Economic Growth Terminated
“Sir Isaac Newton PRS MP (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727) was an English physicist and mathematician who is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (“Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”), first published in 1687, laid the foundations for most of classical mechanics.”
Amongst the circus of concepts, ideas, debates, opinions, conflicts, agendas and so forth that the internet and blogs and this blog gets filled up with, one is greatly overlooked: and namely that the entire concept of Economic Development has been a very short story, a one time quirk, not at all a scientific endeavor such as the discovery of laws and patterns according to repetitive patterns and such.
Most of the entire development of a Technological Economy has been an ongoing work in progress that started not even 150 years ago: mind you 150 years is an extremely short time, almost instantaneously compared to the scale of human history, almost like a “Technological Singularity”, a sudden huge change in all procedures, methods, production processes, energy production and use, society organizations and so forth, a huge change in an extremely short time, bar none.
If you want to be picky and want to extend the time span to include the beinning of the Scientific Era and namely Newton (who invented calculus and such) then the time span is from 1650 to 2000 is only 350 years!
350 years is no time at all!
Electricity, Oil, Car Engines and so forth, all came online about the same time, in a few decades, changed everything and the face of the earth in just a few decades of very recent history:
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“In 1811, John Blenkinsop designed the first successful and practical railway locomotive”
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"Broadly speaking, electrification was the build out of the electrical generating and distribution systems which occurred in the United States, Britain and other countries from the mid-1880s until around 1940 and is in progress in rural areas in some developing countries. "
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“1884: British engineer Edward Butler constructed the first petrol (gasoline) internal combustion engine.”
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“The rise in importance of Petroleum was due to the invention of the internal combustion engine, the rise in commercial aviation, and the importance of petroleum to industrial organic chemistry, particularly the synthesis of plastics, fertilizers, solvents, adhesives and pesticides.”
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"Edwin Drake’s 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, is popularly considered the first modern well. "
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“In 1927, Philo Farnsworth made the world’s first working television system with electronic scanning of both the pickup and display devices,[17] which he first demonstrated to the press on 1 September 1928.[17][18]”
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"A triode is an electronic amplification device having three active electrodes. The term most commonly applies to a vacuum tube (or valve in British English) with three elements: the filament or cathode, the grid, and the plate or anode. The triode vacuum tube was the first electronic amplification device, which propelled the electronics age forward, by enabling amplified radio technology and long-distance telephony. "
8 ) “The first three-element device (mercury-vapor filled with a control grid) was patented on March 4 1906 by the Austrian Robert von Lieben[1][2][3] independent from that, on October 25 1906”
And the list could go on and on starting from 1700 or 1800 and going up to the year 2000.
Just consider 1870 to 1930 and compare that to 1960 to 2010: which era created the most novelties, which era constructed the Modern World ? so obviously we are greatly slowing down in the changes that our technology, science and societies are creating, we probably have peaked in scientific discoveries, technological applications and most of all Economic Development.
This is probably why Economic Growth in the fully developed countries is now so hard to achieve: the USA, EU and JAPAN have finished their growth cycle also because the very growth cycle was a one time quirk, a fluke, just an instant change of so many things all together in such a little amount of time and such. All changes strongly coupled to scientific discoveries and applications, inventions, completely new industries being born out of all of the discoveries and applications, the car industry and energy industry and so forth, a huge number of new industries that came online, hired millions improved the life quality and standards of livings of entire continents and so forth. But it was a one time story, just one huge wave, not destined to continue, hence the story of economic growth is over and done with when a country becomes fully developed. The very evolution and development of a Technological Economy imposes consolidation, optimizations, and so forth, this implies fewer workers needed (productivity increases - consolidation means doing ever more with ever fewer workers and such), automation and so forth.
It is the first time in history that a civilization finds itself in a fully developed and “growth achieved” society, no one has any idea where to go from here (but there is no direction, and no one and no force can really impose any direction, only random forces that will evolve society in any possible random way), no models are available, no clues are available to suggest if there is any direction from here on, the only thing that people keep on noticing and feeling and seeing is the need for less and less work, the concentration of power and wealth in fewer and fewer hands, the constant win lose (it was once win win in the 1960s and such) situations, debates, conflicts and all the economy is imposing on everyone, the debts and all the short circuits, disfunctions, insanities like the US health care system and such or the European Union having a single currency not backed by any single nation and so forths.
This is such a unique, and one time situation that we find ourselves in: how will an economically developed society evolve from here on ? and haven’t a clue on how the random, chaotic forces will play out from here on.
But JHK and the greens, environmentalist, the Nature - Tree Hugging thugs want us all to go backwards again, want to go back, want to go in the past are actually still fighting decades old technologies, are so old time and old timers that they are still fighting against Oil and Cars and TVs (but they accept trains, well once even trains were being fought by backwards people): they don’t get it that you can’t rewind this history, you can’t undiscover electricity, you can’t put oil back in the ground and forget that it ever existed and so on.
You can only go forward now, and the only way forward is to dump this old fashion Economic Ideology that expects continous economic growth to go on forever all by itself, when there is no reason to expect such a thing, this constant expectation of better and more and progress when nothing is pointing in that direction and especially the invisible hand of the market certainly will not force this or make this progress happen anymore: now progress must be forced, like what China does, huge government spending (you can print money forever it never runs out, it is only a place holder for political decisions forcing growth and progress and development and such) to construct the future, High Speed Trains, Rockets to Space, Atomic Energy Plants, Skyscrapers, Industries of all kinds, Huge increase of Consumerism, the complete saturation and application of all of the technologies we now have and even more, ever more, forced economic growth through huge public - private projects, millions of projects, large scale projects and such: and millions, billions of people receiving a free salary and cheap rents since the economy by itself will never again be able to hire them for useful work, nay the only useful work is the huge projects huge government spendings and private corporations (along with their rightly deserved huge profits, since at least they are constructing something, doing something serialzed and accumulating wealth in the form of infrastructers and such) can shove down nature’s throat.
And enough of all of this religion of wanting to protect Nature. And esecially enough of all of this envy towards the rich and this morality crap, “you shall not rob” and such: who cares, people and bosses and politicians will always rob money, and so forth, this morality crap is totally irrelevant, a distraction to what we should all be concentrated on (let them rob all the money they can, who cares, it is totally irrelevant and invisible in the larger scheme of things) and that is huge projects and cheap rents and the governments hiring billions of people to do proudly and bluntly and boldly nothing at all and such. Morality and envy and justice will not make anyone better off, only huge projects and cash will make everyone better off and such, let the private corporations hog up all the profits they can, who cares, what is important is that I can get my free salary and cheap rents and Rockets to Mars and such!
APE THUG