[coopierez]

The idea that Russia or China would magically become democratic utopias without violent social upheaval is extraordinarily naive. In addition to the US just deciding to "solve seemingly intractable social problems, like drug addiction" - human-made problems caused by the same human-made systems that the article is praising.

The only thing I really feel they got close was all 10 of the "Scenario Spoilers". If they wrote an article just focusing on those instead I think all of our minds would have been truly blown. But I suppose this article was written at a particularly optimistic point in time.

[pavlov]

In retrospect 1997-2000 was probably the most optimistic time in the entire history of mankind so far.

I’m 43 and in my heart I don’t honestly believe we will see another such era of relative peace and global alignment during my lifetime. It’s somewhat depressing. (Not for myself, but more about the prospects for my children who statistically have a 50% chance of being alive in the year 2120. The world of climate change we’re leaving doesn’t look like a happy one.)

[Spooky23]

For some people. I grew up in the country and sort of straddled two worlds.

The world of rural family farms was in the full out death spiral. The family farm worked for in rural NY had been in continuous operation since the 1600s, turned into a hobby farm circa 2001. All of the supporting ecosystem died as well. Walmart killed retail. The dying farms killed the equipment and tractor dealers, etc.

Then I went to college and it’s the land of the long boom.

It’s funny I wrote a paper in high school sort of predicting unrest etc in the 2020 timeframe. NAFTA, consolidation of industries and offshoring.

I had forgotten about it until recently, but found it and while some of the details were long, our current path wasn’t totally a surprise to a reasonably intelligent and observant 16 year old in the 90s!

Personally, I don’t share that dark vision. I think that while you’ll see strategic realignments that may have profound impact, life goes on.

[cmrdporcupine]

Are you forgetting about the Kosovo war? How about the second Chechyan war? What about the Second Intifada? I could come up with a dozen other examples. It was not an era of peace.

That peace only looked like that for Americans? In their little corner of the world? Because their dominance at the time was basically unchallenged for a short period of time.

As for prosperity, yes, it was so for our industry. But it was a bubble. A really bad one. And for most other people it was actually an era of wage/income stagnation. And then a lot of people lost a lot of money in the .com crash.

[prepend]

It’s all relative. There was conflict. But the Cold War was over and 9/11 hadn’t happened yet.

It was a very optimistic time.

[cmrdporcupine]

Again, for North Americans on the whole. Maybe western Europeans if they didn't look too far over their shoulders.

I remember it as a very mixed time. Culturally optimistic here in North America, certainly. But I could certainly see the stormclouds.

When you say relative, you need to postfix that with "... to me."

[prepend]

> When you say relative, you need to postfix that with "... to me."

That’s what relative means, right? Adding “to me” doesn’t add much value to the meaning.

I’m not sure your point anyway. As even Western Europe and the entire world no longer feared nuclear Armageddon from the Cold War. There were other problems, of course, but that period for most of the world was more peaceful than the immediately preceding or following period. If you were in North America or Asia or Africa or anywhere.

[nostrademons]

Personally I'm highly optimistic about the post-war period of ~2035. Wars usually bring about extremely rapid development and adoption of new technologies. I suspect that my kids, if they survive, will enter a world I can only dream about. Plus, killing off several billion people will alleviate resource pressures on the planet, and likely reverse global warming through nuclear winter. And world wars usually bring about the downfall of governments and major institutions, which have been major blockers to the adoption of technology on a societal level and development of a social structure that fits the world of today rather than the world of 1945.

It's going to be a pretty grim 10-15 years in the near future. I think a 50% chance of them being alive in 2120 is pretty darn optimistic; I'm figuring they have a 20-30% chance of surviving to adulthood. But if they make it, life after a population bottleneck is usually pretty good for the survivors.

[KineticLensman]

> life after a population bottleneck is usually pretty good for the survivors

One example of a population bottleneck I can think of is the plague (black death) in 14C Europe [0]. This contributed to the collapse of serfdom and wage rises, along with significant social change, which was arguably a good thing. But a big difference compared with today is that 'infrastructure' wasn't itself destroyed and existing technologies and raw materials remained available. Food was grown locally, and most industry, such as it was, could continue as before (except where labour wasn't available). A modern war on the scale you are suggesting, killing off several billion people (!!!), would entirely disrupt our globalised society. Reconstruction to pre-war levels of technology and health would be extremely hard if not impossible.

> likely reverse global warming through nuclear winter

Hardly. Nuclear winter wouldn't magically remove carbon from the biosphere, and the disruption of ecosystems and agriculture would be massive.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Deat...

[nostrademons]

Right. Other examples of a population bottleneck include Communist China's Great Famine + Cultural Revolution (killed ~5% overall, up to 18% in some provinces), and WW2 (~3.5% overall, 15-18% in some regions like Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Union). In WW2 the infrastructure was destroyed, and that led to the post-WW2 boom (even in losing countries!) as it was rebuilt with modern technology.

WW3 will result in the collapse of globalization, but it's very unlikely that it'll affect all regions equally, just like how the U.S. ended up as the big winner because it was all fought on foreign soil. Whichever regions manage to stay out of WW3 will likely enjoy the economic fruits of increased technology + being the engine of rebuilding for the remnants of the rest of the world.

[KineticLensman]

> In WW2 the infrastructure was destroyed

But it was rebuilt partly using massive Marshall plan investment which wouldn't exist in a world where several billion people have just died.

[nostrademons]

Why wouldn't a similar Marshall plan exist in a post-WW3 world? Wars don't affect all areas equally, and don't kill everybody. Even if you assume that 50% of humanity dies (way worse than WW2, and worse than every known war in history), that still leaves a population of 4 billion, which is what it was in 1975, 30 years after the Marshall plan.

[pavlov]

Yours is a grim vision and I hope it doesn’t come to that.

I can’t disagree more on this point:

”governments and major institutions, which have been major blockers to the adoption of technology on a societal level”

After all we’re having this conversation on a global network originally created by government grants, not on AOL or some other commercial alternative.

Re: 50% of being alive in 2120, it does seem optimistic. It’s actually an official projection by the National Statistics Institute of Finland taking into account birth year and gender.

[cplusplusfellow]

This network may have been created on a government grant but one need only review the broadband tax placed upon us 30 years ago versus broadband paid for by the tax to understand what is happening.

[boringg]

So what are you doing to fix the problem aside from lament?

[TuringTest]

Making everybody else aware of the problem, of course

[fooop]

you mean, making everybody else aware of how smart the poster is

[Gunax]

> The idea that Russia or China would magically become democratic utopias without violent social upheaval is extraordinarily naive.

It happened to South Korea and Taiwan. And almost happened to Russia. I really don't think it's naive, even if it's wrong.

Everything seems obvious in hindsight.

[antod]

The end of WWII led to Germany, Japan and Italy becoming (or returning to) democracies. As well as your later examples of South Korea and Taiwan, it's understandable that it seemed like the end of the cold war could also lead to some similar results. Maybe by 97 that optimism had faded, but for a while Russia looked like it was heading towards democracy.

[CommieBobDole]

On the "Scenario Spoilers", it looks like we got (at least in part) 1, 3 (both options), 4, 6 and 9. Pretty impressive.