Voters Are Ignorant, Not Dumb

The lovely Dr. Diana Thomas makes a nice point.  Voters aren't ignorant because they are dumb.  In fact, voters are ignorant because they are SMART.

Raising the question of whether, as Angus has suggested, the ethical choice is actually NOT to vote, especially if you are uninformed.  Think how great it would be if anyone who knew s/he didn't know much decided, "The moral choice is to stay home!"  What a wonderful world that would be!

You ain't seen nothing yet

We are headed for a world where most production can be done efficiently without very many people. Either smart machines will do it by themselves, or communications technology will massively raise the scale at which that the best people can practice their trade.

In other words, we are headed for a new gilded age where owners of capital and labor market superstars will be producing a massive chunk of the economic pie. The exact percentage? Shall we say 90?

Our politicians are, as usual, fighting the last war. It's nuts to worry about getting manufacturing jobs back, because as a first approximation, there won't be any in 10-15 years.

I can think of two possible outcomes for the rest of us.

 One is that we are all on the dole, happily chewing qat or plugging into the Matrix of amazing alternate reality experiences available to us.

The other is that we form an army of personal service providers to the ultra rich. I specialize in fingernail care, you focus on toenails. Uncle Chester vacuums out bellybuttons, and so on.

Unless we get fully functional personal assistant robots who can pass the Turing test.

Then it's the Matrix for all of us non-elites.

People, how do you want to spend your time in a world where meaningful work is not really an option for most of us?

Inchworms: Gore and Frass

I didn't even know what "frass" was. Until now.

There is no great stagnation II (DJ style)

Check out these amazing turntable decks made from LEGOS! This one came from Germany and has a construction manual available here along with more pics:

This one is from the good old USA (more info here):

Honey Badger still don't care

Hat tip to Keith G.

Honey Badger don't care

Hat tip to Aaron S.