Canada's Cellular Giant

Controlling the on-ramp to the Information Superhighway, the big Canadian telecoms are like the three-headed giant in Monty Python's Holy Grail, stomping and devouring all smaller competition while threatening the villagers with its massive club of silently agreed pricing. II recently heard the grey-market reselling of cheaper Manitoba and Saskatchewan contracts as the result of a quirk in the Canadian market. Yeah, the quirk of actual competition due to these being the only provinces with a viable fourth option, provincial telecoms. This makes the prices nearly half those in the rest of the country. Can't have that. Rogers and Telus are scrambling to put a stop to it. The giant must have its shrubbery

The triad can't stand competition. That would be a free market. A monopoly of three is still a monopoly, an implicit conspiracy of price fixing for common interest. Communication and information infrastructure is essential in a country this large. It should be owned and controlled by everyone, available equally to all providers that wish to use it.

The giant needs to fall. We villagers can't afford to keep fattening its belly. It blocks our way forward. The triad must be broken to liberate the market. We must treat modern communications as a real superhighway, not the toll-road of the big three.

Added Flavours, the most Dangerous, Insidious, and Profitable of Drugs

The flavours of natural food come from chemicals linked to its nutrients. We have evolved to like and crave those flavours. Then chemistry allowed the separation fo these chemicals from the nutrients they signal though use of the chemical itself or an analogue like bug juice for strawberry that comes from a different chemical and signals different nutrients. Concentrated use of these chemicals has enabled food processors to transform unpalatable junk into irresistible taste explosions that fool our bodies into thinking they are far more nutritious than the real foods. They are highly addictive drugs that are powering the obesity epidemic.

It doesn't help that real food has been bred, selected, and raised for appearance, travel, retail, productivity, and convenience considerations, resulting in a reduction in taste and linked nutrients. Apples are meant to bruise and turn brown, bread is meant to grow stale and mold, cattle are supposed to get sick occasionally, and no 3-month old chicken is supposed to be big enough to feed a family.

This is far worse than GMOs, whose danger lies in corporate control. Cancer grows fast, reproduces quickly, and travels well, and we are addicted to it.

Cheap mass production produces quantity not quality. The only way to force down most processed food is to load it with fats, sugars, salt, and added flavours. Then "It's Great!" Fat and salt are nutritious in the proper amount. Unrefined sugar originally signally the ripeness of fruit. Some products are nothing but fat, sugar, salt, and/or added flavour, with colouring. Tasty but empty, convincing your body that you are eating a 300 calorie strawberry while leaving you wanting more. Food that makes you hungry, drink that makes you thirsty.

Then there is are the possible effects on gut microbes that help fat people become fat and thin people stay thin, as well as on those that produce brain chemicals responsible for mood and with other health benefits. Unhealthy gut, unhealthy life. Misery loves an added-flavour high.

We are taking good food and turning it into tasteless unhealthy junk for profit at the cost of everyone's health. Einstein said that stupidity was the only true infinity is the universe. We are infinitely blessed.

Added flavours helped begin and fuel society's economic diet of obsessive, useless consumption. Is it any wonder that entire countries are increasingly out of shape?

The Conventions of Ideology

Today's party conventions of the Liberal and Conservatives perfectly demonstrated the two ideologies, even if the Liberals in particular often haven't. The Conservatives are trying to improve their image by voting to recognize the present realities of marriage and climate. The Liberals are voting on improving inclusiveness in their party, improving palliative care for our increasingly elderly population, and the institution of a guaranteed income, in recognition of what we face ahead. Self-interest versus compassion. The past versus the future Fear versus hope.

Can the Conservatives regain the trust and reasoning needed for productive negotiation after years of tyrannical fear-driven division?

Can the Liberals live up to the promise of a leader seemingly far more liberal than many of his predecessors?

We shall see.

Update: The Conservatives decided to recognize the reality of same-sex marriage and came partway to recognizing the pending legalization of cannabis by voting to approve decriminalization. I've heard nothing about climate change. I guess they continue to ignore it. They have inched toward the centre but done nothing remotely progressive. Harper tried to kill those roots. Perhaps he succeeded. The Supreme Court couldn't rule it unconstitutional like most other things he tried, and that most of the presently sitting Cons supported.

#Debunking #Terms of #Oppression

"There are no people who actually have true black, white, red, or yellow skin."

 Everyone has the right to choose a word as a name to help define themselves. Please be careful which word you pick. Don't pick words like "garbage", "object", "tool", "resource", "victim". or "Hitler". The weight of prior associations may keep you down. Trying to change "Hitler" to define "goodness" may require far too much struggle, time, and blood, to be worth it. Choose a less tangled word or create one that helps point to your individuality, uniqueness, or common humanity.

The following is from HUMAN BIOLOGICAL ADAPTABILITY: An Introduction to Human Responses to Common Environmental Stresses

Skin Color Adaptation

Human skin color is quite variable around the world.  It ranges from a very dark brown among some Africans, Australian Aborigines, and Melanesians to a near yellowish pink among some Northern Europeans.  There are no people who actually have true black, white, red, or yellow skin. These are commonly used color terms that do not reflect biological reality.

Skin color is due primarily to the presence of a pigment called melanin , which is controlled by at least 6 genes.  Both light and dark complexioned people have melanin.  However, two forms are produced--pheomelanin , which is red to yellow in color, and eumelanin, which is dark brown to black. People with light complexioned skin mostly produce pheomelanin, while those with dark colored skin mostly produce eumelanin.  In addition, individuals differ in the number and size of melanin particles.  The latter two variables are more important in determining skin color than the percentages of the different kinds of melanin.  In lighter skin, color is also affected by red cells in blood flowing close to the skin.  To a lesser extent, the color is affected by the presence of fat under the skin and carotene , a reddish-orange pigment in the skin.  Hair color is also due to the presence of melanin.

Created and maintained by Dr. Dennis O'Neil
Behavioral Sciences Department, Palomar College, San Marcos, California
Copyright © 1998-2013 by Dennis O'Neil. All rights reserved.

Paleness isn't a blessing that signifies superiority but a curse that renders sunlight painful and dangerous to eyes and skin. I'm practically vampiric myself. White superiority may be similar in some ways to penis envy, hatred self weakness transposed upon the truly superior adaptation of the visible other, as well as resentment of their purity, when you think of Africans as being the original and pure homo-sapiens, lacking other genes and influences. We're all their descendants.

The institution and protection of power and privilege through division, exploitation, and oppression are universal corrupting evils within and between groups regardless how they are defined. Skin colour is the simplest visual division, false like most excuses, but effective as a uniform that draws justified hate away from those deserving of revilement rather than profit. 

Humans are earth-toned. We're ALL brown.

Race and Class are invalid concepts created by those trying to use them to support their claims of quality of a higher nature than that of those they oppress. The idea of Race was created by racists, Class by the privileged, both used to convince the oppressed that they deserve and can't change it. Both create "natural orders", levels of privileged infantilization that provide the oppressed the change to oppress those below them in the tradition of bullying. Bullies blame their victims.

Class may be correctly used to describe quality of behaviour but not person. Race more closely describe the differences between homo sapiens and neanderthals than among homo sapiens.

We are variations of one race, one colour, our actions determining our class. The rest is ethnicity, culture, and opportunity. We must reject the divisive false labels of oppression and its false benevolence. We don't need them. Their privilege can't exist without us. Its is our power that they wield, our wealth that they enjoy. They stand on our backs telling us to be grateful for the employment. Regardless of appearance, gender, sexuality, location, belief, background, or work, the oppressed are the oppressed. We are legion. We are one.

Class and race aren't separate, they are a continuum, a spectrum, a hierarchy, created to protect the privilege and control of the few.  Class creates false division within a group, race is the class applied to outsiders. Once some consider the English, French, and Germans to be separate "races". Race is the class lower than the lowest, beyond untouchable. Sub-human. By extension, the middle-class are sub-human compared to the so-called upper-class, who consider themselves to be the only pure/quality humans. Women have long been oppressed by the concept of purity and viewed as lesser humans.

If you accept racist-created categories to define yourself you help the oppressor by perpetuating the false divide. Divide and conquer. Turn the oppressed against each other. That's how 1% can control 99%. By definition, white and black are irreconcilable absolute opposites. One positive and one negative. Brown, as a third division has no relation to either as a colour. The acceptance of the division prevents any common ground. Focusing on differences, especially essentially minor ones, is the basis of discrimination. We all deserve basic respect.

Dehumanization is the universal evil whether you are reduced to a surface colour, facial features, a level of wealth, an accent, a religion, a consumer, a job, a market, an investor, a tax-payer, a gender, a sexual orientation a body size, or a medical condition. It has been the historical norm that anything we view as less than human gets abused, exploited, or destroyed. No one is less than human.

Facts are the only defense against false belief and lies. Fear always dehumanizes and division only makes it stronger.

We are all created equal and are stronger together. The struggle is ours, not theirs.

It is a fact that Black Lives Matter because all lives do, including those with mental or developmental disorders. We can't change history but we can make changes now. Or we can continue to let fear rule by division.

Ideas can have more power than the sun and be more destructive than a black hole. They are what makes us unique, as far as we know. But what do we really know? Facts are vital for survival.

The first act of war is dehumanization and the first casualty the truth.

The Privilege War began long before humans. Nature's laws make survival and mating privileges. Life only has the right to try.

Only we have the ability to make more compassionate laws than Nature. We have the Right, Reason, and Responsibility, to try. That's what makes us human.

Just as there are no such things as truly black or white humans, the idea of a "pure" human is absurd. The human body contain more microbe DNA than human. Each of us is a ecosystem, a diverse community working for the common good, when in healthy balance. Unbalanced, some work against the community and everything can break down. The body rejects its own parts as foreign and attacks itself. It's protection system kills it.

"Common sense" says that objects possess colour. Colours actually exist as frequencies of light that are either absorbed or reflected by pigments in the objects. The rejected frequencies are what we observe as an object's colour, when really it contains every colour except the ones visible. Black is produced by a total lack of light or its complete absorption. It contains no colour or all colour. Green pigments reject green light. White rejects all colours equally. Should we define ourselves  by what our skin rejects, by what we are not?  Then why not call ourselves Martian gods?

Colourblindness is a medical disorder usually created by a lack of colour sensors in the eyes or brain. We shouldn't be colourblind, but we should see the colours that are actually entering our eyes.

"Black" is darkness.  A "black" mood, experience, day, or life can only be negative, a deficiency, a void, an abyss.  Otherwise it is no longer "black". Light enters the darkness and we can see.

Symbols are what we define them to be. Colours are symbols, like stars. Some people claim to be blue (bloods), implying purity and quality of lineage. The only reason that we don't have purple people is that we haven't assigned a moral or social status to it beyond the clothing of Roman emperor. And that went out of fashion. Ultramarine blue replaced it as the colour of "nobility".

Facts are the only steady, real light we have in the darkness of ideology. Don't let them be filtered through a colored lens, particularly one created by those who are half-blind to humanity. Those unable to see a clear reality. A lens rarely provides better vision than its creator's. You come to see as they do and we tend to believe what we see.

We've become trapped in a shared illusion created with the darkest magic of the  mind. We need to see through the glamour to what's real. Change will appear impossible and nothing will seem to change until we BREAK the spell. We need to see what's real to take effective action and stop fighting ourselves.

According to existing, repeatedly verified, evidence, other races exist only in fantasy literature. Racism is a real ideology that devours everything it contacts. Evil is dehumanization.

Recognize it as what it is and call it such.

Their glamour is our nightmare .

Wake Up!

No one is less than human.

The problem with shouting "Black Lives Matter" at racists and a racist system is that they would largely agree. Except, they view blacks lives  as mattering no more than any subhuman animal, even though humans are animals. Another oppressive false division because we're not mineral or vegetables. To them you are saying that "black" lives matter more than theirs.They can only think in hierarchy. You have to stand on someone. As long as they fear being dragged down, Trey will punch down. The weight of oppression pushes down, each level upon the lower multiplying and building until it explodes upward. But, instead of destroying the hierarchy it is usually used to reorganize it.

Individualism and hierarchy have declared war on community and egalitarianism. If we don't try to establish a balance, it could destroy us all. Especially if we fight it for them. If we oppress ourselves. If we compete in a Oppression Olympics instead instead of recognize that we all have value talents and knowledge, and a role to play.
 
If being "Black" means having an African ancestry, then we are all "Black". Humanity is ancient, ongoing African diaspora. We all descend from a small number of early humans. We're all cousins, or closer. dysfunctional, but a family by blood, relation. We're not strangers, just estranged. There are no "others", just "the othered", the disowned. We're teenagers forming cliques. 

We're just a large family competing violently over an inheritance that we all share.

The universal good is compassion. It's the basis for for human laws and really the only law we truly need. Goodness is compassion.

Dehumanization and compassion are black and white.

Humanity is not a privilege. It is our responsibility to be compassionate. Otherwise we are actually less than the other animals. They have no reason and no choice.
 
You cannot have effective communication without agreed upon, firm definitions as a beginning. Otherwise, you end up talking about two different things and there can never be agreement or negotiation, only confused disagreement and escalating anger. Both sides could be right or wrong but there is no way to tell. They're just throwing apples and oranges at each other. They aren't speaking the same language. Language divides as powerfully as it unites.

You aren't considered truly conscious until you define yourself as a self, forming a theory of mind to become a self-aware individual. Only then can you consider others. Language is how we form concepts and express them in life. If mind is a theory, it can be altered by additional concepts. A word can make all the difference. Ideas are harder to defeat than armies because they attack invisibly from within. They can become self-realizing and self-defeating. Defines are the basis of organized thought. Blueprints are definitions. Laws are definitions. Genomes are definitions. It is madness without them.

Colours mark, identify, protect, warn, attract, and confuse. They don't define. White, red, pink, yellow, and black roses are all roses.

That's just my view from the outside edge.

Mistaken Identities: Colour - Kwame Anthony Appiah argues for a world free of racial fixations

In Part 3 of 2016 BBC Reith Lectures, philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah argues for a world free of racial fixations. (BBC Radio )

Listen to Full Episode 53:58

In the 2016 BBC Reith Lectures, philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah considers Creed, Country, Colour, and Culture. He argues that we over-emphasize scripture in our view of faith; that our concept of nationhood is usually mythical and romantic; that race is 'something we make, not something that makes us"; and that the idea of "Western" civilization is far too limiting. But, he suggests, a broader perspective on all of these offers genuine hope for the world. Recorded in London, Glasgow, Accra in his native Ghana, and New York.

**Please note: This episode is not available to download. Streaming audio is available for listening until February 10, 2017

MORE: Listen to the The Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4

What makes us who we are?  Is it our religion?  Our nation?  Our race?  Our traditions? None of these things? All of them?

(appiah.net/updates)

In the third of his Reith Lectures, philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah argues for a world free of racial fixations.

He tells the story of Anton Wilhelm Amo Afer. He was 5-years-old when he was brought from the Gold Coast to Germany in 1707, educated at a royal court and became an eminent philosopher. He argues that this elaborate Enlightenment experiment illuminates a series of mistaken ideas , including that there is a "racial essence" which all members of that race carry. Modern science long ago disproved this, as almost all of the world's genetic variation is found within every so-called racial group.

The lecture is recorded in front of an audience at the British Council in Accra, Ghana. The series is presented and chaired by Sue Lawley.​
​
Kwame Anthony Appiah grew up in Ghana and in London, the son of a Ghanaian independence leader and an English mother. He's taught at some of the world's top universities, and has written extensively about ethics, honour, and cosmopolitanism.  He's also a novelist, and now teaches philosophy and law at New York University.

Related websites:

• Is there such a thing as Western culture? Sonia Sodha reflects on Kwame Anthony Appiah's fourth Reith Lecture, Culture

• The Identity Quiz: do you know who you are?

• Find out more about Kwame Anthony Appiah and his Reith Lectures - Mistaken Identities​

• Find out more about the Reith Lectures
   
• Kwame Anthony Appiah's website

​​​​
**The producer of the Reith Lectures for the BBC is Jim Frank.
**The producer of this episode for IDEAS is Dave Redel.

Everything is always in process

Only compassion defeats dehumanization.

The Survival of Written Media Organizations

I'm not in the industry so maybe I'm speaking to the past, but from what I hear and read, it doesn't seem so.

Traditional newspaper organizations, large and small are dying from revenue thirst. Because most are local they can't generate enough advertising in their markets or online to be viable. They need to give up their print versions except perhaps as print-on-demand subscriptions for those who prefer their news to be physical.

Most, if not all, written media organizations are now part of empires such as Post Media. If I'm not mistaken each "paper" has its own website. This results in an empire's parts competing against each other. Instead, they should consolidate all their local organizations' content into one site. This would eliminate the duplication of general news while preserving local news. Resources could be concentrated on producing content rather than printing and distributing. Quick-read articles could link to the in-depth stories. A quick search or selection could put local readers into their local section with all content managed and contributed at the local level. This would enable easy access to the news important to those in  both neighboring and distant communities, former and possible residents, as well as the simply curious. A convenient way to get to know the world at the local level

Most importantly for the business, it would consolidate national eyeballs, increasing revenue while reducing cost. Then the news can be free and profitable, the business model of the Internet.

The Extremist Profits of the Deadly Seven

Islam, communism, capitalism, republicanism, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, patriotism, utilitarianism, Christianity, democracy, efficiency, loyalty, justice, progress, faith, reform, defense, home, and genetics, just a few productive concepts that have been perverted by individuals and groups dedicated to their own privilege, wealth, and power, claiming prophetic knowledge and insight to justify unquestioned tyranny.

Turning the concept on its head, they use a fanatical fuel in an engine of murder and destruction for their vehicle of oligarchy, feeble beams of false glory radiated by intense horror leading the way. Secret police, morality police, or thought police, eventually follow.

Evil often presents itself as good engaged in tough love, sometimes a true belief or delusion; more often marketing. The cloak changes often but the thing within remains the same, an avatar of seven sins.

A Successful Referendum on the Canadian Voting System

The federal election was the referendum on whether to the change the voting system. That decision has been made and the mandate established

A referendum on how to change is what's required now. It should presuppose that there is no option for retaining the status quo even with cosmetic surgery. Otherwise people will tend to chose the comfort and convenience of the familiar over the engagement and effort demanded by change.

The question should not be yes or no, and if the law demands such it should be changed. Two to four options approved by Parliament, should be presented on the ballot after great effort to clearly explain the details as well as pros and cons. Real debate should occur and then the people choose. However, if less than say 60% to 75% of voters do their civic duty, the vote is continued until enough of the population have voted, even if it's just to stop hearing about it. Only then is the most popular system according to ranked or simple ballot put into place.

This is more likely to serve the voters than the creators and to possess the legitimacy and possibility for restoring every vote's value in democratic representation.

The Dangerous #Freedom of a Guaranteed Livable #BasicIncome

A universal basic income is becoming a more realistic and cost-effective idea, potentially vital to the new economy as well as society. It should be the only tax-free income, ideally indexed to inflation or cost of living. It would enable the consolidation of many social programs reducing costs involved in the separate supports and rebates while allowing lower taxes, as well as the elimination of some. While equalizing the playing field by providing a truly universal safety-net that also functions as a launcher for opportunity instead of dependence. It would increase productivity while decreasing  health, legal, and labour costs along with the general level of stress.

Civilization was formed to  ease the individual struggle for survival. This allowed the devotion of time, effort, and education to pursuits that advanced society,improving things for increasing proportions of its membership. A sufficient income achieves this like nothing else, raising everyone without putting anyone down.

However, nature and society focus on survival driving us harder than sex. It is far easier to submit to its demands than think independently. Freedom's dangers are uncertainty, purposelessness, depression, and decreasing productivity. If survival isn't existence what is? What am I? What should I do? The problem is spreading through the Nordic countries and defines the idle rich. Sitting around with thumb inserted, partying to stay mindless, or squandering resources on things, seem the only options.

This is the dilemma of true freedom experienced without any real idea  of its unlimited potential for self and social improvement and happiness. This realization demands personal responsibility through self-exploration and knowledge, avoided by most of us as painful when mere survival is the only option. This is not an innate avoidance of improvement and tenancy toward laziness. Some are content with basic survival, but most are more ambitious in the pursuit of some form of improvement whether material, political, social, personal, economic, intellectual, creative, or emotional. Their contribution may be large or small, but every bit helps.

The hardest thing with freedom from survival's struggle is having faith in ourselves, without which we cannot have such in others or our institutions. The powerful have organized many societies to actively discourage this by concentrating it upon themselves by claiming to be its source. They share their social and economic wealth only enough to keep us desperately following. It's time to invest in everyone. We're all worth it. Freedom is something everyone should be able to afford. Facing the fear of freedom is what life is about.

Desperation is the root of most of the world's evils, as easily manipulated as alleviated. Misery and happiness are equally contagious and virulent when encouraged. Freedom isn't meant as bliss or a fortunate, worthy, or chosen few, it is wondrous, awesome, terrible, and for all. It is what makes us truly human and potentially divine.

That's why we're dangerous... and here.

Knowledge of good and evil simultaneously creates Heaven and Hell, but we make it real. Do we do so for desperation or development?

Our choice will be judged by much more than history.

Life with liberty enables the pursuit of happiness. Otherwise it is a two-sided triangle without a point and only one angle that easily collapses into a line all must toe. A flat line.

For the good of all, it's time for us to work for something beyond a living and start living.The luxury time of a few enabled modernity and multiplied luxury time exploded into the developments of the 20th Century. Imagine what the universal luxury of personal development and creative exploration might produce.

Imagine what children going to university on their nest-eggs could do, or their investment in business enterprises. A universal minimum income makes society's capital the basis of the economy instead of debt slavery. That's true economic equality that doesn't punish ambition, preserving the advantages of talent, skill, knowledge, efficiency, timing, and success, while reducing or eliminating such disadvantages as poverty, malnutrition, illness, opportunity, and history.

Democracy is a co-op not a corporation.

Charity can be selfish, entrapping, and dehumanizing. "Welfare" is charity while a guaranteed tax-free minimum income would be compassion. Charity is unpredictable, unreliable, and undependable. Compassion isn't a write-off. It is an investment with great returns, strengthening the economy, society, and the individual, to enable real growth that benefits all.

"Welfare" can force a person to "sit around doing nothing" or they loose their benefits. Some may like to get paid to do "nothing" but most people have more ambition, creativity, curiosity, drive, greed, or self-respect, to sit still for long.

The following interview is bang on, but it makes the universal confusion between work and jobs. Work is effort for a goal. Jobs are work for the sole purpose of survival. A vocation is work that you choose out of a sense of a call, passion, expressive need, or deep interest. Just because you don’t need to work for survival doesn’t mean you won’t work at something. It means you can work at what you want to do.  A vocation is work with personal or social meaning; it is what we should all have. A job is enslavement to pay.  Meaning is in the worker not the work.And he's bang on about corporate taxes.

Sunday April 02, 2017

'Jobs are disappearing, and to me that's a good thing': Why we should abandon work

See something missing? More and more workers are being replaced by automation and historian James Livingston says we should stop trying to replace disappearing jobs. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Listen 35:09

By his rough estimate, James Livingston has had between 50 and 60 jobs in his lifetime. He's been a construction worker, worked on an airport ground crew, sold men's clothing at Sears and been a door-to-door salesman.

These days, Livingston is a professor at Rutgers University. It's a fulfilling job at a prestigious institution. And he got there through hard work, dedication, and keeping his eye on the goal. Right?

Not if you ask him.

"I don't think I worked my way up," he said in an interview with Tapestry's Mary Hynes. "I think what happened was that I got very, very lucky."

According to James Livingston, If these textile workers were entitled to a universal basic income they would have the freedom to spend their time on more socially beneficial labour. (Guang Niu/Getty Images)

Livingston points out that we are living in a time when millions of people in North America find themselves struggling to make ends meet, despite having full-time work.
"We are below six per cent unemployment in the United States of America, and yet — and yet — 25 per cent of employed adults in the United States are at or below the poverty line," said Livingston, who explored the issue in his book "No More Work: Why Full Employment is a Bad Idea."

"Having a job gets you out of bed. It gets you engaged with other people. And therefore it's an incredibly socializing, and perhaps character-building, activity. The problem is that it has now more or less disappeared, so now we've got to look elsewhere for the sources of those things."

(giskou/Flickr - Creative Commons license)

And that leaves us at a "spiritual impasse," Livingston said, because our imaginations are stuck in the past and we've grown accustomed to attaching our identity and sense of worth to our work.

"The relationship between effort and reward — between work and income, between work and, shall we say, satisfaction — has never been actually clear," he said. "But we have believed it for so long — that there should be this legible and justifiable relation — that we can't seem to get over it."

Politicians crow about "full employment" and bringing back "good-paying jobs," but Livingston told Hynes there's a better solution — a world without work.

How to achieve that? Livingston argues governments must begin moving towards a model of a universal basic income, where everyone is assigned a minimum annual income they would receive from the government, no matter how much they worked.
The idea has been tested successfully in the past, both in the United States and Canada, he said.

"We have empirical evidence that a subsidy to your income does not necessarily, or even meaningfully, affect your work ethic — what you want to do with your life," he said.

Everything is always in process

Only compassion defeats dehumanization.

Uber is NOT sharing!

To call Uber sharing is to pervert the concept. Sharing does not involve the charging of fees or earning of profit. Uber and Airbnb are not part of the sharing economy, they are agents for unqualified freelancers operating taxis and hotels. Both need regulation and enforcement as such. Besides the app's coordination of the freelancing, there is nothing new or innovative about either. They twist the sharing label to justify their flagrant violation of regulations and law. Their business model is familiar and old, profit without responsibility.Without legal costs and employees it's no wonder they hare earned a lot of money  and are cheaper than legitimate businesses. They leave the overhead to the freelancers and the risk to everyone except themselves. Like a street gang or the Mafia, they add nothing.

Ride sharing is basically carpooling with complete strangers. You may agree to split any fuel costs or food on long trips but the drier doesn't charge a fee. A ride-sharing service allows the driver and strangers to connect and may charge a fee or subscription for the app that does so, but it doesn't charge for the actual ride. The ride is free. Uber is at best a Taxi-splitting service. If you split a pizza with four strangers you wouldn't pay Pizza Hut or the person in your group carrying the pie a special fee for doing so. Pizza Hut doesn't call itself a pizza-sharing service. The sharing economy is defined by its lack of financial transactions and use of spare resources that otherwise generate waste. Often direct exchange isn't involved. Those sharing expect to have their need met by entirely different people when needed. It matches need with excess whether it be in skills, goods, or services, and works on the idea expressed as "paying it forward" and "what goes around comes around".  Uber drivers don't share their vehicles, they use them to earn a income. Same with Airbnb.

Call it what it is. 

Capitalism and Democracy

Why  does capitalism seem opposed to a green future?

Green technology has the potential of democratizing the production of the energy essential to society and economy. The elite and their corporations don't want individuals controlling and profiting from their own power.

Capitalism was born in the colonial era with the creation of the corporation to fund imperial ventures and disperse risk to its noble investors while increasing wealth of Empire and upper class. Exploitative at its root, most of its wider benefits have resulted from rebellions by those exploited,  not capitalism. Capitalists don't share wealth or effort, cooperate, or relinquish advantage, unless doing so to increase their own profit or given no choice. Neoliberals have worked long and hard to reverse nearly all these victories. Capitalism doesn't solve problems, it profits off them.

Essential to the African slave trade and the rise of the USA, capitalism exploits resources, labour, consumers, and markets, "as far they will bear" and beyond. Or, puts on speed to suck them dry while still hot.

The prefect capitalist enterprise would be a slave-power multinational monopoly selling highly addictive, non-lethal drugs.

Opium trade anyone?
Pharmaceuticals?
OPEC?

Wall Street?
De Beers?
Apple?

Some things are closer to perfection than others.

The Markets will Determine Our Fate!

Blessed with Intelligence, Wisdom, and Compassion!

Tithe to Their Priests and Saints!

King Trump, Marketing Troll

The Troll King rises and calls to his kind.

The worst of the Web crawl from basements and bunkers to follow the master of their dark arts. A Marketing Troll who hasn't turned to stone in sunlight, he seems invulnerable to the weapons of logic and truth as he shrugs off the chains of civility, responsibility, and reality.

Only the Witch Queen stands in the way.


TRUMP SMASH UGLY OLD C%$T!!!

Ignorance, hate, and evil, are neither virtual, fantastic, nor marvelous.

Just malignant. 

Information Management and Sobeys, an Informal Case Study for all Organizations

Normally I don't talk about work or the company for whom I work. However, after more than three years of dealing with Sobeys' s systems and processes in the administration department, I have some observations and suggestions that I believe would greatly help the company and employees, and may be vital for all organizations both private and government in the information age.

The Achilles-heel as I see is a lack of basic systems analysis and and the implementation of standard information management techniques and principles. Information is dispersed in parts and usually incomplete, or in a massive information dump. There is little consideration of the end-user, efficiency, clarity, and ease of access.  When one capability is added, often three as useful or necessary are eliminated or barred. Information is often buried with no indication that it even exists. The principal of limiting processes to as few steps as possible is completely ignored, each step increasing potential for errors and reducing efficiency.

Conference calls and PowerPoint are too heavily relied on, and few actual, complete, detailed manuals exist. And even large system-wide changes with many complex factors are done in one big go, often treated as secrets or surprises. Staff need gradual introduction and training to get accustomed to new complexities and built upon each. The concept of phasing things in is never even considered. Thus even relatively slight changes cause major disruptions, are plagued by communication problems, and unforeseen glitches. And lastly, the user is deemed irrelevant, when actually efficiency is greatly improved by ease and intuition of use, as well as clear and easy access to information.

Simple things, like an asterisk on a report or on the record display to indicate a complex price so the file maintenance knows to look for the Loyalty price button on each record to print these signs individually would help greatly. Not to mention reducing this by several steps. I would suggest the hiring of at least one person familiar with the basic concepts of systems analysis, maybe the creation of a team, to go over the company processes and system to eliminate duplication, unnecessary steps, and such. This would create far less disruption for staff and stores and far less stress company-wide.
I'm no expert but I was trained in basic system analysis as part of my Information Management and Library Technology Diploma. The lack of proper information management is easily the thing that drives me most crazy most often. Not that the company is messed-up, it just needs someone with the right training to apply the right ideas to improve the confusion in the communication and system design areas.  Then things will work like a well-oiled machine.

I highly doubt that this situation is unique to one company. After all, who would think that library technicians or librarians (information scientists with masters degrees) have contributions to make to selling groceries, or shoes for that matter? Information is power, its organization, clarity, and flow, vital for business and society. Otherwise its expensive noise drowns morale in frustration.

Efficiency isn't about eliminating jobs, its about making those jobs more effective, impossible to achieve when the tools and systems serve as hindrances.