Political solutions to technical problems

Hi, I haven't written in a while while I've been managing another site. But here I am with a post that came as a response to the question:

Hi Jason, what you think about this article?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fg%2Fa%2F2011%2F04%2F06%2Fnotes040611.DTL
(If the link doesn't work, it is an article called "The great Barack Obama conundrum" written in the San Fransisco Gate, dated April 6th 2011 - by Mark Morford)


There's a lot to be said about this article. Where to begin....

1. It's a rant. Insults masked as claims, and ad hominem attacks (attack the person instead of the issue.) But ultimately I can hear the frustration of the author. "Looky here, it's the same old shit and I'm sick of it!!!"

2. Spins blame and responsibility onto one person (aka a scapegoat) rather than having anything intelligent to say about the system itself, or the part other people play. The government is not "only" the president.

3. The system itself... in this case the political system.

So what is a system? A working definition is: a whole compounded of several parts or members, a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole.

What then is the purpose of our political system? Here are few common stated purposes:

• enforce laws
• create public infrastructure (roads, schools, tel/com)
• act as an ideological organizing body (political parties, national identity etc.)
• take feedback for public needs and try and solve those problems (aka problem-solving)

With that definition there's a new view that emerges.

Regarding Laws: A way to understand the need for laws is to see the relationship to our social system as patchwork efforts to try and "fix" problems with the system itself. This is an integrity issue. The integrity of a social system can be gauged by the # of laws on its books (so according to this, how are we doing?)

Infrastructure and problem solving: The creation of "things" (be it roads, a coffee mug, schools, or an airplane) is a technical process. Our problems are technical. There is no republican way to build an airplane, there is no catholic way to increase yield from an acre of corn. So when you apply a political solution (or a religious solution) to technical a problem, you can start to see why we have the track record we do (and why articles like the one in the SF Chronicle exist)

Feedback: One could associate this to what we call "Democracy". But what is democracy? Everyone having a say? There's a problem with the concept since 10 white men hanging a black man IS democracy. So there's an assumption here that has been overlooked (and we'll get back to that). Another overplayed association with democracy is "Freedom". So what's that? The ability to do what you want, when you want? Let's look at freedom in our system. Freedom = Purchasing Power. Take away your $$ and how much freedom do you have? Think about it. No purchasing power means no access to food, clean water, shelter, education, healthcare, nothing.

Now getting back to that assumption.. The assumption that is overlooked is "Equality": Democracy assumes people have equal access to knowledge, education, resources, and have their basic needs met so they can make rational choices. Do we have that? No, we don't. We have more inequality than has ever existed. People have to trade their labor-for-income in our system (monetary) in order to earn money which allows access to the necessities of life.

As far as arriving at rational decisions via a political process: Having people divided by race, creed, political ideology, religious ideology, and social class - Coupled with an average 3rd-grade reading level creates mob rule, not democracy. There is no equality in the knowledge-base to allow for the public to make informed decisions about their own welfare and the welfare of others.

And finally, what "Say" do you think you have in the political process? Do people think about that? With $6 trillion dollars of private interest power on K-street to lobby Congress, corporate interest vying for candidates that will support their incomes & markets. And you & I get 1 voting day every 4-years to pick a person that has ZERO qualifications in regards to the technical resolutions to our problems (remember I started with that).

So what would be better? Well, how about a relevant process to the physical world we live in? That could be seen as the application of the 'methods of science' to social concerns. A "Systems Approach" to the management of resources and decision making. And a regard for dynamic equilibrium (i.e only use trees as fast as they regrow). With a combination of these methods it would be completely probable to create an access abundance on the planet for human needs, with the social value evolving from self-interest to social-interest via collaboration and cooperation instead of competition.

For more information about this take a look at a Resource-Based Economic model: www.thezeitgeistmovement.com

Thoughts on Independence and Patriotism

I realize that, at its base, July 4th represents a bold moment in this country's history: The signing of the Declaration Of Independence. To bring something new to this day, aside from mindless flag-waving and hamburgers, I offer a distinction from a great historian:

On Patriotism

“While some people think that dissent is unpatriotic, I would argue that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

In fact, if patriotism means being true to the principles for which your country is supposed to stand, then certainly the right to dissent is one of the those principles and if we’re exercising that right to dissent, it’s a patriotic act.

One of the great mistakes made in discussing patriotism --a very common mistake-- is to think that patriotism means support of your government. And that view of patriotism ignores the founding principles of the country expressed in the Declaration of Independence. That is: the Declaration of Independence makes it quite clear that governments are artificial creations set up to achieve certain ends – equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – and when the government becomes destructive of those ends [it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness]…”

- Howard Zinn

Take back your TV!

Take back your TV! Reclaim it for your own. It’s not yours right now. Think about it. Do you get to say what is broadcasted? Do you get to say what shows are made? Do you get to pick the content in the news? No, you don’t. You get to pick from preselected, prefiltered content.

As a person working in the business of entertainment, mainly the television and film mediums, I get to see how the content (shows, music, news) are used as ‘placeholders for the advertising'. Where do you think the money comes from to make your favorite show or to broadcast the news? The advertising. The broadcasting companies use your publicly owned airwaves (of which they’re supposed to lease from us) for their private profit and interest.

Look at it this way:

You buy a television set for $500 - $2000 dollars (average price)

You may have a home theatre system or better speakers for $500 - $2000 (average price)

Usually have to pay for cable/satellite TV setup fees $100

Pay a permanent subscription fee for television broadcasts $120/month ($1440/year average)

The average TV consumption per person in the United States is 4 to 6 hours per day! So what are you paying all that money for? You’re paying to be bombarded with advertising.. I see it as absurd that people pay $100’s of dollars to receive advertising. At first, pay services like XM Radio made you pay for music without the advertising. Similarly, Pandora does this online now after At&t bought it out. In these cases you're pre paying so the advertising is kept to a minimum.

Ok, now for the News… For those who depend on those 30-second sound bytes for all their knowledge.

The News on TV is not news in the sense of the word that most people take it for. Actually, the news is part of the entertainment programming of the television networks. It could be best described as infotainment more than anything else. This is how the networks get out of being responsible for the truth in the content.

In a 1-hour news cycle there’s about 3-5 minutes of news. The rest of the time is spent on advertising and shaping your opinion (through repetition, preying on your emotions, and omission). You cannot know anything within the short soundbytes offered up as news, but within a few minutes you can sure have an opinion about something based on how you feel from the programming. Yet the programming leaves you ignorant.

So what can you do instead of spending money on cable TV? What could you do to stop the bombardment of ads that shape your opinions? How do you change this condition and have your TV work for you?

The answer is to take it back.

The medium is yours, it’s yours to do with as you see fit. Here’s an example of how I took back my TV…

In 1997 I moved into an apartment that didn’t have cable TV. I was broke at the time and was not going to pay the $100 setup fee and $50/month. So I went without it. Within 6 months I forgot I had a TV. Later I found a good job and setup a small home theatre system for DVDs. Documentaries made their way into my TV along with movies. Now with the advent of broadband internet, there are numerous news sources available to you online. And most all video cards on a computer can drive a television monitor.

Now with my TV I can scan the earth & sky with Google Earth. I watch news programming that I choose. Many TV shows are shown for free after their premier broadcast. And my newspaper is by my design on my screen via an RSS news reader in my web browser. I find content that's relevant to my interests (ie. www.energybulletin.net) and I have a virtual news page that I put together.

My TV is now an educational tool. Education, News, Entertainment are mine to create. Via the internet, the freedom of information is back in the hands of people. You no longer have to sit there flipping through 500 channels of pre-filtered garbage that is intended to keep you from thinking for yourself and to keep you shopping.

Don’t settle for private interests to choose what you see and hear. Take back your TV and make it work for you.

False Dilemmas

There's a statement I've heard over the years that goes: "You can be happy or you can be right." I've thought about it since the first time it came to my ears. At first I thought it was a helpful piece of wisdom when trying to resolve differences in relationship or in an attempt to stop a damaging argument. But something always bothered me about this because of the polarizing attribute it had. Attributes like this in our thinking make it difficult to creatively come up with other possibilities and keep us in a black & white world.

The saying itself "You can be happy or you can be right" can be viewed as a construct. And we can take that construct and impose it upon a life situation thereby forcing two absolutes on it. I went in search of the fallacy in this phrase in order to gain language to communicate this point effectively. I found what I was looking for and I offer it as a viewpoint to open up what may lay between Happy and Right.

The fallacy involved is called a False Dichotomy: Defined as polarized thinking (dichotomy, primal thinking, false dilemma, black and white thinking): This is the fallacy of thinking that things are either black or white, good or bad, all or nothing. This fallacy can lead to rigid and harmful rules based on primal thinking when it is efficient to compress complex information into simplified categories for rapid decision-making during times of stress, conflict, or threat.

Dialogue is a powerful tool for identifying a false dichotomy and moving past it to other alternatives. Here's a story I read that expresses it wonderfully... "A clever Zen master teaches his students to reject a false dichotomy and go beyond polarized thinking with the following challenge. He places a cup of tea before the student, then says “If you drink that cup of tea, I will beat you with a stick, and if you don't drink that cup of tea I will beat you with a stick.” The student has to reject the false dichotomy, recognize options other than the two presented, and create other alternatives, such as offering the tea to the instructor, or asking his advice to avoid punishment..."

As I look around at the messages coming at me I see this fallacy everywhere in our media and politics. Here are some examples by asking: If Barack Obama is good or bad, if you are liberal or conservative, if you are republican or democrat. Or asking are you with us or against us, scientific or religious, etc... This dichotomy obscures a grander unity. It separates us and our understanding of nature and each other. Used right it becomes an effective tool to polarize (or divide) people, and people divided are easier to manipulate.

In essence, false dichotomies are harmful because they distract us from the many alternatives that could provide creative solutions or help us constructively resolve conflict. Whereas debate tends to be used as a tool to support a false dichotomy by focusing on the limited alternatives "Capitalism or Socialism?", "Private Healthcare or Public Healthcare?", the list goes on and on.

Consider the distinction between the false dichotomy of “black or white” and the accurate dichotomy of “black or non-black”. Non-black includes a vast range of colors spanning shades of gray, the colors of the rainbow, and the infinite shades of colors in between.

So as we go about our daily business it may not serve us to reduce things down thus, or accept headlines, messages, or ideals so reduced without some critical thought. Since it's in the reduction of things that we get into so much trouble. We reduce thought processes with these constructs and then we continue on as if they were fact! And then so much is lost in the reduction and it's gone forever and we never stop to recognize that we reduced an idea in the first place. It's no longer real life, and then one is off in concept-land working inside a construct. And when one lives inside a construct we no longer have the resolution (as in megapixles) on the life situation to creatively create alternate possibilities.

Interesting report on where I thought my tax dollars went

In 1984 a commission called The Grace Commission produced a report for the administration in reply to "a directive to identify and suggest remedies for waste and abuse in the Federal Government." [in regards to tax dollars.]

Here's an excerpt from the report:
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Resistance to additional income taxes would be even more widespread if people were aware that:

* One-third of all their taxes is consumed by waste and inefficiency in the Federal Government as we identified in our survey.

* Another one-third of all their taxes escapes collection from others as the underground economy blossoms in direct proportion to tax increases.

* With two-thirds of everyone's personal income taxes wasted or not collected, 100 percent of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal debt and by Federal Government contributions to transfer payments. In other words, all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services which taxpayers expect from their Government.
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As of this writing 100% of the income taxes you pay each week from your paycheck go to pay the interest on the national debt to the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. Not to the roads, or the schools, or anything else. It looks like all money spent on federal programs is borrowed, not paid for by our taxes. That changes a lot of arguments I've heard...