Rant: The U.S. facing the largest financial collapse ever

[Jim Choate]

The problem with your analysis is that it completely misses the impact of
the extended lifetimes (~150 years for anyone alive in or after 2020 that
doesn't die from accident or intent) that are going to accrue. And it's
only going to go up from there. Within 200 years the effective lifetimes
will be irrelevant. The current insurance and investment industry is
toast in about 20 years.

The current economics is based (unknowningly) on 'fast cycle' times
regarding resources and how quickly resources get returned to the pool as
individuals and such die out (it's that 'property right' thing). That is
about to change, so rapidly it will be a eyeblink (something 2-3 years)
compared to anything before.

Coupled with this is the DECREASED interaction between groups that these
technologies foster. They will create a force to fractionalize the
'market' into smaller more goal focused groups.

An additional stressor, and one which all current estimates ignore, is the
3rd World. One day in the very near future we will all, across the globe,
get up one morning and be confronted with a virus based solution for aging
(at least as we currently understand it). If a small group of people (ala
Beggars in Spain) are allowed and the rest are denied then a 'social
divide' (aka All hell breaking out all over at one time) is going to
occur. It will be violent, and it will have a negative effect on the
technology curve. This saving technology might kill us via side effects.

People came together because the technology wasn't there to allow them to
live alone. One day soon technology will reverse this as the level of
technology that is possible, compared to the level of technology in
general, to that available to the individual will become unity.

Why unity? Because technology will not, can not, extend forever. It will
not go on and on. The universe is too filled with 'exclusion rules' to
allow this. Yes the technology is rising exponentialy, because it's
a function of tanh. Thermodynamics will not be denied. [1]

Couple this with the fact that irrespective of the technology level the
Earth doesn't have the resources to support life indefinitely. The Earth
is not indefinite. This has some serious implication of its own.

The most important is that we must get off the planet as a race. Living on
planets that support life should, and will, become gardens where people
visit on vacations. Too precious to waste on individual ego. This implies
that mankinds future is to the stars.

But this very boundary condition limits the time that a planet has to get
off the planet, or drown in its own waste. My estimate is that it's about
200-250 years and we're about 50 years into it. We're not doing very well.

This also raises another potential explanation of why we don't see Roger.
The vast majority (as in asymptotic to 1) don't make it within the 200
year window. The result is a slow slide to eternity with the planet
getting more fucked up on a daily basis.

If you really understood what was going on, you wouldn't give a shit about
Social Security.

Tim's understanding of human psychology is about as swift as his
understanding of the Uncertainty Principle and running time 'backward'. As
usual he confuses ego and individual perspective as some universal. He
just can't seem to grasp the concept of 'observer dependency'. I guess
that's another example of 'May Pole Physics'.

ps I'm back, as I slowly dig out from a two month blizzard of work...

[1] As a complete aside, the realy interesting question here is will when
    it is all said and done, will the maximum technology allow the
    creation of other cosmoses? It would certainly explain why we don't
    see Roger Ramjet scooting around on a daily basis.


On Fri, 12 Jul 2002, Anonymous wrote:

> Tim May writes:
> > As everyone should know by now, and probably does, the Social Security 
> > scheme in the U.S. is nothing more than a large Ponzi scheme. Payroll 
> > taxes, amounting to about 15% of income up to some level (ratcheted 
> > upwards every few years), go straight into the General Fund, where the 
> > 34%-39% top tax rate funds and all of the other taxes go into.
> >
> > The General Fund (not its official name...it may not have one) issues 
> > the SS Geheimstatssecuritatwelfarefund an "IOU" for the trillions owed 
> > by the General Fund to the SS G.
> >
> > Those IOUs are not even computed as part of the national debt. (!!) Talk 
> > about using Enron accounting!
> 
> Standard accounting rules are completely inappropriate when looking at
> the situation for an entire country over a period of decades.  By this
> reasoning, a young family borrowing money to buy a house is making a huge
> mistake because it will be in debt to the tune of several years' salary.
> 
> What is overlooked in this analysis is that the family, just starting
> out in the world, can expect increased income over years to come.  In the
> long run, that house will be very affordable based on the expected growth
> in income.  But standard accounting principles do not take into account
> expected future income.
> 
> This shows up most drastically in the case of Social Security, where we
> are supposedly $20 trillion in debt.  What about the income which will
> be used to pay off that debt?  Those figures are not included.
> 
> The fact is, like a young family starting out in the world, we have
> every reason to expect our income levels to rise steadily over future
> decades, just as they have done in the past.  The world is not a static
> place.  Technology and science are improving at an ever-increasing rate.
> These translate into productivity improvements, greater national income,
> and a higher standard of living.
> 
> In fact, with biotech, nanotech, and all the other -techs that are
> expected to become feasible within the next few decades, there is every
> reason to expect that our income will begin growing at unprecedented
> rates.  See some of the predictions at www.kurzweilai.net for examples
> of what the future is likely to bring.  (For a good laugh, get Tim May
> to repeat his prediction about how nanotech will never go anywhere!
> This at a time when you can hardly pick up a business magazine without
> finding another article about this new investment opportunity.  Take it as
> further evidence of his prognosticative abilities, which are demonstrated
> in this thread as well.)
> 
> Against this background, it's pointless to worry about a Social Security
> debt amounting to $200,000 per household over many decades.  By the
> time today's young people are old enough to begin collecting retirement,
> two major changes will have occured:
> 
> First, the world will be a much wealthier place; standards of living will
> likely have more than doubled; technology will have created commonplace
> devices that would be literally priceless today.  For such a world,
> providing the retirement benefits at the levels specified by today's
> laws will be easy and cheap.
> 
> But second, and more importantly, health and longevity will likely have
> increased substantially as well.  By 2040 it's highly unlikely that a 65
> year old man will be facing the kinds of health limitations that a man of
> that age has to deal with today.  Four decades of medical research will
> allow people who are elderly by today's standards to retain considerable
> health and vigor.  There will be no need to retire by 65 if people don't
> want to; they can work productively for many more years.
> 
> Of course these changes will have almost infinite ramifications as they
> affect other parts of society.  The world is likely to be a very different
> place in the next decades, as the pace of progress continues to quicken.
> It's impossible to predict how it will all work out.  But it seems safe
> to say that the world will give people far more choices and opportunities
> than we see today.
> 
> Those people who do choose to retire at a youthful 65 can be easily
> supported by the incredible productivity increases which the working
> population enjoys.  In fact, retirement benefits may well be increased
> far beyond what seems practical today, as by the standards of our future
> wealth, today's comfortable living is seen as the squalor of poverty.
> We have seen this trend going on for many decades, and it is only going
> to increase in the future.
> 
> There are great things ahead, and it's sad to see someone who claims to
> have a clear vision of the future get caught up in such petty concerns
> as Social Security obligations.  There are serious problems ahead, some
> of which were brought up by Bill Joy in his famous article.  But paying
> for Social Security isn't one of them.
> 


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