I write software for use on the Internet.  This morning I was debugging a new program which sends email that contains forms.  Forms are those things, like this blog story submission, which let you enter text and make selections from menus and click buttons.  Well, the issue I ran into was one of security for forms sent through email.

While my form worked fine for me, it din’t work for my friend in Pennsylvania.  Apparently he had a security program, possible Norton Security, which was preventing him from submitting a form from within an email.

This is a security issue.  But at another level of analysis it is a trust issue.  Because he knew the message came from me and that he could trust me.  But it didn’t matter.  ALL email form submissions were prevented by his security program.  It’s the way we think about things in general that’s the problem.  NEVER trutst ANYONE!  That’s how you sell a security program.  We have a fear-based economic system when you think about it.  There is more money to be made in getting people to “live in fear” than to get them to “trust each other.”

Society requires trust.  Money requires dis-trust.
We’re going in two different directions.  Some of us want to create a better community, a more virtuous society ( trust is a virtue ), and others want to make money.

We are literally tearing ourselves apart for the sake of profit.  We are preventing any system for discerning WHO we can trust and rewarding them appropriately.  We are focused on DIS-trusting everyone and embracing security as our saviour.

Does this sound like the War on Terror to anyone but me?  The War on Terror is a great way of making money.  It’s a horribly bad way to make a functional society.

All wars are on people.  You can’t have a war on a tactic.  So we are warring with each other to gain the “economic advantage” in the capitalistic system.  That’s pretty much where this line of thought takes me.

What do you think?

Steve

This is A REPLY to a diary entry at:
http://www.greenmountaindaily.com/userDiary.do?personId=327
regarding subsidies for the Vermont dairy industry.

Yes, this is a “case in point” about how the current political economy fails to serve us in an intelligent and rational manner.  The so-called “market” serves to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few BY ITS NATURE.  Government intervention serves to create dependence on government. In either case, the small producer become the victim of a larger and more powerful entity … either big agribusiness or government.

So what’s the solution?  First things first.  This is a systemic problem with the way we have constructed our society.  It goes to the root of the issue over what is “valued” in terms of economics.  We value capital, to put it simply, and therefore we are constantly addressing  problems from a perspective of capital. 

Suppose, for example, that our political economy was structured to value something else like  “sustainability at the community level.”  How would that work? 

Everything would need to be re-structured, including government, so that the contributions an individual or business made very evaluated in terms of how much “sustainability at the community level” the contributions produced.  How would this be done?  Since this system is divorced from the notion of capital ( money ) it would need to be done on another standard, such as “community coherence.”

In other words, does a specific contribution, such as milk production, increase “community coherence” in a way which produces “community sustainability.”  Does the contribution lead to a higher quality of life and a more satisfied population and, if so, by how much?

Let’s imagine that we were constructing a system on the Internet where people could express their approval for any contribution by any individual or business in terms of credits. 

Where do the credits come from?  Government.  How are they created?  By consensus, or the best agreement the people can reach, on how many should be created and how they should be distributed to the population. It’s “economic democracy” in the truest sense.  “We the people” accept responsibility for our economy.

What criteria are used to make these decisions?
Whatever criteria have been agreed upon by the people with the highest degree of consent.  If you smell a mathematical formula coming here then you are following me. 🙂

So let’s just say that this “credit creation and distribution system”  allocates everyone with some amount of credits.  You can “spend” your credits by voting for activities which you support via the Internet.

For example, if you want milk you would “spend” your credits by “voting” ( giving credits) for the milk industry and all those businesses which produce milk for the community. 

How many credits you spend on milk could vary from month to month.  Obviously, the milk industry can’t increase or decrease it’s production in a whimsical fashion.
Reason tells us that in order to maintain a stable contribution of milk there must be some “backup plan” in the event that too few people support the milk industry with their credits. 

Here’s where conservativism comes into the picture, as a representation of respect for traditional values.  What has worked in the past?  How much milk was needed to produce community coherence and a sustainable community?  That’s what would be “recommended” by a program which tells the people which industries and activities are “underfunded” and require  more credits.  If the people still don’t respond by allocating credits to these industries, the government could issue more credits directly to the milk industry producers.

If the people indicate, over a period of time, that they want LESS milk production, then the “credit subsidy” for that industry will gradually be reduced.  Again, conservatism is the rule of the program.  ( slow change )
But economic democracy is the rule of the rule. Eventually,
the “will of the people” will prevail but the “conservative rule” will prevent change from happening in a whimsical or
erratic manner.  It’s a kind of ballast on the ship of State.

Now if all of this is sounding a bit like “government by a computer program” then you are getting the idea.  But the software is more than merely a mechanical codification of existing prejudices.  It’s constantly working to write a better algorithm for producing “community coherence” in service of “community sustainability.”  It requires the people to give feedback on how “satisfied” they are with the results in every area of society.  The objective is to attain and maintain the highest possible degree of “community coherence.”  In other words, UNITY!

Sounds like a lot of work, right?  Well, the good part of the plan is that it doesn’t have to work 100 percent perfectly for everything as soon as it is introduced.  It can start small, such as in a particular industry or with a certain percentage of government spending.  Let’s say that 10 percent of the Vermont State Government budget was to be allocated in such a way, via “community credits,”  and that these credits would be honored as “equivalent to money” when dealing with the state government … paying taxes, traffic fines, renewing car registration, campground fees … so that the public would have confidence that the credits were actually “worth something.” 

So farmers could accumulate credits from people who had either received them for simply being residents of Vermont or for doing some work for the State or some non-profit agency funded by the State.  The farmers, in turn, could barter the credits for things they needed or use them to pay their taxes or other state fees.  Individuals or businesses might purchase milk from farmers using credits. Everyone would know that the credits were “worth something” because the State would always honor them.  It would be “another kind of money.”  But the credits would not need to be borrowed in order to be created and the State would not need to “cash them out” with money for as long as they were circulating in the community.  Essentially, this could result in a more sustainable community-based economy with
less dependence on government AND money.

The beauty of this plan is that it could be implemented at a small level, to help subsidize the dairy industry for example, while simultaneously reducing the need for hard currency to subsidize a failing industry.  Dairy farmers might find that the credits would make their life easier but the amount of credits might be regulated to assure that there was an appropriate level of milk production.  The whole process could be governed by the people in consort with the government using the Internet to reach consensus.

Now all of this might take some time to implement.  It might fail the first time, and maybe the second time too, before eventually producing the desired results.  These results would be to increase “community coherence” towards “community sustainability” without dependence on either government or money ( market forces ).  The idea is to free us from the “tyranny of money” and the “tyranny of government.”

In other words, we need to change the way we think about economics and politics.  As I’ve said many times on my
web site:

“It’s all us.  We are the problem.  We are the solution.”

The revolution is in your mind.

Blessings,

Steve Moyer
Candidate for U.S. Senate
http://stevemoyer.us

I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s now playing at the Savoy in beautiful downtown Montpelier. Watch this movie and you won’t be wondering about global warming.

One warning, though: I guarantee you’ll be pissed that Bush and his supporters on the Supreme Court stole the election in 2000.

I had the radio tuned to WSNO in Central Vermont, which is the local home to the right-wing hate, er…talk radio regulars. It was about 5:00 PM and I was listening to Hannity (he who is like Rush Limbaugh without the pills and with even fewer IQ points), who was at the time loudly promoting the Republican theme that the NY Times staff should be imprisoned for treason for reporting on the excesses of the Bush administration. Imagine my surprise at the commercial break to hear the following:

The Sean Hannity show is sponsored by the Barre Technical Center

The Barre Technical Center, as it’s website says, is “considered an extension of the curriculum of Cabot, Harwood, Montpelier, Spaulding, Twinfield and U-32 high schools.” This means that taxpayers of all stripes are feeding into this school from these towns, and ultimately from across the state through the State Education Fund.

Now consider what your tax dollars are paying to support:

HANNITY: Here’s what is bothering me, John. Barack Obama said, quote, “We are helping the insurgency,” unquote. John Kerry himself said American soldiers need not be getting — going into the homes of Iraqis terrorizing women and children. Harry Reid said our presence is a problem, we’re an occupying force. This is almost now coming out on a daily basis, these attacks against our brave men and women. (link)

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a classic example of modern liberalism. Hatred, hatred, hatred for Bush and anyone associated with him. Throw him in jail! He testified four times before the — all right, I’m going to ask you again, [caller]. Do you really want to convict somebody on the idea that he just testified four times before the grand jury? I ask you again, what evidence do you have — you’re so certain that Karl Rove leaked. Where’s the evidence?(link)

LEWIS: You know, I saw kind of a different protest out there. There were a lot of things going on. It really affected me to see so many Iraq veterans out there marching in front of the White House, talking about their experiences and why they’re disillusioned with this policy. You know, it’s —

HANNITY: All right, Ted, I honestly, I’m not really — I don’t care about your thoughts. You can tell them to Alan. I’m not asking you that.
(link)

Hannity has “pledged that stopping Hillary Clinton from becoming president of the United States would be a major focus of his program,” according to a June 20 article on conservative website NewsMax.com, a promoter of Klein’s book. Similarly, a spokesman for Sentinel, the book’s publisher, has said that “he hoped that The Truth About Hillary would do to Clinton what the Swift Boat Veterans bestseller did to [Sen. John] Kerry.” (link)

O’DONNELL: Oh, my God, Sean, don’t you see the pictures from Abu Ghraib?

[crosstalk]

HANNITY: Where’s the evidence?

O’DONNELL: Hello?

HANNITY: There was underwear on the head of one of them. We’re not raping and killing anybody. (link)

HANNITY: Amnesty International is a radical left-wing group. (link)

…and that’s nothing. go to Media Matters and do a search on Hannity and you’ll get far more than outrageous statements. You’ll see a list of outright lies and personal smears all in the unwavering service of the Bush administration, and at the expense of truth, as well as the good name of any who would question him

And he is sponsored by the Barre Technical Center.

I haven’t talked to anyone there (yet), but I’m going to hazard a guess that one might get an earful about “reaching out to working class parents and families.” If that is the rationale, let me just say as a product of a working class family that I would find any such patronizing characterization of working class people as jingoistic, venom-spewing hate mongers as personally insulting as well as demonstrably inaccurate.

But even if it were true, who cares? Hannity doesn’t simply cross a line into a class of propoganda that shouldn’t be funded with my taxes, he leaves the line in the dust.

If you agree that your tax money should never, ever be used to prop up the National Republican attack-and-smear noise machine, here is the way to contact those who should hear from you:

Superintendent’s Office
120 Ayers Street
Barre, Vermont 05641
1-802-476-5011