robotic fighter planes

Robotic fighter planes are here. I remember reading one article (which I can’t find at the moment) about a test where human pilots were unable to beat them in a simulation. The simulation is unimportant, because the robots were unconstrained and allowed to sacrifice themselves if that gave them the greatest chance of taking out the enemy fighter. And that is just what they did – play chicken with the human pilots, whose instinct was to try to preserve themselves and their expensive planes. Anyway, here is another article from Forbes about a “robotic wingman” called Skyborg. Beyond the apocalyptic name (Terminator bad guys meet Star Trek bad guys?), the article focuses on intricacies of Pentagon procurement. Suffice it to say, the companies involved (who probably issued a press release that led to this article) hope there will be lots of procurement.

modern monetary models

These two posts have a long explanation of monetary theory in general, and modern monetary theory in particular. It’s a little over my head, although I like challenging myself to try to understand it. It is a very abstract system to try to understand. I think that if you can understand monetary policy, you might have a chance to understand what money actually is. And if enough people understand it, they might stop believing in it and the world might end.

Basically, as I understand it, the government prints money (i.e., borrows money from itself) and spends it, usually more than it takes back in taxes, and this creates a surplus in the private sector. It can control the money supply by changing the amount it borrows and spends, or by changing the tax rate. I think what people find scary about “modern monetary theory” is that it suggests money doesn’t have to be taken seriously and any needed amount can just be printed any time. This is why politicians generally have not been given the keys to the printing press.

I have a metaphor in my mind of the real economy as a machine with pistons and gears turning. The fuel for the machine is maybe human effort and ideas (and some actual fuel). But the gears will grind without grease, so you have to lube it up. Not enough and the system will shut down violently. Adding extra will not make the machine turn faster, but it will not do any serious harm other than maybe a gunky mess someone has to clean up. Better to use a little too much lube than not enough. The lube for the economic machine is money.

There were a few other interesting things in the articles that I didn’t know or hadn’t thought about recently. It refers to the late Wynne Godley at Cambridge University as the “father of stock-flow consistent modeling”. I think a few people in a few different disciplines might claim that mantle, but that is the neat thing about system theory, it’s interdisciplinary. There is a certain irony if anyone is into it and doesn’t realize it is interdisciplinary.

There is a free(?) system dynamics system called Minsky, something like Stella but tailored specifically to finance and economics. Matlab also has a sort of stock-flow simulation module call Simulink that I hadn’t heard of. I am still waiting for that system dynamics R package.

The Minsky model also made me think of the late Jay Forrester, who advocated for a long time for stock-flow modeling in economics.

Traditional mainstream academic economics, by trying to be a science, has failed to answer major questions about real- life economic behavior. Economics should become a systems profession, such as management, engineering, and medicine. By closely observing the structures and policies in business and government, simulation models can be constructed to answer questions about business cycles, causes of major depressions, inflation, monetary policy, and the validity of descriptive economic theories. A system dynamics model, as a general theory of economic behavior, now endogenously generates business cycles, Kuznets cycles, the economic long wave, and growth. A model is a theory of the behavior that it generates. The economic model provides the theory, thus far missing from economics, for the Great Depression of the 1930s and how such episodes can recur 50–70 years apart. Simpler system dynamics models can become the vehicle for a relevant and exciting pre-college economics education.

Jay Forrester, quoted in a blog called Viewpoints that Matter (including the blogger’s viewpoint, presumably)

Imagine if the average high school graduate really had an intuitive understanding of how important systems like the economy are structured and why they function the way they do as a result. The world might be a different place.

I’ve been working on one more metaphor for awhile. Maybe the real economy is like a tightrope, and the financial economy is like a safety net stretched above a concrete floor. If we use too much food, water, energy, saturate the atmosphere and ocean with our waste, etc. we will fall off the rope. Hitting the concrete floor would be a failure of the real economy like starvation or freezing to death. The safety net would be a spike in prices for food or energy that slows down the economy short of (most people, right away) actually dying of exposure. The fall would still be very painful and you might break bones or even your neck if you fall just the wrong way. What about something like nuclear proliferation or all the ice in Antarctica suddenly melting? I don’t know, maybe dry rot in the old net that we are failing to do anything about. No price signal is going to save us from those.

Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis

The Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis has a new report, Climate Action: Building a Clean Economy for the American People. It has a laundry list of the kinds of measures that are needed and that the next Congress could choose to act on. What is really interesting though is the last chapter, which is called Dark Money. It takes solid aim at the fossil fuel industry’s campaign to misinform, disinform, and buy political influence, especially following the Citizens United decision. On the page introducing this topic is a picture of our Supreme Court justices.

The Democratic Senators blame Republicans, of course, but the cirampaigns need to be funded too. They pretty much admit here that big business owns Congress, and the Supreme Court made that happen. Well, remembering my high school civics, the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution, but Congress wrote the Constitution and Congress can change it.

August 2020 in Review

Goodbye summer, hello fall (or do you prefer to say autumn?) in this weird and consequential year.

Most frightening and/or depressing story:

  • We just had the 15-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a major regional crisis that federal, state, and local governments failed to competently prepare for or respond to. People died, and decades later the recovery is incomplete. Coronavirus proves we learned nothing, as it is unfolding in a similar way on a much larger and longer scale. There are many potential crises ahead that we need to prepare for today, not least the inundation of major cities. I had a look at the Democratic and (absence of a) Republican platforms, and there is not enough substance in either when it comes to identifying and preparing for the risks ahead.

Most hopeful story:

  • Automatic stabilizers might be boring but they could have helped the economy in the coronavirus crisis. Congress, you failed us again but you can get this done before the next crisis.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:

  • Vehicle miles traveled have crashed during the coronavirus crisis. Vehicle-related deaths have decreased, but deaths per mile driven have increased, most likely because people drive faster when there is less traffic, absent safe street designs which we don’t do in the U.S. Vehicle miles will rebound, but an interesting question is whether they will rebound short of where they were. One study predicts about 10% lower. This accounts for all the commuting and shopping trips that won’t be taken, but also the increase in deliveries and truck traffic you might expect as a result. It makes sense – people worry about delivery vehicles, but if each parcel in the vehicle is a car trip to the store not taken, overall traffic should decrease. Even if every 5 parcels are a trip not taken, traffic should decrease. I don’t know the correct number, but you get the idea. Now, how long until people realize it is not worth paying and sacrificing space to have a car sitting there that they seldom use. How long before U.S. planners and engineers adopt best practices on street design that are proven to save lives elsewhere in the world?

humidity helps reduce coronavirus transmission

Humidify those schools!

The relationship between climatic factors and COVID‐19 cases in New South Wales, Australia was investigated during both the exponential and declining phases of the epidemic in 2020, and in different regions. Increased relative humidity was associated with decreased cases in both epidemic phases, and a consistent negative relationship was found between relative humidity and cases. Overall, a decrease in relative humidity of 1% was associated with an increase in cases of 7–8%. Overall, we found no relationship with between [sic] cases and temperature, rainfall or wind speed.

Transboundary and Emerging Diseases

Not being a scientist or doctor, I have always assumed that mucous membranes inside your nose help block germs, and that a dried out nose in the winter time is one reasons colds, coughs, and flu spread through schools and offices every winter. It seems like a relatively simple measure to take that would have a clear positive effect. Now, to sit back and wait for my children’s schools and my office building manager to explain why it can’t be done.

The Republican Party Doesn’t Stand for Anything!

I said I was going to look at the Republican Party Platform.

I have voted for Republican candidates at the state and local level at times in the past. I am sympathetic to pro-business, pro-growth arguments at times. I think that some countries have overreached in terms of taxation and regulation at times. I tried to give the Republican Party the benefit of the doubt. BUT…

Today I confirmed that THERE IS NO REPUBLICAN PARTY PLATFORM. They didn’t meet to discuss one, and didn’t adopt one, in 2020. They are for whatever Trump says, and against whatever Obama and the Democratic Party say. They have no ideas, no policy proposals. They simply don’t stand for anything! This is not propaganda. I am not making this up. This is what their website literally says. Just to make sure I wasn’t missing something, I went to the Republican National Committee website, and clicked on the link to the party platform from there. Here’s what is says:

WHEREAS, The RNC has unanimously voted to forego the Convention Committee on Platform, in appreciation of the fact that it did not want a small contingent of delegates formulating a new platform without the breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement…

WHEREAS, The RNC, had the Platform Committee been able to convene in 2020, would have undoubtedly unanimously agreed to reassert the Party’s strong support for President Donald Trump and his Administration

WHEREAS, The RNC enthusiastically supports President Trump and continues to reject the policy positions of the Obama-Biden Administration, as well as those espoused by the Democratic National Committee today; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda;

RESOVLVED [sic], That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention

The Republican Party

Okay, fine, let’s look at the 2016 platform then, and compare it to the policy priorities of my pretend party platform.

  • Anti-corruption? No! They are literally against any limits on the purchasing of influence by the rich and powerful. p. 12.
  • A major childcare, education, and training commitment? No! The health and welfare of children is a paramount responsibility of the government…right up to the point where they are born. From that point, childcare is up to parents alone, preferably two heterosexual parents, and the government will not and should not interfere. Parents should have a choice of schools, which sounds reasonable, but in practice this means defunding the universal public education system. Make sure white people are not discriminated against in college admissions. The government should not provide student loans and higher education should be privatized as much as possible.
  • A major public infrastructure and private capital investment commitment? A major research and development commitment? They talk about technology. They talk about startups. I’ll give them some points for talking about the electric grid, which Democrats don’t mention. They don’t really see an active government role in any of these things, let alone an active funding role. They are maybe open to some funding for R&D in the private health care industry.
  • Universal health care? No! Continue to rely on the failed private market place that provides poor outcomes at the world’s highest prices, for those who are able to obtain care at all.
  • A major risk management program? No, but remember I didn’t give the Democrats a high score on this. I’ll give them some points for talking about food security. I’ll give them some points for talking about cybersecurity. They talk a lot about coal. I wonder if they would still talk about coal so much if they adopted a new platform? They state that the IPCC is a political body, not a scientific one. They reject international agreements on carbon emissions. They want to double down in the war on drugs. They are generally for more military spending, more nuclear weapons, and against arms control agreements. Iran, China, and maybe Russia are the enemies. They are just generally against much involvement in international organizations.
  • New revenue to support investment? No, they’re just generally against taxes.
  • Unemployment, disability, retirement? No, they want to monkey with social security.

I tried to be objective and read the document with fresh eyes. I am generally disgusted by it. This is a party with no ideas for improving the country, and I would not entrust them with leadership of anything. I hope they crash and burn in 2020, and reemerge as a more moderate, pro-business and pro-growth party.

Katrina, 15 years on

August 29, 2020 will be the 20-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in New Orleans. I think it’s a critical event to understand for at least two reasons. First, it was an early, regional example of U.S. governmental failure to prepare, respond, and recover from a known risk. Now we have a crisis unfolding on a much larger scale, and the government is proving to be just as inept as it was in 2005, with far greater consequences. So I think Katrina was an early warning of government dysfunction that we failed to heed.

As far as coronavirus goes, we are past the prepare stage and it is getting late to mount an effective response. We can still recover though. New Orleans didn’t really recover fully, according to this article.

A year after the storm, over half the city’s schools remained shut; under a third of flooded-out residents had returned; and few buses were running in a city where more than a third of African American households did not own cars. By the second anniversary, no further schools had reopened and damaged rental units largely languished unrepaired. And in 2015, the number of children living in poverty, almost 40 per cent – nearly twice the national average – remained unchanged from when the levees broke.

TLS

So Katrina was a cautionary tale of the U.S. government (and I’m talking federal, state, and local) failing to prepare, respond, and recover from a known risk. On a more literal level, it will not be the last coastal American city to be inundated. Eventually they may all be inundated. It is time to learn from what went wrong in Katrina and figure out how to apply it nationally to prepare, respond, and recover from the disasters that are coming.

who’s going to Mars?

Here’s a rundown from The Week:

  • The U.S., China, and UAE are all sending unmanned missions to Mars at the moment.
  • It takes about 7-10 months to get there.
  • There is water on the surface of Mars right now, in the form of polar ice caps. I guess I sort of knew that, but not really. I thought there was evidence that there used to be water (there is, and it’s indisputable) and/or that there might be water underground.
  • “NASA’s timeline calls for a crewed mission to the moon by 2024, a lunar base by 2028, and flights from the moon base to Mars sometime in the 2030s.”
  • Elon Musk says he is planning unmanned and manned missions to Mars.
  • If you go to Mars, you pretty much have to accept that the radiation will shorten your natural life, and it is unlikely you will make it back to Earth.

the Democratic Party Platform

Since the Democratic convention is this week (as I write), let’s have a look at the party platform. I’ll get to the Republican one eventually.

First, let me think about what I’d like to see in there before I read it (seriously, I haven’t read it yet!)

  • Anti-corruption measures. One person, one vote instead of one dollar, one vote. Free political speech for human beings only. Without this you can’t really get anything else done because a tiny rich and powerful minority affected by each policy can block it. This probably means a constitutional amendment.
  • A major childcare, education, and training commitment. This would help struggling working parents, students, and people out of work right now, and put children on the right path to contribute to the economy and society in the long term.
  • A major public infrastructure and private capital investment commitment. This is necessary for both economic growth and quality of life.
  • A major research and development commitment. This is necessary for growth and competitiveness, and also creates jobs.
  • Universal health care. Just join the world’s modern nations and f-ing do it now! It will help with problems like the pandemic, drug addiction, depression, suicide, child mortality, etc.
  • A major risk management program. This sounds unglamorous, and it can be called something else, but the basic insight here is that we were not prepared for the pandemic and we should have been. Well, there will be another pandemic sooner or later, and there are many other risks big and small like nuclear war, famine, fires, floods, earthquakes, and sea level rise. Then there is preventable disease, accidents, violence, and pollution that kill small numbers of people predictably every day and add up to big numbers over time. We need to pick a top five or ten risks and really tackle them systematically, both domestically and internationally. Once we understand what the biggest risks are, we could realign funding, policy and institutions to match.
  • New revenue to support investment. We might be able to take most of what we need from the defense budget, but we might need to RAISE TAXES. If so, join all the other modern nations and just institute a value added tax. It’s the best practice, do it now! I would also support taxes on pollution (e.g., a carbon tax) and waste (e.g., non-recyclable packaging).
  • Unemployment and disability benefits probably could be shored up, and retirement benefits are basically adequate but need to be protected and adequately funded. All this would help deal with the pandemic in the short term and automation in the longer term.

You might ask where climate change, or environmental protection more broadly, or social justice are in this platform. Well, if done right they are woven throughout all of the above.

Okay, that’s the platform for my pretend party. Now for the Democrats.

  • Anti-corruption? Yes, p. 58 gets around to mentioning a constitutional amendment on campaign finance.
  • A major childcare, education, and training commitment? Yes – it’s pretty strong here.
  • A major public infrastructure and private capital investment commitment? an infrastructure bank is mentioned, basically transportation-only
  • A major research and development commitment? “historic federal investments”!
  • Universal health care? Yes, there’s a public option, and people without private coverage get signed up automatically unless they opt out. There’s some cryptic language though about it being in place “until the end of the pandemic”. Hopefully once it’s in place it would be politically difficult to remove it.
  • A major risk management program? piecemeal – pandemics are mentioned as one might expect. Gun violence is mentioned. Agriculture is mentioned but there’s not really a focus on long-term food security. Climate change and air pollution are discussed in some detail. Biodiversity and habitat actually get a paragraph. It gets around to tepid mentions of defense spending and nuclear weapons somewhere towards the end. Only nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, not even reduction let alone elimination.
  • New revenue to support investment? not really anything new – roll back some previous cuts, reduce loopholes, etc. Campaigning on raising taxes is obviously not a winning strategy. Only Bernie Sanders had the guts to go there.
  • Unemployment, disability, retirement? piecemeal proposals, “shore up the states”

So the platform kind of, mostly contains the stuff I care about, except it’s weak on nuclear weapons and peace and tepid on infrastructure. The stuff I care about is buried in a lot of other…stuff. Race and gender stuff. Union stuff. I’m not against most of this stuff, I just think it is a lot of empty words for the most part.

Doughnut Economics

Doughnut Economics is a new attempt to communicate the goal of an economy that works for humans while not exceeding the natural limits of the planetary system it is embedded in. You want to be in the dough part. If you are in the hole, you are within planetary boundaries but you are poor, starving, unwell, or otherwise not benefiting from the economy that is working for at least some other people. If you are outside the doughnut entirely, you are outside planetary boundaries and the planetary system will not be able to continue supporting the economic system (including you, and everyone else) indefinitely.

The majority of intelligent and educated people on the planet do not understand these concepts. We need a critical mass of people, certainly leaders and decision makers, to understand the problem before we have much hope of solving it. I support new and novel attempts to communicate these ideas. This one doesn’t quite seem fully coherent to me in terms of stocks and flows, and I think if we taught children about stocks and flows from a young age they would grow up better able to understand systems in terms that aren’t so dumbed down.