Post-industrial Jobs, Employment and Entrepreneurism in a 1% Dominated World

In Gallop Chairman Jim Clifton's book The Coming Job Wars, he lays out the coming competition amongst the world's nations for creating and attracting necessary wealth creating jobs and the destructive dangers of long term unemployment and substandard education to a nations competitive stance in a rapidly changing world economy. A Gallup business journal link to the book notes:

Leaders of countries and cities, Clifton says, should focus on creating good jobs because as jobs go, so does the fate of nations. Jobs bring prosperity, peace, and human development -- but long-term unemployment ruins lives, cities, and countries. Creating good jobs is tough, and many leaders are doing many things wrong. They're undercutting entrepreneurs instead of cultivating them. They're running companies with depressed workforces. They're letting the next generation of job creators rot in bad schools. A global jobs war is coming, and there's no time to waste. Cities are crumbling for lack of good jobs. Nations are in revolt because their people can't get good jobs. The cities and countries that act first -- that focus everything they have on creating good jobs -- are the ones that will win.

Clifton notes some of the exact issues that the Occupy Wall Street movement seems to be addressing. We have seen a decade where job growth has been stymied and long term unemployment has swallowed a growing percentage of American workers. Where Corporate/1% interests have dominated the political and economic processes and doing exactly as Clifton describes, "They're undercutting entrepreneurs instead of cultivating them. They're running companies with depressed workforces. They're letting the next generation of job creators rot in bad schools."

Economists have noted that throughout history as a nations financial elites gain an ever larger percentage of a nations total wealth, economic growth of the nation was hindered and middle class entrepreneurial opportunity and growth restricted. A point that I don't see registering in this debate are the implications of exponential growth in productivity in job creation. Consider that in the local Nucor steel mill 100 men produce the same amount of steel a 1000 men produced 20 years ago, and in a decade 10 men, leveraged by AI and robotics, will produce what a 100 men produce today. That is not a recipe for job growth. AI chat programs are predicted to soon be replacing call center workers in a variety of industries. Again, this is not a recipe for job growth. This is not a recipe for equalizing of income distribution necessary to achieve the stability some research suggests our civilization needs to survive.

Malintent Detection Comes To An Airport Near You

Since reading James Halprin's The Truth Machine in late 1998 I have been looking for technology like this to come on the scene. The argument laid out in Halprin's book, that mankind's future in a world where technology increasingly leverages the power of the few or the one to cause damage or death to an ever larger number of people, is going to be dependent upon the development of technologies which can to all intent and purposes read peoples minds to determine whether the person has intentions to cause harm to others.

Nature reports that the Department of Homeland Security has been conducting tests of Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) over the past few months in northeastern states. The technology is designed to identify individuals who intend to commit a terrorist act using public transportation.

Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person's gaze, to judge a subject's state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.

The technology is hardly fool proof. DHS claims a 70% success rate in it's tests, which of course means that 30% of the simulated perpetrators got through the system. The concept has received a great deal of criticism, with critics pointing out that there are a number of aspects of traveling on public transportation which can cause a persons heart rate to rise or have other physiological responses. Nature reports the response of one critic:

Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, a think-tank based in Washington DC that promotes the use of science in policy-making, is pessimistic about the FAST tests. He thinks that they will produce a large proportion of false positives, frequently tagging innocent people as potential terrorists and making the system unworkable in a busy airport. "I believe that the premise of this approach — that there is an identifiable physiological signature uniquely associated with malicious intent — is mistaken. To my knowledge, it has not been demonstrated," he says. "Without it, the whole thing seems like a charade."

I think we will see technologies with this goal continue to be developed and to quickly get better over time. Technologies like this represent a double edged sword to our traditional understanding of liberty, and brings up basic issues like the question of individual privacy vs public safety which will be difficult to resolve. What does privacy mean when, in the near future, the government has the right to read your mind whenever you get on an airplane?

Check out The Truth Machine. It is an interesting read.

A Cybernetic Weapon Of Mass Destruction

Computer Security Specialist Ralph Langner's thought provoking TED talk on the Stuxnet Virus which targeted Iran's nuclear enrichment program.


Ralph Langner is a german computer security specialist who has received attention world wide for his work in deciphering the mystery surrounding the Stuxnet virus.