Shifting Foundations...

Been busy! The hot new Evonomics site has run part II of my extensive exploration of "micropayments," which may be... the next billion dollar industry.

Today  advertising noxiously controls the Internet. Is there a way out? Last time I showed how all past micropayment systems failed.  This time, I discuss the "secret sauce" that may empower the next one to work -- and save modern journalism.


== The ground beneath us trembles... ==

David Sloan Wilson and Sigrun Aasland assert, on the Evonomics site: "It’s no secret that the Scandinavian nations are doing something right. They consistently lead the world in measures of happiness and quality of life."  

Sure, but how the Nordic countries achieve their success–and whether they can be copied by other nations–is another matter. "One reason that the Nordic nations work well might be because they have not—yet—succumbed to the siren’s song of free market fundamentalism."  What the Nordic counties' success suggests to Wilson and Aasland is that centralized planning won’t work and neither will unregulated markets. Something in between is required, which David Colander calls “activist laissez faire.”  

Though shall we add that Norway has benefited from loads of oil? And that Europeans (and Latin American nations) have been able to spend far lower fractions of their national wealth on arms, armies and defense than any generation before them, thanks to a protective umbrella they did not have to pay for?

Oh, but cynicism is the toxic drug addiction of our age. Take this example:

From UltraSociety by Peter Turchin: "There is a principle in Sociology known as the Iron Law of Oligarchy. It says that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic or autocratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop into oligarchies. This principle was first formulated by the German sociologist Robert Michels in 1911. Michels studied the inner workings of socialist parties and labor movements. Both the leaders and the ranks of these organizations professed a strong belief in equality and democracy. And yet in practice, as the leaders accumulated power, they began to subvert democratic procedures. Power corrupts."

Robert Carneiro, an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, describes how the Iron Law of Oligarchy could play out in prehistory: 
"As fighting … intensified, autonomous villages formed alliances with each other as they thought to protect themselves from any attacks. To lead the fighting force of allied villages, war leaders were either chosen or imposed themselves. These war leaders were often village chiefs who, elevated to carry out more urgent functions, found their powers greatly augmented. However, once the fighting ceased and villages returned to their normal conditions of autonomy, a war chief’s power reverted back to what it has previously been. Nonetheless, with each successive war, military leaders tended to enlarge their powers and entrench their position. Moreover, they became increasingly reluctant to surrender these powers when the fighting had stopped. Finally, either through a chief’s peremptory refusal to relinquish his once-delegated war powers, or (less likely perhaps) through the outright conquest of neighboring villages by the chief of the strongest one, the first permanent chiefdoms were established.'

Sound familiar? History does seem to support cynical "iron laws." That is, until you look at the exceptions that awe and frighten cynics. Cynics who shrug off the spectacular examples of when humans chose not to follow those "iron" laws.

Hence the legend of Cincinnatus and the way George Washington shocked the Old World and inspired thoughts of change, by repeatedly refusing power. And the way Pax Americana became by far the least-hated "empire" across history, because folks - even our rivals - can sense that becoming a deliberately domineering empire simply does not interest most of us. (Excluding Bushite neocons.)

The crux: Iron laws may have held much of the time.  But recent generations have proved that they do not have to.

== Challenges from overseas ==

Scott Malcomson describes, How Russia and China are cooperating to dismantle America's dominance of the internet, creating firewalls and filtering information. A theme continued in his book, Splinternet: How Geopolitics and Commerce are Fragmenting the World Wide Web.

In the WorldPost, Nathan Gardels writes: “In March 1946, Winston Churchill famously declared that an "iron curtain" had descended across the European continent, casting a decades-long chill between East and West known as the Cold War. A new chill is in the air once again as China and Russia seek to draw a new "digital curtain" across the world in a joint effort to thwart the Western web from penetrating their cultural space.” Continues Gardels, “If the arrival in Moscow last week of China's Internet czar, Lu Wei, to advise his Russian counterpart on how to erect a "firewall" against the West is any indication, a new "Cominternet" for the 21st century seems to be in the works - analogous to the so-called "Communist International," or "Comintern," which linked communist parties around the world from Moscow to Beijing during the Stalin era.”

== ah... contrasts ==

Meanwhile, ISIS’s efforts at changing educational curricula in the regions that it controls have led it to adopt, at the beginning of the 2014 school year, new books for middle school children aged 12 to 15. These texts are almost all lifted - almost unaltered - from the Saudi school syste, including the book Kitab al-Tawhid by the famous Islamic scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab—founder of Wahhabism, the fanatical sect that utterly controls life in Saudi Arabia, and that has been exported to Saudi financed madrassas that strive hard to radicalize boys across the muslim world.

This includes a  major toehold in Europe -- Kosovo: "Saudi money and influence have transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for jihadists." And "mosques built here with Saudi government money are blamed for spreading Wahhabism — the conservative ideology dominant in Saudi Arabia — in the 17 years since an American-led intervention wrested tiny Kosovo from Serbian oppression." 

This fact is, of course, devastating for those who try to excuse the Saudi Royal House as somehow not deeply responsible for modern Sunni irredentist radicalism (e.g. ISIS and Al Qaeda), as the Wahhabis are simply a branch of that clan.

It gets better. ISIS changed the internationally acknowledged mathematical symbol for addition (+), replacing it with a new symbol represented by the letter z. ISIS’s reasoning is that the + sign indicates the cross, which is used worldwide as a symbol for Christians.

You laugh?  Is it any wonder that the (partly) Saudi-controlled American right has sabotaged moves toward efficiency research and energy independence - and science, in general - for 30 years?