
Three Big Things: Important forces shaping the world - Tangokat
https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/three-big-things-the-most-important-forces-shaping-the-world/
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cryptica
About 'information access', I think the new barrier to socioeconomic mobility
is going to be misinformation and regulation.

Those who have power will do anything to keep that power; with abundant and
free information, fake news and misinformation will be used to control the
masses.

Probably the world will be in such a state that:

1\. Most of the rules in society will not make sense but you will accept them
anyway simply because everyone else accepts them and there will be a lot of
myths and misinformation to justify the rules.

2\. Not believing the myths and not following the rules will get you
imprisoned or killed (as has typically been the case throughout human
history).

I think 'government regulation' is increasingly taking the place of religious
doctrine when it comes to protecting the interests of the rich and powerful.
There are a lot of arbitrary laws which were introduced under some vague
pretext whose real purpose is to create a moat to protect corporate interests.

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Gatsky
Demography is rightly placed first. Youth is short and life is long, therefore
the political and economic implications of an ageing population are huge. In
Australia for example, the biggest ticket item for government spending is
‘assistance to the aged’, $70 billion out of a total budget of $500 billion.
This is distinct from the money spent on health, which is also heavily skewed
towards the elderly. I am not making a value judgement on government spending,
but the numbers suggest we will be locked in a cycle where spending on the
elderly will continue to be a dominant factor in government spending for the
next 30 years.

What will be interesting to see is how the governments keep finding the money.

~~~
iamgopal
Wealth, assets and money always are transferring hands. 30 years from now all
wealth of bill gates could have been distributed to trusts, funds and next
generations. i.e. We are continuously adding assets to what we already have,
at global scale. ( And debt to the environment. ) I wonder what would be
tipping or balance point.

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starchild_3001
If it's time to shoot from the hip (or rather extrapolate), let's rebut a
little bit.

i) _Human_ working population is shrinking, but robots are rising. Remember
this person doesn't exist
[https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/](https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/)
(but they look much like the real thing). See Boston Dynamics's Atlas, Spot
etc. So, yeah, don't worry about demographics. Robots & robot assistants will
multiply like rabbits (or rather like Windows 10 SW). This will overcompensate
for the drop in working population.

2) Inequality is real. It's extremely dangerous and getting worse (tax cuts
anyone?). But that doesn't mean it will reverse itself anytime soon. Most of
humanity lived in bare subsistence levels vs the rich during majority of human
history. If anything, equality is an aberration from the norm.

3) Access to information is awesome. This means governments & powers that be
are hard at work stopping it :) Censure, regulation, control will be the norm
going forward. Wild-west attitude towards information dissemination will
reverse course.

~~~
hackeryogi
(i) it's a very interesting point that you put forth. Yes, robots will
compensate for the _working population_ ; However, I think the OP wants to
direct the attention towards the economic impact of a changing demographic.
Robots won't earn and [ borrow and ] spend. Consumption, Consumerism and the
access to Capital is the reason world GDP has multiplied manifold in the last
century and why it continues to grow. A shift in demographic has a massive
impact on that.

~~~
deogeo
> Consumption, Consumerism and the access to Capital is the reason world GDP
> has multiplied

I'm sure improvements in technology and production played _some_ part...

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fouc
I suspect 20% drop in China's working age population might not actually hurt
as much as the author tries to imply. The sheer size of the population and the
amount of population within cities and outside cities should play a role here.
A 20% drop could actually have the opposite pressure, create some efficiency
and dramatically push up the quality of life and create a better functioning
economy, and overall economy could actually go up and/or become much more
stable.

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js8
"They eventually have enough, and coalesce as a group to become powerful
enough to force change, typically with taxes, minimum wages, and labor
unions."

Typically? You wish!

Look at what happened in many states of Latin America. They have huge
inequality problem. And they are not closer to solving it than they were half
a century ago.

What IMHO usually happens is the rise of authoritarian populism. Until the
inequality is addressed, it might then oscillate between fascism (like
Pinochet) and populist-socialism (like Chavez).

P.S. I like the blog post overall, except it completely ignores the ecological
crisis and global warming.

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roenxi
Demographics are a huge deal, and combines in very concerning ways with:

1) Humanities general inability to foresee the future.

2) The surprising resistance of political bodies to trying new things when the
current method 'seems to be working'.

I've come around to the idea that China's 1 Child Policy was a a very
responsible idea. It was probably executed with the characteristic horrors of
an authoritarian government - but the idea that population is just going to
sort itself out is imprudent.

There are 3 futures. One where population naturally levels off and finds a
sustainable level, one where growth turns out to be truly exponential in
defiance of physical limits and one where a lot of people discover they can't
be supported by what is on offer and die of starvation or violence.

The good news is that is 2 happy endings to 1 bad one. But humanity has a very
long history of need-resource-access-driven violence and evolutionary factors
will push us back there if it isn't politically resisted at a grand scale.

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yamato2022
Your second scenario is what is often promoted despite being hard to believe
at this stage. Your third scenario is very likely IMO. Your first scenario
sounds like the world runs on magic beans and somehow things will just work
themselves out without any intervention or disaster (your third scenario) ...

~~~
mxwsn
I find opinions like these to be somewhat disconcerting. I don't know terribly
much about demographics, but people who study demographics and economic
development seem to fairly consistently agree that global population /will/
level off. At the core, the reasoning is simple -- as women become better
educated and countries develop economically, birth rates drop, with no
exceptions that I am aware of. The United Nations projects that the global
population will level off at 12 billion around 2100.

~~~
phkahler
When I was a kid, there were about 3.5 billion people on earth. I've watched
that double. Growth of 3.5 billion people. You shug off another 4 to 5 billion
like it's no big deal. Maybe you're just happy to hear a prediction if
leveling off, and the number is meaningless. Let me tell you, 3 to 4 billion
is a LOT of people. I remember when it was ALL the people, and what it looks
like to have that many more. Dont kids yourself, it's a LOT of people. The
notion that the entire world will modernize and have a reduced birthrate is
also an assumption. I hope we can handle it.

~~~
shadowprofile77
Yes but the scenarios 2 to 3 mentioned in the comment above are purely
speculative. They in fact go contrary to the weight of more recent demographic
historical evidence so far and insofar as there's a major scientific consensus
of any kind on population growth, it's weighted heavily in favor of the idea
that population will stabilize by or before 2100. Even the 12 billion figure
is exceptionally high. The majority I've seen indicate 11 billion or less,
many 10 billion and the lower professional estimates argue we might see a
world population of only 9 billion or so by 2100, if I recall correctly. All
this takes aside new energy, crop and general technological prospects for good
human development. Currently, more people than ever are indeed living better
than ever despite the population having doubled since the mid 1970s or so and
the current biggest problems facing populations in need almost entirely
consist of politically caused shortages, not literal absolute resource
shortages.

~~~
shadowprofile77
One other thing to keep in mind as well: much of our current population
explosion isn't even due to massive birth rates. It's the result of much lower
infant mortality. If we were to still have the infant mortality rates we had
in the beginnings of the 20th century with current global birth rates, i'd
even speculate that population would already be declining. Since said birth
rates continue to decline, the trend looks good globally.

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deevolution
"The three big ones that stick out are demographics, inequality, and access to
information."

The biggest, most important force shaping the world today is the invisible
hand of evolution.

~~~
cwp
That... seems like a non-sequitur here. What to elaborate?

~~~
sanxiyn
I don't see what is there to elaborate. Humanity is evolving, and OP thinks it
is an important force shaping the world today.

~~~
cwp
This is obviously true, but irrelevant at the timescale that the article
considers, ie, about a century beginning in 1945. Have we evolved
significantly since WW2? Is the internet going to exert selection pressure on
humanity? Maybe, but we won't notice in 3 generations.

