Surviving in a World of Exponential Change — Part 2
I woke one day to fields of rice
Like steps cut into hills
I woke one day to factories
Survive and pay the bills
I woke one day to metropolis
Born from strength of wills
Class Ascension
The piece above illustrates the change one experienced across China from the 1960s onward. These changes happened rapidly, altering the fabric of existence for those living in the country. Adaptation to new ways of living was something that people born over the last six decades are used to in China. Opportunity in this economic, technological, and manufacturing revolution give the Chinese people the chance to make it to the middle class — which depending on the city you are in, slightly differs in income. (See China’s tiered cities)
Looking toward 2030, it is expected that a third of China’s population will enter the middle class. Compare this to the middle class being close to zero in 1995. This, on top of exponential technological growth, is creating a standard of rapid change in China. What about the US?
When you look at the middle class in America from the 1970s onward you see a much different story. Starting in 1970 the middle class was around 61% of the population, making its way down to 52% by 2016. The upper and lower classes grew at about the same rate, by 4 or 5%. This is by no means a bad thing, but what it illustrates is that for the most part, economically, there is not a true standard of rapid change as compared with China.
Things have been fairly stable in America. There have been ups and downs through the 70s, 90s, and the financial crisis in 2008, but compared to developing countries, we are living on a plateau. China, on the other hand, is climbing the mountain with a jet pack. Our reality hasn’t changed that much in the past sixty years, save for technological change. Economically, people are much in the same place as they were when their parents grew up. There are no “rice fields to factories” stories for Americans. It was more “from the suburbs to redeveloped suburbs”.
Population and Economic Growth
By the end of the next decade, it is likely that China will pass the US as the largest economy in the world. What is impressive is how fast they’ve gotten to this point and with how many people.
China’s population has been growing exponentially during economic growth and steep technological advancement from the 1950s onward. It’s has grown by almost one billion people on the last 70 years, which is a growth of 132%. In the same time period, the US population almost doubled, adding 170 million people to the population, which is an increase of 94%. When looking at the GDP growth rate of China over this time period and compare it to the US, we can see that the economic growth is significantly higher in China, by three of four times. That economic growth isn’t at the expense of the population either — as we saw in the analysis of the middle class. There are a web of factors that created these trends in China and the US, but the one I am interested in is societal inertia.
Societal Inertia
Societal inertia is the idea that as nations develop, and citizens get accustomed to a certain way of life, they become slower to adapt. The more time a certain way of life is maintained in a nation, the stronger the inertia grows. The problem with inertia is that velocity and mass are preventing a change of course. The larger the inertia, the slower the change.
Developed nations around the world have the highest levels of societal inertia, and of those, the US is one with the highest inertia. Developing nations are speeding up and have not yet hit the velocity that restricts a change of course. They still are faced with the problems of inertia, but just at lighter degrees. Third world nations that are trying to start their engines have the highest amount of variability and adaptation. As these nations grow, they will be more equipped to adapt to the exponential explosion.
This concept is more about the idea that stability limits change. They are polar opposites if you think about it from a literal sense. The definition of stability is “not changing or fluctuating”. The definition of change is “to make radically different”. Therefore, the more stable a nation becomes — the more societal inertia it has — the less able they are to adapt to increasing change.
What This Means
I am making these comparisons not to say that “China is growing faster than the US” or “their model of society is better”. I am saying that there is a tradeoff between stability and adaptability. This is important because as the exponential explosion begins to ignite, those that have institutionalized change will benefit more. If anything, the points I am making are to alarm the US and say that we should embrace a mindset of change and be ready for a period of moderate instability, instead of resisting it.
An example is our average view of artificial intelligence. The perception in the US can be described in the following statement, “I don’t want it to take my job.” In places like China and India, the statement would be more like “this is an opportunity, let’s embrace it.” Looking at cities like Shenzhen and others across China, one will begin to notice the embrace of change. The raw power that the Communist Party can invoke in short time frames creates this standard of change. That is not to say that a unitary state is better than a democratic one, but there is no denying that it can change much faster.
In a world where the next superpower will be China, how can we speed up our society, democracy, and citizen’s expectation of change so that we can compete when the exponential explosion begins. The tech sector in the US has the highest standard of change, but even that is beginning to fall behind China’s tech sector. We’ve sent our manufacturing and built China’s power in a lot of ways. If we aren’t prudent, we will begin to fall behind in technological innovation — it is already beginning to happen. The US is the retired athlete set into complacency and China is the young buck that has more energy and desire to achieve.
And as the third world starts to ramp up in a period of ever steepening change, will countries that are already developed plateau in some way? Will our societal inertia prevent us from adapting as rapidly as the developing and third world? I fear this is already happening. If we do not find ways to reform ourselves, our mindset, and start embracing change, we will fall behind the rest of the world.
