07.03.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 1:51 pm by George Smith
BitCoin, the digital currency only for wealthy libertarian tech nerds, inheritance billionaires, speculators, hoarders and black markets, burnished the reputation today when venture capitalist Tim Draper was reported as having bought 19 million dollars worth of them, about 30,000, at the US government’s auction of the digital money recovered from the closed website, Silk Road.
From the wire, Draper’s statement:
“Bitcoin frees people from trying to operate in a modern market economy with weak currencies … With [this] newly purchased bitcoin, we expect to be able to create new services that can provide liquidity and confidence to markets that have been hamstrung by weak currencies. Of course, no one is totally secure in holding their own country’s currency. We want to enable people to hold and trade bitcoin to secure themselves against weakening currencies.”
Because, after all, escaping from the debasement of currencies like the dollar, is what BitCoin is about. This morning the Winkdex reported the value of a BitCoin at $641.
Readers may remember Draper is the billionaire behind the 2016 ballot initiative to split California into six states, the one he lives in to be named “Silicon Valley.”
“We need to reboot and the Six Californias initiative would bring government much closer to the people,??? Draper told a news agency a couple weeks ago.
Draper [wants] “people to have a choice, to be local to their state government and to be able to get a refresh so that schools, streets and waterways could improve, poverty would decrease and businesses would want to keep jobs here.”
Which translates as freeing the tech titans of “Silicon Valley” from the big drag of everyone else.
The video is Draper singing “The Riskmaster,” a song he delivers frequently at conferences to handfuls of like-minded libertarian tech nerds in attendance to beg him for money for their start-ups. In this instance it is at Hero City, part of his Draper University of Heroes. (Yes, it’s redundant.)
And no, I’m not making it up.
“It’s just after breakfast, and the superheroes are gathering in a cavernous white-walled room amid a sea of brightly colored beanbag chairs,” reads a NY magazine profile from last year. “Once assembled, they place their hands over their hearts, face the portraits of Thomas Edison and Bill Gates hung high on the wall, and begin reciting their daily oath.”
Further:
“I will promote freedom at all costs!??? says Tim Draper, a venture capitalist with a microphone slung over his ear and a “Save the Children??? tie brightening up his suit.
“I will promote freedom at all costs!??? the heroes echo back.
In lieu of diplomas, Draper U. students receive masks and capes printed with their superhero nicknames and are instructed to jump on each of a series of three small trampolines placed in a line in front of them. While bouncing from trampoline to trampoline, they’re told to shout, “Up, up, and away!???
The school’s purpose is to train students, usually the children of wealthy people, on how to maintain their optimism and act like heroes of capitalism in the building of start-ups.
Pure gold.
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07.02.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle at 11:43 am by George Smith
In 1982 there was virtually no interest in the flesh-eating microbe, Vibrio vulnificus. When I left school, doctorate in hand, there were probably only a handful of people working on it worldwide. On interviews in which I presented a seminar on it, there was never any enthusiasm. No one wanted to hear a thing. The research, the entire stay at grad school, was regarded as virtually nothing.
Yesterday, from the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville:
More than 40 Florida residents showed up at hospitals last year with a certain bacterial infection, and soon the words “flesh-eating disease??? screamed across headlines.
The bacteria, which killed 11 people, is always an underlying concern, but sometimes officials don’t know how prevalent the bacteria is in local waters.
A Jacksonville University class went out on the St. Johns River on Monday to get an idea of how much of the bacteria exists in the waterway.
There’s no guarantee the study will find much bacteria or any at all, said Anthony Ouellette, a JU assistant professor of biology. The goal of the project is to check out a public safety concern while teaching his students real-world research methods.
Forty-one Floridians developed the infection in 2013, including one in Duval County, one in St. Johns County and one in Nassau County, and 11 people died, according to the Florida Department of Health.
“If we do have an upsurge at some point,??? [the professor leading the student sampling experiment on the water] said, “having background numbers for what naturally exists in these habitats is important.???
Out on the St. Johns River on Monday, Marshalluna Land balanced a dropper over a sampling well as the boat swayed.
The JU marine biology graduate student carefully diluted the salt water so she and her peers would be able to filter out the bacteria and other microbes for study.
As a side observation on the value of the social network, I posted a link to my V. vulfnificus season summary on FB and it was ignored, except for one comment, an inappropriate “Yummy!”, something I had to gently chide the person over.
This is not to say science isn’t dealt with on the social networks. I often see posts to my feed about some aspect of science pre-masticated by the media, shared by people with no science background in my “friends” list. But it always has to fit into their political or philosophical worldview or be of a current famous scientist in the news.
Basic science at the grass-roots level has virtually no meaning for most Americans. That’s a pity and the entire country’s loss.
Perhaps Upworthy needs to handle it.
Previously — on the vulnificus beat.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 11:13 am by George Smith
On Facebook and it’s experiment:
“Only a fraction of our connections on social media are people we love. The rest are people we already probably dislike.”
Better, on what Facebook should do next, or what it already does, if you catch my drift:
Notifications of career success from an acquaintance who is in the same field as you, but younger
Mushy “Happy anniversary, baby!” notes from your ex’s new significant other
Cute snapshots of your friends’ young child who they say is doing so well since they opted not to get him vaccinated
Triumphant posts of celebration from people who root for a different team/candidate than you
Memes involving a photo of a beach or flower overlaid with encouraging platitudes with at least two obvious typos
Do you think you were part of the Facebook experiment? From this end, all I can tell you is that I dislike virtually everything FB puts in my feed. If I hand out a “like,” it’s from courtesy and a desire to be seen as civil.
The group mechanization of manipulation, sincerity trolling, favored figure or agency bootlicking and “upworthiness” isn’t something with which I have anything in common. I suspect there are hundreds of thousands of people who are the same. Like me, at one time now in the past, we were persuaded the social networks were good.
From Truth-Out, a long but not at all unreadable bit from Noam Chomsky:
In the 1950s, President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles explained quite clearly the dilemma that the U.S. faced. They complained that the Communists had an unfair advantage. They were able to “appeal directly to the masses??? and “get control of mass movements, something we have no capacity to duplicate. The poor people are the ones they appeal to and they have always wanted to plunder the rich.???
That causes problems. The U.S. somehow finds it difficult to appeal to the poor with its doctrine that the rich should plunder the poor.
From the New Yorker:
Early in the past century, there was a true socialist movement in the United States, and in the postwar years the Soviet Union seemed to offer the possibility of a meaningful alternative to capitalism. Small wonder that the tycoons of those days were so eager to channel populist agitation into reform. Today, by contrast, corporate chieftains have little to fear, other than mildly higher taxes and the complaints of people who have read Thomas Piketty. Moguls complain about their feelings because that’s all anyone can really threaten.
I believe this is more accurate than Nick Hanauer’s semi-regular essays on how “the pitchforks” will eventually come out.
Hanauer is the venture capitalist who has made a second career as a celebrity billionaire, one who is on the side of the little people.
Being a well-heeled spokesperson for those ground underfoot is the new really cool gig. In the past, I wrote this:
I recently watched Robert Reich’s Inequality for All documentary and Hanauer is all through it, the wealthy and wise-sounding man (venture capitalist, author, activist, philanthropist, true patriot and civic leader, according to his bio) delivering the same clarion call: Inequality is wrecking the country, the wealthy need to be taxed more, the people need to be paid more.
The documentary’s Hanauer bits are taken from his home. In the back of the shot, an acoustic guitar is tastefully set …
Here are framing questions for this post: How many people maimed by the American economy have been given the marquee treatment by the big newsmedia for the sheer audaciousness of their thinking about our trying times?
Hanauer, last week, with the same message in a big essay at Politico on how “pitchforks” will come for the “plutocrats” unless more the spoil is more fairly doled out. Of which I only excerpt the remarkable lead:
You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor. Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. I tell you all this to demonstrate that in many ways I’m no different from you. Like you, I have a broad perspective on business and capitalism. And also like you, I have been rewarded obscenely for my success, with a life that the other 99.99 percent of Americans can’t even imagine. Multiple homes, my own plane, etc., etc. You know what I’m talking about …
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, WhiteManistan at 10:28 am by George Smith
Last year, it was bullet-proof tactical puffer vests for children:
With his new line, MC Kids, Caballero offers backpacks and jackets for kids, including some in girlie pink and stamped with fluttering fairies, that are also outfitted with bulletproof plating to stop the slugs from an Uzi. Caballero, 46, said that in his 20 years of business, there had never been a demand in Colombia for bulletproof children’s clothing.
But the United States is a different market: a country where there are about as many firearms as people, Caballero pointed out, and where mass shootings have simply prompted some to stock up on weapons and seek other forms of protection.
And you can see them as part of this video, even more relevant now.
And this week, a long report from deep inna heart of WhiteManistan, Texas, described by Rolling Stone as “falling into the hands of gun nuts, border-sealers and talk-radio charlatans [where] George W. Bush would practically be considered a communist.”
The article is more fair than the lead-in’s implication. Even it’s subjects, most woefully, one of the leaders of Open Carry Texas, might find parts of it a truthful portrayal.
This excerpt, perfectly describes the upside-down world of paralytic, dangerous and paranoid white America in 2014:
Open Carry Texas received even worse press after two dozen heavily armed members, some carrying AK-47s, crashed a meeting of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun-control group formed after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. The Moms had gathered at a Mexican restaurant in suburban Dallas. Even though the Open Carry members never left the parking lot, the damage was done: As any PR novice would have warned, you simply don’t bring guns to a mom fight.
This week, Target issued a statement that bringing guns to shop for sundries was no longer allowed, looking specifically aimed at Open Carry Texas in Tarrant County.
“It’s also interesting to report that nearly everyone I met [for this story] turned out to be far quirkier, politically, than any caricatured preconceptions might lead you to guess,” writes the Rolling Stone journalist.
While journalistic comparisons between the rise of the Tea Party and the rise of Occupy Wall Street – as two ends of the spectrum responding to economic collapse and elite betrayal – feel like clichéd false [equivalence] by this point, there’s an unruly, anarchistic feel to this crowd that reminds me of the time I spent in Zuccotti Park.”
Readers know there’s no shortage of WhiteManistan blog video on the rise of Gun Bully America. They are invited to enjoy again, Gun Nut Folk Tune and Hey Joe and to sh-a-a-a-a-r-e in the great network of social media where the cream always rises to the top.
Made months to over a year ago, working documentary proof that things can always get worse. And do.
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07.01.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 1:20 pm by George Smith
Three years later, no change. Listen to the updated busking version, below.
NYT:
[Walgreen’s is ]considering moving the company’s headquarters to Switzerland as part of a merger with Alliance Boots, a European drugstore chain.
Why? To lower Walgreen’s tax bill even further.
Alarmingly, dozens of large United States companies are contemplating the increasingly popular tax-skirting tactic known as an inversion …
In Walgreen’s case, an inversion would be an affront to United States taxpayers. The company, which also owns the Duane Reade chain in New York, reaps almost a quarter of its $72 billion in revenue directly from the government; it received $16.7 billion from Medicare and Medicaid last year.
“It is unconscionable that Walgreen is considering this tax dodge — especially in light of the billions of dollars it receives from U.S. taxpayers every year,??? Nell Geiser, associate director of Change to Win Retail Initiatives, a union-financed consumer advocacy group, said in a statement.
Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, called it “unfair and deeply unpatriotic if the company moves offshore while continuing to make its money here, leaving the rest of us to pick up the tab for its tax avoidance.???
The Times story goes on to explain the tax avoidance move for Walgreen is being pushed by the 1 percent, “large investors.”
Despite all the bribes and favors extended by the state government of Illinois, Senator Richard Durbin of the company’s home state, and taxpayers the company responded with meaningless boilerplate: “Our management team and board are making significant progress evaluating the proposed transaction determining the timing and structure, the combined management team, additional synergy and cost reduction initiatives and potential changes to our future capital structure.”
“Given all of the benefits Walgreen has received over the years as a United States corporate citizen, it remains curious why [Mr. Wasson, Walgeen CEO], would seek a new passport,” writes the Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin.
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06.30.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Culture of Lickspittle at 1:47 pm by George Smith
It’s the season for flesh-eating disease on the Gulf Coast. Warmer water at this time of year results in more of the marine vibrio, V. vulnificus in the water, on the rocks and submerged objects in shallow water, and in shell fish.
The microbe is always present but the summer months give it optimal growth conditions. Coupled with the tourist season, there is a yearly arrival of cases of flesh-eating disease and septicemia caused by the organism I earned my doctorate on.
“V. vulnificus is a rare cause of disease, but it is also underreported,” reads the Centers for Disease Control. “Between 1988 and 2006, CDC received reports of more than 900 V. vulnificus infections from the Gulf Coast states, where most cases occur. Before 2007, there was no national surveillance system for V. vulnificus …”
“An average of 50 culture-confirmed cases, 45 hospitalizations, and 16 deaths are reported each year from the Gulf Coast region (reporting states are Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas). Nationwide, there are as many as 95 cases (half of which are culture confirmed), 85 hospitalizations, and 35 deaths.”
In years to come, the effect of global warming on its incidence will bear watching.
Statistically, V. vulnificus disease carries about a 50 percent rate of mortality if it becomes systemic, infiltrating large portions of the body or in the blood stream. That’s high. And it’s because, while the organism is easy to treat with antibiotics, it must be caught early in the course of an infection. Those who go to the emergency room or doctor immediately upon seeing a festering wound with spreading systemic component, do best.
Excerpts from the Gulf Coast news wires:
A Treasure Coast man is recovering from a flesh-eating bacterial infection that took over his leg in a constellation-like pattern starting with a cut he got on his ankle.
“Diarrhea, fatigued, not to mention everyday waking up everyday with the weight of what is wrong with me and am I going to be okay?” JJ Davidson said of his 4-week progression since contracting Vibrio Vulnificus ..
Vibrio Vulnificus infected 30 people last year and killed 10 in Florida.
It’s invisible and rare, but often deadly.
Davidson says he knows he became infected at the popular Stuart sandbar, where after he cut his foot, he became incredibly sick.
“I was walking through the water about knee deep and I had an anchor cut my ankle,” JJ said days later he noticed a painful sore develop, and fatigue set in, “I noticed my calf started to get a blistery infection that started to pop up on it. My thigh up here broke out in the same blistery rash.”
Florida health officials have already reported six cases this year; four due to the infection of an open wound and two from consuming raw shellfish.
On June 7, 2013, while fishing along the rocks in front of Grand Isle [Louisiana], Rick Garey contracted the flesh-eating bacteria vibrio vulnificus through a minor scrape on his left ankle.
Within 48 hours, he was literally fighting for his life at Lady of the Sea General Hospital in Cut Off and then at Terrebonne General Medical Center in Houma, where he endured seven surgeries and a two-week stay, including three days in critical care …
“I’m real happy I can see 57,??? Garey said. “I didn’t know if I’d see 56 for a while.???
“Vibrio is bad news. It’s nasty stuff. When you mention vibrio around doctors, you can almost see the color change in their face,??? Garey said. “It happens fast and it’s wickedly efficient, and you don’t even know it.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a macho NFL lineman, it will eat you up just as fast.???
My lasting contribution to science was the determination and partial characterization of an enzyme called a collagenase produced by V. vulnificus.
It was my doctoral thesis. And in formulating the problem, I had looked at the disease, then just emergent and the causative organism with the reasoning that production of a collagenase would be quite likely in such a case.
Collagenase in an enzyme the brings about a fast degradation of collagen which makes up 30 percent of the protein in people. Collagen is found in skin, blood vessels, muscle and liver.
As part of the marine estuarine environment, the microbe produces its collagenase in the digestion of food sources for use.
When large numbers of V. vulnificus proliferate in a wound or in a blood infection, the production of this enzyme, which is always on, contributes to the catastrophic results.
“Clinical characteristics of V. vulnificus suggest that the organism is capable of invading healthy tissue, which to us raises the possibility that the organism produces collagenolytic enzymes,” reads my paper, “Collagenolytic activity of Vibrio vulnficus: Potential Contribution to its Invasiveness,” from 1982.
“Vibrio vulnficus produces two disease states, a rapidly progressive cellulitis from wound infection and a bacteremia which, in some cases, produces secondary lesions which allow the organism to infiltrate the dermis and, in one extreme example, the cerebrospinal fluid. Production of collagenase in vivo could contribute to the invasive property in these cases.”
The data collected showed that the collagenase did digest collagen, ours extracted from the skins of freshly-slaughtered calfs, quite efficiently.
Over the years, the paper was well-received.
The disease is still rare. That is, most people who come in contact with the organism never know it. But it is a recognized hazard, one that has gradually increased since my work on it decades ago.
Consequences of disease caused by V. vulnificus are well documented in pictures at images.google.com. Be advised: They’re unsettling.
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06.28.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 9:15 am by George Smith
In the rush for clickbait and eye-ball grabbing, the Culture of Lickspittle reduces everything to imbecility. The United States did not enter World War I until 1917, about two and a half years after the assassination. And, relatively speaking, its military played only a minor role in the fighting that characterized the war. There is nothing in the American experience, for instance, that comes close to the Somme and Verdun.
But today, for the sake of web hits, its Franz Ferdinand (or Gavrilo Princip) Day. Far easier to digest than Barbara Tuchman, who is dead, anyway, and would have been lousy at web SEO.
Voila, ABC News:
Assassination That Started World War I like ‘Game of Thrones’ Script
The shot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand 100 years ago today – which started a bloodletting that didn’t stop until 10 million people died and four empires were ruined in World War I – had all the elements of an exaggerated “Game of Thrones??? script.
Yep, 10 million people dead sure is kinda easy to picture after watching some popular tv show with a dwarf who shoots his dad in the toilet with a crossbow for the season finale.
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06.27.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 3:48 pm by George Smith
You can probably count the news agencies on the fingers of one hand that don’t publish daily clickbait in the Culture of Lickspittle.
Everyone else is fully engaged in the rush to the bottom of brainlessness, greased by social media and the environment of Google search.
Today’s best, I think, at PBS (!):
8 Things You Didn’t Know About Franz Ferdinand
1. He had bad lungs
2. He hunted nearly 300,000 animals
3. His wife was deemed totally unsuitable for the dynasty
Presumably written for nothing or almost that by someone named Talia Mindich, probably an intern or free-lancer, emphasis on the first part of the word.
And your daily Upworthy immunization:
Are You Sick Of Ass-Backward Hillbillies? Check Out Some Ass-Forward Ones.
The lead-in: “Growing up in West Virginia, I got a lot of comments about whether I wear shoes or have all my teeth. When I went to school out of state, I actually had a professor ask me if ‘folks back home’ felt like I had ‘outgrown [my] raisin’ [sic] by going to college.”
Giant Chickens Were A Really Good Idea In Theory But Turned Out Bad In Practice
The lead-in: “Not only is food a pleasant part of the human experience, it’s also a necessity for us to, well, live.”
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06.25.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Cyberterrorism at 10:26 am by George Smith
Keith Alexander: “Freedom is not free.” No, advice on the matter costs a million bucks a month for some, maybe.
Briefly retired ex-NSA director Keith Alexander has been busy. “He’s already out pushing hard,” as someone pointed out earlier this week.
And he just pushed hard as the keynote speaker at the Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit, an national security megaplex affair where it is assured that a percentage of the attendees are directors or employers of businesses and agencies writing software for spying and generally making things more untrustworthy on the net.
An excerpt on Alexander’s opinions, from the web:
Without mentioning former Snowden or any specific news organization, Alexander said the revelations about the tools and processes the NSA uses to conduct mass surveillance have had a “devastating??? impact on national security. “It’s devastating not only for our country but for Europe,??? he said, adding he thinks that Islamic militant terrorist organizations seem “to be learning from these leaks??? and evading some detections.
He said the freedom enjoyed in the U.S. arises from the security provided by the military and law enforcement. “Freedom is not free,??? he said to the Gartner audience of security professionals.
Got that? Freedom in the US only comes from the money spent on the national security megaplex.
While it’s quite a twisting of the concept of democracy, which we no long have a function example of, anyway, there is a nugget of truth deep within.
The “freedom” the country enjoys, mostly the freedom to shop and collectively spend more money on national security, is kinda preserved by the beliefs put into action by our Keith Alexanders.
Continuing a regular arguing point, Alexander told the security flock that terrorism is increasing.
“Alexander referenced the growing violence around the world, specifically citing more than 1,700 executions at the hands of the Islamic State Iraq and Syria (ISIS),” reads one report from yesterday.
And who set the stage for that?
General Keith Alexander doesn’t live in the same world that I, or anyone I know, does. And the biggest example of it has been Edward Snowden and Alexander’s continuing speeches on the affair and value of the latter’s security work to everyone’s well-being.
Which will all go to hell if he and his successors are not enabled to be ever more on guard.
“[Alexander said] if attackers launch major denial of service attacks or destroy data held in financial systems, for example, the consequences are severe for all,” reads a report on the Gartner summit.
In usage of the cliche of patriots, “freedom is not free,” Alexander puts himself in the company of, wait for it, Ted Nugent.
Go ahead, click that link.
And do enjoy, one more time, the reprint of another PARIAH, one of my favorites in the bunch. Sha–a-a-a-a-a-a-r-e.
Finally, if someone reading comes along with some experience in the matter, do enlighten me.
Why do people at these things sit and listen to speeches like Keith Alexander’s? What’s the motivation?
Douglas MacArthur he’s not.
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06.24.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle at 12:25 pm by George Smith
Ah, good old PARIAH magazine, a perfect series of send-ups for our time. Coulda been great but nobody would share it. Not enough clickability in the Culture of Lickspittle.
Anyway, economist Dean Baker has been thrashing Uber recently, two pieces — one at the Guardian and one at TruthOut — strongly criticizing the disruptive and innovative ride-sharing/amateur taxi cab operation in the last ten days or so.
What’s packaged as disruptive innovation isn’t really that. Uber is just the use of iOS application, the convenience of smartphone and free-lance drivers to evade regulations or costs that others who do the same thing have had to pay.
Baker:
If we go the route of ending the requirement that taxies need medallions, there is also the question of what we do about the sunk costs for people like my cab driver, who is currently out $250,000 from buying a medallion. On the current path, these medallion owners will just be out of luck. Their life savings will be made worthless by young kids who are better at evading regulations than immigrant cab drivers; so much for the American Dream.
It is worth considering this issue in light of the larger issue of the growing inequality we have seen over the last three decades. Uber, like Amazon, has allowed a small number of people to become extremely rich by evading regulations and/or taxes that apply to their middle class competitors …
This is a pretty simple story. In a country where rules are enforced or not enforced to benefit the rich and screw the middle class, you will have increasing inequality and a middle class that is seeing few of the benefits of economic growth.
The unfairness is stark. They key word is evasion,, tech-enabled.
You have the traditional cab driver who has had to take out a quarter-million dollar loan, an expensive mortgage — if you will, to be able to operate a yellow cab in the center of our big cities. This, in addition to the payment of additional regulatory costs put in place by civil society.
It’s a considerable investment in money and middle class livelihoods. And if regulating agencies make a choice which enables technology to throw that away for a poorer service that merely brings the convenience of a smartphone, it is economically maiming the lives of people in the traditional infrastructural regulated service.
Which is what makes Uber odious.
It’s smartphone-driven swarm of amateurs delivering rides in in a generally poorer fashion. (If you click the Uber reviews on Yelp for Los Angeles, you will also see the company isn’t above putting in astro-turf.)
Uber’s innovation, if you want to call it that is little more than a semantic trick. The company passes off the fancy that it’s not a transportation business like cab companies. It doesn’t own cars and is just an app that puts drivers together with rides.
A government, or regulating agency, can choose to ignore such tricks.
Baker adds that if people had all this explained to them, then maybe we’d see more real drive for “rules that treat people equally.”
Instead, he notes, as this blog has sometime in the past, we have a propaganda fog generated by economist cheerleaders and tech columnists for such things, one delivering the message that any badness is just a trivial consequence on the road to the future. Then, he continues, “millions of professional types” get to bemoan inequality without ever explaining or doing something about the big rig job driving it.
The New Yorker blog has just published a bit on Uber. An excerpt:
Startups like Uber argue that technology can transform the casual driver into a professional. With G.P.S., anyone can navigate efficiently. Real-time passenger feedback means that drivers who consistently receive low ratings can be dropped from the service. “Tech tools have changed the whole environment,??? Josh Mohrer, the general manager of Uber’s New York office, told me. The upstarts can provide a range of ride options at different price points, improve driver efficiency by matching drivers with rides more quickly, and weed out bad drivers.
This graph, based on the say-so of an Uber worker, is easily exposed as bullshit. That is, if you read these Yelp reviews on the service in the Long Island/NYC area, linked above.
The rest of the New Yorker piece, brief, is worth a quick scan.
Summarizing, like all the innovation in the sharing economy, the basic application is the use of technology to flood a service with under-priced amateurs and part-timers trying to earn some extra money in a crippled economy.
In other words, it’s the mobilization of an underpaid workforce of temps and free-lancers in an austere economy in the liquidation of service employees in the middle class who earn more, with the pie then appropriated by the owners of the app.
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