Oscar Wilde defined a cynic in Lady Windemere’s fan as; ” a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”.
Big Data is the new oil, the Black and White gold or, the pixelated fools gold perhaps? Huge valuations are placed upon companies who can however incongruously or implausibly graft on the pre-fix or Suffix “- Tech, Tech – TECH”.
An old computing maxim is Garbage in Garbage out, that’s self-evident of course, “pigs ears and Silk purses” and all of that. But let’s remain in the porcine metaphor is Big Data really just “pearls before Swine”.
Perhaps I should explain? Military commanders know all too well that The Map is not the territory, for the purposes of “Prop-Tech” that’s an apt starting point. Of course, the Map is not the territory and the Model is not the thing, just as the name of anything is not the thing in itself. These are far more than just semantic games and when we look at Data, data processing, databases and the hugely powerful new generation of Graph Databases, we have to be very careful to remember that any description of a Thing, a phenomena, a market a moment in time or a reporting quarter is just that, a description of something that has happened in the past at a fixed point or over a period of time. Statically for a snapshot, we can describe say’ ? an unexpired lease term, the passing rental, the repairing obligations the asking price, the previous list of tenants and so forth. Databases are very good at this sort of description and comparisons over time and in parallel can give a sense of the dynamics of individual variables within what becomes a computer model based upon the Data across a whole album of individual pictures.
At this point, one usually swoons with eyes glazed over and we will all want to say something indicating understanding, something indicating the conversation has been helpful and interesting and signalling that we agree, Big Data is full of goodness and very very useful.
“You must have a very very clever Algorithm to go with that”
Perhaps a warning label should come with each Big Data truth claim.
“Two Algorithms and some snake oil to go”.
Valuation is an art and not a science, there is also art in Mathematics both pure Maths and Applied maths always have more than one way to get to a particular solution. That’s why they are Solutions and not answers, the word Solution implies the inevitability of there being more than one way to wiggle the Elephants Trunk.
Based on the paper:
“Drawing an elephant with four complex parameters”, by
Jurgen Mayer, Khaled Khairy, and Jonathon Howard,
Am. J. Phys. 78, 648 (2010), DOI:10.1119/1.3254017
“The company will now focus on investing in technology, both in terms of its people and its assets. SEGRO plans to bulk up the Proptech and digital teams that now sit in the new division. “We had already created this team as we had been working on this for a year to 18 months,” Sleath says. “We have got a small group and will be recruiting into this.
“We are looking for data scientists. We want to use data better when we install centres and pilot a dozen or so warehouses and we want to put in sensors so we can capture data.”
https://www.egi.co.uk/news/segro-chief-puts-disruptive-thinker-at-heart-of-innovation/
There are some interesting developments in the US property world which are off Radar but happening on the OIP platform in which I have been involved. Overstocks Patrick Byrne has an operation called Medici Land, Why is that relevant, let me tell you. Web 3 will revolutionise Database hosting, Data Centres will not be required for the bulk of Data transfer which will be encrypted peer to peer. This is the key to understanding where to focus ones DATA base ambitions in the future. ( outside of the Surveillance Capitalism State, at least. )
Anyway, on such things, you will find that Medici Land ( Overstocks, Patrick Byrne) is way ahead of the curve and if the BIG DATA seduction is happening at SEGRO what is happening in Web 3 is highly relevant.
The centralised proprietary API accessed DataBase model is so Last Millenium, Money for old rope, I Say. The future is Distributed and individually devolved to each terminal input node. This has profound implications for Publishing and customer outreach and advertising. BIG Tech, Big Data and Prop Tech are both overrated and overvalued on the outmoded and outdated proprietary centralised database model, be warned! There are UBERS around every corner, and We Work’ lurking in every Balance sheet.
I give you,” Skills Matter, but so does Cashflow”.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/05/skills_matter_goes_into_administration/
Here is the latest publically available Balance Sheet of the very useful, but for me neither fish nor foul Costar UK Limited. As with Uber one wonders whose lunch they, Costar Uk Limited, has designs upon. The US operation is quite distinct, Brokerage in the US is a rather different business to how things work in the UK Market. In the UK it seems that the US directors of Co Star think things will change, EG and Property Weeks are clearly taking different paths but it’s not only their Lunch that is at risk.
Costar UK Limited, ‘an Uber of real estate data’?
Marcel Du Champs said, “it’s the Viewer that makes the Picture. ”
Allors! regardeur vous les tableaux, et tout alors pendrevous, votre Agencie?
En Garde!
Look Very Carefully It Might be your Lunch!
Some Web 3 Stuff. Heres the Beef!
https://www.minds.com/Tonefreqhz/blog/https-www-linkedin-com-in-rogerglewis-1069871832339398656
https://steemit.com/@tonefreqhz
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Q1i0XXbNGO4R/
https://bittube.tv/post/30e03827-3aa3-4d94-9957-1c23af5fb204
http://notthegrubstreetjournal.com/2020/01/05/at-the-end-of-the-day-10/
That’s a selection of some of the Work on Distributed platforms we have been doing things with at Tychastic Investments Group over the past 5 years.
We are an Internet of Things, Think & Do Tank. The kind of Tank that does not invade Poland, does not Steal your Data and sell it back to you at an inflated price. More of a Giant Aquarium than a Goldfish Bowl and certainly with a good attention span.
Thank you for paying attention.
Published by
Tel: 01732 870415
Test
https://megacancer.com/2019/12/16/merry-christmas-from-the-big-bang/
We do Not have a choice:
„An individual’s “success” in life, in acquiring and consuming resources or having many offspring is the thermodynamic success of the Universe which uses and shapes humans and other life for its dissipative bidding. You think you are successful, but you have been used to further the apparent goals of an expanding Universe. It’s no accident that successful dissipation bolsters your self-image and gives you a good feeling as your homeostasis is maintained. More money, more food, more investments, more children, more dopamine, more………. it all feels good and that’s no accident. The Universe leads you through life in an endless quest for more free energy gradients and after each acquisition the happiness seems to fade until another is found.“
“The Selfish Gene”
I’m with you and James, (Megacancer author who is also on a small list I co-own)
Steve
Try turning down the thermostat on central heating and see how quickly your wife mentions Divorce……
‘Being comfy’ ie thoughtless use of available resources = implied mating suitability, reproductive success and longevity.
Note: handing her a saw and an axe, and suggesting she visit the local wood will probably not work as an alternative strategy.
I know some of you already follow Kurt Cobb – but for those who don’t a timely reminder about America’s true interest in Iran.
Also read the comment at the bottom of the article.
https://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2020/01/iran-energy-and-war.html?m=1
Donald
https://ellenbrown.com/2011/04/16/libya-all-about-oil-or-all-about-banking/
Libya has a few clues. This from Ellen Brown in 2011.
Alex Newman wrote in the New American:
In a statement released last week, the rebels reported on the results of a meeting held on March 19. Among other things, the supposed rag-tag revolutionaries announced the “[d]esignation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”
Thanks for the link Roger – it makes the US and its allies come across as the axis of evil at times.
As a sidenote Libya’s part in the 1988 Pan Am bomb has always been disputed.
Just to avoid and confusion is piece about the rebels forming s bank from March 2019?
the article is from 2011 ewaf88
Many thanks Donald – a very useful explanation. I have copied my children.
Best wishes for a Happy New Year
Hi no problem – a happy New Year to you too although – in my view – it’s got off to a terrible and frightening start.
This Varafoukis Lecture on The Nature of Money was brought to mind today after watching a more recent interview he gave to a French interview channel in February 2019, recommended to me by a French friend today.
In the second one He is asked to explain the Exponential Function.
@ 24.08 income was around 55 trillion just say
25:51
55 there are too many zeros to worry
25:52 about 55 the total size of financial
25:57 derivatives was 70 okay so total income
26:02 another world
55 26:05 total derivatives 70 2007 exponential
26:12 growth okay this is this global income
26:17 had risen because of globalization from
26:19 55 to 70 from in six years as a lot from
26:23 55 to 70 growth in the size magnitude
26:28 volume of the river
26:30 others from 70 to 780 , nice so to
26:38 put it bluntly planet Earth was not big
26:40 enough for this bubble say burst in 2008
Steve Keen A good friend of Varafoukis has published and been linked to here on the Physiocrats and the Energy aspects of the Economic System. The point is though that it’s not only about Energy qua energy.
Which brings me to Dominic Cummings? I actually read all of the linked-to papers and blogs, After the whole exercise I have more doubts about Dominic Cummings before I started, The Un-necessary, “I will bin you”, machismo is rather off-putting. This Talk on the Edge web site is very good, Cummings would do well to watch it and internalise the ideas. https://www.edge.org/conversation/lee_smolin-the-causal-theory-of-views
This is a very good video on Di-Electric Magnetism, now this guy is a proper misfit. What’s more, he is I think very close to scientific truth as we would get to, absent vested interests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KooPsEE7E-Q
Smolin really is onto something as is this man.
https://www.edge.org/conversation/stephen_wolfram-mining-the-computational-universe
I had reblogged this but as it hadn’t appeared I have re-posted instead. For a Blog that purports to be about scientific rigour, it seems to me that Scepticism, essential to the scientific enquiry, should welcome other points of view. The edge site is particularly good at that, at the edges of Human Knowledge, the way forward is not placed onto a handy shelf of bumper stickers.
“All men in this and other countries are accustomed from youth
to measure the increase or diminution of wealth by dollars or other
denominations supposed to be units of value…. Even when the facts
are understood, the idea that the change is in the value of the commodities measured, and not in that of the dollar itself, is so natural
that a long and severe course of mental discipline is necessary to get
rid of it. Indeed, we question whether the most profound economist
can be entirely successful in this respect “(Newcomb, 1879, p. 230).
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6360154.pdf
https://nextexx.com/electron-2-unanswered-questions/
“The idea of electricity as a flow of ‘electrons’ in a conductor was regarded by Oliver Heaviside as “a psychosis”. This encouraged Heaviside to begin a series of writings
Also consider the J.J. Thomson concept of the “electron” (his own discovery). Thomson considered the electron the terminal end of one unit line of dielectric induction. “Electrons as a separate, distinct entity…doesn’t really exist, they are merely bumps in something called a ‘field’.” – Dr. Steve Biller
WOW, I can’t thank you enough for all this Roger – I am but a poor soul as far as advanced physics goes and my math requires something to be desired! After 75 years – at last a viable explanation – and I love short pithy videos.
I did Chem, Bio, Phys at ‘A’ level in 1963 but instead of going to Imperial College to study biochemistry, I got diverted and joined a local car auction instead – great income, poor academic learning environment!
I have retained a passing interest in science and through computing learned more about this subject – but your short videos tell an amazing story – isn’t this generally accepted by the mainstream theoretical physicists in their ivory towers? Here we have a unified theory – amazing. So, light really is a wave form and photons are a human virtual construct, like time.
You have made my day – what an wonderfully knowledgeable site has Dr Tim enabled. I have passed it to my sons, one is an electrical engineer and the other a computer programmer (open source/Linux). I am sure that it will blow their minds unless they already know. I am definitely going to buy a Toroflux! https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=toroflux – £5
Have you come across Prof. John R R Searle?- worth a look – he might have stumbled into dielectric fields too: http://www.searlsolution.com/
Hi Peter,
This Eric Dollard Video is very well worth watching its 3 and a half hours long but worth the time I assure you.
Eulers Identity and other “Constants are In my view related to Electro Magnetism and field theory.
My own research in these matters relates to Sound and Signal processing, particularly FFT analysis, I have also modelled Timbre in guitar bodies and pickups the Time and frequency domains are mutually exclusive in computation and windowing in computer modelling have profound effects on matters of precision. Always one as a modeller one must remember the Map is not the territory. an ancient and wise Military Aphorism.
Claes Johnson
is my tutor of choice in Applied Mathematics and FInite element analysis,
https://claesjohnson.blogspot.com/
his ebook the Dr Faustus of Modern Physics is well worth taking the time to read and then to ponder.
https://www.freebookcentre.net/physics-books-download/Dr-Faustus-of-Modern-Physics.html
Wal Thornhill and the Electronic Universe and Maurice Cotterals theory of Gravity, also Hoyle and Alfven on Steady State theories and Plasma Cosmology all fall outside of the deterministic Atomism of Post Copenhagen consensus Bohrite Dogma. Most of the good science is done in Garden Sheds in the back yards of FlyOver America and North of Watford and outside of Metropolitan areas,
Being handy with Bale String and Gaffer tape can lead to a whole world of discovery and invention, it was ever thus.
Listen to Alfvens two Nobel Lectures they are nothing short of inspiring.
Thank you once again Roger, all most enlightening for me. And I will definitely follow up once I have cleared the publishing of my book this quarter. I have saved your comment and will return asap. My life is becoming somewhat busy!
Hi, Peter, I have looked at the Searle Link when you have posted it before. I have had an interest in zero-point energy for many decades. My contention is that the earth is a perpetual motion Machine within a perpetual motion cosmos system. The Earth System Dynamo sits right before our noses and the problems we face are to do with Enclosure and False scarcity narratives, human constructs of institutionalised control for the protection of ingroup elite privilege.
Anthropocentric thinking is a peculiar hubris of a certain breed of control freakery.
Yes Roger, I agree with you. It seems that I am not normal either – being a person to question everything. It offers and exciting and fulfilling life and at my age I should think about slowing down but actually life is speeding up.
My father (an amateur philosopher) taught me ‘elegant sufficiency’:
Elegant Sufficiency
Having enough for fulfillment, while avoiding waste and excess, valuing quality over quantity.
Ummm, have to remind myself again!
As a straw poll I wonder how many Seeds commenters possess a soldering Iron? How many Seeds commenters can programme in or use Python or have any rudimentary skills sufficient to compile their own applications from Source? How many people here use Gnu/Linux.
Tim uses Duckgo go as his browser of choice how many others use another browser outside of the Google Suite?
On the Cummings Blog post this was the site I found most interesting of all that Dominic found interesting.
https://dynamicland.org/
This statement stood out?
“No normal person sees an app
and thinks “I can make that myself.”
Or even “I can modify that
to do what I actually need.”
By that definition I am not a normal person, I think the statement is false it is natural in all of us to question, to ask why? We are trained and indoctrinated not to do it, that’s rather different to not having a natural inclination to do it anyway.
In the Pavlovian dystopia of surveillance Capitalism, it is more important than ever to make Orwell Fiction again.
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it”. George Orwell
Well, I can program in Python (although I dislike Python), can compile from source, and use Linux.
Got it thanks Roger
The “blame game” is part of hierarchical and tribal competition. It solves nothing in the big picture. It merely shuffles positions of relative power of groups.
The intellectually aggressive hedgehogs knew one big thing and sought, under the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that big thing to “cover” new cases; the more eclectic foxes knew many little things and were content to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world.
In: Justin Fox. “How to Be Bad at Forecasting,” in Harvard Business Review, May 11, 2012.
About prediction and forecasting. Fox commented that “psychologist Philip Tetlock (following the lead of Isaiah Berlin), divided the world of political forecasters into hedgehogs and foxes.”
Tetlock is one of Dominic Cummings Go To’s.
People who screw up or act illegally or Criminally Negligently, a big Clue, Bankers in 2008, should go to jail. That No Big wigs did and haven’t really since Enron and the Savings and loans scandals before. That’s not the Blame Game it’s asking that no one should be above the Civil or Criminal Legal and justice systems let alone Sat astride it and mocking it.
I don’t like abuse of power any more than you do. Go for it! Good luck, as you’ll need plenty. Scale will destroy all. Reset the deck chairs on the Titanic. 😉
IRAN – a SEEDS take on the economy
Re. assessing the tensions between Iran and the US/West, here are some findings on the economy of the Islamic Republic, drawn from SEEDS.
I should caveat that available data for Iran is not wholly satisfactory, particularly over debt numbers. IMF data is useful, the BIS doesn’t list Iran in its credit data, and official Iranian stats are hard to navigate. Other sources are patchy on Iran.
Starting with estimated GDP for 2019, the local number translates to $450bn based on market F/X rates, but the PPP equivalent (about $1,450bn) is probably much more reliable. C-GDP is probably very similar, in that there seems, unsurprisingly, to have been little or no ‘debt-bingeing’ “credit effect” behind Iranian GDP.
ECoE, put by SEEDS at 7.0% (2019), is surprisingly high for a significant energy-exporting country. In USD PPP, prosperity per person is estimated at $16,300 (though only $5,080 in market dollars).
Importantly, prosperity per capita is falling quite rapidly. SEEDS data shows it down by 16%, both local and USD PPP, since the recent peak in 2011. (It has dropped even further in market dollars, but what markets think about the Iranian currency isn’t ‘fact’). Prosperity in constant Rial is falling by between 3% and 4% annually, according to SEEDS.
I’m posting this comment because realistic and useful economic info on Iran seems thin on the ground. Data converted into USD at market rates is virtually meaningless.
Objectively, Iran has a problem in that prosperity per person is falling rapidly – but it hasn’t ‘collapsed’, as some might think or assume.
Iran is an Islamic state, as such, it does not have the Deadweight of usury around its neck, merely of US sanctions. The Usury point is not to be trifled with although remains one of the great enduring taboos of Finacialised Capitalism and the Dismal Science.
Prof. Helmuth Kreutz’s The Money Syndrome or Gringons Money Lent Twice to see how Usury is the problem and driver of a Growth imperative and all the absurd wastes and inefficiencies baked into the Cake to privilege the Financial parasite class.
The Islamic ban on usury is also in the Bible, and was enforced in Christian Europe until the sixteenth century. Opposition to usury seems a wise principle.
This needn’t mean that all debt is necessarily bad (mortgages have helped many). But opposition to usury means, to me, that exploitation of others is always bad, and few instruments offer as much scope for exploitation as debt.
I agree about usury Tim and it has brought nothing but trouble upon large groups of people. However, I had a long discussion with Gerry about this when I was crafting my Chapter on Money. I had thought that money originated with tokens, like shells etc and then gold of course. But Gerry pointed out that money first began as credit: You do this for me and I will return at sometime in the future and repay you.
Credit of course is the other side of debt. And as you say, debt can be good if it is used to yield a return like investing in productive machinery. Debt for consumption is not good as it is bringing forward future production and will eventually have to be balanced out – which is mostly where we are today.
If companies has invested in income yielding assets instead of financialisation, buying their own shares etc then maybe we would be in a better place. It is of course a lot more complex than this but for me it is the core problem with crony capitalism.
@austrianpeter
If you read the article on ‘the big defector’, you can see that investing a little money into the whole advertising/ big data/ AI business has returned enormous GDP and immense wealth. But does anyone here think that has been ‘productive’?
It seems to me that our problems are much deeper than money and debt. I do agree that talking to governments has to begin with money. With corporations, it also ends with money. With Degrowth happening despite the best efforts of government, then they may turn to Quality of Life in desperation.
Don Stewart
PS. Every time I type ‘Degrowth’. the Apple software ‘corrects’ me too ‘Regrowth’. Enough said.
Thanks Don agreed. But you know they always say “follow the money” – I would not agree it is right, but it is what it is. And yes my own US online dictionary constantly confuses ‘degrowth’ – there, it has done it again. I have settled on ‘de-growth’ as it seems to like that!
Collapse of the credit system has likely the best chance of decreasing what you call usury. Until then, interest rates matching inflation should not be termed usurious, as retirees and those saving for it merely break even over time if rates of interest match inflation. If zero interest, they are pauperized over time.
It must be almost entirely the reduction of imports, isn’t it?
Tim we agree on that, manipulated behaviour is not the same as determined behaviour it is a flaw at the centre of atomist logic. Graeber is very good on Debt Jubilees they were the ancients solution to the “Problem of Usury”. It’s a huge subject area I actually blame Jeremy Benthams In defence of Usury for the fall of sensible political defence against Usury. Bentham wrote that in an attempt to get Adam Smith to recant from his views against Usury. It’s a delicious Irony of all the Adam Smith fan boys who have not taken the Trouble to read Wealth of Nations let alone Smiths substantial Body of other work. Darwin is in many respects as dumbed down and bumper stickered as is Malthus.
Its a tautology, Chicken and egg.
The Solution is to create bonds bearing equity returns on real investment, not Casino Captial Debt perpetuating the Hubris of the Financial Oligarchical class and its cronies sand henchmen.
Taleb calls it asymmetric Risk and its a Skin in the game problem, too many dilettantes and not enough stakeholders. Moral Hazard no longer exists in the current bankrupt Model, there are people who are to Blame for this Steven, we all must acknowledge our own part in the idiotic artifice, some are more guilty than others, we all know which side we stand on when we clean our teeth or shave whilst looking in the mirror.
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~roehrigw/kennedy/english/
Margrit Kennedy: Interest and Inflation Free Money
(Published by Seva International; ISBN 0-9643025-0-0;
1. Four Basic Misconceptions About Money 15
…First Misconception: There Is Only One Type of Growth 18
…Second Misconception: We Pay Interest Only If We Borrow Money 24
…Third Misconception: In the Present Monetary System
We Are All Equally Affected by Interest 25
…Fourth Misconception: Inflation Is an Integral Part of Free Market Economies 29
Interest on money drives need for expansion.
Reliance on one currency ( the dollar is a defacto gold standard.with no monetisation of an analogue for silver to provide circulation and a multiplier due to velocity.
”Patriarchal Value Coherence
All patriarchal societies in history have had the tendency to impose
a monopoly of a single currency, hierarchically issued, naturally scarce or artificially kept scarce, and with positive interest rates. This was, for instance, the case in Sumer and Babylon, in Greece and Rome, and from the Renaissance onwards in Western societies all the way to today. The form of these currencies has varied widely, ranging from standardized commodities, precious metals, paper or electronic bits. But what they all have in
common is that governments accepted only that specific currency for payment of taxes, that this currency could be stored and accumulated, and that borrowing such currencies implied payment of interest. They all have in common Yang characteristics as illustrated in Figure 1.”
“Academic Taboo
Challenging a paradigm in any field is always a risky business. In particular, challenging
the monetary paradigm can be interpreted as violating an academic taboo. It somehow
gets in the way in being invited to the top conferences or getting published in the most
prestigious “peer-reviewed” journals. Let us take as example the most prestigious award
of all, the “Nobel Prize in Economics”. Many people ignore that there is a significant
difference between that economics prize and the other five established in 1901; the ones
in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. The Economics prize is the only
one that wasn’t created by the will of Alfred Nobel, nor is it funded by the Nobel
Foundation. Its technical name is the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in
Memory of Alfred Nobel”, and it was first awarded in 1969. Its laureates are selected
exclusively by the Board of the Swedish central bank, and its funding is coming from the
central bank. Is it surprising that none of the 64 Nobel Laureates in economics so far have
made the mistake of challenging the monetary paradigm?
Paul Krugman told the author personally in 2002 in Seoul, Korea, that he has always
followed one piece of advice that his MIT professors had given him: “never touch the
money system”. He did get the Nobel in 2008.
Conclusions
The four layers that generate the blind spot in the monetary paradigm reinforce each other
to the point of locking us into a pretty tight straightjacket around what is perceived as
“normal” or “acceptable” in the monetary domain.”
Bernard Lietaer. The Monetary Blind Spot by Bernard Lietaer
Bernards Integral Theory of Money is also very good.
http://paulgrignon.netfirms.com/MoneyasDebt/MAD2016/essays.htm
Grigons work, not just cartoon films are excellent. Hardly surprisingly the work is massively shadowbanned and kept from a wider audience.
Hi Don,
“It seems to me that our problems are much deeper than money and debt.”
The point on Degrowth is epistemological in many respects and the semantics and semiotics of what is termed “Capitalism” claims its laurels based upon an idea of Growth being always good by the measure of GDP.
The process of giving a new clear and compelling narrative around the distribution of Lifes necessities into a new paradigm is not a trivial task. The Advertising techniques of mass public manipulation will not easily and convincingly start playing the new tune.
In many respects, a sort of Truth and Reconciliation process that was embarked upon in post-apartheid South Africa will be required to allow the opening of a new book, not just the turning of a page or opening of a new chapter.
Part of the pickle our current leadership have got themselves into is that a climate of selective blindness dominates the breakdown processes of a failing system. Some people are actually still doing very nicely from the wealth transfers that have been engendered by the present system. Not everyone is ignorant of the processes at work and whilst many in apparent positions of power and influence are ignorant as evidenced by the Positive Money quiz on Monetary Mechanics in the Uk parliament.
the PoSitive Money quiz Written and developed by David Faraday – Take the Quiz https://t.co/4Wp0AJz71N
#quiz
https://twitter.com/GrubStreetJorno/status/1214236693173325824
http://positivemoney.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Positive-Money-Dods-Monitoring-Poll-of-MPs.pdf
Money Debt and taxation are all intimately intertwined and do not do as advertised on the box. Managing the telling of the truth is not something which comes naturally to the Technocrats of the Rules-based international order,
Jean Claude Junker ( Immediate past president of the EU commission, famously said.
When the going gets tough, you have to lie.
Jean-Claude Juncker
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10874230/Jean-Claude-Juncker-profile-When-it-becomes-serious-you-have-to-lie.html
In Paradigm Shifts, old conventional theories do not step aside easily.
“A paradigm shift typically occurred, Kuhn argued, when a new generation of scholars and researchers exposed to the rival theory felt sufficiently frustrated by this inertia and had reached sufficiently senior posts that they could launch an assault on the old theory. At that point, the proponents of the traditional theory faced a crisis. The scientific establishment would resist, often aggressively, but at some point, the fortifications protecting the old theory would crumble and collapse. Then suddenly almost everyone would switch to the new theory, treating the old theory as if it were some relic of the dark ages.”
That’s Johnathan Cook on the Guardians attitude to Jeremy Corbyn, whilst Boris Johnson’s recent landslide has put Mr Corbyn substantially out to grass, The ideas which His Shadow Chancellor John Mc Donnel espouses and also those eloquently put forward by Janis Varafoukis have a large and growing constituency.
In the fog of the change, a lot of jockeying for position is quite evident and the various factions of the Oligarchy are clearly at war with one another, and not just the old Aristotelian and Platonic beef.
I rather like this scene from the Long Good Friday a classic British gangster movie.
https://youtu.be/KIychwPlgpk
Make of that what you will, to me it’s redolent of the COP25 or Any G20 meeting, even the UNGA or Security council.
Regarding Mis Pricing and misallocation of resources under advanced Financialised Capitalism this paper from 2010 by Saskia Sassen
http://www.columbia.edu/~sjs2/PDFs/savage.pdf
is very good regarding Debt as an instrument of Primitive accumulation, or Coercive Aggregation. These trends are Capital / Political and Ideological in nature and not I would argue driven by Energy imperatives but a necessity for keeping the medium of Exchange scarce so as to privilege one ingroup of Finacial Capitalists, the Roving Cavaliers of Credit as Marx called them. as such SEEDS is forecasting a problem which will arrive but could be postponed a little longer by Changing the Management.
http://paulgrignon.netfirms.com/MoneyasDebt/Grignon_Recursive_Re-lending_Analysis.pdf
Talk about “appeal to authority” 😉
My name is mentioned once in your 1000 word diatribe. I’m familiar with M. Kennedy’s work, and much else that you paste here.
Questions:
How does it change (from human intentionality and action) *sooner* than system crash or multiple decades long natural evolution? Do you propose pitchforks at a time when drones can control mobs? Why direct your energy at esoteric utopian theories?
I hate fiat/credit based money too. But as our host says, this is what we’re stuck with now. You like to curse at the powerful and call them names. I choose instead to deal with probabilities going forward that will affect my son and grandsons, and small responses I can take in educating them with old skills as well as insights into system fragility/brittleness.
Steven,
The sort of Name dropping you indulge your self in is an appeal to authority, Citing Sources with their own reasoning is not appealing to Authority it is the presentation of Argument and data as evidence.
I know you are upset that you think I have not shown your wished-for level of deference to your “Systems Paper on Over-Population”, It is outdated and also superficial on its treatment of the subject. I spent a good deal of time structuring a reasoned argument in response, again citing evidence and data which is checkable, and challengeable and you responded with abusive emails and continued sour grapes on this site.
What I have presented here in this discussion thread is all publicly available for review and readers here and elsewhere can make up their own minds. Your own feelings on the matter are of no interest to me Steven.
Enjoy the rest of your day. I am getting ready for a business trip to London, maybe even to meet with Dominic Cummings for an interview. I’ll let you all know how I get on.
With Best wishes and no Animus,
Roger
Supporters like Sheldrake? Cummings will not be impressed.
Please enlighten us as to the source of your claim that electromagnetism is not physical. Energy is physical if you recall, and electricity is energy. The Nobel Committee is all ears and ready to award a Prize.
I have responded here but the comment has not been published. It is copy and pasted onto my own blog.
Regarding the charge of Diatribe and Esoteric utopian theories, I have not made any such arguments or any appeals to Authority. No, I do not propose pitchforks I subscribe to Erica Chernowerths research that non-violent civil resistance is what works and is the only plausible action in a State apparatus where the monopoly on violence and as you say access to instruments of surveillance capitalism are at the disposal of the current corrupted establishment leadership and being used with increasing frequency in France and the United States as well as in the so-called failed rogue states.
Regarding your religious atheism Steven, your own zealotry does not convert into better arguments for the case you continually fail to make.
Regarding the philosophy of mind and atomistic reductionist world view to which you claim no alternative Electro Magnetism is non-pyhsical, no one knows many of the answers that you claim to be settled, they simply are not.
Not taking sides here – I wouldn’t dream of it! – but I do wonder whether this debate-within-a-debate – is of any interest at all to ‘the general reader’?
I strongly suspect it is not Tim, It is also of zero interest to me. Tedious is not the word.
Then let’s stop it.
Straws in the Wind
*Is this Reality?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/02/big-techs-big-defector
It’s hard to argue that turning a billion dollars into 500 billion dollars isn’t real. So maybe the Yellow Brick Road is paved with Advertisements guided by Big Data and AI?
*Maybe solar panels aren’t such a great idea after all?
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/03/the-ugly-side-o.html
*Maybe electrical gadgets are a bad idea?
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/12/too-much-combustion-too-little-fire.html
Actually, the description of stacked functions in the Too Much Combustion article leads me back to the ultimate stacking scheme that Albert Bates supports. The stacked functions works best, I think, for a family or small group located close to each other. For one thing, they require a lot of tending. There is no timer function with electricity and electrical control circuitry.
I guess my main conclusions are:
*Technology is much over-hyped in terms of increasing human flourishing.
*The people who lust after even more technology are driving the ship toward the rocks.
*It is useful to ponder a return to a biomass driven system, but as Australia shows all too well, biomass combustion will kill everyone unless it is tightly controlled in a CoolLab type environment.
*The conclusion that the Earth can support 10 or 12 billion people with biomass requires the ‘end of the wild’, with everything turned into coppice (as I understand it). Which suggests to me that a more realistic target is 2 billion or less.
Don Stewart
Steven B Kurtz
on January 6, 2020 at 6:30 pm said:
Please enlighten us as to the source of your claim that electromagnetism is not physical. Energy is physical if you recall, and electricity is energy. The Nobel Committee is all ears and ready to award a Prize.
https://nextexx.com/electron-2-unanswered-questions/
“The idea of electricity as a flow of ‘electrons’ in a conductor was regarded by Oliver Heaviside as “a psychosis”. This encouraged Heaviside to begin a series of writings
Also consider the J.J. Thomson concept of the “electron” (his own discovery). Thomson considered the electron the terminal end of one unit line of dielectric induction. “Electrons as a separate, distinct entity…doesn’t really exist, they are merely bumps in something called a ‘field’.” – Dr. Steve Biller.
Steven, see the edge Talk by Smolin and the Stephen Wolfram talk on Computational mining of the universe. also, read Claes Johnsons Dr Faustus of Modern Physics.
Throw in a Dash of Hoyle and Alven and you will see that String Theory is at and has been at something of a dead end. As for the Higgs Bosun? believe that and you will believe anything.
One of Doms Favourites is Dostoyevsky.
“Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that
he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the
evidence of his senses only to justify his logic”. (Dostoyevsky)
Ch 48 Penguin Logic.
http://www.csc.kth.se/~cgjoh/mysticism.pdf
Returning to our main theme, I would suggest that historically ‘quality of life’ has never been the principal concern of governments, or any entity in a position to levy taxes (nomad hordes, etc) until the oil flow permitted a certain self-indulgent fantasy to develop in the 20th century – the Welfare State, now nearing its end.
At best, it has occurred to more enlightened and less brutal rulers (or their advisors!) that healthy, fat, sheep were all the better to sheer, and no more; or that taxing merchants regularly and reasonably works out better in the long run than arbitrarily seizing their goods and torturing them for ransom. This should never be mistaken for evidence of benevolent intent.
As the flows of fossil fuels start to dry up, the behaviour of pre-Modern societies will be a far better guide to how things might develop.
In the case of complex societies in decay, the lesson is generally that the wind is not ‘tempered to the lamb’ (the tax-payer), and the shears that are used get rather bloody as a system in decline attempts the hopeless task of maintaining itself and what is regarded as essential infrastructure against all the odds, until the whole thing collapses. Why should we be any different?
That’s how I view things, too. The kicking can routine via QE/ZIRP/NIRP/MMT is still operative, but if/when energy really bites, air will leave the balloon. No magic bullet is on the horizon unless fusion or an unknown surprises.
Quite so Xabier, thank you and I entirely agree, we are no different. The rules for the rulers never change and they will fight to end to preserve their advantage: