Life vs Competition

Capitalism does a lot of wonderful things but it does have a dark side: poverty. Because capitalism is a competition there will be losers.

Capitalism has many positive offerings, but it is a competition. And in a competition there will be losers.

It is the roll of a civil society to ensure a mechanism to re-charge those that lose. America has employed trickle-down policies, but because so much money has trickled out, the lower-middle class and lower class have been stranded, with each successive generation degrading.

Bubble-up economics is a solution that re-charges the lower class directly, ensuring vibrancy at the base of the economy and improving the possibility of ‘upwards mobility’. Read more: productivity-oriented social programs.

Hi. I’m Rush Limbaugh

Hi. I’m Rush Limbaugh … and I have been misleading decent people for nearly 2 decades.

Thanks to me, you have no idea what is real and what is not.

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Is dogma unconstitutional

Not listening is wrong in a society where speech is considered to be a vital component of stability and growth.

Freedom of speech is meaningless if no one is listening.

And it is impossible to listen (I mean truly listen) if you are already set in your ways, predetermined to respond to the speaker regardless of what they say.

So I figure it is unconstitutional to not listen and consider what your opposition has to say. And the good news is that if your idea is actually the better, it will still come out on top.

Isn’t that dog cute?

Does capitalism play a role in climate change

Years ago I had a girlfriend that played a game known as 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon, a game where kids would try to link something with Kevin Bacon through a series of direct and indirect associations.

This, to me, is a lot like the association between a capitalist’s drive for profit and eco-destruction. Example: company’s drive for profit leads to some business decision which leads to some procedure that leads to some environmental consequence.

The set of decisions that gives way to eco-destruction can be accounted for within one understanding: there is built into capitalism the necessity to please the consumer (this is not the same thing as the necessity to create good products).

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Take as an example grocery bags, whether paper or plastic. Both of these products are rendered to the marketplace for the purpose of convenienc-ing me which is a course towards profit for the store.

A store would lose my business to a competitor if it did not provide to me bags to carry my groceries (unless no stores offered bags … hmmm). The damage of billions of bags is documented: the production of, the delivery of, and the disposal of.

Compare that to the common practice in Europe where people bring their personal grocery bags with them. This practice is leftover from their pre-1990 communism. However, with the advent of aggressive competition and the necessity to please customers to beat competitors, grocery stores began to offer plastic bags to their customers in the early 2000′s, and with all of these new European plastic bags, the environmental damage increases.

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Take as another example, automobiles. I lived in Atlanta for nearly 15 years. For 5 of those years I drove a 50-mile round-trip commute … even though MARTA was available.

Chevy did not have to try hard to convince me that having a car of my own is a good thing. They, in the name of profit, built a product that appealed to me, regardless of the repercussions of pollution, etc.

And again compare this to Europe, where until just recently nearly everyone used buses and trains, company execs, dirty coal miners. This trend is coming to an end though, trains are very empty now. Why? Because they are adopting the American-style consumerism, which is a variation of capitalism.

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critical point psychology … and the class war

Remember back to your freshman astronomy class and the discussion of the event horizon that surrounds black holes. It is the distance from the black hole’s core  such that for any particle that goes beyond this point, it will never be able to come back out … it has become trapped in the black hole … it has fallen beyond a critical point.

The only opportunity for the trapped particle is if some magical external grabber reaches into the black hole and pulls it back out.

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Water also has a concept of ‘critical point’ associated with it, but instead of this critical point being based on distance – like the event horizon – it is based on temperature. When water falls below 32F, the molecules become trapped in solid form, incapable of moving … kind of like the particles that fall into the black hole.

And the only opportunity for the iced molecules is if some external agent injects warmth into the system thus freeing them again.

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There also exists a critical point in human psychology … for all of us.

And once you or I or anyone falls below it we are no longer capable of functioning and behaving as would a normal, healthy individual. The only opportunity is if some external force helps us.

random picture of a black hole

I think that most of the lower class in our country are actually just individuals, entire neighborhoods, that have fallen below this critical point.

In the meantime all the healthy people sit around and express their doubts about the members of the lower class: they’re lazy, they’re drug addicts, they’re criminals … but we have only observed them in their sub-critical-point psychology state, and we have done so from our own healthy state point of view. They struggle to function.

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Bubble-up economics has the potential to fix this, to directly inject positive influences into the difficulties that the lower class faces. It is a system that attempts to re-invigorate the lower class via productivity-oriented social programs, an array of types of programs, each with the similar expectation to benefit the struggling individual but also the taxpayer paying for the program through an applicable ROI.

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Is the upper class doing its part?

The theory of trickle down is a solid theory, and should work in a closed, isolated economy or in a balanced-trade economy.

Trickle down works if the upper class does their part.

But America is neither of these … and so a lot of the money that the upper class receives in the form of tax favoritism to invest into trickle down programs (read: jobs) actually trickles out as the upper class invest, outsource, and relocate into foreign markets, thus stranding the lower and lower-middle classes.

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Thankfully the Bad News Bears got more than just a pep talk

Remember the Bad News Bears? It did not help them to get a pep talk at first.

What helped them was getting uniforms, which gave them dignity. What helped them was getting training and coaching, which gave them skills and self confidence. What helped them was getting gas money to travel to the games, which gave them access.

With all of these assets in place, it is now a great time to give them a pep talk. Now they will be able to appreciate it, absorb it, and use it for inspiration. Otherwise it would have just fallen on deaf hopeless ears.

Without the appropriate assets the Bears would have never won ... the pep talk was helpful too.

Though the Bears fail to win the championship game, their story gains attention, and Walter Matthau is able to get a return on his investment as his reputation improves in the local sports community (maybe spring boarding him to a solid coaching position at a high school … who knows).

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the Liquid Water Perspective Metaphor … understanding silver-spoon conservatives

There are many different subgroups within the conservative population. Primary among them are the capitalists, and within the capitalists subgroup there are further sub-sub-groups, chief among them are the silver-spoon capitalists.

Understanding their viewpoint of the big picture is important. Here is a metaphor that attempts to describe how they view their life experience in relation to the life experience of an impoverished culture.

Understanding the silver-spoon capitalists' viewpoint of the impoverished community is important.

Imagine a drop of H2O, Water, living its whole life in a temperate room. It and other drops of H2O mingle with each other and live a pleasant life. He can easily adapt to new places since he has shape-shifting capabilities, and can easily recover from adversity (such as being splatted by a light hammer) because of its capability to regroup with other liquid droplets.

Water has heard rumors of a drop of H2O that lives differently from himself, Ice, who lives in the freezer of course.

Ice experiences the world differently: he is unable to mingle seamlessly with others, he is unable to adapt to most situations because of his inability to change shape, and when struck by a light hammer his shards are never able to regroup.

This is all good and well, but it does not really matter! … until a compassionate person begins to realize the very different lives that Water and Ice live, and most importantly realizes the very different quality of their lives: Ice is highly stressed; Water is happy.

The compassionate person brings the issue to everyone’s attention. Water says, ‘if they are so unhappy, why don’t they just behave the way we do: learn to recover better from adversities when they occur, adapt to changing situations better?’

Because Water has only experienced reality from his temperate perspective, he was unable to genuinely comprehend the limitations of Ice’s reality, though these limitations have been recited to him several times. Water could just not realize that Ice does not have these capabilities due to the laws of nature, though Ice does wish dearly that he did have these capabilities. The only way for Ice to get these capabilities is if Ice’s environment changes to a more temperate one.

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Why do black people feel that white people want to ‘keep them down’ … now I know the answer, 2011

I originally wrote Why do black people feel that white people want to ‘keep them down’ around late 2008, and since then a lot has has happened and opened my eyes. Observing the conservative culture over the last couple of years has been interesting.

It is important to acknowledge that within that culture there are many sub-groups, some of which have very little in common with each other, oddly enough. I will focus on the subgroup of capitalists.

Capitalism does truly offer a lot of great things, and it is a very natural system. If used in a society correctly it can be an engine of vibrancy. But I, personally, see its dangers as well.

Capitalists(per se), on the other hand, relentlessly believe in it, beyond any rationale or concern that it might have dire consequences for the losers. They say that it is the loser’s fault that they have lost, and that they themselves should not have to support the losers. This is where the idea of rich man keeps the poor man down comes from; but notice: ‘poor man’.

For a black population still struggling economically due to the complexities of generational inheritance, it is not completely incorrect to translate rich man keeps the poor man down as white man keeps the black man down, though it is not the whole reality. However, for the capitalists it is not racism literal, but rather ruthless competitiveness in the game of life.

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if the HaveNots would just work hard

I am amazed by the people that say that they got what they got because they worked hard for it, referring to the demands of their academic experience. And then they go on to say that if poor people would just worked as hard, that they could pull themselves up by their own bootstraps rather than begging at the government coffer.

The Haves have a terrible habit of taking for granted all of the mitigating and supportive factors that have accompanied their life of diligence.

Here are a couple of questions for our mega-diligent college alumni:
1 – did you ever go snow skiing during your college years, or to the beach for spring break?
2 – did you ever have sex with a beautiful girl during your college years?
3 – did you ever take a summer hiatus for three months?
4 – did you believe in your future, did you have a sense of optimism?

The point is that although college can be tough, it is accompanied by an assortment of positive mitigating factors. These reduce the stress level of the academic demands, making the hard work of college much more survivable.

But for people below the Subsistence Threshold (their head is below the water), these mitigating factors do not exist and thus the hard work of a person struggling to get out of their own hole is much more complex and difficult, and as such the odds of success are DECREASED.

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the scale of welfare reform

The conservatives keep saying, “we don’t want to give them anything, they need to get off their ass and work.”

The liberals keep saying, “but you don’t understand their struggle, we have to help them.”

So what is the right answer? Part of the difficulty in answering that is that we seem to have given ourselves only two options: all or nothing. But are we, and our democracy, not mature enough to look for solutions that resolve this polarity, such that both sides are happy, and more importantly such that the lower class can begin to rise into the middle class upon their own dignity?

Productivity-oriented social programs are one solution that sits in the middle of the polarity. These programs meet the bubble-up economics standard.

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the Tree Cutting Metaphor … how to approach the poverty problem

Suppose that you are a business adviser and you have a client who has come to you with a problem: he needs firewood to keep his office warm. Now take a look at the image and answer the 4 questions below.

1 – What is the probability of success for method A?
2 – What is the probability of success for method B?
3 – Which of these methods is the best?
4 – If your client does not have a chainsaw, will you tell them that karate chopping is there only option?

The Pursuit of Happyness, an awesome feel-good, positive-message, Will Smith movie, is a ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ themed story which basically pushes the idea that anybody can karate chop a tree, indeed making people feel hopeful – but hopeful about something that is very unlikely to occur. Thus it is effectively creating false hope and therefore it is a reckless message.

Notice that both method A and B require hard work. But method B offers a realistic probability of success in return for the client’s hard work.

In America a great amount of emotion and political policy is invested into method A solutions for the poor. It would be better to invest all of the ‘you can karate it, you just gotta work hard’ emotion into something with a more realistic probability of success, into grand-scale problem solving: to search for a method B.

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the One-Lane Highway metaphor … how wide is the path out of poverty?

Ever since Will Smith did the movie about the guy who beat all odds, The Pursuit of Happyness, Conservatives have had a token success story to justify their ‘hard work leads out of the gutter’ theory.

is the path out of poverty wide enough

Now they are trumpeting Herman Cain’s success story as proof that anyone who is still impoverished is so because of their own inadequacies and laziness, and doesn’t deserved to be helped by the larger society.

Statistics could be helpful here: what percentage of poor people manage to rise above their poverty to become ‘successful’?
- if the answer is 1/10,000 I will say that the ‘path out of poverty is not wide enough’;
- if the answer is 20%, then I will re-think my position.

I believe (based on my life experiences) that the answer is something small like 1 in a million. And if it is so low, what is the appropriate explanation for that one rare success story? Does it prove that, in theory, there does exist a path out of poverty that is available to everyone? Then why don’t more impoverished people use that path? Or could the explanation merely be that of the statistical outlier?

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Self-righteous vs. Compassionate charity

It is important to not downplay charity regardless of the motivation.

But typically:
Self-righteous people give charity to make themselves sleep better at night.
Compassionate people give charity to make the poor person sleep better at night.

Don’t get me wrong, self-righteous people do accomplish a lot. In fact, the nature of self-righteousness is an important engine in getting good things done. Imagine corporations that sponsor cultural events or seasonal soup kitchens.

But usually the nature of self-righteousness blinds the giver to understanding the truth and complexity of the recipient’s situation, whereas compassionate people are more likely to really put themselves into the recipient’s shoes and are thus enabled to think about fixing the problem rather than merely applying a band-aid.

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Hybrid Economics – the balance between capitalism and socialism

If you are an extreme capitalist, you’re probably wrong.
If you are an extreme socialist, you’re probably wrong.

The right answer lies somewhere in between these two extremes. A healthy society tries to find the right balance.

Consider my widget company:
In an extreme capitalism I can hire thieves to take my competitor’s truck fleet at night when he’s sleeping, or maybe just murder him outright to increase my profits.
In an extreme socialism the government can tell me that they don’t approve of my widget business, or require me to operate my business according to their instructions.

The right answer is to be able to pursue my own ideas the way that I want, but within the limits of civility (which should be defined by a democratic mechanism).

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the Connected Buckets Metaphor

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Productivity-oriented social programs

productivity-oriented social programs

Would productivity-oriented social-programs make everybody happy?

Liberals want a social net.
Conservatives want productivity and progress.
(Poor people want access to the American dream.)

Currently America primarily uses various forms of welfare for social net: food stamps, medicare, unemployment benefits, gov’t housing, etc. So the gov’t is already paying out the money, but not getting anything in return (though the money does get pumped back into the economy).

Three examples of productivity-oriented social-programs:

• 1 – gov’t funded job training … so if I am unemployed I can enroll in a job training program (for 2 years probably) that will be for some envelop-pushing position once I’m fully trained … this would be good for the country, because in 2 years there would be about 5 million bad asses ready to take America’s mfg into the 21st c.
• 2 – gov’t funded work … maybe workers can paint bridges, or maybe something better, but regardless at least the workers get to go to work, the society gets its necessary upkeep, and the gov’t doesn’t just spend money for nothing.
• 3 – gov’t funded mom-and-pop angel investment … currently the only people in society who really have a shot at true capitalism (creating new businesses, new ideas) are those that already have something such as collateral for business loan, a mgmt. team, a business track record, a social network that connects to investors. So for a couple who wants to break out of their apartment-life there is really no option (the SBA does not pander to poor people). These programs could be heavily overseen by gov’t consultants and accountants until the mom-and-pod get their own momentum going.

In all three examples, people who are in the lower rungs of the economic ladder get support, but they also produce something as well. Let me know your thoughts.

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Do wal-mart shoppers take responsibility for their own actions

I’m frustrated at all of the finger pointing by the blue collar Republicans that shop at wal-mart. They are on the blame-obama bandwagon, unwilling to consider their own role (and mine – I go to wal-mart too) in creating this mess. With each purchase of unnaturally cheap foreign imports, a few pennies is transferred from our country to theirs. And as this process continues, American factories close because their products are no longer needed.

maybe I should change some of the colors

If, on the other hand, we had Fair Trade Relationships with these other countries, then purchasing these imports would not be a problem, as undoubtedly their would be a near-equal value of imports and exports.

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the Aquarium Metaphor … trickle-down vs. bubble-up economics

This aquarium metaphor is very helpful in grasping the general concept of trickle-down economics. And I will extend the metaphor to introduce the idea of bubble-up economics.

For these diagrams:

• an aquarium represents America, though in diagram B there is a foreign aquarium also;
• the water depth represents wealth (high water mark = upper class, low water mark = lower class);
• oxygen bubbles represent money.

This first diagram shows that trickle-down can and should work in a closed environment. Basically the wealthy class keeps their capital at tax time, but spends their money on employees and goods such that their money successfully permeates the full class spectrum.

The goal with trickle-down was that the best money managers would be enabled to make strong innovative decisions with their annual holdings and that money would make it to the lower-class via normal market mechanisms.

The problem with diagram A is that it only works in a closed environment … but America is not a closed environment. Once the aquarium ( America ) is connected to another aquarium ( some other country ), trickle-down begins to fail as oxygen/money flows out. This can happen when a member of the wealthy class invests in a foreign company, outsources his labor pool, relocates his company, or when he buys an expensive foreign car.

Bubble-up on the other hand bypasses the wealthy completely, putting money directly into the hands of the lower-class via democratically chosen social programs such as job training, mom-and-pop-shop investment and consultant services, etc. It would be an error to regard these social programs as welfare.

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A conversation between Rich People and Joe the Plumbers

Rich People: “Don’t take our money, don’t take our money … we promise that we’ll do the right thing with it.”

Joe the Plumbers: “Ever since we gave in to your cries for tax reduction and your trickle-down promises, the rich have gotten richer, the Fords and Chevy’s have gotten crappier, and you’ve taken our jobs over seas.”

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