Well… It Was Definitely Solo

Yes, the Disney Star Wars movie involving the titular character, but also, the state I saw it in, as there was not a single other person in my showing. On the other hand, Avenger’s: Infinity War, had at least a dozen people enter the showing right next door in the short time that I was out in the hallway of the theater.

This movie at this point has nearly left many of the theaters in my area, just a few weeks after its release.

After seeing it though, I have to say that it honestly wasn’t terrible. Sure, the movie wasn’t particularly necessary, and it was chock full of fan service, but as a “solo” film, it was solid. The characters were likable and compelling, the story was pretty interesting, and well structured.

It can be difficult to judge a movie such as this on its own merits, since it has so much lore built up over the course of the series, and while one can argue that it explains too much of Han’s backstory before A New Hope, by itself, leaving much of the time between the two void of character development or stories, taken just by itself, it was pretty entertaining.

I definitely recommend seeing it once it’s out on Netflix or Blu-ray.

Basic Income As A Tool for Population Control

I am a huge fan of Basic Income, and I am going to write about it a lot, as it has the potential to cushion the blow to capitalism that will occur from the dramatic amount of automation that is going to occur incredibly rapidly in a number of vulnerable sectors of the economy. With that said, however, such a policy will have societal impacts, and could be used by governments to control populations. I intend to outline how different methods of basic income distribution would allow for a government to control populations and population density.

The first way that a government can use the tool of basic income to adjust populations would be to adjust the amount given for ages. By giving a family basic income for children, you can encourage population growth, as it would allow for people to more  easily care for children, and by increasing the amount that a family gets per child, you can further increase the amount of encouraged population growth, as the need to provide additional income per child to support the family becomes less necessary. Inversely, by not providing credit for children under 18, it will change the incentive structure for individuals, making it more economically preferable to share an apartment, or a house with other adults in a communal situation, discouraging people from having children in favor of adding the basic incomes of other adults together to create a more comfortable living situation for those involved.

Let’s put some numbers to it to make it a little more clear. Say each person 18-64 was provided with $1000 a month for basic income. A 2-bedroom apartment in my current city of Denver can cost anywhere from $1100 a month to around $1600 a month, though there are extreme cases outside of that range. 2 individuals could live in a place together, cheaply, and with part-time income outside of that. With a child credit, that bedroom could feasibly be used for a baby, even on a low income and be provided for comfortably. Without this incentives for children though, the much more likely option is that 4 adults would pool their resources, providing a household basic income of $4000 a month, and leaving over $2000 each month in unused basic income for covering other costs, or to use to spend, save or invest, to say nothing for each individual’s other sources of income. Even if each individual in the household earns the current poverty line in income, around $12,700 a year, this would still translate into a household income of around $96,000.

It’s easy to see how some people would use the ability to live on their own barely scraping by, but having the space and privacy to themselves, but how others who value privacy a little less would be attracted to the reduced costs of communal living, and with more extreme examples, such as with a 3 or even 4 bedroom living quarters creating very-high density population areas, where you could have up to $8000 in basic income a month, with rent amounts much lower proportionally.

There are ways to adjust this a little, if a government wants to adjust the locations of its population centers or to encourage migration from one part of the country to another. Basic income allows for greater freedom of movement, but additionally, allows the government to shift people in a more desirable way.

Say there is an area where growth has been stymied and the governing body wants to increase the growth rate. By increasing the basic income amount for the area, say up to $1100 a month, that small increase should attract people from other areas, where the amount is lower. An area that has experienced too much growth on the other hand, where perhaps living conditions have worsened, perhaps too high of a population density, too much pollution or smog, or simply not enough room to continue growing at its current rate, can be counteracted by this same method. Either the funding for the surrounding countryside can be increased to encourage people to move to more sparse regions, or in more extreme cases, the amount of income could simply be reduced in that area, even only a small amount lower, such as $900 a month, though this would likely be met with some discontent.

This potential for control is an important factor to keep in mind when considering policy decisions around basic income, as well as its potential for abuse in more controlling regimes. Basic income has the potential to radically free up resources in an economy, to drive innovation, and buffer society against the impacts of technology, but will come with its own set of dangers and potential pitfalls if not considered carefully.

A Middling Marvel Movie: Antman and the Wasp

After The Incredibles 2 just a few days ago, I decided to see another superhero movie sequel made by Disney, Antman and the Wasp, and I was… underwhelmed.

Yeah, it had some funny moments, and of course Paul Rudd is still endearing and lovable, and the action scenes were pretty solid and cleverly done, but it didn’t feel as layered or as smart.

Even compared to other more mainline Marvel films, this one didn’t have the visual impact of, say, Thor:Ragnarok, and lacked the same humorous enthusiasm as the first Antman movie. The question on everyone’s mind after Infinity Wars Part 1, was where was Antman during that conflict? Well, that question is answered, though you have to sit through the whole movie to watch the minute or two long end credits scene.

I was quite surprised at the audience for the screening that I saw. Several families with small children were in the movie, which was surprising considering the occasionally strong language, and the science jokes which, to be honest it seems went over the whole crowd’s heads, as the only science jokes they laughed at were the ones where people didn’t understand the science talk that was going on, but still, did not really seem to be the kind of movie to bring a six-year old to, as one little girl proudly told me before the movie.

In all, I would only give the movie a 5.5/10. I don’t really recommend seeing it in theaters, and I honestly don’t think that it would keep kids interest incredibly well, as was evident by the events of my own showing. Wait for it to hit Netflix, and if you’ve got kids, go see The Incredibles 2 instead.

A Blockchain Government: Voting

Blockchain technology has the possibility to secure information, to create transparent government, and to reduce bureaucratic overhead. One of the ways this can happen is by assigning blockchain identities to citizens, giving them a unique fingerprint, like a social security number, but more secure. This would act somewhat like a cryptowallet, specifically one with tokenization capabilities. This would allow for tokens to be created for a large variety of different kinds of projects. It could be used to distribute specific categories of welfare that could only be used for those goods or services, such as a housing token that could only be used for paying rents, or a food stamp-like token that could only be used for the purchase of food goods, etc.

It could also though, be used for voting.

There are a number of ways that you could design the system, depending on how transparent or secretive the ballot process is decided to be. Of course, the more secretive methods could be used by authoritarian states to theoretically rig elections, though that level of control could be made difficult.

One way that such a voting system could work would be that citizens were given “vote tokens”, an amount of tokens representing the number of categories to vote for, or could be used in a ranked-choice voting system. The citizens would then vote for their desired choices of candidates or policy decisions, and those tokens would be transferred to the appropriate “vote wallet”. Simply, between the vote wallets, the options with the most tokens win.

Now, how the votes are verified could be done a number of ways, and on different levels, depending on the level of ballot secrecy required. The transaction records could be encrypted, but the token totals available for view, with the system itself verifying the transactions on the network behind the scenes, which has the benefit of an attacker required to hijack the whole network to make any changes to the transaction records, though if this did occur, there would be no way to verify it until after the fact. Another way this could be done is by allowing the transaction records to be seen, which would allow individuals to verify their own vote records on the blockchain, though this has the drawback of making it possible for other people to potentially see another person’s voting record given the right set of information. Lastly, you could just open up the whole system, so that you can see the ID numbers of every person who voted for what category and at what rank. This has the advantage of total vote transparency. A discrepancy between someone’s vote and their record of that vote would be readily available, though this does provide lists of people who might have voted for the wrong person in the case of a more oppressive regime.

So it matters how these technologies are implemented greatly, if we want to leverage the power of technology in government, but this one example  shows the ways that such a technology could be used to both make democracy transparent, or to create an all-knowing techno-fascist state.

 

An Incredible Review for Disney’s Incredibles 2

It has been a bit since I’ve had time to go to the movies lately, but at the moment, there were just too many tempting choices to not carve out some time for myself to go to the theater. What to see on a Saturday night though? The First Purge? Too political. Ant Man and Wasp? Too crowded. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom? I’ll pass. I was looking for a bit of escape, and Incredibles 2 ended up not being the correct choice for that.

It was a strange experience for me. The movie has been out for a couple of weeks already, and so had plenty of open seats, especially at a 10:30PM showing. Probably a dozen seats or so were filled, with only a couple of children.

This sequel to the movie 14 years ago picked up on literally the day that the previous movie ended on, and the beginning of this movie strips away the progress that the family seemed to make at the end of The Incredibles, bringing us back to the harsh reality that performing heroic acts was still illegal, and that the family was acting outside of the law.

This movie was dark, and real, creating a surreal experience, where characters are coded for so many different representations within the United States at the moment. Mr. Incredible is coded for the manufacturing worker that has lost his work, the stay-at-home fathers who are now raising their children, while Elastigirl is coded to be the entrepreneurial mother, who gets the opportunity to raise the status of the family, and becoming the breadwinner for the family. The arguments between them, the sexism of Mr. Incredible from a previous era, the cynical use of Elastigirl as representative of using women to sell ideas.

This movie that I had chosen had smacked me in the face with layers upon layers of interpretations, and I just find myself thinking about Screenslaver and how we consume media. The emphasis of critical thinking, the views of those with wealth, and influence, and where power really lies in society. It’s maddening to continue listing them, and to explain them might take a whole book, and that would just be for a set of relationship dynamics and ideas, and would only be a small portion of what this movie has to offer to analyze.

This will definitely be a movie that I will need to watch again to get more out of, and look forward to doing so, probably at least a dozen more times in the next few years.

 

 

North Korea is Trying to Wiggle Out of Their “Deal” With Trump

I can’t say that I am surprised. Earlier this year, when the North Korean regime reached out to Donald Trump, in an attempt to “make peace” on the Korean peninsula, I wrote a piece about this around that time, claiming that this was a ruse, and the moves were going to be made in an attempt to garner enough goodwill to prevent war when they next made a threatening move..

 

News has just recently broke that North Korea is now trying to give the appearance of denuclearization, without actually giving up or destroying their weapons, but instead trying to hide them. This should surprise literally no one, and yet here we are. Trump has yet to make a statement about the statements made about this, again, to no one’s surprise. He gave himself an out at a rally soon after the summit, saying that he could be back in six months saying that he made a mistake, though he would not admit it, and here we are, less than a month later. Getting the wool pulled over your eyes in such an embarrassing way should probably disqualify anyone from ever being allowed to do diplomacy again, but that is not how the law works.

 

John Bolton on the other hand, has been making statements since the news broke, saying that we could make sure that the regime gets rid of its nuclear material, going so far as to say that we could get rid of most of it by the end of the year. Of course, he is not going to wink or nudge, or play games about what he thinks the solution is, which is of course military intervention. Of course political analysts said well before the meeting that if those meetings broke down, that the only remaining option would be military force, and so we should delay diplomacy until the right time, with the right group of people, and a well-staffed State Department.

 

There’s not a lot left to talk about at this point, it seems. Now that diplomacy has been removed as an option (or at least diplomacy under President Trump), the dogs of war are howling ever louder, drowning out every other voice for any possible action. It’s likely that Trump will refuse to acknowledge his mistake, especially so close to its occurrence, and instead will wait a few more days before he picks up the call of his most hawkish advisers, joining them in their call for a preemptive strike on Kim Jong Un.

 

Will cooler heads prevail? Will Congress be able to stop Trump and Bolton from starting a war right before the midterm elections? I think it’s unlikely. Trump has already talked about the benefits of a wartime economy, implied the need for increased steel production “just in case”, and that he is aware that when the US goes to war, the party of the president tends to do better in elections, and that president is more likely to be reelected. I also think that politics has gotten to such a cynical place that such considerations are the reason for the moves the president is making, and not just the side-effects.

 

I’m usually an optimistic person, and I still believe that if we can make it through a Trump presidency, that a great future is in store for humanity, but it seems less likely that we’ll make it that far than a year ago.