Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the market value of all officially recognized final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time... GDP can be contrasted with gross national product (GNP) or gross national income (GNI). The difference is that GDP defines its scope according to location, while GNP defines its scope according to ownership. In a global context, world GDP and world GNP are, therefore, equivalent terms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product (more)

In economics and political science, fiscal policy is the use of government revenue collection (taxes or tax cuts) and expenditure (spending) to influence a country's economy. The use of government revenues and expenditures to influence macroeconomic variables developed as a result of the Great Depression, when the previous laissez-faire approach to economic management became unpopular. Fiscal policy is based on the theories of the British economist John Maynard Keynes, whose Keynesian economics theorized that government changes in the levels of taxation and government spending influences aggregate demand and the level of economic activity. Fiscal and monetary policy are the key strategies used by a country's government and central bank to advance its economic objectives. The combination of these policies enables these authorities to target inflation (which is considered "healthy" at the level in the range 2%–3%) and to increase employment. Additionally, it is designed to try to keep GDP growth at 2%–3% and the unemployment rate near the natural unemployment rate of 4%–5%.[1] This implies that fiscal policy is used to stabilize the economy over the course of the business cycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_policy

In economics, crowding out is a phenomenon that occurs when increased government involvement in a sector of the market economy substantially affects the remainder of the market, either on the supply or demand side of the market. One type frequently discussed is when expansionary fiscal policy reduces investment spending by the private sector. The government spending is "crowding out" investment because it is demanding more loanable funds and thus causing increased interest rates and therefore reducing investment spending. This basic analysis has been broadened to multiple channels that might leave total output little changed or even smaller.[1] Other economists use "crowding out" to refer to government providing a service or good that would otherwise be a business opportunity for private industry, and be subject only to the economic forces seen in voluntary exchange. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowding_out_(economics)

Austerity is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both.[1][2][3] Austerity measures are often used by governments that find it difficult to borrow or meet their existing obligations to pay back loans. The measures are meant to reduce the budget deficit by bringing government revenues closer to expenditures. This reduces the amount of borrowing required and may also demonstrate a government's fiscal discipline to creditors and credit rating agencies and make borrowing easier or cheaper as a result. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity

Cory Doctorow on Full Employment. I’m an automation-employment-crisis skeptic. That is, I believe that even if we were – by some impossible-to-imagine means – to produce a general AI tomorrow, we would still have 200-300 years of full employment for every human who wanted a job ahead of us. I’m talking about climate change, of course. Remediating climate change will involve unimaginably labor-intensive tasks, like relocating every coastal city in the world kilometers inland, building high-speed rail links to replace aviation links, caring for hundreds of millions of traumatized, displaced people, and treating runaway zoontoic and insectborne pandemics. (more)

Proportional representation (PR) characterizes electoral systems (voting system) in which divisions in an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body.[1] If n% of the electorate support a particular political party or set of candidates as their favorite, then roughly n% of seats will be won by that party or those candidates.[2] The essence of such systems is that all votes contribute to the result—not just a plurality, or a bare majority. The most prevalent forms of proportional representation all require the use of multiple-member voting districts (also called super-districts), as it is not possible to fill a single seat in a proportional manner. In fact, PR systems that achieve the highest levels of proportionality tend to include districts with large numbers of seats.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation

Voting systems are methods (algorithms) for groups of people to select one or more options from many, taking into account the individual preferences of the group members. (more)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (UK: /ˈruːsoʊ/, US: /ruːˈsoʊ/;[1] French: [ʒɑ̃ʒak ʁuso]; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic and educational thought. His Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. Rousseau's sentimental novel Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) was important to the development of preromanticism and romanticism in fiction.[2][3] His Emile, or On Education (1762) is an educational treatise on the place of the individual in society. Rousseau's autobiographical writings—the posthumously published Confessions (composed in 1769), which initiated the modern autobiography, and the unfinished Reveries of the Solitary Walker (composed 1776–1778)—exemplified the late-18th-century "Age of Sensibility", and featured an increased focus on subjectivity and introspection that later characterized modern writing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau

Book by Bruce Sterling ISBN:1616962364. (For Peter Lamborn Wilson book, see Pirate Utopias.) (more)

Robert Levy's Dirty Dozen ISBN:1595230505 covers 12 Supreme Court cases that the authors see as most undermining the US Constitution (cf States' Rights). (more)

In a first-past-the-post (FPTP or FPP; sometimes formally called single-member plurality voting or SMP) electoral system, voters cast their vote for a candidate of their choice, and the candidate who receives the most votes wins. FPTP is a plurality voting system, and is primarily used in systems that use single-member electoral divisions. FPTP is used as the primary form of allocating seats for legislative elections in about a third of the world's countries, mostly in the English-speaking world (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Pakistan, and other countries in the Commonwealth of Nations). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

Ben Hunt: Things Fall Apart (Part 1) We are all Tony Soprano today. We’ve tried to reason with Phil Leotardo. We’ve tried to compromise. We’ve tried to maintain the cooperative institutions of Our Thing. But the guy won’t take “yes” for an answer. He wants it ALL (more)

part of Democracy (more)

Epsilon Theory term for increased polarization, Culture War of narrative-twisting. (more)

Rusty Guinn: Life in the Gyre. I wanted to write something about Andy Ngo. Andy is an independent journalist who was badly beaten by members of Antifa last weekend. He writes for Quillette (more)

Process of working together. Or maybe "working beside"? cf Parallel Play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_play (more)

Rusty Guinn: The Projection Racket (Part 1). It’s not a protection racket. It’s a projection racket. It is the steady replacement of the power to direct the course of our own lives with right-sounding stories. (more)

Luis Perez-Breva: A Society of Tinkerers. (Epsilon Theory) (more)

Rusty Guinn: The Projection Racket, Pt. 2. (see (2020-09-15) Guinn The Projection Racket Part1) (more)

Cross-site request forgery, also known as one-click attack or session riding and abbreviated as CSRF (sometimes pronounced sea-surf[1]) or XSRF, is a type of malicious exploit of a website where unauthorized commands are submitted from a user that the web application trusts.[2] There are many ways in which a malicious website can transmit such commands; specially-crafted image tags, hidden forms, and JavaScript XMLHttpRequests, for example, can all work without the user's interaction or even knowledge. Unlike cross-site scripting (XSS), which exploits the trust a user has for a particular site, CSRF exploits the trust that a site has in a user's browser. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_request_forgery