Well you can just never really know where a thread is going to end up- Marxist Spirituality to intestinal prophylactics :-)

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"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them"
George Orwell

My main problem with the market fundamentalist approach is the real danger in losing sight of the public interest in favor of the high profits. It seems that as the public sphere has been intentionally dismantled and incapacitated, and private firms beholden to stock holders fill the vacuum, we run a risk of their making decisions for their bottom line rather than the less profitable public interest.

For example: the Google Books project. As libraries have been continually defunded, they were unable to take the initiative to create a national digital library, clearing the appropriate rights with copyright holders, making high quality scans cataloged so that the books are discoverable, and making the domain of human knowledge, which rightfully belongs to the public, publicly available. As a result Google filled the gaps and scanned the collections of several huge research libraries, setting themselves up to make massive profits behind a wall of private interest. The result is an important public good held hostage by a profit seeking business. This firm is not necessarily evil, but it is legally required to make decisions on the sole criterion of profit.

Competition can produce wonders, but it does not always bring the best conclusions; cooperation is vital. I agree that private property ownership must play a part in the ideal scheme, I just am not convinced that competition for profits is the best way to organize a society. Leaving it up to the free markets, we will not see low or no cost psychological and addictions counseling for the poor (which I believe would positively turn around society in a generation) or educational TV for kids. No profit, no reason to go there.

The main point is accountability. Google is accountable to stockholders who see only dollar signs. A government, in a democracy, is accountable to the public. That is why I find this continual anti-government bashing to be in fact anti-democracy bashing. It is saying that the public is too stupid and weak to elect politicians who will work positively for the public good, so let's leave it to the businesses. In fact we need stronger publics with faith in the government to fill the holes I mentioned above. In a true democracy we will then see the government making positive decisions. The market won't wither and die because the state will have the money to fairly outsource (in a genuine democracy) parts of project that need to be completed, like building roads and national digital libraries, and the public can actually hold them accountable for decisions that are not in the public interest. We cannot hold private businesses accountable in the same way.

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Everything is simpler than we can imagine, at the same time more complex and intertwined than can be comprehended--Goethe, Maxims & Reflections

only a small percentage of the American public can correctly answer the question "who is the Vice President" - I rest my case. And by this I don't mean your circle of friends...run your own test, ask the average person on the street.

the upcoming decision in November will not be based on issues, it will be based on moronic tit for tat gotcha politics, reflecting what actually works. If intelligent policy debate would work, we would see that.

I have seen how the political/public sausage is made up close and personal, and it is much much worse than you can imagine. Indeed there are challenges when private interests solve big problems, but I think the potential for government to solve these problems is getting more remote, not less.

Your average bureaucrat is so far removed from being able to grasp the complexity of current and emerging technology, that they can no longer even fake it, and government contracts more and more are bureaucrats handing over their wallet to scoundrels - but its your wallet they are handing over.

At a more fundamental level, there is how the world is, and how we wish it would be. Part of effectiveness is being grounded in the data and not our desires for how PMR should be constructed.

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

To my mind--assuming this statistic is accurate, which I doubt--this is not an incredibly strong case for dismantling democracy. First of all this clown Biden is not accountable to regular folks and is likely to do nothing for them. Second, just because they don't know his name does not mean they are not intelligent people who can vocalize their grievances and make meaningful contributions to public discourse. In an office setting, if someone does not know the VP of the company, does that mean they forfeit their right to voice their opinions on concerns that affect them in the day-to-day office setting?

Also, American politics on a national scale is not a good example for a healthy, functioning democracy. I don't remember voting on unlimited super PAC donations (a very relevant concern for our democratic system) or on waging wars in the Middle East. To use a dysfunctional democracy as an example for why democracy doesn't work is a straw man argument.

I am not convinced that the ideal set-up for PMR is to give all decision-making power to a small portion of powerful and wealthy people and groups. This means an automatic override of the free will of regular folks. This assumes that wealthy & powerful are sufficiently low entropy to make decisions based on the public good over self-interest, and to me the data abundantly debunks this theory. This was the idea of the British in India: the savages are clearly unable to take care of themselves, so let us run their society for their benefit. It turns out that if people do not have a voice in how their government should work, their concerns are ignored at best, and usually ends up with them being trampled on and disenfranchised.



I'm going to play the media card here, and say this is what happens when you have massive corporations that build weapons and seek unlimited profits setting the frame for our vital public discourse, rather than professional journalists. The difference can be clearly seen between NPR and Fox News: one seeks to create dialogue whereas the other seeks to frame it in politically advantageous ways. If the media did not focus on this garbage tit-for-tat stuff but prioritized real issues, the candidates would be forced to address those issues.




This is evidence for more accountability among our leaders, not less. Do you think this situation would disappear if large businesses ran the show? They would be even more self-serving than politicians; they are even less accountable than politicians, who at the very least are nominally accountable (for now).



Certainly I am letting my idealism show, but in the social world the rule set is far more malleable than in physics. I am surprised you take this tack: you talk often about setting intentions above and beyond normal and shooting for better intent in all interactions. Do you not believe that the world has been transformed precisely because certain individuals have looked at society and said "This can and must be changed."

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Everything is simpler than we can imagine, at the same time more complex and intertwined than can be comprehended--Goethe, Maxims & Reflections

Nice discussion, lots to think about.

Montana

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Thanks for your response, I appreciate your opinion and respect your perspective.

I am not anti-business or anti-profit, I am opposed to the domination of our economic, political and social discourse by a few large, publicly traded companies operating with pressure from Wall Street to extract short-term financial gains at the expense of all else, including integrity and responsibility. An economy is for serving the needs of people, not serving the needs of profit. If profit is the sole criterion, what people and the Earth really need may be lost. A few CEOs making choices based on their short-term financial interest is much different than a business actively seeking input from their employees and the communities in which they operate to make choices best for all people involved. For example, banks should be for helping citizens organize their finances and get loans to easily buy cars and houses, not exploiting them for profit with fees and obscenely high interest rates. For example, student loans should help those folks who want to gain knowledge and make a contribution to society, not exploiting them for profit with high fees and interest rates.

As far as the media, I am concerned that most media, operating on a for-profit paradigm, bows to pressure from its owners and advertisers to distract and entertain and worse, push a political agenda, rather than fairly and objectively inform. Their building weapons decreases the probability that they will provide information helping people to see the detriment of aggressive war. Their pursuit of unlimited profits increases the probability that they will feed consumerism, sell ads to anyone with enough money, and will not report negatively on their advertisers, who are the same ones financing politicians.

You may see these views as "child-like" and I may be wasting time by entropically distracting myself from my own ego issues. You are right that I do not have much experience actually changing the world. I suppose what I am doing is trying to clarify my own values for myself.

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Everything is simpler than we can imagine, at the same time more complex and intertwined than can be comprehended--Goethe, Maxims & Reflections

Randy,

You still maintain entirely too much justification/excuses for 'doing nothing' in your concepts. If no one did anything until they were in the ideal position to do so, hardly anyone ever could do anything. You are down to 'whatever is, is right' thinking. You have eliminated Ghandi and Martin Luther King and more as well as discouraging anyone from following such a person as a waste of time. It has clearly not been a waste of time in the past.

There is actually not a lot of corporate money going into the PACs according to published research. There is a lot, 99+%, of 1% (i.e. corporate and bank ownership) money feeding the PACs. The main reason that governments are so ineffective at improving society is that they are manipulated by the outright ownership of politicians by their patrons among the 1% who actually pull the strings.

I wish you would go back in your posting to where everything was not just lumped together and divisible only by whether it is regular or italic type and unidentified as to who is speaking. When every sentence is a new paragraph or when everything is just one big paragraph, it makes reading difficult when it does not have to be. Separating cohesive and connected blocks of thought into paragraphs has a real justification. When everything, both what you are quoting and your responses to it, are included within the quotation block, differentiated only by italicizing, it becomes especially difficult to follow and effectively turns into just one big paragraph.

Ted

Yeah it's easy to just skip over thinking nothing was added, Randy.
Love
Bette

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All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

on the contrary...do everything!

one also has the choice of trial and error, or building a base of human capital so that one achieves effectiveness relatively young, and that is my goal

there is an order and sequence to effectiveness

#1 - job one is controlling our bodies and conquering impulse
#2 - job two is drawing out our IOUC and the higher ruleset, and conquering small science self interest
#3 - job three is figuring out how to integrate the needs of the body, practical affairs, and the needs of our planetary family, with effectiveness

this points to several principles

1) we must work toward self sufficiency before taking on the world. This means school or business or career, finding a profitable partner and making appropriate effort for the safety, security and future of our families. Easier said than done.

2) once there is a surplus, the lower entropy individual turns to clan, neighourhood, country, planet...as an outlet for their energies, rather than perhaps chasing skirts and acquiring fast cars.

One needs a significant surplus and extraordinary effectiveness at the family level in order to do this with penetrative persistent power. Otherwise you are just another Washington asshole with a wife or wives in and out of rehab or hanging from a noose.

One possibility in the future database is that we could construct a friendly/loyal transnational 5th column that would rise to power and influence in a generation or two, and be a key low entropy factor at the future inflection point.

It means rolling up your sleeves though.

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

You are right Randy your model does require a lot of work, highly focused work. #1 being the biggie fear and ego, the way i see it all else would be fruitless. If not this diminished, it would be highly probable that we would self destruct. Sabby

Rather than dismissing idealism as childish, consider the possibility that some people are "hardwired" to see what could be rather than what is, and vice versa. Both dispositions are critical to a well functioning system. Then there are those like MLK who combine both dispositions and make permanent, lasting change.

Perhaps idealists are not "effective" in the sense you describe, in that they yearn for changes that may never come. They have upsets, become discouraged, can have a hard time accepting the world as it is right this moment. But idealists also serve to inspire and stretch the imagination of others. They may be personally unsuccessful in shaping the world along their desired lines, but they don't necessarily find satisfaction in those endeavors; instead, they find satisfaction in opening their own and others' minds to new patterns of thinking which can possibly lead to the changes they want to see. Even if their ideas and models are completely outside the bounds of possible reality, this doesn't necessarily mean they are engaged in entropic distraction; the exercise can be very fulfilling for them.

Imagination in itself is not gratifying for those who are "hardwired" to ground themselves in established data and work with those aspects of reality that can clearly be altered. These people want to see results, actual changes. I admire your conviction and drive to subordinate ideals to effectiveness; I am proposing that perhaps that model works for you but it is not necessarily the key for all of us.

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Everything is simpler than we can imagine, at the same time more complex and intertwined than can be comprehended--Goethe, Maxims & Reflections

as long as we are clear, you are content with gratifying imagination, detached from the data and detached from the future possible database - which is a form of belief, comforting, but devoid of meaning, and an increasing source of frustration over time

the main risk of this is that it takes your eye off the ball, which is how your ego plays in interacting with local issues, such as who unloads the dishwasher - we fill our minds with big issues that we do not understand, and can have no hope of impacting...while there are problems close by that we can actually work on.

we have vast populations of persons who have strong opinions about economics...but could not run a hot dog cart if their life depended on it, or who have strong opinions on politics, but have not even tried to lead a neighbourhood watch...and thus the process of gathering data on reality never actually begins - ones world view is completely imaginary.

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Randy,

Your world view that you keep expressing of your prejudices based upon being a 'government' economist is indeed imaginary if you do not yet understand that there is in fact a concerted, if somewhat inchoate, movement toward domination and control of the 99% by the 1% or more precisely, by some among the über rich. Have I not placed documentation, including an academic study of this division of society, of this on the board? Did you not see it? You do not in any way attempt to refute it, just claim that you know better, have superior knowledge as being among the 'wise' insiders. Or do you just dispute the evidence despite its clarity and starkness? This is not a conspiracy theory nor does there seem to be in fact a conspiracy in the sense of meetings and planning but rather an instinctive coming together of like minded individuals in their actions. You are very blind if you do not see it.

Ted

I found this thread interesting. Could you link me to where you put this study, please?

Kurt