Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Where I depart

from the debt cycle theory. We are, underneath, suffering from DeLong's generational leapfrogging with the electrical revolution of 1870. The advance of electrical communications, each generation has doubled our knowledge farther out in space and time. But we have limited precision, and we blend our knowledge of the short to gain economies. The bankers yield curve is always forced to steepen, reflecting increasing short term constraints that appear with long term knowledge. The constraints appear in transportation.

The solution has always been using communications as guide ways to improved transportation. Transportation technology employs the best of information technology, and precision is allocated. Ever since the horse it has been telegraph line, power line, electric tram, telephone, and roads; enter-twining solutions to produce technology shocks. The results are always great productivity booms. Since the electrical revolution. That is going to continue.

Technology tells us not only where something is now, to the centimeter, but where it will be 20 minutes from now, to the centimeter. Information now controls the future of transportation.

Our stage in this, Yet Another Leap, the new technology tells us enough about the real good that it will move the good directly.

So, you are at an empty intersection in your car, and your cell phone knows more about current traffic is than any of the four idle cars. Well, then put a cell phone up on the light and in all the idle cars. They can have a conversation, just like texting, When that conversation happens, then intersections are seldom idle, but optimally used. Travel times drop, gas efficiency rises.

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