I am a believer in capitalism, but...
Most people in a capitalistic society work at jobs and try to get the biggest paycheck they can. Those who make more than they require for their daily needs squirrel some away for retirement. They put the money in the stock market or bonds, money market funds, or more exotic investments. Most people have jobs that don't require them to be finance experts. The few who do make their living in finance have a distinct advantage in the investing arena. And by some strange coincidence they have some of the largest incomes. These are the experts on the capitalist system itself. So, while the rest of us, the people who make goods and perform useful services, we only dabble in finance. The professionals grow wealthy on it. They are the greasers of the wheels of capitalism.
To a certain extent capitalism is a game. The truly wealthy got that way because they are very, very good at playing the game. Some people are very, very bad at the game. Most people just muddle through. A very few are quite excellent at it. This does not make them either good or bad. One thing many of those people are good at is acquiring more wealth.
Capitalism has 2 aspects. In one way, when an economy grows it usually helps most of the people in it. The popular expression is: A raising tide lifts all boats. This is the aspect of capitalism that everyone hopes for and gives capitalism its optimism. But there is another aspect to capitalism. Sometimes one person's gain is another person's loss. It is that aspect of capitalism that needs to be addressed. Some would say that it is appropriate for the smarter, more clever, people to grow wealthy off of the less clever. The government tries to put some limits on this with consumer protection and other laws. But, as they say, a fool and his money are soon parted. Even educated people in the middle class are no match for the masters of capitalism. This is the root of the growing disparity between the wealthy and the rest of the country. There are some wealthy people who cheat and steal to advance themselves. They are some of the worst. The Bernie Madoff's of the world. Even if all of the crooks were rooted out the divide would continue to grow. There are plenty others who would never consider breaking a law and legally enrich themselves beyond anything imaginable by most people. Warren Buffet. Currently the top 1% wealthiest people have about 37% of the wealth of the country. The top 20% have about 80% of the country's wealth. And the disparity is continuing to grow. Clearly, those people at the top are very good, better than 99% of the country, at amassing wealth. That skill seems to know no bound. It is also clear that the continuing growth in the disparity is unsustainable. The only questions are: When will people decide something must be done about it? What will they decide to do about it?
(Aside: Could it be that Jimmy Buffet is Warren's wayward son?)
The Occupy Wall Street people are gone for the moment but I am pretty sure they will be back. As long as the disparity between rich and middle class continues grow it will get more recruits. Most of the wealthy, with a few notable exceptions, seem to be very smug about having earned what they have and wanting to keep it. At some point they will have to realize that their financial situation is dependent on a stable government, stable society, and stable economy. Whether they realize it or not it is in their best interest to do whatever they need to to keep the status-quo. If the current economic trends continue it could destabilize things and then their investments could end up being worthless, as in the Great Depression.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Friday, August 3, 2012
Magic and Wizards in the Computer Age
As we all learned in grade school, people used to believe in magic because they didn't understand the forces of nature. Over the years science has increasingly reduced what is unknown about nature. At the beginning of scientific advancement, when the most basic principles were determined, most people were able to understand and accept them. As science and technology have advanced fewer and fewer people understand their more advanced aspects. The people who understand the advanced aspects seem almost mystical to the average person. They are commonly called wizards or gurus (e.g. he's a computer wizard).
Although people aren't often faced with making decisions based on advanced knowledge of particle physics they are when it comes to common technologies, such as cell phones and computers. When faced with a program that is behaving badly we often find some "trick" to getting it to work. By pressing some combination of keys or selecting some menu option or something we are able to get the computer to do what we want it to do. We have no idea why it was not performing according to our understanding of the manual. We just know that it works when we perform our mystical ritual to appease the computer gods.
If you ask most people they say they understand that the computer simply executes a series of logical instructions. The same people will acknowledge that they have no understanding how their computer performs its most basic functions. Even people who are computer professionals only know a small aspect of the computer and are in the dark about much of the rest of it. There are chip engineers who design the micro-processors and other integrated circuits and circuit boards that are the physical host on which the system resides. There are operating system designers who know the interface between the hardware and the applications. There are thousands of application domains that each have their own specialists. Each specialist has little or no knowledge of what is in other specialties. To each the other areas are mystical.
About 20 years ago I had a fair idea of how my PC worked, from CPU to word processor. My understanding has become murkier and murkier over the years as computers have become more complex. Nearly everyone has a cell phone these days. Almost no-one understands how they work beyond the most basic concepts. When I was a kid many people worked on their cars. It was well within most people's ability to understand it down to a very low level. Car motors have become vastly more complex and are now controlled by computers. Medical science is so full of specialties that very few specialists understand what is going on in closely related specialties. It becomes scary to think about how little the general practitioner knows.
Before science starting making its leaps and bounds magic and religion used to be used to explain what people didn't understand about the world around them. There was a period where magic was on the wane because science explained a lot of things in a way most people could understand. Now there more of the world has been explained but it is harder to understand. There is also too much information for anyone to absorb. So now people are returning to a mystical acceptance of the world as not understandable. So many people accept that their computer is really behaving in a non-logical way. That there are computer wizards who know some sort of magic that can make their computer behave. That you have to blindly perform a bizarre ritual to make the technology work. That technology behaves in arbitrary and capricious ways.
As concepts of science and technology become more remote from the common understanding we can expect more people to treat it as mystical. The people who have some understanding of it will be called and treated as wizards from the middle-ages. And they will be, more than the middle-age wizard, able to control things that appear magical to average person. (Of course there will be false wizards who have only better knowledge of what special key combinations to press without having a deeper under standing of the technology, and real wizards who really understand it.) The age of enlightenment is ending and we are returning to an age of mysticism.
Not that long ago I had a discussion with a seemingly intelligent college educated woman. She complained that a recent scientific studied showed that the dietary supplement she was taking did not provide the medical benefit she thought it did. She said she felt the scientific community had let her down since, years earlier, the claim was made that there was scientific evidence that the supplement worked. She didn't understand that the dietary supplement industry often over-states the significance of small short term preliminary studies. And that these are not definitive. A lot of the people who take supplements or follow the latest trends in the health-food industry have this miss-understanding. Unfortunately there are a number of industries, especially in the health sciences, that thrive on confusing people about what is proven science and what is just theory.
Although people aren't often faced with making decisions based on advanced knowledge of particle physics they are when it comes to common technologies, such as cell phones and computers. When faced with a program that is behaving badly we often find some "trick" to getting it to work. By pressing some combination of keys or selecting some menu option or something we are able to get the computer to do what we want it to do. We have no idea why it was not performing according to our understanding of the manual. We just know that it works when we perform our mystical ritual to appease the computer gods.
If you ask most people they say they understand that the computer simply executes a series of logical instructions. The same people will acknowledge that they have no understanding how their computer performs its most basic functions. Even people who are computer professionals only know a small aspect of the computer and are in the dark about much of the rest of it. There are chip engineers who design the micro-processors and other integrated circuits and circuit boards that are the physical host on which the system resides. There are operating system designers who know the interface between the hardware and the applications. There are thousands of application domains that each have their own specialists. Each specialist has little or no knowledge of what is in other specialties. To each the other areas are mystical.
About 20 years ago I had a fair idea of how my PC worked, from CPU to word processor. My understanding has become murkier and murkier over the years as computers have become more complex. Nearly everyone has a cell phone these days. Almost no-one understands how they work beyond the most basic concepts. When I was a kid many people worked on their cars. It was well within most people's ability to understand it down to a very low level. Car motors have become vastly more complex and are now controlled by computers. Medical science is so full of specialties that very few specialists understand what is going on in closely related specialties. It becomes scary to think about how little the general practitioner knows.
Before science starting making its leaps and bounds magic and religion used to be used to explain what people didn't understand about the world around them. There was a period where magic was on the wane because science explained a lot of things in a way most people could understand. Now there more of the world has been explained but it is harder to understand. There is also too much information for anyone to absorb. So now people are returning to a mystical acceptance of the world as not understandable. So many people accept that their computer is really behaving in a non-logical way. That there are computer wizards who know some sort of magic that can make their computer behave. That you have to blindly perform a bizarre ritual to make the technology work. That technology behaves in arbitrary and capricious ways.
As concepts of science and technology become more remote from the common understanding we can expect more people to treat it as mystical. The people who have some understanding of it will be called and treated as wizards from the middle-ages. And they will be, more than the middle-age wizard, able to control things that appear magical to average person. (Of course there will be false wizards who have only better knowledge of what special key combinations to press without having a deeper under standing of the technology, and real wizards who really understand it.) The age of enlightenment is ending and we are returning to an age of mysticism.
Not that long ago I had a discussion with a seemingly intelligent college educated woman. She complained that a recent scientific studied showed that the dietary supplement she was taking did not provide the medical benefit she thought it did. She said she felt the scientific community had let her down since, years earlier, the claim was made that there was scientific evidence that the supplement worked. She didn't understand that the dietary supplement industry often over-states the significance of small short term preliminary studies. And that these are not definitive. A lot of the people who take supplements or follow the latest trends in the health-food industry have this miss-understanding. Unfortunately there are a number of industries, especially in the health sciences, that thrive on confusing people about what is proven science and what is just theory.
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