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The National Journal reports today that TED is refusing to publish a recent talk from megarich venture capitalist Nick Hanauer , which argued that rich people actually don't create jobs, and that cutting their taxes is harmful to the middle class. Obviously, Hanauer's position is anathema to most of his fellow billionaires . Although his talk was well-received, TED officials eventually decided that it was too "politically controversial" to post the presentation on the TED website. Click here to see the presentation > In an email to Business Insider this afternoon, Hanauer said that he accepts TED's right not to post his presentation, but that he disagrees with their reasoning: "I got a sensational reaction to the talk at the conference itself, including a big standing ovation.
Nick Hanauer TED Presentation About Why Rich People Aren't Job Creators
From Hipcrime , SUNDAY, APRIL 29, 2012 Every once and awhile I'll be listening to a podcast with one or the other writers specializing on the subject of Peak Oil or collapse and the subject of timetables will come up. When will the collapse finally be here, the callers ask insistently, almost pleadingly, so that they can finally justify their investments in freeze-dried foods, water purification tablets and solid gold coins.
What If A Collapse Happened And Nobody Noticed?
DelaneyCurtin - Section 6.4- The Fall of the Roman Empire
• By 300 AD factories began to fail, pirates disrupted trading, running out of sourced for gold and silver (less silver in money), taxes raised, suffered inflation. • Emperor Diocletian was a strict emperor, limited personal freedoms, doubled army, fixed prices, seized goods, he restored strength and held ceremonies for himself because he claimed to be the son of a Roman god • He split Rome into two: Greek-speaking East and Latin-speaking West, Diocletian took the East and shared authority in the West, but Diocletian still had overall rule since the West held the important cities, trading centers, and was wealthier. • In 330, Constantine moved the capital from Rome to Greek city Byzantium on the Bosporus Strait, in between the east and west, good trading location, and defense.Magnus Linderoth If robots are to take over people’s jobs then they must become, well, more human! When it comes to learning from previous experience, fine motor skills and manual dexterity, today’s robots are far behind humans.
Teachable robot gets ready for factory toil
The phrase “Urban Revolution” was coined in the 1930s by archaeologist V. Gordon Childe to describe the transformation of Neolithic village farming society into the urban states and empires of the Bronze Age. Prior to the Urban Revolution there were no kings, no cities, no writing systems, and no social classes. This was perhaps the most extensive and far-reaching social transformation in human history, with greater implications for life and society than either the Industrial Revolution or the Neolithic Revolution (yes, I know, historical sociologists will not believe that anything was more important than the Industrial Revolution). Today, archaeologists have quite a bit of information about the Urban Revolution, which happened independently in several parts of the ancient world.
January 2011
Renewable Energy Oil & Gas Global Mining
Shell Oil Spill off Nigeria's Coast: Worst in a Decade - Energy Digital
The cost of shopping for health insurance - The Washington Post
(Jud Burkett - The Spectrum via Associated Press) When I wrote a story last week about Congress quietly closing health reform’s Consumer Assistance Program, Wonkblog readers and health-care economists alike quickly seized on one crucial detail: the program’s price tag. Thirty-five states received a total of $30 million to help consumers find affordable coverage, answer health insurance queries and appeal denied claims. I led the story with Texas, which received a $2.8 million grant and, with it, hired nine employees who have handled about 6,000 phone calls. A few days later, Princeton University health-care economist Uwe E. Reinhardt also took a look at Texas’s consumer assistance budget.
Combating Desertification and Drought in St. Lucia « Repeating Islands
The Banana Industry Trust and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries are this week calling for national support for the adoption of the National Action Plan and Strategic Action Plan (NAP/SAP) to Combat Desertification and Drought for St. Lucia. Since signing the 1997 United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, St. Lucia still continues to be faced with challenges with land degradation and drought-like conditions, particularly in watersheds with high agricultural activity. Chief Forestry Officer, Michael Andrew explained that “It is estimated that soil loss is as much as 25 to 63 tons per hectare per year for some of the larger watershed and approximately 300,000 tons annually due to banana cultivation alone.
I think I'll take a break from looking at the macroeconomic situation and going " FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU ", and talk a little about philosophy. Since the dawn of time, libertarians have equated property rights with freedom. Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense: if the government can come and confiscate your stuff, or tell you what to do with it, you don't feel very free at all. But libertarians tend to take this basic concept to its maximal extent; the more things are brought within the cash nexus , the more free we become. No limits, no exceptions.
Do property rights increase freedom? (Japan edition)
Nowadays, although more and more of us understand the fact that we live , not in a democratic republic (as we were taught in school), but under a plutocracy , most still suffer from what Richard Grossman and Ward Morehouse call the "colonization of our minds [ 1 ], [ 2 ] ", the corollary of which is the " TINA " (There Is No Alternative) phenomenon. The fact is, there are alternatives to this evermore distintegrative "way of life". But in order to change this society so the seventh generation yet unborn may , once more, have the opportunity to live their lives to the fullest, each one of us must transform our own conditioned thinking from that of programmed consumer into liberated citizen . Today, people forget that U.S. corporations, or " corpses ", as this ratitor thinks of them, were extremely limited in their powers and influence prior to the Civil War.
Ending Corporate Governance: Revoking Our Plutocracy
Here is a sobering quote by Abe Lincoln: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." Some people expressed doubts about its authenticity, given Lincoln's work as an attorney for railroad corporations! It was an interesting job tracking it down and verifying its authenticity. The first ref I heard for this quote was Jack London's 1908 Iron Heel . And although the quote indeed appears there (near p. 100), Jack London offered neither context nor source.
What Lincoln Forsaw: Corporations "Enthroned" and Re-Writing the Laws Defining Their Existence
SOPA