To Each According to its Degree: The Meritocracy and Topocracy of Embedded Markets : Scientific Reports : Nature Publishing Group

[Tom Johnson]

Interesting study here, which suggests why farmers get so little on the price of milk (yup, all the middlemen) and why, if you believe in the value of a level economic playing field,  communities benefit when wired to the max.

-TJ

http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140121/srep03784/full/srep03784.html

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[Roger Critchlow-2]

This is quite amusing, Tom.  More than an argument for eliminating barriers to internet access, it's a whole new way to evaluate the social costs of privileges which the privileged will eternally argue should be eternally theirs because they stole them first.

-- rec --

On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 8:16 PM, Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting study here, which suggests why farmers get so little on the price of milk (yup, all the middlemen) and why, if you believe in the value of a level economic playing field,  communities benefit when wired to the max.

-TJ

http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140121/srep03784/full/srep03784.html

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[Patrick Reilly]

I see this as yet additional support that actually-applied Libertarionism is generally done so in service of, and benefit of, the established, rent-seeking and powerful actors of a technocracy.

On Tuesday, January 21, 2014, Tom Johnson wrote:

Interesting study here, which suggests why farmers get so little on the price of milk (yup, all the middlemen) and why, if you believe in the value of a level economic playing field,  communities benefit when wired to the max.

-TJ

http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140121/srep03784/full/srep03784.html

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[Tom Johnson]

Just like the creation of the state of Texas, stolen fair and square!
T (in Sayulita, Mexico, our mother country, stolen from the Indians)

On Jan 22, 2014 12:18 PM, "Roger Critchlow" <[hidden email]> wrote:

This is quite amusing, Tom.  More than an argument for eliminating barriers to internet access, it's a whole new way to evaluate the social costs of privileges which the privileged will eternally argue should be eternally theirs because they stole them first.

-- rec --

On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 8:16 PM, Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting study here, which suggests why farmers get so little on the price of milk (yup, all the middlemen) and why, if you believe in the value of a level economic playing field,  communities benefit when wired to the max.

-TJ

http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140121/srep03784/full/srep03784.html

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 1/22/14, 11:18 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> This is quite amusing, Tom.  More than an argument for eliminating
> barriers to internet access, it's a whole new way to evaluate the
> social costs of privileges which the privileged will eternally argue
> should be eternally theirs because they stole them first.
Or because they can use the leverage of providing jobs and taxes to
ensure their privileges.  The value and cost that can be seen as opposed
to the open scheme that `merely' has theoretical arguments for it.

Marcus

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[Roger Critchlow-2]

On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 11:59 AM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 1/22/14, 11:18 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:

This is quite amusing, Tom.  More than an argument for eliminating barriers to internet access, it's a whole new way to evaluate the social costs of privileges which the privileged will eternally argue should be eternally theirs because they stole them first.

Or because they can use the leverage of providing jobs and taxes to ensure their privileges.  The value and cost that can be seen as opposed to the open scheme that `merely' has theoretical arguments for it.

But _they're_ not providing the jobs and the taxes, the location is providing the jobs and the taxes, all _they're_ providing is their monopoly of control over the location.  Troy totally owns the approaches to the Bosporus, so any you Aegeans who need to lay up waiting for the winds to relent can pay the toll for sitting on our beach until you can row through into the Black Sea, or we'll burn your ships and the survivors can try to swim back to Greece.  It's probably already addressed in economic theory as natural monopolies or public utilities.

The 'merely' theoretical arguments appear to be playing out in practice in the ebook market.   There are authors who are deciding to ditch the publishing industry altogether and just publish as independents, ebooks and print on demand, subcontract the art and copy editing and proof reading and promotion.  Here's a story by a proponent about a new proponent from December, http://www.hughhowey.com/at-any-price-by-brenna-aubrey/, who turned down a 6 figure contract.

-- rec --

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 1/22/14, 12:59 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> But _they're_ not providing the jobs and the taxes, the location is
> providing the jobs and the taxes, all _they're_ providing is their
> monopoly of control over the location.
I don't know how prevalent it is in the Southwest, but in rural Oregon
there have been telephone cooperatives since there have been
telephones.    They've survived to this day, and provide excellent
service, now for internet too.  My grandmother has IPTV out on her
farm.   At some point people need to stop confusing the things that are
beyond their reach because of lack of capital from things actually being
hard to do.

Marcus


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[Roger Critchlow-2]

Turns out that 66% by area and 17% by telephone customers of NM is covered by coops and small companies.   And they're utterly dependent on the FCC Universal Service Fund to provide these services at affordable prices.  And the most recent changes to USF tilted the rules to favor the big telecom companies.

-- rec --

On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 1/22/14, 12:59 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:

But _they're_ not providing the jobs and the taxes, the location is providing the jobs and the taxes, all _they're_ providing is their monopoly of control over the location.

I don't know how prevalent it is in the Southwest, but in rural Oregon there have been telephone cooperatives since there have been telephones.    They've survived to this day, and provide excellent service, now for internet too.  My grandmother has IPTV out on her farm.   At some point people need to stop confusing the things that are beyond their reach because of lack of capital from things actually being hard to do.

Marcus


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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 1/22/14, 1:44 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> Turns out that 66% by area and 17% by telephone customers of NM is
> covered by coops and small companies.   And they're utterly dependent
> on the FCC Universal Service Fund to provide these services at
> affordable prices.  And the most recent changes to USF tilted the
> rules to favor the big telecom companies.
That's too bad, but it isn't accurate to say that these small
communities are just sinks for federal resources.  My folks, for
example, get dividend payments from their telephone/internet cooperative.

Marcus

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[Carl Tollander]

I guess I read this differently.  

The model is: " the distribution of payoffs is meritocratic only if the average degree of the nodes is larger than a root of the total number of nodes. We conclude that, in the light of this model, the sparsity and structure of networks represents a fundamental constraint to the meritocracy of societies."

That would seem to indicate that under sparser connectivity, increasing the connectivity some (particularly to large hubs) might actually be corrosive to meritocracies.  It might be amusing to use this kind of model to look at how confucian-style meritocracies would occasionally fail big-time in the middle ages.    One also thinks about the "mad linker" scenario.

A summary with video from one of the authors is also at: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-internet-fairness-income-video.html

C.

On 1/21/14, 8:16 PM, Tom Johnson wrote:

Interesting study here, which suggests why farmers get so little on the price of milk (yup, all the middlemen) and why, if you believe in the value of a level economic playing field,  communities benefit when wired to the max.

-TJ

http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140121/srep03784/full/srep03784.html

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[Owen Densmore]

Ed mentioned a fascinating Georgia Tech experiment: A $6,000 master's degree in computer science!  I believe the program to which he referred to is:

    http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/

This is amazing if it works. I know, I know, it sucks from any number of view points but just think of the theme: lets make education approachable for today's world, credits and all.

   -- Owen

On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 1:44 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

Turns out that 66% by area and 17% by telephone customers of NM is covered by coops and small companies.   And they're utterly dependent on the FCC Universal Service Fund to provide these services at affordable prices.  And the most recent changes to USF tilted the rules to favor the big telecom companies.

-- rec --

On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 1:22 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 1/22/14, 12:59 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:

But _they're_ not providing the jobs and the taxes, the location is providing the jobs and the taxes, all _they're_ providing is their monopoly of control over the location.

I don't know how prevalent it is in the Southwest, but in rural Oregon there have been telephone cooperatives since there have been telephones.    They've survived to this day, and provide excellent service, now for internet too.  My grandmother has IPTV out on her farm.   At some point people need to stop confusing the things that are beyond their reach because of lack of capital from things actually being hard to do.

Marcus


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