President Obama may be smarter than most of us, but he’s still attempting to rescue the very institutions that robbed us in the first place. He’s not a socialist, as conservatives may be arguing, but he is a corporatist. Using future tax dollars to fund government job programs is one thing. Using future tax dollars to give banks more money to lend out at interest is robbing from the poor to pay the rich to rob from the poor.

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Rival drug cartels, the same violent groups warring in Mexico for control of routes to lucrative U.S. markets, have established Atlanta as the principal distribution center for the entire eastern U.S., according to the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center.

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The same regional features that appeal to legitimate corporate operations — access to transportation systems and proximity to major U.S. cities — have lured the cartels, Atlanta U.S. Attorney David Nahmias says.

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Forget DRML, you don’t need it: think Google Translate. There exists a corpus of audiobooks, with intonation (thanks to professional readers). There exists speech-to-text software. It should be possible to build a corpus of spoken phrases, correlated with the reader’s intonation, and then match text from a new work against the corpus to take a “best guess” approach to how to emphasize it. (Google is apparently doing something similar, using the UN’s gigantic corpus of multilingual translations of documents to build a database of phrase-level translations into multiple languages, which can then be applied to web pages. It’s effectively a non realtime mechanical turk, leveraging the historic work of an army of translators.

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Posted by: Charlie Stross | February 27, 2009 2:39 PM

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We have fouled the nest so thoroughly and in so many ways that I would be absolutely shocked if humanity comes out the other end of this century with any level of organization above that of clans and villages. It’s not just carbon emissions and global warming, it’s depleted soil fertility, it’s synthetic estrogens bioaccumulating in the aquatic food chain, it’s our inability to stop using antibiotics in a way that gives rise to multi-drug-resistance in microbes.

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..given the deep corruption (sorry, it’s impossible to argue that getting multi-million dollar bonuses for incompetence and costless public bailouts that pay off huge gambling debts is anything else) of the current US elites..

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Germany’s tilt towards manufacturing is something it shares with France and Italy, the next largest euro-area economies. That bent has left them cumbersome rather than strong. It is goods-producers that suffer most during recessions. Consumers are unwilling to shell out on expensive items, such as cars and home appliances but are less prone to cut back on the frequent small purchases that keep many service industries ticking over. Just as consumers are making do with the cars and fridges they already own, firms are increasingly loth to splash out for new plant and machinery. In uncertain times, the instinct is to make equipment last a little longer. That strikes at the heart of Germany’s economy, which specialises in consumer durables and capital goods.

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Pastor calls the problem in Mexico “even worse than Chicago during the Prohibition era” and said a solution similar to what ended that violence is needed now.

“What worked in the U.S. was not Eliot Ness,” he said, referring to the federal agent famous for fighting gangsters in 1920s and ‘30s. “It was the repeal of Prohibition.”

That viewpoint has picked up some high-level support in Latin America.

Last week, the former presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil called for the decriminalization of marijuana for personal use and a change in strategy on the war on drugs at a meeting in Brazil of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy.

“The problem is that current policies are based on prejudices and fears and not on results,” former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria said at a news conference, in which the 17-member commission’s recommendations were presented.

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“Television, computers, all of these things are de-socializing us… expensive technologies take energy and resources and complicated sometimes toxic materials and processes to manufacture….”

*Well, the net and cellphones definitely are de-socializing us – in the sense that former social structures are visibly dissolving. Last night we had dinner for guests and we brought out some fine silverware from the 1930s. It was amazing how archaic it looked and felt compared to our mismatched plates, re-used jelly-glasses, constantly bleeping cellphones, a digital flatscreen at our elbows, and the other globalized bric-a-brac of our multinational existence.

*It’s beautiful social technology, silverware. Henry Petroski wrote some very nice design-studies things about silverware. Silverware is pretty. To eat with tools almost as heavy as lead makes you very conscious of proper table-manners. We have almost none. Except that we are kind to our friends. Everyone was comfortable; we are how we are. The silverware didn’t feel much like sociality any more; it was a party trick, conversation pieces.

*Being de-socialized doesn’t mean falling into an asocial abyss. The 1930s were horrible times. If you try to return to the sociality of the 1930s you are heading straight for what they used to call “the Dark Valley.”

*I don’t have 1930s catered dinner parties, but I do have stuff like this WELL conversation.

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I noticed that Yochai Benkler, “Mr Commons-Based Peer Production,” weighed in. So I quote him.

“Free market ideology "This is not a technical innovation but a change in realm of ideas. The resurgence of free market ideology, after its demise in the Great Depression, came to dominance between the 1970s and the late 1990s as a response to communism. As communism collapsed, free market ideology triumphantly declared its dominance. In the U.S. And the UK it expressed itself, first, in the Reagan/Thatcher moment; and then was generalized in the Clinton/Blair turn to define their own moment in terms of integrating market-based solutions as the core institutional innovation of the “left.”

"It expressed itself in Europe through the competition-focused, free market policies of the technocratic EU Commission; and in global systems through the demands and persistent reform recommendations of the World Bank, the IMF, and the world trade system through the WTO.

"But within less than two decades, its force as an idea is declining.

"On the one hand, the Great Deflation of 2008 has shown the utter dependence of human society on the possibility of well-functioning government to assure some baseline stability in human welfare and capacity to plan for the future.

"On the other hand, a gradual rise in volunteerism and cooperation, online and offline, is leading to a reassessment of what motivates people, and how governments, markets, and social dynamics interoperate.

"I expect the binary State/Market conception of the way we organize our large systems to give way to a more fluid set of systems, with greater integration of the social and commercial; as well as of the state and the social. So much of life, in so many of our societies, was structured around either market mechanisms or state bureaucracies. The emergence of new systems of social interaction will affect what we do, and where we turn for things we want to do, have, and experience.”

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When Confucius was asked the first thing he would do upon taking office, he replied that he would “rectify names”, as “If names are not rectified then language will not flow. If language does not flow, then affairs cannot be completed.” In the same way, whenever we try and talk about thing “new economics of the commons,” it is nearly impossible to have a sensible discussion, as not only are there no precedents to work with, there are not even any words to discuss it with, sort of like newspeak in reverse. It was part of the reason novel concepts such as democracy and atheism took so long to get off the ground, as the relevant concepts could not be adequately expressed.

If we are to seek some precedents, I suggest the classics. The politicians of ancient Athens gained power by supporting the needy, starting schools and building public monuments. The concept of “gravitas,” so inherent in the Roman system, important enough to cause Caesar to march on Rome, has disappeared from the English language, and has found no replacement.

Perhaps Sarko and Obama are a new type of politician riding on the blogosphere?

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