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They can do whatever they want. It's a free country.
I'm just saying that I think Thiel is correct when he says that, as long as our best companies are out of ideas for moving us into the future, our standard of living is going to decrease since we won't have the capacity for the population increase.
Starts with false hypothetical that they're out ideas. They just have more cash than ideas, big difference. I'm pretty excited in how Nest plays out. Hell, one of the cool things at CES this year was a god damn light bulb. A light bulb.
They can do whatever they want. It's a free country.
I'm just saying that I think Thiel is correct when he says that, as long as our best companies are out of ideas for moving us into the future, our standard of living is going to decrease since we won't have the capacity for the population increase.
Oh my god! It had been an entire 4 years since the ipad came out! Google glass and the self driving car are obviously not going to contribute to our society or economy in any way. Kindles and other e-readers have not revolutionized reading. The A-330 and Boeing Dreamliner are pointless, why should those companies have even bothered. Mapping the human genome, well, I can't see any use in revealing all of the secrets of human DNA. CGI obviously hasn't resulted in any new movies.
Yep, society is doomed. Let's all go ahead and drink the cyanide laced Koolaid right now.
What sorts of R&D, though? Is it the kind that is going to increase our standard of living? I don't see how the iPhone 6 raised our standard of living.
what exactly do you think the standard of living is? Based on being employed, they do this a lot on the global scale too? Money is fairly easy to obtain (anyone can do it), the quantity of it is the hard part
On the face of it, it seems by some observations that we may have hit a peak in terms of consumer technologies.
But I think the new growth industries will be space/aerospace, nuclear energy, healthcare (lots of opportunity here), and the defense industry (think lasers).
I doubt Google, as well as many other tech companies, are "running out of ideas". In all likelihood their R&D branch are working on and holding on to many ideas and patents and waiting for the right time to propose an idea (or induce a demand) for a certain technology that's easily accessible and applicable.
A corporation's number one goal is to make money, but it has to consider many other factors (economic trends, market stability, consumer pricing, etc.) to know the right time to make as much money as possible.
I agree about google. Googleglasses? LOL. It's just their brand that keeps them going, plus they have their server/search site to fall back on.
Glass was a flop.
I still think there's a lot of potential, it just was completely unready for commercial release. The fighter pilot mechanism of eye movements for computer control would be very helpful in my job. Being able to make simple contextual choices (option 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5) would be helpful. There's plenty of mental acuity left in the brain bank but my hands are generally occupied. Leaving what your doing to go the appropriate box and press 5 doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's really annoying.
What sorts of R&D, though? Is it the kind that is going to increase our standard of living? I don't see how the iPhone 6 raised our standard of living.
But what is exactly your complain here? If what they did is of no use, people can stop buying it and they will question themselves... I am not impressed by Apple or Google R&D myself, but that is not a reason to say only innovations that are "increasing" the standard of living are worth. That is too subjective.
Basically, if you solve a problem, you provide an added value. Maybe the Iphone 6 does solve a problem for some people, otherwise, why would you buy it?
Using Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft or other in the news tech firms is one thing but many companies are just not doing much in terms of constant process improvements. The thing we need to remember though is at some time you MAY hit a day when you are no longer the epitome of technical improvement. Take IBM for example, in the 1970s and 1980s were great and know for being in the know of the next phase and craze but now it isn't that IBM anymore. Apple was in a funk after Apple II and the outsing of Jobs until Apple bought out Jobs' NEXT Computers in 1996. Apple was an outdate joke from the late 80s until the 2000s when Jobs expanded product lines and reinvigorated their computer products.
The fact of the matter is, the demand for human labor has never been less and its only getting lower.
Human exceptionalism will *always* be highly valued *everywhere*, but there are billions of people on earth and only a tiny few are exceptional enough to occupy the high paying creative and managerial jobs. Government- the 'business of dividing up the pie' - is having problems with not enough bakers actually making pies for them to divide up so we create pie vouchers and pass those around...
The United States as a nation is sort of like an oilfield worker who just got laid off from his $100K a year 'laborer' job in North Dakota, now that Oil is cheap. For the past 4, 5, 6 years, he built up a standard of living that was unsustainable based on an economic aberration. Its going to be VERY painful for him to accept profoundly less money for his same services 2, 3 years from now when the money is all gone and he needs a job back home in Arkansas.
We had our economic prime when World War II was over and we were the only superpower standing, with a healthy capitalist economy, in an era of paradigm shifting innovation. The idea that the most pedestrian laborer could afford a nice home, a vacation home and a brand new car while there were human beings starving and subsisting on a dollar a day was not a sustainable system, but its what we have come to expect.
A huge swath of our population had better get used to profoundly lower expectations. It will probably take another generation or two for perspectives to adjust back to economic reality, I shudder to think what kind of politics could develop in the meantime.
Last edited by StAugustine; 02-07-2015 at 08:39 PM..
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