Crops, data, AI, and the deeper concentration of wealth and power...and Maslow's hierarchy of needs

[lostnfound]

Last edited Wed May 28, 2025, 04:14 PM - Edit history (1)

Where the institutional and political followers fall on the scale of “avaricious a*holes” to “scared s*itless that the s*it is going to “hit the fan”, that’s a judgment call. I am not fit to judge.

But climate variability is a problem. It’s chilly and wet here in NC, and it is May 27th. The high is so low that it falls in the “below 0.1%” grouping when I run a rudimentary analysis of historical temperature distributions for this date, assuming normally distributed highs around the average of 83 degrees — tenth percentile is 73 degrees, and our high was 62. We’ve had a string of them, and it’s got me thinking about crops. My little garden is soggy and cold. Some food crops are very particular, and some are less so, but I suspect that food production will be more challenging than many know. What can be grown one year in a location may be quite different the next; and for citrus or nuts or fruit or even avocados, you’ve got trees to grow — you can’t uproot them and relocate them to another region based on a seasonal weather forecast. Have you seen any consistent coverage of the future of food?

Our personal information is bought and sold on the internet, but sources of important, reliable information are getting privatized, or locked behind paywalls. I am aware of insightful business subscriptions that cost tens of thousands of dollars a year, PER SEAT. The stuff of governing a democracy (and comprehending its economy) *intelligently* was available in financial papers and papers of record that are no longer trustworthy. Efforts to make basic information about various aspects of economy more accessible on federal government websites are probably down the tubes, along with NOAA data, climate scientists, and government-funded researchers in a variety of fields.

Citizenry carried out debates on important societal evolutions in the US newspapers for decades — slavery, child labor, suffrage, civil rights, free speech, to name a few. The “powers that be” took notice of how these issues were debated by the public. Today, we appear to be headed for an AI-driven, privatize-everything, no-social-safety-net future where civil and human rights are as vulnerable as butterfly wings, even while our planet’s chaos promises to increase in every way. Where is the broad civic debate on those topics? The GOP is busy trying to pass a law to prevent any laws from regulating AI for the next 10 years, and my state is discussing how to charge consumers for building more power plants to fund the data-center beast. “Matters of public debate” are for entertainment only — whether about an AI-driven future and its electricity needs or minimum basic income or automatic weapons. Erased like an etch-a-sketch while we are sleeping.

We the many drown in a sea of polluted data — information as our civic life blood — while The Few are able to pay to capture, corral, clean, turn that data at the source, and turn it into “meaningful insights” or just sell it off for quick bucks.

Wealth and power concentration are likely to accelerate. In some circles, the question is “what will be the first billion dollar company consisting of just one person?” This extreme hypothetical arises from the real fact that AI can equip people to complete robust actions with “assistants” and “agents” that aren’t human but function like relatively capable staff. (Far less staff is a feature, not a bug.) It is an observed trend: agents are becoming more powerful and highly skilled staff can accomplish a department’s worth of ‘grunt work’ with just one person. In technical fields that might have required 100 engineers or programmers or accountants to scour the numbers, the logic, the handbook, it is now possible for a college senior to have learned to tell its ‘agents’ to:

*evaluate data sets X, Y, and Z — calculate — manipulate —
*compare to historical data,
*flag exceptions or anomalies to each of a set of rules, or to patterns that the AI agent detects
*use reference documents to get context or clarification to unfamiliar terms
*summarize key findings in paragraphs or bullets
*Suggest or select structure for reports
*produce 3 versions of reports (2 pages? 5 pages? 15 pages?) with charts and tables
*condense report into multiple formats with tone and depth suitable for an executive, a director, and a client
*pattern its reports after examples you provided as style, tone and writing samples, or based simply on your brief description of desired style
*Route work actions or tasks to other team members or seek input
*Draft (or send) an email for the client/professor/leader
*Archive the work
All in an afternoon. Maybe even in an hour.

These are examples. I can look back over a 40 year career and tell you that at least 70% of the hours of stuff i was hired for can be handled by AI in 5% of the time. It is good at pattern recognition, it is multi-talented, it improves over time, you can set boundaries.

Fear of fascism. The guys at the top of the US power structure — not Putin’s marionette, not the ketamine kids — but the people who collaborate to push the government and the economy in a certain direction — what do they want or need? Besides the obvious — more money, space contracts, inside knowledge to manipulate. Some — maybe most — are motivated by fear, and a desire to not be a target by the others in the club. Yes, they’ve built a fascist regime, and they have their ‘international crime syndicate’ wing. Like Elon, many may consider ‘empathy’ to be useless or a big weakness. Others are just cooperating. What institutional power centers are standing tall against the destruction of democratic values? Harvard? Any others? Which are standing tall against the self-destruction of US power — soft power and economic power? Do any of the institutional opponents of the fascist-cult-that-ate-our-country collaborate together? Where is a Kate Graham, but also, could Kate Graham have kept a drumbeat going long enough in this Distraction Environment?

Needs. So to close out, I’ll turn to Maslov’s hierarchy of needs. When the elites operate out of fear, they are tapping into primal needs of not wanting to have their safety, their security, their life put at risk. At an ego level, some don’t want to be rejected by fellow elites, or to damage their place in high society. But also, they may believe they see a future of humanity in desperation. A confluence of climate change, an aging population, economic collapse — a desperate population that wants to be fed and expects government to provide a safety net. They probably have numbers, reports, carefully compiled insights from teams of humans that paint a bleak picture of the future, that we don’t often see. Fear may be motivating them, layers of fear. Why can’t they be more afraid of the development of a fascist government? Of going down in the history books as betrayers? Or be less afraid of forming alliances amongst themselves? But Harvard as a case study of what happens when an institution opposes the fascism is pretty stark.

Fear is the one thing that the fascists are good at selling. But they aren’t selling us on fear of climate-induced crop failure or what society looks like in an AI-based jobless future. Hope is supposedly an antidote to fear. Hope is: “We can solve these things together.” Along with seeing empathy as a weakness, they say ‘hope isn’t a plan’. But i recall from a friend’s favored poem, that hope is a tiny thing with feathers..

Poetic CODA,

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
-by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

[BoRaGard]

1. "Feed the data center beasts. Feed them. Feed them." - G.O.P., inc. to taxpayers

repubes have us paying millions of tax dollars so their billionaire draft dodger can go gourmet luxury golffing every weekend. Now they want us to fund their energy-and-water devouring, etheric fouling of the atmo and info spheres.

No thank you.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. There's barely a sliver of self-sufficient survival in there

Scarcity of resources, increasingly hierarchical social structures. It doesn't sound much different from concentration of power and wealth in ancient societies, or what we know of them, that preceded or fed their demise. We are just about there.

If we democratize the wealth, the local community production for community, do we extend viability? Are we any better off, or just delaying the collapse?

Sustainability should be front and center for every concept. Instead we lurch from fear to panic over fascist shuffleboard games surrounding DEI and vengence. Society will pay dearly for this wasted time period.

[CousinIT]

5. "Society will pay dearly for this wasted time period."

I truly believe that. Our American society has been wasting precious time to save themselves and the planet for more than 50 years now. And they more clueless now than they were in the 1960s and 1970s.

[jmbar2]

3. Brilliant observation

I always think of Maslow's hierarchy as applying to the have nots. Thinking of it from the perspective of the uber-wealthy/powerful puts it in a whole other light.

I don't know how any of their "needs" can truly be met surrounded by a sea of abject misery and hatred. Even with all of their wealth and technological control, there will always be jobs that they won't do for themselves.

Their dependence on others for those types of jobs will be the weak link in their dreams of a perfect world for themselves.

[Hugin]

4. May I cross post this in the Economy Group?

It’s what economy is all about.

[lostnfound]

6. Of course, that's appreciated!

thanks.