East Meets West Logic...

[Mikal]

Hi Steve...you may have touched a pebble of wisdom when you mentioned "neighborhood." You see if you change your neighborhood and affect it positively and I do the same for mine and everyone does something in theirs...it soon will change the whole world...smiles...
For example, here in the winter its just a lovely walk two streets to the corner store so I have gotten to know all the old folks around here who are very elderly and find the winter hard to get along. So I told them all, on garbage day, just put your garbage out on the stoop there and I will carry it down to the curb for you so we can erase that fear you have of falling on the ice...what do I get from this, a nice walk and about 50 bright smiling faces and it just makes a day lovely....sometimes if I'm lucky I get an oldie joke from some of the old, charming gentlemen...lol...

Regards Mikal

[SteveA]

Hi Steve...you may have touched a pebble of wisdom when you mentioned "neighborhood." You see if you change your neighborhood and affect it positively and I do the same for mine and everyone does something in theirs...it soon will change the whole world...smiles...
For example, here in the winter its just a lovely walk two streets to the corner store so I have gotten to know all the old folks around here who are very elderly and find the winter hard to get along. So I told them all, on garbage day, just put your garbage out on the stoop there and I will carry it down to the curb for you so we can erase that fear you have of falling on the ice...what do I get from this, a nice walk and about 50 bright smiling faces and it just makes a day lovely....sometimes if I'm lucky I get an oldie joke from some of the old, charming gentlemen...lol...

Regards Mikal

Yes, I think those are the things people remember most and if there're a few examples of things like that that people see and remember it leaves open the possibility they'll try it too

When I was younger, a lot of my friends were adults and they usually had a few nuggets of insights to pass around.

That's interesting you mentioned taking the trash out for the neighbors. I just did that a few days ago for one of the neighbors here - an elderly lady that was having some trouble getting the trash out and I did the same for her.

That's another reason I tend to think things work better on smaller scales because it's hard to know much about random people you meet and I remember reading something about correlations between the size of mammal groups and their brain size. Humans can coordinate on larger scales, but still there's a point where things just become numbers and that's likely where the problems start.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't try to coordinate things on larger scales, but that it's more prone to have problems and is better avoided if it's not really necessary.

[SB_UK]

Yes, there are a lot of things sold as "free markets" that aren't - wasn't one of the last "free trade" agreements something like thousands of pages of special priveledges and restrictions etc. Later they'll "fix" that with a "non-free trade" agreement that will just add another two thousand pages etc. rinse and repeat.

And yes, times of economic problems are when a lot of these things are passed too. Look at all the "stimulus" packages we've had in the U.S. and I've already seen so many people lose their homes. Same things during the Great Depression when lots of new policies that were claimed to be helpful (work programs i.e.) were pushed through and many say these were part of the reason the depression stayed around so long. Similarly after 9/11 we had a push for lots of additional agencies and "security" powers etc.

Same thing now. We've got economic problems that have been building. People losing jobs and can't find work http://www.reuters.com/article/topNe...edName=topNews (~15% of the people were laid off here 2 days ago) and people losing their homes (one of my coworkers is losing his right now, my sister in law lost hers a few months ago, the place we moved into almost had the owner lost it, where we moved from ~40% of the people nearby had lost a home ... pitiful that people put up with the fiat currency system - the banks and federal reserve end up printing up paper and trading it for things that others have worked to build - we should expect real exchanges of value and not have a slave population). Meanwhile we have silly things like government subsidies to encourage people to get rid of their cheap transportation and go further in debt to buy a new car, or wanting people to additionally afford health care insurance as if we had all these resources to throw around without cost and there's no change on the political landscape in sight. People are brainwashed into listening to the media and thinking they're being taught important beliefs/skills (it almost makes me sick to my stomach to see some of the stuff that people are buying into).

It would be great to see things go the other way and just start removing these instead of adding more (though I'm certain they'll try to remove just the benefits to people and leave the rest in place).

Oh well, I know it's no use to try to fix it, but I'm just hoping people will make fewer mistakes rebuilding and not try to do the same thing again.

Freedom
Peace
Wisdom
Love
Beauty

Those are on my wish list - #1 is freedom (non-oppression, non-coercion - anarchy) because the rest people tend to naturally learn from that state.

Complete agreement.

Simplification is the solution.

If we've 2,000 makes of vacuum cleaner -
then we need 2000 vacuum bag manufacturers and can't generate generics.

Pushing aside the question of whether we actually need a vacuum cleaner (which we don't)
- the simple solution is to have just one until technology shifts sufficiently to make it necessary to recall and recycle that one and release another.

~*~

Making the global academic University network the research department which develops all products prior to any item being produced
'd
potentially solve this problem.

The collaborative University network -
- with an emphasis on sustainability with instructions for repairing broken and upgrading older items (if possible)

- replacements advocated only when technological improvement genuinely mandates it.

Remuneration ?
One~wage.

~*~

Money just isn't the point.

[Lloyd Gillespie]

Hi Mikal, and great to see your deep interest, knowledge and concern, especially as relates to M.Freidman, and yes I'm well aware of his failed ideas causing much disaster around the world. Friedman and Samuelson are two of the main mathematical economists of the complexities of markets that can not be figured with complexity maths, yet they preached for over 50 years just that, as you somewhat mention, only to see that entire mindset completely collapse last Sept. `08. That's why most are now trying to rethink the economics profession back to days when we had wiser ideas and policies. And if you may have noticed, I've only advocated the older wiser economists, of times past, or recent economists, who deeply respect the wiser thoughts of before the modern complexity schools, that did not understand these complexities, due to the fact they must be figured with universal probabilities maths, just as the greatest physicists and economists always used, instead of the particular maths, that evolve to unknown complexities.

Sorry, didn't mean to get that complex, but the whole system can only be understood with grouping of aggrigates into simpler concepts first, then actual truths, that can truly benefit the people, as a whole group, may be rationalized and factored into valid truth systems. Still sounds rather complex, but really isn't_It's just realizing the whole mind sees far more and better than the particular mind, and that process of aggregate vision is easily factored with general probability associations of thoughts, visions of history's models, and much clearer knowledge systems, brought about by the general probabilities math, handling the far-too-far over-complex complexity maths.

Complexities such as M.Freidman's ideas, just evolve more complexities and unknowns, and we've all seen over the last year, where that gets us.

So, thanks for your post Mikal, and great hearing from you...rrr

P.S.
SB, still working on your post #242 back at LINK
Back at ya later, thanks all...

Hi Lloyd…I was wondering if you had studied at all the late, Economist Milton Freidman of the University of Chicago’s Economic Department?? Mind you Freidman’s influence began fifty years ago to advance free market policies and leading neo-liberal and neo-conservative thinkers into exploiting disaster-shocked people and countries (The Shock Doctrine) where the economic force is allowed to use the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks for example wars, natural disasters or terrorist attacks to push through unpopular economic measures.
Naomi Klein authored the book The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism where she revealed through massive research the roots of Disaster Capitalism more than 50 years ago and she clearly shows how through our contemporary history that well known events of the recent past have been theatres for the Shock Doctrine.
Believe me, if anyone wants to understand just how dark the economic market force can really get this book is a must read…

Regards Mikal

[SB_UK]

A simple question -

Can any (economic) system work if people (through no fault of our own -> simply an evolutionary legacy) are greedy?

Perhaps we need to push economics to one side and to (instead) develop 'harmless' outlets for human greed.

e-Software, e-music, e-book collecting -
all purely electronic (for instance)

- the individual splurging their greed out (until they themselves get better) on items which are purely virtual.

Collecting information is my point here.

~*~

I think this mechanism could work

(actually)

will
work.

~*~

Greed need not necessarily focus upon a limiting physical resource -
as much information as one desires -
a potentially infinite resource

... ... where ... ...

information just wants to be free

refs: RDF : Random Blink and ADDF : DBReynolds

~*~

An acceptance of the very real existence of and the need to satisfy human greed
(in a community friendly manner)
may
be all that we need.

Forcing any unwanted regime on people simply represses, does not allow the individual to engorge themselves to the point of reaching a state of satiety where a 'wafer thin mint' is able to change {their,our} lives forever -

change our lives forever
though nicely -
and not with direct analogy to Mr. Creosote.

Mr. Creosote applies only if we fail in retargeting human greed away from the physical realm and onto the virtual.

~*~

It'll work - promise.

[Mikal]

Hi SB....I read this article this morning and it may help you to understand why we cannot just push economics to one side. It surely enlightened me further....


(NaturalNews) Economic experts are warning that the complex interconnectedness of the global economy makes it highly susceptible to collapse from one or two sharp shocks.

"While [complexity] helps the system diversify across small shocks, it also exposes the system to large systemic shocks," wrote Raghuram Rajan, an IMF chief economist and adviser to the Indian Prime Minister, in 2005. "It is possible that these developments ... create a greater ... probability of a catastrophic meltdown."

Globalization has made world markets and all sectors of the economy dependent on each other, thus allowing a crisis in one sector of the U.S. mortgage market to balloon into a global depression within months.

"The speed at which these events unfolded was unprecedented," the World Economic Forum said in a 2009 report. "It has demonstrated just how tightly interconnected globalization has made the world and its systems."

Globalization has created other risks. Modern air travel allows diseases to spread at formerly unprecedented rates, while "just-in-time" manufacturing and other efficiency-saving specialization measures make the whole global economy dependent on a few key points, known in network theory as "nodes."

In just-in-time manufacturing practices, stores keep very little supply on hand and rely on fast and highly coordinated delivery to keep their shelves stocked.

According to network theorist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, complex systems like the global economy are often less stable than they appear.

"Random insults to most parts of the network will not be consequential since they are likely to hit a poorly connected spot," he wrote in his book The Black Swan.

"But it also makes networks more vulnerable. ... Just consider what would happen if there is a problem with a major node. True, we have fewer failures, but when they occur... I shiver at the thought."

Examples of potential hits to key nodes include disruption of transportation, electrical or communications networks due to accident or sabotage; massive death of doctors, port workers, truck drivers or other key persons due to pandemic; or a major cutoff in the supply of some key material, such as copper or oil.

Sources for this story include: www.independent.co.uk.

[SB_UK]

Examples of potential hits to key [major] nodes include disruption of transportation, electrical or communications networks due to accident or sabotage; massive death of doctors, port workers, truck drivers or other key persons due to pandemic; or a major cutoff in the supply of some key material, such as copper or oil.

Good post
- we need to fully distribute the network -
to effectively eliminate major nodes from global infrastructure.

Major nodes can contribute only instability.





~ fully connected topologies ~

~*~

one~world

[Mikal]

Gee now your thinking my man!! Maybe looking at the economic junctures as Nodes could lead us in the right direction to build bridges to constructive change....

BTW...love your graphics...smiles...


Regards Mikal

[SB_UK]

the globally most stable configuration looks just like the simple image of geometric duality

- of icosahedron - dodecahedron - icosahedron of

> God > ) Mary ) > Jesus >

- the Holy Trinity.

~*~

too funny!

[SB_UK]

It's just a shame that we can't hand down that feeling which is hard to contain for any more than a moment
- that moment nevertheless when we realise that the very real reality which we absolutely do feel is built up from the simplest of substrates.

So almost unimaginable is that transition
that
when translated from
the past to the present
onto
the present into the future
- a doorway opened to unimaginably great prospects for our species going into the future.