News — At The Edge — 7/13
Bad things are happening — Internet trolls and fake capitalism — yet no one knows what to do.
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Someone is wrong on the Internet —
“You wake up, and check your phone, and see a new condemnation…[and] add your voice to the furious chorus in response….
[While] only some of These People are genuinely evil…what they all seem to have in common is an incapacity for compassion…so every online outrage leaches a little more compassion away…and deepens the abyss between Us and Them…[though] many of these viral outrages stem from bots….
They must be fought and stopped…[so] you give more money to those fighting [it]….
[Then] wonder how much the great online divide represents reality, or how much it prefigures reality; whether They really have all lost their minds and their moral compasses…[and] even if they haven’t, what can now be done?” https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/07/someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet/
Takers and Makers: Who are the Real Value Creators? —
“[Businesses] talking about themselves as ‘wealth-creating’…[and] take big ‘risks’, and so…justify inequalities of wealth and income…[because] way the word ‘value’ is used…has made it easier for value-extracting activities to masquerade as value-creating activities.
And in the process rents (unearned income) get confused with profits (earned income); inequality rises, and investment in the real economy falls….
If bankers, estate agents and bookmakers claim to create value rather than extract it, mainstream economics offers no basis on which to challenge them….Government officials can become convinced (or ‘captured’) by stories about wealth creation…[but] lack of analysis of value has massive implications for…the distribution of income between different members of society.
When value is determined by price (rather than vice versa), the level and distribution of income seem justified as long as there is a market….All income, according to this logic, is earned income: gone is any analysis of activities in terms of whether they are productive or unproductive…[so] prices and wages are often set by the powerful and paid by the weak….
The possibility that some activities perpetually earn rent…[while] blocking the creation of value and/or destroying existing value, is hardly discussed….
Today, there is a lot of talk about the need to make growth ‘smarter’…more sustainable (greener) and more inclusive (producing less inequality)….This is very different from the usual assumption that policy should be directionless, simply removing barriers so that businesses can get on with smooth production.
Deciding which activities are more important than others is critical in setting a direction for the economy…. We already do this…[with] tax credits…education and training for students….Similarly, today’s deepening concern that the financial sector in some countries is too large…[for] kind of economy we want to be living in and the size and role of finance within it.…
[The]ascribing value, or the lack of it, has always involved malleable socio- economic arguments which derive from a particular political perspective….
Measurements are not neutral: they affect behavior and vice versa…[so] must instead be more forthright in linking our understanding of value creation to the way in which activities…should be structured, and how this is connected to the distribution of the rewards generated.” http://evonomics.com/value-of-everything-mariana-mazzucato/
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Doc Huston
