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John McCone : Philosophy For The Future

Philosophy For The Future

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Attack of The Robocrats!

July 16, 2019 by admin

MONOPOLY919/Shutterstock.com

Governments, all over the world, increasingly encourage citizens to interact with automated bureaucratic processing systems, rather than human representatives, when filing tax returns, applying for welfare, applying for a passport, etc. Human interaction is becoming an exception reserved for when the computer fails. This trend is not limited to governments. Private companies frequently deploy automated response systems as the first line of defence against engagement, only giving their most tenacious callers access to human beings.

This automation of customer service, and bureaucracy, can reduce queues and processing times, but, as with sex robots,  the total automation of bureaucracy threatens to concentrate power in the hands of a few controllers. The potential for these controllers to abuse such systems is tremendous.

The film Elysium depicts the extensive use of robots in confrontational roles, such as police, or parole officers. Machines don’t have empathy, and have unlimited patience. These traits may be desirable for some roles. A human benefit officer, who’s dealing with difficult applicants, may eventually resort to bending the rules to help them. An automated system can say “no” all day (even all week). Human officials have high salaries that must be covered, so they will feel pressure to process people quickly. They are also afraid, that if a client complains about them, they might lose their job. An automated system (especially running on your PC) has zero hourly running costs and if an applicant, whose housing benefit get cut off by the automated system, commits suicide, there’s no one to blame. Perhaps, in some cases, troublesome applicants should not be prioritised, but, in other cases, they are troublesome precisely because of their desperate situation.

Concerns over who’s responsible for driverless car accidents are just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Who’s responsible when an algorithm blocks your credit card payment? Who’s responsible when an automated welfare system accidentally cuts off your unemployment benefits? Or wrongfully cancels your immigration visa? Or mistakenly cancels someone’s health insurance without informing them? Or fails to pay your salary that week? Or calls in your loan after mistakenly finding you in breach of its terms? Or delists your business, or reduces the ranking of your company, costing you tens of thousands in sales? For those of you who are weird like me and read the full terms and conditions of the various automatic services you subscribe to, the answer is clear: “Company X accepts no responsibility whatsoever for any damage or harm caused by the failure of our software.” This is pretty much ubiquitously across the terms and conditions of all software services.

Furthermore, what about tenants evicted by robo-bailiffs for not paying rent? Or robot police and security guards? If a human bailiff, security guard or police officer inappropriately physically assaults someone, they could lose their job or be sent to prison. But what happens if a RoboCop, bailiff, or security guard does the same? The corporation that made it would be liable, but fining a large corporation is a far smaller deterrent than imprisoning a human worker, thereby destroying his career. Programmers may calculate the legal liability for the harm caused by a particular decision tree is less than the time it saves their clients, or the money it makes them. Security robocrats with these decision trees could do more harm than human employees who bear direct criminal responsibility for their actions. And if the final software comes from a long supply chain, where one company uses a software package supplied by another company, and sells the final program on to a third company, which uses it in a slightly different manner to the supplier’s original specifications, it might be impossible to pinpoint the source of the blame. This could create a moral hazard as, in many cases, bosses might prefer for robocrats, unconcerned with criminal responsibility, to make certain decisions: refusing to pay out insurance, sending out fines to raise money for a municipal government, overestimating tax liability, cutting benefits, overcharging on bills, etc., etc.

People harmed by automated robocratic decisions may be less motivated to pursue them in court. Court cases generally involve evidence, time and legal fees. When another person has consciously wronged or mistreated us, we often feel compelled to seek justice against them despite the cost and inconvenience, but when the decision of something harms us, it no longer seems worth the effort to pursue it. Algorithm designers may take this into account when programming decision-making strategies to maximize their client’s profits.

Robocracy also contributes to the growth of unpaid work which Guy Standing has drawn attention to. Frequent job changes mean more time applying for jobs, reskilling, networking. Beyond that, there’s self-assessed tax returns, work visas (for those who find work abroad) along with registering (and perhaps later deregistering – which is sometimes even harder) with other nations’ tax systems. Today we must also check our own food out at the supermarket and be our own travel agent, booking hotels, planes and organising our itinerary. This is largely because an automated system’s time is free while an employee’s time is expensive. A customer or job applicant’s time may be valuable to them, but it costs nothing to companies and government bureaucracies, so institutions are increasingly dumping work onto customers and applicants at every available opportunity. Once upon a time, if a company or a government asked a customer or a tax-payer to fill out a form, they had to pay a bureaucrat to read that form. Today robocratic algorithms can process it with humans only looking at a small sample of flagged forms or metadata generated by statistically analysing thousands of forms. This creates a moral hazard, for the designers of forms and applications, to make them lengthier, effectively imposing unpaid work on the people who have to fill them.

Beyond that, as AI advances, it will be capable of processing evermore complicated laws. There is a danger that laws may someday get too complex for human lawyers or judges to comprehend. At that point, it will be necessary to fully automate the court system. Past civilizations collapsed under the weight of their own bureaucracy. Today, however, intelligence is so cheap the legal system might sustain itself, even as it gets exponentially more complex. However, if it becomes too complex for humans to handle, the time may come where robot police, bring human beings before robocrat judges and robot juries which send them to fully-automated prisons.

The potential of technology to facilitate the interests of its designer is massive. But what if the designer’s interests clash with other people? From the perspective those at the receiving end, certain technologies may reduce their quality of life and diminish their autonomy. The effects of automating decisions, which may affect and harm people who have never consented to let robots determine their destiny, deserve our intense scrutiny.

 

John

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: Automation, Bureaucracy, Robocrat, Robocrats, Robots, Self-Driving Car Accidents

Blueprint For A Solar Economy

April 27, 2019 by admin

Jenson/Shutterstock.com

Why A Solar Economy?

 

Solar and Geothermal Energy are the most direct forms of renewable energy. Other forms, such as biomass, wind or wave energy are ultimately powered by the sun. Since energy flows from the Earth’s interior are just 0.03% of incoming solar radiation, solar energy potential dwarfs all other forms. Studies indicate the total harvestable energy potential of wind is 5 times global energy demand. Solar’s potential is far higher. Indeed, more solar energy is incident on the earth in an hour than humanity consumes in a year.

Another reason to favour solar over wind is its lack of moving parts. Consequently, solar panels last longer than expected (up to 40 years) while wind turbines wear out sooner than expected ( full report here ).  While wind turbines are getting bigger and bigger, solar panels remain compact as they get cheaper, more durable and more efficient.

These are sound reasons to believe the future belongs to a solar economy and not wind.

The main aim of renewable energy is to minimize cumulative atmospheric CO2 levels in 30-70 years time. CO2 levels next year, or even in 5 years, are unimportant. Only cumulative CO2 emissions over the next 30 to 70 years matter. If wind power is a dead end technology, we should concentrate economic resources on pushing solar down the learning curve as rapidly as possible. Indeed, even today, some solar projects are producing some of the cheapest energy in the world.

The argument “we need an energy mix” is a false one designed to humour obstinate people obsessed with pet dead-end technologies. We don’t need an energy mix. We just need a solar economy. This is the problems with a blind carbon price. In the long run, solar energy will clearly become the cheapest renewable, but, in order “to be fair”, we pay the same price for all carbon free energy. The result of a blind carbon price, compared to focusing funding on scaling up the solar economy as rapidly as possible, will likely cost hundreds of billions, if not trillions more to reach the exact same cumulative CO2 emissions in 30 years time.

 

A Solar Economy with Gas: A Winning Combination

 

Methane can be manufactured from electricity, water and carbon dioxide through the Sabatier reaction. The concept of using gas to store energy generated by renewables is known as Power To Gas. While the cycling efficiency of power to gas (Electricity -> gas -> Electricity) is only about 38%, existing gas infrastructure, like pipelines and LNG shipping, could transmit solar energy across the globe. The factor 2 difference in irradiance between countries with high and low solar energy potential also compensates for the 40% cycling efficiency of power to gas.

We don’t need a giant global HVDC grid. Power to gas enables the existing gas infrastructure to store and transmit solar electricity across the world. HVDC grids can’t store energy. Existing gas networks can store months of gas reserves. Pumped storage, hydroelectric dams and battery banks with cycling efficiencies of 90%+ could complement P2G for short term troughs in solar output – although high cycling efficiency storage is too expensive to store more than a few days worth of consumption.

An inventory of batteries kept in swapping stations for electric cars could serve a dual purpose of absorbing surplus renewable production as well as rapid EV charging.

Electric vehicles may not necessarily require more energy to be transmitted through the grid to cover transportation, as well as household, energy needs. If batteries banks located next to gas plants and solar panel field are charged up there and then physically transported to swapping stations, it might be possible to power a fleet of electric vehicles without upgrading the grid.

 

Importance of CO2 Sequestration

 

The Sabatier reaction requires high CO2 concentrations. It is, thus, important to sequester the carbon dioxide produced from burning gas, both to produce methane with solar power and to prevent climate change. If the solar energy is produced in a different location from where the gas is burnt, the CO2 will have to be piped back to the sunny region to be reconverted into methane. Existing gas infrastructure, that already transports large quantities of natural gas around the world, can also transport CO2. In other words, we will need CO2 pipelines as well as methane pipelines.

A solar economy with power to gas storage, will have a much lower CO2 inventory than a scenario without solar. Instead of storing decades, perhaps centuries of CO2 emissions, we need only store months of CO2 emissions, so there is less to fear from a leak in the system, as only a relatively small quantity of CO2 would escape.

Furthermore, concentrated CO2 will have a fundamental economic value to solar power plant operators. This will enable carbon sequestration companies to be profitable irrespective of carbon prices or government policy.

 

Space Heating

 

Combined heat and power, is a very favourable option for a solar powered economy with power to gas storage. Especially if burnt CO2 must be compressed and sequestered. During winter months when there is less sun, gas would be imported from warmer climes and burnt for electricity. Heating requirements will tend to be highest when sunshine is lowest.

Heat pumps could supply any further heating requirements. Electricity’s 18% share of total worldwide energy use is intimidating, given renewables currently only produce a fraction of the world’s electricity. However, for space heating at least, we can take solace in knowing that a little electricity goes a long way. A heat pump can transport about 4 joules of ground heat with just 1 joule of electricity. The number of joules of heat 1 joule of electricity can transport is its coefficient of performance. This is typically 3 or 4 for modest temperature differentials between the inside and outside.

 

Manufacturing

 

The gas, which power to gas produces, can be used in manufacturing directly. Additionally, the high temperatures produced by concentrated solar power have applications in a wide variety of manufacturing processes.

James May featured a group of scientists using CSP to manufacture gasoline out of water and CO2.

 

Shipping

 

The most credible alternative to fossil fuels for shipping are nuclear reactors. Aircraft carriers already use nuclear reactors so this is clearly feasible. Indeed, a nuclear powered merchant ship, the NS Savanah was built back in 1959 and, in 1969, became the first nuclear powered ship to dock in New York City for the festival “Nuclear Week In New York”

Maritime shipping accounts for 2.2% of CO2 emissions. Nuclear energy currently produce 6% of global energy and existing uranium reserves are sufficient for 135 years at our current rate of use. This implies that nuclear energy could power all maritime shipping for 405 years. Plenty of time to develop breeder reactors or beam driven fusion systems (which are more compact and cheaper than fusion systems designed to produce energy) to breed nuclear fuel from fertile materials as well as process long lived waste.

The only other fossil fuel free alternative is biomass but this is land intensive.

Either that or we go back to sailing boats which would require a significant reduction in ship size and speed with correspondingly lower cargo volumes and longer journey times.

 

Aircraft

 

The aviation industry is also responsible for 2% of CO2 emissions.

There are five possibilities for reducing aircraft emissions:

  • Biofuels
  • Replace with Maglev
  • Metal Powder
  • Radioisotopes
  • Beam Powered Propulsion

As with shipping, aircraft cannot sequester CO2. But while biofuels emit CO2, the growth of biofuels absorbs atmospheric CO2. Biofuels, however, do take up a lot of land and there are even some claims that biofuels are not carbon neutral due to their effect on land use.

Alternatively, high speed trains could replace air travel. Maglev trains have reached record speeds of 375mph, two thirds of the cruising speed of an aircraft. Air travel would still be needed over the oceans, but Maglev trains could reduce aircraft biofuel requirements.

Metal powder combustion is another interesting candidate. The energy density of iron powder combustion exceeds that of gasoline so it maybe a credible power source for aircraft. Furthermore, iron oxide is a solid and so is much easier for a compact system like an airplane or a ship to sequester.

Nuclear reactors are not feasible for aircraft as the required neutron shielding is too heavy. However, many radioisotopes decay by emitting alpha or beta particles. This radiation is easily shielded yet very energy dense. Indeed, one intended use of radioisotope is to power pacemakers. One could envisage hot pellets with a radioisotope in the centre and shielding material around the outside. These hot pellets could heat air entering the jet engine to provide CO2-free thrust. However, radioisotopes can’t be turned off and would require constant cooling. One option is to only load hot pellets onto the aircraft just prior to launch and transfer them from the aircraft into a cooling facility immediately after landing. Getting this system to operate reliably to ensure public safety could be quite challenging. A small, beam-background powered fusion reactor could generate the radioisotopes used to manufacture the hot pellets. Fusion reactors could be relatively cheap to construct so long as they don’t need to generate net energy. Solar energy would ultimately power the atoms beams for these fusion systems.

Alternatively, the aircraft could be remotely powered by an energy beam of microwaves or a laser. The main challenge with powering aircrafts is storing the large quantities of energy required to propel them at high speeds without adding too much weight. Remotely beaming energy to the aircraft from a beam generator on the ground would bypass this problem entirely. This would require very high accuracy. Leik Myrabo is currently experimenting with laser power to propel a prototype lightcraft.

 

Summary

 

With appropriate infrastructure to store and transmit it, solar power could power our entire industrial economy. Although it currently only provides a miniscule portion of our total energy, solar capacity has exploded since 2010 going up 20 fold in some places. If the 27% annual compound growth can be maintained, solar could power our entire economy in the next 20 or 30 years. Maintaining that ~30% exponential growth will, however, require a strong political will, not just to install solar, but ensure a that suitable infrastructure of power to gas will exist to store the surplus energy.

 

John

 

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John

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: CO2, Power To Gas, Sequestration, Solar, Solar Economy

9 Problems With Progressivism

April 13, 2019 by admin

JakubD/Shutterstock.com

Progressivism, one-time white knight to the poor, has run out of steam and ground to a halt. Progressivism has stopped progressing. This is unfortunate, as the anti-social-welfare breed of nationalism that appears to be rising to replace it is, in many ways, even worse.

The progressive rallying cry always seems to be: “We need higher taxes to fund high-quality public services!”, but government spending in most countries is already between 30% and 55% of GDP ( “right wing” governments “only” spend 30% of GDP). How much more GDP do governments need before they can provide those mythical “quality services” that always seem to be just over the rainbow?

Progressivism is losing credibility, as a philosophy, because government spending everywhere is already so high that a significant increase would mean full-blown, state-planned communism, which, given its history, few people want. Normal workers on modest wages already see one-third to one-half of their salary taken by the state.

A few progressives have recently turned against democracy and believe people are “voting the wrong way.” But instead of asking “What’s wrong with voters?” and casting endless recriminations at conservatives, progressives should ask: “Why is progressivism failing people?” Instead of constantly grasping for ever more tax revenue, we should try to spend the considerable tax revenues we already collect to reduce poverty and want more efficiently.

I do not wish to imply that conservatism is the answer, indeed, conservatives share many (though not all) of the problems that beset progressives (such as neglecting the countryside and monetary policy cowardice) along with some new problems (such as a desire to slash much needed social welfare).

Nevertheless, it’s time to take a long hard look at the dogmas in the philosophy of Progressivism and the problems these create. Only then, can true social progress be achieved. This article aims to do that, listing some of the more serious problems within progressive politics.

 

Problem 1: No Clear Narrative or Philosophy

 

A hollowness resides at that heart of progressive ideology, it lacks a core narrative to answer what people are, and are not, rightfully entitled to.

Right wing libertarians assert that income tax is slavery, that the state cannot confiscate the value of people’s labour without claiming to own their labour – which is slavery.

The left-wing response is: “The State does own your labour!” they then appeal to a kind of “Creator State” elaborating: “The State has educated you. The State protects you from crime. The State has built the roads you travel on. The State has funded the research for the information you use. THE STATE HAS PRACTICALLY CREATED YOU!!! For that you owe The State an eternal, immeasurable debt of gratitude! If The State should demand 85% of your wages, you should be GRATEFUL for the 15% it leaves you!” The portion of income that modern states allow citizen-workers to accumulate resembles the peculium of ancient Roman slaves who, while formally obliged to hand their masters all the value of their labour, in practice, were usually allowed to retain a small Peculium for themselves as an incentive to work harder.

So what exactly are progressive views on our right to own the value of our own labour?

“Well sort of… as long as you pay income tax…so…not exactly…um…I don’t know…maybe people have a right to own a portion of their labour?”

But once we acknowledge state has the right to seize a portion of our labour, it is philosophically impossible to determine the portion we have a right to keep – 90%? 50%? 10%? 1%????

Most progressives don’t advocate a 90% income tax… yet. But progressives respond to every policy that takes a little more wealth from rich people, with: “Yes! We should do that! That’s progressive!” and respond to every policy that taxes rich people a little less, with: “No! We can’t do that! That policy is regressive!”

So what exactly is Progressive Politics progressing towards? Communism? After all, an infinite number of incremental policy changes, each taking a little bit more from the rich, will eventually leave them with no more than everyone else. And, indeed, many progressives look back to the upper income tax rates of 85-95% from the 1950s until the 1980s as “the good old days.” Do we really want exceptionally hard-working people, who take huge business risks to create value for customers, to be no wealthier than everyone else?

Income tax has philosophical problems, but, many would argue, a lack of income tax has even bigger practical problems.

What is often overlooked is that not all income comes from wages or the industry of particular individuals. A modest social welfare can be funded by taxing all income which work does not produce, such as the unimproved rental value of land, and distributing it throughout the population. Workers and businessmen can still retain the full fruit of their efforts.

This is the much neglected Land Value Tax that Henry George proposed in Progress and Poverty. It can be expanded to an equal claim of everyone to all value which individual efforts did not produce. A Georgist system of Land Value Tax simultaneously avoids violating the libertarian principle that a tax on wages is slavery but justly distributes economic rents to everyone equally as a modest basic income, so no one is left in destitute poverty.

 

Problem 2 : Neglecting The Credit Efficiency Of Social Welfare 

 

Existing social welfare isn’t doing a great job at eliminating poverty, yet most governments already spend 40% of their nation’s GDP. How much more social welfare can we afford to pay?

The answer is not to pay more welfare, but to pay the same amount out more efficiently.

Progressivism completely neglects the credit efficiency of benefits yet, if we paid it more attention to it, we could eliminate poverty without raising taxes by one penny!

An income’s stability profoundly affects its credit value. Bank managers prefer to lend money at low interest to applicants with steady jobs compared those on a short-term contracts – even if their contracts pays more.

Similarly, those who receive government benefits based on complex life circumstances and policy changes, which can be cut at any time, will find it impossible to obtain low interest loans from banks. The possibility of benefit fraud lowers the benefit’s credit efficiency even more. Even if you dutifully comply with all the legal criteria to receive a benefit, your creditor doesn’t know this, and will take the risk that you may be cheating and get cut off into account when calculating the interest rate to charge you.

On the other hand, a rock solid basic income, paid out to everyone, which was guaranteed never to get cut, could be used to get loans at much lower interest rates.

Self-sufficiency loans to set up homesteads are particularly relevant. A properly set up homestead should deliver all the homesteaders material needs for shelter, food and water. So once the homestead was set up, with capital purchased from a loan, the full (or almost full ) balance of the basic income could service the interest due on the loan.

In the case of homesteading, quality of life will be proportional to the capital the homesteader can raise to initially build the homestead. This capital will depend, not only on the quantity of benefit which the government pays out, but also its credit value.

Consider a government benefit payment of £10,000 per annum, with a 10% chance per year of getting cut off. If someone wanted to start a homestead with their benefit, the banker would have to charge at least 10% interest to cover the 10% default risk. This means that the £10,000 government benefit could, at most, service a loan of £100,000.

Now let’s consider someone on a guaranteed basic income of £5,000 per year, who wants a bank loan to set up a homestead. Because the banker knows the money will be paid in perpetuity, he charges 3% interest on the loan. Thus, the person receiving £5,000 of basic income can use it to service a £167,000 loan.

By minimizing a payment’s volatility, its credit efficiency can be increased many times.

The social benefit recipient wins! The tax payer wins! Everyone wins!

An advantage of providing for your own needs is that you don’t have to sell anything to anyone else, this makes it a completely secure economic activity that anyone can undertake. By facilitating homesteading, a very modest basic income, about the size of The Countryside Living Allowance could lead to conditions of secure full-employment for everyone.

Capital amplifies the productivity of labour while labour multiplies capital by rearranging it into higher value configurations. A nation’s wealth is proportional to the aggregate value produced and consumed. It doesn’t matter if the producer and consumer are different people or the same person. Basic income increases people’s access to capital. This will not only lift them from poverty, but will also increase their productivity. Capitalization raises productivity.

It’s not surprising basic income pilots discovered that giving people money improves their circumstances. What is surprising is just how little money it takes to greatly improve people’s circumstances. A major observed benefit of the Indian Basic Pilot Income study was it freed recipients from high interest loans.

At an abstract level, trust generates prosperity. Low interest rates are a sign of trust. When large amounts of trust are present in society, people can access the capital they need to purchase tools to raise the productivity of their labour. With less trust in the credit market, people can’t raise as much capital, to magnify their labour, and productivity suffers.

Income volatility damages prosperity, security and well-being at a fundamental economic level. Whether that volatility is due to unreliable benefits, or precarious employment in the “gig” economy, its economic damage cannot be overstated. UBI will reduce income volatility promoting credit, trust and prosperity in the process.

 

Problem 3 : “Free” Public Services Are A Terrible Way To Redistribute Wealth 

 

One of the greatest dogma that plagues progressivism is an obsession with tax-payer-funded public services. But, ironically, far from being a progressive way to distribute tax revenue, it is extremely regressive. Locations with the best schools, clinics, public transport connections, policing, etc., all command high rent and – as such – serve relatively wealthy people while the poor inhabit areas with bad public services.

(There may be a case for some state run hospitals serviced by ambulances for emergency cases.)

Progressives erroneously compare no public services and no social welfare benefits with public services and welfare benefits. But instead we should ask:

Assuming a given tax revenue, which use of it would most effectively alleviate poverty:

  • Direct Cash Payments to Poor People

Or

  • Providing everyone with “free” tax-payer funded public services

The answer is obvious: direct cash payments. Wealthy people will monopolize “free” public services available to “everyone” as locations near them will have higher rents.

Publicly running a service may sometimes be more efficient than privately running it (roads, for example). But this must be separated from any false notion that public services effectively redistribute wealth and alleviate poverty.

Localized tax-payer funded public services suck at redistributing wealth. If progressives abandoned their dogmatic adherence to them, we could reduce both taxes and poverty.

 

Problem 4 : Monetary Policy Cowardice

 

Back in 2008, global finance nearly collapsed. Since then, most people, including mainstream progressive politicians, have stuck their head in the sand and have done practically nothing to stop it happening again. Perhaps because the problem just seems too complex and thinking about banking gives many people (including politicians) a headache.

Averting another financial crisis is actually fairly straightforward. All that is required to stabilize the economy and prevent a recession from ever happening again is for the central bank to nationalize all deposits. And in order to prevent our lending system from driving inequality, by handing newly printed money to rich people ( which it currently does ), the central bank should, to the greatest extent possible, strive to evenly distribute out all newly printed money.

Most progressive politicians in major parties don’t have the guts to talk seriously about bank reform. Even though it’s the most immediate existential risk we face. Climate change, however horrifying, will take 30 to 100 years to happen. A catastrophic financial meltdown could easily occur in the next five years.

Admittedly, newly created paper cash, printed by the Bank of England, already does fund the national treasury through the mechanism of seigniorage. The problem, however, is that 97% of newly created money is digital. Only by nationalising deposits can the government ensure that the public receives more than 3% of the benefit it deserves to receive from newly created money.

 

Problem 5 : Income Tax

 

Income Tax is socialism’s greatest mistake. How do we help workers through taxing their wages?

The old-school left, correctly or incorrectly, thought workers were the producers of wealth and socialists originally struggled to secure for labourers the full value their labour produced.

Now, obviously, skilled managers and entrepreneurs also contribute to the effectively organising the productive economy. Nevertheless, a class of speculators gets rich without producing value through their efforts (i.e. speculation on land as well as other financial assets with cheap credit ). Indeed, many speculators destabilize the economy through their activity.

The aim of modern governments (including nominally socialist progressive ones) appears to be the exact reverse of 19th century socialism, namely, to tax the wages earned by the nation’s productive workforce and redistribute them to those who don’t work at all!!!

Income tax plus National Insurance can easily add up to 30% of even a modest salary, while businessmen must pay VAT as well. Where does this money, seized from hardworking people, go? The answer: both downward and upward. Some of it goes to people who don’t work at all, this may be acceptable if their need is great, but wait a minute…how do you think all those “quality services” – which progressives keep promising to spent your taxes on – will effect nearby location values? That’s right! Through the mechanism of land price appreciation, the government seizes the wages of hard-working tenants and uses them to line the pockets of landlords living close to new schools, hospitals and railway stations. And those in political circles, with inside knowledge of future government projects, can buy suitably located land and line their pockets with even more confiscated wages.

While the government only lets businessmen and workers keep a modest peculium of their wages, a tax savvy homeowner, who changes his primary residence strategically, can avoid paying practically any tax at all from the capital gains produced by “quality free public services” built in his area with tax seized from the wages working tenants.

Both left-wing and right-wing governments have presided over these policies. Should progressive, therefore, be surprised if the recent choices of the electorate have been somewhat – shall we say – erratic? Should progressives and home-owning, champagne socialists be shocked that working tenants don’t trust them anymore?

A TRUE Socialist Government should tax capital and PAY labour. Today governments tax labour and use the wages, seized from workers, to inflate capital. Some capital results from hard work and should not be taxed, but a land value tax and universal basic income combined with a radical reduction – perhaps elimination – of all taxes on wages and productive business would do much to get back to the pro-worker ideals of 19th century socialism.

 

Problem 6 : No Resistance – And Even Support For – Outrageous Planning Restriction Laws

 

Progressives often talk about homelessness and poor housing conditions. Repeatedly asserting we must do something. The funny thing is…they don’t ever seem to want to build homes.

How exactly do you solve homelessness without building homes?????

I’m not joking. Every time I suggest at progressive events that the first – and maybe only – thing we need to prevent homelessness it to stop passing laws that FORBID people from constructing homes on agricultural land, the lack of enthusiasm and discomfort is palpable. The usual response is:

“But, if we get rid of planning regulations…won’t that produce shanty towns?”

No one wants to live in a shack. Therefore, people with an option not to live in a shack, will take it. Shanty towns are produced by a lack of capital, not lack of planning regulations. A modest basic income with a high credit value will ensure everyone has enough capital to construct high quality accommodation. Since anyone with a choice between high quality accommodation and a shack will choose high quality accommodation, a UBI that capitalizes everyone sufficiently will prevent shanty towns without any planning regulations.

Furthermore, if living in a shanty town really is a better option to sleeping under a bridge or sleeping ten to a room in slum conditions, then let people build shanty towns!

The general disdain of progressives towards unregulated house building has serious consequences. Tony Blair’s so-called progressive labour government presided over the largest house price rise in U.K. history. If houses were built freely, immigration might be positive, but immigration combined with building restrictions puts pressure on the housing stock. For homeowners with businesses, cheap migrant labour is great. They can hire people for less wages, the cost of services goes down, and the price of their house goes up. For tenants, the effect of migration is very different – their wages go down while their rent goes up.

Restricting people from building shelter for themselves is not “a policy tool”; it fundamentally violates our human rights. Everyone should have the right provide for their needs on a planet we all share – including the provision of shelter – without some local councilor interfering. The UN Declaration of Human Rights mentions the Right To Housing in Article 25. While this right to housing does not imply the right to have someone else build a house for you, it must at least mean we have a RIGHT to build our own house without state interference. In this sense, laws restricting house construction on agricultural land violate the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Progressives, who supposedly have the interests of the poor at heart, should passionately oppose planning restriction laws that increase levels of homelessness. Instead they tepidly accept them – and sometimes even support them, selling out homeless people for a nebulous belief it will benefit the environment. (And their wallet, if they own a home).

 

Problem 7 : Bias Towards Cities

 

Since the industrial revolution, there has been a political bias towards urban centres and progressivism has been no exception. The arrow of human progress is thought to point towards urbanization. Greek cities are viewed as the crucible of human culture while the mechanization of agriculture has freed people to devote their labour to greater things like manufacturing and science.

But as David Graeber observes much of what we do in cities is just mindless bureaucracy and, given cities promote stress and many mental illnesses, if we aren’t occupying ourselves more productively in them… should we even be there at all? The miniaturization of manufacturing processes, such as 3D printing technology, may render large urban factories unnecessary, while cheap communication technology enables low density populations to productively coordinate tasks over long distances. Technological developments like these may soon reverse the trend in urbanization. But even if productive work remains to be done in cities, homesteading in the countryside has an important role to play in buffering wages and facilitating a dynamic job market without structural unemployment.

However, despite the importance of the countryside in buffering the urban economy, in general, politicians neglect rural regions. This needs to change. A Countryside Living Allowance or universal basic income would go a long way to re-capitalizing – and re-vitalizing – the countryside.

 

Problem 8 : Identity Politics At The Top Distracts From Poverty And Precariousness At The Bottom

 

Most progressive politicians don’t have the guts to de-fund public services and redirect tax revenues towards reliable direct cash payments with a high credit value to poor working tenants. Most progressive politicians don’t have the guts to institute a land value tax or nationalize deposits to prevent future recession and gain a new source of public revenue that doesn’t drag down productivity. Most progressive politicians don’t have the guts to throw all the laws that force people to apply for planning permission to build on agricultural land in the dustbin. No, major policy changes like these – which might actually help people – are too difficult and too controversial.

Instead, let’s focus on a few really talented women who don’t get the promotion they deserve. Let’s aim to increase the proportion of female CEOs in fortune 500 companies from 5% to 10%. Never mind if homelessness or unemployment goes up. Never mind if people’s jobs become more insecure. If there is greater diversity among business leaders, and high ranking government officials, we can all pat ourselves on the back for a job well done.

90%+ of men and women, of every race and background, will live and die working lousy jobs at the bottom. It is, of course, an issue of some importance that people are denied promotional opportunities as a result of factors which are unrelated to their suitability to perform a given senior role. But the fact remains that most people will never get promoted to substantially senior position anyway – at any point in their lives.

In many respects, getting different identity groups to root for their “elite identity heroes” and then encouraging the proles to argue about whether a new positive discrimination law is justified is more to distract them from a system that grinds many into the mud, than justice.

 

Problem 9 : Love Affair With State Education

 

Progressives love state-funded education. But there is actually no good reason whatsoever to nationalize education. It make sense to nationalize some natural monopolies to stop private owners, in the absence of competition, from hiking prices far above the cost of the services and pocketing the difference. This may apply to railways or perhaps even water, but it certainly doesn’t apply to schools. If one school charges parents too much, there is absolutely nothing to stop a competing school opening nearby and undercutting the first on price.

Don’t we trust parents to judge if a given private school will give their kids an adequate education – possibly by reading the reviews left by other parents of that school?

Some may protest: “But without state education – poor children will enter adulthood less well-educated than rich children!”

Firstly, with state education, poor children already enter adulthood less well-educated than rich children due to higher house prices in catchment areas next to good schools.

Secondly, it is false to compare giving poor children a free state education and giving them nothing. A better comparison is between giving poor children a free education or giving their parents the same tax revenues in cash that would otherwise be spent on education.

If everyone was given cash, everyone could afford to buy their children a private education.

Furthermore, parents who find it hard to get jobs, with lots of time on their hands, could use that time to home-school their children and use the money (that would have otherwise been spent on state education) on food instead. Poor parents in an out-of-the-way locations could also save money by not driving back and forth to and from school 5 days a week. The life prospects of home schooled children are no worse than those who go through the normal school system, indeed many of them are more civically engaged and suffer less anxiety issues. Lack of money is a major stressor not just for parents, but for children as well. It seems to me that the children of parents with little in the way of money and plenty of time would be better off if the state paid their parents to home school them compared with spending the same money on state education.

Before the internet, large centralized educational institutions played a crucial role in disseminating specialised information. In this age of chatrooms, Amazon, online courses, educational YouTube videos, it is time for progressivism to accept that centralized institutions are no longer vital for education. Children still need real people to coach them, but the ready availability of vast information resources mean parents can educate their children without possessing a wide expertise in every subject themselves.

Let us also not forget the money and CO2 emissions involved in daily trips to school (possibly as much as 4 per day or 20 per week).

Another little secret of state education is the job market is changing so rapidly we don’t fully know what we should even teach children to prepare them for the future.

Another mistake that progressives, like Piketty, make is believing that state education promotes social equality. The main role of education is not to equalize, but to differentiate society into the worthy and the unworthy, the smart and the stupid, those with high marks and those with low marks, those who’ve passed and those who’ve failed. Quite possibly a major reason why progressives advocate education so much is because many of the most prominent ones are professional educators and college professors themselves. It’s true that providing a free education to poor people is better than not giving them anything, but just giving poor people that same money and letting them decide whether they want to use it:

  • To pay for private education
  • To cover household bills while taking an online course
  • To invest as capital to start a business

Would be an even better way to promote social equality.

Arguably, the Progressive demand: “We need the state to provide everyone with a free college education” is little more than an appeal to forcefully seize money from hardworking tax payers and place in the pocket of college professors.

BTW I firmly believe that everyone should have the financial means to buy a decent education, if they so choose, but it is ultimate up to the recipient of that money to decide whether a college education is the best investment for them.

The love for state education is more about perpetuating the myths of a Creator State that moulds you, owns you, and has the authority to tax you than any rational consideration.

Education is important. Publicly funded, state-run education is not.

 

Summary

 

The main reason the Philosophy of Progressivism is stalling is because state spending, as a percentage of GDP, is close to the maximum that people could reasonably want in most countries. Yet despite most governments spending 40% of their nation’s GDP, many social problems persist – and in some respects intensify.

Persistent social problems have fostered a desire for change. This can explain the rise of the far left and the far right. The far left is gaining support because a substantial further increase in state spending to – say – 70-90% GDP is more or less full-blown communism. The far right is gaining support by claiming that our social problems are due to too much government spending.

So do persistent social problems like suicides, homelessness, drug addiction and mental health epidemics mean that our current mixed economies are finished? That Progressivism has nowhere left to progress? And that its seeming incapacity to address these persistent problems will result in a general disillusionment that will cause public sentiment to shift to one extreme or another?

A third option exists. Keep the mixed economy but spend tax revenues more efficiently. This involves:

  • Cutting Public Service Funding
  • Introducing Basic Income (While preserving other welfare benefits)
  • Erase all Legislation that Restricts Building Houses on Agricultural Land
  • Promote Self-Sufficient Living in The Countryside ( By making low interest homesteading loans available and promote learning the relevant skills needed to support yourself)

It’s truly depressing how few politicians from the main parties advocate even one of these desperately needed solutions. As the system approaches collapse, capable and bold leaders are needed more than ever. But looking at Western democracies today, there has never been a more incompetent troupe of clowns in charge of decision-making at the highest level. Andrew Yang is the only serious political candidate anywhere who’s proposing any of the policies we need for real reform.

Some may not like the “Cut Public Services” part of my proposal. But the money for basic income has to come from somewhere, and public services are the most regressively distributed form of government spending. Sucking the private sector dry with even more tax is not a sensible option.

Even if existing social benefits are never removed, as people’s lives improve and society becomes more prosperous, less people will qualify for them – simply by virtue of being better off. This will free up money to phase out income tax, and phase in land value tax.

 

Hopefully we can then have a balanced, fair, truly progressive economy which works for everyone.

 

John

 

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Filed Under: Economics Tagged With: Homelessness, Libertarianism, Progressivism, Progressivism Issues, Progressivism Philosophy

Some Important Truths Are Scientifically Unprovable

March 29, 2019 by admin

Juliann/Shutterstock.com

Can every important issue be scientifically investigated and, by comparing enough experiments with mathematical theories, answered conclusively? Can no philosophy uncover truths beyond the reach of science?

Here I argue that, despite the great service it renders humanity, certain biases, intrinsic to science, must be investigated from outside it. I will mention two examples where philosophical considerations can identify limits to the scientific method:

  • Freewill
  • Neurochemical Evaluations of Happiness

 

Why Free Will Is Scientifically Unprovable

 

An increasing number of scientists and psychologists reject the existence of free will. Indeed 86% of philosophers reject libertarian free will, with most believing that all our actions, down to the most minute decisions, are ultimately determined by circumstances outside our control (though compatibilists believe, so long as our desires align with our actions, we are acting freely even though we could neither act nor desire otherwise).

Is this slide towards determinism due to scientific discoveries… or is it the result of a bias in the scientific method itself?

Let us review what science is:

Science is a process whereby relationships of cause to effect are hypothesized and framed as competing theories. Some important predictions of these competing theories are then tested through experiment and observation. The theory with the greatest predictive power is then provisionally accepted while theories with lower predictive powers are usually rejected as false.

In other words, science is the inherent activity of deriving laws with ever-increasing predictive power. The game of science is the game of prediction. Yet prediction is only possible in a deterministic system.

Trying to use the scientific method to prove the existence of free will is like trying to use an earth excavator to fly to the moon. How can an intellectual activity that grants credibility to new hypotheses based on their predictive ability ever possibly grant credibility to a hypothesis that our behaviour is somewhat unpredictable due to our choices not being fully predetermined?

Science can only disprove free will and prove determinism – it is structurally incapable of the reverse. Science can only validate free will to the extent it fails to prove determinism – or runs up against its own limitations.

And yet…

…despite the inherent tendency of the scientific method to accept ever more deterministic descriptions of the physical world, and the unprovable nature of free will, it’s hard to see how our current scientific knowledge based upon experiments could be more favourable to libertarian free will.

The requirements of libertarian free will are quite philosophically demanding. If every action was exactly determined by preceding circumstances, then there would be no freedom, yet if every action was completely uncorrelated with subsequent actions, there would be no will. The notion of will is that an agent’s wishes determine some of its important future actions so as to materialize that wish in reality. These simultaneous requirements seem almost self-contradictory, yet a system whose behaviour is predictable – and heavily predetermined – in the short term, yet unpredictable in the long term, would satisfy the necessary criteria for a modest interpretation of libertarian free will.

Absolute free will (including the freedom to teleport yourself to Mars) is omnipotence. No advocate of libertarian free will, or any sane human being, would seriously claim we possess this. Libertarian free will is simply the modest claim we possess some free will; that our brains can make some important conscious decisions; that some conscious decisions, which arise from our minds, produce physical actions with physical outcomes that were not always predetermined; that we could have decided differently and – had we done so – a different physical action and outcome could have arose as a result of that different decision (that if you wind back the clock far enough to the same past condition and run reality again – a different outcome could result).

The uncertainty principle, states that the position and momentum of particles is fundamentally undetermined. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is more than just a limitation in our ability to measure particle position, as theses diagrams of electron orbitals in the hydrogen atom show. Each orbital represents the spatial probability of finding a single electron in a particular location in the atom. The p-orbital, for example, contains two dumb-bells of finite probability separated by an infinite plane of zero probability. The zero probability plane completely separates the finite probability regions from each other. There is no possible path for the electron to get from one finite probability region to the other without crossing the zero probability plane, yet if the electron didn’t cross the zero probability plane, the electric field and chemical characteristics of the hydrogen atom would be different. Thus, the electron must simultaneously exist on both sides of the zero probability plane.

3D representation of p-orbital probability cloud

Some theories appeal to an infinite number of unprovable parallel universes to interpret wave function collapse as being deterministic, but if we go back to the core value of science: experimental data is king. And experimentally, wave function collapse is non-deterministic.

While the short-term wiggle room for free will is limited to one atomic radius, the butterfly effect means very small differences in initial conditions can give rise to large differences in final outcomes. Here is the first observed example of a computer model exhibiting divergent trajectories in phase space.

Lorenz Experiment: The first time the Butterfly Effect was detected

The initial conditions vary by less than one part in a million, and, initially, the evolution of the system in both cases seems identical, but, after a period, the trajectory of both runs start to diverge and, eventually, they exhibit some important yet completely different behaviours.

 

The combined scientific observation of fundamental quantum uncertainty and long-term divergent behaviour from similar initial condition is conducive with short term macroscopic determinism and long-term macroscopic indeterminism. In other words, quantum uncertainty, when combined with the Butterfly Effect, leaves room for free will in psychology.

It is hard to imagine a physical description more favourable for the philosophically demanding requirements of libertarian free will than those routinely used to describe the behaviour of complex natural systems.

However, this may indicate free will has a long actuation time, which the Libet experiment cannot refute. Total short term freedom would, after all, negate the existence of a meaningful will.

Therefore, scientists who reject free will do not do so due to any scientific discovery (indeed discoveries in physics could scarcely infer a universe more favourable to free will) but rather due to of biases innate to the scientific method itself.

To complain there is no causal  mechanism for free will and, therefore, that it doesn’t exist is to completely miss the point. Causal mechanisms are, by nature, deterministic. A causal mechanism for free will is an oxymoron and demonstrates how the tool box of science is fundamentally unequipped to prove the existence of free will. If no scientific experiment could ever falsify determinism, then claims for determinism are as unscientific as claims for free will.

 

Neurochemical Evaluations of Happiness

 

Given the importance we place on happiness, it’s worth asking: “What exactly is happiness?”

 

Understandably, many neuroscientists and psychologists have brought their expertise to bear on research in this area. Scientific enquiries into conditions for producing happiness are both valuable and important. But is there any hard limit to the authority and expertise that progressive experimental discoveries could convey to researchers studying happiness (and other subjective feelings like misery)?

 

Consider this thought experiment:

Jim walks into an MRI scanner where his brain activity is thoroughly analysed. After emerging from the machine, the researchers, who have decades of experience studying neurochemistry, say to Jim: “We’ve analysed your brain chemistry and the results are conclusive. You are acutely depressed.”

Jim responds: “But I feel happy! I rarely get depressed.”

To which the researchers respond: “You are clearly mistakenly evaluating your own experience. The results of the MRI are conclusive. You are acutely depressed. You must register for a happiness enhancement course. It’s for your own good.”

Jim responds: “But I don’t need a happiness enhancement course, I already am happy.”

To which one researcher responds: “Jim, I have a 1st class degree in neuroscience, a Phd. in evaluating the neurochemistry of happiness and depression. I have spent the last 15 years looking at different people’s brain activities and evaluating them for happiness, or misery. The other 10 researchers on my team all have similar levels of experience and, after analysing your brain activity, we have all reached the same conclusion: that you are thoroughly depressed. How much experience do you have in analysing brain patterns?”

To which Jim responds: “None.”

The researcher then asks: “So why do you think you’d have more knowledge about your brain patterns than a team of researchers who’ve spent decades of their careers measuring and analysing brain patterns to decide whether patients are happy or miserable?”

 

Question:

Could any amount of scientific advances, cranial measuring equipment or AI data analysis techniques in an infinitely sophisticated future ever conceivably make it possible for the team of neuroscientists to be right and for Jim to be wrong?

 

I take the view that, for any sensible definition of happiness or misery, the answer to this question is “no.” All happiness evaluations must begin with a questionnaire. Now through comparing questionnaires with measured brain activity, facial expressions or other kinds of behaviour, we may find reliable markers that correlate well with reported happiness (dopamine levels, serotonin levels, activities in particular brain centres etc.). In the future, neuroscientists may, by monitoring brain activity, be able to anticipate reported happiness with 99%, 99.99% or 99.99999% accuracy. So, if neuroscience can achieve such accuracy in predicting how someone reports feeling, what happens when that one person reports a very different feeling to what the instruments tell the scientists he should feel? Are the scientists wrong about how the subject feels – or is the subject wrong about his own feelings?

Given that reported feelings are the foundation for correlating brain activity to subjective experience, subjective present experience must always have absolute sovereignty.

 

One could, of course, scientifically define happiness in terms of dopamine levels much like we define force as mass times acceleration, but such a definition would be irrelevant to the inherent philosophical value of happiness as a subjective sense of satisfaction, joy, pleasure, freedom from suffering, etc., etc., And there probably is a danger that, in the future, overzealous neuroscientists might favour scientific definitions of emotions like happiness, anger, sadness, depression that are easier to objectively measure and stick into computer models, even if such definitions are less relevant to the subjective emotions that we feel and value. There’s also a tendency in some fields to ignore outliers, in order to get journal papers published. All of this, if unscrutinised, could result in experts overriding people’s subjective experience.

 

But:

It is certainly possible that, in the future, neuroscientists will gain sufficient understanding of the workings of the brain to anticipate your future subjective experience, or evaluate your past subjective experiences, better than you can yourself.

 

The absolute sovereignty of the individual in evaluating their own experience, only applies to their immediate present experience. Expertise can (and probably someday will) anticipate people’s future subjective experience with greater accuracy than they themselves can. And there is already some important evidence that we aren’t good at objectively evaluating (or accurately remembering) how happy we were during an extended past period. People’s evaluation of their level of happiness over their entire lifespan varied noticeably based on whether they had recently found a few dimes left by a photocopying machine, suggesting our present mood strongly influences how we evaluate past emotions.

Experts may also understand why a subject reports an experience better than the subject’s own belief for the reasons of his experience. Numerous experiments clearly demonstrate that people can frequently give erroneous accounts of the reasons for their motivations and, perhaps, even feelings.

But this does not alter our absolute knowledge of our immediate subjective experience itself.

But being able to predict what people will subjectively feel themselves in the future, or why they feel what they feel, better than they can themselves, is distinct from being able to dictate what people feel in the present, better than they can themselves.

 

There may also be a one-to-many problem that runs both ways, where many different brain-states in different people lead to similar subjective experiences, while nearly identical brain-states in different people may occasionally give rise to significantly different subjective experiences.

So the evaluation of people’s present experience through evaluating neurological activity is an example of where science can only catch up with, but never surpass, common personal experience.

 

John

 

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Filed Under: Philosophy Tagged With: Butterfly Effect, Free Will, Libertarian, Limits of science, Philosophy, philosophy of the future, Psychology, some important, unprovable, unproveable

Laser Propulsion with Plasma Thrusters

March 15, 2019 by admin

The Problem With Current Space Propulsion

 

Space propulsion is currently caught between a rock and a hard place for two reasons:

  • High exhaust velocities dissipate more energy per unit thrust. Momentum increases with the square root of energy. Exhausted atoms with 3 times the impulse have 9 times the kinetic energy. This can overheat the spacecraft – and the crew. Increased exhaust velocity also reduces the thrust chamber’s ability to elastically reflect high energy atoms, as more high energy atoms/ions embed themselves in the lattice structure of the thrust chamber wall.
Equation Relating Momentum to Energy : p = Momentum E = Energy m = mass

 

Exhaust propels the rocket forward by smashing against the thrust chamber. This also heats the rocket.
  • At low exhaust velocities, the spacecraft must accelerate to multiple exhaust velocities. Thus, at lift-off, most initial work accelerates the fuel, and not the payload. As exhaust velocity multiples increase, the ratio of fuel to payload grows exponentially. To reach twice the exhaust velocity, the fuel must be 8 times the rocket mass; to reach 5 times the exhaust velocity, the fuel must be 150 times the rocket mass.
Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation : Δv = Increase in spacecraft velocity, v_e = propellant exhaust velocity, m_0 = Initial rocket mass, m_f = final rocket mass

 

As the final velocity becomes multiples of the exhaust velocity, fuel : payload increases exponentially

 

The Solution to High Thrust, High Specific Impulse Spaceflight 

 

A laser powered plasma rocket is a straightforward solution.  A ground based propulsion laser on Earth beams light onto a focusing mirror attached to the spacecraft. This mirror focuses light to an intense hot spot at the target. The target would be a small piece of matter at the center of a magnetic nozzle. The intense, highly concentrated laser light would turn this target into a plasma – an electrically conducting gas. At one end of the magnetic nozzle, the magnetic pressure exceeds the plasma pressure. At the other end of the nozzle, the plasma pressure would exceed the magnetic pressure. The plasma would then force open the nozzle end facing out into space and plasma exhaust would be thrust out into space.

Diagram Illustrating the laser powered plasma thruster concept (not to scale)

If the time the plasma spends inside the nozzle is short compared to the skin time of the plasma, at those temperatures, then the plasma will act as a super conducting balloon with ions bouncing against the magnetic field and then out into space. The magnetic field would insulate the spacecraft from most of the plasma exhaust heat from the laser powered rocket. Furthermore, if the focusing mirror is highly reflective, its rate of heating compared to the heating of the target will be low.

Magnetic Nozzle. — Left: Empty Nozzle. — Right: Plasma forces open nozzle field and is ejected into outer space

 

Research To Date

 

Researchers have investigated energy remotely beamed by microwaves and lasers with some success. Beam-powered propulsion has also been experimentally investigated and is one of the few ways to power vehicles, unconnected to the electricity grid, that need higher energy densities than batteries can supply. Beamed energy could enable planes or container ships, to operate without burning fossil fuels. Leik Myrabo’s Lightcraft is a small prototype for a laser driven plasma propulsion system. I am not aware of any  existing laser driven plasma propulsion experiments that insulate the spacecraft from the heat of the thrust chamber with a magnetic field to achieve a high specific impulse.

 

Is A Laser Powered Rocket Better Than A Solar Sail?

Yes.

The problem with light is that the amount of momentum a given amount of light energy contains is miniscule. Reduced momentum per unit energy is an unavoidable feature of a higher exhaust velocity, yet a laser powered plasma thruster lies in the sweet spot where the exhaust velocity is very high compared to standard chemical rockets yet still low enough to provide a much larger “kick” per unit energy than a solar sail.

The other way to get more momentum out of light would be to reflect light multiple times between a ground-based mirror and a space-based mirror. The required alignment precision, however, is insanely high. A laser powered plasma thruster needs far less precise alignment compared to a system that required multiple bounces between a mirror in space and a mirror on the ground.

 

Is A Laser Powered Rocket Better Than An Ion Thruster?

 

Yes.

There is a limit to the density of plasma which ion thrusters can emit as, beyond a certain density, the plasma will screen the acceleration grid. The plasma thruster system proposed in this article is charge neutral and so can be ejected at much higher densities. Furthermore, ion thrusters require an onboard electricity source which creates waste heat. Furthermore, the acceleration grid itself is liable to be hit by the exhaust atoms.

 

Conclusion

 

A laser powered plasma thruster is a straightforward design that could simultaneously achieve both high specific impulse and high thrust. Delivering a combined performance that far exceeds any other thruster design currently in use. It’s also safer than existing chemical rockets as there is no store of explosive material aboard the spacecraft. Laser powered plasma thrusters could open the solar system up to manned exploration. First with an Earth-based laser powering trips to the moon and then with a moon-based laser powering trips to the rest of the solar system. The moon is more tectonically stable and so should make the demanding alignment required over multiple astronomical units more feasible.

 

John

 

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Filed Under: Featured, Technology Tagged With: Advance Spaceflight, Laser Propulsion, Rocket, Spacecraft, Specific Impulse, Thrust

Gold: The Most Government-Proof Asset

February 26, 2019 by admin

gold
Joe Belanger/shutterstock.com

Someone once told me about their parents’ experience in the Vietnamese revolution. The government seized their land and froze their bank accounts, but they had gold jewellery, so they bought a ticket out of the country and escaped the carnage.

I’ve previously stated that governments could create stable, prospering economies with a land-backed currency, but can private individuals prepare their asset portfolios against good governments going bad?

 

 

 

The Value Of Most Assets Depends on The Government

 

When you think about it, almost ALL assets – with very few exceptions – depend on the good will of governments. The value of all financial assets like stocks, bonds, copyright, patents, indeed licenses of all kind, depend on government-enforced obligations. CEOs only pay profits to shareholders because of the law. If a government told CEOs, “Don’t worry about those shareholders, keep all corporate profits for yourself!” do you think you’d still get dividends? The value of bonds arises from the legal obligation of debtors. If the government told debtors “Forget about those bondholders, you don’t have to pay them anymore!” then bonds would become worthless. Licenses, patents, copyright, etc. all depends on the government allowing the owners to produce an artwork, an invention, or perform an industrial process while preventing those without the license, patent or copyright from doing the same. Without enforcement, IP is worth zero.

Landownership also depends on government. Land owners differ from trespassers by being able to get police to evict trespassers. Yet if, after a revolution, police refused to evict trespassers from your land, your land holdings wouldn’t be worth the paper your title deed was printed on. Small cottage businesses without much fixed capital have some resistance to governments, but any business with large plants and machinery is a sitting duck during a revolt.

The key point is the government is the most powerful force within a nation’s territory. If a territory contained a more powerful force than the government it would, by definition, become the new de facto government. Short of revolution, disorganized private individuals cannot resist a government with force. Without protection from a major political movement, or foreign country, government officials, backed by the police and the army, can take any valuable assets you can’t hide.

What about hiding paper cash under your bed? Can cash be protected from government seizure? No. Like other financial assets, cash depends on legal fiat and is made of cheap materials whose value depends on laws against forgery. Governments can print all the cash they want and, through hyperinflation, can steal the cash from under your bed without touching the physical notes.

 

Government-Resistant Assets

 

The following are a list of government-resistant assets:

  • Skills/education
  • Black market business capital (valuable connections)
  • Compact Antiques, jewellery and other precious objects (Vintage wine? Rare stamps?)
  • Cryptocurrencies
  • Precious Metals

What’s in your brain, cannot be seized. However, education takes time as well as money. So if trouble is just a few months away, you cannot rapidly exchange vulnerable assets for skills. Valuable skills must be developed years, decades, in advance. Yet skills are one of the few government resistant assets that yield an income during tough times.

Even the most oppressive regimes have trouble seizing people’s underground business networks, connections, and reputation. Black market business capital is either intangible or compact; governments can always take the big stuff. Like skills, black market business capital is a government-resistant income-yielding asset. Like skills it is illiquid and cannot be purchased rapidly, but must slowly build up. Unlike skills, it is difficult remove from the country. Furthermore, while black market business capital is government resistant, it is not immune, and governments can break up operations and imprison participants. Even worse, participating in the black market when justice prevails can get you imprisoned or involved in gang warfare. I’ve referred to the costs of running a business outside the law here. When governance is good, business should be kept above board. Nevertheless, honest businessmen in politically unstable regions can explore strategies to go underground during political strife.

Finally, some compact valuables can be hidden and don’t depend on government enforced obligations. Precious metals and other compact precious items, such as antiques and cryptocurrencies, fall into this category. These assets don’t yield an income, but they can be rapidly purchased and readily moved.

 

Production Risk, Breakage Risk, Network Risk and Preference Volatility Risk

 

This first risk to any valuable asset is production risk, the risk that some new process will produce the asset in large quantities and devalue it. Unlike cash, governments can’t print diamonds. Nevertheless, diamonds are just a rare form of carbon. Industrial diamonds are routinely made. Though not yet identical to natural diamonds, that could change any time. Pearls are also vulnerable to production risk. Antiques, by definition, are no longer produced and thus invulnerable to production risk. Any one cryptocurrency can be made immune to production risk. For example, only a finite number of bitcoins can ever be made. However, an arbitrarily large number of cryptocurrencies with identical qualities to bitcoin can be produced. New mining techniques can extract precious metals from lower grade ores, but these increase the cost and energy of extraction and only a finite amount of precious metals can be extracted at a given grade of purity. So, while precious metals have an associated production risk, it is comparatively low and step changes in technology are unlikely to suddenly flood the precious metal market.

The second risk is breakage risk. Precious metals, valuables, such as diamonds or pearls, and cryptocurrencies are hard to break, but antiques are highly vulnerable. If an antique (such as a vintage bottle of wine) breaks while being transported, or a priceless stamp collection gets wet, its value is instantly destroyed.

Then there is network risk. Most compact items of value do not depend on networks, but cryptocurrencies do. Internet access mostly comes from large infrastructure such as mobile phone masts or optical fibres. Satellites might allow foreign governments to provide internet access against the will of a relatively poor country, yet many governments can successfully shutdown the internet and no internet: no cryptocurrency access. Despite Bill Clinton’s statement in 2000 that censoring the internet was like “trying to nail jello to the wall” the Chinese government has had increasing success in determining what can and can’t be transmitted and, if they wanted to, they could block crypto-payments.

Finally, there’s preference volatility risk. In principle, no asset is immune from preference volatility risk as an asset’s value is only what people are willing to pay for it. If everyone suddenly decides they don’t want something, it’s value will be zero – there’s no way around that. And yet, antiques and crypto-currencies are particularly vulnerable to preference volatility risk, due to the vast, practically limitless, array of different antique and cryptocurrency classes. Precious elemental metals and generic valuables (like diamonds), while undoubtedly volatile, are less volatile than antiques or cryptocurrencies due to the comparatively limited number of categories they can exist as.

Asset Risk
Summary for Government Resistant Asset Class Vulnerabilities

Gold: The Most Government-Proof Asset

 

While precious metals are vulnerable to production risk and preference volatility risk, their intrinsic vulnerability to risk is lower than other assets. Gold has a particular low vulnerability to preference volatility risk. Some say gold has little underlying use value, but this is not true. Gold is a highly useful medium for storing and exchanging value as it is intrinsically:

  • Portable
  • Durable
  • Homogenous
  • Divisible
  • Rare
  • Non-toxic
  • Cognizable
  • Comparatively Stable Value

The fact that gold’s main use is to exchange and store value is a strength rather than a weakness and serves to stabilize its value. More common materials, in high demand from industry, only have value while demand remains high and, since technology and industrial processes constantly change, industrial demand, and their corresponding price, could drop precipitously.

But so long as we need for money, materials ideally suited to function as money will have value. Lower industrial demand stabilizes value.

The biggest challenge to storing value is preference volatility risk. Many media can potentially store value, yet, when society switches its preference from one medium to another, those who stored their value in the first medium will lose it. To narrow down the vast array of options, let’s return to basics. The universe consists of elemental atoms; other value arises from their arrangement. The different ways to arrange elements into things of value is limitless so, to narrow down money candidates, we should only consider elemental substances.

Elemental substances are also divisible. Divisible things can be bartered for items over a wide value range. You can exchange a little gold for a ham sandwich, or a lot of gold for a car. On the other hand, while you might exchange an antique tribal mask for a car you want, if all you have is one antique tribal mask and all you want is a ham sandwich, you have a problem…

Rarer money candidates generally have more value per unit mass (neglecting industrial demand and irrational preferences). Rarer elements make value easier to move, all else being equal. When the universe began, only hydrogen, helium, lithium and beryllium were formed. Nuclear fusion in large stars formed elements up to iron. But it takes a neutron star collision to make gold, so it would be an understatement to say gold is difficult to manufacture. Elements higher up the periodic table are generally rarer than those lower down and so are more favourable as value stores. But we don’t want radioactive money! The highest stable element is lead. Only Mercury, Thallium and Lead have more protons than gold. Mercury exists in an elemental form, but it’s liquid; it’s also highly toxic. Both Thallium and Lead are also toxic and so unsuitable to be passed from hand to hand. Platinum is inert and non-toxic, but it’s melting point is 1,768 degrees compared to the 1,064 of gold making it less divisible; it’s also heavily used by industry, which could be a source of demand volatility. The inert nature of gold’s elemental state also makes it cognizable, and for money to be money, it must be possible to distinguish what is money from what isn’t. Different compounds of elements have different macroscopic properties, so only elements that remain in a single, chemically recognizable form are suitable money candidates. The pure elemental form of gold has recognisable qualities like density and resistivity that distinguishes it from other yellow shiny things.

Finally, gold’s traditional use as a medium of exchange and store of value makes it the most government-proof asset around.

 

Rhodium: An Alternative to Gold?

 

One other candidate may be a more suitable value store than gold: Rhodium. Rhodium was only discovered in 1804, and its toxicity is still unknown. But it has one significant advantage over gold: despite being the same price, annual rhodium production is 100 times lower, so if Rhodium became a generally accepted store of value, since it’s 100 times rarer, you could potential stuff 100 times more value in your pocket by stuffing it with Rhodium rather than gold. Doing so may or may not have negative health consequences, but if future studies show that Rhodium is non-toxic it might be a better government-resistant asset than gold.

It’s important to remember that any government resistant asset must be safe to handle, carry and hide. When times are good, its more sensible to securely store precious metals in institutions like Gold Money. But when politics starts deteriorating, it is essential to withdraw that value and hold it directly in your hand.

This is why toxicity is important.

 

Gold/Rhodium Powder Wallets?

 

Technological trends towards smaller, more accurate measuring instruments will affect suitable money candidates. In the future, precious metal powder wallets will be docked together and instructed to transfer a precise, arbitrarily small quantity of metal powder from one wallet to another. Instrumentation in the recipient wallet will rapidly check the weight and purity of the transferred powder within a fraction of a second and trigger an alarm if the powder was sub-standard or if the donor and recipient wallets disagreed on the transferred amount. In such a situation, you could just as easily buy a ham sandwich or a packet of crisps with physical gold or rhodium as a car, a house, or a cruise ship.

Such payment methods could ensure no element was be too rare to serve as money.

 

Self-Provision: The Best Hedge Against Total Collapse

 

Precious metals are convenient for exchanging value, but the greatest actual value is access to food, clean-water and shelter. If civilization collapses, it will be critical to secure access to necessities – and defend them from aggressors. The problem is you need land to grow food and quite a large space to store, say, a 10 year food supply. States can seize large things, like houses and land, so the best strategy against totalitarianism is to store gold, while the best strategy against anarchy is to buy land – along with food and guns. Either way food cultivation, shelter maintenance and self-defence skills will be of high value. Since an acre of farmland, which can support one person, is only £10,000 and food is relatively cheap to procure, it makes sense, for those with financial resources, to buy a plot of land, large enough to survive on, (for fresh food) and a 5 year reserve of dried food (in case of failed harvests) as a hedge against anarchy while storing any surplus asset value as gold to hedge against the seizure of your land and food. Heavy-duty weapons are illegal in many countries, so it makes sense to store wealth as gold and only buy serious weapons at the start of collapse and lawlessness.

In either case, while it makes sense to secure sufficient resources to satiate your most basic requirements in a remote region, relatively safe from invasion (perhaps a small island), it is best to store excess asset value as gold.

 

John

 

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Filed Under: Economics Tagged With: Asset, Gold, Government, Security

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