Dana Blankenhorn

Impunity

Impunity is the essence of fascism.

Impunity is the idea that you can do anything, and never face consequences, because you’re the victim.

With impunity, all things are possible. War is possible. Lynching is possible. The Holocaust is possible.

It’s impunity that Republicans are deploying now in their fight to take back the country.

Impunity is displayed in many ways. It’s displayed individually, in groups, by mobs. When it’s deployed by cops it’s especially dangerous. Police impunity gives others the confidence they need to act out in the same way.

Impunity cares nothing about danger. It’s different from courage. Courage is conquering your own fear. Impunity is believing fear is a weapon that only you can be allowed to wield.  

How to Cut Housing Prices

Everyone is talking about housing prices. (The house on the right is not for sale right now.)

Whether you want to buy or rent, they’re too high.

But there’s a simple solution, one that doesn’t require us to build a single new house.

It’s the tax code.

Real estate has huge tax advantages. These were meant to attract homebuyers. But they’ve also attracted investors, both individually and through huge pools of private equity.

The answer is to reduce the advantages, at least for homes that aren’t occupied by their owners. Even a credible threat to change the tax laws would send investors scurrying and home prices falling.

It needs to be done carefully. It needs to be phased in. To those who argue that this would cut the supply of houses, maintain breaks for new construction. The investors will rush over there.

Misunderstanding China

I think we fundamentally misunderstand China.

First, it’s not communist. Autocratic, yes. Authoritarian, certainly. Capricious and racist and a danger to its neighbors? Why, yes!

But China is capitalist as fuck. It’s a lot more capitalist than America. I was reminded of this recently writing about a company called SOS Limited. 

SOS is a Bitcoin miner. You can’t get more capitalist than that. When you visit SOS’ Web site , it’s a collection of gobbledygook and Internet buzzwords that will make you swoon. In America, SOS would have been shut down by regulators or judges years ago. In China, it’s business as usual, capitalism red in tooth and claw. I compare Chinese capitalism to Deadwood , the TV show. As Randy Newman might put it, “If Mao Zedong were alive, he’d be rolling around in his grave.”

China has been capitalist for less than half a century. A teenager in Shanghai lives in a futuristic world of apps and instant gratification. His grandmother, younger than even I am, grew up amid grinding poverty and arbitrary power. Talk about a generation gap!

Facebook and Bro-Tech

I sold out of my Facebook stock over the weekend. I bagged a big profit. I could have bagged more.

But that would be blood money.

Facebook has done amazing work. It has brought the full benefit of cloud to the developing world. As I like to tell critics, Facebook is the first free global telecommunications company. This has raised a billion people out of poverty because Facebook’s services are free. Mobile services are also much cheaper than in the U.S., as low as $15/month.

It means the average South African worker, making under $16,000/year, can afford a used $150 Android phone and, with Facebook, become part of the global marketplace. You can’t do that with Apple. You can’t afford it with paid services.

The War of All Against All, or a War for All

There are two great struggles going on in today’s world.

There’s a War of All against All, which blames some “other” for local problems. Those people. That religion. That race. That set of beliefs. It’s their fault. Just get rid of them, in the War of All against All, and all will be well.

Then there’s the War for All. That’s the real struggle.

The War for All is what must be done to save mankind, to save life on Earth. We have weapons. We have the clouds, we have science, we have engineers, we have assets of all kinds, and we have the global popular will at our backs. We know what the enemy is, we have means with which to win this war, we just need to get to work on it. Now. Yesterday.

But we can’t come to grips with the War for All if we let the War of All Against All consume us. It’s the Muslims’ fault, the West, the democrats, shouts China. It’s the immigrants, the communists, the Democrats, shout Americans.

Even those leaders inclined toward the War for All, like Joe Biden, must for practical purposes bend the knee in the existential fight with “the other” or lose power. We’re sliding into a Cold War with China neither side can afford. Chinese cities are flooding, America’s west is burning, but both governments are more focused on confrontation.

What the Futurists Got Wrong

Futurists anticipated a lot of important things. They imagined space before we got there. They saw the environmental disaster of this century from a long way away.

But there are two things they got very, very wrong. Computing and resources.

Look at Star Trek. The communicators and tricorders used in the 1960s version of the show were primitive by early 21^st century standards. As one cartoon put it, “all it does is make phone calls?”

I don’t know of a single SciFi author of any renown who saw Moore’s Law coming. Most defined progress through manufacturing automation, which only improves arithmetically. Even those seeing improvements in computing didn’t see how Moore’s Law would take off in every direction computing touched. They didn’t see the iPhone and didn’t see the cloud.

William Gibson came closest. In Neuromancer he imagined something called “cyberspace.” But it was strangely primitive next to the modern Internet. He has since watched throughout his career as history caught up with him. His later novels seemed to take place in the present. His latest, Agency, is alt-history.

As wrong as futurists were on computing, they’re even more wrong on resources. Most writers, like Allen Steele, saw today’s Near Space era as a battle for resources. We would be running out of heavy metals, the thinking went, and ways to generate electricity. We would need to mine the asteroids.