Poland receives subsidies in exchange for opening its market and for following the tax and labor regulations. All the poorer EU countries do. In the end, it is Germany that benefits the most from large markets for its goods. It would have probably been way more beneficial in the 90s for Poland to have a more closed economy, emulate South Korea and become a "small China in EU" with cheap labor and factories.
I believe it was a grave mistake of the Western Europe to invest so much in producing high-tech goods in China, when during a period of 1990-2005 they had access to cheap and educated labor force close in Eastern Europe. You should never transfer your strategic industries into countries that you cannot influence or control.
I believe there is some merit in the fact that everything is overanalyzed now. Every new trend, fashion, or viral phenomenon is analyzed and commoditized so quickly that it kills its originality. Movies are generated, not directed (Netflix). Music lacks character — where are the crazy, drunken stars from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s?
I also agree that there may be some connection with the use of mobile phones, which has actually made personal contact more difficult. Previously, if you wanted to discuss something with your neighbor or an old acquaintance, you had to call them and talk. Now it’s often just a chat. People are less aggressive and less willing to take risks.
It reminds me of an excellent Stanisław Lem sci-fi novel, Return from the Stars, where an astronaut returning from a mission finds that people on Earth have neutralized themselves from all aggressive impulses, and he is perceived as a wild and dangerous “prehistoric” man.
Another factor could also be that populations are growing older, which means less risky behavior and fewer “youth” crimes.
On the other hand, perhaps the norm to which we should compare the 20th century is the Middle Ages, when for hundreds of years everyone lived in essentially the same way.
Imagine great, "bright" future (few years down the road), where the "gatekeepers" of knowledge will be AI Browsers. 90% of people will get average, generic information from AI content farms. They will be happy consuming AI Slop, steered gently towards products and services of the highest bidder. They will be "trained" to consume specific content. Imagine LLM-like deep learning algorithms that can learn what is your weakness by reading your chats and conversations and exploit it later by providing you crafted content.
10% minority of people will be - just like today - using traditional, manual processes, reading real books, and savoring original websites made by real people. In the long run, part of society will forget what it was like to consume original works. Neal Stephenson in "Anathem" predicted this quite well.
I think the IT job market is getting really dead as a great source of income. There were signs earlier of market saturation, but COVID somehow "covered" them to a certain degree. Of course there are multiple reasons for it, differing in every region:
Globally: IT development is in general moving away from outsourcing building custom solutions. You either build it in-house or subscribe to a ready SAAS product from 1000s available (many will go bust now - pick the winner in category). India is producing millions of offshore IT specialists every year. All above means that it really doesn't make sense to hire as many IT jobs as before.
This impacts US and EU for all jobs that can be done remotely (COVID-> process was accelerated).The jobs that are safer from cheap outsourcing are the ones where you need to interact fluently with Product Owner (UX/UI, frontend) or are requiring local knowledge, so are specific for the region (SAP consultant discussing accounting process with end-user).
Additionally other reasons by region:
US: rates raising, no cash for startups.
EU: manufacturing sector in Germany collapsed due to losing cheap energy source (Russia). That translates into EU-wide slump in projects from that sector. New projects were put on-hold. 20% inflation has killed real wages growth and affected other sectors.
Good sectors: finance is doing well.
AI is fueling some startups (and killing customer service jobs in the process).
All in all, this new world will be interesting. Will the remote offshore jobs be affected by AI way more than local "human-facing" ones? Are we offshoring everything from production (China) to IT services (India)? What will be left in EU/US to do? :)
I don't think this is a convincing argument. Bro management has been saying stuff like this for decades, you can just outsource everything to a cheap country, external partner, or etc. Needless to say we all know how this operation ends every time.
It will become more and more difficult to motivate students to learn facts. Why should they, if they have instant access to everything. Problem is, building understanding usually requires to learn some basic facts. Same with skills like writing, drawing, languages, researching facts - you have to train them (my daughter learned drawing mainly by copying photos of things that she liked). Where to find motivation for learning anything if you can generate images, video, stories, and get all the facts from the machine? I have no idea what the future school should look like. But perhaps going back to the "basics" without any computer support will be the best approach.
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