This article has links to many, many articles and can be considered a great resource. I like to push the discussion beyond the Techdirt borders so we can contemplate a vast restructuring of ownership and control. I'm in favor of democratization rather than corporate control. If changing IP laws helps Google, but doesn't eventually disrupt Google, I don't think we have gone far enough.
The tech debate blasts off (a linkfest) - Towards a leisure society: "But what really makes this time different, I would argue, is that a lot of the competition is now coming from a) the voluntary and crowd sourcing/open source arena and b) it’s only artificial scarcities (patents, monopoly interests) which are preventing complete democratisation of technologically-fueled abundance across the world. It is thus because monopoly power is slipping, challenged as it is by free alternatives rather than cheaper ones… that the crisis is beginning to manifest."
By this reasoning, all countries and subgroups should also have nuclear weapons so that they can protect themselves from other groups/countries with nuclear weapons. And as a result, that would have prevented us from invading Iraq or messing with Iran because every country would be allowed to stockpile nuclear weapons.
I've been reading what people have been posting about the NRA (e.g., its history, move to the right). This one is an especially powerful piece.
Not Safe For Work Corporation | From "Operation Wetback" To Newtown: Tracing The Hick Fascism Of The NRA: "Because it’s now so deeply ingrained that owning guns is a form of radical subversive politics, the people who still engage in real politics have the pick of the litter. That first became really clear in the depths of the 2008-9 collapse, when a lot of people who thought of themselves as radicals and anarchists made a lot of feckless noise about how they were arming and preparing for the collapse and revolution. They could’ve gone out and organized something and maybe built a politics of people power or even a politics of what they call revolution, a politics that actually changed things. But instead, they locked themselves in their homes and apartments with their guns and fancied themselves political revolutionaries just waiting to be swept up. But no one came. No one bothered or cared. And really, why would any plutocrat or evil government agency bother with the suckers, all harmlessly atomized and isolated and thoroughly neutralized by the false sense of political empowerment that their guns gave them, while you do the real work of plundering budgets, bribing politicians and writing laws even more in your favor?"
Here's a new resource. Just found out about it today.
New Book Released! | Sustainable Economies Law Center: "... as the world’s economic and ecological meltdowns demand that we redesign our livelihoods, our enterprises, our communities, our organizations, our food system, our housing, and much more, transactional lawyers are needed, en masse, to aid in an epic reinvention of our economic system."
Imagine the "job protecting" regulations that will be proposed in coming years. I hope only proposed.
It's actually a good thing if we eliminate jobs as long as we don't need jobs to survive. And this is possible if we think differently about how to make sure everyone has the basic necessities of life. And that's the issue. It's not really a jobs problem. It's a resources distribution problem.
I am looking forward to a future where producing is so cheap that anyone can build decent items, so there would be no need for mass manufacturing at all (no made in china crap anymore.)
That's how I hope things will be. A big reason I differ from the usual Techdirt perspective is that my take on music, for example, isn't the CWF+FTB model. Mine is this, "I'll give you the tools so you can create for yourself whenever you want." That's for music, video, photography, design, anything.
Technology is getting so good and so cheap that I'd like to spread the benefits around to the widest possible audience. While there isn't an equal distribution of talent in the world, I think technology can close the gap significantly and fill in the voids when people fall short.
I was an econ major in college (a long time ago). I remember thinking then that what I was getting in my classes was the American business version of economics.
More than ever I feel we need to move beyond conventional thinking.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The energy/climate question
Don't assume easy oil is gone, just because it is economical to look at alternatives doesn't mean that the easy sources are not available. I have been observing in a very general way that volumes available/produced/used since the oil troubles of the '70's. Many of the easy access sources available today are in the control of various governments that are not allies (in all the senses that would matter).
I understand the concept of price manipulation, but I have been reading lots on oil supply and can't find any indication that there is any easy oil yet to be tapped.
The Canadian oil sands project is so awful in its environmental damage and is so hard turn those sands into usable oil that if there is easier oil available, someone is really manipulating the market to justify that.
Similarly fracking that is coming to Colorado is going to turn populated areas into a pin cushion. If there is a cheaper, less disruptive way to get oil, someone should be doing it.
In some respects it doesn't matter if easy oil isn't already gone, then, because we are embarking on very environmentally disruptive projects, so we are acting as if easy oil is going.
Here's what is involved in getting oil out of Canadian sand. And then we need to build a pipeline across the US to get it to a refinery. It's ugly.
I wouldn't worry about that as long as we can solve the renewable energy problem. It's growth in pollution and non-renewable resources that has to stop. If we can continue growing economic activity and standard of living without killing our environment, we'll be fine. That's a big if.
Yes, I actually believe that, too. I think there is great abundance. It just needs to be distributed a bit better and we need to avoid killing the planet.
Many Americans already have more things than they know what to do with and have room for, so we'd be fine if we had fewer possessions.
We have an obesity problem in the US, so it isn't as if we don't have enough calories. We just don't have enough of the right kind of calories. I think the urban garden movement and converting lawns to gardens would allow us to fairly easily provide better foods for more people.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Beware of big companies
This is what we need to do, instead of centralizing the power in the federal government we should be taking away the responsibilities they have and doing it ourselves, healthcare comes to mind, instead of waiting for the government to try something that works, we should be doing the field test right now, creating community clinics, incentivizing people and schools to join in in the search for knowledge and creation of tools to start empowering the low cost community health centers, instead of paying medicaid we should be investing in community alternatives some will fail, some may succeed and armed with that knowledge people will know what it needs to be done and how it is done.
The revolution is DIY or DIE!
And what are you doing? Especially if you are running low cost community health centers that are delivering affordable medicine without government help, please point us to them. We need more health care solutions.
Even if you don't want to give us your name, provide links to projects you are involved in so we can see how they are working.
The problem with climate change is that we may not have any effect on it all, hence anything we implement is irrelevant to climate change mitigation. We just don't know.
A world economy built on fossil fuels has to change, whether or not one believes anything can be done about global warming. Easy oil is gone and what we are pumping out now costs more. We do have a glut of natural gas, but can't fully take advantage of it because most vehicles can't run on it. There's still a lot of coal, but it's relatively dirty and it doesn't run vehicles.
What is good is that people are driving less. And some people are living in smaller, more energy efficient homes. Per capita energy consumption is likely to go down in the US and other developed countries. But if India, China, and others ramp up their per capita energy consumption, the economics (if not the pollution) are going to be felt globally. If US energy companies can sell to the highest bidder, prices will go up here. Which is fine by me. Higher prices mean we are forced to conserve.
The economics of energy are going to change things, even if governments and environmentalists stay out of it. The faster we pump out the oil here in the US, the faster we go through it. I've been reading about the decline rates for fracked wells and they are very real. Industry insiders are saying that the glorious future of US oil is actually more hype than reality. Let's just say I expect the crunch to come before long, even if we "drill baby drill."
In the course of human history, no world power has remained dominant. I think we're headed into some very tumultuous times.
What came to light was that there were few new people coming into the relevant industries and as a consequence, there were fewer people able to do the more intricate and un-automatible tasks.
There are a lot of caretaking jobs that don't yet lend themselves to automation. But we don't want to pay for them. I suppose nannies can make good money in some markets, but caretaking of the elderly isn't something a lot of families have the money to budget for. I suppose we will automate as many of those jobs as we can so that the elderly and disabled won't need as many human caretakers, but there are some duties that don't lend themselves to automation. And maybe someday we'll find health care solutions to reduce the need for more caretakers (both reducing disease/disabilities and also increasing tech resources to enable more people with limitations). It could take awhile, though.
About a year ago I had a new revelation about Social Security. While most people think of it as payments to serve the retired, it occurred to me it was actually a family solution. If you are a young or middle aged worker and your parents have some money coming in so they aren't destitute, that frees you up to do jobs other than taking care of them. I think that is why we have SS and Medicare, but hardly anyone spins it as a family benefit rather than a retiree benefit.
If you are more efficient, you can do more in less time. This means you can either accomplish more, or work less. Your choice.
If you have the choice. If you need the benefits that come with full employment and there are a limited number of full employment jobs, you may end up working more than you want.
The health care system, tied to employment, and insurance companies being able to deny insurance for the self-employed with pre-existing conditions has forced people to take jobs they may not want.
I think the maker movement and interest in self-sufficiency are attempts for people to control more of their own time. The more than they can detach from corporations, the more choices they may have.
Which brings me back to my overall philosophy: the more people can get away from corporations, the better for them. When it was about economy of scale, corporations had value. As we find ways to eliminate the need for economy of scale, maybe we'll eliminate the corporations, too.
Isn't part of the problem that as jobs are displaced along a curve that is dependent on technology improvements the new jobs are effectively sifted through a skill filter. The low-paid, low-skill jobs are retired through technology improvements and the new jobs that are available require a richer skill-set.
Part of the problem is that we are rewarding skills we don't necessarily need. We need more caregivers, but our system won't pay them much.
On the other hand, we significantly rewarded people on Wall Street, and yet what real value have they generated? If anything, their system has created negative effects for the economy.
It's like having a rich person being able to pay a paid killer well. The paid killer may be of value to the person with money, but the paid killer doesn't contribute anything to society overall. He just protects his employer and his employer's wealth.
The problem is much more complicated than any of these simplistic discussions would indicate. All of mankind needs to be fundamentally changed for proper progress in all of this to proceed. However, we of ourselves cannot initiate such change - we are fundamentally incapable of this.
Very true. We aren't especially good at responding to threats that aren't immediate. We can be warned that something is coming, but that won't motivate us.
The problem with climate change is that it may require a solution that starts now and requires a significant change of lifestyle among most world residents. We may not be capable of pulling it off, which means we'll be responding to natural disasters as they come. I suppose the upside of massive disruption is that if the world economy goes to hell, most people can't afford to live middle class lives. It could be back to subsistence living which would lower rates of growth and hopefully resource consumption.
We haven't had a calamity that wipes out a big chunk of the world's population in centuries, but that doesn't mean it can't still happen.
Here in Colorado we are simultaneously talking about fracking and declining water resources. So we want to take water, which is in short supply, to pump out more oil, which is polluting the world. If we behave like other living things, we'll keep trying to dominate our environment until we overdo it and we die off.
And let's look at some important jobs that aren't getting done: environmental restoration and infrastructure restoration. There are plenty of workers looking for work but no one can hire them to get this urgently needed work done because it isn't profitable.
Totally agree. These activities are worth doing and there are likely economic rewards, but not immediately, so those with capital don't want to invest in them.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Here's a lot in one place
The tech debate blasts off (a linkfest) - Towards a leisure society: "But what really makes this time different, I would argue, is that a lot of the competition is now coming from a) the voluntary and crowd sourcing/open source arena and b) it’s only artificial scarcities (patents, monopoly interests) which are preventing complete democratisation of technologically-fueled abundance across the world. It is thus because monopoly power is slipping, challenged as it is by free alternatives rather than cheaper ones… that the crisis is beginning to manifest."
On the post: NRA: To Protect The 2nd Amendment, We Must Trample The 1st & 4th Amendments
Maybe people with guns should shoot other people with guns
On the post: NRA: To Protect The 2nd Amendment, We Must Trample The 1st & 4th Amendments
Re: Gun-Free Zones
On the post: NRA: To Protect The 2nd Amendment, We Must Trample The 1st & 4th Amendments
You all have got to read this piece
Not Safe For Work Corporation | From "Operation Wetback" To Newtown: Tracing The Hick Fascism Of The NRA: "Because it’s now so deeply ingrained that owning guns is a form of radical subversive politics, the people who still engage in real politics have the pick of the litter. That first became really clear in the depths of the 2008-9 collapse, when a lot of people who thought of themselves as radicals and anarchists made a lot of feckless noise about how they were arming and preparing for the collapse and revolution. They could’ve gone out and organized something and maybe built a politics of people power or even a politics of what they call revolution, a politics that actually changed things. But instead, they locked themselves in their homes and apartments with their guns and fancied themselves political revolutionaries just waiting to be swept up. But no one came. No one bothered or cared. And really, why would any plutocrat or evil government agency bother with the suckers, all harmlessly atomized and isolated and thoroughly neutralized by the false sense of political empowerment that their guns gave them, while you do the real work of plundering budgets, bribing politicians and writing laws even more in your favor?"
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
A great summation
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Alternative economics
New Book Released! | Sustainable Economies Law Center: "... as the world’s economic and ecological meltdowns demand that we redesign our livelihoods, our enterprises, our communities, our organizations, our food system, our housing, and much more, transactional lawyers are needed, en masse, to aid in an epic reinvention of our economic system."
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: Simpleton's take
It's actually a good thing if we eliminate jobs as long as we don't need jobs to survive. And this is possible if we think differently about how to make sure everyone has the basic necessities of life. And that's the issue. It's not really a jobs problem. It's a resources distribution problem.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Simpleton's take
That's how I hope things will be. A big reason I differ from the usual Techdirt perspective is that my take on music, for example, isn't the CWF+FTB model. Mine is this, "I'll give you the tools so you can create for yourself whenever you want." That's for music, video, photography, design, anything.
Technology is getting so good and so cheap that I'd like to spread the benefits around to the widest possible audience. While there isn't an equal distribution of talent in the world, I think technology can close the gap significantly and fill in the voids when people fall short.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Alternative economics
More than ever I feel we need to move beyond conventional thinking.
Here's a good article.
P2P Foundation - Towards a Commons Accounting Revolution
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The energy/climate question
PHOTOS: Destructive Canada Oil Sands - Business Insider
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The energy/climate question
I understand the concept of price manipulation, but I have been reading lots on oil supply and can't find any indication that there is any easy oil yet to be tapped.
The Canadian oil sands project is so awful in its environmental damage and is so hard turn those sands into usable oil that if there is easier oil available, someone is really manipulating the market to justify that.
Similarly fracking that is coming to Colorado is going to turn populated areas into a pin cushion. If there is a cheaper, less disruptive way to get oil, someone should be doing it.
In some respects it doesn't matter if easy oil isn't already gone, then, because we are embarking on very environmentally disruptive projects, so we are acting as if easy oil is going.
Here's what is involved in getting oil out of Canadian sand. And then we need to build a pipeline across the US to get it to a refinery. It's ugly.
The Scope Of The Alberta Oil Sands Must Be Seen To Be Believed - Business Insider
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: Re: The energy/climate question
Yes, I actually believe that, too. I think there is great abundance. It just needs to be distributed a bit better and we need to avoid killing the planet.
Many Americans already have more things than they know what to do with and have room for, so we'd be fine if we had fewer possessions.
We have an obesity problem in the US, so it isn't as if we don't have enough calories. We just don't have enough of the right kind of calories. I think the urban garden movement and converting lawns to gardens would allow us to fairly easily provide better foods for more people.
And so on.
On the post: Are The Old Enablers Becoming The New Gatekeepers?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Beware of big companies
The revolution is DIY or DIE!
And what are you doing? Especially if you are running low cost community health centers that are delivering affordable medicine without government help, please point us to them. We need more health care solutions.
Even if you don't want to give us your name, provide links to projects you are involved in so we can see how they are working.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: Re: Re: The energy/climate question
A world economy built on fossil fuels has to change, whether or not one believes anything can be done about global warming. Easy oil is gone and what we are pumping out now costs more. We do have a glut of natural gas, but can't fully take advantage of it because most vehicles can't run on it. There's still a lot of coal, but it's relatively dirty and it doesn't run vehicles.
What is good is that people are driving less. And some people are living in smaller, more energy efficient homes. Per capita energy consumption is likely to go down in the US and other developed countries. But if India, China, and others ramp up their per capita energy consumption, the economics (if not the pollution) are going to be felt globally. If US energy companies can sell to the highest bidder, prices will go up here. Which is fine by me. Higher prices mean we are forced to conserve.
The economics of energy are going to change things, even if governments and environmentalists stay out of it. The faster we pump out the oil here in the US, the faster we go through it. I've been reading about the decline rates for fracked wells and they are very real. Industry insiders are saying that the glorious future of US oil is actually more hype than reality. Let's just say I expect the crunch to come before long, even if we "drill baby drill."
In the course of human history, no world power has remained dominant. I think we're headed into some very tumultuous times.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sales
There are a lot of caretaking jobs that don't yet lend themselves to automation. But we don't want to pay for them. I suppose nannies can make good money in some markets, but caretaking of the elderly isn't something a lot of families have the money to budget for. I suppose we will automate as many of those jobs as we can so that the elderly and disabled won't need as many human caretakers, but there are some duties that don't lend themselves to automation. And maybe someday we'll find health care solutions to reduce the need for more caretakers (both reducing disease/disabilities and also increasing tech resources to enable more people with limitations). It could take awhile, though.
About a year ago I had a new revelation about Social Security. While most people think of it as payments to serve the retired, it occurred to me it was actually a family solution. If you are a young or middle aged worker and your parents have some money coming in so they aren't destitute, that frees you up to do jobs other than taking care of them. I think that is why we have SS and Medicare, but hardly anyone spins it as a family benefit rather than a retiree benefit.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: I am a robot programer
If you have the choice. If you need the benefits that come with full employment and there are a limited number of full employment jobs, you may end up working more than you want.
The health care system, tied to employment, and insurance companies being able to deny insurance for the self-employed with pre-existing conditions has forced people to take jobs they may not want.
I think the maker movement and interest in self-sufficiency are attempts for people to control more of their own time. The more than they can detach from corporations, the more choices they may have.
Which brings me back to my overall philosophy: the more people can get away from corporations, the better for them. When it was about economy of scale, corporations had value. As we find ways to eliminate the need for economy of scale, maybe we'll eliminate the corporations, too.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Job Filters
Part of the problem is that we are rewarding skills we don't necessarily need. We need more caregivers, but our system won't pay them much.
On the other hand, we significantly rewarded people on Wall Street, and yet what real value have they generated? If anything, their system has created negative effects for the economy.
It's like having a rich person being able to pay a paid killer well. The paid killer may be of value to the person with money, but the paid killer doesn't contribute anything to society overall. He just protects his employer and his employer's wealth.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: Re: The energy/climate question
That philosophy pretty much dictates my reading these days.
Here's a good list of thinkers.
The (En)Rich List : Celebrating a wealth of inspirational individuals whose collective contributions enrich paths to sustainable futures. The Top 100.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Re: The energy/climate question
Very true. We aren't especially good at responding to threats that aren't immediate. We can be warned that something is coming, but that won't motivate us.
The problem with climate change is that it may require a solution that starts now and requires a significant change of lifestyle among most world residents. We may not be capable of pulling it off, which means we'll be responding to natural disasters as they come. I suppose the upside of massive disruption is that if the world economy goes to hell, most people can't afford to live middle class lives. It could be back to subsistence living which would lower rates of growth and hopefully resource consumption.
We haven't had a calamity that wipes out a big chunk of the world's population in centuries, but that doesn't mean it can't still happen.
Here in Colorado we are simultaneously talking about fracking and declining water resources. So we want to take water, which is in short supply, to pump out more oil, which is polluting the world. If we behave like other living things, we'll keep trying to dominate our environment until we overdo it and we die off.
On the post: Robots Or Robber Barons? What If The Answer Is Both And Neither?
Re: Capitalism is outmoded
Totally agree. These activities are worth doing and there are likely economic rewards, but not immediately, so those with capital don't want to invest in them.
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