The world without complexity was only able to feed around 2 billion humans
Bold claim. Why do you think complexity itself can improve efficiency? I can easily tank efficiency by adding complexity. Complexity also necessarily destroys resilience. Every time we’ve tried adding complexity, all of those societies disappear, from ancient Egypt to Rome to the Incans.
Often it’s a bit difficult to make an abstract point out of examples. You seem to be countering those examples with today’s zeitgeist, the exact thing the article is looking to counter.
The person decided this was the normal they wanted and where they chose to live.
This would be true if all else were equal, but it isn’t. Society built roads. It had to tear down housing to build the roads. The house prices went up because corporations bought up the housing stock and are using it to manipulate rents. None of that was the “choice” of the farmer. One cannot just opt out. “oh no thanks. I’ll just take efficient public transport and we can just rip up the road network. Just give me one of the houses we build through more dense development.”
Things are going to increase in complexity unless civilization collapses
Why? Many folks today are talking about making society resilient over efficient, with respect to COVID and supply chains. This is a direct ask for reducing complexity. The 15 minute city is an ask to reduce complexity. Complex societies fail.
Ultimately, the issue is cultural.
The issue is hegemony. Every company claiming to benefit you are building a fiefdom and you are the bricks. You can work around it but you have to beat the products and services you buy into submission. This is true of phones, computers, cars, TVs, subscriptions, AI, and increasingly how it asks more and more of us. People say “the things we own end up owning us” but no one says that about a fridge, or a washing machine.
If there was a word for “genius” but for being a good person instead of smart, she would be that.
mmmm Tomacco…
I’m sorry, this could have convinced me in the early oughties but I’m worn out now. There’s a song and dance about how powerful the Murdoch media is but firstly that’s no longer as true as it was, and most importantly, any time Labor has had the chance to shut them down, they haven’t taken it. Literally the laws which got Labor offices raided were supported by Labor. At some point I’m going to stop believing the “small target” strategy is a real strategy and start to believe that this is what Labor actually is deep down. The toothless NACC, the active protection of the perpetrators of Robodebt, making a rod for their own backs, this is just who Labor is.
There are other unions, and if I can take a minor detour, some of them, eg teachers and nurses unions are majority women, and Labor walk over them, time and time again, whereas unions like CFMEU and TWU will strike. Health and Education are being gutted from a skills perspective, and the lesson they’re being taught is that if you stand up like the other unions, you’ll get your necks cut off. COVID came and “went”, and Labor were in power for a good chunk of it, and they’ve not had the Unions or the workers backs. The majority of deaths happened / are happening during Labor in government. How many of those were Teachers? Nurses? With friends like these…
What even is the point any more? What is there to lose when unions are basically unable to stand up to their own? When Labor must shunt to the right of the coalition. Some people blame the right for the “right wing ratchet”, but to some extent this has been engineered by the left to make the right look less favourable to their voters. I don’t give a shit about Labor, I want some fucking solidarity.
There’s also the possibility of a split. If enough of the unions want to split, and it does look like it, it’s possible that “left Labor” and “right Labor” split into two parties.
Frankly Labor has been taking advantage of the unions for a very long time, consistently kneecapping them, and has been doing so back to the Hawke / Keating years. This isn’t a “compromise” anymore, because the right just keeps on taking and taking.
They’re using “Mr Kumar” as an example here, but this story goes back a long way. Huge parts of the wealthy northern suburbs, and prime real estate near the most popular beaches in Sydney are held by a handful of people. They bought this property a long time ago, but the “newer” property investors are basically working off that template. You can actually walk around those suburbs and find a bunch of empty properties. They don’t care about the rent, they prefer to show as little income as possible. They just want the capital gains when they sell. Often these people are retired and can get significant tax concessions.
The “newer” investors are doing this but with properties which are much cheaper. They do it like a job or a business. It’s not healthy for the country either, but it’s actually less of a rort than the institutional wealth in this country.
Overall the issue is that they’re not a “like” technology for ICE cars. The transition won’t happen without regulation. In Norway the vast majority of new car sales are EVs. China too has basically moved straight to EV infrastructure rather than ICE. It can be done but the government has got to do the job. In countries where they are unwilling to, this isn’t going to work.
The olive oil is an example.
I’d like to fix climate change instead?
Honestly I think walking in with a friendly way to explain climate science to a layperson is a bad strategy with politicians. They should come with full technical details and use precise scientific terms. Expect politicians to learn that shit if they want to argue.
Seen this in olive oil prices. It’s already happening.
Idiots don’t realise that hurricanes are controlled from Australia, from pine gap.
I keep mine in an ever growing wishlist, which I never get back to, but it stops me from feeling like I forgot anything.
I’ve given up. I’m going to just keep adding to wishlist and nibble on a new one every now and then.
To pierce the veil a bit, yes, the meme is that somehow the podcast is amazing and insightful, even though in reality it’s pretty meh.
No, it’s another company, but I know nothing about them.
It’s called “Talk Tuah”.
I know it’s a turn of phrase but you don’t know me. I realise the scope and scale of how the world works, thanks.
You’re assuming a lot given what I’ve said. It’s not an “in effect” thing either. You talk about actual systems in a way which invokes Gandalf magic when they work like Penn and Teller magic. You assume the article and any defense of it is naive, but you’re missing the simple reality that sometimes you can simply remove huge amounts of complexity and get a better result.
The internet, for example, is not magic. There were several competing communication protocols, from circuit switched systems to fax to pagers. The internet is able to do all of those jobs, and it is a simpler system than the ones which existed in the past. It moved some complexity around, and therefore removed a bunch of complexity which was unnecessary.
This increase in simplicity is also called the second industrial revolution.
Perhaps you prefer the term decomplecting? Complexity is an overloaded term, but you literally follow up “simplification as a regressive thing” with a bunch of simplification which is effective. Since we are sharing reading lists, perhaps a bit of Dr Fatima and Think that Through on Youtube might help you. It’s clear you do not understand the article nor my points.