Of Siren Servers and Radical Markets

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society
Eric A Posner and E. Glen Weyl
Nonfiction 337 pages
Princeton University Press, 2018

Who Owns the Future?
Jaron Lanier
Nonfiction 396 pages
Simon & Schuster, 2013

It is difficult to review what one doesn't fully understand. Which isn't to say that I was totally baffled by these two books from these  three authors. Their descriptions of socioeconomic problems made perfect sense to me. It was their solutions that baffled me.

"Radical Markets" looks at capitalism in a radical way, starting with the premise that property is monopoly. While their solutions are sometimes over-explained, they none-the-less failed to convince me. That may be due to my inadequate understanding of economics, or perhaps I've correctly intuited that something is missing in their solutions.

Regardless, the ideas are certainly worth reading. One in particular was splendid. It's called quadradic voting, and it works like this: let's say you have a number of vote credits and you can spend them across a number of issues. To vote once on an issue costs one vote credit, to vote twice costs four credits, and voting three times costs nine. If you really cared about an issue, you could vote four times, spending sixteen vote credits. The more you care, the more it costs you. This might be a good way to decide certain popular issues. We live in times where manipulating complex math is easy. There are all kinds of new solutions we could try.

The authors also discuss the idea of treating data as currency, giving credit for this idea to Jaron Lanier. The idea evolved as a solution to what Lanier calls "Siren Servers." I feel the same ambivalence toward Lanier's solutions as I do to those of the other authors. Lanier's label, "Siren Servers", refers to technology companies that make their money by mining other people's content or data. According to Lanier, people should be paid for the demographic data they provide to those who mine it for marketing products or gaining or suppressing potential votes. Sadly, in the United States a great deal of money is spent persuading voters to embrace policies that harm them while enriching those who already have too much. Paying people for their demographic data won't fix this problem. Limiting how much Political Action Committees can spend would do greater good.

I'm not sure Lanier's solution is workable, but I'm completely sure that Siren Servers are an engine of income inequality. Once software is written, only maintenance costs remain. Siren Servers don't require factories full of workers. Only a few, very well paid, employees are needed. Since there are only a handful of Siren Servers, there is little competition to limit price. Apple can charge an app maker 30 percent for a sale in its app store because no competitor charges less. It may not seem like much, but 30 percent of retail price is a strain for both the app maker and the app consumer. On the unregulated internet, price gouging is business as usual. In its earliest days the internet was used to share government and academic information. As the World Wide Web gained popularity, this information source was commodified. Going forward, the internet needs to be more like a library and less a device for monopolist rent collectors.

Explore Denver by Trail

Every city has its secrets and Denver is no exception. Among Denver’s secrets are its miles and miles of trails shared by cycling, walking, rollerblading, and riding urban adventurers. Of course, not every trail is suitable for every conveyance—horses aren’t permitted in some places and rollerblades will suffer on unpaved portions—but all in all, there’s plenty for everyone, especially those who travel on foot.

Suppose you’re attending a convention in the mile high city. Day’s business done, adventure calls. You leave the Colorado Convention Center, cross Speer Boulevard, descend a few stairs, and you’re there. You’re now on the Cherry Creek Trail. Should you head southeast, you’ll pass through some of Denver’s older and more affluent neighborhoods. If you go all the way to the end of the trail, you’ll have travelled about thirty-nine miles. But by then you’ll be in Franktown, not Denver.

Heading northwest instead, you’ll soon arrive at Confluence Park where Cherry Creek meets up with the South Platt River. Heading north along the Platt you can go as far as 104th Avenue before the trail develops discontinuous portions. Heading south, the trail system will take you as far as Chatfield State Park. Trying to go this distance on foot isn’t quite practical. But, a bicycle can take you there if you’re fit and have the time.

The Bear Creek Greenbelt is a personal favorite. It runs from the South Platt River Trail through several parks, including Bear Creek Lake Park, and ends in Morrison. Bear Creek hosts a variety of water fowl. I once saw a night heron while cycling that path. I’d never seen one before and wondered what a penguin was doing that far north. (Since writing this in 2008, I've also seen a Malayan Night Heron, though in Taipei, not Denver.)

 

Towering Babble

 

Back in 1946, George Orwell expressed his doubts about, Politics and the English Language in an essay with that title. If he was correct then that politics was corrupting  language, it's even more true now. Only today, it's not just politics. Social media and a tribalized electorate isolate Americans into conflicting subcultures.

Those who spout unreasoned political nonsense abuse both language and factuality. But one only needs to look toward academia to find serious language corruptors. Academicians abuse language by making it inaccessible to the more than two out of three Americans without college degrees. I suppose academicians coin new terms as a substitute for new ideas. It's a dangerous practice.

Take the term, critical race theory. What does it mean? The term invites attack. If instead, one promoted teaching the history of what really happened, who could object?

Another term I can do without is systemic racism. The word "systemic" bothers me. Without knowing which system, political, social, financial, or educational, is under discussion, it's impossible to address the problem. If I said instead that racism was culturally embedded, I'd be providing a better description of the problem. The seeds of racism are found in children's rhymes, folk tales, ethnic jokes, and locker room talk. Racism is embedded in American culture and that is where it must be sought. Only by understanding its cultural manifestations can we understand how it's embedded in different systems within our culture and its subcultures.