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pagebypagereviews · 4 months ago

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At the very heart of human history lies a baffling enigma: How did Homo sapiens, one of many species of prehistoric humanoids, ascend to become the dominant force on planet Earth? Yuval Noah Harari's "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" confronts this question with a bold narrative that encompasses the entirety of human existence, from the dawning whispers of our earliest ancestors to the roaring cacophony of modern civilization. Harari's sweeping tome has captured imaginations worldwide, becoming an international bestseller translated into scores of languages. It is not just a recounting of history, but an invitation to reassess our collective past, and understand the foundation upon which our present reality is built. "Sapiens" deftly tackles the myriad complexities of our species' intricate tapestry, dissecting the cognitive, agricultural, and scientific revolutions that have shaped our societies. It presents an exploration into how Homo sapiens have become the only surviving human species, primarily due to our unique ability to craft and believe in stories that transcend mere survival—religion, nations, and human rights among them. Harari's work dissects how these shared myths have enabled large-scale cooperation among humans, a pivotal factor in our ascent and dominance. The book delineates not just the rewards of our species’ ascension, but also the numerous problems and moral quandaries it has created. Harari offers no easy answers, but instead delivers a profound perspective on humanity's past, prompting readers to critically ponder the path leading to our current global society and the future that awaits. Plot Sapiens does not follow a traditional narrative plot, as it is a work of non-fiction that examines the history of Homo sapiens from an evolutionary perspective. The book guides the reader through a series of transformative revolutions that our species has experienced. Yuans begins with the Cognitive Revolution, where Homo sapiens developed unique cognitive abilities around 70,000 years ago, leading to advancements in language, culture, and communal cooperation. The Agricultural Revolution follows, starting around 12,000 years ago, highlighting the shift from foraging to farming and its significant consequences on social structures and the environment. Harari then discusses the unification of humankind through empires, religions, and economic systems in the Unification of Humankind, and the book culminates in the Scientific Revolution, which began around 500 years ago. This final section describes how modern science, fueled by the pursuit of power and knowledge, has led to the Industrial Revolution, the development of capitalism, and the Information Age, shaping the modern world and raising questions about the future of Sapiens. Characters As Sapiens is a non-fictional analysis of human history, it does not involve characters in the traditional literary sense. Instead, the "characters" are the broad groups, entities, and concepts that have played pivotal roles in shaping the trajectory of Homo sapiens. Examples include entities like foragers, agriculturalists, emperiors, and explorers, as well as constructs such as religions, ideologies, and economic systems. Harari personifies certain aspects of human development to enrich the narrative, such as discussing how money "talks" or how empires "behave." By doing so, he creates a dynamic environment that helps readers understand complex historical and sociological processes. Throughout the book, human beings collectively are the central "character," with the story unfolding through their actions and innovations. Writing Style Yuval Noah Harari employs a compelling and accessible writing style in Sapiens, which is both informative and thought-provoking. His prose is characterized by clarity and the ability to explain complex ideas in a way that is both engaging and easy to understand. Harari often uses analogies and metaphors to elucidate abstract concepts and encourages readers to question established narratives and beliefs.

His tone is conversational yet authoritative, weaving wry humor with empirical evidence. This combination helps to captivate a broad audience, making intricate subject matter like evolutionary biology, economics, and philosophy approachable. Harari's frequent usage of rhetorical questions invites reflection and introspection, leading the reader to actively engage with the content rather than passively absorb information. Setting The setting of Sapiens spans the entire history of Homo sapiens on Earth, beginning from the emergence of the species in Africa. Harari traverses across different epochs and geographic locales as he discusses the changing habitats and circumstances that have shaped human evolution. From the African savannahs to the Fertile Crescent of the Agricultural Revolution, the vast empires of antiquity, and the multitude of environments affected by industrialization, the book presents Earth itself as the grand setting. Harari delves into cultural, political, and social contexts that have influenced human development. As the narrative progresses to modern times, the setting becomes the global stage, where Harari explores the interconnectedness and interdependence of nations, economies, and ecosystems in the Anthropocene – the current geological age viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Unique Aspects One of the unique aspects of "Sapiens" is Harari's interdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from history, anthropology, economics, biology, and philosophy. Rather than treating these domains in isolation, Harari provides a synthesized narrative that offers a panoramic view of human history. He challenges conventional wisdom by presenting alternative perspectives on historical events and commonly accepted societal norms, such as the idea that the Agricultural Revolution may have been a 'luxury trap' that brought about unforeseen complications for Sapiens. The book also stands out due to its focus on the cognitive and psychological underpinnings of historical change, giving credence to the power of shared beliefs and myths in shaping societies. Harari's examination of myths such as money, corporations, and human rights as purely imaginative constructs that have no objective reality yet possess tremendous power in the human social order is a testament to the book's depth of inquiry into what constitutes reality for our species. Lastly, "Sapiens" is unique in its forward-looking vision, raising existential questions about the implications of our past for our future, speculating on the potential for biotechnological and artificial intelligence advancements to alter the very definition of what it means to be human. Similar to Sapiens Below are two HTML code sections, one for the "Pros" and one for the "Cons" of the book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind". Each uses an HTML table with solid 1px black borders to highlight the content, and is formatted to go straight to the point, focusing on how these factors impact user experience. **Pros of "Sapiens":** ```html table width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; th, td border: 1px solid black; padding: 10px; text-align: left; th background-color: #f2f2f2; Pro Impact on User Experience Comprehensive History Provides a broad perspective on human development which enriches the user's understanding of humanity's past. Engaging Writing Style The narrative is accessible and captivating, ensuring users are consistently engaged with the material. Interdisciplinary Approach Integrates various fields of knowledge, offering users a more rounded view of history and its implications. Thought-provoking Challenges users to think critically about human society and our current trajectory. Cultural Relevance Touches on topics of immediate relevance, allowing users to connect historical insights with contemporary issues. ``` **Cons of "Sapiens":** ```html

table width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; th, td border: 1px solid black; padding: 10px; text-align: left; th background-color: #f2f2f2; Con Impact on User Experience Controversial Opinions Some perspectives may alienate users who disagree, potentially impacting their overall enjoyment of the book. Complex Concepts The discussion of intricate ideas might be overwhelming for users without a background in these subjects. Broad Overviews Important events and figures might be summarized too briefly, leaving users wanting more detailed information. Historical Interpretation The book's interpretation of events may conflict with users' pre-existing knowledge, creating cognitive dissonance. Lack of Depth in Certain Areas Generalist approach can lead to oversimplification, potentially misinforming users or omitting nuanced understanding. ``` Evaluate the Author's Background and Expertise When looking to purchase Sapiens or books similar in scope, it is imperative to consider the author's qualifications and past works. A credible author with a solid background in the subject matter is more likely to provide accurate information and insightful analysis. Yuval Noah Harari, the author of Sapiens, is a historian and professor, with a Ph.D. in History. His expertise is instrumental in framing the historical narratives presented in the book. As a buyer, you should research the author's academic and professional background, check their previous publications, and read reviews from reputable sources to gauge their authority on the topic. Understand the Book's Approach and Scope The book's methodology in addressing its theme is another critical factor. Sapiens tackles the vast history of humankind from a unique interdisciplinary approach that combines history with biology, anthropology, and economics. As a potential reader, determine if the book's angle appeals to you and if it covers the historical periods or aspects of human evolution you are most interested in. It's also helpful to identify whether the book promotes a specific perspective and how this might align with your interests or academic requirements.

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roundedloaf · 4 years ago

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I have a friend who is taking a course on how climate change is represented in literature. The general thesis of the course, she tells me is “novels are shit at dealing with climate change, because they are character based works and can’t deal with systemic issues“. No hero can stop global warming

anyway Im back on brains instead of Murderbot disease so....

Murderbot is a character based story that is at it’s thematic fundamentals about how unchecked capitalism turns people into things. How these systems stop the ability of human kindness and compassion, how easy it can become to hide someone’s personhood behind a mask, on a spreadsheet about a backwater colony, behind contracts and the bottom line or as a ‘hostage of conditional value’.

Murderbot interfaces with these ideas and the ideas of capitalism as a system through the effects on the characters but also through never giving a face or single personified cause of these problems.

The ‘villains’ that characters interact with are lower level lackeys and supervisors, or people twisting the uncaring system to give themselves more power. Tlacey isn’t just a problem because she’s awful, she’s a problem because within her society she’s able to have significant unchecked power on individual people with no fear of repercussion.

@uovoc‘s post about how The Murderbot Diaries is a story with crappy people but not villains also gets into this

Larger antagonistic powers such as The Company or the Corporation Rim as a whole are never personified as something that could simply - by someone clever enough - be defeated. Individual people and small groups can be saved but the only methods offered for lasting change - Preservation Law changes regarding constructs, Bharadwaj’s documentary - are the types we see in real life.

This can be compared this to something like Space Sweepers which personifies capitalism to their evil-Elon-Musk-CEO-villain. Saving the world from capitalism’s horrors is reduced to just stopping his one individual plan, after which the world magically gets better. The problems that lead to that state of the world never need to be addressed.

(Space Sweepers is super good tho! You should watch it. There are robots and pew pew space battles and it has a real sweet heart.)

Murderbot’s solutions also have that element of fantasy: the very good but still slightly imperfect Home. As a book series however it succeeds in a far more nuanced take on capitalism by not allowing the core systemic problem to have a single heroic solution.

#murderbot #the murderbot diaries #loaf to void #no proper editing we write in the tumblr post editor like men #also climate change is far harder to deal with than this #capitalism is a primarily human problem about the way our society is built #cc is far more diffuse its cause and effect harder to trace

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bamf-jaskier · 4 years ago

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A long ramble of thoughts about the history of chaos on the continent and why Fringilla’s use of forbidden magics is pretty neat

So one thing not too many people knowing about the Witcher is that magic is called Chaos for a very specific reason: it is the opposite of Order. In Sword of Destiny, Borch tells Geralt that Chaos is the aggressor and Order is endangered and needs protecting. Chaos is what mages/elves/witchers/sources/etc can channel in order to produce magic.

It's important to note that magic DID NOT EXIST before the conjunction of the spheres so it's pretty strongly implied that before the conjunction Order and Chaos were one and the Conjunction split them apart, leaving Order vulnerable and Chaos in the hands of living beings to manipulate. When the conjunction happened, no race (humans, elves, werebubbs, etc) knew how to use magic but eventually most of them found a way to use chaos.

What is interesting is that we are told that Witchers/Mages/Elves all see magic differently but we are never told how. It is mentioned briefly that mages "pervert" magic by the Elves but we don't know what perversion of magic looks like to the elves because it is subjective to their own worldview. However, looking at the earliest human tribes on the continent, the Dauk and the Wozgor we can get some idea of the difference between human magic and elf magic. Both groups were very influenced by ritualistic group magic as well as worship of the gods. Many of these gods such as Melitele are still worshipped.

The Dauk were more into fertility and harvest, think early Beltane Midsummer stuff, while the Wozgor primarily worshipped Lilit with Blood Sacrifices. So we see humans are in a group-mentality when it comes to magic and summoning, they pull power from the earth and pool together their magic to create spells. At this time, elves and humans were not considered enemies so group-magic and more nature-esque magic is accepted by the elves. This is also supported by the dryads and elves seeming to prefer druids who still use magic group-magic today.

So now we start to get into when the philosophical schism on magic happened. Clearly, at some point, humans started working on less "group/nature magic" and on more individualistic magic. By the nature of chaos it is consuming so as more humans began working on individual magic, they became more power hungry. I had a theory that it was human's use of individualized magic that led them to leaving the nomadic tribe mentality and instead moving to more Nordling-Like culture where they live in one place and fight with other tribes, eventually building cities, colonizing, and in general taking the standard course of human history. So now humans have magic. And they have POWER.

So you get mages who are fighting for their tribes, their groups and eventually kingdoms like Novigrad begin to form. Now the Brotherhood was formed in the 8th century by the Novigrad Union which was a group of druids, mages, and priests who signed a non-agression pact to stop the raids and warfare that were so common for centuries. However, the Union fell apart due to difference in views on magic while the Brotherhood stayed together.

The Brotherhood is now sort of the ruling party on the continent, it's the only power really left after the Union. It's not its own Kingdom so it can technically be considered neutral. This puts a lot of responsibility on the Brotherhood and the Northern Rulers are overwhelmed by the number of monsters. Previously, humans were so focused on killing each other they couldn't really organize and do anything about the monsters but now that society is developing it's a real problem for trade and travel. so they create the first Witchers in Rissberg. However, once they find out that the Witcher don't have the same magic aptitude as mages, they are discarded as failed experiments.

This is where is gets interesting again for me. Because Witchers actually can cast magic as strong as mages, they elect to use signs but Witchers can pool their magic together in order to cast more powerful spells. So what was the difference between mages and witcher that had the mages deem Witchers as failures? I am theorizing that Witchers channel chaos whereas mages manipulate it.

The way I describe it in my fic is that Witchers act as a conduit for chaos, think of it like sucking up magic into a straw, the Witcher is the straw, they bring chaos in it's purest form into the world. Then, once the magic is in our realm, they shape it into the spell or form they desire. It's similar to how elves and ancient humans used magic. This is why the elves don't call a Witcher's magic a perversion but a mage's magic is.

I'm theorizing that Mages on the the other hand bring magic in through almost a mold. When a mage summons chaos, that chaos can only be used for the very specific purpose that they want in that moment. It ties into their philosophy on willpower. What you desire is the magic you have. So a Witcher could begin to cast an Aard and then halfway through change the sign into an Igni and it would work fine. However, a mage can't begin to cast a portal and then change it into a lightning bolt. But this is also the reason mages are so powerful, their magic is specific. It is decided and the willpower behind it makes it a stronger spell.

NOW FINALLY we can begin talking about forbidden magics. So I'm not going to get into the First and Second Ages of the Witchers but just know that Witchers are now off on the continent doing their own thing and monster hunting, creating their own culture, etc. The Brotherhood does NOT care for this. They can see control slipping from their fingers so they and they are worried other mages are going to experiment the same way they experimented to create Witchers but this time they will make something even more powerful. Something that could topple their power.

The Brotherhood begins to ban magic that could be used to manipulate the natural order. The main three banned magics of the Brotherhood are Goetia (demonology), Necromancy and Ancient Magics. Now demonology was actually practiced by the Wozgor and many think that Lilit was actually a demon they summoned. Necromancy and Ancient Magics both have the potential for abuse but not more so than any other form of magic. However these are all powerful magics. But it's not just BANNING magic that creates censure with the brotherhood. It's the stringent guidelines of how to perform magic even though we KNOW there are multiple ways to channel chaos. The Brotherhood also creates a system with the court that also creates censure because courtly expectations now place an emphasis on respectability and governance and how you should hold yourself, etc. Being a mage becomes a lot more restrictive and a lot less experimental.

So we have to ask ourselves, what does Fringilla do that causes her to be considered abhorrent, In Tissaia's words: "I will defend our way of life, The Brotherhood, The Academies, the order that we have built up over centuries, you've rejected it all Fringilla"

So here's what we KNOW Fringilla has done: Forced Mages in Servitude until they decide to serve the White Flame (of course Fringilla says it isn't servitude but Triss disagrees), Practice Necromancy, Demonology, and Fire Magics She specifically says the phrase "most of us came from Aretuza and Ban Ard" so here's what we have to consider, how did Fringilla get them there, she can't have kidnapped everyone and as well if u know some spoilers from the book then there are plenty of mages that voluntary work for Nilfgaard.

Fringilla works with ANYONE who has chaos, not just people deemed worthy by the Brotherhood. In addition, she works will all magic, no limitations. In many ways, Nilfgaardian magic is returning to ancient magic. If you watch the battle at Sodden, the mages perform a lot of life-force spells. I have a theory that those types of spells are MEANT to be performed in groups and since they aren't, the mage withers and dies.

Also, listen, in another world Nilfgaard could be the hero. If they didn't show Nilfgaard being generally evil like killing everyone and sacrificing mages and stuff they actually have good reasoning? Cintra is objectively terrible. They literally almost killed off an entire race? The Genocide of the Elves is very much brushed over and honestly Cintra should have been overthrown ages ago. Also Nilfgaard has policies of cooperativity and community and honestly if they didn't so morally bereft acts their society has a lot of potential.

Fringilla is returning magic to how to was pre-brotherhood where it's groups of loosely defined mages doing what they want. She is also trying to break of the individualistic mindset of most mages which I think is interesting because it goes against the very soul of how mages perform magic. It's like Tissaia said, Fringilla is rejecting centuries of tradition. In any other world, Fringilla would be the Katniss to the Brotherhood's Capital. If Nilfgaard wasn't cast as so brutal they would literally be considered a revolutionary force trying to oust a genocidal dictatorial system (Cintra). Granted, many people have compared Nilfgaard to either being a Roman Empire or Soviet Russia analog, both brutal totalitarian or imperial regimes which probably is part of the reason Nilfgaard is so brutal. I am suggesting that in another universe, Nilfgaard could be instead of an imperial-religious-type regime a more revolutionary force.

Perhaps an AU where Nilfgaard teams up with Cintran Rebels and arrives at the city to help Cintran Freedom Fighters tear it down and then allows Cintra to rebuild on their own terms. Basically, I’m talking about the overthrow of the monarchy system present in most of the continent.

I would really like to see an AU where Fringilla is a revolutionary figurehead trying to work to establish a democratic system in a monarchal society while going against centuries of magical tradition. I think with the addition of magic and complexity of politics not the continent there’s just so much to think about here.

#listen #if anyone #and I mean literally anyone #read to the end of this you are a hero #I know a lot of world building stuff about the Witcher and I like to talk about it #honestly I might write out this Fringilla thing myself #cause fucking hell it sounds very cool once I said it #but I have no time for WIPs #whatever #I don't care #let's GO #lemme know if you liked this at all #the witcher #fringilla #worldbuilding #nilfgaard #cintra #myposts

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everydayanth · 5 years ago

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Let’s talk about talking about politics! Yay! Everyone’s favorite!

Over the past few weeks/months/years, I have had this strange insider seat to a bunch of criminal justice/poly sci professionals (as in, they get paid as professors or scientists or compliance officers, etc.) as they talk about politics and get angry at the general public for our lack of understanding, without having the patience to teach or explain.

Two problems: 1. the ivory tower issue of watching and not actively engaging in the social part of social science, but as their friend, I will note much of this comes from burnout through negative engagement and attacks; 2. expecting others to have had an adequate education to even know many of these tools exist in order to discuss things beyond our average public school education that cuts out Fridays and makes random half days because we can’t afford teachers or textbooks.

As an awkward observer, here are some things I never talked about in school, despite having a better political/civil/economics education included in my curriculum than many of my friends:

1. When we vote for someone, we are voting on a trend in politics. Not as a result, but a direction to move, and most voters vote for the candidate who is closest to their current values already, rather than following the trend of voting for who would move policy to match their needs.

2. Our values change far more than we think they do and they almost always align with a problem we require a solution to or a fear we would like to stabilize or go away, such as property taxes. Because we need to trust the person to solve our problems, especially if we are projecting large fears, candidates who are most likable. We don’t like to stir the pot, we just want it to go where we want, fighting for something is exhausting for everyone.

3. We consider political agendas to be moral agendas but do not agree on obligations. Many feel powerless, others are powerless, we talk about responsibility, but without acknowledging those first two things, it sounds more like blame. We also imagine many things to be wishful thinking that are enacted successfully elsewhere and fail to understand or use logical reasoning to really discuss issues. Anything will be an experiment because the US is so huge, but it is a scalable experiment working in other places, often we don’t understand that until we’re abroad and sick.

4. We’re not sure how to translate policy, and our country was built by and for lawyers. There are very little areas where we agree as a society on black/white right/wrong, and in many ways that’s good, but when it comes to discussing policy, it can be very confusing.

To account for these aspects, people use charts and grids. Much like personality tests, these are useful for creating a foundation upon which to debate and discuss, but are ultimately made by humans in order to generalize and will have errors and discrepancies. But the political spectrum has rarely been the single line most of us were taught. Instead, it is often a grid used to navigate the direction and preference of trends. Most people are much more moderate than they think, but have problems that need cooperative solutions, like the water crisis and fires on the west coast, disaster relief in the south, crop failure in the midwest, and ticks and diseases in the northeast. We all have huge problems and some areas are insulated from them for now, but they will come. How we navigate and demand solutions for those problems is what creates policy and the policies we agree with because of our value is what dictates our vote.

So here’s some charts that human people made to talk about these things with and they have helped ground a lot of engaging conversations with people as I watch them argue but not get angry, because there’s a visual thing to talk around. Those kinds of tools should be everywhere.

The political compass:

via Wikipedia: political spectrum

^A generalization of what different areas might look like. I’ve seen so many versions of this, but I liked the way this one because it gave me a better understanding of words I’m more familiar with and where they fall within the broad concepts. I couldn’t find the source.

^ Here is another one from Google that took me to a shady site, so I didn’t link it, but the goal is to just be familiar with the different ways people structuralize and use definitions and terms to divide them up, in the end, the general understanding is all that matters, and our goal is to be functional, for the government to be usable by the people. Hamilton, the musical, was/is so important for many reasons, but one of the big ones is that it reminded us that this fight of trends and moving around the board has been going on since the very first election of a president to America. It’s always about one group pulling another, creating a tug-of-war that keeps us near the middle, hopefully.

This is a graph showing the individual party ideologies of past presidents by a site called Fact Myth. It is showing the party split between individuals and while we could argue and speculate about accuracies and meanings, whether a president was pushed to make a decision as a person, etc. in the end, they represent the will of the people and the trends we with to follow to solve problems at the time.

^An outline someone made of 2020 candidates on Reddit that has been going around for a while. Jake showed this to me and while he was perfectly receptive to me saying that yeah, but a person made this and they can have agendas and just put people places, he also had some really great points on how Americans often think we’re moderates, but what we perceive to be in the middle is often skewed by capitalism. That’s not to say it’s bad, simply that if we’re talking trends and problems and solutions, we have to understand where we are on the real scale, not just our own. We will also tend to vote for those who are closest to us, rather than moving in the direction of us, so, say someone sits right where Ryan is, Ryan drops out; now, despite their personal political preference being on the edge of the middle moderate square, they move to Biden rather than Warren or Sanders because Biden is closer to their original place, even if, coming from Trump, moving to Warren/Sanders would pull the political trend back toward their moderate preference.

Not everyone does this, obviously, but I’m fascinated by how our individual personalities affect how we decide politics. Are you a “next best thing” kind of person? Are you a “obsess relentlessly until it’s done” kind of person? Are you a “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke? Or what about “out of sight out of mind, doesn’t bother me, I don’t care” kind of person? So many of the ways we solve our daily problems are reflected in the ways we move our own political affiliations during voting times. I just think that’s interesting because I’m a social science nerd though.

A friend from Brown who is much older than us (also a social science nerd <3) pointed out that she grew up with such antagonizing propaganda during the cold war and beginnings of technological boom and peak oil, and it all said the same thing, anything outside the blue is morally wrong and heavily corrupt. I thought that was an interesting point about exposure and remembering past problems, how voting ages overlap to find new solutions or rely on old ones, and what it would cost us to see American politics on a global scale.

^This is a global scale of values (not politics) from the wikipedia page on political spectrums, and I thought it tied into the conversation in interesting ways, especially when we look at American generation differences in individualism and social cooperation and how they are viewed by each other to both be equally negative. There’s a whole world of solutions and different ways things our done, but we’ve been taught from birth that some are bad and others are exceptions and ours is good.

Vox has an interesting tool to figure out where abouts you would lie on the compass. I think debating it with others is a better way, since it’s a primarily relative scale (unless you prefer those structuralist ones, but keep in mind that it’s a preference, not a requirement). But I thought I’d include it for those who may not have access to that kind of conversation.

In the end, consider your morals and how they are different from your current values, and how your current values are affected by your current problems, and how you want the world to look, how you want trends to move, and how your biases of experience or ignorance might play a role in that. I honestly didn’t really think about healthcare until I was in Ireland and saw how simple an alternative was and how freeing it felt. My parents can’t even imagine it (and they are of the class who should most desire those changes), they don’t have enough of a base knowledge to understand how it works, it’s electricity after gaslamps.

Anyway, just thought I’d share some of those tools. As a skeptical person, I want to remind everyone that these are tools, not documented facts, and fighting about where people are on the graph and where we might be is part of how we come to conclusions about rights and wants and solutions and needs and what we actually value. Most of us, in the end, value comfort and hope, and we vote for the people we think provide that to us. The problem often lies in people misunderstanding their own comfort and relying on ignorance rather than hope. I found these graphs useful in grounding my talks with overwhelming professionals and finding some semblance of peace in what I wanted to hope for and I hope maybe for some of you they can provide that as well. ❤️

If, like me, you reached your 20s and realized a gaping hole in your education, I also recommend the Crash Course series on US Politics. It helped me understand a lot of things that were skimmed over in textbooks or left as multiple choice answers on a standardized test. Politics are a series of solutions to the problems we face as a social group, and knowing how to talk about them completely changed my own feelings of helplessness when communicating to others.

#politics #political spectrum #political compass #education #american politics #voting #policy #society #sociology #anthropology #discussion #education access #crash course

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lyfestile · 4 years ago

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U.S. Congressperson and former civil rights activist/organizer John Lewis was laid to rest today. His service took place at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. The ministerial home of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 50s and 60s, Ebenezer has a long history with African people’s struggle for freedom and justice. That’s why its surreal that we find ourselves in a place today where someone like Bill Clinton can be welcomed into the pulpit at Ebenezer to offer an opinion on the correct path African people must take to achieve our forward progress. Clinton, of course, was the 42nd president of the U.S. empire. His claim to fame while being president was fooling scores of Africans into believing that he was our friend. It wasn’t until Obama was elected in 2008 that some African people stopped referring to Clinton as “our first Black president.” Underneath the superficial character presentation of Clinton existed a politician who built, along with his wife and many other opportunists a colossal industry based on imprisoning African people in this country. The Omnibus Crime bill, passed during Clinton’s tenure in 1994, proliferated incarceration rates, primarily of poor and African and/or Indigenous peoples, at record rates. And, yet, despite that clear legacy of harm caused against our people, we still invite someone like this to speak in one of our most storied and respected churches.

As a result, it should come as no surprise that Clinton used his opportunity to honor Lewis by taking a swipe at the legacy of Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael). Ture, was the organizer within the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) who unseated Lewis as chairperson of SNCC in 1966, thus signaling SNCC’s turn towards much more militant politics. In Clinton’s words, this nation is in such a better place because Lewis refused to continue within SNCC after “Stokely.”

Of course, the position advanced by Clinton should surprise no one who has studied the history of this man. And, it was ironic that Clinton reminisced during his Lewis speech about “being with Jesse Jackson” because it was Jackson who was at the center of one of Clinton’s first clear indications of what type of snake he really was. During his 1992 presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush (the first Bush president), Clinton used a traditional Southern Strategy race baiting tactic to call out Jesse Jackson, who at that time was considered one of the leading civil rights leaders in the U.S. Clinton did this by making a public reference to Jackson having some type of political comradery with then so-called “Blacktivist”, rapper, Sista Souljah who had made a name for herself by calling out white supremacy in uncompromising terms. Clinton, in a direct appeal to bourgeoisie voters, primarily European ones, attacked Jackson at that time as pandering to racist African militancy.

In some ways, what Clinton said today about Kwame Ture is a continuation of those politics of respectability and accommodation. That the only right way we could ever advance our struggle for justice is by adopting positions that did not challenge the very existence of the power structure. Instead, the “responsible” way to struggle is always that of waiting, being patient, and working within the very system that keeps us oppressed. Clinton’s comments were opportunistic and designed to send a message to our people at a time when the very foundation of this system is being questioned in many ways. Clinton’s message? Don’t stray too far away from the master. Stay within this system and you will be rewarded. Resist, and you will be punished. It would be hard to find much fundamental difference between what Clinton said today and what Trump says every-day. Plus, its highly doubtful that Lewis himself would have agreed with the characterization that Clinton gave regarding SNCC’s direction in 1966. Now, I doubt there is even 2% of what Lewis believed that I agree with, but one thing I do know is that even after an initial period of distance after that 1966 election, Lewis evolved to a place where he eventually had a positive relationship with Kwame Ture. He even came and participated directly in the dinner honoring Kwame’s life shortly before Kwame made his own physical transition back in 1997.

The bourgeoisie are the spokespersons for the international capitalist/Imperialist network which is led by the U.S. And, Clinton is undoubtedly a member of the bourgeoisie class. Every U.S. president is a member of this class, including Obama. Their roles after leaving the presidential office are to continue to advance the values of capitalism, which cannot happen without also advancing white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, and all the forms of injustice that capitalism thrives on. Obama does this routinely as does Clinton. Its their class responsibility. The bigger problem is that so many of us have no understanding of history, and no desire to have an understanding, that when these people distort our history, we don’t have the tools to effectively push back. For example, if someone was to say, as Clinton did today, that SNCC, under Kwame Ture’s leadership (and later Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, formally H. Rap Brown, and then Phil Hutchings), went downhill and Lewis left to preserve some level of dignity while those wild Africans ran the organization into the ground, it would be necessary for you to have the proper understanding of SNCC history to place Clinton’s comments in the garbage can where they belong. You can do that by understanding what happened to SNCC after Kwame became the chairperson of the organization. What happened is the launching of the most recent Black power movement. The bourgeoisie want you to define that era in the late sixties by the hundreds of urban rebellions, but we employ you not to back down from that challenge. Even Dr. King knew that urban rebellions are the voice of the voiceless. In other words, when people are in pain, they lash out. When a child touches a hot stove, they don’t start singing a song and playing. Urban rebellions are reflections of this system’s inability or desire to change oppressive conditions, so people lash out. If people don’t want people lashing out, care more about people unjustly losing their lives than you do about property being attacked as a result of this glaring human contradiction. Besides that, what SNCC actually accomplished through the Black power movement was a mass awakening that we as a people have the right to exist in a manner consistent with our values and culture, regardless of how European society feels or thinks about it. Without that movement, there would be no Black Lives Matter movement. There would probably be no LGBTQ movement or women’s movements. No physically challenged movement. All of those evolved as a result of the Black power movement. And, that developing consciousness led to SNCC taking a revolutionary position against the Vietnam war. In fact, as quiet as its kept, it was SNCC that led the smash the draft movement. They were the ones who popularized the saying “hell no, we won’t go!” (a Kwame classic), and they were the first national organization at the time (with respect to the Nation of Islam) to take a national position against zionism and in support of the Palestinian people. Clearly, all of those things have advanced and evolved to become mainstream elements of the social movements you are seeing in action today and none of this could be happening without the contributions of the more militant SNCC, led in party by Kwame Ture. So, clearly, there was no moral imperative to part “from Stokely” as Clinton implied in his boring and absurd comments earlier today.

#ripjohnlewis #kwame ture #bill clinton #barack obama #sncc #black power

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continuations · 6 years ago

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World After Capital: Getting Past Capital (Attention)

NOTE: Today’s excerpt from World After Capital is about attention. It argues why attention is scarce in the sense of scarcity introduced earlier in the book. This section sets up the demands on attention and then talks about scarcity of attention for the individual (next time will look at scarcity of attention for society as a whole).

Attention

There is a limited amount of human attention in the world. We have 24 hours in the day and we need to spend some of that time eating and sleeping. For many people in the world much of their waking time is occupied by the job loop (both the earning and the spending parts). That leaves relatively little time for attention that we can freely allocate. This hard limit also exists in the aggregate, since—as I have argued earlier—we are headed for peak population.

At the same time that our attention is limited, we are using the Internet to dramatically increase the amount of available content. The increase in content is well documented to be exponential, which means that most of the content that has ever been produced by humanity has been produced in the last few years [47]. For example, YouTube alone is adding 100 hours of new video content every minute [48].

As a result, it is easy today to be completely overwhelmed by content. Our limited attention can readily be absorbed by ever refreshing content. Humans are maladapted to the information environment we now live in. Our brain evolved in a world where when you saw a cat, there was an actual cat. Now we live in a world of infinite cat pictures. This is analogous to our maladaptation to sugar for an environment that is now sugar rich (largely artificially so). Checking email, Twitter, Instagram, watching yet another YouTube clip or Snapchat story, or episode of one's favorite show on a streaming service—these all provide quick “information hits” that trigger parts of our brain that evolved to be stimulated by novelty. As of 2017, the average person spends roughly two hours on social media every day [49].

The limited availability of attention has become the key new source of economic rents. Companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter are valued in no small part based on the amount of attention they have been able to aggregate, some of which they then resell in the form of advertising. As a result they invest heavily in algorithms designed to present ever more captivating content to their end users in order to monopolize their attention. Sites like Buzzfeed and Huffington Post that are nominally news sites do the same.

Now even if you think this is problematic, does it mean attention is scarce in the precise meaning of scarcity that I defined earlier? That would require for us to not have enough attention to meet humanity's basic needs. Is that really the case?

Individual Attention Scarcity

Let's first consider attention at the individual level. All over the world people have constructed their identities around work and around firmly held core beliefs, whether religious or worldly. Both of these are undermined by digital technologies. We saw earlier how digital technology is putting pressure on labor. It is also putting pressure though on firmly held beliefs. Content is no longer easily contained in geographic boundaries and people are being exposed, many for the first time, to opinions and behaviors that diverge from their core beliefs.

In combination, this pressure is leading to a large scale crisis of individual identity and rising aggression both online and offline. This crisis takes many different forms, including increased teenage depression, growing adult suicide rates—particularly among middle-aged white males, and drug overdose deaths. In the US, these have increased almost 60 percent, 20 percent and 40 percent, respectively, between 2006 and 2015 [need more up-to-date statistics]:

This is not dissimilar from the beginning of the Industrial Age, when people had to leave the countryside and move to big cities. They were forced to give up identities that had been constructed around land and a historical set of professions. They were confronted with people from other regions who held different beliefs.

Just as with the transition into the Industrial Age it is therefore not surprising that there is a rise in populist leaders with simplistic messages, such as Donald Trump in the United States and Viktor Orban in Hungary. A recent study found that throughout Europe, populist parties are receiving more than double their average share of the vote in national and parliamentary elections compared with the 1960s [50]. People whose identity is shaken want to be reassured. They want to hear that things will be OK and that the way of getting there is simple. “Make America Great Again” is an example of that. So is ISIS. In both cases the message is retrograde. Instead of a new identity that has to be built, requiring time and effort, these backward movements promise an easy return to a glorious identity of the past.

Our attention to our most basic need, the existential need to make sense of the world as an individual by finding a purpose that makes our life meaningful, is scarce. Instead we let our attention be occupied by our job or by yet another video or worse by propaganda. This individual scarcity of attention is not confined to any one demographic. Definitely people who have to work multiple jobs just to make rent and feed their families are impacted. But so are many people in high paying jobs who are often working more hours today than they ever have.

I do a fair bit of counseling for young people who want to work for a technology startup or who want to enter venture capital. Most of them are looking for tactical advice, such as how to apply to a specific position. After discussing that for some time, I usually switch gears and ask them a much more open question. “What do you want from your next position?” That often elicits answers such as learning a new skill, or applying a skill that they have recently learned. Sometimes people answer with a desire to contribute to some cause. I then get to the point by asking directly “What is your purpose?” Shockingly few people have an answer to that.

Purpose is an individual need for which the Industrial Age had little use. Somebody with a strong sense of purpose does not fit readily into the job loop either as a worker or as a consumer. Instead work and consumption have become the de facto purpose for most people. Both the cultural and religious narratives adjusted from the Agrarian Age to the Industrial age to support this re-definition of purpose.

With digital technology we can now exit the job loop and redirect attention to finding other sources of purpose. Instead though we are using digital technology to aggregate attention primarily for resale (advertising) and for entertainment. We do not identify this as a fundamental problem of the largest platforms, focusing instead on areas such as privacy and moderation of speech. That's because we continue to see the world through the lens of capital scarcity instead of attention scarcity.

#world after capital #attention

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lovesantoshblr · 3 years ago

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What is the scope of Digital marketing in India After the COVID-19 Pandemic?

It is safe to say 2020-21 was an exceptional year and 2022 will not be the same. What can marketers learn from this pandemic when they think about building brands in 2020-21 and beyond? What can we do for companies to grow faster? What is the future of marketing in this age of Covid-19 and how can it be redefined?

Visit us - www.nidmindia.com

These questions are critical for marketing success over the coming months and years. In the past few months, I have been comparing what my 20-year career in marketing and media has taught me with what we all learned in this one year of massive change. Particularly, I identified 10 ways that the pandemic challenged fundamental truths about marketing and provided us with a new set of rules for moving forward.

1. An old truth: Marketing starts with understanding your customer.

A new truth: Marketing starts with understanding your customer segments.

We know that brands need to communicate with specific consumers in localized and precise terms. This is based on the consumer's circumstances and what is most important to them. This means understanding the local situation, country by country, in every state and zip code. It may also mean tailoring communications store to store for some businesses like banks, restaurants, or retailers.

Marketing messages must be relevant to the individual, not just geography. To create a human connection in commercial messages, it is necessary to define consumer segments. These are people who can be described according to multiple dimensions that affect their buying behavior.

Five waves of research were conducted by EY Future Consumer Index with more than 14,500 people in 20 countries. The index has identified five distinct cohorts of consumers.

The affordability of housing is the first priority (32% of consumers). Living within their means and spending less on brands, and focusing more on product functionality.

Health first(25%)They need to protect their health and the health of their families by choosing safe products and minimizing risk when they shop.

The Planet First (16%)They will try to reduce their environmental impact and buy brands that reflect their beliefs.

Society first (15%) Buys from transparent and honest organizations to work together for the greater good.

Try it first (12%)To make the most out of life, live in the moment. This opens them up to new brands, products, and experiences.

Using customer segmentation and personas to gain deeper insight into media strategies and creative marketing methods can be very useful. These insights can also be used to help you understand the customer journey.

2. An old truth: You compete with your competition.

A new truth: Your customer's last great experience is your competition.

Before Covid-19, consumer expectations were on the rise. Generation Z was raised with technology integrated seamlessly into their daily lives. Because they are adept at our personal data, direct-to-consumer businesses (like Parachute or Glossier) had already taught us to expect hyper-personalization.

Digital transformation was accelerated by the coronavirus. Consumer expectations of digital transformation soared as a result. Customer expectations go beyond seamless digital transactions. This is what Carla Hassan (City's chief marketing officer), explained earlier this summer to me. Companies now have access to their customers' personal data and want personalized, anticipatory experiences throughout the customer journey.

To meet customers' increasing expectations, companies should adopt three strategies:

Brand scores should be a key KPI in customer-facing organizations. This can be done using real-time analytics, rather than looking backward from a point in the past.

To support customer use cases, you must have the right technology and data foundation.

Align your individual and collective goals throughout the customer journey to ensure that any gaps between functional silos, such as marketing, sales, or customer service, are not visible to your end customer.

3. Old truth: Customers want what you have.

A new truth: Customers expect you have exactly what they want.

We must strive for new customer experience values in both B2C as well as B2B settings if the bar is not set higher. Today's consumers expect seamless, connected, intuitive, timely, and relevant experiences. They are focused on getting what they want when they want it. They insist on their independence and will not be stopped.

These experiences require companies to put data and technology at their core. This will likely mean that machine learning and/or artificial intelligence are part of the mix. Why? Because data allows us to create more relevant experiences across a number of dimensions of the four Cs.

You can provide content in the form of emails or mobile apps.

Commerce can be described as either physical retail or e-commerce.

The community can be as simple as gathering B2B buyers at an online trade show or hosting a webinar about home repair for consumers;

Convenience: This could be offering customers coupons or benefits through a loyalty program.

Currently, the majority of the 4Cs can be delivered in a "one-size-fits-all" approach. However, as consumers demand more personalization, companies will need greater data and intelligence to improve their decision-making, drive greater relevance in customer interactions, and build stronger human connections with their brands.

4. An old truth: Courting customers is like dating.

Neue Truth: It is not difficult to court customers.

online dating.

Marketing was for a long time about purchasing mass reach, or targeted reach, at the highest rates in media and hoping it converts. It was basically like going to as many bars and parties as possible in the hope of meeting that special person. It was full of serendipity and spontaneity. There were many face-to-face encounters.

Swipe through dating apps and online dating. Finding your perfect match is less about luck than it is about data and algorithms. Marketing terms have changed from brand marketing to increase reach to performance marketing to generate leads. This trend was only made worse by the rapid growth of digital channels in response to the pandemic.

While performance marketing is an important part of the mix, CMOs must recognize that it is a delicate balance between brand and performance that produces the best results. They must also fight against any bias towards the most quantifiable. Many CMOs are now bringing their customer relations management (CRM), team closer to their media teams in order to better understand the entire continuum and increase efficiency. CRM is powered primarily by first-party data or customer data that the company has (with consent from the consumer), and is the driving force behind initiatives such as couponing, personalization, and email marketing.

This first-party data can be used to increase media efficiency, especially digital media. It allows companies to target customers on a one-to-1 basis. Third-party data is losing value as the key browsers introduce rule changes in January 2022. Marketers are becoming better at designing the online "dates", learning new ways to harness their data, and creating new partnerships with publishers. Even though the dating (or targeting) strategies will change with the new rules, it is important that companies allow for both brand performance marketing and bottom-funnel strategy to drive top-funnel goals. They work together better.

5. An old truth: Customers should be at the center of your marketing strategy.

A new truth: Your customer journey must include customers.

Customer-centricity is not a new concept. But, functional silos that interact directly with customers often become disconnected due to geography, politics, org charts, and technologies. It is difficult to conceal these internal gaps from customers, who assume that the entire company knows about them. All of us have called customer service to speak with a chatbot or call center representative who did not know the exact location of a retail store.

Marketing is only one part of a relationship with a customer. In a B2C context, we engage them, convert them to a sale either directly or indirectly, and hopefully retain them so that they become advocates and open to cross-sells and upsells. Marketers must view marketing in the context of the entire end-to-end process and work to connect all the dots where possible.

It is unrealistic to assume that all customer-facing functions could or should report to the exact same location. It is common to believe that reorganization will solve all problems. It is much more important to examine the operating model carefully and to consider the technologies, processes, talent, data models, and KPIs in order to identify the best ways to align the operations around customers' needs and then drive change.

6. 6.Truth: Relationships are important.

NeueTruth: Relationships matter.

Building trusting relationships with customers is essential. For example, advertising makes a promise, and then it falls on the product, customer experience, and service to fulfill that promise.

Covid-19, however, has placed a greater emphasis on relationships in B2B sales. With virtual sales, existing relationships have helped teams to retain revenue momentum and capitalize on their previous bonds. Prospecting for new customers requires a different set of skills.

Trust and integrity are essential to driving market momentum in both cases. This has required a significant recasting of talent for sales and marketing executives in B2B companies. They need to find people who are best suited to drive relationships in the new world of online interactions. A world that is less dependent on charm and even expense accounts and more on solutions and insights. Trust will be built and rewarded by those who listen to customers and create solutions.

Trust is also crucial in a B2C environment. Trust is essential to the value exchange between a business and a customer. Companies rely more on the personal data they get from consumers. They must comply with regulations and secure the data. However, companies also have the chance to build loyalty and differentiation by creating more transparent privacy controls interfaces. Clearer information will help consumers make better decisions and foster trust.

7. An old truth: Agility can be described as a technological process.

A new truth: Agility is a modern marketing strategy.

For years, we have known that agile cycles are better than a linear or sequential "waterfall" approach to technological development. Covid-19 set an unstoppable trend in marketing to adopt a similar agile mentality. A company might quickly discover that its message is not correct or that its supply chain is not ready to deliver. This could lead to a crisis in advertising and public relations. Imagine a commercial that shows people grouped together, but not showing social distancing. The traditional approval mechanisms became restrictive and long-lead creative processes felt obsolete.

It was a fortunate outcome that the crisis created a mindset of marketing agility, which is likely to last. Continuous consumer listening and demand sensing are essential for marketing to be able to capitalize on the current zeitgeist of consumer sentiment. It also allows for faster decision-making and greater flexibility in key areas such as budgeting, creativity, and media.

8. An old truth: Great products should be the foundation of your brand.

A new truth: Your brand must stand behind great values.

Brand loyalty was severely affected by the pandemic. EY Future Consumer Index showed that 61% of consumers were willing to switch to white label products, regardless of the category. This dynamic, combined with the growing consumer awareness and activism triggered by the 2020 social unrest, should lead brands to be very focused on the values that they represent.

EY research shows that, while price, convenience, and quality still matter, consumers are now more concerned about factors such as trust, ethical sourcing, and social responsibility when choosing products and services. Marketing has the opportunity to educate the C-suite and the board about the importance of brand values in order to differentiate in a post-pandemic market where consumer preferences have changed.

9. An old truth: Modern marketing requires the right technology stack.

Neue Truth is, modern marketing requires a balance of factors.

It has become easy to see the "tech stack" as the ultimate marketing tool. It is useless to drive 40 mph in a Ferrari.

Your technology architecture must be well-matched with the right data, use cases, and a human enablement approach in order to achieve results. This last requirement is probably the most crucial. Human enablement is about understanding the use of data and technology across an organization and making sure people have the skills and the measurement tools to encourage innovation and success. The desired return on investment in marketing technology cannot be achieved without technology, data, human capability, and the right use cases.

10. An old truth: Marketing is essential for growth.

A new truth: Marketing is the core of the growth agenda for all C-suite executives.

Marketing was, undoubtedly, a cost center in companies during times when the primary responsibility was to maximize return-on-investment. It was often the first area to be cut in difficult times when topliner results were compromised.

Marketing has been elevated to the top of the C-suite during the pandemic as a leader in digital transformation, a key player in the customer journey, and a voice for the consumer. All of these are vital functions that other functional leaders must understand. The C-suite must understand the market zeitgeist in order to adapt to new opportunities and navigate the future.

Covid-19 has established a culture of leadership that encourages immediate collaboration and focuses on the urgent need to build resilience. Marketers now have the chance to play a central role in this dialogue and drive the organization's wider growth and innovation agenda.

Science and art

Marketers are responsible for balancing science and art. To unlock the future of better analytics, and to enable AI deployment at scale, we must find the perfect balance between humans and technology. To create meaningful human connections, we must both use data and respect the art of storytelling. It is important to distinguish between branding and performance marketing. We recognize that our current bias towards what can be easily quantified makes it difficult for us to maintain a balance. We must also understand the difference between what should be centralized and what should not, and identify where consistency is helpful and hindering.

These new marketing truths reflect this mix, highlighting the convergence of strategies, operations, and technologies needed to drive growth in a post-Covid-19 world. These are the keys to long-term recovery from pandemics and success. A period of adjustment will be required for marketers and companies that are accustomed to the old ways. Even in this period of change, it is possible to find comfort and confidence in the most basic and crucial truth: The customer's perspective must be prioritized now, next, and above all else.

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amateurthinker · 5 years ago

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A Proposal for Parliamentary Socialism

In this opinion piece, I will attempt to outline my ideas about what a socialist society should look like and why, how it could be implemented in the United States and how it should operate after it has been implemented.

TL:DR, the most notable details are:

I start from family values theory rather than class analysis. I propose protecting democratic institutions from conservatives by disenfranchising chauvinists, and with constitutional protections of socialist principles.

=== Contents ===

Foundation

Family Values

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Life

Liberty

The Pursuit of Happiness

Creating a Socialist Economy

Seizure of Production

A Social Market

Open Source

Revolution

Constitution

Protected Rights

Treason

Socialist Democracy

Native Americans

Policies

Dechauvinism

Dealing with Terrorists and Counter-Revolutionaries

Green Transformation

Law Enforcement

Native Americans

Gun Control

=== Foundation ===

Family Values

According to family values theory, human reasoning combines logic with an emotional attachment to their values. More specifically, when humans try to reason through any question, they rely on one of two biological value systems; strict father family values or nurturant family values.

Strict father family values are based primarily on hierarchical dichotomies between masculinity vs femininity, strength vs weakness, discipline vs licentiousness and punishment vs reward. The association of these values with stereotypes leads to every form of chauvinism (eg classism, sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transmisogyny, etc.). While some people may have an inherent bias towards chauvinist thinking, every human is capable of it, and both fear and privileged circumstances encourage it.

Nurturant family values are based primarily on empathy, fairness and happiness. These values underlie both the social justice movements and socialism, and are incompatible with chauvinism. Notice also that while this value system is gender-neutral, those who consider it from the perspective of the strict father model must categorize it as feminine, because from that perspective it is “the other” and therefore “lesser than”.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

I submit that economic systems can be characterized in terms of family value systems. Capitalism is inherently chauvinistic, in that it is (at minimum) a straightforward application of classism. Moreover, every other form of chauvinism can and has been employed by capitalists to enhance their wealth and power, naturally at the expense of others. This makes capitalism incompatible with the principles of empathy, fairness and happiness, with the natural result that capitalist societies tend to be cruel, unjust and miserable.

Socialism (the essential idea that workers have power over what happens to them in the workplace) is motivated by nurturant family values (i.e. fairness and empathy), and therefore good socialist systems are designed to maximize empathy, fairness and happiness. I submit that socialism is naturally fulfills the Declaration of Independence’s primary goals of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. In this document, I intend to suggest a form of socialism that I believe can best fulfill those goals.

Life

The model for a sane society should be “survival is free, but you must work for luxury”. Providing the necessities of life should reduce the death, sickness, exploitation (both in the workplace and in the home) and misery that result from not having these things, while allowing a market for luxuries should provide an attractive incentive for people to work (especially for jobs that are necessary but not as exciting or enjoyable as others). The arts would be stimulated, since starvation would no longer be a barrier to pursuing that work full-time.

The basic survival needs that should be provided to everyone by the state without charge, including:

housing

food

water

clothing

hygiene products

health care

abuse shelters

sanitation

baby supplies

In addition to these, these other services should be provided by the state without charge, as an investment in the health and productivity of the nation, and as a way to reduce overhead costs for individual proprietorships:

education

mass transit

child care

electricity

While loss of life is an inevitable consequence of armed conflict, in the civilian arena the death penalty should be abolished. There are too many downsides to allowing the state to execute people for crimes (either real or imagined), and many upsides to sentencing the worst criminals to life in prison.

War, whether declared explicitly or engaged with a political wink and a nod, has in the past been too frequently engaged in and too rarely for just causes. Any armed conflict should be approved by public referendum within thirty days of its start, and re-authorized every year by public referendum in order to continue. Without good cause for war, even a fearful public will eventually become exhausted and lose interest, and the government will be forced to withdraw.

Liberty

The justice system of the United States is built on a chauvinist premise; that bad people can be improved through punishment. According to this system, “bad people” are those who rich chauvinists dislike. Among adults, the police are the public-facing edge of this system, and their purpose is to exercise lethal force against those “bad people” who refuse to surrender. In theory, the police can exercise discretion to soften the harshness of the law, but instead they use it to subjugate marginalized communities, and they always uphold the demands of the capitalist order.

The public deserves to live free from armed occupation. The police must be fired and replaced with effective, non-oppressive alternatives. The vast majority of so-called criminals are victims of unjust laws that serve as a means of public control, and that are unequally applied. Laws against “victimless crimes” should be eliminated, people convicted for them should be freed and their criminal records should be expunged of them. Real criminal activity can be reduced dramatically with social programs that satisfy all of the basic needs of the citizenry. The need for traffic patrols should be eliminated by replacing private cars with robust public traffic networks. Many violent crimes can be prevented with non-violent approaches like the “Cure Violence” program. Property crimes, fights and other lesser crimes can be handled as civil disputes.

However, there is one class of crime that does require law enforcement, namely crimes of chauvinism. These are crimes committed by members of privileged groups against members of marginalized groups, or by those who have more power against those who have less power. The reason is that neutrality and neglect always favor the bully; therefore, some form of formal justice system is required to remove chauvinists from society and restore balance.

Examples of such crimes include terrorism, torture, sexual assault, hate crimes, hate speech, domestic abuse, child abuse, abuse of authority, violating public protections (labor, environmental, financial, etc), murder and capital accumulation.

I should make a special note about the word “terrorism”. I consider terrorism to be the commission of violence against civilians to inspire fear. A civilian is anyone who is not a member of the dominant class or one of their armed agents.

Crimes against children are especially awful, not only because they are powerless to resist, and not only because they have fewer legal rights to protect them, but also because the damage done to a child cuts deeper and lasts longer - sometimes for generations. Ending or at least reducing the frequency of these crimes has the potential to eliminate incalculable levels of intergenerational suffering, but it also has social consequences. Children are naturally empathetic; it is fear and abuse drive it out of them, corrupting our society and robbing us all of what might be.

These also happen to be crimes which our present police force has utterly failed to pursue with any serious commitment or vigor. This is due, no doubt, to the intellectual consistency between the chauvinism of the police forces’ mission, training, regulations, equipment and management on the one hand and the chauvinism that underlies the crimes themselves. Nor should there be much surprise when our current police forces commit these crimes themselves, or when the system protects them from prosecution.

The logical conclusion is that a new police force, focused on pursuing the perpetrators of chauvinist crimes, must be formed. Half of these police should be women. Police training should focus on deescalation and a more just approach to law enforcement. Regulations concerning police should eliminate the double standard that currently grants police carte blanche to murder at will. Their equipment should be demilitarized. Police management should be restructured to reflect a civilian, rather than military, mode of organization. Internal affairs should work with their own district attorneys, whose only roles are to prosecute police abuses.

While imprisonment can and should be minimized, it is difficult to reconcile the complete elimination of prisons with the need to protect the public from chauvinist crimes, and the elimination of the death penalty exacerbates this problem. At the same time, jails and prisons (when they are used) should have three goals in mind:

to avoid making mal-adjusted citizens worse

to minimize recividism

to rehabilitate those who can be rehabilitated

To accomplish these ends, prisoners should be protected from harm and from institutional injustices; differences between the prison environment and the external world should be reduced; post-release employment barriers should be reduced to the extent possible; counseling and education programs should be made freely available to all prisoners in the hope that they may find their way before they are released.

The Pursuit of Happiness

The word “happiness” is usually understood in terms that are too subjective to be useful. I suggest that an objective understanding of “the pursuit of happiness” should make use of self-determination theory. That is to say, our focus should be on maximizing these elements:

connectedness

autonomy

competence

Capitalism discourages connectedness, not only by forcing workers to compete against each other (as opposed to working together), but also by creating a socially atomized society. In so many ways, we are driven to consume as individuals, because the behavior of disconnected individuals are easier to analyze, aggregate and manipulate through advertising. A better alternative is not only to build workplaces built on cooperation rather than competition, but also to eliminate advertising and to encourage the development of civil society, eg open source projects, social clubs, support groups, activist groups, political parties, etc.

At the same time, capitalism discourages autonomy by subjecting so much of a person’s life to the control of hierarchies over which they have no influence. Traditional marxists usually assume that this can be addressed through state ownership of the means of production, but this is false. To encourage an individual’s sense of autonomy, that individual needs to have more input in those things that affect their lives, which of course is the essence of democracy. To encourage individual autonomy, democratic decision-making approaches can be used, but eliminating unnecessary restrictions on individual workers and customers can also give people the space they need to breathe.

While capitalists value and reward competence, they don’t like to develop it. They don’t like to pay for training, and they don’t like giving workers enough time to think or to experiment or to validate their proposals. Moreover, capitalist systems discourage competence in areas that don’t directly contribute to private profits. Instead, society should provide academic and job training free of charge, both to high school graduates and to older adults who wish or need to learn more.

Economic class can be, and has been, defined in a number of ways, each with different consequences for one’s worldview. I believe that economic class should be based on the concept of “the rich and powerful”. This gives us two classes; a dominant class (those who subdue others to empower themselves) and the under class (those who don’t). The dominant class is populated by managers, investors and large political donors, whereas the under class is populated by slaves, workers, the self-employed, prisoners, volunteers and stay-at-home caretakers.

I believe that Bichler and Nitzan’s theory of Capital as Power is the best explanation for why capitalists do what they do, and how they relate to government. This theory claims, in a nutshell, that capitalists are motivated by a desire to maximize market control rather than profit per se. This is consistent with both capitalists’ strategic statements and their actions, both in public and in private, and their analyses are of that odd, elegant sort that seem puzzling before you read them but obvious afterwards. As far as I can tell, their theory explains capitalist behavior better than both marxist and marginal utility theories.

Artificial divisions between members of the underclass have been created by the dominant class. Whereas the self-employed is in reality a free worker, they may see themselves as an aspiring member of the dominant class. Highly paid workers may look down on poorly paid workers. The work of stay-at-home workers is completely ignored. Marginalized groups are criminalized under flimsy pretenses, imprisoned and then either excluded from the workforce, or forced into slavery (which simultaneously robs others in the underclass of useful work).

Creating a Socialist Economy

To design a socialist economy, I begin with these premises:

state seizure of production is the only way to survive the climate apocalypse

luxuries should require work

people want to work

people dislike working for others

Seizure of Production

The national government must seize the energy and transportation industries to force a rapid transition to renewable energy and fuel sources. The government should nationalize other industries that cannot be allowed to fail, or that cannot function as a free market with many buyers and many sellers. These include, but are not limited to the insurance, war, utility and education industries. PBS should be expanded to emulate the BBC, providing multiple channels of free, high quality shows and movies to the public. [private property] These changes will ensure cooperation in our efforts to survive the climate apocalypse, while also removing the greatest organizational threats to future generations.

However, public ownership alone simply replaces several hierarchical organizations with one hierarchical organization. Unless this organizational structure is changed, workers will still suffer from alienation. To address this, the public sector should:

adopt an “open source culture” that involves the Deming management philosophy, internal crowdsourcing, collaborative work and an emphasis on personal freedom and professional development

give workers the power to elect executive boards, which in turn will control management appointments

organize small offices (eg. schools) as co-ops. if they choose to have managers, those managers should be elected (or hired) by co-op members.

Banks should be reorganized as regional credit unions. Tenants of rental properties should be empowered to evict their landlords, and to make citizens’ arrests if they resist (while offering military support to those who need it). Idle homes should be seized, renovated and given to needy families.

Creators of music, independent films and various other forms of art should receive taxpayer funds according to their popularity. To avoid the problems caused by casting child actors, and to alleviate the stress caused by filming sex scenes, 3d technology should replace those roles.

A Social Market

If the national government takes over all businesses, it may not be able to properly handle some demands. Some people will desire greater independence than public agencies can offer (despite the reforms I’ve suggested). Some markets could be made to function as something like free markets, which according to classical economics maximizes employment and minimizes profit margins. Finally, workers in the private sector are better able to agitate for better conditions, and under the right conditions those conditions can spread to the private sector. In other words, the private sector should be used as a laboratory to bring new ideas to light, and as a check against government overreach. To achieve all of these ends, I believe that a private market should still exist, but one with social characteristics.

Large companies that haven’t already been nationalized and that can be broken up, (including media companies and restaurant chains) should be broken up. All business ownership arrangements should be invalidated and all non-management employees should be given equal, non-transferrable voting shares (transforming workers into owners and managers into employees). Temporary, part-time and outsourced workers should be banned, forcing companies to properly staff themselves. If threats are made against cooperatives, they should be armed. Sole proprietorships should be organized into retailer’s cooperatives, to take advantage of economies of scale, and to try to encourage proprietors to think in less conservative ways. New companies should either be cooperatives or sole proprietorships.

As much as possible should be done to push markets towards the ideal of a theoretical free market (i.e. competition is on price alone, no one can influence the market price, many buyers, many sellers, no barriers to market entry or exit, etc.). Product networks like amazon.com should be nationalized and tweaked to favor local businesses, and all advertising should be banned. Where practical, products should be standardized, and anti-competitive practices should be strictly prohibited. Business chains should be prohibited, keeping businesses small.

At the same time, market protections (labor, environmental, financial, etc) should limit the negative results of market competition. The advantage of enacting these laws in a society without a corporate elite is that these protections can continue to exist as long as the public supports them.

Agribusiness in the United States is interesting. Most US citizens refuse to work on factory farms for low wages under slave-like conditions, but undocumented immigrants will do so in order to survive. Therefore, when undocumented immigrants are unable to work on factory farms, the crops rot in the fields. However, when people own their own and work their own lands, they fight hard to keep them. Moreover, small farms produce more than factory farms (although they’re more labor-intensive and therefore more expensive).

Factory farms should be seized and given to small agricultural cooperatives, which can give us the advantage of higher productivity while also allowing us to ban child farm labor. Moreover, research should be done to make small farming safer and easier for the adults who work them. If threats are made against cooperatives, they should be armed.

The morality of sex work, and of its prohibition, is complicated by the socioeconomic system within which that work is embedded. In an economic system which compels people to work to survive, the value of a worker’s consent is reduced by their ability of to withhold it, and the erosion of consent in sexual relations is especially worrying. On the other hand, an economic system which separates earned income from survival lacks this problem. Studies have shown that legalizing sex work increases human trafficking, but other evidence shows that legalizing sex work also reduces crimes committed against sex workers. Finally, there is the observation that many (though certainly not all) sex workers report that they felt driven to their careers by economic desperation. If everyone’s basic needs were provided for, it seems likely that fewer people would become sex workers, and more would retire sooner.

In a socialist society, I suggest that the ideal solution to these problems is to fully legitimize sex work (i.e. not only to legalize it, but to uphold labor rights within this industry), while simultaneously increasing prosecution of crimes against sex workers and of anti-trafficking efforts.

Worker strikes are a legitimate avenue of democratic control, even in a socialist society. They are also a safety value to relieve public frustration. If unions are organized on an industrial basis rather than a trade basis, union activity can also serve as a way to reduce divisions within the under class. This is important because even after the formation of a socialist government, those who grew up under capitalists will have to outgrow old habits. Unions must be allowed to form easily (preferably on an industrial basis), and they must not be directed by the state.

Social space must also be created for conservatives, whose numbers are great, and whose worldview is incompatible with worker cooperatives and union shops. Moreover, a certain percentage of people are genetically biased towards conservative thought; they cannot help the way they were born any more than anyone else can. To allow these people the space to breathe, single-family farms and single proprietorships must be allowed to continue alongside cooperatives and employee-owned corporations.

This point is actually very important. Throughout this document, I’ve put great stress on the dangers of chauvinism and of chauvinists. However, a few moments’ thought reveals that half of the United States population comfortably fits that description, and at least another quarter of the population is chauvinist enough to casually accept genocide and other abominations as “necessary evils”. Society must include an escape hatch for those who cannot cope with the transition to socialism, while allowing for everyone else to move forward. The alternative to this approach is to provoke an even greater armed resistance than might be expected, just at the time when cooperation is needed to survive the coming climate disaster. “I told you so” is no substitute for success.

I should say something about “bourgeoisie economics”. So-called “saltwater economics” turns out to predict market outcomes better than any other economic theory, and as such would still be useful for managing that sector of the economy that remains in private hands. In fact, under socialist conditions, it should work even better, because large businesses simply wouldn’t exist in these markets. Furthermore, responsible economists could use Hyman Minsky’s business cycle theory to counsel credit unions and public banks against irrational optimism (a less likely outcome in a capitalist society).

Open Source

While open source software has prospered in capitalist societies, I believe that its true potential is constrained by programmers’ need to work to survive. In a socialist society this would no longer be true; programmers dedicated to open source could work part-time (or perhaps not at all) while still being able to contribute to projects that interest them.

At the same time, open source projects are woefully under-developed outside of academia and the computer software industry. A society whose institutions are largely non-profit can afford to use the open source approach to most forms of knowledge and technology. This has the potential to accelerate technological development, lower barriers to involvement and increase quality beyond the levels that capitalist societies are capable of.

=== Revolution ===

The Declaration of Independence contains two oft-overlooked pieces of wisdom, namely that “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” and “that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed”. These statements are true of every people in every society, even when that consent is purchased with intimidation or with control over information. For though that consent may be eroded, a kernel nevertheless remains, and can be exercised when the ruling elite loses its leverage over the public. That leverage is based on one or both of two things; legitimacy and fear. Elites lose their legitimacy when they can no longer solve the problems their society needs them to solve. Whenever that happens, they resort to violence to maintain their power. To minimize their cognitive dissonance (which is uncomfortable), the public responds to this violence in one of three characteristic ways.

They may withdraw from reality, becoming distracted from it. These distractions could be compulsory, in the form of long work hours, they could be escapist, as popular entertainment can be, or they could appear in the form of transhumanist philosophies that ignore present realities. In the modern United States, these are the people who are, for one reason or another, “nonpolitical”. They may lose themselves in some version of fascist ideology, romanticizing authority, violence, tradition and the past. These are the conservatives, found most obviously in the Republican and Constitution parties. However, some can also be found in the Libertarian and Democratic parties; ask how someone feels about corporate abuses or Democratic presidents’ roles in mass incarceration, war crimes or persecution of whistleblowers, and you should be able to tell who they are.

Finally, they may recognize their plight and the plight of others, embracing a philosophy of empathy and equality and solidarity with others. In today’s United States, the progressives have done this for every marginalized group except the poor. This befits their essential function, which is to save capitalism from the pitchforks of the angry villagers. Only leftists (socialists and left-wing anarchists) consistently apply these values to every marginalized group, including the poor.

The biggest obstacle in spreading this recognition is the problem of bounded rationality, the observation that humans have only so much time and intelligence to process information, and that as a result they are forced to use heuristic methods to solve problems (or to make logical errors or avoid some problems altogether). The key insight here isn’t that humans do these things, but rather that this outcome is inevitable, unavoidable and natural.

This makes maintaining focus on high ideals difficult. Socialism, democracy, revolution, class consciousness and even every-day morality are all susceptible to the limitations of bounded rationality. This is why revolutions are usually sparked by economic downturns, and why people often do not see others’ suffering until they begin to suffer themselves. Perhaps we are wrong to behave this way, but most of us do, and our revolutionary strategy must take human behavior into account.

In the case of the United States, it seems likely that no revolution will occur uncontrollable acceleration of the climate emergency occurs. Only then will a sizable majority of the population become convinced that fundamental change is required, and at that point the question will have changed from “how do we prevent the climate catastrophe” to “how do we survive it?”

After the great depression, capitalism was saved from both its most self-destructive impulses and from popular unrest through legal reforms, but those reforms left wealth and power in the hands of those who had caused it. Eventually they wanted to accumulate even more wealth and power, so they tore down those reforms and took what they wanted. These events teach us that gradual reform cannot bring about fundamental socioeconomic change because the rich and powerful will always use their wealth and power to block it.

Rapid, violent revolution is likewise impossible in the United States. The state is too well-armed and its existence isn’t threatened by a large-scale external military conflict. There is exactly one avenue for revolution left, which is the general strike. But it is not enough for marginalized communities to strike. While their efforts can effect positive change, the state is more eager to commit violence against marginalized people than against privileged people. Therefore, privileged people must participate in even larger numbers.

Social revolutionaries must also have a clear post-revolutionary plan in mind. The lack of a post-revolutionary plan has led to severe problems in real-world socialist revolutions, from the Russian revolution of 1917 to the German revolution of 1918 to the Chinese civil war of 1945. Socialist societies are as difficult to run and maintain as they are to establish, and their design should not be overlooked.

A general strike must demand not only the formation of a new constitutional convention, but one whose delegates are elected by those who engage in the strike itself. This is critically important, because corporate-owned governments must not be allowed to hijack the process.

Furthermore, a general strike must also have some idea of the policies it wishes to implement once the new constitution has been put into place. A constitution is a starting point, but the policies enabled by it are the real work.

Finally, defense against counter-revolutionaries must be taken into account. Within the United States, there are many who publicly declare that they would rather kill and die to prevent their government from aiding the poor, women or minorities. Furthermore, the United States has a long history of violent corporate suppression of leftist and progressive ideas. To assume that these elements would peacefully accept a socialist revolution within the United States defies all sense. I believe that the proper way to anticipate and deal with these existential threats is to use traditional police investigations and military deployments against domestic terrorists and insurgents.

=== New Constitution ===

Protected Rights

A new constitution should begin by paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence, centering “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as the core of all human rights, and of rights of the citizenry. It should further state that not only does the public retain rights not listed within the constitution, but that it is necessary and proper that future reflection on the constitution should widen society’s understanding of the rights retained by natural persons, and by the citizens.

These statements should then be followed by a longer list of protected rights than are explicitly stated in our current constitution, if only to prevent unnecessary arguments from those who would deny those rights to others. While such a list is too long to list here, it should certainly include unconditional bans on slavery, torture and rape; freedom from oppression; and freedoms of expression, conscience, intimacy, etc.

A note on rape: rape should be legally defined as sex without freely given consent, with the additional condition that some conditions (including but not limited to childhood, intoxication and intellectual disability) eliminate or reduce that freedom. In cases that do not involve a white person accusing a non-white defendant, the defendant should be presumed guilty until proven innocent. This case is special in that most accusations are true, and yet most rapists go free under the presumption of innocence standard. At the same time, false accusations of rape are most commonly rooted in white supremacy. To recognize these truths allows for the pursuit of real justice, rather than the continued support and enablement of rapists everywhere.

It should nevertheless also be explicitly stated that (with certain exceptions), the limits of individual freedom are harm to, endangerment of and chauvinism against others. The first condition follows from the principle of equality; we cannot be equally free if my actions prevent you from acting as freely as I do. The second is equally important, though less obvious; if my actions endanger your freedom to act, then they unjustly put your safety at risk, even if that infringement is not guaranteed.

The last condition involves systemic cause and effect rather than direct cause and effect; for example, hate speech can increase the chances of a so-called “lone-wolf” terrorist event, even if there may be no way of predicting the specific chain of events that connects a specific utterance of hate speech and a specific terrorist event. This ambiguity, and the public’s lack of understanding of systemic cause and effect, give cover to oppressors, their supporters and their enablers. However, socialists are keenly aware of these problems, and of their threats to society. While loss of life is an inevitable consequence of armed conflict, in the civilian arena the death penalty should be abolished. There are too many downsides to allowing the state to execute people for crimes (either real or imagined), and many upsides to sentencing the worst criminals to life in prison.

Treason

Treason should be defined explicitly, in exactly the way it is defined in our current constitution. The mis-use of treason charges has been a source of much injustice throughout history, and its current definition is a just and good innovation.

Socialist Democracy

We know that capitalists can increase their market share (and their profits) by manipulating democratic institutions. We also know that chauvinists will always make excuses for those capitalists’ manipulations. Capitalists and chauvinists disenfranchise and marginalize those who resist victimhood. When that isn’t enough, they arrest or murder their victims en masse.

Those who would oppress others and/or tear down democratic institutions must be prevented from doing so. Whenever they are recognized, chauvinists must be barred from voting, from owning firearms and from holding positions of power over others (including political office, supervisory positions, law enforcement, military, chaplain positions and teaching). This principle must be enshrined in the constitution; democracy shall be reserved for those who support it, and chauvinists are to be barred from participating in it.

A note about prohibiting chauvinists from owning firearms: we know that domestic abusers use them to murder their partners, and that white supremacists have used them to mass-murder black, Native American and Jewish people. These are society’s oppressors; arming them supports oppression.

However, these restrictions alone may not be enough to prevent a socialist democracy from returning to capitalism. To further guard against this, a constitution should include defensive language, enforced by the judiciary, requiring that all legally permitted political parties and candidates adhere to certain socialist principles. These should include:

support for worker control of the economy

support for equality of outcome for people of all backgrounds

support for democratic processes

opposition to private companies being owned by people other than their workers

opposition to compulsory labor of any kind

opposition to every kind of chauvinism

Any political party or candidate who fails to meet these criteria should be de-certified by the judiciary, and barred from political office.

The national legislature should consist of a single chamber (eliminating the undemocratic Senate), evenly populated by women and men (ensuring fair representation of women’s perspectives). One third of the legislature should be elected every three years (to reduce the chances of wild swings of power balances), using a nation-wide party-list system (to ensure proportional representation) and the approval voting method (or something comparable; to alleviate the pressure to vote for less desirable candidates). Votes on new laws, approvals of appointees and votes to cease debate should all require simple majorities (to reduce the chances of partisan gridlock).

The executive should consist of a prime minister and a cabinet, elected every three years by the legislature. The prime minister and members of the cabinet should be removable at any time by a vote of “no confidence” on any pretext whatsoever, including but not limited to criminal activity, corruption, negligence, chauvinism or treason. The prime minister should be elected from the legislature, but this requirement shouldn’t be applied by the constitution to the other cabinet members (some of whom might benefit from specialist expertise).

At the time of the adoption of the new constitution, the members of the judiciary should be replaced by the prime minister, with the approval of at least half the legislature. At least half of the members of each multi-member court must be women, and half of all judges must be women. Future members of the judiciary should be appointed by the highest court within the judiciary rather than by the legislature in order to protect the nation’s socialist commitments from political corruption. Nevertheless, the legislature should have the power to impeach and remove judges for criminal activity, corruption, negligence, chauvinism or treason.

All levels of government, from the national level to the municipal, including all of the companies seized and retained by those governments, should share a single budget. This will allow poor communities to stop financing their needs with traffic fines and fees against the poor, it will give the public greater input in how their taxes are used and it will address socialism’s calculation problem. The participatory budgeting approach should be used to allocate these funds, and participants should be considered to be public sector union members, public housing tenants union members and legislators (including members of town hall governments). An environmental impact premium should be added to the labor cost of extracting raw materials.

Liberal societies have long claimed that one purpose of public education is to equip the citizenry to become responsible stewards of democratic societies, and yet those same societies delay their citizens, once educated, from voting or holding office. The result is that young, educated citizens become too discouraged to vote, or perhaps accustomed to not voting, by the time they’ve become old enough to do so, and they’ve likely forgotten the relevant preparation they’d received. Society is then left in the hands of older, more conservative people, who are reluctant (or unable) to learn from and adapt to changing circumstances. If we are to take such ideals seriously, and if we are to survive both present and future crises, we should set the voting age at age sixteen, and we should allow anyone who can vote to hold office.

Lower Governments

The lowest level of government should be the citizen’s assembly. Depending on a region’s popular concentration, this could represent a town, a neighborhood or a rural county. This assembly would consist of all eligible voters, who would vote directly to both propose and ratify legislation. Legislative meetings would be led by the city council, who would serve rotating two-week positions, chosen by lot from among the citizenry. Professional managers could also be hired by the council, removable at any time by the council, or by the assembly.

Higher governments, up to and including provincial governments, would consist of single legislative bodies of delegates sent by lower governments, in numbers based on their relative populations, and recallable at any time. These governments would similarly be led by executive councils, populated by rotating positions chosen by lot from among the delegates. They would also have the option to hire professional managers, removable at any time by the council, or by the delegates.

Areas with enough citizens to form assemblies, but with too few non-chauvinists to vote, should be run by managers hired by the provincial government. This balance should be re-assessed periodically until normal government can replace them. The popular assembly would retain the sole power to send non-voting delegates to the next level of government.

To further rationalize their organization, I suggest drawing the lines of the provinces to create fewer provinces to be relatively compact, to have more uniform populations, to align with existing lines of communication and to be fairly reflective of the populations of the time. (If we were doing it right now, I would personally favor the 2011 MIT cell phone map mention here.)

Native Americans

Native Americans are full US citizens, and as such should also receive the same social benefits and protections as every other citizen. However, our nation has not only established treaties with native tribes, but it owes them a blood debt that can never be repaid. This the reason native benefits must be honored. Moreover, the history of the United States is replete with betrayals of Native Americans’ trust; therefore, a new constitution should offer better guarantees than any law or treaty can offer.

Reservations should be converted into “commonwealths”, whose borders cannot be reduced, but which can be expanded or combined on their own initiative. Reservations should enjoy first jurisdiction for all legal matters within their borders, including definitions of inheritance rights. National approval should not be required to pass laws on reservation land, although if conflicts with national law arise, the national law should take precedence.

Native American reservations should collectively be guaranteed at least one voting representative in the legislature (or more, if their percentage of the overall population merits it). The national government must also provide funding for the preservation of the many aspects of native culture, so that their past will not be forgotten. National funding for environmental cleanup of polluted reservation lands must also be constitutionally guaranteed.

=== Policies ===

Dechauvinism

Initially, one should begin with something like the Soviet Union’s denazification program in East Germany; identified chauvinists should be barred from teaching, law enforcement, the military, supervisory positions, political office and chaplain jobs. They should not be allowed to own firearms, and any firearms they possess should be confiscated. This should be followed by something like West Germany’s self-reflective “vergangenheitsbewältigung” period.

All members of the Republican, Constitution and Libertarian parties, anyone who voted for far-right presidential candidates, and any white people who didn’t support progressive or leftist presidential candidates should be classified as chauvinists. Rebels, supervisors, anyone convicted of chauvinist crimes, members of known chauvinist organizations (i.e. hate groups), self-identified chauvinists (via survey), and diagnosed narcissists, psychopaths, sadists and machiavelists should also be classified as chauvinists. Genetic and psychological tests should be used to identify, discharge and screen current and future soldiers and police for innate chauvinist tendencies.

The police should immediately be disarmed, fired and replaced en masse, so as to stop them from oppressing the populace. At the same time, sweeping pardons and commutations should be issued for the unjustly criminalized. These include, but are not limited to, those convicted of drug-related crimes, those convicted of defending themselves against attackers and those convicted of attacking their abusers. The right to vote should also be restored to all those who have been released from prison. With certain exceptions, those interviewing people for jobs should be prohibited from asking about a job applicant’s criminal history, and discrimination against those who’ve been arrested, charged or convicted for a crime should be made illegal. Drug prohibition should end, all drug interdiction efforts should cease and drug addiction should be treated as a public health issue.

Dealing with Terrorists and Counter-Revolutionaries

Within the United States, there are many who publicly declare that they would rather kill and die to prevent their government from aiding the poor, women or minorities. Indeed; even under President Trump, some have already been emboldened to murder their political and ideological opponents. Furthermore, the United States has a long history of violent corporate suppression of leftist and progressive ideas. To assume that these parties would peacefully accept a socialist revolution within the United States defies all sense. I believe that the proper way to anticipate and deal with these existential threats is to use traditional police investigations and military deployments against domestic terrorists and insurgents.

When deploying the military to arrest terrorists and insurgents, I suggest using the official liberal standard of law enforcement. That is to say, that those who comply should be taken alive. Those who do not comply should be met with lethal force. Conservatives are fond of telling black victims of police brutality that “they should have cooperated”. When they use violence to terrorize others, or when they threaten to overthrow the people’s government, they should receive the same message in turn.

Green Transformation

To survive the impending climate catastrophe, we must stop contributing to it. This requires a rapid transition to renewable sources of power and fuel, drastic cuts to the US military, robust mass transit networks, an international open-source green technology development effort, debt forgiveness for the global south and a carbon rent paid to the global south to re-plant and maintain the rainforests.

These goals can only be accomplished through the institution of a socialist economy. We can no longer afford to trade survival for the enrichment of a few old white men. By the time a successful general strike becomes possible, the obviousness of this truth will have become painfully apparent.

Law Enforcement

All police officers should be fired. Unarmed violence prevention teams modeled after programs like “cure violence” should be deployed in major cities and drug prohibition should be eliminated. New police forces should be built with new regulations, new management, new training, new equipment (including a ban on firearms and military equipment) and a new focus. That focus must be to target the enforcement of chauvinist crimes, to wit:

terrorism, torture, sexual assault, hate crimes, hate speech, domestic abuse, child abuse, abuse of authority, violating public protections (labor, environmental, financial, etc), murder, capital accumulation

Native Americans

Native American tribes that have been recognized by state governments should also be recognized by the national government, and tribes that have been unfairly stripped of their recognition should be re-certified. An aggressive effort must be made to expand native lands under tribal control.

Gun Control

A good gun control policy in a socialist society should rest on three observations:

high concentrations of firearms among the general populace leads to higher death rates

chauvinists tend to use firearms against women and minorities

the poor need arms to defend themselves against chauvinist oppression

Accordingly, gun ownership among civilians should be restricted to shotguns for those who can demonstrate that they are members of a vulnerable population; that they can pass written, marksmanship and psychiatric tests; who don’t already possess a firearm; and who haven’t been identified as chauvinists.

#socialism

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lodelcar · 5 years ago

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PANTA RHEI KAI OUDEN MENEI

Picture: Rwanda - Akagera National Park - Crocodile

Reflections on development in economics and society

The title of this essay is a quotation of Socrates in Plato’s book Cratylus, in which the famous Greek philosopher announced: "Heraclitus says that everything moves and nothing is stable". He referred hereby to the pre-socratic philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus. The expression "Panta rhei" synthesizes for him the thought of a world in perpetual motion. [1]

Development does not always go in the right direction

We can apply this paradigm to our own society. Since 1968 we have been living in a period of transition. There is nowadays great technological progress that disturbs balances. [2] It is not my intention to build up a political discourse. I would, however, like to dwell on a number of phenomena in the economy of which the public begins to realize that they are not improving the quality of life.

First of all there have been the disruptive technology companies that have made a steep rise on the stock exchange but whose added value is being questioned worldwide: AirBnB, Amazon and Uber.

In the past years, almost 10,000 families have been driven out of their homes throughout the city of Lisbon. In the meantime, Lisbon has more Airbnb accommodations per inhabitant than any other city in Europe, including Paris, London and Brussels. The exploding prices for housing mean that families who have to live on one minimum wage can no longer pay rented accommodation. Some are forced to move into abandoned buildings, where they (survive) live in extremely difficult circumstances.[3]

In retail, Amazon accounts for 53 percent of all e-commerce sales growth. This has been devastating already. Twice as many stores closed in 2017, or 8,600, as the year before. Department store jobs have plummeted from 1.782 million in June 2001 to 1.27 million by November 2017. Of course, success and efficiency are not crimes, nor is bigness, unless it prevents anyone else from competing. [4]

The world’s largest ride-hailing company Uber, operating in many cities throughout the world, and still not making profit, received a blow recently. Indeed the London transport regulator has decided that the taxi app can no longer operate in the British capital. The Achilles heel of the company are its drivers, the way they are selected and also the way they are paid. Next to New York, San Francisco and Sai Paolo, London is Uber’s largest market with 3.5 million customers and the 45,000 drivers. [5]

Where is the Panta Rhei aspect in all this?

From Athens and Amsterdam to Paris and Berlin, Airbnb is facing all the more obstacles since it first entered the market a decade ago, as authorities try to restrict the expansion of the home-sharing practice that has taken popular destinations by storm.

Amazon, just like Google and Facebook, is targeted by Democratic presidential candidates because of their monopoly situation. US Senator Elisabeth Warren goes the furthest and advocates breaking up the companies into regional parts, just as was done for Standard Oil and Bell in the early twentieth century. The logic behind this is that extreme market dominance leads to monopoly power and abuses, eventually sweeping away workers, competitors, and potential competitors, while bullying suppliers and stifling innovation. Such aggressive “vertical integration” is precisely why Standard Oil had to be busted up. Like Amazon, Standard Oil controlled all its marketplaces and forced all its competitors out of business or to become captive buyers and sellers of its goods and services.[6]

Everywhere Uber turns, a conveyor belt of new antagonists keeps emerging around the globe. In India, Uber is battling a service called Ola. In Brazil, it is dueling Didi Chuxing, a Chinese company that bought the local ride-hailing operator 99 last year. (Uber owns a stake in Didi.) And newfangled transportation companies, such as electric scooter providers, have popped up.

Bolt, an Estonian start-up, is an example of a troublesome trend for Uber. Bolt is now planning to confront Uber in one of its most lucrative cities: London. The smaller firm is reapplying for a taxi license to operate in the British capital after regulators there rebuffed it in 2017.[7] Of Bolt is known that they can have their programming carried out at a third of the cost for Uber in Eastern Europe. And above all: that they cooperate with existing taxi companies as an increase in their turnover and not as a competitor.

In addition to the disruptive technology companies, there are a number of trends that raise more and more questions. It is striking that most of these stories originated in the United States. This is of course primarily due to the fact that the US is a country with very little legislation that regulates the lives of citizens and directs trade. Moreover, everyone is responsible for his social security. That leaves the coast clear for cowboys who want to get rich quickly.

Even internet domain names for non-profit organizations are no longer safe for money makers. ICANN, the organization that manages the global system of internet domain names, decided recently to lift price restrictions for all types of internet suffixes. The owner of the .org suffixes, destined to non-profit organisations, Internet Society (Isoc) suddenly announced in November 2019 that the management of the .org suffix had been resold to Ethos Capital. From now on, it will operate the domain as a commercial activity. Ethos Capital can now increase the rental price of the approximately 10 million existing .org domain names, approximately 10 dollars a year, as desired, potentially generating billions of dollars. At the expense of non-profits.[8]

Two crashes with the brand new aircraft Boeing 737 MAX recently cost the lives of 346 people. The causes are poor design, too much faith in software and lax supervisors. The device is structurally unsafe, Boeing should never have launched it. The original 737 had small jet engines under its wings. When a new version came in 1980, it already posed problems. That is the great danger of old concepts that are being built on: they look more modern, but they have not really evolved. But a completely new design costs a huge amount. It must pass expensive regulator tests and validations, and customers must retrain their pilots. That is why the so-called “grandfather clause” is used in the US as much as possible: if the aircraft does not deviate much from the original type, it will receive approval via a quick counter at the regulator and pilot retraining will not be necessary. In the late 1980s, Airbus became a real competitor for Boeing. The 737 was the most important weapon in that battle. The pressure to make a better version pushed Boeing over the edge of the allowable. Larger engines had to be fitted, but the old trick that was used before was not enough. It was decided to mount the engines much further to the front to maintain enough ground space. But that made the device inherently unstable, especially when taking off.[9]

Venice’s population has been shrinking for decades. Today, there are just one-third as many Venetians as 50 years ago. But that decline is merely a symptom of a rapidly worsening disease: the reckless promotion of large-scale tourism and lack of investment in human capital. in 2017, the city of 260,000 received more than 36 million foreign tourists. As Venetians have fled the hordes, Venice’s civil society has deteriorated and political torpor has become entrenched. Municipal leaders prefer to complain about the city’s weaknesses, rather than taking effective action to address them. [10] They have been working on a flood barrier project since 1984, called Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico (MOSE). It is still not finished and has already cost 5.5 billion euros. This is due to incompetence, dawdling, but also the influence of the Mafia. Venice moaned under the numerous floods this year. There is finally reason to make up the backlog.

Is there a Panta Rhei aspect in these three examples?

The website of ICANN mentions the following: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) helps coordinate the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, which are key technical services critical to the continued operations of the Internet's underlying address book, the Domain Name System (DNS). ICANN's inclusive approach treats the public sector, the private sector, and technical experts as peers. In the ICANN community, you'll find registries, registrars, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), intellectual property advocates, commercial and business interests, non-commercial and non-profit interests, representation from more than 100 governments, and a global array of individual Internet users. All points of view receive consideration on their own merits. ICANN's fundamental belief is that all users of the Internet deserve a say in how it is run.[11] These are very beautiful principles. It is clear that such an organization can be put under pressure to introduce or curb neo-liberal principles.

What are the lessons of the 737 MAX debacle for the rest of the economy? One: company and regulator must not be too much "two hands on one stomach". Two: bad hardware cannot be fixed with software. Three: artificial intelligence (AI) makes people blind to "garbage in, garbage out" Four: an oligopoly does not encourage real innovation. Five: people are not machines, and machines are not always smarter than people.[12]

As for the Venetian problem, the solutions Carlo Ratti, professor at the Massachussets Institute of Technology proposes are radical, but are not without precedent. In the mid-fourteenth century, Venice’s population plummeted by 60%, owing to outbreaks of bubonic plague. The city opened itself up to foreigners, offering citizenship to anyone who planned to remain for the long term. Newcomers needed only to embrace the key characteristics of “Venetianness,” including the desire to work. There is no reason why a similar strategy cannot work today.[13]

Can we tackle the period of uncertainty?

In America you have a number of large metropolises, such as New York and Los Angeles. In between, in the so-called flyover states, the invisible majority live. The majority of that group is formed by people who are vulnerable. They know they have a problem if they lose their job. On the other hand they cannot move to cities such as Paris, New York, London or Milan. These bastions have become unaffordable for them. The working class lives there on the periphery and they lick their wounds. They have been made culturally invisible. That has led to a lot of resentment. People have stagnated or even deteriorated.

We live in an economic system that continues to record growth rates, but at the same time puts large groups of the population aside. The middle class is disappearing before our eyes. In the Anglo-Saxon world, the middle class, and certainly the working class, has disappeared much earlier. It is to say: those people are still there, but they are no longer "integrated". They no longer count. The first victims were the workers some 30 years ago. Now you see that many other categories - such as the farmers or the wage earners - are getting harder.[14]

One sees all too often that people are voting against their own economic interest. They are being chased away with ideological issues such as abortion or gay marriage to go against their own economic interest. People who already feel insecure cannot accept that others who are even lower on the ladder, would receive help and they cannot. Homogeneous populations are rarely against the government. Sweden is a good example: there was always strong support for a strong government, until immigration waves arrived. Immediately, Social Democracy also came under fire in Sweden.[15]

Paul Krugman in his interview gave an indication of what should be done in order to tackle this period of uncertainty: "The rich are now getting rid of it easily. America must also make health insurance cheaper and accessible to all, help the poor better and restore the power of the trade unions. The trade union in America is needed.[16]“ The same type of statement was made by Flemish entrepreneurs after the Belgian elections. They plead for a tax system without loopholes. Tax optimization can no longer be tolerated. They also argue for a greening of taxation, including through a plane tax and higher taxes on fossil fuels. That should make lower labor costs possible.[17]

The position of the "Gafas" (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) is increasingly under pressure in the US and Europe. Google has been convicted several times for abuse of its dominant position. Amazon promotes some of its own products on its platform at the expense of other retailers. Facebook moans under privacy scandals. Apple lost a lawsuit (Apple Inc. v. Pepper) before the US Supreme Court for commercial practices on the App Store.[18]

On the other hand, the impact of Gafas and other technological players on GDP cannot always be calculated using traditional methods. Today productivity growth in the US can be found with a magnifying glass if we calculate them with the traditional methods. Search engines such as Google, the GPS, the use of a private car such as Uber-taxi and even Facebook - nowhere in the traditional economic concepts is the profit they generate for companies and consumers taken into account.[19] Some economists are zooming in on methods to simply calculate GDP differently. MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson[20], for example, who, together with two colleagues, published a large-scale study / survey in which he tried to measure what the internet and other modern technologies are "worth" for the average consumer. In that case, Facebook alone would yield 0.05 to 0.11 percentage points of additional economic growth for the US, the MIT economist calculated. It is therefore important not to throw the child out with the bathwater when appropriate measures are taken.

Why is the regional level so important in this perspective ?

In the solutions that Carlo Ratti proposes to save Venice from ruin, the first suggestion is to take Venice out of the care of the Italian state and to provide sufficient resources and authority to make the decisions it deems necessary: “The first step is to remove Venice from the jurisdiction of the Italian government, whose consistent failures have driven the city’s decline in recent decades.(…) It is a call for a new type of outward-looking political construct: an “open city” that welcomes anyone who genuinely wants to settle there as a full-fledged citizen, not as participants in what the American novelist Don DeLillo[21] called tourism’s “march of stupidity.”[22]

The Russian search engine Yandex, is a regional competitor of Google. He does not have the ambition to go worldwide like Google, it limits itself to the former USSR. Much like its Silicon Valley counterpart, the ‘Russian Google’ is more than just a search engine.[23]

In the interview with the French geographist Christophe Guilluy he told the story of the former AOL CEO (American on Line, an internet provider from the 90ties), Steve Case. He finances start-ups in the flyover states. A symbolic gesture, but important. That way you say to all those people in the periphery: you don't have to move to Los Angeles or New York, you can stay where you live now.[24]

The same applies to the approach to global warming, in which the US federal government has denounced the Paris treaty, but where US states and cities play a pioneering role, because the smoke from the forest fires or from the industrial smog is at their fingertips.

Europe promotes the role of local and regional authorities in economic and social development. They can more easily work together, provided there is a willingness to do so and not to fight politically between regions for ideological reasons.[25] Regionalization or decentralization are new concepts of which countries start to see the usefulness, even if they do not have a diverse populations. In Ukraine for example, the decentralisation of power in Ukraine began in 2014. To date 4,277 communities have been merged into 924 amalgamated hromadas (AHs). The total number of AH residents is 10 million (28.3% of Ukraine’s population). Own revenues of local budgets in 2019: 375 billion UAH. AHs need to systematically provide the necessary infrastructure and services to enable businesses to start and develop as well as to secure the public's need for employment and social services. In Romania the regionalization does not go further than the creation of 8 statistical Implementation Units uniting the 40 judeţi (provinces)[26]. These can takes additional initiatives, but do not receive funds for it from Bucharest. There might be a change with the new government and the next EU commission, but until now there is no plan to become political regions. Exception on the rule was Statistical Implementation Unit Nord-East Romania, that created a Regional innovation board in which commodities such as water and energy and waste have been discussed and initiatives taken. A Water cluster has been created, integrating all players for waste, sewages, water and energy. In Albania the country has been reorganized into 63 merged municipalities within 8 regions. In the Vlorë region in the south, the municipalities focused on practical development of their areas and left strategic development and the acquisition of funds for those purposes to the regional council. The 7 new municipalities of the region chose therefore to concentrate on the touristic development of the region, focusing on the historical and natural assets of the region and trying to attract tourist also in other periods than summertime. The other priority was urban development, preparing the county for the 21st century.[27]

Is everything moving?

The neo-liberal notion of a globalized economy has suffered from so many blows in recent years that talking about it is nowadays already considered a strategic mistake. And although many still believe in large scale development, that principle has also been hit hard.

Multinationals are under pressure. In the first place because they do everything they can to pay as little taxes as possible to anyone. Secondly, because they still exploit workers and employees by producing in places with very little labor protection and extremely low wages. Thirdly, because they do not respect their clients: they affect their health seriously or they produce crap. And if they bring all their production back to the vicinity of their customers, this production is so automated that very few jobs remain.

Retailers, whose activity consists of buying and selling, are not innocent either. They twist the arm of their suppliers in such a way that they can no longer make a profit. Win-win is a concept for a long-term relationship between equal forces. The attitude is large retail companies is the following: I am big and have a lot of power, and you are small and you will stay that way.

Yet this trend is reversing. Technology allows suppliers to come into contact with the end customer. This last one strives for health and quality at an affordable price. Health is almost the same as small-scale or at least contradictory to large-scale. Quality is also equivalent to smaller batches manufactured by expert and motivated workers. Exploited workers are by definition not motivated.

Automation leads to standardization and not to customization. And let it be that which appeals to modern middle-class consumers: being able to make their own choices. Artificial intelligence will enable to handle customization on the long run. And that at all levels: carrying out surgical operations, calculating and drawing structures, developing new products, medical diagnosis, remote sensing etc. Unfortunately, the priorities for the development of artificial intelligence lie elsewhere. In China it is used to spy on every individual, both own citizens and foreign guests.[28] In the US to shoot down drones, aim tank guns, coordinate resupply, plan artillery barrages, and blend sensor feeds.[29] But also to guide individual consumers in their purchases in such a way that they are convinced that they have made the decision themselves. And this same principle is then used in the US and in Europe to influence voter behavior so that they "choose the right one". This latter principle was used by both the far right and the far left. Unfortunately, there is also the “deep fake” application, a program which animates the face of a target person, transposing the facial expressions of an exterior source.[30]

But "Panta rhei"… The public also becomes aware of these "hidden persuaders". Those who only pursue power to maintain the status quo will ultimately be disappointed. The key problems in the world have become too urgent to be spared: growing inequality and climate change.

They do not require a status quo but political courage. They do not require steps but giant leaps. They do not require undemocratic democracy, but a fully-fledged and efficient democracy.

Louis Delcart, board member EAR-AER www.ear-aer.eu

1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panta_rhei

[2] Filip Rogiers, Wouter Woussen: Er zal gevochten moeten worden voor de democratie. (There will have to be a fight for democracy ) Interview met Ico Maly -, De Standaard - 3 August 2019

[3] Gonçalo Fonseca: Slachtoffers van het succes (Victims of the success, November 21, 2019 De Standaard

[4] Diane Francis: The New Monopoly - The Dangers of Amazon’s Dominance in: The American Interest, Volume 13, Number 5 , February 20, 2018 https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/02/20/dangers-amazons-dominance/, retrieved on 26-11-2019

[5] Bas Van der Hout : Uber tuimelt na verlies Londense taxivergunning (Uber tumbles after losing London taxi license) in: De Tijd 21-11-2019

[6] Diane Francis: The New Monopoly - The Dangers of Amazon’s Dominance in: The American Interest, Volume 13, Number 5 , February 20, 2018 https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/02/20/dangers-amazons-dominance/ retrieved on 26-11-2019

[7] Adam Satariano: This Estonian Start-Up Has Become a Thorn in Uber’s Side – IN: New York Times, April 23, 2019

[8] Dominique Deckmyn: Internetdomein ‘.org’ is nu allesbehalve non-profit (Internet domain ".org" is nowadays anything but non-profit) in: De Standaard - November 22, 2019

[9] Geert Noels, Leer uit de fouten met de Boeing 737 MAX, (Learn from the mistakes with the Boeing 737 MAX), in De Tijd, April 26, 2019

[10] Carlo Ratti: Reversing the Death of Venice, in: Project syndicate Nov 19, 2019

[11] https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/welcome-2012-02-25-en, retrieved on 21-11-2019

[12] Geert Noels, Leer uit de fouten met de Boeing 737 MAX, (Learn from the mistakes with the Boeing 737 MAX), in De Tijd, April 26, 2019

[13] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/reversing-death-of-venice-by-carlo-ratti-2019-11, retrieved on 26-11-2019

[14] Interview with Christophe Guilluy, French geographer: Je kunt geen samenleving bouwen als je het volk beledigt – (One cannot build a society if you insult the people) - De Standaard 6-7-2019

[15] Bjorn Soenens: Interview met econoom Paul Krugman: Neem ontslag, president Trump, u heeft problemen die groter zijn dan de economie (Resign, President Trump, you have problems that are greater than the economy), VRT - 26-11-2019

[16] Bjorn Soenens: Interview met econoom Paul Krugman: Neem ontslag, president Trump, u heeft problemen die groter zijn dan de economie (Resign, President Trump, you have problems that are greater than the economy), VRT - 26-11-2019

[17] Emmanuel Vanbrussel: Vlaamse bedrijfsleiders pleiten voor fiscale ommezwaai, ( Flemish business leaders argue for a tax change), in: De Tijd, 20 August 2019

[18] Olivier Braet en Karen Donders - Zijn de techreuzen te groot geworden? (Have the tech giants become too big?) in: De Standaard, 17 juni 2019

[19] Nico Tanghe, Een jaar zonder Google? Dat is 17.000 dollar waard (A year without Google? That's worth $ 17,000) ,in: De Standaard, 29-11-2019

[20] Erik Brynjolfsson, Avinash Collis, Felix Eggers, Using massive online choice experiments to measure changes in well-being, PNAS (Proceedings of the Nation al Academy of Science of the United States of America), April 9, 2019

[21] Don De Lillo, The names, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1982,

[22] Carlo Ratti: Reversing the Death of Venice, in: Project syndicate Nov 19, 2019

[23] Anastasia Zyrianova: The IT behemoth that you might never have heard of in: BBC Future , 14th September 2018

[24] ‘Je kunt geen samenleving bouwen als je het volk beledigt’ (One cannot build a society if you insult the people)- Interview with Christophe Guilluy, French geographer - De Standaard 6-7-2019

[25] Louis Delcart, Regions and Cities as Stimulators Towards Green and Digital Economy, in: International Journal of Innovation in the Digital Economy (IJDE), sept 2018

[26] + the capital Bucharest

[27] Louis Delcart, EAR-AER creates European Academy of the Regions with CRLDS, in LinkedIn Pulse, 1 november 2016 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ear-aer-creates-european-academy-regions-albania-crlds-louis-delcart/ retrieved on 26-11-2019

[28] Lukas Vanacker: Massale hackeraanvallen op Belgische handelsmissie in China (Mass hacker attacks on Belgian trade mission in China) in De Tijd, 23 november 2019

[29] John Keller: Army to test artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to detect hidden targets in 2020 war game, in: Military & Aerospace Electronics, Oct 23rd, 2019. https://www.militaryaerospace.com/computers/article/14069203/artificial-intelligence-ai-machine-learning-military-applications retrieved 26-11-2019

[30] The technology has been demonstrated animating the lips of people including Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applications_of_artificial_intelligence retrieved on 26-11-2019

#regional approach #artificial intelligence #panta rei

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visualcultureconference2019-blog · 6 years ago

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Day 2: March 20

Conservation and surveillance: the protection through images (Laura Löbl López)

Since the 20th century, the interest in wildlife conservation started to arise. Overexploitation and destruction of the environment became noticeable for the masses. To protect those landcapes for the following generations, surveillance systems were installed to control both nature and humans.

This paper explores the eco-aesthetics brought to us after the established net of surveillance systems, brought together to shield endangered species. The problem of this field begins when the conservationism movement is seen throughout animals’ visuality. It will further be argued that the division of humans and animals becomes blurry, as animals turn anthropomorphic as they are watched. It also shows the switch of intent of this technology, watching only animals to humans again in protected spaces such as national parks or reservoirs.

Recordings of movement, digitalization and propaganda are of special interest as they are captured for the sole purpose of protecting and informing globally. The focus will be on images from protected parks and environmentally-aware institutions in Europe.

The wide range of photographs will be reduced to a smaller fraction of images, accessible digitally and publically. To summarize, the argument will involve how culture, society and mass media interacts with the visuality of natural sciences.

Reclaiming the Autonomy: A Contemporary shift of Gazing at Animals in the Eastern Asian Urban Context (Yuying Zhao)

While the ecological aesthetics of the East Asian landscape have been constructed for hundreds of years through literature and paintings, how human gaze at animals in the same cultural context remains blurred and controversial. This paper will examine a contemporary reflection of the visual arts regarding animals emerging from this region, which rebels against the powerful zoomorphic and colonial perspectives of the past. I begin with a short review of traditional ideologies regarding the human-animal relationship, and how these ideas are intertwined with the capitalism since the 18th century. Then I introduce several artworks which depict animals in today’s urban environment and conduct a detailed analysis of the interdisciplinary art project Institute of Critical Zoologists (since 2007) from Singapore and the independent film An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) from China. Through combining environmental aesthetics with Judith Butler's theory of precarious life, I will claim that this deliberation of animal’s autonomy rooted in the urban everyday life is not only crucial to start a conversation between our own time’s conditions with ancient local ecologic aesthetics as Taoism, but also to shape a more nutritious human-animal, and even human-human relationship.

The question of the dog - Neither human nor animal (Roxana Kaboli)

What lies in between the animal and the human? By using visual examples from the film The Lobster (2015) by Yorgos Lanthimos and the monument statue of Balto the dog in New York City, this paper will examine the grey zone of the animal/human dichotomy with focus on the domesticated pet, more specifically, the dog and what we can learn about our being in this process. The pet dog in modern societies has been removed from their natural habitats and being integrated into to human society not only as pets but as movie stars, heroes, working in various jobs like police dogs, therapy dogs, and service dogs but also having various humans working for them like dog groomers and dog sitters. When altering toward human ideals both aesthetically and in behavior, has the dog been altered away from nature and other animals?

Theories discussing the human/animal relations from Martin Heidegger to Jacques Derrida with the comments and criticism from Matthew Calarco will be used as points of departures to understand the philosophical discourses on the nature of humanity and animality. Writings from Gilles Deleuze will also be used in this paper to lead a discussion on what we as humans can learn and take from the discussion about a creature that is not yet human but no longer animal.

“Everyone in me is a bird. I am beating all my wings” Grieving, remembering, and visualizing extinct species. (Christina Tente)

The writer of this paper is interested in the story of Martha, a passenger pigeon, the last of her species, who passed away in 1914. Martha died in a zoo, her body was dissected and studied by scientists. Martha lived on through the stories, the poems, the artworks that were created for her. Martha is visible in Cincinnati, on her memorial statue, but Martha is invisible to the rest of the world. Martha’s death was ritualized during the Memorial Day of the Lost Species in 2014, but the impact of her death is long forgotten. We remember and “see” and mourn Martha, because Martha has a name and a face and a back-story. But what about all the other species that have become extinct or are becoming extinct every year? How do we, humans, decide which animals are grievable, which animals are worth remembering, whose death has an impact and whose life is simply bare? Focusing on Martha, this paper attempts to explore these questions, with the help of Judith Butler’s writings on grievability and precarity, as well as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of becoming-animal. The writer will problematize the anthropomorphization of endangered and extinct species, and she will explore various ways of creative and ritualistic demonstrations that facilitate grief and catharsis.

Temple of no walls: Outdoor churches and experience of divine nature (Karolina Curova)

“When I am seeking you, I seek whole-heartedly,

When I am encountering you, I encounter whole-bodily.

So I walk into the wild, I breath and walk, breath and walk,

And then in the middle of it, a shrine, peace, the creation of yours, and there

I find you, in the silence,

In the whispers of the green trees, through the crack of the branches, the sunrays caress my skin…”

(KMC, 2019)

This presentation aims to intertwine the feeling one gets when encountering the nature in the whole essence and feeling one gets when encountering spiritual place. My case study will be the outdoor churches - churches without walls inside of the forests and nature reservoirs. Churches that are not limited by walls, but by trees.

Looking at history, early Christians did not attempt to build churches, they solely gathered and praised - first church building was built approximately around year 233 - 256. This case study aims to come back to the early traditions and rituals.

Theories used in this presentation will problematize and discuss this topic with texts by Weinryb’s

“Living Matter: Materiality, Maker, and Ornament in the Middle Ages” and Kavaler’ s “Nature and the Chapel Vaults at Ingolstadt: Structuralist and Other Perspectives.” together with the theories on ‘sublime’ (Burke, Kant, Schopenhauer,..) and ‘divine’.

Additional aspects such as communication and art will be added.

In this creative/academic presentation, one is encouraged to step inside and find inner peace, while encountering these places, as hypothesis is made in the field of community and improvement of the society that stems from the initial idea of reconnecting with ourselves in these spaces.

Cruising Musings: A Queer Ecology and the re/deterritorialisation of Nature and Environments (Lee Mann)

Eco-feminists and environmental justice advocates have long argued no environment, natural or urban, exists outside of socio-political systems including, gender, class and race. Historically, gender has informed our experience of and interaction with nature and environments and continues to do so today. A very clear example of this is the formation of American National Parks in the twentieth century, which served as a domain for men to act out hyper-masculine activity in response to the increasing presence of women in the labour market.

A queer ecology is another lens through which natural environments can be read; we can conceptualise nature through queer eyes. Cruising is a practice whereby primarily but not exclusively homosexual men seek out sex in public spaces--toilets, parks, and parking lots. I intend frame cruising as a socio-political act that re-territorialisatises public spaces traditionally reserved for heteronormative recreation. Gay men and queers, with the night as their disguise, lend public parks to live out desires and liberate sexualities. In doing so, a territory is mapped out through both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ pollution: the excretion of sexual bodily fluids and the trampling of ‘desire paths’. Seeping through natural and urban infrastructures, these sexual acts intercept heteronormative spaces, planting seeds for the flourishing of a queer ecology. Cruising is a gesticulation that quietly dismantles a space formed without the consideration of the other.

Can’t We Just Get Oolong? Tasseography and Biocentrism in the Western World (Wibecka Oliver)

Despite being one of the oldest practices in the world, divination is widely ignored by many scholars and theologians, dismissed as ‘mumbo jumbo’ or overlooked due to a perceived lack of scientific value (Silver, 2018). Tasseography in particular remains a practice that has persisted from Ancient Greece into the modern world, though is largely neglected by academics. Better understood today as tea-leaf reading, prognostication through tasseography focuses on interpreting patterns in residual organic materials such as tea, coffee or wine.

Rather than rejecting tasseography as a nonsensical practice, this presentation reexamines this form of divination through an environmental lens. Acknowledging the mythic nature of tasseography while still appreciating its value as a complex ecologically rooted process is essential. Removing inherent skepticism surrounding the possibility of divination and focusing instead on the larger symbolic relationships presented between the natural and divine, humanity and nature, new insight can be formed regarding this type of communication.

In particular this presentation explores how the ethical concept of biocentrism, in which value and significance extend to all living things, is represented through tasseographical predictions. Furthermore, it will be argued that tasseography can be understood as an involved visual (and bodily) experience grounded in biocentric values.

At War with Ourselves: Of Man and Nature in a Film (Karen Kristjansdottir)

There is no doubt that environmental issues have surfaced with increased force in the last years, months and even weeks. People seem to be waking up to, what some refer to as, the biggest challenges of our times. Today we can see flocks of children fighting for nature and climate causes all around the world, insisting on end to human’s bad treatment of the earth and climate. Theorists have for a long time contemplated on the relationship of man and nature and pop culture has been no exception in that. Last year, the Icelandic film Woman at War was premiered and it deals with this discourse, in a story of one woman’s warfare for the conservation of the environment. This study aims to briefly explore the relationship between man and nature, in the light of the film Woman at War (2018) by Benedikt Erlingsson and identify the reasons that drive the main character to onset a war and become an environmental activist, - or terrorist. It looks into the ways in which the visual representation and narrative can be connected to theories of appropriation and mourning. A couple of visual examples, frames from the film, are shown and analysed to support how these influences surface.

Appropriating Asterisms: Reexamining the Natural Contract Through Detritus (Austin LaGrone)

The use of trash as an artistic medium has a long and celebrated history going at least all the way back to the so-called degenerate artist Kurt Schwitters. Not surprisingly, contemporary artists continue to work with these found materials and in ways that often speak to biotic issues that arise in, and are explored through, Eco-Philosophy. This presentation will investigate Michel Serres’ demand for a “Natural Contract” and suggest that Gabriel Orozco’s art installation “Asterisms” at the Guggenheim can be read as isomorphic to the key ideas developed in Serres’ essay. Furthermore, this presentation will examine humanity’s appropriation of the world through lost or abandoned objects and argue that steering a course into the future must take into account and directly address the dynamics of both hard and soft pollution.

Perceiving the earth as a dynamic actor (Hanna Urich)

In this speech I discuss embodied perception through ‘attention economics’, approaching human attention as a resource. With the development of screen technology and social media, human attention is becoming more valuable and consequently more exploited. Michel Serres calls semiotic methods, such as adverts, of exploiting human attention ‘soft pollution’. When being exposed to clear advertising messages we are more likely to filter out the bodily impressions of the sensory world. Using eco-phenomenological theory I will argue how embodied perception can help us to reach an understanding for the earth as a dynamic actor as opposed to a silent and static backdrop. Our senses alone teach us that the earth is neither still nor mute; birdsong, thunderstorms and the smell of rain has the agency of affecting the human mind. By speaking about human attention as a limited resource I hope to highlight how adverts and algorithms can cause us to budget our attention and therefore limit our understanding of the sensory surroundings.

#day2 #abstracts

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obiternihili · 8 years ago

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waaay too long politics i started writing after complaining left tumblr isn't theory exploring heavy

Complaining and not doing my part isn't something I should do as often as I do, so I guess I'll sketch out some of my axioms, conclusions, and other ideas. Some words as I use them, loosely glossed: * Feudalism - a political system mostly defined by a relationships of often leonine contracts between fiefs and aristocrats; with capital primarily controlled by the aristocrats * Liberalism/Capitalism - a political and economic system that arose by the free investment of capital after the owners of the capital abandoned their resources, stirring the rise of a managerial class and republicanism * Socialism - the still hypothetical system succeeding L/C * Communism - far off, post scarcity society Some things I think: * History isn't dead; society will continue to develop technologically and deal with issues of scarcity that will stir socioeconomic developments for generations to come. The next system, however it is characterized, will be Socialism, even if it hardly resembles anything the socialists call socialism. * The foundations of social order that give rise to the legal and economic structure of societies, when they change, are primarily characterized by conflicts between classes. * People aren't evil based on the class they're born into, although if there is an imbalance in power evil people in a class will have disproportionate power * Revolution is just a sudden change, not necessarily violent. Adopting a new constitution, in American law the foundation of the governmental philosophy and the government itself, for example, would constitute a revolution even if the process was just handled by a convention with broad consensus * Humans function differently at large scales than at small scales, and this is important * Small scale human ethics don't scale to the human macroorganism * The human macroorganism has stress responses that trigger as amorally as immune responses in the human body * Inequity is a major trigger * Usually this response scapegoats something in the same way we individuals suffer from paradoelia and other issues, but occasionally it triggers a revolution in political order * Classes usually succeed other classes in that case * When this happens to Liberalism/Capitalism, the managerial class and the managed class are the main players * because of this, I think the most probably next step is self-management of the managed class * I think the path of least violence involves active non-hostility to the change while maintaining low inequity and other stressors to prevent the revolution response * mainstream econ is generally empirical and descriptive; voodoo econ, laissez-faire fundamentalism, soviet reinactors, and the like generally aren't * socialism will have to be built off c/l, and capitalize off of its capital (sorry) * that includes improving on the market system of resource allocation * the means of resource allocation in the soviet model, the only models really employed in the name of socialism, share more primary characteristics with feudalism than capitalism * this isn't surprizing, because the socialists had few other influences for anti-liberalism * the fascists, reactionaries turned hostile to socialism and maintaining the resentment against liberalism from centuries ago, also invented analogous systems, more purposefully modelled on feudalism * effectively the soviet system practiced in Venezuela today (notably less so under Chavez, not that Chavez was a good guy), Cuba, the former USSR, and so on were fascist by analogy and not my socialism * scarcity leads to conflicts of interests between parties; and sometimes this leads to tragedy of the commons and other problems similar in logical form * this affects nearly everything at every scale in every form * this means that there are problems governments can't solve and problems markets can't solve, some mutual, others not (e.g. food distribution, luxury distribution, large scale prioritizing, adequate feedback for things like enjoyment or whatever, against global warming, healthcare, education, certain market issues) * probably the best way to achieve a socialist society would be for the self-managed to outcompete the managed; while such organizations have a more equitible distribution of money (which the workers can reinvest into the surrounding economy) and appear to be more resistant to bubbles and other crises, their strengths are still comparatively marginal and suffer as any from bad management, misfortune, and inequity. Because the strengths are also something that are stronger when there's more of them, they may be very slow to overtake the markets, perhaps too slow * societies have little reason not to dust off old foundations, apart from the fact that those old foundations were abandoned with reasons. it's necessary to be hostile to quasi-feudal impulses * socialism wouldn't get rid of scarcity, and even communism will not get rid of our instincts. there's still room for dialectical evolution; history won't end * there may be many steps between socialism and communism analogous to the stages like socialism itself and the change may be as gradual as the process into socialism or the processes from early feudalism > nationalist feudalism > mercantilism and slavery > modern liberalism * some predicted hurdles for self-management as socialism - balancing the need for unions in managed companies and the redundancy of unions in self-managed organizations * a prediction about the next major class divide: self-managed companies might have slightly less transference between different careers and that might organize certain broad groupings of career types against others; pragmatic jobs already are very hostile to jobs about stress relief and communication, and that manifests in blue collar workers joking about art students to stem nerds bitching about the humanities and so on * race just isn't an important aspect of the mechanics of this; apart from it doesn't exist (although populations do), most of it is akin to paradoelia in the macroorganism and what we're dealing with is mostly leftovers from earlier societies - humans fighting for scarce food, tribes stuck with no trade options, feudalism's nepotism and family planning, mercantilism's protectionism and isolationism. * the traditional corporate structure is somewhat analogous to feudalism, and the self-managed structures appear more like republicanism, and for largely the same principles should be superior in certain ways (if not all ways) * likewise i favor a trend towards direct democracy in legislation, however i still think it should be checked (as the american legislature is checked by the other branches (in theory)) to prevent the amoral and arational actions of the macroorganism from dictating policy (usually). *in a general trend of dividing power to provide options i also want to see something experiment with an executive tribunate more. some philosophical things * a philosophy of history is possible. While we can't predict the far future well, we can be reasonably certain of the near future. It's basically chaos theory; we can be reasonably sure about the orbits of the planets for the near future in astronomical terms, but as time goes on the margins of error build up until the uncertainties overwhelm the models. If you graph certainty over time you'll find a falling slope and effectively that's what we should expect in history/human affairs as well. That's why I feel confident writing this manifesto and that's why I feel better if we focused on the next steps instead of the long term details. if that makes me socialist, ok; if my belief than an effectively post-scarcity society society is possible makes me a communist, ok * morally, although we can be inductively sure some kind of nihilism is empirically correct (i.e. there's nothing special about morality, it's just a side effect of us having gene-propagating maximizing behaviors), since we can't know absolutely we can always be moral agnostics * i don't want to explain the math but if there is One True Moral System or something similar, we can be sure we aren't practicing it if we happen to be wrong and practice a moral system exclusively. if we leave every system open however and have people practicing a bit of everything it's likely we'll be practicing a portion of the OTMS. Maximizing choices available means people have the most options to practice every system, including the OTMS. Since maximizing the ability to practice the OTMS is necessary to practice the OTMS, it should follow that some kind of choice-maximizing utilitarianism is necessarily fundamental to it. (it happens that that's also how markets work) *because of that being pretty much a fundamental truth that also means that there's an objective system of morality we can reason from. Although there are some absolute negative actions morally then (e.g. killing someone, which subtracts from the amount of choices being made), clemency and discrepency can also be exercised and they can be weighed along utilitarian means of trying to practice net utility gains (e.g. euthanizing a braindead fetus to save the mother's life) * the law is more useful as an incentivization mechanism than a moralizing mechanism, and because of this it takes on properties at odds with the consequentialism of choice maximizing. this is a necessary evil to allow the state its own tragedy busting powers basically * choice means that there's a lot of situations where competing market/state solutions are a good idea, although a lot of this depends on the issue. some natural monopolies exist and are better handled by the state * choices are better made with a clear mind and minds are best cleared when relatively happy and healthy. part of this leads to an anti-suffering utilitarianism underpinning choice utilitarianism * don't be a dick to hegemonic people just because they're rich, white, or so on; only do bad if it's unavoidable * negative actions stir negative responses and even though everyone knows the cycle of revenge is bad again choices are best made with clear minds. people will choose to be horrible if they think they're being horrible to horrible people and this is stupid but human condition. the structure of nato-aligned hegemonic powers we call the west's violence created venezuela cuba and iran, communist attempts to pull a george washington in austria created the nazis, tsars, warlords, and other bastards created the ussr and china. * progressivism is correct and necessarily springs from a lot of these utilitarian causes (I mean look at Mill's politics) but the recent rise in reactionaries is because people who call themselves progressives tend to be humans who are dicks, as well as the fact that some people are dicks because they don't get it or are fucking broken sacks of shit without empathy. * punching a fascist can be a good thing and the principle should be defended as a principle but being a giant asshole and creating martyrs is just making things harder for everyone and you should focus on the object level of these kinds of acts. punching nazis can be good as a signal to other nazis and to protect something. punching spencer was an ambiguous thing because the fallout is as divisive as it is declarative and it probably didn't save australians from being convinced of his utter rank bullshit or stop the memetic hazard. punching innocent girl who slightly disagrees with you is very bad and should be disincentivized in general and specifically repaired if possible, although that's a given with prior reasoning anyways. * because suffering minimization is necessary, understanding the responses the human macroorganism has is necessary as well. this means limiting inequity to prevent the normal genocidal responses to stress, while trying to model and compete better systems and try to control our future without putting off what gets harder over time. this is why my socialism must still be largely prescriptive/morally charged. besides there's a general trend of quality of life expanding with this sort of progress.

#waaay too long

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jimbartholomew · 4 years ago

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“Because the cops don't need you and man they expect the same” Bob Dylan, Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues

America, as continents go, was big, wide-open and sprawling when it was “discovered” by Europeans. It presented tremendous opportunities for anyone who would be willing to exploit the abundant resources contained in the Western Hemisphere. The English weren’t the first ones to figure this out, but once the Spanish, French and Dutch began to benefit from their American colonies, the English came on strong, pushing the limits of “Mercantilism” until full-blown Capitalism popped out.

Capitalism is a great system for exploiting resources to develop wealth. Unfortunately, along with wealth for some, comes poverty for others. The trick is to be one of the people that benefits rather than one of the resources. Capitalism has little to offer resources that no longer produce wealth. Those resources become expendable. One example of a played-out resource is the Appalachian Mountains. Once the coal was gone, that country was left to fend for itself; and that included the land and the miners. It is not good to become an expendable resource under American Capitalism.

It is an establish fact that America is tough on the people it does not need. I say this from the standpoint of an older member of the work force, as well as a student of American History. Luckily, although I no longer serve a purpose as a producer within the system, being recently retired, I still have value as a consumer, so I am safe for a while. I hope. When the day comes that I can no longer play a role within the system, I, too, will become expendable.

Two recent cultural “happenings” (for lack of a better word), the recent Covid Pandemic and the epidemic of videotaped killing of black Americans by the police, have torn away the curtain to reveal the truths regarding who in America today is considered essential and who is expendable. How else can anyone possibly explain the blatant indifference to the deaths in nursing homes and elderly facilities, and the murder of primarily young black men who were not convicted of Capital offenses? I don’t mean for this to be an anti-Republican screed (Democrats are not without fault here), but the current administration and the Senate have been particularly slow to react when faced with these issues. The virus victimized the elderly and the poor first and foremost; the police “happen” to kill black people. The greatest fear expressed by the President and the Majority Leader McConnell during the nation’s shutdown was that doing what the experts said would save lives, would hurt the economy, by which they mean mid-sized business owners and the Stock Market reliant class. The administration’s response to the epidemic of violence was to decry the “war against the police”. It is clear where they stand. It is equally clear who matters to them. There are people in America who are expendable.

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone with a little knowledge of American History. America has always been indifferent to the suffering and abuse of people that were not willing to give their all for America’s wealth, even when it came at the hands of government agents. The elimination of indigenous people because they were in the way of American expansion is the subtext behind every story of “Manifest Destiny”, and at the heart of official government policy, from the very beginning. Start with Columbus and the Taino, observe the Pilgrims with the Wampanoag Indians of eastern Massachusetts, follow the Trail of Tears, and end with the hunt for Chief Joseph; the course of American Empire is ineluctable. Native Americans were not acceptable as citizens, and would not be slaves, therefore they would be eliminated. Their land was needed, but they were expendable.

The willingness to accept and condone the murder of black citizens by Federal, State and local policing agencies is well-documented and beyond question. It is one more aspect of the same fact: black Americans have always been seen as expendable by the majority culture. If you are at all shocked at my saying this, take even a quick look at the historic record. Once slavery was ended in the South, except for a brief period of time during Reconstruction, the prevailing actions of the government were aimed at minimizing black participation in American life. Sharecropping, the Black Codes, the KKK all followed from a single stream of thought: black people in America were expendable.

Over the years, the black community has worked hard to been seen to serve a valuable purpose within American Capitalism, beyond the limited role of black consumer. The value of black workers, athletes, musicians and scholars has been recognized, and yet there are still far too many people who feel that contributions to our culture by black men and women were not really necessary. There has always been more money and energy expended keeping black people “in their place” than helping them take their rightful place as full members of society. The length of time it has taken for America to become outraged at the incarceration and killing of young black men specifically, speaks to the fact that the dominant culture in America sees black people as expendable.

The current administration’s war against primarily Spanish-speaking immigrants – both legal and illegal – shines a clear light on America’s willingness to punish and suppress populations that it sees as expendable. The cruelty of the measures used against people seeking asylum, often from economic and political situations that we have helped create, shows clearly that we simply don’t value their humanity. The most often presented argument from those in power to creating clearer paths to entering the country is purely economic: farmers, orchards and some industries need these workers. This simply attests to the fact that they are only wanted as long as they perform an economic function. By limiting legal immigration, and keeping Hispanic workers on the fringes of society, businesses can actually benefit by keeping wages low and benefits non-existent.

In recent years, America has identified an entirely new group of people that it doesn’t really need: young people. With older people retiring at a later age, there simply aren’t enough jobs for restless and ambitious youths. The solution has been to keep them in school a lot longer and tie them down with an incredible debt burden. Give them a Master’s Degree, $150,000 in (unforgiveable) debt obligation, and an entry level job somewhere and they will serve their purpose as consumers and will keep quiet. Provide them with drugs and the internet and maybe you won’t have to worry about why they’re still living in your basement. Of course, the social and economic elite doesn’t want this for their children; luckily they can afford the private schools that we see more and more as part of their educational agenda. The willingness of the authorities to forcefully suppress the youth movement known as Occupy Wall Street was a clear sign that the Majority Society was more than willing to marginalize and criminalize children who were not willing to accept their assigned role and stay quiet.

Between the social and economic (read: white) elite and the expendable masses, is a thin blue line of police officers, who toiled under a simple mandate: “Protect us and our property. Do whatever you need to do, as long as we don’t need to see it on the nightly news”. And the police fulfilled this mandate, as well as they could, for a long time. But as the need to maintain order and safety in a world in which the distance between the haves and have nots continued to grow became more and more difficult. It became harder and harder to use the once-tolerated methods of policing without causing local, and now national, outrage. Camera phones reveal the story of what happens to expendable people who step out of line in America. It is not a new problem. It is also not a problem of police training, or “bad apples”. It is a long standing part of the American justice system. It has been part of the deal for a long time; now we can see it acted out, in living color.

Where things go from here is anyone’s guess, but this situation will not be able to continue as it is. One possibility is outright fascism, which is historically the form of government that emerges when the middle class is threatened. Our only hope to avoid the anarchy and repression that looms, is to change this country at a fundamental level. The first step is to understand and face our History. America has always presented itself as a nation under Democratic rule – every man with an equal say in the way we will be governed. The reality has been vastly different. Bridging the gap between the promise and the reality will be necessary if we can ever hope to bridge the other gaps; the gap between white America and people of color, the gap between those who own America and those who built it and maintain it, the gap between those who think themselves to be irreplaceable and who have been treated as expendable.

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allyklapak · 5 years ago

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Too many people, not enough space

The world population clock ticks up and down in constant oscillation. The current number reads 7,633,905,260, but in a couple of seconds, its jumped by tens, in a couple of hours maybe by hundreds.[^1] It is known that there are people taking their first breaths and last breaths constantly. It is important to understand why then the population grows, rather than maintains and what the economic and environment repercussions entail. Politicians, philosophers and economists alike have theorized potential plans for management for decades but have found no uniform resolution. These underlying issues of overpopulation and subsequent overconsumption do much to exacerbate the issue of world poverty and over expansive urbanization of land. The pattern of population growth has taken the shape of a J over the past 200 years, adhering to trends of uneven population growth across the world and over time.[^2] Following the baby boom, population growth rate saw a surprising decline. In stabilizing a population, the replacement-level fertility rate dictates each family needs to have an average of slightly more than two children to replace themselves.[^2] Our current population already exceeds the cultural carrying capacity, even though the United States saw a decline in fertility rate following the baby boom. [^2] This underscores the role in mortality in population decline. The emergence of more developed nations and better healthcare has increased life expectancy in a way which lowers mortality. There are many cultural attributes that affect population such as religious traditions, country availability and stance on contraceptives and educational and employment opportunities for women.[^2] Nations are often assessed on age structure through a chart categorizing the percentage of women into categories of pre and post reproductive. Migration of large groups into cities or countries also influences the population of an area.[^2] A more desirable nation to live in would draw in more immigrants to house, therefore consuming more goods and adding to the population. Logically, less developed nations see strong spikes in population because they do not have the means of education and governmental supervision to avoid being roped back into a vicious cycle of having children young and using offspring to supplement income. [^2] The necessity of children to sustain the family explains additional cultural issues of timing and child labor laws. Also, I believe it calls into question the prioritizations held by American people that has a distorted bias toward equitable profit and success. As the video about the good life reminds, life is good and money does not necessarily equate to contentless.[^3] Studying the population of the world with a preliminary American comprehension allows me to be influenced by the American understanding and issues faced. However, the problems that arise from habiting 7.7 billion people takes a toll on world economies and types of living areas. After understanding the circumstances of why populations have been making a consistent rise in modern history, it is next vital to break down the ramifications of a never-ending increase in human numbers in an already maximumly exploited planet. Economists of the last century have offered various principles of economics to attempt to balance the instability of climate, money, and consumption. Rich countries may have less people, but have excelled in developments that deplete resources while third world nations face their own environmental challenges with pollution and contaminated water. If both large and impoverished nations alike are proving detrimental to the environment, how can the earth prevail? One theory proposed by Herman Daly is called the Steady-state model. This plan indicated that the government should enforce analysis of how natural resources flow through the economy.[^4] By connecting the economy and the natural world, the steady state plan aims to establish an established stock of wealth tied to a constant population.[^4] Certain economists have disagreed about the extent of governmental involvement, such as Stuart Mill and David Ricardo who endorsed more hands-off methods.[^4] Daly planned to establish his SteadyState through correction of inequality, stabilization of the population/capital. These steps work to resolve the looming threat of overconsumption whilst simultaneously addressing the repercussions of overpopulation including population, maintenance of shared resources.[^4] I believe the SteadyState plan is ideally a necessary procedure for the world to eventually follow, but I think the controversial nature of high government involvement and modern trends make this extremely unrealistic. Alternative, the Degrowth Moment emerged from this time period with its own list of triumphs and setbacks. The Degrowth movement is economically and socially focused on oppositional capitalist thought.[^5] This entire ideology is more aggressively anti-capitalist and has been criticized for being too pessimistic.[^5] It is also improbable as it opposes all development for development is inherently unsustainable. This statement on development translates to the additionally major point about where people in the world mostly live and how these habits affect the economy. The world becoming increasingly more urbanized because of the rise of America’s financial side. The increase in pedestrian citizens looking to better their current position in society aims to stop the pollution and detriments of urban establishments. The wealthier nations of the world are primarily composed of cities which warrants the information of the public to be targeted at reduction or harm.[^6] There has been a widespread effort towards urbanization as places with wealth increase and is represented by expensive buildings. We know where these cities are primarily concentrated at major landmark locations such as NYC. Urban Sprawl is the consequence of low-density development existing and overtaking the surrounding land and agriculture.[^6] This expansion of the city just further propagates the negative aspects faced by some and the environment. For example, cities are imperfect because infrastructure elements built 20 + years ago are beginning to fall apart already.[^6] Furthermore, the deforestation and destruction of vegetation, clean water, and biodiverse systems are major disadvantages.[^6] Not only to cities give rise to immense air, waste and noise pollution, but it also affects the poor communities nearby that attempt to find work or opportunity in the city. Instead of finding this dream of success, instead shantytowns and slums are built near or around cities which pose safety, healthy and environmental risks.[^6] Mexico City is one example which suffers under intense pollution issues made worse by hot climate and water shortages.[^6] While cities can be a good opportunity for some, they are only a good idea if they are done with a properly environmentally conscientious design. Mayor Bloomberg acknowledged the need for positive action and launched the PlaNYC which completed a portion of its 127 initiatives to prep for the inevitable rise in population, maintain infrastructure, and conserve resources while cutting carbon emissions.[^7] Ultimately, one of the largest issues for carbon emissions in these congested areas are cars because they are an American stable for convenience and a majority of Americans drive themselves alone to work in traffic and delays every day. Investment in alternative methods of transportation like light-rail and heavy-rail systems would benefit the sense of community within the world as well as the environmental status of these populated areas.[^6] His would save the room needed to build roads and the air from overly co2 concentrated emissions. I know these are some of the most difficult issues to deal with as they directly fall in line with American liberties and conveniences which people hold close to their hearts. For example, Ecotowns would take great lifestyle readjustment to actually gain ground, even though they are obviously the better answer for society.[^6] Similarly, I think the issue of overpopulation is one nature may have to take on itself as any government intervention on the matter may seem tyrannical. As the impossible hamster shows, at the rate humanity is going, the population will overpower the earth and force it into failure. Word Count: 1281 Discussion Question: Would providing a full-cost pricing tax on cars be feasible because most of American will have to pay this ontop of everything else and may not be happy that they are being targeted rather than the car industry. 1. “Current World Population.” Worldometer. Accessed March 2, 2020. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/. 2. Miller Jr, G. Tyler. Living in the Environment: an Introduction to Environmental Science. No. Ed. 19. Cengage Learning, 2017. Ch. 6. 3. Koehler, Berrett. "More Than Money - What Is "The Good Life" Parable," Youtube Video, Aug. 8, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7JlI959slY. 4. “Steady-State Economy.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, March 1, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy. 5. “Degrowth.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, February 17, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth. 6. Miller, Ch.22. 7. “PlaNYC.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, November 1, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlaNYC.

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suzanneshannon · 6 years ago

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<![CDATA[ Nothing Fails Like Success ]]>

A family buys a house they can’t afford. They can’t make their monthly mortgage payments, so they borrow money from the Mob. Now they’re in debt to the bank and the Mob, live in fear of losing their home, and must do whatever their creditors tell them to do.

Welcome to the internet, 2019.

Buying something you can’t afford, and borrowing from organizations that don’t have your (or your customers’) best interest at heart, is the business plan of most internet startups. It’s why our digital services and social networks in 2019 are a garbage fire of lies, distortions, hate speech, tribalism, privacy violations, snake oil, dangerous idiocy, deflected responsibility, and whole new categories of unpunished ethical breaches and crimes.

From optimistically conceived origins and message statements about making the world a better place, too many websites and startups have become the leading edge of bias and trauma, especially for marginalized and at-risk groups.

Why (almost) everything sucks

Twitter, for instance, needs a lot of views for advertising to pay at the massive scale its investors demand. A lot of views means you can’t be too picky about what people share. If it’s misogynists or racists inspiring others who share their heinous beliefs to bring back the 1930s, hey, it’s measurable. If a powerful elected official’s out-of-control tweeting reduces churn and increases views, not only can you pay your investors, you can even take home a bonus. Maybe it can pay for that next meditation retreat.

You can cloak this basic economic trade-off in fifty layers of bullshit—say you believe in freedom of speech, or that the antidote to bad speech is more speech—but the fact is, hate speech is profitable. It’s killing our society and our planet, but it’s profitable. And the remaining makers of Twitter—the ones whose consciences didn’t send them packing years ago—no longer have a choice. The guy from the Mob is on his way over, and the vig is due.

Not to single out Twitter, but this is clearly the root cause of its seeming indifference to the destruction hate speech is doing to society…and will ultimately do to the platform. (But by then Jack will be able to afford to meditate full-time.)

Other companies do other evil things to pay their vig. When you owe the Mob, you have no choice. Like sell our data. Or lie about medical research.

There are internet companies (like Basecamp, or like Automattic, makers of WordPress.com, where I work) that charge money for their products and services, and use that money to grow their business. I wish more internet companies could follow that model, but it’s hard to retrofit a legitimate business model to a product that started its life as free.

And there are even some high-end news publications, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, that survive on a combination of advertising and flexible paywalls. But these options are not available to most digital publications and businesses.

Return with me to those Halcyon days…

Websites and internet startups used to be you and your friends making cool stuff for your other friends, and maybe building new friendships and even small communities in the process. (Even in 2019, that’s still how some websites and startups begin—as labors of love, fashioned by idealists in their spare time.)

Because they are labors of love; because we’ve spent 25 years training people to believe that websites, and news, and apps, and services should be free; because, when we begin a project, we can scarcely believe anyone will ever notice or care about it—for these reasons and more, the things we make digitally, especially on the web, are offered free of charge. We labor on, excited by positive feedback, and delighted to discover that, if we keep at it, our little community will grow.

Most such labors of love disappear after a year or two, as the creators drift out of touch with each other, get “real” jobs, fall in love, start families, or simply lose interest due to lack of attention from the public or the frustrations of spending weekends and holidays grinding away at an underappreciated site or app while their non-internet friends spend those same hours either having fun or earning money.

Along came money

But some of these startup projects catch on. And when they do, a certain class of investor smells ROI. And the naive cofounders, who never expected their product or service to really get anywhere, can suddenly envision themselves rich and Zuckerberg-famous. Or maybe they like the idea of quitting their day job, believing in themselves, and really going for it. After all, that is an empowering and righteous vision.

Maybe they believe that by taking the initial investment, they can do more good—that their product, if developed further, can actually help people. This is often the motivation behind agreeing to an initial investment deal, especially in categories like healthcare.

Or maybe the founders are problem solvers. Existing products or services in a given category have a big weakness. The problem solvers are sure that their idea is better. With enough capital, and a slightly bigger team, they can show the world how to do it right. Most inventions that have moved humankind forward followed exactly this path. It should lead to a better world (and it sometimes does). It shouldn’t produce privacy breaches and fake medicine and election-influencing bots and all the other plagues of our emerging digital civilization. So why does it?

Content wants to be paid

Primarily it is because these businesses have no business model. They were made and given away free. Now investors come along who can pay the founders, buy them an office, give them the money to staff up, and even help with PR and advertising to help them grow faster.

Now there are salaries and insurance and taxes and office space and travel and lecture tours and sales booths at SXSW, but there is still no charge for the product.

And the investor seeks a big return.

And when the initial investment is no longer enough to get the free-product company to scale to the big leagues, that’s when the really big investors come in with the really big bucks. And the company is suddenly famous overnight, and “everybody” is using the product, and it’s still free, and the investors are still expecting a giant payday.

Like I said—a house you can’t afford, so you go into debt to the bank and the Mob.

The money trap

Here it would be easy to blame capitalism, or at least untrammeled, under-regulated capitalism, which has often been a source of human suffering—not that capitalism, properly regulated, can’t also be a force for innovation which ameliorates suffering. That’s the dilemma for our society, and where you come down on free markets versus governmental regulation of businesses should be an intellectual decision, but these days it is a label, and we hate our neighbors for coming down a few degrees to the left or right of us. But I digress and oversimplify, and this isn’t a complaint about late stage capitalism per se, although it may smell like one.

No, the reason small companies created by idealists too frequently turn into consumer-defrauding forces for evil has to do with the amount of profit each new phase of investor expects to receive, and how quickly they expect to receive it, and the fact that the products and services are still free. And you know what they say about free products.

Nothing fails like success

A friend who’s a serial entrepreneur has started maybe a dozen internet businesses over the span of his career. They’ve all met a need in the marketplace. As a consequence, they’ve all found customers, and they’ve all made a profit. Yet his investors are rarely happy.

“Most of my startups have the decency to fail in the first year,” one investor told him. My friend’s business was taking in several million dollars a year and was slowly growing in staff and customers. It was profitable. Just not obscenely so.

And internet investors don’t want a modest return on their investment. They want an obscene profit right away, or a brutal loss, which they can write off their taxes. Making them a hundred million for the ten million they lent you is good. Losing their ten million is also good—they pay a lower tax bill that way, or they use the loss to fold a company, or they make a profit on the furniture while writing off the business as a loss…whatever rich people can legally do under our tax system, which is quite a lot.

What these folks don’t want is to lend you ten million dollars and get twelve million back.

You and I might go, “Wow! I just made two million dollars just for being privileged enough to have money to lend somebody else.” And that’s why you and I will never have ten million dollars to lend anybody. Because we would be grateful for it. And we would see a free two million dollars as a life-changing gift from God. But investors don’t think this way.

We didn’t start the fire, but we roasted our weenies in it

As much as we pretend to be a religious nation, our society worships these investors and their profits, worships companies that turn these profits, worships above all the myth of overnight success, which we use to motivate the hundreds of thousands of workers who will work nights and weekends for the owners in hopes of cashing in when the stock goes big.

Most times, even if the stock does go big, the owner has found a way to devalue it by the time it does. Owners have brilliant advisers they pay to figure out how to do those things. You and I don’t.

A Christmas memory

I remember visiting San Francisco years ago and scoring an invitation to Twitter’s Christmas party through a friend who worked there at the time. Twitter was, at the time, an app that worked via SMS and also via a website. Period.

Some third-party companies, starting with my friends at Iconfactory, had built iPhone apps for people who wanted to navigate Twitter via their newfangled iPhones instead of the web. Twitter itself hadn’t publicly addressed mobile and might not even have been thinking about it.

Although Twitter was transitioning from a fun cult thing—used by bloggers who attended SXSW Interactive in 2007—to an emerging cultural phenomenon, it was still quite basic in its interface and limited in its abilities. Which was not a bad thing. There is art in constraint, value in doing one thing well. As an outsider, if I’d thought about it, I would have guessed that Twitter’s entire team consisted of no more than 10 or 12 wild-eyed, sleep-deprived true believers.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I showed up at the Christmas party and discovered I’d be sharing dinner with hundreds of designers, developers, salespeople, and executives instead of the handful I’d naively anticipated meeting. (By now, of course, Twitter employs many thousands. It’s still not clear to an outsider why so many workers are needed.)

But one thing is clear: somebody has to pay for it all.

Freemium isn’t free

Employees, let alone thousands of them, on inflated Silicon Valley engineer salaries, aren’t free. Health insurance and parking and meals and HR and travel and expense accounts and meetups and software and hardware and office space and amenities aren’t free. Paying for all that while striving to repay investors tenfold means making a buck any way you can.

Since the product was born free and a paywall isn’t feasible, Twitter must rely on that old standby: advertising. Advertising may not generate enough revenue to keep your hometown newspaper (or most podcasts and content sites) in business, but at Twitter’s scale, it pays.

It pays because Twitter has so many active users. And what keeps those users coming back? Too often, it’s the dopamine of relentless tribalism—folks whose political beliefs match and reinforce mine in a constant unwinnable war of words with folks whose beliefs differ.

Of course, half the antagonists in a given brawl may be bots, paid for in secret by an organization that wants to make it appear that most citizens are against Net Neutrality, or that most Americans oppose even the most basic gun laws, or that our elected officials work for lizard people. The whole system is broken and dangerous, but it’s also addictive, and we can’t look away. From our naive belief that content wants to be free, and our inability to create businesses that pay for themselves, we are turning our era’s greatest inventions into engines of doom and despair.

Your turn

So here we are. Now what do we do about it?

It’s too late for current internet businesses (victims of their own success) that are mortgaged to the hilt in investor gelt. But could the next generation of internet startups learn from older, stable companies like Basecamp, and design products that pay for themselves via customer income—products that profit slowly and sustainably, allowing them to scale up in a similarly slow, sustainable fashion?

The self-payment model may not work for apps and sites that are designed as modest amusements or communities, but maybe those kinds of startups don’t need to make a buck—maybe they can simply be labors of love, like the websites we loved in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Along those same lines, can the IndieWeb, and products of IndieWeb thinking like Micro.blog, save us? Might they at least provide an alternative to the toxic aspects of our current social web, and restore the ownership of our data and content? And before you answer, RTFM.

On an individual and small collective basis, the IndieWeb already works. But does an IndieWeb approach scale to the general public? If it doesn’t scale yet, can we, who envision and design and build, create a new generation of tools that will help give birth to a flourishing, independent web? One that is as accessible to ordinary internet users as Twitter and Facebook and Instagram? Tantek Çelik thinks so, and he’s been right about the web for nearly 30 years. (For more about what Tantek thinks, listen to our conversation in Episode № 186 of The Big Web Show.) Are these approaches mere whistling against a hurricane? Are most web and internet users content with how things are? What do you think? Share your thoughts on your personal website (dust yours off!) or (irony ahoy!) on your indie or mainstream social networks of choice using hashtag #LetsFixThis. I can’t wait to see what you have to say.

published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

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continuations · 7 years ago

Text

World After Capital: Getting Past Capital

NOTE: Today’s excerpt from my book World After Capital deals with how we have achieved the sufficiency of physical capital. This is capitalisms greatest accomplishment, but also means that we are now facing a new scarcity: attention.

Capital

The title of the book is World after Capital. One of my fundamental claims is that capital is no longer scarce. There is enough capital in the world to meet everyone's basic needs. That means meeting the individual needs of 7 billion or more people, the collective needs of the societies they live in and the collective needs of humanity at large. Using the language introduced earlier, capital is sufficient. And because population growth is decelerating, while technological progress is accelerating (due to digital technology), capital will no longer be the binding constraint for humanity going forward.

It is tempting to look at this in terms of financial capital, but that again would be succumbing to the veil of of money, as was the case with the definition of scarcity. Dollar bills don't feed people. Gold bars can't be used as smart phones. The capital that matters is productive physical capital, such as machines and buildings.

Financial capital is not irrelevant. It is generally required both for the initial construction of physical capital and to meet the ongoing working capital needs of the economy. If I want to build a factory or a school, I need to pay the construction workers, the suppliers of machines, etc. before I can start collecting money. And in many businesses I pay some ongoing expenses every month before collecting revenues from customers. Cash outflows preceding cash inflows means a financing mechanism is required. To get the proper accumulation of physical capital, we therefore need to have effective ways of accumulating and allocating financial capital.

In the history of financial capital there have been many important innovations, such as corporations with limited liability, debt and equity issuance and trading, bank lending and more recently market place lending. The allocation of financial capital to projects through markets has been enormously successful, compared to attempts at various forms of centralized planning. It is the very success of the market-based approach that has now given us a physical capital base in the world that is large enough to meet our basic needs.

Many recent innovations in finance, however, have not contributed meaningfully to the proper creation and allocation of physical capital. Quite the opposite. They have contributed to the “financialization” of the economy: a growth in financial sector activities that is decoupled from or even harms the formation of physical capital. For instance, many derivatives and structured securities have resulted in severe misallocations by shifting risk. One example is the housing bubble that resulted in part as mortgage backed securities and CDOs appeared to remove all risk from capital flooding into construction.

What is the role of “human capital” in all of this? Human capital is the subset of all knowledge that embodied in a group of humans. So the question is better asked differently: what is the role of knowledge? The answer is that advances in knowledge are essential for making capital more effective. Even more fundamentally, knowledge is necessary for having physical capital in the first place.

You can theoretically have physical capital without financial capital but you cannot have physical capital without knowledge. You cannot build a machine, say an MRI, without a lot of knowledge in physics and engineering. In a world where everyone's basic needs are taken care of it might, however, be possible to build the same MRI without the need for financial capital.

Interestingly, you can also have financial capital without physical capital and without meaningful knowledge accumulation. For instance, you can develop financial capital through trade or war or simply by convention as in the case of the island of Yap [40].

All of this is to say that we should never lose sight of the fact that financial capital ultimately serves no purpose in and of itself, other than possibly the gratification of ego. As great illustration of that imagine a Spanish Galleon full of raided gold sinking in a storm. The sailors aboard had ample access to financial capital, but what they really needed to survive was more knowledge and better physical capital.

So now we will go ahead and examine whether physical capital is still a binding constraint when it comes to meeting basic needs. The approach I am taking is split in two parts: here in the main text I am applying logic based on observations; the Appendix contains much more data and calculations to back up the arguments.

Individual Needs

My claim is that capital is no longer the binding constraint for meeting individual needs, not just for one individual but for everyone. This is especially true for the developed economies but increasingly true globally.

The primary strategies for meeting our power needs are breathing air, drinking water and eating farmed food.

There is plenty of air to breathe (one time reminder: please see the Appendix for backup on this and the following assertions), the key challenge today is having clean, breathable air. China and India are both struggling with that at the moment, but this is due to rapid development using outdated energy sources. The clean air achieved in industrialized countries shows that this is a temporary development stage.

Similarly there is plenty of water in the world for everyone to drink. There are distribution and access problems, including right here in the United States (e.g., the polluted water in Flint, Michigan). Again though, physical capital is not a binding constraint. We can even build new desalination plants in record time. [Example]

We have also made dramatic progress in farming. In fact, globally the amount of land required for farming has started to decline as a result of higher per acre productivity. We have made recent breakthroughs in vertical and automated farming. For instance, the world's largest vertical farm is currently under construction in Jersey City. The Japanese indoor farming company Spread is working on a fully automated facility that will be able to produce 30,000 heads of lettuce per day [155].

The discharge need is primarily addressed through modern sewage technology. Here too capital is no longer a binding constraint per se, but again there is a global distribution problem. To see how quickly this has the potential to change, consider the migration that has taken place in China from the country side into cities.

The Chinese construction boom also illustrates how quickly we can build shelter as a strategy to address the need for a controlled physical environment. In the U.S. too we had a prior construction boom which was powered by artificially cheap mortgage credit. While a lot of housing was built in the wrong places it powerfully demonstrated our construction capacity.

Clothing is another strategy for addressing this need. The price of clothing has been falling in the United States and in many other parts of the world. Capital is not a constraint here and we can clothe everyone in the world many times over.

Similarly we have become very good at providing light. There is a great study that shows how the hours of light one can earn with 60 hours of labor have exploded in the United States from about 10 in 1800 to over 100,000 by 1990 [CITATION?]. We have made further progress since with LED lighting. That progress has also come to other parts of the world, for instance in the form of off grid solar powered lamps.

Now we come to a more difficult need, the one for healing. We read all the time how expensive healthcare has become and how it consumes an ever larger fraction of the economy, at least here in the United States. We have to ask though whether capital really is a binding constraint here. Again in industrialized countries this does no longer appear to be the case. We have plenty of hospital space and doctor's offices. We have extensive diagnostic facilities and can produce large quantities of medicine. The binding constraint instead is one of insufficient knowledge. Our bodies are extremely complex and even seemingly basic issues, such as how diet relates to health, are poorly understood as a result.

In learning we are also no longer capital constrained. This is rapidly true not just in industrialized nations but also globally due to the buildout of wireless networks and the increasing affordability of smartphones. We are not far away from a point in time when we have enough capital for anyone in the world to learn anything. The binding constraint here is not capital but the availability of affordable content and the time to learn (and to teach).

The final individual need, the one for meaning, is not and has never been constrained by capital.

Collective Needs

At first it might seem difficult to see how capital even relates to our collective needs as defined in the earlier chapter. How could capital have anything to do with such abstract concepts as motivation and coordination? Was capital ever a binding constraint here?

Capital clearly was not a binding constraint for reproduction, which societies thankfully accomplished a long time ago or we would not be here today.

But when it comes to allocation, capital was the crucial binding constraint during the Industrial Age. Not only were we terribly bad at making stuff at first but we also lacked the communications and transportation infrastructure to easily get goods to where they were needed.

Motivation might historically appear not to to be capital constrained as we had many strategies for the motivation need, including rewards and punishments. The development of markets with prices, however, turned out to be a crucial strategy for meeting the motivation need. High prices provide an incentive for the allocation of capital (and other factors of production). For a long time capital in turn was the binding constraint on the scale of markets. Today, however, we can broadcast supply, demand, and prices in any market globally in near realtime at zero marginal cost.

Coordination, on the other hand, was quite obviously capital constrained for a long time due to limitations on communications. We can see this by considering that until fairly recently it was not possible to have a globally coordinated event. Today on the other hand we not only have a global nearly instantaneous communication network but also the ability to precisely position people or machines using GPS and other location services.

Finally, our collective need for knowledge was capital constrained for a long time. Making books for instance was expensive and time consuming. Copies of books had to be made by humans introducing errors. The spread of knowledge was constrained by the need to create and move physical copies. We have now left all of those capital constraints on knowledge behind.

Enablers

Our progress on enablers is another way to understand why capital is no longer the binding constraint. We have had massive breakthroughs on all four during the Industrial Age: energy, resources, transformation, and transportation.

The biggest breakthrough in energy was the development of electricity. It allowed us to apply energy in highly precise fashion. Our remaining challenges are all related to the production, storage and distribution of electricity. Further improvements in energy will let us solve needs in new ways, but we are not fundamentally energy constrained today. For instance, a relatively small percentage of surface coverage with solar (< 1% in the US) would cover all electricity needs at current efficiency rates [SOURCE?].

Resources were also completely transformed during the Industrial Age through mining, which in turn was enabled by progress with transportation (rail) and energy (steam power). People, especially those motivated by a concern for sustainability, like to point to scarcity of resources as the primary constraint. But resources are sufficient when we consider three sources that we can tap in the future: recycling, asteroid mining and transmutation. For instance, today a lot of electronics wind up in landfill instead of the materials being recycled. We achieved the first soft landing on an asteroid as far back as 2001. And while transmutation sounds like modern day alchemy, we now routinely make phosphorus out of silicon (albeit in small amounts).

Our ability to transform also improved radically during the Industrial Age. For instance, chemistry allowed us to make rubber synthetically which previously had to be harvested from trees. With machine tools, such as drills and lathes, we were able to rapidly transform wood and metals. Later we added transformation technologies such as injection molding and more recently various additive manufacturing technologies (often referred to as 3D printing).

Transportation went from human powered to machine powered dramatically changing our capabilities. We went from walking to traveling to space in rockets. We can fly across continents and oceans on commercial flights and reach any major city by air in just a day (or two at most). While some have complained about a lack of progress in flight, pointing to the lack of commercial supersonic options following the retirement of the Concorde, we had extraordinary progress in flight safety. More recently work has resumed on new options for commercial supersonic flight and we have made tremendous progress with reusable rockets and closer to earth with autonomous vehicles (for instance drones and warehouse robots).

The progress on these enablers has allowed us to produce more physical capital, do so more rapidly and cheaply, and transport it to anywhere in the world. One way to appreciate just how far we have come is to note that the first time smartphones became available was only in 2000. By 2017 over 8 billion smartphones had been produced and shipped and there are currently over 2 billion smartphone users in the world.

As an important reminder before moving on. I am not claiming that everyone's basic needs are being met today. Far from it. Nor am I arguing that governments should be using central planning or that they should be meeting people's basic needs through government run programs such as food stamps or subsidized housing (in fact quite the opposite, as I will argue later when writing about economic freedom).

The point of this chapter is simply to argue that physical capital is no longer the constraint in meeting everyone's basic needs. We are not dealing with a problem of capital scarcity—in the sense of technological scarcity introduced earlier—but with one of allocation and distribution.

Capital is no longer scarce but sufficient. We should consider that the great success of capitalism.

We now face a new scarcity, however, that of attention, and capitalism will not solve it for us without changes in regulation and in self-regulation. Before we can examine the scarcity of attention though we need to understand how digital technologies have the potential to change the role of labor.

#world after capital #capital

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