socialism ('sO-sh&-"li-z&m): any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.
Consider federal grants for higher education, are they socialist? We want kids to get an education so we give them money to purchase that education from any provider they choose, so no. While they may reflect social values, college grants are not considered socialist because they do not govern or administer any means of production, nor do they distribute goods or services.
The desire to educate our population is analogous to our societys desire for its citizens to have access to healthcare. Universal access to healthcare has been proposed in the past, an analog to federal financial aid, but for some reason this has been labeled socialized healthcare and demonized as a one way street to Big Brother controlling our every waking moment and dolling out just enough victory gin to get a guy through the day.
Who could have possibly gotten it into our heads that wanting to provide healthcare to our fellow humans is socialist? Well, who would suffer if the government provided money for healthcare? The insurance industry, in the back, I'm looking at you.
Some quick facts about the health insurance industry:
Over the four years from 2000-2004,
Despite a weak economy and soaring medical costs, U.S. health insurers took in profits at a far greater pace than the rest of corporate America. Profit margins doubled for the top 10 insurers, while the average profit margin across the S&P 500 dropped 20%.
Profits for the 17 top U.S. health insurers rose 114 percent to $414 million from $193 million on average.
Average pay for the five top executives at the top health insurers almost doubled to $3 million a year.
"They're making boatloads of money," said Tom Boldt, senior health-benefits consultant for Watson Wyatt, a leading human-resources consulting firm.
(see http://investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=23544168&brk=1)
Thats profit in the second bullet, not income, profit. Thats $414 million in a year that people spent to have healthcare, that never went to providing them healthcare. Is that the most efficient system, or is that a gargantuan middle man? Where's my invisible hand!?
Were nice people here in Massachusetts, and we want our citizens to be able to get the healthcare that they need, but we've been taken. We let our fear of the Red Menace cloud our judgment and weve been had by shysters and shills. Instead of passing a law to give money to people to get healthcare, we passed a law which forces them to get, and in some cases gives them money to get you guessed it, health insurance. Over $7.5 million was spent on lobbying for this bill alone, much of which came from the insurance industry, in a state government!
So now somehow our goodwill has been turned into more profits for health insurers, and all because weve been fooled about what universal healthcare would mean. Whatever your stance on Socialism with a big S, dont let middlemen take advantage of a hot-button word to extort money from good people who just want to have access to medical care for themselves and their fellow people. Lets bring creative solutions for universal healthcare back to public debate, and stop the major corporate giveaways.
Friday, May 12, 2006
sub-atomic particles for the masses
what if we're not a bunch of distinct little whirly bits circling and clinging to each other, plunging through the air/water/space around us? quantum mechanics seems to suggest that sub-atomic "particles" pop in and out of existence all the time, creating and destroying themselves and their opposites in a semi-erotic flashdance that produces localized mass/energy we can measure. despite this, the idea of the enduring single atom has persevered, sweeping the apparent discontinuity of matter under the rug.
Sure the atom has been a useful idea, and continues to be one to this day for some people i'm sure. But thinking of myself and the world around me as a bunch of tightly packed spheres doesn't do much for me on a daily basis, t'be honest.
All these ideas we have about how reality works are just models in the end; tools to give us broader ranges of ability in our interactions. So i have to ask, "what's the atom ever done for me?" unlike Yahoo Serious I can't split an atom, or grab one, or see one, or interact with one in any way really. Feels like my range of ability is as narrow as ever. (quiet you).
so i think about it for a bit and it occurs to me, what if we're more like figures you might see moving across a scoreboard at your favorite sports event. We see the figures, in 2d, as they dunk on each other and demand that we charge at things, but we also understand that the figures are just patterns of lights turning on and off on a 2d grid. the quantum model has our particles appearing and disappearing constantly, and showing up in different places, so maybe we're not moving our atoms from one place to the next through whatever medium du jour, we're just turning on potential particles on a 3D grid.
Well it seems like the implications of this new model would be massive, and potentially useful in day to day life, but it's tricky. First, what is changing the particle pattern? Who's running the scoreboard? In our case, it seems straight forward: we are, through our consciousness. But we aren't living in a vacuum, there's already stuff in all of the places that i want to be, so it has to get out of the way when i'm appearing. The air around me has to have it's particles appear in he space i've chosen not to be in, and how would in know where that space is, or how to make itself appear there. well, one way to explain it would be to think of all forms of matter/energy as possessing a certain type of consciousness, or will, and to suggest that all the different forms of consciousness are interacting and communicating with each other.
whoa. so i'm like talking to the wind when it blows by me, and what i feel as a rush of breeze on my skin is really my consciousness talking with the ancient mind of the earth?
hold it, not quite yet. but maybe, yeah. what do i know.
still, there's much more to explore here before we all accept the oneness of the grid. What about when things get destroyed for example. Where was the communication there? Well, i say in my voice of pure conjecture, maybe that's when one will dominates another, or when one consciousness isn't flexible enough to move. what would that mean for day to day life? Could we dodge bullets with an open mind? Walk on water if we were accepting enough?
To be sure it leads to some interesting ideas that i think are worth exploring, and hypotheses in need of testing. The latter is the important part and i'm still working on what i think would be suitable experiments. I walked down the street and tried to keep in my mind the sense of appearing and disappearing with each movement, and it felt very odd; a new sensation, and a pleasurable one. So put one on the board for the grid. grid one, enduring atom zilch. But i like to run up the score, so if you have any ideas on where to go with this next, leave a comment or send me a message.
Sure the atom has been a useful idea, and continues to be one to this day for some people i'm sure. But thinking of myself and the world around me as a bunch of tightly packed spheres doesn't do much for me on a daily basis, t'be honest.
All these ideas we have about how reality works are just models in the end; tools to give us broader ranges of ability in our interactions. So i have to ask, "what's the atom ever done for me?" unlike Yahoo Serious I can't split an atom, or grab one, or see one, or interact with one in any way really. Feels like my range of ability is as narrow as ever. (quiet you).
so i think about it for a bit and it occurs to me, what if we're more like figures you might see moving across a scoreboard at your favorite sports event. We see the figures, in 2d, as they dunk on each other and demand that we charge at things, but we also understand that the figures are just patterns of lights turning on and off on a 2d grid. the quantum model has our particles appearing and disappearing constantly, and showing up in different places, so maybe we're not moving our atoms from one place to the next through whatever medium du jour, we're just turning on potential particles on a 3D grid.
Well it seems like the implications of this new model would be massive, and potentially useful in day to day life, but it's tricky. First, what is changing the particle pattern? Who's running the scoreboard? In our case, it seems straight forward: we are, through our consciousness. But we aren't living in a vacuum, there's already stuff in all of the places that i want to be, so it has to get out of the way when i'm appearing. The air around me has to have it's particles appear in he space i've chosen not to be in, and how would in know where that space is, or how to make itself appear there. well, one way to explain it would be to think of all forms of matter/energy as possessing a certain type of consciousness, or will, and to suggest that all the different forms of consciousness are interacting and communicating with each other.
whoa. so i'm like talking to the wind when it blows by me, and what i feel as a rush of breeze on my skin is really my consciousness talking with the ancient mind of the earth?
hold it, not quite yet. but maybe, yeah. what do i know.
still, there's much more to explore here before we all accept the oneness of the grid. What about when things get destroyed for example. Where was the communication there? Well, i say in my voice of pure conjecture, maybe that's when one will dominates another, or when one consciousness isn't flexible enough to move. what would that mean for day to day life? Could we dodge bullets with an open mind? Walk on water if we were accepting enough?
To be sure it leads to some interesting ideas that i think are worth exploring, and hypotheses in need of testing. The latter is the important part and i'm still working on what i think would be suitable experiments. I walked down the street and tried to keep in my mind the sense of appearing and disappearing with each movement, and it felt very odd; a new sensation, and a pleasurable one. So put one on the board for the grid. grid one, enduring atom zilch. But i like to run up the score, so if you have any ideas on where to go with this next, leave a comment or send me a message.
loving freedom hater haters on holiday
I think for the first time ever I can say that I had a really great Martin Luther King day. Everyones had some fun on federally mandated time away from school or work, thats not what I mean (though have you ever noticed how when you get Monday off it feels more like you had two Sundays, and when you get Friday off and it feels like you had two Saturdays? Certainly the calendar has a deeper history than most of us realize, and perhaps this effect is due in part from differences in the days themselves, but Im betting that most of the sleepiness I get on Sunday night, even when I have Monday to sleep in, is just habit). Its more that when we give a day a name, a theme, an honor, and a feeling like that, we give it extra substance and information that we all live through as reality, and Id never really tapped into that before on MLK day.
Yesterday two friends of mine and I used a little bass amp to blast a message of peace, economic justice, international compassion, and the brilliant possibilities in and for human dignity across a well populated public space, hijacking some corporate resources in the process. Certainly not an original idea by any stretch of the imagination, nor indeed really a first for myself. All except the reaction we got.
See this was Martin Luther Kings day, and we had the man himself on our side thanks to the magic of internet audio downloads. We didnt say a damn thing actually, just sat their in the ass freezing cold smiling and people smiled right back, and slipped low fives and thumbs up, and stopped and stood or sat with us, smiling at each other every once in a while, nodding, but mostly just taking in what the prescription Dr. King had for us.
It was his day, what were you going to do, get pissed off about kids making trouble, or their apparent distaste for war? Maybe on most days, but you just couldnt get the energy up to do yesterday for some reason, and you always did like Dr. King We played it for hours and hours and didnt receive a single complaint, not even from the beat cops who went by occasionally. Reality had shifted under the weight of the consensus, ordered by the government, that we should respect Dr. King on that day, and we jumped all over it and maybe got into a few peoples heads.
So that gave me two ideas. One, we all go around looking for these seemingly naturally occurring shifts in consensus reality and exploit them to their fullest extents. Is there a contradiction in a government that says honor Dr. King and simultaneously advances a doctrine of war, repression, and injustice? Fraid fucking so, and contradiction is at the core of unraveling belief systems in this dualistic logic we all use, so lets pull the loose end like winch. Two, lets think of ways to try to engineer those reality circumstances more often. Trickier, I know, but Im thinking about it and Ill let you know what I come up with. See you on presidents day.
Yesterday two friends of mine and I used a little bass amp to blast a message of peace, economic justice, international compassion, and the brilliant possibilities in and for human dignity across a well populated public space, hijacking some corporate resources in the process. Certainly not an original idea by any stretch of the imagination, nor indeed really a first for myself. All except the reaction we got.
See this was Martin Luther Kings day, and we had the man himself on our side thanks to the magic of internet audio downloads. We didnt say a damn thing actually, just sat their in the ass freezing cold smiling and people smiled right back, and slipped low fives and thumbs up, and stopped and stood or sat with us, smiling at each other every once in a while, nodding, but mostly just taking in what the prescription Dr. King had for us.
It was his day, what were you going to do, get pissed off about kids making trouble, or their apparent distaste for war? Maybe on most days, but you just couldnt get the energy up to do yesterday for some reason, and you always did like Dr. King We played it for hours and hours and didnt receive a single complaint, not even from the beat cops who went by occasionally. Reality had shifted under the weight of the consensus, ordered by the government, that we should respect Dr. King on that day, and we jumped all over it and maybe got into a few peoples heads.
So that gave me two ideas. One, we all go around looking for these seemingly naturally occurring shifts in consensus reality and exploit them to their fullest extents. Is there a contradiction in a government that says honor Dr. King and simultaneously advances a doctrine of war, repression, and injustice? Fraid fucking so, and contradiction is at the core of unraveling belief systems in this dualistic logic we all use, so lets pull the loose end like winch. Two, lets think of ways to try to engineer those reality circumstances more often. Trickier, I know, but Im thinking about it and Ill let you know what I come up with. See you on presidents day.
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