The future of a connected world, according to Kevin Kelly

With rather windy weather, we are stuck indoors sometimes three days at a time. I will only go out to shovel 3 inches of snow today, in rather windy weather. 

This is what I have been reading. 

It describes the future based on what we have know, in his world. It is quite different in the rural areas of the prairie, where we do not have high speed internet. We do have a GPS signal everywhere, so farming equipment will be operating based on that, had irrigation and fertilizer application will undergo a revolution soon. Seeds themselves are high tech product that you license from seed producers. You do not own the entire crop you own anymore. They are sort of renting your land and paying labor, you sell the product back to big corporations that are all connected, seed to product on the market. Or even ethanol.

Back to the book:

A rather "soft" review of technology and how it affects your life. The author is connected to Wired magazine and lives a life where he does not own a car or a home. He just pays to use goods and services that make life simple. He owns no physical books or music.

On page 170 Kevin Kelly gets to echo chambers. We are currently experiencing a bit of a shake up with right-wingers and libertarians, the militant type, having no place to scream their loss of a leader who expressed the outrage they had for the left, or even the mainstream of politics.

This sort of negative stuff about the Internet is mainly left out of the book. The chapters are well thought out, so you will find this sort of tracking by those who track (gov't et al) listed in the chapter titled Tracking.

Technology has reached most of the world, though we in the developed world have a much bigger quantity available to us. The farmer in India, as mentioned in the book, may not have running water, but he does have a cell phone.

Crowd sourcing in promoted in the book, as is free software. The communities in the world are connected and are creating a lot of this stuff you borrow from the internet. You do not own much of it, you share.

Examples of crowd sourcing and everyday life are listed, connecting the on-line world to the real world. We are experiencing some of it as we pick up groceries during the pandemic, after ordering it on line. I hope my vaccination will be similarly organized, as we drive though to get vaccinated. If the pandemic drags on, band will start giving concerts on line, with you donating a few dollars of your choosing to hear the concert. Some bands already give out free music, with you deciding what

I said the book is light on the hardware part. It explains what is possible in a connected Internet world, how servers are connected to give you a streaming feed without interruption. But little is explained about technical side and its vulnerabilities. As independent as we are, we are still dependent on internet providers and our phone provider to keep in touch with the world.

I use an iPhone and I use Windows computers. I still pay for those. I am even stuck using them, as I cannot stand how the cursor and typing works on Android devices. So the free stuff in the book may or may not arrive. We may even see the lower income people lose some services as the rest of us keep paying for our instant news and entertainment.

The future is not really mapped out that well in the book. The fact that you could carry all the music ever produced in your pocket 20 years later may be true (he says to keep it in the cloud) but other aspects of the real world will rule what we get in ten years. You would need an economist as well as a biologist to flesh out the physical world a little better. What happens to homelessness, food supply and all that?

Still, it did help for him to focus on the positive. it will be necessary to just go along with these changes. Otherwise you will be stuck in some resistance echo chamber and will not be able to keep up with the world and interact with it in a normal way. There is a democratic aspect to being and creating in the Internet that the author keeps pointing out. And he believes is inseparable from what we have. Let us hope it stays that way.

Nebraska Shifts from 2016 to 2020

The state elected the same congressmen and the senators have not changed, both are Republicans. But, county by county, many changes took place. some 90 000 more Democrats showed up to vote than in 2016. Still, the 39% of votes was not enough to beat Trump at 58% and the electors seem to vote their party no matter what. Yet, there are independents, as seen by the shifts. And really, it was city folks in Omaha that made the change this time. The one elector for Biden.

The scale reads from -8% on the left to +12 on the right. The two dark blue counties on the right were the ones that voted the one elector for Biden. The law splitting electors (3 regions) has not been around but since the late 1900s and has been in danger of disappearing on and off. The state legislature has been a Republican majority basically forever. It is totally fair to split votes in this manner, and the statewide winner still gets the other two electors, of the five total.

The counties surrounding Lancaster (the long blue box in the East) may eventually be able to vote another Democratic elector. The congressman there is still not in danger of losing, but 2022 may be different. The district includes much of the Eastern third of the state.

The far left bluish county is around Scot's Bluff, and only shifted towards blue, Trump got 11000 and Biden 4000. That's still a lot of Democrat leaning people in ranch county. They do not care much for the federal government out there.

The two really red counties that increased Trump votes are Sherman and Wheeler. They have populations of 3000 and 800. The shift is not significant, as Nebraska has 1.9 million people. The urban areas of Omaha and Lincoln have the minority population. Lancaster is still 90% white. Liberals live there because of the university and jobs related to it and the government etc. 

Demographics statewide are more difficult to count, as Hispanics are not properly counted. There is a significant number of Hispanic farm workers as well workers in meat processing and other food plants.

Courts and Elections

 

The election we just had ended up with a number of cases brought to state supreme courts and to the US Supreme Court. That court declined them. The state courts were the right place at least. States have the right to look at the election in their state, the certification of electors and so on.

The Supreme Court hinted at some rules they have about elections. They stated that states should not legislate new laws regarding elections in an election year. That may be what they think, but since there is no US law specifying how to run elections, I don't see that they could demand even that.

States have set up elections with the funds they have. Bureaucrats and temps hired to count votes run the election itself. States can give their own official a lot of latitude in situations like a pandemic. The state officials want elections to be done as fast as they can, because the politicians at the state legislature have to be seated and sworn in as well. Whether a mail in vote needs a witness and such details are up to the state.

The US Constitution

The constitution is very short. It says we should have a Supreme Court, and that it should deal with federal law and with matters between states.

The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.

 In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.

 The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any state, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed.

And that is all it says. There is no role given to the Supreme Court dealing with any election. There are amendments to the constitution and various cases that were brought to the court. This catalog of decisions becomes case law. According to case law, for example, the court decided the Second Amendment applies to citizens. It is a single line, and it does indeed say the thing about well organized militias. To me it appears to deal with state militias. The carrying of guns, or the permission to do so, was at the time a state internal matter. people in the 1700s and 1800s did not think it was a federal matter.

Recent rulings on campaign finance had the court allow unlimited spending on advertising for a candidate, based on free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Bush vs Gore

The supreme court interfered here. They decided to stop a recount of certain counties based on "equal protection." They were considering the votes of those whose ballots were not recounted. There was also a time issue. They wanted the Electoral College (not part of the constitution, only electors are mentioned) to meet at the normal time.

If Florida had not got the recount (ordered first by state courts, properly) finished, they had options. The constitution says states decide about electors. The governor and legislature could set up a vote on who won. The majority party would then get to claim the electors for their party. This is an acceptable solution and the Supreme Court should not have been able to stop that.

The Supreme Court clearly did not want the election to go to the house and senate. Who would have won then? Probably Bush. This has happened three times, and would happen every time there are three candidates and a winner is not found. The Electoral College is in place just for such situations. Normally the least hated of the three candidates is picked by the electors by however many rounds of voting it takes.

FBI and The Police

The FBI is a federal agency. It deals with federal crimes. Those do not include voting fraud. The voting machines are property of the states. If a foreign power tried to hack voting machines or elections, the FBI would need state permission to investigate it. If multiple states were involved, it might be easier. 

The police, which some people think are to be defunded or reorganized, belong to the states. The federal government can only deal with the police using funding they direct yearly to law enforcement. What the police do is none of the business of Congress. They can cooperate with the FBI, which takes over in certain cases, such as kidnappings. The federal forces can also deal with guns, as with the ATF. Taking over a National Wildlife Refuge, as happened in Oregon, is also a federal case.

How Much trump are we here? It seems about 55%

The 2020 election and the individual states

In the prairie, and the high plains, the low population states like North Dakota and Wyoming went wildly for Trump:

Then going Eastward, Trump falls to the 50s in Nebraska and Iowa:

Iowa was no more Trump backing than Ohio this time. If you were to look at counties in those states, you would see that the ones that contain medium size cities went for Biden. In fact Omaha gave one electoral point to Biden. I live in a county that went 50/50 for Trump/Hillary, now going slightly Better, 53% Biden. Out here people seem to not care for the federal government. Especially rural people see the state take care of most things. What do we need the feds for? A US highway or Interstate goes nearby. Some of these states send more money in to the government than they get back. Property taxes are not popular either, and there is endless debate on how to raise revenue for the state. It went badly for Oklahoma when they kept lowering the taxation on oil and gas drilling. (See Rachel Maddow's Blowout book). Texas gave 52% to Trump, Oklahoma much more.

So going South, Trump support goes up to that 65%, higher than in Texas. Comparing to a state in between, Kansas is much like Nebraska, but is going in the Democrat direction. It's urban population is growing. Though Democrats did poorly overall, and did not gain any congressmen in the plains states.

Missouri is similar to its neighbor Kansas, clearly still in Republican country. It is only when you have a really big city like Chicago that the Democrats win over Republicans.

Notes on 2020 election in general, support for Democrats and GOP

The election was on Trump in general, but the red states prevailed in keeping the senators and no major changes took place, outside of the Georgia senate races to come in January.

The Trump supporters were a hard core 40%, another 40% strongly hate Trump. Voters who vote Republican only amount to 40% as there is a large block of independents. Therefore Trump disapproval has been steadily over 50%, and it was 55% in July for various reasons. Black Lives Matter and the coronavirus effort have been the main drivers. Yet, turnout did not reflect the 55% to 42% approval to disapproval. The election was decided by 5.3 million voters. This only amounts to a mere 3.5% of the ones that showed up to vote. Many people voted for Trump even if they disapprove of his handling of the presidency. One can take this in many ways. There is a group that actually think government (and the president) should do not much. Even in a pandemic. Capitalism will solve everything.

Turnout is poor, normally, in the younger voters. Many voters past age 50 are conservative. In this election, young people and African Americans did turn up to vote. But the excitement was all on getting rid of Trump, and ten days after the election he is still getting all the attention. The young folks do not seem to have much effect on the party machine, the grip of Republicans on battleground states and any future direction of the country. Democrats lacked a strong message for change. The battle between the middle of the road Biden supporters and the Sanders AOC wing is still ongoing. It seems we are addressing healthcare and social issues in baby steps. And the reform in police that people were expecting can only happen with co-operation at the state level.

To Win Elections, You Have To Be Positive

The interaction between a voter and a candidate, such as Trump, is described by a Guardian journalist as a bond. One such voter had a bond with Obama as well, but to her mind, he did not deliver the change for blacks that he promised.

 I won't post pictures of cheering Trump voters, you know what they look like. They all have that bond, and they bond to each other as well. But they would not be there at those airports cheering if there was not hope. They have a chance, now still quite real. I won't get into the technicalities of vote counting and the legal angles. 

You have to keep an overall positive attitude, even as you say rude things and even lies about your opponent. You are going to give them jobs, whereas your opponent is merely going to raise minimum wage and maybe give the people some handouts.

Trump has been making all kinds of threats about disappearing suburbs, crumbling Democrat cities and so on. It goes on forever. He'll also give you shower heads with plenty of water and toilets that flush your poop in one flush.

The attack ads against Trump, cleverly, come from Republicans, the Lincoln project. Attack ads spoken by the actual opponent generally do not work.

Trump has a problem. We have a Pandemic, and he did nothing much in the first months, when federal rules could have accomplished a lot. We never had proper quarantine for air travel arrivals from China and Europe. All American citizens were brought home and "quarantine if you can."

But here we are in October and Trump is packing rallies with mostly unmasked fans. Is it dangerous? Ask Herman Cain. He died after attending a rally in spring. But those times are forgotten. And we have no contact tracing. The pandemic is still going to be with us for a year or so. Trump has tried to downplay it. He can only ignore it. The only positive we remember now is that Trump was positive for the virus. Biden was "hiding in his basement," as they say. Or at least wearing a mask.

The Trump voter is likely to survive, and not be aware of anyone getting sick at the rally. Voters vote by gut feel. There is no logic applied to any of this by the Trump 40% base. They do not feel Biden could ever represent them, so the fans will stay with Trump till election at least, or till they die of COVID. But they will feel positive about Trump to the end.

The Democrat voter may be quite similar in ignoring Trump, but more aware of COVID risks. There is a lot of appeal to basic values. Trump is dividing the country by various means, but mainly by gathering all the white voters he can. The remainder, whites, liberals, foreigners, minorities are going to vote Biden. There is no new issue that could change the election at this point.

Biden can give us some feel good about even the Pandemic. He is going to fix healthcare. Having had COVID, you already have a pre-existing condition. No Trump plan is going to cover you. Even  a possible vaccine will cost something. More likely Biden will give it to you free or at low cost. Other issues that Biden talks about are equality and democracy. We are inclusive. It's a positive feel for most of us. If Biden wins, we were proven correct in our inclusiveness.

Jobs are a little trickier, and it will take a decade to convince more people to take jobs that appear form green power initiatives and even services related to that. When your Tesla dies on the road, you will need different road service. Putting up wind turbines actually is not that different from laying oil pipe line, or worse yet, tar sands pipeline. Those pipelines bring no jobs to your state, other than the occasional clean up when the pipe bursts. Wind power gives some jobs right in the area for maintenance. 

On the whole, the jobs that will recover fastest are the service jobs as we get over the pandemic.

One last thing about these voters that "bond" to candidates and vote on gut feel mostly. Their world view, whether Democrat or Republican or other, seems to consist of being optimistic about pretty much everything. They cannot have anything negative in their life. Thus there is a tendency to deny things that are obviously going the wrong way. Like climate change. They do not need to worry about these things because God will take care of it.

The simple folk gathering at the last week of campaigning are really caught up on this feeling that Trump will make things better for them, that the pandemic is over and that we don't need to do anything, in fact we should not do anything about the pandemic. The economy has to recover for them to feel better. And the only way it can recover is basically to ignore all problems (or label them long term) and recover quickly. 

I don't think we will be going to football games, concerts and all the rest anytime soon. It is quite amazing that we let these rallies go on, as they can only spread the virus. But the rallies will be over soon.

Trump will want to do rallies after he loses as well, all the way to January. He will start campaigning for the 2024 election. But he will have lost the momentum. People will realize very soon that we have to go with whatever leader we have.

The Belief in Small Government

 I addressed this once before in a column:

Rural Voters and Small Government

On CNN, they allowed a Trump supporter to write an editorial. He is a lawyer, and he actually had some work to do to strip regulation.

On the first day of the Trump administration, I joined 24 other lawyers in the White House, where we were charged with helping fulfill President Donald Trump's promises to the American people.
The President wanted to unleash American ingenuity and stimulate economic growth by rolling back burdensome and, in some cases, crippling regulations that were allowed to run amok during the Obama administration.

Read more here:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/24/opinions/trumps-greatest-accomplishment-deregulation-schultz/index.html

He mentions a couple trying to build in Idaho. "Mike and Chantell Sackett, in 2005, purchased two-thirds of an acre on which they planned to build a house. Shortly after they began clearing the land, the EPA issued a compliance order to stop work claiming the parcel was, in fact, a wetland and could not be developed. "

It seems a rididculous situation. However, most land is zoned locally, and the zoning boards are supposed to know how to develop land. it may be that they are corrupt, and they may be paid off by big developers to approve their areas first. That is all local politics. Almost never do you need to go to the federal level.

The federal government is quite different now from the 1770s. It collects taxes, it has complicated structure. The first presidents had no standing army, no currency, a few ships for the navy.

The modern state is complicated. The functions of the government are well explained in the Michael Lewis book:

There are millions of government employees. There is a weather bureau, law enforcement that goes across states, DEA, CDC, nuclear waste, etc. You can get an idea of the book here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk

The employees, post office and all, report to cabinet secretaries. Congress has passed laws funding all these departments and defining their tasks. But the cabinet is in fact not even in the constitution. The Founding Fathers did not want a strong cabinet. On the other hand, the constitution does not ban one either. The trouble is that for its continuity, the cabinet department has to have a long term mission. The President in fact does have the power to define these missions or even shut down functions. it makes a big difference who is president. If the president does not know what the weather service does, he can shut it down. "After all, all the TV stations have weather. What do we need the Weather Service for?" Well, find out where the TV stations get their weather data.

There is no Libertarian Solution to a Pandemic

 

I don't have a pandemic photo this time, just your random patriot. These people with the gun rights and so on tend to be libertarian. And a good number of them voted for the Libertarian candidate before but for Trump in 2016.

Now we are nearly four years into the Trump presidency. Those people really did want Trump to put jokers in charge of departments, so that the government does as little as possible.

Mandates and wide testing, quarantines, those are not for libertarians. They will also not take a vaccination. There are no US wide measures they would agree with. Possibly they would agree to keep foreign travelers out, but that is not of any help anymore.

Now we are in a pandemic. The libertarians are in favor of opening everything. Because they can take care of themselves. That is the key word. The libertarian is not really interested in how you do or how well you survive.

The federal troops That trump sent to Seattle, those the libertarian does not care for. They do not want an authoritarian leader. So the Trump experiment went a little wrong there. But a good portion of libertarians do not live in cities, they live in rural and suburban areas where you have some property to guard and all that. So the riots and Trump gorillas are not the worst. They may vote for Trump again.

The flag I have in the picture, that is part of the libertarian mind set. They do love their idea of the country.

Why do we still have a pandemic? 150 000 have died!

We can blame the president, states, various people that had the power to sop travel and arrange proper quarantine (Hong Kong, despite little land, does that).

But jut thinking about regular people, we have some 3 million cases now. The recovered have some immunity. Some people never knew they had it. Let us say there are 10-15 million that were affected. That is not enough for herd immunity. Even with vaccinations, we have 25-30 million flu cases every year. (Another roughly equal number was vaccinated.) That gives us herd immunity, and also, flu is seasonal. Coronavirus is not.

We could look at 10 infected people. In them we have 2 older people. They are very careful and alert. They will go and get tested at the slightest symptom. The old person will likely infect their spouse, as most of them live daily under one roof. They could infect one other person, as there is some chance that one of them had contact with some close by person. They wore the mask, but other people around them did not. It probably takes two masks on TWO people to prevent infection at some 90% level.

Some 5 people of various ages are in the group. They are working people, attempting to go about their jobs. Those 5 infected 10 people before they figured out to stay home. Then there are 3 young people. They are not worried. There are less than 300 people dead in the country in the under 24 group. They did infect some 20 people, but mostly young people. If they contacted friends, they had a chance to stop most of the spread to a third person in line. So some 20 people got sick, recovered from it.

How many total got sick from our 10 people? More than 10. Also those passed it on. Otherwise the pandemic would count fewer and fewer new cases day by day.

Our Failure At Social Distancing

Back in April, most of us understood the rules: stay home, avoid crowds, wear a mask if you have one.

Since a lot of businesses closed for several weeks, people stayed home, did outdoor recreation, watched TV and followed the Internet. With the few choices of activity, that worked very well. We all understood and followed the rules quite well for a month. We all did, Biden and Trump supporters all in the same boat then.

It's now failing, because people are interacting normally. They have started group activities, and this may include a number of groups for you, not just the family or close friends. People also started wearing the masks and then believing they are safe. They are not. If a senior walks into a grocery store, and if there is an infected person inside, you are still at risk. If that person is wearing a mask and you are wearing a mask, and you start talking to them, the mask offers some protection, but you are still at risk. The mask also prevents you from playing with your mouth and nose while you are in the store. BUT, you still want to shop as fast as you can. Don't read product labels, you can read them at home and make a note on that product for later shopping.

I wear a mask outdoors when I expect to run into a few more people. It's not because I feel at risk, it is more due to the fact that I am discouraging strangers from talking to me. I avoid eye contact.

People with teenagers have gotten them out of the house. They are doing a lot of sports and similar activities. The risk is low. We have less than 160 deaths so far among people 15-24 in the USA. The documented cases in that group are about 14 000. However, they will still get sick and bring the disease home to you.

There is not a lot of politics involved, but the Trump supporters that deny science, hate rules etc. are obviously the worst violators of the rules. The Black Lives activities produced some crowds outdoors as well. But even in that group (blacks in cities), you are more likely to get sick at church than outdoors.

Some ethnic groups are more touchy feely. It will be difficult to adjust to not doing all that for a full year.

The masks are of use, but the people are having a hard time incorporating social distancing to their lives. As long as they do this, and the great majority goes to work (work indoors), we are not going to get past this pandemic. My prediction is that is will flatten slightly from the strange July peak, but we will be in the much the  situation a year from now.

New election theme for Trump voters: No masks

Even though it's been shown that masks help stop the spread coronavirus, especially if the infected person wears it, the people are mad. These people will not believe the virus is anything serious, until they themselves are sick.

You can find the video under that name in Youtube, but the school board meeting had to be postponed due to them.

All this is very consistent with Trump voters: deny science, deny global warming, do not get vaccinated. Why? Because the Federal Government is behind it, and somewhere in there is buried a conspiracy, the real purpose being the manipulation of MAGA-hat wearing Americans.

This cannot end well, and my prediction is that large numbers of people in red states, smaller towns and the South will insist on ignoring the pandemic and a good many will survive to vote for Trump. It will be a very divided election, red states going very red, blue states very blue. The other issues in the election will be buried under all this.

With people evicted from rental housing, others losing the exta 600 dollars per month income and those working with the sick making a strong statement (watch MSNBC, CNN) nightly, the fate of battleground states likely will go slightly blue. I predict Trump will not win any rust belt states.

The election will be close, states will have to do recounts, and Trump will not give up. He will only leave kicking and screaming.