Tag Archives: economy

PROMPT: Cities

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Daily writing prompt
How would you design the city of the future?
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I suspect cities are on the way to becoming passé. They worked great for an economy built around humans exchanging time and effort for a salary, but in an economy in which machines do virtually all productive tasks better, faster, and more efficiently than humans, the benefits seem less clear.

Plus, there’s a lot of discussion of an epidemic of loneliness, and so it seems — as a basic organizational structure — cities (admittedly ironically) don’t serve humanity well. People are adapted for families and tribes — more close-knit communities.

Furthermore, Asia is already beginning to see the problem of downward scalability of cities, as many cities shrink less elegantly than they grew. Birth rates are declining everywhere as humanity reaches its upper limit for this planet.

Maybe the future is artist colonies.

Long Gone Hong Kong [Free Verse]

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In my youth, "Honk Kong"
   Came after "Made in __"
   As often as did any
      Set of letters.

I can't remember the last time
   I saw that declaration.
 I do hear references to the
   Hong Kong Markets opening.

They tore down the
   Kowloon Walled City ---
   A chock a block, chunky
      Architectural cancer growth
   Where people lived squeezed
      More than a million to the
      Square kilometer.
      
But still there are places where people
   Are packed and packed --
   While densely stacked --
   In high-rise Building-Cities.
      (If a City-State is a place in which 
      City and Nation are identical,
          A Building-City is where a 
          Building contains all the
          Functions of a city.)
      One could live without leaving
          If one didn't love sunshine. 
 
   But people do love sunshine. 

   And mountains and beaches,
      Which Hong Kong also --
           Against all reason --
      Has in abundance.

PROMPT: Excited

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What are you most excited about for the future?
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I think humanity has a golden age coming. Unfortunately, a.) as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, “In the long run, we are all dead.” Accordingly, I don’t expect I’ll live to see that great age. And, b.) said great age is likely to come on the backend of a tragic period whose reach and devastation will make the Second World War seem like a puny and short-lived regional skirmish by comparison. [I also think there’s a good chance I’ll miss the worst of this, but there’s no accounting for the rapidity at which it might move (and the process has begun.)]

The root of this combination of relative near-term pessimism and long-run optimism is the observation that we are experiencing a technological revolution that there is no reason to believe won’t end in machines that are both smarter and more capable than we, and we have no plan for what to do in that scenario. We have no conception of what an economy looks like in which machines do everything faster, more cheaply, and more efficiently than human labor. I wouldn’t be so pessimistic if our institutions and legal frameworks were trending better and better, but — in fact — after years of spreading rule of law and democracy, we are starting to see global shrinkage and a rise of a strange populist authoritarianism that I can only imagine being catastrophic under the stress test that is to come.

Why the long-term optimism? Nothing lasts forever, and tough times breed tough and capable people. [Whereas comfort addiction is a major factor in our near-term predicament.] I think the Golden Age will be humans learning not to be defined by production / consumption but by developing the human body and mind to its utmost capacity.

A lot of people are worried about population collapse. I am not so worried about that. I think that: a.) humanity could use some thinning; b.) we do fine with long time scale threats. As pressures rise, the adjustments start and — perhaps with some growing pains — we’ll get where we need to be. The AI / Machine Learning revolution concerns me because I suspect it will happen too quickly to steer the ship (like being in an aircraft carrier as a tsunami comes, there’s no agility to navigate out of the way and no speed to outrun it, you just have to take the damage and try to recover.)

You were probably looking for an answer like flying cars, but I gave up on those long ago.

“Epigram for Wall Street” by Edgar Allan Poe [w/ Audio]

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I'll tell you a plan for gaining wealth,
    Better than banking, trade or leases —
Take a bank note and fold it up,
    And then you will find your money in creases!
This wonderful plan, without danger or loss,
Keeps your cash in your hands, where nothing can trouble it;
And every time that you fold it across,
    'Tis as plain as the light of the day that you double it!

PROMPT: Disagree

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What public figure do you disagree with the most?
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These days? Trump — hands down. Beyond a few of his stated policy objectives, there is more and more I disagree with every day. (I emphasize “stated” because there is so little that’s coherent in his actions to prove he is really interested in advancing said objectives.) For example, I do agree that the swelling deficits (budget and trade) are something that should be treated as unsustainable. I’m not of the “a current account deficit is just a capital account surplus, so turn that frown upside-down” ilk. However, erratic and untargeted tariff policies that hurt successful sectors (e.g. agriculture and services) and which will only put the toothpaste back in the tube (bring [human] factory labor back to the US on a huge scale) by crashing the US into Third World status are not the way.

I disagree with this inexplicable monomaniacal obsession with heavy industry, while injuring those sectors that have done well in recent decades.

I agree with… Powell, that there is a high chance of stagflation if the Fed takes a loose money stance. The problem is… Trump. Ordinarily, it would be good to dump some money on an economy that is struggling. But the problem is that Trump is like a salesperson that would like to sell customers something, but he also enjoys chasing them around the store with an axe. The problem is that people and companies don’t make big purchases when they are afraid and the future is uncertain. (This is why even getting investment in robotic factories isn’t happening.) There’s uncertainty because of the tariffs. There’s uncertainty about whether companies will have to pay bribes to Trump, personally. There’s uncertainty about whether the legal and institutional frameworks that have so long made America an appealing place to invest and innovate will survive. So, if the Fed injects money but consumer confidence and investment are flat because of said uncertainty, then that money will be purely inflationary. [Remember, inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. More money needs to meet more demand for stuff.]

I disagree that one can have one’s cake and eat it, too. Specifically, tariffs need to be either for revenue generation or for policy negotiations, they can’t be both, but Trump talks like he doesn’t understand this. If tariffs are going to be the new primary source of government income, they need to bring in money sustainably. If they are a negotiating tool to lever policy, you need to be ready to negotiate them away in return for your own objective wins.

I definitely disagree with the ignoring of Supreme Court decisions. It’s particularly disconcerting to see him ignore 9 – 0 decisions, which means that even his own appointees could not find a hairsbreadth of wiggle room in the law by which his actions could be viewed as lawful.

I disagree with picking a raft of pretty-idiots / talking-heads for positions that require high levels of emotional intelligence and — you know — intelligence intelligence. If it weren’t for the fact that America has the most awesome and professional military in the world, I’d be especially afraid that Hegseth was going to destroy it. But while I think the US Military will be around long after he’s gone, I’m suspect he will have done damage to morale and operational efficiency.

I disagree with favoring dictators over longtime allies. [While I would agree that it’s good that Europe is taking on more of the burden of their own defense, I’m concerned that trashing relations to do so will not prove a sound approach.]

I disagree with all the attempts to play from the Putin-Orban Populist Dictators’ Playbook.

While I’m not at all averse to seeing cuts to the Federal bureaucracy, I do disagree with — you know — firing people before you understand what they do and whether it’s critical to health and safety, the necessary conduct of governance, or oversight against fraud and abuse.

I disagree that one should talk about making loophole end-runs around Constitutional prohibitions.

But, I ramble on…

PROMPT: Productive

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When do you feel most productive?
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Uhh… when I’m being most productive, which is to say when I’m producing something in an efficient manner. (Not sure if it’s a trick question.) Obviously, if I’ve felt the need to check my phone, social media, etc. it’s not a highly productive time because I’m not engaged with what I’m producing. Also, I have lots of time when I’m intensely engaged with an activity, but I’m not producing anything, and so that isn’t being productive per se — though it may be highly beneficial and essential to well-being. (Although, my dictionary / thesaurus have definitions of “productive” that equate it with “constructive” which changes everything. Though it also equates “intelligence,” “erudition,” and “wisdom,” which is a highly suspect understanding of wisdom.)

Devourers [Lyric Poem]

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We were classed: Consumer.
 And that became our task.
  The stores grew like tumors,
    and in stuff piles we basked.

5 Minefields of Armageddon for 2013

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National Land Image Information, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation & Tourism, Japan

National Land Image Information, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation & Tourism, Japan

1.) Ever heard of the Senkakus? What about Diaoyus? If not, you should look them up. When you’ve been wearing a gas mask for the 33rd day straight, you may want to know about the chunks of rock in the East China Sea that we tripped into nuclear winter over. Simmering tensions between Japan and China have been flaring up over these islands of late. So you’re probably wondering who lives there who’s so important that it’s worth wandering through a minefield that could trigger World War III. If you answered, “absolutely no one,” give yourself a prize.  They’re uninhabited. It’s not the islands themselves that anyone gives a rat’s as about, it’s the ramification they have for underwater drilling rights.

The reader may accuse me of hyperbole. (Shh! Dont tell anyone, but– of course– that’s what I do.) After all, China has a boldly stated “No First Use” policy. That is, they claim they will not use nukes in a first strike. Given that Japan isn’t a nuclear weapons state (NWS), there doesn’t seem to be much risk. Except that a.) Japan lives under the U.S. nuclear umbrella;  b.) Japan is the non-NWS that could develop nuclear weapons in the shortest time imaginable — they have the material, infrastructure, and technical know-how (okay, Germany is in the same bag); and c.) see #2

KimJongUn3

2.) North Korea conducted its third nuclear test. This presents a risk because: a.) it provides an incentive for Japan to build its own nukes (particularly if faith in the US umbrella wanes.) b.) [and more importantly] Kim Jong Un has too many yes-men, and no one to slap him in his chubby face and say, “are you smoking powdered unicorn horn?” In other words, he doesn’t have a good idea of what he can get away with before the world unleashes a crate of whoop-ass on his sad country. So he wanders in the minefield.

3.) Europe is getting depressed. Fat and happy Europeans are productive and polite. Downtrodden Europeans have been known to swallow some pretty despicable narratives, and– in doing so– drag the world into war. At the moment this seems really far-fetched. These political movements are at best in the political fringe of countries on Europe’s fringe, right? Maybe so. Time will tell.

4.) If America’s economy is crash-landed, everyone is going to be hit by the debris. This will be depressing, see #3 and then multiply globally. Times like these  echo Churchill’s comment, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Any person, company, or government that sees the train coming in the distance but can’t find its way off the tracks can’t be expected to thrive for long.

5.) India and Pakistan, enough said…