Perceived Injustices Are Meaningless Without Context ... Surviving Reality Requires Continuous Exploration of Response Options

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)

Injustice?

"If the wealth of the world's 5 richest families was confiscated no human being would have to starve again."

This one misses the point, even if technically plausible. Better to define optimal tuning options, rather than ONLY define current injustices.

Problem? The rich are given, and are hoarding, immobilized, an outsize proportion of present fiat?

Suggested alternative? Why bother confiscating it? Just alter the ratio of feeding it (excessive hoarding) vs feeding dynamically distributed fiat. The huge hoards of unused fiat would wither as fast as they accumulated - or become irrelevant.

Why? Because today's net public fiat is always dwarfed by tomorrow's. It's been unstoppable for 4.5 Billion years!

How Public Initiative (fiat) used is NOT. That depends entirely upon the quality (including tempo) of OUR distributed decision-making.

Here's a suggestion. Participate, yourself, in defining your own local and your own country's distributed options.

If you don't, some deranged economist will!

And that will only constrain the rate of exploring our cultural options.

Then you'll have to deal with the PRINCIPLE OF PRIOR PLAUSIBILITY, where an initial hypothesis builds outsized institutional momentum, SOLELY for lack of early opposition or alternatives. The statistics of phenotypic persistence dictate cultural agility. If we want to adjust quickly, then we have to end some cultural habits as fast as we start other ones ... or be far more selective about which ones we start!

Hence Leonardo's famous maxim.

"It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end." Leonardo da Vinci

He might just as easily have said "be selective," rather than just "resist."

And an immediate corollary?

"Democracy works better when practiced every minute, instead of trying to repair it every four years."  RGE :)

Call it the "Broken Democracy" approach. :( The prize to keep our eyes on is our own, constantly increasing Cultural Adaptive Rate. That's the best way to prevent the crime of innocent fraud.

ps: If we question the adaptive value of human fat, why don't we question the cultural utility of obese wallets that immobilizes people in gated communities? A fatty liver is bad for personal health. A fatty wallet is bad for cultural health. Anything beyond 0.1% having fatty wallets is an epidemic of unhealthy demand leakages, i.e., sloth.

(effects of liver cirrhosis)

Stages of cultural damage?

  From healthy culture (distributed decision-making)

  To cultural financial fibrosis? (bought politicians; "yellow" NeoCons)

  And on to cultural liquidity cirrhosis? (free trade? foreign adventures?)

Any artists care to illustrate a cirrhotic Wall St. poisoning American policy agility?