Pausing amid our serious choice between BLM and MAGA, let's not gorget the crisis that was already underway. Let me start by linking to some of the many podcasts and interviews I've done, across the last few weeks.
First, hosted by Dr. David Bray of the Atlantic Council: "A conversation with internationally recognized author and scientist Dr. David Brin, noted public policy professor and expert Dr. Kathryn Newcomer on the technologies, investments, and policy actions that could help us rebuild from COVID-19 on a global scale."
First, hosted by Dr. David Bray of the Atlantic Council: "A conversation with internationally recognized author and scientist Dr. David Brin, noted public policy professor and expert Dr. Kathryn Newcomer on the technologies, investments, and policy actions that could help us rebuild from COVID-19 on a global scale."
And one more podcast! In this one, Amanda Caniglia of The Bella Vista Social Club & Caffe joins Steve Chapel of Intellectual Capital, Alexis Dixon of Mediation Solutions International, to chat and interview me about these strange times and stranger yet to come. And yeah, I wish I had a deeper, better voice. So I try to add extra content value… plus a song.
And Gadi Evron’s Essence of Wonder Podcast dives into the nominees for the Best Professional Artist Hugo... then interviews me about the role of science fiction in modern life. The connection between the visual and descriptive language. And other fine, diverting topics.
But I'm not the only wiseguy blathering or else trying to help change things. Fore example...
... yipe! Some of the wakened Republicans on the Lincoln Project are pulling no punches in their one-minute “Mourning in America” ad. And look up what George F. Will has been saying about the undead mutant horror that's become of his beloved Republican Party.
Meanwhile says Scott Foster, expert on Asian economics: “Stupid people have been called what's going on in the States a WWII Moment. But a real WWII economic policy with real WWII discipline may be required to get us out of this self-generated disaster. Asian manufacturing is coming back on line. While many U.S. factories are closing for good.”
== The Roberts Court: commanded by their masters to end their own relevance ==
I used to think that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts cared most about the institution of the Court. That is what he talks about most. But I’m now convinced that’s a cover-scam. Roberts knows that his current trajectory - relentlessly abetting every cheat that shatters 250 years of constitutionally democratic precedent - will eventually lead to the people rising up to bypass an ‘institution’ that's now more corrupt than it was under John Taney. He is as suborned - and likely blackmailed - as anyone in DC.
On Contrary Brin blog, we’ve been discussing what happens if - faced with just such a popular rising and imminent electoral collapse - the GOP is ordered by its masters to prevent any election happening at all, in November. Or else to wage war on the perceived legitimacy of that election. The following is cogent from that discussion:
“A violation of the Constitution as clear as halting the election for anything short of holocaust-apocalypse level emergency would need all three branches' support to sustain, plus broad popular acceptance -- which won't happen. And the states, not the Feds, have authority and mechanism to actually run elections. So what happens if Lord Farquaad declares an election cancellation, SCOTUS agrees, and states vote anyway? Remember, the House is the ultimate arbiter on the validity of both its own members and on the election of the President; the Senate is the ultimate arbiter on the validity of its own members and on the election of Vice President.” In short, it is entirely possible (by design!) to elect a Congress and a new President even in the face of Federal executive and judiciary opposition. And if necessary, that's what will happen.”
That paragraph invites contemplation of enough potentially weird outcomes that exceed even those I speculated in the “Exit Strategies" chapter of Polemical Judo. For example, a Biden-Trump presidency? No, won’t happen, because the House votes for president with one vote per state, favoring redders, despite whatever the vast majority of the people want. No, if it comes to that, it will be civil war, after all... exactly as Putin and Murdoch want.
I would add that there is precedent for proceeding with a new Congress even if many states did not choose to participate in the election. To be clear- almost none of the representatives or Senators elected from seceding states in 1860 showed up for Congress in early 1861. None after elections in 1862 and 1864, and hence the quorum in the Capitol was based upon those still participating. Hence, if Trump were to "defer" the November 2020 election - or declare a boycott that neo-confederate states participated in - the rest of the states could hold their elections as usual, then have their electors vote and send their Representatives to the new Congress.
The precedent for those states who withdrew is clear. They are ignored.
On Contrary Brin blog, we’ve been discussing what happens if - faced with just such a popular rising and imminent electoral collapse - the GOP is ordered by its masters to prevent any election happening at all, in November. Or else to wage war on the perceived legitimacy of that election. The following is cogent from that discussion:
“A violation of the Constitution as clear as halting the election for anything short of holocaust-apocalypse level emergency would need all three branches' support to sustain, plus broad popular acceptance -- which won't happen. And the states, not the Feds, have authority and mechanism to actually run elections. So what happens if Lord Farquaad declares an election cancellation, SCOTUS agrees, and states vote anyway? Remember, the House is the ultimate arbiter on the validity of both its own members and on the election of the President; the Senate is the ultimate arbiter on the validity of its own members and on the election of Vice President.” In short, it is entirely possible (by design!) to elect a Congress and a new President even in the face of Federal executive and judiciary opposition. And if necessary, that's what will happen.”
That paragraph invites contemplation of enough potentially weird outcomes that exceed even those I speculated in the “Exit Strategies" chapter of Polemical Judo. For example, a Biden-Trump presidency? No, won’t happen, because the House votes for president with one vote per state, favoring redders, despite whatever the vast majority of the people want. No, if it comes to that, it will be civil war, after all... exactly as Putin and Murdoch want.
I would add that there is precedent for proceeding with a new Congress even if many states did not choose to participate in the election. To be clear- almost none of the representatives or Senators elected from seceding states in 1860 showed up for Congress in early 1861. None after elections in 1862 and 1864, and hence the quorum in the Capitol was based upon those still participating. Hence, if Trump were to "defer" the November 2020 election - or declare a boycott that neo-confederate states participated in - the rest of the states could hold their elections as usual, then have their electors vote and send their Representatives to the new Congress.
The precedent for those states who withdrew is clear. They are ignored.
== Wisdom from a science fictional seer ==
My colleague and bro Kim Stanley Robinson has a major article - The Coronavirus is Re-writing our Imaginations - in The New Yorker. (That alone is a victory for modernity, since that zine used to issue lynching-jeremiads against science fiction, with insipid regularity.) Robinson’s thought-provoking piece takes a mile-high perspective on our ructious time.
“It’s very likely that there will be more water shortages. And food shortages, electricity outages, devastating storms, droughts, floods. These are easy calls. They’re baked into the situation we’ve already created, in part by ignoring warnings that scientists have been issuing since the nineteen-sixties. Some shocks will be local, others regional, but many will be global, because, as this crisis shows, we are interconnected as a biosphere and a civilization.
“It’s very likely that there will be more water shortages. And food shortages, electricity outages, devastating storms, droughts, floods. These are easy calls. They’re baked into the situation we’ve already created, in part by ignoring warnings that scientists have been issuing since the nineteen-sixties. Some shocks will be local, others regional, but many will be global, because, as this crisis shows, we are interconnected as a biosphere and a civilization.
“Imagine a heat wave hot enough to kill anyone not in an air-conditioned space, then imagine power failures happening during such a heat wave. (The novel I’ve just finished begins with this scenario, so it scares me most of all.) Imagine pandemics deadlier than the coronavirus. These events, and others like them, are easier to imagine now than they were back in January, when they were the stuff of dystopian science fiction. But science fiction is the realism of our time. The sense that we are all now stuck in a science-fiction novel that we’re writing together—that’s another sign of the emerging structure of feeling.
“Science-fiction writers don’t know anything more about the future than anyone else. Human history is too unpredictable; from this moment, we could descend into a mass-extinction event or rise into an age of general prosperity. Still, if you read science fiction, you may be a little less surprised by whatever does happen. Often, science fiction traces the ramifications of a single postulated change; readers co-create, judging the writers’ plausibility and ingenuity, interrogating their theories of history. Doing this repeatedly is a kind of training. It can help you feel more oriented in the history we’re making now. This radical spread of possibilities, good to bad, which creates such a profound disorientation; this tentative awareness of the emerging next stage—these are also new feelings in our time.”
Like me, Robinson is fascinated by horizons of perception… what thresholds of future possibility people are willing to ponder and act upon. In novels and public statements he has long fretted that our neighbors are used to fobbing off on future generations potentially lethal environmental problems… a concern I shared via Earth and Existence. (See my elucidation of “Horizon Theory".)
In fact he sees hope in our current, self-interested interest in flattening-the-curve.
“We’re now confronting a miniature version of the tragedy of the time horizon. We’ve decided to sacrifice over these months so that, in the future, people won’t suffer as much as they would otherwise. In this case, the time horizon is so short that we are the future people. It’s harder to come to grips with the fact that we’re living in a long-term crisis that will not end in our lifetimes. But it’s meaningful to notice that, all together, we are capable of learning to extend our care further along the time horizon. Amid the tragedy and death, this is one source of pleasure. Even though our economic system ignores reality, we can act when we have to.”
“We’re now confronting a miniature version of the tragedy of the time horizon. We’ve decided to sacrifice over these months so that, in the future, people won’t suffer as much as they would otherwise. In this case, the time horizon is so short that we are the future people. It’s harder to come to grips with the fact that we’re living in a long-term crisis that will not end in our lifetimes. But it’s meaningful to notice that, all together, we are capable of learning to extend our care further along the time horizon. Amid the tragedy and death, this is one source of pleasure. Even though our economic system ignores reality, we can act when we have to.”
Hey, guarded optimism is my own schtick, as well, bro. Any other civilization would have crushed gadflies like thee and me… and most of our readers, too. And the scientists and front line workers and fact professions who will likely — in just the nick of time - save us all. So we’re already ahead of the game, just by continuing to play, and having hope.
== The Biggest Lie of Wall Street Parasites ==
Mark Anderson of the Strategic News Service offers an excellent missive on energy flows in nature! It is vital to understand we’re still part of an ecosystem that relies upon thermodynamics, even in economics. If fact, I’d like to add a couple of points about economics mythologies.
1) We are learning a hard lesson: that one of the wretched mistakes of the MBA caste has been to over-emphasize “efficiency” at all costs. Just-in-time systems developed by Toyota in the 1970s and 80s - based partly on teachings of industrial guru W. Edwards Demming - had terrific effects on pushing the envelope of quality on assembly lines. But when it exaggerated into a cult aversion to ever stockpiling parts on-site, industrial Japan grew fragile and then collapsed when they took a hit, as in the Fukushima debacle. Picture a marathoner with 0% body fat abruptly dropped into the desert for a multi-week survival trek.
In nature, the animals who are ‘efficient’ in a niche keep winning and winning… till hard times hit and suddenly each genus loses most of the specialist species that had branched-off. A lesson is to give Resilience equal priority to Efficiency.
I’ve been urging twenty different measures to make society more robust vs. future shocks. (I’m interviewed here by Peter Denning for the ACM on what simple measures - technological and social - might help accomplish this.)
I’ve been urging twenty different measures to make society more robust vs. future shocks. (I’m interviewed here by Peter Denning for the ACM on what simple measures - technological and social - might help accomplish this.)
2) Ask Wall Streeters to justify the spectacular costs of their activities — fully aware that 99.99% of it does not generate investment capital for companies innovating improved goods and services. They will recite their magical catechism-incantation — that they help to “discover the true price of equities and companies and capital.”
This rationalization is issued not as the mumbo-jumbo that it is, but as an axiom of faith, based upon the one time that's a service, when companies do raise fresh capital via IPO or other original equity sales. But the rest of the time, by nibbling at the edges of every transaction, Streeters claim they help to “smooth” the slope of value. It sounds plausible, till you realize —
This rationalization is issued not as the mumbo-jumbo that it is, but as an axiom of faith, based upon the one time that's a service, when companies do raise fresh capital via IPO or other original equity sales. But the rest of the time, by nibbling at the edges of every transaction, Streeters claim they help to “smooth” the slope of value. It sounds plausible, till you realize —
— that it is stunning malarkey-juju, based on absolutely nothing whatsoever. Certainly no analogues in nature, where health is defined by how FEW steps there are along the steep energy slopes that lead from sunlight to photosynthesizing plants, from plants to herbivores, from herbivores to carnivores, to poop and carrion that feed scavengers and microbes. Five big steps? Six or seven? In that case, everyone is pretty healthy and each layer is doing pretty well, supping in turn along the downward flowing river of free energy from the sun.
So what happens in nature when there are many, many increments, nibbling along the edges and “smoothing the slope”?
It’s called parasitism.
The plants are sickly from fungus.
Herbivores are bleary-eyed and scrawny from tapeworm and the scraggly-mangy lions are desperate.
Parasites are gobbling the energy increments, leaving barely enough for the main participants to stagger on.
It’s called parasitism.
The plants are sickly from fungus.
Herbivores are bleary-eyed and scrawny from tapeworm and the scraggly-mangy lions are desperate.
Parasites are gobbling the energy increments, leaving barely enough for the main participants to stagger on.
Does that sound like today’s corporations, small companies and entrepreneurs? Bled at every phase by commissions and arbitrage fees and consultants and insider trades and vast vampire-siphonings by a CEO caste that is no longer recruited from the innovators or shop-floor engineers (as they are still, in China), but installed by fellow board members, all part of an incestuous cabal of 5000 golf buddies.
Nothing could be more anti-competitive and more… soviet. Or more like the parasitism that brings both economies and ecologies to the very brink.
== Whimsey… thoughpossible to ponder… ==
This DIY Guillotine has… chops. Though Ikea left out the support braces, ropes, latches and pulleys!
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