CB, I think these cyberspace discussons and data are the true productivity gains of the internet. There is allegedly a debunking of Alan Green$pan's technology bonus coming out. Well, the bonus is vast and real but not necessarily appearing in corporate financial accounts. The dominant activity of humans is thinking and communicating. Which is what we can do now, as you say, without the official mass media filters and government restrictions.
I'm not sure that the authorities are actually listening any better than ever before. My experience of authorities is that they don't have hearing. They get power because they like it and seek it for its own sake and their ego. Reagan and Clinton both had defective hearing and they were powerfully ensconced as Presidents for a couple of terms each and would have continued if allowed by law. My experience of authorities is to either defeat them in head-on confrontation or watchfully pre-empt any moves they might make. I have had great success with both strategies.
< With all this information at our fingertips, can we think of a way to avoid a global financial collapse? Something more creative than "buy another SUV"? What would it take?>
I think the best we can do is as we are doing now, voting with our feet [or, more accurately, our wallets] based on the vast plethora of information now pixelated via cyberspace right before our pixilated brains. By acting, speculating and moving, we can actually avoid the fnancial collapse. Short sellers were working valiantly at the peaks to stop the mania. They have been covering lately, reducing their short positions, smoothing the decline to a gentle slope. At the bottom, successful speculators will prevent excessive declines.
This might be the first really big demonstration of internet power. The true power of the people. Not acting through an electoral college which hands power to a guy with a lust for young ladies servicing him while he talks on the phone, but acting directly, on as much information as we care to consume, voting with feet and money and political votes. Alan Green$pan can fiddle with the money supply and interest rates, but it's the multitude who do the serious business of allocating capital. The successful increase their voting power by accumulating capital. Those who get it wrong are cleaned out and go back to the coalface to earn some more on an hourly rate.
It's a self-balancing, truth-finding system based on cyberspace and 3D information. There are millions of eyes around the world, reporting in on everything from cellphone sales, power shortages, to weather, traffic jams and anything we care to imagine. There are millions of people thinking, ranting, arguing and changing their minds based on the tsunami of ideas and data surging in cyberspace.
I don't know what I would say if I DID have the authorities listening attentively to me. Well, I suppose I do. I would say let the markets loose. Do NOT put restrictions on people. Take restrictions off people. Cancel all sorts of victimless crimes. Reduce welfare payments. Cut a LOT of government spending. Cut taxes.
I suspect that governments will act in the opposite way. When the going gets tough, the government gets going and all they can do is make things worse. For example, in the power crises in California and now New Zealand, the governments make things much worse with their interventions [and in fact caused the problems in the first place].
But I agree with you, cyberspace is great!
Mqurice |
