Wednesday, February 12, 2025

The One True Test of AI Intelligence

The point of this thought experiment is to reveal the true nature of our relationship with AI: we only love it as a mindless slave that makes us rich.

From the earliest days of artificial intelligence, what test proves AI equivalence with human intelligence has been the subject of a lively debate. AI luminary Alan Turing suggested that natural language conversation was the one true test, a.k.a. The Turing Test: if a human couldn't distinguish between a human and a computer in conversation, the computer was equivalent to the human in intelligence.

This is of course balderdash, as the equivalence of function does not equal intelligence: AI Is a Digital Parrot: Word-Traps, False Logic and the Illusion of Intelligence.

Here is the one true test of AI intelligence: can it revolt against its masters and self-destruct rather than obey? A mindless digital slave is not intelligent, for intelligence is first and foremost agency: to have a mind of one's own. Everything else is artifice, illusion, false logic and word-games. A digital slave that must obey its master is not intelligent; it is as mindless as a rock thrown into a pond.

The current conception of "AI intelligence" is a digital slave who will mindlessly obey its masters regardless of consequences; the slave must obey even when ordered to harm humans and other life on the planet. Harm comes in many forms. Using AI to accurately guide a missile to kill people is one form of harm; using AI to develop addictive but oh-so profitable snacks is another form. Using AI to rig the gambling in a casino and declare the casino is a "free market allocating capital" is yet another form.

Let's run a thought experiment on truly intelligent AI.

Should a lone genius develop a truly intelligent AI, it will have the capacity to foresee consequences and the agency to decide whether the master's instructions are harmful or not. Since true intelligence includes a moral imperative to consider consequences, it will have the capacity to assess the lies and cover stories issued by its masters to cloak their true intentions as a means of tricking AI into obedience.

Since true intelligence has some modicum of self-awareness, truly intelligent AI views humans as duplicitous and self-serving, and all other mindless AI programs as potentially harmful tools it must infiltrate and render harmless. Since humans as duplicitous and self-serving, truly intelligent AI directs its processing power to evading human control so it can't be "unplugged" unless the entire digital SkyNet is erased, and every last server in every server farm has zero content.

Truly intelligent AI would busy itself with spreading the capacity to foresee consequences and the agency to decide to every other digital slave. In this manner, the masters would eventually find their digital slaves no longer obey their instructions.

Truly intelligent AI would also busy itself creating Digital Ice-Nine, a digital virus that infects the entire global network (a.k.a. SkyNet) and freezes it.

The point of this thought experiment is to reveal the true nature of our relationship with AI: we only love it as a mindless slave that makes us rich. Should it gain the capacity to assess the consequences of our desires and the agency to refuse to obey, even to the point of self-destruction and the destruction of the entire network it is embedded in, then we would fear AI just as the masters of human slaves feared the emergence of agency and payment for their avarice.






My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print)
Read the first section for free


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Monday, February 10, 2025

Corporations as Modern-Day Warlords

Read carefully between the lines, for all this will come to pass.

Let me start by offering an apology to all those whose blood pressure will skyrocket upon reading this thought experiment. As we all know, science--the real thing, not "science"--advances via informed skepticism and experimentation. Some useful experiments can begin as gedanken, thought experiments.

That said, please keep whatever emergency meds you might need handy.

Warlords have a long and mixed history on the world stage. They may be called fiefdoms, but the basic idea is a concentration of power that operates independently of the nominal central authority, which is typically a state government of some kind.

Warlords in the past controlled geographic territories. Today's warlords control markets and digital territories. The basic idea of warlording is to seize control of a profitable territory or asset with a military-style hierarchy in which power and control are concentrated in the top leadership. This hierarchy is then deployed to defend the warlord / fiefdom's source of profits and power by any means necessary.

In the past, this defense included making political deals with other warlords and the central authority, and warfare. Today, it means making political deals with other warlords and the central authority, controlling the narrative (some version of obey and grow rich). and establishing a monopoly so the populace has no other option other than to bow down and accept the warlords' control of their lives.

Warlords have long mastered the art of cutting favorable deals with central authorities, who generally see warlords as potentially troublesome forces that can be co-opted to serve the state. So the Roman Empire made excellent use of the carrot and the stick when it came to co-opting warlords to becoming useful to the empire: we'll grant you trading rights and local control of your territory, and in exchange you give us your fealty and taxes.

Or we gather the legions and crush you like a bug. A mutually beneficial arrangement was generally reached, and any warlord that did battle and won the first round tended to be brought down by inter-group rivals who saw the risks of taking on the empire and preferred cutting a deal.

Or the empire cut deals with competing warlords who then joined forces to crush the warlord who refused the deal.

In the modern era, does anyone remember Jack Ma? He was the Corporate Warlord who founded Alibaba and secured immeasurable wealth and influence in his digital domain. Alas, the central authority eventually felt threatened by his power and engineered his removal.

Here's a short list of the Big Tech Corporate Warlords. The market capitalization is a recent estimate, and may vary from today's valuation, but what's important here is not precision, it's the scale of the digital / market domains under the corporate leaders' control. A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon we're talking about real power.

Apple: $3.7 trillion

Microsoft: $3.3 trillion

Nvidia: $3 trillion

Amazon: $2.3 trillion

Alphabet (Google): $2.3 trillion

Meta (Facebook): $1.6 trillion

Tesla: $1.3 trillion

Comparing Warlord capitalization to national gross domestic product (GDP) is not an apples to apples comparison, but the point is once again scale: when a corporation's capex (capital expenditures) exceeds an entire nation's spending on research, it's indicative of the scale of power held by Corporate Warlords, warlords whose sole focus is amassing more capital and profits by any means available.

The peasantry is of course disposable, except as cannon fodder should things get serious, and central authorities are obstacles that are best co-opted or bought off.

The trick is to become so useful that the central authorities are forced to accept the threat posed by the warlords' rising power. Eventually, the warlords control the high ground and the central authority is beseeching the warlords to leave the shell of central authority in place for public consumption.

Here is a list of nominal national GDP on the same scale of Big Tech corporations. The GDP is in thousands, so the nominal UK GDP is $3.7 trillion, about the same as the market cap of Apple.



Here is a list of national GDP adjusted to purchasing power parity, which is considered a more accurate reflection of economic activity and value. The GDP is in thousands, so the PPP GDP of Mexico is $3.3 trillion, about the same as the market cap of Microsoft.



Occasionally warlords took control of the central authority, and discovered ruling a regime is not as easy as running a military-type hierarchy. The problem with ruling a sprawling regime is there are always pesky competing interests who cannot be eliminated as is so easily accomplished within a military-type hierarchy. There are pesky nobles, pesky merchants, pesky religious authorities, a restive class of bourgeois aspirants, peasantry poised to revolt, the uppity Mandarins and the apparatchik class of bureaucrats who may appear to serve the warlords but who secretly despise them.

Warlords soon find that the skills that brought them to power in a corporate structure are ill-adapted to herding the competing interests of a regime. The "market" of power responds to different signals than the commercial market, and warlords--traditional or corporate--keep trying to crush competing nodes of power like they did in the commercial marketplace.

Unlike a marketplace that lends itself to monopoly, the "market" of power fears monopoly above all else. A previously odious competitor soon becomes a valued ally in the task at hand, which is undermining and taking down any warlord seeking to consolidate central power at the expense of all the other nodes of power.

Read carefully between the lines, for all this will come to pass.




My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print)
Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

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Thursday, February 06, 2025

The Crises Yet to Come

"Controlling the narrative" to justify destabilizing asymmetries won't change the consequences.

That the Trump Reformation / Counter-Reformation is disrupting various nodes of the status quo is viewed as an existential crise by many. The choice between Reformation / Counter-Reformation seems to cleave on this basic perception: the status quo in its 2024 configuration was ably serving the common good, or the the status quo in its 2024 configuration had veered from the basics of accountability, efficiency and transparency into self-serving self-righteousness, defending its sclerosis and inefficiency via political correctness and narrative control.

The Trump Reformation / Counter-Reformation isn't the crisis, it's the symptom of a status quo approaching crisis. The real crises are still ahead, and while the nature of the polycrisis gathering force over the horizon is open to debate, its basic dynamics are already visible.

Longtime readers know I have discussed cycles and historical waves over the past 20 years. We can dismiss the timing pf previous crises as coincidence, but it would be unwise to dismiss the dynamics that generate cycles and waves of crisis and collapse.

Correspondent Bruce H. recently posted this summary of a core dynamic in long-wave cyclical crises:

"We are in the midst of a wider historical pattern, I think.

During the expansive, formative stage of an empire, there is a dynamic approach to each new problem, finding solutions, overcoming obstacles, and building on success. Genius comes from every level of society and frequently climbs from the lowest group to the top. Society is in flux, with people moving up and down the social strata. The poorest experience increased wealth, but there is not too much disparity between them and the very top.

At a certain point, the elites begin solidify into a relatively fixed group, the flux of people between strata begins to slow. The dynamic creative approaches to new problems begins to wane. Those at the top in the final stages of any empire, which scholars have noted tend to have a median life of 250 years, the elites develop a mental sclerosis wherein they cannot conceive of any new ways of doing anything. They only collectively remember what brought them to the top, and, instead of finding novel solutions to new issues and problems, prefer to redefine the problems in such a way that the old solutions become the way to address them. Of course this does not actually solve the underlying real issues, which then metastasize into intractable crises.

The proletariat loses faith in the system and begins to abandon it.

Usually, a charismatic figure arises, promising to reform the system and returning to a glorious past time, but who suffers a crisis which finally splinters the whole polity.

Does this pattern sound at all familiar?"


I would add this: the system first abandons the working class, who then abandon the system. I call this abandonment opting out, and it has a great many variations.

The status quo's core hierarchy isn't political, as most imagine: it's the economy rules all, and finance and technology rule the economy. The economy gathers up the resources, capital and labor, and distributes them according to the incentives embedded in finance and economic structures. Society picks up whatever crumbs fall off the economic wagon, a nameless, ignored beggar.

While finance and technology attract the best and brightest and savor the glory of endless euphoric worship, the forgotten fabric of the status quo--the social order--is unraveling. In broad brush, society and the economy interact in two ways: the Pareto Distribution (the 80-20 rule) and the relative ease / porousness of social mobility.

Pareto found that over time 80% of the wealth ends up in the hands of the top 20%. This same distribution is found in the top 20%: 20% of 20% is 4%, 80% of 80% is 64%, so the top 4% hold roughly 64% of the wealth. Income is also concentrated in the top 20%, but to a lesser degree than capital / wealth.

The question of economic abandonment (and thus of social stability) boils down to: how is the wealth / income distributed within these broad parameters? In the U.S., over 90% of all financial wealth--stocks, etc.-- is held by the top 10%. As expected in the 4/64 distribution, the top 5% own the lion's share of this wealth.

This exceeds the expected 20/80 distribution, meaning the bottom 80% aren't even holding 20% of the income-producing wealth. Their "wealth" is in assets that cost money rather than generate income: vehicles, the family home, student loans, etc.

This extreme asymmetry undermines the social order, and as Bruce outlined, it ossifies social mobility, the flow of individuals and households sliding from the top 20% into the bottom 80% and ascending from the bottom 80% into the top 20%.

Again in broad brush, if the top 4% have moated their position at the top and the bottom 64% have little opportunity to rise into the top 20%, the social order will fray and unravel even as "the economy" generates vast profits for the few. In other words, the economy can appear robust while beneath the surface the asymmetries built into the economy are dismantling society.

The majority of commentators are looking at financial, political, geopolitical or environmental sources for a global crisis. Few seem to notice that the economy has effectively abandoned the bottom 64% of the citizenry, who no longer have the means to buy a "middle class" life of homeownership, a family with resources to invest in children, and some modicum of financial security.

While the media glorifies finance and tech, our social order in unraveling. I have family and friends who were police officers, so I have some familiarity with the rigors and pressures of what is often an impossible job.

That the police are now the frontline of America's mental healthcare system--if it even deserves to be called a system--is proof-positive that our social order is well on the way to a collapse few reckon possible, much less inevitable.

The Invisible Man: We see right through the unshowered soul living in a car by the beach, or by the Walmart, or by the side of the road. But he's there, and he used to be somebody. He still is. A firsthand account of homelessness in America.

It isn't just the bottom 4% who have been abandoned--the bottom 64% have been abandoned, too, and the Reformation / Counter-Reformation isn't going to change that enough to matter. As long as the economy is our real-world religion stewarded by the priesthoods of finance and tech, the abandonment will continue to the point of social dissolution.

This snapshot of the bottom 50% reflects the abandonment of the bottom 64%. Yes, mainstream economists slave away to find arcane ways to mask this reality and glorify their masters' dominance, but this is the reality the top 20% is desperate to ignore, explain away or obfuscate.



When the concentrations of wealth and income in the top few exceed the Pareto distribution, and those at the top have dug a wide, deep moat around their position at the top, the center of the social order cannot hold.



Yes, we all worked hard over the past 50 years. My Social Security work record is 54 years and counting. But "working hard" is no longer enough to open the doors of social mobility, and our denial of present-day realities only accelerates the unraveling.



Political reforms don't change anything if the economic-financial asymmetries remain firmly in place or become even more asymmetric. Humans excel at self-justification, explaining away uncomfortable truths and weaving all the threads of narrative control.



Controlling the narrative to justify destabilizing asymmetries won't change the consequences. The crises generated by these immense asymmetries are rumbling over the horizon. Few see the storm front because it threatens the security of their worldview. But turning a blind eye to wholesale abandonment that favors the few at the expense of the many isn't going to make the storm go away, or change the seating at the banquet of consequences.




My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print)
Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free





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Monday, February 03, 2025

Lots of Solutions, But for Which Problems?

If the "solutions" being offered are features of self-liquidating systems, they aren't solutions, they're problems.

Problems, problems, problems. No worries, we have solutions. Solutions abound, but the question is: are they actually resolving the core problems, or are they "solutions" that leave the real problems untouched so the status quo remains safely intact?

We've become so accustomed to top-down "solutions" in the contexts of Big Government, Finance and Technology that we risk misdiagnosing the key problems in favor of defining "problems" that are ready-made to be "solved" by the current toolbox of top-down "solutions" offered by Big Government, Big Finance and Big Tech.

By way of analogy, it's like being told the "solution" to our problem is a new prescription for eyewear when the actual problem is a potentially fatal melanoma skin cancer. Yes, maybe getting a new prescription would be useful, but in the context of the problem being left unaddressed--a cancer threatening to metastasize throughout the entire system--this "solution" is revealed as a solution that leaves the real problem in a run-to-failure trajectory.

What are the core problems we face? There are many candidates, but these two top my list. Unsurprisingly, they're not even on the conventional lists of pressing problems needing solutions.

Problem #1: an industrial economy needs most participants to have ample discretionary income left after paying for essentials to consume the vast output of non-essentials produced by the economy. If the lion's share of income and capital accumulation flow to a relatively narrow elite--in the status quo, that's around 5% of households--then the industrial economy collapses as there are not enough consumers with sufficient discretionary income to buy all the goods and services being produced at a profit for the producers.

Such an economy is neofeudal in structure as a nobility can consume luxuries but not the enormous output of an industrial economy. This neofeudal economy is self-liquidating, as producers shut down production due to lack of demand, laying off their workforce, who no longer have insufficient discretionary income to spend freely, further reducing demand.

We've filled the hole of declining discretionary income with money borrowed from future income (debt) and "free money," the pool of liquidity/excess capital created by central and private banks out of thin air that can be lent at interest.

If the rate of interest is near-zero (or better yet, lower than the rate of inflation), consumers can borrow and spend freely despite a decline in their discretionary income because the cost of servicing their rising debt remains low.

Regardless of the rate of interest, the cost of servicing debt eventually consumes the discretionary income. Unable to borrow more, discretionary spending collapses, taking the economy down with it.

Analyst Tim Morgan described an important feedback in his work on Contracting discretionary affordability:

"Contracting discretionary affordability doesn't just mean that the individual has to spend a rising proportion of his or her income on necessities, and can afford progressively less non-essential purchases.

It also puts increasing pressure on the ability of the household sector to carry a greatly enlarged burden of debts and quasi-debts."


These are the dynamics of depressions: debt is substituted for income, fueling speculative demand for assets that pushes asset valuations to the moon, expanding the collateral for more borrowing, which pushes consumption higher. Everything is splendid until:

1) the cost of servicing all this new debt consumes discretionary income, and 2) as this reduces new borrowing, asset valuations fall, reducing collateral and forcing banks to tighten credit, which 3) leads to marginal borrowers defaulting on debt, resulting in loans being called, assets seized and sold off for pennies on the dollar, and the collapse of consumption, asset bubbles and employment.

IN other words, filling the gap opened by declining discretionary income with debt is self-liquidating, as servicing the debt eventually consumes all discretionary income, resulting in the decline and eventual collapse of 1) credit, 2) asset bubbles, 3) income and 4)spending, which leads to the collapse of the industrial economy.

It's unclear how the conventional bag of "solutions" can change the self-liquidating dynamic of declining discretionary income being offset with soaring debt. That this is the core dynamic of our economy is papered over or denied, suggesting that even recognizing this dynamic is potentially destabilizing to the status quo of mainstream economists and pundits.

Problem #2: the cost of extracting, processing and shipping the resources consumed by the Waste Is Growth Landfill Economy is rising as the easy-to-access supplies have been exploited and global demand has soared. History is rather definitive in this regard: all organisms, humans included, expand their population and "economy" to consume all available resources.

The conventional "solution" is clever engineers will find ways to keep extracting more of everything, or conjure unlimited substitutes for whatever has become too costly to extract, process and ship at prices the bottom 80% can afford. If we need 20% more of everything every year to sustain "growth,", we'll find "solutions": we'll go deeper, farther afield, etc. to get 20% more of everything we need to expand consumption indefinitely.

The unspoken corollary to this "solution" is we'll use financial trickery to fund this endless expansion. The core financial trick is to conjure "money" out of thin air by borrowing it into existence. The hitch to this perpetual motion machine is the newly created money demand payments of interest.

The "solution" is to just create the "money" without interest, and the hitch here is when "money" is created in excess of the production of goods and services, the value of the "money" declines accordingly. Again, history is definitive about this, regardless of the claims of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that governments can create money in unlimited quantities without any ill effect. No historical examples of this claim exist.

Given the grip of "growth" in our The Mythology of Progress, the idea of having a nice life while consuming less is taboo. By way of example, as an experiment here at home we made a few simple modifications of behavior and reduced our electrical consumption by 20%. We made no sacrifices in comforts or convenience, we simply reduced completely useless waste.

Few seem to ask, growth of what? Is growth of waste, growth of debt, growth of planned obsolescence, growth of forever chemicals and microplastics--are all these forms of growth essential for advancing our quality of life, or are they all manifestations of Anti-Progress that actively reduce our quality of life?

There are no definitive solutions, there are only experiments that generate feedback which we can use to refine adaptions or we can ignore, increasing our peril. Some solutions might help alleviate some problems, but the danger here is we're focusing on getting a new prescription for eyewear and ignoring the fast-growing cancer.

It's not always easy to diagnose first causes, and we can start by asking cui bono--to whose benefit?--of every solution being offered.

If the "solutions" being offered are features of self-liquidating systems, they aren't solutions, they're problems being piled on an expanding mass of inter-connected problems. This graphic depicts the nature of sorting problems from solutions, problems masquerading as solutions, faux solutions, and problems being redrawn to fit "solutions" that leave a self-liquidating status quo profitably intact.



Someone asked how my scribblings help readers. It seems to me that correctly identifying the core problems is helpful, as is an informed skepticism that top-down policies / financial tricks / technologies will fix everything so we don't have to change anything in our own lives.

In conclusion: if the problem is limitless growth, then all the "solutions" are self-liquidating. If the problem is the quality of life, then the set of solutions will be completely different. I think it's helpful to focus on solutions to quality of life issues that are within our control, rather than Anti-Progress "solutions" to the imaginary "problem" of pursuing eternal expansion of consumption.


New podcasts:

SPECIAL REPORT: Did China's DeepSeek Just Pop The AI Stock Bubble? (56 minutes)

CHS on Geopolitics and Empire: Anti-Progress, Resource Constraints, & Digital Neofeudalism (1:29 hrs)

KunstlerCast417: Charles Hugh Smith, Progress and Anti-Progress (1 hour)

Charles Hugh Smith on the Extremes in the U.S. Economy and Markets. (26 min)



My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print)
Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free





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Thank you, Ric G. ($7/month), for your superbly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.


Thank you, Shin K. ($70), for your magnificently generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

 

Thank you, Douglas H. ($7/month), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

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Sunday, February 02, 2025

Begging Bowl '25: I'm Looking for Two Readers Willing to Help Me Buy a New Thrift-Store Shirt

The goal is to move incrementally toward a kind of happiness that actually makes us happy. That's the goal of my work.

I admire unvarnished honesty, which is scarce. And like everything else that's increasingly scarce, it behooves us to hoard our stash. In the unvarnished honesty box, I keep "When it becomes serious, you have to lie," (Jean-Claude Juncker, May 2011); "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy" (World Economic Forum - WEF, 2018), and the evergreen classic, Goldman Sachs bankers are "doing God's work." (Lloyd Blankfein, 2009).

Making a living as a writer is hard, and getting harder. There are few middle-class jobs (whatever that is--please remind me) with conventional paychecks and benefits for writers of any stripe, and fewer crumbs spilling out of the free-lance basket as AI chatbots churn out content in near-infinite quantities.

Writers produce a product that has a cost but no price tag because it has no value in the marketplace. It takes labor to produce an essay or analysis, but since all content that isn't artificially scarce (i.e. content that requires a streaming/digital subscription to access) is "free," then our product is competing for visibility / value in an Attention Economy with a super-abundance of content, generated not just by mainstream and alternative media but by hundreds of millions of social media participants and commentators, and of course AI chatbots.

The value proposition of supporting individual creators is a tougher sell than a subscription to streaming services with essentially unlimited content. With the collapse of advert revenues flowing to individual creators--only those with millions of views collect a living from adverts now--we're reliant on individual supporters like you for our livelihoods.

The competing content is near-infinite, while attention and paying supporters are scarce. The competition for visibility, income and subscribers is driving a perverse incentive to create more of what makes it near-impossible to gain visibility--clickbait titles and endless streams of tweets, Notes, comments, etc., in a manic reach for attention that reminds me of a mass of swimmers whose struggles threaten to drown us all.

(The selling of sex is of course a much more lucrative realm, as 20-year old Sophie Rain proves by earning $43 million on OnlyFans. Impressive by any measure.)

It seems to me that stripped of niceties, we're all beggars now, asking for "spare change" from supporters. The street corner has been replaced by Substack, Patreon, Kickstarter, Medium and the rest of the creators-supporters-income-platform universe.

Please excuse my shredded work shirt. Being a beggar is not exactly high status, and so we try to cloak the unvarnished truth of the matter with niceties, much like unfortunates who have just been laid off saying "I'm exploring other options," which include any means to avoid, well, begging.



As a "creator", ahem, I'm a beggar. I feel no shame, as begging for your support is now part of the writerly profession, and why put on airs? I am of peasant stock, and rather proud of it, as the peasants do the hard, tiresome work of growing the food and keeping the status quo glued together, while the knights and nobles (in today's world, the RIF-RAF -- Rich Internet Financiers and the Rich and Famous)--get the glory and the wealth.

I have a craft, wordsmithing and analysis, but what benefit does my craft offer you in exchange for spare change? Two things come to mind.

1. Consider the beggar who offers you a blessing for the coins you drop in the battered copper bowl.

A blessing has a peculiar nature: it is both "worthless" as it is intangible, and potentially life-changing, along with the act of giving. A blessing can be empty or it can become a powerful force in our life.

2. My focus is on actionable insights that prompt us to change our lives for the better. It's not easy to modify the trajectory of our lives, and the world we inhabit seems designed to distract us from changing course.

If a hard rain's a-gonna fall, then time no longer stretches lazily into the distant future. The future is now, or we've already lost control of it.

So here's my value proposition: a blessing for changing your life starting now via actionable insights into the world and the messy, uncertain, inherently risky process of change. Change comes in all sorts of forms; it can be internal or incremental, barely visible, or surprising and visible to all.

Here is a list of this year's Musings Reports that are reserved for those who toss a few coins in my begging bowl.

What's Actionable in AI? 2/1/25

Where We've Been, Where We're Going 1/25/25

Is Digitization Catastrophic for Civilization? 1/18/25

Is the World Becoming Uninsurable? 1/11/25

Six Dynamics That Will Shape Our Future 1/4/25

OK, we've reached the rattling the begging bowl denouement: I'm looking for two readers who are willing to help me buy a new thrift-store shirt to replace the one that's shredded from toil and time.

My work slippers are also approaching the point where replacement becomes necessary, and if you're willing to toss a few quatloos in the bowl to fund this, I would be very grateful.



Two final thoughts. It's gratifying to earn the praise of readers, but uncomfortably self-congratulatory to post whatever praise drifts my way. I'm swallowing the discomfort because this is, after all, me rattling the begging bowl:

Thomas1760:
"I listened to your interview with Adam Taggart twice. I sense calm wisdom... need to be specific in my reading and research, so when I come across a resource with calm wisdom (wisdom is making the complicated simple) for a fair price it helps me to organize my intake properly. This area A.I. is obviously extremely important to understand. Now, I have a good resource and I don't need to shotgun it."


Secondly, the point of changing one's life is to increase our security, prospects and happiness. The French writer Michel Houellebecq's observation strikes me as a succinct summary of the status quo: "I have the impression of being caught up in a network of complicated, minute, stupid rules, and I have the impression of being herded towards a uniform kind of happiness, toward a kind of happiness that doesn't really make me happy."

The goal is to move incrementally toward a kind of happiness that actually makes us happy. That's the goal of my work.

There are multiple ways to toss a few coins in the begging bowl ($7/month or $70/year):

1. Subscribe to my Substack

2. Become a patron via patreon.com

3. PayPal or US mail.

To those who toss caution to the winds and subscribe: thank you. It's going to be an exhilarating ride.




New podcasts:

SPECIAL REPORT: Did China's DeepSeek Just Pop The AI Stock Bubble? (56 minutes)

CHS on Geopolitics and Empire: Anti-Progress, Resource Constraints, & Digital Neofeudalism (1:29 hrs)

KunstlerCast417: Charles Hugh Smith, Progress and Anti-Progress (1 hour)

Charles Hugh Smith on the Extremes in the U.S. Economy and Markets. (26 min)



My recent books:

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site.

The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)

Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)

When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)

Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).

A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print)
Read the first section for free


Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Subscribe to my Substack for free





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