I think technological stasis could really use more discussion. For example I was able to find this paper by James Hughes discussing relinquishment. He however treats the issue as one of regulation and verification, similar to nuclear weapons, noting that:
We do not yet have effective global institutions capable of preventing determined research of any kind, even apocalyptic. I believe we will be build strong global institutions in the next couple of decades. Global institutions may regulate for safety, prevent weaponization, support technology transfer, and so on. But there will be no support for global governance that attempts to deny developing countries the right to emerging technologies.
Regulation and verification may indeed be a kind of Gordian knot. The more specific the technologies you want to stop, the harder it becomes to do that and still advance generally. Berglas recognizes that problem in his paper and so proposes restricting computing as a whole. Even this, however, may be too specific to cut the knot. The feasibility of stopping economic growth entirely so we never reach the point where regulation is necessary seems to me an unexplored question. If we look at global GDP growth over the past 50 years it’s been uniformly positive except for the most recent recession. It’s also been quite variable over short periods. Clearly stopping it for longer than a few years would require some new phenomenon driving a qualitative break with the past. That does not mean however that a stop is impossible.
There does exist a small minority camp within the economics profession advocating no-growth policies for environmental or similar reasons. I wonder if anyone has created a roadmap for bringing such policies about on a global level.
I think technological stasis could really use more discussion. For example I was able to find this paper by James Hughes discussing relinquishment. He however treats the issue as one of regulation and verification, similar to nuclear weapons, noting that:
Regulation and verification may indeed be a kind of Gordian knot. The more specific the technologies you want to stop, the harder it becomes to do that and still advance generally. Berglas recognizes that problem in his paper and so proposes restricting computing as a whole. Even this, however, may be too specific to cut the knot. The feasibility of stopping economic growth entirely so we never reach the point where regulation is necessary seems to me an unexplored question. If we look at global GDP growth over the past 50 years it’s been uniformly positive except for the most recent recession. It’s also been quite variable over short periods. Clearly stopping it for longer than a few years would require some new phenomenon driving a qualitative break with the past. That does not mean however that a stop is impossible.
There does exist a small minority camp within the economics profession advocating no-growth policies for environmental or similar reasons. I wonder if anyone has created a roadmap for bringing such policies about on a global level.
Out of curiosity, have you read my little essay “Slowing Moore’s Law”? It seems relevant.