FW: The Future in Plain View ?
John McCarthy of Stanford has another take on the future: http://www-formal.Stanford.EDU/jmc/progress/ (An extract) This page and its satellites will contain references to articles, my own and by others, explaining how humanity is likely to advance in the near future. In particular, we argue that the whole world can reach and maintain American standards of living with a population of even 15 billion. We also argue that maintaining material progress is the highest priority and the best way to ensure that population eventually stabilizes at a sustainable level with a standard of living above the present American level and continues to improve thereafter. Bob -- ___ http://www.geog.uwo.ca/mcdaniel1.html
Re: FW: The Future in Plain View ?
Bob McDaniel wrote: John McCarthy of Stanford has another take on the future: http://www-formal.Stanford.EDU/jmc/progress/ (An extract) This page and its satellites will contain references to articles, my own and by others, explaining how humanity is likely to advance in the near future. In particular, we argue that the whole world can reach and maintain American standards of living with a population of even 15 billion. [snip] Does this include at least a quarter-acre detached private house in a Levittown for each "household" of those 15 billion? I would again recall the Sherwin-Williams Paint Company logo: a big bucket of paint above the North Pole, pouring out a huge viscous glop of paint over the entire planet, totally covering the Northern hemisphere and driping off below the Equator, with the slogan: Cover the Earth Less is more. \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA --- ![%THINK;[SGML]] Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
Re: Demodernizing of Russia (fwd)
Eva Durant wrote: Except that this fatalistic "let's use the laws of thermodynamics" - would perhaps make some sense if the Earth was a closed local system. It is not even that. Eva It's because the "reality" of it is too much for people to cope with. The "reality" is that Russia is merely the next country to be flushed down the entropy toilet. It certainly wasn't the first, and certainly won't be the last. None can escape. Jay -- www.dieoff.com Russia wasn't flushed down any entropy toilet: It was flushed down the *economic* toilet (i.e., its head was placed under the water and held there till the body stopped struggling) by the "White" forces (the good guys always come in white!) of global capitalism. Surely Stalin was highly "entropic", but the West's strategy of *strangling* the Soviet economy to cause the Russian peole to revolt -- a policy which began in 1917 and finally "succeeded" a few years ago (that's at least 70 years' sustained intention) cannot be called "entropy" but rather malice of purpose. Reagan was *so* proud of his "greatest achievement": that the victim finally suffocated on his watch! *Now* we can have entropy in the "free market" (Brownian motion) of liberated mother Russia and its unleashed "satellites" (loose cannons on the deck)! Oh, boy! \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA --- ![%THINK;[SGML]] Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
Re: Demodernizing of Russia (fwd)
You ignored the point I tried to make; borroing expressions from physics such as entropy and using them willy-nilly to make an economic or social statement look as pseudoscientific as astrology is. Eva Except that this fatalistic "let's use the laws of thermodynamics" - would perhaps make some sense if the Earth was a closed local system. It is not even that. Eva It's because the "reality" of it is too much for people to cope with. The "reality" is that Russia is merely the next country to be flushed down the entropy toilet. It certainly wasn't the first, and certainly won't be the last. None can escape. Jay -- www.dieoff.com Russia wasn't flushed down any entropy toilet: It was flushed down the *economic* toilet (i.e., its head was placed under the water and held there till the body stopped struggling) by the "White" forces (the good guys always come in white!) of global capitalism. Surely Stalin was highly "entropic", but the West's strategy of *strangling* the Soviet economy to cause the Russian peole to revolt -- a policy which began in 1917 and finally "succeeded" a few years ago (that's at least 70 years' sustained intention) cannot be called "entropy" but rather malice of purpose. Reagan was *so* proud of his "greatest achievement": that the victim finally suffocated on his watch! *Now* we can have entropy in the "free market" (Brownian motion) of liberated mother Russia and its unleashed "satellites" (loose cannons on the deck)! Oh, boy! \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA --- ![%THINK;[SGML]] Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
FW Instead of workfare
I've sent the message below to a list that monitors Ontario Works (a workfare program). Comments from FWers would also be welcome.Sally To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: "S. Lerner" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Making work available Cc: Bcc: X-Attachments: I'd be interested in commentsto this list on an idea that some of us feel would be far better than the coercive and punitive Ontario Works Program. It's very simple: find people on assistance who *want* to work and/or train. Then help them find volunteer work positions (and provide 'work readiness mentoring' if needed) and help them find funding for the training they need/want (not surprisingly, most people on assistance don't have money for training courses.) Sally Lerner, of the Futurework list http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/Research/FW
Re: Demodernizing of Russia (fwd)
Johnson's Russia List #2316 20 August 1998 [EMAIL PROTECTED] #3 The Nation September 1, 1998 Why Call It Reform? By Stephen F. Cohen Stephen F. Cohen is a professor of Russian studies and history at New York University. His most recent book, Rethinking Russia, will be published next year by Oxford. As Russias economic collapse spirals out of control, rarely if ever has American discourse about that country been so uncaringly and dangerously in conflict with reality. With its endless ideological mantra of a purported transition from Communism to free-market capitalism, almost all US government, media and academic commentary on Russias current troubles is premised on two profoundly wrong assumptions: that the problem is essentially a financial crisis and that the remedy is faster and more resolute application of the reform policies pursued by President Boris Yeltsin since 1991. There is a third assumption that Mr. Cohen does not mention. This is that the Russian government is actually in control of the Russian economy. When I was in Moscow on a study tour a couple of years ago I attended a lecture by Vladimir I. Markov (Ph.D., economics), Deputy Director, Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Socio-economic Studies of Population, who suggested that fully 60% of the existing private companies are in some way or another associated with the criminal world - either they are part of this world themselves or they make payments to it for their survival. This situation has probably not improved since then. As well, the difficulties that the Russian government has had in collecting taxes are well documented. The interests of private companies may be better served by paying protection money than by paying taxes. In another lecture, by Boris Erasov Ph.D., Professor of Social and Cultural Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies, Academy of Sciences, argued that without a strong state at the top - without a powerful central authority - Russia was likely to revert to tribalism internally, and to be under threat from foreign powers. He suggested that, unlike the west, Russia has lacked the institutions which have melded a variety of minorities into common nationhood. He maintained that there is no Russian nation. Lift off the central authority (as at present), and there is a general reversion to tribalism (also as at present). This is essentially what was behind the Chechnya war, where the Russians were trying to re-impose central authority before tribalism got completely out of hand. Ed Weick
Entropy and economics
From: Eva Durant [EMAIL PROTECTED] You ignored the point I tried to make; borroing expressions from physics such as entropy and using them willy-nilly to make an economic or social statement look as pseudoscientific as astrology is. You are out of date Eva. I am not borrowing terms from physics. The laws of thermodynamics are now part of the sustainability literature at all levels. Here is clip from one a new book I just bought: THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF GROWTH by Douglas Booth; Routledge, 1998 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415169917 [snip] Economic circular flow and the environment Anyone who has taken macroeconomics is familiar with circular flow analysis. Households purchase commodities produced by businesses, the expenditures of households become the revenues of businesses, and businesses use those revenues to purchase productive services (labor, capital, and natural resources) from households. The incomes of households in turn sustain expenditures on purchases from businesses. In the opposite direction, commodities and services flow from businesses to households and the factors of production flow from households to businesses. Commodities and money flow in an unending circle that never runs down, and, with continuous investment in additional productive capacity, the flow can be ever expanding. This perception of the macroeconomy is misleading because it ignores scientific laws that place constraints on the flow of inputs into the economic system from the natural environment (Daly 1991a: 195-210). The flow of energy and matter through the economic system is in reality linear and unidirectional, not circular. Energy and matter flow from the environment to the economic system and waste matter and heat flow from the economic system to the environment. The flow begins with the depletion of energy and material resources and ends with the pollution of the environment with waste matter and heat. As Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Herman Daly have gone to great lengths to demonstrate (Georgescu-Roegen 1971, 1973; Daly 1991 a), economists have failed in the construction of their macroeconomic models to recognize that the laws of thermodynamics dictate an absolute scarcity of energy and matter. It is this absolute scarcity that in turn negates the macroeconomic concept of circular flow. The essence of the first law of thermodynamics is that energy and matter can be neither created nor destroyed. In other words, the stock of matter is fixed in availability, as is the maximum flow rate of energy. Thus there is an absolute scarcity of both. If energy and matter could be infinitely rearranged without loss, then this law would matter little for economic activity. The disordering of matter created by consumption could simply be compensated by the re-ordering of matter through production. Perpetual circular flow at a constant or even growing rate would indeed be possible. The problem is, whenever energy is used to re-order matter, something is permanently lost. This is explained by the second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics basically says that when used to perform work, energy is converted to a more dispersed, less useful form. To put it another way, whenever energy is used, some of it is given off in the form of waste heat. The entropy of energy increases. No energy-using process is 100 percent efficient. Entropy is the amount of energy in a system that is not available to do work in that system. An automobile burning petrol converts energy in a concentrated form into motion and waste heat. The automobile moves, but some of the energy is converted into waste heat unavailable for work. The flow of matter in production and consumption is also an entropic process. Highly concentrated forms of matter are converted into useful artifacts in production, and in consumption those artifacts are converted into dispersed waste material. The energy of nature - sun, wind, rain, oxidation - causes materials to break down and become more dispersed. A house, for example, slowly deteriorates over time. The paint chips off, wood rots, and the roof deteriorates. An increase in entropy is a decrease in order. As the house deteriorates, its material contents become less ordered. To reconcentrate all dispersed matter from a consumption process would require an impossibly large amount of energy, rendering 100 percent recycling an impossibility. Matter, like energy, is subject to entropy. The extent to which the entropy of energy and matter impinges on the circular flow of commodities in the macroeconomy or harms the human individuals and natural environments that frame the macroeconomy is a fundamental issue that must be addressed by an environmental approach to macroeconomics. The entropic linear flow of energy and matter results in changes to both biotic and abiotic components of what can be called the global ecosystem. Abiotic components include the earth's
Re: Demodernizing of Russia (fwd)
Brad McCormick: Russia wasn't flushed down any entropy toilet: It was flushed down the *economic* toilet (i.e., its head was placed under the water and held there till the body stopped struggling) by the "White" forces (the good guys always come in white!) of global capitalism. Surely Stalin was highly "entropic", but the West's strategy of *strangling* the Soviet economy to cause the Russian peole to revolt -- a policy which began in 1917 and finally "succeeded" a few years ago (that's at least 70 years' sustained intention) cannot be called "entropy" but rather malice of purpose. Reagan was *so* proud of his "greatest achievement": that the victim finally suffocated on his watch! I don't think this is right. The Soviet economy was quite able to suffocate on its own without anyone holding its head in the toilet. There were many problems, but among the most important were a concentration on investment in heavy industry without making that industry more efficient and productive, and an impossible bureaucratic central planning apparatus which took the place of market mechanisms in the allocation of resources. It may have worked for awhile, though never well, but when demands grew and things got more and more complex, the system became less and less efficient. Collapse was inevitable. What the Russian economy suffers from now is that no real market economy has developed and the central planning apparatus is gone. As well, the industrial plant has worn out, and even if that were not the case, it would be incapable of producing the goods and services that are needed now. Because of the concentration on heavy industry during the Soviet era, no tradition of mass producing consumers goods developed. As a consequence, Russia imports a very large proportion of its consumer goods. Because such goods are dollar denominated, the falling value of the ruble has been disastrous for Russian citizens - even for those who are getting paid. As well, the fact that a considerable proportion of GNP was devoted to the military, that a prolonged war was fought in Afghanistan, and that the government had to deal with rebellion in places like Chechnya, did not help. Nor do low oil prices, a major source of government revenue. Ed Weick
The Future of the Canadian Inshore Fishery
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 09:40:04 -0300 From: Parker Barss Donham [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PARKER:1096] Column 8-12-98 Ghoti Lawsuit 12 August 1998 A coalition of small-boat fishermen and fishing communities asked the Federal Court this week to stop Ottawa from imposing radical _ and they believe illegal _ changes in the way fish are managed in Canada. Some will be quick to dismiss the litigants as yet another ``special interest group'' attempting an end-run around democracy through the courts. Herald columnist Jim Meek has already taken a swipe at them. But it's hard to argue that the sweeping changes now underway in fisheries management have been accompanied by much if any democracy _ unless you define democracy as the right of the government to do pretty much whatever it pleases. Privatization of fish stocks constitutes a seismic change that _ some argue _ will devastate coastal communities. Yet it has inspired little public debate outside the industry sectors immediately affected. Few Nova Scotians have any idea what ITQs and enterprise allocations are, let alone how they will change this province. Instead, radical change has been imposed by bureaucratic fiat, while right wing think tanks with no stake in the human impact of the changes, but keen interest in them as ideological test cases, cheer from the sidelines. The ideology stems from an influential 1968 article in the journal Science, ``The Tragedy of the Commons,'' which argued that common property resources are doomed to over-exploitation. Author Garret Hardin, an ecologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, used the example of a community sheep pasture. It is in the community's interest to limit the total number of sheep in the pasture, lest forage suffer. But each individual farmer will want to put as many of his own sheep in the pasture as possible. As long as each individual makes his own decisions, the resource is inevitably overwhelmed. A solution that finds much favor with neo-conservatives is to privatize the pasture. Give each farmer a small section of pasture. He can either use it for his own sheep, or rent or sell it to another farmer. Now his own best interest coincides with the community goal of conserving the pasture. In a common fishery, the theory goes, everyone rushes to the fishing grounds on opening day, because it is in each fisherman's interest to catch as much fish as possible before the overall quota is exhausted. The result is a periodic glut of crudely handled, poor quality fish. So Ottawa has begun issuing ``individual transferable quotas'' or ITQs. A fisherman with an ITQ can catch his own quota on his own timetable _ perhaps waiting until market conditions fetch the best price, or taking extra care to insure good quality (and a better price). Or he can rent or sell his quota to a fisherman with a larger, more efficient boat. It sounds wonderful _ in theory. The trouble comes in practice. Wherever ITQs (and their corporate equivalents, known as enterprise allocations) have been tried, the result has been a rapid concentration of the fishery in the hands of a few, wealthy owners. To an economist concerned only with the overall efficiency of economic output, that looks great. What's lost is the industry's ability to sustain tens of thousands of families and hundreds of small coastal communities. The conflict boils down to one of the essential issues of our time: do people exist to serve the economy, or does the economy exist to serve people? This issue warrants the fullest possible discussion, but has received little. DFO has been able to impose privatizationwithout widespread debate because most of the public finds the industry incomprehensibly complex. Incomprehensibility works to the policy-makers' advantage, since Canadians who object to the change lack confidence in their own understanding of the issue. At the same time, the groundfish collapse has persuaded everyone that radical change is needed. The irony is that the same bureaucrats whose stewardship of the cod fishery was such a spectacular failure are imposing policies to reward the very companies whose rapacious fleets caused the problem in the first place, while punishing the small boat fishermen who have been its chief victims. The small-boat fishermen who went to court this week say Ottawa lacks constitutional jurisdiction to create property rights in the fishery, and existing fisheries legislation specifically prohibits it from doing so. But are the courts the right place to fight the issue? ``It is a process where you can be sure that you will be heard, where you will be taken seriously,'' said Bruce Wildsmith, the soft-spoken lawyer for the small-boat fishermen.
(ICT-JOBS): ICT and New Conditions of Work (fwd)
As I catch up on my mail backlog from travelling I am coming across
various "gems" of which this is one...
The full discussion ICT-Jobs discussion is accessible on
www.globalknowledge.org
Mike Gurstein
-- Forwarded message --
Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 15:16:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: ICT-JOBS Moderator [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: (ICT-JOBS): ICT and New Conditions of Work
In this Working Group, we have discussed at length whether, and how, new
computing technologies, especially those that support communications,
change conditions of work. One widely shared conclusion is the impact of
ICT on work depends on the *way* in which it is introduced. There is a
body of literature that casts some light on this issue. Tom Finholt and
Lee Sproull found that electronic mail can actually give working groups
greater ability to develop their own culture. (Finholt, Tom and Lee
Sproull. 1990. "Electronic Groups at Work." Organization Science.
1(1):41-64) Other researchers have concluded that electronic mail reduces
the barriers to communication between people at different levels of
hierarchy in an organization. (Sproull, Lee and Sara Kiesler. 1991.
"Increasing Personal Connections." Connections: New Ways of Working in
the Networked Organization. Cambridge: MIT Press)
Yet, as members of this Working Group have emphasized, benefits like these
do not come automatically. Professor Robert Kling ("Computerization at
Work," cmc Magazine, August 1996;
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1996/aug/kling.html) points out that
simply installing new technology is not a sufficient condition for the
emergence of improved forms of work organization. He notes, "careful
studies of work with new competing technologies suggest that new
technologies alone are unlikely to be magic potions which can
automatically improve work by just appearing in a workplace." This is the
case whether "improve" means raising productivity or enhancing job
satisfaction.
One problem, Kling observes, is that "most people who use [powerful
programs such as word processors or database programs] seem to learn only
a small fraction of the available capabilities -- enough to do their most
immediate work." Furthermore, "many organizations expect workers to learn
to effectively use computer systems on their own, with little support
besides limited manuals and advice from co-workers."
Kling adds that some of these problems can be cured when companies invest
in relatively uncomplicated systems, train their staffs to use them, and
provide consulting for people who have questions. However, many managers
believe that supplementing computer use with training and consulting is
too expensive. Their concerns are understandable. Training costs often run
three times greater than the price of the software package that is being
taught, while the impact on productivity is hard to measure.
One solution could come from the software side. Poltrock and Grudin, who
studied software developers, found that they do not devote enough
attention to observing how the product is used by their customers.
(Poltrock, Steven E. and Jonathan Grudin. 1994. " Interface Development
in a Large Organization: An Observational Study." (adapted from) ACM
Transactions on Computer and Human Interaction.1(1)(March):52-80)
However, the real impact will come, Kling argues, when companies recognise
the value of using training, feedback from workers, and other means to
enhance integration of ICT in the workplace. Kling recommends, for
example, that companies begin thinking and talking about computerization
as the development of socio-technological configurations rather than as
simply installing and using a new technology. He writes "social design
encourages participants in a computerization project to review the web of
practices and policies relating to telecommuting [or other ICT adoption]
which can otherwise be unanticipated... Firms that do not attend to their
people's (sic) careers as well as their jobs might well have to replace
much of their workforce. Their human capital will be a depreciated
resource, one they may find harder to replenish than they thought."
These observations raise important questions for developing countries:
What opportunities could Southern companies seize to create
socio-technical approaches to ICT adoption, which will be appropriate for
Southern and/or Northern countries, and that are not yet being utilized?
If training is "too expensive" for companies in the North, how can
companies in the South even consider providing such training and becoming
competitive?
Will Southern companies be further disadvantaged because their staff are
even less likely than those in the North to be able to pick up ICT skills
on their own? Or do lower costs of training in the South provide new
opportunities for Southern companies to "outflank" companies in the North
by providing training and addressing social issues of ICT
[FW] Re: Entropy and economics
eva borroing expressions from physics such as entropy and using them eva willy-nilly to make an economic or social statement look as eva pseudoscientific as astrology is. brad Just how does it fit in with this *entroy* scientc/scientism/ brad mythologySuppose someone found a bread mold that would cure brad AIDS... C'mon, guys, let's not have a bunfight over the *metaphorical* use of "entropy". There are numerous godawful entropy metaphors in print, some of them in the (putatively) scientific literature. Jay is talking about the non-metaphorical entropy of steam engines and barrels of oil burned. Living things collectively -- the global ecology or biomass -- constitute a very special, indeed unique domain. Organisms dissipate a lot of energy to create little bags of low entropy in the form of proteins and other biochemicals. Despite the gigabytes of scientific publication in biology, we have still a rather vague grasp of how life works and we don't do very well at duplicating its mechanisms of harvesting a little order from a dissapative energy throughput. Applying the notion of entropy to economics is long overdue because economics attempts to describe deeds done in the physical world. The theory may be couched in terms of "excahnge of value" but in practice we're talking about food, washing machines, perchloroethylene and disposable diapers. The first place I saw it was in the remark, "Throw it away? There is no such thing as "away". Both trash and entropy of physical systems go somewhere. If there's too much in one place, you keep stepping in it. "Value" is a metaphor. You can create it with a pencil or a few words exchanged. The entropy of the universe continues to "tend to a maximum." Applying entropy to social systems generally is a can of worms. Specifically, our discourse commonly mixes and muddles our literal and metaphorical usages so casually that it requires diligent effort and exceptional attentiveness to eliminate the resulting ambiguities. I've several times heard people say things like, (speaking, say, of someone who became angry and belligerent), "he literally exploded", apparently with no awareness of how absurd the construction is. The discovery of a simple AIDS cure would dissipate some energy and would save the lives of at least a few people who would go on to make anti-entropic contributions to society. If these ex-victims live to use more oil, throw "away" more toxic crud, provide a demand for Roundup(tm)-resistant bioengineered monoculture crops, they're probably increasing net entropy within the biosphere. An energy or entropy balance sheet for the discovery of a wonderdrug and its inrtoduction could be estimated but a dialog on the subject would be subject, at best, to numerous digressions and backtrackings as contradictions engendersd by mungled metaphors and misplaced concreteness emerged. - Mike -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/home.html ---
