so, thinking about global pandemics, I wonder how resilient US first world economy is. We lost a bit under 1% of the population in the Spanish Flu c. 1918, and it didn't much hurt us. Lincoln killed off 3% of the US population, and while it quite hurt the economy in CSA >
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5/ I think we'd also see a collapse in the BS economy. As firms struggle to survive, and has the regulatory regime changes, HR / diversity / universities likely take a much bigger headcount hit that, say, manufacturing or transport.
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6/ yep, this is exactly where I was goinghttps://twitter.com/TheTriarii/status/1220378828989706241 …
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7/ everyone talks about how capital is taking a bigger slice of the rewards pie now than labor, but a 50% death rate pandemic acts sort of like UBI / yang bucks / whatever, by making same capital chase after much rarer labor. Labor is scarce, returns go up.
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8/ but getting back to economic / technological collapse, if we lost ~ 40% of the population, I think we'd do OK. At that level, networks still heal, is my hunch. But at some level, maybe around there, certain types of tech get abandoned. We likely stop launching satellites.
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9/ Chip fabs, at least some of them, close. Chip fabs and software depend on economics of scale. Ship half as many units, and you can't run at a profit. Not all of them, tho. I think we'd stay in the 21st century. ...but maybe not advance processor or RAM tech for 50 years.
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10/ Software sector probably shrinks ... but maybe not? with labor scarce, perhaps returns to automation CLIMB ? Fewer coders working on websites, more on robots ?
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11/ This is all at some number - I'm saying 40% death rate, world wide. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe these effects are at 25-30%, and 40-50% is actually a whole new level / type of reaction Instead of falling back to ~ 2005 tech, maybe the next level causes us to fall back to 1960?
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12/ One thing to think about is that technology level in 1960 wasn't merely defined by "what we've discovered / invented by 1960", but also "what the economies of scale of the 1960 customer base allowed". Look at action movies or video games. US population in 1960 was 180 M.
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13/ So a movie would have to cover its budget by selling tickets to ~ 180 M people, max. Today an action movie sells to US, EU, China, India. So the same movie can sell tickets to ~1.5 B people. 7x the market means 7x the budget.
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14/ and at that budget you can afford things that you couldn't afford at all at the smaller budget. So one tool (among many) to think about such things is to look at what tech level we supported at various population levels. We would, I think, partially retract that path.
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End of conversation
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