103 karma · joined January 28, 2009
But is being exploited by "FC" yo-yo's who are either naive or corrupt.
Unfortunately great numbers of naive and corrupt are readily available.
But help me out on some greater understanding of "GDP"...
When wages stay constant or go down, but a profitable financial industry instead is created that lends money to consumers at say 20% or more (for simple consumption and/or speculation with no potential to increase the productive economy at that rate)...
Isn't that financial industry profit part of the GDP? As are naked credit default swap trading profits? Etc...
Are these kinds of profits the same as profits from a physical export? Or development of natural resources?
Wouldn't higher wages and less lending have been a better use of national wealth and productivity?
Are all "profits" truly equal in terms of their real long-term effect on an economy
I heard an idea once that high mobility could lead to countries having to 'compete' for citizens!
And an unfortunate consequence of neglecting excessive power concentration.
Some value may be seen also in taking an anthropological approach!
In my recent brief post on this issue, "Compensation & the Social Network" http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2009/10/compensation-so... , I point out that the competition for status and wealth takes place WITHIN the individual's social network and NOT WITHIN the social organism as a whole. (plumbers compare themselves to other tradesmen while CEO's compare themselves to other CEO's).
The import of this for the social contract resides in the stresses created where social networks become isolated over time (oligarchy) creating an "Ultimatum Game" situation for those individuals and especially social networks that perceive themselves as no longer a party to that social contract (with consequences ranging from regime changes to revolutions and/or civil decay).
This is why there is a point at which wealth division becomes a direct threat to the social contract. This "point" will vary depending on many factors... but at our current stage in cultural evolution there is nothing more important here than the role of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and what David Brin calls a "Moore's Law of Cultural Change".
This tension between the social network and the social organism extends back to the birth of agriculture... but things are moving quite rapidly now.
For a few thoughts on this (and at least what may be a framework for an approach to solutions) I hope you'll see my post "How would hunter-gatherers rule the world? (Pssst... They do!)" http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-would-hunte...
"Text in not likely to be stupid"
Clearly this is a very perceptive algorithm!
In the 19th Century, both nations had vast tracts of land relatively undeveloped...
The U.S. essentially "gave" the land away to vast numbers of its citizens if they'd work it... encouraging and then creating a great class of free-spirited, industrious entrepreneurs with their own capital!
Argentina transferred its land in vast tracts to wealthy landowners and created essentially a division between the wealthy elites and the landless peasant!
The secret to capitalism FAILS when wealth becomes too concentrated... (remedying this is a focus of mine).
I know it's a real problem and does deserve attention. But it's one thing if some guy is trying to sell millions of digital copies of the latest Madonna video from some motel in Eastern Europe, but it's quite another if someone uses a few snips of songs in a video he's doing for YouTube!
I've experienced PERSONALLY what I would consider a smart approach and a dumb approach on this.
I did some 30 second little YouTube videos to promote a thing I'm doing... and in a couple of them I used snippets from a couple of popular songs... I'm fairly naive and didn't think much of it because I wasn't selling the videos, but I was promoting my thing (fortunately very benign so that wasn't an issue)! Though it could be a fair concern...
Anyway, to make a long story short...
Their YouTube algorithms or whatever found 'em and did their robot "thing"... but here's the interesting surprise!
On one (with a clip for a Barbara Streisand song) they just added a little button to the bottom of my video identifying the song with a link for purchase! I was fine with that and so were they!(it was Sony) A smart approach!
But for the other, with a great guitar clip from Jeff Beck, they just stripped the audio from my 30 second video... which I suppose was in a way fair... but all that ended up happening is I had a useless video... and they lost an opportunity for some sales... I forgot the publisher on that one... but it was a damn good video!
This obviously doesn't cover all issues but the point is that there are much wiser approaches that this abominable plan.
But politicians are like very stupid carpenters. They only understand hammers... so everything becomes a nail to be pounded into the ground.
This cannot stand and they can't possibly be stupid enough to try to make it stand!
But beware their "fallback" positions! And the devil is in the details. They may just feel that by putting out such an outrageous proposal they can fall back to a merely disgusting and slimy one.
The scarce use of technology to encourage and access crowd wisdom. (Rather than the cleverness invested in things like gerrymandering and misleading advertising techniques.)
This is a similar phenomenon to the pathological cleverness used in so much social network advertising... you know, bait and switch, the devil's-in-the-details approach to supposed fellow decision makers.
I'm an anthropologist not a software guy. But the solutions are fairly obvious which I try to address elsewhere. Fortunately the reception is getting better in some places.
And that's an option only available to "rational" components of an ecology...
So he's really making just a rational argument for the need to either recognize limits or expand the frontier.
Regarding his thoughts on the role of complexity and a society's need to simplify... there's some truth in it but to achieve that solution without the chaos of collapse may actually require an "increase in complexity.
My only problem right now is I don't have enough fellow friends and associates with a Wave account to use it more and do better evaluation.
I'm looking forward to its spread!
“How to best transcend the current economic mess? Put Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar, Elon Musk, Tim O’Reilly, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Nathan Myhrvold, and Danny Hillis in a room somewhere and don’t let them out until they have framed a new, massively-distributed financial system, founded on sound, open, peer-to-peer principles, from the start. And don’t call it a bank. Launch a new financial medium that is as open, scale-free, universally accessible, self-improving, and non-proprietary as the Internet, and leave the 13th century behind.
In essence, I agree with the piece and the comment.
I also believe that the Chagora model is very close to what they are talking about… (it can function with standard and/or newly created currencies whether localized or not. Especially when combined with methods of geographical localization and scaled anonymity. The practical microtransaction in all areas is essential for proper scaling of civilization and its the political microtransaction (networked citizen lobbying) that is the trigger.
P.S. PayPal is a bad model for civilization development.
(Chagora is essentially scalable speech and association)
If I’m an idiot I’d like to find out soon since things are very tight. I’d like at least a chance to present my case and don’t know where else to go.
See blog for more...
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2009/05/foundations-of-...
I found it helpful..