Today there is a great article in the online edition of Time magazine about how irrationally we process risks in our daily lives. I just wish they’d also point out that the extension of this mathematical ignorance, combined with religious intolerance, can account for most if not virtually all of the most pressing global problems.
We are stupid beings. The recognition of that fact brings us much closer to a measure of salvation and solutions.
This note from the China Venture News:
… nearly 75 percent of Chinese employees would prefer to work for wholly-owned foreign companies rather than joint ventures companies and wholly-owned Chinese companies according to Manpower research.
Lenin is often quoted as suggesting that capitalists would sell to communists the rope the communists would use to hang them. Sorry Vladimir but you had it pretty much backwards. Communism in both Russia and China is in the process of evolving into a new form of capitalism, and the workers of the world are uniting with … us (aka the capitalists), preferring the stability of US capitalism to the challenges of neo-capitalist communism.
There goes the neighborhood Mr. Lenin dude!
I don’t think the Pope is the best source of inspiration about how to structure the world but I certainly respect the fact that’s he’s sincerely interested in alleviating suffering and is a very sharp fellow. Here, the Pope has suggested we need major structural changes in the global economy to stem the tide of poverty.
My working assumption has been that globalization is, on balance, a hugely positive force as well as an inevitable one. In simple terms I believe this because as I travel and look around me it is the highly capitalistic and globalized environments of the USA and western democracies that provide for their people better than the “anti capitalistic, anti westers globalization” economies of Cuba, North Korea, etc.
Socialists suggest that our higher standards are a result of exploitation of the underdeveloped countries, but if this were true we’d tend to see a LOT more flow of goods and capital from, for example, Africa to the USA. In fact we see that Canada and Europe, Japan and China are the huge trading and economic partners of the USA rather than the suffering countries. In fact the striking thing about US interaction with the poor is that it’s non-existent rather than exploitative.
The Pope’s comments notwithstanding, clearly it seems we should be working to bring the poor into the globalization loop, rather than do things that might destabilize the capitalistic global goose that lays so many golden eggs.
We don’t have a crisis of economy, we have a crisis of indifference.
The new MIT Center for Collective Intelligence is a really interesting idea with *potentially* earth shaking implications. Or maybe I should say Climate shaking implications since Global Climate change collaboration is one of their first efforts.
The basic concept is simple: Use the internet to create global collaborations to solve problems.
My knee-jerk reaction after very briefly perusing the website is that some of the effort may get bogged down in it’s own somewhat beauracratically flavored “sign up here” approach:
Participation in the Handbook of Collective Intelligence is completely voluntary and participation will be subject to terms and conditions that will be added at a later date. While you should feel free to participate after registering by adding your contributions via additions, deletions, or edits of Handbook materials at this time, you should be aware that any such contributions will be subject to the terms and conditions that will be added at a later date. Once the terms and conditions are added, you will be required to re-register and assent to the terms and conditions. If you fail to assent to the terms and conditions within forty-five (45) days of their addition to the Handbook, all of your input will be removed from the Handbook. Upon your assent to the terms and conditions, you will be free to re-enter your contributions.
Given that the internet itself is already starting to resemble something of a collective intelligence entity, I hope MIT also works on ways to wire people in directly (or at least participate by simply doing things online) such that the collective contributions online become part of the collective intelligence network.
Yet however it all shakes out I can think of nothing more compelling than huge global collaborative intellectual efforts to solve the many pressing problems we feeble humans have wrought as a result of our inadequacies.
I’m still confused about what seems like a significant overreaction in the blogosphere to Wal Mart’s PR agency Edelman’s decision to sponsor a couple in their RV trip across America. The blog, now called a “fake” by many but not the authors, is WalMartingAcrossAmerica
Onliners, especially bloggers, get more pissed about this type of thing than about, for example, thousands of far, far more significant issues of global significance and ethics, death and destruction and I find that upsetting, intellectually narrow minded, obsessive, and superficial.
So, a big PR firm sponsors a blog that they see will wind up being favorable to Wal Mart? This is surprising? Unethical? If they’d set up the whole thing I’d see it differently, but that does not appear to be the case. They simply were not transparent *enough*, failing to have the bloggers disclose their financial relationship to Wal Mart.
Sure, they deserved to be chastised and called out on this as a breech of transparency, but is this more of a breech than, say, downloading illegal music and videos? Or, for that matter, building entire companies around concepts of illegal downloading? Those guys get cheers and applause and hundred-million dollar paydays.
That said maybe I’m just not reading this right and it was some major ethical breech by Wal Mart/ Edelman.
Here’s my reply to Edelman’s (too thin) apology about all this even as it becomes the top online story by far:
With all due respect this apology seems too thin, and ironically itself sounds like part of the PR-driven rather than the “blog community” approach to the issue which would outline the scoop for everybody and explain how this got so out of hand.
It’s not even clear to me that you seriously defied WOMMA guidelines assuming that things are exactly as described over at the WalMarting Across America blog. Rather it looks like somebody at Edelman saw an excellent and legitimate opportunity and then chose to fund it in a way that turned this into a blog that was too sponsored to retain credibility.
Sheesh – I think I’m articulating your position at greater length than you are?!
The Grameen Bank, which founded the concept of micro loans to empower small businesses run by the poorest in the world, is a superb choice for the award. With the current Omidyar Foundation funding it will be interesting to see if this approach to development can be scaled up in even more dramatic fashion.
Here’s an excellent summary of the very alarming new medical study on Iraq War deaths by the BBC’s Paul Reynolds. This study indicates that some 655,000 *more* people have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war than would have died without the war.
The study has really been bothering me because if true it means the toll from the war is far, far greater than even the harshest critics of the US Iraq policies have been suggesting. If true it defies reason even for the most Machiavellian nationalist to suggest that this scale of death is justified under the circumstances. If false it shows a remarkable lack of quality in a scientific, peer reviewed research project.
Reynold’s points out the key aspect of the study that is very confusing and must be reconciled by the researchers:
That supposes a huge failing by the Iraqi health ministry, a failing the report did not hint at, because it said that death certificates were readily available for most of the reported deaths in the households surveyed.
For the study’s conclusion to be valid it seem that the death certificates they say were produced 92% of the time [I’ve also seen 80% ] *were not counted* by the health ministry. This seems highly unlikely. If they were counted and the count reflects much lower numbers (as I think it does – trying to find that out) then the study is internally inconsistent. The study cannot note 92% certificated death among those interviewed and then reject certificates as a good proxy of actual deaths.
I hope Reynolds and others with key contacts are able to follow up on the Iraq report. If true, it’s a horrific finding of great historical significance. If false, it challenges our reliance on this type of high level, academically supervised research in other sectors.
Why this matters: Ironically, many people who hold strongly held beliefs both in favor and against the Iraq war are suggesting “hey, the numbers don’t really matter”. Those supporting the war think that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and collateral damage is something to sweep under the rug. Those against the war seem to feel that USA should pull out without much regard to the fate of Iraq or to the potentially catastrophic civil war that could follow a US withdrawl.
The death toll is hard to review but it is arguably the best measure of the costs of a war. Ignoring death as a key measure is fundamentally immoral.Also, suggestions to make decisions without taking count of the death toll are not only naive and irrational, they dangerously support the status quo of making decisions without enough information. The world is complex and many life and death decisions must be made every second. Precious lives and resources are being deployed daily to build hospitals, fight wars, teach, drill wells, etc.
Sadly, these allocation decisions are almost always made politically and emotionally rather than being rooted in a careful examination of the costs and the benefits of various courses of action. It’s human to make this mistake, but it’s algo tragic, and results in millions of unnecessary deaths, especially due to the lack of rational allocations in favor of health care in developing world.
Update: This is an outstanding analysis by the Iraq Body Count, an organization very unsympathetic to the war, of why the findings must be viewed with skepticism. If the Lancet and the study are to maintain credibility I would hope these concerns will be addressed.
Related links:
BBC on Iraq Body Count project counts
Some Iraq Health Ministry Numbers. Lower than the new study would suggest.
USA Today: Iraq Health Ministry told to stop counting deaths in December 2003 but it appears they started again after this controversial decision which came after they were coming up with counts that are consistent with other studies but do not appear to support the huge tolls in the new study.
Over at Jeff Jarvis‘, as well as all over the world, there’s a debate about how online news will affect offline news.
An anonymous comment notes:
>>news organizations AREN’T the ones keeping democracy alive. And maybe they haven’t done so for awhile<<
Exactly correct. “News organizations”, even at their best, reflect a highly commercialized, narrow focus on events of usually superficial and passing interest. More time’s been given to the Yankee pitcher plane crash than, say, the recent study suggesting an enormous death toll in Iraq or developments in Darfur.
Even politics is covered by almost all major outlets as scandal and personalities more than issues and substance. The stories of the century, often in the developing world and rooted in the life and death struggles facing *hundreds of millions* are eclipsed by Michael Jackson and Madonna. A notable exception has been Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN with an outstanding effort by that team to cover the African nightmares of war, famine, and AIDS.
The journalistic high road, for the most part, was left far in the distance decades ago when Ed Murrows were replaced by Geraldos and Bill O’Reillys.
Modern “journalism” … isn’t journalism. It’s a wasteland of superficiality and celebrity ruled by ratings, circulation, and money.
The internet may not make things better, but it can’t get much worse.
More on this story from:
Dave Winer
Dan Blank
BuzzMachine
Venture Capitalists make good bloggers because they often have a broad view of the world. I just found this fascinating graph over at Ed Sim’s blog that compares GDP for US, India, and China from 1820 to 2001.
The amazing thing is that back in 1820 India and China together accounted for fully half of the global economy!
What we typically describe now as “the rise of China and India” in the modern economy is actually a *resurgence* of two economic superpowers from their previous dominance. With a little help from … Wal -Mart.
Thanks to Hugo Chavez, Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project) is now number one at Amazon.
Chomsky has always bothered me … a lot …. He’s a good linguist, a foolish economist, and a terrible social scientist / political commentator. Ironically it’s only the last two topics where Chomsky gets any attention and he’s an expert in neither.
He’s the the guy who suggested back in the 70’s that the regime of Pol Pot was not a great threat to the people of Cambodia. When it became clear that Pol Pot’s communist government, the Khmer Rouge, had murdered by many accounts over a million Cambodians Chomsky’s tune changed to suggest it was American destabilization of the region that was to blame.
Although this latter argument has some merit, clear thinkers will note that Chomsky’s failure to hold ruthless Communist regimes accountable while at the same time holding America “overly accountable” for virtually all the bad in the world is a very suspect political philosophy. Here’s a good critique of Chomsky’s hypocrisy.
However, I should caveat all this by pointing out that in a world where so many people and countries are challenging GW, Dick, and the Neocons imperial vision of the USA it’s very important to have more points of view out there than our commercialized media allows. Chomsky is one of the most articulate spokesman for an intelligent radical vision of the world and I’d like to see more of him rather than the inane ranting of intellectually lobotomized right wing radio talk show hosts.
Perhaps careful consideration of many points of view will lead us to some answers. We sure need them.
Posts that contain Hugo Chavez per day for the last 30 days.
Get your own chart!
Joe Duck 