Dr. Fung's basic priciples as I see them

Before I get into my explanation of the self focused experiment and what I am doing in it, I thought it would be good to summarize the basic principles the Dr. Fung details in his book, The Obesity Code. This is not an outline of his book, but more how I understood it. I do recommend getting and reading The Obesity Code, even if you are not obese. It isn't a diet. It is a better understanding of how the body works and if you are healthy and would like to stay that way, it will help you a lot. If you are obese, it will help you understand why and what you can do about it.

Overall, the biggest principle that he states over and over is that "Insulin makes you fat." That isn't really the best way to describe it in my view, but it gets his point across pretty well. Basically, insulin and how the body produces, uses, and reacts to insulin determines metabolic health. If you are fat, it is because of your body's insulin condition. If you want to change it, you have to change your insulin production and response. Insulin is supposed to spike a few times a day, and stay low the rest of the time. Insulin resistance happens when that pattern is disrupted by high insulin for longer periods of time, resulting in obesity. 

So, the first principle is:

• Understanding insulin is the key to understanding and treating obesity. Insulin resistance is what causes obesity (and type 2 diabetes).

Secondly, the next principle is that if you reduce your calories, your body reduces it's calorie burn. All calories are not equal, since different types of calories has a different affect on insulin levels. Our body will revert to it's set point based on how it responds to insulin. Our body will change all sorts of things about how it works to maintain that set point, including reducing our brain function level.

Second principle:

• Reduced calories eaten results in fewer calories burned. Calorie restriction doesn't result in long term weight loss because the body adapts to maintain it's set point.

The third principle is very related to the second principle. Increasing exercise will not increase total calories burned, it will just shift where your body burns them. While it is true, it can result in short term weigh loss, it will hit that same set point, and will eventually revert to it. Most often, increasing deliberate exercise will result in less energy expenditure in other parts of our days.

• Increased exercise will only shift when, where, and how calories are burned. 

The forth principle is about the other major weight impacting mechanism besides insulin, which is cortisol. If you are more stressed or get poor sleep, it impacts your cortisol, which impacts both fat storage and insulin. These are things you can do something about, so do them.

• Cortisol impacts obesity and insulin, so do what you can to keep it at healthy levels by getting good sleep and reducing stress.

The fifth principle is the first one that shows how to make improvements. Basically, it shows what a healthy insulin (and eating) pattern looks like. Insulin spikes when a meal is eaten, but goes back to very low levels between meals, with a very long (fasting) period between dinner and breakfast (including during sleep). If insulin is low for all those in between periods, insulin resistance is avoided. This means we should not snack. Period. We need enough calories during our meals to sustain a healthy level of functioning, but we should only eat during meals.

• Only eating at mealtimes results in a healthy insulin spike pattern.

The sixth principle is that not all calories are created equal. This is basically the very principle that my nutritionist uses as the basis for her whole nutrition recommendation to me. Processed foods, particularly sugars and carbs, create more unhealthy insulin spikes that take longer for the body to regulate and results in higher glucose levels in the blood. There are also many other benefits that Dr. Fung documents about natural healthy foods.

• Eating processed foods and high sugar and carb foods results in many bad insulin affecting processes and effects in the body.

A large percentage of determining factors as to why some people are obese are genetic and not based on diet and exercise. We can only change what we can change. A lot what makes some fat people fat is not under our control, but we should change those things that we can control.

• While many of the causes of obesity are out of our control, we should do what we can with what we can control.

For those who already have insulin resistance, lowering that insulin resistance will take changing many things in their lives. One key approach is fasting. The human body does really well with fasting, even for extending periods of time. Dr. Fung details what happens in the body with different length fasts. If you only follow a healthy mealtime eating pattern, it will help your body not develop more insulin resistance, but to greatly reduce existing insulin resistance, fasting is one of the most effective tools.

• Fasting is a major key to reduce insulin resistance. The body under normal circumstances handles fasting very well.

There are other less significant principles that Dr. Fung illustrates in his book, but these are the major ones that come to mind right now.

Fat man's Journey

Five years ago. I was having a lot of problems. I was 44 yrs old. I had just had my gall bladder out. My weight was 335 lbs and I was so allergic to potatoes that if I ate something that had a tiny amount of modified food (potato) starch, I would have massive spasms in my back and intestines that would leave me crippled for days, while also suffering from massive constipation. 

Everything I had ever done to lose my excess weight was only effective for a maybe 15 or 20 pounds that immediately came back on with extra. I had severely ruptured 4 disks in my lower back when I was 24, and re-ruptured them when I was 32, so my exercise was limited to walking and light swimming. I walked as faithfully as I could. The previous 15 years had seen me try just about everything. I restricted my calories. I went off chocolate for a whole year. I ate only lean meat and vegetables. I increased my walking to over 5 miles a day. All of these showed a small amount of progress, but I would plateau and then the pounds would come back, even if I was still keeping with those changes. I felt awful both mentally and physically.

I was at the end of my rope. I didn't know what to do. The terrible physical shape I was in had me at the lowest point I had ever been in and was only made worse by the severe allergies. Now, being both a skeptical type of person and one that would try just about everything, just to show that things didn't work, I was willing to try stuff that I didn't believe in but that others said had worked for them. I had seen multiple people try something called NAET (Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Techniques), which as one of them said, it is complete hocus pocus that works. So I decided to try it.

I was living near Orlando FL at the time, and we went to one of the NAET practitioners there, who just happened to be one of the foremost in the field, and one who had been doing it longer that just about anyone except for Nambudripad herself. Her name was Kathy. It was really strange, but after a month of weekly visits, potatoes were back on the menu. Additionally, she said I had a huge candida overgrowth and needed to go on a candida diet. Hers was a very extreme candida cleanse diet, and instead of following it for 7 days like what here documentation said, she had me do it for 6 weeks. It was brutal. It didn't focus on calories, but it cut so much from what I was allowed to eat that it basically cut my calories down to between 500 and 700 a day. I know, this is danger zone, but I followed her recommendations religiously. After all, she had fixed my allergy problem, so she must be onto something, right. Well, I lost weight. down to 300 pounds. That was more than I had ever lost doing anything else. At the time, I was transitioning to a new job, and I really wanted to get past that 300 pound barrier. It didn't work. It was a more extreme diet than anything I had ever tried, and it still hit a plateau. I never made it to 299 lbs or lower.

Fast forward a few years. I eventually got laid off from that new job after about a year, and ended up working and moving to California. I counted my calories (1300 a day), walked 3 to 5 miles day, was always tired, had trouble focusing, and slowly crept my way back up to 335 lbs. I ended up moving to Tucson AZ, and needed to find a way to still get my exercise in during the extra hot summer months. I got a gym pass for the whole family, and in addition to using their cardio equipment, I decided, based on medical advice, that I needed more muscle mass. After all, muscle burns fat, I was told. I had been quite buff in high school, and new how to bulk up my muscle mass. I started using the weight machines and was able to work up to doing nearly full stack workouts on most of the machines over the course of the next 6 months. I also went up to 352 pounds. I had slacked off on counting my calories, but was exercising more than ever. I blamed myself for eating too much, and started restricting my eating, trying to repeat what I had done with that earlier candida cleanse. 

I also had gone into a new doctor here for a physical. My A1C (a key metabolic metric) was at 7.2, which was bad diabetic territory. He recommended a bunch of things, and I redoubled my efforts. In 4 months, I had gotten down to 327 and my A1C was down to 6.4. I continued my efforts. I got a Fit-bit. I increased my walking and tried to improve my sleep patterns. after 4 more months, I was at 327, with an A1C of 6.4, which is the top edge of pre-diabetic. My doctor insisted that while I was doing the right things, I must still be eating too many calories, and he set me up with a nutritionist, who was fairly new out of medical school. She had me change what I ate, and not focus so much on calories, but more on net carbs. It sounded a lot like a modified Atkin's diet in some ways. I had decided to follow her advice as best I could. I also wondered if my problem was endocrine related, so I set up an appointment with an endocrinologist after following the nutritionist's advice for about 6 weeks. She had me do all new labs. Following the nutritionist's plan had helped my A1C to improve to 6.0, which was about halfway to getting back to healthy. The good news is that it had improved. I also showed completely healthy endocrinologically. The bad news is that I was going back up in weight. I was up to 332. The last thing she told me was I needed to read a book called The Obesity Code by doctor Jason Fung.

Flash back about a year. My mom is an extreme fad dieter. She is also very overweight and has self diagnosed herself with all sorts of things over the years. Every so often she would tell me about some new breakthrough diet, exercise, or other health related program or approach that was going to revolutionize her health. The latest thing she was going on about was some crazy intermittent fasting thing and that her sister (my aunt) had lost a ton of weight doing it. My mom went on and on about how amazing it would be. She of course, was going to modify what she was doing. After about 6 months or so, when I saw her again, I thought "Yeah, you haven't lost anything." Just another joke program. She continued to swear by it, but I think her total loss was something like 12 pounds. She kept telling me I needed to read the book for it, which was called "The Obesity Code". I was not going to read that book for anything. I did not need another way to lose weight that didn't work.

So, back to the endocrinologist. Here this doctor is telling me to read this same book my Mom is telling me to read. I was not excited. The Dr told me about a lot of her patients who were having phenomenal success with it, but it was more than a diet program. It was a whole new understanding of how our bodies work and what makes us fat or not. I rolled my eyes discretely, took a deep breath, and committed to order the book, and read it. I dragged my feet for two or three weeks before I finally ordered it on Amazon. It wasn't too expensive, and I committed to eventually read it. It sat on my living room table for over a month. I finally figured I had better read it, since my followup appointment is not getting any further away. I read the first half of the book. I was very surprised. His explanation described my experience with precision. I had absorbed a lot of scientific data and concepts out of the book, and I put a bookmark in it while I tried to figure out the best way to implement the new knowledge so that it would help me to actually get in better shape and lose weight. after about 2 weeks, I felt like I had mentally digested the info and had applied a lot of it. I had eliminated snacking completely, but not cut my calories. I tried to keep with the earlier nutritionist's advice, while applying this new info at the same time. In 2 weeks, I was back down to 328, but it stopped and plateaued again.

I decided it was time to read the other half. I was still not excited about starving myself, which is how I viewed what my mom had described to me as the program. I finally dug into the other half of the book. It really opened up my understanding a lot. I could see exactly how everything I ever had done nutritionally and worked, and how I got to where I was. I also read the recommendation at the end of the book. My first thought was hey, wait a minute, but you just said this, and that, and this other thing. Yes, his recommendation follows from what he had said, but it really was a halfhearted application of what he had said. I decided to take the principles he documents so thoroughly, and put together my own thing (gee, sounds like my mom, only more extreme). I am now down 7 pounds in 5 days. I feel better than I have in a very long time.

My wife and daughters said I should be recording this, and documenting it. so I decided to dust off my old blog and use that. I am going to try to summarize Dr. Fung's main points, and describe how I and using them and why. I am also going to explain how my approach differs from Dr. Fung's recommendations at the end of his book. I am not recommending anyone follow what I am doing. It might not work. It is an experiment on someone who was born overweight, and was always the fat kid growing up. Dr. Fung himself says that up to 70% of our obesity ties back to genetic factors, so, I should not be considered a normal case study. I hope that it works. It might not. the last 5 days have been very encouraging, so I am going to document as I go. Who knows, maybe the data from my experiment can even be useful to Dr. Fung as he advances this new approach to metabolic health.

I'm Back

I didn't leave on purpose. I swear it. I just had things to do. It has been a while. I am sorry. Anyway, I still have crazy thoughts. I still express myself in a stodgy, stiff old manner that people don't really relate to.

Anyway, It has been a while. I think I need to post more often, or delete the whole mess. For now, I will not delete it. I just posted a hair-brained idea I had in response to the latest round of gloom and doom "We are all going to be replaced by machines" articles.

Read it before I published it. Meh. It is a weak attempt to address such issues. Mostly, a lot of blah blah blah. Really. Just look up distributism and then compare it to capitalism, socialism, communism, libertarianism, and fascism, and then keep in mind that all of them are flawed. We have to have a balance of some kind. That might still be a negative thing, if we implemented the negative aspects of each. But if we can find a way to balance the positives, then maybe we might get something worthwhile.

Anyway, I have about given up on ever seeing a real solution for anything come from our so called leaders in government. They don't care about us or what is right. Nobody else does, so why should they, nevermind whatever oath they gave when they took office, everyone knows those are not serious.

Automation and People and Land

I have been seeing a lot of prognostication lately about how automation is coming and robotics and AI is going to replace a lot of jobs. I even read one article saying that the haves will become a different species. I think a lot of these such articles are missing something important. Economics.

If we automate everyone out of a job, who will buy the products? How do we take advantage of economies of scale, if the scale is a handful of super rich. If owners of companies are so rich, and everyone else is so poor, what becomes of the people? What do you do with massive populations of people who don't or can't work, due to the economic and technological realities around them? Do we get to the point that we start wholesale elimination of large populations? Undoubtedly, some will see this and the answer. Genocide of such magnitude is unprecedented, but that is where the thinking of such articles lead.

I don't think it will come to that. People will not be replaced by machines in total. Sure, many jobs and functions will be. It will be painful, but people are creative. AI is not. It is not self aware. It does what it's programmers set it up to do. Again, most programs do things differently from what the programmers intended, but they do exactly what they are told. But what if our technology does get to that level where almost all jobs are replaced?

I am not sure how this whole thing works itself out, but it will have to. To feed such masses of poor will require a significant portion of the Earth's land for their maintenance. Who will pay for it? To resolve such questions will probably get ugly in some way, and the poor will probably have the bulk of the losers. I see a variety of solutions to such a dilemma , none of which are very palatable. Most of them will be some form or another of expansion of the current welfare state. Another disgusting alternative is the re-institutionalization of slavery, based solely on economic standing. I certainly hope that no governments will reach the point of deciding genocide is a good way to go.

One of the welfare state expansions that we are beginning too see is called basic income. Many nations are beginning to experiment with this concept. This money has to come from taxes and fees. If only the rich are making money, they will be who has to pay for everyone else. Still a no-win situation. The poor get an income, but become dependent on the government. They will lose incentive to work and create and make the world a better place. It sets up continued and increased tension between the rich and the poor which will eventually come to a head. The more the poor are displace by technology, the more the rich will be taxed. At some point, the rich will resist or rebel. That would lead to one of those other nasty scenarios mentioned above.

It doesn't have to be that way. Perhaps, there may be other solutions which might be worthwhile to look into. I remember reading about laws that existed in some small island countries many years ago that each family was required to grow and preserve a certain amount of food for each family member. They were required to spend a specified amount of time working their gardens. Those that could afford it could pay others to work in their garden's for them. If we step forward a couple of centuries and add technology into the mix, perhaps we find that there may be wisdom in some of the underlying principles of self reliance. This is a variation off of the theme of distributist thinking.

The key is making sure each person has access to the means to take care of themselves. This probably means some kind of guaranteed access to some required per person amount of land and water resources. It will require people to learn to work. The government would have to create some kind of equitable way of distributing, and redistributing, and redistributing again, the land and resources. It would have to be fair, and yet still make sure everyone had their required minimum. I suppose having rules for land inheritance which are different from other inheritance might be required. At any rate, there are some uncomfortable changes which would have to be made to our policies.

The interesting thing is, if we did establish such a program to support the poor, it won't prevent those who are so inclined from setting their sights higher, and seeking more than the bare minimum. If they fail, well, what better safety net than self reliance. Those who succeed can have that benefit of having other people or machines to their work to meet the requirements of such a system. It also would still provides enough of an economic structure to ensure trade will exist and therefore the capital required to create our modern wonders will continue.

Yes, it is true, there will still be rich and poor. Many will inherit their wealth. They will still have to be taxed to pay for government. The difference is, the poor will be better taken care of, have a better safety net, and still have opportunity. The taxes would not be as onerous as in the basic income scenario mentioned previously. A land distributism program would certainly not address all the problems that exist and getting people to understand and agree on the specifics will be extremely difficult. But it will be better than either hordes of unworking being paid for by massive taxes on a few rich, or the alternatives of mass slavery or wholesale genocide of those viewed as having no economic value.

Discernment and Discrimination

Discrimination is a much maligned word. People use it most often to describe unfair or hostile treatment of broad groups of innocent people. Whole sections of our federal code address the evils of discrimination. Millions of people have been victims of discrimination when seeking employment, attending school, searching for a home, or even where they shop.

However, discrimination may not be exactly what we think it is. And, it may not be all bad. Think of a related word: Discern. What does it mean? dictionary.com say it means "to distinguish mentally; recognize as distinct or different; discriminate". There it is again. Discriminate. So what does that mean, in a dictionary sense. Again, dictionary.com says it means "to note or observe a difference; distinguish accurately". So, discrimination is when we accurately distinguish the difference between things. That doesn't sound all that bad, so where does the problem lie?

To address this, we will again go back to dictionary.com, but do another entry. It says "to make a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing on the basis of the group, class, or category to which the person or thing belongs rather than according to actual merit; show partiality;". This sounds less nice. The real problem here is the partiality, and ignoring actual merit. Our laws specifically talk about discrimination, but discrimination can be good, as long as actual merit is recognized.

We have laws that say we can't discriminate on the basis of certain group memberships. The list of groups so protected has grown, and will continue to grow. Then we have other laws saying some discrimination in favor of certain group members is required. I couldn't agree more that we should avoid discrimination against a class of people without regard to personal merit. But what about when we discriminate against that personal merit. What if we decide that the specific qualities, traits, and characteristics of a specific individual are completely unacceptable, or at least inferior to some other alternative.

I think we all must do this in some degree or another in many aspects of our life. I see this in hiring whenever I see hiring done. Companies want the best employees that they can afford. Likewise, employees want to work for the best employers. We have to make such judgement calls in many aspects of our lives. There are a few, however, that can become very controversial very quickly.

Take dealing with neighbors for example. If you live in a neighborhood, and someone moves into the neighborhood that changes the nature of this neighborhood. What if it goes from being a place you loved to live to being a place you are looking to move away from. What kind of things might this new neighbor be doing that could make such a change. What if they are dealing drugs in what previously was a very child friendly place. What if they are a hoarder that fills their yard with such massive piles of junk that you begin to have major rodent and insect infestations. What are your avenues of recourse. Do you just move away and abandon your once wonderful neighborhood and take the financial hit that comes with such circumstances.

In some places, there have been local statutes which address these issues. A common phenomenon in real estate is the use of Home Owner Associations which enforce codes, covenants, and restrictions with the ability to file leans against and foreclose on homes for behavioral problems in neighborhoods. Some cities have created neighborhood preservation services which try to regulate these problems.

But what if your neighbor is just a jerk. What do you do then. I guess you are back to moving. What if all the other neighbors feel that same way. Generally speaking they have no recourse. But perhaps they should. Now, it isn't fair to foreclose and take the property of someone just because you don't like them.

But here is a crazy idea. What if the neighbors could get together and if a high enough percentage, like, 80%, decided they wanted some other neighbor to be forced to move, they could do some kind of forced buyout? Of course, they should probably have to pay a premium for the inconvenience, like maybe 15 or 20 percent. The neighbors would have to front the cash for it. There would have to be legal protections and a very specified process to go though, but, then, the neighborhood might be able to protect itself against deterioration, even if the problem was not a health or safety issue.

Now that I have presented such a nice little fix, now lets view what are ways it could go wrong. First, lets just assume that the hated neighbor is hated only because of race or religion. Is it fair they should be kicked out of where they live just because of discrimination? Also, what about those that rent? Should they have a say? Could a landlord be forced out because of bad tenants? Should they be able to? What are the ramifications? Might we end up with completely segregated neighborhoods? Most of our neighborhoods today are quite segregated. Would it be any worse using this system? Invariably, this subject, whatever side you find yourself on, is ripe for abuse. If it were implemented somewhere, there would have to be a lot of safeguards to protect against abuse. However, by not having such a law, we do not get rid of abuse, we just make it less visible. Under such a system, perhaps, the real benefit would be bringing existing abuses and persecutions out in the open.

I am not saying I think this is the ideal system, nor am I saying I favor unmerited discrimination. I do not. I am just saying that the current system is not working. It would be interesting so see a city, or small state, or even a small country institute such a policy for a trial period and what it would result in. It might turn out bad, but it might actually turn out with less unmerited discrimination than we now have.

New Checks and Balances needed.

The US Constitution was one of the most revolutionary documents in history. Many of the ideas it enshrined may not have originated with the founders, but it was the first time they were put in place as a foundation for government. One of the most important and revolutionary ideas it put in place was the concept of checks and balances between the different branches of government. It has protected us and kept our country going, even in some of the most difficult of times. Until now. It isn't that the checks and balances are wrong, but that they have been replaced, undermined, overruled, and ignored.

The function of checks and balances serve several purposes. First and foremost, they are to keep each part of government from getting too powerful. This applies to the factions of government as well. It usually isn't a good thing to have too much power in too few hands. Checks and balances should keep power distributed. Government should be a slow process. It should be hard to create new laws, and easy to get rid of all but the most foundational of existing laws. This is the role of checks and balances. The problem is that now they seem to be broken.

Not only do they not seem to be working between the branches of the federal government, they also don't seem to be working between the federal government and the states, between states and communities, and between all the levels of government and the people. We need a renewal and fresh re-commitment to checks and balances. Not only that, we need some new checks and balances that correct the most abused places. Here are some ideas:

Federally, we need term limits all around, a line item veto, and a balanced budget amendment. And congress should get to pick undersecretaries in the departments (or something that gives them a better check on the bureaucracy). Both congress and the president need some checks on the courts, starting with term limits on all judges. The ability to overrule court declarations or to at least bring the affected laws back into the congress automatically. Also, the court should have to do their job and rule on the basic constitutionality of each law and section before it is implemented.

The states should have the ability to overrule the federal government if enough states pass the same resolutions. Also, state courts, if enough were in accordance, should be able to overrule the fed courts. State bureaucracies should have to administer any programs within the states.

Locally, the same kinds of checks that states should have on the federal government should exist between the local government and state government. Finally, all laws, policies, decisions, and so forth should be abolishable by petition of the populace, upon majority rule. The populace should be limited to eliminating existing laws, policies, and decisions, and not creating new ones.

All officers of government at any level should be subject to recall. Federal officers should be removable by those they represent. This should extend to senators in a special way, in that state government should be able to recall them, in addition to the citizenry of the state.

These ideas for new checks and balances are just off the top of my head, and perhaps the exact implementations are flawed and need to be adjusted or switched to something else, but the point is, we need to fix the checks and balances, in order to keep government of the people, for and by the people,

The Startup: Best option for retirement.

So, I am 42. I have no retirement. I had some at one point, but had some brilliant idea that if I fixed my house up (cause otherwise it would have either fallen down or been condemned) then, it would be a pretty good place for my family to live and we would have a decent amount of equity built up. So I cashed out my retirement and by the time I got the place fixed up, most of our equity evaporated in the housing meltdown, and my company which serviced the real estate and mortgage industries kind of went with it. Fortunately, we were able to sell before we lost the place, but we got a lot less out then we had put in, even though we bought a major fixer-upper and it was a pretty decent place with a little bit of key work needing to be finished on it when we sold it.

I know, long sob story. I am not the only one who lost just about everything in this downturn. We moved to Texas looking for work, which never panned out, and ate through what little we had left. We finally ended up in my parents basement and I picked up an online consulting gig. We managed to pay off all of our debt with the consulting before I got a regular job. It doesn't pay that bad, all things considered. But it doesn't have any retirement benefits, no options, no future. I should probably have opened up a IRA or something by now, but I haven't cause we have been catching up on years without insurance other things where anything that could be put off was. So, back to where I started. I am 42, and have no retirement.

Funny thing. My father was exactly at this same point when he was my age. He went and got a job with a big mega corporation, that put a decent amount into a 401k. That lasted about 10 years, and then he got laid off in his early 50s. He was able to land a similar position with a much smaller company, but it was big enough to have 401k support as well. He put in his time there and retired at 62 1/2. Turns out, what he saved wasn't enough. They have social security, and a little bit from his retirement savings, but big things keep eating into their principal. He needed at least double what he put aside, if not triple.

So, here I am in a similar situation, only no 401k. I make enough, and have no debt, but I don't have much extra. I also have no equity in a home or real estate anywhere. So, I have been figuring what I am going to need for retirement. Trying to figure out what my best options are. Where I live is very close to work, but doesn't have the lowest cost of living. The schools are good, but still have the typical problems public schools have. In any other direction from my work at the same distance, the cost of living stays about the same, but the schools are not as good and some of the neighborhoods can be quite creepy. I have 6 daughters, so, I get a little paranoid about safety sometimes. I can lower my cost of living if I go far enough away, but then the commute becomes very long, and I don't really save much.

If I were to try to get a comparable job with another company in the area, I could probably get better pay and a 401k, but when I started to do the math, I found myself looking at the same situation my father has found himself in. He worked himself nearly to the bone and when he finally retired, he doesn't have enough. So, this led me to think about what my options are, and how each of those options might affect my eventual retirement. I looked at doing contract work and freelance work. I looked at setting up my own consultancy. One option was to find a better job I could do with a much lower cost of living. There were only 2 options I came up with that had an expected outcome that exceeded my expected needs. All of the other options would use up the next 20 years of my life and leave me short of what I need.

Both of the positive options had to do with startups. First, if I were to come on as a very early founding team member or early key-hire, and the company had a successful liquidity event after 3 to 5 years, I would probably have more than enough cashable equity to cover my needs and then some. This is even more the case with the second option, where I am the founder of the startup, and it also eventually gets to a liquidity event. If it were successful, it wouldn't have to take the next 20 years either. In both cases, it is not a sure thing, but it is a big risk.

I have done startups before, but there were lots of things wrong with how the business was set up. One of which, they were primarily service oriented where I was exchanging my time for money. There is only so much you can get when you exchange your time for money. Sure, there are a few (patent lawyers?, brain surgeons?, industrial spies?, former presidents?) that can charge very high rates, but I am not one of those. While I can make a decent living doing doing service oriented work, it will never create wealth like a successful startup that has a product can.

So, since startups are not a guaranteed route to success, and the other roads are dead ends, what is to be done? Well, make sure you pay attentions to the mistakes you make, and learn from them. The thing that makes startups the best option is that, you are not limited to one. Even successful startups have a tendency to be on a short time table. A solid liquidity event often is within the first 4- 7 years. Even when it isn't, startups are very quick to adapt compared to established companies. And, then there is the whole lean iterate and pivot approach. One startup, many shots on goal. If it isn't working, take what parts do work, and try something different with them. Sounds easy right. Well, if it was, there would be tons of successful startups out there. Oh, wait, there are. Still is easier said than done. Just don't quit. Kind of a bit harder with a large young family and a day job to support them. I guess my iterations just have to move slower. But, fortunately for me, I have never been short on great ideas. I just need to get one to the point that its greatness is readily apparent.

If I can do that, I am sure I can create enough wealth and get to an adequate liquidity event. That will take care of my retirement needs. Even if my retirement looks a lot the same as what got me there. The difference, I won't be financially dependent on it's outcome, and I might just get there a lot sooner.

Self sufficiency, the global economy, and 3D printing.

For a long time, I have had a dream of being self sufficient. I would like to have my own land that is paid for, generate my own electricity, raise my own food, provide my own materials, and pretty much live without having outside expenses. Yeah, I know, that certainly does not seem practical in the current day. Especially when taking into account high technology and our interconnected economies and lives.

But, it gets me thinking about the concept of self sufficiency. Self sufficiency can apply to more than just an individual or family. It can apply to towns, counties, regions, states, and even countries. It certainly applies to our planet. If we can't get it here, we don't get it. That could change one day, but we are a long way from mining asteroids and living on other planets. On smaller scales, though, self sufficiency is largely discouraged in the world.

Historically, that hasn't always been the case. For example, not that long ago, every family who lived in the Kingdom of Tonga was required to grow a garden. They had to grow a certain amount of food to take care of themselves. Even though they still had trade, and bartered things back and forth, the policy was set to make sure that each island was able to take care of itself, which for a bunch of small islands which are prone to be hit by hurricanes, can be important. Still, the storms did come, and could sometimes destroy all their food and wipe out the population of an island, but this policy was a strong factor in avoiding famine and want. It also made sure that people were contributing to society.

Today, areas that are not self sufficient in a regional sense, are more prone to disasters and famines. They might receive help from outside, but if they don't have local resources, recovery and survival are more difficult.  True, we have lots of charity, but isn't the best charity helping others provide for themselves.

I suppose the proponents of the global economy would disagree. They want everyone specialized, and only producing their specialized goods, which are then sold the world over. Technology and the costly manufacturing plants needed for modern cars, computers, and so forth require immense investment and concentration of resources to be viable from a business perspective.

Even more so, globalism has embraced the idea that all people should be active consumers. An example of this is a recent policy from China. They want to bring the peasants into the cities and make them part of the global economy. The idea is they will have jobs and be active consumers. Currently, these people are very poor, but are marginally self sufficient. True, they have no benefit from technology and are without much that most of us in the modern economy consider essentials. On the other hand, they produce most of what they need. Might globalism be more efficient in producing what they need to survive. It might, but it will sacrifice any form of independence they have, and eliminates diversity.

The downsides of globalism exist on both the personal level, such as the loss of independence, and at the global level. If the world needs a certain commodity, and it is made too uniform, either in the place it is produced, or in what is being produced, the risk becomes much higher that it will be disrupted. A classic example is the banana blight of the 1920's. The banana that people sold was called the Big Mike. Commercial growers wanted to sell that one cause it tasted best. Unfortunately, it was a monogenetic crop, and a single fungus wiped out the global production. Fortunately, it was not a staple crop that kept large populations alive. Today, we have massive homogenization in crops, as certain seed companies seek total monopolies of major food crop seed production. Corn, wheat, oats, and to a lesser degree rice and beans are all being subject to this process. At some point, these monogenetic crops will be wiped out by some kind of disease that targets some uniform defect or weakness. Then we will have world wide famines and all the horrors that come with it. Technology is being used to create and strengthen globalism, but while it does make some very wealthy individuals, it doesn't necessarily help the poor.

However, technology might also hold the solution to these problems. It revolves around a different approach to manufacturing. Specifically, what is being called 3D printing. We are still a ways from being able to do this, but if each community had the means of manufacturing anything they can get the raw materials and the plans for, it would change the balance from massive investment into huge centralized facilities to localized production of everything but certain raw materials. Certain raw materials are by their nature scarce, and located in adequate concentrations in only a few places in the world, but the rest, the bulk of the materials could be produced locally. Sure, the designs that are used for those machines are not going to be locally produced, but if I could run down to the local 3D manufacturer and have them print up my new smart phone or kitchen appliance or perhaps even my custom fit name brand running shoes, and pay them for the goods and be on my way, my local economy would benefit. True, the designs and services like the custom fit design used for my running shoes would have to be provided elsewhere, but that is why the internet and 3D printing have to go hand in hand. And it lets product designers reach a much broader market without the manufacturing headaches. It might even help encourage people to consume more intelligently. In being closer to the source, people often appreciate it more.

When this is really available, then the local economy can be highly self sufficient, while still being part of the global economy. Local economies would still have to produce or purchase raw materials, but the overall commodities become much simpler, and with it, much more resilient to economic disruption. Not to mention, wouldn't it simplify life?

Caring for the poor. Teaching them to fish might not be enough.

We have a lot of poor people in this world. But what is meant by poor can mean a lot of different things in different places. I really don't thing anyone would disagree that a single mother in Central America that has only a piece of dirt with no electricity, running water, toilets, or even a roof overhead is poor. One of my neighbors recently went there trying to help the extremely poor, and met this woman. She has about as close to nothing as one can get. She just wanted to have enough food to keep her and her 2 year old son alive for another week. I read many articles about poor people in various parts of the world who just want food. That is truly poor.

There are other kinds of poor. We have an ongoing debate in this country on how to help the poor. Our federal government has dozens of programs to help the poor. We spend unfathomable amounts of dollars trying to address the problem of America's poor. Unfortunately, the more of these programs that get used, the fewer that do all they can to work their way up out of poverty. It doesn't seem to mater how much we give them, it doesn't raise them out of poverty.

I suspect, there are several factors involved here. The first is opportunity and it is a double edged factor. There are many in the extreme poverty that simply do not have opportunity. There are many in fact, even if they knew 'how' to fish, could not feed themselves as they have no access to the fishing waters. Before we start teaching people how to take care of themselves, we need them to have access to the means to take care of themselves. The other side of opportunity applies to those who have the opportunity to life themselves up, but who have a better opportunity to just take the hand outs and not have to work for it. I am not saying the poor in the US don't work. Many of them do, but there are those who do not. Our means testing is very imperfect, and often those who get the most help, don't need it nearly as much as those to don't get the help. I have know quite a few families over the years whose expertise covered which forms and programs to leverage to get a maximum payout from the government.

The second factor is motivation. Those extreme poor in places like Central America, Africa, an so on would do just about anything to improve their situation. They work harder than just about everybody on the planet when they have opportunity. They have motivation. They lack opportunity. They also lack skills and training. If they have the chance, the will get the skills and training. The flip side is that those with robust social programs don't seem to have the motivation to work hard to improve their situation. It isn't that they don't want better. They do. But if they get too successful and trying to improve their situation, they will reach cutoffs for the programs they are using, the their success will ultimately penalize them and leave them worse off than they were before. They are motivated, but motivated to become better at utilizing government and other programs which provide for their needs. They are motivated to avoid too much success.

It is really tragic that this dichotomy exists. We need to find a way to have programs that taper better. That don't penalize those who are finding success. And, we need to find a way to take the resources we dedicate to the problem of poverty, and use it more effectively. Whatever the solution, it should be simple to administer, and difficult to defraud. And most importantly, it should be easily copy-able by those parts of the world where the truly extreme poor and in abundance.

Is growing income inequality inevitable?

I recently had a short twitter conversation with @RepBrianKing regarding wealth and income inequality. He had posted a link to this YouTube video that discusses the subject. I had responded that "our policies that have become more slanted towards so called socialism, have made things worse not better" and later that "Income inequality is a big threat, but neither socialist nor conservative approaches will work. They both make it worse." This led him to ask the question in the title of this post, "Is growing income inequality inevitable?" Well, the short answer echos the Lorax: "Unless.". The not quite as short answer is "It will be difficult to do, and certainly not guaranteed, and will require some very new approaches to government policy." The long answer needs a lot of explanation. I will first address the problems, then the solution, and then the challenges of implementing such a program.

THE PROBLEMS. (You can skip this section if you know all this already.)

1. Wealth and income inequalities. Wealth and income inequality are not the same and often get confused, but they are both problems. They affect everyone, but not in the same ways. Extreme wealth inequality will ultimately result is chaos, civil unrest, or even war, and perhaps even widespread slavery (think Roman or Mayan empire slavery, not just revolutionary war American slavery.) This is because ultimately, all the resources of an economy become concentrated in the hands of the very few, and the entire rest of the society ceases to have any stake in it, but become serfs in a new feudalism. We are not there yet, but it can happen. One of the most significant modern implosions of a strong society was the implosion of the Argentine economy in the early 1900s. It was a very robust and powerful economy, but the wealth had become concentrated. This led to war lords and ultimately the horrors that followed under years of political purges and dictatorship. Income inequality leads to wealth inequality, but it also has some immediate problems of its own. It has the tendency to lead to vast growing over-indebtedness.  Eventually all of that debt will turn into a massive default, which will wipe out the wealth of even most of the upper class (the 10% through 2%). True, they might maintain a slight income advantage over others, but their wealth will mostly be eliminated.

2. Broken safety nets. Today, we have social safety nets that are supposed to help keep the poor from abject poverty and misery. These include social security, medicare and medicaid, welfare, unemployment, disability, food stamps, and myriads of other lesser programs. Each of these are designed to address some specific ill or condition, but often contain elements that penalize real success at getting back on their feet again. For instance, unemployment provides up to 40% of what a person made (up to a cap), but if they happen to make a few dollars doing freelance or temporary work, it takes dollar for dollar from what they would be getting. They are immediately penalized for any small success, and the only incentive the unemployment provides is to not get a job or have any outside income. Any partial success they get immediately tears into what little safety net that they have. Also, some of these programs have cliff like cutoffs. One minute you have vital help, and as soon as you get a little success, the rug gets pulled out from underneath you. Another example is the minimum wage. Raising it does seem to help in the short term, but the prices on basic items, that have the smallest margins for businesses, get raised first and hit the poor the hardest, resulting in eventually lowering their standard of living.

3. Bad socialist policies. Socialist policies of tax the rich and redistribute it to the poor don't work either. They sound great in theory, but in practice, history has repeatedly shown it doesn't work. Look at Russia. After 70 years of the most stark socialist policies in history, their income and wealth inequality are worse than ours. Their rich are richer, and their poor are poorer. The reasons for this are complex and varied, but the fact is it doesn't work. 
(Why it doesn't work: instead of better equalizing the created wealth, it reduces the amount of wealth created while the distribution of that wealth doesn't actually improve. Instead it disappears into hidden, protected, or institutional holdings, and does so at an even higher rate. The rich and powerful find ways to position themselves within an even more influential power structure, and then become untouchable overlords. They only way to apply such a system is through extreme application of force, which dehumanizes both those being forced, and those doing the forcing, and doesn't end up being successful in the long run.)
4. Bad conservative policies. Conservative policies of flat taxation and minimal government regulation have a tendency to get blown out of proportion.  They turn into a wild west type scenario with the attitude of "You have have what you can take"  and the strongest, or best armed have a tendency to turn into thugs or robber barrons and they victimize others. Again, this dehumanizes both the victims and the victimizers. The reasons these conservative policies don't work are a little more clear than the socialist policies. They don't have the negative of reducing wealth creation, and it doesn't tend to hit the middle classes quite as hard, but the results are the same in the long run and those at the top end still get richer while everyone else gets poorer.
5. Corporate usurpation. Wealth and income inequality is made worse with institutionalization of the corporate mindset: a.  Our companies are too big to fail and  b.Employees aren't even slaves, they are numbers and calculations. Corporations are generally not affected by socialist policies as they generally are able to buy themselves an exception. They wield such unbelievable power in influence by the kind of wealth they can throw around, that only other corporations stand in their way. And yet, corporations keep getting bigger and more powerful. Too big to fail. They can nearly collapse our economy, and we will bail them out and transfer their liability to us, because we are too afraid of what happens if they go away. The individuals involved are part of that 1%, and they are untouchable. They can spend money that isn't even theirs to manipulate the world around them. If they do something repulsive or vile, they can hide behind their corporations and stand blameless. Our tax policies hardly touch them.

THE SOLUTIONS (Read carefully)
These solutions are NOT a cafeteria plan. Only a few will be effective without the others, and then, not very much. They all need to be there in support of each other.
1. We need a fair wage act. This act would replace our current wage laws. It is focuses on real earnings of employees in an organization. Organizations with employees generate wealth, and those involved in generating that wealth need to share in that. Organizations (companies, non-profits, government agencies, etc) should be subject to a policy that can be expressed as: the highest compensated individual's total pay can not exceed the organization multiple of the lowest compensated individual's total pay. The organization multiple is determined by organization size. The penalty could be a fine, a corporate tax, or whatever would incentivize organizations to follow the policy. In order to be effective, private contractors would have to be included in these calculations, and total pay would have to include bonuses, commissions, benefits, stock options and any other compensation that has monetary value. The only thing not included in this is dividends paid to stock holders. That is covered later.
2. A better Fair Tax. You may have heard of the fair tax. It is mostly backed by a bunch of tea-partier, anti-IRS types. Sometimes I wonder if they really understand what it is they claim to support. Anyway, they have several things right, and understanding why those are right, and how to use them is important. On the other hand, they have several things wrong, which would make things worse if not addressed and corrected. Things they have right: First, a prebate that is equal across all registered citizens and residents and their dependents which can make even the worst regressive tax system progressive. In fact, if done right, it can be the first tier of a safety net that doesn't penalize success. Second. Taxing income only serves to perpetuate the income divide. Those at the top of the wealth scale don't make income. They make dividends and capital gains, but not income. And often they can offset those by so-called loses. Taxing consumption can be applied more universally, with less tax evasion, and is effective at taxing even those who get around the income tax. It makes shifts foreign trade vastly in our favor, without subsidies or tariffs. Things they have wrong: They want to exclude education and investments. Having worked in the education industry for years, it is an industry. It needs to be taxed just like everything else. It spreads the burden more evenly, and takes away the advantage of those who can afford much better education without paying part of the tax burden. Even more so, investment has to be taxed. It is the primary method of perpetuation of wealth without paying their fair share. The tax level should not be so high as to destroy investment, but if they can pay 5 percent broker fees, surely they can afford to pay tax. They don't have to pay taxes on the gains, just on the investment. It becomes part of the cost of investing. By taxing everything, including education and investment, we can provide a larger prebate, maybe to double what they are currently proposing. That large of a prebate would act as a first safety net buffer to those who are poor. It could greatly improve their financial situation. For those who make more, they still get the prebate, but it is much less significant to them.
3. 20% Accounts. These accounts take care of a large portion of the rest of the social safety net. They are the first tier of unemployment. They help employees feel a little less trapped, and give them a fallback when the worst comes. They are funded by the employer as a 20% match for all compensation for all employees. Who manages them is less important than the fact that they are there. They could be managed by the individual, by investment professionals, or even government agencies. Also, regardless of who manages it, it needs to limit risk for the bulk of the principle while still trying to have some growth. These accounts are generally not tap-able unless the person is unemployed, retired, or in special circumstances as determined by regulation.
4. Inheritance and Gift limits per recipient.  Those with vast wealth perpetuate others with vast wealth. They may have earned it, but they don't help society by creating an upper echelon of society who become untouchable 1%'s. But, what if they were limited in how much they could give to any one person. It could be enough that the recipient could do anything, but not enough to do nothing, or enough to usurp control and power over society. Those with vast wealth would have to spread their wealth out enough to cause it to re-enter the economy. Those who inherit such large amounts might be able to repeat their progenitors success, or they might just live the high life. Either way, the wealth gets spread out, and directly affects wealth inequality for the better.
5. Corporate size and influence limits. We need to make sure no corporation is too big to fail, or even big enough to establish a non-competitive environment. There are many ways to do this. One way would be to limit the number of locations a company can have. This would not limit franchises, as those are generally owned by others, but it would keep them from getting too big. There are other ways to limit the size and scope of corporations, but their size needs to be vastly limited. Some few corporations are of a nature that their size would still surpass reasonable levels, and those should be subject to very rigid restrictions that keep them from engaging in anti-competitive or undesirable behaviors.
6. Self sufficiency programs. It is in individuals', society's, and the government's best interest for communities, families, and individuals to be as self sufficient as possible. This reduces dependency on both society and the government, increases self worth, creates a more stable economy, and improves the overall desirability of the American life. At the same time, self sufficiency is highly dependent on individual attitudes. Attitudes can not be legislated or even regulated. But they can be affected with public service campaigns, and it is well within the scope of government in all but the most minimalist libertarian schemes to perform public education and service programs. Additionally, government can inspire and help develop programs to facilitate the success of those who have this attitude.
7. Limited scope additional safety net programs. There are still those who will be subject to extreme circumstances that prevent them from living at an acceptable level. They will need additional programs for things like disabilities, catastrophic medial conditions, or natural disasters. These programs should be designed, where possible, to help people get back on their own feet as quickly as they can, and should be very carefully monitored and regulated so as to not become abused or ineffective.

THE CHALLENGES ()

Obviously, it is easy to miss potential challenges. This list is certainly not exhaustive, but these are definitely some of the challenges.  It will take a lot of effort to overcome just these.
1. Entrenched Ideologies. The first challenge exists because we as a nation and culture have taken our eyes off of what we hope to ultimately achieve. We instead focus on pet issues, programs, and platitudes that have little real chance of reaching those goals. Each political party and faction has these sacred cows, and anything but their way is considered unacceptable. There is a lot of momentum in these false hopes, and to get people to stop and think, and to realize that the status-quo is quickly tearing our country apart, will take a lot of effort and self control to break from the fixed mindset we are currently in.
2. Educating the populace. Our populations are pretty ignorant of how government really works and affects their lives. Most of our people can quote campaign slogans, but have no idea how those would translate into whatever they think they are voting for. Except for the politically active, very few have taken the time and effort to understand much about these processes. Worse yet, they don't even want to know. Getting them to understand that these things will help them will take a lot of effort and patience.
3. Getting the idea out. Before we can address entrenched ideologies or ignorant populaces, first we have to get the idea out there. It will take a lot of people who really believe these policies will work and that these are problems that must be addressed.
4. Finding effective evangelists. Not everybody is equally effective at spreading the word. There are those who, by means of charisma, or public presence, or fame, or some other factor, are much more effective than most at getting others to both listen to what they say and to believe it. It will be critical to find those public opinion leaders who can help establish an effective movement for these proposals.
5. Critical mass. As with many things, there will probably be some sort of critical mass. Once enough espouse these ideas and policies, there will be a landslide to follow. Unfortunately, where that critical mass is and how to get there is generally unknown.
6. Vested interests. Obviously, if you are in the top 1%, these policies do not benefit you. You are powerful and influential and are going to do your best to see that these things never see the light of day. If you are not in the top 5%, chances are these polices will benefit you. These ideas are not designed to punish success, however, and getting those who are in the other 4 percent to see that will be difficult. Still, under these policies everyone can still enjoy the benefits of their success, but will not be able to just pass it on to create a dynasty. The top 1%'s kids will probably start off with a moderate competitive advantage, but not an insurmountable one. They will have to work for their own success just as their parents did.

In summary, these problems are serious and will destroy us as a nation and a culture if not effectively addressed. I have been thinking about these issues for years and have come up with the what I feel is the best policy proposals to address these things overall. Not being a very effective evangelist, I have been called everything from communist to robber baron to fascist when describing these ideas to people. I hope I have done a better job of describing these this time. These ideas are formulated for effectiveness, not for selling. They pass the economic, psychological, sociological, historical and mathematical evaluations I have tried them against. Having said that, these are new ideas, and implementation rarely mirrors theory. Even if implemented, there are likely to be many pitfalls in the way, but in years of searching for solutions to these problems, I haven't seen anything else which seems likely to work.

Let it simmer.

I am a politics junky. No this isn't about politics (mostly), it is about me and thinking and keeping myself from doing stupid things I end up regretting later. I have seen a variety of comments that are quite similar in many ways, but the basic gist is, when something happens, and you have a reaction that is closely coupled with emotion, it is often good personal policy to sleep on it. Give it a night, or better yet, a full 24 hours or more. Let it simmer and see if you still feel the same way about it. Make sure what you are going to do is the best course of action and not just the passion of the moment.

So, how does this apply to politics? Well, being the political junky that I am, I really wanted Obama to not be re-elected. Yeah, much more that than Mitt Romney being elected. I think Obama is the worst president we have had since Woodrow Wilson. Yeah, Wilson was effective, but he was also un-American and wanted to throw out the constitution. Interestingly enough, The next worst president in my lifetime in my opinion, was not Jimmy Carter, but George W Bush. Between Obama and Bush, they have shredded our freedoms, the constitution, and our economy. So, all of this fitting in with me being a political junky, I tend to react quite strongly with happenings related to elections. I could see early on that the night was not going the republicans' way. Quite the opposite.

My reaction of course was to start thinking of rash and extreme courses of action that of course I would regret as soon as I did, but this year, I purposely tried to gear myself up for the possibility that the night would go that way. I purposely made myself go to bed once the outcome was pretty much decided, or, at least, I tried to. I am afraid my anxiety over the whole affair infected my children, but at least getting them to go to bed took me away from the over-programmed news feeds.

The next day, I made myself stay as neutral as possible, which for me is still hyperbolic, but I tried to keep my most extreme thoughts and reactions bottled up, and try to express rational, moderate thinking. I still read the news feeds, which for the most part were either democrats being poor sports, or republicans being poor sports, but occasionally were something that tried to be reconciling in nature. I have noticed a very small undercurrent in those more moderate voices. While it is true that the divide in america is very stark, and that there is a gap between the sides, what they are really fighting over, for the most part anyway, is not that hugely inseparable between the sides. (There are a few issues that I think really do provide a true irreconcilable difference between the sides, but that is another post.)

So, since this seemed to be such a big deal election, I made myself wait a couple of weeks before posting much about it. And hey, you know, all those topsy-tervy emotional knee jerk reactions and radical thoughts boiled down into some really interesting food for thought. I still don't like many of Obama's policies, but I am much more clear on what I feel and why, and what I can and can't do about it.

So, the next time you get your dander up, sleep on it. Don't do anything until you have given yourself enough time to really boil it down into some more rational course of action.

Taking the long view

As I think about the various factors the influence the way individuals live their lives, one of the most influential seems to be the longevity of their perspectives. What I mean is the time frame of their outlook on life, their goals and ability to be both patient and persistent. When people look at the long term, they act different then when they only look at the short term. I have tried to look at the long  term. When I do, I make much better decisions. When I don't, well, you can probably guess that it doesn't work so well. It is true that sometimes there are short term payouts, but most of the time looking to the short term doesn't really help me reach my long term goals.
Those who take the long view tend to be happier, more successful, have more stable lives. I suspect that in general, they are also more conservative, more religious, and more compassionate.

Our future as a country may not be in our hands

Our political future, and, by extension, our economic future may be out of our hands. If the economy improves before election day, I fully expect Obama to win reelection. If he does win, between his socialist/fascist agenda and his corrupt moral policies, this country will no longer be the land of the free or the greatest country on earth, and would soon begin to tear itself apart. If the economy stays stagnant or gets worse, Romney will win but won't do those things to help us recover the greatness we once had, but might be able to keep us from tearing ourselves to shreds. Neither of these scenarios will be determined by us. Our future will be decided by the leaders of Europe as they try to resolve the nasty set of crises they are currently faced with. If they successfully resolve they problems, our economy will continue to recover. If they just manage to postpone or pull out a middling solution that doesn't really fix things but avoids a collapse, our economy will stagnate. If they really screw it up, and it collapses, we will collapse too. In that case, neither of our candidates for President would be able to lead us out of the mess. Even so, our future still is not in our hands.

Planning app

I would like to see an effective app for helping me plan. And not just one kind of planning, but all kinds of planning. It should be effective at helping me prioritize, even helping me figure out the pros and cons to various options. It should also be able to interact with my various calendars to help me schedule the parts of my plan that I am making. It should work on my phone or on the Web. Just an idea.

Interpersonal paradox

Lesson learned from conversation in the middle of the night: If you want to change others, you have to change yourself. If you want to change yourself, you have to focus on how you treat others. It is when you focus on yourself that you are more likely to have problems with how other people's actions affect you.

I think most of us can identify examples of this at work in our own lives. If we are being mostly selfish, we tend to get bugged more easily by others. If we want to change them, we have to change how we interact with them, which changes us. Thus, I suppose it could even be reasoned that when we change someone else, we really are mostly making changes in ourselves and how we interact with those others. If they are to change, they are the one that has to do the changing. All we can do is inspire them by changing ourselves.

I suppose the statement above should really read something like "If you want to change yourself for the better, you best succeed when you focus on how you interact with and treat others." Yeah, I know, a bit nit-picky, but for accuracy's sake, I figured I would clarify a bit.

Anyway, this lead me to wonder how many other areas of life do we change by changing ourselves and our perceptions and interactions with the world around us rather making actual changes in that world.

Trying a mobile app

So, after resisting for a long time, I finally got a smart phone. I have used it for a couple of months, and am now experimenting with what else I can do with it. Some things are really great, like email, and others not so great, like looking for a rental home in Utah. I have thought about what else might work well and decided to try blogging from my phone. I figure it should help keep my posts shorter, and help me post more often. Let's see how well it works.

Agile Education

So, I work mostly with computers and application development. One of the big movements or trends these days is called Agile Development. It is a methodology for creating regular incremental iterations (of 1-4 weeks, usually) of software that is highly responsive to customer needs and developed by self forming teams. To really learn more about it, a good place to start is Wikipedia.

Interestingly, my educational background is in educational psychology, dealing mostly with ways and methods that people learn and what works best. In thinking about education in the last month or so, I came up with the idea of Agile Education. Well, turns out that it isn't totally original, but the one presentation I found on the web tried to copy the Agile Manifesto and only change the word software to education. Well, I can tell you, that education isn't developed. At least not in the way software is. The idea in the presentation is a good start, but certainly didn't go far enough into a methodology and system for education that really will help people learn better.

The basics of the full idea that I had uses an iterative approach to identifying scaffolding and ZPD's, but not just a first tier ZPD, but second tier, and related foundational ZPD's required for future tiers. It allows the individuals to progress at their own speed, and at the same time work in cross cultural social situations through self forming teams. The teachers in such a system, would be more in the role of student external advocate combined with scrum master and coach. Learning is a self driven activity, even when the motivations are external, so the customer is the student themselves, but they often loose site of or fail to fully comprehend their own needs and educational situation.

Anyway, there is no way I could really give such a big idea adequate justice in a simple blog post, or even a presentation for that matter. I think I will have to start writing a book on it. Maybe. It is a great idea. I just don't know if I have the time.

The Logic of Religion

I have been thinking about what people believe religiously and how logic fits or doesn't fit. Now, I know, there are some of you folks out there who swear there is no connection between logic and religion, but atheists and fanatics aside, how does logic fit with our religious beliefs?

First, I guess you have to decide if you believe there is a God. There isn't a lot of hard evidence one way or another (Well, actually, there is, but you have to dig and spend a lot of time working to understand the meanings and possibilities and ramifications. You have to be open to any possibility before you can effectively use Occam's razor anyway, otherwise, you bias the outcome.). Atheists will say a lack of evidence indicates lack of existence, and a lot of other people will say faith doesn't need evidence. Whatever you believe, still, I think the application of logic can only be helpful.

Second, assuming you decide you believe in a God, you need to decide what are the characteristics of that God. What would that God's motives be, and are they consistent with the commandments and teachings he has sent forth (Again, assuming you believe he has sent some forth. If you think there is a God who doesn't get involved or doesn't care, well, then you have a lot less to go on, but, if you remember the evidences I mentioned above... lets just say He has send forth both commandments and teachings.)

One thing to consider is the consistency of teachings and doctrines professed by a variety of religions. I am going to mainly focus on Christianity today. Lets say you are part of the Catholic Church. They say God is loving, just, and all powerful, but if you are not baptized in the Catholic Church, you get to spend eternity in Hell. What about those who have never heard of Christ, or that never heard the Catholic version. Well, too bad, you lost the genetic lottery and you get to go to Hell without being able to do anything else about it. A God that arbitrarily sends a major portion of his Children to hell just because of where they were born doesn't sound loving or just. OK, so, sorry Catholics, you fail the logic test. Unfortunately, many Christian churches have the exactly the same problem.

Here is another one. Lets say you belong to a christian church that doesn't have this problem because you say that everyone gets saved. There are no requirements. Ok, so what the heck is the point of your church in the first place if I don't have to do anything to get to heaven. Another Fail.

OK, lets look at the whole concept of heaven. Many Christian churches, and Jewish, and Muslim for that matter, have this outlook that if we do what is required here, we get to go to heaven and be happy forever with nothing to do, except sing in a heavenly choir (the Muslims get their 72 virgins, but I am not sure how they reconcile the lust involved with their other teachings, not to mention the denigration of females that is required). Now I like to sing. I even met my wife in a choir. But I don't think I want to spend eternity just singing. But, I have heard some say that is all there is. God just wants this one big choir singing his praises forever more. Man, that sounds vain. Now, don't get me wrong. God is beyond great, and should be praised, but not because he can send me to hell forever, but because he is perfect and loving and not selfish. The personal choir praising just himself forever sounds pretty selfish. There has to be more to it. Otherwise, this one doesn't do all that well on the logic test either.

So, now you see what the logic test is in religion. Go ahead. Try it. See if your church or religion measures up. Just keep in mind, everything must be included. The personality of God, his teachings, his commandments, who we are, who we can become, what the outcomes for us are, why we are here, etc. I personally think the church I belong to passes this test on all counts. It does say that it is the only true church. If that is the case, well, then everyone else has to be wrong. But, that doesn't make it fail the logic test. Go ahead. take the test, write it down, and see if what you find is what you expected.

What to do when a whole state goes traitor.

I recently read news reports about the Eugene Oregon city council voting against the Pledge of Allegiance. My first reaction was, if they do not support the country they live in, perhaps they should not be allowed to stay. Then, there has been a lot of news about gay marriage and ongoing efforts to remove God from our society in various regions of the country. These things led me to think about what our country is and what our government is based on. I finally read a chapter in the Book of Mormon this morning about those who would not support the cause of freedom were put to death. I realized the problem, and the solution (it doesn't involve killing).

I believe the Americas are a special place. I believe God made them that way. The Book of Mormon tells us that if any nation upon this land were to choose iniquity, that when it is fully ripe, it would be destroyed. I believe God inspired our constitution, and that this is a fundamentally Christian Nation. If we choose to worship anything else than God and His Son, we are becoming fully ripe. Of course, there are those who say they don't worship anything, but what they really mean is they worship themselves.

I see our current problem as certain regions doing their best to become fully ripe in iniquity. All they have to do is get rid of the few remaining good and righteous people who live there, and zap, or boom, or something, and they will be destroyed. The problem is that they are so tied to us. There are certain states dragging down the rest. The worst offenders are in New England. The West Coast is almost as bad. Perhaps we should start by kicking those states out of the Union. New England already has it's own name. We just draw a line at the Hudson River, and everything east of it is out of the country. They can have their own country. They can even have their own bastardized version of the Constitution, that won't plague us anymore. 

As for California, well, they have wanted to be their own country since before they were part of this country. Time to let them. And Oregon, and maybe Washington, they can go with them. Hawaii should never have been overthrown, and it should be it's own country again too. As for Alaska, well, we paid for it, but I figure it is up to Alaskans if they want to stay.

How would all this happen. Well, all the states could have referendums that if enough states passed it, could allow some states to vote to leave the Union. Yeah, I know, pretty soon you have 50 independent countries. Well, probably not. Can you picture Delaware or Rhode Island trying to operate independently as their own countries?

Well, perhaps we need some sort of movement to approve succession of states or regions. At the very least some formal process of succession. I know that the whole civil war was about succession, but really, did it solve that much. It created a hundred years of hostility and anger, not to mention poverty. It did end slavery, but I think that might have been ended anyway, after time and economic pressure. What the civil war really did was strip states of sovereignty. Prior to the civil war, both the states, and the nation were sovereign. Not anymore. I think it is time to give the states back their sovereignty. Time to give them the right to succeed. While we are at it, lets kick the bad news states in New England and the West Coast out of the Union so that we can preserve the Union. After all, "If your right hand should offend you, cut it off. Better to lose a hand then be dragged soul and body into hell."

The Rebirth of Feudalism

Yesterday, I was talking with my dad, and he was complaining about the economy and how the rich and the mega corps keep getting bigger while hurting everybody else. He talked about some statistic (that I have no idea where it comes from) that 60% of the used real estate purchases are now done with cash. It is the rich buying up the world, and making the little guys pay for it. He made the comment that soon the only thing that would be an option for the little guy is a small dive and a dead end job.

I thought about how, if everything is owned by a very small elite group, and there is no social mobility, and that we are basically locked into doing things they way the big guys dictate, that is very similar to what happened at the end of the Roman Empire and at the start of the Dark Ages. In fact, that was the condition that perpetuated the dark ages for so long. What really broke the back (and the repression) of the dark ages was the discovery of the new world. There was frontier where those who wanted an out could go. And what did they do with it. They built America and the United States.

We don't have any more frontier. There is no way to end a new dark ages if it happens, and it seems there are many forces in power that are intent on seeing that it happens. If we don't stop it before it gets too far, the only way to end it is the kind of war that kills 99% or more of the population and destroys all the environment. We could stop it now. They way to do so is to tax wealth instead of income; to break up the monopolies and massive corporations, and prevent the buildup of super powerful political, economic, and social elites; and to give people the freedom and opportunities to do as they please without having to pay the living life tolls that the big corporations have established for us.