Urgent observation: who do you believe?

You are taught by your parents, your teachers, your friends, and society as a whole. Yet despite all the education that surrounds you, there is less truth being spoken than ever in human history. Young people (yes, this is mostly for you, as the older generations have a lot of zombie and metal robot mind that is now ingrown and a barrier), I have discussed the search for truth in the faith context, here is now secular guidance.

I'm stimulated to blog this because I just heard a talk show host whine about how much of a weird martyr he is, blah blah blah, as he tries to be the "educator" of truth. Now, understand this: I'm annoyed by that attitude even if I do agree with a particular statement. Here is why:

You cannot be taught by someone who serves two masters: the truth and commercial enterprise.

No one, no matter how well intentioned or well informed can be the "guru" or the "teacher" of the truth if they are partly zombie due to their being paid for their "truth giving."

This is the downfall of every false prophet, every paid teacher, every parent who has an agenda other than parenthood, and of course politics, media and the school systems in general.

All of them are being paid not to tell the truth, but to enact a role.

Before I continue to explain the problem, let me veer into the faith side of faith and reasoning (which is what I am teaching to you) to help you understand, now, more clearly God. Now you can understand that not only is God the truth in all matters, God is the gold standard by which you must measure truth because... God cannot be paid. God is everything and created everything, and is all Knowing and is everything that ever was or ever will be. God is the only existence that is not only all truth, but is not and cannot be reimbursed in any way for the truth. God gives his truth to the poorest person who gives him nothing; God even gives only the truth to people who spit on him and do not believe him.

So how do you determine who is a truthful teacher? Well, here's a big ring on the clue phone. How much are they paid, depend on having a paying job, write books and charge money for seminars, have perks and position, have prestige lavished on them, or, at the innocent end of the same spectrum though, are enslaved by people who hold their livelihood in their hands, and thus must toe the line in what they teach?

Friends, in the old days, many teachers were unpaid monks and nuns. The elders of villages that had no education system at all told the truth of their culture's beliefs unchanged by agenda to their children generation after generation. This is in contrast to salaries, prestige, offices, titles, retirement plans, second homes and other gains that drive just about every person who "teaches" in this society. How much can you believe the truth? You better understand that you are not getting the truth (intentionally or unintentionally) by anyone who is gaining lots of lucre, swag and ass kissing as a part of their job.

People in the talk show circuit of course are big shots and also peddle their wares and those of others. Don't bother telling me how they have to make a living and support their family; I get that more than anyone else. (By the way, if you've not read my capitalism series, or are ready to do so again, check it out under that label). But the problem is that in the old days people could survive without a salary (they could grow their own food, build their own houses, marry someone with a job, etc). So there was no monetary motivation to tell a particular "truth" or "truthiness." Parents genuinely wanted their kids to get life, to not stumble over the same stuff they did. But now parents teach their kids stuff that is commercial agenda driven, whether they know it or not. It may be innocent (you need to learn this in order to get a high paying job) or agenda driven (they want to justify their own bad behavior and lifestyle by teaching you stuff that is plain bogus... and if you wonder what I mean think of the worst example which is a household where parents justify drugs and alcohol). You are not going to get truth and you are not going to get even facts that you can string together using reasoning because it is not in the agenda and economic interest of just about everyone to teach: 1) faith 2) reasoning 3) facts about human history 4) discernment. Schools now teach none of the above.

In some kindness to your parents, they were the first guinea pigs to come out of the "nu" educational systems, the ones that don't teach 1-4, so they could not, in general, do better with you, even if they were aware and wanted to. I hope as they read my blog they want to change too, but my focus is on you, young people. This is because as I said here, the previous two generations are maimed in their ability to self critique. I have never seen people resist honest self assessment as these. They don't want to change a THING about themselves, but they want to go to seminars to be super heroes.

Young people, use the check list I have given to you here and be aware that no one can receive any sort of prestige or compensation and then be a totally truthful agenda free teacher to you or to anyone. Money, rather than truth and your welfare, drives everyone who opens their mouth, uses a pen, inputs to a computer or media device. God drives the truth.

If you connect with God, directly, in your own personal humble relationship with him, as you get to know him you understand that he is never compensated for being the truth, and he is not "paid" or "honored" in return for caring for every human being, believer or non believer. Once you have your gold standard for truth telling, which is God, you can now discern the motivations and infrastructures of learning that human beings offer to you. You will start to better understand teachers with a political or monetary axe to grind, versus those who are yes, stuck in the system, but who still do the best they are able to convey unvarnished truth and the tools by which to learn (1-4). Still, hear me and believe me: you cannot rely on anyone because everyone is stuck in the tar pit. You must supplement your honest learning from even the best of sources with your own study and powers of observation. Unfortunately it is a chain reaction whereby even well meaning teachers today rely on the bull crap that was taught to them.

I have more thoughts but want to get this essential message out because from this understanding all else derives. All the best and thinking of you.

Book excerpt to help understand human nature

The more prosperous people become and the more society controls all of their sources of information, the more people become both inhumane and un-human. Basically, in the past several decades people have done more to lose their basic humanity and humane-ness than at any point in their history. Worse, the past several decades were a total reversal of the trend line, which had been toward increased humanity and self awareness. This ought to be terrifying to anyone who gives a damn at all.

It's a bit of a paradox, the problem of increased prosperity. By prosperity I do not necessarily mean being middle class or rich, but I mean that life is, by definition, no longer a daily struggle just to survive and to subsist. I'm not making this up (this is what you used to learn in history classes, dear young people ;-) Human life can be characterized as "subsistence," which is defined as barely making the necessary gatherings of food, water, shelter and fuel in order to survive and to, hopefully, support one's family, or as "prosperous," which means that you have excess or surplus than what you and your family need to just survive. I write about this somewhat in my understanding capitalism series. So the corn farmer who grows just enough to feed and shelter himself and his family is "subsistence," while the corn farmer who grows extra to sell in the market for optional or "betterment" activities is a basic capitalist and "prosperous," comparatively speaking.

Here is the paradox, and it is obvious to any student of human nature and also any student of the Bible. The subsistence man, woman or child is not allowed much delusion about the nature of human beings. Subsistence is the ultimate "reality show." The subsistence person is hypersensitive, in a good way, to reality. They can look at the crop seeds in their hand, look at the land, watch the weather, and have a very good idea how reality will turn out... will they grow enough and in time to survive, or face privation.

A person with surplus, with that extra produce or production, allowing them relative "prosperity" is able to imagine more, and is thus instantly more vulnerable to becoming increasingly detached from reality. Just to cut to the chase, a person who is prosperous has too much time on his or her hands to guarantee continued contact with reality, because now they can imagine that they are someone they are not, that life "works" in ways that is different than it really does, that they can make dog doodoo up in their minds and writing it down call it fiction, and mislead others, and become self-congratulatory at their own "success" while others suffer (and then imagine bogus reasons for doing so).

So why have humans become, until recently, increasingly humane and understanding their own humanity, even as they became prosperous? Because, until recently, they held tightly to their ultimate reality, as revealed in the Torah, the Bible and the Qur'an. In those books centuries of believers recorded the faith history as they interacted with the one true God. When one studies the true Word of God, who made not only humans, but all that exists in the universe and "beyond," one has an accurate view of humanity's reality, hopes, dreams, aspirations, and also the many pitfalls of their imperfection and brokenness. So until the past several decades as the Gospel and the Qur'an spread, many more people had the benefit of hoping for increased prosperity while at the same time remaining firmly rooted in reality. With the rise of so called "New Age" "beliefs, the usual cyclical interest in Satan and "witchcraft," the heavy use of mind altering substances coupled with defiant attitude toward even beneficial authority, "for pay" "religion" and "salvation," the rise of atheism and vampire "chic,"and the incredibly arrogant belief of "caste" systems, for lack of a better word, of the "enlightened" and the "not so spiritual," many people (and I know that most of the world "decision makers") have totally lost touch with reality, and have led many millions behind them into that ultimate dead end.

With this concern in mind I read a passage in a book written by our current Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, written when he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. The book, "The Spirit of the Liturgy," is about the format and spiritual rationale for the format of worship of God in the Catholic Church known as the Mass. In this book the former Cardinal Ratzinger helps the reader to understand the spirit of the Mass, and thus its history and foundation. Here is the excerpt, where PB16 is analyzing why the Chosen People, the Israelites who have just escaped slavery in Egypt, through Moses and God's personal intervention, could seem to hardly be able to wait to "cheat on God" (my wording) and be unfaithful to God even as God is meeting with Moses to give to him guidance and the Law. I've written about this before, to help my readers to better understand scripture. But here I was impressed at how I can share this excerpt with you to better understand the danger of human nature that I have just described above, and that is now causing the ruination of all that is good and genuinely authentic about humans and humanity.

In the Old Testament there is a series of very impressive testimonies to the truth that the liturgy is not a matter of "what you please." Nowhere is this more dramatically evident than in the narrative of the golden calf (strictly speaking, "bull calf"). The cult conducted by the high priest Aaron is not meant to serve any of the false gods of the heathen. The apostasy is more subtle. There is no obvious turning away from God to the false gods. Outwardly, the people remain completely attached to the same God. They want to glorify the God who led Israel out of Egypt and believe that they may very properly represent his mysterious power in the image of a bull calf. Everything seems to be in order. Presumably even the ritual is in complete conformity to the rubrics. And yet it is a falling away from the worship of God to idolatry. This apostasy, which outwardly is scarcely perceptible, has two causes. First, there is a violation of the prohibition of images. The people cannot cope with the invisible, remote, and mysterious God. [My note: and talk about being spoiled! These dummies actually saw God in his cloud form when he met with Moses, to say nothing to have witnessed all of the miracles of Moses, such as the parting of the sea. Sheesh. The Pope is being kind!] They want to bring him down into their own world, into what they can see and understand. Worship is no longer going up to God, but drawing God down into one's own world. He must be there when he is needed, and he must be the kind of God that is needed. Man is using God, and in reality, even if it is not outwardly discernible, he is placing himself above God.

This gives us a clue to the second point. The worship of the golden calf is a self-generating cult. When Moses stays away for too long, and God himself becomes inaccessible, the people just fetch him back. Worship becomes a feast that the community gives itself, a festival of self-affirmation. Instead of being worship of God, it becomes a circle closed in on itself: eating, drinking, and making merry. The dance around the golden calf is an image of this self-seeking worship. It is a kind of banal self-gratification. The narrative of the golden calf is a warning about any kind of self-initiated and self-seeking worship. Ultimately, it is no longer concerned with God but with giving oneself a nice little alternative world, manufactured from one's own resources. Then liturgy really does become pointless, just fooling around. Or still worse it becomes an apostasy from the living God, an apostasy in sacral disguise. All that is left in the end is frustration, a feeling of emptiness. There is no experience of that liberation which always takes place when man encounters the living God.

(Ratzinger, 200, p 22-23).

Great start in Washington; a suggestion here

I was totally delighted to listen just now to the open press wrap-up of the White House and Congressional meeting. I cannot be overly complimentary when I praise both the taking place of this meeting (which was structured according to working groups on key topics and issues) and the open dialogue and feedback at the conclusion. This was an extraordinary event and a fine role model for what I hope is just the beginning of a new way of doing business in America. The President and the members of the Senate and the House deserve a lot of praise.

Now, I have just one suggestion that I hope will make everyone’s job easier as they wrestle now with the very urgent and complex topics. I address this suggestion to both conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans, each with a slight twist but the same message.

Whenever our members of Congress contemplate legislation, it is natural to think first and foremost, “Can we pay for this and if so, how will we do so?” In fact, one of the greatest areas of unease is the feeling by conservatives that America has resorted to “printing money” and “throwing it at the problem,” and I share this unease. However, I am also sympathetic with those who argue that inaction is worse, as the economy continues to spiral further in crisis, than shelling out the money. Also, generations of politicians and bureaucrats, fueled by corporate mindsets, have grown up with the belief that “grown ups” always keep “how do we pay for this” in mind before contemplating any expenditure.

The problem is that if that attitude rules the entire analysis of a particular legislation or problem solving, it codifies a problem into only two possible solutions: spend money or not. As a result multitudes of other possible approaches fall off the table unnoticed. Consideration of “how to pay” has become a show stopper for doing the right thing because the “how to pay” argument overshadows problem solving too early in the process.

Legislators need to start the legislative process following a more classic approach to problem solving, which is open ended at the very beginning. In other words, they need to put all options for progress on the table, evaluate and refine them first and foremost by whether they are the correct, desirable and “right” thing to do. Consideration of “can we pay” and “how do we pay” must come later in the process. Let me give an example.

Suppose that the legislature needs to evaluate a specific health crisis, let’s say some sort of toxic compound poisoning has been discovered and there is an urgent need for new legislation to address this new crisis. (Stick with me on the example, even though I know that literally existing agencies and budgets would cover this scenario in reality). Instead, assume in my example that a totally new potentially dire but not yet proven dire scenario has come up that requires legislation and of course, by implication, funding.

If the legislators and their aides immediately jump into a “how do we pay for it” attitude, they cannot focus on the genuine extent of the need and all possible implications for solution. Those who are alarmed by the threat of the toxic compound will want to throw money at the problem. Those who are tight with the purse strings will be tempted to poo-poo the potential risk, arguing there is no proof that legislation or investment is needed. That is the danger of allowing money to set the stage for determining whether something needs to be done, or not.

In the ideal case committees do research and determine whether or not this problem exists in truth, and whether or not a solution is needed. THEN experts in this problem can put forth alternatives. Many of these alternatives might suggest creative ways to fund the legislation rather than budget busting straight out expenditure. Suppose in my scenario that a university is already doing research in this area. One solution might be to transfer government resources on temporary assignment to that university’s endeavor, rather than allocate new funding. So people in the educational sector already working (in theory) on research in this area now have a dotted line relationship to a program that is already funded, and the staff and their resources are now reassigned, and what they had been working on is demoted in priority. This is one example where a new legislative endeavor can be “funded” without the tradition approaches of allocating new budgetary funds and the problem of raising money or busting budgets.

Here is another example. Suppose that another country is already doing research in this toxic compound problem. Why not consider an alliance, rather than fund a parallel effort? Again, one could allocate some new funds for additional staff, or reassign, or “swap” with the other country for use of their resources.

It is crucial, especially in this financial crisis, that the President, legislators, their aides, educational institutions and corporations start first and foremost with dialogue on what is correct and what needs or must be done, and leave funding as secondary, as counterintuitive as that sounds. If one decides first and foremost that something is a genuine legislative need, with allocated resources of some specific type needed, one can then secondarily consider options that may not involve budget spoilers or new allocated funds at all. It can also force a fresh look at existing budget priorities, where the responsible agencies just have to push something further down the stack as a greater problem arises.

My suggestion is actually the MOST fiscally conservative approach, rather than the worried dollar signs in the head from the very beginning approach. That is because one is open to a host of alternative ways to procure and provide the resources needed for the new legislative initiative. Sometimes one can craft a better law and budget if one MUST do something but there is no NEW money to do it. That is because one can consider governmental partnerships, private initiatives, swaps and alliances with corporations. What if, for example, a private company was given an extraordinary tax break in return for using their existing staff to work on this problem? Some laboratory that was working on pure research gets the assignment to work on the new potential toxic compound problem and they reallocate their staff from pure to targeted research, in return for a tax break or other non-budgetary incentive.

So it’s actually not the most “adult” thing to think “how do we pay” first and foremost. The most adult thing is “what must we do (if anything) about a particular problem, and what is the correct approach with the most hoped for results?” Then one figures out how to procure the resources and staffing. It is extremely difficult to overcome the deliberate and unconscious programming that has taken place in everyone’s mindset, I understand that all too well, seeing it become a disaster of missteps in decision making in government and society for decades now. It is especially hard with entitlements discussions, where hardly anyone discusses what the right thing to do is, and instead, they just dissolve into quarrels and intransigent positions about money, such as in health care and social security. But if you continue to do that you totally miss out on 1) what is right and essential to do and 2) many alternative ways to do it. Both sides harden into an expensive proposal with one side saying yes and the other side saying no.

This happened with Social Security in the Bush administration. President Bush set his heart on a “free market” approach to actually investing some of Social Security in the money markets (heaven forbid). This is an example of where the President and legislators hardened into one proposal rather than starting by looking at comprehensive reform, where needed. This is because both sides assumed that it is the political “third rail” of politics AND that reform can’t be afforded. Therefore the President thought he was peeling off a piece that would be innovative and helpful, but not touch the third rail or “cost” anything. Can you imagine what would be happening now, in the financial meltdown, if Social Security were part of it? But I’m not criticizing President Bush for trying to peel off doing at least “something” that he felt avoided the third rail of budgetary explosion of costs, and political fighting if people feared reduced benefits. It seemed logical to him, but that logic is erroneous. It’s not his fault in this area because he has walked into a hardened environment of thinking that we must think “first” of “how much will it cost” and “how do we pay for it” before even determining if “it” is the right thing to do. So everyone is somewhat bipolar about it. They tiptoe around the need to do the right thing if it is going to be costly or they then swing to the other extreme and just warm up the printing press and manufacture some greenbacks. As a result very poor decisions are made one after the other because they are not based on the facts of the problem and the need to invest in some action.

I hope that you understand what I am explaining here and find it helpful. It is crucial that people try to change this mindset right away. In classic problem solving one does start with an assumption that is totally free of any consideration of funding. In other words, one must spend at least some time in the “problem definition” and “solutions exploration” stages of just assuming “money is no object.” It is only by assuming that in the beginning that one can determine what the “right” thing to do is. It is after the problem is defined and alternatives identified and sketched that one introduces the “resources needed” part of the process, where implications for investment become identified. After that is done then people can start to identify either staged or modified implementations based on budget realities or, as I am suggesting, how to do the “right thing” without classic check writing or money printing approaches, as I demonstrate in the toxic compound example, where several solutions can be reasonably pursued that are not budget busters yet are highly targeted and effective “investment”.

Economic crisis: stop being part of problem

I want to address the people who are making wise cracks about socialism and irresponsible homeowners who got bad mortgages, who have children they "can't afford," and those who didn't "prepare themselves" for the "new economy" (whatever that was).

Stop being part of the problem, and prepare to start being part of the solution.

First of all, I am sick of hearing people (mostly conservatives) who state that people do not have a right to own a home, have children etc.

You are dead wrong and that is, as I've pointed out, one of the problems with this phony and mean spirited "free market" "capitalism" that has ruined this country and much of the western economies.

True capitalism arose from agrarian societies where people built their own shelters and supplied their own food, and had as many children as the food supply could support.

I have explained that human beings arose and developed civilization and genuine capitalism via understanding that there is a natural expectation that one can create for one's self shelter, food and a family.

Thus any capitalism that does not realize that every human has a right to basic shelter, food and the ability to have unrestricted children (not as "economic options") is not genuine capitalism.

This does not mean that everyone is entitled to a McMansion. But it is not the fault of the people when society herds them so that that is the only choice that they have.

At this point in so called civilization this country at the very least should have been overflowing with cheap homes and apartments, and jobs that allow everyone to have shelter, whether a home or an apartment. Likewise children should have been recognized as a human right and a treasure, not as pawns in the abortion ping pong video game.

I am still shocked to my very core of being at where this country has gone. There is no excuse that there is not an abundance of good jobs, that while paying modest wages are more than sufficient for one person to comfortably afford housing and to support a family.

There is NO EXCUSE for this disaster that is ongoing. The very least conservatives and well paid liberals can do is shut the F*** up, while you are pulling in your very undeserved salaries living in your McMansions that you do not deserve at all.

I could reach through this screen and punch in the face the next fat ass "expert" behind a microphone that bleats that people do not have a right to a home. F*** YOU.

I just read that a man in Ohio, a carpenter, lost his job, so he killed his wife (who had reduced hours at a senior home) and his son, and then himself.

HOW CAN ANY OF YOU LOOK AT YOURSELVES IN THE MIRROR WITHOUT SHAME?

If you are not going to help than at least shut up and be grateful for what you have, especially you miserable ignorant media moron asshats.

Economic renewal not recovery

Not to word smith, but just make a point that while using the descriptive word "recovery" regarding the economy, I think you should keep in mind that "renewal" or "restoration" are more accurate. So use the word "recovery" but keep "renewal" in mind. Why? Because you are not trying to recover, as in go back to, the position just before the crisis since that erroneous position caused the problem.

For example, people should not hope to recover the economy back to its previous position of relying on phony money on Wall Street, such as complex derivatives and the mortgage "products" that were high wire acts without a net. As I've blogged before I saw first hand that corporate executives have had an attitude of individuals making a killing rather than individuals making a living. Immoral and false monetary tools are simply ways to invent money and give it to the few who are "in on the act."

Meanwhile genuine jobs that create genuine product disappear, are outsourced, or given to immigrants since they are "beneath" the corporate Illuminati.

The economy will not "recover," as in become healthy again, if corporate executives, all the way down to small business owners, do not restore their own view of how the economy should work and succeed, so that the most can be prosperous doing work that is real and of value.

I've written about this before, so I won't repeat myself. But people must change their minds and their hearts about the American dream (and, indeed, the global universal aspiration of just about everyone) to not be only about raising prices and raising incomes and being on the endless hamster wheel. People have been enslaved in this economy so that there is only one way to survive, and that remains precarious too. The answer cannot be just to think only of products that liberate money from people's wallets and call that free market and success.

Capitalism/financial crisis: relevant ancient history

Besides God, there is nothing more important to humanity than good stewardship of the earth. By this I mean the basics, such as the ability of humans to grow food and feed all of the population (without imposing population controls) and for humans to wisely manage the ecosystems so that flora and fauna can continue to grow and flourish, and not meet extinction unless it is genuinely their time.

People must learn to be shepherds of the wild and natural flora and fauna, being activist within the natural order of things. Thus they should not be blind exploiters, nor should they be laissez faire protectionists (where they protect the land but then do not lift a finger to either prune or encourage the species within). It is not a coincidence that God gave humans to understand that the earth is a garden because gardeners tend to their garden; they neither exploit the garden nor do they seal it off to be "all natural."

Why do I mention this? It is important to understand that more of humanity's education, jobs and interest must be redirected away from the false (electronic entertainment for example) and more toward the reality of tending to the earth. That is what genuine "green jobs" should be.

I also mention this as part of my helping people to realign their thinking back to reality, and to find their way back to sanity, and back away from the freak show societal delusions. So I want to explain to you something that used to be well understood, but I'm not sure it is taught in schools anymore.

Why did humans invent writing and number systems so they can count? Not to write down stories. Not to label the great buildings with the names of the kings. Not to develop Egyptian hieroglyphs for memorializing the dead. Humans invented writing and counting for one simple reason: to inventory their food supplies.

The earliest writing is preserved from Sumeria, now known as Iraq, in the form of clay tablets and also"cylinder seals." These are blocks of stones shaped like tubes, so that when one rolls the seal the message is also unrolled. As a former antiquities collector I always wanted to add a Sumerian cylinder seal to my collection, but did not get the opportunity to afford one.

When experts decipher the very earliest of human writing, they do not find sacred scripture or the deeds of mythical or real kings. They find boring crop reports, preserved on many clay tablets. Later tablets, but more often the cylinders, were used to depict scenes, history and divine beliefs.

Remember, then, those crop reports were not boring for people who live and die based on what they can grow in that season. Just ask those in Africa and Asia, and those in drought areas elsewhere today, and you will realize that all of mundane life is ultimately summarized and glorified in the ability of the good earth to provide for humans who are fruitful and who multiply, those who share the blessings of earth with new infants, and not resent, as so many "greens" seem to do, new life and new mouths to feed.

Sometimes it is very helpful to remember that writing, which is used so much for "entertainment" and agenda driven purposes today, and numbers, which have also been given by some people a weird and incorrect supernatural and superstitious importance, would not have been invented at all if people did not realize the most fundamental need, which is to provide the goodness of adequate food for all who need it. The old saying is that "necessity is the mother of invention." Writing and counting were invented because of the need to understand and inventory food supplies. Once writing and counting were invented, it is later that they are used for other purposes.

This, by the way, is one reason that Abraham was so wealthy: it was not gold or silver, but agricultural goods and flocks, so that his family could grow and support with love all who were born within it. Wealth among early humans was measured by counting one's flocks and one's harvest, so one knew that one could support their family and contribute to the clan and tribe's survival.

Sometimes to disinfect the skewing of mindset that has taken place, and what moderns take for granted, it is useful to think back to what used to be taught with some detail in schools, which is the agricultural basis for not only capitalism (which I explained in many previous blog posts) but also writing and counting. Thus people ascribe very strange "purposes" to the written word and to numbers, without understanding that they serve humans, and humans do not serve the written word or numbers.

I hope that you have found this helpful.

If you read articles about cylinder seals, you find that they speak almost exclusively of the more "glamorous" topics, such as deities and history, since that is, of course, what they were later used for and are of the most interest to archaeologists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_seals

This is a great introduction to the beginning of agriculture in the area of Sumeria, and also the written tools I describe here in this blog.

http://www.nlcs.k12.in.us/oljrhi/brown/mesopotamia/meso.htm

But the more boring history indicates what I have explained above, which is that it was not the desire to record history that promoted writing and counting (since oral history continued very strongly after writing and counting were invented), but that the actual inventions of writing and counting centered around the essential inventory of food stuffs, both their aquisitions storage and their trade.

Cannot resist posting bank corruption story

I heard about this at one of the banks I worked for in the 1990's.

This was told to me as it was happening by someone in a position to know, but not in a position to do anything about it.

A trader stole millions of dollars from the bank using the "trade tickets in the drawer" method. I don't remember how much but it was truly an enormous amount of money.

When he was detected in his theft the bank declined to press charges and covered the whole thing up out of fear that he would ruin their reputation by being in the press and explaining how stupid and weak the bank was (it had a sterling reputation among its customers).

So he was allowed to leave with the millions he had stolen and given a good reference!

He went to work a few days later for a trading location "across the street."

I was told this was not an uncommon thing, where insiders were allowed to get away with what they stole in return for keeping quiet and supposedly preserving the reputation of the bank.

The only evidence I have is that this person was really scared when this person told me and especially when the bank got busy trying to find out who inside knew about this. This honest and really hard working person was really, really scared and wished that he or she did not know about it for fear of being purged or something.

And you wonder why the problems have all come home to roost, and people like me have suffered for not being an insider at the dishonest pig trough.

Capitalism/financial crisis rule of thumb

I've written much on this subject but tonight want to just give you a rule of thumb as a basis for discussion of where we should go and what we should do to fix the incredible mess.

If you read in my previous post the excerpts from FDR's inaugural address, it will be helpful for you to understand the point I am about to make.

Somewhere between FDR's time and today, modern society has, to their error and peril, redefined citizens of this country as "consumers."

In other words, the entire national psyche has stopped thinking of people as individuals (and communities) who "have lives" and replaced them with an image of "consumers."

In fact, this view of people as being only consumers has been codified into every business structure, particularly large businesses and corporations, by government laws and regulations, by the tax code, and by the coarse culture at large (e.g. news, entertainment and advertising).

The concept of "jobs" is one of the battlelines drawn in the sand regarding the question of whether people are living human beings or consumers. Those who tend to think that people are living human beings tend to, like FDR, focus on the vital importance for everyone who wants and needs a meaningful job to have one. That is because jobs are the activity that human beings engage in, in order to continue to live.

Those who oppose emphasis on jobs claim they do so because "job creation programs do not work," but they are actually revealing their almost robotic programming that people are not people but "consumers." That is why they parrot over and over "let the market decide," and "the government is not good at fixing problems" and "we must have 'free markets.'" They believe, some of them sincerely, that they advocate the "American dream," but instead they are part of the American nightmare.

Young people in particular, do read almost any literature from the time of the 1930's and 1940's, from FDR's time, and keep what I said in mind and you will be struck by the difference. FDR sniffed that very bad change in the wind, which is why he was so harsh in criticizing immoral business practices, such as exploitive banking. Yet even he who was so visionary would not have foreseen a time such as today where American society and each other so often think people as simply being "consumers," no longer concerned with the dignity of day to day life, including a job.

This country will die a miserable death if we do not regain an awareness of people as individuals with needs for living, not needs for spending. People need the basics, what I have called sustenance portion of capitalism, and that includes good and lasting jobs. It is then the excess, the surplus of their labor where they can engage in the activity of consumerism. That is totally different from the current situation where people self manipulate and manipulate each other as beings that are only open maws of consumers. I do not understand how any scholarly or thoughtful "free market" advocates do not understand that the reduction of humans and their lives to the definition of "consumers" is just as bad as if the government and each other viewed humans as potential military draftees and that was their sole identity.

Work with me on that analogy. To better understand how human beings and their lives have been enslaved and chained into the identity of "consumers," think about what our country would be like if we did not have an active military draft, but that every human was viewed as having value only as a potential military draftee. We would have physical education programs for our kids that emphasized combat skills and readiness. We would rewrite the curriculum of our schools to produce good potential soldiers. We would have recruiters everywhere extolling the virtue of service, perhaps one located in every classroom in every school. The recruiters would point out during studies those skills and world events that are the most interest to potential soldiers and the best role models. What would entertainment be like? Movies that pine for the draft and glorify it. Fashion? Clothes that reminded the wearer that they could be called to service at any time. What would the job pecking order be like? Jobs that would support a draft would be highly esteemed, while those that had nothing to do with the draft would be viewed as low status. Cars could be designed like small tanks so that civilian drivers could "get used to" the feel of a tank, or another war machine or vessel, "just in case."

So do you see how the mindset of the people when they surrender the idea that they are citizens and human beings and are instead "a verb" has totally dire consequences? In my analogy the humans in that scenario are no longer people-citizens-but a verb (actually an adverb), "ones who might be drafted." Today we are no longer humans but we are a verb, an adverb, a noun and an identity based on one manic activity, which is to "consume."

President Obama is entirely correct to focus on jobs as the cornerstone of recovery. Yes, jobs programs can be messed up, but the identity of the human beings is correct and sound, unlike in this nightmare of a consumer driven economy and worse, as self identity as consumers. Even faith has become far too consumer oriented, where "product" is packaged and consumed. This is a disaster, one that is based on a total misunderstanding of genuine capitalism (as I've explained in many previous posts; if you are new just follow the capitalism and financial crisis labels for more of what I've previously written).

I cannot overemphasize and just repeat my draftee analogy the problem with human beings and their lives being viewed as simply variations of consumers. This is not semantics because as I show in my analogy, an erroneous view of humanity cascades and infects all aspects of individual life, curtails freedom and demeans the individual and their local communities. That, by the way, is another byproduct of the trend away from supposedly "inefficient" local business to multi corporation "centralized" banks and other service providers or product producers. When locally owned business dries up and vanishes you have people who view multiple states, the entire country, and even globally humans as being "current consumers" and "potential consumers." They are no longer people living lives and living in communities. They are only consumers of your products. So any genuine job revitalization must be understood as a local resource that enables local residents to have good ongoing lives, not fill the coffers of people who are far away and again, just view job creation as a way to stimulate consumption for their own benefit. That is a complicated topic that needs its own post. My point remains to you, however, that jobs are not just "the way that those consumer-robots can start spending money again."

I hope you have found this helpful. Before it is too late would be nice.

Capitalism/financial crisis, another comparison

This one is especially for young people who don't remember, actually, when alternative two was a genuine alternative, nor the debate that we had when "conglomeration" became an issue. Actually it was not much of a social or economic debate because we were just steam rolled into accepting it as the new norm.

Which is better?

You have a man who has become a great success with his own company. He started out with one company in his area of expertise, let's say a chemical company. He has decided to "diversify" so he starts acquiring businesses that are outside of and separate from his original area of expertise. So let's say he buys a candy making company, a clothing manufacturer, a television station and a manufacturer of health care products. They all are now part of his "conglomerate." How are they purchased? By paying large fees to financial managers, and then stripping off parts of the acquired companies that are viewed as not helping the bottom line. For "efficiencies" jobs that are "duplicating" are eliminated. The success of the conglomerate is measured by the one stock of the conglomerate and by the salaries the executives receive.

or

You have a man who has become a great success with his own company. He started out with one company in his area of expertise, let's say a chemical company. He decides to diversify so using his successful model he helps other chemical companies to start up, and to explore greener product lines. He thus goes into new lines of his old business and prospers, while modernizing his own company to be more green and innovative (let's say how to break down the very chemicals he produces in times where a pollution clean up is needed). He is honored as someone who is part of the solution, not part of the problem, and his company thrives, including bringing good jobs to underdeveloped countries.

A candy company has been in business for a long time and provides one hundred people with steady jobs. They "break even" each year; they operate at no loss but not with much profit. Yet one hundred people have homes, benefits and good jobs that they can count on. The owner thinks about offering her product on the Internet or partnering in marketing during special events, thus she continually looks for steady market growth or at least maintenance.

A clothing company is struggling, and they worry about the hundred people who work for them, if they will keep their jobs. They are tempted to let themselves be acquired, knowing that this will be a payout for the owners, but probably the demise of the local jobs. Instead of doing that they decide to remain where they are and find other ways to thrive and keep the local jobs. They create a new line of clothes that is branded by a local celebrity and sold in the casinos. Thus they have a unique clothing product that is not subject to the lowest price wars. They thus create and hang onto their niche, and those jobs.

I don't know much about the television station business, but know that they were the first to be sucked up by media conglomerates. I think that is a free market example of where the chips fall where they may. The question is, does being acquired by a media conglomerate give it more financial security, or render it a mouthpiece for certain viewpoints or "entertainment?" The station owners and managers make a thoughtful decision based on that question.

When the owners of a small health care product line are first asked about their interest in merging with a conglomerate, they wonder, "Why?" They know they have a small but important product, one that is not market driven so much as healthcare need driven. The conglomerate offers large "PR" and "advertising" resources, and says they can hook them up with decision makers who make bulk purchases. It's tempting, but would the product still be manufactured where it is, preserving the local jobs? Could they not do a better job themselves of marketing their product and keeping their profits rather than be absorbed into a conglomerate balance sheet? Would the conglomerate even know anything about their line of health care and care about their patients and their ability to afford their products? The conglomerate's interest stirs them to explore their options, but they recognize that their first obligation is to preserving their local jobs and meeting the needs of their patients and customers at the lowest possible cost.

Capitalism/financial crisis: a question for you

Which is the better situation?

You have two separate companies in the same line of business, let's say two small community banks. Each one is financially solid and solvent, but not dramatic. One bank employs about one hundred people and the other employs about two hundred people. Everyone gets a good salary and benefits. Thus three hundred people, including the top managers, earn "a good living" but are not exactly plutocrats or captains of industry.

-or-

The bank with one hundred people figures they could "do better" and takes over the bank of two hundred people. They "merge" and eliminate "duplicate services." They now employ a total of two hundred and twenty people, eliminating eighty of the previous employees. The deal makers made a big commission out of the merger and the managers make more money. The "shareholders" get a few cents more per share in earnings than they did before.


That is the problem. All of western society has been brainwashed to think that scenario number two is "better."

Babies' health, spiritually and for the economy

It's a sign of the times, and not a good one, that many of you might wonder what the health of infants has to do with the economy and the current economic crisis. These modern times are so ill informed and warped in their priorities that obvious connections are no longer recognized or well understood. So here are some thoughts and background for you to contemplate.

For virtually all of human history parents have had many children, and several of them have died young. As recently as the early 1900's this was an unsurprising pattern. Everyone knew a family who had a baby die at birth or soon after. It was a great sorrow and not spoken about, not because people were ashamed of the poor baby, but because that was how everyone was "in the same boat" and coped by feeling sorrow but moving on.

We then had tremendous health breakthroughs in the middle 1900's where prenatal care was better understood and provided, hospitals provided rapid response to problem births, and people began to learn how to treat many birth defect conditions and other problems that put a baby's life at risk.

I don't know if young people today know the old expression of relief that new parents would express, saying "As soon as he or she was born we counted all his or her fingers and toes." This is from the time when there was no sonogram or other prenatal diagnosis of fetal health, and upon first sight virtually all parents "checked" the hands and feet of their newborn for all the fingers and toes. Birth was a time of suspense because as I said, everyone knew a family who had lost a baby in birth or in young childhood and the counting the fingers and toes was a kind of "laughing in the dark" ritual that accompanied the sigh of relief when a birth was healthy and successful.

Humans have a horrible problem of back sliding, though. One would assume that infant health would only get better and better as society and technology "progressed," but it has not. For example, just as infant prenatal and post natal doctor care improved, women took up smoking cigarettes. Women did not smoke, either while pregnant or normally, until pretty recently. So in a way, much of the health of infants that was achieved through technology progress was canceled out by women taking up cigarette smoking. A study announced today shows that women who smoke while pregnant put their children at higher risk of being aggressive. That is a risk factor that simply did not exist throughout human history, just to give you one example. During more socially prurient times mainstream women did not smoke cigarettes, drink or take illegal drugs, including marijuana. Thus on the one hand women gained the benefits of prenatal care and more prosperous lives in which to have safer births (housing, heating, vaccinations, antibiotics, for example). However, on the other hand, "liberated" women started putting substances into their bodies both before and during pregnancy. See, I am not explaining this to blame, but to educate especially the young people about why things change the way that they do in human social and medical history. As having babies became safer women (and the fathers) accelerated their unsafe choices that canceled out much of the progress.

Further, lifestyle and environmental situations changed around all humans, both those having children and not. For example there is a huge influx of food additives, chemicals such as in plastic, medication and hormones that are in the drinking water, and toxins in the air and even more insidiously in the household. Again, the health gains of safer prenatal care and post birth delivery and treatment of any birth defects or conditions has been canceled out by the acute toxicity of the environment. In my time I have witnessed houses that used to be made out of natural materials (wood, stone, brick, etc) be replaced by houses made out of artificial chemically produced and "treated" materials. People were slow to recognize that humans have built two generations of "sick buildings." Upholstery and carpet used to be made from cotton and wool. Now it is filled with toxic material. We used to wash our bodies and homes with soap and water. Now the "cleansers" are worse than the dirt and those that kill germs only breed stronger and stranger germs to replace them.

So now we see all sorts of mysterious physical, emotional and mental reactions in babies and children and lots of them look like "allergies." The asthma crisis of several decades ago should have been the first wake up call. Mold and the dander and leavings of vermin such as roaches are a large contributor to the asthma crisis. But now it is even more insidious because even the "cleanest" modern house is filled with toxins. Just as an example, those expensive lovely granite countertops in the finest homes sometimes emit radiation. Scented products are no longer scented by the actual flower or herb but potentially toxic chemicals. So your "cinnamon"candle does not have cinnamon but a chemical that is "derived" from or "smells like" cinnamon.

Thus there is a confluence of three tragic things:
1) People have very high and unrealistic expectations about the health and survivability of all of their children since they only remember the good times where people could take it somewhat for granted, and thus forget that there has always been a real risk of losing a child to death or being presented with very serious life curtailing conditions.
2) People have unwittingly canceled out much of the progress in infant and child health by engaging in optional activities (drugs, drinking, smoking) or enduring unwittingly enforced (surrounded by toxic products) high risk conditions.
3) People have not invested their economy's wealth into addressing these problems and promoting the best of healthcare, free healthcare, for all pregnant women and their fetuses, and their born infants and growing children.

So here is the economic kicker. No economy thrives or survives that is not based on a high child bearing population.

"It's not the spending, stupid."

People think that "spending" is the key to the successful western economy. It is NOT. The key to the (previously) successful western economy was an economy that was highly child and child birth oriented.

The "baby boom" was a great time, not because babies were born with charge cards and thus we had "more spenders."

The "baby boom" was a great time because genuine economic growth and thriving relies on lots of people having lots of children and building child friendly communities and thus jobs.

Where there are many children there were investments in health care facilities, schools, infant and child clothing and products, nutrition industries... you name it.

What is key is that these were lasting products. A school is not a video game.

This country has invested in total trash for thirty years now while losing all the gains of "progress" regarding our infants and children.

I do not understand how the economy can survive and recover, especially in the form of the "faux capitalism" that I've explained previously that has ruined genuine capitalism, if it does not reform to have a new orientation toward the having of children in families.

We lack babies, we lack children, we lack jobs, we lack health care for those who do have children, we have more, not less, troubled children with grave medical or emotional woes, we have less healthy communities that are structured around schools and family place of worship, and ultimately we have less workers and people who participate in the grassroots life and growth of the economy.

While people are yapping about "carbon credits" they are letting their babies (if they even had any) crawl on artificial chemically infested surfaces, letting water get polluted, ignoring sewage treatment plant needs, not researching childhood diseases and conditions as much as they could have been, and letting communities that used to be child-centric dissolve into narcissistic enclaves of "self actualizing" garbage oriented "entertainment."

If I were President Elect Obama I would not sign funding for a single "project" that does not have an "invest in our children" orientation, one way or the other.

Healthy or desperately sick, all children should live within a total network of family and community support. I cannot believe the crap that this country has invested its treasure in while parents of sick children lack proper care and have to fight for the smallest of gains.

That's why I believe that there should be free medical care for prenatal and young infants and children and kick the stupid and greedy insurance companies right out of it. I've blogged about this before, presenting my vision and arguments for why this economy will never recover (say nothing of the country's spiritual goodness) if there is not comprehensive and free prenatal (NOT "market driven") preventative and medical care for prenatal to age of majority children, period.

With such a system you would also address the problems that are now plaguing our children, whether asthma, diabetes, obesity, autism, rare or common birth defects, teenage depression and nihilism, addiction etc. All children need in a just and prosperous society comprehensive medical care and a system of preventative medicine that includes components such as vitamins and nutrition.

I don't understand how economists and other "experts" do not realize that a successful economy relies on a vigorous and loving birth rate in a stable child-oriented community structure nationwide, not on "spending" in and of itself.

Meanwhile, start to educate yourselves about the housing materials that you take for granted. We are all living among materials that are hazardous and unnatural and it is only getting worse, not better.

Some of it is "lazy safety" thinking. Rather than being careful around fire and so forth people started pouring "fire retardant" chemicals onto the fabrics and building substances around them. This is just an example of where what looks like a safety "break through" is the addition of needless chemicals. The same with food additives: rather than cook fresh food people eat pounds of "preservatives" in every bite of food that they consume. I remember the days when things were packaged in waxed paper and glass; now it is plastic and God knows what added to the handy packaging for "microwaves."

Think about Korea and Japan, who used to have traditional housing of wood such as bamboo and even paper. As they moved to modern housing they have also had increases in instances such as the recent discuss of Kawasaki syndrome. Japan is a useful study and I've blogged about this before. Breast cancer among Japanese women was extremely rare until the 1960's when those who moved to the USA and also adopted western diet and probably trigger substances in their environment observed that their numbers now converged on what western women experienced.

This country will not "get back to good" unless it becomes child oriented again and we look long and hard at the environmental pollution of home and work place substances, and until we treat all children, sick and well, for free and comprehensively. I get lots of sheer frustration headaches whenever I think about this topic and look at the horrible mess that everyone is in today.

Capitalism/Financial Crisis: ADVICE

As local, state and federal governments and agencies look to their budgets and programs, especially where there is a need to stimulate growth and provide jobs, here is essential advice. (This also applies somewhat to private capitalists, but to a lesser degree, helping more in where you locate facilities and also plan new product).

When you do your program by program examination of what you have and what you propose to do, as part of the review identify the multiple purposes of each program. Do not do this defensively, but do it honestly. Here is an example. I've seen a lot of kind of "arty" programs and projects supported in the past where they are characterized as "revitalizing a neighborhood" or "providing jobs." I'm not bashing arts, but I want to use the example of building a museum to make the point. In the past I've seen local governments decide to invest in some art facility because they hope that it will be a cornerstone of revitalizing a neighborhood, etc. Here's the problem: they "hope." They rarely know. Yet at the same time other essential service programs and other opportunities for revitalization are ignored or starved. This is because "ideals" and "assumptions" cloud the investment and budgetary decision making.

Now, here is where an idea to build a museum (to "revitalize" or to "provide jobs") would be a good idea because it is "multi-purpose." Suppose that it is located in a neighborhood that does not have a Boys and Girls club, strong after school programs, or sports and it INCLUDES in the building of the museum a staffed and safe community center. This way you provide multiple benefits in one decision: 1) you are motivated to locate the theoretical "new museum" in a neighborhood that truly needs the stimulation (even if on the face of it you think, "Huh?" put a museum 'there?') 2) you use the same building and utilities and potentially even the staff for two separate but compatible purposes, to provide art exhibition and to provide a community center that provides real sports, after school programs, and creative activities for the neighborhood's youth, on a large scale, and safely 3) you will get more benefit from infrastructure (road, parking lot, etc) improvements because in all likelihood that area was already deficient 4) you might offset some expense in the long run if educational success of the area is raised and crime is lowered.

Now I know that it's unlikely people are pondering such projects, but keep this in mind for all sorts of projects, such as sports stadiums. I think that people should consider housing a separate but compatible beneficial use for the community (a real one, one that is staffed, secure and is needed, not dedicating an empty room and calling it a "community center") so that great public works projects (including private ones that get tax breaks) are not single purpose. Further, you need to consider "multiple use" in even the types of projects that most are thinking about today, such as public works to improve infrastructure, such as roads and bridges. Use this time to decide if that road or bridge has impact beyond just being safe to drive. In other words, revisit plans and think about if a change in the plans might solve several problems, such as relieve congestion or safety issues, steer motorists toward areas that need the stimulation of more potential customers. Don't feel stuck investing in fixing a road just because it is there, if perhaps the community would prefer a rerouting that supports multiple purpose (restore communities to eliminate commuter traffic going through them, vitalize business sections that are bypassed, have more logical connections using bridges, etc.)

Be honest and have your planners look at each existing or proposed new project with "new eyes" to list the multiple purpose and benefits of each and re-assess and re-prioritize with that perspective and information where it would be advantageous. I hope that you have found this helpful.

Capitalism/financial crisis trade/purity issue

I do not understand why "free market" advocates constantly push for more trade without saying one word about how to not only maintain but increase testing and guarantee of any imported product, especially food, medicine and toys, safety and quality.

Sorry to be blunt, but someone has to be. Just as ethics have degraded in the USA, foreign developing countries have companies that often never had ethics in the first place. The obvious example is what has happened in China about the melamine in milk, but the purpose of this post is to explain to you that this has been a trusting and naive generation in the USA, used to putting anything in your mouth or your children's without giving a thought to deliberate poisoners on the other end. Read this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7750464.stm

snip

Nigeria's food and drug agency says that 25 children aged between three months and four years have died after taking a contaminated teething syrup.
The National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control said it had shut down the Lagos-based manufacturer, Barewa Pharmaceuticals.
It said the syrup, called My Pikin, had been tainted with diethylene glycol.
The substance, used in engine coolant and anti-freeze, triggered kidney failure in the children, it said.
The children died at three hospitals in Lagos, Ibadan and Zaria.
At least 10 other children are reported to have been brought to hospital.
The NAFDAC said symptoms among the children who had taken the syrup included diarrhoea, vomiting, fever and convulsions, and that they had not been able to pass urine for several days.
The agency said it had first received reports of possible contamination on 19 November and had begun to confiscate the syrup two days later.
"NAFDAC officers nationwide have been directed to mop up all batches of the offending drug from circulation," the agency's head, Dora Akunyili, was quoted as saying.
She also appealed to mothers to stop using the medicine on their children.


Now here is my point. Both the left and the right in economic and trade policy have been asleep at the wheel. The left thinks it is all enlightened and groovy to stimulate the economies of poor countries by importing their goods to the USA. The right thinks this is the "competitive free market at its best," since of course goods from developing countries are cheap. But look, here is another example where obviously some people don't mind putting a deadly chemical in baby teething formula for their own country's children!

How does this stuff get in these products? Greed is the reason whether an accidental contamination or deliberate. If it is an accident that means they cut corners on cleanliness and purity in the factory. If it is deliberate then they are substituting industrial chemicals for the more costly active food or medical ingredients. Either way the reason is to be cheap and thus greedy.

So I do not understand why there are less resources in the United States who work full time at not only testing all products before they enter but are part of the initial trade negotiation process. "If I were in charge" I would never sign a trade agreement without US inspectors not only doing initial inspections of all likely import products (to gain background information on how the goods that might enter the USA are being made, and create a database in advance) but also there should be an incremental addition to the FDA, customs and other inspecting organizations at the time any new trade agreement is signed. They should be "specialists," then, for the products that the new trade agreement proposes to allow into the country.

This is part of our horrible financial and economic meltdown, just as much as the mortgage problem, because it reflects the breakdown of standards of quality and due diligence on behalf of the American public.

Somehow American governments, agencies, and corporations, pushed by both the left and the right, think that just because the USA has a friendly relationship with a country, and wishes to do good by opening trade, that automatically like magic dust that means that all of the product suppliers and manufacturers in that country are well educated and ethical folks, and that their product can be swapped as "just as good but cheaper" as anything that had been previously grown or made in the USA. That is one of the most incredibly naive views of both greed and "culture" that I've seen in the past several decades. Our parents and grandparents used to be suspicious of imported aka "foreign" goods for a reason, not because they are prejudiced dolts, but many of them know that things are not too nice and clean, and anything will be done for a buck, in many of these places. But that knowledge has been dismissed as being old fuddy duddies who are prejudiced. Anyone with a lick of common sense and world experience, though, knows that "any thing goes" in most of the developing country marketplaces, including deliberately putting poisonous industrial chemicals in products for babies.

WISE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would not sign a single trade agreement, no matter how "nice" the country or how "worthy" the desire for mutual benefit and trade without some sort of advance product vetting by legitimate and beefed up USA agencies. A database should be established in advance so that if any problem does arise, Washington is not scratching their arses wondering "where did those tomatos or chiles come from?" Sheesh.

Capitalism/financial crisis with history excerpt

Today I want to explain a kind of catch bag of economic concepts. While I am fully aware of professional terminology such as “the fundamentals” and “money velocity,” I’m not going to use them for the reasons I’ve explained previously, which is they are definitions used to describe warped and skewed capitalism, not genuine capitalism as it first emerged in its true form. I had the misfortune of working with highly paid and arrogant bank economists and I observed first hand that their education, and subsequent “Unreal Greed Street” job experience, hardened their misunderstanding of the origins of their own profession. Also, I obviously am not trying to train the people who read my blog to do more of the same of what has not only not worked, but was incorrectly crafted in the first place. However, I mention my background so that I can reach out to economists who genuinely do wish to do well and help the country-and all of the people and also, by implication, those in the world who depend upon the health of the USA to ensure their own. There are so many well formed ideas that I have, and so much background information that I would need to convey, that this is why I decided to lightly touch on a number of topics rather than go in depth in any one of them today. I know both the financial experts will get what I am saying nonetheless, as will those who have been following what I’m teaching as concerned citizens. I especially want at this time to reach out to local governments (states, cities, towns, counties, parishes and so forth) in order to help them cope and be heartened that there is a reasonable approach to solving our problems, one that is still firmly grounded in the Constitution.

So here I will introduce and explain a number of topics, in no particular order, just as they occur to me today, having been on my mind for many years.

The first is to understand money (in the form of currency, not theoretical measures of wealth) and how to properly assess the best uses of it. The trouble with money, and let’s use the American example of the dollar bill, is that like I’ve explained previously, people jump too quickly to thinking about some end goal without considering how the dollar bill has made its way there. Think of a dollar bill in an analogy (you knew one was coming, didn’t you?) Let’s think of a given dollar bill as an old fashioned antibiotic, such as penicillin. I’m not selecting penicillin as a hidden symbol of the dollar bill being less effective or out of favor, but because penicillin was the world changing discovery that first allowed humans to treat themselves successfully against infection. Likewise the use of standardization of currency was a wonderful development that allowed humans to do many things they could not otherwise do. Also I’m not implying that only the sick need a dollar bill, LOL, (though it seems like only the sick are the money managers, but that is a whole other problem!) I want to use the analogy so everyone can understand how a dose of money works its benefit throughout the economy and just as importantly, how it does not work as a magic cure all for every situation.

When doing some important financial planning task, such as trying to stimulate a local economy, there is a concept of looking at how quickly a dollar bill moves within that area, and whether it stays in that area, and how many hands touch and presumably benefit from it. This is a wise concept but one that has been totally misapplied and has become misunderstood. Would be economic planners sometimes think that if a dollar touches, let’s say ten local merchants, that it has done more “good” for the “local economy” than a dollar that touches two or three local merchants. But that is not always true. Using the penicillin analogy, if the penicillin touches ten local merchants, but only one of them was sick, what was the benefit of that? It’s almost as though the genuinely sick merchant was lucky to get a touch of the penicillin dollar bill. Suppose the dollar bill that touched “only” two or three merchants, however, was targeted to touch those that who were genuinely sick. Therefore the analogous penicillin dollar bill proved the wiser investment where it touched “only” two or three genuinely “sick” merchants than the dollar bill who touched ten merchants, only one of whom was “sick.” Economists, local planners and the hidden money plutocrats and mandarins who pull the strings behind the scenes both innocently and deliberately misunderstand this concept and abuse it accordingly. So my first lesson is that money that does not touch the right hands and settle in the right places does not perform its function.

Now, before I hear the howls of those who accuse me of wanting to “redistribute wealth,” you are totally wrong and I am not saying that. I am telling you how to invest your money properly, not trying to take it away from you. I have seen over the decades people make what they think are both wise and compassionate investment and charitable donations, and who might as well have burned the money in the parking lot, because they did not understand what I have just explained. I’m not trying to “redistribute your wealth,” I’m trying to be the wise investment planner that you never had as your partner. So whenever one assesses a dose of penicillin dollar bill, do not be tempted by visions of that dollar bill going from let’s say gas station to grocery store to bank account to paycheck to buying some home furnishing and compare it to some other use of the dollar bill and immediately conclude that since the first use, to use a baseball analogy, “touched five bases” that it is automatically more “stimulating” to the community that let’s say a dollar bill that went into a much need school repair. In the latter case, that dollar bill might only have moved “once,” from the payer hands to the contractor payee (and to keep the comparison pure, let’s assume the contractor sent the earned dollar out of state and had brought supplies in from out of state), nonetheless that dollar bill might have had a cascading economic benefit that was as if one hundred dollar bills “magically” appeared. The wise penicillin dollar bill might have kept a few more kids in school who might have dropped out and turned to crime, it might have stimulated more after school scholarly or sports activities for a dozen other kids, it might have avoided some insurance payout due to decaying school conditions, and thus avoided a future loss, etc. I know for a fact that hardly anyone understands and uses that concept of measuring a penicillin dollar impact on a local community or in fact in any given fiscal problem. Instead they retreat to the standard talking points, which over time they have come to believe, which are, to list just a few, “trickle down,” “keep the money local,” “stimulate local business,” “give back to the community” and so forth. Thus both the left and the right totally misunderstand how to properly gauge and manage the best impact of any penicillin dollar in either their personal planning or their community, or national, fiscal spending.

I’m reminded of one of President Grant’s stories from his memoirs and will repeat it here because you will see how that mindset crept into society as it happened. Here Grant sees himself as the average educated white man who understands money (this was in the beginning of his Army career), so please do not read this with the usual prickliness about racism, but consider that he thought he was actually observing an ignorant practice by the local Native Americans. That is one of the problems with today (I first observed it in my Ivy League university in 1971-5), which is that people refuse to read any further and learn from historical literature if they think the author was, despite the context of the times, “racist” or “sexist.” So if you want to own your own mind you need to learn to read without wincing and prejudging the observations that people made during certain times in history, period.

OK, so think about the penicillin dollar when you read this.

When I was stationed on the Pacific coast we were free from Indian wars. There were quite a number of remnants of tribes in the vicinity of Portland in Oregon, and of Fort Vancouver in Washington Territory. They had generally acquired some of the vices of civilization, but none of the virtues, except in individual cases. The Hudson’s Bay Company had held the Northwest with their trading posts for many years before the United States was represented on the Pacific coast. They still retained posts along the Columbia River and one at Fort Vancouver, when I was there. Their treatment of the Indians had brought out the better qualities of the savages. Farming had been undertaken by the company to supply the Indians with bread and vegetables; they raised some cattle and horses; and they had now taught the Indians to do the labor of the farm and herd. They always compensated them for their labor, and always gave them goods of uniform quality and at uniform price.

Before the advent of the American, the medium of exchange between the Indian and the white man was pelts. Afterward it was silver coin. If an Indian received in the sale of a horse a fifty dollar gold piece, not an infrequent occurrence, the first thing he did was to exchange it for American half dollars. These he could count. He would then commence his purchase, paying for each article separately, as he got it. He would not trust any one to add up the bill and pay it all at once. At that day fifty dollar gold pieces, not the issue of the government, were common on the Pacific coast. They were called slugs.

Now, here is what Grant meant by saying the Indians would pay for each item. Suppose you went to the grocery store to buy milk, bread, meat, a carrot and an apple. You let the check out clerk total your purchases and you pay once the total, receiving change. However, the Indians would have the clerk ring up the bread, and then pay for the bread, ring up the milk, and then pay for the milk, ring up the meat, and then pay for the meat and so forth for the five full separate transactions. Grant said it was because they did not trust the clerk to add up the total correctly, but you know, do you not see now, that it was more than that. The Indians maintained control and value judgment over each item piece by piece. The value of each individual item was not hidden in the total. It’s not that they just didn’t trust the adding up of the total (and I bet they had good reason to not trust in many situations!) Even if someone could prove that the clerk was always honest and that the total was the same as each price individually, they still would have stuck to the individual payment of individual items. This is because despite being “ignorant” they instinctively understood both a benefit and danger of capitalism. The benefit of capitalism was money they could trust (even though the slugs were not minted by the government, they were based on the gold standard) and so they readily accepted as wise that development of capitalism, which was a trustworthy standard means of exchange of a precious metal. However, they instinctively recognized that a danger of capitalism was the tyranny of the “sum total” mentality. When one manages money using sum totals, the meaning and wisdom of individual purchases is hidden and indeed lost. We all experience this feeling ourselves when we “throw a few things in the grocery cart” and then find a higher price than we expected at checkout, just because we no longer pay attention to either the individual item’s merits of purchase or the running sum total. Now, imagine an entire people, and entire world, that only looks at sum totals of millions of individual decisions, never analyzing the impact or the wisdom of any one of them. That is what I call the tyranny of the sum total.

So I’ve introduced to you here two concepts that it is important that everyone genuinely understand. One is the need to examine alternatives when deciding how each “dollar bill” is used in order to truly discern the best usage, and not to implicitly assume that frequent rotation through a lot of hands is “good” when in fact it is often what I call a “shallow” use of money. Money that is used shallowly is flash money, usually paid for transitory goods and services that is usually justified as “adding salaries to the community” yet does not “stick” to any place in the community where it can genuinely generate on its own “new dollars,” almost out of thin air. The second concept is the tyranny of the sum total, which we see everywhere from the problem of the bloated and still ineffective Federal budget, all the way down to a business man or woman accepting a plan from one of their staff that is “bottom line” and has not been examined not just for accuracy but more importantly for more substantial individual choices of expenditure and alternatives that could be more meaningful.

It is critical that today’s money managers, no matter how great or small your budget or investment pool, look at each item, rather than the sum total, and act as though you had never heard of such a thing, and need to be persuaded anew that this is a necessary or wise usage of funds. That’s the third concept that I want to introduce which I call “what if” financial analysis. It’s different from the concept of “valuation,” the “value chain” or “value analysis” because it constantly questions the chain of production and assumptions itself, rather than valuing the pieces of production that one takes for granted and never questions. People are incredible creatures of habit and easily slip into both information overload and what we call in the vernacular “being on auto pilot” in our decision making. A lot of this is not malicious, but those who have ruined the economy are guilty of this kind of thinking themselves and at the same time exploiting it in others. Here are some examples so you know what I mean.

The entire problem of providing social services and welfare is an example of sides that hardened into two alternatives (“provide welfare” or “make them work”) and the result is a horrible and at times dastardly mess. This is the tyranny of sum total thinking that totally lacks “line by line” “what if” thinking. Welfare is an example of “one miserable disaster fits all” sum total planning. I don’t need to list how many ways welfare as it is constructed today has failed individuals and society as a whole, especially the children. Yet whenever someone mentions that welfare is the nightmare that it seems as though we will never wake up from, the “other side” can’t wait to jump in and have a hardness of heart that is shocking. Both sides are “wrong” because both are enslaved to sum total mentality combined with a lack of visionary and genuinely well intentioned “what if” analysis of real alternatives within the system. It would take me about one hour to list ten different scenarios for providing necessary services for the needy, tailored to the actual context of the needy that we are discussing (their community setting, for example) rather than assuming that throwing penicillin dollars, to go back to our analogy, hits the right hands. Yes, in one hour I could give people a list of at least ten alternatives that they could select from that would address a particular welfare based problem or case study. Yet no one even tries to come up with a third alternative these days, they just fall into arguing their two sides, each atop an ignorant sum total tyranny. Welfare as it is structured today is a disaster, and so is the touted “put them to work” “alternative.” I cannot believe how willfully ignorant humans seem to have become and what miserable failures everyone has become at analysis and problem solving based on both wisdom and compassion.

I have just paused for a minute in order to resist slipping into one of my rants about the freak show society. What triggered it was what a woeful spectacle “job creation” has turned into, and I dearly hope and pray that with the new administration they recognize that meaningful jobs are not just the means of getting a paycheck for producing more garbage to throw into society as the “product.” In other words, I totally support the vision that the new administration seems to have of real jobs related to infrastructure and schools, for example, rather than enabling shake your money maker entertainment “jobs.” Entertainment is a vital sector of the economy and you might be surprised to hear that I do not oppose entertainment such as casinos, on principle. But the incredibly shallow output of much of American “entertainment industry” rather than infrastructure entertainment, such as Boys and Girls clubs or local sports and music programs is shocking. So when one argues that people need to “get a job,” its more than just a job because in this economic crisis, those who can make these decisions at the federal, local, corporate, agency and individual levels must make some wise decisions based on alternatives, for once. Here is an example.

Suppose that I have one hundred penicillin dollar bills, and I want to create a business so I can earn a good living, create some jobs and help the community. I decide to manufacture violent video games because it will “provide the poor with good jobs.” Huh?

That’s not free market, despite the fact that both the left and the right will argue that, saying “Well, if the public didn’t want violent videos they would not buy them.” Yeah, but you could have thought about creating a business that is genuinely “free market.” How about if I had used the one hundred penicillin dollar bills to open a Boys and Girls after school club where they could apprentice making video games under ethical teachers? I could have generated salaries (the teachers), made money (by selling the supplies), and gotten dozens if not hundreds of local kids to learn skills (video making and also business and creative skills) and best of all, THAT is free market. After all, suppose you had a thousand students in your business lifetime. Many would not go into that career but it was character building. Some might have become young entrepreneurs themselves in civic areas since you did not bind them to just learning the lowest common denominator of product. For example, one of your students might have developed an idea for a video game that teaches local kids how to discover areas of pollution in their community and how to be a genuine activist! A few might go on to make violent video games, LOL, but that is free market in truth, not brainwashing. Maybe you would not be a video game millionaire. But see, that’s the problem with the mindset today. I referred to that in earlier blog postings as being the “make a killing” mentality instead of the “make a good living” mentality that capitalism is genuinely founded upon, and needs as its basis, not greed, or it is doomed to dismal, crushing moral and fiscal failure.

I’m just painting a vivid example but one that is not too far off of the mark.

I’ll say “it’s a wrap” on this particularly posting, having introduced three economic concepts, and there’s of course much more, but these are essential to reorienting the thinking that is killing this country. I hope that you have found this helpful. To summarize:

1. Always analyze the flow of dollars and do not assume anything about the benefit of any particular dollar volume, location or frequency without examining purported benefits and alternatives thoroughly, especially looking for dollar usage that beneficially “sticks” and generates new dollars.
2. Beware of the tyranny of the sum total and wherever possible examine each item, questioning if a better usage or placement of dollars is possible on that “line by line” basis. Use "what if" analysis to generate alternatives for even what one thinks are obvious inherent portions of investment.
3. Genuine free market means the open ended creation of both jobs and skill sets that are wisely discerned and targeted for maximum benefit and both economic and civic worthiness.