
No Great Technological Stagnation (2016) - Hooke
https://nintil.com/2016/04/25/no-great-technological-stagnation/
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roenxi
Quite a lot to digest, even the reference links are still interesting.

I find it interesting when reading things like the headwinds identified on
186-187 (or pages 2-3 as the pdf reader counts them) of the document linked
early on in the article [0]. It is a welcome break from data light world of
politics and encouraging to see people talking about the parts of the future
that are unlikely to be rosy.

Curious really that nobody fingers the bank bailouts from thing like the
'07-'08 financial crisis as a risk to long-term growth. The financial
companies determine where the money flows to and the crisis can be interpreted
as the the economy signaling that the money managers are incompetent. Propping
the system up with bailouts and QE probably does real harm over the long term,
as people are incentivised to do things that have been proven not to work.

[0]
[http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Interactives...](http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Interactives/2014/thinktank20/chapters/tt20-united-
states-economic-growth-gordon.pdf?la=en)

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evrydayhustling
Great read! If you accept both his evidence that tech is accelerating AND the
consensus thesis that productivity growth is slowing, then the simplest
explanation is that there is a separate, fast-growing phenomenon that saps
economic productivity.

Anyone want to propose what that is and share some measurements?

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PacifyFish
I’ll offer some speculation with no data to back it up: quality of life is
good enough that after a certain threshold of wealth people aren’t willing to
work extra hours any more. See: Europe & bigco tech jobs.

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maxxxxx
I think that’s true. Most people just want a comfortable life. Only a few will
always want more.

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TeMPOraL
And out of these few, how much would prefer to put their efforts towards goals
of _their_ choosing, instead of exchanging labor for money via whatever task
_someone else_ is willing to pay for?

