What Will Happen in the 2020s - <AUTHOR> https://avc.com/2020/01/what-will-happen-in-the-2020s/ <comment><USER2> [https://web.archive.org/web/20200101163454/https://avc.com/2...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200101163454/https://avc.com/2020/01/what- will-happen-in-the-2020s/)

<comment><USER3> _Time is running out: please help the Internet Archive today. The average donation is $45. If everyone chips in $5, we can keep our website independent, strong and ad-free. That 's right, all we need is the price of a paperback book to sustain a non-profit library the whole world depends on. We have only 150 staff but run one of the world's top websites. We're dedicated to reader privacy so we never track you. We never accept ads. But we still need to pay for servers and staff. If the Wayback Machine disappeared tomorrow, where would you go to find the websites of the past? We stand with Wikipedians, librarians and creators to make sure there is enduring access to the world's most trustworthy knowledge. I know we could charge money, but then we couldn't achieve our mission: building a special place where you can access the world's best information forever. The Internet Archive is a bargain, but we need your help. If you find our site useful, we ask you humbly, please chip in. Help us reach our goal today! Thank you._

Please consider this. They are a real bargain and provide a real service to humanity. Instead of upvoting this comment, please give them $5 instead if you can.

<comment><USER4> Why do they need 150 people to run a non interactive site?

I'm not against anything about them but if they want donations, their way of expense should be clearer.

<comment><USER5> "Non-interactive site" wtf, do you even know the trickery you have to do in JavaScript files to remotely work outside their intended domains? Or how hard was to create a working playable copy of hundreds of old games? Or how much people you need to handle an ever-growing data storage (e.g everyday bigger than the day before) while making it available over internet?

<comment><USER4> While the code needs maintenance to adapt to edge cases, it's build once and maintain feature. It's not user registering site that needs support for customers and no need to introduce new features to keep going.

Data storage is also single purpose job. While it needs technical capability to store huge amount of data, I still don't see how 150 people are needed to maintain the archive.

You say as if 150 is a small team but how are they used?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't really buy into 4-6.

I don't see any benefit for a country to turn its currency into a crypto asset. Either they are relinquishing a great deal of control in democratizing their financial system (also exposing themselves to attack), or it's a crypto in name only that doesn't seem any better than digital cash through banks except for a buzzword.

Decentralization is hit or miss. You get economies of scale with centralization that are hard to beat. I only see decentralization being useful for certain applications (namely, anything that needs to be censorship resistant/ can't rely on the centralized infra for some reason) like it already is being used for.

Meat won't be a delicacy unless we are not counting lab grown meat. Absolutely no way. I would be willing to take a huge bet on this. People all over the world love meat, it's one of the first things people start spending on when they hit middle income (globally speaking). Plant based alternatives will become a lot more popular especially once they become cheaper, and we will probably start eating mostly lab grown meat, but meat _will_ be consumed, at least by stubborn, older red-blooded Americans wary of technology and set in their ways that the author likely has little exposure to.

<comment><USER7> Yes, the only way #6 will come true is if the replacement for meat looks, smells and tastes exactly like the real thing and it'll have to be cheaper too.

People all over the world love meat, especially US, UK and the Chinese. I've tried to convince some family members to reduce their meat consumption even a tiniest amount gets a huge amount of resistance. People aren't going to give up their meat: they may not even be willing to try alternatives.

Impossible meat has a great start and I think their market share will continue to increase. But, there's an immense amount of variety in the meat market and the alternative meat industry still has a huge amount of work to do to address it.

<comment><USER8> Faced with a choice between beef or fake beef that tastes exactly the same, most people will just go for the real beef. They don't want the highly processed fake stuff that contains who knows what.

The only way beef loses is if the alternatives are significantly cheaper. If a McBeef is $5 more than a McFakeBeef then you got a shot at converting people.

<comment><USER9> You are being downvoted, but I think that you are totally right. For an awful lot of people, eating meat is a matter of status; it's similar to why many people prefer having big cars even if they are less environmentally friendly.

There is also the fact that plant based diets are still associated to certain ideologies and because of that they will keep being scoffed at by people from opposing ideologies. Sure, you don't have to lean left to be vegan, but the vast majority of vegan people, or people seriously trying to reduce their meat consumption, do lean left (continuing with the car analogy: remember the rolling coal fad).

Dietary choices go way beyond their nutritional value. People feel attached to what they eat, and they will resist change. So, yes, a strong economic incentive is needed, and even worse, it might not be enough.

<comment><USER10> As someone who isn't considering giving up my ways, red blooded meat eating American that I am, I actually appreciate vegans to some degree.

As long as there are an appreciable number of them, I will enjoy a greater variety of dishes and ingredients available to me, and oftentimes fresher ingredients too.

Insofar as they are making choices that benefit them, they also make choices that benefit me.

Where they lose me, and this isn't all vegans, but the ones that lose me are the ones that try to convince me that I am a bad person for the dietary choices I make. Maybe I am, but I don't think so. The ones that make me want to go out and eat two steaks just to stick it to them are the ones that want to take away my choices or introduce sin taxes onto meat. I'm cool with carbon/GHG taxes that make no exceptions, if the cost of my choices goes up because of a tax that applies to all levels of society in fair measure, I can live with that. I would argue such a fair tax is entirely theoretical, but in theory, it could work out. The ones that want to punish me specifically are the ones I can't abide.

When someone introduces me to an entirely vegetarian dish or vegan dish that I like, I'll probably add it to my menu and start making it myself, and I usually don't modify it to add any additional protein. Good food is good food and I actually _like_ tofu and some of those veggie patties on the market. I like them for that they are, not for what they pretend to be. It come down to making a different choice as to what to eat for dinner, rather than making a compromise.

Today, January 1st 2020, I'm not even thinking about lab grown meat. Maybe I'll prefer it on January 1st, 2030, or maybe I'll be paying a premium for my steak, or maybe the price of my premium cut steak will actually fall after checking against inflation and I'll be eating even more steak. Maybe I'll even lose my taste for meat, I mean I lost my taste for shrimp once upon a time, and I gained a taste for eggs in my early twenties. Vegans that practice veganism for dogmatic, ideological and religious reasons certainly aren't going to win me over in ten or a hundred years by preaching to me though.

I make choices. Vegans make choices. Everyone makes choices. I think that's a pretty good state of affairs.

<comment><USER11> As there seem to be very few comments actually defending the ethical vegan standpoint here I go.

Vegans who ask for "sin taxes" don't want to piss you off, they simply have the belief (and actually quite well justifiable so) that meat consumption leads to quite a lot of suffering in the world. You don't seem to be opposed to taxes on ghg emissions - presumably because you believe that they cause suffering. Why is it not reasonable to also punish/tax other behavior that causes suffering? Do you really believe that animal suffering doesn't count?

I would really encourage you to reflect your position on this and maybe revise towards being more forgiving towards people who simply care about the suffering of animals.

<comment><USER10> Your assumption is wrong. The tax I would support is entirely theoretical and would raise the prices of all industrial products on the market from all forms of food to all forms of textiles and all forms of computers and machinery. I suspect that if it were ever implemented properly to begin with, it would become a target to steer into a kind of sin tax or luxury tax by doubling the rate on this or that product or zero rating it for others, so I can't say I necessarily even would support it. Show me a policy proposal and I'll say "maybe".

Suffering doesn't enter into it, but I don't like subsidies. If the problem with climate change is that my lifestyle is being subsidized because the "true cost" isn't in the purchase price, I'll pay it, but so should everyone. I'll be paying more for meat, but I'll also be paying more for spinach, and coffee, and spices, and salt, and clothes, and every single industrial good that I buy. And so would everyone, because the net result would be to see the purchasing power of everyone decrease. I can live with that if you can, even factoring in my dietary preferences, I'm willing to bet money I have a lower net contribution to climate change than most in my country.

<comment><USER12> Sure, parent comment made a faulty assumption about your policy preferences and the reasons you have for them. In responding to this grievance, you've entirely missed their point: the consumption of meat is above all else a moral issue—yes, a sin—and making other lifestyle choices of below-average ecological impact do not make up for it.

I could elaborate, but I don't expect to change your mind; you've already stated outright that you're determined not to. In any case, I'm not here to cast blame on you personally for eating meat. I still do it, too.

It's a shame about your stubbornness, though. You seem to be smart enough to engage in careful, reasoned analysis about a complex issue. In fact, I'd wager that you'd scoff at an anti-vaxxer or a Holocaust denier who shared the strength of your convictions. Of course, scientific and historical truth are a little more objective than basic moral principles—but when it comes to the way animals are manufactured in America today, not by much.

<comment><USER10> I didn't engage his point because I've taken it as a given that we'll have to agree to disagree. There's too much conviction on both sides to take that one in any meaningful direction. To some, to you and to the one I replied to, it is a moral issue. I'm not going to convince anyone that it isn't a moral issue anymore than they will convince me that it is.

There isn't a lot that is objective, even scientific and historical truths are often less scientific, less historic and less truthful than we think they are. I take a live and let live approach to the voluntary choices of others precisely because I'm not morally superior, nor do I endeavor to be. In return, I don't accept that the choices they have made _are_ morally superior to my own. They're just living their lives according to their beliefs and I don't want to take that away from them, nor do I want them to take away my choices nor to be punished for them. Life is too short, fleeting and full of suffering and choices to start making choices for other people. I do not, and I would wager you do not, have the status, position or occupational license to cast judgements upon others that aren't our children, charges, employees or elected representatives. Even these limited forms of subordination have their limits.

<comment><USER11> The point that I was trying to make is to try to show you that I am pretty sure that you actually do care about moral questions in the case of climate change (on the surface you seem to argue it's a matter of justice and paying for the true cost of your actions but the very reason that carbon is being priced in the first place (and you accept that price) is that it causes suffering in the world, right? You wouldn't accept an arbitrary oxygen tax, would you?) but somehow don't extend that concern to the suffering of animals. However, similar to how scientists have shown that ghg emissions cause human suffering, scientists have shown that factory farming causes animal suffering.

Of course you can have reasons for denying the importance of animal suffering but most of those accounts are easily shown to be inconsistent and simply self-serving. People who accept animal suffering as real and probably a bad thing tend to have a much easier time to articulate a consistent world view. If you don't agree with that claim show me how I am wrong and coherently articulate why the suffering of animals doesn't matter... it's really surprisingly difficult to not reach for arbitrary distinctions like "they are not human" but have substantial arguments grounded in empirical evidence that justify your opinion.

In the end my goal was not to convince you of becoming vegan (that's generally a quite difficult task due to current societal indoctrination) but to simply make you reconsider how you view vegans who actually care about animal suffering. It's a totally reasonable position and it's generally much more coherent and aligned with evidence then other positions. Even if you don't care, you don't need to judge other people who do.

<comment><USER10> I won't judge them for caring, I won't even judge them, but I do find being preached at to be generally unenjoyable and I don't enjoy the company of people who wish to preach to me rather than engage me. You've engaged me, but that's not what I have come to expect from vegans who are of an evangelical type, and I say that without it meaning to be disparaging, merely descriptive.

For what it is worth to you, I purchase the best meat I can find and afford at the local market. The more room to roam, the better. Absolutely no hormones, pointless antibiotics, or other growth techniques that degrade the meat. I'm under no illusions that what I purchase is cruelty free though, it's livestock which was raised for slaughter, from a species that was cultivated to be raised as livestock, slaughtered and turned into various meat and leather products.

I buy better meat because it tastes better, I don't do it to spare the animal. I advocate for better farming practices where possible because I want better and more pervasive products to be available and at a lower cost and to more people.

I do in fact care more for the lives of people than I do for most animals. I don't care for needless deaths, nor do I like unnecessary cruelty, but when I eat an animal, it wasn't needless or pointless. It lived until it died, and was recycled into my body. I too will live until I die and am recycled into other living creatures.

Laying it out, I sound more callous than I intend, but I don't know that there's a less brutal way to put any of that and keep it honest, but more than sounding callous, I don't want to be or sound like a hypocrite, even unwittingly.

Thank you for engaging me, actually laying out my views allows me to solidify in my own mind what it is I'm thinking, and figure out how to communicate it better the next time.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for your reply. It's good to see that you reflect your own thinking and attempt to articulate a coherent position. If you enjoy this type of engagement, I can also recommend you the following short youtube video (~3 min) with a philosophical thought experiment that turns the table on you and asks whether you would still hold your position in that case: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSUz6Rj5oo4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSUz6Rj5oo4).

Would be interested to hear your reply to that :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, I have a problem with a large number of these points. Each point alone requires a long rebuttal that no one would read. I think Fred is way off here. The bullet points:

1\. There will be no global change in human behaviour and activity that is against the short term interests of those people. Period. The way to replace fossil fuels with renewables is by them being a cheaper source of power. We're well on the way here for solar.

2\. Until someone can devise a safe way to processor nuclear fuel, transport the fuel and waste and process and store the nuclear waste nuclear power is just not making any kind of resurgence. It just isn't. Believing otherwise is a pipe dream that ignores the significant externalities of nuclear power (as in the waste products from the reactor and refinement processes).

3\. Why Fred thinks China won't have the same short term self-interest that every other country does seems fanciful at best.

4\. Crypto currency doesn't solve any problems that most people care about. Bitcoin surged in value for two reasons:

\- So wealthy Chinese people could escape their country's capital controls and move their wealth out of China. Mine Bitcoin in China, sell overseas for USD, profit.

\- For illegal activity.

Traditional currencies have reversible transactions (which most people actually want) and aren't subject to 51% attacks. Nor do they require technical proficiency to safely use.

5\. Decentralized Internet is a pipe dream.

6\. Plant-based diets by the end of the decade? Not a chance.

I look forward to having a chuckle at this list in 2030.

<comment><USER14> > Each point alone requires a long rebuttal that no one would read

I'd like to sell you a solution for that. Brief bullet points like the one you made are readable, but when people disagree you need hypertext links to your supporting arguments. I made a web app for creating such trees of arguments. Here's an example in which you'll see I think the dangers of nuclear waste are debatable: [https://en.howtruthful.com/o/nuclear_power_is_a_crucial_comp...](https://en.howtruthful.com/o/nuclear_power_is_a_crucial_component_in_the_move_towards_creating_sustainable_carbon- free_energy_for_the_united_states/68e13aad02e98d53843bc788f00ff193)

<comment><USER15> Cool idea, but I don't completely understand the interface. It's not clear what the 1-5 buttons up top are: does clicking on it record my rating of the claim?

What are the numbers next to each of the links in Pros and Cons? They look like they correspond to the ratings above, but I didn't understand how those were derived.

<comment><USER14> You're on a link that's my opinion, so the numbers next to each link are my ratings. Clicking the buttons on top saves your rating to local storage, and makes a 'You' link to your opinion, where you can put pro/con arguments with your own ratings.

Putting your ratings on the site requires a paid account. I'm making this in my spare time and would have a hard time controlling spam if such accounts are free. I still think the free version is useful for exploring your own opinions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> All cars will be required to have dashcams. Either by insurance companies or by governments.

All cars will be required to have GPS, and be tracked in real time. This is already the case with the majority of commercial vehicles.

Incremental steps in autonomous cars, first starting with 'drone' cars. Cars and trucks that are operated from a remote location. This will be piggy backed on existing technology. Cheap cameras, cheap cell networks etc. Think of delivery car, one person drives a truck from a remote location and one person is inside sorting packages, carrying them to the door. People with kids can work from home as Uber drivers and delivery drivers.

<comment><USER17> The GPS thing is unlikely, what would be the rationale of that? This would be a very unpopular policy.

<comment><USER18> The rationale is taxation. As more cars go electric they have to replace the gasoline tax.

<comment><USER19> I would think it should be the other way around where gas cars would need to pay carbon tax. Or we can just call it even. Or in a hopeful scenario, stop oil and gas subsidies.

<comment><USER20> Depending on location, we already pay carbon taxes. In gasoline, tax on the new car, green sticker for being able to drive into low emission zones. Electric cars have none of that, yet they contribute heavily. For example by using electricity produced from coal. It's just that the owner does not see the emissions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I predict the 2020's will turn out to be the most difficult-to-predict decade yet. The predictions of the OP in my mind fail to account for several yet-to- mature disruptive technologies that will potentially transform our society to the degree the Internet and web have. The only prediction I'll make is in the domain where I work:

By the end of the decade, most people will be wearing some kind of immersive computing device (glasses, contacts, perhaps neurological etc) all day which allow software to proxy most aspects of their visual and audio perception, perhaps more.

Among the many results of this change, the most profound will be the loss of physical co-presence as a factor for interacting with other people. People will routinely 'beam in' each other (similar to FaceTime conceptually, but with no visual or auditory perceptual deficiency vs being together in person) in varying contexts for varying purposes.

The technical miracle aside, this will cause a fundamental shift in the way we think about what it means to "be" with other people -- the dependence upon physical co-locality will be no longer something we place highly in our mental model for spending time with others, other than children.

This will affect nearly every industry in terms of economics, some sectors potentially catastrophically like long distance transportation, but the biggest effect will be degree to which we will become able to empathize with others around the world and create novel, deeply impactful forms of interacting with others in a physical and emotional sense.

I suspect, perhaps hope, that the dominating result will be that, in combination with new forms of media based upon these new technological marvels, we will be able to greatly reduce or eliminate the tribalist tendencies we have for one another when those 'others' are out-of-reach for us to talk with, hug, dance with, and learn from.

In 2030, you'll be able to hug anyone on Earth instantly, and that's something to be optimistic about.

<comment><USER22> The internet is already a huge step up in communication from 20 years ago. Turns out people use that to find ideologically likeminded people meaning tribalist movements everywhere are stronger now than before internet came along. 90's were full of optimism about how tribalism could be overcome that is completely vanished now.

From the same technological situation you describe I can only think of how people would use that only to further isolate themselves. At least today, physical location sometimes dictate you have to interact with people outside of your own social class and background. What you describe could reduce that, making every one retreat even further into their echo chamber.

People already live in close proximity to millions in cities. They generally don't hug each other; more fixated on rushing past each other, avoiding eye contact.

Humans just aren't made for having 7 billion friends...

<comment><USER16> The Internet had temperately killed technical clubs like HAM radio, wood working shops etc., as people got into coding and could collaborate remotely. Around 2008 lots of Makerspaces started to open, but not nearly enough, the maker movement has stalled though.

We need to rethink the ways schools operate, from 8am-3pm they can be for kids. After 4pm they can be adult learning hubs, maker spaces, DIY bicycle repair shops etc.

<comment><USER23> I think libraries are a better fit than public schools, and some already have maker spaces, seed banks or gardens, and opportunities for continuing education. With funding provided by a dedicated library district (which is increasingly common) in addition to private foundation support, these institutions can have a significant positive impact in the communities they serve.

<comment><USER24> School are normally significantly larger and mostly unused outside of their normal operating hours. Realistically it shouldn't be an either or thing but rather both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > We will see nuclear power make a resurgence around the world, particularly > smaller reactors that are easier to build and safer to operate.

Funny, I was digging into this issue just this morning. One family member supports Andrew Yang, but another won't support anyone who advocates for nuclear power.

Despite Thorium not being fully proven yet, I lean toward agreement with Yang: [https://en.howtruthful.com/o/nuclear_power_is_a_crucial_comp...](https://en.howtruthful.com/o/nuclear_power_is_a_crucial_component_in_the_move_towards_creating_sustainable_carbon- free_energy_for_the_united_states/68e13aad02e98d53843bc788f00ff193)

<comment><USER25> I support nuclear power, however I doubt we will ever see many more reactors built in most countries. The growth of photovoltaic solar power combined with coming cheaper grid scale battery storage is going to wreck the economics for nuclear (including fusion if it ever works).

<comment><USER26> The big assumption being economical grid storage. We don't have a technology yet to do that.

<comment><USER27> Yes we do and it's already being deployed. See [1] for example.

[1] [https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/07/29/california-gas- plant-...](https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/07/29/california-gas-plant-to-be- re-powered-with-batteries-solar/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Many of these seem like wishful thinking on the part of the author. For example, take the first one:

> The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars > were to the previous one.

Oddly enough, if you go back to 2010 for predictions about the next decade, you'll see quite a few people talking about "peak oil." Almost nobody predicted a sharp turnaround in oil production and I don't think anyone in 2009 was predicting that the US would become a net oil exporter by the start of 2020.

I'll make a counter-prediction on the topic of climate crisis for the 2020s:

The climate crisis movement will become widely discredited for its attempts to manipulate scientific data and the scientific process for political ends. Grave prophecies of doom will not come to pass, causing loss of momentum and credibility. Climate research will continue, and as a result, new thermal regulatory mechanisms will emerge that lead to a more nuanced view of future climate change.

<comment><USER29> > Grave prophecies of doom will not come to pass, causing loss of momentum and > credibility.

Why would you think this? Grave prophecies of doom have failed to come to pass for nearly half a century now and the climate change tale is _gaining_ momentum.

<comment><USER30> Failed to come to pass? Are you aware there's an entire _continent_ literally on fire right now?

<comment><USER31> Australia is always on fire. More of has burnt many times, many decades ago.

I'm not saying that climate change isn't responsible. I do believe that it has increased the severity of the situation, and that is a big problem. But this is not a doomsday scenario. It's a once every 20 years going back as long as we can measure scenario.

I think your reaction is a perfect example of what the parent comment is talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > people overestimate what will happen in a year and underestimate what will > happen in a decade.

Last decade seemed like the opposite. So much happened every year, but nothing changed over the decade. The biggest change seems to be the expansion of aggrieved classes to include almost everybody. This only applies to "the West" of course. Changes elsewhere are perhaps striking.

<comment><USER33> There are enormous changes ocurring. Rapid development of less developed countries, complete commoditization of computing power, secularization of america (catching up to Europe), revizitalizion of the space industry (SpaceX and other "new space" companies, smallsats, internet constellations, etc), amazing resurgence of psychedelic research, prosthetics and other biotech advancing rapidly, continued progress in many fundamental technologies (batteries, materials science, robotics, BMIs, etc), AI technologies, information representation and communication (changes in media, continued digitalization of business, etc).

The list goes on and on.

<comment><USER21> I agree - the list of technologies (not just bits and atoms, but human institutions) winding their way along the innovation cycle leaves many, many reasons to feel confident the next decade is going to be one of profound, transformative, positive change.

One potential dark horse is genetic engineering. I wonder how close we are to the point where kids are doing gene hacking after school. It could happen this decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I would take a pessimistic view on #8:

> Mass surveillance by governments and corporations will become normal and > expected this decade and people will increasingly turn to new products and > services to protect themselves from surveillance. The biggest consumer > technology successes of this decade will be in the area of privacy.

I'd take this a step further and fear that not only will it become the norm, even making use of privacy tech and devices will be viewed with suspicion or may even serve as barriers towards getting access to various societal instruments.

<comment><USER35> > making use of privacy tech and devices will ... serve as barriers towards > getting access to various societal instruments

This already happens.

For example, in the US good credit is often necessary to rent an apartment, open a bank account, get insurance, or even land a job. In order to maintain "good credit", one needs to make sure their financial activity is reported to the bureaus. If you do everything using more-private cash or debit transactions you lose out.

<comment><USER36> Yes, but...

Some things you want as a signal and some things you don't. Paying rent on time should be a signal, but often is not. Going to a cancer clinic may not be a signal you want, but already is exploited.

Nuance is needed. Lots of small but important decisions to be made. Sounds like a product to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> China is _not_ going to provide a crypto version of its currency. The Chinese government is all about centralisation and control. It will go for electronic transactions via a few tightly-controlled banks combined with the elimination of physical cash.

<comment><USER38> This has already happened AFAIK.

<comment><USER39> I recall seeing that they were experimenting with it. Yep, here's a story from August.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-12/china- s-p...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-12/china-s-pboc-says- its-own-cryptocurrency-is-close-to-release)

<comment><USER40> >Unlike decentralized blockchain-based offerings, the PBOC's currency is intended to give Beijing more control over its financial system.

So not what you are expecting from a crypto currency?

<comment><USER41> Wow sounds great can't wait to invest in this propaganda coin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > Plant based diets will dominate the world by the end of the decade. Eating > meat will become a delicacy, much like eating caviar is today. Much of the > world's food production will move from farms to laboratories.

This needs a huge asterisks at the end of it right? You could argue that plant based diets already dominate the world. Now if he's claiming that "muscular" foods that are produced in a lab will pound for pound outsell animal based meat I would happily take that bet against him.

<comment><USER43> Look at Impossible Burger. Burger King sells them. Try an Impossible Whopper alongside the Beef Whopper. They're making a million pounds of burgers a month, from soy, potatoes, and heme for the meat flavor. Their plant in Oakland is only the size of a supermarket. This isn't an expensive product to make.

When the beef industry's lobbyist in Washington first tried one, he called his people and said, "Guys, we have a problem".

<comment><USER26> There is a coming backlash against fake meat due to the amount of chemicals and processing required. It's not just soy, potatoes and flavoring.

<comment><USER43> Yes, and it's funny.[1] The Impossible Burger was cool when it cost $20 at Jardiniere. Then the company scaled up and started supplying Burger King. This got some foodies upset. Wait until they get the price down to well below meat and start supplying McDonalds.

[1] [https://www.vox.com/future- perfect/2019/10/7/20880318/meatle...](https://www.vox.com/future- perfect/2019/10/7/20880318/meatless-meat-mainstream-backlash-impossible- burger)

<comment><USER44> If that happens then we will stop seeing meat in any processed food because of extreme cost cutting even if people still want real meat.

<comment><USER41> Processed food often already has a huge portion of soy and/or wheat protein in addition to the grade F meat. HN's Whole Foods crowd seem to way over-estimate Your Average Persons diet and how much they care what's in the tasty meal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> A few good takes, but China becoming the dominant global power? Not a good take.

China is fairly good at a few things, namely lending money and manufacturing goods.

What they aren't good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong for the last 6 months.

I don't think the United States is becoming increasingly isolationist. I think we've seen a brief period of these attitudes, but it's not indicative of the next decade imo.

And the author seems to think China will be able to rapidly adapt to change, pointing to global warming.

China is the world's worst source of pollution. I don't think they're going to 180, especially since their economy is built on it.

<comment><USER46> "What they aren't good at is making people happy. See Hong Kong for the last 6 months."

Wrong Chinese people are very happy. In some rankings they belong to the happiest people. Here they are medium range: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/09/10...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/09/10/a-fascinating- map-of-the-worlds-happiest-and-least-happy-countries/)

My prediction:

We will see an economic depression, also caused by energy problems. The current quantitative easing is actually the first sign of the problems with energy: [https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/09/12/our-energy-and-debt- pr...](https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/09/12/our-energy-and-debt-predicament- in-2019/)

PS: The US is also pretty good at making other countries unhappy. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran to name a few :-)

<comment><USER47> "How's life in soviet russia?"

"Can't complain!"

This is the mistake you're making regarding China.

Source: grew up there

<comment><USER46> "How's life in China?"

"Great!"

Source: I live there!

This is the mistake you're making regarding stuff you have no idea of.

<comment><USER47> >Source: grew up there

<comment><USER46> Yeah. Because we know that post-soviet Russians are very happy people. Not.

Source: I am there once a month.

<comment><USER48> I think you are missing the joke...

I imagine that if English is not your first language, it would be easy to miss this, since the joke plays on multiple meanings for the phrase "can't complain".

Usually, in this context, "Can't complain" means "life is good".

However, in this joke, the secondary meaning of "Can't complain" indicates that "You can't complain about life in soviet Russia, because if you do complain, you get in big trouble".

Basically, this indicates that life in soviet Russia was NOT good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Any prediction of decentralisation of the Internet, or anything built on it, needs to explain how this will overcome the economies of scale (1 big data centre is cheaper than 1000 little ones) and the network effects (everyone buys and sells through Amazon because thats where you find the most buyers and sellers).

<comment><USER49>
        1 big data centre is cheaper
        than 1000 little ones

There are billions of computers out there that are idle most of the time. Utilizing them might very well be cheaper then building and maintaining a new datacenter.

        everyone buys and sells through
        Amazon because thats where you
        find the most buyers and sellers

Not everyone. Not even the majority. Even in the USA which is Amazons biggest market, their market share is less then 50%. Individual onlineshops are also moving billions. Even the small ones built with Shopify are moving billions when you combine their revenue. And then there is Ebay, Facebook Marketplace, Alibaba, Rakuten, Zalando ... all moving billions worth of goods.

<comment><USER50> > There are billions of computers out there that are idle most of the time.

They will remain idle unltil untethered energy and bandwidth become free.

I won't let you use my phone's spare cycles and murder my battery while we're still using lipo cells that degrade after 2 years with _regular_ use.

<comment><USER19> > They will remain idle unltil untethered energy and bandwidth become free

unless you tie it to an incentive, and thus you arrive at cryptocurrencies

<comment><USER51> Funny you mention that, since we've seen cryptocurrency processing concentrated in big data centers... for all the same reasons everything else is located in big data centers - energy and bandwidth are cheaper.

<comment><USER19> That's up to whoever is supplying the services. While many may be outsourcing this to data centers, I'm sure it's not the case for everyone and there are people operating their own hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> In my opinion, most the predictions made here are dumb, to be honest.

It seems like a mix of wishful thinking and linear projection of a few trends this particular VC happen to like, but nothing bold or creative, nothing that could make me think and wonder.

Are most VCs living in their own world or something?

</comment><comment><USER53> Regarding China, I believe that the Chinese economy will collapse because less and less countries will want to do business with China due to it's human rights violations.

Regarding plan based diets, I agree but I think that eating meat will be seen as babaric. I believe that the way way we treat animals now will be seen similarly as we see slavery now.

Regarding, decentralized internet and crypto currencies. I don't see why those would happen and believe will see more regulation not less.

<comment><USER54> > Regarding China, I believe that the Chinese economy will collapse because > less and less countries will want to do business with China due to it's > human rights violations.

Think you're totally wrong here. The only countries that will care about China's human rights record are the NATO countries. The other 6 billion people in the world live under governments that will be happy to work with a superpower willing to look the other way to their own transgressions.

<comment><USER53> But those are the countries that China would want to trade with.

China also has territorial conflicts with all of it's neighbors in South China Sea.

<comment><USER54> China is very much in the same position the US was in at the turn of the 20th century: lots of territorial conflict with old powers, but a grudging recognition that the winds of change are in their favor. All it will take is a single small-scale conflict akin to the Spanish-American War and China will have unquestioned dominance over the South China Sea (like the US did with the Caribbean and South Pacific).

Their neighbors will be forced to play nice with them or be blockaded. Which is exactly what the US did in the early 1900s with central / south American banana republics. There is a playbook for ascendant superpowers, and China is just playing their best hand. Anyone who isn't a superpower is just going to have to accept what China does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> If we start predicting that the 2020's will be the rise of the remote-working 6-hour workday, maybe it will catch even more momentum and finally become true.

</comment><comment><USER17> > Countries will create and promote digital/crypto versions of their fiat > currencies

Why? I don't see what would be the benefit of that. Fiat currency already is digital. And - at least where I live - domestic transfers are instant.

<comment><USER56> Giving each citizen an account at the central bank. Then everyone will have access to "real" money digitally (not only via cash, which is currently the case).

<comment><USER57> What's the point? Why would countries bother?

<comment><USER58> tracking everything

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> What will happen in the 2020s: "Error establishing a database connection."

Yep, sounds about right.

<comment><USER32> Maybe this is the decade that web developers will finally stop using dynamic databases for static content.

I'll predict the opposite. Web stacks will get even more unnecessarily complex and buggy. Investment sizes, late-stage development cycles, and page size, will continue to grow toward infinity while startup success rates drop closer to zero. Page load times on the best available connection and hardware will remain constant as it always has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> > 4/ Countries will create and promote digital/crypto versions of their fiat > currencies, led by China who moves first and benefits the most from this > move. The US will be hamstrung by regulatory restraints and will be slow to > move, allowing other countries and regions to lead the crypto sector. Asian > crypto exchanges, unchecked by cumbersome regulatory restraints in Europe > and the US and leveraging decentralized finance technologies, will become > the dominant capital markets for all types of financial instruments.

People will not start trusting the Chinese government in the next 10 years. If there is a use for crypto here it will be for rich Chinese to evade their government when moving money outside the country as they typically do.

<comment><USER43> _If there is a use for crypto here it will be for rich Chinese to evade their government when moving money outside the country as they typically do._

That's the real use of Bitcoin. It's why Bitcoin mining is such a big thing in China. It's "exporting". Made in China, sold outside China - that's exporting, and not only legal, but encouraged and subsidized. Buy a share in a Bitcoin mine in yuan, watch your EUR or USD balance build up in Hong Kong or Switzerland.

<comment><USER6> It also messes up the Bitcoin mining economics for the rest of the world. If you see mining bitcoin as a way to convert CNY -> equipment and electricity -> bitcoin -> foreign currency, you're willing to operate at a loss. Kind of like how when people launder money they accept they'll only get 50% or something of their dirty money converted into clean, except in reverse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I think the next decade will see a radical change in the materials used to make a significant percentage of common goods. From biodegradable materials that equal the performance of petro/plastics, to graphene replacing steel, aluminum, carbon-fiber, etc. for many applications. Also potentially changing the game with respect to microchip fabrication and performance.

RE: Graphene though, there are so many military applications, that it's hard to say what the lag will be to civilian technology. If history is any indication, and I hope it isn't, there could be a decade or (much) more between first production applications and public knowledge that those applications even exist, let alone having access to products incorporating them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> >5/ A decentralized internet will emerge, led initially by decentralized infrastructure services like storage, bandwidth, compute, etc. The emergence of decentralized consumer applications will be slow to take hold and a killer decentralized consumer app will not emerge until the latter part of the decade.

The pendulum of history suggests this will occur (at some point), and I hope it happens sooner than later in many respects, but it is also seems like one in which we won't know the triggers/causes/sparks until after the fact, partially because it seems it will take complex combinations of causes?

Anyone seeing possible sparks which perhaps the rest of us aren't yet identifying?

<comment><USER62> Maybe there will be a need for massive computing in remote areas: Antartica, or space. They need a lot of local storage and compute. And they have low bandwidth.

It's kind of like GPUs are in cars right now. You can't drive a Tesla with dumb sensors over the Internet -- you need smart local compute.

[https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-self-driving-car- computer-...](https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-self-driving-car-computer- chip-nvidia/)

So I guess IoT and doing heavy local computation is a technical reason you would need decentralization. I can see that happening for many use cases. I'm not sure if it will happen for the consumer web because centralization is more efficient and the current network effects are so ingrained. Similar to how Windows is still dominant on the desktop, but iOS/Android are perhaps more important platforms.

\---

I think major changes in behavior are driven by new hardware -- phones in the 00's, PC's in the 80's, Internet in the 90's, etc.

People have been trying to push VR, but to me VIDEO is the real VR -- more stuff happens there and more people use it. I was chatting with a friend yesterday and observed that YouTube is basically what "SecondLife" was supposed to be. People are exchanging all kinds of valuable information and entertainment on YouTube.

So if you need to process a lot of video locally for some reason, that could be a killer app for decentralization. Just like a self-driving car, although I'm bearish on self-driving impacting the average consumer in the next 10 years. I think it will continue to be cheaper to operate rideshares with human drivers in most parts of the world and most terrains/climates.

<comment><USER63> > YouTube is basically what "SecondLife" was supposed to be. People are > exchanging all kinds of valuable information and entertainment on YouTube.

A keen observation!

<comment><USER62> Yeah it's probably because I've been watching a lot of YouTube lately, but it feels like there's just a lot more real interaction going on there than on other platforms. It sounds like Twitch is the same way.

One example: I learned how to clean my toilet from this video.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd6pV5lyvG8&t=1s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd6pV5lyvG8&t=1s)

The comments are hilarious... Tons of people having the same "AHA" moment. (Basically you paper mache your toilet with vinegar and wait a couple hours. Old mineral stains come off like butter!)

Compare a google search for "clean toilet" and it feels like a bunch of SEO- infested crap.

YouTube is more like the "old web" where you can get a real opinion on something.

\-----

I have friends who cook and that's a whole other subculture of YouTube. I've been watching a good MMA show. And there are programming streams, and pretty much every programming conference has an archive, which is a rich archive of free information (e.g. PyCon, CppCon, etc.)

I don't know what's going on in Second Life now but to me it feels like it's probably not "real life". I guess people want "life" and not "second life", and video is becoming an increasingly large aspect of the former.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I'm seeing a database error, but there's a similar site with 2020 predictions (and onwards):

[https://futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2020-2029.htm](https://futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2020-2029.htm)

Most of the 'predictions' have links explaining why they think this may occur in that timeframe, e.g., this one about exascale computers: [https://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2021.htm#exascale](https://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2021.htm#exascale)

</comment><comment><USER65> > The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars > were to the previous one.

I don't think so. WWII was a war between two fronts. Climate change affects countries very differently. The ones not affected much will unlikely contribute. My guess is that everyone to his own in this one.

> experiments to reallocate wealth and income more equitably will produce a > new generation of world leaders who ride this wave to popularity.

I don't think it'll be more than experiments. Capital is very sensitive to being grabbed by government for the benefit of the "people". My guess is that we'll see countries that try to have their industries collapse; while other countries letting that capital flow to them.

> China will emerge as the world's dominant global superpower

China is doomed to fail in the long run. Not sure if it's going to happen in the next decade or later, though. But it'd be all good and hopefully democracy is established.

> Countries will create and promote digital/crypto versions of their fiat > currencies, led by China who moves first and benefits the most from this > move.

This was already tried and failed. Crypto-currencies have no meaning without the decentralized factor. Governments will never be able to establish their crypto due to the fact that they want to control the underlying.

> Asian crypto exchanges, unchecked by cumbersome regulatory restraints in > Europe and the US and leveraging decentralized finance technologies

Kinda related to the point above. Countries with low taxes are going to boom further as western countries are tightening their fiscal game.

> A decentralized internet will emerge, led initially by decentralized > infrastructure services like storage, bandwidth, compute, etc.

I, very, believe this one and hope it happens in the next decade.

<comment><USER66> China doomed to fail based on what?

<comment><USER67> Witness what's going on in Hong Kong? There's plenty of speculation that what's happening there is being funded or supported by an opposing party in China. Older generations are also implicitly supporting protestors there very carefully. The young college kids are who everyone sees but there is a lot happening behind the curtain.

China has had multiple generations of unrest. It isn't just the young generation that is ready for change.

I wouldn't say China itself is doomed but communism there might be.

<comment><USER68> The older generation in Hong Kong, if my friends there are in any way representative (all adults at 97 handover, like me) in what they tell me, simply hold the same resentments they did in 98, 99, 00 etc for the changes China has made to their home and how it is governed, and the constant chipping away at what they have. Some of those friends have been out on the marches and protests across the years, not just 2019's. First demo in favour of universal suffrage was probably in 98 when China dismantled the electoral system for the LegCo and replaced with the pro-Beijing weighted system. Universal suffrage of the Chief Exec was promised right back then.

It doesn't need an opposing mainland party to explain HK. There may be, but I see little evidence for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> >7/[...] The early years of this decade will produce a wave of hype and investment in the space business but returns will be slow to come and we will be in a trough of disillusionment on the space business as the decade comes to an end.

I guess this depends on SpaceX's success with the Starship - if a rocket that is made outside a cleanroom and with cheap rolled steel frame proves to be usable means that going to space becomes very very accessible.

<comment><USER70> Yeah, but space needs to be profitable, not just accessible, for private companies to take over investments. Even as SpaceX fanboy, I have a hard time imagining this any time soon.

Space based internet constellations have a huge resurgence right now, but that's unlikely what the author meant.

(Asteroid) Mining? Even if we already had the tech, such a mission would take decades. Who would accept the uncertainty risk of investing over such long time-spans? That is, if there is anything worthy enough to mine in space in the first place, will that still be the case many years later?

Tourism might be a thing, but enough to bootstrap an entire space economy?

Countries/politicians/billionaires wanting to project power or memorialize themselves still seems like the safest bet to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> I too dream of a decentralized internet and especially decentralized cloud resources, but I can't find a way around the question of how you securely host a database on some random person's idle computer/"spot instance". If that data is compromised, who do you sue? The random person who has no assets?

Data security ultimately depends on secure physical access to the hosting hardware. Not everything can or should be put in a public database, so you need physical security. Cloud providers provide physical security plus trustworthiness due to their reputations, as well as deep pockets to sue if something goes wrong.

Most industries end up with only a few competing firms. Why would cloud computing be different? I'm open to solutions on data security.

<comment><USER72> Multiple clients sync to/from a server. Server syncs with other servers. Part of the sync with clients is a list of all servers so clients can cycle servers until sync succeeds. Eventual consistency. I'm doing this with a small dataset now.

<comment><USER71> That solves consistency but does not secure the data against a malicious node.

<comment><USER72> Data is encrypted (or not) by the client. The server is a zero-knowledge sync service.

I have an open source client that does client side encryption. I hope that once released people will use it, or ideas from it, to create their own clients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> > 6/ Plant based diets will dominate the world by the end of the decade. > Eating meat will become a delicacy, much like eating caviar is today. Much > of the world's food production will move from farms to laboratories.

In this decade? Not a chance. Maybe in 50 years this is more likely.

</comment><comment><USER49>
        A decentralized internet
        will emerge

It already is decentralized. No single authority controls the routing of packets.

        led initially by decentralized
        infrastructure services like
        storage, bandwidth, compute, etc.

Seems like what he means is that more decentralized services will be built on top of the internet. Services, where you don't know who will provide the service you are buying. And where anybody can jump in to provide that service.

A bit like AirBnB, Uber etc. But probably he means that the rules of those new services will be enforced by protocols, rather then by companies. So I guess Bitcoin is the most prominent example of such a service that is already in existence.

</comment><comment><USER74> I'm hoping that in 2020 fewer VCs will try to market themselves by making random predictions for the future.

<comment><USER75> ...and that we'll have fewer trolls...

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> #9 is hilarious. There will be 50 year old millennials in 2030, making the "prediction" nothing more than an observation about how political power has worked for all of known history.

<comment><USER30> Not to mention it completely ignores Gen X.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> The global debt crisis and intractable US entitlements will lead to a global depression. China will promote a new cryptocurrency to compete directly with the failing dollar. The US and allies will attempt to use their massive military to defend the dollar. China will not have sufficient military might be so will lean on other countries in particular Russia with their nuclear arsenal.

World War III will be sold on supposed moral grounds as all wars are. China and other countries will say that they need to defeat an evil US that is immoral and forcing the world to use their baseless currency causing great suffering. The US will say that China is attempting to create a global dictatorship with total control and no freedom. Both sides will see moral justification to fight to the death.

As the likelihood of the war ramps up over the next few years, there will be a feverish push to create general purpose AI and improved robotic locomotion such as artificial muscle-based locomotion with high strength to weight ratios. Around the time that the first nuclear salvos arrive, perhaps around 2023-2025, these efforts will pay off with robust general AI and humanoid robots.

By 2030, the planet will be a nuclear wasteland, with several billion dead. There will be a new religion pushing to give the AGIs full autonomy and control. The Martian colony will have a few dozen people already and rapidly ramping up.

A growing group of nuclear survivors have adapted with advanced high bandwidth brain-computer interfaces connected to superintelligent AI systems that act as a supercortical layer.

<comment><USER58> When is the movie out?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> What about demographic collapse in the west/china? will it not overshadow a lot of this? Esp coupled with demographic looming catastrophe in africa. Poor countries becoming increasingly unsustainable at a time when the developed ones will be least able to help.

<comment><USER78> Immigration will make both of these things less of an issue. It will create increasing political tensions.

<comment><USER58> immigration requires opportunity, and opportunity is becoming increasingly scarce in europe. it's more likely, lots of capital will be reallocated towards the growing parts of africa

<comment><USER25> Immigration doesn't require opportunity if you're fleeing from drug cartels or islamist death squads.

<comment><USER58> that's a very small number; and they re refugees

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> What? No reference to country specific disconnected-from-the-rest-of-the-world Internet, a-la Russia's experiment a few days ago? To me, more government control over the Internet to the extent of governments basically sealing the Internet to within country borders with more regulation (taxes, anyone?) of out-of-country access seems like a no-brainer thing happening in the upcoming decade...way more than just the great-wall-of-china firewall.

</comment><comment><USER80> This kind of reads more like a wishlist than a list of predictions.

</comment><comment><USER81> Climate left out many other environmental issues: pollution, plastic, extinctions, etc

Most of all Overpopulation.

People fear discussing it now because they only know of China's policy and eugenics. I predict that the successful, non-coercive policies of Thailand, Iran, Mexico, etc that increased peace, prosperity, and stability will become better known.

Those models will lead us to realize that we can peacefully and stably lower birth rate to increase peace and prosperity, easing all other environmental problems. We'll realize steady-state following de-growth works more successfully on a full finite planet than pushing economic and population growth forever.

<comment><USER82> I'm intrigued by this and definitely open to learning more about de-growth models. Would you mind providing some examples of the policies implemented in these countries?

<comment><USER81> Alan Weisman's book Countdown revealed to me about countries that lowered birth rates without coercion. Before reading it I only know about the one- child policy and some eugenics attempts. I highly recommend the book. I just recorded a conversation with him for my podcast. Fascinating conversation but it's still in the editing queue.

Off the top of my head, his main examples were Thailand, Iran, and Mexico. Here's a piece on Thailand [https://www.context.org/iclib/ic31/frazer](https://www.context.org/iclib/ic31/frazer). Wikipedia covers Iran between 1989 and 2006 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_in_Iran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_in_Iran). Cultures including Japan and Italy saw dramatic decreases in birthrates without focused efforts.

Here are videos of him: [https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alan+weisman&oq...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alan+weisman&oq=&gs_l=). I haven't watched them, but probably will give you a jump start on the book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I look forward to laughing at this list a decade from now.

</comment><comment><USER84> No excessive carbon taxation will happen. No significant or global emergence of digital currencies (not including regular "electronic" dollars or euro). Meat may become more rare along with fish (due to still unregulated in 2030 overfishing and acidification), but there will be no or almost no lab grown food. Mass surveillance will propagate even more but privacy will not succeed or become sought by majority.

</comment><comment><USER85> Plant based food?

Well, let me think! I just ate a home cooked pizza. The total calories were 654, and 455 of those were from just the flour, a "plant based food"!

More generally, in the US, big time grocery store items are milk, butter, cream, eggs, beef, chickens, and pork.

For feeding the animals, we have grass, hay, wheat, corn, and soy beans. E.g., look at a rail yard

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qv7y0W_mNM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qv7y0W_mNM)

and see the long train of grain cars!!! We're talking a LOT of grain.

For the retired dairy cattle, "think fast food" \-- US hamburgers are not going away at all soon!

Point: No way, not a chance, not even a teeny, tiny chance, will that huge industry and supply chain, with huge fractions of the land in the US South and Midwest devoted to growing animal feed, be displaced or even affected by "laboratory" anything.

Sure, we grow some mushrooms in caves. And some greenhouses grow tomatoes and maybe oregano, bib lettuce, basil, rosemary, etc. But greenhouses and hydroponics both go way back with no chance of anything similar having a big, new impact now.

</comment><comment><USER39> Good predictions.

Didn't mention distributed/remote work. Not sure if that's because it's so obvious a trend as to be boring?

I think he's early on the plant-based diet prediction, but correct in 20-30 years. Actually a lot of these seem like trends that might take more than 10 years, but have a high chance of being correct eventually.

<comment><USER86> Distributed work will continue to be a minor thing prevalent mainly in tech circles. Human nature doesn't change on 10 year timescales. We're tribal beings who organize around work and family.

Best Buy's pullback from it for their office staff is instructive.

<comment><USER87> Yeah I've been doing remote 95% of the last couple years and it takes a toll not being able to be around people at all. Even as a mostly introverted person who needs quiet alone time for solving harder problems and general flow state. There's something about social interaction that helps with motivation that I find hard to get over chat and video. This is assuming the people are not toxic somehow.

<comment><USER21> See my post above: there are reasons to be optimistic remote social presence and shared spatial awareness for many contexts will be solved this decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> Some of the points made here I agree with, probably slightly more accurate that the other warped predictions I've seen so far.

However, I question that predictions /2 and /6 seem to be wildly far-fetched that it's as if the author based his predictions from a damaged magic mirror.

/2) While the tech is there for automation, Several safety and regulatory requirements the AI technology is not transparent enough to completely replace workers. This will take more years to only end up being a complimentary tool for its users.

/6) doesn't sound very realistic to achieve in this decade. The research is experimental or starting to emerge but not mature yet for be available to all yet and will not be in this decade. Probably the next or very late 2020s.

I'm surprised to see that mainstream AR not being mentioned nor the further regulation of tech being detailed more in this article.

<comment><USER89> Several of his answers are between laughable and decades sooner than would be possible under any scenario. It came across as Fred reaching desperately to say something interesting and instead he just wrote a bunch of well-worn low value fantasy from other sources.

Just look at how comical this stuff is:

> Plant based diets will dominate the world by the end of the decade. Eating > meat will become a delicacy, much like eating caviar is today.

In one decade? Dominating the whole world and meat becoming a delicacy. That's such a bad prediction it's borderline sad. Maybe over the course of 50-100 years. It would take a decade just to scratch the surface of that prediction. It'll take decades just to scale up the necessary food production changes and distribution required by that prediction. He entirely ignores the massive investment required, the slow moving nature of it, the entrenched gatekeepers that dictate food policies, and the very slow moving nature of changing global consumer taste & demand (more likely to occur via aging out and new young people adopting, rather than true mass adoption by existing people that have all been eating meat for the entire lives; that will take a long time).

> Asian crypto exchanges, unchecked by cumbersome regulatory restraints in > Europe and the US and leveraging decentralized finance technologies, will > become the dominant capital markets for all types of financial instruments.

Things at that scale, dominated as they are in finance by giants with vested interests and tightly regulated and influenced directly by military muscle, do not change that much in the span of ten years or less. Another absurd, impossible prediction. This is Fred going overboard on a crypto binge.

He might as well have said in his list that we'll all be piloting flying cars in ten years. It's the exact same bullshit worthless futurism fantasy backed with the exact same supporting basis (vapor).

> China will emerge as the world's dominant global superpower leveraging its > technical prowess and ability to adapt quickly to changing priorities

In ten years the US will still have the only global projection military and will still have the world's largest economy. Another obvious error of projection by Fred and a bad one at that. If everything goes right for China, in 30 years they could theoretically occupy a dominant superpower position. That's best case scenario. However what is most likely is that China will split the world in half with the US and never achieve such an overwhelming position and that they'll suffer stagnation due to well understood problems they're already sinking under (demographics, debt, increasingly extreme authoritarianism).

Basically none of what he lists in item #1 will occur in the next decade. Most of it is so impossible to occur in the span of just ten years, that again, it's super far fetched. Someone should have screened all of this for him before he hit publish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> A lot of the regulations that "hamper" U.S.-based fiscal markets provide basic protection against financial mismanagement and corruption. The writer's supposition that relatively unhampered Asian crypto-currency markets would be trusted is highly optimistic. They are more likely to turn out to be prone to in-house theft or corrupt insider-dealing, or to external hacking (the 750K BTC lost from Mt Gox are still missing[1]), or to government control and manipulation.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox#Bankruptcy;_stolen_bit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox#Bankruptcy;_stolen_bitcoin_\(2014%E2%80%93ongoing\))

</comment><comment><USER91> >6/ Plant based diets will dominate the world by the end of the decade. Eating meat will become a delicacy, much like eating caviar is today. Much of the world's food production will move from farms to laboratories.

GMO Frankenfood made in labs hasn't been proven safer than regular meat in peer reviewed studies yet.

Eating all plants like potatoes in The Martian have to take multi-vitamins as well. It is boring to eat the same thing each day.

McDonald's has farms so that it can sell a $1.48 McDouble cheaper than a $6 salad. If plants cost more money, why eat them when meat is cheaper? Ever tried to price plants in the veggie section? They cost too much, but you can buy a frozen pizza for $3 which is cheaper.

<comment><USER21> It's a fallacy when making ten year predictions to assume nothing will change in order to lead to the prediction. Presumably for the idea of plant based diets to dominate, there will need to be an available substitute for meat which is competitive economically and in taste.

<comment><USER92> It might be enough to force near prices to include their environmental impact. I think that's what the post says about meat becoming like caviar. So it would still be available, just way too expensive for every day meals.

<comment><USER91> Jacking up meat prices would upset a lot of people. Meat-substitutes would have to be cheaper than they are now. Food By Products are already used in meat as filler. Like ground beef and hamburgers have cereal or soy in them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> There are two wealth in this world: financial wealth, and demographic wealth. Both are limited by natural resources, so it should come as no surprise that they are declining. Humanity will be confronted with the principle of reality.

<comment><USER66> What is demographic wealth?

<comment><USER94> I'm guessing a population that can generate wealth (think age distribution, education).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> These predictions don't show any particular insight beyond the things that absolutely everyone talked about in 2019. Literally just predicting that some of this year's causes du jour will extend a decade.

</comment><comment><USER96> > 6/ Plant based diets will dominate the world by the end of the decade. > Eating meat will become a delicacy, much like eating caviar is today. Much > of the world's food production will move from farms to laboratories.

Before refrigeration, a considerable amount of meat on the market was spoiled, with a horrible taste as well as a horrible aftertaste. The price was much higher than today. You had to use a sauce to make it more palatable.

It would have made sense to go vegan back then, but no. People are more willing to eat spoiled, expensive meat with mold rather than going plant- based.

</comment><comment><USER97> One thing that was not mentioned was anti-trust action by the government. I predict by 2030 one of the FAANG + MSFT will have been investigated and broken up by the government. Leaning twords FB or AMZN.

</comment><comment><USER98> Here are my 2 cents worth of prediction.

1\. Energy will become very cheap (almost free), solar and wind will be about USD 5-7 per MW-h (or ~USD 13 per BOE)

2\. The Chinese CCP will fail. - China will return to local strongmen who may claim to be the CCP. But are really Warlords similar to 1919 - 1940.

3\. Major ecological failure. The shit will really hit the fan. Millions dead and many more millions trying to get to rich countries.

4\. Economic growth stalls - all the neo-liberal bullshit dies. Growth hits hard ecological limits.

This is just the start, modern civilisation will be lucky to survive until 2040.

</comment><comment><USER99> There was a smattering throughout about areas where the US lags. There was a lot of discussion around #6 but I found #3 to be quite interesting, esp. the last sentence:

> Conversely the US becomes increasingly internally focused and isolationist > in its world view

I wonder what are some people's thoughts on this - specifically if they agree and what are some of the potential impacts to US citizens and abroad (influence, wealth, industry leadership, etc)?

</comment><comment><USER100> The 2020s will be when the majority of humanity _finally_ agrees that we need to make climate change our highest priority since it will be too obvious to ignore. See what's happening in Australia now for example.

OTOH I don't think serious global action will happen in this decade. I seriously hope I'm wrong on that one because we are already 40 years late and I fear we might have passed the point of no return.

</comment><comment><USER101> > We will see real estate values collapse in some of the most affected regions > and we will see real estate values increase in regions that benefit from the > warming climate.

Identifying the risky low lying areas is relatively easy. However, predicting how and where the climate will change for the better, is at best a crap shot.

We'll know things are getting serious when there's talk on Wall Street about moving out of lower Manhattan.

</comment><comment><USER102> > the US becomes increasingly internally focused and isolationist in its world > view.

There's about 50-60% of the US population, and 2/3 of the US economy, that are very much eager to do business with the rest of the world. They are concentrated in urban areas, and thus have issues in the political process, but it's enough clout that I wouldn't make hard predictions about US isolationism in the 2020s.

<comment><USER21> Isolationism does not seem to be anything more than a ghost. Any analysis that assumes that the current US administration is isolationist is in my opinion a tell that someone is trapped in a filter bubble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> One prediction he missed out is the mining of space for scarce resources. (He just touched on commercialization of space, but he probably assumed things like satellite launching and space tourism)

I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla/SpaceX towed a lithium filled asteroid to near Earth within the next decade. They are probably working on it right now.

Save this comment and come back in 2030

</comment><comment><USER104> On the central conceit about people underestimating how much happens in a decade... how much has happened in the last decade?

I feel like very little has changed in the last decade. Technologically, socially, politically, it feels like we've lived through a decade of very little noticeable change, especially compared to other periods such as 1990-2000 or 1980-1990.

</comment><comment><USER105> This post from Alex Danco contains a similar but much more opinionated and falsifiable set of predictions: [https://alexdanco.com/2019/12/17/ten- predictions-for-the-202...](https://alexdanco.com/2019/12/17/ten-predictions- for-the-2020s/)

</comment><comment><USER106> I think by the end (very end) of this decade it will become common place for at least the upper class to cryogenically freeze and store a cell culture to take advantage of advances in medicine that will also occur in this decade such as affordable / reliable processes for growing your own organs for transplant, etc.

</comment><comment><USER107> My prediction is that the top 10 defining factors in 2020 will have absolutely nothing in common with this list.

</comment><comment><USER108> My prediction: Average commute time will increase in proportion to the adoption of self driving vehicles.

<comment><USER18> I think so too. Autonomous cars are going to fuel urban sprawl like crazy. I know I want to get further out of the city. Once I can commute without driving I won't mind a long commute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> The predictions about China are a little confusing. I know they've copied lots of foreign tech, but have they demonstrated any ability to source original research and development that had no external links? This read a little like what China would want the 2020s to look like.

<comment><USER109> I agree. Except for mass manufacturing and stolen tech, most chinese tech is smoke and mirrors at the moment. Chinese research is famously low-quality given that most researchers are paid by the paper.

I hope their fusion and quantum experiments are real, and not PR lies like the soviet union used to do in the 80s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> Fred Wilson (A VC) somehow dominates HN last New year as well... And was so completely wrong it's shocking anyone would promote him year after year.

It's obvious to me people are doing so only because they WANT all these predictions to come true not that they have any basis in reality. It's bubble talk for bubble people, no offense.

His solution to NN (which we all died from, remember?) was "blockchain".

Here he is last year heavily propped up for saying Trump wouldn't be in office after Mueller probe... Remember the Mueller results? Anyone not involved in hyper partisan politics knew it was going to be a dud. [https://avc.com/2019/01/what-is-going-to-happen- in-2019/](https://avc.com/2019/01/what-is-going-to-happen-in-2019/)

Just browsing his previous predictions just makes more curious how he gets spotlights here every year. 2018 he made a list "questions" answering only some himself, about 1/2 wrong. And 2017 is just... well... AI isn't the new Mobile, Cyberwarfare isn't the new Cold War: [https://avc.com/2017/01/what-is- going-to-happen-in-2017/](https://avc.com/2017/01/what-is-going-to-happen- in-2017/)

<comment><USER111> _And was so completely wrong it's shocking anyone would promote him year after year._

This is a misunderstanding of how voting/promoting works. If someone is wrong you may want to promote them as much as someone who is right in the hopes of enlightening the masses.

Also, you may disagree with something and find it interesting still. In that case upvoting makes sense.

Upvoting != Agreeing. Unfortunately, when you do not have a button for agreeing or disagreeing, you are inclined to use the Vote button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> Reminded me of 2009 "The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century" by George Friedman of Stratfor. Among of his far fetched (but who knows, still possible) predictions was Poland becoming [again] a decisive power in Europe...

</comment><comment><USER113> There's a large plant based burger chain here in Australia. Many of their customers aren't even aware they aren't having meat, they just enjoy the taste. I definitely think the plant based prediction is on the money.

</comment><comment><USER114> Bizarre: In chrome this is rendering as strange character set in UTF8, but HTML source shows correct english text output.

[https://imgur.com/a/18CJCDY](https://imgur.com/a/18CJCDY)

</comment><comment><USER106> By the end of this decade a commercialized, industrial strength solution will exist for people to (a) make machines do things just by thinking, (b) transfer a subset of your thoughts to someone else just by thinking them.

</comment><comment><USER115> Majority of the HN community would downvote anything decentralized/crypto/block chain up until a few months ago. Lately I see less titled "why you don't need blockchain*. Let's see

</comment><comment><USER116> The fallacy I see here is the assumption that today's hot topics will still be as relevant in 10 years and not (as I suspect) superseded by wholly different issues and problems.

</comment><comment><USER117> My predictions:

1\. China overtakes the USA GDP by 2029

2\. Trump wins reelection

3\. The United States has a recession by 2021

4\. Inflation becomes an issue in the United States because of high debt, increased military spending as a result of great power competition and huge pension debts/promises coming due with baby boomers retiring. The best investments (other then great startups of course) becomes Gold (because of the proclivity to favor spenders over savors.)

5\. The United States will focus on big infrastructure spending.

6\. Google develops a competitor to Huawei's Safe City project for the United States and its geopolitical allies, this will be a great benefit to our society

7\. Humanity will reach mars

8\. Humanity will turn the corner on Carbon pollution

9\. San Francisco reaches a breaking point and elects moderates whose focus is building more housing.

10\. The United States will join the TPP

11\. Chinese culture and media breaks out and becomes popular in a similar way Hollywood and American culture is popular in other places

<comment><USER118> 1\. Probably

2\. Trump wins by smaller margin (losing Michigan or Florida)

3\. What will the recession be caused by?

4\. Maybe younger voters vote against Social Security for this reason [insert doubt]

5\. Unless Bernie is elected don't expect any infrastructure spending

6\. Huh

7\. Don't get your hopes up

8\. Maybe

9\. There's no breaking point. Their Hell has no bottom.

10\. Both Bernie & Trump are against TPP. Would require moderate to get it.

11\. Only Americans/Brits are good at spreading movie culture, that'll be true for a long time to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER119> I'm in doubt on most of this.

China won't become the dominate superpower this decade.

Plant based diets won't replace meat.

Youngsters won't replace oldsters in power (unless at that point they are the oldsters).

A decentralized internet won't be the norm.

There won't be a WWII level of effort against man made climate change and in fact after "nothing much happens" (again) the noise will die down.

Here's my prediction for the next decade: Some unexpected stuff happens but mostly incremental changes. I do agree with #10.

</comment><comment><USER120> My favorite is the part where the torch will be passed from baby boomers to millenials and gen z. As if there isn't an entire generation of people between the baby boomers and the millenials.

</comment><comment><USER121> I'm really curious to hear what we underestimated in 2010? Anyone have some thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER122> Interesting absence: No autonomous cars, no AI breakthrough, and no drone delivery.

</comment><comment><USER123> AI will attain perfect scores on international math and computing olympiads. Toward the end of the decade we'll see AI solve an unsolved Clay Millennium Problem.

</comment><comment><USER124> > 9/ We will finally move on from the Baby Boomers dominating the conversation > in the US and around the world and Millennials and Gen-Z will be running > many institutions by the end of the decade. Age and experience will be less > valued by shareholders, voters, and other stakeholders and vision and > courage will be valued more

I don't how the first part of his prediction leads to the other. By the time Millennials/Gen Z take control they'll be just as old amd curmudgeonly as the Boomers. All in all the article seems pretty light on justification.

</comment><comment><USER125> In my view being optimistic about the future is in conflict with believing that China will become the dominant power. There are many concerning signals from China, not least the situation of Muslims and also the surveillance state. There is much we don't know about the true situation of debt, public and private, in China.

<comment><USER126> >There are many concerning signals from China, not least the situation of Muslims and also the surveillance state.

Why is the situation with Muslims concerning for China? For Muslims and for anyone who cares about human rights, sure, it's concerning, but it does not follow at all that this is bad for China. The US became the dominant power despite having slavery longer than any western nation, and then having Jim Crow laws for a full century afterwards, including during the post-WWII economic boom.

I would argue that, unfortunately, there is no evidence that treating your minorities well is necessary for economic success. In fact, it may be the opposite. Ancient Rome did quite well while having slavery, after all.

As for the surveillance state, here we don't really have a lot of historical precedent. Obviously it didn't work out too well for the Warsaw Pact nations, particularly East Germany, but what they're doing in China really isn't like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER127> "Cancer solved", every 10 years. "Plant based diets", um, I don't know anyone that stays vegetarian.

</comment><comment><USER128> Lost all credibility at "... Age and experience will be less valued ...".

<comment><USER129> It's sad, but it may not be wrong. The AOC's of the world are popular for a reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER130> In 2020 a cohort of US politically active people will die, retire or be replaced in significant roles. Ruth Bader Ginsberg is statistically likely. Saunders and McConnel likewise. This is influencing longer term politics because of obsession with 'legacy' such as the make up of the supreme court.

Putin is less likely to move on. There may be a new leadership in Iran but culturally it's unlikely to be more flexible, if anything it's going to be less flexible.

Europe already has it's new leaders. It probably won't be very different.

A politically resurgent youth vote will be coming into it's prime pissed off with current tax and social policy in housing and education. And of course climate.

The ww2 generation and it's successor will be dying out faster, but costing more in pension and health costs and contributing less in tax inputs.

Ubiquitous internet will be a given but more overtly a dual edged sword as tax and national borders continue to collide

No candidate for high office will have a blank sheet of high school pranks. Fifteen year old tweets will be held up to fresh air

</comment><comment><USER131> > We will finally move on from the Baby Boomers dominating the conversation in > the US and around the world and Millennials and Gen-Z will be running many > institutions by the end of the decade.

Gen-X will continue to be forgotten, apparently.

</comment><comment> cia-killer I'm surprised this guy isn't bankrupt and homeless.

</comment><comment><USER132> Error establishing a database connection

</comment><comment><USER133> Wilson's site got the hug of death :)

<comment><USER133> Fortunately it's back now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> Predictions for 2020s

1\. Agree

2\. Automation will be one of the anticlimaxes of the decade.

3\. China will have a mixed decade, marred by competition from other countries for production, human rights scandals, a domestic financial crisis that will spread globally, and a complete slowdown in growth. But its government will survive.

4\. Crypto currency will be no more relevant in 2029 than 2019. The dollar will continue to dominate beyond 2030, until at last in the 2030s the Euro is backed by a significant military force.

5\. No decentralised internet will gain popularity.

6\. Plant based diets will see a meteoric rise in the west, but will still be a minority by 2030.

7\. Biggest story of space will be the failure of NASA to make much progress in landing humans on Mars. SpaceX will make the most progress along those lines, with a test landing of an unmanned craft, but safety concerns over manned flight will hold SpaceX back in serving NASA.

8\. A surprising backlash against social media will see the end of Facebook (but Whatsapp will survive well, with Instagram in a long decline). Twitter will pivot successfully almost beyond recognition.

9\. Baby boomers will no longer dominate the electorate, and a shift to the political left will take place across America and Europe. The UK will see the most left wing government since Atlee's. The climate crisis will help make big government palatable again.

10\. Progress on cancer will be piecemeal and slow. However, this disappointment will contrast with miraculous advances in treating and prevention of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Mine...

11\. VR will replace games consoles. VR will have a huge impact on society, but it will be only the beginning - much like 90s Internet, it will grow in importance decade by decade, but the 2020s will be remembered as the one in which it "arrived".

12\. Apple will decline to a shadow of its former self.

13\. To everyone's surprise, smart watches will have a come back in the second half of the decade thanks to hardware improvements, and will become almost universal for younger demographics. They will become a significant item of self expression, and related "digital jewellery" will also take off.

14\. Electric cars will arrive faster than anticipated, putting huge strain on electricity distribution.

15\. In the US, the college bubble will burst. In the UK it will not, but student numbers will drop and many universities will be forced to merge and close humanities departments.

16\. Post Brexit UK will suffer a economic stagnation similar to Japan's post banking crisis. Scotland will vote to remain in the UK, but Ireland will be reunified. A great number of people will leave the UK to work in the USA.

17\. Putin will die, and Russia will enter a period of crisis and civil disorder.

18\. After Trump's second term ends in economic disaster, popularism in the US will slowly retreat. The democrats will be in power for the remainder of the decade, particularly focused on climate change.

19\. Amazon and Microsoft will emerge as the great winners of big tech over the decade, driven by cloud services and consumer appliances.

20\. A new e reader device that actually works well will be launched, destroying the kindle's grip on the market, and will be universally adopted for education and leisure. The maker will be a newcomer and will end the decade as one of the most exciting startups since Google.

</comment><comment><USER135> Wow, I think I disagree with... most of them?

1\. While I do think climate change is something we need to mitigate now, political realities are very clear on this one -- people don't want to spend much money on mitigation. Furthermore, the dire consequences are still quite far away, doubtful 2020s are the years this will turn around.

2\. I think for now automation will do what industrialization did before -- increase productivity which will lead to increase in consumption. I think it is only when we start approaching AGI when human labor will start becoming superfluous. Again, I don't think UBI is in the cards for mass adoption in the US or other major countries in the 20s (although I see it as inevitable on a longer time scale).

3\. China IS a global super power, whether it will fully displace the US is again doubtful, they have the capacity to do it in the next 20-50 years, but probably not in the next 10. There is a lot of inertia against them basically everywhere (europe, east asia, india, etc).

4\. There is literally no reason this would happen. Even private attempts on decentralized currencies (bitcoin/etc) did not produce assets that are used as money for regular transactions (not black market, not aimed at speculation). For countries it is even less attractive to start a crypto since if you have a stable fiat then why wouldn't you just... have the stable fiat? Countries LIKE having control over their currency.

5\. Internet relies on hardware/infra that is currently privately owned by what are essentially local monopolies/duopolies. Unless laws that force infra sharing get passed (which in the US I just don't see happening), decentralized internet will absolutely not happen. Again, the 20s are now and we have no real movement in this direction.

6\. Most people prefer meat. Currently population growth is such that meat production can easily keep up with demand. I agree that meat production is worse for the world (due to being resource inefficient) and I agree that it is more ethical to eat artificial meat due to decrease in suffering, but let's be real, most people will just eat the meat that is cheap and easily available. There is zero chance major countries manage to pass bills that would make meat expensive.

7\. This one I almost agree with, I just don't think that there will be "a wave of hype" since without better propulsion/space elevators capital costs are obviously high and don't scale well (space isn't software).

8\. I agree that governments will ratchet up surveillance, but I don't think consumers will be willing to put much money into privacy. I bet most people don't care (enough to spend money) about privacy, and the fraction who are OK with surveillance will only increase.

9\. I mean, given that most baby boomers will be retired by 2030 I agree that they will play increasingly diminished role in the society, but I don't think it's because age/experience will not longer matter.

10\. This is something I most agree with. I do hope that the 20s will be year genetics changes how we treat non-infectious diseases.

</comment><comment><USER136> > Error establishing a database connection

Looks like we're going back to the 00's

<comment><USER65> Comments are broken too...

</comment></comment><comment><USER137> I kind of doubt most of these. My prediction:

1\. China will fall to internal strife of some kind. Still may maintain power, but famine and mass executions / disappearances will occur.

2\. we will have further centralization of the internet

3\. Solar will only account for 10k Gw

4\. Agree that nuclear will make a massive resurgence

5\. Gas will still be the dominate power source for mobile transportation, but less so. This is because gas prices will fall.

6\. Saudi Arabia will have a violent revolution

7\. California housing market will collapse due to high electricity prices, lack of electricity and wildfires

10\. Meat will be nearly as prevalent today, but wild caught fish will be virtually no more

11\. Self driving vehicles will operate in many of the non-heavily effected weather states. Laws will be passed to regulate and exclude some states after fatalities

12\. Marijuana will be legal federally

13\. Government will start accessing Alexa, Google, Siri recordings and public will be made aware

14\. China will start using / building power projection in states it can. Specifically to protect food

<comment><USER138> >China will fall

>Saudi will have a violent revolution

Very very unfortunately, this sounds more like wishful thinking than a reasonable prediction. The ways in which modern states can maintain power and suppress their people is overwhelming. China can and has built perhaps the most oppressive totalitarian state ever to have existed. Saudi is diversifying its _absurd_ wealth to resist downturns in oil, and the "first world" is still hapelly grovelling and kissing the rings of that disgusting despot, selling them weapons and propping them up diplomatically. All in all, I don't have my hopes up.

It's all rather depressing.

<comment><USER139> The PRC's working population peaks somewhere between right now and the next 5 years. By 2050, over 1/3 of their population is over 65 years old. They've been under replenishment birth rates for a long time. Their population pyramid is really, truly scary.

Their highly leveraged economy will not survive at "6%" growth over the next decade. It is not clear that they will escape the Middle Income Trap [1]. They are struggling with zombie companies and transitioning from manufacturing to a services-based economy. Their manufacturing is also being slowly eaten away by countries like Vietnam.

As the PRC maintains its legitimacy through the economic growth that has happened under its existence, a recession could trigger political upheaval or force the CCP to distract the populace, e.g. they might try to annex the ROC (Taiwan and its other holdings) by force. A military conflict in which a large number of one child families lose their sole child would have disastrous ramifications as far as government stability, too.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap)

(No opinion on Saudi as I only follow the economy/demographics of the PRC and Eurozone countries)

<comment><USER140> Given their focus on technology and modernization and massive investment in R&D and STEM education, it is likely that China will grow further still. China's R&D investment is now at the top of the world about on par with the US. There are also a very high number of capable engineers in China as suggested by PISA results.

A key difference with middle income countries that only earn export income as manufacturing base is that there are quite a few Chinese companies that possess its own technology and brands. DJI, Oppo, Xiaomi are some examples. Many of these brands are not well known in the US but have become increasingly competitive with global brands, at least in some respect, in Asia and perhaps elsewhere.

It might make sense to compare them to Korean brands a while back, with an additional advantage of massive domestic market.

Their forward-looking focus on major industries of tomorrow like AI, EV, and biotech does not hurt either.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21868570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21868570)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21692002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21692002)

Since there are many areas in China that could be further developed, the service sector will also likely grow.

My point is that the US ought not get complacent and believe in wishful thinking that competition from China will simply go away in time.

<comment><USER141> It's all about trade. The USSR was brought down because they had no nations to trade with and refused to play ball with them and excluded them from the world diminishing their growth and power. The key difference this time around is Europe seems pretty complacent to let China keep doing its thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER142> These are realy realy awful predictions.

> We will see real estate values collapse in some of the most affected regions > and we will see real estate values increase in regions that benefit from the > warming climate.

What happens this decade is the same as the last decade.

The difference is small for any measure. Seas rise at about the same rate, climate changes at the same rate. wtf? If anything technology is improving and long term implementations are starting to be implemented to reduce the issues we saw from the last decade.

> Plant based diets will dominate the world

Meat will rise and continue to rise. The world is getting richer, this stats are undeniable. It's like they look at the fad at McDonalds down the road and extrapolate across the world. Once lab based meat becomes normal (perhaps this decade) it will increase even faster.

</comment><comment><USER143> > 2/ Automation will continue to take costs out of operating many of the > services and systems that we rely on to live and be productive. The fight > for who should have access to this massive consumer surplus will define the > politics of the 2020s. We will see capitalism come under increasing scrutiny > and experiments to reallocate wealth and income more equitably will produce > a new generation of world leaders who ride this wave to popularity.

</comment><comment><USER144> hey all - wondering your thoughts on my end-of-year notes around startup fundraising and VC.

[https://torinrittenberg.com/writing/looking-back-and- ahead-o...](https://torinrittenberg.com/writing/looking-back-and-ahead-on-the- vc-funding-landscape)

</comment><comment><USER145> For future reference, vote as you please:

The "looming climate crisis" and most of today's popular academia will be a mainstream joke by 2030.

</comment><comment><USER146> >9/ We will finally move on from the Baby Boomers dominating the conversation in the US and around the world and Millennials and Gen-Z will be running many institutions by the end of the decade.

And as typical in such pieces, GenX gets forgotten...

<comment><USER147> GenX is tiny and has failed to progress forward precisely because it is so small compared to the Boomers and Millennials. Also by the end of the decade parts of GenX will be approaching 60.

<comment><USER148> "Failed to progress forward" \- what are you talking about?

The United States - and really the world as a whole - has enjoyed its most prosperous time in all of human history during Gen-X's window of contribution.

<comment><USER101> Yes. But that prosperity came with a massive balloon payment in the form of climate change. What's label prosperity today will be "Grand ma, WTF were y'all thinking?"

Long to short, the jury is still out on the actual success of Gen-X.

<comment><USER148> I'm not buying the climate change alarmism.

The climate has changed and will change. Some of that change (although I think its a small part) will be influenced by human activity. The Earth will adjust. Humanity will adjust. And humanity will continue to flourish.

<comment><USER101> A high percentage of the world's population lives on or near the coast. Why the climate is changing doesn't change the effect on these people and the places they live. Dismissing this fact as alarmist isn't going to help anyone.

p.s. Humanity will continue to flourish? Your prediction is based on what, past performance? When Mother Nature's bounty was harvested mindlesssly and shameleessly? That's going to continue forever? Infinitely? Can you share some links supporting such projections?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER149> I think the climate is going to change much faster than any models predict, like 3-4x faster, because we went past the tipping point about 30 years ago.

Phytoplankton populations will crash out in the next 10 years and the marine food chain will collapse.

Extreme wether patterns are going to completely disrupt food production, which will cause mass starvation and a global immigration/refugee crisis.

In the U.S., the terrified of everything elderly, and right wing will go for less freedom and more authoritative government control. They will also secede more control to corporations as a way of avoiding "big government", effectively handing over power special interests and the ultra wealthy.

Healthcare will however become nationalized because the system as it stands is out of control and therE is no way to reign it in, so costs will keep spiraling up until the system breaks.

Marijuana will get legalized in most states, and the percentage of THC will start to get capped.

Designer CRIsPR "therapies" will become popular.

The U.S. college system have a major event, costs are spiraling out of control, and the colleges have no way to stop the cost growth, students are becoming more accustomed to online classes, in the next 10 years there will be a mass realignment of the U.S. college system, just like banking, healthcare. A lot of closures, mergers and partnerships. A commoditization of higher education, which will be good for some majors, like STEM, and really bad for majors that are more "subjective". I also think we'll see incorporation of what is seen as traditional "trade school" skills. Learning is learning, and is the schools can make it profitable, "why not?".

<comment><USER150> What's going to _cause_ the crash of phytoplankton? Rising CO2, I presume, but by what mechanism?

<comment><USER151> Possibly ocean acidification could damage the cell walls of diatoms, which make up a fair fraction of phytoplankton? But I don't see how that could have been locked in 30 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER152> Agree with all, except the crypto currency bit.

Asia (China) would not have an incentive politically to run with it, as it would remove traceability and control of money flow. Not to mention online currencies pitfalls.

<comment><USER153> Crypto currencies have failed to be useful as currencies, so I'm not sure why governments would be so eager to try them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER154> The climate crisis will be exacerbated by the increasing centralization of large cities. Humans are tending towards centralized population hubs, and away from rural areas.

This will be the main catalyst for adopting greener infrastructure. Fear of permanent climate change will _not_ be the catalyst, as that is a long term repercussion of not solving the pollution problem, and humans have _never_ been good about preparing for things in advance.

<comment><USER155> I thought it was the other way around? Don't people in cities have a lower carbon footprint because of public transportation, smaller homes, and other things that can be shared?

<comment><USER154> Yes it seems people were confused by my first sentence. I should have said "the _perception_ of the climate crisis will increase, leading to faster adoption of green policies".

There's a reason why people in rural areas are less aware of climate change due to human pollution. The effects of pollution are much less apparent in rural areas due to the far lower human density. Rural areas are "clean" to the human eye, so we have large swaths of the population that simply don't care about long term effects of pollution, because to them, even the short-term effects are almost indiscernible.

People are moving to cities at a faster rate despite the proliferation of the internet. As such, we'll eventually reach a critical mass of the population that eventually leads us to adopting greener policies. All because people are moving _into_ cities _from_ rural areas. I get that it sounds counterintuitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER156> Ah, from the mouths of babes.

1) Maybe. Or maybe we fuck it up and we are the penultimate generation of pre- Anthropocene human life. Hard to say for sure. So far, the rich and powerful seem to have little trouble selling their property.

2) Automation will not lead to some sort of wakefulness and critique of capitalism, but just more technocracy. The future is Google being too busy to offer you customer service.

3) China will collapse after their attempts to monopolize the South China Sea fall through.

4) Cryptocurrencies as a technology will collapse after several showstopping protocol-level issues are found. Most notably, a team will crack Satoshi's key and steal their BTC hoard, crashing almost all cryptocurrency prices, while as a runner-up effort, another team will successfully demonstrate forgery of high-difficulty blocks with ironic complexity analysis.

5) The various decentralized mesh networks around the globe will each grow to blanket their metropoloi, and some areas will see their mesh networks merge to create massive clouds of ambient connectivity. Disks will still be expensive, though. In fact, I'll predict another disk supply crash due to a natural disaster, akin to the tsunami from last decade.

6) Most folks around the world do not eat that much meat, and no numbers are listed, so I'll instead say that people will _continue_ to not eat much meat. Perhaps meat consumption in USA, China, etc. will diminish, but probably not.

7) India and China step up their national space programs over the next decade, while ESA and NASA continue operating. Elon Musk is still around because of sheer willpower, but nobody else is really privatizing.

8) Already happened. It will continue to happen. The author's really showing off their bubble with this one.

9) Yes, many Boomers are near the end of their mortal coils. Don't be so morbid about it. I'm not sure if this prediction's at all interesting, since any actuary could make the same prediction without a single cup of coffee.

10) Gene therapy will still be sputtering and straining at the end of the next decade. CRISPR with Cas9 will have been long obsoleted, and nothing will have replaced it. There may be a field of genetic programming, though, where people specialize in writing code using DNA; there will certainly be a field of epigenetics which is distinct from traditional genetics.

</comment><comment><USER132> 6 is a big NO. The most part of diseases of this decade are caused by plant based diets. Humans need meat, without it we get sick. B12 can't be found in plants, there are plenty studies that shows how sick we get if we eat ONLY plants.

<comment><USER157> RE: The most part of diseases of this decade are caused by plant based diets

Do you have any studies that back up your claim that humans need meat to live a healthy life?

Several governmental bodies worldwide state[1] that one can live healthy using a plant based diet and The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine[0] even recommend a plant based diet for good health and disease prevention.

Did you know B12 is produced by bacteria and that some meat eaters are low in B12 and need to supplement. Animals in factory farms are being fed B12 supplements[2].

You might want to research this further so you're better informed next time you state information as fact. Or watch this documentary - [https://gamechangersmovie.com/-](https://gamechangersmovie.com/-) it's on Netflix.

[0] [https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition](https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition)

[1] [https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/the-vegan- diet/](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/the-vegan-diet/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK396513/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK396513/)

[2] [https://baltimorepostexaminer.com/carnivores-need- vitamin-b1...](https://baltimorepostexaminer.com/carnivores-need- vitamin-b12-supplements/2013/10/30)

<comment><USER132> btw, please don't do like these guys [https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/14/vegan- parents-starved-toddler...](https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/14/vegan-parents- starved-toddler-to-death-by-forcing-him-to-eat-raw-plant-based-diet-11147678/) feed your babies with meat, we don't have technology (yet) to eat only plants.

<comment><USER157> This is one isolated case of parents who were probably quite dogmatic and ill informed and they were fruitarians - mainly eating raw food, so probably not living on a well-balanced diet.

The article even states that a vegan or vegetarian diet is fine for kids[0]. So again please read articles properly next time and don't make generalised statements based one some headlines you read.

[0] "Babies and young children on a vegetarian or vegan diet can get the energy and most of the nutrients they need to grow and develop from a well- planned varied and balanced diet."</comment></comment></comment></comment>