Category: zerohedge

With lumber prices up 67% since the start of this year and up 340% from a year ago, according to Random Lengths, a wood products industry tracking firm, adding tens of thousands of dollars to new residential builds, there is a viable new option to construct a home (lumber free) through machine-printed clay. 

Machine-printed clay homes are lumber-free and mitigate the ecological impacts of construction could soon become a viable option for affordable housing. 

The push for 3D-printed homes could already be underway due to the historic rise in lumber prices. The National Association of Home Builders recently said lumber costs for a new single-family home had risen $36,000 in the past year. Lumber is found in framing, roofing, flooring, windows, cabinets, railings, and the list goes on and on. 

Now there’s a new way to completely circumvent lumber via the Italian 3D printing company, WASP, who built a prototype of a 3D-printed home that looks like Lars homestead from Star Wars. 

WASP works with Milan-based architectural firm, Mario Cucinella Architect, to develop one-of-a-kind clay homes that are entirely 3D printed out of clay. 

“From the shapeless earth to the earth as house-shaped. Today we have the knowledge to build with no impact in a simple click,” said Massimo Moretti, the founder of WASP. 

The WASP printer can print 538 square feet of living space and, therefore, make it possible to build independent living modules, of any shape, in a few days. Multiple printers can be linked together and create a more elaborate home.

Instead of clay, Apis Cor, 3D printing specialists based in Russia and San Francisco, are printing homes with a concrete solution in under 24 hours. 

The disruptive nature of 3D printing allows homes to be constructed lumberless. Given today’s market conditions, we could see an uptick in interest as people seek other methods and or materials to build houses. 

Managing editor Ed Harrison welcomes Raoul Pal, Real Vision CEO and co-founder, to introduce Real Vision’s latest campaign, “Welcome to the Exponential Age.” Raoul will be going in-depth on his new macro framework, the Exponential Age, and he and Ed tease their interview that’s being released on Monday. They also contextualize today’s U.S. jobs report, which fell far from economists’ expectations, and Raoul explains what the Exponential Age means for employment going forward.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday issued a statement that’s sure to once again provoke Beijing, urging the World Health Organization (WHO) to formally invite Taiwan’s participation in the global body which works alongside the UN.

China has long seen such a proposal as an “illegal” violation of the longstanding One China policy, which both the UN and WHO have thus far upheld. Ignoring this, Blinken called on the WHO to facilitate Taiwan’s participation in the upcoming World Health Assembly meeting which is set for the last week of May in Geneva.

“There is no reasonable justification for Taiwan’s continued exclusion from this forum, and the United States calls upon the WHO Director-General to invite Taiwan to participate as an observer at the WHA – as it has in previous years, prior to objections registered by the government of the People’s Republic of China,” Blinken said in a statement Friday.

China has consistently blocked Taiwan’s participation even as an ‘observer’ going back to 2016. 

Blinken argued that Taiwan is a “reliable partner” and a “vibrant democracy,” saying that—

“We urge Taiwan’s immediate invitation to the World Health Assembly.”

He said the urgency of stopping the global pandemic means “political disputes” must not get in the way, given the virus knowns no boundaries or conflicts over autonomy. 

“Global health and global health security challenges do not respect borders nor recognize political disputes,” Blinken’s statement continues.

Blinken calls on WHO director-general @DrTedros to invite Taiwan to participate in the World Health Assembly.

“There is no reasonable justification for Taiwan’s continued exclusion from this forum….” https://t.co/UVIcpo1L2P

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) May 7, 2021

“Taiwan offers valuable contributions and lessons learned from its approach to these issues, and WHO leadership and all responsible nations should recognize that excluding the interests of 24 million people at the WHA serves only to imperil, not advance, our shared global health objectives.”

The fresh Friday statements echoed similar statements of US officials at the G-7 meeting in London at the start of this week. China’s Foreign Ministry has vehemently fought Taiwan’s WHA entry on the basis that Taipei and its backers refuse to “recognize that both sides of [the Taiwan Strait] belong to one and the same China.”

South Carolina House members voted Wednesday to add execution by firing squad amid a lack of lethal injection drugs, according to local newspaper The State. 

State lawmakers voted 66-43 Wednesday for a bill that would add death by firing squad to the default method of execution from lethal injection to the electric chair. The state is one of nine that still use the electric chair and will become the fourth to use firing squads. 

The state Senate approved the bill in March but conducted another procedural vote after some minor modifications. The bill now heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who is expected to sign it. 

“We are one step closer to providing victims’ families and loved ones with the justice and closure they are owed by law. I will sign this legislation as soon as it gets to my desk,” McMaster tweeted after the bill’s passage. 

We are one step closer to providing victims’ families and loved ones with the justice and closure they are owed by law. I will sign this legislation as soon as it gets to my desk.

— Gov. Henry McMaster (@henrymcmaster) May 5, 2021

Supporters say execution by firing squad will deliver justice. Opponents say the form of execution could lead to an innocent person’s death. 

Once McMaster signs the bill into law. It will end South Carolina’s 10-year dry streak on executions. Current law states inmates have the option of death by the electric chair or lethal injection. But due to a nationwide shortage of drugs, death by firing squad is set to become a quick, cheap, and easy way to execute criminals. 

“Getting the death penalty back on the track will be positive for the criminal justice system, I know it will be for the victims in those cases, unfortunately, I have victims in those cases that I’ve helped that are waiting too,” Rep. Tommy Pope, R-York, who is also a prosecutor, told local news WIS. 

Meanwhile, Democrats are concerned the law would lead to the death of potentially innocent people.

“It would not sit well on my conscience,” said Rep. Jermaine Johnson, D-Richland, about the vote. “Especially in a state where we claim to be pro-life, and we claim to believe in individuals and their rights to live and survive, but we are literally talking about a bill today that if this stuff passes we are literally signing their death certificates,” he said.

Utah, Mississippi, and Oklahoma are the only other states that allow death by firing squad. As soon as McMaster signs the bill into law, South Carolina will be added to the list. 

Authored by Craig Rucker via RealClearEnergy.com,

President Biden recently announced ambitious plans to install huge offshore industrial wind facilities along America’s Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Pacific coasts. His goal is to churn out 30 gigawatts (30,000 megawatts) of wind capacity by 2030, ensuring the U.S. “leads by example” in fighting the “climate crisis.”

Granted “30 by 2030” is clever PR. But what are the realities?

The only existing U.S. offshore wind operation features five 6-MW turbines off Rhode Island. Their combined capacity (what they could generate if they worked full-bore, round the clock 24/7) is 30 MW. Mr. Biden is planning 1,000 times more offshore electricity, perhaps split three ways: 10,000 MW for each coast.

While that might sound impressive, it isn’t.  It means total wind capacity for the entire Atlantic coast, under Biden’s plan, would only meet three-fourths of the peak summertime electricity needed to power New York City.  Again, this assumes the blades are fully spinning 24/7. In reality, such turbines would be lucky to be operating a top capacity half the time. Even less as storms and salt spray corrode the turbines, year after year.

The reason why is there is often minimal or no wind in the Atlantic – especially on the hottest days. Ditto for the Gulf of Mexico. No wind means no electricity – right when you need it most.

Of course, too little wind isn’t the only issue. Other times, there’s too much wind – as when a hurricane roars up the coast. That’s more likely in the Gulf of Mexico. But the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 had Category 4 winds in Virginia, Category 3 intensity off Cape Hatteras (NC), Long Island and Rhode Island, and Category 2 when it reached Maine. It sank four U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships.

When storms or hurricanes hit, turbines can be destroyed. Repairing or replacing hundreds of offshore turbines could take years.

If the White House is planning to generate all that power using common 6-MW turbines, our coastlines would need a hefty 5,000 of the 600-foot tall monsters dotting them. The Washington Monument is 655 feet tall.

Going instead with 12-MW turbines, like the 850-foot-tall GE Haliade-X turbines Virginia is planning to install off its coast, America would still need 2,500 of the behemoths – just to complete Phase One of Biden’s plan. 30,000 megawatts by 2030.  Even if these were all plopped in the Atlantic, it still would not be enough to meet New York State’s current electricity needs.

And what about the environment?

How many millions of tons of steel, copper, lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, concrete, petroleum-based composites (for turbine blades) and other raw materials would be required to manufacture and install the turbines and undersea electrical cables, especially where deep-water turbines are involved? 

How many billions of tons of ore would have to be mined, crushed, processed and refined – considering that it takes 125,000 tons of average ore for every 1,000 tons of pure copper metal?

Not only would nearly all of this mining and manufacturing require fossil fuels, but much of it would be done in China, or in other countries by Chinese-owned companies. Haliade-X turbines are also manufactured in China. And much of the mining and processing is done under horrid workplace safety and environmental conditions, often with near-slave and child labor.

More turbines will also kill countless birds and bats. Turbine infrasound and other noise have been implicated in disorienting and stranding whales and dolphins. The numbers, height and low-frequency turbine noise also interferes with surface ships, submarines, aircraft and radar.

Nuclear power or billions of batteries (or retained fossil fuel power plants) will have to back up every megawatt of intermittent, unreliable wind power, so that society can function every time the wind fails. That means more raw materials, transmission lines and costs.

Even with massive taxpayer subsidies, electricity generated by offshore turbines will cost many times what we are paying today, even in New York and California. That will have especially heavy impacts on energy-intensive industries, hospitals, and poor, middle-class, minority and fixed-income families.

Economic, environmental and climate justice reviews must fully, carefully and honestly assess every one of these factors. No “expedited” or “climate emergency” shortcuts should be permitted.

President Biden likes to say offshore wind energy is clean, green, renewable and sustainable. Wind itself certainly is. But harnessing the wind (or sun), to meet the needs of modern civilization is not – especially in ocean environments.

Claiming otherwise is a mirage – a scam. Maybe that’s why the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management already canceled two wind projects off Long Island. The costs and impacts are enormous, and local opposition was high. Do climate activists in and out of the Biden Administration expect otherwise anywhere else?

The persistent question over the past months as more of the US population has had access to COVID-19 vaccines has remained: “when will it all end?” A new poll has found that nearly half of Americans believe some form of social distancing measures will now become permanent, according to a study by Signs.com. 

The majority, however, at 64% believe that their local and state governments will loosen up restrictions like caps on attending public venues or being in places like bars or restaurants, even should national policies remain in place, at some point within the next three months. 

The recent study on Americans’ views of distancing measures was published as it’s becoming increasingly clear that large states like Texas have not suffered a resurgence in the virus even after it “opened 100%” at the start of March.

The extensive polling data was also released just as a major MIT study challenged many social distancing guidelines, including the effectiveness of mask-wearing. The study found that “one is no safer from airborne pathogens at 60 feet than 6 feet.”

“We need scientific information conveyed to the public in a way that is not just fearmongering but is actually based in analysis,” the MIT scientists said.

Yet Americans now fear that many of these policies previously forced on the population like the “6 foot rule” (even as they were anything but “established science”) will now become permanent.

Below are some of the key takeaways from the survey, which was published Friday:

• 45.4 percent of respondents disliked the “new normal” of social interactions during COVID-19
• 43.1 percent believe the world would go back to normal, just as it used to be 
• 41.3 percent thought that some social distancing measures would remain permanently, even after the pandemic ends
• 57.6 percent said they are uncomfortable visiting the gym, while 54.4 percent said the same about restaurants and 45.2 percent said the same about hospitals. 
• 72.6 percent said they felt most comfortable going to places like parks (72.6 percent), grocery stores (59 percent) and pharmacies (57.9 percent) in person. 
• 54.8 percent listed one-way aisles in stores as the most annoying social distancing measure
• 22.9 percent confirmed they were following social distancing rules more strictly now than at the beginning of the pandemic compared with 27.7 percent who had decreased their efforts in following the previously adopted practices. 

Via Signs.com study…

And there was this interesting line from the study: “53.7% of baby boomers believed some social distancing measures would remain in place permanently.”

Ultimately, the survey concluded, “43.1% of respondents believed that the world would go back to normal, just as it used to be” while in contrast “41.3% thought that some social distancing measures would remain permanently, even after the pandemic ends.”

Authored by Stephen Moore, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

Why Did Biden Census Bureau Add 2.5 Million More Residents to Blue-State Population Count?

There is something very fishy about the new 2020 Census Bureau data determining which states picked up seats and which states lost seats.

Most all of the revisions to the original estimates have moved in one direction: Population gains were added to blue states, and population losses were subtracted from red states.

The December revisions in population estimates under the Biden Census Bureau added some 2.5 million blue-state residents and subtracted more than 500,000 red-state residents. These population estimates determine how many electoral votes each state receives for presidential elections and the number of congressional seats in each state.

Is this a mere coincidence?

These population estimates determine how many electoral votes each state receives for presidential elections and the number of congressional seats in each state.

Remember, the House of Representatives is razor-thin today, with the Democrats sporting just a six-seat majority with five seats currently vacant. So, a switch in a handful of seats in 2022 elections could flip the House and take the gavel from current Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. A shift of 3 million in population is the equivalent of four seats moving from Republican to Democrat.

The original projections for Census reapportionment had New York losing two seats, Rhode Island losing a seat, and Illinois perhaps losing two seats. Instead, New York and Illinois only lost one seat, and Rhode Island lost no seats. Meanwhile, Texas was expected to gain three seats, Florida two seats, and Arizona one seat. Instead, Texas gained only two seats, Florida only one, and Arizona none.

Was the Census Bureau count rigged? Was it manipulated by the Biden team to hand more seats to the Democrats and to get more money—federal spending is often allocated based on population—for the blue states?

The evidence is now only circumstantial, but when errors or revisions are almost all only in one direction, the alarm bells appropriately go off.

Here are some of the strange outcomes in the Census revisions just released:

No. 1: New York—We’ve been tracking the annual population/migration changes between states since the last census in 2010. Over the past decade, New York LOST about 1.3 million residents on net to other states. (This does not include immigration, births, and deaths.) Still, this is a population loss that is the equivalent of two, maybe three, lost congressional seats. But the final numbers ADDED approximately 860,000. That’s roughly twice the population of Buffalo and Rochester—combined. This is the state that has lost by far the largest population over the past decade.

No. 2: Many deep-blue states had 2020 Census numbers significantly revised upward from their December estimates: Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

No. 3: Many red states had 2020 Census numbers lower than their 2020 estimates: Arizona, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

No. 4: Going back to the 2010 Census, the final headcount in every state was within 0.4 percent of the original estimate, and 30 of them were within 0.2 percent. This time around, 19 states were more than 1 percent off, 7 were more than 2 percent off, New York was more than 3.8 percent off, and New Jersey was more than 4.5 percent off.

No. 5: Virtually every one of the large deviations from the estimates favored Democrats. Just five states in the 2020 Census were within the same margin (0.41 percent) that all states were within from the 2010 census.

Maybe the 2010 estimates were abnormally accurate, or maybe the 2020 estimates were abnormally inaccurate. The Census Bureau needs to tell Congress why these revisions under former President Barack Obama were so much larger than normal and so weighted in one direction: toward the blue states.

A high-end condominium glut in Brooklyn forced one developer to reconstruct its entire business model from condos to rentals for one of its new luxury highrises. 

Avery Hall Investments announced Monday the commencement of leasing at One Boerum Place located at Brooklyn Heights and Boerum Hill. Bloomberg notes the building was never intended for rentals, but a glut of condos in the borough and citywide forced the developer to change paths. 

Avi Fisher, a founding partner of Avery Hall, told Bloomberg that One Boerum Place “was very much envisioned as a condo.” At the time of construction, which began around 2016, the condo market in the borough was “roaring, and all signs were pointing to continued growth, and in our company’s history, this was the culmination of the condo pipeline we’d amassed,” he said. 

In all, Fisher said his firm spent about $250 million on building costs. When 2019 came along, the condo market began to deteriorate. A year later, during the pandemic, the condo market plunged as city dwellers moved to suburban areas and rural communities to escape the socio-economic collapse of the liberal-run city. 

Sales of One Boerum Place were to begin in late 2020, but Fisher and his team began to evaluate the oversupplied condo market. That’s when they decided to flip the business model from selling condos to high-end rentals. 

“What solidified the fate of this building was ultimately the pandemic,” Fisher said. “The condo market deteriorated to the point where the decision was clear to us.”

To change course, Fished received approval from lenders and partners. The press release today outlines “pre-leasing commences” at the luxury building. 

“One Boerum Place will now become luxury rentals, with prices ranging from $8,500 a month for a roughly 1,200-square-foot three-bedroom to $12,000 a month for a roughly 3,120-square-foot four-bedroom. There are also, the developer says, “not many” one-bedroom apartments which will start in “the low $4,000s,” and a few two-bedroom apartments that will rent for just under $6,000,” Bloomberg said. 

Fisher said his company made the right move:

“As an organization, we felt the right move for us and our investors and partners was to [create] a rental portfolio,” he said, “because we believe it will stand the test of time.”

Fisher explained the “exodus in Manhattan” resulted in a “large number of [those] people came to Brooklyn.” He believes his building could be in a perfect spot to capture the outflow of Manhattanites.

He added: “We don’t have to sell this asset now, and the best way we can help participate in the recovery of New York and capitalize on that [recovery] is to execute a rental plan.”

Brooklyn’s rental glut may get worse as new supply via One Boerum Place has just hit the market. 

Authored by Ethan Yang via The American Institute for Economic Progress,

Writing, money, and ledgers, are the three basic building blocks that allowed humanity to progress past the days of foraging for berries and hunting wild game to the advanced global civilization we are today.

• Writing allowed us to convey knowledge and information that made it possible to cooperate and build on the findings of others.

• Money allowed for the efficient allocation of scarce resources and the facilitation of trade.

• Ledgers allowed all these activities and transactions to be recorded so we could trust one another beyond immediate friend groups.

Being able to trust one another is perhaps one of the most important facilitators of economic and social activity. When you perform a transaction you trust that the service you’re getting is what you paid for. When you put your money in a bank, you trust that the bank is a reputable third party to store assets. When you use the internet you trust that your data is secure and won’t be given away to bad actors.

Being able to trust a person, a service, or a device is integral to the functioning of a complex and evolving society. Oftentimes the progress of society is limited by barriers to expanding trust whether it be avoiding scams, processing data, or embracing the promise of the digital age which understandably has many worried about trusting the technology to be secure. For this to happen, we will need to collect and process a tremendous amount of information about everyone and everything. Giving all that power to big corporations or governments to handle doesn’t sound like a great idea either. 

That is what makes the promise of blockchain technology so revolutionary, as it possesses the potential to accomplish all these requirements to facilitate trust in a digital revolution without assigning that power to any authority, private or public. This is the topic of The Truth Machine, a book co-written by Michael Casey, a senior advisor at MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative, and Paul Vigna, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal who specializes in cryptocurrency. The book was written in 2018, which is a true testament to its value as its predictions about the promise of blockchain technology only continue to realize themselves. 

What is the Blockchain?

The authors make an insightful point about ledgers and data when they write the following,

“The advent of the first ledger technology can be traced back to roughly 3,000 BCE, in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). Of the tens of thousands of clay tablets the Mesopotamians left behind, most are, well ledgers: records of taxes, payments, private wealth, worker pay. The famous Code of Hammurabi – the Babylonians’ system of law – was written on one of these ledgers, but most kings had their own rules set out as well. The rise of ledgers matched the rise of the first large scale civilizations.”

Translation: data is king. Data is needed in everything from basic transactions at a cafe to running massive enterprises with countless moving parts, and is incumbent on the ability to access data. 

The authors write,

“Money itself is intrinsically linked to the idea of a ledger. Physical currency like gold coins and paper money are, similarly, record keeping devices; they too aid with societal memory. It’s just that rather than existing as a written account of transactions, a currency’s record-keeping function is abstracted into a token.”

The blockchain is essentially a massive decentralized electronic database that is extremely difficult to hack and manipulate. However, it is not like a typical database like a computer hard drive. Investopedia explains,

“One key difference between a typical database and a blockchain is the way the data is structured. A blockchain collects information together in groups, also known as blocks, that hold sets of information. Blocks have certain storage capacities and, when filled, are chained onto the previously filled block, forming a chain of data known as the “blockchain.” All new information that follows that freshly added block is compiled into a newly formed block that will then also be added to the chain once filled.”

The blockchain can be used to perform all sorts of activities such as monetary transactions, storing personal data, and holding contracts. The most important thing is that it is virtually impossible to manipulate, which not only makes it extremely secure but allows people to trust the person on the other end. The blockchain is powered by a decentralized network of participating computers around the world, not a single entity like a tech company or a government. Therefore, unlike contemporary examples of decentralized data like “the cloud, which at the end of the day belongs to a single tech company like Apple or Google, the blockchain belongs to everyone and nobody at the same time. 

The Limitations of Current Technology and the Promise of Blockchain

Being able to establish trust is essential to the conduct of a modern and enterprising society. We swipe credit cards trusting that the money will go where it needs to go. We sign contracts, trusting that the deals will be followed. We choose to solicit the service of a bank, trusting that the finances are well-managed. Uncertainty and vulnerability are what hold back progress in many areas of economic life, whether that be accessing the credit of a potential loan recipient or signing a deal with a potentially shady actor. In the worst-case scenario, being deceived by someone you can’t trust leads to dire consequences.The authors give an example of some modern-day challenges that could have been avoided with better trust mechanisms, such as the blockchain by writing,

“Lehman Brothers is often Exhibit A in the breakdown of trust in the twenty-first century. A lion of Wall Street, the firm was revealed to be little more than a debt-ravaged shell kept alive only by shading accounting – in other words the bank was manipulating its ledgers…The crash of 2008 revealed most of what we know about Wall Street’s confidence game at that time. It entailed a vast manipulation of ledgers. The recorded value of the assets those ledgers were supposed to track – including those havoc causing credit default swaps – turned out to be largely vapor.”

The entire crisis of 2008 was largely an issue of deception enabled by the power of large financial institutions to lie about their asset valuations. Of course, there were policy issues regarding government lending and oversight that created moral hazards, but at the end of the day, deception is what set the whole system up for failure. 

With blockchain technology, manipulating ledgers and altering numbers would be far more difficult, and it may have even prevented the 2008 crash in the first place. In fact, blockchain technology would even vastly simplify auditing and bookkeeping, freeing up countless people to work in more productive jobs while also decreasing compliance costs.

Blockchain technology in the financial sector would also increase competition and make the market more dynamic by allowing greater trust in newer companies. Much of the power large corporations, particularly banks, have is that people trust them because they’ve been around for a while. Blockchain would allow smaller and newer competitors to at least demonstrate to consumers that they are trustworthy actors who have sound financial practices. This doesn’t just apply to Wall Street either. One of the biggest roadblocks to the global poor in acquiring capital and opportunities to better their lives is being able to be trusted. If blockchain is made accessible, that could open up a new world of possibilities when it comes to acquiring loans, owning property, creating contracts, and all the other trust-based mechanisms that are often less available to those who live in underdeveloped areas.

Embracing the Internet of Things

Perhaps one of the most exciting trends of the digital age is the connection of everything to the internet. Self-driving cars, smartphones, advanced portable medical devices, smart grids, the list goes on. Being able to have devices connected to one another across the world enables countless possibilities to make life easier and work more productive. The one thing holding all this back is trust. Even if we develop the technology to handle all the data being processed by linking more things to the internet, compiling all this data amongst a few big tech companies sounds like a recipe for disaster. 

The authors write,

“Who is capable of and can be trusted to run a global network of billions of devices that will tap into virtually every single thing we do on a daily basis? It’s one thing for a private company like, say, Comcast, to offer a relatively simple service such as cable for millions of people. But trusting a monopoly gatekeeper with all the sensitive personal data that’s broadcast by your devices is much more problematic.”

Letting the government handle our data in this matter is a nonstarter as well. The current model of centralizing all data in the hands of databases public or private is a recipe for crippling incompetence, the erasure of privacy, regulatory stagnation, and a hacker’s dream. In order to actually make the jump to a future of endless possibilities promised by embracing the digital age is to have a decentralized system of data processing that is extremely difficult to compromise. Without exaggeration, this is what blockchain can provide. 

The authors pose several examples of all the wonderful technology society can safely embrace with the widespread integration of blockchain technology and the Internet of Things. Imagine sensors that can monitor bridges for structural weakness and immediately communicate that to the relevant actors. A surveillance apparatus that is able to track the spread of pathogens around the world without invading everyone’s privacy. Smart ports that allow you to turn your house into a car charging station and collect payments. Whatever entrepreneurial product you can think of that can harness the power of being connected to other devices via the internet can now be a reality if we are able to safely and efficiently process massive amounts of data. With these new products comes a radically more efficient, dynamic, and collaborative future full of exciting opportunities. 

Key Takeaways

The Truth Machine makes it clear that the basis of all civilizational activity, whether it be economic or social, is trust. Adam Smith articulated the famous principle that society is most productive when individuals are left to pursue their own self-interest. However, for all these self-interested interactions to take place, people need a way to trust whoever they are interacting with. When humans existed as small nomadic tribes, trusting one another was easy. In order to build the bustling global society that exists today, people have to develop ways to trust strangers and institutions.

Today we find ourselves on the cusp of another great technological revolution with tremendous potential to better the lives of people around the world. However, the current apparatus of centralized data processing and storage is not only incapable of adequately handling the prerequisite needs of this digital society, but it might also turn it into a dystopia. What we need is a highly decentralized and efficient infrastructure that is impervious to manipulation. Blockchain technology seems to be the essential component to make the digitized society of the future a foundation for empowerment and growth rather than an Orwellian nightmare. 

Sure, Amazon delivery contractors will let you work as many hours a week as you can handle as a driver, but you better keep a close eye (or nose) on your fingernails and body odor.

That’s because the e-commerce giant is apparently still “dictating the state” of personal hygiene their drivers must maintain, according to a new Bloomberg report. This is despite the fact that many drivers work for small, independent businesses with contracts to transport packages for Amazon.

Amazon writes in a recent version of their policies for these independent businesses: “Personal grooming must be maintained at an acceptable level, including but not limited to prevention of unpleasant breath or body odor, modest perfume/cologne, and clean teeth, face/ears, fingernails and hair.”

The document also asks drivers to not post “obscene” things on social media and to undergo training approved by Amazon. 

Independent contractors are mandated to adhere to Amazon’s policies, which the tech giant can amend anytime it wants. Amazon also demands access to geo-locations, speed and movement of drivers, the report says.

Additionally, delivery contractors have to “defend and indemnify” Amazon in the event of wrongdoing by their drivers, including wrongdoing involving death or injury.

But the more control Amazon wants to exert over these independent businesses, the more legal risks it brings on itself. University of Miami law professor Andrew Elmore told Bloomberg: “Amazon seems to want to have its cake and eat it too—to have all the control of an employment relationship, without bearing the costs. These documents provide an important signal to courts and to government agencies that this is a relationship to look at.”

These methods have already been challenged in court by drivers, forcing Amazon to pony up $8.2 million in a class action suit that resolved Seattle-area claims of missed breaks and lack of overtime pay. Amidst claims that Amazon drivers didn’t even have time for bathroom breaks in March, Amazon’s Twitter account @AmazonNews responded to Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin: “You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?”

Amazon spokesperson Rena Lunak said that “the suggestion Amazon is seeking to avoid responsibility for delivery drivers is wrong.”

“We’re proud that our program has empowered thousands of small businesses to create tens of thousands of jobs with competitive wages of at least $15 an hour and comprehensive benefits,” she continued. 

Temple University law professor Brishen Rogers commented: “This kind of arrangement basically locks in place a low-wage economy, even as Amazon is incredibly profitable.”

Last year, the company said there were more than 1,300 delivery service partners across North America and Europe, who collectively employed 85,000 people. 

The contract labor model – also used by McDonald’s, Alphabet, FedEx and, famously, Uber and Lyft – is expected to continue to draw more scrutiny from the Biden administration.