Blog 2
It is necessary in proposing a new analytical model to show critical failure in the old model [Kuhn, 1967]. How hard is that with classic economics? 1872,1929, 2008. It's a piece of cake. It is not that those catastrophes occurred. It is that they were unexpected and in each case complex market interventions were required to keep the factories running,
The problem is not capitalism. If markets did not exist, we would invent them. Talent is a naive concept. It exists in the mind long before it is recognized in the person. That economic talent would be graced with unequal reward is intuitive. Likewise the essential arbitrage relationship, that greater risk requires greater reward, is very real and very human. Capitalism, in itself, is humane in the sense that it is all too human. We are too clever by half for our own good and we have win/lose outcomes wired into our cells. Capitalism is not the problem. It is the myopia of the economic analysis.
That analysis, in the process of utilizing available technology, has created our productivity driven mass industrialism with its aggregate demand and GDP. It is by these metrics definitely not human scale. It is by definition, in terms of any specific individual, not humane. Throw in the machines that make it go and the fact that its mechanisms manage to reduce humans to minions of the automated machine process and it is not incidentally inhumane. It is actually hostile. So, how do we characterize and analyze economic behavior so as to create a humane economy? Here is my speculative, somewhat naive, try:
Value Dilution Economics
There are two major aspects to economic behavior and, while each is perfectly comfortable with classic economics and accounting, the relationship of the two, production and distribution, is imperfectly expressed in the current model. To correct this, I propose two theoretical units, Point of Manufacture, POM, the point that the product leaves the factory, and Point of Sale, POS, the point that the product is in the possession of the end consumer. The number of socioeconomic sectors, education, basic income etc, between POM and POS I label x.
Arbitrarily I give each POM and POS a numeric value of 1. I then write the equation:
(POM + POS) / x = y
y is the dilution factor of the 'goodness' of the money used in all the transactions. Obviously, the value of y will fall between 1 and 0. Why do this? Because money, a value calculus allowing the comparative valuation of disparate products and services in a market, has only economic value. The social utility of economic activity varies inversely with its economic utility. Using money for its social utility dilutes its value much as putting too much in circulation does.
A humane economy has a target value of .5 because any greater number will be excessive economic utility and any lesser number will be excessive social utility. It is a matter of plugging this equation in across all transactions to calculate the goodness of a currency.
Material existence, the stuff of economics, lasts around 75 years at best. Social existence is the stuff of eternity. It only makes sense to balance social utility and economic utility and it makes absolutely no sense to do otherwise.
Do Well and Be Well.
Nest Blog:
Bespoke Production and the Humane Economy
Sunday, May 13, 2018
Saturday, May 12, 2018
Technology and Venture Capital in a Humane Economy
Blog 1
Introduction
We live in an age of humanist defeatism. We are surrendering the human joy of making to the machine and have been for centuries. Consistently the only objection is the lack of a safety net to dislocation. The only justification is productivity increase and the context is always mass industrialism. We need to sequence from mass industrialism to bespoke production and this needs to be done in a humane manner to a humane end. It is the object of this blog to argue that human exceptionalism is expressed in the concept of talent; that markets reward talent; that no autonomous machine economy, and that becomes ever more possible with AI, could be legitimate in the sense that human economies, serving human material existence and by doing that, serving the totality of human existence, social, spiritual, and intellectual in a sustainable harmony with all that exists, can be legitimate.
It is necessary and becoming increasingly urgent that we rationalize the process of innovation, that we manage change, in order to remain valuable, meaningful beings. Capitalism is a system in which, incidental to 'moving' plenty to scarcity by the mechanisms of market and price, rewards vision and talent by the allocation of resources, land and capital in classic taxonomy, to them. Consumerism, which is Keynesian in its emphasis on increasing aggregate demand, is a variation of pure capitalism. The legalization of the printed form installment loan contract is a market intervention, not an evolution of markets. It is also a condition of existence here in the United States, institutionalized and legitimized by usage. It is not subject to repeal. It is the mainspring that drives the mechanism of our disneyland economy created by the exigencies of mass industrialism and, in order to maintain the integrity of that economy, must be honored in terms of value and consideration by income earned in the addition of value in the production and distribution market system.
I am not arguing for economic determinism in the nature of the human soul. I am simply saying that economic prestige figures in both self-esteem and healthy cognition. I am saying that the pursuit of the next logical step in technology is opening the deep chasm of meaningless existence that stands between us and the proper employment of technology. We must direct the machine with wisdom and not let it direct us in order to cross that chasm. In short, I am arguing that reclassifying robots as a hybrid Capital Good/Labor, a labor good, and licensing their deployment but not their development would pay the social cost of their use in an honest bargain and rationalize both economics and innovation.
Do Well and Be Well
Next Blog: A Speculation on a Humane Technological Economy
Introduction
We live in an age of humanist defeatism. We are surrendering the human joy of making to the machine and have been for centuries. Consistently the only objection is the lack of a safety net to dislocation. The only justification is productivity increase and the context is always mass industrialism. We need to sequence from mass industrialism to bespoke production and this needs to be done in a humane manner to a humane end. It is the object of this blog to argue that human exceptionalism is expressed in the concept of talent; that markets reward talent; that no autonomous machine economy, and that becomes ever more possible with AI, could be legitimate in the sense that human economies, serving human material existence and by doing that, serving the totality of human existence, social, spiritual, and intellectual in a sustainable harmony with all that exists, can be legitimate.
It is necessary and becoming increasingly urgent that we rationalize the process of innovation, that we manage change, in order to remain valuable, meaningful beings. Capitalism is a system in which, incidental to 'moving' plenty to scarcity by the mechanisms of market and price, rewards vision and talent by the allocation of resources, land and capital in classic taxonomy, to them. Consumerism, which is Keynesian in its emphasis on increasing aggregate demand, is a variation of pure capitalism. The legalization of the printed form installment loan contract is a market intervention, not an evolution of markets. It is also a condition of existence here in the United States, institutionalized and legitimized by usage. It is not subject to repeal. It is the mainspring that drives the mechanism of our disneyland economy created by the exigencies of mass industrialism and, in order to maintain the integrity of that economy, must be honored in terms of value and consideration by income earned in the addition of value in the production and distribution market system.
I am not arguing for economic determinism in the nature of the human soul. I am simply saying that economic prestige figures in both self-esteem and healthy cognition. I am saying that the pursuit of the next logical step in technology is opening the deep chasm of meaningless existence that stands between us and the proper employment of technology. We must direct the machine with wisdom and not let it direct us in order to cross that chasm. In short, I am arguing that reclassifying robots as a hybrid Capital Good/Labor, a labor good, and licensing their deployment but not their development would pay the social cost of their use in an honest bargain and rationalize both economics and innovation.
Do Well and Be Well
Next Blog: A Speculation on a Humane Technological Economy
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Shifting Paradigms: Idiosyncratic Social Existence
There are two modes of human social existence, normative and eccentric. These two categories of social behavior are exhaustive and mutually exclusive. There are no others.
The excessive influence of mass industrialism on social organization has led the bulk of humanity into a normative existence, the factory whistle, the same television program, date and time, the same movies, the same week, and the same bestselling books all generating norms of thought, language, and perception. Eccentric social behavior has been left to outliers whose outsider status has led to valuable science, philosophy, and art. This is changing. This grand cultural monolith of normative values is eroding into what I call personal psychological spaces that necessarily generate eccentric social behavior in the pursuit of idiosyncratic social existence. Eccentricity is becoming the norm.
The culprit in this normative cultural decay is consumerism. It is no surprise that the leading critics of this economic orientation of consumption are neoMarxists, the philosophy of the masses. As niche production and niche marketing have come into play, technology has kept pace, gadgets tied to product ecosystems such as the Amazon Fire, functioning as a vending machine or jukebox depending on the product, filter bubbles made possible by the internet, and a renaissance of indie publishing, books and blogs done digitally.
It is the role of philosophy in normative social existence to define the thinkable, appropriate cognitive patterns, catalog reliable perceptions under specific paradigms (science), and provide rigorous language for the communication of ideas. It is essential to the practice of philosophy that one says this, this way, because to say something in other words is to say something else. If one doesn't understand the language specific to an idea, one doesn't understand the idea. The term currently used is theory laden.
The role of philosophy in eccentric social systems such as exist in individualistic attempts at social behavior, idiosyncratic social existence, is essentially different. It is to provide paradigms and rules that may be shared by individuals in their specific circumstance or psychological space. Without such common ground, those psychological spaces are significantly incommensurable and communication rudimentary and trivial. It is the essence of eccentric social existence to master paradigms and rules in order to say this (idea) about that (perception) in an intelligible manner.
As consumerism erodes the mass monolith, the importance of paradigms, and not one True paradigm but rather a repertoire of paradigms and theory laden terms, will be increasingly apparent. It is the proper place of philosophy to systematically address that need.
Do Well and Be Well.
The excessive influence of mass industrialism on social organization has led the bulk of humanity into a normative existence, the factory whistle, the same television program, date and time, the same movies, the same week, and the same bestselling books all generating norms of thought, language, and perception. Eccentric social behavior has been left to outliers whose outsider status has led to valuable science, philosophy, and art. This is changing. This grand cultural monolith of normative values is eroding into what I call personal psychological spaces that necessarily generate eccentric social behavior in the pursuit of idiosyncratic social existence. Eccentricity is becoming the norm.
The culprit in this normative cultural decay is consumerism. It is no surprise that the leading critics of this economic orientation of consumption are neoMarxists, the philosophy of the masses. As niche production and niche marketing have come into play, technology has kept pace, gadgets tied to product ecosystems such as the Amazon Fire, functioning as a vending machine or jukebox depending on the product, filter bubbles made possible by the internet, and a renaissance of indie publishing, books and blogs done digitally.
It is the role of philosophy in normative social existence to define the thinkable, appropriate cognitive patterns, catalog reliable perceptions under specific paradigms (science), and provide rigorous language for the communication of ideas. It is essential to the practice of philosophy that one says this, this way, because to say something in other words is to say something else. If one doesn't understand the language specific to an idea, one doesn't understand the idea. The term currently used is theory laden.
The role of philosophy in eccentric social systems such as exist in individualistic attempts at social behavior, idiosyncratic social existence, is essentially different. It is to provide paradigms and rules that may be shared by individuals in their specific circumstance or psychological space. Without such common ground, those psychological spaces are significantly incommensurable and communication rudimentary and trivial. It is the essence of eccentric social existence to master paradigms and rules in order to say this (idea) about that (perception) in an intelligible manner.
As consumerism erodes the mass monolith, the importance of paradigms, and not one True paradigm but rather a repertoire of paradigms and theory laden terms, will be increasingly apparent. It is the proper place of philosophy to systematically address that need.
Do Well and Be Well.
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Writing Sentences: The Process
Analyze the nature of what the writer does in just writing a sentence. A sentence is a problem in lexicon, syntax, and idea which must be solved simultaneously for all three, word by word, in order to build a linguistic construct that moves plot and develops character or perhaps is a bon mot. It has to 'fit' into the sentences before it while defining the creative space of the ones that follow.
And it has to make sense in itself and to a larger reality. I once did an independent exercise in writing iambic pentameter. I can write rhyming verse in that meter. I can make sense within each line and to the whole of the piece. I cannot do both simultaneously and consistently. Being able to do that, being Shakespeare, is what we call writing talent. It is what separates the interesting scribble from Art.
I am not amazed at the complexity of the writing process but I am amazed that any human can do it.
Do Well and Be Well.
And it has to make sense in itself and to a larger reality. I once did an independent exercise in writing iambic pentameter. I can write rhyming verse in that meter. I can make sense within each line and to the whole of the piece. I cannot do both simultaneously and consistently. Being able to do that, being Shakespeare, is what we call writing talent. It is what separates the interesting scribble from Art.
I am not amazed at the complexity of the writing process but I am amazed that any human can do it.
Do Well and Be Well.
Saturday, December 30, 2017
Disrupting the Factors of Production
Producer Goods in the Role of Labor
In the centuries old scheme of factors of production, there are three -
1. Land - the raw materials necessary to produce goods for consumption
2. Labor - the human factor, skilled and unskilled
3. Capital Goods - the machines necessary to turn the raw materials into consumable products in conjunction with labor
It is the contention of this blog that capable autonomous robots using artificial intelligence disrupt this theoretical analysis to the point of requiring a fourth factor -
4. Labor Goods - those machines possessed of intelligence that function as both Labor and Capital Goods at one and the same time
Adding in and accounting for this Fourth Factor creates economic scenarios that would have been unimaginable for Adam Smith and unthinkable for Joseph Schumpeter.
Of significance in this new scenario is the fact that any AI robot capable of substantially replacing human production labor is capable of making, maintaining, and repairing itself. That presents a solid unscalable face to what was creative destruction with its corollary phenomenon of raising the employment bar. 'Normal' comprehensible adjustment cannot be done.
An autonomous artificially intelligent robot of significant capability bankrupts classical economic theory. It is simply a matter of adding in this Fourth Factor, this producer good, this machine\labor hybrid, but that addition changes the economic analysis out of all recognition because it creates a new economic order such as has never been seen before.
Our present economy in the United States is a capitalist welfare state committed to innovation, which is to say, the market forces allocate resources to relevant entrepreneur and arbitrageur talent and those that fall victim to creative destruction in the process have a safety net to cushion the blow.
This economy is institutionally consumerist and has been since the form installment loan contract was declared legal so workers could buy refrigerators, automobiles, and houses. Consumerism evolved in an ad hoc, heuristic, fashion to absorb overproduction and in so doing created chronic overproduction. The system that these factors have brought into being is systematically criticized for its waste and nihilist commercial values but not for its princely lifestyles. Everybody wants a helicopter but nobody wants to pay the cultural cost.
This economy functions within liberal tenets and institutions that deny the importance of talent and insist that anybody can do anything with proper training. It is therefore a system in constant conflict with itself.
An autonomous artificially intelligent robot changes the whole consumerist, capitalist, dynamic reducing demand, wages, and opportunity if left to itself. This situation must be addressed. One cannot muddle through an economic innovation, an economic revolution, of this order of magnitude. Unlike other economic revolutions that have preceded it, this one does not merely change the nature of human work, it dispossesses it into a pure machine empowerment of human vision. We are not prepared for this kind of dislocation and it grows closer by the day. It is time to get ahead of the curve.
It is time to consider backcharging Labor Goods for the cost of this dispossession. As Labor Goods, they are certainly eligible for some sort of taxation and the funds so generated could be used to develop vision and perhaps, within the liberal model, generate makework projects. Such a levy would slow the deployment of these machines, but not their development, and create manageable rates of change.
I prefer the consumerist simplicity of a Universal Basic Income devoid of socialist theory. As an ad hoc restructuring of economic profits such a consumerist device would continue to support production and provide the means to develop one's talents for the marketplace.
Whatever the concept, some address must be made, not in abstract political terms but in the sense, as trading bots have demonstrated, that you, whoever you are, are next.
Do Well and Be Well.
In the centuries old scheme of factors of production, there are three -
1. Land - the raw materials necessary to produce goods for consumption
2. Labor - the human factor, skilled and unskilled
3. Capital Goods - the machines necessary to turn the raw materials into consumable products in conjunction with labor
It is the contention of this blog that capable autonomous robots using artificial intelligence disrupt this theoretical analysis to the point of requiring a fourth factor -
4. Labor Goods - those machines possessed of intelligence that function as both Labor and Capital Goods at one and the same time
Adding in and accounting for this Fourth Factor creates economic scenarios that would have been unimaginable for Adam Smith and unthinkable for Joseph Schumpeter.
Of significance in this new scenario is the fact that any AI robot capable of substantially replacing human production labor is capable of making, maintaining, and repairing itself. That presents a solid unscalable face to what was creative destruction with its corollary phenomenon of raising the employment bar. 'Normal' comprehensible adjustment cannot be done.
An autonomous artificially intelligent robot of significant capability bankrupts classical economic theory. It is simply a matter of adding in this Fourth Factor, this producer good, this machine\labor hybrid, but that addition changes the economic analysis out of all recognition because it creates a new economic order such as has never been seen before.
Our present economy in the United States is a capitalist welfare state committed to innovation, which is to say, the market forces allocate resources to relevant entrepreneur and arbitrageur talent and those that fall victim to creative destruction in the process have a safety net to cushion the blow.
This economy is institutionally consumerist and has been since the form installment loan contract was declared legal so workers could buy refrigerators, automobiles, and houses. Consumerism evolved in an ad hoc, heuristic, fashion to absorb overproduction and in so doing created chronic overproduction. The system that these factors have brought into being is systematically criticized for its waste and nihilist commercial values but not for its princely lifestyles. Everybody wants a helicopter but nobody wants to pay the cultural cost.
This economy functions within liberal tenets and institutions that deny the importance of talent and insist that anybody can do anything with proper training. It is therefore a system in constant conflict with itself.
An autonomous artificially intelligent robot changes the whole consumerist, capitalist, dynamic reducing demand, wages, and opportunity if left to itself. This situation must be addressed. One cannot muddle through an economic innovation, an economic revolution, of this order of magnitude. Unlike other economic revolutions that have preceded it, this one does not merely change the nature of human work, it dispossesses it into a pure machine empowerment of human vision. We are not prepared for this kind of dislocation and it grows closer by the day. It is time to get ahead of the curve.
It is time to consider backcharging Labor Goods for the cost of this dispossession. As Labor Goods, they are certainly eligible for some sort of taxation and the funds so generated could be used to develop vision and perhaps, within the liberal model, generate makework projects. Such a levy would slow the deployment of these machines, but not their development, and create manageable rates of change.
I prefer the consumerist simplicity of a Universal Basic Income devoid of socialist theory. As an ad hoc restructuring of economic profits such a consumerist device would continue to support production and provide the means to develop one's talents for the marketplace.
Whatever the concept, some address must be made, not in abstract political terms but in the sense, as trading bots have demonstrated, that you, whoever you are, are next.
Do Well and Be Well.
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Meaning and Motivation: Structure, Fit, and Drive
There is always a social context to our behavior. We all have a prescribing culture influencing that behavior and either there is a myth, however personal, ordaining that culture, making that context legitimate, or one is a nihilist.
We speak of meaningful social existence and motivated people in vague generalities and specific examples. This blog is an attempt to bring order to that chaos of analysis, to rationalize, if not the actor, then the act.
What is meaning? That question drives the quest of philosophy to define goods and find happiness. What, in short, does meaning mean? For human behavior, it means personally relevant social context, structure, in which one behaves and relevance in that behavior to that context, fit, and a temporal point A in that social context worth occupying and a temporal point B beckoning, drive.
I have a personal psychological space of Victorian and transcendental symbol and canon that defines my relevant context and pragmatic values that define my behavioral repertoire simply because that era is the last instance of true continuity in Western Civilization. In this multicultural, linguistically relative, universe that has technologically been brought into being, I have to pick my relevant moments and ignore, to the extent possible, those that aren't personally relevant. This has given me a reputation for being distant and cavalier but I suspect that reputation of being authored by disordered and irrelevant social contexts. In any case, it is a condition of my existence.
Being civilized is difficult under the kind of disruptive influences that hold sway today. Civilization is found, as it has been since Byzantium, in the library and in individual lives and in those books and in those lives one finds structure, fit, and drive.
We speak of meaningful social existence and motivated people in vague generalities and specific examples. This blog is an attempt to bring order to that chaos of analysis, to rationalize, if not the actor, then the act.
What is meaning? That question drives the quest of philosophy to define goods and find happiness. What, in short, does meaning mean? For human behavior, it means personally relevant social context, structure, in which one behaves and relevance in that behavior to that context, fit, and a temporal point A in that social context worth occupying and a temporal point B beckoning, drive.
I have a personal psychological space of Victorian and transcendental symbol and canon that defines my relevant context and pragmatic values that define my behavioral repertoire simply because that era is the last instance of true continuity in Western Civilization. In this multicultural, linguistically relative, universe that has technologically been brought into being, I have to pick my relevant moments and ignore, to the extent possible, those that aren't personally relevant. This has given me a reputation for being distant and cavalier but I suspect that reputation of being authored by disordered and irrelevant social contexts. In any case, it is a condition of my existence.
Being civilized is difficult under the kind of disruptive influences that hold sway today. Civilization is found, as it has been since Byzantium, in the library and in individual lives and in those books and in those lives one finds structure, fit, and drive.
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
A Reality Separate from Human Perception
The philosophical standard in epistemological matters is Protagoras' 'Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, of things that are not that they are not.' Being human, it is impossible to escape that judgement. Modify the mechanics of perception, certainly, but the proposition that reality is what humans perceive it to be is absolute.
Now, with advanced AI and the possibility of machine reality, we are faced with a significant exception to Protagoras' rule. Right on cue, a new embryonic body of thought with which I am only superficially familiar arises, Metamodernism. That doctrine holds there to be a reality separate from human perception which is a timely and necessary construct in the event of a divergent machine reality.
As a Whorfian pragmatist, what problems does that give me? Whorf postulated a threefold schema of language, thought, and reality which I could modify to thought, language, and perception to account for an independent reality. This done, by which language becomes a mediating influence on both thought and reality, there appears a dichotomy of perceived and unperceived reality, leaving room for a third, machine reality.
Now, with advanced AI and the possibility of machine reality, we are faced with a significant exception to Protagoras' rule. Right on cue, a new embryonic body of thought with which I am only superficially familiar arises, Metamodernism. That doctrine holds there to be a reality separate from human perception which is a timely and necessary construct in the event of a divergent machine reality.
As a Whorfian pragmatist, what problems does that give me? Whorf postulated a threefold schema of language, thought, and reality which I could modify to thought, language, and perception to account for an independent reality. This done, by which language becomes a mediating influence on both thought and reality, there appears a dichotomy of perceived and unperceived reality, leaving room for a third, machine reality.
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