Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 2596 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/04/092011/04/09

Complex Societies Collapse When Commodity Prices Go UP and Financial Speculation Returns Go DOWN

Analysis, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Threats

JOURNAL: Oil >$100 Crunch time ahead (again)?

The last time the price of oil topped $100 a barrel for an extended period, we ended up in a global financial meltdown. Is this time any different?

Not much.

All of the excessively financial leverage and fraudelent derivative wealth we had during the last melt down is still in place. Total debt to GDP levels in the US are about the same (370% of GDP or so). No reforms were made on Wall Street. Nobody at fault for the fraud that led to the last melt down went to jail, so behaviors haven't changed.

We're worse off than before. Read rest of article…

This is classic Tainter (the excellent anthropoligist/historian). He posited that complex societies only collapse when the costs of basic inputs increase at the same time the returns on investments in complex institutions/etc. turn negative. So, with oil going up again, we are seeing basic input costs rise. It's also clear that our twin overheads Government and Global Finance are well past the point they delivered positive returns for additional complexity. Worse, they are colluding, via cronyism, to prevent any meaningful changes.

Complexity & Catastrophe (103)
Complexity & Resilience (119)

2011/04/082011/04/08

Search: cost of corruption + Corruption RECAP

Corruption, Searches

The discussion of corruption–and the urgency of reasserting integrity–permeates this website.

Here are a general comment and a few links.

General comment: Corruption consists of a lack of integrity, which in turn is not just about dishonesty, but about a failure to achieve transparency, truth, trust, and accurate feedback loops. The cost of corruption, calculated in terms of waste, is at least 50% and could be as high as 75%. In the US, on Capitol Hill, the known kick-back for earmarks seen to allocation is 2-5%. In fairness to the lobbyists, they are not offering the money, they are being shaken down by Senators and Representatives. It is the lack of integrity in government that makes the lack of integrity in the private sector so pervasive. What we do know is in the first two links. The first documents health waste, the second the cost of peace versus war (one third).

2010 Reference: HEALTH–The Price of Excess (PWC)

Graphic: Medard Gabel’s Cost of Peace versus War

Other Links:

Continue reading “Search: cost of corruption + Corruption RECAP”

2011/04/082011/04/08

Arabian Revolt & Inequality in the USA

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Analysis, Communities of Practice, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Waste (materials, food, etc)

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Recommends...

Below are two opinion pieces.

The first is “A revolution against neoliberalism” by Abu Atris, it appeared in Al Jazeera on 24 Feb. The second is “Of the 1%, by the 1%, and for the 1%” by Joseph Stiglitz. One is about the Arab Revolt in Egypt and the other is about income inequality in the United States … they raise stunningly similar — and very disturbing — themes when compared to each other. I urge readers to read each carefully and think about the likenesses and differences between them.

EXHIBIT A

A revolution against neoliberalism?

If rebellion results in a retrenchment of neoliberalism, millions will feel cheated.

‘Abu Atris,’ Aljazeera, 24 February 2011

EXHIBIT B

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.

By Joseph E. Stiglitz, Vanity Fair, May 2011

2011/04/08

Hexidecimally Lingual: Websites Must Speak 16 Languages to Go Global

Advanced Cyber/IO

Hexidecimally Lingual: Websites Must Speak 16 Languages to Go Global

New data from research firm Common Sense Advisory suggests that if your brand is to achieve truly global reach in our online world, your website must “speak” more than 16 languages.

Common Sense Advisory publishes reports that are designed to help its clients reach a more global audience, so you could be forgiven for thinking it's obvious the firm would stress a statistic that promotes its own services–but actually, if you read through the company's thinking it all makes good sense. As part of its most recent report dubbed “The Top Scoring Global Websites,” CSA looked at a long list of global brand's websites and rated them for a wide range of accessibility scores, including poly-lingual skills.

The fact that 16 languages is recommended to have the most influential global web presence will come as quite a shock for many global brands who just tackle the top few of the world's most spoken languages (in order of number of speakers it goes Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi-Urdu, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, and Russian) and rely on English being the lingua franca of the Web; the figure will keep growing, too, as Internet penetration reaches more countries around the world. CSA's math suggests that sites that use 11 languages can only reach 80% of the world, and monolingual sites typically capture just 25% of the world's Net users.

Using the 20 different metrics in its analysis (including user experience, meta-navigation, and more) CSA scored Google the highest, with a total score of 9.56 out of 10. Facebook came second with 9.53 and YouTube third with 9.51. Wikipedia scored 9.43, and Samsung and Blackberry weren't far behind, with scores of 9.11 and 9.10.

Search: cybersecurity 1994

IO Impotency, IO Technologies, Searches

Machine Hits:

2010: OPINION–America’s Cyber Scam

Journal: Cyber-Security or Cyber-Scam? Plus Short List of Links to Reviews and Books on Hacking 101

Human-in-the-Loop Precision:

1994 Sounding the Alarm on Cyber-Security

1994 Brief to the National Research Council Review of the Army Multi-Billion Dollar Future Communications Architecture

2011/04/082020/04/04

Who’s Who in Intelligence (Decision-Support): Robert David Steele – Hispanic Robert David STEELE Vivas

Alpha Q-U, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Cyber-Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Public Intelligence

PERSONAL WEB SITE HERE

There are too many past links to this post to change them all, apologies for that. Above link leads to https://robertdavidsteele.com with pages on Overview, Contact, #BigIdeas, About, Qualifications, Appearances, Publications (most linked and free online), Espanol, Francais, and Web Sites.

Want to talk? Make a donation, it triggers an email from Robert.

2011/04/08

Vendor Relationship Management (VRM)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Autonomous Internet

Doc Searls‘ (et al) “vendor relationship management” (VRM) concept can be useful. Walmart is as it is because it serves a base of passive, faceless consumers – as is the case with “mass” business in general. VRM redefines the relationship of business to consumer by giving the consumer an active role – balancing power in the relationship of business to consumer. Participatory medicine, which is another of my areas of focus, does that with the patient, and is a great working example of VRM thinking. Project VRM hopes to drive the development of tools, and is connected to identity and data portability movements.

How customers matter more than data about them .. Pushing for Pull and the Open Web .. VRM as Agency .. The Personal Data Story .. VRM+FSW+PDS .. VRM + CRM .. Managing relationships, not each other .. Why not have your own cloud?