- Medical providers: Health care providers should be competing with one another to provide the best care at the lowest cost. I don't believe this is happening, and why they don't seem to care if they have your business or not is largely because they are not rewarded for your customer loyalty. To them, you're just another number they have to squeeze in, paid for by some monstrous insurance program. They're not making money off you. They're not benefiting from your business. If they had to keep your business, they'd try harder.
- Medical insurance: Same deal. They should want your business, so they should want to charge affordable rates and give good service. If they do not provide coverage as stipulated in the contract, only THEN should the government step in to settle the dispute. That's the legitimate function of government: to enforce contracts. If you're being screwed by an insurance company that you paid for coverage, then you ought to get your coverage, and someone who is able to force the insurance company to make good on its deals needs to muscle them a little. When you're dispute is settled, they are done. If you don't want insurance, then you get to pay out of pocket. If you can't pay out of pocket, then you pay on time or try to negotiate a deal.
- Income tax on compensation: It wasn't legal when they drafted the constitution, it wasn't legal when they ratified the constitution, so why is it legal now? It's not. Don't be fooled. Just because everyone is doing it does not make it legal. The feds know this, but they maintain the facade of legality in order to rake in the money. Compensation is not profit, and was never meant to be taxed. Since the government is not going to be used in the capacity of catch-all safety net for everyone in every circumstance, they can get by with less money. What do they have to do? Protect the borders, protect our rights, and protect interstate commerce. So, why do they need trillions of dollars every year? They don't. They just keep eating more money in order to continue raising (illegal) taxes.
- Social Security: I don't feel very secure at the moment, even though I've been paying into this chimera since I started working. When they originally billed it, they told everyone that there was as "special account" set aside for you, and all the years you are working, the money you earn is deducted from your paycheck and added to your individual account. If this were the case, why do YOU have to do this all over again when you set up a Roth IRA through your bank and set up a 401K with your place of employment? Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. If they were honest about how it worked from the beginning, they never would have gotten it through. Right now, there should be little warning bells and red flags waving. You should be asking yourself: If Social Security was passed by lying to the people, what might they be lying about today to push legislation through?
- Money should be real. Not fiat money that can be printed up whenever the Federal Reserve wants to issue more debt. If we had real money, there wouldn't be appreciable inflation. Wouldn't this slow down the economy? I suppose it might, but putting breaks on a car that's rolling down hill off a cliff would tend to slow it down, and I would see that as a good thing. What is real money? Gold. Silver. etc.
- Corporations: They are not persons.
- Campaign contributions: Should be illegal. All of them. Money is not speech. Money is bribes. Speech is free. Money is not. Why is this so hard to fathom? If someone is running for public office, then the press should cover it because it's news. If they can't put their lying commercials on the tele to dupe voters into voting for legislation that is worded to mean exactly the opposite of what voters think they are voting for, then even better.
- Criminal justice. The system is way too complex. The laws need to be reduced and rewritten to serve the values of the community. Murder, stealing, rape...we can all agree that crimes that victimize people deserve punishment. Insanity is not a valid reason to allow people to escape punishment. If someone is insane, maybe a lesson or two on reciprocation would help them learn a something about reality. If a crime is committed, and nobody is a victim, is it still a crime?
Saturday, September 26, 2009
How should it work? Nigel Strange answers everything.
The political/financial/medical system that we currently have is so far away from how it should be, that it is difficult to even imagine how it should be. I'll attempt to draw a picture, though.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Blind for Reform
Taste the delicious irony as you watch this video. The organizers don't really seem to get what's going on until they walk into the punchline:
"So you're controlling the message?"
Several things are going on, though I feel that I am insulting my reader's intelligence by pointing them out. Well, except yourself, then, and consider the explanation for those who are coming here for the first time and don't know any better.
"So you're controlling the message?"
Several things are going on, though I feel that I am insulting my reader's intelligence by pointing them out. Well, except yourself, then, and consider the explanation for those who are coming here for the first time and don't know any better.
- Obviously, the people who are rallying in support of Obama's health initiative do not make their own signs, or even look at them, or if they do, they don't understand them. I wonder how much they are getting paid.
- Part of fascism is controlling the message, controlling the media, and ultimately controlling what people are allowed to say, what they are allowed to think. The organizers are simultaneously claiming that their movement is not fascist, while simultaneously doing all of the above.
- To their credit (I must give them credit for this) they did not violently assault the prankster or the cameraman, which is something we've seen from this thugocracy before. Maybe they didn't get the joke, or if they did, they took it in good spirits. So, maybe there is some hope for these people, after all.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Meme war pt 1: cultural relativism
There is this article about an ex-Muslim girl who is afraid that her own father will kill her because she converted to Christianity.
Tolerance, as an ideal, is not universal. We, Americans, are being brainwashed into a kind of listless tolerance for everything un-American. On the other side, everyone else learns to be more intolerant of us. It is a one-sided meme war.
When asked by CNN, the girl's father said: "We are not bad people. We are not like that, we are normal."
What does "normal" mean? In America, we had this idea of normal meaning having normal American values. However, in a multicultural America, the word loses all meaning. There are many "normals," and we are not allowed to consider the imposition of our own code of conduct on others. In some parts of the world, it is normal to kill a girl for the crime of being raped. In some parts of the world, it is normal to decapitate people for changing religions. So, when someone says "normal people" it has meaning there. When someone says "normal people" in a culture that has defined itself into nonexistence, as Americans have been brainwashed into doing, it is entirely meaningless.
So, is it by accident or by design?
It is by design.
For those new to this blog, you might want to start by reading the 45 stated goals of the communists here.
Tolerance, as an ideal, is not universal. We, Americans, are being brainwashed into a kind of listless tolerance for everything un-American. On the other side, everyone else learns to be more intolerant of us. It is a one-sided meme war.
When asked by CNN, the girl's father said: "We are not bad people. We are not like that, we are normal."
What does "normal" mean? In America, we had this idea of normal meaning having normal American values. However, in a multicultural America, the word loses all meaning. There are many "normals," and we are not allowed to consider the imposition of our own code of conduct on others. In some parts of the world, it is normal to kill a girl for the crime of being raped. In some parts of the world, it is normal to decapitate people for changing religions. So, when someone says "normal people" it has meaning there. When someone says "normal people" in a culture that has defined itself into nonexistence, as Americans have been brainwashed into doing, it is entirely meaningless.
So, is it by accident or by design?
It is by design.
For those new to this blog, you might want to start by reading the 45 stated goals of the communists here.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Information age
We live in the information age.
This information age was not created for our benefit, but for the benefit of memes.
We are in a meme war. Right here. Right now.
If you already know this, then you are fighting the meme war.
If you don't already know this, then you are just the territory.
This information age was not created for our benefit, but for the benefit of memes.
We are in a meme war. Right here. Right now.
If you already know this, then you are fighting the meme war.
If you don't already know this, then you are just the territory.
Public servants
It occurred to me that public servants enjoy their positions way too much, particularly the legislature.
It seems to me that instead of being paid positions, congress and senate should be like jury duty: something you get picked to do by some random process and have to serve the time, making decisions.
Now, you might say that the quality of our law would deterriorate. I think not. Have you read the laws coming out of there? The language is often intentionally vague, if not downright misleading. It seems to me that if you had some regular people from different walks of life (like a jury) making this stuff, they'd do a better job of creating honest laws.
Also, when you think about it, every new law is a government expansion. It is a new restriction of some sort. Now, most of us would agree upon certain laws, such as murder and so on, but there are a lot of laws that are decreed ex cathedra that we're just supposed to suck up.
These legislators just have too much time on their hands. They want to get paid, and they want to look like they're getting paid for a reason. They want us to think that their work is worth our money. Well, suppose we did what BO is doing to private health insurance? Suppose we "removed the profit motive" from working for government. That would "incentivize" them to do a better job, right?
Really, the government is just another corporation now, only it is one that doesn't actually earn your money because they can take it by force.
It seems to me that instead of being paid positions, congress and senate should be like jury duty: something you get picked to do by some random process and have to serve the time, making decisions.
Now, you might say that the quality of our law would deterriorate. I think not. Have you read the laws coming out of there? The language is often intentionally vague, if not downright misleading. It seems to me that if you had some regular people from different walks of life (like a jury) making this stuff, they'd do a better job of creating honest laws.
Also, when you think about it, every new law is a government expansion. It is a new restriction of some sort. Now, most of us would agree upon certain laws, such as murder and so on, but there are a lot of laws that are decreed ex cathedra that we're just supposed to suck up.
These legislators just have too much time on their hands. They want to get paid, and they want to look like they're getting paid for a reason. They want us to think that their work is worth our money. Well, suppose we did what BO is doing to private health insurance? Suppose we "removed the profit motive" from working for government. That would "incentivize" them to do a better job, right?
Really, the government is just another corporation now, only it is one that doesn't actually earn your money because they can take it by force.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Good and evil
There is a big discrepancy between what people say they believe about good and evil and what they actually believe.
One popular line of thought is that evil is the absence of good. I think this is called the privation theory. I believe that this is not really what people believe, though they think they do.
The duality of good and evil is often depicted as the duality between cold and hot. Heat, being associated with Hell, is also associated with evil. By contrast, though we don't really come out and say it, Heaven is usually depicted as a cold place: high in the sky, clouds, white and blue colors. Beneath the surface of this comparison lies a more profound psychological truth which might be processed subconsciously, but is not something people who believe in absolute good or evil would come out and say. That is: cold, per se, does not actually exist. Cold is really just the absence of heat. Following this line of reasoning, one could say that analogously, good does not exist in its own right, but is really the absence of evil. Thus, evil is a thing in and of itself, while good is the absence of that thing.
One example is the concept of innocence. Most people consider innocence, chastity, virginity, to be good, verging on holy. But what are these things but a lack of knowledge or experience? A lack of sexual contact? A lack of worldly patina that encrusts us as we grow in a world full of dirt and corruption? Good, here, is the absence of something, not a thing in its own right.
What about good deeds? Good deeds are nothing more than the identification and nullification, or reduction of identified causes of suffering. Disease is an evil, so reducing disease is good. Hunger is evil, so reducing hunger is good. Poverty is evil, so reducing poverty is good. Ah, but is not poverty a lack of money? It turns out that money, being a thing in itself, is also an evil! It is, in fact, often regarded as the root of all evil. So, by contrast, poverty must be a good? No?
In any case, it seems reasonable to conclude that good does not really exist in and of itself, but only as an absence of something, be it "evil" or suffering of some degree or another.
So, if good is the absence of things, then the ultimate good is the absence of everything, isn't it? It seems far fetched, but when you think about it...
Demons feature quite often in video games, movies, and other form so popular culture. Everyone can draw up pictures of vile horned creatures that embody evil and sin. Similarly, depictions of Hell, even going back the morality plays of the middle ages and to Dante's Inferno are ripe with imagery and visceral sensory impressions. In the old days, this evil was often juxtaposed by a strong belief in God and in the positive power of good. Not so much anymore. Although video games, for instance, draw heavily from the infernal iconography, no mention exists of God or any other real divine power. It is as if the makers are afraid to mention the source of good, unless it is some airy-fairy flakey foofoo new age thing, like a holy stone or a generic mother goddess figure. They want the juicy bits of the religion that includes the monsters, but they reject the meaningful bits of religion that teach us what good is supposed to be. Is it that they have forgotten what good is, or is it that they recognize that good, being the absence of evil, being sterile and boring, is ultimately lifeless, and that the only way that we, as mortals, can ever truly experience the purity of ultimate good is after we die. Meanwhile, evil continues to manifest, fairly frequently, in this world of ours.
So it makes sense, from this point of view, to consider Manicheism as a valid world-view: the world is evil, and the non-existent nothingness of infinity is good. Still, very little refreshment can be derived from such a religion. Similarly, Buddhism reflects a pessimistic point of view by offering the world of life and living as a wheel of Samsara, of pain, misery, and suffering caused by the sin of attachment. If we could only learn to divest ourselves of the motivating force of life, we could rest in eternal emptiness.
Should one take comfort in nihilism? The very idea makes as much sense as squeezing blood from a stone. However, it seems that nihilism has taken root in our culture and erupts in various forms, such as cultural relativism, diversity, and the most pernicious of all: moral relativism. All of these ideas are various disguises for nihilism: the idea that nothing has any real meaning and that the only meaning that exists is what we imbue with our minds at the time of perception. These ideas turn good and evil around until the terms are totally meaningless, and one is lost in a sea of grey areas and uncertainty. To the modern mind, such concepts of good and evil become quaint metaphors for old-fashioned people, who quibble about how many angels dance on pinheads, yet, when true horrifying evil is brought to light, people shower upon it invective, as though they still have some abysmal kernel of soul left within them that can point them toward good and evil, like a compass points to north.
In the end, we are left in a world full of evil, in which we imagine good to exist somewhere else. We do our best not to be evil, which, for most people, passes for good.
Yet, this is not enough. There is something more.
One popular line of thought is that evil is the absence of good. I think this is called the privation theory. I believe that this is not really what people believe, though they think they do.
The duality of good and evil is often depicted as the duality between cold and hot. Heat, being associated with Hell, is also associated with evil. By contrast, though we don't really come out and say it, Heaven is usually depicted as a cold place: high in the sky, clouds, white and blue colors. Beneath the surface of this comparison lies a more profound psychological truth which might be processed subconsciously, but is not something people who believe in absolute good or evil would come out and say. That is: cold, per se, does not actually exist. Cold is really just the absence of heat. Following this line of reasoning, one could say that analogously, good does not exist in its own right, but is really the absence of evil. Thus, evil is a thing in and of itself, while good is the absence of that thing.
One example is the concept of innocence. Most people consider innocence, chastity, virginity, to be good, verging on holy. But what are these things but a lack of knowledge or experience? A lack of sexual contact? A lack of worldly patina that encrusts us as we grow in a world full of dirt and corruption? Good, here, is the absence of something, not a thing in its own right.
What about good deeds? Good deeds are nothing more than the identification and nullification, or reduction of identified causes of suffering. Disease is an evil, so reducing disease is good. Hunger is evil, so reducing hunger is good. Poverty is evil, so reducing poverty is good. Ah, but is not poverty a lack of money? It turns out that money, being a thing in itself, is also an evil! It is, in fact, often regarded as the root of all evil. So, by contrast, poverty must be a good? No?
In any case, it seems reasonable to conclude that good does not really exist in and of itself, but only as an absence of something, be it "evil" or suffering of some degree or another.
So, if good is the absence of things, then the ultimate good is the absence of everything, isn't it? It seems far fetched, but when you think about it...
Demons feature quite often in video games, movies, and other form so popular culture. Everyone can draw up pictures of vile horned creatures that embody evil and sin. Similarly, depictions of Hell, even going back the morality plays of the middle ages and to Dante's Inferno are ripe with imagery and visceral sensory impressions. In the old days, this evil was often juxtaposed by a strong belief in God and in the positive power of good. Not so much anymore. Although video games, for instance, draw heavily from the infernal iconography, no mention exists of God or any other real divine power. It is as if the makers are afraid to mention the source of good, unless it is some airy-fairy flakey foofoo new age thing, like a holy stone or a generic mother goddess figure. They want the juicy bits of the religion that includes the monsters, but they reject the meaningful bits of religion that teach us what good is supposed to be. Is it that they have forgotten what good is, or is it that they recognize that good, being the absence of evil, being sterile and boring, is ultimately lifeless, and that the only way that we, as mortals, can ever truly experience the purity of ultimate good is after we die. Meanwhile, evil continues to manifest, fairly frequently, in this world of ours.
So it makes sense, from this point of view, to consider Manicheism as a valid world-view: the world is evil, and the non-existent nothingness of infinity is good. Still, very little refreshment can be derived from such a religion. Similarly, Buddhism reflects a pessimistic point of view by offering the world of life and living as a wheel of Samsara, of pain, misery, and suffering caused by the sin of attachment. If we could only learn to divest ourselves of the motivating force of life, we could rest in eternal emptiness.
Should one take comfort in nihilism? The very idea makes as much sense as squeezing blood from a stone. However, it seems that nihilism has taken root in our culture and erupts in various forms, such as cultural relativism, diversity, and the most pernicious of all: moral relativism. All of these ideas are various disguises for nihilism: the idea that nothing has any real meaning and that the only meaning that exists is what we imbue with our minds at the time of perception. These ideas turn good and evil around until the terms are totally meaningless, and one is lost in a sea of grey areas and uncertainty. To the modern mind, such concepts of good and evil become quaint metaphors for old-fashioned people, who quibble about how many angels dance on pinheads, yet, when true horrifying evil is brought to light, people shower upon it invective, as though they still have some abysmal kernel of soul left within them that can point them toward good and evil, like a compass points to north.
In the end, we are left in a world full of evil, in which we imagine good to exist somewhere else. We do our best not to be evil, which, for most people, passes for good.
Yet, this is not enough. There is something more.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Thought for the day: outsourcing
I have heard libertarians describing outsourcing as a boon to the American economy. It helps 3rd and 2nd world nations develop so they can become markets for more goods and services.
I guess I'm just stupid. Instead of Americans buying televisions made in America, there will be Indians buying televisions made in China. I just don't see how this helps the American economy.
I guess I'm just stupid. Instead of Americans buying televisions made in America, there will be Indians buying televisions made in China. I just don't see how this helps the American economy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)