utopian daydreams for an armageddon afternoon

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Re: Hey, Slimmie, I Really Do Love Your Posts, Brother

Postby antiaristo » Thu Feb 02, 2006 12:03 am

Floyd,<br>I've responded on havanagila's thread.<br><br>In addition I'd like to explain why I believe Robert's concept is correct.<br>Systems don't work.<br>The reason they don't work is that the bad guys figure out how to "game" them. Until you've got the present ludicrous situation whereby money is taken from the working class (in the shape of borrowing) and handed to the fat-cats. Meanwhile ALL the politicians sing from the same hymnsheet about their "New Deal" for NOLA. FDR woulduv approved!<br><br>So you take away the scope for gaming.<br>It strikes me as a true mixed economy.<br>Up to 50k, keep everything. (and we can all live EXTREMELY WELL on that sum - if we live simply and forget about financial engineering.)<br><br>Over 50k, share and share alike.<br>It's completely transparent, is a GENUINELY free market because the market is near-perfect, and true entrepreneurs will find motivation. <p></p><i></i>
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Why Are Most of You Too Lazy to Rename Your Replies???

Postby Floyd Smoots » Thu Feb 02, 2006 12:27 am

antiaristo, I have NO problems with robertdreed's premise. I just think that under our (USA's) current administration, there is no way it's going to happen. We, the people, as it turns out, have NEVER had control of our government, no more than British subjects have ever really had control of their government. It has always been no more than a game of "smoke & mirrors", "dog & pony show", "pick your analogy".<br><br>We, the sheeple, will be herded into the already-prepared "concentration camps", re-educated, re-evaluated, re-structured, etc. until we either re-capitulate, re-gurgitate, or, just re-volt to the point of execution!!!<br><br>But, that's just my opinion,<br>Sadly, I believe I'm correct.<br><br>Love in Jesus,<br>Brother Floyd<br> <p></p><i></i>
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reply robertdreed

Postby sceneshifter » Thu Feb 02, 2006 12:50 am

<br><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:black;font-family:helvetica;font-size:small;"><br>Thank you robertdreed - I can't write if I dont have something to reply to and I am very frustrated if i cant write, because this idea is, in my [deluded or not deluded] mind, so great - GREATGREATGREATGREAT - So your replies, which are sincere, are precious to me - You are doing me a big favour - I havent got through to anyone yet [and if Im deluded I never will, hopefully] but if I can try, I'm happy - I'm typing all day till 2am and loving it - [My back is a bit sore] - So thank you<br><br>These are the notions, the accepted ideas in the culture, arent they - And some of these notions are causing the enormous harm we are doing to ourselves - Because of inequity, our life is a war, and truth is the first casualty - selfdeception exists and it is contagious - we have to think our way out of these contagious thought-diseases<br><br>Yes, we are taught, or we pick up somehow, the idea that people are paid for 'responsibility and headaches', and that that is good and right and proper - Everybody 'knows' that - So it is fun to turn a hard keen penetrating eye on it and see how solid it is<br><br>First, there is no measurement of 'responsibility and headaches' - So there is no way we can determine whether people are being paid for 'r & h' or not - We see that some people are presumably in responsible, 'headache' jobs, and getting highly paid for it - But what is the degree of correlation between r & h and pay? - Is it high or low? - And there is a distinction to be made: there is r & h jobs and there is a person doing an r & h job responsibly - What about a person being irresponsible in an r & h job? - And how far will we take the definition of responsibility? - Will a CEO be responsible without taking care of the planet? - Will we say he is being responsible if he cares only about the shareholder profits? - Who and how to measure responsibility? - The science of responsibility measurement doesnt exist - Maybe we are just assuming that, if the job is highly paid, it is an r & h job - And if the job is not highly paid, that the job is not an r & h job - How responsible is a busdriver? - How responsible is an automechanic? - People's lives depend on them - What is there about neurosurgery that is so r & h? - When you look at it hard - The guy has had long training - I believe students should be paid for study, which is work - Then we dont need to overpay them ever after for having studied - So that takes care of that aspect of it - The thing about a neurosurgeon is that he has to be very careful, his hand has to be very steady - But this is a gift of nature - If a steady hand were from training, we would pay him for that work of training - The neurosurgeon does his best - Everyone does their best, more or less - There is no one seeing if the neurosurgeon is doing his best - Some surgeons make mistakes they shouldnt have, and it gets covered up - The nurses know, but they keep mum, maybe - <br><br>Then, we know that there are people in equally r & h jobs who are paid very different amounts - A CEO in India, a CEO in America - Same number of people 'under' them. This lowers the correlation between r & h and pay - Bill Gates's job is probably less responsible than some jobs [head of state] that are paid a fraction of his pay - This lowers the correlation - The correlation between r & h and pay may well be 0.1 - [1 is perfect correlation] - In any case, we know the causes for the high pay of BG - And they have nothing to do with responsibility - The prime cause is new technology, which involves high demand and low supply in the beginning - Which throws the price in the air - Ratio of cost of PC's and price may be 1 to 10 - high demand, low supply, like van Gogh paintings - And who is responsible for the demand? - The people, the PC buyers - But we reward BG for our high desire for PC's - Which reminds me of another accepted idea that we have: That people like BG create jobs - Why, sure, of course he creates jobs - Look at all the people he employs - What a guy! - But the number of jobs in the PC industry is created by the demand - So you see, our ideas are full of s**t - If we want to get the s**t out of our lives, we have to get the s**t out of our ideas - Because our culture is our ideas - And our culture is s**tting on us bigtime - We are robbing ourselves of 99% of our birthright happiness by our ideas - Which a moment of reflection would dissipate<br><br>And we have another disease, too - We often think: my ideas, right or wrong - Could there be anything more dangerous? - What about: right ideas, mine or not - but we have pride - Which is very odd, because no other animal has it - Where does it come from? - We have all these barriers to good sense, to pursuit of happiness - We have all this programming to interfere with our good sense, to hurt ourselves, to screw up our pursuit of our happiness - Very strange where this comes from - Of course it is not our fault - We didnt say: I think I'll be proud, I think I'll resist good ideas if they arent my own - It is dumped on us, we are victims of it - <br><br>And that is another odd thing about us, we take it personally if someone thinks we are stupid, or proud, or whatever - And yet we dont have the ability to make ourselves stupid or proud or whatever - In fact, we hate being stupid so much, we refuse to enetertain the idea we could be stupid ever - So we never learn our mistakes - We are locked into our stupidity! - Very very mysterious where this came from - But it is quite certain it didnt come from us - We cant make a flea, or even an atom - So it wasnt us who made pride - Maybe some passing alien infected our brains with a computer virus - <br><br>So we have to use our very thin human brain to sort out the nonsense in our mammal and reptile brains - Do a massive brain housecleaning - Happiness is much easier for the other animals<br><br>I call it the 'Taking the peak of the pyramid for the whole pyramid' fallacy - We think BG made all those PC's - We think BG employed all thsoe workers - We give the Sultan of Brunei billions for 'his' oil - We dont give everyone in that country equal payment for that oil, we give it all to the top man - Weird - It is like saying: the only important brick in that pyramid is the top brick; take the others away - You see the fallacy in George Pullman's statement: 'The workers should be the first to suffer in an economic downturn, because they contribute nothing to the enterprise' - Which is not only shockingly arrogant, it is also incorrect - You see it in the feeling that the poor are dispensable - We can get rid of them, they are only cluttering up the place, they are messy - Tidy up the world by killing 5 billion of the lower bricks in the pyramid - And BG has a right to 'his' billions, because he invented the PC - Because he is a genius - Because the world is so much better with PC's - He has made us great - We are now a species with PCs - Forget all the brains, going back centuries, who went in to the development of the computer, who were never paid anything like, nor praised anything like - Forget the fact that BG on his own, without all the infrastructure of society, which is ultimately everyone, could not have done it - Forget that, whatever he did, he only used the talents nature gave him - Forget that, whatever he did, he didn't work more than twice as many hours as the average person, who works 50 hours a week [Housewives work an average of 70 hours a week - If the first world [20%] works an average of 40 hours a week, and the third world [80%] works only an average of 52.5 hours a week, the world average is 50 - the third world probably work much longer hours] - PC's were created by all of us - Just as the pyramid is created by all the bricks - The bricks in the bottom row are as essential as the brick on the top - But we are phallic - or our patriarchal society is - and we are interested only in how far up it goes - <br><br>Observe a CEO at work - He is not doing anything different from what you are doing - He is working about equally hard - A little less hard, or a little harder - Probably having more breaks, more pleasant breaks - He is not sweating blood of responsibility and headaches - He is not in agony - He is not giving more - He is just doing what he naturally can, in a different position in the pyramid - <br><br>We over-honour 'responsibility', partly because we buy the r & h person's own egotistical assessment of his greatness, partly because we know we couldnt do it, and because we wouldnt want to have to try - But that is true the other way - He wouldnt like to do what you are doing - Some people are suited to leadership - Some to followership - That is nature - Neither is superior - Even if all leaders were superior, it is still a question whether they should be rewarded for that - As a gift of nature, the only one who should be rewarded is the one responsible for making them superior - Mother Nature - But she also made us crazy and stupid and proud - Unless it was an alien who did that - But MN made the alien too<br><br>There are very good reasons for not paying anyone higher or lower - In overpaid jobs, the moneyhungry push out the genuine workers - So not only are higher paid jobs expensive to buy [like medical care], the jobs are not done well, are not done by genuine people - See that in the medical and pharmaceutical fields - but it applies to all overpaid jobs - Politics - the moneyhungry are more aggressive and so elbow their way into higher paid positions - This is very bad for society - It causes the higher ranks in a hierarchy to be soaked with less-competents, who suppress the rise of more-competents - <br><br>To have the ego thrill of being able to say: look how high our pays go! we injure ourselves terribly - <br><br>What happens when all jobs are paid equally per hour? - No one is tempted away from the work that they are made for, to higher paying jobs - Everyone is free to gravitate to the work that gives them most intrinsic satisfaction - Doctors are people who love to heal, who are naturals at it, who are not comfortable unless they are healing - Everyone is getting maximum satisfaction from their work, because there is no force pulling them away from the [in-demand] work they love and enjoy most - That in itself is a huge increase in happiness - Happiness in work - And universal equal hourly pay is universal respect for all people - Equality. And fraternity or friendliness. Universal social enjoyment of other people, instead of classes, and avoidance of people poorer and richer - Think of poor Charles, having so few of his class he can choose a wife from - If his soulmate, his truelove, happens to be in a different class, he's stuffed - The higher you are, the less choice you have - Which must contribute to making our leaders odder and wierder and less human, more emotionally crippled<br><br>And equal hourly pay is essential, anyway, because inequality grows endlessly, acceleratingly, producing the unsafety of overpay, the miseries of underpay, and extinction for all when the escalation has reached its limit - which, thanks to e=mc2, we have reached - planet endangered - if it wasnt for the atom bomb, we would be only at the stage of being able to firebomb a city, which is only a flyspot on the planet, but now we have leapt forward to being able to kill all planet life by turning a key - and the rising tensions and despair to turn that key - And much greater equality of hourly pay is automatic on limiting fortunes to the maximum earnable, and endlessly escalating inequality is stopped - [There would still be a [relatively tiny] inequality remaining - people could still get $2 million without working, without contributing to society - but not to a dangerous extent]<br><br>Thanks again, Robert! What do you think? Any sound thoughts here? <br><br>The fact is, our accepted ideas and customs have become heavily polluted by the ideas of bullies and brutes, who elbowed and killed their way to the top, and we have to do a mighty springcleaning of our ideas and customs<br><br>You may ask: Can we have leadership without wealth? - We cannot have leadership with wealth [overpay] - Proof: Every empire has been strong, and grown, though small, with leaders with low higher pay [Cato, Jefferson] - And every empire has been weak, and has fallen, though large, with extreme inequity [Nero, Bush] - Empires plunder, and then they get plundered - they get higher, taller and thinner, and then they fall over - the Roman, the Spanish, the Dutch, the British, the American - If you want a building to last, you build it low and wide - Draw a graph of the state of the world now - Put richest to poorest along the x-axis, any length - Put the lowest hourly pay at one millimetre, one billion people at 1000th, 3 billion at 100th, and 5 billion at a 10th of one metre, which is the average - and put the highest end of the graph at 1000 kilometres! - Very tall and thin!!! - And tension and anger between every pair of levels on that graph - Between every relative privilege and underprivilege - A inequity factor of one billion! - Which means a violence factor of one billion! - [And notice on that graph how 90% of the 'water' has left the 'swimming pool' - no one can swim!]<br><br>Reduce the inequity factor from a billion to a million, and violence is 1/1000th - Reduce the inequity factor from 1,000,000,000 to 1000, and there is one millionth the violence, disturbance, speed of escalation of war and weaponry to extinction - Even limiting fortunes to $1,000,000,000 would have a profound effect on war and crime and corruption and evil and sadism and business crises - [Crime is war at the personal or gang level] - Limiting fortunes to $100,000,000 - 10 times better! - Limiting fortunes to $10,000,000 - better again - Limit fortunes to $2 million, and every family working average hard will be on US$75,000 - They can save $25,000 a year for 40 years and retire with a million! - Everyone can be millionaires!<br><br>'Money is like manure, best when spread' <br><br>[This idea is not new - Lycurgus did it, the ancient Jews did it [or were told to do it], Henry Ford did it, Marshall Plan did it, MacArthur did it in Japan, and Japan has 36% less inequity than America, and much higher income growth rate - And you dont need rich for capital - Equitous countries have highest capital formation - Extremely rich-poor countries have very low capital formation]</span><!--EZCODE FONT END--> <br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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replies -

Postby sceneshifter » Thu Feb 02, 2006 2:41 am

<br> <br>Boy oh boy - Lots to talk about - Very brief replies first<br>Sorry, Starman, I got you and Robert mixed up - Dont give up - Regarding socialism and marxism - Marxism as it was practised - Was a con - A dictatorship takeover diguised as a people' revolution - [Nazism was called a democracy - Italian fascism took its points from communism] - Communism was the most extreme injustice - Take everything off everyone and give it to Stalin - It makes sense that when a bully govt is toppled, the ones to take over are the next bullies in line - Never the people - 'Communism was hijacked 5 months after the revolution' - <br><br>Socialism seems to be the darling of the superrich - The bullies and bandits of the world are always looking for sheep's clothing under which to hide - This is an important point the people have to get - It happened to the church - Because Jesus was so for the people, Christianity was the most useful clothing for the biggest predators - And still is - Read Avro Manhattan and worry about Catholicism - 'Catholicism against the 20th C' and 'The dollar and the Vatican' - At the core of the Catholic church is an inner circle who are completely unreligious and greedy, with very big ambitions - <br><br>The key of my difference with any of the different Socialisms [weak or strong versions] is the failure to recognise the totally vital importance of a complete limit on fortunes - Individual contribution to society by work is limited - so fortunes are limited to the maximum of the contribution, or things just get more and more out of wack - As soon as fortunes go over the amount that the individual contributes to society, it has got into overpay, which is theft, which creates underpay, and overunderpay creates violence - and the inequity never stops growing - as history shows - from spears and stones to ICBMs - from intervillage quarrels to WW3<br><br>Government means control - Limitation of fortunes to justice is the essence of control - 'The purpose of government is justice' James Madison - No limitation of fortunes, no justice<br><br>Slimmouse - Yes - Re-educate adults and children - Learn the good sense and teach it to your dear ones - Teach just one person a month, and the world learns it in 33 months - You ask: How much is enough? - I say: Every penny you have contributed to society by your wealthmaking work - And not one cent more - Let's say that the efficiency factor of having specialisation of jobs is 2 - Twice as much is produced by the same amount of work if you have specialisation - Then the individual's contribution to society is double the amount of wealth he would create by his work in nature, ie, alone, with no specialisation and no exchange - but with a 1/n th share of nature's bounty [n = human population] - Another way of getting a handle on the limit of an individual's contribution: No one can work more than twice as hard as the average of 50 hours a week - And maybe no one should work more than 50 hours a week - Working 100 hours a week is like fishing and never cooking and eating - Because of specialisation of jobs, we have to pool all our goods and services - The shoemaker makes shoes for everyone - And this then creates the possibility of some taking out more than they put in - Which has certainly happened - To an incredible extent - And we are blind to it - No one should be paid more than twice the average - Because no one puts in more than twice the average - With that amount of idea of the limit of contribution, we can put a just ceiling on fortunes - Without taking anything off anyone that belongs to them - And then we are putting a limit on injustice and violence - Whereas now violence is unlimited<br><br>Antiaristo - The distortions overpowering? What do you mean, pls? - Remember that everything the present corrupt govts come up with is sheeps clothing for another wolfish plunder - A new scheme means it takes a while for people to get on their tails - And once again, the problem is they are not limiting fortunes - the govts being corrupt, will never do that - Only the strong clear will of the great majority is enough to turn this corruption around - And 99+% will benefit financially by greater equity - and 100% benefit in happiness <br><br>A tax rate of 98% sounds terribly harsh - But it is a jip - Another way to fool the people - If a person is being overpaid 100 times their contribution to society by their work, then their tax rate should be 99%, to remove all that belongs to others - If the person is being overpaid a 1000 times, and their taxrate is only 98%, they are still walking away with money that 19 others have earned - With the incomes of 19 people - At the other end, if a person is being underpaid by 20% their tax should be MINUS 20% - A negative taxrate - To restore what they have been robbed of by the automatic thieving in the economic system - Instead the poor person is paying maybe 20% and thinking he is lucky to be paying so little, and how terrible it would be to be paying 98%, and feeling those rich people are marvellous putting up with 98% taxrate - And the rich are laughing all the way to Ascot - And the poor are too dumb to notice that the rich arent getting poorer, and that 'we wuz robbed' - Again - And the maximum overpay is a million times - The taxrate there should be 99.9999%, to remove the money others have earned - If the taxrate is only 98%, that person walks away with 20,000 incomes - legally steals 20,000 incomes - and in the process ensures an increase in social violence, as people notice they are somehow being robbed - People can see that they are working as long as the richman - and being paid a fraction<br><br>You say: systems dont work - Quite right - When the people dont understand what they should be being vigilant about - Limit fortunes to justice and vigilance is easy - Any person with more money than they could possibly have earned [US$2 million] goes to jail - When the police have laws prohibiting overpay, they can vigilant it - America nearly got it circa 1800 - And they can get it now - A 99+% majority is more powerful than superwealth - Because there arent enough people left that he can buy to protect him - He has to bow to the general will - And be happier himself - Out of danger, and returned to the human fold<br><br>'Life is a race between education and catastrophe' H G Wells<br><br>Entrepreneurial motivation - This argument rears its head again - If money is the motivation for innovation, then under equity, with 99% of people better paid than under inequity - With 90% of people 10 to a 1000 times better paid - With much lower violence/war/disturbance rate - entrepreneurial motivation will be much much greater - There will be 10 times as many entrepreneurs - 10 times as many Graduates - 10 times as many inventors - and the wastage of corruption is gone too [80% of medical research money is wasted on finding generics to get round patents] - and there will be 10 times as much money in the economy - 10 times as much spending - 'the only trouble with capitalism is that most people under capitalism are too poor to be capitalists' - Hence I call this fairpay capitalism - Or fairplay capitalism<br><br>You look at unlimited wealth and you see highest motivation - You dont look down and see 99% lower motivation - You want the lottery prize to be high high high - You dont see that that means the tickets are more expensive and the majority must get poorer - So entrepreneurial motivation overall decreases with higher fortunes - to say nothing of the costs of the violence it brings - And overpay is motivation to evil deeds to get money too - like the ford Pinto - maximum satisfaction for all comes from moderation - justice - Overpay and underpay is like thinking that it is better if the head gets all the blood - The person falls over and cracks his head and the whole body is lost<br><br>Smoots - 'People have never had control' - I agree - Time for a sanity revolution, a thinking revolution, to end the endless bloody revolutions and the endless battle to get human rights out of the jaws of the wolf of overpay - Kill the wolf - Limit overpay [theft, injustice]. The time when the people have most freedom is just after an empire falls, like in the socalled Dark Ages when Ireland had its Golden Age - when princesses could walk from one end of the country to the other wearing all their jewels and not be molested - Or at the beginning of an empire, when the leaders are genuine leaders and not overpaid - When the competents are not pushed out by incompetents who are after the overpay<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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sceneshifter

Postby robertdreed » Thu Feb 02, 2006 4:39 pm

in your dreams...with the emphasis on "your."<br><br>The only way for your scheme to work would be if everyone voluntarily agreed on it's wisdom. Otherwise, you're relying on the State to confiscate wealth in the most massive levlling scheme in the history of mankind. <br><br>You've convinced yourself that the merits of the program you're peddling are so self-evident that everyone should instantly see that, and agree with them. <br><br>Don't be so dismayed by argument. If you're really ready to hear some commentary and counterpoint to your position, try pitching it to a website comprised of small businesspeople, or professionals. Try pitching it to some of the occupations who you think are overpaid, instead of trouncing the straw man in your head. <br><br>I think you're off-base in so many ways that I don't intend to spend much more time disputing you, because it's difficult to knowhere to begin, much less where to stop.<br><br>But just take your idea that no one should work more than 50 hours a week. Most anyone who runs a single-proprietorship business will tell you that <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>they never really stop working</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->. They never get to punch out. And even in terms of the hours spent at the worksite, doing hands-on business, most of them work more than 50 hours a week, particularly at the outset. Some of them pour their savings into it and operate at a loss for the first few years. How do you quantify that, when it comes to "getting paid"? They do it because they have dreams of eventually making more than some maximum income pre-ordained by an outside agency. Another related problem is that the most common characteristic of small businesspeople is that on the first attempt, they've failed at getting their enterprises off the ground. How does your program intend to deal with that? If you intend to remove all of the liability and risk they assume for pursuing their independent course, and pay them simply for trying, how are you expected to figure out whether or not they've been "faking it"? And even if sincere, should an incompetent entrepreneur be rewarded for their unproductive enterprise? <br><br>Those are merely a few objections I can raise out of a bundle of them...and I'm by no means done expounding on the issues that I've brought up. <br><br>The world of work is obviously unfair, in some respects. But it's even more unfair to attempt to embark on a massive program of pervasively enforcing egalitarianism. When Truthiness-"what you wish were true, in defiance of the facts"- meets Reality on this issue, the practical results are disastrous. <br><br>I'll be anticipating your cloud-castle rejoinders...I suppose I have a little more time to while away. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 2/2/06 2:03 pm<br></i>
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Re: sceneshifter

Postby sceneshifter » Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:06 pm

<br><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:black;font-family:times new roman;font-size:small;"><br>Thank you, robertdreed, for your reply - [Although you are a little caustic] - It is invaluable to me to know where people's heads are at - I can aim my replies more accurately to people's positions - <br><br>First, there is some heat in your replies - Heat is selfdestructive - Let's assume that I am wellmeaning, that I have no agenda against you - That I have nothing behind my back which I am going to pull on you when I think you are far enough in - This is purely about discussion - On the principle [which should be hung in every classroom in every nation:] we get closest to the truth when we hear all opinions - Even the opinions of fools have some lesson in them - It at least teaches you to look out for fools - An ancient Egyptian saying runs: One can have an educational experience listening to the washerwomen by the river - A friend is one who warns you - Are you sure I am not a friend? - Shall we assume I am a friend, and mean you well, and mean your increased happiness? - Until it proves otherwise - There is no organisation here, nothing to join at any stage, no money involved at any stage, no following of anyone except yourself, no dedication to anything except your own happiness, your own understanding - This is based on the knowledge that everything in our culture, good and bad, is caused by ideas - A change of ideas is a change of culture - And I could be wrong - I wont know until someone convinces me - And you may be wrong - It may be I am right - That we can all be 100 times happier - After all, we were made a little happier by the discovery of penicillin, the telephone, etc - And war and weaponry have been increasing for 1000s of years, therefore it follows we were free of war and weaponry at some stage - Something is causing the growth of war and weaponry - And presumably we would like to stop it growing, and chop the tree of war down if we can - <br><br>At the moment, you think that this idea is impractical - But that would not generate heat - Believing that someone else is a fool does not upset us, and make us hot - What is making you heated? - <br><br>And you think I am talking about force - I thought that I have made it very clear that I regard force as the old way - The way of bloody revolutions - I call this a sanity revolution - A call to people on this eve of universal destruction to try to think their way out of armageddon - I claim that we dont need force, because everyone will be much happier - There will be no opposition - I have tried to show that everyone already agrees with this idea - We just have to clarify our understanding - Work through all the issues by discussion and reach the point where we see clearly that yes, we already agree - If there is 100 fold happiness, we all want it - So let's discuss, share our views, and see if we can reach consensus - And then teach it to others till everyone agrees - I am in this for the happiness - For myself - The only way I can get this happiness is by convincing 6 billion people - There are reasons for hoping we can reach this happiness, and reasons for fearing we wont - One of which is the distraction of heat - So let's concentrate on checking out this idea, by talking freely what we think of what we understand or misunderstand this idea to be - As you are still doing, but may stop doing too early to enjoy this opportunity - If it is an opportunity - <br><br>You write: 'Dont be so dismayed by argument' - I thought I gave every indication of being delighted by any response - I dont care where people are at, if we can talk - Bear in mind that I am under the delusion that there is 100 fold happiness available, so I am very frustrated if I cannot talk about so exciting a subject, a subject so valuable to me - One thing about this plan [which adds to my excitement] is that it will work even if people are 100% selfish - So any selfishness out there will not be a barrier - I have been reflecting on this idea for years without coming up against a problem with it - Of course I could still be deluded<br><br>My partner of 25 years returned from a family reunion and told me VERY HAPPILY that she had spent the night screwing my nephew - In the same room where my son and my sister and her son were [hopefully] sleeping - I got angry - but if I had remembered Spinoza's excellent point, that if you remember that everything has a cause, you will not get angry, I would have saved myself a LOT of pain - portrayed in my novel Murder, free at nigel.orcon.net.nz - If we get heated in this discussion, we may ruin our chances of getting 100 fold happiness - That would be selfdestructive - Let's try to avoid such a sad occurence<br><br>'Try pitching it to the ones you think are overpaid' - I have PLENTY enough disappointment trying to reach people who are underpaid, people who will be better paid [less robbed] under this idea - And there are 99% of them - Forgive me if I see whether I can get through to them first - I'll feel braver when I have 99% on my side - I expect I will have limited luck convincing the overpaid - Because vested interest and business mindset will be great barriers to overcome - The overpaid, or higherpaid are generally more aggressive, less dispassionate and objective, quicker to heat - There will be some among the overpaid who are still capable of rational cool thought, eg, perhaps Edward Filene, who said, Why shouldnt I give half my money to the American people, they gave it all to me - And I am not beyond hoping that I could convince Bill Gates, if we had a month to sit down and turn the idea over and over and look at it from all sides - but I dont know him well - And I couldnt get through his secretary - I wanted to tell him that if he gave away 'his' fortune tomorrow, it would be back in the first world in 3 months, because the third world is supporting the first world to the tune of $200 billion a year, as Kofi Annan, Sec.-Gen of UN said - So powerful is the hoover of money-makes-money, rich-get-richer - And so I thought 'his' money would be better spent educating people in this idea - Which is after all, the foundation of the american [and human] dream of a land of the free - Pretty obvious that European tyranny Americans escaped from was impossible without superwealth - Money is power - Wealth disparity is tyranny, as communism showed - <br><br>You write: The only way your scheme would work is if everyone voluntarily agreed on its wisdom - Exactly - the only way it can work - And the only way it should work - If everyone is not voluntary, there is force, tyranny, and where there is tyranny, there are people looking round for a land of the free - communism showed that it did not believe in itself when it used force - If they had believed that communism was good for everyone, they would not have prohibited anyone leaving - they would have been confident that enough would see sense - Using force showed that they were the usual robbers - when you are going to rob a roomful , you guard the exits - And they committed the biggest robbery - Stole everything off everyone and gave it to Stalin - Naturally people objected, and Stalin had to cow them by killing 60 million kulaks - People - Bush's bosses are showing they are robbers by using force, not sense - They are anticipating opposition - If I am right, I can convince everyone, if not, not - Of course, this assumes that people will be prepared to soberly seriously sincerely coolly consider the arguments - Which should be possible - If there is a chance of escaping the nightmare of history, I want to check it out - What can be the harm? - If I get heated at the challenge to critically examine my cherished notions, I am not concentrating on my happiness - Critical examination cannot be bad - Either I will confirm I am right, or I will find I have been unwittingly hurting myself - Either way, I profit<br><br>[The mollyhawks [large seagull-type winged persons] are behaving differently today - They are flying around, calling loudly all the time to one another - Cawcawcawcawcawcawcawcaw - Clumping round on the roof - Maybe it is breeding season - Normally you dont see them and they never call and never clump on the roof - Earthquake?]<br><br>What would cause heat when I am offered opportunity to critically examine my accepted ideas? - Not sense, not my pursuit of my happiness - Railway men test the wheels of the trains - If the wheel is sound, fine, if not, good, we save a nasty accident - I think you will have to agree that the present state of the world looks like a bad accident - Why is the concern at the state of the world so low? - Why is the searching for solutions so low? - Why is the attachment to our accepted ideas so high when something is going so wrong? - When the Challenger had an accident, they looked for the cause, to fix it - the NASA people didnt get heated when someone suggested they look for the cause - The world is an accident happening, and yet we are not keenly looking for the cause - I have to argue for a critical examination, although a c. e. should always be welcome, because it cannot be bad - I am a question-asking machine, and I have no idea of an answer to these questions - Why dont we want the railwayman testing the wheels?<br><br>So much for introductory remarks<br><br>My point about limiting to 50 hours a week - [It is only an extra little idea, it isnt essential, or the main point] - It is just that, the lower we can justifiably and justly bring down the limit of fortunes, the lower the underpay will be and the lower the violence and the higher the general quality of life and the lower the defense costs and the more money and lives to spend on good things - Plus, as I said, working 100 hours a week is fishing so long you dont have time to cook and eat - The overworker is stealing leisure from self, family and community - Leisure is important - It gives us perspective, time for ideas from way-out to be heard by our minds - The poor man spends his money on his family, the rich man spends his family on his money - Getting money is a means to an end - To spend all ones time on it is waste - Half our time to get money, half our time to spend and enjoy the fruits - A bear doesnt fish for salmon all day and not stop to eat - The purpose is eating, the money is means to the end - For the superpoor on 1c an hour to work 16 hours a day is one thing - They are slaves - But for people pulling reasonable hourly pay, it is madness and selfdestructive behaviour - I am not saying: prevent anyone working 100 hours a week, just setting the limit of lifetime income at 50 hours x 50 weeks x 50 years x the world average pay - US$2 million [doubling every 12 years at 6% global inflation] - Even most businessmen will not average more than 50 hours a week over a lifetime, anyway - The higher the honey is pulled on the stick from the pot, the lower the honey in the pot, and the higher the violence - the lower the limit of pulling honey from the pot, the higher the honey in the pot, and the lower the world disturbance - Businessmen love peace too - The higher the honey in the pot, the more people with money to spend, and the safer, more profitable and more peaceful business is - Income growth is highest in juster societies - the forces like monopoly that accelerate wealth also accelerate poverty - And violence - Boom and bust - Monopoly pulls bigger profits [boom], so the consumer base is weakened [bust] - Suddenly there is no buying to pull profits from - Monopoly is selfdestructive - Suck the money out of the economy and the economy is weakened - The world economy is very weak because 90% have between a 10th and a 1000th of the average income - that is an enormous contraction of the market - Limit to fortunes is limit to monopoly is limit to boom and bust - Surely you can acknowledge that $10 million an hour is overpay? - There is a selfdeception that these huge fortunes dont come out of people's pockets - That somehow the money materialises out of the blue and doesnt reduce consumer money - Surely you have to acknowledge that no one can work more than twice the average, since the average is 50 hours a week, therefore no one contributes to society more than twice the average, therefore a limit on incomes at double the average is just - People see the lovely vision of unlimited fortune, they dont see that unlimited fortune is freedom to be under attack from the underpaid/underpowered/robbed/enslaved and freedom to have war and weaponry escalating to extinction - And freedom to be under attack from those overpaid more than us - Tyranny - We avert our eyes from the extinction, and with our tunnel vision concentrate on the lovely vision - We forget that a law of rapidly diminishing returns applies to overpay, since fairpay satisfies most desires, and that therefore the upsides of overpay are much smaller than the downsides - We forget that the higher the lottery prize, the less chance of getting it, the greater the chance of not getting, and the higher the cost of the tickets, ie, the greater the chance of ending up worse off - plus, when you win the prize, you have all the impoverished nonwinners after you - endlessly - So your defense and security costs are endless and eventually eat all your prize - Empires plunder and then get plundered - The more you plunder, the poorer the plundered are, and therefore the harder they try to rob the plunder back - Where is Alexander the 'great's plunder? Where is the British Empire? How much fun did the conquerors of South Africa have, trying to protect themselves from the plundered? And who won? The plundered always win - The people, the robbed, are always more powerful than the superpowerful - Pity the plunderers! - They have an exhausting dangerous ceaseless job on their hands, and they never win - the French revolution, the guillotined plutocracy [= robbers] - YOU CAN NEVER ENJOY YOURSELF UNLESS ALL ENJOY - the robbed are not doormats, they never give up, they hunt for the cracks and they creep in - <br><br>You are confident that I intend something stupid - You think up things I didnt think of - As for business risk - I'm not proposing any change except limitation of fortunes - With that, capitalism is perfect - Or good enough - With that, violence and endless degradation of quality of life are prevented - Not going to pay people for trying - Not going to interfere with any facet of capitalism except overpayunderpayviolenceextinction - If the businessman wants to spend a sprat to try to catch a mackerel, fine - Im not going to run around paying fishermen for standing on the bank of a river and having a go - Im not going to help the bear fish, either - <br><br>Businessmen failed to get their enterprise off the ground the first time? - Did they die? - Am I going to race after the gold prospector and pay him for his risk? - Are you? - Is anyone thinking of paying workers for risk? - Were miners highpaid, though they died? - How many sailors died trimming frozen sails in gales round Cape of good hope bringing spices from china? - <br><br>I dont feel like rewriting here section 51 of 'Global Happiness', free at www.globalhappiness.org [not an org, an idea] - An examination of the idea of business risk - and read section 33 - This book is designed to be dipped into - In small bites - So that consciousness is high - So that the brain does not fall asleep in reading too much - And dont put it aside if you come across something you disagree with - Your danger is too great for that - There may still be much you can learn to your profit and happiness - No one can write without error<br><br>Pity yourself! Hurtling towards extinction, not able to see which of your ideas is pressing the pedal to the metal!</span><!--EZCODE FONT END--> <p></p><i></i>
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sceneshifter, What Can I Say???

Postby Floyd Smoots » Fri Feb 03, 2006 12:10 am

You ARE a dreamer. This last, satanically-controlled, portion of "His Story" is, thankfully, drawing to its well-deserved close. When the ONE who created us all re-appears, it will have been worth all of the "blood, sweat, and tears" that have been shed in the meantime. Until then, nothing you can posit, or attempt, will make any difference. Take my (and your own) advice, and "Love your neighbor as yourself", be as honest, gentle, giving, and FORGIVING towards others as you possibly can; say your prayers every day, and "Occupy 'til HE comes". You can do no more; and, God, Himself expects no more of you than that.<br><br>Peace in Jesus,<br>Maranatha,<br>Brother Floyd<br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: sceneshifter, What Can I Say???

Postby AnnaLivia » Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:16 am

yer blinding me with science, floyd...yer blinding me with science.<br><br>HEY!, let's fold scarves! YEAH, THAT'S THE TICKET!<br><br>at this point, sceneshifter, i want to hear whatever more you have to add...<br><br>...because yr the only voice who makes any sense to me in this here-to-day consciousness<br><br>i know i'm not like anybody else...but you'll just have to forgive me...or condemn me<br><br>gd, i am so worried about you, hunny, i had to find an altered state...<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Altered State???

Postby Floyd Smoots » Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:28 pm

How about East Carolina? It extends out into the Atlantic Ocean for about 300 miles. Sorry though, No Scarves Allowed, they scare the sharks, don't ya know? But, at least, we'll always have <!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:fuchsia;font-family:comic sans ms;font-size:xx-large;">URANUS!!!</span><!--EZCODE FONT END--><!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :eek --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/eek.gif ALT=":eek"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :o --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/embarassed.gif ALT=":o"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Altered State???

Postby heath7 » Sat Feb 04, 2006 8:04 pm

There must be freedom to move, to grow, to inspire, to evolve from where the human condition is now.<br><br>Leveling sounds like a terrific idea, but it could never work until all the people understood, that's what we truly want. We could all wash our own damn toilets and let <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>everybody</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> do something productive with their lives, as equals, but that would take a higher level of interconnected consciousnous than humans are even close to accomplishing as our world is.<br><br>...I can see a world where we can be motivated to be more without wanting to earn more. Its only part of our twisted national religion that you'd expect more material to want to be a neorosurgeon over a midlevel IT tech. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Altered State???

Postby robertdreed » Sat Feb 04, 2006 8:57 pm

<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Its only part of our twisted national religion that you'd expect more material to want to be a neorosurgeon over a midlevel IT tech. </em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>I don't agree. It costs more to be educated as a neurosurgeon than as an IT tech. And beyond the money of it, in terms of the amount of time spent studying, the stresses of exams, the energy required to acquire a level of competence, the sheer talent needed in the form of steady nerves and ability to function in a crisis. And that's all before one even hangs the shingle out.<br><br>Human behavior is purposive. I think it's natural to expect to be rewarded more for doing what is more difficult, or for what takes more effort, for seeing a personal vision through to completion, for accomplishing greater tasks than lesser ones, for assuming more responsibilities or risks. <br><br>See, I think Ayn Rand made some valid points within the context of her Objectivist philosophy (although I don't buy the whole package.) I think authentic meritocracy ought to be respected. It's disastrous all around for the most talented, industrious, creative, inventive, enterprising, intellectually gifted, physically proficient, and/or ethical risk-taking mentalities to have their motivations, ambitions, and dreams knee-capped by second-guessers, armchair political theorists, critics and onlookers who have never entered the arena themselves.<br><br>That's a different matter than being rewarded for incompetence, chicanery, or criminality. But this idea that anyone who makes more than $75,000 per year must therefore be thieving from the less fortunate is nonsense. <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 2/4/06 6:15 pm<br></i>
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Untied Nations of Earth!!!

Postby Floyd Smoots » Sat Feb 04, 2006 10:23 pm

robertdreed, I heartily concur with your last post on this thread. I only changed the "subject line" because, though I, yes, even I, have slipped once or twice, I personally consider it the height of laziness to just hit the "reply" button without giving my/your post its own title.<br><br>You are probably too busier than I, in the pursuit of "Life, the Universe and Everything", to even notice, therefore you are forgiven in advance. sceneshifter's posts about egalitarianism, et al, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, have become tiresome because most of us here know they're not workable, in any way, in the world in which we currently abide/collide/hide/reside.<br><br>Hi, "shifty", I know you're looking. I still luv ya, but you're not gonna really get any traction with your social theories here on this board. There IS, however, AMPLE proof all over the internet, that CEO's of most of the Fortune 500 companies are being GROSSLY OVERPAID, compared to those in the companies who actually produce the products/services that are bringing ALL THAT money!<br><br>Why don't you use your computer to check out "Corporate Donations" to dishonest legislators, organizations that are undermining freedom, marriage, families, children, and PROMOTING militarism, drug sellers, whoremongers, etc., all over the world........I could go on and on, but I HOPE you're getting the "Big Picture". <br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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I think this is GOOD [sorry]

Postby sceneshifter » Sun Feb 05, 2006 1:01 am

<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong><br><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:green;font-family:comic sans ms;font-size:small;">Thanks heath7 - Obviously there is a lot of accepted ideas that a lot of people are not going to put on the examination block - although we race towards extinction - But head-in-the-sand has solved that problem! - No damn reality is going to get tough with me! - If any damn reality tries to get tough with me, I always have my master weapon, my eyelids! - And anyway, if the general culture doesn't believe that extinction is likely, well, the culture is never wrong, right? - When was a generally accepted idea ever wrong, hey? - I have said that critical examination can never be bad - testing the wheels of the train we are on can never be bad - If the wheels are fine, fine - if not, fine, we save a nasty accident - The unexamined life is not worth living - the unexamined life is soon derailed - <br><br>Obviously the idea that has caused escalation of war and weaponry for 1000s of years is an idea we are deeply committed to - Obviously the voice of wisdom, so rarely raised, has in all that time not been penetrating enough - It is just EXTRAORDINARY - superhyper e-x-t-r-a-o-r-d-i-n-a-r-y - that hourly pay from a 1000th to a million times the average makes no one stop the happy faith in accepted ideas, in order to think - 'How rarely do we ever really truly think' - <br><br>I have stated the argument against the argument for the present system on the basis of need for expansion, growth, need to have the stimulation of reward - but no one has absorbed it - The words have been read and not heard, have not been digested, nor have caused any modification of the understanding, have not caused any suspicion of the accepted ideas - As a herd animal, we put enormous blind faith in what the herd does - but even herds have 'bellwhethers' - or the herd would eat the grass under their feet and never move - I'm shifting metaphor from humans to sheep to wildebeest, arent I - and then to lemmings - but you get the idea - Real thinking takes place outside the herd instinct, the blind faith in the herd behaviour - Real thinking goes back to reason, to sense - It may be that most humans simply don't have any faculty for thinking outside the blind faith - in which case there is no hope for us - Or it may be just that people are not used to using reason and sense - They fall for the snoozy way of the herd - blind men leading blind men into the ditch of extinction - But for thinkers, there is nothing but sense - nothing but tapping the train wheels with the silver hammer of sense alone, without any easy jumps using the accepted ideas - Every accepted idea is on the block - tested for ringing true - 'Test everything and hold on to what is good' - that is the definition of real thinking - People hear me with their minds still full of unexamined ideas - Even if most people have no power to think, free of accepted ideas, it may be sufficient if the bellwhethers think<br><br>And dont anyone be insulted or feel they are being insulted by this attitude - We didn't make ourselves, we are victims of the limitations of our intelligence, our reptile-mammal-cortical brain - Or our five brains [working in harmony or otherwise]: the reptile brain, the mammal brain, the right and left hemispheres and the cortex - plus a string of lesser brains that we havent enough brains to know of yet - <br><br>Argument one is a powerful one: if money reward is the motivation, then motivation is greater - much much greater - under fairpay, where 99% get paid more - where 90% get paid 10 to a 1000 times more - And dont buy the accepted idea: but that is the poor, they are nothing, they couldnt do any entrepreneurship, they are as inferior as their pay - The poor are the same as the others - just poorer - They have as many brains, as many powers, as much energy as 'us' - [in fact they have more] - They are us - with poverty - [baring the ones so deprived of protein in childhood - by our accepted ideas - that their wits are not formed] - Digestion of this one argument alone will turn people completely around, if they think - It will also give them an example of an accepted idea that is wrong, so that blind faith in accepted ideas may diminish, and real thinking grow<br><br>Argument or point two: people in nature, before or outside society, have motivation enough to live and grow and expand - overpay is overmotivation - Eating salmon is enough motivation for the bear - Fairpay is enough motivation - Overpay/underpay is overmotivation/undermotivation - This is again a sufficient and powerful argument, showing the herd thought is simply totally wrong - which seems to arise because of an obsessive focus on the upside of overpay and a blindness or ignoring [ignorance] of the downsides - Even the upside has a huge downside: overpay suffers under the law of rapidly diminishing returns [as fairpay satisfies all major, and most, desires and needs] and yet the danger of being overpaid is proportional to both the overpay and the underpay that overpay causes - The danger is proportional to the overpay squared, so to speak - or cubed, if you think that: the richer, the fewer; and therefore the more focus falls on you - The focus on bill gates is out of proportion to his share in overpay - [the same phenomenon which you see in junk shares: the undervaluing of the nonbluechip, the ovevaluing of the bluechip] <br><br>Three: the custom of paying for brains and other natural gifts [or rather the idea that we do pay people for natural gifts and ought to] has no foundation in sense: you don't pay people for receiving gifts - You pay people to compensate them for what they have lost in giving their time to some specialised job - so that they can exchange the time they spent making things for others, so they can buy things they need or want which they didnt have time to make - The shoemaker gets paid so he can buy his meat - the butcher gets paid so he can buy shoes - This again is a totally strong argument, which will be ignored by people putting faith in custom and accepted ideas - Custom will wash it out of people's heads in a minute, even if they get the argument - Also, even if it were right to pay people for natural gifts, you still have to justify taxing, fining, stealing from, punishing those with fewer gifts [or gifts the customs do not pay for - like muscle] to pay the reward for the natural gifts - Also, there is an inevitable backlash, which is not in the interests of the gifted ones: Nazism and the chinese Cultural revolution are revenges of the less gifted against the theft and the humiliation of secondgrade citizenship - If a person is out of society, doing all his own work, he has to do the so-thought 'humbler' tasks - the 'prouder' jobdoer has to be compensated so he can buy the produce of the 'humbler' jobdoer - so even if prouder work was to be paid more highly than the humbler work, the prouder would need LESS money, because the humbler work he doesnt do will be cheaper - if you can follow that argument<br><br>Three B: we dont pay people for natural gifts now - and we cannot pay people for natural gifts now - because there is no measurement of natural gifts, nor science of proportioning of rewards to gifts - [the various gifts are to be paid how much each? how compare piano talent with physics genius?] - The correlation between rewards and gifts is very low - Many many people with equal gifts to bill gates and up to a billionth of the pay - There are bill gates's who died last week, uneducated, unfed - The poor are not poor because they are dumb and lazy, they are poor because they were robbed - plundered by the european empires, for a start - and plundered by the desperate poor for a finish - [The causes of bill gates's legal theft are wellknown, and they have nothing to do with his gifts - new technology combines very high demand and very low supply - the cost [total labour input, including bill's] of PC's is 10-25% of the price - Competition in PC's is still gearing up - Most of the price is a scarcity cost - and there is no reason in sense to pay bill gates billions for natural scarcity of PC's - Although it is easy to see that no one can work more than twice as hard than the average of 50 hours a week, people STILL cannot see that bill gates has billions that they have earned - The force of accepted ideas throws a veil over even the glaringly obvious - As soon as people have as clear an idea that gates has money they have earned, as that it is wrong to go in public naked, there is no power that can stop the change of custom - Bush can kill a million, but he cant walk naked in Washington]<br><br>[I really think many people have enough sense to see the sense in what I am saying, and therefore to conclude it is not a waste of their time to persist in reading me - Even if I sometimes seem, to their present judgement, to be talking nonsense - You may know the media are lying, but do you get anywhere the sense they would be talking if they had any?]<br><br>Four: the custom of not paying students for studying, and then [over]compensating them in their pay ever after, is not sense - This plan i speak of, to avoid extinction soon, and continuing, escalating miseries until extinction, suggests paying students for studying [who do work and are owed compensation, for they cant grow lettuces etc while they are studying] and not paying them a premium afterwards - [when their needs and desires and rights do not get bigger] - <br><br>I suggest that submission to sense is the only way out of the terrible mess we have created by a mixture of sense and herd mentality - 'Money is like fire, a good slave, a bad master'- we need a Prometheus of money - Prometheus didnt bring fire, he looked at it, and worked out how to control it, enslave it - We have yet to look at money and enslave it]<br><br>I have to ask myself whether it is ethical to try to save a hybrid sane-nonsane species that causes itself such ginormous zillionfold unnecessary suffering without having the brains to even WANT to inquire into the causes of the escalating misery and violence - Is humanity a dog that incurably bites its own flesh to shreds? - If so, humaneness says: better to let nature-art take its course to extinction and put an end to such vast miseries, a million times what the other animals suffer, rather than let such suffering go on forever - This argument is pretty powerful, and the evidence of human power to extricate themselves is small, small indeed - On the other side is the fact that an idea can transform - culture is ideas - A change of this one idea, of unlimited fortunes for limited contributions to the social pool of wealth, could make an enormous difference in very short time - If hedgehogs 'got' the idea of traffic, hedgehog fatalities would stop overnight - <br><br>Actually, this is a way to put this idea that I havent quite thought of before: over 90% of people are definitely underpaid, because 90% are paid less than a 10th of the average, while working harder than the average because of poverty, therefore there must be overpay - which is necessarily theft, which is necessarily violence-generating - Think how you would feel to be reduced permanently to a 100th of your income, and multiply by 5 billion: that is the amount of violence that will disappear with the disappearance of legal theft - Even more violence than that will disappear, because under underoverpay, not only the overpaid and underpaid fight each other, but also the underpaid fight the underpaid and the overpaid fight the overpaid<br><br>Argument five: even if inequality of hourly pay was just, it would not justify the DEGREE of inequality of hourly pay - the distinction must be made between inequality of the order of a factor of less than 10 [top hourly pay less than10 times bottom hourly pay], or a 100, and the super hyper extreme inequality of hourly pay we have, with inequality factor of one billion - Even if people cannot see their way to equality of hourly pay, there is still room to see that violence is proportional to inequality of hourly pay, and to reduce the inequality factor to a survivable and less horribly miserable level - much less masochistic for both the overpaid and the underpaid - But i think that if people get this latter idea, of proportionality between violence and inequality, they will get the idea of equality being a minimisation of misery - <br><br>It is strange that equality is one of our ideals when our practice and our faith are opposite as can be - very very very strange - We have a long way to go - We are, scientists tell us, 98.4% chimpanzees - More similar to chimps than dolphins to porpoises - We are 98.4% nature and 1.6% art - We are sorcerer's apprentices, with enough learning to get into trouble, not out - We do not even know that, nor how money transfers automatically from earners to nonearners - Although we know that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, we have not gone the little extra step to grasp that that must be unjust, since the poor work harder and harder - And then the little step further, that injustice means violence, although theft of valuables and necessities is obviously cause of anger - Nor the little step further that violence after theft must be endlessly escalative, as both sides try to prevail - Until we grasp these points , we will not grasp that Mammon is universal misery and extinction - We will continue to think that someone trying to talk us out of Mammon is trying to take away something VERY VERY GOOD]<br><br>[If I sound chipper, it is because I have several nonreligious sound rational proofs of our not-bodiness - Eg, the same thing cannot change and not change at the same time; I remain me for decades, through many bodily changes - In fact, the fact of my perception of change is a proof: I couldn't perceive change if the perceiver changed identity during the changes; there would be no self to compare the earlier and later states of the change - This is a very simple and perfectly strong proof but it seems to be original - And who will get it? - Or even want to try to get it - Anyone who wants to get it will get it - The trouble seems to be in wanting to get it - Which is strange, when it is so comforting - Are we truly masochists? - Or can words convey so little? - Or are we amusing ourselves with the illusion of mortality?] <br><br>Sound arguments cannot get into the brain without the person pounding it in from the cortical human rational brain into all the other brains - many days' labour - But worth it</span><!--EZCODE FONT END--></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> <p></p><i></i>
sceneshifter
 
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Reply Floyd Smoots

Postby sceneshifter » Sun Feb 05, 2006 1:30 am

<!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:fuchsia;font-family:comic sans ms;font-size:small;"><br>Thank you, Floyd - I can feel you are a good sweet person, labouring for others to have the joy you have -You are so happy, you cant make yourself happier, and so your happiness is to try to splash people with it - And no doubt you grieve to see others without your good luck to have such enjoyment and safety - <br><br>Yes, you are right - Like the inventor of the car, I have a dream - A bee in the bonnet - Share this idea, or find out that it is wrong<br><br>I will list a few of my beliefs - I believe that words are deceivers and that we must read carefully - I believe the history of religion always has been largely misreadings of the words - So religion is littered with errors - Errors of our limitations of brain, and errors of corruption in the church - People unenlightened writing things without full understanding - [Red Indian culture is the only culture I know that hasnt had a tradition of wrong interpretation of the words - No tradition of pedantry, of hairsplitting, of falling victim to the 'letter' of the words, that kills - And the great -sorry - Native American speeches are unique in their simplicity and grandeur and nobility and dignity and power] - So we, who inherit all these errors, which have become traditional and accepted in the church, have to sort through and separate the wheat from the chaff - There are reasons to believe that even the gospels have been interfered with by [sometimes wellmeaning] 'additors' - And the only guide we have is our own wits, such as they are, and the suspicion that some humans may have had something useful to say - I have only my wits - I cant use anyone else's because I have to judge whether they have more wits than I do - And if they do, then I will be able to see that, by seeing the sense they see - <br><br>If god is rational, then I get close to god by being rational - If Jesus was rational, I get close to Jesus by being rational - If god or Jesus are not rational, then I stay away - With what part of me can I accept something that I cant accept in my reason, my good sense? - To accept something in which I see no sense is to commit myself to insanity, to leap off the pier of sense into the waters of madness - If religion says Love, I say: Why? If religion is sane, it will tell me why. If not, not. For those non-sanes who subscribe to beliefs without reason [to get a cushy position in the church, or because they think it is right to do so], they will not be able to give a reason, and I cannot go there - I have no faith in non-sanity - I guess that Jesus had a reason for saying Love - I guess it is for the same reason someone in every culture has said the golden rule in variant forms - Because it makes good sense - Because it fits right in to my pursuit of my happiness - And because there are those without good sense who need to have it suggested to them - [There would be no golden rule if everyone knew it - There is no rule: Wear your hat on your head not your feet, because everyone seems to have this one sorted] - As simple as the sense of the golden rule is - Treat people badly and they generally treat you badly, treat people kindly and they on the whole treat you more kindly - I want pleasure, not pain, so I am nice to people - Pretty simple - I wish religion would point out the good sense of it - If people obey a good rule without knowing the sense, they make themselves insane, they are practising and growing insanity - And sanity is useful in pursuit of happiness which is spirituality<br><br>Some people will be shocked at the idea that Jesus suggested the golden rule because it helped the person using it - that Jesus thought that looking after yourself and treating yourself kindly was okay, was good, was religious, was what religion is about - I like to recall Jesus said: Love others as much as you love yourself - And he meant, not: Love others little if you love yourself little, but: Love yourself much and love others as much - He didnt say that, but I am guessing he meant that - Possibly they didnt have the phenomenon of selfhate in his time, so he didnt allow for it - It seems, from what passes down to us as being what he said, that he took it for granted that everyone loved themselves well - Today we somehow have been infected with the notion that loving yourself is wrong, is poor Christianity - I believe selflove is a duty - I believe pursuit of happiness is everything - I believe that spirituality falls within the realm of pursuit of happiness - That there is no spirituality separate from maximisation of happiness - Spirituality is love, god is love, the golden rule is at the heart of christianity, and the golden rule makes good sense - I am me, I want to be happy, the happiness of me is my business, and all my business, and being nice to others it part of my happiness - But our culture has got twisted round somehow [probably the church being in the hands of the least spiritual and rational people for 2000 years has something to do with it] so that we are ashamed to pursue our happiness - Or rather, pursue it outside the church, as if it were naughty - [And because we are 'forced' to do it sneakily, we do it badly] - For an institution that has done the foulest deeds, we have extraordinary faith that the church is somehow good, somehow better than us - That god backs the church - It has always been the kindness of the people that has pulled the church out of its hatred and evil - Burning people, slavery, etc - [Although, 99% are still in slavery - what am I saying? - 100% are still in slavery - 99% are still in the slavery of having to work part or most of the time with others getting their pay - the 1% - or rather the 100% - are still in the slavery of thinking that wealth is great, that wealth isnt the thing that brings the misery, that wealth isnt overpay, that the saying 'love of money is the root of all evil' doesnt mean 'love of overpay is the root of all evil' - although it is obvious the saying doesnt mean it is wrong to like your paycheck, ie, your just earnings]<br><br>What a laugh that is, the recent thing about the church saying the inquisition was wrong but legal - Why not just say it was wrong? - Why do they think that legality somehow made it better? - Pure legalism, pure phariseeism! - And yet, on the other hand, the fact they are saying or nearly saying THE LAW CAN BE WRONG suggests the church may be finally growing out of legalism, of the letter of the law that kills - Is the church on the eve of going beyond the letter of the law? - That will be a great day indeed! - Augustine said that the letter of the law is a raft to get across the river - You dont carry it with you when you get to the other side - [Buddha said exactly the same thing] - Is the church finally getting to the other side??? - Is the church going to stop being 'hypocrites, scribes [ie, lawyers] and pharisees'?!! - WEEHOOO! - When they reach the end of the letter of the law, they reach the beginning of the spirit of the law [love, goodwill, selflove-and-otherlove, sanity] which gives life - Is the church finally going to become spiritual? - WEEEHOOO! - <br><br>Is god infinite, Floyd? - Do you believe god is infinite? - Is that part of your understanding? - Let's look at the spooky logical implications - The meaning of 'god is infinite' - Infinite means unending - The fin in infinite is the same as in final and finish - And the in is negative - Unending - That means god doesnt end - He just rolls on and on, over everything - If there were anything outside god, god would end - So that the other thing can begin - but god doesnt end, so god goes over everything, includes everything - Absolutely everything - If there was one thing outside god, god would be un-infinite - god would be ending, not unending - God = everything - There is only god - Whatever exists, is god - god means 'everything that exists' - God is existence - There is nothing that exists that is not god because god is unending, god rolls over everything, includes everything - And the bible supports this concept of god - In the bible, god says that his name is I AM - He is not just saying that, as a matter of fact, he exists, He is saying that his name is I EXIST - ie, that his nature, his character, his essence is existence - God = existence - <br><br>There can only be one infinite thing - And there can be nothing else - The whole show, the whole of life, everything - That is god - god is that - The sum total of existence - So the theologians who tried to prove the existence of god, and the atheists who say god does not exist, are under a misapprehension - They did not grasp what god was - And people have managed to overlook the implications of I AM for 100s of years - God is just a name for existence - Perhaps superfluous [Heehee - superfluous means flowing over] - Perhaps confusing, misleading - <br><br>Now - Who you gonna worship, god or existence? - Existence is certainly worthy of worship, that is, of worthship, of esteem - I dont know of anything else that is - In fact of course logically there is nothing else - You esteem existence or you esteem part of existence, or you esteem nothing - If you esteem anything that has anything outside it, you esteem and worship something finite, something less than existence, which is surely more worthy of esteem than part of existence - Most people's idea of god imagines some things being outside god - Satan, evil, the world, the flesh [sex], hell, sin, disobedience, concentration camps, excrement, etc - In fact they think of heaven as outside god, because they think of god as in heaven - If god is existence, then everything is in god - World, hell, excrement, sex, heaven, everything - Words get us into trouble - We think that there are all these things, god among them <br><br>If god is infinite, then god is existence - In the broadest sense - Not just created existence, but also uncreated existence - ie, not just matter but energy too - Not just created things, but creativity - Not just the actual but also the potential - If god is existence, then god is good and evil - And the bible again supports this: 'I create good and I create evil' Isaiah 45,7 - If god is good, then bad exists and is not god, and god is not existence and god is not infinite - And god is not the only god - If god is good and doesnt create evil, then there has to be another god, another creator, who creates the evil, as in Zoroastrianism - But Christianity is firmly committed to there being only one god, so god must create evil - Existence must create evil - Life must create evil - <br><br>So people who esteem and worship god as good only, worship something less than the infinite - They worship something limited, something finite - Something limited to being good - They do not worship the true god, they do not esteem existence, which is the only thing, or is the biggest thing that can be esteemed - they despise and ignore existence and worship a part of existence - They are making a mistake about what god is - They are worshiping something limited, they are worshiping a false god, an idol, a part of god - They are like those worshipping the sun or a statue or something - They are breaking the first commandment - They have an IDEA of god - And an idea is bound, is limited - To this or that - they have an IDEAL - god is only good - God is better than anything on earth - God is perfect, the world is not - In worshipping an ideal, they worship something limited - Something limited to being ideal - They idealise god, they idolise god - they make a false god, a god of their concept of god - They make god something invisible, something that is NOT HERE <br><br>Religion is joining god and man - the word religion means rejoining - Of course, not joining with rope or glue - With removing the illusion of separation - With removing the idea of god as being limited, and out there somewhere, not here - With ending the idealisation of god - With ending the esteem of something other than, less than existence - What is more worthy of our wonder, awe, amazement, fear, curiosity, love, hate, anger, etc than existence? - Than life? - Than everything? - Than the whole show? - Instead, we are despising and ignoring existence and worshiping something else, something 'better' - Which, however, because it is 'better', is less - In fact, nonexistent, because there is only life, only existence - No one has seen this god that most religious people worship - They are worshiping a fiction - A notion of god derived from reading stories about god doing this and that as though he was a body - A body, a finite thing - the most widespread definition of god is: Neither this nor that - that is, not limited to being this or that, having this or that character, but being unlimited, having all characters or none - Being bigger than the limitation of having a character - Having all characters - Like life - Including all opposites - All opposites are in life, in existence, otherwise we would not know of them - god = everything = life - Not just life excluding death, but life including death - <br><br>So religion, as it is mostly practised and understood, is the very essence of irreligion - The nonjoining, the separation of man and existence, of humanity and life, the turning away and ignoring and despising existence, for a fictional notion, a personification - Like believing in the real existence [somewhere] of a person Santa Claus - It seems the church should know better - But the people, with their good instinct, have turned away from the church to return to god - As Lenny Bruce said - <br><br>Christianity affects to believe that god is allgood and allpowerful - But this is impossible - Or it is possible only by not thinking of the meaning of the words - Obviously god can be allgood and not allpowerful, or allpowerful and not allgood, but he cant be both - Or the words do not have their meaning<br><br>People idealised and idolised god because they had made the big mistake - They had divided existence into good and bad - Existence was god and bad, so god was not existence, because god was good - For the true religious experience, the experience of existence - 'Isnt it amazing, isnt it strange, isnt it fantastic, isnt it incredible' - they substituted good and bad - 'Isnt it good, isnt it bad' - This is the 'original error' of Adam and Eve - The mistake that we all make every day - We have separated existence into two things and cut ourselves off from existence and turned away to a fictional good - When you forget about good and bad, and put existence together again and say Isnt it fantastic, that is true religion - And that is the end of irreligion, which most religion, after the original error, is - It is the end of guilt - We are good and bad, god is good and bad, and that's the way existence is - Isnt it odd? - That is what the mystics' All-is-one means - There is REALLY only one thing - call it life, call it everything, call it existence, call it god, or Xanadu or Jisl - Not two things - To be aware of existence is being awake - Being realised, being enlightened - Having the weight of good and evil lifted from one - Being lightened - Having guilt lifted - Having an end to the struggle with good and bad - If there is only one thing, it cannot be good or bad - It just is - The isness is the thing - The isness is everything - There is nothing else - We dont think of the front end and the back end of a car as two things - There is only one thing, the car - Consciousness is consciousness that something exists - Anything else is unconsciousness - If you are thinking 'this is good' or 'this is bad', you are not conscious of existence - You are not conscious of life, which means you are dead - Someone once wrote an essay Why is there something rather than nothing? - That is the consciousness of existence, the mystery of existence - It is just incredible that it exists - It is startling - It is inexplicable - But it definitely is - In all its incredible complexity and detail and its characterless character - It isnt just this, it isnt just that, it's everything! It is dark and light, it is hot and cold, it is good and bad, it is heaven and hell, it is dazzling and it is dull, it is magic and it is mundane - It is just very interesting, and strange and hard to understand - Impossible to COMPREHEND, that is, to get your head around and grab with the mind - it is too big, too... infinite, unlimited, inexhaustible - 'god is the identity of opposites' - So says Nicholas of Cusa - Whatever you can think of, god-existence-life is that, and the opposite of that - We separate, we think there is energy and matter, space and time, but there is REALLY energymatter, and spacetime, there is REALLY energymatterspacetime, there is really just one thing - Life - We think that there is life and death, but there is really only lifedeath - -There is really only energymattertimespacelifedeath - String all the nouns in the dictionary and that is the only thing that really is - That and all the nouns that arent in the dictionaries yet because the creativity of life had not made them yet - How can we judge life when it hasnt been finished yet? - We put up all these concepts until we cannot see the existence of existence - And that error, that irreligion, that separation, that polarisation, that duality, that selfblinding to the existence of existence, is part of life too! - God is truth and error, god is religion and irreligion! - Everything is recognised through its opposite, so the only way to realise you are life is to think you are not!<br><br>Jesus said I am not good - That hasnt stopped people, under the influence of the original error, idealisation or idolisation, from thinking Jesus is allgood - Thus making him finite and less incredible than the infinite that is life<br><br>Why has the bible got 500 contradictions? - Why has the bible got 200 doctrinal contradictions? - Why does Jesus say god is good, and god says: I create good and I create evil? - Why does Jesus play ducks and drakes with the law of Moses and then say he is not changing one iota of it? - Why does Jesus get his connection to King David through Joseph and then get conceived by god while Joseph and Mary are engaged, so that Joseph is thinking of putting her away in a village because she has had sex with someone not him? - Part of the reason is that Life means lifedeath, Love means lovehate, Good means goodevil - We just think that existence is pretty neat, evil notwithstanding - Existence has to be love - It is a gift, right? - A pretty neat gift - Get a universe for Christmas! - Everyone does - A bit strange - You can prick yourself on it if you're not careful, or even if you are careful - but nonetheless... Part of the reason for all the contradictions is to make you laugh - To relax you - The idea of a god coming down and having it off with your wife is a joke from the classical literature - But god is all the people without a sense of humour too - Which is funny too - What is funnier than someone who never sees anything funny? - It is obviously a funny bit in a play, where god says he will destroy a city if there are not 40 good people in it, and Abraham works god down to that god will save the city if there are 10 good people - What about if there are only 30, god? - Oh well, okay, I'll let it go if there is 30 - Well, what about 20? - And where god tells Ezekiel to eat human dung for over a year, and Ezekiel works god down to cowdung - Oh, all right, cowdung then - A bit of earthy humour there, well appreciated by the more earthy types - Read that passage out in school assembly! - The man who said life is a joke was more right than he knew - A sick joke - And a very good joke too - A strange thing, but definitely here - And we love it, for all its faults<br><br>There is nothing good in nonexistence - But dont worry, you're not going there - It doesnt exist! - You are existence - And existence is infinite - There is no room for nonexistence - You are space and time, energy and matter, love and hate, light and dark, humour and unhumour, good and evil, intelligence and stupidity, kindness and meanness, male and female, life and death... - The spitting image of god! - And the infinite cannot be destroyed - No room for a destroyer<br><br>We think there is life, and an opposite, death - but death is change - and so is life!</span><!--EZCODE FONT END--> <p></p><i></i>
sceneshifter
 
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Reply robertdreed - what we all agree on

Postby sceneshifter » Sun Feb 05, 2006 9:58 pm

<br><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:black;font-family:comic sans ms;font-size:small;">robertdreed 6feb2006<br><br>I am very grateful, robertdreed, for your saying that the idea of no one being able to contribute more than US$75,000 a year by their work to the social pool of wealth is nonsense - If people just think to themselves that it is nonsense, and dont put it down, we cant discuss it - I cant reply - And I LOVE replying - for selfish reasons: I am under the delusion that if this idea is in people's heads, my world is less dangerous, my neighbours are more smiley, further from cracking up and reaching for the uzi<br><br>It allows me an opportunity to - it gives me the idea to - list the points i have made that i think you - and the others who feel the same way as you - will agree with - Of course you can disagree that you agree with them - I am just going to list the things I think you and anyone else already do agree with - And then we can see how far that takes us towards the understanding that I think will be our salvation - I dont want to use a religious word like salvation, but there is no other word for it - saving us from the hell and nightmare we are in - I realise that you may disagree that we are in a hell and nightmare<br><br>When I implied to my mother that she was less happy than she could be, she threw something at me - Unfortunately, we have to believe we are less happy than we can be in order to make any improvement in our situation - Unfortunately, people feel insulted if you suggest they are in a worse situation than they could be - Unfortunate, because that little characteristic [and god knows where it comes from, why we are saddled with it] utterly prevents improvement of our situation - If your legs are pinned by a bulldozer, you cannot improve your situation without facing the fact that you are in a worse situation than you could be - If you think you are the best situation, you will do nothing - There is no harm in saying to yourself, my situation could be better, even if it isnt true - It stimulates to be open to the possibility of coming across an idea for improvement<br><br>WHAT I THINK YOU AND EVERYONE WILL AGREE WITH ALREADY<br><br>Inequality of income and fortune due to harder working, more brains, more application, more grit and guts and so on, and inequality of income and fortune without inequality of hard working, brains, etc may be two different things - It may be that inequalities of income and fortune due to harder working etc would account for no more than fortunes of less than 10 times the average - That inequalities of hard working etc cause a tiny fraction of the inequalities of fortune we have - That you can still be for inequalities of fortune due to hardworking, etc, and for a reduction of the bulk of the inequalities of fortune - In other words, that you agree that Bill Gates does not work a billion times harder than the lowest paid person, that Bill Gates does not work a million times harder than the average person, that the lowest paid person does not work a 1000th as hard, have a 100th of the wits, etc as the average person - I really would love to see a film of people working - with a voiceover giving their pay per hour - <br><br>I think you will agree that it is lacking in logic to think of paying people for having gifts of nature - We do not pay people for receiving christmas and birthday gifts - It may be argued that people with more brains are more useful, that they produce more - But it will have to be conceded that they do not give more of themselves, of their time, of their life to society than another person working equally hard and being paid less for having fewer brains, etc - And the correlation between brains and pay is in fact low - If we could accurately measure brains, we would find that people of equal brains, and equal hardworkingness etc, are being paid very different incomes - In short, that the reasons for inequalities of pay are not limited to inequalities of hardworking, brains, skill, talent, etc - Other reasons are wellknown - <br><br>When the English Rothschild made a 'killing' on the English stockmarket by making sure he learned the news of Waterloo before anyone else, by pigeon, and then dumped his english shares to make everyone else think england had lost at waterloo, and secretly bought them up cheap and made a 'killing', was he justly rewarded for his hardwork and brains? Or overpaid? The correct compensation for his labour in organising a pigeon, and for the use of his brains in coming up with the idea, and the idea of dumping the shares of the winner, and his labour in organising the secret purchase of english shares, was how much? - Did the economic system permit him to take more from the pool of social wealth than he put in? - How productive was his relatively brainy scheme? - How much did it contribute to the social pool of wealth? - <br><br>I think you and everyone will agree that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer is a saying of some fame - And some truth - And that everyone will agree that it is not in proportion to hardworkingness, brains, application, etc - That, generally speaking, the rich work easier and the poor work harder - And that this violates the principle of paying people for work - <br><br>I think you will agree that, when everyone did their own work, and no one specialised in their job, and there was no exchange, as it is with the other animals, that pay was much more proportional to work - And that, now we have speicalisation of work and pooling of the products of work in order to mix specilaised product, that we have created an opportunity for the taking out from the pool more than the person puts in - And that we have not sufficient controls to inhibit this theft - On the contrary, our attachment, our faith in grab-all-you-can means that there is little will to inhibit this theft - Everyone is of a mind to have no control of this theft, so that the theft is possible for all - We reason: If we prevent the taking out more than put in, I will be inhibited in taking out more than I put in, and that will be bad - We do not reason that open season on taking out means most getting out less than they put in, causing violence, which is ever-escalative, leading to war and extinction - History is a process of increasing theft, of increasing violence and danger, of pain ans suffering - unnecessary - because of this myopia, this tunnel vision in looking at the economic situation - We put ourselves at the liberty of grabbing and are shocked and annoyed when we find that others have the evilness to grab from us - Of course we defend what is to us rightly ours [we grabbed it, didnt we?] and a fight ensues - An endless fight, because both sides think they are right - War and weaponry grow and grow, as each side tries to prevail - If sticks and stones will not give me my rights, then, by god, my enemies have asked for it, I'll give them spears and arrows - But the keeping the secret of the new weaponry is as important as the new weaponry - If the other side gets it, I have to escalate - <br><br>If nuclear weapons disappeared tomorrow, war and weaponry would continue to escalate - Henry George pointed out very clearly one way in which money transfers from earners to nonearners - Aperson buys land when it is cheap or worthless, others bild a city round that land and make the land valuable, and the owner gets rich - the owner may have worked, but is overpaid - Sucks wealth out of the public welfare into private pocket - Okay, so there is an error in the economic system - Dont you think the 99% would have prevailed in getting this leak fixed since Henry George pointed it out, if the 99% had known that they are on the losing end of this error? - Dont you think we have failed to plug this legal theft because many of the 99% who lose by it are hoping to gain by it? - When the 99% are aware of the reality, when everyone is economically literate, we will stop the leaks and end violence - Even some of the 1% who will lose financially by stopping up all these leaks by limiting fortunes to the limit of what hard work can do, will be moved by the arguments that extinction is on its way - <br><br>Is there an at-least 1% chance of nuclear war and extinction, now we know that atomic waar will put 60 times enough atomic smoke into the air [above the washout by rain level] to block out the sunlight permanently, lower the world av temperature 3 times lower than during an iceage? - I think you will agree, yes - If there was a 1% chance of a bomb in your house, wouldnt you act? - Yet some failure of the human mind means that people are not acting, are not facing the problem, are not looking for solutions, are still treating solutions by throwing things at the people making suggestions - We may simply not have enough cortical brain to pull us through this - <br><br>I have expressed myself in a partially new way here - If people will persist in putting up with my responses, and telling me where they are at, in feelings and thought, I may one day put it in a way that people can see, can buy what Im saying - That is why I am so grateful for your responses</span><!--EZCODE FONT END--> <p></p><i></i>
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