2019 Predictions and Trends
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It’s the beginning of a new year and this is normally the post when I revisit my long-term predictions. Though “normally” may be overstating things since I made the predictions two years ago and have only revisited them once. That’s not much of a trend. But my sense is that last year not much changed one way or the other, and so while I’ll spend some time reviewing things, I’m going to spend the rest of it looking at potential long term trends, longer in any case than my trend of doing a beginning of the year post about my predictions.
To begin with you can find the initial predictions here, and last years post where I reviewed them here. For those disinclined to go back and review them, I can sum things up for you very simply, I’m a pessimist.
My first set of predictions covered my pessimism about artificial intelligence, and despite the recent news about AlphaZero dominating Stockfish in chess, and more interestingly doing it using the same algorithm it uses to play Go and Shogi. I don’t think much changed on that front over the last year. Even if you wanted to argue that we have developed a general AI for playing games, which is already a stretch (how does it do with Poker? Or more importantly Starcraft II?) it still fails at the venerable “A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing” standard.
From there I have a pessimistic prediction about the difficulties of brain emulation, as championed, most notably, by Robin Hanson. Last year I promised that this would be the year that I read Age of Em and I kept that promise. (Can we call that a successful prediction?) You can find the post I wrote about it here. As I said at the time, it was an interesting book, but in the race between general AI and brain emulation, My bet was that we’re going to get rained out before the race finishes. Nothing that has happened this last year inclines me to change that bet.
My next predictions concern transhumanism, particularly the various ways in which life might be extended. Here the news looks even better for my pessimism, though I suppose worse for humanity in general. We are in the third year of declining US life expectancy. Our quest for immortality appears to be headed in the opposite direction. Also this year like last year I continue to be baffled that there are so few people who have signed up for cryonics. As near as I can tell the number is still less than 10,000 and maybe a lot less. If that’s any reflection at all of the strength of the transhumanist movement in general, then I don’t know that I would be looking to them for the salvation of humanity anytime soon. It sure looks like, despite at least a couple of decades of attention, that people are more interested in reading about transhumanism than actually being transhumanists.
As long as we’re on the subject of life expectancy, I recently came across an article about Jeanne Calment, the current record holder for that, which made the strong case that the person who we thought was Jeanne Calment was actually her daughter. Who had taken her place many decades before hand in order to avoid a fairly punishing inheritance tax which was in place at the time. It was very interesting, but my point in bringing it up here is that if it’s true it’s yet more bad news for those hoping for immortality. Not only is the average person getting farther away from it, but we might have to throw out one of our best data points for what’s possible.
My next section of predictions gets into my pessimism about space exploration and colonization. Here there was a smattering of interesting news:
As of this writing China has a craft orbiting the moon readying to land on the lunar farside (the first such “soft” landing ever) once that side turns toward sun in early January. After this it does appear that China has further ambitious lunar plans. Earlier this year they announced their intention of building a scientific research station on the moon though with no actual date attached. We’ll see how that plays out, and despite my pessimism I’d be as excited as anyone if this happened.
Closer to home Elon Musk and SpaceX’s dreams of Mars continue to chug along I suppose. And just the other day I saw an article arguing that the SpaceX Starlink satellites could end up providing all the money Musk and SpaceX needs for their Mars plans. That said, I don’t think anyone would argue that this was a great year for Musk, I haven’t seen any indication that Musk’s Tesla troubles have bled over to SpaceX, but they might.
In any event we still have a long way to go before I have to worry about being wrong on my prediction of no extraterrestrial colonies of greater than 35,000 people. My other prediction concerns the resolution of Fermi’s Paradox, and I think I’ve revisited that recently enough that there’s nothing more to add at this point.
The next section of predictions concerns war, and I’ll repeat what I said the last two years. As always, I hope that my pessimism is entirely misplaced. Though I don’t think any of the events of this year have done much to calm that pessimism. Relations between Russia and the US are widely described as being as bad as they’ve ever been (at least since the end of the Cold War). Iran is testing ballistic missiles. Despite Trump’s claims, North Korea’s nuclear program appears to still be going strong. And, of course, the Middle East is as chaotic as ever.
The next set of predictions were my miscellaneous predictions. Once again not much has changed, though given that one of my predictions is that the US national debt will cause a major global meltdown, it’s useful to look at how much it increased in 2018. At the end of 2017 debt stood at $20.49 trillion and as I write this the debt stands at $21.87 trillion, so it went up by $1.38 trillion. And while that’s a lot of money (and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.) A better measure is the debt to GDP ratio. Which stands around 104% and has been basically flat for the last couple of years. Once again 104% is not great but the question is where does it go from there?
Some people will point out that it was 119% in 1946 at the end of World War 2 and the world didn’t end (in fact it helped keep the world from ending). Also within 10 years it had halved. If the current debt and deficit was all attributable to a single cause that had some chance of ending, then that comparison might make sense. But I don’t see anything like that. All I see on the horizon are the Trump tax cuts, an aging population and the possibility of a recession starting any day now.
My final prediction is that five or more of the current OECD countries will cease to exist in their current form. And here the news mostly matches my pessimism, particularly the news out of Europe. The Brexit morass continues to ooze along. Angela Merkel, after serving as prime minister for 18 years has agreed that she will not seek another term in 2021. And then there’s France, always on the bleeding edge when it comes to social discontent, with their yellow vests movement which started back in November and appears set to continue well into 2019. Layer that on top of a 26% approval rate for Marcon and it doesn’t look like his government can hang on to power for very long.
Of course none of the things I just mentioned would count as a fulfillment of my prediction, but it does provide a nice segue into the area I do want to spend the bulk of the post on. Current trends. What’s going on in Europe? What are the trends at work here?
Of course the European trend most people have heard about is the trend of nationalism. And that’s definitely at play with Brexit and to a lesser extent Merkel, but when it comes to the yellow vests that’s a bit less clear, and maybe more interesting, so we’ll return to them in a bit.
At this point every country has a nationalist party and one easy, if somewhat crude way of tracking this particular trend is to look at their level of support over the past few years. I think it’s safe to say that it’s been on the rise, though it has definitely played out differently in different nations, but I suppose that’s exactly what you’d expect from nationalist movements. That nations act differently
Somewhat paradoxically, the nation which is experiencing the largest tangible consequence of nationalism, the UK, also has the weakest of all the nationalist parties: UKIP. In fact they seem to have cratered precisely at the point where they had achieved their greatest victory. That’s a phenomenon that may be worth keeping an eye on, particularly given that it appears to be happening to Trumpism as well. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call it a trend yet, nor do I think anyone is likely to adopt it as a strategy, i.e. letting the nationalists win on the assumption that their support craters afterwards. I don’t imagine any anti-trumpers think the brightest possible future is on the timeline where Trump actually got elected.
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Moving on, if we’re looking back at 2018, Italy actually had an election. Italian politics is always messy, and I’m no expert, but everyone seems to be able to agree on one thing. The nationalists did really well. Out of 630 seats in the Chamber of Deputies the anti-immigration and Eurosceptic Five Star Movement picked up a net 119 seats for a total of 227 and the right-wing nationalists (Motto: Italians First) picked up 109 seats for a total of 125. While the center left party which had been in power up until the election, lost 180 seats dropping them to 112, and in fact the left-wing coalition as a whole lost 223 seats. If we combine the two nationalist parties and assume they represent Republicans and assume the left-wing coalition is the Democrats it would as if the Republicans had picked up 179 seats in the last house election.
Turning to Germany, as I already mentioned Merkel has agreed not to run for reelection. (Though she has given herself until 2021, and a lot could happen in the next couple of years.) And the reason she’s not running has a lot to do with the nationalists. To begin with, one of the key components of nationalism is being anti-immigration. And most people feel that the beginning of the end for Merkel was when she invited in a million refugees back in 2015. Beyond that her own party has been losing ground to the nationalist Alternative for Germany party, which now polls second in terms of popularity.
Thus far I’ve mostly been using the term nationalist, though there is a strong overlap between nationalism and populism. Which is what finally takes us back to France and the yellow vests movement. Which is definitely populist without being especially nationalist. It would be convenient if it slotted neatly into the same basic space as the Italian election and Merkel’s promised departure, but instead it forces us to consider whether the big trend isn’t anti-immigrant nationalism, but populism more broadly. Whereas everything we’ve spoken about thus far has at least leaned right-wing, as far as I can tell if you were forced to label the yellow vest movement as either left or right, you’d almost certainly label it a leftist movement. But that definitely doesn’t capture the entirety or even most of what’s going on. In fact I think the movement is a great example of the increasing complexity of political ideology, as even the smallest niche is able to use social media and the internet to gather hundreds if not thousands of people together.
This is not to say that the yellow vests are a niche movement, but I think it is comprised of a lot of niches each of which shares a dissatisfaction with the status quo. What this further means is that you can find nearly any form of politics within the movement. There’s people pushing for the very leftists ideas of wealth taxes and increase to the minimum wage. But, on the other hand, the movement actually started as a rejection of increased gas taxes which included a carbon tax designed to fight global warming. And above everything else, there appears to be a definite rejection of the Marcon government, who’s basically just to the left of center, but also definitely a globalist.
Beyond all this is how suddenly the yellow vest movement emerged, at least as far as I can tell. Everyone knew that Marcon was extremely unpopular, but did anyone predict that huge demonstrations were just around the corner? Let alone the worst demonstrations since 1968? It seemed to go from nothing to 300,000 people. I certainly haven’t been able to find anything talking about it before the first protest on November 17th and articles written in the days immediately following speak of it coming “out of the blue”.
Having covered all of this it’s easy to see that Europe is kind of a mess. (Though the current mess still pales in comparison to previous European messes.) But what direction is this mess headed in? What trends can we extract from all of this?
The biggest trend would appear to be the decline of Western globalism, and in fact it may be dead already. Certainly if it can’t be kept alive in America and Europe, it’s not going to be sustained outside of there by countries like Russia and China.
There’s also bad news for people who feel that global warming is the big issue for our times. If you can’t enact a carbon tax in a place like France where can you enact it? This would represent more a continuation of the current trend of inaction. But for those who continually hope for a trend of action it’s obviously disappointing.
There’s also various social media trends in there. Italy’s Five Star Movement wouldn’t have been possible in a pre-internet era. (It’s led by a blogger.) And then there’s the yellow vest movement which sprang up out of nowhere after being entirely organized on Facebook.
Outside of Italy and Eastern Europe the populists haven’t really taken power. Are trends moving in such a way that eventually every European country will be run by nationalists/populists? This seems less likely, but also I’d be surprised if it didn’t happen in at least one or two other countries. Particularly when you toss in left-wing populism. Which would include the UK Labor Party led by Jeremy Corbyn.
After going through all of this one question jumps out at me: is the US ahead of Europe or behind them? Perhaps given the specifically national nature of the various disruptions, the question is meaningless. Perhaps, having already elected our populist, we’re ahead of Europe. On the other hand, I would say we’ve yet to have our own yellow vest moment, so perhaps we’re actually behind them.
As I’ve mentioned I have an aversion to making short-term predictions. But I’m going to go ahead and make one now. There will be a US recession before the next election. Given that the yellow vest movement seems primarily economic in nature, and happened despite the economy of France doing okay (thought not spectacular) what happens both here and there if the economy tanks? Perhaps more importantly, what happens if it all comes together in the run up to an election?
I see this trend of populism combined with a generous helping of nationalism as being one of the dominant trends in the West for the foreseeable future. I would add in the additional and related trend of the conflict between nationalism and globalism, but as I said, the latter may already be dead. It seems more likely that going forward the principal area of political conflict will be between different flavors of populism, perhaps national populism and economic populism. Though there can be a fair bit of the latter in the former. But this is in the West. What’s going to be happening elsewhere?
Outside of the West the two countries that get the most attention are Russia and China and in both we see the continued entrenchment of authoritarian regimes that bear little resemblance to the ideals of western liberal democracy. Which is unsurprising given both the nature of the two countries and the perceived decrease in stability offered by the liberal democratic framework. Of more worry is how the competition between authoritarianism and democracy plays out in the rest of the world.
But returning to Russia and China. Russia had an election this year. As expected Putin easily won reelection with nearly 77% of the vote. This takes him through to 2024 when in theory he’s term-limited by the Russian Constitution. Before you start laughing at the idea of Putin voluntarily stepping down, he has in fact said that’s what he plans to do. China went the opposite way this year when, in March, the Chinese Constitution was amended to abolish presidential term limits, meaning that Xi Jinping could theoretically rule China until his death (he’s 65, a year younger than Putin). Perhaps the same thing will happen in Russia, Putin still has plenty of time to change his mind. Of course, the longer a country goes with the same leader the more disruptive it is when that leader finally steps down, or dies. But overall I think we’re seeing another trend towards leaders being less likely to relinquish power. Though perhaps it’s more accurate to say that this is a return to a very old trend.
I would include in this trend Recep Erdoğan of Turkey (he’s 64). Who also won an election this year. Though of possibly more significance were the constitutional reforms he pushed through in 2017. Reforms which made this year’s election far more significant because they made the office Erdoğan was elected to in 2018 far more powerful. Beyond that this also ties into another trend I think I’ve noticed, a trend towards increasing state-level conflict in the Middle East. We have the war in Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia, and then, or course, there’s the ongoing Syrian Civil War which Trump just announced we were withdrawing from, on top of that there’s the continual wildcard that is Iran. And adding spice to all of this is the recent scandal over the murder of Khashoggi.
From where I stand this all seems to be part of the decline of US military hegemony, a trend that has been going on for awhile and is likely to continue. While Syria marks the first time since Vietnam where we’ve completely withdrawn from a conflict (also recall that we still have troops in Korea, Japan and Germany) the US has been signaling a reluctance to go “all in” for quite a while. This creates potential opportunities for the regional powers which include the Saudi’s, Turks and Iranians, who are all now jockeying for position, and that jockeying might include war. Russia and Israel should also be included in the list, though Russia isn’t exactly regional (though it’s not that far away) and Israel is probably more interested in surviving than in assuming regional leadership.
You might think that based on this I’m opposed to Trump withdrawing from Syria. But the situation is complicated. I understand that all of what I just said argues for a more robust US military engagement, and that additionally and perhaps unforgivably, we appear to be once again abandoning the Kurds, but if the alternative is a low level war that never ends, like in Afghanistan, than Trump’s call may be the right one. To put it another way if we were really serious about removing Assad we could do it, but we obviously aren’t and if that’s the case why are we sticking around? What is our ultimate objective? If it’s just to stick around wasting money and lives until the locals outlast us, then it’s better to leave now, but that also doesn’t mean that doing so makes everything better.
As a whole this post didn’t end up being as tightly constructed as I would like, so to help with that here’s the summary of things:
All of my long-standing predictions continue to hold up, with some getting a little more likely and some a little less, but none in serious danger. (Oh, also China did land their rover.)
Populism will be the dominant force in the West for the foreseeable future. Globalism is on the decline if not effectively dead already.
Carbon taxes are going to be difficult to implement, and will not see widespread adoption.
Social media will continue to change politics rapidly and in unforeseen ways.
There will be a US recession before the next election. It will make things worse.
Authoritarianism is on the rise elsewhere, particularly in Russia and China.
The jockeying for regional power in the Middle East will intensify.
I didn’t get a chance to talk about India, but here at the end let me just toss in Tyler Cowen’s argument in Bloomberg that not only is “Hindu nationalism on the rise, [but] India seems to be evolving intellectually in a multiplicity of directions, few of them familiar to most Americans.” A point which ties in well to Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. Cowen also talks in the same article about an increase low-level authoritarianism in China.
Finally, did you see that story out of Arizona recently about people attacking self-driving cars? I had kind of hoped it represented some kind of neo-luddite riot, but apparently the cars are just incredibly annoying to have around. I guess they have a long way to go before they’re ready for primetime. Which is to say, despite, or perhaps because of everything I already said above, remember that the future is always farther away than you think.
One future that I hope is not so far away is the future where you donate to this blog. (Is it just me or did that come out sounding like a bad pickup line?)