A resonance frequency approach to stopping the motor of the world

Posted by $ jbrenner 8 years, 10 months ago to Going Galt
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In a prior thread, we considered the possibility of committing sabotage to stop the motor of the world. To stimulate the discussion, I took the role of "devil's advocate" and suggested that Galt might have engaged in sabotage. There was almost universal agreement that Galt would have lost his moral authority to lead the Gulch if he had committed sabotage, rather than only convincing titans to go Galt.

A recent thread entitled "Obama is John Galt" started by jimjamesjames was largely shot down as well, and for good reason.

http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/30...

However, that thread made me reconsider strategy for stopping the motor of the world.

The looters and moochers in real life have taken Cloward and Piven's strategy of overwhelming "the system" with more and more moochers. This is an act of sabotage. This is a moral line that we have decided not to cross. This puts us at a strategic disadvantage.

Add to that disadvantage the fact that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are convincing others (like Larry Ellison of Cisco Systems) to give to charity. I urge you to look at how many billionaires have taken The Giving Pledge:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_...

Someone here in the Gulch recently suggested that this giving pledge might actually be their way of going Galt. I forget which Gulcher suggested this (Zenphamy? sjatkins?) and apologize to that person.

We all know what Ayn Rand thinks about altruism. I have said previously that the charitable contributions of these billionaires may lengthen the time for the collapse of the looter/moocher era sufficiently that there may not be a time when producers like us would be able to go back into the world. Their charitable contributions delay the inevitable pain for the moochers.

Now switch gears and start thinking about physics and differential equations.

Think back to when you took physics and learned about constructive and destructive interference. If there is a disturbance that causes an object to oscillate at its resonance frequency (or an integer multiplier of it), then the object will break MUCH faster.

For an introductory treatment of resonance frequencies, go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance

For an example, see the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXS...

If we are to stop the motor of the world, an alternate solution would be to do something that reinforces the interference that the looters or those encouraging people to take the Giving Pledge are applying.

Does it make sense to convince MANY producers to go Galt, or will we be more effective by harnessing the momentum of The Giving Pledge to accomplish the goal of depriving the looter/moocher world of producers?

If one takes producers out of the system, how does this change the 2nd order differential equation(s) that would describe the producer-looter-moocher problem?

Please comment on
a) how one would implement such a strategy; and b) whether this would count as sabotage.


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  • Posted by LaissezFaire 8 years, 10 months ago
    Sorry, no contribution to (a) or (b) here ... just a side note. Ayn Rand also said: "My views on charity are very simple. I do not consider it a major virtue and, above all, I do not consider it a moral duty. There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue." Playboy, March 1964
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    • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
      I agree with you and Ms. Rand about charity except that it does keep the moochers from feeling the pain that they ought to feel. This delays the inevitable at our expense.
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      • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 10 months ago
        That is moot. There is no pain that someone 'should feel'. If a person who has earned money chooses to give it away, it's their money and their choice. They can give that money to sterling individuals or to total loosers and they can give it for whatever reason they wish.

        There is no positive ethical advantage to our ruling on whether someone has the right to do as he wishes with his money. Whether it increases the dissonance or delays the crash does not matter: his bucks, his right.

        Jan
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        • Posted by ewv 8 years, 10 months ago
          This has nothing to do with political rights. One certainly can say what is morally proper to choose.

          The 'strikers' in Atlas Shrugged recognized that Dagny and Rearden were worthy of helping, but chose not to because it would drag out the effect of the strike and hurt themselves. That they "could not afford". That was a proper moral choice based on objective considerations. It did not involve political rights, was not an irrelevant subjectivist choice, and did not directly concern "moochers" as the potential beneficiaries.
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          • Posted by LaissezFaire 8 years, 9 months ago
            I remember Rearden's character differently. He would often write checks at the request of his wife or family, for certain charitable causes. In one part, the person requesting it, even had the nerve to not let it be known the donation was from Rearden.
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            • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago
              Rearden was not a striker and his actions were not on behalf of the strike. Galt, Francisco, and the others would not help Dagny or Rearden when it would have prolonged their own struggle. Ragnar told Rearden that reparations were being stored for him in the form of gold for the time when his actions were no longer helping the looters: "On the day when you will be ready to claim it—the day when I'll know that no penny of it will go back to support the 1ooters—I will turn your account over to you."

              Hank Rearden's giving money to his brother's progressive "social conscience" Friends of Global Progress was a consequence of Rearden's inability to see the nature of the evil in those he was supporting. His brother not only didn't want it known that Rearden was the source of the money, he had the effrontery to tell that to Rearden himself. Friends of Global Progress turned out later to be crusading for the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. This was an example of the immorality of charity to the wrong kind of recipients -- despite the fact that Rearden had the political right to do it. _Exercising_ the right to do something morally wrong is not condoned by Ayn Rand's ethics. She was not a libertarian subjectivist.
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        • Posted by LaissezFaire 8 years, 10 months ago
          I totally agree with you Jan. Although Ayn Rand was not religious, she was not opposed to individual members of a church's congregation giving to the church of their choice. Similarly, if someone was in need of a helping hand, and say I individually was willing and able to help by giving them some money, especially if it made me feel better, she would be all for it. Even if she would refer to that recipient as a moocher, it is of no danger to the rest of us if the giving was not forced. My take is that what she was opposed to was FORCED giving, such as at the "gunpoint" we call government.
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          • Posted by ewv 8 years, 10 months ago
            Where did Ayn Rand condone giving money to churches? She distinguished between what one has a right to do and what one should do rationally. She did not advocate doing what makes you "feel better" and was not "all for it". She way not a subjectivist or a hedonist opposed only to forced altruism like the a-philosophical libertarians..
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            • Posted by LaissezFaire 8 years, 9 months ago
              Here is a relevant link, ewv:
              http://www.aynrandanswers.com/2012/09/di...
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              • Posted by ewv 8 years, 9 months ago
                The link says nothing about Ayn Rand condoning helping churches or giving money to make you "feel better". It's an attempt to describe Ayn Rand's view of charity in general, which she rejected as a primary issue of ethics or a duty, and endorsed it only selectively to worthy recipients and then only if you can afford to pursue it non-sacrificially as one of your values.

                Giving support to the wrong causes _is_ a danger to all of us, which was illustrated in Atlas Shrugged in many ways, including Hank Rearden's donation to his brother's progressive Friends of Global Progress.

                Ayn Rand did not endorse any giving for any subjectivist purpose as long as it "feels good". She only recognized the political _right_ to do so, even when you don't know any better -- or even if you do and have destructive motives. That is not morally condoning all acts of giving as long as they are not forced. She way not a subjectivist or a hedonist opposed only to forced altruism like the a-philosophical libertarians.
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                • Posted by LaissezFaire 8 years, 9 months ago
                  I think we agree on most of that. The whole larger discussion here is sort of on whether the giver makes things worse by giving to people who ask for a handout. My main point is, as a Christian, sometimes giving just seems like the right thing to do (but I'll admit personally, I don't give much to charities or to my church), and I gather from the previously referenced link that that is not inconsistent with Rand's philosophy. Her main issue was avoiding 'forced' (mandated by gubmnt) giving, which is not compassion, it is slavery.
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          • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 10 months ago
            I, personally, would not even call the recipient a moocher. To me, 'moocher' represents a lifestyle or philosophy choice. Hmmm - how do I clarify this thought?

            If someone has run three times in his life, I do not call him a 'runner'; if he runs every other day, then I call him a 'runner'. I use the term 'moocher' in the same way - it means (to me) 'someone who characteristically mooches'.

            Jan
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        • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
          My point is not with regard to the altruists, but to the moochers. We should feel the effects of all of our good and bad choices. If one feels no pain when one makes a bad decision, as most moochers do routinely, then one will keep on making bad decisions. In psychological terms, moochers are dependents, and charitable givers are codependents.

          Secondarily, if we are to go on strike and others are making life too comfortable for moochers, then there may never be a world to come back to.
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          • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 10 months ago
            You are cosmically correct in both respects, jbrenner. However, according to our own ethics, what a person does with his money is his business. So 'whatever else we do' that is not a point of attack.

            I do not like freeloaders any more than you do, personally. But people who give their own money to these parasites merit no condemnation for me. They should not have to NOT give money to charity in order to respect my world view. To say that they have to refrain from this activity puts us in the same class as those people who try to control how we spend our own income.

            Jan
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            • Posted by ewv 8 years, 10 months ago
              A moral principle that charity is not a primary virtue and that there is nothing wrong with helping those you think are worthy of it when you can afford to does not impose a duty to either give or not give. It does say that helping those who deserve it can be proper and that helping those who don't is not. Such moral judgment is itself not forcing anyone to do anything. Ayn Rand wrote with objective evaluation, not in duties.
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            • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
              I am not going to tell anyone what to do with their money, but we do need to factor in altruism into our calculations regarding whether or not a society is worth coming back to.
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      • Posted by $ hash 8 years, 10 months ago
        I disagree... charity doesn't really delay the inevitable, it actually brings it closer in the same way that forced wealth redistribution does, by reallocating capital from productive hands to (largely unproductive) charity cases.
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        • Posted by term2 8 years, 10 months ago
          I am DONE with charity in this society I think. Its so hard to decide who is really in need and will use the charity to better themselves so they dont need it anymore. The bums on the street today just expect ME to work so they can sit around and collect money from people
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          • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
            Indeed there are a lot of Philip Reardens who don't even appreciate charity. I gave up on charity when furniture and clothing that I had used in my own house was deemed "not good enough" for Goodwill to put in their showroom. That was just before I read AS.
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          • Posted by blackswan 8 years, 10 months ago
            Charity should be aimed at the DESERVING poor, not just thrown about willy nilly. Take the approach that the robber barons made, viz., libraries, schools, etc., where the poor, if they have any gumption, will use the assistance to improve themselves, and eventually contribute to the pot. Forget those who refuse to make any effort.
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        • Posted by $ hash 8 years, 10 months ago
          The real problem is that most productive people are behaving like Dagny and Rearden and not abandoning the collectivist regimes they are in. Too many people and companies who should know better continue to remain in (and immigrate to) countries with high taxes and fascist economic policies (especially the USSA) and so keep feeding the state.

          I expect this to start changing rapidly over the next few years as collectivist states descend further into bankruptcy and civilizational breakdown while immigration options to more sane countries increase (eg. Panama and Chile now have nearly open-door immigration policies for many people) and alternative currency systems become more popular and provide a method to do business privately free from statist financial surveillance and currency manipulation.
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          • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
            Panama and Chile are on the map amongst possible Gulch sites, especially the westernmost province of Panama. There are many more Dagnys and Reardens than people who are willing to shrug.
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            • Posted by term2 8 years, 10 months ago
              Interesting. I would have thought south america was full of socialists like in venezuela
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              • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
                Chile has made some great strides since the Pinochet era of the 1970s, and Panama has done likewise since the fall of Noriega. Colombia is improving as well.

                Brazil is somewhat paradoxical. Although socialist, I think that Brazil will improve a lot in a generation. They have a new scientific mobility program with lots of highly motivated, largely entrepeneurial students. When this group of 20 year olds gets into their 40s, Brazil may become as entrepeneurial as America was in the late 1800s.

                Other than those countries, your evaluation of South America's socialism is largely correct.
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  • Posted by Lucky 8 years, 10 months ago
    This gives me an opportunity to tell a story. Years ago, a friend as a young lad was on an ocean cruise. It was a big ship with a big pool. The pool was empty and the crew were filling it. They stopped when, it appeared to them, that splashing would get worse with more water, the ocean swell was not predicted to lessen that day. My friend questioned the crew, he suggested that this was an oscillating condition and that adding more water would take the system out of resonance. They did not take that advice.
    My opinion, now, is that the crew were correct. The explanation may have right but the system could have been approaching the peak resonance frequency and the water sloshing could have got worse and drenched and damaged other areas (then stopped when the pool had emptied itself).
    So, jbrenner may be correct, a little touch may be enough to set the economy into swinging into disaster. In that case whoever provides such assistance will be blamed. Or, the little touch may move the economy towards more stability. Even if that is good, the wrong people will get the credit. In general, systems with the potential to oscillate are very sensitive to provocation near the resonance frequency.
    Summary- if you do not know the effects of what you are going to do, best keep your hands off. Good intentions are no substitute for knowledge.
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    • Posted by $ johnrobert2 8 years, 10 months ago
      Thus, the conundrum. Which action will result from that initial touch? It's kind of like the guys who do avalanches. Will they start one which will result in a more stable slope or one which will wipe everything below it?
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  • Posted by philosophercat 8 years, 10 months ago
    Galt went to the great producers and showed them how their effort supported the looters. Galt knew these men could restart the world when it collapsed. The problem today is the world is collapsing of its own because there are not men of independent productive ability. We need to show men how to start the motor of the world not stop it. It is possible to achieve greatness in this world and do it while affirming values. The looters cannot learn, they must be replaced, not at once but by generations of young objectivists. Don't try and stop the motor of the mind, instead try to start one.
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    • Posted by ewv 8 years, 10 months ago
      Ayn Rand did not advocate trying to bring down society by a strike or any other means as a way to reform society. She knew that it was impractical for a small number of good people to have such an effect by such means, and that collapsing a society would provide nothing on which to rebuild it. She advocated spreading the right ideas required for a proper society. The strike was intended to show the role of the mind in society and what happens when it is withdrawn in a fictional accelerated form of a collapse that was happening anyway, not a political blueprint for reform. Withdrawing to some degree may be (and today often is) proper only for the benefit of your own personal values in how you want to best live your own life versus being punished for it.
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  • Posted by ohiocrossroads 8 years, 10 months ago
    "By depriving you of victims, I have shortcut the normal course of history, and have thereby destroyed your world." John Galt didn't try to apply mathematics to the problem of stopping the motor of the world, he pointed out to his rectruited strikers that they were right in pursuing their self-interest, and wrong in putting the fruits of their thought and work at the service of the looters.

    In reality, there is too much complexity in the interaction between people and the economy to boil it down to a simple calculation of a resonant natural frequency.
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  • Posted by livefree-NH 8 years, 10 months ago
    Interesting analogy, but it's important to remember that any such periodicity is already man-made and not a 'naturally-occurring resonance'. Compare these two: the 11-year solar sunspot cycle, and the four-year US presidential election cycle. You can correlate human events to each of them with very good fit, and either could be argued as a flock response to an external event, but one was set up by humans and the other was not.

    I daresay that attempting to modify the resonant frequency of the magnetic reversal of the sun would fail in your lifetime, if only because you would not live long enough to take enough data points to confirm the change. The same would hold true for making a change in human behavior that is most likely fruitful over generations, and not in shorter term.

    In other words, you can (maybe?) make a change that will make the world a better place for your grandkids, but making a change today isn't measurable today.
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    • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
      Regarding making the change in human behavior so as to be fruitful over generations and not in the shorter term, this was the common attitude amongst many of our forebearers. However, is that really consistent with Objectivist philosophy? If we cannot expect to see the fruits of such change in our lifetimes, is that not living for the sake of another man (even if it is your own direct posterity)?

      The main point of this thread was to ethically postulate a way to collapse the looter/moocher world in a short enough time such that there would be a world worth coming back to. While a wonderful story, at least in this era, it would not be possible to remove enough producers in the way that Galt et al. did to collapse the system soon enough to make it worth coming back to the world.
      Your point, livefree-NH, is to go further and say that, even by modifying the resonant frequency for human behavior, one would not collapse the looter/moocher world fast enough to make it worth returning to. I cannot disagree. In fact, my comment suggesting that John and Dagny coming back to the world may not have been the correct ending to AS was not well received (and I didn't expect it to be). The reason I said that is because we are in agreement.
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      • Posted by livefree-NH 8 years, 10 months ago
        jbrenner I think we are in complete agreement. I was only adding my thoughts, kind of like poking a stick into the embers of a nice campfire.

        Regarding your questions, I would ask the same ones as well, rhetorically, and would add that since we have a longer lifespan than our forebearers, it would seem that there is even more reason why we should try to do something which would bear fruit in our own lifetimes.
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  • Posted by philosophercat 8 years, 10 months ago
    This is not a resonant phenomena society. There are no physical analogies for a system where all the elements can decide on their own to be come moral and act in a rational way. Boltzmann, Clausius, Newtonian gases all assume that the units of a system are inert and not self sustaining self generated actors with free will. Address the real issue, how to change volitional minds. The answer is by example with explanations available. classical physics and Quantum mechanics do not apply to living organisms nor do verbal analogies. Thermodynamics explains why living things must act but cannot explain which action will produce which results. That is the joy of being a living thing. We can do it but humans are lacking the consistent philosophy of how to do it. Thanks Ayn Rand. for the answer. The best fiction regarding the change of social systems is Asimov's Foundation series.
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    • Posted by ewv 8 years, 10 months ago
      Physics has nothing to do with this. It is a floating abstraction that is at most a strained metaphor. There are no "second order differential equations" describing the moral/political trend.
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    • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
      Actually there is a pretty good analogy to societal interactions. Try looking at the mathematical models of Bruce Buena de Mesquita.
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      • Posted by philosophercat 8 years, 10 months ago
        de Mesquita's selectorate theory is a perfect example of modeling based on the assumption of the past as predictable of the future. Living things are the opposite. The future is created from the past. Harmonics decay to noise if they are not reversible but if they are reversible they are predictable forward and back in time. That is the opposite of the nature of life which is irreversible by the laws of thermodynamics. Did de Mesquita predict Ayn Rand?
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  • Posted by blackswan 8 years, 10 months ago
    Not to get off topic, but giving people what they want, even though it will destroy them, isn't sabotage, but justice.
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    • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
      This sounds like a corollary to part of Francisco's money speech. "Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality–the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind."
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  • Posted by term2 8 years, 10 months ago
    The secret behind using resonance is that small inputs applied at the resonant frequency of the system produce LARGE outputs. When applied to the collapse of our socialist system, I could suggest giving to the moochers to increase their expectations of free stuff, and then withdraw the free stuff for awhile and make the government step up and give it. And do that at the right frequency (maybe social workers could input on this one) so as to excite the masses between bouts of getting some and wanting more...
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    • Posted by philosophercat 8 years, 10 months ago
      OK if you want to use this non-human analogy then the resonator is the government and the added energy to the system can counter the harmonic or cancel it. If you support climate change legislation you will damp the productive oscillation and it you vote against it you will accomplish nothing because you remove non of the friction and inefficiency of existing legislation. Keep oscillating guys it uses energy and achieves nothing.

      Remember information is originated and received only by thermodynamic systems. If the systems focus on efficiency then you will find the least energy needed to maintain the system. Its called capitalism.
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      • Posted by term2 8 years, 10 months ago
        Exactly. I think at this point that the USA has reached the same tipping point reached in atlas shrugged. The tide is overwhelmingly towards socialism as in Venezuela and it needs to be helped along to hit bottom before the tide can turn towards capitalism again
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        • Posted by philosophercat 8 years, 10 months ago
          When the evidence of evil is all around it becomes easy to point it out but still hard to find the right words to make it clear and point in the new direction and be heard. That's our task now.
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          • Posted by term2 8 years, 10 months ago
            Too many people today in USA don't think what we call evil is in fact evil. Best to float your boat when the tide rises than to waste energy fighting to keep the tide from receefing
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      • Posted by term2 8 years, 10 months ago
        But reliance on mindless emotion seems to be the driving force behind collectivism . This thread seems to be about ways to speed up the eventual collapse of this approach to life through use of resonance theory, and a return to living a life based on personal responsibility when artificial altruistic support structures are gone. If indeed emotions in this country can be described as a pendulum swinging between socialism and capitalism- but moving more and more towards socialism, the faster we can help it swing more towards socialism and the associated horrors. The better
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    • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
      The mere threat of taking away the free stuff is sufficient. The frequency of that is about every two years, whenever Democrats want to demonize their enemies.
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      • Posted by term2 8 years, 10 months ago
        I would think it depends on some aspect of the emotional makeup of humans. just when you feel you have got it made with the freebies, they disappear. then just when you are pissed off enough to actually work, the goodies come back. Eventually, the person gets emotionally whipsawed and goes wild in the streets demanding the goodies never stop. I would say its at least a 12 month cycle- maybe you are right 24 months.
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  • Posted by term2 8 years, 10 months ago
    I am closer to the "shrugged" mentality in the last few years. I gave up manufacturing medical equipment after the FDA took over regulating it. I really dont want to die "rich". I would rather spend my time on whats interesting and enjoyable and have just enough money to keep myself going in decent style until I die. Why make a lot of money, only to have the government profit from it. If I had kids, I would tell them to do what they could to keep the government from profiting from their work, and hope the system collapses soon and can be rebuilt as a true capitalist system.
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    • Posted by Flootus5 8 years, 10 months ago
      Well said. I know many at this point that actually don't want to make "too much" because it gets taken for the wrong reasons and in the wrong directions.

      But, to also be engaged in something productive, interesting, and rewarding is paramount. Haha! I'm obviously describing my current ventures.
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    • Posted by blackswan 8 years, 10 months ago
      I was in a discussion with a thinking liberal (someone like Ms. Powers) friend of mine a while back, and he asked me where can I find a single capitalist society anywhere in the world, either now or in the past. I realized that I could only point to a few societies that APPROACHED capitalism, but never actually hit it, which suggested to me that we have never been free of the moochers, and may never be. Just as there had to be compromises to get the Constitution approved, so there may never be a pure capitalist system, which leaves the opening for more and more statism to be imposed. This suggests that we're looking at a sinusoidal system, fluctuating between more or less freedom as we move through the process. So, the question should be, how do we create a PURE capitalist system? What would it look like, and how can it be imposed?
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      • Posted by term2 8 years, 10 months ago
        Good points. The problem is that by its nature, capitalism cant really be imposed. The whole idea of a free market system is that its freely accepted. A benevolent dictator who believed in free markets and owned a 'country' could set the capitalist rules and the people who moved there would have to agree with them. That might work.
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      • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 10 months ago
        I do not think that it is possible - or necessary - to get a pure capitalist system, blackswan. What is necessary is to get a system that _allows_ capitalism. "Allows" in this case means "does not punish or encumber", but realize that any system so constructed would also allow other systems to be nested within it; some of these systems will be socialist.

        This is OK. If someone wants to voluntarily give up the rights to their production to a commune in return for security, then that is their business - and lots of people will be in this group. The point of restructuring society will be to Include capitalism, not to Exclude other social formats.

        Jan
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      • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
        I think Ms. Rand laid a blueprint for that, and it is why I suggested a couple of weeks ago that the ending of AS might not have been the correct one. The only way to get a purely capitalistic system is to have a microsociety that takes Galt's oath.
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        • Posted by ewv 8 years, 10 months ago
          Ayn Rand's climactic ending was perfect for the novel. It was a work of fiction illustrating the role of man's mind in society and what happens when it is withdrawn -- in a deliberately fictional acclerated fashion -- not a prescription for how to collapse a society and take over. The ending showed fundamental victory and vindication, also highly accelerated, without drawing out the details of how to rebuild a country, which the novel was not about.
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  • Posted by term2 8 years, 10 months ago
    What the giving pledge does is in the end to empower the non-productive people into wanting more and more, while it depletes the resources of the productive people. It will backfire on the Buffets, in that the very people they help will become "monsters" and want more and more. This is happening to our liberal government right now- which is why their non-discretionary expenditures have exploded in recent years. Whether the Buffets really intend to stop the motor of the world with this strategy is doubtful. Its probably some altruistic thing instead. But if enough people give away their fortunes to the ones who dont earn anything, the motor will stop .
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  • Posted by Technocracy 8 years, 10 months ago
    Economy is the resonance. A big enough "bubble bursting" in the economy ripples out and resonates around the world.

    The "housing bubble" nearly took down our economy. Since we have world markets and other countries invest in our markets, it did worldwide damage. And it can easily happen again.

    The three angles that can cause an even bigger oscillarion are: energy, currency, and war. A sharp enough blow from any of the three could cause fatal resonance.
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  • Posted by kevinw 8 years, 10 months ago
    So much here to comment on.
    A while back Straightlinelogic posted his own article http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/1e... about bankrupting the system/causing economic collapse that would seem to fit in very well with your resonance frequency approach. I never took physics so you have exceeded my ability to link them together any better than that.

    I missed the suggestion you referred to about the giving pledge being someone's way of going galt. If you or someone else could post a link to that I would be grateful. I have often thought that, myself. Bill Gates and Microsoft had no presence in Washington prior to being dragged into court for anti-trust "violations" and began lobbying after that for their own protection. But in the midst of the bogus lawsuits, who was at their side? Nobody. Where were the people standing up for the company that put a computer on Everybodies desk? When the prevailing attitude was that computers were basically for the higher educated, and/or the wealthy. I think Gates shrugged, not from the government, but from the people who benefitted the most from his efforts but allowed that to happen to him and his company. Consider, also, that he is welathier now, after the "giving pledge" than before he took it.

    On your post about Galt committing sabotage, while I did not agree with your suggestion that he did, I based my disagreement on my view that he did not need to. I would question his loss of the moral high ground by raising this question, which I have asked before; At what point does the governments (and the people who they represent) initiation of the use of force require the retailiatory use of force? The answer to that would answer your final question. (b)

    To your question (a); my impression is that you are looking for ways to speed up the process of collapse. In the book, I was under the impression that the number of producers that disappeared was, maybe, a couple hundred. I would suspect that in todays world it would take thousands, possibly many thousands to speed up the process significantly. As has been stated around here before, there is enough wealth currently to drag out the collapse for generations. The problem with the Giving Pledge idea is that these people have already produced so much that the effect of their removal is negligible.

    Maybe I just can't see it because I'm not sure I'm ready to speed up the process to bring on the collapse. I still think that education can turn this thing around. HOWEVER,... the thought hit me the other day, "if Jeb Bush is the republican nominee, I just might have to vote for Hillary." If Jeb Bush is the best option the republicans can offer, it's time to put this dog down.
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    • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
      Thank you for recalling straightlinelogic's post. That was one that I had missed, even though I look at most of his. It is quite relevant to this one, kevinw.

      As for speeding up the collapse process, I do agree that it would take at least thousands of producers (probably tens of thousands) to be taken out of production. The bottom line is that if producers are to strike and want to come back, the collapse has to be fast enough that such producers are not all past age 75 when the time to return occurs. Otherwise, striking is not in one's best interest.

      Also regarding speeding up the process of collapse, one learns in crack mechanics that all stress focuses on the longest crack in an object. Think about someone trying to walk with a so-called "stress fracture" in his/her foot or ankle. Until that crack heals, every step is pain-ridden. However, in economics, the same rule does not apply. If we choose to speed up the collapse of the world, we would have to see to it that the same weak area is stressed repeatedly. This also presumes that there is no "fatigue limit" in economic terms. In materials science, when a material has a fatigue limit, above a certain crack length, increasing the crack length does not lower the maximum stress that the object can tolerate. Unfortunately I suspect that there is such a fatigue limit if someone were to try intentionally to collapse an economy.

      As for your Jeb vs. Hillary debate, I was two months too young to vote for Reagan. There hasn't been an R or a D since that I have had any interest in voting FOR in a general presidential election. It's well past time to put this dog down.

      As for whether Gates et al. have gone Galt, I have found suggestions over the past nine days from David Kelley and from coaldigger regarding this possibility quite fascinating:

      http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/2f...
      Within that David Kelley wrote, "What if Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and a few others had disappeared 12 years ago (despite the fact that most of them are liberals :))?"

      In Khalling's post, http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/30...

      Posted by coaldigger 5 days, 2 hours ago

      "I believe these guys have truly gone Galt. If they kept their money invested in their enterprises with their minds, they would have produced more and more, while we did less and less. As the leeches became hostile to the hands that were feeding the trough, they said "fine. Take it. It is gold to us but it will be poison to you." They have withdrawn leaving a fool's legacy and can bask in the adulation of the pigs that they are leading to slaughter. The disgust that they feel for us must be amazing!"
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      • Posted by ewv 8 years, 10 months ago
        If Jobs, Gates and Zuckerberg and a few others had disappeared it would have made no substantial difference. There were many other brilliant minds developing the same ideas. The history of Zuckerberg in particular shows that his amoral pragmatism reached a level of frenzied manipulation and throat cutting because he was well aware that others were developing social media at several universities. He did not invent the idea or its main innovations.

        If someone expects to make a difference on a societal level by going on strike, he had best determine if anyone will notice.
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        • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
          If no one notices, then the Gulch can easily remain anonymous, but the time to collapse doesn't decrease appreciably either.
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          • Posted by ewv 8 years, 10 months ago
            Their noticing where a few people are hiding from them in order to try to prosper is not the same as noticing someone missing from the economy and not doing what they don't know about because it didn't happen. There is an enormous difference between going somewhere to live your own life versus expecting to have a political impact with the "strike" as a floating abstraction, and this matter of "noticing" is one aspect of it.
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  • Posted by plusaf 8 years, 10 months ago
    Well, I know that most folks here hold Werner Erhard and the 'est Training' in about as much esteem as Krugman has for Rand, but one of the concepts he adopted from Bucky Fuller 'resonates' with this subject (pun intended...)

    Bucky called it Trim-Tabbing.

    In theory, as WE described it, the rudder of a Large Ship is fairly impossible to move with any practical mechanics or hydraulics, so in order to move the rudder and 'turn the ship' (metaphor/analogy warning!) you need to do something you CAN do that will move the rudder.

    And that's what a trim tab does. You'll see the same thing on the wings and tails of Large Aircraft.

    If you want the ship (water-type) to turn Right, you need to shove the rudder to the Right (starboard) side. But that's hard to do, so they add a small trim tab to the rudder.

    And the Trim Tab is moved to the PORT side of the ship. What happens? It acts like a hydrofoil that bends the water flow around the rudder in such a way as to create a low-pressure area on the starboard side of the Trim Tab.
    So, the trim tab, pulled to Port, Moves The Rudder to Starboard, and the ship is pushed towards a new Starboard direction.

    Same with many airplane rudders, elevators and ailerons. Take a close look at how they move on your next flight.


    SOOOOOOOOOOO, WTF am I trying to say?

    I forget.... no, now I remember... If we have the goal of moving the Ship Of State in some New Direction, pushing on the Big Rudder might be really difficult to affect!

    But some gentle nudges in the right places might just get people thinking about the Ship's Direction and if they start to believe that One Good Turn is a Good Idea, a bunch of them just Might get in motion in the direction we'd like 'em to go.

    Whatever.... I'm just an old engineer.... what could _I_ possibly know? :)))))))))))
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  • Posted by iroseland 8 years, 10 months ago
    This got me thinking..


    " The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments."
    Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 191

    Now, there are some interesting ways to view doing exactly this..

    Were we to suddenly start supporting

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/perso...

    of course with intentionally faulty ( but loud ) arguments. There are really only a few meaningful outcomes..

    People would suddenly see just how bad the idea is and want nothing to do with it.
    Or worse, they prove they are in fact sheep and follow along.

    In both cases you would be sabotaging the system. In either case the amazingly bad idea loses..

    Ok, there is a third outcome where the true believers attack your poor support, but then they are expending energy on that instead of trying to push such a bad idea.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 10 months ago
    You remove the producer and you no longer have a function.

    Interesting. I actually have been working my way through calculus text at lunchtime at the office, feeling a need to brush up enough to teach my kids (and, perhaps, other kids).

    Somebody thought Obama was Galt? Haha...there's some sabatoge! I just brought up the "you didn't build that" mess with a couple friends yesterday and they never heard of it.
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  • Posted by strugatsky 8 years, 10 months ago
    It may very well be that human behavior is analogous to material properties and can be modeled using the same concepts. The big complication is that humans are much more diverse than materials. But, just as homogeneous materials can be combined into complex networks, diverse humans and a great many phenomena emanating from human behavior can be simplified by approximations when dealing on a macro scale. I can see such a model as a possibility; it can be programmed and used for simulations and comparison to the real world. Past and current events can be used to test the model and it may very well turn out that predictions and, thus, corrections or influences, can be injected into the real world with scientific precision. That would be an amazing model to develop.
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    • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
      It would be a remarkably challenging model to develop, but as I've learned over the last few days, there are a couple of models out there that could be adapted to such a purpose. The real challenge is in the assumptions (er, premises in AR terminology) that would go into such a model.
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      • Posted by strugatsky 8 years, 10 months ago
        Parts of this model already exist. There are a number of human network models that are used for tracking human activities, such as terrorism or anti-government sentiments. It seems to me that these could be the basis for an overall human behavior model, especially if it is at first "limited" to economic activity. As to the premises, that in itself could be an interesting graduate project.
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  • Posted by strugatsky 8 years, 10 months ago
    Although not directly answering your questions, I do want to add that if one looks at the details of the "charities" from the big boys like Gates and Clintons, it becomes obvious that they are charities in name only; money laundering would be a more appropriate term. These people are not stupid; they are convinced, however, that we are.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 10 months ago
    There is one common bond between all those folks and their pledge. Tax Deductions. Ted Turner got a lot of milage out of paying the US share of over due UN payments.In the end his bank account did not suffer.

    Truth telling is a great way to throw sand in the gears. Ethanol (another name for moonshine) is a great example. To run the sitll that makes the ethanol takes about one gallon of fossil fuel for every gallon of ethanol produced. to keep the price down ethanol is subsidized by the tax payer another way of saying you pay for it without getting any. similar to the GMC bailout and how many taxpayers are still owed a Chevy. Ethanol is known to ruin engines even the Calilfornia EPA published a warning. The requirement for ten percent of fuel production must be ethanol was a boon to the fuel and agribusiness industries.who garnered most of the income including the federal subsidies. The workers of the grain belt got lots of jobs and also higher prices at the grocery stores.

    A little sand is still a lot of grains of sand the work is done slowly but eventually it destroys. BOHICA and don't forget to check the lube for sand.
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    • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
      Well said, Michael, even though you picked on two wounds for me that will never fully heal. The ethanol subsidy benefited the competition of my former biofuels business. I had sold my GM bonds a couple of years before the GM bailout, but my parents lost $100 K in GM bonds when Obama rewarded the union moochers at my parents' expense. I have since been forever unwilling to buy bonds as my protest over the violation of bankruptcy law proceedings.
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  • Posted by Flootus5 8 years, 10 months ago
    This is an incredibly rich concept that could take a lifetime to explore.

    Or - already has? But that also goes forward as inexorably as does the time that is afforded to our lives.

    I understand what jbrenner is putting forth as resonant frequency. To illustrate, I had a physics professor describe, as an analogy, what happens sometimes when you may be approaching say 55 mph and suddenly your vehicle is vibrating all to hell, and then when you may increase or decease your speed , it goes away. That is a product of harmonizing resonant frequencies inherent in an object.

    I dealt with this phenomenon more specifically when it came to designing blast patterns in mining. The millisecond timing between each explosive loaded blasthole going off is absolutely critical in determining the vibration frequency that is imparted into the adjacent unexploded ground that is intended to serve as a stable highwall. That highwall is made of rock that has an inherent strength property. If you have enough blastholes in your explosive pattern that are going off at the same time or are in an impact wave propagation that has coincident timing - that rock strength is severely damaged. It's ability to stand as a slope is severely compromised.

    jbrenner's point here is that societal/human behavior systems may have similar properties to material properties. As usual, humans have excelled at understanding material real world properties to the benefit of mankind and failed miserably at the same with reality based interactions of humankind. With the exception, I would posit, of Ayn Rand and other rational based thinkers (and founders if I may).

    To extend the concept of resonance frequency as a mechanism to stop the current macro insanity and cognitive dissonance that is gripping our current world situation is a very important idea. A huge amount of exploration in pursuit of this is entirely worthwhile.

    But, I would also agree with some in this post, that the actual motor that needs to be stopped is that of the one deliberately generating this rampant cognitive dissonance. Hence we get into how to circumvent the mainstream media with something else and then you get into the familiar argument of how that option is so far ratcheted down now with net neutrality that we are approaching 1930's Germany.

    But, hey; this concept of resonance has huge merit and power to it. This will be occupying my mind for quite a bit here.

    Thank you jlbrenner!
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  • Posted by $ jlc 8 years, 10 months ago
    I want to say that this is an incredibly intriguing thread. Yes, it is like the psychohistory of Asimov's universe to consider society in terms of resonance frequencies, and that is just great. Have you considered a second profession, jbrenner?

    There are a couple of problems that I see here: One is 'how high is Up' and the other is 'black swan robotics' (not our very own blackswan, you note).

    In the former case we have a variable 'time until dissonance' that is predicated on the affluence and infrastructure of the individual country (how high an Up point we start at). And - as this thread makes clear - the voluntary donation of funds to non-productive members of society figures into how long this affluence lasts.

    The second, which may actually be a derivative of the first, is that when we come up against the threshold of general roboticization of our society, the model changes. From that point on we all, even the poorest, can become aristocrats ethically supported by our non-sentient robotic slaves. The question of 'productivity' in such circumstances is one we have visited before, on other threads.

    So IF we shrug and IF it does not matter because either (a) our country starts at such an affluent point that socialism + charity is taking decades to erode prosperity, and (b) robots revolutionize economics before prosperity is lost, THEN our ethical stance becomes meaningless because the entire basis for productivity has change.

    IF we shrug and prosperity is lost precipitously (war, epidemic, asteroid impact) THEN we can serve as philosophical templates for the reconstruction of a free society.

    So, the conclusion that I come to from reading this thread is that we are a 'back-up on durable media' against catastrophe. (This is not where I thought I was going, but it is where I ended up...)

    Jan
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  • Posted by Ibecame 8 years, 10 months ago
    This has the glint of something from Isaac Asimov's Psychohistory. While I do agree with you that some human solutions do have a mathematical basis, the problem here is that you are making an assumption. That the purpose of setting up a "Foundation"(Translation: rich persons charity) is to provide charity. You are also making the assumption that Bill Gates, Warren Buffett are actually charitable people and will distribute and use these funds in a charitable manner. "Foundations" are a get out of taxes free card, not to mention the probate advantages, and the average of those I looked at only gave back less than 4% in the form of charity. If either Oren Boyle or Westley Mooch were real people alive today they would each have their own "Charitable Foundation". For the public good.
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    • Posted by $ 8 years, 10 months ago
      Agreed except on one point. I do not make the assumption that the purpose of setting up a foundation is to provide charity. Most people who set up foundations and even those people who donate to get the get out of taxes free card do so primarily because they want their dollars to go either to establish a legacy or to put up an image that will get positive PR.
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      • Posted by Ibecame 8 years, 10 months ago
        My apologies, I thought you were missing that point. Knowing how this works, I don't understand how donating to charity would "hasten" the downfall. I should add, not that I would want to. If it doesn't happen in my lifetime my children will have to deal with it, but at least they are capable.
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  • Posted by KevinSchwinkendorf 8 years, 10 months ago
    Isn't this what RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) are already doing, contributing to the problem? If you really want to accelerate the collapse, just vote for Hillary Clinton (I refuse to refer to that creature as simply "Hillary," because using only someone's first name is a form of endearment, and I would never want anyone to think I thought of her in a positive way).
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  • Posted by ReneeDaphne 6 years, 11 months ago
    A nicely stated summation of the idea and interesting thoughts on "using" resonance.

    I don't really see how you could "use" this resonance concept against anyone so it would be very hard to call it "sabotage". When someone is actively engaged in combating that which is "hell bent" on destroying them, no one calls it "sabotage".

    Additionally, if you are focused on creating what you want instead of combating what you don't like, you naturally set up an harmonic dissonance in those who would enslave you.

    It eventually gets the best of them and they go down in a heap. That's not sabotage either. It's the universe exacting justice. :-)
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