Ming the Mechanic
The NewsLog of Flemming Funch

Wednesday, April 23, 2003day link 

 Augmented Capitalism
picture From HeadMap:
money was predicated on spatial constraints

the range of currencies is infinite and the money is intermediary between them

hats are currency, butter is currency,

they get filtered through money (so that ..hats can buy butter at another place and time)

the friction that transportation and distribution and communication among those who would exchange created the right climate for money


the internet is doing some disturbing things

it is creating currencies and ecoonomies with no money intermediary

link economies, peer two peer file sharing economies and software development and exchange economies


this seems to suggest that in the absence of friction money makes less and less sense

in fact in the current climate many things are starting to make less and less sense

and these network economic anomalies will soon slip into the real world

destroying huge industries based on friction difficulty seperateness and centralisation


as exchange without money becomes more efficient and reliable

money won't disappear but will have to start living in parallel with vibrant, aggressive efficient parallel economic forces


the moves towards hardware level copyright controls and crippling copyright legislation

seem more and more like attempts to artificially introduce friction into a system that by its nature is able to remove it entirely

there seems to be the fear that money itself may be on the verge of collapse and that only a radical lockdown can save a civilisation with money at its heart

capitalism is being augmented at a frightening speed

[ | 2003-04-23 23:13 | 4 comments | PermaLink ]  More >

 If a tree falls in the forest, and noone's there ...
picture BlogBaby has a nice overview of the Bush administrations war against public forests in the U.S. Such as the article that this is from:
Washington- Environmental activists and community groups from more than twenty cities around the nation held demonstrations, marches, sit-ins and rallies to protest the Bush administration's attempts to weaken environmental laws protecting public land, including endangered forests. These Earth Day protests come just one week before the U.S. House will consider legislation containing parts of President Bush's controversial, "Healthy Forest Initiative." The cities included Atlanta, New York, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.

"The Bush administration assumes Americans are too distracted by global politics to care about our national forests here at home," said Andrew George, Campaign Coordinator for the National Forest Protection Alliance, a coalition of 130 forest protection groups, including Greenpeace. "This national day of protest serves to demonstrate how much the public cares about national forests and signals the beginning of an escalating campaign to expose, confront and prevent attempts to undermine our environmental laws and the forests those laws safeguard."

In 2001, the Bush administration handpicked former logging lobbyist Mark Rey to serve as the Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment, and oversee the management of 192 million acres of national forest lands. A industry lobbyist for 18 years, Rey has since initiated a series of unprecedented rollbacks to the nation's environmental laws that protect clean water and wildlife habitat and guarantee public oversight and participation.
That's a great idea. Put a professional logging lobbyist in charge of the environment, and give all the forests to the logging industry. Keeps the wheels churning. Who needs forests anyway.
[ | 2003-04-23 23:23 | 0 comments | PermaLink ]

Main Page: ming.tv