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Comment by xiaoma | Hacker News Reader

>"anywhere in developed world"

I hate this terminology. If the US has, in fact, "finished" developing, then the future of the S&P will be bleak. I don't think that's the case at all, though. I think development has just started and we'll see fantastic advances in bio-informatics, solar power, 3D printing and a number of other fields in the upcoming decades.

When I was a teenager, I pirated music. I seriously hope my children pirate gourmet cheeses and burritos as teenagers. I download apps that organize my notes. May they download the bio-app that lets them dunk from the free throw line.

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>> If the US has, in fact, "finished" developing, then the future of the S&P will be bleak.

Most of S&P are global corporations. They're considered American simply by virtue of having headquarters in the US.

This only shifts the question as to whether or not the rest of the world can emulate the growth of the United States, and if so, where specifically and to what extent.

I'd suggest taking a look at Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth. Gordon's coverage of past technology and both the mode and extent of impacts, and of recent developments, including information technology medicine, and other areas, is sobering.

And that's despite disagreeing with Gordon fairly strongly in a number of other areas.

Vaclav Smil and Manfred Weissenbacher both have excellent books describing the impacts of technolgy, and especially energy, on history. I strongly suspect that's the most significant component.

Gordon's book is part of a larger series much of which addresses the question of why concerning the Industrial Revolution and the absolutely unprecedented growth of the past 250 years or so, much of that occurring only in the 20th century. It's hardly the only treatment of that phenomenon, but I do agree with Gordon, and others, that it's perhaps the most pressing question, still unanswered, of economics.

Who will be able to buy that stuff?

I'm not seeing the end is nigh unemployment rate. But it will definitely get worse...

With the dropping off potential buyers you reduce the possibility for increased profit.

Sure you can just increase the margin ( and I think that is what we will see more ave more I future) but that growth is also limited.

New markets will emerge and make profits. But economics as a whole will shrink.

US is far from finishing deveping, fortunately or unfortunately. Take trains, for example, area where US is far behind China, Japan, or European countries, despite the size of its territory. I'm sure there are other examples.

Transportation in general is weak in the US compared to other countries.

Tangent, but the US freight rail networks are much better than Europe. US is good at freight rail and bad at passenger service, Europe is vice versa.

Actually, I find Europe's passenger service uninspiring compared to Japan or especially Taiwan.

Taiwan's trains are subsidized

So are Japan's. The idea isn't to get a profit off of tickets vs operating costs. The idea is to improve the efficiency of the country and economy. It's an investment.

If the US had a similar political climate the east coast would already have high speed rail from New York to Miami.

Rail needs to be profitable, but roads certainly don't. For some reason.

Japan has a very low subsidy and most of its railways are private and receive none.

I think that Japan's population density and relatively small size makes it much easier to make money on railways.

But they don't need to be, really, when they can just put it on a boat for the whole journey, or most of the journey and then just truck it a few hours inland.

Our infrastructure needs a lot of work ($4T dollars worth). Improving our infrastructure has a good ROI (GDP multiplier).

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LKZQT6pv_oU/TBqKqQaCcaI/AAAAAAAAA6...

http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/infrastructure/our-insigh...

http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/grades/

The problem with infrastructure spending isn't that it doesn't potentially have a good ROI, it is that the process channels the money to wasteful projects that don't have a good ROI.

This is what happens in every ecosystem as the available energy sources become fully exploited. Featherbedding and cronyism are the parasitic vines which strangle enough trees so that when the next lightning strike comes the conflagration is inevitable. They cannot exist without the forest. When the forest grows to maturity they become inevitable.

He probably means "developed world" as compared to third-world countries. I agree, though, that the U.S. have not finished developing but have instead just begun developing except on a new frontier now.

"Developed" is a relative term (more fully, it would be "More Developed"), not a statement of completion (this is somewhat confused by the currently-accepted alternative, "developing", but it was more clear with the more accurate, previously common, alternative "Less Developed".)

But we live in the best of all possible worlds!

Have you visited other possible worlds?

all of them, that's still nil though.

nil has very interesting qualities.

Nothing has no values. Nil is nothing thoug, or what properties should it have?

It noths. With vigor.

Don't be so Candid

I thought it was Chumscrubber.

The question being, is that what I believe, or fear?

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