I recently discovered a really fantastic atheistic cult called the Raelian Movement, started by Claude Vorhilhorn in the 1970's. He wrote a book in which he describes an encounter with an alien (Mr. President) who revealed to him the true origins of life on our planet and human civilization. Here are some of his claims (not in any particular order):
1. the same alien (Mr. President) is a scientist who has lived for over 25,000 years and together with a team of similarly long-lived scientists created all the forms of plant and animal life on this planet, and that the diversity of human races and of all life reflects the creativity of different teams of scientists and artists who were the creators.
2. the team of alien scientists created the single continent that existed before breaking up and becoming the separate continents we know today
3. the aliens are waiting to see how humanity turns out, to see if we're intelligent and peaceful enough to deserve receiving our inheritance - the sum of all knowledge acquired by our alien creators
4. the aliens have intervened in human affairs throughout our early history and some of these incidents are documented in the Bible, and have been misinterpreted by subsequent generations
5. the aliens are afraid that humans will be dangerous to them when we catch up to their technological achievements, which is why they're watching us, but also they want to hurry things along so that's why they've allowed themselves to be seen (UFO sightings)
6. the aliens achieved immortality through cloning, and it's possible to clone a person and all his personality and knowledge from a single cell of any part of the body. Also, that it's possible to transfer knowledge from one person to another by extracting brain fluid from the brain of one and injecting it into the brain of the other - and that's how the aliens teach their young.
7. the resurrection of the righteous that is predicted in the Bible will be done by the aliens using their cloning techniques
What's really interesting to me is that, when I was reading his book this week, I found myself really unsurprised by many of his alien biblical interpretations because I have seen some of the episodes of Ancient Aliens and I believe that the artifacts we have from ancient civilizations combined with religious histories from around the world certainly make a pretty good case that it's possible that aliens have visited our planet in the past.
However, I was disappointed that Claude didn't research the science better before writing his book, because some of what we know today about the world is seated very strongly in physical evidence that doesn't match the story Claude tells.
For example, the theory of continental drift is based on pretty good evidence that the continents drift a tiny amount every year and that over the 4.5 billion years that the earth has existed they have drifted together and and part several times, and the last time they were together was from approximately 300 million years ago to 200 million years ago when they started their drift from the last single continent into their current positions. This contrasts greatly with Claude's story that the aliens found our planet covered completely by water 25,000 years ago and created a single continent by setting explosions everywhere and piling the earth into a single mass... which then drifted apart into our current continents sometime between 22,000 years ago and now. That's enough time for the sea levels to change in many places but not for the continental drift.
Another problem with Claude's story is that we know quite a lot about how the body works and there isn't any evidence at all that any part of a person's knowledge lies outside of their brain. Even "muscle memory" is stored in the brain. The genetic material in our cells is a blueprint for the body, it's not a copy of our memory. Furthermore, what we know of how the brain works also doesn't include any evidence that brain fluid stores any of a person's knowledge. So even if Claude's aliens can clone themselves and transfer their own memory to their clones using such a pair of techniques, which I'll assume is possible although not in the way Claude describes, they still wouldn't be able to resurrect righteous people who died generations ago because first, it's not possible to know by looking at a grave who was righteous and who wasn't (unless the aliens have tracked every single person's life and their burial site); and second, even if aliens recover genetic material from a person's grave they are not likely to find any brain fluid remaining from which to recover the personality. So this seems like quite a bit of fiction.
Finally, Claude claims that the alien intentionally didn't give him any evidence to show the world as a test of our intelligence - if we are intelligent enough then we will know Claude's story is true without any evidence. Well... that's absurd. An intelligent person who seeks the truth prefers to find it from evidence and observations. And if we arrive at the conclusion that aliens have already visited our planet in the past independently of Claude, it will be using evidence that we find in our environment.
We'll be forced to conclude that although Claude is one of many authors who have postulated the existence of aliens, Claude is also one of the many phonies who invented incredible stories, and a creator of yet another cult.
I think that a beautiful idea isn't a good enough reason to lie to people. Assuming Claude's story of alien encounter is a hoax, I would say to Claude that he had a fantastic idea and that if he had simply published it as a "what if", then if evidence is later discovered that shows he was in the ballpark of the truth he could have been honored as a visionary.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Assorted Problems
Here are some issues that I feel are a huge drain on society. It's not a complete list and it's not ordered in any way.
Lack of respect for nature and other people. Stealing, vandalizing, littering, dumping chemicals, cutting trees without replacing them, all these things make our entire nation a little bit poorer one disrespectful act at a time. Our attitude should be to preserve and improve the world, not lash out in anger or damage it out of laziness or greed.
Unwillingness to let other people suffer the consequences of their own actions or inactions. If you want to help, that's great, but don't make slaves of good people to help lazy or unfit people. By this I mean that taxing everyone to provide free food, clothing, and housing for a few people who refuse to work is very unfair. Very few people have a legitimate disability that prevents them from doing anything useful at all. Those people need to be cared for by their own families, not by the taxes of everyone else. And if they don't have families, and absolutely zero value to anyone, why do they deserve to live on the backs of everyone else? When we make such a system possible (as it is today) then a lot of people find reasons why they can't work, and this class of freeloaders grows as large as the rest of society can support. Too many people have seen the case of the food-stamp shopper who talks on a nice new cell phone and drives a nice new car, and this is an injustice to everyone who was forced to pay for those food stamps with their taxes. Therefore helping the poor must be the work of charities, not government.
Overprotection of criminals. We treat even the most violent criminals to free room, free food, free education, free medical care, and free entertainment. Except for being confined to the prison, we give them rights just as if they were free people, and that's not fair. They are in prison as punishment for their crimes, it must not be healthy, delicious, or enjoyable. So we must ensure that non-criminals aren't sent to prison. Prison isn't suitable for people who only violated the law, who hurt someone unintentionally, or who paid reparations for what they damaged or stole. Prison is for people who intentionally hurt other people and can't or won't pay the damages. Prison should be slavery. Prison time should have a rate at which we value the work done by prisoners and credit it toward their reparations. When the reparations are fully paid the inmate can be released after some counseling to live a non-violent life and to comply with the law. Reparations are possible for everything but the most violent and permanent of crimes - murder and rape. The work done by prisoners should be valuable and pay for the costs of their imprisonment, with excesses going into a fund that will be used to pay reparations to the victims faster, or to fund law enforcement and judicial activities. Extreme care must be taken so that the role of the jury in convicting criminals is not undermined by a desire to increase production in prisons. Prisoners must never work in cooking or baking; their food should be prepared by free citizens to serve as a reminder that it is society that is keeping them alive there and also for food security.
Misinterpretation of the constitution. The constitution isn't perfect but some things are clearly widely misinterpreted. The right to assemble and the right to free speech are meant to protect people's political rights. I don't believe for a second that the founder George Washington would have let the crazy Westboro Baptist Church protest with their hateful and idiotic messages at the funerals of his Soldiers. It's a crime, they are hurting the mourners. Free (political) speech is only intended to protect people from being arrested only for voicing displeasure with the government. That is not at all the same as the right to say anything, anywhere, to anybody; especially not the same as this church group desecrating funerals to promote a hateful homophobic message.
Injustice. If a poor or middle class man steals $50,000 from someone, or robs a bank at gunpoint, when he is caught he would definitely spend some time in jail and if he still has the capability to earn an income he may be ordered to pay it back. If a network of banks and brokers steals billions of dollars from the American public by rigging the bond bidding system, when they are caught some junior executives are fined and the banks are fined but only for a fraction of the amount for which they defrauded the public, and the rest is never paid back and the banks are allowed to continue to operate and do business with the government and receive more public money. When the largest insurance company made bad investment decisions that should have caused it to go out of business, the government gave it large amounts of money as a "bail out" to prevent it from crashing. Yet the government doesn't bail out any of the thousands of small businesses that close every year due to not being profitable. That is a huge injustice. If an individual is hurt by circumstances involving a business, and the business is held liable for all of the damage even though some of the fault clearly was with the individual, and the business is fined for millions of dollars in damages more than the actual damage done just to make a point, that is also a huge injustice. Justice is not prejudiced against the rich or the poor. Justice must be created one case at a time. There may be some guidelines about what is justice but the facts of the case are everything. The courts may be doing a good job in general on small cases but there are far too many large cases that end up with injustice, and that is causing a feeling of unrest in the public.
Lack of respect for nature and other people. Stealing, vandalizing, littering, dumping chemicals, cutting trees without replacing them, all these things make our entire nation a little bit poorer one disrespectful act at a time. Our attitude should be to preserve and improve the world, not lash out in anger or damage it out of laziness or greed.
Unwillingness to let other people suffer the consequences of their own actions or inactions. If you want to help, that's great, but don't make slaves of good people to help lazy or unfit people. By this I mean that taxing everyone to provide free food, clothing, and housing for a few people who refuse to work is very unfair. Very few people have a legitimate disability that prevents them from doing anything useful at all. Those people need to be cared for by their own families, not by the taxes of everyone else. And if they don't have families, and absolutely zero value to anyone, why do they deserve to live on the backs of everyone else? When we make such a system possible (as it is today) then a lot of people find reasons why they can't work, and this class of freeloaders grows as large as the rest of society can support. Too many people have seen the case of the food-stamp shopper who talks on a nice new cell phone and drives a nice new car, and this is an injustice to everyone who was forced to pay for those food stamps with their taxes. Therefore helping the poor must be the work of charities, not government.
Overprotection of criminals. We treat even the most violent criminals to free room, free food, free education, free medical care, and free entertainment. Except for being confined to the prison, we give them rights just as if they were free people, and that's not fair. They are in prison as punishment for their crimes, it must not be healthy, delicious, or enjoyable. So we must ensure that non-criminals aren't sent to prison. Prison isn't suitable for people who only violated the law, who hurt someone unintentionally, or who paid reparations for what they damaged or stole. Prison is for people who intentionally hurt other people and can't or won't pay the damages. Prison should be slavery. Prison time should have a rate at which we value the work done by prisoners and credit it toward their reparations. When the reparations are fully paid the inmate can be released after some counseling to live a non-violent life and to comply with the law. Reparations are possible for everything but the most violent and permanent of crimes - murder and rape. The work done by prisoners should be valuable and pay for the costs of their imprisonment, with excesses going into a fund that will be used to pay reparations to the victims faster, or to fund law enforcement and judicial activities. Extreme care must be taken so that the role of the jury in convicting criminals is not undermined by a desire to increase production in prisons. Prisoners must never work in cooking or baking; their food should be prepared by free citizens to serve as a reminder that it is society that is keeping them alive there and also for food security.
Misinterpretation of the constitution. The constitution isn't perfect but some things are clearly widely misinterpreted. The right to assemble and the right to free speech are meant to protect people's political rights. I don't believe for a second that the founder George Washington would have let the crazy Westboro Baptist Church protest with their hateful and idiotic messages at the funerals of his Soldiers. It's a crime, they are hurting the mourners. Free (political) speech is only intended to protect people from being arrested only for voicing displeasure with the government. That is not at all the same as the right to say anything, anywhere, to anybody; especially not the same as this church group desecrating funerals to promote a hateful homophobic message.
Injustice. If a poor or middle class man steals $50,000 from someone, or robs a bank at gunpoint, when he is caught he would definitely spend some time in jail and if he still has the capability to earn an income he may be ordered to pay it back. If a network of banks and brokers steals billions of dollars from the American public by rigging the bond bidding system, when they are caught some junior executives are fined and the banks are fined but only for a fraction of the amount for which they defrauded the public, and the rest is never paid back and the banks are allowed to continue to operate and do business with the government and receive more public money. When the largest insurance company made bad investment decisions that should have caused it to go out of business, the government gave it large amounts of money as a "bail out" to prevent it from crashing. Yet the government doesn't bail out any of the thousands of small businesses that close every year due to not being profitable. That is a huge injustice. If an individual is hurt by circumstances involving a business, and the business is held liable for all of the damage even though some of the fault clearly was with the individual, and the business is fined for millions of dollars in damages more than the actual damage done just to make a point, that is also a huge injustice. Justice is not prejudiced against the rich or the poor. Justice must be created one case at a time. There may be some guidelines about what is justice but the facts of the case are everything. The courts may be doing a good job in general on small cases but there are far too many large cases that end up with injustice, and that is causing a feeling of unrest in the public.
Friday, August 24, 2012
The Meaning of Life
If you ask, "What is the meaning of life?" and then look to other people for an answer, you will find a large variety of answers.
I think the meaning of life is improvement.
Everything that lives tries to either improve itself or improve its surroundings by growing, moving, or thinking.
In the past I thought that the meaning of life was survival because everything that lives attempts to survive, procreating to promote survival of its genetic code. I interpreted every action in the light of the ultimate task of survival. But to say that the meaning of life is to survive doesn't help much because it doesn't answer why life exists. If life was formed out of non-life, then forming just to survive is absurd because all the elements in the world would have persisted - survived - in their lifeless form due to the law of conservation of matter. To be clear, I don't expect a rock to know of, or understand, or employ the law of conservation of matter in its decision-making. What I do expect is that if a rock should become alive, that there be a cosmic reason for this change. Survival just doesn't seem to answer the question. But improvement does. I found that survival doesn't explain enough of our actions as humans. However, improvement can explain the motive for survival. Survival doesn't explain the origin of life, but improvement does. A world without life is boring: changes are slow, sands move from here to there, the laws of physics are barely used. The lifeless world survives, but a lively world improves.
To move from a lifeless world to a lively world is an improvement. Therefore the cosmic reason for life can simply be to improve upon a lifeless world. It doesn't need to be more complicated than “to improve.” From the lifeless world to the principal forms of life that first existed all the way to the present day, improvement is the invariant of life.
Because changes to a species happen in each generation, the motive to survive is given meaning by improvement. An organism must survive and procreate in order to have a chance at genetic improvement in its offspring. Every action that is necessary to survive is given meaning by the ultimate goal of improvement.
If a person accepts improvement as the meaning of life then it explains the joy derived from a regular cycle of work and rest; the motivation to make the world a better place; the motivation to help others; the motivation to pursue the arts, sciences, and sports. Survival is possible without these inclinations but pursuing them leads to improvements in oneself, society, or the environment.
Starting with the axiom that existence exists, I think there are two natural tendencies. The first is towards chaos and the second is towards improvement. The world is in motion, the sands are moved by the wind, gases disperse to fill available space, liquids pool together, all these are manifestations of physics that affect atoms and small particles. Existence exists, it doesn't care what happens to a grain of sand as it is moved by the wind. When some combinations of particles are brought together due to the chaotic activity and they form bonds with each other due to their physics, those combinations will stay together when moved by the chaos. There isn't necessarily a purpose for them to stay together but they do because of their physics and the chance that brought them together in the chaos. Some combinations will break apart, some will continue to grow. New combinations will form due to chance. This is an example of a boundary between chaos and improvement. If there is a combination that is likely given the elements in existence, and stable due to its physics, then given enough time and chaos there will be many instances of this combination. The natural tendency of improvement is that, if something is better, it will persist. Therefore, even without a perspective on the end result of this evolution, the changes that persist may be called improvements. And so the world has both chaos and improvement, and this has naturally created life.
The universe is not only cold and dark, it is filled with much material that has formed into stars and planets and debris. The universe contains varying degrees of chaos, with their temperatures, and many improvements - changes or combinations that persist as long as they are able.
I don't pretend to know the purpose of the universe, if there is one. I only know that it exists because I trust my senses. I know that it contains chaos because there is plenty of evidence. I know that it contains improvement because there is plenty of evidence. I believe that chaos and improvement are natural tendencies of the universe because my experience, which includes reading the work of many authors before me, has led me to this belief. The belief that the meaning of life is improvement has resonated very well with all of my prior beliefs. I can't prove it. But I think it's useful and it may turn out to be a conclusion if I am not able to improve upon it before I die.
It's hard to give up the idea of God because of all the psychological construction since my youth. The large number of people who believe in God, who claim to have seen and experienced God, who claim that if I don't believe in God I will suffer greatly - this makes me afraid to shuck my belief in God. But in contrast, I also know that it's possible for all the people in the world to be wrong. And I know that a all the proof of God that people cling to reduces to circular logic or invention with no root in reality, and worse, that there is clear evidence which contradicts many religious claims. So I am not afraid to say, that the God I believe in is not at all the same as the God that is popular in religious teachings. My God is the creator of the universe. God is whatever caused the universe to exist. For me, everything after that can be explained by the nature of the universe that exists.
Science is a methodology for acquiring knowledge about our world and it's concerned only with what exists in our world. This is why through science it will never be possible to completely know God, the creator of all existence, because God is outside existence. If God has manifested in any way within existence, we can only know the part of God that has manifested in existence, and we can only know it as part of existence.
So the meaning of life is improvement, and if there is a God who created the universe then I assume that God must have intended for me to find this meaning, since it is a natural part of the universe. All of my values are derived from what I was taught when I was younger, and yet they can be derived just as well from the axiom that existence exists and that the universe contains chaos and improvement and that the meaning of life, the cause and motivation of life, is improvement.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Education Standards
In recent years there has been a push to standardize the public school curriculum across the nation. Standardized tests have been implemented to test such a large array of topics that there are reports of teachers focusing their time solely on material that is on the test and discarding their former lesson plans.
There's a huge benefit to a uniform education for our nation's youths and that is, assuming it's a good quality education, all the youths will have an approximately equal opportunity to succeed in adulthood.
There's also a huge drawback to a nationally uniform education: if it's not a good quality education, the number of people who are able to improve it is drastically reduced due to centralized control.
And there's a second huge drawback as well: we lose the ability to compare approaches. If everyone is doing the same thing, we have to trust that the centralized management is evaluating potential changes rationally - maybe carrying out experiments and studies - but the process is sure to be slow in order to allow ample time for discussion, evaluation, and planning. These activities are necessary before making a change to a national standard because every change will affect educators and students across the nation.
There are people out there who believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, that science was invented by the devil to trap humanity, and that the theory of evolution is a religious stance. It's clear to me that these people should not be involved in the education system. Yet, they might say the same about me. So who should be allowed to set the standard of a good education?
One way to do it is that whoever pays the most money in "political contributions" to the recent campaign winners should get appointed as head of education and set the agenda for everyone. I think this way leads to poverty.
A better way to guide our national education program is to have a council of twelve wise people determine the educational standard. Each year, a list of the most successful companies in each industry and prominent researchers in every science will be compiled. Council members would be selected at random from this list, with the restriction that any person who has been drafted for the council in the past must be excluded at least five years before being drafted again. They would be notified six months in advance and brought together for two full days and two nights and have access to all available information and reports from our government departments - education, commerce, agriculture, defense, and so on. Each one would write his or her recommendations for changes to our educational program, and then a secretary assigned to support the council would combine all the recommendations into a report. The report would be circulated to all council members and each one would write comments on any section - encouragement or criticism. The secretary would combine all the comments into a single volume to accompany the report. Then the council would discuss each proposal and its associated comments, amending the proposal in accordance with the discussion, and voting to approved or reject it as amended. A two-thirds majority vote would be required to approve any proposal. The complete report, divided into two sections, would be published so that all educators will know the guidance. The first section is approved proposals, as amended, with any remaining criticism. The second section is rejected proposals with their criticism. It will be up to each school, county, and state to implement the guidance. Implementing the guidance would not be mandatory but prudent educators will pursue it. Reports on which communities implement approved guidance from the council and statistics on how their graduates fare in life should be collected by the government and made available to the public. This way is democratic and meritocratic. In fact, such councils can be used at every level of government so that in addition to the national council, states may run their own councils, and counties may run their own councils. Schools implementing guidance from any council must track their efforts and results and report on them. In this way, a really good proposal from a local council can be shared nationally when the next council meets and sees its results.
Yet another way is to apply a free market to the problem - education companies will offer programs and parents will choose the education for their children based on cost and quality. National uniform tests would be administered by the government to rate how well children are learning in each company and these ratings would be made available to the public. This method does not set standards for education - the national uniform tests would not have a minimum passing score, only a rating of how well a student knows the facts of each subject. The range of subjects need not be limited arbitrarily. Interpretation of the results would be up to the public. Special interest groups such as churches, engineering associations, etc. can organize committees to interpret the results with their implications for the group and publish it so their members can more easily make decisions regarding where to send their children to school. So, for example, in the subject of science there might be a question such as "Which of these is true? Earth revolves around the Sun; Sun revolves around the Earth; Neither; Both." People who believe that the Earth is fixed and the sun revolves around the Earth might be attracted to areas where kids tend to answer that question incorrectly, but in general people might be attracted to areas where kids tend to answer questions correctly.
In a free market system, there must be schools to educate children whose parents choose not to pay the cost or cannot pay the cost. The burden of uneducated adults living on society is too heavy, and the injustice to children of poor parents is too great, so children must be given an opportunity. But also there are issues of fairness to people who do pay for their children's education - because by providing free education to the children of their unable or unwilling peers, the government is forcing everyone else to pay the cost. Maybe that's acceptable as long as there are strict rules enforced regarding the removal of children who are disruptive in the classroom or harass other kids. It's perverse for them to stay in school. I think that people will feel a lot better about paying for public education through taxes when the system is set up to provide a safe environment for their children. So all children would have an opportunity to be educated, but children who aren't fit for it will not be allowed to attend public schools.
Some people may rightly say that children who misbehave are victims of bad parents, but society must draw the line there. Disruptive or dangerous children shouldn't be allowed to interfere with the education and growth of other kids. If we see them as victims of bad parents we need to remove them from their broken homes. The state and charity organizations should work together to provide foster homes from which the children attend a separate school that has a much longer school day and where besides academics there is a combination of paid and volunteer staff who devote a lot of time to teaching proper behavior. The point is in such a system the bad parents don't have any influence on their victim children, thus saving the children. When children in foster homes improve their behavior they would be allowed to return to regular public schools while living in the foster homes.
There's a huge benefit to a uniform education for our nation's youths and that is, assuming it's a good quality education, all the youths will have an approximately equal opportunity to succeed in adulthood.
There's also a huge drawback to a nationally uniform education: if it's not a good quality education, the number of people who are able to improve it is drastically reduced due to centralized control.
And there's a second huge drawback as well: we lose the ability to compare approaches. If everyone is doing the same thing, we have to trust that the centralized management is evaluating potential changes rationally - maybe carrying out experiments and studies - but the process is sure to be slow in order to allow ample time for discussion, evaluation, and planning. These activities are necessary before making a change to a national standard because every change will affect educators and students across the nation.
There are people out there who believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, that science was invented by the devil to trap humanity, and that the theory of evolution is a religious stance. It's clear to me that these people should not be involved in the education system. Yet, they might say the same about me. So who should be allowed to set the standard of a good education?
One way to do it is that whoever pays the most money in "political contributions" to the recent campaign winners should get appointed as head of education and set the agenda for everyone. I think this way leads to poverty.
A better way to guide our national education program is to have a council of twelve wise people determine the educational standard. Each year, a list of the most successful companies in each industry and prominent researchers in every science will be compiled. Council members would be selected at random from this list, with the restriction that any person who has been drafted for the council in the past must be excluded at least five years before being drafted again. They would be notified six months in advance and brought together for two full days and two nights and have access to all available information and reports from our government departments - education, commerce, agriculture, defense, and so on. Each one would write his or her recommendations for changes to our educational program, and then a secretary assigned to support the council would combine all the recommendations into a report. The report would be circulated to all council members and each one would write comments on any section - encouragement or criticism. The secretary would combine all the comments into a single volume to accompany the report. Then the council would discuss each proposal and its associated comments, amending the proposal in accordance with the discussion, and voting to approved or reject it as amended. A two-thirds majority vote would be required to approve any proposal. The complete report, divided into two sections, would be published so that all educators will know the guidance. The first section is approved proposals, as amended, with any remaining criticism. The second section is rejected proposals with their criticism. It will be up to each school, county, and state to implement the guidance. Implementing the guidance would not be mandatory but prudent educators will pursue it. Reports on which communities implement approved guidance from the council and statistics on how their graduates fare in life should be collected by the government and made available to the public. This way is democratic and meritocratic. In fact, such councils can be used at every level of government so that in addition to the national council, states may run their own councils, and counties may run their own councils. Schools implementing guidance from any council must track their efforts and results and report on them. In this way, a really good proposal from a local council can be shared nationally when the next council meets and sees its results.
Yet another way is to apply a free market to the problem - education companies will offer programs and parents will choose the education for their children based on cost and quality. National uniform tests would be administered by the government to rate how well children are learning in each company and these ratings would be made available to the public. This method does not set standards for education - the national uniform tests would not have a minimum passing score, only a rating of how well a student knows the facts of each subject. The range of subjects need not be limited arbitrarily. Interpretation of the results would be up to the public. Special interest groups such as churches, engineering associations, etc. can organize committees to interpret the results with their implications for the group and publish it so their members can more easily make decisions regarding where to send their children to school. So, for example, in the subject of science there might be a question such as "Which of these is true? Earth revolves around the Sun; Sun revolves around the Earth; Neither; Both." People who believe that the Earth is fixed and the sun revolves around the Earth might be attracted to areas where kids tend to answer that question incorrectly, but in general people might be attracted to areas where kids tend to answer questions correctly.
In a free market system, there must be schools to educate children whose parents choose not to pay the cost or cannot pay the cost. The burden of uneducated adults living on society is too heavy, and the injustice to children of poor parents is too great, so children must be given an opportunity. But also there are issues of fairness to people who do pay for their children's education - because by providing free education to the children of their unable or unwilling peers, the government is forcing everyone else to pay the cost. Maybe that's acceptable as long as there are strict rules enforced regarding the removal of children who are disruptive in the classroom or harass other kids. It's perverse for them to stay in school. I think that people will feel a lot better about paying for public education through taxes when the system is set up to provide a safe environment for their children. So all children would have an opportunity to be educated, but children who aren't fit for it will not be allowed to attend public schools.
Some people may rightly say that children who misbehave are victims of bad parents, but society must draw the line there. Disruptive or dangerous children shouldn't be allowed to interfere with the education and growth of other kids. If we see them as victims of bad parents we need to remove them from their broken homes. The state and charity organizations should work together to provide foster homes from which the children attend a separate school that has a much longer school day and where besides academics there is a combination of paid and volunteer staff who devote a lot of time to teaching proper behavior. The point is in such a system the bad parents don't have any influence on their victim children, thus saving the children. When children in foster homes improve their behavior they would be allowed to return to regular public schools while living in the foster homes.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Corporations
No person shall be held personally responsible for the actions of another person. Every person shall be held personally responsible for his or her own actions and inactions. A business shall be held responsible for the actions and inactions of any owner or employee. When a wrongdoing is not criminal, it's acceptable for the responsible party to receive assistance in paying the damages. When the wrongdoing is criminal, it's acceptable for the responsible party to receive assistance in paying the damages but the members of that party may still be imprisoned as a punishment for their crimes. Together, these principles lead to the common-sense outcomes that in a business with two or more partners, if one partner commits a crime or tort without the knowledge of the others, that the other partners will not be liable for the actions of the individual alone; if the other partners knew of the activity and failed to report it or stop it or leave the partnership, then they are responsible for their inaction and become "guilty by association"; for any crime or tort the judge must determine if the activity was a one-time occurrence or if it was regular, and to what extent was the activity a joint responsibility of the business or a responsibility of the individuals involved. This shall not be an automatic determination based on the "type" of business - it must be made separately for each case.
Starting a business is very risky but it has great rewards for the community. Successful businesses create jobs and productive industries bring wealth to their communities. Entrepreneurs and investors need some protection if things don't end well - but that protection must be limited. First, if there is a crime involved there shall be no protections for those persons who were involved with the crime. Second, if the business simply did not work, with no evidence of wrong-doing, then the protection should be only that which was agreed to by the entrepreneur and his or her investors and customers. This is what should be referred to as "limited liability" - it's only by agreement, not a protection from the state.
The concept of the corporation has failed in the following four ways:
One. It has become standard practice for judges who convict corporate executives of wrongdoing to fine them either a tiny fraction of the damages they caused and to allow the corporation to continue operating, often under the continued management of more senior executives who were principally responsible for the wrongdoing, or to fine the corporation an amount disproportionally big to the actual damage in order to "make a point" and not hold individual decision makers liable for their actions. In both cases, the notion that a corporation is a legal entity separate from any of the citizens who operate it leads to grave injustices.
Two. The limited liability corporation stands in contrast to partnerships as a mode of doing business which is more expensive to create and maintain both in terms of money and the owner's time. For a small business, forming a corporation is unreasonably taxing and is often skipped for that reason, with potentially disastrous consequences for the business owner. Those disastrous consequences usually come about because a judge holds the business owner personally responsible for the actions of his employees or the misfortunes of his customers. Even if the business owner was personally responsible for the problem, unless its criminal it should be possible to tax that business until the actual damages are repaid.
Three. The term "limited liability corporation" should be a label for an agreement that has been executed by entrepreneurs and their investors, not something that is at all related to crimes or taxes or torts. If a family owns a business and a customer has a misfortune, they should be no more or less liable for the damages than a corporation would be. But what often happens is that bigger businesses, by virtue of doing more business, if they have wronged their customers in some way when all the customers band together to sue the business is usually able to reach a settlement and pay less damages, and therefore it is less liable for a wrongdoing than a small business would be to a smaller group of wronged customers. This is unjust. A bigger business should not be made less responsible just because it is bigger.
Four. Large corporations have stolen from the public or from their customers astronomical amounts, acted fraudulently, bribed government officials, and were left unscathed or even allowed to continue doing business with the government and with the people they defrauded. It's absolutely disgusting. America is still suffering from echos of "too big to fail", of settlements of millions of dollars that represented only a small fraction of what was robbed, of corporations receiving bail-outs from the government while their executives continue to receive enormous salaries or benefit packages. The concept of the corporation has caused a great deal of harm to the public. Large corporations that are known to be harmful continue to exist. If the persons responsible for the largest crimes in the history of the world were truly held responsible for their actions, and if the corporations that they managed were sentenced to repay the entirety of the damages they caused, then not only would we have justice, but we would also have a useful deterrent against future crimes. Currently we have neither.
So what I propose is to do away with the concept that a corporation is a legal entity separate from the people who own it. The government should treat all businesses equally in this regard: The structure of a business should not determine its protections and liabilities. Sole proprietorships and partnerships should have the same legal protections as corporations and corporations should have the same legal liabilities as sole proprietorships and partnerships. The liability of an entrepreneur to his or her investors should be determined by their agreement. If a large business commits a crime so large that it cannot repay the damages - then it must be disbanded; the assets seized by the state for sale and the proceeds distributed to repay damages; and all the responsible executives held personally responsible and imprisoned for some time. In other words, all businesses are corporations, and all people are personally liable for their own crimes regardless of their involvement in a business.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Lighthouse Strategy for Winning in Afghanistan
This is our 11th year in Afghanistan and we don't have much to show for it. We built schools and wells, and the Taliban destroyed many of them.
We gave Afghans money and equipment, and the Taliban took it from them. We have also mistakenly funded Taliban supporters, sometimes because we didn't know about their affiliation and sometimes because we foolishly thought it would somehow help us.
We tried to control the entire country but ended up controlling only major cities. The Taliban have freedom of movement in many areas.
Our initial goal of punishing the Taliban government for hosting Al-Qaida was accomplished very early. The rest input time in Afghanistan has been wasted.
The Afghan people are no closer to freedom from oppression now than they were in early 2002 after our successful attack on the Taliban government. If we were to leave tomorrow, the Taliban is capable of returning to power and controlling the entire country.
While we spend billions of dollars to maintain our presence in Afghanistan every year, the Taliban's costs are minimal. While we try to build support for freedom with our construction projects, the Taliban tear down the people with intimidation, murder, kidnappings, and robbery - much cheaper than construction and security. The Taliban have the home field advantage. But we can change that.
If we want to win freedom for the Afghan people, we need to do it with organized, a scalable method. We need to demonstrate to all Afghans what life can be like without the Taliban presence. We need to win complete freedom and security in one location and then expand it. Instead of trying to control the entire country, at once, we need to focus on just one area, what would be known as Land of the Free, and offer free relocation to any Afghan individual or family who wants to move there. Other Afghans would see a desirable and feasible alternative to Taliban oppression and they would travel to live in the Land of the Free.
We would help them form a government and fund construction projects. We would insist on a minimum set of secular laws designed to maintain the integrity of the effort and advise their government and provide experts and educators to bootstrap a new Afghan society. It would be much cheaper to defend a small area and as it matures the Afghans living there could take over the security role and we can expand its border. Eventually it would be big and stable enough to withstand any Taliban attack on its own. Then we and the Afghans will have the home field advantage against the Taliban, who will find themselves becoming irrelevant as fewer and fewer Afghans will be left to oppress.
The Taliban can then spend the rest of their days living their ideal hypocritical pseudo-Muslim lives, raping and pillaging each other to their hearts content, and we can live happily ever after knowing we avenged the attack on 11 Sep 2001 and truly liberated many Afghans from the reign of terror imposed on them by the Taliban.
We gave Afghans money and equipment, and the Taliban took it from them. We have also mistakenly funded Taliban supporters, sometimes because we didn't know about their affiliation and sometimes because we foolishly thought it would somehow help us.
We tried to control the entire country but ended up controlling only major cities. The Taliban have freedom of movement in many areas.
Our initial goal of punishing the Taliban government for hosting Al-Qaida was accomplished very early. The rest input time in Afghanistan has been wasted.
The Afghan people are no closer to freedom from oppression now than they were in early 2002 after our successful attack on the Taliban government. If we were to leave tomorrow, the Taliban is capable of returning to power and controlling the entire country.
While we spend billions of dollars to maintain our presence in Afghanistan every year, the Taliban's costs are minimal. While we try to build support for freedom with our construction projects, the Taliban tear down the people with intimidation, murder, kidnappings, and robbery - much cheaper than construction and security. The Taliban have the home field advantage. But we can change that.
If we want to win freedom for the Afghan people, we need to do it with organized, a scalable method. We need to demonstrate to all Afghans what life can be like without the Taliban presence. We need to win complete freedom and security in one location and then expand it. Instead of trying to control the entire country, at once, we need to focus on just one area, what would be known as Land of the Free, and offer free relocation to any Afghan individual or family who wants to move there. Other Afghans would see a desirable and feasible alternative to Taliban oppression and they would travel to live in the Land of the Free.
We would help them form a government and fund construction projects. We would insist on a minimum set of secular laws designed to maintain the integrity of the effort and advise their government and provide experts and educators to bootstrap a new Afghan society. It would be much cheaper to defend a small area and as it matures the Afghans living there could take over the security role and we can expand its border. Eventually it would be big and stable enough to withstand any Taliban attack on its own. Then we and the Afghans will have the home field advantage against the Taliban, who will find themselves becoming irrelevant as fewer and fewer Afghans will be left to oppress.
The Taliban can then spend the rest of their days living their ideal hypocritical pseudo-Muslim lives, raping and pillaging each other to their hearts content, and we can live happily ever after knowing we avenged the attack on 11 Sep 2001 and truly liberated many Afghans from the reign of terror imposed on them by the Taliban.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Truth
Truth is only that which accurately describes existence in the past, present, or future.
We must never tire of pursuing the truth.
We must never tire of pursuing the truth.
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