Category Archives: Economy

The Times – They are A-Changin’

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Mariner found the article below in an old Time magazine. Currently, scientists anticipate 20 billion living humans by the end of the century. If they all live forever and each couple continues having two children, what a fine thing that will be???

Is an Anti-Aging Pill on the Horizon?

By Alexandra Sifferlin

“NAD+ is the closest we’ve gotten to a fountain of youth,” says David Sinclair, co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. “It’s one of the most important molecules for life to exist, and without it, you’re dead in 30 seconds.”

NAD+ is a molecule found in all living cells and is critical for regulating cellular aging and maintaining proper function of the whole body. Levels of NAD+ in people and animals diminish significantly over time, and researchers have found that re-upping NAD+ in older mice causes them to look and act younger, as well as live longer than expected. In a March 2017 study published in the journal Science, Sinclair and his colleagues put drops of a compound known to raise levels of NAD+ into the water for a group of mice.

Within a couple hours, the NAD+ levels in the mice had risen significantly. In about a week, signs of aging in the tissue and muscles of the older mice reversed to the point that researchers could no longer tell the difference between the tissues of a 2-year-old mouse and those of a 4-month-old one.

Now scientists are trying to achieve similar results in humans…[1]

– – – –

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said, “Change is the only constant in life.” Indeed so as we enter what looks like it will be civilization’s most disruptive century since the Black Plague. Consider this list:

Climate change – coastal cities around the world will be flooded; much of the temperate zone will become tropical; ocean life will dwindle to a serious degree; penguins and polar bears will be homeless and hungry; environmental stresses will interfere with war; the travesty of climate destruction will test the strongest economies.

Artificial Intelligence – already reducing major job markets and soon will displace many lawyers, family care physicians, financial advisors, mortgage brokers and everyone who performs data entry tasks; public transportation including trains, planes, cars and 18-wheelers will drive themselves (this likely may require making human drivers illegal); AI will interfere with cultural policies about race and religious segregation – simply because identity politics won’t be affordable.

Banking and Finance – Artificial intelligence also will affect the way we relate to income and assets; economies will be influenced by increasingly socialist solutions to solve problems too large and diverse to be addressed by individual national economies or corporations; individual families may not own much directly but will participate in largescale consortiums (think something like Amazon.Com); salaries will be separated from most jobs and distributed directly to citizens. [Yes, this may sound blasphemous to fiscal conservatives but mariner draws this opinion from existing evidence that banks, corporations and governments are thinking about how to manage a future where everyone around the world has instant contact with everyone else and personal assets are managed electronically; ways to bundle housing, payroll, transportation and accessories as a single package; ways to bundle services like health care and education.]

Mariner is concerned that we may simply turn over to others our privacy, independent choices in our lives, even our choice of taste in clothing and other daily interests. Both the book 1984 and the movie Matrix loom as literary shadows if we do not move into this century level-headed and wisely.[2]

Ancient Mariner

 

[1] http://time.com/5159879/is-an-anti-aging-pill-on-the-horizon/

[2] For someone who has given the immediate future great thought, buy the book, We’re doomed, Now what?: Essays on war and Climate Change. by Roy Scranton.

Is there any Room for Capitalism?

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If cancer could grow as large as it desired without harm or imposition to other living organisms, one hardly would notice its highly consumptive nature. Alas, one’s body needs all its space and functions for other purposes. Cancer can’t have free run of the body.

Regarding consumptiveness, capitalism is a lot like cancer. From its inception the American experiment has let capitalism grow at will; for many generations capitalism wasn’t bothering anyone or any systemic functions of economy. In fact, capitalism is what brought the United States to the top of the international arena. But no one noticed how consumptive capitalism was.

It was unbelievably good fortune that Europeans landed on the shores of a virgin continent. There was enough room to spread out to the point that many early colonies had their own flavor of Christianity and variety of government. Entrepreneurs could consume endless virgin forests, endless water, abundant minerals were harbored in the continent’s soil and rock. Blessed by a favorable temperate climate, agriculture had no bounds. Wildlife from shellfish to grizzly bears were more than plentiful. Even before the eastern continent was full, the US acquired the Louisiana Purchase, Texas, the Gadsden Purchase, territory from the Mexican and Spanish cessions, and cut a deal with Britain for the Northwest. The entire Forty-Eight were in place – with no industry, a few native indians, no Europeans, nothing but space, nature’s riches and an ethos based on freedom of everything, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 200 years after the first settlers, land still was in such abundance the government had programs to give away land to those who would claim it.

It would take an unleashed capitalist economy to leverage the virgin riches of the continent. With good timing the Industrial Revolution came along with steam and oil and trains, planes, automobiles, and highways. Consumption of America was feverish and overwhelming compared to normal circumstances in the rest of the world. Even continuous war every few years with other nations would not make a dent in growing GDP. No one noticed the greed and hoarding – necessary side effects of capitalism.

But then, suddenly, the continent was full. 350 million people; no extra land; overcut forests; polluted streams and rivers; overfished lakes and oceans. Still, capitalism raged on with its consumptive behavior funneling more and more resources to the wealthiest capitalists to sustain profits.

Today, the greedy aspects of capitalism are noticed. Corporations merge with corporations just to sustain record profits. But a strange thing happened in the 1980’s: profit was no longer driven by production and labor. Instead, wealth invested in other wealth by using the stock market and a plethora of profit-taking maneuvers engineered by the banking industry and US Federal and state governments. Consumption is so important to capitalism that the United States can no longer afford high concepts like freedom, life, liberty and happiness – they are too expensive because unlimited resources no longer exist. As fewer and fewer resources are available, capitalism is a victim of its own strength: expansion. Profit and assets must continue even without resources. All that is left is the assets of the public. Fringe benefits and salaries suffer; human dignity is unaffordable. Oligarchy and kleptocracy emerge as the pressure mounts to sustain capitalism.

Pure economies of government, capitalism, communism, socialism, and all the derivatives, are not healthy. Left to perform unopposed, any single form of economy will run amok. Any effort at modifying American capitalism will take years of pain in the public sector but they must prevail if a new American ethos is to emerge that will focus on freedom, life, liberty and happiness.

For the next decade or two, capitalism will find profits in computerization. More important to the public sector is that they will be part of the solution. Else, as in the previous post, change will be devastating.

Ancient Mariner

 

What REAL Change is

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The world map might look differently had the Greek volcano Thera not erupted 3,500 years ago (1645 BC) in what geologists believe was the single-most powerful explosive event ever witnessed. Thera dwarfed the atomic bomb. Thera didn’t just blow a massive hole into the island of Santorini – it set the entire ancient Mediterranean onto a different course in history. The legend of Atlantis and the story of the Biblical plagues and subsequent exodus from Egypt also have been connected to the epic catastrophe.

Minoan culture, the dominant civilization in the Mediterranean at the time, crumbled as a result of the eruption, changing the political landscape of the ancient world indefinitely. Environmental effects were felt across the globe, as far away as China and perhaps even North America and Antarctica.

There are no first-person accounts of what happened that day, but scientists can compare it to the detailed records available from the famous eruption of Krakatoa, Indonesia, in 1883. Krakatoa killed upwards of 40,000 people in just a few hours, produced colossal tsunamis 40 feet tall, spewed volcanic ash across Asia, and caused a drop in global temperatures and created strangely colored sunsets for three years. The blast was heard 3,000 miles away.

Thera’s eruption was four or five times more powerful than Krakatoa, exploding with the energy of several hundred atomic bombs in a fraction of a second.

An absence of human remains and valuables like metal suggest that the Minoan residents of Santorini predicted the eruption and the island had been evacuated, but the culture as a whole did not fare as well. The powerful Minoan civilization declined suddenly soon after Thera blew its top. Tsunamis spawned by the eruption would have swamped its naval fleet and coastal villages. A drop in temperatures caused by the massive amounts of Sulphur dioxide spouted into the atmosphere led to several years of cold, wet summers in the region, ruining harvests. The lethal combination overran every mighty Minoan stronghold in less than 50 years.

– – – –

The Black Death, also known as the Great Plague, the Black Plague, or the Plague, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 200 million people in Eurasia and peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. The bacterium Yersinia pestis, which results in several forms of plague, is believed to have been the cause. The plague created a series of religious, social and economic upheavals, which had profound effects on the course of European history.

– – – –

The Earth’s climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives. A change in orbit is expected relatively soon.

The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions released into the atmosphere. Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with the five warmest years on record taking place since 2010. Not only was 2016 the warmest year on record, but eight of the 12 months that make up the year — from January through September, with the exception of June — were the warmest on record for those respective months.

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost an average of 281 billion tons of ice each year between 1993 and 2016, while Antarctica lost about 119 billion tons during the same time period. The rate of Antarctica ice mass loss has tripled in the last decade.

Is our twenty-first century civilization facing another REAL change?

Mariner will not speculate on the changes to civilization overall, which will be dramatic, but some effects already have been determined by scientists:

By 2100 worldwide shortages in potable water will be severe.

By 2100 every major coastal city in the world will be flooded.

By 2100 every major agricultural belt will be severely diminished. For example, the average temperature across the US wheat belt will average 104° with no let up during winter.

Take note that these changes are worldwide. How will civilization change? How will concepts like nations and economy and civil liberty change?

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Cultural salve

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An opening allegory: A fine house is built in 1952. Not ostentatious but finely built with a pleasing layout. A family buys the house newly built. They live there until the parents retire and sell it. It is bought by a middle aged couple who turn the second floor into a separate apartment to lease. They retire eventually and sell the house to a real estate person who converts the house to a four-plex. Finally in 2018 the house is condemned.

What happened to this house is common. Two conditions contributed to the demise of this house: the neighborhood slowly changed and the house was used as a source of maximized profit. Neither of these conditions felt it necessary to invest in the wellbeing of the house. No one championed the architectural ethos, the vibrancy of sustaining a solid, appreciated structure. If at the point of condemnation one were to purchase the house for one dollar with an agreement to full restoration, the expense would be exorbitant. The neighborhood as well would need to be changing to a better situation otherwise bulldozing the house would be the only rational decision.

This allegory represents the house of the United States of America since 1952.

Let us assume the electorate will reclaim the US for one dollar and start restoration. There is the same risk in asking the electorate to fix things as a restoration investor has that a profit may be possible – a long shot in either case. Democracy, with all its voting and representation machinations, is not a good approach for this situation. In 2016 some of the electorate were hasty in their judgment and purchased the wrong tool. Without using the power of the vote, what can an individual citizen do?

Similar to a serious burn on the skin, we apply a healing salve. There is no way to remove the skin and do without; we need the skin to heal while we continue to depend on the skin. Unfortunately, salves are not remarkable. The skin must be left in place to heal on its own terms – with the help of the salve.

The salve for our situation as citizens of a burned government is to apply compassion. Compassion, especially for the eager citizen, is not rewarding. But that is the whole point: gratifying ourselves to maximize personal ‘profit’ is what brought us here. In other words, ignoring our house since 1952 has occurred because we did not use compassion to sustain the ethos of our nation.

Continuing with the salve theme, our skin grows dry and flaky and even splits painfully at times. We can’t, for example, lease our feet or move out of our feet – we must seek curative methods. If the electorate does not apply compassion, our nation will continue to flake and split. Without compassion in our daily lives, derision has become commonplace; prejudice is unparalleled between common citizens; class discrimination has become deliberately destructive; most significantly, those who continue to seek maximized profit will lead the nation to be condemned – leaving room for a new international solution to take its place in the world neighborhood.

Most folks don’t like to use compassion habitually. It is easier to scratch the itch of prejudice than to deliberately allow another human to have the primary need, to seek comfort for them in their life rather than seek comfort for one’s self.

Using compassion allows citizens to begin at the foundation, to replace brick by brick the substructure of a growing society, a maturing culture. The nation – a very complex entity – will wobble and waffle its way through our current dysfunction. Without compassion, however, the electorate risks condemnation.

Ancient Mariner

 

Soul Mates

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Mariner has discovered a soul mate. He is an ex-computer person that has switched to social psychology and philosophy and now writes books about the abuses that we put upon ourselves in the name of modern communication technology. His name is Jaron Lanier. He has written a book: Ten arguments for Deleting Social Media Accounts Right Now. He has an interview on CSPAN that is enlightening[1]. Mariner must warn you that his sartorial splendor leaves much to be desired but his mind is clearly focused. No one that mariner has read has delved into the disruptive consequences of social media as Jaron has.

Jaron starts his presentation by reminding everyone of the science of behaviorism; he cites B.F. Skinner, the major personality of behaviorism. Stated as briefly as mariner can, behaviorism is a person’s response to feedback, that is, if it is rewarding, people tend to return and do it again; if it is negative, people tend not to do it again. Skinner proved in his experiments with animals that manipulating reward or negativity will modify behavior in a predictable way.

Jaron suggests that the Internet and the data manipulators using the Internet have created a negative loop in the communication cycle. This is because negative behavior is more reactive and, importantly, expands in the loop much faster than positive behavior. We can reference this phenomenon ourselves with the racist and Russian impact on the Internet. The negativity flows rapidly and expands until no one can tell the difference between truth and falsehood. Another example is Donald’s constant reference to fake news; the negativity spreads quickly, outrunning positive behavior that requires confirmation. The end result is no information can be trusted.

Jaron warns us that while only five or ten percent of the user group will adopt negative information that is enough to disrupt politics, society norms, and stable platforms for unity and ethical values. To wit: the 2016 Presidential campaign where Donald held forth with negative values thereby overwhelming informative dialogue offered by other candidates.

Listed briefly below are the ten arguments for deleting your social media account[2]. Exploring each one is a whole post. Mariner suggests the reader buy the book or watch the C-SPAN video.

1.You are losing your free will.

2.Quitting social media is the most finely targeted way to resist the insanity of our times.

3.Social media is making you into an a**hole.

4.Social media is undermining truth.

5.Social media is making what you say meaningless.

6.Social media is destroying your capacity for empathy.

7.Social media is making you unhappy.

8.Social media doesn’t want you to have economic dignity.

9.Social media is making politics impossible.

10.Social media hates your soul.

Ancient Mariner

 

[1] See: https://www.c-span.org/video/?447079-2/ten-arguments-deleting-social-media-accounts-now

[2] Courtesy of Christine Pennylegion at https://inthisordinarytime.wordpress.com/2018/07/02/jaron-laniers-ten-reasons/

Climate Change – Too Slow to Worry About

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Actually, the title is inaccurate in that it suggests there is nothing to worry about. On the other hand, just because it is too slow to cause concern as if it were a tornado approaching, doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

The current Atlantic website and magazine has an article presenting the latest findings of scientists who have new tools and insights into climate change[1]. It turns out that in Earth’s history, about 60 million years ago when mammals began to emerge, the atmosphere held 400 ppm (parts per million) of CO2 – the same amount we have in the atmosphere today. The last time CO2 was at 400 ppm (as it is today) was 3 million years ago during the Pliocene epoch, when sea levels were perhaps 80 feet higher than today. Scientists predict the sea level will catch up to the effects of CO2 around the end of the century – which may or may not reach 80 feet[2]. Mariner suggests a homework assignment: using Google Earth, determine how many major cities around the world have an altitude less than 80 feet above our current sea level (The entire shoreline of Florida including the Keys qualifies).

There is more science and environmental change in store, like palm trees in Scandinavia, and an increase in methane from very large swamps covering thousands of square miles. Methane is the chemical that slowly accelerates sea level rise. Mean temperatures in places like the Mediterranean and St. Louis will hover around the 104° mark and have no winter.

This climate future largely is out of our hands. The damage has been done and the results will play out. Interestingly, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wants to hold CO2 to 1,000 ppm – only 600 ppm more than what we have today. What’s an 80 foot sea rise when it may be possible to wipe out mammalian existence in a few hundred years?

Mariner often hears a common retort: “Well, we won’t be around then.” This response, besides pretending to be an ostrich with its head in the sand, is part of the fact that climate change is so very slow. Yet, the end of the century is just 82 years away. One’s grandchild still may be around to endure the slow, slow inevitable impact on world economy, health and survivability near ocean waters.

Given the current US political position on climate change (fake science – no, undesired science), younger voters will have more than racism and greed to worry about at election time.

Ancient Mariner

 

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/earths-scorching-hot-history/566762/

[2] There are so many variables, from the planet’s point of view, that it is difficult to predict actual sea level rise. What worries scientists is current annual sea level rise is increasing geometrically; small amounts now but increasing dramatically over time.

Narcissism versus the North American Union

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This past Sunday Fareed Zakaria opened the subject of the tiff between Mexico and ‘the wall’. Fareed also could have had a discussion with Canada on the same subject of US contraction and isolationism battled via trade negotiations. The situation with Donald’s recipe of self-aggrandizement, racism and kleptocracy is one that interferes with a marketing/cultural dream that has been around for a long, long time. The integration of Mexico, the US and Canada is one of two current international concepts that can compete with emerging China internationalism. The other concept is TPP which seems to be passing by unrequited. To keep the post short, mariner quotes Wikipedia:

“The North American Union (NAU) is a theoretical economic and political continental union of Canada, Mexico, and the United States of America. The concept is loosely based on the European Union, occasionally including a common currency called the Amero or the North American Dollar. A union of the North American continent, sometimes extending to Central and South America, has been the subject of academic concepts for over a century, as well as becoming a common trope in science fiction. One reason for the difficulty in realizing the concept is that individual developments in each region have failed to prioritize a larger union.”

That last sentence is blatantly true under Donald’s administration. NAFTA, given its minimal impact in the labor market (unions would disagree – a good example of failing to see the value of an international union), was a first step toward the NAU. The electorate has failed to grasp the enormity of uniting the economic power of the first, tenth and twelfth largest economies in the world. Today such a consortium represents a gross domestic product of $22,192,248 million million ($MM) compared to China’s $12,014,610 ($MM).

Today’s circumstances, where the US is slipping and China is getting its act together, provide a new urgency for pursuing NAU. With unusual certainty, thoughts about internationalism will not exist under the present narcissist kleptocracy.

Obviously there is comparison with the European Union (EU). However, the EU was formed to avoid failure of economies in member nations. Further, the EU made the mistake of not making the Euro its only currency. In the case of NAU, economic integration likely would be more universal. As China grows economically, their relation with other nations follows the EU model, allowing local currency and independent oversight of local economic policy. The NAU represents the idea of a combined economic policy that oversees all members’ policies and a single currency – a stronger economic model.

Tangentially, NAU would be large enough and politically influential enough to compete with what today is runaway corporatism. Corporations gain their advantage by playing in the cracks between the economies of different nations and cultures that are not easily unified financially.

Frankly, mariner’s opinion is that the US is so screwed and dysfunctional that attempts at managing its future remain a fantasy.

Ancient Mariner

Changing Signs

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Back in the early 60’s, there was a British comedy show called Beyond the Fringe. Eventually it toured in Baltimore where mariner and his wife saw the show. It remains one of the best comedy experiences of our lives. The entire show is online at https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=beyond+the+fringe+1964&view=detail&mid=2391A28FEE931C54B1142391A28FEE931C54B114&FORM=VIRE

Mariner often recalls many of the short bits in the show. One of his favorites is changing road signs around to confuse German troops should they invade Great Britain (it is at 53 minutes on the video). Two men are standing beneath a sign with arrows showing the directions to three towns. The dialogue: “Let’s put Lyme Regis where Great Yarmouth was, Great Yarmouth where Ipswitch was and Ipswitch where Lyme Regis was. . . Here, how do we get home?”

Mariner does not expect the humor to carry after such an elaborate explanation but it speaks perfectly to today’s situation in US politics and culture. Some pieces of news that show we are changing signs:

NPR interviewed an individual in West Virginia of all places who said quite seriously and without malice that we should eliminate the Senate. (Mariner mentioned a few posts ago that the electorate may face conflict leading to a Constitutional convention)

The Republican Party ended Reaganomics by putting the US into the deepest debt in modern US history.

Donald is seeing to it that recent Democratic Party accomplishments (should mariner say recent Obama accomplishments?) are trashed whenever possible. Donald also has put the US at risk by denying climate change and disrupting international relations politically, militarily and economically. Further, the momentum that carries the US as a global leader is diminished by Donald’s immaturity and simplemindedness.

As the Democratic Party ramps up for the coming elections, a platform plank advocates eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) added 43,000 new members in 2018. It seems millennials aren’t afraid of the ‘S’ word.

Culturally, we are changing signs as well. Women in particular have pushed their agenda into public awareness for everything from abusive sexism to equal pay for every job. What lies ahead, especially with a different Supreme Court, are heated battles over Roe v Wade, voting suppression, gun laws, gerrymandering, privacy and security, single payer health care, and significant reworking of all Federal discretionary programs especially in education, Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. Last but definitely not least is the role of religion(s) in a state-run culture.

Here, how do we get home?

Ancient Mariner

 

UBI

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No sooner had mariner posted the last post about a new stratum, within minutes his wife handed him an article in the latest New Yorker magazine about universal base income (UBI)[1]. UBI is a concept where everyone, working or not, wealthy or not, young or old, socially accepted or not, receives the same base income from the government. Typically, it isn’t a lot of income; maybe enough to not starve.

The concept has been tested in small experiments in several countries. The testing arises from a concern that receiving a guaranteed freebie from the government may affect how or whether an individual will participate in the workforce and whether the stipend will affect employment regulations. By and large, it doesn’t alter the lifestyle of the individuals; they continue to participate in society as they did before receiving the stipend. In harshly deprived economies like many in Africa, UBI has worked well because it puts cash into a nonexistent economy; people react by using the stipend in responsible ways in order to escape abject poverty as much as possible.

Inadvertently, the United States has practiced UBI in a few labor markets. For most of the twentieth century school teachers were grossly underpaid because teaching, a female occupation, was considered a second income to the husband’s income. The teacher’s salary, in context, was treated like a universal base income outside the real source of income for a family.

Today, especially in small businesses or in larger service industries like convenience stores, the practice of requiring an employee to work only 38 hours to avoid benefits and fulltime labor regulations is the same rationale as UBI but for business profit instead of personal wellbeing; the business owner will claim that it is expected that a part time employee has other sources of income. These two examples suggest the reduced income was considered a stipend on the side rather than a fair, competitive salary.

However, in a government-distributed UBI, labor market income does not affect the stipend – or does it? Will labor class jobs slowly fall behind in salary because the government in effect is helping to pay the employee?

UBI relates to the last post about meritocracy; the New Yorker article uses the term as well. Meritocracy will mean every individual has the right to receive a stipend regardless of class, race, etc.

In several past posts, mariner has said that the true issue is not stipends; it is the definition of the word ‘job’. Pinning words similar to ‘equality’ and ‘justice’ to a universal dole is a false gesture insofar as human dignity is concerned; feeling justified in being a human takes more than a few dollars. With UBI will certain citizens continue to say, “They ought to get off their butt and get a job”?

REFERENCE SECTION

Mariner must share with readers a fascinating quote he discovered. He was reading a book review by Ron Elving of Dan Kaufman’s book, The Fall of Wisconsin. In his final chapter, Kaufman returns to the quotation that begins his book. It is from Edward G. Ryan, who was Wisconsin’s chief justice in 1873 and foresaw the protracted struggle of the next century and a half with striking clarity.

“The question will arise … Which shall rule: wealth or man? Which shall lead, money or intellect? Who shall fill public stations, educated and patriotic freemen or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?”

1873!! And still we haven’t straightened it out. A wonderfully articulate and insightful statement.

Ancient Mariner

[1] “Take the Money and Run,” The New Yorker July 2018, by Nathan Heller.

A Top Down Look

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Regular readers know that for several weeks mariner has been in spiritual sequestration. He deliberately retreated from any news source and ceased reading and searching for the latest tragedy, nonsense, and threats. Retreats of this nature are beneficial. We are familiar with the idea of a vacation, today’s version of a retreat, taken by a family or individual retreating to a holy shrine like Disney World, a spa, or a cruise somewhere. Some people have hobbies that provide sanctuary; for example, climbing mountain faces without rope; surely that releases any other thoughts in one’s mind. The underlying premise is an attempt to clarify mind and spirit and to erase callousness that blocks sensitivity and perspective.

Mariner knows with certainty that his thought processes are top down, bottom up – a 1980’s pop psychology term. The term implies that one must first have a grasp of broad generalities from which values can be taken; these values are validated or rejected by collecting detail relevant to the general values. This is a lot of jargon to express the term we all use: intuition. What forced mariner’s retreat is that his intuition, his top down bottom up analysis had become broken. Yes, blame it on Donald, the purveyor of distorted reality.

Fresh from respite, mariner’s three alter egos are ready to take on reality. Mariner must warn readers that at this moment in time it’s like opening the front door and finding molten lava at your doorstep. Calling on Guru to provide a fresh perspective, Guru states that Donald, as destructive as he is to the American ethos, is not where the greatest danger lies. There are two major players that threaten in the most absolute terms the future of the US in particular and the whole world in general.

The first major player is the US Government. Over many decades the legislative and regulatory responsibilities of legislators and government officials have weakened continuously to the point that responsibility for the public good is disregarded. Both Federal and state governments are dysfunctional and largely irrelevant to the electorate. The fact that an irrational, authoritarian President can literally tear at the flesh of American democracy shows more weakness in government than strength behind the antics of an 8-year old narcissist.

The remaining major player is corporatism. Government’s lax sense of responsibility for the public good has given corporations a liberty to do what they will to manipulate or eradicate not only procedures and interpretations of law but to usurp the independent ethos of a nation that once led the world in governmental righteousness. In an age where Internet and cloud technology create international opportunities, it is difficult for any single nation to control commerce. Corporations have become Pandora; putting corporations back where they belong in the human order of things will be difficult.

– Corporatism

We shall examine corporatism first because the danger to normal human participation in the future hangs in the balance. Further, the abuses of corporatism will provide perspective on the failure of government and the loss of democracy that is critical to sustain human control of ethos.

A quick metaphor is helpful: The Dark Ages. History skips over the Dark Ages largely because nothing happened for 525 years. It was a time of warrior kings, dukes, lords, and other titles associated with military prowess. Common people did not participate in the economy; they did not participate in organized society; they did not have the right to vote, ownership of any kind, and no due process because there were no courts of law. Life as a commoner in the Dark Ages was not much better than today’s forgotten hoard of homeless and starving Africans.

Now substitute today’s players: Corporations are warrior kings. Economy is run by corporations. Organized society quickly is becoming a rich man’s game; today who your parents are is many times more important than your vote; a Dark Age commoner class is emerging. Voting is close to being irrelevant, ergo no right to vote that counts. With great assistance from data mining corporations, an individual citizen will have possessions only on paper; the bank will tell you what they think you can afford and perhaps what neighborhood you can live in and will not make it easy for an individual to seek alternatives, merchandizing corporations will offer goods and prices that are not driven by public supply and demand but according to the corporate license to tell commoners what they can or can’t purchase from homes to socks. The primary tools in this dehumanizing process are, mariner is sorry to say, the smartphone and social media. Finally, what takes the place of government and justice is the warrior king’s court; Donald would feel at home with such a court.

Overall, especially with artificial intelligence on the horizon, the loss of decision power at the level of the common citizen is at great risk. Computers smarter and more knowledgeable than humans will greatly influence if not control economy, culture, equality and justice. At the moment, there is no human control over this evolution except for the very few tech corporations who own the computers. Are these the new warrior kings?

– Government

Evaluating government is difficult. At the moment, in principle at least, the US government functions as a democracy. People, however wise, foolish, prejudiced or enlightened, own the government by virtue of those they elect to put in charge of the government. This arrangement, a sort of controlled populism, is quickly vanishing. Today’s headlines speak to the common causes that induce collapse (all a reflection of growing corporatism): lobbyists, money, elitism, distorted tools of democracy such as gerrymandering, voter restrictions and imbalanced voter processes, and on an on – pick your headline. The caveat is, do not let Donald interfere with legitimate evaluation of our democratic government; Donald is as irritating and as destructive as the plague of Japanese Beetles that destroyed whole trees and gardens last year. Today, there are a few but the plague is gone. What is important is to restore the trees and gardens.

It is mariner’s opinion that the democratic process elects representatives that are a lot like us, have the same attitudes and prejudices. The issue with this is that the result is the blind leading the blind. No elected official in our government understands one iota of the impact, ethics or authoritative imbalance of modern communication technology. Lack of regulation allowed Facebook to help the Russians; massive mergers of communication corporations reveal to the world every last bit of information about an individual – the foundation of freedom for corporatism. It used to be that a city could determine how many people were in the city by measuring water usage from toilets and showers. Today, a corporation knows you’re using the toilet because you stopped pecking the smartphone – at least most of us stop.

The most important cure is a full vote of the citizenry – not 47%. Next in importance is to elect representatives who appear above the typical gut issue lamentations of political campaigning. It was a tough election for mariner when he was told in his primary that he could not vote for Maryland’s Martin O’Malley even though the Governor was on the ballot. O’Malley already had demonstrated success as Maryland’s Governor and was a person of discretion. Instead mariner had Donald . . .

Ancient Mariner