tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33956713897949143542024-03-08T14:17:59.057-08:00Apprehending PostscarcityAmerica has long reached a pinnacle of productive efficiency and prowess impossible to imagine just a century ago. Yet, Productivity Dividends of an entire era of progress remain undeclared. It's as if we do not understand, as a people, how to move into the assurance of abundance that we have already collectively created. For more than 50 years America's best and brightest have called for unconditional #BasicIncome. It's time to join them. Here's why.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-1570805311666080412013-06-21T21:14:00.001-07:002013-06-21T21:14:21.992-07:00Ver @JeremyRifkin Habla del Desempleo Tecnologico (Speak about Technological Unemployment) #BasicIncome<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/tslntbfHUjQ" width="459"></iframe>Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-57094363447202253772013-05-21T19:50:00.001-07:002013-05-21T19:50:32.156-07:00The audacious #postscarcity plan to #endhunger with 3-D printed foodPer NASA via @<a href="http://temporaryhuman.com/post/51041281480/the-audacious-plan-to-endhunger-with-3-d-printed">Temporary Human</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">“A day when every kitchen has a 3D printer, and the earth’s 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store. Contractor’s vision would mean the end of food waste, because the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted before being returned to the store. Ubiquitous food synthesizers would also create new ways of producing the basic calories on which we all rely. Since a powder is a powder, the inputs could be anything that contain the right organic molecules.”</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://24.media.tumblr.com/cb782638bff2cd3b10e6b17aba6c17ec/tumblr_mn6icmriQO1qmuagto1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/cb782638bff2cd3b10e6b17aba6c17ec/tumblr_mn6icmriQO1qmuagto1_500.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-72670171417323889522013-05-12T19:59:00.001-07:002013-05-12T19:59:11.446-07:00America: Utopian Project from Day One. @rortybomb #BasicIncome #EndPoverty<p dir=ltr>Washington Post <a href="http://twitter.com/rortybomb">@</a><a href="http://twitter.com/rortybomb">rortybomb</a>:</p>
<p dir=ltr>"taking <a href="http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/11/thinking-utopian-how-about-a-universal-basic-income/">a </a><a href="http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/11/thinking-utopian-how-about-a-universal-basic-income/">moment</a><a href="http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/11/thinking-utopian-how-about-a-universal-basic-income/"> to </a><a href="http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/11/thinking-utopian-how-about-a-universal-basic-income/">think</a> ... shows that the core projects of balancing what markets do in our economy and the general commitment to democracy would still continue, and could even be amplified, with a universal basic income."</p>
Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-26747622554118217172013-03-05T12:11:00.001-08:002013-03-05T12:15:00.755-08:00It's Also About Preventing 40% of Our Food Wealth Going to WasteCertainly #postscarcity is eventually about nano-assembled, Star Trek replicator, instant-on-demand, horse-meat-free meatballs for 9 billion; but on the way to that golden future, it's immediately <a href="http://www.wastedfood.com/about/">about improving the effective circulation of resources on hand.</a><br />
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Last August, <i>TheAtlantic</i>'s Brian Fung explained, far too politely, in our estimate, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/08/how-40-of-our-food-goes-to-waste/261498/" target="_blank">How 40% of Our Food Goes to Waste</a>.<br />
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Brian wrote, "In a country where overeating is basically a national pastime, the fact that the United States grows more than its citizens can eat, drink, or trade away is remarkable." We not only consider such a remarkably infamous feat utterly unconscionable, we find it an equally deplorable and all too apt as analogy for the way America produces, hoards, and wastes wealth of all kinds. Call it a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2w6BqUBghg" target="_blank">Cash Hoarding Obesity</a> epidemic, the direct result of an insatiably self-indulgent, obliviously obstinate culture that congratulates itself for attaining the loftiest pinnacles of industrial efficiency and machine intelligence while completing, cluelessly failing to achieve -- in the alleged most advance economy in the world -- even the most rudimentary standards of human decency articulated in the <a href="http://j.mp/Article25UDHR" target="_blank">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a>. Article 25:<br />
<ul><li>(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.</li>
</ul>Here's what America's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM" target="_blank">Cash Hoarding Obesity</a> looks like in more accessible visual terms (looking past the pointlessly pejorative interlinear mischaracterization of #socialism, which is another needless distortion we'll continue to take up in other entries.)Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-73270784132977659532013-02-06T10:41:00.003-08:002013-02-06T10:41:57.717-08:00#postscarcity: Some will doubt you. Let 'em.<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Y4H8GxSJVm8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-75292731033488940502013-01-26T12:38:00.001-08:002013-01-26T12:38:37.082-08:00Opening the #OvertonWindow: America Has Hit “Peak Jobs” @rezendi in @TechCrunch It's the data, stupid. <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/26/america-has-hit-peak-jobs/">America Has Hit “Peak Jobs”</a><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Distribution_of_Annual_Household_Income_in_the_United_States.png/640px-Distribution_of_Annual_Household_Income_in_the_United_States.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Distribution_of_Annual_Household_Income_in_the_United_States.png/640px-Distribution_of_Annual_Household_Income_in_the_United_States.png" width="320" /></a></div>;Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-5772118893675110252012-12-21T01:42:00.003-08:002012-12-21T01:42:34.503-08:00Grandpa's Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren is here. It's Us.Via <a href="http://bigthink.com/politeia/why-do-we-still-have-to-work?page=all">BigThink</a>:
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In a 1930 essay called “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote that “assuming no important wars and no important increase in population, the economic problem may be solved, or be at least within sight of solution, within a hundred years.”
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If productivity continued to increase by just a few percent every year (which it has, and much more), then through the miracle of compound interest we could be eight times better off in 2030 than we were in 1930. And, with that much wealth, we would finally be able to satisfy everyone’s basic needs. <b>We might still want more, but what Keynes called the “economic problem” would be be solved.</b> For the first time in human history, our problem would be not how to provide for ourselves, but what to do with all our free time.
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Krugman argues that we may be seeing what economists call “capital-biased technological change.” As machines become more productive, the people who own them may be keeping a larger share of the profits. At a recent talk, according to Owen Zidar, Summers asked us to imagine what the world would look like if machines could make or do anything. In this world, robot butlers could free us from work by providing us with the necessities of life. The problem is that in this world the profits of robot labor would go only to the people who own the robots
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[E]conomic inequality is increasing just as we are finally beginning to have enough to provide for all of our citizens. The same technology that makes us rich as a society gives the people who control it the power to take home a larger and larger share of our income.
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This is not the world Keynes imagined. We are richer today than any society before in human history. But if innovation slows and inequality continues to grow, the economic problem will remain as bad for most of us as ever.</blockquote>
Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-18588007655750403412012-09-18T14:05:00.001-07:002012-09-18T14:05:39.394-07:00Inevitable Obsolescence of Human Labor<p>It's just not theoretical anymore. the forecasts of the past century or so <a title="Meet Baxter" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/science/a-robot-with-a-delicate-touch.html" target="_blank">have come to pass</a>. We're here, now. We need to be in the present when we're making public policy that shapes and guides the next steps into the future.</p><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/science/a-robot-with-a-delicate-touch.html" target="_blank"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-1-I8ZuyZNus/UFjhrr7fn0I/AAAAAAAABPU/slkqw9wHWMM/%25255BUNSET%25255D.jpg" alt="Baxter: Ushering in the Obsolescence of Human Labor " width="512" height="307" /></a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-47819137582278136062012-08-03T21:52:00.001-07:002012-08-03T21:52:26.609-07:00Imagine - #GSP12 Postscarcity Abundance Remix<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/LBG1aEJdZqs?fs=1" width="480"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-31170753915433344372012-08-03T00:52:00.000-07:002012-08-03T01:07:15.795-07:00How Much Is Enough?<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="GingerNoCheckStart"></span>"Instead of redistribution, we offer people debt; and of course that is a very, very insecure way. Another would be an <a href="http://youtu.be/GzYahFIWtv8?t=15m16s">Unconditional Citizen's Income</a> ..."</span></blockquote>
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<span class="GingerNoCheckEnd"></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-47301611900372070282012-01-15T15:13:00.000-08:002012-12-01T16:51:50.210-08:00"The economics of the future are somewhat different." - Jean Luc PicardPerhaps too much data on this site is making some aspects of immediate and inevitable change seem overwhelming. Maybe a little make believe will help those trapped in the current make believe world.<br />
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But wait, <a href="http://capitalismplusplus.blogspot.com/2012/01/captain-picard-on-fate-of-capitalism.html" target="_blank">there's more</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-90789410878061000092011-12-04T13:18:00.001-08:002011-12-04T14:27:37.005-08:00Postscarcity in Education"Whenever we think scaling or automating things, or creating things that have zero incremental delivery cost, there's an implicit assumption that it's probably nice, probably good, and it's better than nothing (because of zero incremental delivery cost). <b>But there's no way that it's going to better than the live, expensive, resource-scarce version of it</b>." - Salmon Khan<br />
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And whenever we think that, we may be entirely wrong. #rethink #postscarcity<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/74TqZJud2EA" width="480"></iframe>Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-64943917403208027122011-11-13T12:11:00.000-08:002011-11-13T12:31:31.043-08:00Global Super-Rich Stash: Now $25 TrillionNation of Change: <a href="http://www.nationofchange.org/global-super-rich-stash-now-25-trillion-1321201867">The Global Super-Rich Stash: Now $25 Trillion</a>.<br />
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"The 12 lawmakers on this congressional super committee — six Republicans and six Democrats — are trying to trim $1.2 trillion off federal red ink over the next ten years. <b>On their chopping block: Medicare, Social Security, and assorted other programs essential to the well-being of America’s 99 percent.</b></blockquote>
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No one knows how much budget-cutting pain the panel will be recommending. But panel members could actually avoid all that pain — and raise over $1 trillion in new money for investing in America — simply by subjecting all U.S. individual net worth over $30 million to a modest wealth tax. </blockquote>
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<b>An annual 5 percent wealth tax on this overage would raise over $293 billion a year, or $2.9 trillion over the next decade — more than double the $1.2 trillion the super committee is so desperately looking to find.</b><br />
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The most amazing part of this? America’s ultra rich could easily pay this 5 percent annual wealth tax for the next ten years and remain as rich as ever.<br />
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That’s because wealth begets wealth. All those trillions of dollars America’s ultras are currently holding don’t sit under some mattress. The ultra wealthy have those trillions invested in assets that generate short- and long-term returns."</blockquote>
Still, taxation is not the ultimate weapon in the <a href="http://j.mp/WarOnPoverty">War on Poverty</a>, it's only one link of an interdependent logistics chain. Without post-industrial methods of <a href="http://j.mp/EcoCirculatory">sustainable circulation</a>, nothing will change for the daily subsistence of the 99%.Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-71070143071152259712011-11-08T08:08:00.000-08:002011-11-08T08:08:00.925-08:00"The process has clearly begun" - The EconomistRemember the times you pondered the Star Trek economy back in the 60's and thought, "yeah, whatever; it'll be 20, 30, even 50 years before that happens." Guess what? It's been 50 years and our smartphones are way smarter than those chintzy communicators. But don't worry, if you lost count reelin' in the years, <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/11/artificial-intelligence?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ludditelegacy" target="_blank">The Economist</a> hasn't:<br />
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This is what Jeremy Rifkin, a social critic, was driving at in his book, “The End of Work”, published in 1995. Though not the first to do so, Mr Rifkin argued prophetically that society was entering a new phase—one in which fewer and fewer workers would be needed to produce all the goods and services consumed. “In the years ahead,” he wrote, “more sophisticated software <b>technologies are going to bring civilisation ever closer to a near-workerless world</b>.” </blockquote>
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<i>The process has clearly begun</i>. And it is not just white-collar knowledge workers and middle managers who are being automated out of existence. As data-analytics, business-intelligence and decision-making software do a better and cheaper job, even professionals are not immune to the job-destruction trend now underway. <b>Pattern-recognition technologies are making numerous highly paid skills redundant.</b></blockquote>
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Radiologists, who can earn over $300,000 a year in America, after 13 years of college education and internship, are among the first to feel the heat. It is not just that the task of scanning tumour slides and X-ray pictures is being outsourced to Indian laboratories, where the job is done for a tenth of the cost. The real threat is that the latest automated pattern-recognition software can do much of the work for less than a hundredth of it. </blockquote>
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Lawyers are in a similar boat now that smart algorithms can search case law, evaluate the issues at hand and summarise the results. Machines have already shown they can perform legal discovery for a fraction of the cost of human professionals—and do so with far greater thoroughness than lawyers and paralegals usually manage.</blockquote>Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-36236824636737151992011-11-06T11:07:00.000-08:002011-11-06T17:25:12.922-08:00What Postscarcity has to do with AIDS, Malaria, Polio, and PovertyWhenever a cause is seen as sufficiently urgent -- such as millions of people dying if we don't do something dramatic, immediately -- suddenly <a href="http://apprehendingpostscarcity.blogspot.com/">postscarcity</a> is almost no problem at all, there's enough of whatever is needed to address the blight, in a very short time. <a href="http://www.latimes.com/sports/basketball/nba/lakers/la-sp-plaschke-magic-johnson-20111106,0,213653,full.column">In the LA Times, Magic Johnson explains</a>:<br />
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"We're on the verge of opening a seventh AHF <i>Magic</i> Health Clinic," he says, referring to his AIDS Healthcare Foundation-sponsored storefronts. "<b>All these people all over the country can come in and get their HIV meds for free</b>. Can you imagine?"</blockquote>
Yes, we can imagine, Magic, and we can imagine this urgency applying directly and immediately to <a href="http://apprehendingpostscarcity.blogspot.com/2011/10/accelerating-change-and-corrosive.html">the epidemic of poverty</a> in America, and worldwide. John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, "<a href="http://apprehendingpostscarcity.blogspot.com/2011/05/end-of-poverty.html">24,000 people die</a> <i>every single day from hunger</i> and hunger related diseases. <i>At least</i> 24,000."<br />
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As with many bleak statistics, we don't like to acknowledge them too publicly; the <i>Deaths from Poverty</i> numbers are likely understated, yet that is still nearly <i>9 million people dying from poverty every year. </i>How many die from AIDS every year? The <i>high estimate</i> from international AIDS charity, <a href="http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm">Avert</a>, is 2.1 million for 2009, about 5,700 per day. Tragic? Of course. Unacceptable? Of course.<br />
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"When he was asked in a televised interview who owned the patent to the [polio] vaccine, Salk replied: "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk">Wikipedia</a>). Yet, today Monsanto seems determined to<a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/monsanto-pig-patent-111/"> patent the entire world's food supply</a>." This contrast neatly illustrates the fundamental standoff between the pragmatic postscarcity and inertial scarcity world views. </blockquote>
The good news is, we can save those 9 million dying every year from poverty without any of the expense or complexity of formulating and distributing modern pharmaceuticals. To make an immediate difference, to begin saving lives TODAY, what we need to do is declare the basic human right to a subsistence <a href="http://j.mp/MLK4BasicIncome">basic income</a> and declare it in effect by reason <a href="http://j.mp/MLK4BasicIncome">Humanitarian Emergency</a>. We are talking about a plague 6 times the magnitude of AIDS.<br />
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"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - PKD</blockquote>
Perhaps if people haven't been able to comprehend the argument from logic and reason, they may need a slogan to get behind. I'm we can do better, but here's a first take, "If you're against the <a href="http://usbig.net/">Basic Income Guarantee</a> you are sentencing 9 million people to death again, this year alone; you killed 24,000 yesterday and are in the process of exterminating that many again, today. By your current philosophy and actions, you are steadfastly committed to growing that number, every day and every year, for the rest of your life. That about sums it up, right?"Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-32311611758108073732011-10-11T18:03:00.000-07:002011-11-21T23:21:43.137-08:00Accelerating Change and The Corrosive Effects of Relative Poverty<div align="center">
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Clip: “Poor people have been demonized, poverty has been criminalized. 42% of our precious children, of all colors, live in or near poverty. That is a national disgrace,” Dr. Cornell West.</blockquote>
<span style="background-color: transparent;">As we've written over the past several years, we believe that America on the whole is a magnificent Success Story, one of the great success stories of all history. Yes, even in spite of such startling statistics. What we have attempted to convey is the fact that, as the result of Capitalism’s success – not it’s failure – we subsequently carry the burden of a sobering existential obligation; to responsibly model the end game and exit strategy for industrialization, so that other nations and civilizations may follow. This is not hubris, this is accountability.</span><br />
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Just 235 years into our American experiment, it would number among history’s greatest travesties should we arrive at this pinnacle of achievement, only to collapse under the obesity of our own gross overconsumption, strident fundamentalism, and self-entitled, hoarded super abundance. In the context of the sheer scale of our technological achievements, history will mock us far more harshly than it mocks the downfall of earlier experiments in Democracy. Yes, looking back, it is oh so easy to see the obvious mistakes that <em>those unenlightened ancients</em> made. Surely, we are so much more sophisticated than they. Or are we?<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent;">Current Economic Reality</span></h2>
Author Philip K. Dick wrote, timelessly, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing it, doesn’t go away.” Today, we can’t get away from the inescapable reality that we live in the miraculous, robotized, space-faring, techno-utopian future imagined by our 18th century founders. We’ve made it. We have arrived. Great, great, great Grandma and Grandpa would be proud. Except for the fact that we haven’t slowed down for even a nanosecond, to take notice, to reflect. To introspect. To understand.<br />
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Accelerating change, like the very universe around us, is accelerating itself. How can something infinite, be expanding? Yet, that’s <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/">what we observe</a>, thanks to the kind of fundamental research that enables Nobel Prizes. This is the reality that won’t go away, even if we close our eyes, hearts, and minds to it. We observe and interact with multiple artificial intelligences – from sophisticated, high frequency trading stock market bots to smartphone apps – extended and amplified human minds, where millions of hipster hip pockets are packed with a full blown Global Multicast Station, live-streaming anywhere an internet packet carrier signal can be found; where augmented social cognition, and synthetic life are ho-hum, everyday features.<br />
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So cheers to us! We made it. We have arrived. I'll hazard to propose that it’s safe to say, from such a vantage point, no thoughtful person argues against the fact that 19th century industrial capitalism is the very best way to transition a society from agriculture, to industry, to material abundance. Of course it is, okay Larry Kudlow? History has proved time and again that capitalism works -- for a particular phase of industrial development and cultural evolution. Today, we have successfully traversed that road. We did it! Good for us! Are we encouraging ourselves enough, yet? Maybe not.<br />
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Marshall McLuhan said, “<a href="http://j.mp/FutureOfTheFuture">The future of the future</a> is the present; and that is something that people are terrified of.” An insight to which Alexi Murdoch might respond, “Its only fear, only fear … that keeps you locked in here.” So, we find ourselves living Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, hunkered down in isolation, hoping Kurzweil’s Singularity will be nice to us.<br />
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People are confused. Utterly dependent on vestigial routines staying the same, even as accelerating change has become the new normal. Yet, somehow, we know deep down in our knowers that 19th century methods are simply not viable means for adapting to the sustainable 22nd century planet, presently under construction. Right now, today, we are creating that world.<br />
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<em><span style="color: #d19049;">NOTE: Unfortunately, MSNBC's clip-n-share didn't generate a new thumbnail for this second clip; it's not a dupe. So, mute the commercial if you prefer, but please don't skip it, it's brief and explains the corrosiveness of relative poverty better than I'm able in this short space.</span></em></blockquote>
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<blockquote>
Clip: "This really isn't about Wall Street, it's about a society in which our values are out of whack," says Howard Dean. </blockquote>
<span style="background-color: transparent;">No less than former libertarian and Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is equally quick to explain that growing and </span><a href="http://capitalismplusplus.blogspot.com/2010/10/unsustainable-resource-skews-messsage.html" style="background-color: transparent;" target="_blank">unsustainable resource skews</a><span style="background-color: transparent;"> threaten American Capitalism, itself. Yet, from Hollywood, to Silicon Valley, from Hamptons cocktail conversation to tea party affairs, </span><strong style="background-color: transparent;">relative poverty</strong><span style="background-color: transparent;"> is dismissed as irrelevant, when compared the the utter blight of </span><strong style="background-color: transparent;">absolute poverty</strong><span style="background-color: transparent;">. A mistake that both cocktail and tea party crowds make is failure to accurately assess the corrosiveness of all poverty, period. </span><strong style="background-color: transparent;">Relative poverty</strong><span style="background-color: transparent;"> is, in essence, another thinly veiled form of institutional corruption; a topic that Lawrence Lessig has been tirelessly educating us about, for years (</span><a href="http://fora.tv/2009/10/08/Lawrence_Lessig_on_Institutional_Corruption#chapter_07" style="background-color: transparent;" target="_blank">Loss of Trust and Other Ramifications of Institutional Corruption</a><span style="background-color: transparent;">). As Howard Dean and Joe Scarborough put it, “When Americans no longer believe in the system, then you know we have crossed the Rubicon."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent;"><br /></span><br />
<h2>
The Poor Will Always Be With You</h2>
Without waxing religious, many readers will doubtless be playing that partial tape in their heads. The poor will always be with you. It’s a convenient cliché commonly used in proper prosperity gospel company to dismiss our own personal responsibility with full Pharisaical self-righteousness. Jesus was not exactly the most cynical character in history. He wouldn’t say, “The poor will always be with you, so feck ‘em.” Rather, he said in a hundred different ways: take compassion on, and care for everyone in the community. Take care of the least. When you take care of the least, you care for me. It’ll be easier for a rich man to get through the eye of a needle; and so on. This isn’t the place for a sermon, only to dismiss another fatuous objection to doing the right thing for our communities, our country, and humanity.<br />
<br />
I have no doubt that the best place for mainstreamers to begin getting educated about the magnitude of poverty in America will be Tavis Smiley and Cornell West’s collaboration, “<a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/features/poverty-tour/" target="_blank">The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience</a>“ series now airing on <strong>PBS, October 10-14, 2011</strong>.
<br />
<blockquote>
“Poverty in the United States is cyclical in nature, with roughly 13 to 17% of Americans living below the federal poverty line at any given point in time, and roughly<strong> 40% falling below the poverty line at some point</strong> within a 10-year time span. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty">Poverty</a> is defined as<strong> the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions</strong>. According to the <a href="http://www.census.gov/hhes/povmeas/index.html" target="_blank">U.S. Census Bureau</a>, approximately 43.6 million (14.3%) Americans were living in absolute poverty in 2009, up from 39.8 million (13.2%) in 2008.<br />
The poverty level for 2011 was set at $22,350 (total yearly income) for a family of four. </blockquote>
Seriously. Imagine a couple trying to live on $22,000, let alone four. No individual will be riding high on the hog with a $1,200 monthly <a href="http://usbig.net/" target="_blank">Basic Income Guarantee</a>, or $14,400 annually, in 2011 US dollars. The 2006 American Enterprise Institute book, “<a href="http://www.aei.org/book/846">In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State</a>” called for $10,000 annually.<br />
<br />
Similarly, when commentators use the inconsequential sounding, "15% of Americans are poor," remember that means 15% in <b>absolute poverty</b>. Like <a href="http://capitalismplusplus.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-if-25-and-growing-real-us.html">understatements of unemployment</a> that use the low-ball U3 number instead of the closer-yet-still-understated U6 number, beware the "15% poor" deception. At least double that number barely subsist, not far above the official boundary. Don't just believe us or the commentators; double check our numbers and sources, do the homework for yourself at the <a href="http://www.census.gov/hhes/povmeas/index.html" target="_blank">U.S. Census Bureau</a> and online. We're always happy to publish your corrections and better data.<br />
<br />
So the fundamental challenge – and it <em>is</em> mostly a mental frame of reference challenge – at this historic juncture, is to continue the American Legacy of Einstein who said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge," of Henry Ford, “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business,” of Abraham Lincoln, “The fiery trials through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation,” and of Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death." <br />
<br />
<h2>
“As if” Liberty is not American Liberty</h2>
Wage slavery is not liberty. Working paycheck to paycheck, often at more than one job, in order to provide just the essentials of life is exactly the life that our sharecropper great grandparents lived. Work the land <em>as if</em> it were you own, but it will never actually be yours. You are owned, cradle to grave. That’s not the 21st century that our forebears had in mind.<br />
<br />
America's opportunity and obligation today is to demonstrate the real incentive for the billions of human beings living on less than $2/day to adopt the model that served us so well, to pass the baton to them – not by clawing back 19th century manufacturing jobs that they need to advance – rather, by proving the attainable pay-off. The actualization of authentic and abiding liberty from tedious toil, and the flourishing realization of substantive <a href="http://j.mp/MLKOfficialDemands" target="_blank">economic justice for all</a>.<br />
<br />
Let’s be clear, my fellow Americans: liberty from tedious toil has nothing to do whatsoever with the end of WORK. Nor does the end of the <strong>J.O.B.</strong> as the only legitimate<strong> <a href="http://j.mp/BreakTheJobTrance" target="_blank">Justification Of Being</a></strong> as a contributing, valued member of civil society spell the end of productivity. As you study the dozens of web sites linked herein, you will learn that the concepts of <em>work</em> and <em>job</em> are as different as hope is from optimism. The former will always be with us; the latter are merely indicators of a particular set of conditions. <br />
<br />
<h2>
Where Do We Go From Here?</h2>
There are a number of ways to demonstrate true American Leadership for the 21st and 22nd century, to not reject the dynamism of free markets, but to increment Capitalism (to use the programming notation, <a href="http://capitalismplusplus.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Capitalism++</a>) into healthy and <a href="http://j.mp/MixedEconomy" target="_blank">sustainable hybrid econo-systems</a>. Most assuredly, new ways and means to raise the bar for humanity will emerge as the extended and augmented intelligence of the global cognition grid evolves, adapts, and becomes an increasingly natural and seamless feature of the fabric of global civilization; what Kevin Kelley refers to as The Technium; toward what Ray Kurzweil refers to as the Singularity.<br />
<br />
Presently, there are two undeniably obvious realities which we can leverage to our advantage. First, and this one might surprise you, Wall Street's very own A.I. High Frequency Trading bots Secondly, over a half century of exhaustive and comprehensive scholarship and successful Case Studies for a <a href="http://usbig.net/" target="_blank">Basic Income Guarantee</a>; a simple matter of scaling up the long successful Alaska Permanent Fund. The two are like peanut butter and chocolate.<br />
<br />
The first proposal is straightforward. Clusters of HFT bots can be programmed to maximize revenue for a handful of people, or they can be instructed to fund Basic Income. Yes, we still want and need markets. Yes, the coolest new cars and electronics might come from Namibia in 2024; good for them, is good for all of us. Yes, there will still be people astronomically richer than most of us. No, there will be nobody living in tents, cars, or under bridges for want of sufficient minimal greenbacks or equivalent. Mental health and homelessness? Yes, an ongoing challenge. In every case, <a href="http://j.mp/MLK4BasicIncome" target="_blank">Basic Income</a> is a permanent economic stimulus that will only improve corporate sales.<br />
<blockquote>
<em>Note to Wall Street: If your mighty trading bots are smart enough to create the </em><a href="http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=365" target="_blank"><em>Giant Pool of Money</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://wikidashboard.parc.com/wiki/Synthetic_CDO" target="_blank"><em>fractal tranche synthetic CDO's</em></a><em>, then they're smart enough to figure out <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23BasicIncome" target="_blank">#BasicIncome</a> in the U.S. and worldwide. You don’t get it both ways.</em></blockquote>
As for the second approach, oil is rightly accounted the common resource of all Alaskans, hence the Permanent Fund Dividend (<a href="https://www.pfd.state.ak.us/" target="_blank">PFD</a>). Similarly, so is the collective output of our highly advanced technium: aka, our GDP, the sum of all our efforts. From veritable armies of unpaid parent-labor raising the next Intel or IBM executives FOR FREE; to tutors; to volunteers; to peer counselors and friends and clerics who provide everyday psychological services that would otherwise cost hundreds of millions of dollars on the open market. People's lives contribute inherent value. Social capital is the substance of all enduring value.<br />
<br />
If all that's too much to grok, it can't get simpler than <a href="http://www.peterfrase.com/2011/09/the-basic-income-and-the-helicopter-drop/">The Basic Income and the Helicopter Drop</a>.<br />
<br />
<h2>
Couch Potatoes, Cheetos, and the Idiot Box</h2>
The raggedly tired 18th century Protestant specter, as we all know, goes something like this: “most of you – yes, you, readers – will sit in front of a 1950’s style 3-channel broadcast idiot box with a bag of Cheetos all day, happy to barely breath or think, bloating to maximum body mass and then popping in 40 or 50 years, all on a $1,200/mo. basic income.”<br />
<br />
The first and most obvious problem with that argument is that this is the year 2011. Similar to opposition of marijuana legalization, people who are prone to do that are obviously already doing so. Remember the part about reality being that which doesn’t go away, just because you don’t believe in it? Yep, they’ll probably continue to do so until we learn better ways to reach them and help them heal; all too often from the injuries of post traumatic stress disorder suffered in childhood, at the hands of abusive parents who themselves were being pummeled by poverty – absolute and relative – who didn’t know any better themselves, for absence of role models, and were ill equipped to protect themselves and their families from the devastating psychological impacts of fighting for survival in such a hostile environment.<br />
<br />
Moreover, as varieties of self-destructive behavior becomes apparent, this too is of greater benefit, for we will finally be able to better identify those of you – yes, you, if you choose to play the <em>humans are lazy sloths</em> card, because you likely most fear that others will act as dysfunctionally as you suspect of yourself – who need the help, education, and encouragement to lead normal, functional, balanced and productive lives.<br />
<br />
<h2>
The New Normal++</h2>
For most of us, the <a href="http://usbig.net/" target="_blank">Basic Income Guarantee</a> will simply encourage us to not give up in between work assignments; to not settle while seeking the best opportunity for both us and our next <strike>employer</strike> collaboration; maybe, to scrape by long enough to really create that work of art or literature; or <a href="http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/10/bigelow-aerospace-lays-off-40-of-90.html" target="_blank">enable these 40 lazy space engineers</a> to keep helping that amazing, game-changing startup until they can connect with customers to really make a go of it. Instead, those engineers will be on the skids; told that they are not above taking a job at McDonalds or Wal-Mart if that’s what it takes to be a responsible human being. <br />
<br />
The old normal wouldn’t blink to say, “yep, unemployed rocket scientists should compete with high school kids at McDonald’s if those are the only jobs available.” Utterly absurd.<br />
<br />
Human beings are inherently industrious; not indolent, slothful, and lethargic. If humans were so deficient by nature, we would literally be hanging from our toes in the trees along side our kin, or evolution would have taken us out, long, long ago. We are not lazy and useless, by nature. <strong>We are imaginative, daring, productive, adventurous, curious, persistent, and creative creatures.</strong><br />
<br />
<strong style="background-color: transparent;">That's what implementing a Basic Income Guarantee says about us.</strong><span style="background-color: transparent;"> That’s why we utterly reject the cynical, hateful violence of the brutish, bare-knuckles political opposition who's only arguments consist of red-baiting character bashing, "we'll become like those lazy Europeans, Marxists, Communists!" Oh, do you mean those lazy Europeans at CERN who invented the World Wide Web and are now pursuing the Higgs boson? Or the scientists in Moscow who put the first human being into space and without whose cooperative leadership there could be no International Space Station?</span><br />
<br />
Bottom Line: The truly lazy people are those too torpid to think through the opportunities and obligations incumbent upon our generation. Here is what laziness looks like in 2011: demanding predictable, interchangeable, easily performed <a href="http://j.mp/BreakTheJobTrance" target="_blank">jobs, jobs, jobs</a>, so you can vacate your mind for 8 hours a day of monotonous distraction and then go home and consume, consume, consume the rest of the planet into oblivion. That, is laziness.<br />
<br />
The fear of <a href="http://j.mp/BreakTheJobTrance" target="_blank">Breaking the Job Trance</a> is what keeps us locked in here. Maximizing human opportunities to do exciting and meaningful WORK is the solution. That simple distinction may be the most important one that we realize, stepping forward, leveling up our world game, to <a href="http://capitalismplusplus.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Capitalism++</a>.<br />
<br />
<i>Permalink: <a href="http://j.mp/WarOnPoverty">http://j.mp/WarOnPoverty</a></i>Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-80640941364375661292011-10-03T22:26:00.000-07:002013-01-21T19:54:11.323-08:00Where Do We Go From Here? Martin Luther King Jr. on #BasicIncome #99percent #OccupyWallStreet #OccupySF #OWS"We are demanding an emergency program to provide employment for everyone in need of a job, or if a work program is impractical, a <b><u>guaranteed annual income</u></b> at levels that sustain life and decent circumstance. It is now incontestable that the wealth and resources of the United States make the elimination of poverty absolutely practical." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? 1967.<br />
<ul>
<li>Study <a href="http://j.mp/WhatIsBasicIncome" target="_blank">What Is Basic Income?</a></li>
<li>Research what is <a href="http://tagdef.com/MaslowSafety" target="_blank">#MaslowSafety</a></li>
<li>Join the <a href="http://j.mp/WarOnPoverty">War On Poverty</a></li>
<li>Follow <a href="http://twitter.com/livable4all">@Livable4All</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/basicincome">@BasicIncome</a> </li>
<li>We live in 2011, not 1811, so <a href="http://j.mp/BreakTheJobTrance">Break the Job Trance</a></li>
<li>Circulate <a href="http://j.mp/MLKOfficialDemands">MLK Official Demands</a> for #OWS</li>
</ul>
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/s6zVj3nBmNs" width="560"></iframe>Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-10170310200237312602011-10-01T10:38:00.000-07:002011-10-01T11:38:37.168-07:00Recalcitrant Religious Fundamentalism #OccupyWallStreet #LondonDeclaration<div style="text-align: center;">
High Priests protecting the Golden Calf while Monetary Mullah's observe, from on high.<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/09/occupy-wall-street/100159/"></a></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/09/occupy-wall-street/100159/"><img border="0" height="281" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BL0BG9mdDuM/TodN4adciaI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/AZf9m2cD-KE/s400/wallstreet.bull.graven.image.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/09/occupy-wall-street/100159/">TheAtlantic</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_416508058"></span></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://j.mp/orFTPZ">London Declaration:</a> Immutable Human Right #1: Freedom from Poverty.</div>
<blockquote>
"We, the signatories to this ‘London Declaration for Global Peace &
Resistance against Extremism’, affirm that <strong>all humans everywhere possess
inherent dignity and immutable rights: these including freedom from poverty</strong>,
oppression, fear and prejudice and freedom of belief, worship and expression."</blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/09/occupy-wall-street/100159/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Lc4NL9EaVSw/Todc0-H9rhI/AAAAAAAAAEU/-iegbjqei6M/s400/greed.occupywallstreet.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/09/occupy-wall-street/100159/">TheAtlantic</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<blockquote>
</blockquote>
Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-60707900627133693182011-08-26T19:22:00.000-07:002011-08-26T19:22:05.002-07:005 Billion People Want to Live Like 500 Million Do TodayVinod Khosla continues <a href="http://campl.us/d9ci">the clarion call</a>. Hello humans ... are we reaching?<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://campl.us/d9ci" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="297" src="http://pics.campl.us/f/4/4c42f28da3bbe6a286d499f9b9723ec9.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">5B people want to live like 500M do today - via <a href="http://twitter.com/daniel_kraft" target="_blank">@daniel_kraft</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-17004224381798512232011-08-16T10:14:00.000-07:002011-08-16T10:14:23.099-07:00It's not fun. It's not acceptable.<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xa9M7dniYoI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
All for the want of a measly $1,000/mo. <a href="http://www.basicincome.com/" target="_blank">basic income</a> that would cover <a href="http://www.realestateappraisals.com/s-market.html#Apartments" target="_blank">housing</a>, healthcare, food so that human beings can have enough surplus attention to even begin thinking about how to become more productive.<br />
<br />
Thanks for the outstanding work at <a href="http://invisiblepeople.tv/blog/2011/08/brenda-homeless-saskatoon-canada/">InvisiblePeople.TV</a>Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-17239454884699780612011-08-10T13:04:00.000-07:002011-08-10T14:39:06.681-07:00On Scarcity Logic and Abundance LogisticsIt used to be that the poor didn't have a voice, because we were uneducated and people could play word games to placate us and make themselves feel justified in the sociopathological hoarding that causes our plight. Not any more. Today, a master's degree is the bachelor's degree of 1980. PhD's are likewise oversupplied to the point of diminishing returns. What we have today is a very large population of educated people for which the manufactured scarcity model of <a href="http://j.mp/EcoCirculation">circulating resources</a> simply will not work, any longer. This isn't a matter of debate, it's a matter of observing and comprehending <a href="http://j.mp/ThatWhichIs">that which is</a> vs. that which we wish were true.<br />
<br />
The Scarcity Logic to which most fundamentalists and Tea Party types cling, which won't see the fates of the global poor -- here and abroad -- as equivalent until we all start dying at the same rate, is a major roadblock on the path to sustainable postscarcity. I understand their confusion, but it's not okay to let that confusion set domestic, much less global, policy.<br />
<br />
29,000 Dead in Past 90 Days. Inexcusable. Raising taxes on the Top 5% or even <a href="http://j.mp/ThatWhichIs">Top 1%</a> so that we, as a nation, can continue to provide the humanitarian aid that <i>makes us a humanitarian people</i> is not a long term solution; but it is better than doing nothing, until we can move forward into a reasonable <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy">Mixed Global Economy</a> that works for everyone.<br />
<br />
This is a <a href="http://j.mp/EcoCirculation">circulation problem</a>, it's about Abundance Logistics. One key reason for the logistical lockup is the common misguided thinking that proclaims those in western <a href="http://j.mp/PovertyTour">relative poverty</a> should feel grateful, because they aren't in the absolute poverty of Somalians. Believe me, we're grateful; and the only reason anyone could possibly believe that we are not equally emotionally traumatized and desperate is that you've never walked a single step, let alone a mile, in our shoes. We're just <a href="http://invisiblepeople.tv/blog/">Invisible People</a>, but we will no longer keep silent.<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kwPYId8A850" width="560"></iframe>Michael Silverton's Metavalent Stigmergyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391984708930471762noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-4830024443819933592011-08-05T16:39:00.000-07:002011-08-05T16:40:02.612-07:00The Great American Poverty Tour<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.povertytour.smileyandwest.com/"><br />
<img border="0" height="233" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yDfyxvfiQK4/Tjx6dQr0dLI/AAAAAAAABF8/caAxZefmWZo/s640/poverty.tour.JPG" width="500" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Is this the model we expect from the Greatest Society On Earth? Or <a href="http://usbig.net/">this</a>? Or <a href="http://basicincome.org/">this</a>?<br />
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<a href="http://www.povertytour.smileyandwest.com/2011/08/annette-john-hall-cornel-west-tavis-smiley-to-undertake-poverty-tour/">Beginning Friday</a>, <i>Cornel West and PBS host Tavis Smiley will take to the road with a 15-city “Poverty Tour” to raise awareness about the plight of impoverished people.</i> </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>They’ll visit soup kitchens, public housing projects, and farms. They’ll stay with low-income families and along the way they’ll try to assess whether Obama’s policies are working. </i></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>“This is a way to galvanize as opposed to complain,” West said. “<b>Both parties have rendered the poor invisible</b>. The only thing we have left is to dramatize their plight.”</i></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<div style="text-align: center;">
It's long past time to grow up and out of emotionally hijacked redistribution rhetoric.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Read: <a href="http://j.mp/EcoCirculation">An economy is like a body's Circulatory System</a></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="377" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ic1jz5qh5dY/Tjx6xZPQMVI/AAAAAAAABGA/L-kn44-QB1Y/s640/wealthinamerica.gif" width="500" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New American P.I.I.E. - Permanently Inadequate Intermittent Employment</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://twitter.com/cornelwest">@CornelWest</a>: I try to tell the truth. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">When 40% of our children are going hungry, </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I'm going to get morally outraged at that. <a href="http://ow.ly/5WsIH">http://ow.ly/5WsIH</a></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-61775133025342167482011-05-09T21:46:00.000-07:002011-05-09T21:46:00.045-07:00The End of PovertyA Feature Film<br />
<iframe width="560" height="349" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pktOXJr1vOQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
John Perkins, <i>Confessions of an Economic Hit Man</i>, author, "24,000 people die every single day from hunger and hunger related diseases. At least 24,000. That doesn't need to happen, <b>we have plenty of resources, so that shouldn't happen; it happens because of the system we've created</b>. We can say, without a doubt, that this system is an absolute failure. From the most rational, objective economic standpoint it's a failure. Less than 5% of the world's population live in the United States. We are consuming over 25% of the world's resources and creating roughly 30% of it's major pollution. That's a failure."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-82455702379167512642011-04-28T10:19:00.001-07:002011-04-28T10:19:43.855-07:00FRIDA: Friendly Robot for Industrial Dual-Arm Assembly<object width="560" height="349"><param name="movie" value="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/Cjo4AsTVh0s?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/Cjo4AsTVh0s?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="560" height="349" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3395671389794914354.post-67348646082113568862011-04-22T11:13:00.000-07:002011-04-22T11:14:20.728-07:00Idiocracy vs PostscarcityMark Taylor in Nature News suggests that we must<a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472261a.html" target="_blank">Reform the PhD system or close it down</a>. Awesome. Are we so pathologically obsessed with the status quo that we'd actually institute a systemic policy that intentionally retards the advance of knowledge and the continued growth of human intelligence? Really? It's not news to readers of this space that:<br />
<blockquote>Higher education in the United States has long been the envy of the world, but that is changing. The technologies that have transformed financial markets and the publishing, news and entertainment industries are now disrupting the education system.</blockquote><br />
We'd rather shut down universities than contemplate ways to transcend this brief blip, this historical aberration known as the industrial capitalist, and post-industrial information revolutions? Why not declare victory, and move on to the next model? On the other disheartening hand, if the best that our best and brightest "surplus PhD's" can collectively figure out is to turn back to pre-middle ages, perhaps we deserve the inevitable zombie apocalypse idiocracy, after all. <br />
<br />
Dude, that would totally suck. Let's please not.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0