Gare Henderson, blog
This is my personal page, where you can find out more about me, my work, my life...thanks for visiting.
This is a work in progress
Selected work in progress
Energy is not only something that you find, mine, or drill. The artifacts that we see as energy such as coal, petroleum , or plant based fuels are concentrations of easily convertible energy. However energy is proportional with change, and the method by which energy is condensed into these artifacts is by change it self.
Any change in the state of nature is energetic. This means that and change in mass, velocity, or context represent harvestable energy sources.
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Time is a view or interpretation of context. However context also includes such givens as gravitational fields, historic factors, and intention.
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All that man calls evil could also be called incompetence, or ineffectiveness. The happiness of mankind is our universal good. Happiness is both a natural and understandable goal of all human activity. Who will deny that what he calls evil is a good in the mind of the evil doer. A man robs and beats an old lady. He is wearing a new leather coat, and has a belly full of fried shrimp. While his victim is living on 200 calories a day, and shivering in a cloth coat, her husband gave her as a birthday present 22 years ago.
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There is fortune and misfortune, but luck can always be described as some form of competence.
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Infinity is not a really long time, infinity is no more a measure of time than an idea.
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I must accept that some being of a greater intellect and competence than any man exists.
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The real problem with the world economy
Robots are our problem, and taxing them may be the solution.
America is in economic crisis both current and looming. The
congress and the fed are taking unprecedented moves to shore up
failing financial institutions. The conventional wisdom is the
sub-prime mortgage crisis is the root. But is it really the root,
or simply the fruit of the poisonous tree. Has the American social
and economic model failed?
Watch international news and you will quickly realize that our
problems are just the American face on a world wide catastrophic
trend, In Australia the news is the countless middle class people
who are moving into trailer parks because they can no longer afford
more traditional housing. In China the government fears that if the
economy stops growing there will be riots. In Indonesia the middle
class are taking over the institutions of power, because the feel
that the poor are favored. European governments are funneling
hundreds of billions of dollars to stabilize their banking
systems. While the pundits and recent political campaigns
imply that the sub-prime mortgage crisis was caused by American
deadbeats, and greedy financial wizards. But the fact that the
problem is impacting on all countries of the world, raises the
suspicion that the problem is not American deadbeats who scammed the
banking industry, but instead a fundamental problem in the world
economy.
When we take a quick look at the problem of the mortgage crisis the
easy answer is to blame the banks, or blame the borrowers, and there
is enough blame and self recriminations to go around for all
concerned. However, when we look more deeply at why these people
have been unwilling or unable to meet these mortgages, we find at
the root the economics of life not just in America but around the
world. More and more responsible skilled people are living on the
financial edge. Financially over-stretched people are unemployed,
underemployed, or fully employed but fearful of the ax. With little
or no cushion from a rapid devolution from a cherished lifestyle,
for kids, wives and pets. Prudent people have worked out tight
budgets to live a full and convenient life and maintain solid
credit. But when prices suddenly shoot up like the recent gas
crisis. Budgets crash into a new reality. Fractious quality of
life decisions, about cable and cell phones, and special
expense, must be made and consensus reached within families, and
often the mortgage lacks a lobbyist. When this phenomena is
combined with the fact that we have been convinced to overpay for
the basics of life through credit cards, it doesn't take much to
send many families into foreclosure.
Why, are so many people around the world struggling to make ends
meet? Of course we could blame the rising middle classes around the
world, who are beginning to compete with more established affluent
populations for goods and services. We could blame modern
marketing, and the philosophies of western governments to promote
democracy and freedom around the world to increase the customer base
for multinational firms. And yet neither of these significant
phenomena can account for the steadily increasing gap between
the "good life" and the reality of the working citizen.
The culprit may be our heroic reverence for automation. Robots,
software solutions, automation, or efficiency enhancements all make
our lives easier, if not simpler. But are they slowly eroding our
disposable income and therefore our quality of life. We all
love our email, and our cell phones, remote controllers, washing
machines and our automated movie rental systems. But too few of us
consider that each of these devices have both positive and negative
effects on world economies. When I look at old movies where when
the poor family fell on hard times, the mother would concede that
she would have to take in more of the rich people's wash to make
ends meet. The widespread acceptance of the automatic washing
machine put an end to that cherished source of emergency income not
just in Mississippi, but in India, in China, and all countries of
the world where it penetrates. We respond to such losses with the
platitudes of better education, and wider availability of risk
capital as the solutions. However, it is not just the poor who are
being displaced by automation. The popular DVD kiosks where you
can rent a movie, for a deceptively low price, take away a
significant number of starter jobs for middle class youth, and
management jobs for middle class adults. Sure the argument in
defense is that it saves people money, and that it creates jobs for
engineers, designers, technicians, and administrators, while also
increasing the exposure of the public to creative materials. And
this is all true, however the jobs lost is 10-100 for every job
gained. And you can not have a society where only the brilliant can
make a good living. Everybody doesn't want to be an engineer, or a
boss, a lot of people are most capable of repetitive social or
mechanical tasks. And yet they still like to live and eat like
engineers, and designers.
The amount of meaningful work that is available to growing
populations is shrinking due to automation! It's easy to point to
endless of examples of these phenomena, which has been forecast by
creative products from Woody Allen, and Aldous Huxley. All around
the globe people with excellent skills and experience are being
forced in to underemployment by the lack of work in their chosen
area caused either directly or indirectly by automation. There is
now an seemingly endless cycle of re-training for the new jobs,
lawyers, carpenters, and factory workers trying to become computer
experts. In a couple of years perhaps everyone will try to learn
robot repair, then what? And is this the best use of human
potential?
To paraphrase an old proverb "when the robot ATMs replaced the bank
tellers, I said nothing because I was not a bank teller, when the
self check robot came for the cashiers, I said nothing because I
wasn't a cashier...But when the robot took my job, there was no one
left to say "hey he needs a paycheck to survive". Accountants are
being replaced by quick-books, lawyers are being replaced by
automated document grinders, the doctors are being replaced by
artificial intelligence based diagnostic software. Who is next?
Of course those who automate their businesses make fortunes, while
in the national statistics it's called productivity gains, the
result is a rising imbalance of rich and the struggling.
As in most cases, our hands are not clean, and our feet are of
clay. We love the low prices and convenience that automation brings
to our lives, my Romba is bumping around in the room above me even
as I write this piece. But I do try my best to favor the human
cashier at the supermarket over the self check out machines. At my
local grocery I have seen people lined up for the self-check
machines, while the human cashiers stand idle, probably thinking
about how to get a new job. Of course automation is indefatigable.
It will make our lives easier, probably longer, and in many ways
better. But what, if anything can be done to combat the erosion of
base amount of work that exists in human society.
If incomes continue to erode due to automation, we will feel the
pain most when the marginal benefits such as lower prices, and
easier lives drops below our ability to afford these luxuries. At
some point the basic nature of work will have to be reexamined.
Work is more than income, work is a part of the way we define
ourselves as individuals. Work is the way we judge our goodness
and worth in most western societies, and under the context of the
Abrahamic religions. The erosion of useful work will tear at the
very fabric of society. Will we all become endless job seekers,
watching the good life pass us by?
What are the broad consequences of this phenomena, and what if
anything can be done? From the personal income perspective, I think
that the models of oil rich countries, who provide most essential
services such as health care, housing and education is one that
could work. Unemployment payments would begin automatically at age
18, and only stop if you find suitable employment. Perhaps, if
people are left to turn there efforts to excellence rather than
survival a new culture can take root over generations and become and
acceptable lifestyle for mankind. Some care will be required to
providing sufficient challenges to a population to foster this
excellence, but the western celebrity culture may prove as least
partially effective in generating productive dreams.
Where will the money come from to support this new utopia? One
method would be to begin forcing robots to pay taxes. These taxes
could be generated in the form of a government surcharge every-time
you rent a DVD from a robot, use the automated check out, or get
your car washed by a robot. While the industrial robots that
replace manufacturing jobs would be charged based upon their output,
and this would be added to the price of the products they produce.
These robots could fund local, state, and even federal governments
world wide. And if the surcharges made the prices of the products
better reflect the costs to society of employing them, then those
"advances" which have actual negative impacts on human life would be
marginalized.
A robot tax...something to think about.
Gare Henderson
Gravitational Systems, LLC.
Chairman of the Singapore alternative energy conference.
Expertise:
Computer languages : Adjunct faculty : New York University, City College of New York, The New School for social research, Bernard Baruch College, Hunter College
Business Entrepreneur: Computer-help network (Times Square, Soho : Manhattan): AAA-datarecovery.com: Washington, DC. Hi-techmovers.com : Chicago, IL
Engineering: Gravitational systems, New York : Design Engineer
United Technologies corp: Los Angeles, CA: Industrial sales engineer
Physical dimensions:
6'5" 245 lbs
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