Category: America

Hayek’s Spontaneous Order Goes Global with Instagram

Instagram user diegotrial

Several months ago when I heard the news about Facebook paying $1 Billion for Instagram I thought ‘the world was going crazy’.  My first impression was to think that the ruling scale of values was mistaken.  That people was giving value to unimportant things while the rest of the world was still trying to manage to survive the day.  I couldn’t understand Why would a company pay such a huge amount of money for a software application for smartphones and iPhone that is only used for procrastination and doesn’t create any value for the world? Last week’s volcanic eruption of Fuego Volcano in Guatemala made me change my mind.

The entrepreneurs behind Instagram,  Kevin Systrom and Michel “Mike” Krieger, created an application that was not only user-friendly but that enabled users to share images from anywhere in the world immediately.  Such an application was created (maybe unintentionally) to become one of the fastest image reservoirs of instant news and global interconnection.  When Facebook bought this photo-sharing app and paid $1 Billion they had not only bought the access to an essential function in millions of smartphones around the world but also connected visually the planet as we had never seen before.  Last week’s event in Guatemala was the first time in my life when I could see through my phone in Denmark high quality images of events that were taking place in real-time more than 5,843 miles.  Indeed, Hayek’s ideas of how an spontaneous order works was going global!

“Spontaneous order is what happens when you leave people alone—when entrepreneurs… see the desires of people… and then provide for them. They respond to market signals, to prices. Prices tell them what’s needed and how urgently and where. And it’s infinitely better and more productive than relying on a handful of elites in some distant bureaucracy.” Leonard Reed

To say that the world is interconnected and interdependent means to say that we are able now able of bypassing normal newsbroadcasters around the world.  No longer will be that easy for anyone to control what  the world would see and what the world wouldn’t see (as critized when News corporations around the world have been used to show a biased reservoir of images and videos during the Gulf War, or in the war in Iraq to mention some examples).  Now, with access to photo-sharing applications such as Instagram the world not only has access to interconnection of real-time events but also has what Hayek explained as “a more efficient allocation of societal resources than any design could achieve.”  Instagram is one more societal tool that enables us to achieve the best of humanity if used for the right purposes.  Because of this reasons the founders of Instagram earned  that billion dollars and the world is wealthier today.

We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say

Remember 1989?  Well, as argued by many scholars, that years was the culmination of global interactions that “dynamized in many places of the world crisis phenomena and synchronized, the resulting transformation processes Had they been previously locates primarily in a national framework, now its global dimension is obvious. Thus began both reflect on the established order of the world is understood relationship with their respective areas of sovereignty in the resolution, as well, should be designed as the new world order.” (Read more on 1989 in a Global Perspective).

“The MIT Technology Review explains how CSI’s model works: “The evidence comes from two sources. The first is data gathered by the United Nations that plots the price of food against time, the so-called food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN. The second is the date of riots around the world, whatever their cause.” Plot the data, and it looks like this:……”

Read more…

Graph: Poverty In The U.S. By The Numbers

The people at http://visual.ly/ prepared a very complete graphic with information regarding the state of poverty in the United States in 2010.  Just two years after one of the worst financial depressions the country had seen, the numbers of how 46.2 million people lived in poverty are impressing.  The graphic includes information regarding race and ethnicity, family, gender, State by State and Past and Present figures.

Supreme Court upholds Obamacare. Recommended analysis on its short & long-term effects.

Today, Americans who Love Freedom lost a battle against the Welfare State.  In a historical decision, the Supreme Court decided to support Obamacare and to extend the devastating track of health care regulations in The United States of America.

The effects of Obamacare will represent higher costs, less competition, less innovation, more bureacracy, and decreased quality.  and in the long run, the result will be the complete destruction of American health care, as the system’s problems are inevitably blamed on our ‘private’ health care system and a fully socialized ‘single payer’ medicine is offered up as the only cure as explained, Yaron Brook, the Director of the Ayn Rand Center.

To learn how today’s decision will impact your life in the short and long term, I invite you to read the following articles that were collected by the Classical Liberal network Kosmos with the opinions of some the most important Libertarian and Classical Liberals:

While Freedom lost a battle today; the fight for a limited government that protects individual rights, including the right to private property, will continue and we will not stop.

Live-streaming of The Atlas Summit Available for June 28-July 1, 2012!

Register for Live-streaming! I am very happy to inform you that The Atlas Summit that is going to be held in the following days in Washington, D.C. is going to be available for Live-streaming.Here is a link to the Speaker Bios and information on the topic of their talks.

I am very exciting about this event since I will be talking this time on the History of Capitalism in two sessions.  I will be more than happy if you can join and send any questions during the Q&A Sessions: The History of Capitalism 1 and The History of Capitalism 2

If you can’t be in D.C. for the Atlas Summit you can still view all of the presentations by purchasing a live-streaming ticket. You will even be able of submitting questions for the Q&A sessions.Cost: $99 for entire conference.Students: $19 for entire conference. Sign up now!