Brave "New" World

[spidergoat]

That's what I thought. Your techno-saviors are far in the future while the great emergency is now. The housing collapse was just an opening salvo.

 

[Gravage]

You must have slept through Econ 101. No one benefits by an increase in unemployment. Neither the unemployed workers nor their former employers.

Sure, during the transition there can easily be a temporary bubble in one sector of the economy. The current private-equity fad illustrates that. For the past couple of decades an increasing share of America's wealth and income has accrued to capital (corporate profits, rents, dividends, interest, entrepeneur and proprietor income, etc.) and a decreasing share to labor (wages, fringe benefits, entitlements and other government programs). In fact financial institutions and other corporations have a much larger percentage of their assets in cash than ever before.

But this also clearly illustrates the fallacy of this strategy. These selfish capitalists (and capitalism does not equate to selfishness in general, this is a special breed of capitalists who don't understand what they're doing) are basing their income on the inequality between nations. They're promoting tremendous growth in the economy of China, Malaysia and other formerly destitute countries by tremendously increasing employment over there. But as soon as their standard of living starts approaching the level in the West, they'll find it more difficult to sustain their astronomical profit margin by manufacturing goods thousands of miles away from their markets and having to pay shipping costs in an era of rising fuel prices.

To summarize what I just said: This too shall pass. America's business leaders will be forced to reform their business practices and increase employment or there won't be anybody left to buy their products.Traditionally the poor have not had the knowledge, training and contacts to start businesses. Today many of them are well-educated and have business experience. All they need is the money.

The standard of living in places like China has already risen so fast that it's increasingly difficult for American corporations to make fantastic profits there. So they're moving their factories to poorer countries. But eventually when even Angola and Uruguay have been industrialized and become middle-class countries, as Brazil and Mexico have become in this century, there won't be any more poor countries to exploit. At that time they'll have to repair their partnership with the American people. They'll start lending money to educated, experienced Americans who want to start their own businesses.

The businesses of the Information Age are much smaller and easier to finance than steel mills and railroads, so this scenario is quite practical. So you and I aren't really disagreeing. The time will come when most of the giant corporations are obsolete. Work and profits will be distributed more evenly among the populace than they were during the Industrial Era. There will be more "intrapreneurs" as Toffler calls them: people who run very small information-intensive operations that primarily serve their own needs and those of a very small community, making a small profit in the bargain that is more than enough to live on in an age when people can live on cheaper rural property and spend very little on transportation, and food production is almost completely automated.As I said, you and I don't really disagree. Perhaps you see this happening only by revolution or a trend toward authoritarian government; I think you're wrong and it will simply happen naturally. We're already seeing large corporations die off while others scavenge their rotting corpses. The private-equity firms are perhaps the most visible manifestation of this trend.I didn't accuse them of being guilty of anything. Obviously to a certain extent some poor people are poor because of choices they made, such as blowing off school and thinking they could live in their parents' basement forever. But most poor people are poor largely because of bad luck--which includes being born into a poor family that can't give its children the opportunities the rest of us had.There will always be powerful people among us, but they don't always have to be arrogant. The democratization of humanity, which began in earnest in the 18th century, is an inexorable trend. Today more than half of the human race lives in countries whose governments are accountable to their constituents, and that fraction increases visibly with every passing decade. When governments are accountable, then so are the aristocrats--whether they're known as "nobility," "priesthood," "politburo," or "capitalists." Admittedly the accountability may be a slow process so the injustices you suffer will be corrected in your children's lifetime. But they will be corrected and most generations will have better lives than those who came before them.

Your remarks about the plight of the poor in America must be tempered with recognition of the explosive expansion of the government's safety net. The education, transportation, health care, protection, food-stamp, etc. services that the municipal, state and federal governments provide to every American (and arguably more to the poor) are equivalent to very roughly $20K in annual income. This is greater than the per-capita GDP of some countries!That "always" is not true. Up until around 1980, American business leaders shared their wealth with their workers. As the postwar economy boomed, wages actually rose slightly faster than corporate profits, including executive salary and other income.

It's only been since 1981 (do I have to remind anyone who became President in that year?) that corporate moguls have abandoned their responsibility to the people who generate their profits.

Today in Europe, the average corporate executive's income is about ten times that of his average employee. In the USA the factor is one hundred.

There's nothing natural or inevitable about this. Europe is, in fact, booming. One of the ways they do this is by not propping up inefficient corporations like General Motors. They let them go bankrupt so that some new, more efficient enterprise can take its place with sharp young leaders who use hot new ideas. In Europe they can do this because the government quickly and efficiently retrains the employees of the old company so they learn how to do the new kinds of jobs. In America we give them unemployment benefits for a year and then we let them starve. Even their medical insurance expires!

Other countries prove to us every day that the things that are going wrong in America are not inevitable or universal. We're just going through a bad patch.

You're philosophizing way too much.
Obviously we don't live in the same world, because really if richer countries wanted for poor countries to develop on the level of rich countries when it comes to science, technology, economics and etc. than it would be solved by now, but this is not the case this will never be the case-and that's the fact, unless poorer countries don't stand up themselves and fight against this trend (some of them stood up against corporations like Venezuela, Argentina, but that's still not enough). However human nature will always be the same, and that's the most limiting factor here.

Only the interest of corporations and the question of how much corporations will make profit matters. This is why more and more people don't believe in classic/western science anymore (at least when it comes to health and economy) mostly because all the western science is fully financed from multinational multi-billionaire corporations, so it's all about how rich corporations will get richer and richer on the expense of poorer countries and their environments and more poverty.

 

[Gravage]

We can take a nuclear plant from proposal to operation in about twenty years. It's widely predicted that $8-per-gallon gasoline will cause Americans to finally wake up to the problem. At that point there will still be more than enough petroleum left to get us through twenty years, even if the price keeps rising. Our dinosaur-era managers who can't figure out how to manage people they can't see will have retired by then. They'll be replaced by you younger people who have been using the internet since you were born and can't imagine why people should have to be physically in the same place in order to work together. Telecommuting will cut our country's petroleum consumption by 25-35%.

The orbiting solar collecters, well yeah. Considering that the U.S. government all by itself can't make a decision, it's unlikely that during this era all the world's governments would be able to cooperate to launch a project of that scope. In any case that's probably a hundred-year project.

To be practical we'd probably have to build the space elevator first. I don't think anyone had dreamt of that 45 years ago when I first encountered the idea. Maybe it will make the project cheaper and faster.

Forget it, people will want more simple life than more complex, they will rather return to the nature, than live with all that high-tech, at least majority of them, because they want to be healthy after all that's more important than high-tech and science and never-ending race for the survival on the brutal and emotionless market, which was the main thing that brought our health on critical level.
All those you said you need capital, that's why it will not happen, they said so many things in 20th century, and nothing has ever come true, people are more realistic now, as well as more skeptical to these uotpostic ideas.
Health is the most important, screw science, technology and economic markets.

 

[Gravage]

That's what I thought. Your techno-saviors are far in the future while the great emergency is now. The housing collapse was just an opening salvo.

Exactly.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Forget it, people will want more simple life than more complex, they will rather return to the nature, than live with all that high-tech, at least majority of them, because they want to be healthy after all that's more important than high-tech and science and never-ending race for the survival on the brutal and emotionless market, which was the main thing that brought our health on critical level. All those you said you need capital, that's why it will not happen, they said so many things in 20th century, and nothing has ever come true, people are more realistic now, as well as more skeptical to these uotpostic ideas. Health is the most important, screw science, technology and economic markets.

What country do you live in? Certainly not mine! The majority of Americans obviously don't feel this way. They want gadgets, not nature. They want Big Macs, not health. They're much less active and a lot fatter than their parents.

The youngest Americans would happily sit in a chair 24/7, dividing their time between texting, web surfing, and videogames.

 

[Gravage]

What country do you live in? Certainly not mine! The majority of Americans obviously don't feel this way. They want gadgets, not nature. They want Big Macs, not health. They're much less active and a lot fatter than their parents.

The youngest Americans would happily sit in a chair 24/7, dividing their time between texting, web surfing, and videogames.

And this is why we all get sick when we get older, how stupid is that? What's the point of technology if it makes your life more stressful and sicker than you are (because of the reasons you mentioned above), more damage than usefulness...

And all of you said is a major problem, people don't know what nature is anymore, every weekend I go into the mountains with my cell phone turned off for example I have been without computer or cell phone for several months and I loved it.
The majority of Americans don't feel this way-but that title belongs to children, which is said where is that country heading to? Personally I hate cell phones, I see them only as the tool for control, people without cell phones and technology lived just fine throughout the history.
We're addicted to sci-tech addiction disease, put them in nature and they'll panic.
America has become artificial country with eating unhealthy habits, really bad food (gmo, fast food and etc...) stressful way of life which only has risen with the use of technology and when we get sick we are asking questions.
You're wrong that majority of Americans obviously don't feel this way. Actually most of them want to get out of town and go to live in the mountains mostly because of the stress this way of life provides, but the fact is they can't because many of them don't have enough money to do this. Many people are old-fashioned even the new generations who really want to get out from their towns.

 

[Servant_]

The technocrats want you to continue your battle for materials. Once again, you are not on the approved buyers list for certain products. They are too dangerous for use and are completely off limits to the "general public". "Certain" Government and Military officials only...

So, how do you get on this approved buyers list you say? You don't and can't. Wake up!

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

And this is why we all get sick when we get older, how stupid is that? What's the point of technology if it makes your life more stressful and sicker than you are (because of the reasons you mentioned above), more damage than usefulness...

Americans apply a very high discount rate to pleasure and happiness. One month of happiness in 2012 is more valuable to us than five years of happiness a couple of decades in the future. We live like people who have a very high risk of dying in the near future, so we'd better get all we can right now.. And of course this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And all of you said is a major problem, people don't know what nature is anymore . . .

Nature is a place we go for a couple of weeks every year, take photos, and throw marshmallows to the baby raccoons. (Nothing on earth is cuter than a baby raccoon eating a marshmallow.)

. . . . every weekend I go into the mountains with my cell phone turned off for example I have been without computer or cell phone for several months and I loved it.

In every era there are people who are uncomfortable with that era's level of civilization. I have noted before that the complete disappearance of "the frontier" has left a lot of people uncertain of what they want. 200 years ago if an office or factory worker in the city felt like he didn't belong there, he could head off for Colorado, Saskatchewan, the Amazon, half of Africa or most of Australia. He could try living the Stone Age life, building a lean-to and trapping beavers for food, or he could hook up with one of the many Paleolithic (hunter-gatherer) or Neolithic (primitive farming and herding) tribes that were still in existence. If he didn't like it he could come back to the city and decide that civilization ain't so bad after all. His stories, as well as the stories filtering back from the guys who decided to say in the outback, helped the other guys (and it was usually guys: most women love civilization) by giving them some concrete information to supplement their fantasies about frontier life.

Today there's nowhere to go. Even professional outdoorsmen have a hard time in places like Alaska and Siberia. The average city boy wouldn't live through November, even with a travois loaded with REI's finest gear.

So city boys dream of going back to the frontier, a place that no longer exists. And they live their lives trapped between a dream they have no hope of testing, and a reality that everyone around them thinks is just fine.

The majority of Americans don't feel this way-but that title belongs to children . . . .

Excuse me, but the last time I qualified as a "child" was in the 1950s. My wife and I foolishly moved to a place like the one you described, surrounded by forest, with bears and cougars prowling around, the nearest neighbor too far away to hear if one of them tries to eat us, eight miles from the nearest supermarket and 300 miles to the nearest city worthy of the name.

It just absolutely sucks. I had the good fortune of losing my telecommuting job and had to move back to the city while she waits there patiently for me to make enough money to retire and come "home." I'm in no hurry. I've got museums, concerts, places to go dancing, a go club, and dozens of friends.

. . . .people without cell phones and technology lived just fine throughout the history.

The average person never traveled more than twenty miles from the place he was born. He was lucky to hear professionally performed music three times a year unless he lived near town and could go to the bar on Saturday night and/or church on Sunday morning and hear the same songs over and over again. He rarely met a stranger. He knew almost nothing about what was going on in the next county, much less the next country.

America has become artificial country with eating unhealthy habits . . . .

Until the industrial revolution most of the people on earth had terrible eating habits. They ate too much grain and not enough meat and suffered all kinds of nutritional deficiencies. The life expectancy was about 35--for people who survived childhood! At birth, the life expectancy of the average human was 6-8 years.

. . . . really bad food (gmo, fast food and etc...)

Apparently we don't think it's really bad because we buy it at inflated prices and happily eat it.

You're wrong that majority of Americans obviously don't feel this way. Actually most of them want to get out of town and go to live in the mountains mostly because of the stress this way of life provides, but the fact is they can't because many of them don't have enough money to do this. Many people are old-fashioned even the new generations who really want to get out from their towns.

You haven't been reading your memos. More than half of the people in America now live in cities. In fact that is true for the entire population of the planet.

Two weeks a year out in "nature" is more than enough for most of us.

I'm going to see The Cult next week, one of my favorite bands, and Crosby, Stills & Nash in July. I saw Garbage a couple of weeks ago, the Moscow Festival Ballet in April, and the St. Petersburg Orchestra playing Scheherazade, one of my all-time favorite symphonies, in February. How often do any of those companies perform in the middle of the forest?

Music is what life is all about for me, and there just ain't any out in the places where you hang out.

How fortunate that there's room for both of us on this planet. Just don't start telling me that I'm suffering because I'm not like you. I lived in the desert when I was young and as far as I'm concerned they can just cover it with solar panels to solve the energy crisis.

 

[Gravage]

Americans apply a very high discount rate to pleasure and happiness. One month of happiness in 2012 is more valuable to us than five years of happiness a couple of decades in the future. We live like people who have a very high risk of dying in the near future, so we'd better get all we can right now.. And of course this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nature is a place we go for a couple of weeks every year, take photos, and throw marshmallows to the baby raccoons. (Nothing on earth is cuter than a baby raccoon eating a marshmallow.)In every era there are people who are uncomfortable with that era's level of civilization. I have noted before that the complete disappearance of "the frontier" has left a lot of people uncertain of what they want. 200 years ago if an office or factory worker in the city felt like he didn't belong there, he could head off for Colorado, Saskatchewan, the Amazon, half of Africa or most of Australia. He could try living the Stone Age life, building a lean-to and trapping beavers for food, or he could hook up with one of the many Paleolithic (hunter-gatherer) or Neolithic (primitive farming and herding) tribes that were still in existence. If he didn't like it he could come back to the city and decide that civilization ain't so bad after all. His stories, as well as the stories filtering back from the guys who decided to say in the outback, helped the other guys (and it was usually guys: most women love civilization) by giving them some concrete information to supplement their fantasies about frontier life.

Today there's nowhere to go. Even professional outdoorsmen have a hard time in places like Alaska and Siberia. The average city boy wouldn't live through November, even with a travois loaded with REI's finest gear.

So city boys dream of going back to the frontier, a place that no longer exists. And they live their lives trapped between a dream they have no hope of testing, and a reality that everyone around them thinks is just fine.Excuse me, but the last time I qualified as a "child" was in the 1950s. My wife and I foolishly moved to a place like the one you described, surrounded by forest, with bears and cougars prowling around, the nearest neighbor too far away to hear if one of them tries to eat us, eight miles from the nearest supermarket and 300 miles to the nearest city worthy of the name.

It just absolutely sucks. I had the good fortune of losing my telecommuting job and had to move back to the city while she waits there patiently for me to make enough money to retire and come "home." I'm in no hurry. I've got museums, concerts, places to go dancing, a go club, and dozens of friends.The average person never traveled more than twenty miles from the place he was born. He was lucky to hear professionally performed music three times a year unless he lived near town and could go to the bar on Saturday night and/or church on Sunday morning and hear the same songs over and over again. He rarely met a stranger. He knew almost nothing about what was going on in the next county, much less the next country.Until the industrial revolution most of the people on earth had terrible eating habits. They ate too much grain and not enough meat and suffered all kinds of nutritional deficiencies. The life expectancy was about 35--for people who survived childhood! At birth, the life expectancy of the average human was 6-8 years.Apparently we don't think it's really bad because we buy it at inflated prices and happily eat it.You haven't been reading your memos. More than half of the people in America now live in cities. In fact that is true for the entire population of the planet.

Gravage: You're mixing apples and oranges. Yes, the life is longer, but it snot healthier. we get more sick today than ever before, the number of chronic and other NEW diseases is increasing. What's the point of all science and technology if they make me sicker and if it makes my life more stressful than ever? Tell me what's the point? Just think about for a second.
This is not life it torturing, multinational corporations are killing us with food, pollution, pesticides. Science and technology is in their interest not in our, if it was in our interest, our lives would have much greater quality today, than we have. Greater power means greater responsibility, in a man's case greater power means greater irresponsibility.
I'll rather have a short life (like people had before), living in nature and be happy and healthy than live 100 years in pain and torturing.

Two weeks a year out in "nature" is more than enough for most of us.

Not quite there are still old-fashioned people, not the one who cannot live without gadgets (like you, we're way too dependent on high-tech not to mention this high-tech comes from electricity. 60 million people lose electricity and they blame Al-Qaida for it. Oh, please... The best ever was mechanics, not electricity.
Of course it is because you're artificial, every demand you have is by gadgets/buttons, try to live without it, you can't, I can.

I'm going to see The Cult next week, one of my favorite bands, and Crosby, Stills & Nash in July. I saw Garbage a couple of weeks ago, the Moscow Festival Ballet in April, and the St. Petersburg Orchestra playing Scheherazade, one of my all-time favorite symphonies, in February. How often do any of those companies perform in the middle of the forest?

Music is what life is all about for me, and there just ain't any out in the places where you hang out.

Gravage: Who cares? I only care about my happiness and health in the first place with less technology as possible.

How fortunate that there's room for both of us on this planet. Just don't start telling me that I'm suffering because I'm not like you. I lived in the desert when I was young and as far as I'm concerned they can just cover it with solar panels to solve the energy crisis.

Well, when I was a kid we had nothing to eat either, we worked all day long whatever the weather, whether it was winter or the summer. We survived with very small amounts of food, and we were much healthier than people are today. Living in towns will make you sicker, more stressful life and pick up today's new diseases and poisoned food with pesticides, insecticides and fungicides.
Nature>technology.

 

[twr]

How is this science? I hate it when people who have no earthly business talking about economics get on the political soapbox, trying to say technology is ruining the world like some kind of 21st Century Luddite.

People are good for the economy. More people, more jobs to service those people.

Technology is good for the economy. More technology, more efficiency, more efficiency, more productivity, more productivity, MORE JOBS.

The issue we have at present is one of a boom and bust cycle. They occur roughly every 10 to 20 years and everyone always forgets about the last one. The fact of the matter is that the world standard of living is growing exponentially and will continue to do so as long as we have the resources to continue growth.

 

[NMSquirrel]

People are good for the economy. More people, more jobs to service those people.

More ppl equals more competition for jobs straining the already limited resources of this planet..
more ppl will not solve the problem..less ppl will...

 

[twr]

More ppl equals more competition for jobs straining the already limited resources of this planet..
more ppl will not solve the problem..less ppl will...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale

Read up on those and tell me I'm wrong. Who am I kidding, you know what you know what you know... you'll just repeat the same unsubstantiated claims that actually postulate that population growth is bad for an economy.

 

[machaon]

Jobs are disappearing because technology is replacing them, slowly at first, but exponential in it's progression.

There is no escaping this...

It will not be a problem. The technology will ultimately create a job market for soldiers and laser gun manufacturers as we must eventually have to fight to keep it from taking over the world: terminator style.

 

[Gravage]

It will not be a problem. The technology will ultimately create a job market for soldiers and laser gun manufacturers as we must eventually have to fight to keep it from taking over the world: terminator style.

And how exactly are you going to stop this, if you let the technology does all the jobs that people used to do, than it's all over. Some things should not be touched, we all know how the stuff with technology and science works it first goes to bad guys after that it goes to good guys, I wouldn't be surprised that all the science and technology return on us as boomerang.
Sometimes technology is a bad thing like this one...

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

. . . . you'll just repeat the same unsubstantiated claims that actually postulate that population growth is bad for an economy.

In fact every economic model since Adam Smith contains the unstated assumption that a steady increase in the number of producers and consumers is its engine of growth. This is what I keep pointing to. You younger people will be alive at the end of this century, when the global population levels off and then starts decreasing. It's not too early to be figuring out how to prevent that from being an economic catastrophe.

. . . . if you let the technology does all the jobs that people used to do, than it's all over.

Do I hear an echo from the 18th century?

"If you have your way, soon machines will be growing all the food, packaging it, delivering it, selling it and cooking it. There won't be any jobs for the humans!"​

You have to forgive those people, because until the Industrial Revolution the only "jobs" there were for 99.99% of the human race were in the food production and distribution industry. Pre-industrial methods were so inefficient that pretty much everybody had to grow and deliver food so everybody got enough to eat.

But when the Industrial Revolution took hold, we discovered that there were a whole lot of other things we could be doing, now that we didn't all have to be farmers or food haulers or makers of farming tools. Whole new industries sprang up that no one could have foreseen, and they employed thousands, millions, of people. Constructing bigger and better houses and taller commercial buildings; building roads, bridges and tunnels for motorized vehicles; building and staffing hospitals, schools, libraries, theaters, restaurants, grocery stores and museums. Writing became a major profession and newspapers proliferated.

Around 1890, when the U.S. economy toggled from scarcity-driven to surplus-driven, entire new kinds of goods and services were created. The advertising industry sprang up to convince us that we needed them. Cars, telephones, refrigerators, washing machines, radio, TV. All of those things resulted in new kinds of jobs.

Along the way, our work week was reduced from 100 hours to 40, so we had time to enjoy all that technology and buy the equipment that supported it. And we could pay for it because we got paid a lot more for those 40 hours than anybody ever was paid for 100 hours of farming.

The same thing will happen as a result of the Information Revolution. Jobs are already becoming desk-oriented, "knowledge work" as it's known, as we sit all day reading and writing and fewer people are required to keep the automated machinery running that does everything else for us. The work week will continue to shrink, perhaps to ten hours. And your great-grandchildren will earn more money in those ten hours than you earn in forty, because the productivity of their labor is being leveraged by technology. They will produce more in those ten hours, just as we produce more in 40 than our ancestors produced in 100 with their hand- and animal-operated farming tools.

Sometimes technology is a bad thing like this one...

Like which one? Did you leave out a URL? Most technologies can be used for both good and evil. It's up to us to make the right choice. Most people are not evil so we usually muddle through okay.

 

[Gravage]

In fact every economic model since Adam Smith contains the unstated assumption that a steady increase in the number of producers and consumers is its engine of growth. This is what I keep pointing to. You younger people will be alive at the end of this century, when the global population levels off and then starts decreasing. It's not too early to be figuring out how to prevent that from being an economic catastrophe.Do I hear an echo from the 18th century?

But everything has its limits the number of producers and consumers are its engine of growth, but it depends on the resources, and resources will not last forever.

"If you have your way, soon machines will be growing all the food, packaging it, delivering it, selling it and cooking it. There won't be any jobs for the humans!"​

You have to forgive those people, because until the Industrial Revolution the only "jobs" there were for 99.99% of the human race were in the food production and distribution industry. Pre-industrial methods were so inefficient that pretty much everybody had to grow and deliver food so everybody got enough to eat..

And what we have today products, food with questionable health quality with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and gm food which are all extremely doubtful when it comes to security.

But when the Industrial Revolution took hold, we discovered that there were a whole lot of other things we could be doing, now that we didn't all have to be farmers or food haulers or makers of farming tools. Whole new industries sprang up that no one could have foreseen, and they employed thousands, millions, of people. Constructing bigger and better houses and taller commercial buildings; building roads, bridges and tunnels for motorized vehicles; building and staffing hospitals, schools, libraries, theaters, restaurants, grocery stores and museums. Writing became a major profession and newspapers proliferated.

Who cares about industrial revolution I want to live in barrack and hunt to what I have to eat, actually many people are returning to Alaska on other nowherelands because to find peace and be free. Our development is destroying us, humans are cancer of this planet (there was a scientific documentary and scientific forum about this). If we rise too much we would fall faster.

Around 1890, when the U.S. economy toggled from scarcity-driven to surplus-driven, entire new kinds of goods and services were created. The advertising industry sprang up to convince us that we needed them. Cars, telephones, refrigerators, washing machines, radio, TV. All of those things resulted in new kinds of jobs.

At least they had clean air, yesterday I read that people in European union are living 2 years shorter thanks only to air pollution, this is not kind of society and scientific development anybody wants.

Along the way, our work week was reduced from 100 hours to 40, so we had time to enjoy all that technology and buy the equipment that supported it. And we could pay for it because we got paid a lot more for those 40 hours than anybody ever was paid for 100 hours of farming.

And yet we have more stress than ever, which is killing us in the process, so who gives a damn about scientific development if it's killing us, it's killing our health, how stupid can we be more than this?
You cannot trust to science anymore, because this has become a multi-billion dollar industry, who cares about what anybody wants, and how is anybody's health, that's just horrible, this is why people lost morality and ethics and the limits of what is moral are dropping, we as society have become too soft of what is questionably moral, or not moral at all. Too much tolerance in every way on everything, the system is only for scientists, politicians, rich and powerful, others are like waste which keeps tolerating all the injustice we have today. Scientists and high-tech manufacturers don't have moral and ethics, either.

The same thing will happen as a result of the Information Revolution. Jobs are already becoming desk-oriented, "knowledge work" as it's known, as we sit all day reading and writing and fewer people are required to keep the automated machinery running that does everything else for us. The work week will continue to shrink, perhaps to ten hours. And your great-grandchildren will earn more money in those ten hours than you earn in forty, because the productivity of their labor is being leveraged by technology. They will produce more in those ten hours, just as we produce more in 40 than our ancestors produced in 100 with their hand- and animal-operated farming tools.Like which one? Did you leave out a URL? Most technologies can be used for both good and evil. It's up to us to make the right choice. Most people are not evil so we usually muddle through okay.

And with these jobs we still get sick all the time, stress is killing us more than ever, and nobody cares, it's all about supposed scientific development and technology, but this is just another form of controlling what I do, whenever I do, we don't need that. This is why I said technology is a bad thing.
Why don't they make cures for all diseases,, why don't they transfer to another source of energy, it's still oil and gas, dirty industry, despite the alternatives, the faster you rise, the faster you fall, this can be said for our technology, than destruction of ecosystems, atmosphere polluting, so no we don't need that kind of technology, everybody laughs about older autochtoon people, but now it's getting more and more clear that they are right-living in the harmony with nature, and this is where our technology should be focused. but instead of it, it's focused in entirely wrong way which will cost us of our own doom.
you said in your other post that you were boring while living in the desert, trust me you are bored, but there is always a job you could do in the desert or anywhere else 8especially when you have to make a food and water for your own survival, so it's far from being boring, I bet you wouldn't survive long there if you didn't learn how to survive, or maybe you didn't want to learn how to survive in the desert), it's just matter of you if you want to work or just being lazy and do nothing.
Cheers.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Imagine a future in which machines can do everything humans could, except better and cheaper, what would people do? Well assuming people adapt to such a world and machines are obedient to humans: people would live like kings and queens, probably dedicate themselves to the arts or activities of pure entertainment, would people stop working? Well probably more like things like World of Warcraft would become "work".

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

And what we have today products, food with questionable health quality with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and gm food which are all extremely doubtful when it comes to security.

Nonetheless, the pros outweigh the cons. We have better nutrition today than at any time in history. You have to go back into prehistory, before the Bronze Age civilizations, to the Neolithic Revolution and the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to farming and animal husbandry, to find people who had better diets than ours. And their food production technology could not have supported one percent of today's world population.

Who cares about industrial revolution I want to live in barrack and hunt to what I have to eat, actually many people are returning to Alaska on other nowherelands because to find peace and be free.

I question your use of the word "many." The vast majority of human beings have utterly no interest in returning to a Stone Age lifestyle. Sure, it's a big world and there certainly are people like you, but you're nothing but a tiny, interesting, eccentric minority.

I would not want to live without the professionally composed and performed music that is available 24/7 in my current life. Even the 1950s, with radio and TV, weren't this good. I'm a resolute pacifist but even I would take up arms against any faction that wanted to take us back to the Stone Age.

And finally... It's really easy to say that you "want to" live like that, until you've tried it. This is why it's such a shame that there aren't any real frontiers anymore. Alaska just isn't practical: very few people chose to live there even in the Stone Age!

200-300 years ago, a disgruntled farmer or factory worker could say, "To hell with this, I'm going primitive," and he could go to western North America or Australia or deepest Africa or several other places that were still in the Stone Age. He could join up with a Paleolithic or Neolithic tribe, or he could just go out in the wilderness and trap beavers for food and pelts. Many of those people returned and told their friends and family just what it was like; many others did not survive the rugged life. So the other disgruntled famers and factory workers could say, "Hmmm. I guess my life here isn't so bad."

Today from a practical viewpoint there is no more frontier. Disgruntled office workers and store clerks can dream about chucking it all and going out to the frontier, but they'll never be able to reality-test that idea. Even experienced outdoorsmen find Alaska rather harsh. A barista at Starbucks, or the guy who cleans your office at night, wouldn't make it through one winter even with a sled full of top-end gear from REI.

Our development is destroying us, humans are cancer of this planet. . . .

Yet we are the most successful species that ever lived. We are the apex predator, eating the flesh of both bears and sharks. We have transcended nature and built our own environments. Sure we've taken the wrong path a few times but we always find our way back. The root of most of humanity's problems today is despotism, and every decade sees a smaller percentage of the world population living under dictatorships.

. . . . there was a scientific documentary and scientific forum about this . . . .

If you believe all the crap on TV, you've become part of the problem instead of the solution.

If we rise too much we would fall faster.

The human population will start to decrease by the end of this century. You younger people will live to see it happen.

At least they had clean air, yesterday I read that people in European union are living 2 years shorter thanks only to air pollution, this is not kind of society and scientific development anybody wants.

At the zenith of the Roman Empire, the life expectancy of an adult who had already managed to survive childhood was about 23. Today life expectancy at birth is over 70 in the developed nations, over 80 in a couple of places, and over 50 almost everywhere else.

And yet we have more stress than ever, which is killing us in the process, so who gives a damn about scientific development if it's killing us, it's killing our health, how stupid can we be more than this?

Do you have some statistics to back that up? What percentage of the population dies of stress? And if we die of stress at age 80, we're still better off than our ancestors who died from overwork or disease at 35 a mere 150 years ago.

Or is this something else you "learned" by watching TV?

You cannot trust to science anymore, because this has become a multi-billion dollar industry, who cares about what anybody wants, and how is anybody's health, that's just horrible, this is why people lost morality and ethics and the limits of what is moral are dropping, we as society have become too soft of what is questionably moral, or not moral at all. Too much tolerance in every way on everything, the system is only for scientists, politicians, rich and powerful, others are like waste which keeps tolerating all the injustice we have today. Scientists and high-tech manufacturers don't have moral and ethics, either.

You watch way too much TV.

And with these jobs we still get sick all the time, stress is killing us more than ever, and nobody cares, it's all about supposed scientific development and technology, but this is just another form of controlling what I do, whenever I do, we don't need that. This is why I said technology is a bad thing.

Please tell us about the people who knew who were killed by stress. In 69 years nobody I knew ever died that way. The leading cause of death for people under 45 is accidents, primarily road accidents. Heart disease becomes a major cause after that, but we've made great strides against it. Indeed heart disease is arguably a consequence of stress because stressed-out people tend to eat bad diets, but it's ironic that the generation that has lived the easiest, most stress-free life, the Baby Boomers, are so unhealthy. Apparently being happy doesn't motivate people to take care of their health. Still, the U.S. life expectancy is around 75 so on the balance we must be doing a lot of things right. Those of us who are in our 60s and 70s have very little stress and our number-one killer is, arguably, Alzheimer's.

Your thesis is not supported by evidence.

Why don't they make cures for all diseases,, why don't they transfer to another source of energy . . . .

That's a fabulous idea. Did you get a master's degree in biology or chemical engineering, so you can help find cures for diseases or help develop new energy technologies?

I'm a software developer. (Well I was, today I'm a technical writer but still in the software industry.) I've helped improve the efficiency of civilization through automation. Thanks to us, you have friends in foreign countries, you can listen to virtually any musical composition in the world by pushing a button while lying in bed, and you can probably do a significant portion of your work at home without having to drive to work and create pollution. Thanks to us, people in repressed countries can reach out to each other, plan and organize, and overthrow their dictators. Thanks to us, people in vast regions of the world consider everyone else a member of their "community" and lobby for international peace. (Did you weep for Neda? Would you tell your congressman to vote to go to war against Iran?)

. . . . you said in your other post that you were boring while living in the desert, trust me you are bored . . . .

Huh? Who the hell are you to tell me that I'm bored? I've never had such an interesting, fulfilling life as the one I have today. I have a job I enjoy, I play in a rock'n'roll band, I have many friends in both the carbon and silicon world, I have some wonderful dogs, I live in a house with wonderful scenery right outside my window, I go to a concert or the theater at least once a month, and I even play go. You're getting a little too big for your britches, young man.

. . . . but there is always a job you could do in the desert or anywhere else 8especially when you have to make a food and water for your own survival, so it's far from being boring

Read my lips: FARMING IS FUCKING BORING WORK! There is absolutely nothing rewarding or fulfilling about it. It's drudgery. It saps the life out of you. It's for people who are unlucky and don't have the brains, or maybe the education, or maybe the opportunity, or maybe simply the ambition, to do anything better.

I bet you wouldn't survive long there if you didn't learn how to survive, or maybe you didn't want to learn how to survive in the desert)

I lived in the goddamned desert for seven years. Don't start lecturing me about something you obviously know nothing about. The desert is a hell-hole, that's why very few people live there on purpose. Even in the Stone Age the desert was not a popular place to live.

. . . . it's just matter of you if you want to work or just being lazy and do nothing.

I work hard and my work is appreciated. What exactly do you do for a living?

The measure of a civilized person is that he tries to leave the world a little better than he found it. I've done that. Have you? My music alone has enriched the lives of a lot of people.

Imagine a future in which machines can do everything humans could, except better and cheaper, what would people do? Well assuming people adapt to such a world and machines are obedient to humans: people would live like kings and queens, probably dedicate themselves to the arts or activities of pure entertainment, would people stop working? Well probably more like things like World of Warcraft would become "work".

This is the Industrial Revolution all over again. They couldn't imagine what people would do when "machines do all the work." We can't imagine what people will do when "computers do all the work." There's always an entire new kind of work to be done that we could never imagine without our era's new technology.

How many people do you know who work in the software industry? Do you think your grandparents could have foreseen that? Do you think the people in the 19th century envisioned advertising, travel agencies, or an entertainment industry? All of these things were made possible by industrial technology increasing the productivity of human labor so there was more wealth and leisure to go around.

Did the people in the 17th century foresee an explosion of hospitals and medical schools, much less veterinarians? Did the people in the 13th century expect newspapers to be big business and writing to be a well-paid occupation?

The people in the Paleolithic Era could not have imagined farms, houses, stoves, windows, furniture or wheels.

 

[ElectricFetus]

But everything has its limits the number of producers and consumers are its engine of growth, but it depends on the resources, and resources will not last forever.

"If you have your way, soon machines will be growing all the food, packaging it, delivering it, selling it and cooking it. There won't be any jobs for the humans!"​

This is not quite true, resources could last "forever" its just a matter of price. Virtually infinite supplies of space, energy and materials can be found its just we will have to pay the price of living in outer-space. If it comes to it we could mine magma and sea water for all our mineral needs but the amount of energy required for that kind of extraction would be phenomenal and at present most of our energy comes from finite resources (fossil fuels) we would need something like Thorium of plutonium fission or nuclear fusion as a majority energy sources in order to supply the needs of dozens of billions of people in abject luxury right here on earth for thousands of years.

And what we have today products, food with questionable health quality with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and gm food which are all extremely doubtful when it comes to security.

And yet people are living longer healthy lives than in the past, just a 100-150 years ago medicinal products with cocaine, opiates, lead, mercury, were street legal! And before that people had to eat what ever they could get their hands on. During my time in Peace Corps in a developing country seeing people living more "naturally" I could see its amazing benefits: the constant diarrhea they had from eating unsanitary meat and vegetable products, the malnutrition in the children, and most of these people lacked the money to afford pesticides and fertilizer or other things you say causes insecurity.

Who cares about industrial revolution I want to live in barrack and hunt to what I have to eat, actually many people are returning to Alaska on other nowherelands because to find peace and be free. Our development is destroying us, humans are cancer of this planet (there was a scientific documentary and scientific forum about this). If we rise too much we would fall faster.

Well by all means go back to living in the wild, oh leave you gun and clothing behind, make everything from nature! Live off the land in Alaska like this guy For thousands of year human population was max out at ~500 million by disease, famine and war, suddenly we get civilize and technological advanced enough to support billions and that "destroying us"? What will destroy us is if we ever have to return to living like we did a thousand years ago!

At least they had clean air, yesterday I read that people in European union are living 2 years shorter thanks only to air pollution, this is not kind of society and scientific development anybody wants.

Clean air? I watch people in mud huts huff smoke for hours cooking over a fire pit, too poor to afford even a luxury like smokeless charcoal, lung disorders and a hacking cough were common. Disease like Tb were rampant even amongst those that did not have HIV.

And yet we have more stress than ever, which is killing us in the process, so who gives a damn about scientific development if it's killing us, it's killing our health, how stupid can we be more than this?

Do we really have more stress? I saw a family scream with horror, riping at their cloths and hair purest expression of despair I have ever seen, as their son lay swollen and dieing from a snake bite, in which people had no hope of bring to a doctor or getting anti-venom, and this was a regular occurrence! So many funerals with tiny caskets and distraught mothers weeping. Mental illness in the developing world is grossly under-counted and under-treated. I met people that swore up and down that curses, demonic possession and witch craft was real, that they had seen it with there own eyes.

You cannot trust to science anymore, because this has become a multi-billion dollar industry, who cares about what anybody wants, and how is anybody's health, that's just horrible, this is why people lost morality and ethics and the limits of what is moral are dropping, we as society have become too soft of what is questionably moral, or not moral at all. Too much tolerance in every way on everything, the system is only for scientists, politicians, rich and powerful, others are like waste which keeps tolerating all the injustice we have today. Scientists and high-tech manufacturers don't have moral and ethics, either

Organization like the WHO, UN, Board of ethics, etc, etc never existed a century ago, in fact present day egalitarianism to seek truth and justice for all is a products of modern technology allowing people to place concern on more ethical issues over saying just getting food in their mouths. People barely noticed injustices in the past, they allowed things like slavery and serfdom, mass genocide of the enemy was acceptable even called up by religion. In short science and engineering is far more trust worthy then your local feudal lord or high priest! Sure modern global capitalism has its problems but they are minor compared to the past and there is nor reason to believe that with further regulations and education and time and energy to consider moral problems that things won't improve as they have been over the centuries.

Why don't they make cures for all diseases,,

"They" have cured a lot of diseases, extended life spans, with time technology might even cure all illness, even mortality its self!

why don't they transfer to another source of energy, it's still oil and gas, dirty industry, despite the alternatives,

One of the flaws with capitalism is that it adapts after the fact, as prices of dirty finite energy sources go up due to scarcity alternatives become more economically competitive. Interest and development of renewables have skyrocketed, wind, solar, electrics, have been growing in market shares, there are already countries that get a significant amount of power from cleaner alternatives. There no reason to think that we can't and won't convert, we are already are and will do so even more rapidly as the sweet crude continues to dry up, and the alternatives of tar sands and high sulfur coal are to expensive and provide to low of energy returns to compete against ever cheaper wind, solar, geo, wave, etc renewable energy sources.

the faster you rise, the faster you fall, this can be said for our technology, than destruction of ecosystems, atmosphere polluting, so no we don't need that kind of technology, everybody laughs about older autochtoon people, but now it's getting more and more clear that they are right-living in the harmony with nature, and this is where our technology should be focused. but instead of it, it's focused in entirely wrong way which will cost us of our own doom.

The only way we could get 7 billion people to live in harmony with nature is if most of them shriveled up and died! Harmony with nature is were disease, famine and killing each other for limited resources are so endemic that human population are kept in check by all the collective dying off! Living like that until some natural catastrophe forces our extinction is not much of an existence! No we are too far passed the point of no return, are only hope is to continue developing technology to try to save everyone, to try to make a world without suffering and harm. Technology may just provide such a solution: a world in which a billion "people" could fit on a server rack and "live" long after the sun burns out. You may scoff or laugh at such an idea but its a far better existence than living like hairless apes as you suggest.

you said in your other post that you were boring while living in the desert, trust me you are bored, but there is always a job you could do in the desert or anywhere else 8especially when you have to make a food and water for your own survival, so it's far from being boring, I bet you wouldn't survive long there if you didn't learn how to survive, or maybe you didn't want to learn how to survive in the desert), it's just matter of you if you want to work or just being lazy and do nothing.
Cheers.

Which is worse: suffer horribly and dying or laziness? I much rather be lazy, and if ultimately we evolve by merging into the machine there will be no such thing as laziness: we will be able to spend every millisecond working, without rest or tiring or boredom, for thousand of years without stop if necessary, I laugh at your pathetic human ideal of hard work, in which one has to take time off to rest and relax, laughable! Imagine a machine-human that finds only joy in working non-stop indefinitely.

 

[Gravage]

Nonetheless, the pros outweigh the cons. We have better nutrition today than at any time in history. You have to go back into prehistory, before the Bronze Age civilizations, to the Neolithic Revolution and the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to farming and animal husbandry, to find people who had better diets than ours. And their food production technology could not have supported one percent of today's world population.

Actually, its the opposite the cons outweigh the pros. we don't have better but worse nutrition than we use to have, don't sell me this story, please, mass production, chemical fertilizers, gmo it's all bad for earth and with questionable quality, today people get sick mostly of stress and food.

I question your use of the word "many." The vast majority of human beings have utterly no interest in returning to a Stone Age lifestyle. Sure, it's a big world and there certainly are people like you, but you're nothing but a tiny, interesting, eccentric minority.

I'm not saying return to stone age, but slow down the growth, because the higher you fly, the deeper you fall, there must be an balance between the growth.

I would not want to live without the professionally composed and performed music that is available 24/7 in my current life. Even the 1950s, with radio and TV, weren't this good. I'm a resolute pacifist but even I would take up arms against any faction that wanted to take us back to the Stone Age.


And finally... It's really easy to say that you "want to" live like that, until you've tried it. This is why it's such a shame that there aren't any real frontiers anymore. Alaska just isn't practical: very few people chose to live there even in the Stone Age!

Actually, you're wrong, people want freedom from all this high-tech and scientific frenzy and they go to woods to relax and have peaceful normal life.

200-300 years ago, a disgruntled farmer or factory worker could say, "To hell with this, I'm going primitive," and he could go to western North America or Australia or deepest Africa or several other places that were still in the Stone Age. He could join up with a Paleolithic or Neolithic tribe, or he could just go out in the wilderness and trap beavers for food and pelts. Many of those people returned and told their friends and family just what it was like; many others did not survive the rugged life. So the other disgruntled famers and factory workers could say, "Hmmm. I guess my life here isn't so bad."

You're primitive, I'm primitive, we are all primitive, it doesn't matter if we live in stone age or in some futuristic high-tech, scientific world, people will not change crime will not go away. People who live in villages are actually happier than those who live in towns.

Today from a practical viewpoint there is no more frontier. Disgruntled office workers and store clerks can dream about chucking it all and going out to the frontier, but they'll never be able to reality-test that idea. Even experienced outdoorsmen find Alaska rather harsh. A barista at Starbucks, or the guy who cleans your office at night, wouldn't make it through one winter even with a sled full of top-end gear from REI.

Who cares about that if you don't have the right to clean air, clean water...

Yet we are the most successful species that ever lived. We are the apex predator, eating the flesh of both bears and sharks. We have transcended nature and built our own environments. Sure we've taken the wrong path a few times but we always find our way back. The root of most of humanity's problems today is despotism, and every decade sees a smaller percentage of the world population living under dictatorships.

And yet we are the most destructive species on entire planet, that will cost us, eventually.

If you believe all the crap on TV, you've become part of the problem instead of the solution.

I believe to scientific research when it comes to this, and that's what I was watching on Discovery science, humans-cancer of the earth, we are destroying too much, people like you obviously live somewhere else.

The human population will start to decrease by the end of this century. You younger people will live to see it happen.

At the zenith of the Roman Empire, the life expectancy of an adult who had already managed to survive childhood was about 23. Today life expectancy at birth is over 70 in the developed nations, over 80 in a couple of places, and over 50 almost everywhere else.

We will yet see if the population will drop and how much we will destroy, extreme weather has started to show its effects, it's just matter of time.

Do you have some statistics to back that up? What percentage of the population dies of stress? And if we die of stress at age 80, we're still better off than our ancestors who died from overwork or disease at 35 a mere 150 years ago.

Or is this something else you "learned" by watching TV?

I work in the hospital, and compare results with other hospitals, yes believe it or not, the most cancers and diseases come from food, fast worklife and stress.

You watch way too much TV.

This has nothing to do with TV, a science has become a tool of business/money. From time to time you have affairs when doctors are paid from companies to say this medicine is good and etc..

Please tell us about the people who knew who were killed by stress. In 69 years nobody I knew ever died that way. The leading cause of death for people under 45 is accidents, primarily road accidents. Heart disease becomes a major cause after that, but we've made great strides against it. Indeed heart disease is arguably a consequence of stress because stressed-out people tend to eat bad diets, but it's ironic that the generation that has lived the easiest, most stress-free life, the Baby Boomers, are so unhealthy. Apparently being happy doesn't motivate people to take care of their health. Still, the U.S. life expectancy is around 75 so on the balance we must be doing a lot of things right. Those of us who are in our 60s and 70s have very little stress and our number-one killer is, arguably, Alzheimer's.

Stress does not kill but it does help you to go to grave, I truly don't know in what utopistic world you live. And like I said food and fast way of life.

Your thesis is not supported by evidence.

I have experience in hospital and communication with other people, you have experience with computers and theories...

That's a fabulous idea. Did you get a master's degree in biology or chemical engineering, so you can help find cures for diseases or help develop new energy technologies?

Come one you're smarter than this, my question was given to those who give money, instead of giving money to military, they should give all that money to health and medicine research, I really don't know how didn't you see this?

I'm a software developer. (Well I was, today I'm a technical writer but still in the software industry.) I've helped improve the efficiency of civilization through automation. Thanks to us, you have friends in foreign countries, you can listen to virtually any musical composition in the world by pushing a button while lying in bed, and you can probably do a significant portion of your work at home without having to drive to work and create pollution. Thanks to us, people in repressed countries can reach out to each other, plan and organize, and overthrow their dictators. Thanks to us, people in vast regions of the world consider everyone else a member of their "community" and lobby for international peace. (Did you weep for Neda? Would you tell your congressman to vote to go to war against Iran?)

No offense, but I'm happier if the money is given to fight against diseases.

Huh? Who the hell are you to tell me that I'm bored? I've never had such an interesting, fulfilling life as the one I have today. I have a job I enjoy, I play in a rock'n'roll band, I have many friends in both the carbon and silicon world, I have some wonderful dogs, I live in a house with wonderful scenery right outside my window, I go to a concert or the theater at least once a month, and I even play go. You're getting a little too big for your britches, young man.

Well, that's you other people don't want this, what makes you think other people are like you? That's the problem with science/scientists if forces other people to adapt, otherwise you're doomed.

Read my lips: FARMING IS FUCKING BORING WORK! There is absolutely nothing rewarding or fulfilling about it. It's drudgery. It saps the life out of you. It's for people who are unlucky and don't have the brains, or maybe the education, or maybe the opportunity, or maybe simply the ambition, to do anything better.

Farming is awesome, but only if you want to farm, what you do it not really a life, it's more like fun than life.

I lived in the goddamned desert for seven years. Don't start lecturing me about something you obviously know nothing about. The desert is a hell-hole, that's why very few people live there on purpose. Even in the Stone Age the desert was not a popular place to live.

One thing is to have nothing, the other thing is to have something and be happy with this, the fact remains people who have little have greater happiness, than those who have everything.

I work hard and my work is appreciated. What exactly do you do for a living?


The measure of a civilized person is that he tries to leave the world a little better than he found it. I've done that. Have you? My music alone has enriched the lives of a lot of people.

This is the Industrial Revolution all over again. They couldn't imagine what people would do when "machines do all the work." We can't imagine what people will do when "computers do all the work." There's always an entire new kind of work to be done that we could never imagine without our era's new technology.

The question will you make people happy? I don't think so that's not your intention.

How many people do you know who work in the software industry? Do you think your grandparents could have foreseen that? Do you think the people in the 19th century envisioned advertising, travel agencies, or an entertainment industry? All of these things were made possible by industrial technology increasing the productivity of human labor so there was more wealth and leisure to go around.

More people are doing that industry because they are forced than those who actually enjoy it, you're minority.

Did the people in the 17th century foresee an explosion of hospitals and medical schools, much less veterinarians? Did the people in the 13th century expect newspapers to be big business and writing to be a well-paid occupation?

The people in the Paleolithic Era could not have imagined farms, houses, stoves, windows, furniture or wheels.

Like I said investments in health and medicine are just ok.