Inequality

Here's the embed of the much-discussed October 2011 TED presentation by Richard Wilkinson, "How Economic Inequality Harms Society".



Wilkinson (mini-bio here) is co-author of Spirit Level along with Kate Pickett. The BBC World Service have recently run a brilliant two part report on income inequality (Episode One and Episode Two).

An important part of the report was the level of household debt now exceeding income in many instances - in a consumer society when debt repayments negate any ability to consume, society must start to implode. Capitalism requires consumers to purchase - in the poor sector of society, this has been achieved by accumulating debt because incomes are so relatively small that they cannot afford to do so by any other means. The accumulation of debt has led to a false idea that the economy is still functioning, in fact it has become artificially inflated.

The report examined small businesses which made great profit by catering to the "super-wealthy". But capitalism as a whole cannot be supported by the "much less than 1%". How severe the correction is will depend on how far into the population this debt bubble has gone. Indeed, according to the WEF, the numbers don't add up.

As the debt repayments are no longer met and as the High Street is reduced, public policy will become more conservative. It isn't Orwellian to imagine a near future where there's a cap on the number of children allowed by families on a certain percentage of their income as welfare. This economic puzzle will require severe solutions and we should anticipate what sort of political landscape such a scenario will bring. The Conservative party will move further to the right, but the disenfranchised will either coagulate at the extreme left (as in Occupy) or in the extreme right (as in anti-immigration). Anticipation of the debt bubble bursting is key to ameliorating its impact.

There's a fascinating part of the World Service report: a clip of Gordon Brown in 2007 praising and thanking the City of London.

Lecture and presentation on wireless mesh networking by Tim Kindberg

It was a pleasure to be in the audience for Tim Kindberg's lunchtime presentation yesterday at the wonderful Pervasive Media Studio. The talk was titled Precious Cargo: Ferrying virtual resources physically in crowds. The presentation was a result of Kindberg's six weeks lecturing at IT University of Copenhagen, as a visiting professor there. His co-authored Distributed Systems: Concept and Design is one of the main texts used in programmes there.

Just a few points for consideration I want to list:

The volatility (that is the continual changes to density) of crowds, the asymmetries of knowledge and how this would affect communication.

The ability of drones to act as a conduit to restore lost communications between, for example, a military team and its command station. As early as 2004, miniature UAVs, one developed by the University of Florida, had an 11cm wingspan and flight duration capability of 15 minutes. I imagine similarly that drone development to house a 2.4GhZ disruptor to take down all bluetooth and 3G capability will be in development.

And my favorite - that the new Android 4.0 platform, forthcoming, will incorporate WiFi Direct.

Tim also cited Norbert Weiner's work, 'Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society', originally published 1950.

"I told him to pay his car tax". Met have just won an appeal over use of kettling at G20, 2009 though it's unclear if this tactic would be employed at any protests during 2012 olympics because of the propensity for shocking images and footage to be viewed globally. The question was raised that anti-kettling tactics, including rapid random diffusion in opposed directions, seriously alter the crowd density and positions. There's a sense of extreme innovation from both the crowd and the control sides.

Small Wars Journal article

Small Wars Journal kindly posted an article I wrote on the limitations of COIN and the advantages of using proxies here.

Michael Few is leaving after a year and half as editor of SWJ, during which time his energy and insight have been remarkable. I was especially interested in his co-authored (With Carl Prine and Crispin Burke) recommendations for revisions to FM 3-24. The revision process concerning FM 3-24 is now underway at Ft Leavenworth.

War is too important to be left to the adults

There's a beautiful new site called The Children's Illustrated Clausewitz which has various animals, led by Hare Clausewitz, discuss the concepts raised in his work. On the site, Book One has just been completed.