(2020-12-08) Troynikov The Stakes

Anton Troynikov: The Stakes. Only the fragile promise of continued technological progress represents an escape from the horrific, deadly, Malthusian prison that was the past. These are The Stakes.

Most discussions of technological progress revolve around an imagined future.

Arguments based on imagined worlds often have the ring of just-so stories.

There are many imagined futures, but we have only a single past

We know what the past was like because we were there. And the past was hell.

In 1798, Thomas Malthus published his seminal book, An Essay on the Principle of Population

A Malthusian world is a closed system.

In the Malthusian world, where there is never enough for everyone to be comfortable let alone prosperous, the question immediately arises - how is the finite, closed world to be divided?

It is a mistake to believe that the Malthusian world is a product of these ideologies. In fact, such ideologies arise as a consequence of the closed system

But in our age, there is reason to hope.

Malthus' predictions have not come to pass.

This is because Malthus' models did not take into account the contributions of technological progress.

Through continued technological progress, humanity stands a chance of stepping into an unbounded world.

And end to scarcity not only of material resources, but also the ways it's possible to be human - a much higher, much brighter ideal.

in a closed world of infinite material resources but only one way to live, there will be blood and suffering, for humankind fundamentally needs an unbounded frontier, one that will never close.

An unbounded world is the only one in which we can escape from Malthusian ideologies

We live now in a time where we might be able to reach escape velocity

Technological progress is not inevitable. It is not guaranteed to continue. We got very lucky.

Technological progress is itself precarious, relying as it does on economic surplus

Threats to the existense of a continued economic surplus loom

A changing global climate (climate change) requiring the consumption of a greater part of economic produciton to maintain.

Some global event that undermines our complex industrial base, for example a truly deadly pandemic virus

All that's necessary is that we are cast back far enough that we are incapable of regaining what we have today, having destroyed the surplus and left unable to ever recreate it

our Malthusian history is vicious and cruel, and above all real.

Only the fragile promise of continued technological progress represents an escape from the horrific, deadly, Malthusian prison that was the past. These are The Stakes.