Welcome to Robert Warden's Box-Free Blog: the Psychology of a New World View

A Natural Lefty's 100% Organically Grown Brain Candy -- Here is Psychology in all of its ramifications for Philosophy, Spirituality and all of Science. This is the website that is not only outside the box, there are no boxes.

My name is Robert Warden, and I am a Psychologist with a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of California, Riverside. I currently teach at a local community college. These posts are mostly in the form of progressive series of short essays built around common themes. I also have updates and commentaries about things which are going on in my life or Eunice's (my wife's) life.

Most of these posts are also put on The Thom Hartmann Bloggers Group on Facebook, and the Thom Hartmann Community Blog on Thom Hartmann's site. You can leave messages and comments in either of those places.

July 27

A Capital Idea part 21: Capitalism is Antidiversity

What do guitars and golf clubs, gas and brake pedals, and scissors have in common? By and large, they are all made for right-handed people's use. Even though music is a right hemisphere function and lefties tend to have better than average musical ability according to researchers, I seldom see any musician other than Paul McCartney play a left-handed guitar. It's probably too expensive and troublesome for the guitar manufacturers to make 10% or perhaps more of their guitars left-handed. The same applies to golf clubs. How many left-handed professional golf players are there, aside from Phil Mickelson? Fishing reels are another example. All of them are built for righties, although most of them can be reversed by unscrewing the bolt that holds on the handle on the right side and putting it on the left side of the reel. As a lefty, I buy reversible reels and immediately turn them into lefty reels. However, some fishing reels cannot be reversed to become lefty reels. I accidentally bought one of those a few years ago, which now sits in our garage waiting to be given away to a right-handed person. I guess it's too troublesome for fishing reel manufacturers to make reels for lefties, although most of the manufacturers have the hang of making reversible ones. There are ambidextrous scissors, but they are not common and probably more expensive than the usual righty ones. The most glaring example in my opinion, of a manufacturing bias in terms of handedness, is the gas and brake pedals on cars. Well, they are really more about footedness than handedness, but left-handed people are usually left-footed also, as well as left eyed, as I am. The pedals must be operated with the right foot. I have to wonder whether that makes driving less safe for lefties. I know that there was research around the 1980s which indicated that lefties were more likely than righties to die in car accidents. Arguably, the placement of the various knobs to the right of the driver could also be a sign of handedness bias.

What does all of this have to do with capitalism, aside from being a lefty's idiosyncratic way of looking at manufacturing bias? The simple answer is that these are examples of how capitalism is antidiversity. Whomever can manufacture the most product for the least money is likely to win the real-life monopoly game that corporations play. How do corporations cut down costs while churning out as much product as possible? Aside from firing employees and replacing them with machines, corporations can standardize their equipment so that all of the product is made exactly the same way -- as in guitars, golf clubs, fishing reels, scissors and even car pedals, all built for right handers only. Beyond handedness, their are standardized clothing sizes, with relatively few options in terms of shirt sizes, for instance. Cars, furniture, appliances, toys, paper, pens, pencils, whatever, are all made in standardized ways to suit the greatest number of people. People who don't fit the mold have to buy special equipment, perhaps even going to specialized stores and buying more expensive products.

Beyond the standardization of manufacturing products, capitalism is also antidiversity through its inevitable gravitation toward monopolies. Over time, there are fewer and fewer corporations who own more and more of the economy. Of course, each corporation does things a certain way, and has stores with a given brand name which are all designed the same way. Last Friday, on Eunice's birthday, she decided to go to that "Mexican sandwich restaurant near Costco" called Portillo's Hot Dogs or something like that. It is in a sort of large, rectangular building, but I figured, since I had never heard of such a chain before, and since there are so many people of Hispanic origin living in Moreno Valley, that some Mr. Portillo who lived in town had decided to open a restaurant. I even have a Ms. Portillo in my summer session class currently, so it could have been her family. Such was not the case, however. It turns out that Portillo's is a chain restaurant from Illinois, which has just recently begun to expand outside of Illinois. Since it was relatively inexpensive, with relatively good food, and surprisingly good business for Moreno Valley which is a lousy place to do business in general except for bottom of the line bargain places, I anticipate that this chain will enjoy continued success. In a few years, there will probably be Portillo's restaurants all over the U.S. Once they conquer the U.S. market, of course, they will expand internationally. The larger point is that there are hardly any mom and pop, one-of-a-kind businesses anymore around here. We have a major shopping area which has opened up not far from where we live, with many new stores, and some older ones, but virtually all of them are large, national chain stores, with no other options. I think the same is true all over the United States. It is antidiversity, pro-monopoly, too-big-to-fail business. This is not good for society. I think we should have a law in the United States as India does, preventing chain stores from occuring. In India, each store must be one-of-a-kind, which helps their middle class tremendously, creating diversity and opportunities for its citizens. I have not heard anything about India's economy being in a tailspin, probably because their economy is doing well throughout this period of economic crisis for the more monopolistic nations.

An argument could be made that democracy itself encourages a similar "tyranny of the majority" as does capitalism. This is true to an extent; however, there is one huge mitigating factor which helps to keep the majority from acting tyanically in democracies. That is, democracies make constitutions and laws which assert the rights of the minority. Since almost everyone has family members or good friends who are members of one sort of minority or another, even if its only having a lefty in the family (mine has 3 brothers who are all lefties, 2 foreign born Asian wives, a teenage nephew of mine who seems to be gay, plus people of a variety of religious/spiritual beliefs and non beliefs), it is difficult for citizens to encode any sort of discrimination into law, except under the most extreme of circumstances. There was a time when slavery was legal, a time when Chinese were not allowed to migrate to the United States, and during WWII, a time when Japanese-Americans were imprisoned in concentration camps, but we wound up being so embarrassed by these immoral actions, that Americans (most of us, at least) have become determined to never do such things again, and have written more and more protections for minorities into the Constitution and into law. Also, American society itself has become more diverse in various ways. In contrast, capitalistic corporations have no compulsion to "do the right thing." They are governed by profit, which means that they are motivated to do things the easiest, cheapest way, resulting largely in a lack of accomodation to the diversity of the human species. They do not make laws preventing discrimination against minority shopping populations. Any such laws which exist were made through democratic legislative processes.

My final point for this post is that we should think of society in terms of an ecological analogy. Any ecologist will tell you that diversity is good for an ecosystem. That is why the current, human-caused extinction event in which we are losing a great many species is not only a tragedy on a spiritual level, but also, a dangerous thing for the immediate geological future of the world. Diversity in an ecosystem makes it stronger and well, more lively. Diverse ecosystems are better able to adapt to change, favoring certain traits as conditions change, and producing adaptive mutations which lead to new species. Ecosystems which lack diversity are vulnerable to ecological disaster. The same applies to human cultures. The "too-big-to-fail" phenomenon with large banks and corporations is emblematic of this problem. We have become a very vulnerable society -- vulnerable to financial and social collapse and chaos -- because as a society we have gone way too far down the road of capitalistic monopolization. Too many people either work for or depend upon too few businesses, despite the advent of new technologies over the years. We are paying for this poor choice now. This choice was not really made or widely backed by the public, in my opinion, but was a choice made largely by rich people and their politicians with relatively little consent by the public except for the natural tendency to buy the cheapest products, and the fact that many people have been fooled into voting for this ideology through exposure to their propaganda. The way to prevent it from happening again is to use democracy to create laws -- hopefully Constitutional ones -- which regulate and reduce the role of capitalism for the sake of the public good, so that corporatism cannot run amok ever again. In fact, the less capitalistic society becomes, the better it will allow for human needs and human diversity, in my opinion.

July 23

A Capital Idea Part 20: The News Media Been has Bought and Paid for

When I was a child, we used to watch the evening news. Walter Cronkite, or Dan Rather, would report the news matter of factly. At the end of the show, Walter Cronkite would say "and that's the way it is" in his trustworthy way. As far as I can tell, that is the way it was. News was news. The fictional character Lou Grant played by Ed Asner, as well as Mary Tyler Moore who played Mary Richards on the Mary Tyler Moore show, were honest arbiters of the most important news.

Somehow, those days went out the window. In the intervening years, I came to realize how easily biased the news could be. The choice of what to cover on the news is one means of biasing the news, and how it is covered is another way. Apparently, news corporations realized that too, during this same time frame. Wealthy Australian conservative Rupert Murdoch bought the FOX station and turned it into Fascists On Xanax, or Faux News, as some have called it -- a mouthpiece for conservative thinking. Other stations have appeared to cave in to conservative pressures as well. My hometown's newspaper, the Press Enterprise of Riverside, CA, had consistently conservative editorials, and slyly had a somewhat greater number of conservative columnists than liberal ones, although not disproportionately enough to be obvious. One of the so-called liberal ones was Thomas Friedman. Give me a break! He was supposedly a liberal, award winning columnist, but whenever I read his commentaries, he was promoting unregulated international capitalism or cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq. In 2004, when the Press Enterprise recommended that we vote to re-elect Bush, I promptly cancelled my newspaper subscription. Now, I get my political news from the internet, the Thom Hartmann show ("where smart people get their news") and other progressive radio shows, and my friends on Facebook and the Thom Hartmann site. I don't read newspapers anymore, although I know they are struggling financially. Part of the problem is due to the advent of internet, but partly it is there own fault for slipping into a state of dishonesty as they pretend to be fair, but actually are corporate mouthpieces.

I still watch news shows on television sometimes, but not as much as I used to. Actually, an auspicious event happened about a year ago, when we were forced to go to digital television signals from analog ones. When that happened, we got a bunch of new public stations, many of them foreign language, including several Chinese ones that Eunice likes to watch, plus several stations which have more open minded reporting such as the Bill Moyers show which has recently been replaced by "Need to Know" or Jim Lehrer's newshour. At the same time, our television became unable to get the FOX station. Meanwhile, the signal from KCAL which emanates from Los Angeles and has mostly news, became very unreliable. So much for the great digital signals we were promised! But that's okay with me, considering that the stations which were added were mostly good ones, while the stations we could no longer receive because they were broadcasting from distant Los Angeles were ones I had problems with such as FOX, and the evangelical Christian station. We have never had cable television here because I don't want to spend an extra monthly fee to get a bunch of extra stations most of which we don't even want, and the ones we do like, would probably only serve as additional distractions from our purposeful, productive activities. I would rather let my wife Eunice use the money to fund charities, such as sponsoring poor children -- I think we sponsor 4 of them currently -- donating to research on diseases, and also donating to public television stations. Today is Eunice's birthday, and she already put several donation letters in our mailbox. Instead of receiving on her birthday, she is giving. Good on my beautiful wife!

The bigger issue is that the mainstream private media is largely owned by a few small corporations, which are basically looking after their own financial interests. As such, they tend to have a conservative bias, no matter how much conservative talkers whine about the so-called "liberal media bias." Most of these corporations are owned by conservatives, who hire people who will not defy them or suggest anything contrary to their interests. If they do, they will be subject to immediately losing their jobs. Since these are private corporations presenting what they claim to be the news, they engender an inherent conflict of interest. How can a private entity which is being run like an empire with its owner as king, be a fair arbiter of the news? The simple answer is that this is not possible. There are many progressives I am sure working for these people, as well as many conservatives, but anything contrary to the corporate bottom line is untouchable. The corporate media bias arguably may be the single biggest factor behind the corporate takeover of America, and basically, this is a conservative bias -- a fascist bias urging the merger of corporate and state interests, and the development of modern feudalism as they pull the wool over the eyes of the public, so to speak.

Note also that the revenue of these corporations is also corporate, in the form of advertising. Thus, the corporations which present us with their version of the world and attempt to make it ours, are simultaneously supporting the consolidation and internationalization of big business as we watch competing businesses be swallowed up in a wave of corporate monopolization. The sad fact is that advertising works, giving those with the money to use them, an unfair advantage over others. This insidious effect of advertising is another aspect of corporatization which needs to be abolished, to be replaced by consumer report and Angies' List type organizations which represent public interests rather than corporate interests. The news which we see or read from privately owned businesses will never be critical of their corporate sponsors, but rather, will promote them!

In summary, we need to get rid of this entire system of privately owned so-called "news," both its corporate sponsorships and inherently biased news itself. Also, we need to require that commentary is labelled as commentary, cheerleading as cheerleading, and real news as real news. We, the public, need to own our own news. Publicly sponsored media can serve this purpose, as it already does but only in a small degree. Only when the news as a whole comes to represent the public interest and "need to know" (the name of the show which replaced Bill Moyers show), will we be able to see the world as it is, rather than the warped view of the world presented to us by the corporate media.

July 19

A Capital Idea Part 19: Has the "Free Market" Been Bought and Paid for?

Tomorrow I have an appointment with my opthalmologist. I need to go because I have glaucoma. While there, I plan to ask my sympathetic doctor for a couple of sample bottles of my glaucoma eyedrops, which cost over $70 for a 5 milliliter bottle. I also plan to purchase another pair of eyeglasses, which will probably cost me at least a couple hundred dollars, since the only pair I have are bifocals and they are not easy on the eyes with all the adjustments one has to make. All of this is after our so-called health care reform, which was really a health care insurance coverage expansion bill, and does nothing else to make affordable health care a right or even slightly reduce health care insurance rates for the average customer. By the way, the company that makes my eyedrops is Bausch and Lomb, which is a German corporation, I believe. These eyedrops are far cheaper in Germany, I am sure! As far as I am concerned, the market system should be called the "pay an arm and a leg market," not the "free market."

But tales of eyedrops and glasses is only the lower, consumer end of a humongous story -- one involving multinational megacorporations and the richest, most influential families in the world. I have found out that there are several exclusive organizations which include many of the ultra-rich and prominant politicians among their members, whose purpose is to exert influence on political policies around the world. These are in addition to the more out-front organizations such as the World Trade Organization, ASEAN, NATO, and so forth. These are more behind the scenes, invitation-only organizations which receive almost no publicity.

Among these organizations are The Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberger Group. There is clearly a lot of conspiratorial thinking regarding powerful groups such as these. A rather out-of-date website about The Council on Foreign Relations describes a variety of conspiracies by this group, and 13 rich and influential bloodlines collectively known as The Illuminati, including the Rockefellers and Kennedys in the U.S., the Onassis family from Greece, th Li family of mainland China, and mother of all Illuminati, the Rothschild Family of Great Britain, which the site claims controls half of the world's wealth. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/bloodlines/rothschild.htm While reading this material for a few minutes, for example, I "discovered" that the Rothschilds are Satanists, that Abraham Lincoln was an illegitimate child fathered by a Rothschild family member, and that he had several illegitimate children himself with members of elite families. According to this account, Lincoln knew he was a member of The Illuminati, but was strong-willed enough to resist their Satanist agenda. This isn't exactly the quaint history of Abraham Lincoln that I learned about as a child. After a few minutes, I had been exposed to enough of this conspiratorial nonsense. I felt like telling the author of this article, Fritz Springmeier, come on, dude, Abraham Lincoln grew up dirt poor! Illuminati, indeed! Well, I am not one for supporting wild conspiracy theories, but I do think that there are people, and families who exert way too much worldwide influence.

Thus, I have been attempting to glean what reliable information I can about the influence of these organizations.The best site I found that describes their influence, in my opinion, is one about the Bilderberger Group. At least, it states the situation in a way that I agree with. http://www.bilderberggroup.net/ To quote this site:

"When such rich and powerful people meet up in secret, with military intelligence managing their security, with hardly a whisper escaping of what goes on inside, people are right to be suspicious. But the true power of Bilderberg comes from the fact that participants are in a bubble, sealed off from reality and the devastating implications on the ground of the black-science economic solutions on the table.

No, it's not a 'conspiracy'. The world's leading financiers and foreign policy strategists don't get together at Bilderberg to draw up their 'secret plans for the future'. It's subtler than that. These meetings create an artificial 'consensus' in an attempt to spellbind visiting politicians and and other men of influence. Blair has fallen for this hook, line and sinker. It's about reinforcing - often to the very people who are on the edge of condemning Globalisation - the illusion that Globalisation is 'good', 'popular' and that it's inevitable.

Bilderberg is an extremely influential lobbying group. That's not to say though that the organisers don't have a hidden agenda, they do, namely acumulation of wealth and power into their own hands whilst explaining to the participants that globalisation is for the good of all. It is also a very good forum for 'interviewing' potential future political figures such as Clinton (1991) and Blair (1993). [see above for more on this]

The ideology put forward at the Bilderberg conferences is that what's good for banking and big business is good for the mere mortals of the world. Silently banished are the critical voices, those that might point out that debt is spiralling out of control, that wealth is being sucked away from ordinary people and into the hands of the faceless corporate institutions, that millions are dying as a direct result of the global heavyweight Rockefeller/Rothschild economic strategies.

When looking at one of the (partially reliable) participant lists it should be remembered that quite a number of participants are invited in an attempt to get them on-board the globalisation project. These are carefully selected people of influence, who have been openly critical of globalisation. Examples are Jonathan Porritt (Bilderberg 1999) and Will Hutton (Bilderberg 1997) but there are many others. Most of these kinds of participants are happy to speak about the conference afterwards, and may even be refreshingly critical.

The Bilderberg organisers are accepted by those 'in the know' as the prophets of Capitalism." Actually, the content on this site was so well-written that I could have simply quoted the entire thing, but that might have been excessive. You get the idea. The site does go on to explain that the Bilderbergers are an immoral group of power hungry individuals who have in mind controlling as much as possible of the world's wealth, and furthermore, it claims that they want the peoples of the world to abandon their own moral principles, making it easier for the Bilderbergers to advance their agenda. It also mentions that the organizers of the Bilderberg Group include people named Rothschild, Rockefeller, and Kissinger. Basically, these people are living inside the bubble of uber-wealth, and neither understand nor empathize with the lives of the masses of citizenry who are not so fortunate as to be uber-rich. Their ambition, combined with their lack of understanding of the real world, produces a pernicious effect in which the capitalist system allows those with money to gain access to power which creates even greater wealth for the already rich, in a vicious cycle. In the process of power acquisition, the ultra-rich manage to gain control of the vast majority of the media, so-called news shows and radio talk shows. After all, madia controls the message. Many prominent members of U.S. government have been members of the Bilderberg Group, including Presidents Gerald Ford, and Bill Clinton.

The Trilateral Commission has the admirable stated goal of increasing cooperation among the United States, Europe, and Japan. In recent years, it has also included more representatives of ASEAN nations. However, it was founded by David Rockefeller, and is all about international economic hegemony. Membership is by invitation only, and of course, only the most prominent leaders of industry and government are invited to join it. Among its current and former members are former Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, along with many other prominant members of U.S. government.

The Council on Foreign Relations also includes many prominent business leaders and politicians. This creates a potentially insidious groupthink-type situation in which a relatively few well-connected people (4,300 around the world, actually) have a vastly disproportionate voice regarding the direction that international relations take. Compared to The Bilderberg Group or the Trilateral Commission, however, The Council on Foreign Relations has a pretty diverse membership including scholars and journalists, so it is possible for an academic or journalistic expert on foreign relations to work up to membership in this group, but I suspect that only those with relatively conventional views regarding foreign relations are accepted for membership. Their site did ask me to complete a survey about where I get news about international relations and what I thought of their site, which was surprising and encouraging. http://www.cfr.org/about/membership/

Fortunately for the public, we at least have the internet, with web neutrality, a place where people can exchange information without having it be controlled by big business. Let us keep it that way. I have a feeling that the ultrarich have bought and paid for the so-called free-market system in which all of us are compelled to participate. At least the non-commercial portion of the internet is not bought and paid for.

July 14

A Capital Idea Part 18: We're Not as Rich as we Think we are

The case of monetary exchange rates is a case for which I think it is instructive to examine other nations. We are all aware that in most parts of the world, average income is far below what it is in the United States, yet for the most part, people in these places survive comfortably. How is this possible, given that incomes in other nations, for example, $2000 per year, are far less than what is needed in the United States just to pay for necessities such as food, much less utilities, rent, mortgages or property taxes, or any other needs?

It is my contention that monetary exchange rates are skewed in such a way that Americans appear to be richer than they are. Perhaps you have heard that an American can immigrate to certain other countries and live the high life as a rich person. This is true, because the currency of the United States has far more buying power in other nations, for the most part. For example, one hundred U.S. dollars may buy one hundred dollars of a foriegn nation's currency. However, since the foreign currency is undervalued compared to the United States' currency, that one hundred foreign dollars can buy much more in that foreign nation than one hundred dollars could buy in the United States. This is yet another example of the arbitrariness of money as a tool of exchange. This situation also encourages one-way trade between nations, with the United States on the receiving end and the other nation on the selling end, resulting in massive trade deficits for the United States. When Americans pay one hundred dollars for a product from this generic foreign nation, it has much greater purchasing power when it gets to the foreign nation than it did in the U.S. On the other hand, when foreigners pay $100 in their "cheap" currency for an American product, it does not buy very much in the United States. In other words, the prices of goods in the United States are inflated as a whole.

The basic reason for this is that the people of the United States have become addicted to consumption of goods. We have been inculcated to expect a high standard of living, as "the world's richest/greatest nation." Thus, anything less feels like poverty to most Americans -- after all, we have to keep up with the Joneses. I never took an economics course, but it doesn't take an economist to figure out that the high rate of demand for goods by Americans leads to higher prices. Thus, even thrifty Americans become victims to the free spenders among us, being compelled to pay artificially high prices. Add to this our huge and growing budget deficit, our credit card debts, and homes for which people owe more than the house is worth, and we are clearly living on borrowed time. The current pessimistic political climate and attitudes of the American public reflect that many Americans are waking up to these uncomfortable facts and realizing that we are far poorer than we appear to be. However, our lifestyle continues to be one of living beyond our means, for the most part, and using resources irresponsibly, including non-renewable ones.

My wife "Eunice" (Zun-Liang) is from Taiwan, and we are planning to go there in mid to late August. I did go there in 1990, and I can confirm that there are many low-income Taiwanese-Chinese, but few of them go hungry or live in abject poverty. My wife told me that her family used to have its own farm, including fish and freshwater crab ponds. They would often give the food to others in the neighborhood, or have them work on the farm for the food. Everybody shared their resources. That is pretty much the way life still is in Taiwan, at least in rural areas. Thus, in addition to the skewed monetary exchange rate, community lifestyles which encourage self-sufficiency and the sharing of resources make life more comfortable for all and prevent extreme poverty and hunger. This is a common theme in traditional cultures around the world. Places where people live under horrible conditions of poverty, it seems to me, are places where traditional lifestyles which have evolved over long periods of time to the benefit of the society as a whole, have been disrupted, and people don't have land or waters available to provide for their subsistence needs -- places such as the makeshift communities on the outskirts of South American cities, or places where ethnic or religious conflict has wreaked havoc, such as some areas of Africa. In places such as these, people are starving to death literally, but not in peaceful, stable communities. I also have a sister-in-law, Rosalie, who is from a remote part of the southern Phillipines. She and my brother were talking about the Phillipines when we were visiting their house in South Lake Tahoe. Rosalie was describing how they lived in big houses there, had lots of good food to eat, a beautiful (if somewhat rainy and warm) environment, and a nice community. This is despite the fact that this area is officially an impoverished area according to world financial standards. My brother and Rosalie said that one can go out and pick fruit in the forest, or grow it on one's property, catch fish in the nearby ocean or freshwater, or buy whatever one needs for relatively low prices. Furthermore, my brother said he would ideally like to spend his winter on his wife's island, and summers at Tahoe, but his year-around job working for the California State Water Quality Control Board prevents that from happening. It hardly sounds like the Phillipines is a miserable place of poverty to me, except perhaps around overgrown cities such as Manilla, or where Muslim insurgents are in conflict with the Phillipine government. Although it does have some problems and isn't exactly paradise, it seems like a good place to live, to me. I think such is the case around much of the world. By the way, both my wife Eunice and my sister-in-law Rosalie say that the United States has been quite a disappointment to them, compared to its reputation which they heard about before coming here. Eunice says that if not for me, she would go back to Taiwan; I also think Rosalie stays in the U.S. to be with my brother and their kids.

A final consideration regarding monetary exchange rates is that perhaps the biased exchange rates have been intentionally created or supported by politicians. Why? Since it benefits American politicians to point to their constituents' lifestyles and show that they have lots of goodies to play with, the encouragement of consumerism is something which is attractive to politicians. Let's keep our people supplied with lots and lots of "cheap" (but not really by international standards) stuff. By having exchange rates which encourage the importation of goods, and since the manufacturing base in the United States has collapsed, we can maintain this situation, but only as long as our money lasts and foreign factory workers continue to be horribly underpaid. Someday soon, if it has not already happened, America will wake up and find that it is closer to being a third world nation, economically, than the world's richest one, and it will remain that way until we drastically change the structure of our culture.

p.s. Our goal should not be to be the world's richest nation, but rather, to help create the best sustainable lifestyle and environment for everyone around the world, one which facilitates people's personal growth, but the point of this post is the Americans are living beyond their means, and I believe, heading toward a major economic collapse in the relatively near future if we don't change our economic structure to help the public and to be more realistic.

July 9

A Capital Idea Part 17: The Family that Wants to Start Armageddon

Imagine that there was a political conspiracy underfoot. Imagine that a shadowy group operating in Wahshington, D.C. had plans for world domination. Further imagine that this organization had tremendous political influence, but kept its membership and other records secret. Now, imagine that this group is an ultra-conservative, ultra-Christian group, whose purpose is to bring about the prophesied end of the world, including the battle of Armageddon and return of Jesus by influencing politics.

Actually, you don't need to use your imagination. Such an organization does exist and is well-documented, even though it attempts to keep much of its activity secret. This organization is known as "The Family," (also known as The Fellowship and The International Foundation) and was founded by an evangelical Christian who immigrated to Seattle from Norway. His name was Abraham Vereide, and he said that God had appeared to him in a vision in 1935, telling him that God wanted him to ignore the poor and the suffering, because they were too powerless to bring about the so-called kingdom of God. Instead, he said, God wanted him to help evangelicals take control of government and help bring about the events prophesied in the Bible. Vereide also viewed unions as the enemy, because they wanted to give more power to commoners and thereby delay the takeover of government by those with the wherewithall to bring about Armageddon.

To quote Lindsey Beyerstein from the website "Worse than Fascists:"

"Through personal relationships and small group encounters, Vereide united captains of industry and politicians as a Biblical bulwark against the increasing power of organized labor.

In the late 1940s, the Family helped roll back key pro-labor provisions of the New Deal. Later, the Family did its part for the Cold War by cultivating anti-communist strongmen around the world, including repressive leaders like Suharto of Indonesia and Jonas Savimbi of Angola.

The roster of current and former Family members includes senators, congressmen, Fortune 500 CEOs, generals and at least one Supreme Court justice. The Family does not publish membership lists, and its members are sworn to secrecy, so a full accounting is impossible.

Sen. Hillary Clinton has been involved with the Family since 1993 when, as first lady, she joined a White House prayer circle for political wives. Clinton has also sought spiritual counseling from the current head of the Family, Doug Coe. Sharlet argues that Clinton's longtime association with the Family has helped her forge working relationships with powerful religious conservatives such as Family member and anti-abortion crusader Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

The Family nurtures the next generation of prayer warriors in suburban dormitories. Sharlet spent nearly a month living at Ivanwald, a dormitory in Virginia where sons of the Family are sent to immerse themselves in Jesus and clean the toilets of congressmen and senators.

The Family also runs a house on C Street in Washington, D.C. The C Street Center has housed a number of federal legislators, including Sen. John Ensign of Nevada. Residents allege that the center is just a cheap place to live, but as an Ivanwald brother, Sharlet saw firsthand that the center is a religious community. As far as the IRS is concerned, the C Street Center is a church." (http://www.alternet.org/rights/87665/)

The Sharlet mentioned in the quote is journalist Jeff Sharlet, who infiltrated "The Family" undercover a few years ago, and emerged to write a book about the organization called "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power." This organization covets and reveres power, however it is attained. To quote a review of Sharlet's book "Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao as leadership models, the Family's current leader, Doug Coe, declares, 'We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't.'" Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao as leadership models, the Family's current leader, Doug Coe, declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't." http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780060559793?&PID=32513

If you were wondering how our nation has come to increasingly resemble a fascist state, now you know, it is not only big business that is to blame; it is also "The Family" and those politicians who are influenced by "The Family." Although we do not know the exact leadership hierarchy of "The Family" from public records, it is known that many prominant politicians are members of this organization. Politicians associated with "The Family" who have had sex scandels in recent years include Senator John Ensign (R-Nev), Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, and Representative Charles Pickering (R-Miss), who lived at The Family's headquarters in Washington, D.C., called "The C Street House." Several members of Congress have also accepted trips to foreign nations which were paid for by The Family. Accroding to Sandhya Bathjia in "Travelling with The Family," included in this group are "Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), who also lives at the C Street house, and Republican Reps. Frank Wolf (Va.), Joe Pitts (Pa.) and John Carter (Texas). Sens. John Ensign (R-Nev.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) each also accepted one trip from the foundation. Both Senators have lived at the C Street house." http://blog.au.org/2010/06/28/traveling-with-%E2%80%98the-family%E2%80%99-secretive-evangelical-group-bankrolled-overseas-trips-for-members-of-congress-newspaper-says/

Notice that almost everyone involved in The Family is Republican, but a few Democrats are involved, too, most shockingly to me, Hillary Clinton. That makes me really glad that she did not win the Democratic Party's nomination in 2008. As for detailing the leadership of The Family, aside from its nominal leader, Doug Coe, much secrecy seems to be involved. It is suspected that the Bush and Rockefeller families are at the heart of The Family.

I am not generally into conspiracy theories, perhaps because of my exposure to psychology and in particular, paranoid schizophrenics who regularly invent conspiracy theories out of thin air, as well as my exposure to various other, competing and improbable conspiracy ideas. However, there comes a time to recognize that there may be true conspiracies to gain power and promote a particular agenda. Last time, I wrote about a de facto conspiracy, something which I think is all too common. In the case I wrote about last time, people with a shared world view -- believing in free-market capitalism for the individual -- with no actual conspiratorial communication, have helped effect a conspiracy of omission, through their inaction driven by the belief that the system does not need regulation. This de facto conspiracy has greatly contributed to the rise of corporate hegemony and corresponding corporate influence on government in the Untied States and around the world.

Today, I have discussed a true conspiracy which would have disastrous consequences if successful. What pains me the most, is that this conspiracy has been somewhat successful. I think this group needs to be exposed and have the light of day shed upon its operations, as much as possible! The more people know about this organization, the more the public as a whole will oppose it and those who are a part of it. Like all such conspiracies, I believe The Family is ultimately doomed to fail (because the prophecies they predict, in the case of The Family, will never happen), and the instrument which will bring it down is the voice of the public -- the sooner, the better.

July 5

A Capital Idea Part 16: Conspiracy by Consensus

Today's topic regards not so much an actual conspiracy, as a de facto one that applies to what one might call "average everyday millionaires." Next time, I will discuss what may be an actual conspiracy involving certain weathy families in the United States, but for now, I will discuss cognitive laziness and sheeplike behavior which create a troubling status quo which is difficult to fix.

The root of the problem may be in so-called "free-market capitalism" once again, or as I call it, "lazy unfair capitalism." Social and Health Psychologist Shelley Taylor has called people "cognitive misers" based on research regarding peoples' use of cognitive effort or lack thereof. That is, people tend to do the least amount of thinking that they need to get by. Heuristics (cognitive shortcuts) are relied upon as much as possible, even when it results in predictable errors. Actually, a Cognitive Psychologist named Kahnemann won the Nobel Prize in Economics a few years ago by showing that people use heuristics when investing in the stock market. Over reliance on older, established ways of doing things has also frrequently been demonstrated in Psychology research. There are a number of related terms used by Psychologists such as top-down processing, functional fixedness, or confirmation bias -- all of which lead to errors in thinking.

Thus, it comes as no surprise to find that the dominant economic system used in the United States, if not the world now, involves not active involvement in the regulation, but rather, as little regulation as possible. The rationale for deregulation or a lack of economic regulation is that somehow, the economy is supposed to take care of itself. The "free-market" will find an optimal equilibrium according to the apologists for our current economic woes, and everyone will be paid what he or she is "worth." According to the social Darwinists who believe this, it is only natural that a few economic elite will capture most of the world's resources to create their own personal playground of the world's economy. The rest of the population is to remain in relative poverty feeding on economic handouts given them by the rich, or perhaps even starving to death unless taken pity upon by some wealthy person. Of course, members of the economic elite will not say this publicly, and many conservatives do not believe this, preferring instead to believe that somehow, the "free-market" will eventually make everyone wealthy, except for laggards and freeloaders who refuse to work. Never mind that we are all born as freeloaders.

How convenient it is that the people who run the system believe that the system will run itself! That frees them to concentrate on making money, and using that money to create more money, rather than worry about regulating each other! While the ideas presented this essay are certainly not novel, its major point is that the most convenient possible conspiracy by consensus has developed, in which those who run the machinery of the economy tend to view it as some sort of infallible, perpetual motion machine which will continue to run to the benefit of humanity ad infinitum without maintenance. After all, these people created this "machine" and as leaders of the world economy, they must really "know" what they are doing, just as BP's executives must have thought until their big oil pipe broke and they didn't know how to fix it, and still don't. I realize that I may be engaging in a bit of hyperbole here, and not all of the United States' and certainly not all of the world's, economic elite prescribe to the unregulated free-market ideology, but this certainly is the direction that the world, led by the United States, has been going over the past few decades.

If a person happens to run a lucrative business and enjoys considerable wealth, why not "go with the flow." After all, if it's not broken, why fix it? Of course, the belief that the system is not broken is a result of being one of its prime beneficiaries. For generations of people living in poverty, the system has never worked. But being out of the power loop, the majority of us have only very limited power to change the system, by perhaps electing politicians who want to change the system, and by complaining and insisting upon change. Meanwhile, those with the money to do so, work to shape the public's attitude so that they will not elect such politicians, and manipulate the system so that if such politicians are elected, it will be difficult for them to enact change. We are seeing this process play out in Washington politics now. Thus, the conspiracy by consensus and the inertia it creates, continues for the time being, but that may change soon. Once people, even wealthy ones, realize en masse that an unregulated economic system will inevitably lead to disaster, the consensus will break down, and real reform will be possible. I believe that we are currently in the process of seeing the public begin to reject the "free market" economic model. Once the economically average citizen rejects the "free market" model, and once its inadequacies become apparent to even the wealthy, they will eventually be forced to accept economic regulation.

July 1

A Capital Idea Part 15: My Money Lessons Through the Years

Since I wrote a brief history of money last time, it makes sense that my personal history with money should follow.

The first lesson I remember learning about money is the adage "Money is the root of all evil." I am not sure where I heard that, but it stuck with me. I think I heard it in elementary school, perhaps from my second grade teacher, Mrs. McPhail. She and I were very fond of each other, and I got lessons such as that from her when we weren't singing peace songs such as "Kumbaya" or "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream," or protesting the Vietnam War at my public school in Riverside, CA, while soldiers headed to war in Vietnam from nearby March Air Force Base, and many never returned, including my friend Pat's father.

I may have gotten that lesson from my parents, as well, who were always very good at showing us kids a strong sense of conscience and solid morals mostly by example without any religious training whatsoever. (As far as I know, the first time I went inside a church was when I went to my eldest cousin's wedding when I was a freshman in high school.) In either case, I was imbued with a sense of skepticism regarding money, and a cautious approach to money. I also have, not a disdain for money itself, but a disdain for avarice and a sense that "making money" is not what it seems and not what life is about for me. Like anyone, I would like to have lots of money, but it is what one does with one's life that is really important; how we earn money trumps how much we have. My feelings about money might have been different had I grown up wanting in it. By the time I was born, my father was a practicing radiologist working in the main group of radiologists to be found in Riverside. Money was never an issue for us while growing up, but the interesting thing is that, despite having money available and living a comfortable lifestyle, none of us 3 children had any inclination to spend much of it. Ironically, my eldest brother grew up to marry a woman who is a spending addict, which has caused him great financial difficulties. The second brother and I both use a thrifty lifestyle to get by, and have wives who are not big spenders. I have noticed that girls tend to want to spend more than boys, so that may have been a factor, but also, the rampant consumerism of American culture drives most Americans, male of female, to be addicted to a relatively lavish lifestyle and the spending which that requires. Maybe we just don't have the "spending gene" in my family. In any case, we need to break our dependence on spending to buy an American dream which we cannot afford. Perhaps the current financial crisis will accomplish this.

I did have positive lessons about money while growing up, too. As implied in the previous paragraph, my brothers and I learned that managing money carefully and controlling one's spending is a good thing. One needs a certain amount of money to get by financially, but the better one controls spending, the less money one needs and the better off one will be in the long run. Saving money is a good thing, a lesson that too few Americans have learned. I learned to think of saving money as a type of investment in the future. Meanwhile, I saw my parents saving money for their kids, so that hopefully we would never be wanting for money. That was their way of investing in the future. As a consequence, I have never felt in danger of poverty, even though I am a lousy money earner. But perhaps the reason I am a lousy money earner is because the acquisition of large amounts of money has never been a priority for me.

There are two other basic lessons about money which I learned later on, which are integrated into this series on capital. One is that money attracts the wrong type of people (as does political power all too often). That has been made all too clear by recent financial events in the world. Whoever created the adage "Money is the root of all evil" might not have been 100% correct, but was certainly more correct than not. Another related fact, which as a person who diligently believes in creating a fair world, greatly bothers me, is that pay rates, or rather, rates of money acquisition, have little to do with a person's contributions. The system is horribly broken and patently unfair. While growing up, I knew that my father was smart, well -educated, and helped people recover from injuries and health problems. It only seemed fair that he was well-paid. However, when I was 14 years old, he switched from practicing radiology, to working for the California State Department of Health. His new job was as a Medi-Cal Consultant, allocating Medi-Cal money to pay for the health care of poor people. My father's main reasons for changing jobs were the threat of lawsuits as a doctor, and the general stress and strange hours of being a doctor. This switch in jobs affected my attitude toward money in several ways. One is that people can change careers, and aren't always as happy as they seem in their jobs. I thought the change of jobs was a good thing, and I was proud of my father for making the switch. It eased my father's tensions, although it paid less than his previous job. Another fact which was brought to my attention was the problem of lawsuits and how it affects doctors. Just yesterday, I saw an internet article which cited a study which found that the main reason for doctors overtesting their patients was the fear of lawsuits. It is doctors versus lawyers, lawyers versus doctors -- dueling professions vying for money and power -- and in the process, medical costs are enormously inflated and medical care is compromised. I consequently learned that money is a very powerful force, which does not work the way it is supposed to; that is, rather than working for the public good, the role of money is to serve the whims of its owners. Finally, I realized that personal happiness is more important than pay; my father chose a job that did not pay as well because he felt he would be happier helping poor people, and not having to worry about lawsuits from people who hold doctors to impossibly high standards. My father was being compassionate in his desire to help poor people, which made me realize that by implication, he must have felt that they did not deserve to be poor, but rather were victims of a badly flawed system.

The final basic lesson which I am still in the process of learning, is that money is an entirely artificial social construct, and may ultimately, be unecessary and may be extinguished, to be replaced by a much more just and productive system. I learned the term "social construct" during my first year of graduate school, and it was not long before I connected that term to money. In fact, I think that money is one of the best examples of a social construct. I have also learned that many societies, albeit primitive ones, get along just fine without money. However, it occurs to me that a money-free culture is not only a function of a culture's primitiveness, but could also be an indicator of a culture's progress. New technology and new ways of thinking should eventually replace old ways of thinking about wealth and worth. Various forms of capital -- real capital -- can be the basis of a new economy, and the implementation of new technologies can create a better economy for all, an economy of the people, by the people, and for the people. What we have now, is an economy -- and government -- of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

June 29

A Capital Idea Part 14: Money's Long, Strange Trip Through History

The Birth of Barter

So Thor the caveman wanted to give his cavewife, Thorazine, who drove him crazy with love, a decoration befitting her beauty. It so happened that his neighbor, Ugh, was an expert at finding and shaping "Magic Stones" into beautiful Objects D'Art. Thus, Thor offrered Ugh one of his cattle in exchange for a beautiful piece of Jade for his wife, a request to which Ugh assented. Now, Ugh not only had pretty stones, but also, enough beef to feed his sexy wife, Viagra, and their little Ughs and Ughlettes for quite awhile, and Thorazine had a beautiful decorative gift stone from Thor to show off to her friends and family. (Meanwhile, I seem to have a bumper crop of "corn" going here.)

This fictionalized scenario represents an early form of barter, which preceded the use of objects as actual money. Since we have no records of how barter developed, researchers do not have a very good idea regarding when it began, but it was clearly before the invention of writing. Barter differs from money in that it is a direct exchange of goods between individuals. In barter, there is no keeping of accounts in order to horde representations of perceived value, as is done with money. Barter is still commonly done between individuals. In some cultures, a sort of exchange of gifts, which can be viewed as a type of barter, is still the primary means of exchange. Even in our modern culture, of course, there is a tradition of exchange of gifts. My wife always feels obligated, for instance, to bring gifts to relatives when she sees them. But far more important than this, barter may in a sense be the lifeblood of relationships, except that in relationships, it is the exchange of favors which is normally bartered, rather than goods. Studies of cats and dogs show that even they have a sense of fairness which requires them, as social animals, to take turns and share resources with their companions. Thus, the origin of barter or its more primitive predecessors may be hidden in the mists of time which characterize our distant evolutionary past.

The Birth of Money

According to A Comparative Chronology of Money, by Roy and Glyn Davies, the first form of money was probably cattle, around 9000 BC. According to them, catlle were still used as money in the mid-1900s in some places. The concept of cattle as money seems pretty strange, since they are themselves a valuable resource, but the reasoning behind considering them money is that cattle were essentially used like money, as placeholders representing accumulated worth. Obviously, cattle make a very imperfect form of money. If one's cattle catch an infectious disease and a resulting epidemic kills most of them, I suppose this is the equivalent of a "stock" market crash, as in "livestock" market crash, in this case.

Thus, if Thor had an impressive collection of cattle, and used these to confer high status upon himself, amongst his tribemembers, he was using cattle as money, according to Roy and Glyn Davies. Eventually, people figured out more compact, lighter, inanimate items than cattle to use as placeholders for value. Various forms of livestock, grains, and agricultural implements were stored as money for quite some time, ranging from about 3000 BC to 2000 BC. Around this time, writing was invented. According to the Davies, the motivation behind the development of writing was in order to keep track of peoples' money. Clearly, the development of writing as a tool facilitated keeping track of money, but given its importance and plethora of uses, I have to question the idea that writing was invented for accounting purposes. In any case, banking was invented during this same period.

Eventually, valuable metals such as gold or silver replaced agricultural items as money, thus accounting for the nefarious "gold fever" which seems to have characterized much of humanity's early explorations and subsequent gold-finding expeditions which continue to the present day.

Since nuggets of gold aren't exactly something that people can expect to find lying on the ground everyday, it was only a matter of time until people figured out that we should use something much more common and with little or no intrinsic value as money, and give that value according to its use as money. The first known example of that is the use of Cowrie shells as money by the Chinese around 1200 BC. The Chinese character for money is based on a pictogram of a Cowrie shell, in fact. Since that time, Cowrie shells were used as money in many different cultures, as recently as the mid-1900s in Africa. By 687 BC, however, the Lydians in Greece were using metal coins as money. We know that because in 687 BC, a fellow named Herodotus complained about the gross commercialism of the Lydians and their coin money. Coins were also invented in China around the same time, although the date is uncertain. Eventually, of course, the use of coin money became widespread, along with the crass commercialism of the Lydians. Metal coins had the advantage, from a government standpoint, of being human-made, with official government approval, nice little pictures of their leaders, and written descriptions of their value, but they still tended to include rather precious metals, such as silver mixed with other metals. I suspect that historically, people tended to get miffed if their coins looked too "cheap," and not shiny and pretty enough.

Fast forwarding to the development of paper money, which is obviously of even less intrinsic value than metal coins, once again, China led the charge forward. The first mention of paper money is from 806-821 AD when the Chinese emperor Hien Tsung decided to take the plunge into paper moneyhood since they were running out of the copper with which they had been making coins. No wonder other nations (especially the U.S.) now owe the Chinese so much money; the Chinese have had more practice at using it than other people. Meanwhile, the other early leader in coinage, Greece, lagged behind in paper money use, and their money supply just recently crashed. Could there be a connection here? Considering current money usage practices, I could not find any reference to the first use of credit cards or electronic money transfers, but clearly, modern technology has made the use of physical money or coins uneccessary in the past 100 years or so. Obviously, our bank accounts are meta-locations somewhere in virtual reality, with no physical representation and no actual money. They are not big (size depending upon one's wealth) piggie banks full of pennies.

Even though money apparently originated around 9000 BC, it has not always been used since that time. At least one prominant culture of the past got by without money at all. The Incas in South America managed to build a complex and powerful society without any money at all, but their culture was rigidly hierarchical and I believe involved slave labor. Additonally, around 3000-2000 BC, the pyramids were built based upon slave labor, without money. Slave labor continued to be used, bypassing the use of money to pay workers, with legal protection well into the 1800s, as we are all aware of. However, what most of us may not be aware of is that virtual slavery continues, with millions of unpaid workers around the world being illegally forced to do their jobs. This is truly a shameful phenomenon of the modern world!

Why Did People Bother to Invent Money in the First Place?

Although I have touched upon the topic of the reasons behind money's invention previously, it bears some further explication here. According to Wikipedia, barter including the exchange of wanted goods, or gifts, worked fine as long as both parties involved had the wanted goods in stock. The problem occured when one party did not currently have the product in stock, but presumably would later on. For example, a farmer might want to acquire a cow from a rancher, and the rancher might want the farmer's apples, but if apples are out of season, it would not be possible for the farmer to supply the rancher with tasty, nutritious apples, and thus prevent the rancher from getting scurvy or some such disease resulting from lack of vitimins. However, if the farmer and his family could sell their apples while in season, they could accumulate money which could be saved for the slack season (winter presumably) when they had no crops to sell. Meanwhile, the rancher could preserve the apples from last year's crop and eat them during the winter in order to stay healthy. (As an aside, farmers still depend upon seasonal, highly variable income, which makes farming a pretty perilous profession. Many farmers go out of business, and their farms wind up being bought by richer farmers who build megafarms. One of my own great grandfathers actually became rich by buying failed farms of his neighbors in North Dakota around the late 1800s to early 1900s, and this process of farm consolidation still continues.)

In any case, money is far more flexible in its uses than bartering and/or gift exchange. In a populous society, with diverse forms of labor, if we are to continue to "keep score" and track each person's claims of wealth, we need some method of doing so without regard to the nature of the individual's contributions, to be used to buy whatever goods or services the individual wishes to, without regard to their nature. Money has the flexibility of use in order to accomplish this. However, the fundamental problem of economic fairness has never been resolved, since basically no objective way has been devised to equate people's worth. Rather, a person's financial worth has been left to a messy plethora of circumstances, ultimately dominated by the decisions of those individuals who find themselves in the position to set the prices of goods and services.

June 25

A Capital Idea Part 13: Force, Law, Religion, Culture and Money

In this post, I wish to further explicate how money is used to exploit people and the environment. People who wish to exert power over others throughout history have found ways to do so. For example, men have typically found ways to exert control over women, both inside and outside of marriage, using law, religion or brute force. Slavery historically began usually with military conquest, and was followed by threat of further violence to keep slaves working for free. Wars historically have represented attempts of one people to exert control over another. So does the use of military forces against one's own people. There is a reason why they are called "military forces" after all. They are not called "military persuaders," or "military reasoners," although we all would be better off if they were persuaders and reasoners rather than people who use violence or the threat of violence to get their way. Police also have the potential to exploit people through the use of force if they are corrupt, something which happens all too often around the world.

Where do the law and money fit into all of this? Well, what may have started with brute force, winds up with law and money. The so-called "civilized" way of exploiting people is through the fascistic combination of law and money. That is largely what we are seeing now in the world, at least in places where brute force does not prevail. The Supreme Court"s Citizen's United decision is just the latest in a long series of steps legalizing of the use of money to allow those with more of it to exert control over those with less. Through the reification of money, our entire political system has been organized in such a way that money can be used as a tool for the exploitation of others -- through lobbying, advertisements, too-big-to-fail bailouts, and laws which favor big business, for example.

Throughout history, law has been used as an excuse for the exploitation of people, when applicable. I am not by any means saying that exploitation is the purpose of law, but rather, that the law is imperfect and represents the biases of the people who make it, just as, no matter how vehemently Supreme Court candidates claim that they will arbitrate the interpretation of the Constitution in a completely unbiased way, we all know that just is not the case. That is why every Supreme Court nominee undergoes political scrutiny regarding his or her politics. If they were completely unbiased, their political views theoretically would not matter one iota, a fact which I have always found to be very telling about human nature, or at least how most people respond when put in a position of authority. (I happen to believe that some Justices, such as David Souter and John Paul Stephens, both of whom were nominated by Republican Presidents, were relatively unbiased in their rulings and thus being centrists were considered "liberals" while members of the Supreme Court, an opinion which the evidence seems to support. Thus, some people are much better at avoiding the application of their personal biases than others.) Slavery was written into the U.S. Constitution, and supported by law until the practice of slavery was ended. How did this become the case? Culture, biased religious interpretations, and tradition had something to do with it, but so did money. "Money talks," the saying goes. Wealthy politicians, political donations, advertisements, and so forth, all played a role in propping up the legal status of slavery. These days, slavery may be gone, but the role of money in society is larger than ever.

Money is simply a tool through which those with power exert their will, without resorting to force. Money is rationed to employees, or the public, and used to create a legal system which perpetuates or even increases the disparities between the wealthy and the rest of us. The seriousness of the current situation is why we desperately need to disconnect big business and its money from the political process. For that matter, we must also downsize big business, both to increase competition among businesses, and to decrease the power of big business.

The larger point of this post is that we must build a civil society. I believe in democracy and the rule of law, not a law which provides excuses for abuses, but rational, compassionate law which helps all of us live happier, more productive lives. In so doing, we must not allow those who wish to exploit their fellow human beings, or abuse our planet, to have their way. The best way to do that is through the application of reasonable laws, and through the use of good, responsive democratic government. In turn, the best way to have good laws and government is to get the financial influence of wealthy individuals out of government, so that we can truly have a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln.

June 23

A Capital Idea Part 12: Money as a Tool for Exploiting Others

I will begin discussing the history of money now. Before I get more deeply into the topic, and do the requisite research, I wish to discuss the issue of ruling versus servant classes, and the role of money in this phenomenon.

Most of us tend to assume that such days are over, at least in "advanced" societies such as the U.S. Actually, in recent years, with the destruction of the middle class through deregulation and handing the keys of the empire, as it were, to big business, the distinction between ruling and servant classes has actually been increasing in recent years, especially in the United States.

The history of the United States as described in grade school is very idealistic. European immigrants crossed the Atlantic Ocean to escape oppression and find a new land with great opportunities. Here, they are said to have found "freedom" and therefore created a society that advanced freedom. That makes Euro-Americans the world leaders in freedom -- enjoying it and spreading it -- according to the euphemized version of history that we get in grade school. In fact, if one examines the history of money in the North American continent, American history largely represents a chance for ambitious members of the servant class to become members of the monied, ruling class. This is true not only of the United States, but of all the nations in both North and South America, where people of European descent came with little money, but were able to use the leverage of superior technology to climb from the lower parts of an old money tree to the top of a new one. In doing so, native peoples were enslaved, and when they were found unwilling to work as slaves, new slaves were imported from Africa. Much of the wealth of the Americas in its early days was built by slave labor. Thus, early Americans most likely did much more to destroy freedom than to create it. If they did create freedom, it was mainly for those who were able to climb to the top of a new financial order.

However, it was not only slaves that the new inhabitants of the Americas found to exploit. Clearly, it was natural resources, as well. Anything valuable -- foods, minerals, fur, lumber, et cetera -- were soon exploited in order to build wealth for the new inhabitants. Having abundant natural resources, the technology to exploit them, and the opportunity for the average European-American to do so, is probably what is most responsible for the economic rise of the United States over the past serveral centuries. Nations to the south of the United States had resources, too, but more limited technologies and fewer citizens given the opportunity to exploit those resources. Thus, those nations have lagged behind the United States economically. Now, however, the age of easily exploitable resources is coming to an end. Coal and oil are being burned up at an alarming rate, with no ability to replenish them, minerals are being depleted, forests disappearing, fish stocks dwindling, and so forth. As a result, we must depend upon further scientific progress, not the availability of readily exploitable resources, to provide for the future.

In any case, the exploitation of peoples, and the exploitation of natural resources, are intertwined. Society's elite previously used slave labor to exploit available resources. Now, society's elite use corporate and political influence in order to exploit the labor of a great many workers, people who are all too often "wage slaves" while not being slaves in name. Often the modern form of exploitation still involves the use of precious natural resources, although not necessarily.

It would be interesting to find out to what degree immigrating to North America facilitated people's rise from serf class to owner class, and to what degree wealth accumulated by the early settlers who became part of the new owner class, has continued through the generations to the present day. I do know that many of the early members of North America's financial elite came from backgrounds of poverty, but I think that most immigrants to North America and their families, remained relatively poor, finding themselves part of a new worker class. Let's face it; there is only room for a small percentage of wealthy people in a winner-take-all, capitalist society. Regarding the second question, there are many variables which change the wealth of families over generations, and the relative economic mobility which our culture used to engender (and supposedly still does, but that is a falsehood), ensured that the financial status of various families tended to change substantially over the generations, but not completely. It is my impression that there is a substantial class of wealthy families found largely in the northeastern U.S., which helps explain the relative concentration of wealth in that part of the nation. Most of these families have handed down wealth to their descendants for hundreds of years. I believe that there are even a few families such as that in California, where I live.

I once had a conversation with my best friend in graduate school, in which I mentioned that perhaps Euro-Americans such as us, still benefit from the slave labor of the past. I told him that I suspected the descendants of slaves still suffered economically from their poor start in American history, but even more importantly, psychologically, thus making it difficult for them to enjoy the type of prosperity found in Euro-Americans. Meanwhile, Euro-Americans still tend to enjoy the cumulative effects of generations of educational, social and economic advantages afforded them. My friend, Steve, looked at me as though he had come to a sudden realization, and he said something like "Gosh, I had never thought of it that way before." (Note that even Barack Obama, our first "Black President," is not a descendant of slaves, but rather the child of a Kenyan father and an Anglo-American mother.) Despite most peoples' lack of conscious recognition of such realities, numerous examples of entire populations which are unable to overcome prior exploitation are to be found around the world, if one only looks.

It is the use of money which makes this possible. Money probably made empires possible, with kings passing their power and wealth to their heirs, and money still makes financial empires possible, whether or not the wealthiest people rule their realms as kings. The corporate model is based on the idea of building an empire. A successful corporation is like an empire, ruled by its owner. Thus, in this distortion of reality, the owner/king/queen gets to accumulate the lion's share of wealth, while doling out crumbs of small money to employees. It is a ruling class and servant class system. Now that the keys to the empire have politically been handed to the financial elite, this system has become stronger than it has been since at least before the Civil War, here in the United States. The rich have become richer, the rest of us, poorer, and upward mobility, actually more difficult than before, though not impossible. Perhaps we have reached the limits of our money-as-capital system, and our resource situation, to create new wealth. I say it is time to trash the financial empire! Let us look at new ways of creating true wealth from which we can all benefit, ways which involve non-monetary forms of capital, and the egalitarian use of and expansion of scientific knowledge.

Next time, I will have more about the history of money.

June 22

Big Adventure to Mostly NorCal

Eunice and I drove our new car northward on a fishing and sightseeing trip, once I was finished with grading duties and ready to go.

On Friday, June 11, we basically drove from Moreno Valley to interstate 5, then northward on I5 until it was time to stop at a motel. We wound up in Yreka, CA, near the Oregon border. Once we got past the Sacramento Valley, the scenery became very beautiful. Shasta Lake, a huge reservoir on the Sacramento River, was virtually full and very beautiful. Eunice didn't recognize the lake, probably because it usually is far below capacity. All the rivers were high and on the verge of bursting their banks, and the mountains and forests looked inviting.

The next day, I was planning to go fishing in southern Oregon. June 12-13 were a free fishing weekend in Oregon, so fishing there that weekend was part of my moneysaving plan. However, Eunice told me "I have never been to Portland before" and was jealous of the fact that I had once, so we were required to go to Portland and check it out. This was the first of numerous itinerary changes during this long, strange trip. We arrived in Portland late afternoon/early evening, after a beautiful drive amongst trees and wildflowers throughout western Oregon. Portland has a really nice atmosphere, so we liked it. In fact, all of Oregon has an eco-friendly, nice atmosphere. Gas station attendants pump gas for people, which I was not used to, yet prices are somewhat lower than in California. In Portland, we drove downtown and stopped at a park there, took pictures and walked around. Then we went to a Motel 6 in nearby Troutdale. (I liked the name of the town.) While on the way, we passed the convention center, which I recognized as the place where I stayed for a Western Psychological Association convention long ago. The walkways between the buildings were easily recognizable, as was the nearby, really large Willamette River, although it is dwarfed in size by the Columbia River.

On June 13, we finally got to go fishing. First, I tried going to a fishing store to get regulations and perhaps a book or booklet about fishing in Oregon. It turned out that the fishing store was more of a snack shop, and the young woman who was working there said that they had run out of regulations and weren't given any more of them. Oh well, I decided to drive toward Mt. Hood and figured that we would see a fishing store on the way. Eventually, Mt. Hood was looming large in front of us, and we found a place along state highway 26 called The Flyfishing Shop. Their answer regarding regulations was something like, "We are not licensed to sell licenses. Therefore, we don't carry regulations." Huh? I guess that is the downside of being in an ecofriendly state. I asked the employees where a good place to catch trout in the area was, without necessarily flyfishing, and they told me Trillium Lake, up the road about 15 miles, was good. I also asked about the trout limit, and they said you could keep 5 of them. They also told me that anyone could fish for free that day, even out-of-staters. Thus, we headed up the road for Trillium Lake (which name my mother informs me is a beautiful type of flower native to that area). We made it to Trillium Lake in good order, and as usual, I got out of the car to check around while Eunice sat in the car and read. The place has a fantastic view of Mt. Hood, which bears a strong resemblance to Mt. Fuji, and was covered in snow and glaciers. There were numerous people fishing, but not catching much except for a few stocker Rainbow Trout. However, I saw some fish surfacing in the lake. As I walked along the dam, I noticed an outlet creek which poured out of the lake over the top of some metal tubes. There was a large pool on the outlet, so I went down there to take a look. Wow! The place was full of fish, albeit small ones, and they had a Cutthroat-like appearance. We started fishing in the lake first, and since fish were surfacing, I tried using a bobber and fly setup. I soon hooked a small fish, which had a reddish, Cutthroat Trout like appearance in the water, but somehow, it got the line stuck in the rocks near shore and broke off. After that, I headed down to the big pool on the creek. Since it was surrounded by trees, I decided to cast a tiny, 1/80 ounce red and white minijig there, on 2 pound line. As soon as I did so, it was attacked by hordes of small fish. Soon, I caught one, which was indeed a Cutthroat Trout. It had red slashes under its throat, red fins, and was heavily spotted on a bronzish background. My first Oregon fish ever was a native Cutthroat -- how cool! After that, I must have caught about 20 more of them, all Cutthroats. I did not take any pictures of these little beauties, but they appeared to be Coastal Cutthroats, even though this was in the mountains. They resemble the picture of coastal Cutthroats in my California fishing regulations booklet, as well as other photos of them, except that they are more reddish in appearance, probably due to their being landlocked. After a while, I invited Eunice to join the fun, and handed the pole to her. She caught her first Cutthroat Trout ever there, and we ended up keeping 4 of the larger ones, which were around 7 inches. (Most of the fish were about 5-6 inches.) Yesterday, I found out that many streams in Oregon have a 2 fish limit, with lures-only regulations. Fortunately, we adhered to those regulations by accident. However, if I broke any Oregon regulations, I apologize to the state of Oregon. It was not through lack of effort that I was not familiar with their regulations; I asked for them in 3 separate places with no luck.

After leaving Trillium Lake, we had a long, beautiful drive southward all the way to Klamath Falls. Eunice cooked the Cutthroats in the electric cooking pan that we brought with us, and they were even more delicious than expected, though on the small side.

The next day, I was planning to go to Crater Lake National Park, sightseeing and fishing, since fishing is free in national parks. However, I remembered that entrance fees were about $20 the last few times we had been to a national park. When I mentioned that to Eunice, she immediately had us turn around to go fishing in California, where we already had fishing licenses. I guess Crater Lake was no big deal to Eunice. At that point, I was a little confused about where to go. I probably should have headed for Medicine Lake, a lake in NorCal which is supposed to have excellent trout fishing, or headed south toward Modoc County and its fishing spots, but all I could think of was that I wanted to go back to Copco Lake, which Eunice and I had fished for Yellow Perch back in the 1990s. Copco Lake and Iron Gate Reservoir, downstream from Copco Lake, are pretty much the only Yellow Perch fisheries in California, and I figured we could use up our old nightcrawlers there and catch lots of fish. It was a long drive to Copco, which involved travelling west on a nearly deserted highway virtually surrounded by wildflowers, but we finally found our way there. Copco Lake was beautiful, rocky and volcanic, but rather forlorn looking. There were numerous private houses by the lake, some with people present, but no open businesses. Even the Copco Lake Store had gone out of business. There was virtually no one fishing or exploring there aside from us. Eventually, I decided to stop near the bridge which crosses the lake near where the Klamath River enters the lake. I had read a couple of articles about fishing in that area in recent years which indicated that the size of the perch had increased, plus there were some large trout in the area which sometimes bit for people who were perch fishing. Before when we were there, the perch grew no larger than about 7 inches or so, but the internet stories I read talked about catching lots of 8-11 inch perch. The truth, at least for us, was somewhat in between. The Yellow Perch were still present in huge numbers, and hungry. We must have caught over 50 of them. Eunice actually caught more of them than I did. She definitely had her perch catching technique working. The larger ones seemed somewhat larger than last time, but not much larger. We caught 5 or 6 of them which were 8 inches long, with the rest smaller. We wound up keeping 11 perch, and released the rest. By the way, we both tried using jigs for the perch, which usually work well for them, but although they kept bumping the jigs, they were not solidly taking them in their mouths, so we were unable to hook any that way. Perhaps they were still a bit sluggish with the cold weather this spring and the cold water from the river which created a noticeable current where we were fishing. They were fairly easy to hook on worms, though. We fished until we ran out of worms. I found a few dead worms in one worm box, but put them on the hook anyway, and we even caught fish on those. No trout bit, though. We forgot to take any pictures there, which is a shame, since it was a really nice place. After fishing, we drove to a Motel 6 in Red Bluff in the northern Sacramento Valley, which was adjacent to our next turnoff, arriving there around 9 p.m.

On Tuesday, we headed east from Red Bluff, with the idea of going to the Lassen area, and spending several days staying in Susanville and fishing around there. When we passed the Lassen National Park turnoff, I asked Eunice whether she wanted to go there, just in case, but again the answer was, if they make you pay to get in, we won't go there. Oh well! I went fishing once in Lassen National Park when I was young, and remembered catching some extremely colorful trout in Kings Creek which must have been a native strain of Redband Rainbow Trout. They looked much like Golden-Rainbow hybrids. Anyway, Kings Creek was out, so we headed for a place east of the park called Silver Lake. Meanwhile, we had no ice in the cooler, since the motel in Red Bluff had run out. No ice, no problem -- we stopped at a snowmobile park, and filled the cooler with snow there, even though it was June 15 and the elevation was only about 5,900 feet -- simply amazing. While on the way to Silver Lake, my eldest brother called on my wife's cell phone. He was inviting us to stay at his house in Davis, CA, but unfortunately, we were not heading that way. He also asked us to help take care of his younger daughter in August when she is scheduled to stay with my parents, a request which we are happy to help with. It was my brother's birthday, but I was so preoccupied with driving at the time, that I forgot about that.

Anyway, when we got to the final turnoff to Silver Lake, to my surprise, it was a dirt road, with that red cinder cone volcanic stuff which is so common in that area, covering the road. By the way, Eunice had already managed to get a nice collection of small, pretty volcanic rocks by that time, mostly in Oregon. Well, weren't thrilled about driving around on dirt roads in our new little Honda Fit, which Eunice calls "good boy" and I call Lenny (based on our license plate). We went anyway, and a few miles later, arrived at a still snowy Silver Lake. As it turns out, we saw a couple of large trout in Silver Lake's outlet stream, but they would not bite. The fish had a bluish appearance with a crimson stripe, which I have noticed in Golden Trout and Golden-Rainbow hybrids. I think these were probably Redband Trout, and probably spawning. In short, we had no bites and saw no other fish. We tried salmon eggs and lures in both the lake and creek. I walked down the creek about 100 yards, and found a beautiful pond of about 1 acre, just the sort of place that Brook Trout and I both love, but the place seemed fishless, and nothing bit there, either. After giving up on the Silver Lake area, we rumbled back down the dirt road, leaving a trail of red dust in our wake, and headed to Susanville. In Susanville, we went to a supermarket called the Grocery Outlet, I think, which was pretty good. Then we bought more worms at the local Wal-Mart. While there, I talked to a young man who recommended fishing at the jetty by the marina of Eagle Lake, using nightcrawlers under a bobber. The only problem was that he said the fish usually only bit for about the first hour of daylight. Nonetheless, I figured they might bite in the evening, too, so we headed for Eagle Lake and its famous strain of Rainbow Trout in the late afternoon. (Eagle Lake is a large, natural, alkaline and somewhat salty lake that only specially adapted fish can survive in.) Well, I casted out nightcrawlers under a bobber as directed with one pole, and a lure with my other pole, for an hour or so, but nothing bit. Discouraged, we decided to stay in Susanville that night, but then head south looking for better fishing the next day. I think the fish in the Lassen area were still in sleepy mode. I don't think this area necessarily has lousy fishing overall.

On wednesday, I decided to try a place called McCoy Flat Reservoir first, which is not far from Susanville, about which I had read really good things. However, when I started heading up the hill out of town, I noticed a warning light go on in my car. This car model is very full of safety features which I am not used to, and has basically been idiot proofed which is a really good thing in my case, but sometimes, it does things which are downright silly. In any case, I was afraid our fears of tire damage from the rough dirt road to Silver Lake had unfortunately been realized. I turned around and went back to town, and found a gas station with free tire air. I filled up the tires with air there until they looked full, then went to Wal-Mart again to buy a tire gauge, since we didn't have one. It turns out that the rear tires were fine, at least after adding air, and the front ones were now overinflated (but they look good to me that way). Meanwhile, the warning light refused to go off. In fact, it is still on, but I have decided that the tires are okay, although I should let some air out of the front tires and remeasure the tire pressure.

After figuring out that my car was being paranoid, I decided to head to McCoy Flat Reservoir once again. This time, we made it there, but found the lake surrounded by a fence in the area we wanted to go fishing. Huh? I thought this was supposed to be a public reservoir open to fishing. Later, we found a small dirt road which appeared to be heading toward the dam area of the lake, but Eunice said that "good boy" didn't want to go on anymore dirt roads, so McCoy Flat Reservoir and its supposedly super fishing was out. I drove a few miles further to check out a creek called Pine Creek, which is actually the main inlet to Eagle Lake. It is open to fishing in that area, which is in its upper reaches, and supposedly full of Brook Trout, but when I found what I think was Pine Creek, it was fishless as far as I could tell. it appeared to bubble from a spring into a nice pool, then flow downstream through a field. The water was beautiful and clean, everything was visible, but no fish could be seen. After that, I decided to really give up on the Susanville area and head south. My new plan was to head to the Gold Lakes Basin, which I had never been to before, then stay at a nearby motel. The Gold Lakes Basin is at the very northern end of the Sierras, and is reputed to have excellent trout fishing. (Everything north of there is part of the Cascades, which is basically a series of volcanoes, whereas the sierras is mostly granitic and results from the buckling of the north American tectonic plate as it gets pressed by both the Pacific Plate, and the smaller plate that lies under much of the western side of California.) We eventually found our way to Gold Lake sometime in the late afternoon. I walked out on the dock by the launch ramp there, and looked down in the water. It appeared to be about 20 feet deep there, and I could clearly see every pebble on the lake's bottom. Wow, is that water ever clear! Unfortunately, I could see no fish. Nonetheless, I tried fishing from the nearby shore for awhile, with no bites. While I was there, I spoke with a man who said he was tying his boat to the dock, and planning to return at 4:30 the next morning to go fishing. I could see trolling equipment in his boat. I was wondering about his sanity a bit, considering how windy, snowy and cold it was there, but I hope he had good fishing.

After leaving Gold Lake, we headed for upper Salmon Lake, mostly to look around and take pictures. It was really snowy there, and I couldn't see anyone fishing there or any signs of fish, but I think it would have good fishing once it warms up a bit. The place I really wanted to go to was Sardine Lakes, anyway, so we headed there next. These lakes are lower down, actually only about 5,800 feet or so, I think, yet are supposed to have good fishing for both Brook Trout and Rainbow Trout. (Usually, Brook Trout are only found much higher up in the Sierras.) In addition to the 2 lakes, I had noticed a pond below the lower lake in studying for the trip, just the sort of place I like to fish. It turns out that the parking lot for Sardine Lakes said something like "Sand Pond Picnic Area," so the pond on the map must be called Sand Pond. I walked about 100 yards over to the pond, saw it had a small inlet from Lower Sardine Lake, and got really happy when I saw dozens of baby Brook Trout scurrying around in the area where the creek enters the pond, which appears to be about 2 acres in size. I went farther on and found that the main branch of Sardine Creek had numerous, nice size Brook Trout visible in it. I went back and got my fishing equipment, headed for the pond, and had a limit of 8-10 plus inch Brook Trout within about 1/2 hour, on worms under a bobber. There were also lots of fish surfacing, so I tried a Black Knat fly, but only had one strike on it. The fish were probably feeding on a specific type of insect, and I didn't know what pattern to use. Anyway, the fishing was so good using worms that I didn't mind. Eunice was sitting in the car reading while I fished, so after I had caught my limit, I went back to the car and told her that it was her turn. With her, we tried Sand Pond briefly, but she was having trouble hooking the fish, so we headed for the main branch of Sardine Creek, where the Brook Trout also turned out to be cooperative on worms, and she "caught her limit" there with some help from me. All 10 Brook Trout were caught between about 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., and no Rainbow Trout were seen. We loved Sardine Lakes, and in my opinion, it was the find of the trip. In addition, Eunice told me she wants to stay at the resort which is next to where we parked, in the future.

By the way, when Eunice got out of the car, the horn started honking for no apparent reason, another one of our car's quirks, apparently. I finally got the car to stop honking by pressing the door unlocking button on my car key. A couple of months ago, I apparently pressed the button to lock the door by accident while still in the car, so I could not open the door until I pressed the unlock button -- how strange. Anyway, Eunice had plans to head farther than I did that evening. She kept changing my route by telling me where to go, and we wound up at King's Beach at the north end of Lake Tahoe after 10 p.m. Unfortunately, most of the motel owners appeared to have already gone to sleep. We finally found one motel employee that was responsive to us, so we rented a room there. We had a dinner of delicious pink-meated Brook Trout, and a breakfast, and another dinner of them, from our trip to Sardine Lakes. The fish we caught there appeared to be wild fish. Although the lakes are stocked with fish, the ones we caught were from below the lakes, where no stocking probably takes place.

On Thursday, we decided to call my other brother, Bruce, who lives at South Lake Tahoe. I had been hoping to stop there on our trip, but Eunice seemed to be against it. She kept saying we should bring gifts, etc., but nonetheless, she eventually called them. Meanwhile, we headed for Donner Lake, basically because it was nearby and I had always wanted to see it. We found a public fishing dock there, and there were a couple of teenagers fishing there already, so Eunice sent me off fishing there while she waited to see if I could catch anything there. As it turns out, when I went back from the dock to the car to get my fishing equipment, one of the teenagers caught a Lake Trout on a worm. It was about 15 inches long, similar in size to the ones I caught 2 years ago in Colorado, and I think it was his first Lake Trout. He was really excited about it and surprised, since he fishes Donner Lake a lot but had only caught Rainbows before. Unfortuantely, that Lake Trout turned out to be the catch of the day, as in the only catch of the day. I tried worms, and the Krocodile Lure that I caught the Lake Trout on in Colorado, to no effect, and no one else had any more bites, either. After a couple of hours fishing there, I gave up, and we headed for South Lake Tahoe. Eunice called my brother while we were on the way there, actually. Bruce said we were welcome to stay there, and his young daughters were eager to go fishing with Uncle Robert and Aunt Eunice again, so we ended up going to their house, having dinner there, and basically hanging around that evening with my brother's family. Bruce and Rosalie's older daughter Branda was talking excitedly about going fishing, and showing us her Ugly Stick fishing pole which resembled ours closely. I also took that chance to call my eldest brother Craig to say, happy birthday, call my parents, and neighbors who were caring for our pets, yard, and house.

Friday, June 18, we had a plan to fish some of the places where Eunice and I had success trout fishing last year without the kids, but this time, bringing the kids to fish with us. After going to K-Mart to buy a Barbie Pole for Bruce and Rosalie's younger daughter, Beverly, the first stop was supposed to be Caples Creek (also called Woods Creek on some maps), below Woods Lake. I was to lead the way there, while Bruce followed with the girls in his car. However, I could not find the sign or turnoff for Woods Lake. Eventually, we figured out that it was a small road with no sign. After turning onto that road, we drove about 1/2 mile with piles of snow lining the road, until there was an SUV parked in the middle of the road in front of us. In front of the SUV was a large pile of snow covering the road, so cars could go no further. This was only about 8,000 feet above sea level -- simply amazing.

After that, we went to Plan B, which was the creek where I caught my personal best trout last year. As it turns out, that creek had been transformed into a raging torrent that was, in my brother's terminology, "ripping." Even with fairly large weights on our lines, the line was being pushed downstream and into snags. Despite this, one of my nieces apparently had a bite, and I think I saw one small fish, but that was it, fishwise. Then it was on to Plan C, which was Caples Lake by the auxilliary dam. Gettin to the fishing involved walking through some snow banks. It was shady there, and the wind was blowing heavily in our faces, so it felt really cold there. Despite this, the fishing was not bad there. We saw several stocker-type Rainbows caught by other fisherpeople, and eventually, I caught a Brown Trout, and Eunice caught a Rainbow there, both on worms, but the girls weren't able to catch any. I so wanted Beverly to catch a fish on her Barbie Pole, too! Eventually, we got so cold that we all decided to leave. Bruce took the kids home, but Eunice and I decided to stop on the main dam at Caples Lake to fish the creek below the lake, where we had good fishing for Brown Trout last year. The stream was fuller this year, but it was still fishable. However, we weren't able to catch anything in the creek this time. Eunice did have 2 bites, however. After we headed back to the car, I noticed one man fishing along the dam had 2 trout, one nice sized Brook Trout, and a small Brown Trout. The weather had gotten calmer by then, too. However, no fish were seen surfacing. Nonetheless, I tried fishing there for awhile with no luck, then we finally went back to my brother's house.

On June 19, we decided to take the girls someplace where we thought they definitely would be able to catch fish. We settled on Bluegill fishing at "Elliot's House" on the Tahoe Keys. Actually, Branda's friend Elliot and his family had already moved out of the house, but the house was unoccupied, and Bruce decided it would be okay to fish from the dock there. At first, I didn't see any fish there, but after a moment, several Bluegills showed up. They almost seemed to be looking at us as though they were expecting us to feed them. Once we obliged, more Bluegills appeared and started swarming the girls' baits. Branda kept saying something like "These Bluegills don't like my worm. They keep biting it but don't get on the hook" -- silly girl! Before long, they started catching Bluegills. Clearly, our efforts last year to rid the keys of these alien fish were unsuccessful. While I rationed the worms to the girls, I casted a small jig into the lake, which soon got clobbered by a better size fish which turned out to be a large Tui Chub. My brother was really happy to see that, since they are a native species, and my brother is involved in protecting native fish in the area. He said that was the largest Tui Chub he had ever seen. It was about 9-10 inches long, but they are usually much smaller. As it turned out, I caught 6 Tui Chubs, all on the jig, and Branda caught a really large one on a piece of nightcrawler, too. We didn't catch any Tui Chub last year at the same spot. We also caught about 12 Bluegills among us. Branda and Beverly caught several fish apiece. Beverly's Barbie Pole worked well there, as did Branda's Ugly Stick. They kept saying stuff like "fishing is fun" while we were there. The male Bluegills were about 7 inces long and in spawning colors, while the females were about 6 inches long and full of eggs. We ended up keeping 10 or 11 Bluegills, which we filleted and fried that afternoon. Eunice also convinced Bruce to let her keep one Tui Chub, which she wanted to try. Did I mention that Eunice is a wee bit eccentric? Anyway, she is Chinese, and the Chinese like eating Carp, so why not Tui Chub?

That evening, Eunice treated all of us to dinner at a local Chinese restaurant for father's day, so we had a relaxing evening and waited for our return trip home. Sunday morning, Branda and Beverly kept asking us to take them fishing again, but we said we really needed to go home. On the way home, we did take one side trip to Virginia Lakes, since I had told Eunice about fishing there, but she had never been there. As it turns out, road turned to dirt for the last little bit to Big Virginia Lake, Eunice said that "good boy" didn't want to go there, but that other, paved road was okay. That other road went to Little Virginia Lake, which is below the bigger lake. We wound up fishing near the boat launch area at Little Virginia Lake for a couple of hours, and fishing was reasonably good there. We lost lots of bites, I kept being preoccupied with snags, tying new lines, etc. but managed to catch two 8-10 inch Brown Trout, and Eunice, one small, 7 inch wild Rainbow, all on worms. I was surprised that we didn't catch any Brook Trout there, though, based on previous reports from there. Strangely, I had never fished Little Virginia Lake before, although I have fished in the Virginia Lakes drainage many times before. I think I will go there again. Anyway, considering how snowy it was at Little Virginia Lake, which is at 9,300 feet I think, the place I had wanted to go at 9,900 feet was probably still snowed in. It has definitely been a wet, snowy year in the western U.S. Bruce told me that it kept snowing in Tahoe until the end of May, which explains the cold, snowy condtions around there.

After leaving Little Virginia Lake, it basically was a long drive home. We even ate leftover food in the car. We finally arrived here at about 10:30 p.m. Sunday evening, where we were glad to see that all was well, including our 3 cats. (The youngest one is just a kitten, a little calico girl which we have only had few a few weeks.)

It was a super trip with my female fishing buddies, although no bragging size fish were caught. Interestingly, although I think I caught over 30 trout during the trip, not a single one was a Rainbow. I usually target other species, and prefer to catch non-stockers over stockers, but usually catch at least a few stockers, holdover or wild Rainbows. Species caught on the trip included: Cutthroat Trout (Coastal variety), Brook Trout, Brown Trout, Rainbow Trout (by my wife), Yellow Perch, Bluegills, Tui Chub, and a little Largemouth Bass by my niece Beverly at Tahoe Keys.

We also got lots of sightseeing and picture taking in. On the way home, Eunice said she had gotten tired of seeing pine trees, mountains and snow, but I never got tired of that. Anyway, we are back to the the hot, brown hillsides and civilization of summer in Moreno Valley now.

June 9

I finally finished finals and grading chores, which have prevented me from doing blog posts for awhile. Soon, Eunice and I should be going on a vacation, but I will report on that when we return.

A Capital Idea Part 11: Nurturant Capital

Carl Jung wrote about what he called "archetypes" as part of humanity's collective unconscious. The most important archetype, Jung felt, was the mother archetype -- that is, the archetype of the nurturer. While I am not particularly an advocate of Jung's theory, I do agree that the prototype of the nurturing mother is an extremely important image to all humans. Yet, we treat mothering as something done out of love, for zero pay, as though it is of no use to our economy or to put it more directly, society's well- being.

I have to ask why that is the case, and suggest that we should consider nurturant capital, of all kinds, as a true form of capital. As with education, we would be lost without nurturing parents. A Lord of the Flies scenario suggests itself. The Lord of the Flies is a book about a bunch of British schoolboys from a ritzy private school, who are marooned on an island with no adult supervision. In the end, they basically wind up killing each other. While this is a work of fiction, and the reality would probably not be that bad, it may not be far from the truth, either. The deserters of the HMS Bounty found their way to Pitcairn Island, with their Tahitian wives or girlfriends, but when discovered a few years later, only one of the deserters was still alive, and he would not talk about what had happened to the others. (There were still several of the Tahitian women and a number of children they had with the deserters, whose descendants still occupy Pitcairn Island to this day, but only one of the original men remained.) In any case, as helpless as we are as infants, none of us would have survived more than a few days without being taken care of. All of us literally owe our lives to nurturers, whomever they may have been!

Thus, nurturance -- the sharing of resources with those less able to gather their own -- could be considered the most important source of capital of all! Clearly, this is antithetical to the philosophy of financial capitalism, which is about collecting capital and using it to gain more capital, not for sharing, but for oneself. Rich people may share their wealth, but that is usually more out of a sense of pity, guilt, gratitude, or even a need to glorify themselves -- something called egoism -- than as a necessary condition of living and being a responsible member of society. In other words, any charity by the wealthy means going above and beyond the call of duty. Rather than viewing nurturance this way, which I feel is toxic to society, I propose that we celebrate it and imbue it with true value, not just lip service. This issue is much like the situation with education in the sense that society would disintegrate without it, yet it is easily taken for granted and devalued.

Moving beyond the mothering concept, nurturance also includes: fathering, mentoring, coaching, foster parenting, taking care of pets, other animals, yards or other plants, environmentalism which contributes to the well-being of our planet -- in short, any actions which contribute to the well being of other life and our planet. Of course, there are mothers' days, fathers' days, awards for parents, and tax breaks for parents, but these are small recognition compared to the worth of peoples' nurturing efforts. Perhaps the smile on a child's face, or the affection of a grateful pet, is all the reward that one needs, but there must be a better way to treat the nurturers of the world fairly and give them the support and recognition that they deserve -- perhaps a parenting stipend, for example. However, in an economy based upon non-financial capital, it would be much easier to grant individuals their human rights, which includes the right to be properly nurtured and cared for by one's elders. This is far from being the case in the world that I know.

In conclusion, let me state that love is the greatest capital of all. I plan to do my next post or several posts in this series about the history and concept of money.

May 28

A Capital Idea Part 10: Well-Being as Capital

Presumably, the entire idea of capital is to create more well-being -- health, happiness and security. Capital represents resources which can be used to create more resources, which leads to more well-being. In that sense, this post gets to the heart of the matter.

Abundant evidence from psychological research indicates that happiness makes people more productive. Conversely, being productive makes people more happy. In terms of Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development, generativity is essentially the second highest goal people have in life, with integrity being the ultimate goal. In terms of humanistic theory as proposed by Carl Rogers as well as Abraham Maslow, the goal of personal development is self-actualization, which can be conceived as being the ultimate in well-being. Psychological research which touches on this topic is generally in agreement that the consequences of true well-being (health, the desire to be generative, self-actualization) are good in terms of productivity. (This is in contrast to the disingenuous self-esteem, narcissism and false sense of entitlement which is so prevalent in our capitalist society, especially among the rich.)

The amount of productive work lost to depression, anxiety disorders, and the self-medication of drug abuse is enormous. Were we able to significantly reduce these problems, our workforce would be much more productive. Unfortunately, our winner-take-all social and political system, and fast-paced, you-can-and-should-have-it-all mindset, makes it inevitable that a large proportion of our population will continue to struggle with such problems until our system changes. Similarly, the cost of health problems in terms of lost productivity is enormous as well. Yet, even though the United States has the latest available medical technology, our for-profit health care system ensures that the majority of our population (including myself) will continue to find adequate health care extraordinarily expensive, thus shunning the system to the point that it is inevitable that the health of the average American will suffer and be worse than that of people in other nations, whose politicians long ago understood, unlike our stupid leaders who are blinded by capitalistic greed, that health care is a right which benefits society in terms of health, happiness and economic productivity. Despite the recent health care bill's passage, we for now will continue to suffer under a for-profit health care system, and the cost of health insurance for people such as myself is likely to continue to increase.

To go one step further, well-being is itself a form of capital. Our health is a resource which, used productively, can be used to ensure further health and happiness. Similarly, happiness is a resource which, used wisely, can lead to future happiness and the spreading of happiness to others. True happiness (in contrast to the false happiness of narcissistically based egotism) is self-replicating in a sense, like a form of life, a virus that produces good. What could be a better form of capital than that? Some people have even proposed using a happiness index rather than indices of economic prosperity to measure the success of a society. The leader of one nation (I forget which, but I think it was in Asia) suggested using just such a happiness index. I wholeheartedly agree with this approach.

The happiness of being productive, healthy, doing good, and spreading happiness to others is the true measure of a society's well-being and success. Societies in which conflict prevails are doomed to being unproductive until they figure out how to get along with each other and create a happier society, and those in which oppression prevails will continue to thwart human potential and productivity until the oppression ends. It is not about business, capitalism, building factories, etc. It is about cooperation and developing and using our understanding to create a better society. The better we do this, the better future we create. Now, that is true capital. After all, what could represent the concept of capital better than something which creates a beneficial, happy, productive, progressive future? I say it is high time that we, as a society, recognize the reality of well-being as true capital.

May 26

A Capital Idea Part 9: Spiritual Capital

Today, I propose an even more unconventional form of capital -- spiritual capital. This is related to moral capital, but not the same. By spiritual capital, I refer to our human spirit, and our quest for spiritual understanding. (Other animals may have a spirit as well.) The basic fact of our common humanity, as sentient, spiritual beings, gives us certain human rights, including a right to our share of vital resources available to other humans as well. Meanwhile, the individual's quest for spiritual understanding merits respect. People should have a right to and chance to engage in their spiritual endeavors as they see fit.

The importance of spiritual capital in practical terms is that it forms the basis of a sense of ethics, a sense of human rights. Spiritual capital is not limited to the religious, or even those who believe in a higher power. Even atheists enjoy a sense of spiritual capital when they try to prevent suffering. Agnostics, in fact, may be the most active in terms of undergoing a spiritual journey. Agnostics are more open-minded than people who adhere to a religion, and ask the larger spiritual questions, although people with specific religious beliefs also have important spiritual questions.

To put the issue into perspective, if we were machines, with no feeling, desires or spirit, there would be no need to be concerned about how we treat each other. People could be put into factories and worked to death, to be replaced by new ones, without any moral compunction. In fact, this is pretty much the case in many factories around the world, and used to be the case in the U.S. as well, until a populist workers' rights movements put a stop to child labor and horrible factory working conditions. Recently, I have been reading about the suicides and death by exhaustion of Foxxconn workers in China. Foxxconn is a Chinese computer company, that my stepdaughter used to work for here in the U.S. as an accountant. She always complained that they made her work overtime without pay, and on holidays, and generally overworked and mistreated their employees. Apparently, she wasn't exagerrating. The way Foxxconn's factory employees in China are treated is, clearly, much worse than what Isabella experienced. Of course, Foxxconn is only an example of a corporation not respecting its employees' human -- in other words, spiritual -- rights.

The point of this post is not to elevate the status of people who make a life of the pursuit of spiritual activities. Rather, we all have a certain level of spiritual capital. People who place their lives' focus on spirituality, however, do deserve respect for their spirituality and strong sense of ethics. We all, as persons of conscience, should be allowed to pursue our own forms of spirituality. It may be said that perhaps I should be writing about emotional capital. I will deal with that in a separate post, but compared with human happiness, spiritual capital recognizes us as part of a larger reality, not a self-contained one. Matter/energy is neither created nor destroyed in the universe. We are part of something eternal. We must always pursue the most ethical possible lifestyle keeing in mind our oneness as part of a larger reality, and the timelessness of this reality.

People who abuse the human rights of others, and deny their spiritual desires, including big businesses which behave in such ways, are spiritual offenders. They degrade and use the spiritual capital of their workers, and even their customers, in the pursuit of profit. Thus, I say, spiritual capital is real, and deserves to be considered as such. This is the best way to create a truly ethical society.

May 21

A Capital Idea Part 8: Is it Possible to have a Corruption-Free Society?

This is a corollary of the moral capital post from two days ago.

Corruption degrades any moral capital that a society has. Currently, we in the United States are in a state of massive corruption at a financial level, corruption which has invaded our political system, eroding its moral capital. Furthermore, this state of corruption has been spreading around the world in recent years with the advent of huge international corporations. Some degree of corruption has seemingly been the norm historically, but much worse at some times than others.

This begs the question: Can we somehow build a corruption-free society, one in which fairness prevails? For that matter, can an incorruptible society be built? I do not have any ready answers for these questions, but feel I must do my best to address them. In order to emphasize the importance of this matter, let me point out that a sense of fairness is extremely important to people's psychological well-being. The more people feel that society is set up in a biased way, which unfairly favors some over others, the more downtrodden and exploited they feel, and thus, the more angry and miserable. We are seeing this phenomenon at present, in the form of anger directed at banks, financial institutions, big business (most of all, oil companies), insurance companies, and government. Anger lead to demands for change, which can result in denial and further repression by the powers that be, constructive progress, or violent revolution. We as a people -- people of the entire world, in fact -- must insist that the course of constructive progess be the one taken. This is a crucial role of the public in the use of moral capital. It is the public's use of its own moral capital, to insist that government be a place of moral capital.

Encouraging politicians to behave in a moral way can help reduce government corruption, but it is not likely to eliminate government corruption. Similarly, attempts to regulate the financial industries and other businesses to prevent abuses is not likely to prevent all abuses, but certainly such attempts will help. Theoretically, if society is somehow purged of all corruptible persons, and regulations are extremely thorough and efficient at preventing or punishing abuses, the regulatory process could result in a corruption-free society. This is, however, extremely unlikely.

It seems to me that as long as financial capital and financial capitalism exists, which by its nature encourages excesses under the delusion of never-ending gain, society will be strapped with unfairness and corruption to some degree, sometimes more, sometimes less. An objective program to create fair wages and prices for services and products could be a great help, but there still would be people who might be tempted to and actually find ways to cheat the system, and it would still be possible for financial monopolies to form. The inevitable conclusion that this line of thinking leads me to, is that if we are to ultimately have a corruption-free (or nearly so) or better yet, an incorruptible (or nearly so) society, is to base its economy on other forms of capital rather than financial capital.

Capital represents resources, which clearly are needed in order to sustain an economy. It seems to me that the most straightforward way to run an economy other than through financial capital, is through resource capital, as promoted by The Venus Project. As discussed previously, this presumes having abundant resources of whatever nature is needed, and the means of equitably distributing these resources. There are also the problems of incentives for work and having a sense of fairness when all people are legally entitled to their share of the resources regardless of their contributions or lack thereof. Personally, I think that all of these issues can be addressed in a resource-based economy. In addition to a resource-based economy, however, I believe that in order to create the fairest, happiest and most progressive possible society, we should formally integrate other forms of capital into the economic system. For example, as morally conscientious beings, we should recognize the rights of all persons to a certain share of the available resources, and we should encourage and reward the good conscience of other members of society. In terms of work capital or intellectual capital, we should find ways to reward people's contributions, fairly and without creating inordinate wealth or monopolies. Similarly, with other forms of capital not yet discussed, such as spiritual capital, we need to find ways of using the economic system to appreciate people's spiritual wisdom. The best approach to creating a non-corrupt society is a balanced, integrated one involving all forms of capital. Perhaps some form of money may even play a role in such an integrated economic approach. So-called "token economies" are a popular way of shaping the behavior of institutionalized people.

If you think the idea of an economy not based on money seems like a lousy idea, consider the following: When monopolies are no longer possible, financial corruption in the forms we are currently seeing, will neither be possible. When there is no money to steal, there will be no robbers. Without money, there would be no rich lobbyists or corporate influence on government. True democracy would be much more possible without money doing the talking. When people are no longer stressed over finances, there will be less impetus for domestic abuse, and less psychopathology. I cannot say that such a society would be completely without conflict or crime, but the preconditions leading to conflict and crime would be much diminished. Also, cultures with economies based on non-financial forms of capital would be freer than current ones to promote the prosocial socialization of its children. Government and society itself act as role models. Current role models are woefully inadequate and corrupt. Once corruption diminishes, creating a society of morally grounded, well-socialized individuals will become much easier.

And consider this: Throughout much of human history, people got by without money. Money is a relatively recent invention, and in reality, an artificial form of capital. People used to live in small, subsistence-oriented bands. Now, we live in large acquisition-oriented cultures. Perhaps the age of money we are currently going through is a stage in human evolution. Money has been of some use since its inception, but its time of usefulness may be on the verge of ending. I see no reason why members of modern societies cannot live together like family, without the undue influence of money, in an economy based upon truer forms of capital.

May 19

A Capital Idea Part 7: Moral Capital

We have probably all heard the term "moral authority" on occasion. I submit here that there is such a thing as moral capital, which may be more important ultimately than financial capital, and which, neglecting as it seems to be in our nation currently, leads to disaster.

The United States used to have a sense of moral authority. We were the nation which led the world in democracy, and rode our white horses to the rescue of besieged nations around the world. However, our international corporations, our leaders, and their militaristic supporters have been unable to restrain themselves from building an empire, have not been able to prevent themselves from supporting dictators who support the United States' government, and have failed to stop themselves from becoming the world's bully, feared and despised around much of the world. I guess this is just another example of the "top dog" phenomenon, or maybe a "big pig" phenomenon. People who want power, all too often want power for power's sake. They wallow in it like pigs in the mud, no matter how they got there, and they cannot prevent themselves from abusing their power. The old saying "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" comes to mind.

What are we to do about the erosion of the United States' moral authority? One thing we can do is to elect leaders who are not interested in world hegemony, who are uncorruptible and retain a sense of moral authority, if such candidates can be found. Barack Obama may be such a leader, and has given the world much hope, but so far, this remains more of a hope than a reality. Another thing we can do is to encourage the United States to work in a cooperative and egalitarian or even altruistic manner with other nations, rather than an authoritarian, militaristic manner. We need to build good will again, and respect other nations and their governments within reasonable limits. We need to build schools, roads, and all types of infrastructure, not guns, bombs, warplanes and warships. Third, we need to strenthen a sense of moral authority within the United States. We have reached a point where the financial bilking of the public is being rewarded with huge bailouts, and have long since reached the point where misanthropic behavior by celebrities is largely excused or denied by the media most of the public. The rapists of America -- as in those who are raping our great nation -- are hiding in plain sight, under the cover of public self-delusion.

Sigmund Freud had only 19 patients during his career as an early psychiatrist in Vienna, Austria, circa 1900, and the vast majority of them eventually revealed to Freud how they had been molested as children. However, upon presenting his theory that sexual molestation was a major cause of psychological disorder, he was disbelieved and discounted by his colleagues. Afterward, Freud decided that no molestations of his patients had actually occured. Instead, he postulated that such reports were childhood fantasies about one's opposite sex parent, an idea which became a cornerstone of Freud's theory of psychosexual development. As a result, Freud's radically different and sexy theory became wildly popular, despite its appalling inadequacies, and set back the search for truth in psychology and the treatment of victims of child abuse, by something like 100 years. Yet here we are, in the year 2010, still in a state of moral denial for the most part, regarding the behavior of our nation and its more prominant inhabitants. We have learned to take the mistreatment of women and children, and minorities of all kinds -- those less able to defend themselves -- more seriously than in the past, especially among those of us who are aware of these problems and their consequences, but far too many Americans still harbor biases which lead to the unfair treatment and victimization of blameless people. If the people of the United States wish to be world leaders, it must be in a moral sense -- as a shining example of what humanity is capable of -- not in a "top dog" use-of-force sense.

Finally, we owe it to ourselves to be persons of good conscience. Moral capital exists on both societal and personal levels. How is personal morality rewarded? For one, people of moral integrity reward themselves through having a clear conscience regarding their actions and decisions. According to developmental psychologist Erik Erikson, the final stage of personality development, in late adulthood, involves the quest for a sense of integrity. Psychologically healthy people have moral integrity, but psychologically unhealthy people do not. Furthermore, abundant evidence by modern psychologists shows that having a clear conscience is indeed good for people, both in terms of psychological and physical health. On the other hand, there is nothing worse for a person than living under siege from one's own conscience. Secondly, moral behavior is usually rewarded by other people, especially by those who know and love us the best. Successful marriages and parent/child relations are based largely on the integrity of the marriage partners and of the parents, respectively. The kindness of strangers or acquaintances, even, tends to represent a sort of reciprocity. People tend to respond in kind to others who introduce themselves in a friendly, trustworthy way, as a person with integrity. There is a strong and good tradition of valuing reciprocity and prosocial behavior, found widely among religions and philosophical traditions of the world. This helps create a better world and happier lives for all of us, and especially, for those of us who practice peace, love understanding, and kindness as a matter of course.

May 17

Aha Quin with Chuck and Cody Again

May 14

Since we didn't have much of a spring break, and Eunice didn't catch any fish when we did get away to Lake Isabella, we decided to go fishing at Aha Quin on the lower Colorado River. Eunice kept asking me to take her there, since we have gone there these past few Aprils and she always does well there. I think it's her favorite fishing spot. We timed the trip for a late afternoon/evening session, leaving Moreno Valley at 2 p.m. After taking a detour to avoid a construction project and major traffic jam on the 60 freeway in Beaumont, we arrived at our Aha Quin fishing spot at 5 p.m. As we got out of the car, I commented, "I'll go down and see if Chuck and Cody are fishing on the dock" semi-seriously. Chuck is the character we met last year at Aha Quin (mentioned on this blog last April) and Cody is his grandson. To my surprise, there they were. Both of them had Bluegills on there lines, there first of the trip. They had just gotten there too. Cody commented that this was there first time at Aha Quin since we saw them last year, amazingly enough, and I said it was the same for us. When I first saw them, I figured that they fished there all the time. I guess it's some sort of fishing ESP.

While Eunice went to the restroom, I started fishing. Cody said there were lots of Bluegills not too far from shore. I put a redworm on my hook, casted out to the right about 15 feet, Cody said, "That's perfect," and within 2 seconds, I had a good size Bluegill on the line. Aha Quin certainly is good to us. Over the next three hours, we caught about 20 fish, about equal numbers for both Eunice and myself. There were 6 really large Redear Sunfish, 1 Bass Eunice caught, and the rest were Bluegills. The Redears at Aha Quin average about 1 pound each, while the Bluegills average about 1/2 pound each. (This has been consistent over the years.) After awhile, I decided to try fishing with a tiny 1/80th ounce, red and white Crappie Jig, and wound up catching most of my fish on it -- 3 Redears, and about 5 Bluegills all on the same jig, which was nearly demolished by the time I retired for the evening. Eunice caught 1 Bluegill on it too. She kept retrieving it a little too steadily and quickly for the fish, so I told her to pause the lure, and sure enough, the Bluegill inhaled it. For me, I think it was a record catch of sorts, the most Redears I have caught on a lure in one day, maybe the most Bluegills, too -- I usually catch Bluegills on flies when I use artificials -- and the biggest volume poundage wise of Redears and Bluegills I have caught on jigs. We were two happy fisherpeople. By the way, there were a group of several Bass about 15 inches long each, that kept going after our fish as we were reeling them in, even though the sunfish we were catching were much too large for the Bass to eat. Eunice's Bass was her personal best, too. She doesn't catch many Bass, since we rarely fish for them. I thought it was a large Redear until she got it near shore. It was thin, but still good sized at 17 inches. The Bass looked like it was starving, and it was the first Largemouth Bass we have caught at Aha Quin. I asked Eunice if she wanted to keep it, and she wanted to keep her biggest catch of the day. When we brought it home and cleaned the fish, it turned out that the Bass had a large hook in its stomach which was preventing it from feeding, so the fish was starving. I think it also had laid eggs recently. Bass around that size are fairly common at Aha Quin (both Largemouth and Smallmouth) but they don't seem to get much bigger than that. The only fish we let go that day was a smaller female Bluegill; most of the Bluegills were colorful males in spawning condition, and all of them were of decent size.

Compared to the previous year, the claims of Chuck, who apparently is the world's greatest fisherman, were relatively lame. He told us about how he and his wife caught 40 large Bass at Lake Isabella in an hour and a half at the marina, after renting a boat and not catching anything -- but Chuck said it was dumb luck this time. He mentioned how he caught 8 large Striped Bass on one Slim Jim (one of those little pieces of dried sausage that gas stations sell). He also mentioned about how his name used to be mentioned in the Friday fishing report "every Friday" mostly with his catches from Vail Lake. That brought back memories, since my father and I used to go fishing there frequently (always from shore). Now, Vail Lake is closed to the public, sadly. Chuck told me one more story, as a former detective, involving Vail Lake. Apparently, on one occasion, there was a customer there who rented a fishing boat, but no fishing permit. He took the boat and parked it by the shore near his car, got a suitcase out of his car, and put it in the boat. One of the lake employees saw this happen, because he was chasing the guy down to ask him to pay $5 for the fishing permit. He got suspicious, and made the guy open the suitcase, since it did not look like it contained fishing equipment. It turned out that the guy's dead wife was in the suitcase, and the man admitted to having killed her. The first thing the employee saw was her lifeless head and red hair when the suitcase was opened. When asked why he did it, the man said he killed his wife because she had spent all of his money. The story about Vail Lake was pretty scintillating (and probably true), but overall, I think maybe Chuck's storytelling is slipping, or perhaps he has realized that there is a limit to how much I can tolerate before my eyes start to roll. But seriously, we had a really good time fishing with Chuck and Cody. Somehow, though, we outfished them by a wide margin that day, although they brought in an occasional fish.

At about 8 p.m., we headed to the Blue Line Motel in Blythe, which is run by the Jia family, originally from mainland China. They treat us like old friends and are highly solicitous of us. Mr. Jia met us and gave us a room with a refrigerator and freezer at a relatively low rate. However, we did not see Mrs. Jia, and the room was not in very good repair. The power frequently and unpredictably went out for a moment, before turning back on. It would have been comical had it not been worrisome. The plug on the air conditioner was too short to reach the electrical outlet, and of course, the room was hot. Temperatures were about 100 degrees in Blythe, although they were only about 80 degrees here in Moreno Valley. To top it off, when I tried to turn on the television, there was no remote control, and nothing showed on the screen. I went to inquire about how to get the television to work, and there was a hispanic man working there, which had never been the case before. It had always been Mr. and Mrs. Jia, with their son managing the place. Anyway, the new employee gave me a remote control, but I was left wondering what had happened to Mrs. Jia. Last year, Eunice told me that Mrs. Jia felt lonely and isolated living in Blythe, so Eunice tried to cheer her up. Now, we were worrying about her. Mr. Jia said that she had gone to bed early -- somehow I doubt that.

After a dinner of various crackers, some of Chef Boy Artie's creations, Gatorade, Powerade, and some of the smaller Bluegills, we went to bed.

May 15

After the previous day's success, we decided to head back to Aha Quin. Strangely, when we got to the dock, Chuck and Cody informed us that the fish weren't there, but there were some over by the launch ramp, where Eunice and I had caught some of the fish the previous day (including the Bass). Sure enough, there was a swarm of Bluegills visible 5-10 feet from shore at the launch ramp. Most of them appeared to be males in spawning mode. In fact, I could see several spawning nests just beyond the launch ramp concrete, being guarded by male Bluegills who were chasing other male Bluegills, and some female Bluegills around. It was kind of heartening to see, as a Bluegill lover. With my jig fishing success the day before, I decided to try using only artificial lures this day, while I rationed the few remaining nightcrawlers to Eunice. As it turned out, the fish weren't biting nearly as much on the jigs this day. I did catch 2 Bluegills on the jig at the launch ramp, but only after ditching the bobber I had been using the day before and casting to the fish that were close to shore. Eventually, even they stopped biting on jigs. I guess they got tired of seeing them, but even when I fished different spots, nothing went after the jigs. It was as though someone had flipped a switch to the "off" position. Fortunately for Eunice, the fish continued to bite on nightcrawler pieces. She caught about 9 that way, casting beyond the ones that were visible on the nests. The fish on the nests would not bite, anyway, but the other ones were biting. Most of the fish we caught were male Bluegills, but Eunice did catch one large Redear (female).

While we were by the launch ramp, a tribal-looking guy with a mohawk haircut walked onto the dock and talked to Chuck, who was still fishing there. I heard him say something about how they hadn't been enforcing the regulations before, and it looked like he was making Chuck leave our favorite little fishing dock. This is also a sort of gas station for boats, but previously, the employees always let us fish there as long as we didn't bother the boats. In fact, I think the employees found it entertaining to watch people catch fish there. Chuck remained calm, but obviously miffed. He called Cody, who had been fishing and swimming near us, over and said that they were going to leave. Fortunately, the fishing restriction only applied to the boat dock, not to the rest of Aha Quin.

Eventually, the worms ran out, so we decided to go to a place called Lost Lake Resort which also has good fishing, and a store that sells worms. For some reason, the fish were not much in evidence at Lost Lake, even on fresh nightcrawlers. (I had since given up on having a lures-only fishing day.) I eventually lost one which felt good size, but my hook came off due to a knot defect, apparently. We headed over to the other public area there, where the backwater meets the river, but it was swarming with campers, picnickers, swimmers, and boaters, so we decided not to even try there. Instead, we went to a place called Hidden Valley, which we had never been to before. It also is private, but we found a couple of public places there where we could fish. It seemed like a friendly place, with no "no trespassing" signs or anything of the kind. We stopped by a bridge built especially for golf carts, which are a common form of transportation around the river, and a launch ramp which spanned both sides of a backwater channel about 75 feet wide. There were lots of reeds in the area, and it looked pretty fishy. Sure enough, the moment I casted there with a worm, I hooked something large. It stripped some line off my reel, then headed into the nearby reeds. I thought about giving the line slack and hoping the fish would swim out of the reeds, but decided I had a better chance of landing the fish if I tried to steer it away from the reeds. In any case, my 4 pound leader broke. What a shame. Later, I caught a rather large Bluegill there, with brilliant pink and lavender colors, and Eunice caught a 1 pound Redear in the same spot.

Since Eunice saw another fisherman catch a 4-5 pound Flathead Catfish at Aha Quin the evening before, she wanted to return to Aha Quin around dusk to try for catfish. As it turns out, we saw a group of 3 people catch 2 smaller Channel Catfish, and a typical 1 pound Redear, while I tried in vain to get something to bite my jig, and Eunice once again outfished the rest of us by catching another big Redear and 2 more Bluegills before we called it a day. I guess this was her day. This trip was her Mother's Day present, in a way. We released a smaller female Bluegill I caught on my jig, and kept the other fish. One of the guys who were fishing near us mentioned that he netted a 16 pound Flathead Catfish for Chuck the evening before, after we had left. Chuck had told me that he caught a big Flathead the night before. This time, he wasn't kidding.

Once again, Chef Boy Artie, Gatorade, Powerade, and Bluegills were on the dinner menu, but this time, it was Bluegill sashimi (yum) and Bluegill soup.

May 16

We checked out of the motel, unable to find either Mr. or Mrs. Jia. Both of us are under the impression that something happened to Mrs. Jia, since we never saw her. Since we had basically been catching sunfish species, we decided to try some new spots for possible Catfish or Striped Bass, etc. I think we would have been better off, fishing wise, going back to places we know. I ended up trying a bunch of canal spots around Blythe while Eunice sat in the car, avoiding the oppressive heat. I did catch 2 Smallmouth Bass at the first spot I tried, one of them, a pretty 12 incher which gave my rod a good bend. I showed the fish to Eunice, then released it. It is a pretty strange experience catching these cool-water fish in a canal in the searing desert. A while later at another spot where nothing was biting, an official looking truck pulled up behind my car. It was a fish and game Warden. After some awkward introductions, we had a good conversation while he politely inspected our catches and we talked about fishing. His name was Officer Shanley, and he congratulated us on our good catch upon inspecting our cooler full of frozen fish. (I mentioned that we knew about the new combined panfish limit of 25 fish per person in California, and we had about 25 of them in the cooler, which was half of our double limit of 50.) He told us about a fishing place called Goose Flats south of town, so we headed there next. It turned out to be a disappointment. The river bank there is steep, the river swift and hard to fish, not really our type of fishing. I find that the current just sweeps our lines downstream, and nothing bites, in swift water like that, at least in my experience. There was a small -- really small -- branch of the river which ran through a wooded area. There was a pool downstream from the road that was about 20 feet wide and 50 feet long, so we decided to try fishing there. I caught a couple of tiny Bluegills on worms, put them back, then added a bobber to cast farther down the pool. I immediately hooked a Largemouth Bass there, about 12 inches long, but the pool was full of branches and roots, and the fish immediately headed for some branches on the left side of the pool. I tried getting it out of there to no avail, and eventually, my line broke. Oh well! The interesting thing is that another, larger Bass followed the one I had hooked. I am guessing that I hooked the male, and the other one was the lone adult female of the pool. There was also a colorful 7 inch male Redear on a nest just in front of me, another one of those heartening signs. It's probable mate was just to my right. Neither one of them would bite on our offerings, but we didn't want to prevent them from completing their spawning activities, anyway.

After that, Eunice wanted to go to a place called Oxbow Lake where we had fished once before. It turned out that nothing was biting there, surprisingly. We also tried a few more canal spots, but could only manage a few small bites, no fish. We also checked out a place called Cibola Wildlife Refuge, but decided not to fish there when we found out the parking fee was $10 per vehicle, especially since it was about time for us to go home. We finally ran out of time and energy, ate odds and ends in the car around, then drove home. Next time, I guess it will be back to Aha Quin for us, and maybe, Hidden Valley and Lost Lake. Hopefully, the weather will be a bit cooler next time, and the fishing just as hot.

May 10

A Capital Idea Part 6: Ideas as Capital

Ideas are what really changes the world, for better or ill, but mostly for better, since good ideas have a self-perpetuating property. Ideas are a real form of capital, of inestimable worth in many cases. In this category, I am including artwork, creative projects, and scientific inventions -- which includes the overlapping intellectual and scientific capital categories in my list of capital's forms.

There are two sides to ideas as capital, in my thinking. One is that the people who come up with useful ideas such as good books or inventions, should be well-paid, and in fact, the best paid members of society. All too often, it is entrepreneurial capitalists using the ideas of others who become rich by exploiting these ideas, while their originators languish in relative poverty. However, the idea of intellectual "property" is truly a dubious one. It has reached ludicrous proportions in the case of corporations trying to copyright genes, for example. The fact is, every idea, every possible invention, is basically a discovery of what is already there, not a creation of its finder. Furthermore, those who make these discoveries are only able to do so because of the cooperative work of many people. Ideas do not happen in a vacuum. Thus, ultimately, ideas should belong to the public.

How do we appropriately reward peoples' creative products while also recognizing their role as part of humanity's common wealth? One way is recognition of a person's achievements, as in Nobel Prizes, or the so-called "genius awards," to use some extreme examples. However, very few of us can enjoy such recognition. There should be more awards and forms of recognition. Another way to reward good ideas is of course, financial. Copyrights, profits from sales, and residuals can be used to reward people for their good ideas. However, instead of being in perpetuity to the heirs of the person, sales profits and residuals could expire when the person dies, and subsequently, become the collective property of the public, as it should be and as Thom Hartmann has suggested.

For me, the point of this exercise is that, intellectual capital is an extremely important entity whose economic role merits careful consideration. In order to have a progressive society -- that is, one that strives toward progress as well as it can -- we need to have a policy relating to intellectual capital which allows it to do the most possible good. This means, not making intellectual capital the exclusive, or even the primary, domain of private enterprise. In the system we have now, intellectual capital does seem to be primarily under the control of private enterprise, although there are some exceptions. We need to change cases of public ownership of intellectual property from being the exception to being the rule!

This is a complex topic, balancing individual rights and needs with societal rights and needs. We cannot pretend that the situation is anything but that. We all want, need, and deserve to be recognized for our accomplishments. I believe that can be done using awards, rewards and pay, while still recognizing the role of the larger society in allowing a person to have the ideas or inventions in the first place, and allowing the good results to be used for the benefit of society without making everyone who uses them pay fealties, making one or a few people (think Bill Gates) rediculously rich while draining the wallets of those who provided the social infrastructure which made the idea possible in the first place. Here is an idea that I just had: I propose that we create a repository of ideas, inventions and creative products which represent humanity's common wealth -- intellectual capital which can never again be exploited as private property for personal gain.

May 8

A Capital Idea Part 5: Valuing our Work

Traditional business is run autocratically. The owners set the price of their employees' salaries and the price of the goods or services produced by the business, except that they cannot pay them less than the minimum wage in nations that have a minimum wage. Employees can unionize, at least in some places, to negotiate better wages, or negotiate individually, but still, the business owner is in charge of setting prices. This situation creates an inherent bias in favor of the business owner, such that the owner winds up far richer than any employee, a fact which can be justified by the business owner's special status, even when some employees may actually contribute more than the owner toward the success of the business. Business friendly law and government policies which give tax breaks and benefits to businesses, and reduce the regulation of businesses, exacerbate this situation. Every time I do my taxes, I am astounded -- actually, disgusted may be a better word for it -- when I see on my H & R Taxcut program how far government leans toward the side of business to give them tax breaks. It is businesses which rake in the money which can most afford to pay taxes, yet somehow, conservatives have somehow convinced politicians through the use of lobbyists that giving tax breaks to the rich is good for our economy, by stimulating business activity among the financial elite. Meanwhile, businesses are giving their employees end-of-year bonuses, many billions of dollar worth of them, while our nation and others flounder in debt. I have never had a bonus in my life, and never expect to. In fact, much of the productive work that I have done has never been paid at all. The most maddening thing about the economy that we find ourselves in, is the blatant and extreme unfairness of the system which was created by others. I want to work toward re-creating a system which is more fair for all, reforms which I believe would have tremendous benefits of all kinds -- not only economic benefits, but also psychological and social benefits which will enhance the cultural evolution of humankind.

I wrote in my blog before about reforming our pay structure to create greater economic fairness. To summarize, I suggested that we have a government committee which, with input from citizens, determines fair prices for the efforts of workers in various industries. At times, citizens might even vote on the value of various services, making this a very democratic process, but for the most part, a group of impartial experts would determine as objectively as possible, how to value the various efforts of workers. This is the valuing of our efforts and talents which was mentioned (in 2 places) in my list of types of capital in part 1 of this series. Whenever possible, people should be paid according to the value of the actual effort put forth by the person in producing something or doing something of value. If this is not feasible, a value should be placed on the product itself. For example, imported goods from foreign countries would have a certain value for each product. With this system, businesses could no longer determine the prices of their products; the prices would be set for them, and the businesses would be out of the empire-building business. In addition to the reform of salaries as described above, businesses would not be able to use their money as leverage to increase their share of the market through advertising, as before. Rather than advertising, there would be a variety of consumer and government groups which objectively evaluate products and produce reports featuring the characteristics, merits and problems with each product, as Consumer Reports -- which helped Eunice and myself select a Honda Fit to be our new car -- does now. These reports would be widely available, so that no consumer need be ignorant of a product's merits or lack thereof prior to purchasing something, nor would any consumer be subjected to dishonest or indirect feel-good -- so-called preipheral route processing -- messages which present products as desirable even when they offer nothing of value to the consumer. What advertising is allowed, would have to meet strict, objective standards of honesty and relevance to the product. Also outlawed would be the lobbyist profession. Businesses would not be allowed to use their money to leverage greater influence through lobbies, either. At the same time, regulatory practices which have been used in the past would be reinstituted, such as breaking up corporations which become too large, using the Sherman Antitrust Act.

I feel this system would actually encourage competition, not hinder it. Businesses which produce a better product more efficiently, while still paying their workers the required salaries, would be able to sell more of their product, so that some businesses would do better than others. Some would go out of business, while new businesses would start up from time to time. Businesses would not be allowed to use their money as leverage to create more wealth, power and political influence, as they currently do; thus, the success of a business would be more purely based on its effectiveness in producing something of value, while still treating its employees fairly. Value added taxes would be another option to consider in this revamped salary system.

Finally, as I proposed in a previous post, we should eliminate the stock market. As I see it, the stock market serves no purpose of value, and in fact, is only a counterproductive gambling exercise on a massive scale. It adds to the instability, and unfairness of our economic system, while in all likelihood reducing productivity, and employs a great many individuals unproductively. The same holds true of the various other forms of economic gambling such as the derivatives market. We would still have banks, but they would be ones which perform traditional services of value such as providing loans and savings accounts. The Federal Reserve should be replaced by a government entity which regulates our money supply, and the use of credit unions, co-ops or other non-profit banks should be encouraged by government policy.

You might wonder what all the out-of-work advertisers, lobbyists, stock market traders and financial specialists would do in this reformed, democratic-business (as opposed to empire-business) economy. Their background would make them well-suited as salespeople, or perhaps business owners, which would still be needed. In fact, with the great improvement in the economy likely to result from these reforms, we will need more salespeople and business owners than before. These people would not have the opportunity to get as rich as before, but at least they would be paid a fair, living wage as would the rest of the workers who participate in the economy.

All of this presupposes the continuation of reliance on a monetary system. As discussed in the previous two posts, my inclination is to hope that society eventually evolves to the point where it uses a Star Trek-like, system of incentives which value people's contributions, and confirmation of human rights which need not involve money -- but one must walk before one can run. These changes work with our monetary system in ways which are feasible, which can really be done in the relatively near future (say, a few decades at the most) if we have the political will as a people, and can set the stage for further societal evolution. The system I described may seem complex, but actually, while indeed it is complex, the legal infrastucture for much of it is already in place, and it would probably be less complex than the convoluted system that has sprouted up around us over the years (just take a look, for instance, at how complex our tax code is), like a garden full of economic weeds. I say it is time to pull those weeds, and let a democratic business model designed to create economic fairness and well-being, bloom.

May 5

A Capital Idea Part 4: The Venus Project

It has a sort of other worldly sound to it -- Venus, the planet -- and a sexy connotation -- Venus, the Greek Goddess of Love. It advocates a world without money, like the utopian Star Trek vision of the future which has always appealed to me. Actually, though, The Venus Project is named after a town in Florida where the project's headquarters is. Perhaps founder Jacques Fresco picked Venus, Florida to be the headquarters of this culmination of his life's work, because he likes the name. I really don't know. With global warming threatening to significantly raise sea levels, I wouldn't pick Florida to be the base for any long-term project, but Jacques Fresco did. In any case, The Venus Project is a serious attempt to present and put into action ideas which its proponents feel can transform the world to be a vastly better place.

The main idea of The Venus Project, which I was introduced to me by my friend Dissident Priest, and encouraged to explore by another friend, Tim ODonnell, is that we should go to a resource-based economy. Furthermore, Fresco asserts that there are abundant resources available to give all people a great standard of living, sustainably and indefinitely. The only obstacles to this great standard of living, Fresco asserts, are the implementation of the necessary technology, and the proper distribution of the resources. If this is reflected in my previous post, that is intentional. Yes, I am by and large an advocate of The Venus Project and its approach. But do I accept its ideology without reservation? No, I find Fresco's utopian vision of the future too neat and flawless, much like that of Karl Marx, or for that matter, Fresco's inspiration Edward Bellamy and his futuristic books about a world in which public capital prevails. It is all too easy to convince oneself that a certain course of action will solve all of our problems without creating new ones.

Nonetheless, on Monday, I joined The Venus Project as a member and signed up for its newsletter. (I have not received any yet.) Among the immediate goals of the project are:

PHASE ONE

"Jacque Fresco, futurist, inventor, industrial designer and founder of The Venus Project and his associate Roxanne Meadows have completed the construction of a 25-acre research center in Venus, Florida to help present the proposals of The Venus Project. Videos, pamphlets, and a recently published book, The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, and War, have been created to help raise awareness about this project and its many proposals.

PHASE TWO

Phase Two includes the production of a full-length feature film that will depict how a world embracing the proposals advanced by The Venus Project would work. This film would provide a positive vision of a peaceful society in which all human beings form a global family on planet Earth. A civilization in which all people are engaged in the pursuit of a better understanding of the world they share. This film has been designed to be an entertaining and educational experience for both adults and children."

PHASE THREE

To test its designs and proposals The Venus Project is working towards putting its ideals into practice by the construction of an experimental research city. Blueprints for most of the initial technologies and buildings have begun. Fund-raising efforts are currently under way to help support the construction of this first experimental city. This new experimental research city would be devoted to working towards the aims and goals of The Venus Project, which are:

1. Realizing the declaration of the world's resources as being the common heritage of all people.

2. Transcending the artificial boundaries that currently and arbitrarily separate people.

3. Replacing money-based nationalistic economies with a resource-based world economy.

4. Assisting in stabilizing the world’s population through education and voluntary birth control.

5. Reclaiming and restoring the natural environment to the best of our ability.

6. Redesigning cities, transportation systems, agricultural industries, and industrial plants so that they are energy efficient, clean, and able to conveniently serve the needs of all people.

7. Gradually outgrowing corporate entities and governments, (local, national, or supra- national) as means of social management.

8. Sharing and applying new technologies for the benefit of all nations.

9. Developing and using clean renewable energy sources.

10. Manufacturing the highest quality products for the benefit of the world’s people.

11. Requiring environmental impact studies prior to construction of any mega projects.

12. Encouraging the widest range of creativity and incentive toward constructive endeavour.

13. Outgrowing nationalism, bigotry, and prejudice through education.

14. Eliminating elitism, technical or otherwise.

15. Arriving at methodologies by careful research rather than random opinions.

16. Enhancing communication in schools so that our language is relevant to the physical conditions of the world.

17. Providing not only the necessities of life, but also offering challenges that stimulate the mind while emphasizing individuality rather than uniformity.

18. Finally, preparing people intellectually and emotionally for the changes and challenges that lie ahead.

PHASE FOUR

After the research experimental city is built, a theme park is also planned that will both entertain and inform visitors about the possibilities for humane and environmentally friendly life-styles planned by The Venus Project. It will feature intelligent houses; high-efficiency, non polluting transportation systems; advanced computer technology; and a number of other innovations that can add value to the lives of all people - in a very short period of time.

No one can actually predict the future. We can only extrapolate on present information and trends. Population growth, technological change, worldwide environmental conditions, and available resources are the primary criteria for future projections.

There is no single philosophy or point of view whether religious, political, scientific, or ideological, that someone would not take issue with. We feel certain, however, that the only aspects of The Venus Project that may appear threatening are those which others project onto it.

The Venus Project is neither Utopian nor Orwellian, nor does it reflect the dreams of impractical idealists. Instead, it presents attainable goals requiring only the intelligent application of what we already know. The only limitations are those which we impose upon ourselves" (The Venus Project Aims and Proposals).

In addition to the above, I understand that The Venus Project has produced two movies "Zeitgiest movie and Zeitgeist movie addendum" (PHASE TWO?) and a free book. There is also a long, explanatory essay by Jacques Fresco on The Venus Project's website. Here are some relevant quotes from the essay (The Future and Beyond, by Jacques Fresco). Regarding the issue of motivation in a system in which everyone is provided with their basic needs:

"MOTIVATION, INCENTIVE & CREATIVITY

It is claimed that the so-called free-enterprise system creates incentive. This may be true, but it also perpetuates greed, embezzlement, corruption, crime, stress, economic hardship, and insecurity. In addition, the argument that the monetary system and competition generate incentive does not always hold true. Most of our major developments in science and technology have been the result of the efforts of very few individuals working independently and often against great opposition. Such contributors as Goddard, Galileo, Darwin, Tesla, Edison, and Einstein were individuals who were genuinely concerned with solving problems and improving processes rather than with mere financial gain. Actually, very often there is much mistrust in those whose incentive is entirely motivated by monetary gain, this can be said for lawyers, businessmen, salesman and those in just about any field.

Some may question that if the basic necessities are accessible to all people, what will motivate them? This is tantamount to saying that children reared in affluent environments, in which their parents provide all the necessary food, clothing, shelter, nutrition, and extensive education, will demonstrate a lack of incentive or initiative. There is no evidence to support this fallacious assumption. There is overwhelming evidence to support the facts that malnutrition, lack of employment, low wages, poor health, lack of direction, lack of education, homelessness, little or no reinforcement for one's efforts, poor role models, poverty, and a bleak prospect for the future do create monumental individual and social problems, and significantly reduce an individual’s drive to achieve. The aim of a resource based economy is to encourage and develop a new incentive system, one no longer directed toward the shallow and self-centered goals of wealth, property, and power. These new incentives would encourage people to pursue different goals, such as self-fulfillment and creativity, the elimination of scarcity, the protection of the environment, and the alleviation of suffering in their fellow human beings."

I am largely in agreement with this statement, but find it to be vague. Also, people do respond to incentives. They do not have to be financial ones, but rewards, as well as the fostering of intrinsic motivation, are crucial to the individual's role in creating achievements. We must recognize, though, as Fresco understands, that our achievements are dependent upon the contributions of others and the social infrastructure which makes such contributions possible.

Regarding communism, which seems to be very similar to what The Venus Project is advocating:

"Many years ago an attempt was made in the U. S. to understand a social and economic system different from our own. A film called "The March of Time" had this to say about Soviet Communism: "We believe that the American free-enterprise system will function better than the collective system. However, we wish you the best of luck on your new and unusual social experiment." The failure of communism to provide for human needs and to enrich the lives of its citizens is not unlike our own failures. Both failure and success are inherent in the on-going experiment that is social evolution. In all established social systems it is necessary to devise different approaches to improve the workings of the system."

Rather than endorsing a particular political system, Fresco's approach is an apolitical one-world approach. The approach seems to be all about economics. The only reference to politics that I can find is the following listed among the aims and goals of the project:

"6. Evolving towards a cybernated society that can gradually outgrow the need for all political local, national, and supra-national governments as a means of social management."

It seems that Fresco sees no need for politics in the future, an idea which I must remain skeptical of, to say the least. At the very least, we need people to regulate the distribution of resources, and people to make important decisions or execute the will of the public. This essay is very long, so what I have presented here are just a few small excerpts from it.

How I see my role in processing the information from The Venus Project is to critique it without rejecting it. Rather, I would like to use my perspective to interact with, add to and modify the ideas presented in The Venus Project, to create a more feasible direction for future societal evolution, one that avoids likely pitfalls of the system proposed by The Venus Project's creators. I suggest anyone else who reads this essay or sees The Venus Project material to do the same. As it currently exists, The Venus Project may seem pretty much a "pie in the sky," dreamy utopian vision of the future, but we need this type of vision as a starting point to create a better world. Better visions have a way of leading to better realities.

April 30

A Capital Idea Part 3: Resources as Capital

I have often wondered how people can "own" land, or the seas for that matter, among other things. Apparently many other people have had the same thought. Native Americans thought that the concept of land ownership was ludicrous, when European settlers came to this land and claimed the land for their own. Given the current popularity of Native American land-sharing ideology among Euro-Americans, their idea seems to be catching on. Despite this trend, our capitalistic system is fueling an opposing trend, in which even genes are seen by some as property which can be copywrited. As another example, in fact, naturally occuring substances have long been usurped by pharmaceutical companies, as their property to be used for their own profit.

It is true that European settlers took over this land and have dominated this continent, using a capitalistic economic system, but basically, the immigrants employed an exploitative system -- exploitative of both people and natural resources -- to create an ultimately unsustainable economy, sort of a huge, long-term bubble economy. So far, the resources upon which it relies -- and the cheap labor -- have not run out, but our resources are much degraded, as is our natural environment. The phrase, "penny wise and pound foolish" comes to mind.

We need to adopt the idea that our true wealth lies in our renewable, natural resources. This wealth, like land, cannot truly be owned, but rather, is part of our "commonwealth," a word the founders of this nation were fond of using. We must share the land, share the resources, share our knowledge, and recognize that our accomplishments depend upon the contributions of others. I have written about creating a "green" economy before. Here, I submit that having a "green" economy means recognizing the value of our shared resources. Furthermore, it means recognizing the importance of developing sustainable resources. The fact that we continue to have available natural resources to drive our economy, though nonrenewable ones such as coal and oil are dwindling, and even renewable ones such as timber are at far lower levels than what the early European settlers found, shows that this planet contains enormous resources and potential resources. But these resources are not limitless, and their use has enormous consequences, such as global warming, and the "sixth extinction" which, tragically, is causing many species to go extinct due to human activities.

The main difference between the traditional Native American approach, and the modern renewable resource approach, is the use of science as a tool for creating a sustainable approach to the economy, with a good standard of living for all. Scientific research can tell us the limits of our resources, but more importantly, can be used to create more efficient, sustainable, and environmentally friendly ways of using the resources that we have. For example, solar energy capture technology is being deployed more and more frequently around the world, although not nearly as much as it should. Changes for the better are happening, but at a very slow pace, distressingly, probably at a slower pace than negative consequences of our traditional practices are piling up. In other words, we are "tinkering around the edges" of the problem, trying to increase recycling and the use of sustainable forms of energy, for example, but still not stemming the tide of environmental degradation which our ancestors set into motion. There seems to be an innate fear of change, at least in enough people to make true change difficult.

We should not be afraid of change. The only way to correct the errors of the past, is to be fearless in embracing that which can improve our world. If we continue to rely upon old technologies, such as the profligate use of coal and oil, eventually our entire society will collapse. I think the recognition of that is motivating most of us to modify our behavior in minor ways, but unless faced with the spector of social collapse, most people are unwilling to deploy the best available technologies, or even political or economic systems. It seems so much easier and comfortable to stick with the familiar and known. But even the so-called "familiar and known" has a way of degrading into counterproductive and unpredictable, and lead to people clinging to "sacred" or "honored" traditions based on false premises. What we really need is a paradigm shift in our thinking, to overcome the inertia of tradition and established practices, an inertia which prevents us from seeing our resources as the precious gifts of the earth that they really are.

April 26

A Capital Idea Part 2: We Are All in This Together, Economically

"Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money." ~ Cree Indian Proverb. (From Thom Hartmann via David Walker)

The fundamental problem with the idea of financial capital, to summarize capital in its various forms, is that it is conceptualized as being private in nature. It is something that someone owns, supposedly through merit, and uses at one's own discretion. The concept of money is an outgrowth of the concept of wealth as conceptualized by emperors, wealthy noblemen and industrialists. Theoretically, every individual has his or her own store of private capital, but in fact, it is a way of concentrating resources and power in the name of certain individuals. Some people, including children and the infirm, are unable to participate in the capitalistic economic system. The great majority participate as workers rather than owners, but are at a tremendous disadvantage in this system compared to owners, or those who work with the capital for a living. Thus, merit becomes disconnected from outcomes.

A book called Looking Backward was written in the year 1887 by a man named Edward Bellamy. While I have only read an excerpt from this book, I understand it was a fantasy about a man named West who suddenly was transported to the year 2000. When he got there, it turned out that everyone in society basically worked as a team, and instead of money, used what Bellamy termed, "public capital." Apparently, Bellamy was motivated by his observations of poverty in the late 1800s, and the insidious role of corporate wealth and power in creating and perpetuating social disparities among peoples. Unfortunately, Bellamy died only a few years later (from tuberculosis, I think), although he did produce a follow-up book to Looking Backward. Nonetheless, Looking Backward was the second most widely read book in the United States in the 1800s, quite an accomplishment. The system Bellamy described was not communism, but actually predates the communist movement in the world. Similar to the concept of communism as envisioned by Karl Marx, however, Bellamy's book was a utopian vision of a world in which private corporatism and the exploitation of labor was a thing of the past, and people progressed through shared efforts and pooled resources, the "public capital" from which a person could draw what was needed. As far as I can tell, the main substantive difference between Bellamy's vision and Marx's vision, was that Bellamy advocated the continuance of a democratic framework of government, while Marx advocated a strong but philanthropic central government which fairly allocates resources, and whose members rise to power through merit of works rather than through democratic means (or perhaps Marx failed to discuss how people were supposed to reach responsible positions in government. If I seem uncertain here, it is because I am indeed uncertain and could use some information from people who have studied Looking Backward and communism in more detail than I have.) Clearly, Bellamy's approach was appealing to a great many Americans, while communism had less appeal to Americans.

The concept of public capital is central to my discussion of different types of capital and their proper use. "Me" capital promotes a "me" society, while "we" capital promotes a "we" society. Regarding public capital, there are several questions which need to be addressed:

How can we incorporate the various types of capital into a system of public capital? Should there be both public and private capital? If so, how should the two be integrated? How can we use a system of public capital to create an enlightened society in which people are free to pursue their interests, and true democracy thrives, as Bellamy envisioned, and how do we avoid the pitfalls of totalitarianism that have plagued communism?

Although I admittedly am pretty much flying without a steering wheel at this time, at least my landing place is clear in my sight, and I plan to address these questions in future essays. The various types of true capital -- for example resource, human, intellectual, scientific, moral, spiritual, well-being, work, health, and social capital -- all can be conceptualized as having a public as well as a private aspect. Our current system is stuck on the idea that only the private aspect counts, except perhaps when reliance on the private aspect of wealth is unfeasible. I think it should be the other way around; we should concern ourselves with the public nature of capital, except when it is unfeasible to do so and such wealth can only be viewed from a private perspective. After all, our accomplishments are dependent upon our shared wealth, not our individual wealth. To think otherwise is delusional. All of our efforts depend on our common ground, our common infrastucture, our pooled resources. We are all in this together. The economy is no different in this way from anything else.

April 21

A Capital Idea Part 1

It has occured to me that the idea of financial capital has been used in the wrong way all along. This feeling has been reinforced by conversations with a number of my like-minded friends. According to my Random House Webster's Dictionary, relevant definitions of capital include: "The wealth, as in money or property, owned or used in business," and "pertaining to financial capital." The economic system based upon capital is known as capitalism, which my dictionary defines as "An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately owned." I critiqued the use of capitalism as a basis for an economy in "The Immorality of Capitalism" a few months ago. My moral critique of capitalism has its basis in academic psychology, which shows that capitalism compels people to act at the lowest levels of morality. Basically, the pursuit of profit trumps all other concerns in capitalism, at least if it is not restrained in some way. Thus "might makes right" according to a capitalistic system, and whatever increases profits is morally justified. To use yet another platitude in the most appropriate possible manner, "The ends justifies the means." Capitalism is a system that encourages businesspeople to "rip off" their customers if they can get away with it. As a result, business people typically operate on the lowest of the six stages of moral development described by Lawrence Kohlberg, a stage in which any outcome favorable to oneself is considered morally good, which normally applies only to young children, yet, shows a resurgence among wealthy businesspeople in adulthood due to the perverted economic system we suffer under called capitalism.

As a result, the question that has occured to me is, how can we build a society with a more morally enlightened economic system? Not only would a morally enlightened economic system be far fairer, but it would also be more productive, because people would treat each other better within this system (which is the basis of morality in the first place), and be better rewarded for their efforts. Even more, since financial capitalism is basically an undemocratic system, we could build a more truly cemocratic society by changing our economic system. A related question is, what would be the basis for such an economic system? In order to build a more enlightened society, with a morally enlightened economic system, we must rethink its basis. An answer which I can only take partial credit for, although it occured to me independently, is that there are different types of capital, not only financial capital. After having this idea, I discovered that some other authors have already written to some extent about certain types of capital other than financial (but not nearly as extensively as I plan to).

What follows is a non-exhaustive list of types of capital:

1. Financial capital (the current basis of our economic system and probably the only one that has really been actually fully utilized)

2. Resource capital (the valuing of our shared resources, in which a healthy environment is a wealthier one, as the basis of wealth)

3. Human capital (the valuing of our talents and skills -- which innately belong to the individual and cannot be owned by others -- as our actual wealth)

4. Intellectual capital (the valuing of ideas as the key to progress and as the basis for true wealth)

5. Scientific capital (the valuing of scientific knowledge and its application as the basis of true understanding and wealth)

6. Moral capital (the valuing of moral character and the nurturing of moral character as the basis for a happy, just and truly wealthy society)

7. Spiritual capital (the valuing of spiritual well-being and the quest for spiritual enlightenment as the basis of true wealth)

8. Well-being capital (the valuing of psychological happiness and well-being as the truest indictor of the health and wealth of a society)

9. Work capital (the valuing of actual work as the true basis of an economy, a bottom up approach which precludes people sitting around collecting money do to their exalted position in society)

10. Human health capital (the valuing of our health as prerequisite to any form of true happiness or wealth)

I thought of all 10 of these possiblities in about 10 minutes; there may be more to come. In any case, it is my plan to explore the possibilities for making these the basis for an economy, or at least, incorporating them into our economic system to make a more enlightened, balanced, and improved system. It is important to keep in mind that these types of capital are not mutually exclusive. The best possible economic system may well involve some combination of all of these. But at the very least, the time is long past due that we begin to recognize the reality and importance of these various sorts of wealth. It is also important to realize that some of these types of capital may already have a functional role in our economy. However, their roles need to be expanded and explicitly acknowledged. It is not just about money, which is essentially a human-constructed abstraction of the concept of value, whose acceptance as the basis of wealth means: Accepting all the inequities of making inappropriate comparisons of value, and; accepting all of the human fallibilities built into our monetary system, and; accepting a nondemocratic, autocratic system which has as its goal the creation of monopolies while hypocritically claiming to endorse competition, and; accepting that human beings have dominion over all life and all resources on earth, justifying the abuse of other lifeforms and our environment.

A truly healthy and sustainable economy means recognizing and appreciating the true bases of our wealth, and using a scientific approach to create a more enlightened, happy, compassionate, fair and environmentally friendly society.

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(Regarding the photo: The photograph at the top of the page was taken on Mount Cadillac in Maine, which is said to receive the first light of the day in all of the United States. The pools of water are rain pools because it had rained heavily the night before. The photo was taken by Eunice.)