Ways to Screen Political Candidates

The goal of acquiring better politicians and eliminating influence of money in government points to an exam based selection system as the means




How to better achieve the age old goal of having political candidates that are right for the job? The job of course being to visibly and tangibly advance social welfare and involves:

a- decreasing price (in caloric energy spent) while increasing quality/quantity of food, electrical output, transport, shelter, education  
b- decreasing necessity for backbreaking work and subsistence living  
c- increasing safety from violence and coercion and advancing interethnic harmony
d- preserving and even expanding human autonomy during the process of all of the above

Yes, very difficult and definitely not the type of job that morons, pandering charismatic narcissists, rich man's stooges, and quick fix/gimmick driven individuals should engage in. Unfortunately, very often these days these 4 types are blended into one toxic package. To know what we want from candidates is to conceptualize a way to screen them. The public desires 3 basic simultaneous things from a person seeking power:

1) sufficiently competent to run and evolve technologically complex and very populous (over 10 million people) social units
2) sufficiently independent of oligarchic corporate influence
3) sufficiently legitimate in eyes of the public without it minimizing 1) and 2) (successfully approved by some sort of democratic input)

It is becoming very clear that neither public or private financing of candidates is achieving these. Rather than engaging in a futile task of tweaking an easily abused system (more public financing, ban on ads, regulating funds, etc), it is possible to cut off degradation and corruption of the candidate pool at the root. What needs to be made structurally obsolete is a need for money in politics in the first place. This in turn eliminates the need for advanced election marketing propaganda, fund raising pandering, and for extremely self absorbed individuals that possess a solid acting/lying/showmanship ability.

Screening method 1: Technical Exam

As previously mentioned, since economics is an engineering challenge, it is imperative to dramatically increase the quantity of candidates with scientific, civil engineering, and technical backgrounds. This calls for a comprehensive examination that candidates have to pass. Unlike the 1920s progressive era desire to screen voters via literacy tests and such, screening of ambitious power hungry candidates will find a lot more support. Relatively unbiased apolitical technical exams can rapidly be formulated and mandated for those who are to appear on the ballot the same way signature collection is.

The difficulty of the examination process can depend on the level of responsibility the candidate will possess. Perhaps the highest offices in the land may mandate taking a general exam, then secondary more closely watched exam for top 10% of scorers, and finally a final filtering test for 10% top scorers of surviving group. The last individuals left standing (say 10 people) can then be put under rigorous investigation of their personal and psychological backgrounds and be made to engage in debates before the public finally votes for who they want.

"But who controls the process!!?? Who makes the exams!!!??? Wouldn't rich people just have super specialized prep schools to create super engineers that always pass!!?? We're back to where we started!!!"

Sigh. The rich ivy leaguers are nowhere near as advantaged under the examination system since they would not get the automatic social networking and money raising boost. The materials to pass would be much more diffused and available in society (unlike the ivy social networking advantage many politicians have that prevents average people from even trying to run for office). This means that more people can try their luck at higher office. Additionally, due to the color blind nature of the meritocratic candidate selection process, the chances are a lot better for a highly qualified individual to make it into the final candidate pool (who would otherwise not get there due to voter bias against race, gender, ethnic group, age, class, etc).

We must keep in mind that the goals of candidate competence and independence from corporate control determine the means of candidate selection. If for example, one looks at a hypothetical proposal where some sort of social networking-video presentation candidate selection method is implemented, it becomes clear that once again the visually presentable and narcissistic are at an advantage. Visual selection of candidates via videos of speeches filters out the potentially far more competent individuals who may be camera shy, not be sufficiently attractive, not possess superb verbal eloquence, and so on. As of today, politics is dominated by extroverted semi psychopathic backstabbing individuals who are very eloquent and presentable. This corporate type led our society to disastrous consequences on a planetary scale. Reducing reliance on video presentation and increasing other ways of evaluation is key.

The exam itself would consist of sections such as systems thinking, civil engineering, organizational architecture, basic materials science, energy science, history, systems analysis, organizational psychology, infrastructure design, etc. If children of rich people do have some advantage of specialized prep schools, so be it, they'll be better occupied than snorting coke and becoming lawyers.

Screening method 2: Psychiatric Exam

This would test candidates for psychopathy using cutting edge medical and psychological means. This is a very serious if not the most critical issue for leadership filtering in terms of preventing damage to society. Further information concerning the societal justification can be found here.

A hypothetical argument against this can be made from certain possibility that as the ability to pass the technical exam increases, the ability to pass the psychiatric one decreases. This may be true to a degree considering schizoidia leaning introverted individuals with low empathy may excel more at engineering and systems analysis the colder their temperaments are. What has to be kept in mind is that a degree of physiologically determined empathy and emotional intelligence is not in conflict with competence but is a significant characteristic of it (especially for a political leader). To see some discussion on taking emotionality into consideration when determining policy in a group context (or even formulating a candidate exam), see here.

The reader can be assured that humanity can overcome the problem of balancing the need to screen out genuine psychopaths (who are not likely to be synonymous with advanced technical/analytic ability to begin with according to Lobaczewski) from the candidate pool while allowing very cold but harmless people to participate in evolution of social policy.

Final thoughts:

It is worth noting that technical and psychological exams can be applied to all levels of public recruitment even if the leadership is still selected completely democratically. A council of engineers instead of council of economists by the side of the mayor, governor, or president would go a long way. Some countries have already engaged in trying to screen out psychopaths during hiring of new police officers. This can be expanded easily to entry level positions within all public hierarchies. If we are to have proper reindustrialization of the Western world, the public cadres must be up to the level of the task.

Guide to Effective Protests: Dress Code

Which picture shows people who are more serious?

The title was going to be "making demonstrations more effective" until I realized my previous titles increasingly began with ING suffix words. This reminded me that the trend of statements with ING suffix starters seemed to pick up pace under Bush. He would make many speeches in front of a background that would be endlessly covered with written tidbits like "rebuilding American families", "increasing opportunities", "making heartland strong", etc.

News organizations caught this propaganda flu as well. Since adding the ING suffix creates an action noun and conveys that continuous action is happening, it could very well be that GOP came up with very effective, psychological, and viral informational tool. Instead of definitive statements conveying a beginning and end such as "The act of 2006 caused this" we got streams of meaningless and cerebrally confusing "financing our future" which just told that vague action is happening nonstop. Perfect for 24/7 cable and do nothing politicians since definitive statements with an end would invite thought. Bush excelled at psych ops.

When talking about increasing effectiveness of protests, it is good to remember that the gathering of demonstrators is primarily a psychological propaganda tool for various media and apathetic middle class sections of the public. During the Bush era, the early Iraq war protests numbered in the hundreds of thousands. These protests were dramatically ineffective and not just due to 3 major media conglomerates deciding to ignore them. These anti-war gatherings were utilizing shockingly outdated methods (if they were ever that effective to begin with considering cultural backlash in 1970s).

The participants thought that the sheer numbers of people would be enough to catch the media's eye. Many of the baby boomer organizers have been using the same tactics that seemed to be successful decades ago and for which the establishment and society at large had developed a serious immunity. It may have been shocking and eye catching to have colorfully dressed hyper individuals in large numbers in 1960s in one place. In 2003 however, the insistence than protesters find their own unique way of expressing discontent became counterproductive since MSM was able to use it as a weapon of ridicule when it wasn't ignoring. It was easy pickings to zoom in on the strangest looking hippy or funniest paper meche statue.

Anybody who was exposed to this silly groan inducing spectacle could not have come away psychologically impressed. The actual target audience, politically dominant elderly and middle aged voters in the western world (majority of them were not on the side of earlier protesters in 60s/70s) were exposed to the wrong psychological marketing strategy and completely counterproductive anti-war propaganda.

The organizers would complain that just getting everybody organized enough to show up was an accomplishment. If they faced such critical organizational issues they should have spent serious energy on creating a perception of organization that was lacking. This is easily accomplished with a general agreement on what to wear and what color theme the demonstration should be.

It may sound silly but one just has to look back at US suffrage movement and the various CIA engineered "color revolutions" in eastern Europe in recent years. The green "movement" in Iran for instance was comprised of multitudes of various groups and previously unaffiliated individuals yet it miraculously became transformed into a monolithic "movement" with a simple color emphasis.

The effect of 2003 protests would have been multiplied dramatically if everybody showed up in their most formal wear and decided on a singular color. All it takes is for organizers to send a simple message to those attending such as "whatever you do show up in work pants/work skirt and a white shirt and wear a cheap blue headband or scarf, etc". When a reporter takes a picture of 50,000 people each dressed individualistically, it looks as you'd expect, just a horde of disorganized people. However a picture of 50,000 all dressed in office cubicle formal wear that also has blue headbands and occasional blue flags would be visually and psychologically stunning. It would:

1) Prevent reporters (both MSM and amateur) from singling out the strangest looking costumes and pretty much force more wide crowd shots since shots of so many people wearing the same are better photography in general (think psych ops of crowd shots in 2003 Ukraine and 2009 Iran). More media coverage is guaranteed.

2) Create the illusion of organization and "movement" which in turn invites giving the whole coalition of diverse groups an umbrella nickname (even simple tea bags can do this much less blue headbands)

3) Most importantly the psychological effect on elderly people (who see a crowd of crisp well dressed people of all ages) would go further in achieving the aim of the event in the first place. Even if the demonstration gets a derogative nickname like "bluebaggers/bluetesters" etc it would still give power to "movement" by putting it under one category. People like to lump things into categories.

Doing something as simple and seemingly trivial as coordinating color and asking everybody to wear a white shirt automatically starts a process of integration where common themes and slogans are developed. It may be asking too much to also coordinate 3 simple phrases such as "Telling to End Afghanistan War" to utilize propaganda of repetition as a voice of the crowd. It may also be asking too much to have everybody at a protest shut up and walk in solemn silence for a mile to create a psychological sense of gravity in onlookers. It may definitely be too much to replicate the simple parade formation walking that suffragettes showed.

But when people feel seriously enough about something to gather in a large crowd (knowing that the crowd itself is a marketing tool) then they should also take the next step to demonstrate their seriousness instead of treating the event like a giant Halloween party, music festival, or socializing opportunity. Until common tricks to multiply message are used, American protesters will not show they are serious no matter how they feel on the inside. Then again, in today's climate next time there are that many people in the streets the catchy nickname they'd get may be pitchforkers.

Constructing Efficient Socieconomic Systems

Part 1: A second look at non-technological top down approaches we're already familiar with

The last article touched upon a simple overarching goal that seems to have been lost in the discourse about the public sector. That is, constantly using cutting edge engineering and technological knowhow to create a bigger energy bang for your energy buck when delivering goods and services via public means. When one makes the effort to replace a plow with a tractor one has greatly cut spending in terms of energy/resources over the long run.

Many governments in the world are the plow/ horse and buggy equivalents. Throwing more money for a better plow isn't going to cut it in the 21st century. Public tools at humanity's disposal must be restructured to meet the demands ahead, these demands being mass scale production of fission and fusion reactors to power up southern hemisphere and reindustrialization of the Western world.

Future public sectors will be judged in how they balance:

1) preservation/expansion of human autonomy

and

2) speed in construction of energy plants needed for continental infrastructure projects in irrigation, transport, farming, etc.

The idea will be to create virtuous cycles where the public tools and infrastructural products of said tools reinforce each other in a rapid movement forward.

No, this is not a call to emulate China (as some in the West are beginning to do) or argument for some sort of a scientific dictatorship (although after the current ghastly rule by bankers and lawyers a congress/parliament of scientists would be a liberating breath of fresh air). Efficiency should not be a dirty word. The word was certainly dragged through the mud by free market economists (the energy logistics behind outsourcing being so inefficient as to make Soviet central planners blush) but we can reclaim it.

Many people are currently focused on bottom up structural reform within their communities and micro governance in general. That is all good but before we move on to that lets remember that there are always 3 other basic ways to get things moving on a macro level. Additionally, whether reform is from above or below, the extent to which it is possible depends on a certain level of technological development and proper implementation of communication devices, transport, etc.

Common top down types of restructuring to bring about efficiency on a macro scale:

A) Breaking up larger political structures geographically to infuse the newly independent parts with new life and autonomy. Example: dissolution of Austria-Hungarian Empire and USSR. After the fragments became independent they learned how to function and are now joining up again in new economic/political blocks on their own free will. Think of it as a bloated monopoly or an unwieldy AOL/Time Warner merger coming apart. When the different parts don't compliment each other well (if they are kept together by historical force or if the ethnic groups don't mix well), then major public sector efficiency gains can be made locally through splitting up the country. Some even argue that countries should have population caps (ranging from 10-50 million people) as small countries provide best examples of governmental streamlining.

If large entities like India, China, or United States (it can easily be 5-7 smaller federal unions) are split up, the fragments can reorganize and then merge again in a fashion that is more productive for all. This is not realistic brainstorming in most cases but lets continue to illustrate types of macro reform that may be attempted in unforeseen regions in the future.

It may presently be absurd to join the already huge and ungovernable Mexico and USA together with Canada to form a North American Union. However, if Mexico splits, if USA splits, and then if Canada splits, after 10-15 years of independence the newly streamlined governments of fragments can rearrange into a North American Union that is dramatically more productive. This of course is recommended for those bloated beasts that can split without bloodshed (once again you know who you are... Indian subcontinent).

B) Joining industrial enterprises together to create economies of scale.
One may think that A) contradicts itself. Why would countries join together again (even partially) after political decentralization and independence? Once again, efficiency is the reason. Think of a hypothetical federal union that has 3 major states: Mexas, Malifornia, and Mew Mork. The country has one large industrial monopoly (Mockheed Lartin) that makes advanced passenger planes. The factories to assemble the airplane parts are scattered throughout the union, research facilities concentrated in one part, vertically integrated mines in another and so on. If this imaginary country splits up, the new governments may become a lot more efficient, responsive/closer to the people, freer, have greater energy and ability to do things faster, etc. However, the new sovereigns of Mexas, Malifornia, and Mew Mork may suffer greatly if Mockheed Martin is similarly split up into three pieces. That is because synergy between the parts of the industrial giant has been lost. The new countries will be left with pieces of a giant and will not be able to barter planes for other things that they need (or even provide planes for themselves in the short term as cheaply as before). The slow down of real physical economy would then negate benefits from acceleration of the political process.

This is not to say that all industrial monopolies with a global reach are synergetic. Lockheed Martin for instance purposefully decentralizes its operations through all 50 states to influence congressmen which creates ridiculous cost overruns and logistical inefficiencies. But if one looks at how European Union and USA emerged, there were major industrial enterprises driving the integration. When it comes to infrastructure builders and providers for products like MagLev trains, tunnels, and canals it's obvious that some organisms need to stay together and expand for cheaper utilization of materials and assembly lines. Industrial giants benefit from size and are the only way to advance real physical economy and wealth of the world.

Therefore, if we continue discussion of what may be best for North America, the optimal restructuring may be: the 3 great countries on the continent splitting into a bunch of smaller sovereign political units (while preserving their industrial links) THEN coming together again as a North American EU confederate  equivalent and THEN creating singular continental industrial monopolies to take advantage of economies of scale. This way North American Union can fully utilize its resources to stamp out planes, trains, fission reactors in large cheap quantities to compete with similar continent wide industrial giants elsewhere. These continental giants would dwarf Gazprom and most likely be born from bilateral/multilateral agreements between sovereign governments (rather than any private interests). At this scale, such continental industries are necessarily public property as a mater of simple energy economics and common sense. On a longer timeline, this process would eventually lead to UN being partially or fully in charge of a planetary electrical grid, irrigation construction, and other things of sufficiently international scale.

C) Finally another structural reform is elimination of local governments. In parts of northeastern USA, the oldest parts of the country, there is an absolutely absurd, archaic, and insanely inefficient overlap of tiny local governments. An area and population that would simply and cheaply be covered by a county government in the Midwest would have an ancient village government, a town government, and various neighboring microgovernments all fighting tooth and nail with each other as if it was some Middle Age feudal principality.

Often, a good way to cut spending is to simply wipe out local governments and replace them with one bigger horizontal government with a flat managerial structure that can provide goods and services cheaply by utilizing its larger negotiating power. Unlike A) which wipes out an umbrella gov, C) creates a new umbrella gov for localities while eliminating those under it. Feudal political middlemen on the village level may sound like they are close to the people but when it comes to adding to resource costs and societal progress they stand in the way like some strange Western tribal elders. Here is an example of a fiasco that can occur.

This will be all for now, I'll return to question of efficiency and its interplay with human autonomy in later parts as well as discuss micro bottom up approaches.

How to Raise Public Sector Efficiency

It is not a secret anymore that the "choice" between raising taxes and cutting public services is a false one.

Shrinking the government without drowning it in any bathtub is something we lost sight of. Similar to how the amount of workers in agriculture sector went from a quarter of the labor force to 1% of it, the government workers can shrink in numbers while delivering more. This involves meritocratic placement of system engineers and scientists in administrative charge instead of lawyers and political appointees.

Streamlining of bureaucratic functions and restructuring of service delivery mechanisms allows budgetary savings without raising additional taxes or resorting to cuts in provisions. This realization is especially key for advanced countries around the world as they struggle with the convulsions of a gradually dying monetarist debt based system. Reforms to raise the efficiency of the public middlemen are very important since they prepare us for the long and difficult transition to a post-monetarist resource based socioeconomics.

Even citizens of countries like Germany, a country that has weathered the international depression remarkably well, have to put up with a ridiculous false dilemma of either less spending on infrastructure/public provisions or higher taxes. Angela Merkel, a former physicist, may hopefully yet show the world how productive politics are done.

[ Please note: this discussion has the bottom 90% of citizens in mind who are most affected by the presentation of between a rock and a hard place construct. Taxes on the richest people should be hiked without mercy to pre neoliberal wave levels (especially in the English speaking world). This will make up for some of the looting that has occurred. Sarkozy's recent quest for an international Tobin Tax is a great start. ]

Shrinking the government without drowning it in any bathtub:

Often politicians don't focus on restructuring the public sector for the following two reasons:

1) It is a very difficult task both politically and logistically and requires long term effort. It doesn't produce the wanted quick pre-election results in a democratic system. Making the post office work 20% better so it requires 20% less funds is not a flashy gimmick to present to the crowds.

2) The majority of money that backs many politicians in the western world come from public unions and oligarchs. Both of these have deep interests in stifling efforts to raise efficiency.

Raising efficiency of transportation delivery for example may require replacement of some public workers with machines. This creates a clash with organized public labor. In the English speaking world, the government is the last place where unions have any real power and middle class wages and thus it becomes a fierce last stand.

The wealthy on the other hand can point to the politically created inefficiency of the public sector as an example of private sector superiority and use this comparison to call for cuts in public services. It becomes less palatable to raise taxes to support something that refuses to streamline. Cutting money spent on an inefficient "bloated" middleman without reform makes the services even worse.

One may think that many wealthy would call for reforming the PS instead of butchering it when pro-higher tax sentiment wins on occasion. However that would aide the idea that government can actually provide something well. A solid example is GOP puppets in USA making public sector dysfunctional deliberately to make privatization of it an easier sell.

Once the public fully realizes (that raising PS efficiency by 50% is not only doable but would allow a surplus of funds which can then be used to either lower taxes or increase quality/quantity of services), reforms can proceed. The problem of what to do with displaced public workers is not different than one facing anybody else replaced by machines. In fact, we will be able to face this key global question sooner. The sooner the better.

Privatization with its own mass scale inefficiencies due to overhead and profit driven qualitative degradation is NOT an option. Privatization of public heavy industry and other large organs drains a lot more wealth out of society long term than even lack of reform.

The solution is mass scale focus on filling the top ranks of government bureaucracies and enterprises with engineers and scientists. Just like economics is an engineering challenge, so is streamlining of delivery mechanisms for social goods. The relative success of the French public service sector can be directly attributed to large scale presence of technically minded people at the top. The same allowed East Germany to be the most productive country within the old communist block.

Regulations: Not more or less red tape but improving the quality of the tape so less is used in the first place

Same principle applies to regulative functions. "Throwing money at the problem" always pales in comparison to better implementation of advanced technological tools and application of systems theory.

Major reform is not for everyone. Some societies (you know who you are) are so rotten that major reform would destabilize them the way sudden exercise may give a very unhealthy person a heart attack. Such societies will have to do the equivalent of dying first in order for the public sector reform to truly begin within a new reincarnated body.

Collective Land Ownership: Journey and Implications Part 2

Gradual fading of nationalism into regionalism and globalism is a natural process that shouldn't be feared.

In part 1, there was some exploration of the meaning behind a claim that the environment belongs to all of us. It began to appear that people already do collectively claim indirect ownership over all the land within their specific national boundaries (nationalism has done a good job of ingraining that notion). Various conflicts throughout the 20th century have demonstrated that average citizens don't take international trespassing lightly.

This is beginning to change.

The political elites of powerful countries have long moved beyond viewing themselves as sovereign landowners and masters of just their territory. The scale perception of a jet flying, conference attending globalist politician is radically different from perception of a nationalist citizen. To globalists, the world is but one country in the process of being put together due to the necessity of large scale cooperation and prevention of a nuclear war. To put it another way, they think the world can enter into a more perfect union the way the 13 colonies did.

It seems absurd to many international elites to have the equivalent of a giant village hurtling through space where every house or block is strictly sovereign and militarized. Thus powerful landowners (members of state governments and their oligarch backers) routinely meet to enjoy drinks and to hammer out ways to have more joint collective ownership and management over the planetary surface.

The United Nations was a solid start to this project. Rather than making nation states share sovereignty under some umbrella body within a federal structure, it allowed the landowners to have the final say in all matters and remain sovereign. UN literally does not exist without its components. The slow progress of global integration in the past 50 years has been due to some major differences of opinion among largest landowners on the security council when it comes to what planetary managerial approach is best. Every plantation boss whether it be Chinese or American government desires to be the backbone of a future world government.

Gradually, the more educated people in the northern hemisphere began to partially follow the thought process of their political elites. This is most evident in their acceptance of E.U. confederate structure without a violent insurgency. At this very moment, French, Spaniards, Irish, etc are increasingly claiming psychological collective ownership of land within the borders of neighboring countries and allowing citizens of neighboring countries to do the same. It may be objected that they are prodded/dragged by their unaccountable internationalist masters in government but the same objection was brought up during the formation of United States, Germany, Italy, and many other states.

And it is true to a large degree. As the perceptive scale of elites expands beyond their city walls to include first nation states, then entire continents, and then the whole world, the people follow. The process is a mix of coercion from above and voluntary acceptance from below due to understanding and desire to solve large scale problems. There was very little input from average people when landed oligarchs founded the American republic. Constitutional Convention was not transparent and not open to social networking for debate. If it happened today there would be a furious outcry and accusations of smoking rooms and conspiracy. This is not to say that transparency and public input should not be allowed in the future. Regional and global integration is no joking matter to be at risk of group think.

Implication 2: Some sort of tighter planetary unification and collectivist global governance is inevitable.

The political end point (before the arrival of technological singularity) will likely be a planetary confederate structure between various continental and semi-continental unions. There are many reasons for this from providing security from nanotechnological terrorism to fulfilling the psychological desire of global elites to compete (but in a non-violent manner) while preserving some of their wealth and position in a world transitioning to post scarcity socioeconomics.

We are well on the way towards formation of South American Union, North American Union, Arab Union, etc. The heads of these unions will have a bigger claim to be represented on the UN security council in the years ahead compared to claims of Brazil, Japan, India, etc. It is to be noted that the UN general assembly is already split by regional blocks. Overlaps of trade blocs and regional organizations will just pick up pace barring some catastrophic event.

Considering the absolute humanitarian failure of Anglo-American globalist "free trade" project, there are understandably major reservations among nativists the world over when it comes to further planetary unification. This manifests in partially true conspiracy theories involving global banking cartels that use American imperial center of force for their own needs until they find another host body whether inside EU, Russia, or China.

The almost total transplantation of US economy onto Chinese soil seems so deliberate as to imply a half baked attempt at standardizing the world's citizens to a certain degree. Third worldification of the West and first worldification of the East is bringing enormous pain but to those with the eye for world governance may seem no different than New York getting poorer at expense of South Carolina. This unprecedented reshuffle of world wealth has largely run its course and can't really go further without creating a blatantly revolutionary situation (actual famine in parts of the West). We should now see people demand (and get) much needed protectionism on continental scale. China is showing that mercantilism definitely works.

Additionally, there are serious disagreements among globalists concerning which route is best to take. The severe decline of the English speaking world due to imperial transnational financial parasitism will discredit English speaking globalists and reduce the influence of their sympathizers among globalists of Germany, China, and Russia. That is, after the American economic crisis deepens substantially, Alan Greenspan equivalents in Beijing, Berlin, and Moscow will be displaced. Since Soviet route to planetary unification is also discredited, the future route is likely to take a creative rethinking of EU model with major helpful input from Asian/Russian elites.

The nativists the world over may truthfully note that regardless of what type of road to world government we take, the people in charge will find a way to profit from it. That is correct. It is also likely that many of the financial banking parasites who caused the current worldwide depression will find themselves in new positions of power as high powered civil servants in other global power centers.

The desire to bring back the guillotine (for people like Lloyd Blankfein) as revenge for massive historic Anglo-American financial exploitation is understandable but is very dangerous. The most likely event in the western hemisphere will be a packed transition. The way soviet elites had a deathbed conversion, former free market bigwigs will start changing their stripes (into technocrats, collectivists, social democrats, and socialists) when pitchforks appear on the horizon. Whether they pull it off remains to be seen but we can be sure that the power that they had in shaping the world of the future will pass on to top dogs in eastern hemisphere.

To conclude this part, there are many different conceptions of a New World Order that are being discussed. Some of these conceptions even maintain the sovereignty of major states like US, Russia, China, India within a more collectivist framework. It may be hard to believe but among the elites there are even factions (they tend to be "new money"/"new power") that want to genuinely improve the human herd and raise its welfare. Nihilism and hedonism has infected many top policy makers but not all. Now that the Internet is awakening thoughtful humans on the outside of power/wealth hierarchies, it'll increasingly become easier to connect with the "kind masters" to formulate a new type of globalization that is not a dirty word.

I'll discuss some alternative futuristic globalization models in part 3.

Collective Land Ownership: Journey and Implications Part 1

Beginning of exploration concerning certain issues on the way to global governance and international problem solving



Now that Georgism and resource based socioeconomic theory (technocracy) are having a major revival, it's time to look at the ins and out of collective land ownership.

As explained in one of my earliest articles Story of Joe the Land Baron, private land ownership is a feudal concept that capitalist/libertarian thinkers just came to defend without giving it much second thought. Their arguments on taxation being theft and coercion are much more applicable to private holding of territory (if basic history and dynamics of control over land are looked at). It is likely that in the years to come, there will be a rise in popularity of bridging theories (such as geolibertarianism) due to the desire of Internet hatched free market zealots to reconcile their socially atomizing beliefs with psychological communal longing.

The most likely focus of attack would be private land ownership (first the unrestrained corporate variety and then smaller scale slumlord variety due to severe housing shortages). Such a hallowed notion under attack is the result of educated individuals now increasingly seeing the world as one splintered country in formation and themselves as citizens within it. The globalist mentality of elites has been infiltrating the minds of middle classes for some time now as they realize that key problems are international in nature. The massive damage to the ecosystem puts large scale land owners under greater scrutiny than ever before. The realization that capitalist theory doesn't defend private land control makes this scrutiny all the stronger.

The nation's and world's environment being a collective responsibility inevitably leads to certain clarifications.


Idealist Statement: Environment belongs to all of humanity.
Realist translation of statement: The state is the ultimate landowner (practically and morally)

Working with accepted definition of the state being a monopoly on violence over a given area, it's clear that most of the land acquired throughout the world was via the state providing muscle, support, and protection. This could be anything from an absolute monarch settling a territorial dispute to the federal government engaging in Louisiana purchase.

In 2010, the ultimate defense of all the land in the world is given by statist military guarantee. At least on paper. There may be de facto areas not under state control in which case the armed individuals creating leadership in those areas become temporary micro states rather than remain private individuals. Yes, the public government may devolve power to individuals when it comes to day to day defense and maintenance of specific bit of land but you can bet that if another government lands helicopters there and puts a flag in, there would be a massive statist reaction (see Georgia 2008).

Idealist Statement: The government is people's tool and is a managerial extension of the people.
Realist translation of statement: People are indirect landowners of all the land under their state's military protection.

If people ideologically (and naively given the oligarchic reality) perceive the government as their tool and servant, then they claim ownership to the totality of territory under that government's control. This seems as a no brainer in that in many nations nativist patriots would be enraged and feel violated if a neighboring country's people invade with the goal of land acquisition. The concept of nationalism has psychologically imbedded the idea of collective ownership of land for many decades now. Statement of "our country" is amusing coming from the mouth of a pro-private land ownership libertarian. It's no less amusing if this person says "the state's country" and then proceeds to argue how he is just in some contract with the state to get contract enforcement, etc.

Whatever the socioeconomic structure and popular legitimacy of any given state is, it is evident that most people within it have had their ancestors acquire the state's land by force, kept it by force, and continually claim strong joint psychological ownership over it. The fact that the notion of private land ownership still exists in the modern world points to the continuing strength of feudal power (large landowners having incredibly larger leverage in using the government as a tool compared to masses at large). Seizure of land by the government from private interests "in the name of the people" is like a car owner seizing his glove compartment to reestablish control over it. Legality and morality of it is as absurd to discuss as legality of modern country borders. Ownership of improvements on the land (contents of the glove compartment) are a different matter to be discussed below.

Implication 1: Acceptance of collective ownership of land results in elimination of feudal middlemen as rents are now publicly collected.

The rents that land owners collect is based on the value of the land (that landlords are allowed to sit on by the state). Since the state is the ultimate landowner, these rents need to go directly to it while cutting out the feudal middlemen out of the equation. This means that private rent collection is to be eliminated as a practice. Private individuals are not allowed to collect whatever tax they like at the moment and same would apply to rents from locations they happen to occupy.

to be continued in part 2

Psychiatric Reform

A panel based solution to proper mental evaluation

The transition period from current societal embrace of negative psychology to one of much needed positive psychology will be a turbulent one. In order for psychology and psychiatry to get good social reputations again (to make this transition quickly and smoothly) three key problems need to be tackled:

1) Serious and debilitating split between psychiatrists and psychological therapists (with corresponding lack of synergy between the two in creating holistic improvement of the individual). 

The split has occurred due to different breeds of humans that go into the fields of therapy and pill prescription. The amount of schooling (10+ years) and training that is required to become a full pledged psychiatrist is enormous. It takes a certain type of reptilian cold blooded patience and unemotional personality to become a doctor and then do additional cramming to be able to prescribe hard hitting narcotics to children as young as 5 (and sleep at night). The final result is that many psychiatrists are just neurologically not built for empathic understanding of their patients. It comes as no surprise then that after such herculean effort to make money, many become easily corrupted by big pharma. They get just a few minutes with their clients and could care less about what happens to them.

Therapists on the other hand are an emotional empathic bunch but just don't have the patience and attention to detail to go through over a decade long ultra boring journey to become professional pill pushers. They genuinely care about humans and are emotional sponges (that subconsciously get a feeling of power from endlessly listening to other people's troubles and feeling better about their own turbulent inner emotional world through comparison).

I exclude remaining psychoanalysts and specialists who specialize in ultra wealthy clientele. The dichotomy problem mentioned affects to vast majority of the patient demographic. People who are physiologically capable (have the right serotonin and dopamine production in their brain) of emotional understanding AND who have the ability to become excellent PhD psychiatrists are few in number. Therapists most likely are ENFJ/INFJ Myers-Briggs personalities and can get joy from helping troubled children whereas psychiatrists are probably INTJ/ISTJ leaning who can get a kick out of molecular chemistry.

2) Corporate and political domination of psychological research, consensus building, and norms.

This is likely a more difficult problem to take care of. As mentioned in my previous article, the members of American Psychiatric Association are thoroughly compromised. They are the ones who write the mental health bible [DSM] and descriptions of ailments thus creating industry standards and norms.

"Of the 170 panel members, 95 (56%) had 1 or more financial associations with companies in the pharmaceutical industry. In 6 of 18 panels, more than 80% of the panel members had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies".

The corruption among top medical professionals in APA is especially serious because within the scientific hierarchy, many youthful upstarts have to cite these bought off clowns in order to have their peer reviewed papers be taken seriously. In other words, there are a few hundred people with high enough "seniority" whose research has to be integrated and over half of them are partially if not fully in the pocket of international corporations. This creates the absurd situation analogous to agricultural scientists having to indirectly cite the thoughts of McDonalds board of directors when writing their research papers. Of course this analogy is extreme (and done for illustration) considering this top down rot is very indirect. But if done long enough and on a large enough scale, it becomes Soviet in its abuse of the field of psychiatry. At a certain point, when politically significant numbers of the herd are medicated and are part of the "clientele", ruling factions become involved by trying to use the APA the way they use other influential structures (mass media organs, department of education, etc). Thus we see an unholy monstrosity of a couple hundred cold blooded 60 year olds sandwiched between corporations and the government defining what ails school children.


And people wonder why psychology/psychiatry has such a bad reputation. In its current form, it is a very advanced form of Brave New World-esque social control. Soma now comes in many flavors. I wont go further into the profit driven pill pushing abuses as there have been many articles concerning this in recent years.

3) Severe fundamental and structural confusion in the field since many of the "disorders" are just intense physical characteristics of certain human breeds that are exacerbated by their socioeconomic environment.

This third problem will be naturally and gradually resolved by itself as more and more research gets connected from across the planet in the coming years. It will then be finally understood that psychology and psychiatry mostly treat symptoms of certain socioeconomic developments and their effects on the two legged animals. In the future what is done now will be seen as obscene as giving anti-depressants to a moody elephant forced to do tricks in a circus.

What's the solution?

Even in an enlightened welfare/human centric society of the future, psychology/psychiatry will remain important as there are genuine neurological ailments and environmentally acquired conditions. In addition, even individuals in a healthy socioeconomic system will want to reach new heights of development through positive psychology and not just "treat" themselves "back" to some notion of homeostatic normalcy. This would be analogous to wild and free elephants seeking augmentations to be even more empowered in the wild.


In the meantime, we need to focus on problems 1 and 2 mentioned above. The obvious solution to the first problem is to have a panel analyze an individual.

An example would be 2 therapists and 2 psychiatrists and perhaps 1 sociologist make a joint simultaneous assessment of the patient. This automatically greatly reduces the problem of false diagnosis when it comes to prescribing pills. Different assessments by individual practioners being made is a legendary problem in the field. The first session should be lengthy and the doctors in the room would be aided by the empathic understanding of the 2 therapists present.
The follow up sessions can then minimize the doctors' role and just leave the patient with 3 people to work on him or her. The sociologist would provide environmental explanatory framework.

The obvious benefits is that the 5 professionals would learn from each other and have a more holistic outlook in the future. The patient benefits from 1 democratically reached opinion that is the product of 5 brains. These brains will work harder as well since they'll want to demonstrate their will to power and expertise to their educated peers. This will boost confidence of the client and the people augmenting him. A human being's psyche is too important a thing to leave in the hands of one person. Problems of salary, time, and economics are but engineering problems that can be resolved with sufficient effort.

When it comes to the second problem mentioned, only muckraking and structural reform can resolve it. Different countries have different levels of corruption in their psychiatric bodies. Perhaps some term limits or age limits are needed to constantly bring new blood into psychiatric leadership. Those countries that are at the bleeding edge of progress should create joint bilateral education programs with other states. Eventually United Nations should deal with the issue of abuse and non-interference when it comes to mental health.