I am sure you are wrong about it not being the dislike button but it could be something else. Obviously though, this means there is no longer any open source fraud control anymore, of course this would happen!
It seems to me this article uses Physics to justify the view that courts should "abstract new laws" as they deem necessary.
This is wholly undemocratic and while it claims to solve one problem (that of legal frameworks growing obsolete) it swaps democracy for 'laws by committee' or 'expert rule'. As a computer scientist I'd call this unscientific or at least a sloppy proposal.
It seems to me this article uses Physics to justify the view that courts should "abstract new laws" as they deem necessary.
This is wholly undemocratic and while it claims to solve one problem (that of legal frameworks growing obsolete) it creates the problem of 'laws by committee' or 'expert rule'.
The nations mentioned are some of the most advanced in the world, and their lower-than-world-average GDP growth is being used to show that "it's not all about wealth". I don't think this article makes a very good point.
Exactly. This is a classic case of a confounding variable. The happiest nations are also the richest ones. The richest ones have lower growth than developing nations precisely because they are the richest: developing nations can achieve growth by increasing their literacy rates, building infrastructure, and making other capital expenditures (e.g. farming equipment, high-tech machines for factories). The richest ones already have all of that, so their growth needs to come from elsewhere.
That is, GDP is a function of Capital (K), Labor (L), and a catch-all of technology (A).
Developing countries can ramp up any of these 3 easily, especially technology "A" by transfering/adopting technologies that exist elsewhere. The richest countries can't do that since they should be at the forefront of technology.
That's because a lot of technology is coming up with new ways of using energy to do useful things. See: light bulb, internal combustion engine, etc. And a lot of technology is new methods that reduce the cost of building these energy-consuming devices allowing us to produce more of then for cheaper (and more of them then consumer more energy).
I feel like you are trying to say "no, it's just consuming more energy. It's not 'technology'". But I think you've missed the point. We can't just dump more coal and oil onto a field and burn it and expect that energy to increase production. We need "technology" to turn it into something useful.
1. Those new ways of using energy themselves are highly dependent on energy-intensive factors as inputs. Steel, aluminium, copper, electronics, reliable power inputs, control systems, etc., are all the products of high-energy outputs.
When you realise that the Watt steam engine revolutionised manufacturing based providing a net total of 500 prime movers of about 10 HP each net power output, you start to recognise just how energy-contrained economic activity was.
2. The Solow Residual is, quite literally, just that. It's a statistical residual. Solow himself describes it as "the measure of our ignorance". Again: there is no basis to attribute it to "technology". Other than it forms an economically convenient theory.
3. The research I've mentioned is far more specific -- rather than just run a regression of capital vs. labour and handwave a declaration that All That Is Unexplained Shall Be Termed "Technology", it specifically considers the role of other factors, including energy. And, again: shows that that accounts for up to 98% of the residual -- an insanely high fit.
So long as we're talking factors of production, I've just learned, reading of and from Alexander Hamilton Church, who more-or-less invented cost accounting, that through about 1900, only labour was considered as a factor of production.
Somewhat amusingly, his discussion of factors other than labour focuses, almost exclusively, on the ability to supply mechanical power through engines. Go figure. 1910.
