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.
25.2.12
Philosophy of Education
Haiku of the Day:
lover of wisdom
in knowledge's well swim deep
waters becoming
Age and level are the demons of our pedagogy; no person ought ever be deemed too young or old regarding enlightenment. When we call education to a period of life, implying that one's learning is ever through, we deceive ourselves and destroy the capacity of our society to grow. This shows in consumer behavior as well as occupation, the majority limited as to what they know by those standards which are socially reinforced -- mandatory education, occupational specialization, and work experience, supplemented with a healthy dose of whatever the market will bear. As a result, competition for the highest quality at any price is mistakenly preferred to a universal baseline from which one can climb as life calls one to do so.
How we live our lives is dictated by the education system we have, when the education system we need should be dictated by how we live our lives. The days of training in a single field for a single profession are gone, as are the days of expecting a single wage earner to support a household. To repair this we need to build skills from an early age that are as applicable to life outside work as they are to basic job skills. We must also keep education in the lives of adults, making every working person more capable, not less, of filling today's new jobs than they were the year before. This is how we fill the good jobs with good people, put good workers with outdated skills back to their most gainful purpose, and guarantee that our children grow up atop, not beneath, the rising tide of global education.
lover of wisdom
in knowledge's well swim deep
waters becoming
Age and level are the demons of our pedagogy; no person ought ever be deemed too young or old regarding enlightenment. When we call education to a period of life, implying that one's learning is ever through, we deceive ourselves and destroy the capacity of our society to grow. This shows in consumer behavior as well as occupation, the majority limited as to what they know by those standards which are socially reinforced -- mandatory education, occupational specialization, and work experience, supplemented with a healthy dose of whatever the market will bear. As a result, competition for the highest quality at any price is mistakenly preferred to a universal baseline from which one can climb as life calls one to do so.
How we live our lives is dictated by the education system we have, when the education system we need should be dictated by how we live our lives. The days of training in a single field for a single profession are gone, as are the days of expecting a single wage earner to support a household. To repair this we need to build skills from an early age that are as applicable to life outside work as they are to basic job skills. We must also keep education in the lives of adults, making every working person more capable, not less, of filling today's new jobs than they were the year before. This is how we fill the good jobs with good people, put good workers with outdated skills back to their most gainful purpose, and guarantee that our children grow up atop, not beneath, the rising tide of global education.
24.2.12
Owning Identity
Haiku of the Day:
that coat and plumage
intersect function forms
with conjunct beauty
We are ourselves and no other, and that alone should stand in this age of endless information. To the extent that records of our being, financial, medical, or otherwise, must be stored, it is the right and responsibility of the owner - the identity to which that record belongs, not the recorder - that it be accurate, real property, perhaps the most valuable in an age of widespread credit. Exactly how is up for discussion, but our life histories need to be made ours, in the sense that intellectual property is ours, only to be used by others with our permission, and only as we permit, instead of constantly negotiating ownership; why must we compromise our recorded identities with legal contracts full of verbose limitations of another's choosing?
I propose that we take back our data, take responsibility for it, and form a cooperative for storing and distributing that data securely to only those parties we wish to have the data. This endeavor will be profitable, as it is to those who produce marketing research, credit ratings, and insurance risk analysis today using our own records. The cooperative will be more accurate than current record keeping, as the owners will know when the data is wrong and note the corrections. Lastly, it will be good for society, as we will all have everything we need to know about ourselves at easy reference; no more dependence on recollection. This is the "real" social network, where we all share the responsibility of managing who we trust with our information, instead of a legal team from a profit-driven corporation.
that coat and plumage
intersect function forms
with conjunct beauty
We are ourselves and no other, and that alone should stand in this age of endless information. To the extent that records of our being, financial, medical, or otherwise, must be stored, it is the right and responsibility of the owner - the identity to which that record belongs, not the recorder - that it be accurate, real property, perhaps the most valuable in an age of widespread credit. Exactly how is up for discussion, but our life histories need to be made ours, in the sense that intellectual property is ours, only to be used by others with our permission, and only as we permit, instead of constantly negotiating ownership; why must we compromise our recorded identities with legal contracts full of verbose limitations of another's choosing?
I propose that we take back our data, take responsibility for it, and form a cooperative for storing and distributing that data securely to only those parties we wish to have the data. This endeavor will be profitable, as it is to those who produce marketing research, credit ratings, and insurance risk analysis today using our own records. The cooperative will be more accurate than current record keeping, as the owners will know when the data is wrong and note the corrections. Lastly, it will be good for society, as we will all have everything we need to know about ourselves at easy reference; no more dependence on recollection. This is the "real" social network, where we all share the responsibility of managing who we trust with our information, instead of a legal team from a profit-driven corporation.
16.2.12
The Problems
Haiku of the Day:
decaffeinated
society might relax
enjoying morning
[continued from 2/15/11]
The next two problems are somewhat intertwined: the cost of medicine and medical devices contribute to an ever-expanding budget for human health, while the mechanism of intellectual property, at least in terms of patents, is dominated by the patent medicine industry. Other issues, like hospitalization as a part of health care and counterfeiting as a drain on intellectual property owners, require local action focused on the logistics of each. Keep in mind that the best market solutions are those that create more efficient markets, and the giants of the information age have all built their wealth by building the wealth of those who participate in the market; these are solutions one can profit from without direct investment, but which profit most - in return on investment, not absolute net gains - those who own the market.
3. Restoring Affordable Health Care? The recipient of health care, the individual who is maintaining his or her health, must become to the medical industries what the voter is to democratic government, the by, of, and for behind it, not just the vicarious customers through an employer or government proxy. Medical records must be owned and operated by the person, not an institution, and health care should once again begin and most nearly end in the home. Then we must do a better job of bringing innovation to patients more efficiently, a large part of which is the mechanism for patent approval, drug and device approval, and the licensing and expiration of vetted patents.
4. Respecting Intellectual Property? Current intellectual property laws are broadly disregarded and the underlying rights infringed because it creates in practice what does not exist in nature, the monopoly of an idea. While it is just and fair to demand the market provide compensation for those who develop intellectual property, be it patent or copyright, ideas pass freely between people, across borders, and with virtuous sharing; laws should not attempt to prohibit this flow, the bread and butter of the information age in which we live, but instead encourage it, as it does with other commodities, by regulating a free market for buying and selling these ideas. Either by royalty or blanket license, all intellectual property should be brought to the market, that everyone who would profit by it may, that the creators might continue their creation, income secure, uninhibited by the business of turning ideas into consumed goods and services.
decaffeinated
society might relax
enjoying morning
[continued from 2/15/11]
The next two problems are somewhat intertwined: the cost of medicine and medical devices contribute to an ever-expanding budget for human health, while the mechanism of intellectual property, at least in terms of patents, is dominated by the patent medicine industry. Other issues, like hospitalization as a part of health care and counterfeiting as a drain on intellectual property owners, require local action focused on the logistics of each. Keep in mind that the best market solutions are those that create more efficient markets, and the giants of the information age have all built their wealth by building the wealth of those who participate in the market; these are solutions one can profit from without direct investment, but which profit most - in return on investment, not absolute net gains - those who own the market.
3. Restoring Affordable Health Care? The recipient of health care, the individual who is maintaining his or her health, must become to the medical industries what the voter is to democratic government, the by, of, and for behind it, not just the vicarious customers through an employer or government proxy. Medical records must be owned and operated by the person, not an institution, and health care should once again begin and most nearly end in the home. Then we must do a better job of bringing innovation to patients more efficiently, a large part of which is the mechanism for patent approval, drug and device approval, and the licensing and expiration of vetted patents.
4. Respecting Intellectual Property? Current intellectual property laws are broadly disregarded and the underlying rights infringed because it creates in practice what does not exist in nature, the monopoly of an idea. While it is just and fair to demand the market provide compensation for those who develop intellectual property, be it patent or copyright, ideas pass freely between people, across borders, and with virtuous sharing; laws should not attempt to prohibit this flow, the bread and butter of the information age in which we live, but instead encourage it, as it does with other commodities, by regulating a free market for buying and selling these ideas. Either by royalty or blanket license, all intellectual property should be brought to the market, that everyone who would profit by it may, that the creators might continue their creation, income secure, uninhibited by the business of turning ideas into consumed goods and services.
15.2.12
Four Priorities for a Modern World: The Problems
Haiku of the Day:
easily foolish
counting discarded barrels
after a fish shoot
There exists an infinite continuum of problems for our kind to solve; the solutions invariably lead to new problems, but this is life. For efficacy's sake, I have selected four problems for which modernity has provided simple, profitable answers. When there is money to be made, and the system permits it, an opportunity arises for the entrepreneur and customer to achieve what the politician and voter cannot--rapid, revolutionary change in the way average people live.
The Problems:
1. An Alternative to Fiat Currency? Everyone is impacted by the control of currencies with no intrinsic worth by entities that have their own agenda. Our global economy needs a global currency, one that acts as a real unit of trade, an equally real store of value, and apart from any government or body that would or could manipulate value.
2. Universal Access to Quality Education? There are ever fewer jobs that require no formal training, and most of those that do not would benefit from so doing. Yet the wealthiest nation in recorded history is forced to look overseas for the best applicants, many of whom receive their post-secondary education there. Our world needs a universal educator, capable of taking any person, from anywhere, and producing an educated mind with the skills to provide value as labor or entrepreneur, as the individual chooses.
[to be continued]
easily foolish
counting discarded barrels
after a fish shoot
There exists an infinite continuum of problems for our kind to solve; the solutions invariably lead to new problems, but this is life. For efficacy's sake, I have selected four problems for which modernity has provided simple, profitable answers. When there is money to be made, and the system permits it, an opportunity arises for the entrepreneur and customer to achieve what the politician and voter cannot--rapid, revolutionary change in the way average people live.
The Problems:
1. An Alternative to Fiat Currency? Everyone is impacted by the control of currencies with no intrinsic worth by entities that have their own agenda. Our global economy needs a global currency, one that acts as a real unit of trade, an equally real store of value, and apart from any government or body that would or could manipulate value.
2. Universal Access to Quality Education? There are ever fewer jobs that require no formal training, and most of those that do not would benefit from so doing. Yet the wealthiest nation in recorded history is forced to look overseas for the best applicants, many of whom receive their post-secondary education there. Our world needs a universal educator, capable of taking any person, from anywhere, and producing an educated mind with the skills to provide value as labor or entrepreneur, as the individual chooses.
[to be continued]
14.2.12
It's All Money, Sonny.
Haiku of the Day:
recompense at least
not only to exploit ourselves
in public offer
Okay, I've got some stuff to say again.
Decided not to say it on F---Book.
Decided to revive this little nothing of a gem i call the blogo-dodecahedron.
I don't like ads, but I guess ones that pay me are better than ones that pay someone else. As a plus, this puts me in a position to turn any ad revenue into something I do like!
I've got a few projects in mind, and I don't care so much who gets rich, if anyone, so it probably wouldn't hurt to make them available here as they come online. So i will do just that. In the mean time, I will post, as often as the urge strikes, to describe positions that I have come to: positions which, after long thought, led me to the conclusions on which these projects are based.
Am I planning on throwing wrenches? You bet, but they'll be right here to examine before they hit the gears.
recompense at least
not only to exploit ourselves
in public offer
Okay, I've got some stuff to say again.
Decided not to say it on F---Book.
Decided to revive this little nothing of a gem i call the blogo-dodecahedron.
I don't like ads, but I guess ones that pay me are better than ones that pay someone else. As a plus, this puts me in a position to turn any ad revenue into something I do like!
I've got a few projects in mind, and I don't care so much who gets rich, if anyone, so it probably wouldn't hurt to make them available here as they come online. So i will do just that. In the mean time, I will post, as often as the urge strikes, to describe positions that I have come to: positions which, after long thought, led me to the conclusions on which these projects are based.
Am I planning on throwing wrenches? You bet, but they'll be right here to examine before they hit the gears.
14.5.11
shortcomings as a blogger
so i haven't posted anything about anything in a long time. i suck. since nobody reads this, it doesn't really matter, does it?
11.2.10
The Real Cost of the War on Drugs in America
Let me begin by saying that marijuana is unequivocally safer than alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, taurine, nasal decongestant, or high fructose corn syrup. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot. There, that was easy enough. Only hurts for a second, right? Now we can move on to the real issue...
Hard drugs, and alcohol must be included in this, have the ability to destroy lives, disrupt families, fracture communities, and turn our borders and parts of our urban landscape into perpetual battle zones. They don't ruin everyone they touch, but enough of them that it would be callous to take no action. That said, everything is wrong about the global, national, state, and local response to drug abuse; prohibition is worse than the disease, as we found out quite painfully when alcohol was banned by the 18th Amendment, which is precisely why it was the only Amendment to be repealed. Yet we cannot even bring sanity to a war on drugs that treats the sick and the casual user alike as criminals, leaves countless people dead or maimed, and costs us tens of billions of dollars each year.
If that weren't bad enough, it has led to drugs wreaking havoc on our culture. In case this was not public knowledge, artists of all types do drugs at a rate substantially higher than the population as a whole; they also tend to be more functional addicts, but our goal is to help our culture, not enable self-destructive habits. The quality of mainstream culture has descended quite rapidly over the past several decades, and it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots here: a lot of people in entertainment (the heart of a culture) are on drugs and in the closet, because addiction has been criminalized and stigmatized. It's not a good thing to be a wanton addict, but it's not wrong to have a problem, just very, very human.
If everyone who had committed fraud on a loan application were in jail, and $100,000+ frauds are a serious felony on both the federal and state level, our nation's prison population would quintuple overnight, and we already incarcerate at several times the rate of any other industrialized nation. We would rather put those desperate enough to abuse or sell drugs and foolish or unlucky enough to get caught doing so in prison instead, then we go out and spend beyond our means, addicted to consumption and unashamed, and act indignant when our economy falls on its face.
We have a problem here, folks. A big problem, and it isn't just the United States. Our disinclination to self-control has combined with our desire for hasty, arbitrary punishment to cost us the war in Afghanistan and our influence across much of Latin America, but that is a topic unto itself. Another day, perhaps.
Hard drugs, and alcohol must be included in this, have the ability to destroy lives, disrupt families, fracture communities, and turn our borders and parts of our urban landscape into perpetual battle zones. They don't ruin everyone they touch, but enough of them that it would be callous to take no action. That said, everything is wrong about the global, national, state, and local response to drug abuse; prohibition is worse than the disease, as we found out quite painfully when alcohol was banned by the 18th Amendment, which is precisely why it was the only Amendment to be repealed. Yet we cannot even bring sanity to a war on drugs that treats the sick and the casual user alike as criminals, leaves countless people dead or maimed, and costs us tens of billions of dollars each year.
If that weren't bad enough, it has led to drugs wreaking havoc on our culture. In case this was not public knowledge, artists of all types do drugs at a rate substantially higher than the population as a whole; they also tend to be more functional addicts, but our goal is to help our culture, not enable self-destructive habits. The quality of mainstream culture has descended quite rapidly over the past several decades, and it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots here: a lot of people in entertainment (the heart of a culture) are on drugs and in the closet, because addiction has been criminalized and stigmatized. It's not a good thing to be a wanton addict, but it's not wrong to have a problem, just very, very human.
If everyone who had committed fraud on a loan application were in jail, and $100,000+ frauds are a serious felony on both the federal and state level, our nation's prison population would quintuple overnight, and we already incarcerate at several times the rate of any other industrialized nation. We would rather put those desperate enough to abuse or sell drugs and foolish or unlucky enough to get caught doing so in prison instead, then we go out and spend beyond our means, addicted to consumption and unashamed, and act indignant when our economy falls on its face.
We have a problem here, folks. A big problem, and it isn't just the United States. Our disinclination to self-control has combined with our desire for hasty, arbitrary punishment to cost us the war in Afghanistan and our influence across much of Latin America, but that is a topic unto itself. Another day, perhaps.
14.1.10
If the Record Industry Hasn't Been Price Fixing I Haven't Been Masturbating
I mean the audacity of their denial is palpable. It is like arguing in court that the sky is not blue because it is a windowless room, sheerest idiocy of the highest order. Unforgivable. Burn them at the stake! If they're really not colluding, no one will come to put the fire out, and they'll be proven innocent. I know they are damn liars because...
I contacted every one of them about ten years ago and got no response, because I thought we record labels should negotiate up from free (the norm) rather than down from CD prices (so high they limit sales) and guess what? El zilcho, no response whatsoever, because they thought - still think - they need to exist for musical culture to continue. To the contrary, they need to be found guilty, and busted up from their media conglomerates to play fair with those of us who might have started an independent label. Ahem.
Instead, they worked out a sweetheart deal with Apple, held a gun to Napster's head, and generally went about setting the $1/song price for duplicating a digital file that I know for a fact can be downloaded (twenty times an hour for free) on anyone's home computer if they have a mediocre broadband connection. Corporations aren't capitalist at all, they're totalitarians, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a goddamn liar.
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