Sailing on her must have been gorgeous, but Savannah was basically the last gasp of the pre-jet/pre-container age. She'd make a lovely billionaire's yacht today, but as a commercial proposition she was as dead on arrival as the Bristol Brabazon.
]]>Swapping the shares for gilts isn't great either. They've chosen to go for shares due to the higher return, if you do that they'll simply sell the bonds and buy shares elsewhere.
The state doesn't have a great record at running businesses tending to be about as efficient as the least efficient private businesses.
]]>And we most emphatically do need something to arrange the extinction of capital, the value-add of which has gone wildly and increasingly negative. Note that this is not at all saying market mechanisms are worthless (though they have much more limited worth than many proponents ascribe to them), a call for a centrally planned economy, or a demand for general crippling poverty in preference to a powerful post-industrial economy. It's just an assertion that the consequences of allowing a tiny minority to rig the game to guarantee they win is a very bad thing.
]]>Clear and profound.
There are people who will argue that it's always been that way.
Like, in the Iliad chariot race, Antilochus was the lowest-ranking aristocrat there, but he had the daring and skill to come in second just before king Menelaus even though his horses were of course not as good. They started to give the second-place prize to the guy who came in last rather than give it to him, but he loudly objected. Then Menelaus suggested that he argue the case that he didn't cheat, and Menelaus would be the judge. Antilochus realized his position and gave Menelaus the prize, pointing out that he'd give Menelaus anything else he had too.
The first prize was a skilled woman, not like there was any hint of equality....
So anyway, the argument is that tiny minorities have always rigged the game so they would win, and there's nothing anybody can do about it so we might as well not even try.
My first thought is that these are paid shills who try to discourage actions their masters don't want.
But on second thought I think they may just be fans of aristocracy. Like at a sports game, the fans on the other side might yell "You haven't got a chance, just go home". These guys like the idea that a tiny minority will run things for its own benefit because that idea appeals to them. They want to be slaves.
So they argue that even if you get rid of one master, the next master might likely be worse so why bother.
]]>I apologize.
]]>Thank you!
In terms of always being that way, social organization is a function of communications. Literacy at all gets you god-king autocracies (because tax records), widespread literacy and printing gets you the Reformation/Counter-reformation, non-land-based organizations having legal status gets you industrialization, and here we are with the potential for widespread dynamic-hierarchy problem solving. (Who knows about this? what do they say we need to do?)
The problem with the tiny minority is that they've gone from (in the god-king autocracy) at least defensible (someone has to keep the records and plan, and if you can't afford general literacy or (tougher) leisure...) to actively harmful, because it's very firmly in the interest of the tiny minority to have a fixed hierarchy; the same people are always in charge and always making decisions. This fails, it's not even "doesn't work", it's actively fails, as soon as you're trying to do anything the least bit complex; a huge fraction of business effort gets expending on working around directives from on high that either make no sense at all or are hopeless leadership failures and expect people to diligently and enthusiastically act against their own interests.
The different thing about today is that we have the means to get the whole species connected. This allows immense improvement in the forms of organization; the idea that we need to concentrate resources in a risk-taking -- remember that this is the original justification for permitting the concentration of capital, it would bear risk and benefit society as a whole -- class has become false.
Society hasn't followed this because the tiny minority likes being able to insist that they're inherently important, and the benefits of always winning.
They might even like the two-handled tripod.
]]>Again, profound implications there.
"Literacy at all gets you god-king autocracies (because tax records), widespread literacy and printing gets you the Reformation/Counter-reformation, non-land-based organizations having legal status gets you industrialization,"
I'm not sure about that last, it might be that the beginnings of industrialization were enough to result in legal status. Once they produce a degree of riches, they are like the goose with the golden eggs. If you kill them then you can't tax them. Given time that turns into formal rules.
"and here we are with the potential for widespread dynamic-hierarchy problem solving. (Who knows about this? what do they say we need to do?)"
I don't know much about this. John Ford hinted at it in Growing Up Weightless. CJ Cherryh hinted at it in one of her Alliance/Union novels, maybe Heavy Time. Etc. Usually the assumption is that people on Terra use rigid top-down structures while people somewhere else have a cooperative structure where whoever has the info shares it quickly and leads the decisions. There usually isn't much thought about how it works.
Obviously, we need to find out what works and use it, but whatever-it-is doesn't come naturally to us because it isn't yet embedded in the culture.
"The different thing about today is that we have the means to get the whole species connected. This allows immense improvement in the forms of organization; the idea that we need to concentrate resources in a risk-taking -- remember that this is the original justification for permitting the concentration of capital, it would bear risk and benefit society as a whole -- class has become false."
A quibble, there have been various justifications to concentrate capital, a major one to avoid losing wars. When the costs of losing a war are so high, people will put a lot of effort into preventing it. Back when it took a whole village to support one armored knight, and castles were very conspicuous consumption.... And armies "lived off the land"....
War consumes. One of the big justifications to produce more is to contribute more to the war effort.
So, like, mass production ultimately results in richer societies, but it isn't obvious ahead of time that this helps the rich -- when you mass-produce shoddy stuff for the masses, who can pay for it because you paid them to make it, what do you get? But when you can equip and supply bigger armies, you're less likely to lose wars.
"Society hasn't followed this because the tiny minority likes being able to insist that they're inherently important, and the benefits of always winning."
Things take time. We have repeatedly brushed aside small elites when they became irrelevant. Aristocrats. Monarchs. Slave owners. The Nomenklatura.
But we don't particularly have alternatives in place yet. We're seeing more effective use of data. Walmart sales are around 2.7% of total US personal consumption. I don't know whether Walmart is how the new model will stabilize.
Similarly, the US military Global Information Grid has the goal of using the new methods, but as near as I can tell it's being created using the old methods.
]]>Tax the dog-shit out of them and use that revenue to fund public goods and to "incentivize" growth and development at a percentile that doesn't already own everything. Plus this: I challenge anybody to name me one worthwhile public policy objective that can be met more cost-effectively through tax incentives than through direct public spending. That's another crapstack we've been sold by the "ownership society," whose policy is dictated by its owners. It just flat ain't true, and it creates massive public inefficiencies while providing cover for the run-up to verticality at the top end of the income distribution.
]]>The LK-60s are meant for riverine duty as well as open-ocean work with shallower draughts than classic seagoing icebreakers but up till now the riverine breakers have been mostly conventionally powered since they could always refuel and resupply locally.
There's also the tourist business... It costs about $12,000 to sail to the North Pole on board the largest in-service nuclear icebreaker, Fifty Years of Victory which is outfitted to carry a number of tourists. The successor ships will also be able to carry tourists.
]]>It has happened that way often enough in human history. After a few decades of Stalin's rule, the Tsars didn't seem so bad. Now, a few decades into the post-Soviet era, a majority of Russians claim they like the old system better.
Personally, I think the Iron Law of Oligarchy is probably right. Either there are a few people in charge, or there's nobody in charge, and the second case is even worse than the first.
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