Wuhan Virus

[Adam Strange]

An interesting report on the direction that business, in general, is taking in the time of Covid-19, by a guy on Twitter. I think he might be ILI, because he seems to be all about gloom and doom, but he has some interesting charts for those people who might be considering starting a business:

https://twitter.com/pueokeffer/statu...43006918381568

Personally, I've been wondering for a number of years how all the people in a closed system will fare with respect to employment as capitalism becomes more labor-efficient, social complexity rises, the number of innovations falls as we run up against limits on what is possible ("Where is my intergalactic teleporter?"), and the price of human replacements (oil) drops to the point where you can buy a barrel of oil (representing about five to ten years of human labor energy) for under $70. Oil replaces humans because it only costs $10 dollars per year for every person it replaces, rather than $10,000 or $50,000 for a human. And oil is getting cheaper. http://theoildrum.com/node/4315

I think the future could take one of two directions. One, we could see increasing inequality and concentration of wealth, which will lead to social stagnation and a new Middle Ages with a few kings and many serfs and the whole thing enforced by knights and supported by a Church.
Alternately, we could see a shift in the distribution of the rewards of civilization to something nearer to what you see in a family, rather than a slave ship, in which case we might build a future that is a nice place to live.

I give the latter outcome about a 10% chance of happening.