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The Bureaucratic Singularity: when technology develops faster than governmental control.

Posted by $ HeroWorship 9 years, 4 months ago to Technology
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Note: The image at the link summarizes this post.
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If government regulation grows arithmetically, while technology grows exponentially, there reaches a point where innovation happens faster than the government can control it. This is the inflection point of The Bureaucratic Singularity.

DarkWeb, Bitcoin/blockchain, Arab Climate Change, Anonymous, AirBnB, Uber, etc. I submit we are at the inflection point - now.

Existence Exists. Reality. Our friend. And, no respecter of persons or weakness.

Specialization creates efficiencies, which drive competition and innovation - exponentially - changing the competitive landscape of society. Wealth, intelligence, and skill begets more wealth, intelligence, and skill.

Predictable Result A. The opportunities/speed to benefit society and (in the process) create wealth also grow exponentially (Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.), with producers on the cutting edge gaining lion's shares of larger pies.

Predictable Result B: Consumers gain larger absolute slices but smaller relative slices. Successful Entrepreneurs move from Millionaires to Billionaires, while the average joe moves from plays to Netflix, telegraph to iPhones, libraries to the Internet. 5% on 100 million is 5 million. 50% of 100 thousand is 50 thousand. The size of the relative gap between rich and poor is accelerating even as the poor get richer in absolute terms.

Predictable Result C: Competitors (and their employees) lose their place at the table, unless they can adopt/adapt/innovate in pace with the cutting edge. For them, cutting edge is bleeding edge. This displacement is not trivial, and requires increasing investment by companies and individuals in (self) development, without certainty of where to invest.

Predictable Result D: Populist rhetoric/media becomes increasingly effective at portraying disparity. Envy and anger at disparity grows, leading to increased government attempts/regulation to "correct" this "imbalance." Democrat/Republican alike succumb to this pressure. Lobbying intensifies as the Beltway Parasites feed on the frenzy. Government interference in economy causes increasing systemic failures.

Suggestions:
1. Prepare yourself to surf this wave. Make sure you are on the cutting edge, not the bleeding edge.
2. Teach yourself to focus on and promote absolute wealth, not relative wealth.
3. Promote positive adaptations to the rapid changes, using profit as a slipstream to fund the promotion in an upward spiral.


All Comments


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  • Posted by johnpe1 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    it's the tightest point in the curve? . you picked a tough
    equation, with y going to minus "infinity" at x=0 . . it's plain
    that it wasn't a mathematician who chose the terms for
    the source article.

    it is, of course, the point of intersection -- maybe that's what
    they meant to say. -- j
    .
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  • Posted by Herb7734 9 years, 4 months ago
    SAME AS IT EVER WAS.
    HW has just put in writing, something I have said for years. He/she said it better. In Russia, my grandfather did beautiful leather work, mainly sword and dagger scabbards. In America, he worked in a factory as a manual laborer. But he didn't complain because even though he went from craftsman to laborer, he lived better than he could even aspire to in Russia. He even was able to have caviar every now and then. (Not beluga, but the cheaper stuff.)
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Almost sounds like you are talking Steve Jobs except he figured out the details as well as inventing whole new worlds of need. No zero sum game for that man. His pie expanded in size and in value while the Pelosi's of the world scrambled for crumbs.
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  • Posted by term2 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It DOES take them a while to react tho, and in the meantime we can all make money !!
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    PayPal made him rich but it's not a place I was advise people to go to find customer service nor honesty. In that regard they are equal with Bank America which is somewhere between none and zero..
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Private security is one of the faster growing industries at this time. I hope George Smith is right about that aspect of anarcap.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    No!
    Or, I hope you are wrong and I am right.
    Government will certainly try to make it difficult - and may even succeed. We will still find a way around those punks. Damnit!
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The way to do that is don't ask permission. What's the old rule? Do it and use it now and ask forgiveness later....if you get around to it.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    John,

    As a professional mathematician, I must disagree on the use of terms argument. "inflection" means "the point on the curve where it starts to look different in an important way."

    Then again, maybe I am making up terms and you are right. Yeah, that's it.

    What do you call the "knee of the curve" point?

    Or, is it even more difficult than that, because the equation "Y= -1/x" always looks the same at each order of magnitude, and the "knee of the curve" "inflection point thingy" is an illusion of distance?
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Fair enough. Thou art God.

    And, as Smith pointed out - it is not to the benefit of the humanity of the worker that he becomes a cog in a machine - it is the benefit of the society as a whole.

    Specialization also need not be "insectual" (sorry, incest puns are a habit of mine). We each specialize in Ayn Rand - which doesn't suck. :-)

    To challenge you - isn't it precisely because so many people specialize so profoundly that allows Musk to dream and invest - while other people figure out the details? (I won't mention the government cheese involved).

    I vote B. :-)
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Amen. Government will have to adapt to the new realities - it will be too slow to stop them. End result? Little to no effect. Or rather, the changes wrought by technology will be so profound that the regulations created to attempt to stop them will be annoyances.

    I hope. :-)
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Zen, I wrote this piece after an extensive empirical study of regulatory documentation... NOT! :-)

    Although, http://rationalspirituality.com/pages...

    In terms of unpredictable intervals I argue that the democratization of technology and the number of fundamental breakthroughs that exist but have yet to be integrated/applied will lead to creativity unlike we have ever seen. It will be unpredictable in moments, but the trend will be relatively smooth.

    And - They are still working on Net Neutrality (arithmetic) , while the internet has grown exponentially. (he says, hoping this carries water)...
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  • Posted by Zenphamy 9 years, 4 months ago
    My fist question is that I've seen nothing that substantiates that gov't regulation only grows arithmetically.

    And secondly, doesn't technology that has significant impact, occur at unpredictable intervals, ie EM uses, transistor, maser/laser?

    While it's true that technology grows on technology, but so does regulation.
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  • Posted by dnr 9 years, 4 months ago
    Kurzweil and others have long documented the exponential rate of innovation. It seems that we are, in fact, passed the knee of this exponential curve. Governments can attempt to interfere with innovations and the societal changes they bring, but in the long-run will have little or no effect. At this point in time, it seems like most religions are doing a better job of screwing things up than governments. "This too will pass."
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 9 years, 4 months ago
    I was OK until I read "specialization creates efficiencies." I'm a fan of Heinlein, and remember one of my favorite Lazarus Long quotes about humans: "Specialization is for insects." The ability to adapt to rapid change is critical to getting positive results, especially with the accelerating pace of technology.

    Elon Musk defies the dictum of specialization, making his fortune with PayPal, and striking out in multiple technological directions, with space launchers, solar energy, electric vehicles, and high speed transportation (Hyperloop).

    Right now we appear to be engaging in a battle between results B and D. If B wins, we will see the world's first trillionaire, most likely a space entrepreneur who mines asteroids. If D wins, we may see the end of the American experiment, collapsing in violence.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 4 months ago
    Excellent article, which highlights points that are often been overlooked in visualizing the future. I believe that there is one factual error in the otherwise excellent list: What I have read indicates that the poor are getting richer faster than the rich are, so the gap is closing, not widening. This is minor, though, in comparison to your main point that high tech is increasing the capabilities of 'everyone' at a marvelous rate and that it is shifting paradigms faster than bureaucracies can compensate.

    There is an aspect of this that I think of as 'virtual Australias'. When you engage in interactions that are beyond the sphere of control, you have the freedom of a 'new land'. When we discuss the union's demands for increased minimum wage leading to robotization of fast food, we are talking about this. (The Maker movement is another example.)

    I am very aware that Louis XIV, Kublai Kahn, Alexander the Great...none of them had or could have had HVAC or the Internet. "Is it not passing brave to be a king, and ride in triumph through [a personal virtual Persepolis on the Internet]?"

    Jan
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  • Posted by ProfChuck 9 years, 4 months ago
    Pure science is devoid of ethics. Reality is what it is, there is no good or evil, no right or wrong, only understanding or the lack of it. A nuclear scientist can build a bomb or an engine, the physics is virtually identical. The choice goes beyond the relative simplicity of science and becomes driven by morals and ethics which is astonishingly more complex. I was once asked why I didn't consider a career in law rather than science. My answer was juvenile but accurate, "With science I don't have to memorize so much." This may seem facile on the surface but there is solid reasoning behind it. With science almost everything can be derived from a few fundamental principals because it is nature that makes the rules and the scientist cannot alter them he just needs to find out what they are. Nature is honest. The law, however, consists of a labyrinth of inventions, some interlocking and some independent. Law is based upon what we want reality to be while science is based upon what reality is. The problem is that no one can agree on what reality "should" be so we live in a state of constant conflict of agendas and ideologies. T.E. Lawrence was once asked "Why do you love the desert?" His response was wonderful, "Because it's clean". That describes how I feel about science.
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  • Posted by johnpe1 9 years, 4 months ago
    I love everything but the terms. . the term singularity
    refers to the "edge" of a black hole, and it's an odd
    choice here. . and inflection refers to the point where
    a curve changes from positive to negative slope, or from
    increasing 1st derivative to decreasing 1st derivatve --
    or vice versa, in both cases. . I can see the black hole
    analogy, kinda, but the word inflection??? -- j
    .
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    There are automatic brakes. Patent laws, required testing, medical area is big on that since thalidomide. EPA rules... you name it. Technology may have the answer producing and selling it is an entirely different story. greater than 256 codes ring a bill?
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  • Posted by term2 9 years, 4 months ago
    Interesting article. I think that increasing speed of innovation is here to stay. BUT, government has also learned to do new things. Like in Las Vegas- you cannot do ANY business until you convince the powers that be your business fits into one of their "categories" of approved businesses. And they are slow at expanding their list as innovation proceeds. For example AirBnB is illegal in Las vegas. It took an hour for me to get a license to do simple manufacturing of LED loff road lights while they figured out what categoy it fit into.

    The government can simply do what it wants now, like forbidding any profits over $xx, or forbidding any income over $xx by making it subject to 100% tax.

    There is directive 10-289 stuff too. All bets are off with government these days. There seems to be nothing off the table now.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    An interesting book entitled The World Is Flat puts what you said together with fast movement of packages from a small memory chip or birthstone ring or microkini to a huge shipping container, the communications system, the plastic payment handling systems, and outsourcing which in effect flattens the world's business and commercial playing field. Business has an escape from the predator Governments like Washington DC. They move out of the country, still advertise here, and unless you need address to home courier service can get you products from around the world in one or two days. If there are any taxes the end user consumer pays them....the company is safe and elsewhere. Who does that not hurt? Some of the bigger unions for items still made locally and especially shipped locally, installers of comm systems, Walmart and the Dollar stores... the others will be in the welfare lines if they don't join the real world....

    Now if we could only outsource government...
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I defer to DK on the bs/problems of intellectual patents. And, when I look at airbnb/uber/bitcoin/blockchain, I see so many disruptive changes that the government is going to be increasingly on its heels.

    Will it always find some way to create laws to attempt to regulate (as much a s a mis-nomer as that term is)? Sure. However, the technology will change the game, and they will adapt themselves to it. The faster this happens, the more difficult it will be for them to do so.

    AND, while they shut down napster and piratebay, dozens of other sites took their place. The key, as I understand it, is that more people are learning how to use the technologies. As the next 3 billion people come on line, the game as we have known it is forever changing.

    I admit, it is a bit optimistic. However, I believe warranted.
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