The Third Industrial Revolution (economists)

[ozleicester]

Econonmists, people knowledgable in this stuff... please tell me where this guy has got things wrong. Please explain the flaws.

 

 

[Innovindil]

43 minutes ago, ozleicester said:

Econonmists, people knowledgable in this stuff... please tell me where this guy has got things wrong. Please explain the flaws.

 

 

Plenty better at the economics side than me, so I'll let them cover that. 

 

As for the presentation. He's got a proper shiny head. Should have wore a hat, or gone ferret style like trump. No good giving a speech while your audience are having to dodge light death rays off your dome tbh. 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, ozleicester said:

Econonmists, people knowledgable in this stuff... please tell me where this guy has got things wrong. Please explain the flaws.

 

 

Can't imagine many are going to listen to all of that Oz. I stopped at 4:30 when he stated that 40% of the population are worse off than before the industrial revolution and his initial justification was that they earned less than $2 a day.

 

What they earn is irrelevant to whether they are better off. Their standard of living is higher, they have more needs and wants fulfilled. I'd say that the percentage of people living in worse conditions than before the industrial revolution is incredibly low and probably those are living in a war zone and have known a better standard of living.

[yorkie1999]

Fvck that, i thought it was quite interesting, although a little exaggerated,  until he started going on about getting rid of T-bone steaks in order to stop a bit of extra methane going into the atmos!  

Edited 6 March 2018 by yorkie1999

[MC Prussian]

Several points:

 

1) Comparing the state of the world today with the one at the (beginning of the) 19th or 20th century is far-fetched, due to numerous influences, all with varying degrees of weight:

Global population, technology, infrastructure, health & safety and many other variables differ immensely.

The 19th and 20th century did not know 7.6 billion people living on this planet. If it weren't for progress in productivity and health care amongst others, how would we be able to support so many people on Earth? Then the use of the "better off people getting even richer" - they've always existed and they'll always exist. Why fuel envy at rich people when you should focus on eliminating poverty, I wonder? And it's not like as if the rich aren't philanthropists, either.

 

2) On the topic of climate change, well... We have triple to six times the amount of people living on the same land masses as opposed to 100, 200 years ago, with Asia and Africa leading the stats here... What do you expect? Each one of us needs more stuff, produces more waste, more gases, uses up more natural resources. The progress that we've made also seems to be our downfall, because we cannot cope with the speed by which it is happening. Try teaching people to live a life of austerity, budget and humbleness and see how far you can go in the Western World and Asia (China, South Korea and Japan mostly).

Heck, even Rifkin still uses planes to get to places, as he openly admits. How economical and ecological is that?

3) Germany's economic growth is mainly down to new and more jobs in the low-paying sectors (which may benefit the economy, but not the people living in Germany) and by cheating the employment stats.

4) Also, how can energy flow in just one direction as Rifkin wants us to believe - and that in an endless, ever-expanding universe?

5) With regards to the Third Industrial Revolution and smart technology - what do you do with all the people losing their jobs in the process? How do you eliminate poverty then and what should we strive for when even more manual labor becomes obsolete? The speed of technological progress and productivity is exceeding the progress in social structures and the meaning of working for a living.

6) "Big data" can be a big gift to mankind... or a big danger. We are starting to give up our own control of things to machines, sensors and companies controlling the data. Who controls Big Data? How much Big Data do we need? How far do we go with technology when robots start developing their own consciousness? There's a whole load of philosophical questions looming around the corner.

7) Technological progress: Wind and solar energy & technology are currently at a stage where they still cannot substitute nuclear power or fossil fuels, they aren't even near it. Wind turbines, for instance, are highly inefficient (in built, maintenance and energy conversion) - and bloody ugly to look at:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/wind-turbines-are-neither-clean-nor-green-and-they-provide-zero-global-energy/

 

VICE itself is a subject of controversy, an overvalued global media-tech company with its own agenda. What once started out as an alternative magazine in Montréal has now become a highly sought-after commodity in the world of world news, an amalgamate that wants to be "MTV, CNN and ESPN rolled into one", part-owned by Disney, 21st Century Fox (Rupert Murdoch) and the Hearst Corporation. Their HQ in New York is hipster heaven and that's the audience - millennials. They are capitalist, but pander to a generation by trying to oppose government. It is selling itself on the "coolness" factor, producing high-quality video material. It's all about the product and creating new dependencies. VICE pay little to no money to their employees, many of them interns, whilst CEO Shane Smith and his entourage get richer by the minute. "It's like a cult" (a former employee) and reminds me of Red Bull media to some extent:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/the_cult_of_vice.php

Just look at the audience in the video and you'll see they're all about the same age... and mostly white. Coincidence? Where are the kids under 18? Or the people over 30 to 40?

I also wonder how much money VICE paid Rifkin to hold that mic...

 

All in all, this documentary once more emphasizes the potential dangers of VICE (and its backers), but I do hope it encourages a healthy debate about what the future holds.

Edited 6 March 2018 by MC Prussian

[leicsmac]

I think that the vid itself is rather hyperbolic, but a couple of comments here:

 

28 minutes ago, MC Prussian said:

Several points:

 

2) On the topic of climate change, well... We have triple to six times the amount of people living on the same land masses as opposed to 100, 200 years ago, with Asia and Africa leading the stats here... What do you expect? Each one of us needs more stuff, produces more waste, more gases, uses up more natural resources. The progress that we've made also seems to be our downfall, because we cannot cope with the speed it is happening. Try teaching people to live a life of austerity, budget and humbleness and see how far you can go in the Western World and Asia (China and Japan mostly).

Heck, even Rifkin still uses planes to get to places, as he openly admits. How economical and ecological is that?

 

7) Technological progress: Wind and solar energy technology are currently at a stage where they still cannot substitute nuclear power or fossil fuels, they aren't even near it. Wind turbines, for instance, are highly inefficient.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/wind-turbines-are-neither-clean-nor-green-and-they-provide-zero-global-energy/

 

 

1

With respect to point 2...though the point is spot on about people not accepting a more austere lifestyle to guarantee the future, this should really come with a caveat that a solution to that particular dilemma that involved sustainable growth needs to be found because the alternative is careening right into a civilisational crisis of one of a few different sorts (or more than one at the same time).

 

With respect to point 7...though wind and solar energy aren't as efficient as fossil fuels or nuclear power yet, big strides are being made on that score, and again - their replacement of certainly the former is a matter of necessity rather than preference - again, the way we consume oil, gas and coal around the world simply isn't sustainable and if we don't pull back on it, the planet will end up doing it for us one way or another. Thorium fission has a part to play in large energy grids, but I would really like to see wind and solar as well as other possible renewable options take more precedence at a household, personal, level as they become more efficient.

[ozleicester]

3 hours ago, MC Prussian said:

Several points:

 

1) Comparing the state of the world today with the one at the (beginning of the) 19th or 20th century is far-fetched, due to numerous influences, all with varying degrees of weight:

Global population, technology, infrastructure, health & safety and many other variables differ immensely.

The 19th and 20th century did not know 7.6 billion people living on this planet. If it weren't for progress in productivity and health care amongst others, how would we be able to support so many people on Earth? Then the use of the "better off people getting even richer" - they've always existed and they'll always exist. Why fuel envy at rich people when you should focus on eliminating poverty, I wonder? And it's not like as if the rich aren't philanthropists, either.

 

2) On the topic of climate change, well... We have triple to six times the amount of people living on the same land masses as opposed to 100, 200 years ago, with Asia and Africa leading the stats here... What do you expect? Each one of us needs more stuff, produces more waste, more gases, uses up more natural resources. The progress that we've made also seems to be our downfall, because we cannot cope with the speed by which it is happening. Try teaching people to live a life of austerity, budget and humbleness and see how far you can go in the Western World and Asia (China, South Korea and Japan mostly).

Heck, even Rifkin still uses planes to get to places, as he openly admits. How economical and ecological is that?

3) Germany's economic growth is mainly down to new and more jobs in the low-paying sectors (which may benefit the economy, but not the people living in Germany) and by cheating the employment stats.

4) Also, how can energy flow in just one direction as Rifkin wants us to believe - and that in an endless, ever-expanding universe?

5) With regards to the Third Industrial Revolution and smart technology - what do you do with all the people losing their jobs in the process? How do you eliminate poverty then and what should we strive for when even more manual labor becomes obsolete? The speed of technological progress and productivity is exceeding the progress in social structures and the meaning of working for a living.

6) "Big data" can be a big gift to mankind... or a big danger. We are starting to give up our own control of things to machines, sensors and companies controlling the data. Who controls Big Data? How much Big Data do we need? How far do we go with technology when robots start developing their own consciousness? There's a whole load of philosophical questions looming around the corner.

7) Technological progress: Wind and solar energy & technology are currently at a stage where they still cannot substitute nuclear power or fossil fuels, they aren't even near it. Wind turbines, for instance, are highly inefficient (in built, maintenance and energy conversion) - and bloody ugly to look at:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/wind-turbines-are-neither-clean-nor-green-and-they-provide-zero-global-energy/

 

VICE itself is a subject of controversy, an overvalued global media-tech company with its own agenda. What once started out as an alternative magazine in Montréal has now become a highly sought-after commodity in the world of world news, an amalgamate that wants to be "MTV, CNN and ESPN rolled into one", part-owned by Disney, 21st Century Fox (Rupert Murdoch) and the Hearst Corporation. Their HQ in New York is hipster heaven and that's the audience - millennials. They are capitalist, but pander to a generation by trying to oppose government. It is selling itself on the "coolness" factor, producing high-quality video material. It's all about the product and creating new dependencies. VICE pay little to no money to their employees, many of them interns, whilst CEO Shane Smith and his entourage get richer by the minute. "It's like a cult" (a former employee) and reminds me of Red Bull media to some extent:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/the_cult_of_vice.php

Just look at the audience in the video and you'll see they're all about the same age... and mostly white. Coincidence? Where are the kids under 18? Or the people over 30 to 40?

I also wonder how much money VICE paid Rifkin to hold that mic...

 

All in all, this documentary once more emphasizes the potential dangers of VICE (and its backers), but I do hope it encourages a healthy debate about what the future holds.

Interesting, thanks.

 

Edited 6 March 2018 by ozleicester