Month: October 2017

What happens next: Explore the future of money, food, facts, home, and work — Quartz

Source: What happens next: Explore the future of money, food, facts, home, and work — Quartz

In our new series, What Happens Next, we talked to the people living the future to see what it might look like.

The future has a history. And the stories we tell about incoming change—the stories we’ve always told about such changes—fall into consistent patterns. Dator gained some of his stature in future studies with his famous observation that predictions about the future—whether they’re coming from a corporate spreadsheet, a church pulpit or Hollywood—all boil down to roughly four scenarios. Growth that keeps going. Transformation upending the past. Collapse of the present order. And discipline imposed, in some cases, to hold such collapse at bay.

Understanding these patterns helps drive home the idea that the future is multiple. Living as if there’s only one way things are going to turn out isn’t terribly resilient when events take off in a shocking direction.

If our only images for the future are victory or doom, the underlying message for regular people seems to be, “There’s nothing you can do.”

We need more useful ways to consider and prepare for what happens next.

Why We Must Fight for the Right to Repair Our Electronics – IEEE Spectrum

Source: Why We Must Fight for the Right to Repair Our Electronics – IEEE Spectrum

Pending U.S. legislation could force manufacturers to make repair parts and information available at fair prices

Manufacturers don’t want you to fix that broken microwave or air conditioner; they want you to buy a new one. Some even send cease-and-desist letters to people who post repair information online.
…
In December 2016, the U.S. Copyright Office concluded a yearlong study [PDF] on copyright law, repair, and embedded software that solidly confirms that repair is legal under copyright law. The same study argues that federal copyright law can’t be used as an excuse to prevent repair.

But that hasn’t stopped some manufacturers from continuing to try.

So how can people in the United States preserve their right to repair electronics? The answer is now apparent: through right-to-repair legislation enacted at the state level.

The right to repair electronics isn’t just about repair or even about technology⁠—it’s about ownership. You bought the thing, and therefore you own it—and not just part of it but all of it. And that means you should be able to fix it or get it fixed by whomever you choose. The terms of ownership shouldn’t change just because the product has a chip in it.

Full Text: Senator Jeff Flake’s Speech on Reelection – The Atlantic

Source: Full Text: Senator Jeff Flake’s Speech on Reelection – The Atlantic, by Arizona Senator Jeff Flake (R)

We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes the normal. With respect and humility, I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it. We know better than that. By now, we all know better than that.

Leadership lives by the American creed: E pluribus unum. From many, one. American leadership looks to the world, and just as Lincoln did, sees the family of man. Humanity is not a zero-sum game.

The principles that underlie our politics, the values of our founding, are too vital to our identity and to our survival to allow them to be compromised by the requirements of politics.

The anger and resentment that the people feel at the royal mess we have created are justified. But anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy.

We must respect each other again in an atmosphere of shared facts and shared values, comity and good faith. We must argue our positions fervently, and never be afraid to compromise. We must assume the best of our fellow man, and always look for the good. Until that days comes, we must be unafraid to stand up and speak out as if our country depends on it. Because it does.

Mr. President, the graveyard is full of indispensable men and women—none of us here is indispensable. Nor were even the great figures from history who toiled at these very desks in this very chamber to shape the country that we have inherited. What is indispensable are the values that they consecrated in Philadelphia and in this place, values which have endured and will endure for so long as men and women wish to remain free. What is indispensable is what we do here in defense of those values.

America Has a Monopoly Problem—and It’s Huge | The Nation

Source: America Has a Monopoly Problem—and It’s Huge | The Nation, by Joseph E. Stiglitz

The Nobel Prize winner argues that an economy dominated by large corporations has failed the many and enriched the few.

This increase in market power helps explain simultaneously the slowdown in productivity growth, the sluggishness of the economy, and the growth of inequality—in short, the poor performance of the American economy in so many dimensions.

We should be concerned about this agglomeration of market power not just because of its economic consequences, but also because of its political consequences. An increase in economic inequality leads to an increase in political inequality, which can and has been used to create rules of the game that perpetuate economic inequality.

For a third of a century, the American economy has failed to enhance the well-being of a majority of its citizens. … There is no simple answer to problems as deep, longstanding, and pervasive as those I have discussed here. … What is required is a panoply of reforms—rewriting the rules of the American economy to make it more competitive and dynamic, fairer and more equal. … Much is at stake—not just the efficiency of our market economy, but the very nature of our democratic society.

Continue reading America Has a Monopoly Problem—and It’s Huge | The Nation

The Doom Loop of Liberalism – The Atlantic

Source: The Doom Loop of Liberalism – The Atlantic

Diversity and equality seem tragically incompatible today. But are they?

Here are three trends that are often discussed in isolation:

  1. The low birth-rates of advanced economies
  2. The rise of a xenophobic anti-immigration politics
  3. The fragility of the welfare state

While these subjects might seem to have nothing to do with each other, in fact they crash into each other like dominos. As rich countries have fewer babies, they need immigration to grow their prime-age workforces. But as the foreign-born share of the population rises, xenophobia often festers and threatens egalitarian policy-making.

an unavoidable lesson of the last few years, from both inside and outside the U.S., is that cultural heterogeneity and egalitarianism often cut against each other. … The future of the U.S. economy depends on population growth. The future of U.S. population growth depends on immigration. But, as in so much of the world, immigration can trigger bigotry and backlash. The liberal cause requires Americans learning to break the catch-22 of diversity and equality. If multicultural egalitarianism is the future of liberal politics, the road to the future will be bumpy.