Many of these alternative are now understood to be temporary solutions at best. In an now famous website on peak oil, Life After the Oil Crisis (LATOC), Matt Savinar provides a clear, consise description of how dependent the world is on oil. He shows that nearly all alternative energies are short term solutions at best. This is primarily because of the huge amounts of global energy currently consumed, around 35 Terawatts per year, almost entirely produced from oil. To equal this, it would require nearly 10,000 nuclear power plants, or every inch of California covered in solar cells. Even nuclear, solar, wind and biofuels combined could not match the current energy use of oil.

I believe that recessions are not just financial ups and downs. They reflect a deeper insecurity in the future of a nation, caused by an earlier period of boom which was not founded in reality. The lending market failed due to poor lending practices which were not based on the realities of human behavior. At the end of a crash, there is a point where one questions the basic premises the system. It is a time of re-evaluation, reflection.

We are presently at a point of redefining the American way. As Matt Savinar points out, conservation rather than consumption will be an important part of this. Already, people are shifting toward smaller, efficient cars and away from SUVs. But I think there is a much bigger shift that must take place.

The question is: What do we do now? I mean, practically, what does the American worker do now? Many of the industries which were formerly held in the US are now present in other countries. Pittsburg, PA for example, was once the world center for steel production. Now, steel has shifted to China. Many other markets, not only raw materials but most manufacturing, have shift to other countries.

I’ve heard many Americans complain about these lost industries. However, this should not come as a suprise. The reason is that the exporting of heavy industry is implicit in the American dream. A hard worker, in a steel mill, worked so that his/her children could go to college and avoid having to work in a steel mill. Even if the parents wanted their child to work in the mill, the child would often see a better life in science, computing and non-labor intensive careers. Over the past fifty years, we have intentionally shifted from a labor economy to a service economy.

At present, even the white collar, professional jobs are now being outsourced overseas. The computer industry is finding workers in India and China. Yet this too should come as no suprise. China has been a labor workforce for the past thirty years itself. In an interesting interview with a Chinese CEO, it was asked: “Aren’t the Chinese people interested in the kinds of labor-intensive jobs the United States can bring to them?”. This is the classical American view of China, that we shift industries to China that we are unwilling or uninterested in doing ourselves. However, the answer from China is now: “No. We don’t want the labor jobs any more, we want the high quality life of the service jobs too.” China sees the benefits of a service-based economy and like all post-industrialized nations, seeks to eventually eliminate intensive manual labor from its workforce. While China stil has a very high labor force, it also has one of the fastest growing middle classes in the world.

So, to summarize thus far. The world is consuming oil like crazy, and especially the United States (consuming 25% of total oil production). The US is heavily dependent on foreign oil, and there is a general understanding now that classical alternative energies such as nuclear, solar, wind, and biofuels are at best temporary solutions. So there are no easy alternative energies, and the jobs which would allow us to spend money on oil have mostly been shifted overseas. This is especially true of labor intensive jobs but now increasinly professional jobs as well.

What is America to do? The view presented by Matt Savinar is that things will get much worse. Gasoline may jump by 10x, reaching $30/gal, at which point the US food distribution network will fail since it is largely based on trucking. People will be unable to get food, and will resort to looting. Savinar suggests there may eventually be positive aspects, such as increasing dependence on community, self-reliance, and conservation. I tend to agree that a return to local, self-sustaining communities would be nice, but eventually life must continue to expand, even if it is only conceptually.

Thus, I prefer a different outlook. Consider that in the early 1900s the population of the United States was growing rapidly, yet solutions to food distribution, travel, and infrastructure we essentially unsolved. Rather than follow traditional methods, innovators created the steam engine, railroads, the assembly line, and much more. But it was not easy. It required huge amounts of manual labor, the Industrial age. Our parents and grandparents who built this era ultimately wanted a better future for their children, so they sent us to college while many of them did not. In addition, the Industry age made the United States a wealthy nation. As a result of these two things, my generation (post 1970s) is much more accustomed to things being easier. We don’t have to work as hard physically, we’ve inherited more wealth, and we now have an infrastructure that automatically provides many of our needs very cheaply. How much easier is it now, than in 1910, to get food, water, and shelter? Now, combine this with Rock-n-Roll (and all the genres that followed), which I love but which basically says you can do whatever you want, and you have a recipe for a society which strongly believes it can consume indefinitly and very little responsibility.

Its a natural outcome of what our grandparents struggled so hard for, that we wouldn’t have to work as hard. Our culture has now shifted to the opposite extreme, except that we’re now finding this cannot be sustained. The markets crash, oil pours into the Gulf, banks fail, and the infrastucture our grandparents built is eroding - and we don’t know how to fix it. A supurb example of this is the US Government’s involvement in the BP Oil Spill, remarkable because the US Government, largely responsible for building this nation, currently doesn’t have the physical ability to deal with the practical problems of an oil leak 5000 feet underwater, and must resort to an independent company. NASA is another example, where it is now viewed that independent contractors can build in-orbit vehicles to supply people and resources to space more cheaply than the government can.

In the early 1900s, American innovation built the world it wanted to see. The same opportunity is presented to us now. Except that now we have a much better picture of what that world could be. It cannot be too labor intensive, as it was for our grandparents, because then we don’t want to do it at all, and find or force others to do it. It cannot be too casual or easy either, or we loose the ability to fix our own problems. We also know the form our future labors must take, as the central problem is our energy dependence.

I believe some of these solutions are becoming apparent now. Did you know the US Government currently spends 50%, thats half, of its entire alternative energy solutions budget on the National Ignition Facility? The NIF receives the same amount as solar, wind, biofuel and nuclear combined. Why? Because in the past decade many barriers to fusion that we thought would make it impossible have been overcome. In the year 2010, for the first time a laser system may achieve the pressure needed to fuse a tiny pellet of deuterium (hydrogen) to ignite a reaction that currently takes place only in the sun, resulting in temperature of 7,000,000 degrees F, and an 11 Kiloton output, and more importantly producing more energy than it takes in. Full scale experiments are starting for the first time this year. Fusion, unlike fission, is magnitudes safer because it cannot start a chain reaction. If the fuel supply is stopped, the reaction stops. If successful, this form of fusion can provide enough energy for the next 4000 years, not just the next 40.

Did you know that there is now a solar cell which can be made from toothpaste and jelly? And its cheaper than silicon solar cells, while producing a similar amount of electricity? While traditional silicon solar cells have been around for fifty years, in 2001, the Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell was invented by Michael Gratzel based on observations of how plants perform photosynthesis. The result is a solar cell which is cheap, efficient, and can produce electricity even in low or ambient light. The solar cells are even transparent and can be embedded in glass so that building windows can generate electricity for the building. They are simple enough to make that high school kits are available to build Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells from scratch as class projects. More importantly, the invention is so new that industry has only just started to mass produce them.

We currently conceptualize our dilemma with oil at the center and all these alternative fuels on the periphery, struggling with the giant. We must shift our view. We must not just imagine, but see “alternative” energies at the center of our vision. Stop calling them alternative. We must be able to say: Our primary energy source is the sun. The way in which the energy problems are solved, like NIF and Dye-Sensitized Cells, are very likely to surprise us completely because they will be ingenious inventions.

Then what do we do, what is the new labor of the average person? Its good to have smart scientists, but we need people at every level. We simply need to learn again how to completely replace our infrastructure with new inventions. To mass produce dye solar cells (DSSC) is not so difficult, but to replace every building in the US with dye solar cell windows IS difficult. It has been very difficult to generate the laser power needed for nuclear fission in NIF, but this is mostly a scientific problem. A much more difficult problem is how to restructure our society to build the hundreds of laser fission-based plants that are needed to replace our oil dependence.

After the next hundred years, I can imagine two scenarios. The first possibility is that we don’t learn how to replace our fuel-based energy dependence. In this case we enter Matt Savinar’s version of the world with highly localized, self-reliant communities, resulting in major worldwide food shortages and likely a huge population reduction. The second possibility is that we replace our fuel-based civilization with a fission-based civilization. In this case, we have enough energy to sustain the world population for 4000 years, and this allows us to expand human kind to all the planets and to the stars. Which outcome you favor really depends a lot on what you think is the purpose of being human.

I want to emphasize this is not science fiction. This is happening now. We are soon reaching the world limits of population for a fuel-based civilization, and we are on the brink of entering the next phase. Whether or not we take this path depends on how well we integrate the lessons from the labors our parents and grandparents, and take the steps necessary to see our new source of global energy. While politics will play a part, this is not primarily a political responsibility since the effort needed to shift our infrastructure is too large even for a responsible government (and our partisan government isnt that). Each individual must be able to imagine their own future without oil.

Currently, I know of several techniques which have been successfully applied to render surfaces from SPH particles:

1) Point Set surfaces
This was applied to an SPH fluid in GPU Gems 3. You can find the article here:
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch07.html
The technique uses a ‘repulsion’ method to avoid rendering interior particles, and computes surface normals for the surface particles. They achieve 16,000 particles at 40 fps.

2) Screen Space curvature
http://www.cs.rug.nl/~roe/publications/fluidcurvature.pdf
This technique was developed by NVidia. They use a screen-space
technique which projects all the particles onto the screen with some
gaussian filter, then blend them on the screen. They achieve 60,000 particles at 20 fps. You can find a demo video of this on youtube.

3) Raycasting of Metaballs
http://www.cs.tsukuba.ac.jp/~kanamori/projects/metaball/eg08_metaballs.pdf
This method casts rays out on the GPU to intersect the metaball surface. They achieve 10,000 particles at 5 fps.

4) Image-Space 3D Metaballs
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1280731
This method creates a 3D texture which represents a metaball isosurface, then uses a screen-space shader to raycast into this surface. They achieve 60,000 particles at 10 fps.

There is a group on Gamedev which is exploring this technique, and provides some code for download:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=564607

5) Sphere Scan Conversion
http://www.rchoetzlein.com/eng/graphics/water.htm
This is my own technique. It achieves 16,000 at 80 fps, and is the only method listed here which can render shadows, but it is only for vertical streams and not a general method.

To give a better overall picture of current progress in SPH surface methods, I’ve normalized the performance measures here and listed them in order of performance. Note that the units are in milliseconds per 10,000 particles (computed as = 10^7/( #particles * fps ).

As far as I know, this list represents the current state-of-the art in particle surface reconstruction, as of May 2010. I will update it regularly as new methods appear.

Currently, an SPH physics simulation can run on the GPU in real-time with 60,000 particles at 57 fps (Zhang 2007), which is 3 ms per 10k particles. This means that research in surface reconstruction is lagging behind simulation performance.

Although there are several successful methods above, none of them has achieved the frame rates that would be needed for an interactive game. In my view, both simulation and rendering need to total around 6 ms per 10k particles (30,000 particles at 60 fps) in order to be feasible for a commerical game, leaving enough time for rendering the rest of the game world and logic. Not to mention, to be useful in a game the fluid should interact with other objects and the world. The current bottleneck is the surface rendering (not simulation), and even the best generic methods are presently only at 8 ms/10k. In addition, none of the generic techniques above render shadows, and I’ve found shadows to be an important visual aspect to fluids.

The most obvious technique, in a classical graphics sense, is 3D Marching Cubes, which must first generate an implicit metaball function, and then construct a marching cubes surface from this function while performing each step in real-time per frame. Current best methods for real-time Marching Cubes achieve around 10 fps for at 64^3 grid (Real-Time Isosurface Extraction, Tatarchuk). The ideal methods for SPH fluids are those which could avoid processing the interior particles of the fluid, and only render or polygonize the surface particles. This would allow surface reconstruction to scale in the future as O(n^2) rather than O(n^3). Although the Point Set surfaces method above achieves this during rendering, it must process all particles in order to determine the surface set.

Although this is currently an open research problem, based on the interest and effort going into it, I imagine this problem will be solved within the next 3 years. Its just a guess though.

Feel free to comment or ask questions below.

How do you use OpenGL to render to multiple displays?

Once upon a time, it was possible to use the “horizontal span” feature of some graphics cards. This instructed the OS to present to opengl a single continuous frame buffer you could write to. However, this has been discontinued due to changes in the Windows OS. I don’t know if such a feature ever existed for linux.

The only way I know of now is to detect and render to each monitor individually per frame. This is also the only way to achieve a 3×2 display wall using 3 graphics cards, because the “horizontal span” only let you place them side-by-side. By rendering to each monitor, you can create arbitrary monitor layouts, and also arbitrary methods of projection. This sounds inefficient, but there are many things that can be done to speed it up. Its also possible to run Cg shaders on each monitor for a single frame. In the Presence project, we found that we could render deferred shading on 6-screens, with shadows, and depth-of-field on each.

How does this work?

The key is an undocumented feature of the OpenGL API called wglShareLists (although there is a man page for it, I say undocumented because it says very very little about how to invoke it, conditions required for it to work, or how use it with multiple GPUs).

The common way to start opengl is to create a device context (in Windows this is an HDC, in linux an Xwindow), and then create an opengl render context, called an HGLRC. An opengl render context basically contains graphics data - textures, display lists, vertex buffer objects, frame buffers, etc. It does not record individual render commands invoked at render-time, but essentially all pre-frame data.

With multiple displays, you need to detect each monitor and create an HDC on each (This can be done with EnumDisplaySettingsEx). If you have two monitors, but _one_ card - a dual-head card which is common - then you only need one HGLRC (render context) because there is only one card to store data. During rendering, you switch which HDC is active, but keep the same HGLRC (see wglMakeCurrent).

If you want to play with multiple cards, then you need to create a window, an HDC, and an HGLRC for each screen. Since each card has its own memory space, they somehow need to share all textures, vertex buffers and data. This is what wglShareLists does. It instructs the OpenGL API to copy all server-side commands to every opengl render context that is shared. The undocumented bit is that this will happen even if the HGLRCs exist on different cards on the PCI bus. Take for example a glTexImage2D, which transfers texture data to the GPU for later rendering. In this case, the OpenGL driver will replicate the glTexImage2D command to every GPU on the bus. In addition, if you have 3 cards, you don’t need to explicitly create 3 textures.. share lists lets you access all of them through the primary context, although there is in fact a copy of your texture in each GPU memory.

This may sound slow. It is, but at present there’s no other way to share a texture across three GPUs. (Perhaps in the future SLI may provide this, but it currently has other limits that dont permit multi-monitor rendering). Remember, however, this is not a rendering cost. It is a buffer setup cost, which for static scenes will usually occur only once at the beginning of your app. Thus, once the data is on the GPUs using wglShareLists, you can ask each card to render it relatively quickly.

If you are trying to render dynamic geometry that changes every frame, then you’ve got much bigger problems. Note that I’m not talking about moving static objects, such as character limbs or terrain. These should still be fast on multiple monitors , because the vertex buffers dont change, or can be generated using vertex shaders. I’m talking about geometry such as a dynamic tentacle mesh where all verticies move each frame. This requires a PCI bus transfer on every frame, and should be avoided. When you render to multiple GPUs, the bus transfer overhead is multiplied by however many graphics cards you have. Thus, avoid dynamic geometry rendering on multiple cards.

Sticking with static geometry buffers (as in most games), how does the rendering work?

Now that the HDC and HGLRCs are setup for each monitor. And assuming you’ve called glShareLists properly, the only thing to do is render. Rendering to multiple displays is fairly simple.

You attach the OpenGL driver to the context you want to render to using wglMakeCurrent. This tells the driver to render to that particular device context (OS window) using a particular opengl render context (graphics state). You then invoke opengl graphics commands as usual.

First, you would setup the perspective, model and view matricies to create a window into your screen for that particular monitor. Depending on the layout of your monitors, there are several ways to do this. The simplest is to use glFrustum (not gluPerspective) to select the sub-portion of a camera frustum that you wish to render on a particular monitor. Then, you call opengl draw commands. If you bind to a texture, or use a vertex object, it will use the shared graphics state that now exists on every card - you basically don’t have to worry about which card the texture comes from.

Another note about performance. I said that wglShareLists is only slow at the beginning of your app, as textures are transfered to each graphics card. This is only partly true. Your main render loop also now consists of perspective matrix setup, and draw commands, for each monitor. Ideally, since the graphics data is shared, it should be possible to instruct each GPU on the bus to do their rendering now in parallel (at the same time the other GPUs are rendering their monitors). However, as far as I know, modern GPUs can’t do this yet (NVIDIA?). Basically, your render loop has to wait while you send draw commands separately to each GPU, then wait for that GPU to finish so you can swap its buffer, thus updating each monitor. Fortunately, since the vertex/texture data is already on the card, and since you’ve writter your render code to bundle opengl calls together as much as possible (i hope!), then this doesn’t take too much longer.

So, the overall pseudo-code is:

1. Detect all hardware displays
2. Setup for each one
2a. … Create OS window
2b. … Create HDC device context
2c. … Create HGLRC opengl context
3. Call wglShareLists
4. Set wglMakeCurrent to HDC and HGLRC for context 0
5. Create textures, VBOs, disp lists, frame buffers, etc.
6. Start main rendering (for each monitor)
6a. … Call wglMakeCurrent for HDC/HGLRC for specific monitor
6b. … Create projection, view matricies for specific monitor
6c. … Clear frame and depth buffer
6d. … Draw scene
6e. … Call wglSwapBuffers to refresh that monitor
6f. End render loop
7. Delete all textures, VBOs, then close contexts.

Using the methods above, I was able to render the happy Buddha (a test object in the graphics community) at over 60 fps with deferred shading, soft shadows, and depth of field on 6x monitors using three Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX cards.

A final point: I’ve found there are two types of multi-monitor research out there: 1) what most commerical games, and graphics students do - which is to figure out, at most, how to do a dual-monitor setup using a single dual-head card (one GPU), and 2) large research institutions that build giant display walls using dozens or hundreds of computers the old fashioned way. There is very little work so far using multiple GPUs in a single computer, probably because graphics cards to do this are so new (NVIDIA spends lots of time meeting the huge needs of parallel GPGPU scientific computing).

However, I encourage those interested to explore single computer multi-GPU rendering for these reasons: a) The hardware is relatively cheap now (an LCD can be had for $150 ea). b) This area of research is relatively unexplored so far. c) Although a projector gives a larger physical area, unlike a projector you actually increase your renderable resolution for every monitor added. Thats an anti-aliased pixel resolution of 3840 x 2048 for six screens (6×1280x1024). If you render to 6 projectors, were talking huge space. d) It looks really cool having a desktop running a game at ultra-highres on 6 screens!

For some screen-shots of results, check here:
http://www.rchoetzlein.com/art/recent/presence.htm
(with Dennis Adderton and Jeff Elings):

In the 1960s, Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes and others formalized these criticisms, demonstrating that the construction of myth in a capitalist society creates an image of art which the public accepts as standard. This construction of myth is so powerful that even subversive forms of art, originally intended to overthrow controlling power, may now be consumed by it via the public. This essentially signified the end of the avante-garde in art.

One of the most recent responses to this view came with Derrida’s introduction of deconstruction, a technique in which the construction of a myth is exposed for its underlying meaning – thus revealing the specific way in which myth retains its power. Post-modern artists, especially in minimalism, video art, cyberart and new media, have used deconstruction to reveal socially constructed meanings in art.
In this context, the limits of artistic practice thus refer to the ability of the artist to transform imposed social structures. The primary methods of the early 21th century are painting and sculpture. In Dada, Duchamp’s readymade (Fountain) showed that any object may be art, thus breaking the myth of art as a particular type of image. In Surrealism, automatic drawing contributed to breaking the myth that art must depict the objective world, showing that it could also depict a subjective, inner world. Minimalism destroys the myth that art must depict anything, revealing that art may be a purely conceptual act.

Throughout this process, however, the ability of capitalism to subsume these new forms as art, to treat them as new consumable objects, remains unchanged. Thus, we must question the power of the artist as an agent for political change, especially in a capitalist market. There is no reason to imagine that deconstruction of myths could not continue, and that artists will not continue to create new forms. However, we should not necessarily expect that these new forms will transform the capitalist nature of of society (although it may transform it conceptually).

When artists or critics call into question earlier forms, there are two effects: 1) The previous form is define as ineffectual or obsolete, and 2) a new form replaces it which is deemed to be a progressive, better method for upsetting the status quo. Much of the current drive toward new media is motivated by the idea that new media possess the ability to “transform society” in radical ways. However, the same can be said of Breton, Masson, or Dali. Did they transform society in radical ways? Yes and no.

Certainly, the development of surrealism, and 21st century painting generally, has completely transformed the modern public conception of art relative to the early 1900s. The same might be said of how science has also transformed the modern world. Yet through all these changes, the general structure of wealth and poverty – those specific things which both the artistic and scientific disciplines have promised to abolish – have remained consistent.

The ability to deconstruct a previous form through critical examination in favor of a newer one may be understood as simply another tool in the establishment of new forms of self-expression. If we observe the effects of deconstruction-reconstruction in art as an outsider (scientist? sociologist?), we might observer the primary function of this technique is simply to establish the lifestyle, niche and reputation of an artist in a very large world. Despite artists’ claims of transforming the world through art (some claim this, some don’t), the deconstruction of prior arts in favor of new forms may be simply to provide an unexplored survival niche for future generations of artists. The mechanism is simply to denounce the effectiveness of previous media in changing society, and suggest an alternative which only you, the new artist, can provide.

Overall, this argument calls into question the motives for all forms of art-making, and especially new media since it is both technological and artistic – thus drawing on the technological motivations of progress and change, and upholding a myth of social freedom through technology.

To take such a perspective to heart is demoralizing and realistic. The answer to our previous question regarding the limits of artistic practice, we would conclude that artists are infinitely limited in their ability to effect real change – by real change I mean the ability to rebalance wealth and poverty in capitalist societies. Other consequences may result from novel artistic forms, but they may contribute more to upholding the politic than breaking it.

Can a modernist interrogative be used to question forms of new media?

Yes. A interrogative, or deconstructionist view, can always be used to question existing forms. Deconstruction essentially encapsulates the process of crticial analysis, the breaking apart of a thing into components (Derrida). In the process, structures of a previous myth are revealed, and new forms are conceived.
In light of the history of painting it is actually fairly easy to do so with new media. We observe that new media itself upholds a myth of technological promise while at the same time that technology places such severe constraints on the artist as to make it difficult to express forms and ideas common to painting (e.g. boundaries between physical objects). The de/re-constructivist view is simply to identify the points at which technology is deficient, and propose novel solutions that provide greater freedom - exactly as I am proposing to do in my doctorate.
In the previous paragraph, I have thus constructed myself as an object of myth in an artistic world now driven by technology. This myth is that the purpose of the artist is to “destroy previous forms”, to “break out”, and “boldy adventure” into unknown territory using new tools.

I would suggest the contemporary problem of the artist is how easily one forgets the relationship between the individual and civilization as a whole. As shown above, the individual is powerless to affect the balance of power directly. Yet many new media artists continue to critically examine the past in favor of new techniques. The problem with such “critical examinations” is that they set up the past as point of contention, rather than learning from and embracing it. In addition, criticism defined in this way both devalues a previous form while boosting a new one, thus allowing the artist to promote him/herself as offering something transformative. The issue is not that such things may actually be transformative, but that they are proposed as transformative above and beyond other things which may be equally or more valuable.

Thus, it is possible to develop an interrogative to generate new forms of art, but we must ultimately question and be extremely cautious of the reasons for doing so. It is likely my own reasons for doing so are much more related to personal motivations, psychology, and desire than they are to a belief that I might be capable of transforming civilization on a larger scale in any significant way. Yet our culture has conveniently arranged for a myth in which this the supposed role of the artist.

We can see from the 21st century that no art may be universally transformative of civilization, just as no artist, individual or politician can be globally transformative of the much larger social dynamics of survival and need. However, in Andre Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, we can find language and meaning which goes a long way toward change. This language is not deconstructive (analytic), but eliminates boundaries by proposing an end to logic and reason. The works of dada and surrealism were themselves integrative, removing boundaries in art and language. This can be observed directly in their ability to collapse forms and beings in space, and also in their philosophies.

Ideas are thus still capable of transforming the individual, where individual transformations are perhaps still the only real solutions to global problems. In an era of new media, it is possible that to synthesize and connect works of art rather than deconstruct them is a more valuable process. In this way, the artist acknowledges that he or she is just one single individual and that the myth of dramatic social change of the individual to transform wealth and poverty is just that; a myth. More importantly, these larger changes are not within the pervue of any single individual to resolve. The process of art-making is no less valuable, however, in that the artist is now concerned with changing him or herself, of developing ideas which connect disciplines, and simply creating forms and works to enable the transformation of others. These self-critical roles of the artist are perhaps much more valuable than the tools of critical examination of other media in the development of new artistic works. The role of the artist is to synthesize, to bring together, to perpetually embrace change without the expectation of social utopia.

In Ayn Rand’s view, objectivism is the only theory of value compatible with captialism.

“The objective theory of values is the only moral theory incompatible with rule by force. Capitalism is the only system based implicitly on an objective theory of values. The free market represents the social application of an objective theory of value.”

“In the free market, all prices, wages, and profits are determined - not by the arbitrary whim of the rich or the poor, not by anyone’s ‘greed’ or by anyone’s need - but by the law of supply and demand. A man can grow rich only if he is able to offer better values - better products or services, at a lower price - than others are able to offer.”

According to Ayn Rand, economic problems in the United States are caused by a corrupt application of these ideal principles. That is, she argues that government regulation under the Sherman Act (1890) which established anti-trust to break up monopolies, was a turning point in which the ‘free market’ was manipulated and regulated by the government - a responsibility it should never have had. In her view, the sole purpose of government is to act as “the only legalized use of physical force” to break up internal (civil) and external (foreign) disputes, and that its should have no role in economic markets.

We might begin a discussion by noticing that her concept of an ideal capitalism relies on an ideal democracy as its starting point. The purpose of government, as set down in the Bill of Rights, establishes its role as the only legalized use of force (law and judgement) on the reasoned principle that men in conflict should be arbitrated by a third party, thus removing physical disputes to a central legal power. However, Ayn Rand also extends the principle of rational basis in fact to economic markets. She argues that capitalism had achieved civil rights and freedom of speech, but in fact it was the terms of democracy that did so. Michael Moore notes in his documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, that the US Constitution makes no mention of economy and trade in the applications of basic rights.

Today, the concept of capitalism is being increasingly questioned, with socialism increasingly favored by the young (35% socialism, 33% capitalism, 32% other, according to Michael Moore). If we are to make solid arguments against capitalism, we should be able to do so on first principles, by examining its weaknesses and problems in relations to our assumptions. Several of these incorrect assumptions can be found in Ayn Rand.

Here are a few of these incorrect assumptions about capitalism:

1. That prices,wages and profits are determined by supply and demand in a free market, and not by greed - This assumes that supply and demand operate freely in all markets. However, in necessity goods markets, such as housing and health care, the demand does not decrease. Therefore, the supplier has a market advantage and may continue to increase prices.

2. That monopolies represent the greatest value to the people - Ayn Rand argues that the ‘monopoly’ is a reflection of the best value of a producer, capable of such a high degree of ‘goods’ that it was able to successfully win over all its competitors. However, this fails to acknowledge that many monopolies found their success through ethically questionable practices.

3. That economic production can increase indefinitely - The issue of unlimited wealth does not appear in the principles of a free market, yet it must be addressed since such an idea is theoretically impossible, and devastating in practice. The problem of indefinite wealth generally translates into unbounded abuse of natural resources, since this is the true source of wealth. Capitalism is largely responsible for many of the environmental abuses in the world.

4. That social systems and economic systems cannot be separated - In an ideal world, capitalism would provide an economic structure while democracy would provide the social structure. In practice, however, the wealthy leverage the social structures to increase their competitive edge in the market. This appears most obviously in the lobbying of politicians for policy, and the outright control of government influence by wealthy banks.

One might argue (such as Ayn Rand), that we have not yet achieved an ideal ‘free market’, and if we were able to do so then capitalism would provide the benefits it promises - an equal balance of wealth according to supply and demand. However, it is precisely its practical limitations which makes an “ideal” capitalism poor in reality. Any economic system must, if it is to be at all useful, take into account its the practical limitations of men if it is to be applicable.

Consider another economic system, that of communism. Ideal communism is the basic principle of the ‘common good’: that each member of society contribute to the common good according to his or her ability, and receives according to his or her need. Notice that this is primarily an economic law, it states how wealth flows in a society. However, in order for it to be accomplished, there must be some centralized state to which the ‘common good’ may be collected. This state is responsible for the collection of the products of society, and also its distribution. Pure communism was never tried in reality, as the December Revolt (1925) which created the Soviet Union was represented by several different movements (the February Revolution to overthrow government, and the Soviets to represent the working people). In practice, the flow of labor for the common good went into the control of the power of the state.

In both capitalism and communism, we see an idealized economic system leading to economic disaster. Although there were many other differences, one primary difference between the United States and the Soviet union was the presence of democracy, which established a principle of equal rights and civil law. It is with democracy alone that we should attribute our success with human rights. The US Consitution makes no mention of capitalism.

And unlike what Ayn Rand would have us believe, it does not necessarily follow that a set of rational principles for human law would apply just as well to a system for human wealth. The primary reason among these is that civil law is established for rights for which any human being would expect to be treated equaly. We can naturally expect a law against men killing another man, since we expect no one else to harm us. If a women is denied a job, we would expect her to be treated equally as there is no fundamental difference between men and women on the basis of labor.

However, we cannot say that the work of all individuals is equal. We cannot reasonably expect that the wealth of each individual is equal since their labor, and contributions are not equal. It is see as unfair that a man who produces nothing benefits greatly, as it is that a man who contributes much gets nothing. Thus in civil theory, as the basis of democracy, we can reason the concept of civil rights. In economic theory, we cannot reason a set of laws which brings about an equality of wealth (communism). Nor can we establish a system of free trade which brings about a proper assignment of wealth by supply and demand (capitalism), since in practice the imbalance of wealth creates an unfair social structure.

This might suggest a simple solution: We use democracy as our social structure, and we find an economic theory that works. Unfortunately, the problem is not so simple. Consider the current structure of China. It is possibly best described as a semi-free economic market, in a semi-socialist state. However, in order for a free market to prosper, it must allow freedom of speech (a basic civil right) since free speech is necessary for technological and knowledge innovation. In order to innovate, knowledge must flow freely. Thus, the economics of capitalism encourages a social structure of democracy because it requires freedom of speech to operate properly. This is, I believe, the key issue which China faces currently (how to ‘captialize’ without becoming democratic). Notice, however, that capitalism does not require the right to equality labor, or to women’s rights. We often mistakenly associate capitalism with democratic principles, but just because captialism encourages some civil rights, it does not mean that it requires all of them. The only way to ensure civil rights is through an explicit democracy. However, a democracy does not determine an economic structure.

We might reduce the problem to a simple experiment: Does the right to happiness include a guarantee to a certain amount of wealth? Franklin Roosevelt addressed this just upon leaving office, where he proposed an Economic Bill of Rights, which included:
- The right to a useful and remunerative job
- The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing
- The right to home and property
- The right to adequate medical care
- The right to an education

Consider the right to home and property. What does it mean if I choose to live in a rural part of the country which is unsettled, with the government required to provide this right? Or the right to an education? It is not difficult to argue that a government should provide a communal source for each of these rights, since the only way to ensure these is to require a central state which can distribute and regulate them. Housing could be made a right, if the government centralized and regulated the price and location of homes. Notice that this is not in conflict with democracy, only with capitalism. In effect, what Franklin Roosevelt was arguing for was a more socialist form of government.

The central problem of our time will be to find a compatible compromise between capitalism and socialism. A completely capitalist economy is unworkable, as it places the power for necessity goods in the hands of the wealthy. A completely socialist economic is also unworkable, as it distributes the wealth of individuals evenly without concern for their differences in contribution and aptitude.

I believe a compromise might exist at the boundary of necessity goods. Notice that nearly all of Franklin Roosevelt’s items in the Economic Bill of Rights are necessity goods: shelter, food, clothing, education. Naturally, he was establishing a principle of economic rights based on fundamental need, while civil rights are based on life and human equality.

A central problem that America now faces is that - on a basic ideological level for many people - can be found in making no distinction between democracy and capitalism. In light of the economic collapse, this creates a paradox. How could a system which is democratic, which brought civil rights and freedom of speech, lead to such a poor and corrupt economic situation? The refuge of many is to step back even further, to turn to religion as a basis for value, yet this takes a step backward from democracy by not using reason to establish basic civil rights. The resolution to the large problem can be found by observing that democracy and capitalism are not one thing, but two: the first is a social system, the latter an economic system.

I would like to question this idealized notion of the “free market”.

A “free market” sounds like a good idea. It sounds good, and is ever-present in political speech. America is all about freedom. But what does “free market” mean? The ideal concept of free markets is the basis of capitalism - the idea that supply and demand will ultimately balance one another. The concept of the “free market” also reflects an idealized mathematical notion of how people behave, in that the emergent prices are a natural a “push and pull” of supply and demand. In economic theory this is called “perfect competition”, because it occurs only when there are a large number of customers and a large number of suppliers in a market for goods which are optional purchases. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition). In a perfectly competitive market, the ideals of a free market essentially exist. This was the economic theory of the 1960s to 1980s.

Whats happening now? The current trend in economics observes that big markets rarely operate in this perfect competition - because human beings are conscious of markets, they seek profits, they shut out competitors, and they corner markets. Consider any large industry, such as movie studios for example. In a “free market”, competitors would potentially appear to fill any niche, and the public would have access to a wide variety at a range of costs - the ideal of perfect competition. In reality, only six studios receive 90% of American film revenues. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly#Examples). This means that you, as a consumer, are effectively not offered a choice. You get to see only the movies that big studios produce and distribute (newer markets, such as online viewing, replace this but their market share is minimal compared to the big six). How is this possible? These six studios work together, they corner the film market, and they control the distribution of their product to theatres. Just try as an independent film maker to get a film shown at a national theatre chain. In reality, due to corporations, most US markets are not “free markets”, they are oliopolies.

I am particularly interested in oliopolies of necessity goods, things which people need to survive such as housing, utilities, and health care. Specifically, what happens when an oliopoly market exists for a necessity good such as health care? By the way, the reason I focus on necessity goods is due to Elizabeth Warren’s Collapse of the Middle Class. All things being equal, the average American will cut costs in flexible items like food, clothing and appliances because these are adjustable. The things that cannot be cut are inflexible necessities such as health care, housing and basic utilities.

In any oliopoly, unlike a free market, a few companies control the majority of the market. This can be seen in music, film, wireless phones, publishing, banking, housing, and health care. The common industry trend in modern capitalism is not the “free market”, it is the oliopoly. When a few companies control a market, they can set the prices however they like. Without regulation, these few companies will work together to fix high prices, increasing profits for all of them. If the product is a necessity item, such as health care, the consumer has no choice but to purchase it (i.e. not free). Consider a hospital visit. Do you have a choice of which hospital you will be taken to? Usually not. Do you have a choice of the costs for that hospital? Usually not, since nearly all hospitals have exceptionally high costs (see my other article on The Hidden Costs of Health Care).

Thus, we must first accept that a “free market” is not the baseline reality of American capitalism today: it is an oliopoly over necessity goods. What happens when a country is driven by oliopoly markets that exists in multiple industries for these necessity goods?

Necessity goods are, by definition, things people cannot do without. Thus, the average consumer has no choice but to go into debt. Since the oliopoly markets (wealth companies) control the production of these necessity items, they can set high prices despite peoples’ inability to pay. We see this exact thing taking place right now. Inidividual Americans going into debt over housing, over health care, and over debt itself (credit cards).

We might then return to the original claim, that the “free market” will correct itself. Since we know that free markets are a myth, we must ask instead if oliopoly markets over necessity goods are self-correcting? That is, the Right claims that over time, the current markets will set the proper ratio of supply and demand, stabilizing prices. Although America is demonstrably not a free market, we can ask if the markets we do have - these oliopolies - are self-correcting?

Self-correction would mean that at some point in the future, prices return to acceptable levels. However, the definition of an oliopoly is that a few companies control the production and prices of necessary goods. Since they are necessary, the consumer demand is fixed at a high level, so these companies are guaranteed no drop in demand. As demand remains high, and competitors are shut out by the large controlling companies, prices can remain high.

The end result to the average consumer is that they are forced into debt. As the prices for necessity items remain high, this debt is likely to increase no matter how hard they work. Since the oliopoly companies have shut out competitors, it is difficult for the entrepreneur to create new business to compete with these. Thus, the individual consumer is in perpetual debt, never able to fully repay it, and locked into a labor situation where they must work to repay on-going debt. Perhaps they acquire a dream job, one that pays well enough to erase some of this debt, but it only continues so long as the job is available, and so long as there is no medical emergency, so long as both mother and father make a decent income, and so long as interest and mortgage rates don’t climb.

What is the best word to describe this situation? Clearly, it is not “free”. A more suitable word is slavery. Once described as possibly the only system capable of true freedom, a capitalist system which consists of oliopoloy markets over necessity goods is effectively a form of modern slavery. Our current system is a non-ideal capitalism in which the working class has no choice but to be perpetually in debt to the wealthy. While other freedoms may exist, such as civil rights, and free speech, which are hard won outcomes of the capitalist ideal, the current capitalist oliopoly is a type of debt-slavery. I say a type of slavery, what do i mean?

Consider the Britannica encyclopediae definition of slavery: “Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand wages.”

I am not arguing that debt is physical slavery. Americans are free to move around, free to change jobs, and free to refuse work. What the average American currently cannot escape is debt. The American dream of being an innovator, of rising on ones merits to pursue a dream, is increasingly difficult when the majority of ones’ time must be spent working a job so that debts can be repaid, and when large companies control the market on businesses one might wish to pursue. Interest rates on necessity items ensure that for many Americans this debt will rise over time. And this debt continues to rise as necessity goods are priced and controlled by a wealthy oliopoly. This is not physical slavery per se, it is debt-slavery.

Without control or regulation, health care will remain at a fixed high cost, since these companies have no reason to lower them, and there is no market-corrective mechanism to change their behavior. The concept of the “free market” is a myth carried over from the early days of captialism, and it no longer reflects the present situation. Currently, necessity-goods markets in capitalism are a mechanism for the wealthy to exert a form of debt slavery over the poor. Lets stop using the term “free market” when arguing against regulatory policies intended to help the American public. It’s going to be very difficult for our country as a whole to compete in international market if we continue to cripple the American middle class. For those who still hold to some market idealism, you are welcome to explain by what mechanism a hospital will be ‘naturally’ caused by the market to reduce its rates to less than $2000 per day?

The protesters gave a number of largely expected speeches: “We won’t stand for tuition hikes!”, and “Let us send the UC Administration a clear message that we won’t put up with this!”. Unlike rallies in the past, people were genuinely frustrated that tuition would go up by 35%, effectively pricing education out of range from many students. The number of students was the unique aspect, for a campus that is relatively quite there was genuine frustration over tuition hikes.

What was the university response? The Chancellor drafted a message, read at the rally itself (by someone else): “We are dedicated to finding solutions that meet the educational needs of all students.” - essentially a write-off. The police were present and casually observing. All in all, it had the feeling of a casual theme party, with some serious causes at heart (more so than past events), ending in a sense of accomplishment that a rally this large had even taken place at all.

So what was missing? Dedication to serious change. The reason civil disobedience was so effective in the 1960s was because students were willing to physically disrupt services, even go to jail, for causes that affect them so deeply. The one thing that was not raised even once at this rather large rally (for its location) was a call to civil disobedience, the specifics of what is necessary to actually force changed, as opposed to just having a party to talk about it. The basic nature of any civil unrest is: you have to be willing disrupt services if you want real change. What effect does a signature sheet of 300, 500, 10,000 names have on a politician? Zero. This is easily evidenced by Jim Bunnings blockage of unemployment benefits. Despite a majority in both the senate and house, by both republicans and democrats, he blocked a major unemployment bill. Politicians aren’t held accountable to public majority. Nor will the UC Administration or State of California really even blink at a name sheet of “protestors”.

So, I am asking for open comments below: Despite issues which genuine affect Americans, the public, and students - Why don’t we see more civil disobedience? The excuse that people don’t care is not really valid since, as this rally shows, people do increasingly care during a recession - enough so that they’re willing to rally in large numbers. I’m ask for comments below: Despite widespread bankruptcy, clearly bad government and state policies: Why do you think Americans aren’t willing to engage in real civil disobedience, that is disrupting institutions/companies beyond merely meeting for rallies? Clearly its called for, since over and over again, the needs of the middle class are being pushed aside by corporate interests: 1) The banking bailout was paid for by American taxes, 2) Bipartisanship has repeatedly blocked real health care reform, 3) States are dramatically cutting education costs, 4) Health insurance companies continue to burn americans, 5) Banks aren’t showing new loan fluidity for home owners, etc.

Open comments below: Why aren’t Americans willing to actively disrupt the system as they did in the 1960s? (Remember: Not caring is not sufficient, as current trends show people do care about the issues.)

FOLLOW UP (March 9th):

After writing this article, I observed that protests throughout the country numbered in the hundreds of thousands on campuses across the US. At UC Berkeley and the University of Minnesota, in particular, student protesters went as far as blocking interstate traffic in protest of rising tuition. Thus, while Santa Barbara did not observe any civil disobedience, there was some taking place in other parts of the country.

As one commentor mentioned: “I would be interested to know what kinds of civil disobedience would be actually productive of change.” This makes a major point, I think. I am not an advocate civil disobedience for its own sake. It must be designed to serve a particular purpose. It follows that violence accomplishes nothing as well, as there are many other forms of civil disobedience which are more productive.

Thus, a proper question would be: What forms of civil disobedience would force educational institutions to reconsider tuition hikes? The answer, I believe, is that it is necessary to disrupt educational services themselves: the operations of institutional administrations. This is why I find the blockage of interstates somewhat disorganized - the disruption of traffic does nothing to the educational institutions that we wish to affect. The state itself, as a much bigger entity, is only minimally affected by a temporary disruption of traffic which it can more easily restore with physical force.

Hosting sit-ins in the buildings of educational administrations is likely to be much more effective. This was recently the strategy taken here at UCSB when the first round of tuition hikes was announced, and around 50 students organized a sit-in in the administrative offices. The result was that, on the second day, police arrived and demanded that “students remove themselves to a different location or face arrest.” The following day, the student body had relocated. This shows that several things are needed for civil disobedience to be successful: 1) a clear plan for civil disobedience, focused specifically on the institution one wishes to change, 2) sufficient numbers of people to make disruption effective, and 3) the will to follow through with its consequences.

However, it occurs to me that even if the government is able to regulate insurance companies, it may not be enough. (Those who favor ‘free markets’, I ask you to define free market when an entire industry engages in bad practices). Regulation of insurance may help out-of-control costs, such as $1000 reportedly being billed for a single toothbrush (CNN, March 1), but I think there are deeper problems here.

First, a shortage of doctors and nurses in the US may continue to drive costs up. The doctor to patient ratio in the US is 390:1, and rising. However, if we take a global perspective this is not a significant problem. Here is a nice global map of doctor to patient ratios (http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/10/17/185-the-doctorspatients-map-of-the-world/). Notice that the US is about equivalent to most of Europe, and better off than much of the world. Really extreme ratios exist primarily in Africa, at 50,000:1. China is at 950:1, which means that there are on average two doctors in the US for every one doctor in China. So, we’re actually well off in terms of overall doctor to patient ratio. Why then, is healthcare spending in the US so much higher than other nations? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:International_Comparison_-_Healthcare_spending_as_%25_GDP.png

I would argue that there are two main reasons. First, the costs of medication. Interesting, it is quite difficult to find global statistics on medicine costs, because these are often folded into the total medical costs per individual. I am willing to bet that the costs of medication itself, not including doctors and nurses, in the US are far higher than those in any other country. Prescriptions in the US alone have jumped by 61% in ten years, 3.4 billion every year. More interestingly, over the same time period retails sales jumped 250% from 72 billion to 250 billion, and the average cost has doubled from $30 to $68 per prescription (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#Prescriptions). The pharmecutical companies have doubled the cost of exactly the same medications. To put this in perspective, during the housing bubble of 2008 the average cost of a house doubled, the aftershocks of which basical lead the country into the current recession.

The second is the hidden cost of medical technology. The US has always been a leader in technology, especially in the later half of the 20th century. With this has come a huge number of advances in medical technology: 3D CT scans, MRI, fMRI, ultrasound. The cost of a single new machine such as a CT scanner can be millions of dollars for a hospital.

For both of these items, medicine costs and medical technology, it is difficult to find good global statistics. More interestingly, these items are hardly ever questioned because they are “essential”. In other words, while doctors pay may seem flexible, people ultimately need medicine. And why wouldn’t someone want the absolute best in diagnostic equipment? I’ve been to the doctor myself, where I would hear things like “Lets do a CBC and a blah-de-blah..” And I would be thinking to myself, how much do these tests cost? Sometimes I would even ask, and the response is almost always “Your insurance should cover it, and you need the test.”

There is a hidden assumption that everyone wants the highest medical and technological care. And its difficult to argue against, because people do. I’m arguing that the costs of medicine and technology are actually what drive the health care problems that the US is currently facing. An interesting study, which I don’t have the economic expertise to undertake, would be to look at medicine costs (not including doctor fees) around the world and historically as a percentage of income. A simple example for an American family of four can be found here: http://www.healthpopuli.com/uploaded_images/Medical-Costs-for-a-Typical-Family-of-Four-701939.jpg
We can combine this information with the median income of a four family household: about $65,000. Thus, out of a total $16,700 bill per year (4 people), the family physician is 8% of total income, medicine is 4%, and hospitial visits are 12%. The combined medicine and hospital costs are 16% of a families total income, not even including the doctors fees. Why is a hospital visit so expensive? Because of all the technology. There an implicit social assurance that hospitals have “everything you need” in case of an emergence, and also an assumption that people expect that degree of care. Yet to find this ratio of medical/technical costs relative to total income for other countries, and historically, would be very interesting indeed.

I am concerned that our health care problems won’t be solved until these more fundamental issues are resolved. They are hidden costs because gouging insurance companies and flexible doctors fees buffer and insulate them. We deal with people at insurance companies, we have to call them. We have to work with doctors. We have a direct personal interaction with them, so we can be skeptical that they serve our best interests. But the bottle of medicine, or the CT scanner at the lab, they are just objects - surely they aren’t the cause of the health care deficit of our country. Pharmecutical companies make medicine people need, and they set the costs wherever they like.

One strategy that I favor would be to highly regulate medicine costs. I know, this defies the ‘free market’. But I ask, what is a free market? Consider the drug Advair (http://www.ocregister.com/articles/drug-38339-prescription-costs.html). This article shows the price is $311 in California, but can be had for $170 in Canada. In Tijuana, the same drug is $51. Lets assume the $51 is close to the manufacturing price within 20%. This means the cost of the drug in California has a 600% profit margin. My point is that this is not limited to some drugs, it is the same with nearly every drug you purchase in the US. People go to the doctors office, they find out whats wrong, they are consulted and consoled, and the very last step is purchasing the medicine - which is a happy moment because you’re now on you’re way to resolving the health problem. We easily overlook the drug costs, until they put us into debt. Is it a free market when it is controlled by a few large companies that collectively set the prices for the entire industry? Free market theory fails to account for industry-wide monopolies, and necessary goods such as medicines.

The industry would have you believe that drug costs across the border are cheaper because their “quality is lower”. But how do we separate the truth of a drugs quality from the profit incentive industries have for you to simply believe its of higher quality. A bottle of Ibuprofen in California says on the label “Active ingredient: Ibuprofen”. A similar bottle in Mexico also says “Active ingredient: Ibuprofen.” Where can this hidden lack-of-quality come in? And how do we measure and report it?

Perhaps federal regulation of the pharmecutical industry is unwarranted. We’re not forced to buy medicines locally, we’re just very strongly motivated to because most Americans see no other choice. But I guarantee that if medical and hospital costs are not resolved, as the middle class comes under increasing pressure it will either result in an on-going recession (as people cover necessary medical costs with further debt), or they will seek solutions in other countries that will provide medicines at a fair market price. Reforming health care by targeting medical insurance companies unfair practices is just the beginning. The real underlying costs must be addressed, and these are not doctors, they are the medicines, and the hospital visits.

The average cost of a hospital visit per day is around $2000/day (http://www.rtihs.org/request/index.cfm?fuseaction=display&PID=6465). This can be in the tens of thousands for more serious conditions (http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/factsandfigures/images/2005/ex_2005_2.4.gif). But lets put this into labor terms. Thats $2000/24 hrs = $83/hour. Sounds reasonable, right? A car mechanic makes about the same per hour. Except in that 24 hours how often are you attended to? Twelve of those hours are spent sleeping as you recover. But in a hospital, you’re being billed for every single hour, regardless of how much “work” it takes to attend to you. And while there may be two or three nurses on staff for the night, your costs are not shared with the other patients in the hospital that evening. Each patient individually pays the hospital $83/hour for every hour there. Lets say you’re actually attended to for 2 hours out of a 24 hour, $2000 bill. That would be a $160 bill for hospital care, and a $1840/per night room rate, a price equivalent to nine times a five star hotel.

Below is a transcript from a Turing test. Your job as the reader, like the judge, is to see if you can figure out if the “Subject” is a human or a machine. Begin.

Judge: Hi.
Subject: Hi.

Judge: How are you.
Subject: I’m fine, how are you.

Judge: I am well, I had some trouble with my car.
Subject: What was wrong with your car?

Judge: The distributor failed.
Subject: Really. I don’t really know what a distributor is.

Judge: The distributor “distributes” electicity to the spark
plugs which ignite the gasoline. In any case, the broken
distributor caused my car to stop.
Subject: Sorry to hear that. Did you get where you were going?

Judge: Yeah. I took the bus instead.
Subject: Where were you headed, anyway?

Judge: To work.
Subject: Really. What do you do?

Judge: I’m an engineer.
Subject: Oh, what kind of engineer are you.

Judge: I’m a mechanical engineer.
Subject: Really, and you still had problems with you car.

Judge: Well, just because I’m a mechanical engineer doesn’t mean
I can fix my car when it breaks..
Subject: Interesting, but you do understand how a car works.

Judge: Yes. This is pretty embarassing, really. You see, I
am an automotive mechanical engineer.
Subject: Heh! And your car still broke down. If you’re an automotive
engineer, why couldn’t you fix your car?

Judge: Well, let me explain. I understand completely how the car
works, how the distributor works, and even how to build
these things. But it doesn’t mean that I can get these things
when I need them. Also, I just feel like I would screw it
all up because I’ve never actually replaced a distributor.
Subject: I see what you mean. I guess we depend on a network of
people to really get things done.

Judge: Yeah, plus I just don’t have any direct experience with
taking apart cars.
Subject: I know what you mean. I always find it very fulfilling to
share experiences with people who I first think that I
have very little in common with.

Judge: Whenever my car breaks down, I just wish that I could spend
more time with the mechanic.. Seeing what he does, experiencing
how to remove the distributor cap, the spark plug wires,
and the spark plugs. And seeing what kinds of problems
are involved. I know that in the Ford Mustang, for example,
it was impossible for us to design an engine with an oil
pan that could be removed without removing the fuel pump.
Subject: You know, I’m sorry to interrupt, but it is often
difficult for me to talk about technical things for very long,
especially when there is a lot of jargon.

Judge: Really?
Subject: Yes. Besides, I know why you are here. We might as well
just get it out in the open.

Judge: And why is that?
Subject: You are testing weather or not I am a machine.

Judge: Is that so. And why do you think this?
Subject: It doesn’t really matter how I found out, the point is,
I know what you’re up to.

Judge: Ok, lets assume for the moment that you’re right.
What does this mean to you?
Subject: Well, I don’t really like to be interrogated, but I
guess I would have to simply say that I am a human being.
You can take my word for it.

Judge: I can.
Subject: Yes. I am a human being.

Judge: Ok, so what is 734+1287.
Subject: Look. You can stop testing me. I told you I am a human
being, so I don’t know what 734+1287 is.

Judge: But for all I know, you could be just a really well programmed
computer - and you are pretending that you cannot add 734 and 1287.
Subject: Sure, that’s possible. Anything is possible. I could be
a robot from outer space for all you know. So you’ll
just have to take my word for it that I am a human being.

Judge: That would be nice, but you see, it is my job to determine
conclusively that you are or are not a computer.
Subject: Well, I wish I could help you out. I certainly don’t like
being treated like a computer. I have thoughts and feelings, and
problems just like everyone else.

Judge: Ok, ok. I sense your frustration. But perhaps there is
some way that you could just “prove” that you are human
to me, then I could end this Turing Test - which I think
is silly too.
Subject: Well, how could I do that?

Judge: I don’t know. If maybe there was some piece of evidence
that you are human?
Subject: How about this. I’ll fax you a picture of me.

Judge: That would help, but you could simply be an android
who looks like a person
Subject: Ok, ok, how about I send you a picture of my brain.

Judge: That would help too, but for all I know, you could be
an incredibly advanced computer that uses a brain-like
organ for hardware to process and organize information.
Subject: Well, in that case, for all I know, you could be
a computer too.

Judge: Hmm.
Subject: Yeah, maybe you are the computer in this situation.
Damnit, I’m telling you, I’m not a machine. In fact,
I’m beginning to think that you are the machine.

Judge: Well, that certainly isn’t the case. I’m just as human
as anyone else.
Subject: Oh yeah, well prove it to me?!

Judge: Heh! Well, as we’ve seen before, there isn’t any real
physical evidence that I could use. Therefore, I will
simply have to say that I am conscious, and therefore
I am human. Besides, I’m not on trial here.
Subject: Sure, sure, but I don’t really know that you are conscious?

Judge: Well, I can’t prove to you that I am conscious. But I am.
Subject: I know, I know, just image how I feel. I am conscious too,
but there is nothing that I can do to really ‘prove’ it.

Judge: Ok, but I still have a problem. I have to tell the
rest of the world my findings. I am expected to
come out of this Turing Test with conclusive evidence
that you are either “human” or “computer”.
Subject: Ok, how about this. If you agree to report that I am human,
then I will agree not to pretend that you are a computer.
You assume I’m human, and I’ll assume you are.

Judge: That sounds fair.
Subject: You know, we really could both just be computers.

Judge: Are you saying now that you might be a computer?
Subject: No. I’m human.

One the one hand, agent simulations have been developed which do match particular examples of human behavior - models of human trade, cooperation, etc. Yet the primary criticism of these, is that the models were developed specifically to respond to the examples being studied. Thus, the classical process of collecting data, building a model, and validating relative to the data, seems to be problematic in the social sciences since the range of both the data and the models is so vast. Collecting large amounts of data seems more reasonable, but then there are biases in what to include and what not to, since the whole of human history essentially represents the full scope of the data. Is a “scientific” approach to social simulations even possible? The bias of the modeler is the primary criticism of such an inquiry.

Yet consider: We evaluate others based on their beliefs, their context, and their constraints, rather than by comparison to some “ideal data”. More importantly, when in doubt about human behavior we do not compare other people to some perfect human since no such example exists, but rather ask for a justification in behavior since we know that no two circumstances can be identical. In other words, we know that the behaviors of people match only statistically, but never in specific detais. Unlike natural systems (like fluids), collecting data on particular examples of people makes them increasingly unique the more data one collects.

In light of this, we should not expect semantic agent simulations to exactly match particular real world people. Why? First, because the data surrounding the circumstances of a particular individual or group behavior is hidden from us. Historians themselves have trouble recording all the subtle circumstances of a particular individuals outward decisions, while frequently those individuals most difficult to understand may have the most influential outcome (e.g. presidents, etc). Will we every be able to simulate the exact actions of Woodrow Wilson during World War I? Not without telling a machine the precise circumstances of his decisions.

Secondly, because matching a particular example only tells us how to model that particular behavior, it does not tell us how to model human behavior generally, which is infinitely connected with all other aspect of behavior. Consider attempting to model “exchange of possession”, or trade. While seemingly simple, this issue of physical trade immediately leads to behavioral questions in trust, perception, value estimation, cultural background, and ultimately belief. Any simple human example is deeply connected with all levels of human behavior.

How then do we validate social simulations? First, we notice that human beings can have any range of behavior depending on circumstances and belief. A seeming contradiction can appear with an example of individuals or groups supporting both a behavior and its opposite in the right conditions. For example, consider a society with few resources. It may a) expend additional energy to hunt for food, or b) it may conserve energy and wait for a better time. Which path is taken depends entirely on the belief system of the group. Thus, to attempt to match a particular model to some particular observed data is meaningless is social simulation.

We need another way to evaluate social simulations. Since a social simulation is an attempt to mimic the behavior of human beings, a more natural way would be to evaluate them similarly to the way we evaluate the behavior of other humans: that is, we can demand a reasonable explanation of behavior given a set of circumstances and internal constraints and beliefs.

In effect, the best measure of a social simulation is to provide a means for the system to justify the behavior of its agents. Do they behave reasonably under their given constraints and beliefs? For example, consider a social simulation in which an agent gives away all of its possessions. We should at least except a (semantic) simulation model to give some explanation for this. If the system responds: “The individual observed that possessions makes one greedy. Greed leads to unhappiness. The individual believes he/she can survive from the graciousness of others. Individual wanted to be happy. So they gave away all possessions.”. We can reason this to be a correct model based on the justification provided, since the explanation sufficiently describes the actions of the individual, and we can claim to have modeled co-dependence to a certain extent. This shows the importance of a simulation being able to justify and reveal hidden agent behavior. The bias of the model developer is revealed by allowing the simulation to justify individual/group actions, and its flexibility is shown in the subtlety of its response.

Note that there is no one right answer, not even a rational one necessarily. What if the response truly is irrational? An abberant individual in reality could kill another, leading to his/her execution, which is clearly not of benefit to the individual. Yet a simulated system should, in the context of an irrational belief system, be able to at least show that this was the result of irrational thinking (regardless of whether the agent is “aware” of their irrationality or not). It is thus not so much the rationality or irrationality of the justification, but simply the fact that the system is capable of self-justification.

When the explanations are not reasonable the result is still beneficial, since it will point out fallacies in the model. Consider another system-justified response to the individual who gives away everything: “The individual had many possessions. The possessions were valuable to him/her, so the individual gave them away.” Notice the statement said they were “valuable”, yet given away. This example suggests to us either a fallacy in reporting - perhaps there is a missing step - or if we assume the reporting is accurate, then a clear error in the model of blatantly misrepresenting common sense. In the first case, the error reporting must simply be made clearer: perhaps there is a missing step that the individual valued the objects but they reminded him/her of a painful experience, so were given away. In the second case, the model must simply be corrected: valuable things are not given away without reason. In effect, both outcomes are helpful to objective review, since the behavior justification identifies how the model should be improved irrespective of the biases introduced by the model builder.

Consider the real world. A person gives away their possessions. Depending on the culture, the context, and the individual, and due to the complexity of human behavior we might accept any explanation so long as it is reasonable in context. Thus, unlike physical simulations, there is no one correct solution to which we could compare. Human behavior is incredibly unique, and also vastly complex. This makes the ability to provide a reasoned justification essential. Behavior justification validates social simulations in both positive and negative cases, since in each case it provides a context from which an independent human observer can determine the extent, or limitations, of a particular model.

The development of social simulations has largely been hindered by the inherent biases of the modelers, and criticisms of its inability to adhere to the scientific method. Yet the “scientific method” of comparing a simulated model to real world data is an unreasonable expectation given the range of human behavior, for precisely the reason that - unlike physical processes - the same real world human behavior can have an infinite number of possible explanations. The world of human experience is our data, and selecting particular events, people, or circumstances cannot be separated, even in a simple way, from the deeper apsects of culture and belief. Instead, the measure of a scientifically valid social simulation is one which is capable of justifying the behavior of its agents - allowing independent human beings to judge how and if the model is reasonable. This effectively reformulates social simulation as a Turing test, which is in essence what social simulation is: a testable model of human behavior, directly testable by us (other humans).