Comment by Palomides
6 hours ago
using all these personal adjectives to describe the world economy strikes me as very chauvinistic, and I am not convinced the cold war was such a good thing that we need another!
6 hours ago
using all these personal adjectives to describe the world economy strikes me as very chauvinistic, and I am not convinced the cold war was such a good thing that we need another!
Everyone has a personal ideal view of what life should be. Some people are content to chill and have creature comforts, no stress. I've no problem with that view, but it's not my disposition. I want to push boundaries.
It just so happens that competition pushes technology further. It puts a sharp edge on investment dollars and intellectual capital. A lot of money gets spent, but it gets spent smartly.
WWI and WWII - horrible and tragic - pushed us so hard that people alive as teenagers during the invention of flight lived to see a man walk on the moon.
The cold war created the PC, internet, and planted the seeds for the smartphone and AI.
We had a whole lot of incrementalism in the 00's - 20's. Ad tech, emojis on smartphones, so many social networks. I want to see all of that turned on its head, everything pushed forward 10x. By the time I die, I want to see robots, whole body transplants, autonomous everything, brain uploads, VR indistinguishable from life, cures to every cancer, decelerated aging, widespread access to middle class standard of living. I have so much desire for this and it's all I want for.
That's going to require pushing through an economic and technological salient. Competition accelerates that.
It's time for America to stop being weak and naive. Lazily greedy. To stop spending on ad tech upgrades and instead sow the seeds of a scientific and industrial powerhouse.
When we focus on protecting rather than optimizing eyeball engagement and becoming pilfering middle men, we make the greatest strides.