Beyond Labels

A 360° Discussion of Foreign, National and Local Policy Issues

Monthly Archives March 2015

A dystopian view of trends in government

Charles Stross, a science fiction writer, makes an interesting argument in his blog about the conditions under which we are living.

Among his observations:

We’re living in an era of increasing automation. And it’s trivially clear that the adoption of automation privileges capital over labour (because capital can be substituted for labour, and the profit from its deployment thereby accrues to capital rather than being shared evenly across society).

A side-effect of the rise of capital is the financialization of everything…

Since the collapse of the USSR and the rise of post-Tiananmen China it has become glaringly obvious that capitalism does not require democracy. Or even benefit from it. Capitalism as a system may well work best in the absence of democracy.

The iron law of bureaucracy states that for all organizations, most of their activity will be devoted to the perpetuation of the organization, not to the pursuit of its ostensible objective. (This emerges organically from the needs of the organization’s employees.)fought for control of our societies by opposing forces that are increasingly more powerful than we are.

The original article is here, and well worth reading.

The Sudan – What is our stake in this unstable part of the world?

Discussion area for 16 March Beyond Labels.

The Sudan has seen Religious, Ethnic and other rifts that have drawn the attention of the world – albeit not with recent broad attention. Are we attentive to this part of the world? Should we be, and how so?

Some links follow (lots to read)  but feel free to provide is you have some of your own for reading. Tried to capture those from diverse sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan

http://www.sudan.net

http://www.hrw.org/africa/sudan

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/su.html

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/23/a-history-of-violence-4

Is Internet Connectivity a Net Gain?

I have posted a Brief Presentation as discussed on Monday to: www.manorhousestudio.com under the INTERNET page.

The ability and reliance on Internet connectivity can be a plus for business, personal use and educational purposes, but can it be a threat to the same? How about the military and government agencies?

When we broke this week the subject was recommended for discussion during next week’s meeting, and we’ll focus there – especially considering recent revelations on Internet over the last few days. Will attempt to post relevant material in the next couple of days.

Snowden, Clinton, Hacking, Philanthropy, etc. (just a couple of references. 

1. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/edward-snowden-wants-to-return-us-115697.html#ixzz3TPSe2800

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/hillary-clintons-use-of-private-email-at-state-department-raises-flags.html?_r=0 

3. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/12/18/sony-hack-timeline-interview-north-korea/20601645/ 

4. http://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/bulletins/2013/2013-03.html

5. http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/gwens-appearance/ford-foundation-netgain-conference-internet-philanthropy-and-progress

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