Exchange value

Exchange value:
Data markets relative to Libyan slave markets


It is always cool to get an affirmation regardless of whence it comes.


Re reading John Ralston Saul’s “Collapse of Globalism” I came across his ironic observations on Economists and the trade in Economic theory: he said, “That which never was a science struggles with difficulty to remain a domain of speculative investigation.”


Why an affirmation? Consider, that for decades I have taught 9th grade economics for Learners [school kids], that economics is defined as “the management of scarcity” while increasingly it isn’t. Over the past half decade, I amended the definition to “The management of apparent scarcity in a world of remarkable abundance… for some.”


Now it is not my intention to deal with that idea; simply to confirm that as an old- school, pre-mathematical systemization economist, I am and have been in my past two blogs, firmly in the field of “speculative investigation”.


I refer of course to the idea that “Data must pay Rent”… about which I penned [well, typed eventually] two blogs on a speculative idea regarding data.


I said that one of the unspoken revolutions of the post 2011 period is the awareness that all of the world’s knowledge, past and unfolding, is packaged and available on line in an instant. To someone who grew up and went to school, using slide rules to make mathematical calculations, the transition has been stunning.


The Smartphone however also helped us to understand that all that information; and; that more, unfolding daily, has, logically, been created by humans living in the world.


Now we also know that it is wrapped up daily, packaged and sliced up with mountains of trivia, into byte-sized parcels: and moves [almost] effortlessly from one end of the multi-verse to another… Now, especially since the Zuckerburg testimonies, we are aware that kleva people are extracting mass scale Rentier value from it: without regard for the “The People”…. To whom it rightfully belongs.


I called this thoughtless process “Kolonization of the mind” and compared it to the mountains that held silver in South America back in the day, that were plundered for wealth: and exchanged for value, with no thought for the mountain.


I also mentioned how it was Mr. Zuckerburg’s meeting with the ‘Natives”: those being Kolonised in the Firmian* [My word for a country now allegedly stage managed by Wall street] Congress of the People: that emphasized that metaphor. This drew my attention to the Rentier nature of Data usage.


In this final piece on the subject, I am going to refer to the original thought that began puzzling me about this thing called DATA. In the interest of full disclosure I know nothing about DATA other than that it is a ‘product’ being sold to me each month for a certain amount of money. I type things like this and send it to places.


Then my ‘stuff’ is later subject to being rifled through by who knows who; searching for who knows what value. Just as I did back in the Sixties, when panning for gold: in specific rivers to the east of where I now live.


The thought: about who really “Owns” data, was prompted by a piece in the Science and Technology section of ‘The Economist’, 31st March this year. It was also my 45th wedding anniversary by the way and thus a moment for long reminiscence, that made the article’s oddness more apparent than intended by the [usually anonymous] writer. I gratuitously used the article’s heading, for my heading on this blog. [The Economist: Data markets: Exchange value. P.80, March 31st 2018]


The piece opens with a quoted observation from the Firmian* Tech Company, Cisco, that the volume of data flowing through the Internet each month has surpassed a Zettabyte, which, they say “… is “enough to fill 16bn 64GB iPhones.”.
A Googled Internet source tells me that a Zettabyte is One thousand billion, billion bytes [or One sextillion bytes.].


Since like most people, I found that to be confusing and strictly meaningless I found the entry that showed it as a number: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.


So as an economist [with a small e] I like to think in annual figures to compare with our favorite toy: GDP [Gross Domestic Product: For everyone else: how much money a country earns every year excluding imports]. So: on present trend, the Internet handles >12 Zettabytes of data annually. The kicker here [can you imagine a kicker on such a huge number?] is the caveat written by the article’s author. ”Immeasurably more data sits outside the public internet on company servers.”


So here is the thought experiment on which I speculated following this article in association with Mr. Z’s rhetorical declamations*. [* Fancy words: meaning, meaningless affirmations.] That is 12 Zettabytes put into GDP language.


Assume a value given to each byte. Assume that value to be ONE ten MILLIONTH of ONE cent [$US}…. A number that I understand would look like this $US0.0000001. [ Please feel free to contradict me, my calculator gives up at the ninth zero and there are still another 12!]


According to my extremely rough calculations [it is >half a century since I finished school the year the late President Kennedy was shot] the resulting amount of value
Would be the equivalent to two thirds of global income for 2016. That is an enormous amount of production that is being treated as a ‘happy to be ignored’ impervious “externality*” [*another economist idea]


Currently that volume of data is valued at zero and the people producing it get the same. Of course: we have the toys that produce it, and the freedom to give it away on a personal communication instrument.


So doesn’t that make you feel like the mountains filled with silver that had it taken from them in return for having some roads built on you… whoops: sorry… on the mountain. Not for nothing could one argue that the guy’s running the new Libyan slave markets have missed the trick.


So I submit; in the interests of full disclosure: that although I know little about the technical mechanics of data, I do think that inside the way in which we [economists/accountants?] value the DATA stuff that flows in abundance; hides the most important answer for this hydra-headed century.


And that is how I concluded that the ‘Rentals’ being reaped currently, on this freely kontributed ‘soil’, by a number of Klevas, has the potential to produce a potent residue: ta ra ta ra: Universal Income…


Now U.I. or Basic PAY IS A key plank, in the policy position taken by the new government of the old Leftover Roman relic on the Mediterranean coastline. That delightful territory that produced two of the coolest cars I ever had to give to random debt kolektors, and about 70 different governments, in the same number of years. Like its Aegean cousin the left/right, ‘left-behind’ heroes, struggle with the mathematics of the Euro… and the debt fiasco it brought with it.


This will be my last word on this topic as I continue to write a fictional tale set circa 2037 about what happened to the protagonists, when this idea: that DATA holds the key to Universal Income, was taken seriously, by that new government.


Enjoy the journey. Love you all.