“…these utilities are coveted by investors; that the regulatory environment makes them extraordinarily profitable; and that investors have very little interest in the quality or the long-term operational efficiency of the systems.”

There’s an often unexamined myth that private enterprise will always and inevitably do a better job than government. It isn’t true, and it especially isn’t true for infrastructure.

When I worked in the city, I used to park in a particular parking building which was owned by the council. They handed over management to a private firm. The charges went up with a big bump, and the standard of cleanliness of the facility dropped sharply.

Originally shared by ****

Goodreads have done a roundup of literacy-related charities. Most of them are specifically US, but there are some international ones, if literacy is something you want to help promote. It has a lot of leverage for improving people’s lives.

This makes sense to me. Not only does a dynamic, innovative economy involve a lot of disruption which requires supporting people as they transition out of jobs that are disappearing into new ones that are coming into existence, but being an entrepreneur is risky. If you weren’t already independently wealthy, would you take the risk of losing your home and your healthcare with no backup? A few people would, but a lot wouldn’t, and that’s potential innovation that everyone is missing out on.

Originally shared by Deborah Teramis Christian

“[A]s numerous Republican lawmakers have made clear, tax reform is only the first part of a broader effort to begin dismantling key components of the social safety net. And yet. . . the old doctrine that the safety net is always and everywhere antithetical to growth is beginning to be reassessed. Dawning instead, as we have observed elsewhere, is a recognition that a high-tech economy fueled by disruptive innovation actually requires a stronger safety net, if only to maintain the public’s tolerance for its inherent dislocations.

“You’re not constantly seeing negative headlines because the world is getting worse, you’re constantly seeing negative headlines because that’s what audiences react to.”

I quietly make it my mission to post mostly positive stuff to social media, as my small contribution to making it more like I want it to be (note to self: do that social media manifestorant sometime).

I especially emphasise stories about possibility, and about people who are making, or have made, a difference through courage, intelligence, and perseverance. And my fiction is like that, too.

This isn’t an attempt to ignore the enormous problems we have. But just constantly boosting the message “We have enormous problems!” is no way to make any progress on solving them.

I’m fortunate to have worked with many engineers, and I like their mindset: “We assume that this problem can be solved, now let’s work together to figure out how.”

Originally shared by Singularity Hub

Why Intelligent Optimism Is Crucial to Human Progress http://suhub.co/2BzQz5A

This is the very pragmatic reason for supporting equal access to opportunities for all citizens, leaving aside any concept of justice or fairness. You get more innovation that benefits everyone.

These are interesting thoughts.

One thing the article doesn’t take into account: the establishment of mechanisms by which people who can’t personally weather a shock have effective assistance made available to them (such as a government-provided health service, retraining for people put out of work, and the like). I suspect this is because the author is writing in a context where these things don’t really exist and are not likely to exist any time soon. But in some countries, they do, and they provide a brake on the tendency of societies to become more unequal for the reasons outlined here.

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

If you want to know how wealthy you really are, ask what kind of financial shock you could weather.

If you want to know why inequality happens without any seeming outside force, it’s because people who get hit with a random financial shock end up dropping an economic level, and much of the wealth they lost gets redistributed among everyone else. That’s true for both random shocks like flat tires, and coordinated shocks like economic downturns or a mortgage crisis.

And then changes in bargaining power happen, and that’s what shapes societies.

Creativity is not something you just wait and hope will happen. There are ways to encourage it.

Sounds like something out of a Cory Doctorow story.

Originally shared by Steven Saus

Technology only helps if the system is structured to provide equitable access to it.

Originally shared by Singularity Hub

Can Technology Help Mend America’s Divided Healthcare System? http://suhub.co/2yIsicI

Defence of tribalism came from some unexpected quarters. Here’s a response.

Originally shared by Jennifer Ouellette

When Did Tribalism Get To Be So Fashionable? “I won’t argue here for the virtues of going beyond tribalism—see, if you’re interested, the last 5,000 years of state formation. But perhaps scientists, scholars, and the general intellectual public have failed to make these arguments clear. Our cosmopolitan, pluralistic societies today are under enormous strain. But they’re also too large, and too successful, to survive a transition back.” http://nautil.us/blog/when-did-tribalism-get-to-be-so-fashionable