Another Example of the Limits of a Cost Based Economy to Handle New Growing Problems

This NBCnews.com article specifies just how much, in counters, treatment for Alzheimer's disease will cost. Below is a direct quote from that piece:

"...A devastating disease

To truly understand just how catastrophic an illness Alzheimer's is, consider that it is the only cause of death among the top 10 in the U.S. that can't yet be prevented, cured or even slowed. Someone diagnosed with cancer, heart disease or even HIV/AIDS has a better chance of surviving — and having a better quality of life while battling the disease — than a person diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

According to the Alzheimer's Association, there are now 5.3 million Americans age 65 and older living with the disease. The total direct cost to the U.S. economy of caring for those with Alzheimer's: a staggering $226 billion, with half being borne by Medicare.

Delaying the onset of the disease by just five years, research studies show, could decrease Medicare spending by 50 percent. That's an important point to consider, because economists forecast that unless something is done to cure or even slow the symptoms, the number of people with Alzheimer's will rise to 16 million by 2050 and cost the U.S. economy $1.1 trillion. The portion covered by Medicare will balloon to $589 billion..."

A Wonderful Example of how Sustainable can be done

Please check out Starry Hilders here: Starry Hilders Off Grid Homestead and her YouTube page here

If Only it were just a Cliquey High School

Take a look at the screen shot below of the NBCnews.com video link to the segment produced by Alex Stambaugh. Sandwiched in between a candy ad, and prompts for further glimpses into our insane world is an attempt to characterize current politics as the semi adult, semi adolescent, behavior of high school kids.

Lets forget for the moment that, when such young people do stupid things, it is, in large part, because they have a human, higher brain functionality, not fully realized yet; even as the lower brain pumps out hormones as a part of ages old survival strategies. Our political system as been going for quite a long time now (at least in human terms), as well as the social/economic framework within which it functions. The question you ought to be asking yourself is this: Which is the more ludicrous, a political system now described glibly as being no better than the product of semi adults, or the facile consumption of bad commentary within the plea for even worse consumption; all of it engineered to be brightly engaging and entertaining. None of it, however, even remotely resorting to asking the deeper question of why we would want to continue with this comprehensive farce, which, make no mistake, is both the presentation as well as the insanity presented.

In my opinion, what ought to be making you very angry, is that this segment does no more than a wink and a nudge, nudge, at the infantile behavior of political stage players as they prance about trying to portray the other guy as the fool, all the while crying about their inability to fully control the larger electronic staging.

They do get to control quite of bit of it of course, in these preliminary rounds of auditioning, and marketing research, so as to package the product with the best balance of demographic resonations. The problem is that the real advertising money doesn't kick in till you're down to the semi-finals, where the negative packaging can really start to get the voters all worked up over. We then get then get one side voting against the other side precisely because of the semi-truths, and the outright lies. At which point it doesn't really matter what any candidate says they may or may not do. One or the other will get elected and the realities of where we are now will be ignored, for the most part, as they have been, as each side tries to play to their base, while not pissing off Big Money too much.

On and on this goes, with much the same rhetoric, and about the only thing that changes, as we all buy into it again, is that things just seem to get crazier and more insane. It's all entertaining though by golly, and as distracting as hell.

A Presidential Campaign or High School Clique?

Another Example of the Falicy of "Pay and Forget."

As this NBCnews.com article reminds us, even recycling can be corrupted when you think you can simply pay some folks to re purpose used automobile tires and then not worry about it any more. Especially when you assume these folks will check thoroughly into whether such usage is safe or not. Or that the watch dog agency, strapped by less government, and less taxation zealots, will be able to keep up with even being aware of the new threat.

The Cost of Counters is Far More than even They Can Figure

The trouble with this article about a potential increase in the Fed rate, as it is with economic policy arguments in general, is that it nearly always lacks in not only a deeper context in which to judge what we are being told, but even significant indication that the so called experts cannot agree on how to properly gauge things in whatever context one might present.

We are told in the article that, in addition to the jobless rate going down, the aggregate hourly wage rate has increased slightly. And the gold standard nostrum of people having more to spend affecting inflation is reiterated; only here the consensus on one side is that a desirable rate of 2% is closer at hand so that now would be a good time to "tap the breaks" on the flood gates of dollar specific counters.
What we aren't told, of course, is a more comprehensive breakdown on a wide ranging number of metrics concerning such counters, and how their interaction affects inflation. Any more than on how complex the relationship of prices, and the actual count of counters are to each other, or why it is still mostly the wages of consumers that impact both.

The old idea was that you had to have a certain level of productive application within the cost of labor to justify that cost. Too much demand, and too much wage increase to support demand would always, ultimately, lead to rapid price increases, which, in turn would lead to self perpetuating demands for more wage increases. That we are now in a global wage and product market makes this relationship a great deal more problamatic, certainly, as counter balances can come in from all over.

But that introduces another factor; the amount of dollar specified counters others hold, and their perception of what they are worth. If a negative perception gains general acceptance the speclators jump in with bets for the continued value decline, and the central bank has to jump in to support the counters; a stop gap that can continue for only so long. Unless, of course, you are too big to fail, whereupon everyone one but the holders of large counter aggregates has to take a big bite of a shit sandwhich.

One thing that is hardly ever emphasized is that the overal count of any specified counter grows by means other than simple wages. Certainly, if the Fed simply pumps new counters in, as they did with quantitative easing, you will have more in the total aggregate. Debt itself, however, is the creation of new counters. A piece of paper, created to signify the specifics of the debt arrangement, is then held by whatever institution as an actual instrument of value; rather as gold used to be held, or other, more substantial objects of production, or the things produced, still are. In this case, however, it is the process of repayment that this paper represents that is the productive activity.

The holders of large aggregates, hiding behind the paper of institutions they hold sway over, have been getting absolutely obscene increases in the wages of their paper instruments. How could it be otherwise when they have been able to speculate with the knowledge that, whatever the machinations of the institutions they hold sway over, they can fall back on the zero rate of the Fed to ease any sudden bumps in the road. Mean while the infrastructure of most of the rest of civil interaction goes a begging for counters to keep any of it working at all, much less improved to handle the challenges that will occur more than a financial quarter or two down the road. And wage erners continue to barely make ends meet as global wage competition, as well as automation, makes sure that ever more of us will be living paycheck to paycheck

In this larger context I always start wondering why there isn't greater talk about the actual productivity of any given debt instrument. What is the economy in general getting in return for the profit made on a given speculation? No doubt there are some instances where this might be quite obvious. In others, though, I suspect it is far more aggregious than any recent wage hike, or perhaps even for those going back a good ways into the past.

The answer to why we don't get more comprehensive discussions about such issues is obvious of course. It simply isn't in the interest of any of those who control the discussions, or those with most of the counters. And those of you out there now occupied with the real work of distraction don't want to hear it either. It is, after all, complicated. It requires thought, further inquirey, as well as study of things that just aren't all that entertaining. Even as I write this I know those mostly interested aren't worried at all.

Would Fed Rate Hike End U.S. Economic Honeymoon?

Electrified facade

This is what happens when those in power can represent themselves without the fully free flow of information. And as a recent NPR story on the lack of transparancy in how police officers are investigated for sexual assault (where, even if an officer is caught and fired in one precint, he can get hired in another) has indicated, not only is the flow of needed metrics not in place, national standards for investigative procedures in police departments are also sorely lacking.

The sad part here is that not only does the public suffer, but the everyday heros in police departments across the country suffer as well. This is a virtually impossible job. Something I have maintained for some time now. We create a specialized group to take care of problem individuals for us; a group that has to form very strong bonds of intra group trust in order to depend on each other. And yet we become surprized when they tend to close ranks and protect their own. If any one of us were in these uniquely close knit groups we would tend towards the same protective behavior.

The problem here, as it is with quite a few other specialized occupations, is that we want to throw a particulary distasteful task at a few individuals and then go about our lives as if it didn't have to concern us any more; blissfully ignorant of the realities of the sacrifices involved. This is certainly why we have so far been able to continue with a permanent war economy as there have always been the few willing to man, and woman, the ramparts; something whos days are mostly likely numbered now, though, as the list of enemies grows without end.

There are others, however, who are forced to sacrifice quite arbitrarily, with their health, and/or, low income life style, simply because they have no political power (getting poison created, or stored where they live, or paying too much for needful things that might also end up harming them, etc.). Something that I see as an essential aspect of the game Big Money plays with "who pays and who benefits."

When you think about it though you come to realize that electrified facade is just another way of describing the environment of complete absurdity. In that type of system the catch phrase is definitely "The Absurdity of Growing up," and where the sane represent a failure to be properly medicated, and/or occupied with distraction.

On The Corruption of the Hacker, Open Source Mind Set, and Big Money control of patents

When you bounce around the web as much as I do, following as randomly as possible, all sorts of minimally, as well as primarily, connected things (via tech sites, artistic sites, political commentary sites, as well as YouTube, Digg, and ordinary News sites), you bump into the damnedest linkage threads. What often happens, as a result of this, are connections, and/or juxtapositions, of common, as well as disparate, themes and ideas.

A case in point is the TedxMidwest talk (published on Aug, 30, 2012, on YouTube) given by Pablos Holman on utilizing the hacker mind set to solve perplexing new problems. It is a good presentation and I recommend you give it a view.

As most of you already know, similar talk of turning what has mostly been a private, and all too often, a self serving, mode of occupation, into something positive, has spread far and wide on the Net. Which, in and of itself, is most probably a good thing. My concern here, however, is to illustrate what might be one area of concern for such well intended social thrusts.

I should hasten to point out that this concern didn't surface in my mind right away, after listening to Mr. Holman. My first impression was that, on the whole, it seemed like a good mesh. After all, who wouldn't be attracted to the idea of getting people who see beyond ordinary limits and boundaries; who relish taking the things we take for granted, pulling them apart and seeing what better ways to do things might become apparent. And whether one believes zapping mosquitoes with lasers is truly practical or not, the notion that the hacker mind set, as the ultimate boundary breaker, can be used for positive social change is an attractive idea.

Weeks later, however, I happened to bump into another Ted Talk and, surprisingly enough, it too was on a laser based, mosquitoe zapping system; only this talk took place on Feb 2010, and was presented by Nathan Myhrvold, former Microsoft technology officer and now CEO of Intellectual Ventures. And in case you haven't been keeping up on the controversial role of “Patent Trolls” in the last few years, I.V. is the current poster child for heavy handed tactics in the world of patent control, and enforcement. You need only read the first few pages of the Stanford Technical Law Review article “The Giants Among us” to see just how prominent I.V. has become as a source of worry in the patents world.

I point all of this out because I want to re-emphasize just how insidious, and pervasive, is the process of how Big Money works to co-opt everything that starts out as a means to thwart their over-arching interests of control. Even though this is certainly a complex issue, and that those who create ought to get something in return for what they create, we need to be very careful on how far we take the ownership, and control of ideas, and processes, not to mention the myriad flow of metrics that all of our endeavors propagate. As the S.T.L review article points out, the secrecy that Intellectual Ventures employs (using over a thousand shell companies to acquire patents, and never divulging, or allowing others to divulge, who has invested what) is astonishing. And despite the few high profile patent fights that have taken place so far, we are only beginning to understand the balance of positive to negative effects of so few controlling so many patents.

The bottom line for me here is that you have to wonder just how benevolent a company like Intellectual Ventures is, touting loudly as they do their creative fertilization of the ground for needful social development, and yet being so unwilling to actually document the precise numbers of what their investment income nets; both for the few investors, the inventors, as well as for the rest of us. After all, it's been nearly six years since the first Ted Talk on the mosquito zapper. Have they seen to the low cost introduction of this innovation yet? Has much more than reasonably priced mosquito netting been provided? I do seem to recall mention of a possible malaria vaccine, but how much is, or will be, spent on providing it? At what profit margin? And who will actually end up paying for it?

Just a few more things to think about in the new world of absolute absurdity.