Is Less Government More?

Another comment/response (like Unaffordable Health Care) in the same Facebook thread:

So I guess I’m saying that basically all government functions are socialistic in nature. They are implemented by/for a social group (U.S. or state or local or . . . citizens). Centralization is just a means of doing, or another way of describing, the focusing of effort. -which is really a main practical use of forming any group, in the first place (another being division of labor, for efforts which are big and/or complicated). E.g. You live in a family group. The family usually focuses or centralizes itself and resources into one, single, house, rather than a single dwelling for each individual. So that is a primary defining feature of a government. It will centralize, or focus, effort on manipulating defined aspects of our resource exchange (our “economy”). The scope/extent of its activity can be debated. But I don’t see any of a government’s activities as being much/anything but “socialist”, in my view. This might simply be semantics, and not THAT useful an issue to push. But I guess the point I’m trying to make is that it is not necessarily useful to demonize the act of centralization, or even sometimes the act of increasing its scope of influence. The act of choosing to have a government (national, local, or otherwise), vs. none, IS effectively the act of deciding it’s ok to increase its scope of influence.
I sincerely don’t mean to incite any ill will. I am surely missing some information. But it seems there are a couple internal inconsistencies in your words, and possibly your words vs. your life choices. 1) It seems a couple defining or observable features of a “fallen” (or otherwise similarly described) world are “chaos and disorder”. So to the extent you are “comfortable” with a “certain amount” of that, seems to be the extent to which you are fine with the world being “fallen”. 2) A “least” government is the best, “skeptical” view of the government, seems inconsistent with anyone who volunteers to work for one of the most extremely socialist parts of our national government. --the military. Those opting for this, are choosing to have the government most directly determine/provide their health services AND their housing situation AND their food supply (and more). This is a lot more than, say, an independent contractor, freelancer, small business owner, etc. Here are a couple free-market versions of military jobs, one might instead opt for: patriotic mercenary, civilian defense contractor, etc. 3) I’m not sure if, or the extent to which, this applies to you. But those who believe in a god, most certainly believe in a benevolent dictator. -someone who is (on the balance/within the context of his/her “plan”) “benevolent”, and to a large extent dictates what happens to the world (and thus the people in it). To, maybe, expand on the above, here are some other examples of what some people might do to demonstrate they, in practice, believe in less expansive/centralized, and more localized handling/control of resources/services: Local/sustainable farming (v.s. large, centralized operations, in a few states). Installing solar panels to charge an electric car, vs. using gasoline (localized sun energy collection, vs. from some central collection and processing facility, likely much farther away). Again, I don’t assume you, personally, are not already aware of, or doing, such things. Of course everyone’s experience, and thus worldview, differs. We all are limited by our biology (brain, eyes, ears, etc.) and circumstance in forming a model of the world which cannot exactly match the ACTUAL world. I don’t believe there is any utopia (at least, not that we have the capability to comprehend or design). But I do have some belief/hope that we might be able to set up some sort of optimization problem to try and determine an appropriate balance between “common good/effort” and “individual freedom” in defined instances, if we can account for real, tangible, trade-offs. The modeling and optimization can never produce some sort of “utopia”, because it is not possible to know all of the parameters, and those parameter values would change in unpredictable ways, as a civilization evolves. Our current form of governmental “design” contains many examples of “chaos and disorder”, built in. So I don’t want more of that. But I also try to be a “what is right” vs. “who is right” kinda guy. So I also don’t necessarily think a free market competition of PEOPLE or groups of people (businesses, etc.) is optimally useful. I think the free market can be a good empirical way to experiment and find the best IDEAS (i.e. “what is right”). I mean . . . I realize the current market form doesn’t literally kill, or eliminate, or enslave all the people in a competing company, who might produce/provide an object or service of objectively inferior value. Some of those displaced workers might, effectively, subscribe to the “victor” company’s “idea”, by going to work for them, instead. But it seems like there might be ways to better promote a competition of methods/ideas, vs. people, themselves. Anyway . . . I just feel like we are being played, by “the powers that be” (The people instrumental in this, might not be actually/totally conscious that/how they are doing it. They just know that it seems to be working for them), into wasting our time with (and/or then falling into apathy about) arguments which can’t ever be resolved. The people they want labeled as “liberals” and “conservatives” choose different sides of a “common-good/work together” vs. “individual freedom” debate, depending on the application (military vs. human welfare, etc. etc.). The arguments distill out to be the same, whether you invoke “Jeffersonian” or “Federalist” or other labelings/categorizations. If one group is on one side, the other needs to invoke the other view, to justify what they want. It is a waste of time to choose one over the other AS A GENERAL PRINCIPLE, because both contribute to quality/quantity of life, but both have costs. I feel like, if you push strongly for one, over the other, you just keep the pendulum swinging in a useless, never-ending oscillation. You can fall into some mythical fantasy of a country that used to be “great”, and we can get there “again”, by simply shoving the pendulum back the other way.

Yeah. The more I think and look closely at our interaction, the more I see that we seem to fundamentally agree on. -something I believe is generally more widespread, than "the media" might tend to portray (including Facebook, and it's suggested/relevant items which now show up in the center feed). I'm just afraid of rehashing failed solutions of the past, due to some nostalgic recall, or failure to objectively study the underlying dynamics of past scenarios. It seems like the more people actually engage each other, in terms of sharing values about basic needs (personal protection, food, health, housing), the more the other more politicized issues become irrelevant, and we see opportunities for real solutions and hope.

Unaffordable Health Care

The following refers to, and elaborates on, parts of a comment a friend made on Facebook, to someone’s post. I didn’t want to post a ton of text there. So I’m making it a blog post, here.
I think there is a lot of validity to "Agustus’s" comment. Any less direct means of paying for your health services (vs. paying “out of pocket”) certainly can have the effect of a person losing track of the cost. When people have any kind of insurance, they can tend to think “It’s paid for.”, or at the very least reason that they pay the same amount, so why not take advantage of as many services as they think they might “need” to. One might see how these could have the effect of providers (i.e. “free-market” businesses) being able to get away with increasing costs and services. So I think it’s valid to propose that effect happens when going through a modern government, with all its administrative structures, etc. -i.e. It can be hard to SEE the true costs you’re paying, for any specific service. So an unchecked/un-revisited "subsidy" can surely have the effect of increasing costs. Realizing I was naive to the history of employer-provided health care, I did some quick research. Apparently it started with hospitals trying to market some of the then new health care advances, without shocking patients with large one-time costs. I guess it got one big boost during the WWII economy, when employers tried to attract reluctant workers, by offering health care insurance/benefits. Said another way, these businesses used this “benefit” to lure employees, rather than paying a (modestly) higher wage. One could argue who’s fault that was: Manipulative “free market” employers, or “stupid” employees. Another big boost to employer-”paid” health benefits came in 1943, when the government made these benefits tax-free (plus another boost, in 1954). I personally don’t see any rationale for government services to be directly tied to one’s income (income taxes). Those health benefits seemed to enjoy an advantage, given that the other forms of employee compensation were taxed.
But I reject the notion that any of these effects are simply due to the nature of “the government” or the government being simply “too big”. People that advocate free market, also seem to want some socialism. E.g. “(some regulation and contract law is of course necessary for a functioning economy)”. I have asked, and have yet to get an actionable answer, to questions like “Exactly how much is ‘some’?”, or a question which should be easier to answer than that: “What is the concrete, guiding, PRINCIPLE you’d use to QUANTITATE how much regulation, of what kind, where?” How much of this socialism, you are in favor of, is too much?
My view: Any group construct, call it “public”, “government”, “corporation”, “company”, --whatever-- can be vulnerable to third-party manipulation. You can get some things done faster by dividing and specializing, and also spread risk. But you also increase the “attack surface”, when you introduce administrative processes, and other structures. Corporations have this third-party manipulation built right in. -shareholders, vs. the producers/servicers and the customers. The U.S. government has it’s lobbyists, etc., etc. As is usual, in life, there are tradeoffs. The fact that large organizations persist, means that the balance must be in favor of the large group, vs. individuals, for certain applications. Walmart is a large group. It uses it’s “large group” bargaining power to purchase things for its stores at very low prices. So why are so many people opposed to a group of all the U.S. citizens forming a large, collective bargaining group to get better prices for health care? If large organizations like Walmart regularly bargain for goods/services, why do people want to believe it’s IMPOSSIBLE for the U.S. citizens to do it? --and what is the large group that the U.S. citizens have formed?! Oh. Yeah. The U.S. government!  The “free market” many people think of would only exist if individuals traded amongst each other. As soon as you have some group forming on one side of any trade (e.g. a company, or corporation), the self-correcting benefits of that dynamic tend to fail. --until an equally powerful group can form on the other side of the trade (consumer/trade/labor union, etc.). In terms of increased health care expense, I believe part of it is just that progress has allowed more health interventions to be possible, and thus more “opportunities” to pay more money. But I also feel like a big reason things have/had gotten so expensive is that we have allowed employers, private insurance companies, and health care providers to keep their hands too much on the controls of OUR healthcare money. Too much “compromise” with private health insurance providers. I believe a person should be able to join any cooperative group, to pay (collectively bargain) for anything. Give people the option of joining a large insurance cooperative (U.S. government), to collectively bargain for health services. People should have the option of joining any other group, instead. But why would any logical person want to join a group where, on top of health care, they are paying for shareholder profit, and advertising costs (used to try and convince the subscribers they are getting a good deal).
I guess, in summary, I feel like the government needs to be more streamlined and held accountable (maybe completely rebuilt). I don’t think a growing of the large groups on the “other side” (private, “free market”) is an antidote for this. I have been focusing on health care, because it is a case example of a government program. I guess I see an OPTIONAL single-payer system as more market-like, than the alternative. We would effectively be allowing people to form a consumer-union-like group on one side of the market trade. The alternative to doing this would require increasing the amount of enforcement of “regulation and contract law”, so that corporations aren’t too powerful a force in this exchange with health care consumers (U.S. citizens). --more regulation and enforcement infrastructure, vs. just allowing the U.S. citizens to simply form their own trade group (effectively).

But I think you are right that many people agree on what we want, and we only tend to disagree on how to get it. When I attempt to look at things logically, and objectively, I feel like certain people who control many of our resources would have a huge interest in pushing a “free market” notion, along with a general distrust in government. They, themselves, utilize and benefit from large-group power, including the U.S. government. They like, and use, these “too big” structures, regularly.. They want you to distrust them, by promoting the so-called “free market”. If you do that, you reduce your engagement with, and thus your control over, your large, powerful group. --your U.S. government. I think the parts of the “free market” notion that resonate with many people are the concepts of fairness and accountability (fair price setting, no “stealing”, etc.). We want to be able to fairly trade, and share, our resources. We want people to be accountable for what they do or don’t contribute to a trade or sharing. But how could we ever really enforce people not joining together into large groups, to gain some advantage over our environment (other people/groups are a part of our environment). Our working together in large social groups is a huge part of how we have become such a successful species. So I don’t think we need to demonize one group (say, the U.S. government), in contrast with others (businesses which operate in the “free market”). I think we just need to try to engage with and within groups to make them more directly fair and accountable. Remember that these groups aren’t real things. They are just a set of interactions and intra-actions. So the more you try to be fair and accountable, when dealing with others, the more things will be that way. Technology can be used to shorten the interaction loop, so it is easier to see how your actions are affecting others, and to reduce the attack surface for potential third-party agents. I’m thinking about things like directly paying to “subscribe” to government services, as a way to keep government agents accountable, and directly “register” your “vote” for what you want, without having to rely on some elected official to hopefully advocate for your will.

Intelligence

A recent article a friend posted on FaceBook, Who Are Donald Trump's Supporters, Really?,  shows that Donald Trump supporters tend to be, among other things, less formally educated than supporters for other candidates. It might be telling about some people not really thinking very much about the real issues, but this implies that less intelligent people tend to believe in Trump. This idea doesn't completely sit well with me. I believe that "intelligence" is about experience. If a person is experiencing college courses, etc., that time is displaced. It is NOT available to experience other valuable things about the world. I'm the first/only person to earn a college degree in my biological family. My dad, brother, etc. would be considered "blue collar". But they're not stupid. In fact they are among the most intelligent people I know. So I don't really like the implication. It seems like we might want to label them as stupid, and say "See. Only stupid people like Trump. You don't want to be stupid, do you?" Now it IS possible to do "stupid", or non-useful things. You don't need to be college educated to deduce certain things. If a person has shown that they lie a lot, how can you begin to trust them? That's just common sense. I get that people and politicians lie. Often you only find out that they might have lied because they haven't kept, or been able to keep, their campaign promises. But if a person does a lot of blatant lying, long before they even get into office . . . Trump confidently says things like "Trust me. ____ WILL happen. Believe me.", without really showing concrete examples of how/where it has. It can feel comforting for some, to hear that, but . . . it looks like others have fallen for that non-substantial pitch before. It also doesn't make sense that rich people, like Trump, want to reduce the parts of government which negatively impact citizens. They absolutely DEPEND on the complexity of the IRS, and all the tax regulations. It's a great place to hide loopholes that only expensive tax lawyers have the time/resources to take advantage of. Then, lobbyists, have plenty of resources (tax money) from the rest of us, to work on channeling into subsidies benefiting their large businesses. Government has been a great business for guys like Trump. He's taken advantage of socialist-like programs like bankruptcy laws, multiple times. What he says just doesn't add up. You don't need a college education to see that.

Scary Socialism

I've been seeing Facebook posts about socialism. Some people appear to be afraid of our government "becoming" socialist. People. Please. Don't be so naive. So . . . you're against things like public schools, Social Security, labor unions, any level of minimum wage, paying armed force personnel (at all), national parks, interstate highways, GI Bill, veterans benefits, unemployment insurance, VA home loans, any pension or retirement plan, etc., etc., etc.? Because the payment for NONE of these things are based directly on free market capitalism. Even retirement plans offered by private companies are socialist. All you have to do is join the social group (others working in your company), meet the basic requirements (employee class, years of service, opt in to a plan, etc.) and you get it. It is not based on the market value you provide for the company. Your retirement plan doesn't immediately/automatically change, if you, effectively, raise your company's market value by landing a big account, or creating some huge savings for your company. The way to make it non-socialist would be to allow people to opt out of a retirement plan, and pay them 100% of the cash they'd otherwise take out of their checks to pay for this benefit. But people seem to love these socialist retirement plans. I don't see any of you anti-socialism people protesting against them, or the GI Bill, or military retirement benefits. I mean . . . don't you trust yourself to be responsible with money? Do you need a socialist safety net? The money is yours! If you are such a capitalist, why wouldn't you demand to keep that in your paycheck, and invest it on your own, rather than join a bunch of others in some socialist retirement plan? Maybe you'd say you're not joining such a socialist group for you. You did it for those poor guys who aren't responsibly saving for retirement. You're doing it for their welfare. You, then, believe in socialist welfare benefits. I mean, really, is our federal government anything BUT socialist? Are any federal employee salaries based directly on profits they help to generate on the free market? The social group is the American people. These people pool together resources (via taxes), and hope to share in some benefits. Now I think we can talk about how our socialist government channels the resources. Maybe reduce the loopholes and breaks rich people are able to take advantage of. Maybe even reduce the size of government. But if, say, a Republican says he's against socialism, how can that be true? If he or she chooses to be paid by a government which IS completely socialist, he or she IS a socialist.

Micropayment Magic

I think we would be surprised at how quickly good things would get done, if people used micropayments to promote what they wanted. It would seem like magic. I get frustrated by the the pace of progress. A lot of things have moved forward relatively rapidly. The size, power, and cost of computational microprocessors have progressed very rapidly, for example. But some things . . . are frustratingly slow. We truly can, and do, already vote with our money (e.g. the choices of clothes and food we buy, etc.). If it were easy, and cheap to process small  money transactions, large numbers of individuals could make a big difference. I think of the time I waste trying to determine if something I buy off of Amazon has what I need, and is the best buy. User ratings are helpful, and one reason I use Amazon at all (rather than, say, eBay). But you can't completely trust those reviews. Sellers offer incentives (free products to "test", etc.) to people to write "honest" reviews. When I buy on Amazon, often I think I should take the time to leave feedback, to help others. But my time is valuable. It's not just taking the time to leave the feedback. It's remembering to log back in a second time, later, after you've actually had a chance to use the product. -when you're in a position to leave actual useful feedback. Product sellers are already, effectively, paying for ratings which are useful to them. What if we cast a "vote" by saying "yes" this review was useful to me, --which goes into the ranking of useful reviews-- by actually micropaying reviewers who take the time to test products to provide useful reviews? If we voted this way, would that not attract more people into using their time and energy to provide useful information for buyers? It also seems like people, in general, might be more motivated to provide concise, useful, actionable information. Rather than feeling they need to gather enough information, and/or low quality filler, for a book, or even an article, people might feel it worth it to create short, micro articles, with just the useful information. --not information simply to sell more newspapers, or create content, suitable for attaching ads and coupons. What about funds for developing things? Research and development is a lot of trial and error. That's the process. It's expensive. Sites like Kickstarter can help generate capital to get things off the ground. But they choose which projects to allow. The Synergy Aircraft project was initially denied, until they perceived Synergy's popularity to be great, and later changed their minds. Even with this "kickstart", projects like this are often forced to beg for venture capital, if they want to continue. This means they have to not only try to develop something that is useful for people. They additionally have to formulate some sort of "business model" which will allow the venture capital investors to exclusively, and continually extract profit from any product of the development, etc., etc. But if something like Kickstarter were able to continually fund a project, couldn't a project continue more rapidly if it is not loaded down by all the baggage of "how can we make sure we can exclusively charge people for this?", and "How are we going to patent this?", etc. I guess what it boils down to is making the people who actually want to use, or see the use of, some technology, the same people who are paying for it's development. Because there is no inherent conflict of interest (venture capitalist investors vs. users), things can move faster, and you get more of what YOU want, rather than something that is easy for someone else to charge you money to use. You cut the baggage of venture capitalists, and their lawyers (patents, etc., etc.). I think about accelerating the development key technologies. Progress towards increasing the energy density and decreasing manufacturing cost of energy storage technologies (batteries, etc.) could accelerate. A breakthrough in this area would make a huge impact in our quality of life. From affordable electric vehicles, to off-grid, solar-powered, homes. --really anything you own, which requires energy, could be so much more useful. Governments are putting some money into development of different storage technologies. But if people were to contribute directly to promising projects, we wouldn't have to wait for the government (and the corporate lobbyists which control it) to determine which projects will get a chance to try and help us all. You might ask "How would we know what to invest in?". I'd say information for making that decision would become clearer, if it is not filtered and obscured by a company trying to market it's for-profit product. Have you ever tried to get simple, clear, complete, and trustworthy information from the website of a company claiming to have a "breakthrough" technology? When a researcher writes a grant application for research funding, they are forced to write a clear, concise explanation of exactly what they intend to do with the money, and hope to accomplish. Not doing so makes it very easy to triage such an application to the "don't fund" pile. If a group asks for money from people, it is in their best interest to make it clear, concise, accurate, easy to understand, etc. Marketing jargon gets in the way of that. If developers saw a mass adoption of micropayments as a viable way to fund their product research, they'd have to adjust to be able to clearly communicate the specific, differential, advantage their proposed outcome would have over existing, or other developing, technologies. I mean . . . many parts of the equation would be similar to now. You'd still have to convince someone of the usefulness and feasibility of your project. But we'd just be removing all the extra baggage of venture capitalists, lawyers, marketers, etc. adding a lot of cost and time to the whole process. Compared to now, I think it would almost appear to be like magic, how quickly/simply things could get accomplished.

They're All Symbols

I think about all the different forms of electronic communication/information: text, e-mail, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, word processors, collaboration suites, etc., etc. But all these things are just ways to share information, via symbols. -characters (including numerals), in the case of text. Even images just symbolize real people, and other situations/events. Video is simply sequences of images (symbols). All of this is just information for sharing with others, or ourselves at a later date. Given that we are just dealing with pictures, words, and similar symbols, there is a finite set of things we generally can, or want to, do. So it seems unwarranted to have so many different services and software to do, largely, the same things. We share images and text via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, and many more. Facebook lets you broadcast text, images, etc. to groups of "friends", but also allows one-on-one communication. Twitter is mostly for broadcasting short texts, and receiving such broadcasts from others. Some do things the others can't, very well, but all deal with, basically, the same thing. I guess that is one reason I tend toward using Google services. In one place, I can do pretty much anything. Sometimes it seems like Google is trying to do too much, with all they are involved in. But really, most of it is really the same thing: information processing and sharing services. Calendars, video messaging, photo storage, collaboration on documents, etc. Google+ does something like Facebook. But I think it is better in terms of controlling what, and to whom you share with. -and much less clutter crap. You can "follow" people and groups, just like Twitter. If you want to share images (including video), etc., you just share a link to your Google Photos, or YouTube channel. You can collaborate on a text document, spreadsheet, slideshow presentation, etc. Google seems to be one of the best, in terms of seeing, controlling, and retrieving the data you have/share (Check out Google Takeout). All of these "free" services (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.) are free, because they are using your information to help market products to you. They're all "selling" your information. But you can, if you want, open a Google Business account, for $5-$10/month, and keep your data more private. You can use things like boxcrpytor to encrypt things, before you even share them to such clouds services. Google has even made genuine efforts to help provide real e-mail encryption (which would allow not even them to see your GMail messages). There really doesn't seem to that many truly different information/communication services we really need. Google is not perfect, but it covers many of my needs, in a reasonable way.

Are Rights Right?

When someone makes a "rights" argument, it always looks identical to a religious argument to me. The reasoning can only ever come down to "Because that's what I strongly believe." You can write down all the rights you like, into law. But they will never be followed without someone willing/able to pay for that. We are already aware of military, and other, service veterans who have paid for our "rights to freedom", with their lives. If we don't have taxpayers willing to pay for police, or if police officers are not willing to take a chance on paying with their lives, a person's right to, say, not be murdered, is meaningless. At the end of another post, I suggest a problem, even, with our "right to vote". We may think "one person, one vote" is fair and reasonable. But what can a vote, in itself, do? If there was no one paying in taxes, used to implement such choices (votes), they don't mean anything. So we are already paying (taxes). Why don't we, instead, couple that payment with a vote for what you want that applied towards? If you've sat in on any committee, like a condo association, for example, you'll get where I'm going. Everyone has an equal vote. But members always know that only a few are actually going to commit time/resources to getting things done. Why not say "I feel pretty strongly about this, enough to actually contribute something tangible, so I'll 'vote' one dollar towards it." Corporations already "vote" with their money, via lobbyists. The problem there is, they are getting a good deal. They're using our "representatives" to leverage that relatively small amount of money to access the vast amount of resources American citizens have already paid in, via taxes. Having these representatives is a profitable loophole, for them. But regular citizens have also, effectively, voted with money. People can, and have, gone on-line and directly contributed money to presidential, and other, campaigns. Even with a relatively small proportion of the total populace doing this, it has made real differences in outcomes.
So what about charitable systems, such as social security, welfare, pensions, etc (I.e. not based directly/proportionately on your contribution to society, -E.g. work, etc.)? What about people who don't have the resources to contribute these "votes"? I think reasonable people understand that it is easy to fall into a situation where you can't contribute equally. We pay into insurance, understanding it is possible anyone can become injured, ill, or other ways liable for large expenses. I can easily become a member of the group who suddenly doesn't have the resources to pay for an unfortunate change in my situation. We ALREADY accept, and choose to pay for this "insurance" when we allow our government to take money out of our paychecks for "Social Security", or we allow our employers to not pay us as much as they could, because they are keeping some money to put into pension and retirement plans (for at time when we plan not to work as much). None of these things are based directly/proportionately on your daily productivity at your work. If we are AREADY choosing to allow/do this, why not continue? Why not "vote" a certain amount of money, every month, towards this? If you don't "vote" the required amount, per month, you don't get the benefit of being able to collect some of this "insurance" resource. If you don't pay because you are in a situation meant to be protected by this insurance, you should be able to easily make a "claim" that you should get some help from this program. There is no way around this being a tough one. We ALWAYS have to judge to what extent a person's situation is their own doing, and how much it was out of their control. We can never really know. We can only be guided by what we tend to do for our own family members. If in doubt, we help them out. We put a set of extra resources aside, and give people the benefit of the doubt, in hopes that they will do the same for us, if/when we get into a bad situation. And, obviously, such a system can't sustain repeated, expensive abuse. At some point you might have to make the decision to cut lose your alcoholic uncle, when he wants money to pay for his drunk-driving accident, after he voluntarily dropped out of the rehab program you already paid for him to take.

Feeling Loopy

One "klahnection" I see between different things is the size of their cause-effect loop. It seems like, in all cases, it makes sense to shorten the loop, if you can. Here are three examples of long loops. 1) Energizing your life. For a while now we've been utilizing this: Sun energy is captured by ancient (mostly plant) life. Those life forms decay, etc., Some of those cook, and chemically transform into fossil fuel, over millions of years. --oil, coal, etc. We process and refine these into energy sources for cars and home electricity. 2) We want to watch a video. We watch the ad associated with that video. We (enough of us) buy some of the items advertised, at a cost above that which is required for manufacturing, delivering, and profit. The producer of those items (in addition to paying the production and administration costs of the ad) pays for the production of the program. We watch the program. 3) We want a government service. We pay taxes. We elect representatives we hope will steer our money into the service we want in the first place. Maybe we get what we want, at a reasonable cost, in a reasonable time. Here are the corresponding short loop versions: 1) We install solar panels and instantly capture sun energy we can store in batteries, which can be used to power cars, homes, etc. 2) We want to watch a video. We pay a few cents for the video, and watch it. 3) We want the government to do something for us. We pay a certain amount to the government, and say "I want this money to specifically be used for ______."
Why are shorter loops better? For one, the added length is usually intrinsically associated with added cost. Taking more time and "distance" (steps) to do the same thing is usually the definition of inefficiency. For another thing, the added loop length provides more opportunity --more places-- for third-party agents to manipulate things, and leach resource out, in ways you cannot easily watch/control.

What's Your TIme Worth?

I was recently thinking about watching TV, or even YouTube, ads. I wondered how much my time is worth to watch or have to wait for these ads. That also got me wondering about the true ad revenue a video producer gets, per view. For YouTube, it looks like maybe $2 per 1000 views of your video, might be a generous estimate (http://www.tubefilter.com/2014/02/03/youtube-average-cpm-advertising-rate/). -see the comments of that link. If that's reasonable, that would be 1/5th of a cent that a video producer gets, on average, each time their video is seen. Now, based on calculations of some people's salaries, a reasonable, and easy to remember, thumb rule might be that your time is worth about 1 cent per second. So, if I had to watch 10 seconds of video ad, I wasted 10 cents worth of my time. Our time on earth is limited. It is valuable. Imagine if you only had one month to live, how you might become more aware of the value of your time. Does it not seem logical/reasonable to maybe pay something like 1 to 10 cents to watch your average YouTube video? Of course more production-intense videos, utilizing the talents of 100's of people (E.g. major motion pictures) might cost 100's more (Maybe 1-2 dollars). Not only could you eliminate all the admin costs associated with production and attachment of the ad, but a producer would be able to direct their content more squarely at what people actually want, rather than having to tailor it to be more related to what the advertiser wants to sell. I'm saying that the amount of useful content would increase. Think of all the tired, rehashed storylines and themes. -or all the crap generated by content farms,  regurgitating copied psuedoinformation, simply to create pages for attaching ads to. What about static content? -news articles, how-to's, blogs, etc. Why not give someone who provides information, that is useful and/or entertaining to you, a few cents? I'll tell you one reason why not. It's because some think that the transaction cost for such so-called "micropayments" is too high. It is thought to be too large of a proportion of the payment, itself. Credit card companies, PayPal, etc. can't make much off of micropayments. Some companies, like ChangeTip, are trying to give it a go, though. I really like the idea. It seems like it is really a solution to a problem that shouldn't be there in the first place. In the age of computers, and the internet, our currency exchange fees should already be tiny. So . . . I mean . . . what I'm really talking about is pay-per-view. That already is (was?) a thing cable TV providers had. But there we are/were talking about dollars per view. Here, I see it must be possible to get/produce content for pennies per view. Obviously that is currently possible, if advertisers have found a way to only pay 1/5 of a cent, per view.

It's Kinda Drafty

Reading my posts, I often feel they look more like rough "drafts". Many words aren't quite right, or the best. More appropriate examples or analogies might be used. Many things could be better. I go ahead and publish anyway, because I feel this is consistent with reality. Life is always a work in progress. Things get refined, removed, added, etc. People do and should change their minds and their ways, over time. Also, any time I've spent trying to create a "perfectly polished literary work", is more time that it's NOT being shared with others. I actually like the  idea that people may look a post and say "There's nothing special about him. I could do that." You can "do that". There are so many things you can do. I welcome any comments on flaws in my prose, and in my logic. I mean . . . thinking about problems and solutions in the world should be a collaborative process.

Prosumers

I thought of this word on my own, only to find it's already been made up. Wikipedia tells me it is ". . . a person who consumes and produces media." Oh well. There's nothing new under the sun, right? What I wanted to mean by this is that any given person can be both a producer and a consumer. We speak of customers, employees, etc. I don't think it is useful to distinguish these roles. Really, we are all just trading things of value. There are only traders. On one side of the trade might be a group of individuals working together to deliver their thing of value (e.g. a "company"). On the other side might be an individual, using a proxy for an actual thing of value. Dollars, for example, are proxies, representing something of value a person has contributed to producing for someone else. I.e. they got money for being producers. So, it is really like two producers trading. Why do I think it is useful to think in these terms? Well, for one, it always seems to me better to think in terms of reality, when trying to figure out real-world issues. Money is just a medium --IOU's in the form of tokens--, humans made up (which does have use). -not an actual thing of value. The names we give the parties, in this trade are also made up by humans. They don't describe a real, fundamental, difference in the nature of the people in the two parties. For two, though, it allows us to not try to impose certain rules which apply to only one side, but not the other. If one side is working in a group (e.g. a "company") to deliver their thing of value, in this trade, why can't the other side do the same? So we have "companies", "labor unions", "consumer unions". Aren't they, fundamentally, all the same thing? --groups of people trying to optimize some aspect(s) on their side of the trade? Currency obscures this, by being a proxy for trades which happened in the past (and thus we don't see them now). But we're all just trading things of value, we can deliver. So I think of our "new" economy, with things like Uber, AirB&B, Postmates, etc. Uber is NOT providing rides for people. They are centralizing the information to connect people who want rides, with those willing/able to give them. I recently saw a piece (on PBS?) about Postmates. It is like an Uber, for mail and package delivery. But the two drivers profiled said they would not do it full-time, if they had other options. -sounds like they weren't getting paid enough, in relation to their true costs, and weren't able to turn down individual assignments. But if the drivers/couriers were able to unionize, etc., that could make it a better trade for them. It seems like the policies/design of Postmates has skewed the trade in terms of one group, over the other. It's easier for Postmates to extract their cut from the "customer" group, in this trade, simply because they are using proxy value (currency). So, even though it is just a trade going on, the "customer" group effectively has more control over Postmates, because it is like they are paying for the service. If Postmates, and other services, don't try to treat both sides equally, they're going to end up not having enough conscientious people working for them. This shift in thinking makes a big difference. If you are mediating a transaction, but you, effectively advocate more for one party, you are going to raise transaction costs, due to mistrust, and turn people off of using your service. So what are some ways a company like Postmates can be more fair? Of course they could allow couriers to invest and profit-share. But that could then skew things in favor of the couriers. If a mediation service like this is a publicly traded company, both deliverers and senders have the option to "profit-share" by buying stock, anyway. Here's another way they might be able to even things. -if couriers could rate senders (and refuse to take certain jobs), as well as vice versa. I don't know. It reminds me of eBay. If you get bad service, or a bad product, from a seller you can give a bad rating. But then they can turn around and give you a bad rating, just because you did. The assumption seems to be that the buyer leaves feedback first. That seems skewed towards sellers. But if I think of it more in terms of a trade, between two equal parties, the answer seems more obvious: You leave feedback  when you receive your part of the trade, and only about what/how you received it. The seller leaves feedback when they get their money. The buyer leaves feedback when they get their item. Maybe no one should see the other's feedback, until they leave their own (maybe within a certain time period, after the transaction). I don't know. But it seems like solutions become a little clearer when we think of things like the trades they really are, rather than labeling one as a giver, and the other as a receiver, or something like that.

Designed Deconstruction

Some of our founding fathers seemed to understand the dangers of a government getting too big and too powerful. They advocated (designed in) some term limits, etc. I guess, also, that modern holders of office have cut budgets and programs, which may have become inefficient and/or unnecessary. But it seems to me that once the system, offices, administrators, etc. are in place, it can be hard to get rid of all this so easily. The system tends to perpetuate itself, for itself. Once you start to depend on tax money for your livelihood, you tend to want to stay tapped into that stable revenue spring. But I think we really need to build in mechanisms for deconstruction of programs, for if/when they become inefficient or obsolete. We need to start thinking of "programs" more generally as simply groups of people working together to concentrate/share resources to affect a change. If we measure the effort/resources going in to be disproportionately greater than the benefit coming out, we have to design it into our psyche that deconstruction of such a system is a valid option. Yes the measurement of success can be hard, and may require time. But we need to realize that a person working inside the program may be too biased a judge of it's effectiveness. I think we need to lower the cost of being able to deconstruct things, in general. These can also lower the cost of construction. --even to revive programs we may have deconstructed in the past. How could we do this? Ironically, I think maybe many government administrators would have ideas on how to do both. Even if they are safely enjoying a stable position, many are also frustratingly aware of unnecessary inefficiencies which can make construction and destruction so costly. The written rules, procedures, regulations with must be authored, recorded, followed, updated, reported, agreed upon, etc. On the surface, many of these might seem reasonable. But if they are hard to implement and enforce efficiently enough, they are just words. -not really helping people. -not as many people as the their cost is causing us to ignore. I think we could better use electronic communication to organize, make decisions, etc. Maybe allow more people to work outside a physical office. If you need to add to, or reduce, people working on/in a program, you don't then need to think about creating or wasting a physical work space. Pay them a little for the use of their home resources, for your job. But when you need to deconstruct, it is easy. You cut that loss, without hanging on to the office space overhead. We need to realize that deconstruction is really just a shifting of people/resources. I don't think we should get into the habit of closely identifying our personal identity with our position title or program name. That is my opinion. Feel free to share yours.
By the way, I am in no way saying this is limited to government programs. I see the same kind of thing happening even with private organizations. I respect the group that publishes Consumer Reports (have subscribed). I like that they don't accept ad revenue. But it bugs me when they run promotions like sweepstakes, or try to market additional health magazines, etc. I see things like this merely as gimics to try and maintain or grow their group. I think they also must need to be able to deconstruct or shift resources more efficiently, if they find they can't meet the needs of their subscribers or current employees, the way they are currently configured.

An Average Revolution

In high school I felt pretty average. I wasn't super popular nor very talented at anything, really. There were kids who were known for being good at things. There were also kids who were thought to be underachievers. I've sometimes thought that fading into the middle is the worst situation. The people who did well academically and/or athletically, etc., were admired. The people who broke "the rules" and rebelled against the system, also stood out and garnered some admiration. At the very least, they might not have been judged as closely, because they could always say they didn't succeed at certain things only because the weren't really trying. This may seem like a loose "klahnection", but . . . I was thinking about how things could change in the world. Our thoughts about our government, economic system, etc. are so ingrained that one might conclude it would require a revolution. --a large, massive event. But, just like feeling ignored seemed like the worst thing to me in high school, maybe that could be the worst thing to our current system. Maybe ignore all the rhetoric or opinion about this or that person or group. Just bypass all that. I don't know. I guess it is hard to ignore the fact that tax money is being taken from us even BEFORE we get paid for our work. That's a real issue. How can we ignore that, and not demand that our money be used the way we choose? But . . . maybe here's a somewhat related example of where we have done something like this: The U.S. Postal service. We aren't protesting against it, or talking endlessly about it on Facebook, etc. We just ignore and bypass it's inefficiencies. We just use UPS or FedEX, or e-mail, or . . . We bypass it. If we feel it isn't efficiently serving our needs, we just go a private, non-governmental route. There are creative people out there. I'm sure you can think of better examples of how ignoring things can make them go away faster than launching some revolt against them.

Party of Two

In this presidential election year, I think again about our two major political parties. I could go into how I think they are actually very similar to each other. -especially after campaign promises are long forgotten. That aside, one can make the argument that limiting the final vote to two choices gets us is a feeling of "majority". -more than 50%. In a democracy, I think we hope for a situation where we can feel that "most of the people" (majority) want it "this way". If the final presidential vote included 3 or more people, it is considerably less likely any one of them would get more than 50% of the vote. So an argument might be made that democracy is not served in that case (more than two major parties/candidates). Of course, one can say that the people's will is being imposed during conventions, and primaries, etc., where the final two are chosen in the first place. All of this thinking, though, misses one major point: We are voting for outcomes, not people. We want our government to be modified, enhanced, or cut back in certain ways. We vote for the people as representatives of how we want OUR government system changed. The way one candidate representative sees the government working is not mutually exclusive to what another proposes. So, one of three or more candidates can represent a majority of voters wishes, since many of those wishes will also be in line with what other candidates are proposing. I.e. there is overlap. We may already realize this, on some level. There will be compromise, but it is possible to get someone in office who believes in, say, 80% of what maybe 80% of the people want. So we are really voting for a set of issues we agree with a candidate on. -almost like a pre-packaged cable TV "bundle". We hope to get most of what we want. But why do we even need this middle person? -the representative. Why does it need to be bundled into a package? Why couldn't we go a la carte? Why do we even need the representative, in the first place? I don't want to waste time with this personal popularity contest. I'd rather just vote directly on the issues. Unlike when our governmental system was started, we currently have the technology to do that now. Look at shows like American Idol, for an example that electronic remote voting is possible. You might say "I don't have time to vote on every little issue." OK . . . Right now you vote directly on NO issues. Wouldn't you want the OPTION of voting on issues important to you? How hard would it be to set up a system where you could set a general preference for your vote on issues? -an automatic proxy. -a "representative" that actually listens to you. E.g. "conservative", "liberal", etc. -or, more useful, "tend to keep as is" (what used to be known as "conservative"), "cut program, if largely in question by others", "yes to programs that promote _______". I mean . . . many people might still not have the time to be involved. But wouldn't even a small amount of participation be more than people's current levels of participation in government? Lobbyists are certainly involved in government. Don't you want to be? I'd figure retirees might have the most time to participate in such a system. Many older people have a strong interest in staying informed about community (from local to world) issues. Would it be such a terrible thing to have the people who are the most experienced (i.e. They've been around long enough to see some of what has and hasn't worked, in the past), and informed among us, empowered to be directly involved in deciding governmental policies? You might say "Electronic voting for something like American Idol, is fine. But I wouldn't want to expose voting for important things, to hackers." If you do ANY on-line banking or buying, you ALREADY trust something most people think is more valuable than a vote (their money) to network security systems. There have been electronic voting systems proposed and piloted. We hear things about the "danger" of voting fraud or mistakes. It's interesting (suspect?) to me. An on-line company wants to be able to transfer hundreds of dollars from from a person, and we find a way to make the network/computer transaction "secure". But we want to transfer ONE vote from ourselves, to OUR government, and that is too "dangerous" to try? The cryptographic algorithms used for privacy and authentication are already trusted and used by the most defensive government agencies. Nothing is always secure all the time. Cash can be lost. Ballots can be lost, counted wrong (by the electronic vote counter), etc., etc. -or EVEN WORSE, NEVER COLLECTED IN THE FIRST PLACE, because it is a pain to get to a "place of voting", during a prescribed time, or you simply don't think it matters much because your wishes will be filtered through, and easily ignored by, your "representative", rather than directly counted as in favor of a specific governmental change. What good is a "right" to vote, if it is prohibitively hard for some individuals, or is never TRULY COUNTED directly for or against a real-world policy issue. There is another major issue about this "right", though. I'm going to save that for another post.