Posts Tagged ‘mutualism’
“When we think of the major threats to our national security, the first to come to mind are nuclear proliferation, rogue states and global terrorism. But another kind of threat lurks beyond our shores, one from nature, not humans – an avian flu pandemic.”*…
Noting that, technically, all pandemic flus start as bird flus, the estimable “Scott Alexander” addresses three all-too-timely questions: What is the H5N1 bird flu? Will it cause the next big pandemic? If so, how bad would that pandemic be?
The entire post is eminently worth reading; here, the summary:
Conclusions / Predictions
All discussed earlier in the piece, but putting them here for easy reference – see above for justifications and qualifications.
- H5N1 is already pandemic in birds and cows and will likely continue to increase the price of meat and milk.
- 5% chance that H5N1 starts a sustained pandemic in humans in the next year.
- 50% chance that H5N1 starts a sustained pandemic in humans in the next twenty years, assuming no dramatic changes to the world (eg human extinction) during that time.
- If H5N1 does start a sustained pandemic in the next few years, 30% chance it’s about as bad as a normal seasonal flu, 63% chance it’s between 2 – 10x as bad (eg Asian Flu), 6% chance it’s between 10 – 100x as bad (eg Spanish flu), and <1% chance it’s >100x as bad (unprecedented). The 1% chance is Outside View based on other people’s claims, and I don’t really understand how this could happen.
Don’t give your true love a partridge, a turtledove, or (especially) a French hen: “H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know,” from @astralcodexten.com.web.brid.gy
See also: “How America Lost Control of the Bird Flu, Setting the Stage for Another Pandemic” from Kaiser Health News.
As Larry Brilliant once said, “outbreaks are inevitable, but pandemics are optional.”
* Barack Obama
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As we prioritize preparation, we might spare a thought for Pierre-Joseph van Beneden; he died on this date in 1894. A zoologist and paleontologist, he specialized in parasitic worms and discovered the life cycle of tapeworms (Cestoda).
He is credited with introducing the term mutualism in biology– naming a phenomenon akin to the invader-host relationship central to the development of flus– in 1875.
“Justice is not the work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only the declaration and application of what is just in all circumstances where men have relations with one another”*…
This essay proposes a new model of personal and public wealth-building that can address the current crisis of inequality in the United States. We place contemporary American wealth inequality into its historical context by tracing how federal government policies have worked to support personal and public wealth building across three periods: the First Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th century, the Second Industrial Revolution of the early 20th century, and the Information and Communication Technology revolution of the late-20th century. We then suggest a series of potential governmental policies that can help to ensure a more equitable wealth distribution in the future. Our proposed “mutualist” model of political economy would allow for the large-scale diffusion of productivity gains that may follow the installation of deployment of the next wave of general-purpose technologies. This new social contract will move beyond the welfare state’s focus on insurance toward a more radical notion of shared ownership of returns on capital via universal individual capital endowments and new public investment channels that control shares in firms and intellectual property…
Addressing inequality in the U.S.: “The Mutualist Economy: A New Deal for Ownership“– Nils Gilman (@nils_gilman) and Yakov Feygin (@BuddyYakov) offer a powerfully-provocative proposal.
They join a growing chorus. See also, e.g., Louis Hyman (toward the end of this essay) and Lynn Forester de Rothschild (in this interview).
[Image above: source]
* Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, describing an ideal state
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As we rethink what isn’t working, we might send gilded birthday greetings to Johns Hopkins; he was born on this date in 1795. A businessman who is largely remembered as a philanthropist, he operated wholesale and retail businesses in the Baltimore area; he built his fortune by judiciously investing his proceeds in myriad other ventures, most notably, the Baltimore and Ohio (B & O) Railroad. In 1996, Johns Hopkins ranked 69th in “The Wealthy 100: From Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates – A Ranking of the Richest Americans, Past and Present“
His bequests founded a number institutions bearing his name, the best-known of which are, of course, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University.
Although Hopkins is widely-noted as an abolitionist, recent research indicates that Johns Hopkins was a slave owner for at least part of his life.
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