Politics as an Automatic Stabilizer App?

Commentary by Roger Erickson

News Reporter = Worst Job in 2013? 

Time to Outsource, Then Automate? :(

So, the Koch bros are buying newspapers?

Their assumed arbitrage op is that labor will get tight enough that starving journalists will soon PAY to have their articles published.
(News as an automated lottery? with "winners" rewarded by elites?)
(Does that sound vaguely familiar?)

Once labor rates follow interest rates into negative territory ... cannibalism could soon follow? That can be automated too. By drones, no less.

Note Michael Frayn’s 1965 comic The Tin Men:

It is set at an Institute for the Automation of Human Life and the characters are constantly conjecturing the possibilities

“When you come to think about it, you could programme a computer to appreciate the cricket results for you — or even to appreciate the actual automated game as the playing computer played it. … . So far as I can see, appreciation is a finite activity, which means it’s a programmable one. The spectator is eminently replaceable.”

“But ... the spectator enjoys watching.”
“He may I suppose, but that’s rather beside the point. The hydraulic press operator who is replaced by a computer when his factory is automated may enjoy operating a hydraulic press. But that doesn’t save him from being replaced. A human being, my dear Rowe, is far too complex and expensive an instrument to be wasted on simple finite tasks like operating presses, filling up football pools and watching cricket. The whole world of sport, I believe, will gradually become an entirely enclosed one, unvisited by any human being except the maintenance engineers. Computers will play. Computers will watch. Computers will comment. Computers will store results, and pit their memories against other computers in sports quiz programmes on the television organised by computers and watched by computers.”


Why not turn Politics into an Automatic Stabilizer App? Now THAT would make sense. The lobbyists too.  Then we complex & expensive humans could get back to exploring our options and SELECTING from them 100% of the time.

Timothy Taylor — Automatic Fiscal Stabilizers

Conversable Economist

Automatic Fiscal Stabilizers

Timothy Taylor | Managing Editor, Journal of Economic Perspectives

Recorded Tape Loop Needed: "Public-Spend More, Public-Spend Less"

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Effects of Automatic Stabilizers on the Federal Budget

Old hat, since this is what MMT basically began with, pre 1996. Seventeen years on, we are still exhaustively RE-belaboring simple policy decisions first inaugerated ~1933 - and we're STILL just beginning to make the public aware of what was originally obvious circa 1933? Is the dent in public mis-awareness even noticeable yet? Sometimes it takes ~87 years of 2x4s before the information starts to sink in for the mule?

If this is ground zero in public understanding of currency operations, we're in trouble. It's like the captain of the Titannic not knowing there's this thing called a rudder?

Did anyone ever consider that this is what "Automatic Stabilizer" MEANS in a fiat currency system? The people that enacted various Automatic Stabilizer policies knew this. What's happened to everyone since? Any general knows they must resupply any army after EVERY engagement, win or lose. Every sports coach knows to feed the team after EVERY game, win or lose. Every business has to restock after every season, whether sales were up or down. Every fiat currency issuer has to restock national liquidity after every business cycle, whether up or down. Yada, yada.

How on earth can this be a surprise to anyone? Marriner Eccles must be turning over in his grave! :(

More than anything else, this reminds me of jokes with tape recorded messages telling dumb blondes that they must breathe out after breathing in. Except we're talking about our Congress AND the US electorate here, not just metaphorical dumb blondes! AND - our Congress, press and electorate is busy laboring over every ripple and subtone in every breath!!! BMHOTK! If this isn't as natural, and automatic, as "breathe in, breathe out," then lord help us!

Don't tell me it's really that bad! ? Do we have to send "Fiat Spend More, Fiat Spend Less" tapes to every Congressperson and voter, reminding them to automatically "public-spend more" when private spending dips, and "public-spend less" when private spending goes wild?

If that's the need, wouldn't it be simpler to bypass Congress and institute Automatic Policy Stabilizers that replace ignorant policy staff with intelligent ones, whenever policy agility drops below survival thresholds?

Even better, bypass our broken education system that's obviously failing our nation, and institute Automatic Policy Stabilizers that replace voters ignorant of Situational Awareness, with a more informed crop of citizens, whenever policy agility drops below survival thresholds.

If we can't do something so simple, Nature is simply going to let her Automatic Stabilizer - the one called Evolution - automatically replace the USA.

Then of course, there are people actively lowering the median IQ.

Witness: "An Infinite Amount of Money" and especially note the steady descent in idiocy from Bloomberg to Mauldin to the one comment. (TRIPLE face palm!)

Weepin' Buddha on a decline! Are we doomed?