Wanton Parasites in Action

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)



Below is another example of a nation cutting off it's Middle Class to spite itself. WE have given Verizon a license to serve us. Define the terms of that license to serve OUR needs, or Verizon will define it to serve their needs, at our nation's net expense. Parasites, however, can't win by winning their way - only by winning together. As usual, we have to save ignorant, greedy people from themselves, by making them cooperate with us, in a more perfect union.

"Venimus, Vidimus, Perfecimus Eventus Accommodatos"*

What part of "we" don't these parasites understand? Who wants wanton? It may taste good at first, but it's an unhealthy soup. Some stuff ya gotta learn in school, rather than physically re-learning on your own. We don't have time for all new humans to re-learn everything from scratch. Cultures don't last if they repeatedly make grandchildren re-learn painful lessons that their grandparents learned the hard way, and their parents either forgot, or never learned at all. That's neglect, not progress.

Common Cause says: "Internet freedom is under attack. Verizon is using every trick in the book -- spending lots of money to elect friendly legislators, lobbying all over Washington, and bringing questionable lawsuits -- to challenge common sense open Internet "net neutrality" protections.

What's at stake? Open Internet rules prevent Internet service providers like Verizon from slowing down access to competitor sites. Without these rules, your cell phone company could block your favorite apps or hit you with a surcharge if you try to use them -- on the phone or tablet you paid for! And if Verizon wins, it also could charge customers special fees just to access popular sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Learn about Verizon’s agenda and what you can do to stop it in our new, interactive online comic: Big Deal, Big Money."





*        i.e., We came, we saw, we made a more perfect union.

Why DC Saved the Economy, Then Permanently Destroyed the Labor Market - Autocatalysis Stalled For Now

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Why Washington Saved the Economy, Then Permanently Destroyed the Labor Market

Apparently, our advanced technologies have so far only enabled us to more precisely target our own foot. Obviously, WE ARE CAPABLE OF ACHIEVING FAR MORE THAN THAT. It's a matter of learning better uses for our emerging tools ... by practice.

This is a VERY useful article. It explains much about political operations,* which cannot be ignored any more than currency operations can be ignored.

Mindless, narrow class war is playing out, just like between rival Alawite/Sunni/Shia villages in Syria ... just in a more abstract venue. Is our internal class war - "financial terrorism" - just as self limiting for our aggregate? Of course. What can we do about it? How can we get back to continuously forming "a more perfect union?"

By setting our sights on even bigger, desired outcomes? On consensus outcomes that transcend the trivial tactics that are now masquerading as national goals? Surely Americans can dream audacious dreams big enough to stimulate everyone's imagination? Anything less gets boring, very quickly. 

How can we get ourselves to do that? No one can predict solutions, only practice finding the unpredictable solutions. We need more interaction, more talk, and more practice at social auto-catalysis.** And, paying far more attention to adequate K-12 education would also help. That general process falls under the heading of cultural OBT&E - what we can either call "COBTE," or just auto-catalysis.

Otherwise, all we can be will remain BELOW something that is greater than the sum of our parts. We can't chase our Achievement Gap by bickering and hoarding .. only by creating - which requires discussing all perceived options and then exploring them. In short, we need to get back to practicing auto-catalysis. The highest return, by far, is always the return-on-coordination, and it can only be pursued by constant practice at auto-catalysis.


*[Note esp. that a "plant" seems to have immediately hijacked half the comments to the straw man issue of immigration. If nothing else, the 1%'s hired lobby is disciplined and organized.]

** [The definition of auto-catalysis transcends the cooperation inherent in teamwork, and emphasizes that team practice continuously enhances and enlarges the return on teamwork. Auto-catalysis makes teams better, and represents the "moment" of, or best method for, accelerating cultural Adaptive Rate.]

"State of Human Capital Utilization"

commentary by Roger Erickson

A report and accompanying film are out.

State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2012

This Could be Generalized to "State of Human Capital Utilization"

What's money got to do with capital? Just another automatic stabilizer.

It's telling that the paradigm most commonly voiced by developers is that local people are standing in the way of others utilizing static "riches." Such a definition of development and "finance", as rape, is then a rallying cry to angrily take said riches by force from the "obstructionists," who are subsequently typically labeled as terrorists. Talk about not being able to see the human capital for all the people!

By this measure, the list of prominent terrorists throughout history would include most notable religious martyrs, nearly all regional tribes in every land, and, of course, all the signatories to our own US Constitution. Oh, and we must now also include that 99% of our current population who are standing in the way of our 1%, who simply want to put OUR resources to "better" use - by and for them, of course. But of what use is their form of use?  Their use always turns out to a confused state of the tail hoarding the dog.  Buddy can you spare a paradigm?  We seem to all be in the way of the one we have.

However, there are other paradigms to select from. One is as follows.

"Venimus, Vidimus, Perfecimus Eventus Accommodatos" 

[We came, we saw, we made a more perfect union.]

What is wrong with an education system that can teach superficial aspects of accounting, relativity, organic chemistry, and nuclear engineering to vast numbers of people, yet can't or won't teach a topic as rudimentary and fundamental as the difference between static and dynamic value?

Without that distinction, supposed "capitalists" show only an abject failure to compound net human capital. Some capitalists! If you're gonna aspire to be one, it might help to define and rank the forms of capital, and what they mean to citizens of a nation, and members of a social species.  Is dynamic value EVER mentioned in accounting classes?

How NOT to Explore Our Own - Available - Options

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)



The following article by Peter Van Buren cuts across monetary operations as just one area where tactics are masquerading as national goals. If we don't systematically define what success means for us, we'll continually be recruited to campaigns whose relevance to our REAL if ill-defined goals continues to elude and frustrate us.

How Not to Reconstruct Iraq, Afghanistan -- or America A Guide to Disaster at Home and Abroad
Peter Van Buren

"I spent a year [in Iraq] with the Department of State helping squander some of the $44 billion American taxpayers put up to “reconstruct” that country.  [Seven years] after their “liberation” by the American invasion of 2003, [many Iraqis] were still wandering that unraveling, unreconstructed urban landscape looking ... for food.

I flew home [one] day, a too-rapid change of worlds, to a country in which the schools of my hometown in Ohio could not afford to pay teachers a decent wage. Once great cities were rotting away as certainly as if they were in Iraq ... . To this day I’m left pondering these questions: Why has the United States spent so much money and time so disastrously trying to rebuild occupied nations abroad, while allowing its own infrastructure to crumble untended? Why do we even think of that as “policy”?

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

Let's hope this is temporary ignorance, which we can remedy with discussion and practice. If we don't work as a culture to remedy these policy failures,

"Andrew," in a comment at Warren Mosler's site, nails a worse condition that we can easily fall further into.

"The economic prosperity of the 99% hinges on them properly understanding the budget deficit and National debt. The political power of the 1% hinges on the 99% NOT understanding."

Continuing that mismatch between group and class goals is not only stupid, it's a recipe for national failure.  If nothing else, let's make it an overt goal to cease, forever, the maladaptive habit of confusing ourselves, in order to rob ourselves.  How is that supposed to define success, either as creating a more perfect union, or as improving the general welfare of the people?

ps: There's an obvious generalization of Andrew's statement, one that is a given axiom of all variants of system theory.

The economic prosperity of any group hinges on the full group adequately grasping situational awareness and their options for shaping it.   None of us can be smarter than all of us - hence return-on-coordination is always the highest return.

What do YOU need to be saved from?

What happened to "Venimus, Vidimus, Perfecimus Eventus Accommodatos?"

Research May Teach Rodents to Detect Explosives

Hmmm. What kind of research do you suppose would teach people to go, see & make a more perfect union?

The kind NOT supported by our mil/industrial complex?  Nor by our banksters lobby?

Do we have to save THEM from themselves too?

If so, do we need a rescue plan for every one of the ~19,000 NAICS industry codes? :(

What, exactly, do YOU need to be saved from? Do we need a real time database to track it all and schedule interventions?  WikiInterventia?

Or have we run out of money for that too?