Re: Niven has this one covered
> I would argue that k varies dependent on the enlightenment of the society. In the dark ages, it was very much lower
I'm not sure I agree with this. In the dark ages, you could always wonder off and start your own farmstead in the forest or wilderness. The volume of legal requirements was rather low, not the 5000 new laws per year coming out of the EU alone, never mind national government. The State's reach was also limited meaning that freedom and security from peer attacks were somewhat inversely related but freedom and security from state attack were directly related.
The question is, what is the larger problem, peer attack or state attack and can the state coopt peers to attack you. Authoritarian regimes on both sides of the spectrum have shown that it certainly can. Would the State attack you? Perhaps we can learn from one of the most advanced, most enlightened, highly educated societies in the world. Germany in the early part of the 20th century. What tipped the balance and plunged the world into chaos? Probably not the rantings of a charismatic madman, but desperation caused by economic collapse which meant anyone offering hope was welcomed, regardless of their views on Jews.
What drives stock-market bubbles? Low interest rates. With no return on investment available from loaning money to business in a format where business has a firm idea of return, the money goes on speculation. Interest rates show you what return business is really expecting, stock prices show you how desperate the gambling is. Ideally the return should be on average around the same from both markets - slightly higher in stocks due to additional risk. If the difference is massive, the risk is massive.
So the problem is that we have built an inordinately intrusive infrastructure and new we teeter on the brink of economic disaster. I don't know if the NSA would have built their tapping infrastructure without the example of Google, or if its facial recognition capabilities are enhanced by facebook's tagging, but we with more and more of our lives held under the control of third parties its a problem. I would not be able to find work without job search engines, without email and DNS. What if the government decided I should not be able to use these things because I am an undesirable non-native? The problem with massive amounts of meta data is that it can be used to construct very convincing circumstantial evidence. When people are hurting they want swift justice and decisive action. The impartial, objective computer says that is you in the photo and you are guilty.
Combine this scenario with the vague laws passed in the last 10 years which mean everyone is criminal. What happens when the government goes back to google, pulls up your GPS location for the last 5 years and slaps a GBP 4000 fine on you for every time it notices you arrived at your destination faster than your should have, or if you can't pay you go to jail. Perhaps only enemies of the party will be investigated like this. We could have had self-contained GPS's but most people never really twigged that live updates could be used to track you and the system is set up to do just that. It's so pervasive, that paper maps with their offline capabilities are rare.
All our tech provides extra features, but the tradeoff is increased fragility. Turn off the mobile network and all sorts of things just don't happen. House purchasing failures on the other side of the world batter our economy.
I wonder if the dark age death tolls were anything comparable to what we have inflicted on ourselves with our greed and tech-fueled economic capabilities?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
