News — At The Edge — 12/22
Ominous Dickensian issues — endless arms race, brazen plutocrats and creeping censorship — suggest an increasingly dark future.
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Military Issues –
Military robots are getting smaller and more capable Soon, they will travel in swarms -
“[A] video called ‘Slaughterbots’…set in a near-future in which small drones…with face-recognition systems and…can be programmed to seek out and kill known individuals or classes of individuals…[and] shown collaborating with each other….
[Real] military laboratories around the planet are…developing small, autonomous robots for use in warfare….[U.S.] has spy drones that you could hold in…your hand…pocket-sized battlefield scouts that can hop or crawl ahead of soldiers…[and] swarms of devices that can take coordinated action to achieve a joint goal….
Pentagon is as alarmed by the prospect of freebooting killer robots….If swarms of small robots can be made to collaborate autonomously, someone, somewhere will do it…[and] things are advancing rapidly…[getting] get better as they get smaller [quieter]…ideal for spying…better maneuverability, and are less disturbed by gusts of wind….
[Also] monopod weighing 98 grams that has a rotating tail and side-thrusters…[to] stabilize itself and reorient in mid-leap…[with] the agility to bounce over uneven surfaces and…climb staircases….[So] ‘imagine a cheetah running at top speed using only one leg’…[and] travel over terrain, such as collapsed buildings, that is off-limits to wheeled vehicles….
[Another] solution resembles a cockroach…[with] wing-like extensions it can use to flip itself upright….[Goal’s] small drones that can ‘ingress and egress into buildings and navigate within those buildings at high speeds’… and report back to their starting-point, all by themselves….
[Next] is getting the robots to swarm and co-ordinate their behavior effectively…without outside intervention….’Heterogeneous group control’ is a new discipline that aims to tackle the thorny problem of managing units that consist of various robots…able to break up into sub-units to search a building and then recombine once they have done so, all in a hostile environment.” https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21732507-soon-they-will-travel-swarms-military-robots-are-getting-smaller-and-more
How The Defense Industry Lit A Trillion Dollars On Fire (15 min. video) –
Economic Issues –
A decade after it hit, what was learnt from the Great Recession? -
“[I]n the ‘Great Recession’… America suffered a cumulative loss of output estimated at nearly $4trn, and its labor markets have yet to recover fully….Paradoxically, that success spared governments from enacting bolder reforms of the sort that might make the Great Recession the once-a-century event….
By reducing the need for radical innovation, the speed and efficacy of the response left the world economy less reformed and so vulnerable to the same forces that made the crisis possible….[T]he international system that facilitated the more recent financial crisis has been neither abandoned nor reformed.
Open capital flows can put countries at the mercy of sudden swings in market sentiment…[so] many emerging markets accumulate foreign-exchange reserves, which can be drawn on in crisis…[but]add to a global glut of capital which depresses interest rates and encourages borrowing.
Because reserves are so often held in the form of dollar-denominated bonds, they can destabilize the American economy. They also heighten the world’s exposure to American financial stumbles. This regime helped…American housing bust into a global crisis, and remains in place….
In the years after the Depression, sweeping banking and financial reforms created new regulatory institutions and placed tight constraints on financial behavior….From the 1980s to the 2000s, those restrictions were largely undone: banks were given freer rein over the activities they could engage in and products they could create.
The financial crisis could not have occurred without this liberalization. Yet in its wake, the financial sector has been treated relatively gently…[and] rules are now being relaxed….As a share of American GDP it has actually increased somewhat since 2007….[T]he Great Recession demonstrated the value of automatic fiscal stabilizers, but governments failed to seize the opportunity to link tax and benefits more closely to the business cycle….
[The] financial and political elites…largely kept their seat at the table, blocking the enactment of bolder reforms…[and] left the fundamentals of the system that produced the crisis unchanged. Ten years on, the hopes of radical reform are all but dashed.” https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21732529-governments-skilfully-tackled-symptoms-not-underlying-disease-decade
The Tax Bill That Inequality Created —
“[As] smaller group of people cornered an ever-larger share of the nation’s wealth, so too did they gain an ever-larger share of political power…[and] became, in effect, kingmakers….
[T]he top 1 percent of the population by wealth…[and] primarily benefit from the tax bill — controls nearly 40 percent of the country’s wealth. The bottom 90 percent has just 27 percent…. Just three decades ago these numbers were almost exactly the reverse….
To find a time when such a tiny minority was so dominant, you have to go back to the Great Depression….
[Rich] have supported candidates who share their hostility to progressive taxation, welfare programs and government regulation…[and] pushed the Republican Party…to the right by threatening well-funded primary challenges against anybody who doesn’t toe the line on tax cuts for the rich and other pro-aristocracy policies….
[This] has contributed to political polarization and made the federal government less responsive to the needs of most voters…. Trump, who ran as a populist, has…abandoned any pretense of fighting for the working class…[and] joined Republicans in Congress…to help business tycoons….
Most political campaigns now rely on a small group of wealthy donors who give…40 percent of contributions to campaigns during the 2016 federal election came from an elite group of…0.01 percent of the adult population. In 1980, the top 0.01 percent accounted for only 15 percent of all contributions….
Democratic candidates have also benefited from…wealthy donors…[but] corporate America…pushed many Democrats to the center or even to the right on issues like financial regulation, international trade, antitrust policy and welfare reform….No liberal organization comes close to rivaling the network of donors and political activists created by the conservative Koch brothers….
[T]he top marginal income tax rate now just below 40 percent, from 70 percent when Ronald Reagan won…[and] top corporate tax rate has dropped…from 46 percent in 1980….
While supply-side economics remain…Republican fiction, politicians from both parties have supported the effort to reduce taxes on capital — profits, capital gains and dividends….But the cuts have done little to bolster the economy or the working class. In fact, incomes have stagnated, and workers [pay]…a larger share of their pretax earnings in the form of payroll taxes….
Congress has been so slow to raise the minimum wage — $7.25 an hour since 2009 — that its purchasing power is now about 10 percent less than it was in 1968. Lawmakers and conservative judges have also undermined workers by making it harder for them to unionize….
Trump and Republicans…are talking about cutting…Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security next year to help make up for the more than $1 trillion the tax bill would add to the federal deficit.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/opinion/sunday/tax-bill-inequality-created.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=sectionfront
Tax reform saga should alarm defenders of democratic process -
“Meeting behind closed doors…Republicans reached a secret deal…[that] culminated in a middle-of-the-night vote in the Senate on legislation most Americans oppose…[and] raises alarm bells about American democracy….
Most key decisions have been made in secret, with loads of backroom meetings with lobbyists….[Public] policy decisions should reflect public preferences.
Yet, polls indicate that no more than about 30 percent of the public approves of the Republicans’ plan…[and] only 2 percent of Americans believe taxes are the most important problem facing the country…[or] cuts in tax rates for corporations and the wealthiest individuals…bolsters the impression that self-interest is driving the process [not]…the general good….
[Republicans] urgency to pass a tax bill to accomplish something…will come at a substantial risk from the broader electorate…[and] reinforce ordinary Americans’ anger over a federal government that they see ignoring their needs.” http://thehill.com/opinion/finance/365556-tax-reform-saga-should-alarm-defenders-of-democratic-process
Creeping Censorship Issues –
Why Words Matter: What Cognitive Science Says About Prohibiting Certain Terms -
“[CDC] is typically tasked with conducting critical science…[and] choosing how you frame and talk about something…can drastically change someone’s perspective…if it dampens those conversations in the spheres that end up controlling a lot of our lives….
There are two outcomes that happen when we don’t name or talk about something.
- Things that are named are the ones most likely to be thought about and to be visible in our consciousness…[because] our actual attentional span is very limited. As a result, the kinds of things we tend to think about are the ones that are named….
- [If] categories are never recorded…you can never do the data collection to show what’s true…[so] you don’t have to deliver those services….
Words are really categories of things….[so] to erase the word “fetus’…is to make human life be seen as continuous from the point of conception — so there’s not a separate category that exists before a child or a baby…[thus] taking out a categorical distinction in the medical world.” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-words-matter-what-cognitive-science-says-about-prohibiting-certain-terms/
CDC gets list of forbidden words: fetus, transgender, diversity -
“[CDC] forbidden words are ‘vulnerable,’ ‘entitlement,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘transgender,’ ‘fetus,’ ‘evidence-based’ and ‘science-based’…[and] given alternative phrases.
Instead of ‘science-based’ or ‘evidence-based‘…[now] CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes…[but] other cases, no replacement words….
HHS dropped questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in two surveys of elderly people…[and] removed information about LGBT Americans from its website….CDC officials confirmed the…list of forbidden words….
The reaction of people in the meeting was ‘incredulous….Are you serious? Are you kidding?’…[since] never had any pushback from an ideological standpoint…[and] likely to provoke a backlash’….
CDC’s budget drafts were…sent back to the agency for correction…[flagging] ‘vulnerable,’ ‘entitlement’ and ‘diversity’…[while] ban on the other words had been conveyed verbally.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cdc-gets-list-of-forbidden-words-fetus-transgender-diversity/2017/12/15/f503837a-e1cf-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html?utm_term=.b413edf13da7
White House temporarily removes petition tool -
“[Trump’s] removing a petition tool from its website after 11 months of silence…[about] any of the 17 petitions…since Trump took office…[including] calling on President Donald Trump to release his tax returns and to place his assets in a blind trust.
Others that have reached 100,000 signatures call on Trump to both preserve and cease funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The official said the move will save taxpayers $1.3 million annually.” https://apnews.com/5e95880b6f39476597ff930e2b70d4b6
The stoned housewives of Washington, DC -
“[Woman] in her mid-40s found herself alone in her house in a suburb just outside Washington, DC…[and] perfect day to try the marijuana-infused cookies that came inside a backpack she had purchased outside a metro stop downtown…. The company she bought her knapsack from…was so busy…they were turning away customers….
Recreational marijuana has been legal in Washington since 2015…[and] allows an adult to keep…three mature plants at home and to carry up to two ounces with them in public…[so] marijuana-related arrests…fell from 1,840 in 2014 to just 32 in 2015…[and] put weed back into the hands of the straight-laced wonks and political operatives who have long eschewed it for the sake of their careers….
[But] conservatives in Congress used their power…to block the city from regulating marijuana….Giving cannabis as a gift is legal, but selling it [isn’t]….[So] vendors of cheaply…T-shirts or flimsy backpacks [are]…bought for $100, and…throw in marijuana as a present….
As people become more familiar with marijuana — especially its health benefits…a proper market will be created and…’[few] years from now it’s going to be on sale at Whole Foods.’” https://www.1843magazine.com/dispatches/the-daily/the-stoned-housewives-of-washington-dc
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Doc Huston
