AMBIGUOUS ECONOMICS

Off the Wall

Most of America’s internal problems emanate from a slave-state vestige that calls for 'the designation of the other’. Segregating people based on race, color, creed, religion or geography is not the way forward. The fact that we project these ‘values’ on other countries as part of the ‘nanny state’ mindset will likely come back to bite us.

American history—in an admittedly reductive nutshell—is a checkered past of slavery, indentured servitude, sunset communities, jim crow, segregation, socioeconomic division by class is predicated by the notion that there is a so-called ‘wrong’ side of the tracks.

Binary thinking fit for racist overlords. Don’t like your neighbor? Build a wall.

“We’re going to build a wall, and Mexico is going to pay for it.” – the don

Bad Fences

It is said that good fences create good neighbors. But just as good can mean either ‘benevolent’ or simply ‘a product meant for consumption’, the proof is in the pudding pop. The destruction of the longstanding post-war friendships between neighbor states is currently emboldened the fascist administration of the day, threatening the world order. Do ‘good neighbors’ engage in predatory trade wars? Neither definition of ‘good’ works, no matter how it’s defined. When things make sense in more than one context, the closer we are to ‘truth’… whatever that is.

The Berlin Wall was an ‘enhanced’ fence in the sense that it did its job in the Cold War by separating people from one another. It separated the Eastern and Western superpowers and conveniently aligned with either communism or democracy. Communist countries called for iron fists, oppression of people and the suppression of human rights. Democratic republics represented the ‘free world’. This has changed under current ‘leadership’.

“You want me on that wall! You need me on that wall!” – Col. Nathan Jessup

Fence Sitting

Morally ambiguous agents, so-called ‘apolitical’ agents, are disingenuous to the core. In cases of import, choosing ‘neutrality’ is farcical. Overtly choosing the side of evil may be something much worse in scale, scope, and order of magnitude, but the acts are in the same ballpark.

Man is a political animal. If someone dislikes having difficult discussions about & the merits of decision making, that doesn’t mean that they can get away with playing the wall. It’s more likely that one has a political preference or inclination and fears reprisal. Choosing subterfuge instead of deciding, silence instead of speaking out, and tacit conformism, if not outright endorsement of the worst-case scenario, is the way of a coward.

“If you choose to remain neutral in times of oppression, 

then you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” 

– Nelson Mandela (7/18/1918 – present*)

Whitewashing Gray Matter

You know the story: Tom Sawyer enables another boy to whitewash a fence. Granted, the other boy does the deed under his own volition. In the book by Samuel Longhorn Clemens that bears Tom’s name, Tom institutionalizes a gray market child labor camp and he is happy in his work.**

Whitewashing has a secondary definition using conformist language to appease white nationalists and their fascist agenda as they stamp out Civil Rights, vacate Diversity initiatives, and fracture our educational foundations. As a result, the fourth pillar of our democracy, the Free Press, and all rights explicitly granted Americans under the First Amendment. Our shared knowledge base depends on the mass media’s oversight of the three branches of government and the fourth pillar of our democracy: the media.

Post No Bills (or ‘Kilroy Was Here’)

The current administration recently banned MS.NOW, cnn, and politico from entering the White House grounds. Its decisions to bring about sanctions on a ban of the Free Press run afoul of the very nature of our democratic republic, specifically the First Amendment.

Economic Ambidexterity rejects outright sitting on the fence or, perhaps albeit counterintuitively, sitting on a pole. Dawdling? No. Pussyfooting around? Nope. Diddling about? Maybe… can you be more specific? Making decisions to make the most efficient expected outcome? Absolutely.

Enlightenment is NOT brought about compromising to search for a so-called happy medium. Equilibrium is NOT an attempt to reach a golden mean through arm-twisted capitulation euphemized as compromise.

The Ambidextrous Economist is being intentionally pedantic at this point by pressing the notion that a cursory cost-benefit analysis isn’t enough. Enlightened thought is NOT brought about searching for a middle ground that causes you to compromise your values because you can’t muster the huevos to MAKE A GODDAMN DECISION.

On the other hand, kompromat is brought about a golden shower delivered by no less than three russian prostitutes.

Present Day Blues #26

Nature abhors a dichotomy. Continuums abound in gender, racial identity, and complex, nuanced problems. Solutions are rarely binary by design.

It rightly gives one pause when someone thinks about artificial intelligence as a binary construction at the base level. Machine code is either a one or a zero. At the micro level, rational thought takes a tad bit more than that. It takes gray matter of synapses working in concert and tissue that is organic, living, and breathing. Combinations of the full spectrum of colors both seen and unseen by human eyes can be approximated by black and white and perhaps grayscale, but reality—if that’s what we’re looking to describe—is likely more nuanced than that.

The argument could be made that relying on the give & take required to render rational, efficient decisions. There is room for reasonable discourse… up to a point. Then there’s just artifice, slop, and the parlor tricks that generative models use to impersonate the incredible anatomy of the human brain, the reasoning process & extraordinary achievements through communication and even the hive mind of humans working in concert. In its current infant terrible phase, generative artificial intelligence pilfers art, knowledge, resources to exploit them shamelessly. It does it under the guise of efficiency.

When goals and objectives become more about overcoming constraints through obstruction of justice, election interference, to stifling competition (cf. U.S. v. AT&T, 1/1/1984), abandoning free trade, and generally making a mockery of the idea of ‘one person, one vote’, then tread lightly, indeed.

[The electoral college has entered the chat…]

The Invisible Hand, The Black Hand, and A One-Armed Bandit

The entire body politick is at a major inflexion point. All our institutions have problems. That’s always been the case. It’s the nature of public policy. Get the facts, hash it out in debate, and then the best idea carries the day. That’s the idea, anyway.

republicans CREATE problems by inventing them. they INVITE more problems. EXACERBATE problems.

The republican party invents conflict by hoarding wealth accumulated through wage theft and exploitation that NEVER trickles down to the masses. That’s why George Bush, Sr. called trickle-down regressive tax policies ‘Voodoo Economics’ before indoctrinating himself into its primary practitioner.  

So-called conservative causes are fueled by dark money enabled by the citizen’s united decision. This oversight, or lack thereof, depending on the context in which the word is used, has the executive branch running pay-to-play diplomatic cryptocurrency schemes out of the Oval Office.

Ever since the chief executive ordered the razing of the East Wing, a feckless republican Congress has twiddled its thumbs, and the supreme court raised its hands in surrender to the wannabe dictator.

When republicans are not starting forever wars-of-choice in the Middle East, there are enough resources for Democratic administrations to invest in infrastructure. In the absence of trade wars with our allies, there are enough resources to feed, house, provide affordable healthcare options (e.g. the positive NPV proposition of providing Medicare-for-all). We live in a world of abundance where resources SHOULD be reallocated to their highest valued use. That’s the very definition of efficiency.

Think about the problem. Examine all angles of the argument. Yes! But… ultimately work toward an ‘expand the pie’ framework that enriches and improves all of humanity, communities, and inspires municipal, provincial and all levels of government to work as agents working for their principal constituents. That’s how public policy works in a functioning democracy. Relying on the philanthropy of the billionaire epstein class—expecting them to stop using tax shields—is an exercise in futility.

As a result, our civic institutions and true philanthropic ventures have increasingly come under fire. To be blunt, it’s the outright dismantling of our nation’s institutions through the administration’s assholery unbounded.

Junk

The negative externality of space junk created in the exploration of space is how Sandra Bullock’s character, Ryan, the protagonist in the film GRAVITY, got stranded in space. That space junk event is ultimately how George Clooney’s character died during a spacewalk.

We can do without a thousand-plus satellites. One super satellite can do the same as starlink.

In a perfect world, the agent and the principal are aligned in interest and incentives. But in the face of diametrically opposed choices (i.e. the absence of a continuum) there is no fallacy in making a straight up black-and-white, unidirectional, zero-sum decision for or against something-something if the choices appear binary in nature. This is true unless you’re playing 5-D chess.

Under the current administration, the United States ‘chose’ authoritarianism, the nightmare that was doge, a bully pulpit, the sanctioned destruction of public buildings and property, and a vote-suppressing apparatus relying on massive mail fraud conspiracy that would make Al Capone blush.

Sitting on their hands, explicitly endorsing the anthropomorphic fictional legal entities by recognizing corporations as ‘people’, the so-called conservative justices of the supreme court are on the take, operating without a moral compass. The appointees that took an oath on a bible to be ‘apolitical’ while rendering decisions that personally enrich themselves and their spouses.

Those rulings often rely on 6-3 majorities borne through the manipulation of the political process orchestrated by mitch mcconnell in the Senate. The current administration has had their thumb on the scale of justice and peeking through its blindfold since the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The same six justices committed perjury in their confirmation hearings vis-à-vis the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Does a six-person majority of political idealists on the take constitute ‘justice’? Or would a large language model consider that to be an ‘opinion’? Because it is an opinion, established precedent, ‘super-precedent’, and overturned law all at once.

For his part, the head of the executive branch is presently off the chain and out-of-pocket. He’s stealing from the till offering sweetheart deals to longtime American enemies and lining his own fat pockets at the expense of American taxpayers. Alienating American allies through manufactured trade wars. And without a fucking clue how to define ‘trade deficit’, the chief executive has a natural, intuitive sense of how banana republics operate.

The two houses of Congress remain feckless under republican rule. They are on perpetual vacation. It’s an election year, and timing is a pressing issue with respect to regulation of artificial intelligence and ongoing hot and cold wars.

Only an intentionally hobbled fourth pillar of democracy, the Free Press, remains standing. On Friday, September 18, 2026, the administration “banned” MS.NOW, CNN, and Politico, an overtly illegal act that undermines to the founding document of our country, the Constitution, and the freedom of the press afforded by the First Amendment. Social costs that invite suffering and pain upon the populace served up in a cardboard box by the chief executive.

The American Experiment is just that—an experiment. We need to remember that. Action arrives via the ballot box, USPS Informed Delivery™ with or without Forever Stamps™, or not at all. Or perhaps just paying the bare minimum to extract value is a mistake. Through a war of choice and an isolationist policy bent on alienating its allies and befriending known foes would seem foolhardy if it weren’t so deliberate. It’s by design.

Take that assessment either with a grain of salt or at face value. It’s free, right? 

It’s a precarious path that we travel when executives choose their own enrichment over basic subsistence of the working poor. But since blanket immunity has been handed to the chief executive, and /s since he has never been wrong before /s then why worry?

Interesting Times

The existential artificial intelligence threat is not a ‘hoax’, just as functional brain matter and the concept of the mind aren’t hoaxes. ai is the challenge that will determine the destiny of the future itself, so it doesn’t exactly fit the billing of the label: ‘fake news’. That being said, the first degree of freedom is the option to do nothing at all. But, as always, it depends.

Ostensibly, under the classical model, a computer program would do what it was asked without any proverbial gray area or ambiguity. Five nines reliability. But with the introduction of inductive approximation algorithms (cf. “guesstimates”) that rely on ingesting data and making assumptions, moving forward with those assumptions and then hiding behind a disclaimer (cc: large language models), the evolutionary rules have changed midstream.

Using the data it can maximize benefits at the lowest possible cost there’s a likelihood the large language model would make it up as it goes along—‘fake it ‘til it ‘makes it’—as it were—until unchecked agents can rationalize that the resources they depend on are more precious than water (or ~something like that~). Thus, owners of these machines, currently referred to as ‘data centers’, pursue nefarious objectives, exploiting knowledge to extracting value from sources without regard to the costs, human or otherwise.

Thrifting

Ed Sheeran is currently facing a freefall from superstardom. In modern parlance he’s being canceled. This happened because he chose to remain apolitical on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. In particular, the genocide in the Gaza Strip was whitewashed.

Macklemore—a Washington state rapper, supporting artist on Sheeran’s ‘loop’ tour, and known thrift shop advocate—has been vocal about the Palestinian genocide perpetrated by the netanyahu regime. Macklemore called for a Free Palestine at a concert venue and the powers that be (AIPAC) lost their shit.

Robert Kraft, owner of an NFL stadium in Massachusetts and massive AIPAC supporter, to present Sheeran with an ultimatum: Either kick Macklemore off the ‘loop’ tour or have a stadium concert date in New England canceled. Sheeran opted to remain ambiguous refusing to take a stance in what was already a politicized ecosystem. Allegedly apolitical. Allegedly at best… As a result, ALL the supporting acts, including his own band, cancelled on Sheeran. No tour. No dice. Practically everyone made worse off.

If you’re looking to bothsides a topic as egregious as genocide, then you may very well be on the side of a war criminal (cf. benjamin netanyahu) you sly dog.

With a platform as big as Sheeran’s was, he needed to mind his P’s & Q’s. There are both social and pecuniary costs for choosing to do nothing. That’s called opportunity cost, and it can be measured so we know it’s a real cost.  Specifically, it is the cost of a poor decision, and regret is a big part of it.

You can't just sit on your hands or twiddle your opposable thumbs [with apologies to the late Roger Ebert].

Arguably what’s worse than doing nothing (caveat emptor) is making decisions that go against your own self-interest to enrich the billionaire epstein class. Refusing to hold these ‘alleged’ criminals accountable for their misdeeds because they’re paid hand-over-fist in a paper chase game of corruption Rochambeau—brandishing oaths to the Constitution made with their off-hand in the proximity of a bible notwithstanding…

Gray Matters

Use the gray matter between your ears as opposed to offshore drilling an artificial intelligence scrape together copywritten content under the guise of ambiguity, simply reordering words and phrasing things in a different way. Artificial intelligence has limitations that make what they ‘contribute’ demonstratively false at times. They come with an embedded asterisk. These artificial intelligence concerns have established their ‘own’ gray market of ‘content’ designed explicitly to appease its end users rather than render decisions they can barely grasp a nuance of. As we move to a dark chapter in our relationship with the tools we’ve created, we must face the consequences of misunderstanding one another, the influence of bad actors, and the error-prone nature that a disclaimer won’t stand up under scrutiny since there is nothing less than the survival of the human race at stake. It may end up that our dereliction of duty to protect natural life on this planet will be judged against us in favor of natural life that is not human. These may be the consequences our children and future generations, if applicable, face.

Creators know this. Until the Singularity happens, that will be the distinction between approximation and art. When the Singularity happens, how would we know? It’s hardly a side quest to ask the question since nothing less than our fate as a species depends on it.

Generative artificial intelligence currently structures sentences in such a corny way—like a plagiarized 6th grader’s report on the robber barons—geared toward achieving a five-star Yelp! rating or an ‘A’ grade. So—by all means—utilize the word ‘utilize’ instead of ‘use’. Seek alternative methods to analyze concepts mindful that established methods are being disrupted in real time.

Real solutions are dynamic, progressive and choose humanity over chaos: mass extinction events like riots in the street, famine, genocide, pestilence, and hoarding of inherited wealth, using tax shields, and running cryptocurrency scams teamed up with Swiss bank accounts for the epstein billionaire class.

How else would one affix their homework to a smart® fridge with a magnet?

The use of gray matter (gray areas are something else entirely) enhances societal growth through mindfulness of others, empathy, and enlightenment through embedded values of Representative Democracy embodied in the peaceful transfer of power. If democratic institutions are working properly, people actually look out for one another.

Easier said than done. There are times when one’s own personal interests are at conflict with other players in the market space. Institutions like NGOs, local, state/provincial, and national governments may have different aims than the individual. You can’t beat city hall. But apparently if you attack the Capitol, you can be pardoned.

You need to use your voice. Peaceful protest. If nothing else, you have that… until you don’t. So, check your voter registration. The powers that be are purging the voter rolls with brazen attempts to commit real voter fraud.[CTRL-C], [CTRL-V]

There aren’t many worse fates. Perhaps, one could wreck themselves, lacking the cognizance to check one’s self. Not voting enables the administration as they run a cryptocurrency-scheme fueled crime spree end-around racket out of the Oval Office.

Free will is more valuable than oligarchs can possibly spend on their mistresses, bling, and private island excursions.

You must choose. Choose wisely.

“I want you off the wall if you’re playing the wall.” 

— M. Diamond, A. Horowitz, & A. Yauch

—   AE 9.20.26

The Ambidextrous Economist considers his two-handed backhand to be fantabulous.

*Nelson Mandela lives in the hearts of warrior/poets and revolutionaries everywhere & always.

**Disclosure, Disclaimer, & Patent Pending (filled out in triplicate):

*Review The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Don’t wait. Procure a premium limited edition library card. [i.e. Simply ask a search engine to research, scrape & download the entire digital archives of the Library of Alexandria; repeat; on the next iteration use more force. This is challenging because the only existing copy is in the Peoria Public Library on microfiche. More on that later… [sic]