Good Word of Mouth

Posted by XperDunn on May 22, 2013

Tuesday, May 21, 2013 8:52 PM

(paintings by Correggio)

I’ve been stumped for writings lately—maybe I’ve finally run dry of grumpy-old-man-op-ed essays—who knows? I’d actually like that, I think… I only write those things because I want to expel the bile that festers at my brain when I see intentional stupidity and intentional harm. I’m no cynic—the people that own everything are intentionally making our lives worse—intentionally widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

What’s worse is, we help them do this—every time we take a paycheck to look away—supporting a family is no excuse, it only makes it worse, since we are destroying the society they will inherit, while we collaborate in the name of ‘supporting them’. What is the answer? When an entire town is centered around a military complex, what do we do with those townspeople when The Base gets abandoned due to budget cuts? Do we keep it open for the sake of the town? That only sounds correct to the townspeople, god bless’em. Does the government simply walk away, and leave the gutted town to turn ghost in their wake? That sounds wrong to everybody. So, we see at once that simple solutions are not to be had. What do we do?

Do we go out and protest in public? To me, that always seemed like giving too much power to the opponent—telling them to act, instead of us acting on our own initiative—though I suppose the media attention (if you could catch it, and for as long as it lasts) would be valuable. We’d have to come off as the ‘good guys’ on camera, though—and pissed-off people rarely look like ‘good guys’, at first glance.

Sensible people might point out an obvious solution—enact a program of decommissioning an entire ‘economic zone’, not just the Base it once supported. Find (or Found) businesses that are a good match with the town’s focal skill sets. In areas where closing the Base means total evacuation (say mid-desert, like) then enact a program to place the townspeople in other towns still operating as theirs once did. It would still be a breakup of the community, but it doesn’t have to be an economic disaster as well. Letting a whole town full of people go dead broke will cost a lot more, in the long run, than helping them transition to new homes and new jobs.

But all you sensible people out there know the chances of that course of action—none to little. So let’s think about political solutions that approximate the sensible solution. The last two days in Oklahoma have seen recording-breaking tornados (in both size and wind-speed) that devastated communities in Tornado Alley. So we liberals may enjoy the very bleak comfort of saying ‘I told you so’ to the climate-change-deniers, but down in Okie country the praying has been non-stop—the people there have put their faith in the lord—and so cannot be harmed. That explains why they would choose live in an area called ‘Tornado Alley’.

I just know we could be doing all of this stuff so much better if there were better people in politics—but I’m damned if I’m gonna spend time with those nut-jobs. That’s why we need young people in politics—we used to insist on old people because our elders tended to know more than the rest of us. I’m getting into ‘old guy’ territory myself these days—and I can assure you, the people my age and older are as likely to be swamped by the Future Shock Wave that is remaking the globe as they are to have depths of wisdom–which applied to an earlier, pre-internet age—and so may no longer have any relevance to our present times, anyhow!

Only the young guys and gals can even appreciate these new fulcrums of power, and the consequences of blindly trying to do business in the past. Plus, younger men and women are less ‘free for the purchasing’ than old cronies whose lives have always been defined by business. Today’s global business is a threat to humanity—soon, a tiny group of uber-bankers will own the entire world—and us with it, since we’ll all need to make a living.

In the old days, when America and Big Business were synonymous, the famously quoted ‘business of America—was Business’. But that is no longer true. The business of International Mega-Corporations is ‘Business’—the business of we Americans has become ‘fighting a rearguard action against global corporate culture in an attempt to resume control of our own government’. That’s the new business of America.

I’m tired of being proud of my country—it’s that right-or-wrong business—there is so much wrong with our society, our industry, our quality of life, and our Freedom from Fear—and then up pops these Tea Party people-Doh! You know, if the Cold War was still ongoing, I’d be sure that the Tea Party was a fifth-column action to make a nonsense-of-shouting out of what were once the Founding Documents, to turn Freedom of Expression on its head by using it as a shield against those who accuse them of hate-speech—and using Freedom of Religion to suggest that it implies their particular faith is the Default Faith for the whole country.

Their ignorance is epic—but that’s OK, cuz they don’t hold much stock in all the edjicashun nonsense, no how. They are a tremendous threat to our nation. They are the pawns of folks like the Koch Bros. and they even act against their own self-interest—when that runs counter to whatever mind-boink of a narrative cheerleaders like Sarah Palin are feeding them through the mass media they all despise so indignantly—it’s pure stupid, and hold the rest, out there in Tea Party land.

So I’ll be happy to be proud of my country when we start taking it back from the private interests of the super wealthy. I think we should start by refusing to respond to any TV or internet advertising—let’s all agree that we’ll only vote for a candidate when someone we trust gives that candidate a good reference. We should all unite in refusing any electioneering from anyone we don’t know and respect. Word of mouth will be the only criteria that we will base our decision on. And we disqualify all of the incumbents just to make it a clean start. (If we lose a good congressperson, we’ll come to re-elect that person, in time—but we must sand the floor before we slap on the new paint.)

A total re-boot of federal representation via word-of-mouth may result in something more democratic than the moneychangers we endure today—but even if it doesn’t work, they’ll do no less than the last decade of blockage -and- it’ll keep the crooks busy enough to slow their insatiable greed.

Word of Mouth Only! Word of Mouth Only!

Chant it with me now—

Word of Mouth Only! Word of Mouth Only!

Back to Welfare (or How To Fix Public Education)

Posted by XperDunn on April 8, 2013

Ah, the myth of the man-month, all over again. “The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering” by Fred Brooks, ["..First published in 1975 (ISBN 0-201-00650-2), reprinted in 1982, and republished in an anniversary edition with four extra chapters in 1995 (ISBN 0-201-83595-9), including a reprint of the essay "No Silver Bullet" with commentary by the author.]“–Wikipedia.

Brooks’ Law has been around a long time. However, Brooks’ book is jovially described as the ‘Project Managers Bible’, oft-quoted, but almost never followed. There are good reasons for not following the rational approach described therein—for one thing, it concerns group efforts in a business environment. Ask anyone with experience in such things and they will tell you, “Sure—in group efforts (or team efforts) there is nothing rational involved—it’s all about their feelings and relationships (and their hierarchy, corporate-wise).”

Like office staff during a prolonged period of ‘downsizing’, members of a ‘group effort’ assume a herd aspect—everyone looks to everyone else, ignoring their specific efforts while focused on the much more important mob-moods of the group as a whole. But the vagaries of corporate dysfunction and corporate survival are not my theme for today.

Today, in examining the exhaustive world of Insolvency, I’m going over ground that’s been gone over before—but is very worthwhile in reviewing and reminding us of key facts. Part of the Poverty problem is the enormous effort required to be poor and alive at the same time.

Let’s enumerate. Point One—if you cannot afford a car, you are forced to either walk or take mass transit, often for long distances, on a daily basis. This applies not just to the commute to a job (yes, many poor people have jobs—they’re just not good jobs) but to shopping, medical emergencies, parent-teacher meetings, etc. Commuting is, however, where it hurts the most—the likelihood of being late is magnified by the number of factors outside of the control of the worker—missed busses and trains, inclement weather, and heavy traffic on a street that must be walked across, etc. And this results in either docked pay or diminished perceived value as an employee—or both. In short, the lack of a car can be costly in effort, man-hours, reputation, and straight-up paychecks. And it makes certain destinations virtually unreachable.

Point Two—if you cannot afford a house, you must find a friend to let you stay on the couch—or find a homeless shelter. Either way, you are subject to all the disadvantages of not owning a home—you cannot accumulate appliances, furniture, or foodstuffs; you cannot give a home phone number or mailing address; and you can end up spending too much time exposed to the elements—which can lead to…

Point Three—if you cannot afford a doctor and you are sick or injured, you must spend a minimum of one whole working day at an Emergency Room—and then get less-than-competent health care at the end of it. Infection is more likely to find people who have no Band-Aids or Purell.

I could go on to Point Thirty-Three with this stuff—but I’ll spare you the rest—in truth, it makes me very tired to think about Poverty. So many people—so much injustice and unfairness—thinking how it would affect me, in my disabled state, if I were all alone, I can’t help but see it as a sort of hell on earth.

I can only surmise that the many angry voices on the Internet, that despise the poor and the hungry, are the voices of like-minded folk—with the important difference that they fear that hell-on-earth for themselves and, rather than empathize with today’s victims, simply wish to distance themselves from such a horrible condition. That fear makes them angry and such people want to insist that the monster could never catch them—thus their characterization of the poor as ‘lazy’ and ‘un-enterprising’. But they are no safer for all their hexing.

None of us are safe. That is why it makes a tremendous amount of sense to ameliorate the horrors of Poverty. It could happen to me tomorrow—then wouldn’t I feel like an idiot for trying to stop government aid to my new demographic? We should be making Poverty an embarrassment rather than a frightening wasteland. We should be making Poverty so easy to bear that the only damage it inflicts is the wounding of one’s pride.

But please understand me—I’m not saying we should taunt the poor—that isn’t it at all. No, I’m saying that poverty should hold no fear for our lives, for our health, for our daily bread. I’m saying it should be easy to be poor, easy to care for our children when we’re poor, and easy to get medical treatment for us and our families when we’re poor. We should be tempted by Poverty—it should call to us when we are down and make us think, “O, forget all this trouble—I’m just gonna give up.”

Without such a safety-net system of support, none of us are safe, none of us can rest easy—the poor suffer, and the rest of us worry about becoming poor. It’s too primitive this way—and what is a civilization anyway, if not a collective effort to improve quality of life for everyone?

I remember the ‘Welfare state’ of yesteryear—how it became a black hole of government expense. But that was not caused by an army of ‘lazy good-for-nothings’, people who chose welfare over honest labor—even in those easier times, no one went on Welfare just to avoid working. No, the true cause of the arterial spurt of cash that Welfare became was corruption, not overuse.

Plus, no one thought Welfare through—it was an attempt to end the poverty of inner cities and depressed rural areas—when someone has lived hand to mouth for a lifetime—and then is handed money—that person doesn’t have any natural propensity for changing into someone new—no. When Welfare was instituted, there was no concomitant effort to guide those people towards a different way of life—so when they got money, they spent it as they always had. The idea that they would simply march straight into a bank and start a savings account, try to use some of the money to get a better education, and generally start doing things the way prosperous people were used to doing them—that is one big assumption.

It showed our ignorance of social dynamics and, more importantly, it revealed government’s (any government’s) weak side: envisioning what will happen tomorrow. Mixed up in there, too, was a lot of prejudice, condescension, and miserliness. And the Misers ultimately won out. The media painted it thus: calls for rooting out the corruption and illicit scams in the Welfare system were followed by pronouncements that it couldn’t be fixed, we should just trash the whole thing. And that’s what we did.

A few years later, NYC (and many other places) noticed a new problem in the streets—homelessness. Coincidence? You tell me. Then we had years of debate over how to solve the homeless crisis. No one suggested anything as old and shabby as Welfare—we’d already tried it, hadn’t we? Well, not really.

Let me say this—if we tasked our armed forces with a war on domestic poverty, we wouldn’t be that far off. As I see it, much of the perpetuation of poverty is due to businesspersons that create an economic niche within the plight of the poor—slumlords, high-interest-loans, overpriced merchandise targeting customers who can’t afford the extra time and the extra distance travelled to reach an honorable establishment. It is a microcosm of how most of the world is eternally being ripped off by the rich—but I’m going to stay on task here—back to Poverty.

So there are businesses which prey on the poor—but there are the gangs, too. Modern gangs control many under-served, depressed areas—and our world’s largest penal system contains an inexhaustible supply of replacements for all the gangs. Between street gangs, our prison system, and organized crime, huge swathes of the ‘land of the free’ are so ‘law of the jungle’ that they actually could be perceived as foreign countries—thus my suggestion that the military take point on this issue.

If our armed forces can get rid of the thieves and tin-pot dictators of the Mid-East, rebuild the infrastructure, train and educate the native populations to the point where they can govern themselves—why can’t we do that at home? I say bring back Welfare, and enforce it with heavy armament! Then, when people stop starving and freezing, perhaps, the public education system can be fixed.

Deep Inside Facebook—With Gun and Camera

Posted by XperDunn on March 20, 2013

I got a Friend Request today, out of the blue. It’s not in my nature to refuse an offer of friendship, so I accepted. Then I saw the profile (what there was of it):

“Micheal Glory

Worked at Retired/Disabled

Born on 2 November 1955

Female”—

No pictures, no employment, no school, no online footprint—and her demo (50s, disabled) was my demographic, too.

So I started thinking about how likely it was that this was not a person, but a marketing net-bot, phishing for demo-data or polling-data. In furthering my new ‘detective’ job, I wrote the following message:

“Hello, new friend. I am curious as to the pronunciation of your first name—is it a regular ‘Michael’ or does the transposition of the a and the e connote a more exotic reading? Also, could you please say something that proves you’re not a robot? You don’t have much online info—and I don’t mean to pry—but the whole point of FB is for people to share amongst themselves–nothing truly personal, you understand, just enthusiasms and interests and opinions and what-all..

If you are real, I’m also curious as to what led you to my particular profile—have we known each other in the past, perhaps?— if I should remember, I heartily apologize–please don’t be hurt—I have a very bad memory—and I’m not just saying that…”

Now I’m having second thoughts—and how appropriate that I should have two of them. The first second thought is “Why bother with all this when it is an obvious data-mining NPC?” (Non-Player Character—it means a personae that isn’t representing a human, but is a personae created by the software running the marketing or polling program. The weirdest part of these things is that they don’t need to hack Facebook, they just need to generate Users with specific demographics, or in response to a particular ‘like’.)

My second second thought is “If this really is an old friend, or even just a stranger, my first impression will seem incredibly hostile.” But I’ve rationalized that by telling myself “If that lady can’t see the funny side of this, why would she want to be friends with me, anyway?” So, there’s a goodly chunk of my day wasted on self-imposed head games.

O, and there is a third second thought: “What if it’s one of those human-backed fake online personae, that turn complex messages over to the manager to respond to?” Then I’ll have put myself right in the middle of an unwritten Kafka drama. But this isn’t my first time to the party—requests for info are always responded to with blatantly commercial ‘likes’—it’s a numbers game—at least until FB or Legislation or Public Awareness (or all three) make it a bad investment.

And I think the word is out amongst the younger set—internet kids are as likely to hack them back as to fall for their marketing research net-bots.

New Dole

Posted by XperDunn on March 8, 2013

Nice little stormlet—nothing that carries a mortality rate—just school closings and slips on the ice (Nana’s still in a wrist-cast from a week or so ago). It keeps Claire home, though she’s still working in her office all day. I just feel better when she’s around—especially in dicey weather. I’m one of those unfortunate souls for whom the thought of the offspring strikes more bells of alarm than happiness. I love them both so much—but my love is constituted of more than a small percentage of worry and dread, plus all the more kindly affections. So my first thought is always, “Gee, I miss the boy—I hope those Binghamton winters haven’t put him in jeopardy”—so you see, before I even get to the thought of, “I should call him and say hello.”—I’m already worried that he’s in danger. He’s the worst example, because it includes the knowledge that he’s far too far away for me to come immediately to his aid. But daughter has her own special ‘dreading’s, i.e. life in the Big Apple, nighttime streets—her fiancé is always nearby, and she is no slouch when it comes to standing up for herself, either—but she’s so dainty—even in my reduced fitness I can easily lift her up.

So, I appreciate these storms especially—the TV is full of “Don’t leave home today if you can possibly avoid travel.” And the snow just sits because everyone knows it’ll be 50 degrees F for the next few days afterward. It’s a cozy storm. I thank the wheel for being protected from the cold and wind. (It just blew open the door I leave cracked to disperse my smoke—and made me do one of those cartoon-leaning-into-the-wind moves before I could get it closed!) I’m all too aware of how many people are without proper shelter or warm food and drink.

I had a thought while watching CSPAN. What if we created a New Dole, a stipend that worked out to the same net amount as someone making $30,000 per annum. Now, that’s a lot more comfortable than many of the livings being earned by people who are working three jobs and struggling to buy their kids’ school supplies—but it isn’t the life of Riley, either—it still demands a financial scrupling that most upper-middle-class would think of as being ‘poverty’. So it isn’t quite madness, but it is a great deal more generous than what we have now. What actions would follow?

Firstly, a lot of workers would walk quietly away from the slave-labor conditions of their present lifestyle. A large increase in families claiming relief would occur. The amount spent by the Fed to relieve these families would increase drastically. And so, for the moment, it would appear that it hurts, rather than helps us with reducing the Deficit. But what would follow almost immediately?

There would be a dearth of labor on the market—a lot of hard work will have been left deserted. The companies that paid them a slave wage (or part-time, no-benefits minimum wage, if you prefer) would still need their work to be done—but now they will be forced to pay someone a decent wage to do a respectable, full-time job. Outsourcing has its limits—just ask the new Dragon Lady in charge of Google about how much can and can’t be done ‘remotely’. Plus, manufacturing in America is enjoying a resurgence—so we merely have to ‘out-quality’ third-world-slave-labor’s production parameters, and we see an immense potential for employment.

Roosevelt was right about the ‘Fear itself’. Everyone in this economy who is enjoying a comfortable life-style (and that is a surprising majority of us) is scared to death of falling off their own perches. I know, because it is my great fear, too. But we have good reason to fear poverty so much—we treat poor people just a little better than we treat shelter pets. And we appear to have the same rubric in place, as well: ‘We try to save as many as we can, but we only have so much money’. That’s not good enough. That’s a Hell on Earth, and no wonder everyone is permanently panicked about being thrown onto that same trash-heap!

Our unemployment should be a negative value. It should indicate how much we would appreciate having a few more workers than are already busy as bees and happily employed. One thing we should not be doing is borrowing efficiency tips from regimes that put a lower value on human life, and dignity, than we do. We should continue the American tradition of surprising the world demonstrating how much more powerful humane principals are than the so-called ‘hard-nosed business’ perspective. We must take a step back from Fiscal Fascism and distribute our resources in ways that best serve the people. We fought for two decades over the question of foreign involvement—and we still stick ourselves in the middle of things, only citing a ‘War on Terror, rather than ‘Soviet Expansionism’.

Either way, we should recognize the similar threat presented by corporate lobbyists. We try to avoid ‘foreign entanglements’ with little success, but at least we recognize that as a problem. Industrial and financial lobbyists represent ‘foreign value-systems’ that attempt, piece by piece, to slide into place a ‘near enough’, removing the actual ethic for one more conducive to Business than Humanity. And they should be even more urgently avoided.

I hear proponents of Business shouting about how ‘money is the bottom line and you can’t operate in the real world without winning at the money contest’! I hear them, I do. Can’t argue the point, but it doesn’t work that simply. There is the question of how you aim your money-guns. Do we aim them at our competitors, play their game? Our do we try to be ‘American’ (as I’ve always thought it) and point the weapon at the ills of our society? We should beat our opponents by making them slobber with envy at what our nation’s quality of life has become while they were still Mesmerized by the money-changers. Just like we did to the Soviets.

Being rich would become passé. (How do you say ‘thank you’ to MS Word for automatically sticking that accent over the ‘e’ in passé? There, it just did it again! Sorry, what were we talking about?, O yeah…)

The new cool would become living without stress. A nice job, pleasant workplace environment, challenging work (but not overmuch, unless that was how you liked it.) and a nice place, with two bathrooms. We could replace ‘supply and demand’ with ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’. I suggest that we reverse ‘planned obsolescence’ and ‘go green’ by making as many products as possible last a lifetime or more. Now, the sales department isn’t going to see much good in that—but I don’t see too much good in sales, so we’re even.

We could measure the value of these products as a function of point-of-purchase profit, but with added valuation for the lack of resources required to make new ones every year or two and the reduction in waste products that need composting or recycling. Eternally-rising corporate profits sound good to the owners and managers of the single company, but as a part of the entire economy—maybe not so much.

A great deal of our hi-tech civilization’s energy and resources are spent on inertial running-in-place—every single company has to keep growing or die. We should look at new business models that minimize idle-time costs and look towards products that are manufactured and maintained only occasionally. Tomorrow’s factories will not be predicated on maximum output, but on minimum down-time expense and custom-quality products.

Now, I’m sure this all sounds very Socialist. I am only reacting to the reality I think I’ve gleaned from the media and books and the people around me. I’m no researcher with a huge bibliography to back up my ideas. I’m not even a college graduate (but that didn’t prevent my kids from getting their degrees). I’m just saying—what we’re doing isn’t working. It is causing pain, fear, and stress—it is filthifying our ecosystem—it is using up resources that cannot be replaced once they’re gone—and it keeps even those of us who are snug and satisfied in our cozy, comfy houses living in a state of terror that has nothing to do with Al Qaeda. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I personally also feel guilty about all the people that are already in a place I’m petrified about being damned to.

Fear and guilt do not fit into my idea of the ‘pursuit of happiness’. People argue that government is too big or too small—that’s nothing—what are our goals? And how is the government helping us to reach our goals? It isn’t all about money. Well, it is—but only because of the way it’s set up. We can beat Money, we can tame it, and make it ‘user-transparent’ for all practical purposes.

Just as guns are great tools when used properly, but deadly when misused—money has the capacity to moderate our march towards happiness at the double-step, smoothing the knots of trading one thing for another. We must bend it to our will—not let it continue to make some people dictators and others starved and suffering—that is only what we have foolishly allowed it to become. Just as we try to moderate national arguments with the UN, we should implement a UM that seeks to keep everyone on earth reasonably housed, well-fed and educated (and, if its not too much trouble of course, free internet).

Just as the Hague has a World Court judging international or humanitarian crimes, we need a World Accountant that finds people with just way too much money, and takes half of it—with the promise to return some of it if the person can actually spend the remaining half in their own lifetime. Then the WA would contribute to the UM in its quest to end poverty everywhere on Earth.

And it all starts with our New Dole, a latter-day Emancipation Proclamation that allows everyone to live in relative security and comfort, thus forcing business owners to revalue the salary paid to a working soul. The business advocates don’t want Obama’s new minimum-wage-increase because it will hurt business? Well then, do my idea—it won’t hurt business at all—unless you call forcing them to treat their employees like human beings ‘hurting’ them. A new paradigm beckons us towards a new American Dream—our we could just stick with the seven-billion-man rat-knot that we’re already squirming in.

Unfortunate (Tuesday, December 18, 2012 8:37 PM)

Posted by XperDunn on December 22, 2012

For some pre-historic cultures, human sacrifice, even cannibalism, was an accepted part of the culture. In that context, being an overtly healthy and vital member of the community might have been considered unfortunate—for their being prime candidates for the rituals and feasts, etc. Even so, a slow-runner or a poor shot with a sling might just as easily die from starvation. At such a nadir of civilization one may suppose that all were equally unfortunate. Such is the perfect elegance of nature.

The more civilization imposed on the human animal, the greater the possibility that some people might be better off than other people. The chiefs of the villages might get the best food, or the most food, or both. The villagers at the bottom of the pecking order were plagued by a concentration of fellow neighbors eager to criticize and ridicule.

Some became unfortunate merely by being female—the absolute necessity of producing well-raised offspring was easily minimized by the breast-beating hunters and bullies. One of civilization’s worst aspects is its preferring of thoughtless categorization upon the individuals—both ignoring their special values—and assuming untrue attributes about anyone pigeonholed into any certain category.

The development of rope, and later metal-working, allowed the practice of enslavement—an unfortunate predilection of ours that continues in the darker places of the world even today. This brought our ‘pecking order’ habits into the realm of law—and kept them there—arguably, until the American Revolution, but, in some matters, arguably, still clutching us in its grip today.

The self-fulfilling philosophy of the older world’s elite—that they were bigger, better, and superior to those around them—was reinforced by the greater health and stature conferred by a superior diet, and the greater reasoning powers that some (but not all) people gain from a good education.

With both women (and their children) and slaves under some form of control, civilization has already improved some people’s quality of life even more than the acquisition of dogs and horses. Imagine a living robot that does whatever you say—and lives in fear of execution if it questions its status. What a sweet ride for the old-boys club, huh?

The story of civilization, taken (I admit) from a certain point of view, is a journey away from our natural, balanced, primitive state and ever closer to a civilized state wherein we maintain what individualism we can whilst living within a ‘shared’ consensus of patterns and rules. As a simple example, take airplane travel—at first, it was thought impossible; then it was considered an unusual spectacle, then a military weapon, then a necessity, then a danger. When the skies became crowded enough, a regulatory system began to control the air-traffic in congested metro areas. At this point, we must all adhere to the consensus rules of air travel (and military flights) that keeps all the flying machines from crashing into each other all around the world.

Many of our great technological enhancements require regulation, maintenance, infrastructure—all the rules and conventions and quality controls demanded by such industries as automotive, pharmaceutical, governmental finance, environmental protection, etc. We’re still getting used to shouldering the responsibility of the effects of our civilization on the natural world—keeping the water clean, keeping the air non-toxic—all those pesky details we did such a great job of ignoring for so long.

We may have left it untended for too long already. The population boom that ecologists warned of since the 1960s has brought us to a total of seven billion people on our planet. Let’s experiment with the concept of scale, shall we? Pick one thousand places on the Earth where you can support seven million people in each place. Then look around and see what’s left for the additional billion people born in the next few years (and remember that seven billion people can make an awful lot of babies).

But the schism between the high class and the low class is the most avoidable and irrational of our accommodations to civilization. We have gone from despising the mentally challenged, to imprisoning them, to trying to help them. They have made it into that exclusive club: the ‘unfortunate’.

Single mothers faced similar challenges and only recently (historically-speaking) have we been open-minded enough to consider them (and all their children) worthy of our help or concern. The physically challenged, the maimed, the deaf, the blind, all the people whose presence once endangered our peace-of-mind—they are recognized today, by all right-thinking people, as ‘merely different’ rather than as someone to be shunned and shut out of society.

We even have some legislation in place that tries to even the playing field between the upper class and the rest of us—but, when money is the root of all corruption, those laws are often side-stepped in a multitude of ways.

Having recognized this pattern—the ‘why don’t we all just get along’ pattern of social progress—there’s little reason for putting each new hurdle through all the hoops that anti-Semitism, anti-integration, and women’s liberation from male chauvinism had to jump through. But we can’t seem to learn this lesson, as a society. We are trying to soothe our cultural constipation about homosexuality as homosexuals (et.al.) take a more exposed position in our society—and their would-be condemners are moved more towards the fringes of modern society with nearly every passing law—as it should be.

And we gain also in the further refinement of our sensibilities (one of the many benefits of social progress) as when once, we lumped all these mentally challenged into one group. And, having accepted these benighted children as worthy as any other, we begin to perceive the various shades of what we once assumed was all the same, of Tourette’s Syndrome, ADD, OCD, and the forms of Autism from high-functioning to low, and Asperger’s Syndrome. Not only do we then give more effective and customized support to these children—we also learn more about the human mind and, thus, about ourselves.

Scratch any old prejudice or ostracization, and we will find the benefits of overcoming our primitive repulsion in both the more humane approach to treating with the unfortunate as equal in dignity, if not capability or appearance, and, ultimately, a larger benefit to society as a whole and, again thus, to ourselves. Put more simply, being sensitive is being sensible. It is not charity—it is an inclusion of everyone in society, which can only make our civilization a more balanced and stable organism.

The problem of money, of rich and poor, shows no signs of changing in the near future. I have no suggestions on that score. However, I do have one thesis I’ve been incubating for a while now.

The jobs of pure, physical labor shrink more and more, and even skilled jobs are being more and more done cybernetically, especially in the big-factory assembly lines. We are looking at an undeniable disconnect between people who want to work, who need to make a living, and the number of jobs our high-tech civilization requires to get the work done.

With every step closer to the futuristic freedom from any labor or drudgery, we also draw nearer to the population of the existing employable. Before too long, we will simply have too few jobs and too many workers. And, on the face of it, we can’t really expect to create a support system (read ‘welfare-state-of-necessity’) with an open-ended population growth. Thus the specter of population control rears its ugly puss. But I am not clever enough to think of a proper way, an ethical paradigm, for controlling the birth rate—not to mention the inevitable loop-holes that young people will naturally create, out of desperation to have kids.

We are still struggling, in our present, with the ethics of willing, voluntary birth-control—so, the idea that we might allow governmental policy to control, in any way, our individual decisions concerning procreation seems total madness.

I would hate to be any part of a population-controlled society. Still, there is one thing that bothers me—if we don’t restrict our own population growth voluntarily, poverty and starvation will continue to do that for us, only in huger numbers and in places much closer than the third world nations of today.

That we in the USA already have starvation and malnutrition in depressed and remote areas is only one of the reasons for considering a National Minimum Policy—a program that ensures no one goes without food, clothes, shelter, transportation, online access, education, and medical care. I would suggest repurposing military installations as barracks and communities for any homeless or unemployed person—and their children.

Now that technology threatens to force us from our own lives, perfectly healthy, fairly bright people will join the ranks of the unfortunate—their plight will be just as dire, merely by reason of a lack of jobs that need doing. They will have no discernible disability except for not-being-a-robot.

If technology is making our lives easier, it must be making our jobs easier, too. And in many cases, here in the 21^st century, we’ve made some jobs so easy that no one needs to do them. So what we gain in productivity, etc. we lose in job-security. In earlier times (like my childhood) there was no way to run a business without a crowd of people. Nowadays, five people with laptops and a hotspot can run nearly any business you can name.

We look at unemployment numbers in an old-fashioned way—those numbers used to reflect the overall economy, because more business always required more workers. This is no longer the case. Jobs will evaporate almost as quickly as the polar ice caps are melting—and the people in charge do not want the rest of us taking a serious look at these glaring problems. So they choose up sides and start a fake fight over a tenth of a percentage point tax rate change (up or down, it doesn’t matter) and they manufacture the image they allow us to see on mass media.

We are so blind. Changing one thing always leads to changing another thing—all things are connected, all people are interdependent. It is a truth that we ignore every time we insist that money is all that matters. All that really matters is what we can do with money—and what no amount of money can change. If we institutionalize money out of the survival equation, we make our lives better. Even if we have a good job, we will still feel better knowing that getting fired doesn’t mean we are cut loose from our communities, but rather that we are drawn closer by our neighbors and friends.

Once we iron out the initial wrinkles, we can look into designing original ‘support communities’ with their own special functioning in mind. It isn’t as though we want to keep a swollen standing military—but those communities where bases get closed will have the purpose, the heart, removed from their communities. And the poor, and orphaned, and seniors, and homeless, and the unemployed all need a place to stay.

Plus, of necessity, we will need to employ some of these people as day-care providers, free public-schooling teachers that don’t end at High School, but can offer Bachelors, Masters and PhD programs to anyone capable of doing the work, and administrators, care-givers, cooks and craftspeople. With the correct planning and support, these centers could easily become the cradle, not of a welfare state, but of a new renaissance of American progress, invention and know-how. And it will not all be the province of just the wealthy, ivy-league grads—it will be the new frontier for the whole population, a world without a death sentence binding us to the whims of those 1%, ‘Master-of-the-Universe’ A-holes.

Just as starvation now serves as our ‘population control’, desperation likewise serves as our present ‘social incentive’. A highly fragile, highly complex global society does not need a large mob of desperate, angry, hungry people with no jobs or hope or escape.

If we begin to tone down the competitiveness that has been our driving force ever since capitalism replaced monarchism, we can transition to a newer, post-capitalist ‘—ism’ that tries to impose a sounder stability than the rough and tumble of the global marketplace. Think of the International Space Station—those astronauts, men and women, are aware that violence and selfishness are completely out of place in an artificial environment. If they want to act out, they wait until after splashdown, when being sloppy or careless isn’t instantly fatal.

Our global society is even more complex and fragile than the ISS, yet we cling to the notion that ‘market forces’ and ‘competing in a free-trade market’ are not yet too volatile for an interdependent global commerce. We have to remove competition and replace it with cooperation, or everything will just continue to fly off in all directions, until we collapse under our own fantasy of infinite time, infinite resources, and the ‘benefits’ of a ‘healthy’ antagonism.

The Politics Of Stupid

Posted by XperDunn on July 1, 2012

Saturday, June 30, 2012

The Politics Of Stupid

I never get over my surprise at how stupid people can be about politics—the media ‘ostinato’ giving equal weight to religion and reality, truth and spin, and lying and talking. Can’t folks see they’re being manipulated by some very cold-blooded psychopaths? The tremendous wealth and power these people possess is only an enabler, camouflaging their sociopathy under a veneer of dignity and worth. And this country (and the world at large) assents to this bull. I’ve accepted this as fact many years ago—but it is always in the back of my mind, coloring my vision of the future with inherent dishonesty and greed.

As a US citizen, I have endured a plethora of cognitive dissonance. As a child, I would see race riots in the southern states and be ashamed to be white. In school I would learn about the genocide of the Native Americans and the purposeful destruction of their culture being passed down from the survivors to their children. This would muddy my pride in being American. As a young, fire-in-the-belly Madison Ave. man, I learned about advertising vs. truth, financial might over ethical right, and propaganda/indoctrination/spin and the media-neglect concerning coverage of injustice in ‘attractive-resources nations’ vs. the total lack of coverage in nations suffering mere injustice (without any impact on the US economy). No amount of speechifying can change the fact that we care more about some countries than others. And it is crystal clear to me, personally, that these are short-sighted paradigms that ignore the long-term effects on the globe, and thus the USA’s own interests over time.

It is no picnic being an American, as far as morality goes. We get enough threats from foreign countries to make grousing about our foreign policy a tricky business, especially for media-figures like the Dixie Chicks girl band–who’s CDs were the subject of CD-burning protests in some cities, in reaction to the Dixie Chick’s public protests against the second invasion of Iraq. For such a free-speechy kinda country, it is surprisingly easy to become a pariah. Some of our greatest intellects (Noam Chomsky comes to mind) are marginalized into media blackout by the minimal-IQ-audience entertainers who spout conservative, fundamentalist, small-minded garbage into the ears of the electorate. And we, the electorate, have seen our education stats fall so low that we despair of any realization by the majority of us that we are being led like sheep.

I define the Republican party as ‘overt rule by the rich and powerful’ and I define the Democratic party as ‘covert rule by the less rich and less powerful’. I think this explains very neatly the back-and-forth of these two parties being elected for presidents, senators and congress-persons over the latest decades. When one side has power, they abuse it until the cracks in their façade start to show. The opposite party offers itself as the solution—and repeat, ad infinitum.

A specific node of cognitive dissonance in our government is this: we know that both parties have long since given us the dirty end of the stick –and- we know that a third party can’t be elected because of the tactics of the two big parties. This leaves us being forced to vote for the lesser-of-two-evils candidates, when in fact, long term, they are equally evil in their eschewing of good government and their eternal battle over which party machine lies the best.

Because of this fault in our democracy, many people do not vote—the years have proven that a different President, a different Senator, will make virtually no difference in their quality of life. These people will never vote unless a third-party candidate shows some chance of beating both parties. But those of us who still vote will avoid a third-party candidate in our urgency to vote for the lesser of the two conventional evils. In addition, the third-party candidate may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, ushering in something even worse than our present status quo.

Our distorted and distorting media have taught us never to trust anyone. This is an improvement over the old-fashion concept of trusting whoever is in power, but it goes too far. I blame mass media for this—their new, commercial-based ‘journalism’ always quotes both sides, even when one of those sides is evil, stupid, or simply obnoxious. If we could hear an honest politician (Oxymoron, that.) without his or her message being juxtaposed against sheer, full-throated dishonesty, we might begin to cull from those elected offices individuals that are unquestionably more in favor of advancement of their personal careers over any wish to be a civil servant acting for the benefit of their voters.

But, as with all things that generate revenue (i.e. make money) the news media will never change except to improve their ratings or protect the large corporations that own them. So, now we need a third-party candidate and a whole new news service that conforms to the old-fashioned, public-service-oriented journalism that was once such an important part of our political process.

What else do we need to rescue Democracy? Well, I wouldn’t mind seeing the body-politic grow a pair. Who are these crazies that want to use Brown-Shirt tactics during electoral campaigns? Can the Tea party fail to see how un-American their behavior is? They seem blind to the contradiction between their beliefs and their actions—I suppose a majority of the Tea Partiers are using their politics to self-administer primal therapy—their lives have come to a place where nothing is left for them to do but scream at the tops of their lungs. And, in that sense, they are identical to the Left (but less restrained) in that they want big changes and more honesty and some government that makes even one iota of sense.

We have just endured the biggest robbery ever perpetrated against the entire country—and it was committed by the richest people in the world, our own financiers. Billions of dollars were just crossed off the people’s bank accounts and investments—and added to the ledgers of Fat Cats who just happen to be their own industry’s policemen. Shouldn’t the Tea Party be concerned with that? Do they ignore it simply to avoid agreeing with those ‘damned socialists’ in the Democrat party?

Then there are the rest of us—how did we rationalize this draining of the coffers of nearly every individual in this country? Why isn’t Washington, DC still the urban uprising it would have become in any other country (and has become in many Arab states’ capitols) with the people demanding at least the pretense of fair dealing from their government?

”…But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

United States Declaration of Independence

Which reminds me of another notable wit who pointed out that all governments are democratic in that, if a big enough majority is desperate enough, even a dictatorship will be removed from office—the only difference being that they won’t technically ‘vote’ him out of office. It would be more in the style of a bloodbath—which we’ve seen in recent news in several countries where people are tired of not having any say in their own governing.

Also, the above quote, from one of our three Founding Documents, makes clear that real Americans should not sit still for ‘absolute Despotism’. Also made clear is the fact that those early revolutionists were dissolving bonds with a government that was, in terms of today’s transportation, on the Moon—We have to deal with a government intertwined with our lives, our lands, and our way of life. To revolt from this is not nearly so easy as to rebel against George III. But our founders foresaw this difficulty and made allowance for it—democratically elected leaders. Our country has withstood the bombardments of the world and the chaotic growth of itself for over two centuries.

But the power-hungry and money-coveting of this era have finally broken the code. They have boxed us in with our own democracy. And now they are in charge. They control the media, the government, and the jobs. They have an army, police, and private security. Employees are paid subsistence wages while their hard work makes the Boss wealthy—the majority of jobs in our country today are simply slavery 2.0—the modern style of oppression, mislabeled as the ‘middle class’. I would think ‘working class’ more appropriate—and what do we call the super-wealthy? Royalty? Demigods? Or should we go more ‘honest’ and call them a pack of .… [insert expletives here]

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