Re: Re:democracy
Victor Milne: As I recall, this thread got started with a comment about many of the voters seeming to be neither intelligent nor well-informed. I'm sure from many of his postings that Ed Weick did not mean this in an elitist sense. No, I didn't mean it in an elitist sense. I meant it very much in the sense of your posting. What often adds complexity to voter decision-making is the choice between the candidate and the party. I've been faced with this on more than one occasion. I wanted to vote for a party but I simply couldn't stomach the candidate it was running. On one occasion I did not feel any of the candidates were worthy of my vote so I spoiled my ballet. What we have to realize in discussing this whole issue of governance is that our system has evolved over several hundred years and is still evolving. It is a very imperfect system, but it is the only one we have. For the most part, we cherish it, flawed as it is. To take it away from us and give it to some elite group, as Jay argues, would result either in rebellion and chaos or the repression of a police state. Yes, voters can be stupid and politicians can be stupid, but the right to cast a free vote is not stupid. Ed Weick
Re: real-life example
- Original Message - From: Edward Weick [EMAIL PROTECTED] No thanks! I saw direct democracy in action the other night on a PBS program about Rwanda: eight-hundred-thousand dead in one hundred days. Don't you think your being just a little unfair? That was butchery, not democracy. Given its background, it could have happened under any form of government. That's exactly my point. Given the opportunity, it would happen anywhere, at any time. There is nothing inherent in man that keeps him torturing and murdering his fellows. For example, the practice of human torture was "legal" for at least 3,000 years and formed a part of most legal codes in Europe and the Far East. Remember that Hitler was elected by "the people". Moreover, the men who ran the camps during WW2 were, for the most part, average people. Remember the Slave trade? Just some conscious family men trying to make a buck and put their kids through school. Let "the people" make all the laws? Bad idea! Jay This puts us at a dead end, which may also be your point. I don't like the idea of scientists running things. I've worked with too many of them. One of the best couldn't think his way out of a paper bag, but he could do wonders inside that bag. They really don't want to govern. Who's left? The Pope? The UN? The IOC? For want of other options, I would put my money on the street kids of India or Brazil. They could teach us a thing or two about survival. Ed
Re: real-life example
From: Edward Weick [EMAIL PROTECTED] How about an explicit definition of the job and explicit qualifications? We do that with every other job, why not politics? God will write them? Theocracies worked for a while, but they too had their problems -- e.g. the classic Mayas screwed up their environment just as badly as we have. Gee! Why not try science for a change? Jay, I've known enough scientists to convince me that that might not be wise. Ed
Re: real-life example
No thanks! I saw direct democracy in action the other night on a PBS program about Rwanda: eight-hundred-thousand dead in one hundred days. Jay Jay, Don't you think your being just a little unfair? That was butchery, not democracy. Given its background, it could have happened under any form of government. Ed
Re: real-life example
Jay: How about an explicit definition of the job and explicit qualifications? We do that with every other job, why not politics? God will write them? Theocracies worked for a while, but they too had their problems -- e.g. the classic Mayas screwed up their environment just as badly as we have. Ed Weick
Re: real-life example
Jay Hanson: First of all you did not know my crew. G Moreover, the reason they have skippers on boats is because they are better trained than crew and passengers. It's a fact of life. Human society is inherently hierarchical for the simple reason that it contributes to "inclusive fitness". Could anyone imagine democracy on a commercial airliner? Human society does not have to be permanently hierarchical and hierarchies do not necessarily have to be undemocratic. In their original state, northern Aboriginal groups followed certain people because they had special abilities - e.g. they would allow a particular person to take the lead in hunting because he was a very good and successful hunter. However, this did not mean that he led in other ways. The pilot of an aircraft is a little like this. While the aircraft is flying, he clearly leads. When he is on the ground, he is like anyone else. My point is that, in relatively simple social situations, hierarchies exist around special circumstances or activities, but they apply only to those. The Aboriginal hunter could not command people to hunt with him just as the pilot cannot command people to fly with him. Hierarchies became more fixed and permanent as population numbers increased and social complexity grew. While hunting and gathering societies needed only transitory hierarchies, more complex societies needed permanent ones. However, there is no reason on earth why these couldn't be democratic, allowing a particular leadership limited powers and only a limited tenure. That in many cases they became undemocratic and permanent reflects a usurpation of the rules by a leadership, or conquest or some such thing. During the past two centuries, a great deal of effort has been devoted to developing methods by which complex and populous societies could maintain essential hierarchies and still operate democratically. In my opinion, much of this has been successful. Ed Weick
Re: Samuelson's lump-of-labor, 1998
Ray E. Harrell: 2. Opera is truly a holistic art form that encompasses music, drama, dance, the graphic arts, film and anything else that can be used by the composer. There is nothing about Neo-Classical Economics that vaguely resembles the whole of human. They more resemble the state form theories of practical science that assumes the keyhole to be only what is in the room and proceeds accordingly. Unfortunately there is nothing like the Hubbell Space Telescope to rescue them from their projections. I rather vaguely remember that there were several streams in economics during the 19th Century. While some economists became increasingly preoccupied with how a rational consumer would go about choosing between peanuts and birdseed, others were deeply concerned about the worsening human condition in a rapidly industrializing and changing Europe. One must not forget that, while neo-classicism emerged from the 19th century, so did communism and socialism. While some people tried to reduce human behaviour to tight little equations or diagrams, others bellowed at the heavens. Alfred Marshall was a product of the economics of the 19th Century, but so was Schumpeter, and so, for that matter, was Lenin. Like it or not, economists are people, and like all people, they can be peculiar in many different ways. Ed Weick
Re: real-life example
Jay Hanson: Democracy makes no sense. If society is seeking a leader with the best skills, the selection should be based on merit -- testing and xperience -- not popularity. Government by popularity contest is a stupid idea. Somehow I'm not at all surprised that this is your point of view. But then how is merit to be determined? Testing and experience, you say, but who will assess this? Surely an intelligent and informed public should have something to do with it. But, I suppose you would then argue that much of the public is neither intelligent nor informed, a point which I would, alas, have to agree with. Ed Weick
Re: The lump-of-opera fallacy
Ray: Being a musician is a full time job whether paid or not and angry artists are often quite destructive. Since they control the mirrors they often contain a destruction that is truly genocidal all in the name of their own view of the world winning a kind of artistic 'losing. I find this a little bothersome because it makes me wonder who might qualify as destructive or genocidal artist. Somewhere, in the dark recesses of their minds both Stalin and Hitler fancied themselves to be artists. Stalin wrote poetry and Hitler wanted to be an architect or painter. Both were failures, though perhaps not in their own minds. Were the prisoners of the gulag and the death camps victims of failed self-styled artists? Or perhaps you mean Hitler and Stalin were influenced by artists -- Hitler by Wagner, for instance. When I think of destructive true artists, Van Gogh comes to mind. But then he destroyed himself, not others. Ed weick
Re: Sustainable work
Neva Goodwin: "At some point, we need to ask, why are we using the word, "work"? There are other good words -- "self-actualization" (well, that's not a very euphoneous one, but it has a good meaning), "play" -- I've tended to assume that "work" had to do with an output of some kind that was of value, not only to the doer, but also to at least some others in society. Etc. "Work" is one of the most impossible words in the English language. It covers far, far too many things, including play (e.g. as in hockey or baseball). There are other words which fit particular situations better, words which in some cases have already become commonplace. I don't find "self-actualization" bad if that is what someone is doing -- perhaps the dancer in a Feiffer cartoon. But then many women, worldwide, still do not work. Rather, they "drudge", while their husbands and often their children "toil", if they can find work at all. Little boys on the streets of Calcutta don't work either, they beg or scam. Nor do little boys in Sierra Leone. They carry guns around and fight. Drug dealers do not work either. They "push", while prostitutes from the same neighbourhood "hook". My point is that the words are probably already there. Perhaps we should get honest with ourselves and use them. Ed Weick
Designer seeds
From the Globe and Mail: Designer seeds a growing concern in India Monday, January 25, 1999John Stackhouse Badshahpur, India -- Ever since the cotton-field massacre, security for the miracle tomato has been stepped up. As it has for the miracle cauliflower, cabbage and soybean, too. On a well-guarded research farm in the northern Indian state of Haryana, geneticists are busy trying to create daring new seeds for all these crops, and more. They claim the designer seeds, mixed with genes to fight off pestilence, floods and drought, will save the world's second-most-populous country from what could be a new century of hunger. While the geneticists toil away in their labs and test fields, they know their greatest obstacles lie on India's political battlefield, where the promise of transgenic seeds has met some of its fiercest opposition yet. If the gene scientists believe in technological progress, their activist opponents fear a new form of technoslavery, as the world's biggest seed producers race to sell genetically engineered seeds to some of the world's poorest farmers. These seeds will not add to the food security of India, warned Davinder Sharma, a New Delhi agriculture analyst. They will add only to the profit security of these companies. Popular or not, India's Gene Revolution is well under way in a small laboratory in the middle of a mustard field in Badshahpur, 50 kilometres south of New Delhi. To get there, one must drive down rutted back roads that carve their way through vegetable fields struggling to be part of India's new surplus economy. Billions of dollars of public money has gone into fields like these, through heavily subsidized irrigation, fertilizer and pesticide schemes, and yet India's crops struggle to keep pace with its population. Yields, on average, are only half those of China. But the private sector says it has an answer. Inside the Badshahpur research station, behind a tall iron gate, genetic engineers and entomologists at Proagro-PGS India Ltd. work into the night to find new ways to fight pests that for centuries have kept India on the edge of hunger. Among them is Harish Kumar, a mild-mannered entomologist who toils in a narrow basement room swarming with bugs which he vows to kill -- and does. In one dish, Dr. Kumar shows the leaf of a naturally grown cauliflower that has been devoured by moths in only 24 hours. In the next dish is his genetically altered cauliflower leaf, surrounded by dead moths -- the result of a killer gene. There's absolutely no survival, Dr. Kumar said exuberantly. If Proagro wins approval to sell its genetically modified seeds, it believes it will revolutionize Indian agriculture. Its new mustard seeds show a 20-per-cent increase in productivity over the best Indian variety, and the company claims they would require almost no chemical fertilizers. In a country where 200 million people are undernourished, such designer seeds could also change the national diet with genetically injected vitamins and minerals added to basic vegetables and grains. And they would spare consumers the horrible consequences of eating chemically laced produce, which has emerged recently as a major public-health problem. To do this, most genetically altered seeds are injected with a gene from the the Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) bacterium that produces insect toxins especially effective against moths, caterpillars and certain beetles. By mixing the Bt gene with cotton genes, U.S. seed giant Monsanto Co. says its new Bollgard seed could save India from voracious bollworm attacks like the one in 1996 that wiped out much of the southern cotton belt and led to at least 100 farmer suicides. Instead of praise, Monsanto's Bt cotton seed has
Re: academia, etc.
Ray E. Harrell, Welcome to the world of the arts.Out of 5,650 graduates a year in vocal performing arts programs there are about 300 full time jobs. We are told by the economists that making a living at something else means that we should be happy to do the art for free. Welcome to the world of lean and agile thought and virtual reality. Prooducktivity. I wonder who thought that one up. So far only Mike Hollinshead has commented on our Nobel Laureate (Friedman) and his fear of having to pay taxes for the common good.Thank you Mike for rising from your sickbed. This is not only happening in the vocal and performing arts. Former neighbors or ours both had Ph.D.s, he in microbiology and she in some other field of biology. Neither could get full-time work in their professions. Both went back to university, he to do an MBA, she to obtain a teacher's certificate. Both then got full time work. It would seem that there has been a change of emphasis from specialization to flexibility; from the application of skill and knowledge in depth to the provision of "just in time" solutions. To know a little bit about a lot of things, as MBA's do, is more valuable than knowing a lot about one thing, as microbiologists do. One can visualize a world in which everything the microbiologist knows can be stored in a computer, and in which the generalist (perhaps an MBA with a microbiology background) who knows how to organize it, store it, retrieve it and apply it is the really important guy. It is guys like him or her that businesses and governments will increasingly want to hire and the universities will increasingly try to turn out. As for the performing arts, turning on our TVs, renting videos, and buying CDs does seem to have disposed of the need to get dressed, get in the car, and go to the theater, all at considerably greater expense. Think of it -- with a good CD player you can now hear the best voices and orchestras, and you can even shut your eyes and use earphones if you want to be alone. There are still things that you have to go and see or hear because there is no other satisfactory way of accessing them -- stage plays for example -- but they are diminishing in type and number. The problem appears to that, in the not too distant past, someone, somewhere, linked the performing arts to the economy. This worked for awhile because the economy was localized and the type of technology available today was either non-existent or existed in a rudimentary form. Two things appear to have happened since: the economy has become "globalized" (how I hate that word but there does not seem to be another!) and the ability to distribute and consume (good economic words) artistic performances via gadgetry has exploded. There is no need to pay all of the artists, even if they are better than mediocre. Let them go back to singing in church! Ed Weick
Re: Afrika and living beyond our means
M. Blackmore: Hence the reality of our position is obscured by market relations. Disrupt those relations and watch the industrial populations die off like flies :-( would be my guess. I suppose it depends on what is meant by "disrupt". Total disruption, if such a thing can be imagined, would of course be disastrous to all of the earth's people. But partial disruption has always occurred in some fashion or another, and probably always will go on despite efforts to make things predictable via large trading blocks and the "normalization" of trade and capital flows via organizations such as the WTO and efforts such as the MAI. Because of resource depletion or politics, sources of supply (and demand) change, and rearrangements have to be made. In my opinion, the largest impending problem that humanity will face is not global market disruption but more particularized and regionalized disruptive phenomena. I have in mind things such as trade and market disruptions on a regional basis, a sheer scarcity of vital resources in heavily populated parts of the world, and something that might be called "the bad effects of good intentions". There are many examples of disruptions on a regional basis: While the rest of the world goes on, some people simply cannot get the supplies they need or undertake trade because of localized wars or economic collapse - Kosavo, Russia, the Ukraine. The increasing scarcity of vital resources can perhaps best be illustrated by falling water tables in densely populated areas (India). The creation of educated, literate, longer-lived and politically aware populations in regions in which higher expectations simply cannot be met is an example good intentions and bad effects. While any of these phenomena, and probably others, can have disastrous effects in the regions in which they occur, their impact is probably containable globally, at least for the time being. Ed Weick
Re: Visions of Heaven or Hell
Victor Milne: But what consumers are going to be left? They may opt out--boycott--as suggested above. However, Angell's world seems to leave precious few consumers. Global business is to downsize, outsource, roboticize, and where it retains a few workers, tell them to be damn grateful for the pittance they get. The unemployed who survive will do so by participating in a black market economy. In 1995, more than 80% of global GNP accrued to the people who live in high income economies. These people comprised only 16% of the world's population. Their GNP per capita worked out to aprx. US$25,000. In comparison, the per capita GNP of people living in low and middle income economies worked out to aprx. US$1,100. What such numbers suggest is that the production of consumers goods and services is aimed mostly at the rich world and at the rich stratum of the population of poor countries. Inequality between rich and poor is growing. One can picture a world in which, in the course of time, about 90% of global GNP will accrue to people who live in high income economies. Add to this the probability that income differences between rich and poor in those economies, and indeed in poorer ones, will have grown considerably. One can also picture a situation in which, because of downsizing, the world's relatively wealthy population has declined as a proportion of total global population, but in which the total income accruing to that population has proportionately increased. Prof. Angell's "Alphas", ensconced in fully efficient, re-engineered corporations, would then be providing goods and services for a proportionately smaller but richer population. The rest of the population wouldn't matter very much because then, as now, it would mostly be too poor to comprise a worthwhile market. It could be left to the peddlers, hawkers and small shopkeepers. It is unlikely that the rich would be willing to join consumer boycotts. They would have plenty of money and no reason for not buying quality goods and services. Even if he is pulling our collective leg, we have to take Prof. Angell's message seriously. What he is saying is happening all around us. Here is an example: A few days ago, we got together with some friends who had been laid-off by Bell Canada a couple of years ago. While that seemed catastrophic when it happened, they have landed on their feet. What are they doing now? Why, they are working in Brussels as technical consultants to Belgium's telephone company. When they have finished their work about a year from now, that telephone company will be in a position to lay off half its personnel. Ed Weick
THE THIRD CULTURE - by Kevin Kelly (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly/inde
Title: EDGE 3rd Culture: THE THIRD CULTURE - by Kevin Kelly The Third Culture Home | Third Culture | Digerati | Reality Club The Third Cultureby Kevin Kelly Kevin Kelly wrote the following essay for Science Magazine's Essays on Science and Society, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of that publication. The second essay in the series (following The Great Asymmetry by Stephen Jay Gould), it appeared in the Volume 279, Number 5353 Issue of 13 February 1998, pp. 992 - 993 of Science and it is also available on the Science Online website. It is published here for the third culture mail list by permission of the author. Kevin Kelly is the executive editor of Wired and author of Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World. THE THIRD CULTURE Science is a lofty term. The word suggests a process of uncommon rationality, inspired observation, and near-saintly tolerance for failure. More often than not, that's what we get from science. The term science also entails people aiming high. Science has traditionally accepted the smartest students, the most committed and self-sacrificing researchers, and the cleanest money-that is, money with the fewest political strings attached. In both theory and practice, science in this century has been perceived as a noble endeavor. Yet science has always been a bit outside society's inner circle. The cultural center of Western civilization has pivoted around the arts, with science orbiting at a safe distance. When we say culture, we think of books, music, or painting. Since 1937 the United States has anointed a national poet laureate but never a scientist laureate. Popular opinion has held that our era will be remembered for great art, such as jazz. Therefore, musicians are esteemed. Novelists are hip. Film directors are cool. Scientists, on the other hand, are ...nerds. How ironic, then, that while science sat in the cultural backseat, its steady output of wonderful products-radio, TV, and computer chips-furiously bred a pop culture based on the arts. The more science succeeded in creating an intensely mediated environment, the more it receded culturally. The only reason to drag up this old rivalry between the two cultures is that recently something surprising happened: A third culture emerged. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when it happened, but it's clear that computers had a lot to do with it. What's not clear yet is what this new culture means to the original two. This new third culture is an offspring of science. It's a pop culture based in technology, for technology. Call it nerd culture. For the last two decades, as technology supersaturated our cultural environment, the gravity of technology simply became too hard to ignore. For this current generation of Nintendo kids, their technology is their culture. When they reached the point (as every generation of youth does) of creating the current fads, the next funny thing happened: Nerds became cool. Nerds now grace the cover of Time and Newsweek. They are heroes in movies and Man of the Year. Indeed, more people wanna be Bill Gates than wanna be Bill Clinton. Publishers have discovered that cool nerds and cool science can sell magazines to a jaded and weary audience. Sometimes it seems as if technology itself is the star, as it is in many special-effects movies. There's jargon, too. Cultural centers radiate new language; technology is a supernova of slang and idioms swelling the English language. Nerds have contributed so many new words-most originating in science-that dictionaries can't track them fast enough. This cultural realignment is more than the wisp of fashion, and it is more than a mere celebration of engineering. How is it different? The purpose of science is to pursue
Re: Douthwaite's Version
Weick: Growth did not, as Douthwaite appears to imply, stagnate because of a lack of effective demand, but because, in the euphoria of the boom, bad investments were made. And it was not only foreign capital that bailed out. Domestic capital also did so. Davis: The "bad investments" were bad in part because they created capacity in excess of demand. Weick: But isn't this just another way of saying they were bad investments? - i.e., they produced things no one wanted, so they went belly up. Where there is intense competition, excess capacity does not last long. If too many bad investments and unrepayable loans have been made, and if investor expectations have been raised higher than the market will support, it may take something as big as the Asian meltdown to bring things back to reality. What appears to have happened in Asia is that an initially sound growth process turned into a bubble that could not be sustained. The bubble has collapsed, but I would be willing to bet that what was sound is still there. Weick: I would also take some issue with Douthwaite's points about why wages are falling. In Canada wages have been stagnant since the late 1970s. A reason often cited is that the growth of productivity began to slow at about that time. Prior to about 1975, both productivity and wages grew rapidly. Why the stagnation since? In my opinion, the least likely reasons are the export of capital or free trade, and one likely reason is that all of the work required to rebuild a war-devastated world had come to an end. Europe had not only been rebuilt, it had become a modernized competitor in world markets. Davis: Real wages have been declining in north america since the early 70's. I believe that true reason is ideological. If productivity is defined as output per unit of work (in some ways a very perverse definition) it is obvious that it has not slowed at all or the massive layoffs of the last 15 years could not have been made without drastic production cuts. In many industries (e.g. forestry) output has grown steadily even as jobs were slashed. Until the early 70's, unions dominated the labor scene. From that time, the idea that adequate wages were "anti-competitive" and "greedy" began to take root. There was much that was undesirable in the union model, but providing adequate wages was good for both social equity and for economic growth. Weick: I don't see what ideology has to do with it. Labour has always been the highest component of business costs, and we have always had innovations aimed at cutting costs by displacing labour. During recent decades, the business world has become more competitive and the rate of labour displacement has probably accelerated. Inventions such as the microchip have played a large role in this, but they are by no means the first thing to have displaced labour. Consider the impact, in its time, of Henry Ford's assembly line. And one shouldn't overlook social change. A couple of years ago I did some arithmetic on changes in labour force participation. I found that the participation rate for men had not changed very much since the 1970s, but the rate for women had risen dramatically. It is not only machines that have displaced men in the workforce, women have too. In Canada, and probably most advanced countries, at least part of the growth of unemployment can be accounted for by the increase in female participation - i.e. by social change. And, yes, women have entered the labour force because families need double incomes, but that is not the only reason. When I say that the rate of increase of the productivity of Canadian labour has declined, I mean on average. (Actually, the decline is not my discovery. The Economic Council of Canada pointed to it when it was still around.) The productivity of specialized labour has undoubtedly increased. Such labour is able to fetch a good salary, and is still very much in demand. It is less specialized or unspecialized labour that has taken a big hit. This is the kind of labour that comprised much of the union movement a few decades ago. With the decline of its importance in the economy, the political clout of unions has also declined. I would be hard pressed to believe that people are really any more greedy now than they were a few decades ago. I would however agree that today's greed is a little more obvious and perhaps rapacious. The economic world has become a more competitive place. The pie is not growing very fast and there are more people fighting for it. Davis: By the 80's the ideology of capitalistic greed was not only tolerated but glorified. Workers who wanted a living wage were greedy, but "investors" were just accumiulatring wealth so it coiuld "trickle down". In the 3rd world, the colonial tradition of converting the land on which the people had always subsisted to specialized export crops accelerated, driving more and more people off the land to cities or maquilladoras where they were desperate enough to
Re: REGIONAL PLANNING DILUTES AND ULTIMATELY DEFEATS DEMOCRACY
excerpt from a paper by Albert Bartlett published in Population Environment, Vol. 20, No. 1, September 1998, Pgs. 77 - 81. REGIONWIDE PLANNING WILL MAKE THE PROBLEMS WORSE REGIONAL PLANNING DILUTES AND ULTIMATELY DEFEATS DEMOCRACY What does regional planning do to democracy? In 1950 the population of the City of Boulder was 20,000. So when speaking to a member of the City Council in 1950, a citizen of Boulder was one voice in 20,000. In 1998 the population of Boulder is approximately five times larger, so one citizen of Boulder in 1997 is one voice in 100,000. Population growth in Boulder since 1950 has diluted democracy in Boulder by a factor of five! This is bad enough. But look what will happen if we turn to regional planning as we seek democratic ``solutions'' to the problems. If there are 300,000 people in the ``region,'' then, as seen by the individual citizen, regional planning will further dilute democracy by another factor of three. If the ``region'' includes the metropolitan Denver counties with perhaps 2.5 million population, one citizen of Boulder will be reduced to being only one voice in 2.5 million! Then, to make things even worse, if regional planning is ``successful'', it will hasten the population growth in the region to 3, 4, or even 5 million, with the corresponding further destruction of democracy. For the individual, democracy is inversely proportional to the size of the participating population. I'm not sure that it always works quite that way. When I spent a month in a Sao Paulo slum a year ago, I saw something rather interesting. Sao Paulo, as you know, has a population of aprx. 20 million, meaning, by Bartlett's reckoning, that each citizen would stand a one in 20 million chance of being heard. This did not seem to bother the people around me in the least because, while many of them worked in downtown Sao Paulo, the city as a whole was not in any sense their community. Their community consisted of the people around them, with whom they interacted via a great variety of networks. The boundaries of this community were rather amorphous, and seemed to vary depending on what was at issue. While it seemed informal, it was probably quite tightly organized around things that really mattered - for example, drug dealers' territories or daycare for young children. And on those things, it was not always democratic. Much of the world's population is now urban, and large cities are continuing to grow at the expense of smaller urban centres and the countryside. Perhaps what will emerge from this is something like I observed in Sao Paulo. In their day to day lives, people can only interact at a certain scale -- maybe no more than a few thousand people. What they may try to do, then, is break a very large city down into communities which make sense to them. These may be partly democratic, partly authoritarian, but they would function to provide people with a sense of protection, place and order. Ed Weick
Re: technology changes community
Victor Milne: Having a single service centre for the whole continent is not necessarily very efficient, because the people answering the calls don't have a clue about the local situation. True. I was having problems with my computer, so I dialed the 1-800 number. I told the gentleman at the other end that I lived in Ottawa, and asked where I might get it checked out. He though for a moment, and suggested Halifax. No, I said, too far away. He thought a little longer and said Windsor. No, I said, still too far. Finally he suggested suburban Montreal. OK, I said if that is the closest place, and, by the way, where are you? Los Angeles, he replied. Ed Weick
Trends of the times
1996 Census: Sources of Income, earnings and total income, and family income, Statistics Canada, May 12, 1998: The nearly 21 million individuals who were income recipients in 1995 had an average total income from all sources of $25,196, down 6% from 1990 after adjustment for inflation. This decrease wiped out gains during the second half of the 1980s. As a result, average total income in 1995 was almost identical to that in 1985, and slightly below the level of 1980. The average income of men ($31,117) was 7.8% below their average income in 1990. Between 1985 and 1990, men were just able to recoup the income losses suffered in the recession of the early 1980s. As a result, average income of men in 1995 was 7.6% below their income in 1980. The number of female income recipients has been increasing over the years. In 1995, women accounted for nearly half (49.7%) of all income recipients. In 1995, they had an average income of $19,208, down 2.1% from 1990. TSE 300 CEOs pocketed bigger pay package in 97, Globe and Mail, December 10, 1998: Top executives of Canada's premier publicly traded companies collected an average pay package of almost $1.7-million in 1997- that's close to $709,000 more than the average two years earlier, a study released yesterday says. The salaries were bigger. The bonuses were bigger. The other annual compensation was bigger and the long-term [incentives] were bigger, said Alisa Dunbar, a partner who leads the executive compensation consulting practice for Ernst Young. I'll admit its a bit of a false comparison, because the first item refers to a 15 year period ending 1995, while the second refers to 1995-97. Nevertheless, I doubt that the position of the average income earner has improved much since 1995. What is more probable is that it has worsened. Meanwhile, our top execs have risen to the lower stratosphere (not the middle or upper stratospheres; those are for Americans). Ed Weick
Re: Y2K in SF?
I see on the news bulletins that San Francisco is experiencing a massive and mysterious power blackout. Could this be an early symptom? Maybe a systems test that didn't work? Tom Walker The following makes it sound all very mysterious! Ed Weick Massive blackout hits San Francisco, Peninsula By Larry D. Hatfield OF THE EXAMINER STAFF A massive power failure brought San Francisco to a darkened standstill at the height of the morning rush hour Tuesday, stranding hundreds of people in high-rise elevators and dark tunnels, freezing traffic, knocking thousands of computers off-line and paralyzing business operations and otherwise creating havoc. The blackout, which rolled neighborhood to neighborhood as far north as Fairfield and into other parts of the Bay Area after a Pacific Gas Electric plant in San Mateo shut down, began at 8:17 a.m. and still had much of the region blacked out hours later. By late morning, power had been restored to various areas but much of the region was still without electricity. PGE spokesman Corey Warren said power was returning station by station, with manual switching required to restore electricity city block by city block. Mayor Brown said he was told by PGE officials that the blackout was caused by human error, but offered no details. "San Francisco has been magnificent,'' Brown said. "People have been respectful of each other. The City is essentially functioning as it previously has, a little bit slower but it's functioning." By late morning, some 350,000 PGE customers were still without power; about 30,000 had their power restored. Of major concern were reports from the San Francisco Fire Department that as many as 10 percent of the elevators in 500 high-rise buildings San Francisco were having problems. There were no major medical emergencies reported. Fire DepartmentInspector Kaan Chin said the biggest problem was panic. "The fire department has been anticipating a situation like this since the 1989 earthquake,'' he said, adding that it took about a half hour for each elevator to free trapped people. Although some people were temporarily City department heads were already in their regular Tuesday meeting with Brown, then convened within minutes of the blackout at The City's emergency services headquarters at 1003A Turk St., according to Rachel O'Hara, an official in the city administrator's office. After returning from a briefing, Dr. Mitchell Katz, director of the department of public health, predicted that all power would be back to the entire city by noon. He said power already was restored by 11 a.m. in the Embarcadero and Bayview-Hunter's Point areas. "So far, it's gone remarkably smoothly," Katz said. He said there were no unusual police incidents and no health emergencies. All hospitals immediately switched to auxiliary power and all emergency rooms remained open. But elective surgeries and routine appointments were cancelled, Katz said. The biggest health problem was people trapped in elevators, he said. According to PGE spokeswoman Mary Rodrigues, the center of the problem was a PGE substation in San Mateo. The substation takes high-voltage power from transmission lines and lowers it to a voltage that can be used by consumers. She said an unexplained problem still under investigation caused the substation to go off-line. At that point, automatic switches were triggered to isolate the area supplied with electricity by the substation. Without the switches, power to all of Northern California could have gone out, called by the utility an "underfrequency.'' PGE spokesman Bill Roche said it would take 2 to 5 hours to repair the substation and bring the others back on line. An unknown number of persons were evacuated from Muni tunnels. There apparently were no trains in the trans-Bay BART tunnel, according to a BART police spokesman. At San Francisco International Airport, one of the world's busiest airports, flight operations continued on separate power but some flights were diverted to Oakland and San Jose to ease traffic. Officials said if the blackout continued, arriving and departing flights would be delayed. Emergency power lit the terminals but computers were down, making it impossible to check in passengers, said airport spokesman Ron Wilson. Airport personnel used bullhorns to alert travelers to flight delays. A PGE spokesman said more than 372,000 customers were left without service. Traffic lights at intersections throughout The City were off and some Muni electric buses were stuck in the intersections, blocking traffic. Police and parking control officers directed traffic at others. Mayor Brown, who was driving around The City to check on problems, urged calm. He also expressed concern about the operation of hospitals, although there were no early reports of problems as hospitals switched to auxiliary power. Brown spokesman Ron Vinson urged people to go
Re: simulating ownership and democracy
It's hard to answer anything but "maybe" to these questions, which doesn't really satisfy me. "Ownership" is quite an abstract concept, and for all that Marxists talked about materialism they sure attached a lot of importance to something so abstract. Back to some rudeness. I'm really beginning to wonder about this! There is a very direct connection between ownership and monopoly power. The more concentrated the ownership of productive resources, the more monopoly power that can be exercised. The greater the monopoly power, the greater the concetration of income and wealth in a relatively few hands, and the more impoverished and powerless the population in general. I've tried my damndest to take your proposal to simulate the world economy seriously, but now question whether you can even begin to this without some understanding of basic economics. Without such understanding, I'm afraid that all you will produce is another CIA Factbook. Why bother? Ed Weick
Fw: World Bank Economic Forecast
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Newsgroups: usa-today.money,alt.politics.economics Date: Thursday, December 03, 1998 6:22 PM Subject: World Bank Economic Forecast December 2, 1998 The World Bank (Wednesday) says the Asian financial and economic crisis is having a profound negative impact on economic performance in most developing countries. The big international lender says developing countries overall are growing less than half as fast as they did in 1997. World Bank economists say even countries not directly hit by the crisis are suffering from the trauma that erupted in East Asia 18-months ago. World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz says because Asia is in recession, commodity prices are collapsing and exports of developing countries are down. Mr. Stiglitz says developing countries are affected in several ways. "One of them is this huge terms-of-trade effect. So a country like Chile, they may be pursuing very good economic policies, but if the price of copper falls it is going to be adversely affected. The oil-exporting countries, regardless of whether they were pursuing good economic policies -- and some were good and some bad -- have been very, very badly affected. Because oil prices are so low, the World Bank says per-capita incomes in the Middle East and North Africa have fallen this year. Per-capita incomes are also down in sub-Saharan Africa. Because Russia's economy has gone into deep recession, there is no growth this year in per-capita incomes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. World Bank economist Milan Brahmbhatt says it is the poor in East Asia who are suffering most. Mr. Brahmbhatt says in several countries, years of progress in alleviating poverty have been lost. "As is too often the case, the collapse of economic activity is having its most dramatic impacts on the poor. Unemployment in Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand is expected to triple, while the number falling below poverty could reach 25- million in Indonesia and Thailand alone." The World Bank says there is some risk that the world economy could slip into recession next year. The bank says the Asian crisis was caused by the huge inflow and then sudden outfloow of short-term capital. The bank says since the onset of the crisis (in mid-1997) 100-billion dollars have been withdrawn from South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. Global Investing News at http://www.cyberhaven.com/globalinvesting/ ---== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==-- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Re: Re: more on simulation ...
"Douglas P. Wilson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Since my post containing some tentative requirements analysis the silence has been deafening, with even Jay Hanson being mute on the subject. For my part, I found your post excellent, even inspiring. I marvel at your level of enthusiasm. -Pete vincent I, on the other hand, do not. I have seen little evidence that you really know anything about the global economy that you hope to model. But then I've never regarded simulation as a substitute for understanding. Many years ago, I was in an Aboriginal community in the high Arctic. They held a dance. They danced and we, the outsiders, danced. They understood the dance. We did not. We simulated. Ed Weick
Re: (FW) Data and projects (simulation)
Steve Kurtz: (Douglas: I urge you to have a look before attempting to re-invent the wheel.) Then, summarizing a paper: Simulators are descriptions of complex systems representing the interrelationships among the processes that constitute the system; they combine observations of past states of the system with scientific understanding of processes. As such, simulators are explicit and communicable representations of the mental models that guide our perceptions and actions. Unlike verbal or mathematical descriptions of systems, simulators are active and can be experienced. Learning how the system works arises from the experience of using the simulator. The user will come to appreciate the complex system-as-a-whole behaviour as it emerges out of dynamic interactions among relatively well understood processes such as manufacturing, consumer demand, technology and energy use. I must first apologize to the list for my ill-tempered reference to dancing in the High Arctic. I may have had a little too much wine last night, which made me cranky. It is possible that the Aboriginal people I referred to had no more idea of why they were dancing than we did, and were thus simulating just as we were. Perhaps they danced not out of an understanding of their own changing traditions, but because they knew that we, the visitors, expected them to. And perhaps we expected them to because they were Aboriginal people, and that is what they do. Anyhow, what matters most is that we all had a good time. Nevertheless, I do feel that the questions I have raised about the simulation that Douglas Wilson is proposing are valid: Is there really something to be simulated? If so, what? Will the proposed simulation lead to a better understanding of economic phenomena? And, do we not already have a considerable understanding of the global impacts of megaphenomena such as population growth and energy resource depletion? I will try to address these issues. On whether there is something to be simulated, I pointed out in a previous posting that, despite headlines and hype to the contrary, economic activity is still overwhelmingly domestic, not international. This makes me wonder how a "global economy" might be defined for the purposes of simulation. I feel too that, in a global simulation, broad political realities would have to play a central role. How might they be factored in? For example, the world of the Cold War consisted of two massive politico-economic blocks, each trying to extend its hegemony over nations by foreign aid and other "instruments of diplomacy". Politically and economically, that world was quite distinct from the much more fragmented, and perhaps more dangerous, one which has replaced it, a world in which even the powerful United States is merely one player among many, and there is no real certainty about how many are playing or what the real game is. I would suggest that, in a simulation of the kind being proposed, it matters a great deal what kind of overall global world is being assumed, since the nature of that world would determine who provides economic support to whom, who is willing to sell strategic resources to whom, who provides weapons to whom, and other such things. Perhaps the model would have to be capable of being redesigned to take account of a variety of possible global scenarios representing possibilities ranging from a bipolar, Cold War type, world to one which is even more fragmented than the one we live in today. Which leads me to the issue of whether a model of the "global economy" would really be helpful. In a previous posting I asked what it might tell about whether China might devalue the yuan, knowing full well that it couldn't tell us much. But perhaps it could tell us quite a lot about the consequences of yuan devaluation. Yet would it really tell us more than we already know? At the most general level, we know that the impact of not devaluing would largely fall on the Chinese economy, whereas the impact of devaluing would, to a considerable extent, export the problem from China. We also know far more than this. If we really put our minds to it, we could, on the basis of known trading patterns, probably make some pretty good estimates of who would lose and who would benefit, and by how much. But in doing this, it is probable that we would get down to a level too micro for a global model -- or the global model would have to terribly comprehensive. So the point is, perhaps a model would not really be of much use in a case like this. And, to extend this line of thought, most of the thinking that needs to be done about day to day or even year to year changes in the international economy is essentially of a micro nature: How will the continuing Japanese recession affect BC lumber and mineral production, and ultimately employment? How will an excess of global pork combined with European subsidies affect Canadian farmers? How might the devaluation of the South Korean
more on simulations...
Douglas P. Wilson: But weather is such a profoundly non-linear system that linearization is either impossible or doesn't help much. We may differ on this point, but I think the world economy is a much simpler system than the world's weather. I don't know any way to prove this other than to construct a simulation and try it, but I'd be quite surprised to see anything like the chaos seen with weather. I havent commented on this discussion because I dont know the jargon and would have little to add to what has been said about modeling. However, what does bother me is continuous reference to simulating the world economy without first bothering to ask whether there is such a thing and whether there is anything left to model. A very very large part of the economic activity that takes place in the world occurs within national boundaries, and a considerable number of analytical and predictive simulation models already exist to deal with such activity. To the best of my knowledge, such models incorporate international transactions. Although I have no direct experience with this, it is probable that some of these models could be linked (or are already being linked) so that what happens in one country could be reflected in the model of another. When one thinks of the European Union, such linking of country models into larger ones would make sense. I would also question how useful the type of modeling being proposed might be. Would it really tell us anymore than we already know about the Asian meltdown or the economic problems of Russia? Would it really give us more information than we already have (which is not much) about the debate currently underway in China about whether the yuan should be devalued to maintain Chinas trade position? And as for doing the world a great favour by developing a simulation model of the world economy, I would suggest that agencies such as the World Bank, the US Federal Reserve Board, the Bank of Canada, and the Canadian Department of Finance have already done considerable modeling, and, being rather pig-headed, may want to keep building on what they have already done. I would add, however, that I received most of my education before the age of the computer, and my comments may simply reflect how out of date Ive become. Ed Weick
Exxon/Mobil merger
Jock McCardell: If this merger is based (as claimed by the respective CEOs) onrationalisation of producers because of declining consumption of oil howdoes this affect the timeline on the 'tank is empty' equation? I believe that its a decline in the price of oil that's at issue, not a decline in consumption. To the best of my knowledge, consumption continues on its upward trend. As far as price is concerned, this morning's Globe and Mail says The January contract for the benchmark West Texas intermediate oil fell 9 cents to $11.13 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange -- its lowest close on the futures market since mid-1986 and down 50 percent in the past 14 months. In the US, the price of gasoline is said to have fallen to about 97 cents a gallon from $1.15 a year ago. The price of aviation fuel is also down. So why is this happening? I can think of two reasons. One is that OPEC is no longer in a position to exercise control over price and output. The other is that governments have become very dependent on royalties generated by oil -- the more that countries pump, the more revenues their governments get. (These reasons may actually be one and the same: governments don't want to cooperate because of the revenues they get.) Given this, the creation of large near monopolies, like Exxon/Mobil, might be beneficial. In economics 101, monopolies are supposed to raise profits by raising product price and restricting output. If the central issue is conservation of the resource, this might not be a bad thing. However, the merged Exxon/Mobil will still only be one of several big players, none of which can dominate to the point of determining industry output. What may be driving the merger, then, is prospective efficiency. If price and output cannot be controlled, costs can. Cutting duplicate staff and rationalizing production will lead to a leaner single company, a company better able to compete and remain profitable, given the continuation of low energy prices. It would therefore seem that the merger is based on the expectation of continued low prices (but also greatly increased profitability if prices were to rise). Expect more mergers. There already are some others underway (e.g. BP/Amoco). Ed Weick
