I remember election night. I knew who was going to win, but I turned on the computer, poured myself a drink, opened the political sites, turned on news radio, and waited for the fait accompli bloodbath to commence. Everyone knew who was going to win. Because we'd been told in poll after poll after poll.
Similarly with Brexit. We knew it was going to fail, because poll after poll after poll said so.
It's time for real facts, not the ongoing BS, which is repeated enough that it becomes circular and self sustaining.
That's a good point. This "expanding the circle jerk" phenomenon happens quite a bit in policy circles. Someone puts out a paper at the end of a project, with dubious conclusions, and it's picked up by scores of others who want it to be true, and it grows exponentially. Yet the original source is deeply flawed. And yet, there are scores of sources restating the flawed conclusions, including MSM outlets, and then those secondary sources become the purported authoritative source.
This happens in: * Nutrition * Finance * Medicine * Justice * Education
Government may not want me to lock my doors, so in the event law enforcement wants to come in to look around, they can simply turn the knob and come in.
However, criminals will also have the same ease of entry.
Answer's simple: Government needs to look at my data, they get a warrant, just like with entering a residence.
So, everything that makes it into your inbox from AdultFriendFinder or HotKangaroo dot com, create a gmail filter for. Have it automatically load into a label/folder called "Dumbo" and forget it. I wouldn't go to these sites and do anything with your email because it gives them an IP and validates your email as real.
Someone is signing you up for donkey porn. Just filter. Let the monster Gmail engine do its work.
Beef up your password strengths for your banks and billpay sites and such.
I've had artists passionately explain to me why I couldn't possibly do the things that they do, and that they could easily do the things that I do.
That is a statement from people who've never been challenged by their coursework. Have them take a compilers or algorithms course and then they can provide a informed opinion.
I think art is important, but IMO that statement arises out of ignorance.
Not a fiction but an extremely durable logical construct. As long as any individual can only see their sliver of the economy, and everyone else values the money as they value it, and it's able to provide the holder with the necessities he requires, the construct continues.
The economy is a competition for resources. I put my widgets up for sale, hoping to entice people to give me resources in the form of money, for them; a panhandler hopes to accrue resources by playing on my empathy, and induce me to give him some money; stockbrokers attempt to sell dreams of riches to stock buyers; startups attempt to sell dreams of riches to investors.
Whoever "wins" the most resources is not necessarily smarter, but a) a better economic competitor and b) perhaps a bit luckier.
Being a better competitor can certainly mean more ruthless and devious as well, though it doesn't have to.
Central banks don't create wealth. They create digital and paper representations of wealth. If I have a village with 10 people and the the money supply is 100 dollars, representing all the goods and services in that village, then I, as king, can appropriate a bit of that wealth by printing up a few extra dollars and either keeping it or giving it to my favored associates.
The Fed redirected wealth to the sectors and companies it deemed fit, by diluting the pool of money. That's all it can do - redistribute. And they do it subtly.
The economy is a competition for resources. I have to convince someone with resources to give me some portion of those resources in a transaction. For example, someone has a car with a problem and I can fix it. I bargain with them to give me a certain amount of money to fix their car. I've grown some corn: I convince people to part with some amount of money and then I give them a portion of the corn. A panhandler tries to prevail on my empathy so that I'll give him some money. And so on. In the case of governments, the government collects taxes (or issues debt which may be purchased by entities with money, or in some cases, by the central bank which prints money and buys the debt), and then I bargain with the government to give me some of that revenue.
An entity can create physical or virtual goods, or services that people value. A farmer grows crops; a barber provides haircuts; Apple builds iPhones; game companies create virtual objects in the game which can be purchased for cash; companies can create stock (class A, B or C) to be sold on the open market; and so on.
The problem is that we're moving to a more consolidated goods-and-services (i.e. value) creation model. This also happened at the dawn of the industrial age.
At the dawn of the industrial age, machines obviated the need for people. See the famous story about John Henry versus the steam hammer. And thus the owner of the machine created the value which people previously provided. And thus the owner of the machine (i.e. the owner of capital - the capitalist) was able to accrue an outsize amount of value, that which was previously more evenly distributed among the population.
At the dawn of the automation age, once again, we see machines obviating the need for people. And once again the owners of those machines will be able to accrue an outsize amount of value, which was previously more evenly distributed among the population.
So: inspecting how humanity reacted to the dawn of the industrial age (not well I might add) can give us ideas about how to deal with automation, robots and AI going forward.
One concept of money is that it is a "claim on wealth". Now, it's not strictly a "claim", as I do not have to do business (exchange goods and services for money) with you, to the extent allowed by law.
But thinking of money as a claim on wealth is a pretty useful model. In reality, it physically is a slip of paper or an electronic database entry.
The company may be large and serve a lot of customers, but it's Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the union. Its customers will pay for this while the company pockets the overruns.
I have limited screen space. I want to see as much information as possible, clearly delinated, at a glance. Just like I don't like long pointless monologues and soliloquys with little informational content, I also don't like long low-content pages. It has a low signal to noise ratio.
Empty space delineates but it's a lazy way to do it and at odds with the fact I have limited screen space and want to slurp up as much info as possible with each glance. Of course there is the opposite extreme, but I would happily take the opposite extreme of very high information density, and would even prefer it if it were laid out such that I was able to maximize my information uptake with minimal physical effort.
Power is like a gravity well. There is a continuous, natural push to accrue ever more power. Without constant efforts to push back, it inevitably accrues, until we're back to oligarchy.
This is one important reason why they imposed term limits on the presidency.
Obviously, success is ultimately important, but in tech you gotta be willing to fail. Can't be afraid to fail. Technology is a very different endeavor than sports.
Look at the striking difference in Nadella's response to the AI debacle Microsoft had some months ago:
"Just under a year ago, Microsoft launched a Twitter bot by the name of Tay (officially, Tay.ai), in an attempt to advance how artificial intelligence communicates with humans in real time. Things took a vicious turn, though, when hackers and others caused Tay to begin spewing racist and profane comments.
The result? Tay was shut down just 16 hours later, followed by an official apology from Microsoft.
If you worked on the team responsible for Tay, your instinct might have been to try and forget what had happened, as soon as possible.
And that's what makes the follow-up email from Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, so remarkable.
In a profile piece recently published by USA Today, Nadella shared part of the email he sent the Microsoft A.I. team after the Tay debacle. It included the following:
"Keep pushing, and know that I am with you... (The) key is to keep learning and improving."
It would be nice if the government would live on collected taxes alone. BUT, there's deficit spending and on top of that, occasional money printing by the central bank to buy government debt. The debt increases won't stop until the system breaks. And no one knows where that is, but spending money helps senators and representatives hold onto their jobs, so they won't stop until they find out. Admittedly, US government debt is slightly over 100% of GDP but Japan's is up around 240 percent. Their historical chart is interesting. I suppose they'll find the limit before we do.
After the US went off the gold standard in 1971, and went to pure paper (fiat), the sky became the limit.
Term limits don't solve the problem though. If anything, they empower the lobbyists, because lobbyists don't get term-limited, and they wind up knowing the issues far better than your 2-3 term congresscritter.
I strongly suspect most lobbyists know the the details of their pet issues better than any congresscritter. Lobbyists are professional persuaders. If they have to persuade someone new every few years, they would have a more difficult job, which is good.
What you're missing is that long term incumbency isn't the problem itself, it's WHY there's so many long term incumbents. Someone who gets reelected 10 times because they do a great job representing the wishes of their constituents, are responsive to the needs of actual citizens and not moneyed special interests? Sure, we could use more of them - a lot more of them.
Same could be said of the president. But there is blowback from having a president serving 30 or 40 years. He and the government are likely to warp the system so he can become El Presidente for life. This is one of the reasons we have gerrymandering in the first place. It's the Congressional level of declaring oneself El Presidente For Life.
And if you just term limit them, then I have some bad news, because there's a long line of asshats waiting to take the place of the gerrymander/money protected incumbent that will vote exactly the same way that the lobbyists/moneyed interests want them to.
The lobbyists will have to persuade the next politician. That's what lobbyists do. The politicians are the decision makers. If the lobbyist has to convince multiple people every few years, his case will have to be stronger.
Also, if the service in political office was a limited tour of duty, it seems to me to be more likely that the politician could focus on the job details, not primarily on maintaining the career.
We do...we vote for Representatives every, what, two years, and Senators six years. Their terms are limited to how often we re-elect them. We end their term by voting for somebody else.
We also vote for president every four years. And he is term-limited in order to prevent the warping of the system which could occur, as it does in many countries, with long-serving leaders.
When you give politicians the real possibility of having a lifetime career as a politicians, it focuses them on doing everything they possibly can - as a group - to keep their political office. This makes them takes steps to insulate themselves from the electorate, whose whims may not always be kind to them.
If being a lifetime politician is not an option, they would hold their seat less dearly, and perhaps be persuaded to govern more effectively and responsively, instead of doing everything they can to insulate themselves from the electorate, and focusing on retaining power.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason." - Mark Twain
Politicians are minimally responsive to the general concerns of the population. Seems counterintuitive. But they're able to do this because of: 1) Gerrymandered districts. 2) Heavy special interest dollars.
What we also need are term limits. Yes, they have costs and benefits. But they approved term limits for the president, one of 537 federal politicians (100 senators + 435 representatives + president + vice president). The reason was to prevent an imperial presidency. We should implement the same thing for the other 535 federal politicians for the same reason - to prevent an imperial Congress.
I don't see how politicians would ever be persuaded to limit their power however. The 535 limiting the power of the one (president) - certainly. The 535 limiting their own power - I don't see how it could be done voluntarily.
Once you give politicians more power, it is extraordinarily difficult to take it away.
We need politicians that are less development officers (fundraisers) and more focused on policy and governing.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember election night. I knew who was going to win, but I turned on the computer, poured myself a drink, opened the political sites, turned on news radio, and waited for the fait accompli bloodbath to commence. Everyone knew who was going to win. Because we'd been told in poll after poll after poll.
Similarly with Brexit. We knew it was going to fail, because poll after poll after poll said so.
Very suspicious. That's the real fake news.
That's a good point. This "expanding the circle jerk" phenomenon happens quite a bit in policy circles. Someone puts out a paper at the end of a project, with dubious conclusions, and it's picked up by scores of others who want it to be true, and it grows exponentially. Yet the original source is deeply flawed. And yet, there are scores of sources restating the flawed conclusions, including MSM outlets, and then those secondary sources become the purported authoritative source.
This happens in:
* Nutrition
* Finance
* Medicine
* Justice
* Education
Fake news indeed.
Government may not want me to lock my doors, so in the event law enforcement wants to come in to look around, they can simply turn the knob and come in.
However, criminals will also have the same ease of entry.
Answer's simple: Government needs to look at my data, they get a warrant, just like with entering a residence.
So, everything that makes it into your inbox from AdultFriendFinder or HotKangaroo dot com, create a gmail filter for. Have it automatically load into a label/folder called "Dumbo" and forget it. I wouldn't go to these sites and do anything with your email because it gives them an IP and validates your email as real.
Someone is signing you up for donkey porn. Just filter. Let the monster Gmail engine do its work.
Beef up your password strengths for your banks and billpay sites and such.
"A report released today by the Governors Highway Safety Association shows that the number of pedestrians killed in traffic jumped 11 percent last year, to nearly 6,000."
When I see the term 'nationalize', I think, "Who owns the politicians?"
That is a statement from people who've never been challenged by their coursework. Have them take a compilers or algorithms course and then they can provide a informed opinion.
I think art is important, but IMO that statement arises out of ignorance.
Not a fiction but an extremely durable logical construct. As long as any individual can only see their sliver of the economy, and everyone else values the money as they value it, and it's able to provide the holder with the necessities he requires, the construct continues.
The economy is a competition for resources. I put my widgets up for sale, hoping to entice people to give me resources in the form of money, for them; a panhandler hopes to accrue resources by playing on my empathy, and induce me to give him some money; stockbrokers attempt to sell dreams of riches to stock buyers; startups attempt to sell dreams of riches to investors.
Whoever "wins" the most resources is not necessarily smarter, but a) a better economic competitor and b) perhaps a bit luckier.
Being a better competitor can certainly mean more ruthless and devious as well, though it doesn't have to.
Central banks don't create wealth. They create digital and paper representations of wealth. If I have a village with 10 people and the the money supply is 100 dollars, representing all the goods and services in that village, then I, as king, can appropriate a bit of that wealth by printing up a few extra dollars and either keeping it or giving it to my favored associates.
The Fed redirected wealth to the sectors and companies it deemed fit, by diluting the pool of money. That's all it can do - redistribute. And they do it subtly.
"It's so easy to hurt others when you can't feel pain" -- Hall and Oates, "Rich Girl"
The economy is a competition for resources. I have to convince someone with resources to give me some portion of those resources in a transaction. For example, someone has a car with a problem and I can fix it. I bargain with them to give me a certain amount of money to fix their car. I've grown some corn: I convince people to part with some amount of money and then I give them a portion of the corn. A panhandler tries to prevail on my empathy so that I'll give him some money. And so on. In the case of governments, the government collects taxes (or issues debt which may be purchased by entities with money, or in some cases, by the central bank which prints money and buys the debt), and then I bargain with the government to give me some of that revenue.
An entity can create physical or virtual goods, or services that people value. A farmer grows crops; a barber provides haircuts; Apple builds iPhones; game companies create virtual objects in the game which can be purchased for cash; companies can create stock (class A, B or C) to be sold on the open market; and so on.
The problem is that we're moving to a more consolidated goods-and-services (i.e. value) creation model. This also happened at the dawn of the industrial age.
At the dawn of the industrial age, machines obviated the need for people. See the famous story about John Henry versus the steam hammer. And thus the owner of the machine created the value which people previously provided. And thus the owner of the machine (i.e. the owner of capital - the capitalist) was able to accrue an outsize amount of value, that which was previously more evenly distributed among the population.
At the dawn of the automation age, once again, we see machines obviating the need for people. And once again the owners of those machines will be able to accrue an outsize amount of value, which was previously more evenly distributed among the population.
So: inspecting how humanity reacted to the dawn of the industrial age (not well I might add) can give us ideas about how to deal with automation, robots and AI going forward.
One concept of money is that it is a "claim on wealth". Now, it's not strictly a "claim", as I do not have to do business (exchange goods and services for money) with you, to the extent allowed by law.
But thinking of money as a claim on wealth is a pretty useful model. In reality, it physically is a slip of paper or an electronic database entry.
Regardless, someone got snookered.
The company may be large and serve a lot of customers, but it's Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the union. Its customers will pay for this while the company pockets the overruns.
Monorail!
"A small town with money is like the mule with a spinning wheel. No one knows how he got it and danged if he knows how to use it!"
I have limited screen space. I want to see as much information as possible, clearly delinated, at a glance. Just like I don't like long pointless monologues and soliloquys with little informational content, I also don't like long low-content pages. It has a low signal to noise ratio.
Empty space delineates but it's a lazy way to do it and at odds with the fact I have limited screen space and want to slurp up as much info as possible with each glance. Of course there is the opposite extreme, but I would happily take the opposite extreme of very high information density, and would even prefer it if it were laid out such that I was able to maximize my information uptake with minimal physical effort.
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
I don't have a beef with Wall Street. I expect them to be amoral sociopaths focused solely on profit. I have a problem with politicians and a central bank which not only avoids prosecuting them, but actually keeps protecting and bailing them out in return for cash and favors.
Power is like a gravity well. There is a continuous, natural push to accrue ever more power. Without constant efforts to push back, it inevitably accrues, until we're back to oligarchy.
This is one important reason why they imposed term limits on the presidency.
Obviously, success is ultimately important, but in tech you gotta be willing to fail. Can't be afraid to fail. Technology is a very different endeavor than sports.
Look at the striking difference in Nadella's response to the AI debacle Microsoft had some months ago:
-- Inc.
It would be nice if the government would live on collected taxes alone. BUT, there's deficit spending and on top of that, occasional money printing by the central bank to buy government debt. The debt increases won't stop until the system breaks. And no one knows where that is, but spending money helps senators and representatives hold onto their jobs, so they won't stop until they find out. Admittedly, US government debt is slightly over 100% of GDP but Japan's is up around 240 percent. Their historical chart is interesting. I suppose they'll find the limit before we do.
After the US went off the gold standard in 1971, and went to pure paper (fiat), the sky became the limit.
I strongly suspect most lobbyists know the the details of their pet issues better than any congresscritter. Lobbyists are professional persuaders. If they have to persuade someone new every few years, they would have a more difficult job, which is good.
Same could be said of the president. But there is blowback from having a president serving 30 or 40 years. He and the government are likely to warp the system so he can become El Presidente for life. This is one of the reasons we have gerrymandering in the first place. It's the Congressional level of declaring oneself El Presidente For Life.
The lobbyists will have to persuade the next politician. That's what lobbyists do. The politicians are the decision makers. If the lobbyist has to convince multiple people every few years, his case will have to be stronger.
Also, if the service in political office was a limited tour of duty, it seems to me to be more likely that the politician could focus on the job details, not primarily on maintaining the career.
We also vote for president every four years. And he is term-limited in order to prevent the warping of the system which could occur, as it does in many countries, with long-serving leaders.
When you give politicians the real possibility of having a lifetime career as a politicians, it focuses them on doing everything they possibly can - as a group - to keep their political office. This makes them takes steps to insulate themselves from the electorate, whose whims may not always be kind to them.
If being a lifetime politician is not an option, they would hold their seat less dearly, and perhaps be persuaded to govern more effectively and responsively, instead of doing everything they can to insulate themselves from the electorate, and focusing on retaining power.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason." - Mark Twain
Politicians are minimally responsive to the general concerns of the population. Seems counterintuitive. But they're able to do this because of:
1) Gerrymandered districts.
2) Heavy special interest dollars.
I mean, even when times are rough, incumbency rates are very high.
What we also need are term limits. Yes, they have costs and benefits. But they approved term limits for the president, one of 537 federal politicians (100 senators + 435 representatives + president + vice president). The reason was to prevent an imperial presidency. We should implement the same thing for the other 535 federal politicians for the same reason - to prevent an imperial Congress.
I don't see how politicians would ever be persuaded to limit their power however. The 535 limiting the power of the one (president) - certainly. The 535 limiting their own power - I don't see how it could be done voluntarily.
Once you give politicians more power, it is extraordinarily difficult to take it away.
We need politicians that are less development officers (fundraisers) and more focused on policy and governing.