Category Archives: Fair – Justice

There is no such thing as fair

Monetary Reform

I’ve just finished watching Bill Still’s “The Secret of Oz”

and just for good measure I watched his older offering of “The Money Masters”

Close to five an a half hours of documentary watching. These films give an interesting historical timeline to world events and their relationship to availability of money at the time.
I’m not an economist but in a nutshell the film proffers as fact that “He who controls the money supply, controls the world” and that this control is presently held by unelected officials and thus are unaccountable to the people.
Essentially this means there is no such thing as democracy in the world today, just the illusion of it.

To it’s credit these films don’t just dramatically expose the problem but offers a quick and seemingly easy solution. Bill Still, like me, has a plan to “Save the World”. His solution, which incidentally I see merit in, is monetary reform.

The essence of his solution is to firstly hand back control of the money supply to elected officials (Governments) and for them to issue the money debt free backed purely by good faith in the economies they represent. (i.e. Fiat currency) This function becomes a utility for the benefit of citizenry. Secondly, to abolish fractional reserve banking over a two year period by recapitalising the banks by issuing more money until their reserves have a one to one ratio to their outstanding loans. The bank’s business model changes over this period to essentially become brokers bringing together buyers and sellers of debt. They can still make money but nowhere near as much as they can now.

If it weren’t for the fact that in the past assassinations have been financed, wars have been started, and politicians have been bought, in an effort to stop this solution from happening, it would all seem quite simple and logical.

My solution of Kahatika is a little more subtle than this and works to similar ends but from a different angle. It may well be the step that makes Monetary Reform possible and meaningful.

Business Politics is for the Good

The teachings of Aristotle by Michael Sanders via Harvardjustice.org cite the absolute neccesity of being involved in politics in a journey which persues virtue. Thirteen minutes into the video below we learn that in this regard practice is all important. Big business is entrenched in Politics. Many years ago I got out of big business because I believed that the politics wasn’t for good, and that I wasn’t in a position to change that fact.

Aristotle believed to live outside the politics you either had to be a god or a beast, I’m neither. But how do you turn business politics back to their original purpose? For the Good.

In aquiring any skill, albiet the skill is the art of virtue, requires practice.
Take swimming for instance. The first practice lesson could be throwing a toddler into a swimming pool and pulling them out if they looked like they are about to drown. That’s one way to get them to practice. Another way may be to encourage them to play in the shallows, building their confidence, practise water skills, play successively more swimming like games. Finally the child learns to swim.
Why is Business Politics so much like being thrown in a swimming pool as a toddler?

The Game of Life

I’ve not posted a new Blog for a while because I’ve been playing an online game called UrgentEvoke. I came across it through following a Linkedin group called Social Impact Games. The objective of the Game was to “Save the World” although I note from their latest Home page they are now purporting to only “Change the World”. Never-the-less the essence of the game is to make positive change by crowd-sourcing support for ideas that impact on issues identified through crowd-sourcing. Ultimately the game wants to inspire its participants to act in the real world by taking action based on ideas. It is run by the World Bank and directed by Jane McGonigal who designed the game.

Given that their were prizes of mentorships and seed capital I thought I would give it a go. Another opportunity to further consolidate and document my thoughts about Kahatika.

I have long since realised that the design of Kahatika could be interpreted as a never-ending slow moving game.  In today’s real time communication environment you may observe that the attraction of something that moved slowly might have limited appeal. Like only appeal to those that engage in postal chess.  Kahatika has elements in it’s design to ensure engagement and to retain interest between rounds of participation.

I have contributed multiple items related and unrelated to Kahatika over the last Month or so to UrgentEvoke, some of which contain circular references back to this blog.  My Profile on UrgentEvoke is the access point for all of this content and can be found here.

As I finale of the game and a mechanism to make yourself eligible for prizes there is a process of submitting a final blog to say what you would do if you were successful in attracting seed capital from the World Bank. Combined with a private email to the game administrators my final submission can be found here.

The content I submitted which relates to Kahatika is as follows:-

http://www.urgentevoke.com/forum/topics/challenge-the-network?comme…

http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/learning-compassion

http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/the-dangers-of-designing-a

http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/more-realistic-look-at-money

http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/we-need-to-make-practical-use

http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/others-also-see-the-need

http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/barry-schwartz-on-the-loss-of

http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/learn5supply-of-money

http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/need-to-open-the-debate-to

http://www.urgentevoke.com/video/act1-shadowing-richard-branson

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/act6-donation-lifespring

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/imagine5-a-new-direction-in

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/act4-philanthropists-need…

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/commitment-four-the-long-…

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/distilling-the-evidence

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/this-social-innovation-game

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/the-little-red-hen-revised

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/the-journey

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/kahatika-1

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/what-motivates-you

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/act1-shadowing-richard-br…

http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/learn1-innovate-on-existing

Accelerating Innovation

The following TED talk delivered by Bill Gates speaks of his one wish to halve the cost of energy while simultaneously reducing carbon output from the production of energy to zero. He speaks of energy miracles and explains his preference for a particular miracle he favours.

I started to wipe the sweat from my brow. I don’t have to do this “Save the World” thing. Someone else is about to do it. Not only that, it’s  Bill Gates. He has a track record of performing miracles.  He has more resources at his disposal than any other individual on the planet. This will get done.

Then again, if you take note of what Bill has to say 15:20 -> 17:00 into his talk about the 2020 report card. He realises his punt on a miracle may be wrong. To reduce risk, others must also take a punt. We must accelerate innovation in all realms and even he doesn’t have the resources to back all of it.

His releasing fireflies into the audience indicated that we need to think about all ideas as it’s ideas where innovation comes from.

Only a small proportion of the global population regard their individual role as one of Research and Development, yet it’s Research and Development that we hold responsible for innovation. Bill Gates pleads for Government direct investment and incentives for R & D and yet delivery mechanisms will only deliver investment to a small portion of potential innovators.  This is conventional wisdom and doesn’t look outside the box.

Perhaps changing the system of innovation to increase individual participation is the way of meeting our new world goals. Not surprisingly, this smacks of Open Source Philosophy and hence not mentioned in his speech.  What is mentioned in the Question and Answer session at he end of the Talk with Chris Anderson is Bills inability to share detail due to the conventional wisdom of non-disclosure agreements.

At this point I remember that Kahatika is a way of having your cake and eating it too.

More Video Talks I like

As I pick up links offered through people I follow on twitter I find more and more stuff related to what I’m trying to do with Kahatika and my efforts to “Save the World”.  I busily place talks in my favourites list on TED, Youtube and the likes to try and stay organised. Am I going to remember why they are related to Kahatika?  I had better put them in my Blog and write what struck me as interesting before I forget.

Jonathan Zittrain offers a bunch of questions on the start of a problem in the video talk above. It caused me to ponder on the changing nature of trust relationships. I ran all concepts of Kahatika through the questions he raises and was content that in one way or another I had addressed them all. Perhaps crowd sourced problem solving techniques are more appropriate in closed networks where trust regarding true purpose can be verified and earned.

The following talk by Dr. Robert Sapolsky on, the Uniqueness of Humans, reinforced concepts within Kahatika on reward mechanisms. From a neurological perspective, it dovetails nicely into Edwards Deming’s ideas on the failings of compensation methods of western industry. Kahatika was born from ideas I gleaned from attending workshops on Deming principles. The last minute of Sapolsky’s talk provides inspiration to act. Whilst geared towards a group of successful academics, we all can take heart from his words.

The Festive Season

It’s an interesting time of year to observe human behaviour. All the monotheistic religions are having or recently have had a major event in their calendar. That seems to put a perceivable buzz in the air that effects us all, regardless of whether we have a faith or not. It manifests in lots of ways, not all good. Stress, violence, suicide all go up at a time when we practice rituals designed for us to engage in positive things like Love and Compassion. Both reason and faith in a benevolent higher power has us wonder at the irony of these strange statistics.
Is there only so much love in this world to go around? Do some people experience the joy of the festive season at the expense of those who experience negative feelings?
Is it something to do with the ways we are executing our rituals? Has social evolution of rituals over thousands of years improved the system?
Is this part of some Darwinian evolution model where the way we act at a given time of year, strengthens those in society where its to our species advantage for them to survive and weakens those detrimental to our species?

What is it that we do at this time of year?
A lot of time is spent in and around the act of giving. Obviously when there is a lot of giving happening there is a whole bunch of receiving also happening. The process itself generates expectation, and leads to contemplation on fairness and justice.
Does this contemplation on fairness and justice cause our stress, violence and suicide rates to go up? Is anger and despair generated as a consequence of additional time to make a comparative analysis on our lot in society? Some of us count our good fortune and it just doesn’t stack up with our expectations?

Perhaps our ritual of giving needs to be reassessed? Maybe a small tweak to the system to de-emphasize cause and effect in the giving process would be in order?

A return to anonymous giving?

How Dangerous is being Wise?

  • Wisdom – the quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight. ~ Dictionary.com
  • Insight -an instance of apprehending the true nature of a thing, esp. through intuitive understanding ~ Dictionary.com

If I create a tool that gives us practice at exhibiting wisdom how dangerous could this be?

  • Dan Ariely in the following talk exposed the possible danger of using our intuition. I found this talk very interesting and his work on cheating 4 and a half minutes in caused me to tweak some practical aspects of my design for Kahatika.
  • It is well worth watching in it’s entirety but if you are running short of time he tells of his personal pain due to intuition in his opening statements and sums up on the danger of using intuition 14 minutes into the talk.
  • Not for Love nor Money?

    I seem to concerned about Love but what is my concern for Money?

    Ahh! I see, you’re a conspiracy theory nut blaming the banking industry  and big business for the woes of the world!

    Not at all, just trying to reveal just how controlling the money system is, and how that impacts on our ability to exhibit Love and Compassion.

    If after pondering the Money as Debt concept for a while, it may seem hopeless.

    Then again a tiny tweak to the system may just reverse that hopelessness……who knows?

    Here are a few clever people who appear to be wondering about the solution.

    Lionel Barber, Alain de Botton ,Simon Schama, Charlie Mayfield, Stefan Stern, and Noreena Hertz have their say

    Seems like something needs to be done, exactly what still eludes them.

    Robin Hood Tax
    Take from the Rich to give to the Poor

    The Decision

    If you had a virus that if given to a patient, cured them, and once cured, would give that patient the ability to infect other sick people with that virus, hence curing them and so on until all sick people were cured; Would you start the ball rolling by giving that virus to the first willing patient?

    What would your answer be if only patients with the capacity for compassion were cured and patients without this capacity for compassion died as a result of becoming infected?

    “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile Universe.” ~ Albert Einstein

    We have a Crisis of Trust.

    Despite all the complicated Systems and Mechanisms our society institutes to reduce the need for trust, our day to day lives are manageable only because we do trust.

    We trust that the oncoming traffic will stay on their side of the road, we trust that the money we give to the banks will be available to us when ask for it. We trust that we will be paid, things will arrive on time, that basically agreements written and implied will be kept. It’s not because of our laws and systems that enable us to do this. Most of us couldn’t afford the time nor expense of seeking formal justice in every instance where trust is involved.

    If we didn’t trust, we would be in a paralyzing state of indecision, leaving our lives impotent. Inaction would be the norm. Societal evolution of humans is fundamentally down to trust.

    In what environment do we feel most comfortable with trust? The answer to that is, when we feel the most loved.

    In what environment do we feel most uncomfortable with trust? The answer to that is, when we are afraid; in a state of fear.

    This link gives rise to the definition I heard at a course I went on called Money and You  “The opposite of Love is Fear”

    Having also learned Deming’s 8th point of his 14 point philosophy; “Drive out fear where ever it exists in your organisation” was perhaps couched that way because he simply didn’t believe he could sell the idea “Exhibit Love everywhere within your organisation”

    Economists the world over would agree that the Global Financial Crisis is essentially a crisis of trust. The collapse of Lehman Brothers, an organisation the global financial institutions trusted, was found to be not trustworthy. If Lehman Brothers could collapse, who else could go the same way.  The flow of money, which was primarily based on trust, between these powerful organisations stopped. This had a knock on effect, falling business confidence, foreclosures, unemployment, bankruptcy. Recession.

    In summary the world has just had a whole hunk of love ripped out of it and had it replaced with fear.

    The solution; put back the Love.