Out There

There are those that say no one is out there.  Our focused effort with SETI has been fruitless in over two decades of effort.  But let us put this in perspective. It has been just three centuries since the invention of radio. It has been only a century since we entered an understanding of the quantum world of physics. Perhaps we have centuries before we discover and are able to use some form of galactic communication technology.

There is another thing to think about.  Have you ever waited for another person that is consistently late?  It is a person that seems to be always working from a different clock.  Even among species here on earth there are differences in time frames. A snail moves and seems to react at a much slower pace. A fly zips around. Are their actions merely the result of reflexes?  I wonder if they have a different time sense.  Watch professional athletics in action. Their perception and the reaction sometimes mesmerize. Suppose some entity out there perceives at a glacial pace or suppose an entity perceives in nanoseconds. Perhaps our interstellar communication attempts are the victim of a time sense problem.

A second thing to consider is that our perception is binary. Intellectually we perceive things in terms of duality. Such things as good and evil, left and right, up and down. They may not be such absolutes as we imagine. Some other entity might have a third, fourth, or even hundredth frame of reference. How different reality must be for them.

The worst case is that we are placing importance on things that are not that much of a deliminator. Suppose communication, the transmitting of thoughts and ideas, do not subscribe to our vehicle of exchange. Suppose they have a single central intelligence that controls the parts.  Another approach might be a distributed intelligence among individuals that aggregates, think swam. Maybe even intelligence is not that important in the scheme of things. Perhaps our emphasis on intelligence is really just an anthropomorphic measurement purely important because it is what we consider to be our greatest uniqueness.

Capitalism is Great

Capitalism is a great economic system. It can foster a better life. Chemotherapy is a great medical advancement that has prolonged life. But we clearly are aware Chemotherapy is also extremely hazardous, can be a killer and must be closely managed.

 

The problem with Capitalism is that political systems are ill equipped to manage it. Inevitably the captains of Capitalism will acquire control of the mechanisms of government. Once in control they will amass greater wealth and power in arithmetic proportions.

Capitalism works best as small businesses of single proprietor Mon and Pa operations. It even works well in medium size businesses of a few hundred employees. It breaks down in terms of real social value as larger corporations, conglomerates, and consortiums. Governments cannot effectually manage these entities for any length of time. That is when capitalism is the like Chemotherapy to society. Often the constraints we see government enact on them is really a power struggle among themselves. It is a case of to one entity or industry using government influence to victimize another for advantage.

In America there are some gapping mistakes made in government management of capitalism. At the top of the list is granting corporations the legal standing of a person. It dilutes responsibility for actions and makes it extremely difficult to hold individuals accountable. It also allows corporations to use their wealth and power to a disproportionate advantage in the legal system. Similar magnitude of leverage can only be achieved through class actions or unionization. It is no accident that class actions and unions are under attack by the politicians and judges. They owe their office to business and industry.

Second is not requiring all candidates for presidential and congressional elections to use public funds. This will lessen the influence of special interests. Unrestricted use of money in elections is not free speech.

 

Next on the list is not allowing campaign money to be given anomalously nor in any quantity by wealthy individuals, business and industry. In one recent California ballot initiative most of the campaign money was from outside the State.

Require investors in mergers and acquisitions to retain their holdings for at least 4 years. This will stop the “flipping” that has occurred with corporate America chasing instant Wall Street gratification.

Regulate hedge funds, CDCs and exotic financial schemes.

Divest investment banking from investor banking.

Make Credit Bureaus and the businesses that use their information fully libel for the information they provide or use.

Return the personal bankruptcy laws back to pre-2000. Usury lending schemes by banks and credit card companies would be much less attractive if they were more at risk.

Do not allow credit cards and other businesses to base their acceptance or rates on the actions of an individual with another company. They themselves must be victimized. This is another financial scheme that is used purely to drive up rates and profits.

Cap credit card interest rates at an absolute rate of 10%. This will help prevent credit bubbles and speculation. 

Require all mortgages, that the holders wish to do so, to be recast at current market value plus 10%. This will be like putting a stake in the heart of the banking industry vampire spectators that caused the mortgage crisis.

Require all government Defense and Black Opts contracts to have to be re-approved and funded each year on an individual basis with public debate. Each year that a government contract is over budget and behind schedule, the Contractor should be penalized 10% of the contract value. Do not allow the Pentagon to manage this process. Have it in a fully open public forum. Do not allow claiming State Secrets to cloak spending in darkness. Reduce Defense spending to the military industrial establishment by half immediately [primarily speculative weaponry which uses the lion’s share of the budget].

Do not allow lobbyist to write legislation, like they did with the Medicare Act in 2003. It is unbelievable that the legislation bars government from using its purchasing power to lower pharmaceutical prices to recipients.

Businesses should have a life cycle. We have allowed businesses and whole industries to avoid a normal life cycle through patents and copyrights. We have cemented their continued existence and froze out incumbents that may have new and better business models for the public. The most dramatic case is the Patriotic Act. It is granting business and industry unprecedented power to control technology. If today’s laws were in place at the time the telephone was invented, we would still be using Western Union telegraphs for the bulk of communication. Each telephone would have to be registered with Western Union and pay them an operating fee. The telephone, and not to mention the television, would be a narrow niche market. Do you realize that if DVRs [Digital Video Recorders] such as TIVO and VCRs were invented after the Patriot Act they would be effectively barred from public use?

Never forget Capitalism is to serve the people and not the other way around. Treat capitalism like a two year old in an antique ceramics shop. The child will likely grab at everything within reach. The results will be disastrous.

Assess risk

There is a signature line from the Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford movie, “Devils Own”.  In the movie Harrison Ford has a very American “mom, pa and apple pie view of things”. Brad Pitt is from a different world. At a key point Brad Pitt cements the acknowledgment of the difference as the bubble of Harrison Ford’s view of things burst. Brad Pitt tells him, “…this in not an American story, it is an Irish one”.

American stories most often have happy or satisfactory endings. It is a cultural thing of good over evil or just reward. Alfred Hitchcock movies epitomized this American philosophical perspective.  But is life really like the American movies? In the movies man triumphs no matter how awesome the situation. Examples are the movies “2012” and “Knowing”. They have American cultural endings. They beat unbelievable odds, even if it required deus ex machine, as in the movie “Knowing”.

Our cultural perspective of always ultimately triumphing is cognitive desistance [intellectual denial]. It causes us to take unacceptable risks. We believe we are uniquely special, have a divine destiny and are protected.  It comes as an extreme shock when a risk becomes a reality. The financial crisis was an example. Yet how quickly we forget and go back to our cognitive haze. The same is true of the philosophy of our elected officials. We forget it was the Republican perspective that created so much chaos in the last decade and bought them back in office. A couple of euphemisms come to mind in terms our our approaches, “the tail wagging the dog” and “throwing the baby out with the bath water”.

This kind of cognitive desistance is small potatoes.  We live in a world that has no preference for mankind. A solar flare, virus or meteor could wipe us from the face of the earth at anytime.  Our own activities could destroy civilization and plunge us back to a few scattered tribes in a stone age.  How do you assess risk? To what extent should we be cautious?  I think the Hippocratic oath is the best answer to our activities, “…first do no harm”.

Content

You have heard or seen the term “Content” used. It seems all the big media companies are focused on it. 

First, “Content” as it is used is a proper noun. Second, think of a passenger train. What is it that a passenger train must have? It must have passengers. The big media companies generally fall into either being trains or providers of passengers. The trains are vehicles that deliver the passengers. Examples are the cable companies and Netflixs. The Passengers are “Content” in the form of the products from entertainment companies. The products provided are television shows, movies, music and specials. Examples of the entertainment companies are Disney, Fox, and HBO. 

In a reversal from the normal arrangement, the delivery trains have to pay to be allowed to carry their Content passenger. Comcast pays for the right to carry channel Content from Disney. What is happening is that the trains are being economically held hostage by the Content providers. The Content providers want higher fees. Also there are new delivery mechanisms available such as smart phones and the internet. This is allowing entertainment companies to compete directly with the trains in delivery. An example is HULU. It is a consortium formed by the entertainment companies and provides television shows over the internet. The entertainment companies are also backing off previous Content providing agreements with trains. The one in the news is the pending restriction of Content to Netflixs.  

The trains are fighting back. They are trying to obtain their own exclusive Content. Comcast just bought the television broadcast network NBC. Netflixs just bought the rights to the highly successful cable television series, “Mad Men”. Time Warner [cable company] is declaring that its Content license agreements allows it to stream media to various platforms, such as Smart phones and iPads. The lawyers are working overtime.

The entertainment companies see big profits in also being the trains for their Content. The trains, delivery companies, see big profits in providing their services to more platforms. A larger universe to serve means more profits. But both the entertainment and delivery companies have an added problem. Others are getting into the delivery business, such as Amazon and now Google with a revamped YouTube. In the news is the big fight by financial moguls over control of a bankrupted BlockBuster, another train.

There is a rush to create Content. Reality TV shows are by far the cheapest, easiest and quickest to produce. Successful examples are the cooking shows, Ice Truckers, Pawn Stars, Dancing with the Stars, Biggest Loser, Kitchen Nightmares, Cup Cake Wars, and Clean House.

The fight for dominance of Content reminds me of the Highlander movies where the chant by the protagonist is, "...there can be but one!".

Around the Corner

I was thinking about a test phase that we used years ago. The phase was, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". It is a pangram, a phase that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet. They used it to test type writers and printing devices such as teletypes. Thinking about the phase caused me to think about teletypes.

I remembered when teletypes changed from clunking mechanical devices to slick machines. The change was the result of using “gated” logic circuits instead of gears and levers. A “gate” is a solid state chip that performs a specific simple function. Many gates had two inputs and one output. The most famous of these gates are “AND”, “OR”, “NOR” and “NOT”.  

Complicated logic chains can be formed by laying out hundreds of these gates. The new teletypes of the time used this scheme. Gates are “hardware” defined logic. Today our logic chains are all “software” defined.

I was thinking about the overnight demise of these teletypes despite their enhanced functionality. Their demise was a result of being caught with the advent of microprocessor technology. Computers could be programmed to also perform the teletype function using a modem [a device that turns an analog signal to digital and back again].

I wonder what other technological demises are just around the corner? Remember the “pager”?

Fall Back Strategy

The world had better have a fall back strategy. Suppose we wake in the morning and find that overnight America has collapsed. It had gone the way of the Soviet Union. The central government was no more and States, areas, and special interests were declaring their sovereignty.  The military would be slower to weigh in because of conflicts of allegiance within its ranks.

America is the financial and political hub of the world. On the morning of the fall the stock market will drop over 400 points. Big holders of the dollar will unload as much as half their holdings as the dollar falls. Others will take flight because the dollar will no longer represent a safe haven. These moves will exacerbate the falling of the dollar.

The world will be in panic. The consensus will be that somehow stability must be achieved. Traditionally the gap would have been filled by Japan in conjunction with some major Western power, most likely Britain. Japan is in turmoil due to the tsunami. Its cash is spoken for at this time. Britain would not be desired by the American wealthy special interests. The British government does not subscribe to “the divine right of capitalism”. It is a euphemism for “nothing must stand in the way of the pursuit of profits”.

The new British government has taken a less laissez-faire approach because of the financial crisis. But the American wealthy special interests may no longer be in the driver’s seat to determine the outcome. For many wealthy Americans they would be financially trapped like during the 1929 stock market crash. They would be witnessing all their holdings vanish in value.

Most likely the stability will be the result of a triumvirate formed by Britain, Germany and France, sanctioned by the EU. Certainly China, Russia, and Israel will be heavy handed in their attempt to shape the new world order.

The second act will be the loss of cohesion in the American military establishment. There are bases all over the world. They will be largely abandoned or become fiefdoms. Things would be little different with the Diplomatic organization. There will be shouting by some and silence by others in the American diplomatic organization. They also will not be speaking from the same page. The fragmentation will result in domestic and foreign American “privateering”.  

Things domestically will be filled with uncertainty. Faith will be gone in the police, the fire fighters and civil service. Schools will be closed. Children will roam. Adults will be derelict.  Bandits and disorder will reign. The green back would be an uncertain medium of exchange. Medical care would only be provided on a humanitarian basis. We would be subsisting in the dark without much electric power. The whole society would be holding its breath, while demigods rage. Everyone will be hoping for a messiah to lead them out of the nightmare.

Gold will go to $4,000 dollars an ounce. But gold deposit certificates would be worthless. The asset holders would just not honor them. The legal system would have no leverage to compel them. Ice and some other things would become very valuable as commodities in trade. People will horde vinegar, bleach, alcohol, cigarettes, liquor, peroxide, ammonia, and soap. Two things would be premium products cementing wealth, sex and drugs.

The coup de grâce for America will be the ignoring of American copyrights and patents. America would no longer have the leverage to force adherence. The individual entities that result from the American collapse would rush to cut their own international deals. This would further undermine the old order.

How prepared is the world? Will they be as unprepared as they were for the financial crisis, believing the odds are too great for it ever to likely happen?