Friday, June 23, 2017

Eternal Basement

Zuckerberg’s Opiate for the Masses - WSJ:

Modern billionaires lack of understanding of both the human condition and economics is breathtaking. Automation keeps on happening -- let's just give everyone a guaranteed minimum income! Say $3K a month, that ought to make people happy! Let them eat cake.

Upon reflection, it isn't really that hard to understand though. Going back to the Reformation of 1517 (this year is the 500th anniversary), the English Revolution of 1688, our Revolution - Constitution of 1776-1789, and the French Revolution of 1789-1799, we see the shape of the discussions of government and the nature of man.

Where does the authority to rule come from? God, as in the divine right of kings? Inheretence as in family name for both monarch and aristocracy? Is there authority at all, or is pure chaos the best "government"? Does merit matter? Does it exist? Does being rich make you an authority on anything but money? (we know Zuckerbert's take on that).

There are a lot of very deep questions here, but I think the author of the article subtley told us how much thought current billionaires and socialists are putting into their thinking for the masses ...


We now know from plenty of time studying human behavior that people are NOT in general happy living in their parents basements and entertaining themselves. In fact, they are quite commonly suicidal.

We could put all the power lines ... and maybe trains for that matter,  under ground. We could explore space, or even the oceans -- there have only been four dives to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, like 35K feet deep, deepest ocean spot on earth. Hooking up the major cities of the earth with super high speed mag-lev or other tech speed units in say, vacum tunnels could take a bit of engineering and work ... the list is infinite.

Yes, for all these things there needs to be thought on how it becomes economically value producing -- however, compared to funding vido games and net surfing from basements, the bar is not very high!


'via Blog this'

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