It must have come as a shock to Huawei. It's discovered that it's only a hardware-maker after all. The real power is with Google. So it will now have to develop its own total ecosystem like Apple.
But it's hard to replicate what Google has - just think of the intellectual capital represented by Google Maps, for one. Remind me again just how good the Chinese are at software for westerners.
Huawei can't win this one. Not outside of China.
We now live in a multiple planetary system. Planet Anglosphere, planet China and then the rest.
On a personal basis I distrust the woke, dissimulating Google. It's a vast gatekeeper, sitting between the producers and their customers, siphoning off middleman-rents like some vampire squid. It's interests are far from benign: ask yourself what the ideal Google-world would look like and repeat after me: 'total surveillance'.
Benign, of course, Daenerys.
I'm tiptoeing away. I already left Google Search in favour of DuckDuckGo; Chrome has been abandoned in favour of Firefox. I am tempted to migrate from Gmail to Protonmail but I hardly use email these days. But Photos, Maps, Translate, Keep, Docs and Blogger?
There are Microsoft alternatives but frying pan and fire come to mind.
Oh dear!
---
Trivia note: in "The Magic Faraway Tree" (Book 2 of the trilogy), Enid Blyton introduces 'Google Buns'. Here's a recipe. And here's a link to my current (.mp3) reading of this book: 'Are you sitting comfortably, children?'.
I already read Book 1.
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Thursday, May 16, 2019
"Everything that could NOT possibly go wrong ..."
Tyler Cowen has an article at Bloomberg: "Nuclear War Is Still Very Possible and Very Scary".
Commentator reaganite88 had this response.
That was a theme of Dan Simmons's controversial SF novel, 'Flashback'.
It's imaginable to detonate a few nuclear devices if you're a fundamentalist. Global nuclear annihilation is something only America, Russia and China could aspire to. I don't see any Islamic state being on the road to that capability.
Commentator reaganite88 had this response.
"Great column. I once got to talk to the head of Sandia National Laboratories about how they did analysis of the possibility of an unintentional detonation of a nuclear device. He said they had two teams look at each device... one to think about everything that could possibly go wrong... and another to look at everything that could NOT possibly go wrong. Because the impact of an unintentional detonation was so massive the second team was needed to try to reduce any "black swan" events that the first team could not imagine happening. "Another commentator, Juan Pablo, noted that "Only a fundamentalist state would launch a nuclear war with MAD. MAD has worked for 70 years."
That was a theme of Dan Simmons's controversial SF novel, 'Flashback'.
It's imaginable to detonate a few nuclear devices if you're a fundamentalist. Global nuclear annihilation is something only America, Russia and China could aspire to. I don't see any Islamic state being on the road to that capability.
Monday, May 06, 2019
The future obsolescence of kin selection?
The behavioural preference for kin is a consequence of the selective advantage for alleles which promote kin-cooperation, as manifested through innate drives. It emerges from the generate-and test model of (sexual) reproduction. Genetic variations in offspring (orchestrated by mutation, Mendelian segregation and recombination) are tested by the environment. Unsuccessful genotypes tend to vanish from the population as their bearers fail to reproduce.
Our emotionally-primed ethics are the reflection of these innate drives within consciousness.
What happens when we can engineer genomes freely? When generate-and-test is obsolete?
Your children are, in reality, genetically-enhanced adoptees.
The theory of kin selection suggests that parent-child emotional bonding might then be poor, depending on whether lack of innate kin-recognition trumps bonding in the context of limited and viscous dispersal effects. There are anecdotes of the 'switched at birth' variety.
However, those ties are also an artefact of the natural evolutionary process. Perhaps we should additionally engineer those genes coding our emotional responses to reinstate those essential bonds of love and nurture.
All these issues: morality, ethics, emotions and purposes are ultimately rooted in (evolutionary) population genetics. They codify what has worked. It's a revelation to consider the consequences of systematic and directed genetic engineering applied purposefully to the human genome. So many things which were constants suddenly become variables.
Historically, the reason we don't lie in bed all day, the reason we don't suicide at once, the reason we reject Nihilism is that all the genotypes which might have fostered a true commitment to such belief systems, by definition, did not survive in the population. Our genotypes are those of the survivors who clung tenaciously to life in all its adversity. Generate and test.
The future will be made by those who are there. I imagine that's the reason why those particular motivational allele-sets might be pretty much off-limits.
See also: Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. A continuing minority taste, population genetics assures us.
Our emotionally-primed ethics are the reflection of these innate drives within consciousness.
What happens when we can engineer genomes freely? When generate-and-test is obsolete?
- We will fix mutational errors and sub-par alleles
- Optimise allele-sets for desired phenotypical traits (prosocial, smart, healthy)
- Construct genome tweaks for new, trans-human traits (e.g. bat-like sonar).
Your children are, in reality, genetically-enhanced adoptees.
The theory of kin selection suggests that parent-child emotional bonding might then be poor, depending on whether lack of innate kin-recognition trumps bonding in the context of limited and viscous dispersal effects. There are anecdotes of the 'switched at birth' variety.
However, those ties are also an artefact of the natural evolutionary process. Perhaps we should additionally engineer those genes coding our emotional responses to reinstate those essential bonds of love and nurture.
All these issues: morality, ethics, emotions and purposes are ultimately rooted in (evolutionary) population genetics. They codify what has worked. It's a revelation to consider the consequences of systematic and directed genetic engineering applied purposefully to the human genome. So many things which were constants suddenly become variables.
Historically, the reason we don't lie in bed all day, the reason we don't suicide at once, the reason we reject Nihilism is that all the genotypes which might have fostered a true commitment to such belief systems, by definition, did not survive in the population. Our genotypes are those of the survivors who clung tenaciously to life in all its adversity. Generate and test.
The future will be made by those who are there. I imagine that's the reason why those particular motivational allele-sets might be pretty much off-limits.
See also: Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. A continuing minority taste, population genetics assures us.
Monday, April 22, 2019
Who is 'us'?
This post is meant to be faintly sardonic and humorous, indicating the many and varied implicit answers to the question exhibited through revealed choices across the social spectrum worldwide.
Personally I'm most inclined to option 10. But I don't want to fall into complete relativism. I won't convince anyone in this post but I do have a methodological view, which is always to start on these questions from sociobiology.
For almost all species, the answer to the question "who is us?" is "kin".
In a species which practises reciprocal altruism, the answer is "family and friends".
In that uniquely ultra-social species which is humanity, the answer is: the toleration of unrelated individuals who:
If I had one wish, it would be for a non-ideological sociology based, as E. O. Wilson wished, on sociobiology.
---
Question 1: who is 'us'
---
Question 2
Match answers to Question 1 with the following tribes and class-fractions.
Personally I'm most inclined to option 10. But I don't want to fall into complete relativism. I won't convince anyone in this post but I do have a methodological view, which is always to start on these questions from sociobiology.
For almost all species, the answer to the question "who is us?" is "kin".
In a species which practises reciprocal altruism, the answer is "family and friends".
In that uniquely ultra-social species which is humanity, the answer is: the toleration of unrelated individuals who:
(i) don't threaten the essential interests of family and friends (item 10);Most of the other items either reflect survival strategies in situations of social instability (5-8) or are parochial and egregious generalisations based upon ideological/material drivers which represent the interests of privileged social groups (1-4).
(ii) contribute through their structured and disciplined activities to a level of civilisation (= an enhanced environment) which enhances the survival and flourishing of your family and friends (item 9).
If I had one wish, it would be for a non-ideological sociology based, as E. O. Wilson wished, on sociobiology.
---
Question 1: who is 'us'
- Those who are prosocial, compassionate and tolerant
- Those who are the oppressed of the world
- All life in the universe/galaxy/solar system/planet Earth
- All of humanity across the world
- Those in my religious community
- Those who share my ethnicity
- My fellow members of the rich and powerful elite
- Those who live in my country
- Those who are civilized and productive
- People who will leave me alone.
---
Question 2
Match answers to Question 1 with the following tribes and class-fractions.
- Liberals
- Social-Justice Warriors
- Buddhists/Jains
- Communists/Socialists/Humanists
- People of the Book
- X-Power advocates for values of X
- Rich and powerful elites
- Nationalists
- Conservatives
- Libertarians.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Clever Sillies
This is a short post with some examples of clever people believing stupid things. And here is the origin of the term: "Clever sillies: why high IQ people tend to be deficient in common sense."
In fact clever sillies are people who have an agenda defined by their social position, which being axiomatically believed, prevents them from understanding reality properly.
1. The Catholic Church cannot understand evolution
From a biological view, the whole of life is a space of genotypes, mutating and complexifying over time via new phenotypes in response to environmental challenges caused by geophysical events and the feedback loops within ecologies themselves.
If you look at primate genomes, the C, G, A, T sequences, nothing jumps out at you about humans. They're pretty indistinguishable from other primates. There's continuity.
Yet in Catholic doctrine, people are in a unique relationship with God, have souls and so forth. Chimpanzees not so much.
Evolution can't support such theological discontinuities, so lip-service only is paid to it.
2. Liberals cannot understand evolution
From a biological standpoint, the presently-existing human race is a marvel of diversity. Over and above the basic XX-XY genomic differences encoding differential male-female reproductive roles, we see regional and historical adaptations to climate and social complexification marking and enabling geographical migration, the neolithic revolution and even the turbulent social history of the last millennium.
New results are being released every day, from teams like that of David Reich through to everyday personal genomics companies such as 23andMe.
None of this is consistent with equal outcomes, an axiom of SJW thought. So human micro-evolutionary plasticity must be denied.
3. Economist can't understand capitalism
As Steve Keen showed, the theoretical structure of neoclassical economics - the current orthodoxy - is laughably stupid. It takes years of education to ram this nonsense firmly into economists' heads. Capitalism is conceptualised as an idealised village market: petty-commodity production.
All this to wish away the obvious truth that investment is conducted for profit, and that profits result from the appropriation by private owners of produced value from propertyless workers. Unthinkable.
Conclusion
We live in a society which denies its own economic nature and for its own replicatory purposes misrepresents the nature of the people who comprise it. No wonder we are drowning in lies.
Where is the truth?
Where is the truth, you ask. Marxists come close with their understanding that capitalism is a kind of game played by people in unequal class relations. The ideologies which makes this seem natural and right are discussed above.
Yet Marxism buys into a naive ideology of the ur-nature of mankind: generalised benevolence waiting for the right social conditions to emerge. This unlikely prospect has been falsified both by history and biology. So there's another agenda subverting the truth. The ever-critical Marx would have been horrified.
I think the people who get closest to truth are the sociobiologists (check out West Hunter some time). They have the kudos of being reviled by everyone.
As the petty-bourgeoisie gets ever more outraged at its lacklustre prospects, its febrile mobilisations, its crazed intellectual frothings get ever more irksome and dangerous.
Hold on tight .. .
In fact clever sillies are people who have an agenda defined by their social position, which being axiomatically believed, prevents them from understanding reality properly.
1. The Catholic Church cannot understand evolution
From a biological view, the whole of life is a space of genotypes, mutating and complexifying over time via new phenotypes in response to environmental challenges caused by geophysical events and the feedback loops within ecologies themselves.
If you look at primate genomes, the C, G, A, T sequences, nothing jumps out at you about humans. They're pretty indistinguishable from other primates. There's continuity.
Yet in Catholic doctrine, people are in a unique relationship with God, have souls and so forth. Chimpanzees not so much.
Evolution can't support such theological discontinuities, so lip-service only is paid to it.
2. Liberals cannot understand evolution
From a biological standpoint, the presently-existing human race is a marvel of diversity. Over and above the basic XX-XY genomic differences encoding differential male-female reproductive roles, we see regional and historical adaptations to climate and social complexification marking and enabling geographical migration, the neolithic revolution and even the turbulent social history of the last millennium.
New results are being released every day, from teams like that of David Reich through to everyday personal genomics companies such as 23andMe.
None of this is consistent with equal outcomes, an axiom of SJW thought. So human micro-evolutionary plasticity must be denied.
3. Economist can't understand capitalism
As Steve Keen showed, the theoretical structure of neoclassical economics - the current orthodoxy - is laughably stupid. It takes years of education to ram this nonsense firmly into economists' heads. Capitalism is conceptualised as an idealised village market: petty-commodity production.
All this to wish away the obvious truth that investment is conducted for profit, and that profits result from the appropriation by private owners of produced value from propertyless workers. Unthinkable.
Conclusion
We live in a society which denies its own economic nature and for its own replicatory purposes misrepresents the nature of the people who comprise it. No wonder we are drowning in lies.
Where is the truth?
Where is the truth, you ask. Marxists come close with their understanding that capitalism is a kind of game played by people in unequal class relations. The ideologies which makes this seem natural and right are discussed above.
Yet Marxism buys into a naive ideology of the ur-nature of mankind: generalised benevolence waiting for the right social conditions to emerge. This unlikely prospect has been falsified both by history and biology. So there's another agenda subverting the truth. The ever-critical Marx would have been horrified.
I think the people who get closest to truth are the sociobiologists (check out West Hunter some time). They have the kudos of being reviled by everyone.
As the petty-bourgeoisie gets ever more outraged at its lacklustre prospects, its febrile mobilisations, its crazed intellectual frothings get ever more irksome and dangerous.
Hold on tight .. .
Friday, April 12, 2019
Straussian Ethics
This is a post about Straussian ethics. Or, when is it worth dying in a ditch?
Let's start with a typical scenario. Suppose it became a commonplace, but morally-charged, belief that the moon was actually a cube of green cheese.
People who were unwise enough to note that common observation might suggest otherwise would be rebutted with the usual litany. They would be accused of deploying old, discredited stereotypes about heavenly bodies. ‘Scientific Geometry’ would be ridiculed.
And so on.
A prominent astronomer would make an exasperated speech refuting this conventional wisdom about the moon and unwisely ridiculing its proponents. A media firestorm would then ensue, resulting in the scientist being expelled from the community of right-thinking people. He would be fired from his job.
So far, so familiar.
---
Now consider Dr Smith, a software developer who writes a blog on technical topics. Over the years he has posted articles about the spherical geometry of large gravitationally-bound objects. Maybe written about the composition of the lunar regolith.
He feels he should write an indignant post about the disgraceful hounding of this astronomer. A few years ago he would not have hesitated. He would have skewered the green-cheese cubists with glee.
But now he thinks:
'What would be the point? I'm a nobody. No-one cares what I think. My thoughts will have zero effect on history. I'm not part of any organised tribe. There's no decisive battle here to be fought and perhaps won.
'Worse, sticking my head up makes me a target. The howling, tribal mob can find my post on the public Internet. On a whim I'll get the same treatment. No-one will care when my reputation is trashed and I'm fired for my unacceptable values.'
So Dr Smith makes a rational calculation. He doesn't write his incendiary defence of the hapless astronomer. Instead he spends an evening carefully reviewing his blog, deleting any posts about the moon.
And why stop there?
He removes all his posts about astronomy and resolves in future never to touch the topic again.
In addition, he will write henceforth in deliberately abstract, tortuous and obfuscatory language, unlikely to trigger the roving eye of the Inquisition.
He has resolved to become a Straussian.
---
People who take Dr Smith's view are roundly denounced from a safe distance, by liberals not themselves experiencing life-changing pressure. “Stand up for the truth and be damned!” they say.
Dr Smith notes that in history, people who did that were cut-down and left for dead. In the end, in almost every case, their courageous stand made no difference.
The dead hero has generally made a poor, stupid choice, he thinks. Sanity is eventually restored by the pendulum of history, not the blood of forgotten martyrs (although one or two high-profile ones are handy as symbols).
We no longer believe in heavenly credit for bearing witness.
Is the obscure Dr Smith right?
Let's start with a typical scenario. Suppose it became a commonplace, but morally-charged, belief that the moon was actually a cube of green cheese.
People who were unwise enough to note that common observation might suggest otherwise would be rebutted with the usual litany. They would be accused of deploying old, discredited stereotypes about heavenly bodies. ‘Scientific Geometry’ would be ridiculed.
And so on.
A prominent astronomer would make an exasperated speech refuting this conventional wisdom about the moon and unwisely ridiculing its proponents. A media firestorm would then ensue, resulting in the scientist being expelled from the community of right-thinking people. He would be fired from his job.
So far, so familiar.
---
Now consider Dr Smith, a software developer who writes a blog on technical topics. Over the years he has posted articles about the spherical geometry of large gravitationally-bound objects. Maybe written about the composition of the lunar regolith.
He feels he should write an indignant post about the disgraceful hounding of this astronomer. A few years ago he would not have hesitated. He would have skewered the green-cheese cubists with glee.
But now he thinks:
'What would be the point? I'm a nobody. No-one cares what I think. My thoughts will have zero effect on history. I'm not part of any organised tribe. There's no decisive battle here to be fought and perhaps won.
'Worse, sticking my head up makes me a target. The howling, tribal mob can find my post on the public Internet. On a whim I'll get the same treatment. No-one will care when my reputation is trashed and I'm fired for my unacceptable values.'
So Dr Smith makes a rational calculation. He doesn't write his incendiary defence of the hapless astronomer. Instead he spends an evening carefully reviewing his blog, deleting any posts about the moon.
And why stop there?
He removes all his posts about astronomy and resolves in future never to touch the topic again.
In addition, he will write henceforth in deliberately abstract, tortuous and obfuscatory language, unlikely to trigger the roving eye of the Inquisition.
He has resolved to become a Straussian.
---
People who take Dr Smith's view are roundly denounced from a safe distance, by liberals not themselves experiencing life-changing pressure. “Stand up for the truth and be damned!” they say.
Dr Smith notes that in history, people who did that were cut-down and left for dead. In the end, in almost every case, their courageous stand made no difference.
The dead hero has generally made a poor, stupid choice, he thinks. Sanity is eventually restored by the pendulum of history, not the blood of forgotten martyrs (although one or two high-profile ones are handy as symbols).
We no longer believe in heavenly credit for bearing witness.
Is the obscure Dr Smith right?
Saturday, April 06, 2019
Capitalism, Democracy and China
Bill Markle writes (about the present situation in Chinese politics):
Why?
Because capitalism separates the economic class, which secures wealth for itself, from the state apparatus and political power. Capitalist relations generally reproduce themselves without direct, repressive coercion from the state. You do not go to work at the point of a gun.
Slaves and peasants metaphorically did.
In the normal state of affairs, the capitalist economy grows. This is inherent in the competitive process. Invest or die. However, a rising economic tide can lift all classes. Buy-in can be bought. Meanwhile, a democratic form allows the state to debate optimal policies. Not an easy task, as Brexit is currently demonstrating.
Centrally-planned economies, where the bureaucracy attempts to direct production (through central planning) via administrative means are always repressive. The interests of the bureaucracy cannot be aligned organically with the interests of the masses. As Markle indicates in his post, this is a sign of weakness, not of strength.
---
The story changes when the capitalist economy falters in stagnation, or plunges into recession, or worse, depression. The working class and sections of the petty-bourgeoisie (the middle classes) no longer economically advance. Instead, they mill around in confusion and obdurate resistance (one of the key motors of the Brexit vote). They obstruct the measures necessary to restore profitability which always include company bankruptcies, mass unemployment and serious cuts to real wages and benefits.
Sometimes authoritarian-state or paramilitary force is required to cow the masses and economically scatter them. It's always a multi-year project, but in history we've seen reactionary strong states and fascistic movements triumphing.
The attractor form of governance is always bourgeois democracy, but the duration of repressive structures can be long. If Spain (1939-1975) or Portugal (1932-1974) are taken as examples, you can see that it took generations to move from regimes like those of Franco and Salazar back to democracy.
I do not see an infinite history ahead for the Chinese Communist Party. The economy will become more capitalistic, that sector will continue to grow. The rising middle-class will demand dynamic economic growth. Given China's size and historic fear of disintegration, some kind of strongly presidential state seems likely to emerge, something like France or Russia.
Perhaps Xi is giving us the preview.
"At one point, the grand political bargain that CCP struck with the population was, “We will let you get rich, you let us govern.”Democracy under capitalism ('bourgeois democracy') is a peculiarity within history. All previous social formations (in their respective modes of production) have been autocracies for the many, even if they had a democratic formulation for the ruling class itself.
Those circumstances that allowed China to prosper and CCP to thrive since 1978 are no longer in place. The wealthy and the very wealthy are now forces with which to contend, even as they are beholden to the Party for continued flourishing.
As hard as it tries, the government cannot import western Dr. Science without the specter of Mr. Democracy. The same students who go to the US for degrees in STEM come back wanting to say what they think, even as they adjust to life back within the authoritarian regime.
Middle class CCP cadres whose livelihoods depend on party stability still want clean air, water, food, and good education and job opportunities for kids.
China is not a tinderbox waiting for a spark, but the constant stirring of anger and resentment is no way to run a country.
If something cannot go on forever, then it will eventually stop – hence a warning to CCP, which turns 100 years old in 2021 and in that year will be the longest lasting single party state in history, at 72 years."
Why?
Because capitalism separates the economic class, which secures wealth for itself, from the state apparatus and political power. Capitalist relations generally reproduce themselves without direct, repressive coercion from the state. You do not go to work at the point of a gun.
Slaves and peasants metaphorically did.
In the normal state of affairs, the capitalist economy grows. This is inherent in the competitive process. Invest or die. However, a rising economic tide can lift all classes. Buy-in can be bought. Meanwhile, a democratic form allows the state to debate optimal policies. Not an easy task, as Brexit is currently demonstrating.
Centrally-planned economies, where the bureaucracy attempts to direct production (through central planning) via administrative means are always repressive. The interests of the bureaucracy cannot be aligned organically with the interests of the masses. As Markle indicates in his post, this is a sign of weakness, not of strength.
---
The story changes when the capitalist economy falters in stagnation, or plunges into recession, or worse, depression. The working class and sections of the petty-bourgeoisie (the middle classes) no longer economically advance. Instead, they mill around in confusion and obdurate resistance (one of the key motors of the Brexit vote). They obstruct the measures necessary to restore profitability which always include company bankruptcies, mass unemployment and serious cuts to real wages and benefits.
Sometimes authoritarian-state or paramilitary force is required to cow the masses and economically scatter them. It's always a multi-year project, but in history we've seen reactionary strong states and fascistic movements triumphing.
The attractor form of governance is always bourgeois democracy, but the duration of repressive structures can be long. If Spain (1939-1975) or Portugal (1932-1974) are taken as examples, you can see that it took generations to move from regimes like those of Franco and Salazar back to democracy.
I do not see an infinite history ahead for the Chinese Communist Party. The economy will become more capitalistic, that sector will continue to grow. The rising middle-class will demand dynamic economic growth. Given China's size and historic fear of disintegration, some kind of strongly presidential state seems likely to emerge, something like France or Russia.
Perhaps Xi is giving us the preview.
Wednesday, April 03, 2019
Plumbers are a market failure
The shower is dripping again.
I phone our fifth plumber (all the rest have been struck off for incompetence or a refusal to attend - this one actually came the last time). He texts back airily, 'Busy right now, maybe three weeks time?'
I am wise to the language of plumbers. He means he has a lucrative long-term contract and cannot foresee a time when our little piece of work could make economic sense to him, or be scheduled.
Given the new houses being built in our neighbourhood, this makes complete sense.
---
I am dissatisfied with plumbing as a service, in a way I am not with retailing.
Waitrose. Why can't plumbing be like Waitrose?
We tried a national organisation once. They advertised that they'd find a plumber for you. In so many hours, at such-and-such an inflated cost. I called them. Then I cancelled within the hour after reading - belatedly - their terrible reviews. They were cowboys and charlatans.
Most plumbers are small businesses. Family and friends. The job does not lend itself to economies of scale: each house and job is different, with little standardisation. This means that there is no value-adding role for a Waitrose-type organisation of plumbers.
The cowboy outfit I called was just an Internet middleman. But they sign up primarily incompetent plumbers because the margins their plumbers see are worse.
The supply of plumbers is inelastic.
The steady-state number of plumbers in an area is set by periods of weak demand, usually during a recession. When times are better, the good plumbers are always busy on the best contracts; the long-term ones sourced from house-builders.
The little family-house problem gets short shrift.
If supply of plumbing services is structurally inadequate, then what about demand? Deskilling the task would help: better quality piping and joints, designed for less, and easier, maintenance.
But housebuilders have no incentive. New-house plumbing works just fine for the first few years. The builders have been paid and are long-gone when the problems start.
With local supply restricted and local demand hard to decrease, the mismatch looks here to stay. Only labour mobility can solve this problem.
Market equilibrium demands we say yes to the Polish plumber!
---
This is not an argument against Brexit. It's an argument in favour of access to competent, skilled workers.
I phone our fifth plumber (all the rest have been struck off for incompetence or a refusal to attend - this one actually came the last time). He texts back airily, 'Busy right now, maybe three weeks time?'
I am wise to the language of plumbers. He means he has a lucrative long-term contract and cannot foresee a time when our little piece of work could make economic sense to him, or be scheduled.
Given the new houses being built in our neighbourhood, this makes complete sense.
---
I am dissatisfied with plumbing as a service, in a way I am not with retailing.
Waitrose. Why can't plumbing be like Waitrose?
We tried a national organisation once. They advertised that they'd find a plumber for you. In so many hours, at such-and-such an inflated cost. I called them. Then I cancelled within the hour after reading - belatedly - their terrible reviews. They were cowboys and charlatans.
Most plumbers are small businesses. Family and friends. The job does not lend itself to economies of scale: each house and job is different, with little standardisation. This means that there is no value-adding role for a Waitrose-type organisation of plumbers.
The cowboy outfit I called was just an Internet middleman. But they sign up primarily incompetent plumbers because the margins their plumbers see are worse.
The supply of plumbers is inelastic.
The steady-state number of plumbers in an area is set by periods of weak demand, usually during a recession. When times are better, the good plumbers are always busy on the best contracts; the long-term ones sourced from house-builders.
The little family-house problem gets short shrift.
If supply of plumbing services is structurally inadequate, then what about demand? Deskilling the task would help: better quality piping and joints, designed for less, and easier, maintenance.
But housebuilders have no incentive. New-house plumbing works just fine for the first few years. The builders have been paid and are long-gone when the problems start.
With local supply restricted and local demand hard to decrease, the mismatch looks here to stay. Only labour mobility can solve this problem.
Market equilibrium demands we say yes to the Polish plumber!
---
This is not an argument against Brexit. It's an argument in favour of access to competent, skilled workers.
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Dominic Cumming's new political party?
 |
| Dominic Cummings |
In his blog: (my emphasis):
"Start rebuilding our network now. The crucial data to collect: name, email, postcode, mobile (full address if possible). If we need to set up a new entity — a campaign, a party — you will be able to plug this straight into new data infrastructure and we will try to grow super-fast. And it looks like we will need to…I'm interested, Dominic, and not without some sympathy. But explain yourself clearly: what is your party going to be for?
Remember: we won last time even though the Establishment had every force with power and money on their side. They screwed it up because they do not have good models of effective action: they literally do not know what they are doing, as they have demonstrated to the world in the farcical negotiations. They are screwing up their attempt to cancel the referendum. Beating them again and by more will be easier than 2016.
Also, don’t worry about the so-called ‘permanent’ commitments this historically abysmal Cabinet are trying to make on our behalf. They are not ‘permanent’ and a serious government — one not cowed by officials and their bullshit ‘legal advice’ with which they have herded ministers like sheep — will dispense with these commitments and any domestic law enforcing them.
And next time we will not close down — we will try to ensure that votes are respected and the malign grip of the parties and civil service is broken, as Vote Leave said should happen in 2016.
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Beyond capitalism: is this the best we can hope for?
It's to easy to reify capitalism. To see it as the capitalist class (hiss!) bearing down upon the downtrodden proletariat.
Expropriate them!
---
1. The inner-truth of capitalism
Let's do the analysis right.
Consider the vast mass of people who cannot live by their own efforts (they have no land, no resources, they are not self-sufficient). The proletariat.
Add a minority who own the land, the factories, the machines, the tools, the raw materials and all the other means of economic production. Ownership guaranteed by law and state. The capitalists.
If the owners hire workers (their capacity to work, actually) at a rate which can reproduce them for work next day, week, year .. while the amount produced by said workers exceeds their wages in value, well the surplus will be owned by the capitalists. They will get consistently richer. We have a technical name for this: it's called profit and it's a good thing. It means social needs are being addressed efficiently.
Note: if you work for the state rather than a private-sector employer, your wages are paid out of taxes: value contributed ultimately by the capitalist sector.
2. What do the capitalists do with their ever-increasing riches?
An insignificant relative proportion goes into luxury apartments and super-yachts (although this conspicuous consumption is a powerful human motivator and source of envy and resentment). The statistics show that most capitalist profits are re-invested to secure another round of expanded reproduction. Or in these stagnating times, financing debt.
M - C - M' in Marx's formula. Money makes money through the intermediary of surplus value production.
Gratuitous consumption is always a missed opportunity under capitalism. An opportunity cost.
In the nutshell, it is the way production is organised which creates the classes .. they are both a precondition and a consequence of the relations of production.
3. Capitalism really pushes the social-surplus product
No moralism. We're none of us going back to living off the land. Noble hunter-gatherers, trapped in the deepest well of unproductive subsistence.
Nor are we going back to the agrarian life, another low-productivity hell-hole where almost everyone is tied to mediocre, hard, tedious life on the land.
We all agree that human affairs are improved when we have a better constructed-environment, one which suits our diverse needs. The way we do that is by a global division of labour where projects of the most ambitious scope can be realised. I like modern medicine.
That's going to take a lot of social-surplus product going forwards. It's going to continue to require people to personally consume only a small fraction of the value they themselves produce.
Any one individual is going to look at projects on all scales up to the fully global and subjectively feel like a small cog in a vast machine.
I wonder though whether they'll really care. Nobody asks me about NASA but I can still get excited.
Who decides what projects should be done, if not individual capitalists who have succeeded in attracting investment capital? I refer you to the pessimistic literature on traditional post-capitalist organisational forms well-documented here.
4. A post-capitalist economic organisation we might expect
Suppose we get the miracle of total automation. Cognitive robots replace workers. But in the end, without wage-labour, profits can't be obtained.
Under capitalism, the capitalist who automates gets a short-term advantage but then overall profits fall. Competition means that in the steady-state the capitalist cannot charge more than will cover his costs. Without wage-labour creating additional value, sale-prices are simply bid down to the costs of robots, overheads and materials. As a consequence, profits tend to zero.
The capitalists don't invest. It's like an economic crisis which never abates.
5. The Roman Empire redux
An economy of petty-commodity production is what still works. Like the Roman Empire of antiquity. The slaves have been switched out for robots. Units of production produce lots of goods which are sold at their value, like in a village marketplace.
The Roman Empire was economically complex and vast in space and time. It was not very productive, not very dynamic - which may have been due to its agrarian character. And slaves are not the ideal robot - far from it. Not biddable at all.
Some people think the answer is for everyone to own personal robots. In antiquity most of the elite fraction of society had at least a few household slaves. But that isn't commensurate with distributing widely the benefits of a sophisticated global economy.
If I had to guess, I would say that the automation-heavy future is essentially robot-powered petty-commodity production combined with a very generous guaranteed income for everyone. Add in genetic enhancement to exploit the possibilities of an improved humanity and we'll not be in a bad place.
At least until the AIs decide we're a waste of their space!
---
Note: the Marxist economist Michael Roberts has written extensively about the consequences of total automation under capitalism. Here's a good place to start.
Expropriate them!
---
1. The inner-truth of capitalism
Let's do the analysis right.
Consider the vast mass of people who cannot live by their own efforts (they have no land, no resources, they are not self-sufficient). The proletariat.
Add a minority who own the land, the factories, the machines, the tools, the raw materials and all the other means of economic production. Ownership guaranteed by law and state. The capitalists.
If the owners hire workers (their capacity to work, actually) at a rate which can reproduce them for work next day, week, year .. while the amount produced by said workers exceeds their wages in value, well the surplus will be owned by the capitalists. They will get consistently richer. We have a technical name for this: it's called profit and it's a good thing. It means social needs are being addressed efficiently.
Note: if you work for the state rather than a private-sector employer, your wages are paid out of taxes: value contributed ultimately by the capitalist sector.
2. What do the capitalists do with their ever-increasing riches?
An insignificant relative proportion goes into luxury apartments and super-yachts (although this conspicuous consumption is a powerful human motivator and source of envy and resentment). The statistics show that most capitalist profits are re-invested to secure another round of expanded reproduction. Or in these stagnating times, financing debt.
M - C - M' in Marx's formula. Money makes money through the intermediary of surplus value production.
Gratuitous consumption is always a missed opportunity under capitalism. An opportunity cost.
In the nutshell, it is the way production is organised which creates the classes .. they are both a precondition and a consequence of the relations of production.
3. Capitalism really pushes the social-surplus product
No moralism. We're none of us going back to living off the land. Noble hunter-gatherers, trapped in the deepest well of unproductive subsistence.
Nor are we going back to the agrarian life, another low-productivity hell-hole where almost everyone is tied to mediocre, hard, tedious life on the land.
We all agree that human affairs are improved when we have a better constructed-environment, one which suits our diverse needs. The way we do that is by a global division of labour where projects of the most ambitious scope can be realised. I like modern medicine.
That's going to take a lot of social-surplus product going forwards. It's going to continue to require people to personally consume only a small fraction of the value they themselves produce.
Any one individual is going to look at projects on all scales up to the fully global and subjectively feel like a small cog in a vast machine.
I wonder though whether they'll really care. Nobody asks me about NASA but I can still get excited.
Who decides what projects should be done, if not individual capitalists who have succeeded in attracting investment capital? I refer you to the pessimistic literature on traditional post-capitalist organisational forms well-documented here.
4. A post-capitalist economic organisation we might expect
Suppose we get the miracle of total automation. Cognitive robots replace workers. But in the end, without wage-labour, profits can't be obtained.
Under capitalism, the capitalist who automates gets a short-term advantage but then overall profits fall. Competition means that in the steady-state the capitalist cannot charge more than will cover his costs. Without wage-labour creating additional value, sale-prices are simply bid down to the costs of robots, overheads and materials. As a consequence, profits tend to zero.
The capitalists don't invest. It's like an economic crisis which never abates.
5. The Roman Empire redux
An economy of petty-commodity production is what still works. Like the Roman Empire of antiquity. The slaves have been switched out for robots. Units of production produce lots of goods which are sold at their value, like in a village marketplace.
The Roman Empire was economically complex and vast in space and time. It was not very productive, not very dynamic - which may have been due to its agrarian character. And slaves are not the ideal robot - far from it. Not biddable at all.
Some people think the answer is for everyone to own personal robots. In antiquity most of the elite fraction of society had at least a few household slaves. But that isn't commensurate with distributing widely the benefits of a sophisticated global economy.
If I had to guess, I would say that the automation-heavy future is essentially robot-powered petty-commodity production combined with a very generous guaranteed income for everyone. Add in genetic enhancement to exploit the possibilities of an improved humanity and we'll not be in a bad place.
At least until the AIs decide we're a waste of their space!
---
Note: the Marxist economist Michael Roberts has written extensively about the consequences of total automation under capitalism. Here's a good place to start.
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