*The Evolution of Progress*

The excellent Brink Lindsey pointed my attention to this fascinating book, subtitled The End of Economic Growth and the Beginning of Human Transformation (like many subtitles, that one is an exaggeration), wirtten by C. Owen Paepke and published in 1993.  A brief book summary is here.

It is fascinating to read his take on how the biosciences will be the wave of the future and how much of human progress will come in the "interior" dimension.  Here is one excerpt:

The United States enjoyed the dubious honor of leading a world-wide parade toward lesser productivity gains.  The growth of both total factor productivity and labor productivity of every advanced economy, notably including Japan, has slowed since 1973.  Only the newly industrialized countries, such as South Korea and Singapore, maintained or increased their productivity growth during the 1970s and 1980s, largely by exploiting innovations earlier pioneered in the advanced economies.

In fairness to the data, this productivity trend was temporarily reversed in the mid-1990s, for a few years, right after Paepke wrote.  And:

By the middle of the next century, a new generation will surpass its precedessor, not in the traditional realm of possessions of life-style, but in the more fundamental one of genetic endowment.

It seems Paepke is a lawyer (one source has him running a pharmaceuticals company), here is Paepke on "Facebook like."  Here is Paepke's patent for "affinity analysis."  Here are Paepke's thirteen trademarks.