Haiku of the Day:
technical balance
thermal relativity
vernal equity
POP QUIZ 24/03/2012 (5 points)
This is a quiz on our views of the future. There are no wrong answers, and I do not pretend to have "right" answers. The best answers will draw from personal understanding and rest on broad agreement.
[All scores over 4.5 will get a free "Q is for Qaliqo" T-shirt!]
1. Look to the future; what do we see?
2. Are our eyes closed?
a. Are we peeking, one eye open?
b. Are we blankly staring?
3. Are our eyes seeing?
a. Are we facing that direction?
b. Are we focused on what we should be?
4. Can our eyes adjust to the light level?
a. Is it too bright?
b. Is it too dim?
5. Can our minds interpret what is there?
a. Is it too complex in detail?
b. Is it too vague, almost featureless?
15.3.12
A Store of Value (Currency)
Haiku of the Day:
midst vernal jump start
blossoming within us all
again uprising
Currency valued by fiat is not a store of value except that fiat rule is benevolent and long-sighted. We are at this public and private crisis with social and pension benefits not because the benefits are so great, but because the dollars paid in are devalued over time--today's retiree paid a dollar in at a time when that would buy a gallon of gas, a gallon of milk, or both, depending on the person's career path, but they draw that dollar at a time when it will buy a quart of neither. A stable currency with which to save must be the basis on which our collective debts, public and private, social and personal, are balanced; our alternative, the present state or a close modification thereof, pits every citizen in a battle with inflation, loan interest, and the risk/reward of investing dollars to hedge against the former, is unsustainable and unfair.
What if currency was valued, passively for the end user, the way inflation adjustments are used to value past dollars (e.g. a 1982 dollar is worth $2.35 today by the standard metric)? What if that monetary supply of "date stamped" dollars was never inflated with "quantitative easing"? Now what if that currency could also be freely exchanged without the several percent overhead used by credit card companies? That tiny slice of the pie returning to the seller translates into a broader base of both sellers playing the margins and buyers taking advantage of the more competitive market.
[This concludes my introduction to the four topics, albeit in five parts. Future posts will assume familiarity with these basic premises, and may or may not reference the original post as context.]
midst vernal jump start
blossoming within us all
again uprising
Currency valued by fiat is not a store of value except that fiat rule is benevolent and long-sighted. We are at this public and private crisis with social and pension benefits not because the benefits are so great, but because the dollars paid in are devalued over time--today's retiree paid a dollar in at a time when that would buy a gallon of gas, a gallon of milk, or both, depending on the person's career path, but they draw that dollar at a time when it will buy a quart of neither. A stable currency with which to save must be the basis on which our collective debts, public and private, social and personal, are balanced; our alternative, the present state or a close modification thereof, pits every citizen in a battle with inflation, loan interest, and the risk/reward of investing dollars to hedge against the former, is unsustainable and unfair.
What if currency was valued, passively for the end user, the way inflation adjustments are used to value past dollars (e.g. a 1982 dollar is worth $2.35 today by the standard metric)? What if that monetary supply of "date stamped" dollars was never inflated with "quantitative easing"? Now what if that currency could also be freely exchanged without the several percent overhead used by credit card companies? That tiny slice of the pie returning to the seller translates into a broader base of both sellers playing the margins and buyers taking advantage of the more competitive market.
[This concludes my introduction to the four topics, albeit in five parts. Future posts will assume familiarity with these basic premises, and may or may not reference the original post as context.]
9.3.12
Restoring Family Health Care
Haiku of the Day:
tracing the starlight
interference undulates
affecting image
The primary responsibility for maintaining health is the individual; to the extent there is a strong secondary responsibility, it must be to the family, not an employer or state. Yes, the state has a role in being the provider of last resort, inasmuch as we wish to be a humane civilization, but those with family should be turning to each other first. Yes, employers have a vested interest in making sure the business has employees who are healthy and not overwhelmed with the health concerns of their immediate family, but that interest is fiduciary in nature, not personal. The providers market to us directly, yet we have placed multiple intercessors between the persons affected by the medical treatment, individually or vicariously, and those who are providing the service, making each person a database entry in a workflow that is streamlined for economic efficiency, not human efficacy. The logical step, for most of us anyway, is to get the intermediaries out - decline insurance, save diligently, and turn to your family, not a business, if the situation merits.
A tougher issue may be hospice and the process of dying. Most medical expenses occur in the last 30 days of life; if those 30 days are spent at home, health care costs per person would drop like a stone. Returning to the practice of living with our elder relatives, or at least in close proximity, where family life can address aging without paying a stranger to do those basic things that become more difficult as the body stops cooperating. Incentives should be made to the families of those who eschew assisted living and long-term care facilities to find one's rest at home, either from the companies and governments who save in expenses, the communities (religious and secular) who benefit from the interpersonal networks being maintained, or both.
There are a host of other social fixes for this problem from which to choose. The important thing is for us to choose, not allow the status quo to drag us deeper and deeper into financial ruin while depersonalizing the life cycle. Making licensing of patents mandatory and using some of that revenue to accelerate the process of bringing new treatments to bear would help. So would forming community creches, enabling single women and their children to have the benefits they may not otherwise be able to access, giving both generations better access to the information and skills that improve and maintain health. Effective triage at emergency rooms, redirecting the urgent care needs to the correct, less expensive, less profitable eponymous facilities, could shave a few percentage points (each point being over $10B/year) off our collective expense. All these point in a single direction: reducing the scale and increasing the scope of health care to provide a holistic, permanent solution rather than patching an increasingly decrepit problem.
tracing the starlight
interference undulates
affecting image
The primary responsibility for maintaining health is the individual; to the extent there is a strong secondary responsibility, it must be to the family, not an employer or state. Yes, the state has a role in being the provider of last resort, inasmuch as we wish to be a humane civilization, but those with family should be turning to each other first. Yes, employers have a vested interest in making sure the business has employees who are healthy and not overwhelmed with the health concerns of their immediate family, but that interest is fiduciary in nature, not personal. The providers market to us directly, yet we have placed multiple intercessors between the persons affected by the medical treatment, individually or vicariously, and those who are providing the service, making each person a database entry in a workflow that is streamlined for economic efficiency, not human efficacy. The logical step, for most of us anyway, is to get the intermediaries out - decline insurance, save diligently, and turn to your family, not a business, if the situation merits.
A tougher issue may be hospice and the process of dying. Most medical expenses occur in the last 30 days of life; if those 30 days are spent at home, health care costs per person would drop like a stone. Returning to the practice of living with our elder relatives, or at least in close proximity, where family life can address aging without paying a stranger to do those basic things that become more difficult as the body stops cooperating. Incentives should be made to the families of those who eschew assisted living and long-term care facilities to find one's rest at home, either from the companies and governments who save in expenses, the communities (religious and secular) who benefit from the interpersonal networks being maintained, or both.
There are a host of other social fixes for this problem from which to choose. The important thing is for us to choose, not allow the status quo to drag us deeper and deeper into financial ruin while depersonalizing the life cycle. Making licensing of patents mandatory and using some of that revenue to accelerate the process of bringing new treatments to bear would help. So would forming community creches, enabling single women and their children to have the benefits they may not otherwise be able to access, giving both generations better access to the information and skills that improve and maintain health. Effective triage at emergency rooms, redirecting the urgent care needs to the correct, less expensive, less profitable eponymous facilities, could shave a few percentage points (each point being over $10B/year) off our collective expense. All these point in a single direction: reducing the scale and increasing the scope of health care to provide a holistic, permanent solution rather than patching an increasingly decrepit problem.
1.3.12
Getting Creative to Market
Haiku of the Day:
owning ideas
illusion in the mind's eye
unstolen sharing
Current intellectual property law, designed originally to protect the rights of individual creators, has been so thoroughly gamed by an elite super-minority. Whether patents or copyrights, the bulk of value comes from exploitation by an ever-narrowing field of global owners, collecting dust as the parent companies' outdated model for profiting from these creations struggles against the new reality of global trade. Companies are bought and sold for precisely the reason that their intellectual property is never transferred; a market, much like those for stocks, bonds, and commodities, allow the creator and distributor to:
* define a market by setting the number of partial owners;
* find a market price for the underlying asset through public offering;
* realize a gain (for creators) or secure supply (if a distributor) before a product has proven track record;
* concentrate on their business, not contractual obligations.
What would this mean for the global economy? Rapid, sustainable growth as both creators and their distributors tune in and find the market. An intellectual property market will bring every new thing to end users faster, cheaper, and without the nearly ubiquitous End User License Agreements that pretend to control every aspect of the consumer's use of what the consumer has already paid to use. Is there a downside for existing powers? Hardly; the enormous investments made to protect technology with other technology merely broaden the portfolio, each its own profit center as those protective measures are themselves sold at a price the market will bear.
owning ideas
illusion in the mind's eye
unstolen sharing
Current intellectual property law, designed originally to protect the rights of individual creators, has been so thoroughly gamed by an elite super-minority. Whether patents or copyrights, the bulk of value comes from exploitation by an ever-narrowing field of global owners, collecting dust as the parent companies' outdated model for profiting from these creations struggles against the new reality of global trade. Companies are bought and sold for precisely the reason that their intellectual property is never transferred; a market, much like those for stocks, bonds, and commodities, allow the creator and distributor to:
* define a market by setting the number of partial owners;
* find a market price for the underlying asset through public offering;
* realize a gain (for creators) or secure supply (if a distributor) before a product has proven track record;
* concentrate on their business, not contractual obligations.
What would this mean for the global economy? Rapid, sustainable growth as both creators and their distributors tune in and find the market. An intellectual property market will bring every new thing to end users faster, cheaper, and without the nearly ubiquitous End User License Agreements that pretend to control every aspect of the consumer's use of what the consumer has already paid to use. Is there a downside for existing powers? Hardly; the enormous investments made to protect technology with other technology merely broaden the portfolio, each its own profit center as those protective measures are themselves sold at a price the market will bear.
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