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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Money, Information or Situational Awareness in Politics - Which Rules Now, and Which Will Rule in the Future?

Commentary by Roger Erickson

"The only way to influence the direction of government is to inject money into politics. Putting out information is not enough." Steve Hanson

That adage has been a truism for decades. Yet, like all methods, it will keep working ... until it doesn't.

Do you think the methodology of money & currency in politics will scale?

Politics is about distributing and receiving both influence and feedback ...
which eventually boils down to coordination & return-on-coordination.
Currency won't last as the best method for doing that.
Money and currency are just one form of information.

As many have noted, to be "free," you either have to be wealthy, or reduce your needs to zero. What is it you wish to be free to do?

The people with nothing to lose make their power felt periodically.

No telling what they'll think up next.

6 comments:

  1. With enough access to information, and the context that data derives meaning from, will we always need money and/or currency in politics?

    Maybe when more information is more free ... we'll need currency only to coordinate exploration of group options, not for hoarding and thereby constraining exploration of group options.

    As always, it seems that we'll either hang together, or hang separately. Do we really require currency as we know it, to hang either way, or just information - and Situational Awareness?

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  2. With enough access to information, and the context that data derives meaning from, will we always need money and/or currency in politics?

    No. These are just accounting records.

    Maybe when more information is more free ... we'll need currency only to coordinate exploration of group options, not for hoarding and thereby constraining exploration of group options.

    I think that we will come to see that this is simply distributing liquidity efficiently.

    Do we really require currency as we know it, to hang either way, or just information - and Situational Awareness?

    Currency is a toll, and not a necessary one at that. All that is required is situational awareness and adaptability. Available means are fitted to ends, and innovation (necessity is the mother of invention) produces new means.

    To progress, kill the sacred cows.

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  3. Human nature being what it is, I'd say that money talks and B$^&@~*T walks, and probably will be so for the foreseeable future.

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  4. Rombach,
    Various groups, like the Mafia etc, can talk very seriously, without use of currency as money.

    Human nature does change. The old folks are just never prepared when it does.

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  5. Roger - I see your point, but I really don't thing that human nature has changed all that much in the past 10,000 years. As a species we have a lot of wood to chop as far as evolving goes. Not to say that I don't hope for the best, but experience tells me to prepare for the worst.... as with Murphy's Law. Call me cynical I guess.

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