Posted on 07/24/2011 10:24:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It's a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes from Mises Media on Vimeo.
We are surrounded by miracles created in the private sector, particularly in the digital universe, and yet we don't appreciate them enough. Meanwhile, the public sector is systematically wrecking the physical world in sneaky and petty ways that really do matter.
Jeffrey Tucker, in this follow-up to his Bourbon for Breakfast, draws detailed attention to both. He points out that the products of digital capitalism are amazing, astounding, beyond belief—more outrageously advanced than anything the makers of the Jetsons could even imagine. With this tiny box in hand, we can do a real-time video chat with anyone on the planet and pay nothing more than my usual service fee. This means that anyone on the planet can do business with and be friends with any other person on the globe. The borders, the limits, the barriers—they are all being blasted away.
The pace of change is mind-boggling. The world is being reinvented in our lifetimes, every day. Email has only been mainstream for 15 years or so, and young people now regard it as a dated form of communication used only for the most formal correspondence. Today young people are brief instant messaging through social media, but that’s only for now, and who knows what next year will bring.
Oddly, hardly anyone seems to care, and even fewer care about the institutional force that makes all this possible, which is the market economy. Instead, we just adjust to the new reality. We even hear of the grave problem of “miracle fatigue”—too much great stuff, too often. Truly, this new world seems to have arrived without much fanfare at all.
And why? It has something to do with the nature of the human mind, Tucker argues, which does not and will not change so long as we live in a world of scarcity. We adjust to amazing things and don’t think much about their source or the system that produces them.
The Jetsons’ world is our world: explosive technological advances, entrenched bourgeois culture, a culture of enterprise that is the very font of the good life. But there is one major difference, and it isn’t the flying car, which we might already have were it not for the government’s promotion of roads and the central plan that manages transportation. It is this: we also live in the midst of a gigantic leviathan state that seeks to control every aspect of our life to its smallest detail.
The government is still Flintstones, an anachronism that operates as this massive drag on our lives. With its money manipulations, regulations, taxation, wars (on people, products, and services), prisons, and injustices, we similarly look the other way. We try to find the workaround and keep living like the Jetsons. Often times things don’t go right and the reason is the anachronism that rules us. And yet, unless we understand cause and effect in the way that the old liberal tradition explained it, we can miss the source.
Tucker goes to great length to explain that which we take for granted, that glorious global network of cooperation and exchange we call the market economy and its capacity to meet our every material need. At the same time, he draws attention to way that the government is chipping away at economic opportunity and making our lives a bit more miserable every day. The answer to the problem of private miracles and public crimes is to keep the former and jettison the later -- all in the service of that elusive dream of universal peace and prosperity.
This book will inspire love for free markets - and loathing of government.
It is changing exponentially and human beings cannot cope with the current rate of change, much less that coming next year or the year after that. It is just one of the reasons I think Jesus will come very soon.
Just one.
I think it is pushing it — to breaking.
We really don’t see the machinations of Government in Jetsons nor Flintstones, except for cops and judges who are out of central casting from I Love Lucy: they answer to no one except themselves and will support each other unless some outrageous new evidence shows up.
Other than that, the government assumed by the author is not supported by the series’ themselves. It isn’t there at all.
In both series, the boss is arbitrary, capricious, interferes with the private life of our principle (and close friends and family).
But, as a frequent flyer, I will tell you we should turn our flying car initiatives to the makes or baby buggies — I have seen ones the size of small cars fold up into almost small enough to be put in the overhead!
I cannot comment on Jesus’ return, that’s His call.
But as for rate of change, I completely disagree.
Humans can easily keep up, if they are interested. If they are frail, weak, and lack intellectual curiosity, then keeping up could be a problem for them. This is only acceptable if you’re old or diseased.
The speed of technological change does not entail a moral vacuum, so Christians shouldn’t be using God as an excuse to bow out of the tech world, or to point to it as a reason for the second coming, IMO.
Some of us suffer from OBS (0ld brain syndrome). Or, as my grandson said to me when he wanted me to play a video game with him, “Don’t worry, Grandma, it’s an easy one!” ;-)
But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only.~Matthew 24:36
Did you see that it’s there as a free PDF?
Yes, I downloaded both PDF and epub versions. The epubReader add-on in Firefox works well.
Actually, you and I are pretty much in agreement on this with the exception that I do feel that humans need a bit of stability in their lives - ALL humans. All people handle change differently and some do better than others. I personally love it. I’m 57 and am about to enter my “fourth” unique lifetime.
That said, it can reach a tipping point. I use a dramatic example to illustrate: Imagine that the political, cultural and technological changes we witnessed in the last 100 years happened in, say, ten. Few, if any, could cope. This is where we are actually headed right now.
Also, I believe we are very, VERY close to unlocking the key to immortality. I firmly believe God will not allow that to happen. I have always followed the cutting edge of technology and loved it. I used to say that it is a double edged sword. The discovery of the atom gave us the atom bomb, and nuclear power. But it wasn’t until my late 30’s that I put any serious thought into the negative connotations of tech. I’ve learned to consider it thoughtfully now. We have reached a point where our knowledge really is exploding exponentially. As the Bible says, knowledge will increase greatly in the end just before Jesus’ return. I think we are about there.
And no, I am not the equivalent of a person born in 1890 witnessing man walking on the moon, or the person that says the atom bomb will bring on the end of the world. Sometimes it is not merely a “relative” thing. We are on the cusp of understanding our physical laws to the point that we will be able to manipulate matter efficiently. That, coupled with the immortality thing is one of the reasons I think the Lord will return soon.
And I haven’t even touched on all the other reasons. ;-)
>>But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only.~Matthew 24:36<<
Yeah, I have to quote that one for others as well. I’m not picking a day. I am focusing on the scripture that precedes it (32-34):
“Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”
The twigs are tender and the leaves have come out.
I am in the category of preterist (much to my parent’s chagrin). But in the end I don’t think it matters when God is coming back, one must be prepared. The rapture and dying are pretty much the same. It’s a due date in either case for one’s spiritual decisions. And actually, even though it won’t be pleasant for the unsaved, and the rapture trully occurs, it’s a better deal for the unsaved. They still have a chance at repentance... death doesn’t give a person that chance.
And if He isn’t coming back anytime soon, I am ready to ride the tech wave. Besides, if we begin to manipulate matter and energy more efficiently, we will more than likely learn how to augment our brains as well to deal with the information available to us. It will all walk hand in hand is my guess. Plus, I am not sure the level of intelligence needed for a true knowledge explosion will be available to normal man, until such augmentation technology arrives.
Anyway, just my opinion :)
>>And if He isn’t coming back anytime soon, I am ready to ride the tech wave. <<
Thing is, I’m thinking it is gonna get WWIII bad whether this is his return or not. WWII was kinda unpleasant. I think this will be much worse. That is why I’m hoping this is “it”. The bible does say it will be worse than it has ever been, and it’s been pretty bad.
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