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.