I often contemplate the concept of government debt and how absurd it seems to be; yet every level of government seems to borrow money for its projects. Now the federal government is in such debt that failure is inevitable.
I hear the arguments that it is no problem, we owe that money to ourselves. Then i contemplate that we still have all the roads and schools and factories and stores that we had yesterday. They don't evaporate over night. What's wrong with book keeping that says we owe money to ourselves for all that stuff?
It is about false promises. Some day we will have to face the disappointment of not getting what was promised to us.
Here is an analogy to help understand it...
Let's follow a young couple who buys a piece of land to start a farm. They start with virtually nothing and work hard to create shelter and food. Eventually they build barns and houses, productive fields and workshops. They have lots of kids, hire lots of workers. They all grow into multiple generations on this productive farm.
For big jobs like barn raising, everybody chips in. People are told that if they help raise the barn, they will be well cared for (medicare) when they are old. To keep them working on the next project, they are told that they will get a certain amount of free food (social security income) when they are old. Those promises are so easy to make that they over extend themselves. When the time comes to make good on that promise, they find that the farm is just not productive enough to take care of all those non producers. People become extremely disappointed when the promises that they have relied on are not kept.
The farm wants to build another expensive project. It needs everyone to put time into it. You have been putting your spare time into creating a buggy. The farm says that if you put that time into their project now, some day they will give you even more help building that buggy. (That is the same as saving to buy a car. They borrow your savings and pay interest.) Well, that was so easy that they make the same kind of promise to many people. Pretty soon the farm simply doesn't have enough manpower to help everyone. A whole bunch of people thought that they had stored wealth; the promise of help getting that buggy built. They are very disappointed to find out that the promise can't be kept.
As the farm starts to realize they can't keep their commitments, they start to play all kinds of games to hide the problem and keep people's confidence. Those games eventually only make the problem worse. When people begin to realize that everybody else is beginning to realize the scam, they all scramble to get their promises fulfilled first. The whole situation gets very noisy.
Our federal government is very close to that stage. We who think that money in the bank is safe, or that the government will be able to do anything useful for us may be headed for huge disappointment.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
In the future, Columbus will be celebrated less and Darwin will be celebrated more.
Civilization will be getting smarter due to being better connected. That means we will see some things more clearly.
Looking to the past, we will see that Columbus is not a good role model.
Looking farther into the past, we will see that all the universe, from the tiniest sub atomic forces to vast clusters of galaxies, is a result of ongoing evolution. Darwinism isn't just for biology anymore.
Civilization will be getting smarter due to being better connected. That means we will see some things more clearly.
Looking to the past, we will see that Columbus is not a good role model.
Looking farther into the past, we will see that all the universe, from the tiniest sub atomic forces to vast clusters of galaxies, is a result of ongoing evolution. Darwinism isn't just for biology anymore.
Monday, October 18, 2010
The physics of Attitude
The answer to whether the cup is half empty of half full depends on momentum. Do you see the cup is filling or emptying? Momentum is basic. Momentum is everywhere.
You could consider momentum as the 5th, 6th and 7th dimensions. No definition of a particle's location in physical space is complete without defining the time, spatial co-ordinates in 3 dimensions, and speed in each of the 3 dimensions. In many ways, where it is going, and how fast, is just as important as where it is.
In a person's mental and social space there are many more dimensions, but the concept still works. In each of those dimensions, where you are going is just as important as where you are.
Your direction is your attitude.
How well you apply your attitude is your speed.
How much of you is moving at that speed is your momentum.
You could consider momentum as the 5th, 6th and 7th dimensions. No definition of a particle's location in physical space is complete without defining the time, spatial co-ordinates in 3 dimensions, and speed in each of the 3 dimensions. In many ways, where it is going, and how fast, is just as important as where it is.
In a person's mental and social space there are many more dimensions, but the concept still works. In each of those dimensions, where you are going is just as important as where you are.
Your direction is your attitude.
How well you apply your attitude is your speed.
How much of you is moving at that speed is your momentum.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Attention metaphore
Lately we have been weighing the pros and cons of our campus being the center of a television show. The extra attention it would bring to our company and its mission would be both good and bad.
I have often said that attention is the currency of life. The root of the word currency is current; a flow.
This morning I realized that attention is very much like a current. It flows. It brings vital nutrients and carries away waste. It can power and motivate things. Just like fire or any other useful tool, its power for good is balanced by its power for destruction. Small currents and large ones can both be useful, but as the current gets larger, it becomes more dangerous.
So, if we were to suddenly find ourselves in the midst of a flood of attention, we would have to be prepared to handle the extra flow. Have deeper ditches and higher bridges; more solid foundations, larger pipes, bigger rocks, etc.
If we are well prepared, we can use that current to generate useful power. Any current beyond what we can safely handle should have a safe overflow path.
I have often said that attention is the currency of life. The root of the word currency is current; a flow.
This morning I realized that attention is very much like a current. It flows. It brings vital nutrients and carries away waste. It can power and motivate things. Just like fire or any other useful tool, its power for good is balanced by its power for destruction. Small currents and large ones can both be useful, but as the current gets larger, it becomes more dangerous.
So, if we were to suddenly find ourselves in the midst of a flood of attention, we would have to be prepared to handle the extra flow. Have deeper ditches and higher bridges; more solid foundations, larger pipes, bigger rocks, etc.
If we are well prepared, we can use that current to generate useful power. Any current beyond what we can safely handle should have a safe overflow path.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Playing the scales: Regenerating Reliability
The rules change when you change scale. Little kids can do things that adults can't. Ants can do amazing things that humans can't. A little go cart can turn on a dime. A battleship is famous for being very slow to turn.
As our little business grew and eventually became a big business, we constantly had to learn new rules. Just about every time we started to get a handle on how to operate, we found that our existing techniques didn't work well anymore because we were bigger.
I became fascinated with just what things change when you change scale and what things stay the same. It helped develop a huge appreciation for how nature evolved critters of different sizes, and why they ended up with the body styles they have.
When we delve even deeper, past physiology and down into the underlying physics, a recurring pattern starts to show. It seems to me that at the lowest level of existence I can currently fathom, life starts out digital. It exists in a very noisy environment so it's first priority is to repair itself and make reliable copies of itself. As its population grows, the sum of many life units creates flows and capacities that function in analog form. Eventually some of the analog functions become stable and robust and complicated enough that they find ways to repair and copy themselves. Their organization has become digital.
The new level of digital units become very stable and successful and therefore proliferate. The huge quantity of them once again creates analog functions at a new scale. They also become building blocks that combine in ever more complicated ways. Eventually some of those functions learn to repair themselves and make copies, becoming digital, robust and prolific.
In this context, the term "digital" means a limited number of stable states.
Protons, electrons, neutrons seem to be digital. Next scale up is atoms. Perhaps the next scale up is biological cells. Then stable groups of cells that function as one unit (like animals or plants).
As our little business grew and eventually became a big business, we constantly had to learn new rules. Just about every time we started to get a handle on how to operate, we found that our existing techniques didn't work well anymore because we were bigger.
I became fascinated with just what things change when you change scale and what things stay the same. It helped develop a huge appreciation for how nature evolved critters of different sizes, and why they ended up with the body styles they have.
When we delve even deeper, past physiology and down into the underlying physics, a recurring pattern starts to show. It seems to me that at the lowest level of existence I can currently fathom, life starts out digital. It exists in a very noisy environment so it's first priority is to repair itself and make reliable copies of itself. As its population grows, the sum of many life units creates flows and capacities that function in analog form. Eventually some of the analog functions become stable and robust and complicated enough that they find ways to repair and copy themselves. Their organization has become digital.
The new level of digital units become very stable and successful and therefore proliferate. The huge quantity of them once again creates analog functions at a new scale. They also become building blocks that combine in ever more complicated ways. Eventually some of those functions learn to repair themselves and make copies, becoming digital, robust and prolific.
In this context, the term "digital" means a limited number of stable states.
Protons, electrons, neutrons seem to be digital. Next scale up is atoms. Perhaps the next scale up is biological cells. Then stable groups of cells that function as one unit (like animals or plants).
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Persona masks and the big social brain
Yesterday, Ian was showing me a toy robot that had a mask for a face. He made a statement similar to "The mask IS the brain". That rang a bell deep inside me that is still resonating. It connected some dots that helps form a picture of the human condition.
We are all wearing masks. We selectively show only small parts of our selves to others. We wear different masks in different situations, and when dealing with different people.
We are all neurons in the big social brain. In a brain, each neuron connects to many others via synapses. The intelligence in the brain is in the weights that are assigned to each synapse. Each mask we wear when dealing with other people is a collection of weighted synapses. Just like a neuron, we each have thousands of those synapses. We have been growing the big social brain ever since we first learned to communicate selectively.
What makes humans so different from other critters is the extent that we communicate. That is what drives innovation; so much so that communication (our social interaction) has become the dominant force in our evolution. It has shaped our brains and parts of our body (such as our larynx). It has become less important how fit the individual is, and more important how fit the big social brain is.
Recently the social brain has had explosive growth in connectivity. Internet, cell phones and automated communications (like Google crawlers) are making the big brain millions of times more intelligent than ever before in history. This has to have incredible outcomes that are hard for us little neurons to fathom.
Hang in there. The next few decades are likely to be the most exciting in history.
We are all wearing masks. We selectively show only small parts of our selves to others. We wear different masks in different situations, and when dealing with different people.
We are all neurons in the big social brain. In a brain, each neuron connects to many others via synapses. The intelligence in the brain is in the weights that are assigned to each synapse. Each mask we wear when dealing with other people is a collection of weighted synapses. Just like a neuron, we each have thousands of those synapses. We have been growing the big social brain ever since we first learned to communicate selectively.
What makes humans so different from other critters is the extent that we communicate. That is what drives innovation; so much so that communication (our social interaction) has become the dominant force in our evolution. It has shaped our brains and parts of our body (such as our larynx). It has become less important how fit the individual is, and more important how fit the big social brain is.
Recently the social brain has had explosive growth in connectivity. Internet, cell phones and automated communications (like Google crawlers) are making the big brain millions of times more intelligent than ever before in history. This has to have incredible outcomes that are hard for us little neurons to fathom.
Hang in there. The next few decades are likely to be the most exciting in history.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Male sexual cycles
There is little info published about male sexual cycles. They seem irregular and confusing. This entry is an attempt to sort some of them out.
Online research tells me that men have a cycle of high and low testosterone that runs about 30 days. Beards grow faster during certain parts of the cycle.
It is overlaid with another weaker testosterone cycle that runs about a week.
Testosterone level is also raised by sexual activity, winning competition, exposure to new women, food and other things.
Then there is the ejaculation cycle. Sexual energy, tension and fluids are all discharged at ejaculation. Then they build up again, rising like a sawtooth waveform that suddenly drops again at the next ejaculation. Normal frequencies for that cycle run about once per day during teens and twenties. As you age, the frequency gradually drops to 1 per week or two in your 50s.
Overlay all these cycles, add the events that modify the cycles, and you have a nearly unpredictable waveform. However, it is useful for a thoughtful guy to understand these patterns within himself.
Online research tells me that men have a cycle of high and low testosterone that runs about 30 days. Beards grow faster during certain parts of the cycle.
It is overlaid with another weaker testosterone cycle that runs about a week.
Testosterone level is also raised by sexual activity, winning competition, exposure to new women, food and other things.
Then there is the ejaculation cycle. Sexual energy, tension and fluids are all discharged at ejaculation. Then they build up again, rising like a sawtooth waveform that suddenly drops again at the next ejaculation. Normal frequencies for that cycle run about once per day during teens and twenties. As you age, the frequency gradually drops to 1 per week or two in your 50s.
Overlay all these cycles, add the events that modify the cycles, and you have a nearly unpredictable waveform. However, it is useful for a thoughtful guy to understand these patterns within himself.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
A better economic system
I used to think that real estate taxes were the most unfair in the world. Eventually I realized that they are actually very fair. We individuals must pay the public an annual fee for the use of a piece of property. If there were no such taxes, rich people would end up owning all land and most of us would be serfs.
I just read a chapter in "The Tau of Abundance" about money and interest. It twisted my head. It is forcing me to try to see with fresh eyes from outside of a culture and financial system that all of us are immersed in.
It lead me to contemplate the concept that real tangible property rights shouldn't be treated any different from intellectual property rights. Ownership of money and goods should eventually time out and revert to the public.
Because it doesn't, in the US CEOs get 400 times the average workers pay. The richest 1% own 34.6% of all private wealth. The wealth gap keeps getting bigger because we allow people to keep assets forever. Then, like feudal lords, they charge us (their serfs) huge percentages of our income for the privilege of using that property.
(The average household pays about 18% of disposable income just to service debt.)
A MORE FAIR SYSTEM...
We could tax people based on assets that they own. For example...
If your net worth is 100% of the median net worth, you would pay 1% of your net worth as tax.
If your net worth is 200% of median, you pay 2% tax.
If your net worth is 5,000% of median, you pay 50% of it as tax.
The dynamics of this tax method are fascinating...
This lets you be substantially better off than average, but not by ridiculous factors.
It also decays wealth at a fair and reasonable rate, keeping an incentive to work hard while preventing undue concentrations of wealth.
It lets you pass a reasonable amount of wealth to your kids, but prevents situations like Paris Hilton.
To get large capital, a company would have to be owned by large numbers of stockholders, or be a co-op or non profit.
Later maybe we will explore how this would reduce debt and lead to lower total taxes.
I just read a chapter in "The Tau of Abundance" about money and interest. It twisted my head. It is forcing me to try to see with fresh eyes from outside of a culture and financial system that all of us are immersed in.
It lead me to contemplate the concept that real tangible property rights shouldn't be treated any different from intellectual property rights. Ownership of money and goods should eventually time out and revert to the public.
Because it doesn't, in the US CEOs get 400 times the average workers pay. The richest 1% own 34.6% of all private wealth. The wealth gap keeps getting bigger because we allow people to keep assets forever. Then, like feudal lords, they charge us (their serfs) huge percentages of our income for the privilege of using that property.
(The average household pays about 18% of disposable income just to service debt.)
A MORE FAIR SYSTEM...
We could tax people based on assets that they own. For example...
If your net worth is 100% of the median net worth, you would pay 1% of your net worth as tax.
If your net worth is 200% of median, you pay 2% tax.
If your net worth is 5,000% of median, you pay 50% of it as tax.
The dynamics of this tax method are fascinating...
This lets you be substantially better off than average, but not by ridiculous factors.
It also decays wealth at a fair and reasonable rate, keeping an incentive to work hard while preventing undue concentrations of wealth.
It lets you pass a reasonable amount of wealth to your kids, but prevents situations like Paris Hilton.
To get large capital, a company would have to be owned by large numbers of stockholders, or be a co-op or non profit.
Later maybe we will explore how this would reduce debt and lead to lower total taxes.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Empowering dream
Running around naked
war decision
flying, playing with kids
We were working on a river; a common theme lately. So common that I can't sort out the river details of this dream from other river dreams.
The setting is a kind homestead/campus/resort. Lots of people there, very much a sense of family and small community.
The work evolved into a council. We were preparing for some kind of war. It was coming. It was inevitable. At some point in the meeting, we decided "Wait a minute! We are in charge here. We can just say NO to war." It felt good.
Next scene we were doing homestead and resort type things around the campus; playing and working. I was so used to being naked that I was running around doing my regular meetings and work and playing without even realizing that I was still naked. Pretty much nobody cared. It was freeing to be honestly me. Eventually an in-law was stressed out by my nakedness and I started to feel naked.
Next scene I was playing with kids. Trying to surprise or impress them by flying around; jumping to their treehouse or attic fort. This was a little different from my normal flying dreams. Instead of being infatuated with the fact that I can fly, it is just matter of fact. I have accepted it and I am not afraid to show it as I play with the kids. They weren't terribly impressed either. They just accepted it.
The common theme seems to be acceptance of who I am, and the powers that go with that.
war decision
flying, playing with kids
We were working on a river; a common theme lately. So common that I can't sort out the river details of this dream from other river dreams.
The setting is a kind homestead/campus/resort. Lots of people there, very much a sense of family and small community.
The work evolved into a council. We were preparing for some kind of war. It was coming. It was inevitable. At some point in the meeting, we decided "Wait a minute! We are in charge here. We can just say NO to war." It felt good.
Next scene we were doing homestead and resort type things around the campus; playing and working. I was so used to being naked that I was running around doing my regular meetings and work and playing without even realizing that I was still naked. Pretty much nobody cared. It was freeing to be honestly me. Eventually an in-law was stressed out by my nakedness and I started to feel naked.
Next scene I was playing with kids. Trying to surprise or impress them by flying around; jumping to their treehouse or attic fort. This was a little different from my normal flying dreams. Instead of being infatuated with the fact that I can fly, it is just matter of fact. I have accepted it and I am not afraid to show it as I play with the kids. They weren't terribly impressed either. They just accepted it.
The common theme seems to be acceptance of who I am, and the powers that go with that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)