Saturday, October 17, 2015

Continuum and possible futures




Continuum Actually Managed to Have a Pretty Sweet Ending by Charlie Jane Anders

The Dreamwork of Humanity by DeLong

In popular entertainment ... the Syfy TV series Continuum just ended on an upbeat note. 2077 will look more like Star Trek's one-world government, replicator communism and the Corporate Congress will never have existed thanks to the time-travelling fascist "Protector" Keira Cameron. In the Wachowski siblings' movie Jupiter Ascending, on the other hand, Capital has expanded across the universe, working through family "houses" of "entitled." Galaxies of planets haves succumbed to Piketty's death spiral as the .000000000001 percent utilize sentient beings as resources for profit as if they were Soylent Green or batteries for the Matrix's AIs. He who controls the populated planets, controls the universe.

As a revolt erupts among the central planners at the FOMC, more and more one hears about the possibility of "cold fusion" (see Willem Buiter and Citigroup's Steven Englander) or a "Peoples' QE" (Jeremy Corbyn). Simon Wren-Lewis described it as "democratic helicopter money." "Investment that also boosts the supply side is likely to be a far more effective form of stimulus than cheques posted to individuals."

Cold fusion raises the possibility of unprecedented leaps in "productivity" which would provide immense help in the campaigns to avoid global warming and the Piketty death spiral.

And yet it draw opposition from the likes of Nick Rowe and David Beckworth. Why?

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