"You are not the first person to think such a thing- that putting all economic authority in the hands of a beneficient- but all powerful- government would advance humanity."
You paint a false choice between two extremes.
We can have a mix of: * a gift economy (Wikipedia, GNU/Linux, Blogging, most of slashdot, Freecycle) * an exchange economy with a "basic income" (like social security but for all from birth) * an improved subsistence economy (home 3D printing, DIY everything learned by the internet and friends, techshops everywhere, cheap solar panels and LENR devices everywhere, organic gardening robots, and more) * improved democratic participatory resource-based planning at all levels (organized face-to-face or through the internet).
There are lots of alternatives: http://books.google.com/books?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC "This dictionary provides ammunition for those who disagree with the early twentieth-first century orthodoxy that 'There is no alternative to free market liberalism and managerialism'. Using hundreds of entries and cross-references, it proves that there are many alternatives to the way that we currently organize ourselves. These alternatives could be expressed as fictional utopias, they could be excavated from the past, or they could be described in terms of the contemporary politics of anti-corporate protest, environmentalism, feminism and localism. Part reference work, part source book, and part polemic, this dictionary provides a rich understanding of the ways in which fiction, history and today's politics provide different ways of thinking about how we can and should organize for the coming century."
Most highly successful developed countries (of which the USA is questionably probably not one of them relative to a poor showing giving all its assets and historical advantages) have both a strong active market and a strong active state sector.
What would have happened to the world after the Third Reich had an atomic bomb? http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,347726,00.html "Once the robberies had begun, a sort of "snowball effect" ensued and in order to stay afloat, he says Germany had to conquer and pilfer from more territory and victims. "That's why Hitler couldn't stop and glory comfortably in his role as victor after France's 1940 surrender." Peace would have meant the end of his predatory practices and would have spelled "certain bankruptcy for the Reich."
Instead, Hitler continued on the easy path of self deception, spurring the war greedily forward. And the German people -- fat with bounty -- kept quiet about where all the wealth originated, he says. Was it a deplorable weakness of human nature or insatiable German avarice? It's hard to say, but imagine if today's beleaguered government of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder could offer jobs and higher benefits to the masses. "No one would ask where the money came from and they would directly win the next election," Aly says.
The Nazis helped themselves to Jewish wealth and used it to feed the war machine. Likewise, in the 1940s, soldiers on the front were instructed to ravage conquered lands for raw materials, industrial goods and food for Germans. Aly cites secret Nazi files showing that from 1941-1943 Germans robbed enough food and supplies from the Soviet Union to care for 21 million people. Meanwhile, he insists, Soviet war prisoners were systematically starved. German soldiers were also encouraged to send care packages home to their families to boost the morale of their wives and children. In the first three months of 1943, German soldiers on the Leningrad front sent more than 3 million packages stuffed with artifacts, art, valuables and food home, Aly says.
"About 95 percent of the German population benefited financially from the National Socialist system. The Nazis' unprecedented killing machine maintained its momentum by robbing from others.... Millions of people were killed -- the Jews were gassed, 2 million Soviet war prisoners were starved to death... so that the German people could maintain their good mood." By contrast, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill cajoled his people in 1940, just after France had fallen, to "brace ourselves to our duties" so that in a thousand years, "men will still say, this was their finest hour."...
Perhaps, says Aly, that is partly because German historians weren't ready to look at what he calls "secondary" questions about the structural and financial underpinnings of the Nazi war machine. "Writing about them would have reduced the human scale of the tragedy," he says. Plus, he insists, it is always "much easier to say it was the fault of a small group of elites, the power-crazed SS commanders, or even big businesses" than to point to your own greed. German society has spent decades digesting and "perhaps now we have reached a new level," he says.
Current politics seems to mirror this sentiment. These days, making use of an agile word and mind flip, Germans have begun to insist that they -- like the rest of Europe -- were also liberated on May 8, 1945. They say it marks the day they and their children were freed from Nazi oppression. Still, in 1945, says Aly, Germans didn't think they were being liberated. "They had to be liberated from themselves," he says. "That's the problem." "
The Germans, from what I read somewhere, also essentially killed off all their own people who were old or infirm and so on...
So, the Nazi regime was like a fire burning on the abundance of Germany and the globe. That would have had to end eventually. How would it have transformed? It would have had to, whether it won WWII or not, whether it had atomic bombs or not.
And then would there have been uprisings? Same as the Arab Spri
Albert Einstein said: "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
He also said that if he had known the Nazis would not make atomic bombs, he never would have worked on them. Of course, now even digital watches (or at least smartphones) have enough computer power to design the essence of atomic weapons...
Here is a website by psychiatrist Donald Pet about moving to that newer way of thinking we need: http://anwot.org/
Here is related stuff I have written: http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html "Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land?... These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious...."
Sometimes when you find ourself in a hole and you don't want to be there, the best thing to do is stop digging and start thinking in a new way about how you got there and how to get out.
Back then the USA had a lot more family farms, or kids whose relatives or grandparents were famers. From what I've heard, growing up on a family farm tends to make people used to hard work, independently solving problems, working with both your hands and your mind, and also often provides a familiarity with dangerous chemicals and even explosives of some sort or other (like to dynamite big rocks out of a field). Hard to compare that to what most kids these days experience growing up where they can't even get near a decent chemistry set...
Is a condo association a type of "government"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association "The fastest growing form of housing in the United States today is common-interest developments (CIDs), a category that includes planned-unit developments of single-family homes, condominiums, and cooperative apartments.[1] Since 1964, homeowner associations have become increasingly common in the USA. The Community Associations Institute trade association estimated that HOAs governed 24.8 million American homes and 62 million residents in 2010.[2]"
The mystery of the human genome was sort of like a protective lock that prevented people from engineering terrible plagues. Now that mystery is going away, with lots of well-meant good intentions to cure genetic diseases and so on. With that protective "code" widely understood, we had better be sure to learn how to be nicer to each other, and use that knowledge to build a better society rather than tear everything down.
Or, in other words: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042546/quotes "Elwood P. Dowd: Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say "In this world, Elwood, you can be oh so so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart... I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."
And a basic income for all is part of that transition to a newer way of thinking, even though it seems all these social trends are very slow processes. I've heard that is until the trends reach some tipping point like about 10% of the population understands them and values them, and then the trend races forward. It's amazing that it was considered as much as it was in Germany recently: http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_snd-basic-income.html
There really is no alternative to a newer way of thinking and related socioeconomic policy, given the power of WMDs at this point in the hands of disgruntled people at the edges of the society who may think the whole thing is grossly unfair. The miracle is that people are so peaceful anyway, and that things like blowback actually so rarely happen.
Although one can also quote a point and not agree 100% with it. If you read the book, you'll see the author also talks about left authoritarianism as well. But politically, at least when the book was written a few years back, it certainly was pretty true in that quote. And it still is pretty true, even if one can also point out many problems on the left. At the same time, there are many good points made by self-labelled conservatives -- fighting against excessive bureaucracy, protecting the rights of the unborn, protecting rights to privacy, promoting individual initiative, and so on...
Anyway, the book has an excellent experiment collecting a bunch of authoritarians in a room playing a game, and shows what a different outcome (world destruction) there is then when average people are playing it.
An excellent essay on left vs. right thinking by a sociology professor: "The Left and the Right in Thinking, Personality, and Politics" http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/left_and_right.html "Rightists tend to be very individually oriented. They tend not to see groups and social classes. They think that success is a matter of individual effort, overlooking the social support that they and everyone else has had in order to advance in life. This individualistic orientation, along with their respect for hierarchy, makes them into natural supporters of the current power structure, whatever their socioeconomic standing.
On the other hand, according to Tomkins, Leftists are oriented toward human needs and pleasures, not rules, and think that rules are created by people. They are attracted to new experiences and positive feelings. They are for equality and do not like hierarchy; they are egalitarians who are willing to change the rules if they think that is necessary. In addition, they tend to focus on groups and social networks. This group-oriented stance, along with their emphasis on equality, makes them natural allies of the underdogs, whether this means low-income people or people excluded from the dominant society on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religious preference."
However, that does not mean such thinking maps cleanly onto US politics, or even what to do about that dichotomy. And even he says everyone has aspects of both.
Have you read what I wrote outlining four potentially interwoven possibilities? Why do you create a "false choice" between two extremes? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma "A false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice, black-and-white thinking, or the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses) is a type of logical fallacy that involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options (sometimes shades of grey between the extremes). For example, "It wasn't medicine that cured Ms. X, so it must have been a miracle.""
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns "I emphasize this point because it is the most important failure that would-be prognosticators make in considering future trends. Most technology forecasts ignore altogether this âoehistorical exponential viewâ of technological progress. That is why people tend to overestimate what can be achieved in the short term (because we tend to leave out necessary details), but underestimate what can be achieved in the long term (because the exponential growth is ignored)."
"We can't have a society at all where everybody expects to be taken care of by some magic of 'past social credit', somebody has to do the actual work of creating the stuff, whatever it means, and it really means organising land labour and capital in the most efficient manner to give the market something that will be profitable enough to keep the lights on."
Tell that to Linus Torvalds and all the Debian GNU/Linux maintainers. Kids should tell that to their parents and adopters too. There are many ways of organizing how things get done based on what values we want to celebrate.
People can deny it and fight it all they want. Probably the best they'll accomplish to protect and obsolete old order is wipe out humanity -- I hope we do better than that.
Also, comparative advantage does not apply when there is local unemployment. Who is the "you" you are referring to in trade anyway? The people without jobs who are at the edge economically and socially in the USA? So much of what people think they know about even mainstream economics is bunk. See also, for just one example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_toil "The paradox of toil is the economic hypothesis that total employment will shrink if everybody wants to work more when "the short-term nominal interest rate is zero and there are deflationary pressures and output contraction".[1] The idea is that total employment will fall when wages, and therefore consumption, are pushed down by the simultaneous efforts of everyone to work more in situations where interest rates are against the zero bound so that rates cannot drop more to increase demand for goods. This is a limited example of the fallacy of composition.[1] where assuming that the increase in production that normally occurs when total labor increases applies in all situations. Put simply, when a recessionary economy is up against the zero bound, having more people seeking work - at lower wages if necessary - can actually reduce the number of jobs due to reduced demand from lower wages."
There are at least four fundamental complementary ways to arrange most work that needs to be done: * Volunteerism through a gift economy (Wikipedia, Linux, Freecycle) * Through the exchange market, but softened by transfer payments like a "basic income" (or a more fragmented system like in the USA with social security, public school supports, welfare, unemployment insurance, etc.) * By local subsistence through advanced technology like 3D printers, personal robotics, solar panels, and similar DIY stuff * By democratic participatory resource based planning at all levels.
The fact is, neither the USSR nor the USA was talking about "socialism" when they either celebrated it or maligned it. Western Europe is a better example of what "socialism" means. See Chomsky here to see more about the truth about the USSR and the USA and how they played against each other: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-4Hv9pDicA
Your post is very selective about the "facts". If enough people keep thinking your way, we are probably doomed for sure in an age where any disgruntled person can download a plague off the internet and feel justified using it out of either retribution or to achieve some objective that they think will make them "secure" by wiping out most everyone else who might in theory be a threat. Maybe we could try being nice to each other for a change and see how that works out for a while? http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
Or: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Prologue " Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so the idea was lost, seemingly for ever.
This is her story."
Were you one of the protesters against the supposedly justified war against Iraq over non-existent weapons of mass destruction. If not, then what moral authority do you speak from? Who was the aggressor there? Hard to accept the implications. Based on your philosophy, how should the USA be labelled for that endeavor, and what should other countries do about that? Can you explain why most other countries consider the USA a far greater threat to world peace than most of the countries it invades? http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/15/usa.iran
They have also happened in other countries without those countries losing their democracies.
But sadly, the article suggests the worst terrorism these days seems to be coming *out* of the US Capitol and destroying the fabric of US society both economically and socially. See also: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ "OK, what's this book about? It's about what's happened to the American government lately. It's about the disastrous decisions that government has made. It's about the corruption that rotted the Congress. It's about how traditional conservatism has nearly been destroyed by authoritarianism. It's about how the "Religious Right" teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country. It's about the United States standing at the crossroads as the next federal election approaches."
Just think about whether you are helping the terrorists win?
Since most material wealth is now created through machines that need fairly little maintenance, and most intellectual wealth has historically been created as a labor of love by voluntary community interactions and in any case we now have so much of it, your whole point is obsolete (if it was ever really true). See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit
Also, remember that most land is "owned" by people who got it through some chain that eventually arrives at either finders-keepers or might-makes-right policies. Even Manhattan Island, the literal bedrock of US capitalism, was essentially purchased from people who did not own it in any sense (a neighboring tribe who probably though the whole thing a good joke). A logical system of saying who gets the fruits of the land is problematical when there really is not a-priori reasonable way to say that some people are more privileged to have access to the land for mining, farming, recreation, or whatever.
One question is that it is probably more the Democrats than the GOP Republicans who are in bed with Hollywood, according to this previous slashdot article: http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/02/03/1322205/how-the-gop-and-the-tea-party-helped-kill-sopa ""Strengthening intellectual property enforcement has been a bipartisan issue for the past 25 years, but Stewart Baker writes in the Hollywood Reporter that when the fight went from the committees to the floor and Wikipedia went down, the Democratic and Republican parties reacted very differently to SOPA. 'Despite widespread opposition to SOPA from bloggers on the left, Democrats in Congress (and the administration) were reluctant to oppose the bill outright,' writes Baker. 'The MPAA was not shy about reminding them that Hollywood has been a reliable source of funding for Democratic candidates, and that it would not tolerate defections.' That very public message from the MPAA also reached another audience -- Tea Party conservatives. Most of them had never given a second thought to intellectual property enforcement, but many had drawn support from conservative bloggers and they began to ask why they should risk the ire of their internet supporters to rescue an industry that was happily advertising how much it hated them.""
That is not to disagree with many other points about economic changes needed to benefit most people that you insightfully make.
A big problem is that the USA has been painted as a post-agriculture, post-manufacturing, even soon post-service-using-robotics-and-offshoring country. What does that leave if we are to keep with the old economic paradigm -- copyright ownership and patents? But who is going to pay for copyrights with so much free stuff coming through the web. So, we really need much broader socioeconomic change than either major US party (or even most minor parties) are talking about. It will come. It's just a question of how much people will suffer as the process is drawn out...
... through arguing over resource allocation. According to "Conceptual Guerilla", mainstream economics is just mainly a mythological cover story to justify elites: "The Mythology of Wealth" http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
Example: http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/ "The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society."
And also the similarly named: http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rest-Us-Debunking-Science/dp/1595581014 "Why do contemporary economists consider food subsidies in starving countries, rent control in rich cities, and health insurance everywhere "inefficient"? Why do they feel that corporate executives deserve no less than their multimillion-dollar "compensation" packages and workers no more than their meager wages? Here is a lively and accessible debunking of the two elements that make economics the "science" of the rich: the definition of what is efficient and the theory of how wages are determined. The first is used to justify the cruelest policies, the second grand larceny. Filled with lively examples--from food riots in Indonesia to eminent domain in Connecticut and everyone from Adam Smith to Jeremy Bentham to Larry Summers--Economics for the Rest of Us shows how today's dominant economic theories evolved, how they explicitly favor the rich over the poor, and why they're not the only or best options. Written for anyone with an interest in understanding contemporary economic thinking--and why it is dead wrong--Economics for the Rest of Us offers a foundation for a fundamentally more just economic system."
"Technology is so intertwined with politics these days that you can't unwind them."
Great post. Lawrence Lessig says in his book "Code 2.0" that there are at least four ways to influence behavior (a key issue in politics). The are rules, norms, prices, and (computer and other) architecture. http://codev2.cc/
Some of my own thoughts on that: http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html "This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."
One problem is that the latest "war of the da"y is always profitable to somebody: http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm "WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
War is just not usually beneficial to most people who have to pay the costs (which includes the US taxpayer, as well as all the victims abroad or at home who were in the way...)
And so a society consumes itself, burning itself to the ground because every incremental step makes sense to the fire... Where are the "political" firefighters when we need them?
"Is slashdot scaring away developers with more political submissions? Remember when there used to be a Developer section instead of all this political BS? I swear YRO has ruined this site."
Politics is about resource allocation. Much of computing design is about resource allocation, too. So they are more connected than you might think at first.
Lectures like you describe may work well or be essential for poorly motivated ans easily distracted students (see John Holt or John Taylor Gatto about that) who are jumping through career hoops, but in a different paradigm, systemic needs might be different. The central issue is that most schools are not primarily educatioanl instituions first, whatever they call themselves, and most students are not at schools to get a real education (whatever they say).
That said, if I was back in college, I'd probably want to be one of your students, since I've generally liked lectures. Even if they are not interesting, something about them tends to give me unrelated ideas I can scribble in my notes.:-)
In the video they asked for the cure for cancer, and it turns out most cancer can be prevented with adequate vitamin D, eating lots of vegetables, and avoiding some lifestyle risks.
Global warming can be dealt with by renewables and probably LENR (cold fusion) and if all else fails, Thorium power (but it is not clear it is all from fossil fuels as much may have come from topsoil destruction by poor farming practices, or that global warming is entirely a bad thing compared to delaying a next ice age).
Massive unemployment can be dealt with through a "basic income", an expanded gift economy, improved subsistence technologies like 3D printing and home gardening robots, and/or by better participatory planning at all levels of government.
The biggest issue Google, like the rest of us, needs to wrestle with is the one in my sig below -- the irony of technologies of abundance being used to fight over perceived scarcity, or worse, to create artificial scarcity.
Look into vitamin D, eating more vegetables, getting enough iodine, periodic fasting, omega 3s, and so on.
Regular exercise to keep lymph circulating and mind-body coordination (Yoga, Tai Chi) can help, too.
And social and psychological aspects make a difference too (especially in supporting good nutrition, adequate exercise, time for learning, and limiting bad stress).
The seeds of cancer are usually set decades before the problem emerges. The body is always getting cancerous cells; the issue is does the immune system fight it off. And the more reserve capacity a brain has, the longer mental decay takes to become significant and life-altering.
Sorry to hear about your father, but maybe these can help you avoid the same fate.
See also, not that it applies directly, but might be suggestive: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/new-study-finds-that-vitamin-d-may-help-in-treatment-of-pediatric-bone-cancer/ "Vitamin D can cause cancerous bone cells to turn into normal bone cells, according to research by scientists at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC). The discovery may lead to new treatments for pediatric bone cancer, the scientists say. Recent studies have shown that vitamin D may be helpful in treating cancer of the breast, prostate and colon by inhibiting the growth of malignant cells. KUMC scientists built on that foundation, using tests to show that vitamin D produces a similar response in osteosarcoma -- a type of malignant bone tumor that mainly affects children and adolescents."
"I challenge you to repeat that post replacing your references to actual papers published in mainstream journals."
Consider: http://www.disciplined-minds.com/ "Who are you going to be? That is the question.
In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."
And from a previous link: http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/ "The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society."
So, that's why it's hard to find this stuff in mainstream "group think" economic journals edited by "disciplined minds" engaging in "group think" that is directly linked to their own paychecks as professors ("those who profess") of mainstream economic dogma.
However, if you actually looked at any of those links I previously supplied, you would find several of them actually lead to either journal publications (Luthar) or items that cite journal publications in other fields or even some books written by professional economists. A little bit of reality sometimes even seeps through past the group think and self-serving apologies of the current high priests of the mythology of wealth like in the links to the NY Time article. Again: "Economists Who Did Their Homework (800 Years of It)" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/economy/04econ.html "But in the wake of the recent crisis, a few economists -- like Professors Reinhart and Rogoff, and other like-minded colleagues like Barry Eichengreen and Alan Taylor -- have been encouraging others in their field to look beyond hermetically sealed theoretical models and into the historical record. "There is so much inbredness in this profession," says Ms. Reinhart. "They all read the same sources. They all use the same data sets. They all talk to the same people. There is endless extrapolation on extrapolation on extrapolation, and for years that is what has been rewarded.""
Here is more on that mythology and the consequences:
Here is another thing to think about, by the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_toil "The paradox of toil is the economic hypothesis that total employment will shrink if everybody wants to work more when "the short-term nominal interest rate is zero and there are deflationary pressures and output contraction".[1] The idea is that total employment will fall when wages, and therefore consumption, are pushed down by the simultanious efforts of everyone to work more in situations where interest rates are against the zero bound so that rates cannot drop more to increase demand for goods. This is a limited example of the fallacy of composition.[1] where assuming that the increase in production that normally occurs when total labor increases applies in all situations. Put simply, when a recessionary economy is up against the zero bound, having more people seeking work - at lower wages if necessary - can actually reduce the number of jobs due to reduced demand from lower wages."
Even in your defense of the concept, you started introducing qualifiers. You "introduce" a new worker into a "closed" economy. You are carefully avoiding what it means when an economy already has 20% or higher real unemployment, or what it means if the economy is open to imports or innovation, or what happens when the owners of capital take advantage of the situation of too many workers chasing too few jobs and apply the law of supply and demand to lower wages.
But since so much of mainstream economics is theory devoid of facts, let me play along, and show how, just theoretically, the "lump of labor" fallacy assumes both linearity in a relation of labor to output and also increasing demand, given whoever becomes a worker in a modern society with unemployment like the USA must already have been consuming a lot of products.
Consider an economy with one hundred people who consume one generalized product called "A". Imagine forty-five members out of the hundred "work" to produce product 10000 units of product A per day. The production of A has been greatly optimized for maximum production, ignoring any joy the workers get from their jobs: http://web.archive.org/web/20110425153540/http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
Assume people only need about 1 unit of A to get by, but more is nice, up to about 7 units of A, and then more doesn't make people much happier (and at some point, people even become sick from too much).
The product is distributed in some fashion to everyone in the society, party based on
Slashdot Mirror
"You are not the first person to think such a thing- that putting all economic authority in the hands of a beneficient- but all powerful- government would advance humanity."
You paint a false choice between two extremes.
We can have a mix of:
* a gift economy (Wikipedia, GNU/Linux, Blogging, most of slashdot, Freecycle)
* an exchange economy with a "basic income" (like social security but for all from birth)
* an improved subsistence economy (home 3D printing, DIY everything learned by the internet and friends, techshops everywhere, cheap solar panels and LENR devices everywhere, organic gardening robots, and more)
* improved democratic participatory resource-based planning at all levels (organized face-to-face or through the internet).
There are lots of alternatives:
http://books.google.com/books?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC
"This dictionary provides ammunition for those who disagree with the early twentieth-first century orthodoxy that 'There is no alternative to free market liberalism and managerialism'. Using hundreds of entries and cross-references, it proves that there are many alternatives to the way that we currently organize ourselves. These alternatives could be expressed as fictional utopias, they could be excavated from the past, or they could be described in terms of the contemporary politics of anti-corporate protest, environmentalism, feminism and localism. Part reference work, part source book, and part polemic, this dictionary provides a rich understanding of the ways in which fiction, history and today's politics provide different ways of thinking about how we can and should organize for the coming century."
Most highly successful developed countries (of which the USA is questionably probably not one of them relative to a poor showing giving all its assets and historical advantages) have both a strong active market and a strong active state sector.
What would have happened to the world after the Third Reich had an atomic bomb? ... Millions of people were killed -- the Jews were gassed, 2 million Soviet war prisoners were starved to death ... so that the German people could maintain their good mood." By contrast, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill cajoled his people in 1940, just after France had fallen, to "brace ourselves to our duties" so that in a thousand years, "men will still say, this was their finest hour." ...
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,347726,00.html
"Once the robberies had begun, a sort of "snowball effect" ensued and in order to stay afloat, he says Germany had to conquer and pilfer from more territory and victims. "That's why Hitler couldn't stop and glory comfortably in his role as victor after France's 1940 surrender." Peace would have meant the end of his predatory practices and would have spelled "certain bankruptcy for the Reich."
Instead, Hitler continued on the easy path of self deception, spurring the war greedily forward. And the German people -- fat with bounty -- kept quiet about where all the wealth originated, he says. Was it a deplorable weakness of human nature or insatiable German avarice? It's hard to say, but imagine if today's beleaguered government of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder could offer jobs and higher benefits to the masses. "No one would ask where the money came from and they would directly win the next election," Aly says.
The Nazis helped themselves to Jewish wealth and used it to feed the war machine.
Likewise, in the 1940s, soldiers on the front were instructed to ravage conquered lands for raw materials, industrial goods and food for Germans. Aly cites secret Nazi files showing that from 1941-1943 Germans robbed enough food and supplies from the Soviet Union to care for 21 million people. Meanwhile, he insists, Soviet war prisoners were systematically starved. German soldiers were also encouraged to send care packages home to their families to boost the morale of their wives and children. In the first three months of 1943, German soldiers on the Leningrad front sent more than 3 million packages stuffed with artifacts, art, valuables and food home, Aly says.
"About 95 percent of the German population benefited financially from the National Socialist system. The Nazis' unprecedented killing machine maintained its momentum by robbing from others.
Perhaps, says Aly, that is partly because German historians weren't ready to look at what he calls "secondary" questions about the structural and financial underpinnings of the Nazi war machine. "Writing about them would have reduced the human scale of the tragedy," he says. Plus, he insists, it is always "much easier to say it was the fault of a small group of elites, the power-crazed SS commanders, or even big businesses" than to point to your own greed. German society has spent decades digesting and "perhaps now we have reached a new level," he says.
Current politics seems to mirror this sentiment. These days, making use of an agile word and mind flip, Germans have begun to insist that they -- like the rest of Europe -- were also liberated on May 8, 1945. They say it marks the day they and their children were freed from Nazi oppression. Still, in 1945, says Aly, Germans didn't think they were being liberated. "They had to be liberated from themselves," he says. "That's the problem." "
The Germans, from what I read somewhere, also essentially killed off all their own people who were old or infirm and so on...
So, the Nazi regime was like a fire burning on the abundance of Germany and the globe. That would have had to end eventually. How would it have transformed? It would have had to, whether it won WWII or not, whether it had atomic bombs or not.
And then would there have been uprisings? Same as the Arab Spri
Related: http://www.doug-long.com/einstein.htm
Albert Einstein said: "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
He also said that if he had known the Nazis would not make atomic bombs, he never would have worked on them. Of course, now even digital watches (or at least smartphones) have enough computer power to design the essence of atomic weapons...
Here is a website by psychiatrist Donald Pet about moving to that newer way of thinking we need:
http://anwot.org/
Here is related stuff I have written: ... These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious. ..."
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land?
Sometimes when you find ourself in a hole and you don't want to be there, the best thing to do is stop digging and start thinking in a new way about how you got there and how to get out.
Back then the USA had a lot more family farms, or kids whose relatives or grandparents were famers. From what I've heard, growing up on a family farm tends to make people used to hard work, independently solving problems, working with both your hands and your mind, and also often provides a familiarity with dangerous chemicals and even explosives of some sort or other (like to dynamite big rocks out of a field). Hard to compare that to what most kids these days experience growing up where they can't even get near a decent chemistry set...
Is a condo association a type of "government"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association
"The fastest growing form of housing in the United States today is common-interest developments (CIDs), a category that includes planned-unit developments of single-family homes, condominiums, and cooperative apartments.[1] Since 1964, homeowner associations have become increasingly common in the USA. The Community Associations Institute trade association estimated that HOAs governed 24.8 million American homes and 62 million residents in 2010.[2]"
Please define what you mean by "government", and please define what you mean by "force".
The mystery of the human genome was sort of like a protective lock that prevented people from engineering terrible plagues. Now that mystery is going away, with lots of well-meant good intentions to cure genetic diseases and so on. With that protective "code" widely understood, we had better be sure to learn how to be nicer to each other, and use that knowledge to build a better society rather than tear everything down.
Or, in other words:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042546/quotes
"Elwood P. Dowd: Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say "In this world, Elwood, you can be oh so so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart... I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."
In general, our society needs to move to "A Newer Way Of Thinking" like Albert Einstein (and now Donald Pet) talk about, given we can either use abundance to build a better world for all, or we can use it to destroy that possibility for all:
http://www.anwot.org/
http://anwot.org/blog/2011/07/10/stren-70-why-do-we-have-destructive-aggression-and-war/
And a basic income for all is part of that transition to a newer way of thinking, even though it seems all these social trends are very slow processes. I've heard that is until the trends reach some tipping point like about 10% of the population understands them and values them, and then the trend races forward. It's amazing that it was considered as much as it was in Germany recently:
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_snd-basic-income.html
There really is no alternative to a newer way of thinking and related socioeconomic policy, given the power of WMDs at this point in the hands of disgruntled people at the edges of the society who may think the whole thing is grossly unfair. The miracle is that people are so peaceful anyway, and that things like blowback actually so rarely happen.
Likewise, if LENR (what was formerly called cold fusion) pans out, while it will open up many possibilities for good, it will lead to more destructive possibilities as well, and probably, after a brief spurt of new jobs, we will see massive formal-sector unemployment as energy can often substitute for labor. Related links (even if things are still up in the air, and solar panels are a proven technology also rapidly dropping in cost):
http://www.google.com/search?q=lenr
http://pesn.com/2012/01/12/9602009_NASA_Admits_LENR_Cold_Fusion_Game_Changer/
http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/cold-fusion-being-studied-at-mit
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/12/newenergytimes-gets-three-nasa.html
http://energycatalyzer3.com/news/billionaire-donates-money-for-cold-fusion-research-at-us-university
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
Good points, thanks.
Although one can also quote a point and not agree 100% with it. If you read the book, you'll see the author also talks about left authoritarianism as well. But politically, at least when the book was written a few years back, it certainly was pretty true in that quote. And it still is pretty true, even if one can also point out many problems on the left. At the same time, there are many good points made by self-labelled conservatives -- fighting against excessive bureaucracy, protecting the rights of the unborn, protecting rights to privacy, promoting individual initiative, and so on...
Anyway, the book has an excellent experiment collecting a bunch of authoritarians in a room playing a game, and shows what a different outcome (world destruction) there is then when average people are playing it.
An excellent essay on left vs. right thinking by a sociology professor:
"The Left and the Right in Thinking, Personality, and Politics"
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/left_and_right.html
"Rightists tend to be very individually oriented. They tend not to see groups and social classes. They think that success is a matter of individual effort, overlooking the social support that they and everyone else has had in order to advance in life. This individualistic orientation, along with their respect for hierarchy, makes them into natural supporters of the current power structure, whatever their socioeconomic standing.
On the other hand, according to Tomkins, Leftists are oriented toward human needs and pleasures, not rules, and think that rules are created by people. They are attracted to new experiences and positive feelings. They are for equality and do not like hierarchy; they are egalitarians who are willing to change the rules if they think that is necessary. In addition, they tend to focus on groups and social networks. This group-oriented stance, along with their emphasis on equality, makes them natural allies of the underdogs, whether this means low-income people or people excluded from the dominant society on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religious preference."
However, that does not mean such thinking maps cleanly onto US politics, or even what to do about that dichotomy. And even he says everyone has aspects of both.
Have you read what I wrote outlining four potentially interwoven possibilities? Why do you create a "false choice" between two extremes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
"A false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice, black-and-white thinking, or the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses) is a type of logical fallacy that involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options (sometimes shades of grey between the extremes). For example, "It wasn't medicine that cured Ms. X, so it must have been a miracle.""
See also:
"Marxism of the Right"
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
We have lots of options. The question is what sort of society do we want to live in together?
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns
"I emphasize this point because it is the most important failure that would-be prognosticators make in considering future trends. Most technology forecasts ignore altogether this âoehistorical exponential viewâ of technological progress. That is why people tend to overestimate what can be achieved in the short term (because we tend to leave out necessary details), but underestimate what can be achieved in the long term (because the exponential growth is ignored)."
Just look at any recent robotics videos and think again. Self-driving Google cars. The US military flying drones. Flexible manipulators. Wasp-like construction robots. The videos go on and on. Just one:
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation
The exponential progress is starting to show. The flashover to some other economic regime may be sooner than you think now. Even China is automating to assure quality and reduce labor costs and management costs.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/07/31/foxconn_to_substitute_workers_with_1_million_robots_in_3_years.html
"We can't have a society at all where everybody expects to be taken care of by some magic of 'past social credit', somebody has to do the actual work of creating the stuff, whatever it means, and it really means organising land labour and capital in the most efficient manner to give the market something that will be profitable enough to keep the lights on."
Tell that to Linus Torvalds and all the Debian GNU/Linux maintainers. Kids should tell that to their parents and adopters too. There are many ways of organizing how things get done based on what values we want to celebrate.
How much "work" does it take to tell robots what to do?
"PR2 Fetches Sandwich from Subway"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIYRQC2iBp0
The authoritarian USSR you knew is history, and the quasi-authoritarian USA is going much the same way.
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
There were zero net new jobs created in the USA in 2000-2010 while population grew and the GDP went up by 30% or so.
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comments
People can deny it and fight it all they want. Probably the best they'll accomplish to protect and obsolete old order is wipe out humanity -- I hope we do better than that.
Also, comparative advantage does not apply when there is local unemployment. Who is the "you" you are referring to in trade anyway? The people without jobs who are at the edge economically and socially in the USA? So much of what people think they know about even mainstream economics is bunk. See also, for just one example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_toil
"The paradox of toil is the economic hypothesis that total employment will shrink if everybody wants to work more when "the short-term nominal interest rate is zero and there are deflationary pressures and output contraction".[1] The idea is that total employment will fall when wages, and therefore consumption, are pushed down by the simultaneous efforts of everyone to work more in situations where interest rates are against the zero bound so that rates cannot drop more to increase demand for goods. This is a limited example of the fallacy of composition.[1] where assuming that the increase in production that normally occurs when total labor increases applies in all situations. Put simply, when a recessionary economy is up against the zero bound, having more people seeking work - at lower wages if necessary - can actually reduce the number of jobs due to reduced demand from lower wages."
There are at least four fundamental complementary ways to arrange most work that needs to be done:
* Volunteerism through a gift economy (Wikipedia, Linux, Freecycle)
* Through the exchange market, but softened by transfer payments like a "basic income" (or a more fragmented system like in the USA with social security, public school supports, welfare, unemployment insurance, etc.)
* By local subsistence through advanced technology like 3D printers, personal robotics, solar panels, and similar DIY stuff
* By democratic participatory resource based planning at all levels.
The fact is, neither the USSR nor the USA was talking about "socialism" when they either celebrated it or maligned it. Western Europe is a better example of what "socialism" means. See Chomsky here to see more about the truth about the USSR and the USA and how they played against each other:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-4Hv9pDicA
Lots of alternatives:
Your post is very selective about the "facts". If enough people keep thinking your way, we are probably doomed for sure in an age where any disgruntled person can download a plague off the internet and feel justified using it out of either retribution or to achieve some objective that they think will make them "secure" by wiping out most everyone else who might in theory be a threat. Maybe we could try being nice to each other for a change and see how that works out for a while?
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
Or:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Prologue
" Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so the idea was lost, seemingly for ever.
This is her story."
Were you one of the protesters against the supposedly justified war against Iraq over non-existent weapons of mass destruction. If not, then what moral authority do you speak from? Who was the aggressor there? Hard to accept the implications. Based on your philosophy, how should the USA be labelled for that endeavor, and what should other countries do about that? Can you explain why most other countries consider the USA a far greater threat to world peace than most of the countries it invades?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/15/usa.iran
Terrorist attacks have happened many times on US soil, including the US Capitol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States
They have also happened in other countries without those countries losing their democracies.
But sadly, the article suggests the worst terrorism these days seems to be coming *out* of the US Capitol and destroying the fabric of US society both economically and socially. See also:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
"OK, what's this book about? It's about what's happened to the American government lately. It's about the disastrous decisions that government has made. It's about the corruption that rotted the Congress. It's about how traditional conservatism has nearly been destroyed by authoritarianism. It's about how the "Religious Right" teamed up with amoral authoritarian leaders to push its un-democratic agenda onto the country. It's about the United States standing at the crossroads as the next federal election approaches."
Just think about whether you are helping the terrorists win?
Since most material wealth is now created through machines that need fairly little maintenance, and most intellectual wealth has historically been created as a labor of love by voluntary community interactions and in any case we now have so much of it, your whole point is obsolete (if it was ever really true). See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit
Also, remember that most land is "owned" by people who got it through some chain that eventually arrives at either finders-keepers or might-makes-right policies. Even Manhattan Island, the literal bedrock of US capitalism, was essentially purchased from people who did not own it in any sense (a neighboring tribe who probably though the whole thing a good joke). A logical system of saying who gets the fruits of the land is problematical when there really is not a-priori reasonable way to say that some people are more privileged to have access to the land for mining, farming, recreation, or whatever.
See also:
"Marxism of the Right"
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/
Lots of interesting ideas there.
One question is that it is probably more the Democrats than the GOP Republicans who are in bed with Hollywood, according to this previous slashdot article:
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/02/03/1322205/how-the-gop-and-the-tea-party-helped-kill-sopa
""Strengthening intellectual property enforcement has been a bipartisan issue for the past 25 years, but Stewart Baker writes in the Hollywood Reporter that when the fight went from the committees to the floor and Wikipedia went down, the Democratic and Republican parties reacted very differently to SOPA. 'Despite widespread opposition to SOPA from bloggers on the left, Democrats in Congress (and the administration) were reluctant to oppose the bill outright,' writes Baker. 'The MPAA was not shy about reminding them that Hollywood has been a reliable source of funding for Democratic candidates, and that it would not tolerate defections.' That very public message from the MPAA also reached another audience -- Tea Party conservatives. Most of them had never given a second thought to intellectual property enforcement, but many had drawn support from conservative bloggers and they began to ask why they should risk the ire of their internet supporters to rescue an industry that was happily advertising how much it hated them.""
That is not to disagree with many other points about economic changes needed to benefit most people that you insightfully make.
A big problem is that the USA has been painted as a post-agriculture, post-manufacturing, even soon post-service-using-robotics-and-offshoring country. What does that leave if we are to keep with the old economic paradigm -- copyright ownership and patents? But who is going to pay for copyrights with so much free stuff coming through the web. So, we really need much broader socioeconomic change than either major US party (or even most minor parties) are talking about. It will come. It's just a question of how much people will suffer as the process is drawn out...
... through arguing over resource allocation. According to "Conceptual Guerilla", mainstream economics is just mainly a mythological cover story to justify elites:
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
Example:
http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/
"The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society."
Other ways to look at economics:
http://debunkingeconomics.com/
And also the similarly named:
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rest-Us-Debunking-Science/dp/1595581014
"Why do contemporary economists consider food subsidies in starving countries, rent control in rich cities, and health insurance everywhere "inefficient"? Why do they feel that corporate executives deserve no less than their multimillion-dollar "compensation" packages and workers no more than their meager wages? Here is a lively and accessible debunking of the two elements that make economics the "science" of the rich: the definition of what is efficient and the theory of how wages are determined. The first is used to justify the cruelest policies, the second grand larceny. Filled with lively examples--from food riots in Indonesia to eminent domain in Connecticut and everyone from Adam Smith to Jeremy Bentham to Larry Summers--Economics for the Rest of Us shows how today's dominant economic theories evolved, how they explicitly favor the rich over the poor, and why they're not the only or best options. Written for anyone with an interest in understanding contemporary economic thinking--and why it is dead wrong--Economics for the Rest of Us offers a foundation for a fundamentally more just economic system."
"Technology is so intertwined with politics these days that you can't unwind them."
Great post. Lawrence Lessig says in his book "Code 2.0" that there are at least four ways to influence behavior (a key issue in politics). The are rules, norms, prices, and (computer and other) architecture.
http://codev2.cc/
Good questions. Please keep digging...
Some of my own thoughts on that:
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."
One problem is that the latest "war of the da"y is always profitable to somebody:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
War is just not usually beneficial to most people who have to pay the costs (which includes the US taxpayer, as well as all the victims abroad or at home who were in the way...)
And so a society consumes itself, burning itself to the ground because every incremental step makes sense to the fire... Where are the "political" firefighters when we need them?
"Is slashdot scaring away developers with more political submissions? Remember when there used to be a Developer section instead of all this political BS? I swear YRO has ruined this site."
Politics is about resource allocation. Much of computing design is about resource allocation, too. So they are more connected than you might think at first.
Lectures like you describe may work well or be essential for poorly motivated ans easily distracted students (see John Holt or John Taylor Gatto about that) who are jumping through career hoops, but in a different paradigm, systemic needs might be different. The central issue is that most schools are not primarily educatioanl instituions first, whatever they call themselves, and most students are not at schools to get a real education (whatever they say).
That said, if I was back in college, I'd probably want to be one of your students, since I've generally liked lectures. Even if they are not interesting, something about them tends to give me unrelated ideas I can scribble in my notes. :-)
In the video they asked for the cure for cancer, and it turns out most cancer can be prevented with adequate vitamin D, eating lots of vegetables, and avoiding some lifestyle risks.
Global warming can be dealt with by renewables and probably LENR (cold fusion) and if all else fails, Thorium power (but it is not clear it is all from fossil fuels as much may have come from topsoil destruction by poor farming practices, or that global warming is entirely a bad thing compared to delaying a next ice age).
Massive unemployment can be dealt with through a "basic income", an expanded gift economy, improved subsistence technologies like 3D printing and home gardening robots, and/or by better participatory planning at all levels of government.
The biggest issue Google, like the rest of us, needs to wrestle with is the one in my sig below -- the irony of technologies of abundance being used to fight over perceived scarcity, or worse, to create artificial scarcity.
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
Look into vitamin D, eating more vegetables, getting enough iodine, periodic fasting, omega 3s, and so on.
Regular exercise to keep lymph circulating and mind-body coordination (Yoga, Tai Chi) can help, too.
And social and psychological aspects make a difference too (especially in supporting good nutrition, adequate exercise, time for learning, and limiting bad stress).
The seeds of cancer are usually set decades before the problem emerges. The body is always getting cancerous cells; the issue is does the immune system fight it off. And the more reserve capacity a brain has, the longer mental decay takes to become significant and life-altering.
Sorry to hear about your father, but maybe these can help you avoid the same fate.
See also, not that it applies directly, but might be suggestive:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/new-study-finds-that-vitamin-d-may-help-in-treatment-of-pediatric-bone-cancer/
"Vitamin D can cause cancerous bone cells to turn into normal bone cells, according to research by scientists at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC). The discovery may lead to new treatments for pediatric bone cancer, the scientists say. Recent studies have shown that vitamin D may be helpful in treating cancer of the breast, prostate and colon by inhibiting the growth of malignant cells. KUMC scientists built on that foundation, using tests to show that vitamin D produces a similar response in osteosarcoma -- a type of malignant bone tumor that mainly affects children and adolescents."
"I challenge you to repeat that post replacing your references to actual papers published in mainstream journals."
Consider:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
"Who are you going to be? That is the question.
In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy."
And from a previous link:
http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/
"The authors of this appeal are deeply concerned that more than three years since the outbreak of the financial and macroeconomic crisis that highlighted the pitfalls, limitations, dangers and responsibilities of main-stream thought in economics, finance and management, the quasi-monopolistic position of such thought within the academic world nevertheless remains largely unchallenged. This situation reflects the institutional power that the unconditional proponents of main-stream thought continue to exert on university teaching and research. This domination, propagated by the so-called top universities, dates back at least a quarter of a century and is effectively global. However, the very fact that this paradigm persists despite the current crisis, highlights the extent of its power and the dangerousness of its dogmatic character. Teachers and researchers, the signatories of the appeal, assert that this situation restricts the fecundity of research and teaching in economics, finance and management, diverting them as it does from issues critical to society."
So, that's why it's hard to find this stuff in mainstream "group think" economic journals edited by "disciplined minds" engaging in "group think" that is directly linked to their own paychecks as professors ("those who profess") of mainstream economic dogma.
However, if you actually looked at any of those links I previously supplied, you would find several of them actually lead to either journal publications (Luthar) or items that cite journal publications in other fields or even some books written by professional economists. A little bit of reality sometimes even seeps through past the group think and self-serving apologies of the current high priests of the mythology of wealth like in the links to the NY Time article. Again:
"Economists Who Did Their Homework (800 Years of It)"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/economy/04econ.html
"But in the wake of the recent crisis, a few economists -- like Professors Reinhart and Rogoff, and other like-minded colleagues like Barry Eichengreen and Alan Taylor -- have been encouraging others in their field to look beyond hermetically sealed theoretical models and into the historical record. "There is so much inbredness in this profession," says Ms. Reinhart. "They all read the same sources. They all use the same data sets. They all talk to the same people. There is endless extrapolation on extrapolation on extrapolation, and for years that is what has been rewarded.""
Here is more on that mythology and the consequences:
Thanks for the reply, even if the ad hominen part probably just weakens your argument. :-)
I actually like economists like Julian Simon, even if he ignores externalities and equitable distribution:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
The fact is, most mainstream economics is based neither on facts, history, or human nature. :-) Most of it is abstract theoretical model with little connection to populist ethics or reality. See, for example:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/6397/
http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/appeal/
http://debunkingeconomics.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/economy/04econ.html
Or:
"Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science that Makes Life Dismal"
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rest-Us-Debunking-Science/dp/1595581014
Here is another thing to think about, by the way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_toil
"The paradox of toil is the economic hypothesis that total employment will shrink if everybody wants to work more when "the short-term nominal interest rate is zero and there are deflationary pressures and output contraction".[1] The idea is that total employment will fall when wages, and therefore consumption, are pushed down by the simultanious efforts of everyone to work more in situations where interest rates are against the zero bound so that rates cannot drop more to increase demand for goods. This is a limited example of the fallacy of composition.[1] where assuming that the increase in production that normally occurs when total labor increases applies in all situations. Put simply, when a recessionary economy is up against the zero bound, having more people seeking work - at lower wages if necessary - can actually reduce the number of jobs due to reduced demand from lower wages."
Even in your defense of the concept, you started introducing qualifiers. You "introduce" a new worker into a "closed" economy. You are carefully avoiding what it means when an economy already has 20% or higher real unemployment, or what it means if the economy is open to imports or innovation, or what happens when the owners of capital take advantage of the situation of too many workers chasing too few jobs and apply the law of supply and demand to lower wages.
But since so much of mainstream economics is theory devoid of facts, let me play along, and show how, just theoretically, the "lump of labor" fallacy assumes both linearity in a relation of labor to output and also increasing demand, given whoever becomes a worker in a modern society with unemployment like the USA must already have been consuming a lot of products.
Consider an economy with one hundred people who consume one generalized product called "A". Imagine forty-five members out of the hundred "work" to produce product 10000 units of product A per day. The production of A has been greatly optimized for maximum production, ignoring any joy the workers get from their jobs:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110425153540/http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics/english.html
Assume people only need about 1 unit of A to get by, but more is nice, up to about 7 units of A, and then more doesn't make people much happier (and at some point, people even become sick from too much).
The product is distributed in some fashion to everyone in the society, party based on