A Spontaneous Order Creation Story

What am I? This being contemplating about the origins of all things, what is it? Is consciousness and free will a useful illusion to keep the molecular storm - the body, the genes, the replicators - and its intricate pattern, constantly dancing together for a few more billion years? That's my best guess.

What we are, these self-aware, curious, globules of organic matter, is the result heretofore of a molecular storm that started perhaps 3.5-5 billion year ago (the verdict is still out on the date). In the primordial earth, some mix of molecules and energy surged to create an auto-catalytic storm system, an out of control disequilibrium. It kept on feeding on input from the environment, and dumping wastes. It started on a journey that would not be interrupted for billions of years to this present day, to the point that these now very stable and complex disequilibrium molecular storm systems have given rise to consciousness, Godel, Bach, Escher, Einstein, the internet, and their associated extended phenotypes. And you are the ethereal pattern being produced by a several billion year old molecular storm, holding you in disequilibrium. Equilibrium is death.

I would like to take you on a journey through one plausible scientific version of the history of creation. Stitched together to form a coherent abstract overview of the history of time, told in the first person.

Stay tuned for Part 1.

There and Back Again: a tale of government intereference in the growth of transportation infrastructure.

Reflections from driving 500 miles today from NYC to Cleveland:

Look at what has become of our nation. A brief overview of the evolution of transportation in this nation reveals a fundamentally government-driven economic reorganization that has lead to a culture of car dependence in the United States. We started out in a very strong tradition of liassez-faire capitalism, unlike the world has ever seen before or since. Evolved from colonies that had minimal government interference from the beginning. The government controlled less than 5% of national income until the Civil War. Land incentives were given as among the first direct industry subsidies to create the very greatest, awe inspiring, railway network around the whole nation, threading it together into one defensible whole.

Next you had these oil barons, and various industry tycoons, get together in a business venture to buy out mass transit systems, and provide their own fleet of oil-powered, firestone equipped, GM produced buses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal
Their little stunt was thwarted by the Sherman anti-trust act. Though those actions were an alleged attempt to corner the cities' commuting routes on behave of the oil and automotive industries, it was not a direct move toward car culture, it was merely a gas and bus mass transit alternative to light rail.

With so much cheap oil, and such advancements in car production, they became the heaviest and largest industries. Entire cities, like Detroit and Anchorage, were spontaneous ordered into magnificent industry shanty towns. Just when it started tapering off during the great depression, they were suddenly being subsidized again by massive demand for oil and automobiles for military use. What was World War 1, but not an orgy of heavy industries' over production in a meat grinder, that had to destroy in order to continue growing? I would not be surprised if there were oil and car manufacturers, not to mention weapons industry, that had some influence over FDR. But the end result is the same, major subsidy and artificial market creation.

Finally, but 10 years after the last time industry was sucking at nipples of government for some fluids from the tax payers, President Dwight D. Eisenhower initiates the step that propels us into whole new zeitgeist of car culture. By signing 1956's Interstate Highway Act, construction of the biggest and most ambitious road network the world has ever seen had begun. Today, there is nearly half a trillion dollars directly tied up with automobiles in our country. Our economy runs on it. Subsidizing automakers and roads has caused a massive distortion in the evolution of our transportation infrastructure, not to mention violating fairness principles by favoring one industry over another. There has long been friction between the rail/steel and the oil/automobile alliances; always competing to see who gets a bigger share of the transit market. From my analysis, the rail roads were the clear winners for nearly a century, while oil industry mostly grew on kerosene. Automobile makers were in favor of using ethanol as a very clean and plentiful fuel -- however they were convinced to partner up with the oil companies because they had so many stockpiles of gasoline that they were just pouring into rivers like the Hudson. Car prices were dropping so fast, they started to compete against rail again, but during wars, they got a huge boost from the government. Eisenhower then subsidized cars in a totally new and unique way. It would be the equivalent of it building a huge rail network across the whole nation. But clearly the rail system was incredibly efficient, very profitable, and barons were treated like aristocrats (hence the title of baron). That privately constructed transnational rail system is clear vindication that the market is able to very effectively self organize to meet the needs of public transportation. But Eisenhower saw a new vision of tanks rolling down highways, or using them as air strips. And either by misguided national defense motives, influence of industry tycoons, or sincere love of cars, he bankrupted the entire national railway system by injecting a 425 billion dollar investment into car infrastructure in today's money.


As a result, industry reorganized. Parking lots began appearing everywhere. Sidewalks were disappearing, some cities were no longer walkable. Strip malls, fast food, drive throughs, big box stores, spawl. So what's the final verdict? Right behind the US government in size, the largest corporations are:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2009/

And the winners are: Oil, Automobiles, and Walmart. Imagine what it would look like if there was twice as much capital in the hands of the market (assuming the government consumed a pre-level civil war share of the income), with rails competing naturally with automobiles? In the turn of the century, without the subsidy, automobile corporations, like the rail industry, would have to build and maintained their own roads. They would have to come up with $425 billion to invest into infrastructure for their product. Meanwhile, trains were growing faster because they controlled more market share. Bottom line is, I think our national transportation system would be immeasurably more diverse, robust, and innovative were it not for government interference. Instead of a car culture, we would have a healthy mix of efficient transportation systems complimenting each other. If the rails could be so successful under third world standards, as America was at that time, imagine what could have been done in the 20th century, and what yet could be done in the 21st.

And of course we're much worse off. The negative externalities from car obsession of dead and disabled, property damage, pollution, loss of productivity due to traffic, waste, suburban sprawl, are not justified by the benefits; freedom of travel, flexibility, convenience, privacy. It is hard to argue that cars have enabled more people greater freedom, and cheaper housing- because it is difficult, if impossible, to adjust for the opportunity costs of car ownership (living father away from resources, losing time in traffic/parking, costs of car maintenance/gas/tolls, attaining driving skills and vehicle registration/inspection, increase safety risk, productive time lost during driving) - especially since there are various subsidies which make it more feasible, such as suburban/rural electrification and utility subsidy, making it cheaper to live farther, oil subsidies, road and infrastructure subsidies, eminent domain for mall and parking lot construction, automaker subsidies, and recently programs like "cash for clunkers". Ultimately, if negative externalities are internalized into liabilities against the manufacturers and roads are not maintained by the state, cars might not have the insane economic advantage over rail.

So in summary, the fed takes 1/2 a trillion productive capital out of the economy and creates a whole new inefficient transportation network, and in the process destroys the efficient old system.

Intellectual Anarchy

One thing that has never made much sense to me is how we draw property lines around ethereal things like ideas, to create the nonsensical and destructive policy of granting "intellectual property". It is rather improper to call ideas property in the first place, or to say that the "theft" of such is possible, due to the non-rivalrous nature of such "property". That is to say that "stealing" someone's idea does not deprive the original owner/creator of the idea of their right to use that property as they wish; therefore its not stealing -- it's learning, and it is the basis of evolution and growth in our society. Patents on design, method or concept are unjustifiable, as I will argue, and they harm the process of innovation and technical evolution… and this harm is accelerating as we proceed through the fast-paced communications revolution that started in 1995, with the consumer embrace of the internet. The benefits of patents seem to be largely overstated, unprincipled, and, again, becoming increasingly marginalized as we accelerate into the future. The only concession on this front that I am willing to make is in the case of trademarks, as I see them as being crucial for product differentiation in the marketplace, but perhaps some of my readers could convince me otherwise.

Anyway, I've heard 2 major claims that are supposed to intuitively justify using coercive legal means to monopolize ideas and concepts: one which stems from a prospective of social justice (recognition of one's contribution, and due profit); and another which comes from a utilitarian approach, which claims that the prospect of such legal monopolies on information are the necessary incentives for many inventions to come to be in the first place. Well, hogwash.

One the first point, generally speaking people get recognized for results, not "plans". That is, I have a lot of really neat ideas that might help people in many ways, if not just enjoy life a little more, but they are meaningless unless they can be formulated into tangible profit-generating items. Surely if I have some great idea or design about something I shouldn't be able to exclude other people from trying to implement them. Or if I do end up attempting to utilize my idea in a market setting, should I exclude competition from potentially more creative and efficient sellers? We all know that monopolies are bad, and this is monopoly in its purest form, a monopoly which, on average, lasts for 20 years from the filing date.
On that note, the trends in granting intellectual property are quite troubling. We are seeing exponential increases in the application and granting of patents. This kind of exponential exclusion of ideas from the market at such a rapid era of growth is an incalculable stab to the potential of progress.

In the case of scientific research, people get published and recognized all the time. The driving force for university publication is prestige and qualification for pay raises or job perks such as tenor. In industry, the profit incentive to innovate and create will always be the main driving force necessary for progress to move on. While it is true, the artificial incentive created by a promised legal monopoly on a new product is a solid safety net for inventors, and might stimulate efforts to be the first to innovate and capture a monopoly on that product, but it stops there. As soon as a company plants its proverbial flag on the innovation, it need not fear anymore competition for the duration of its legal monopoly. As a result, prices are no longer set through competitive production, distribution and supply and demand, but are instead at the mercy of the monopolist. This is especially well exemplified in the ridiculous price of medicines from biopharmaceutical companies which hold such patents. High prices lead to less accessibility and underutilization of goods, and would-be innovators in the realm of production and distribution are left waiting until the patent expires. Further innovation of the patented product is stagnated and wholly dependent on the permission of the patent holder to allow modifications unto the marketplace.


Contrary to popular opinion, innovations will still occur under a state of free information. The incentive to create exists in many forms. Firms that innovate will have the benefit of being the first to the market with the product, not to mention the reputation of being innovative and successful. Without the prospect of intellectual property protecting the innovation investments of large firms, they would have to prepare to enter the market at full steam and use the advantage of being first to the game, and developing market credibility. Inventors can still secure royalties by selling their ideas to industrial producers through contracts. Entire companies can organize around attempting to harness human creativity and offer royalties to all people with ideas worth pursuing to the marketplace. It would be the ultimate in creative cooperation for mutual gain.

Ever wondered why you don't have that cool roller to apply sunscreen on your own back? Or how about the bong that doubles as a vibrator (US Patent #7122000)... these are just a few examples of countless patents monopolized by morons who can't market their products successfully. Silly examples, but there are many good ones. One that touches me personally is that old SNES Chronotrigger fans might never get to enjoy a fully updated 3D version of the classic masterpiece of a videogame -- one such open development plan had gotten well underway before being shut down by Square Enix Co., the owners of the original game: http://www.opcoder.com/projects/chrono/
To impose limits on competition through patents only slows the process of innovation and efficiency which provides us with better services at lower prices.

In the spirit of the mission of this blog, I would like to end by expressing the radical uncertainty in which the future lies. We simply do not know how the marketplace, driven by the creative minds of hundreds of millions of profit-seekers and entrepreneurs, will spontaneously organize around the free exchange of ideas, nor how future innovations will change the way we share, exchange and implement information, or how much farther the envelope of innovation will progress. One thing is clear, the future lies in inclusion, competitive cooperation, and participation by as many players as possible, and intellectual property stands in direct opposition to these principles through exclusion and monopolization.

Free yourself from propertied software:
Check out a great, free alternative to the Windows operating system: http://www.ubuntu.com/ , which provides you with the same features, greater security, and stability.
You can even buy your next Dell loaded with Ubuntu with full technical support: http://www.dell.com/open/ .
Educators should incorporate "creative commons" licensed lectures to complement their classes, like from http://www.ted.com/ .
If you plan to continue using Microsoft, check our this list of some excellent open source software that can replace most of your paid or illegally pirated software seamlessly, http://www.opensourcewindows.org/ .
The future lays in intellectual anarchy.

State of Fear

Although for the most part I believe that our current rate of growth in technology and information is generating so much potential for exponential wealth and standard of living increases that it will free us from the Leviathan of government control (mainly because our society will become far too complex and changing far too rapidly for any central authority to attempt to keep up with management and regulation), there is still one major danger that seriously threatens our potential for growth and freedom.

September 11^th symbolizes this great danger to liberty and progress as we move through the 21^st century: Fear. The events themselves are violently twisted and demented, but in overall magnitude of lives lost and damage done deliberately (which is an important distinction, as compared to automobile deaths for example, which are much more grotesque but are a result of error rather than deliberation) they themselves pale in comparison with the deliberate fiscal and human costs of the subsequent Iraq and Afghanistan incursions.

At the writing of this blog entry, the Iraq war/occupation had cost American tax payers over $450 billion, with 3,774 dead and 27,767 brutally mangled, by official counts (www.antiwar.com). Infrastructure damage to Iraq can't even be calculated in any meaningful way, nor have such estimates been attempted, but conservative estimates put the civilian deaths at somewhere between 71,000 and 78,000 (IraqBodyCount.org), though some studies (i.e. The Lancet/John Hopkins University study) claim almost 10 times as many deaths.

All of this made possible by political exploitation of people's irrational fears and ignorance of the long chain of cause and effect which had lead to the events of September 11^th. No one really asked “why?”. The best interests of American citizens, to withdraw our foreign military bases and end out meddling in unstable regions, were never considered. On the right, Neoconservatives have done especially well at hijacking the catastrophe and using a campaign of fear to further their “big government conservative” agenda. The spineless left has adopted the same tactics to protect their political office from seeming “soft” on defense. Once again the two-faces of American politics failed the American people, but did a good job of scaring them shitless and leading them down the war path.

This same kind of fear is emboldening an ever growing consensus that we are undergoing an anthropomorphically generated global climate change, with impending disastrous consequences, and that immediate governmental action must be taken to prevent it. Michael Crichton recently dealt with this idea in a marvelously enjoyable novel called “State of Fear”, in which he presents a plethora of sourced scientific data which runs contrary to the conventional wisdom on global warming. It is a fascinating topic which I will devote a future post to, but for the purposes of this entry I wish only to draw the parallels between the use of irrational fear and hysteria instead of solid and consistent information, logic and reasoning to explore the theory of global warming and the justifications for an invasion of an non-threatening foreign nation.

I foresee the 21^st century as a struggle between the freedom that promises prosperity and the fear that threatens to strangle it. But perhaps the same could be said about the entirety of human history. I just hope freedom wins this time around.