{"id":22981,"date":"2017-02-25T16:22:15","date_gmt":"2017-02-25T21:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22981"},"modified":"2017-02-25T16:22:15","modified_gmt":"2017-02-25T21:22:15","slug":"faking-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=22981","title":{"rendered":"Faking It"},"content":{"rendered":"

FAKING IT<\/a><\/h3>\n

Thanks to the election of President Trump and his uncompromising attitude to the establishment media, much hot air is being expended on the subject of \u2018fake news\u2019. Those being so exercised seem unable to stop and wonder when such news has NOT been, shall we say, \u2018nuanced\u2019. In Napoleon\u2019s day, a well-worn figure of speech was \u2018to lie like a bulletin\u2019 while there was always much rather at hollow hilarity in the West over the fact that one of the Soviet Union\u2019s main organs of the press was call \u2018Pravda\u2019 or, in English, \u2018The Truth\u2019.<\/p>\n

What we should, of course, be getting worked up about is \u2018fake economics\u2019, for this is a much more pervasive evil, as well as a much more persistent one.<\/p>\n

One such idea, currently doing the rounds is that automation is about to throw everyone out of work and so we should tax the \u2018robots\u2019 and distribute the proceeds as a \u2018universal income\u2019 to the poor souls who can no longer find work in industrial drudgery.<\/p>\n

Ironically, Bill Gates is the latest to add his voice to this half-reasoned, Broken Window call \u2013 a man whose entrepreneurial genius has spared us non-specialists more labour and meanwhile reduced the employment opportunities of more accountants, typists, publishers, graphic designers, and photographers than anyone in history!<\/p>\n

Would you mind just writing us all a cheque now, Bill, for all that lost income and we\u2019ll call it square?<\/p>\n

What none of those raising such a clamour seem to realize is that the \u2018robots\u2019 \u2013 and how conveniently sinister THAT term seems, with its echoes of every piece of dystopian science fiction from Frankenstein to Terminator and beyond \u2013 will only be installed if they allow more or better goods to be made at lower cost and that for their installers to enjoy a return, those goods have to be able to be sold at a price the masses \u2013 including the robotically-displaced masses \u2013 can afford to pay!<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FAKING IT Thanks to the election of President Trump and his uncompromising attitude to the establishment media, much hot air is being expended on the subject of \u2018fake news\u2019. Those being so exercised seem unable to stop and wonder when such news has NOT been, shall we say, \u2018nuanced\u2019. In Napoleon\u2019s day, a well-worn figure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7380,7844,2779,496,512,1250],"class_list":["post-22981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-cobden-centre","tag-donald-trump","tag-fake-news","tag-mainstream-media","tag-media","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22982,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22981\/revisions\/22982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}