martedì 6 giugno 2017

Quanto conta la materia? SAGGIO

Future Imperfect di DAVID D. FRIEDMAN - realtà virtuale - TWENTY All in Your Mind
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ESSERE O ESSERE PERCEPITI? QUESTO E’ IL PROBLEMA
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what I see is not what is in front of me but what they draw... The image from my video camera is processed by my computer before being sent on to everyone in my audience. That gives me an opportunity to improve it a little first, to replace my bathrobe with a suit and tie, give me a badly needed shave, remove a decade or so of aging.
LA REALTA’ VIRTUALE NON E’ COSI’ DISTANTE. CONSIDERA LA VDEOCONFERENZA. MAGARI UNA VIDEOCONFERENZA “RITOCCATA”

Video games are our most familiar form of virtual reality.
LA FORMA PIU’ FAMILIARE DI REALTA’ VIRTUALE
However good our screens, this sort of virtual reality suffers from a serious limitation: It only fools two senses... Want to hear things? Vibrate air in the ear. Want to see things? Beam photons at the retina. Applying that approach to the remaining senses is harder.
MA INGANNARE DUE SENSI NON BASTA
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UNA REALTA’ VIRTUALE ANCORA PRIMITIVA

We all, automatically and routinely, judge the people around us not only by what they say but by how they say it - tone of voice, facial expression, gestures.
UN OSTACOLO ALL’AFFERMAZIONE DELLA REALTA’ VIRTUALE: IL GIUDIZIO E I SEGNALI

con men. They are people who, through talent or training, have mastered the ability to divorce what they are actually... on the Internet nobody knows you are a dog. Or a woman. Or a twelve year old. Or crippled. In virtual reality, once we have the real-time editing software worked out properly, you can be anything you can imagine... Giochi di gruppo: Have participants write and post physical descriptions of other participants they had never met. I gained almost nine inches. In virtual reality I never have to be short again.
NELLA REALTA’ VIRTUALE PUOI ESSERE CHI VUOI (O QUASI). CONSEGUENZE.
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MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO

My Contribution to Corpore Sano
One objection to video games is that they remove one of the few incentives modern people have to exercise.
VIEDOGIOCHI E VITA SEDENTARIA
If what you want is exercise, the obvious solution is bigger joysticks... you only notice how tired you are after you have won or lost.
RIMEDIO: JOYSTICK GIGANTI

Altra funzione videogiochi. to do dangerous things while only getting virtually killed... Mariana trench... the lunar case,
ALTRA CRITICA AI VIDEOGIOCHI: CI ABITUANO ALLA VIOLENZA E AD AZIONI ESTREME. MA FORSE LA VIOLENZA VIRTUALE SPIAZZA QUELLA REALE. ESEMPIO: LA PORNOGRAFIA RIDUCE GLI STUPRI?
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Suppose we succeed in cracking the dreaming problem, figuring out enough about how the brain works so that we too can create full sense illusions.
FUTURO: SOGNO E REALTA’ INDISTINGUIBILI
a useful first step is to distinguish between information transactions and material transactions. The book is a physical object. But reading an illusion of a book, with the same words on the virtual pages, would do just as well... For a material transaction, consider growing wheat.
DISTINGUERE: INFO E OGGETTI
A sufficiently advanced form of virtual reality can provide for all information transactions. It might assist with some material transactions; the wheat harvester could be run by an operator located somewhere else, giving real instructions to a real machine.
EFFETTO DELLA REALTA’ VIRTUALE: TUTTO DOVENTA INFO
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Cosa conta? Why do I want to visit my friends? To see them, to feel them, to hear them, to do things with them. Unless one of the things is building a house or planting a garden that really has to be built or planted, the whole visit is an information transaction... consider a phone call.
PERCHE’ UN AMICO IN CARNE ED OSSA E’ DIVERSO DA UN AMICO VIRTUALE?
Fantasia depauperata? My daughter has so far refused to see the movie version of The Fellowship of the Ring because she prefers the product of her imagination to the product of the director's imagination.
LA REALTA’ VIRTUALE DEPAUPERA LA FANTASIA?
Consider in contrast a symphony. It corresponds to nothing in nature. The composer has taken one sense, hearing, and used it to create an aesthetic experience
LA MUSICA ESALTA IL POTERE DELLA FANTASIA. IN QUESTO SENSO E’ L’ANTIREALTA’ VIRTUALE
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FANTASIA: SOSTITUTO O COMPLEMENTO DELLA REALTA’ VIRTUALE?
Su WW non c'è distinzione tra sessi, la violenza è anche sulle donne. That raises an obvious question: Having routinely punched out virtual females online, will he be more willing to punch out real females in the real world?
ANCORA SUGLI EFFETTI DELLA VIOLENZA VIRTUALE
George Orwell, writing more than sixty years ago, worried about the corrupting effect on readers of the routine brutality of American crime fiction... Later writers worried about the effect of television. The latest concern is the effect of Internet porn… Is virtual sex and violence a complement to or a substitute for real sex and violence?
GEORGE ORWELL PESSIMISTA
Tod Kendall.' Correlate growth of access to the Internet, by state, with changes in the frequency of rape. It turned out that the correlation was negative
UN’OPINIONE INFORMATA PIU’ OTTIMISTA: TODD KENDALL
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MA COSA CONTA DAVVERO ALLA FIN FINE?

Mondo materiale. Stuff must be produced for real, but human beings do not need much stuff to stay alive. To check that for food, price the cheapest bulk flour, oil, and lentils you can find. Calculate how much 2,000 calories a day of each of them would cost... Viewed in realspace, it is not much of a world. Everyone is eating the cheapest food that will keep a human body in good condition, living in the human equivalent of coin-operated airport storage, exercising by moving against resistance machines, perhaps as part of virtual reality games...
LA MATERIA E’ DAVVERO IMPORTANTE PER NOI?

Mondo virtuale. All women are beautiful, and enough are willing. All men are handsome. Everyone lives in a mansion that he can redecorate at will, gold-plated if he so desires.'
PERCHE’ RIGETTARE UNA FANTASIA MERAVIGLIOSA?
Which is true - slum or paradise? It depends on what matters. If all that matters is sensation, what you perceive, it is a paradise
COSA CONTA: QUEL CHE E’ O QUEL CHE PERCEPISCI?
As evidence against, consider a very old form of virtual sex: masturbation. tion. In your mind you can be making love to the woman of your dreams, at least if you have a good enough imagination.
TRISTEZZA DELLA MASTURBAZIONE 
Having someone read a book I wrote, enjoy and be persuaded by my ideas, pleases me... But what about only thinking someone read my book?
ESSERE O ESSERE PERCEPITO

Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, put the question in terms of an imaginary experience machine, his version of VR.'

IL PIU’ FAMOSO ESPERIMENTO MENTALE IN MERITO. FATELO E DECIDETE PER VOI.

Il ritorno del dilettante SAGGIO

Reactionary Progress - Amateur Scholars and Open Source – Future Imperfetct by David Friedman
TESI: L’OPEN SOURCE SEGNERA’ UN RITORNO DEL DILETTANTE. MA SARA’ UN RITORNO AL PASSATO
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SPLENDITI DILETTANTI… LA STORIA NE E’ PIENA

Malthus and Darwin were clergymen, Mendel a monk, Smith a mining engineer, Hutton a gentleman farmer, Mill a clerk and writer, Ricardo a retired stock market prodigy. Of the names I have listed, only Newton was a university professor
SPLENDITI DILETTANTI… LA STORIA NE E’ PIENA  
In the twentieth century, on the other hand, most of the major figures in all branches of scholarship have been professional academics.
XX SECOLO: L'AVVENTO DEL PROFESSIONISMO...   
Why did things change? One possible answer is the enormous increase in knowledge. When fields were new, most scholars did not need access to vast libraries.
MA PERCHÈ UNA SIMILE DINAMICA? IPOTESI: LA CONOSCENZA ESPLODE.…..
The Web, while not a complete substitute for a library, makes enormous amounts of information readily available
CON IL WEB LA CONOSCENZA È DISPONIBILE PER TUTTI. IL RITORNO DEL DILETTANTE E’ PIU’ CHE PROBABILE.   ...
An alternative explanation... downward spread of education. In the eighteenth century, someone sufficiently well educated to invent a new science was likely to be a member of the upper class, and hence had a good chance of not needing to work for a living.
ALTRA IPOTESI: MOLTI, NELL'800, NON AVEVANO BISOGNO DI LAVORARE E POTEVANO DEDICARSI ALLA RICERCA. NEL XX SECOLO LE COSE CAMBIANO      
most educated people today are rich - rich enough to make a tolerable living and still have time and effort left to devote to their hobbies.
OGGI, NELL’ERA DELL’ABBONDANZA, IL BISOGNO DI LAVORARE TORNA A DIMINUIRE PER MOLTI APPARTENENTI ALLA CLASSE AGIATA…                IL 
These arguments suggest that, having shifted from a world of amateur scholars to a world of professionals, we may now be shifting back.
RITORNO DEL DILETTANTE NEL XXI SECOLO...
Two examples: Robin Hanson... His hobby was inventing institutions. His ideas - in particular an ingenious proposal to design markets to generate information - were sufficiently novel and well thought out to make corresponding with him more interesting than corresponding with most of my fellow economists.
Esempio 2. One of my hobbies for the past thirty years has been cooking from very early cookbooks... When I started... There were no translations of early cookbooks in print and very few in libraries... The situation has changed enormously over the past thirty years... the biggest change is that there are now at least seven English translations of early cookbooks on the Web, freely available to anyone interested... Most of the translations were done by amateurs for the fun of it.
DUE ESEMPI......
The professionals, on average, know much more than the amateurs do, but there are a lot more amateurs and some of them know quite a lot.
LA SITUAZIONE ORA  
amateurs have access not only to information but to each other, as well as to any professional

ACCESSO ALLA CONOSCENZA MA ANCHE ALLE PERSONE
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OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE


rising incomes and improved communication technology make it easier to produce things for fun.
CREARE PER DIVERTIMENTO
The best-known example is Linux... graduate student named Linus Torvalds.
IL SIGNOR LINUS
The mechanics of open source are simple. Someone comes up with a first version of the software. He publishes the source code. Other people interested in the program modify it - which they are able to do because they have the source code - and send their modifications to him. Modifications that he accepts go into the code base,
LA MECCANICA OPEN SOURCE: TUTTI DENTRO.
Eric Raymond: open source has its own set of norms and property right... Linus Torvalds owns Linux. Eric Raymond owns Fetchmail. A committee mittee owns Apache... anyone is free to modify... provided that he makes the source code to his modified version public... each can take advantage of improvements made by the others.
REGOLE OPEN SOURCE
such ownership is controlled by rules similar to the common law rules. Torvalds: If he loses interest he can transfer ownership to someone else.
VI RICORDA QUALCOSA? MA SÌ... LA COMMON LAW
There is a second form of ownership in open source - credit for your work. Each project is accompanied by a file identifying the authors.
RICONOSCENZA E REPUTAZIONE: IL MOTORE DELL’OPEN SOURCE
open source movement is simply a new variation on the system under which most of modern science was created. ated. Programmers create software; scholars create ideas.
L'OPEN SOURCE C'È DA SEMPRE. CHIEDERE AGLI STORICI DELLA SCIENZA.
Scientific theories do not have owners in quite the sense that open source projects do, but at any given time in most fields there is considerable able agreement as to what the orthodox body of theory is.
CHI È IL PROPIETARIO DI UNA CERTA TEORIA SCIENTIFICA?
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JIMMY WALES'S IMPOSSIBLE SUCCESS
Few projects seem less suited to the open source approach than writing an encyclopedia. For it to be a success readers must rely on it, so a mistake in one article casts doubt on others.... In 2001, Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia
OPEN SOURCE E ENCICLOPEDIE
With rare exceptions, any article can be edited anytime by anyone.
OPEN SOURCE RADICALE
More often than one might expect, the article evolves to a consensus, a statement of differing views that both sides can agree on.
IL CONSENSO... EMERGE
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MERCATO E GERARCHIA


firms themselves are miniature socialist states... There is one crucial difference between Microsoft and Stalin's Russia. Microsoft's interactions with the rest of us are voluntary.
COSA DIFFERENZIA UN'IMPRESA DA UNO STATO? NON IL SOCIALISMO. C'È MOLTO SOCIALISMO ANCHE NELLE IMPRESE
The easier it is for a dispersed group of individuals to coordinate their activities, ities, the larger we would expect the role of decentralized coordination, market rather than hierarchy, in the overall mix... the existence of the Internet had shifted the balance between center and periphery.
IL VANTAGGIO DELLA COOPERAZIONE VOLONTARIA: IL DECENTRAMENTO
Eli Lilly had decided to subcontract part of its chemical research to the world at large... according to a story in the Wall Street Journal, they had gotten "about 1,000 scientists from India, China, and elsewhere in the world"
DECENTRARE LA RICERCA IN UN MONDO DALLA CONOSCENZA DISPERSA
Consider a chemist hired to work in an area related to one of the problems on the list. He has an obvious temptation to slant... A chemist paid by firm A while working for firm B
IL PROBLEMA DEL DECENTRAMENTO: IL LAVORO OCCULTO
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LA GUERRA DELL'INFORMAZIONE NELL’ERA DELL’INFORMAZIONE
Internet supports decentralized forms of cooperation. It supports decentralized forms of conflict as well.
INTERNET: IL REGNO DEL DECENTRAMENTO. TUTTI DICONO LA LORO. MICROCONFLITTI OVUNQUE 
Case 1: The Tale of the Four Little Pigs... The year is 1995, the place Cornell University. Four freshmen have compiled piled a collection of misogynist jokes entitled "75 Reasons Why Women (Bitches) Should Not Have Freedom of Speech" and sent copies to their friends.... The central question is whether creating such a list and using email to transmit it is an offense that ought to be punished or a protected exercise of free speech... La preside punisce...     the students have offered to do the following: Each of them will attend the "Sex at 7:00" program... the students have offered to do the following: Each of them will attend the "Sex at 7:00" program... Each of them has committed to perform 50 hours of community service.... There are at least two ways to interpret that outcome. One is that Ms. Krause is telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - Cornell imposed no penalty on the students, they imposed an entirely voluntary penalty. ... The alternative interpretation starts with the observation that university sity administrators have a lot of ways of making life difficult for students.... Risultato: They publicly maintained their commitment to free speech while covertly punishing students for what they said.... Someone who preferred the second interpretation thought up a novel way of supporting it. An email went out: Now that we have had time to evaluate the media response, I think we can congratulate ourselves on a strategy that was not only successful cessful in defusing the scandal, but has actually ally enhanced the reputation of the university as a sanctuary for those who believe that "free speech"... Yours sincerely Barbara L. Krause...... The letter was not, of course, actually written by Barbara Krause... It was written, and sent, by an anonymous group calling themselves OFFAL - Online Freedom Fighters Anarchist Liberation. The letter was a satire... Their summary: We believe that ridicule is a more powerful ful weapon than bombs or death threats. And we believe that the Internet is the most powerful ful system ever invented for channeling grassroots root... The correct point was that Cornell's actions could plausibly be interpreted preted as hypocritical - attacking free speech while pretending to support it.... What I find interesting about the incident is that it demonstrates a form of information warfare made practical by the nature of the net - very low transaction costs, anonymity, no face-to-face contact.
TIPICO INCIDENTE DELLA NOSTRA EPOCA: SILENZIARE IN NOME DELLA LIBERTÀ DI ESPRESSIONE?
Some years ago on a Usenet group, I read the following message: I believe that it is okay to have sex before marriage unlike some people... Please write me and give me your thoughts on this. You can also tell me about some of your ways to excite a woman because I have not yet found the right man to satisfy me.......It occurred to me that what I was observing might be a commercial variant of the OFFAL tactic....that form of information warfare has been used frequently enough online to have acquired its own nickname: "Joe job."
DISTRICARSI CON IL FAKE. LA NUOVA VIRTU’. CHI NON LA POSSIEDE PENSA AL PROIBIZIONISMO


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UNA STORIA TRISTE: FURTO D’IDENTITA’
For my present purposes what is interesting is not which side was guilty but the fact that either side could have been, and the problems that fact raises for the world that they were, and we will be, living in.
FURTO D'IDENTITÀ. TIZIO FINISCE NEI GUAI PERCHÈ QUALCUNO ACCEDE ALLA SUA MAIL


solution is some way of knowing who sent what message.... One possible solution is the use of biometrics, identification linked to physical characteristics such as fingerprints or retinal patterns.
COME RIMEDIARE A GUAI DEL GENERE? LA FIRMA DIGITALE RISOLVE IL PROBLEMA
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OPEN SOURCE E CRIMINI DIGITALI
online private investigator who, from the buyer's cell phone number, was able to get his real name and landline phone number. Attempts to interest the Chicago police department, the FBI, and the Secret Service were unsuccessful... "not large enough to interest us"... 
FREGATO SU EBAY REAGISCE. NEL MONDO DIGITALE L'AUTODIFESA GUADAGNA PUNTI. IN MERITO VEDI ANCHE LA SORTE DELL'AZIONE PENALE NELLA SOCIETÀ TRASPARENTE

Ingegneri vs Ecologisti SAGGIO

Progressives, Engineers, and Ecologists - Foolproof by Greg Ip
TESI: I DISASTRI SONO DESTINATI A RIPETERSI (MA GLI INGEGNERI NON LO SANNO). QUANDO NON SI RIPETONO PRESTO, ALLORA SI RIPETERANNO PIU’ VIOLENTI. COSA OCCORRE? LA PAURA.
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In 1907 a terrifying panic swept New York’s financial markets… Three years later and thousands of miles to the west, massive forest fires broke out that burned across Montana…
Note: INCENDI E BORSE CHE CROLLANO Edit
Until then, western settlers accepted fire and businesses accepted bank panics as the unavoidable by-products of a civilization

Note: MA SIAMO ANCORA NELL’ERA DELLA RASSEGNAZIONE Edit
The two disasters marked a turning point in how Americans coped with chaos… more than a dozen distinct financial panics between its founding and 1907….
ECCO CHE PARTE LA SVOLTA: BISOGNA PORRE RIMEDIO. OCCORRONO SOLUZIONI.
There was available a solution: a central bank that could lend to banks
Note: PER LE CRISI FINANZIARIE LA SOLUZIONE SEMPLICE: UNA BANCA CENTRALE Edit
The Panic of 1907 shifted opinion decisively the other way. “It is the duty of the United States to provide a means by which the periodic panics which shake the American Republic and do it enormous injury shall be stopped,”
CAMBIO DI MENTALITA’
The fires of 1910 similarly altered the country’s attitude toward natural disaster.
Note: IL GRANDE INCENDIO DEL 1910 SOLLECITO’ I MEDESIMI IMPULSI: BISOGNAVA PORRE FINE A QUESTE DISGRAZIE
The logging industry wanted the trees for lumber; Theodore Roosevelt wanted them for national parks.
UN TEMPO L’ALBERO ERA UN FASTIDIO, ORA UNA RISORSA. INTERVENIRE DIVENTAVA NECESSARIO
Gifford Pinchot, a confidant of Roosevelt and the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, wrote a few months after the fires: “Today we understand that forest fires are wholly within the control of men…
Note:  POMPIERI E IL MITO DEL CONTROLLO Edit
He and his successors transformed the infant fire service into an organization devoted to preserving the woods
Note: NASCITA DEL POMPIERE Edit
A century later, panics and forest fires are still with us.
Note: MA UN SECOLO DOPO… Edit
Does this mean central bankers and forest managers were failures?
Note: POSSIAMO PARLARE DI FALLIMENTO? NO! Edit
Yet it was that very success that planted the seeds for future disaster and that illustrates the fundamental contradiction in humanity’s quest for safety and stability:
Note: NO: DOBBIAMO PARLARE DI SUCCESSO. SENONCHE’ E’ PROPRIO IL SUCCESSO A CREARE PROBLEMI... Edit
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COMPORTAMENTI COMPENSATIVI
In the case of forests, putting out small fires makes large fires more devastating, since fire suppression allows more leaves, brush, and other dead tree matter to accumulate on the forest floor, leading to denser forests.
Note: LA VIRTÙ DEL PICCOLO INCENDIO Edit
the natural tendency of the landscape to immolate.
FUOCO: UN FENOMENO NATURALE (E BENEFICO)
The ferocity of fires in recent decades is the consequence of a warming climate combined with the fuel provided by forest density that has been allowed to develop over decades of fire suppression.
Note: DENSITÀ DELLA FORESTA Edit
IN ECONOMIA C’E’ UN PROCESSO PARALLELO.
As for the economy, there is no shortage of theories about what produced the crisis of 2008. One popular culprit is private greed… Another is government: pursuing a vision of home ownership for all… Or maybe the crisis was the result of one of the mass obsessions that periodically sweeps the population, from tulip bulbs in seventeenth-century Holland to Internet stocks in twentieth-century America…
Note: FALSI COLPEVOLI DELLA CRISI FINANZIARIA: L AVIDITÀ... GOVERNO... ISTERIA Edit
the most important factor was the sense of safety that resulted from years of successfully fighting crisis and recession. The twenty-five years before the global financial crisis were unusually peaceful
Note: IL VERO COLPEVOLE: IL SENSO DI SICUREZZA Edit
VENIAMO AI TEMPI PIU’ RECENTI…
the “Great Moderation,”… choking with the fuel of leverage, risk, and complacency.
Note: IL SENSO DI SICUREZZA INDUCE A “GIOCARE” UN PO’ TROPPO CON LA LEVA FINANZIARIA Edit
Fear serves a purpose: it keeps us out of trouble.
LA FUNZIONE DELLA PAURA
Parents vacillate between walking their children to school every day to protect them from predators, and worrying they’ll grow up sheltered and unable to cope with life.
Note: UN GENITORE LO SA
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two schools of thought. One, which I call the engineers… the other, which I call the ecologists,
Note: DUE SCUOLE DI PENSIERO: INGEGNIERI VS ECOLOGISTI Edit
engineering’s rise began with the Progressive Era in the late nineteenth… Alfred Marshall published his path-breaking Principles of Economics in 1890, but as Marshall noted, as a science it was “in its infancy.”…, Marshall made famous the supply and demand curves that every economics undergraduate today knows on sight…These tools persuaded experts that with enough study and will, the complexities of nature
Note: LA NASCITA DEGLI INGEGNERI IN ECONOMIA: ALFRED MASHALL
American Economic Association was founded in 1885, the Society of American Foresters in 1900, the American Sociological Association in 1905, and the American Planning Association in 1909… revolt against Gilded Age capitalist
COMINCIA LA PROGRESSIVE ERA. GILDED VS PROGRESSIVE Edit
Progressivism, the philosophy that government could be a force for both equity and efficiency…. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson… a more activist, muscular state… creation of a central bank modeled on those in England, France, and Germany… role of government sprung from social science….
IL MARCHIO DI FABBRICA DEGLI INGEGNERI PROGRESSISTI
One of his influences was Walter Bagehot… professional administrators in government.
FIGURA DI SPICCO
The basic tools now existed for engineers to manage the economy: new regulatory powers, a central bank, even an income tax…. Fed eagerly stepped forward to finance the federal government’s First World War effort…. This worked well throughout the 1920s, and leading economists concluded that the problem of depression had been abolished…
ORA GLI STRUMENTI PER IL CONTROLLO CI SONO! LE DEPRESSIONI SONO SCONFITTE. LO SI DICEVA NEGLI ANNI VENTI. POI… LA GRANDE DEPRESSIONE DDEGLI ANNI TRENTA.
what caused the Great Depression… One theory that emerged in the early 1930s was that the engineers had overreached.
CAUSE DELLA GRANDE DEPRESSIONE
Anything that remedied the Depression would interfere… This ecological view was shared by Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury secretary.
ECOLOGISTI DI NUOVO ALLA RIBALTA
If ecologists like Hayek and Mellon accused engineers of doing too much, engineers believed they had done too little… Fisher, for instance, laid the blame for the Depression at the feet of the Fed, for allowing deflation to take hold…The Fed, he said, had to restore prices and end deflation through expansionary monetary policy….
TROPPA INGEGNERIA O TROPPO POCA?
Herbert Hoover… He was a Republican who believed in letting market forces play out, but he was also, by profession and temperament, an engineer… Hoover thought Mellon meant well, but he dismissed his prescriptions and fought the Depression as best he could, for example setting up the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to lend to banks…
HOOVER… INGEGNERE O ECOLOGISTA?
Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 and implemented a banking holiday, devalued the dollar against gold, and proceeded to overhaul the Fed and vastly expand the role of government. … Government could make things much better, or much worse. This was the revolutionary insight of the British economist John Maynard Keynes… business investment as driven by “waves of optimistic and pessimistic sentiment.”… If businesses were pessimistic enough, even interest rates of zero could not coax them to invest… Thus was born a role for the government… Franklin Roosevelt didn’t just expand the government’s responsibility for the economy: he also extended its oversight of nature. Since 1910, the Forest Service’s leaders were convinced that the only thing that kept them from controlling fires… The Civilian Conservation Corps, one of the New Deal’s largest job creation programs…unmarried men to work planting trees and fighting forest fires… The Depression only strengthened the conviction that the rivers should be harnessed for economic benefit… Thus, at the end of the Second World War, the engineers had assumed responsibility for much of the environment and the economy…
SU ROOSVELT E KEYNES IL DUBBIO NON SI PONE: INGEGNERI AL MASSIMO GRADO. NEL GIRO DI UN DECENNIO ECONOMIA ED AMBIENTGE PASSANO NELLE MANI DELLO STATO CENTRALE.
Within twenty years, though, fissures appeared in this new consensus. Neither the economy nor the natural world turned out to be as amenable… Gilbert White noticed that the frenzy of levee and dam building in the 1930s had not solved flooding… new problem: more homes, factories, and farms had sprung up on the floodplain… Starker Leopold… Called for the reintroduction of fire as a device for habitat management… Controlled fire was “the most ‘natural’…
CREPE NEL PROGETTO PROGRESSISTA: INCENDI E ALLUVIONI
University of Chicago, argued that government management of the economy was backfiring by failing to consider how people would adapt. George Stigler argued that regulators often ended up serving the regulated, not consumers… Sam Peltzman made an even more audacious claim: regulations aimed at making consumers safer might be doing the opposite… “risk compensation,”… “moral hazard”…
CREPE NEL PROGETTO PROGRESSISTA: MICROECONOMIA
Macroeconomic engineering faced a similar critique. Keynes’s… In 1967 Milton Friedman predicted that as workers got used to higher inflation, they would demand higher wages — negating any additional demand for labor… By the 1970s, he was proved right as both unemployment and inflation rose… Friedrich Hayek’s star rose as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan…
CREPE NEL PROGETTO PROGRESSISTA: LA MACROECONOMIA.
But monetary engineering — tweaking interest rates just enough to keep both inflation and recession at bay — not only survived; it was more popular than ever. Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, and other central bankers… unemployment and inflation steadily fell…
CIO’ HA DECRETATO LA SCOMPARSA DEGLI INGEGNERI? NO. MOLTE DELLE LORO SOLUZIONI SONO OGGI ROUTINE.
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UNA FIGURA CHIAVE: Hyman Minsky
he also thought Keynesian models gave short shrift to the financial system. They assumed that the central bank had full control of the money supply, credit, and interest rates… money and credit didn’t depend just on the central bank but on financial innovation…. If, to control inflation, the Fed restricted the growth of lending by banks, then Wall Street’s innovators would come up with mechanisms to go around banks
UN KEYNESIANO CHE OBBIETTA A  KEYNES
The longer the Fed prolongs prosperity, the further finance progresses through these stages, and the more unstable the financial system becomes…. “Stability is destabilizing” sums up Minsky’s thesis…
LA STABILITA’ CHE DESTABILIZZA
engineers’ efforts to control the economy would ultimately be self-defeating… Because the financial system is always evolving, “the next financial crisis will never be just like the last one.”… His papers were more like essays, somewhat repetitive… Falkenstein, one of his teaching assistants and later a fund manager, recalls that his advanced classes were all classes in “Minskyism.”… he preferred to tell stories of the great economists
OGNI CURA E’ IL PRELUDIO ALLA MALATTIA SUCCESSIVA
Apart from being a difficult person, Minsky had another problem: his theory wasn’t very useful… Minskyism was antithetical to such elegant model… Confidence and credit would grow hand in hand, until some event caused them to break… When? Minsky didn’t know… “He always thought a market collapse was just around the corner,” Falkenstein recalled… Falkenstein sent his old mentor a letter, telling him, “I’m going to get rich off your theory!” Minsky was tickled…
UN MODELLO PASTICCIATO E INUTILE… MA PROBABILMENTE VERO
“What this country needs to shake us up and give us a little discipline is a good bank failure…. it would be healthier if people were a bit more scared…
COSA SERVE? UNA BELLA CRISI E UN BEL PO’ DI PAURA