The Edge of Logos

It turns out that solar power is keeping the BLM busy lately. Since 2006 a tremendous land rush in the deserts of the Southwest has developed, and it’s taking a very novel form. Rather than following the ancient tradition of looking for valuable resources in or on the land–ore, petroleum, water, etc.–they’re looking for value coming toward the land. That is, photons blasting towards it from the Sun. The land is just a place to stick the panels or mirrors that’s flat and preferably conveniently near a road and a transmission line. Whether the land is physically like the moon or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is irrelevant. In one sense, land on the more moon-like end of the spectrum is better. If it lacks alternate value, there’s less competition for it.

Except for one other form of competition: other solar prospectors. Here the competition is very intense. It’s interesting that Goldman Sachs is buying up a lot of this desert through an investment subsidiary called Solar Investments. Obviously these bankers aren’t about to put on hard hats and gloves and get busy building solar plants. Nor are they barefoot eco-hippies looking to save the world. They’re East Coast speculators. And the fact that the “smart money” (ahem) is moving in to buy huge swathes of desert suggests that solar power is finally real. It also suggests a big-ass bubble is inflating. It recalls a folksy piece of wisdom: the pioneers get the arrows, the settlers get the land. The presumed first mover advantage may ultimately destroy a lot of wealth. This is the essence of speculation.

It is happening now, and it will be transformative. It is the harbinger of major economic and cultural change. This virtually worthless land has abruptly become a hot commodity. I just went camping in Monument Valley and drove through desert all the way there and back. I can tell you, there is a lot of room for solar plants, and not just on BLM land. Some of these dusty little towns are going to get flush. And I wonder if the Navajo, Hopi or other tribes that got screwed out of the then valuable land in the 19th century, and literally force-marched into the deserts to eke out a marginal living, will suddenly find themselves sitting on prime real estate. That would be an incredible historical irony and a super business opportunity, one that’s healthier and a lot classier than casinos.

economics, energy, technology

This is the most shameless, most indefensible piece of trash I have ever read in the New York Times:

You Try to Live on 500K in This Town

Now, for a trip back to Planet Reality, courtesy of the World Bank:

Poverty Around the World

Fact of note: “1.4 billion people live at th[e] poverty line or below.” The poverty line is $1.25 per day. So, to anyone accustomed to “living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue” and whining about how hard life is, I encourage you to pull your head out of your ass and find out how people are “living a certain way” in the Third World.

economics

The upcoming Olympic games in China this year have generated a lot of controversy. The reasons are simple. China intends the event to signal their emergence on the world stage, so it’s clearly a matter of national prestige. Yet China has a lot to be ashamed of: the conquest of Tibet, continued crushing of human rights, imprisonment of political dissidents, and atrocious environmental problems. China is a tyranny, and nothing about that is changed by hosting the Olympics, despite the glamour the communist regime hopes it will lend.

On the other hand, the Olympics are almost certainly going to be a venue for political grandstanding intended to make the Chinese government very uncomfortable. It’s already begun, actually. For example, Stephen Spielberg was involved in the event, but he stepped down to protest China’s see-no-evil stance towards the Darfur crisis. I expect to see at least one gold medal winner use his victory as a platform for similar forms of social protest. It’s an irresistible venue for celebrities, athletes, and other media darlings.

All the fuss got me thinking: of the countries that have ever hosted the Olympics, how many were undemocratic? As it turns out, not many. I did a little homework, and according to my research, the list is: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and South Korea. (South Korea is included because the Olympics and the establishment of democracy were virtually simultaneous. In fact, fear of pro-democracy unrest at the Olympics was part of the motivation.)

Then I noticed that all of these countries are now democracies! (Of varying qualities, of course.) And I wondered: How long did tyranny last in each country after the Olympics? Here are my findings:

Country: Germany
Games On: 1936
Democratic By: 1946
Tyranny Duration: 10 years

Country: Soviet Union
Games On: 1980
Democratic By: 1991
Tyranny Duration: 11 years

Country: Yugoslavia
Games On: 1984
Democratic By: 1990-92
Tyranny Duration: 6-8 years

Country: South Korea
Games On: 1988
Democratic By: 1987
Tyranny Duration: 0 years (coincident)

Check this out. Not one country maintained its tyranny for more than 11 years after it hosted the games. What does this mean? It suggests that if it follows the pattern of all tyrannies before it, China could be democratic by 2019!

And if you think about it, it’s not that far-fetched. The Olympics tend to be hosted by countries that are at least moderately wealthy and industrialized, for obvious reasons; you need electricity, stadiums, etc. And those countries are, by and large, democracies.

All the tyrannies on this list were industrial–just as China is. And China has followed the trend towards liberty. Authoritarianism is on the decline there already–if only modestly; rules and attitudes are generally relaxing. (All bets are off if there are demonstrations, though; I suspect they would be crushed.)

Much more impressive, though, are the economic strides China has made, especially in the last few decades. it has been growing wealthy at a breakneck pace; it is a hard-core capitalist nation growing at least 10% a year. If there’s any connection between industrialization, wealth and democracy–and I think that’s undeniable–China could see some major political change in the next decade.

culture, economics, politics

“People don’t know what they want, not before they see it. Every object of desire is a found object. Traditionally, anyway.”
- William Gibson, All Tomorrow’s Parties

It’s the time of year to consume. Here’s the formula:

1. Supply and marketing of object x is prior to discovery of x.
2. Discovery of x is prior to demand for x.
3. Demand for x is prior to consumption of x.
4. Supply, discovery and demand for x are now in place. Consumption event occurs; x is consumed.
5. Return to step 1.

The last step is possibly the most important. It’s an iterative process. As soon as object x is consumed, it is necessary to update or supplant it with a shiny new object y, ad infinitum. This point is critical: the consumer model isn’t just constantly buying things; it is constantly finding new things to buy.

Yet as traditional as it is to us, so familiar that it’s weird even to speak of it, it wasn’t always like this. Sixty thousand years ago, demand was bounded by very hard limits. There can be no consumption of things that don’t exist; there would be no found objects, and therefore nothing new to desire. The products that existed in the day had been around for ages, so the endless cycle of consumption just wasn’t there. A hunter-gatherer could dream of flying, but that’s not anything like demand for a flight to Cancun. Demand was very, very limited, so consumption was too.

I’m not holding that period of history up as some wonderful thing, and I’m not suggesting that we should chuck our iPods and become hunter-gatherers. I’m saying that there was a time when no one was a consumer. Since the consumerist formula didn’t exist long ago, it stands to reason that it isn’t necessary, that it can be abandoned even today.

Do you find the idea of being a mechanical component of an economic algorithm degrading? (I hope so.) Fortunately, there are alternatives. I will not spell any out here, because I’m not a preacher. I just want to stir the stagnant waters a little. Try a little thought experiment:

• Imagine discovering worthy things on your own, independent of advertising.
• Imagine being beyond the grip of desires that others intentionally saddled onto you.
• Imagine not lusting for that new thing that you didn’t care about the other day.
• Imagine seeing it for what it truly is, rather than how you hope it makes you feel.
• Imagine seeing it broken, obsolete, at the bottom of a landfill.
• Imagine other ways to use money that don’t involve consuming a product.
• Imagine being fulfilled by means of no object.
• Imagine giving a gift to someone you care about that has no price, can’t be bought or sold, and can’t be replaced with something new later.

It’s hard, isn’t it? No one wants to think of themselves as a mere consumer–that’s what everyone else is. No one can ever be entirely free of this; we do consume. The question is: do you love to consume? Does it define you? Do you truly recognise the extent that consumerism shapes your life?

culture, economics

Thomas Friedman, a regular op-ed contributor to the New York Times, drives me nuts. He often writes on topics that interest me: renewable energy, globalization, etc. So I’m drawn in. But his ideas are superficial and discordant.

Example: His book, “The World is Flat.” It’s about how globalization is, in his view, “flattening” competition across the world. The idea is that circumstances between developed and emerging economies are coming to parity, rather than heavily favoring the developed world.

Fair enough. But his analogy to flatness is just stupid. Saying ‘the world is flat’ suggests a regression to an earlier state of ignorance. The world was thought to be flat, back when people didn’t know any better. Globalization is nothing like this. It’s a global transition to greater economic integration. This might be analogized more properly to a growing network of increasing economic balance. Calling this ‘flat’ is just dumb. His analogy has the virtue of being simpler, but at the cost of accuracy.

Nonetheless, the book is a bestseller. Most likely because his simple-but-inaccurate analogies are easier for his broad general audience to understand. So if he wants to sell books, that’s great. If he wants to write a good book, that’s lousy.

Another example: “The Dawn of E2K in India.” What is ‘E2K’?

E2K stands, in my mind, for all the energy programming and monitoring that thousands of global companies are going to be undertaking in the early 21st century to either become carbon neutral or far more energy efficient than they are today. India is poised to get a lot of this work.

This he holds in analogy with the Y2K bug: that the current transition to environmentally sound development technology in India is similar to the effort in the late 90s to fix the representation of dates on older computers before January 1st, 2000. But it’s really another disanalogy. The similarity is, at best, superficial.

Both represent widespread efforts to solve a problem that, left unsolved, might be catastrophic. But in every other respect, they are entirely dissimilar. Y2K was a computer science problem that, when fixed, maintained the status quo. “E2K” is a manufacturing/energy problem that, when addressed, represents a revolutionary change in humanity’s relation to its environment. It is not a ‘programming’ problem, unless you really have no clue what programming is.

And on this weak basis he coins the neologism “E2K?” What’s that supposed to be? “The Environment 2000 Bug?” Brilliant.

economics