Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

[David Horn]

(08-18-2017, 06:25 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: I really don't see how we could have such a conversation or even start one.  As I pointed out in my previous post it would be like expecting someone from the 9th century attempting to develop a working economic model for an industrial society.

... except you start right in on the project in your next paragraph.

Kinser Wrote:I would, however, say that it occurs to me that there would be a demographic shift required to maintain an economy wherein the human population declines (which urbanization itself would contribute too).  As economies in the west have developed from the agricultrial age to the industrial age to whatever we are now we see a pattern.

Agricultural age people marry very young, have loads of children as they are necessary to provide farm labor and people die relatively young (though the human lifespan remains unchanged--I expect I don't have to explain to you the difference between expected total lifespan and average lifespan, like I would to Eric who rejects mathematics as well as science). In the Industrial age we've seen to population patterns.  I call them "early" and "late".  The early pattern, the pattern that India is experiencing for example, people move to the city but maintain their pattern of having lots of kids.  However, due to moving to cities and improvements in health care and sanitation more survive to adulthood and people discover that in the city children are really more an expense than an asset (particularly after child labor is abolished--and so far at some point every society that industrializes seems to abolish child labor).  Late pattern we have people who have lived in an urban (or suburban) environment for sometime, or all their lives and they seem only interested in having approximately 2.3 children (replacement level) and sometimes not even that.  There are of course those who never biologically reproduce for whatever reason.

I agree that, on a global scale, some adjustment to population trends will have to occur, with the last bastions of the agricultural age being the last to adjust.  After all, Nigeria is expected to be in the 5 in population within a century or two.

Kinser Wrote:As that late pattern advances countries experience a "demographic winter" where the pattern inverts.  This of course strains welfare states built on the early model and some societies attempt to address that issue by importing from elsewhere the necessary young population rather than automating themselves out of the problem. (seeking to obtain a population column rather than pyramid)  However, in the attempt to do so, they end up destroying their own societies. 

This is a point where the hard work begins.  How do we transition ... and these societies are only the worst case.  There are problems in the advanced and emerging societies too, because growth has always been assumed everywhere.  Eventually, that has to end.  

Kinser Wrote:I would hypothesize that if we are discussing a post-scarcity society which has undergone a demographic winter, a lot of the jobs that have been automated, or are under threat of automation now are done by machines, while humans maintain control of design, programming, coding and so on. Any surplus population could be dealt with by establishing space colonies which is an absolute requirement for the continuation of the species.

Perhaps ... perhaps not, but starting to think about it is better than waiting for it to bite our descendants in the ass.  There are bad ideas that need to be discussed and discarded. Other bad ideas need to be modified into something potentially workable.  Some good ideas suffer the same problem: workability.  So this is a process, and one that will take a long time. 

As usual, the think tank/academic community will take the first swing, because it's how they make their chops.  Some of that has already happened, and there's more to come.  That effort is desirable, but the decision makers will be the ones to move the process along, and they are not even cognizant at this point.  If they are, they hide it well.  All the while, climate change is moving along at its own pace, and that will be on the agenda long before the post-scarcity society.  So will inequality.  But we know we're gong there, so we need to begin the process of preparing, even though we will be distracted on the way.