What Happens When "Producers" Don't Need "Consumers"?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

How many citizens remember the definition of a tangent, from high school geometry?

Much has been written recently about automation disintermediating currently "secure" human jobs, and the supposedly dire threat that any and all newly invented tools now pose to human culture and humans themselves. Few stop to ponder the fact that we've been inventing labor-saving tools since the first twig was poked into a termite nest, long before the first flint chopper was knapped. New tools have always posed a transient challenge, followed by the freedom to turn our attention to other things.

Now, however, supposedly modern humans seem to be having problems TURNING THEIR ATTENTION to bigger and better things.

Uh, ... maybe OCD* is the problem, not tools or automation?

Consider (but please don't get overly side tracked on the specifics of) just one of many, many examples, hat tip to Shai Schechter ‏

"Truck driving most common job in 29/50 US states. What will happen when trucks don't need drivers.

Oh, I don't know. What did our ancestral primates (and their teeth) do, when gnawing raw meat from bones was replaced by cooked meat sliced with flint knives?

Can we please NOT descend into discussion of the trivia related to each & every such "what happens" question, and instead ponder what things will be like 2, 3 & 7 or more generations out? My persistent point is that our smorgasboard of new options worth exploring swamp each and every negative associated with population growth and our new inventions. I call this the Traveling Entrepreneur's Task, but it's also the Context Nomad's Task or the "SOCIAL-SPECIES DILEMMA," and it's at the heart of the utility & purpose of fiat currency, or denomination of ongoing (& expanding) Public Initiative. We've been doing that for ~3.5 billion years on planet Earth. Let's not lose track of that.

3 seconds of stopping to think produced this response.

I'd worry more about invention of the auto-consuming robot. What happens when "producers" don't need "consumers"? :(

Pun intended. But seriously, take our aversion to thinking .... PLEASE!

Is it too much to ask fellow citizens for, say, 60 seconds of silent, actual thought? What might THEY come up with, if asked to respond to this question?

Years ago, when visiting elementary schools for the NIH, to help reconsider science education, I used to ask this type of questions of kids. Up to 5th grade, kids everywhere had no problem demonstrating truly astounding imagination! You couldn't contain it! Sadly, you could palpably see the intellectual repression kicking in somewhere in 6th grade, in the form of repressed imagination regarding the future, replaced with too much slavery to "efficient performance" in the transient present. Much of the original imagination of student humans had - unimaginably - been contained and destroyed, reminiscent of the destruction of the once limitless Bison and cod fisheries of the Grand Banks.

NeoClassical Ideology & Collapse Of Human Imagination ... will that be our epithet?

For now, let's leave these dangling options for readers to explore on their own, unimpeded by any restrictions. The rising ranks of unemployed should have plenty of time to think, instead of just mindlessly watch tv.

Please notify me if any NeoClassical mouth-breathers re-discover the concept of infinite tangents, and then apply it to reconsideration of our instantaneous position on the evolutionary path of homo sapiens. Where do we go from here? Off on some random tangent?  Or do we THINK about the continuous, strenuous thinking required to keep within striking distance of our unpredictable survival path?  Well?

The murky images in my crystal ball imply submergence of a new sub-species of humans, destined for rapid extinction. Dumbo NeoClassicoSenseless, or the "DNCi" - disappearing from reality faster than a receding hairline, warbling their erble logic all the way. 

The sad part is how many passive homo sapiens may needlessly follow them off on some fixed tangent, & over the nominal cliffs the DNCi invent.

What's in YOUR crystal ball? Just the present view imposed by the DNCi, or endless new options worth exploring?

* Really, I'm surprised that adhering to NeoClassical Economics isn't on this list. 

    Or maybe it is, and we just don't notice? 

    Here's another thought:

     If variant wiring of many neurons within one central nervous system can produce OCD behavior in one individual, can variant policy wiring in public discourse produce OCD behavior in a nation's government? Since we're in charge of constantly rewiring both examples .... can't we fix or at least significantly mitigate both, with careful, persistent management, training and practice?  Say, isn't that called Democracy, and acting like a co-owner?

What Aspect Of SCALE & Aggregate Degrees of Freedom Don't We Teach To Enough Kids, In All Schools, Everywhere?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



(Photo: walking towards, instead of away from, an impending tsunami of context changes.)

Why is it that group intelligence always seems to recede just before devastating changes in group context? Ordinary humans are clearly talented enough to devise many practical applications for exploring perceived options. There are countless examples, from sublime to mundane, such as this one.

Most Pet Lovers Don't Perceive Equal, Parallel Need To Help A Handicapped Middle Class

Do we have to practice austerity, or can we achieve everything we can imagine, and more?

Application of our talents is clearly gated by the process of recognizing and orienting to local, regional or systemic context. Perceptions & practice then drive us to optimize an increasingly complex combination of actions, so that we can all sail through that thicket of micro-to-macro contexts. Social species work exactly BECAUSE recombinant member interactions provide compounding group resiliency.

Please ask every talented person you know, to design some Automatic Stabilizer policies, for a struggling and starving Middle Class.

We are what we practice, even at a cultural scale. So what triggers do we need, to get more of ourselves to perceive our own, constrained, self-handicapped electorate?

Too few seem to see a MiddleClass limping down the road to oblivion, right into the path of another set of predatory sociopaths, whether "Brits" in India, or an Upper Looting Class that eventually self organizes everywhere.

To avoid these self-inflicted constraints, we need an electorate that practices simultaneously perceiving the full spectrum individual needs, AND team dynamics, AND social interdependencies. To maintain Adaptive Rate, a working culture has to juggle all available input, and keep all it's increasing options available.

What aspect of SCALE don't we teach enough kids, in all schools, everywhere?

Instead of hoarding static assets as rent, why aren't we seeing the value of employing everyone to explore our full range of cultural options, so that we can practice achieving even more than what any individual can currently imagine?

Join a citizen's army? Be all that, together, "we" can be?

Support cultural intelligence? A group mind is a terrible thing to waste?

Why don't more emerging students grasp the scale of the group options to be explored? What methods do we need, in order to change our re-emerging electorate back towards a more adaptive path?

Methods drive results?

  Milestone goals drive methods?

    And Desired Group Outcomes drive milestone goals?

      And interacting imaginations drive Desired Outcomes - aka, Group Imagination?

We can't get there by having everyone wishing to hoard above average amounts of static assets. The reality of the boring outcome actually achieved from that dream has repeatedly been trivial compared to increasing our dynamic assets, an alternate outcome which is available to any organized aggregate - but only if they first recognize it.

If There's A Distributed Will, There's A Crowd-Sourced Way. We Just Have To Find Methods.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)




Someone please tell the 1% to quit trying to micromanage the 99%, by trying to buy all the politicians? It just doesn't work? Jane & Joe Sixpack could tell 'em that, and General Patton could have too, if they'd listen & read.

There are creeping consequences. Here's a prime example.

On the Failures of American Universities

That message holds 10x for failure of public policy institutions too?

Plus, the article doesn't say enough about remedies for this widespread sclerosis.

Do we have to have an aggregate heart-attack to trigger bureaucracy bypass surgery?

What's it take to get this electorate to practice some healthy-policy living?

We need Economic-Illness prevention. Maybe some economic-fitness-gurus would help. Do you know any that aren't one-trick ponies? :(

Never tell 320 million people HOW to do things? Progress for 320 million people means allowing consensus on what BIG challenges to tilt at, and then letting all that diversity amaze ourselves with it's distributed genius?

Yet don't despair. If there's a distributed will, there's a crowd-sourced way. We just have to find methods.

The methods we need are ways to ask people to LET themselves help them achieve. As Einstein and Shewhart suggested, imagination is always more important than context-dependent knowledge. Normally that quickly makes one think of maintaining social agility by right-sizing AND right-distributing our currency supply, a sore subject. Yet even if NeoLiberal Luddites are trying to constrain our fiat-metric supply, today our IT-enabled culture can still explore alternate forms of cultural currency.

It's only a question of how many potshots at our own feet we want to take before right-sizing our cultural imagination and cultural adaptive rate.

"Two capitalist tools for every plutocrat, and 99% holes in every aggregate?" Wotta campaign slogan! Please start suggesting better ones. We need about 320 million alternates to select from.

The Whole World Runs A Capitalism & Macro-Economic "Barro" Experiment, And The Results Come Out Opposite To Theory

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



This is just astounding. Was there ever another peep from Barro?

Bill Mitchell Unearths Yet More Options [not taken] for Europe

If this occurred in the field of physics - or any other science/engineering field - they'd IMMEDIATELY change the theory ... to fit experimental facts.

But not us!!! We just pretend it never happened, and try twice as hard to make the failed experiment-on-ourselves work "right" - right?

There are a number of astounding findings Bill Mitchell is dredging up about the Monetarist backlash against reality. I'll only mention one, for the sheer lack of imagination it shows.

“[Imaginary] multipliers and marginal propensities to consume ordinary goods and services would be relatively larger under [imaginary settings] than under quantitative easing/new bond financing of budget deficits.”

Wow! We’re trying to let ad hoc accounting rules dictate to unpredictable reality? What would Maxwell, Boltzmann, Einstein & Planck say? Or Alfred Nobel? Is there an Ignoble Prize in Economics?

What to do about the "banking reserves" which our fiat currency accounting methods throws off as a nominal side effect of any economic growth? How about some imagination? If we can run Carbon Credit Markets which trade Carbon Credits for reducing greenhouse gases, why not a Public Purpose Market that trades PublicPurpose Credits for draining nominal banking “reserves” as well?

If you listen carefully, you can actually hear the sound of reality re-entering the faint minds of double-entry accounting gnomes. Despite all odds, they haven't made an entry for net national growth on their ledgers, opposite the entry for net banking reserves.

Stay tuned for the next episode of the hit tragecomedy:

Accounting Rules Reality

or One Class Flown Upside Down Over The Cuckoo's Fully Amortized Nest

Starring: Du Bell 'entry, as Big Purse

The moral? When capitalists come to a fork in the road .... they stick it to themselves? (With apologies to Robert Frost.)

Perhaps we need to consider some paths less taken?

The Tortuous Process Of Distributed Learning .... Watching The Masses Slowly Learn

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Escape From The Matrix: Alternative Finance And Investment Advisors

Very interesting, even if slow. The euro-zone may be slow to learn, but it's not like we're all THAT much more agile here in the USA.

ps: the close inspirations for the Matrix movies go back as early as R. Heinlein 1941, D. Knight in 1955, & P.Dick 1957, not to mention the vaguely similar ideas throughout classic literature - all of which stoke our collective imagination.

Every time I think of that, I'm personally VERY offended. Why on Earth wasn't every 10-yr old in the USA able to rapidly obtain OpenSource access to obviously adaptive memes like those early sci-fi books in that list? It would have made a difference for me, growing up. I've read only a very few of those texts listed, and obviously wish I'd read more of them, back when I was avidly reading sci-fi, in grade school.

We're actively retarding our cultural adaptive rate, aka the rate at which our electorate learns, and orients to changing context.

Wherever we could be going, we ain't gonna get there at this current rate, with too many brakes on, rent-seeking from Intellectual Property, instead of seeking the far higher returns on social coordination that even some amoebas are "smart" enough to stick to.

It's rather astounding to watch members of a social-species spending most of their time planning individual, rather than aggregate investing. As one of the Wachowski brothers' other movie character says, "That don't make no sense!"

Is it foolish to look for logic in the chambers of the human CNS?

How A Family Went A Year Without Sugar - Could An Industry Lobby Go A Year w/o NeoLiberalism?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)

How An Australian family went a year without sugar

There are those who cannot instantly reason by analogy. So let's challenge them to simply practice doing so, in small steps.

Start off imagining that NeoLiberalism is synonymous with Corporate Welfare.

After all, even Albert Einstein said that imagination was far more important than knowledge, or even logic.

Now, imagine the MICC keiretsu surviving a year w/o ... well, all the MICC policy incest!

Go ahead, just imagine something along those lines. See, you can do it. It won't break anything. Now imagine many things, and then start selecting any of those novel thoughts which actually are unexpectedly supported by available evidence. It's called pattern recognition.

See! You're actually THINKING!!! Anyone can do it. Even writers from San Francisco with PhDs. :)

Now just do a equally simple exercise every morning, with your yoga. Start small and ramp up, so you don't overload your amygdala and panic. Before you know it, you'll be able to easily & instantly model changing circumstances, dynamic systems .... EVEN CHANGING CONTEXT!!!

Can't hurt to try. You may eventually even see your animosity to change transformed to open curiosity. Acquiring the habit of quick thinking is what all teamwork begins with, regardless of what those team skills are applied to.

Now back to the subject. Why can't some country today go a year without NeoLiberalism? Why not OUR country?

They're A Bit More Honest In Canada? Maybe ETI Will Contact Them First?

(commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Generation Screwed: Youth [have no purpose] struggle for jobs, home ownership

That's telling it like it is. Luddites are winning? Winning what?

Nevertheless, even Canadians are only a bit more honest than us here in the states. After all, what kinds of "experts" totally miss the point like the experts quoted in the next newsline from Canada?

BMO job cuts have little to do with sky-high profits
"Technology, sluggish economy mean job losses would occur despite how much banks make, experts say."

Huh?

Translation: We're squeezing water from a stone ... because we don't know what else to do with our citizens and nation. Might as well extract rising rents from our own citizens .. until our nation withers and dies. Our mantra is to do ANYTHING EXCEPT set new goals worthy of re-dedicating our nation, culture and populous to.

Why?

Is there a endgame plan at work here, even by default? I mean, other than parasites consuming the host they THINK they own? That's a dead-end game, not an endgame leading to expanding options. What on Earth has happened to homo sapiens? They used to be a social species, but seem to be reverting to hermit, cultural cannibals before our very eyes. Maybe we're lacking a cultural mirror ... more than any other missing piece of technology? Maybe banksters could hire all those citizens they deem "useless" to work on a cultural mirror system, and thereby help us regain group intelligence?

Until then, we'll continue with unchecked, purposeless rent extraction? Simply because we can? What is the Desired Outcome behind that?

That kind of pea brain outlook is equivalent to a parent saying they ate half the neighborhood children because technology made it possible ... and because they couldn't imagine any other options.

A little more imagination might be called for?

Personally, I'm sure that youth of this age have plenty of imagination - since they always have had, or else evolution wouldn't have occurred. Just because you CAN do things, that doesn't mean you SHOULD. Imagine being more adaptively selective! Isn't that what homo sapiens was named for? Are homo sapiens being replaced by NeoLiberals, or just stuck, temporarily in the no-evolution land between feudalism and further evolution? Growing an Output Gap for three thirds of us doesn't seem like much of a "way."

Adequate youthful imagination would likely be expressed quickly enough, as further cultural evolution ... if only the old farts would quit trying to hoard REAL national options that they can't take with them to the grave? Ya think? These are our kids, grandkids and great-grandkids we're talking about here. Why aren't we managing THEIR options, instead of uselessly trying to constrain OUR current fiat?

What kinds of "experts" miss that point? Those designing their own extinction? Like dinosaurs? Perhaps the kind that never interacted enough with their own kids to notice that there's no adaptive point in economic cannibalism?

We haven't seen such an anal, "bankster" outlook this widespread since ... well, really, since the pre-Christian era in Europe, or the pre-Buddhist & pre-Jain era in Asia. Certainly not since the Reformation and Renaissance. The bankster mentality has degenerated all the way back to class war and the culture of class-based vs nation-based mercantilism. Do we really want to return to squabbling subunits that pit "our" classes, clans, castes and tribes against all others ... INSTEAD of at least sticking together by national allegiance, reaping the insane return-on-coordination, assimilating all citizens, and creating even more, newer cultures, more ethnic diversity and more, newer mythologies?

Sure, we may envision a time when there is once again guaranteed mobility, at least for honest, non-toxic individuals & sub-groups whose negative reputations don't precede them. But do we really want to let a tiny cabal of existing uber-merchants (instead of Communists) Centrally Plan and rush this transition, without more careful consideration? Are we to trust Merchant Central Planners, just because they claim to be OUR central planners? Something seems amiss in the message they promote. Every prior rush to deregulate without re-regulating even more productively - by decentralized consensus - has only ushered in a chaotic period of rampant looting by whomever can get away with the initial deregulation. Somehow the CP-deregulators themselves never get around to decentralized re-regulation again. By definition, it's beyond them. It's simply not in their repertoire.

Well, gag me with a Luddite and call me stupid! 'Cuz I don't see the point in being NON-SELECTIVE about deregulation. At all. We're throwing our entire next generation out with the nominal, fiat bathwater this time. Tune the damn system, carefully, rather than just looting components willy nilly?

There is no way to hoard static assets without growing a group Output Gap.

And tempo matters. 50% cultural degradation this year is FAR, FAR worse than 100% cultural growth next year.

Why? Because the evolutionary value of Dynamic Assets leaves the value of Static Assets in the dust. That's why social species succeed, and why homo sapien cultures outstripped other primate species. It's far smarter to stay fully invested in growing dynamic assets, than to stupidly hoard static assets. That means investing in Democracy, NOT just in personal ownership of more static assets. The whole strategy of social species is 2-stage optimization: keep the components alive AND grow the system (faster than either can grow when working at cross purposes). Instead, humans in NeoLiberal regimes are reverting to negative rates of interest in expanding group intelligence.

"Banksterism AND Busted Evolution" - that's become our motto. Some twisted minds even posit that as doing the work of one or more gods. SETI results are suggesting otherwise.

Imagine That. You Have the Option To.

commentary by Roger Erickson

3D Photography?

Imagine even more. Imagine visualizing not just geophaphic space. That's only our 3 dimensions of physical movement.

Imagine visualizing "options space," and all the N-dimensions of cultural re-configuration open to us.

Now THAT is mind blowing.

And what about options for our children and grandchildren?  How many options are we preparing them to quickly explore?

If we let them extend a little more imagination practice, and more distributed liquidity, our children could be doing amazing things with all their group capabilities and the infinitely nested options worth exploring - instead of arguing over the pathetically inane things we still keep OUR potentially brilliant minds tied up arguing over.

Reader John of PA writes:

"Imagine what you will see and be able to do in the next 20 years, it will be mind boggling.

NEXT GENERATION PHOTOGRAPHY
This is absolutely incredible.
Note it is not just 360. It is 360 at every latitude...try going up or down.

360-degree pictures . . . next generation photography
Try not to get dizzy!

You can also look straight up and down.
Click on the pictures below and when they come up, click again and drag your mouse in any direction and the picture will give you a 360-degree view. Amazing Photography."

PICTURE NUMBER 1

PICTURE NUMBER 2

PICTURE NUMBER 3

PICTURE NUMBER 4

PICTURE NUMBER 5

    ....

[Never mind that. How many economists does it take to keep a nation gazing at it's group navel? Does that remind you of the number of angels dancing on pinheads?]

Can I get some witness options? In any permutation?

Group Option Number 1: [please write or comment]

Group Option Number 2: [please write or comment]

Group Option Number 3: [please write or comment]

Group Option Number 4: [please write or comment]

Group Option Number 5: [please write or comment]

The Private Snafu Cartoon Series From WWII

commentary by Roger Erickson

They're actually pretty good.

Given the sheer scale of our distributed organizational tasks today, I have to think it would do far more good than harm for today's students to see these before 5th grade.

Our DoD, and the USA in general, used to be much more innovative, creative & imaginative than today!

Lilleputian Brains Redefine Poverty

Poverty? What Poverty

Let's see, "poor" people may also have subprime mortgage, auto, furniture & student loans they can't repay either? Not to mention credit card limits they'll never repay?

Say ... doesn't that sound a lot like the sharecropper business model?  Or lifelong serfs tied to the coal company's store?

Who knew that NeoCon capitalism means Central Planning! (By business "owners" run amok.)

Seems that the only time WE fail is when we collectively allow presumed process owners to think they actually own social processes. Didn't Churchill say that was a General rule about war? :)

In unrestrained capitalism, there's nothing like capturing the customer.

(And then underutilizing human capital.)

And, so much for owning land as a guarantee!

No matter what a host achieves, the parasite's goal is to own the process for owning it.

Anyone who can't escalate social immune defenses to whatever level needed, can't compete in the host/parasite evolutionary spiral (especially when your own family will always be the source for some of it's own parasites)!

Much of the time, even our own left & right hemispheres are their own worst enemies, so practiced coordination is our only salvation path.

Every process is too important to be left to the presumed process owners! Can we go back to teaching that to all Lilleputians in Kindergarten? And reinforcing it throughout their lives?  Without the return on coordination, we'll doom our entire population to being poorer than they need to be.  Indeed, what part of relativity do the 1% not understand.  Being the richest 1% in a constrained population demonstrates only a poverty of imagination.  Those poor rich people!