[ExI] Fwd: A rant on financial obesity and Project Virgle & an ironic disclosure :-)

[kanzure]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernh... at kurtz-fernhout.com>
Date: Apr 21, 10:54 pm
Subject: A rant on financial obesity and Project Virgle & an ironic
disclosure :-)
To: Project Virgle

For busy executives, the summary from the end: :-)

So what am I really saying?

That we as a society are not going to happily get to Mars or the
Asteroids
or other star systems, or even just fix up Space Ship Earth, until we
come
to see the love of money as the problem, not the solution.

Or as made clear by Iain M. Banks:
 http://folk.uio.no/thomas/po/the-culture.html
"Money is a sign of poverty, meaning that money only has a function in
a
scarcity economy, and therefore its existence betrays a pre-abundant
(poor)
society."

And so financial obesity is part of the problem, not the solution.

Do with that insight what you can, even if only in jest next April
1st. :-)

--Paul Fernhout

===========================================

A rant on financial obesity and Project Virgle & an ironic
disclosure :-)

Now, (April 21st) for those few out there still paying attention, is
where
IMHO the original April 1st joke really starts to get weird. Or should
I say
"Wired"? :-)

First, please make sure you are sitting comfortably and have no
beverages in
your mouth you could choke on in case of either laughter or
outrage. :-)

In the interests of up-front disclosure, sooner or later someone savvy
in
social networks will figure out an indirect link between my family
and, say,
a project like this:
  "Son of TIA: Pentagon Surveillance System Is Reborn in Asia"
   http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/03/SINGAPORE
  "Un-wired" (a defense of that system and rebuttal of the article)
   http://www.cognitive-edge.com/2007/03/unwired.php
  "Welcome to RAHS: Risk Assessment & Horizon Scanning"
   http://rahs.org.sg/t2_home.html
  "Video overview"
   http://rahs.org.sg/t2_multimedia_rv.html

I know that disclosure may look bad to some. :-(

Or the height of sublime ironic humor to others. :-)

I did warn you to have no beverages in your mouth you could choke
on. :-)

BTW, if you hadn't already figured out that link, maybe you need
better
social network analysis software? :-) And no, don't ask me, I'm too
busy on
OpenVirgle/OSCOMAK, and I don't write that kind of stuff anyway. :-)

And to think Byte rejected a write up of a simulation of self-
replicating
robots I wrote in the 1980s on a Symbolics despite saying it was the
most
interesting and fascinating thing they had seen in a long time but
wasn't
PC-oriented and business-oriented enough for their new (downward :-)
direction. (I think Marshall Brain may have been at a talk I gave on
that
simulation at NCSU. :-)
 http://www.marshallbrain.com/
And now the irony to see this other image actually in print in a
comparable
magazine discussed in a highly critical tone :-( That image was done,
by the
way, using this free and open source unrelated third-party non-
infringing
OpenGL-compatible Java graphics library:
  "jGL 3D Graphics Library for Java"
 http://www.cmlab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~robin/JavaGL/
Used already in OpenVirgle here: :-)
 http://code.google.com/p/openvirgle/source/browse/trunk/jgl.jar

If it helps restore a little trust, I can say that my wife and I
sincerely
believe that bureaucrats learning to see things from multiple
perspectives
will ultimately be a good thing. A system like that might even have
helped
US intelligence analysts communicate better to the appointed
commander-in-chief and so avoid wasting trillions of dollars and tens
of
thousands of lives for a "preventive" war of choice in Iraq (or soon
perhaps
Iran :-( ). And the parts we had anything to do with are also now used
to do
things like help provide better care to cancer patients and to better
manage
forests. And the larger general ideas there in that video could also
be
applied to designing aspects of space settlements as well (substitute
"designer" for "analyst" in that video. :-)

One new word I learned at IBM Research: "co-opetition". :-)
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coopetition

But, is that also another word for dirty hands or hard ethical
choices? :-(

Also, in partial defense, we did try NASA first a decade ago (like
with the
original idea for OSCOMAK).
 http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/index.htm
But they were too busy running a shuttle to nowhere. :-(
On a tiny budget (relatively speaking). :-(
And I'm not a very good salesperson. :-(

Everybody did get fair warning though, see: :-)
 http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/msg/7bb134f616feed3b
"Har Har! I've never been called a "space pirate" before, but Isaac
Asimov
did once call me a "rotten kid". :-)"

Just remember this when I refuse to confirm or deny anything: :-)
 http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lando_Calrissian
    "We go back a long way, Lando and me."
    "Can you trust him?"
    "No. But he has no love for the Empire, I can tell you that."
    -- Han Solo and Leia Organa

Prussian-derived "Empire" starved and gassed relatives to death in
Holland,
and made my mother as a teenager suffer other horrors that some might
feel
worse than death, in part from her ancestry. :-( I think *she* perhaps
did
feel that way about those horrors, and so moved to the USA after WWII
to try
to escape that horrendous past. But as my well traveled (Merchant
Marine)
father said, "Wherever you go, you take yourself along." In the
abundant
USA. my mother spent decades hording food and becoming obese (she had
an old
relative literally die of starvation in her household, although he was
very
sick and weak already when he arrived at her home I heard).
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944

The result of living through extreme scarcity is often hording and
obesity.
I don't want to see that happen again on Mars -- or on Earth. :-(
 http://news.google.com/news?q=food+war

Why should I love Empire and killing and starving people for a cause
whether
it is called "Deutschland", "America", "Profit", "Babylon", "Virgle",
"Capitalism", or even "Zion"? :-(
 http://www.rachelcorriefoundation.org/
Though I certainly have no love for terrorists either, who are mostly
just
the flip side of the same coin with "empire" on the other face IMHO. :-
(
Same with killing and destroying for any "ism":
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rankism
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism
And as my mother told me, for every German soldier killed in
Rotterdam, ten
townspeople would be grabbed at random and lined up and shot as
collective
punishment:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment
 http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
So killing doesn't work anyhow (at least, when you are not Emperor).
German
culture has progressed far beyond that now, I am glad to see. Maybe
the USA
could learn something from them now, or from others:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi_(film)
People change and systems change all the time, often with unexpected
quickness:
 "The Optimism of Uncertainty"
 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040920/zinn
Still, when all you have is a military, every problem looks like a
war:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_war
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%93present)
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War
Alternative (at least as a first step):
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Peace
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Element
So will we soon see the "War on getting to Mars"? :-(
 http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040114-3.html

BTW, Singapore is an interesting place to learn about if you think
about
that city-state as a prototype of the world's first space
settlement. :-)
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore
Although one can also imagine many alternative future forms of space
settlement governance than "Disneyland with the Death Penalty": :-(
   http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson.html

There, now, including my previous posts, I probably have everyone
across the
political spectrum pissed at me. :-)  And a few laughing, I hope,
though
hopefully not to the point of pissing in their pants over the
irony. :-)
Who have I not touched on in my monologues? Google-ites. Foundation
managers. "Terrorists". The imperial/government/school/military/
corporation
complex that spawns them all. :-( Both Zionists and Neo-Nazis. Even
the
*real* sea pirates in the Straits. :-( As well as likely those other
alienated youth caught in the middle of all that worldwide mess who
feel
betrayed looking for easy answers or simple characters:http://
www.adbusters.org/the_magazine/71/Generation_Fcked_How_Britain...
“The reason our [British] children’s lives are the worst among
economically
advanced countries is because we are a poor version of the USA,” he
said.
“So the USA comes second from bottom and we follow behind. The age of
neo-liberalism, even with the human face that New Labour has given it,
cannot stem the tide of the social recession capitalism creates.”

Rhetorically, I wonder what *they* all have in common? :-)

Hint: Empire (and profit) or its blowback. :-)

And Empire is, IMHO, a big part of the reason we can't seem to find
the
resources
   http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm
either for a decent civilian space program or cleaning up Spaceship
Earth
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth
which we are all already on board (and then making the world game play
out
well for all the passengers).
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Game

And it seems if you oppose *both* Empire and the terrorists it spawns:
  "Obama Identifies Iraqi 'Blowback'"http://
thegate.nationaljournal.com/2007/07/obama_identifies_iraqi_blo...
that doesn't leave many friendly faces, or does it? :-)
  "Wright's "Blowback""
 http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/carpenter/013
"It seems the Rev. Wright is being asked to head to the back of some
Straight-Talking Express bus. Quiet, boy, only distinguished white
professors are permitted, with impunity, to gussy up the patently
obvious in
books that the great unwashed will never read, nor should they. That
might
crimp our imperial style."

It would be such a farce if people on all sides weren't dying. :-(
Or becoming physical and emotional and genetic casualties:
 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12482733/
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium
Or becoming refugees:
 http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html
"Iraqi refugees throughout the region have become increasingly
desperate.
Despite a decline in violence in the second half of 2007, only a small
number have gone home, often because their resources are exhausted. Of
those
who returned to Iraq, many found their property occupied and suffered
secondary displacement. UNHCR estimates more than 4.7 million Iraqis
have
left their homes, many in dire need of humanitarian care. Of these,
more
than 2.7 million Iraqis are displaced internally, while more than 2
million
have fled to neighbouring states, particularly Syria and Jordan. Many
were
displaced prior to 2003, but the largest number has fled since. In
2006,
Iraqis became the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe."

Essentially, by focusing on "profit" (and so Empire to defend that
profit
and related "ownership" and "equity") this is the kind of deadly farce
of
the bubble of Empire that Google and Virgin are (in jest) proposing
bringing
to Mars. It's just the "unsaid" part of the prayer/joke:
  "The War Prayer" by Mark Twain
 http://www.warprayer.org/
Paraphrased: "... You heard the words 'Grant us the [profits on Mars],
O
Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is
compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary.
When you
have prayed for [profits  on Mars] you have prayed for many
unmentioned
results which follow [profits on Mars] -- must follow it, cannot help
but
follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken
part of
the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen! ... [Help]
us to
turn [those who cannot pay their air fees or water fees or patent fees
or
copyright fees] out roofless with their little children to wander
unfriended
in the wastes of [Mars] in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the
sun
flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn
with
travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it --
For our
sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives,
protract
their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with
their
tears, stain the white [CO2] snow with the blood of their wounded feet
[so
that others will see that suffering and so work harder for profits on
Mars
to avoid the same for their families]! We ask it, in the spirit of
love, of
Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and
friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and
contrite
hearts. Amen. ..."

But Google-ites apparently can't see beyond profit even in jest. Or
can
they? I can hope this jest was just a nervous laugh by Google at
itself. But
with the Virgin involvement, somehow I doubt that. :-( I'll be glad to
be
proven wrong. And I also thought that way myself years ago:
 http://groups.google.com/group/virgle/msg/081919dbba30d1f7
So people can change. Even me. :-)

Again:
"There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of
success,
nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.
For the reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order.
This luke-warmness arises partly from fear of their adversaries,
who have the law in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of
mankind,
who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual
experience of it." -- Machiavelli "The Prince"

Caught in the middle of all this mess, you can hopefully see why I
keep
requoting Manuel De Landa as my conceptual shield. :-( Or perhaps
security
blanket? :-)
  "MESHWORKS, HIERARCHIES AND INTERFACES" by Manuel De Landa
 http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
"To make things worse, the solution to this is not simply to begin
adding
meshwork components to the mix. Indeed, one must resist the temptation
to
make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only
because,
as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because
in real
life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these
cannot
be established through theory alone but demand concrete
experimentation.
Certain standardizations, say, of electric outlet designs or of
data-structures traveling through the Internet, may actually turn out
to
promote heterogenization at another level, in terms of the appliances
that
may be designed around the standard outlet, or of the services that a
common
data-structure may make possible. On the other hand, the mere presence
of
increased heterogeneity is no guarantee that a better state for
society has
been achieved. After all, the territory occupied by former Yugoslavia
is
more heterogeneous now than it was ten years ago, but the lack of
uniformity
at one level simply hides an increase of homogeneity at the level of
the
warring ethnic communities. But even if we managed to promote not only
heterogeneity, but diversity articulated into a meshwork, that still
would
not be a perfect solution. After all, meshworks grow by drift and they
may
drift to places where we do not want to go. The goal-directedness of
hierarchies is the kind of property that we may desire to keep at
least for
certain institutions. Hence, demonizing centralization and glorifying
decentralization as the solution to all our problems would be wrong.
An open
and experimental attitude towards the question of different hybrids
and
mixtures is what the complexity of reality itself seems to call for.
To
paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari, never believe that a meshwork will
suffice
to save us."

Although DMCA is also a bit of a safe harbor for service providers,
like for
OSCOMAK-like systems: :-)
 http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/faq.cgi

Or as I wrote elsewhere in my own words:
"... I agree with the sentiment of the Einstein quote [That we should
approach the universe with compassion], but
that sentiment itself is only part of a larger difficult-to-easily-
resolve
situation. It become more the Yin/Yang or Meshwork/Hierarchy situation
I
see when I look out my home office window into a forest. On the
surface it
is a lovely scene of trees as part of a forest. Still, I try to see
*both*
the peaceful majesty of the trees and how these large trees are
brutally
shading out of existence saplings which are would-be competitors (even
shading out their own children). Yet, even as big trees shade out some
of
their own children, they also put massive resources into creating a
next
generation, one of which will indeed likely someday replace them when
they
fall. I try to remember there is both an unseen silent chemical war
going
on out there where plants produce defense compounds they secrete in
the
soil to inhibit the growth of other plant species (or insects or
fungi) as
a vile act of territoriality and often expansionism, and yet also the
result is a good spacing of biomass to near optimally convert sunlight
to
living matter and resist and recover from wind and ice damage. I try
to
recall that there is the most brutal of competition between species of
plants and animals and fungi and so on over water, nutrients
(including
from eating other creatures), sunlight, and space, while at the same
time
each bacterial colony or multicellular organism (like a large Pine
tree)
is a marvel of cooperation towards some implicitly shared purpose. I
see
the awesome result of both simplicity and complexity in the
organizational
structure of all these organisms and their DNA, RNA, and so on,
adapted so
well in most cases to the current state of such a complex web of
being.
Yet I can only guess the tiniest fraction of what suffering that
selective
shaping through variation and selection must have entailed for untold
numbers of creatures over billions of years. To be truthful, I can
actually *really* see none of that right now as it is dark outside
this
early near Winter Solstice time (and an icy rain is falling) beyond
perhaps a silhouette outline, so I must remember and imagine it,
perhaps as Einstein suggests as an "optical delusion of [my]
consciousness". :-) "

So much for "world peace" when even the tranquil seeming forests have
so
much Yin-Yang complexity going on within and around the trees. :-)
 The best
I feel we can hope for is balance (like Ursula K. Le Guin's writings):
 http://www.ursulakleguin.com/
or maybe, transcendence to some form of universe certainly way beyond
our
present understanding; example, with its own flaws:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis_of_Prime_Intellect
But still, no matter what examples the universes sets before us, or in
what
proportion, as *ethical* and *spiritual* beings, we humans can choose
a
different way, and at least approximate world peace among ourselves as
best
we can. Something I learned from an old and wise biologist (Larry
Slobodkin)
who studied both philosophy and nature.

What a dangerous game life is, especially living in "interesting
times". :-(
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times
The good news is, no one will get out of this infinite game alive
anyway, so
we might as well have some fun with it 'till then. :-)
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games

See why the USA has to spend about $600 billion a year on K-12 and
college
education (instead of, say, the space program):
 http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d98/d98t031.asp
to keep the US American people "disciplined" and not playful:
 http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
and then "busy" afterwards (including with a military budget 50X
NASA's):
 http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
"Let's pretend for a moment that work doesn't turn people into
stultified
submissives. Let's pretend, in defiance of any plausible psychology
and the
ideology of its boosters, that it has no effect on the formation of
character. And let's pretend that work isn't as boring and tiring and
humiliating as we all know it really is. Even then, work would still
make a
mockery of all humanistic and democratic aspirations, just because it
usurps
so much of our time. Socrates said that manual [or intellectual :-)]
laborers make bad friends and bad citizens because they have no time
to
fulfill the responsibilities of friendship and citizenship. He was
right.
Because of work, no matter what we do, we keep looking at our
watches."

That $600 billion a year is spent essentially from fear of the human
potential. From fear of "OpenVirgle". From *fear* the kids might
actually
figure out how to go to Mars instead of being profligate consumers and
obedient cannon fodder soldiers. :-( That fear is still the
fundamental
basis of the two biggest institutions almost all of us spend almost
all of
our time (school and work). And so *fear* is what keeps more people
from
doing space settlement given how interesting it is and how much
prosperity
our mostly automated productive systems can pump out -- whether those
free
people work on OpenVirgle or choose another approach or another
related good
cause (Earthly sustainability).
 http://www.heifer.org/
 http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/06/09/design-for-the-90-exhibition/
And it is likely fear that holds Google back from becoming a post-
scarcity
organization despite the continuing rush of exponential growth in
technological capacity its planners surely must be predicting:
 http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1
 http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion/0061.html
 http://www.bootstrap.org/dkr/discussion/0126.html

Now some fears are good to have. But some are not.

And one of the few antidotes to fear is ... humor. :-)
 http://www.humorproject.com/doses/default.php?number=1
 http://www.humorproject.com
And I'm glad to see Google-ites still have some, even given the
insanely
long hours at Google (which frankly are illegal in other parts of the
world. :-)
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek

But is humor enough? From:
 http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue6.htm
"Ordinary people send their children to school to get smart, but what
modern
schooling teaches is dumbness. It’s a religious idea gone out of
control.
You don’t have to accept that, though, to realize this kind of economy
would
be jeopardized by too many smart people who understand too much. I
won’t ask
you to take that on faith. Be patient. I’ll let a famous American
publisher
explain to you the secret of our global financial success in just a
little
while. ..."

But maybe things are different for middle- and upper-middle-class
kids? Or
in private schools?

Again from Gatto:
"""
Jacques Ellul, whose book Propaganda is a reflection on the
phenomenon,
warned us that prosperous children are more susceptible than others to
the
effects of schooling because they are promised more lifelong comfort
and
security for yielding wholly: "Critical judgment disappears
altogether, for
in no way can there ever be collective critical judgment....The
individual
can no longer judge for himself because he inescapably relates his
thoughts
to the entire complex of values and prejudices established by
propaganda.
With regard to political situations, he is given ready-made value
judgments
invested with the power of the truth by...the word of experts." The
new
dumbness is particularly deadly to middle- and upper-middle-class kids
already made shallow by multiple pressures to conform imposed by the
outside
world on their usually lightly rooted parents. When they come of age,
they
are certain they must know something because their degrees and
licenses say
they do. They remain so convinced until an unexpectedly brutal
divorce, a
corporate downsizing in midlife, or panic attacks of meaninglessness
upset
the precarious balance of their incomplete humanity, their stillborn
adult
lives. Alan Bullock, the English historian, said Evil was a state of
incompetence. If true, our school adventure has filled the twentieth
century
with evil. Ellul puts it this way: "The individual has no chance to
exercise
his judgment either on principal questions or on their implication;
this
leads to the atrophy of a faculty not comfortably exercised under [the
best
of] conditions...Once personal judgment and critical faculties have
disappeared or have atrophied, they will not simply reappear when
propaganda
is suppressed...years of intellectual and spiritual education would be
needed to restore such faculties. The propagandee, if deprived of one
propaganda, will immediately adopt another, this will spare him the
agony of
finding himself vis a vis some event without a ready-made opinion."
"""

So, the few in the world with money generally are so *seriously* :-)
caught
up in keeping it all or becoming even *more* pathologically
financially
obese, that they can't help the world transition to a post-scarcity
(and
humorous :-) economy either.

Look at Project Virgle and "An Open Source Planet":
 http://www.google.com/virgle/opensource.html
Even just in jest some of the most financially obese people on the
planet
(who have built their company with thousands of servers all running
GNU/Linux free software) apparently could not see any other
possibility but
seriously becoming even more financially obese off the free work of
others
on another planet (as well as saddling others with financial obesity
too
:-). And that jest came almost half a *century* after the "Triple
Revolution" letter of 1964 about the growing disconnect between effort
and
productivity (or work and financial fitness):
 http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/
C_CC2a_TripleRevolution...
Even not having completed their PhDs, the top Google-ites may well
take many
more *decades* to shake off that ideological discipline. I know it
took me
decades (and I am still only part way there. :-) As with my mother, no
doubt
Googlers have lived through periods of scarcity of money relative to
their
needs to survive or be independent scholars or effective agents of
change.
Is it any wonder they probably think being financially obese is a
*good*
thing, not an indication of either personal or societal pathology? :-(

Think of what even just a million independent minds could do for the
world
 http://www.albanyfreeschool.com/
 http://www.unschooling.info/
if, like Rachel Corrie, they all had her courage and if they were also
not
too worried about future employment (my advantage as a stay-at-home
Dad. :-)

And, yes, like Rachel, sadly, some of them will die for their beliefs.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the
blood of
patriots and tyrants."  --  Thomas Jefferson

But again, like Rachel, even if sadly some might *die* for their
beliefs,
hopefully none would ever *kill* for their beliefs. There is a huge
difference. Imagine, if. say, a million unarmed average US Americans
had
walked into Afghanistan or Iraq or Saudi Arabia (where most of the
hijackers
were from) after 9/11 bearing gifts and helpful skills for the average
people of those places *instead* of a million armed soldiers bringing
shock
and awe. And kept giving even if 10% of them were brutally killed.
What that
would have *proved* about the wrongness of terrorism and 9/11 and the
deepness of the generous US American character which helped end the
"hunger
winter" and earned the Dutch people's gratitude. So maybe this sounds
impossible. But at least it is the kind of thing we can think about --
what
if it was possible? Say, for North Korea? What if?

The fact is, there are far more than six *million* millionaire
families in
the USA who would never have to "work" another day in their lives if
they
were frugal (and so could work full time on space settlement or other
worthwhile charitable free ends).
   http://www.dba-oracle.com/t_billionaire_next_door.htm
There must just be a failure of imagination that keeps them from it.
Or an
excess of a certain capitalist religion shown on a libertarian-leaning
college mailing list I am on (and usually disagreeing :-). Or a
failure to
be able to define "enough" and move beyond a fear of becoming poor.
And the
millionaires I've known or heard of who became suddenly wealthy
generally
are suddenly adrift in a life that has not prepared them for thinking
about
deep questions like what their values and priorities really are and
why --
and working through that takes time which they often don't have as
money
runs away from them spent on trivialities of "their stillborn adult
lives".
And the stable millionaires who have slowly earned their wealth are
often so
enmeshed in the current order of things to make it hard to see beyond
it (a
current order which they may well have genuinely and sincerely tried
to make
better, like at Google, and even succeeded at doing so to an extent,
within
the bounds of Empire.)

And no, I am not a millionaire. I'm just a somewhat frugal guy
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_simplicity
with a little imagination and a hard working spouse (who is probably
much
smarter and more imaginative than me in many ways. :-)
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Mari%C4%87
That's one reason we are stuck with so many hard choices day-to-day,
like
whether to purchase health insurance or not, or develop intelligence
systems
or not. :-(

Fortunately we don't have the worse choices of many US Americans these
days
of whether to starve or freeze. :-(
   http://www.secondharvest.org/learn_about_hunger/
  "Feeds more than 25 million hungry Americans each year"
   http://www.hungerinamerica.org/
   "“It is tragic and alarming that more and more people are relying
on
emergency food assistance in the United States, where we produce
enough food
to feed every hungry person in the world,” said Robert Forney,
President and
CEO of the America's Second Harvest Network."

And the final solution for that still seems a ways off, giving us a
short
time still to act and play with better scenarios than this:
 http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna4.htm
"Ultimately, you would expect that there would be riots across
America. But
the people could not riot. The terrorist scares at the beginning of
the
century had caused a number of important changes. By 2030, there were
video
security cameras and microphones covering and recording nearly every
square
inch of public space in America. There were taps on all phone
conversations
and Internet messages sniffing for terrorist clues. If anyone thought
about
starting a protest rally or a riot, or discussed any form of civil
disobedience with anyone else, he was branded a terrorist and
preemptively
put in jail. Combine that with robotic security forces, and riots are
impossible. ... Because no one had a window, they could really pack
people
into these buildings. Each terrafoam dorm building had a four-acre
foot
print. It was a perfect 417 foot by 417 foot by 417 foot solid brown
cube.
Each cube originally held exactly 76,800 people. Doubling this to
153,600
people in each building was unthinkable, but they were doing it
anyway. On
the other hand, you had to marvel at the efficiency. At that density,
they
could house every welfare recipient in the entire country in less than
1,500
of these buildings. By spacing the buildings 100 feet apart, they
could
house 200,000,000 people in a space of less than 20 square miles if
they had
wanted to. At that density, they could put everyone in the country
without a
job into a space less than five miles square in size, put a fence
around it
and forget about us. If they accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb or
two on
us, we would all be gone and they wouldn't have to worry about us
anymore."

Also, more important than implementations I or others may do (or fail
to do
from lack of focus or time) are the *ideas* behind them. And the
*ethics*
behind them. And the April 1st Project Virgle announcement has made it
possible for me to get these ideas out there as one more voice in the
chorus, by giving me a drop more of creative energy. :-) Even if, as
with
Lando Calrissian, the ethical decisions of living in the middle of
Empire-enforced scarcity (25 million hungry Americans?) can often be
quite
complex. :-( Like we just sent a check to the US Empire for enough
money to
have paid someone to work on Project Virgle full time for a year
(well,
maybe in India :-), when I know much of it will instead pay for the US
Military (and bullets and cluster bombs and land mines) instead.
 http://www.stopclustermunitions.org/
 http://www.icbl.org/treaty
To be clear, I'd happily pay more in taxes if like in much of Europe
everyone else did and the money was well spent.

See also: :-)
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Galileo_Seven
"Spock gets an idea and decides to dump and ignite all the remaining
fuel
from the [shuttlecraft's] engines [rather than maintain orbit as long
as
possible which would result in sure doom to follow for everyone in his
care
in an hour]. This produces a giant flare that is easily spotted by the
Enterprise sensors. Once again, Kirk turns the ship around and
transports
the survivors out just moments before the shuttle is destroyed on re-
entry."

Maybe the millionaires and billionaires and trillionaires
(governments) out
there should think on Spock's choice as capitalistic and militaristic
irrational exuberance starts reentering the stratosphere (wars over
food,
water, arms, climate, and oil profits, and yes, blowback from
terrorism).
 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=globalization+blowback
And actually do something besides compete and make jokes:
 http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/nc.htm
"No Contest, which has been stirring up controversy since its
publication in
1986, stands as the definitive critique of competition. Drawing from
hundreds of studies, Alfie Kohn eloquently argues that our struggle to
defeat each other -- at work, at school, at play, and at home -- turns
all
of us into losers."

But given what Gatto and Ellul say, that action may be a long time
coming
because the wealthy get so much emotional reward out of believing the
propaganda of elites deserving abundance amidst scarcity for the many
and
spreading that propaganda further (even via Virgle).
  "The Mythology of Wealth"http://www.democraticunderground.com/
discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&...
"The cheap-labor conservative “minimalist government” social Darwinian
world
view is just plain bullshit. It builds a new class structure, which
just
like the ancient class structures, is based on a set of mythological
concepts. In fact, those mythological concepts like “property rights”,
“contract rights”, “corporations”, “stocks”, “bonds”, and even “money”
itself are socially created to regulate distribution and access to
resources. The “market place” is a human creation. The details of how
it
operates are determined by the particulars of the institutions on
which it
is built. It is “instituted among men”, and if its workings become
destructive of the lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness of people
subject
to it, it may be “altered or abolished”."

For example, Google contractors get no Segways and massages?
 http://www.google-watch.org/googles-ipo.html
Or second class badges?
 http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/googlife
"I used to work at Google as a Contractor. Let me tell you, it wasn't
the
greatest place for a contractor. First, you have red badges, so anyone
with
a Google badge looks down on you. Already you feel left out, and you
don't
feel like enjoying all the benefits Googler's have. ... I don't miss
working
there. The people arn't really all that friendly, people have
arrogance and
MBA, PHD attitudes."

And ultimately, aren't even the people in sweatshops in, say, China
who
build component used in Google servers in some sense Google
contractors?
Definitely no Segways or massages for them. :-(
 http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/templer220807.html
"Well over 150 million migrant workers from rural areas have crowded
into
the cities over the past decade in search of economic survival.  They
may
regularly not get paid for months at a time.  Public healthcare across
the
economy is declining to the point where many millions of working
families
cannot afford to seek medical care or risk huge debt if they do.
 Migrant
workers are at especial risk.  Large numbers of workers in the toy
industry
have now lost their jobs directly as a result of the Mattel recall,
and its
fallout continues. They are the direct victims of their local bosses'
abuses
and the lack of safety control.  But of course they and their stories
and
suffering, literally inscribed in the toys they make, remain
invisible."

So what is Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California but a
little
temporary space habitat bubble of happiness for regular employees, but
floating on a sea of relative misery for everyone else planetwide who
supports it? Can't we as a society or Google/Virgle as an aspiration
do
better that that? And even within that bubble are emerging issues. How
long
can a company expect to run on twenty-somethings without kids?

Google-ites and other financially obese people IMHO need to take a
good look
at the junk food capitalist propaganda they are eating and serving up
to
others, as in saying (even in jest):
 http://www.google.com/virgle/opensource.html
"we should profit from others' use of our innovations, and we should
buy or
lease others' intellectual property whenever it advances our own
goals"
-- even while running one of the biggest post-scarcity enterprises on
Earth
based on free-as-in-freedom software. :-(

Until then, it is up to us other
 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145660/quotes
"semi-evil ... quasi-evil ... not evil enough" hobbyists with smaller
budgets to save the Asteroids and the Planets (including Earth)
   http://www.openvirgle.net/
from financially obese people and their unexamined evil plans to
spread
profit-driven scarcity-creating Empire throughout every nook-and-
cranny of
the universe. :-(
 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086190/quotes
 "The Emperor: Young fool... Only now, at the end, do you
understand... [the
power of love of money :-(]"

Actually, in Google's defense, as far as most newly wealthy, key
Google
people have done far, far better than most by tithing 10% of the
Google IPO
to charitable causes:
 http://www.google.org/
 http://www.google.org/foundation.html
But they remain financially obese. Michael Phillips in _The Seven Laws
of
Money_  suggests
 http://www.google.com/search?q=The+Seven+Laws+of+Money
that from his experience on the board of the Point Foundation that it
was
almost impossible to give money away effectively. And I'd certainly
agree
the world may well be better served with the current leadership at
Google
(who are at least trying not to be "evil", even if that is impossible
100%
in our society or in life in general) instead of if they sold out to
another
new Google leadership that might be 100% evil, especially given Google
is
rapidly becoming a de-facto world government in some ways.
  "Cory Doctorow's Fiction About An Evil Google"
 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/20/2325240
So, their situation is not an easy one. And I may poke fun at them (as
they
poked fun at all of us on April 1st), but I would not bother if I did
not in
some sense also respect their accomplishments and their potential.

So what am I really saying?

That we as a society are not going to happily get to Mars or the
Asteroids
or other star systems, or even just fix up Space Ship Earth, until we
come
to see the love of money as the problem, not the solution.

Or as made clear by Iain M. Banks:
 http://folk.uio.no/thomas/po/the-culture.html
"Money is a sign of poverty, meaning that money only has a function in
a
scarcity economy, and therefore its existence betrays a pre-abundant
(poor)
society."

And so financial obesity is part of the problem, not the solution.

Do with that insight what you can, even if only in jest next April
1st. :-)

I'll say this about my mom: obese and chainsmoker that she was later
in
life, she was a real trooper to the end. I can respect her for that.
And she
had to live with far worse than three rich guys making fun at her
dreams.
Anyway, I'm getting bored and talked out with making political and
social
comments here (I can hear the cheers and applause :-), so on to more
programming etc. on OpenVirgle and OSCOMAK.

--Paul Fernhout
Putting Ki-Aikido into practice throughout the Universe? :-)http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Shin_Toitsu_Aikido

[Note: on physical obesity: I'm overweight and working on
it. :-)http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20070702/stress-unlocks-fat-
cells-ups-...http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/08/the-treadmill-
workstation/
]
copyright (c) 2008 Paul D. Fernhout
Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire document are
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