Idiots allowed to vote.

[Day]

Granted, the rich and powerful have always been with us - but although I agree that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, I'd also argue that the past is a very bad guide to what we can expect in the future. Especially in our current situation of globalised finance and very rapid, equally globalised change - to say nothing of other factors such as population size, resource depletion, and the destructive capabilities of military technologies.

All of which is to say, essentially, that I don't know what's going to happen, but that I think there are no guarantees or even reliable indicators of where we're heading. Collectively, we need to keep our wits about us, and take nothing for granted.

I guess that the current main evolution force is shared investment, as it unites lots of stakeholders to accomplish projects.
Free software is a perfect example, having produced the biggest project in history: Linux.
We find it in lots of current disruptive projects: airbnb, uber, wikipedia, google search (you have to take into account the work made by webmasters and referencers), etc...

[Wildeblood]

I just saw this on the TV news seconds ago, I hope they'll put it on Youtube tomorrow, because you won't believe me if you don't see it for yourselves... Land developers who needed to widen a road, to add a turning lane approaching an intersection, couldn't be bothered waiting for Western Power to move the electricity pole adjacent to the road so they just built the new lane around the pole. Obviously, cars can't actually drive in the new lane because, "Look out, pole!" Those idiots vote! Democracy makes me sad.

[cim]

I think the historical "evolution" idea is a fallacy, myself: there is no direction to history.

I said "evolution" rather than "progress". Lots of incremental changes, all probably seeming useful at the time to the preservation of the overall system, adding up to a significant change in the long-term (and the potential to end up in a dead-end leading to extinction)

We find it in lots of current disruptive projects: airbnb, uber, wikipedia, google search (you have to take into account the work made by webmasters and referencers), etc...

I don't know if I'd count those four as examples of the same sort of thing.

Google search I wouldn't consider "disruptive" at all - it's basically just the same search engines that the web had for a good decade before, except that when it first came along it had much more relevant results and was able to use that to get a dominant market position - run by a fairly traditional tech company. (I don't think it's useful to include the sites it links to as part of that "shared investment", as there's no particular shared goal for "all websites" collectively)

Wikipedia is a good example of shared investment and collaboration, and something which was probably inevitable to happen if not when it did then soon. It also I think gives a good example - in terms of its social dynamics, in terms of what articles get effort put into them, and so on - of just how unrepresentative "people who are willing and able to work on that sort of thing for free" are of the general population [1,2], and how difficult it is to manage shared investment and collaboration towards productive effort rather than shouting at each other when the overall goal is very vague.

The other two are transparent ways to cheat (possibly legally; there are too many court cases in progress and pending in too many jurisdictions to be sure one way or another on that) around various licensing and workers' rights laws to run a conventional-ish company without things such as fair salaries, equipment expenses, insurance costs, regulatory compliance and so on cutting into profits. That seems to be the Silicon Valley definition of "disruptive", but it seems to be just more of the same to me.

[1] The same is true of most of the famous open source projects - and Wikipedia has potentially an easier task than most since the technical barrier to entry is at least relatively low. Some of them are trying to improve on their past record, at least.
[2] Though Wikipedia differs from a lot of open source projects in that most of the big open source software projects welcome significant contributions from (and/or are controlled by) corporate entities with paid workers, whereas Wikipedia has extremely few paid staff and is extremely distrustful of other people paying editors to work on it.

[Day]

Google search I wouldn't consider "disruptive" at all - it's basically just the same search engines that the web had for a good decade before, except that when it first came along it had much more relevant results and was able to use that to get a dominant market position - run by a fairly traditional tech company. (I don't think it's useful to include the sites it links to as part of that "shared investment", as there's no particular shared goal for "all websites" collectively)

I beg to differ.
Google search is the fundation of other google services, first of all Adsense (ads on google and on world websites) which is displacing all other ads-funded industries.
Adsense is disruptive: 1) "customers pay depending on the number of ads clicked, and not the number of ads viewed", 2) "with the bids system, the prices are fixed through a real market concurrency", 3) "Ads may be everywhere in the world, and primarily on THE internet remote control used by everyone", 4) "the quality of the targeting system for these ads is the best in the advertisement industry". 3 insures the world best coverage, 4 insures the best quality in clickers, 1 insures real interest of the target, and 2 insures the lowest price achievable in the industry (note that this method of price fixing doesn't take into account the cost of publishing the ads; it's only based on what people are willing to pay).
This means that to propose a better deal, you have to propose the same pricing method, with a better coverage (totally impossible), or a better customer targeting quality (currently impossible, Google is the best for this with Google search, and they are working on every current research on data veracity).
Digression: android is essential to their strategy as it brings them true data, which is necessary to have the best ads. The Internet of things too.
So... Adsense is where they earn money, and other ads industries are feeling the pain. (TV channels in France, at least, papers, etc.)

Now, about the "shared investment" part. Google brings value to its users, be it through ads or relevant search results. This value is clearly greater than the one proposed by the market before, as they reached very quickly an almost total domination of the market in these two sectors, are continuing to expand, and are not even tickled by their concurrents.
From where does come the invested value in the technical tool providing this value to users ?
1)(no sense of order) From the r&d made by Google (algorithms, etc), 2) from the material infrastructure provided by google (lots of servers smartly spread over the world), 3) from the "free" technology they integrated (like linux), which is really shared investment itself, 4) from the data they gathered from their users.
This part is essential, and is shared property rights, ie shared investment.

Wikipedia [...] gives a good example - in terms of its social dynamics, in terms of what articles get effort put into them, and so on - of just how unrepresentative "people who are willing and able to work on that sort of thing for free" are of the general population [1,2], and how difficult it is to manage shared investment and collaboration towards productive effort rather than shouting at each other when the overall goal is very vague.

Well yes, this explains why shared investment companies like google exist with not-shared shareholders.

The other two are transparent ways to cheat (possibly legally; there are too many court cases in progress and pending in too many jurisdictions to be sure one way or another on that) around various licensing and workers' rights laws to run a conventional-ish company without things such as fair salaries, equipment expenses, insurance costs, regulatory compliance and so on cutting into profits. That seems to be the Silicon Valley definition of "disruptive", but it seems to be just more of the same to me.

I beg to differ here too
For a car or flat owner, the Total Cost of Ownership might be strongly lowered if they're renting their goods when not using them. Airbnb and Uber allow that.
For a Airbnb or Uber user, this is a way to improve the concurrency, lowering the price, maybe avoiding to own a car or a flat, so lowering drastically his own TCO.
From an infrastructure point of view, if the prices are significantly displaced, then some new business will appear on top of this "new" infrastructure, this is good for society.
So, this is disruptive and good for the society.
Now, about regulatory requirements, these were put into place to protect customers and providers in a "hotel/taxi" way of doing things. We must now find ways to protect customers and providers in a digital context (maybe with digital solutions!). Concerning fair salaries and costs, well... In USA and generally in capitalist societies, the idea is that you have to find goods or services that other want to buy at a price to sell it to them; nobody said anybody had to buy from you. So, "fair salaries" were mostly put in place to protect employees from bosses in position of power, the thing often overseen is the salary is a negociation internal to the company, not external as in the price paid by the customer to the company.
To summary, improving the productivity and lowering the TCO of goods all over the country(ies) is very good for the society (if not always the economy).

[cim]

3) from the "free" technology they integrated (like linux), which is really shared investment itself, 4) from the data they gathered from their users.
This part is essential, and is shared property rights, ie shared investment.

I'm still not sure it's "shared investment" in any sense I'd understand those words.

On 3, Linux is shared investment, but using Linux doesn't automatically make what one does shared investment (as it happens, Google does contribute code back to several open source projects - but it's not part of their core business, and they certainly don't contribute any of the key code used in their core business back to the public!)

On 4, users pay Google for its services in personal data rather than in cash, but it's not to me shared investment any more than my local bakery is shared investment because I provide them with money, they provide me with baked goods, and we both get something we want. Google are making effective use of free and/or undervalued resources - in combination with their own private R&D work - to make themselves lots of money.

From an infrastructure point of view, if the prices are significantly displaced, then some new business will appear on top of this "new" infrastructure, this is good for society.

This doesn't automatically follow.

A very easy way to cut the costs you pay to provide a service is to make someone else pay the costs. So, e.g. a nuclear power plant could provide much cheaper electricity - outcompeting pretty much all other providers regardless of production method - by throwing the nuclear waste in the nearest river rather than spending millions on secure storage and containment facilities. The extra opportunities to society provided by cheap energy would not make this a net positive, though it would certainly be "disruptive". Society therefore deems this not an acceptable way of cutting costs and requires that nuclear waste be disposed of properly, even if the energy company does have a website.

I'd argue that this is exactly what Uber is doing: by avoiding paying basically any costs of providing a taxi service itself other than a bit of advertising and web expense, it can provide a much cheaper service at a much greater profit. But all those costs still exist: cars need to be bought and maintained, and so on. Rather than those costs being paid by the business they're instead largely paid by the drivers - who therefore take on basically all of the risk.

If you run a conventional taxi company, your cars may break down, your drivers may become ill, and so on. You therefore need insurance, a slight staff surplus, and so on. If you run Uber, and a driver's car breaks down, or the driver becomes ill, you can effectively fire them for free (since you never employed them in the first place) and replace them with a new driver with a working car at basically no cost.

It also gives further advantages to the business: in a conventional taxi business, you need to set your travel prices (assuming it's not a regulated journey with a set price) such that the price exceeds the marginal cost of providing the service. Uber doesn't actually need to do that: it can set the price below the marginal cost of providing the service, because it doesn't pay the costs ... and if the driver realises that the additional maintenance, fuel, opportunity, etc. costs are actually more than they're getting from passengers, well, there'll be another sucker along who hasn't done those calculations.

(Similarly liability for accidents, violent drivers/passengers, illegally-unmaintained cars, traffic rule violations, etc.)

Basically it's outsourcing of costs and risk premiums away from the company. That does allow an increase in profits and/or a reduction in prices - but it's not a positive thing for society as a whole. It's certainly not shared investment: the risks are shared, but the benefits are largely not shared.

[Cody]

I know a fair few local cabbies (I worked radio control for a while), and you can imagine their opinions of Uber - unrepeatable!

[Disembodied]

Basically it's outsourcing of costs and risk premiums away from the company. That does allow an increase in profits and/or a reduction in prices - but it's not a positive thing for society as a whole. It's certainly not shared investment: the risks are shared, but the benefits are largely not shared.

Yup. The really "disruptive" bit of technology in the taxi sector is probably the existence of satellite navigation, replacing years of carefully developed knowledge and specialised skill with a small plastic box. This sort of disruption has been going on since at least the development of the power-loom, and now it's creeping in to the knowledge-based industries.

Expect more disruption in some previously highly paid sectors soon: things like e.g. conveyancing and making a will - the bread and butter stuff for solicitors - could probably be replaced by expert systems (or a series of point-and-click menus, for that matter) without much trouble. Of course, the legal industry, with its wealth and political connections, may prove more resistant to this sort of disruption than the cottage weaving industry did, or the taxi-driving industry is.

There's a long, but very interesting, article from the London Review of Books called "The Robots Are Coming". Much of what it says will not be news to many people here, but it's still interesting to see some of these things (like Moore's Law) put into context, e.g.:

In 1996, in response to the 1992 Russo-American moratorium on nuclear testing, the US government started a programme called the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative. The suspension of testing had created a need to be able to run complex computer simulations of how old weapons were ageing, for safety reasons, and also - it’s a dangerous world out there! - to design new weapons without breaching the terms of the moratorium. To do that, ASCI needed more computing power than could be delivered by any existing machine. Its response was to commission a computer called ASCI Red, designed to be the first supercomputer to process more than one teraflop. A ‘flop’ is a floating point operation, i.e. a calculation involving numbers which include decimal points (these are computationally much more demanding than calculations involving binary ones and zeros). A teraflop is a trillion such calculations per second. Once Red was up and running at full speed, by 1997, it really was a specimen. Its power was such that it could process 1.8 teraflops. That’s 18 followed by 11 zeros. Red continued to be the most powerful supercomputer in the world until about the end of 2000.

I was playing on Red only yesterday - I wasn’t really, but I did have a go on a machine that can process 1.8 teraflops. This Red equivalent is called the PS3: it was launched by Sony in 2005 and went on sale in 2006. Red was only a little smaller than a tennis court, used as much electricity as eight hundred houses, and cost $55 million. The PS3 fits underneath a television, runs off a normal power socket, and you can buy one for under two hundred quid. Within a decade, a computer able to process 1.8 teraflops went from being something that could only be made by the world’s richest government for purposes at the furthest reaches of computational possibility, to something a teenager could reasonably expect to find under the Christmas tree.

[Day]

3) from the "free" technology they integrated (like linux), which is really shared investment itself, 4) from the data they gathered from their users.
This part is essential, and is shared property rights, ie shared investment.

I'm still not sure it's "shared investment" in any sense I'd understand those words.

On 3, Linux is shared investment, but using Linux doesn't automatically make what one does shared investment (as it happens, Google does contribute code back to several open source projects - but it's not part of their core business, and they certainly don't contribute any of the key code used in their core business back to the public!)

I'm ok with that. I didn't want to imply otherwise.

On 4, users pay Google for its services in personal data rather than in cash, but it's not to me shared investment any more than my local bakery is shared investment because I provide them with money, they provide me with baked goods, and we both get something we want.

Hmm, nope. I think there are several common misconceptions here.
First, users don't pay Google for its services in personal data. This would imply there is a contract between customer and provider. Users use Google for its services in exchange for unlimited rights of use on their personal data. Ownership being defined by abusus/usus/fructus (sorry latin definition is used in french law), otherwise said ability to sell/ability to use/ability to rent. Google in fact becomes part-owner (on the use/rent part) of its users' data. The contract between Google and its users isn't a provider-customer contract ; it doesn't imply any obligation on Google side, except make available its services, without quality obligation. On this point, it's easy to see they don't guarantee any availability/integrity/confidentiality numbers. It's on a "we do our best and you don't get to say anything" basis. This contract is merely a contract of transfer of ownership on the user's data.
That it is acceptable, or even desirable, by the user doesn't make it a service contract.
So, users don't pay, and Google doesn't provide a service (in a contractual meaning).

Back to the shared investment part. Where do appear the rights to users' data? In Google's balance sheet, of course!
These are immaterial goods, with a value, necessary to make Google business model viable.
Are these in the investment part? No, as it wasn't value burnt to obtain another value.
This an accurate statement of Google reality, but not an accurate statement of society reality, in the same way as externalities are costs not appearing on one balance sheet, but supported by the society (by design, common choice, or oversight).

Now, from a society point of view, if users had personal balance sheets, those would include their investments in companies, and even not-so-formalized associations. The fact that those investments aren't correctly put on a sheet of paper doesn't make them less investments.
From the user point of view, he has invested some rights on his personal data to get access to Google services (still excluding a contractual service meaning).
Back to the society point of view, LOTS of users have invested their personal data to get access to these services, and it's these personal data which bring the quality of veracity enjoyed in these services, to the point that these services are now used as a common infrastructure allowing new business models, new companies, new services, etc.
Value burnt and shared by users to bring new value to all users: from the society point of view, this is shared investment.

From an infrastructure point of view, if the prices are significantly displaced, then some new business will appear on top of this "new" infrastructure, this is good for society.

This doesn't automatically follow.

A very easy way to cut the costs you pay to provide a service is to make someone else pay the costs. So, e.g. a nuclear power plant could provide much cheaper electricity - outcompeting pretty much all other providers regardless of production method - by throwing the nuclear waste in the nearest river rather than spending millions on secure storage and containment facilities. The extra opportunities to society provided by cheap energy would not make this a net positive, though it would certainly be "disruptive". Society therefore deems this not an acceptable way of cutting costs and requires that nuclear waste be disposed of properly, even if the energy company does have a website.

I'd argue that this is exactly what Uber is doing: by avoiding paying basically any costs of providing a taxi service itself other than a bit of advertising and web expense, it can provide a much cheaper service at a much greater profit. But all those costs still exist: cars need to be bought and maintained, and so on. Rather than those costs being paid by the business they're instead largely paid by the drivers - who therefore take on basically all of the risk.

If you run a conventional taxi company, your cars may break down, your drivers may become ill, and so on. You therefore need insurance, a slight staff surplus, and so on. If you run Uber, and a driver's car breaks down, or the driver becomes ill, you can effectively fire them for free (since you never employed them in the first place) and replace them with a new driver with a working car at basically no cost.

It also gives further advantages to the business: in a conventional taxi business, you need to set your travel prices (assuming it's not a regulated journey with a set price) such that the price exceeds the marginal cost of providing the service. Uber doesn't actually need to do that: it can set the price below the marginal cost of providing the service, because it doesn't pay the costs ... and if the driver realises that the additional maintenance, fuel, opportunity, etc. costs are actually more than they're getting from passengers, well, there'll be another sucker along who hasn't done those calculations.

(Similarly liability for accidents, violent drivers/passengers, illegally-unmaintained cars, traffic rule violations, etc.)

Basically it's outsourcing of costs and risk premiums away from the company. That does allow an increase in profits and/or a reduction in prices - but it's not a positive thing for society as a whole. It's certainly not shared investment: the risks are shared, but the benefits are largely not shared.

I totally agree.

Nethertheless, let's say that we are comparing an ideal ImprovedUber against taxis, not the current "better say sorry than ask" Uber. This ImprovedUber would respect every rational law and take responsibility for the risks (maybe using insurances). It would still use peoples' cars and work through an app.
I really think the total cost of ownership for using a car would be tremendously lowered. I got no numbers, though.
And it would be a shared investment from the point of view of society, using the same logic as for Google.

I know a fair few local cabbies (I worked radio control for a while), and you can imagine their opinions of Uber - unrepeatable!

Yup! In Paris, we had fights and mobs the last two weeks.

[Paladin Tux]

I'm fourteen (since a few days ago)! I could grow up wanting to be an accountant, but then I realised that now supercomputers have taken my job! If it gets extreame enough that Tony A Butt is replaced by a robot too...

I feel that with abit of luck, my generation maybe able to hold on. If our whole generation grows up to a world like that then I wouldn't survive very long. I wouldn't find a job and probably become homeless. Why make all this stuff if we're all too poor to use it?

That is why democracy must be fixed. While my old schoolmate (Jake Billardi) is trying to do it the violent way, we need smart people to rule us! We'll never become a great race at this rate! We'll die to our own stupid invention.
Money.

I just realised, I could be using Jake Billardi's locker...:O

[Diziet Sma]

I'm fourteen (since a few days ago)!

Time to update your sig, then..



Well.. quite a fascinating and interesting discussion you guys have been having here..

In response to all of which, I can only shake my head and say "and people wonder why I'm an anarchist...."

[Paladin Tux]

I'm fourteen (since a few days ago)!

Time to update your sig, then..



Well.. quite a fascinating and interesting discussion you guys have been having here..

In response to all of which, I can only shake my head and say "and people wonder why I'm an anarchist...."

Yeah. I guess I do.

But then even the worse forms of anarcy turn into some kind of governement, eventually.

[cim]

Nethertheless, let's say that we are comparing an ideal ImprovedUber against taxis, not the current "better say sorry than ask" Uber. This ImprovedUber would respect every rational law and take responsibility for the risks (maybe using insurances). It would still use peoples' cars and work through an app.
I really think the total cost of ownership for using a car would be tremendously lowered. I got no numbers, though.

Various things exist already for that sort of requirement but because they don't cheat, don't give huge profits to a Silicon Valley CEO, and aren't remotely new, they don't make the news very much - worker-owned taxi cooperatives, car-sharing schemes, car rental firms, public transport (both tax-subsidised and commercially profitable forms), etc. - all of which can allow people to get from A to B without personally paying the full TCO of a car. (And of course they all require some very old shared infrastructure - roads - which haven't been newsworthy in themselves since Roman times)

One which didn't cheat would I think not be particularly different in cost efficiency to a normal taxi firm, and for that reason I think probably wouldn't work very well for TCO reduction.

If you're giving people lifts for money through the app as a part- or full-time job to subsidise your car costs, then you're doing the conventional thing of exchanging time for money, and taxi-driving is not a highly-paid profession. For people with no particular desire to be a taxi driver, funding their car through an alternative time/money exchange not directly related to cars is probably more efficient.

If you're being more tactical about it and only accepting contracts going roughly in a direction you were going anyway, so that you get the full profit for relatively little increase in time spent, then what you've got is basically a car-sharing scheme: useful, but probably only marginal in TCO benefits in most cases. There's several of these out there, mostly pre-dating things like Uber. I expect they're useful to their membership - some of them have been running on the internet for close to twenty years, so they must be doing something right - but they're hardly revolutionising the cost of owning a car.

[Diziet Sma]

But then even the worse forms of anarcy turn into some kind of governement, eventually.

Why assume the worst? The best are far more interesting.

Incidentally, some of the best kinds of anarchy stayed that way for hundreds of thousands of years.. until a kind of mental illness took hold of some people, back around the time of the First Agricultural Revolution.

[Day]

Various things exist already for that sort of requirement but because they don't cheat, don't give huge profits to a Silicon Valley CEO, and aren't remotely new, they don't make the news very much - worker-owned taxi cooperatives, car-sharing schemes, car rental firms, public transport (both tax-subsidised and commercially profitable forms), etc. - all of which can allow people to get from A to B without personally paying the full TCO of a car. (And of course they all require some very old shared infrastructure - roads - which haven't been newsworthy in themselves since Roman times)

One which didn't cheat would I think not be particularly different in cost efficiency to a normal taxi firm, and for that reason I think probably wouldn't work very well for TCO reduction.

I'm not that sure. For me, a proposition, like that of ImprovedUber, which would allow anybody to enter the market as driver with less hassle than all those propose, and anybody to enter the market with less hassle than all those propose, and at the same time is working everywhere in the world, would work well for TCO reduction.
It could be linked with a car rental service, where people could rent their car to a worker finding customers through that ImprovedUber.
Hmm, I guess that in market terms, the searched goal is to improve liquidity
The idea, finally, is to be able to use all those stopped cars, to minimize the amount of locked up capital.
To summary, more drivers would earn money, maybe less than currently taxis earn; the cost of being driven would be lowered, allowing more businesses built on that; the cost of using a car would generally be lowered.

Now, after Uber will come auto-driven cars, and then the taxi job will evolve a lot. I'm waiting for the auto-driven buses which runs will be updated daily through algorithms depending on demand and reservations...

[SteveKing]

Incidentally, some of the best kinds of anarchy stayed that way for hundreds of thousands of years.. until a kind of mental illness took hold of some people, back around the time of the First Agricultural Revolution.

Are these the kind of anarchical societies that basically revolve around survival (and of the fittest) - a lions pride, a zebra herd, a baboon troupe or nomadic tribe of hunter gatherers? Over the longer term these are (have been) very successful in that the group flourishes to the point where it is big enough to split, like a simple organism, and starts the process again in two geographical locations.

The difficulties with this sort of society is that they are inherently inefficient in some ways - not maximising the potential of the local resources and having to leave the (renewable) resources idle for a period of time to allow them to recover. With these inefficiencies, there is a size/sustainability limit to the group with respect to the local environment and unit type of the group. The size for division is probably determined these days by some sort of fancy sociologist algorithm and (I would think) measurably stable (if not entirely accurate).

This division in itself is limiting, because there are (ultimately) finite resources and at each split means the groups have to travel further to find resources for sustainability. Ultimately the farther flung groups have to adapt to changing geographic and/or environmental conditions. They either else die out or be faced with returning to a favourable environment and have to compete for the finite resources. Struggles ensue and the cycle of survival of the fittest continues.

Even at this level though, there must be some sort of social cohesion (societal structure) for the group to survive, so I wonder how anarchical a society can be? At one end there will be the 'strongest' as a leader, and the group succeeds or fails based on the decisions of the one (Dictatorship - herd mentality or Feudal Heirarchy - insect colony). At the other end, a collective of ideas voted upon equally and the group's survival is based on the implementation of popular ideas (ideal Democracy or Communism - flock mentality). Or, more likely, somewhere between the two which allows for charismatic or intelligent members to have a greater weighting in decision making that the others basically accept (modern Democracic Socialism, probably the general structure of group survival, certainly for human groups).

Although this is a simplified list, it probably covers most group organisation based on survival. I would say that Anarchy is more individual based - the decisions of the one only affects the one.

So, to keep it 'on-topic' Any average society will have a full distribution of individual types - from intelligent and/or fit to weak and/or dumb, with the distribution skewed toward the 'lower end' because that is how society is structurally defined - hence and ultimately 'Idiots are allowed to vote'.

'Oh how hard it is to soar with eagles when we are continually surrounded by turkeys' (quoted, I presume, by anon)