Peter Thiel, about Stagnation

[WillyAp]

I read a interesting piece in the NY Times.

A piece of it:

So the original example for me was: After Sept. 11, there was this whole mentality among foreign policy conservatives that we had been decadent and stagnant, and now is our time to wake up and launch a new crusade and remake the world. Obviously, that ended very badly. But something similar ——
Thiel: But it was Bush 43 who told people to go shopping right away.
Douthat: So it wasn’t anti-decadent enough?
Thiel: For the most part. There was  some neocon, foreign policy enclave in which people were LARPing as a way to get out of decadence. But the dominant thing was Bush 43 people telling people just to go shopping.

The entire opinion you find here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/peter-thiel-antichrist-ross-douthat.html
Paywall free: https://archive.is/HTIF6

The biggest issue with stagnation is that "the people" love to live in their status quo.  
Once you archived some financial freedom the taste for risk taking leaves. That is human nature, I've seen it in many.  Due to just developing financial freedom we develop all kinds of ills. loose friends, create enemies. It is obvious that we lack the ability to advance as an entity, body and soul. 

What is your take on this?

[Hydrogen]

The biggest issue with stagnation is that "the people" love to live in their status quo.  
Once you archived some financial freedom the taste for risk taking leaves. That is human nature, I've seen it in many.  Due to just developing financial freedom we develop all kinds of ills. loose friends, create enemies. It is obvious that we lack the ability to advance as an entity, body and soul. 

What is your take on this?

"Conditions of degeneration in the organic world are approximately known. These conditions are often of two distinct kinds, deprivation of food, light, etc. so leading to imperfect nutrition and enervation; the other, a life of repose, with abundant supply of food and decreased exposure to the dangers of the environment. It is noteworthy that while the former only depresses, or at most distinguishes the specific type, the latter, through the disuse of the nervous and other structures etc. which such a simplification of life involves, brings about that far more insidious and through degeneration seen in the life history of myriads of parasites."

-Patrick Geddes

[adam.sandler]

I support the view of Thiel, who believes that the issue of recession is true. His analysis of the post-9/11 is quite enlightened rather than taking such a window of opportunity to cause significant change the society has gone back to consumerism. This will demonstrate how much the search of immediate comfort is rooted into our culture.

The thing is you are also quite right that financial freedom is what makes people conservative. i bet that what can help to avoid this trap is to establish such a culture that teaches people to take risks and fail. In other words, in case we create such systems which would make the failure endurable (such as social protection) and encourage creativity, we would probably be able to eliminate recessions. Tough, to do that we would have had structural change.

The quote given by Geddes seems very interesting to me too, as well, which the hydrogen user mentioned. Recessions are like a normal stage in the lives of the societies that are too comfortable. In order to beat them, we must be challenged at all times i.e. through competition, major threats (such as climate change), or demanding objectives (such as space travel). All we need to be wary of is that all these challenges do not translate to chaos.

[WillyAp]

The thing is you are also quite right that financial freedom is what makes people conservative. i bet that what can help to avoid this trap is to establish such a culture that teaches people to take risks and fail. In other words, in case we create such systems which would make the failure endurable (such as social protection) and encourage creativity, we would probably be able to eliminate recessions. Tough, to do that we would have had structural change.

Westen society in so called advanced countries overdo their concern for security by establishing health care, often "free" in the past, now at a price.
Those create a mechanism.

[quote author:Douthat, NY Times]basically, the argument in that essay was that the dynamic, fast-paced, ever-changing modern world was just not nearly as dynamic as people thought, and that actually, we’d entered a period of technological stagnation. That digital life was a breakthrough, but not as big a breakthrough as people had hoped, and that the world was stuck,[/quote]

In 100% commerce the digital part is about 30%. Of those 30%, 30% go into social media. (and of those, most go into Facebook) And exactly here the "digital life was a breakthrough, but not as big as people had hoped" makes more sense. We see a similar approach to AI, "everyone is using it", so digital platforms scream on top of their lungs. Google's Searches have seen an increase by 10%  and those did not go into the AI Box.

When someone does not claim credit for something, he/she has reasons. That is just human.

 

we must be challenged at all times i.e. through competition, major threats (such as climate change),

Or war, People need to be made aware, that there is no security, nature in this case is a helpful factor.