These stories are the myths of capitalism. Hence his idolising of JP Morgan and JD Rockefeller, seeking to say that America has buried assets in its culture.

Robert,

Capitalism is, or isn’t, what I say it is, or your version, or Howard’s, or JD Rockefeller’s, but there are ways of measuring physical and now even psychological reality. The label merely points to the thing being labeled, it isn’t the thing being labeled, and my point of all this matter of fact stuff is to focus on the specific connection between the label in view and the thing in view, so as to measure the connection for accuracy.

Is your version of capitalism interchangeable with JD Rockefeller’s? If not, what is different?

A. Your version
B. An example provided by someone who defines capitalism in a more powerful way

My version of capitalism rarely exists; I prefer not to employ that pricing method. I have a hard time figuring out what is capitalism from anyone else’s perspective, no one confesses.

Here are two links that may or may not be examples of accurate currency (measurably true communications of actual reality):

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books ... index.html

http://www.reformation.org/wall-st-hitler.html

Those links are twins for a reason. The reasoning may not be readily obvious or believable if the reasoning becomes obvious. The work in the link, from my view, exemplifies the process called research.

I point to those links as examples of “capitalism” as defined by “capitalists”, and if that doesn’t illustrate capitalism, as you know it to be, then I think it may help to find an example that does illustrate capitalism as you know it to be.

To say that capitalism is suffering from a misperception, and to suggest, perhaps, that the mud on capitalism is unjustly stuck there, if that is suggested, is an odd way of seeing reality to me.

On the other hand, competition will increase the quality of production and reduce the cost of production to a point where the highest possible quality is reached at the lowest possible cost in reality, because that is how competition works.

Then, with two hands in view, my process of resolving the conflicts between the conflicting versions of “capitalism” arrives at two solutions.

A. Crime
B. Not A

There are many version of each of those two. Version A has one very specific and very obvious method by which it proceeds under the direction of its proponents, not obvious from the perspective of the innocent victims. It, or more precisely it’s operators, destroy competition.

So there is now this:

A. Crime (destroy competition)
B. Not A (competition)

Which capitalism is worth saving, and who has an interest in saving capitalism?

Why save it?

If the idea is to help move our species from a certain death that will occur when the earth dies, to bad for us, rather, if we are to move to a species saving move elsewhere, then my thinking is such that option A must become less powerful relative to option B.

If the criminals call themselves capitalist today, socialists tomorrow, and then fascists for a few years, then back to liberals, then over to conservatives, then to whatever is fashionable next year, whatever works best, and the victims fail to notice, then that is one thing.

On the other hand, the victims may catch on, and join in on the doom day parade, because failing to do so moves their buts further up in line, and at that point, it seems to me, the people in that line are not going to like having someone remind them of where they are, exactly.

I may be wandering well off the topic.

When the thing being used is obviously torturing and mass murdering, by law no less, it may be time to repurpose, and the labels attached to that process are important in proportion to their ability to aid in that process.

If, on the other hand, the labels used by the people who genuinely seek to avoid being even remotely associated with option A (crime) are set against each other because the labels are mislabeled, confused, misdirecting, false, deceptive, or otherwise not accurate, then how do the proponents of option B (not crime) transfer necessary data among themselves accurately?

Why, for example, are people who suggest that the official version of events makes no sense, are summarily titled as “conspiracy theorists”?

I have an answer, my question begs for one.

Accurate currency challenges falsehood, and falsehood must destroy the competition or lose.

If something better is on the shelf next to something worse, who will use the poor product?

A. Crime
B. Not A

What is the product designed to accomplish – exactly?

His approach is to use the central ideas of science as a framework for meaning.

The book has upset my thinking, so I put the book down for awhile, and the pieces are falling back into place. It seems to me that life must seek at least two things.

1. Power
2. Reproduction

The obvious thing that life must do in our case is to gain the power required to reproduce on other planets. If our species fails, then our species dies out with the Earth. If the whole process starts over again somewhere else in time and space and that competitive form of life doesn’t fail, why doesn’t it fail?

It, if it succeeds, will produce the power required to reproduce new sustainable environments, extra-terrestrial.

All else, from that viewpoint, is academic? We live, now. Our species ends with the Earth unless our species doesn’t end with the Earth – then what?

Following Murphy, miracles can't happen - they involve things that can't go wrong.

I’m not following that line of thinking, it is foreign to me. “Wrong”, as in going wrong, must have some frame of reference – no?

Example:

Species survival = right

Species extinction = wrong

?

Hey Joe, fantastic post. Thanks. My version of capitalism I have explained in my threads here at Booktalk on the Spragg Waterbag and the Algae City in the Gulf of Mexico. I'm looking to establish an algae biofuel feedstock industry in the world ocean and would welcome American venture capital interest. The ocean occupies 71% of the planetary surface, and should be the next target for human colonisation, before we start to think about moving to the rest of the solar system. My version of capitalism would collect CO2 in volumes larger than current world emissions using the algae production methods described at my provisional Australian patent, and convert this algae into diesel, fish food, fertiliser, coal-fired power station fuel, plastic, etc to fix and regulate the environment and the climate and provide a large new industry to support economic growth. That way we could leave the valuable old fossil fuels in the ground instead of burning them like there was no tomorrow.

Robert,

Can you link to these places where you have offered your version of capitalism? I looked for a way to contact you privately but failed to find one.

Here is a similar link:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/04 ... index.html

If the path forward goes in both centralized and decentralized directions (one doesn’t destroy the other – destroy the competition), then market share will disperse thusly:

Some people will produce home grown food and motor fuel (from algae) in their own private vertical farming modular greenhouses made by themselves because they can afford to do so and because they can’t afford not to do so, and these examples run old gas burning cars on algae fuel.

Some people will buy ready made vertical farming greenhouses from a centralized factory type corporation and make their own food and motor fuel with those modular greenhouses, less decentralized than above.

Some people will buy algae fuel from large and incorporated centralized algae fuel producing business and run their internal combustion engines with that ready supply of competitive priced fuel, where costs are lower including the costs not counted (hidden on purpose) with the petroleum (I don’t sign onto the “fossil” fuel myth) type fuel.

Some people will buy electric cars, solar panels, vertical farming modular units, perhaps even algae fuel electric generators, and perhaps even buy some hydrogen electrolysis (or ‘cracking’) converters to store excess electricity production.

Some people will produce more and more of these new competitive power products in a centralized manner, such as incorporation, new thriving businesses that employ people.

Then there is the factor of "open source" and since I’ve read into Howard’s new work now, again, (and have re-borrowed his brain) my spin on the open source factor has taken off again – in my head – not so much on paper.

If you are involved in the actual work of producing algae fuel then please consider joining a discussion group I have been invited into, here is my e-mail = josf.kelleyATverizon.net (AT out and @ in). I can respond to an e-mail with details, if you are interested, I can’t be sure that you will be invited, it isn’t my group.

Here is a very old (all things are relative) illustration I made concerning my version of how things work in political economy – if you are interested in knowing such trivia.



I can sum up my version of political economy in one sentence:

Power produced into a state of oversupply will reduce the price of power while purchasing power increases because power reduces the cost of production.

If that is true, and I think it is, then it becomes even more obvious as to why criminals (legal or otherwise) must destroy the computiton (or leverage them into submission, joining the monopoly), since power produced into a state of abundance removes the power criminals have over their innocent victims.

I can go on, and I can specifically take a religious direction since that is another area where I have problems with Howard’s secular perspective. Howard’s work manages to help bridge gaps. I have to do my part in that effort – it seems.

Excuse me for breaking in here, as I don't have anything to say about Bloom's book, not having started to read it. One thing that interests me about this writer, to whom the word "brilliant" seems to be attached by nearly everyone, is whether he takes into account the social effects of the transformative changes he envisions. If you compare his book to Hedges' "Empire of Illusion" (which I'm also not reading now) or Dick Meyer's 2008 "Why We Hate Us" (which I am), would you have two essentially different views of the challenge facing us? Hedges and Meyers talk about the various types of malaise that rapid social change (which often is fueled by rapid technological change) produces. Their focus might be what is lost as traditional social structures fall, while Bloom's might be (pardon me if this is all wrong) the ways we need to transform our traditions. If this dichotomy is accurate, it wouldn't be a knock against any of these writers, just the indication that each is taking a particular, and partial, viewpoint.

If this dichotomy is accurate, it wouldn't be a knock against any of these writers, just the indication that each is taking a particular, and partial, viewpoint.

DWill,

I don’t see the view you see. Howard’s work appears to be ambiguous or perhaps the right word is abstract on specifics concerning what will be a better direction. The viewpoint I read into the new book is similar to what a disinterested observer may see when that objective observer views human life passing through history up to this time, and then that viewer forms a hypothesis concerning what is most likely going to happen in the future. Mixed into that scientific measure of view is Howard’s cheerleading for capitalism, it seems to me, and the specifics as to what capitalism is, or isn’t, are not well understood by me, as I read the book.

I get the part, in the book, where the objective observer observes what has happened, and what is most likely to happen, if things go as they have gone, over and over again.

There is no question that human beings, as a species, will adapt or perish – as a species – no question whatsoever, like there is no question as to weather or not an asteroid is on a collision course with the earth, the specific time when these inevitabilities will occur is not certain.

People will re-purpose. If people don’t there is a thing that happens; inevitably.

So that part of the book, if I haven’t read things into it that are not written into it, is clear to me. As to what can be done, specifically, concerning the thoughts and actions of people during the process of repurposing, my confusion as to what is in the book on that subject is almost driving me to open the book back up and resume consumption.

If there is fear concerning a loss of good things during the process of repurposing, as if the baby is thrown out with the bath water, I’m on board with that fear, or that concern.

My background on this type of thinking (history/opportunity) includes reading work by Eric Fromm, and others.

Eric Fromm went very deep into specific thoughts and actions of people during the process of boom and bust, and he remained objective (not cheer-leading any political/economy/cultural/religious “side”). Eric Fromm didn’t go as far back (objectively) to view our species as “just another living organism” (my words) as Howard does, where the perspective measures this cyclic tendency as a natural thing, a specific result of the living process, a genetic instruction perhaps.

If people throw out competition, because people convince themselves that competition is bad, mistaking competition to be dirty bath water, then people will throw out the baby, that will be an error, and a very serious one, as the true, measurably true, dirty bath water is falsehood and aggressive violence for profit against the innocent (crime) – it always has been, and it is very dirty stuff indeed.

Criminals, it seems to me, are in a very good position to profit from a confusion whereby too many people are convinced in the need to throw out competition, out-law it, instead of focusing any defensive attention (any power people control for use in defense) on the real problem i.e. crime. That scenario (out-law competition) is akin to throwing out the baby and keeping the bath-water.

I cannot confirm that my response has anything to do with the quoted words at the beginning of my response. My thinking is that my response does have something to do with the quoted words:

If this dichotomy is accurate, it wouldn't be a knock against any of these writers, just the indication that each is taking a particular, and partial, viewpoint.

What is the "dichotomy"?

Hedges and Meyers talk about the various types of malaise that rapid social change (which often is fueled by rapid technological change) produces. Their focus might be what is lost as traditional social structures fall, while Bloom's might be (pardon me if this is all wrong) the ways we need to transform our traditions.

My take on that goes back to the baby and the bathwater analogy. If people fear the loss of security and there is an assumption that security is earned by outlawing competition, by using whatever means possible in that work, then people will wish to conserve that traditional and cultural error.

If that is what is; then those people are doomed.

Joe,
Thanks for your response. It was difficult for you to get at my meaning because I suspect my question may not have much to do Bloom's purpose in the book. Maybe my question has a little more to do with Global Brain, of which I've only read a little, so then again maybe not. The prospect of ever greater interconnectivity that Bloom promotes in GB has a distinct possible downside for us as beings who evolved needing intimate social contact. Remote interconnectivity may, ironically, only worsen our separation from each other as members of true communities. This continued loss of community is the bathwater that could be lost as electronics comes more and more to channel our economic and social lives.

Remote interconnectivity may, ironically, only worsen our separation from each other as members of true communities.

DWill,

The analogy here may be a double edged sword, not a sword without a handle?

If the baby or the productive edge of the sword is the opposite of remoteness, call it intimacy, I’m reaching here, then is the dirty water, or the destructive edge of the sword, this remoteness, a failure to care for each other, or care for anything; because we grow ignorant of each other’s fate?

I’m going to confess a moment where I sobbed like a little girl over a video clip in the news where more children were being packed into trucks, displaced, being deported, being exiled, thrown out, discarded, suffocated, destroyed, their lives prematurely ended, I just broke down, I did so outside my own kids bedrooms, in the hall. What a collosal weakling I am, I still think so; because of that great moment of weakness.

Now am I desensitized, it hasn’t happened since?

That never happen before either, it just happened that one time.

I don’t know how to move on from here, in this reply, other than to link someone who may offer a viewpoint that can serve as a reply.

The question in view, as I see it, is certainly contentious, competitive, worthy of expending costs to bring forth some measurable resolution - a way to understand the conflict of interests.

I’ll find the link, re-read the words, and offer a quote from it – to see if it works here.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lite ... cture.html

Which is why we take for the greater, more painful and less bearable disaster not that which is in fact greater, more painful and less bearable, but that which lies closest to us. Everything which is further away, which does not threaten this very day to invade our threshold - with all its groans, its stifled cries, its destroyed lives, even if it involves millions of victims - this we consider on the whole to be perfectly bearable and of tolerable proportions.

That appears to be on target – no?

This presents a rampant danger: THE SUPPRESSION OF INFORMATION between the parts of the planet.

That is, perhaps, what my reading of your reply sparked in my memory. I may be lost. A return to your words (putting aside firther reading of Solzhenintsn) may re-connect the thinking process.

The prospect of ever greater interconnectivity that Bloom promotes in GB has a distinct possible downside for us as beings who evolved needing intimate social contact.

There, then, is the conflict, the two edges of the sword, as a battle, a competition, between allowing connectivity and not allowing it.

I may be wrong. What can be done to preserve intimacy when intimacy is threatened by an over-abundance of interconnectivity?

Is that a reasonable question?

This continued loss of community is the bathwater that could be lost as electronics comes more and more to channel our economic and social lives.

I may not understand what is meant with this word: community - or true community.

I wrote the above at work yesterday and sent it home to be posted from a computer where I have the password for this site saved. I slept on the response so I’ll continue writing (and I won’t edit the above first response - much).

Quoting first:

The prospect of ever greater interconnectivity that Bloom promotes in GB has a distinct possible downside for us as beings who evolved needing intimate social contact. Remote interconnectivity may, ironically, only worsen our separation from each other as members of true communities.

How about a quote from someone who may have thought about this some and the quote is difficult for me to understand; however it seems to fit here:

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

Actually that one wasn’t what I had in mind – here is the one I remembered:

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

If thinking is such that human beings are bad, we are bad, then I can see a viewpoint where connectivity is bad, a single edged sword used by bad people to do bad things - or a sword without a handle.

Then if I see that some people are bad, by what they choose to do, not what they say, and connecting to them is bad, worse the closer I am to them, less worse the farther away they are from me, out of reach – of me, I’m secure in seeing that danger.

How do I warn someone in China if someone in China is about to be very close to someone who has chosen to do something very bad?

Joe, thanks for your very thoughtful response. I just wanted to acknowledge it. I tried to reply twice, but for some reason (me? the system?) each of my posts was lost. I'll see if I can try later.

Joe Kelley wrote: If the baby or the productive edge of the sword is the opposite of remoteness, call it intimacy, I’m reaching here, then is the dirty water, or the destructive edge of the sword, this remoteness, a failure to care for each other, or care for anything; because we grow ignorant of each other’s fate?

Hi Joe. It may not be intimacy, exactly, that could be lost, just paying attention or caring about those in physical proximity to us. The fates we might grow ignorant of are not of people thousands of miles away, but of people next door to us. Otherwise, you've guessed my meaning well. The point I made in the first post wasn't original and maybe was half-baked. We hear warnings all the time that we use remote connectivity to wall ourselves off from our immediate environment, so that we are actually less connected to people with whom we share space. My impression of Howard Bloom in Global Brain is that he tells us by ever greater interconnectivity we will realize our rightful destiny by becoming as connected with each other as the ancient colonies of microbes were. We'll come full circle. This will happen, if it does, by electronic communication of some kind. My objection to this vision is simply that it's over the top and presents interconnectivity as a panacea. We know panaceas have never existed.

Don't misunderstand me, I think interconnectivity needs to continue. For example, it is vital to our being able to understand more exactly what the climate of our planet is doing. It's just that as a solution to our human problems, I don't believe in it; it is only a tool, as powerful in certain ways as it may be.

Which is why we take for the greater, more painful and less bearable disaster not that which is in fact greater, more painful and less bearable, but that which lies closest to us. Everything which is further away, which does not threaten this very day to invade our threshold - with all its groans, its stifled cries, its destroyed lives, even if it involves millions of victims - this we consider on the whole to be perfectly bearable and of tolerable proportions.

This observation of Solzhenitzyn's is very true. It's a level or two above the one I was thinking of, though. Offhand, I can't see how interconnectivity would help us be more universal in our concern, but maybe I don't understand what others see in its potential.

This presents a rampant danger: THE SUPPRESSION OF INFORMATION between the parts of the planet.

That's an interesting quotation, too. I don't have that particular worry on my own radar screen.

There, then, is the conflict, the two edges of the sword, as a battle, a competition, between allowing connectivity and not allowing it.

Well, I hope there won't be a battle. I guess I just hope that new technological abilties are used well. For example, I hope that interconnectivity will be used for better purposes than in these examples from Howard Bloom: "There are numerous technologies with which we'll soon upgrade our interconnectivity--from smart clothes and digitized pens to information-sending-and-receiving shoes and computers which divine our interests by watching the dilation of our pupils, then go out as personal servants to crawl the World-Wide Web for finds to surprise us, to entertain us, and to help us through emergencies" (p. 219). Say it won't be so, Howard!

I may be wrong. What can be done to preserve intimacy when intimacy is threatened by an over-abundance of interconnectivity?

Is that a reasonable question?

It's a reasonable question. If we're wise, as well as clever, we'll constantly have an eye on the need to upgrade our flesh-and-blood communications and interactions, even as we ramp up interconnectivity.

How about a quote from someone who may have thought about this some and the quote is difficult for me to understand; however it seems to fit here:

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

I think the consciousness referred to expresses both the strength and the weakness of our evolved consciousness. The weakness becomes more apparent as we find it imperative to live as a global community.

It's been nice talking about this with you.

We hear warnings all the time that we use remote connectivity to wall ourselves off from our immediate environment, so that we are actually less connected to people with whom we share space.

DWill,

I have a method of simulating conversation on forums and it involves reading and stopping to comment before reading the whole response in view. I stopped reading there to offer something I thought about this morning on this topic.

This topic is Howard’s book in general and in particular an idea concerning connectivity and disconnection – your very interesting observation – in on the table currently.

I think that intimacy, or caring, or protecting, preserving, defending, nurturing, or otherwise loving other people other than one’s own self is statistically measurable.

If that measure of general or overall empathy, sympathy, or love between one human and the other humans is measured accurately 100, 1000, and 10,000 years ago and that accurate measure is now measured today, also done accurately, then what would the results of that accurate data indicate?

Is the presumption such that the data is accurately measured and furthermore that the data shows a drop in overall caring from a high point in the past to a low point now?

I have not signed onto that presumption; I do not have the data, and the data I have indicates no overall loss of caring, not the opposite, and certainly not accurate to a point where a conclusion can be made, what can be made, it seems to me, is a hypothesis geared in either direction.

Direction A: Human beings as a whole care less about each other now then they did in the past.

Direction B: Human beings as a whole care more about each other now then they did in the past.

Direction C: No net change in overall caring by human beings from the past to today (move onto some other measurable perspective).

I contend that someone could conjure up selective data to prove either hypothesis so long as the observer is careful enough to avoid the inclusion of data that does not support the hypothesis.

Someone championing capitalism may offer data that supports the hypothesis that capitalism has raised the standard of living of human beings in a measurable way because the past proves, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that people tortured and mass murdered (crime) each other on a more regular basis.

Howard does that to some measurable degree and I call it apologizing for capitalism.

Eric Fromm, on the other hand, tends to offer the Direction C, as Eric Fromm refutes the Direction A hypothesis with data measuring the activities of current and past “uncivilized” civilizations where the general trend in those civilizations is measurably less costly in terms of work load for the people within those “uncivilized” civilizations.

If, as Eric Fromm appears to contend, we have “advanced” from days of old, now we are more civilized, then how is that advancement measured? Is it measurable as a cost/benefit ratio such as hours of labor per day divided by happy and healthy living? If so: then some examples of civilization in the past, and present, offer a lower cost and a higher benefit than a comparison with, say, my life up to today. I’ve worked as a laborer sometimes 12 hours a day 6 days a week, even 7, for months and returning to 10 hours a day, and having almost no time or energy (power) to do anything but work for years, while my body deteriorates and becomes less able to work, and finding no benefits, no viable insurance, no golden parachute, nothing to show for all that hard work for all those years, and my standard of living is measurably higher than average today.

If the idea is to see the truth, rather than an idea where the viewer wishes to see something desired, then I think this idea that we, as a species, have become less empathetic is not yet conclusive. Not conclusive to a point where a conclusion can be made, and then from that conclusion a new direction can be traveled; certainly not to a point where any data that refutes the conclusion is preferably ignored.

I’ll read on with your reply, seeking more interest in this contentious thing in view (connection versus disconnection).

My objection to this vision is simply that it's over the top and presents interconnectivity as a panacea. We know panaceas have never existed.

My take on that is such that Howard didn’t intend to convey what you are reading into the book. Perhaps it is me who has mistaken what is intended to be conveyed by the book. When I read Global Brain I happened to be working on very similar thoughts concerning how connectivity works globally. Howard’s book offered much data in support of my own observations. I am not absolutely convinced in my conclusions of political economy; but I have yet to see any data that refutes my present conclusions.

Your viewpoint offers contentious data, and that is why your viewpoint is front and center in my life right now. I wake up to this contention on the table.

I think the contention on the table right now can be summed up as:

Connection versus Disconnection

It seems to me, after thinking about this from many angles, that there must be data, conclusive data, which measures disconnection. There is data, in abundance, where there is a measurable increase in connection.

I’ll read on.

Don't misunderstand me, I think interconnectivity needs to continue. For example, it is vital to our being able to understand more exactly what the climate of our planet is doing. It's just that as a solution to our human problems, I don't believe in it; it is only a tool, as powerful in certain ways as it may be.

Here is my opportunity to offer a viewpoint that may ring true to you as a possible measure of what you are seeing when you look at connectivity from a viewpoint of connectivity being harmful or from a viewpoint where connectivity isn’t good, where connectivity isn’t, as you say, “a solution to our human problems”.

Human beings must trust each other, without this type of connection, without this quality of connection, there can be no trade, there can be no collective increase in the power needed to maintain life and reproduce life.

A. All for one and one for all
B. Everyone for themselves

If everyone trusts that everyone is out for themselves and everyone is always on guard always knowing for certain that without the expense of defense there can be no trade, then that is TRUST.

Now, if you can follow me, enter into the picture something that ends trust and ends trade and without trade (connectivity) each person must produce everything they need to survive and reproduce or perish.

A. Trust (connectivity)
B. Crime (disconnection)

If what you are seeing when you see disconnection isn’t disconnection, instead, or rather, this thing in view is crime, then you are seeing a form of connection that intends to disconnect.

I think, and I’ve thought about this a lot, that you are seeing, at the root, two things in view (and I thank Howard for Howard’s work as being a vital part of my thinking process):

A. Entropy
B. Ectropy

I can illustrate what I mean, if what I am seeing isn’t transferring to you well.

Currently there is a way of trading globally with a program called E-bay. If Trader A trusts that the person he will trade his money for a used guitar amp with will, in fact, send no used guitar amp, that the supposed seller is a criminal, that the only thing being traded here is his money for nothing in return, then such a connection will not happen, not voluntarily, not by the person who trusts that the other trader is a criminal.

Why would the Trader A person conjure up such a conclusion?

The program offers data whereby the potential trader can measure this trust factor. Trader B has currently collected something called negative feedback. The negative feedback could be unjustly attached to Trader B.

Why would Trader B unjustly be connected to negative feedback?

Someone somewhere decides to injure Trader B, and the method employed is to falsify the data, to disconnect Trader B from potential traders, to end connectivity.

What happens if one entropic disconnecting criminal type joins up with, connects with, sympathizes with, or empathies with a second entropic, criminal type, and they both decide to add to the negative feedback of Trader B?

Now Trader A has more than one source of data that confirms a trust in the entropic, criminal, destructive, disconnecting intention and embodiment of Trader B, and this is a false trust, a false conclusion, and how did this power become some powerful?

Criminal A connects with criminal B to access the power of connectivity and cartelize or monopolize their entropic behavior, to cause further disconnection, to produce more false data, to confuse, to disguise, to injure, and to destroy, to spread apart, to sever, to exclude, etc.

Criminal A produces a mutually beneficial plan and shares that mutually beneficial plan with criminal B, and they both volunteer, and agree, and share and profit from this connection, this mutual association, this division of labor, and this specialization, this combined, collective, and this example of ectropy.

What do they do with this increase in power earned by their voluntary and mutual association, where they share an idea, and share the work load, and find better ways to make this association work efficiently?

They decide upon an idea called crime, they use their combined power to destroy, to separate, to disconnect, to dissect, to dismember, to pull apart, to un-join, etc.

The power in view is connectivity, when someone is looking for human power, a power that produces something, even crime.

I think you are looking at entropy and seeing the human form of it, I think you are looking at crime and you have yet to label it accurately, to know it, to see it, to measure it, and to then learn to avoid it, and most certainly to know not to become it.

I hope the illustration can aid in the transfer of what I see to you. E-bay offers a very good look at how human beings connect globally and how human beings manage to avoid crime in that process. If you can find an angle of view in this illustration whereby the culprit of any wrongness, and harm, and blowback is the fault of connectivity, or something I have not seen, then please consider responding with that accurately measurable observation. I think that the paper trail (or the digital trail) will lead to one criminal, then another, then another, in each and every case where bad things have happened.

I have one more angle of view and this one is much easier to see compared to the very complicated E-bay illustration above – it seems to me.

If oxygen suddenly turns into ammonia, each oxygen atom connected to each oxygen atom, then that sudden change will kill all oxygen dependent life on earth, or the one’s who will survive manage to disconnect some of the oxygen from the source of the “infection”.

Does nature, ectropy, produce the “infection”, or does the paper trail lead to some human being in some lab where the idea behind the work is to eliminate the competition?

I borrow this viewpoint from Kurt Vonnegut with his Ice 9 creation.

I’ll read on.

This observation of Solzhenitzyn's is very true. It's a level or two above the one I was thinking of, though. Offhand, I can't see how interconnectivity would help us be more universal in our concern, but maybe I don't understand what others see in its potential.

I may be wrong here but my guess is that you are harboring a false viewpoint that has been unwelcome in your natural way of perceiving life. I can call this viewpoint the Machiavelli syndrome. People who profit from you having this viewpoint are people who have this viewpoint, people who own it. If you have this viewpoint and you don’t see it, it may be very difficult to divorce yourself from it. It may be impossible.

I don’t know.

I am going to get out my copy of The Prince and I am going to quote from the introduction in my copy. If what you read opens a door in your viewpoint that you don’t want to see, and you close that door, slam it shut, then you may be infected. This may all sound stupid to you too. I can’t help the way I see our world – either. It is what it is.

I try to keep all the doors open, even the one’s that scare me.

Machiavelli’s viewpoint was darkly pessimistic; the one element in St Augustine’s thought which he wholeheartedly endorsed was the idea of original sin. As he puts it starkly in the same chapter 18 of The Prince, men are bad. This means that to deal with them as if they were good, honourable or trustworthy is to court disaster. In the Discourses (I,3) the point is repeated: ‘all men are bad and are ever ready to display their malignity’. This must be the initial premise of those who plan to found a republic. The business of politics is to try and salvage something positive from this unpromising conglomerate, and the aim of the state is to check those anarchic drives which are a constant threat to the common good. This is where The Prince fits into the spectrum of his wider thought: while a republic may be his preferred form of social organization, the crucial business of founding or restoring a state can only be performed by one exceptional individual.

And that is the point, yes or no, that everyone “else” is bad.

If connecting good people is good and if connecting bad people isn’t connecting good people, then what is it about connectivity? Is it bad?

It is not bad, it is essential to the survival of the species here on Earth and most certainly essential for the survival of the species once the Earth can no longer support life (an inevitability).

What is the frame of reference?

A. Survival of the species = good
B. Survival of the species = not A.

Or

A. Survival of me – good
B. Not A

They are not necessarily mutually exclusive goods.

If someone sets out to injure someone else, to survive at the expense of the other person, how does that decision work reasonably if, by chance, the injured one, or the injured many, could have been essential to the survival of the species?

A common political message these days, I am asking for confessions for it’s owners, is “over-population”.

What is the final solution for that wonderful perspective? Where is the data that confirms the accuracy of that oh so conveniently vague and misleading perspective?

I’ll read on, I have to get moving too.

That's an interesting quotation, too. I don't have that particular worry on my own radar screen.

If the one news source you look at is FOX NEWS, then your quotation has a different meaning, to me, than, say, if you have 20 diverse competitive news sources from which to pick the most accurate news, in your view, from.

Say it won't be so, Howard!

My viewpoint includes a future cell-phone self-defense/insurance weapon where the users can be compared to non-users statistically much less likely to be harmed by criminals –even legal ones.

What will happen isn’t within my power to know. I think, I can predict with confidence, that gasoline (petroleum) powered cars will be upside down in 5 years time. I mean that a buyer of one of those cars today will be better off dumping it rather than paying off the loan – like people living in houses with upside-down mortgages. But that is my viewpoint based upon the data I have managed to get past the censors. I can elaborate – with specifics.

If we're wise, as well as clever, we'll constantly have an eye on the need to upgrade our flesh-and-blood communications and interactions, even as we ramp up interconnectivity.

To me your viewpoint continues to harbor a false negative upon connectivity. It isn’t connectivity that plans on and then executes the plan to injure innocent people. Connectivity, like a weapon, a pointed stick, doesn’t commit crimes.

The weakness becomes more apparent as we find it imperative to live as a global community.

Some criminals desire a global community so as to destroy all competitors who may vie for control over that one connection, a legal money monopoly comes to mind.

If the global legal money monopoly offers the highest quality money at the lowest cost possible, then why would such a thing be at all bad?

The facts support an observation that legal money monopolies offer the lowest quality money at the highest cost to the victims, while the producers of said commodity have the opposite perspective.

They must either destroy the competition or leverage the competition into submission – or the competition will force quality up and cost down.

Why would anyone ever trade something valuable for the poor costly thing when a rich inexpensive example is on the same web page?

It's been nice talking about this with you.

It has been nice borrowing your thoughts – thanks. No time to edit carefully.