Tag Archives: economics

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The real-life "Mad Max" will be about water

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The original “Mad Max” was about a post-nuclear war Australia, where the war had been caused by countries vying for dwindling oil supplies. But what if the same could happen, only the precious substance was water? Many people seem to think so, and the number’s growing. The largest-growing area of the US is the Southwest, the area with precisely the least amount of water to go around, though by far not the only region of the country with water problems.

The kicker is that, unlike carbon emissions, if one person conserves x amount of water, and another person on the other side of the world uses a surplus of x amount of water, it doesn’t even out. If I in Japan – a country with a high amount of rainfall – conserve water, it doesn’t do an Australian sheep farmer a lick of good. They say all politics is local, and water usage is the same. It’s up to each local to use its supply wisely. Some people have said that Darfur, if not the Rwandan genocide, was the first of the 21st century water wars. We’ll see if it turns out that way.

(photo via brtsergio)

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Freakonomics asks – Is Space Exploration Worth the Cost?

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Freakonomics has an excellent quorum of space experts and economists talking about a very interesting question – Is Space Exploration Worth The Cost? There are some interesting points made although all of the participants are in the field of space science, so naturally they all agree it’s a good thing! It would have been nice to have a few dissenting views but even so there are some good quotes here.

G. Scott Hubbard: “We explore space and create important new technologies to advance our economy. It is true that, for every dollar we spend on the space program, the U.S. economy receives about $8 of economic benefit. Space exploration can also serve as a stimulus for children to enter the fields of science and engineering.”

Keith Cowing: “Right now, all of America’s human space flight programs cost around $7 billion a year. That’s pennies per person per day. In 2006, according to the USDA, Americans spent more than $154 billion on alcohol. We spend around $10 billion a month in Iraq. And so on. Are these things more important than human spaceflight because we spend more money on them? Is space exploration less important?”

John M. Logsdon: “In the longer run, I believe that human exploration is needed to answer two questions. One is: “Are there activities in other places in the solar system of such economic value that they justify high costs in performing them?” The other is: “Can humans living away from Earth obtain at least a major portion of what they need to survive from local resources?” If the answer to both questions is “yes,” then I believe that eventually some number of people in the future will establish permanent settlements away from Earth.”

Personally I agree with Charles Stross that living away from Earth has so many things to overcome that it’s unlikely without huge discoveries but the value of space exploration in our lifetimes may be in asteroid mining – with many new technologies like solar cells rapidly using up some of Earth’s more scarce elements.

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The banks are shutting down!

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Ginko ATM in Second Life Well, they are in Second Life, at least; Linden Lab, creators of the anarchic virtual world, have stepped in with a major change to the terms of service that bans individuals and organisations from running finance operations that offer “unsustainable interest”:

“Usually, we don’t step in the middle of Resident-to-Resident conduct – letting Residents decide how to act, live, or play in Second Life.

But these “banks” have brought unique and substantial risks to Second Life, and we feel it’s our duty to step in. Offering unsustainably high interest rates, they are in most cases doomed to collapse – leaving upset “depositors” with nothing to show for their investments. As these activities grow, they become more likely to lead to destabilization of the virtual economy.”

This move is doubtless triggered by the final collapse of SL Ponzi scheme bank Ginko Financial – though the threat of lawsuits from people who lose significant amounts of real-world money probably has a part to play as well.

Economist Robert Bloomfield is a little disappointed, as he saw the SL economy as an experimental control group for learning how real-world markets operate, and he wonders whether some of the stock exchanges will continue to operate – if the Linden Lab rules provide sufficient loopholes for them to do so.

Meanwhile, Ian Betteridge wonders if we’ll see real banks stepping into the breach. [Image by ChikaWatanabe]

[tags]metaverse, Second Life, banking, economics[/tags]
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Computing as commodity – an economic singularity approaching?

Asus Eee notebook computer Charlie Stross has been shopping – and he’s pretty impressed with the Asus Eee notebook he bought. Not because it’s particularly powerful (which by current standards it isn’t, really) but because he feels it represents a turning point in the commoditization of computer technology:

“The Eee isn’t an order of magnitude cheaper than a normal laptop but it is close to an order of magnitude cheaper than previous ultra-lightweight subnotebooks. And I think I’m going to use it as a pointer to a future trend in the computer business, at the low end. The Eee is about 8 times as powerful as that 1998 Omnibook, at a quarter the price. That’s an improvement of half an order of magnitude in one direction and close to a full order in the other. And it’s a tipping point, I think, showing that the price points that have defined the goal posts for the personal computer business aren’t set in stone.”

As Stross points out, client-side power is becoming less necessary as well as cheaper – at least outside of boutique markets like the one Apple has staked out for itself. And this is a good thing, surely? Well, it would seem so at first. But with the science fiction writer’s instinctive “what if?” chops, Stross looks beyond the immediate:

“… how deep will be the recession that follows once the personal computing industry deflates to its natural value (i.e. peanuts)?”

Ouch. Double-edged sword. [Image by UnwiredBen]

[tags]computing, technology, commodity, economics[/tags]
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CO2 rising 25% faster than previously thought – a SF Call to Arms

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We’ll need a lot more of theseClimate scientists released a scary report this week saying that global warming is likely to be both ‘stronger than expected and arrive earlier than expected’. Since 2000 large spikes in releases of the gas have seen the amount in the atmosphere grow much faster than expected when the Kyoto treaty was drawn up in 1990. The principle reasons for this increase include the growing economy, China’s increased use of coal and most worryingly, a decrease in the amount of absorption by the world’s natural ‘sinks’.

The UK and New Zealand have both had news stories this week with ministers seeking to go back on ‘unrealistic’ Carbon emission cuts. The problem for all these countries is as the world economy is in such a delicate balance right now (and always, you could argue), to be the first one to start making the drastic changes neccessary means a massive hit to your economy and job market. 12 States including California and New York are sueing the US government for failing to do enough about the problem. All across the news, there are gloomy tales of doom if we don’t change but very little positives highlighted of changing to a less energy intensive future.

SF Writers have a huge part to play in all this. I’m not saying we should all run off and become Mundane. However, science fiction has a capacity to inspire unlike any other genre – just look at the Space Race to see the dreams of the genre in action in the real world. At the moment people understand global warming is a problem. They just don’t have an image in their head of what can replace the current state of affairs. Most of the books that deal with climate change are overwhelmingly apocalyptic, offering no respite and little hope. If we as SF writers can paint a picture of a future where we have adapted to the problems globalisation has caused us without the world ending or life becoming depressingly morbid, we can achieve something that few people are able to do. We can stop scaring people into change and start inspiring them.

[story via the new Guardian America site, image by alasam]