Lecture #10 "Stagnation and the Modern World" (09/23/2011)

       Through this lecture Rizzo was pointing out several issues and arguments that I thought they were counter intuitive to most of our class. So many people thing that right now the world is full of conflicts and wars. They think that our world is completely dirty and nobody takes care of it. Moreover that our world is truly endanger of destroying. When then he flips everything saying that the globe was actually worst before. That people died like a lot more before than in the past 10 years. Not only that but but also our globe is now facing a lot less conflicts and deaths than before. So the reality is that because today media and news is so fast we get to know everything that happens around the world easily. 

So now knowing that something wrong is going in Libya or in another country is easy when 60 years ago news didn't have the state of the art technology we have now to report and public material. Finally we conclude that is not that our world is more polluted or full of conflicts but that news and getting to know whats happening in the world is a lot easier right now than before. 

Rizzo touched another topic about growth stagnation. So in the past 50 years western countries have faced a great stagnation or more specific a slow down in their economic growth. When in the other hand other countries like China had the best growth they have ever had. One of the consequences is inequality around the globe. 

Just to conclude I will like to point out the difference between the 2 theories of production. The Classical which points out more production since the population grows so basically no more net profit and the modern which actually overpasses the population growth since it had improvements in technology and knowledge. 

Some facts pointed out in class:

• Suicide rates have maintain constant through history
• Less wars, conflicts and deaths than ever in history.
• Is not that we have more wars and pollution than before but the fact that our worlds media and technology to 
• Are we stagnated?
• Should we have more children?
• Coordination problem!

-Rizzo

Daniel Gaona