The very rich and the very powerful

The agenda of the rich and powerful is aligned with their personal goals, and not much to do with the interests of the vast majority of people who are not part of the top 1% of the socio-economic pyramid.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement that attractive some media attention in the fall of 2011 asked a very simple question:

With 1% of the peopulation controlling most of the economic wealth and growing richer and 99% of the population having rather little of the economic wealth and losing, what does leadership olan that will rectify the problem?

Much of the media portrayed OWS as a silly leaderless movement that was failing to articulate its demands. In fact they had a serious question which has not been answered. The rich and pwoerful leadership does not want to answer this question ... and why shouldl they, the status quo suits them just fine.

Democratic government ... not working

Many important documents have the phrase 'We the People' somewhere at the top of the text. But in practice some people count a whole lot more than other people, and there is an increasingly prevalent perception that people count a whole lot less than money.

The patches worn by a NASCAR driver show very clearly who is sponsoring the team, and other sporting personalities acknowledge their sponsors. It is less clear who are the powerful people who are behind the politicians. There is enough evidence that the power of lobbyists in Washington is big ... and they seem to be getting their way.

I learned a lesson when I was working in Georgia back in the 1970s. My company was not happy with some proposed legislation in Washington so we wrote to Senator Talmadge to get his support for our point of view. A few days later we got a letter back from the Senator saying he agreed with us and would be voting against the bill. Then we got another letter from the Senator also saying he agreed with us, and would be voting for the bill. In the first letter he went on to say he was voting against the bill in order to introduce an amendment to strengthen the bill.

Huge wealth acquisition associated with political power

Uneven application of law

People 'above the law'

Selective application of law

Laws that say one thing and do another

Corporate welfare

Perverse incentives in the social safety net

Lobbyists Amazing technology ... wrong uses

Moore's Law and All That! ... Rapid changes … huge power

The technology is changing very rapidly and growing in power and in its capabilities. The power is awesome, but how this power is being used is problematic.

TVM is committed to the best possible use of technology in association with data that are designed to be useful for better decision making for society.

In many ways the performance of TVM is independent of technology … but the rapid pace of computer science innovation suggests that the basic data model for TVM will be superceded in due course by something based on better use of technology that cannot be envisioned at this stage.

Technology has changed a lot in the last fifty years … and a lot in the last five years. Technology is changing fast ... very fast … and accelerating. Rapid changes in technology are changing the economics of some parts of our society, but not always in a useful way. The possibilities of technology are not yet being well used for the benefit of society as a whole, and especially, not for the benefit of those that are at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP).