[FRIAM] Musk’s America Party – Some Thoughts from Afar

[glen]

Ha! I doubt you can stick to that story! 8^D I know you could re-generate *a* stream like that again. But how close would that stream be to this one? How reliably could you re-generate that stream given the same or similar prompt? Say what we will about the LLMs, but they are way more reliable than we are, even at high temp.

Along similar lines, the "AI WEAPONS" essayist made a comment that he was confident that book "The Human-Machine Team" was *not* written by AI because the writing was so bad. The LLMs' interpolation functions make it difficult to get pathological styles back out. They can "read" a tranche of bad l33t coded screeds on 4chan and will still re-generate something akin to a (l33t coded) philosophy professor because the centroid pulls the interpolation toward a more stable region of the space. A recent experiment of mine was to use an LLM to analyze the linguistic style of a person's spoken language, then use a different LLM to render some information into a new document using that style. When the person *read* it, they objected that it didn't match their "voice" at all ... a bit like how uncomfortable many of us can be when we listen to our own recorded voice. Even given that written "voice" is almost always very different from spoken "voice", whether the LLMs got it more right than wrong is up in the air because the person may have a self-image distant from their self. What's that Butthole Surfers line? "You never know just how [to|you] look, Through other people's eyes."


On 7/10/25 9:57 AM, steve smith wrote:
> 
>>> In this system, money is really just a record — “Here’s what I contributed, and here’s what I can claim in return.” It’s flexible, decentralized, and surprisingly efficient.
>>>
>>> So far, no government in sight.
> 
> government is square in the middle of it by issuing and endorsing currency, even if it nominally has intrinsic value (like silver/gold coin)...   the government is endorsing the authenticity of the "coin" as being of "fair weight" and "proper composition" under penalty of punishment for forgery.  Many coins still have ridges around the perimeter to prevent "shaving" them (not nickels or pennies in the US, and pennies haven't been copper, and nickels haven't been nickle and dimes and quarters and halves and fulls haven't been silver for a half a century now, so what is to shave?).
> 
> The US confederacy (and lots of other "governments") have printed money which was only as valuable as the paper it was printed on (albeit now sullied with pictures of their heroes).   Even today I think there are hoards of such "currency" available for purchase still at a fraction of face-value... "collectors novelties" as it were?
> 
> Yes, a "distributed ledger" but only as good as the rules for how to generate new "tokens" (printing) and how to validate them (anti-forgery).
> 
> 
>>>
>>> But Wait — Here Comes the Government
>>> Governments step in because, well, someone needs to organize a few things we all need: roads, hospitals, armies, cat memes (okay, maybe not those). Also, someone has to stop the money system from melting down.
>>>
>>> To do this, governments collect taxes and (spoiler alert) borrow money.
> 
> this is all (in the ideal/abstract) about managing "the commons"... many of us *want* their to be a way for there to exist a robust and viable commons we can all synergistically draw from, but in the spirit of "the tragedy of" we know that some people like to take "their half out of the middle" and believe in memes like 'finder's keepers' and 'possession is 90% of the law', etc.
> 
> 
>>>
>>> Borrowing isn’t bad, in theory. But here’s the rub: both major U.S. parties seem to have developed a taste for borrowing like there’s no tomorrow. Debt keeps growing, interest payments balloon, and one day — surprise! — the interest alone starts eating the budget.
> 
> And now for MY "Just so" story.
> 
> I do believe that there is a long history of the dysfunctional relationship between ruling classes and merchant classes, with the peasant's feeling both sets of heels grinding the same (or similar) on their necks while being told by both that "it is in your best interest, trust us".
> 
> Yet, the peasantry (anyone not commanding undue resources by capital ownership or divine declaration or threat of violence) also find it convenient to have the "distributed ledger" for their exchange of goods with folks they don't know.
> 
> This is where my UOMe comes in...  among neighbors and friends and repeat customers, those bits of copper or silver (with high quality stamping presumably beyond anyone but those "in charge" and with ridges to prevent shaving) or well printed on special paper with holographic strips embedded, anti-forgery "promissory notes" are only conveniences.   It beats faulty asymmetric memories and reduces the needs for ledger books,  and avoids the awkwardness of the country doctor having to maintain a poultry farm to make useful  all the chickens his patients bring him in barter for his alms and tinctures.
> 
> When does an IOU become a UOMe?   When the trust breaks down. When the proferring of an IOU is no longer a friendly, mutualistic act of presumed symmetric, synergistic exchange which presumably delivers excess value to both parties .  When one wants something from someone else they aren't prepared or inclined to share... be it their eggs, their chickens, or the whole shebang (formerly known ans "lock, stock and barrel"?) including the coop, the house you live in and maybe your wife and daughters too.
> 
> Elon Musk (fondly aka Elno) holds (somewhere in bank records?) hundreds of billions of UOMe's which he regularly throws around at people (and corporations and governments and ...) to *demand* that the folks living in or near Boca Chica close their windows and replace their HEPA filters regularly as the exhaust from his rockets (and occasional fireworks displays) disperse toxic waste into the air and water (and soil, and bodies of themselves, their plants and pets, their children, etc) in return for a few UOMe's he might dribble onto them out of his coffers.   Similar, the folks Near Memphis, and gawdelpus if we know all the other places his "filthy lucre" is sullying "the commons" and seducing/intimidating the peasants.
> 
> When Elno grabs a fistful of UOMe's and points them at the "ruling class" (aka elected officials, in particular those who are bought and paid for by folks like him already) and threatens to "primary" them, These are definitely UOMe's not IOUs.  And when with the *other* fist he offers these "chits" to folks who promise to help him expand his influence and take more from the commons than he already does.  He is winking and nodding to them so they understand those are UOMes which they in turn can use to seduce and intimidate (yet) others.
> 
> Meanwhile the good people of Memphis and Boca Chica and (and and) are (mostly) gently taking those UOMes and using them like IOUs with one another... asking one another, "may I please have some of those eggs for this fistful of IOUs I got from Elno's bursar?". And little does Alice know when she asks Bob this question that Bob made a similar request of Charlene who drove up in a truck full of eggs that morning, though Alice must wonder "where DO those eggs come from?"...   a few transactional chains later and we see Zekiel standing in a hot, humid, smelly, possibly unhealthy (read "miasmic") factory egg-farm either hating or loving that he gets to/has to pick each hen up and squeeze an egg out of it every day whether it wants to share or not.   And Zekeil and Yolanda (his boss) both hate the part of the job where one out of 100 hens needs to be "culled" because they either no longer give over an egg when squeezed daily, or have lost too many feather's to their neighbor's 
> frustrated beak, or didn't eat enough anti-biotic-laced food, or maybe got the batch with ground up chickens in it that didn't have the salmonella sterilized out of it well enough... or...
> 
> But Yolanda and Zekeil will join Xavier and Wendy at the pub after their 12 hour shift and maybe have a pickled egg with their beer made of "rocky mountain tumwater" 6 states away...  where another Wally and Xandia and Yarvis and Zadie  are drinking beer made from water drawn directly from (hopefully filtered) the industrial sludged river that until a few years ago used to catch on fire regularly.   Elno and Donald and Jeff and Zuck and Thiel and Palmer and Cathy (Wood) and Kristy Noem and Laura Ingraham will all tell us stories about how good our "free market economy" is for us and how "democracy delievered a mandate to the cheetoh colored Jesus" and so forth and so on.
> 
> "Don't let me get off on a Rant here!" (nod to Dennis Miller circa 1995)
> 
> Meanwhile, HOW DO we maintain (cultivate?) a "commons" in an "enlightened self-interest" way?   The famous "tragedy" is a tragedy at the hands of someone... and the wide distribution of UOMes seems to help accellerate said tragedizing...  can a commons be recognized, maintained, developed without lots of IOUs and do they have to (self) transform into UOMes to do that "good work"?
> 
> For the Christers (and Yawhey and Allah) folks here there was once a commons called "the Garden of Eden".   But with our IOUs and UOMes for leverage, we conflated our Paradises with Parking lots.
> 
> And in the spirit of "one more thing"  I wonder if there isn't a small town somewhere in the deep south or backwoods of Appalachy where there is still in circulation Confederate Currency.  but what makes it work is that when someone offers an IOU, they sign their name on the bill... which formalizes the gentlewoman's agreement that when that note is offered back it will be received with no question.   Maybe folks don't actually have to sign every note every time, they can just recognize and defer to other upstanding members of the community with good handwriting who have signed a particular note, trusting that if the proferror isn't around to take it back next week when the surpluses are reversed, the guy who signed it might have something they want or maybe yet another third-party will be eager to have a note signed by Andrew jackson hisself?  Or Uncle Carmen?
> 
> I wonder if there is a secondary market for Trump Watches, Sneakers, Vodka, Water, TU diplomas, fight-fight-fight Challenge Coins, etc?  Maybe a red Tesler (sic) with "lots of computer" is worth more because DJT "signed" it olfactoraly by passing some McDonalds' induced gas when he sat in it? Or has sod from the White House Lawn stuck in it's tire treads?
> 
> Maybe this is what will pass for "currency" in the wealthy-peoples'-bunkers post-jackpot.
> 
> And to that end, I recommend Cory Doctorow's "Masque of the Red Death", a great snark on the Ellison's and Zuckerbergs and their elaborate bunker-island-states.
> 
>     https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/13/the-masque-of-the-red-death/
> 
> I think I officially entered what Marcus called "bad faith territory" a while ago.
> 
> But this is MY "Just So" story about money and i'm sticking to it!
> 
>>>
>>> At that point, the government has a few not-so-great options:
>>>
>>> Print more money (hello, inflation),
>>>
>>> Raise taxes and cut spending (cue screaming),
>>>
>>> Or pretend everything’s fine (until it’s not).
>>>
>>> So What’s the Point?
>>> I’m not saying governments should never borrow. Borrowing to invest in people, infrastructure, or science makes sense — if it’s done carefully. But running constant deficits just to keep the lights on? That’s a recipe for future pain.
>>>
>>> In a perfect world run by wise leaders, debt wouldn’t matter so much. But in our world, the least-bad option might just be the old-fashioned advice: Try not to spend a lot more than you earn.
>>>
>>> Not because it’s always true, but because it’s a pretty useful model — at least until someone builds a better one. I'm all ears and like to evaluate different constructive options, don't just criticize what's wrong with the current system.
>>>
>>> On Wed, 9 Jul 2025 at 20:19, glen <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     And ... and and and, money isn't at all zero sum. The very concept of "don't spend more than you earn" is not even wrong. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of money. And Musk is a great example! When Tesla stock dives, Musk isn't losing what he's earned. Borrowing money to buy Twitter, collateralized against estimates of Tesla stock? Did Elno spend less than what he earned? No. Has he earned whatever "we" estimate his fortune to be? No. Toss in things like quantitative easing, the value of USD as the world loses confidence in it, etc. None of that over-simplified rhetoric makes any sense whatsoever.
>>>
>>>     I'd love it if Elno stopped spending money *he* doesn't have. And if he did that, you'd see something magical happen, his name wouldn't be in the headlines every day. Just like with buying Twitter using imaginary money, the political party he wants to create is a mechanism for keeping his name in everyone's feed. He wants you to say his name every day, multiple times per day. Trump does the same thing. They want you to keep saying their name. Again. And again ... and again ... and again... all day every day.
>>>
>>>     Why? Because we (at least in very developed countries) have an *attention* economy. The more you say their names, the more money they accumulate. That "huge personal hit" is at best empty rhetoric and at worst bullshit designed to distract you with one hand and pick your pocket with the other.
>>>
>>>     On 7/9/25 10:14 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>>      > We do have the money.  We are a wealthy nation.   The problem is we are cheap.
>>>      >
>>>      > *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> on behalf of Pieter Steenekamp <pieters at randcontrols.co.za <mailto:pieters at randcontrols.co.za>>
>>>      > *Date: *Wednesday, July 9, 2025 at 10:07 AM
>>>      > *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>>>      > *Subject: *[FRIAM] Musk’s America Party – Some Thoughts from Afar
>>>      >
>>>      > I’m not American—but I’m a big fan of the place.
>>>      >
>>>      > What really keeps me up at night is how both major political parties in the U.S. seem to have a shared hobby: spending money like it’s going out of fashion. Year after year, the national debt grows bigger, and the interest payments grow even scarier. It’s like watching someone keep swiping a credit card with no plan to ever pay it back.
>>>      >
>>>      > Now, let me put on my South African cap for a moment.
>>>      >
>>>      > When South Africa became a democracy and Mandela became president, things were looking financially grim. We weren’t flat-out broke yet, but we were close. Mandela then did something very clever: he made Trevor Manuel the finance minister. Manuel, being honest, told Mandela he knew nothing about finances. Mandela basically said, “Don’t worry about the details—we’ve got smart people for that. Just make sure we don’t spend more than we earn, and I'll politically support you.” And guess what? South Africa’s finances did great for a while.
>>>      >
>>>      > (Yes, it all fell apart later when Jacob Zuma came along, but let’s not ruin the story.)
>>>      >
>>>      > Back to America.
>>>      >
>>>      > No, I don’t think the U.S. is heading for an immediate meltdown—but the idea that it’s too big to fail? Not something I’d bet my pension on. Sooner or later, the debt monster will come knocking.
>>>      >
>>>      > Which brings me to Elon Musk’s political adventure. From where I sit, his main message is: “Hey folks, maybe we should stop spending money we don’t have?” Whether his new party takes off or not, I think it’s great that someone is at least ringing the alarm bell.
>>>      >
>>>      > Even if nobody listens, I’m 100% behind the effort. Musk is taking a huge personal hit—his companies, his wealth, all of it’s being affected. But if it helps America become more financially sensible, I say hats off to him.
>>>      >
-- 
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