John Hemington, long time advocate for the Middle Class, writes with a list of recent articles discussing things that most Americans don't know that they don't know.
Doctrine of Mathematical Impossibilities
Why Obama should pick Yellen to lead the Fed
Government: A much-maligned engine of innovation
[Brilliant exploration of new ideas in business?]
Bradley Manning, Surveillance State Creep, and
The Next Way: The Emergence of Post-Constitutional America
Yes, John, these are all excellent points that should be discussed far more frequently by a supposedly informed electorate. The absence of these topics from most media underscore lack of thought on underlying public purpose. So here's my initial contribution, to help extend the needed conversation.
Regarding math. A nation's currency system is always created by the people, to denominate all the unpredictable transaction chains it may find need to see citizens execute. Such distributed options and agility flows, always, from policy agility - as a publicly mandated choice. The math only comes after the public purpose.
Yellen vs Summers? Such a choice! Is this a policy fraud hoisted by lobbyists? Why not "none of the above?" Who says there is no other alternative? TINA? Who's Tina? Bernays' publicist, or just another straw woman?
"Government" questioned as a source of innovation? This requires no brilliance whatsoever to discern. Our greatest threat is promotion of a Luddite ideology that denies this simple reality, since government of, for & by the people is both the polar opposite of fascism, and it's natural remedy as well. If we remind ourselves that government is never anything other than us, then it's obvious that teamwork in a social species always generates the highest returns and the most innovation. The best way to explore the return on coordination? Evaluate the options possible through teamwork? That's not rocket science. Just honesty.
On Bradley Manning. Ben Franklin nailed this over 200 years ago. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
The next way? All the endless rhetoric here is mercifully summed up by Bill Black's reference to Jonathan Swift. "[Fraud is] a greater crime than theft. For .. care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, can protect a man’s goods from thieves, but honestly hath no fence against superior cunning. . . where fraud is permitted or connived at, or hath no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage." 1726, Jonathan Swift
[Note that fraud needn't even display superior cunning. It need only proceed unchecked. Keating, Greenspan, Rubin, Summers and Geithner proved that!]
These discussion points all converge to a summary point. Our current criminogenic environment starts as an ill-chosen public policy to reward a few at the expense of the whole. That policy also actively rewards the architects of public looting with further promotions to even higher public policy offices. End that policy, and we end a host of subsequent ills. With even a modicum of discussion, citizens may easily see that a vast amount of daunting activity may be easily replaced by a very few strategic actions, carefully selected to favor Public Purpose over public looting. The benefits of that return-on-coordination outweigh all other temptations, by far. All this is easy, but ONLY if we maintain a bias to carefully selected, minimal action.
Regarding math. A nation's currency system is always created by the people, to denominate all the unpredictable transaction chains it may find need to see citizens execute. Such distributed options and agility flows, always, from policy agility - as a publicly mandated choice. The math only comes after the public purpose.
Yellen vs Summers? Such a choice! Is this a policy fraud hoisted by lobbyists? Why not "none of the above?" Who says there is no other alternative? TINA? Who's Tina? Bernays' publicist, or just another straw woman?
"Government" questioned as a source of innovation? This requires no brilliance whatsoever to discern. Our greatest threat is promotion of a Luddite ideology that denies this simple reality, since government of, for & by the people is both the polar opposite of fascism, and it's natural remedy as well. If we remind ourselves that government is never anything other than us, then it's obvious that teamwork in a social species always generates the highest returns and the most innovation. The best way to explore the return on coordination? Evaluate the options possible through teamwork? That's not rocket science. Just honesty.
On Bradley Manning. Ben Franklin nailed this over 200 years ago. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
The next way? All the endless rhetoric here is mercifully summed up by Bill Black's reference to Jonathan Swift. "[Fraud is] a greater crime than theft. For .. care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, can protect a man’s goods from thieves, but honestly hath no fence against superior cunning. . . where fraud is permitted or connived at, or hath no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage." 1726, Jonathan Swift
[Note that fraud needn't even display superior cunning. It need only proceed unchecked. Keating, Greenspan, Rubin, Summers and Geithner proved that!]
These discussion points all converge to a summary point. Our current criminogenic environment starts as an ill-chosen public policy to reward a few at the expense of the whole. That policy also actively rewards the architects of public looting with further promotions to even higher public policy offices. End that policy, and we end a host of subsequent ills. With even a modicum of discussion, citizens may easily see that a vast amount of daunting activity may be easily replaced by a very few strategic actions, carefully selected to favor Public Purpose over public looting. The benefits of that return-on-coordination outweigh all other temptations, by far. All this is easy, but ONLY if we maintain a bias to carefully selected, minimal action.
TINA: "there is no alternative"
ReplyDeletehttp://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=12887