The other argument I am seeing a lot of is the affordability "crisis," which may be a crisis of perception, or anxiety, or values instead. David Foster and bsking have also had things to say on it. My wife's mother had a cleaning lady who came in once or twice a week for years, and people have nannies now. Before that, lots of people had maids or cooks that put in a lot of hours. With larger and multigenerational families and big Victorian houses there was more work per household. Many labor saving devices were not yet invented. But Matthew Iglesias points out that the reason people don't have servants now is not because their wages are less, but because servants wages are more.
Lyman Stone links to two problems for the hereditarians
There has been actual fraud, excused by prominent researchers
and comments himself that we have in fact modified real-world phenotypic intelligence with things right under our noses. He analogises to better visit because of glasses, contacts, and surgery even though genotypic eyesight isn't any better
Maybe Y'all Really Do Need Jesus by the always controversial and entertaining Cartoon Hate Her. She is a one of the rare adult converts who had no religious upbringing whatsoever.
The Great Downzoning "It was once legal to build almost anything, everywhere. Then, in the space of a few decades, nearly every city in the Western world banned densification. What happened?"
Has an English Civil War Already Begun?
4 comments:
I think Stone's example is a stretch. Sure, more people now can solve problems that people in the 1500s could not but that's at least partially because we deliberately teach the solutions or procedures to solve them, not because people in the 1500s were less intelligent. As a counter example I'd point to the mystery of the longevity of Roman concrete which was only recently rediscovered. I've remarked several times here that people often imagine we could easily rebuild technologies from the 1800s or even early 1900s without realizing that we've largely completely erased the skills and infrastructure needed to create and maintain them. You can do a one-off rebuild of a steam locomotive from 1905 in 2025 but mass production would take decades of rebuilding.
IIRC, the last freight hauled by steam locomotive was in July 1968, possibly 1969 on the narrow gauge Denver and Rio Grande from Chama NM to either Durango CO or Farmington NM -- lumber, mostly. You're right that the skills to maintain those steam locomotives are declining, but the tourist attraction of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad and the more well-known Silverton to Durango route are keeping the maintenance skills somewhat alive.
@ Christopher B - you might be interested in the book "The Knowledge," which tackles the problem of what could catch up with quickly on a culture restart and what would be out of reach. You could reuse a lot of quality metal still lying around, but mining would be impossible because we've already got everything on the surface. You could catch up to 1900 medicine quickly just by knowing the germ theory and contagion, and knowing that something like an antibiotic existed somehow. It's very uneven.
I've a young recent-graduate colleague at one of my employers who laments that he'll never afford homeownership, and a young recent-graduate colleague at the other employer who just bought one 2 years after completing his bachelors.
1st is carrying lots of debt from attending a private tier-1 R1,
2nd lived at home and attended the nearest branch of State U.
So I think debt-load has something to do with perception of affordability.
Post a Comment