10-04-2016, 02:56 PM
(10-02-2016, 12:45 PM)Mikebert Wrote: What I really want to see is how you can get a HUGE reduction in inequality like that seen in the 1340-1450 period or in the 1930-1970 period without massive population decline (which induces labor shortages that drive wages up) or a massive reduction in elite number through war attrition (that allows a greater fraction of economic output to flow to the lower orders). If demographics are key its pretty much one or the other.
As a potential solution I have a manuscript ready to go that just awaits a literature review of Turchin's book, which I cannot do until I read it. It is also possible that the finished book is very different than the manuscript I read, maybe he as already come up with the stuff in my paper--he's a really smart guy.
There is a very high probability that the concept of a labor shortage will become passé in the next two or three decades ... perhaps sooner. There are very few exceptions to the march of automation and artificial intelligence. The single largest category of employment among the less educated is motor vehicle operation, and we know that's going in the next 10 to 15 years. That hardly an exception to the rule, either. Similar events will quickly neuter the economic driver of higher wages, if they haven't started to do that already. Yet continuous declines aren't possible either ... unless we like the idea of dystopia, anarchy or revolution.
I have to wonder whether the problem can even be addressed until it manifests in earnest. The average person doesn't see the end of work as a potential issue, so they aren't likely to see it as an issue anytime soon. In other words, are we moving out of a paradigm we basically understand into one where we are all neophytes? The arrival of modernity in the early 20th century was pretty overwhelming too, but human labor was still in demand. This time, probably not.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.