George Gilder Interview focusing on Capitalism and Creativity

[greenwave]

Recent interview with Gilder relating to the future potential growth of Capitalism

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60Dr-LirFDs     

 

greenwave

[vikx01]

Some good points here and there but mostly crap.

I then looked up the interviewee and found that he co-founded the Discovery Institute, which advocates, among other ideas, intelligent design.

[Mark Jr.]

I like George Gilder and I liked this interview. I read Life After Television which was released in 1994 and he certainly anticipated some of the major themes of the internet and the world wide web. So when he released Life After Google I read that too and again, I think he'll be proven prescient.

 

The fact that he may believe in Intelligent Design or be associated with a group that espouses it is really irrelevant and in fact a type of logical fallacy known as "poisoning the well".

 

I also find it refreshing whenever somebody with a proven track record for groking tech debunks that nonsensical notion of a coming Singularity.

[Guest cherzeca]

gilder is a great mind.  This not to say he is always right, but I didn't say he had god's  mind.

[Mark Jr.]

gilder is a great mind.  This not to say he is always right, but I didn't say he had god's  mind.

 

Indeed. For example I disagree with him about his thoughts that AI will not displace jobs. I mean he could be right in the sense that I'm an AI skeptic. (Was, then wasn't, now I am again).

 

But automation is another thing entirely, and what we call "AI" today is really just expert systems. Those will displace jobs, lots of them.

 

If you read any of the work by Charles Hugh Smith (oftwominds.com) he does a good job showing how the numbers of jobs displaced by big tech are being replaced by a much smaller number of jobs. I guess one would call that productivity gains.

 

I really do worry that there will be no jobs in the future, or rather, my joke for it is "in the future there will be one occupation: managing one's wealth. And most of us are gonna be unemployed".

 

Gilder doesn't share this vision, and I'd prefer it if he were right about this and I'm wrong.

 

[Guest cherzeca]

the thing that I am thinking about is gilder's point that the internet was designed to be an information/communication medium, and it was poorly designed to be a transactional/commercial medium that it has become (and will continue to evolve as such).

 

so at some point blockchain will become hugely important for internet.  now while gilder seems to think that this portends trouble for cloud companies (I have yet to read "beyond google"), it is not clear to me that the cloud just can't incorporate blockchain...indeed, make the cloud more effective and valuable.  but his point that socialism prevents creativity while capitalism rewards it is one of the biggest "simple" ideas I have come across.

 

problem with gilder is that he can be 10 years early on his themes for investing purposes. 

[Mark Jr.]

problem with gilder is that he can be 10 years early on his themes for investing purposes.

 

"The graveyards of Wall Street are littered with the skulls of those who were too early".

 

A great book on that exact phenomenon is Nick Gogarty's "The Nature Of Value" which I may have once posted in the books forum, I can't remember. It's all about the stages a new technology paradigm goes through before it is reasonably investable.

[Spekulatius]

problem with gilder is that he can be 10 years early on his themes for investing purposes.

 

"The graveyards of Wall Street are littered with the skulls of those who were too early".

 

A great book on that exact phenomenon is Nick Gogarty's "The Nature Of Value" which I may have once posted in the books forum, I can't remember. It's all about the stages a new technology paradigm goes through before it is reasonably investable.

 

It really does not take that much foresight to predict that something new comes along to challenge the likes of Google or Amazon or FB within the next twenty years. It is not clear to me that the challenger has anything to do with Blockchain. The knock on Blockchain is that it is inherently inefficient to facilitate transactions, so maybe something new comes around to either fix that problem. Blockchain alone wouldn’t make transactions secure - we know what happens when the key is lost. Do clearly additional layers are needed to make this viable. There is also no reason why cloud companies cannot incorporate it in their offering. To me Blockchain looks more like an evolutionary step that will be part of existing and emerging techs than a technology that facilitate changes by itself.

[Guest cherzeca]

problem with gilder is that he can be 10 years early on his themes for investing purposes.

 

"The graveyards of Wall Street are littered with the skulls of those who were too early".

 

A great book on that exact phenomenon is Nick Gogarty's "The Nature Of Value" which I may have once posted in the books forum, I can't remember. It's all about the stages a new technology paradigm goes through before it is reasonably investable.

 

It really does not take that much foresight to predict that something new comes along to challenge the likes of Google or Amazon or FB within the next twenty years. It is not clear to me that the challenger has anything to do with Blockchain. The knock on Blockchain is that it is inherently inefficient to facilitate transactions, so maybe something new comes around to either fix that problem. Blockchain alone wouldn’t make transactions secure - we know what happens when the key is lost. Do clearly additional layers are needed to make this viable. There is also no reason why cloud companies cannot incorporate it in their offering. To me Blockchain looks more like an evolutionary step that will be part of existing and emerging techs than a technology that facilitate changes by itself.

 

trust has been the internet's principal issue.  lack of trust is bad enough in a communications platform, but it is death to a transactions platform.  while blockchain is just a toddler, it is the only thing that I am aware of that promises transparent security that can be verified by all participants..trust.  this is a big deal.  what I don't understand (unless I suppose I finally get around to reading gilder's latest book) is why google/FB will suffer rather than prosper from blockchain...I suppose FB charges the ad rates they do because FB's platform data is private to FB