Book: 20230821 to 20231003, "The Price of Tomorrow" by Jeff Booth

20230821 - Introduction

Jeff Booth has almost identical opinion as mine. Except I support zero interest rate and infinite government debt.

Automation in production and service area is critical power, with the help of AI. But how long that would take?

Sometimes timing is more important than trend.

20230824 - How the Economy Works, Part I: Printing Money

There are a few things I don't agree.

1. Government local currency debt is completely different from personal debt and enterprise debt.

Government can print their own money. There is no such thing that they cannot pay it off. Central bank can always buy all debt, even if the interest is zero.

2. Great Depression is in different age when government cannot just print money, and China is different from Europe to US, as China has huge trade surplus against US.

3. Wealth inequility is not only caused by the compound effect of easy money.

Different people have different value contribution to the society. There are too much amusement in modern society. Most of people get distracted by those stimulus.

4. The best way to handle financial crisis is either bail out the banks or let those banks die out.

I think the way FED handle Silicon Valley Bank(SVB) is great: let the bank burst, then FED work as the first creditor to support all bank clients. So all executives and stakeholders get the punishment because of their greed and risk taking.

20230907 - How the Economy Works, Part II: Creative Destruction

This chapter explains why Elon Musk spent $44B to purchase Twitter, instead of building a new one: Twitter is a monopoly in short message social media. It's very hard to replace it.

What type of business model can crash those Monopolies? AI? How?

Let's say self-driving succeeded, then all professional drivers and Uber drivers are going to lose their jobs. If GPT-5 succeeded, then a large percentage of office workers are going to lose their jobs. If Optimus robots succeeded, then most of blue collar workers are going to lose their jobs. The unemployment rate would skyrocket, and cause what problem? UBI will maintain people's living standard, not matter where the money come from (most likely from government debt). How much would Youtube and Facebook get affected by this change?

If government continues to lend money to the market everytime when crises come, what would happen in the end?

In sustainble economy, the sum of the wealth of everyone, is supposed to equals with the sum of market consumption * N years. With unlimited government lending, the "N" is getting larger and larger. Surely the interest rate will eventually drop to zero, and then government debt can increase forever.

20230908 - It Is Hard to Think Differently

How to overcome our biases? Verification.

At least we should do that before making any major decisions.

Verification could be done through reflection(feedback) from others, or based on books about other domains.

But verification may take long, long time, and there could be too many distractions.

20230922 - The Technology Boom

The technology boom has passed the sonic boom. It is not restrained by natural resource, labour, or credit.

For example, it doesn't need too many people or too much money to develop ChatGPT, Tesla FSD and Optimus.

So we will get abundant goods and services without much natural resource, labour and credit.

20230923 - The future of energy

Jeff Booth only discussed the supply side of energy, not the demand side.

Naturally, when the energy price drop down, we will consume more energy. For example, we may keep air conditioners running 24*7, and more people may decide to live in faraway place which need to collect water from air. So it will take much longer time to see energy price reduced.

Timing is critical. When will lithium battery price go down enough to beat fossil energy? Each family may need at least 150 kwh battery storage. At the moment, that's around 100k USD, together with 20k solar panel it's 120k AUD. If the interest rate is 4.x%, then the cost is 5k AUD per year, which means around 7k AUD per year. Most of family only need 700AUD per quarter, which is around 2800 AUD.

The battery price needs to drop for at least 60%. That's from 8400USD per Tesla Powerwall 3 unit to $3360USD.

20230923 - The future of intelligence

Where does intelligence come from? It comes from prediction and verification and then improve the prediction and then verify it again. This makes perfect sense.

So, not just the brain cells in individual, but each person in human colossus is like a neuron. After the invention of printing press, individuals are activated and connected (share knowledge with each other), so we can help each other to make better prediction. So, the intelligence of human start to progress rapidly.

Intelligence has three levels to human: at cell level, at individual level, and at group level. Cell knows how to heal a wound; individual knows how to get food and survive; group knows how to improve productivity.

If cell needs harmful germs to improve itself(immunisation system), if individual needs failures and frustrations to grow, of course groups need enemies to become better.

For AI, the progress will be much faster, as computer calculate and communicate at least one million times faster than human. There will be many levels, which are beyond our cognition.

20231002 - Who will be the masters?

Error correction is the heart of intelligence? True.

Will robots replace most of people doing work? Will there be more than 100 billion robots?

If most of people reply on UBI, how can they pay for the luxury goods and services?

Will they find meaning of their lives?

Do they still want to have children?

Should we be optimistic even friendly AI is in charge?

20231002 - Us versus Them

Hitler's "Mein Kampf"("My struggle"): 

"Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. (...) All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. (...) The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (...) The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_Nazi_Germany

"propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side." p174

High unemployment rate and huge inequality lead to more extremism. What's the best solution? UBI can only guarantee basic living standards.

We need common higher goal. Or common enemy?

20231002 - Can we cooperate?

Scarcity will never go away! 

I believe that people will pursue something limited, for example, the houses at the top of hills.

Many governments will not let that happen. The AI and robots belong to a few companies. If energy comes from solar, then how can other countries pay for the services, no matter how cheap they are?

So, abundence will not eliminate conflicts.

How will the states handle AI and robots, if they don't own them?

Game theory means there are two status of world. In a world full of trust and cooperation, cheater can gain most benefit at lowest cost; in a world full of distrust and conflict, honest people win and prosper.

So the world will never be literally "stable". To US, China is the catfish in catfish effect, which brings huge benefit to US. Similarly, Russia is the catfish to Europe. Without catfish, political effect will ruin human civilization.

20231003 - A call to action

Jeff Booth doesn't want to mention one obvious question: before all goods and services become completely free, where will those unemployed people get money to survive? They cannot get Bitcoin or USD for free. What is the source of UBI?

The major reason that government debt of developed countries keep going up, is because those governments have to support the people in poor.

And, if the price of goods and services are much cheaper, the waste will be much higher. This is decided by our gene.

So, goods and services will never be free.I believe that interest rate will be zero, and government debt will keep going up, forever.

The real valuable asset is the one can create value for the society, the one can supply goods and services. NASDAQ passive index fund could be the best choice.