Category: technology

Post # 2051 big data vs unique event.

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We are in a paradox, first amassing big data to intercorrelate everything and tying all the data sets together into one giant machine (Mirowski ).

At he same time we are missing the big thing going on – the undoing of the planet – that we needed to know. The who, what why and when – and alternatives.
How can these two co-exist? Doesn’t the promise of the first – knowing everything – expect to know the one thing that we needed to know?

How much of economics is just filling in the gaps in the fabric (like exporting the Chinese person recognition software to Chile and tyying the results to consumer data sets) and how much is struggling for insight into the overall situation?

Post # 2023. No plan for the societal side of climate change

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Provocation # 174.

So far as I am aware, there is no plan proposed by anybody that deals with the social disruption of climate breakdown and the social disruption of trying to prevent that disruption in anything like implementable detail. If you know of any please let me know. doug@dougcarmichael.com’

The Green New Deal proposed by Cortez and supported by Naomi Kline still suggests that we can get sufficiently more green while growing the economy into fuller employment with increased equity and avert the collapse. But there are few details.

At best, if we are to attempt to mitigate global heating, many jobs will have to cease because they use so much fossil fuel. Is anyone planning for such a transition with its disruptions?

Serious mitigation probably means stopping lots of economic activity. Even if new economic activity arises at the same time, it will not be in the same space, which means millions moving. The disruption would be intense and the time lags devastating. We have no serious analysis of what jobs must continue or we get catastrophes, such as maintaining nuclear reactors. Left alone they will explode.

Not discussing these and making plans means that we support muddling through the next few years. But at some point, public reaction to our being stupid about the inevitable will stir up serious anger.

The new factor might be a youth movement, already developing, demanding radical changes. But there is no plan for what those radical changes would have to be (not just technological but political and institutional). How do you take back the core wealth of the 1%without civil war?

1924. middle class an artifact?

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What is the chance that the middle class is an artifact, first (early empires 1000BC and more) of elites trying to milk the peasant ( trapped) population of their surplus through the use of a literatte bueucracy, and that has with time morphed into the GI bill after ww2, educating many to middle management now largely replaced by computing. The core is elites and underclass with computers and automation. (robot is German for slave).  This suggests it is hard to support, create, spread, a middle class.  In fact most middle class jobs are quasi monopoly jobs: either through professional licensing or college degree required. These are procedures to control access to the middle class and hence cartel like and hostile to the under class. We have a lot of thinking to do to figure out how tech can help build a more fair process. Spreading tech more widely and also spreading the management that goes with the best tech: team based, creative, not so hierarchically controlled,  would be very helpful. But we can’t expect the normal middle class salaries to establish themselves and the 40 hour or more jobs will be less structured with hard to anticipate consequences.