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Bill Fulkerson

Why a 400-Year Program of Modernist Thinking is Exploding | naked capitalism - 0 views

www.nakedcapitalism.com/...ernist-thinking-exploding.html

capitalism power society

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 11 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Bill Fulkerson on 11 Mar 17
     
    " Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power Follow yvessmith on Twitter Feedburner RSS Feed RSS Feed for Comments Subscribe via Email SUBSCRIBE Recent Items Links 3/11/17 - 03/11/2017 - Yves Smith Deutsche Bank Tries to Stay Alive - 03/11/2017 - Yves Smith John Helmer: Australian Government Trips Up Ukrainian Court Claim of MH17 as Terrorism - 03/11/2017 - Yves Smith 2:00PM Water Cooler 3/10/2017 - 03/10/2017 - Lambert Strether Why a 400-Year Program of Modernist Thinking is Exploding - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith Links 3/10/17 - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith Why It Will Take a Lot More Than a Smartphone to Get the Sharing Economy Started - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith CalPERS' General Counsel Railroads Board on Fiduciary Counsel Selection - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith Another Somalian Famine - 03/10/2017 - Yves Smith Trade now with TradeStation - Highest rated for frequent traders Why a 400-Year Program of Modernist Thinking is Exploding Posted on March 10, 2017 by Yves Smith By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website Across the globe, a collective freak-out spanning the whole political system is picking up steam with every new "surprise" election, rush of tormented souls across borders, and tweet from the star of America's great unreality show, Donald Trump. But what exactly is the force that seems to be pushing us towards Armageddon? Is it capitalism gone wild? Globalization? Political corruption? Techno-nightmares? Rajani Kanth, a political economist, social thinker, and poet, goes beyond any of these explanations for the answer. In his view, what's throwing most of us off kilter - whether we think of ourselves as on the left or right, capitalist or socialist -was birthed 400 years ago during the period of the Enlightenment. It's a set of assumptions, a particular way of looking at the world that pushed out previous modes o
Bill Fulkerson

Anatomy of an AI System - 1 views

anatomyof.ai

AI amazon

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 14 Sep 18 - No Cached
  • Bill Fulkerson on 14 Sep 18
     
    "With each interaction, Alexa is training to hear better, to interpret more precisely, to trigger actions that map to the user's commands more accurately, and to build a more complete model of their preferences, habits and desires. What is required to make this possible? Put simply: each small moment of convenience - be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song - requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch. A full accounting for these costs is almost impossible, but it is increasingly important that we grasp the scale and scope if we are to understand and govern the technical infrastructures that thread through our lives. III The Salar, the world's largest flat surface, is located in southwest Bolivia at an altitude of 3,656 meters above sea level. It is a high plateau, covered by a few meters of salt crust which are exceptionally rich in lithium, containing 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves. 4 The Salar, alongside the neighboring Atacama regions in Chile and Argentina, are major sites for lithium extraction. This soft, silvery metal is currently used to power mobile connected devices, as a crucial material used for the production of lithium-Ion batteries. It is known as 'grey gold.' Smartphone batteries, for example, usually have less than eight grams of this material. 5 Each Tesla car needs approximately seven kilograms of lithium for its battery pack. 6 All these batteries have a limited lifespan, and once consumed they are thrown away as waste. Amazon reminds users that they cannot open up and repair their Echo, because this will void the warranty. The Amazon Echo is wall-powered, and also has a mobile battery base. This also has a limited lifespan and then must be thrown away as waste. According to the Ay
Steve Bosserman

It's time to regulate the gig economy | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...s-time-to-regulate-gig-economy

gig economy sharing economy favors exchange platforms labor unions

shared by Steve Bosserman on 19 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • Although it would seem straightforward that the laws protecting workers should also apply to workers in what is described as the ‘gig economy’ or ‘platform-based work’, there is much debate – and confusion – on this issue. This lack of clarity stems in part from the novelty of platform-based work. There has also been an effort to conceal the nature of platform-based work through buzzwords such as ‘favours’, ‘rides’, and ‘tasks’ as well as the practice common to many platforms of classifying their workers as independent contractors. Platform-based work includes ‘crowdwork’ and ‘work-on-demand via apps’. In crowdwork, workers complete small jobs or tasks through online platforms, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, Crowdflower, and Clickworker.  In ‘work-on-demand via apps,’ workers perform duties such as providing transport, cleaning, home repairs, or running errands, but the workers learn about these jobs through mobile apps, from companies such as Uber, Taskrabbit, and Handy. The jobs are performed locally.
  • Platforms mediate extensively the transactions they have with their workers, and also between the customers and the workers.  Platforms often fix the price of the service as well as define the terms and conditions of the service, or they allow the clients to define the terms (but not the worker). The platform may define the schedule or the details of the work, including instructing workers to wear uniforms, to use specific tools, or to treat customers in a particular way. Many platforms have performance review systems that allow customers to rate the workers and they use these ratings to limit the ability of lower-rated workers to access jobs, including by excluding workers from their system. The amount of direction and discipline that clients and platforms impose on workers, in many instances amounts to the degree of control that is normally reserved to employers and is normally accompanied by labour protections such as the minimum wage, limits on working time, and contributions to social security. This recent ILO study provides more detailed analysis on these features of platform-based work.
Steve Bosserman

Refugees a Burden? Trump Says Yes; Research Says Otherwise - 0 views

undark.org/...refugees-benefit-their-hosts

refugees spillover economic benefits

shared by Steve Bosserman on 08 May 17 - No Cached
  • At least a dozen local, regional, and global analyses published in the last five years provide credible evidence that refugees and migrants offer long-term economic benefits for their new communities. J. Edward Taylor, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis, and director of the Rural Economies of the Americas and Pacific Rim Program, led two such studies, from Rwanda and Uganda, finding that every dollar spent by governments and organizations on refugee aid is multiplied as added income.
  • This “spillover,” as economists call it, accrues when refugees buy goods and services from local vendors and producers. In Rwanda, each additional refugee resulted in an added $205 to $253 to the economy each year. In Uganda, each refugee dollar spent generated an additional $1 to $1.50 in local income. Spillover benefits are higher when refugees receive cash transfers instead of food aid. In fact, the World Food Program promotes a program doing just this in part because it also allows refugees to make their own market choices.
  • But the overall finding offered a powerful message, Parsons said: “It implies that we have nothing to fear from accepting refugees, as long as appropriate mechanisms and support programs are in place to help people resettle and integrate.”
Bill Fulkerson

The Federal Job Guarantee Is Not Just "Better" Than a Universal Basic Income. It's the ... - 0 views

www.nakedcapitalism.com/...sal-basic-income-sinister.html

ubi

shared by Bill Fulkerson on 28 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • UBI adds money to the economy without increasing production or output. This is how you cause inflation: The creation of money without consideration of the real resources available to you.
  • FJG adds money to the economy by increasing productivity and output. This is how you avoid, or greatly reduce the severity of, inflation. It forces private industry and the military to up their game, in order to be competitive with the FJG: better than bare-minimum living wage, benefits, and working conditions.
  • If the FJG creates “busywork” pointless jobs, it is not a problem of the FJG itself, but rather a reflection of poor implementation of the FJG at the local level. There are basically an infinite number of genuinely useful things to be done at the local level, throughout the country.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The fear of automation is nonsense. We should embrace automation. Robots can cook our cheeseburgers, wash our cars, and accept and dispense cash better and faster than humans. But robots cannot take care of our children or seniors, they cannot entertain us, create works of art, write our books, or be our primary care physicians or psychologists. Leave the more physically taxing and repetitive drudgery work to the robots. Leave the infinite number of more satisfying and productive jobs for us humans.
Steve Bosserman

A California Court Just Ruled That Gig Workers Are Bona Fide Employees. Will Courts in ... - 0 views

psmag.com/...ig-workers-moves-to-the-states

employment gig economy independent contractors

shared by Steve Bosserman on 04 May 18 - No Cached
  • The court ruled in favor of the Dynamex drivers, agreeing that they had been misclassified as independent contractors and are, in fact, employees. The ruling also concluded that employers could only classify as independent contractors those workers who meet the conditions laid out in the "ABC standard" established in other states:(a) that the worker is free from control and direction over performance of the work, both under the contract and in fact; (b) that the work provided is outside the usual course of the business for which the work is performed; and (c) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation or business (hence the ABC standard).
  • While some of these workers may be independent contractors by choice, others, like the Dynamex drivers, were forced into the classification by employers looking to save money. The National Employment Law Project estimates that employers can reduce payroll and other taxes by up to 30 percent by re-classifying employees. State-level studies on the issue, meanwhile, have uncovered extremely high misclassification rates—a series of audits in Ohio found that 47 percent of workers were misclassified. (This misclassification, not surprisingly, costs federal, state, and local governments hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tax revenues.)
Steve Bosserman

Modern grocery and the emerging-market consumer: A complicated courtship | McKinsey & C... - 0 views

www.mckinsey.com/...nsumer-a-complicated-courtship

emerging markets grocery stores supermarkets food distribution

shared by Steve Bosserman on 19 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • In the 1990s, the term “modern grocery retail” was essentially a proxy for a small group of multinational grocers including Ahold, Aldi, Auchan, Carrefour, Costco, Lidl, Metro, Tesco, and Walmart. It was widely presumed that these retailers’ entry into any market would lead to the demise of the traditional trade—the family-owned grocery chains, small independent stores, and informal merchants that at the time accounted for the vast majority of grocery sales in emerging markets. The prevailing expectation was that although there would be local differences due to cultural specificities, in every country the retail landscape would eventually consist of a combination of modern formats: full-line supermarkets and hypermarkets, convenience stores, and discounters. These assumptions have been proved wrong. Global grocery giants are struggling to grow profitably in many emerging markets. Traditional trade has proved remarkably resilient. And the market and channel structures taking shape in individual emerging economies are distinct from one another, following no obvious pattern.
Steve Bosserman

A Road Trip Through Rusting and Rising America - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...usting-and-rising-america.html

communities sustainability work skill development social capital

shared by Steve Bosserman on 25 May 17 - No Cached
  • The big divide in America is not between the coasts and the interior. It’s between strong communities and weak communities. You can find weak ones along the coast and thriving ones in Appalachia, and vice versa. It’s community, stupid — not geography.The communities that are making it share a key attribute: They’ve created diverse adaptive coalitions, where local businesses get deeply involved in the school system, translating in real time the skills being demanded by the global economy.
  • Show me a community that understands today’s world and is working together to thrive within it, and I’ll show you a community on the rise — coastal or interior, urban or rural.
  • What is wrong with America is that too many communities, rural and urban, have broken down. What is right with America is the many communities and regions that are coming together to help their citizens acquire the skills and opportunities to own their own futures. We need to share and scale these success stories.
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