Capitalism, Sustainability and Democracy

Yes, I am riffing

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy

by

Joseph Alois Schumpeter was an Austrian political economist. Schumpeter was one of the most influential economists of the early 20th century, and popularized creative destruction, a term coined by Werner Sombart. His magnum opus is considered Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.

Why now? First, this is the July 4^th weekend in America:

Independence Day  is a 1996 American science fiction action film directed by Roland Emmerich. Upon its release on July 3, 1996, Independence Day was considered a pivotal moment for the Hollywood blockbuster, leading the resurgence of disaster and science fiction films in the late 1990s. It emerged as a major commercial success at the box-office, grossing over $817 million worldwide on a production budget of $75 million. The film won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

This day always reminds me of Thomas Jefferson’s unforgettable phrase,

Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness,

which, as many of you know, I have repurposed as my mantra (Weston Brahmin) for a Life of Liberty:

Leisure, Luxury and Pursuit of Newness.

You also know that I have repeatedly invoked – most recently in Can AI really transform Real World Supply Chains anytime soon? (The Importance of Being Skeptical) – this excerpt from David Reisman’s Schumpeter’s Market:

The market is supply and demand. Seen as statics, it is a gravitational field that produces equilibrium price as if guided by an omniscient auctioneer. Seen as dynamics, it is a voyage of discovery that, powered by profit or driven on by challenge, need never arrive at its final point of rest. Enterprise is relentless transformation. Newness is the leitmotiv. Capitalism is newness.

Now to Sustainability. Just a couple weeks back, this news broke: 

EU’s Supply Chain Rules Receive ‘Another Blow’ as Member States Propose Deeper Cuts.

French President Emmanuel Macron called for it and other regulations “not just to be postponed for one year, but to be put off the table.” German Chanceller Friedrich Merz called for “complete repeal”…

And then this a few days back:

 Sweden invented ‘Flight Shaming’. Now it is begging airlines to return.

The impact on Sweden’s aviation industry was stark. Swedavia AB, which runs 10 Swedish airports, saw passenger numbers drop for seven consecutive months in 2019. In the seven years that followed, international flights dropped by a third. The pandemic was the catalyst for change. The country suffered a recession in 2023 and the economy shrank by 0.3pc between April and July 2024. It was within this economic climate that the new right-wing government, elected in 2022…

This tension between Economic Growth and Environment Stewardship is one of the aspects we – Nilsu Uzunlar and Alan Scheller-Wolf – explicitly discuss in our paper (Section 6: Alignment of Environmental and Economic Objectives):

Greenness and its Discontents: Operational Implications of Investor Pressure.

From a stakeholder perspective, the market’s environmental considerations should attempt – as much as possible – to reconcile environmental and economic objectives. Specifically, long-term emission reduction objectives should be achieved without causing substantial drops in short-term profits. Our analysis can guide regulators concerned about the potential economic disadvantages of environmental pressure…

So, what is a possible market solution to keep up with growth, especially of computing needs, and be sustainable? You know it:

Innovation.

As you know from What would Steve Jobs do?, 2020 Tayur Prize, Roll over Turing, Pocket Quantum Computers, Réflexions sur la puissance de calcul de la lumière and Back in Bangalore, I have been advocating for a room-temperature, Ising solver on a chip to be part of the hybrid analog-digital computing future, and it was so nice to receive this email a couple days back:

Hello Sridhar,

I am excited to share some recent updates on the Quanfluence Coherent Ising Machine as we take this from PoC stage to production deployment.

The Quanfluence Coherent Ising Machine is now available in a server rack mounted 1U form factor. The device supports all-connected 20,000 variables Ising problems. It is built around a photonics non-linearity loop and contains an advanced FPGA. We are doing customer on-prem deployment of the machine as well as supporting over-the-cloud access through Python SDK.

Below is an image of the QF Ising Machine. This is prepared for on-prem deployment at one of the big-four accounting firms.

We are ready to assemble and deliver the on-prem Quanfluence coherent Ising machines to other customers and collaborators.

We would love to hear your inputs and thoughts.

Of course, the first thing I wanted to do was to see if it can outperform the best-in-class purely digital solution on a real-world scale problem of our quantum-inspired algorithm, published earlier this year in IJOC:

A Quantum-Inspired Bilevel Optimization Algorithm for the First Responder Network Design Problem.

What better than test it on the FRNDP problem (see Quantum GAGA), on a fully connected 468×468 graph representing Istanbul road network? As you know – The Man Who Loves Zeroes – an important aspect of GAMA (and GAGA) is obtaining Multiplicity of Zeroes. On 150 different instances, each solving the QUBO 100 times using Simulated Annealing (SA) and Quanfluence (QF), it was great to see the results:

As you can see QF statistically provides more unique zeroes than SA.

What about time and energy? I look forward to showing the results at the upcoming INFORMS Keynote in Atlanta (in October).