Friends,
They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers start building only cars and mass transit that reduce our dependency on oil.
They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers build cars that reduce global warming.
They could have given the loan on the condition that the automakers withdraw their many lawsuits against state governments in their attempts to not comply with our environmental laws.
They could have given the loan on the condition that the management team which drove these once-great manufacturers into the ground resign and be replaced with a team who understands the transportation needs of the 21st century.
Yes, they could have given the loan for any of these reasons because, in the end, to lose our manufacturing infrastructure and throw 3 million people out of work would be a catastrophe.
But instead, the Senate said, we'll give you the loan only if the factory workers take a $20 an hour cut in wages, pension and health care. That's right. After giving billions to Wall Street hucksters and criminal investment bankers -- billions with no strings attached and, as we have since learned, no oversight whatsoever -- the Senate decided it is more important to break a union, more important to throw middle class wage earners into the ranks of the working poor than to prevent the total collapse of industrial America.
We have a little more than a month to go of this madness. As I sit here in Michigan today, tens of thousands of hard working, honest, decent Americans do not believe they can make it to January 20th. The malaise here is astounding. Why must they suffer because of the mistakes of every CEO from Roger Smith to Rick Wagoner? Make management and the boards of directors and the shareholders pay for this.
Of course that is heresy to the 31 Republicans who decided to blame the poor, miserable autoworkers for this mess. And our wonderful media complied with their spin on the morning news shows: "UAW Refuses to Give Concessions Killing Auto Bailout Bill." In fact the UAW has given concession after concession, reduced their benefits, agreed to get rid of the Jobs Bank and agreed to make it harder for their retirees to live from week to week. Yes! That's what we need to do! It's the Jobs Bank and the old people who have led the nation to economic ruin!
But even doing all that wasn't enough to satisfy the bastard Republicans. These Senate vampires wanted blood. Blue collar blood. You see, they weren't opposed to the bailout because they believed in the free market or capitalism. No, they were opposed to the bailout because they're opposed to workers making a decent wage. In their rage, they were driven to destroy the backbone of this country, not because the UAW hadn't given back enough, but because the UAW hadn't given up.
It appears that the sitting President has been looking for a way to end his reign by one magnanimous act, just like a warlord on his feast day. He will put his finger in the dyke, and the fragile mess of an auto industry will eke through the next few months.
That will give the Senate enough time to demand that the bankers and investment sharks who've already swiped nearly half of the $700 billion gift a chance to make the offer of cutting their pay.
Fat chance.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
I know, and so appreciate, the left slant that this writer, director, producer, and cause fighter can create in his movies and documentaries, but I also know of the corruption, lies, deceit, and failures to nearly anything that this current administration has done for eight years to the hard working American, this great country and the repercussions now around the world.
I must side with Michael Moore fully on this issue. It is a travesty to what has transpired in this country with the Bush/Cheney team. It is now time that the courts have their day with this administration and show the world that this country will not stand for these kind of murderous, corrupt, thieves in the White House and on Wall Street. It is time we fill the prisons with white collar criminals for a change.
This, the 219th entry in bloggoland! Thanks for reading and coming back. I always enjoy the comments, emails and the banter!!
(c)Copyright 2008 Doug Boggs
Showing posts with label economic collapse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economic collapse. Show all posts
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Friday, November 14, 2008
The Ponzi to beat all Ponzi schemes
I was listening to Jim Lehrer yesterday of his interview with Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson. This discussion brings to mind a previous article I had penned back in June of this year.
I talked of our founding fathers and their declaration that "they hold these truths to be self evident" and the juxtaposition of that phrase with today's wiki-society of truth by proxy. Now, it seems, that if you can get enough people to believe the shit that spews out of your mouth then it becomes truth. As I said in the article, which you can find through the link above, Ayn Rand, the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, believed that truth exists independently of the minds and opinions of people. That there was an underlying universal self evident truth that existed beyond the scope of society and its collective manipulations that can cloud the value of universal truth.
Through the interview on the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, yesterday, it shows clearly that the current administration still believes in the mob mentality or the control of and manipulation of the lemming minds of America. It is self evident that they maintain their belief that our society holds a truth by proxy. That has been their public relations platform to create and get away with their abuse of power and how they created a dictatorship type of Presidency under everyone's nose without hesitation.
Well, as I stated a few days ago, "There you go again." I don't understand why I feel it is amazing that they attempt to get away with this type of behavior when it works for them every time. We are allowing these fraudulent statements to carry on and their embezzlement of American tax dollars. This money is all of our future earnings being thrown to the elite. That governmental distribution of funds or the great social experiment. We used to call it the great Democratic Experiment. The recipients of all of this social distribution of tax dollars to the current tune of $270 Billion have gone solely to the elite and corporations, to which Paulson and Bush belong to, or have their hands deep into the till, and they are orchestrating the distribution of funds without means of oversight whatsoever. The incestuous means of staffing the TARP committee is simply Paulson making sure his previous business cohorts are still in and part of this ponzi scheme to which they are orchestrating.
Although, I was driving during a lot of this interview, if I were to have closed my eyes I could have switched Paulson out for Palin and we would have heard the same type of rhetoric and catch phrase lines that they calculatingly put into the ears of society. The repetition of phrases. The nonchalance of the gravity of destruction to which Paulson will sit and overview, for the American people, but of course without much, if any personal repercussions.
I wish to include the entire interview in print, but it is long so I will leave you with a link that you can directly go to and read. Or I am including a link here to on a streaming video that you can watch the interview. I feel that this is such an exemplary means of proof to the theories laid out in the "Mobs, Messiah's, and Markets" book I keep touting in this blog. I will also leave a link for you that if you wish to simply listen while you blog as you can hear the streaming download as well.
(c)Copyright 2008 Doug Boggs
I talked of our founding fathers and their declaration that "they hold these truths to be self evident" and the juxtaposition of that phrase with today's wiki-society of truth by proxy. Now, it seems, that if you can get enough people to believe the shit that spews out of your mouth then it becomes truth. As I said in the article, which you can find through the link above, Ayn Rand, the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, believed that truth exists independently of the minds and opinions of people. That there was an underlying universal self evident truth that existed beyond the scope of society and its collective manipulations that can cloud the value of universal truth.
Through the interview on the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, yesterday, it shows clearly that the current administration still believes in the mob mentality or the control of and manipulation of the lemming minds of America. It is self evident that they maintain their belief that our society holds a truth by proxy. That has been their public relations platform to create and get away with their abuse of power and how they created a dictatorship type of Presidency under everyone's nose without hesitation.
Well, as I stated a few days ago, "There you go again." I don't understand why I feel it is amazing that they attempt to get away with this type of behavior when it works for them every time. We are allowing these fraudulent statements to carry on and their embezzlement of American tax dollars. This money is all of our future earnings being thrown to the elite. That governmental distribution of funds or the great social experiment. We used to call it the great Democratic Experiment. The recipients of all of this social distribution of tax dollars to the current tune of $270 Billion have gone solely to the elite and corporations, to which Paulson and Bush belong to, or have their hands deep into the till, and they are orchestrating the distribution of funds without means of oversight whatsoever. The incestuous means of staffing the TARP committee is simply Paulson making sure his previous business cohorts are still in and part of this ponzi scheme to which they are orchestrating.
Although, I was driving during a lot of this interview, if I were to have closed my eyes I could have switched Paulson out for Palin and we would have heard the same type of rhetoric and catch phrase lines that they calculatingly put into the ears of society. The repetition of phrases. The nonchalance of the gravity of destruction to which Paulson will sit and overview, for the American people, but of course without much, if any personal repercussions.
I wish to include the entire interview in print, but it is long so I will leave you with a link that you can directly go to and read. Or I am including a link here to on a streaming video that you can watch the interview. I feel that this is such an exemplary means of proof to the theories laid out in the "Mobs, Messiah's, and Markets" book I keep touting in this blog. I will also leave a link for you that if you wish to simply listen while you blog as you can hear the streaming download as well.
(c)Copyright 2008 Doug Boggs
Monday, October 27, 2008
The United States FICO score...
We have purged out some global economic results through watching the unfolding of the crisis throughout the world.
It seems the most powerful participant in the economic arena is the USA. Whether this is liked or not it is the case and has been exemplified with the global situation. It seems to have now been exposed that as the United States stays afloat so does the rest of the world. Ever since the Nixon Administration took the U.S. off the Gold standard and made the dollar the world currency it created a global safety net for the U.S. It is at the very least the means to which the other currencies of the world now are obliged to value their base.
The economic power mongers knew what they were planning at that time, and knew the stability it would create for the United States, and knew it was a ripe time to make that switch in order to guarantee the U.S. dominance in both monetary and military positions.
What we are now beginning to see is the global political pressures mounting due to the balance, or rather known imbalance, of the monetary pressures and the military pressures meeting halfway.
It would be best for the United States to get its financial obligations more in line in order for this imbalance of power to strengthen itself globally again. The respect of position is being lost in the fact that the United States is so heavily debt laden to other nations. The military strength is respected, but the power economically has been lost. We have seen emerging markets, like China and India, begin to create their own individual stability that could be overtaking the imbalance of economic power that the U.S. has held for the past 35 years since the removal of the gold standard. As long as the U.S. continues to be a debtor nation it will reduce its economic power throughout the world and it will become a necessity for the country to rely on military might and pressure to other nations rather than policy and economic partnerships.
As America has been held as the de-facto leader in the global arena, the other countries will not continue to allow this position to be held when the emerging power of another country, based on the debt America has to that country, could cause such economic uncertainty if the country began to sell of its dollars.
China holds the power to do just that. We are witnessing that the power of economic uncertainty is much more dynamic than that of military power and the current most powerful weapon in China's possession. The position that the U.S. continues to hold is if there become a military confrontation it might dismiss its monetary debt.
This would have China lose on both fronts if this were to occur. Whether China would play the sell card is not yet clear, although given the economic uncertainty of our time we may find out shortly. It seems, yet at this time, that the rest of the world still seems dependent on the economic health of America.
It may just be, through this economic crisis, that the U.S. may become the world de-facto leader simply based on the economics of the international interrelations and monetary policies that have become so inbred into today's debtor type of capitalistic society.
Being heralded as and being able to substantiate the claim of de-facto world leader are two different things. Global leadership has reached a tipping point in international politics today. The power players of old have shown that they are incapable of creating this position due to their greed and incompetence and our policies and power players must now change in order for the global transformation of community can be accomplished.
It stems from the fact of entitlement that America has come to own. People in America, and it starts from the examples sitting in the White House, feel that the world must work around the thoughts and ideals of the United States. This may not be altogether true as we are beginning to see today. We must earn the global respect once again, and not assume the de-facto power position, as we are finding the precariousness of that position.
We are seeing through the opinions of other countries and their desire for a major political change that Obama is the desired person at this opportune moment in history to begin to create the necessary changes that we must have globally. Through the global respect of new vision and policies can the other countries begin to fall back in line to the economic leadership of the United States.
We must begin to re-establish ourselves as the leader of the world in policy and monetary stability rather than simply demanding respect through military power. This type of international policy will find its demise to this country if there becomes a global uprise to the current means of global policy that we have experienced over these past eight years.
It is quite simple really, the FICO score of the United States has fallen dramatically in the past eight years. If we are unable to maintain our debt and reduce our debt other nations will reach a point, just as we are seeing banks globally reach a point, to not lend money to those with low FICO scores...
(c)Copyright 2008 Doug Boggs
It seems the most powerful participant in the economic arena is the USA. Whether this is liked or not it is the case and has been exemplified with the global situation. It seems to have now been exposed that as the United States stays afloat so does the rest of the world. Ever since the Nixon Administration took the U.S. off the Gold standard and made the dollar the world currency it created a global safety net for the U.S. It is at the very least the means to which the other currencies of the world now are obliged to value their base.
The economic power mongers knew what they were planning at that time, and knew the stability it would create for the United States, and knew it was a ripe time to make that switch in order to guarantee the U.S. dominance in both monetary and military positions.
What we are now beginning to see is the global political pressures mounting due to the balance, or rather known imbalance, of the monetary pressures and the military pressures meeting halfway.
It would be best for the United States to get its financial obligations more in line in order for this imbalance of power to strengthen itself globally again. The respect of position is being lost in the fact that the United States is so heavily debt laden to other nations. The military strength is respected, but the power economically has been lost. We have seen emerging markets, like China and India, begin to create their own individual stability that could be overtaking the imbalance of economic power that the U.S. has held for the past 35 years since the removal of the gold standard. As long as the U.S. continues to be a debtor nation it will reduce its economic power throughout the world and it will become a necessity for the country to rely on military might and pressure to other nations rather than policy and economic partnerships.
As America has been held as the de-facto leader in the global arena, the other countries will not continue to allow this position to be held when the emerging power of another country, based on the debt America has to that country, could cause such economic uncertainty if the country began to sell of its dollars.
China holds the power to do just that. We are witnessing that the power of economic uncertainty is much more dynamic than that of military power and the current most powerful weapon in China's possession. The position that the U.S. continues to hold is if there become a military confrontation it might dismiss its monetary debt.
This would have China lose on both fronts if this were to occur. Whether China would play the sell card is not yet clear, although given the economic uncertainty of our time we may find out shortly. It seems, yet at this time, that the rest of the world still seems dependent on the economic health of America.
It may just be, through this economic crisis, that the U.S. may become the world de-facto leader simply based on the economics of the international interrelations and monetary policies that have become so inbred into today's debtor type of capitalistic society.
Being heralded as and being able to substantiate the claim of de-facto world leader are two different things. Global leadership has reached a tipping point in international politics today. The power players of old have shown that they are incapable of creating this position due to their greed and incompetence and our policies and power players must now change in order for the global transformation of community can be accomplished.
It stems from the fact of entitlement that America has come to own. People in America, and it starts from the examples sitting in the White House, feel that the world must work around the thoughts and ideals of the United States. This may not be altogether true as we are beginning to see today. We must earn the global respect once again, and not assume the de-facto power position, as we are finding the precariousness of that position.
We are seeing through the opinions of other countries and their desire for a major political change that Obama is the desired person at this opportune moment in history to begin to create the necessary changes that we must have globally. Through the global respect of new vision and policies can the other countries begin to fall back in line to the economic leadership of the United States.
We must begin to re-establish ourselves as the leader of the world in policy and monetary stability rather than simply demanding respect through military power. This type of international policy will find its demise to this country if there becomes a global uprise to the current means of global policy that we have experienced over these past eight years.
It is quite simple really, the FICO score of the United States has fallen dramatically in the past eight years. If we are unable to maintain our debt and reduce our debt other nations will reach a point, just as we are seeing banks globally reach a point, to not lend money to those with low FICO scores...
(c)Copyright 2008 Doug Boggs
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Margin calls...
Top down Reaganomics at its best when the markets are free from government intervention...?
Part V
(From Equity Private)
And then we get back to reality...
*
Part V
(From Equity Private)
And then we get back to reality...
*
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The Fuhrer or Amerika continued...
I have had some great feedback on this video series. I am including Part III and Part IV for today. Enjoy the irony...
For Part I and Part II you can go HERE.
(From Equity Private)
Part III
Part IV
*
For Part I and Part II you can go HERE.
(From Equity Private)
Part III
Part IV
*
Monday, October 6, 2008
It's time to discuss, Bionomics!
I have mentioned the book, "Bionomics; Economy as Business Ecosystem" by Rothschild, being one of my favorite books, in this blog numerous times since I have begun writing. I wish to thank my friend Greg Welch for the recommendation. I have since read the book he lent me more than a few times and it is falling apart, so I owe him a new copy...
Bionomics is the comprehensive study of an organism and its relation to its environment. (Greek: bio = life; nomos = law)
Capitalism, like life, was not planned. It just happened. All factors for its survival were correctly in their place and it began to gestate within the human psyche and early man's society. Through early trade practices and the emergence and growth of more complex human societal structures the evolution of capitalism has grown spontaneously. Just as in the way the human society organizes itself to survive in a world of limited resources, capitalism flourishes when it is not suppressed, as it is also a natural occurring phenomenon.
We have seen this process at work directly through this meltdown of our national and in many respects, global financial systems due to the freedom that our administration allowed for capitalism to flourish. Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
This is to say that in a free market economy without regulations the distribution of goods and financial expenditures for those goods are determined by the actions of private citizens and corporation working in direct tandem with eachother's financial needs and their own personal or corporate desires for success and survival. In another way to say it would be that capitalism is the evolutionary process of all organisms (businesses, corporations, markets, economies) that seek to adapt and preserve themselves and their own individual environments and their "genetic" success characteristics.
The inheritance of the success "genes" of corporations, as an example, help to maintain the stability of the markets as the corporations continually announce these "genes", and their successful mutations, to the public at large through earnings announcements and stock valuations. This also goes to say, that each local and national economy distribute this same success information to the public at large for them to interrelate within their own environment.
As the economy is continually and dynamically driven into new states by technological change, the rules and lessons of Bionomics are more pertinent than ever. They suggest great caution regarding government planning and control of a naturally growing and self-regulating market economy. Government's role is to protect the property and the rights of individuals and corporations, that allow new economic orders to flourish.
Rothschild notes that the roots of his study of economics theory came from Darwin's natural selection...and it makes intuitive sense that economics would have much more to do with biology than math and statistics. Capitalism is not just another economic system... it is a natural emergent quality of nature itself.
Emergence theory is a concept that has been used in theory since at least Aristotle. It is the study of behavior or emergent property which can appear when a number of simple entities (corporations, businesses, individuals, economies) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviors as a collective. If emergence happens over disparate size scales, then the reason is there is often a form of top-down feedback in systems with emergent properties. This process may occur in either the observed or observing system, and can commonly be identified by their patterns of accumulating change, most generally called 'growth'. This is more commonly referred to as "Reaganomics" in political discussions today. This behavior occurs because of highly intricate relations across a myriad of scales and feedback to individual results of these behaviors. This inter-connectivity can be predictable or highly unpredictable thus allowing to represent a new level of the system's evolution.
As much as I may be a conspiracy theorist, the complex behaviors or properties are not a property of any single such entity. We are unable to deduce or predict the behavior of the system, that being corporations, national or global economies, from a single or lower level entities, or the citizens or small businesses. Liken this theory to the fact that no physical property of an individual molecule of air would lead one to think that a large collection of them will transmit sound.
This has been studied by watching flocks of birds or a shoal of fish. There is no leader to this systemic movement. The birds or fish move and act and react as one entity, although there is no direct leader. The movements and reactions, or emergent behavior is hard to predict due to the number of interactions between components of a system which increases relating with the number of components, whereby potentially allowing for many new and subtle types of different behavior patterns to emerge. For example, the possible interactions between groups of molecules grows enormously with the number of molecules such that it is impossible for a computer to even count the number of arrangements for a system as small as 20 molecules.
On the other hand, merely having a large number of interactions is not enough by itself to guarantee emergent behavior. Many of the interactions may be negligible or irrelevant, or may cancel each other out. In some cases, a large number of interactions can in fact work against the emergence of new and interesting behaviors by creating a lot of "noise" to drown out any emerging "signal". The emergent behavior may need to be temporarily isolated from other interactions before it reaches enough critical mass to be self-supporting. So, it is not just the sheer number of connections between components which encourages emergence, but it is also how these connections are organized.
A hierarchical organization is one example that can generate emergent behavior (a bureaucracy, or government may behave in a way quite different from that of the individual humans in that bureaucracy, or government entity). Emergent behavior can also arise from more decentralized organizational structures, such as a marketplace.
We have now seen this through the systemic breakdown of the banking industry. In some cases, the system has to reach a combined threshold of diversity, organization, and connectivity before emergent behavior appears. As we have seen the trickle down effects of this connectivity on a global scale. Unintended, or perhaps intended (as I am a conspiracy theorist) consequences and side effects are closely related to emergent properties. That said, although the actual behavior of the intended consequences would not be guaranteed to the individual(s) attempting to manipulate the emergent properties, due to the unpredictability of such a large (global) system, the continued actions and reactions can help justify and allow for the systemic changes to occur on their own. This, over time, allows the individual(s) to change their processes in order to comply with the new evolutions of thought and actions.
Luc Steels is a Belgian scientist, and Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Vrije University Brussel writes: "A component has a particular functionality but this is not recognizable as a subfunction of the global functionality. Instead a component implements a behaviour whose side effect contributes to the global functionality [...] Each behaviour has a side effect and the sum of the side effects gives the desired functionality" (Steels 1990). If I may paraphrase this that, the global or macroscopic functionality of a system with "emergent functionality" is the sum of all "side effects", of all emergent properties and functionalities.
With the most recent global breakdown of our banking systems we realize that the side effects of the banking system directly relate to the effects of the insurance system, which directly relate to the reinsurance systems. These directly relate to the borrowing capabilities of local banking systems and their interdependence on the international banking systems. This directly relates to the borrowing capabilities of the small business and microorganisms, or individual citizens. The success of the macro systems, or host entities, rely more on their own successes to the demise of the individual entities success. Thus, the hailed "trickle down" theory, or "Reaganomics" is not a determined successful business model.
The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the universal law of increasing entropy, stating that the entropy of an isolated system which is not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium. Systems with emergent properties or emergent structures may appear to defy entropic principles and the second law of thermodynamics, because they form and increase order despite the lack of command and central control. This is possible because open systems can extract information and order out of the environment.
Emergence helps to explain why the fallacy of division is a fallacy. According to an emergent perspective, intelligence emerges from the connections between neurons, and from this perspective it is not necessary to propose a "soul" to account for the fact that brains can be intelligent, even though the individual neurons of which they are made are not. But, this is a discussion for another day!
I will be discussing, in depth, another of my favorite books "Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets" by Bonner and Rajiva soon. I hope you join me for that one! It can be considered part two of this discussion as the emergence theory and economics is explored more thoroughly.
(c)Copyright 2008 Doug Boggs
Bionomics is the comprehensive study of an organism and its relation to its environment. (Greek: bio = life; nomos = law)
Capitalism, like life, was not planned. It just happened. All factors for its survival were correctly in their place and it began to gestate within the human psyche and early man's society. Through early trade practices and the emergence and growth of more complex human societal structures the evolution of capitalism has grown spontaneously. Just as in the way the human society organizes itself to survive in a world of limited resources, capitalism flourishes when it is not suppressed, as it is also a natural occurring phenomenon.
We have seen this process at work directly through this meltdown of our national and in many respects, global financial systems due to the freedom that our administration allowed for capitalism to flourish. Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
This is to say that in a free market economy without regulations the distribution of goods and financial expenditures for those goods are determined by the actions of private citizens and corporation working in direct tandem with eachother's financial needs and their own personal or corporate desires for success and survival. In another way to say it would be that capitalism is the evolutionary process of all organisms (businesses, corporations, markets, economies) that seek to adapt and preserve themselves and their own individual environments and their "genetic" success characteristics.
The inheritance of the success "genes" of corporations, as an example, help to maintain the stability of the markets as the corporations continually announce these "genes", and their successful mutations, to the public at large through earnings announcements and stock valuations. This also goes to say, that each local and national economy distribute this same success information to the public at large for them to interrelate within their own environment.
As the economy is continually and dynamically driven into new states by technological change, the rules and lessons of Bionomics are more pertinent than ever. They suggest great caution regarding government planning and control of a naturally growing and self-regulating market economy. Government's role is to protect the property and the rights of individuals and corporations, that allow new economic orders to flourish.
Rothschild notes that the roots of his study of economics theory came from Darwin's natural selection...and it makes intuitive sense that economics would have much more to do with biology than math and statistics. Capitalism is not just another economic system... it is a natural emergent quality of nature itself.
Emergence theory is a concept that has been used in theory since at least Aristotle. It is the study of behavior or emergent property which can appear when a number of simple entities (corporations, businesses, individuals, economies) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviors as a collective. If emergence happens over disparate size scales, then the reason is there is often a form of top-down feedback in systems with emergent properties. This process may occur in either the observed or observing system, and can commonly be identified by their patterns of accumulating change, most generally called 'growth'. This is more commonly referred to as "Reaganomics" in political discussions today. This behavior occurs because of highly intricate relations across a myriad of scales and feedback to individual results of these behaviors. This inter-connectivity can be predictable or highly unpredictable thus allowing to represent a new level of the system's evolution.
As much as I may be a conspiracy theorist, the complex behaviors or properties are not a property of any single such entity. We are unable to deduce or predict the behavior of the system, that being corporations, national or global economies, from a single or lower level entities, or the citizens or small businesses. Liken this theory to the fact that no physical property of an individual molecule of air would lead one to think that a large collection of them will transmit sound.
This has been studied by watching flocks of birds or a shoal of fish. There is no leader to this systemic movement. The birds or fish move and act and react as one entity, although there is no direct leader. The movements and reactions, or emergent behavior is hard to predict due to the number of interactions between components of a system which increases relating with the number of components, whereby potentially allowing for many new and subtle types of different behavior patterns to emerge. For example, the possible interactions between groups of molecules grows enormously with the number of molecules such that it is impossible for a computer to even count the number of arrangements for a system as small as 20 molecules.
On the other hand, merely having a large number of interactions is not enough by itself to guarantee emergent behavior. Many of the interactions may be negligible or irrelevant, or may cancel each other out. In some cases, a large number of interactions can in fact work against the emergence of new and interesting behaviors by creating a lot of "noise" to drown out any emerging "signal". The emergent behavior may need to be temporarily isolated from other interactions before it reaches enough critical mass to be self-supporting. So, it is not just the sheer number of connections between components which encourages emergence, but it is also how these connections are organized.
A hierarchical organization is one example that can generate emergent behavior (a bureaucracy, or government may behave in a way quite different from that of the individual humans in that bureaucracy, or government entity). Emergent behavior can also arise from more decentralized organizational structures, such as a marketplace.
We have now seen this through the systemic breakdown of the banking industry. In some cases, the system has to reach a combined threshold of diversity, organization, and connectivity before emergent behavior appears. As we have seen the trickle down effects of this connectivity on a global scale. Unintended, or perhaps intended (as I am a conspiracy theorist) consequences and side effects are closely related to emergent properties. That said, although the actual behavior of the intended consequences would not be guaranteed to the individual(s) attempting to manipulate the emergent properties, due to the unpredictability of such a large (global) system, the continued actions and reactions can help justify and allow for the systemic changes to occur on their own. This, over time, allows the individual(s) to change their processes in order to comply with the new evolutions of thought and actions.
Luc Steels is a Belgian scientist, and Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Vrije University Brussel writes: "A component has a particular functionality but this is not recognizable as a subfunction of the global functionality. Instead a component implements a behaviour whose side effect contributes to the global functionality [...] Each behaviour has a side effect and the sum of the side effects gives the desired functionality" (Steels 1990). If I may paraphrase this that, the global or macroscopic functionality of a system with "emergent functionality" is the sum of all "side effects", of all emergent properties and functionalities.
With the most recent global breakdown of our banking systems we realize that the side effects of the banking system directly relate to the effects of the insurance system, which directly relate to the reinsurance systems. These directly relate to the borrowing capabilities of local banking systems and their interdependence on the international banking systems. This directly relates to the borrowing capabilities of the small business and microorganisms, or individual citizens. The success of the macro systems, or host entities, rely more on their own successes to the demise of the individual entities success. Thus, the hailed "trickle down" theory, or "Reaganomics" is not a determined successful business model.
The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the universal law of increasing entropy, stating that the entropy of an isolated system which is not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium. Systems with emergent properties or emergent structures may appear to defy entropic principles and the second law of thermodynamics, because they form and increase order despite the lack of command and central control. This is possible because open systems can extract information and order out of the environment.
Emergence helps to explain why the fallacy of division is a fallacy. According to an emergent perspective, intelligence emerges from the connections between neurons, and from this perspective it is not necessary to propose a "soul" to account for the fact that brains can be intelligent, even though the individual neurons of which they are made are not. But, this is a discussion for another day!
I will be discussing, in depth, another of my favorite books "Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets" by Bonner and Rajiva soon. I hope you join me for that one! It can be considered part two of this discussion as the emergence theory and economics is explored more thoroughly.
(c)Copyright 2008 Doug Boggs
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Colbert sums up the breakdown!...Will.I.am speaks
This pretty much sums up the financial situation at hand with our economic fallout. In a profound and precise show of words Stephen Colbert, on his Emmy award winning show "Colbert Nation", gives us a true explanation and breakdown of how delicate the situation is at hand.
Is there anything else?!
YES! Wil.I.Am speaks out with this amazing video!
VOTE FOR Obama!
Is there anything else?!
YES! Wil.I.Am speaks out with this amazing video!
VOTE FOR Obama!
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