Speaking of venturing outside of one's intellectual comfort zone, and reading voices one doesn't normally read (#1401462), here's Mr. Milanovic (Marxian-ish economist, inequality scholar, and most well-known for the elephant graph-- the distribution of income growth across the global income distribution). Plus, I have an ARC of his new book, The Great Global Transformation in my possession... so gotta keep an eye out!

It's a question many Bitcoiners ponder, explicitly or implicitly, especially in our mythology about "omg, we could buy a house and live well on a single income" bullshit. It's something I wrote about for HumanProgress.org a few years ago ("Have Our Screens Been the Only Major Tech Achievement since the 1970s?)", off an Eric Weinstein podcast convo.

A lot of "compare now and then"/generational convos (#1369771, #1358006) come down to a specific price index and how you're adjusting wealth/income/stuff through (long) time.

To many young people it might seem a strange question to ask because the world of the 1990s is a faraway world of which by experience they know almost nothing. But they do know the terms of the Global Financial Crisis, liberal imperialism, and Washington Consensus.

"the world of the 1990s was a world of unmatched hypocrisy and ideas that almost all turned out to be wrong""the world of the 1990s was a world of unmatched hypocrisy and ideas that almost all turned out to be wrong"

MISTAKEN beliefs of the 1990s:
#1: FINANCIALIZATION IS GOOD
I mean, the bitcoin treasury nonsense really got me thinking about this in a completely new way. This used to sound like a total anti-capitalist/left-wing nonsense talking point but now I understand better. It's not a left/right consideration: it's whether or not a phenomenon is useful to society (#1291642, #1288000)

It was thought that both domestically and internationally greater financialization would make individuals and countries grow faster. It was a substitute for economic equality: everybody who wanted to study or had a good idea could easily borrow and become rich

Countries could do it (hashtag gov debt) and individuals could (hashtag student loans).

#2: MULTIETHNIC SOCIETIES ARE GOOD
Oh man are we getting into the juicy stuff.

While this was affirmed in public, the elites and the media supported the break-up of multi-ethnic formerly communist federations in Europe and Africa (Ethiopia). How was it that multiethnicity in one part of the world was good while in the other part of the world it was bad?
as multiethnicity became a problem in the West, increasingly strong obstacles to the free movement of labor were set up. Most notably so in Europe that surrounded herself with electric fences (that were ostentatiously destroyed in 1989 on the border between Hungary and Austria) and fast boats in the Mediterranean to protect herself against what its elites ideologically sad they supported: multiethnicity.

#3: POOR COUNTRIES CAN/SHOULD EASILY BECOME RICH

The claim was that rich countries and the elites there were keen to help poor counties grow out of their poverty. Poor countries were poor because they were corrupt and unable to use technological knowledge that existed in the world.

I kind of still believe that. Property rights and values/culture rule.

But when China used that worldwide technological knowledge and got ahead of the rest of the world, suddenly the story changed: now the poor were stealing the technology that rightly belonged to the rich. The truth of the 1990s turned out to be wrong, or more exactly, what was claimed was not sincerely believed.

#4: GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM
I definitely believe that, and I don't see anything in the last three decades (= more gov) having disproved that.

Everything could be done better by the private sector. Except when the combination of the private sector and the state reshuffled the cards in the world and made China grow at two-digit rates

OK, but that's not the private sector doing things, it's mixing the worst of both worlds. (Also, private-public partnerships can go die in a dumpster fire.)

"almost all that was believed in the 1990 was either proven wrong, or was self-serving. Hypocrisy’s uncontested rule relegated any daring or alternative opinions to the lunatic fringe""almost all that was believed in the 1990 was either proven wrong, or was self-serving. Hypocrisy’s uncontested rule relegated any daring or alternative opinions to the lunatic fringe"

It was ideologically a barren period where clichés were regarded as ultimate accomplishments of human thought. Today’s world may not be better but is certainly intellectually freer.

uuuh, not sure about that. We did live through medical-opressive censorship ala V for Vendetta or 1984, and the Samourai dudes are in prison (#1277360) so I dunno.