Politics 5: The shadow of big business

The general level of paranoia in the general public has constantly risen since Nixon. A constant flurry of lurid exposés of authority figures is part of our culture's normal background noise, as are absurd conspiracy theories. Business is a main component in both factually reported misdeeds and the insane fever dreams of the theorists. The collusion between business and politics is very real, however, and about as old as government itself. Governments and politicians need large amounts of money and businesses are willing to provide, for legislation that benefits them and the contracts to do things for the government. Basically businesses spend money to make money. The only difference in recent years is how much more powerful businesses have become. Multinationals have always been able to lord it over poor countries, often with the backing of their home countries, but now there are companies big and influential enough to take on western democracies. Since the 1980's there's been a definite effort to give businesses as much freedom as possible, with detrimental results for the individual. If you adjust for inflation, the average real wage has taken a drastic drop throughout the west, and taxes have gone up only slightly. Governments have also privatised so much of their own businesses they barely have an idea how they operate in the real world anymore. Their tasks haven't really changed though, except now it's up to private contractors to do it, for a fee. The government gets less money from you, has lost a great deal of power and competence, handed it to business, who are now bigger and richer and get more of your money. They're only getting more powerful and both the individual and the government suffer.

More Giant Robots!

After that giant Gundam Statue, another beloved Japanese giant Robot franchise gets it's life-size recreation. Considering japan's existing lead in Creepy robot technology, the hour draws nearer when they'll just attack China, and their crippling national debt be damned. If fake giant robots become ubiquitous, as they are now poised to, how long before real giant robots do? Sure, there's no point, but when has that ever been a problem?

British politics more or less resolved for indeterminate period

Well, there we are. Conservatives get to fix the economy in the most cynical way they can come up with, but the Liberal Democrats get their reforms. The only question now is how bad they'll allow it to get before bailing. Lack of experience with coalitions, the general malaise and the little or no hope of ideological change in the government mean this might not last until the end of the year, if it wasn't for the horrible state of the Labour party. There won't be a competent opposition, maybe not for years. But there is some hope that the old Labour will come back, the social democratic party so thoroughly destroyed by Tony Blair. That would make a difference, and if this coalition holds, it may mean a brighter future where one of the richest countries in Europe isn't also the most in Debt, or has the highest teen pregnancy rate, etc.

Comedians/writers know more about economics than Bankers

Observe:




It's shocking that you hear so little about these two basic truths expressed in these videos, that there's nothing wrong with the economy an sich, it's only a speculation bubble that collapsed, as they will, and that consumption is not the most important or useful index in gauging the size of the economy. Isn't it weird that Bankers and other financial professionals are the only ones who keep believing in getting something for nothing? Every financial disaster can be traced back to idiots believing in easy money. And they're right to believe in it, governments will pick up the bill if you mess up, then hardly complain when you use the money to give yourself a raise. The often touted argument that you need to pay well to get the talent required is false, there is no need whatsoever for clever, new ideas in banking. The more boring and reliable the banker, the better.

Who would win in a fight between Batman and Superman?

Just two days after Action Comics #1 sold for a million, Batman beats Superman by 75,000 dollars. Most of the news outlets are reporting with some glee the 10 million percent inflation since 1938, but a lot weirder is the 1000 percent since the early eighties, when either comic could be had for the difference between the two records. And just a mere 10 years after that, prices had gone up enough that by publisher's(mostly image) clever attempts at cutting print runs and driving up cover prices with exclusive foil-embossed covers, which are now worthless. I own a couple, but thank god I never cared enough about wetworks or WildC.A.T.S. to fall for that. Even more horrible, the four million near mint copies of the death of Superman, bought by would-be collectors the last time the news reported on comics, that awful story won't even be scarce in the twenty-third century.

It could have been good

This hilarious piece of irony is courtesy of youtube of course. Girl Talk is a musician who splices together dozens of songs in to two to three minute compositions to make something new, he has not been sued successfully so far. He features prominently in the documentary Rip: a Remix Manifesto, also on youtube. But the most interesting interview in that documentary is with Clinton's erstwhile 'copyright czar', who claims that the government had 2 plans for the future economic development of the United States: the first option was to throw enormous amounts of money at making the economy green, thus creating an eco-bubble which, after bursting, would leave the United States the greenest country in the world, the second option was to export all manufacturing to the third world and base the economy of future on controlling ideas through the U.S. copyright system, which countries would have to adopt to get the manufacturing contracts. They picked option two, and now that it's failed, option one is the only possible way forward until nanotechnology takes off.

Singular fun

This singularity idea is gaining ground, but it's a bit optimistic. Everybody who's used technology recently, knows that better technology is no guarantee for better information. Even a computer better than the human brain will face that problem. How to deal with all the nonsense. It's a bit like when they cloned that sheep. It became horribly mundane and absurd quite quickly. What if we make an artificial intelligence and it's crazy or kind of stupid, or just a huge jerk. I don't mean in the sci-fi standby kind of way of a supercomputer running amok, but more in this kind of way:



Here's a terrible vision of future knowledge ghetto's for AI workers, courtesy of economics, science of depressing visions of the future.

I'm not angry, I'm disappointed 6: Legitimate complaints and right wing activism

The left is the center and the right is the new revolution. This is the last point in the documentary, which is full of interesting snippets, but this is the meat. This guy is pretty awesome anyway, but he's also one of the few academics you see popping in lots and lots of political debates, the other obvious one being Dawkins, who's just a shade too zealous to be taken seriously by his opponents. But this point, and the elaboration on Berlusconi are essentially the reason behind the weird right wing revolution that's been growing since the late 70's. The people, individual freedoms, revolution. All these themes are right wing now. Reagan and Thatcher began this thing in the west, the ayatollah in the Iran. The resolute reclamation of rhetoric and narrative from the left. Now, the status quo is heavily under attack again. But the status quo is now the liberal left, and the future is bleak.

Gas-guzzling death traps

The thing that annoys me about SUVs isn't that they guzzle gas or are unsafe, per se, but the conflation of causes that made it the most popular car model of the last 20 years. They just didn't deserve to be. American car companies were out of ideas, so they lobbied for what was essentially a truck, i.e. something to haul freight with and built a salon on top of it, to be legally recognised as a passenger vehicle. The public, compliant as ever thought that it was safe and roomy. But just because you're high up doesn't mean you win. It handles worse than an average American car, which already feels like toboganing down a hill on a sack of wet cement, mostly because it wasn't designed to go faster than 90 kilometers an hour or so. An overpowered engine that wastes an absurd amount of fuel to move considerably less weight than it could. It is also not an off-road vehicle, regardless of what the brand says, if you go off-road you might need suspension or a good differential, a manual gearbox. It's a horrible useless machine that just doesn't do any of the things people thought it could do. There is no reason to lament the downfall of the American car industry, they haven't done anything useful since the sixties, this is it's tomb.