Phenomenal World

> NLNET can only allocate funds to something an individual or small group proposes. If you want to propose something, please go ahead.

Well, gee, let's look at the sponsorship page for KiCad:
https://www.kicad.org/sponsors/sponsors/

I see a couple EU companies, but no EU governments. It takes a paltry $15K to be a Platinum sponsor.

I picked KiCad because PCB design is critical military infrastructure, the alternative programs are almost all under non-EU jurisdictions and could be pulled, and KiCad is both open source and local desktop to top it all off. This is exactly the kind of quiet, unflashy toil that desperately needs support from a government entity.

Lots of areas need support for open source alternatives that are controlled by proprietary software that might vaporize. I picked PCB design because it's an easy target. Cadence and Synopsys have locks on VLSI design domains that could get yanked from the EU. VHDL tooling is still disastrously poor. Everybody could use an alternative 3D modeling kernel (the EU is a little better here because the dominant proprietary kernels are from Dassault Systèmes and Siemens). I'm sticking to software as the domain because the purpose of the funding is obvious (pay developers, duh), but it also applies to things like small manufacturing and maintaining domestic supply chains (but the purpose and focus becomes a lot messier).

And yet, everywhere I look, any project I pick, crickets.

I don't expect the EU to front run, but…

I think the article comes off to many here as anti-technology because it doesn't continue past the thesis: Apple's vast amount of unilateral control over devices and software gives it the ability to surveil the population in ways that were not possible before. It then goes on to suggest a very consumer-centric way of addressing this, through a special iPhone that's more privacy-centric.

This ignores two big things we have to address when thinking about mass data collection.

1. The ability to collect data at scale unlocks capabilities that simply weren't possible before. There are lots of positive outcomes that can come out of this. Focusing on only the negative can lead one to a sort of primitivist mindset, and it convinces no one who feels the positive effects of it.

2. Apple could very well offer a phone with no facial recognition, rock solid encryption, an easily coverable camera, and it would affect close to nothing. The entire point of mass data collection is the "mass" part of it, and as long as people observe the benefits of being tracked (i.e. using maps, social media, finding their lost things, getting notified when their heart rate is up, counting their steps, tracking their sleep, getting notifications, seamlessly backing up their contacts and photos, dictating messages, etc.) then they will continue to be able to collect mass amounts of information regardless if some individuals choose to abdicate completely.

Other people are pointing these things out in the…

It depends on what you mean by industrialization.

Mass industrialization of low economic complexity manufacturing is useless in the world today - even factories in India heavily utilize industrial automation as prices have gone down significantly [0][1][2].

On the other hand, industrialization with investment in high complexity manufacturing (which of course doesn't nearly translate to significant job growth) is of significant value, especially if some amount of this output is redistributed via a welfare system.

The latter is the approach India is now taking [3], and I see first-hand in my ancestral village as well - we have factories manufacturing wind turbines, EV batteries, textile yarns, and generic pharmaceuticals for domestic and export markets, but most employees work part-time earning around $200-300/mo as they also get the advantage of rural social safety nets netting an additional $100-150/mo, and the spouse works a government job netting around $100-200/mo.

The only region of India where mass industrialization via light manufacturing can work are those regions of India where state capacity for welfare delivery is lowest and manufacturing wages can be at the $100-150/mo range thus outcompeting industrial automation. The only regions like that are Bihar, Jharkhand, and Eastern UP.

[0] - https://m.indiamart.com/impcat/automatic-soldering-machine.html

[1] - https://m.indiamart.com/city/delhi/automatic-wire-cutting-and-stripping-machine.html

[2] -…

Propaganda is very effective when there's some kernel of truth behind it.

For this trade deficit question the important context is that some trade partners artificially devalue their currency (relative to the USD) to maintain strong export advantage (which therefore directly disadvantages their own people, since their wages are worth less on the global market, ie. when they are importing they have to pay more, when they are going on a vacation abroad they have to pay more, and this is a large chunk of the "missing trade" (the trade deficit), which translates to missing demand for US exporting sectors.

The other important piece of the puzzle is that US residents are also negatively affected by one distinct factor, which is the resource curse of the dollar's reserve currency status. Because due to the exorbitant privilege[1] (of the USD being the de facto global reserve currency) the financial sector is at an advantage compared to other sectors, and it slowly crowds out other economic activity.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege

[2] https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the-class-politics-of-the-dollar-system/

Maybe that's a a good thing? Per https://phenomenalworld.org/interviews/trade-wars-are-class-wars the rest of the world is chucking all sorts of junk at once --- per the high elasticity of the demand we barely want it but "oh fine" we'll take another shift if they are just that cheap.

If we're the dollar exporter, we should be able to call the shots in other ways. Dollars for democracy (hah), dollars for rail not cars, etc. etc. It's a massive soft power and develop-for-greater-good opportunity, but we choose to get inundated with cheap crap instead.