April 1, 2011 New York, NY
A Bloomberg poll of leading US economists found that 79% were “shocked” or “dismayed” by the recently-readjusted Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that labor productivity in the United States plunged by 13.8% in 2010. Asked how they felt about the corresponding sharp decline in U3 unemployment – from 10.1% to 6.3% - 31% of these economists said improved employment numbers were “welcome”, but 88% considered the correlation (between falling productivity and falling unemployment) “counterintuitive” or “irrelevant”. All agreed that the top priority must be to return to increased productivity and healthy economic growth as rapidly as possible.
In addition to the improved employment situation there were other signs of progress last year. The US trade deficit fell by 18.4% in 2010 as demand for petroleum products and imported consumer goods “fell off a cliff”. Consumption of energy overall, demand for minerals and metals, and purchases of snack food products all showed steep declines, and total vehicle-miles-traveled dropped an astonishing 13.4%. Household debt fell by 15.8% as consumers saved more and spent less.
Climate scientists were delighted to announce that US emissions of greenhouse gasses in 2010 went down by 12.6% - a result which bolsters Stanford University Professor Clausius Carnot’s contention that nuclear and renewable energy sources can provide much larger percentages of US electricity usage when electricity consumption declines. Professor Carnot has generated much controversy – and elicited more than a little scorn from the Wall Street Journal editorial board – for his radical theory that climate change is being driven by “an excess of economic metabolism”.
The good news extends to health as well. “People are happier when they have useful work to do”, noted Dr. Howard Frumkin of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. “Moreover, with the steep reductions in automobile usage and petroleum consumption, more and more people are employing their legs and arms to do physical work. When it becomes normal for people to walk or bike to the grocery store and other nearby destinations, this definitely hurts the auto industry, the oil industry, the roadbuilders, and so on. Hell, it even hurts the health-care industry, because obesity is the primary engine of growth for the medical sector of our economy. So we have this weird situation where the economy is shrinking but people are better off. We’re in uncharted waters.”
But none of America’s most prominent economic thinkers is willing to concede that a mere year’s worth of evidence might disprove long-established economic theory. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times notes, “Everyone knows that the only way to grow the economy is to increase labor productivity – to grow output of goods and services per hour of human labor. And everyone knows that the only way to maintain healthy levels of employment is to increase consumption sufficiently to offset the decreases in employment per unit of output. This is Econ 101, for God’s sake.”
“So even if we presume Earth is flat, how could less employment for fossil fuels and less employment for machines translate into more employment for human beings? This sounds like the ravings of the Luddites; like Marx and his ridiculous ‘crisis of surplus labor’. Well, we are a lot smarter now; smart enough to know that such ideas are pure bunk.”
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Non-Violent Transportation
Want more Peace on Earth? And more living Earth available for Peace?
Choose Non-Violent Transportation.
Small. Because the Footprints of human feet and bicycle tires are miniscule relative to the Footprints of cars.
Slow. Make wherever you are...the place where you want to be.
Gentle. Living things which might cross your path have a right not merely to not be harmed by you, but to not be afraid of you.
Choose Non-Violent Transportation.
Small. Because the Footprints of human feet and bicycle tires are miniscule relative to the Footprints of cars.
Slow. Make wherever you are...the place where you want to be.
Gentle. Living things which might cross your path have a right not merely to not be harmed by you, but to not be afraid of you.
Friday, February 19, 2010
I Am Scared
I am scared to death of scared people who "overcome" their fears by surrounding themselves with automobiles.
I am really scared of scared people who don't realize – or won't admit – that by "solving" their fears with power and speed and crash-resistant steel, they force this "solution" on everyone who lives in their midst.
I am scared of you. I am scared of many people in my own family. I am scared to say anything, because when I am scared, I nearly always scare other people. I am terrified of how scared we are.
Sometimes, in my fear, I have struck out with angry words at people who force their vehicular “solution” on the world. I have found myself surrounded by people who vociferously condemn my words. I have found myself bereft of allies in the battle against those who “speak” with a metallic force that often maims and kills. Or perhaps I should say, in the battle against the fear that drives the speakers.
Sitting comfortably on our rear ends inside a room and talking and or watching a video will make exactly zero (0) difference where it matters – on the streets and sidewalks of our communities. Nor will casting a ballot once every two or four or six years. No one else is going to make Change happen for us.
Solvitur ambulando.
I am really scared of scared people who don't realize – or won't admit – that by "solving" their fears with power and speed and crash-resistant steel, they force this "solution" on everyone who lives in their midst.
I am scared of you. I am scared of many people in my own family. I am scared to say anything, because when I am scared, I nearly always scare other people. I am terrified of how scared we are.
Sometimes, in my fear, I have struck out with angry words at people who force their vehicular “solution” on the world. I have found myself surrounded by people who vociferously condemn my words. I have found myself bereft of allies in the battle against those who “speak” with a metallic force that often maims and kills. Or perhaps I should say, in the battle against the fear that drives the speakers.
Sitting comfortably on our rear ends inside a room and talking and or watching a video will make exactly zero (0) difference where it matters – on the streets and sidewalks of our communities. Nor will casting a ballot once every two or four or six years. No one else is going to make Change happen for us.
Solvitur ambulando.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Communities That Walk
Recently a fellow pedestrian/bicycle/transit advocate checked Walkscore.com and learned that his address in the Williamson Street neighborhood of Madison, Wisconsin rated a score of 91 – “highly walkable”. Unfortunately, one of his rewards for choosing to live where a top-notch rating is possible is to endure exceptionally high levels of automobile traffic – much of it generated by the tens of thousands of Madison-area commuters who regularly drive through his part of the Isthmus but reside where Walkscores are lower, often much lower. This is typical for "walkable" neighborhoods in most cities and villages in the United States.
Typical but not right. If things were fair, those with high Walkscores – especially those who actually walked a lot – would be rewarded with automobile traffic as light and calm as, say, the private streets of the gated golf course community in my village…or the secluded country estates occupied by ultra-high-VMT exurbanites scattered throughout nominally-rural Dane County. (This is a major, albeit seldom acknowledged, social/environmental justice issue, comparable to – and often correlating with – racial and socio-economic segregation.)
Even so, Walkscore.com does not begin to tell the whole story. There is often a huge chasm between potential and reality.
Case in point: my wife and I reside in one of Madison’s numerous bedroom suburbs – the Village of Oregon, population 8,807. Despite being much smaller than Madison, and despite the prevailing suburban character, Walkscore for our street address is 69 – relatively good. In fact I can’t think of many places in Madison where it would be more convenient to bicycle and walk to the grocery store, K-12 schools, preschool, playgrounds, parks, playing fields, library, coffee shop, hardware store, pharmacies, church, vet, post office, copy/shipping shop, barber, etc. We have an absurd number of bank branches within ½ mile, a decent variety of restaurants, health clubs, and so on. Oh, our dentist is less than two blocks away; eye doctor is three, and family medical provider is a bit over four.
Unusual for Oregon? Absolutely not. Given the abundance and variety of frequented destinations here, and the spatial arrangements of destinations and residences, I would guess that more than a quarter of Village residents would have comparable Walkscores. Moreover, Oregon has plenty of sidewalks, crosswalks, and traffic signals with pedestrian-activated buttons. We even have a fairly extensive system of bike lanes and paths for a municipality of our size.
Despite all these “walkability” features, the ratio of driving-age Village residents who drive rather than walk or bike to destinations within the Village itself is probably 50:1 or more. Why? If proximities and infrastructure were the primary factors in the mode-split equation, Oregon’s streets and sidewalks would be buzzing with self-locomoted human beings. They are not.
Thus we must look elsewhere for causality: our norms and expectations; our automobile-scaled perception of time and distance; our sense of entitlement to the convenience, comfort, and security of our own multi-ton armored personnel carrier. And looming above all of these factors is our obstinate refusal to confront yet another inconvenient truth: lifestyles rooted in automobile dependence poison the ground against the growth of a human-scale culture where it is safe, practical, convivial, and – most of all – normal to walk and bike and use transit. Automobile dependence in Oregon, as in most of Dane County, is near-total and incredibly tenacious. Despite five years of crusading here I have not made any noticeable dent in mode split, not even among "sustainability" types. I suspect many advocates elsewhere feel just as impotent. Why?
I believe one big reason is that we often undermine our efforts with the vocabulary we use. We usually talk about the characteristics of things (streets, neighborhoods, cars, etc.) rather than focusing on behaviors – and the responsibilities of citizens. Terms like "walkable", "bicycle-friendly", and "transit-supportive density" are like bumper stickers: in and of themselves they make absolutely no difference. Meanwhile our use of such language tacitly-but-inexorably diverts our perception of causality away from human beings.
God help us, we need pedestrian-oriented people. Bicycle-oriented people. Transit-oriented people. We cannot zone these people into existence or force them into existence by blocking automobile-centric developments. Hell, such people cannot even consume themselves into existence by shopping in the Green Aisle! Thus our challenge is to create people who vote with their feet. When that happens, the places we seek will occur.
How to create such people? Not by telling them that someone else is to blame for America's auto-addicted way of life; that someone else owes them easy solutions; that someone else has the power to make a truly-green "Transportation/Access Revolution" happen.
First we must show people how their choices and behaviors – in combination with our own – literally create our community week-by-week and year-by-year. We must emphasize that we all have much to learn, and that to succeed we need the kinds of wisdom that can only be gained from experience. Thus we must challenge people to just get out there and begin occupying their communities as human beings again. Choose at least one thing they do on a regular basis via car, and do it..or them…without a car. No excuses. No waiting. No passing the buck. Experience what-is. Let it soak in. Start to imagine what-might-be. Then take the next step – literally.
So long as well-meaning people remain behind those damned windshields (waiting for third-party “solutions”), they will not learn the first thing about what we-the-people collectively must do to create…not "walkable communities"…but “communities that walk"; communities that bike; and communities that have enough of us walking and biking to make transit viable. Hello! Habitat follows behavior.
Typical but not right. If things were fair, those with high Walkscores – especially those who actually walked a lot – would be rewarded with automobile traffic as light and calm as, say, the private streets of the gated golf course community in my village…or the secluded country estates occupied by ultra-high-VMT exurbanites scattered throughout nominally-rural Dane County. (This is a major, albeit seldom acknowledged, social/environmental justice issue, comparable to – and often correlating with – racial and socio-economic segregation.)
Even so, Walkscore.com does not begin to tell the whole story. There is often a huge chasm between potential and reality.
Case in point: my wife and I reside in one of Madison’s numerous bedroom suburbs – the Village of Oregon, population 8,807. Despite being much smaller than Madison, and despite the prevailing suburban character, Walkscore for our street address is 69 – relatively good. In fact I can’t think of many places in Madison where it would be more convenient to bicycle and walk to the grocery store, K-12 schools, preschool, playgrounds, parks, playing fields, library, coffee shop, hardware store, pharmacies, church, vet, post office, copy/shipping shop, barber, etc. We have an absurd number of bank branches within ½ mile, a decent variety of restaurants, health clubs, and so on. Oh, our dentist is less than two blocks away; eye doctor is three, and family medical provider is a bit over four.
Unusual for Oregon? Absolutely not. Given the abundance and variety of frequented destinations here, and the spatial arrangements of destinations and residences, I would guess that more than a quarter of Village residents would have comparable Walkscores. Moreover, Oregon has plenty of sidewalks, crosswalks, and traffic signals with pedestrian-activated buttons. We even have a fairly extensive system of bike lanes and paths for a municipality of our size.
Despite all these “walkability” features, the ratio of driving-age Village residents who drive rather than walk or bike to destinations within the Village itself is probably 50:1 or more. Why? If proximities and infrastructure were the primary factors in the mode-split equation, Oregon’s streets and sidewalks would be buzzing with self-locomoted human beings. They are not.
Thus we must look elsewhere for causality: our norms and expectations; our automobile-scaled perception of time and distance; our sense of entitlement to the convenience, comfort, and security of our own multi-ton armored personnel carrier. And looming above all of these factors is our obstinate refusal to confront yet another inconvenient truth: lifestyles rooted in automobile dependence poison the ground against the growth of a human-scale culture where it is safe, practical, convivial, and – most of all – normal to walk and bike and use transit. Automobile dependence in Oregon, as in most of Dane County, is near-total and incredibly tenacious. Despite five years of crusading here I have not made any noticeable dent in mode split, not even among "sustainability" types. I suspect many advocates elsewhere feel just as impotent. Why?
I believe one big reason is that we often undermine our efforts with the vocabulary we use. We usually talk about the characteristics of things (streets, neighborhoods, cars, etc.) rather than focusing on behaviors – and the responsibilities of citizens. Terms like "walkable", "bicycle-friendly", and "transit-supportive density" are like bumper stickers: in and of themselves they make absolutely no difference. Meanwhile our use of such language tacitly-but-inexorably diverts our perception of causality away from human beings.
God help us, we need pedestrian-oriented people. Bicycle-oriented people. Transit-oriented people. We cannot zone these people into existence or force them into existence by blocking automobile-centric developments. Hell, such people cannot even consume themselves into existence by shopping in the Green Aisle! Thus our challenge is to create people who vote with their feet. When that happens, the places we seek will occur.
How to create such people? Not by telling them that someone else is to blame for America's auto-addicted way of life; that someone else owes them easy solutions; that someone else has the power to make a truly-green "Transportation/Access Revolution" happen.
First we must show people how their choices and behaviors – in combination with our own – literally create our community week-by-week and year-by-year. We must emphasize that we all have much to learn, and that to succeed we need the kinds of wisdom that can only be gained from experience. Thus we must challenge people to just get out there and begin occupying their communities as human beings again. Choose at least one thing they do on a regular basis via car, and do it..or them…without a car. No excuses. No waiting. No passing the buck. Experience what-is. Let it soak in. Start to imagine what-might-be. Then take the next step – literally.
So long as well-meaning people remain behind those damned windshields (waiting for third-party “solutions”), they will not learn the first thing about what we-the-people collectively must do to create…not "walkable communities"…but “communities that walk"; communities that bike; and communities that have enough of us walking and biking to make transit viable. Hello! Habitat follows behavior.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Not in Kansas Anymore
Why are we surprised that unemployment continues to rise? Why do we expect the GOVERNMENT to do something about it?
We've spent the last 200 years mechanizing and automating everything possible. Substituting fossil fuels for human labor and computer circuits for cogitation. "Labor-saving" has become "labor-destroying". Yet it never occurs to us that there could be such a thing as too much productivity.
As James Howard Kunstler says, “It’s all good”…as long as the economy keeps growing every year. But planet Earth ain’t getting any bigger. The highest-quality, most easily extracted resources are gone, and now we’re strip-mining an Arizona-sized chunk of Canadian forest for tarry goo, and even thinking about scraping the barrel at 25,000 feet below sea level. How do you spell “desperation”?
Plus there are limits to how much credit you can vacuum out of the future to jack up present consumption. So when people get frugal, when hundreds of millions of Americans wake up and realize that we don’t really need all the junk we’re buying, unemployment skyrockets. People are terrified that no one else needs them. With good reason. Decade after decade, our economy has “decided” that more and more of the essential jobs should be done by machines.
As citizens, we sure as the devil don’t ACT like we want other Americans to have jobs. Except we’re not citizens anymore – we’re cogs in the economy. As consumers our fidelity is to the lowest prices – getting as much as possible for as little as possible – flaunting our wealth – dying with the most toys. As investors we want the highest rate of return. If these things are incompatible with living wages, health care, honoring pension obligations, supporting local communities…well to hell with them. We’re rational, after all.
But what about good-old-fashioned self-reliance? Right. These days we don’t even want to employ our own legs to get from “a” to “b”. Of course it doesn’t help that 50+ years of Happy Motoring has destroyed pedestrian-oriented, transit-supportive communities.
Yes, Greenspan and his disciples are clueless. But so are people who think that with a dose of hard reality – and if only the government stops “interfering” – the economy will eventually turn around and grow and everything will be OK again.
Sorry, we ain’t in Kansas anymore.
We've spent the last 200 years mechanizing and automating everything possible. Substituting fossil fuels for human labor and computer circuits for cogitation. "Labor-saving" has become "labor-destroying". Yet it never occurs to us that there could be such a thing as too much productivity.
As James Howard Kunstler says, “It’s all good”…as long as the economy keeps growing every year. But planet Earth ain’t getting any bigger. The highest-quality, most easily extracted resources are gone, and now we’re strip-mining an Arizona-sized chunk of Canadian forest for tarry goo, and even thinking about scraping the barrel at 25,000 feet below sea level. How do you spell “desperation”?
Plus there are limits to how much credit you can vacuum out of the future to jack up present consumption. So when people get frugal, when hundreds of millions of Americans wake up and realize that we don’t really need all the junk we’re buying, unemployment skyrockets. People are terrified that no one else needs them. With good reason. Decade after decade, our economy has “decided” that more and more of the essential jobs should be done by machines.
As citizens, we sure as the devil don’t ACT like we want other Americans to have jobs. Except we’re not citizens anymore – we’re cogs in the economy. As consumers our fidelity is to the lowest prices – getting as much as possible for as little as possible – flaunting our wealth – dying with the most toys. As investors we want the highest rate of return. If these things are incompatible with living wages, health care, honoring pension obligations, supporting local communities…well to hell with them. We’re rational, after all.
But what about good-old-fashioned self-reliance? Right. These days we don’t even want to employ our own legs to get from “a” to “b”. Of course it doesn’t help that 50+ years of Happy Motoring has destroyed pedestrian-oriented, transit-supportive communities.
Yes, Greenspan and his disciples are clueless. But so are people who think that with a dose of hard reality – and if only the government stops “interfering” – the economy will eventually turn around and grow and everything will be OK again.
Sorry, we ain’t in Kansas anymore.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Willful Ignorance
Ask yourself why so many of us expect "the government" to compensate for jobs lost to increases in labor productivity (i.e. output of a good or service per unit input of labor.) Ask how it is possible we CELEBRATE increases in labor productivity even as we cringe at rising unemployment. Just how stupid are we?
And what about those of us who believe the biophysical limitations of Earth all but guarantee that Mankind's consumption of resources will soon shrink, and shrink dramatically? Who have concluded from the recent financial crisis that we have substantially exceeded our powers to vacuum ever-more credit from the future in order to stimulate ever-higher consumption in the present? Who recognize that marginal increases in material consumption throughout much of the industrialized world often have a NEGATIVE correlation with human well-being?
Is there any chance that we-the-consumers and we-the-investors will be willing to shift our fidelities from the lowest prices and highest rates of return to intentional, meaningful, fulfilling employment for one-another…and for ourselves? Doesn't our love affair with the automobile prove that we don't even want to employ our own legs?
What shall become of human employment in a future of limits? If the means of production are not widely held, what will be the fate of those who own little or none of it? Is a Darwinian economic religion compatible with love for one another? And even if all these other factors could be overcome, are our human natures suited for life without needful labor?
And what about those of us who believe the biophysical limitations of Earth all but guarantee that Mankind's consumption of resources will soon shrink, and shrink dramatically? Who have concluded from the recent financial crisis that we have substantially exceeded our powers to vacuum ever-more credit from the future in order to stimulate ever-higher consumption in the present? Who recognize that marginal increases in material consumption throughout much of the industrialized world often have a NEGATIVE correlation with human well-being?
Is there any chance that we-the-consumers and we-the-investors will be willing to shift our fidelities from the lowest prices and highest rates of return to intentional, meaningful, fulfilling employment for one-another…and for ourselves? Doesn't our love affair with the automobile prove that we don't even want to employ our own legs?
What shall become of human employment in a future of limits? If the means of production are not widely held, what will be the fate of those who own little or none of it? Is a Darwinian economic religion compatible with love for one another? And even if all these other factors could be overcome, are our human natures suited for life without needful labor?
Friday, October 9, 2009
Manufactured Uselessness
The pervasive, willful ignorance which characterizes nearly all public discouse concerning unemployment is stunning. How can we be so blind to what is so obvious - that Growth makes the "crisis of surplus labor" worse and worse?
Consider the facts:
(1) We-the-consumers demand the lowest (internalized) costs
(2) We-the-investors demand the highest (internalized) rates of return
(3) Any business which ignores these demands is quickly rendered extinct in the Marketplace
(4) Therefore we mechanize and automate and outsource everything possible...
(5) ...replace human labor with coal and oil and every other easy-to-extract fossil fuel we can rip out of the Earth...
(6) ...throw power tools and robotic machines at every job we can…
(7) ...and then we're astonished that unemployment is a problem
DUH! God help us, really, we're too clueless to help ourselves. We cannot imagine such things as too much Progress or too much Productivity. We cannot see – cannot admit – that one of the main "outputs" of the Growth Economy is Manufactured Uselessness.
This is the mother of all third rails in American political and social discourse: no one will admit - in public - that Productivity has severed tens of millions of Americans from employment and vocations which are associated with real human needs. And not only are these workers TOTALLY UNNECESSARY for the production and delivery of essential goods and services, but less and less of their labor is needed for the provision of ever-more extravagent luxuries, indulgences, status symbols.
Always and forever we are told the solution is More Growth. "Drink more bottled water!" "Fly to Disneyland!" "Buy a vacation home, a bigger riding lawnmower – we need JOBS!" But every year it takes fewer and fewer people to provide that bottle of water, that vacation trip, that vinyl-clad McMansion, that gas-guzzling go-cart which happens to cut grass.
Heaven knows most of us don't need more stuff any more than we need the spiritually-corrosive manipulations which marketers use to foist more stuff upon us. Such things as greed and gluttony, lust and pride and envy are – as they have always been – vices, moral hazards, threats to family and community. Meanwhile we are reaching and exceeding the biophysical limits of Earth.
But mainstream economists and businessmen and politicians live in holy terror of thrift and frugality – if the consumer isn't spending "enough" on credit, then by God the government had better do so. Libertarians and Austrian-school types fervently believe that balanced budgets, minimal government, and a truly free Free Market will solve everything; they don't seem to worry about the fact that half the working population in America would be jobless if our nation REALLY got serious about living within our means. At least Keynesian liberals and progressives give a damn about employment for working people, but they focus so much of their energy on demonizing super-rich elites that they fail to recognize Productivity is a double-edged sword. And Productivity may become far more sinister than even the Luddites imagined:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
Perhaps we are so enamored of our various Balkanized groups/ways of thinking that nothing less than a catastrophe will open our minds to real "Change". Is this why so many of our wise ancestors have deemed the human condition tragic?
Consider the facts:
(1) We-the-consumers demand the lowest (internalized) costs
(2) We-the-investors demand the highest (internalized) rates of return
(3) Any business which ignores these demands is quickly rendered extinct in the Marketplace
(4) Therefore we mechanize and automate and outsource everything possible...
(5) ...replace human labor with coal and oil and every other easy-to-extract fossil fuel we can rip out of the Earth...
(6) ...throw power tools and robotic machines at every job we can…
(7) ...and then we're astonished that unemployment is a problem
DUH! God help us, really, we're too clueless to help ourselves. We cannot imagine such things as too much Progress or too much Productivity. We cannot see – cannot admit – that one of the main "outputs" of the Growth Economy is Manufactured Uselessness.
This is the mother of all third rails in American political and social discourse: no one will admit - in public - that Productivity has severed tens of millions of Americans from employment and vocations which are associated with real human needs. And not only are these workers TOTALLY UNNECESSARY for the production and delivery of essential goods and services, but less and less of their labor is needed for the provision of ever-more extravagent luxuries, indulgences, status symbols.
Always and forever we are told the solution is More Growth. "Drink more bottled water!" "Fly to Disneyland!" "Buy a vacation home, a bigger riding lawnmower – we need JOBS!" But every year it takes fewer and fewer people to provide that bottle of water, that vacation trip, that vinyl-clad McMansion, that gas-guzzling go-cart which happens to cut grass.
Heaven knows most of us don't need more stuff any more than we need the spiritually-corrosive manipulations which marketers use to foist more stuff upon us. Such things as greed and gluttony, lust and pride and envy are – as they have always been – vices, moral hazards, threats to family and community. Meanwhile we are reaching and exceeding the biophysical limits of Earth.
But mainstream economists and businessmen and politicians live in holy terror of thrift and frugality – if the consumer isn't spending "enough" on credit, then by God the government had better do so. Libertarians and Austrian-school types fervently believe that balanced budgets, minimal government, and a truly free Free Market will solve everything; they don't seem to worry about the fact that half the working population in America would be jobless if our nation REALLY got serious about living within our means. At least Keynesian liberals and progressives give a damn about employment for working people, but they focus so much of their energy on demonizing super-rich elites that they fail to recognize Productivity is a double-edged sword. And Productivity may become far more sinister than even the Luddites imagined:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
Perhaps we are so enamored of our various Balkanized groups/ways of thinking that nothing less than a catastrophe will open our minds to real "Change". Is this why so many of our wise ancestors have deemed the human condition tragic?
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