A Lot Of Lip Service To A Lot Of Progressive Red Meat

But certainly not much of any new thinking about what you do with a broken, and obsolete, economic system. Any more than they gave much attention to the growing alarm that ought to be there for the sake of a very sick planet.

And just how does one "restore faith in government" when it has become so entangled in that very same broken economic system? You have already tried reforms, over and over again. And what if that broken economic system is the main impediment to fixing anything that is seriously wrong now; precisely because the electrified aspect of its competitive nature has turned information itself into gold so that, as already stated, nobody wants to share it properly anymore. So now all its good for is manipulation, obfuscation, and outright thievery.

This moment in human history is not about whether a supposed new version of the Democrats, or some supposed emergency revamp of the very tarnished Republicans, will retake, or keep, hold on power in America. It is about whether humans will see this as the opportunity to do the much needed pivot to life beyond all of the old butchery, ignorance, and self serving indifference of the economics of scarcity that originally spurred the creation of Capitalism (which made sense for that time and operating environment_); making it give way instead to holistic thinking, and balance; recognizing life now as the very intricately integrated multiplex of systems interacting with other systems; whereupon we get the notion that everything affects everything else, directly or indirectly, eventually.

And in this, of course, amongst the very top priorities, is the need to find a way of cooperating with each other. To find a way to negotiate this "better balance" on an ever ongoing, and dynamic, fashion. Which certainly won't be easy. With a little imagination, though, and that willingness to cooperate, we can make that difficulty pay off with humans put on a path that will not only save this planet, it will create the New Isthmus humanity needs to begin the great migration we will also have to undertake in order to save this planet. And it will do this even as it makes living meaningfully, with both material needs, as well as needs beyond the material, being met for all who participate in their community's life, a fact of life. Because we will find a way to redefine work as an organic aspect of just partnering with our neighbors to keep things going all around.

We can do it. We must do it. We just can't do it in any way that harkens back to "Business As Usual."

Democrats try to balance governing agenda with resistance fervor

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[Post Note: I wonder, as the Dems used to support labor, if they would ever consider supporting a labor strike en mass, as I have been proposing for some time now. Support it because, just supposing, that were the only way we could get the Billionaire's to fork over, and for not only a living wage, but also the right to be treated with the respect a citizen, trying to work hard by the rules, ought to expect. Getting paid poorly is bad enough, but to also be treated as if you didn't really matter, because there's always someone out there, more desperate than you, who will put up with it, because they have to. I wonder... No, actually I don't wonder all that much. I think we all know what they would do. What I do wonder about, though, is what they think their base is to become, if not from hourly folks, and low leveled salaried? Is it just going to be High Tech, Aerospace, Entertainment, and Liberal Academia? J.V.]

Home Depot Employees Are Broke, Sick, and Disappointed

Get Ready For the New Norm For Disaster Relief

As government becomes more gridlocked because of competing special interests, and extraordinary turbulence continues to enter both atmospheric systems, as well as social systems, more disasters are sure to be a part of every year now. And it won't matter if its hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought driven wildfires, or having large sectors of the economy stop functioning because of labor strife, a debt implosion, or new sickness, or a sudden lack of a critical resource, because fighting somewhere else has broken out  (or whatever other disaster you can imagine). The net effect in each case will likely be significant at the very least with each new event, and much more than that, in total, singular effect, getting more likely all the time.

In other words folks unfinished disaster relief is going to start accumulating. And eventually, if not already, people only half along from getting back on their feet will be pushed back once again; at which point one can only hope they're not pushed back even further than the last one set them back with.

And all the while the very operating system that caused the lion's share of all of this "extraordinary turbulence" will continue to thwart our ever being able to deal with the accumulated burden we put into so many natural systems; the burden that now makes them strain at the extremes of their carrying capacity. Just as this operating system continues to pursue production and consumption as if nothing of any real substance has occurred at all in the last couple hundred years. Just get the idea (by hook or crook of course), make the product, and cash in baby! Let the devil take the hindmost.

None of this seems very appealing to me. I can't imagine how it could be appealing to anyone who values the amazing biological miracle that this planet represents. Is it really all that appealing to you?

Maria and Harvey wiped out homes — and hopes. Kids have been devastated.

A Very Understandable, and Laudable, Idea That Won't Work

It is very hard for me to understand why some Progressives still think that they can create the change they seek by behaving as Liberals.

Liberals are those who think that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Capitalism that a few, well chosen laws won't fix. They have been thinking this for well over fifty years now. And in that time we have had a lot of laws added. Laws layered on laws that, almost without exception, might start out having some good effect but, after being watered down in the first place, and then, either starved of funds to continue to do what was intended, or by simply being ignored by subsequent new administrations, or by being co opted by the insertion of stooges into positions of leadership in enforcement agencies, are rendered either impotent, or completely counterproductive to what they were intended for.

This idea that you can make a market based economy, and one now that faces not only imposible new contradictions because of technological change, but also all of these dangerous competitions with the rest of the world for resources, and who will dominate certain critical markets; that you can make that kind operating system fork over significant chunks of what would otherwise have been profit, and still have it be competitive, is ridiculous. And especially ridiculous because all of the layering of these laws, over time, serve mostly to make an already much to complex of system even more so. It is the equivalent of making update changes over and over to complex software, trying to keep it relevant to changes in the operating environment, but not only having a good portion of your software staff working against you, but also having to face the reality that, at some point, you absolutely have to start over with a completely redesigned approach to what is needed for your software to do in the first place.

When are any of you going to understand that, if you have a substantially changed operating environment, you must, at some point, create a new way of operating within it. That means a complete redefinition of what work should be. And of how we set things up so that we are able, for once, to truly govern ourselves.

Just face and accept it. Electrified experience retrieval has made human skill as a reliably competitive commodity an absolute absurdity. The same electrification has turned information, which is essential to an informed electorate in a Democracy, into pure gold; gold that nobody wants to share correctly anymore at all. And so it becomes a weapon instead. And hasn't that just added so much sweetness and light to our attempts to create consensus, and common understanding; as well as to our ability to negotiate what are priorities, and what aren't.

From my point of view it just cannot be more obvious. We will not survive as a nation, and the planet will not survive as a living habitat, if we stay with an operating system so toxic, and out of date.

A Promise So Big, Democrats Aren’t Sure How to Keep It

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From the fringe to the front: 5 left-wing ideas gaining Dem support

[Post Note: Liberals think a few new laws will change things and yet the absurdities of this view pile up almost as bad as the garbage we still do not know how to deal with properly. Garbage from an operating system that creates waste at every turn because it cannot factor in full lifetime costs of the ever present, and growing, avalanche of consumerist items that have automatic obsolescence built into them because the great, and terrible machine, must always make and sell more. J.V.]

IN FOR A TRASH RECKONING

America's Landfills May Be Completely Full In Just 13 Years

4 diggs theoutline.com Policy

This is in part due to China's recent ban on accepting many varieties of foreign recyclables.

Too Much Power Indeed

But if the revolution won't be coming from the consumer, where else is it to come from?

You have to ask that question because, as he makes quite clear, the advertisers aren't leaving, and neither are the consumers. All he can offer, though, is that government should take action. But if the "Zuck's" of the world gain greater communicative power, how much more chaotic can government itself get before everything just implodes of its own, suddenly obvious, absurdity.

This is, unfortunately, another ugly aspect of "Business as Usual," where it gets personal; whether out of just habit, or just real addiction now, many of us can't give up the very thing that is killing our ability to think for ourselves, let alone to be able to realize that the planet is in danger as well; whatever the case may be ultimately, though, if we can't all wake the hell up very soon we are all in dire straits indeed. All of us. Whether you can afford a survival bunker deluxe now or not.

What I keep wondering is: Where are the people who put the creativity into tech corporations now; the scientists, coders and managers and analysts, and all the rest in the trenches that fight the growing war of competitive tech. The people who have to think clearly for a living. Is it just the money, at least while it lasts? Does that make what will ultimately result here worth it? When it could be changed. If enough of us spoke up. People with considerably more credibility than I.

I know you are out there. I know some of you pay attention to at least a few of my posts. Are you just going to sit back and do nothing? Do you value the continuance of life so little anymore?

Time will tell.

Zuckerberg Is The ‘Most Dangerous Person’ In The World: NYU’s Scott Galloway

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California Today: San Francisco Nurses Protest the Zuckerberg Hospital’s Name

Yay! People Are Finally Beginning To Recognize That Capitalism Is Broken!

[Post update: My dyslexia strikes again. I forgot to put in "become one and the same thing" to the end of the first sentence, in the second paragraph. J.V.]

Now. If we can only make folks see the bigger picture as to why.

Sure, we, as a nation, have been front and center in putting the pedal to the metal, so to speak, on the whole, let's let electrified experience retrieval run amok, and thus insinuate itself into the very fabric of a once quite mechanistic system. A quite mechanistic system. Segmented. Linear, and not used at all to dealing with multiple threads at the same time. Something that I believe speaks to the typographic nature of Capitalism's success, even if its not fully responsible for its actual creation.

We did that, also in my view, because we let the frontier spirit, and too much "Manifest Destiny," take whatever sense of balance was left, at the beginning of the 1800s especially, away from us; so that personal attainment, and supposed mastery of "natural resources" (quoted here because, in this context, these are things wasted if not exploited, for the good of industry as a whole in one sense certainly, but not at all limited to that) become one and the same thing. And after that, as well as in conjunction with, the steam engine, and the telegraph, did we get the beginnings of "Robber Baronism." A model I believe is still quite popular to this day.

The bottom line here, however, remains the same in my view: Capitalism is broken. But it is broken so severely, and so fundamentally, that it cannot possibly be fixed. No more than you could fix the original version of Windows to work in today's operating environment. As such there can be do doubt now that it has to be replaced. The only question then left is to what.

How America Broke Its Economy

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[Post Note: This one is just to remind you about how real this whole "change in instrumentality" thing is. J.V.]

Here's Google's AI Assistant Making A Phone Call And Acting Like A Human

The True Mindset Of Capitalism

It doesn't matter how well you are doing at any particular moment. All that matters is that there are others taking market share away from you. And whether that might actually be a good thing, it hardly seems to matter at all; good thing being, of course, thinking long term, as it tends to keep you on your toes, concerning what you actually provide, within your majority control of said market, and thus less likely to be the victim of somebody else's "disruption."

No. What truly matters is that you crush all possibility for such surprise, even as you take making a good profit to absolutely mindless extremes. And this, it would seem, because the only successful Capitalist now is the one with the biggest, most maniacal ego around; whatever pond, of whatever size, you might want to talk about.

Now that cooperation, along with a lot of imagination, and willingness of the majority to sacrifice, is probably the only thing, that is going to save us, or the planet, any fool can see that sticking with an operating system, even remotely described by the first two paragraphs above, might not be all that helpful in getting it done, and doing it in way that preserves balance for both the majority, and the minority. Not very helpful at all.

So. Do you want to survive or not? Your choice.

AT&T/Verizon lobby asks FCC to help raise prices on smaller ISPs

All Of America Needs To Be Ready To Strike En Mass

Only by massive, and unified, expression of rejection by a majority of working Americans (salaried and hourly) will we be able to make the one percent listen. To make them understand that Capitalism stopped working for working people decades ago. And now things are only getting much much worse for us.

So Go American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299)!

More than 50,000 UC workers prepare to go on strike, citing income disparity