Is any direction in liberal thinking a dead-end?

In the previous post, I have compared the methodology of thinking in conservative and liberal minds. Conservatives are simple - anything you are trying to prove should pass a strict testing procedure. The level of difficulty depends on the importance of the proposed change in thinking but any increment is practically irreversible. This makes technical progress based on solid knowledge so fast - new knowledge piles up. 

Liberal ideas do not undergo any strict proofing - just compare liberal mainstream discussions today, five years ago, twenty years ago, and so on. Many previous ideas are forgotten and understanding of freedom wobbles as the earth's rotation axis. This makes me suggest that any liberal idea is a dead-end. In practice, I cannot support the current version of liberal thinking since it will change spontaneously when a new "thinker" of socialism, liberalism, libertarianism, ...ism appears. Since the new path to social happiness is unpredictable and the current one will fade away in the near future it is conservative to ignore all versions of liberalism as leading to a dead-end(s).  The most conservative approach to liberalism would be to consider it as an instrument of dominance rather than an ideology. This is a dangerous instrument easily sharpened by stones of real social injustice and ancient myths of heaven justice. 

Why liberals are getting more and more aggressive. Methodological notes

  I wrote several posts on "liberals" and their comparison with "conservatives". This theme is endless, of course. Here, I address the difference between liberal and conservative approaches from the methodological point of view. 

As a physicist, I have to be very conservative and follow the well-developed scientific methodology in research and publications. Basically, any scientific fact is an observation projected to the domain of all available knowledge (experimental and theoretical), which is verified and falsified by the broader scientific community. (It does not mean that there are no mistakes in the available knowledge and not all physical publications are confirmed later on.) This means, that one has to meet several requirements when studying nature: checking internal consistency of a theory or experiment, finding corroborating observations and facts; prediction, (conduction of new experiments), and testing currently unknown observations, testing the limits of applicability (falsifiability), discussion with colleagues to assess the shortcomings and new ideas. For a scientist, the cost of error in natural sciences is high and this forces them to be very conservative. The error is usually final, i.e. it will never be reestimated as a success, as well as the reputation. A conservative mind is similar to the process of scientific study in hard sciences - it changes by small steps well-supported by practice and theory (aka wisdom). The overall progress in hard sciences is very fast, however. This is the result of a famous saying - do everything fast, i.e. slow but without interruptions.     

My observation of liberal minds and their products, so often in humanitarian sciences and politics, results in a suggestion that they follow some procedures opposite to those adopted in the hard sciences. Literally, one just need to negate all requirement, which I listed above and obtain the working requirements for a liberal mind processing. In the USA, the evolution of liberal thinking reached its ultimate point: no justification is needed for any theory. Just opposite - any justifiable theory is rejected as wrong without broader discussions, which are strictly prohibited. The theoretical domain is represented by small islands of historical dreams. The generation of new ideas and thoughts is rather a stochastic process based on a random combination of liberal bricks. The rate at which new liberal ideas/thoughts are generated is so high that their half-life is counted now in weeks and days. This makes the overall evolution in humanities and the liberal paradigm to be a random walk, with progress and regress equally probable. Essentially, they do not move at all in the fastly growing technical world.

The absence of progress and permanent failure to match any of the requirements adopted in adult sciences and to prove any consistent statement make the adepts of liberal thinking highly disappointed. The currently observed strong growth in aggressiveness is the result of this epic failure. Liberals have only one method to convince people - violence. The USA is the first playground for liberal activists. Conservatives, beware of liberals!  

Двестиграм (немедленно)

Я открыл новый блог Двестиграм (dvestigramm.blogspot.com) с лозунгом "немедленно" и собираюсь  ссыпать в него ссылки на понравившееся мне видео из youtube.  Совмещение собственных постов и ссылок на чужие не кажется мне правильным, хотя и увеличивает количество просмотров. 

Richard Feynman on Pseudoscience

История России в 20 веке в одной кривой изменения численности населения: Германия проиграла две войны, но, вероятно, убила СССР, убив его граждан

Реальный экономический рост и социальный прогресс в решающей степени зависят от притока нового населения трудоспособного возраста, то есть людей в возрасте 15-19 лет. Это не только механическое замещение старого (от 60 до 64 лет) работающего населения, но и внедрение новых идей товаров / услуг и методов работы, усвоенных в процессе школьного / университетского образования. История России в 20 веке является ярким примером влияния таких процессов демографической депопуляции на экономическую и социальную эволюцию. 

На рисунке 1 представлены кривые, описывающие ежегодное изменение численности населения в возрасте от 15 до 19 лет по данным ОЭСР. Исходные данные охватывают период с 1960 по 2018 год (красная линия). Чтобы восстановить временные ряды в прошлом и экстраполировать их в будущее, можно использовать популяции разного возраста и сдвигать их по разнице в возрасте. Например, мы берем население в возрасте от 5 до 9 лет, сдвигаем его на 10 лет вперед (зеленая линия) и получаем оценку на следующие 10 лет. Близость красной и зеленой кривых до 2018 года как раз подтверждает правильность такого подхода - отклонения намного меньше амплитуды кривых. Для оценки в прошлом мы сдвигаем оценку населения между 70 и 74 годами и получаем относительно точную оценку вплоть до 1910-х годов. Разница амплитуд в прошлом больше из-за потери популяции с возрастом, но можно также подогнать амплитуду, введя некоторый компенсационный коэффициент. Здесь мы этого не делаем. 

История российского населения (кривая синхронизирована с 17-летним возрастом - центром возрастной группы от 15 до 19 лет) пугает - есть несколько глубоких провалов в росте населения, которые должны были иметь крайне негативное влияние на страну и общество. Первый провал (отрицательный прирост населения) наблюдается между 1931 и 1938 годами, с минимальным значением в 1935 году. Этот пик определенно связан с Первой мировой войной и гражданской войной. Глубочайший провал 1935 года должен быть результатом наиболее интенсивной фазы гражданской войны 1917-1920 годов, но начало спада связано с началом Первой мировой войны. Любой пик депопуляции создает волны депопуляции в будущем как результат отсутствия населения, дающего жизнь следующему поколению. Такие волны наблюдаются у населения стран с наибольшими потерями в Первой и Второй Мировых Войнах. Для России восстановление молодого населения, начавшееся в 1940 году, было прервано началом Второй мировой войной, и падение годового прироста числа 17-летних (средний возраст для населения в возрасте 15-19 лет) началось в 1945 году, а самое резкое снижение наблюдалось в 1949 году. Этот провал не связан со глубоким спадом 1935 года, а только с ВОВ. Таким образом, эти два глубоких популяционных провала, разделенных 15 годами, вызвали череду волн депопуляции с периодом около 25 лет, что, вероятно, является возрастом пика рождаемости для населения в России.

 

Следующий спад наблюдался примерно в 1960 г. (отрицательный пик в 1961 г.), а амплитуда падения определяется синхронизированным действием депопуляции в 1930-е годы и отсутствием нормальной рождаемости во время Второй мировой войны. Обе волны депопуляции сделали спад очень глубоким, но по длительности он был не самым страшным. Следующее падение началось в середине 1970-х и продлилось до 1980-х годов. Это падение длилось не менее 15 лет, потому что волны 1930-х и 1940-х годов сошлись с интервалом 10 между пиками. Это был период, когда СССР был разрушен из-за серьезных экономических проблем, вызванных отсутствием «свежей крови», столь необходимой для реального роста и технического прогресса. Германия проиграла Первую и Вторую мировые войны, но потери населения в этих войнах были смертельными для развития СССР. 

В XXI веке глубокое и длительное (17-летнее) падение населения произошло в России в период от 2004 до 2018 года. Это прямое следствие падения между 1977 и 1988 годами, т.е. возникла структура, объединяющая две волны депопуляции: в Первую мировую и ВОВ. К счастью, в период действия этих негативных волн цены на нефть были высокими, и экономическая и социальная структура не пострадала в такой степени, как в 1980-е годы. Следующая волна депопуляции в России наступит в 2035-2040 годах.

Интересно, что появление либеральных идей хорошо коррелирует с падением численности населения. Во время роста населения консервативные идеи, вероятно, более привлекательны. 

 

Рисунок 1. Годовой прирост числа людей в возрасте от 15 до 19 лет, полученный из таблицы численности населения ОЭСР за период с 1960 по 2018 год.

The history of Russia in the 20th century in one population curve: Germany lost two wars but likely finally killed the USSR

Real economic growth and social progress critically depend on the influx of new working-age population, i.e. people of 15-19 years of age. This is not only mechanical replacement of old (above 60 to 64 years of age) working population but also the introduction of new goods/services ideas and methods of work learned in the school/university education process. The history of Russia in the 20^th century is an extreme example of the influence of such population/depopulation processes on the economic and social evolution. 

Figure 1 presents several curves describing the annual change in the population between 15 and 19 years of age as reported by the OECD. The original data cover the period between 1960 and 2018 (red line). In order to recover the time series in the past and to project them into the future, one can use populations of different ages and shift them by the age difference. For example, we take the population between 5 and 9 years of age, shift it by 10 years ahead (green line), and obtain an estimate for the next 10 years. The closeness of the red and green curves before 2018 just supports the accuracy of such an approach – the deviations are much smaller than the amplitude of the curves. In the past, we shift the population between 70 and 74 years and obtain a relatively accurate estimate down to the 1910s. The difference of amplitudes in the past is larger because of the population loss with age but one can also fit the amplitude by an introduction by some compensation factor. We do not do that here. 

The history of the Russian population (the curve is synchronized with 17 years of age as the center of the 15 to 19 years of age range) is shocking – there are several deep depopulation troughs, which must have an extremely negative influence on the country and society.  The first trough (i.g. negative population growth) is observed between 1931 and 1938 with the bottom around 1935. This peak is definitely related to WWI and the civil war. The bottom in 1935 should be the result of the most intensive phase in the civil war in 1917-1920, but the start of the trough is related to the beginning of WWI. Any depopulation peak creates depopulation waves in the future as a reflection of the absence of the population giving birth to the next generation in the 20 to 30 years after the depopulation event. One can see such waves in the populations of the countries with the largest losses in WWI and WWII.  For Russia, the population recovery which started in 1940 was killed by WWII, and the fall in the annual increase in the number of 17-year-olds started in 1945 with a sharp bottom in 1949. This trough is not related to the trough in 1935 but only to WWII. Therefore, these two dramatic depopulation events separated by 15 years started two sequences of depopulation waves with a period of around 25 years – which is likely the peak of the birth rate for the population in Russia.   

The next trough was observed around 1960 (the fall peaks in 1961) and the amplitude of the fall is defined by the synchronized action of the depopulation trough in the 1930s and the absence of a normal birth rate during WWII. Both depopulation waves made the trough very deep, but it was not the worst trough in terms of length. The next fall started in the mid-1970s and extended into the 1980s. This fall was more than 10 years long because the waves from the 1930s and the 1940s came together with a 10 spacing between their peaks. This was the period when the USSR was deconstructed because of severe economic problems driven by the absence of “fresh blood” so needed for real growth and technical progress. Germany lost WWI and WWII but the population wounds from these wars were deadly for the USSR. 

In the 21^st century, the deep and long (17-year-old) population fall came to Russia in 2004 and extended into the second half of the 2010s. This is the direct aftermath (wave) of the fall between 1977 and 1988, i.e. the two-depopulation-wave structure originated in WWI and WWII. Fortunately, the oil price was high during these negative waves period and economic and social structure did not suffer to the same extent as in the 1980s. The next depopulation trough will come to Russia in 2035-2040. Russia is rising.

It is interesting that the emergence of liberal ideas is well associated with the depopulation troughs. During population growth, the conservative ideas are likely more attractive.

Figure 1. The annual increment in the number of 15 to 19 year-olds as obtained from the OECD population table for the period between 1960 and 2018

the US recovery is highly likely severely overestimated

On January 31, 2021, I published an accurate estimate of the actual GDP fall in the USA  - 21.7%.  This estimate was based on a simple quantitative analysis that most of the money in the government 2.5 trillion bill was poured into the economy and counted as if it came from economic activity. In reality, this money was just (electronically) printed (e.g. compensation to employees was dropped severely as a reaction to the fall in economic activity). The estimate of actual GDP growth is simple if one extracts the bill money and actual fall in economic activity – 3.5% of the nominal GDP. The original 22% is likely overestimates but the fall is definitely below 15%.

One of the features revealing the great fraud was an outstanding growth in the personal income (PI), which was 1.05 of the GDP in Q2. This means that the economy generated more income than products and services. Figure 1 presents the ratio of PI and GDP, which includes also the 2021Q1. This makes me write this post. The new helicopter money injection in 2021Q1 has the same effect on the PI as in 2020Q2. This money has the same path to the GRP through “government social benefits to persons” and we not subtracted from the GDP.

The PI/GDP curve in Figure 1 is again above 1.0 indicating that the trick played in 2020 is in use again. The new 6.5% growth in 2021Q1 is overestimated by the volume of printed money – seems to be 2 trillion and thus the real GDP fell by around 4% in 2021Q1 and the nominal GDP by 7%. The most important message is that the US economy in a deep economic crisis in the first quarter. The recovery does not go well and the helicopter money allows hiding the actual fall by double counting. The last two quarters of 2020 demonstrated some optimism in an economic recovery but the Biden administration failed to support the recovery.  

Figure 1. PI/GDP ratio. 

Figure 2. Ratios revealing the printed money transfer from the government to personal income.