Category Archives: Future

Did the ancient Myan’s predict the collapse of human civilization in 2012?

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There have been a series of Cassandra video’s floating around this year, actually pretty much from the beginning of the internet.  I think the latest one I keep hearing glancing past is Post America or some such.  Ed Driscoll has a piece on the free fall of California that takes a lot of its material from this piece by Victor Davis Hanson then mentions the book After America from which the following comes:

 In ten years’ time, there will be no American Dream, any more than there’s a Greek or Portuguese Dream. In twenty, you’ll be living the American Nightmare, with large tracts of the country reduced to the favelas of Latin America, the rich fleeing for Bermuda or New Zealand or wherever on the planet they can buy a little time, and the rest trapped in the impoverished, violent, diseased ruins of utopian vanity.

“After America”? Yes. It will linger awhile in a twilight existence, arthritic and ineffectual, declining into a kind of societal dementia, unable to keep pace with what’s happening and with an ever more tenuous grip on its own past. For a while, there may still be an entity called the “United States,” but it will have fewer stars in the flag, there will be nothing to “unite” it, and it will bear no relation to the republic of limited government the first generation of Americans fought for. And life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness will be conspicuous by their absence.

I agree that things are ugly for certain segments and geographical subsets of the middle class.  But I do not see a wholesale breakdown of the American dream.  On one side the American Dream has always been time and place focused, on the other I see almost as many positive signs as negative if you look at things from a broader perspective.  Conservatives are always going to lament most changes they see around them and conservatives living hyper conservative lifestyles, (i.e. farmers, lawyers, police, military)  are going to see things going to hell with more poignancy. 

The way I see it we got here because of the sequence of bubbles we have lived through, from the Post Cold War Bubble, Tech Bubble, Internet Bubble, a General Bubble (up to 9/11/01) then the Housing Bubble.  All of this essentially enabled the following: 

  • Pandering to gov’t worker unions
  • venal politicians promising money they had no way of knowing would be there
  • Bankers divorced from personal financial risk taking too many risks
  • Stock investors who should know better always expecting smooth growth
  • Managers looking six months ahead instead of six years ahead
  • Apathetic voters:
    • Voters who vote for the guy who ‘looks’ the best
    • Voters who vote for the guy who promises the most
    • Young folks not voting because they’re working 60hours and playing 40.
    • Middle career folks voting on visceral because their working 60hours and then coming home to another 40 of honey dos
  • One issue voters
    • Old folks voting for their pensions with scant consideration for other issues
    • Gov’t workers voting their pocket book  with scant consideration for other issues.
    • Bee in their bonnet rich folks using referendum to drive through special initiatives with no concern for unintended consequences.
    • Bee in their bonnet single issue political movements who vote gut level issues like abortion or church state separation, lower taxes butleave no room for compromise even when most of the realize that compromise is the only way anything will ever really be done
    • Politicians who gutlessly sign pledges that lock out the possibility of compromise, which was the basis on which the US was established.
  • Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, as the king of Siam famously said

So…what am I saying?

That while I agree with the Cassandra’s that things look very bad this too shall pass, though sadly it’s not certain it will not pass without disorder and death, I expect that the United States will continue to exist for a few more centuries.  The majority of the country understands the general direction we need to go.  This majority does not include the rabid left or the zombie right but it does include many on both sides as well as the middle.

    • A retirement safety net that is much more focused on those in real need at a fraction of the current cost (means tested and not generally available till 75.)
    • A universal retirement savings system that is portable and personally monitored and focused on retiring at 70 only earlier if you have the funds or a real need due to disability.
    • A disability safety net that is probably little changed from today. but any federal mandate has to be funded by block grants from the federal gov’t .
    • Out of work benefits, system probably little changed from today but any federal mandate has to be funded by block grants from the federal govt’
    • Health Coverage:
      • A health insurance safety net focused on kids to 18
      • Universal Health Savings account (not mandatory you use it, not taxed), portable and personally controlled
      • Health insurance available, Insurance companies have to take new people, they can establish different price for different age groups (5 year min span.)  If you sign up as an adult with no prior insurance you will pay a reasonable premium for the first two years (25%)
      • Health cost published by all practitioners on their web pages, visits, shots, etc etc. 
      • Health practitioners are not allowed to charge different groups different prices for the same services.
      • People will pay their own health bills via a Pay Pal or equivalent system.
    • A simple but graduated income tax system without the bands.  I’d propose  simple linear progression from 0% at 10,000 to 20% at  $1 Million. Above $1M ‘income’ is considered capital gains and flat taxed
      • Capital Gains 25%.
      • No exemptions period end of sentence.
      • Special tax deals are special contracts with Department of Treasury / Inland Revenue, which Congress has to sign off on. 
      •  No tax deal can reduce expected tax rate below 10% ever.
    • Restrict the volume of regulations and laws.
      • A whole bunch of restrictions on length and length of effect.
      • You cannot make a regulation ex post facto (after the fact) just like no ex post facto laws restriction in the Constitution.
    • Anti Corruption
      • Congressmen have to put their money in a blind trusts.  No insider trading
      • All donations to all elected officials have to be public record, no restriction on the amount. No privacty for political acts.
      • Special interest groups who target politicians with adds, have to publish their financials and who provided the funds. No privacy rights for political acts.
    • Secrecy Restrictions
      • Debates on laws can be held behind closed doors but a proposed law has to be published on the internet at least ten days before the final vote and no special access for lobbyists etc.
      • Nothing can be held secret for more the 5 years without special and specific reasons agreed to by a committee of the senate and the maximum is 50 years.

  • No program / group above a certain size (10 people, $10 million) can be completely black, it has to have a public face and a public (and honest) reason for existence and its top level budget and basic structure must be public.

    • 5 and only 5 Departments of Executive Gov’t
      • Department of Treasury
      • Department of Defense
      • Department of State
      • Department of the Interior
      • Department of Commerce
      • All other departments shuttered and any necessary functions put in one of the others:
      • All current agencies would fall under one of these departments.  No independent Agencies of Gov’t. But can have an independent board of directors who can act as buffers…&seperate budget line item.
    • Recognize that blanket prohibition never works and establish a new regime for bad drugs including tobacco and alcohol.
    • Get Gov’t out of the marriage business.  Gov’t does care about stable committed partnerships for clear socio-economic reasons but should see it as a contractual issue.  Contract of Family Partnership to replace Marriage License.  Marriages are religious and can be restricted as the religious group sees fit. 

    So OK I got carried away, I’ve cut this list down several times then rebuilt it.  Not sure it’s really coherent but it does reflect my opinion on a number of topics.  I also think it reasonably represents the views of a lot of moderated, be they Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, Libertarians, Progressives….I think.  I may find out I am absolutely wrong….but then that would require folks to read this…..sigh.

    Cheers

    Is Petabyte Storage and the supercomputer going to create the ultimate totalitarian state.

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    FuturePundit: Government Total Recall On Past Communications.

    Is Petabyte Storage and the supercomputer going to create the ultimate totalitarian state?  There is some discussion that Syria and Iran already do this….as does the US.  The NSA theoretically only trolls outside the ‘Homeland’ but how can you be sure…isn’t this a bit like th False in one, False in all assumption, Roman lawyers pulled out of their butts a couple of millennia ago.

    Iran-3 tidbits and some commentary…

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    Iran, a troubling country, as Persia it dominated troublemaking for the Hellenes and the Romans, though Alexander the Great among other Hellenes ground it down a couple of times. That piece of the world has a long history and has a right to be proud and annoyed when abused which it has been but at the end of the day it is a small backwater that could and should be able to grow to regain much of its glory in the new world but as with most other islamic dominated countries it seems to be unable to slip the bonds of a mindset that is more focused on the past and in some ways on revenge, than on the future and finding ways to let the past lay.

    An update on the loss of the Beast of Kandahar (RQ-170 Stealth Drone)

    December 21, 2011: On December 8th Iran displayed what appeared to be an American RQ-170 jet powered UAV, which they claimed had landed intact in Iran two weeks earlier. Iran claimed they had hijacked the control signals for the RQ-170 and landed it themselves. This seemed highly unlikely but not impossible. Experts on Iranian military immediately suspected something else. First, the Iranians are constantly lying about their military exploits, especially when it comes to developing new weapons and technology. This is apparently done mainly for propaganda as satellite photos never show more than a few prototypes of these wonder-weapons. Then many Americans familiar with the RQ-170 carefully studied the pictures of the “captured” RQ-170 and immediately suspected something was off. For one thing, the RQ-170 shown was the right size and shape but the wrong color. Not just a different color from that seen on many photos of the RQ-170s in Afghanistan but also a color unknown in American military service. A closer examination of the Iranian RQ-170 photos indicated that the Iranians had reassembled an RQ-170 that had crashed and broken into three or more pieces. Then the Iranians apparently gave the UAV a new paint job (which was obvious to anyone seeing those photos.)

    This is another piece about Iran, and its road to hell…

    Iran is turning into more of a military than a religious dictatorship. That was made clear when a government official revealed that half of government employees now belong to the Basij (the reservist organization of the Revolutionary Guard, the separate armed forces of the clerics running the government) . This was deliberate. Since the late 1990s the Basij has been establishing units in schools for children of all ages. Using games, toys, and popular children’s activities the kids are indoctrinated into Basij ideology (radical Islam, including the joys of being a suicide bomber). The Basij recruiters have found that their best prospects are from poor or broken families (including orphans). This was the Nazi and Soviet experience. The Romanian communist government did best at this with their secret police (the Securitati) forming much feared units of these orphans. Recruits were selected young and raised to be remorseless and savage operatives. Called “young wolves”, these operatives could be depended on to do anything for the cause. Iran is always looking for plain clothes agents who can terrorize reform minded students and civilians in general. In the last few years, more and more of these Basij operatives, now adults, have been leading the fight against reform minded Iranians, or overseas as agents of Quds. Since Basij is largely a part-time operation many members have a full time government job.

    Obama Moves Toward War With Iran

    In a recent interview with CBS news anchor Scott Pelley, Panetta said “the United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us”. He continued: “We will take whatever steps are necessary to stop them”. A nuclear Iran is “unacceptable”.  When US secretaries talk about “whatever steps are necessary” they are not usually talking about holding one more meeting of the sanctions committee.  They are thinking shock and awe rather than cookies and tea.

    Panetta said the Iranians could have a bomb in a year or less; we’ve heard this before. The point is, Washington doesn’t believe the mullahs have stopped building. Unless that changes, the Obama administration is headed toward war with Iran, quite possibly before November of 2012.

    OK, I don’t know if I agree with Dr. Meade, I’ve argued more from impression than anything else that there is no appetite in the world for an Iranian war.   But in fact the Saudi’s and the other Gulf Arabs want the suckers taken down before they get nukes.  There is also a lot to be said for the fact that until Iran is put back on a reasonable path Iraq is unlikely to remain stable.  Also the Iranians are the backers of the main troublemakers in Syria and around Israel.  An argument could be made that Iran was always a worse problem that Iraq but that taking out Iraq was easier and it was hoped would make Iran behave itself.  Taking Iraq also took down a potential flanking enemy.  Now with major forces in Afghanistan on one side of Iran and our naval forces on the other there is at least some military realism to taking Iran down.

    • Israel has nukes
    • Pakistan has nukes and is perhaps as likely to proliferate as Iran
    • NK has nukes and is a worse proliferator than anyone else
    • Syria tried to get nukes
    • Libia tried to get nukes
    • Any marginally competent state with an industrial sector can ‘do nukes’ if they get the materials.
    • Would going in and blowing up the Iranian Nuclear program solve anything? ( And I do mean going in, I do not see any way of avoiding putting troops, probably a lot, on the ground to make sure those facilities are blown to dust.) Does this stop proliferation in its tracks or is it a slippery slope? 
    • Pakistan, NK, Iran, Isreal, Syria, Lybia….Each case utterly different and circumstances do matter, hard lines in the sand are rarely possible to draw and live with. 
    • But will others see the take down of Iran (if it happened) as a sign not to go nuclear or as a sign that they should press forward as quickly and quietly as possible.
    • We would have to establish the Obama Doctrine, “we will take down anyone who is going for nuclear weapons”   Could we make it stick?

    Then of course there all the mysterious ‘accidents’ occurring in Iran, is there a covert war going on already?  I am not convinced but I have to say that it seems highly possible.  If so the Iranians aren’t doing well.  The thing that stops me being convinced is that the Iranians aren’t squealing about it and or going all out for retaliatory strikes (see the article above on militarization of Iranian gov’t.) Now its possible that with the tracking tools we have now and in some ways a fairly fine mesh filter for folks coming out of that part of the world we have been able to stop anything, and maybe I hope that’s true.  

    To be honest I would almost rather its just the Iranian’s paying the price for turning away from technical competency for some (invisible to me) religious gain, our spooks being that efficient puts one in mind of all sorts of conspiracy theories.

     

    New Age of Discovery | iPad, Pandora and the

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    Stars and Gas in the Milky Way Galaxy
    OK, I have to admit that I have done most of my posting from the iPad for the past couple of weeks, it does make micro blogging pretty danged easy. The iPad continues to amaze me it is the single most life changing device I have ever used. No it is not the god machine and Steve Jobs, though a genius (with a lot of help from his team), was not a messiah. But the device and the infrastructure it accesses with such elegance have changed how I live in ways and at a speed that no other single device has (baring perhaps my license/first car.)

    Telecommunications technology (phone and TV), the computer, the micro chip, the mini computer, the calculator, the personal computer, the internet, the cell phone, the laptop and now the tablet computer have each in their way had a profound impact on my life but each one though important in some particular piece of my life had little effect on other parts. The iPad has changed how I read, what I read, how I create, what I create, how I communicate with my wife, what entertainment I enjoy and when. It is my constant companion and I would be lost without it. This has never been true of any other device to the same extent though my laptop and cell phone are close, more because of how important they are to one or two important parts of my life, unlike the iPad which has had a broad impact on most of my life.

    Is this good or bad? One part of me wants to say it has to be good, otherwise why would it have taken over so thoroughly, it allows me access to the web at almost any instant to look up info or browse, I use it to keep me amused at the club, etc. Another part wants to say bad, because there is no denying that I have been more sedentary (big word for sitting on my ass more) since I got the iPad, and I in fact have not read as many books since I got the iPad. Pull back for the big picture and I think that the iPad has enables changes in how I live my private life, and that good or bad is what I make of the changes it enables, because there is nothing that I used to do that it forecloses by its existence and use.

    Though not as high impact as the iPad, Pandora is the other technical insert in my life that I feel I would miss profoundly. I am currently listening to it Jennifer Thomas’ Beautiful Storm, a piano piece with orchestral background, a strikingly beautiful piece of music I doubt I would ever have heard if not for Pandora. Over a period of a couple of years I have slid sideways from Nickleback, to Shinedown, to Adele, Glitrap, Jes and more. Music discovery is what Pandora is all about and I think I’m better off for it….

    And that brings me back to the iPad and its impact….one of the things it does is make discovery easier, discovery of new memes, of new sounds, new skills and new voices. It allows me to fill in the little wasted cracks of time in my life with more discovery.

    Two posts this week have dealt with 3D printers, what I think of as stereolithographic machines. And the computer controlled 3D wood carving machine I saw in Rockler catalogue. The Maker movement is all about discovery, the DARPA crowdsourcing initiative is all about discovery. So is it that the iPad and Pandora are my first windows into this new age of discovery?

    Commercial Crew Launch funding issues cause concerns

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    Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | NASA decision increases risk in commercial crew program.

    Congress short funded the commercial ISS crew/cargo program (by 1/2!!!!) the only good result being the continued use of cooperative agreement funding tools rather than the (potentially) more controlling fixed price contracts. Some concerns about delays and risks are very appropriate but it’s possible this not all bad. One of the comments pointed out that the senatorial launch system got funded as well and suggests a great solution, take some of the SLS money for CCL and then offer the big launcher requirement up to the eSpace competitors for solution on a commercial basis.