rrivers

This moral outrage seems very convenient given the impending market crash. I wonder how many politicians will come forward announcing the liquidation of their portfolios in good faith to the public, conveniently ahead of the major dip.

Curious how many of the respondents have read MMT literature. Seems to be a theme of believing MMT ignores inflation, which is not at all the case and is addressed directly in Stephanie Kelton's The Deficit Myth.

Credit is created at the point of contract. This was revealed in a 2014 Bank of England report. The current economic arrangements bake in certain percentages of unemployment. MMT suggests reimagining the model to focus on full employment through civic programs that compensate for slow downs in innovation and lending.

Puzzling to see such a staunch offense against alternatives when the present arrangements clearly favor a small few at the expense of the many.

Taxation exists to create a demand for money. It removes liquidity from the system.

Laws can never be neutral. They always direct behaviors and relationships towards specific directions.

Dynastic wealth transfer is extremely inequitable. While everyone defines their own meaning, to frame the human condition as the process of generating excess capital is a diminishment of life and experience.

Just hopping in to agree about UO, one of the primary gaming experiences of my life. A fascinating culture, community, and experience. Chesapeake baby.

Writa.co https://writa.co

Compartmentalizing medical content writing using professionals writers, machine learning, marketing automations, and "plug-and-play" journal sourcing.

Project came to me after serving as a marketing director for a multi-state ophthalmology practice. Understanding how vital quality content is to S/M medical orgs I wanted to see if I could dramatically reduce the time/cost involved with outsourcing professional content. Just launched a week ago with a single client

Article also misses the additional aspect is that being a billionaire isn't just about the digits representing your fiat energy. It gives very small groups of individuals large swaths of control in entire verticals of society. A small group of unelected kings directing the energy, housing, food supplies, distribution, town square (etc.), needs of the rest.

It's a poor way of organizing a functioning and well integrated society. One that is only maintained by the continued purchasing of political power. It's an anti-democratic system where the primary distribution of power is determined by birth lottery.

We're in an era of our species and collective intelligence where we can imagine much better ways than this, but for many with that power their primary objective is keeping it.

I think his most approachable book is his newest "The Knowledge Economy". I highly recommend it to anyone interested in a macro perspective of our economic transition as it stands now and where it can go.

If you prefer more academic texts my favorite work of his is "The Religion of the Future" and I also enjoyed "The Singular Universe & the Reality of Time" that he co-wrote with the physicist Lee Smolin. His earlier works are good but less digestible and can be picked up from his lectures.

About 4 years I founded a 501c3 non-profit that built a free election campaign platform for local candidates - the idea was to solve the problem of $20k campaigns for town council. Our beta went well, citizens loved it - but it was a bad product market fit. I have a rudimentary technical knowledge but if anyone is interested the git is here: https://github.com/OurSociety/OurSociety---Free-Local-Campai...

During that time my wife introduce my to him haphazardly and he just sucked me in. I started by listening to his lectures and have since "taken" all of his courses at least twice.

Why do you think not every is able to be a KE worker?

Do you mean in the immediate present, or are you saying that even in a scenario of reimagined social organization there would still be people unable to do this type of work?

The former I understand and agree with, the latter I would strongly disagree with. IMHO every human being is a blank slate of infinite potential at birth, at the circumstances they are born into in combination with the time of their arrival are the two most determining factors. Ungers argument is to radically redirect ourselves in order to make the second option possible.

- Expanding a vital suite of protections to remove survival from employment.

- Reclassification of the laws of property and contract - break from a single market structure to allow multiple markets to operate in tandem. Socialized housing, healthcare, transport alongside privatized video games, widget manufacturing, etc.

- Decoupling of education from municipality taxes, make it federally funded and programmed. Education also becomes lifelong process, the best firms become the best schools.

- Expand access to credit both in the form of capital and technology. Tie finance to the real economy, speculation is good but not in its current form. Most of the money in the stock market stays there, which is antithetical to its purpose of funding the productive agenda of society.

- Open access of technology, revising IP laws to allow a much higher degree of proliferation among emerging verticals.

I don't agree that it's a misreading.

Your point that there are hierarchies within the skill set of various tasks is true, however the argument isn't that everyone needs to be a KE worker - it's that everyone needs the opportunity to be one. Presently that is not the case, many are completely shutout simply because of birth lottery.

A core part of Unger's argument is the expansion of a vital suite of protections for all people. E.g. if everyone has access to universal healthcare, greatly expanding public housing verticals, ample opportunities to retrain and direct their lives it fundamentally changes the nature of our relationship to work.

The grocery store job is only dead-end now because our well being is entirely dependent on our ability to generate capital. In this reimagined future it might be the perfect job for a new mom (or dad) who wants to focus on spending as much time as possible with their child while still having some human interaction outside the house.

If everyone is capable of being a KE worker, it doesn't mean they will be. When and if they want to they can.

So I've been studying Unger for about four years now through my political activism. He is verbose in his language but once you get used to it you can see his brilliance.

His core arguments on the KE are as follows:

- It is creating a schism in the American workforce, and those on the outside lack access to the necessary educational institutions to ever catch up.

- Our IP laws are stagnating our economic development by keeping it isolated to a handful of companies in each industry vertical. Compared to our past this prevents transitioning to an entirely new mode of production. Compare that to history - if you wanted to open a loom factory during the industrial rev. you had access to the loom tech. Not the case today. There's also no shortcut like there was in the past. E.g. Put a farmer in a factory assembly line is NBD. Put a plant worker behind a laptop and ask him to write a script? Not happening.

--- Platform companies only have their dominion because an IP loophole states the individual's data is not their property. We make our data our property and companies like FB/Google struggle to retain their power.

- It's a form of work that utilizes the greatest human power, imagination.

- Under the right political structures this form of work ushers in a new human era. Under the current it stagnates our potential.

Happy to answer specifics if anyone has any questions about his work/perspective.

Finally got around to reading this. Great guide, thank you for sharing.

Yes if we consider the universal as information and our relationships to it as receivers. We've been expanding our time experience for millennia and will continue to so as long we continue to imagine and create.

Rental properties are an investment, why in the world would we subsidize investment losses? The fault is having housing for the majority of people classified as a financial instrument. There is no scenario where the landlords should be compensated.

Also your argument that they imposed lockdowns that were economically destructive and caused death is exactly the opposite of what we know to be true as evidenced by the countries that successfully implemented lockdowns initially and slowed the spread. It's these types of mental gymnastics that represent our failure as a nation to combat this.

About a year ago I penned a short essay about this exact subject. Central argument is that Uber is the type of organization that should be open to public ownership given that there is no road to profitability for them. Since writing, states like CA have taken firmer stances on gig economy workers and employment status. The alternative is that Uber continues to try and find avenues of financialization instead of continuing to experiment and innovate with their core service model.

Article Link: https://medium.com/swlh/socializing-uber-for-society-shareho...

Second statement is an oversimplification of many in that scenario; e.g. my mother. Single Mom for 30 years, built a career, bought a house in her mid 40s. 2008 recession erased her career, unemployed for 5 years after, now rebuilding. Still has a mortgage on her townhouse.

Let's not assume poor decision making when there are plenty of factors outside of the average blue collar workers control that directly impacted their ability to to the right thing.

https://ronrivers.com

I'm a progressive organizer/activist locally, an inventor, built/exited an eCommerce start-up, and very passionate about the future of society. I mainly publish on medium and have been a featured writer in categories like economics, future, work, and more.

The central theme of my writing is diving deep into the how and why behind structural reform in the U.S. and around the world.

Free election campaign platform for local candidates. (501c3 Non-profit w/ a revenue model) Purpose is to remove the financial barriers from running for community office (Mayor / Council / School Board). We incorporated a number of UX features to make the process as easy and convenient as possible for users to better understand which candidate options best aligned with their personal values.

In 2018 we ran a beta test in central NJ that was well received. I am the non-technical founder and our entire team was volunteer based. I also self-funded the project (outsourcing development) and although the beta went well the product is unfinished. Now on the back burner because we have no team anymore and I don't want to invest more personal cash into it at this time. I pay to keep it live for interested parties.

Site: https://oursociety.org

Git: https://github.com/OurSociety/OurSociety---Free-Local-Campai...

Not at all crazy, I share your experiences. The mushroom is a method to commune with something larger than ourselves. Although I share your lack of faith in traditional religions, the mushroom has me believing that the spiral does indeed go up (just as we know it goes down).

Education as a whole is not and cannot be overvalued enough given the trajectory of technology, society, and the nature of work.

What can be overvalued is the character of our present educational institutions. Because the system of education that produced many of us was designed for another time. This is reflected in both the character and the quality of education.

Education in the U.S. is also unevenly distributed due to a funding model that relies on municipality taxes, creating a multi-generational disadvantage.

Capital may be under-appreciated and you're correct that it's "trapped in networks" - but I believe that the solution is to legally tie that capital to real economic purposes. Companies floating billions in cash reserves waste the productive potential of those resources. Same could be said for the stock market, speculation has it's purposes but modern financial markets just churn money to make money. Wall-street was intended to fund the productive agenda of society, not tie up capital in the hands of an isolated few.

Warren and Sanders are proposing breaking up these organizations (Google, Amazon, and FB) - but I believe they are pulling out of the Gilded Age playbook that won't necessarily transfer to today's age. How do you break up virtual assets and realistically stifle their power?

I don't believe the same old anti-trust is the most effective method for dealing with these and future monopolies. Instead, a more tiered social responsibility program may be the ideal solution to continue and incentivize innovation while allowing society to reap the benefits of organizations that reach network monopolies.

If you're interested in exploring this line of thought I've published a brief article about it: https://bit.ly/2Yc57iS

Quite some red-herrings in this line of questioning. He never made reference to "profit is bad."

Saying that medical care for our fellow humans should not be for-profit implies that the individual values human life over our current constructed system of exchange. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. who would be bankrupted instantly if they were to suffer a significant accident that required prolonged medical attention. People that would otherwise continue to live productive and meaningful lives who would be regulated to abject poverty, destroying their potential.

The argument for socialized healthcare is simple; we have the resources to do it successfully and it costs less[1][2] and is more efficient than our current model. The only thing propping up our system is the millions of dollars of lobbying money from the insurance firms.

--

[1] http://www.pnhp.org/news/2014/november/implementing-a-univer... [2]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-30/study-med...

I find that organization helps me accomplish much more; taking the time every Sunday to plan out my week makes focusing significantly easier and more productive.

For standard tasks, I use Excel to track my weekly tasks. I prefer Excel compared to a web application because it's just always open on my laptop: https://imgur.com/a/bp2sJYY - I break them down into priorities (Low - Absolute), class (blacked out column, I use the names of my two orgs), category, and a target date I set at the beginning of the week. - Anything not completed transfers over to the next week and is reassigned an appropriate priority and date. - Started this level of detail in Jan. 2018 and have been very happy with it.

For larger, more complicated projects I use a top-down approach I call strategic planning. I wrote a detailed article on the approach here: http://bit.ly/2zWlARj

.The Knowledge Economy is an economic system where the most advanced form of production is based on highly skilled labor that is easily transferable between organizations. Our modern example being Silicon Valley. This type of work has replaced industry/manufacturing for the title of "most advanced." Most advanced being summed as greatest returns for input.

The problem we have right now as Unger argues is that this new Knowledge Economy is insular - in that it is self-contained to tech hubs. His argument for the Progressive Movement is to spread the most advanced forms of production to all sectors and the only way to accomplish that is through institutional reformation. The labor of the future will be broken into cooperative efforts and self-employment - all under a system of free labor which can now be realized and empowered by technology.

He argues that no man should have to do a job a machine can do.

Professor Roberto Unger (Harvard) often talks about the current restlessness of the masses in his political philosophy of the paradigm of Progressive Politics courses. Something that through listening to his lecturers over the last few years I strongly agree with. Mainly that people at this moment in time are yearning for a reimagining of what the human experience is, and the solution is a progressive political campaign reimagining our entire institutions.

We see the same restlessness in the national Primary Education teacher strikes. Is it possible that the academics are the beginning of a more substantial wave of worker rights and protections as we enter the new Knowledge Economy?

Edited to add website: http://www.robertounger.com/en/

To be clear nothing in his model suggests unlimited. He has mentioned in his writings that it is in fact limited, but that limit may as well be unlimited for you and i (within our lifetimes)

Need to make a formal correction; I recalled this information incorrectly.

7.5 Years into the project they were at 1% completion. 15 was the total amount of time targeted.

"Halfway through the genome project, the project’s original critics were still going strong, pointing out that we were halfway through the 15 year project and only 1 percent of the genome had been identified. The project was declared a failure by many skeptics at this point. But the project had been doubling in price-performance and capacity every year, and at one percent it was only seven doublings (at one year per doubling) away from completion. It was indeed completed seven years later. Similarly, my projection of a worldwide communication network tying together tens and ultimately hundreds of millions of people, emerging in the mid to late 1990s, was scoffed at in the 1980s, when the entire U.S. Defense Budget could only tie together a few thousand scientists with the ARPANET. But it happened as I predicted, and again this resulted from the power of exponential growth."

http://www.kurzweilai.net/ray-kurzweil-responds-to-ray-kurzw...

Lets assume you are correct and his predictions are no better or more accurate than anyone else's. Even better let's assume they're all wrong and always will be moving forward. Similar to what I posted above if his mathematical thesis of the Law of Accelerating returns is correct how does he fare in your perspective?

From my perspective as someone who has read his works but albeit likely not researched rebuttals as deeply as you this stands as my clear takeaway.