I am not into the 666 biblical thing. I just want to stop the bastards such as the Bush clan, Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, NSA, etc from taking away my freedom.

farfiman, I've read that in the 1920s the Americans thought they'd entered a nirvana as they had been transformed in a matter of decades from an agrarian life with horses, lanterns, stage coaches communication to an industrial one with cars, radio, electricity, radio, etc..

The Second Industrial Revolution (which came as a result of the network effects of the First Industrial Revolution) caused massive technological unemployment, yet of course it also raised the standard-of-living and eventually created many more higher-skilled jobs. If we trace history, we can see this pattern repeating every 78 years = 3.1459 x 26 year maturity generations. Before the First Industrial Revolution were two soil technology revolutions which transformed agrarian productivity and caused massive unemployment.

8fold, there seems to always be a major war during each of the depressions caused by these periods of massive technological unemployment. 78 years before War World 2, was the US Civil War.

Any way, 1929 + 78 = 2007 (the year the real-estate bubble burst in USA and PIIGS and the depression started, the depression which is currently dead-cat bouncing and many are mistaking this for a recovery). The downturns typically have a duration ranging between 26 to 31.459 years. I was amazed when a recent Oxford study predicted a loss of 45% of existing jobs to automation within 20 years, i.e. by 2033.

Rival and rpietila, indeed the rich (in stored claims on manual, fungible labor) man can't generate knowledge. The poor (in useless stored claims on manual, fungible labor) can generate knowledge. The rich fool is just a usury (loans, bonds, dividends, hard-on money, and ponzi pump & dump) parasite, and I believe the knowledge revolution will destroy his ability to parasite on society and boast about it. I intend to be part of that, hopefully coming to a Bitcoin theater near you this holiday season.

Note this process isn't likely to be 100% complete ever, and certainly not even 50% complete any time soon. So stored capital remains useful for the meantime and will diminish but not entirely disappear in my lifetime. For example, the bastards still have their cartel on the energy we need to produce knowledge with (although we continue improve the efficiency of our gadgets, cars, etc).

rpietila, we can't give away knowledge. I have tried to give away my knowledge and I can't even force it down the readers' throats. Knowledge is impossible to bottle up and distribute. Knowledge is dynamic, diverse, spawns from fitness as motivated by the diverse situations that humans encounter.

Revenues will scale down with less required capital stock, due to lower costs of producing knowledge (only need a computer and home office). Thus more massive deflation ahead.

Large capital is going to running around trying to find a home, but it will be difficult to find economies-of-scale. The best investments will be very tiny.