Future of International Film Industry

Creating a non-superficial global cinema will require finally figuring out truly universal values of a planetary culture. These values derive from human biology.



Capturing and holding audiences from all the continents isn't easy. Many have tried.

Modern mass entertainment often serves as a deeper and more important global language than English. That is because present day Hollywood industry inadvertently created a process that increasingly touches upon basic physiological human needs and aspirations. Profit driven use of visuals, characters, and themes (that were scientifically researched to be as marketable and appealing to widest possible multi-ethnic audience) is steadily pushing towards a universal formula. Although we're still at a point where the appealing "supranational" characteristics of mainstream Hollywood involve the usual (explosions, special effects, sex appeal, mental escape through hyperindividualistic protagonists, etc), we will begin to see deeper basic cinematic themes emerge that cut across all cultures in the near future. The basic reasons will be:

1) Same corporate profit motive that gave us the rise of neuromarketing will push for figuring out physiological substrata that makes simultaneous global release movies more emotionally appealing. Digital piracy will make physical movie spaces ever more important for revenue generation. Conversion of movie theaters into expensive 3D/concert/theater type spectacles will need research to be successful. You WILL be satisfied with the global release whether you're in Nigeria, Japan, Ecuador, Texas, etc.

2) Emerging Internet culture finding its way to the mainstream as globe trotting generation Y takes charge of the industry.

3) Dawning realization by Western elites that globalization has stalled. Their scramble to rethink and proactively improve globalization and its integrative forces. Goal of preventing a major and rapid slide into mercantilist (potentially even hostile!) continental economic blocks will see elite efforts to create stronger intercontinental "glue". Efforts towards discovery of media/art/Internet driven truly global culture should be part of the effort. Most states currently subsidize their movie industries behind the scenes as national propaganda PR moves. This practice can be turned on its head if applied towards supranational themes and purposes.

The spread of this Hollywood lingua franca is a microcosm of globalization itself. When analyzing integrative processes of globalization, special attention should be given to the film industry in particular.

Until relatively recently, Hollywood released its mega movies domestically first and abroad only months later. Then, to combat immediate digital piracy from places like China it became a more common practice to have simultaneous global openings for very big budget titles. The preparation and logistical coordination of this represented stage three in the emergence of a truly globalized film industry.

Lets briefly go through the stages:

1) 1950s-1980s: Mass cultural exports of the post-war period. Influx of Hollywood products into occupied territories and satellite states. Increasing cooperation between West European studios/agencies and Hollywood resulting in an international entertainment business sphere. Some partial work done on "universal" values within the ideological framing context of the cold war. Both Western and Soviet intelligence have a heavy role in informational shaping of entertainment to influence perceptions of the present world and prime expectations of how the world's future will develop (the dystopian-utopian spectrum of how the 21st century was popularly portrayed in movies is an interesting example of this). Genuine attempt at discovering universal values is hidden and distorted by individual private and corporate interests behind the militaries of the NATO pact.

2) 1980s-1990s: Hollywood studios rapidly expand beyond NATO's sphere of influence and become truly global as most markets are now accessible. Majority of key studio revenue now comes from abroad. Consolidation in number of transnational media corporations that own the studios. Streamlining of their operations along lines of fellow tangible good producing transnational companies. Rapid horizontal creation of international links to reduce costs and create an immediate global reservoir of cheaper talent, locations, and equipment. Actors and actresses become supranational super celebrities recognized anywhere. Global businesses are increasingly synchronized in space and time.

3) 2000- present: Merging of dozens of national and regional markets into one planetary market that allows rapid global penetration and hype generation (via local auxiliaries). Simultaneous global cinema and disc openings. "Epic" large cash infusion Hollywood movie making style is rapidly emulated by other players like Beijing and Moscow. Besides profit, this is partially done to increase their soft power and control domestically. For non-Western (particularly BRIC) powers to be successful with their mass media projects, they need to absorb/buy Hollywood's cutting edge technical, CGI, and art talent. That is already happening and is currently causing peripheral cooperation/merging between movie studios of all key regional political powers on earth.

Stage 2 saw the serious streamlining ("dumbing down") of plots and character backgrounds of biggest budget Hollywood pieces so not too much appeal is lost in the translation for foreigners. Reliance on cartoony cardboard cut out Americana archetypes for characters still continues (with other ethnic archetypes increasingly playing a bigger and bigger role).

Stage 4 will be the most interesting one yet.

Wages in a Resource Based Economy

Compensation in resource based economy will be underlined by energy accounting



The main question that technocrats all over the world are asked is "how will we get a herd of 7 billion monkeys to transition away from the current fiat monetarist system towards a real economy based on resource and electrical energy quantities? How will they be motivated beyond promise of self-aggrandizement and greed?"

Simple answer is that transition to a resource based economy will involve all the same gimmicks used by rulers since the dawn of civilization: greed, fame, honors, and promise of some inequality (although much more reasonable and controlled than currently). Some key differences from the present system are an ever rising safety net baseline to meet basic needs of the populace and compensation in material/energy backed units. Late 20th century methods of artificial scarcity management, central bank printing presses, and Soviet rations have run their course.

Here is one basic outline among many: ( sidenote: The Pragmatist is not an unofficial media arm of any existing technocratic organization even if I provide a link to a wonderful technocracy video introduction at the top right corner of the blog. Check it out! There will be many competing energy accounting and resource accounting systems in the coming decades and they will begin to converge in basic themes eventually.)

1) 10 wage compensation levels with level 1 wage as guaranteed minimum income and level 10 wage as maximum income (10 is used here for metric system style simplicity, it could very well be 6 or 8). There are physiological limits to how equal humans are but there are also physiological limits to how unequal they are. One human receiving no more than 10 times the amount of reward, living space, fame, and electrical output is about right. No human, no matter how strong or gifted is more than 10 times smarter, stronger, productive, "better", than the weakest (multiply IQ of 20 by 10 as an example).

2) At the age of consent everybody starts as a level 1, receiving say, 10,000 units of electrical energy as a basic living stipend (in addition to minimum level 1 modular housing unit, level 1 simple food ration, and provision of equal baseline education and healthcare for all). A level 10 would receive a stipend of 100,000 electrical units to do with as he/she pleases since amount and increase in top compensation is pegged to level 1 baseline.

3) Although transition period may involve brief return to deflationary "sound currency", income eventually will be provided in amount of electrical energy available to you for a certain amount of time. For example, a level 3 person may get 30,000 units of energy a year or 576 units a week. If he or she doesn't spend these 576 units that week on art supplies (or additional non-stipend clothing, grooming supplies, level 8 rare food, etc) then the units don't roll over. They "expire" and return to communal use to provide extra kick for energy intensive infrastructure projects. Nobody could thus hoard up or create a banking lending system with their saved up energy within the common grid. Obviously on the side shenanigans can be done with off grid energy supplies and batteries but common grid can be easily kept separate from it. A person trying to compete with common grid and create "energy banking" would be like a mom and pop store creating water/food banking. The energy wage system is a communal and very macro safety/incentive net.

4) Societal honors, social pressures, education, societal attention, and better mating opportunities are the incentive to educate yourself further to qualify for higher wage level compensation. Some may prefer to marry or have sexual relations with apes of only certain levels just like currently. It is relatively easy to create social mechanisms to encourage personal growth, especially when basic needs of shelter, good nutrition, and healthcare are met (one just has to look at how people are compelled to improve themselves and pursue various non-graduation/non-wage related interests on some of the better college campuses).

5) The rise of maximum income wage is tied to rise in minimum income stipend to create incentives for strongest people to improve conditions for the whole herd. Thus if level 10 leadership builds enough new power source infrastructure to raise the amount of electrical power they give themselves from 100,000 units annually to 200,000 units annually, the provision of minimum stipend for level 1 people will also double from 10,000 to 20,000. This way, the gifts of the strongest create a real and automatic trickle down. An enterprising level 10 living in a house 10 times larger than level 1 house may ask his or her level 8-10 colleagues to contribute their energy towards a new experimental project or an idea.

6) This is very easily calculated by seeing and tracking the total amount of electrical energy available within relatively decentralized global "energy Internet" power grid. Amount of energy flux density within any given area is readily seen as well as deficiencies by relating the energy amount to population per square kilometer. Energy accounting is thus the base of the resource economy superstructure. Calculating energy production and distribution is essential for all other material production, material rationing, and distribution. This is a no brainer and rapid construction of new and better energy sources will be the primary societal and leadership task of level 10 people.

7) Electrical compensation is tied to the amount of schooling that was needed for the task and amount of hours spent on the task. Thus a level 10 after years of training, has to work the entire 20 hour workweek until retirement at the age of 40 (yes those aren't typos, think about the technology enabled progress in leisure time that occurred over the last 100 years from 16 hour workday turning into 8 and so on).

8) To repeat, 20 hour workweek and retirement at 40 (with a generous stipend to almost match the wage level) to allow fresh talent to take control in a fast paced 21st century environment where exponential progress in technological gadgets, implants, biological and pharmacological augmentations makes late retirement a danger to the whole planetary herd. Gerontocracy at all levels is a public safety risk of enormous proportions. The elderly should be comfortably and rapidly retired with allowances for extra talented ones to continue working without societal coercion that presently exists (like losing a home). A level 5 would work 10 hours a week correspondingly. We should see surprising amount of volunteering at this stage of human development by people who are restless to utilize their training after years of school. We already saw rise in mass scale volunteering in Anglo-American space in 1960s-2010s period and in Soviet space in the 1920s-1950s period. If there is a grand exciting societal construction project, a new wave of volunteering will automatically be generated considering the new 21st century incentive structure, safety net support, and moral encouragement.

9) Level advancement can also be provided as honors for certain heroic tasks, extra special inventions, contributions to the herd, etc. This can be democratically decided to prevent corruption. Corruption itself at political level greatly reduced by systems such as examination with democratic popular input for highest scoring candidates. 

10)  Systematic targeting of land monopolies that currently exist in the form of landlordism to prevent too much centralization in energy production and distribution and to eliminate last remnants of feudalism. Modification to underlining land ownership structure from private to communal  is essential to prevent creation of unhealthy regional patchworks where areas with access to harder energy supplies (fission reactors) are able to browbeat neighbors. Eventually, with enough globalization and agreement on level 1 stipend standards for continents, some agreement needs to occur on global level 1 stipend goals.

Upon closer examination, none of this is utopian since controlled inequality and greed/sex based reptilian brain incentives are preserved. If one appreciates the sheer technological potential that humanity is looking at with transhuman augmentation, nanotechnological mass production, AI, AND if one understands that the time horizons we're looking at stretch into the 2050s, THEN the simple replacement of monetarism with more rational energy accounting described above is definitely not utopian. Current 2012 living standards enjoyed by more enlightened human wage slave plantations of Japan, Scandinavia, and Germany would have sounded similarly rather "utopian" to people in the 1850s. Yet we don't have to wait till 2150s due to the technological progress in means of production and distribution continuing to accelerate.

Some unanswered questions

"So will level 4 person get 4 times the food or 4 times the quality of the food or combination of both? Will shelter and food on higher levels also be provided on a stipend basis or will the additional electric units will be required to pay for it? What happens to rich people and their mansions currently? I can already visualize ways to abuse the system, what do we do with the shameless scoundrels? I certainly would like to spend my annual 50,000 units after my 10 hour workweek not on a level 5 shelter but maybe on three level 1 shelters in different sectors and a new kitty cat and maybe 2 cars instead? Can I forgo a stipend in clothing to get more energy units and what happens if..."

It is... too... early... for that.... First it is important to understand why we're on this road to begin with. 

Meanwhile in Libya

Meanwhile in Libya...

"On 15 May, a diplomatic source briefed by Western intelligence officials stated that, beside the tribal rivalries plaguing the country, there was concern about a growing presence of Islamist militants in some areas, specifically the city of Derna. The source said that hundreds of Islamist militants were in and around the town, and there were militant training camps where weapons were also provided. He said one official had described the area as "a disaster zone." Tensions had reportedly grown between local people and the militants. According to the source, the previous month, a number of town residents went to a camp on the outskirts of the city and forced militants to leave. One of the indicators of the militant inter-factional were also the recent spate of car-bombings in Derna..."   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932012_Libyan_factional_fighting

International Police Reform

Although we have become accustomed to unnerving global cooperation in suppression of demonstrators by increasingly militarized riot police, transnational police standards stand to improve civil rights of an average citizen


Current painfully slow but steady movement towards a Type 1 civilization is demonstrated socially in development of increasingly global themes in movies, rapid transmission of underground music to every spot on earth, in continuing advancement of English as world's lingua franca (in parallel with decline of key English speaking countries), in social networking tools, and globalist orientation (world as one country) of generation Y among world's middle and upper classes.

On the state level, we see rapid globalist thrust towards common educational standards for wage slaves via the Bologna Process in the Northern hemisphere and in reorientation of Interpol towards terrorist threats from neo-luddites, religious reactionaries, and politically charged have nots. There's plenty of less glamorous "under the hood" efforts being conducted to internationalize the Internet and put it under UN regulation and of course to deal with communication, transport, energy, law, etc. 

One may argue endlessly whether some competition in standardization is in order (such as having 6 continents falling under 2-3 competing standardization models versus the whole world falling under one potentially faulty and stagnating model). What is clear is that historically, centralized standardized police action improved efficiency in administration of justice by often ignoring and being above the petty corruptions and concerns of localities. Obviously window for brand new abuses was opened up but generally centralization of power and justice was slightly to moderately less corrupt than decentralization of justice (1 rich man's government versus dozens of smaller rich man's governments). We usually hear this mentioned in history books in terms of somebody or a group unifying the tribes, colonies, feudal fiefdoms, etc under 1 relatively detached and impartial infrastructurally minded central authority. Transition from feudalism towards a modern state system was a welcome development in reducing abuses and arbitrary action.

The current relatively politically correct "soft" approach of the UN and Interpol is a demonstration of the above. Often one would rather be apprehended by some UN helmet policeman rather than a small town cop from Texas, Russia, or China. Same occurred when Federal police first appeared on the scene in United States in early 20th century. When it comes to bringing order to the wage slave plantations (or "countries" as they are known currently), global police force and rapid development of global policing standards will tend to increase autonomy for an average human and decrease civil rights abuses.

Major police reforms to be undertaken by individual countries under new global umbrella guidelines

1) Elimination and retiring of 50%+ of police forces. This is easily accomplished by transnational agreements to end the futile drug prohibition as well as hands off approach to consensual acts such as gambling, some forms of smuggling, sex work, etc. Such efforts are already underway in South America. A UN and Interpol commission to create a detailed list of "offenses" that are too absurd and socially damaging to continue being so called offenses. Then creating a hands off guidelines to shame other countries into compliance with new socially libertarian measures. End of drug prohibition in United States for instance will allow mass layoffs of policemen currently employed by the executive.

The current development of world's armed forces is to become "leaner and meaner" and same should and will apply to the police. Modern communication, educational (see below), robotics, and weapons technology makes majority of law enforcement employees obsolete.

In parallel, there will develop a need to absorb a large pool of young aggressive men and women into socially beneficial activities not revolving around military or law enforcement. Traditional venue of sports can save the day once again if new 21st century sports are developed (magnetic levitation football anyone?) that combine physical exertion with new innovative technological and infrastructure construction development. The young homo sapiens should be allowed to tinker with tools and gadgets, aggressively compete in teams, provide their social proof to the community, and get honors for it.

2) Doctorate's degree as a mandate to be a policeman and tripling of police wages. The responsibility of having the power to enforce justice with violence and to detain a fellow homo sapien is a heavy one. A policeman should be compensated as well as a doctor and be required to undergo many years of social psychology (herd dynamics), fitness, basic law, and various sensitivity conditioning alongside elite weapons training. Mass layoffs of police will free up resources to make remaining policemen as elite as possible. Now of course many human apes who join to serve will have restless aggressive physiologies and after being screened for psychopathy, they should be allowed to start serving in some capacity right away (guards of various facilities, etc) while having to complete their education in parallel. Thus for example, a well compensated 15 hour workweek in limited power capacity with classes towards a PhD. Nurturing sports and fitness should be provided in addition. We should see a lot of new highly motivated people join the force (similar to how post 2008 economic depression eliminated talent shortage problem in the armed forces). Obviously higher salary and more societal respect does not eliminate corruption (one just has to look at big pharma-doctor cooperation in US) but it does make entry to corruption a bit more difficult.

It is essential to create cooperation between transnational police and college standardizing entities concerning implementation.

3) 1 newly trained policeman being able to ideally replace up to 5 late 20th century policemen. Just as a modern policeman has as much cognitive ability, training, technology, and firepower to replace 5+ policemen in 19th century, a 21st century policeman should do the same to current batch of employees. The profession should be socially even more respected and with the end of prohibitions on consensual acts and rebalancing of power between haves and have nots, it will be. Strict fitness and dietary standards should be applied to new recruits and continual lifelong education and nurturing developed. Conditional well paid retirement at 40 is a good idea to reduce corruption, entrenched authoritarian thinking, and to keep supplying new blood to the force.

4) Strict separation between military and police. This is perhaps most difficult to accomplish considering the mass global Internet led awakening among the poor. However, eliminating the gray area of militarized police will be necessary to prevent even further civil unrest and angering of the mob. A society should either figure out how to allow a large crowd to gather peacefully with non-militarized police present (as if it was was New Year's eve) or it should throw away the mask of civility and bring out the military and tanks when there are large purposeful gatherings. The current gray area just creates militarization of the civilians and a multitude of various neurotic behavior in the herd. 

5) Training population to police themselves. This can be accomplished by reintroduction of firearms training in high schools, civil duty lessons, and following the Swiss model of citizen militia. The generation that will follow generation Y is more than ready to accomplish self policing as well as swelling the ranks of embryonic world police core.

Obviously applying some of these reforms on top of current society (especially #4) is not workable but will become increasingly doable with planet's continuing transition away from current socioeconomic system. This process is a multidecade one and will be most led by countries that emerge from the current financial crisis in their best shape.

Land Value Tax in the 21st Century

Georgism (breaking the power of last remnant of feudalism, the landlords) presents the most important point of contact and agreement between far left, far right, and centrist liberals throughout the world. Such agreement is key during transition to a new world economic system.


H.G. Wells, in The Shape of Things to Come, appears to have been correct (if off by a number of decades) when it comes to predicting Land Value Taxation becoming a fundamental cornerstone of a saner future world system. Whether the landlords are private or public in the form of a government, the unearned rents they collect will be redistributed to all living on the land. This allows most private corporations and individual capitalists to: 


1) Redirect increasing anger against them onto a relatively small number of individuals (buying time).


2) Buy off the poor without incurring too much personal cost (buying time).


3) Eliminate critical inefficiencies remaining from the dark ages and allocate capital more effectively in a world where capital accumulation has been slowing down/stagnating for decades (buying more time).


4) Push governments (that they always indirectly control when not being fused with them) of key great powers in the northern hemisphere to reinvent themselves. This allows the European continent to take the torch from United States in becoming a fortress of safety for capital via even better high tech welfare states (buying time once again by providing livable stipends to elderly and those displaced by machines).

Although it is popular to focus on either financial cartels or inefficiencies of the public sector these days, the sheer absurdity, inefficiency, and tyranny of landlords is often overlooked. It is too much part of background scenery. However, landlordism must be tackled first and directly since it is an older structural problem from a pre-capitalist world system. As we approach an end of a global debt supercycle (with governments of key military powers having to reconstruct social order to continue to function), landlordism should be emphasized as having been the primary cause of the crisis. This would create a convenient (and very necessary!) scapegoat and allow many corporations, oligarchs, unions, and governments to save face during transition to a new world system. Obviously it is one of many causes but singling it out has critically important benefits for humanity in terms of saving political energy expanded this century.


A few words about the global transition. It will either be orderly (Bretton Woods 2.0) or disorderly (trade disruptions and corresponding hunger related political violence primarily in the southern hemisphere). 


For it to be more orderly, the states will need resources. Resources will be scarce (factories shutting down, balance sheets of governments and corporations in disarray, etc). Tapping private landowners the world over and forcing them to pay rent will free up resources to minimize these conditions of chaos. Since new land can't be created readily, since it can't be hidden, and since private landlords control most of the surface of the earth, it will be easy to find what/who we need and redirect the rent these people normally collect towards infrastructure/welfare of a new world system. 


Although not all landlords have the same parasitic pull, the argument of "what about mom and pop landlords" is much like the 19th century argument about "mom and pop slave owners" who just had 1-3 slaves rather than the hundreds of the large plantations (large corporation equivalent of the day). Having said  that, the small landlords of course will not be physically touched and will become beneficiaries of the new system that they now help provide for. Some countries already implement a partial Land Value Tax system to great benefit. Taiwan is best example today. Future merger of China and Taiwan will hopefully "infect" a large planetary role model with a more futuristic tax code.

Problem of governments as landowners


Writing in 1976, Arthur Selwyn Miller in The Modern Corporate State, articulated the rise and decay of FDRist Social Democratic arrangement in United States from 1937 onwards. What started out as a roughly coequal coalition of large unions, large corporations, large universities, and large welfare government (with emphasis on job creating benefits of the military) has deteriorated. 40 years after the book was written, we are left with large military, large corporations (private governments), large universities subordinate to these private governments, and hollowed out central "public" government subordinate to these private governments. Combined with ever present institutionalized landlordism, this heady brew can only be described as neo-feudalism (especially with the 20th century decay/stagnation of newer dynamic progressive industrial capitalist system). 


Richard Nixon, the last strong relatively-autonomous American president, tried to prevent this and wanted to develop some executive government led (as first among equals) developmental authoritarianism. Franco's Spain in the 1950s springs to mind. Nixon was shown a lesson and now we have a major problem on our hands. How do we prevent the current, mostly privately led neo-feudal arrangement from transitioning to a mostly publicly led neo-feudal arrangement? How do we go forward towards new rather than backwards (only now with a glossier high tech patina).


Tapping and tackling only private landlordism will concentrate so many resources in the hands of the state that potential for mismanagement and confusion (see Soviet and modern Chinese examples) becomes all but a certainty. It will still be a better, saner, and more comfortable social order but one that would rapidly decay unless people in public governments are also viewed as much a (potentially parasitic) landlords as private landholders. This is especially important to keep in mind considering that most states in the world are effectively fused with large corporations to different degrees. Decreasing potential for corruption should be correlated to increasing complexity of civilization since preventing social unrest is difficult as is in such a densely populated world.

taxing land monopolies has no inefficiencies since supply of land is perfectly inelastic

The more proactively humane solution will only be in a legal rabidly institutionalized framework that ties the productive resource benefits derived from the land to each individual homo sapien living on the land directly. This means that governments can no longer serve as self aggrandizing “representatives” with final authority on how to allocate the stipends in the 21st century. This means structurally and legally binding governments, these entities with monopoly on violence in a given area, to only act as middlemen service providers and enforcers of justice. For instance, individuals in a private cooperatively owned and democratically managed private corporation in the future will pay legally mandated “rent” (whether money, electrical energy, resources, etc) to a public government land"lord" (people actually owning the land via planes, guns, and missiles) who will in turn be legally bound to transfer these resources to all people on the land. With cutting edge communication and transportation infrastructure, the line between decentralized and centralized governance will increasingly be blurred.

Sounds straightforward and surprisingly libertarian in the American sense? Yes, this brings us to a prior article on Left-Libertarianism in United States as a “glue” for the opposition. North America will be the hardest hit by the global transition since the people on that continent have utilized cutting edge technology to exhaust the current system first. This also means that most cutting edge and novel experiments in creating a new social order will happen there first. Land Value Tax provides a seemingly sensible yet ridiculously radical point of agreement towards a foundational platform of political coalitions of the future.

The planetary transition (whether orderly or disorderly) to a new international social order will span a number of decades and at first the leadership in constructing and developing it will pass to elites in the eastern hemisphere (Berlin-Moscow-Beijing-Tokyo-etc). However, once US begins to (hopefully) economically recover in the late 2020s and becomes role model for South America again (continent with the worst landlordism problem in the world), leadership should swing back to the land where both hope and world crisis began.

Future of Modular Nuclear Reactors

City, state, and local governments have to own their nuclear reactors the way they own police stations and provide electrical energy the way they do police protection.




Country of Lithuania was able to provide for over 70% of energy needs for its roughly 3.6 million population in mid 1980s with one 1,500 megawatt nuclear power plant. Kyshiwazaki-Kariwa 8,212 megawatt plant powered 16 million homes in Japan. Such feats can be scaled down to small political units owning modular reactors that are relatively quickly and cheaply constructed (and even delivered by ship or rail if small enough).

Think about the potential of cities like Boston or San Francisco deciding to build a third generation hyper efficient and safe 2,000+ megawatt plant to power their public needs. Think about a small city of 50,000 people having a train deliver a factory manufactured modular 125 MW reactor and not only having its needs met for decades but allowing city's expansion.

Public Ownership of Energy Sources

The cost of government falls dramatically if capital intensive long term construction and management systems like power are controlled by the public. Just as with public provision of healthcare, the overhead cost is substantially lowered.

The essential foundation of all modern civilization and growth is how much electrical output is available per square kilometer and per human being. Most of public expenditures in the future will be to power electrical buses, trams, firetrucks, police cars, garbage disposal units, water treatments plants, vertical farms, medical vans, construction equipment, various tools, etc. Acceleration of resource expenditure on fission (and later fusion), not austerity, is the way to cut public spending and increase growth. This will mean state directed efforts. The tax payer will be a lot less bothered by government expenditures on constructing clusters of small fission reactors if it means lower long term spending overall. The borderline superstitious "not in my backyard" mentality is easily overcome by multipronged propaganda campaigns and top down repeated appeals by authority figures. The elderly public can be easily swayed if even half as much propaganda effort is put into supporting nuclear industrial production as is put into homicidal military "humanitarian" interventions abroad. The nationalism of many conservative boomers should be tapped to "beat the Chinese, French, Russians, and Japanese in a nuclear development race while cutting dependence on Arabs". Great emphasis should be placed on the green and carbon free aspect of nuclear to co-opt boomers who are former hippies. When analyzing public support, almost no other industry stands to have as broad of a public coalition behind it.

For large central and federal governments to become more flexible and efficient themselves, there has to be political decentralization via increased and effective autonomy for local governments. That is only realistically possible if local governments, down to the city level, are allowed to own, staff, and operate their own next generation nuclear reactors. This allows infrastructure building efforts to eventually become relatively independent of the often hated political center.

The central governments however can help in this effort by coercing/taking over large multinational energy companies and negotiating deals with them. This would provide localities with cheaper fission reactor parts or finished units themselves (via pulling together local government funds to tap economies of scale with large purchases/orders).

One can visualize a federal state holding company bending Lockheed-Martin and Boeing to its will and pushing them to mass produce thousands of large parts for modular reactor assembly the way bomber airplanes or ICBMs are built during wartime. A city of 500,000 people can acquire five 150 MW medium reactors and be set indefinitely for basic routine tasks once it undergoes energy grid and vehicle modernization. Smaller cities would require newest small reactors spun off marine/submarine designs. The center can continue to play the vital role of standardization so mass production is applied to small, medium, and large reactors and matched with political units based on population size and energy needs as required. Central regulatory planning is not incompatible with decentralized locality rule (think of individuals ruling themselves while the center standardizes their cellphones and food quality).

Average American house is roughly 200 sq meters (more than twice the average of many European houses) and consumes roughly 10,000 kilowatt hours of energy annually. New 21st century housing and appliance standards should half the consumption. As the countryside gets depopulated due to aging and migratory outflows, many small towns will increasingly be able to come under cover of relatively tiny 21st century "hot tub"  reactors in the 20-30 MW range. These can even be delivered by heavy helicopters or specialized trucks. This will allow many rural areas to continue to be productive and lead dignified lives, even in relative isolation. Additionally, once thorium is developed as fuel for this range, safety system costs should drop dramatically.

The key is to cut out the profit driven private middlemen and overhead costs that come along with it. County reactors (their quality, brand, model number) should be a source of pride and care for the locals. Introduction of new reactors should be combined with festivities and bottle breaking /ribbon cutting ceremonies seen with introduction of new battleships. Actual production of the reactors however should be performed by large supranational monopoly government managed cartels as mentioned in a prior article. On a large enough scale, a factory made reactor to power high tech 21st century civilization for 200,000 people is but a "Volvo truck" in terms of mass assembly.

The medium sized reactors of course can have mass manufactured large modular parts be assembled on site, have the plants floated to coastal cities, or even have them delivered by heavy lift transport military airships. Chinese will probably be the first to make breakthroughs in modular mass production of reactors considering the scale and speed of some of their other modular projects such as 30 story hotel in 2 weeks assembly (even if it is 4-6 weeks, it's nothing to sneeze at).

United Nations can help a lot by setting realistic goals such as raising global electrical output via fission to 30-40% from current 15% over a certain amount of years. What humanity really needs is a Henry Ford of nuclear industry.

Defining Left-Libertarianism in United States

Easiest, most marketable, practical, and productive way to unite dissident movements in United States is to utilize the umbrella term of Left-Libertarianism.




This article is less about existing left-libertarian constructs, some of them stretching back to the egalitarian ideas of a small minority of US founders. It is more about the emerging peripheral fusion between two seemingly antagonistic dissident political forces, the ones behind the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements.

Previously I wrote that there are enough commonalities between the two dissident groups to create a very concrete and mutually agreeable political platform to be shared by both libertarians and progressives. That was written long before the other dissident shoe dropped in the form of OWS and before Ron Paul and Ralph Nader agreed to join forces. The platform was thus very general and tilted to the Tea-Party faction. Now that both sides are roughly co-equal in public consciousness, it is time to re-examine the dynamics of what can only be called Left-Libertarian political emergence. Ultimately, any framework for restoring the economy on the North American continent (to make it a healthy global pole as described in the previous article) will have to involve constitutional political reorganization favorable to both dissident sides.

Here at The Pragmatist, ideology and ideological titles are generally disliked. That is due to ideology stagnating society if adapted by the public as a guiding framework on a large scale. The individual brain and thus society at large defers its ability to think by going on an autopilot. However, there are two instances when an ideological name can work alongside pragmatism of thought and action (something that IS liked on this website unsurprisingly):

1) Memetic engineering. Ideological titles can be used as a cynical marketing tool on a tactical level. Left-Libertarianism has the effect of triggering entire meme clusters among the very energized Internet literate demographics. Many within OWS have always sympathized with the anti-imperialist message of Ron Paul and may see a way to co-opt a number of post-financial crash libertarians. Many within Ron Paul's faction have similar thoughts about co-opting new recruits from among the medley on the OWS left. Left-Libertarian label at the very least serves as a starting mechanism to bring the dissident groups together for a serious strategy centered discussion.

The fusion is accelerated as Left-Libertarian label neatly peels off entire layers of libertarians from the Tea Party. This is more possible by the day since majority of younger/Millennial libertarians have had time to thoroughly study how the Tea Party was co-opted by corporate forces. Many of them have chaffed at rubbing shoulders with elderly conservative religious crypto fascists and having to exert energy to ideologically educate them to be more in tune with Ron Paul's vision. The GOP primaries (and the ongoing total meltdown of the once national party) has heightened the tensions within Tea Party allowing desertions to accelerate.

2) Formation of a formal alliance with a Left-Libertarian label (or multitudes of unique local alliances as the case may be considering numbers of Occupy and Tea Party groups) also serves to pragmatically force thought about the platform and ideology of such alliance. Although ideology with a relatively coherent platform stagnates the mind by deferring thought, a relatively undefined ideological hybrid without a tangible mutually agreed platform increases thought. In the case of Left-Libertarian label, the thought is forced in these particular ways:

___a) Those on the Left/OWS side of the equation have to think of how to fuse/define/summarize their thought in order to better balance the relatively more coherent and united libertarians. The far seeing among them will realize the sheer utility of first trying to find major points of agreement among social democrats, socialists, zeitgeist followers, communists, technocrats, etc and second to think of most strategic ways to combine these points of agreement with the libertarians.

___b) Thought is also forced on how to fuse strains within previously existing left-libertarian dialogue and make it applicable to the particularities of post-financial crash American dissident forces of Tea Party and OWS.

___c) Thought is forced on logistics, marketing, and operational/technological aspects of a Left-Libertarian label.

Thus we see a potential for an ideological label that pragmatically begins to will substance and definition into being. What starts out as a marketing ploy acquires a life and genuine belief on its own. Not only that, but it actually serves to solidify OWS/left in general in case there aren't enough committed leftists and libertarians who want to work together this closely. Total collapse of such dialogue is not likely due to the current form of libertarianism burning out in the minds of many American intelligentsia. It is unlikely for Ron Paul's thought to continue rapidly increasing in the general national imagination (after the current last campaign hurrah). This is due to the amount of people educating themselves about the causes of the financial crash and the inefficiencies of run away capitalism in general. We should therefore see youthful OWS leaders supporting Left-Libertarianism to better define themselves and youthful libertarian leaders supporting it to not become marginalized/irrelevant.

This process is already happening without the title being prominently talked about. The key word in the last paragraph is "youthful". Left-Libertarianism serves as an effective political consolidating tool for the Millennial generation as it begins its long struggle with declining Boomers for reigns of power. All stripes of Millennial political activists are defined by technological optimism and ability to rapidly leverage decentralized communication on a tactical level. It naturally follows that technology will increasingly play a key role in whichever political program Left-Libertarians eventually settle on. Ideas of Henry George, Thorstein Veblen, King Hubbert, Jacque Fresco, and Buckminster Fuller are increasingly becoming popular again. These ideas are often seamlessly compatible with decentralization and technological optimist of Millennial thinkers. Technology may serve as an even better glue among Left-Libertarians than disgust with the corruption and inefficiency of the current neo-feudal system we live in.

Marketing, the engineering and production of psychological states, is the key instrument of power and if dissidents want to become relevant they will have to utilize proper labels and label clusters for maximum effect. Left-Libertarianism taps into the current American zeitgeist and allows existing libertarians to become involved in the project of building society of the future while saving face publicly.