Essentially, it shows how the post-WW2 social contract that linked productivity improvements to median income gains was shattered in 1974.

– John Robb at Global Guerillas

I was born in 1974, about three weeks before the resignation of Nixon. This is what I think the economy is. This is what I learned by default. This is what I expect. This is normal to me. "Upward mobility", and eighties yuppies, were only on television. Some people think of America as a place you shouldn't expect to get ahead unless you work hard. I grew up thinking of America as a place where you shouldn't expect to get ahead if you work hard. When I dropped out of a University I couldn't afford and entered the workforce full time in the nineties, "Lateral mobility" became the natural catchphrase, where moving from company to company was the only way one would ever advance in pay or benefits. And, ultimately, by the turn of the century, self-employment ended up the only way to actually get what I wanted.

Education, careers, retirement, home ownership, investments and savings - these were all mirages to me. They felt like lies at the time. And now, as the ant's colony crumbles and is stripped bare by the locusts of Wall Street, somewhere, a grasshopper is smiling.

I didn't believe society then. But at that time, it was only a hunch. It is with a rather bittersweet sense of schadenfreude that I now have an entire argument. When the grasshopper begs the ant for food, he may at least be fed. But what is a grasshopper to do when the ant, wiped out and exhausted, comes calling?

Comments –Nato

It's true that a big crazy hullaballoo is being manufactured about AIG's bonuses, whose $165 million dollars comprise less than one tenth of one percent of the $170 BILLION. But it's also true that this is a critical fraction, because it is intended as compensation - easily exorbitant, by compensation standards - for the performance of executives who are responsible for destroying, not only their company, but the global economy.

Where was this anger when the law was being drafted? I mean, seriously, what was Congress thinking? They actually believed that they could write check after check to a profit-making enterprise and expect them to change their behavior with no strings attached.

AIG CEO Liddy claims that the company was contractually obligated to pay these bonuses since last year, and this ties his hands. While I take Glenn Greenwald's point that this is sickeningly disingenuous in light of GM's breaking of it's compensation contracts with workers, I still find the appeal of a plutocrat like Liddy to the rule of law a rather refreshing response to the whole mess.

And now, the House has passed a bill to "claw back" 90% of bonuses for any bailed out company that exceeds $250,000 per household.

But what boggles me is why Congress is so incensed to pass new legislation instead calling for actual investigation and enforcement of the laws that are already on the books. You know, things like RICO and fraud statutes. After all, if the real problem is that the compensation incentive system inside the company is not producing the desired results, isn't that what deterrent incentive systems, like criminal law, are for?

Update: Obama on Leno:

Here's the dirty little secret, though. Most of the stuff that got us into trouble was perfectly legal.

Laws? What Laws?

Oh. I see.

Comments –Nato

J. Storrs Hall posted something that made some sense. At least, it didn't have me throwing up my arms at the sheer absurdity of plutocratic market fundamentalism that has run our economy government for the past few decades (You're entrepreneurs! What the hell are you doing in government?!). He remains optimistic in the sense that he sees advancing automation and AI as an overall good thing, but at least he's clear enough on the idea that, yes, we're actually going to have to DO something, politically and economically, in order to make it work. In other words, the way our economy is structured now, which pays people for their labor, is not going to provide widespread prosperity when the costs of outright owning automated devices decline at Moore's Law rates.

Furthermore, he introduces me to the work of James Albus, an economist who proposed a response to the automation problem in the 1970's. Entitled People's Capitalism, the idea is that governments create a National Mutual Fund, which invests in businesses and pays out what amounts to a guaranteed income through a citizen's dividend. Everyone owns capital by virtue of citizenship, rather than investment. Thus, everyone becomes a capitalist, rather than depending on their dissolving earning power.

It's obviously not a new idea, but it's one that sounds downright grownup in comparison to the brutality of market fundamentalism. I'd like to see this tried, as (or if) the problem begins to get worse. So I'm glad to see it get some airtime as a credible possibility.

I seem to recall Chomsky warning against people buying into an abusive system, and having something to lose from opposing what they would otherwise think are unethical methods of production. A citizen's dividend would sure as hell mean more skin in the game - but it might be better than total disenfranchisement.

Now THIS is what I'd call a sane debate.

Comments –Nato

Considering Congress as a marketplace fails to apprehend the reality of corruption. Campaign contributions in exchange for legislation frames lawmaking as a marketplace, where consenting actors cooperate for mutual gain. But this isn't what's really going on. Naturally, the conception of Congress as a place to strike deals between the wealthy and the powerful would be bad enough, even if it was true. But its worse than even that.

Customarily, government holds the monopoly on the use of coercive force. This license is used in order to exert selective pressure on business, to insure that abusive commercial and industrial practices are eliminated. But the reality is not just different - its the opposite. Because politicians simply cannot run for office without wealth, but must skillfully avoid being caught appearing to have been influenced by money (something that contributors also have an interest in, since a corrupt-looking politician doesn't serve them either), they must come to running for office already convinced of the positions that wealthy contributors favor. Otherwise, they are simply not sponsored.

Politicians don't coercively regulate wealth; wealth coercively regulates politicians.

Money doesn't change a politician's mind; it simply pre-determines who may run for and win office. It's not adaptation - it's natural selection.

Comments –Nato

As a follow up to my post re: Stross on the Singularity, MichaelAnissimov takes offense. His original post went overboard in places, and was heavily edited in response to some points raised by folks in the comment thread (myself included). I know - I have the original post in my email (Go rss2email!).

In Dimitry Orlov's excellent piece on the Collapse Gap between the US and the Soviet Union, he suggests that we actually refrain from ridiculing politicians, regardless of the temptation. Paying attention makes them - and everyone else - think they can do something productive, when they can't. Ignoring them, Orlov says, will make them go away faster.

This is reminiscent of my mangling of one Ghandi's favorite quotes. My version, which I originally deployed to describe how Democrats should handle Republicans now that they hold majorities in government, goes thusly: "First, you win. Then you fight them. Then you laugh at them. Then you ignore them."

I wonder if the same strategy should be applied to singularitarians? In my time online, I have learned that attention is the oxygen of the troll. Fail to respond, and you snuff out the flame war. But more recently, watching Jon Stewart and reading Dale Carrico have both revived my appreciation of ridiculing the ridiculous, when done well.

Look, software and neuroengineering techniques will be wanted and unwanted, powerful and inconsequential, all depending, not on their own inherent capabilities, but on how we use them, or restrict their use. Until such techniques actually show up (as more than a theory) and actually tango with what the broad diversity of people we share the world with can conceive of as possible, desirable, and undesirable, very little that's truly useful can be generalized about whether we, as a species, will welcome or reject any given hypothetical technique.

It doesn't even make sense to me to be trying to put a whole bunch of different possibilities into one basket, and insist that we, collectively, advocate or reject them, collectively, before they've even been delivered. Never mind the divisive "us vs them" bickering I see partisans like Anissimov doing here.

Comments –Nato

Ray Kurzweil has argued against concerns about automation creating unemployment by pointing out that, at the turn of the 20th century, workers simply couldn't have imagined the jobs in IT administration, software development, and web design, that we're all doing now instead of raising crops (except for those of us who work at Walmart. But let's humor him for the time being). So we shouldn't worry about what jobs we'll do in the future as existing ones are claimed by automation (a claim he doesn't dispute). We just haven't invented them yet - but we will!

The predictive-event-horizon singularity to the rescue! We can't imagine the jobs we'll be doing in the future, and they were there when we couldn't imagine them before, THEREFORE they must be there now! Ignorance is bliss. Yeah. Some answer. Make your reputation as a futurist by pushing all kinds of predictions, and then use ignorance to justify your predictions when convenient. Brilliant.

Aside from that however, have you ever seen a cow driving a tractor, never mind pulling a plow? Because that's the equivalent of what you're saying when you continuously insist that humans will never be economically obsolete.

That's not an economy. It's a Gary Larsen cartoon:

Comments –Nato

Paul Krugman in Rolling Stone:

How much spending are we talking about? You might want to be seated before you read this. OK, here goes: "Full employment" means a jobless rate of five percent at most, and probably less. Meanwhile, we're currently on a trajectory that will push the unemployment rate to nine percent or more. Even the most optimistic estimates suggest that it takes at least $200 billion a year in government spending to cut the unemployment rate by one percentage point. Do the math: You probably have to spend $800 billion a year to achieve a full economic recovery. Anything less than $500 billion a year will be much too little to produce an economic turnaround.

From what I can decipher from Bureau of Labor Statistics data, one percent of the unemployment rate represents approximately 1.54 million absolute jobs. So if, as Krugman estimates, $200 billion creates 1.54 million jobs, each job results from $129,870 in government spending.

That's less than half of what Bush proposed on a job creation program in 2003, but still. And that's "per year" spending.

Screw the job, man - I'll take a check.

Wait a minute. This wasn't supposed to happen. I got into this movement because I wanted money and fame, not truth or justice. This whole thing was supposed to be just a shtick - a fantasy that was so ludicrous as to be incredible, but so mysterious as to be unfalsifiable. It used to be a brilliant idea. So brilliant, it often pained me that I could never let anybody in on the joke.

But there it was, flittering away, right before my eyes. Suddenly, the joke wouldn't be funny - not because I'd told it too many times, but because I hadn't told it at all.

Had I gone mad? Was I seeing things? After all, I was the one that lead all these people here; I was the one that scraped and pitched this project just to have something to do. I was the one who pleaded with well-heeled benefactors to give us just one more chance. But though every shred of credibility I could possibly have received depended on that thing showing up at just that moment, when it happened, all I could do was wince and deny it, stunned, like anybody would. Anybody, that is, except my brother Ted. You see, it took Ted to actually point it out and get everyone one else to give it a thorough photographing before it turned, like a coy fashion model, and shrank away into the sunset.

"There it was!" Ted gasped, later. He was pacing the length of the hotel room, still charged by the evidence we'd seen. And photographed. And - Oh God - video? Why did there have to be video? Why couldn't the thing have just bounced around for a few seconds, done a passable impression of a lens artifact, and vanish, like a good UFO?

If I had anybody to brag to, I might try to convince them that my silence at that moment was purposeful, that I was just mentally nimble enough to realize how bad the implications of it were, and that I was just stalling until the thing went away, so I could go back to being an ordinary work-a-day conspiracy theorist and cult leader. But, no. There was no way Ted was going to let that happen, anyway. Letting it get away, that is.

"You know, Doug, I ... I have a confession to make." Ted had stopped pacing, indicating that he was thinking about people again, finally. Time to put on my game face. "There have been times when..." He stammered to a stop, worried. He chanced a sidelong glance at me, now that he'd gotten my attention. I had spent most of the last fifteen minutes speechless, my head in my hands, silently trying push apart the jaws of the trap that had just sprung on my brain.

It was refreshing to consider someone else's problem, for a moment. "It's alright, man. What is it?"

Ted sat down on the second bed. "You know, sometimes, over the last few years, through all that shit with the organization, watching you pitch donors, and sifting through all that declassified data at night, I would just sit there and... it would be really hard for me to believe you."

Ted looked deep into my face - my frozen, bewildered, blind-sided expression, hoping to glimpse a glimmer of forgiveness in me, when the rollercoaster behind my eyes had just set sail on a long trip to lala land. And there was Ted, holding the mooring line, smiling, and waving goodbye, utterly oblivious. I'd been lying to own brother all this time, but suddenly, I was the poor bastard.

I managed not to crack - not that Ted would suspect if I had. "It's alright, Ted," I assured him. I grinned, more slyly than he knew, as I added, "You know, there have been times where I wasn't sure I believed myself, either." I got up and turned away to enjoy the joke in pitiable solitude.

And that began my long journey into the theretofore-unknown land of understatement.

Comments –Nato

Originally written 2007-06-27

Today was the day.

The excitement in the Senate chamber was palpable. Alvin Rogers about to present the nation with his recommendations for solving the poverty of the entire human race, and almost everyone knew that his recommendations were sure to knock our socks off.

You see, Rogers was no ordinary pundit; he was the first subject of an experimental intelligence enhancement procedure; one whose success had been nothing less than spectacular. Rogers had become so smart, he was solving ancient math problems, solving new puzzles in moments, and inventing whole fields of knowledge singlehandedly, as fast as he could take in the requisite background material.

And now, he was applying himself to the ancient ethical mysteries of the human condition. After much discussion and deliberation, he told the world he was ready to propose what he claimed was an ideal solution. Finally, after all these years, we may have the missing piece to alleviate all human economic suffering.

But the announcement, when it came, was anything but satisfying. It was downright anticlimactic.

Rogers said, simply "According to my calculations, we have plenty for everyone. Tax the rich, and give it to the poor."

The applause was slow to come, but it did. But when it did, it was something less than the raucous cheer that everyone present had been hoping for.

It was easy to feel more than a little swindled - didn't we already know that we could do that? Wasn't the idea of having a genius tackle this problem was so that we wouldn't HAVE to tax the rich?

Over the course of the next few hours, the sour feeling of let down only grew heavier. On the news, the next day, people began to question exactly how smart this Alvin Rogers guy really was, and, even if he was as smart as they said, why people should listen to him. After all, it wouldn't make a difference how smart a guy is, if he doesn't properly represent your interests. And raising taxes was most definitely not an interest of the wealthy people of the nation.

Thus, Alvin Rogers faded from the mediasphere in a whimper of controversy and uncertainty. His fifteen minutes of fame had been spent.

The poor would simply have to wait for someone even smarter to come along and solve their problem.

Comments –Nato

For president, I voted Green.

If there's anything that can turn otherwise calm Democrats into mad lunatics, it's Ralph Nader. The idea that the swing state voter margins in the last two presidential elections were smaller than the progressive support for Nader's candidacy drives even progressive democrats up the wall, and fills many of them with the kind of hatred typically reserved for theo-cons. After 2000 and 2004, many "if only" recriminations flowed through the collective liberal consciousness. If only we'd campaigned harder here; if only we'd said this or that if only we'd finished the recount. But none drew the vitriol of "the spoiler" - not even the Republican voters that outnumbered Nader supporters by orders of magnitude.

I wonder if the reason that third parties can't get traction in this country isn't so much that the parties themselves conspire to duopolize the campaign process, so much as the public is constantly demonizing and terrorizing dissatisfied voters.

I sympathize; I really do. For those that live in battleground states, one really does need to weigh carefully the consequences of voting for someone who might not win.

I don't live and vote in a battleground state, so not only do I have no qualms about voting for a third party, neither do most of the frothing progressives who insist Nader robs them of elections, rather than contributing to the nation's political discourse. But let's set that fact aside for the sake of argument.

There's really a more important reason I'm not convinced to vote for a viable candidate that doesn't repreent me well enough. And, ironically, I learned it by listening to him.

As should be plain by now, Obama is a candidate who inspires with hope, rather than fear. The most striking contrast between the McCain and Obama campaigns is Obama's refusal to be drawn into low-road smears and innuendo against his opponent, at the same time such scaremongering has become, not just a tactic, but the hallmark of McCain's campaign. McCain's campaign has insisted that this election is "not about issues", but personality, while Obama insists exactly the opposite: that this election is "not about me." Obama often repudiates the politics of fear, and his campaign's conduct generally reflects that philosophy.

But Democrats, having been taught caution by the losses of the past decade, have been nervous about Obama's insistence on positivity. In August, the drumbeat among Democrats uncomfortable with Obama's decisive calm in the face of the growing sludge flowing from the McCain campaign grew louder, with calls to "take the gloves off" and "go negative" becoming more insistent. It would seem Obama had already decided what he was going to do, because he largely resisted this advice at that time.

But while the contrast between the conduct of the two campaigns is stark, Obama's tendency to avoid frightening is not perfect. There have been moments where he has resorted, subtly, to scare tactics.

The first time I noticed this was the FISA amendment bill , finally passed in July. After his campaign expressed clear opposition (including filibuster support) to the telco immunity provisions within the bill, Obama voted, at last resort, to pass the bill, although he did vote for unsuccessful measures to have it removed.

That by itself was disheartening, but what really broke the deal for me was in reading Obama's justification for the vote.

Democracy cannot exist without strong differences. And going forward, some of you may decide that my FISA position is a deal breaker. That's ok. But I think it is worth pointing out that our agreement on the vast majority of issues that matter outweighs the differences we may have. After all, the choice in this election could not be clearer. Whether it is the economy, foreign policy, or the Supreme Court, my opponent has embraced the failed course of the last eight years, while I want to take this country in a new direction. Make no mistake: if John McCain is elected, the fundamental direction of this country that we love will not change. But if we come together, we have an historic opportunity to chart a new course, a better course.

After all the talk of hope over fear, of bipartisanship, of common unity over divisiveness, I got a striking impression that Obama had slipped, and, unable to otherwise explain his dereliction of principle (one that even his future running mate Joe Biden and former primary oppoent Hillary Clinton had not compromised on), he simply resorted to scaring us with another Republican presidency.

So for president, I voted Green. Obama has taught me not to vote out of fear of parties or candidates - even when he is the one doing the scaring, and even when Nader is the one I'm supposed to be scared of.

Maybe if Obama had been philosophically OK with frightening us all in principle, I might have voted for him.

Comments –Nato

Despite the enormous price, it's a good thing that there are patriots in this world who swear that you will only take their civil liberties from their cold, dead fingers. Because in times like these, when even our own leaders discount the value of those liberties, it seems that kind of patriot is the only kind you can actually get them from.

Zingers

Comments –Nato

Small government means small democracy.

Zingers

shrinking –Nato

Choice is a poor substitute for freedom.

Zingers

Comments –Nato

The message of transhumanism - the hope that inheres in the enhancement of human capability seems overrated to me.

I'm not worried about what I can do. I'm not really interested in doing more. I'm happy. I'm satisfied.

Too often, it seems like the carrots of greater intelligence, memory, stamina, etc., seem to serve primarily to boost our competitiveness in the global marketplace. And when you think, as I have, that competition is silly and counterproductive, especially when compared to legitimate, existing collaborative alternative means of production and living, the shine quickly comes off the gadget. I can't get really excited about having the competitive advantage of a "transhuman" modification when I realize that, long before some joe like me can have it done, everyone else will, too. As a poorer American, My adoption of technology is not not to get ahead, but to keep up; to stay alive.

What I am more intersted in is shoring up and neutralizing human vulnerability, fragility, and precarity.

Thus, the mere existence of enhancement technologies and modifications fails to tantalize. It is a foregone conclusion that, if techniques are feasible, the status quo being what it is, the privileged will have them, and the unprivileged will lack them. This should surprise no one, and disappoint us all.

What is needed are not new techniques to configure physical gadgetry, but new ways of organizing and distributing them. We need innovation in policy and economy, as much as we need them in technology.

Enhancement must give way, for now, to deprecaritization. As we make progress with the latter, the former will be more exciting and worthwhile.

The systems and techniques that we use to insure the health and homes of the extant human race (for starters) are more important to me than the development, emergence, and germination of the next one.

Don't get me wrong. Pushing the limits is great. But it is a dull prize when the ground beneath your feet is still unstable.

When the promise of humanism is yet unkept, what attraction can transhumanism hold?

Comments –Nato

The Internet eliminates the middlemen between consumers and producers. Personal fabrication eliminates the distinction between consumers and producers.

Zingers

Comments –Nato

To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.

Today, Obama caved.

And for what? Political expedience? Who's going to vote for him because he's soft on crime committed by King George and the Telecoms? To earn a reprieve from Republicans for criticizing him as soft on terrorists? They don't need an excuse, and now they're hitting him for flip-flopping.

Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike.

Democracy cannot exist without strong differences. And going forward, some of you may decide that my FISA position is a deal breaker. That's ok. But I think it is worth pointing out that our agreement on the vast majority of issues that matter outweighs the differences we may have. After all, the choice in this election could not be clearer. Whether it is the economy, foreign policy, or the Supreme Court, my opponent has embraced the failed course of the last eight years, while I want to take this country in a new direction. Make no mistake: if John McCain is elected, the fundamental direction of this country that we love will not change. But if we come together, we have an historic opportunity to chart a new course, a better course.

So, in summary, Senator Obama is holding his progressive constituency hostage against the threat of Bush's third term, so he can take advantage of... nothing. Now THAT is negative campaigning. THAT is the politics of fear. Republicans have been trying to scare us with terrorists for years now. And it's worked so well, now Democrats are trying to scare us with Republicans.

I love you back, Senator. Not only have you allowed yourself to be victimized by fear tactics, but you have now officially proven that you are qualified to hold the office of President of the United States in the 21st century: You have mastered the art of fearmongering.

Comments –Nato

I'm not going to die because medicine will soon progress to the point where most diseases of aging are cureable.

I'm not going to die because cryonic suspension and resuscitation will be perfected in my lifetime.

I'm not going to die because mind uploading will be made to work in the next few decades.

I'm going to die because people like me won't have access these technologies when they arrive.

THAT's why I'm going to die.

And it's probably why you are going to die, too.

The solution to this problem is not investment in R&D; it's universal health care.

The solution to this problem is not technical; it's political.

Comments –Nato

We are fucked.

Just yesterday, I stopped in my neighborhood to actually feel the flowers and plants. It was a beautiful moment.

I saw a bee doing its pollination jig and wondered: does a bee know that this plant species has evolved with it, to take advantage of its behavior? And if it is ignorant, what are we, then, ignorant of, in terms of species that have adapted to us? We all know about domestication of livestock, cats and dogs, etc. But what kinds of adaptations do we not know about?

Today, I find out that beehives are going fatally haywire because of our own greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, enormous numbers of human food crops won't get properly pollinated.

That was quick.

Comments –Nato

Every so often I hear people talk about the need for a "new" kind of economics geared toward the supposedly oncoming period of superabundance; an economics geared not toward management of scarcity, but of plenty.

The problem I see with this is that economics concerns itself with scarcity as a problem. The pollyannish formulation of "superabundance" boosters continue to tout, however, doesn't seem to be a problem at all. But abundance can, indeed, be a problem.

The opposite of scarcity is not abundance. It's excess; overabundance; glut.

There are plenty of existing examples of this: too much spam email; too much carbon dioxide; too much money; too much garbage and waste.

Comments –Nato