Understanding that this is at bottom line a VR does not mean that we are not to participate in it 'as if' it were all there is. To alleviate as much suffering as we are able and add as much to the quality of life as we can. This knowledge of the VR nature hopefully will add perspective and explain what the purpose of this experience is. That what matters is the quality of our interactions and actualizing the free will of all participants to the extent possible, even when it requires the curbing of the free will of some to protect that of others.

Ted

the libertarian position, which is a bit extreme, is that all institutions not subject to the discipline of the market are subject to the forces of corruption, so the only thing to do is to minimize such institutions. This leaves a short list

Congress
Military
Federal Reserve or something to manage the currency and money supply

everything else is then private.

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great posting. Indeed, all this geopolitical stuff is not quite relevant to our life, and there is little we can do about it. Andrew Weil teaches that we should slowly wean ourselves of media, which only serve to increase stress levels.

I would argue that what matters are your neighbours on each side, maybe 2 deep, similarly your neighbours at the office or place of employment, that handful of people in the house and who you can call.

That's your world, and how you choose to deploy your ego or your QoC into this battleground DELTA-t by DELTA-t is everything.

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what can happen is our glass 10% empty detectometers pick up on the local environment and incorrectly conclude that it is our home team that are the bad guys while our view of foreign systems is shaped by other 10 percenters and stuff we read in books or the media. The only cure for this is to go overseas or connect deeply with individuals who come from these systems, like with Lena's comments for you.

Don't know how deeply you are into this, but the risk here is that you will invest a lot of energy and mental space to this American self-loathing thing, and miss the many doors of opportunity that your home system will make available to you.

Somehow these immigrants who are not aware of all these limitations come in and run entrepreneurial circles around American/Canadian raised kids.

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I don't know Randy. All I can know about is myself, right? Anything else is judgement, and I don't feel that is my place to judge.
Love
Bette

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All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

unless given special protection by the public system, corporations must fight for customers, and if they are up to monkey business, you can only fool people for so long.

what good government must guard against, is permitting corporations or privately held family firms for that matter, acquiring natural monopolies (monopolies that arise from natural conditions rather than artificially imposed by law), which they use to put the screws to customers...something that is arising in South America regarding water rights.

natural monopolies are what economists call "market failure", and market failure is where government should get involved.

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the key idea here is to have a realistic assessment of the QoC of the players, and then design an economic system that is most efficient for those players

the hypothesis of economics is that people pursue their self interest, so if you give someone a blank cheque to take money out of your pocket, they will do so and make their life as comfortable as possible, and the data supports this.

When this is done most effectively, it involves a lot of world travel in 5 star hotels at public expense, the goal of all public sector managers.

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they eventually get found out and fall by the wayside,

the last two years was a special situation and there are strong arguments that it was mostly a failure of regulation, started with suppression of redlining, magnified by Fannie and Freddie taking the bad loans off of the originators books.

and then there is this new too big to fail problem

as far at the corporate bad boys, that's to be expected, and that's what regulators or the FBI are for.

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I don't know Randy. All I can know about is myself, right? Anything else is judgement, and I don't feel that is my place to judge.
Love
Bette

the key point here is that people are selfish, so if you give a selfish person a position in a government office, the evidence is that they use that position to serve themselves, and if some service occurs to the client, that is secondary.

this is the basis of libertarianism. - Randy

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The key point to what is quoted from me here is I can only know if I am honest, and it isn'y really any of my business to judge others. Yes there are selfish people, yes they get into positions of power, yes some barely leave anything for other, no that is NOT secondary, that is what it is about. But it is not for me to judge other, I can only know myself, and what I think about doing or not doing, and what I actually do, and not do.
Love
Bette

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All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

The key point to what is quoted from me here is I can only know if I am honest, and it isn'y really any of my business to judge others. Yes there are selfish people, yes they get into positions of power, yes some barely leave anything for other, no that is NOT secondary, that is what it is about. But it is not for me to judge other, I can only know myself, and what I think about doing or not doing, and what I actually do, and not do.
Love
Bette

yes, what you say is true, however there is a difference between judging an individual vs pattern recognition in human behavior and then developing assessments regarding the least entropic societal governance

service is secondary in the context of how this plays out in real life, vs the original intention of a government program or stated nominal goals.

When bureaucrats are assessed on their performance, spending budget is 10 times more important than achieving measurable results for the target nominal clients.

and actually, it is often worse than this, with institutions taking steps to avoid solving on the ground problems for clients that would threaten the mandate of the "helping" institution.

I include myself in this "judgement" - can't say I am ready to step up and put forward proposals that would eliminate my job.

the key to the thread stream is for each of us to honestly ask ourselves "what is human nature at this point in the simulation", based on our direct experience, and from there think about what economic structures make sense.

the purpose of this line of argument is that a lack of scepticism regarding public institutions and overweighting of the problems of capitalism (which drifts into the phenomena of American self-loathing), is highly entropic on the personal level when you are actually living in such a system, can bleed energy into time-wasting activities, and can become a cop-out for our personal lack of progress.

Randy

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About the self loathing charge:
What you posted cuts both ways. I believe it is also entropic to derive too much of a sense of self identity from nationalism to the point that one 'puts their head in the sand' or says 'lalalalala I can't hear you' when presented with uncomfortable facts that should be addressed-especially when people's lives are effected on massive scales from the problems at hand.

"Blame America first crowd" is the moniker often slapped on someone who may raise a legitimate objection. This magic phrase(meme)closes minds in an act of simple handwaving-an example of groupthink because this is the very phrase repeatedly used on talk radio/dis-info for it's loyal listeners to use. (self admitted 'ditto heads')

This is a cop-out from one's responsibility as a citizen IMO.I see this as blind nationalism-"the king can do no wrong" -which leaves problems to fester and grow.I personally notice stong authoritarian tendencies in people around me like this.This is not an unwarranted judgement on my part,I have been verbally and physically threatened for raising such issues in discussions -which has tested the limits of my tolerance.(I am more than capable of physically defending myself ,to put it one way) There is scientific evidence for this type of phenomenon and how it effects lives.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

I do hear you about wasting energy and opportunity though.This is true that some seem to take the other extreme and blame the world for all of their problems while not taking, or appreciating the opportunities they may have in front of them.I certainly have done this at times in my life too.

Don't get me wrong,I see value in the Libertarian view point in places too(vote with your wallet),I have read Murry Rothbard,Ron Paul,and much here: http://mises.org/
I just can't ignore the fact that before the 'new deal' the market never solved problems with child labor,poverty and the elderly. This is something often ignored "if the markets were left alone it would have been fixed" they say. I can't go with that one.

Here's the kicker for me: Not too much can be done about one's initial conditions. In the US there is good opportunity, and hard work can pay off for many-though this is rapidly changing.However,the one's who do 'make it' do not have the right to 'pull up the ladder' for others.As well ,I believe it is only responsible,at the least,to think about how our actions and beliefs effect one another at home and abroad. A success story to one may be a horror story for another-
http://www.alternet.org/story/13140/

Really this is the type of discussion that can go back and forth without much or any resolution.Kind of entropic,people get rigidly set in beliefs that's how it is.

Man,did this thread get jacked or what? BTW I loved waking life too.

what needs to be done, and we are doing that here due to your elevated QoC (I see you are doing a better job than I am bringing the temperature down), is to hive off the extremes on the right and left and argue from just right and left of centre - a great example of how TOE-heads do it!

this is what economics is though, figuring out how to correct social results that the invisible hand leads to

indeed, the tea-party Hannity/Palin-level analysis is what I call red-neck, bible-thumping, "bring back the gold standard" conservatism, and this unquestionably ego-based and giving conservatism a bad name.

actual neo-conservatism (or at least how I use the term), which differs from sink or swim libertarianism, is heart-based conservatism, based on the hypothesis that markets are the key to solving 95% percent of the worlds problems, and the the 5% it does not solve, you cut a cheque - that is what economic science tells us is the most efficient -

and for situations like a single mom with a disabled child, you cut a really big cheque...but you don't subsidize lazy healthy twenty-somethings that refuse to take jobs below their aspirations.

again, my favorite Liberal Prime Minister said "we have forests that need the underbrush cleared", when speaking about the young able-bodied masses on welfare.

you don't nationalize or subsidize industries in order to deal with isolated social problems - you give the person a cheque...and ultimately, you go with the negative income tax that Friedman espoused as the ultimate solution.

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I appreciate that "shout-out" Randy. :)
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.