October 30, 2009

If Life Is A Game, How Do You Win?

By wise sloth

Picture of the board game, "Life" by Milton Bradley

 

You can think of life like a game, but not a game like Candy Land where the only prize is bragging rights and the only consequence of failure, a simple “Oh shucks.” Life is a game in the sense that there’s a purpose, and tied to that purpose are rules, but unlike Candy Land, life doesn’t come with instructions. Part of the game is to figure out the purpose and the rules before time runs out. Also, unlike Candy Land, almost nobody ever even tries to figure out the rules. We tell ourselves we’re not allowed to figure it out. We tell ourselves we’re too dumb to figure it out. Or we lackadaisically assume we weren’t meant to figure it out. So we give up the game before we even star…. and make no mistake, this isn’t a game you can opt out of. To quit is to lose.

Another thing we misunderstand about the game of life is, we think it’s won with big victories. We think success in life is determined by the big choices we make like picking the right spouse, job, religion, political affiliation, sacrificing our life for our country, winning a championship game, becoming famous, making it in the history books, etc. While all these accomplishments have their place, they’re not the deciding victories in the game of life. You could count on your fingers the decisions of that magnitude you’ll have to make in your life, which leaves a lot of time unaccounted for.

Spending minutes is like spending money. You may spend $40,000 on a car and call it a big decision, but if you add up all the candy bars, socks, pencils, soap, bread, milk, sodas, etc. you’ll buy in your life they’ll add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. How you manage your money in the small things really determines whether or not you’ll win the game of being able to afford retirement. In life, the little choices, the grains of sand that pile up will in the end, far outweigh all the boulders.

So what have you been doing your whole life? Trying to reach a certain square on the board? Are you hoping if you stand on the right spot on the globe it will transport you to heaven? Have you been looking for that one person? If so, I have bad news. When you convince yourself the purpose of your life is to get married, you’re going to crush your partner with codependency. Are you hoping if you make enough money you can buy a bridge over death? If not, how many hours a week are you putting aside living to earn more money and why? Do you think if enough people know or remember you that you can surf the waves made by your impact on the universe for the rest of eternity? You don’t win the game by doing something.

You win the game by growing. That’s how a tree wins the game of life. It grows up and blossoms. Unlike trees though, humans can grow to their full physical size and still not fulfill their potential. It’s as important, if not more, for your mind grows to its full potential. Your mind is a complex machine. It’s harder to explain how to raise a healthy mind than to explain how to raise a healthy garden, and you’d be surprised how complicated it is to raise a healthy garden. But you need to figure out how to do it anyway because your mind garden is going to die if you don’t. And if your mind does fall sallow and dies, you can’t blame anyone else on the board for failing you. Even if your accusations are logical and just, at the end of the day, your mind garden is your mind garden. That’s nobody else’s problem, and yet at the same time, it’s everyone’s problem just as everyone else’s problems aren’t yours and yet they are.

The game of life is played in your mind, our minds. Think of it like exploring a DOS or UNIX operating system for the first time and trying to figure out how the system works. Anyone familiar with navigating operating systems will tell you, the quality of the answers you get are equal to the quality of questions you ask. The game of life is played by asking the right questions. What should you learn? What sources should you trust? How do you determine truth? What exists? How does the universe work? Why do people act the way they do? Why do we feel? Why do we think? Why does life grow? Why does life reproduce? Who are we and what the hell are we doing here? If we can’t know then how do we decide what to do now?

You begin playing the game of life by looking up at a starry sky and shouting, “What the hell is going on around here?” 

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

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1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in meaning of life

October 30, 2009

How To End Corruption In 3 Steps

By wise sloth

Cartoon of four men facing away. Behind their backs, each one is handing another papers in exchange for stacks of money.

 

1. Hold all government officials to the same level of screening used when hiring school janitors and the lowest level enlisted military troops.

That includes a drug test and a criminal background check. If it’s too dangerous to have a janitor on drugs then why don’t we make sure our leaders aren’t on drugs? If it’s too dangerous to give a soldier with a felony conviction a gun then why give members of Congress with felony convictions the ability to control our troops? About two weeks ago Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska got convicted of 7 counts of felony corruption. Guess who got re-elected to the Senate two days ago? Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska. Guess who couldn’t vote for Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska because he has a felony conviction on his record? Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska. What the fuck? Is this any way to run a government? This is shit you expect to hear about in the Philippines, not the most powerful country in the world.

 

2. Make corruption a treasonous offense. 

(Political) corruption is defined as:

“the use of governmental powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain.”

Treason is defined as:

“1. the offense of acting to overthrow one’s government or to harm or kill its sovereign.

2. A violation of allegiance to one’s sovereign or to one’s state.

3. The betrayal of trust or confidence; breach of faith; treachery.”

If George Bush stole the 2004 election, then he overthrew the government. He’s also violated his allegiance to the nation by selling out our safety to big business, and by lying to us about the war in Iraq which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and 1 million Iraqis, he has betrayed our trust, our faith, and committed atrocious acts of treachery. It would be impossible to argue he’s not guilty of treason.

When a politician uses government powers to for illegitimate gain, treason is committed. The punishment for treason in America is death. I’m usually not all about the death penalty, but when George Bush lied to us and Dick Cheney handed the keys to our treasury to Halliburton, they both committed treason. Anybody who is given as much power over other people as our leaders on Capitol Hill should be held to the highest level of accountability, and if they abuse that power, they should be punished not only for the wrong they committed but also for the good they failed to accomplish. Once you have to worry about being killed for a bribe I’ll bet you’re not going to be likely to take it. At the very least, make corruption punishable by life in prison… and certainly don’t let people who’ve been convicted of corruption run for public office again.

 

3. Outlaw campaign contributions and lobbyists.

Our government already gives money to political campaigns. Take all that money and make a couple of websites/television stations devoted solely as a platform for campaigning. If it’s illegal to spend any money on campaigning you automatically accomplish two things. First of all, anyone can run for office. You don’t have be a millionaire or well connected. As it stands, those are the two most important requirements to run for office…as opposed to be qualified. Secondly, politicians won’t have to pay back their campaign contributors with political favors. If lobbying is outlawed then they can’t do under-the-table personal favors for politicians in return for political favors.

If we can do at least these simple, common sense things we can eliminate the vast majority of corruption in our government and begin to head away from the fate of Rome, Russia, and every other corrupt nation that has fallen from glory. Then we can begin to move towards Utopia and the glory that we ignorantly boast so loudly about having today.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Barack Obama
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Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Corruption and Election Reform

October 30, 2009

Six Lessons Civilians Can Learn From The Military

By wise sloth

Photo of a military officer speaking to a room full of civilians wearing business suits

 

Note: I served in the U.S. Air Force from 2000-2007. My AFSC was 3C0X1 (Communications computer systems operator). My highest rank was E-5 (Staff Sergeant), and I received an honorable discharge.

Do:

Streamline and centralize your personnel databases. In the military all your training records, pay records, promotion records, performance reviews, medical records, and disciplinary records, etc. are managed by one central data bank. If the civilian world would adopt this system we wouldn’t need to apply to colleges. They would simply know who they were willing to accept. We wouldn’t need to write resumes. Prospective employers would already have all the information they need. Any hospital you go to would already know your medical history. Your time towards retirement could easily roll over to your new job. Basically, half of the bullshit bureaucratic paperwork you have to do to stay alive would be eliminated. Granted, this is flirting with socialism, but that’s because the military is a socialist organization. But the military is socialist because it’s efficient.

Do:

Socialize healthcare. One of the things I liked best about being in the military was never having to worry about healthcare. Every day I carried with me the peace of mind that if anything happens to me I’m taken care of, and I didn’t have to pay a cent for it. Granted, that health care was crap, but crappy health care is better than no health care, and I didn’t need good medical attention anyway. Just enough to get by. Oh, and did I mention it was free? If I wanted cosmetic surgery, a second opinion, or a better doctor I could always go on the free market and pay for it, and officers and higher ranking enlisted people who could afford that often did. Another good thing about the military’s socialized medical system is I didn’t have to worry if my HMO covered this procedure or that procedure, and I didn’t have to worry about finding a doctor that was covered under my health plan. If I got injured far from a military hospital I just went to a civilian one and handed the bill to the military when I got back. I didn’t worry about shit really.

Do:

Socialize education. You don’t have to pay anything to go to military training. And guess what. Military personnel are trained to do their jobs. This means they can support the organization to the best of their abilities. Imagine if everyone in America were trained to the best of their abilities. Life would be good. But apparently, it’s more important to put college deans in corvettes than to make life good for the rest of the people and industries in America.

Don’t:

Socialize the workforce. When everybody gets paid the same amount regardless of how much they work they typically do as little work as possible. There’s a very popular phrase thrown around the Air Force: “The harder you work the harder you work.” You may be disappointed to know that for every hard charger your tax dollars are employing in the Air Force there are 5 sloth-asses surfing the internet not doing shit because they have no incentive to. I’m sure this is one of the reasons the Soviet Union fell apart. Nobody did any work.

Don’t:

Institute indentured servitude. In the military, you can’t just quit. I think military members should be able to quit. Some people say, “You signed up knowing you couldn’t quit, and you took an oath. So you can’t complain.” Great. You win the argument. Now let’s talk about how that plays out in reality. A contract is a two-way street. You can’t quit, but you can’t get fired either. If I came up to you at your job and said, “I don’t care how much you hate your job you can’t quit for the next 4 years. Your dignity means nothing to me. You’ll just have to be absolutely miserable until your contract is up. Oh, and by the way, you’ll basically have to face fuck a baby to death in order to get fired.” You know what you’re going to be doing at the job you hate but are guaranteed to get a paycheck from regardless of how little you work? The bare minimum.

Don’t:

Think a college degree is proof of job qualification. Forrest Gump had a college degree. Does that mean he’s so great he should be saluted or be made department head? No. Both the military and civilian sector need to make accurate intelligence tests and use personality tests to determine who is most qualified for certain jobs. That and job performance. But the only thing a college degree means anymore is that you can drink for 4 years and still be able to get out of bed and go somewhere…most of the time.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Military Mind Control
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Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Military Philosophy

October 30, 2009

Buy A Better World By Donating Dividends

By wise sloth

Graphic of a small plant growing money symbols out of its branches

Many people give away a percentage of their income to charities each year. The more of a percentage of your income you give away, the more I believe this idea would help create the effect you’re looking to accomplish, which is to make the world a better place.

Instead of just outright giving away your money, find a company on the stock market engaged in doing something you feel is worthwhile. This could be companies that make products and services that help the poorest of the poor directly, like desalinization technology, or ones that help indirectly, like cell phone manufacturers. Find one that pays dividends, and invest in that company. Then donate your dividends to charity to help those who can’t wait for technology or the economy to catch up to their plight.

Going this route, your initial investment will grow and allow you to give away more money in the long run in addition to helping a needed business grow. When you’re ready to cash out and retire, you can sell off all your stocks so you don’t become destitute yourself.

 

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Predatory Capitalism Creates Poverty
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2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Buy a Better World

October 30, 2009

5 Reasons To Legalize Gambling

By wise sloth

Graphic of a slot machine with the words, "LEGAL GAMBLING USA" displayedin front of it

 

It’s bullshit that gambling is illegal in most states. And I blame Nevada for that. I heard once that the reason online gambling in America was shut down was because the big casinos in Las Vegas were losing money and lobbied Congress. I don’t have any proof, and it’s not important enough to me to look up, but it sounds plausible. Anyway, here’s my reasons why it should be legal:

 

1: Freedom

This is a no-brainer. Don’t tell me we live in a free country is I’m not free to play or own a slot machine. Yeah, with freedom comes anarchy, and with anarchy comes destruction. That’s why they won’t get the lottery in Hawaii. People there are so desperate the government knows they’d all go broke buying lottery tickets if they could. That’s they’re fucking choice. Plus, if that’s your big hangup, ration the tickets. You could even enforce spending limits or time limits in casinos.

At any rate, if we make the choice to make gambling illegal for the Hawaiians or anybody else, then we’ve set a precedent to make other choices for them. Maybe if we didn’t have so many freedoms already taken away from us willingly, the Patriot Act would have never passed. As it stands, the Patriot Act wasn’t an anomaly. It was a step in the same direction we’ve been headed for years.

 

2: Economic stimulation

Gambling makes money, which stimulates the economy and creates jobs. A vote against gambling is a vote for a weaker economy and higher unemployment rates.

 

3: Tax revenue

I don’t want my tax money to go to busting illegal casinos. I don’t give a fuck if people play Texas Hold’em. We’ve got bigger problems in the world that all that tax money desperately needs to go towards fixing. Look around you. Our economy is a big pile of shit right now and gambling is illegal. Coincidence? I think not. If nothing else, just legalize gambling and give me back the money you would have spent fighting it.

 

4: Not being a hypocrite

Texas is so back-asswards. We have drive-through liquor barns, but you can’t buy liquor on Sundays. We have the lottery, dog racing, and offshore casinos, but gambling is illegal. I feel bad for children growing up today. Reality must be one big clusterfuck for them where nothing means anything and everything contradicts itself. Why don’t we just end the hypocrisy starting with legalizing gambling? It’s already legal. It’s just limited. We’ve already stuck our dick in. We may as well finish fucking now.

 

5: Progress or Crime? Take your pick.

When gambling legalized the money spent on it goes to legitimate businesses that can use that money to grow and actually provide a service to the world. Las Vegas casinos how major intellectual conferences every year. Casinos have contributed greatly to improving computer software hardware technology. In the states where gambling is illegal all that money goes to the mafia and petty criminals. Then it helps their crime rings grow. When they get big enough the branch out. Then you’re paying “protection” fees on your car in your driveway. Way to keep us safe by making gambling illegal.

 

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1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in American Laws

October 30, 2009

5 Reasons Why Prostitution Should Be Legal

By wise sloth

Picture of protestors marching down a city street carrying a banner that says, "SEXWORKERS RIGHTS = HUMAN RIGHTS"

 

1. Security

Prostitutes need security more than a designer clothing store. So much so that illegal prostitutes get pimps who extort them. As horrible as that is, it’s better than not having a pimp. In Holland, the prostitutes get big, bad bouncers. One guy told me about a brothel he went to in Cologne, Germany where they had pit bulls. Now, who do you think has more dead hookers, New York or Cologne? But America doesn’t care whether or not a hooker dies because they’re immoral. Good ol’ Christian values at work there… that do more harm than good.

 

2. Sanitation

You’re more likely to get an STD from someone at a club than from a porn star or a Dutch prostitute. They get medical checkups so often it’d make a hypochondriac cream his pants. Seriously, abortion is legal and prostitution isn’t? The only reason abortion was ever passed in a country that won’t let you cuss on television is because too many women were getting backroom abortions and were dying from any number of medical problems.

That’s horrible seeing as how I suspect one of the main reasons prostitution is still illegal in America is because the American women don’t want the competition. Imagine this commercial for the brothel that may someday open up down the street from your house:

 

3. Women’s dignity

How bad would your life have to get to risk getting arrested for going to work every day, risking getting murdered, beaten, humiliated, and infected with a disease? These women aren’t immoral fluzies. They’re desperate. Their lives suck on levels you and I can’t even imagine. And be keeping prostitution legalize we’re supporting that. We spend millions of dollars a year oppressing prostitutes and destroying their lives. Their tears and blood on our hands. Fuck that. I don’t that responsibility laid at my feet. Somebody wants to make a little money, mutually consensually, making lonely people happy in a safe and sterile environment what do I care? I don’t want my tax dollars going to keeping those two people unhappy and unsafe. And quite frankly I’m disgusted at anybody who would.

 

4. Reduce rape

Why risk going to jail and destroying your conscience by raping someone when you can go buy a hooker with no hassle? A veto for prostitution is a vote for rape. Make a campaign button out of that.

 

5. Economic stimulation

Prostitutes make more money. Businesses make more money. The economy grows. With the economic problems we’ve got these days and the amount of people wanting a little relief now’s the perfect time to legalize prostitution. Here’s my campaign slogan: “PROSTITUTION: IT’LL DO YOU GOOD!”

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Barack Obama
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1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in American Laws

October 30, 2009

8 Reasons To Legalize Marijuana You’ve Already Heard

By wise sloth

Graphic of a green, black and white American flag, with a large outline of a marijuana leaf in the middle

1: Freedom

This conversation should really be over after that one word. How are you going to argue with freedom? But people do. Just don’t tell me we live in a free country when I’m not free to grow a plant and consume it in the privacy of my own home. Freedom doesn’t get much more basic than growing a plant. And if we don’t have that simple freedom and we take it for granted that simple freedoms like that are okay to take away then we set a precedent for any other rights to be taken away. All the government needs now is a good sounding reason. A vote against legalizing marijuana is a vote against your children’s freedoms.

 

2: Reduce organized crime

Look at what happened in Chicago during prohibition. Politicians made alcohol illegal despite the wishes of the majority of the people. If you think of dollars as votes and cash registers as ballot boxes you’ll see that people voted for alcohol with their dollars. Unfortunately, since alcohol was illegal the only people you could get it from were criminals. And being criminals they did other illegal things to keep their business running, like killing people. Do liquor store owners today kill each other? No. Do people selling weed today kill each other? Yes. Do innocent people get caught in the crossfire? Yes. Do the owners of “coffee shops” in Holland that sell weed kill each other? No. Legalizing marijuana will put criminals out of business. Then they’ll have to get jobs.

 

3: Drug laws hurt people more than protect them

This is the warped logic of the laws. Using marijuana will destroy your life. Therefore, it’s illegal, and if you get caught using it then in order to protect you from yourself you’ll be thrown in jail, which will cause you to lose your job. You’ll be slapped with a huge fine that you won’t be able to pay because you lost your job, and you’ll get a criminal record equal to shooting or raping someone that will guarantee you never get a good job again. And you’ll probably get your ass kicked, raped, and possibly killed while in jail. So basically, the government protects you from destroying your life by destroying it for you far worse than smoking marijuana could have. Oh, and by the way, everybody knows that there are millions of people who smoke weed every day and live productive, not destroyed lives…until they’re arrested. So the government isn’t actually saving you by destroying you. It’s just destroying you.

 

4: Reduce stress that leads to hard drug use

That would be a good argument if it were true. The reason people use drugs is because their lives suck. That’s the real gateway. Legalizing marijuana would make life suck less. Therefore it would actually reduce hard drug use. Plus, who do people get hard drugs from? The same criminals they buy their weed from. If people didn’t need to buy weed from criminals then they’d never meet said criminals to know where to buy the hard drugs from. If marijuana were legalized, we’d probably see a drop in hard drug use.

5: The precedent has already been set

Morally there’s no difference between drinking alcohol and smoking or eating marijuana. The effects are slightly different, but the morality isn’t. If we can have one we should be able to have the other. Anything less is hypocrisy.

 

6: Reduce overcrowding in prisons

All across America right now there are ex-con rapists, thieves, murderers, and brawlers going about their business in quiet little neighborhoods like yours raping, stealing, murdering, and fighting when they should still be in prison. You know why they’re not in prison? Because the prisons are overcrowded with potheads who are guilty of victimless crimes. That’s how sick in the head America is. We can actually say the contradictory nonsensical meaningless phrase “victimless crime” with a straight face and pretend like it means anything less than, “You don’t live in a free country.” Let me tell you about a crime that has real victims. It’s a crime that the government and the police force allow real criminals to get out of jail early to hurt more innocent people. Plus, if the penalties for real crimes are lowered across the board because the prisons are full of pot heads then there’s less incentive for real criminals to obey the law. Let’s rob this gas station. Fuck it. If we get caught we’ll only do two years. Good thing there are too many potheads in jail. Otherwise, we might have to serve a real term that would actually discourage us from robbing this gas station. Ha ha ha.

 

7: Increase funding for addiction treatment

Someone once said that the war on drugs took a minor medical problem and turned it into a major legal one. How much money has the war on drugs cost the American taxpayers? We know the government lost that war. Even the government admits it. So how about we just legalize everything, give people the freedom to screw up their own lives if they want, and take all the money we’re flushing down the toilet fighting victimless criminals and spend that money on medical treatment for these people with a medical problem. Is there anyway possible that could work worse than what we’re doing right now?

8: Reduce wasteful government spending

Still not convinced? Still think marijuana should be illegal? Fine. But you’re going to pay for it literally. The potholes on your street aren’t going to get fixed. Your children’s school isn’t going to get new textbooks. Your public library is going to be closed. And your taxes are going to go up to build that big new prison on the outskirts of town. So you don’t like the idea of hippies getting stoned at concerts. Fine. I don’t like kids on my lawn. But I don’t think we should spend billions of tax dollars on a war on kids on my lawn when that money could be used for education. Shit. Just end the war on drugs and give the money back to the people. We’re fucking poor. We need money more than we need the kid who lives across the street from me not smoking out on his roof after his parents go to bed. If I paid you $10,000 would you support legalizing weed? I think most people would. Well, if marijuana were legalized and taxed we’d probably all see more than $10,000 in some form or another from the increased tax revenue and decreased need for taxation.

I think we should let children run our government. They call it like it is. If a lobbyist came up to a kid and said, “Instead of medically treating people with medical substance abuse problems let’s take away their jobs, give them a criminal record, lock them up with real criminals for a long time, and let the real criminals go free. At the same time, we’ll spend trillions of dollars in a futile attempt to cut off the supply and demand of the goods the people are voting for with their dollars and having huge protests about every year. And as long as we allow the war that we created to go on people will needlessly get hurt and killed by competing drug cartels.” Only an adult could have an idea that stupid and commit trillions of dollars and millions of lives to perpetuating this cancerous, destructive plan. Any child could see how retarded that plan is and how seriously, really, in real life hurting real people. And since children are going to have to live in the world we create they might pass laws that will take care of themselves in the future. Whereas currently, we make laws that fuck over our children’s future because fuck it. Our kids are going to have to deal with most of the consequences, not us.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Barack Obama
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Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in American Laws

October 30, 2009

The economy is stacked against you: part 2

By wise sloth

Outline of a man drawn on a table that looks like he's being crushed by a deck of cards sitting on top of him

I bought a house almost a year ago. The only reason I was able to get the loan for the house is because I’m a veteran, and the VA will vouch for veterans’ down payments on houses. Otherwise I wouldn’t have even been able to afford the down payment. Nobody tells you this until the last step of the home buying process, but if you take out a 30 year mortgage, between interest and taxes you house will end up costing twice as much as its worth. Knowing this I bought a duplex so my renter could pay half my mortgage. This is a hollow victory though, because my renter isn’t paying half the cost of my house. My renter is paying the fake fees forced upon me….well, most of the fake fees anyway.

I read an article written by an ex-car salesman a long time ago who said that when you see, “As Low As…” written on the window of a car for sale it really means, “As Much As…” It’s common knowledge that when you drive a brand new car off the lot it looses several thousand dollars in value. Why is that? Because you got ripped off by the dealer, and people are only dumb enough to get ripped off by dealers and not by ordinary people.

How much money do you think it actually costs to make a phone call? Like one cent. How much more do you think it actually costs to make a collect call? The same price. How much do you get charged though? As much as possible.

How much does a college professor get paid per year? How much does the average student get charged to attend college per year? How many students does the average college professor teach per year? Where is all that extra money going?

Inflation could be easily kept at 0%. However, if that were to happen everyone would just keep their money in the bank and save it for a rainy day. While that will help the regular Joe, it doesn’t help stimulate the economy. So the government intentionally tries to keep inflation at about 3% so that you’ll be punished for saving your money and will invest it. Most economists agree this is a good thing for the economy.

Inflation supposedly goes up 3% per year. When I was 10 years old a soda out of a vending machine cost 50 cents. Now it’s not uncommon to see a soda that costs $1.50. I’ve even seen sodas at theme parks that cost $2.50. $1.50 is 200 times the cost of a soda 18 years ago. $2.50 is 400 times the cost of a soda 18 years ago. At 3% inflation a year (compounded) soda should cost about $1.36 today. This is also assuming that in the past 18 years the soda companies haven’t started using cheaper ingredients to lower the cost of production and haven’t moved their factories to third world countries to get cheaper labor. If either of those two things were to happen you’d expect to see the price go down for the consumer. Actually, they are using cheaper ingredients and cheaper labor, but the price hasn’t gone down. In fact, it’s gone up.

The pharmaceutical business is possibly the worst of all mark up profiteers.

I could give these kinds of examples and do these calculations all day, but you don’t need me to. You know that the price you pay for everything is extremely marked up. Plus, prices are getting more marked up every day while the quality is getting lower. Plus, all of our luxury goods are being made in sweat shops and we don’t give a fuck. Fuck brown children. That should be the new American slogan. But whatever. They’re not important. Let’s get back to talking about us.

There was a magical time in ancient history past when the cost of a thing actually represented its value. Today it’s taken for granted that anything you buy is going to cost at least 100% its cost of production. Some things, like I’m guessing “Smarties” sugar candies for example, cost thousands of times more to buy than they cost to produce. With car, house, life, etc. insurance we pay for nothing 99 times out of 100. And car insurance is mandatory. The government came to us and said, “I declare that you must pay $50-$200 per month on nothing…just in case. Just in case we ever save any fucking money for ourselves.

Here’s the bottom line. Every year the consumer is getting charged more and more than the things you buy are worth. You’re also getting paid less and less every year in order to maximize corporate profit. If corporations can get cheaper labor oversees they’ll just shit can your job all together. The fact that public school teachers almost never get raises that meet or beat inflation just goes to show our nation’s fucked up priorities.

The bottom line is that you’ll never get ahead because it’s too expensive. This is great for business, because that means you’ll have to take out more loans and pay more interest. It’s too expensive to live because that’s the way the people you cheered into public office designed the system. Only one or two politicians are even talking about curbing corporate extortion, and it’s only going to get worse.

That’s the main reason your life sucks, because the economy is stacked against you.

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October 30, 2009

One Dollar Equals One Vote In The Economy

By wise sloth

"Every time you spend money, you're casting a vote for the kind of world you want." Anna Lappe

The term, “free market” is defined as, “an economic system in which prices and wages are determined by unrestricted competition between businesses, without government regulation or fear of monopolies.” The American economy is not strictly a free market. There’s a lot of regulation that goes on, but by and large, the general population determines what’s sold and how much it’s sold for via supply and demand. If we don’t want something that’s offered, we won’t buy it, and then business offering it will cease to exist. If we want something, we’ll buy it, and the more we want it, the more we’ll pay for it.

The more money we spend on a certain product or service, the more money that business will make. Thus, the more money that business will have to reinvest into making that product or service better. As investors see us spending our money in certain places they’ll start more business to fill that need. That drives up competition and forces each business in that field to make even better products for potentially lower, more competitive prices.

There’s no ballot box where we deposit our voting slips and determine what we want businesses to sell us, but there are cash registers and dollars. A free market is a democracy where we vote with our dollars, and we suck at voting. If we took all the money we spent on sports over the past 30 years and invested all of that money into energy we’d all be riding around in flying cars right now. If we took all the money we spent on designer clothes in the past 30 years and invested it in public transportation there’d be no traffic. If we took all the money we spent on movies and invested it in housing there’d be no homelessness. We’ve done a good job of voting on computers at least. For every other bad decision, there’s Master Card.

As we watch banks collapse and the economy lag, we hear a lot of talk about the role regulation and deregulation of business practices has played, and it’s all very confusing. We’re all looking for someone to point the finger at. We need a scapegoat, and I have no doubt that one will be found for us. It won’t solve our problems, but it’ll make us feel better because we won’t have to point the fingers at ourselves. We won’t have to admit that gas prices are so high because we voted for it by buying Hummers. We won’t have to admit that the reason so many mortgages have defaulted is because we voted on mass-produced houses we couldn’t afford in unsustainable suburbs. The reason we’re worrying about whether or not we’ll have the basic necessities of life when we retire is because we didn’t vote on them. We voted on Pepsi, Prada, Persian rugs, iPods, Hollywood, Harley Davidson, Marlboro, Ikea, and Viagra.

There are a lot of corporate villains and incompetent politicians out there who have done a lot of unethical things to bankrupt the economy, but we shouldn’t forget we voted in all of these mistakes with our dollars, and we should take responsibility for it and feel ashamed. However, that won’t do us any good unless we use that shame to vote wiser in the future. Don’t waste your money. Spend responsibly on the things that matter, and the things that matter will improve. Not wasting your money on things you don’t need will also allow you to save money to give you a cushion when things go bad. Then, the shit will never hit the fan.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 Build a Better World
Buy a Better World
Predatory Capitalism Creates Poverty
Fixing the Economy

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October 30, 2009

My Entry In the Google 10×100 Contest

By wise sloth

Google's Project 10x100 logo

 

In 2008, Google launched a contest called “Project 10×100″ asking for ideas on how to improve the world. They received over 150,000 suggestions and then condensed those ideas down into 16. Then they donated $10 million to finance them. Below is the entry I submitted. The Google 10×100 contest awarded $3 million to the Khan Academy after multiple people submitted similar ideas to mine.

 

Khan Academy logo

 

Ignorance is the root of all that kills, and true knowledge is the root of all virtue. The Internet has done an amazing job of educating the masses in ways that were never before possible, and we can already see real-world improvements as a result. So let’s take the Internet to its obvious conclusion and streamline that power by giving everyone access to free education.

Make a website where anyone can upload education material. In addition, have public schools record their classes and/or produce Internet-ready educational videos and give them to the world. This site would be like a hybrid between YouTube, Wikipedia, any free E-book site and Itunes University. It will be open source, and anyone can add to its content.

The content would be arranged like a college course listing, except it will include every subject from every grade level. The structure would be further subdivided into sections/chapters like in a school textbook. This way people will be able to find the content they want to study.

The site would include videos and downloadable course material for every single class you could ever take in school, from kindergarten to a doctoral degree. I’m talking about unlimited, free education for everyone, 24 hours a day, anywhere in the world where there is Internet access. Children in inner-city school who don’t have good teachers or can’t concentrate in class because of all the chaos going on around them can watch classes online at night and pick up what they missed or didn’t understand. People who can’t afford to go to college can watch videos of upper-level sociology and anthropology classes. People with depression can watch psychology classes and come to understand themselves on their own. People in third world countries can watch videos on farming at their local Internet cafe. Young professionals could watch law school or philosophy classes on their lunch break. Poor kids won’t ever need to pay for another tutor again.

It won’t lead to a degree (at least, not at first).  The site is based on the philosophy that education is more important than degrees because degrees don’t make people better: education does, and only when our entire society is fully educated will we ever hope to live in an ideal society.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

The Importance of Public Education
Flaws in the Public Education System
Improving Public Education

 

 

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