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Upside down capitalism

Or right-side up, as the case may be.

Are there herds of socially conscious investors, or be these merely unicorns –  a mythical breed, product of minds who wish to conjure a next, more hospitable capitalism, yet unseen in the wild?

Given the inherent cynicism of speaking these players into existence if they do not exist, let’s posit that they do. Pension funds, family foundations, high-wealth individuals who have re-gained sight or never lost heart. It would be just as cynical to discount these.

One thing the so-called ‘disruptors’ do not want or take any shine to, is in fact disruption. That is, positive outcomes from new products to stock price to IPO feeding frenzies are all predicated on business as usual. However, re-ordering the calculus toward a triple bottom-line – people, planet, profit – will only occur with a fight. Several, many, multiple that will enter the courts but not end there.

Public opinion can not only be swayed, it cries out for persuasion. So this star is not fixed, despite the claims of those who deny priority to human rights, who cannot countenance paths to a renewable energy future that is already here, who beg patience for big data schemes but preach urgency for dismantling social safety nets that protect and educate.

The unicorns need to speak out. They need to speak out about how capitalism ends by not ending, not by changing but by being changed.

Whether it is capital allocation or your HVAC, from time to time broken systems must be replaced. Socialize yourself to country-ownership – alternately be prepared to live in someone else’s country. The someone being an oligarchy. This is how the oligs imagine the scenario.

Also: get rested up for the fight.

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Energy diversification

photo of flag painted on tin

Yours, mine, ours.

I recently finished reading a book about being trapped in the same day over and over again, which presented the concept of a rift in time in the context of complex minutiae and how we factor small events into larger ones. Even our best sense of recall leaves out quite a bit. The actual route between kitchen and bath, for example; or what happens on the other side of the switch that allows our betting apps to re-charge.

The low and slow approach to movement or reading by candlelight dispenses a luster all its own. We are free to partake, understand its nourishing powers, and to ignore these in lieu of better light and quicker options, to relegate them to novels and the pity of grateful authors.

Legs may tire and the candle burns down, marking progressive time very distinctly in ways that are only typically confusing. And these methods share something else: a hovering sense of the immediate. We declaim poetry in the same manner that we accept a holiday, earned or not, observant of its nature or not. That is, gladly. Attuned to bare arms and all they may evoke, how they interrupt our struggle for productivity with suggestion. Seen in this light, the need to produce, develop, accrue is as unnatural as time travel. The many dumb reasons behind events of note and other current happenings dumb us down, so be wary. Be suspect, call out. Use fancy old words if you so choose. Declaim.

Baudelaire was unsparing and left so much popcorn on the forest floor it can be hard to discern the trail. But discern we must. Find your way. Write your music and play it.

Happy Holiday.

Image: American Flag by R. A. Miller

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Data States

Just returned from a sojourn to Silicon Valley where you can be party to many conversations about or tangential to Artificial Everything, or you can just party. Both of these I will mark as complete.

The biggest flaw thus far in the advent of AE is not chat-bot psychosis, though sufferers should seek medical attention (this is not investment advice), but local resistance to data center construction. Although, it seems that Utah did not receive the memo:

A plan to create one of the world’s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state’s stressed water supplies.

The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years.

Last week, the project was approved by the county’s commissioners, despite thousands of objections lodged by Utah residents. Environmentalists have warned that Stratos could imperil the Great Salt Lake ecosystem, including a critical migratory bird habitat, which is already under severe stress.

Pretty sure that on my way out to SV, we flew over this area or nearish-by. I can attest that from my window seat (not engineering advice) there is sufficient spatial accommodation for this project. But as the fine people of the area point out with their signs and yelling, there does not seem to be sufficient anything else.

Sacrificing water and energy that a state does not have at a scale that it does, will not a data center make. You can siphon a watershed for ‘other purposes’ but not without hastening a collapse of the ecosystem and all that it temporarily supports.

The numbers of people who pushed back on this plan to no avail is at least worth noting.

Image: Cumberland Island, for context of scale, about the same size as Manhattan but with 6 million less people.

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Artificial Everything

[Too] many conversations about encroaching technology and artificial everything – we should just call it that, as we have no real definition for intelligence, much less understand what it means – compel further examination. Let’s go in.

First off, let’s acknowledge a basic premise.

We’re edging along a process of abdicating our personal sovereignty by our own choosing. I can’t tell you not to install a front door camera and spy on your neighbors or not to let slopGPT be your therapist. But let’s at least acknowledge how much we submit to all of this voluntarily. It’s not the illusion of choice, but still actual choices that we make continually. All the while creeps a sort of helplessness about what is being done to us. It is imperative to maintain our wits at such a time – such as a time as may come, such a time as now.

It is necessary to demonstrate how modern imagination is captured – and defended. Among the multitude of familiar arguments on which to draw, public and private liberties, civic duty and overwhelming loss of self esteem among our fellow citizens compel a checklist on the rescue mission should one be required.

There is extraordinarily powerful hype and propaganda supporting the inevitability of artificial everything. The laziness of corporate media has made this so much easier; excellent at completing PR circles, not so very good or interested in explaining things, rewarded for the combination with diminished honor and loss of prestige. Though a quite visible slight of hand, effort to acknowledge this process reminds us that we remain far from powerless. The sheer vastness of all we’re not thinking about and discussing enough also require some work on our part, to investigate, to understand, but first just to care about. When we get to the place where this work is not optional – and hey, we like work. It’s one our fears about AE, that it will take work away from us –  we’ll be well on our way to better places. If you’re already there, congratulations. You’ve got plenty of work to do.

Image: Author photo of work on a wall.

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The moral element

There are so many issues on which people can be or become confused about whether their choice stance is political, economic, or moral. The problem with the third in this sequence is that it makes the choice/stance much clearer on the first two than may be desirable or convenient.

Further, confusion about the rights of others that allows for a seeming choice where none exists creates space for degeneracy – bigotry, victimization, persecution, false equivalence – which turn into their own rationales for unfortunately familiar behavior. It’s sadly too easy to see why attacks on vulnerable people are wrong, so the convolution helps cover otherwise indefensible actions and positions, from anti-trans attacks all the way up to capitalism itself.

The fear that capitalism would be so much less forceful and thus successful with limits on its rapacious character is so embedded as to be dogma. It must always be fully unleashed to exist at all. We equate force with success, which inures to all the resulting destruction. Collateral damage hardly makes a dent as a concept anymore and it remains unclear whether that manifests from the inability to see outside of one’s own interests or the casual acceptance of casualties, whatever their nature. Either way, it’s quite the evolution. We have yet to grapple with the actual consequences of zero-sum, much less the reality that ‘externalities’ get less and less external the further on with this we go.

The concept of ‘easy solutions’ feeds misdirection from guardians of the status quo, no matter their futurist garb. Positive-sum deflates fascism and environmental catastrophe with great collaboration and distribution, and its tools sit idle, though ready. One of the new tricks taught by every old dog is that opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.

One need not be a philosopher or a socialist to recognize the moral character of our actions. No special training or knowledge is required, only courage.

Image: Symbol for the chemical element Beryllium; elements are amoral but Be is a divalent element that occurs naturally only in combination with other elements to form minerals. Just sayin’.

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On Popularism

The political strategy characterized by advising politicians, particularly Democrats, to prioritize policies with majority support supported by Wall Street while avoiding divisive, ideologically extreme, or unpopular issues, popularism consists of poll-driven, focused-grouped balderdash designed to resonate with existing public sentiment. While following polls is a bad approach, lefty or progressive stances that poll strongly are often not considered at all. Popularism is pseudo-analysis that elides clear public support for things like funding childcare and protecting immigrant communities, aka communities.
What are some leading issues? Are they popular? It’s an election year – let’s advise our candidates.
Over the past year, the White House has courted tech billionaires and gone out of its way to protect the AI industry’s agenda, fast-tracking permits for data centre construction and approving the sales of advanced chips to China while cracking down on states’ attempts to regulate chatbots … But across the US, citizens, clergy and elected officials in conservative communities are leading a grassroots rebellion against the rapid rollout of the technology.
Conclusion: not popular

And it was all too easy to be pessimistic about the prospects both for cooperation and for persuading voters to accept even modest future-oriented sacrifices.

Then came the renewable energy revolution. Solar and wind power have become cost-competitive with fossil fuels — they are, in particular, clearly cheaper than coal. Huge progress in batteries has rapidly reduced the problem of intermittency (the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow.) There’s now a clear path for a transition to an “electrotech” economy in which renewable-generated electricity heats our homes, powers our cars, and much more.

Conclusion: very pop– wait. It seems that the Trump administration has decided to block/rollback this transition that would benefit the planet, ensuring that the US will be left behind in global competition. Oh well.

ICE detention centers:

Communities across the country have been shocked to learn that DHS wants to use warehouses in their towns for detention space amid the ongoing immigration crackdown.

Conclusion: as popular as the plague. And speaking of…

The bipartisan American investment, which the Trump administration led, was absolutely key to containing a horrific global pandemic which could have been exponentially worse without the stunning accelerated development of mRNA vaccines — one of the great public health triumphs in modern history. But this miracle cure was only the beginning. The massive investment in mRNA opened doors to numerous other medical advances…

These mRNA advances would obviously benefit people in the United States, who would be much less likely to die of cancer, flu, pandemics, and a range of other illnesses.

Conclusion: popular, live-saving, beneficial across borders and populations. Unfortunately, also vulnerable to disinformation by cranks and malefactors willing to lie to enrich themselves and endanger others.

So even among this small variety of issues, clear policy preferences can be sorted. Public opinion has a role to play, and it’s especially important in the face of corporate media with thumbs on the scale, keeping unpopular issues and policies in a kind of eternal toggle state where the jury is still out. These should not be avoided. Look for candidates who run toward your preferences. Some might even already be there.

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Fascination with numbers

It’s no stretch to suggest that quantifying life as we know it not in terms of quality but economic growth leaves everyone a bit empty, a bit lesser for the experience, such as it is.

Numbers are fine, can be fun, even. Inspiring. Take Clairaut’s Theorem, as just one example. Among the heights of the Enlightenment – there were several – the eighteenth-century French mathematicians/philosophers Alexis Clairaut and Pierre Louis Maupertuis led an expedition to Lapland in the Arctic Circle (in the 1730’s) in order to measure a single degree of the median arc. The goal was to calculate the shape of the Earth, and validate whether Newton was correct in his Principia where he theorized it was an ellipsoid shape.

In disagreeing with Newton’s theory, Clairaut suggested not only that the Earth is of an oblate ellipsoid shape, but it is flattened more at the poles and is wider at the center. You can imagine the controversial this unleashed among scholars of the day, and Clairaut leaned in, full tilt. He courted the fight and published work in the 1740’s that promoted Clairaut’s Theorem, which connects the gravity at points on the surface of a rotating ellipsoid with the compression and the centrifugal force at the equator.

Under the assumption that the Earth was composed of concentric ellipsoidal shells of uniform density, Clairaut’s theorem could be applied to it, and allowed the ellipticity of the Earth to be calculated from surface measurements of gravity. This proved Sir Isaac Newton’s theory that the shape of the Earth was an oblate ellipsoid. In 1849 George Stokes showed that Clairaut’s result was true whatever the interior constitution or density of the Earth, provided the surface was a spheroid of equilibrium of small ellipticity. [wikipedia]

Provides interesting context to our jokey notion about “views differ on the shape of the Earth.” There’s an amazing book about all of this and more that centers on Madame Du Châtelet, erstwhile mistress of Voltaire who translated Newton’s Principia.

Fascination may be in the eye of the beholder. However, a focus on economic growth beyond the point where it may be healthy, productive, even possible, disassociates us from even the power of numbers themselves. Growth becomes its own ends and we, captive to the destruction its portends, stand idly by and make nervous jokes about issues long settled, amidst our intellectual withering and spiritual decay.

Image: [shiny)Detail of a painting by Lou Kregel.

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Kicking over the tipping point

Dignity, restraint and action in a time of constitutional crisis. It’s amazing but, like the Steven Wright  joke where he realizes someone has been following him from in front, the Republican Party is re-enforcing community by galvanizing communities against it. And that for which it stands:

Within hours of taking office on Jan. 17, Spanberger signed an executive order that rescinded Youngkin’s order mandating that state agencies contract with ICE, but that alone left the agreements intact. She went a step further this week by actually pulling the plug and ordering four state agencies, including the state police and the Department of Corrections, to end their 287(g) agreements, terminating their role as force multipliers for federal immigration authorities.

“Virginians deserve to have their state and local law enforcement resources devoted to the safety and security of their communities, not federal civil immigration enforcement,” the governor said in her order. These agreements “improperly cede accountability and discretion over Virginia law enforcement to the federal government.”

That’s the result of people pressure. Forces of civil democracy aka you, me, and all of us. One neat trick to turn many disinterested and distracted people into pissed off voters. I have always detested irony but I’m willing to let this one slip.

Governors and lieutenants, secretaries of state, state attorneys general have always been important statewide races. Now they are critical. Let’s elect good ones. Find one, be one.

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About once in every 20 years

The inimitable John Doe, and Exene.

Will revisit this but as a history nerd lad I was rather affected by John Locke and the whole right to revolution thing:

the common Question will be made, Who shall be Judge whether the Prince or Legislative act contrary to their Trust? This, perhaps, ill affected and factious Men may spread amongst the People, when the Prince only makes use of his due Prerogative. To this I reply, The People shall be Judge; for who shall be Judge whether his Trustee or Deputy acts well, and according to the Trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him, and must, by having deputed him have still a Power to discard him, when he fails in his Trust? If this be reasonable in particular Cases of private Men, why should it be otherwise in that of the greatest moment; where the Welfare of Millions is concerned, and also where the evil, if not prevented, is greater, and the Redress very difficult, dear, and dangerous?

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Of fulcrums and chasms

Given the very sleepy lead into 2025, despite the alarms blaring full bore, headwinds for clean energy seem to have roared to the forefront this year.

Tax credits expiring. Wind projects shelved or cancelled, often for extraordinarily petty reasons certainly consistent with the personality of leadership. Domestic US EV sales dipping.

Despite the pettiness and short-sighted backwards-facing outlook, a cultural shift has been been leveraged into place. The ancient kind of leverage – with a rock and an iron bar:

“…as of the last three or four years, we finally have a tool, not at this point to stop global warming — it’s too late for that — but perhaps to at least shave some tenths of a degree off how hot the planet gets. And that tool is cheap energy from the sun and the wind and the batteries to store that power when the sun goes down or the wind drops. Alternative energy is the commonsense, obvious, straightforward way to make power on this planet, which is why 95 percent of new generating capacity around planet Earth last year came from these clean sources.

The authoritarian mindset –  which eschews progress on meaningful rights and resources for all in exchange for illusory safety from outside foes and forces – has always protected fossil fuel production by forgiving its destructive effects on people and planet in return for cheap energy. Another instant where the meaning of words carelessly cast aside returns for payment, with interest.

And now, that mindset is suspended over a chasm: destructive effects of global warming, coupled with cheap, clean energy increasingly available everywhere. Incompetent/compromised [let’s be honest] government is a distinct disadvantage. Can capitalism be saved?

Be neither depressed nor overly sanguine, as these were never the options. Instead, mock the laggards incessantly, especially your own. If you don’t know or feel unsure, find out. Use everything you have, make things. Row into the currents. Turn the beat around.

Image via