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from the how-many-robots-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-lightbulb dept.
Digital technology has been a fantastic creator of economic wealth, particularly in the twenty years since the Internet and World Wide Web were unveiled to the masses. And with non-trivial applications of artificial intelligence (such as Apple's Siri) finally reaching the mainstream consumer market, one is tempted to agree with pundits asserting that the Second Machine Age is just getting underway.
But Yale ethicist Wendell Wallach argues that growth in wealth has been accompanied by an equally dramatic rise in income inequality; for example, stock ownership is now concentrated in the hands of a relative few (though greater than 1 percent). The increase in GDP has not led to an increase in wages, nor in median inflation-adjusted income. Furthermore, Wallach says technology is a leading cause of this shift, as it displaces workers in occupation after occupation more quickly than new career opportunities arise.
This piece led to the latest iteration of the 'will robots take all of our jobs' debate, this time on Business Insider, with Jim Edwards arguing that the jobs lost tended to be of the mindless and repetitive variety, while the increase in productive capacity has led to the creation of many new positions. This repeated earlier cycles of the industrial revolution and will be accelerated in the decades ahead. Edwards illustrated his point with a chart of UK unemployment with a trend line (note: drawn by Edwards) in a pronounced downward direction over the past 30 years. John Tamny made a similar point in Forbes last month.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Monday June 08 2015, @11:41AM
Jobs come from energy. More energy means more jobs. Less energy means less jobs.
Likewise money comes from energy comes from a hole in the ground that hopefully isn't empty. Once that hole in the ground is empty, that means no energy which means no money. (plus or minus bubbles). If someone tries to tell you energy comes from money, hold on to your wallet. They probably believe in the tooth fairy, too, so hold on to your teeth.
For a very short amount of time you can generate a financial bubble, everyone loses in a bubble except the rich guys who ran it, who happen to be in charge, which is why since 2000 or so the economy has been solely based on bubble formation and popping rather than industrial or even post-industrial. The era of the knowledge economy ended in the 90s and the new economic era is called the bubble era. The popping of the frac bubble is interesting to watch right now. Social / web 2.0 is getting ready to pop too. The Chinese bubble is popping right now, they're having their 80s moment when they go from the worlds fastest growing debt based economy to mid 1930s american experience. You can bubble without energy, which is good because we're running out of it. But bubbles are long term negative sum game that impoverishes nations... eventually you can't squeeze blood from a stone. At that point we'll enter the next dominant economic era, which will probably be agribusiness. All your food, energy, fuel, everything, will come from a couple industrial grain farms and all your money will go to them. Modern feudalism, pretty much.
The technology is fairly irrelevant other than bean counting optimizing the amount of energy per job, more or less. Optimization accounting is important but its not the driver.
Naturally, during an era of energy growth, up to 1970 or so, perhaps, jobs increase overall no matter what happens to individual jobs or technology.
Naturally, during an era of energy decline, since 1980 or so, perhaps, jobs decrease overall no matter what happens to individual jobs or technology. Decrease obviously presents itself early as a stop in the rate of increase, then flat line for a while, then permanent decline starts to set in, think post 2005 or so American decline.
Economic indicators become useless over time, because they no longer reflect reality and political adjustments are always concatenate. They are a metric and metrics are gamed. Originally the Dow Industrials meant something because we were an industrial nation and it was useful as a short term indicator of financial markets. Now we're de industrializing as fast as we can eliminate jobs and companies, the members of the DJIA are (overall) no longer heavy industries, the membership changes constantly to only present "winners", and the metric is only used to display imaginary long term growth as if all the preceding were not true. Ditto unemployment stats and inflation. Think about it... Things that are Fed with by committee always get worse over time... is "star wars episode I jar jar sux" really better than "Star Wars IV the new hope"? Is windows 8.0 really better than 7.0? Is systemd really better than sysvinit? Really?
A natural analogy of the broken window fallacy is the nation of shopkeepers fallacy. As been amply demonstrated over the past 35 or so years, you can't FIRE sector yourself into prosperity, you can only get prosperity from resource extraction and industrialization. The FIRE sector burns and destroys wealth as it shuffles around money, not create wealth.
The natural level of this country without fossil fuels is roughly the 1500-1800 experience. We've burned most of what we can extract of our own, and are now burning other countries stuff, until they wise up or the deals break down. Then, obviously, its back to 1800, plus or minus soil erosion and depletion and toxic waste issues, etc. True, we do have some minimal resources left of our own to burn. Also true that our population is about 10x to 100x bigger than the pre-fossil era, so the minimal resources left round down to zero.
If you know the game is coming to the end, because you're counting cards or whatever, you maximize your position and wealth extraction. If the other players are dumb enough to go along with it, you tell them its BAU and keep on happy motoring to maximize your personal return.
Corporations not needing humans any more, means the folks in charge are not going to spend money on medical care, social services, pensions, enviro stuff ... why thats beginning to sound like "today" isn't it...
The above is really all you need to know about the 2000s, particularly the first half or so, WRT the posted article commentary about workers conditions and jobs and economic indicators. I'm not sure there's anything else to say other than expanding upon details above or providing better examples or clarifying poorly written things above or toying with logical fallacy using trolls. Sometimes you run into people suffering from the eternal problem of getting a pay check that relies on their not understanding. That's about all there is to say on the topic of economics and jobs and the current situation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @11:54AM
That's just a little too cheerful for a Monday.
Skipping the nuclear power option? I think the NIMBYs will get over themselves when electricity is topping $1/kwh and they can't afford their home heating and cooling anymore.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Monday June 08 2015, @02:27PM
The problem is trajectory. Its not that a KWh will cost $1. The problem will be it takes 20 yrs to build a plant under BAU and even in some dictatorial FDR style TVA it would probably be over 5 years for some of the industrial fabrication. Its a big project...
So electricity starts increasing and civilization breaks down completely at $0.50 and ... well that was boring. Also please no stories about 0.0001% of the tourist economy or startup economy or 3rd world economy surviving under BAU at $2/KWh, because I'm talking about macro the whole economy.
So electricity starts increasing and we FINALLY decide to make a plant at $1/KWh and 4 years later with one year left how will civilization function when the price continues increasing and hits $20/KHw equivalent other than something neofeudalistic like a really big concentration camp of plant construction workers surrounded by slave operated farms?
Or the TLDR is nuke construction would be a good response to collapse if it didn't take maybe 20 times longer to build than a collapse takes to happen. Its the "simcity" confusion that you can just click the map and you get a plant instantly, right?
Its a subset of the rising sea level argument that after sea levels rise about 5m or so we'll likely get near universal cooperation, but its going to be a bit late to get started at that point.
I have seen something similar with old people, ancestors. Got cancer, well, now at 85 its time to start eating organic (wtf?). Got heart disease at 75, well might be time to start exercising. Lung cancer at 80, well time to stop smoking. No fools, the time to start that stuff was like half a century ago, you're just wasting your very limited time now. Perhaps the dumbest thing to do when electricity hits $1/KWh would be to start a 20 year plant project; you know every gram of resources, drop of sweat, and penny of money will be wasted compared to using it to roll out blacksmith shops or otherwise getting used to not having electricity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:39PM
The countries heavily investing in renewables research and infrastructure will survive the collapse of the fossil fuel markets. The US needs to get its head out of its ass and get over its selfish "Not my problem" mentality and golden parachute productions and start workings towards easing, surviving, or even growing during the obvious and fast-approaching crisis. As a bonus, if AGW really is a problem, the establishment of renewable energy sources mostly solves that too, without even needing to acknowledge that its real.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday June 08 2015, @12:04PM
No it doesn't.
Unless you're talking about geothermal power, what's coming out of the hole in the ground is chemical compounds that store energy that was collected millions of years ago. But that's not where the energy came from, that's merely how us humans are grabbing it and controlling it. If we had a device to collect energy coming from the same source as the one that was used to make all the chemicals we're digging out of the ground, we wouldn't need the middle-man of the chemical storage.
No it doesn't.
Money comes from the selection of a specific commodity to act as an intermediary for trade. In modern times, it is created by a central bank as loans to private banks, mostly numbers in a computer system somewhere. In a nutshell, it represents the claim that one person/organization has to the fruits of the labor of another person/organization. Energy in its various forms is certainly one of the things that can be traded in this way, but it's also far from the only thing that can be traded in this way.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 08 2015, @01:04PM
Energy makes the economy. Without that it will stall.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday June 08 2015, @01:35PM
But it's also "made" by:
Land, raw materials, innovation, labor(you can call this energy if you're being reductionist), demand, trade, natural resources, water, infrastructure, and a fuck ton more.
Any one-dimensional analysis of a system as complex as the world economy is a pointless exercise in ego. A way to tell yourself "I've got it all figured out, unlike those other people." It will fail to account for a multitude of important things.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 08 2015, @02:03PM
One has to focus on the resource that is the most limiting and thus the most relevant and that can't be replaced by something else. Energy can be used to get other resources in exchange in many cases.
The other factors you mention are important but perhaps not the ones that will brake the economy:
* Land - there's plenty of it on this planet. Though if there's requirement for water that's another story. And one can move.
* Raw materials - Quite a lot of it except for some like Neodymium, Lithium etc. That might be eliminated by innovation.
* Innovation - There's a lot already done. And new can be had by providing the right circumstances.
* Labor - Nowadays it needs to be educated.
* Demand - Human concept
* Trade - Human concept
* Natural resources - Lot to go around except for contaminated or rouge climate areas
* Water - Only limited in some places and can be had in exchange for energy.
* Infrastructure - Built by the above resources.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday June 08 2015, @02:14PM
And here you go just plain being wrong.
For example, you just dismiss a couple things as "human concepts". Hey doofus. We're humans. You and me. This economy we interact with, it's a human concept too. Land isn't as widely available as you think it is, and variations in details of land affect its utility. None of what you said here dismisses the criticality of any of those things.
You're. Just. Wrong.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday June 08 2015, @02:29PM
Human concepts depend on natural resources to make them happen. It's a dependency graph in essence.
If you got energy you may mine or extract phosphorus to make food using land and sunlight (energy) to make something to eat and trade with and so on.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday June 08 2015, @02:34PM
Oh, so you're really just going to push this because, hell, "matter's just a form of energy" or some level of physical abstraction that completely obviates the idea of an "economy" in the first place.
Well, enjoy. I'm not going to pursue this conversation for the next 10 replies it takes to get to that point.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday June 08 2015, @02:57PM
Some minor corrections
* Land - once its polluted, its not as useful for growing. And topsoil is a more or less non-renewable (on human time scales) resource, and once its gone...
* Raw materials - The stuff thats cheapest / lowest energy to extract gets extracted first. That means the energy cost for materials always increases over time. Which is OK in an era of generally increasing energy. In an era of declining energy per capita, not so good. Even worse when your source of energy itself is a raw extractable material and we already extracted and burned the easy to get stuff.
* Labor - Nowadays it needs to be vocationally trained, not educated, (nobody has a use for philosophy majors anymore other than as waiters and bartenders) and we've got vaguely around twice as many people as the economy needs, and that "twice" is growing. That means either the economy has to grow (LOL that hasn't happened since the 70s) or you need redistribution by the red squads and guillotine (we like to pretend this won't happen, just like every other human in every culture right up until it did happen) or you need people to get used to grinding poverty aka let them eat cake and they should pull themselves up from their bootstraps like job creators do. There are various mixtures of course, and the exact mixture varies over time. All of it pretty much sucks. On the bright side there's always plagues and that could keep the great game playing along for a little while longer, best get used to that idea.
* Infrastructure - All infrastructure has an "economy must be this tall" kind of gatekeeper. Look at Detroit. Once you collapse far enough, its no longer possible to maintain infrastructure, which leads to further infrastructure decline which leads to further economic collapse. If you look at it like a disease, inevitably, if you can't fix a growing cancer, it eventually consumes everything. We can't fix Detroit even at the peak of energy and wealth. On the downslope it seems even less likely. So no matter where you live in the future, eventually, it'll be "Welcome to Detroit!" time.
* Water - see raw materials. I live in a river community. 200 years ago you could drink the river water, today that would not be wise. We have no shortage of water being east of the mississippi, however I hope you like decades of pulp mill waste and chromium plating compounds. Lets just say there aren't any fish living in the river, not any that you'd want to eat. At enormous energy cost you could clean up the river and/or the water in the river, oh wait we're not going to have that energy, and back when we had money and energy we had no interest in cleaning it up, so it ain't happening. Locally we drink muni well water, at least until the aquifer empties. Its dropped about 100 feet in my lifetime, what me worry?
The future is already here, its just very unevenly distributed. America 2050 generally looks a hell of a lot more like 2015 Detroit or Buffalo than 2015 Manhattan or Vegas. Just look at it almost like a thermodynamics entropy argument... is it more likely that your hometown can slide into Baltimore or slide into silicon valley, times every hometown in the country.
Note that rolling back the metrics for resources etc sound good on a raw count. Going back to 1977 for number of full time "real" jobs, OK the 70s were pretty awesome. Going back to 1940 level of on shore crude oil extraction, OK 1940 was cool according to my grandparents aside from the whole "here comes hitler" obviousness. So we can roll back to the good old days. Oh except for that population growth problem... And what happens when we roll back to 1800, or further? Going back to "plantation culture" in the south is going to be a tough sell, but its gotta happen eventually, no matter how much disliked.
"Yeah, well, they screwed it up in the old days, but maybe we won't screw it up this time" - said absolutely everyone who ever screwed anything up historically.
I'm feeling rather optimistic, we'll get thru without a WW3 or nuke war or biological war. Pessimistic me would be claiming that's inevitable. It probably is, realistically.
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Tuesday June 09 2015, @02:55AM
When we finally have the impetus to get off this rock we will no longer have the resources to do so.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @06:51PM
Those aren't the only possible solutions. "Redistribution" only has to occur at gunpoint when inequality has grown so large that the system breaks and it happens spontaneously. Things like cooperatives (you know, socialism) prevent the need for redistribution by helping to keep inequality from growing in the first place, though I'm not sure it'll help reduce already-established inequality, or do so fast enough to prevent the collapse of the system.
We already know everything we need to, we know all the consequences and we know the solutions, all we need to do is actually do something instead of watching things go to shit yet again.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by WillAdams on Monday June 08 2015, @02:59PM
Unfortunately, a not insignificant area of land is getting poisoned w/ salt by being irrigated by insufficiently desalinated water.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2015, @04:34AM
Trade - Human concept
Not at all. It's quite prevalent in the animal world - even at the most fundamental levels. For example, sex and dna swapping in bacteria. When even single celled organisms engage in trade, it's just not a human concept.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 09 2015, @08:24AM
Still something that is constructed using other less complicated resources and thus dependent on them. Energy makes the cogs spin and with that one can make materials or extract them and one can.. well. It makes it all happen.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday June 08 2015, @02:14PM
You can't make money, and in long term, jobs, with trade as the backbone of a civilization. Shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. Its a FIRE sector zero-sum or worse scheme. Its less than zero sum because inevitably end up burning coal to make electricity to run the trading system, or burn diesel transport oil to shuffle stuff from one pile to another. You'd be wealthier in an abstract potential sense if you didn't trade; I agree you'll be physically more comfortable if you trade but its a delusion to think burning bunker C in container ships somehow increases the wealth of the world rather than lowering it overall and concentrating it in the correct hands, even if cheap junk from walmart increases overall happiness, for awhile anyway.
What I'm getting at more specifically is inflation.
Sure, you can print out more gameboard counters and tell yourself you're richer because you got more pieces of toilet paper. The net effect doubling the number of counters without doubling the number of resources/energy can be seen in (resources)/(counters) = (how much each counter is worth). So now you got twice the number of gameboard counters but the price of everything doubled. Meanwhile you had to burn some of the resources just to shuffle the paper, so you're actually falling behind.
The confusion is:
1) Its possible for one dude to collect money from other dudes, in fact most trade is not mutually beneficial but is more mercantileist or imperialistic.
2) The guy most likely to collect the most money by shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic is the rich guy, the guy in charge, the guys who tell you what to think. Unless they're insane obviously they'll tell you world trade is great, crazy resource extraction schemes are great, I mean every sucker who believes it is moving money from their wallet to the rich guys wallet, so ...
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by ikanreed on Monday June 08 2015, @02:21PM
Oh, thanks. That's a great example of a different one dimensional analysis. It might even have a second dimension.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khallow on Monday June 08 2015, @02:43PM
You can't make money, and in long term, jobs, with trade as the backbone of a civilization.
Are you crazy? If I were to point to the defining characteristic of a civilization, it would be existence of a prevalent trade network and corresponding infrastructure.
You'd be wealthier in an abstract potential sense if you didn't trade; I agree you'll be physically more comfortable if you trade but its a delusion to think burning bunker C in container ships somehow increases the wealth of the world rather than lowering it overall and concentrating it in the correct hands, even if cheap junk from walmart increases overall happiness, for awhile anyway.
I think a big part of the problem is that you simply aren't perceiving the world as it is. Here's a chart [voxeu.org] I like to trot out in these discussions (see figure 1). It's a graph of the percentage increase in income, adjusted for inflation, of people in 1988 versus a corresponding group in 2008. The three remarkable features which I wish to draw your attention to are the following: 1) the wealthiest 1% have among the highest increase in wealth of any group, the group from about 80-95% have the weakest income growth of the entire world. That's the developed world losing ground. And two thirds of the world's population see more than a 30% growth in income over those two decades (with the median growing at 60% over this time frame!). In other words, that's global trade bettering most of the world's population with most of the lost ground due to the relatively uncompetitive developed world.
One can speak of the supposedly "less than zero sum" nature of trade, but that is just an absurd delusion. The fundamental fact of trade is that it is entered into willingly. That means mutual benefit. And as we see in my example, most of humanity benefits from global trade.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday June 08 2015, @03:17PM
The fundamental fact of trade is that it is entered into willingly
What is mercantilism, imperialism, slave labor sweatshops, "work will set you free". Thats what real trade looks like.
Its very much like the statement that communism will work in a perfect world. Which we don't have. So it doesn't work. But it sure would work great in its artificial unrealistic framework. Likewise its possible to build a framework of world trade that in an imaginary perfect world benefits all of humanity. Of course it doesn't work. But if it did work, I agree it would be totally awesome. Well, time to try something new, surely it can't fail as much as something already failing.
If I were to point to the defining characteristic of a civilization, it would be existence of a prevalent trade network
I'm not arguing presence but cause and effect relationship. I apologize in advance if I get this wrong, but I think you're pushing that its a cause of civilization. All I'm saying is its an effect.
Think of the trade in lady gaga audio cds. It doesn't make the world rich. In fact it makes the world, net, microscopically poorer. However, a rich civilization can afford it occasionally as an extra luxury. And there's nothing wrong with enjoying some extra luxury (although if you choose a lady gaga audio cd I reserve the right to WTF the specific selection). The only problem I have with trade in that CD, is assuming its a cause or source of wealth. Its actually a microscopic worsening of the overall world net situation of resources and wealth, as a luxury expenditure it is an "affordable" effect of wealth. Just don't use it as an economic policy that you can simply lady gaga the entire planet into wealth. At most you can make her and her distributors wealthy at the cost of everyone else, at best case, while simultaneously permanently using up the limited world resources of material and energy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 08 2015, @03:51PM
What is mercantilism, imperialism, slave labor sweatshops, "work will set you free". Thats what real trade looks like.
No, a lot of that isn't trade. Being enslaved to another is not trade. And a number of the other categories you merely fail to recognize as beneficial trade. For example, sweatshops are portrayed as bad, but what else was that worker going to do? Starve? End result was a better life for the worker and those he or she care about. And that's what trade is about - better opportunities than if the trade didn't exist.
I'm not arguing presence but cause and effect relationship. I apologize in advance if I get this wrong, but I think you're pushing that its a cause of civilization. All I'm saying is its an effect.
I argued neither. Establishing trading routes, for example, has historically been a common pathway to civilization. And civilizations invariably found ways to strengthen trade and themselves.
Think of the trade in lady gaga audio cds. It doesn't make the world rich.
Why should that expectation exist? Now, if you were to make the far more reasonable claim that trade in Lady Gaga CDs makes us a little bit wealthier, then I would agree with that.
while simultaneously permanently using up the limited world resources of material and energy.
Which less us note, both are vast in extent and would be used up anyway.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday June 08 2015, @04:19PM
Lots of those who are currently employed in sweatshops were from families that were until recently farmers. The same globalization that brought in the factories also brought in gobs of super-cheap food from faraway places. So what ended up happening was that the farmers' formerly successful businesses became insolvent. That in turn left the families with no viable alternative but to send their 12-year-old daughters to work in sweatshops to then buy that super-cheap imported food.
That wasn't an inevitability, that was the result of public policy enshrined under the term "free trade".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Touché) by rondon on Monday June 08 2015, @06:44PM
And, nobody wants to chime in with, "Thexalon's broad assertion is wrong because I can redirect the conversation into the tiny point I want to make!!!!11"
Thank you, Thexalon, for proving that the people arguing minutia against VLM's broad assertions can't even do that correctly.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2015, @04:23AM
"Thexalon's broad assertion is wrong because I can redirect the conversation into the tiny point I want to make!!!!11"
It's wrong because it's just wrong. There wasn't a sea of "successful" farms getting put out of work by evil developed world agriculture. It was a sea of farmers who barely could grow enough food and had nothing better to do with their labor. Now, they can work with well paying multinational corporations and their supply chains (the euphemistically named "sweat shops") and have far better futures (and food security BTW) than they would have had otherwise. The same thing happen in the US over the 20th Century as it transitioned from a relatively unproductive agrarian society to the largest industrial society in the world.
No one can really dispute my broad assertion, that the world has been getting better for a long time and continues to do so. You ignore powerful evidence to the contrary.
Thank you, Thexalon, for proving that the people arguing minutia against VLM's broad assertions can't even do that correctly.
VLM has yet to provide any evidence for his assertions. The world, trade, and various other concepts which he or she bring up, simply don't work the way the "broad assertions" assert they do. Trade is a huge positive sum activity. People are getting wealthier and living longer. Income inequality is getting better. It's just not getting better as fast in the sliver that is the developed world.
Further, my supposed "minutia" includes the observation that two thirds of the world did a lot better over the past twenty years and that trade is usually beneficial to all parties involved - which should be common economics 101 knowledge.
Finally, what's supposed to be the end game here. If trade is supposed to be bad, then what's going to replace it? How much of our societies are we going to deface and how many people will have to die just because a few people got this idiotic notion that trade was bad or employing people was bad?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2015, @03:45AM
Lots of those who are currently employed in sweatshops were from families that were until recently farmers. The same globalization that brought in the factories also brought in gobs of super-cheap food from faraway places. So what ended up happening was that the farmers' formerly successful businesses became insolvent. That in turn left the families with no viable alternative but to send their 12-year-old daughters to work in sweatshops to then buy that super-cheap imported food.
I call bullshit. The farmer with the successful business isn't the one who has to send their 12 year old daughter to a sweatshop. It's farmers who were barely surviving. And when will you address that most people, at least two thirds of humanity are far better off just in the last twenty years?
(Score: 2) by rondon on Tuesday June 09 2015, @12:18PM
Distorting local economies with free goods can and does have a negative impact to the sector that used to produce that good. For example, we continually cry foul when the Chinese dump goods below cost in the United States in order to run their competitors out of business. Unfortunately, the US has been at that game far longer than the Chinese.
Just because trade can be positive, and likely has been an overall net positive, doesn't mean that it can't be used for evil. In fact, I'm leaning (heavily) towards the conclusion that all new trade agreements are aimed at making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2015, @09:32PM
Recall that I posted in the first place in response to:
You can't make money, and in long term, jobs, with trade as the backbone of a civilization.
I think that particular quote is profoundly ignorant of history, economics, and how civilization operates. Just because we can point out places where trade, or group activities like "trade agreements" can harm others, doesn't mean that trade somehow this time isn't a fundamental, core part of civilization or something that usually works to our advantage.
It seems to me like talking about how useful hammers are and all the wonderful things you can make with one, and then someone says that "but you can whack people over the head with one too". It's as if the presence of a drawback is supposed to counter all the good things one can do with a hammer.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Tuesday June 09 2015, @03:48AM
Materials, information, energy, and computation capacity, all in various forms.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by WillAdams on Monday June 08 2015, @01:32PM
Interestingly, I've come across one claim that at $200/bbl, it becomes economically feasible to use fuel-air liquefaction technologies to make long-chain hydrocarbons out of warm, moist air using solar energy --- the guy didn't address the problem of catalysts (every such reaction I've seen uses rare / expensive catalysts which are consumed in the course of running the reaction), but the Germans were using this process during Word War II, so there should be something to it.
But yeah, a lot of factors look really bleak:
- 10 calories of petrochemical energy to get 1 calorie of food energy
- phosphorous (and to a lesser degree potassium) is the hard limit on converting the earth's crust to biomass --- look up where the reserves are, and note which country has reserves, but has stopped exporting and is importing all it can
- currently we're using 2.5 earths worth of renewable resources each year (the extra 1.5 comes from non-renewable sources such as petro-chemicals)
- a lot of fertilizer and a fair number of chemicals wash out to the seas due to modern industrial farming practices
My grandfather lived in a time when commercial hunting was outlawed and a number of species either went extinct from it, or were driven to the brink of it --- I worry that my grandchildren (or even my children) will live in a time when commercial fishing is outlawed --- given the number of countries which depend on the sea to a significant degree for their protein, that's going to get real ugly.
I turn off lights when I'm not in the room, turn the A.C. up and the heat down, ride my bicycle when I can, try to eat local foods where possible, recycle everything I can, purchase as little as possible, but I'm really dreading some of the questions my one-day grandkids will probably be asking.
(Score: 3, Informative) by kaszz on Monday June 08 2015, @02:26PM
According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), about 50 percent of the global phosphorus reserves are in the Arab nations. Large deposits of apatite are located in China, Russia, Morocco, Florida, Idaho, Tennessee, Utah, and elsewhere. Recent reports suggest that production of phosphorus may have peaked, leading to the possibility of global shortages by 2040.
(hmm.. Got oil? got phosphorus?)
Perhaps educating 3rd/2nd world women and giving them jobs may drive down birth rates?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @06:39PM
>Perhaps educating 3rd/2nd world women and giving them jobs may drive down birth rates?
So men can be miserable and sit in jail for trying to marry little girls (which is their right by religion and culture)
Fuck you.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday June 08 2015, @03:31PM
but the Germans were using this process during Word War II
I'll give you the terms to google / wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergius_process [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process [ wikipedia.org (Warning: Unicode in URL) ]
Both more or less from a very high level are "extreme cracking" like you'd do in an oil refinery except instead of pumping in the heaviest of crude oil (like asphalt) its literally shoveling in coal as the carbon source. FT can also eat the lighter crude hydrocarbons as a source of C.
"warm moist air" and some coal, yeah. And some energy.
There is another problem. At $75 oil we can stably run an economy and provide all the catalysts and raw materials and plant workers you'd need. Of course you'd lose money on every barrel, but you could physically build and operate the plant in that financial environment. At $200 oil you'd finally run a paper profit, but can you permanently run an economy over $200 oil while providing catalysts raw materials and trained plant workers? I think not.
The environment extends to financial markets and the economy. Yes at permanent $2000 oil I could justify a nice solar array, but its going to be hard to design, install, and operate a solar array when $2000 oil means the rest of the world is entirely cannibal looters. Other than that whole "rest of the world collapsing" thing, $2000 oil would be awesome for solar. (Note the $2000 is made up but the general idea stands)
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Monday June 08 2015, @04:31PM
Thanks.
I'd thought the number was optimistic and involved some hand-waving.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @08:39AM
the problem of catalysts (every such reaction I've seen uses rare / expensive catalysts which are consumed in the course of running the reaction
Uhm, isn't a catalyst by definition something that remains unchanged after the reaction?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @01:59PM
Talks most, says least.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 08 2015, @03:39PM
Good news everyone! [nextbigfuture.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @04:02PM
The word is "fewer", not "less".
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 08 2015, @05:46PM
Does it? Assuming that fossil fuels are now and forever strikes me as anachronistic. Trends in renewable energy are strong and getting stronger. 2 years ago solar parity with grid power had been achieved in 11 American states. Since then that number has grown. Wind farms keep going up everywhere. Energy efficient appliances have almost completely taken over. Denmark gets something like 28% of its power from renewables now, Germany's not far behind at 23-25%. Every country that gets that percentage to 100% will enjoy a great many economic and socio-political advantages. Every household that gets its percentage to 100% will enjoy advantages. And fresh from driving around my brother-in-law's BMW i3 EV this weekend, it's not too hard to imagine that the advantages of this new-found energy independence will cascade across the transportation sector and many other areas besides.
The whole discussion about phosphorous escapes me, too. Does the phosphorous radiate into space after it's been used as fertilizer? Is the Earth in fact not a closed system, but a lossy, leaky one? Perhaps we can be better about redirecting our waste streams into compost and recycling, sure. There are many more loops we can close to create virtuous cycles; but doing that is fun and it should keep at least a generation or two of our descendents happily busy. With sufficient energy you're generating from solar and wind on your property, you can grow a lot of vegetables using hydroponics in a 3D volume, and if you like to eat meat you can combine that with fish farming for aquaponics. Personally I don't use artificial fertilizers at all--I vermicompost our scraps and put the resultant soil back in the garden. It grows as well as, or better than, using MiracleGro.
3D printing and open source are opening up other avenues. I haven't paid for software in 15 years. As 3D printing matures that may start to be true of physical objects, too. When they perfect recyclers that take surplus or broken items as feedstock and output it to the 3D printer for reformatting as something else, the entire economy of China will collapse.
I do agree that the current form of slash-and-burn capitalism is reaching its end. You hit all the right notes, so I won't restate them. But I sort of think that we are close to having all the tools we need to disintermediate every part of the existing power structure (political and economic) permanently. Other structures will emerge, but they're not going to look anything like this hub-and-spoke form we have now.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday June 08 2015, @06:41PM
For a very short amount of time you can generate a financial bubble, everyone loses in a bubble except the rich guys who ran it, who happen to be in charge, which is why since 2000 or so the economy has been solely based on bubble formation and popping rather than industrial or even post-industrial. The era of the knowledge economy ended in the 90s and the new economic era is called the bubble era...
There is nothing new about about an economy based on bubbles. It is the basis of Reaganomics, which itself was nothing more than a start in returning us to the economic policies that were the standard before the Great Depression and the New Deal. Since 1980, that has been the de facto economic policy, regardless of which administration has been in charge. It is always a benefit to those at the very top and somehow everyone else keeps believing that wealth will someday "trickle down. In the meantime the gap in wealth between those at the top and the rest of us has been rapidly increasing and will continue to do so as long as we let it happen.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday June 08 2015, @09:47PM
For your reading pleasure T.R.O.Y. [utopianwc.com] - the winner in the "Utopian World Championship" 2001.
Pay attention to the "Economic organization" section - my interpretation: discard the proposed details (interesting still) and just realize can't get a balanced currency with the single metrics that is called now money (and which you proposed be substituted with energy).
Physics decided that you'd also need at least space and time and chemestry decided that it's a stochastic game [wikipedia.org] that takes place in the "game space" (real world).
Can't get my head on how so many people really takes serious the childish game called capitalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 09 2015, @08:15PM
Can't get my head on how so many people really takes serious the childish game called capitalism.
Capitalism just works. Markets just work. That's why most of the world takes it seriously. For example, you complain that two thirds or so of the world only has 10% of the wealth. That sounds bad because 10% is a lot less than 67%, right? But it's more than enough to elevate them over time to a developed world standard of living. And that's what's been happening.
just realize can't get a balanced currency with the single metrics that is called now money (and which you proposed be substituted with energy).
So what? Nobody eats money. Nobody tries to travel via money. Nobody tries to make things or make them go with money. Money is just a means for simplifying trade. That's all it does. So for a simple task, you don't need a bunch of "metrics" that just add complexity and screw up your ability to do stuff. All those things you trade via money are what you actually want to balance. And glancing through your essay, I see that we already have more than one money metric with each national level currency being its own metric. You just want it on the local level rather than national level as part of some colossal fragmentation of humanity. I think that's a terrible idea, but hey, not my fantasy.
Frankly, I still can't take seriously your utopia. Partly, it's the high level of suspension of disbelief, such as assuming without reason that capitalism will completely fall apart. And you spend way too much of the time complaining about nonproblems in capitalism and markets (for example, whining that markets "compel" people to seek profit or the above mentioned fact that some people have more than others).
Ultimately, my view is that if the global economic system just shuddered to a halt, then people would make another capitalist system. There's just too much we do with that we can't do with competing systems. It's also the best solution to human greed yet devised and beats hoping that greed and similar negative traits magically go away.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 09 2015, @09:58PM
Until the simplification blows in your face as inadequate for the societal purposes (trade is a mean, not an end).
Like cases you trade irreversible damage (like: non-renewable resources or sustainability or biodiversity or human lives) in exchange for something ephemeral (like iGadgets [wikipedia.org])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 12 2015, @01:50PM
Until the simplification blows in your face as inadequate for the societal purposes
"Until".
Like cases you trade irreversible damage (like: non-renewable resources or sustainability or biodiversity or human lives) in exchange for something ephemeral (like iGadgets)
I believe trade is more than adequate for that particular activity.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @08:53AM
I think this line of thinking is right. Energy is what it all is about. Machines are just a side effect. If you have unlimited energy, then anything, literally anything is possible. And if you have cheap energy, as has been the case for the last 100 years a lot has been possible. And we've been building like crazy. But we're running out of the black gold. Rapidly. And haven't been using it all too wisely to guarantee our run would continue smoothly...