow the holder's fault.
Anecdotally, I've seen much more hate, violence, calls for violence,
unhappiness, and economic dissatisfaction today compared to 10 years ago. This
could be due to any number of things, some real and some related only to
perception. This is a subject for debate, but it doesn't make sense to imply
that the observation itself is somehow wrong. Your dismissal is antagonistic
where it doesn't need to be.

~~~
m0zg
What you're experiencing is called the "good old days" syndrome. You're
evolutionarily predisposed to first forget the bad stuff, so the way you
remember the past is an idealized version that didn't really exist. This is
very easy to see if you're into journaling.

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elfexec
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of
incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was
the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...

And it always will be. Every decade, century, millenia is amazing and
dreadful. And that's the beauty of it. You can cherrypick and slant things to
push a narrative you want. Someone could write "The 2010s Have Been Dreadful".

------
JohnJamesRambo
This article reminds me of a documentary I watched recently about the Maya.
I’m paraphrasing, but the guy said all civilizations were richest before their
final fall.

I don’t see the 2010s through the same lens this article does. It seems like
the last orgyistic quantitative-eased decade of excess before the whole thing
collapses.

~~~
csallen
Didn't the Roman empire fall centuries after its peak?

Also, the US (and many other nations) have been growing and improving for
hundreds of years at this point. So by your logic, at almost any point in the
past you could have said, "We're doing better than we've ever done, therefore
this is the end."

There seems to be some strange human predisposition toward predicting that
doom and gloom are just around the corner -- a prediction that is almost
always wrong.

~~~
hackeraccount
You're on the Titanic and someone shouts "Iceberg Dead Ahead!" Everyone gets
to turning the wheel.

What do you think of the people who say, "Is that really an Iceberg?" Or "What
the opportunity cost of swerving the ship suddenly vs. the risk of hitting -
please also take into account what the damages and risk of sinking might be if
we don't move and hit it?"

I'll tell you what everyone thinks of those people. "You guys are nuts! Just
turn the damn ship and we'll figure out if it was a sensible move later!"

That's fine on the one hand. Everyone loves a good argument. The biggest
problem I have with all of it is that a lot of people on both sides see
nothing wrong with being particularly nasty about it.

"You want us to hit the iceberg!" "You know there's really no iceberg!"
"You're being disingenuous!" "You're a liar." "I may be telling a lie but it's
only to save the ship from hitting an iceberg."

------
rvz
Those who have lived under a rock for a decade would most definitely draw to
this utopian conclusion of describing the 2010s as being "Amazing".

The actual reality of the 2010s brought technological advancements alongside
the endless possibilities of abuse of privacy, security, bias and policies by
its many creators upon its users. We have devices loaded with micro-sensors
that track everything we do created by the so-called unprofitable 'unicorn'
companies floating in IPOs every day, meanwhile in other countries there are
claims of foreign interference in elections and referendums via the use of the
same data we created, Which gives bad actors the opportunity to use them
against us to easily bring terror to our streets. The list of damages from the
2010s go on.

No doubt that the tech and data we created can be used for good, but as the
tech grows up we must prepare to create detection and prevention methods
against the bad actors. The 2010s did not do this enough and it has riddled us
with these issues.

