AI & Capitalism: On a Collision Course

First we had self-scan checkout lanes, now we're facing down self-driving vehicles. IBM's Watson AI can predict cancer better than the best oncologist. Ultimately, few jobs are safe from automation. Should this scare us? Maybe.

We face a social conundrum. Capitalism, by its very nature, seeks the most efficient use of capital to produce an optimal economic outcome for shareholders. Technology doesn't require benefits. It doesn't get sick. It doesn't spend 30% of its work day socializing. Technology is efficient. Thus, it is always a natural choice for executives to invest in technology which will eliminate people -- that is, if their objective is to optimize the use of capital.

While there are certainly social-minded organizations that consider it part of their mission to employ people, most for-profit companies seek more profits. Technology is the best way to do that. Heretofore, white collar jobs that required people to "think" for a living were safe. We could retrain people who had used their hands to use their minds. Now, artificial intelligence (AI) threatens those jobs too.

Nobody really knows where the tipping point is, but we do know that there are certain types of phenomena that have tipping points. A tipping point is a specific condition that causes an abrupt and often dramatic change. A good example would be the housing bubble that manifested in 2006. In 2007, in a very short time, we reached a point that caused housing prices to drop sharply and quickly.

It is reasonable to suspect that at some point, AI and other related automation will eliminate enough jobs that the economy will become dysfunctional. Companies want to reduce cost and improve output, but they need customers to take advantage of those efficiencies. Customers are people with disposable income. Income is money earned from work. Do you see the conundrum?

Prospects for Change

There are alternatives. Unfortunately, they will all require strong political leadership. If we've learned nothing, we now know that any self-promoting gasbag with enough social and economic resources can claim the mantle of leadership, even having never demonstrated any evidence of real leadership.

What is a leader? There are many books on this topic and I have read some of them. My takeaway is that leaders are those who can create a clear vision of the future and empower people to execute plans to achieve that vision. We don't have many of those in Washington these days.

National politicians are convinced that they need huge amounts of money to win elections. As we all know, huge amounts of money come from places that have huge amounts of money. Common sense would tell you that these are not the people who are worried about losing their jobs to technology. They're the ones BUYING IT! In other words, the people who are taking away jobs are those who have the most influence on our "leaders."

There are three ways in which the major changes necessary can come about:

1. Total collapse of the system
2. Revolution
3. Courageous leadership that can sell tough love

I numbered these because I believe this is the order of likelihood that the necessary changes will come about. People are basically problem-solvers. It ought to be clear to anyone with a brain that the folks who have influence in Washington don't have any major problems with the current system right now. Thus, they will not be inclined to take steps to avert the onset of the tipping point discussed earlier.

Choices

So, let's assume that we eventually arrive at #1 - total collapse. The big problem here is we end up with the same crappy [lack of] leadership we have now. The first and most important thing will be to prop up the people who own Washington -- rich people (remember corporations are people too). In the past, this has meant printing money and giving it to them, so that their wealth wouldn't be diluted. This worked okay when they used the money to buy things that created demand for products and services that required more employees to deliver them. What happens when more people aren't needed to do this? We've already noticed a trend in the last few business cycles that the recovery is much slower. There has even been mention of a "jobless recovery." This sounds as strange as a "money-less economy." What is THAT!

Therefore, even if they try to prop up rich people first, that won't be the end of it because that won't do anything. Next, they will try traditional means of putting money back in the hands of consumers. This has typically been done with tax credits. Tax credits work great for people paying taxes. However, people with no income don't pay taxes...and there's going to be a lot of those.

Finally, we get to the only real solution: handing out free money. There's one big problem with free money. Since our capitalist system puts economic value on money by evaluating its productive power in the marketplace, free money is ultimately worth nothing. On a small scale, free money can be covered by other economic activity, but on a massive scale, the economic value would be gone.

This is right where our current government taps out. I can't imagine them overthrowing the very system that they control. It would take an incredibly strong and visionary leader who could reach the people, thereby bypassing the power elite to sell and idea on a massive scale. I can't imagine anyone like that coming to power now, but maybe in a crisis we could garner such a leader.

Assuming we could, what's the answer? I believe it is socialism. Socialism has gotten a bad name for two main reasons:

1. People don't like to work to support other people who are just sitting around
2. Socialism generally requires centralized control and this means central power, which becomes corrupt every time

In the past, #1 has been a problem, but in the future it is likely that people who don't want to work won't have to. Thus, nobody should be complaining about working to support the masses. If you don't like your work, turn it over to a computer or machine (or both); or the 100,000 people lined up to take it off you (some people actually like to work - even if they don't get paid).

The second problem is trickier, but not insurmountable. How can we decentralize socialism? The answer is to use open source algorithms that are democratically modified to alter decision parameters. If decisions are not "black box," the logic behind them can be examined and justified. I wrote a post about the distributed system problem that you can read here. The point being, the very technology that put us in this situation can be used to fix the traditional problems of socialism.

The Future

Nobody knows how the future will unfold. What we do know is that it will unfold. Sometimes it is relatively easy to extrapolate certain changes. They may not be inevitable, but it will take an intervening disruption for the course of major events to be altered. Assuming that doesn't happen, eventually we won't need near as many people to work as we have. We can't keep warehousing a growing population that is just not needed in the workforce. When the tipping point comes, it may likely come in the form of a seemingly normal business cycle. However, none of the old tools will fix it and as it deepens, it will drag more of us down with it. If we are ready with new options and strong leadership, maybe we can avoid much pain and suffering. I sure would like that. How about you?

Who is the Republican Base?

Compliments of the Huffington Post

If the 1% got half the votes in this country, they would overwhelmingly put the Republicans in office. They don't. That means that lots of people who don't earn over $250k/yr. are voting for them. Why? Is it because the Republicans have co-opted traditional family values? What have they done for traditional family values lately?

Republicans talk a lot on the campaign trail about rolling back abortion and discouraging unchristian behavior. In fact, as a group, they are just as philandering as the Democrats. So, let's talk about the things that really matter to them -- economics!

In a move of ultimate hypocrisy,  congressional Republicans and Trump squashed a plan hatched by mayors of three major cities to help their citizens plan for retirement by setting up a local funding mechanism. Why would they do this? It is local, which they supposedly support. It encourages personal responsibility, which they supposedly encourage. It reduces federal bureaucracy, which is also a good thing.

It also takes money away from Wall Street. If you're as old as I am, you might have had your savings wiped out by Wall Street once or twice along the way. We had enough money saved to pay for our children's college education before Black Tuesday. After, we had enough for one year. Our then retirement savings went to pay for their education.

The stock market is a giant casino in which those big investment bankers who work with each other every day are allowed to keep a few extra cards up their sleeves. If you are just a regular working stiff, you don't have those cards and they are thus siphoning off your savings. What those three cities were trying to do is take some of your money out of the hands of the New York robber barons. If you're a Republican, your party stopped it.

Your hatred of Democrats is bankrupting you and destroying the prospects for your children's economic prosperity. You can say that they're no better, but all three mayors that were trying to help their citizens save for their retirement were Democrats. One of them lives in the belly of the beast as New York City is one of the three cities.

The fact that our country is so equally divided is a testament to modern subliminal marketing techniques. Most of us don't have the time to do effective research to fully understand the impact of the decisions our leaders make on our behalf. This one is pretty simple and it exposes the Republican party for what they are -- supporters of the rich. The Democratic party is much more likely to go up against the rich -- no small task even for them, but unless "we, the people" give them a mandate, it will be more of the same -- rich getting richer and everyone else losing their money to them. You thought Donald Trump would be different, but he's turning out to be the biggest scammer of them all -- taking care of his rich friends.

I know Republicans don't like the idea of redistribution of wealth. You're convinced that when that happens, they will come for your money. If you make over $250k per year, you're probably right. If you make less, you are one of the suckers they've been playing. Keep it up and we'll all be broke.

Jam Band Lament

My fellow bandmates and I recently saw Spafford opening for Umphrey's McGee. We were giddy as a bunch of school girls with excitement to learn from the masters. Spafford has big time competency and Umphrey's...well...they make it look easy. In fact, too easy! The energy from both bands was very different.

From Spafford I got the sense that they had worked very hard to put together a seriously tight and solid show. Mission accomplished, but the fear of a mistake was almost palpable.

Umphrey's, on the other hand, played like a mistake was highly improbable. They now have the skills and experience to put on an improvisational pyrotechnical show of massive proportions without busting a sweat.

Unfortunately, to really bare your soul to an audience, you need to be willing to cut the tethers of what has worked before, and neither band did that. How do I know this, you ask? Answer: Mistakes. Mistakes are the only signal. A wise person knows that "you never know how far you can go until you've gone too far.'

I am encouraging my band to continue making "mistakes." As a continuous improvement professional by day, I know that people who embrace their mistakes as learning opportunities end up making ever-smaller mistakes.

Further, I would encourage all of our jam band brethren out there to keep making them too. Give jam band audiences some credit for knowing what it means when you really hang yourself out there without a net. They love it just as much as the band members who are pushing their individual envelopes. That's the juice, baby!

Humans: Out of Our Depth

Anyone who has hopes for humans to evolve past our primate proclivities could only be disappointed by recent events. It's not really all bad news because people are far less deadly than they were only a short 1000 years ago. Even looking back as little as 100 years ago, times have improved. Maybe it is because of our strides that there are so many more of us who have lived a life almost devoid of daily violence and death around them.

The relative lack of violence in our personal lives makes the daily violence in others' lives all the more distressing. At the same time, our distance and lack of connection to the suffering people we observe, makes us less sensitive to their plight. Chimps don't care what happens to other groups of chimps.

Someday, just maybe, the world will get small enough that we will value all beings on the planet equally. Until that time, maybe we could find a way to help spread some peace. In the last century, the Europeans pulled the middle east apart. They knew what they were doing when they drew national boundaries that split tribes, while pushing separate tribes together. It was the perfect way to ensure that the once great Persian and Arabic nations didn't become great again.

Isn't it time to undo this tragic manipulation of so many people? What is needed is an area summit to redraw national boundaries that reunite the tribes and provide them with the autonomy so many have died for. If we really cared, we would be trying to fix the mistakes of the past. The fact that we are indeed doing things that have caused further destabilization in the region suggests that we (the United States Government) still likes it that way. Maybe we, the people, still do, too.

Meanwhile, our own country is getting hollowed out. The generational poor in our country are cared for at a level that is superior to those in most of the rest of the planet. However, there is a growing population of people who have worked most of their lives and have a sense of identity that includes providing for their family.

One job at a time, capital has sought the most efficient way to profit (just like economists say it should). The most efficient way is capital expenditure for equipment that replaces humans. So far, most of the machines we've built have taken jobs from people who work with their hands. The net effect is the decimation of manufacturing and construction jobs. Politicians blame bad trade deals and cheap foreign labor. Wake up and look around! The number of people it takes to make a car or build a road is a tiny fraction of what it took only 30 years ago.

For every job that equipment replaces, a rich person gets richer. In the next few years, we will see the jobs that require a human mind get replaced, too. We already have very sophisticated automated phone systems that listen to and understand questions and actually provide verbal answers. These systems have replaced rooms full of people who once used their brains all day. IBM's Watson has started providing medical diagnosis and medical robots can already collect vital statistics from a patient. Lookout! They may be coming for your job next.

Basically, the technology available to us today has outstripped out social evolution. Our primate drives cause us to abuse the very capabilities that could make a better world for everyone. If we were evolved enough, each of us could focus on making everyone else's life better, but we still basically care only about our own and those close to us. Fix this and all our other problems simply melt away.

Some say that the profit motive is the only thing that drives progress. I call bullshit. If that's true, we have enough technology to put it in charge of making better decisions than that. Here's a formula for you: people are suffering, therefore do something to end it. Wow! That's complicated. How so, you ask? By a bunch of rules we made up to make it that way. See. Bullshit.

A Plea to Trump Supporters

I just read a troubling Facebook post about two open-minded teenagers who attended a Trump rally even though they were Bernie supporters. Granted, wearing Bernie garb was provocative, but they were otherwise quiet and respectful. They were also escorted out by the secret service and police. That's scary, but not why I'm compelled to write this post.

What is more scary to me is the reaction they got from the Trump supporters (not all of them to be sure). Look, I get it! Lot's of people are fed up with our crappy government and Trump does a great job of representing the "not our crappy government" camp.

I'm sure Hitler could tap into a similar sentiment right now. He came to power during a time when the economy was in shambles. Regular folks were getting squeezed harder and harder. Hitler blamed immigrants and outside forces for this. He argued that Germany was for Germans and that alone they could rebuild their country. For everyone who had lost a job to a Jew or a Pole or an Armenian, this really hit home. Throw them out! Build a wall!

At issue here isn't the problems we face. They are real. The issue is anger and those that would amplify it for their own ends. If you are angry, you are an easy pawn for power brokers with their own agendas. There is strong scientific evidence to  suggest that anger can impair cognitive functioning. It is in the best interest of leaders who want to control people to tap into and even inflate your anger. You are much more easily manipulated that way.

So, here's my plea. Stop being angry. Take some long slow breaths and just relax. There. Now, you can think clearly. If you hate our government, ask yourself what a good government would look like. Is there a way to get there from here? Will it be easier to get there with everyone's help or just whities against the world? Is the thing that make the U.S. stand out against all other countries that we are a melting pot of so many different cultures and treat them all equally? I think so.

I believe in the middle way. We use the word "extremist" to describe someone that usually ends up dead, in jail or at large. Extremists live at both ends of the political spectrum. It is a nasty place with little tolerance for divergent viewpoints. It is those very divergent viewpoints that make this country great.

One Trump supporter told those teenage girls at the rally to move to China. That's ironic, because they were doing something very American. They were exploring divergent viewpoints. Maybe the person who shouted that should move to China. I'm sure they'd fit right in.

Why Hillary Will Win the Presidency

I'd like to start this post by saying that I'm not a huge Hillary fan. She's a horrible orator, but maybe not such a bad politician. Her positions are calculated based on what her team thinks she needs to do to win. In other words, she's not particularly idealistic.

Let me also say that I like Bernie Sanders. He's affable and idealistic. He has a good grasp of the problems this country faces and I believe he truly desires to fix said problems. The reality is, he can't. The system is completely stacked against him. Washington has basically shut down Obama, who is far more pragmatic than Sanders. Congress won't let Sanders order paperclips.

It's starting to look likely that Trump will win the the Republican nomination. Anyone with half a brain who is willing to actually put it to work ought to be able to see that a Trump presidency would be a disaster. You just can't run a country -- especially the most powerful one on the planet -- like a game show. Maybe Trump would hire some proper diplomats to curtail his belligerence, but with an ego that far out of control, I wouldn't bet on it. With him as president, I could see us fighting a world war in which Europe and Latin America are part of the opposition. Simply put, the man is dangerous and there are many rich and powerful people who are smart enough to do anything to stop him -- up to and including voting for a Democrat!

This brings us back to Hillary. Her flexibility and pragmatic views make her far more palatable to more centrist Republicans. In a general election between Sanders and Trump, a third party candidate is more likely to win. In a two candidate race, lots of smart Republicans will begrudgingly vote for a sane, but ideologically divergent Sanders rather than a crazy man. Hillary is a no-brainer. That's why Hillary's war chest will grow rapidly if she doesn't win big tomorrow night. Republicans who want to hedge their bets will help her out as a backup. As is not uncommon, Republicans may even start voting for Hillary in the primaries, writing their own party's choice off as a lost cause.

What is this Trump phenomenon? I get it. People are sick and tired of Washington insiders casting them aside. Making choices that provide economic cover for the rich and powerful while stripping the middle class. Trump, unencumbered by reality, promises to reverse all that. Whoopee! Tell them what they've won, Bob? A crackpot president who won't be able to get anything done! Sweet!

I think Eddie Murphy said it best in Trading Places. "The best way to hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people." It may be the only way. The Great Depression turned a lot of rich people into poor people. After the recovery, the years that followed (50's and 60's) were the most prosperous in our history. This time around, we printed up $3.5 TRILLION in order to prop up the rich people. Depressions suck, but they do serve a purpose. They unclog the pipes of capitalism. Neither Trump nor Sanders is going to turn rich people into poor people. Thus, the pipes will remain clogged.

At least Hilary will keep things moving along until the next crisis. Maybe it will be a real depression next time. If it happens on her watch, I think we will be better off than if Sanders or Trump were in charge. I'll take a pragmatist over an idealist or a game show host any day!

Voluntary Redistribution

I read an article yesterday in The Economist about how global fiscal policymakers are running out of tools to fix the next economic downturn. Interest rates are near zero and even negative rates have limited potential. All the levers of control have been pulled and yet, here we are -- facing sluggish growth that threatens to stall. Government spending means more debt and nobody seems to have the stomach for that either.

I’m a self-confessed Trekie. In Gene Roddenberry’s series, capitalism has been abandoned. Capitalism is a dear old friend that has been the best way for humans to exchange the things they need with one another. It is the best system we know for managing scarcity.

WHAT IF SCARCITY HAS BECOME A MAN-MADE CONDITION?

We assume that scarcity is an underlying fact of life on Earth. Is it? Are there any problems of extraction, reclamation, production and distribution that couldn’t be collectively solved with a combination of innovation, initiative and resources? Is it possible that unnatural divisions between us are the ultimate cause of scarcity?

If we all worked together for the common good, what could we accomplish? It seems to me that this initiative would need to start with the rich and powerful (who are usually one and the same). In 2013, the Forex currency exchange was trading $5.3 TRILLION per day. At that time, the daily global trading of goods and services was estimated to be 25 times less. That’s just currency folks! This does not take into account money sitting in banks or in other trading accounts. None of this money helps real people with real problems. I suspect it causes them.

It seems like it is the nature of the rich and powerful to hold onto what they have for as long as they can. When the system finally collapses (which it always has eventually), they are left with nothing. Frankly, in times past, they often ended up with their head in a basket, swinging from a rope or some other sudden and violent death. We like to think we’re more civilized now, but one only needs to follow the news of the day to know that’s just wrong.

What could rich and powerful people do if they took their money off the sidelines and put it to work? For starters, they could build infrastructure. Ideas already exist to build a global “enernet” that would provide cheap power wherever it is needed. We could build new transportation infrastructure on top of the old such as that proposed by SkyTran. Most importantly, we could fully fund (and thereby accelerate) research to address every unsolved problem facing humankind.

Just try to imagine what would happen if the global economy was 50 or 100 times more effective than it is now. What could we do? It seems we’d have virtually unlimited ability to create the golden age of humankind that we all know in our hearts is possible.

Behind it all are a few extremely powerful people who have convinced themselves that changing the system would be disruptive and destructive. They believe that from their vantage point, they see things more clearly than the rest of us. They understand about forces we know nothing about that would derail any attempt to create a better world. They are wrong. They are part of the same cycle that humankind has repeated over and over since the dawn of civilization. If they put all their power and resources behind a transformation. They could make it happen. They could own the creation of a future that unbinds us from the shackles of the past. It would take courage. It might even get messy at first. But, what better legacy to leave behind?

Lip Balm is For the Bees

When we got into the soap business, we thought we should have a few other products as well. Having started the business in late fall in Michigan, moisturizing was already on our minds. The air gets pretty dry in the winter months around here. So, we opted to make some body lotion and lip balm.

Our goal was to make better products that don't have a ton of chemicals in them. I will confess here and now that I am a longstanding Burt's Bees lip balm user. Back when lip balm was called Chapstick®, that's what I called it and that was the brand I used. When I discovered Burt's Bees, I came to realize that Chapstick® is made from petroleum. That's what some of us call a fossil fuel when its other derivatives find their way into the tank of our car.

Burt's is made with real bee's wax. It smells better, it feels better. And, it's ingredient list is a bit shorter. Frankly, when we set out to make lip balm, we didn't think we could beat it. There was one thing I did like about that petroleum product: it wasn't so hard. The hardness thing is particularly a drag in the winter when I most need it because it gets so hard that I practically risk chipping a tooth putting it on.

Enter Ti LeBlanc lip balm. The secret? Just the right amount of coconut oil. It makes the lip balm softer and creamier. I can pull an ice cold tube out of my jacket pocket and it goes on just like butter! Sometimes less is better. We only have three ingredients.

I know what you're thinking. "This dude is just going on about his damn lip balm because he's trying to sell it." Well...yeah, I'd like to sell some lip balm. Can you blame me? That doesn't mean it's not as good as I say it is.

Don't worry, I'm not going to keep going on about lip balm. Here's what I'm going to say. Go to the Ti LeBlanc Website and spend $24 on other products and we'll throw in the lip balm. It'll have to be peppermint because I can't figure out how to make our discount system allow you to pick your flavor, but if you really hate peppermint, put a note in the order and we'll hook you up with another flavor.

By the way, we've got a Grand Opening BOGO deal going on right now, so you can get two bars of soap and a lip balm for free! It's a good time to be dirty, dry and chapped.

Almost Biological

By Jawahar Swaminathan and MSD staff
at the European Bioinformatics Institute

We are a young species when it comes to intelligence. As we learn more about the brain, we find fewer differences between our own and those of other mammals. From a sociological standpoint, our differences may be mostly superficial. I often wonder what a race of intelligent beings far in advance of our own would think of us. Would they see the fine-grained difference between us and other mammals? They would obviously see that we are far more sophisticated at building tools. That’s a big deal -- but not the only deal.

When I look at other mammals, I see creatures that fight with each other to garner scarce resources. They are willing to do anything, up to and including killing their own kind, to improve what they perceive as a desperate situation. When I look at humans, I see the same thing. This self-destructive behavior is not in the long term interest of any truly intelligent species. I think most of us know this.

I read a lot of science fiction. I love speculation about possible futures. It makes me think about who we are now. As a result, I have come to believe that no advanced species is truly biological. We have already begun our march towards becoming a technological species. The lines are blurring.

Scientists are designing robots made from DNA. They are using a new approach called CRSPR to insert custom sequences of DNA to engineer certain traits. Is this biological or technological? Is biology defined by the materials used to produce something? Or, does “biological” refer a natural process of evolution through random mutation?

We can debate these questions, but over time they will matter less. If you could get a $500 transfusion that would replace your own blood with artificial blood that would prevent you from ever getting sick again, would you do it? If you could replace your lungs with a device that would let you run at full speed without ever getting winded and swim underwater for four hours without taking a breath, would you do it? Maybe you wouldn’t take advantage of these things, but there are plenty of people who would.

Technological breakthroughs like these are inevitable. People are already working on them. Incremental breakthroughs are occurring daily. Assuming we don’t destroy ourselves first, we will eventually start to colonize space. When we do, our current physical limitations will create a huge burden on our systems. Creating spaceborn environments that allow us to remain in our biological “Goldilocks zone” requires temperature, atmospheric and gravity controls that would not be required for technological beings. All of these things are easily overcome for a spacefaring species.

The debate about what makes us human will change with time. Any technological intelligence that is born of our creativity is ipso facto an evolution of us. We have not had to grapple with technological evolution for very long. The concept is new and it is only natural that we would resist relinquishing our biological roots. Currently, most artificial replacement parts are substandard compared with the our biologically evolved parts. That won’t be the case for too much longer. We’re already building exoskeletons that are stronger and harder than our own bones. Our cameras are far higher resolution than our eyes -- we just don’t know how to hook them to our optic nerve yet. Soon, we will start chipping away at our biology one system at a time. When we figure out how to make a better brain, we will load it with our humanity and see what happens.

When we finally accept that the things that give us the greatest pleasure are also the things that cause us to destroy ourselves, will we let go of them? If we do, what else will we be free to lose? I have no crystal ball, but I can’t help but feel that we will ultimately become purely technological beings. That is not to say that there won’t be any organic elements to our physiology, but they will be highly engineered technology -- not naturally evolved. I’d be happy to be almost biological if it allowed me to live forever and explore the universe. How about you?

Why the Cover-up?

Since October, methane gas has been spewing into the atmosphere at a rate of 110,000 pounds per hour. This linked article from The Hill was the most authoritative source I could find on the Internet. Where is CNN, MSNBC, Fox, Time, etc? Some have indicated that this is the worst environmental disaster since the BP oil spill. Others would say it is worse.

While some of the oil from the spill could be cleaned up. None of the methane will be recovered. It is 25 times more harmful to our atmosphere than the CO2 we are always talking about. Why are they keeping it quiet? Could it be because they don’t know how to cap the damn thing? People don’t like problems with no solution. What’s the news? More crap got pumped into the atmosphere today?

I suppose that pockets of methane have been released into the atmosphere since we first had one. Without people to capture it, the gas just became part of the environment. This is a bit different. Aliso Canyon is a storage facility. There is more gas there than one might typically find in a single natural reserve.

Between cutting down the Amazon rainforest and pumping more crap into the atmosphere, there seems to a growing question about whether we will be able to continue to breathe what the Earth will have to offer us in the future. Another little-known fact is that the oceans are the primary source of storage for CO2 and greenhouse gases that are pulled from the atmosphere.  There is a growing layer of these gases compressed at the bottom of the oceans. Scientists believe that as the oceans warm, which they will do as the polar icecaps continue to melt, they will not be able to hold that CO2 down there. We could start seeing releases from the oceans on top of what we already pump into the atmosphere ourselves.

Maybe there are some knowledgeable people out there who know that we have already passed the point of no return. Could we clean up our atmosphere if we put all of our knowledge and resources into it? Maybe. It would obviously mean major sacrifices from everyone and a lifestyle makeover that would not be to the better for our ruling class. From an economic standpoint, what is probably necessary to reverse the trend we’re on is a disaster. Entire industries would be abandoned. Other industries would see their funding sources dry up to be diverted to more important things.

We are born selfish and greedy. It is not a good recipe for altruistic behavior. Will some of us on the planet today live to see a time when we will suffer and possibly die for the bad choices we’re making now? I don’t know. It’s like a grand game of musical chairs. We all hope the music doesn’t stop while we’re still in the game, but it always stops eventually and in this game there will be no chairs for anyone.

Ironically, if we are eventually forced to build environmentally contained domes, we will have a much harder time building the infrastructure to get off this rock during the very time we have learned how to live in other hostile environments. Maybe now is the time to start planning our escape? I think so. Other than Elon Musk and few other high tech visionaries, nobody seems to be doing much about it. I guess the money just isn’t there yet.

Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur

I’m a serial entrepreneur. Every one of my prior attempts has been a high-tech endeavor. Despite having varying degrees of success, one thing has become apparent -- the high-tech world is fundamentally unstable. Things change, change causes disruption, and one cannot be expected to respond successfully to disruption every time.

When a good friend approached me and my wife about a business selling soaps, lotions and lip balm, my first reaction was “finally, a non-high-tech business!” The thought that I wouldn’t need to deal with constantly changing technology had tremendous appeal. The fact that we’re selling soap was...meh. I guess I was more excited about what the business wasn’t.

Fast forward -- we’re making soap. We’re learning about different soap formulas. I’m still roughly in the “meh” camp. The thing about good soap is that it takes up to six weeks to properly cure. So, when you make it, you need to wait awhile to see how you did. During that time, I’ve discovered that there are lots of people out there that are very enthusiastic about soap.

I’ve been using Dial and Irish Spring and various other household brands for my entire life. I’ve never thought twice about it. Recently, I learned that this stuff isn’t even really soap. It turns out that soap is made when you mix fat with lye to create a chemical process called “saponification,” which turns the fats into salts. Different types of fats produce different effects. Okay, that’s probably more than you want to know about soapmaking. Here’s the thing, look at the ingredients of Irish Spring:

INGREDIENTS: SOAP (SODIUM TALLOWATE, SODIUM COCOATE AND/OR SODIUM PALM KERNELATE TYPES) WATER, STEARIC ACID (SKIN CONDITIONER) COCONUT AND/OR PALM KERNEL ACD, GLYCERIN (SKIN CONDITIONER), FRAGRANCE, SODIUM CHLORIDE, PEG-12 POLYSORBATE 20,TITANIUM DIOXIDE, TETRASODIUM EDTA, BHT D&C GREEN NO. 8, FD&C GREEN NO. 3.

I had to look up tallowate and kernelate to figure out what’s going on here. Apparently, these are fats that have somehow already been converted to salts. This undoubtedly eliminates the curing, which means faster to market. By the way, tallowate is made from beef fat, so if you use this, your soap is not vegan. Bottom line: this stuff is designed to be quick to make first and foremost.

Back to me. Finally, I got around to using actual soap. Wow! What a difference. If you’ve never used real soap. You will probably be as surprised as me. It actually makes my skin feel better. Now, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has a lot to say about when you can make claims about what a product can do for your body and as an owner I need to be careful about making “claims.” So, this is just me talking about me. Your results may vary.

If you happen to have actually gotten this far into my post today, I’m going to make it a bit easier for you to try out some real soap. Just go to the Ti LeBlanc website and pick yourself out a bar of soap. Type in “friendsshipfree” (without the quotes) into the coupon code box when you check out and...you guessed it!...we won’t charge you for shipping (Sorry, U.S. customers only -- for now). I’d love to hear what you think. We have a Facebook page and as a new company, every customer gets the sort of attention that as a customer, you live for. As a matter of fact, if you’ve got some ideas for a product, let us know. We might just whip you up a batch!

Going Private: The New Going Public

Rarely does one get an opportunity to see the effects of “going public” so starkly. My wife worked for Whole Foods Market (WFM) for 21 years. When she started, the company was still privately held. It was a gem. Employees were given extensive training, had substantial autonomy in performing their jobs, and were held accountable to their results. Using an organizational structure modeled on Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, teamwork was highly valued and encouraged.

Most importantly, quality and stewardship were valued more than profits. That did not stop profits from coming. In fact, Wall Street could not wait to get their hands on those profits. Eventually, they won out. Many early employees who were granted substantial stock options cashed out and left the company. What happened next was a slow decline into corporate ordinary-ness.

I will not bore you with details as you can get those elsewhere. What I can tell you is that Wall Street forces all of “their” companies into a straightjacket that is not good for them, not good for employees, not good for customers, and not good for society. It is designed to be good for investors and thus they are the only ones who ultimately benefit...for awhile.

For certain, pumping more money into a company can help it grow faster. In the early stages of public life, this can be a huge boon. With the pre-public structure that brought them still in place, newfound money means more of a good thing. Unfortunately, companies can’t and shouldn’t grow forever. Eventually, they reach the optimal size. For WFM, it was when they had put stores in all the carefully vetted locations that fit their model.

Wall Street is a hungry beast that is never full. They demand either growth or increased capital efficiency. Once a company gets on this treadmill, it is a matter of time before they must tear down the very edifice which allowed them to go public in the first place. For WFM, it means putting stores in locations that don’t fit their model, thus forcing them to abandon that model which was so successful. For others, it is expanding product lines into unfamiliar areas with stronger competition.

First, the employees start to notice the difference. Empowerment becomes a catchphrase with little substance as “corporate” starts pulling back control from the field. With a return of control to the central authority, there is less need for high caliber employees, so they leave. This creates more mistakes, which encourages the central authorities to pull back even more functions. Of course, this precedes another round of layoffs. Layoffs create badwill (the opposite of goodwill).

As the organization continues to have fewer people with less time to reach out and touch consumers, it becomes an empty brand without its original substance. What large publicly held corporation hasn’t gone this way? Oh sure, they try to put a human face on it. You can put lipstick on a pig, but I wouldn’t want to go to work for it (or kiss it).

The answer, it seems to me, is for publicly traded companies who want to get their soul back to go private. This can be done and it is a win-win-win-win situation. Private equity investors get a better company, consumers get a better company, employees get a better company and Wall Street loses one more victim.

Michael Dell has tried to take Dell Computer private. Before John Mackie retires, he should take Whole Foods Market private. Really, any CEO/major stockholder who really cares about what he/she has built ought to go private. Better yet, don’t go public in the first place.

Music Makes You Smarter

When I was in fifth grade, we had a special class in which we got to go to the band room and “meet” all the different instruments. Something about the trumpet just called to me. Later, I found out that fifth graders play the coronet, a smaller version of the trumpet. We rented one and so began my musical career. I was about eleven years old.

I continued playing the coronet until I got braces a few years later. The mouthpiece cut into my lips, which created a bloody mess (literally and figuratively). I switched to baritone, which is like a mini tuba. I liked playing on the low end. When I was fifteen, I started playing harmonica and when I was sixteen, after a failed attempt at playing guitar, I took up the bass. Years later, I added hand drums to my list of instruments. Each new instrument informed my musical vocabulary.

Interestingly, there is a linguistic connection to music. It turns out that FMRI scans of human brains playing a musical instrument shows the same active areas as speaking (plus a few). Furthermore, since music involves not only intonations, but rhythm, tempo and volume, it stimulates the brain even more. Some studies are starting to suggest that musicians keep their cognitive functions longer than non-musicians as they age.

Listening to music triggers some of the same linguistic centers of the brain, but it also triggers six different emotional centers. Surprise! Music is good for the soul. We all knew this already, but scientists are starting to catch up with us. You know how they like to have an explanation for everything.

I have my own theory about music. I think you can stimulate your brain further by listening to more complex forms like jazz and classical. These forms are not easy to listen to, but if you practice it gets more enjoyable with time and as an added bonus, you get smarter! So, listen to some jazz or classical music. Progressive rock has elements of both jazz and classical for all you rockers. It’s good for your soul, your soles (okay, classical not so much as they tend to like you listening to that sitting down) and your brain.

Polarization: Accident or Plan?

Yesterday, I was reading an article in The Economist and, as is my practice, I read some of the top comments. I really like the comment section in TE because it is one of the few places where liberals and conservatives converge. What I find interesting is that there are three basic voices in the fray:

1. People who identify as conservative
2. People who identify as liberal
3. People who identify with a set of ideas that they believe

I know, I know. You’re going to tell me that the first two groups will see themselves as the same as group #3. I don’t dispute that. However, being that I find myself in group #3, I can tell you that there is a difference. The difference is this: I sometimes find myself agreeing and disagreeing with views in both of the first two groups. I do not buy the doctrine of either group lock, stock and smoking barrel. What seems clear from my TE exploits is that I am in the minority. How can someone who is pro-choice and in favor of a single-payer medical insurance system also be in favor of capital punishment and the right to carry a concealed weapon?

The answer is, I don’t buy in bulk. I buy one idea at a time. I don’t buy planks in a platform. I don’t buy all the views of Bill Kristol or Bill Maher. I don’t just watch Fox and I don’t just watch PBS. Basically, I have a hard time understanding why anyone would abdicate their right to free thought in favor of an entire collection of ideas that have been packaged by someone else.

I have spoken with people on both sides of the political fence and they both think they are smarter and know more than the “other guys.” Conservatives are always complaining that liberals think they are smarter than the conservatives, but conservatives know better. Liberals think they are being objective and that conservative ideas just don’t work and if conservatives were better informed they would understand this.

Reality is much more complex. The simple ideas put forth by both camps are almost always bullshit. Liberals say we’ve got to get rid of guns. We can’t! Conservatives say law abiding citizens should be allowed to carry a weapon. Sounds good until the law abiding citizen’s crazy son shoots up a school. It’s complicated.

Our lives are so filled these days. Many work long hours, sometimes at two jobs, to provide for their families. They try to pack some fun and relaxation in around their jobs and there isn’t a whole lot of time for reading up on the latest issues. Having a nice packaged set of ideas that are ready to serve starts to look like a handy time-saving device. For the same reason that eating only McDonald’s food will eventually kill you, doing either set of packaged ideas would eventually destroy this country.

Maybe...just maybe, our leaders like it the way it is. They know that the issues we face are complicated. They understand that to solve most of them, we need to develop solutions that will be complex, hard to sell to the American people and have something for everyone to hate. It’s a whole lot easier to blame the other side for holding up the show. It’s politically safer to cobble together stupid solutions that are compromises of what both sides want and then when they don’t work well, blame the other side for forcing bad compromises on them.

If you want to be part of the solution, do your homework! Read the arguments on both sides, but also do some scholarly reading on the topic so that you have a less politicized view of the issues in question. Throw out your existing beliefs and form some new ones based on something complex that has a real chance of working. Trust me on this: if the big problems we face in the world today had simple solutions, we would have solved them by now. We’re down to the hard stuff. Polarization = gridlock.

Forget Political Correctness

Courtesy of businessinsider.com

I would like to thank Donald Trump. I think he’s a baffoon, but I like the fact that he doesn’t seem to care about political correctness. When a Caliphaniac (my term for Middle Eastern terrorist) blows themselves up, they are typically told that their families will be cared for. Trump says we should blow up their families. However clever this may sound, it’s all kinds of wrong.

The fact that he doesn’t care who he offends makes Trump a real trailblazer in the public space -- especially for an actual politician (although I use the term loosely). Imagine, if you can, politicians saying whatever they think regardless of who it offends. It would be the end of political correctness as we know it. At the very least, we’d need to rename it. We could call it Wimp’s Correctness or maybe Overly Empathetic Candy Ass Correctness.

For example, as a white guy, I’ve always wondered why I can’t publicly say “hey nigger, what’s up?” Black guys can say it to me, but god help me if I say it back. Last year, I used the word “Oriental” to refer to Asians and my Asian coworkers almost blew a proverbial gasket. Apparently, “the ‘O’ word” is off limits now. They knew what I was talking about so from a communication standpoint, the word worked just fine. Who’s idea was to make it offensive unless you’re referring to rugs?

This all strikes me as a big waste of everyone’s time. How many hours do we spend collectively every day searching for just the right words to say something? Frankly, it’s bullshit -- and that IS the right word. If you can’t look into someone’s heart and determine whether they’re being malicious or not, go take some empathy lessons - you’re probably an asshole anyway, so you need them.

I cringe every time I see some parent teaching their little ones political correctness. It usually goes something like this:

Child: “Mommy look at that fat man! He’s huge.

Mommy: “Sweetie, it’s not nice to point and he’s not fat, he’s massively challenged.”

Child: “What’s ‘massively challenged’?”

Mommy: “Never mind. Just don’t call people fat.”

Child: “That’s dumb.”

Mommy: “You mean intellectually suboptimal.”

We take simple descriptions like fat, ugly, dumb asshole and change them to obese, cosmetically, intellectually, and attitudinally challenged individual. Just the cost in hard drive space to store all this crap is unfathomable.

As much as a president Trump might get us all killed, he might also shake off a few bad habits. Maybe if we got a few more things out in the open with some straight talk, we could start to heal some of the unspoken (or jibbered up) wounds. I dare to dream!

Corporatocracy's Icy Grip

Why did we go to war in Iraq when we were attacked by the Taliban out of Afghanistan? Why are we stripping the Amazon rainforest when we know it is the lungs of the world and the source of immense biodiversity (some of which may hold the cure for various diseases)? Some individual or group is making these decisions and their reasons are not very transparent.

We get our information about these decisions from the mainstream media. We assume that the media is free and independent. However, mainstream media is now generally owned by some of the largest corporations in the world. So, the media are corporations. As such, they have the typical self-interests of any corporation. In order to satisfy those self-interests, they need support from the government.

Further, the government is largely made up of the most successful individuals from the corporate world. I’m not talking about politicians (although some of them are from corporations), rather the policy makers. They’re the ones that write the scripts for the politicians. They’re the ones who provide the options and recommendations from which the politicians choose. They pull the strings. They are almost exclusively from corporations. Go ahead, look it up -- I’ll wait…

Okay, so now you know that government and corporations are essentially one big entity. Author John Perkins calls this the “corporatocracy.” The term lays bare the most important fact about our global society. It is run by these people. They have self-interests. Those self-interests do not usually align with those of “we, the people” (or the 99% as some would call us).

What we know is that we have enough food to end starvation. We have enough drug making capacity to end the diseases that kill the vast majority of children and women who die daily. We have the technology to end the use of fossil fuels in the next 10 or 20 years. There is so much we could do to make this a better place to live, but we don’t. Why?

The answer almost always comes down to one factor - economics. The financial factors are not controlled by “we, the people.” They are controlled by the corporatocracy. They are the “they” which we often talk about when we discuss the things out of our control. What reason could “they” have for not solving the world’s major problems if the solutions are within reach?

We can choose to believe when “they” tell us “it’s complicated,” there must be good reasons why they don’t do these things for us. What if the truth is simply greed? How would we know? Is it fair to assume that someone who has climbed -- no -- scratched and clawed their way to the top of the corporatocracy’s food chain has self-interest deep in their heart? I think so. Surrounded by like-minded people, it is not hard to imagine what sort of decisions they make.

Take a look at the world in which we live. It’s not hard at all to imagine. The evidence of their decisions is all around us. Can we take back control? Maybe, but first we will need widespread awareness. Spread the word. The corporatacracy does not have our best interests in their hearts. We need to control the conversation with posts like this one.