Suresh Naidu pointed me to a fascinating 1930 essay (excerpts below) by the famous economist John Maynard Keynes on the long term future. Consideration of the far future put Keynes into a very far mode, where he upheld far ideals against near practical constraints. While Keynes accepted that farmer ideals of work, property, and saving for the future were needed to maintain economic growth, he detested such ideals, and looked to a future roughly a century hence when, humanity’s absolute material needs being satisfied, we embraced forager ideals for sharing material goods, living in and enjoying the moment, and just doing what feels right.
The phrase "assuming no important wars and no important increase in population" should be taken into account before people get too excited about pointing out how wrong this vision was.
(for reference, world population in 1930 was two billion)
We can forgive Keynes for not understanding a couple key economic and social factors that make his predictions worthless. We can't be so kind to those who read him today and make the same wide-eyed mistakes.
Namely:
1) The constraints of thermodynamics.
2) Resource limits.
3) Continued population growth and the disintegration of collective value-dialogue.
How much is this affected by the very specific timing of being just after the crash? Keynes was a very good speculator, other than being pretty much wiped out in the crash. Did he write on this topic at some other period?
The last sentence in the essay is the best: ". If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid!"
If you're referring to the way Keynes mentions usury, then I think that's possible but unlikely. Keynes thought real interest rates would fall to zero in the long run as the supply of loanable funds became more and more abundant relative to investment. So "usury" as he knew it would simply cease to exist as a matter of course.
I'm pretty sure that the last two paragraphs are mostly just expressions of not very veiled anti-semitism and the earlier parts seem almost perfectly correct and well calibrated.
Keynes’ Forager Future
right. I don't think his predictions are that crazy.
The phrase "assuming no important wars and no important increase in population" should be taken into account before people get too excited about pointing out how wrong this vision was.
(for reference, world population in 1930 was two billion)
The forger and the farmer categories remind me of the grasshopper and the ant fable.
Fertility will be our Achilles heel. The separation of sex and procreation will lead to a population and culture crash.
We can forgive Keynes for not understanding a couple key economic and social factors that make his predictions worthless. We can't be so kind to those who read him today and make the same wide-eyed mistakes.
Namely:
1) The constraints of thermodynamics.
2) Resource limits.
3) Continued population growth and the disintegration of collective value-dialogue.
http://stumblingandmumbling... for instance
Possible, but it's worth considering what else we know about his thinking on these matters.
How much is this affected by the very specific timing of being just after the crash? Keynes was a very good speculator, other than being pretty much wiped out in the crash. Did he write on this topic at some other period?
Utopia:
http://www.youtube.com/watc...
or maybe just:
http://www.worldstarhiphop....
The last sentence in the essay is the best: ". If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid!"
If you're referring to the way Keynes mentions usury, then I think that's possible but unlikely. Keynes thought real interest rates would fall to zero in the long run as the supply of loanable funds became more and more abundant relative to investment. So "usury" as he knew it would simply cease to exist as a matter of course.
I'm pretty sure that the last two paragraphs are mostly just expressions of not very veiled anti-semitism and the earlier parts seem almost perfectly correct and well calibrated.
Not massively surprising.
Here's a question: what historical figure would you be most interested in reading a vision of the future from?
I'd pick two: Machiavelli and Al Capone.
What kind of person assumes a near mode when asked this question?