J. Storrs Hall of the Foresight Institute shares an unusually bleak scenario with the Foresight Senior Associates in his most recent e-mail:
The coming collapse
We don’t have a decision market — what Robin Hanson called “idea futures” when he invented them — in the efficacy of our government’s fiscal and monetary policies. But we have something close: the price of gold. As I write, gold is nearing $1050 an ounce, an unprecedented high. The logic of the market translates this into confidence at an unprecedented low.
Part of this caution is due to recent revelations of plans among the Arabian Gulf states, China, Russia, Japan, and others, to move out of the dollar as the oil reserve currency. Part is due to the fact that our policies of bailing out failing businesses are like of the Japanese in the 90s, which led to a “lost decade” of severely stunted economic growth. And part is because we’ve been living high by borrowing, and the rest of the world is beginning to wonder whether we’ll ever pay it back.
The problem is, that world-straddling empires don’t just have a lost decade. When the British Empire collapsed in the decade following World War II, standards of living in England went from the highest in the world — London was essentially the world’s capital as late as 1910 — to those of a third-world country. The top empire has a lot of advantages that it loses when it drops back into the pack, such as having its currency be the reserve and thus being able to print its way out of tight spots. Losing those advantages has a multiplier effect on what would otherwise be a mild, or at least not precipitous, decline.
One of the reasons the British collapsed as far as they did should give us pause. The Empire had accumulated a host of structural inefficiencies which they could get away with before, but were a huge drag on an economy trying to be competitive. We have these in spades, along with the fact that our science and engineering education, and levels of interest among young people, is dismal.
You may be surprised to hear this kind of thing from Foresight, because we usually have an optimistic take on the future. In fact, the technical outlook has never been brighter: nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and molecular biotech are increasingly in our grasp and have, more clearly than ever, the potential to change our future drastically for the better. Matter printers, personal robot servants, and a cure for aging would give us a fantastic standard of living no matter what the rest of the world might do.
But these things will not happen by themselves. They have to be invented and built. And that means they have to be invested in. And that means people have to understand that they are possible, and in the not-too-distant future.
And that’s where Foresight comes in.
Yours sincerely,
Josh
J. Storrs Hall, Ph.D. President Foresight Institute
I think Josh has thrown down the gauntlet, not just for Foresight but for everyone who believes that a vastly better future is in our grasp, that it’s something we can achieve sooner rather than later. Is the coming collapse inevitable? I believe it is no more inevitable than the Malthusian end-state of humanity laid out by Robin Hanson that we discussed on last night’s show.
I am reminded of this passage from A Christmas Carol:
“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge.
“Am I that man who lay upon the bed?” he cried, upon his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
“No, Spirit! Oh no, no!”
The finger still was there.
“Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at its robe, “hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?”
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
“Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!”
A change of direction is possible, requiring first a change of heart. What will happen over the next 10, 20, 30 years depends a little on what we imagine to be possible, a little more on what we expect to happen, and a whole lot on what we insist must happen.
The choices are:
1. We experience a gradual, or even rapid, decline over that period, orchestrated and carried out by a political class composed of two parties each of which ceaselessly insists it is fighting against such a collapse, while doing little or nothing to help us realize the truly game-changing technologies that Josh described above, the ones that can turn everything around. We ultimately land in an end-state somewhat north of sheer misery (we hope), but far less than what we knew was possible.
2. We take charge of the process ourselves, either replacing the aforementioned political class with people who really get it, or bypassing them altogether. We work to bring about truly meaningful economic change by way of highly achievable technological progress. And over the next 30 years, we launch the biggest economic boom in human history, making a tiny blip out of every period of growth that has come before.
Yes, there are plenty of scenarios that fall between these two, but these are the bookends — these are the possibilities we should be looking at as we decide what steps to take next.
I think anyone who has read the book will agree: we don’t want the nightmare to become our reality. We want to wake up and have a very merry Christmas. If the courses be departed from, the ends will change.
