The Revolution in Motion

[ReeferMadness]

My favorite book close to this subject is "Techno-Fix" by Michael Huesemann, an engineer to unmasks the false hopes and dishonest claims of techno-optimists from liberal to libertarian. Most new technologies have come to us with high costs that have never been properly assessed for long term damages, let alone answer the question of how modern tech-dependent populations are going to cope with the eventual exhaustion of non-renewable resources needed to build them and their products.

True dat. Technology won't save us from ourselves. We need to be in control of it. And in control of the people who would be careless with it.

[ReeferMadness]

Copying existing information isn't the "foundation of wealth", though. Rather, it's the ability to create new information that has value. The foundation of wealth in the 21st century is people of ability... more or less as it should be, if you ask me.

You're missing the point. First of all, what you say isn't true. There is a lot of value in copying and disseminating existing information. That's why we have schools.

Second, unlike land (which is immutable) and traditional factories (which can be copied but only at capital cost), information is easy to copy and hard to contain.

[WIP]

Your link would be very impressive if it in any way addressed the point I was making. Stop wasting my time with this nonsense.

And on a side note, RBC's contention that the housing market is OK is a combination of wishful thinking and self-serving propaganda. Like other institutions, RBC would like to avoid a housing collapse and one way to do that is to tell people there won't be one. Whether there will be or not nobody can predict. But Canada's housing prices (in most cities, not just TO and Vancouver) can be sustained only by protracted historically low interest rates. The housing market is precarious, like a house of cards. The best case (for current owners and anyone with a significant stake in today's economy) is a prolonged period of real price declines (the so-called soft landing). The worst case is a panic as or both of the two over-inflated cities suffers a collapse and the accompanying landslide takes out much of the rest of Canada. The combined populations of metropolitan Toronto and Vancouver is right around 8 million people - a pretty significant portion of Canada.

I have at least two American cousins who lost most of their equity in the real estate collapse in the US...one in Florida, the other in New Mexico. They thought they were in a situation where they could both retire comfortably before age 60 and in good health....and they both (three if I include my Florida cousin's wife) ended up having to go back to work full time again because so much of their wealth had been plowed into paying off their mortgages early.

Well, at least they didn't end up like so many unfortunates...underwater on fraudulent 'escalator' mortgages and going bankrupt. But, my takeaway is that all of the phony disingenuous promises about the strength of the US real estate markets was being made by the banks and their hired propagandists all across the TV dial....so why should we believe that Canadian real estate markets can only go in one direction - UP? Especially with so many people speculating in real estate because of low returns on almost every other investment that average people can get in on.

First to address your ludicrous contention about market efficiency. I laugh out loud whenever the apostles of capitalism tell me how omniscient and wise markets are when I turn and watch actual prices weave and sway around like a drunk in a hurricane.

The myth of what's called "Pareto Efficiency" has been taken down by a number of economists and a few psychologists who've noted that the myth is based on a presumption that buyers and sellers are making rational choices....and that doesn't describe the real world....especially what marketers using new media and psychological evaluation, have done in the last 60 years to create an army of compulsive consumers who can't even provide rational answers for their major buying decisions!

The "democratization" of the markets has simply made things worse as millions of uninformed investors pour money into the biggest casinos in history - the stock markets. And the profits are largely scooped off the top by people possessing inside information. So it is. So it's always been.

I'm immediately thinking of the LIBOR Scandal...that major media tried to bury as quickly as possible a few years ago. The major banking institutions controlling the exchange rates were shaving percentages to make billions in extra profits for themselves, and the new phenomena of programmed trading, where major institutions can move so fast they can actually jump on trades made by third parties before the trade is completed. Anyone who believes that high finance and markets are fair...let alone a 'democracy' is delusional. It's a game where big money wins most of the hands played, and the small fries are lucky to make any gains.

But I don't think that's what he meant. As time goes on, more and more of the value of a company is determined by its information. But information as an asset is ridiculously hard to contain. You can patent products and processes but you can't patent data or ideas. Once they leak out, someone else can reverse engineer what you've done and build something better.

What bothers me now with all the talk of entering the Information Era, is that the whole motivation behind TPP, TISA and TTIP appears to be focused on enforcing *and extending patent and copyrights on new products and ideas. And the original creators and inventors are not the ones who are collecting the big money from the existing system. It's the companies that buy up patents looking for profit opportunities later....or in some cases, stuffing those new ideas if they might cut into the profits from an existing product the company owns.

Edited July 23, 2015 by WIP

[TimG]

And the original creators and inventors are not the ones who are collecting the big money from the existing system. It's the companies that buy up patents looking for profit opportunities later....or in some cases, stuffing those new ideas if they might cut into the profits from an existing product the company owns.

The current patent system in the US has serious flaws because the patent office often ignores the principal that ideas which are 'obvious to one skilled in the art' are not patent-able. This problem is is aggravated by a system that leaves complex technical decisions in the hands of non-technical juries. This does not mean that intellectual property protection should not exist since other countries have more balanced systems. Edited July 23, 2015 by TimG

[Michael Hardner]

We need to be in control of it.

We can't control technology. See McLuhan.

[Moonlight Graham]

The foundation of wealth in the 21st century is people of ability... more or less as it should be, if you ask me.

I disagree. The "foundation of wealth" is: Your ability to produce wealth for yourself within the existing economic system, coupled with whatever advantages and disadvantages of power, wealth, and opportunity you were born into.

I don't think your answer takes the second part into consideration. One the one hand, Oprah Winfrey was a black woman born into poverty and worked hard with high ability (ability of strong economic value that is...not all ability has economic value, ie: compare today's rock music talents to 20 years ago. If The Beatles formed today they'd be making moderate sums as indie artists) to be worth 3 billion dollars today. On the other spectrum, Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, did next to nothing for her dad's company (unlike some of her brothers) and inherited a share of his fortune to become the 11th richest person in the world at around $40 billion by doing nothing but sliding out of her mother's vagina.

[TimG]

I disagree. The "foundation of wealth" is: Your ability to produce wealth for yourself within the existing economic system, coupled with whatever advantages and disadvantages of power, wealth, and opportunity you were born into.

People are not equal by nature. Some are smart, some re beautiful, others have innate artistic or business talents. In many cases these attributes are inherited. So while it is true that upbringing confers an advantage it is also unavoidable. Government policy should be focused on ensuring that people with ability have to the opportunity to succeed no matter what their background. Governments cannot and should not try to make everyone equal. Edited July 23, 2015 by TimG

[ReeferMadness]

We can't control technology. See McLuhan.

With all due respect to McLuhan, or at least your interpretation of McLuhan....

we built it, we can control it. It just takes will.

[ReeferMadness]

On the other spectrum, Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, did next to nothing for her dad's company (unlike some of her brothers) and inherited a share of his fortune to become the 11th richest person in the world at around $40 billion by doing nothing but sliding out of her mother's vagina.

Well, you make it sound so easy but you weren't there.

[TimG]

we built it, we can control it. It just takes will.

Everything we have today exists because a capitalist society was free to experiment and deploy technology in new and interesting ways. There are always Luddites that fear change and would rather see new technologies banned or at least have their use restricted in ways that protects the economic interests of the Luddites while harming everyone else. Unfortunately, these Luddites have gained a significant hold on our society and are limiting progress by opposing things like vaccines, GMOs or the development of energy systems that actually work. Societies that have the political will to ignore these Luddites will be the ones that are best able to provide for their people in the future. The ones that give into the Luddites will stagnant. Edited July 24, 2015 by TimG

[Moonlight Graham]

People are not equal by nature. Some are smart, some re beautiful, others have innate artistic or business talents. In many cases these attributes are inherited. So while it is true that upbringing confers an advantage it is also unavoidable. Government policy should be focused on ensuring that people with ability have to the opportunity to succeed no matter what their background. Governments cannot and should not try to make everyone equal.

I mostly agree. But I didn't argue otherwise.

Some attributes are inherited, some are nurtured, and almost all can be better developed. What I'll argue is that as a society, whether by government or privately, we should try to develop everyone's attributes to their best potential, because we'll all benefit from that. But that's probably similar to what you were saying with "Government policy should be focused on ensuring that people with ability have to the opportunity to succeed no matter what their background".

Though yes, some will always have an unavoidable advantage of more favourable upbringing.

[Michael Hardner]

we built it, we can control it. It just takes will.

It's the genie out of the bottle... the gist of the theory is that our media reshape how we communicate, how we relate to each other in ways we can't anticipate. The fish knows exactly nothing about water, and we are the fish.

[Moonlight Graham]

We can't control technology. See McLuhan.

Of course we can. Your philosophy seems to be that when we create technology (creation is control, btw) it's just already "out there" so there's no use trying to control it.

If we can't control technology, it will destroy us. That's a fact. Because we have created technology that already has the ability already to do so. In the future that potential will become much, much worse. Stephen Hawking has already warned of this.

[kimmy]

Kimmy, 25 year mortgages are nothing new.

On the average, in inflation-adjusted dollars, housing is several times more expensive than it used to be. And Tim's figures from the RBC don't dispute that, they just make the point that housing remains "affordable" because mortgage-payments are still "affordable". People can still get a home, they just need to borrow more money. Just like education. A college degree is many times more expensive than it used to be, but education is still "affordable" because students have access to bigger student loans than they used to. People can still get an education, they just need to borrow more money than they used to. Tim's premise that people are as well off as they used to be only holds true if you're willing to take on enough debt to get there.

The idea that you champions of fiscal conservatism are advocating for the idea that the overall size of the debt doesn't matter if they payments are still "affordable" is quite funny to me.

-k

[TimG]

Tim's premise that people are as well off as they used to be only holds true if you're willing to take on enough debt to get there.

Well, the fact is prices are at the level they are at only because a lot of people are willing and able to take on debt. If people were not willing to take on that debt then the housing prices would be that much lower. IOW, the housing market automatically adjusts to what people collectively deem to be affordable. That said, markets like Vancouver are distorted by foreign money buying up properties that are then left empty (if they were rented the foreign money would be a benefit). This means the Vancouver market has prices which are much less affordable to the people living there than they were in the past. Edited July 24, 2015 by TimG

[WIP]

The current patent system in the US has serious flaws because the patent office often ignores the principal that ideas which are 'obvious to one skilled in the art' are not patent-able. This problem is is aggravated by a system that leaves complex technical decisions in the hands of non-technical juries. This does not mean that intellectual property protection should not exist since other countries have more balanced systems.

I didn't get to my main issue with so called "protection of intellectual property" laws yesterday. What's most offensive about this new regime is that the life of patent and copyright protection keeps getting extended. Eventually Disney will no longer have to keep going back to extend the copyrights on movies made by Walt 80 years ago, it will keep providing free money to Disney...or whoever the corporation sells those copyrights to in the future. I remember reading that when copyright protection on books first began, it was only for 20 years. Mark Twain apparently, was the first to demand extending copyright life till as long as the author was still alive....apparently his later works didn't sell as well as his classics, and he was bad with money and would have ended up destitute if he couldn't squeeze a little more money out of them. Then they were extended for the heirs of the author's estate, and now we are at a point where you won't find much on Gutenberg Press or other online sources of free online books that are less than 100 years old.

Remember Mulroo decided to double patents on new medicines from 7 to 14 years...these will also be extended much further. Supposedly that was to provide needed incentives for drug companies to create better medicines for us....even though they take most of their primary research free of charge from government-sponsored agencies like the NIH in the US.

It seems that Big Pharma has instead, enriched itself greatly at everyone's expense, as they create new drugs to treat everything from pain to depression that are mere variations of existing generic drugs. It's all one big racket that creates monopolies and provides little returns for the people who actually think up new ideas.

[bush_cheney2004]

....It seems that Big Pharma has instead, enriched itself greatly at everyone's expense, as they create new drugs to treat everything from pain to depression that are mere variations of existing generic drugs. It's all one big racket that creates monopolies and provides little returns for the people who actually think up new ideas.

That's what they get paid for.....read the employment documents. Pharma R&D ain't free.

[WIP]

People are not equal by nature. Some are smart, some re beautiful, others have innate artistic or business talents. In many cases these attributes are inherited. So while it is true that upbringing confers an advantage it is also unavoidable. Government policy should be focused on ensuring that people with ability have to the opportunity to succeed no matter what their background. Governments cannot and should not try to make everyone equal.

About 10 years ago, a behavioural psychologist - Paul Piff, created a test with a rigged monopoly game that a group of random volunteers would engage in, that arbitrarily rewarded some players and not others. The findings mirror the results from sociology studies of the past 50 years, where the successful players have inflated egos and feel superior and believe they deserve greater rewards, and are more likely to cheat and excuse their cheating. In the rigged monopoly game, the subjects who kept winning (but didn't know it was fixed) began talking louder (some were even verbally abusive and insulting) and interrupting losing players....even taking more chips from a snack bowl that they were told to share while playing. The losing players (no surprise) became quieter, more discouraged, and filled with self-doubts.

What should the rigged monopoly game tell us about the kind of society we live in today? Well one thing it tells us is that those who are "born on third base" feel entitled to the privileges they've been given merely by accident of birth, while those who are not as successful in our kind of society, are likely to be stuck at the bottom, especially if they come from a dysfunctional background and turned to alcohol or drug abuse early on.

So, I'm not even going to bother arguing about returning to progressive taxation and other liberal methods to make capitalism fairer. I'll just say that the regime we are in right now is psychotic and incompatible with long term human survival on this world! Most of the incentives for devouring resources and fouling ecosystems and ever-increasing rates is because material demands keep increasing in societies with greater inequality. This system that we are told rewards achievement is actually the greatest threat to the survival of coming generations. If our species has permanently lost its ability to share and cooperate with others, it will be swept from this earth like so many other once-dominant life forms that proceeded us.

[TimG]

What's most offensive about this new regime is that the life of patent and copyright protection keeps getting extended.

Copyrights and patents are two different things. I can't see any reasons for copyrights to expire if the work is still be actively used and promoted. We want people to profit from creating new works.

It seems that Big Pharma has instead, enriched itself greatly at everyone's expense, as they create new drugs to treat everything from pain to depression that are mere variations of existing generic drugs. It's all one big racket that creates monopolies and provides little returns for the people who actually think up new ideas.

If the original drugs are free of patent they we don't care that new ones are slight variations. It is only an issue if a patent is issued for a variation on a old idea that prevents the old idea from being used. That is a case where the patent office is not doing its job by denying patents that are 'obvious to one skilled in the art'. Edited July 24, 2015 by TimG

[WIP]

Of course we can. Your philosophy seems to be that when we create technology (creation is control, btw) it's just already "out there" so there's no use trying to control it.

If we can't control technology, it will destroy us. That's a fact. Because we have created technology that already has the ability already to do so. In the future that potential will become much, much worse. Stephen Hawking has already warned of this.

I'm reminded of one technology in particular - the creation of plastics, may be one of the major contributors to dieoffs of plankton, fish and marine mammals in the oceans. All of the plastics created never completely break down to natural organic compounds, and will remain in the oceans for thousands of years...and yet we keep adding to them, throwing out more and more disposable plastic garbage. Back in WWII, when many of these compounds were created, nobody thought of doing any sort of risk assessment for unintended impacts....and that's the primary failing of nearly all new tech that gets added every year.

[TimG]

I'm reminded of one technology in particular - the creation of plastics

And without plastic we would not have the modern world. Every technological and medical advancement developed over the last 50 years is directly or indirectly connected to the availability of plastic. So unless you want to give up all of that progress you should learn to love plastic.

[WIP]

And without plastic we would not have the modern world. Every technological and medical advancement developed over the last 50 years is directly or indirectly connected to the availability of plastic. So unless you want to give up all of that progress you should learn to love plastic.

So, if the choice is death or plastics, you choose plastics.

I'm left wondering why there was such a drive to make all plastics biodegradable 40 years ago, and almost nothing is said about it today, as we watch the Pacific and Indian oceans fill up with plastic residues. During the late 60's/early 70's, there seemed to be a brief window of time when western culture and economics were subject to scrutiny. Consumer activism has vanished from MSM today, and there is less concern on biohazards and growing toxic wastes now that we're inundated with it.

[Michael Hardner]

Pharma R&D ain't free.

I had the great fortune to go camping with a chemistry prof last weekend. He liked to talk, and I knew nothing about chemistry... what a boon for me.

One of the myriad topics that came up was R&D for drug costs, and his perception that this is actually owed, in a large part, to government bureaucracy like FDA being cumbersome. In some cases, drugs are 'fast tracked', but the risk/benefit analysis that goes into reviewing drugs seems counterintuitive and all too political to me.

Just an aside, but it's indeed part of the revolution...

[Michael Hardner]

Of course we can. Your philosophy seems to be that when we create technology (creation is control, btw) it's just already "out there" so there's no use trying to control it.

Not my philosophy, these are theories of people far wiser than me.

If we can't control technology, it will destroy us. That's a fact.

Destroy us or change our very being little by little, yes I agree.

Because we have created technology that already has the ability already to do so. In the future that potential will become much, much worse. Stephen Hawking has already warned of this.

So the response needs to be that we have a mature understanding of how to engage with technology. A mature understanding would also need to acknowledge that believing from the outset that we can 'control' technology isn't on. We can adapt to it, though, or even prepare for it. See my thread on Persistent Surveillance.

[TimG]

So, if the choice is death or plastics, you choose plastics.

The real choice is plastics or death since our society could not exist today without plastic. In any case, the claims of catastrophe due to plastic are likely way overblown.

I'm left wondering why there was such a drive to make all plastics biodegradable 40 years ago, and almost nothing is said about it today

Producing plastics is a complex process. Using bio-degradable plastics would require sacrifices in other important properties such strength and durability. Edited July 24, 2015 by TimG