Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt debate the stagnation of technology

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt kicks off this debate from 2012 by arguing that technological progress is accelerating and the world is getting better for a lot of people—everyone has access to the world’s information and large leaps are being made in fields ranging from genetics to material science.

But Thiel disagrees:

“If you look at the US in the last 40 years (1973 to today), median wages have been stagnant. The 40 years before that, 1932 to 1972, they went up by a factor of six. And it was matched by incredible technological progress. Cars got better, the aeronautics industry got started. You went from no planes to supersonic jets. Computers were invented.”

There has also been little progress in energy in the last 40 years:

“If you think about where oil prices were in 1973, it was $2 or so a barrel. It is now at north of $100 a barrel. You've had a catastrophic failure of energy innovation and it's basically been offset by computer innovation. I think that's sort of a simplified account of what's happened in the last 40 years.”

Thiel believes the root cause is erroneous government policy:

“I think it's because the government's outlawed technology. We're not allowed to develop new drugs with the FDA charging $1.3 billion per new drug. You're not allowed to fly supersonic jets because they're too noisy. You're not allowed to build nuclear power plants. We've basically outlawed everything having to do with the world of stuff. And the only thing you're allowed to do is in the world of bits.”

Eric agrees to some extent and believes the solution is better policy and education:

“US issues have to do with entitlement spending, bad government, and demographic issues… The core problem we have going forward is that you have two forces that are going to govern much of what's going to happen in the future. The first is globalization, which we're not going to repeal, and the second one is automation, which we're not going to repeal. These problems are ultimately cast in political systems in the West, and I think eventually globally, as jobs problems. And the solution to jobs problems, in my view, is education.”

But overall he believes Thiel’s criticism of technological progress over the last 40 years is too harsh.

I’d recommend watching the full debate—it’s interesting and quite funny.

Full video: kykeon “2012 - Eric Schmidt and Peter Thiel - Debate“ (Jul 2012)