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" 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

"This has fundamental implications for how one thinks about current challenges. Globalisation and technological change are often portrayed as exogenous forces sweeping across the rich countries, inexorably driving up inequality and forcing workers to accept wage stagnation (and often less security) if they are to hold on to their jobs. Instead, the variation in country experiences shows how much institutions and policy responses matter to how these forces - themselves subject to human agency rather than God-given - play out in the job market and affect household disposable incomes. Wage-setting institutions clearly have a critical influence. The Belgian combination of wages indexed to inflation, collective agreements covering most workers, and a high minimum wage underpinned significant wage growth across the distribution. In Australia, the extension of collectively negotiated employment terms and conditions over much of the work force, together with a very high minimum wage, play a key role. By contrast, the remarkably poor earnings performance of the UK over the last decade is in a context where wage bargaining has become individualised."

Given constant emergence of new infectious threats, Infectious Diseases (ID) should be one of the most attractive medical specialties to students and trainees. Yet, ID Fellowship programs continue to not fill in the match, and ID remains among the lowest paid specialties. Nearly 35 years after Dr. Petersdorf first asked the question, we find ourselves once again wondering, "Whither Infectious Diseases?" To answer this question, and align with predominant US market forces, ID experts should push for: 1) restrictions regarding utilization of ID diagnostics and antimicrobial agents; 2) pay-for-performance measures regarding antimicrobial prescribing rates; and 3) healthcare reform as called for by the American College of Physicians to move away from fee-for-service medicine. Einstein said, "Continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity." We must move towards alignment with market forces, to benefit our patients, society, and our colleagues.

"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

The Forum's perspective on present and future technological and societal changes is captured in their 'Principled Framework for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.' Philbeck explained the four principles that characterize the Fourth Industrial Revolution. * Think systems, not technologies. Individual technologies are interesting, but it is their systemic impact that matters. Emerging technologies challenge our societal values and norms, sometimes for good, but sometimes also in negative ways; the Fourth Industrial Revolution will have civilization-changing impact-on species, on the planet, on geopolitics, and on the global economy. Philbeck suggested that wealth creation and aggregation supported by this phase of technological innovation may challenge societal commitments to accessibility, inclusivity, and fairness and create the need for relentless worker re-education. As Philbeck stated, "The costs for greater productivity are often externalized to stakeholders who are not involved in a particular technology's development." * Empowering, not determining. The Forum urges an approach to the Fourth Industrial Revolution that honors existing social principles. "We need to take a stance toward technology and technological systems that empowers society and acts counter to fatalistic and deterministic views, so that society and its agency is not nullified," said Philbeck. "Technologies are not forces; we have the ability to shape them and decide on how they are applied." * Future by design, and not by default. Seeking a future by design requires active governance. There are many types of governance-by individuals, by governments, by civic society, and by companies. Philbeck argued that failure to pay attention to critical governance questions in consideration of the Fourth Industrial Revolution means societies are likely to allow undemocratic, random, and potentially malicious forces to shape the future of technological systems and th

"It's time to consider, I suggest, a renewal of the traditions of American federalism: a systematic devolution of power from the overinflated federal government to the states, and from the states to the people. It's time for people in Massachusetts to accept that they're never going to be able to force people in Oklahoma to conform to their notions of moral goodness, and for the people of Oklahoma to accept the same thing about the people of Massachusetts; furthermore, it's time for government at all levels to give up trying to impose cultural uniformity on the lively diversity of our republic's many nations, and settle for their proper role of ensuring equal protection under the laws, and those other benefits that governments, by their nature, are best suited to provide for their citizens. "

Alternative: create in-country employment opportunities for people BEFORE they choose to emigrate or circumstances force them to become refugees.

"What these examples have in common is that they illustrate two of the key tasks of the social sciences: to measure important social variables over time and space, and to identify the social mechanisms that lead to variation in these variables. There are large problems of methodology and conceptual clarification that need to be addressed in both parts of this agenda. On the side of measurement, we have the problems of arriving at consistent and revealing definitions of economic wellbeing, using incomplete historical sources to reconstruct estimates of prices and wages, and using a range of statistical methods to validate and interpret the results. And on the explanatory side, we are faced with the difficult task of reconstructing social processes and forces in the past that may have powered the changes we are able to document, and with the task of validating the hypotheses we have put forward on the basis of historical evidence."

"Third, the ad does not adequately acknowledge the degree to which some of the institutions it defends are in fact a source of much of the trouble we now face. NATO was an important and valuable institution during the Cold War, for example, and it clearly magnified U.S. influence. But a good case can be made that NATO has been a disruptive force since then, mostly by pursuing an open-ended and ill-conceived eastward expansion. Similarly, the creation of the WTO and the headlong pursuit of what my colleague Dani Rodrik calls "hyper-globalization" has clearly had deleterious economic effects for millions and played no small part in the populist avalanche that has been reshaping politics throughout the Western world and beyond."

"The casual observer can hardly comprehend the value-extracting power of hedge fund activists. Technically, they are no more than minority shareholders. Yet they exert enormous influence, often forcing these companies to undertake fundamental restructuring and to increase stock buybacks and dividends substantially. For instance, Third Point Management and Trian Fund Management, holding only 2% of the outstanding stock of Dow Chemical and DuPont, respectively, engineered a merger-and-split of America's top two chemical giants at the end of 2015 that resulted in both massive layoffs and the closure of DuPont's central research lab, one of the first industrial science labs in the United States."

"The above summary does not do justice to Martyanov's truly seminal book. I can only say that I consider this book as an absolutely indispensable "must read" for every person in the USA who loves his/her country and for every person who believes that wars, especially nuclear ones, must be avoided at all costs. Just like many others (I think of Paul Craig Roberts), Martyanov is warning us that "the day of reckoning is upon us" and that the risks of war are very real, even if for most of us such an event is also unthinkable. Those in the USA who consider themselves patriots should read this book with special attention, not only because it correctly identifies the main threat to the USA, but also because it explains in detail what circumstances have resulted in the current crisis. Waving (mostly Chinese made) US flags is simply not an option anymore, neither is looking away and pretending that none of this is real. Martynov's book will also be especially interesting to those in the US armed forces who are observing the tremendous decline of US military power from inside. Who better than a former Soviet officer could not only explain, but also understand the mechanisms which have made such a decline possible?"

"he Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps will also phase out their programs to train uniformed strategists and retire serving strategists, which will save billions of dollars, Mattis said. Meanwhile, civilian consultants will replace strategists across the Department of Defense. According to the contract, their key duties will include producing PowerPoint briefings with graphics that no one understands, writing white papers that will not be read by policymakers, faking expertise on countries they have never visited (primarily China and Russia), and repeatedly saying "whole of government," all at a much lower cost than what the Pentagon currently spends for similar duties."

"This work presents the first compressive and independent analysis of the contributions of one of the most important public officials in American history.  As a graduate student more than a decade ago, I began to investigate the role that Marriner S. Eccles played during the 1930s, as both a special assistant to the secretary of the Treasury and as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. I was intrigued that Eccles, as a Republican businessman from Utah-and yes a Mormon-became the New Deal's most forceful advocate of Keynesian policy.  Since that time I have come to learn far more about his participation in those years, and, indeed, a good deal more about the vexed political and economic milieu in which his career as a public servant unfolded.  Although this work is clearly intended to amplify the contributions that Eccles made in important policy areas, it also seeks to correct some inaccuracies that have frequently been conveyed about the details of his participation. Moreover, his fiscal and monetary interests were so extensive that it would not be too far afield to view what follows as a history of the New Deal with Eccles as the focal point."