Re-Localization
John Michael Greer puts together the historical argument for sustainable local economies.
In particular, the role of guilds (regulated the talent stream to maintain somewhat of a free market):
Thus in a restricted market where specialization is limited, a free market in which prices are set by supply and demand, and there are no barriers to entry, can make it impossible for many useful specialties to be economically viable at all. This is the problem that the guild system evolved to counter. By restricting the number of people who could enter any given trade, the guilds made sure that the income earned by master craftsmen was high enough to allow them to produce specialty products that were not needed in large enough quantities to provide a full time income. Since most of the money earned by a master craftsman was spent in the town and surrounding region – our blacksmith and his family would have needed bread from the baker, groceries from the grocer, meat from the butcher, and so on – the higher prices evened out; since nearly everyone in town was charging guild prices and earning guild incomes, no one was unfairly penalized.
(H/T Dale Asberry.)
What’s Going On With Android?
The hardware isn’t keeping up with the software.
Look, cell phone manufacturers aren’t known for quality design. That’s why the iPhone won. Part of this, of course, is due to the cell phone market being bigger in the Eastern hemisphere, where design doesn’t matter as much as a high features-to-price ratio. (In contrast, the iPhone launched in the West and went East.)
So give them a slick software platform, and most of these firms will be clueless. Sure, they got the pieces into play – touch screens for one. But so shabbily designed that they’re borderline unusable. (LG phones in particular don’t seem to understand the point of a touch screen.)
Google made the play that if the software’s right, the hardware will come. That’s clearly not the case. (Again, partly due to the East vs. West dynamic.) So they have to keep flagshipping (picking winners by rewarding better design as in the case with the Droid) the hardware (now even building their own phone). If they don’t, the ecosystem is going to die off (albeit slowly) as interest plummets in the software as a result of bad hardware.
Mirrors Edge
Fun game:
Mirror’s Edge is set in a society where communication is heavily monitored by a totalitarian regime, and so a network of runners, including the main character, Faith, are used to transmit messages while evading government surveillance.[11] In the style of a three-dimensional platform game, the player guides Faith over rooftops, across walls, and through ventilation shafts, negotiating obstacles in parkour fashion.
Here’s the mobile software platform (PackMule) that would enable organic collective action in this scenario.
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