Where are GI Jane and GI Joe When We Need BOTH of Them?

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

And, has GI Adaptive Rate Reached Zero Yet?

Do enough schools - or parents - teach students that policy matters? And voting decisions too?

Merchants, take our industry and Middle Class capabilities-set. Please! And while you're at it, start ramping up the policy civil wars, so we can shoot enough of our own feet to stage a real boondoggle.

NSA Spying Crushes US Tech Companies in Emerging Markets (“An Industry Phenomenon,” Says Cisco’s Chambers)

NSA Revelations Kill IBM Hardware Sales in China

A study in early August estimated that the spying scandal would cost US tech companies $35 billion

In response, a tech-industry worker writes: "Meanwhile those same American companies use Chinese suppliers and manufacturers."

Why, you finally ask?

Why, to support "free" trade, of course! Yet why "Of course?" Do any citizens even stop and think - at all - about the buzz words they hear from advertisers any more? How many citizens even know that there are alternate outlooks? How many are even familiar with and comfortable with uncertainty, doubt, and the practice of critical thinking, and audacious problem solving ... when it comes to national policy?

Free Trade? That Just Means That The Large-Scale Merchants Are in Control of Tax Policy.

And why? Apparently, only for lack of our full group bothering to set rational, group outcomes for the whole nation, and then actually assessing it's full-group progress. The result is that some merchant inmates are running the asylum. Again, why? Only because everyone else just wandered off in a daze? Another Central Planner economy did something like that too, more than once, just a few decades back.

These headlines above reminiscent of parents putting Sugar Smacks on the table & turning on the tv or video-games ... so that the parents can watch NASCAR & drink beer uninterrupted by the kids they're supposedly RAISING! Or, schools hosting football games, so the Athletic Director can get paid ... .

Conclusion? Our various Wars, including the supposed War on Drugs, have themselves degenerated into a War BY Our Net Selves, ON Our Net Selves? And if any foot anywhere squeaks up, it gets shot? Put yourself in our nation's position. Is that any way to win a war against yourself?

Or, we're repeating an alternate type of Prohibition, this time prohibiting citizens from the routine practice of critical thinking? Gotta hope for some novel variants of SpeakEasies. ThinkEasies? Anyone? Again, put yourself in your nation's position. Would it really help to avoid thinking carefully?

It gets more bewildering every year. Only pattern I can see is that our numbers are increasing faster than our methods for coordinating & mobilizing Group Intelligence (GI) are evolving - so that our national group intelligence is decelerating, rather than accelerating. Can you imagine the look on, say, a basketball lobbyist's [coach's] face, when presented with the overwhelming need for radical change beyond his ability to comprehend?

Basketball lobbyist: "Look, kids, basketball is a simple game. There are two teams with 5 players each."

Kids: "Uh, coach? We just counted again. There are 150million players on each end of the court. What do we do now?"

Basketball lobbyist:  ........  

Kids: "Looks like his brain locked up. Or else he's dead. Same thing. Whaddya wanna do now? ... Hey, there's this game called Lord of the Flies." :(

Has GI rate of change decelerated back to zero yet? Has GI itself sunk past the point where THIS size population cannot recover enough GI to survive? Where are GI Jane and GI Joe exactly when we need BOTH of them to work together - more than ever? Do we really HAVE to start anew, and rebuild this country from scratch?

How the hell would we even know? Literally no one is even discussing that question rationally, let alone comparing methods for assessing either our situation or our methods for surviving it! 

It is in the merchant inmates of the world that we must place our hope for organizing on a larger scale? Fate have mercy! And gag me with a buffoon! If this is the best we can do, then let's hope the current merchant inmates die off quick, and that their recombinant kids express more GI than Jane & Joe Sixpack did. Either that, or else it's Sayonara USA. We need to get back to having the merchant inmates work for the US Middle Class. NOT the other way around.