Lexington, of The Economist, has a tantalizing review of Tyler Cowen's new book, Average Is Over.
"It describes a future largely stripped of middling jobs and broad prosperity. An elite 10-15% of Americans will have the brains and self-discipline to master tomorrow’s technology and extract profit from it, he speculates. They will enjoy great wealth and stimulating lives. Others will endure stagnant or even falling wages, as employers measure their output with “oppressive precision”. Some will thrive as service-providers to the rich. A few will claw their way into the elite (cheap online education will be a great leveller), bolstering the idea of a “hyper-meritocracy” at work: this “will make it easier to ignore those left behind”.
Mr. Cowens's vision is neither warm nor fuzzy. In his future, mistakes and even mediocrity will be hard to hide: eg, an ever-expanding array of ratings will expose so-so doctors and also patients who do not take their medicines or otherwise spell trouble. Young men will struggle in a labour market that rewards conscientiousness over muscle. With incomes squeezed, many Americans will head to the sort of cheap, sun-baked sprawling exurbs that give the farmers'-market-and-bike-lanes set heartburn. Many will accept rotten public services in exchange for low taxes. This may sound a bit grim, but it reflects real-world trends: 60% of employers already check the credit ratings of job applicants; young male unemployment is high and migrants have been flooding to low-tax, low-service Texas for years."
I like a cozy, semi-dystopic read more than the average bear, and I wonder if, even though it is written by a popular economist, it could be categorized under the speculative fiction category Synova recently spoke of. I tend to agree with Cowen's predictions, due to my Technium influenced worldview. Matthew Yglesias of Slate takes a less sanguine view of this future, and feels that we should not go gently into that good night.
"So I would take the message [of Cowen's conclusions] to be something like "politics is really important just as it always has been and people ought to get more fired up about some ideas that aren't at the current forefront of the congressional agenda." Cowen's actual message seems to be that we ought to make ourselves more complacent, and that these somewhat bleak trends he forecasts aren't really all that bad if you look at them in the right light. But I don't quite see why. If good public policy were easy, there wouldn't be so much poverty and misery in the world. But if good public policy were impossible, there wouldn't be any success stories and "growth miracles" and "trente glorieuses" and so forth."
Still, it seems a somewhat acceptable future. People will receive healthcare and have a fairly large degree of freedom. There are worse things than a semi-benevolent elite ruling a semi-happy world. It would be up to the people, both the rich and not rich, to come to terms with themselves and how they will live their lives.
The Economist
Slate
h/t rhhardin
"It describes a future largely stripped of middling jobs and broad prosperity. An elite 10-15% of Americans will have the brains and self-discipline to master tomorrow’s technology and extract profit from it, he speculates. They will enjoy great wealth and stimulating lives. Others will endure stagnant or even falling wages, as employers measure their output with “oppressive precision”. Some will thrive as service-providers to the rich. A few will claw their way into the elite (cheap online education will be a great leveller), bolstering the idea of a “hyper-meritocracy” at work: this “will make it easier to ignore those left behind”.
Mr. Cowens's vision is neither warm nor fuzzy. In his future, mistakes and even mediocrity will be hard to hide: eg, an ever-expanding array of ratings will expose so-so doctors and also patients who do not take their medicines or otherwise spell trouble. Young men will struggle in a labour market that rewards conscientiousness over muscle. With incomes squeezed, many Americans will head to the sort of cheap, sun-baked sprawling exurbs that give the farmers'-market-and-bike-lanes set heartburn. Many will accept rotten public services in exchange for low taxes. This may sound a bit grim, but it reflects real-world trends: 60% of employers already check the credit ratings of job applicants; young male unemployment is high and migrants have been flooding to low-tax, low-service Texas for years."
I like a cozy, semi-dystopic read more than the average bear, and I wonder if, even though it is written by a popular economist, it could be categorized under the speculative fiction category Synova recently spoke of. I tend to agree with Cowen's predictions, due to my Technium influenced worldview. Matthew Yglesias of Slate takes a less sanguine view of this future, and feels that we should not go gently into that good night.
"So I would take the message [of Cowen's conclusions] to be something like "politics is really important just as it always has been and people ought to get more fired up about some ideas that aren't at the current forefront of the congressional agenda." Cowen's actual message seems to be that we ought to make ourselves more complacent, and that these somewhat bleak trends he forecasts aren't really all that bad if you look at them in the right light. But I don't quite see why. If good public policy were easy, there wouldn't be so much poverty and misery in the world. But if good public policy were impossible, there wouldn't be any success stories and "growth miracles" and "trente glorieuses" and so forth."
Still, it seems a somewhat acceptable future. People will receive healthcare and have a fairly large degree of freedom. There are worse things than a semi-benevolent elite ruling a semi-happy world. It would be up to the people, both the rich and not rich, to come to terms with themselves and how they will live their lives.
The Economist
Slate
h/t rhhardin
