global poor

Gabriel Zucman
Thirty-two-year-old French economist Gabriel Zucman scours spreadsheets to find secret offshore accounts. 

https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/BLM7828005774
https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/BLM7828005774?selected=BLM3218777474

Bloomberg
Businessweek

Listen to the Story
Our editors bring you the most interesting reporting from this week in the world of business, finance, tech, and politics.

The Wealth Detective

May 23, 2019, 2:00 AM PDT
The Wealth Detective Who Finds the Hidden Money of the Super Rich

Thirty-two-year-old French economist Gabriel Zucman scours spreadsheets to find secret offshore accounts.

By Ben Steverman
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-23/the-wealth-detective-who-finds-the-hidden-money-of-the-super-rich?srnd=businessweek-v2


The Wealth Detective

The rich know how to keep their money secret. Gabriel Zucman knows how to find it.
  By Ben Steverman
  Tue, 21 May 2019 16:28:43
  Bloomberg News
 https://traffic.megaphone.fm/BLM3218777474.mp3

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

News & Events
Massachusetts Hospitals Stockpile $1.6 Billion in Cayman Islands and other Offshore Accounts; Nurses Call for Financial Transparency

05.30.2019
https://www.massnurses.org/news-and-events/p/openItem/11324

 CANTON, Mass. – Hospital corporations across Massachusetts have placed at least $1.6 billion in the Cayman Islands and other well-known offshore tax havens, leading nurses and lawmakers to call for legislation requiring financial transparency from hospitals and the returning of excess profits and CEO pay to the public good.

“We can improve our health care system by shining a light on hospital finances, limiting excessive CEO pay and ensuring that the public has a stronger voice in shaping how our health care dollars are spent,” said Karen Coughlin, a 35-year RN from Mansfield and Vice President of the Massachusetts Nurses Association.

The Hospital Profit Transparency and Fairness Act (S. 714/H. 1144) requires hospitals to disclose financial holdings and profits, including money kept in offshore accounts. It will also claw back excessive profits and CEO pay and return that money to the public good through a newly created Medicaid Reimbursement Enhancement Fund. Massachusetts hospitals are both largely non-profit organizations and publicly funded through tax dollars.
  ... ... ...

 To address this issue, The Hospital Profit Transparency and Fairness Act (S. 714/H. 1144) will:

    • Require hospitals to be transparent about their financial holdings and other activities.
    • Assess any hospital receiving taxpayer dollars that has an annual operating margin above a specific, predetermined cap.
    • Assess any hospital receiving taxpayer dollars that provides a compensation package for its CEO that is greater than 100 times that of the hospital's lowest paid employee.
    • Deposit assessments in a newly created Medicaid Reimbursement Enhancement Fund to increase Medicaid reimbursement rates to eligible hospitals as a way to claw back excess profits and ensure that taxpayer dollars are dedicated exclusively to safe patient care and necessary services for all communities in the commonwealth.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

2:06
Panama Papers explained like you were five
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e87OxZAkgmY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e87OxZAkgmY
Teriyakuza
Published on Apr 5, 2016
Panama Papers explained like you were five, with piggy banks

source:
https://www.vox.com/2016/4/4/11361780/the-panama-papers-cartoon


2:06
The Panama Papers, explained with piggy banks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2APYPjTWZ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2APYPjTWZ8
https://youtu.be/k2APYPjTWZ8
https://youtu.be/k2APYPjTWZ8
Vox
Published on Apr 5, 2016
A massive document leak reveals the secrets of shell companies. Matt Yglesias explains, adapting an analogy from reddit user DanGliesack:

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

     2:47
   ‘This is not an elitist issue’: AOC on Republican inaction on climate change –video
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5M8vvEhCFI
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5M8vvEhCFI
   Guardian News
   Published on Mar 26, 2019
   Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gives a fiery speech during a committee hearing in response to Republicans push-back on her climate change policy, The Green New Deal. ‘You want to tell people that their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist?’, yells a impassioned Ocasio-Cortez. ‘Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx which are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country … You’re telling those kids that they are trying to get on a plane to Davos? People are dying!'

      9:02
   The Biggest Lie About Climate Change
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbW_1MtC2So
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbW_1MtC2So
   AsapSCIENCE
   Published on Mar 14, 2019

      17:51
   James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWInyaMWBY8
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWInyaMWBY8
   TED
   Published on Mar 7, 2012

      19:27
   Green New Deal: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDcro7dPqpA
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDcro7dPqpA
   LastWeekTonight
   Published on May 12, 2019
   With the Green New Deal sparking a national conversation about all the ways to combat climate change, John Oliver looks at a few potential solutions.
 
   6:03
Greta Thunberg | Special Address, Annual Meeting of the World    Economic Forum 2019
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7dVF9xylaw
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7dVF9xylaw
   World Economic Forum
   Published on Jan 25, 2019

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty, 2013
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Why-Inequality-Matters-Capital-in-21st-Century-Review

Capital in the twenty-first century / Thomas Piketty ; translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
1. capital.
2. income distribution.
3. wealth
4. labor economics.

HB501.P43613 2014
332'.041—dc23

2013 in France (la France), 2014 in United States

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=fr&text=France

Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
First published as Le capital au XXI siècle, copyright © 2013 Éditions du Seuil

Contents
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One: Income and Capital
1. Income and Output
2. Growth: Illusions and Realities

Part Two: The Dynamics of the Capital/Income Ratio
3. The Metamorphoses of Capital
4. From Old Europe to the New World
5. The Capital/Income Ratio over the Long Run
6. The Capital-Labor Split in the Twenty-First Century

Part Three: The Structure of Inequality
7. Inequality and Concentration: Preliminary Bearings
8. Two Worlds
9. Inequality of Labor Income
10. Inequality of Capital Ownership
11. Merit and Inheritance in the Long Run
12. Global Inequality of Wealth in the Twenty-First Century

Part Four: Regulating Capital in the Twenty-First Century
13. A Social State for the Twenty-First Century
14. Rethinking the Progressive Income Tax
15. A Global Tax on Capital
16. The Question of the Public Debt

Conclusion
Notes
Contents in Detail
List of Tables and Illustrations
Index

Acknowledgments

This book is based on fifteen years of research (1998–2013) devoted essentially to understanding the historical dynamics of wealth and income. Much of this research was done in collaboration with other scholars.


Conclusion

I have presented the current state of our historical knowledge concerning the dynamics of the distribution of wealth and income since the eighteenth century, and I have attempted to draw from this knowledge whatever lessons can be drawn for the century ahead.
   The sources on which this book draws are more extensive than any previous author has assembled, but they remain imperfect and incomplete. All of my conclusions are by nature tenuous and deserve to be questioned and debated. It is not the purpose of social science research to produce mathematical certainties that can substitute for open, democratic debate in which all shades of opinion are
represented.

The Central Contradiction of Capitalism: r > g

The overall conclusion of this study is that a market economy based on private property, if left to itself, contains powerful forces of convergence, associated in particular with the diffusion of knowledge and skills; but it also contains powerful forces of divergence, which are potentially threatening to democratic societies and to the values of social justice on which they are based.
   The principal destabilizing force has to do with the fact that the private rate of return on capital, r, can be significantly higher for long periods of time than the rate of growth of income and output, g.
   The inequality r > g implies that wealth accumulated in the past grows more rapidly than output and wages. This inequality expresses a fundamental logical contradiction. The entrepreneur inevitably tends to become a rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labor. Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.
   The consequences for the long-term dynamics of the wealth distribution are potentially terrifying, especially when one adds that the return on capital varies directly with the size of the initial stake and that the divergence in the wealth distribution is occurring on a global scale.

   The problem is enormous, and there is no simple solution. Growth can of course be encouraged by investing in education, knowledge, and nonpolluting technologies. But none of these will raise the growth rate to 4 or 5 percent a year. History shows that only countries that are catching up with more advanced economies—such as Europe during the three decades after World War II or China and other emerging countries today—can grow at such rates. For countries at the world technological frontier—and thus ultimately for the planet as a whole—there is ample reason to believe that the growth rate will not exceed 1–1.5 percent in the long run, no matter what economic policies are adopted.1
   With an average return on capital of 4–5 percent, it is therefore likely that r > g will again become the norm in the twenty-first century, as it had been throughout history until the eve of World War I. In the 20th century, it took two world wars to wipe away the past and significantly reduce the return on capital, thereby creating the illusion that the fundamental structural contradiction of capitalism (r > g) had been overcome. 
   ... ... ...

Yet it seems to me that all social scientists, all journalists and commentators, all activists in the unions and in politics of whatever stripe, and especially all citizens should take a serious interest in money, its measurement, the facts surrounding it, and its history.  Those who have a lot of it never fail to defend their interests.  Refusing to deal with numbers rarely serves the interests of the least well-off.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

by Stephen Chen
https://www.inkstonenews.com/society/beyond-yellow-river-dna-records-tell-new-story-han-chinese-origins/article/3011457

Dr Li Yuchun, lead author of the paper, said the findings helped trace the history of Han to the dawn of civilization, the emergence of agriculture and the sustainable growth of population.

“Increasing food led to a population boom in these areas. We can see it in the separate path of gene evolution,” Li said.

The research also found that women were able to preserve their genetic story better than men as they stayed at home to tend the fields, while men went to explore, trade or wage war.

Stephen is a contributor to Inkstone. He covers science and its impact on society, as well as the environment, military, geopolitics and business for the South China Morning Post.

© 2019 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Hans Rosling explains demographic
16:36
Why the world population won’t exceed 11 billion | Hans Rosling | TGS.ORG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI
THINK Global School
Published on Dec 1, 2015
In part 5 of a 6-part lecture, Hans Rosling uses statistics to give an overview of population growth and an explanation of why the total human population will never reach 11 billion, as others predict and fear.

child mortality  and  babies born per woman
2:50
#BillsLetter
Hans Rosling: The River of Myths
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYpX4l2UeZg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYpX4l2UeZg
Bill Gates
Published on Jan 31, 2013

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

 EPA Plans To Get Thousands of Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math (nytimes.com)
 Posted by msmash on Wednesday May 22, 2019 @11:30AM from the how-about-that dept

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/05/22/1530213/epa-plans-to-get-thousands-of-pollution-deaths-off-the-books-by-changing-its-math

 in the real world, there are no safe levels of the fine particulate pollution associated with the burning of fossil fuels.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

The Atlantic
 "Breakfast Food" is a Lie - Americans eat a narrower variety of foods for breakfast than anyone else (514 words)
By Amanda Mull
May 14, 2019
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/what-is-breakfast/589411/

According to Krishnendu Ray, a professor of food studies at New York University, that’s consistent with how much of the world still approaches the day’s first meal. “Poorer people everywhere, especially in places like India and China, eat the same kind of food for meal after meal,” he says. “The strict differentiation of meals is partly an American thing, but partly a thing of upward mobility.” Breakfast food, as a concept, is a luxury.

   ... ... ...

The first half of the 20th century is when breakfast’s class elements start to take hold in the U.S., Ray says. Refrigeration was a luxury, and although the ingredients in cereal might be cheap and nutritionally hollow, brand-name versions have always been pricey. “The most expensive part of cereal-making is shoving it down people’s throats by advertising,” he explains. “I don’t think cereal would have been successful without the massive propaganda of the industry.” 

source:
https://tildes.net/~food

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Leonard-Barton, Dorothy
Wellsprings of Knowledge : building and sustaining the sources of innovation / Dorothy Leonard-Barton
1. information technology——management
2. information resources management
3. management information systems

copyright © 1995

HD30.2.L46 1995
658.4'038——dc20

p.205
Schwartz tells how Smith & Hawken, a mail-order garden tool business, sharpened its focus when the company decided, in the late 1970s, to consider possible futures.  It constructed three scenarios: (1) "more of the same but better," (2) "worse" (decay and depression), and (3) "different but better" (fundamental change).  The company determined that the first two scenarios both suggested direct mail as the best approach, since either people would be wealthy enough to buy but too busy to get to the store, or the market would disappear and capital-intensive retail operations would be highly risky.  Scenario 3, fundamental change, implied a concern for the environment and distrust of throwaway tools.  The 1980s turned out to be a mixture of the three scenarios, with both yuppie wealth and homelessness in the United States and a growth in concern for the environment.  Although none of the scenarios exactly played out, the company was better positioned because its managers had thought through which steps to take under the various conditions.49

    (Leonard-Barton, Dorothy, copyright © 1995, HD30.2.L46 1995, 658.4'038——dc20)
(Wellsprings of Knowledge : building and sustaining the sources of innovation / Dorothy Leonard-Barton, 1. information technology——management, 2. information resources management, 3. management information systems, )

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

6:25
Why Japan's Homeless are Different from North America's (Part 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK--oCVP18A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK--oCVP18A
Life Where I'm From
Published on Aug 16, 2017
One day while walking around Shinjuku, a major hub for government and business in Tokyo, Japan, I noticed a shelter built by a homeless man. It looked semi-permanent, but more importantly, had solar panels on it. I thought this was very different than the homeless I encountered in my former city of Vancouver, Canada, so I started to investigate homelessness in Japan.

I was lucky enough to interview Professor Tom Gill, who has researched homelessness and other societal issues in Japan for many years.

This is part 1 of a series of videos I'm making about the homeless in Japan. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave in the comments. Thanks for watching.


12:01
DW is a German public broadcast service. Wikipedia
Berlin: homeless capital of Germany and other world stories | DW Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejK8IEvLjtQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejK8IEvLjtQ
DW Documentary
Published on Jan 18, 2018


5:21
DW is a German public broadcast service. Wikipedia
Germany: Homeless Students | European Journal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOsXLMo4I_s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOsXLMo4I_s
DW News
Published on Nov 29, 2012
Affordable housing is becoming increasingly hard to find in Germany's big cities. The main reason is the euro crisis; those who can afford it are buying - because property is seen as a safe investment. Big cities like Hamburg have a shortage of affordable housing. Students and trainees are hardest hit, as are low-income families.


2:02
Rising Rents and Homelessness in America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWOYSQ_6Juk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWOYSQ_6Juk
Zillow
Published on Sep 29, 2017
Rising Rents and Homelessness in America
Many factors contribute to homelessness, but one common issue goes overlooked: the impact of rising rents and decreasing median incomes.

9:54
Press TV is funded in whole or in part by the Iranian government.
10 Minutes: Homelessness in America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzdT390OCz4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzdT390OCz4
PressTV Documentaries
Published on Dec 4, 2016
According to the recent 2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress on a single night in 2016, over half a million people were experiencing homelessness in the United States of America.


12:00
DW is a German public broadcast service. Wikipedia
Germany’s poor pensioners | DW Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDveK6oWN5w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDveK6oWN5w
DW Documentary
Published on Jan 22, 2018
Poverty threatens more German seniors than ever. How to make ends meet, when pension isn’t enough?


12:07
([ professional ])
DW is a German public broadcast service. Wikipedia
Down and out in Russia: Fighting hunger | DW Reporter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AguJNdNCzao
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AguJNdNCzao
DW News
Published on Feb 6, 2016
About 60,000 homeless people live in St. Petersburg. Winter is an especially difficult time for them. The Nochlezhka charity organization helps them survive. A mobile van travels the city delivering meals to people in need.


22:50
Mediacorp is funded in whole or in part by the Singapore government.
Get Rea!: Cubicle Dreams (Hong Kong)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQF0-3-RupM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQF0-3-RupM
CNA
Published on Feb 17, 2014
54-year-old Yeung Suen is one of Hong Kong's 100,000 cubicle dwellers. He lives in a 35 square foot windowless space barely bigger than his bed. The irony is, he pays more per square foot in rent than someone living in a luxury apartment. In this episode, Get Real enters Hong Kong's world of cubicle dwellers, and asks if living in a cubicle is their only option.


22:19
LOVE & DRUGS ON THE STREETS  S2 • E1
Britain's Homeless In Winter | Girls Living On The Streets Of Brighton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=746xJlIAHJ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=746xJlIAHJ4
BBC Three
Published on Feb 11, 2018
Kelly is 18 and has been homeless since leaving care a year and a half ago. 22-year-old Charlotte and her boyfriend Lance are sleeping rough having been evicted from their flat. 


48:45
Bay Area Homeless - Concern or Crisis Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCaOeyjHgaE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCaOeyjHgaE
KTVU
Published on Sep 11, 2017
Part 1 of our special on homelessness in the Bay Area.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

16:33
How Sand Mining Destroys One Home to Build Another | Short Film Showcase
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpc3hhH1cas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpc3hhH1cas
National Geographic
Published on May 5, 2019
As Singapore dredges sand out from beneath Cambodia’s mangroves one woman is faced with the erasure of her beloved home.


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southeast-asia-mining-sand/sand-mining-mafias-destroying-environment-livelihoods-u-n-idUSKCN1SD0KG

Asia
May 7, 2019 / 12:29 AM / Updated 18 hours ago

“Communities are losing their land and their homes because of sand mining, but they are split over the issue because some people make a living from it, while others say it is ruining their lives,”

Reporting by Rina Chandran @rinachandran; Editing by Michael Taylor. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

U.S. data and trend on wealth and income distribution
Why and How Capitalism Needs to Be Reformed (Parts 1 & 2)
Ray Dalio
Published on April 5, 2019
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-reformed-parts-1-2-ray-dalio

Our Biggest Economic, Social, and Political Issue
Ray Dalio
Published on October 23, 2017
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-biggest-economic-social-political-issue-two-economies-ray-dalio

https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/raydalio

    ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/investment_manager_2014.html

https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/

https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/images/wealth.html

Wealth, Income, and Power
by G. William Domhoff

The Wealth Distribution

In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2010, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 35.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.1%. Table 1 and Figure 1 present further details, drawn from the careful work of economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2012).

Table 1: Distribution of net worth and financial wealth in the United States, 1983-2010
     Total Net Worth
Top   1 percent  Next 19 percent  Bottom 80 percent
1983    33.8%      47.5%           18.7%
1989    37.4%      46.2%           16.5%
1992    37.2%      46.6%           16.2%
1995    38.5%      45.4%           16.1%
1998    38.1%      45.3%           16.6%
2001    33.4%      51.0%           15.6%
2004    34.3%      50.3%           15.3%
2007    34.6%      50.5%           15.0%
2010    35.4%      53.5%           11.1%

     Financial (Non-Home) Wealth
Top   1 percent  Next 19 percent  Bottom 80 percent
1983    42.9%      48.4%           8.7%
1989    46.9%      46.5%           6.6%
1992    45.6%      46.7%           7.7%
1995    47.2%      45.9%           7.0%
1998    47.3%      43.6%           9.1%
2001    39.7%      51.5%           8.7%
2004    42.2%      50.3%           7.5%
2007    42.7%      50.3%           7.0%
2010    42.1%      53.5%           4.7%

Total assets are defined as the sum of: (1) the gross value of owner-occupied housing; (2) other real estate owned by the household; (3) cash and demand deposits; (4) time and savings deposits, certificates of deposit, and money market accounts; (5) government bonds, corporate bonds, foreign bonds, and other financial securities; (6) the cash surrender value of life insurance plans; (7) the cash surrender value of pension plans, including IRAs, Keogh, and 401(k) plans; (8) corporate stock and mutual funds; (9) net equity in unincorporated businesses; and (10) equity in trust funds.

Total liabilities are the sum of: (1) mortgage debt; (2) consumer debt, including auto loans; and (3) other debt. From Wolff (2004, 2007, 2010, & 2012).

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀
 
Chris Anderson, The long tail, 2006                          [ ]

p.125
In the summer of 1897 an Italian polymath named Vilfredo Pareto busied himself in his university office in Switzerland, studying patterns of wealth and income in 19th-century England. It was the age of Marx, and the question of wealth distribution was in the air. Pareto found that the spread of wealth was indeed unequal in England--most of it went to a minority of the people. When he calculated the exact ratios, he found that about 20 percent of the population owned 80 percent of the wealth. More important, when he compared that with other countries and regions, he found that the ratio remained the same.
   What Pareto had discovered is that there is a predictable mathematical relationship in the pattern of wealth and populations, something he called the Law of the Vital Few. It seemed constant over time, and across countries. Pareto was a brilliant economist, but he was a poor explainer, so not many understood the importance of his insight. He went on to write obscure sociological tracts about elites, which unfortunately were taken up at the end of his life by Mussolini's fascists. But the theory of unequal distribution took on a life of its own, and Pareto's observation is now known as the 80/20 Rule.

p.126
   Powerlaws are family of curves that you can find practically anywhere you look, from biology to book sales. The Long Tail is a powerlaw that isn't cruelly cut off by bottlenecks in distribution such as limited shelf space and available channels. Because the amplitude of a powerlaw approaches but never reaches zero as the curve stretches out to infinity, it's known as a “long-tailed” curve, which is where I derived the name of this book.

pp.126-127
   As far as consumer markets go, powerlaws come about when you have three conditions:

   1. Variety (there are many different sorts of things)
   2. Inequality (some have more of some quality than others)
   3. Network effects such as word of mouth and reputation, which tend to amplify differences in quality.

   In others words, powerlaw distributions occur where things are different, some are better than others, and effects such as reputation can work to promote the good and suppress the bad. This results in what Pareto called the “predictable imbalance” of market, culture, and society: Success breeds success.

   (Anderson, Chris, The long tail : why the future of business is selling less of more / Chris Anderson.--1st ed., 1. market segmentation., 2. internet marketing., 3. marketing--technological innovation., 658.802   Anderson, 2006, )

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

By Franklin Hiram King (author)

Excerpt from Farmers of Forty Centuries: Or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan

We have not yet gathered up the experience of mankind in the tilling of the earth; yet the tilling of the earth is the bottom condition of civilization. If we are to assemble all the forces and agencies that make for the final conquest of the planet, we must assuredly know how it is that all the peoples in all the places have met the problem of producing their sustenance out of the soil.


Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5350


https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R5VHF6ARFZISG/
Raven
Farmers please read
May 6, 2011
Format: Kindle Edition
Verified Purchase
First published in 1911, with a preface by Dr. L. H. Bailey, Farmers of Forty Centuries is the kind of book that would be of interest to farmers and historians alike.

This book was written at time in society when 'better living through chemistry' was just starting to take hold as mainstream thinking. Reductionist science, pesticides, and fertilizer were gaining strength and agriculture was changing from a point of view that works with the natural processes to a system that conquers and controls plants natural impulses. Taking into account the time when this book was written, and one can see that it is an important book in the history of agriculture and an excellent reference for modern farmers that might have been lost if not for the dedication of people who converted it to e-text.

The preface by Dr Bailey, discusses where American agriculture stands at the turn of the last century (1900). It mentions how farming in the North America is very successful, and acknowledged that this is primarily because the population density of the continent is sparse and people have been cultivating the soil for a relatively short time. Bailey mentions that in order to properly conquer the land and turn it to our needs (common attitude of the time) we must be careful not to strip it of fertility. Chemical farming alone will do this over time; however, by examining agricultural practices that have sustained themselves for long periods without loosing soil fertility - then american farming can be even more productive (shame this wasn't taken to heart at the time).

The book itself is examines agricultural practices in some of the most densely populated areas of the world at the time in hopes of gleaming some useful information.

Given where we are now with industrialized farming, this book might just be what we need to help understand how we can regain some of the waste farmland that now has very little or no agricultural use thanks to poor management practices over the last 100 years.

The kindle version has no interactive menus, no way of quick navigation and no pictures. But there are no obvious errors in the text.

This book is perfect for both small farmers and large scale agri-business.


Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5350

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀


notes  ([ the law of the minimum ])
Thinking in systems
a primer

Donella H. Meadows
Edited by Diana Wright

sustainability institute
2008

p.101
A patch of growing grain needs:

    • sunlight
    • air
    • water
    • nitrogen
    • phosphorus
    • potassium
    • dozens of minor nutrients
    • a friable soil and the services of a microbial soil community
    • some system to control the weeds and pests ([ ideally without pesticides, insecticides, herbicides or any chemical of that sort ])
    • protection from the wastes of the industrial manufacturer

It was with regard to grain that Justus von Liebig came up with his famous “law of minimum.” It doesn't matter how much nitrogen is available to the grain, he said, if what's short is phosphorus. It does not no good to pour on more phosphorus, if the problem is low potassium.
  Bread will not rise without yeast, no matter how much flour it has. Children will not thrive without protein, no matter how many carbohydrates they eat. Companies can't keep going without energy, no matter how many customers they have──or without customers, no matter how much energy they have.
  This concept of a limiting factor is simple and widely misunderstood.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WfELt4nDPdNt0HCUQ4UNJON5a_sdLkiE
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WfELt4nDPdNt0HCUQ4UNJON5a_sdLkiE/view

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

William Engdahl, A century of war: Anglo-American oil politics and the new world order, 1992, 2004 

pdf page: 24/314 (filename: Engdahl_Century_of_War_book.pdf) 
Germany and the Geopolitics of the Great War
p.13
The German chemical industry, under the impulse of great researchers such as Justus von Liebig and others, grew from one vastly inferior to both the French and the British industries, to become the world's leader in analine dye production, pharmaceuticals and chemical fertilizers. 

p.13
   Introduction of scientific agriculture chemistry by von Liebig and others led to astonishing rates of productivity increase during this period for German agriculture.  Going from a situation in the early decades of the 1800s which was literally desperate, with outbreaks of famine and harvest failure, when it seemed more economical to import grain from Russia or even Argentina, Germany reimposed a protective tariff blocking imports of cheap grain in the 1890s.

pp.13-14
   The mechanization of farming began to show progress, going from 20,000 harvesting machines in 1882 to some 300,000 by 1907.  Despite often inferior and sandy soils, German chemical fertilizer development led to improving harvest yields.  Grain harvest yields had improved as a result, by 80 per cent at the time of the Great War, compared with the the period before 1887 when fertilizers were first introduced on a significant scale.  By constrast, Russia, at the outbreak of the war, with 3 million acres more under grain cultivation, produced 19 million fewer tons of grain than Germany. 

p.14
 By 1913, Germany was 95 per cent self-sufficient in meat production, despite per capita meat consumption having doubled since 1870, while Britain in 1913 imported 45 per cent of her meat requirements.  

p.14
Paralleling the expansion of its industry and agriculture, Germany went from a net emigration country in the early 1800s, to a country with strong population growth by the end of the century.  Between 1870 and 1914 Germany's population increased almost 75 per cent, from 40,000,000 to more than 67,000,000.  

p.14
Large industry grew after the 1880s in a symbiosis with large banks such as Deutsche Bank, under what became known as the Grossbanken model, or simply the ‘German model’ of interlocking ownership between major banks and key industrial companies.2 

William Engdahl, A century of war: Anglo-American oil politics and the new world order, 1992, 2004 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e0PVSremXnuf4Nkn4cY0xW8hF8SaL72-/view

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

18:54
Will Technology Solve the Problems Caused by a Rising Population | Fortune
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9elrJc-v7Mk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9elrJc-v7Mk
Fortune Magazine
Published on May 18, 2016

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

17:49
Food Waste: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY
LastWeekTonight
Published on Jul 19, 2015
Producers, sellers, and consumers waste tons of food. John Oliver discusses the shocking amount of food we don’t eat.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Food
Betting on Hunger: Is Financial Speculation to Blame for High Food Prices?

Food prices have been on the rise since 2007, thanks in part to bad weather and increasing demand from biofuels and developing nations. But there's one cause that hasn't gotten much attention: financial speculation in crop markets. Are bankers artificially inflating the price of food?

By Kharunya Paramaguru
  @Kharunya
Dec. 17, 2012   

http://science.time.com/2012/12/17/betting-on-hunger-is-financial-speculation-to-blame-for-high-food-prices/

Correction appended Dec. 17, 2012

Remember the food crisis of 2007 and 2008, when rapid and extreme increases in global food prices led to riots and civil unrest in 28 countries?
   ... ... ...

U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Ann Berg, a former trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and now an adviser to the FAO, says that while this trend has been noted, you “cannot prove causality” between the role of these speculators and the artificially high prices.

Traders have always speculated on the agricultural-commodities futures market, just as they do in other commodities like copper or oil. Those with an actual commercial interest — food producers and buyers — use this market to bet against price increases and decreases as a form of insurance against volatility. But after 1999 and 2000, when sections of the Glass-Steagall Act were repealed and President Bill Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act into law, investment banks and other financial actors began to bet on commodities as speculation, not as insurance. “Where we used to see something like 12% of the market made up of financial players, since deregulation, this number has now jumped to over 60%,” says Heidi Chow of the World Development Movement, a U.K.-based campaigning organization.

The statistics are impressive: the German NGO Foodwatch points out that investment in food commodities has jumped from $65 billion to $126 billion in the past five years. Perhaps a more revealing statistic is that speculative investment in these commodities in 2011 amounted to 20 times more than the total spent on agricultural aid by all countries combined.
   ... ... ...

A possible solution to curbing these investors’ impact on real-world prices has been written into the Dodd-Frank legislation, authorizing the CFTC to set limits on percentages of specific commodity products that can be held by a single entity. Michael Dunn, a former CFTC commissioner, expressed doubts about these limits, describing them as “a cure for a disease that does not exist, or at worst, a placebo for one that does.” His pronouncement is yet to be tested; in October, Judge Robert Wilkins of the Washington, D.C., district court struck down this rule. For its part, the CFTC plans on appealing his decision. It may be the case that by the time regulation is in place, investors have lost their interest in commodity speculation, if only because of the poor optics for banks. For the world’s starving, however, this may be too little, too late.
 

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that President George W. Bush introduced the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. It was introduced during President Bill Clinton’s term.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

    US & Canada
Betting the farm on hunger

Debate heats up whether financial speculation is spiking food prices and spelling disaster for millions of poor people.
by Robert Kennedy
28 Sept 2012

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/09/2012911125854157194.html

Financial investors betting on the price of food are dangerously driving up prices, threatening millions of impoverished people in food-importing countries who will go hungry, critics warn.

But the issue of food speculation by banks, hedge and pension funds is a controversial one, and many observers say there is no evidence that gambling on food causes price increases and volatility.
   ... ... ...

Chris Mahoney, agriculture director for commodity trader Glencore, recently told reporters the US drought would be good for business. "High prices, a lot of volatility, a lot of dislocation, tightness, a lot of arbitrage opportunities," said Mahoney.

Attitudes such as these define the core problem with food today, said Haigh. Corporate control over the global food system needs to stop, she said.

"Markets don't have morals," Haigh said. "The fundamental issue is markets care about people's ability to pay for food, not their need for it. We need to radically reform these power dynamics."

SOURCE: Al Jazeera

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Red Winter Wheat
U.S. Corn
Thai Broken Rice
U.S. Hard Red Winter Wheat

https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/sites/default/files/casino_hunger_report_dec_2009.pdf

p.3 (pdf Sec1:3)
The biggest change from normal conditions in earlier years was the addition of hundreds of billions of dollars in investment money into the commodity futures markets.  The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development noted, “a major new element in commodity trading over the past few years is the greater weight on commodity futures exchanges of financial investors that consider commodities an asset class.”21  The additional excess speculation has magnified the volatility in food-staple prices that has contributed to the global food crisis and increased poverty.22 
21    UNCTAD. “The Global Economic Crisis” at 24. 
      https://unctad.org/en/docs/gds20091_en.pdf
22    Collins, Ben. “Hot commodities, stuffed markets, and empty bellies.” Dollars & Sense. July/August 2008.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Making Sense
Hot Commodities, Stuffed Markets, and Empty Bellies
What's behind higher food prices?

By Ben Collins
http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2008/0708collins.html
   ... ... ...

The Consequences of Financializing Food

Facing political pressure by constituents over high oil and food prices, several members of Congress have sponsored legislation that would bar index investors from commodity markets. One bill proposed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Ind- Conn.) would prohibit public and private pension funds with more than $500 million in assets from trading in commodity futures, and other bills would limit the maximum number of futures contracts an index investor could hold. These bills may stem the flood of money from index investors into commodities, but comprehensive reform is needed to reverse the Commodity Futures Modernization Act's authorization of over-the-counter commodity trading. Absent an outright repeal of this so-called "Enron loophole," energy and agricultural commodities will continue to be traded outside the reach of government regulation, making future Enron- and Amaranth-style market disruptions inevitable.

Ultimately, eliminating unregulated commodity trading cannot address the fundamental causes of higher agricultural prices. Even if speculative buying is curtailed, supply and demand factors such as falling crop yields, destructive trade policies, and the growing use of biofuels have likely brought the age of cheap food to an end. However, if the critics of commodity index investment are correct, then these investors have amplified recent food price shocks and are needlessly contributing to the impoverishment of the world's poorest citizens. Even though commodity market transparency and regulatory oversight will not solve the global food crisis, eliminating unregulated commodity trading can help resolve the debate over the effects of index investors on commodity prices and restore the accountability of commodity markets to the social interests they were originally established to serve.


Ben Collins is a member of the Dollars & Sense collective and a research analyst at KLD Research & Analytics, a sustainable investment research company. Mr. Collins's views do not necessarily reflect those of KLD or its clients.

Sources: Michael Masters, Testimony before the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, United States Senate, May 20, 2008; Daniel P. Collins, CFTC to up spec limits, Futures, May 1, 2005; Paul Krugman, Fuels on the Hill, New York Times, June 27, 2008; Michael Frankfurter, The Mysterious Case of the Commodity Conundrum, Securitization of Commodities, and Systemic Concerns, Parts 1-3; Michael Frankfurter and Davide Accomazzo, Is Managed Futures an Asset Class? The Search for the Beta of Commodity Futures, December 31, 2007, Graziadio Business Report; Regulator Commits to Futures Tracking Volatility, Associated Press, June 4, 2008; Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC Announces Agricultural Market Initiatives, June 3, 2008; Michael Greenberger, Testimony before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, June 3, 2008; Sinclair Stewart and Paul Waldie, Who is responsible for the global food crisis? Globe and Mail, May 30, 2008; Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Agricultural Markets Roundtable, April 22, 2008; Ann Davis, "Commodities Regulator Under Fire—CFTC Scrutinized As Congress Looks Into Oil-Price Jump," Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2008; Ed Wallace, ICE, ICE, Baby, Houston Chronicle, May 19, 2008; Laura Mandaro, Lieberman plans would bar funds from commodities, Marketwatch, June 18, 2008; Our Confusing Economy, Explained, Fresh Air, April 3, 2008.

This article is from the July/August 2008 issue of Dollars & Sense magazine.
http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2008/0708toc.html

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Our Confusing Economy, Explained
39:07
April 3, 2008
11:20 AM ET
Fresh Air
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89338743

Perplexed by the U.S. economy? You're not alone. Law professor Michael Greenberger joins Fresh Air to explain the sub-prime mortgage crisis, credit defaults, the shaky future of other types of loans and what we can expect from the U.S. financial markets.

Greenberger is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and the director of the University's Center for Health and Homeland Security.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

20 January 2011
Causes of the 2007-2008 global food crisis identified
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/225na1_en.pdf

Source:
 Headey, D and Fan, S. (2010) Reflections on the Global Food Crisis. How Did It Happen? How Has It Hurt? And How Can We Prevent the Next One?
International Food Policy Research Institute.
Research Monograph 165.
The report can be accessed at:
http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/rr165.pdf
http://cdm15738.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getfile/collection/p15738coll2/id/5724/filename/5725.pdf

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

2007–08 world food price crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%9308_world_food_price_crisis

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

William Engdahl, A century of war: Anglo-American oil politics and the new world order, 1992, 2004 

pdf page: 25/314 (filename: Engdahl_Century_of_War_book.pdf) 
pp.14-15
p.14
In 1890, as a result of the near failure of the prestigious London merchant bank, Baring Brothers, arising from their huge losses in Argentine bond speculation and investment, and the ties of German banking to this Argentine speculation, a Berlin bank panic ensured, as the dominoes of an international financial pyramid began to topple. 

p.14
   Berlin, and German investors generally, had been caught up in international railroad speculation mania in the 1880s.  With the crash of the elite Baring Bros., with some $75,000,000 invested in various Argentine bonds, down came the illusions of many Germans about the marvels of financial speculation. 

pp.14-15
   In the wake of the financial collapse of Argentina, a large wheat exporter to Europe, Berlin grain traders Ritter & Blumenthal had foolishly attempted to ‘corner’ on the entire German wheat market, planning to capitalize on the consequences of the financial troubles in Argentina.  This only aggravated the financial panic in Germany as their scheme collapsed, bankrupting in its wake the esteemed private banking house of Hirschfeld & Wolf, and causing huge losses at the Rheinisch-Westphaelische Bank, further triggering a general run on German banks and a collapse of the Berlin stock market, lasting into the autumn of 1891. 

p.15
   Responding to the crisis, the Chancellor named a Commission of Inquiry of 28 eminent persons, under the chairmanship of Reichsbank President Dr. Richard Koch, to look into the causes and to propose legislative measures to prevent further such panics from occurring.  The Koch Commission was composed of a broad and representatives cross-section of German economic society, including representatives from industry, agriculture, universities, political parties, as well as banking and finance. 

p.15
   The result of the commission's work, most of it voted into law by the Reichstag in the Exchange Act in June 1896, and the Depotgesetz of that July, was the most severe legislation restricting financial speculation of any industrial country of the time.  Futures positions in grain were prohibited.  Stock market speculation possibilities were severely constrained, one result of which has been the relative absence of stock market speculation since then as a major factor affecting German economic life.

p.15
   The German Exchange Act of 1896 established definitively a different form of organization of finance and banking in Germany from that of Britain or America──Anglo-Saxon banking.  Not only this, but many London financial houses reduced their activity in the restrictive German financial market after the 1890s as a result of these restrictions, lessening the influence of City of London finance over German economic policy.  Significantly, to the present day, these fundamental differences between Anglo-Saxon banking and finance, and a ‘German model’ as largely practiced in Germany, Holland, Switzerland and Japan, are still somewhat visible.3 

3. Friedrich List. The National System of Political Economy (1885 edition. London: Longman, Green). Reprinted New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966.  

William Engdahl, A century of war: Anglo-American oil politics and the new world order, 1992, 2004 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e0PVSremXnuf4Nkn4cY0xW8hF8SaL72-/view

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eon-LgnO0xBGwNocDzajA8hELTmWS1CR

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Howard W. French., Everything under the heavens : how the past help shape China's push for global power, 2017. 

p.279
a German economist at Bretton Woods institution in Washington remarked to me, 
p.279
to create a new global or regional economic and political institutional arrangements 
United States, World Bank in 1944; 
Japan, Asian Development Bank in 1966; 
Germany, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 1991; 
China, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank 

   (Everything under the heavens : how the past help shape China's push for global power / Howard W. French., first edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2017] | China──foreign relations──21st century.| China──foreign relations──Asia.| Asia──foreign relations──China.| strategic culture──China.| geopolitics──Asia., LCC JZ1734.F74  2017| DDC 327.51──dc23, https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021957, 2017, )

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

  UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT

The Global Economic Crisis: Systemic Failures and Multilateral Remedies

Report by the UNCTAD Secretariat Task Force on Systemic Issues and Economic Cooperation

UNITED NATIONS
New York and Geneva, 2009

UNCTAD/GDS/2009/1
UNITED NATIONS PUBLICATION
Sales no. E.09.II.D.4
ISBN 978-92-1-112765-2
Copyright © United Nations, 2009
All rights reserved

https://unctad.org/en/docs/gds20091_en.pdf
https://unctad.org/en/docs/gds20091_en.pdf

Key messages

UNCTAD’s  longstanding call for stronger international monetary and financial governance rings true in today’s crisis, which is global and systemic in nature.  The crisis dynamics reflect failures in national and international financial deregulation, persistent global imbalances, absence of an international monetary system and deep inconsistencies among global trading, financial and monetary policies.

  ... ... ...

The Global Economic Crisis: Systemic Failures and Multilateral Remedies

  ... ... ...

p.8 (pdf 23)
        D. What should have been anticipated: the illusion of risk-free greed and profligacy

        The global financial crisis arose amidst the neglect of international governance – the failure of the international community to give the globalized  economy credible  global rules.  The sudden unwinding of speculative positions in the different segments of the financial market was triggered by the bursting of the house price bubble in the United States.  But all these bubbles were unsustainable and  would have burst sooner  or  later.  For policy makers  who  should have known better  than to continuously bet  on  “beating the bank”  to  now assert (with  the  benefit  of  hindsight) that  greed ran amok, or that regulators were “asleep at the wheel”, is simply not credible.

        The  housing  price  bubble  itself  was  the  result  of  the  deregulation  of  financial  markets  on  a  global  scale,  widely  endorsed  by  Governments  around  the  world.  The  spreading  of  risk  and  the  severing  of  risk  and  the  information  about  it  was  promoted  by  the  use  of  “securitization”  through  instruments  like  residential  mortgage-backed  securities  (RMBS)  that  seemed  to  satisfy  investors’  hunger  for  double-digit  profits.  It  is  only  at  this  point  that  greed  and  profligacy  enter  the  stage.  Without  the  economic  “lifestyle”  of  deregulation  of  the  last  decades,  and  in  the  presence  of  more  appropriate  regulation,  expectations  on  returns  of  purely  financial  instruments  in  the  double-digit  range would simply not have been possible (Kuttner, 2007; Davidson, 2008).

        In  real  economies  with  single-digit  growth  rates  those  expectations  are  misguided  from  the  beginning.  However,  human  beings  tend  to  believe  that  in  their  generation  things  may  happen  that  never happened before, ignoring, at least temporarily, the lessons of the past.  This happened in most recent  memory  during  the  stock  market  booms  of  the  “new  economy”.  Despite  the  dot.com  crash  of  2000 a wide range of investors began to invest their funds into hedge funds and “innovative financial instruments”.  These  funds  needed  to  ever  increase  their  risk  exposure  for  the  sake  of  higher  yields  with  more  sophisticated  computer  models  searching  for  the  best  bets,  which  actually  added  to  the  opaqueness  of  many  instruments.  It  should  have  been  clear  from  the  outset  that  everybody  can’t  be  above average (Kuttner, 2007: 21) and that the capacity of the real economy to cope with exaggerated real  estate  and  commodity  prices  or  misaligned  exchange  rates  is  strictly  limited,  but  it  is  only  now,  through  the  experience  of  the  crisis,  that  this  is  coming  to  be  understood  by  many  actors  and  policymakers. 

        A more important driver of this kind of “financial innovation”, however, was the naive belief in efficient market theories that did not recognize objective uncertainty but mistakenly assumed well-informed buyers and sellers and hence promised minimal risk (Davidson, 2008). But “securitization” of investment vehicles led to further risk concentration because it converted debtor-creditor relations (or  insurer-insured  relation)  into  capital  flow  transactions  by  packing  different  types  of  debt  for  onward sale to investors in form of bonds all around the world (Fabozzi et al., 2007), whose interest and return of principal are based on the value of the underlying assets. Due to the opaqueness of these complex bundled “products”, many “securitized” assets found their way into instruments qualified as low-risk.  A global clientele invested in these bonds because the global imbalances had intensified the global  financial  relations  and  had  created  the  need  for  financial  institutions  located  in  the  countries  with  current  account  surpluses  to  hold  much  of  the  toxic  paper.  In  the  first  flush  of  financial  liberalization,  the  global  distribution  of  these  papers  was  seen  as  an  indication  of  successful  risk diversification.

p.9 (pdf 24)
Chapter I – A crisis foretold

        But eventually the opposite happened: financial “innovation” resulted in a concentration of risk since most of the “vehicles” were “securitized” by using assets that had similar default risks (Kuttner, 2007: 21–22).

        Needless to mention, that credit-rating agencies totally failed.  But it  is mainly due to the microeconomic approach they usually take and their ignorance  concerning macroeconomic and systemic factors on a global scale that they misunderstood the risk of so many participants playing on the same fragile bridge between the small real economy and a bloated financial sector.
  ... ... ...

p.23 (pdf 38)
Chapter III Managing the financialization of commodity  futures trading

A. Introduction: commodity markets and the financial crisis
  ... ... ...

p.24 (pdf 39)
Figure 3.1 COMMODITY PRICE CHANGES, 2002–2008
A. JUNE 2008 VS. JANUARY 2002
(Percentage change)
  ... ... ...

p.24 (pdf 39)
commodities as an asset class.
The depreciation of the dollar clearly was one such general cause for the surge in commodity prices.  But a major new element in commodity trading over the past few  years is the greater weight on commodity futures exchanges of financial investors that consider commodities as an asset class.  Their possible role in exacerbating  price movements away from fundamentals  at  certain moments  and  for certain  commodities  is the focus of the following sections.
  ... ... ...

p.25 (pdf 40)
Chapter III – Managing the financialization of commodity futures trading

B. The growing presence of financial investors  in commodity markets
  ... ... ...

Two common indexes are
   the Standard & Poor’s Goldman Sachs Commodity Index(S&P GSCI)  and 
   the Dow Jones-American International Group Commodity Index (DJ-AIGCI),  
   which are composites of weighted prices of a broad range of commodities,  including energy products, agricultural products, and metals.9
  ... ... ...

p.25 (pdf 40)
        The Global Economic Crisis: Systemic Failures and Multilateral Remedies

That is why all the weaknesses in speculative activity have to be tackled at the same time.  For example, dealing only with the national aspects of  re-regulation  to prevent housing bubbles  and  the creation of risky assets related to this area would only intensify in other areas like stocks.  Preventing  currency speculation through  a new global monetary system  with  automatically adjusted exchange rates  might redirect the short-term games towards commodities and increase volatility there.  The same is  true  for regional success in fighting  speculation,  which  might  put other regions in the spotlight of speculators.  Nothing short of closing down the big casino will provide a lasting solution.

        It is obvious,  a coherent  and  effective approach  can only be found  at  the international level  and with the inclusion of as many countries as possible.  A broad international agreement about the distortional effects  of large-scale  speculation  in different areas  on  growth and employment  is  absolutely crucial  to create the framework for  a globalization that has  the potential  to  deliver  rising living standards for all.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

https://www.zdnet.com/article/medicine-needs-to-embrace-open-source/

http://www.opensourcepharma.net/resources.html


What Is Open Source Pharma (and Why Should You Care)?
 Posted by Soulskill on Saturday September 05, 2015 @04:50PM from the having-the-patience-to-help-patients dept.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/15/09/05/1825252/what-is-open-source-pharma-and-why-should-you-care


What is Open Source Pharma (and why should you care)?
Friday, September 4th, 2015 @ 12:36 PM EDT
Contributed by: Andy Updegrove

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/articles/what-open-source-pharma-and-why-should-you-care

  ... ... ...

It has been observed that when one person dies, it’s a tragedy, but that when a million do, it’s a statistic. Perhaps the best way to bring the reality of non-existent and over-priced medications back into focus is to quote from an essay written by James Arinaitwe, one of the members of Open Source Pharma, the (so far) loosely affiliated group of individuals and organizations that have now met for the second year to further this cause:

I grew up in rural Western Uganda, where two of my siblings succumbed to measles before their fifth birthday and my father to HIV/AIDS before I turned 10. I often wondered why so many preventable and treatable diseases were still killing the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. Could it be possible that big pharmaceutical companies and big, bureaucracy-laden governments were so vertically aligned in their approach to bringing life-saving medicines to market, that they rarely saw any reason to find solidarity with the communities that would eventually benefit from their inventions and policies?

My father and my baby sisters did not die because the vaccines for measles or the antiretroviral drugs for HIV were not available. They died, in large part, because life-saving vaccines and medicines were priced beyond our reach.

  ... ... ...

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Goldman Sachs Asks: 'Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?'
 Posted by msmash on Monday February 18, 2019 @07:30AM from the wow dept.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/02/18/100232/goldman-sachs-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustainable-business-model


Investing
Goldman Sachs asks in biotech research report: ‘Is curing patients a sustainable business model?’
Published Wed, Apr 11 2018 3:15 PM EDT
Updated Wed, Apr 11 2018 7:20 PM EDT
Tae Kim
@firstadopter
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustainable-business-model.html
  ... ... ...

The report suggested three potential solutions for biotech firms:

“Solution 1: Address large markets: Hemophilia is a $9-10bn WW market (hemophilia A, B), growing at ~6-7% annually.”

“Solution 2: Address disorders with high incidence: Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) affects the cells (neurons) in the spinal cord, impacting the ability to walk, eat, or breathe.”

“Solution 3: Constant innovation and portfolio expansion: There are hundreds of inherited retinal diseases (genetics forms of blindness) … Pace of innovation will also play a role as future programs can offset the declining revenue trajectory of prior assets.”

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Hunter-gathering seems to have been easier than farming
Why does farming catch on when it dings health and quality of life?

Cathleen O'Grady - 5/24/2019, 8:37 AM

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/adopting-agriculture-means-less-leisure-time-for-women/

For most of our history, humans got hold of food like any other animal: by hunting and foraging, moving around to find the best resources. Settling down in one place to cultivate crops is a comparatively recent development. But once it started around 12,000 years ago, agriculture spread through human cultures across the world, fundamentally changing our societies, genomes, and possibly even languages. In many ways, farming seems to have been terrible news for the people who adopted it, leading to poorer nutrition and greater social inequality—but it also resulted in higher fertility rates and a massive population expansion.

Understanding how and why this technological change was adopted remains a challenge. Studies mostly rely on fossil evidence, but there are also clues in the modern world, as some present-day groups of people are moving away from hunting, fishing, and gathering their food and toward agriculture.

A paper published in Nature Human Behaviour explores how this shift affects the time budgets of hunter-gatherers in the Philippines, finding that women who participate more in agricultural work have less leisure time—around half the leisure time of women who prioritize foraging. The results fall in line with past research that challenges the concept of hunting and foraging as arduous work with scant rewards, and this work contributes to a growing understanding of the social dynamics that go along with a shift to agriculture.

A natural experiment

The Agta people in the northern Philippines have sustained their traditions of hunting, fishing, and foraging for food to this day, preserving a huge body of knowledge. Many of them trade some of their high-protein catch with local rice farmers, getting high-calorie carbs in return. But some Agta people also spend some of their time working on local rice farms instead of foraging, which makes it possible to explore the consequences of a shift to farming playing out in real time.

Of course, this is not a perfect proxy for the change that people would have experienced 10,000 or 5,000 years ago. For one thing, the Agta are modern people who have been living alongside agriculturalists in an industrializing country for a very long time. Another crucial difference is that the agricultural techniques available to the Agta are a world apart from the sort of farming that was being developed millennia ago.

The social and political dynamics playing out between Agta and other Filipino populations are also going to be distinct from those of societies that have managed this transition in the past. Every set of social interactions has probably been distinct, so this isn't new—but the difference in social context matters.

With those caveats in mind, researchers gathered data on how Agta spent their time each day for months. Every day, they’d scan 359 people living across 10 camps—including 142 adults—and find out what they were up to, starting early in the morning and repeating every few hours until sundown.

Budgeting time

The results sketch out how sex and age make a difference to people’s time budgets. Beginning in adolescence, women and men both start spending more time on domestic chores, childcare, and “out-of-camp” work, which can include hunting, foraging, and agricultural work. For men, more of that time goes on out-of-camp work; for women, more goes on childcare and domestic work, but there’s some of each in the mix for everyone. Around the same time, leisure time takes a nosedive and doesn't pick up again until around middle age.

There were huge differences in the amount of agricultural work that people did—some did nothing, and for others, it was as high as 80 percent of their out-of-camp work time. It’s not well-understood why people make such different choices, says Abigail Page, one of the authors of the paper. Some camps are closer to rice farms than others, but camp membership is fluid among the Agta people, and they're able to move from one to another when they choose. So it could be that people who are more interested in farming choose to live in the camps that are nearer farms. It's not clear whether living nearer the farms could affect the wild resources that are available.

Being closer to non-Agta farming population could also mean “seeing the benefits of this lifestyle," she adds. For some Agta, preserving their culture and identity is central. But for others, farming is seen as higher-status, and some Agta mothers “talk about their desire to have kids that are educated and healthy,” says Page. Unfortunately, for Agta people, the transition to farming comes with worse health and higher infant mortality.

This research also shows leisure time takes a knock: women who engaged more in agriculture spent more time working out of camp, didn’t reduce their domestic load, and thus had less leisure time. “The transition away from foraging,” the researchers write, comes along with “a deteriorated standard of living.”
Time affluence

From the 1960s onward, anthropologists began to shift how they talked about hunter-gatherers. While they had previously been seen as living precarious lives filled with hardship, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins argued that their lifestyle was, in fact, one of abundance. They desired little, he argued, and their essential needs were met easily, allowing a workweek of just 12 hours in what Sahlins called the “original affluent society.” This framing has been challenged—the 12 hours of work per week estimate omits domestic chores and food processing. The hardships caused by natural disasters and other changes in resource availability from one year to the next also didn't figure in Sahlins' framework.

Still, it does seem to be true that moving away from foraging and toward farming goes along with poorer health and a lower standard of living—both for modern hunter-gatherers and for our Neolithic ancestors. Why, then, did farming catch on? The best explanation may involve calories and fertility: the readily available carbs of farmed cereals can make a huge difference to how many children a woman has, which makes it a strategy favored by the cold hard math of evolution.

Regardless of how they made their choices, our modern view of hunter-gatherers get stuck between “the naturalistic fallacy of everything they do being good” and a view that assumes their lives are “short and brutal,” says Page. In reality, the picture is more complicated. Even in a very marginal environment, people are still able to live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and have a good amount of leisure time. Farming may bring them some advantages, either real or perceived, but it shouldn't be assumed to mean uncomplicated "progress."

In some ways, that's because we look to them to understand ourselves. “We tend to like using hunter-gatherers to reflect on our own nature,” says Page. Correlational data like this, based on one group of people, has its limitations in supporting navel-gazing, but it’s useful in understanding how prestige and fertility may have played a role in the spread of agriculture.

It's also important not to limit our perspective so that hunter-gathering is the only factor about a people we consider, which would miss out on really understanding the group of people in question. If the paper had been on land rights, “something that mattered to the Agta," she adds, "it wouldn’t have received half as much attention.”

Nature Human Behavior, 2019. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-019-0614-6  (About DOIs).

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀
 
    “There's a stable, robust relationship
     between the patterns [of wealth and poverty that]  
     you've seen before and
     what you encounter today.”;
            ── Adam Grant,
               Originals: how non-conformists move the world,
               2016, p.53 

1:17:03
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez | SXSW 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU-SE5eNt04
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU-SE5eNt04
SXSW
Published on Mar 10, 2019
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=682
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=682
([ an old trope, we're getting con ])
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=740
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=740
([ Trump has been able to fill a void ])
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=786
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=786
([ I'll kind of go back with a story  ])
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=836
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=836
([ 10 per cent better than garbage    ])
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=1000
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=1000
([ meh                                ])
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=1058
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=1058
([ Bechdel test?                      ])
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=1071
https://youtu.be/JU-SE5eNt04?t=1071

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀ 

Matthew Maury (January 14, 1806 – February 1, 1873)

Matthew Fontaine Maury, transatlantic slave trade (global), "engines of growth?", Capital in the 21st century

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fontaine_Maury
He was nicknamed "Pathfinder of the Seas" and "Father of Modern Oceanography and Naval Meteorology" and later, "Scientist of the Seas" for his extensive works in his books, especially The Physical Geography of the Sea (1855), the first such extensive and comprehensive book on oceanography to be published.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fontaine_Maury
When a leg injury left him unfit for sea duty, Maury devoted his time to the study of navigation, meteorology, winds, and currents. He became Superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory and head of the Depot of Charts and Instruments. There, Maury studied thousands of ships' logs and charts. He published the Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic Ocean, which showed sailors how to use the ocean's currents and winds to their advantage, drastically reducing the length of ocean voyages. Maury's uniform system of recording oceanographic data was adopted by navies and merchant marines around the world and was used to develop charts for all the major trade routes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fontaine_Maury#Scientific_career
As a sailor, Maury noted that there were numerous lessons that had been learned by ship masters about the effects of adverse winds and drift currents on the path of a ship. The captains recorded the lessons faithfully in their logbooks, but they were then forgotten. At the Observatory, Maury uncovered an enormous collection of thousands of old ships' logs and charts in storage in trunks dating back to the start of the US Navy.[4] He pored over the documents to collect information on winds, calms, and currents for all seas in all seasons. His dream was to put that information in the hands of all captains.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fontaine_Maury#Death_and_burial
He died at home in Lexington at 12:40 pm, on Saturday, February 1, 1873.
 His last words were "all's well," a nautical expression telling of calm conditions at sea.[2]


http://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=13&article=361
Matthew Fontaine Maury
by      Trevor Major, M.Sc., M.A.

Although an accomplished sailor, Maury always leaned toward the academic side of his profession. Following a serious coach accident, which confined him to duty on land, Maury’s scholarly reputation earned him a position in 1842 as Superintendent of the Depot of Charts and Instruments.

Almost immediately, Maury began the greatest task of his career. He was determined that captains should have charts that would enable them to sail as quickly and as safely as possible around the world. He used old log books and thousands of new observations to produce his famous wind and current charts of the world’s major oceans. These achievements earned him the epithet, “pathfinder of the seas.” Maury also wrote directions to accompany his charts, and he combined these with other observations about the ocean to produce The Physical Geography of the Sea, which first appeared in 1855. This was an immensely popular book, and marked the beginning of the science of oceanography.

“paths of the seas” in Psalm 8:8.

Another problem is that some currents, such as the Gulf Stream, were well-studied by the 1840s. Maury’s feat was to bring his scientific knowledge to bear on a vast array of nautical information, but he was not the first to discover ocean currents.

There is little doubt that Maury held a special fascination for Psalm 8:8 and other passages that mention the sea and the sky. They confirmed to him that revelation in nature and revelation in Scripture were in harmony because they have One Author. These convictions, and Maury’s character, make him worthy of emulation by Bible-believing scientists today.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

"ιχθύς" (ichthýs)
 ιχθύς
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthys
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichthys
The symbol was adopted by early Christians as a secret symbol. It is now known colloquially as the "sign of the fish" or the "Jesus fish".[2]
conscious symbol of a witnessing Christian
ΙΧΘΥΣ
Ιησούς   (Jesus)
Χριστός  (Christ)
Ο Θεός   (God's)
Υιός     (Son)
Σωτήρας  (Savior)

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀
 
49:13
James Burke Connections, Ep. 2 "Death in the Morning"
https://youtu.be/1NqRbBvujHY?t=856
https://youtu.be/1NqRbBvujHY?t=856
 15:32  (stop)
https://youtu.be/1NqRbBvujHY?t=591
https://youtu.be/1NqRbBvujHY?t=591
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NqRbBvujHY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NqRbBvujHY
DRS_Education
Published on Jan 20, 2019
"Death in the Morning" examines the standardisation of precious metal with the touchstone in the ancient world. This innovation stimulated trade from Greece to Persia, ultimately causing the construction of a huge commercial center and library at Alexandria which included Ptolemy's star tables. This wealth of astronomical knowledge aided navigators during the age of discovery 14 centuries later following the introduction of lateen sails and sternpost rudders. Mariners discovered that the compass's magnetised needle did not actually point directly north. Investigations into the nature of magnetism by Gilbert led to the discovery of electricity by way of the sulphur ball of von Guericke. Further interest in atmospheric electricity at the Ben Nevis weather station led to Wilson's cloud chamber which in turn allowed development of both Watson-Watt's radar and (by way of Rutherford's insights) nuclear weaponry.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

The transatlantic slave trade is often regarded as the first system of globalization. According to French historian Jean-Michel Deveau the slave trade and consequently slavery, which lasted from the 16th to the 19th century, constitute one of "the greatest tragedies in the history of humanity in terms of scale and duration".

The transatlantic slave trade is unique within the universal history of slavery for three main reasons: 
  • its duration - approximately four centuries (400 years)
  • those vicitimized: black African men, women and children
  • the intellectual legitimization (and rationalisation)

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and-human-sciences/themes/slave-route/transatlantic-slave-trade/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade
http://abolition.e2bn.org/slavery_45.html

5:38
The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you - Anthony Hazard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NXC4Q_4JVg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NXC4Q_4JVg
TED-Ed
Published on Dec 22, 2014

11:07
The Atlantic Slave Trade: Crash Course World History #24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnV_MTFEGIY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnV_MTFEGIY
CrashCourse
Published on Jul 5, 2012

22:41
Introduction to Moralities of Everyday Life
11:05 (start)
https://youtu.be/1jUd72Dmd_A?t=665
https://youtu.be/1jUd72Dmd_A?t=665
 ([ 1 minute 10 seconds ])
12:15 (stop)
https://youtu.be/1jUd72Dmd_A?t=736
https://youtu.be/1jUd72Dmd_A?t=736
https://youtu.be/1jUd72Dmd_A?t=735
https://youtu.be/1jUd72Dmd_A?t=735
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jUd72Dmd_A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jUd72Dmd_A
YaleCourses
Published on Nov 12, 2013
Professor Paul Bloom offers a preview of his Coursera class "Moralities of Everyday Life." 

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

NBER working paper series
general purpose technologies : "engines of growth?"

Timothy F. Bresnahan
Manuel Trajtenberg

working paper no. 4148

national bureau of economic research
1050 massachuesetts avenue
cambridge, ma 02138
august 1992

General Purpose Technologies "Engines of Growth?"
Timothy F. Bresnahan, Manuel Trajtenberg
NBER Working Paper No. 4148 (Also Reprint No. r2008)
Issued in August 1992
https://www.nber.org/papers/w4148
https://www.nber.org/papers/w4148

GPT (general purpose technologies)
AS  (application sector)

p.0 (unnumbered) (pdf p.2)
Whole eras of technical process and economic growth appear to be driven by a few key technologies, which we call General Purpose Technologies (GPT's).  Thus the steam engine and the electric motor may have played such a role in the past, whereas semiconductors and computers may be doing as much in our era.  GPT's are characterized by pervasiveness (they are used as inputs by many downstream sectors), inherent potential for technical improvements, and innovational complementarities', meaning that the productivity of R&D in downstream sectors increases as a consequence of innovation in the GPT.  Thus, as GPT's improve they spread throughout the economy, bringing about generalized productivity gains.


p.1 (pdf p.3)
What is there in the very nature (technological and otherwise) of the steam engine, or the electric motor, or the silicon wafer, that make them prime "suspects" of having played such a role?

pp.1-2 (pdf 3-4)
The central notion is that, at any point in time, there are a handful of "generic", or "general purpose" technologies (GPT's) characterized by their pervasiveness (i.e. they can be used as inputs in a wide range of downstream sectors), and by their technological dynamism.  Thus, as the GPT evolves and advances, it spreads throughout the economy, and in so doing it brings about and fosters generalized productivity gains.2

p.2 (pdf p.4)
Rosenberg's insightful 1979 essay, "Technological Interdependence in the American Economy", reproduced in Rosenberg (1982). 

p.3 (pdf p.4)
Moreover, time gaps and time sequences are an inherent feature of technological development, particularly in the context of GPT's (e.g. the transistor could not come before electricity, nor could interferon before DNA), and hence what could be required is coordination between agents located far from each other along the time and technology dimensions. 


p.19 (pdf p.21)
14
Note that this issue arises above and beyond the multiple equilibrium problem, since we have assumed that the "best" Nash equilibrium is the one that holds; in particular, the economy is not trapped at  z=0,  T=0  by a failure to realize mutually profitable opportunities. 

pp.19-20 (pdf pp.21-22)
The horizontal externality can illuminate some issues in the economics of technology connected with the role of large, predictable demanders, which are in turn related to policy.  It is often claimed that the procurement policy of the U.S. Defense Department "built" the microelectronics-based portion of the electronics industry in the US during the fifties (1950s) and sixties (1960s).  Obviously, the presence of a large demander changes the condition of supply, and this may benefit other demanders.  However, the important point here is that such a demander had a high willingness to pay for components embodying  z  well outside current technical capabilities, and was willing to shoulder part of the risk, primarily by procurement assurances; in so doing may have indeed set in motion (and sustained for a while) the virtuous cycle mediated by the horizontal externality.

p.21 (pdf p.23)
Recent events in the computer and telecommunications markets show how pervasive yet complex the motive for technological cooperation can be.  For a long period, each market was characterized by the presence of a dominant firm (IBM, and AT&T), which could take a leading role in the determination not only  of its own technology, but in the encouragement of complementary developments in or for applications.

pp.21-22 (pdf p.23-24)
Now, technical progress in the GPT part of both computing and telecommunications is diffused across quite a few firms, and the mechanisms for technology contracting have changed accordingly.  "Strategic alliances", participation in formal standards-setting processes, consortia, software "missionaries", and the systematic manipulation of the trade press, have all emerged as standard management tools in the microelectronics-based industries.  These mechanisms permit technologies, and encouragement of complementary innovations.  Yet they probablly fall short of offering the means to internalize the bulk of the externalities discussed above.

GPT (general purpose technologies)
AS  (application sector)

p.22 (pdf p.24)
4. The Dynamics of General Purpose Technologies
In previous sections we assumed that the whole process takes place in just "one round", and that allowed us to discuss the two main externalities associated with GPT's in a relatively simple solution.  However, in order to examine the implications of GPT's for growth, we need to formulate explicitly a dynamic process by which the innovational efforts of the GPT and the AS's unfold  and interact over time.  A suitable framework for that purpose is the theory of dynamic oligopoly as developed by Maskin and Tirole (1987) (henceforth  M&T), which centers around the concept of Markov Perfect Equilibrium (MPE).  In what follows we sketch the model and (re)state the main results from M&T in terms of GPT's and AS

p.25 (pdf p.27)
Thus, for example, firms developing new personal computers know that the next generation of Intel's microprocessors is going to be the 586, that it is due in the late 1992, that it is expected to have 2 million transistors and at least twice the 486's performance (see table 1).  On that basis they may be able to do part of the R&D for the next generation of personal computers that will incorporate the 586, but not all:  some of the development process requires that they actually get hands on the  586, examine it, test it in various configurations, etc.  How much they can develop prior to the actual appearance of the  586 depends  inter alia [among other things]  upon the degree of detail of the technological information that they manage to obtain, the extent to which Intel is willing to make them privy of the development process, etc.

pp.25-26 (pdf pp.27-28)
The reverse conditioning is perhaps less obvious but not less important:  to continue with the same example, Intel has been developing parts and circuits for personal computers (other than microprocessors) even though "neither line is profitable as chips, but through them Intel gains insight into trends: Knowing what needs to go on a board this year helps it determine what should go into microprocessors next year" (Business week, April 29, 1991, page 55).  This is true to various degrees as one goes down the "technological tree":  thus, software developers need to actually have the new operating systems in order to develop software for them; in order to write new operating systems one needs to get hands on the (new) personal computers that will be use them, and so forth.

gpt (general purpose technologies)

p.33 (pdf 34)
Third, historical studies of GPT's and "institutions" (in the broad sense):  the intention would be to examine the historical evolution of particular GPT's and of the institutions coupled with them, using our conceptual framework in trying to understand their joint dynamics.  In particular, we would like to assess the extent to which specific institutions facilitated or hindered the GPT's in playing out their presumed roles as "engines of growth".  A key hypothesis is that institutions display much more inertia than leading technologies, and hence as a GPT era comes to a close and new GPT's emerge, an economy may "get stuck" with the wrong institutions, that is, those that enable the previous GPT to advance and carry the AS's, but that may prove inadequate to do as much for the new GPT.

p.33 (pdf 34)
To sum up, the main goal of this paper has been to suggest a way of thinking about technical change, that focuses on the interface between the characteristics of key technologies and the features of the markets for them.  It is thus an attempt to look carefully inside the "black box" of technology, inspired by history and aided by formal modelling, while seeking to unveil the links between the stylized facts of technology and the institutions surrounding it.  Since at any point in time there are countless "technologies", this approach is useful only in so far as it can identify at the outset a small subset of technologies that are of particular economic relevance, and characterize them tightly.  The notion of general purpose technologies put forward here fulfills that role, but that is certainly just one possible abstraction in this vein, there may be other interesting and useful characterizations as well.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀
 
James Burke: Connections
1978, Technology
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/james-burke-connections/

https://www.explainthatstuff.com/timeline.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_technology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historic_inventions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Academy_of_Engineering#Greatest_Engineering_Achievements_of_the_20th_Century

35 Inventions That Changed The World
From ancient tools to the latest digital advances, human inventions that changed the world and transformed life on the Earth.
Written by Alekhya Sai Punnamaraju
           November 25th, 2016
https://interestingengineering.com/35-inventions-that-changed-the-world

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Capital in the twenty-first century / Thomas Piketty ; translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
1. capital.
2. income distribution.
3. wealth
4. labor economics.

HB501.P43613 2014
332'.041—dc23

2013 in France (la France), 2014 in United States

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto&tl=fr&text=France

Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
First published as Le capital au XXI siècle, copyright © 2013 Éditions du Seuil

Contents
Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One: Income and Capital
1. Income and Output
2. Growth: Illusions and Realities

Part Two: The Dynamics of the Capital/Income Ratio
3. The Metamorphoses of Capital
4. From Old Europe to the New World
5. The Capital/Income Ratio over the Long Run
6. The Capital-Labor Split in the Twenty-First Century

Part Three: The Structure of Inequality
7. Inequality and Concentration: Preliminary Bearings
8. Two Worlds
9. Inequality of Labor Income
10. Inequality of Capital Ownership
11. Merit and Inheritance in the Long Run
12. Global Inequality of Wealth in the Twenty-First Century

Part Four: Regulating Capital in the Twenty-First Century
13. A Social State for the Twenty-First Century
14. Rethinking the Progressive Income Tax
15. A Global Tax on Capital
16. The Question of the Public Debt

Conclusion
Notes
Contents in Detail
List of Tables and Illustrations
Index

Acknowledgments

This book is based on fifteen years of research (1998–2013) devoted essentially to understanding the historical dynamics of wealth and income. Much of this research was done in collaboration with other scholars.


Conclusion

I have presented the current state of our historical knowledge concerning the dynamics of the distribution of wealth and income since the eighteenth century, and I have attempted to draw from this knowledge whatever lessons can be drawn for the century ahead.
   The sources on which this book draws are more extensive than any previous author has assembled, but they remain imperfect and incomplete. All of my conclusions are by nature tenuous and deserve to be questioned and debated. It is not the purpose of social science research to produce mathematical certainties that can substitute for open, democratic debate in which all shades of opinion are
represented.

The Central Contradiction of Capitalism: r > g

The overall conclusion of this study is that a market economy based on private property, if left to itself, contains powerful forces of convergence, associated in particular with the diffusion of knowledge and skills; but it also contains powerful forces of divergence, which are potentially threatening to democratic societies and to the values of social justice on which they are based.
   The principal destabilizing force has to do with the fact that the private rate of return on capital, r, can be significantly higher for long periods of time than the rate of growth of income and output, g.
   The inequality r > g implies that wealth accumulated in the past grows more rapidly than output and wages. This inequality expresses a fundamental logical contradiction. The entrepreneur inevitably tends to become a rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labor. Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.
   The consequences for the long-term dynamics of the wealth distribution are potentially terrifying, especially when one adds that the return on capital varies directly with the size of the initial stake and that the divergence in the wealth distribution is occurring on a global scale.

   The problem is enormous, and there is no simple solution. Growth can of course be encouraged by investing in education, knowledge, and nonpolluting technologies. But none of these will raise the growth rate to 4 or 5 percent a year. History shows that only countries that are catching up with more advanced economies—such as Europe during the three decades after World War II or China and other emerging countries today—can grow at such rates. For countries at the world technological frontier—and thus ultimately for the planet as a whole—there is ample reason to believe that the growth rate will not exceed 1–1.5 percent in the long run, no matter what economic policies are adopted.1
   With an average return on capital of 4–5 percent, it is therefore likely that r > g will again become the norm in the twenty-first century, as it had been throughout history until the eve of World War I. In the 20th century, it took two world wars to wipe away the past and significantly reduce the return on capital, thereby creating the illusion that the fundamental structural contradiction of capitalism (r > g) had been overcome. 
   ... ... ...

Yet it seems to me that all social scientists, all journalists and commentators, all activists in the unions and in politics of whatever stripe, and especially all citizens should take a serious interest in money, its measurement, the facts surrounding it, and its history.  Those who have a lot of it never fail to defend their interests.  Refusing to deal with numbers rarely serves the interests of the least well-off.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀
 
10:16
Max Weber & Modernity: Crash Course Sociology #9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69VF7mT4nRU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69VF7mT4nRU
CrashCourse
Published on May 8, 2017
This week we are wrapping up our overview of sociology’s core frameworks and founding theorists with a look Max Weber and his understanding of the modern world. We’ll explore rationalization and the transition from traditional to modern society. We’ll also discuss bureaucracy, legitimacy, and social stratification in the modern state. Finally, we’ll see why Weber was so worried about the modern world.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Donella Meadows Archives

http://donellameadows.org/archives/can-there-be-capitalism-in-a-sustainable-world/

Can There Be Capitalism in a Sustainable World?

By Donella Meadows

–January 20, 1994–

Paul Hawken, legendary founder of the Erewhon Trading Company and of the garden supply firm Smith & Hawken, was recently presented an Environmental Stewardship Award for his ecologically correct business practices. “I walked to the podium,” he says, “looked out at the sea of pearls and black ties, and … realized two things: first, that my company did not deserve the award, and second, that no one else did either.”

From that realization Hawken has written the first honest book about “green business,” The Ecology of Commerce. Hawken takes on the subject that environmental groups duck, the topic about which there is not quite full freedom of speech in America — the unsustainable behavior of corporations — and he doesn’t duck.

Devoted to business himself, as committed to capitalism as a person can be, Hawken admits that planting trees and printing annual reports on recycled paper cannot come close to making the economy sustainable. “We know that every natural system on the planet is disintegrating. The land, water, air, and sea have been functionally transformed from life-supporting systems into repositories for waste. Quite simply, our business practices are destroying life on earth.”

There it is, the elephant in the living room, too obvious, too entrenched, too powerful for anyone to talk about. More money flows through the world’s 10 largest corporations than through the world’s 100 smallest countries. The top 500 companies control 25 percent of the world’s output (and employ 0.05 percent of the world’s people). Many forces cause environmental problems, but the corporate force is the largest and one of the least innocent. With typical bluntness, Hawken says, “Today’s deteriorating culture, environment, and economy are the fruits of decades of corporate dishonesty, a dishonesty that we have created, sanctioned, and supported.”

Hawken makes statements like that without blame and without despair. He sees that destructive business practices arise not from evil people, but from a misdesigned system. That system rewards short-sighted, nature-destroying, people-demeaning behavior, and punishes long-term responsibility. But it is a human-designed system, which means it can be redesigned. So Hawken talks about redesign. Though he cites most of the horrifying ecological statistics of the day, he does so not to induce guilt, but to lay out the work that needs to be done.

The work, he says, falls into three categories. The first is: ELIMINATE WASTE. Nature turns the waste from one process into food for another process, and so must industry. Hawken describes an industrial complex at Kalundborg, Denmark, where an electricity plant sells waste steam to heat an oil refinery, a pharmaceutical firm, several greenhouses, a fish farm, and 3500 houses. The refinery sells gas to a sheet-rock factory and to the electric plant. To clean the air the refinery removes sulfur from its gas and sells it to a chemical company. The sludge from the sulfur removal is used to make the sheet-rock. Organic waste from the fish farm fertilizes crops. Not the zero-discharge system Hawken is calling for, but a step in that direction.

Hawken’s second goal is also taken from the operating manual of the planet: SHIFT FROM CARBON FUELS TO SUNSHINE FUELS. That means developing solar-based energy, from wind to falling water to photovoltaic-generated hydrogen for running cars. That task will be a great entrepreneurial opportunity and a great public benefit. It will solve problems from global warming to local air pollution, from strip-mining to oil spills to the balance of payments.

Those first two mandates require technical redesign. The third calls for economic redesign: CREATE ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEMS THAT MAKE RESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR NATURAL AND PROFITABLE. That means proper pricing that includes full environmental and social costs. Proper accounting, to keep track of natural assets as well as financial ones. Setting environmental standards based on what the earth needs, not what business wants. Encouraging diversity by favoring small, not large, companies. And — an ingenious Hawken suggestion — lowering trade barriers not for politically defined MFNs (Most Favored Nations) but for ecologically defined MSNs (Most Sustainable Nations).

Economic redesign requires a government that is not itself captured by the shortsightedness of present economics, and a politics that is not dictated by corporate contributions. Says Hawken: “The most profound act of leadership that could be exerted by business would be to admit that its influence over and manipulation of government is misguided.”

The difference between this book and others that chronicle corporate sins is that Paul Hawken understands business, respects it, and wants to release its powers to truly serve society. He has a vision of a vibrant business community in a sustainable society — a vision that sounds comfortingly old-fashioned. “The corporation borrows the will of the consumer: the will to be warm, fed, and secure; the will to grow, develop, learn, and be approved of; the will to succeed, to lead a happy life, to be loved. Will is powerful stuff, not well understood; when a company borrows will, it is more than a loan, it is a covenant.”

“In the restorative economy of the future, the fundamental principle to be honored is the covenant between company and customer. Businesses will become instruments of the customer; the customer as the passive instrument of commerce will disappear.”

If corporate leaders would read, understand, and implement the ideas in this book, they might not only make profits, and not only save the world, they even might find a way of doing business that satisfies their souls.


Copyright Sustainability Institute 1994 

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀
 
Leonard-Barton, Dorothy
Wellsprings of Knowledge : building and sustaining the sources of innovation / Dorothy Leonard-Barton
1. information technology——management
2. information resources management
3. management information systems

copyright © 1995

HD30.2.L46 1995
658.4'038——dc20

p.205
Schwartz tells how Smith & Hawken, a mail-order garden tool business, sharpened its focus when the company decided, in the late 1970s, to consider possible futures.  It constructed three scenarios: (1) "more of the same but better," (2) "worse" (decay and depression), and (3) "different but better" (fundamental change).  The company determined that the first two scenarios both suggested direct mail as the best approach, since either people would be wealthy enough to buy but too busy to get to the store, or the market would disappear and capital-intensive retail operations would be highly risky.  Scenario 3, fundamental change, implied a concern for the environment and distrust of throwaway tools.  The 1980s turned out to be a mixture of the three scenarios, with both yuppie wealth and homelessness in the United States and a growth in concern for the environment.  Although none of the scenarios exactly played out, the company was better positioned because its managers had thought through which steps to take under the various conditions.49

    (Leonard-Barton, Dorothy, copyright © 1995, HD30.2.L46 1995, 658.4'038——dc20)
(Wellsprings of Knowledge : building and sustaining the sources of innovation / Dorothy Leonard-Barton, 1. information technology——management, 2. information resources management, 3. management information systems, )

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

   How do you know that Adam and Eve were Russian?
   Because they thought they were in paradise when they had no clothes and only one apple to share between them.

                                                Russian joke
  
   Why Capitalism Can't be Sustainable
   http://www.greeneconomist.org/page.php?pageid=capitalism


“de Jouvenel [5] postulated that it was the particular view of the future held by small but dominant political groups within a nation, which determined how the future of that nation unfolded.”, p.802, 
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zWlz-5zHTN-Su2Hxq3nO73_yhg6N7-Dk
p.802
   Meanwhile, de Jouvenel, the founder of the Futuribles Group
(Association Internationale de Futuribles) which became a catalyst in the development of the international futures movement, joined the Prospectives centre in 1966. de Jouvenel [5] postulated that it was the particular view of the future held by small but dominant
political groups within a nation, which determined how the future of that nation unfolded.  This could be avoided he argued, by encouraging futurists to act as catalysts in articulating idealistic images of what the future could be like and which could serve as a blueprint for the nation. The thrust of de Jouvenel’s work therefore was in using scenarios to construct positive images of the future or ‘scientific utopias’ and then specifying ways in which these could be brought about to improve the life of ordinary people [6].
   [5] B. de Jouvenel, Introduction in: B. Jouvenel (Ed.), Futuribles: Studies in Conjecture (1), de Droz, Geneva,
1963, pp. ix–xi.
   (The origins and evolution of scenario techniques in long range business planning, Ron Bradfield, George Wright, George Burt, George Cairns, Kees Van Der Heijden, available online 24 May 2005)

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

forecaste folder (references)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1G1Fq7biIEfT-_wjZlwk5Z6DTrhwtWwDn

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow:  a modest defense of futurology
Jessica Bland  and  Stian Westlake
May 2013
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1K2TmM4nSeN-AfWbDR28Bo1Tr_eDdPFcs
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K2TmM4nSeN-AfWbDR28Bo1Tr_eDdPFcs/view

Future studies, foresight and scenarios as basis for better strategic decisions
author:  A. Rialland, K. E. Wold
Trondheim, December 2009
report no.: GLO-MP2020
            working paper 10-2009
project:  innovation in global maritime production 2020 (GLO-MP2020)
 << NTNU Trondheim                                               >>
 << Norwegian university of science and technology               >>
 << department of industrial economics and technology management >>
https://drive.google.com/open?id=15hAvJzljlbUlzU31xFDGAjXBaH0qzbuf
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15hAvJzljlbUlzU31xFDGAjXBaH0qzbuf/view

Six rules for effective forecasting
by Paul Saffo
harvard business review
copyright © 2007
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1F9AWoN6PgPfz0_MRPyn_sYAawQ-Tzs0M
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F9AWoN6PgPfz0_MRPyn_sYAawQ-Tzs0M/view

Living in the futures
how scenario planning changed corporate strategy
by Angela Wilkinson  and  Roland Kupers
harvard business review
copyright © 2013
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1d7Yvf6CTwda_xUNWlVrJkgtX8FwFRNay
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d7Yvf6CTwda_xUNWlVrJkgtX8FwFRNay/view

The origins and evolution of scenario techniques in long range business planning
Ron Bradfield, George Wright, George Burt, George Cairns, Kees Van Der Heijden
24 May 2005
a
University of Strathclyde, Graduate School of Business, 199 Cathedral Street, Glasgow G4 0QU, UK
b
University of Durham, Durham Business School, Mill Hill Lane, Durham DH1 3LB, UK
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zWlz-5zHTN-Su2Hxq3nO73_yhg6N7-Dk
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zWlz-5zHTN-Su2Hxq3nO73_yhg6N7-Dk/view

Delivering tomorrow
Logistics 2050
a scenario study
Deutsche Post AG, Headquarters
PROJECT DIRECTOR:  Dr. Jan Dietrich Müller, Corporate Communications, Deutsche Post AG
PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND EDITORIAL OFFICE:  Johannes Oppolzer, Corporate Communications, Deutsche Post AG
SCENARIO PROCESS AND REALIZATION:  Z_punkt The Foresight Company, Cologne
1. edition February 2012
© Deutsche Post AG, Bonn, Germany
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZQiory75Bphdr7x55nc8vY4aSAgrIzoe
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZQiory75Bphdr7x55nc8vY4aSAgrIzoe/view

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀ 

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy
50 Things That Made the Modern Economy is produced by BBC World Service and hosted by Tim Harford.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Things_That_Made_the_Modern_Economy

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/downloads

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/guide?page=1
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/guide?page=2
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/guide?page=3


Each of the nine-minute long programmes introduces the story of a product or invention that revolutionised the modern world.

Series 1 episode listing with released titles and taglines Episode     Title     Tagline     Broadcast Date

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/guide?page=3
1  Diesel Engine     Rudolf Diesel died in strange circumstances after changing the world with his engine     5 Nov 2016
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04dhs7p
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04dhs7p

2  Haber-Bosch Process     Saving lives with thin air - by taking nitrogen from the air to make fertiliser     14 Nov 2016
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04f77rg
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04f77rg

3  Shipping Container     The boom in global trade was caused by a simple steel box     19 Nov 2016
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04g1ddh
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04g1ddh

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/guide?page=2
4  Concrete     It's improved health, school attendance, agricultural productivity and farm worker wages     26 Nov 2016
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04gyg20
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04gyg20

5  iPhone     How Uncle Sam played an essential role in the creation and development of the iPhone     3 Dec 2016
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04gyg20
 play       https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04hyzm5

6  Barcode     How vast mega-stores emerged with the help of a design originally drawn in the sand     10 Dec 2016
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04k0066
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04k0066

7  Banking     Warrior monks, crusaders and the mysterious origins of modern banking     17 Dec 2016
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04kj3n5
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04kj3n5

8  Lightbulb     Once too precious to use, light is now too cheap to notice     24 Dec 2016
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04knm03
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04knm03

9  M-Pesa     Transferring money by text message is far safer and more convenient than cash     31 Dec 2016
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04kxddv
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04kxddv

10  Compiler     Installing Windows might take 5,000 years without it     7 Jan 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04n04cm
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04n04cm

11  Billy Bookcase     Low cost, functional and brilliantly efficient, one is produced every three seconds     14 Jan 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04nmxy2
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04nmxy2

12  Antibiotics     The tale of antibiotics is a cautionary one, and economic incentives are often to blame     20 Jan 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04pfn2z
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04pfn2z

13  Paper     The Gutenberg press changed the world – but it could not have done so without paper     28 Jan 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04q774r
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04q774r

14  Insurance     Insurance is as old as gambling, but it’s fundamental to the way the modern economy works     4 Feb 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04r1sjb
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04r1sjb

15  Google     The words 'clever' and 'death' crop up less often than 'Google' in conversation     11 Feb 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04rv3v3
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04rv3v3

16  Clock     The clock was invented in 1656 and has become an essential part of the modern economy     18 Feb 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04skkw4
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04skkw4

17  Disposable Razor     King Camp Gillette created the disposable razor. But his influence extends beyond shaving     25 Feb 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04t8k2l
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04t8k2l

18  Robot     Robots threaten the human workforce, but they are crucial to the modern economy     4 Mar 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04tz7rg
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04tz7rg

19  Public-Key Cryptography     Geeks versus government – the story of public key cryptography     11 Mar 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04vqrwy
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04vqrwy

20  Battery     The story of the battery begins inside a dead murderer. It’s a tale that’s far from over     18 Mar 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04whgbh
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04whgbh

21  Gramophone     "Superstar” economics – the story of how the gramophone led to a winner-take-all market     25 Mar 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04x6xg6
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04x6xg6

22  TV Dinner     The TV dinner, and other inventions from the same era, made a lasting economic impression     1 Apr 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04xyqfs
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04xyqfs

23  Contraceptive Pill     The pill wasn’t just socially revolutionary, it also sparked an economic revolution     8 Apr 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04yph1b
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04yph1b

24  Elevator     The safety elevator is a mass transit system that has changed the shape of our cities     15 Apr 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04yzrqv
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04yzrqv

25  Air Conditioning     Invented for the printing industry, air conditioning now influences where and how we live     22 Apr 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0504qtn
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0504qtn

26  Cuneiform     Cuneiform, the earliest known script, was used to create the world’s first accounts     29 Apr 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p050skkr
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p050skkr

27  Video Games     From Spacewar to Pokemon Go, video games have shaped the modern economy in surprising ways     6 May 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p051gbxd
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p051gbxd

28  Intellectual Property     Intellectual property reflects an economic trade off when it comes to innovation     13 May 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0523g6y
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0523g6y

29  Passports     If anyone could work anywhere, some economists think global economic output would double     22 May 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p052spyb
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p052spyb

30  Tally Stick     The tally stick shows us what money really is: a kind of debt that can be traded freely     27 May 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p053g7qj
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p053g7qj

31  Index Fund     Warren Buffett is one of the world’s great investors. His advice? Invest in an index fund     3 Jun 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p054414c
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p054414c

32  Infant Formula     For many new mothers who want, or need, to get back to work, infant formula is a godsend     10 Jun 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p054sh3w
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p054sh3w

33  Tax Havens     Gabriel Zucman invented an ingenious way to estimate how much wealth is hidden offshore     17 Jun 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p055glgq
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p055glgq

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/guide?page=1
34  Barbed Wire     “Lighter than air, stronger than whiskey” – barbed wire wreaked huge changes in America     24 Jun 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0564q9t
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0564q9t

35  Department Store     Harry Selfridge pioneered a whole new retail experience with his London department store     1 Jul 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p056srj3
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p056srj3

36  Leaded Petrol     When lead was added to petrol it made cars more powerful – but it also poisoned people     8 Jul 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p057fvwf
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p057fvwf

37  Dynamo     The big story behind the way dynamos made electricity useful     15 Jul 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p057xsl0
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p057xsl0

38  Limited Liability Company     How some legal creativity has created vast wealth down the centuries     22 Jul 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p058qrk3
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p058qrk3

39  Paper Money     Currency derives value from trust in the government which issues it     29 Jul 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p059c7g1
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p059c7g1

40  Seller Feedback     Without seller feedback, companies like eBay might not have grown as they have     5 Aug 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p059zb6n
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p059zb6n

41  Plastic     We make so much plastic these days that it takes about eight percent of oil production     12 Aug 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gl
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csv3gl

42  Market Research     Market research marked a shift from a producer-led to consumer-led approach to business     19 Aug 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gm
 play    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csv3gm

43  Radar     A high-tech ‘death ray’ capable of zapping sheep led to the invention of radar     26 Aug 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gn
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csv3gn

44  S-Bend     The S-bend was a pipe with a curve in it, an invention that led to public sanitation     2 Sep 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gp
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csv3gp

45  Double-entry Bookkeeping     Market research marked a shift from a producer-led to consumer-led approach to business     9 Sep 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gq
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csv3gq

46  Management Consulting     If managers often have a bad reputation, what should we make of the people who tell managers how to manage?     16 Sep 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gr
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csv3gr

47  Property Register     Property rights for the world's poor could unlock trillions in ‘dead capital’     30 Sep 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gt
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csv3gt

48  Welfare State     Do welfare states boost economic growth, or stunt it? It’s not an easy question to answer     7 Sep 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gv
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csv3gv

49  Cold Chain     Refrigeration revolutionised the food industry, and other industries too     14 Oct 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gw
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csv3gw

50  Plough     The plough kick-started civilisation - and ultimately made our modern economy possible     21 Oct 2017
 download   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csvt0k
     play   https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csvt0k

source:
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/three-things-that-made-the-modern-economy/

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

James Burke: Connections
1978, Technology
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/james-burke-connections/

Connections explores an Alternative View of Change (the subtitle of the series) that rejects the conventional linear and teleological view of historical progress. Burke contends that one cannot consider the development of any particular piece of the modern world in isolation.

Rather, the entire gestalt of the modern world is the result of a web of interconnected events, each one consisting of a person or group acting for reasons of their own (e.g., profit, curiosity, religious) motivations with no concept of the final, modern result of what either their or their contemporaries' actions finally led to. The interplay of the results of these isolated events is what drives history and innovation, and is also the main focus of the series and its sequels.

To demonstrate this view, Burke begins each episode with a particular event or innovation in the past (usually Ancient or Medieval times) and traces the path from that event through a series of seemingly unrelated connections to a fundamental and essential aspect of the modern world. For example, The Long Chain episode traces the invention of plastics from the development of the fluyt, a type of Dutch cargo ship.
 
Connections (1978), episode 7
"The Long Chain" traces the invention of the fluyt freighter in Holland in the 16th century. Voyages were insured by Edward Lloyd (Lloyd's of London) if the ships' hulls were covered in pitch and tar (which came from the colonies until the American War of Independence in 1776). In Culross, Scotland, Archibald Cochrane (9th Earl of Dundonald) tried to distill coal vapour to get coal tar for ships' hulls, which led to the discovery of ammonia. The search for artificial quinine to treat malaria led to the development of artificial dyes, which Germany used to produce fertilizers to grow wheat and led to the advancement of chemistry which in turn led to DuPont's discovery of polymers such as nylon.
 https://archive.org/details/james-burke-connections_s01e07


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)


7:03
James Burke BBC Connections - Technology Traps Scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPcZ_5uCldg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPcZ_5uCldg
Driveable Flea
Published on Jan 19, 2016
What would you do? Just a great scene from James Burke's Connections Series 1, Episode 1. I highly recommend you watch the show. It is old but it is insightful.

49:21
James Burke Connections, Ep. 1 "The Trigger Effect"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ
DRS_Education
Published on Jan 16, 2019
"The Trigger Effect" details the world's present dependence on complex technological networks through a detailed narrative of New York City and the power blackout of 1965. Agricultural technology is traced to its origins in ancient Egypt and the invention of the plough. The segment ends in Kuwait where, because of oil, society leapt from traditional patterns to advanced technology in a period of only about 30 years.

connections playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLToTG4UrDonXr4PnQYrB4Q9ZUVLMAiIdX

https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22connections%22%20creator%3A%22james%20burke%22

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀ 

 gunpowder - Gunpowder (or gun powder) is a mix of chemical substances (75% saltpeter, 15% charcoal and 10% sulfur). It is used primarily in firearms, burns very quickly, and creates gases.
49:21
James Burke Connections, Ep. 3 "Distant Voices"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCp8h9RkaSw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCp8h9RkaSw
DRS_Education
Published on Jan 20, 2019
"Distant Voices" suggests that telecommunications exist because Normans had stirrups for horse riding which in turn led them to further advancements in warfare. Deep mine shafts flooded and scientists in search of a solution examined vacuums, air pressure, and other natural phenomena.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder
Gunpowder, also known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur (S), charcoal (C), and potassium nitrate (saltpeter, KNO3). The sulfur and charcoal act as fuels while the saltpeter is an oxidizer.[1][2] Because of its incendiary properties and the amount of heat and gas volume that it generates, gunpowder has been widely used as a propellant in firearms, artillery, rockets, and fireworks, and as a blasting powder in quarrying, mining, and road building.

Gunpowder was invented in 9th-century China and spread throughout most parts of Eurasia by the end of the 13th century.[3] Originally developed by the Taoists for medicinal purposes (in search for substances that would provide longevity [life extension] - like the fountain of youth - the eternal quest to live forever and to remain youthful), gunpowder was first used for warfare about 1000 AD.[4] 
 

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Scale and scope, 1990               [ ]
p.42
The scientific disciplines acquired to improve processes and products in explosives were transferable to the development of new chemically produced fibers, fabrics, films, and plastics, as well as better paints, varnishes, and other finishes, since those products were all based on the same cellulose technology. The scientific training needed to improve machinery for the generation and transmission of electricity was applicable to developing electrical appliances, vacuum tubes, X-ray and electronic equipment, and other technologically complex devices.
   Even more important, the chemical producers and electrical manufacturers had mastered the specialized technical and organizational skills needed to move a new or improved product into full commercial use: that is, they became even more skilled in development than in research. They understood the complexities that are inherent in market research, in building pilot plants and then in scaling up production facilities to minimum efficient size, and in recruiting and training a nationwide sales network--activities that absorb by far the greatest part of the cost of completing successfully the long haul from product innovation to volume production for world markets.

   (Scale and scope : the dynamics of industrial capitalism / Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. with the assistance of Takashi Hikino., 1. big business--United States--history, 2. big business--Great Britain--history, 3. big business--Germany--history, 4. big business--Germany (west)--history, copyright © 1990, , )


The Welsh Longbow
Posted on July 9, 2014
https://www.sarahwoodbury.com/the-welsh-longbow/

Saxons, as a rule, were not archers.  It is another five centuries before there is any recorded use of a longbow in England.  The men of Wales used longbows against the Normans, from the moment they arrived to conquer England and Wales, up through the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd.  One of the greatest victories for Llywelyn was in 1257 before the Battle of Cymerau where the Normans lost 3000 men (http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/cymerau/).  At Llandeilo Fawr, they cowered for two days under a hail of arrows from the Welsh.

Starting 1252 in England, the longbow was finally accepted as a formal military weapon.  “In 1252 the Assize of Arms required that all landowning yeomen with an annual income between 40 to a 100 shillings were to be armed and trained with a longbow (war bow) and the more wealthy yeomen were also required to possess a sword, buckler, dagger and to be trained in their use.”   http://robinhode.webs.com/yeomen.htm

http://warbowwales.com/the-welsh-longbow/4557703062

Being of Anglo-Norman and Welsh origin, Gerald would have been familiar with the crossbow with its yew prod. This was the main missile weapon in the English armies and clearly the Welsh longbow compares very favorably. Indeed, such was the fear of the Welsh warbow, in comparison to the inferior Anglo-Norman crossbow, that Welsh men were barred from bringing their weapons across the border.

  ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀