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"This guy is having a typically American techno-narcissistic frontier-utopian freakout." Man I laughed so hard when I read that. Thank you. It had to be said.
CrowdFunding Disruption
Here's an interesting, yet inevitable combination: Community funding (Crowdfunding) via Indigogo or Kickstarter and Disruption. To gather info or build things that will disrupt (postively or negatively dependending on your viewpoint) the social landscape. Here's an example of a tech team ...
This is worse than LBJ picking out bombing targets.
The US President's Hit List or "Death by PowerPoint"
Last Friday, I wrote a post on how: US national security agencies increasingly use computerized analysis of collected data to designate a person as an enemy combatant. The US currently uses non-judicial Presidential "hit lists" to simplify the killing of people (including US citizens) designate...
A significant chunk of the elite turned against the American system post-1965 Voting Rights Act. You go through the South and you can see it very clearly-- the decline of spending or interest in common infrastructure such as schools, public pools etc. Basically, when the white settler elite (the former slaveholders) realized they would have to share the commons with African Americans they decided to withdraw from the commons. But this is true throughout the United States, not just the South. It is only most obvious in the South, and since Southern politicians have succeeded in dominating the federal system, they have also been able to cripple the central government as well. Look at the huge fight over federal funding for high speed rail in California, which is embarrassing. Even Japan's right-wing one party government could see the benefits of high speed rail-- during the 1950s.
Withdrawing from the commons has worked fine for the top of the income bracket. But their less well off foot soldiers didn't realize, however, is that we all live side-by side, and that systematically destroying the nation-state would also hurt them. Eventually the predator state prison complex gun would point at the white working class too-- and this has happened, they've found out that no one gives a shit about them either. You may go to church every Sunday, profess your undying belief in America, and work ass off at your construction gig, never accept welfare and look down on non-whites as shifty dope using profligate embracers of promiscuity,but ultimately the people whose economic program you supported for 30 years don't care about you and now they are going to destroy your life by privatizing what is left of the commons and leaving you to race to the bottom.
On the left, people decided that the idea of the nation-state was déclassé, and that patriotism was embarrassing, and they retreated, into the self-referential intellectual masturbation of post-modernism, where everybody is right and nobody is wrong. Of course, that's nonsense. They don't actually believe that, it's just a convenient cover for people who lack the courage of their convictions. Ironically, these people often embrace the Che cult, and the cult of ''third world liberation" generally, while never realizing that what drove those movements was not some embrace of an international ideal, but of localized, nationalistic sentiment. Carefully ensconced in academia, they have cushy jobs, retirement plans and insurance benefits, and enjoy regular international travel to mostly irrelevant conferences where other people just like them deliver talks on the post-Lacanian cultural analysis of the cultural identity of transnational non-traditional shamanistic sexuality participants (aka furries), followed by cliched calls to solidarity with striking workers in Greece. You can sneer at the nation state all you want, but you exist in a bubble of academic privilege that is paid for by federal student loans and defense department grants, and the multicultural diversity that you so prize exists only because there is still, just barely, a common American identity holding it all together. If the United States ever fell apart, no one is going to protect your precious, diverse, non-traditional gender role-loving community, as the US will look more like the Balkans after the end of Communism.
There is a way out of this situation, but the answers most certainly will not be found among an elite that long ago turned its back on America.
When Elites Depart
One of the benefits of having a son that is a scholar of ancient warfare, from Alexander the Great to the Byzantine Empire to the Mongols, is that we can have wide ranging discussions on very deep topics. Of perennial interest to us: why do complex societies/civilizations collapse? One of in...
In the legal system, all property is virtual. Let's take the example of a plot of land. That is "real property", you have a title to it which gives you certain rights-- to destroy it, to build a house, to dig for oil, etc. Interestingly, some titles will include things like the mineral rights (water, coal, oil, etc), but some won't. I can almost guarantee you if you own plot of land within an incorporated area, that you won't have the water rights. Check out your title-- in most of the Western US the original "title holder" if you go back far enough is the USG, although sometimes it's Spanish....whole other story.
The point is that for the purposes of _the legal system_ a property interest in real estate and a property interest in a musical track are the same.
Where they differ, in my view, is this-- what happens when someone infringes on your property right.
For the real property, if someone decides to infringe on it, they make it so you lose some use of it. For example, if someone squats on your land, you lose the use of it in that space. The example of a car is more instructive-- if someone takes the car, you don't have a car anymore.
If you own the rights to a song, and someone else copies it, you don't lose the use of the song. That's the difference. Now someone is going to come along and say "but , you lose the marginal amount you would have gotten if they'd bought the song." Okay. Now we're in the realm of speculating what will happen in the future-- in court, this is where both sides bring in consulting economists to prognosticate. In my opinion, any time that happens you've automatically moved into a realm where chances are high that the nonsense level goes to maximum. As a way around this, the media oligarchs have introduced statutory damages-- a set legal fine for each infraction. Otherwise they'd have the burden of proving their loss each time, which is probably impossible, if not extremely expensive. Consulting economists aren't cheap.
What the media oligarchs have done is shift the costs of enforcement almost completely onto the common carriers (Youtube) and onto the individuals who may be "infringing." It's a simple power grab, and one you see across our legal system, as jury trials become harder and harder to get. Another example is mandatory arbitration-- which is just a bullshit cost that gets pushed onto small time plaintiffs, to gum up the system. Big businesses backed by scumbag insurance companies aren't going to settle during arbitration, it's just another barrier to getting into court, because scumbags want to avoid juries whenever possible. Juries are known to do things like take offense at scumbag behavior and levy actually painful cash awards to plaintiffs. And we can't have that.
I don't have a problem with compensating individuals for their work. I do have a problem with these out of control long term monopoly grants, and that is exactly what we have now.
Did the US already Privatize Big Brother?
What do you think of the following: YouTube has an "informal system" that allows companies with copyrights to automatically scan all uploads for potential violations. If the software detects the "possibility" of a violation (image, tune, trademark, etc.), it automatically tells YouTube to de...
And David Brin on Miller's OWS rant:
http://davidbrin.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/move-over-frank-miller-or-why-the-occupy-wall-street-kids-are-better-than-spartans/
LINKS: November 14, 2011
"Reinventing Fire maps pathways for running a 158%-bigger U.S. economy in 2050 but needing no oil, no coal, and no nuclear energy." Virtual power plant market set to zoom. International Academy of Astronautics says we need to start building an orbital solar power system. The United States Gang ...
A profile on Graeber:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/david-graeber-the-antileader-of-occupy-wall-street-10262011.html
I have a hard time believing that an area the size of a nation state, or even a city state could be run according to the principles Graeber espouses, and I question whether "self-organization" and no central government could administer infrastructure such as water distribution, sewage and telecom. Nor am I convinced that such a social arrangement could do things like develop and manufacture pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics, insulin etc.
However, I think there is ample data that consensus based, anarchist direct democracy principles could function in small enterprises -- cooperative grocery stores, bike shops, machine shops, etc.
From what I gather in speaking with anarchists at various Occupy encampments, their theory is that running the encampments is a practical experiment/exercise in anarchist principles. Graeber's article appears to confirm that this was the plan at the start.
Currently OWS has raised a couple of hundred thousand in donations, a lot of it in cash. And the park is running as a self governed entity *to some degree*. However asking for food and money donations is a far cry from a self-sustaining enterprise. Whether OWS on the ground in NYC can bootstrap (or wants to bootstrap) to a "resilient community" status remains to be seen . But at present they have the material resources to do it-- the question is what they can do with their wet-ware. We'll know soon enough.
DRONES and US Internal Security
Signature strikes target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren't always known. The bulk of CIA's drone strikes are signature strikes. Wall Street Journal. Drones are changing the dynamics of warfare in very scary ways. They make oppr...
It's funny, if you knew anything about the core group that started Occupy in NYC, you'd know they aren't looking for "big government." It was David Graeber and some other anarchists-- who probably want _even less government than you do_. As in, none.
You may have more in common with OWS than you think.
DRONES and US Internal Security
Signature strikes target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren't always known. The bulk of CIA's drone strikes are signature strikes. Wall Street Journal. Drones are changing the dynamics of warfare in very scary ways. They make oppr...
This is essentially what is happening with at least one of the Occupations, in Oakland, California.
BEYOND FARMERS MARKETS...
As we are pulled inexorably into an era of economic depression and political chaos, the globally sourced retail supply chains we rely upon will wilt and wither. Many, if not most, of the local retailers and big box stores in our communities will disappear either through an inability to secure ...
Keep on fighting that Cold War, while the rest of us build the future.
JOURNAL: A note from the NYC front lines
Nice note from New York City: hey John, i've been down there for about a week now, and from my eyes on the ground, your theory hits it right on the head. it's funny but before i read this, i was talking with my friend who's one of the organizers and was telling him about your GG ROI theory l...
Ridiculous. USG does not have significant debt obligations in gold or non-dollar denominated assets. We're not Weimar.
JOURNAL: Dmitry Orlov on Collapse
Had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Dmitry Orlov (author of the excellent book Reinventing Collapse) last night, with my friend Steve Wardell. Dmitry makes a compelling case that the US empire will suffer the same fate as its most hated rival, the Soviet empire, for many of the sa...
There is at least one Korean MMO that sells licenses so that you can run your own private server. Name escapes me at the moment, but I know that some user groups/online friend networks have bought licenses and run their own servers. They lack the juridical personality, i.e. business organization to lever up, but it's only a matter of time.
THE NEXT SOCIAL NETWORKING JUGGERNAUT
Some fun thoughts about social networks (a side benefit of having spent the last couple of months up to my eyeballs in social networking data). It may or may not be useful. ______________ Up until now, Facebook and Twitter have just been riffs on blogs. These networks are pretty much dealing th...
Looking at the demographics of the group, they'll mostly be dead in 20 years.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904
LINKS: 28 SEPTEMBER 2010
Some random items of interest: Crime wars from CNAS. This report aside: Has the beltway's CNAS become the McDonalds of military theory? Interesting data/analysis on mass murders. ...the trough in the mass murder rate during the 1940s and 50s may have been due to the upsurge in pro-social...
John, the states cannot run ongoing deficits because they are not currency issuers.
That is not the case for the federal government, where the only limits are inflation, and actual resource constraints. There are political constraints in place, but not actual fiscal constraints. The federal government does not have to issue debt, or tax, to spend money. The federal government can, and should, run deficits. See http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=10384.
If the federal government does not create money, demand for funds falls to the private sector. But, all the private banking sector can create is credit-- i.e. every dollar created in a deposit account is linked to a debt. Only the federal government can create money, i.e. unit of exchange, not linked to debt creation.
It is pretty clear that forcing the government to run a budget surplus will pull money out of the economy. This is because if the government is running a surplus, the amount of money available in the rest of the economy goes down. Demand for the unit of exchange then, will be filled by credit. This is great for the FIRE sector, whom you have accurately described as global guerrillas. This is not so great for average Americans.
JOURNAL: Hollow US States
"We (California) are on the verge of system failure." John Ross, the California budget project to Canada's Globe and Mail. Here's an early picture of a world dominated by a global financial oligarchy. One point on a trend line. Fiscal insolvency leads to an endless reduction in services. ...
Here is some publicity about the incident command center:
http://blogs.chron.com/newswatchenergy/archives/2010/05/inside_the_bp_i.html
JOURNAL: No More Katrinas?
More evidence of an orchestrated government/corporate campaign to choke off media and scientific access to the Gulf continues to pour in (see "Leaking Legitimacy" for an overview of the situation). Not only has BP corrupted local law enforcement to block reporting and scientific analysis of th...
All this time listening to dancehall, and I had no idea about the political implications. I guess all political leaders must have their troubadours.
JOURNAL: Jamaica and Global Guerrillas
If Coke is somehow able to hold out and formally establish his community as a state within a state, then Jamaica's future is bleak Brian Meeks, a professor of government at Jamaica's Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (reuters). Jamaica has issued a month long state of emergency a...
Edwardo,
Please refrain from threatening me in the comments.
Why do policy makers want the US to keep selling bonds as "financing?" Who knows. Ignorance? Self-dealing?
QUOTE: On the EU Crisis
"We now see ... wolfpack behaviours, and if we will not stop these packs, even if it is self-inflicted weakness, they will tear the weaker countries apart" Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg (at the EU Summit). In open source warfare, small independent guerrilla groups often using swarming t...
But the U.S., as a fiat currency issuer, does not have to sell bonds to raise funds for spending. Not at all. See chartalism, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartalism
QUOTE: On the EU Crisis
"We now see ... wolfpack behaviours, and if we will not stop these packs, even if it is self-inflicted weakness, they will tear the weaker countries apart" Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg (at the EU Summit). In open source warfare, small independent guerrilla groups often using swarming t...
John,
How much have you looked at modern monetary theory? Would seem to be necessary for a in-game currency.
ONLINE GAMES, SUPEREMPOWERMENT, AND A BETTER WORLD
"We're witnessing what amounts to no less than a mass exodus to virtual worlds and online game environments." Edward Castronova (Ed's an economist that studies online games. I met him at a Highland's conference a couple of years ago, smart guy). Here's a video of Jane McGonigal at the 2010 T...
If you want to create an alt currency you need a tax authority to do it. Now where could you do that online?
JOURNAL: E-Currency Systems
Forget Paypal. Virtual currency and online payment systems are proliferating like weeds. These systems provide an alternative to the limitations of official banking systems (although at greater risk). Most of them integrate with credit cards and cell phones. In many cases it is possible to e...
Jess,
150 is about the size of an infantry company.
NEW WAYS TO INCENTIVIZE WORK AND INNOVATION
If I asked you: what is the best way to incentivize work and innovation in a large economic system? You would immediately respond: financial reward. However, that assumption might not be correct. Here's why. As a serial entrepreneur, I'm constantly thinking about building new businesses. On...
The concept of building an MMO based tribe to accelerate resilience is an interesting one. I thought about this several years ago, but lacked the technical chops to make it happen. I contribute my thoughts on this issue because John's effort is probably the best shot at making these things real. I'm going to focus on the organizational/sociological issues and not on technology, since I am sure that John has a better handle on that than I do.
I've thought about two sets of issues with respect to the MMO. The issues are the internal organization, and then the relationship to the outside world.
Internally, there are a couple of issues:
1. Drawbacks of tribal/fictive kinship relationships
2. Getting buy-in to tribal/fictive kinship relationships by typical western consumerist people.
3. Managing the medium of exchange
4. Governing the internal world
Dealing with the world outside the so-called "magic circle" of game play also presents a few issues:
1. Juridical personality (if any)
2. Real money trading
3. Potential advantages of a real world presence
I realize this post is long enough as it is, so I will focus only on 1) and 2) under the internal issues. John, if you'd like, I can address the other issues in later comments.
Internally:
There has been a lot of discussion on the blog about the power of kinship and fictive kinship relations. As someone who has grown up in a kinship society , and regularly navigates a couple of fictive kinship based organizations, these are not without drawbacks. For one thing, the level of invasiveness can be high, since everyone is in your business. Also, grudge holding and the running mental balance sheet are always present. The running mental balance sheet is the thing that people in kinship/fictive kinship organizations use to know where they stand in relationship to others. Fictional example: someone lends money to my father to get a boil on his back lanced by a doctor. My father doesn't even want the money but the guy forces the issue. Turns out the doctor prevented my father from dying from a staph infection. Therefore, my father owes a debt to the guy who forced him to take the money. Not only that, it happened before I was born, so my father tells me that I owe this guy my very existence, and that I have an obligation to this guy's family. The guy who lent money to my father is now my fictive kin. Since often kinship/fictive kinship societies are ruled by shame, I have to honor this or I look like an idiot in front of everyone.
The drawback is that the complexity of these relationships can become so great that people are afraid to do anything for fear of incurring a debt to someone else that can never be repaid. Also, the people who mentioned Japan as some kind of society that has more freedom more than the English speaking world -- get real. I won't address this here too much, but I've lived in Japan, Korea, China and the USA. Of those societies, Japan's is easily the most constrained at the interpersonal level. Yes, some men from the USA and UK go to Japan and feel really free, but that's because they are outsiders/tourists. Life is very different for the native born Japanese.
This brings me to getting buy in to the kinship/fictive kinship values among the typical wholly consumer-culture oriented denizen of a Western society. Let's call them con-cult denizens. My experience has been that the typical con-cult denizen has a difficult time conceptualizing an obligation based fictive kinship group. Indeed, this is especially endemic among web developers and programmers, who often subscribe to some variant of Randian Libertarianism. The fact of the matter is that a fictive-kinship group is often very constraining, because it is composed of a web of relationships and personal obligations. Even in a relatively non-hierarchal fictive-kinship society, there is going to be a lot of negotiation and conflict-avoidance. It is very much the opposite (in my lived experience) of the "well here are my rights to MY property." I've worked on technical projects where both types of people (con-cult and fictive kinship) were members. Since con-cult denizens are mostly motivated by increasing the amount of private property at their disposal, they often react very, very poorly to being told that that they are letting down the group.
Any MMO based tribe is going to have to have a filtering system to filter out those who aren't interested in developing fictive-kinship relationships. More importantly, it should have a system to train your typical con-cult denizen to understand and value the fictive-kinship based obligation system.
There's a natural human desire to be part of a group, and to seek meaning. Other commenters have noted that MMOs appeal to the desire for escapism. This is true. But what are the players trying to escape? Meaningless existence in a working world that devalues them as people, separates them from others and gives them little control over their own destiny. Those are basic, unmet human needs, and this results in the popularity of MMOs. If the notional MMO we are discussing can meet those needs, people will "escape" to it as a rational alternative to a modern working world that does not fulfill basic human needs for meaning and community.
If you turn on the news lately, there's a lot of discussion about the budget deficit. What is not being examined so much, is the deficit of meaning and belonging that exists among denizens of the con-cult. There are meatspace activities that are filling this-- notably, fight sport participation, what the Japanese refer to as "kakutogi." But that is outside the bounds of this discussion and will have to wait for another, more appropriate time.
NEW WAYS TO INCENTIVIZE WORK AND INNOVATION
If I asked you: what is the best way to incentivize work and innovation in a large economic system? You would immediately respond: financial reward. However, that assumption might not be correct. Here's why. As a serial entrepreneur, I'm constantly thinking about building new businesses. On...
Regarding foreclosures-- credible reports indicate that the majority of the loans out there have serious violations of fraud and unfair business practice statutes. Furthermore in some cases the parties doing the foreclosing don't even have the right to be in court. Judges are starting to realize this, and are in some cases halting foreclosures. What's interesting is that in many cases the loans were securitized, so the servicers claiming a right to foreclose actually do not have the standing to be in court. In some cases the notes are not endorsed to any beneficiary. One has to ask, who really benefitted from the creation of all this negotiable paper.
People should fight their foreclosures. There's a great site about fighting the foreclosure process at http://www.livinglies.wordpress.com
Although some people might claim that the site is "fringe," the proprietor has had his classes approved for continuing legal education credit by the California State Bar.
LINKS: 22 DEC 09
Some random items of interest: Copenhagen collapse. Note the role/roll of financial capitalism in this article. Advanced topic: Darknet economics: Radu Privantu has some well articulated tips on growing an MMO economy from 2007. Still valid. It's really not a stretch at all to apply these ...
Duncan,
New myths have been emerging for 40 years. The issue is whether people want to listen. For people like Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs, the answer is pretty clearly "no."
LINKS: 19 NOV 09
Random items of interest: Chris Blattman on Diego Gambetta's book, "The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection." "The book tells a fascinating tale of the mafia, traced mostly from court transcripts, investigator files, and some interviews. He essentially advances an economic the...
Duncan-- Tyler Durden = protagonist of the film/novel Fight Club
OPEN SOURCE INSURGENCY THROUGH SOFTWARE TOOLS
Many people that want to organize groups online, typically attempt to do this through a site dedicated to a specific topic, an inflammatory article/video, etc. This is a fairly arduous and suboptimal process. A better approach is to build a site that enables people to accomplish things. Softw...
You're also going to want some kind of task assignment system. In online activism you often see one person getting slammed with being the co-ordinator, and everyone uses phpBoard to co-ordinate. Suboptimal. You'll want some kind of basically project management system to let people group up and then vote up a co-ordinator, and then task people.
There's more to it of course, but like MKORION, I also need to get paid =)
OPEN SOURCE INSURGENCY THROUGH SOFTWARE TOOLS
Many people that want to organize groups online, typically attempt to do this through a site dedicated to a specific topic, an inflammatory article/video, etc. This is a fairly arduous and suboptimal process. A better approach is to build a site that enables people to accomplish things. Softw...
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