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295

The Interface to Reality

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terms
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notes

Lanier, J. (2014). The Interface to Reality. In Lanier, J. Who Owns the Future?. Simon Schuster, pp. 295-304

297

It's worse than foolish to imagine that technologists will be able to fix the world if economists and politics have gone insane. We can't function alone. What we do is empower people. The world needs to be approximately sane for us to make any positive difference.

agreed

—p.297 by Jaron Lanier 6 years, 5 months ago

It's worse than foolish to imagine that technologists will be able to fix the world if economists and politics have gone insane. We can't function alone. What we do is empower people. The world needs to be approximately sane for us to make any positive difference.

agreed

—p.297 by Jaron Lanier 6 years, 5 months ago
300

If homeowners with mortgages had been owed something resembling royalties whenever a mortgage was leveraged, then there would not have been overleveraging. The cost of risk would have been built in from the start, and would have been paid for by the investor creating the risk. Benefits would have been shared with those who were creating the fundamental value: homeowners who promised to pay the mortgages. Economic symmetry would have prevented investors from taking risks on other people's uninformed behavior, using yet other people's money.

I mean, if financial institutions were not allowed to extract surplus value then we wouldn't have had the financial crisis ... but this is akin to not having capitalism ... for this solution to work, the main problem would have to have already been solved (see note 1556)

—p.300 by Jaron Lanier 6 years, 5 months ago

If homeowners with mortgages had been owed something resembling royalties whenever a mortgage was leveraged, then there would not have been overleveraging. The cost of risk would have been built in from the start, and would have been paid for by the investor creating the risk. Benefits would have been shared with those who were creating the fundamental value: homeowners who promised to pay the mortgages. Economic symmetry would have prevented investors from taking risks on other people's uninformed behavior, using yet other people's money.

I mean, if financial institutions were not allowed to extract surplus value then we wouldn't have had the financial crisis ... but this is akin to not having capitalism ... for this solution to work, the main problem would have to have already been solved (see note 1556)

—p.300 by Jaron Lanier 6 years, 5 months ago