Rants & Raves
Supply and Demand - October 9th, 2010
Conservatives are known to like the Reagan quote that “government is the problem”. But what is government? Since we live in a democracy and elect our government, then it follows that we are the problem. We have the kind of government we elect and hence, we deserve it. Are we a nation that puts corporate profits above all else? The recent Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court seems to indicate that we place a high value on the “opinions” of corporate interests. Unfortunately, those interests are solely fiscal. And strictly speaking, a corporation’s primary obligation is to return value to its shareholders, so it’s not realistic to expect it to behave in an altruistic or even ethical manner. But if, as the court would have us to believe, we are to extend rights to corporations as persons under the law, then we should raise our expectations for good behavior on their part. Why is it that banks, who received billions under the TARP program, are not lending money to businesses or people seeking loans and mortgages? Why are companies stockpiling a record amount of cash to buy back their own stock, instead of hiring some of the millions of people still out of work? They’re all trying to improve the value of their shares, of course. Is that OK? For the shareholders, sure, but for the rest of us, maybe not the type of good behavior we might want. But nobody is complaining. At least, they are not complaining about this, they are just bashing “the government”. The reason for that, I believe, is that the right wing has convinced its hapless followers that if corporations and their wealthy shareholders are doing OK, then we’ll all do OK. This is of course known as “trickle-down” or supply-side economics (berated as “voodoo” by Bush I). It should be obvious to us by now that this does not work! If our recent troubles have shown anything, it is that demand is the fuel for the the US economy, and most of that demand needs to come from consumer spending. For demand, you need people making good wages, which implies (1) they need jobs and (2) they need to be able to expect fair pay for their work. It’s time for corporate America to “do the right thing” and start hiring again. Be good “citizens”. You start hiring people, they’ll start buying products, you’ll make more money. It will be the beginning of an upward spiral. As for government, it’s easy to blame Washington, especially when you don’t like the people in power. But when it comes to fixing the current economic problems, we need a strong regulatory and enforcement system that can ensure the rights of working people, consumers, and small businesses are protected. Big business doesn’t need our help.
From Eternity to Here - July 4th, 2010
I've just finished reading Sean Carroll's From Eternity to Here, in which he discusses several theories of time. Specifically, he surveys past and current thinking regarding the "arrow of time" and its relationship to entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I'd recommend the book to anyone who is interested in the concept of time and has a fairly good understanding of physics. What struck me most about the book was the question that can't be answered: why was the entropy of the early universe as low as it was, when we wouldn't expect it to be? As we know from the second law, entropy always increases within a closed system. So we're left with the possibility that either (1) the beginning wasn't the beginning or (2) the universe is not a closed system. This immediately made me think about the higher dimensional membranes (P-branes) that have been suggested by String Theory/M-Theory scientists. The basic idea is that our universe exists on the three-dimensional surface of a higher dimension membrane, and that there are possibly an infinite number of these membranes floating around. This is one variation of the multiverse idea. It’s possible that our universe was formed by the collision of two membranes. This collision caused the big bang, inflation, etc. The totality of creation is in fact eternal, universes like ours are just local patches of space time that result from collisions between branes; or, as Sean Carroll suggests, baby universes that “pinch off” like bubbles from other universes. This pinching off could result from black holes or wormholes as well, I believe. The collision process or bubbling process occurs over and over again. These ideas solve some important problems: (1) why was the entropy of our universe low at the beginning and (2) why does our universe appear finely-tuned for the emergence of intelligent observer. The answer could be that we’re just in one of possibly an infinite number of universes, so it’s not surprising. See also The Cosmic Landscape by Leonard Susskind. What this means is that (1) time, and space, did exist before the conventional beginning and (2) the multiverse is eternal. This would be consistent with the second law and the Copernican Principle. Unfortunately for the religious, this doesn’t leave much room for a creator... the “god of the gaps” is getting smaller all the time. People will always need religion, but invoking it to explain cosmology is going to get harder as we continue to deepen our understanding of the universe.
More Ranting...
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