Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Sarbajit Roy]

Its a variation on Parkinson's Law   (work expands to fill the time) ...
"Economies expand to keep their populations sedated"

On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 10:17 PM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> Nick,
>
> I suspect that if people only did what they 'need to do' the economy would
> collapse.
>
> On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 10:34 AM  wrote:
>
>> Colleagues,
>>
>>
>>
>> I have asked this question before and nobody has responded (for clear and
>> good reasons, no doubt) but I thought I would ask it again.  What exactly
>> is this economy we are bent on reviving?  What exactly is the difference in
>> human activity between our present state and a revived economy.  We can go
>> to bars and concerts and football games?  Is that the economy we are
>> reviving?  It seems to me that the difference between a “healty” economy
>> and our present status consists possibly in nothing more than a lot of
>> people frantically rushing about doing things they don’t really need to
>> do?
>>
>>
>>
>> You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats
>> were put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered and
>> protected to see how the population would develop.  They never got above
>> two hundred.  Infant mortality, etc., was appalling.  Carnage.  In the same
>> space, a competent lab breeding organization could have kept a population
>> of tens of thousands.
>>
>>
>>
>> Don’t yell at me.  What fundamental proposition about economics do I not
>> understand?
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
>>  . ...
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
>> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>>
>
>
> --
> Frank Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
> 505 670-9918
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
>  . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...  
. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Gary Schiltz]

Great rant/stream of consciousness as usual, Steve! Has anyone watched this
five minute video yet? A bit utopian, but maybe not...
https://vimeo.com/411278238

On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 7:23 AM David Eric Smith  wrote:

> I can’t weave a grand diorama that has the meaning of everything in it,
> and anything I try will come out a mess.  So let me try for Less is More.
>
> I think part of this is habit and commitments.  Somehow the society has to
> sort out a predictable way to arrive at who has a right to consume how much
> of what.  A surprising amount of structure goes into that, and it has
> enormous inertia.  Part of what we are trying to “restart” is a set of
> systems that happen to be doing an allocation that we don’t have other
> systems in place to do as an alternative.
>
> Take food production.  Fine, what people need to eat is relatively
> inelastic, and not wildly different from one human to another, compared to
> dollar-wealth.  But over the past 80 years, nearly all food calories are
> produced by very few decision makers and enormous capital outlays, levered
> to the hilt with credit, on really bad (regular, fast, and inflexible)
> turnaround times.  (This means Corn, Beans, lesser Wheat, to some extent
> commodity meats.). The story is a little more diversified for the nutritive
> value of food (fruits, vegetables, et al.), but different in structure
> where near-slave labor takes the place of capital and a different analysis
> is needed.  For now I will just look at the simple one.
>
> We can’t all suddenly move back to the farm and grow calorie crops.  We
> don’t own land, we don’t have skills, and besides there is no easy angle to
> do that in a system that over-produces already.  So the production is
> there.  But if we don’t have a way to pay the “farmer” (really a
> grant/loan/lobby businessman more than an expert in soil health etc.), why
> should he give us anything to eat?  You could say “Ah, he only needs enough
> to live, and he is only one man, so he could give the rest away because
> people need it.”  But he isn’t only one man.  He is a vastly debt-leveraged
> operation, with enormous capital replacement and maintenance costs, huge
> loans for fertilizer/seed/pesticide, and no way to pay that unless he turns
> over the crop within certain price ranges (or lobbies hard to get Dept of
> Ag to make up the difference; what happens is a lot of both).  So he has no
> choices if we don’t have money, and we have no choices if we have no
> money.  But then what should anyone pay any of us for if the US operates on
> 1000 farmers, but there are 378M mouths that want to be fed?  Some system
> has to work that out.
>
> During the near-century of technological increases in output optimization,
> the rhetoric was that with less labor used to produce consumables, people’s
> efforts would be liberated to do other good things.  But to the extent that
> those things aren’t “necessary” in the Maslov sense like food is (following
> Steve S.), really all those other people are useless.
>
> One could try UBI, or have some utopian fantasy about centrally managed
> communist economies, but apart from small-scale experiments on UBI within
> much larger conventionally-run countries, and Kibbutz-level communes, I
> don’t see evidence of mechanisms to put behind those visions.  So we are
> left with an unsolved problem of distribution.  Not least, just How do we
> coordinate it?  But also how do we do so stably enough that the system is
> perceived as having some kind of legitimacy (close enough to “fair”, to
> being individually negotiated and thus allowing people to want different
> things, all the marginalist Econ stuff).
>
> Take any other area.  Gas-powered transportation.  Well, maybe you don’t
> “need” it in the sense that you can conjure a world where you live and work
> close together and have support for walk/bike/pubtrans etc.  But where you
> are now, you and almost everybody else in the US, has demographically
> committed to being unable to do much of anything without plugging into that
> whole “unnecessary” system.  So some part of the economic inertia comes
> just from the thick web of these commitments that people have made, which
> leave them unable to withdraw from dependencies on lots of complicated
> services.
>
> Easiest way to get 100,000V if you started with 100V?  Coil some wire to
> make an inductor, plug it into the wall, and then cut the wire.  Sudden
> shifts of anything have a dimension of problem just from the timescale, in
> addition to whatever may have been problems or virtues of the normal state
> of operation.
>
>
> If one thinks that these kinds of “commitments” or “inertia” as one
> principle, and the mechanics problem of negotiating a widely-applicable and
> adequately stable set of permissions for access to a wage as the second,
> are two broad “primary” drivers of the restarting, then there is still a
> vast depth of smaller-grained design choices that have accumulated 

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Prof David West]

Genghis did not "stay home" to procreate. He traveled with his armies, 
conquered other tribes / peoples; then married the daughters of the leaders of 
those he conquered. Marriage and children provided the political glue that held 
his empire together — including appointing his daughters as governors instead 
of sons.

My only assertion was that the Khan's genes spread via marriage - not wholesale 
rape.

Of course, the politically correct sensibility of today would characterize any 
marital relations under the umbrella of arranged / political marriage is by 
definition rape.

davew


On Sat, May 2, 2020, at 9:57 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> 

> On 5/2/20 8:39 PM, Prof David West wrote:
>> Genghis spread his genes via wives and concubines, not rapine. He also 
>> installed daughters and wives as regional governors instead of sons. 
>> Interesting historical figure.
> So Genghis stayed back home and procreated while he sent the boys out into 
> the field? And nobody got anyone pregnant while on the road? Or just Hooker's 
> Legionaires? 

> Hmmm curious.

> 

> 

>> 
>> davew
>> 
>> 
>> On Sat, May 2, 2020, at 8:00 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>>> Dave -

 I once taught an honors course, with Father Smith at St. Thomas on the 
 Anthropology and Theology of War. One of the prime forces behind war — 
 since prehistory — had been nothing more than birth control.
>>> Do you meant literally *birth* and *control*, or rather *population* and 
>>> *reduction*?

>>> The more literal usage works well too. Controlling Births. I think much 
>>> warfare culminates (or did before modernish times) in the victors killing 
>>> the men and raping/impregnating and enslaving the women either in-place, 
>>> inhabiting the conquered lands or taking them back to their homeland. 
>>> Children alternatively would have been killed or enslaved. Thus the genetic 
>>> heritage of Genghis Khan...

>>> One step more sophisticated than the rats?

>>> I don't think we have to go there, no matter how much the gun hoarders want 
>>> their chance at being unequivocally "on top" at least for one round of the 
>>> grande iterated prisoner's dilemma that is human civilization.

>>> - Steve

> Well, in a sense that’s correct. But their method of “birth control” 
> 
>  is not one that I am prepared to take as a model. Just imagine the worst 
> sort of dystopian post apocalyptic novel. See the description of the 
> Calhoun experiment on p 224.

> 

> Nick

> 

> Nicholas Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

> Clark University

> thompnicks...@gmail.com

> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

> 

> 

> 

> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Marcus Daniels
> *Sent:* Saturday, May 2, 2020 12:15 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> 
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question
> 

> < You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats 
> were put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered and 
> protected to see how the population would develop. They never got above 
> two hundred. >

> 

> Maybe the rats were right?

> * *

> Marcus

> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... 
>  . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
> 
 
 
 .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... 
  . ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

 
>>> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... 
>>>  . ...
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
>>> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... 
>>  . ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
>> 
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... 
>  . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p 

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Prof David West]

Nick,

No one made any claim about effectiveness. Just an observation that if you do 
year-by-year plot of birthrate in a given population you will see an annual 
increase leading to the onset of a war, an obvious decrease during the war, and 
a surge immediately after the war ends. The surge more than compensates for the 
drop during the war years, so effectiveness is out the window.

I think — haven't checked recently — that there was a gradual increase in birth 
rate between WWI and the onset of WWII, a 2-4 percent decrease during the war 
years, and a huge baby boom immediately after. Father Smith had similar 
statistical measures for dozens of other conflicts.

Population pressure / "birth control" are but one of a multitude of factors 
that lead to war. All kinds of arguments can be made about the "validity" of 
Father Smith's statistics — few pre-modern peoples kept comprehensive public 
health records, ...

davew


On Sat, May 2, 2020, at 11:21 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
> David,

> 

> Basic fact of demography. Killing men is not a particularly effective means 
> of population control. 

> 

> You want war to serve in that capacity, you have to get women in the 
> military. 

> 

> Nick

> 

> Nicholas Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

> Clark University

> thompnicks...@gmail.com

> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

> 

> 

> 


> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Steven A Smith
> *Sent:* Saturday, May 2, 2020 8:00 PM
> *To:* friam@redfish.com
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

> 

> Dave -

>> I once taught an honors course, with Father Smith at St. Thomas on the 
>> Anthropology and Theology of War. One of the prime forces behind war — since 
>> prehistory — had been nothing more than birth control.

> Do you meant literally *birth* and *control*, or rather *population* and 
> *reduction*?

> The more literal usage works well too. Controlling Births. I think much 
> warfare culminates (or did before modernish times) in the victors killing the 
> men and raping/impregnating and enslaving the women either in-place, 
> inhabiting the conquered lands or taking them back to their homeland. 
> Children alternatively would have been killed or enslaved. Thus the genetic 
> heritage of Genghis Khan...

> One step more sophisticated than the rats?

> I don't think we have to go there, no matter how much the gun hoarders want 
> their chance at being unequivocally "on top" at least for one round of the 
> grande iterated prisoner's dilemma that is human civilization.

> - Steve

>>> Well, in a sense that’s correct. But their method of “birth control” 
>>> 
>>>  is not one that I am prepared to take as a model. Just imagine the worst 
>>> sort of dystopian post apocalyptic novel. See the description of the 
>>> Calhoun experiment on p 224.

>>> 

>>> Nick

>>> 

>>> Nicholas Thompson

>>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

>>> Clark University

>>> thompnicks...@gmail.com

>>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

>>> 

>>> 

>>> 

>>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Marcus Daniels

>>> *Sent:* Saturday, May 2, 2020 12:15 PM

>>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 

>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

>>> 

>>> < You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats 
>>> were put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered and 
>>> protected to see how the population would develop. They never got above two 
>>> hundred. >

>>> 

>>> Maybe the rats were right?

>>> * *

>>> Marcus

>>> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... 
>>>  . ...

>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

>>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam

>>> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

>>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

>>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

>>> 

>> 


>> 

>> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... 
>>  . ...
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
>> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... 
>  . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
> 
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...  
. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/list

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Prof David West]

Early this year, Pornhub claimed to have close to 2 petabytes of video. Other 
sources suggested it was barely over 1 petabyte. Pornhub is the largest, but 
only one of several thousand sites serving this kind of video.

davew

On Sat, May 2, 2020, at 10:06 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Steve writes:

> 

> < Hard-line "invisible hand of the market"-eers will insist that if it exists 
> in our economy, that it *must* be of interest/value/use to *many* (or at 
> least some). Invoking the idiom of "follow the money", I agree that we *can* 
> follow a chain of implied value that leads from the most marginal or absurd 
> to the common and mundane. >

> 

> I had a similar thought when I saw this  video. 
> One can’t simultaneously be sympathetic to this initiative and believe in the 
> invisible hand of the market. I haven’t found good recent documentation, but 
> I’ve heard that on the order of 30% of internet bandwidth has been used for 
> pornography.

> 

> Marcus

> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... 
>  . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
> 
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...  
. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Prof David West]

Father Smith was a "liberation theologian," pacifist, and activist as well as a 
Catholic priest. On the population-war issue we had some fun conversations 
about whether or not contraception should be used as war/violence preventative 
measure.

He and I traveled to Cuba in the 90s and tried very very hard to get arrested 
upon our return (to protest the US embargo), but the immigration and customs 
personnel at the Minneapolis airport refused to cooperate. Although it was 
legal (barely) for US citizens to go to Cuba, it was illegal to spend money 
there. I brought back, and declared, several hundred dollars in Cuban cigars, 
rum, and art goods. Both immigration and customs personnel looked at the form 
and my luggage, visibly sighed and waived us through instead of arresting us.

Fun times.
davew


On Sun, May 3, 2020, at 7:43 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> Nick,
> 
> No one made any claim about effectiveness. Just an observation that if you do 
> year-by-year plot of birthrate in a given population you will see an annual 
> increase leading to the onset of a war, an obvious decrease during the war, 
> and a surge immediately after the war ends. The surge more than compensates 
> for the drop during the war years, so effectiveness is out the window.
> 
> I think — haven't checked recently — that there was a gradual increase in 
> birth rate between WWI and the onset of WWII, a 2-4 percent decrease during 
> the war years, and a huge baby boom immediately after. Father Smith had 
> similar statistical measures for dozens of other conflicts.
> 
> Population pressure / "birth control" are but one of a multitude of factors 
> that lead to war. All kinds of arguments can be made about the "validity" of 
> Father Smith's statistics — few pre-modern peoples kept comprehensive public 
> health records, ...
> 
> davew
> 
> 
> On Sat, May 2, 2020, at 11:21 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote:
>> David,

>> 

>> Basic fact of demography. Killing men is not a particularly effective means 
>> of population control. 

>> 

>> You want war to serve in that capacity, you have to get women in the 
>> military. 

>> 

>> Nick

>> 

>> Nicholas Thompson

>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

>> Clark University

>> thompnicks...@gmail.com

>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

>> 

>> 

>> 

>> 

>> *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Steven A Smith
>> *Sent:* Saturday, May 2, 2020 8:00 PM
>> *To:* friam@redfish.com
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question
>> 

>> 

>> Dave -

>>> I once taught an honors course, with Father Smith at St. Thomas on the 
>>> Anthropology and Theology of War. One of the prime forces behind war — 
>>> since prehistory — had been nothing more than birth control.

>> Do you meant literally *birth* and *control*, or rather *population* and 
>> *reduction*?

>> The more literal usage works well too. Controlling Births. I think much 
>> warfare culminates (or did before modernish times) in the victors killing 
>> the men and raping/impregnating and enslaving the women either in-place, 
>> inhabiting the conquered lands or taking them back to their homeland. 
>> Children alternatively would have been killed or enslaved. Thus the genetic 
>> heritage of Genghis Khan...

>> One step more sophisticated than the rats?

>> I don't think we have to go there, no matter how much the gun hoarders want 
>> their chance at being unequivocally "on top" at least for one round of the 
>> grande iterated prisoner's dilemma that is human civilization.

>> - Steve

 Well, in a sense that’s correct. But their method of “birth control” 
 
  is not one that I am prepared to take as a model. Just imagine the worst 
 sort of dystopian post apocalyptic novel. See the description of the 
 Calhoun experiment on p 224.

 

 Nick

 

 Nicholas Thompson

 Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

 Clark University

 thompnicks...@gmail.com

 https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

 *From:* Friam  *On Behalf Of *Marcus Daniels

 *Sent:* Saturday, May 2, 2020 12:15 PM

 *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
 

 *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

 

 < You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats 
 were put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered and 
 protected to see how the population would develop. They never got above 
 two hundred. >

 

 Maybe the rats were right?

 * *

 Marcus

 .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... 
  . ...

 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

 Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam

 unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

 archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[thompnickson2]

Hi, Eric, 

 

Thanks.  I am going to study on this.  Not only does it show that less is more 
but also that mess has lure.  

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

  
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Sunday, May 3, 2020 6:23 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

 

I can’t weave a grand diorama that has the meaning of everything in it, and 
anything I try will come out a mess.  So let me try for Less is More.

 

I think part of this is habit and commitments.  Somehow the society has to sort 
out a predictable way to arrive at who has a right to consume how much of what. 
 A surprising amount of structure goes into that, and it has enormous inertia.  
Part of what we are trying to “restart” is a set of systems that happen to be 
doing an allocation that we don’t have other systems in place to do as an 
alternative.

 

Take food production.  Fine, what people need to eat is relatively inelastic, 
and not wildly different from one human to another, compared to dollar-wealth.  
But over the past 80 years, nearly all food calories are produced by very few 
decision makers and enormous capital outlays, levered to the hilt with credit, 
on really bad (regular, fast, and inflexible) turnaround times.  (This means 
Corn, Beans, lesser Wheat, to some extent commodity meats.). The story is a 
little more diversified for the nutritive value of food (fruits, vegetables, et 
al.), but different in structure where near-slave labor takes the place of 
capital and a different analysis is needed.  For now I will just look at the 
simple one.

 

We can’t all suddenly move back to the farm and grow calorie crops.  We don’t 
own land, we don’t have skills, and besides there is no easy angle to do that 
in a system that over-produces already.  So the production is there.  But if we 
don’t have a way to pay the “farmer” (really a grant/loan/lobby businessman 
more than an expert in soil health etc.), why should he give us anything to 
eat?  You could say “Ah, he only needs enough to live, and he is only one man, 
so he could give the rest away because people need it.”  But he isn’t only one 
man.  He is a vastly debt-leveraged operation, with enormous capital 
replacement and maintenance costs, huge loans for fertilizer/seed/pesticide, 
and no way to pay that unless he turns over the crop within certain price 
ranges (or lobbies hard to get Dept of Ag to make up the difference; what 
happens is a lot of both).  So he has no choices if we don’t have money, and we 
have no choices if we have no money.  But then what should anyone pay any of us 
for if the US operates on 1000 farmers, but there are 378M mouths that want to 
be fed?  Some system has to work that out.  

 

During the near-century of technological increases in output optimization, the 
rhetoric was that with less labor used to produce consumables, people’s efforts 
would be liberated to do other good things.  But to the extent that those 
things aren’t “necessary” in the Maslov sense like food is (following Steve 
S.), really all those other people are useless.  

 

One could try UBI, or have some utopian fantasy about centrally managed 
communist economies, but apart from small-scale experiments on UBI within much 
larger conventionally-run countries, and Kibbutz-level communes, I don’t see 
evidence of mechanisms to put behind those visions.  So we are left with an 
unsolved problem of distribution.  Not least, just How do we coordinate it?  
But also how do we do so stably enough that the system is perceived as having 
some kind of legitimacy (close enough to “fair”, to being individually 
negotiated and thus allowing people to want different things, all the 
marginalist Econ stuff).

 

Take any other area.  Gas-powered transportation.  Well, maybe you don’t “need” 
it in the sense that you can conjure a world where you live and work close 
together and have support for walk/bike/pubtrans etc.  But where you are now, 
you and almost everybody else in the US, has demographically committed to being 
unable to do much of anything without plugging into that whole “unnecessary” 
system.  So some part of the economic inertia comes just from the thick web of 
these commitments that people have made, which leave them unable to withdraw 
from dependencies on lots of complicated services.

 

Easiest way to get 100,000V if you started with 100V?  Coil some wire to make 
an inductor, plug it into the wall, and then cut the wire.  Sudden shifts of 
anything have a dimension of problem just from the timescale, in addition to 
whatever may have been problems or virtues of the normal state of operation.

 

 

If one thinks that these kinds of “commitments” or “inertia” as one principle, 
a

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[David Eric Smith]

I can’t weave a grand diorama that has the meaning of everything in it, and 
anything I try will come out a mess.  So let me try for Less is More.

I think part of this is habit and commitments.  Somehow the society has to sort 
out a predictable way to arrive at who has a right to consume how much of what. 
 A surprising amount of structure goes into that, and it has enormous inertia.  
Part of what we are trying to “restart” is a set of systems that happen to be 
doing an allocation that we don’t have other systems in place to do as an 
alternative.

Take food production.  Fine, what people need to eat is relatively inelastic, 
and not wildly different from one human to another, compared to dollar-wealth.  
But over the past 80 years, nearly all food calories are produced by very few 
decision makers and enormous capital outlays, levered to the hilt with credit, 
on really bad (regular, fast, and inflexible) turnaround times.  (This means 
Corn, Beans, lesser Wheat, to some extent commodity meats.). The story is a 
little more diversified for the nutritive value of food (fruits, vegetables, et 
al.), but different in structure where near-slave labor takes the place of 
capital and a different analysis is needed.  For now I will just look at the 
simple one.

We can’t all suddenly move back to the farm and grow calorie crops.  We don’t 
own land, we don’t have skills, and besides there is no easy angle to do that 
in a system that over-produces already.  So the production is there.  But if we 
don’t have a way to pay the “farmer” (really a grant/loan/lobby businessman 
more than an expert in soil health etc.), why should he give us anything to 
eat?  You could say “Ah, he only needs enough to live, and he is only one man, 
so he could give the rest away because people need it.”  But he isn’t only one 
man.  He is a vastly debt-leveraged operation, with enormous capital 
replacement and maintenance costs, huge loans for fertilizer/seed/pesticide, 
and no way to pay that unless he turns over the crop within certain price 
ranges (or lobbies hard to get Dept of Ag to make up the difference; what 
happens is a lot of both).  So he has no choices if we don’t have money, and we 
have no choices if we have no money.  But then what should anyone pay any of us 
for if the US operates on 1000 farmers, but there are 378M mouths that want to 
be fed?  Some system has to work that out.  

During the near-century of technological increases in output optimization, the 
rhetoric was that with less labor used to produce consumables, people’s efforts 
would be liberated to do other good things.  But to the extent that those 
things aren’t “necessary” in the Maslov sense like food is (following Steve 
S.), really all those other people are useless.  

One could try UBI, or have some utopian fantasy about centrally managed 
communist economies, but apart from small-scale experiments on UBI within much 
larger conventionally-run countries, and Kibbutz-level communes, I don’t see 
evidence of mechanisms to put behind those visions.  So we are left with an 
unsolved problem of distribution.  Not least, just How do we coordinate it?  
But also how do we do so stably enough that the system is perceived as having 
some kind of legitimacy (close enough to “fair”, to being individually 
negotiated and thus allowing people to want different things, all the 
marginalist Econ stuff).

Take any other area.  Gas-powered transportation.  Well, maybe you don’t “need” 
it in the sense that you can conjure a world where you live and work close 
together and have support for walk/bike/pubtrans etc.  But where you are now, 
you and almost everybody else in the US, has demographically committed to being 
unable to do much of anything without plugging into that whole “unnecessary” 
system.  So some part of the economic inertia comes just from the thick web of 
these commitments that people have made, which leave them unable to withdraw 
from dependencies on lots of complicated services.

Easiest way to get 100,000V if you started with 100V?  Coil some wire to make 
an inductor, plug it into the wall, and then cut the wire.  Sudden shifts of 
anything have a dimension of problem just from the timescale, in addition to 
whatever may have been problems or virtues of the normal state of operation.


If one thinks that these kinds of “commitments” or “inertia” as one principle, 
and the mechanics problem of negotiating a widely-applicable and adequately 
stable set of permissions for access to a wage as the second, are two broad 
“primary” drivers of the restarting, then there is still a vast depth of 
smaller-grained design choices that have accumulated since the Industrial Age, 
in supply chains, transportation, management, law, etc.  It’s a hard web to 
change fast without a lot of chaos that drowns a lot of people.  

However bad it was during the last depression, city people still could go back 
to the farms, because there there was food, and th

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Merle Lefkoff]

No, Frank, the PRESENT economy might collapse, not the economy.  The word
"economy" comes from the Greek for "house" and "manage".  Nothing about the
present economy suggest household management.

On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 10:47 AM Frank Wimberly  wrote:

> Nick,
>
> I suspect that if people only did what they 'need to do' the economy would
> collapse.
>
> On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 10:34 AM  wrote:
>
>> Colleagues,
>>
>>
>>
>> I have asked this question before and nobody has responded (for clear and
>> good reasons, no doubt) but I thought I would ask it again.  What exactly
>> is this economy we are bent on reviving?  What exactly is the difference in
>> human activity between our present state and a revived economy.  We can go
>> to bars and concerts and football games?  Is that the economy we are
>> reviving?  It seems to me that the difference between a “healty” economy
>> and our present status consists possibly in nothing more than a lot of
>> people frantically rushing about doing things they don’t really need to
>> do?
>>
>>
>>
>> You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats
>> were put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered and
>> protected to see how the population would develop.  They never got above
>> two hundred.  Infant mortality, etc., was appalling.  Carnage.  In the same
>> space, a competent lab breeding organization could have kept a population
>> of tens of thousands.
>>
>>
>>
>> Don’t yell at me.  What fundamental proposition about economics do I not
>> understand?
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
>>  . ...
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
>> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>>
>
>
> --
> Frank Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
> 505 670-9918
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
>  . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>


-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
merlelefk...@gmail.com 
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...  
. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Steven A Smith]

Gary -

Watching now... but THIS rant was Eric's not mine... mine was previous
and more rambly!

- Steve

> Great rant/stream of consciousness as usual, Steve! Has anyone watched
> this five minute video yet? A bit utopian, but maybe not...
> https://vimeo.com/411278238
>
> On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 7:23 AM David Eric Smith  > wrote:
>
> I can’t weave a grand diorama that has the meaning of everything
> in it, and anything I try will come out a mess.  So let me try for
> Less is More.
>
> I think part of this is habit and commitments.  Somehow the
> society has to sort out a predictable way to arrive at who has a
> right to consume how much of what.  A surprising amount of
> structure goes into that, and it has enormous inertia.  Part of
> what we are trying to “restart” is a set of systems that happen to
> be doing an allocation that we don’t have other systems in place
> to do as an alternative.
>
> Take food production.  Fine, what people need to eat is relatively
> inelastic, and not wildly different from one human to another,
> compared to dollar-wealth.  But over the past 80 years, nearly all
> food calories are produced by very few decision makers and
> enormous capital outlays, levered to the hilt with credit, on
> really bad (regular, fast, and inflexible) turnaround times.
>  (This means Corn, Beans, lesser Wheat, to some extent commodity
> meats.). The story is a little more diversified for the nutritive
> value of food (fruits, vegetables, et al.), but different in
> structure where near-slave labor takes the place of capital and a
> different analysis is needed.  For now I will just look at the
> simple one.
>
> We can’t all suddenly move back to the farm and grow calorie
> crops.  We don’t own land, we don’t have skills, and besides there
> is no easy angle to do that in a system that over-produces
> already.  So the production is there.  But if we don’t have a way
> to pay the “farmer” (really a grant/loan/lobby businessman more
> than an expert in soil health etc.), why should he give us
> anything to eat?  You could say “Ah, he only needs enough to live,
> and he is only one man, so he could give the rest away because
> people need it.”  But he isn’t only one man.  He is a vastly
> debt-leveraged operation, with enormous capital replacement and
> maintenance costs, huge loans for fertilizer/seed/pesticide, and
> no way to pay that unless he turns over the crop within certain
> price ranges (or lobbies hard to get Dept of Ag to make up the
> difference; what happens is a lot of both).  So he has no choices
> if we don’t have money, and we have no choices if we have no
> money.  But then what should anyone pay any of us for if the US
> operates on 1000 farmers, but there are 378M mouths that want to
> be fed?  Some system has to work that out.  
>
> During the near-century of technological increases in output
> optimization, the rhetoric was that with less labor used to
> produce consumables, people’s efforts would be liberated to do
> other good things.  But to the extent that those things aren’t
> “necessary” in the Maslov sense like food is (following Steve S.),
> really all those other people are useless.  
>
> One could try UBI, or have some utopian fantasy about centrally
> managed communist economies, but apart from small-scale
> experiments on UBI within much larger conventionally-run
> countries, and Kibbutz-level communes, I don’t see evidence of
> mechanisms to put behind those visions.  So we are left with an
> unsolved problem of distribution.  Not least, just How do we
> coordinate it?  But also how do we do so stably enough that the
> system is perceived as having some kind of legitimacy (close
> enough to “fair”, to being individually negotiated and thus
> allowing people to want different things, all the marginalist Econ
> stuff).
>
> Take any other area.  Gas-powered transportation.  Well, maybe you
> don’t “need” it in the sense that you can conjure a world where
> you live and work close together and have support for
> walk/bike/pubtrans etc.  But where you are now, you and almost
> everybody else in the US, has demographically committed to being
> unable to do much of anything without plugging into that whole
> “unnecessary” system.  So some part of the economic inertia comes
> just from the thick web of these commitments that people have
> made, which leave them unable to withdraw from dependencies on
> lots of complicated services.
>
> Easiest way to get 100,000V if you started with 100V?  Coil some
> wire to make an inductor, plug it into the wall, and then cut the
> wire.  Sudden shifts of anything have a dimension of problem just
> from the timescale, in addition

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Merle Lefkoff]

Nick, the only mainstream news program I watch is Fareed Zakaria on Sunday
morning.  Below is part of this morning's report.  Not surprisingly (for
those of us who have had the privilege recently of spending time in
Sweden), the answer to how it's working, is just about like the countries
that are locked down, with one exception.  More deaths (mostly among the
elderly who primarily live together in retirement).

As world governments employ different policies to fight Covid-19, Sweden’s
relaxed approach stands out: Eschewing lockdowns, the country has left its
schools, gyms, cafes, bars and restaurants open throughout the spread of
the pandemic. Fareed interviews the man behind that strategy, *Anders
Tegnell*, the Swedish government’s top epidemiologist, about how it’s
working and whether his country can offer any lessons to the rest of the
world.

On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 10:34 AM  wrote:

> Colleagues,
>
>
>
> I have asked this question before and nobody has responded (for clear and
> good reasons, no doubt) but I thought I would ask it again.  What exactly
> is this economy we are bent on reviving?  What exactly is the difference in
> human activity between our present state and a revived economy.  We can go
> to bars and concerts and football games?  Is that the economy we are
> reviving?  It seems to me that the difference between a “healty” economy
> and our present status consists possibly in nothing more than a lot of
> people frantically rushing about doing things they don’t really need to
> do?
>
>
>
> You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats were
> put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered and
> protected to see how the population would develop.  They never got above
> two hundred.  Infant mortality, etc., was appalling.  Carnage.  In the same
> space, a competent lab breeding organization could have kept a population
> of tens of thousands.
>
>
>
> Don’t yell at me.  What fundamental proposition about economics do I not
> understand?
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
>  . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>


-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
merlelefk...@gmail.com 
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...  
. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Gary Schiltz]

Sorry Steve, I quoted the Wrong Wrant :-) Rest assured, though, that it was
my intention to complement Your Rant. David, your rant was good as well.

Always the diplomat,
Gary

On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 11:53 AM Steven A Smith  wrote:

> Gary -
>
> Watching now... but THIS rant was Eric's not mine... mine was previous and
> more rambly!
>
> - Steve
>
> Great rant/stream of consciousness as usual, Steve! Has anyone watched
> this five minute video yet? A bit utopian, but maybe not...
> https://vimeo.com/411278238
>
> On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 7:23 AM David Eric Smith 
> wrote:
>
>> I can’t weave a grand diorama that has the meaning of everything in it,
>> and anything I try will come out a mess.  So let me try for Less is More.
>>
>> I think part of this is habit and commitments.  Somehow the society has
>> to sort out a predictable way to arrive at who has a right to consume how
>> much of what.  A surprising amount of structure goes into that, and it has
>> enormous inertia.  Part of what we are trying to “restart” is a set of
>> systems that happen to be doing an allocation that we don’t have other
>> systems in place to do as an alternative.
>>
>> Take food production.  Fine, what people need to eat is relatively
>> inelastic, and not wildly different from one human to another, compared to
>> dollar-wealth.  But over the past 80 years, nearly all food calories are
>> produced by very few decision makers and enormous capital outlays, levered
>> to the hilt with credit, on really bad (regular, fast, and inflexible)
>> turnaround times.  (This means Corn, Beans, lesser Wheat, to some extent
>> commodity meats.). The story is a little more diversified for the nutritive
>> value of food (fruits, vegetables, et al.), but different in structure
>> where near-slave labor takes the place of capital and a different analysis
>> is needed.  For now I will just look at the simple one.
>>
>> We can’t all suddenly move back to the farm and grow calorie crops.  We
>> don’t own land, we don’t have skills, and besides there is no easy angle to
>> do that in a system that over-produces already.  So the production is
>> there.  But if we don’t have a way to pay the “farmer” (really a
>> grant/loan/lobby businessman more than an expert in soil health etc.), why
>> should he give us anything to eat?  You could say “Ah, he only needs enough
>> to live, and he is only one man, so he could give the rest away because
>> people need it.”  But he isn’t only one man.  He is a vastly debt-leveraged
>> operation, with enormous capital replacement and maintenance costs, huge
>> loans for fertilizer/seed/pesticide, and no way to pay that unless he turns
>> over the crop within certain price ranges (or lobbies hard to get Dept of
>> Ag to make up the difference; what happens is a lot of both).  So he has no
>> choices if we don’t have money, and we have no choices if we have no
>> money.  But then what should anyone pay any of us for if the US operates on
>> 1000 farmers, but there are 378M mouths that want to be fed?  Some system
>> has to work that out.
>>
>> During the near-century of technological increases in output
>> optimization, the rhetoric was that with less labor used to produce
>> consumables, people’s efforts would be liberated to do other good things.
>> But to the extent that those things aren’t “necessary” in the Maslov sense
>> like food is (following Steve S.), really all those other people are
>> useless.
>>
>> One could try UBI, or have some utopian fantasy about centrally managed
>> communist economies, but apart from small-scale experiments on UBI within
>> much larger conventionally-run countries, and Kibbutz-level communes, I
>> don’t see evidence of mechanisms to put behind those visions.  So we are
>> left with an unsolved problem of distribution.  Not least, just How do we
>> coordinate it?  But also how do we do so stably enough that the system is
>> perceived as having some kind of legitimacy (close enough to “fair”, to
>> being individually negotiated and thus allowing people to want different
>> things, all the marginalist Econ stuff).
>>
>> Take any other area.  Gas-powered transportation.  Well, maybe you don’t
>> “need” it in the sense that you can conjure a world where you live and work
>> close together and have support for walk/bike/pubtrans etc.  But where you
>> are now, you and almost everybody else in the US, has demographically
>> committed to being unable to do much of anything without plugging into that
>> whole “unnecessary” system.  So some part of the economic inertia comes
>> just from the thick web of these commitments that people have made, which
>> leave them unable to withdraw from dependencies on lots of complicated
>> services.
>>
>> Easiest way to get 100,000V if you started with 100V?  Coil some wire to
>> make an inductor, plug it into the wall, and then cut the wire.  Sudden
>> shifts of anything have a dimension of problem just from the timescale, in
>> addition to whatever may have 

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Gary Schiltz]

Merle, I'd like to watch that interview. Do you watch Fareed over cable or
satellite, or over the internet?

On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 11:55 AM Merle Lefkoff 
wrote:

> Nick, the only mainstream news program I watch is Fareed Zakaria on Sunday
> morning.  Below is part of this morning's report.  Not surprisingly (for
> those of us who have had the privilege recently of spending time in
> Sweden), the answer to how it's working, is just about like the countries
> that are locked down, with one exception.  More deaths (mostly among the
> elderly who primarily live together in retirement).
>
> As world governments employ different policies to fight Covid-19, Sweden’s
> relaxed approach stands out: Eschewing lockdowns, the country has left its
> schools, gyms, cafes, bars and restaurants open throughout the spread of
> the pandemic. Fareed interviews the man behind that strategy, *Anders
> Tegnell*, the Swedish government’s top epidemiologist, about how it’s
> working and whether his country can offer any lessons to the rest of the
> world.
>
> On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 10:34 AM  wrote:
>
>> Colleagues,
>>
>>
>>
>> I have asked this question before and nobody has responded (for clear and
>> good reasons, no doubt) but I thought I would ask it again.  What exactly
>> is this economy we are bent on reviving?  What exactly is the difference in
>> human activity between our present state and a revived economy.  We can go
>> to bars and concerts and football games?  Is that the economy we are
>> reviving?  It seems to me that the difference between a “healty” economy
>> and our present status consists possibly in nothing more than a lot of
>> people frantically rushing about doing things they don’t really need to
>> do?
>>
>>
>>
>> You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats
>> were put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered and
>> protected to see how the population would develop.  They never got above
>> two hundred.  Infant mortality, etc., was appalling.  Carnage.  In the same
>> space, a competent lab breeding organization could have kept a population
>> of tens of thousands.
>>
>>
>>
>> Don’t yell at me.  What fundamental proposition about economics do I not
>> understand?
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
>>  . ...
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
>> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>>
>
>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
> merlelefk...@gmail.com 
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
>  . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...  
. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Frank Wimberly]

Sounds like the lesson is that if you're willing to lose old people you
don't have to lock down.  As an old person I have my doubts about that
approach.  In the last three days one of my highschool classmates died of
covid related causes and a first cousin died of a heart attack with no
known covid involvement.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, May 3, 2020, 10:55 AM Merle Lefkoff  wrote:

> Nick, the only mainstream news program I watch is Fareed Zakaria on Sunday
> morning.  Below is part of this morning's report.  Not surprisingly (for
> those of us who have had the privilege recently of spending time in
> Sweden), the answer to how it's working, is just about like the countries
> that are locked down, with one exception.  More deaths (mostly among the
> elderly who primarily live together in retirement).
>
> As world governments employ different policies to fight Covid-19, Sweden’s
> relaxed approach stands out: Eschewing lockdowns, the country has left its
> schools, gyms, cafes, bars and restaurants open throughout the spread of
> the pandemic. Fareed interviews the man behind that strategy, *Anders
> Tegnell*, the Swedish government’s top epidemiologist, about how it’s
> working and whether his country can offer any lessons to the rest of the
> world.
>
> On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 10:34 AM  wrote:
>
>> Colleagues,
>>
>>
>>
>> I have asked this question before and nobody has responded (for clear and
>> good reasons, no doubt) but I thought I would ask it again.  What exactly
>> is this economy we are bent on reviving?  What exactly is the difference in
>> human activity between our present state and a revived economy.  We can go
>> to bars and concerts and football games?  Is that the economy we are
>> reviving?  It seems to me that the difference between a “healty” economy
>> and our present status consists possibly in nothing more than a lot of
>> people frantically rushing about doing things they don’t really need to
>> do?
>>
>>
>>
>> You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats
>> were put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered and
>> protected to see how the population would develop.  They never got above
>> two hundred.  Infant mortality, etc., was appalling.  Carnage.  In the same
>> space, a competent lab breeding organization could have kept a population
>> of tens of thousands.
>>
>>
>>
>> Don’t yell at me.  What fundamental proposition about economics do I not
>> understand?
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>
>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
>>  . ...
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
>> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>>
>
>
> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
> merlelefk...@gmail.com 
> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
>  . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...  
. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

[FRIAM] Population regulation by mayhem

[thompnickson2]

Dave, 

 

Didn't mean to bite your head off.  You touched an old sore.  There was a
huge literature leading up to the sixties (Wynne-edwards, 1962, Animal
dispersion in relation to Social Behavior, inter alia) which argued that
population regulation was the function of social arrangements and that
selection was at the level of the species.  This was all abruptly ended in
1966 by George C. Williams's scathing screed, Adaptation and Natural
Selection: A critique of some current evolutionary thought. Williams argued
that most of our recent thinking about evolutionary causation at that time
had been tainted by a confusion between consequences of behavior and its
function, and that just because population regulation was a consequence of
much social behavior was no reason to believe that that was its function.
The species itself is NOT an object of selection, but its consequence.
Consequences to the species, as such, are not an evolutionary cause.
Williams's book led to an appalling over correction which continues today
and may be reflected in some of the libertarian-ish themes in FRIAM  -- the
idea that selection occurs ONLY at the gene or the individual level .
Trying to claw out some middle ground between these two absurd extremes has
been one of the stories of my life. See this brief commentary.
  

 

One of the points that Williams made is that in a species such as humans,
killing off males cannot be seriously considered as a method for regulating
population since, more or less, it takes a only single male to inseminate a
virtually infinite number of females. Yeh, I know.  "In my wildest dreams."
But still. 

 

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

thompnicks...@gmail.com  

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

From: Friam  On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Sunday, May 3, 2020 7:43 AM
To: friam@redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

 

Nick,

 

No one made any claim about effectiveness. Just an observation that if you
do year-by-year plot of birthrate in a given population you will see an
annual increase leading to the onset of a war, an obvious decrease during
the war, and a surge immediately after the war ends.  The surge more than
compensates for the drop during the war years, so effectiveness is out the
window.

 

I think - haven't checked recently - that there was a gradual increase in
birth rate between WWI and the onset of WWII, a 2-4 percent decrease during
the war years, and a huge baby boom immediately after.  Father Smith had
similar statistical measures for dozens of other conflicts.

 

Population pressure / "birth control" are but one of a multitude of factors
that lead to war. All kinds of arguments can be made about the "validity" of
Father Smith's statistics - few pre-modern peoples kept comprehensive public
health records, ...

 

davew

 

 

On Sat, May 2, 2020, at 11:21 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com
  wrote:

David,

 

Basic fact of demography.  Killing men is not a particularly effective means
of population control. 

 

You want war to serve in that capacity, you have to get women in the
military. 

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

  thompnicks...@gmail.com

 
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

From: Friam mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> >
On Behalf Of Steven A Smith

Sent: Saturday, May 2, 2020 8:00 PM

To: friam@redfish.com  

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

 

Dave -

I once taught an honors course, with Father Smith at St. Thomas on the
Anthropology and Theology of War. One of the prime forces behind war - since
prehistory - had been nothing more than birth control.

Do you meant literally *birth* and *control*, or rather *population* and
*reduction*?

The more literal usage works well too.  Controlling Births.  I think much
warfare culminates (or did before modernish times) in the victors killing
the men and raping/impregnating and enslaving the women either in-place,
inhabiting the conquered lands or taking them back to their homeland.
Children alternatively would have been killed or enslaved.   Thus the
genetic heritage of Genghis Khan...

One step more sophisticated than the rats?

I don't think we have to go there, no matter how much the gun hoarders want
their chance at being unequivocally "on top" at least for one round of the
grande iterated prisoner's dilemma that is human civilization.

- Steve

Well, in a sense that's correct.  But their method of
 "birth control" is not one 

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Gary Schiltz]

David, thanks for your thoughtful response. The film does present a very
simplified, and probably elitist and naive view. I will have a look at the
film you referenced and reflect my thoughts back here.

On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 4:49 PM David Eric Smith  wrote:

> Hi Gary,
>
> I would put up this one as a constructive reply to your link below, not to
> counter but to add alongside:
>
> https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-power-of-community-how-cuba-survived-peak-oil-2006/
> I am pretty sure I have posted this to the list in the past, but it
> remains a strong reference for me.
>


> Six weeks or two months into a shutdown, with pictures of glittering
> skyscrapers in NYC with nobody maintaining them, and yoga people sitting on
> posh porches overlooking the forest, I get the impression that something is
> being overlooked.  If I saw the same video made by a Panamanian immigrant
> in Brooklyn, living with 6 family members in a small apartment, I would
> feel safer abducting from the anecdotal point of view to a generalization.
>
> I don’t say that to disagree with the intent of the short video you
> circulated, which expresses preferences that I also hold.  But all the ways
> we create damage, from climate to farmland management to ecosystem
> destruction happen partly because it is hard to understand long-term
> trajectories from the early stages of transients, and we are particularly
> bad at recognizing that transients are that.  This little bit of inertia,
> while people consume stocks that were in inventory already, does not look
> to me like a model for an alternative steady state in barely any respects
> (though still a few).  I don’t doubt that the maker of the video
> understands this and would agree, but he probably sees the end of making
> the point as justifying the means of omitting these things.
>
> I like the Cuban case because it starts to get into the weeds of just how
> much _work_ is needed, and how many and how diverse are the problems that
> require invention to solve, to significantly re-arrange a social system.  I
> think the documentary makes the case that the move they made was entirely
> in the right direction.  The thing that makes it feel real to me is that it
> was a lot of work for a modest and very incomplete improvement.  To make a
> good world will require that kind of work-for-change as a way of life to
> which we remain committed over generational timescales.  It also required
> that the center of mass of the society be going in that direction, and not
> just a committed fringe swimming against a current that is all going the
> wrong way.  The latter nut is one that is seeming particularly hard to
> crack.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Eric
>
>
> On May 3, 2020, at 10:05 PM, Gary Schiltz 
> wrote:
>
> Great rant/stream of consciousness as usual, Steve! Has anyone watched
> this five minute video yet? A bit utopian, but maybe not...
> https://vimeo.com/411278238
>
> On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 7:23 AM David Eric Smith 
> wrote:
>
>> I can’t weave a grand diorama that has the meaning of everything in it,
>> and anything I try will come out a mess.  So let me try for Less is More.
>>
>> I think part of this is habit and commitments.  Somehow the society has
>> to sort out a predictable way to arrive at who has a right to consume how
>> much of what.  A surprising amount of structure goes into that, and it has
>> enormous inertia.  Part of what we are trying to “restart” is a set of
>> systems that happen to be doing an allocation that we don’t have other
>> systems in place to do as an alternative.
>>
>> Take food production.  Fine, what people need to eat is relatively
>> inelastic, and not wildly different from one human to another, compared to
>> dollar-wealth.  But over the past 80 years, nearly all food calories are
>> produced by very few decision makers and enormous capital outlays, levered
>> to the hilt with credit, on really bad (regular, fast, and inflexible)
>> turnaround times.  (This means Corn, Beans, lesser Wheat, to some extent
>> commodity meats.). The story is a little more diversified for the nutritive
>> value of food (fruits, vegetables, et al.), but different in structure
>> where near-slave labor takes the place of capital and a different analysis
>> is needed.  For now I will just look at the simple one.
>>
>> We can’t all suddenly move back to the farm and grow calorie crops.  We
>> don’t own land, we don’t have skills, and besides there is no easy angle to
>> do that in a system that over-produces already.  So the production is
>> there.  But if we don’t have a way to pay the “farmer” (really a
>> grant/loan/lobby businessman more than an expert in soil health etc.), why
>> should he give us anything to eat?  You could say “Ah, he only needs enough
>> to live, and he is only one man, so he could give the rest away because
>> people need it.”  But he isn’t only one man.  He is a vastly debt-leveraged
>> operation, with enormous capital replacement and maintenan

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Merle Lefkoff]

Gary, he's on CNN (Cable) on Sunday mornings.  I'm not sure how to get it
anywhere later.

On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 11:03 AM Gary Schiltz 
wrote:

> Merle, I'd like to watch that interview. Do you watch Fareed over cable or
> satellite, or over the internet?
>
> On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 11:55 AM Merle Lefkoff 
> wrote:
>
>> Nick, the only mainstream news program I watch is Fareed Zakaria on
>> Sunday morning.  Below is part of this morning's report.  Not surprisingly
>> (for those of us who have had the privilege recently of spending time in
>> Sweden), the answer to how it's working, is just about like the countries
>> that are locked down, with one exception.  More deaths (mostly among the
>> elderly who primarily live together in retirement).
>>
>> As world governments employ different policies to fight Covid-19,
>> Sweden’s relaxed approach stands out: Eschewing lockdowns, the country has
>> left its schools, gyms, cafes, bars and restaurants open throughout the
>> spread of the pandemic. Fareed interviews the man behind that strategy, 
>> *Anders
>> Tegnell*, the Swedish government’s top epidemiologist, about how it’s
>> working and whether his country can offer any lessons to the rest of the
>> world.
>>
>> On Sat, May 2, 2020 at 10:34 AM  wrote:
>>
>>> Colleagues,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I have asked this question before and nobody has responded (for clear
>>> and good reasons, no doubt) but I thought I would ask it again.  What
>>> exactly is this economy we are bent on reviving?  What exactly is the
>>> difference in human activity between our present state and a revived
>>> economy.  We can go to bars and concerts and football games?  Is that the
>>> economy we are reviving?  It seems to me that the difference between a
>>> “healty” economy and our present status consists possibly in nothing more
>>> than a lot of people frantically rushing about doing things they don’t
>>> really need to do?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats
>>> were put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered and
>>> protected to see how the population would develop.  They never got above
>>> two hundred.  Infant mortality, etc., was appalling.  Carnage.  In the same
>>> space, a competent lab breeding organization could have kept a population
>>> of tens of thousands.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Don’t yell at me.  What fundamental proposition about economics do I not
>>> understand?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nicholas Thompson
>>>
>>> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>>>
>>> Clark University
>>>
>>> thompnicks...@gmail.com
>>>
>>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .-
>>> ...  . ...
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
>>> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
>> President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
>> emergentdiplomacy.org
>> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>> merlelefk...@gmail.com 
>> mobile:  (303) 859-5609
>> skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
>> twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
>> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
>>  . ...
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
>> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>>
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...
>  . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>


-- 
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
emergentdiplomacy.org
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
merlelefk...@gmail.com 
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merle.lelfkoff2
twitter: @Merle_Lefkoff
.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ...  
. ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Steven A Smith]

Eric -
> I would put up this one as a constructive reply to your link below,
> not to counter but to add alongside:
> https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-power-of-community-how-cuba-survived-peak-oil-2006/
> I am pretty sure I have posted this to the list in the past, but it
> remains a strong reference for me.

I was (only vaguely) aware of the Cuban "special period" and think the
description of the Cuban people's response in the movie was very
inspirational.  It helps a great deal that Cuba has a very good climate
for year round agriculture and that it's people were not terribly
addicted to personal-conveniences as provided by our idea of modern
technology.   I have not really paid attention to what has evolved there
more recently.

I have friends/colleagues in Ukraine who are old enough to have
remembered both Chernobyl, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the
Ukranian independence.   They went through some similar experiences to
Cuba, suddenly not having direct access to the huge false-economies of
the Soviet Empire and having to try to keep a system running on
nominally only what could be produced regionally.

I wondered when Puerto Rico got hit so hard by the hurricane a few years
go if THEY might not follow a pattern closer to Cuba's as described in
the movie.

> Six weeks or two months into a shutdown, with pictures of glittering
> skyscrapers in NYC with nobody maintaining them, and yoga people
> sitting on posh porches overlooking the forest, I get the impression
> that something is being overlooked.  If I saw the same video made by a
> Panamanian immigrant in Brooklyn, living with 6 family members in a
> small apartment, I would feel safer abducting from the anecdotal point
> of view to a generalization.
I agree that Gary's video leaves me waiting for "the other shoe to fall"
when I know the beast in question is more like a centipede than a biped.
>
> I don’t say that to disagree with the intent of the short video you
> circulated, which expresses preferences that I also hold.  But all the
> ways we create damage, from climate to farmland management to
> ecosystem destruction happen partly because it is hard to understand
> long-term trajectories from the early stages of transients, and we are
> particularly bad at recognizing that transients are that.  This little
> bit of inertia, while people consume stocks that were in inventory
> already, does not look to me like a model for an alternative steady
> state in barely any respects (though still a few).  I don’t doubt that
> the maker of the video understands this and would agree, but he
> probably sees the end of making the point as justifying the means of
> omitting these things.
Yes, in spite of our just-in-time logistics system, there has been quite
a bit of product in the pipeline and it is not like *every* factory and
*every* packing plant, etc.  shut down immediately or entirely *IF
EVER*.   Your reference to the style of glossing in the movie is
well-taken and I think I agree it was deliberate and aspirational more
than pretending that (as you point out) that 2 months in we can *know*
that everything is going to be OK even (especially?) if we cut our manic
hypercapitalism by a factor of 2 or 10.
>
> I like the Cuban case because it starts to get into the weeds of just
> how much _work_ is needed, and how many and how diverse are the
> problems that require invention to solve, to significantly re-arrange
> a social system.  I think the documentary makes the case that the move
> they made was entirely in the right direction.
The improvements in health and nutrition they report is a good indicator.
>  The thing that makes it feel real to me is that it was a lot of work
> for a modest and very incomplete improvement.  To make a good world
> will require that kind of work-for-change as a way of life to which we
> remain committed over generational timescales.  It also required that
> the center of mass of the society be going in that direction, and not
> just a committed fringe swimming against a current that is all going
> the wrong way.  The latter nut is one that is seeming particularly
> hard to crack.

But I would claim/suggest that a "catastrophe" like the one we are on
the crest (of the beginning?) of is a good opportunity, not unlike the
"Special Period" of Cuba, for that center of mass to shift perhaps.  
And there are directions to lean that will help that or alternatively
hurt (return to normal) that.

Good video and good thoughts,

 - Steve


>
> Many thanks,
>
> Eric
>
>
>> On May 3, 2020, at 10:05 PM, Gary Schiltz > > wrote:
>>
>> Great rant/stream of consciousness as usual, Steve! Has anyone
>> watched this five minute video yet? A bit utopian, but maybe not...
>> https://vimeo.com/411278238
>>
>> On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 7:23 AM David Eric Smith > > wrote:
>>
>> I can’t weave a grand diorama that has the meaning of everything
>> in it, and anything I try w

Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[David Eric Smith]

Hi Gary,

I would put up this one as a constructive reply to your link below, not to 
counter but to add alongside:
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-power-of-community-how-cuba-survived-peak-oil-2006/
 

I am pretty sure I have posted this to the list in the past, but it remains a 
strong reference for me. 

Six weeks or two months into a shutdown, with pictures of glittering 
skyscrapers in NYC with nobody maintaining them, and yoga people sitting on 
posh porches overlooking the forest, I get the impression that something is 
being overlooked.  If I saw the same video made by a Panamanian immigrant in 
Brooklyn, living with 6 family members in a small apartment, I would feel safer 
abducting from the anecdotal point of view to a generalization.

I don’t say that to disagree with the intent of the short video you circulated, 
which expresses preferences that I also hold.  But all the ways we create 
damage, from climate to farmland management to ecosystem destruction happen 
partly because it is hard to understand long-term trajectories from the early 
stages of transients, and we are particularly bad at recognizing that 
transients are that.  This little bit of inertia, while people consume stocks 
that were in inventory already, does not look to me like a model for an 
alternative steady state in barely any respects (though still a few).  I don’t 
doubt that the maker of the video understands this and would agree, but he 
probably sees the end of making the point as justifying the means of omitting 
these things.

I like the Cuban case because it starts to get into the weeds of just how much 
_work_ is needed, and how many and how diverse are the problems that require 
invention to solve, to significantly re-arrange a social system.  I think the 
documentary makes the case that the move they made was entirely in the right 
direction.  The thing that makes it feel real to me is that it was a lot of 
work for a modest and very incomplete improvement.  To make a good world will 
require that kind of work-for-change as a way of life to which we remain 
committed over generational timescales.  It also required that the center of 
mass of the society be going in that direction, and not just a committed fringe 
swimming against a current that is all going the wrong way.  The latter nut is 
one that is seeming particularly hard to crack.

Many thanks,

Eric


> On May 3, 2020, at 10:05 PM, Gary Schiltz  wrote:
> 
> Great rant/stream of consciousness as usual, Steve! Has anyone watched this 
> five minute video yet? A bit utopian, but maybe not... 
> https://vimeo.com/411278238 
> 
> On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 7:23 AM David Eric Smith  > wrote:
> I can’t weave a grand diorama that has the meaning of everything in it, and 
> anything I try will come out a mess.  So let me try for Less is More.
> 
> I think part of this is habit and commitments.  Somehow the society has to 
> sort out a predictable way to arrive at who has a right to consume how much 
> of what.  A surprising amount of structure goes into that, and it has 
> enormous inertia.  Part of what we are trying to “restart” is a set of 
> systems that happen to be doing an allocation that we don’t have other 
> systems in place to do as an alternative.
> 
> Take food production.  Fine, what people need to eat is relatively inelastic, 
> and not wildly different from one human to another, compared to 
> dollar-wealth.  But over the past 80 years, nearly all food calories are 
> produced by very few decision makers and enormous capital outlays, levered to 
> the hilt with credit, on really bad (regular, fast, and inflexible) 
> turnaround times.  (This means Corn, Beans, lesser Wheat, to some extent 
> commodity meats.). The story is a little more diversified for the nutritive 
> value of food (fruits, vegetables, et al.), but different in structure where 
> near-slave labor takes the place of capital and a different analysis is 
> needed.  For now I will just look at the simple one.
> 
> We can’t all suddenly move back to the farm and grow calorie crops.  We don’t 
> own land, we don’t have skills, and besides there is no easy angle to do that 
> in a system that over-produces already.  So the production is there.  But if 
> we don’t have a way to pay the “farmer” (really a grant/loan/lobby 
> businessman more than an expert in soil health etc.), why should he give us 
> anything to eat?  You could say “Ah, he only needs enough to live, and he is 
> only one man, so he could give the rest away because people need it.”  But he 
> isn’t only one man.  He is a vastly debt-leveraged operation, with enormous 
> capital replacement and maintenance costs, huge loans for 
> fertilizer/seed/pesticide, and no way to pay that unless he turns over the 
> crop within certain price ranges (or lobbies hard to get Dept