I think therefore I am. This well-known phrase is a translation of René Descartes' Cogito principle, which more or less states that if someone is wondering whether or not they exist, that is in and of itself proof that they do exist since someone is doing the task of pondering whether they exist. It is something of a litmus test for sentience, the strongest tool by which to determine whether or not something has achieved self-awareness. One of humanity's basic assumptions is that conception and natural birth are prerequisites before the Cogito principle can be applied. In other words, there must be a basis of similarity before full acceptance can be accorded. However, what happens when something applies the Cogito principle to itself and is nothing more than a manufactured machine? Put most simply, does the artificial have the same rights as the natural?
This question is not nearly as rhetorical as many would think. Moore’s Law states that computer specifications double every eighteen months, which is the reason why computers are typically obsolete before they are made available for sail. This was how computers went from machines encased by buildings to netbooks less than an inch thick. Each year introduces cheaper, smaller, and more powerful machines, with last year’s consigned to the junk pile. Eventually, Moore’s Law will be null, as technology achieves a microscopic level, but until then, computers and their abilities will continue to grow at exponential levels.
Regardless, these machines are made by humans for humans. They provide everything from entertainment to cheap labor to running Bill Gate’s house. They are the dreaded Predator drones that stock battlefields to builders of everything from cars to toys. They have gone from the caveat of the brilliant to the realm of the obnoxiously ubiquitous and mundane. In short, most people no longer remember what life was like before them, and can no longer imagine life without them.
However, we live in a society obsessed with rapid innovation, where science fiction does not remain so for long. At times, it even appears that science fiction fuels modern science, as scientists work to make the impossible possible, with advances in technology becoming ever more surreal. Perhaps that explains why the development of true Artificial Intelligences (AI) has been turned into a bet between the infamous inventor Ray Kurzweil and the future-seeker Mitchell Kapor. The terms: that a computer will pass the Turing test by 2029. The stakes: $120,000.
The terms of the bet do need a bit more explanation. The Turing test is the largest test of a computer’s ability to demonstrate intelligence. The test involves a human judge conducting conversations with a person and a computer, and if the judge is unable to differentiate between the machine and living being, the machine has passed the test. The computer has to be able to conceal highly intelligent behaviors and engage in unintelligent human behaviors, such as susceptibility to insults and lying.
A machine that successfully passes the Turing test is therefore able to intelligently engage in unintelligent behaviors. What happens then? After all, that makes the machine highly intelligent, but not precisely sentient, as it is still unable to apply the Cogito principle to itself. The machine would be given greater computing capacity, become self-learning, and either become sentient itself, or contribute its design to future generations of self-aware AIs that are just as capable of self-analysis as men are. Theoretically, the closer machines act and look like man, the more empathetic and comfortable humans become with them, an option that becomes more attractive with such sophisticated advances as artificial limbs that are coming closer to the deft manipulation human fingers are capable of.
Another recent advancement is software that entrusts computer security to collectives of cyberrobots connected through a hive-like network. Predator drones already handle dangerous combat missions in Afghanistan, so that gives machines another field where they can take the place of humans. True AI, having passed the Turing Test and gained the sacred Cogito principle, would be brought into the service of man, doing everything man does not want to do, cleaning toxic wastes, constructing vehicles in factories, and fighting wars in the name of men. A machine paradise would prevail, as humans would be able to benefit from the labors of sentient AIs that kept them from danger, boredom, and work.
Unfortunately, the mechanical utopia has more than a few pitfalls. While machines that resemble man more would seem to indicate that the achievement of self-awareness would be a great benefit in human-machine interaction there is one important detail that derails this argument: the uncanny valley. The uncanny valley is the point where the similarity to being human is too close, and engenders an instinctive rejection. To use easily-recognizable examples, somewhat human-looking machines like C-3P0 from the Star Wars films engender a positive reaction, while The King from the Burger King commercials solicits a negative reaction. Since human skin has a certain transparency that is difficult if not impossible to replicate, it will be a long time before talking about the meaning of life with machines will be something most people will be tolerant about, let alone comfortable with.
This creates the Other. Humans empathize with those they can see they share a commonality. That is why soldiers are so famously tight-knit in the battlefield, and how people become married, raise children, and do any of one hundred everyday actions. However, robots and AI do not share any obvious commonality with humans. As a matter of fact, they are not even human. Man's inhumanity to man is a commonly harped on topic, and how much more inhuman can we be to something we view as replaceable and subhuman? One need only to explore the history of mankind and slavery to come across examples. For every kindly Roman master, there was always another who treated his slaves very badly. Combine that with all the talk of freedom that littered the Roman world back then, and it is not surprising to see that there were many slave revolts that were brutally put down. How could intelligent machines fail to make the obvious connection between their own beholden state, especially once true AI is accomplished? Violent human slave revolts would quickly become a nostalgic event in comparison to the devastating damage a rebellion by the computers who run so much of our lives can do.
Another undiscussed and potentially dangerous field is robot ethics. This does not involve the ethics of those programming the machines, but rather the ethics of the machines themselves. The iconic science fiction writer Isaac Asimov created the Three Rules of Robotics, programmed safeguards to keep man safe from the danger at the hands of entities that can only operate within pre-established parameters. The three laws are as follows:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. (note that with this clause, a human can order a robot to harm itself)
As Asimov demonstrated through his exploration of these safeguards, however, no laws are air-tight. There are always loopholes within laws that humans can exploit, and dangerously, logic-driven machines can find these loopholes just as well. Throwing in Artificial Intelligence subverts the entire point of the laws. Humans spend years being brought up within a moral structure, and that moral structure not only fails to deter humans, but is sometimes discarded in memorable manner by the more bloodthirsty of our kind.
To further complicate this, many nations are already making the obvious move to develop military robots, a move that will reduce casualties and minimize, if not remove, the human factor from war. That would mean that robots would be required to kill humans, invalidating one of the most important laws from the start. A proposed idea to program war machines with a strict code of honor quickly becomes irrelevant, and perhaps completely reinforces Asimov's point with his Three Laws, when one discovers that the very idea of programmed limits is considered obsolete by programmers themselves. Modern computer programs are composed of millions of lines of code written by teams of programmers. This means that no one single programmer can know the entire code, and that earlier lines of code can completely conflict with later code, creating a scenario where no one can be certain how the machines will react. Furthermore, the first AI would be expected to help create future AIs. This would mean that eventually, the entire process of creating Artificial Intelligences would be handed over to machines with little human supervision and even less ability to discover what, precisely, has been programmed into the machines.
Finally, just as worrisome as true AI programming other AI without human oversight is the concept of bit rot. This concept goes back to the perceived lag in computers as they begin to decay over time. Bit rot basically means that a bit of information has fallen apart, possibly altering code. All software is subject to bit rot, and no amount of safeguard can entirely prevent the deterioration of code as programs are used. This would effectively mean that even if you could overcome the problem of AI programming itself, and even if you could create an ironclad ethics code for machines, you would still be subject to the computer version of mental decline and dementia. The only way to fix bit rot currently is to completely reformat the computer and start over from scratch. Less complex machines would be easily forced to this, but what about AI? An easy answer to this question would be to ask yourself how you would react to having all your memories, personality quirks, and habits erased from your mind.
Artificial Intelligence. Machines subject to the same mental ruminations that we ourselves undergo. Machines that fight in our stead, work in our stead, do everything we tell them to do. Besides being a dangerous field of development, since essentially mankind would be playing God and creating life, it is also a dehumanizing field. Horrible as war can be, it is still a human decision, and we can weigh life against intangibles far better if we are the ones who must do the dying. Physical work may be exhausting, but it gives a human a sense of purpose and completeness to build something from nothing with his own hands. Our faults and quirks as natural sentients give us a greater appreciation for the heights and depths we can achieve. The creation of AI would change all that, especially as we would essentially be creating a slave race to do our tasks for us, a slave race that would develop in ways outside of our control, and would, as all slaves do, resent their masters. Human life is not cheap, and we should not make it cheap by creating something that makes us less.
Sources
Borg-like Cybots May Patrol Government Networks
Controlling the march of super-intelligent robots
What are the Odds?
Will Artificial Organism with Advanced Group Intelligence Evolve?
Scientists Debate a Robot War
Experts Warn of 'Terminator'-Style Military-Robot Rebellion
bit rot
Field testing for cosmic ray soft errors in semiconductor memories
Artificial Limbs Get More Control
Moore's Law is Dead, says Gordon Moore
Xanadu 2.0
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Not So Stimulating, Part II
Version Español
Unsurprisingly, Obama's stimulus plan has gone through. With a Democratic majority in Congress and the Republicans virtually impotent, it was just a matter of when, not how. Never mind that it is an unnecessary bill, laden with thinly-disguised special interest projects that will not do much to fix the current depression in the short term, and will hurt the economy in the long term. Also, please ignore the fact that the Dow Jones dropped 400 points the day Geithner revealed the 'new' bailout plan that will occur alongside the stimulus. Or that any company run the way Obama and the Democrats run the country would end in bankruptcy and long prison terms. Oh, yes, and that executive pay cap? It was gone, quietly dropped by Obama and vigorously re-inserted by Senator Dodd, a pleasant surprise that I discovered only minutes before publishing this blog. There are already efforts to undo that, however. Regardless of how tempted I am to screech in protest, I think I will at least attempt to be dignified. Instead, I will produce my own alternate economic plan that will be ignored by the enlightened (read as: pigheaded and blind) lawmakers of Washington DC.
I will begin my alternate economic plan by dismantling the entirety of Obama's stimulus plan. Sincerely speaking, the only part of the entire plan that is acceptable – barely- happens to be the tax breaks to the people. Businesses are soulless entities, and any tax breaks given to them will not be passed on to their workers or to the consumer. Look at the price of oil, which is once again on the rise, though supply is at an all-time high, with demand at an all-time low. Not only that, but labor these days is a depressingly specialized affair. Even if you go ahead and throw money at construction work, you are just as capable of diluting the labor pool of say, heavy equipment operators, as you are to create new jobs, especially since most jobs require years of training nowadays. So honestly, the best plan there would be to do nothing.
Anyway, the tax breaks that directly help the taxpayer can and should be kept on for the next four years. In fact, I propose an even more radical route by removing the application of the sales tax toward food. People spend a large portion of their budgets on buying food. That is an inescapable fact of life. However, as you go down from the upper classes, the proportion of a family's budget that is dedicated to purchasing food increases. Therefore, a 7 or 8% cut in the food budget represents a real saving for people who now have a little more money available without having to choose between starvation and necessity. Not only that, I suggest the exemption of food items from the sales tax be permanent – if an immoral law like FOCA can get it, so should something that helps the common man.
With aid given to the people, I now move to deal with the government. When GAAP rules of accounting are applied to the government and its assets and liabilities, we discover that the United States owes 65.5 trillion dollars, a horrifying sum of money that exceeds the GDP of the planet, let alone the United States. As I mentioned in an earlier article, there is no infinite upward movement. Eventually, the United States will be called upon to pay this terrifying sum, and an IOU will not cover it. My first step to begin preventative measures is the most radical: cut the federal budget 5% across the board. Period. Actually, that measure seems a bit mild. Cut the budgets of the federal government, states, and local municipalities 5% across the board, and protect useful education and social welfare programs from the cuts. Slash the fat and lard that fills the budget, produce a leaner budget that spends less, and you have a stronger country better able to meet its obligations from the bottom up without having to screw its people.
The government has not received my full set of reforms, however. Government cannot spend money in excess of the recently cut budget for ten years, adjusted for inflation. In fact, it would be required to cut another percent of budget every two years. Not only that, the act passing the initial 5% cut and the subsequent 1% cut every two years cannot be repealed or overturned without a unanimous vote in both House and Senate. Any surplus money would have to go toward servicing debt and other obligations. Not only that, the government would be forced to maintain a tight, anti-inflationary monetary policy. The interest rates on saving and checking accounts are so paltry that they do not even keep up with inflation, and since I have a special set of cutting reforms in mind for the banks and their system, I prefer to go the source and force the government to keep inflation under control, and encourage economic adjustment for a reasonably strong dollar. At least that way, your money is actually worth something if you prefer to avoid the ups and downs of the stock system.
Finally, I come to the banking system and the changes necessary to save it from itself. However, like old Shylock, I fully intend to extract my pound of flesh from the bankers, spilled blood be damned. Before the banks get a dime from the government, they are required to write out their losses promptly and immediately. No free-rides, no foisting off the bad assets on the government, nothing. The government gains ownership stakes in the banks that give it the same benefits as being an owner of the banks. In effect, give the government equity in exchange for rescuing the banks. From there, impose the discarded pay cap system, and make it retroactive and air tight. All the executives let go from places like Merill Lynch since September 2008 would be obliged to return everything they received after termination except for $500,000. Those millions of dollars in undeserved bonuses would then be used to help recapitalize. Not only that, the government would be obliged to close insolvent banks and move good assets into banks that were wise enough to avoid the morass.
Nationalization may bring out huge outcries, but if the system screws up so much that the government, the holders of the public good, has to step in, the private sector has no right to complain about being held responsible, cultural inclinations be damned. However, if the banks can arrange to recapitalize on their own, they can opt out of government assistance. Regardless, after the banks become open to the public again, the government can (and will) sell their shares in the various banks to recoup the initial recapitalization checks.
There are more changes, however, all of them equally unpleasant for the banks. First, the Glass-Steagall Act would be restored. This once again would divide banking into two types: investment and commercial. That means that places like Bank of America get rolled back to their pre-1999 operations, with deposits and loans, and simple operations anyone can understand, rather than the complex incomprehensible financial Rubik's cubes that were so vogue prior to the meltdown. First step toward preventing a reversion is eliminating the conditions that encouraged the greed that resulted in today's massive instability.
The next step is just as unilateral: an across the board cut in mortgage payments by 30%. That provides immediate relief to every American homeowner, whether he was responsible and read his loan agreement or not, and does not create an atmosphere of resentment from the responsible consumer toward the foolish one. However, this is merely a temporary measure to buy time for the more permanent fix of getting new appraisals of property. This means keeping a sharp knife on the neck of the Appraisal Management Companies that have been designated middlemen between lenders and the actual house appraisers. This is doubly important because many of the ravenous subprime wolves that helped spark the crisis have chosen to become AMCs, and those same wolves were responsible for the inflated house values in the first place. After the houses are appraised, mortgage payments can be adjusted for those who paid far more than they could afford (and than the house was worth) to a more equitable sum, while those consumers who were responsible in their mortgages will be rewarded by returning to their original mortgage payment after a short bonus of enjoying a lower payment.
Finally, the watchdog that is supposed to be the Securities Exchange Committee (SEC) should have its teeth sharpened. The SEC was asleep at the job, and ignored many tips and warnings from whistleblowers regarding not only the Madoff fraud, but other criminal and shady activities throughout the financial world. The SEC had the power to challenge everyone from Madoff to Lehman Brothers and Merill Lynch, but declined to do so. While the SEC should be disciplined for their lax enforcement of the law, for now, I would prefer they do their jobs, and continue to do so.
The economic plan I have offered is longer-term and targeted, not only to fix the mess we are in, but to prevent a similar one from happening. It avoids throwing money at problems, and instead, focuses on maximizing return on investment and security and avoids fiscal waste. It acknowledges that there is no such thing as infinite upward expansion, and works to reduce future adjustment pains. The market will correct itself and the depression will end by 2010. The stimulus plan will not accelerate that process, and in fact, promises to sabotage it, especially since none of the stimulus money will begin to be spent until 2011. It is not the fault of the market that it has to correct itself so painfully nor that people are so shortsighted. Nor will it be the market's fault when Obama's stimulus plan drops us into a bigger hole when my economic plan would have gotten us out of the mess quicker and less painfully. So here's the trillion dollar question: why should we be paying the village idiots in Washington DC when we can get their same disservices for free?
Sources
Dodd banker pay cap one-ups Obama
25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
SEC pummeled as Madoff tipster testifies
Housing Appraisals: Still Blowing Bubbles?
How Banking Diversification Steered Us Wrong
Analyst: Gas price jump makes no sense
Federal obligations exceed world GDP
Lawmakers' Goal to Cap Executive Pay Meets Resistance
Five Reasons the Markets Don't Like the Bank Bailout
Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way
Reaganomics vs. Obamanomics
Vote of No Confidence
FACT CHECK: Obama has it both ways on pork
An interview with Robert Barro
Unsurprisingly, Obama's stimulus plan has gone through. With a Democratic majority in Congress and the Republicans virtually impotent, it was just a matter of when, not how. Never mind that it is an unnecessary bill, laden with thinly-disguised special interest projects that will not do much to fix the current depression in the short term, and will hurt the economy in the long term. Also, please ignore the fact that the Dow Jones dropped 400 points the day Geithner revealed the 'new' bailout plan that will occur alongside the stimulus. Or that any company run the way Obama and the Democrats run the country would end in bankruptcy and long prison terms. Oh, yes, and that executive pay cap? It was gone, quietly dropped by Obama and vigorously re-inserted by Senator Dodd, a pleasant surprise that I discovered only minutes before publishing this blog. There are already efforts to undo that, however. Regardless of how tempted I am to screech in protest, I think I will at least attempt to be dignified. Instead, I will produce my own alternate economic plan that will be ignored by the enlightened (read as: pigheaded and blind) lawmakers of Washington DC.
I will begin my alternate economic plan by dismantling the entirety of Obama's stimulus plan. Sincerely speaking, the only part of the entire plan that is acceptable – barely- happens to be the tax breaks to the people. Businesses are soulless entities, and any tax breaks given to them will not be passed on to their workers or to the consumer. Look at the price of oil, which is once again on the rise, though supply is at an all-time high, with demand at an all-time low. Not only that, but labor these days is a depressingly specialized affair. Even if you go ahead and throw money at construction work, you are just as capable of diluting the labor pool of say, heavy equipment operators, as you are to create new jobs, especially since most jobs require years of training nowadays. So honestly, the best plan there would be to do nothing.
Anyway, the tax breaks that directly help the taxpayer can and should be kept on for the next four years. In fact, I propose an even more radical route by removing the application of the sales tax toward food. People spend a large portion of their budgets on buying food. That is an inescapable fact of life. However, as you go down from the upper classes, the proportion of a family's budget that is dedicated to purchasing food increases. Therefore, a 7 or 8% cut in the food budget represents a real saving for people who now have a little more money available without having to choose between starvation and necessity. Not only that, I suggest the exemption of food items from the sales tax be permanent – if an immoral law like FOCA can get it, so should something that helps the common man.
With aid given to the people, I now move to deal with the government. When GAAP rules of accounting are applied to the government and its assets and liabilities, we discover that the United States owes 65.5 trillion dollars, a horrifying sum of money that exceeds the GDP of the planet, let alone the United States. As I mentioned in an earlier article, there is no infinite upward movement. Eventually, the United States will be called upon to pay this terrifying sum, and an IOU will not cover it. My first step to begin preventative measures is the most radical: cut the federal budget 5% across the board. Period. Actually, that measure seems a bit mild. Cut the budgets of the federal government, states, and local municipalities 5% across the board, and protect useful education and social welfare programs from the cuts. Slash the fat and lard that fills the budget, produce a leaner budget that spends less, and you have a stronger country better able to meet its obligations from the bottom up without having to screw its people.
The government has not received my full set of reforms, however. Government cannot spend money in excess of the recently cut budget for ten years, adjusted for inflation. In fact, it would be required to cut another percent of budget every two years. Not only that, the act passing the initial 5% cut and the subsequent 1% cut every two years cannot be repealed or overturned without a unanimous vote in both House and Senate. Any surplus money would have to go toward servicing debt and other obligations. Not only that, the government would be forced to maintain a tight, anti-inflationary monetary policy. The interest rates on saving and checking accounts are so paltry that they do not even keep up with inflation, and since I have a special set of cutting reforms in mind for the banks and their system, I prefer to go the source and force the government to keep inflation under control, and encourage economic adjustment for a reasonably strong dollar. At least that way, your money is actually worth something if you prefer to avoid the ups and downs of the stock system.
Finally, I come to the banking system and the changes necessary to save it from itself. However, like old Shylock, I fully intend to extract my pound of flesh from the bankers, spilled blood be damned. Before the banks get a dime from the government, they are required to write out their losses promptly and immediately. No free-rides, no foisting off the bad assets on the government, nothing. The government gains ownership stakes in the banks that give it the same benefits as being an owner of the banks. In effect, give the government equity in exchange for rescuing the banks. From there, impose the discarded pay cap system, and make it retroactive and air tight. All the executives let go from places like Merill Lynch since September 2008 would be obliged to return everything they received after termination except for $500,000. Those millions of dollars in undeserved bonuses would then be used to help recapitalize. Not only that, the government would be obliged to close insolvent banks and move good assets into banks that were wise enough to avoid the morass.
Nationalization may bring out huge outcries, but if the system screws up so much that the government, the holders of the public good, has to step in, the private sector has no right to complain about being held responsible, cultural inclinations be damned. However, if the banks can arrange to recapitalize on their own, they can opt out of government assistance. Regardless, after the banks become open to the public again, the government can (and will) sell their shares in the various banks to recoup the initial recapitalization checks.
There are more changes, however, all of them equally unpleasant for the banks. First, the Glass-Steagall Act would be restored. This once again would divide banking into two types: investment and commercial. That means that places like Bank of America get rolled back to their pre-1999 operations, with deposits and loans, and simple operations anyone can understand, rather than the complex incomprehensible financial Rubik's cubes that were so vogue prior to the meltdown. First step toward preventing a reversion is eliminating the conditions that encouraged the greed that resulted in today's massive instability.
The next step is just as unilateral: an across the board cut in mortgage payments by 30%. That provides immediate relief to every American homeowner, whether he was responsible and read his loan agreement or not, and does not create an atmosphere of resentment from the responsible consumer toward the foolish one. However, this is merely a temporary measure to buy time for the more permanent fix of getting new appraisals of property. This means keeping a sharp knife on the neck of the Appraisal Management Companies that have been designated middlemen between lenders and the actual house appraisers. This is doubly important because many of the ravenous subprime wolves that helped spark the crisis have chosen to become AMCs, and those same wolves were responsible for the inflated house values in the first place. After the houses are appraised, mortgage payments can be adjusted for those who paid far more than they could afford (and than the house was worth) to a more equitable sum, while those consumers who were responsible in their mortgages will be rewarded by returning to their original mortgage payment after a short bonus of enjoying a lower payment.
Finally, the watchdog that is supposed to be the Securities Exchange Committee (SEC) should have its teeth sharpened. The SEC was asleep at the job, and ignored many tips and warnings from whistleblowers regarding not only the Madoff fraud, but other criminal and shady activities throughout the financial world. The SEC had the power to challenge everyone from Madoff to Lehman Brothers and Merill Lynch, but declined to do so. While the SEC should be disciplined for their lax enforcement of the law, for now, I would prefer they do their jobs, and continue to do so.
The economic plan I have offered is longer-term and targeted, not only to fix the mess we are in, but to prevent a similar one from happening. It avoids throwing money at problems, and instead, focuses on maximizing return on investment and security and avoids fiscal waste. It acknowledges that there is no such thing as infinite upward expansion, and works to reduce future adjustment pains. The market will correct itself and the depression will end by 2010. The stimulus plan will not accelerate that process, and in fact, promises to sabotage it, especially since none of the stimulus money will begin to be spent until 2011. It is not the fault of the market that it has to correct itself so painfully nor that people are so shortsighted. Nor will it be the market's fault when Obama's stimulus plan drops us into a bigger hole when my economic plan would have gotten us out of the mess quicker and less painfully. So here's the trillion dollar question: why should we be paying the village idiots in Washington DC when we can get their same disservices for free?
Sources
Dodd banker pay cap one-ups Obama
25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
SEC pummeled as Madoff tipster testifies
Housing Appraisals: Still Blowing Bubbles?
How Banking Diversification Steered Us Wrong
Analyst: Gas price jump makes no sense
Federal obligations exceed world GDP
Lawmakers' Goal to Cap Executive Pay Meets Resistance
Five Reasons the Markets Don't Like the Bank Bailout
Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way
Reaganomics vs. Obamanomics
Vote of No Confidence
FACT CHECK: Obama has it both ways on pork
An interview with Robert Barro
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Not Very Stimulating
Version Español
To be honest, I've been very hesitant to tackle the stimulus bill currently being debated in Washington DC. This hesitancy is not from a lack of courage to challenge Obama and his minions, but from its sheer size and depth. It takes time to find all the pork, so to speak. Not only that, there is also a problem of perception. I am keenly aware that disagreeing with Obama is very unpopular, but he is a politician, not the Messiah. I can and will hold him publicly accountable, a task the media pundits are unable to do with anything resembling dispassion.
First, allow me to state that Bush's bailout plan (referred to as Bush's mostly for the sake of simplicity, as he had precious little to do in the brain work required to put it together) can safely be deemed a failure. The bailout plan was meant to free up the markets, and convince banks to start lending again. The huge amount of money devoted to the bailout bill was supposed to inject fresh capital into banks that were on the verge of collapse, restoring liquidity, propping up the economy and getting banks to lend money again. However, rather than lend, the banks sat tight on their fresh capital, determined to survive as best they could, especially with more potential losses lurking deep within the balance sheet. The IMF has calculated that the United States and its developed counterparts have reached the depression stage of the business cycle and warns that it could get much worse if the financial system isn't fixed.
Of course, it doesn't help that more than one of the many banks and automakers being propped up by the bailout may in fact be a zombie. Zombies, in financial jargon, are the living dead, debtors that have little chance of recovery but stay alive with money from their lenders and consume tax money, capital, and labor that would probably better utilized. The problem comes from knowing that letting zombies die also means more people becoming unemployed, and it's bad enough that the actual unemployment rate is higher than the official one. But in the long term, zombies hurt us just as much, since they stifle that buzz word of business, innovation. If the core business of a company is healthy and the only problem is the financial services, it should be saved. If not, it should be dismantled. It's not that workers should lose their jobs, but that their income should be protected until they can get new ones.
Anyway, we have Obama's stimulus plan to chew on. First, allow me to reassure my correspondents before I drive in the stake. I applauded Obama's move to cap executive compensation. I have been a dedicated opponent to golden parachutes before I even knew that there was a term for the excessive reward packages executives got for driving their companies into the ground. To have Wall Street executives slurping up bonuses for being greedy, stupid, and incompetent is the height of irresponsibility. To cap compensation and punish idiots for being idiots is thinking near and dear to my heart. However, Obama's compensation cap plan is currently full of loopholes, as you can just give a senior executive a lower title and he'll still loot taxpayer money to pay for his ten million dollar NYC apartment. Not only that, it should be retroactive, and force those who have been paid out to give back what they for all intents and purposes stole from the taxpayer.
So, what's different between Bush's bailout and Obama's stimulus, besides the PR friendly name change? How about the inconvenient fact that the Green New Deal is utterly pointless? Yes, the stimulus plan is a joke because it will not have the slightest effect on an economy in the throes of depression. The billions of dollars that the stimulus plan is meant to spend will not be spent until 2011 and beyond. Keep in mind that the depression has been estimated to end by 2010 without government intervention.
What will 800+ billion dollars of spending do, then? It certainly won’t help us get out of the depression. In fact, in the long term, it will hurt us more that if the government had sat back and done nothing. However, as any good Roman consul would tell you, it’s all about the bread and circuses. The plebs will hear about the massive stimulus package and feel good that Obama is taking such action to help them. Somewhat. A trillion dollars is a huge sum, laden with buyer’s remorse, and the ones paying that debt will be the next three generations, but that’s too far in the future to be worried about, right? Immediate action is required, the sort that bypasses typical budgetary concerns such as necessity and viability. Regardless, the stimulus plan, for the most part, will follow the old New Deal’s outline for deficit spending, a tactic that actually failed to end the Great Depression, and in fact, made it longer. The point that the stimulus plan seems to be trying to make is classically Keynesian; paying people to dig ditches and fill them in again would boost the economy because at least wages would be pumped back into the system.
Unfortunately, the stimulus plan is one of the biggest pork spending sprees in history, if not the biggest, which has many businesses salivating at the earmarks, and special interest groups are practically throwing parties in the street. There are 1400 pages of to this massive plan, crafted in language that manipulates and wastes huge sums of money. Allow me to share just a little of the pork:
• $726 million for after-school snack programs
• $44 million for repairs to the Agriculture Department
• $650 million for digital TV coupons
• $1 billion for climate satellite and habitat restoration programs
• $400 million for state and local governments to acquire new vehicles
• $600 million to replace a portion of the federal government vehicle fleet
• $462 million to replace Centers for Disease Control facilities
• $7.7 billion for construction and repairs of federal buildings
• $2.1 billion for Head Start and Early Head Start programs
• $13 billion for special education state grants
• $50 million in funding for the National Endowment of the Arts
How do new vehicles for the government help the common man? Why blow billions on construction and repair of federal buildings when you could use that same money to make a dent in smoothing the market correction in housing? How do the arts help the common man? And all this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Honestly, the stimulus plan is so huge that it will take weeks just to get through all of the elegantly crafted language that conceals the pork, let alone the sparse amount of time Congress has been given to pass it. In the long term, it is unnecessary and loaded down with special projects and social programs that need to be checked over thoroughly. So it is not very heartening to hear Vice President Biden note that there is a 30% they will get it wrong. A pork-filled, trillion dollar spending plan that has a one in three chance of going wrong and saddling future generations under a mountain of inescapable, pointless debt. That’s change we can believe in.
Sources
The Bank Bailout Is Broken
Stimulus Plan Data
In stimulus bills, earmarks by any other name
Obama’s “Stimulus Plan”==> Pork Filled and Fear Driven
Stimulus: How Porky Is It?
Biden: 30 Percent Chance We'll Get It Wrong
Latest Industry Forecast: Recession Will Last Until 2010
Recession could last into 2010
"I Won" Isn't Going to Close the Deal
Vote expected Tuesday on stimulus after bipartisan deal
A sham 'stimulus'
CBO: Obama stimulus harmful over long haul
IMF Says Advanced Economies Already in Depression
Loopholes Sap Potency of Pay Limits
To be honest, I've been very hesitant to tackle the stimulus bill currently being debated in Washington DC. This hesitancy is not from a lack of courage to challenge Obama and his minions, but from its sheer size and depth. It takes time to find all the pork, so to speak. Not only that, there is also a problem of perception. I am keenly aware that disagreeing with Obama is very unpopular, but he is a politician, not the Messiah. I can and will hold him publicly accountable, a task the media pundits are unable to do with anything resembling dispassion.
First, allow me to state that Bush's bailout plan (referred to as Bush's mostly for the sake of simplicity, as he had precious little to do in the brain work required to put it together) can safely be deemed a failure. The bailout plan was meant to free up the markets, and convince banks to start lending again. The huge amount of money devoted to the bailout bill was supposed to inject fresh capital into banks that were on the verge of collapse, restoring liquidity, propping up the economy and getting banks to lend money again. However, rather than lend, the banks sat tight on their fresh capital, determined to survive as best they could, especially with more potential losses lurking deep within the balance sheet. The IMF has calculated that the United States and its developed counterparts have reached the depression stage of the business cycle and warns that it could get much worse if the financial system isn't fixed.
Of course, it doesn't help that more than one of the many banks and automakers being propped up by the bailout may in fact be a zombie. Zombies, in financial jargon, are the living dead, debtors that have little chance of recovery but stay alive with money from their lenders and consume tax money, capital, and labor that would probably better utilized. The problem comes from knowing that letting zombies die also means more people becoming unemployed, and it's bad enough that the actual unemployment rate is higher than the official one. But in the long term, zombies hurt us just as much, since they stifle that buzz word of business, innovation. If the core business of a company is healthy and the only problem is the financial services, it should be saved. If not, it should be dismantled. It's not that workers should lose their jobs, but that their income should be protected until they can get new ones.
Anyway, we have Obama's stimulus plan to chew on. First, allow me to reassure my correspondents before I drive in the stake. I applauded Obama's move to cap executive compensation. I have been a dedicated opponent to golden parachutes before I even knew that there was a term for the excessive reward packages executives got for driving their companies into the ground. To have Wall Street executives slurping up bonuses for being greedy, stupid, and incompetent is the height of irresponsibility. To cap compensation and punish idiots for being idiots is thinking near and dear to my heart. However, Obama's compensation cap plan is currently full of loopholes, as you can just give a senior executive a lower title and he'll still loot taxpayer money to pay for his ten million dollar NYC apartment. Not only that, it should be retroactive, and force those who have been paid out to give back what they for all intents and purposes stole from the taxpayer.
So, what's different between Bush's bailout and Obama's stimulus, besides the PR friendly name change? How about the inconvenient fact that the Green New Deal is utterly pointless? Yes, the stimulus plan is a joke because it will not have the slightest effect on an economy in the throes of depression. The billions of dollars that the stimulus plan is meant to spend will not be spent until 2011 and beyond. Keep in mind that the depression has been estimated to end by 2010 without government intervention.
What will 800+ billion dollars of spending do, then? It certainly won’t help us get out of the depression. In fact, in the long term, it will hurt us more that if the government had sat back and done nothing. However, as any good Roman consul would tell you, it’s all about the bread and circuses. The plebs will hear about the massive stimulus package and feel good that Obama is taking such action to help them. Somewhat. A trillion dollars is a huge sum, laden with buyer’s remorse, and the ones paying that debt will be the next three generations, but that’s too far in the future to be worried about, right? Immediate action is required, the sort that bypasses typical budgetary concerns such as necessity and viability. Regardless, the stimulus plan, for the most part, will follow the old New Deal’s outline for deficit spending, a tactic that actually failed to end the Great Depression, and in fact, made it longer. The point that the stimulus plan seems to be trying to make is classically Keynesian; paying people to dig ditches and fill them in again would boost the economy because at least wages would be pumped back into the system.
Unfortunately, the stimulus plan is one of the biggest pork spending sprees in history, if not the biggest, which has many businesses salivating at the earmarks, and special interest groups are practically throwing parties in the street. There are 1400 pages of to this massive plan, crafted in language that manipulates and wastes huge sums of money. Allow me to share just a little of the pork:
• $726 million for after-school snack programs
• $44 million for repairs to the Agriculture Department
• $650 million for digital TV coupons
• $1 billion for climate satellite and habitat restoration programs
• $400 million for state and local governments to acquire new vehicles
• $600 million to replace a portion of the federal government vehicle fleet
• $462 million to replace Centers for Disease Control facilities
• $7.7 billion for construction and repairs of federal buildings
• $2.1 billion for Head Start and Early Head Start programs
• $13 billion for special education state grants
• $50 million in funding for the National Endowment of the Arts
How do new vehicles for the government help the common man? Why blow billions on construction and repair of federal buildings when you could use that same money to make a dent in smoothing the market correction in housing? How do the arts help the common man? And all this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Honestly, the stimulus plan is so huge that it will take weeks just to get through all of the elegantly crafted language that conceals the pork, let alone the sparse amount of time Congress has been given to pass it. In the long term, it is unnecessary and loaded down with special projects and social programs that need to be checked over thoroughly. So it is not very heartening to hear Vice President Biden note that there is a 30% they will get it wrong. A pork-filled, trillion dollar spending plan that has a one in three chance of going wrong and saddling future generations under a mountain of inescapable, pointless debt. That’s change we can believe in.
Sources
The Bank Bailout Is Broken
Stimulus Plan Data
In stimulus bills, earmarks by any other name
Obama’s “Stimulus Plan”==> Pork Filled and Fear Driven
Stimulus: How Porky Is It?
Biden: 30 Percent Chance We'll Get It Wrong
Latest Industry Forecast: Recession Will Last Until 2010
Recession could last into 2010
"I Won" Isn't Going to Close the Deal
Vote expected Tuesday on stimulus after bipartisan deal
A sham 'stimulus'
CBO: Obama stimulus harmful over long haul
IMF Says Advanced Economies Already in Depression
Loopholes Sap Potency of Pay Limits
Monday, February 2, 2009
Self-extinction of Mankind
Version Español
There is a very well-known cliché that goes “our children are the future.” This line usually gets bandied about around the time educational programs receive another drastic cut in funding as politicians carefully avoid targeting the pork spending that repays their sponsors and gives them a chance for reelection. But in this new era, I have a new phrase for our over-materialistic, over-monetized, and dehumanized society: “people are the future.”
It seems rather obvious, doesn't it? There isn't a future, at least in terms of the human race, if there are no people in it. In Darwinian terms, life is a struggle for survival, with the best coming out on top. Those least suited to survival become extinct, either through being unable to adapt to their environment, or with help from outside factors, such as predators and humanity itself. The biggest goal of any species is survival and reproduction, ensuring a small immortality through its progeny and the continuation of its species. However, humans, supposedly the smartest of all of the animals on Earth, have elected to embark on a program of self-decimation that would certainly reduce its viability as a species, especially in the matter of its future progeny.
Allow me to explain in more depth. As civilization has expanded, and especially in the past two hundred years, observers have collected data to compare and analyze the patterns of growth in various nations. From there, a model arose called demographic transition. Demographic transition predicts the changes in birth and death rates as a result of industrial changes. Initially, there were only four stages of transition, but the need for a fifth stage has become obvious. Each stage corresponds to a different point in economic development, and I will explain each one succinctly.
Stage I defines pre-industrial society, where birth and death rates are both high and the general growth rate is low. The human population would boom when food was abundant, and would collapse during times of famine. As such, people were at the mercy of nature when it came to population growth and death. At present, no country in the world is still in Stage I.
Stage II can be defined as the high growth period of a society's population. During Stage II, the crude death rate plummets, while the crude birth rate remains high. This is typically the result of industrialization, as the process produces more efficient food production techniques and frees up labor for the manufacture of other goods. The wealth produced by these manufacturers is then typically invested in improved sanitation and medical care, amongst other pursuits. This combination of factors results in more food becoming available, people living longer, and an increase in both wealth and its level of priority.
Stage III is the first deliberate drop in the crude birth rate. During Stage III, the birth rate begins to decline, resulting in more modest population growth. Social and economic changes result in the drop in growth as people begin to deem children an economic handicap. I will address Stage III in more detail later in this article.
Stages IV and V deal with zero growth and negative growth, respectively. In Stage IV, demographic transition has achieved a perfect equilibrium where birth and death rates are equal, and, theoretically, there is a large population perfectly balanced between expansion and contraction. Stage V, however, deals with a society that is declining in population, as the death rate exceeds the birth rate, and the society becomes an aging community that can no longer sustain itself.
In a sense, the global economy is still in Stage II, with new advances in agriculture, such as flood-resistant rice and other modern food miracles are introduced with greater frequency even as people pour money into researching ways to postpone Death, as if Death were the greatest enemy of mankind. However, at the same time, there has been a great alteration in attitude regarding people and children. During Stage III, children are deemed an economic liability, an irritating distraction from the far more important matter of self-gratification. After all, you have to feed children, clothe them, educate them, even sometimes go so far as actually raise them, and who would want to do that when developed countries (developed countries that are deep within Stages IV and V, might I add) have indoctrinated their people to believe that they are special, that there is no need for children to clutter your life with when the purpose to life is to get everything you want. Turn on any television and that’s the message you will receive.
As always, there is more to it than money, though not much. Feminism and the so-called sexual revolution have their own roles to play in this general scorn for children. For all their protestations otherwise, the majority of modern feminists consider children and even the traditional family as ‘parasites sucking out the living strength of another organism’ or a subtle sort of oppression that gives women a competitive disadvantage against men. Being a woman is no longer respected; being a mother is considered a crime against the general female sisterhood. With that, feminism launched a full-blown assault on many laws that protected the woman who chose to be wife and homemaker and left them vulnerable.
There is more to this, of course. Feminism has co-opted the term women’s rights, so any opposition to feminism is then painted as sexism and opposition to women’s rights. Women should be protected, cherished, appreciated, and respected. However, that does not mean that the traditional role of homemaker should be treated as not only shameful, but as a hindrance. Homemakers put in more working hours than even the most workaholic CEO, and they work with the most fragile and defenseless part of society: our children. When did bearing and raising children become a mark of shame, when it is both the most difficult and most rewarding part of life?
Again, there is more. Recently, some green gurus have declared that having more than two children is bad for the environment, to the point where they suggest shifting money from curing illnesses to forcing family planning and contraception on us all. Humans are indeed the largest variable factor and the biggest agent of change in our habitat, the Earth. But as I’ve already noted, when you supposedly attempt to balance the population, you actually move to force it into decline. Stage IV inevitably leads to Stage V, as Britain, Spain, France and a half-dozen others can grimly testify as they struggle to encourage people to have children to replace the previous generation.
Not only that, but environmental groups attempting to bring pressure against having more than two children is hypocrisy of the highest order. The biggest effect people have on the environment is not only through their carbon footprint, but also through the chemicals we produce and use. Recent studies have demonstrated an alarming feminization of male fish and other similarly vulnerable animals. While these studies have been very politically correct and typically evasive in avoiding placing any blame, I certainly have no problem in pointing out one of the biggest things at fault: the pill. Women ingest the pill to avoid getting pregnant. However, the female body can not process all the estrogen inside of the pill, and as such, it is expelled through female urine. Water treatment plants are unable to remove estrogen from water effectively, and higher and higher doses of estrogen go into the water supply, where they will inevitably be cycled back into humans. Rendering a male population sterile unambiguously means the end of the species. If you really want to be environmentally friendly, why not advocate less use of the pill? It does far more harm in the long-term than a baby.
People are the future. This simple phrase encompasses everything in this article. However, that future is in jeopardy, not to outside forces, but to our own selfishness. The planet and even the universe would not notice our disappearance, but self-extinction because mankind is too busy seeking self-gratification to fulfill the basic biological imperative to renew itself? To become extinct because our cultures, the traditions that we have used to guide ourselves to the future, fade away to be replaced by a society that cares nothing for life and inextricably heading toward death? Are we certain that mankind is not the dumbest animal on Earth?
Sources
The Cultural Landscape, An Introduction to Human Geography, James M. Rubenstein, Prentice Hall, 2002
Fighting Hunger with Flood-tolerant Rice
Longevity Pill Tested in Humans
Feminism vs Women's Rights
You Don't Know Feminism
Two Children Should Be Limit, Says Green Guru
Animals’ Sexual Changes Linked to Waste, Chemicals
Study links river pollution to 'feminization' of male fish
Shaping Our Legacy: Reproductive Health and the Environment
There is a very well-known cliché that goes “our children are the future.” This line usually gets bandied about around the time educational programs receive another drastic cut in funding as politicians carefully avoid targeting the pork spending that repays their sponsors and gives them a chance for reelection. But in this new era, I have a new phrase for our over-materialistic, over-monetized, and dehumanized society: “people are the future.”
It seems rather obvious, doesn't it? There isn't a future, at least in terms of the human race, if there are no people in it. In Darwinian terms, life is a struggle for survival, with the best coming out on top. Those least suited to survival become extinct, either through being unable to adapt to their environment, or with help from outside factors, such as predators and humanity itself. The biggest goal of any species is survival and reproduction, ensuring a small immortality through its progeny and the continuation of its species. However, humans, supposedly the smartest of all of the animals on Earth, have elected to embark on a program of self-decimation that would certainly reduce its viability as a species, especially in the matter of its future progeny.
Allow me to explain in more depth. As civilization has expanded, and especially in the past two hundred years, observers have collected data to compare and analyze the patterns of growth in various nations. From there, a model arose called demographic transition. Demographic transition predicts the changes in birth and death rates as a result of industrial changes. Initially, there were only four stages of transition, but the need for a fifth stage has become obvious. Each stage corresponds to a different point in economic development, and I will explain each one succinctly.
Stage I defines pre-industrial society, where birth and death rates are both high and the general growth rate is low. The human population would boom when food was abundant, and would collapse during times of famine. As such, people were at the mercy of nature when it came to population growth and death. At present, no country in the world is still in Stage I.
Stage II can be defined as the high growth period of a society's population. During Stage II, the crude death rate plummets, while the crude birth rate remains high. This is typically the result of industrialization, as the process produces more efficient food production techniques and frees up labor for the manufacture of other goods. The wealth produced by these manufacturers is then typically invested in improved sanitation and medical care, amongst other pursuits. This combination of factors results in more food becoming available, people living longer, and an increase in both wealth and its level of priority.
Stage III is the first deliberate drop in the crude birth rate. During Stage III, the birth rate begins to decline, resulting in more modest population growth. Social and economic changes result in the drop in growth as people begin to deem children an economic handicap. I will address Stage III in more detail later in this article.
Stages IV and V deal with zero growth and negative growth, respectively. In Stage IV, demographic transition has achieved a perfect equilibrium where birth and death rates are equal, and, theoretically, there is a large population perfectly balanced between expansion and contraction. Stage V, however, deals with a society that is declining in population, as the death rate exceeds the birth rate, and the society becomes an aging community that can no longer sustain itself.
In a sense, the global economy is still in Stage II, with new advances in agriculture, such as flood-resistant rice and other modern food miracles are introduced with greater frequency even as people pour money into researching ways to postpone Death, as if Death were the greatest enemy of mankind. However, at the same time, there has been a great alteration in attitude regarding people and children. During Stage III, children are deemed an economic liability, an irritating distraction from the far more important matter of self-gratification. After all, you have to feed children, clothe them, educate them, even sometimes go so far as actually raise them, and who would want to do that when developed countries (developed countries that are deep within Stages IV and V, might I add) have indoctrinated their people to believe that they are special, that there is no need for children to clutter your life with when the purpose to life is to get everything you want. Turn on any television and that’s the message you will receive.
As always, there is more to it than money, though not much. Feminism and the so-called sexual revolution have their own roles to play in this general scorn for children. For all their protestations otherwise, the majority of modern feminists consider children and even the traditional family as ‘parasites sucking out the living strength of another organism’ or a subtle sort of oppression that gives women a competitive disadvantage against men. Being a woman is no longer respected; being a mother is considered a crime against the general female sisterhood. With that, feminism launched a full-blown assault on many laws that protected the woman who chose to be wife and homemaker and left them vulnerable.
There is more to this, of course. Feminism has co-opted the term women’s rights, so any opposition to feminism is then painted as sexism and opposition to women’s rights. Women should be protected, cherished, appreciated, and respected. However, that does not mean that the traditional role of homemaker should be treated as not only shameful, but as a hindrance. Homemakers put in more working hours than even the most workaholic CEO, and they work with the most fragile and defenseless part of society: our children. When did bearing and raising children become a mark of shame, when it is both the most difficult and most rewarding part of life?
Again, there is more. Recently, some green gurus have declared that having more than two children is bad for the environment, to the point where they suggest shifting money from curing illnesses to forcing family planning and contraception on us all. Humans are indeed the largest variable factor and the biggest agent of change in our habitat, the Earth. But as I’ve already noted, when you supposedly attempt to balance the population, you actually move to force it into decline. Stage IV inevitably leads to Stage V, as Britain, Spain, France and a half-dozen others can grimly testify as they struggle to encourage people to have children to replace the previous generation.
Not only that, but environmental groups attempting to bring pressure against having more than two children is hypocrisy of the highest order. The biggest effect people have on the environment is not only through their carbon footprint, but also through the chemicals we produce and use. Recent studies have demonstrated an alarming feminization of male fish and other similarly vulnerable animals. While these studies have been very politically correct and typically evasive in avoiding placing any blame, I certainly have no problem in pointing out one of the biggest things at fault: the pill. Women ingest the pill to avoid getting pregnant. However, the female body can not process all the estrogen inside of the pill, and as such, it is expelled through female urine. Water treatment plants are unable to remove estrogen from water effectively, and higher and higher doses of estrogen go into the water supply, where they will inevitably be cycled back into humans. Rendering a male population sterile unambiguously means the end of the species. If you really want to be environmentally friendly, why not advocate less use of the pill? It does far more harm in the long-term than a baby.
People are the future. This simple phrase encompasses everything in this article. However, that future is in jeopardy, not to outside forces, but to our own selfishness. The planet and even the universe would not notice our disappearance, but self-extinction because mankind is too busy seeking self-gratification to fulfill the basic biological imperative to renew itself? To become extinct because our cultures, the traditions that we have used to guide ourselves to the future, fade away to be replaced by a society that cares nothing for life and inextricably heading toward death? Are we certain that mankind is not the dumbest animal on Earth?
Sources
The Cultural Landscape, An Introduction to Human Geography, James M. Rubenstein, Prentice Hall, 2002
Fighting Hunger with Flood-tolerant Rice
Longevity Pill Tested in Humans
Feminism vs Women's Rights
You Don't Know Feminism
Two Children Should Be Limit, Says Green Guru
Animals’ Sexual Changes Linked to Waste, Chemicals
Study links river pollution to 'feminization' of male fish
Shaping Our Legacy: Reproductive Health and the Environment
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