Understanding the Internet: The Information Society 

Update: Since I posted this yesterday, I have gotten (for the first time) a negative rating. This amazes me! My writing here is based on that of highly respected sociologists and psychologists. What the negative rating says is simple: people using the Internet cannot apply critical inquiry to themselves (a necessary component of morality), and are clueless about more than just government. I want to specifically mention statistics! Stats are dangerous to apply to humanity when done well, and no statistician would validate "web by invitation" stats.

Really people, get a clue! Please don't get me depressed into thinking humanity sucks after all, and the only path to peace is a planet w/o humans.

=Original text==
Using statistics from a web site is not necessarily a good way to determine the popularity of an idea. True polls use random samplings, and approach people for information. Here on this site, people are coming to the site with ideas, and they don't necessarily represent a true cross section of the opinions of the population.

People coming to this site could very likely fit into small categories of "types," such as social activists or: people seeking change. Exactly how things should change and how fast can obviously vary. Some discussion threads have dug deeply into economic and financial issues far more deeply than the average person would; this I know for a fact. I was recently a census worker, and I learned that the majority of people are not well versed in the mechanics of government, least of all the census. I would say that those people who discuss government and finances are in fact a tiny portion of the population.

If this site is going to be used to try to improve democracy through the Internet, the there has to be a huge caution flag raised.

Look at the history of the Internet; it is an extension of the Information Society. If you have read Lewis Mumford's incredibly predictive testament of information technology, you will know that the Information Society has its roots in the command and control structure of the Egyptian Empire--hardly democracy! "Pharaoh, let my people go," said Moses.

The great leaps of the Information Society have been the invention of the book, the radio, TV, and of course the Internet. I would add the spread of the use of coffee around the world, and coffee has historically stimulated the original digital networks, our neural networks, and helped create thecollaborative environments of the coffee houses of history.

The invention of the use of light, either as lamps or bulbs, and windows has helped us be able to spend time reading and writing. We think better when we feel better, and we feel better when we are clean, so plumbing has contributed as well. Humanity is historically defined by technological break-throughs, and technology is created by collaboration. Unfortunately technology is also exploited by non-peaceful and dangerous people, but these people do not work through collaboration, but use instead predatory cooperation; they are predators.

This site may produce good ideas, but as far as I can tell, nothing thought up in recent decades has really worked to make society better. We recently escaped the nuclear mutual destruction of the Cold War only to end up in this mess;guaranteed destruction of the environment through global free trade that promises to alter weather patterns causing hurricanes, blistering heat, and other equally terrifying prospects.

President Obama is aware of this, and despite some promising attempts by him to resolve some of the problems in the little picture, I do not believe that there is any plan on the table, or on this site, that will actually improve the World's situation. Because there is a lack of a "single-system" approach to helping the world, I believe that the situation can only get worse.

One good thing to know about is the concept of "instruction creep" that comes from the Wikipedia: it refers to how good ideas that become policy (or the laws of the Wiki) often, or even usually become weapons for Hitler-type control fanatics. In the case of
globalism, anti-cultural bias has become a vehicle for economic bias. We successfully redefined being Black and African in the 1980s (I was a Reggae band manager, so I know), and we liberated South Africa. All through the 90s, creep comes in in the form of globalism. Since culture is cool, everyone if different culture is cool, even if they are genociding their own countries to satisfy global free market hunger.

This is happening in Peru right now with proposed extermination of the Native tribes to facilitate the exportation of their land. Peru made a home for escaping Nazis after WWII; Peru's government is wholly dictatorial and not to be trusted. Peru, of course, blames the US saying that it has to destroy therain forests because of a "free trade" agreement, which cannot be true. Obama is equally accused by Latin American Capital of attempting to alter the "free trade"agreements by removing NAFTA.

This is why I concentrate on the psychological and sociological aspects of the economy, finances and society--and especially the historical, such as in writing by Lewis Mumford.

As the song goes: "I think this is just another case of history repeating itself."

Please look here for information about the Information Society:
Thinman.com --> http://thinman.com

Tax waste and damage, not hard work: Rattlesnake Rebellion 

The Fathers of the US, also called the "framers of the Constitution," used didactic framing to build US capital from colonial capital. What we got was a new version of the same old thing: exploitation of the people by the elite. Didactic framing usually refers to the style of teaching where teachers force information down the students' throats, but technically it is the cognitive approach, which says that you need to be taught what to think, and if you are not, you are insane. Added to that in education and psychology is the behavioral approach that is simply sadistic conditioning.

The option, or perhaps the original human condition to which the above sickness is the option, is the natural collaborative system that nature provided for us through evolution. This is generally called constructivism in education, and humanism in psychology, but really is the way we do everyday things when things are going the way they should be.

The true American revolutionaries were a combination of Europeans and Natives who worked to integrate Native "law" into a document called the Bill of Rights, which has been the template for all rights documents since it was written several centuries ago. Europeans unquestionably came to the New World to capitally exploit it, capital colonial exploitation was nothing new, it was perfected by the Romans before Christ's time. But many Europeans came to the New World for the types of freedom that can only be called Tribal and Native: they were European Natives struggling against European, or perhaps extended Roman, capital.

Many Europeans "nativized" easily, because, as it happens, and native anywhere is a native everywhere--Nativism means a collaborative connection to the Earth. Edward Curtis, the photographer, is such an excellent example -- his rendition of the Natives are unquestionably an example of founding abstract art.

But we are here to discuss politics, and not art, though Curtis is such an excellent digression.

The US was nearly purely corrupt after the original American Revolution--much worse than the English colonial government. One of the main problems was the US government's lack of willingness to pay the revolutionary soldiers, and also its continuation of the use of debtors' prisons: shades of the situation we face right now.

Two rebellions set that straight, and forced the creation of the Constitution, and with it the Bill of Rights. The "Whiskey" Rebellion was the better know (but poorly named), but the more important was Shay's rebellion that focused primarily on corruption in the courts and the debtors' prison situation. It was Shay's rebellion that forced the creation of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights -- two documents nearly completely ignored today in the land they were "framed."

Shays rebels, as well as other important American revolutionaries continued the struggle against capital corruption, and did so very near to where I sit right now, NW Connecticut. Most eventually went to Vermont to form the University of Vermont (well educated rebels!), and none were punished. This consolidation of Nativism between the displaced natives of Europe and the natives of the New World, has defined the necessary path for humanity very well. Since then the consolidation has included Natives from Australia and the Pacific, and will soon include the Natives of Peru struggling against capital exploitation there.

After the extended US technology and manufacturing crash of 2000, I became a long haul truck driver, a job which brought me into direct contact with the entire US simultaneously. I created documentation suggesting a new direction for America that I "framed" within the ideals of Shay's Whiskey rebellions, that utilizes mildly but steadily increasing taxes to limit the kinds of damages that capital does to the economy and the environment. It limits law to a few specific items, like Christ's reduction of the Jews' 800 laws to the few laws of Christianity centering on love and forgiveness. It incorporates an exponential curve to bring the majority of taxation to where capital does the most damage and wastes the most -- at the very top. Because of the "trickle down theory," at least 90% of American wealth resides the hands of the top 10%, and across the world the ration is more like 99% and 1%.

To visualize the use of an exponential curve, think of the right half of a huge suspension bridge viewed from the side. Near the beginning of the curve (or the middle of the bridge), the curve is nearly flat, and it stays flat for nearly the entire expanse, and only becomes steep at the very end. The vast, vast majority of us are in the flat end of the curve, and using the curve, would pay nearly no taxes. Only towards the end where the curve slopes upward would there be significant taxation, and please trust me when I tell you that the people that would be affected at this end of the curve are so rich that they would not physically feel taxation. In fact, this benign form of taxation would only deflate the most inflated prices -- expensive real estate and high-end luxury items.

As it happens, I recently learned that this concept is neither new nor revolutionary -- it is nearly economics as the great Christian Wesley promoted them; Wesley founded the very influential Methodist Church, and in a word, Wesley promoted "thrift."

Obama promised to end the ruinous "trickle down" theory that is destroying America's and the World's economies. This plan, sometimes called "taxing bads, not goods" would instantly end it. Below is the plan as I envisioned it as a trucker, so you know it is down to earth. There are other topics surrounding this kind of plan that explain how de-tuning capital actually increases real wealth by reducing the waste of the over-production of capital construction, but what we need to do here to properly implement democracy into economics is to keep it simple, as Christ did with his formation of the morals of Christianity. I called the document the "Rattlesnake" after the original American revolutionary battle flag: "don't tread on me." The rattlesnake still appears on the Army flag.

Here are the "demands" of the Rattlesnake Rebellion:

1) Create unlimited investment cash to build export industries by allowing all income to be kept in 401K-type tax free accounts

2) Eliminate inflation with an exponential tax on money spent when deducted from 401K-type accounts, allow borrowing for major purchases

3) Eliminate the middleman with an exponential brokerage tax

4) Eliminate gouging with an exponential tax on the difference between prices (retail, rent, and real estate) and average (or mean) production or purchase costs with an exception made for replacement parts

5) Even the field of competition with an exponential tax on corporate size - balance the advantage caused by the gouging-elimination tax, and allow for the success of very small business

6) Eliminate corporate person-hood by removing ex post facto protection for corporations involved in any wrongdoing

7) Protect the nation, people, and environment by removing ex-post-facto protection for mass crimes against the economy (shipping jobs overseas), mass destruction of the environment (sub divisions and forest destruction), and compromises to security made as state expediences (allowing foreign drug and criminal infiltration to create a slave-level labor source)

Link:

ThinMan.com/rattlesnake
http://thinman.com/rattlesnake