Why is the world in such dire economic straits, and what can we do about it?
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Sunday, August 23, 2026 20:19
VIEWED: 10090
PAGE 7 of 9
Just saw this chart.
http://www.getinthehotspot.com/10-richest-countries-in-world/
Haven't looked at how accurate it is, but it seems most of the countries listed as the richest are in Europe.
List is compiled by the Swiss, so maybe it is biased. But interesting.
-----
Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Except you think capitalism is necessary to the "unfettered" part - and it isn't.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Which was why I didn't not have electric lighting on my list as a mostly American invention.
Originally posted by SignyM:
Oh, and let's not forget that Paris had electric lighting long before the light bulb was ever "invented".
Look, you guys are really hung up on this. Lemme explain the whole invention thing again.
Invention is a continuous process that moves from person to person, country to country. Everything stands on the shoulders of the people who came before them. It's a chain, right? Some links in the chain influence the final product (the one WE know) more than others. But which ones? There is some subjectivity in deciding this link was the "father" link. Blah blah blah.
Take refrigeration. According to Wikipedia (and some other sources), this is what the chain looks like.
11th century: Avicenna, Iran, refrigerated coils
1748: William Cullen, Scotland, produced a small amount of ice artificially.
1805: Oliver Evans, America, vapor compression refrigeration cycle, key to refrigeration. No refrigerator unit though.
1834: Jacob Perkins, America, first patent to use vapor compression cycles in a refrigerator unit. Patent filed also in Scotland.
1841: John Gorrie, America, patent for mechanical refrigeration
1853: Alexander Twinning, America, vapor compression unit that produced large amounts of ice
1856: James Harrison, Australia, ammonia and ether compressor unit
1859: Ferdinand Carre, France, ammonia compressor unit
1867: JB Sutherland, America, refrigerated railroad cars
1876: Carl von Linden, Germany, gas liquification process critical to refrigeration
1913: Fred Wolf, America, refrigerators for domestic use
1916: Alfred Mellowes, America, self-contained refrigerators, bought out for first mass production of refrigerators at the Frigidaire Co.
1922: Baltzar von Platen, Carl Munters, Sweden, Electrolux refrigerators.
Etc. I am sure there are others I've missed, but you get the picture. I look at the links I consider to be critical, and I look at the number of links overall. I consider Oliver Evans to be the "father" link in the chain. Considering also that most of those links were American, I think it is safe to summarize that refrigerators were mostly invented in America.
The same type of chain can be constructed for all other inventions. Perhaps you will pick a different "father" link than I would, and we can nitpick and bicker about where things were invented ad infinitum.
Whatever. I stand by my position that most of the new technology during the Gilded Age was developed in America. You don't agree. Fine.
My central point is not whether Americans invented this or that. My central point is that unfettered development of new technology played a big role in allowing 1) money to move from Europe's nobility to the nouveau riche, 2) a creation of a middle class, and 3) improved living standards for industrialized nations. To me, these 3 results indicate that unfettered new tech development (even though it had a relatively short window) has promise as an anti-"gravity" mechanism.
Bickering doesn't address these points.
-----
Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
CTS, stripped of surrounding arguments you said:
Quote:
unfettered development of new technology played a big role in allowing 1) money to move from Europe's nobility to the nouveau riche, 2) a creation of a middle class, and 3) improved living standards for industrialized nations. To me, these 3 results indicate that unfettered new tech development (even though it had a relatively short window) has promise as an anti-"gravity" mechanism.
My first thought was that the development of steam power was certainly unfettered ... in fact, it was rampant. And it DID transfer wealth from the nobility to the nouveau riche. But it lead to impoverishment for whole swaths of populations, the previous agricultural peasant class who were forcibly displaced off their small holdings, and who filled the new factories, slums, poorhouses and streets with starving wage-slaves.
So what is the main difference between THAT implementation of technology, and one that you would consider to be "anti-gravity"? Because it seems to me, from many historical examples, that not every technological advance is anti-gravity.
Also, I would say that the first xfer of wealth from the nobility occurred during the formation of the merchant class, which began (I think) around 1500.
I agree that advanced technology CAN lead to better quality of life, for some. OTOH, in this highly advanced technological world, the entire continent of Africa is poorer than ever before. So the creation of prosperity for all is a complex process. IMHO the creation of a middle class (which BTW occurred in both Europe and the USA) had more to do with labor unions than any beneficent, automatic effect of technological advance. So I think this point deserves more discussion about how technology can be anti-gravity, and when it might not be, and how to ensure that future advances will fill the role.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Unfettered technology has improved the overall standard of living ... for us. But not for everyone, not indefinitely, and currently as a crutch for capitalism.
Consider all the really important technologies a short list of which I gave above - language, stone tools, the baby sling, the bowl, fire, clothing, agriculture, even binding with sinew or rope, rafts, sails and rudders, and the alphabet, and all prehistoric discoveries great and small. Not only did they improve the standard of living, they made it possible for humans to expand from their very small, very particular and generous origin to which they were uniquely adapted to survive - their 'Eden' - to areas around the globe which otherwise would have been beyond their physical survival.
These technologies had important consequences for human society as well, consequences we are still trying to deal with to this day. They created excess, which, like Goodall's pile of fruit in front of the chimps, nearly always gave rise to hierarchies - more specifically male territorial (warlike) parasitic hierarchies - which lived off the excess generated by the people, and without apparently contributing anything in return except bs stories about the gods and their (the male hierarchies') divine right to be where they were, doing what they were doing, and getting what they were getting. A consequence which continues to this day, I might add.
So technology can improve the overall standard of living, but at a social cost.
Do we WANT unfettered technology? And do we WANT to enable capitalism?
Anyway, I have to get going. I hope to add more later.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Well, I stopped following this a while ago, but it sounds to me that the frontier alleviating the poverty problems created by the industrial revolution and subsequent urbanization suggests that if each person/family unit doesn't has enough productive lands or resources that they can grow or trade for a living, bad things happen.
Similarly, bad things happen if an economic system relies primarily on projected assets and not real-world assets.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
But, uhm, as was pointed out above, it wasn't Americans who came up with the new technologies. So the Gilded Age doesn't meet your criteria either.
They didn't come up with coal power or steam-engines, no, but there was plenty in the time period Americans did come up with or improve upon, for better or for worse.
There are periods of invention and growth and even optimism in human history. This appears to usually be caused by some kind of paradigm shift.
Quote:
These technologies had important consequences for human society as well, consequences we are still trying to deal with to this day. They created excess, which, like Goodall's pile of fruit in front of the chimps, nearly always gave rise to hierarchies - more specifically male territorial (warlike) parasitic hierarchies - which lived off the excess generated by the people, and without apparently contributing anything in return except bs stories about the gods and their (the male hierarchies') divine right to be where they were, doing what they were doing, and getting what they were getting. A consequence which continues to this day, I might add.
Nearly always. Not always. Obviously, the less centralized any society or community is, the more self-sufficient and stable it is, and the less parasitic.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Why does it in any way matter exactly who came up with what, when - if the technology is of benefit ?
Caring more ABOUT that, than the effect, is what lead fools down the road to the DMCA and worse.
You do not forment technological improvement by strangling it in the crib.
-F
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
A good point, Frem. I think none of us are against technology itself. Perhaps that's the salient argument here.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:See, I am not sure that the "nouveau pauvre" were that much poorer than the agricultural peasants. I think the poor and starving simply moved, from the country to the city, where they were more visible. I am also not sure that the technology itself was what caused the migration. If you'd like to make a case for that, I'd like to hear it.
Originally posted by SignyM:
But it lead to impoverishment for whole swaths of populations, the previous agricultural peasant class who were forcibly displaced off their small holdings, and who filled the new factories, slums, poorhouses and streets with starving wage-slaves.
Quote:Agreed.
not every technological advance is anti-gravity.
Quote:Yes, because people with advanced tech/weapons used the tech to oppress people in Africa. You might say that is how the Indians got robbed of an entire continent: advanced weaponry.
OTOH, in this highly advanced technological world, the entire continent of Africa is poorer than ever before.
Quote:Well, I am not that ambitious. Right now, I'd just like to see prosperity for more.
So the creation of prosperity for all is a complex process.
Quote:I think they both played a role.
IMHO the creation of a middle class (which BTW occurred in both Europe and the USA) had more to do with labor unions than any beneficent, automatic effect of technological advance.
Quote:Agreed.
So I think this point deserves more discussion about how technology can be anti-gravity, and when it might not be, and how to ensure that future advances will fill the role.
So maybe my premise is overly simplistic and naive. But here is how I see it.
The rich got rich by doing X. All their resources are invested in X. If someone else, anyone else, invents Y which makes X obsolete, all the future wealth becomes rerouted and goes now to the guy with Y. Instead of continuing to accumulate more and more, Mr. X's assets become devaluated; his gravity shrinks. Mr. Y, who may have been a peasant yesterday, suddenly has gravity of his own. The world now revolves around Planet Y instead of Planet X, which fades into a has-been.
Broadly speaking, when kerosene replaced whale oil, the whaling tycoons were replaced by coal tycoons. Then the petroleum tycoons displaced the coal tycoons a couple of notches down. I would imagine, should someone invent cold or warm fusion, fusion tycoons would displace the petroleum ones. I call it "evolution," as if each new technology were a mutation.
Now mutations are not always good, and do not always lead to a better life. In fact, most of the time, they cause many undesirable effects. But they are also the main, natural mechanism for long-term, large changes whereby the old die off, and the new begin. You want something that will break the unending and entrenched accumulation of power/wealth of the old? I think evolution, via mutation and natural selection, is the best answer.
No, not all mutations will lead to evolution. But evolution doesn't occur without mutations. So we just gotta put up with a lot of bad mutations until we get the ones that take. Maybe we can help it along in just the right way.
-----
Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME