jean_tta

In the long term, the West (Europe at first) went from at best a not particularly interesting place compared to, say, China to the global hegemon because

1. it became much better at war than the others [0]

2. it became much richer than the others [1]

Much has been written about how Western values and/or institutions and/or any other causes led to 1 and/or 2 and the interplay between 1 and 2.

The warfare advantage is primarily tech-based against peer enemies. Training and sheer size may matter against asymmetric foes but against China it's basically whoever has the best technology.

Given the relative size of Western countries and the rest of the world (China is about four times as big as the US for instance), the West needs to be many times richer per capita to be a larger economic power than China or India. Note that the West used to be a much higher percentage of the world population in the past.

There's a lot of catching up both in technology in particular, including military technologies, and economic catch up more broadly; it is very unlikely that the West can leap again and grow/innovate so much faster than China & India can't catch up enough to dominate.

People in this thread seems to be too focused on what they see as a cultural decline within the US and not see the economic and technology long term catch up.

[0] see for instance https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691139708/wh...

[1] see for instance https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691090108/th...

If anything that lowers growth is a kind of violence, then it is tautological to say that you cannot lower growth without violence.

If I get what you say right,

* it is impossible to predict the (economic) future if it is your job

* any layman can predict the future through simple extrapolation of GDP variation around the long term trend

So why are economists so much worse than the layman?

I would call this "obvious in retrospect". Of course you can tell a little story on why it is obvious, but you can also tell a little story on why the opposite is obvious. The tricky part is figuring out which "obvious" thing will happen and which "obvious" think won't.

If there was no growth and bleak predictions of future growth, it would have been just as easy to rationalize.

> This sounds pretty technical but I think I can follow. If you put people out of jobs and out of their homes for 1+ year, they ain't going to come back to an utopian pre-pandemic world. What did you think, that all the lost human capital & institutional knowledge lost in destroyed jobs and bankrupt companies was going to be rebuild in a day?

If there was no growth and positive predictions of future growth, it would have been just as easy to rationalize.

> This sounds pretty technical but I think I can follow. It takes a little while for people and companies to adjust to the post-pandemic world - takes a while to ramp up production, takes a while to stop saving just in case and start spending again. If you let people out of their houses to buy stuff, might take a couple months to transition back to normal but it will happen eventually.

If there was high growth in the short and bleak predictions of future growth, it would have been just as easy to rationalize.

> This sounds pretty technical but I think I can follow. If you let people out of their houses to buy stuff, after they couldn't for a year, then the economy is going to show growth in the quarter you let them out. But after that quarter, not much will happen. Long term growth depends on HN engineers developing revolutionary new software and the pandemic hasn't changed that. Opening up will allow us to catch up but won't have sustained effect.

And so forth.

There are plenty of countries that had no or low growth without any violence.

Also if the economy can grow by providing more and better games, bread, and Netflix, why didn't it happen during the various lockdowns in various countries?

If I understand your comment, you are saying that what people do in their private life does not matter unless it is important enough (e.g. being the Boston strangler): this is tautological (what is important in the legacy of someone if the important things they did, their work and/or their private life if their private life is important).

You are just saying that hundreds of such "incidents" is simply not important enough to be remembered. But murder would be according to you. Where do you draw the line?