Cracked

Greetings good citizen,

Probably just the effects of being unemployed for two years but it seems I can’t look at anything these days without applying the basic principles of A Simple Plan.

The latest to rise to the test is this long overwrought issue:

A Titan’s How-To on Breaking the Glass Ceiling
By JODI KANTOR

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, is attempting to start a national discussion for women in the workplace with her new book, and a social movement.

How does ASP apply here?

IS (as the capitalists claim) the ‘problem’ with the world’s management team the fact that there aren’t enough women at the top…

Or is it a lack of qualifications, (which seems to me to be the more obvious problem…)

Which is to point out that under A Simple Plan, the most qualified and only the most qualified, regardless of gender, will be promoted to tackle the planet’s top jobs.

(Um, the ‘goal’ of A Simple Plan is to achieve global dominance…fairly quickly.)

Regardless of how they are fixed personally, the world’s top people won’t view the world through their personal plumbing!

Which generally appears to be the source of this ‘gender diversion’.

So let’s make a big deal about the ‘number’ of women in boardrooms and PRETEND that this is the reason the global economy is scroomed!

But lets look at a different piece of the puzzle:

Neighbors Kill Neighbors in Kenya as Election Tensions Stir Age-Old Grievances
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

In less than two weeks, Kenyans will line up by the millions to pick their leaders for the first time since a disastrous vote in 2007, which set off clashes that killed more than 1,000 people.

Um, you know I’m down on elected office in the first place and under A Simple Plan there wouldn’t be any.

How else will we ‘get over’ the human tendency to hold grudges if we don’t select our leaders through comprehensive competency testing?

While the test can’t erase an individual’s color, gender or the, er, ‘supreme being’ he/she believes in, it does ‘eliminate’ the most critical factor, incompetence.

So it is that these people are being given the ‘illusion of participation’ and killing one another over what must be some pretty foul choices.

How sad is it that we aren’t too far from succumbing to the exact same set of circumstances.

Perhaps that’s the hell of it good citizen. Elections merely exemplify our powerlessness to control our situation, especially when the only options are BAD and WORSE.

IF we are to have ANY hope of correcting what’s wrong in our society we first need to get the BEST POSSIBLE Candidates a shot at the job then have the candidates PROVE they are the ones who can get the job done!

HOW do we find ‘the best people’?

The Tests start when you join the workforce and lead to the top job…so EVERYBODY has a chance of becoming King of the Heap!

Every year you step up or move aside, depends on what’s inside you (and how far you’re comfortable with going. Fully 90% of all candidates want no part of the ‘top job’ regardless of the ‘perqs’.

And admittedly, most people want no part of the responsibility that comes with the turf.

Ironically, people who do well in the tests also thrive on the challenges the tests present.
But that’s neither here nor there…but it does raise the ‘better than you’ issue that somewhat haunts our current broken society.

Which is something the tests will be designed to screen out. If power gives you a fat head then you aren’t going to be seeing very much of it.

My but I’ve had a ‘full day’, sorry for the tardy but it is what it is…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Burn

Greetings good citizen,

While some of you are appalled that the problems of the world CAN’T be solved with a spoonful of sugar. Let me offer the comforting thought that I designed the plan more so with an eye towards what most of you WOULDN’T like done to you rather than the conservo-whacko way which is we’ll do this, this and this…but ONLY to BAD PEOPLE.

Weirdly, everybody can get behind castrating a hypothetical stranger…but it’s not such a good idea anymore when you find YOURSELF on the receiving end of the bargain.

This is why A Simple Plan was designed to be ‘HUMANE’. We don’t ‘execute’, er, those who refuse to live by some pretty basic rules. We merely strip them of their right to live among us.

Not that playing ‘defense’ has helped. You either support the plan (which is holistic, it’s ALL or NOTHING) or you don’t.

If you take nothing away from this web page take that. You can’t ‘cherry-pick’ A Simple Plan and get anything even approaching the correct/workable results.

(And if you want the creator here to guide its implementation, you all had better shake a leg ‘cuz I haven’t got a lot of time left.)

Not much of a sales pitch but it is the truth.

Readership would rapidly dwindle to zero if all I did here was pitch A Simple Plan, I’ve taxed your patience enough.

today’s offering tackles the issue of the ‘dehumanizing’ nature of capitalist society.

The human body, with its need for rest, nutrition and hydration, is such an inefficient tool for capitalist production. But while machines are unlikely to replace human workers anytime soon, new technologies can deftly strip workers of their humanity!

The Irish Independent reports that grocery giant TESCO has strapped electronic armbands to their warehouse workers to measure their productivity, tracking their actions so closely that management knows when they briefly pause to drink from a water fountain or take a bathroom break. These unforgivable lapses in productivity impact workers' performance score, which management then apparently uses to terrify them into working faster.

"The devices give a set amount of time for a task, such as 20 minutes to load packets of soft drinks. If they did it in 20 minutes, they would get 100pc, but would get 200pc if they were twice as fast," writes the Independent. Although TESCO denied that bathroom breaks impact productivity scores, one former staffer the Independent spoke with said he got a "surprisingly lower" score when he took a bathroom break.

"Sometimes, management would call staff to an office and tell them they had to do better if their scores were low."

"I had really easy assignments and when I'd come back after a break, I would get a horrendous score and wonder why," he said.

The rational mind screams ‘how did we come to this?’ While the capitalist sees nothing wrong with ‘squeezing as much value’ as he/she can out of their workers.

What’s ‘wrong’ with this picture is why we do what we do.

We ARE NOT ‘machines’, tied to a specific task for certain number of hours BUT that is how our COLLEGE EDUCATED MORONS are taught to treat us.

When we ‘work for money’ the purpose becomes secondary…despite money being an invention, a tool.

It is tool that is all too commonly abused. More often used as a hammer than a reward.

What do you suppose management’s ‘complaint’ was when the employee took a bathroom break?

You’re costing me MONEY! When the correct employee response would be, ‘I was keeping your floors clean which, overall, saves you money.’

(Get a clue fathead, ALL money is FUNNY!)

Yet we are evicted from our homes and have to subscribe to supplemental nutrition programs for a lack of the ‘funny stuff’!

Which is to point out that our social model is broken and headed for collapse…because the bean-counters have decided to see how far they can ‘push it’.

Weirdly, they are pushing for riots in the street.

What would those charged with ‘protecting us’ from exactly this sort of treatment think if they knew what our self-professed ‘betters’ had in store for them?

You KNOW this ends with cops in body bags (more civilians than cops but still…)
All because ‘stingy’ wants to see how much he/she can get away with (and it secretly ‘tickles them’ to wield this kind of ‘raw power’.)

For some reason they don’t believe ‘The Horror’ lurks just beneath the (mostly placid) surface of a (‘desensitized’) modern civilization.

What do I mean by ‘desensitized’?

Let’s just say ‘mercy’ isn’t one of modern societies strong suits.

They have shown none so they shouldn’t be too surprised when they don’t receive any in return.

Somewhat surreal to frame the coming debacle as similar to admonishing a child not to play with matches.

They do it and they get burned for their…impudence.

How sad is it good citizen that this time they are going to ‘burn’ us all?

Thanks for letting me inside you head,

Gegner

PS: (Seems to be a lot of these recently) I have 'updated' and posted a copy of A Simple Plan on the Civics 202 page , my apologies to all who tried to read a Simple Plan and found that unedited mess! It is unforgivable as well as being fixed.

That's what 'cut & paste' gets you!

Pillars (1)

Greetings good citizen,

It is not unusual for the news cycle to ignore the issues we should be discussing, so it was today when I couldn’t find an ‘appropriate’ article that would allow me illustrate (one of) the pillars of A Simple Plan.

Thus today’s ‘lecture’ will be on ‘what are the ‘pillars’ of A Simple Plan?’

The first pillar is equality, without equality there is no justice…

Naturally, nature doesn’t do ‘equal’ and NOBODY is qualified to ‘adjust’ perceived ‘natural inequalities’.

So it is, for our purposes in this discussion, 'equal' refers to the principle of ‘equal treatment under the law’.

This is not ‘new’ however, like anarchy it also has never been tried, never mind achieved.

Because the concept of equal treatment (under capitalism) stops exactly there, at the courtroom door…because that’s where ‘equality’ under capitalism (allegedly) exists…in the courtroom, everywhere else, class war reigns.

(And you KNOW our current inoperative economy is the way it is because the elite ‘own’ the courtroom too…so there goes ‘equality’…)

Which would be to opine that equality is non-existent, under our capitalist rubric at any rate.

Thus the base of the first pillar under A Simple Plan is the Human Anti-exploitation law.

How does equality figure into ‘anti-exploitation’?

What applies to one applies to ALL, that is equality.

So the Human anti-exploitation law makes it illegal for one human to make his/her living from the ‘sweat’ of another human.

This, in fact, outlaws the entire employer/employee relationship.

It also bans selling as a means of making a living. (Your ability to buy cheap and sell dear exploits the buyer.)

So if you can’t buy and sell and you can’t hire anyone (for a profit) how do you make a living?

You cut out the middleman and work for society.

Yes, good citizen, humanity is the customer and the resources to make what humanity needs belong to all of us…so this ownership nonsense should have gone out the window with the collapse of monarchy…but it didn’t.

Now we have a worse situation on our hands…we may have rid ourselves of ‘absolute rulers’ of the lands we live in but we still have them ruling our places of employment!

Worse, this is happening in a time when there aren’t enough jobs to go around!

How do we fix this?

Under (every owner a king) capitalism, we can’t! (Short of the Lord Creator [of Christianity] appearing in the sky and commanding it, it ain’t gonna happen!)

Imagine if Allah appeared in the heavens over Washington DC? What do you think the Israelis would do?

But I digress…(although certain ‘thought experiments’ are irresistible! I also feel compelled to remind you that Gegner is an atheist so the only thing Gegner expects to appear in the sky is rain…in its various forms.)

While the capitalist defends the indefensible by insisting it’s not their fault there isn’t enough ‘market share’ to drive ‘full employment’, this merely flips the problem on its head.

Their unwillingness to pay their employees is what is driving the global ‘demand drought’. (We need not even go into the massive mismanagement issues that are evident through out the commerce system world-wide.)

So how ironic is it that the solution to our broken economy lies in the ending of predatory capitalism?

What the clueless among you (and those damn Libbies really are clueless) need to understand is much of what we do NEEDS DOING (and we’d do it regardless of if we got paid to do it!)

Again, STUPID Libbies would interpret that as an argument against paying because they don’t understand money’s ONE (count ‘em) ‘useful purpose’.

Money is a ‘regulator’; it restricts access.

Without money you’d never get within a hundred yards of a restaurant…although the ‘lack of help’ (nobody would work there for any amount!) might make you give up your booth.

Ironically (again) the (stupid) Libbie’s solution to this problem is slavery, which they are perfectly cool with (until the chains are slapped on THEM!)

Then it’s ‘tragically unfair!’

So under the pillar of Equality, you would work ‘for society’ and your money would be for YOU! When you went to procure the necessities of life NOBODY (not even society) would receive your ‘money’, it would simply be erased from your account, having served its one useful purpose!

Um, I didn’t intend to expend an entire essay on a single pillar but the first is the ‘foundation’ of A Simple Plan.

Without ‘equality’ there isn’t a civilization that is worth squat…and the only way we know that is by the ‘success’ of past races.

While our education is ‘Euro-centric’ in this nation, the most successful civilization on the planet to date was the Native (North) Americans.

Native American history is an embarassment of riches yet we shun it in favor our blood-thirsty European heritage…at the behest of the capitalists among us.

(Full Disclosure, Gegner is NOT [to the best of his knowledge] even ‘part’ Native American, my admiration of their culture is completely unbiased.)

No irony should be lost on the fact that the Native peoples used banishment as a punishment for bad behavior, so Exile is rooted in ‘custom’ as a sensible solution.

And then, like now, the assumption was that you couldn’t be ‘fixed’…so your genes were excluded from the gene pool.

Sort of makes you wonder where humanity would be today if it had adhered to this passive ‘process of elimination’?

How sad is it good citizen that the genes that should be eliminated from our society belong to the powerfully stupid?

No irony should be lost on the fact that this is where the idea that criminals were ‘salvageable’ was born.

Which opens a different door, many of today’s criminals have done no wrong, while many who have done wrong haven’t been prosecuted for their crimes (Thanks to their criminal relatives!)

Which is all leading to the second of our three pillars, justice.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS. We cannot address the world’s problems if we are unwilling to face the world as it really is.

While it appears I advocate certain unorthodox beliefs, it is the casting out of these beliefs that coincides with the disintegration of the fabric of human society.

Like the Libertarian/Republican insistence that there is no such thing as a human social contract.

Peculiar because this is how slavery became widespread.

While the capitalist points to our (ever) diminished ‘faith in God’ (as the reason our society is failing), the realist points to Justice!

Funny how the capitalist is the first one to defend and invoke ‘god’s right’ to retribution.

If I’ve done wrong, let God punish me! (Knowing full well it won’t happen.)

I say it’s time we give the capitalist God the helping hand he has always needed.

When the capitalist is thirsty for justice he has no patience with God. When the shoes are reversed, it’s the other way around.

Government

Greetings good citizen,

In our ongoing series to highlight how we can change the world we discussed (briefly) the economic changes that need to be made in order to return society to prosperity.

What we didn’t do was touch upon the social ‘third rail’…not out of fear but due to the great degree of ‘ignorance’ that surrounds what politics should be about.

We have a landscape populated with starving, unemployed homeless people and all our politicians can talk about is gay marriage and gun control (along with Federal subsidies to get more cops and build new schools.)

Worse, politicians (and people with political ambitions) don’t see the need to change the conversation from what it was 200 years ago when the hot button was States rights Vs Federal rights.

Our new government, er, (bear with me) will be (as opposed to ‘should be') centered on Human rights.

How did our (Slaving) founders get it wrong? They had to avoid the issue of human rights so as not to offend the ‘monied interests’.

Worse, the founding of the US was seen as the birth of a ‘capitalist utopia’…which they rapidly learned would not work! But you have to give the capitalists credit, they are persistent if nothing else…(like intelligent, for example.)

Here it is two hundred years later and they are trying to pull the same stunt in China (which I predict will go horribly and catastrophically wrong.)

They tried to ‘capitalize’ the former Soviet Union and it blew up! (Just to give you an idea how toxic capitalism really is.)

So if capitalism is so toxic, how have we survived it for two hundred years?

Well, not all of us did. The death toll keeps rising as capitalism continues its death spiral.

Make no mistake about it, 99% of the murder rate is tied directly to capitalism.

And while it (again seems like) I am digressing, I am not. Capitalism is so ingrained in how we manage our society as to be inseparable.

And THAT is what I mean when I point to ‘ignorance in politics’.

Politicians regularly separate politics from commerce when, under capitalism, they are the same thing.

Ironically under A Simple Plan there are no politics…and political parties will be illegal.

I’ll go you one better, the ‘lie machine’ will be shut down too.

People who make their living molding public opinion will have to find a ‘real job’.

But now I digress, the ‘fourth estate’ is the subject of its own essay.

Under the new way of doing things we will have ‘direct democracy’…which means YOU will get to decide what is or isn’t illegal (within reason.)

Understand that our ‘leaders’, who will ‘earn’ their positions, will be in charge of the day to day business of keeping our society running. YOU will get to decide on the guidelines they’ll operate under.

Unlike today, leadership will NOT be in charge of the justice system. It will be an independent body charged with protecting society with a focus on preserving personal liberty.

These days money buys favorable legislation while ‘short-circuiting’ existing prohibitions. That will no longer be the case because we will not have ‘elected’ officials.

Our leaders will ‘win’ their positions by demonstrating they are the best candidate for the job via the tests!

Better! The tests are open TO ALL!* (Yeah, there is an exception that needs to be included here despite this being a far from definitive layout of A Simple Plan architecture.

(* You will not be permitted to test IF you are accused of an exile offense…and since false accusation is an exile offense we would hope nobody would bring such charges ‘frivolously’.)

IF we are to get ‘money’ out of the management of our society we need to put an end to political process designed to make candidates ‘beholden’ to the money interests.

And if we are to put human rights where they belong (number one) we must eliminate the influence of greed that routinely crushes compassion and understanding.

Spoken like a ‘true liberal’ wouldn’t you say?

Makes me wonder how many conservative heads explode reading my exhibits?

Because a true conservative doesn’t care about humanity or an uneven playing field, all a true conservative cares about is themselves.

Well our streets are full of hungry, homeless, unemployed people who are the ‘by-product’ of ‘compassionate conservatism’.

“We’re gonna end these folks suffering by farming out their jobs!”

Then we’ll cut their welfare and let them eat Democrats!

This, good citizen, is what ‘politics’ in the US has devolved into.

If you think it’s time for a change, I’m pointing the way.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

PS. Just an observation but today's post on 2/12 is number 1212...coincidence?

And no I didn't take Sunday off to make it fit!

Whittled away...

Greetings good citizen,

Markets just opened here in the capital of capitalism where the simple act of opening the NYSE is enough to drive markets around the globe upwards for no reason whatsoever…which is pathetic considering what this says about their ‘regard’ for ‘investor intelligence’…such as it is.

But then we return to the ever-present dilemma of a media that treats the rest of us with similar contempt. And while it has become my habit to point at Alternet and to label it the ‘Libertarian press’ they really are only a half a step removed from Fox news…where stories about bigfoot and what the ancient aliens knew dominate.

Under the category of, (what else) ’book reviews’ we have the following, er, ‘proposal’.

If we’re going to take the time to slow down, we want quality. Slow democracy doesn’t mean we have to attend every poorly advertised, badly run city council meeting. What slow democracy can help us do is learn to identify authentic, healthy processes; participate judiciously and with the patient confidence that real change takes time; and support the people who engage us in meaningful decision making, so they’ll do it some more. Inclusive, well-run deliberations with effective follow-through can make an enormous difference in the life of a community.

Slow food advocates know that a sustainable food system must offer healthy food in an ecologically viable way, but there’s more. As journalist Ben Hewitt describes in The Town That Food Saved , “It must feed the locals.” Just as slow food cannot only feed the rich and elite, slow democracy must be open to all. The people, or demos in Greek, are at the heart of the word “democracy.” 

Finding a place in the life of the already overburdened and underprivileged—such as single working parents, or low-wage workers who string together two or three jobs—is one of the greatest challenges of slow democracy. But these are the populations most often shut out of the democratic process, and most in need of what it has to offer. Slow democracy incorporates people from all walks of life and the full range of the human condition: from talkers to doers, from those who value charts and graphs to those who love chatting over coffee. It makes room for those who like to talk at microphones but also celebrates the vast majority of us who would, frankly, rather die than make a speech. It builds on the already-existing web of relationships that form a community, recognizing that some of our best ideas come while taking a walk with a neighbor. And it forges new relationships, introducing us to people we might have avoided but come to appreciate.

What SHOULD hit you in the eye is the futility of trying to make things work using a thoroughly corrupted system.

Do you see the first pissing contest already?

Knot-head would fight you tooth and nail over whether or not the system was corrupt, totally ignoring how we got where we are today and why it happened at all.

Don’t bring up the subject of why NOBODY has been prosecuted for a whole laundry list of offenses, (with the financial ones being the least of the charges!) because you’ll be ‘talking to the hand’, they just don’t want to hear it.

Are you prepared to have this battle with EVERY corrupt motherfucker getting greased by the current system?

Because that’s how it’s going to go, everybody is a ‘corruption fighter’ until it benefits them…then it’s okay, its not really stealing, it’s, er, taking the edge or some other harmless euphemism.

So what a stupid idea it is to try to use the system to ‘fix’ the system, it can’t be done.

Do we sit here and suffer with a thoroughly corrupted system or do we REPLACE IT with one THAT CAN’T BE CORRUPTED?

Because replacing what exists is the ONLY road to salvation, if we don’t scrap the whole electoral system and the totally corrupt practice of voting for people who vote for us without ever consulting us then 'change' will remain impossible. (Why is it so difficult to convince people the current method of so-called 'democracy' is a BAD idea?)

ESPECIALLY TODAY, when only one ‘entity’ has a seat at the table and that entity is the soul-less corporation. Where the relentless pursuit of profits trumps the very health of civilization…an entire world where only a few can ‘live’ (everyone else suffers.)

And while I preach to the choir, I may as well be talking to the fucking wall!

Yes, you’re keeping your powder dry…which is all fine and well, can’t fight them if they have you locked up.

Which brings us to a secondary problem, when the shit hit’s the fan will you be ready?

Chances are the answer will be no.

It’s already too late when tanks are parked in your driveway. (Although it is a perfect opportunity to kill the asshole who parked a tank in your driveway…and you don’t have to hunt him down either!)

Most of you (around the world) are aware that you are being ‘penned in’, corralled as it were as your ‘legal standing’ is whittled down to nothing.

Soon, you poor son of a bitch, there will be a bounty on your sorry ass…and then it will really be too late!

So if you’re wondering when would be a ‘judicious’ time to strike, I’d say you’re already a month behind schedule!

Be that as it may, there’s no time like the present.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Hail Anarchy!

Greetings good citizen,

For the longest time Anarchy has gotten a bad rap under our capitalist society…mostly because our leaders DON’T want YOU thinking and deciding for yourself!

How long would the thieves on Wall Street gone unprosecuted if YOU had something to say about it?

Wouldn’t YOU be screaming for the head of those supposed to be in charge of investigating this sort of thing?

Because under A Simple Plan you can (and will) institute action (that must be answered to!)

Not that the kind of fraud we are seeing today will even be possible under A Simple Plan but the fact that those in charge are answerable directly to ANY MEMBER of the public is a true game changer.

Um, like communism, there are many different ‘varieties’ of Anarchy, A Simple Plan is based on the ‘Rules without Rulers’ variety.

While I have been advised that my, er, ‘type’ of Anarchy is close to a variety championed by Bakunin (who was executed by the Bolsheviks) I am unfamiliar with the specifics of Kropotkinism…

It seems that everywhere, these days, people are talking about anarchism. Now Dmitry Orlov joins the discussion with a 3-part series, “In Praise of Anarchy.” Utilizing primarily the work of the 19th century Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, Orlov argues that anarchy, rather than hierarchy, is the dominant pattern in nature, that hierarchical organizations ultimately end in collapse, and that the impending collapse of the capitalist industrial system presents an opportunity for the emergence of anarchism.

Orlov,(aka kollapsnik at Club Orlov), is probably best-known for his book, Reinventing Collapse, in which he compares the collapse of the Soviet Union with the imminent collapse of the United States. Russian-born Orlov is in a unique position to make such comparisons. He immigrated to the USA when he was twelve years old, and, as an adult, made numerous trips back to the former USSR in the years immediately following the collapse of its political and economic system.

With a wry Russian wit I find immensely attractive, Orlov describes in Reinventing Collapse how people in the USSR were better positioned than are Americans for economic collapse. For example, most Soviet citizens did not own their homes; instead they lived in state-owned dwellings. When the USSR collapsed, they simply remained where they were and nobody evicted them. Compare that with the United States, where people were seduced into signing questionable mortgage agreements for outrageously priced homes, and where, since the economic crisis of 2008, 3 million have been foreclosed upon.

Unhelpfully, this article goes on to compare life in ‘post-communist’ Russia with living conditions in the US just after the collapse of the financial markets.

What this has to do with Anarchy is unclear…although the writer points to Orlov’s background as a naturalist and his observations on nature to reinforce the concepts of Anarchy…

Much like this video explores Darwinism as a justification for the excesses of capitalism…

The video is an hour long and provides a curious window into the mindset that brought us the original Great Depression…

I have not visited ‘Club Orlov’ and it remains unclear whether or not Alternet will run the remainder of the series…I am assuming they skipped the first installment as this one seems to indicate it is the ‘middle’ piece.

I have to give Orlov credit though, he states the Darwin (actually Spencer’s) term ‘survival of the fittest’ is merely the fastest route to extinction…which is to point out that ‘fitness’ has many more aspects to it than the fitness of the individual.

Man’s success is predicated on his ability to pull together with other members of his species to achieve larger goals and to overcome other, more virulent competitors.

So this ‘survival of the fittest’ bullshit has actually had a dampening effect on our social development…so a few could be rich.

Which leaves us to ponder how we protect the bulk of our species from the few self-centered enough to betray the trust of the rest?

I posit that the best preventative here is to place the levers of power beyond the reach of the self-interested…which is what *A Simple Plan does.

[* Part of the testing feature that governs advancement also measures the candidate’s moral compass. You can ace the technical aspects but if your moral compass is broken, you will NOT advance.]

Most psycho paths believe others are ‘too stupid’ to know they are being played…this is a shortcoming in the psychopath…because everyone KNOWS who is a few fries shy of a Happy Meal and that they need to be watched.

The only ones the psycho is fooling is themselves. Everybody else has a ‘good idea’ something’s wrong with the clever guy who talks down to everyone…

But I digress…

This is supposed to be an opportunity to talk up anarchy, and idea whose time is long overdue!

I designed A Simple Plan with certain laws already in place so we could avoid having the ‘I didn’t vote for that’ bullshit that some people will engage in regardless.

The idea was to lay down a framework that enabled us to vote on the laws we want without having to hold critical ballots that preserve our freedoms…like the Human Anti-Exploitation Law.

It’s so basic you can only marvel why it isn’t already a law…but then you take a quick look around and you know the answer.

It’s a ‘choice’ those who are screwing you left and right DON’T want YOU to have.

With that one law as the cornerstone of our new civilization, everything else falls into place.

There is also a law about new proposed laws that forbids legislation that isn’t ‘universal’ in nature.

Which is to say it prevents stupid laws like ‘Only white people can vote’…

Or only the military can be armed…

Seriously good citizen, you have to be extremely careful with what you prohibit.

Protecting the few at the expense of the rest is a recipe for tyranny.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

About Me

Greetings good citizen,

I have just perused the media offerings for today and concluded, amazingly, that in a world that is truly falling apart, they have nothing to say!

So for today’s ‘treat’, you can read me, ‘unplugged’.

Let’s start with my humble beginnings, shall we?

No, I’m not going to bore you with my tawdry upbringing because being raised poor has little to do with anything…although I doubt I’d be who I am today had I been born with anything even resembling a ‘silver spoon’ protruding from any orifice!

So yes, it is at least tangentially relevant that I was born poor and remain poor to this day.

Um, contrary to popular belief, I have never set myself on a path to ‘conquer the world’…and, unsurprisingly, might be accused of failing because I didn’t’ set my sights high enough.

But we can’t ALL conquer the world…and maybe that is my fracture because my goal always has been the ‘greatest good’.

Why is it in a world so full of bounty that only a few get to enjoy it?

And the answer comes back (quite quickly I might add:) mismanagement.

The system itself is deeply flawed and remains that way due to deep corruption!

But I preach to the choir, do I not?

Everybody knows.

So why doesn’t ‘somebody’ DO SOMETHING about it?

Have we all been so deeply indoctrinated with ‘go along to get along’ that none of us dare ‘rock the boat’ (even though it is headed over a cliff?)

Although I’d daresay we have already gone over that cliff, rocking the boat now would merely remove the only thing between you and the jagged rocks below.

As thin as that object may be,

And no, it is unlikely you will survive that sudden stop that follows every long fall.

But I digress…(and do so with such frequency that I fear few of you can follow my, er, ‘insights’ to their conclusions.)

Which is to announce that I suspect my son isn’t the only one with ADD.

Meaning he comes by his ‘honestly’.

So let’s return to the beginning (because we’re gonna end up there anyway) and try not to ‘squander the opportunity’ which the slavers among us are prepared to defend with their worthless lives.

Yes good citizen, there are those among us who support slavery so long as it is not they who are the slaves.

They will inflict a fate worse than death upon YOU if their children are spared.

Did I lose you again? Try to keep up, eh?

These ‘true believers’ form a singular barrier to a fair and equitable society. They must be eliminated OR those they follow/obey must be, er, ‘eradicated’ for subsequent generations to be free.

No ‘half measures’ here good citizen, this is not a ‘once and done’ proposition.

Which is to say vigilance is key. We may succeed in sweeping them aside (temporarily) but they will regroup and start over if we provide them with the mechanisms they need to corrupt society.

Their ‘tool of choice’ is (and always will be) ‘hard currency’. Without it, it becomes near impossible to ‘bribe’ others towards your way of thinking.

This is why you are ‘trained’ to demand money you can touch…while money itself remains an ‘idea’.

Fix this and we break the slaver’s back.

The other ‘trump card’ the slaver holds is their control of the workplace. They get to decide who ‘prospers’ and who starves.

A decidedly toxic power to have in a world where survival depends on ‘participation’.

If they don’t let you play, you can’t prosper…legally.

That is the ‘powder keg’ the unemployment situation has become.

Yet the conservatives (those who would enslave you) still preach that it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to make yourself ‘USEFUL’ to the employer.

And soon SOME OF YOU may be able to ‘redeem’ yourselves by being willing to DIE for people who wouldn’t ordinarily spit on the best part of you!

Oh, you’ll be a hero for taking a bullet for them but you can almost hear them shriek ‘idiot’ as you fall to the ground, clutching your vitals!

Um, I find myself apologizing after these solo flights if only because a trip through the landscape that is my mind can be a pretty disturbing experience for those who don’t usually think along those lines.

So, in short…(not that I’m particularly comfortable with the short version of anything) A Simple Plan was designed to facilitate the ‘equality’ we need to move forward as a species.

If we don’t learn to live together, we will not survive to go forth and meet new (and hopefully more intelligent) races across the cosmos.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Hell in a bucket...

Greetings good citizen,

‘Hell in a bucket’ is proceeding apace if you peruse the local court docket. I notice there is an upsurge in prosecutions for petty theft, locally anyway.

So, is theft like cockroaches, for every one you see prosecuted there are a thousand more that go unapprehended and a thousand more (each) that go unreported?

That’s a lot of theft good citizen and while we’re on the subject of court dockets I’d like to address what appears to be the single largest/most popular ‘crime’ of the current times…

Unregistered/uninsured, driving after your license has been revoked/suspended…

While DWI runs a close second, continuing to drive without, er, ‘paying’ has become a very popular pass time, definitely bigger than baseball!

Aside from the fact that the cops only bag a tiny percentage of these ‘offenders’ we have to pause for a moment and ask if life hasn’t become ‘too expensive’ for the majority of us…

You do, on occasion, see the rare ‘I forgot’ type where the only listed violation is an expired inspection sticker…but ‘usually’ it is a ‘full boat’. No sticker, no registration and no insurance with more than a few having a suspended/revoked license too boot!

Life’s ‘big three’ ain’t cheap and there is only one factor you can, er, control…what you put in your mouth.

The roof over your head and wheels under your ass can quickly chew up the average paycheck with very little left over.

Worse, it is ‘impossible’ in most metro areas to do all three on the Federal minimum wage. (Even with a ‘free’ automobile. Repairs on anything you can get for free are more than enough to put you on a perpetual ‘starvation diet’.)

The barely street legal shitbox is the payday lender’s wet dream!

More people are driven (literally!) into destitution trying to keep shitboxes on the road.

And we haven’t even factored in registering or insuring said shitbox!

Why do we subject ourselves to this? No wheels = no job!

A situation that isn’t getting any better as the ‘economic desert’ continues to expand at an accelerating pace…


Uncle Tom isn’t helping his prospects for re-election by cheerleading the ‘persistently invisible’ recovery either.

Which, naturally, leads to the subject of why the government seems incapable of dealing with this train wreck of an economy?

And the answer is the people they take their marching orders from don’t want it fixed!

The already rich will throw our entire civilization under the bus to fatten their worthless bank accounts…

Actually, that’s not right…this isn’t about money and they know it…it’s about power.

Those whose power relies on fossil fuels need to ‘stretch out’ the supply so their power will last a while longer…and they don’t give a fuck who freezes or starves to death in the process.

We’re dealing with psychopaths here, the same kind of psychopaths who cut down the last palm tree (large enough to make an ocean going canoe out of) on Easter Island to roll their fucking statue to the coast!

Be VERY careful of who you bow to…they just might be nuts!

Ironically the statues survive to this day, their civilization, on the other hand, is toast.

And guess who is headed in the same direction? (For pretty much the same reasons…)

We are long overdue for a change in the way things are run. As a species we can no longer tolerate the leadership of those who think the only thing that matters is their own selfish desires/whims!

This is the ‘bottom line of every post I create…THERE IS A ‘BETTER WAY’ and we can start down that path tomorrow!

I don’t propose this for me, I propose it for ‘us’.

Disturbingly, Marx didn’t devise communism ‘for himself’ either. He attacked the wrong issue and society suffered…his bad.

Communism, like capitalism is ‘money based’…A Simple Plan is law based.

The common ownership of the means of production is meaningless as long as the ‘self interested’ continue to make the laws…


Worse, the formation of a ‘party’ at the outset turned an inclusive arrangement into an ‘Us vs. Them’ proposition…there are no ‘parties’ under A Simple Plan (and forming one will get you exiled!)

It’s not about ‘no rules’ it’s about ‘no rulers’!

I shouldn’t be too surprised that most of you ‘don’t get it’…neither the Greeks nor the Romans could conceive of a society without slaves…

So maybe its just me that’s messed up…but I kind of doubt it.

If we made slavery ‘voluntary’ I’d be it would be the world’s shortest que! Just behind the line for voluntary castration…

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

A Simple Plan

A Simple Plan
(Reader's Digest Version)

I have a bad tendency to go off on tangents…so much so that people seem unable to grasp the concepts put forth in A Simple Plan

This is an attempt to rectify that tendency.

A Simple Plan is based on a few central concepts

The first core concept is the ‘human anti-exploitation law’. This outlaws anyone from personally profiting from the labor of another. The buying and selling of labor has another name: we call it slavery.

The second core concept is direct democracy. It is vital to the survival/prosperity of a society to remove the law beyond the reach of the self-interested. A vast majority of the laws on our books today exist to protect the interests of the people that sponsored them and no one else…

In order to ensure justice, the law must be the exclusive domain of everyone that lives under them. Anyone can propose a law, as there won’t be a legislature.

To prevent being forced to run to the polls ten times daily, all proposed laws would have to first pass the ‘golden rule’ test before being submitted for a vote.

The third core concept is universal employment, that all members of society are guaranteed employment that pays a living wage.

The fourth core concept is your money is for you (and only you.) All money will be electronic and there won’t be a way to transfer funds between individuals. It will not be possible (nor necessary) to go into debt.


My first attempt at explaining the four concepts resulted in 75 rather confused pages. The second attempt ran 140 pages and was even murkier because it introducing new concepts.

This time I’ll stick to the four core concepts and keep it simple.

I provide the human anti-exploitation law as ‘number one’ because it is the most important piece of the puzzle. It could even be argued that it is the only ‘necessary’ piece, the others are optional.

Your liberty, the freedom to pursue your own destiny resides in the human anti-exploitation law.

If you believe it is your ‘destiny’ to be an employer, a ‘shining beacon of stability’ for all the ‘employee wannabe’s’ out there, you are admitting you are no better then a 18th century planter…a slaver.

The human anti-exploitation law forbids any person or entity earning their living by buying and selling the fruit of ‘anyone’s’ brow.

It goes a step further than that. Since debt would also be illegal (debt is exploitative) there wouldn’t be a way to raise the capital so you could own your own automated factory. (Nor would anyone be able to ‘gift’ you such a sum…for a couple of reasons.)

Buying and selling would also be considered ‘exploitative’ due to ‘uneven access to information’. The seller knows their ‘true cost’ and is under no obligation to inform the buyer.

So ALL buying and selling between private parties (a.k.a. individuals/corporations) would be outlawed.

Naturally, the elimination of commerce’s ability to use you as a beast of burden would, by default, outlaw corporations.

Because all ‘owners’ (save some sole proprietors) derive their living from the efforts of others.

So, who would we work for if we no longer worked for ‘the man’?

Who would cut our paychecks…or would we bother with money at all?

Here we must shift mental gears to address a cruel fallacy perpetuated by capitalists.

You know what they are calling ‘deflation’, that descending spiral where falling wages leads to falling sales which leads to falling employment?

Do you know why this happens? The answer lies in the ‘hierarchy of needs’. There are only a handful of things that are ‘indispensable’. We are constantly bombarded with product offerings but most of them are ‘discretionary’, you can survive without them.

Simply put, the economy is ‘imploding’ because people are no longer buying what they don’t ‘need’.

To the flip side of this we have the issue of jobs. If only the most basic industries offered consistent employment…what would the vast majority of us do to support ourselves?

Thirdly, there is the resources issue…a tremendous amount of strategic resources are squandered producing products that few need and even fewer can afford.

But I’m going ‘off track’ again.

How ‘few’ are our needs? I came up with a list of only 11 ‘unique’ fields of endeavor, I added a twelfth to provide an interface between the original eleven as well as to provide the consumer with ‘one stop shopping’.

If you examine the list of SIC codes, the world of work has hundreds of different niches but most of them aren’t ‘unique’. Rather than create dozens of wasteful ‘layers’ of management (each with its own little narrowly defined patch of turf to defend) it’s best to keep it simple and consolidated from the start.

If you can no longer work for ‘Joe Blow, LLC.’ It’s okay, you are ‘guaranteed’ employment with one of the twelve ‘divisions’.

Why can you work for a ‘division’ and not for ‘Joe’? Because the divisions are ‘non-profits’…they don’t exist to earn money for their owners, they exist to support and advance the ‘common good’.

Your ‘paycheck’ is cut directly by the ‘end –user’ of the products you make and the services you provide, society itself.

There will be no such thing as a ‘central bank’ nor will there be ‘private banks’ as ‘banking’ will be an internal function of the division that employs you.

Here we touch upon the fourth ‘core concept’ where the fact that Mother Nature doesn’t have a cash register means that money is only useful to the individual as a tool with which they can build the kind of life/lifestyle they desire.

Money serves to regulate access to that which is in short supply. First come, first serve does not preserve the supply of highly desirable items that would result in shortages and lead to unrest.

Money is the most effective tool there is to prevent hoarding, the bane of all ‘open’ social models. It is here that the ‘non-transferability’ of funds between individuals is essential.

It’s not too difficult to see how the um, ‘independent minded’ would hoard or steal goods to sell at a premium for their personal profit.

The only reliable way to plug this gaping hole in the supply chain is to remove the ‘customer’ from the equation.

Since the divisions don’t exist to earn profits, prices would be set according to availability. Theft would reduce availability, thus driving up the price for everyone.

Understand that the divisions being non-profit means, by extension, there wouldn’t be a stock market.

We’d all ‘own’ the means of production and our ‘dividend’ would be the ability to buy everything at the lowest price possible across the board, not just on the products your division produced.

There would be multiple other benefits to be derived from not being exploited. The most significant of these would be the elimination of taxes. Perhaps the second most significant benefit would be totally free healthcare and education (society pays these people to do what they do so there’s no need for you to pay them too.)

Then there’s the ‘stack of lumber’. You would no longer be required to either rent or own one. Since the transfer of funds between individuals would be impossible, there is no way for the would-be landlord to collect rent…and rightly so.

There is only one (count ‘em) way to get money and that is to work for it.

The largest single benefit of this arrangement is crime prevention/resource squandering.

There is another huge benefit gained by ‘full employment’…once achieved, the economy automatically ‘balances’ itself and the ‘economic desert.

As you are well aware, unemployment is a tool used by the exploiters to keep wages low. They aren’t interested in paying you a living wage as much as they desire to maximize their profits.

Don’t look now good citizen but these crazy self-serving assholes have already made half of the working aged citizens in this nation ‘redundant’.

But I’m running off the rails again, no?

So I’ll segue into our second core concept as I have already ‘drifted’ into and pretty much covered the third core concept without meaning to.

The second and final core concept is direct democracy. Once we enjoy a true ‘free press/media’ (as all divisions are non-profit and no ‘purse string’ control exists over any of them. They wouldn’t rely on advertisers for funding and new truth in advertising laws would likely curtail advertising volume…)

The news industry is in trouble today due to a severe loss of reader trust. Once the onus of kowtowing to major advertisers and the threat of having their permits pulled by the government were removed, they would be free to serve the consuming public in a responsible way.

I wonder if anyone has a good answer to the puzzle of if we are all in this together, who precisely is the ‘opposition’?

The ‘boogeyman’ of ‘single party rule’ is nothing compared to multiple adversarial parties.

How many times have ‘the Republicans’ blocked legislation that was favored by a majority of the general public?

The short answer is too many. The baffling part is how they consistently get away with this bullshit even when they are not in the majority!

Rather than ‘single party rule’, I propose no parties at all. We would dismantle the party apparatus on both sides of the imaginary fence because, in the end, we are all in this together.

You can do nothing to protect yourself against the machinations of the self-serving if you are not permitted to vote directly on what the law will or won’t be.

Thus do we need the additional safeguard of the ‘fairness doctrine’. Nobody can pull a ‘fast one’ if proposed legislation cannot pass a basic fairness test.

Give it a try, you’ll see just how difficult it is.

Be subtle; try to hide the cheat in the little words…the ‘ifs’ and ‘whens’.

Understand that while leadership has no power to make or interpret the laws, they are the ones that determine if a proposed law is fit to be put to a vote.

Once won, liberty must be zealously guarded.

Here we circle back to the laws regarding money and the non-transferability of funds.

You see, another political change will be the elimination of elections. You will not vote for leadership, the qualified candidates will ‘compete’ for the job.

Since you, the citizen, will vote directly on proposed legislation, there is no longer a need for ‘representatives’. Since the citizen also has direct control over legislation, there is no need for a judicial branch either (as the fairness doctrine covers that base.)

Understand that the biggest single obstacle to enacting the human anti-exploitation law is the bought and paid for judicial branch…how else do you explain their inaction/open hostility to any measure that challenged their mandate to defend ‘private property’ ahead of all else, including the common good.

I think you can see how this undertaking could easily morph into ‘novel length’ work.

There is much more to say but this covers the four core concepts.

The ‘anti slavery law’.

True direct democracy.

Full employment.

Your money is for you.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner