It is a magazine. Here is Kaila article on Sender http://www.thesavvystreet.com/a-post-cha...

I don't buy it. The lack of tech progress is a result, not a cause. When business people have to spend more and more of their time, money, and energy keeping up with the latest overregulations, and the system makes funding scarce, advances don't happen. (And of course our wages stagnate *because* we're now competing with workers in India who spend much less for rent and other living expenses than we do, another result of overregulation and overtaxation.)

Hard work does not make you wealthier - technology does.

No, I am unfamiliar with Savvy Street.

Good grief. Is it really that hard to agree on the matter?

I've grown fruit and vegetables all my life by hand with a hoe and shovel and it's not much different than what they did back in the 1600's. It's long, hard, back-breaking work. If you want to compare a farmer from the 1600's with a farmer of today, they both still work their butts off, but the modern farmer has a tractor and weed killer which allow him to effectively cultivate thousands of acres in the same amount of time it would have taken for a peasant from the 1600's to cultivate only a few. And no one is arguing any different.

The equation, however, hasn't changed from the 1600's to now: Productivity = work x coefficient of technology. Let's say the hoe and shovel are a coefficient of about 1 and the tractor and weed killer is the coefficient of about 1000 (plug in your own figures if you don't like these). It still doesn't change the outcome when work = 0. And as per your point above, I can use that tractor to either till my own fields, or ruin the fields of my neighbor - which I choose to do is all up to my morals.

we haven't heard from him recently. Did you get a chance to read my interview with him on Savvy Street?

The passage of the Community Reinvestment Program (CRA) was the begining. This act forced the banks to lend to people who were not qualified. Then came the Government Sponsored Entities (GSE's) [FannieMae, Genny Mae, etc.] that were encouraged by the government to accept "liar loans" to increase housing sales. A liar loan was one where the applicant wrote down the amount they claimed to have made but the information was not verified by the lenders/brokers. those involved gave a nod nod wink wink - the only ones at risk were the tax payers when the sh*t hit the fan. And now, there are mortgages with only 3% down. Another problem waiting to happen.

I think you give too much weight to technology. Or perhaps you have a wider definition of it than I am assuming

In my case, I am right now having to learn about computer programming in order to compete with the chinese and people from india. Without that knowledge, I will fall behind them (as we have already as a country)

If I found unnoticed gold on my property, I would be definitely richer for some time to come. Not forever, but then again fracking wont last forever either.

Right - you think you work harder than the people in the 1600s? You would have to work 50 times harder - that is impossible.

No new found resources do not make us wealthier over any period of time and in fact it usually requires new technologies to find or extract these new finds - see the fracking industry.

But new technologies mean you do not need to learn a lot of things that you use to have to know - how to operate a slide rule as a trivial example.

The increases in technology have been constrained to ever narrow areas by regulation. Take housing. Building codes mean we have essentially the same buildings and houses today that we had in the late 1970s. Cars have hardly changed. Airplanes still fly subsonic and on and on.

Without changes in the level of technology the best you can hope for is to optimize the economy. After that there cannot be any real per capita increases in wealth.

Other things influence per capita income- like newfound resources, and harder working people- without any change in technology at all. They can also subtract from the effects of improvements in technology.

actually as an engineer, I can see a number of things slowing down technology. First of all, the legal liability of trying something new is a real damper on innovation. You can lose more than you ever made in lawsuits (the reason I try not to make items that could result in lawsuits) . Secondly, having to meet government restrictions that are based on cronyism (the reason I dont make medical devices anymore). Thirdly, the level of technology rises every year and it makes it harder to keep up with the ever rising bar. The things I learned at MIT years ago are pretty much useless today. I have had to learn a LOT of new things just to keep up- and I am no whiz at where the real money is made today.

"It's the only tool we have for becoming wealthier."

I would argue that it is man's ability and desire to work hard that makes him wealthy. Your second question outlines things even better.

"The spying problem is not a technological problem, it is a moral problem."

100% agreed, and that was my point. Technology is a tool - it is ultimately the people and their morality that determine the use of the tool and therefore productivity. But it is a mistake to argue that technology independent of morality is a path to wealth. The great line from "Jurassic Park": "Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they _could_, they didn't stop to think if they _should_."

"Governments tracked every little detail about their citizens long before the internet."

Which governments are you talking about? None that existed prior to the Internet ever had the scope and interconnectivity that exist today. The GRU of the Soviet Union and the Mao-led Reds only wished that they had something this powerful in the 1950's. Hitler, too, would have loved to have had something as detailed. I'm failing to see anytime except in very recent history where such a claim can be made.

Without the power given to the banking cartel (then used to bribe and subvert "public servants") those changes to securities laws would not have taken place, imo.

But increases in real per capita income can also come from newfound resources or everyone working just more hours or smarter. Technology is for sure one of the things that lets us do the business of staying alive in a shorter time, and I agree that we have grown to expect advances in technology to match our expectations in economic growth. But what if our expectations are just too high to be met by technology, resource, or working hours? Then we historically have relied on the federal reserve to print up money and fool us into thinking we are richer than we really are- at least until the inevitable crash comes.

Woodlema:
A most brilliant point!

I wonder how sender47 is doing down in Venezuela. My Venezuelan students refuse to go back.

The only way to increase real per capita income is to increase your level of technology. Now there are many different things that can slow the growth of new technologies, but only one thing that can cause real per capita increases in wealth.

It certainly does not help, but actually the major issues were the weakening of the patent system, changes to our securities laws, like Sarbanes Oxley, and changes to our accounting rules

So a designer drug that targets politicians and bureaucrats? Bet that would be very popular;^)

No technology does not. It is the only way to increase real per capita income. When incomes are not growing it is because our technological growth is slowing down or stopping. If the Fed had not been created and we had the same technology as in 1913 then we would be no wealthier today.