Is The Great Singularity Still Coming?

Much has been said about an approaching 'Singularity' in human cultural organization and behavior, and even in the nature of human existence at its core, i.e. should/will 'we' cast aside our bio-bodies and go-fearlessly (or somewhat fearlessly) into a #GreatNebulo of new existence defined as a world of virtuality wherein humanity will exist as cyber imprints within vast but nanoscale arrays of massive-memory-quantum-computing-systems (#MMQCS).

One major voice predicting the approach of a Singularity is Ray Kurzweil.

I laud Kurzweil. Though retired as a practicing (materials and quantum) scientist, I've diligently followed the scientific journals and have developed 'hobbies' in advanced technologies such as energy and nanotech.

I discovered 'Kurzweil' long after coming to my own opinion that humankind was headlong racing to a #techno-cultural-conjointure that will be marked by an explosive utilization of massively rapid technological advancement resulting in a complete transformation of humankind - its signatures such as culture, cities, and even human formats. By 'human formats', I mean body shapes, functions or even the future need for bodies. In short, I felt 10 years ago and more so today from looking out at our American culture as perhaps the prime example of techno-cultural change, humanity has not long to go before experiencing a 'Great Transformation' which will be advented by crossing a technological threshold most likely in bio-cyber areas. This will lead fairly overnight to 'going cyber', virtual existence, or #LivingInTheCloud. The technologies will be the combination of:
#SentientArtificialIntelligence (#SAI),
#NanoTechMassiveMemoryAssemblies (#NTMMA), #NanoscaleQuantumComputing (utilizing #ExtendedCubitQuantumScaling (#ECQS),
and nano-engineering, including #Nanoscale-Space-Temporal-Propulsion (#NSTP) which will require immensely less energy (10exp-15 factor?) than human scale space craft. Others might estimate different ratios but the general picture is painted.

These breakthroughs will mean unlimited lifetimes and opportunities to investigate the universe via ultimately #NanoArkAssemblies ( millions of personalities contained in nanoscale-memory-computing systems).

Kurzweil and others speak of the 'Singularity' happening in terms of several hundred years. I believe, knowing a little of how DARPA works, 100 years or less will be required. I would not be shocked if DARPA (or international combine of cooperating government agencies despite lower level disagreements) has already progressed well along this general technological route.

In summary, I feel Kurzweil and others show a maybe more-than-mild degree of obsolescence in their predicted timeline for the occurrence of The Singularity. (And once real threshold-crossing occurs, there will be a succession of Singularities marked, and caused, by technologies and implemented-cyber-concepts well beyond what we can fantasize about today.

How Would Humans Appear to an Alien Visitor: A Manual for Investigating the Human Species

this comment was posted in response to the above question, 'How Would Humans Appear to an Alien Visitor'.

"Biologically, humans are still in a primitive, furred stage with constant emission through their dermal encasement sac (aka 'skin') of gaseous and liquid wastes that are toxic to self and to other humans unless proper space is available - a very messy and unsanitary species to be around. Note: a significant human social effort and giving up of possessions is involved in the often intricate cultural ritual and apparatus of dermal cleansing humans call, 'bathing', which is essentially immersing themselves in a terrible hydride chemical fluid they call 'water' which however is the same fluid environment that nurtured them in their early biological history before they adopted their current shape. Also, though they describe themselves as 'civilized' and 'evolved', humans still give top priority to energy-draining designs for their space exploration by insisting on biological support systems primarily involved with provision and management of bio-input ('food) and output (waste treatment and recycling). Humans have not progressed to accepting the limits to bio-bodies and moving towards cyber existence.

Humans suffer extreme protective anxiety over food and food symbols such as personally 'owned' trinkets (material objects of value), opposite sex (reward symbolism) or trinkets of others. Humans can ingest almost any other bio-species on their planet to obtain energy for movement and thought. Additionally, Humans are primitive to the point of even engaging in cannibalism when normative 'food' is scarce.

The minds and thinking of Humans are 'Unlinked' so they have, so far, had to rely on external devices to communicate with each other via various biological (facial expressions, sounds, pheronomes) and artificial (technical) contrivances such as books, electromagnetic radiative contraptions visual signaling. In the last respect, human technology has become more and more intricate for their species though they don't realize that their stubborn insistence on retaining their bio-shells is an obsession that leads to a dead-end and merely prolongs the inevitable progress to cyber-state existence. However, the tragic lack of a bio-interlink with other humans causes them great pain and tragedy as the result of individual isolation and the need to achieve 'certainty' and clarity about their world by employing consensus and trading back and forth vocal and non-vocal signals, aka spoken languages, writing, and body (facial mostly) exertions.

As a result of their being Unlinked', humans suffer from a constant sense of being isolated. Consequently, humans must be treated with caution as their lack of true connectedness coupled with their still-primitive reliance on fear-fight-or fight bio-coded instincts makes them dangerously suspicious, afraid and psychologically inconsistent (unstable). In fact, another intricate cultural pre-occupation has developed to try to bridge the communication gap - this is known as 'therapy'...and some 'therapies' are quite touching and inventive and are also known as 'philosophical systems'. Furthermore, humans have a special kind of need and brain structure that makes them search for true and pure communication which they feel must be possessed by a perfected breed of human they call, symbolically, 'gods'. Humans have created often elaborate and admittedly appealing mind structures to help them in the matter of 'religion' and their gods who they often attach with human weaknesses and personalities. Human religions should be regarded carefully and respected by the explorer and exo-scientist as much for care and respect for human subjects as much as for avoiding dangerous emotional collapse in humans by taking away the mental stability structure of the human subjects. Religions are for many humans, sometimes like a blind person finding his way with a special cane...take away the cane and the result is predictable, or not which is the danger with humans.

Special Note: human lack of bio-connectedness, creates constant opportunities for deception (facial 'lies' and spoken words) in pursuit of material trinkets and perceived 'gain'. 'Gain' is a human trait of desiring more than an individual's fair share of needed energy or even trinkets. Humans have an interesting way of treating their 'more than fair share' - they hide the excess share(s) away and protected from other humans. This trait has also led to the development of a significant human cultural phenomenon called 'banking systems and investments' - which are again often elaborate systems of lies, deceptions and visual tricks (misleading advertising) to persuade some humans to give up some of their excess in hopes (or false promises) of multiplying their 'investment'.

Humans have other undesirable traits and features. They are burdened by their need to manage personal bio-wastes or else suffer disease and death. They are ridden with bio-parasites that result in early demise. Again, significant cultural structures and time occupations have been developed to address the constancy of human disease - an activity-set humans call 'doctoring' with elabroarate infrastructures for training principals and support staff. Humans give up much of their surplus nation and individual wealth to the 'doctoring' sector of human social organization.

Lastly, but not least, humans recognize their great species 'lack' from not having #BioConnectedness creates both good and bad.

On the good side, humans acknowledge that being unlinked, along with a seemingly innate drive to trickery, can with practice (following prescribed cerebral formulae) lead to artful expressions known as 'comedy'. 'Comedy' is a human behavior with apparent rules that creates a sort of substance-free addiction marked by positive, elevated emotional states usually accompanied by uncontrollable throat expulsions humans call 'laughter'.

On the bad side, humans also acknowledge their non-connectedness has and will continue to offer opprotunities, or requirements, for deceptions and trickery to extort from others their possessions and rights. Humans allocate a significant portion of their waking lives to combat and control this human physiological loophole (regulate) and results by developing an elaborate systems of regulation and formalisms of communication among individuals and groups. The generic territory of these systems is 'Law'. The conducting and acting out of these systems and their rituals are done by individuals and groups specially trained - lawyers, juries and courts. All of currently encountered human study subjects involve some form of their 'Law' apparatus. It is wise for the exo-scientist to remember this feature of human behavior and social organization.

But, humans being what they are, even acting out the rituals of 'Law' some humans are not able to wean themselves completely away from their species inclination to indulge in trickery and deception.

Consequently, much of current human 'comedy' has to do with (to humans) the antics of those in the Law sector. The exo-scientist will constantly hear references to these tales ('lawyer-jokes'), accompanied by even more vigorous throat explosions. These recitations (jokes) are sometimes very elaborate in complexity or are so linked to basic human physiology and physiological activities as to be either difficult to interpret or difficult to witness in their mental imaging.

For a primitive and coarse species, humans can be unfathomable in their preoccupation with their base functions. And why humans so frequently associate in their 'comedy', practioners of 'Law' with human waste and acts of reproduction is a subject of serious study as it seems to represent the surfacing of as yet unknown human traits.

In summary, the exo-scientist is cautioned when investigating the human species. Humans are inherently inconsistent and lack the rationality of post-biological species. They tend to compensate for their Great Lacking (of wireless Bio-linkaging) with over-aggressiveness, suspicion and a knack to somewhat readily drift away on tangential courses to follow exceptionally 'de-ranged' human indivuals or individual interpretations of reality (supersitition). Humans show exceptional inventiveness concerning the imaging and implementing of these mental abberrations in the form of physical tools devoted to perpetrating physiological mayhem on other humans. These traits, along with being principally omnivorous, inquisitive, and focused on species reproduction, render humans often dangerous or at least embarrassing to be around. Treat humans with care for the sake of investigator safety and sanity.

MBA Follies: The Age of Hyper-Productivity and the Abandonment of the Consumer

There is a frenzied concern these days about the increasing concentration of wealth at the top of the American social pyramid. ThIs phenomenon is called ‘wealth inequality’, income disparity, and even ‘the coming revolution’. We are in an age of focus paid solely to productivity and the consumer has been abandoned - the #AbandonedConsumer Age.

The concentration of wealth at the top is no longer denied or excused - it is here, it has been happening, there doesn’t seem to be any stopping of it, and it will probably continue unchecked until some countervailing movement steps in. And this, #countervailingmovement, is where things are getting dicey, because included in this term are such notions as social revolution (yes, that term is now seen in mainstream commentaries), #wageless-economic-leveling via government-industry subsidizing of idle workers displaced by productivity advances, and even simple largess to artificially sustain the consumer base.

We just can’t let go of the traditional model of capital-comes-first. The opinion of ‘Perched Eye’ is we might 'go down’ just because we are stuck in the cement boots of 19th century industrial thinking. Though, a notable exception to this trap (of hubris of the ‘haves’) was Henry Ford who realized what should be a universally recognized truth - the welfare and economic health of the populace (including the worker-consumer base)is needed to sustain industry and, by elementary linkage, likewise assure the well-being of the capitalist.

Henry Ford was a prime example of the market ‘truth that capitalism is an organic, symbiotic ‘thing’ of cooperating species - worker, owner, financiers, consumers - all interdependent on one another for what keeps them individually afloat.

Ford’s model of capitalism, that capitalists have responsibilities outside the ledger book and even outside working hours and outside the plant gates, is breaking down. Maybe has almost completely broken down because it appears current capitalist thinking has almost completely abandoned any consideration of external dependencies (and influences) on capitalist productivity,i.e., Ford’s fundamental notion that somebody else’s money is required to buy product and keep the company going.

There are signs of this break-down of Henry Ford’s interdependent market model.

First, we are in an ‘age of unthinking search for productivity gain’ with little thought that this goal is forcing consumers out of the picture, i.e. the goal of productivity gains is more profitability resulting more concentration of wealth from the base to the top with less recirculation (fewer jobs). This can’t logically be sustained. The result can take several forms: open political revolution, disease culling of the growing numbers of ‘#catastrophicpoor’, and #totalsystemcollapse.

There seems to be little discussion of ‘total system collapse’. This might occur when so little production gain is recycled into jobs that the consumer base disappears. The consumer base can no longer consume because the consumer can't afford the goods of production at whatever discount, profit disappears and companies go broke and financing debt becomes impossible. (One solution might be #discountedConsumption, the non-wage subsidizing of the consumer base just to sustain its purchasing power.

A first stage of ‘total system collapse’ is occurring right now. We are currently seeing attempts to adjust to the reduced purchasing power of the consumer base by making cheaper goods, i.e. goods of less quality using cheaper components and faux ingredients. Another sign of collapse is the relabeling schemes accepted by our food quality guardians,e.g. cheese is now ‘cheese product’ which is the signal that some minimal modicum of this product has ever seen an animal. Lesser quality goods even now are starting to dominate our American food market - more ‘food' is not only being processed with cheaper ( ‘ersatz’ ) ingredients but even ‘ersatz’ food is being replaced by #foodexperiences where only taste remains and there is zero food value. And, our fast food and snack markets are now seeing their turn to be forced out of the market by even cheaper substitutes that bear no link to food except that now labeling redefinitons allow ‘organic’ to mean the product contains carbon and hydrogen atoms that a high schooler associates with simple organic chemistry which also includes plastics.

Can humans survive on ‘food’ that is mostly plastic - or all plastic, as the end-goal of productivity savings? The answer is definitely, commonsensical, ‘NO’! But in the increasing absence of our guardians of common sense, i.e. the weakening of our food quality regulating agencies,...’Well, hell, let’s give it a try’. We don’t need so many people laying around doing nothing, anyway."

A Basic Income for All Americans: Is It Possible? What Prevents Americans from Addressing Its Great Economic Inequality?

Lynn Parramore recently wrote a timely article in ’Nation of Change' on America’s awakening to the damage to our society by our increasingly unregulated capitalism: ‘5 Reasons to Consider a Basic Income for all Americans’. Hope Lynn survives the weekend.

Two years ago, Lynn’s suggestion or even discussion of a ‘basic income’ would have been shouted down as sacrilegious and un-American, a double edged clue to the complexity of the 'American problem'. But Lynn’s thoughts are now appropriate for these mal-wealth-distributed, mega-rich, noir times.

But, despite the truths and suggestions in this article, there is still a gap, a fog-bank of our own making, and which we Americans seem to want to continue to drift around us and shield us from ‘what’s there’. This shield hides from us what is at the heart of this article but is left unsaid even by Ms Parramore.

It is the great 'family secret’ about America’s road to power: that America became ‘king of the hill’ by not only militarily dominating its aggressors but also by cannibalizing ourselves, our poor, and our children by willingly depriving them of access and mobility which their parents have thought they were defending by going off to war and enduring economic exploitation out of a disrupted sense of, at best, loyalty-to-the-flag and ‘suffering with honor’, or just being too naive to understand what has been perpetrated upon ‘us’.

But at worst, there seems to have been, and even now, the attitude of ‘them’s our betters’, right out of the feudalist past of the, still, majority of Americans of European or colonial descent...and which has resulted in a tip-toeing’ around issues like wealth-inequality and the increasing numbers of the poor, and has led to an era marked by rabid attacks on any kind of broad-base health care and in general a shying away like a whipped horse from dealing with a sick, exploiting economy that has no respect for Americans that feed their last penny into a till that funnels riches to a ‘1%’ of super-rich. This unbalanced national illness is like a ghost that does great damage but is kept locked up as if being out of sight will make things better.

The closeted ghost is ‘greed’ that dominates our culture and places a price tag on just about everything and everyone in America. As an example, America’s food industry is converting from selling actual food that serves a biological need, to a twisted ‘food concept’, a food experience where food serves not a biological purpose but is a spear to hit a psychological target, a mental need that doesn’t exist without media stimulation.

My point: until America faces and resolves its great sin of greed, will even a basic income solve anything? Until ‘greed capitalism’ is brought out from behind the curtain, a basic income will just rapidly disappear into the pockets of the 1% just as it is doing now. The picture will look like the nether-world of Dante in the heartland - rail-thin, ill-clothed, unhealthy and mentally deficient Americans offering up their last pennies the the ‘uber’ who blindly take it all in to the last 'sou’. And then? At best, bloodlessly, it will all collapse as dividends dwindle and more and more of the ‘uber’ become the ‘unter'.

America’s great unspoken-of secret in the closet is we haven’t openly faced, much less admitted, is that our version of capitalism is like the bull-in-the-china-closet.

American capitalism has been let go to run virtually unrestrained to wherever it smells new markets and new profits even at the disadvantage of the American working class...who are contradictably still expected to purchase more and more of what they can’t afford and can’t pay for without increasingly heavy credit debt.

American capitalism is characterized by a set of deeply destructive sins, both to its market(targeted consumers) and to itself. American capitalism is awash with the sin of greed that consumes ‘all’ for the ’now’. This greed has led to a version of capitalism that is: (1) almost 100% motivated and driven by greed, (2) this ‘greed’ has no limits, is ungovernable by our naive choice to defend it as a sacred cow and is like an amoeba that eats until there is nothing left, (3) this greed-driven capitalism will consume our resources until there are none left or none remaining that are safe for us, (4) that our choosing to defend greed is largely the result of manipulation of the greater majority of unsophisticated Americans by immensely wealthy interests who by their wealth are able to dominate and control public propaganda venues (newspapers and television, internet) that by command distort and lie to prevent the truth from ever reaching the 99%, (5) that we regard these greed-driven, destructive actions as largely forgivable acts, the ‘nature of the beast’ and the cost of national success, and for which we the exploited seem to have a high tolerance for these excesses of the ‘anointed few’, (6) that the same vested and greedy interests that distort the truth and cleverly hide behind religion and faux-historicist-chauvenism, most evilly convince America’s most economically exploitable (malleable) population to vilify and deny their own need for access to higher education for them or their children, hence preventing them, the ‘great unwashed’, from becoming less vulnerable, (7) and that the ‘1%’ have managed to convince our weakest and most vulnerable majority they must vote for politicians and shibboleths that work against their interests.

This is a clever if not evil agenda put into practice. Unfortunately, it will lead to not long-lived super-wealth and riches for the few but to a near-horizon collapse of our society and the very economy that enriches the few. Talk about killing your ‘Golden Goose’. But killing the goose and eating the last fertile golden egg is what greed is all about. Listen to Mother Goose, children.

The Overdue Makeover of the American Way, ‘Lagom': Income Inequality, the ’85’ & ‘Working for the Few’, The Third Metric

This is the third reblog of a 2009 piece i wrote about the need for a Swedish-style makeover , ‘Lagom’ (moderation and balance), of American cultural values in light of the 2008 recession...and especially the somewhat obscene map-redistribution (upwards) of wealth and income during the so-called ‘recovery’ since then. The last reblog was June 2012, '"LAGOM": A New Life Style for Post Recession Americans’. Arianna Huffington’s ‘The Third Metric’ way of redefining and measuring the value of one’s life, lifestyle, mode of living, life philosophy and self-evolution is much in tune with ‘Lagom’.

This time, I am motivated to reblog about Lagom, by Robert Kall’s January 25, 2014, piece in OpEdNews, 'Needed: A Science, Economics and Lifestyle of SMALL-- It's Time to Face Reality-- Too BIG is Too Dangerous--‘, where Kall notes:

'Too big is not just about too big to fail banks. Nature abhors just about anything that is too big. Giganitism is an abnormality that, in humans and most life forms, leads to pathology or death. The same is true about things humans create-- companies, government, political and economic systems, megastores, megachurches, the 85 billionaires. who own as much as half of the seven billion planetary inhabitants.'

Ah, the newly arisen mega-monster, ’The 85’. January 21, 2014, Huffingtonpost summarized a January 21, 2014, Oxfam analysis (“Working for the Few”)that the richest 85 individuals around the globe (1 % of global population) own, possess or control more than collectively owned by half (50%)the globe’s humans! With a global population currently around 7.14 Billion, this means each of the ’85’ owns as much as 84 million ‘lesser’ human beings. Question, ‘is this a palatable outcome of economic ‘freedom’?

Does this extreme wealth imbalance deserve to be preserved at all costs much like a sacred icon of the lesser god, money? Or, is such extreme imbalance a sign of gross disfunction, a pathology as Kall suggests?. As Kall notes (his writing is one of my fav reference points):

'The problem is, as Lord Acton observed, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I would argue that there are so many risks and dangers in giving people the ability to accumulate huge amounts of money and the power that comes with it, that we should put limits on wealth...'

‘Lagom’ is a Swedish philosophy of day-to-day living that emphasizes the quality of life over material accumulation - of living in moderation, sufficiency, balance and sustaining our world. More and more is being written, with increasing alarm and fretting, that America and indeed the global village need to find options to free-market capitalism, the presumed driving force behind the Industrial Revolution that now seems to be not only a barrier to progress but, unless we find a path away from it, we might end up self-destructing. In the absence of an active pursuit of safe, alternative energy - are we held back by technology (unlikely) or are we stymied by the petro-lobbyists (very likely)?. How many more Fukushima’s (March, 2011, nuclear reactor melt-down in Japan) can we, the globe and not only America, sustain?

The recession lingers. The ‘unemployed’ has lost meaning because so many have given up looking for a job thus skewing the BLS curves to where few know or can guess. This recession hasn't finished teaching us that the American idolizing of the Darwinian-capitalist pursuit of riches, where a neighbor in difficulty automatically becomes a "loser" to be put out of mind and forgotten, just doesn't cut it when "we" are coming close to becoming one of "them".

This recession is marked by a frightening prospect of overnight conversion from ‘plush-to-bust' that can reach all levels, just, post-recession, ask Bernie Madoff's “clients” (to refer to a now classic meme). We all feel the anxiety of material failure, of being second, of being the loser even when we are nicely comfortable...for the moment. When, in our daily pursuit to hang on, we have the rare moment to pause and think about things, we intuit that ‘it’ doesnt make sense. But, who has the time to contemplate when we are so driven to materially excel and garner more than our neighbor in the race to see who next will be the winner, or loser.

The essence of this recession is the repeat of a lesson that the wild-frontier, laissez faire (self-regulated, NOT!) capitalism ala Ayn Rand is just a dream; actually a dangerous nightmare because it creates a make-believe theater of false fronts and actors in false face where "dollars are the ultimate". Repeatedly, with each new generation of Americans who are not schooled about past economic collapses and who eagerly join the race to grab the brass ring and win the carnival doll, these falsities come tumbling down killing the fortunes and hopes of many many people, families, countries.

However, America is not down and out for good. We can move on to a higher level of maturity by adopting a life style of moderation, suitability (LAGOM) from one of the most advanced cultures on the planet, and perhaps the culture with the highest standard of living and certainly the first or second highest in cultural well being, Sweden.

In Sweden, cultural happiness can be summarized in the following observation about purely economic success (which seems to be the current way America values itself):

For all its prominence, GDP is only one yardstick of economic performance and it is no guide to social progress. It simply indicates the market value of all goods and services produced in an economy. It takes no account of how income is shared out, or of how it is generated. Few would celebrate a boom in costly divorce cases – but it would be great for GDP.

America is ready for a new way of living life. It is in our best interest to try a new way of valuing living life rather than material accumulations.

It is time to try "Lagom".

"LAGOM" has no exact translation in English. But good translations of lagom are: "enough, sufficient, adequate, just right". Lagom is also widely translated as "in moderation", "in balance", "optimal", and "suitable", also "sustainable" as a way of life.

Lagom also carries the connotation of perfection through appropriateness.

The value of "just enough" can be contrasted to the value of "more is better". It is viewed favorably as a sustainable alternative to the hoarding extremes of consumerism

"Lagom" is said to describe the basis of the Swedish national psyche,..of consensus and equality. It is ... to be modest and avoid extremes.

Similar to Lagom" is the Middle Path in Eastern philosophy, and Aristotle's "golden mean" of moderation in Western philosophy.

So, America, let's have "Lagom" meals; "Lagomish" houses, cars, and visible material wealth in general.

Income & Wealth Inequality 2: Realistic Taxation Might Help

Re: 'It's Economic Inequality Stupid -- What to Do About the Biggest Crisis Facing America’
[ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/its-economic-inequality-s_b_4273787.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications ]

Robert CreamerPolitical Organizer, Strategist, Author; Partner Democracy Partners

Mr. Cremer mentions that economically the wellbeing of the middle and working poor classes have been on a downtrend or static for decades:

Today, to qualify for the top 1%, your family has to have an income of at least $394,000 -- and the average income of the top 1% of the population is $717,000. The average for the rest of the population is $51,000. The difference in net worth is even more stark. The top 1% have net assets that average $8.4 million. That would be 70 times the average net worth of the rest of the population.

And this inequality is growing. In 2012, the share of income flowing to the top 1% soared to almost 20% of the income generated by the entire economy. That is the highest level since 1927 - the height of the "Roaring 20's" that set the stage for the Great Depression.

This increase in income and wealth inequality has gone on for some time. According to a study by UC Berkeley economist Emmaunuel Saez, from 1993 to 2012 average real income for the bottom 99% of the population increased 6.6%. Average real income for the top 1% went up 86%. In other words, over the last two decades, the top 1 percent received two thirds of the overall economic growth in real income per family.

“

...who did nothing to earn these fortunes except benefit by the accident of birth.

”

This is often heard but despite being born iINTO wealth a child is never born guilty ‘a priori’ as implied. It also seems ‘whimsy’ to tax the rich too quickly and heavily just as it is unfair to tax lesser income strata more than their commensurate ABILITY TO PAY, so ‘less wealthy’ classes should have a lesser tax rate than the rich. The country needs to evaluate exactly what ‘fair’ means and what for what PURPOSE(s) do our taxes really serve!

What exactly is our national tax purpose? Is it simply to make the rich pay their ‘fair share’ whatever that might be and even-out the tax impact? Or, to accumulate government surpluses just because it sounds good? Or, as an optional purpose, one might propose a ‘TAX ENOUGH’ policy that focuses on meeting a few significant objectives but leaves a goodly amount of monies in circulation for jobs, investment, risk etc.

What is the real-life tax impact on our socio-economic classes? Can we even guess at taxation equivalencies?

Oversimplifying, a quick look at tax reform might start with a simple ‘equation': increase the ‘rich’ tax rate but not to de-motivate investment and risk; give the middle class relief by tax reductions and/or tax-reduction-equivalents (college credits, national health care, family tax credits, etc); and give the working poor emergency relief that prioritizes the concept that ‘WORKING POOR’ is not a permanent class but a temporary condition. And above all, avoid the conservative POV that a ‘good’ social policy is one that is punitive in spirit and result, i.e., one that ‘strikes the fear of God’ into the minds and spirits of the taxed...as if America is mired forever in the past battles between the Shires and Robin Hood - a too-easily referenced template left over from America’s core roots in feudal Europe.

MBA Follies - About the ‘Common Good’: A Battle between the Citizen and Corporate Ownership-for-profit

This post was motivated by Noam Chomsky’s recent op-ed in ’Nation of Change’ webzine, ('What Is The Common Good?’),that focuses on a seemingly increasing and critical lessening of importance, and increasing fuzziness, of being a human citizen in America. This blogger maintains this is a crisis time because it appears the requirements of traditionally defined citizens (i.e., human) are competing somewhat unsuccessfully with corporate wishes, influence and priorities that are often in conflict with, are ignorant of, or just plain unconcerned and callous about the quality of life of normal citizens. The results are persistent erosion of our natural environments, depletion of natural resources even those that are replenishable but require husbanding and planned harvesting (our fisheries) and a general rush to perdition in the interests of corporate quarterly profit reports.

Professor Chomsky summarizes this problem of citizen vs state as not new but a continued debate from even the era of Aristotle 2400 years ago. Chomsky brings the debate into ‘current’ focus at the moment of the formation of America and summarizes the thoughts of Thomas Jefferson who was the principal writer of the Declaration of Independence and served as the third president of the United States:

Thomas Jefferson, the man who drafted the United States’ Declaration of Independence, captured the essential nature of the conflict, which has far from ended. Jefferson had serious concerns about the quality and fate of the democratic experiment. He distinguished between “aristocrats and democrats.”

The aristocrats are “those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.”

The democrats, in contrast, “identify with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interest.”

Today the successors to Jefferson’s “aristocrats” might argue about who should play the guiding role: technocratic and policy-oriented intellectuals, or bankers and corporate executives.

Pericles21 has for several years posed this same broad question, 'what has happened to the notion of the citizen?' Has America lost it’s sense, along with its senses, about what is the purpose of a nation and whom does a nation exist to serve - human citizens or corporate enterprise? Where along the path so far in this nation’s history have we detoured to value ‘signs’ of wealth (not health) such as material possessions, wealth in itself beyond even expanded wants, and acted-out greed, above social needs and individual happiness, physical health, education, child nurturing and spiritual well being?

From Pericles21’s commentary added at the end of Professor Chomsky’s article:

American culture appears to be facing the ‘depletion’ of room for its human citizens (note, now, the break-out of 'citizenry' into subcategories) to co-exist with their corporate co-citizens whose sole responsibility is the quarterly financial report; and whose regard for human citizenry is focused on their usefulness as a labor pool, a flexible (disposable) pool at that. In this respect, the labor pool is respected only as long as employed by the corporation who assumes nothing about the welfare of laborers outside the corporation’s physical and fiscal boundaries, the plant or office walls and the employee list.

Question, ‘is the human citizen to accept this status? Or, more accurately, ‘can’ the human citizen accept its new status - a status defined as co-equal to a sister population that does not eat, breathe, drink, care for its children, etc., and consequently does not need healthy, safe food and water, does not need to nurture a child, support an education system, nurture a spiritual life and carelessly and without conscience tosses aside surplus labor whenever they are not needed. Note: a great many, increasingly too many, American workers are not owed more than 24 hours notice of layoff. All of these human ‘requirements’ not met by corporations seem to be leading to a ‘Crisis of Choice’ for human citizens in America - accept second-class status according to a new democracy (for humans citizens) regardless of race, creed, etc. - or, what? As yet, no optional theories for coexistence are being formulated? While the corporate ‘American’ citizen is free to roam the globe seeking the lowest-cost labor, and is often freed (by special interest lobbying) from any tax loyalties to America, yet, the human citizen labor pool, unneeded and cast aside must (?) remain in place within America, ...unless we become the next global pool of low-paid migrant labor available (forced) to work in foreign industrial zones.

Question - what is the process whereby elected, human, Americans willingly fall into place and support the corporate citizenry in this madness? WHAT QUEER, ILLOGICAL, UN-COMMONSENSICAL LOGIC MOTIVATES SCOTUS TO INTERPRET THAT CORPORATIONS MERIT EQUAL CONSIDERATION OF ‘RIGHTS’ AND PRIVILEGES (E.G., CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTING) AS HUMAN CITIZENS???

These thoughts are repeated more and more often now even by concerned (and thinking) Conservatives. and, it appears the critical point has yet to be reached. What will be the nature of that critical point - a fundamental collapse of our natural environment or resources? A serious calling of ‘time out’ by the grass roots (human)? Or, will we stand and watch with wringing of hands as it all goes down the drain?