Massively Connected

                                                                                              written 8 June, 2025

                                                                                        published 15 June, 2025

     

            In 1999, Thomas Friedman wrote "The Lexus And The Olive Tree", describing the fundamental global shifts after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1991.  Decades of rigid geopolitical economic structures disappeared, and the new reality was dominated by the rise of computers, the Internet, and cell phones.  Where before, all transactions operated within the confines of "which side are you on?", now everyone was functionally connected to an unprecedented degree.  Since the book was written, this connectivity has accelerated with the introduction of the first iPhone in 2008 and now artificial intelligence (AI).

            With Internet access, information can be drawn from around the world and be communicated with almost anyone.  Business can be conducted from anywhere that has access to shipping, and financial transactions can take place anywhere.  This connectivity has given rise to web businesses that have driven long standing brick and mortar companies into bankruptcy, and allowed the migration of viable economies from urban densities to more rural communities, as long as web access is adequate.

            The economic advantages of being connected have spurred countries to open their economies to the world, bringing in foreign investment, which can increase the standard of living.  Countries that remain disconnected, supposedly protecting their local advantages, fall behind.  Disconnection comes from inadequate Internet bandwidth and availability, lack of accounting transparency, limited rule of law, and corrupt political systems.  Unfortunately, America is becoming more disconnected under our current administration.

            A measure of the rapid change is computer processing speeds.  Since the Berlin Wall fell, consumer computer processing speeds have increased by over 100 thousand times, and super computers are a million times faster than that. All transactions are happening much more rapidly.  In minutes, you can arrange a car loan through your phone, from anywhere.  Profits in the stock market can come by placing a server a few feet closer to the node, getting bids microseconds faster than the competition.  

            Friedman is a free market booster, so his book mostly describes the benefits from this new connected, free market, globalized world, but does identify some problems.  Monetary wealth is the only measure of prosperity that is valued.  Short term thinking dominates, destroying the natural world.  Extreme economic inequities are on the rise.

            Global finances are no longer managed and controlled by a small group.  People all over the world participate, forming what Friedman calls the "Electronic Herd", which swirls around the planet, chasing the maximum profit of the moment.  Being a herd of individuals, mob mentality prevails, dominated by incomplete information.  It can flood into countries, turbocharging the local economy, but can be spooked, and rush out in a flash, leaving economic wreckage behind.  

            In the connected economy, a crash in one corner of the planet can trigger global upheaval elsewhere.  The 1997 Southeast Asian crisis began in Thailand, affected other countries in the region, spread to Russia and its neighbors, and then to Latin America.  Chasing profits selling mortgage backed securities in the US, using increasingly risky loans, eventually caused the 2008 economic crisis, which shook the world.

            This massive interconnection is real, an expression of the basic unity described in both spiritual metaphysics and quantum physics and cannot be avoided.  But our culture, historically based on the illusion of separation and exclusive gain, is under assault because actual connection has never before been such a dominant paradigm.  

            As a result, we are vulnerable to the limitations inherent in the human species.  Many people are responsible and ethical, while others are corrupt and traumatized, but all have access to the whole world.  Along with the benefits of connection, we also suffer from cybercrime, hacking, fraud, polarizing social media, and massive disinformation.  News sources used to be held to journalistic standards, but now anyone can be an influencer, and AI makes fraud easier.  Instead of a few channels of information, we have millions, and information overload is everywhere.

            Rather than accepting all our information from "outside", perhaps we can begin to cultivate information from "inside".  Inspiration is how our personality experiences the "aha" clarity coming from our internal connection with being alive.  Everyone already has that access to some extent, but intention can enhance our receptivity.  Balance may involve deliberately stepping away from outside information addiction, and instead cultivate practices of quiet, stilling the external noise, to hear the soft internal voice of wisdom, which is our birthright.

 

Compared To What?

                                                                                              written 1 June, 2025

                                                                                           published 8 June, 2025

 

            In any conversation about the climate crisis and solutions to deal with it, someone often complains "it costs too much".  But rarely does the discussion consider "compared to what?"

            To restate the basics, for several centuries our global energy system has been powered by combustion of fossil fuels, which has slowly changed the atmospheric chemistry, making it more opaque to infrared energy, trapping more heat.  As a result, Earth is becoming less habitable for humans, and economic stability is threatened.  The solution is twofold: complete economic decarbonization (stop adding to the problem), and carbon dioxide sequestration (returning to an atmosphere we know supports humanity).

            The first part requires a complete redesign of our global energy system, with cost estimates of about $60 trillion, which is indeed a lot of money.  But compared to what?  The global economy already spends $7 trillion on fossil fuels each and every year.  However, the cheapest reserves, those easiest to access, have already been burned up, so this annual cost will keep increasing, even if sufficient new reserves are developed.  

            In contrast, renewable energy is free, already being delivered to the planet, so the cost involves only the hardware to collect and store that free energy.  Decarbonizing with renewables would change from a constantly increasing energy bill to a fixed cost infrastructure.  Investing in renewables avoids inflation by prepaying decades of energy costs.

            Of course, the trillions involved in the fossil fuel industry create massive economic inertia to keep things as they are, since the current economic winners will probably not be the renewable energy winners.  But the economics are pushing toward change.

            While fossil fuel development will only get more expensive, further exhausting finite resources each year, solar systems are getting cheaper, because improved manufacturing continues to drop the per unit price.  In the last fifty years, solar panel prices dropped from $100/watt to $0.50/watt, while gasoline prices increased from $0.20/gal to $5.00/gal.

            Ukiah School district installed canopy solar arrays in three location in PG&E territory, at a cost of $3.00/watt.  Over the 25 year life of the system, that will produce electricity costing $0.10/KWhr, one quarter the current cost of the cheapest PG&E power.

            The large upfront cost is a problem.  However, this is just a financial distribution issue.  The explosive shift from horses to automobiles in the early 1900's was the result of bankers extending auto loans to more people.  As more global monied interests see the profit in renewables, the shift will accelerate.

            However, if you still think it is too expensive to make the renewable shift even to save money, then consider the cost of doing nothing.  More extreme climate is already here, and getting worse.  When a community is destroyed, like Paradise, CA, the Big Bend area of Florida, or the storm flooded areas in the east, it can take more than a decade to get back to where they were before the disaster.  US economic losses from extreme climate (drought, floods, heat, cold, fires, and storms) are already approaching Pentagon funding levels, with unaccounted increases in health and grocery costs.  

            Extreme wildfires and damaging storms have made affordable insurance problematic in California and Florida.  Consider what will happen to real estate, banking, and local governmental property tax based funding, when large areas become "uninsurable", which is projected to happen within a decade or so.  

             These economic hits are the result of just the gradual heating from the changing climate.  Abrupt, nonlinear changes have also been identified, which would break our economy and our entire food production system.

            The global GDP is over $110 trillion, and the economy is brittle, vulnerable to disruption from unexpected disturbances.  What is it worth to avoid having the economy collapse?  By spending extra money now, we can avoid, or at least mitigate, the consequences of apparently low probability events.  This is the reason for property insurance.  This is the reason for upgraded seismic engineering in earthquake country.  

            There is no solution without dealing with the underlying cause.  There is no possibility of avoiding events when you refuse to even acknowledge they exist, which is the current insane policy of the Federal government.  What is the wisdom of ignoring reality?

            So, when you hear someone complain that it is too expensive to address the climate crisis, ask them if they like paying high energy prices.  Ask them want kind of planet they want for their grandchildren.

Some Things To Think About

                                                                                            written 25 May, 2025

                                                                                          published 1 June, 2025

   

            Capitalism lowers costs to provide more affordable products.  Labor has long been viewed as a cost to be reduced.  Using machines, and now robots, which are fixed cost hardware, productivity increases, making human workers redundant.  Some large factories have more robots than humans, and the ideal is no human workers at all.  But we live in a consumer economy, which grows by encouraging people to buy ever more goods and services each year.  With fiscal concerns demanding a lowest cost economy, and fewer people are employed to make what is consumed, can the economy support any customers?

            Can a multi billionaire be expected to know anything about our life?  Does our standard of living depend on others being impoverished?

            A robust economy needs long term investments in infrastructure and manufacturing.  For example, the housing market is based on the 30-year mortgage, often at a fixed interest rate.  The US economy has been relatively stable for decades, so the US dollar has been a global standard where people around the world can invest reliably.  The chaotic turmoil of extreme tariffs, changing weekly with the whims of our leader, brings that economic stability into question.  Do we benefit if the macho economic bullying of the rest of the planet sinks the US dollar?

            Should a political office be for sale to the highest bidder?   Is public corruption OK if it is blatant?  

            Most people of color have directly experienced racist discrimination, or know others who have.  Most women have experienced misogynistic sexism, or know others who have.  Most white men are ignorant of this experience.  Does that ignorance explain their arrogance?

            Is money constitutionally protected speech?  Are corporations really people, with rights over actual humans?

            Ideal capitalism assumes all the costs in producing a product or service are reflected in the price.  But economic reality includes "externalized costs", which are not factored into the sale price, and wind up being paid by other people, who may not be included in the transaction, and may not know the costs for decades.  This may be intentional fraud, or the result of ignorance, but the costs get paid eventually, which distorts the entire society.  How can we know if the best deal is really the cheapest price in the moment?

            Is it OK to make money selling a product that poisons people?  Is it better if the people being poisoned don't know about it at the time?  Is it more acceptable if taxes are paid?

            We have seen explosive changes with the rise of computers, the Internet, and smart phones.  How we communicate and do business has radically changed, driving some businesses to extinction, speeding the pace of all transactions.  People now have unprecedented power in their pocket, with access to the information from around the world, and the ability to communicate with anyone almost anywhere.  The underlying unity of the world is manifested materially.  But that connection has also spawned global scams and frauds, massive disinformation campaigns, and the rise of cyber terrorism by criminals and hostile nation states.  Can we be connected without being ripped off?

            Which is more important, competition or cooperation?  Which is more important, breathing in or breathing out?

            Our existing global economy is only possible with relatively cheap energy to power production and transportation.  But we have already consumed the most affordable fossil fuels, and are moving too slowly to renewable sources and living on our global energy income.  As more people consume more material while living on a finite planet, how does it end?  Are humans no smarter than beer yeast, explosively populating, eventually dying in their own waste? Will extraterrestrials show up, bottle our atmosphere, and sell it for a good time somewhere else? 

            The rest of the world is going green.  Why should they listen to the ignorant scold in the White House?  What happens when America is left behind?

            Boosters claim the free market is best for the economy.  But short term gains are more valued than long term gains.  The first hostile takeover was a relatively sustainable lumber company.  Then harvest rates were tripled, completely clear cut in a few years, workers were laid off, and the company was then sold off in pieces.  Such processes are now a global.  What happens when the entire planet has been clear cut, and shut down?  

             Money is a concept, but life is an experience.  Which is more valuable?