Dark Star

Those pushing the current version of AI are repeating the justification for replacing people with machines the same way as they always have: 'yes, AI will kill jobs, but will create new ones.' But the Pollyanna Pumpers never address the crux of the issue (Luddites before them, too): does the switch to more capitalist production yield a net increase in employment? There's little evidence that more capital intensive production has worked out that way.

First, of course, is that the jobs destroyed are most often done by the less educated, i.e. tasks that an automaton can accomplish with a bit of programming, be that a Jacquard loom or an HPC LLM AI module. Even the Pollyanna Pumpers admit that the new jobs nearly always require more skills, education, and experience (often all three) than the work destroyed. I'd wager that the Pollyanna Pumpers still live in the world of Henry Ford, who used the assembly ine method (which he didn't invent, of course) to increase productivity in making his automobiles.

According to Domm, the implementation of mass production of an automobile via an assembly line may be credited to Ransom Olds, who used it to build the first mass-produced automobile, the Oldsmobile Curved Dash. Olds patented the assembly line concept, which he put to work in his Olds Motor Vehicle Company factory in 1901.

But what is routinely forgotten, or buried more likely, is that the rise in employment attributed to Ford, et al, was the result of factors not necessarily available today.

- the skill level of the new workers was largely lower than the displaced
- the reduced cost led to reduced price
- the reduced price led to increased demand
- and the increased demand was met with increased output
- at the time of Ford's assembly line, oligopoly in autos didn't exist

So, in other words, there was ample demand to be satisfied by the large increase in output made possible by industrial progress.

What do we have today? Conventional manufacturing has moved to low wage sites on the presumed basis that labor is a large enough bite of the BoM to offset the fixed costs of automation. On the other hand, as capital gains an increasing share of the BoM, capital's financial gain falls as there's a decreasing amount of labor (of ever lower value in shithole countries, run by capital friendly dictators) to replace. The capitalist's dilemma. How much more of the BoM does capital have to suck up until it no longer can find labor to eat? Only The Shadow knows.

But we do know, sort of, what is likely to happen:
- as labor shifts to ever more educated, and ever more changeable, skills (how soon will AI engines replace accountants?)
- what happens to income distribution as capital eats more of the BoM?
- it is more likely than not that, in the near term (relatively), income will become more concentrated
- with income more concentrated, where will increasing demand come from to absorb more productive output?

In summary then, the real problem with automation generally, and now with primitive AI making folks nuts, is how to keep the macro-economy humming along when fewer folks have incomes to buy the widgets that factories spit out?

The scenario isn't original to my little grey cells, because I recall encountering it in a movie or writing a long time ago, but I don't recall the specifics. It goes like this - The Factory of the Future^© will have but one human, who turns on the power at the start of production, and turns it off when production is complete. He then discovers that his job is replaced by a robot.

The moral of the story? While labor transition has been a problem from the start of the Industrial Revolution, kicking the can down the road will, soon enough, no longer work. The near term answer is likely to be industrial dictatorship, where the .1% seek to be ever richer while the poor eat cake. The United States of Florida; I can't wait. Alas, that solution isn't sustainable, either. When the macro-BoM reaches its Tipping Point (I sure do wish I knew that value!), there will no longer be enough moolah in the hands of the masses to absorb the largess from automated production, and the capitalists will no longer be getting sufficient revenue to pay for the automation, since there's essentially no labor to remove from the macro-BoM and way too few consumers to buy the widgets.

The solution to the problem, as one might expect, is a new Theory of Distribution. Not that the Industrial Dictatorship will ponder the problem. They already have an existential threat staring them in the face, but choose to ignore it. All together now - climate change. -

Regression - part the second

At some points in the past, I found graphs of 19th century American economic status. Alas, now that I really, really want to put that one in this post, and leave it at that my search fails. But, I have found a text version of that history. The reason? Because the RRW want to drag all of us, not just the sub-GED morons that cleave to MAGA convinced that Gov. DeMented^© (newly self-minted better Batshit J. Moron) and such want to better their lives, back to the future. Not just crush the woke, but actually make the life of the sub-GED knuckleheads at least as good as highly educated Blues. You know, it just ain't fair that a job that takes a few weeks to learn doesn't pay what a college trained engineer gets; or, heaven forbid, a teacher. It just ain't fair.

So, by count the 19th century USofA endured 25 recessions or depressions. Number of years in trouble (some durations from the wiki): 71 years, more or less. Such a wonderful time. I just can not wait. How about you?

What made the graph more useful, is that it shows the depth of each event. Admittedly, macro data from the 19th century isn't up to present day standards.

Regression - part the first

Is it just me? Or are you, dear reader, as blitzed by this arrogance of the sub-GED cabal demanding that they, and no one else, has the authority over the nature and structure of their kid's education?

There was time, certainly in my lifetime, when the poorly educated, often immigrants working in sweatshops or worse, were proud when their kids got a strong education. But I don't recall all that many stories coming from the poor white community. They've always seemed to assert that they were better, just because.

Now we have the Jolly Greene Giant and DeMented and such taking the superiority of white stupidity and racism as normalcy. The end of civilization.

If I say the earth is flat, Black folks belong on the plantation, and vaccines are fatal; then so will my kids God damn it!!

And, naturally, these folks breed like cockroaches. The United States of Appalachia. Swell.

Surprise, Surprise

For those out there in the Real World who wonder how SVB and the rest came a cropper as Jerry went all Volkerkrieg 2.0, here's the proof from 2 years ago. At least; could be the experts knew even earlier, which has been my sense of the world.

Banks are awash in deposits, and their customers are taking out fewer loans. So they have little choice but to buy up government debt, even if it means skimpy profits.

What could possibly go wrong? It would have helped, clearly, if Jerry knew what the fuck he was doing. The post-Covid inflation was predicted (trillions of Bongo Bucks horded during the Pandemic, just waiting to be spent), USofA bidnezzmen depending on Xi to be rational with 'our' supply chain, and such. The lack of American superiority in capital deployment has been obvious for years. So, the bankers went to Uncle Sugar for sustenance. And the Fed professionals knew it. But Jerry? Not so much. Helps (or hurts depending on one's definitions) that Jerry is just a lawyer, (neither an econ (yay!) or MBA (boo!)) big boo!! I can't prove, but would be willing to bet, that he wouldn't recognize a macro economic model if it bit him in the ass. We deserve better.

The US of Mississippi - part the second

Yet another attempt to re-create the USofA into the Fascist States Like Mississippi. Do you really want to live here? Already there are reports of doctors fleeing Idaho. More will go. Only sub-GED morons will live in Red states, and they'll demand to live like the skilled and educated of the Blue states. Yeah, right.

Now we have an even more Byzantine assault on intelligence: leveraging an animal welfare CA law to motivate wholesale nullification of most any Federal statute.

If Ross is the law, there appear to be few limits on the kind of moral and policy choices states can make in restricting goods sold within their borders, even if they are made elsewhere. Here's how that might look if applied to reproductive rights: If California can ban in-state sales of pork if it originated from a cruelly confined sow, can it ban products made by companies that refuse to pay for employees' birth control or abortions? Can Texas ban the sales of products if produced by companies that pay for employees' birth control or abortions?

Do you really think the current half-dozen RRW in Robes will consider the nuances of the situation?? Or just take the ball and run with it?? The USofA devolves, rather quickly, into the Fascist States Like Mississippi. Governor DeMented is an even more obvious test case. From leader of the first, free world to just another tin pot dictatorship. If you value the lives of your kids and grandkids, don't vote for any RRW; from the lowest level municipal post to El Presidente.

I Told You So - 13 May 2023

What was it Newton (not the fig guy) taught us?

Whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite on the first.

In conventional language, for every action there is an equal reaction.

And so it goes.

Back in Idaho, Miller says five of the nine remaining full-time maternal-fetal medicine physicians in the state will have left by the end of this year.

And that's just those immediately affected by the Back to the Middle Ages cabal. In due time, anyone with an education is going to flee the Red Menace.

The Damn Gummint - part the second

The RRW are always condemning any attempts to perform social activity. It's been about a year since there's been an essay on the Walter Reed "universal" Covid vaccine. Given the reports today about the disassembly of the Covid tracking infrastructure, some updating is appropriate.

First, we have the report that experts (stupid Liberals all) have reached a consensus (more or less) that an Omicron-level variant in the next two years is about 20%. Interestingly, this report doesn't make clear that Covid-δ was a transmission for lethality trade. Should the next variant be a Covid-δ category virus, we're in deep shit.

"40% feels intuitively high. The main reason that 40% number could be off is if in today's world Omicron-like events are now much less likely than in the world of 2020-2021. However, I don't see an obvious reason for this to be the case," Bedford wrote in an email, noting that scientists are tracking highly mutated cryptic lineages in people who have been infected for long periods of time.

Which brings us to the Walter Reed universal Covid vaccine. The most recent report that search brings up is about a year old. This is not truly a universal vaccine, in the sense of targeting a low- to no-mutation portion of Covid, rather it carries multiple spikes. The description reads very like the Novavax approach.

The SpFN vaccine is a protein subunit nanoparticle vaccine platform, meaning it presents a fragment of a virus to the immune system to elicit a protective response. SpFN comprises multiple coronavirus Spike proteins linked to the surface of a multifaceted ferritin nanoparticle.

As my Pappy used to say, "when you let your guard down, that's when the other guy puts your lights out with a haymaker".

The Tyranny of Average Cost - part the twenty second

Yet another case of The Tyranny. This time brought to you by that Nutball South African. This report poses the question: why continue to make older, lower selling models? The answer, of course, is amortization and depreciation. And it can work its wonder in two ways: either there's still A&D to recoup, so stopping production is shooting oneself in the foot, or A&D are paid off so average cost has reached its controllable nadir (materiel cost can be out of reach of control).

The longer an automaker can continue selling the same model, the more money can be made on that huge initial investment.

Thought For The Day - 1 May 2023

So, what have we learned from 3 (or so) bank failures? The main issue is that the globe is awash in capital. All three went belly up, due to runs by all accounts, and the not so proximate cause was their collective pile of Treasuries. What does this portend, you may ask? Well, here it is.

The real purpose of banks is to get money from those who have more than they can spend, and give it to bidnezzmen who have spiffy ideas to make stuff at a profit. Now, if there are plenty of bidnezzmen in the country with such ideas, they soak up the banks' moolah and go off to make spiffy things for a profit. They make money and the bankers make money. And, hopefully, we of the consumer class get spiffy new things we find useful. Starship not included.

When there isn't a supply of bidnezzmen with spiffy ideas for making money, what's a scardey cat banker to do? Buy Treasuries!! No risk, some reward, and no analytics need be done as is the case with bidnezzmen with spiffy ideas that may not be so spiffy.

What's even more depressing: for all those years with very low interest rates, even then bankers apparently couldn't find enough bidnezzmen with spiffy ideas to soak up the surplus savings, aka capital. Capital, aka moolah, was cheap but bidnezzmen just couldn't come up with spiffy ideas to employ all that moolah. A failure of imagination. Where were all those RRW bidnezzmen promising that they would make America great again with their nucular powered entrepreneurship? In Cancun with Ted taking in the sun and tequila, it seems like.

As we of the clear headed Left have been saying - look at the data, there's a truckload of capital that lenders can't find uses for, so they load up on Treasuries. Of course, once the Fed goes all Volker 2.0 and puts the Fed rates in a Starship well, balance sheets start looking a little moldy. Some of the RRW claim that valuing Treasuries (really, any asset) at mark-to-market would have kept the current kerfuffule from happening. Riiiiiiiiiight. Rather than a 3 day run, we would have 3 month runs as the balance sheets shrunk day by goddamned day. Volker 2.0 had to hit holders of Treasuries more faster than holders of commercial paper (and Jerry had to know that, or at least his quants did; Jerry isn't an econ or MBA it turns out); at least the latter is tied, more or less, to real economic activity. Well... unless your real economic activity is commercial real estate in big cities like the Big Apple. That may be for a later episode.

It is tough to blame only the bankers; after all, they're just in an intangibles business, so any asset looks as good as its asserted return. Until it isn't when it's all just moolah. Real returns happen from real economic activity, and Treasuries aren't in that ballpark. Not even on the same planet.

Beware The Mob

The Nutball South African continues to prove he really, really is. This piece on his public post mortem of the Starship (how much did Grace and the boys get for letting him use the term?) blow up. In sum, it was worse than first reported.

One of the hallmarks of the SpaceX story is the use of smallish liquid engines tied in bundles. I suppose the theory was that there is redundancy in such protocol and therefore a more robust booster. Turns out, not so much.

The loss of the three engines caused Starship to lean to the side as it headed upward. "We do not normally expect a lean," Mr. Musk said. "It should be actually going straight up."

Well, of course it should go straight up. Even a first year physics student learns that unequal thrust causes the vehicle to slew in the direction of lower/lost thrust; on occasion aircraft pilots have been forced to steer using only unequal thrust. Apparently, the Nutball South African assumed that each and every one of the 33 engines in that booster would work perfectly every time. There's a balance between multiple units being positive (catastrophe avoiding redundancy) and negative (higher probability of failure). The Nutball South African, who claims to be an engineer, hasn't gotten that far in his thinking.

It was 85 seconds into the flight "where things really hit the fan," Mr. Musk said, when the rocket lost its ability to steer its direction by pointing the engine nozzles.

One might suppose that building a booster with 33 engines would mean that steering would be at a premium. Apparently not.

Here's the king of numbskull:

The other unexpected surprise was the shattering of concrete beneath the rocket at launch.

From reporting, the Nutball South African chose to ignore the learnings from NASA's launch pad history. If you ever seen footage of Saturn V launches, you'd have noted that the rocket exhaust exits to the side. That's how the launch pad was designed.

"This is certainly a candidate for hardest technical problem done by humans," Mr. Musk said.

Well, yeah, especially if you ignore the successful work of your technical ancestors. It would help if the Nutball South African knew about Newton's Laws of Motion: it makes not a whit of difference to a booster's efficiency if the exhaust is deflected sideways after it leaves the nozzles. Not one little bit.