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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.