Blogging at Kosmosaic Books

I am no longer blogging here. All my future blogs will be at my publishing website: Kosmosaicbooks.com. 

The Robotic Age

From The Chrysalis Age (2002):

 The long slow march toward artificial consciousness will proceed as fast as memory and chip speed will allow it. What the final result of this research will be is impossible to guess at this stage, but even if scientists are unable to create a machine that is aware, they will likely be able to create one that can imitate intelligence well enough to do many human tasks. This will inevitably change the structure of many societies, and we will necessarily need to prepare for it. Today a world of thinking machines seems like a far flung possibility, but with the rate at which computer sophistication increases many of us will see a computer capable of imitating, and thus replacing, simple human actions within our lifetimes. What would be useful is if the computer and robotics organizations in existence today could create an international panel working with major governments to examine and address these issues. Primary among them should be the examination of how robotics, even before advanced computer intelligence, will change the distribution of labor around the world. If we do not prepare ourselves for this shift, it will cause even more upheaval than the shift from manual to machine labor did during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century. This can be managed and assuaged by planning in advance how to shift from human to machine labor on a worldwide scale. We should establish educational programs for retraining as well as social security nets to ensure social and cultural stability in the nations most heavily affected. This planning should begin now to avoid the suffering that will inevitably come from being taken off guard and unprepared by the sudden changes we are bound to experience.

From Reuters, two days ago:

Contract manufacturers such as Foxconn, which also counts Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Nokia among its clients, are moving parts of their manufacturing to inland Chinese cities or other emerging markets.
They are also boosting research and development investments to lift their thin margins.

"Workers' wages are increasing so quickly that some companies can't take it longer," said Dan Bin, a fund manager at Shenzhen-based Eastern Bay Investment Management, which invests in technology and consumer-related shares in China and Hong Kong.

"Automation is a general trend in many sectors in China, such as electronics. Of course some companies will consider moving their manufacturing overseas, but it's easier said than done when the supply chain is here."

The China Business News on Monday quoted Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou as saying the company planned to use 1 million robots within three years, up from about 10,000 robots in use now and an expected 300,000 next year.

Debt Ceiling Crisis

So the debt ceiling crisis is still looming. Seems clear that we will have to make cuts in things we like because we have been borrowing to pay for them for too long. Also seems inevitable that we will have to raise taxes, on every one eventually, but the wealthy first. Unfortunately, it seems only the first if likely to happen anytime soon.

The conservative logic says that you can't raise taxes on the wealthy because they use their money to create jobs.  Where are those jobs?  9.2% unemployment. Where are they putting their money? Dow Jones is over 12,000. Seems they are putting their money in the stock market.

The wealthy do not spend their money in ways that create significant jobs. There aren't enough wealthy for their consumption of common goods to impact the economy and job creation. Moreover, the luxury items the wealthy purchase do not require significant labor pools to manufacture. A simple thought experiment: How many workers does it take to manufacture a $5000 handbag?  Now how many workers does it take to manufacture 100 $50 bags?

One recurrent conservative meme is that every dollar in taxes is a dollar that is taken out of the economy.  That makes no sense. The money collected as taxes goes back into the economy to pay the salaries of government workers, government contracts, constructions projects, unemployment benefits, etc.. Money that the very wealthy keep from lower taxes it more likely to go into the stock market than the economy.

Money put into the stock market is speculative investment. By and large, it does not create jobs (except for stock brokers). So, money that might be used for taxes, and put back into the economy is instead being put in the stock market. Speculative investors hope to make a profit and pay a lower tax rate than they would with earned income from productive investment.

We need to structure taxes to encourage productive rather than speculative investment. Productive investment, like venture capital, creates jobs. The money is used to hire people, rent office space, purchase equipment and machinery. But venture capital investment peaked in 2000. Shortly after that capital gains taxes were lowered. It made more sense for people with money to invest to stick it in speculative investments. The stock market. Money invested in the stock market doesn't create jobs (unless it is in new stock offerings used to expand companies - bonds do put money into the economy).

We'll need to cut spending and raise taxes, because we don't just need to balance the budget, we eventually need to start paying back the money we have borrowed. Unfortunately, I doubt any of that will happen until it is too late to really help.

Busy, Busy

Cannot seem to find time to post here. Too busy posting at the Kosmosaic Books site, and the daily Twitter and Facebook posts.

I'm writing one of two new novels and editing two old ones. The Wizard of Time should by up for sale within a week. Hopefully The Young Sorcerer's Guild will be available a month later. 

All this leaves very little time for posting here. 

Posts will be a little sporadic.

Libya and Moral Questions of War

I haven't known quite what to make of the political situation here in the US regarding the NATO intervention in the Libyan civil war.   I think there is a clear moral need to intercede when a tyrant starts killing his own citizens and with airpower and threatening to annihilate those who have risen up against him. I'm not entirely sure why so many on the left of the political spectrum are so upset by this intervention. Especially those who are critical of the Obama administration for not putting enough international pressure on Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen to halt the attacks on their citizens who are calling for democracy and reform.

I do think that President Obama was legally obligated to seek authorization from Congress to continue the mission (a political burden the other NATO members are insulated from), but after the failure by a wide margin in the House of Representatives to pass such a bill without his request, I can understand why he chose not to seek it. While it is possible that if he had come to congress and explicitly asked for authorization for US participation in the NATO Libya operation that both houses would have passed a bill giving the go ahead, it is also possible, in light of events, that they would have either failed to pass such a bill, or would have attached such strings to it as to make it politically impossible to for President Obama to continue the mission with any hopes of success. Or they might have added amendments for domestic issues that would force him to veto the very bill he asked for.

A failed authorization bill that he requested would be a larger political failure than any heat he will take from the Left or the Right by claiming that the Libyan conflict does not rise to the level of hostilities which would require him to follow the War Powers Act. I think it does rise to that level, but I can see why he says it does not. Without troops on the ground and with limited military engagement by the US at this time, he can make that claim and still pursue the goal of ousting Gadhafi.

Although I'm not especially happy about it, I find I do support the decision. Do you follow the law and hope that your political enemies hand you the tools to accomplish the mission, or do you step around them and do what you think is morally right?

Glad I don't have to make those decisions.

Universal Marriage Rights in NY - Finally!

New York has become the first state to legalize marriage for everyone. That's a nice feeling, knowing the people your state, or at least the people the elected to represent them, have been wise enough to see everyone should have the ability to marry the person they love.

It is a level of compassionate thinking, being able to put one's self on someone else's shoes, that is sorely lacking through the world today.

Afghanistan 2011

President Obama announced yesterday that the 10,000 of the 30,000 troops added to the Afghanistan campaign will begin returning home this year will the remaining 20,000 to return by November 2012. Of course this will still leave nearly 70,000 US troops in Afghanistan. There is much debate about the wisdom of this plan from all political perspectives.

So, what is a spiritual path for such a quagmire? I'm glad that troops will begin coming home, but how much will really change on the ground? Although the president's stated plan is to slowly draw down troops until their final departure in 2014, without clear goals for the mission, no one really knows what will happen. The goal seems to be creating a stable enough situation in terms of security that the Afghan army can take over the fight. So far they have seemed unwilling or incapable of even participating in the fight in any meaningful manner.

The unfortunate reality is that until the Afghan people need to be willing to fight for their own freedom. To date that doesn't seem to be the case. If it is not clear to them that the Taliban is their enemy, that they should be taking up arms against it to protect the freedoms they have gained, then no amount of US troops will solve the situation. You can't fight for someone else's freedom if they are unwilling to fight for it themselves.

Some sort of truce with the moderate elements of the Taliban might be possible, but the more extreme elements have no interest in a genuine truce because they have no interest in the democratic freedoms that Afghanistan has gained. They don't want rights for women. They don't want girls in schools. They don't want public elections. They want a theocratic state based on their very narrow interpretation of Islam. We know this, because this is what they had created until October of 2001, when the US helped to oust them.

Honestly I am unsure of what a true spiritual path might be in this situation. If the US were to leave rapidly now it seems all too likely that the Taliban would take control of the country again. But the longer they stay the more they become seen as occupiers (as the clearly unstable and unhelpful President Karzai called them).

Much of the problem is due to a clash of worldviews, but I'll try to articulate that in some later post.

For now, the only spiritual path I can see is some kind of negotiated deal that would retain the democratic freedoms while allowing the Taliban to practice their more medieval lifestyle (assume they can convince any of the women of the country to give up their freedoms and join them). The notion I'm suggesting is a negotiated truce that would give the Taliban the right to live like the Amish live in the US, as long as they agreed to the same non-violence as the Amish.


But that seems like an impossibly optimistic scenario. I suspect that violence and domination are so much at the heart of the true Taliban ideology that they would rather die than allow others to live as they wish.