Khannea Suntzu's Quixotic Nymious Torrent

My 15 seconds of reverberative fame. Wish I could have attended Future Fest, but hey, LA. It’s kinda far away.

Original link.

I understand you have a country to run, and I understand the Netherlands are succumbing to a global crisis, largely caused by systemic reasons not directly attributable to policies or wrongs enacted by anyone locally. We have now inherited a systemic crisis, largely because of the thoughtlessness, the corruption, the short-term mindset or sheer incompetence by policymakers and managers and leaders abroad.

I understand that you as a politician must take a responsibility congruent with your knowledge and expertise, and congruent with your values to deal with the realities of our day and age. I understand that you see little else than a need for collective austerity.

What troubles me is that you clearly do not seem to see the consequences of your actions. You will no doubt acknowledge the fact that people hurt because of your policies, and you accept this. I look at the icy eyes of the Dutch political caste as they make these hard choices, and I see in these eyes a determined mindset of “we have to do this”. In other words – “we have to be this calculatingly ruthless because the consequences if we don’t would be worse”.

I accuse you of not seeing in full the consequences. I now face in my life people who were fairly happy a short time ago, now unambiguously close to suicide, as a direct result of the nefarious trickledown effect of Dutch governmental policies. You now take responsibilities and exert power in a way that causes damage to the very bedrock morale of people in this country as to cause them to irreversible suffer hairline fractures. Or worse – I see people giving up.

This is nothing new. Societal decay and collapse causes people to succumb to irreversible despair. People do fail, on a statistical level, and “can’t handle it any more”. When the Soviet Union started its grinding collapse (and it does feel very similar what we are now experiencing in Europe) people found themselves unable to resolve the transition and could do little else than succumb to a permanent deadness. This has massive consequences for Russia, as it has for many similar countries. Right now in Greece we see the suicide rate shoot up. I am fairly sure there are people in your party that will mock this simple fact and add the comment “good riddance”, along the lines of good Social Darwinists, but you can’t expect to run a country in this manner.

This is callousness. ruthlessness. Any decrease of safety, collective affluence, societal care… any increase of harshness, bureaucratic disinterest, collective apathy, self-interest .. is irreversible. It damages the fabric of society at a fundamental level. Those that don’t cope succumb to irreversible neurological damage. Or they self-medicate. I can guarantee you an epidemic of alcoholism and other substance abuse. I know that the use of anti-depressants is mostly a fake solution that deadens souls inside and ruins lives (as well as livers and kidneys) and it is a very costly solution. But expect people to run for these solutions, and expect the painful consequences in desperate, irrational acts, suicides, violent crimes, extreme costs to the health of the nation, or people completely dropping away from the labor markets altogether.

Current policies in the Netherlands have become unacceptable. They are rife with disparity and inequality. People in the Netherlands are starting to hate one another. This is a society that is starting to show fractural lines in ways I would only have believes possible in bad Dystopian fiction just a few years ago. I myself feel viciously held in contempt by so many people in this country that I sometimes feel as if I am suffocating. Trust me, the feeling has become completely mutual. This has become a country divided by mutual resentment.

This isn’t the Netherlands any more.

When mothers are on the verge of giving up – well beyond the point of tears – well in the point of desperation – and find themselves unable to care for their children, then you have a problem as a leadership. I see many examples. You are, in the most empathic of terms, fucking up the job entrusted in you. The people in the Netherlands support the current political caste out of sheer dread and fear, but don’t trust you. It’s just that they fear the alternative more.

This isn’t the same world as it was ten years ago. The electorate has vastly new technological means at its disposal, and I will guarantee you these tools will be used. You need to start doing a better job, or the current political system will end up removed and replaced. Yes I am talking popular dissent and revolution, and far sooner than many of you consider possible.

The process of revolution is always painful and bloody. It is an awful thing to have to endure. But with the various catalysts available in new media and technologies it can happen a lot quicker than you deem possible. Once you leave the Dutch people no way out (and you’ll see this same sentiment all throughout Europe) you will see this translated in a statistical groundswell of protest, and beyond protest, in to violent revolt.

In fact just writing about this I feel I can breathe again. Finally I so understand these people in eastern bloc countries, and these people in the middle east who after years of feeling at the mercy of a disinterested system suddenly decided they had enough. Once the political system causes people to feel like this – “hope that a revolution may make things better” – you got a serious problem. And I am saddened to say that is precisely what I feel.

Many people had enough. Stop doing what you are doing and make our lives better instead of making us feel hopeless.

Khannea Suntzu

A new study released by the National Science Board (NSB) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) raises concerns about the global leadership of the U.S. in Science and Technology investments. The report also highlights massive job losses in high-tech.

According to the NSB, the U.S. lost about 687,000 jobs in high-tech since their peak of about 2.5 million in 2000. The organization stated that there have been “permanent” losses in an ongoing trend that affects the areas of aerospace, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications equipment, computer and office equipment as well as scientific instruments.

The NSB carefully criticized the government’s approach of funding science and research by stating that there is still a $7 billion budget for the NSF, but the U.S. is quickly dropping in the global view of investment dollars. Between 1999 and 2009, the U.S. share dropped from 38 percent to 31 percent, while Asia gained from 24 to 35 percent during the same time. Especially China is growing fast, the NSB said, and is now the largest science and technology investor behind the U.S.

“Over the last decade, the world has changed dramatically,” said José-Marie Griffiths, chair of the NSB committee that oversees production of the report. “It’s now a world with very different actors who have made advancement in science and technology a top priority. And many of the troubling trends we’re seeing are now very well established.” The NSF said that it has launched a number of new initiatives designed to better position the United States “by enhancing international collaborations, improving education and establishing new partnerships between NSF-supported researchers and those in industry.”

(source)

Check out my Disparity SCOOP.IT, respectively my Oil Versus SSPS SCOOT.IT.

…I think it’s time to make Neuromancer. We have a Mollie.

Noomi Rapace would do nicely too, incidentally.

Check out my Disparity SCOOP.IT, respectively my Oil Versus SSPS SCOOT.IT.

(thanks James)

U.S. Companies Are Spending to Upgrade Factories but Hiring Lags; Robots Pump Out Sunny Delight
(link)

Each month when the labor department figures are released in the US I also check this table for the Labor Force Participation figure. This month there is great news for the re-election of Obama that the jobless claims are sharply down. Unfortunately, since jobless claims are just the percent of people seeking new unemployment benefits, and the unemployment rate goes down when people get discouraged and drop out of the labor force, the labor force participation rate is the more important barometer, and it is still tracking down…

In order for this figure to go back up we would have to be adding three times the number of jobs that we currently are. And as “business confidence” picks back up they still have to choose between capital investments that improve productivity (IT and automation) and hiring more workers. Given the extraordinarily unsustainable health care costs borne by employers in the US it is now surprise that the majority prefer hire a robot…

The article:
In no other U.S. recovery since World War II have companies been simultaneously faster to boost spending on machines and software, while slower to add people to run them.

Part of this is the old story of substituting capital for labor. But a combination of temporary tax breaks that allowed companies in 2011 to write off 100% of investments in the first year and historically low short- and long-term interest rates have pushed that process into overdrive.

Hiring, meanwhile, is too slow to bring the unemployment rate down rapidly. Employers have added workers at a monthly rate of 142,000 for the past six months, half the pace needed to significantly reduce unemployment, which is now at 8.5%.

Sunny Delight is spending $70 million to upgrade equipment at its five U.S. juice factories, much of it in Littleton, Mass., above.

Billy Cyr, chief executive of Sunny Delight Beverage Co., a Cincinnati-based beverage company, says he is buying new machinery partly because it is a bargain. “When the cost of capital goes up, it is harder to justify an equipment purchase and may, instead, result in higher employment using existing equipment,” he says, such as by adding shifts or overtime for existing workers. Today, the opposite is happening.

Instead of hiring, companies such as Sunny Delight and chain-saw maker Stihl Holding AG are investing in technology or other ways to make existing operations faster and more productive. History suggests that investment that increases productivity eventually will create jobs and raise living standards. The mechanization of the farm and the automation of the factory both raised fears of permanent unemployment that were unrealized, as efficiencies in production of basic commodities created jobs in all sorts of services.

Most economists say today’s surge in productivity will have the same beneficial effect—in the long run. In the short-term, however, this burst of efficiency allows companies to delay hiring.

And that is happening more in this recovery than in the recent past. Spending on gear and hiring usually are more synchronized. Since the economy began growing again in 2009, spending on equipment and software has surged 31%, adjusted for inflation. In the postwar period, only in the wake of the 1982 and 1970 recessions has such spending grown faster. Private-sector jobs have grown just 1.4% over the same span. Only recoveries following the 1980 and 2001 recessions saw slower job growth.

Erik Brynjolfsson, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, says companies began stepping up labor-saving investments in the first half of the last decade. The turning point, he says, came during the recession, when companies realized they could do far more than they expected with fewer people.

Even as demand has drifted back, companies are keeping that ball rolling by spending more money on machinery that automate functions. “It’s as if the economy had a pent-up potential for labor savings that hadn’t been harvested until the recession,” says Mr. Brynjolfsson, author of a new book on automation.

Of course, the surge in capital spending isn’t the only impediment to hiring. Some employers say they would hire more if there wasn’t so much uncertainty, about everything from the durability of demand to tax and regulatory policy. Others complain they can’t find qualified workers for the vacancies they have.

Sunny Delight is spending $70 million to upgrade its five U.S. juice factories, a record annual investment for the company, which was split off from Procter & Gamble Co. in 2004. A big chunk of that spending goes toward upgrading an aging complex that sits astride a railroad siding in Littleton, Mass., outside Boston. Improvements there include a new, brightly lit “filler room” where machines fill four flavors of juice simultaneously on one high-speed line. Previously, flavors were filled on separate lines, scattered in different corners of the plant. Each line required its own operator. Only two people tend the new combined line.

Coming early next year: automated vehicles to replace the factory’s fleet of forklifts and drivers.

“Some people who drive forklifts now will shift to supervise the automated vehicles,” says plant manager Dan Gray, leading the way through the cavernous facility, where the heated mix of liquid coursing through overhead pipes gives the air a sweet smell. “But others will have to move to other jobs in the plant.”

The upshot will be fewer people. Littleton will shed 30% of its original 140 workers by the time the renovations are done.

The Flip Side
The White House says the employment picture would have been worse if not for the jump in business investment. Jason Furman, deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council, says spending on equipment and software has created jobs at businesses that are expanding as well as at companies that make and install equipment. Hiring, however, is driven mainly by demand growth—and that side of the equation has been more muted.

“For the economy as a whole, we’re getting about the level of job growth we’d expect, given the economic growth we’ve had,” he says.

The tax break that Congress legislated for last year is having the desired effect, executives say.

“It just makes the decision easier,” Brandyn Chapman, president of Phoenix Stamping Group LLC. The closely held company is getting tax breaks on $1.5 million in machines he bought for his two Atlanta-area factories.

Mr. Chapman is buying equipment because there’s growing demand for his products, which include parts used in farm machines and heavy-duty trailers. “The cost of capital certainly helps that decision,” he says. Phoenix is hiring because of the demand growth. He plans to add 12 production jobs to his current staff of 115.

The trend toward using labor-saving machines and software isn’t limited to factories. W. Brian Arthur, an economist at Xerox Corp.’s Palo Alto Research Center, says businesses are increasingly using computers and software in the place of people in the nation’s vast service sector. Many companies, for instance, use automation to process orders or send bills.

“It’s not just machines replacing people, though there’s some of that,” Mr. Arthur says. “It’s much more the digitization of the whole economy.”

Calling the Robots

The U.S. today is second only to Japan in the use of industrial robots. Orders for new robots were up 41% through September from a year earlier, according to the Robotics Industries Association trade group. That has helped fuel a larger boom in productivity. Output per hour worked in nonfarm businesses has increased 6% during the recovery. Hours worked are up only 1.5%.

Mitch Free, chief executive of MFG.com, a website that manufacturers use to buy and sell parts and packaging, says the weak economy has produced a buyer’s market for businesses shopping for equipment and software.

“We’re still hearing that companies are having a tough time getting credit,” he says, “but those that are able to buy are loving the deals they get on equipment right now.” Machinery is a bit like housing, he says, “there’s a glut.”

Peter Mueller, executive vice president of the U.S. arm of Germany’s Stihl, says he would buy robots and other machines even if they were far more costly. In Virginia Beach, Va., he recently opened the company’s most advanced factory for making chain-saw guide bars, the metal frames that hold the chains in place.

The plant has 120 robots that run around the clock every day, with only seven workers on each shift. Next year, the company plans to spend $10 million for machines and software that will allow the plant to double its output. It will only need six more workers to do that.

Mr. Mueller says companies that want to produce in the U.S. and compete globally against low-cost producers in places like China need the latest technology or risk getting steamrolled by the competition. Mr. Mueller says the cost for a chain saw made in Virginia is just 1.8% higher than one his company makes in China. “It shows you the power of automation.”

Check out my Disparity SCOOP.IT, respectively my Oil Versus SSPS SCOOT.IT.

8 and then 50

Fire rises hot and bright from the Wood beneath the sacrificial caldron:
The Superior Person positions himself correctly within the flow of Cosmic forces.
Supreme Accomplishment.

“Tip over the caldron and get rid of its stagnant contents once and for all.”

Check out my Disparity SCOOP.IT, respectively my Oil Versus SSPS SCOOT.IT.

By Pete Kofod
Much attention has been paid to the “disappearing middle class” and the “vanishing American Dream.” While the observations are largely accurate, they are also misleading. The traditional three-tier model of the upper, middle and lower class broadly categorizes people according to income and net worth. One significant problem with this model is that membership in any particular class is very much in the eye of the beholder. One man’s “scraping by” is another man’s “opulent living.” This subjective and arbitrary grouping and boundary assessment inevitably gives rise to the simmering class warfare that is starting to rear its ugly head in many Western countries. Such categorization is therefore meaningless at best, if not outright deceptive as it conflates a variety of economic actors.

The chief fallacy of this model rests in the fact that it focuses on how much those actors are compensated, as opposed to how and why they are compensated. A far better perspective is perhaps gained using two classes, the Political Class and the Economic Class, with a third class emerging.

The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker – The Economic Class
The Economic Class, at least in the United States, has historically been the numerically dominant group, although in recent decades its dominance has noticeably waned. The economic class would traditionally be called the Private Sector, but even that term has become misleading for reasons we will delve into later in this article.

Members of the Economic Class provide goods and services that are voluntarily sought by consumers and paid at rates that the market will bear. In an unfettered environment, the economic class would count farmers, engineers, coal miners, artists, physicians, janitorial staff, security guards, merchants and company executives among its membership. They participate freely and competitively in the market place, using the economic principles of Division of Labor and the Law of Comparative Advantage to increase the wealth of society as well as improve their personal position. Capital, entrepreneurial and human resources are brought together collaboratively to meet the needs of the market place. This is standard Economics 101 fare and hopefully generates little controversy among the readership. The important factor defining Economic Class membership is not the amount of money a person earns but rather their participation in the free and open market.

The Lazy Highwaymen – The Political Class
Like the Economic Class, members of the Political Class are not properly defined by their wealth but rather by how they exert influence in the market place. Whereas members of the Economic Class engage the market openly and voluntarily, members of the Political Class employ coercion and deceit to achieve their economic objectives. The coercion and deceit may either be exerted directly or, as is increasingly observed, through a variety of proxy agents. The most obvious members of the Political Class are, unsurprisingly, politicians. This group includes elected individuals at every level of government as well as various appointed officials.

In addition to this primary membership category, a second distinct group exists within the Political Class. It consists of various advocates including lobbyists, influence peddlers and miscellaneous other supplicants of government cheese. These creatures exist to serve as envoys for the third distinct group, which is made up of a patchwork of commercial entities that have learned that employing a politically well-connected pitch man replaces the need for an effective sales and marketing organization and in some cases even the requirement to have a desirable product.

Furthermore, it is commonly observed that members of the Political Class routinely migrate between the three aforementioned groups. An unfortunate consequence of allowing these economic actors to “cut in line” is that the rewarded event becomes the prevailing trend. Because of that, there is virtually no industry that has opted out of the rent-seeking game. From the military-industrial complex to agricultural subsidies, to the utterly corrupt banking system, the Political Class is inexorably claiming an increasing share of the world’s economic activity, a highly disturbing trend indeed.

Subsidized inefficiency, intentional destruction of productive assets and confiscation of property are but some of the effects that are observed when the Political Class employs force to serve those that are “more equal than others.” The arrangement can be summed up by saying that economic activity within the Economic Class places the bargaining power in the hands of the buyer whereas the economic activity within the Political Class places the bargaining power in the hand of the seller. This gives rise to dislocations in the free exchange of goods and services as well as widespread misallocations of capital as businesses adjust their practices based not on the normal mechanics of supply and demand but rather based on the dictates of the Political Class. Over the years, the scale of the intrusions of the Political Class into economies around the world, and very definitely here in the United States, has grown to the point where truly free markets are now the exception and not t he norm.

Because the Economic Class operates in the realm of voluntary exchange whereas the Political Class employs force to achieve its objectives, many of which are anathema to the Economic Class, it follows that a significant amount of resources must be dedicated by the Political Class to the enforcement of their objectives. This role has traditionally fallen on the wide array of military and law enforcement organizations as well as numerous regulatory agencies and departments.

From the US military’s role in protecting the Political Class’s global interests and the IRS keeping the Treasury full, to the FDA serving “Big Pharma” and various law enforcement agencies maintaining a low-level chronic fear in the populace, the level of physical control that the Political Class needs to extend over productive resources is staggering. And in lockstep with the virtually unchecked growth in the Political Class, so has grown the size and scope of the enforcement branch deployed to protect its interests.

Paradoxically, for reasons I’ll touch on momentarily, the allegiance of this enforcement branch belongs to neither the Political Class whom they serve nor the Economic Class whom they “service.” In time, their level of influence grows to the point in which they become a class of their own. They are the Praetorian Class.

Legions and Lictors – the Praetorian Class
The Praetorian Class includes members of the Armed Services, federal, state and local law enforcement personnel as well as numerous militarized officials including agents from the DEA, Immigrations, Customs Enforcement, Air Marshalls, US Marshalls, and more. It also includes, although to a lesser extent, various stage actors in the expanding security theater such as TSA personnel. The main mission of the Praetorian Class is to keep the order of the day. This requires displaying an intimidating presence in their interactions with the Economic Class.

As the Praetorian Class ascends, the clear, albeit unstated, message that emerges is that actions and events in the Economic Class only occur with its tacit consent. Whether driving on roads, traveling in the air, visiting public land, walking down the street or even living in your own home, every action you take is predicated on its permission. By preconditioning the populace to enforcement of its edicts, most of which are completely arbitrary, the Praetorian Class sets itself up for a high degree of autonomy in its actions. This is confirmed by the fact that consequences for malfeasance within the Praetorian Class are almost never observed, and when it happens, it typically becomes a grotesque spectacle in which one of their own is sacrificed as an example, so as to keep appearances of effective internal controls.

Members of the Praetorian Class are typically recruited from the Economic Class and usually from the lower socio-economic spectrum, which offers them an opportunity for personal and professional gain that otherwise might be out of their reach. Early on in the training and indoctrination process, a strong emphasis is placed on teamwork and advancing the welfare of the team above the individual. While independent thought is never overtly discouraged, the fact is that questioning authority and failing to display complete loyalty to the team results in censure, shunning and even expulsion. Naturally, the recruit learns in short order which behavior is rewarded and responds accordingly. This forges a lifelong, unbreakable bond between the brothers-in-arms. This bond can be observed when people proudly display unit insignia and decorations decades after their departure from service.

As they serve in their martial role, members of the Praetorian Class learn to despise members of the Political Class and to view the plight of the Economic Class with detachment or even contempt. Law enforcement and military personnel will converse behind closed doors about the most horrific injustices and brutalities with cavalier amusement. While perhaps natural, their training for violence and teamwork is a fundamental cause for why members of the Praetorian Class abandon their roots and in time come to view their peers “back on the farm” with contempt. Likewise, the steady displays of the craven and treacherous character of the Political Class causes the Praetorian Class to privately disavow emotional allegiance to their masters, usually early in their service.

Naturally, as the members of the Praetorian Class socially distance themselves from both their origins and their masters, even though they are paid to do their bidding, a new group identity among them emerges. Adoption of this group identity, forged by the training, indoctrination and work, defines membership in the Praetorian Class. Some of the characteristics of this identity include:

* Viewing everything and everyone according to a perceived threat posture.The members’ thought processes, beliefs and actions center on viewing the world through a paradigm of a graduated conflict spectrum and how to posture themselves accordingly. Even in the most mundane settings, their conversations tend to be awkward if not centered on their martial duties.
* Tight internal socialization. Because they view life through a martial paradigm, members tend to socialize almost exclusively amongst themselves. Immediate family members are expected to do the same, which naturally occurs anyway as they can share experiences that external relationships simply are unable to address.
* Loyalty is the highest honor. Whether referred to as the blue wall of silence or the brotherhood in arms, even the most egregious transgressions are buried. If the misdeeds are internal, meaning member versus member, the justice is handled internally. On the other hand, external missteps are typically swept under the rug and significant chicane is experienced by outsiders who seek to learn the truth.

In a relatively free and peaceful society, members of the communities that form the Praetorian Class lead a discrete existence. Members of the military commute to and from their place of work and are largely invisible to both the Political and Economic Class, certainly in communities that are not “Praetorian” communities.

Attendance at cultural events in uniform is frowned upon, if not explicitly forbidden. During these times, members of the military and law enforcement are expected to live and operate outside the perception of other members of society, their purpose and function regarded with a sense of detachment and perhaps even subtle curiosity.

As the Political Class increasingly calls upon the Praetorian Class to ensure their order, however, their martial nature becomes more visible in the fabric of day-to-day life. This serves several purposes. For one, it allows the Political Class to demonstrate its willingness to use unlimited force to achieve its objectives, something that was always the case but is now made publicly visible. Rationalizing the increased public profile, a stream of honorifics is bestowed upon the Praetorian Class so that they may be presented as defenders of the Economic Class. This is accomplished through the time-tested use of pageantry, pomp and circumstance.

Over time, additional perquisites are bestowed upon the Praetorian Class including preferential treatment in both private and public facilities. Preferred air travel accommodations for uniformed personnel, including dedicated lines at TSA checkpoints and preferential boarding, have recently emerged as cultural standards that further distance the Praetorian Class from the masses.

Another clear change is the physical appearance of members of the Praetorian Class. The uniforms transition from relatively inconspicuous attire to “battle uniforms” such are those now standard issue to both the military and law enforcement personnel. These optics reinforce the position of the Praetorian Class as maintainers of public order, convey a message of physical dominance and establish chronic low-level fear among the masses. Sometimes referred to as the militarization of the police force, this characterization traditionally refers to the increasing firepower in even municipal police departments. Frequently lost in this observation, however, is the psychological impact that such a heavily armed police presence has on the “civilian” population – specifically that it further separates the Praetorian Class from the Economic Class.

As the influence of the Praetorian Class grows, so do the resources it consumes. This is manifested in the form of continuous “equipment” upgrades, training budgets and costly “interagency collaboration” in addition to the usual staff augmentation. This, of course, has the ancillary benefit of directing resources to equipment and service providers that are favored by the Political Class and in some cases may in fact be the primary purpose.

Perhaps less obvious is the need to constantly keep the Praetorian Class on the march. A bored Praetorian is a dangerous creature that will start looking for things to do. In order to keep the Praetorian Class engaged, they must be fed a continuous source of adversaries that they in turn actively engage. In “peace time,” actual engagement is replaced by training and rehearsing the defeat of the adversaries.

While the Praetorian Class emerges as its own entity, with allegiance only to the members’ peers, the most senior of the Praetorians are eventually invited to join the Political Class. Prior to that occurring, they are vetted for suitability, after which they become “made men.” Consider the long list of senior military officers and police chiefs that joined the ranks of the political elite. It is a sight to behold, their new-found support of the Political Class, a class they had silently held in contempt until their recent assumption. Metropolitan police chiefs, district attorneys and joint chiefs of staff are selected for political compatibility, not conviction of character.

How Does It Play Out?
History does not keep a flattering record of societies that allowed the Praetorian Class to rise. The Roman Empire’s decline from splendor to squalor extended for two centuries whereas the Nazi Third Reich collapsed in less than two decades. The continuous drain on productive resources, continuous warfare against new foes, abrogation of human rights and liberties and a pervasive culture of fear inevitably send the society into a tail spin. Some societies are able to observe the retreat of the Praetorian Class, but it is usually a function of economic necessity and often after a great price has been paid by the general population.

Unfortunately, as the tragedy unfolds, the Economic Class often tries to ride out the calamity. This is understandable, since people have a limited capacity to internalize long-term trends. In fact, because people adjust to new circumstances relatively quickly, it is almost impossible for them to compare the condition of life in the present versus the past. The common vernacular for this concept is “the new normal”, which upon the slightest reflection represents an obvious paradox, since the word normal implies a historically stable trend.

The Third Reich as a Textbook Example
History books are filled with examples of societies that have seen the rise of the Praetorian Class, followed by their own subsequent collapse, ranging from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union. Of all the examples, however, none seems more instructive than the rise and fall of the Nazi Third Reich in Germany.

Over a period of two decades, starting with the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the end of World War II, Germany saw the rise of a charismatic demagogue, the rise of police and paramilitary forces, the development of a military-industrial complex, the assumption of industry by the State, the demonization and persecution of scapegoats finally resulting in widespread warfare and societal ruin. Because the timeline is relatively compressed compared to other historical examples, spanning a single generation, the Third Reich serves as an excellent example of the broader consequences a society experiences when we observe the rise of the Praetorian Class. Furthermore, by virtue of its recent occurrence, many cultural and technological parallels serve as clear milestones.

Call to Action for the Economic Class
In order to evade the inexorable path to ruin, two critical actions must be taken. First, it is imperative to understand historically how events play out, identifying key milestones along the process. Some milestones may include the level of military spending, such as the $700 billion that the United States spends annually on “defense”. Consider the escalating threat propaganda. Leading up to the war with Iraq in 2003, a common justification heard was “We gotta fight them there, so we don’t have to fight them here.” Apparently that strategy didn’t work, since the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act declared the United States part of the global battlefield. Is it the increasing monitoring and control exerted over the media, including the subpoena and detention of free-speech activists? Or perhaps it is the tortuous argument that the private minting of silver coins bearing no resemblance to US legal tender currency represents domestic terrorism.

As the saying goes, “History does not repeat, but it does rhyme”, which is to say there are events that have played out universally in the past and are likely to do so again. An implied task that emerges is the need to be an avid student of history. Usurpations of power observed today have historical precedents in some form or another and therefore serve in some instances as predictable milestones.

Second, identify the milestone that defines the “point of no return,” at which point taking no action is likely to have very adverse consequences. This is a very difficult task emotionally as it usually requires taking drastic action before circumstances clearly warrant it. It may involve winding down business and social commitments while conditions on the surface still seem fine. This, of course, represents a personal balancing act. While there is merit in the saying that it is better to be a month early than a minute late, there is a practical limit to the value of that axiom. Predicting a financial collapse twenty years early, and making adjustments accordingly, results in significant opportunities lost, both personally and professionally.

In Summary
The emergence and rise of the Praetorian Class is a common observation in societies that have transitioned from market-based meritocracies to societies governed by coercive syndicates formed by the Political Class. The Praetorian Class is formed and grown to defend the Political Class and in time becomes the dragon that rules its master. It represents a highly disturbing trend because it foretells the decline, not the advance, of a society. In some instances, the decline is peaceful, clearing the path for an improved future. Unfortunately, in many instances that is not the case. The Political Class leverages the full force of the Praetorian Class representing significant loss in wealth, personal freedom and, in many cases, human life. For this reason, it is critical that productive members of society take steps to protect themselves.

Check out my Disparity SCOOP.IT, respectively my Oil Versus SSPS SCOOT.IT.

(Reprinted from Gwyn)

While discussing SOPA with Moon Adamant, after reading this nice article from the WordPress gang, we came to the following conclusion: are legislators so stupid as not to foresee that all this will backfire?

Imagine that I’m ruthless Zuckerberg, the kind of guy who kills the animals he eats, and face being threatened to have Facebook shut down by Disney and Sony Entertainment and Warner Bros because some silly user — out of his 800 million users — just posted a link to pirated content from the entertainment industry giants. What will Zuckerberg do?

Obviously Zuckerberg will use his Russian connections and get all Disney forums spammed first with anonymous “users” who will place links to pirated content from their content — and denounce Disney as being uncompliant with SOPA. Before Disney does anything. Then Disney gets their sites down, specially the ones generating revenue.

Disney has no-one to sue: anonymous “hackers” from Russia are impossible to trace — they’re professionals. And will certainly enjoy attacking Disney first of all, and then slowly moving down all other SOPA-supporters. Imagine, a few hours after SOPA is in effect, having basically all entertainment giants’ websites — and their DNS providers, of course — all shut down. Immediately. Before even they know what had hit them, they’re off the net.

In the mean time, Facebook, Google/YouTube, Twitter etc. will swiftly leave their DNS providers and move their precious domains to someplace safe. Perhaps in Europe, or a registry in Australia, Japan, or any other country like that. Disney and friends can “fight back” trying to shut these sites down, but they will only manage to get them “off the air” in the US.

A cyberwar will start taking place, as competitors pre-emptively fill competitor’s sites with links to pirated content and file claims against each other. This will be top-down first. Who cares if a site with 100 visitors per month with one link with pirated content is hit, if the major players are suddenly flooded with millions of links to pirated content? It’s easy to do. It’s not even as if requires advanced technology. For a few hundred dollars, you can engage professional spammers to flood the ‘net with any kind of content — much easier than doing actual spamming. Before technical engineering teams start dealing with the new threats (i.e. updating their anti-spam tools), millions of SOPA claims will be up, and millions of sites will be forced to be shut down first, before their tech teams can get themselves rid of the pirated content. And even then there is no guarantee they will be able to eliminate every single reference to pirated content, thus making any counterclaims hard to prove in court.

Other people have come to the same conclusion:

Basically, the bill will be no good at stopping piracy—what it was apparently designed to do—but excellent at censoring any web site capable of providing its users with the means of promoting pirated content or allowing the process. This includes sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, and many more. If it’s possible to post pirated content on the site, or information that could further online piracy, a claim can be brought against it. This can be something as minor as you posting a copyrighted image to your Facebook page, or piracy-friendly information in the comments of a post such as this one. The vague, sweeping language in this bill is what makes it so troubling.

What would come next? Well, as many of you know, even though there is no “central” Internet authority, there is the “next best thing”: the IANA, which deals with IP addresses, and its many subsidiaries which hold the root domain name servers. This is the only “weakness” on the whole Internet: a single country (US) has a single institution (well, almost) which “controls” address assignments all over the world — even in China, Cuba, or North Korea. So far, because the US authorities have been “behaving well” for several decades, and in spite of some discomfort of knowing that the central nodes of the Internet are under the control of the laws of a country which can swing so unpredictably, the rest of the world did not make a serious threat to challenge the status quo.

But how will a world with an estimated 700-1,000 million people connected to the Internet outside the United States react when all of the sudden their websites will be pulled down — out of Google’s search engine, out of sight… — due to a law that can be put into practice assuming people are guilty (of piracy) before giving them the right to claim their innocence? How will the whole world face the issue that nasty spammers, with unreachable and untraceable tools, will “force” unwanted content — as comments, links, posts — to trigger the mechanisms in SOPA to pretty much exclude everyone they dislike from the Internet? I think that the rest of the world will very quickly start to question the US’ right to apply their silly laws to everybody else in the world (that’s the reason why many anti-SOPA organisations, unlike similar issues in the past, have engaged so many non-US citizens to aid their protests: they’re aware we’re all in the same boat because the US controls most of the root nameservers which can affect us all).

So probably before the whole world is plunged into Internet chaos, the whole world will pull themselves out of a sinking boat and let the US sink alone. Well, and at the same time, drawing most major US corporations to put their domains and their servers outside the US, too. Sure, the US has 300 million Internet users, but the world has five to seven times that amount. Sure, the US has a huge economy, but the whole world is bigger. It’s very realistic to expect companies to get their data out of the US as quickly as they can (Google runs hundreds of thousands of servers on data centres all around the world) to escape the drama of SOPA. And it’s just a question of time for US citizens to routinely install Tor software or similar technology just to be able to surf the Web like before — assuming, of course, a Web which is not under the control of the US government. In essence, that’s how citizens of China can today punch holes through their country-wide firewall and still get access to a taste of a free, uncensored world.

Let me tell you a short story which might illustrate what can happen. In the early 20th century, when the superpower was Britain and its Empire, the people of Tibet, afraid to be “contaminated” by British culture and civilisation, closed their borders and tried to live in isolation. Nobody could enter Tibet; nobody could leave it; as a result, Tibet’s teachings remained unaccessible to the whole world and mostly unknown and ignored. When China invaded Tibet in the 1950s, they thought they could use Tibet’s isolationism against them: by utterly crushing their culture and civilisation, they could erradicate Tibet’s Buddhists teachings once and forever, and effectively get their taste of religion out of the minds of Chinese citizens. But this backfired. The thousands that left Tibet brought its teachings with them. As a result, they’re now commonly available to pretty much everybody in the world. Things that once required journeys taking weeks or months to obtain are easily available via a search query on Google. By trying to crush Tibet’s Buddhist teachings, China actually did them a favour, by spreading them to the whole world and making them universally available — even to Chinese citizens.

I think that this whole SOPA silliness will backfire similarly. Instead of “fixing the problem of piracy”, what SOPA will achieve is an exile of companies and organisations out of the US and its crazy laws, and a distribution of the single-point-of-failure of the Internet — its root nameservers — outside the US. SOPA might ultimately achieve what we have been waiting for decades to happen: an even more decentralised Internet, independent of the laws and whims of a single country.

What does this all mean for Second Life users? SL – and possibly even LL — has been a target for several DMCA claims in the past, most notoriously by the industry giants who were unhappy about the amount of 3D content using copyrighted content floating around the grid. LL has, in the past, pre-emptively removed content to avoid any potential lawsuits: despite LL’s own Terms of Service, trying not to make them liable for the content their users upload to SL, big industry giants might simply don’t care: all they need is to push huge and expensive lawsuits against LL and wait until they get at least one that goes through — enough to create precedent, demand insanely high compensation fees from LL, and effectively shut them down. But because LL has an opportunity to claim innocence before getting hit by the consequences of those lawsuits, so far they’ve escaped being crushed in court. There were occasional lawsuits around copyright issues which tried to bring LL into court, but all were settled. They also were filed by the “small fry” who can only afford short lawsuits with quick settling.

Under SOPA, all it takes is a disgruntled resident to claim that LL is violating SOPA. They can just create an alt, upload an avatar based on a Disney character and file it as “proof”. Immediately — without even going to court — mechanisms are triggered under SOPA to make LL’s domain names disappear, thus preventing anyone not only to access the SL Marketplace, but to login to SL as well. Even if LL releases a new viewer based only on IP addresses and not domain names — or registers a new domain name outside the US — how will they announce that to the residents, when their own sites are all down? And they will be down not only in the US, but world-wide. LL might eventually file counter-claims proving that they are in no way related to that resident and that they made their best effort to get rid of copyrighted content in their own servers, but that will just take weeks or months of legal discussions. In the mean time, until a verdict is pronounced, SL will be down and unaccessible.

SL is relatively low-profile these days, but it could happen, and doesn’t even take a lot of effort — no need to hire a huge team of hackers and spammers based in Russia to spam LL’s sites with copyrighted content. All it takes is one alt and one disgruntled resident. Think about it.

So even if you’re pro-SOPA — because you have copyrighted content of your own in SL and would like better anti-piracy laws — you should review your position. Your competitors and enemies — the people angry at you for some reason — can very easily shut you down, too. If you have a website where you promote your products and services, it’s prone to attacks — and an attack is just someone that might post a comment on your blog while you’re asleep, with a link to copyrighted material, and when you wake up the next morning, your site and domain name are off the Web, and you have no way to get it back. If you are a non-US citizen but bought your domain name in the US or host in the US, you’re going to be affected as any US citizen. Even if your domain name is outside the US, you’re still not safe — US citizens might be unable to view your site, and thus unable to know about your content for sale in SL. Worse than that: if most people visit your site because you’re used to getting googled for it, Google might be forced to drop your website’s domain name from their database, in effect turning your website and your products unsearchable by anyone on the Web, not just US citizens.

So get in touch with any of the many anti-SOPA organisations which accept contributions from both US and non-US citizens and file your protest. Allegedly there are still a few US representatives doubting the wisdom of this choice and willing to vote against it, if they can be persuaded it’s the Right Thing To Do. It’s ironic that the Internet, designed in 1969 to survive nuclear attacks and still keep going on, is now in the hands of a few representatives which, depending on their vote, will effectively be able to shut down the Internet forever or not, based on their personal convictions — and affect the whole world, not just the people that elected them.

That’s a scary thought. Somehow this has to be stopped.

Check out my Disparity SCOOP.IT, respectively my Oil Versus SSPS SCOOT.IT.