Speaking of innovation, change and economics, I watched this video talking about the end of growth and how we have been more than lucky for the past 60 years.
Now people often say that we will find more growth but like Robert Gordon, I don’t really see anything coming close to the revolutions we’ve got. People forget that innovation takes quite a while to spread out and being optimum. Look at computers, invented decades ago and on which we’re still surfing the future with.
But soon it will be over (look at how Intel struggles like crazy to innovate now compared to the 90s). Don’t get me wrong innovation is here and we need it but to me expansion, the race, the sprint is over at least for a long while. The marathon has started and as humans the idea is not to being twice as rich as the previous generation, we they did that. It’s to optimize and scale being twice as efficient than our parents with computers, recycling, biking and making no babies for example.
Now we need to fix stuff in the West.
For instance the toilet like I pointed out, definitely demands innovation. Which would require complete rewiring of thousands of kms of pipes and lines, rebuilding an entire system for every single city. Not a lot of innovation but, that’s some work! Would it make the economy grow? I don’t think so. When you fix something, you don’t really create as much value as creating this something in the first place. Jobs? Who would want in 2035 to work under the ground in the poop to make the world a better place anyway? Not a lot of people.
In the West, things are only going to slowly decay, because of all the problems Robert Gordon speaks about. I don’t really see how it would get better, hoping I’m wrong.
Countries who didn’t profited the second industrial revolution of the past century though, if they’re patient, will be able to get the best of current innovation and build their societies around it. If we haven’t already screw them over, the West acting like a giant poisonous octopus around the world (hello, patents)…