Post-ish Scarcity, Energy, and learning from Failure

Today I'll do something a bit different for this blog and talk about ideas I have been considering from literature, specifically SF. I've been reading a fair bit of Iain M. Banks of late, and have been thinking about his setting of The Culture and how it relates to what we have now and are likely to get to based on our present trajectory.

First off, The Culture is a Utopia, so instantly suspicious to realists such as myself. It is not made out to be perfect, but in terms of everyday life it's as close as no matter. The phrase "post-scarcity" came up at a party I was at a while ago, albeit in the context of today's world. The Culture takes that concept to its' logical conclusion, with the caveat that the frame of reference has been shifted significantly.

Communism and (to a lesser extent) Anarchy have been tried out and found severely wanting; this is in comparison to a well-run liberal democracy which is merely wanting. The best possible government you can get is an enlightened despot, but they are exceedingly rare. The key constant in all of these systems is people. As long as you have people, you will have human emotions and drives gumming up the works. Banks gets around this by putting seriously powerful AIs in charge of everything, leaving people to do anything they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.

We don't live there and as far as I can see we never will. What we need to deal with though is the people who think this is achievable. One of the things which pushed me toward this was a protest which students were having in Montreal about hikes in their tuition rates, still the lowest in the country. They are emblematic of people who forget that this is not a completely Post-Scarcity world.

Things need to be paid for; there are no magical gnomes or super advanced technology resembling magic which will build your house or grow your food. Obvious, I know, but there are a surprising number of people who don't understand it. We live in the most fortunate age civilization has seen, with all but the very poorest having luxuries (proper heating, electricity, hot running water) which the Kings and Emperors of all previous ages could not have had for any sum.

Perfection? No. As close as we'll get? Doesn't have to be. The key is cheap clean energy and advanced technology, and either one will get you the other, therefore both. I'll start with Energy.

Energy at its' most basic is the ability of something to do work, and I recommend the link as a refresher (if you need one) about how energy and matter relate. As "doing work" is how things get done, energy is obviously the key to everything else. Hell, with enough energy you can re-arrange matter at the atomic level (e.g. making elements in a linear accelerator). I am not a physicist by any means, so I won't get too far into this, except to say that the cost of energy effects the cost of everything else.

I thought that was obvious too, but apparently not. Taking the simplest connection, if the price of petrol goes up it costs you (and everyone and everything else) more to get around. This has the compound effect of reducing your discretionary income and increasing the price of things you would drive out to buy. Result: standard of living goes down, economy contracts. We're living it right now.

Enter the Entitlement Generation. I am working hard to NOT raise my children like that, but the results are all around us and it started at the tail end of (my) Generation X. I am by nature a rather lazy person, but I am also a responsible one. I accept (or at least understand) the kicking that I often take from the Type-A types who rise to the top of my organization. I do the best with what I have, but I know that some other people will be better than me at certain things.

This I consider to be a realistic and healthy (albeit somewhat depressing at times) appraisal of the world and how it works. So, I will work and accept that I will never rise to the top, as they are looking for things I don't have. This is as it should be, but there are a LOT of people (mostly young) who don't get it. You cannot (with rare but notable exceptions) do whatever you want just because you put your mind to it. Trust me, I've tried a lot of things that way and it ain't how things work for most people.

They'd love Banks' "Culture"; so would I but we're nowhere close. We need rules and we need Rule of Law to keep the decision makers in line. While I was in the gym this morning I saw a business school guy talking about the cost of education and making choices. People are talking about free education, but he wasn't having any of it, and with good reason.

Enter "Opportunity Cost": The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action. So, you want someone else to pay your opportunity cost for you (e.g. free tuition)? Proponents of free education call it "an investment in society" but if so it's a bad one. Again, not an economist, but off the top of my head I don't see the extra tax income from graduates offsetting the investment in them in any kind of a hurry. What it amounts to is everyone else paying more taxes so that YOU can get ahead: in other words, an entitlement.

There are all sorts of people in universities who shouldn't be there in the first place, simply on academic achievement and potential. I went to class with a lot of them and often wondered how they got out of high school let alone into university. This isn't your top-end universities, but it is most of them.

Vocational and trades training need to be brought back, and I see that some attempts are being made. I have done a lot of really messy jobs to make ends meet before I sorted myself out career-wise, but too many kids won't clean bathrooms or move garbage because it's "below them". Thank you, Princess culture et al. Which brings us back to...

...where does all of our "stuff" come from? Somebody designs it, somebody designs the tools that make it, somebody builds those tools while other people build the building this all goes in. Others extract the raw materials, process them and ship them to the factory. Notice: nary a super-intelligent AI with unbounded energy resources and manipulation to be seen in the process.

My point? Stuff doesn't make itself, ship itself or (oh horrors!) clean up after itself (or you). I don't like cleaning bathrooms any more than anyone else, but I do it (at home) because it needs to be done. In all of this I blame lazy parents. Teaching kids responsibility and accountability is hard and tiring, a.k.a. Work. Kids learn what they're taught; if expectations are low at home, and low at school, they'll never learn anything useful.

Just like our ancestors broke their backs and their health to clear land and build farms and cities, the current and upcoming generations need to work to make better things in order to make things better. It's a lot less of a slog than it was for our predecessors, but we can't coast now. I don't know about you, but I want my (figurative) flying car. Thorium reactors would be a good start though, so let's work on that.

As Ronald Reagan said: If not us, who? If not now, when?

Paying the bus you throw your allies under

The Obama administration intends to resume funding for Egypt’s military, despite congressional restrictions and objections from human rights and democracy advocates.

For months, the money for Egypt — more than $1.5 billion, with the bulk earmarked for the military — has been withheld amid that country’s crackdown on pro-democracy groups, including several U.S.-based organizations with close ties to political parties in Washington.

A law passed by Congress in December forbids funding unless the State Department certifies that Egypt is making progress on basic freedoms and human rights.

But Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is close to announcing plans to bypass those restrictions on national security grounds, according to senior administration officials and others who have been briefed on the deliberations but were not authorized to speak publicly. The administration believes failure to provide the funds would risk worsening already fraying ties with Egypt’s leaders, most notably the Egyptian military, which still controls the country.

At least I'm far from being alone in thinking that this is a bad idea. Warts and all, Mubarak was the Americans' only reason to fund the Egyptian military, as he took Sadat's baton of peace with Israel and carried it for 30 years. Once again the USA has abandoned an immediately politically inconvenient (and admittedly at least partially despotic) ally to forces inimical to America's national interests.

This is the trajectory of last year's "Arab Spring", and the 1979 Iran (Islamic) revolution should provide a model for what is likely to come in most of these countries. The Egyptians won't start another war with Israel (outcome is certain anyway) but they can be miserable and descend into a factional Islamist terrorist-supporting state.

The idea that the US will maintain any useful influence with the Egyptian power structure is wishful thinking at best, putting arms into the hands of people who will use them against you and your interests at worst. Oh well, it's not like they haven't done it before; there is that old saw about doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results...

Yes, I've not been up to too much here and at times I feel badly about that. However (and I know I've said this before) it often feels that I've nothing new to say. Anyway, I'm less busy than I have been for the last couple of months so there will likely be more from me here. You have been warned...

International Burn a Religious Text Day

Once again, books are being burned (for good reason this time) and people are killing other people and themselves over it. I give Islam a lot of stick on this blog, but any Muslims can rest assured that I would be equally scathing with any other group that was so violently touchy and intolerant.

There is a lot of bowing and scraping about the "desecration" of the books, but that is NOT against any law in North America to the best of my knowledge. The Bible pre-dates the Koran by a whole lot and is the basis for Islam (whether they'll admit it any more or not) and I can burn as many of those as I want and nobody makes a peep.

Oh, I'm sure you'll find a few Christian nutjobs who'd like to lynch me over it, but they'd be pooh-poohed as cranks. What do you do when there are hundreds of millions of nutjobs? Apparently you panic and kowtow:

Last year, when controversial Florida pastor Terry Jones presided over what he called a trial of the Quran and burned a copy, Afghans took to the streets by the thousands. In the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, demonstrators stormed a U.N. office and killed 12 people. In Kandahar, three people were killed in one demonstration, and nine in another when police and stone-throwing demonstrators clashed.

American officials vociferously condemned the pastor's act.

"It was intolerant and it was extremely disrespectful and again, we condemn it in the strongest manner possible," said Gen. David Petraeus, who headed the U.S.-led international forces in Afghanistan at the time.

"...the strongest manner possible ." Think about that language. This equates burning a mass-produced book to the raping and killing children or other such universally abhorrent acts. I'm sure Director (then General) Petraeus would contest my equivalence here but there is no getting around what he said and what it means. And for Obama to call for "a fair and public trial", I'd like to know what law these American service people broke, even under military law that would call for a trial; they were burning the trash, and the books were in it for good reason.

So, to sum up:

• Burn a Koran, be threatened with arbitrary arrest and/or death at the hands of incensed Muslims the world over, or;
• Riot, burn and kill people about something which has nothing to do with you and you are "proud and noble".

If you want to live under a system where you're executed for this sort of thing, move to, well, any self-identified "Muslim" country. Under the law of MY land, I can have a big Koran/Bible/Torah/Bhagavad Gita/Kangyur BBQ in my backyard (local fire ordinances permitting) and there is nothing illegal about it. Of course, making a ranting Youtube video about it could land me in front of the Human Rights Tribunal, but that becomes a "hate speech" issue and don't get me going on that in a discussion of freedom of expression.

I feel badly for all of the decent people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and anywhere else who are condemned to live with the REAL intolerance and bigotry which kills you if you step out of line. Let's haul in front of a Human Rights Tribunal all of the people who would kill me (or them) for saying what a lot of people think about bullshit religions instead of terrorising people into being Sharia compliant dhimmis. If you don't know what those last two terms mean, do yourself a favour and research them, especially "Dhimmitude", 'cause that's where Obama, Petraeus and General John Allen have already placed us.

The Maple Leaf for Now

First off, all the best to you in the year that Mayans decided to stop making calendars; considering where that civilization is these days I'd say they built more than enough redundancy into them. I can never guarantee we won't have a cataclysm, but I'll put my money (and everything else!) on the fact that I'll still be around this time a year from now.
 

AotF starts the year starts with more local musings on civilization. Canada is 40+ years down the history-abnegating path of Multiculturalism and Political Correctness, and we finally have a government which is trying to reclaim the common past of this country.
 

Political observers of all stripes believe the revival of interest in Canada's colonial history is part of a broader Conservative effort to rekindle patriotism and reshape Canada's culture more in the government's own image.

Tom Flanagan, a former adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper who now teaches at the University of Calgary, said that vision took root many years ago -- and originated at the top.

"Stephen once said to me that a conservative party in any country ought to be party of patriotism," Flanagan said in an email. "He is now creating a conservative version of Canadian patriotism."

Harper's brand of national pride relies heavily on elements common to many right-wing political movements, including unwavering support for the military and a push to lay claim to the country's far-flung northern regions, Flanagan said.

 

The thing that gets the most press of course is the attention to the formalities of our association with the Crown. There seem to be a lot of people who can't tell the difference between a Republic (what the USA started off as) and a Constitutional Monarchy, our form of government. The Queen is our Head of State, not the Prime Minister, and as long as that relationship is maintained protocol must be observed.
 

Where I weigh in on this is the connection it provides Canadians with a common heritage. Quebec, although intimately wound up in Canada’s common colonial past will always be bent out of shape about that fact that a German king took over from their French one. La Belle Provence has never accepted that they were but a Great Power pawn, so getting them on board with the monarchy is not going to happen.
 

Canada was referred to as "two solitudes" but I'd like to think we can reduce that to one: Nationalist Quebecois  who are already a vanishing political force. The rest of us, whatever our extraction, can adopt Canada with an identifiable history. Even if it wasn't your ancestors directly, you should be able to adopt the broad sweep of Canada's history, for example:
 

At Queenston Heights and Lundy's Lane,

Our brave fathers, side by side,

For freedom, homes and loved ones dear,

Firmly stood and nobly died;

And those dear rights which they maintained,

We swear to yield them never!

Our watchword evermore shall be

"The Maple Leaf forever!"
 

The whole of "The Maple Leaf Forever" is dated, sure, but there need to be things that a culture can identify as its' own or it doesn't exist. The latter works for "progressives" for whom everything that might set someone apart from anyone else is bad, but even a democracy requires an identity if people are going to be inspired to work for it.
 

Defending our territory is foremost in the duties of the Federal government, so solidifying our hold on the Arctic should not be at all controversial, merely overdue. Acknowledging the constitutional advantages of having a hereditary Head of State with (very) limited but absolute powers to dissolve government shows the robustness of our Democracy to withstand tyranny and demagoguery.
 

I am not a Monarchist for the sake of the Royal Family (Charles as King, really?) but the Canada that most people can agree that they want to live in would not be secure as a Republic. The separation of taxation power from the hereditary/appointed Crown which has the power to approve and dissolve government provides a simple "check and balance" on the prerogatives of both elements. Supporting that should not only be a "conservative" position.
 

Anyway, I pulled back in to start off the New Year, but I'm sure there will be wide-ranging wackiness for me to comment on before long. As I do occasionally, I'll appeal to any of you who read this to give me some sign with comments or even the quick "tick in the box" impressions I've provided for your convenience. No names, no pack drill, but I am curious to know a bit about who is looking at this.

Pick a Flashpoint, any Flashpoint...

The one prediction I'll make for 2012 is that it probably won't start out boring. Taking the Mediterranean/Middle East/South Asia alone, there is unrest and tension from the Pillars of Hercules to North Korea. Algeria is a barely contained powder keg, Libya is a disaster waiting for extremists to take over, and Islamists are posed to or have taken power in Tunisia and Egypt. That's just North Africa.

Moving into the Med, the Turks are firing into the sea adjacent to Cypriot/Israeli gas developments and one of their sabre waving exercises will likely result in an armed confrontation with Israel unless they back off. That gets interesting, as Turkey is still a NATO country,and Article 5 of the North Atlantic Charter would compel Canada and most of Europe as well as the USA to come to Turkey's aid. In practice I don't see that happening, but the Israelis have too much at stake to let the Turks push them around, so Turkey either backs away or there's a regional war.

NATO's involvement in Afghanistan is winding down, and Pakistan is moving firmly into the "enemy" camp as it destabilizes (further), so lots of potential for mayhem. I skipped Iran, but moving back to them, a lot of people are trying to figure out what game they're trying to play right now. The talk about closing the straits of Hormuz is madness and must be for domestic consumption. Even at that it's messed up, as the Iranians know damned well that even the fading US could hand them their ass in less than a day, leave off what the Gulf Sates and Israel would do to them.

Smashing Iranian military power would not be difficult, and since no-one's even thinking of invading the place I see no upside to them playing tough. Perhaps they got overly bold after bringing in that US drone, in which case some serious questions need to be asked about who is in charge of what in Iran these days. Flaunting (distant) pictures of a US carrier group is not even close to being able to seriously threaten it, so bad decisions abound in Tehran these days.

So, get your money and place your bets. I haven't even mentioned the looming holy war in Nigeria, but think of it as a cross between the Lebanese Civil War with the mess that was/is Iraq, with a population of 160M people. To be more local, any Sierra Leone/Liberia etc. machete-waving necklacing atrocity-fest on a massive scale. Oh yeah, and Sudan is bombing South Sudan already...

Lots to look forward to, and I've only hit the most obvious stuff. Hopefully your New Year doesn't involve any of these places, but in any event, the best of luck.

Tyrant Turnover and year-end review

As the end of 2011 rapidly approaches, I can't say it's been a dull year geopolitically. Barring some (by no means impossible) last-minute additions, the following will serve as a list of things that got my attention for any length of time. In no particular order:

• the Arab Spring. It won't quite be "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss", but I can't say that things are likely to improve as much as was hoped in the first blush of protests. Syria is still a running sore and Egypt and the rest which have forced a change (however incremental) are looking pretty iffy.
• Related, Libya. Gaddafi is no loss to the world, but it's worth noting that he kept the Islamists down and was trying pretty hard (post Iraqi Freedom) to make nice with the west. Indications of Al Quada in the militias should give some pause for thought amidst the rejoicing about Gaddafi's summary execution and illusions of instant functional democracy.
• Israeli oil and gas. This isn't getting a lot of press but is a potential game-changer in the Middle East. Erdrogan in Turkey rattling his Muslim credentials at Israel and the loss of Mubarak (and associated stability) in Egypt weakens two of the underpinnings of Israeli security. Obama and the current American foreign policy regime weakens the biggest one, but not terminally. This gives Israel some breathing room to work with Cyprus to develop their off-shore as well as on-shore oil shale deposits. Turkey is making hostile moves toward the former, so a skirmish is not out of the question.
• The Tsunami in Japan and associated nuclear mess at Fukushima. The loss of life and property was massive, a huge glot of debris is working its' way across the Pacific even as I write this. The repercussions for the already struggling nuclear power industry have been serious, with Germany pledging to get rid of it. Of course they don't say with what it'll be replaced, but it's easy to say things like this to look like you're doing things.
• "Occupy" *.* I'll be interested to see in the spring if this makes any sort of a comeback, but it was formless to begin with and rapidly degenerated. City governments were caught off guard the first time, but once the the camps started to get out out of hand they were rolled up across the continent in pretty quick order. You want change, form political parties with a clear agenda. Otherwise it's perilously close to insurrection and/or anarchy.
• Keystone pipeline. The PM isn't bluffing when he says we'll sell our oil to China if the US doesn't want it, but there's no infrastructure either way so watch and shoot.
• Euro crisis. It strains credulity that the default of Greece can shake the foundations of world (Western) economy, but after the last few years said economy is obviously all a particularly persistent illusion (apologies to the late A. Einstein). the UK might finally cast off the EU out of all of this, but deals are still being done and regulatory empires built, so nothing is really settled.
• Lastly (for now) the changing of the guard in North Korea. Much like Syria right now, I don't imagine that the latest Kim will be calling the shots in the DPRK against whatever vested interests are already there, but North Korea is "too big to fail". The Chinese don't want the humanitarian disaster on their doorstep and the ROK has lost interest in absorbing their northern cousins, so the big question is: Bang or Whimper?

There was a whole lot more, but most of those were big news this year, and more to the point things that I've commented on here. I'm going to be very busy after New Years so this can be considered a "greatest hits" before things go into maintenance mode. I thank all the non-spambots for dropping by (assuming there are some real people) and you never know when I'll be back.

Whatever happens, we have got The Stealthy Drone and they; oh wait....

The Associated Press

Date: Saturday Dec. 10, 2011 11:22 AM ET

WASHINGTON — The loss to Iran of the CIA's surveillance drone bristling with advanced spy technology is more than a propaganda coup and intelligence windfall for the Tehran government. The plane's capture has peeled back another layer of secrecy from expanding U.S. operations against Iran's nuclear and military programs.

...

Iran aired TV footage Thursday of what current and former U.S. officials confirm is the missing Sentinel. The robotic aircraft suffered what appeared to be only minimal damage.

Iran protested Friday to the United Nations about what it described as "provocative and covert operations" by the U.S. The Tehran government called the flight by the drone a "blatant and unprovoked air violation" that was "tantamount to an act of hostility."

Flying any sort of military and/or surveillance aircraft in sovereign airspace is not merely "tantamount" but a de jure hostile act. This means only that I concur that this was a military action against Iran, NOT that I have a problem with the concept. Only the execution in this particular case.

I have read that Obama (Commander in Chief after all) was presented with options to destroy (easiest) or recapture the drone. He did nothing, and the US will suffer for it as its enemies get physical access to their best drone tech. The blog title is my take on this from Hilaire Belloc:

The Modern Traveller

Blood thought he knew the native mind;
He said you must be firm, but kind.
A mutiny resulted.
I shall never forget the way
That Blood stood upon this awful day
Preserved us all from death.
He stood upon a little mound
Cast his lethargic eyes around,
And said beneath his breath:
'Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.'

So the much vaunted F-22 is grounded more often than not due to oxygen problems, the F-35 is vastly over budget and over time, and now this. America is rapidly losing any advantage over potential competitors, and if Iran did in fact hack the drone (unverified but likely considering it didn't crash) the lynchpin of American surveillance and small conflict strategy is seriously compromised.

It has been a concern in some quarters for some time (it's occurred to me also) that the other side can have drones as well, AND anything which is remote controlled can be jammed or hacked. Appearances are at the moment on the side of the Iranian account, so this would be a efficient payback for some of the lethal shenanigans which have been played on Iran of late.

I'd like this more one-sided (to "our" side) but assuming that your enemies are stupid and incompetent is always a bad idea. The proof of that is sitting in "an undisclosed location" in Iran right now, and nothing short of an outright act of war can now prevent all of the highest bidders (China foremost) from getting their mitts on it. Nice going Obama.