Tagwealth
Review of “Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity”
This new book on tech, AI, and economic prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson is incredibly timelyThis book by two MIT economists is very timely because the world is now dealing with the latest in the “Thousand Year Struggle,” in the form of artificial intelligence, the claims that many white-collar jobs will be automated, OpenAI’s call for regulation, and the possibility that AI will bring a further concentration of power among the big tech companies. Much of the book sets the stage for this discussion by summarizing the history of technology. This review focuses on the economic and social impact of automation and information technology over the last 50 years. For instance, “the distribution of income between capital and labor began to change significantly in the late 20th century. While throughout most of the century, about Read More ›
Business Prof: Stop It! The World is NOT Running Out of Stuff!
A famous bet between two top thinkers settled that a long time agoRecently, Jay Richards interviewed Dr. Gale Pooley, Professor of Economics at BYU-Hawaii, on the myth that we are running out of resources and doomed to future scarcity. Even though media pundits often claim it is true, the numbers say it is a myth. The story begins with a famous bet between two professors… From the interview: The bet was whether basic commodity prices would rise between September 29, 1980 and September 29, 1990. The professors who made the bet were Stanford insect biologist Paul Ehrlich (1932–), author of bestseller The Population Bomb (1968), and economist Julian Simon (1932–1998) Ehrlich bet yes and Simon bet no. Gale Pooley: First of all, what was interesting about Julian Simon, he reads Ehrlich’s book Read More ›
Valley Insider Peter Thiel’s Comments Last Year Proved Prophetic
China’s recent takeover of Hong Kong and the campus Cancel Culture spotlight his warnings for our culture’s future in the age of 5GPeter Thiel, who spoke by interactive video to the COSM conference last October, is probably the most remarkable of the Silicon Valley insiders. A fuller version of his discussions with tech philosopher George Gilder has just been released. What makes Thiel (think PayPal, Facebook, Palantir, Airbnb, Lyft, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX) unique is that he so much contradicts the Valley stereotype and is certainly not afraid to tell the Valley its faults. In fact, he moved down to Los Angeles in 2018, fed up with the Valley as a one-party state. He suggested in 2019 that Google be investigated for treason for refusing to work with the Pentagon but helping the Chinese military. Most of the time, though, Thiel prefers Read More ›
