Day 919: Grrr

5 Responses to Day 919: Grrr

1. Tara Li says:

   November 5, 2014 at 12:54 pm

   Sar, frankly – you’re looking at this from the wrong perspective.

   3D printers were barely more than lab toys when you started writing Quarter Share – they’re ubiquitous and cheap these days, and getting more and more capable by the day. Automation puts more and more people out of work. Society fractures between the “haves” and the “have nots” – but so much of what the “haves” supposedly have is mist and moonbeams – fiat money only worth something because people say it is worth something, stocks and bonds that can be repudiated at a whim. The gap is not so large as we think – it’s the perception that makes people act as though it’s a problem.

   The truth is – we’re in the birth canal, between a womb of hard work, and a coming age where material goods are essentially freely available. The only scarcity will be attention. We’re almost there already, in fact. We *have* the technology to build arcologies with densities of 50K people per square kilometer, and apartments of several hundred square meters *per person*. Climate controlled vertical farming that folds farm acreage over, turning it into farm cubic, with much better yields. The Skunkworks has announced a prototype 10MW fusion reactor next year that will fit in an intermodal shipping container, with production runs starting 3-5 years after that – care to bet *against* the Skunkworks when they make that kind of announcement?

   The problem, of course, always comes down to the essential law of sensible numbers – there are only 3. Zero, One, and Infinity. Governments fight against governments, this is clearly visible in history. We’ve never seen an example of the Zero Governments case – true anarchy. We say we have, point to various “lawless” regions of the world, claiming that those are “anarchy” – but they’re not. What they *are* is a case of too many governments, in too small an area, competing for control. There are laws – warlords make decrees all the time, use those willing to follow them to enforce those laws just as our laws here are ultimately enforced – at the point of a gun. The people are trapped between these laws, just as we are trapped between the competing Republican and Democrat governments we have in DC (and in a few places, doing a much better job, the Mafia). Libertarianism is – of course – the best approximation we can make the “infinite governments”, each person governing themselves – but that’s almost useless until we have much better education – and that won’t happen with the US Department of Education in charge. Even State Boards of Education are iffy. Are individual privately funded small schools better? Maybe – lots of variation, lots of isolation of beliefs for the most part. Risky.

   And so many people now going on about how it’s time for the Universal Basic Income – except that the UBI may actually be rather impractical in a democracy – given two politicians, one who promises to vote to raise the UBI, and one who talks about the whole point of the UBI is provide only what is *necessary* – which one is going to get elected? How high will the UBI go before people realize it’s meaningless? Simply giving away “money” is not the answer, though I’m really not sure what is.

   I am sure, however – we *will* bumble our way to some kind of answer. Probably not the best, but we’ll get there. It’s just going to be very painful along the way.

   Reply
   • Nathan says:

     November 5, 2014 at 1:08 pm

     Some good points, Tara Li.

     Thanks.

     Reply
2. George says:

   November 5, 2014 at 2:39 pm

   You aren’t the only one who is worried about the state of this country, and what we are leaving to our daughters. Of the seven deadly sins, I am most worried about greed, and the fact that the results of this election will have the tendency to permit the greediest to even better satisfy themselves at the expense of the majority of the citizens of the country. It is a shame that the majority don’t see this coming.

   Reply
3. Richard says:

   November 5, 2014 at 3:58 pm

   Completely unrelated to what you talked about today but I’ve been looking for a new game to play and have come across Elite Dangerous, parts of the game from the review linked below made me think of the Golden Age so much I thought I would share the link with you as you play Eve and it is in the same vein

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUpKcJTmmM8

   Reply
4. Dan Thompson says:

   November 5, 2014 at 9:29 pm

   I share your frustration and disappointment with the elections. People tell me that the results will benefit people like me, i.e. upper middle-class white straight males. But, these results also mean I have to live in a country with expanding inequality and significant levels of oppression. I don’t want those things. Living in a country where those are preserved is *not* a “benefit” that I want.

   So yeah, I just want to grab all those rich white male politicians and tell them to stop speaking in my name… because they’re not.

   Reply

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