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RE: Towards A Better Tomorrow : Part 4 - The Final Destination
EXCELLENT post. While I might disagree with you on some details I whole heartedly agree with your conclusion. In my (not so humble) opinion, the main (inf not only) reason that the West (in particular the US) has managed to maintain what freedom we have is that Government is stupid. Innovation and technological advancement is advancing faster than government can understand it, and thus pass laws controlling it.
For example. No one saw the internet coming. It snuck up on them and become entrenched before they knew what was happening. That's GOOD!
3D printing, and other technologies is doing the same thing.....RIGHT NOW.
The future is looking so bright that I need shades.
in the long run.
In the short run...not so much.
I agree 1000%
The answer to that is to recognize that government is a tool of the people and when it ceases to function as a tool of the will of the people then it ceases to have any legitimacy whatsoever.
You address this by either working directly within the system by running for office and getting generally politically active. Or you operate outside the system and refuse to recognize the authority of this or any other government over your person or your property.
There is a concept embedded in our laws based on a natural law called "Adverse Possession". I believe it's a nice middle ground. Operating within the bounds of the law to reclaim that which has been denied to us by law.
I explain this in my next posting on towards a better tomorrow.
In my opinion government is a disease. It's not immediately fatal but countries tend to grow beyone all reason then die.
From my research in the matter anytime the cognitive limit of Dunbar's Number is exceeded things begin to degrade. The further past that limit the worse it becomes. The Iron Law and the other Iron Law are instructive.
I suspect that we will continue to have difficulty as long as states are more powerful than individuals , or clans.
Well I mostly agree with you except for Dunbar's Number. That number is pretty arbitrary. There are CEOs in organizations in the thousands that know the name and family of everyone who works for them and are highly effective at finding hidden gems in their organization.
They are rare and exceptional, but only because they actually put forth the effort.
Once a politician loses sight of the people who voted for him/her that's when politics falls apart. But there are tribes which number in the thousands and have none of the problems we have. On the other hand those tribes have no concept of private property or ownership rights either.
It may actually have more to do with Amdahls Law than any specific number. The more parallel tasks there are that need to be completed, the more opportunity there is for fulfilling work to be accomplished. People just want to be valued.
In a way the future I see just reflects that. When everyone's "labors" have zero value then money too has zero value. At this point everything we know and understand about money and power go out the window.
Yet it leaves open the opportunity for truly free trade.
Here is a car I built from my midden heap, made exclusively for you.
Here is a painting I made exclusively for you.
No obligations in a trading situation like that. Everyone is on equal footing because you no longer have "need" of anything, just want. And I imagine that the want will be the efforts of another person who is not yourself.
This is what I mean by patronage.
When production labor has 0 value, individual effort becomes priceless.
For purposes of this conversation lets assume that Dunbar's number follows a normal distribution. The much maligned Bell Curve
Some people, like me, and only 'empathize' with twenty or thirty people.(I have an odd memory, I've know it for some time, there are other oddities that I won't go into) Some exceptional people, like the CEO's you spoke of (and I have an FB friend who claims to be so) can 'empathize' with thousands of people.
My type of memory and his type of memory are on opposite sides of the curve. The middle of the curve is said to be 'about' 150 to 200' (but you knew that) The actual number is not really important. The fact is though
one death is a tragedy while a million deaths is a statistic
Everyone we KNOW is one of US
Everyone we don't KNOW is not us...they're them.
We can't help but think of and treat THEM, different from US.
It's very easy to think of THEM as less than us...less than human. In fact it's damn hard NOT too.
and that's insane. I mean that's really crazy.
yup..that's the point.
dealing with crowds, beyond the cognitive limit, is crazy making. It can be done (poorly) The larger the number the worst it gets. Sometimes it gets totally out of control and genocide results. (during the twentieth century 300 million people died due to the actions of their OWN governments...not counting war...that's CRAZY)
Just looked up Amdahl's law...never heard it called that but I agree.
One more thing. My favorite term is 'Highly Redundant, Widely Distributed, and Massively Parallel"...in other words NOT CENTRALIZED.