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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

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Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      There's a bunch of literature on this as a turning point... here is a take that the US upstaged hosts UK at the 1851 world's fair. The colt revolver and the McCormick harvester were key breakthroughs.https://www.loc.gov/item/2017645148/ …

      1 reply 2 retweets 22 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      If you treat 2014 as peak US, that's 160 years after 1854. So how long might a decline future be? The UK as precedent for rise/fall of world powers: rise from 1600 to 1854 (roughly contemporaneous with East India Company), and fall from 1854 to 1944 (end of WW2).

      2 replies 1 retweet 20 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      Similarity triangle math. If UK took 254 years to rise, and 90 years to fall, the US, which took 160 years to rise should take about 57 years. Rise and fall of empires aren't equally rapid. It's not straight up Lindy effect, but sawtooth Lindy effect. The fall is 2.8x faster.

      2 replies 5 retweets 29 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      So by this math, 2014+57 = 2071. In this UK-rhyming history, and assuming you buy the 2014-peak thesis, by 2071, the US will be down to the level the UK was in 1944 at the end of WW2.

      4 replies 1 retweet 13 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      What can we expect? The UK in decline 1854-1944 is a hugely romanticized and powerful narrative. It was the Victorian+Edwardian era which is still the favorite era of Anglophiles. Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, H. G. Wells, modernist culture, key role in winning 2 world wars

      2 replies 1 retweet 15 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      Whatever the reality of the "new cold war vs. China" or "rise of the rest" or "clash of civilizations" or "climate apocalypse" or whatever, anyone expecting a quick decline narrative is going to be disappointed. Declines are faster than rises, but not THAT rapid.

      1 reply 1 retweet 28 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      If you're (say) 25, betting on an apocalyptic future and doing a bunch of prepping for a Mad Max future, you're going to have a long, painful wait even if you're right. It might be 2060 by the time your future actually arrives. You'll be a 65-year old. You'll have lived life.

      1 reply 2 retweets 24 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      I'm still, on balance, more optimistic than pessimistic about the future of the US. Despite the spectacular bungling of Covid etc. China in 2020 isn't the US in 1854. It isn't a young, hungry nation arriving. It's one of the oldest nations trying to renew civilizational vigor.

      3 replies 2 retweets 30 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      Until a couple of years ago, I still thought the "Chinese alternative" was overstated and overrated, destined to be overhyped and collapse like the Japanese or Soviet examples before it. But Trump+Covid response have convinced me it's a serious alternative of some sort.

      1 reply 6 retweets 19 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      But I don't think the future is one of Cold War or any sort of zero-sum ideological contest among 2 or 4 or 7 ideologies. It's more one of gradual mutual disengagement as the centralizing concern of oil-based economics starts to weaken. Renewables are a decentering force.

      3 replies 3 retweets 36 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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      Remember, the rise of the US 1854-1944 was accompanied by the rise of Standard Oil and the dominance of the oil economy by the US. I think we don't appreciate the extent to which unipolar and bilpolar world orders were an artifact of oil competition.

      10:34 AM - 30 Nov 2020
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      • hack celerity mutual Maven moncholo internet KHALI #ENDSARS Arlyn Culwick Rongeur Willem, MSc kiddo Rahul Ramchandani
      2 replies 7 retweets 44 likes
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          There is still resource contention over plenty of other things, but the structure of competition is unlikely to be that drastically convergent. More than a change in the competitive order of large political entities (countries, block, Stephensonian clades...) it is a "loosening"

          1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          This is partially me seeking confirmation for a divergentist worldview. Things growing apart. Think "expanding universe" (as in galactic redshift, galaxies retreating from each other) model for epistemes and politieshttps://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/12/01/can-you-hear-me-now/ …

          1 reply 1 retweet 17 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          The US and USSR were in closely entangled competition 1950-74, matching each other's every move. So were the US and Japan 1974-90. But the US-China axis feels different. First, it's more cooperative than competitive. Second it is marked by divergence, not a circling-in.

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          The previous ideological conflicts felt like wrestlers circling in a ring looking to grapple. This one feels like a live-and-let-live mutual retreat. You don't have to agree on most things. You share an economy, you share science and technology, you go your own way elsewhere.

          3 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          I started with a future-like-the-past analogy between the US and UK rise-and-fall, but the future is mostly not like the past now. The biggest difference is that we now live in a rapidly greying world. A retired world of aging populations.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          A good mental model of world of the next 40 years is: 1. Global divergence of civilizations 2. Energy transition (whether or not you believe in climate change) 3. Aging population 4. Technological progress decoupling from nation-states, and turning into a political commodity

          2 replies 8 retweets 44 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          4. is huge and we're only now beginning to appreciate how huge. 1851 to 1939 was the heyday of World's Fairs, when technological prowess was synonymous with national identity. The World's Fairs went into decline after that and become a joke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_fair#Industrialization_(1851%E2%80%931938) …

          2 replies 1 retweet 14 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          After 1939 the World's Fair stopped being some sort of national tech olympics and became a kind of boring bureaucrat show (something similar is going to happen to the sports olympics soon...). Tech became a political commodity after 1939, not a way to build national identity.

          2 replies 2 retweets 29 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          I think the starting point was the race to grab Nazi rocket scientists at the close of WW2. Once that chapter closed, it became clear that science and tech had gotten complex and valuable enough that they could not respect national boundaries.

          1 reply 0 retweets 16 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          Complex advances would be the result of developments in a dozen countries, orchestrated by MNCs, and distributed to global markets, with only a little bit of border friction. Open source takes that logic to an extreme. Countries don't compete on tech anymore, corporations do.

          3 replies 3 retweets 17 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          This creates an interesting political puzzle. To the extent nations continue to persist as the primary political units (at least another century imo), what will they be competing on if not technology?

          3 replies 0 retweets 15 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          Modern nation-states date to 1648 (westphalia being the conventional starting point), so for 200 years or so, nations *didn't* compete on tech. They competed on mercantile economics and early-modern warfare. So one scenario is going back to that, which is what Trump wanted.

          3 replies 0 retweets 13 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          I frankly don't think a reactionary turn to neomercantilism is plausible. The world is too dependent on non-zero-sum trade, which is dependent on technological progress, which is now owned by corporate forces, not national.

          1 reply 2 retweets 17 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          Corporations are still nominally governed by nations. The US started a trade-war. The Chinese state interferes in IPOs. But in general, the ability to own corporations is weak because corporations are globally mobile. So if not tech or mercantilism, what then?

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          Healthcare is actually a big candidate. Covid revealed public health governance and care delivery as a huge differentiator among nations, regardless of governance systems. With aging populations reliant on a service sector of relatively poor people, this is a big deal.

          1 reply 1 retweet 27 likes
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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          There is a popular social darwinist view that pandemics are culls. This was kinda true in 1919 with the Spanish Flu, with the weak and aged succumbing at the margins leaving behind a healthier pool. Even if you buy this ideologically, it is descriptively a poor model for 2020.

          2 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          Off the top of my head, around WW2, around 16 young/working people supported 1 aged person in the US. Now it's down to 4:1 or 3:1 or so, and heading that way globally. And most of the 3 workers today are low-skill service workers with hard-to-automate jobs. "Cull" is bad model.

          2 replies 1 retweet 9 likes
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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          The population structure of 2020 cannot handle "culls" from pandemics. We are at 7.5B headed to about a 9B peak in a couple of decades, with a very slow service automation trend in a barbell population of poor young people serving weak old people.

          1 reply 2 retweets 18 likes
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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          Countries will compete on how well they solve this problem. So we now see a world marked by: a) relative American decline b) tech progress driven by corps still staffed by educated globalized elite c) nation-states competing on healthcare with barbell service+aged populations

          1 reply 1 retweet 21 likes
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        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          This boils down to how individuals see their lives: work for the most innovative companies remotely while living in the countries that manage healthcare best. This is a FAR cry from the world of even 1980 when nationality was identity rather than a healthcare provider.

          1 reply 4 retweets 29 likes
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        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          I'm not even exaggerating. Healthcare is increasingly the reason people choose to live in specific places, and constrains where they move to, both within and between countries.

          3 replies 4 retweets 30 likes
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        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          For the time being, your healthcare system determines your global mobility. Your certificate of recent Covid testing matters more than your passport. This acute condition will pass, but I suspect leave behind a "healthcare theater" on par with TSA "security theater"

          2 replies 5 retweets 25 likes
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        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          I think this is the biggest point of disconnect in the US even among believers in a positive, optimistic US future. Market fundamentalists who think healthcare is no different from any other good, and those who think it's an entirely different beast.

          2 replies 1 retweet 16 likes
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        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          The Obamacare debates of a decade ago are very interesting in light of the pandemic. Back then as now, the debate was over individual mandates, individual responsibility, individualism was key issue. Antivaxxers began their rise then too. Collective health was a marginal concern.

          2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
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        26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          It is still possible to argue with a straight face that healthcare should primarily be an individually purchased market commodity, and you should get what you can afford, same as the logic of diamond rings or pizza or cars.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          But the flip side of that is: if you make individuals responsible for their own health, they won't accept any share of responsibility for collective health. They won't accept lockdowns or isolation or masking mandates, let alone allow state-enforced quarantines. Result: 267k dead

          1 reply 2 retweets 38 likes
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        28. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          Healthcare, unlike say transportation, is *irreducibly* collective due to the existence of pandemic threats. There is no meaningful debate like there is between private cars vs public transit. A market fundamentalist who does not recognize this is signing up for death-by-market.

          2 replies 1 retweet 30 likes
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        29. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          You could argue that energy can become irreducibly collective if climate change progresses enough, but healthcare is already there. Healthcare has to be minimally collectivized at a level I suspect private insurance alone cannot achieve.

          2 replies 0 retweets 15 likes
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        30. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          So back to nation-state competitiveness... if nations compete on healthcare, and are forced by nature to do it in a collectivized way over the objections of screaming red-scare types as the bodies pile up... how do they pay for it? What's the tax base in this world?

          2 replies 1 retweet 11 likes
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        31. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Nov 30
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          If wealth and income gravitate to the wealthy and middle classes, linked to employment or work for MNCs, income and corporate taxability become as mobile as capital itself. Countries were already trying to fence in capital, and will get way more aggressive in the future.

          1 reply 2 retweets 10 likes
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