We Say We Want an Evolution! We All want to change the world!
There is a lot of talk in the AI world about the imminent bursting bubble. Will Lockett gives an informed explanation here. In short, the financial world is investing enormous amounts of money, far in excess of the revenue generated by AI, in the belief that it will ultimately produce the revenue to justify the investment, but in 2025, instead of revenue increasing, revenue growth declined. Quoting Lockett, “OpenAI’s revenue growth is slowing down dramatically. In 2023, they increased their revenue by 169% over 2022, and in 2024, they increased their revenue by 250% over 2023. In 2025, they are set to increase revenue by only 56% over 2024.”
The reason is that the reality of what is termed AI “hallucinations” is setting in. In many cases, rather than increasing productivity, AI is actually slowing productivity down.
I may have bumped into that phenomenon in several encounters with large corporations during the last week, the most recent example being when I switched my internet provider. My new service is supposed to include streaming perks that do not materialize, apparently because when I log in to my internet account, any subsequent action causes my login to roll over to my mobile account, which does not come with streaming options. I have no proof that this phenomenon is caused by an AI hallucination, but it does seem highly unusual for a major corporation to get the coding so wrong. Could the coding have been done by AI?
I lost several hours of productivity trying to resolve this glitch. Why did I allow it to rob me of my own productivity? I confess it is because I was working with a human rather than an AI in trying to fix it. I had called to cancel my new service, but in contrast to AI customer support, human customer support has come to feel magical. Am I imagining it? Human support seems to be having a particularly good time, engaging in conversations and humor. Is it because their jobs are less stressful?
I didn’t mind extending inordinate patience toward human support, trying to do their job, but when it comes to AI support, I have lost all patience. Every time I think about using chat, I think about listening repeatedly to lists of options that bear no relationship to what I am trying to achieve and going round and round in circles as AI attempts to assert what it wants over what I want. I cringe at the thought and call on the phone, where I inevitably encounter the same system, but hitting the O button will often put an end to it.
My web server is filled with ads for services it is trying to sell, which I must scroll down to access the sections I want. The other day, when I logged in, one such app, from Guttenverse, filled the entire screen. Mistaking it for an upgrade, I clicked, and that wiped out my own header on my own website, and when I went to retrieve my header, I found a dozen of Guttenverse’s images in my media library. I restored my theme, but it was missing some parts, and I worked many more hours on fixing that.
More lost hours away from the project I initiated a few weeks ago, which is where I want my attention to be directed.
AI robs the public of its productivity time to save corporate expenses in hiring people. Remember when state governments justified investing taxpayer dollars in capitalizing large corporations as “job creation”? That’s a hard sell now, as large corporations have invested in AI in the interest of saving money on labor costs-but that is proving to be premature. When AI hallucinates, humans must come to the rescue.
There is an article in the Boothbay Register about a poll being conducted by the most recent outside consultant group hired by our leaders to plan our economic development for us. (Community input sought on economic development strategy).
The corporate state of Maine systematically excludes small businesses and individuals from participating in its economic development pow wows, as it controls municipal leadership through wealth redistribution, so that community leaders readily give up their Home Rule authority. At the roots of the system, upward mobility or economic independence is discouraged. This philosophy is nowhere more visible than in the housing solutions advanced by the corporate state, advantaging large developers over inhabitants.
As a protector of inherited small businesses’ productivity assets, which can be very beneficial to upward mobility and economic independence at the roots and beyond, there is no local or state resource that I can go to for support or to engage in my community development.
I gave my 250 characters (or whatever it was) to the questionnaire, which is the most that individuals and small businesses are invited to participate in their own communities in a corporate-managed state like Maine.
I contacted the consulting group tasked with developing the Peninsula’s economic future when they were first announced and received an acknowledgement, but no further communication thereafter.
And so I engage in the Fourth Estate sponsored by Boothbay Register, the only forum where the local citizenry is allowed to speak at greater length than the designated number of characters, ranging from 250-500. There, I presented my own vision for a “priority zone” for the first time
No one invited me to do so, but if I waited for an invitation, I would never get to participate. We must make our own opportunities.
Contemporary circumstances are co-creating the opportune moment, as at this time, it is not the community leaders who are leading as their housing solution of 161 overcrowded, undersized units with the dimensions of mobile homes stacked on top of each other, and no individual land ownership, sits unsold after 257 days.
If the cause of the housing shortage is “underproduction of housing,” Why aren’t these overpriced, “affordable”, “workforce” housing units selling like hotcakes? Could it be that the developers and realtors who were enabled by the Maine Legislators to bypass Maine Constitutional rules for Direct initiative of legislation, were hallucinating the cause of the housing shortage?
Section 18. Direct initiative of legislation. 1. Petition procedure. The electors may propose to the Legislature for its consideration any bill, resolve or resolution, …, by written petition addressed to the Legislature or to either branch thereof and filed in the office of the Secretary of State by the hour of 5:00 p.m., on or before the 50th day after the date of convening of the Legislature in first regular session or on or before the 25th day after the date of convening of the Legislature in second regular session, except that the written petition may not be filed in the office of the Secretary of State later than 18 months after the date the petition form was furnished or approved by the Secretary of State….
If the cause of the housing shortage is the underproduction of housing, then why is one of the latest housing acts called: H.P. 1224, L.D. 1829 An Act to Build Housing for Maine Families and Attract Workers to Maine Businesses by Amending the Laws Governing Housing Density?
First, dehumanized housing for the working classes was justified by a housing shortage caused by “underproduction of housing. Now they tell us that overcrowded housing is being produced to attract new workers to the state of Maine, since working classes across the world are raring to live in Industrial Revolution-style urban tenements with no access to traditional rural lifestyles.
Are our leaders hallucinating?
The title of H.P. 1224, L.D. 1829, suggests that the state municipal ordinances are not justified by an underproduction of housing but because the corporate state wants to expand Maine’s population to expand the corporate state’s industrial army and most predominately the state’s new unconstitutional corporation, The Maine Space Corporation, which will raise regulatory issues of many sorts and those issues will be decided by the same entity that broke with the Maine Constitution to charter and operate the Maine Space Corporation. (See my Letter to the Editor here) The people were not invited to weigh in on this game-changing state-run industry. Is it what we want for our state?
This begs the question: Are Maine leaders hallucinating?
The title of the act suggests that building overcrowded housing, reminiscent of urban housing during the Industrial Revolution, will attract working people to Maine who want to live in a newly structured class society where the working classes are second-class citizens.
This is the sort of mentality that evolves after decades of refusing to allow individuals and small businesses to be a part of the conversation.
How’s that working out? The city block in a rural landscape on the Boothbay Peninsula is the first outcome of LD 2003-Hp1489. To date, the development is a ghost city block that cost millions of dollars and rerouted water lines. It is reasonable to consider that our leaders are hallucinating about all of it, including the cause of the housing shortage, and it’s time to account for possible other reasons for the housing shortage, such as short-term rentals, and to consider other visions for the future of the Peninsula
Such as:
A little side note, lest anyone thinks AI isn’t creative. I used generative AI to expand the solid blue background above, expecting just a larger blue rectangle, but AI, on its own initiative, added the skyline, which I think is pretty cool.
As the title of the act says, it is not about a housing shortage; it is about attracting workers to Maine by establishing overcrowded housing zones in every Maine community where the “workforce” can live, segregated from the default housing zone that advantages short-term rentals, where transients enjoy the traditional rural lifestyle.
The overcrowded housing expansion for the “workforce” will conveniently serve the needs of the new Maine Space Corporation, chartered in flagrant violation of the Maine Constitution (Article IV Part Third section 13 & 14) and signed into law by Governor Mills as part of a series of laws, including the housing laws, that violate the Maine Constitution. Now Mills is running for Senate at a time when Americans rely on Congress to protect our federal Constitution, and not only when it’s convenient to do so.
In another triumph for Maine’s centrally managed government, the State Legislature enacted H.P. 789 An Act to Require Municipal Reporting on Residential Building Permits, Dwelling Units Permitted and Demolished and Certificates of Occupancy Issued, also signed into law by Maine’s next would-be US Senator, Janet Mills.
The summary of H.P. 789 states:
This bill directs municipalities to provide an annual report on certain housing data to the Department of Economic and Community Development for use in administering the Housing Opportunity Program, including data on residential building permits, dwelling units permitted and demolished and certificates of occupancy or other approvals of housing units issued and certain affordability data
The Town, County, and State funded the BRDC housing project in Boothbay with AARPA affordable housing funds even though the pricing and financing terms of the units are not consistent with affordable housing needs as stated in the State report , nor is it consistent with financing guidelines for affordable housing as stated in LD2003-HP 1489 based on a study done by private sector Commissioners such as Erin Cooperrider, the VP of the BRDC.
However the BRDC housing project satisfies that the Peninsula is consistent with state municipal ordinances and mandates.
Now that state mandates are satisfied, the people, including individuals and small businesses, can develop affordable housing to serve the needs of the working classes and specifically those in the 60%AMI or below demographic identified in the state report, as the greatest need, especially on the coast, but not accomodated by the large scale development funded by Town, County and State leadership, which is currently sitting unoccupied for almost nine months. Since the development is unoccupied, the question becomes what will happen to the rest of the land intended for 121 more overpriced, overcrowded units to house the undifferentiated workforce?
The design of the BRDC development is consistent with the pattern found in the Boothbay Roundabout, where road decor is used to detract from a poor infrastructure design. The “units” as they are appropriately called, are designed as long hallways, resembling the dimensions of railway cars, which our leaders believe is a design for home living that will attract the working classes to Maine. The units reflect the attitude of leadership toward the people who are considered to be indistinguishable and unindividualized as the units.
Furthermore, as the BRDC is funded by the government, the limits on economic growth imposed by the government will apply to the development. I am not speaking from knowledge of all the rules that apply specifically to the BRDC development, but from general knowledge derived from independently reading the Maine economic development statutes for many years and from the fact that the BRDC claims 75% of any increase in value realized if the buyers of the units resell those units, greatly diminishing the equity value of home ownership.
In terms of the rental units, the affordable housing rules require an inhabitant to move if their income exceeds a limit, and so we are talking about entire communities where income growth is capped. Is this a desirable working-class environment in which to raise a family?
I propose another sort of priority zone that encourages small businesses and permits businesses in a home. Instead of industrial job training in a publicly funded public school, the job training is naturally embedded in the environment. If there is such a non-profit organization as I am suggesting with Land To Individuals, let that organization be committed to not accepting funding from any source that places limits on economic growth. Why should a community be committed to limiting growth? While an aggressively expanding wealth divide is undesirable, so is the opposite type of environment that limits economic growth. Such a community is part and parcel of an expanding wealth divide by intentionally placing limits on growth at the roots of society. What is desired is an engaged working-class environment with a focus on the psychological benefits of work. There are issues to be worked out related to curtailing unintended exploitation of the system without sacrificing the pathways to economic growth, which will require group particupation to develop.
To my knowledge, my Dad, who started a successful and very complex business on his own, never took a business course but he was raised in a small business working class community, where his Dad, a chicken farmer installed the electric power in the town as described by my nephew, Colin Woodard in his article about Andersen Design published in Maine Boats and Harbors
.My grandfather grew up in Primghar, Iowa, a small town near the South Dakota line. He was seven years old when the stock market crashed. By the time he was in high school, the town had filled with economic refugees from the urban East, seeking to ride out the crisis in what was a relatively stable and prosperous agricultural center. Others, from the West, passed through on US18. “You could tell by the license plate that they were from the Dakotas and they were just so desperate,” my grandfather recalled. “Families in old wrecks with machinery piled up on a trailer behind them who were just looking for some place to get a new start. It made a very deep impression on me.”
My grandfather’s own family was relatively secure. His father, a son of Danish immigrants, was a self-taught electrician who had electrified the town himself and, later, oversaw the building of the municipal power plant. He designed and built buildings, sat on the city council, and owned a chicken hatchery. My grandfather, by his own admission, was a bit of an odd duck, an artistic soul in a community of pioneering agriculturalists, making sculptures from the clay exposed by his father’s building excavations. \Vhen his older brother began collecting jalopies—rundown cars could be bought for a few dollars at the time—he helped him craft a stylish new body for a Model T from chicken wire and painted canvas
The alternative people’s problem-solving movement is already underway. Recently, an article in the Boothbay Register reported that a group in Southport, in charge of a parcel of land, decided to sell it to individuals to build their own homes. This is consistent with my idea for a non-profit organization formed to acquire land and sell it to individuals, bypassing the large developers, supported by the state, making housing affordable to people of lower incomes. Selling land to individuals doesn’t require a specified non-profit organization, but a non-profit can acquire land and develop means to help people finance the land. I envision such an organization that prioritizes selling land to those making 60% AMI or below first, with a percentage going to the 80% AMI demographic. Our government leaders are already covering the 80-120% AMI demographic, which is the target for the 20-40 units built by the BRDC.
There is much to work out in such an idea. The mission statement needs to clearly state the intent to sell land to the lower end of the economy, without placing limitations on the economic growth of the inhabitants. Some regulations are needed to discourage exploitation, such as acquiring the land and then turning around and selling it for a higher price to a higher demographic without developing it, but those who develop the land in the spirit of the organization’s intent should be able to realize full equity value from doing so.
Such an environment is a natural learning environment in industrial job training which would free the public school system to focus on educating the citizenry in reading, writing, arithmetic, philosophy, analytical thought, and, in alignment with State law, in educating about the Maine and US Constitution and the history of indigenous people and genocides. Then it would not be so easy for our Legislative branch to steamroll over our Constitution to transform Maine into something unintended by the Maine Constitution.
Title 20-A, §4706: Instruction in American history, African American studies, Maine studies, Wabanaki studies and the history of genocide
Another grassroots organization called 100+ Women Who Care chose an organization that helps people with low incomes to afford a place to live as the recipient of their grant.
100+ Women Who Care awards Stepping Stones Housing with first-ever ‘Impact Donation’
There is a need for solutions for housing beyond a narrow concept of working-class housing solutions, branded as “ workforce housing.” What could be less creative and innovative than passing a law enabling state-wide municipal ordinances that treat the entire state of Maine as a repetitive grid of cultural conformity? Maine should be a home to diverse communities, as reflected in our traditional New England architecture. It was not too long ago that an out-of-state visitor remarked on how unusual it is to see every house a unique home. Today, we are in danger of becoming the Land of Monotonous Units.