What Is the Permanent Problem?

[Nevilledog]

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David Wallace-Wells
@dwallacewells
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“The short-fuse calamity of covid-19, superimposed on the long-fuse calamity of climate change, makes the case for a deeper pessimism: we are confronted simultaneously with our vulnerability to catastrophe and our profound unseriousness in the face of it.”

brinklindsey.substack.com
What Is the Permanent Problem?
Since 2016, I’ve done a great deal of reading, writing, thinking, talking, and brooding about the crisis of liberal democracy we’re now living through — how it originated, what powers it, and how...
2:11 PM · Sep 28, 2022

https://brinklindsey.substack.com/p/what-is-the-permanent-problem

Since 2016, I’ve done a great deal of reading, writing, thinking, talking, and brooding about the crisis of liberal democracy we’re now living through — how it originated, what powers it, and how possibly to defuse it or at least muddle through it. And what I’ve concluded is that this political crisis is one aspect of a much larger, deeper, global social crisis — a period of transition in which the long-term outlook for free and open societies, and for human wellbeing more broadly, swings all the way from catastrophe to transformational progress.

To try to explain what this global crisis is about, to describe it in all its varied and interrelated dimensions, to assess possible outcomes for good and ill on the other side of the vortex, to explore the most promising possibilities for genuine and durable progress — that’s the mission of this blog.

The name for this site is “The Permanent Problem,” a line from an essay by the economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes foresaw our current predicament at a time when it couldn’t have seemed more distant. In a piece titled “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” published in 1930 in the depths of the Great Depression, Keynes lifted his gaze from the grim present and looked forward a hundred years —that is, to just a few years from now. He understood, correctly, that the Depression was a temporary interruption in a long-term trend of cumulative growth, and that in all likelihood the trend would continue. Which led him to this bold conclusion: “All this means in the long run that mankind is solving its economic problem.” In other words, the threat of physical privation was gradually receding and would in due course no longer be a central motivating force in society.

“[T]he economic problem, the struggle for subsistence,” Keynes wrote, “always has been hitherto the primary, most pressing problem of the human race.” But in light of the remarkable progress of modern economic growth to date, the prospect of continued progress “means that the economic problem is not — if we look into the future — the permanent problem of the human race.” If growth could just persist for another century, Keynes claimed, “for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem — how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.”

*snip*

[unweird]

1. We're doomed

Optimistically speaking mind you.

[c-rational]

2. I have always liked Keynes and his economic philosophy. This post made me think of Frank Ramsey,

(1904-1930) who I believe also studied with or of Keynes, stated the 'the well being of future generations should be given the same weight as our own'...does not look too good for those following. Those unaccounted for costs...like an inhabitable planet.

[dgauss]

3. Makes me think of some of the naive ideas about automation.

That ever increasing automation will gradually free humanity from the burdens of labor and lead to the pursuit of more rewarding and enlightening ends. Seems like it still leads to the same permanent problem of how "to live wisely and agreeably and well."

[Duppers]

4. K & R x 1000

Wish most would read this.


TY for posting.