694 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2024
  2. Feb 2024
  3. Jan 2024
    1. Equal Pay for Equal Work

      This post discusses the arguments for and against equal pay for equal work, highlighting the potential chaos and disadvantages of implementing such a system. The author emphasizes the importance of education and skill acquisition in increasing earnings and suggests creating transparency in pay to motivate individuals to improve their skills.

    2. Equal Pay for Equal Work
      • Who: The author (Just A Gamer).
      • What: Exploring the arguments for and against equal pay for equal work.
      • Why: To discuss the potential benefits and drawbacks of implementing equal pay.
      • How: The author presents their personal opinion against equal pay, highlighting reasons such as potential laziness, impact on company systems, and reduced incentives for talent and skill acquisition. They also suggest creating awareness about education and skill acquisition and promoting transparency in pay as potential solutions.
  4. Dec 2023
    1. SDGs
      • for: recommendation - replace SDG with downscaled earth system boundaries / doughnut economics

      • recommendation

        • recommend syncing local actions to global impacts via downscaled earth system boundaries instead of just SDGs due to the urgent nature of the climate crisis
    2. the SoNeC approach could potentiallybring about results related to these areas, but not limited to these
      • for: good match - SONEC - TPF, good match - SONEC - downscaled earth system boundaries, good match - SONEC - doughnut economics
    1. Jogerst, Karen. If I Could Just Get Organized: Home Management Hope for Pilers & Filers. Manhattan, MT: Rubies Publishing, 1999. http://archive.org/details/ificouldjustgeto0000joge.

      The author is a "piler" and patently not a "filer", so she's definitely going to be anti-card index based here.

      Small publishing company. Definite religious slant to the discussion.

      Only worth a quick scan.

      • for: futures - neo-Venetian crypto-networks, Global Chinese Commons, GCC, cosmolocal, coordiNation, somewheres, everywheres, nowheres, Global System One, Global System Two, Global System Three, contributory accounting, fourth sector, protocol cooperative, mutual coordination economics

      • summary

      • learned something new
        • I learned a number of new ideas from reading Michel's article. He gives a brief meta-history of our political-socio-economic system, using Peter Pogany's framework of Global System One, Two and Three and within this argues for why a marriage of blockchain systems and cosmolocal production systems could create a "fourth sector" for the transition to Global System Three.
        • He cites evidence of existing trends already pointing in this direction, drawing from his research in P2P Foundation
    1. the GS2 transition was more painful than GS1, and so very likely, the GS3 transition will be harder
      • for: GS3, Global System Three transition, mutual coordination economics

      • paraphrase

        • GS3 will be more difficult than GS2
        • social contract needs to be updated to include
          • new relation with nature and non-human beings
          • stronger multilateral relasionships to protect the planet
        • In Michel's view, a cosmolocal coordination will be required
        • The alternative is coercive eco-fascism to prevent massive ecological damage while we continue to overconsume planetary resources
        • definition: mutual coordination economics
          • an economic system that maximizes freedom of choice within earth system boundaries with minimal coercion
          • it is a new synthesis of markets, states and commons via decentralized p2p networks
  5. Nov 2023
    1. State Treasurer Robert Sprague said the program comes as many Ohioans face increased obstacles when it comes to buying a home in terms of price and availability

      Since prices are high due and availability is low, their Keynesian solution is to flood the market with free money, which will cause even more demand, less availability, and even higher prices. Basic economics.

    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

      “The Sam Vimes "Boots" Theory of Economic Injustice runs thus:<br /> At the time of Men at Arms, Samuel Vimes earned thirty-eight dollars a month as a Captain of the Watch, plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars.<br /> Therefore over a period of ten years, he might have paid out a hundred dollars on boots, twice as much as the man who could afford fifty dollars up front ten years before. And he would still have wet feet.<br /> Without any special rancour, Vimes stretched this theory to explain why Sybil Ramkin lived twice as comfortably as he did by spending about half as much every month.”<br /> ― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms (1993)

  6. Oct 2023
    1. incentive-misalignment problem

      This is provably wrong. 1. Less power-hungry chips are in high demand thanks to mobile computing. 2. Manufacturers keep touting how much less power they consume. 3. Greater power costs greater money. So the incentives are aligned.

    1. And if you look at the total consumption of semiconductors by the Chinese manufacturing industry, then China imports more semiconductors than they import oil.

      China spends more importing semiconductors than on importing oil? really?

      This is from Peter Wennink, CEO of ASML

  7. Sep 2023
  8. Aug 2023
    1. In finance, the greater fool theory suggests that one can sometimes make money through the purchase of overvalued assets — items with a purchase price drastically exceeding the intrinsic value — if those assets can later be resold at an even higher price.
    1. Undoubtedly the first task of the statesman in such countriesis to raise the standard of living to such a point that thepeople may be freed from economic slavery and given thetime to get the education appropriate to free men.

      A bulk of America was stuck in a form of economic slavery in the 1950s. See description of rural Texans in Robert Caro's LBJ biography for additional context --- washing/scrubbing, carrying water, farming, etc. without electricity in comparison to their fellow Americans who did have it.

      In the 21st century there is a different form of economic slavery imposed by working to live and a culture of consumption and living on overextended credit.

      Consider also the comedic story of the capitalist and the rural fisherman and the ways they chose to live their lives.

    1. the Auto industry built for us and what's most Insidious is the financials behind all of this
      • for: adjacency - urban decay, suburbs, history- suburbs, history - car culture, urban decay - economics
      • paraphrase

        • as the suburbs expanded they need more and more roads highways Bridges infrastructure to stay afloat
        • but because the nature of the suburb is spread out single-family housing as opposed to the densely packed City Apartment dwelling the suburbs have too few people to be able to fund this infrastructure
        • subsequently, they so they have to keep expanding in order to fund themselves and even then they still can't fund themselves
        • so they often rely on tax dollars from City dwellers to subsidize their Suburban excesses
        • who lives in the cities because of white flight ?... people of color
        • when it comes to housing, people of color have been screwed over in literally every way in imaginable

        • so we have this self-perpetuating cycle

          • the growth of suburbs leads to more suburban sprawl
          • this increases the need for cars
          • this leads to the building of more highways and Roads
          • this leads to not enough income to pay for the suburbs
          • this leads to black and brown communities being forced to subsidize Suburban Lifestyles at the expense of the beautification of their own communities leading to the degradation of inner city neighborhoods
    1. so here we go to number six why transform
      • for: doughnut economics, climate change - societal impacts, whole system change - motivation
      • question: why transform?
        • answer
          • The word transformation is carefully chosen by John and here he explains why.
          • We face an extreme and growing polycrisis that threatens to overpower our capacity to cope with it unless we act now for whole system transformation.
          • Voices across all of society are becoming more vocal of the need to transform the existing system.
          • This transformation program does not need everyone to participate, just a sufficient but small percentage of the population who are aligned to these ideas.
          • Not everyone believes such transformation is necessary but the R+D project only needs to onboard a small percentage of the population who does believe to change the entire system for the benefit of even the non-believers.
      • comment
        • John is implying social tipping points as well as social engineering
    1. Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023.

    1. For largely financial reasons, the intensity of bookings is increasing (the number of artists scheduled to perform per year, per season, etc.) and the bookings themselves are growing more and more extensive (the kilometres/miles travelled by artists continue to rise with fewer and fewer performance dates in each region)
      • for: music industry - touring economics, concert booking arms race, unsustainable booking
        • the intensity of bookings ( number of artists scheduled to perform per year or per season) is increasing
        • the average booking is becoming more geographically widespread ( more kilometers travelled per artist) with fewer performance dates per region
        • increase in artistic fees and technical requirements force organizers to attract more audiences who come from further away, creating a concert booking arms race
    1. Der Guardian hat Fachleute zu Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) befragt. Die britische Regierung legitimiert neue Öl- und Gasbohrlizenzen mit gleichzeitigen CCS-Projekten. Einige Experten sind nach ersten Erfahrungen sehr skeptisch, was die grundsätzliche Realisierbarkeit von CCS an vielen Stellen der Erde angeht. CCS werde vor allem zur Dekarbonisierung von Industrien gebraucht werden, die bisher nicht CO<sub>2</sub>-frei betrieben werden können, es sei aber keine Rechtfertigung für neue fossile Entwicklungsprojekte. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/01/is-carbon-capture-and-storage-really-a-silver-bullet-for-the-climate-crisis

  9. Jun 2023
    1. Technology is valuable and empowering, but at what end direct cost? Consumers don't have available data for the actual costs of the options they're choosing in many contexts.

      What if that reprocessing costs the equivalent of three glasses of waters? Is it worth it for our environment, especially when the direct costs to the "consumer" are hidden into advertising models.

      (via Brenna)

  10. May 2023
    1. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=complexity+exonomics+textbook&crid=2SZP0E6DIIR6J&sprefix=complexity+exonomics+text%2Caps%2C630&ref=nb_sb_noss

      While I'm reading Doughnut Economics, it's interesting to contemplate the images on common economics textbooks as an indicator of how the authors/publishers think about the models of the information inside them.

      Some broad ideas represented here: - bustling people (consumers) walking over curvy 3D graph grids - greenish abstract cover (representing the green idea of money) - a compass rose (indicating finding one's direction; on a book about managerial economics and business strategy) - a globe of the world with a colorful infographic heat map - a bunch of blue and silver metal balls connected in a network-like configuration - a montage of images of numbers (credit card numbers, numbers on money, a ticker with stock prices, etc.) - a solar panel with blue sky and clouds in the background - blue sky with white fluffy clouds (indicating what, exactly?) - an ipad with an image of a busy street in the 1800s held up as if taking a photo of the same street today - puzzle pieces being put together with an image of people exchanging money at a farmer's market - abstract grid of a map outline of the Americas

    1. the Carthusian monks decided in 2019 to limit Chartreuse production to 1.6 million bottles per year, citing the environmental impacts of production, and the monks' desire to focus on solitude and prayer.[10] The combination of fixed production and increased demand has resulted in shortages of Chartreuse across the world.

      In 2019, Carthusian monks went back to their values and decided to scale back their production of Chartreuse.

  11. Apr 2023
    1. A writer collective is a set of editorial and financial structures designed to give writers the autonomy and upside that they get from writing alone, and the support and security they get from working for a media company. 

      If the "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" who benefits from the excess value and how is that economically broken up in a fair manner?

    1. It is difficult to see interdependencies This is especially true in the context of learning something complex, say economics. We can’t read about economics in a silo without understanding psychology, sociology and politics, at the very least. But we treat each subject as though they are independent of each other.

      Where are the tools for graphing inter-dependencies of areas of study? When entering a new area it would be interesting to have visual mappings of ideas and thoughts.

      If ideas in an area were chunked into atomic ideas, then perhaps either a Markov monkey or a similar actor could find the shortest learning path from a basic idea to more complex ideas.

      Example: what is the shortest distance from an understanding of linear algebra to learn and master Lie algebras?

      Link to Garden of Forking Paths

      Link to tools like Research Rabbit, Open Knowledge Maps and Connected Papers, but for ideas instead of papers, authors, and subject headings.


      It has long been useful for us to simplify our thought models for topics like economics to get rid of extraneous ideas to come to basic understandings within such a space. But over time, we need to branch out into related and even distant subjects like mathematics, psychology, engineering, sociology, anthropology, politics, physics, computer science, etc. to be able to delve deeper and come up with more complex and realistic models of thought.Our early ideas like the rational actor within economics are fine and lovely, but we now know from the overlap of psychology and sociology which have given birth to behavioral economics that those mythical rational actors are quaint and never truly existed. To some extent, to move forward as a culture and a society we need to rid ourselves of these quaint ideas to move on to more complex and sophisticated ones.

    1. Much popularization work remains to put newer evolutionary lessons on par with pop-science selfish-gene logic. But billions of years of harsh testing have taught all living systems to suppress certain sorts of disruptive selfishness. Economists should reflect long and hard on why the systems they study would be any exception.

      Kate Raworth's Donut Economics thesis is a step in the direction of reframing economics towards cooperation and creating a self-sustaining world.

    1. The $11.8 billion mistake that led to Bed, Bath & Beyond’s demise by Chris Isidore

      Share repurchases of $11.8 billion since 2004 may have led to the downfall and ultimate bankruptcy of Bed, Bath, & Beyond.

    2. Share repurchases are a way for companies to return cash to shareholders indirectly, without them having to pay taxes as they would on a stock dividend. The idea is that by reducing the number of shares outstanding, each remaining share of stock in the hands of investors becomes more valuable.
    1. Based on yesterday's discussion at Dan Allosso's Book Club, we don't include defense spending into the consumer price index for calculating inflation or other market indicators. What other things (communal goods) aren't included into these measures, but which potentially should be to take into account the balance of governmental spending versus individual spending. It seems unfair that individual sectors, particularly those like defense contracting which are capitalistic in nature, but which are living on governmental rent extraction, should be free from the vagaries of inflation?

      Throwing them into the basket may create broader stability for the broader system and act as a brake via feedback mechanisms which would push those corporations to work for the broader economic good, particularly when they're taking such a large piece of the overall pie.

      Similarly how might we adjust corporate tax rates with respect to the level of inflation to prevent corporate price gouging during times of inflation which seems to be seen in the current 2023 economic climate. Workers have seen some small gains in salary since the pandemic, but inflationary pressures have dramatically eaten into these taking the gains and then some back into corporate coffers. The FED can increase interest rates to effect some change, but this doesn't change corporate price gouging in any way, tax or other policies will be necessary to do this.

    2. Why do we devalue education? Is it such a commodity now that its transmission value is worth pennies on the dollar?

      Is Government requirement and support for education part of what causes the devaluation of the "educational market"? If so, how would one decouple this process to increase the wages of educators? Is a capitalistic version the best way to go, or is it better to socialize it further and inject more money into it versus other choices?

      Major nationwide strike forming minimum wage with variances for local consumer indices and city/state costs of living? Something which would drive competition for child care and teaching spaces? Wages that would push up the social value of education? Create a market for competition for teachers at the local level as well as between areas?

    3. Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/lV19ytGBEe2ynWMu34UKUg

      This depreciation is done at the lowest level of exchange and caused the system to collapse rather quickly. What level is our current exchange done at such that the inequalities are pushed up multiple levels making the system seem more stable? How is instability introduced? How could it be minimized?

      Our current system is valued both by time and skill (using the measure of payment per hour).

      Compare this with salespeople who are paid on commission rather than on an hourly basis. They are then using their skill of sales ability and balancing time (and levels of chance) to create their outcomes, but at the same time, some of their work is built on the platform that sales management or the company provides. Who builds this and how do they get paid for it? Who provides sales leads? How is this calculated into the system costs?

      How do these ideas fit into the Bullshit Jobs thesis?

    4. Tradesmen, too, were quick to see that the exchange might be worked to their advantage; they brought unsaleable stock from their shops, exchanged it for labour notes, and then picked out the best of the saleable articles. Consequently the labour notes began to depreciate; trouble also arose with the proprietors of the premises, and the experiment came to an untimely end early in 1834.

      The labour exchange at Gray's Inn Road which began on September 3, 1832, which was based on Robert Owen's idea in The Crisis (June 1832), eventually collapsed in 1834 as the result of Greshham's Law in which "bad money drives out good." In this case, rather than money the object was the relative value of goods which were exchanged based on Labour notes. Labour notes were used to exchange unsaleable stock in shops for labour notes which were then used to purchase more valuable goods. This caused depreciation of the labor notes ultimately causing the experiment to collapse in 1834.

  12. Mar 2023
    1. Ads, Andrew and James discuss where the the climate movement is right now, how deep time plays into the effects we are having on the planet, when good people do bad things because of poor systems and what happens next if 1.5C fails.
      • 21:52 Carbon credits, carbon markets
        • it's a scam designed to perpetuate fossil fuel use, in a phoney war against the climate crisis
        • Offsets were designed to allow polluters to pay others to create schemes that would compensate or "offset" that pollution. The classic example WAS afforestation, the planting of trees that can sequester that carbon.
        • Carbon neutrality comes from this idea that you can keep polluting if you offset it and become "carbon neutral"
        • A company may decarbonize a lot of their supply chain but may struggle to get rid of airflights around the world. In that case, they use offsets. When companies analyze the very difficult choices, they take the easy way out and use carbon offsets
        • However, there is so much offsets for afforestation now that there isn't enough land on earth
        • Carbon markets are a recipe for grifting and fraud or zero impacts
        • This is the current state of offsets

      31:00 Shell oil carbon offset greenwashing scam - the sky zero proposal - Shell claims they can offset all the O+G emissions out of the ground - it is preposterous - there's not enough land on earth when you tally up all the carbon offset afforestation schemes

      • 32:30 Neo-colonialism

        • rich white man can offset his emissions by buying land from a developing nation. Now the indigenous people cannot use that land for any reason.
        • also, will require huge amount of water to grow those trees
        • we don't have enough land and we don't have 100 years, only 5 years.
        • nature-based solutions are an industrial, myopic approach
      • 37:00 Deferred Emission Reduction

        • a lot of carbon credits are called deferred emission reduction credits.
        • this is avoided emissions - ie. trees in a forest with 100 ton of sequestering potential
        • this is promise to not destroy the biosphere any further so it's not removing any existing carbon
        • maybe multiple people might own the same forest, or someone might come along and burn it down
        • Trees are vulnerable to climate impacts - ie. Microsoft bought a large forest in California that later burned down in a climate change intensified wildfire
      • 40:00 can we do anything within the extractive capitalist system?

        • some people claim that as long as extractivist capitalism still persists, we cannot have system change
        • also a neocolonialist element - global north exploited the global south to create most of the emissions in the atmospheric commons
        • a number of people are beginning to see that an extractivist capitalist system is not in line with effectively addressing the climate crisis
        • wind, solar, etc has displaced electricity generation in a number of countries like in the UK. However, these are only a few countries.Renewables are helping increase overall energy production
      • 44:22: Stop burning fossil fuels

        • t doesn't matter if investments in renewables triple. It won't make a difference if we don't significantly stop burning fossil fuels at the same time.
      • 47:00 economic growth prevents real change

        • Insisting on 1, 2 or 3% growth, will limit the response to the climate threat to render it irrelevant
        • Climate change is still mostly an optimization problem. They are more concerned with economic damage.
        • Economists believe that anything that threatens economic growth cannot be accepted
      • 51:00 Degrowth making headway

        • Degrowth scholars are getting more attention on the need to decouple economic grwoth from climate policies
      • 52:10 Is there a positive future scenario - The role of solidarity

        • Solidarity is the greatest strength we can harness.
        • The success of Doughnut Economics gives me hope
        • The richest 1% must reign in their impacts and redistribute to allow the impoverished to live humane lives
        • We can all have good lives and we don't have to manufacture that wonder
        • This is what it is to be human
    1. Within the Earth Commission, we aim to propose ‘safe and just Earth system boundaries’ (ESBs) that go beyond planetary boundaries as they also include a justice perspective and suggest transformations to achieve them3.
      • The = Earth Commission,
      • proposes ‘safe and just Earth system boundaries’ (ESBs)
      • that go beyond planetary boundaries as
        • they also include a justice perspective
        • suggest transformations to achieve them.
      • Safe and just ESBs aim to:

        • stabilize the Earth system,
        • protect species and ecosystems,
        • avoid tipping points,
        • minimize ‘significant harm’ to people while ensuring access to resources for a dignified life and escape from poverty.
      • If justice is not considered,

      • the biophysical limits may not be adequate
      • to protect current generations from significant harm

      • Comment

      • Similar to aims of doughnut economics
    2. Raworth and colleagues have pushed for social issues and equity to underpin the planetary boundaries by highlighting the social foundations in ‘doughnut economics’27. We build on these ideas (Fig. 1) to propose the concept of Earth system justice
      • = Earth system justice
      • build upon = Doughnut economics socio-economic boundaries.
    1. On the public end of the spectrum, good protocols for environmental stewardship can bring endangered species back from the brink of extinction, and restore delicate ecosystems.

      Reminds me of some of the work of the Center for New Economics like: - Community Land trust program - The Commons Program

      and I imagine this is strongly referencing the Yellowstone story? More here in this amazing Wollheben book

    1. //

      • This is a good resource to explore doughnut economics at a national scale for many countries of the world.
      • The two quadrants show a major pattern and dualism between 1) many developed countries that can meet socio-economic well-being, but only at the high price of exceeding planetary boundaries, and 2) many countries that stay under planetary boundary limits, but only at the expense of poor socio-economic indicators.
      • The conclusion of the study is that currently, a good life for all within planet boundaries does not exist
    1. TheCalculagraph

      Beyond having people make direct copies of cards by hand or using carbon paper, The Calculagraph Company manufactured a copying machine for duplicating data.

      There is an accompanying picture (which I haven't copied here). Advertisement from 1906 System Magazine:

      The Calculagraph<br /> Makes individual records of actual<br /> working time on separate cards<br /> which may be used interchangeably<br /> for Cost Accounting, for Pay-rolls and<br /> for a number of other purposes with-<br /> out copying or transcribing a single<br /> figure, by simply assorting the cards<br /> and adding the records directly from<br /> their faces.<br /> A card containing all the work<br /> records of one man for a week may<br /> be useful for pay-roll purposes, but it<br /> is utterly worthless for learning the<br /> cost of products, until all the items<br /> have been copied or transcribed for<br /> classification.<br /> The Calculagraph requires a large<br /> number of cards in a factory employ-<br /> ing several hundred persons, but it<br /> Saves Clerical Labor. (In one<br /> factory it saves $150.00 per week).<br /> Cards Are Cheaper Than Labor<br /> The Calculagraph Makes No<br /> Clerical Errors.<br /> Let us send you our printed matter.<br /> CALCULAGRAPH COMPANY<br /> 1414 JEWELERS BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY

    1. Piketty, Thomas. A Brief History of Equality. Translated by Steven Rendall. Harvard University Press, 2022. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674273559.

      annotation target: url: urn:x-pdf:61f07d62a5664b0280bb35ee2d6a69e5

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    1. In short, in the absence of legal tender laws, the seller will not accept anything but money of certain value (good money), but the existence of legal tender laws will cause the buyer to offer only money with the lowest commodity value (bad money), as the creditor must accept such money at face value.

      During the coronavirus pandemic, many vendors facing inflation began to pass along the 3% (or more) credit card processing fees to their customers. Previously many credit card companies would penalize vendors for doing this (and possibly cut them off). This fee was considered "the cost of doing business".

      Some vendors prior to the pandemic would provide cash discounts on large orders because they could circumvent these fees.

      Does this affect (harm) inflation? Is it a form of Gresham's law at play here? What effect does this have on credit card companies? Are they so integral to the system that it doesn't affect them, but instead the customers using their legal tender?

    2. In economics, Gresham's law is a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good". For example, if there are two forms of commodity money in circulation, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable commodity will gradually disappear from circulation.[1][2] The law was named in 1860 by economist Henry Dunning Macleod after Sir Thomas Gresham (1519–1579), an English financier during the Tudor dynasty. Gresham had urged Queen Elizabeth to restore confidence in then-debased English currency. The concept was thoroughly defined in medieval Europe by Nicolaus Copernicus and known centuries earlier in classical Antiquity, the Middle East and China.

      Gresham's law is an economic monetary principle which states that "bad money drives out good."

      It relates to commodity value, particularly in coinage, where cheaper base metals in coins will cause more expensive coinage to disappear from circulation.

    1. Studies published so far either use a per-capita approach that assigns a value derived from the global threshold, whether it can have consequences on the stability of the Earth System or not, or they calculate a local boundary that ignores the global relevance of the concept. Only Zipper et al. (2020) have developed a framework for the regional application of the freshwater Planetary Boundary. This framework is able to combine both a fair share based on the global boundary and a local safe operating space based on locally relevant control and response variables. They divided the water Planetary Boundary into six sub-boundaries as per Gleeson et al. (2020), which reflect the different functions of water within the Earth System, and represent five different stores of water (atmospheric water, soil moisture, surface water, groundwater and frozen water). Each store of water can either have a boundary only at the global/local level, in which case only the relevant boundary will be used, or it can be relevant at both scales. In this case, if the control variable of the boundary is different for the global and the local scale, two boundaries will result, with two different control variables. If the control variable is the same, the more conservative boundary will be

      This cpatures the key challenges to downscaling esp to regional levels, along with a possible solution

    2. The review is organized around three key questions:1-How can one downscale a global concept (with physical borders) for operability for a country (within political borders)? (Section 2).2-What is the role of interactions among different boundaries? (Section 3).3-Can the concept of ecosystem services help to downscale the Doughnut and define the life within the SJOS? (Section 4).

      Article is sceptical of capacity to downscale global concepts, and of the capacity to link social and ecological dimensions of the doughnut

  13. Feb 2023
    1. Dieser Aufsatz ist eine argumentativ durchgeführte Übersicht zu ökonomischen Konzepten für eine regenerative Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Die Autor:innen verarbeiten sehr viel und – so weit ich das beurteilen kann – sehr relevante Literatur, und sie bringen dabei unterschiedliche Stränge zusammen. Zentrale Positionen sind dabei die biophysikalisch begründetet Kritik an der Wachstumsökonomie durch Georgescu-Roegen und seine Nachfolger, die Historisierung von Märkten duch Karl Polanyi, die institutionelle Ökonomie sowie Ansätze der Social and Solidarity Economy.

    1. Ever since President Reagan decided to stop enforcing U.S. anti-monopoly laws, the easy solution to competitive threat is to simply buy the competitor.

      Note for historical purposes.

    1. Mattei, Clara E. The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2022. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo181707138.html.

      I've always wondered why the United States never used the phrase austerity to describe political belt tightening.

  14. Jan 2023
    1. Modern factory discipline was born on ships and on plantations. Itwas only later that budding industrialists adopted those techniques ofturning humans into machines into cities like Manchester andBirmingham.
    2. Kandiaronk, who took the position of anegalitarian and skeptical rationalist and held that the punitiveapparatus of European law and religion was made necessary only byan economic system arranged in such a way that it would inevitablyproduce precisely the behaviors that apparatus was designed to

      repress.

    1. Spencer, in turn, was struck by how much the forces driving natural selection in On the Origin of Species jibed with his own laissez-faire economic theories. Competition over resources, rational calculation of advantage, and the gradual extinction of the weak were taken to be the prime directives of the universe.
    1. Sustainability researchers from the Rochester Institute of Technology point out that there is significant variation in the types and amounts of critical materials present in different reservoirs of coal waste. This means that not all waste will be profitable to purify. As the researchers have written, “The value of rare earths in a single ton of coal ash can vary from US$99 at a coal plant in Ohio to $534 at a West Virginia plant. With extraction costs expected to range between $380 and $1,200 per ton, not every coal plant’s ash will be a profitable place to find rare earths.” There are also concerns that the chemicals used to harvest critical minerals could be damaging.

      In the best case, the cost of extraction is about 70% of the possible value of the recovered minerals.

    1. Euronext today announced the launch of the CAC SBT 1.5°

      Euronext launches CAC SBR 1.5 - designed to facilitate.the adoption of mainstream ESG investment tools for investors and market

  15. Dec 2022
    1. doughnut economics does questionthe dominant economic growth paradigm [1,14]. How-ever, Brand et al. [49] see the absence of upper limits onthe social foundation as a particular limitation of thedoughnut, proposing that ‘societal boundaries’ areneeded to address injustice and slow the metabolism ofsocieties that overshoot ecological boundaries. Indownscaling efforts, determining such societal bound-aries would require powerful local leadership and in-tensive public engagement to foster their legitimacywhile also helping to identify the social and culturalresources that can support collective self-restraint [49].Such engagement may also help to counter the interestsof powerful actors who oppose socioeconomic limits orbenefit from greater inequality [69].

      !- local doughnut economics : challenges - incumbent power will resist constraints to socio-economic limits - local doughnut economic champions will need to provide strong leadership to counter such actors

    2. Translating the ambition behind the doughnut to localaction is inherently political given the demand for socialand economic shifts that imply a significant redistribu-tion of power and resources [23,65]. Critical social sci-ence research highlights the need for principles tounderpin such decision-making processes, ensuring thatgovernance for sustainable development is transparent,accountable, and responsive, particularly to those whoare marginalised [49].

      !- doughnut economics : local governance -will require major power shifts so becomes political - there is a need for transparency, accountability and responsiveness, especially to those who are marginalized

    3. he concept of planetary boundariesprioritising scientific expertise and discussed primarily inacademic debates [14], and the doughnut commonlyappealing to policy-makers and practitioners at nationalor subnational scales, neither has the traction acrossspatial scales that has been achieved through the steerby the UN in the case of SDGs.

      !- downscaling : planetary boundaries and doughnut economics - neither has the traction as SDGs

    4. If the doughnut is to bea practical tool for governance it will need to involve newconversations incorporating political institutions, civilsociety organisations, and the wider public

      !- downscaling : doughnut economics - challenges - wider stakeholder engagement than just scientific community is required

    5. downscaling poses the additional complexity ofunderstanding place-based dynamic systems to identifypathways that are safe and just over time [26,37]. Incomparison to national processes, where issues are ad-dressed by separate government departments and siloedpolicy agendas [22], local institutions may be better ableto generate integrative place-based policy and action[43,44]. However, institutional capacity and integrationmechanisms may be needed to support these kinds ofpolicies [45]. Applications of the doughnut present fur-ther challenges in this regard because of a need to in-tegrate and respond to changing scientific knowledgeregarding non-linear change, tipping points, interactionsand feedbacks [35], for which it may be difficult toidentify the implications for local contexts.

      !- downscaling : doughnut economics - challenges related to place-based dynamic systems

    6. Downscaling the doughnut may require more attentionto connectivity across scales than has been demanded bypast approaches to local governance for sustainable de-velopment. The task of downscaling global models in-tensifies established challenges around goal setting,indicator selection, data availability and ongoing mon-itoring [18,22,23,26,39] because it requires goal setting tobe informed by an understanding of context-specificsocial and ecological trends and how they interact toinfluence both local and planetary outcomes. There areparticular complications in incorporating a burden-sharing approach that explores the extent to which localactivity contributes to global trends and problems.

      !- downscaling : doughnut economics - challenges in downscaling

    1. Human choices and actions could narrow or widen the safe and just corridor for human development. Considering the complex interactions, feedbacks, and non-linearities within and between societal activities and Earth system behavior, we need to advance beyond previous frameworks such as the “donut” (Raworth, 2018) to understand when “safe” and “just” ranges do and do not overlap.

      !- limitations of : doughnut economic model - the interactions, feedbacks and nonlinearities between societal activity and earth system behavior is far too complex for the doughnut economic model

    2. safe as primarily referring to a stable Earth system and just targets as being associated with meeting human needs and reducing exposure to risks.

      !- in other words : "safe" and "just" - thinking in terms of doughnut economics, safe refers to staying within biophysical constraints and just refers to staying within socio-economic constraints of human civilization to ensure wellbeing

    1. in ecological economics and or environmental economics grandfathering is typically seen as the most unfair distribution and the reason why we do it also in a mission training system the first five 00:40:19 years I started with grandfathering because it's feasible as you start from where you are so it's realistic in a way and then you approach Industries or countries where they are so all the road maps start from 00:40:31 grandfathering because you start from where you are it doesn't mean that it's fair that some counters have very very high emissions per capita is it fair the United States had three times higher than Sweden per capita 00:40:43 and therefore they should have three times more allocation than Sweden well we can argue that so generally it's not fair but it's it might be feasible and the common budget differentiate 00:40:56 responsibility increases perspective capabilities principle there is no unique scientific answer to this it's an ethical issue that is worth a sincere public discussion and political 00:41:08 negotiation so we cannot really answer this in scientific way

      !- explanation : ecological economics grandfathering - starting where the country is at - is not fair, because currently, some countries have much higher carbon footprint - why should they be allowed to carry on and incrementally decrease - while other low carbon, undeveloped countries cannot?

    1. They didn't block new features for shits and giggles, though – the method to this madness was rent-extraction. The iron-clad rule of the Bell System was that anything that improved on the basic service had to have a price-tag attached. Every phone "feature" was a recurring source of monthly revenue for the phone company – even the phone itself, which you couldn't buy, and had to rent, month after month, year after year, until you'd paid for it hundreds of times over. This is an early and important example of "predatory inclusion": the monopoly carriers delivered universal service to all of us, but that was a prelude to an ugly, parasitic, rent-seeking way of doing business:

      Predatory inclusion is a form of rent-seeking in which one preys on customers using monopoly power to extract excessive value for small add-on services.

    1. to lowered economic productivity through reduced earnings. In addition,increased health costs amount to $192 billion, whereas costs associated withincreased crime and incarceration (increased victimization costs of street crime;increased corrections and crime deterrence; increased social costs of incarcer-ation) total $406 billion.

      Childhood poverty results in an annual loss of $294 billion due...

    2. Human capital consists of those skills and resources that eachof us brings into the labor market. They include the quantity and quality ofeducation we have attained, job training received, acquired skills and experi-ence, aptitudes and abilities, and so on.
    1. This is a case of what Paul Keller and I have called the Paradox of Open: the existence of power imbalances that leads to, at best, ambivalent outcomes of openness. It is a paradox that the success of open code software, both in terms of the reach of the technology and in economic terms, has happened through underfunded or entirely volunteer work of individual coders. This shows the limits of the open source development model that will affect the future growth of the Fediverse as well. 

      The Paradox of Open (Source) is as Keller and Tarkowski formulate it, that the clear socio-economic value and tech impact of open source comes from underfunded / volunteer work. Vgl [[Bootstrapping 20201007204011]] and the role of precarity in it. Makes me think about 1937 Ronald Coase's transaction costs which in [[Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky]] is used to derive a Cosean Floor (and Cosean Ceiling). Openness allows you to operate below the Cosean Floor, but it seems that to bootstrap beyond that first stage is harder. Are such projects incapable of finding a spot above the Floor further down the chain, or are they pushed aside (or rather 'harvested') by those already positioned and operating above that Floor? Perhaps your spot above the floor needs to be part of the design of the work done below the floor. What's the link with my [[Openheid en haar grenzen 20130131154227]] in which I position openness as necessity to operate in a networked environment, and as necessarily limited by human group dynamics and keeping those healthy? Balancing both is the sweetspot in the complex domain. Are we any good at doing that in other terms than just social group behaviour in a room? #openvraag what's the online/bootstrapping equiv of it? How did we do that for my company 11 yrs ago (in part by operating something else above the Floor alongside)?

  16. Nov 2022
    1. Hello! Daisy Thomas is my name. I recently earned an Economics Ph.D. degree from the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. I earned my CSET AND CBEST (Multiple Subjects) teaching certificates on the side and graduated with a 7.75 GPA! I am an expert in Economics, statistics and Money Market. I worked on this Economics Homework Help and for exam purpose take my economics exam website and my client was so impressed with my work and also gave me 9.2/10 ratings. If you want to me to work for you then you can hire me anytime, I will never disappoint you.

  17. view.connect.americanpublicmedia.org view.connect.americanpublicmedia.org
    1. The word “kafala” in Arabic has traditionally been used to describe a social and moral “responsibility to another.”  Researchers Ray Jureidini and Said Fares Hassan write, “kafala contracts were used to protect the weak and vulnerable by instituting the patronage of a prominent local who provided whatever protection was required.” Think of raising an orphaned child, for example. In business, kafala originally referred to contracts where a guarantor assumes liability for another person (e.g. a cosigner for a loan).    Kafala nowadays is often used to describe the legal relationship between businesses and migrant workers. Employers, typically citizens, act as sponsors for workers and assume legal responsibility for their movement and actions in exchange for their right to work in a geographic area. 

      The use of kafala shows a shift from a meaning of social responsibility into a meaning co-opted by capitalism and social contract.

    2. Most of the tourist and sporting infrastructure had to be built at enormous expense — estimates range anywhere from$200 billion to $300 billion. Yet the return on investment for huge events like this is rarely positive. The Olympics are infamously pricey  to put on, and the economic benefits for residents of the host city are questionable.  So, with the big price tag and not much to show in return, why do countries like Qatar, Russia and Brazil offer up billions of dollars to host global sporting events? According to Victor Matheson, a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross and a former Major League Soccer referee, they may be seeking to burnish their reputations through international media coverage.   “If you’re putting any sort of significant money into infrastructure like Qatar obviously is doing, there’s just no way you can make that back on ticket sales, on media rights, [or] on the amount of money you make from tourists coming to visit your country,” Matheson said in an interview with Marketplace’s David Brancaccio. “So obviously, you’re hoping for some sort of long-run benefits, some sort of legacy, and often that is an improvement in your reputation, either as a tourist destination or as a world player in some ways.” 

      Alternate thesis for why countries and cities vie to host money-losing events like the World Cup and the Olympics: grift.

      With the necessary need for building infrastructure, there's easy and ample opportunity for cooking the books and pushing cash flow into the pockets of contractors and political figures as well as into the pockets of the governing bodies and their officials.

      Cross reference FIFA bribery

      Some of the money may go into the local economy and workers which is good, but who's really benefitting here? Where is the money going? Who is footing the loss? It can't all be written off to goodwill.

    1. I've been told since the first day I started working at the Division of Hospital Medicine at @UCSF that my work doesn't bring in $ to cover my salary. It's a narrative of manufactured scarcity, a common tactic in capitalism. The CEO is making $1.85 million plus bonuses.

      — Rupa Marya, MD (@DrRupaMarya) November 4, 2022
      <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

      A Hospitalist’s economic value is in what we *save* the system in terms of quality-driven care and patient throughput (DC/unit time), not in how much we bring in through profees. Because of how the system is structured, you’ll only see our value when we aren’t there.

      — Rupa Marya, MD (@DrRupaMarya) November 4, 2022
      <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

      This sounds a lot like hospitalists fall under David Graeber's thesis in Bullshit Jobs that the more necessary and useful you are the less you're likely to get paid and be valued.


      I suspect the ability to track an employees' direct level of productivity also fits into this thesis. One can track the productivity of an Amazon warehouse worker or driver, but it's much more difficult to track the CEOs direct productivity.

    1. Leeson, R. A. Travelling Brothers: The Six Centuries’ Road from Craft Fellowship to Trade Unionism. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1979.

      https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4467218-travelling-brothers

      Suggested by Jerry Michalski on 2022-11-02

  18. Oct 2022
    1. kriminalisering av deltagande i kriminella gäng

      Undrar om ekonomisk brottslighet menas. Den utgör minst 100 miljarder kronor per år, alltså minst 1,8% av sveriges BNP, medan flyktingimmigration kostar cirka 1,0% av sveriges BNP; observera att flyktingimmigration bidrar till sveriges BNP, vilket ekonomisk brottslighet aldrig gör.

    2. Företagsbeskattningen ska vara konkurrenskraftig

      "Konkurrenskraftig" brukar vara högerspråk för att vidare ge företag fördelar medan fattiga individer försvagas.

      Sverige har under de senaste 25 åren urholkats till förmån för rika, och detta underlättar saken. Från min egna bloggpost som citerar ekonomijournalisten Andreas Cervenkas bok "Girig-Sverige":

      Sweden has undergone extreme change in the last 25 years. Where I guess most people around the world believe Sweden to be a socialist haven, check out this list of changes:

      • 1997: wealth tax was abolished for owners of more than 25% of stock in public companies. This occurred after pressure from, among others, Stefan Persson (owner of H&M; he's now the wealthiest person in Sweden)
      • 2003: owners with more than 10% of stocks in a company wouldn't have to pay taxes on dividends and sales
      • 2004: the inheritance tax was abolished
      • 2004: the tax on gifts was abolished
      • 2006: the tax on dividends for sole traders were, in some cases, lowered from 30% to 20%
      • 2007: the wealth tax was abolished
      • 2008: the property tax (in per cent) was abolished and replaced with a set cost that in 2021 was 8,524 crowns (about 850 euros)
      • 2008-2012: the company tax was lowered from 28% to 22%, and somewhat later, once again lowered, this time to 20.6%
      • 2012: investment savings accounts (ISK) was introduced. Profits and pay-outs are tax-free and taxes are replaced by a lump sum.
    1. The history of recessions in the United States shows that they are a natural, though painful, part of the business cycle. The National Bureau of Economic Research determines when a recession starts and ends.1 The Bureau of Economic Analysis measures the gross domestic product (GDP) that defines recessions.2 The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports on the unemployment rate.3Bureau of Labor Statistics. "How the Government Measures Unemployment." Unemployment often peaks after a recession ends because it is a lagging economic indicator.4 Most employers wait until they are sure the economy is back on its feet again before hiring permanent employees.5 There have been 19 noteworthy recessions throughout U.S. history.

      The Bureaus apply such measurements as GDP and unemployment rate to analyze the main reasons of the US recessions throughout the history.

    1. Built and assembled without anyparticular significance or any value, Walter de Maria's Boxes for MeaninglessWork could also be an echo of Duchamp's sound strategies. In aparallel project, Robert Morris realized Card File (1962-3), a series ofcards on which a series of hazy concepts are written and laid out alphabetically on a vertical support. Through this initial process, Morriscreated a description of the necessary stages required to achieve thework. The terms used in this file include such things as accidents,alphabets, cards, categories, conception, criticism, or decisions, dissatisfactions, durations, forms, future, interruptions, names, numbers,possibilities, prices, purchases, owners, and signature. As a result, thework had no content other than the circumstances of its execution.Through this piece, Morris also asserted that if one wished to understand and penetrate all subtleties of the work, one would have toconsider all the methods used in bringing it forth. The status of thework of art is immediately called into question, because the range ofcards can undergo a change:In a broad sense art has always been on object, static and final, eventhough structurally it may have been a depiction or existed as afragment. What is being attacked, however, is something more thanart as icon. Under attack is the rationalistic notion that art is a formof work that results in a finished product. Duchamp, of course,attacked the Marxist notion that labor was an index of value, butReadymades are traditionally iconic art objects. What art now has inits hand ismutable stuffwhich need not arrive at the point of beingfinalized with respect to either time or space. The notion thatworkis an irreversible process ending in a static icon-object no longer hasmuch relevance.25Marcel Duchamp's musical and "Dismountable approximation" illustrate this process perfectly. John Cage recalled that "for his final opus,Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas, exhibited in Philadelphia, [Duchamp] wrote a book [the "Dismountable approximation"]that provided a blueprint for dismantling the work and rebuilding it.26It also provided information on how to proceed, as well as the only definition of the musical notation, isn't that so? So it is a musical work ofart; because when you follow the instructions you produce sounds."27But Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas was never createdas a musical piece, even though it is entirely "possible to do it. . . .Andif one takes it like a musical piece, one gets the piece [that Duchamp]This content downloaded from 194.27.18.18 on Fri, 18 Dec 2015 12:35:27 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

      card file as art!

  19. Sep 2022
    1. 10 percent of children spend atleast half of their childhood living in poverty.
    2. Although the causes of poverty have not been examined in this chapter,the findings presented here suggest that given its widespread nature, povertyappears systematic to our economic structure. In short, we have met the enemy,and they are us.
    3. Results indicate that between the ages of 20 and75 years, nearly 60 percent of Americans will experience living for at least 1 yearbelow the official poverty line, while three-fourths of Americans will encounterpoverty or near- poverty (150 percent below the official poverty line).4

      Mark Rank and Thomas Hirschl's research based on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) using risk assessments using life tables show that nearly 60 percent of Americans between 20 and 75 will live for at least 1 year below the poverty line and 75% of Americans will encounter poverty or near-poverty (defined as 150 percent below the official poverty line).

      Cross reference:<br /> Mark R. Rank and Thomas A. Hirschl, “The Likelihood of Experiencing Relative Poverty Across the Life Course,” PLoS One 10 (2015): E01333513.

    4. The underlying theme tyingthese myths together is that poverty is often perceived to be an issue of“them” rather than an issue of “us”—that those who experience povertyare viewed as strangers to mainstream America, falling outside accept-able behavior, and as such, are to be scorned and stigmatized.

      One of the underlying commonalities about the various myths of poverty is that we tend to "other" those that it effects. The "them" we stigmatize with the ills of poverty really look more like "us", and in fact, they are.

      Rather than victim shame and blame those in poverty, we ought to spend more of our time fixing the underlying disease instead of spending the time, effort, energy, and money on attempting to remedy the symptoms (eg. excessive policing, et al.) Not only is it more beneficial, but cheaper in the long run.


      Related:<br /> Gladwell, Malcolm. “Million-Dollar Murray.” The New Yorker, February 5, 2006. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/02/13/million-dollar-murray (.pdf copy available at https://housingmatterssc.org/million-dollar-murray/)

    5. With respect tomeasuring the amount of economic inequality in a country, we make use ofwhat is known as the Gini coefficient or index.9 This is an overall measure ofhow unequal the income distribution is, and it ranges from 0 (complete equality)to 1 (complete inequality).

      see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

      It can apparently apply to either income inequality or wealth inequality, so it may have slightly different meanings based on this underlying context.

      Delve into this question of definition.

    6. We will also examine wealth inequality. This is analogous toincome inequality but is looking at the distribution of economic assets ratherthan income. Net worth refers to all of one’s assets minus all of one’s debts.Financial wealth is exactly the same but does not include the equity that onehas built up in a home.6

      compare with income inequality: https://hypothes.is/a/_JLGuj3HEe2dJFdOJRcvaQ

    7. Income inequality refers to how wide or narrow the overall distribution of an-nual income is.5
    8. Theidealized image of American society is one of abundant opportunities, withhard work being rewarded by economic prosperity. Consequently, those whofail to get ahead have only themselves to blame according to this argument. Itis within this context that America thinks of itself as a fair and meritocraticsociety in which people get what they deserve in life.

      There is a variety of confounding myths in America which tend to hold us down. These include economic mobility, meritocracy, poverty, and the land of opportunity.

      With respect to the "land of opportunity", does positive press of a small number of cases from an earlier generation outweigh the actual experience of the majority?


      There was a study on The Blitz in London and England in general in World War II which showed that despite high losses in general, enough people knew one or more who'd lost someone or something to the extreme but that the losses weren't debilitating from a loss perspective and generally served to boost overall morale. Higher losses may have been more demoralizing and harmful, but didn't happen. (Find this source: possibly Malcolm Gladwell??)

      Is this sort of psychological effect at play socially and politically in America and thereby confounding our progress?

    1. Chetty’s paper reports that “the strongest and most robust predictor [of the level of upward mobility in an area] is the fraction of children with single parents.”

      Cross reference with: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/raj-chettys-american-dream/592804

      I should read more of Chetty's primary material here.

    1. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3641225-mcconnell-throws-shade-on-grahams-proposed-national-abortion-ban/

      I've recently run across a few examples of a pattern that should have a name because it would appear to dramatically change the outcomes. I'm going to term it "decisions based on possibilities rather than realities". It's seen frequently in economics and politics and seems to be a form of cognitive bias. People make choices (or votes) about uncertain futures, often when there is a confluence of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and these choices are dramatically different than when they're presented with the actual circumstances in practice.

      A recent example was a story about a woman who was virulently pro-life who when presented with a situation required her to switch her position to pro-choice.

      Another relates to choices that people want to make about where their children might go to school versus where they actually send them, and the damage this does to public education.

      Let's start collecting examples of these quandaries at all levels of making choices in the real world.


      What is the relationship to this with the mental exercise of "descending into the particular"?

      Does this also potentially cause decision fatigue in cases of voting spaces when constituents are forced to vote for candidates on thousands of axes which they may or may not agree with?

    1. Yolanda Gibb: How a mindset of Ambidextrous Creativity can get you generating AND exploiting your ideas?

      https://lu.ma/poo355tg

      Ambidextrous creativity is having a balance between exploration and subsequent exploitation of those explorations.

      Small companies and individuals are good at exploration, but often less good at exploitation.

      Triple loop learning<br /> this would visually form a spiral (versus overlap)<br /> - Single loop learning: doing things right (correcting mistakes)<br /> - double loop learning: doing the right things (causality)<br /> - triple loop learning: why these systems and processes (learning to learn)

      Assets<br /> Relational capital * Structural capital - pkm is part of this<br /> there's value in a well structured PKM for a particualr thing as it's been used and tested over time; this is one of the issues with LYT or Second Brain (PARA, et al.) how well-tested are these? How well designed?<br /> * Structural capital is the part that stays at the office when all the people have gone home * Human Capital

      Eleanor Konik

      4 Es of cognition<br /> * embodied * embedded * enacted * extended<br /> by way of extra-cranial processes

      see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7250653/

      Yolanda Gibb's book<br /> Entrepreneurship, Neurodiversity & Gender: Exploring Opportunities for Enterprise and Self-employment As Pathways to Fulfilling Lives https://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurship-Neurodiversity-Gender-Opportunities-Self-employment/dp/1800430582

      Tools: - Ryyan - for literature searches - NVIVO - Obsidian - many others including getting out into one's environment

      NVIVO<br /> https://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo-qualitative-data-analysis-software/home

      a software program used for qualitative and mixed-methods research. Specifically, it is used for the analysis of unstructured text, audio, video, and image data, including (but not limited to) interviews, focus groups, surveys, social media, and journal articles.

      Ryyan<br /> https://www.rayyan.ai/<br /> for organizing, managing, and accelerating collaborative literature reviews

  20. Aug 2022
    1. Mit der Normierung von Karteikarten für die Karteikästen eigener Fabrikation machte Dewey sich um die Weiterentwicklung der Verzettelungstechniken verdient, ohne etwas damit zu verdienen. Um den ökonomischen Ruin zu verhindern, stellte das Library Bureau im Jahr 1888 die eigene Buchführung vom traditionellen Verbuchungssystem auf das schnellere und kostengünstigere System des "card index" um. Der "Technologietransfer zwischen Bibliothek und Büro" (Krajewski), nämlich die Buchführung in Zettelkästen, wird ein Erfolgsschlager: Banken und Versicherungen, Stahl- und Eisenbahnunternehmen übernehmen das Karteisystem und damit auch die Karteikästen von Deweys Firma.

      With the standardization of index cards for the filing boxes of his own manufacture, Dewey earned himself the further development of the routing techniques without earning anything with it. In order to prevent economic ruin, the Library Bureau switched its own bookkeeping from the traditional accounting system to the faster and more cost-effective system of the "card index" in 1888. The "technology transfer between library and office" (Krajewski), namely bookkeeping in card boxes, is a hit: banks and insurance companies, steel and railway companies take over the card system and thus also the card boxes from Dewey's company.

      This is a fascinating way of making one's product indispensable. Talk about self-dogfooding!

      Sounds similar to the way that some chat messaging productivity apps were born (Slack was this way?). The company needed a better way to communicate internally and so built it's own chat system which they sold to others.

    1. A studyof human behavior that is not based on at least a tentative formulation of relevantsystems of knowledge and belief is predestined to triviality and irrelevance.

      behavioral economics? This was probably only a nascent field at the time this was written.

    Tags

    Annotators

  21. Jul 2022
    1. Martha Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield, FBA (née Potter; 22 January 1858 – 30 April 1943) was an English sociologist, economist, socialist, labour historian and social reformer. It was Webb who coined the term collective bargaining. She was among the founders of the London School of Economics and played a crucial role in forming the Fabian Society.
    1. reply to: https://ariadne.space/2022/07/01/a-silo-can-never-provide-digital-autonomy-to-its-users/

      Matt Ridley indicates in The Rational Optimist that markets for goods and services "work so well that it is hard to design them so they fail to deliver efficiency and innovation" while assets markets are nearly doomed to failure and require close and careful regulation.

      If we view the social media landscape from this perspective, an IndieWeb world in which people are purchasing services like easy import/export of their data; the ability to move their domain name and URL permalinks from one web host to another; and CMS (content management system) services/platforms/functionalities, represents the successful market mode for our personal data and online identities. Here competition for these sorts of services will not only improve the landscape, but generally increased competition will tend to drive the costs to consumers down. The internet landscape is developed and sophisticated enough and broadly based on shared standards that this mode of service market should easily be able to not only thrive, but innovate.

      At the other end of the spectrum, if our data are viewed as assets in an asset market between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, et al., it is easy to see that the market has already failed so miserably that one cannot even easily move ones' assets from one silo to another. Social media services don't compete to export or import data because the goal is to trap you and your data and attention there, otherwise they lose. The market corporate social media is really operating in is one for eyeballs and attention to sell advertising, so one will notice a very health, thriving, and innovating market for advertisers. Social media users will easily notice that there is absolutely no regulation in the service portion of the space at all. This only allows the system to continue failing to provide improved or even innovative service to people on their "service". The only real competition in the corporate silo social media space is for eyeballs and participation because the people and their attention are the real product.

      As a result, new players whose goal is to improve the health of the social media space, like the recent entrant Cohost, are far better off creating a standards based service that allows users to register their own domain names and provide a content management service that has easy import and export of their data. This will play into the services market mode which improves outcomes for people. Aligning in any other competition mode that silos off these functions will force them into competition with the existing corporate social services and we already know where those roads lead.

      Those looking for ethical and healthy models of this sort of social media service might look at Manton Reece's micro.blog platform which provides a wide variety of these sorts of data services including data export and taking your domain name with you. If you're unhappy with his service, then it's relatively easy to export your data and move it to another host using WordPress or some other CMS. On the flip side, if you're unhappy with your host and CMS, then it's also easy to move over to micro.blog and continue along just as you had before. Best of all, micro.blog is offering lots of the newest and most innovative web standards including webmention notificatons which enable website-to-website conversations, micropub, and even portions of microsub not to mention some great customer service.

      I like to analogize the internet and social media to competition in the telecom/cellular phone space In America, you have a phone number (domain name) and can then have your choice of service provider (hosting), and a choice of telephone (CMS). Somehow instead of adopting a social media common carrier model, we have trapped ourselves inside of a model that doesn't provide the users any sort of real service or options. It's easy to imagine what it would be like to need your own AT&T account to talk to family on AT&T and a separate T-Mobile account to talk to your friends on T-Mobile because that's exactly what you're doing with social media despite the fact that you're all still using the same internet. Part of the draw was that services like Facebook appeared to be "free" and it's only years later that we're seeing the all too real costs emerge.

      This sort of competition and service provision also goes down to subsidiary layers of the ecosystem. Take for example the idea of writing interface and text editing. There are (paid) services like iA Writer, Ulysses, and Typora which people use to compose their writing. Many people use these specifically for writing blog posts. Companies can charge for these products because of their beauty, simplicity, and excellent user interfaces. Some of them either do or could support the micropub and IndieAuth web standards which allow their users the ability to log into their websites and directly post their saved content from the editor directly to their website. Sure there are also a dozen or so other free micropub clients that also allow this, but why not have and allow competition for beauty and ease of use? Let's say you like WordPress enough, but aren't a fan of the Gutenberg editor. Should you need to change to Drupal or some unfamiliar static site generator to exchange a better composing experience for a dramatically different and unfamiliar back end experience? No, you could simply change your editor client and continue on without missing a beat. Of course the opposite also applies—WordPress could split out Gutenberg as a standalone (possibly paid) micropub client and users could then easily use it to post to Drupal, micro.blog, or other CMSs that support the micropub spec, and many already do.

      Social media should be a service to and for people all the way down to its core. The more companies there are that provide these sorts of services means more competition which will also tend to lure people away from silos where they're trapped for lack of options. Further, if your friends are on services that interoperate and can cross communicate with standards like Webmention from site to site, you no longer need to be on Facebook because "that's where your friends and family all are."

      I have no doubt that we can all get to a healthier place online, but it's going to take companies and startups like Cohost to make better choices in how they frame their business models. Co-ops and non-profits can help here too. I can easily see a co-op adding webmention to their Mastodon site to allow users to see and moderate their own interactions instead of forcing local or global timelines on their constituencies. Perhaps Garon didn't think Webmention was a fit for Mastodon, but this doesn't mean that others couldn't support it. I personally think that Darius Kazemi's Hometown fork of Mastodon which allows "local only" posting a fabulous little innovation while still allowing interaction with a wider readership, including me who reads him in a microsub enabled social reader. Perhaps someone forks Mastodon to use as a social feed reader, but builds in micropub so that instead of posting the reply to a Mastodon account, it's posted to one's IndieWeb capable website which sends a webmention notification to the original post? Opening up competition this way makes lots of new avenues for every day social tools.

      Continuing the same old siloing of our data and online connections is not the way forward. We'll see who stands by their ethics and morals by serving people's interests and not the advertising industry.

    1. Speculation, herd exuberance, irrational optimism, rent-seekingand the temptation o f fraud drive asset markets to overshoot andplunge - which is why they need careful regulation, something Ialways supported. (M arkets in goods and services need lessregulation.)
    2. experiments in laboratories by the economistVernon Smith and his colleagues have long confirmed thatmarkets in goods and services for immediate consum ption -haircuts and hamburgers - work so well that it is hard to designthem so they fail to deliver efficiency and innovation; whilemarkets in assets are so automatically prone to bubbles andcrashes that it is hard to design them so they work at all.
    3. using the currency that counts, your time.

      Time is a useful and relatively equal "currency" that can be used across time for comparison.

      One might wish to add corrections for increasing health and lifespans however as this means more lived time for the average person.

  22. Jun 2022
    1. (2) The influence of the various concepts for the induction of lateral structure formation in lipid membranes on integral functional units like ionophores is demonstrated by analysing the single channel current fluctuations of gramicidin in bimolecular lipid membranes.
    1. Between 1914 and 1980, inequalities in income and wealth decreasedmarkedly in the Western world as a whole (the United Kingdom,Germany, France, Sweden, and the United States), and in Japan,Russia, China, and India, although in different ways, which we willexplore in a later chapter. Here we will focus on the Western countriesand improve our understanding of how this “great redistribution”took place.

      Inequalities in income and wealth decreased markedly in the West from 1914 to 1980 due to a number of factors including:<br /> - Two World Wars and the Great Depression dramatically overturned the power relationships between labor and capital<br /> - A progressive tax on income and inheritance reduced the concentration of wealth and helped increase mobility<br /> - Liquidation of foreign and colonial assets as well as dissolution of public debt

    2. But it was pre-cisely this fiscal, financial, and military capacity that was to provedecisive for the rise of Europe’s power.
    3. In concreteterms, a state that levies taxes amounting to only 1 percent of the na-tional income has very little power and capacity to mobilize society.
    4. the institu-tions in force in China in the eighteenth century were much more inaccord with Smith’s ideas than those applied in the United Kingdom.

      Piketty suggests that eighteenth century China was a better example of economic liberalism in the vein of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) than the United Kingdom was during the same period. He particularly points out lower taxes and balanced budgets in China, respect for property rights, better markets for labor and goods, competition, social mobility and freedom.

    5. K. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the ModernWorld Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000)
    1. Knowledge is the only resource that getsbetter and more valuable the more it multiplies.

      He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.<br /> —Thomas Jefferson

    2. If we overlay the four steps of CODE onto the model ofdivergence and convergence, we arrive at a powerful template forthe creative process in our time.

      The way that Tiago Forte overlaps the idea of C.O.D.E. (capture/collect, organize, distill, express) with the divergence/convergence model points out some primary differences of his system and that of some of the more refined methods of maintaining a zettelkasten.

      A flattened diamond shape which grows from a point on the left so as to indicate divergence from a point to the diamond's wide middle which then decreases to the right to indicate convergence  to the opposite point. Overlapping this on the right of the diamond are the words "capture" and "organize" while the converging right side is overlaid with "distill" and "express". <small>Overlapping ideas of C.O.D.E. and divergence/convergence from Tiago Forte's book Building a Second Brain (Atria Books, 2022) </small>

      Forte's focus on organizing is dedicated solely on to putting things into folders, which is a light touch way of indexing them. However it only indexes them on one axis—that of the folder into which they're being placed. This precludes them from being indexed on a variety of other axes from the start to other places where they might also be used in the future. His method requires more additional work and effort to revisit and re-arrange (move them into other folders) or index them later.

      Most historical commonplacing and zettelkasten techniques place a heavier emphasis on indexing pieces as they're collected.

      Commonplacing creates more work on the user between organizing and distilling because they're more dependent on their memory of the user or depending on the regular re-reading and revisiting of pieces one may have a memory of existence. Most commonplacing methods (particularly the older historic forms of collecting and excerpting sententiae) also doesn't focus or rely on one writing out their own ideas in larger form as one goes along, so generally here there is a larger amount of work at the expression stage.

      Zettelkasten techniques as imagined by Luhmann and Ahrens smooth the process between organization and distillation by creating tacit links between ideas. This additional piece of the process makes distillation far easier because the linking work has been done along the way, so one only need edit out ideas that don't add to the overall argument or piece. All that remains is light editing.

      Ahrens' instantiation of the method also focuses on writing out and summarizing other's ideas in one's own words for later convenient reuse. This idea is also seen in Bruce Ballenger's The Curious Researcher as a means of both sensemaking and reuse, though none of the organizational indexing or idea linking seem to be found there.


      This also fits into the diamond shape that Forte provides as the height along the vertical can stand in as a proxy for the equivalent amount of work that is required during the overall process.

      This shape could be reframed for a refined zettelkasten method as an indication of work


      Forte's diamond shape provided gives a visual representation of the overall process of the divergence and convergence.

      But what if we change that shape to indicate the amount of work that is required along the steps of the process?!

      Here, we might expect the diamond to relatively accurately reflect the amounts of work along the path.

      If this is the case, then what might the relative workload look like for a refined zettelkasten? First we'll need to move the express portion between capture and organize where it more naturally sits, at least in Ahren's instantiation of the method. While this does take a discrete small amount of work and time for the note taker, it pays off in the long run as one intends from the start to reuse this work. It also pays further dividends as it dramatically increases one's understanding of the material that is being collected, particularly when conjoined to the organization portion which actively links this knowledge into one's broader world view based on their notes. For the moment, we'll neglect the benefits of comparison of conjoined ideas which may reveal flaws in our thinking and reasoning or the benefits of new questions and ideas which may arise from this juxtaposition.

      Graphs of commonplace book method (collect, organize, distill, express) versus zettelkasten method (collect, express, organize (index/link), and distill (edit)) with work on the vertical axis and time/methods on the horizontal axis. While there is similar work in collection the graph for the zettelkasten is overall lower and flatter and eventually tails off, the commonplace slowly increases over time.

      This sketch could be refined a bit, but overall it shows that frontloading the work has the effect of dramatically increasing the efficiency and productivity for a particular piece of work.

      Note that when compounded over a lifetime's work, this diagram also neglects the productivity increase over being able to revisit old work and re-using it for multiple different types of work or projects where there is potential overlap, not to mention the combinatorial possibilities.

      --

      It could be useful to better and more carefully plot out the amounts of time, work/effort for these methods (based on practical experience) and then regraph the resulting power inputs against each other to come up with a better picture of the efficiency gains.

      Is some of the reason that people are against zettelkasten methods that they don't see the immediate gains in return for the upfront work, and thus abandon the process? Is this a form of misinterpreted-effort hypothesis at work? It can also be compounded at not being able to see the compounding effects of the upfront work.

      What does research indicate about how people are able to predict compounding effects over time in areas like money/finance? What might this indicate here? Humans definitely have issues seeing and reacting to probabilities in this same manner, so one might expect the same intellectual blindness based on system 1 vs. system 2.


      Given that indexing things, especially digitally, requires so little work and effort upfront, it should be done at the time of collection.


      I'll admit that it only took a moment to read this highlighted sentence and look at the related diagram, but the amount of material I was able to draw out of it by reframing it, thinking about it, having my own thoughts and ideas against it, and then innovating based upon it was incredibly fruitful in terms of better differentiating amongst a variety of note taking and sense making frameworks.

      For me, this is a great example of what reading with a pen in hand, rephrasing, extending, and linking to other ideas can accomplish.

  23. bafybeiccxkde65wq2iwuydltwmfwv733h5btvyrzqujyrt5wcfjpg4ihf4.ipfs.dweb.link bafybeiccxkde65wq2iwuydltwmfwv733h5btvyrzqujyrt5wcfjpg4ihf4.ipfs.dweb.link
    1. In 1968, he resigned as Secretary of Defense to become President of the World Bank.

      Similarly Paul Wolfowitz was U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense running the U.S. war in Iraq before leaving to become the 10th President of the World Bank.

      McNamara was the 5th President of the World Bank.

    1. What can we do with a shift in thinking backed by a total of $3.6 trillion in funds under management? I’m backing strategic circular initiatives to convert the highest return on value for anyone’s money. Stay tuned as we crack open new investment opportunities.

      Her diagram explicitly shows a synthesis of planetary boundaries and circular economy. This is a connection that many in this area are tacitly aware of but is good to explicate it in a diagram of this sort..

      If circular economy is about ultimate reuse and recirculating material flows to eliminate the concept of waste, then how does energy consumption fit into the picture? Obviously, CO2 emissions is a form of material waste that is an undesirable byproduct of carbon-based energy usage. Capturing CO2 and reusing it is one method, but not a very scalable solution presently.

  24. May 2022
    1. Demand-side solutions require both motivation and capacity for change (high confidence).34Motivation by individuals or households worldwide to change energy consumption behaviour is35generally low. Individual behavioural change is insufficient for climate change mitigation unless36embedded in structural and cultural change. Different factors influence individual motivation and37capacity for change in different demographics and geographies. These factors go beyond traditional38socio-demographic and economic predictors and include psychological variables such as awareness,39perceived risk, subjective and social norms, values, and perceived behavioural control. Behavioural40nudges promote easy behaviour change, e.g., “improve” actions such as making investments in energy41efficiency, but fail to motivate harder lifestyle changes. (high confidence) {5.4}

      We must go beyond behavior nudges to make significant gains in demand side solutions. It requires an integrated strategy of inner transformation based on the latest research in trans-disciplinary fields such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, neuroscience and behavioral economics among others.

    1. One of the masters of the school, Hugh (d. 1140 or 1141), wrote a text, the Didascalicon, on whatshould be learned and why. The emphasis differs significantly from that of William of Conches. It isdependent on the classical trivium and quadrivium and pedagogical traditions dating back to St.Augustine and Imperial Rome.

      Hugh of St. Victor wrote Didascalicon, a text about what topics should be learned and why. In it, he outlined seven mechanical arts (or technologies) in analogy with the seven liberal arts (trivium and quadrivium) as ways to repair the weaknesses inherit in humanity.

      These seven mechanical arts he defines are: - fabric making - armament - commerce - agriculture - hunting - medicine - theatrics


      Hugh of St. Victor's description of the mechanical art of commerce here is fascinating. He says "reconciles nations, calms wars, strengthens peace, and turns the private good of individuals into a benefit for all" (doublcheck the original quotation, context, and source). This sounds eerily familiar to the common statement in the United States about trade and commerce.

      Link this to the quote from Albie Duncan in The West Wing (season 5?) about trade.

      Other places where this sentiment occurs?

      Is Hugh of St. Victor the first in history to state this sentiment?

    1. The HRF design intends to operationalize entangled security (figure 8). It provides orchestration logic at ecoregional, nation-state, and local levels and is expected to vary  according to context. It comprises four main task groups: HRF support; planetary security; human security; and state security.

      These are umbrella categories that can allow for the classification of vast numbers of existing transition projects. With the use of disaggregated planetary boundaries, doughnut economics framework, Inner and Outer transformation, and Bend-the-Curve gamification, the impacts of each type of operation can be measured.

    2. For four years, an accelerated and intensive global effort will be made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and restore ecological stability. It will be “fast and furious” because it will involve startup action as well as implementation. It is focused on the remaining “low-hanging fruit” for fastest global reductions

      The Tipping Point Festival can introduce the Bend-the-Curve (BtC) gamification to engage as many cities, towns, rural communities and bioregions as possible. A 3 year research program to dis-aggregate planetary boundaries can allocate a fairshare of local biophysical targets each city, town, rural community and bioregion must aim to achieve if we as a civilization are to meet the 1.5 deg C target, as well as other Anthropocene and planetary boundary targets.

      Doughnut economic framework can be adopted immediately and educated across all communities to plant seeds of local change actor chapters who can start their own local doughnut economies and begin reshaping their local economy into circular bio WEconomies.

      When the dis-aggregated planetary boundary metrics are available, then each community can adopt and aim to bend their local curve, in order that we altogether bend the global curves back to a safe operating space.

      it may be questionable whether we are able to develop highly accurate targets, but even if we are close enough, the greater value is to allow citizens to have a tangible and compelling and measurable reason to work together, organize and mitigate our human impacts in a systematic way. In this way, we can expose the hyperthreat by breaking it down into digestable, identifiable pieces that are cognitively more accessible and can lodge into the salience landscape of the individuals of a community.

    1. Even with data that’s less fraught than our genome, our decisions about what we expose to the world have externalities for the people around us.

      We need to think more about the externalities of our data decisions.

    1. It did not have to be this way. But as Trump aptly said of himself and his policy, “It is what it is.” He accepted more disease in hopes of stimulating a stronger economy and winning reelection. He’s waiting now for the return on that bet. As so often in his reckless career, his speculation seems to be that if the bet wins, he pockets the proceeds. And if the bet fails? The losses fall on others.

      A very apt description of Trump's life philosophy. Also a broad perspective at how many Republicans and Libertarians seem to view the world economically: privatizing profits and socializing losses.

    1. Frank Wilhot's: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/
  25. Apr 2022
    1. "Dat we studenten in economische opleidingen nog altijd onderrichten in een kapitalistisch model zonder vragen te stellen bij de groei, is niet minder dan een misdaad tegen de mensheid."

      Anne Snick (systeemdenker en lid Club van Rome): 'Ons economisch model op basis van groei is disfunctioneel'

    1. A New York Times article uses the same temperature dataset you have been using to investigate the distribution of temperatures and temperature variability over time. Read through the article, paying close attention to the descriptions of the temperature distributions.

      Unfortunately, like most NYT content, this article is behind a paywall. I'm partly reading this as I plan to develop a set of open education resources myself and the problem of how to manage dead/unavailable links looks like a key stumbling block.

  26. Mar 2022
    1. https://every.to/letter

      A manifesto about what the Every platform is all about. They're trying to create a new(?) economic model for writers working together.

      I'm not really sure how this is dramatically different from prior efforts or if the economic incentives are actually properly aligned here. Many writers without critically looking at the whole may be led here as much by marketing hype as anything else. It almost sounds like they're recreating The Huffington Post, but giving away some of the value up front instead of leaving all the value in one person's hand for a future sale.

      Who owns the copyright of the created works? Are editors and proofreaders just work for hire here? What about their interests?

    2. If we decide to part ways, Leads can leave with a copy of their email list.

      While a writer may leave a collective with their email list, do they necessarily benefit from having helped to get a going concern off the ground in the first place? Where does that slice of value sit? Do they also collect a multiple of the present value of the concern the way one might in buying a pre-existing business from another?

    3. You also need to design a compensation structure that pays writers what they’re worth.

      A writer's collective trying to gather writers using the bait that they've managed to crack the problem of "paying writers what they're worth" seems to be a lot of hype.

      This seems to put the already extant fear into a writer's mind that they're not being paid enough. Doesn't the broader economics of a capitalistic system already solve this issue? Where are the inequalities? What about paying the website designers and developers? What about the advertising and other marketing people?

    4. We’re building a knowledge base, so if one writer collects information for an article, their research is made available to the other writers in the collective. 

      How does one equitably and logically build a communally shared knowledge base for a for-profit space?

      How might a communal zettelkasten work? A solid index for creating links between pieces is incredibly important here, but who does this work? How is it valued?

    1. The constellations’ positions in the night sky on significant dates, such as solstices and equinoxes, are mirrored in the alignments of the main structures at the compound, he found. Steles were “carefully placed within the temenos to mark the rising, zenith, or setting of the stars over the horizon,” he writes.

      Phoenicians use of steles and local environment in conjunction with their astronomy fits the pattern of other uses of Indigenous orality and memory.

      Link this example to other examples delineated by Lynne Kelly and others I've found in the ancient Near East.

      How does this example potentially fit into the broader framework provided by Lynne Kelly? Are there differences?

      Her thesis fits into a few particular cultural time periods, but what sorts of evidence should we expect to see culturally, socially, and economically when the initial conditions she set forth evolve beyond their original context? What should we expect to see in these cases and how to they relate to examples I've been finding in the ancient Near East?

    1. Refinement is a social process: New ideas are conceived of by individuals, and then they are refined through reviews from knowledgeable peers and mentors.

      Refinement is a social process. Sadly it can also be accelerated, often negatively, by unintended socio-economic forces.

      The dominance and ills created by surveillance capitalism within social media is one such result driven by capitalism.

    1. “Scarcity: WhyHaving Too Little Means So Much” (2013) by Mullainathan andShafir. They investigate how the experience of scarcity has cognitiveeffects and causes changes in decision-making processes.

      I'm reminded of a reference recently to Republicans being upset that poor people of color would "waste" their money on frivolities like manicures and fake fingernails instead of on food or other necessities. How might this tie into the argument made in this book?

  27. Feb 2022
    1. Thiscost is of the same scale as the aviation industry’s £7 bnexemption from fuel tax and zero-rating for VAT each yearbefore Covid, and shows the scale of environmental andsocial benefits that could be achieved by directing aviation’stax breaks into more productive areas.

      Ah, so that's how it works. Instead the going to a tax giveaway for aviation, the money goes into RnD and training.

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. Markets are politically regulated institutional processes far removed from idealized, perfect competition, and prices are negotiated between small numbers of powerful brokers (84) involving hidden subsidies, e.g., for infrastructure

      Das Konzept des Marktversagens geht davon aus, dass Märkte ohne politisch/institutionelle Regulierunge funktionieren könnten.

    1. In crowded housing markets in large cities, house flipping is often viewed as a driver of inequality.

      If house flipping is viewed as a driver of inequality in crowded housing markets in larger cities, what spurs it on? What do the economics look like and how can the trend be combatted?

      What effect does economic speculation have?

    2. Then, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln pulled the ultimate Manifest Destiny power move with the Homestead Act.

      When pushing through ideas like the Homestead Act of 1862, one needs to additionally consider the long arc of history and plan for secondary level changes in decades or centuries hence. It may have been an economic boom for 50 years or so (and shouldn't giving away all that land account for something like that?) but what happens when that economic engine dies from lack of planning?

      Could the land and space be given back to indigenous peoples again? Could it be given to immigrant populations which might have different economic drivers for their lives and concerns?

    3. “When I moved to Kansas,” Roberts said, “I was like, ‘holy shit, they’re giving stuff away.’”

      This sounds great, but what are the "costs" on the other side? How does one balance out the economics of this sort of housing situation versus amenities supplied by a community in terms of culture, health, health care, interaction, etc.? Is there a maximum on a curve to be found here? Certainly in some places one is going to overpay for this basket of goods (perhaps San Francisco?) where in others one may underpay. Does it have anything to do with the lifecycle of cities and their governments? If so, how much?

  28. Jan 2022
    1. Looking up their net worths, we find that Bill Nye is worth $8 million. That’s great, really. A scientist that is worth $8 million is pretty rare. Even Neil Degrasse Tyson is only worth $5 million. I say “only” with tongue in cheek because $5 million is really a LOT of money. But, it’s only about 63% of Bill Nye’s net worth. So, comparatively speaking, Bill Nye has done very well for a scientist.Let’s compare that with Ken Ham. He has a net worth of $54 million. That ark has made Ken Ham his fabulous wealth. And, if it wasn’t for the Bill Nye debate, it might never have come into existence since the project had stalled out.

      All this demonstrates is the amorality of capitalism. Ham is richer, but also an immoral propagandist for a demented worldview.

    1. https://www.noemamag.com/the-other-invisible-hand/?utm_source=indieweb&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=indieweb

      Raw capitalism mimics the logic of cancer within our body politic.


      Folks who have been reading David Wengrow and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything are sure to appreciate the sentiment here which pulls in the ideas of biology and evolution to expand on their account and makes it a much more big history sort of thesis.

    2. As Wilson quips, “an unregulated organism is a dead organism.”

      We definitely need aphorisms like this embedded into our political and economic spheres.

    3. Speaking of such lessons, Wilson and John Gowdy write, “the invisible hand metaphor can be justified … for humans in addition to nonhuman species, [only] when certain conditions are met.”

      Which conditions? How broad are they?

    4. Unfortunately, the ideas most economists use have been too influenced by “methodological individualism,” rather than the more scientifically supported view of us as a super-social, super-cooperative, intensely interdependent species. Often, this economics-style individualism is of the Thomas Hobbes variety, which paints humans in “a state of nature,” waging a “war of all against all.”

      This statement in the framing of biology is quite similar to the framing in anthropology and archaeology that David Graeber and David Wengrow provide in The Dawn of Everything.

      Perhaps we should be saying (especially from a political perspective): Cooperation is King!

    5. Unregulated parts can kill their wholes. 

      This is true in so many domains and not just biology.

    6. And protecting life-supporting cooperation requires suppressing certain kinds of selfishness. Biologists, unlike many economists, grasp when the “greed is good” ethos gets deadly.

      At what scale might such cooperative efforts fail?

      Look at the scale of the bitcoin bros using crypto and bitcoin as a completely selfish endeavor. Has this reached a scale for social failure? (Separate from the end date at which the bitcoin/crypto system completely fails and collapses?)

    7. Both involve “invisible hand” magic — intricate, unplanned, “self-organizing” systems.
  29. Dec 2021
    1. Dreams or vision quests: among Iroquoian-speaking peoplesin the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was consideredextremely important literally to realize one’s dreams. ManyEuropean observers marvelled at how Indians would be willingto travel for days to bring back some object, trophy, crystal oreven an animal like a dog that they had dreamed of acquiring.Anyone who dreamed about a neighbour or relative’spossession (a kettle, ornament, mask and so on) couldnormally demand it; as a result, such objects would oftengradually travel some way from town to town. On the GreatPlains, decisions to travel long distances in search of rare orexotic items could form part of vision quests.34
      1. On ‘dream economies’ among the Iroquois see Graeber 2001: 145–9. David Graeber. 2001. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave.

      These dreams and vision quests sound suspiciously familiar to Australian indigenous peoples' "dreaming" and could be incredibly similar to much larger and longer songlines in North American cultures.

    2. The founding text of twentieth-century ethnography, BronisławMalinowski’s 1922 Argonauts of the Western Pacific, describes howin the ‘kula chain’ of the Massim Islands off Papua New Guinea, menwould undertake daring expeditions across dangerous seas inoutrigger canoes, just in order to exchange precious heirloom arm-shells and necklaces for each other (each of the most importantones has its own name, and history of former owners) – only to holdit briefly, then pass it on again to a different expedition from anotherisland. Heirloom treasures circle the island chain eternally, crossing

      hundreds of miles of ocean, arm-shells and necklaces in opposite directions. To an outsider, it seems senseless. To the men of the Massim it was the ultimate adventure, and nothing could be more important than to spread one’s name, in this fashion, to places one had never seen.

      Not to negate the underlying mechanism discussed here, but there's also a high likelihood that this "trade" was in information attached to these objects being used as mnemonic devices.

      Read further into the anthropology of these items, their names and histories.

    3. Already tens of thousands of years ago, one can find evidence ofobjects – very often precious stones, shells or other items ofadornment – being moved around over enormous distances. Oftenthese were just the sort of objects that anthropologists would laterfind being used as ‘primitive currencies’ all over the world.

      Is it also possible that these items may have served the purpose of mnemonic devices as a means of transporting (otherwise invisible) information from one area or culture to another?

      Can we build evidence for this from the archaeological record?

      Relate this to the idea of expanding the traditional "land, labor, capital" theory of economics to include "information" as a basic building block

    4. It’s almost asif we feel some need to come up with mathematical formulaejustifying the expression, already popular in the days of Rousseau,that in such societies ‘everyone was equal, because they were allequally poor.’

      Link this to

      A thousand years ago, the world was flat, economically speaking. —Chapter 1 of Economy, Society, and Public Policy https://hyp.is/-XJOwkOjEeqNeL-phEONOg/www.core-econ.org/espp/book/text/01.html

      I don't think we have to go back even this far. If I recall correctly, even 150 years ago the vast majority of the world's population were subsistence farmers. It's only been since the 20th century and the increasing spread of the industrial revolution that the situation has changed:

      Even England remained primarily an agrarian country like all tributary societies for the previous 4,000 years, with ca. 50 percent of its population employed in agriculture as late as 1759. —David Christian, Maps of Time (pp 401) quoting from Crafts, British Economic Growth, pp. 13–14. (See also Fig 13.1 Global Industrial Potential from the same, for a graphical indicator.

    1. We live in a society whose psychic structure is formulated on the premise of survival of the fittest and you’re either in or you’re out. If you’re in, you must play the game of kill or be killed. One-upmanship and a perpetual ladder-climbing exercise is your lot.

      Quite a pithy remark. Even though some may say it's far too reductionist, I would say reductionism remains the truest mirror of our selves. We're nothing but monkeys, except that we don't throw shit at each other, we throw nukes.

    1. In order to truly have checks and balances, we should not have the same people setting the agendas of big tech, research, government and the non-profit sector. We need alternatives. We need governments around the world to invest in communities building technology that genuinely benefits them, rather than pursuing an agenda that is set by big tech or the military. Contrary to big tech executives’ cold-war style rhetoric about an arms race, what truly stifles innovation is the current arrangement where a few people build harmful technology and others constantly work to prevent harm, unable to find the time, space or resources to implement their own vision of the future.

      She's talking about monopolies here. How can we break the monopolies of big tech?

      Here again is an example of the extreme power of granting corporations the ability to be protected as "people".

    1. oh by the way did i tell you it's hard like probably it's it's also really hard but i really don't want to stop here on a on a low note

      This is a great video on the reality of open source software. Open source hardware also faces similar funding issues.

      As long as open source is fundamentally dependent on the private sector, it will exist within at best a parasitic relationship. To truly develop an autonomous open source model requires a structural change in funding that allows it to stand alone and apart from corporate sponsorship.

      This is a classic chicken-and-egg situation. We want people to sponsor us, but many of those people also work for the private sector. Governments and NGOs may sponsor us, but they also depend on private sector for tax and donation revenues.

      This requires a much deeper discussion that unpacks the fundamental assumptions that underpin our economic, social and political systems. The structural challenges of funding open source exposes the constraints of our current system.

      Unless we examine the fundamental assumptions by which our current civilization operates, we cannot make the structural changes that would enable open source to reach its full potential, which is maximum access to shared intellectual and material resources for the benefit of all.

  30. Nov 2021
    1. They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and I can only imagine the conversation between Eve and Skywoman: “Sister, you got the short end of the stick . . .”

      It's a bit funny and ironic to think that the communal/peaceful Skywoman would use such a Western-centric phrase like "short end of the stick", which as I understand it has an economic underpinning of a receipt by which the debtor and the lender used marked sticks that were broken apart with one somewhat shorter than the other. When put back together the marks on the stick matched each other, but the debtor got the shorter end. (Reference: Behavioral Economics When Psychology and Economics Collide by Scott A. Huettel; what was his source?)

      Compare with etymologies expanded upon here:

      The Long Story of The Short End of the Stick by Charles Clay Doyle. American Speech, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 96-101 (6 pages), Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/455954

      Which doesn't include the economic reference at all.

    1. But how does the author know if we can actually provide in all these basic human needs within planetary boundaries and have this wiggle room left?Maybe the stuff needed for the Social Foundation already causes overshoot and the inner circle should actually be outside the outer circle?

      This is the million dollar question and requires a lot of science to calculate it.

    1. Both of the companies are providing podcasters with options to put their audio content behind a paywall and in effect giving them the ability to build up a recurring revenue stream.

      As much as I like the idea of putting your content out for free, I get that people need to make money if this is the business model. Schools and universities are probably under less pressure to do make a profit but still need to cover basic costs.