Frediano

Just saying that it can't be shown that union busting has appreciably improved the[sic] economy overall. For who? My personal union busting(after a summer or two as a college student learning what the phrase "f***ing the dog" meant, I've had little/nothing to do with them, either as a forced against my will member, or employer)has appreciably improved my economies over what they would have been had I volunteered to ... prepay my own ransom. No doubt that union busting hasn't appreciably improved "the[sic] economy' overall. Eventually, folks will figure it out. Or not. In the meantime, as far as I'm concerned, they can take all the time they need to figure it out. They are living the consequences of thier beliefs, not me. I am living the consequences of my own beliefs. Some years, was seven figures worth. Others, mid six. A bad year, low six. All without so much as a secretary. I am way out of the tribe's way; so feel free to go scoop up all that excess that vampires like me used to suck out of the backs of the virtuous working class...by employing them. That's a big plus now, isn't it? Can you imagine what a prick I would be to work for? (I tried it once briefly, in '92. Never again, it was like being a 'dad' to complete idiots. They need to be working in T shirt shops and tanning salons-, not learning to do what I was once willing to teach them.) I shudder at the idea of employing folks with their crappy attitudes. Let them employ themselves; I guarantee its possible. And increasingly ... well, necessary. I mean, who in their right mind wants to step up and be the guy sucking all the lifeblood out of virtuous labor? No thank you, I'm not that guy. (Which means... the field is pretty much restricted to those with no compunction about being that guy. Uh-oh...one of those unintended consequences of our ratcake politics...) Folks don't have to hold my beliefs, or practice them. They are free to do as they will, and more power to them, I wish them well, in spite of the crappy advice being fed to them by tribalists, which they apparently swallow by the wagonload. I'm not asking them to change their ways, their beliefs, their outlook on life, their theories, their politics. In fact, I'm not asking anything of them at all. They're free to have at it, the universe, as it is. I'm for sure not in their way. Hope it works out for them, as it has for me. And, unionize this.

No Utopian Objectivist world? Are you aware you (and your family) are the only one living in your "Galt's Gulch." The Galt's Gulches in the world, plural, are in plain sight, and populated via the bane of tribalists: free association. Indeed, there is no Galt's Gulch. That was a romantic work of fiction from now 60 years ago... three generations ago. But the world today is full of people doing business one on one via free association, Guaranteed. Not enough 'folks doing this in the world to make a difference to anyone else? Now that's an interesting thought; let me ponder it for the first time in almost 30 years. Maybe not; but then again, not their problem. Those that can, do. But this fringe activity should make the tribalists ecstatic. Because by doing so, they leave more of that which falls from the sky, unabetted, for the tribalists to scoop up like formerly maldistributed rainfall. The results are stunning so far, after decades of this. But then, who is keeping score, using what metric, and why? Tribesmen in rags, living in hovels, heeping scorn on those that aren't sucking the lifeblood out of them anymore by ... giving them jobs? Tell it down at the local, I guess. The difference between this depression and the last is, our government is doing a much better job of spinning reality. Like redefining the reporting of unemployment. Did you realize that when the POTUS said for the sixth time recently that he was going to freshly focus on the current crisis of "jobs jobs, jobs" that his solution involved ferrying his pet dog on an Osprey flight to Martha's Vinyard for some golf? Here's an easy prediction. When he comes back from his August vacation, he will give another one of those campaign stop speechs with his sleeves rolled up talking about how he is ready now to focus on "jobs, jobs, jobs..." Any day now...the miracle is, how he manages to keep saying it with a straight face. I am beyond even wondering if the tribalists will ever catch on. It's easy enough to remedy; they just need to show the fangs for what they are in the light of day, start telling(national socialism has nothing at all to do with asking, that is the free association model) folks to line up behind the old tried and true forced association fasces of National Socialism. Now that should be an easy sell jobl the nation is ripe, like 20s Germany. But, they say, it will come about via (pure) Democracy 51% to 49%.. Just like in a gang rape, where 9 to 1, the victim loses a local vote. I think that is what is called the ethical highground-- the ethics of a gang rape. Forced association, in case you can't see it for what it is. In a nation of peers living in freedom, under rules fettered by free association, peers ask, they don't tell. Recently, our POTUS stumped with the following sound byte: "What is wrong with asking the most fortunate among us to give a little more?" Indeed, that's all the bottomless gaping maw of the tribalists ever want, is 'more.' But note the lie; he wasn't talking about 'asking' anyone to do anything. He was trying to justify tribal taking without asking. The word 'asking' in the mouth of a devout tribalist is a slur. Here's what is wrong with that, jackass. JFK's America, a nation of 180M people, gave JFK $100B in tribal federal overhead, over half of which was for defense at the peak of the cold war. We can inflation (x7.5) and population (not even x 2.0) adjust that $100B to $1500B today. We're at $3800B today. That isn't "a little" more, that is alot more. A factor of +250% more in adjusted federal overhead straining our economies relative to JFK's America. JFK's America paid for its SS. JFK's America build Ike's Interstates. JFK's America went to the Moon. JFK's America righted old civil rights wrongs. JFK's America sent the graduating class of 1963 out into economies that roared, with real hope and real inspiration and real opportunities. Compare with the world faced by the class of 2013 and its bloated federal government... doing what? Panama Canal. Hoover Dam. TVA. Mercury/Gemini/Apollo program. Interstate system. All great a ccomplishements of our federal government. All substantially accomplished during a period when our federal government overhead was like or less than JfK's $100B. Can any of the tribalists describe one thing that the current $3800B/yr federal government is doing that will be remembered in 5 months, never mind 5 decades from now? Just one would do. And that is why endlessly falling for the "we only want more" line from our resident tribal children, like the current Ivy League Golden Passer/political basket weaving scientist is a recipe for failure. Besides... why is it that when any of our struggling children go for some crap job in a cubicle, they need to pony up their college transcripts before they can become assistant to the assistant clerk, but a guy who skated through college on some liberal arts basket weaving political science track who yet claims to know how to 'run the economy' is so ashamed of his transcripts that he's got to hide from them, and few of us even want to see the grades before letting him flail away as the new Czar of The Economy? And while I am pondering the imponderable, can any of the tribalists explain why, in the immediate afternath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the very visible failure of centrally planned command and control 'the economy' running that so many Americans looked at that smoking rubble and concluded "Hey, we should try that here" as evidenced by bobbing their heads along with the folksy Cajin wisdom of Carville and his "Heeeeiiiits the Economy, stooopit!"

Was there a point to the 'Fred Bartlett Roofing' comment? And, in order to have a point, wouldn't it have to be, I don't know, ... true? A little true? Sorry; there is no heading in the Yellow Pages for what I've been doing the last 30 years ... It has been fringe, and niche, and in the cracks. And lucrative enough. For me. Now, go make me feel badly about not working for you and your little mob for the last thirty years...good luck with that. You'll need a time machine.

I guess I've been unprincipled --by not employing others. But now I'm confused(not really, and I wasn't confused thirty years ago, either, when this line of shit was first thrown at me)--by taking less of that which falls from the sky, unabetted, all these years, than I would have if I would have ruthlessly employed people(you know, by riding their backs and sucking all the profits from labor), haven't I left more for others to scoop up? So ... scoop! Scoop it up. Go get it. Form those non-profit co-ops and ... go get it! Here, I'll even hold my breath, waiting for that to happen. Sorry, I lied; not going to hold my breath at all; I'm unprincipled after all. Still, not waiting either, for folks to scoop up that which they claim falls effortlessly from the skies, only to be 'maldistrubuted' -- like rain. Howzat redistributin' going? Anyone keeping score?

I've done business all over the world ... as a roofer? Just me and my ... bucket of nails. This is news to me. I know I've enjoyed being "disadvantaged," as long as that means making more money than the POTUS for the last twenty years. Could I have made more by being 'principled?' As in, targeting activities that create jobs for folks who think I'm abusing them when I do so? I don't know. Maybe you're right. Hasn't been a problem. For me. So, little ole me and my principled behavior has had more of an impact on dis-empowered workers than the line of B.S. being fed to them by left wing union organizers? How does that work, exactly? Because ... I'm nowhere to be found... Seriously, hasn't been a problem at all. For me. How has all the B.S. guys like you've been feeding them all these years helped them, instead? I wonder if they'll ever catch on? I don't wonder too much, because it is their problem, not mine. Not even a little bit. I wish them the best of luck.. not only with what they've long embraced, but the consequences of it that they are wearing. Whoda ever thunk that the actual look and feel of 'Social Justice' would look like this -- folks wearing what they espouse? I guess its time for me to go look for the union label around here. Not seeing too much of it. Seriously, organize away. The jobs, jobs, jobs are showing up any day now.

As I'm reading all this nonsense about unions, there is a sign over my desk "Unionize this." Been there for a while. The stench blowing in from these stinking political winds has been in the air my entire adult working life, as has the obvious conclusion: "neither an employee nor employer be." I realized that in the late 70s. I am at the end of a now thirty year career practicing that. I was not, by far, the only person to have ever smelled the prevailing political winds and reached this same conclusion. The folks I did business with all over the world -- all hiding in plain sight -- were usually organized just like I was, most, like, me, without so much as a secretary. Perhaps this realization by a fringe few -- by those who could -- hasn't had a significant impact on the nature of our economies; I don't know. I do know that for the last 30 years, I put my engineering degrees from Princeton and MIT to work in other than the normal tribal group cluster fuck tracks. I know it hasn't been a problem for me --nor I suspect, for those I've done business with --in the least. So unionize away...while you still can. I'll cheer. Maybe they will, too. Who knows? Here's a toast to the unions. Good luck to them. Wish them all the best. And now...unionize this.

I see that from a different place. I regard money as capital, and debt as a lack of money. I look at my own account because that is my personal responsibility. So it logically follows that it is the personal responsibility of others to look at their own accounts. I couldn't as well way that because I'm a Capitalist. Only Creditists could say that. Creditists regard debt as if it was capital when in reality it is only their own lack of capital. The widespread insolvent delusion that credit is capital is what caused the crash of 2008. And that crash was simply a return to the reality that only capital is capital. The Creditists got slaughtered in the collapse... while the Capitalists continued to consistently prosper. Greg I agree, funding spending from savings/sweat equity always puts you in a stronger position. And, not what is taught in business schools, which amounts to 'Go find fools and risk their savings, not yours.' Or leverage via debt to fuel maximum growth. But that theory discounts a fact of human nature; we are far more focused in our efforts when we have our own skin in the game. It is painless to risk OPM. Modern business school ethos doesn't acknowledge that calculus. They talk instead about 'stakeholders' and whatnot. Total nonsense. Hard to imagine a more efficient means of bringing the greatest economies on earth to a grinding halt than half the crap taught in our left wing over-run 'business' schools. As if by design... You offer value in exchange for value-proxies. (Unless you are a 'Barterist.') You receive value-proxies in the form of spendable cash. When you spend those value-proxies, folks hand over actual value or effort-- as if they accepted your cash as anonymous debt/demand on their value. If you earn more than you spend, you end up with a surplus of value-proxies, representing anonymous debt held by you(not owed by you-- owed to you, anonymously, by the economies.) If you spend all you earn, you end up with no surplus of value-proxies. Nobody owes you anything. And if you spend more than you earn, -you- must be in debt(be a 'creditist.') and you owe the economies. When you defer spending all your value-proxies, you have a choice as to what to do with the balance in the future. You can choose to spend it later, and you have a choice. You can spend it on consumer items(making you a 'consumer.') or you can spend it on things that will help you create new value (capital). Making you a 'capitalist.' But that is true of money that you borrow, as well. You can spend that borrowed money on consumer items, or you can spend it on things that will help you create new value, on capital. So even, not all debt is equal in its effectiveness in turning present value into future value. Debt fueled consumer spending is not equivalent to debt fueled capital spending...is not the same as deferred spending fueled future capital spending (paid for by past pulls on the pump handle/savings vs. future pulls on the pump handle/credit.) But even as an individual who takes on debt for capital spending, you have incentive to actually create future value(to pay off debt and restore your available credit or even just stop paying future value as interest.) This is why private debt is not equivalent to public debt; nobody in the world wakes up the day after taking on public debt with an incentive to do anything at all. Cash is anonymous debt, created by offering more value than consumed. If you look in your wallet and find any dollar bills, the economies are in debt to you(owe you value.) Cash is not anonymous debt you owe; cash is an anonymous debt owed to you. There is no such thing as unary debt there is always an entity that owes debt and an entity that is owed debt. But you need to account for all your accounts in total; if that cash in your wallet is a result of your own debt, then at most it is a wash. You can use that cash to pay off your debt-- getting you back to '0' -- but you can't do that and also spend it(on anything-- consumer or capital goods.) It is one or the other. When the government is not jacking with the money supply, cash is a locally nearly 'incompressibly' form of valye proxy. Cash is nearly 'risk-free' as a value proxy. (I wish.) At least over the very short term, because in fact the government is jacking with the value of money. Over the long term, there is another alternative for cash/spending. It can be converted into an equity -- a 'compressible' form of value proxy, one with future value subject to risk/reward. The value of the equity in the future might go up or down, and in the meantime, it might pay dividends over time, as well. It is a means of modulating exposure to risk/reward. But when cash is converted into an equity, cash/debt doesn't dissappear from the economies; it is simply transferred from the current account of the equity buyer to the current account of the equity seller, at the current equity price scored in dollars. In the old days, this used to be about funding capitalism(fueling the engines that create future value.). In the modern era, both the government as well as the financial 'industry' focuses almost exclusively on the value-proxies and gaming the various value-proxy exchanges; 'capitalism' is for the glossy brochures and sales pitches and the few remaining fools struggling to take actual risk and create value in this tribal C.F., unaware that they are the only folks actually keeping the entire card game afloat.

I see that from a different place. I regard money as capital, and debt as a lack of money. Double entry accounting is like that. It looks one way...when you only look at one account. You could as well say that a 'lack of money' is a lack of you being owed a debt by others, because you havent toffered a surplus of value to other folks and thus end up holding residual debt (money) in return for that value,owed to you by others who accepted your past value/effort and handed you the paper in return. Money is also capital -- whether you borrow the money, or others have borrowed from you(resulting in you holding evidence of -their- debt in your hands, which you can now freshly exchange in the economies for value. -- by cashing in the debt you are holding (as cash, current accounts.) There is debt you hold payable by others (cash is an example), and there is debt payable to others (that you owe.) Both are debt, but what is key is, held by who and payable to who? Cash in your hand is anonymous debt. You can walk up to people who have value or effort that you would like to consume, hand it to them, and they will cough up the value or effort. They are anonymously paying debt by providing value. If you actually borrow money, you can also that same debt/cash to paydone -your- debt. What you get in retrun is a restoration of your personal available credit. None of us has an infinite amount of available credit, and 330 million times a finite number is still a finite number, although it is a big finite number. So when you or I take on debt, we reduce our available credit-- we consume a finite resource under our control. We have incentive the very next day to go out and create new effort in the economies, to acquire new cash/anonymouse debt that we can use to resotre our available credit. That is the alchemy by which deferred present value becomes future value. When governed by sane banking principles, it is win-win for all involved. We all at various times in our life are both borrowers and lenders. regards, Frediano

That was for sure impolite, but not deliberately so. Google:More:Translate, and in 30 seconds, you can have your way with all that.

גוגל זעץ: דער טורעם פון דע-באַבעל.

?ביסט דו אַ איד בלויז אין גייסט; אויב איך געווען צו קלייַבן אַ רעליגיע, וואָס וואָלט זייַן מיין ברירה. איר קענען נישט קלאַפּן 6000 יאָרן פון הצלחה, רעכט איך טראַכטן צו זייַן וואַלועס (משפּחה, בילדונג, שווער אַרבעטן.) איך באַווונדערן עס ס פלאַך נפּאָן-פֿירמע מאָדעל: איר, רבי, גאָט, מיט רבי ווי לערער, ניט מאָנאַרטש.

אויב מיין זיידע האט בריסט ... קיינמאָל מיינונג, מיין זיידע האט האָט בריסט..

Are you much encouraged by that as a realpolitik possibility? For years -- maybe since JFK was assassinated -- we seem to be trying to 'hope' our way out of this endgame. JFK's vision of restoring gradient, realized immediately upon sewing that last star on the American flag, has largely fallen flat for five decades. (Why? Sadly, it comes down to Nixon's petty jealousy over what he perceived as JFK's legacy. Nothing much more substantive than that. We spent the last 30 years flying no father above the earth than Washington DC is from NYC, after once having traveled to the Moon.) The new volume based 3D growth paradigm -- the one that we are currently standing on the shore of, staring out at a vast Gulf -- is the obvious new growth paradigm. It's not about moving us all to the Moon or Mars or beyond; it is about restoring -broad- gradient(and this, broad opportunites) all the way from here to mankinds farthest reach. Without mankind's farthest reach, there is no such growth driven gradient to drive economies. The gradients that exist are thus purely intellectual and specialized, ever more tiny niches. Mercury/Gemini/Apollo was not about putting twelve sets of footprints on the Moon; the effort to do that reached all the way back to Bethpage, NY, Huntsville, AL, Los ANgeles, CA, etc., and beyond. The gradient created by that reach beyond our grasp went into our universities and schools. There is no technical reason that you and I aren't able to go out tonight, look up at the Moon, and show our children the lights of new cities. The political reason we can't inspire our children to look up tonight is because we chose another path, the path of targeting stasis on earth in an endgame. OK, so ask our children instead, "What is it that this nation is doing today that inspires you to look up, to reach?" They will either give you a blank stare, or laugh at you. Shame on us. On average, we are average. No escaping that fact. Politicians don't need to know how to think, they need to know how to count heads on average. They told us fifty years ago that the pictures from Detroit and Appalachia compelled us to stay and fix our problems 'right down here on earth." OK, fifty years of Great Society have passed, exceeding Mercury/Gemini/Apollo by many orders of magnitude. (We're still living off of that push in microelectronics, etc.) So what have we accomplished? The pictures from Detroit and Appalachia look worse, not better. Stills and drunks are now meth labs and drug addicts. What else have we done to fix those problems 'right down here on earth?' In fact, our ability to address those problems -- like the energy of JFK's America once did, and not since -- is lacking precisely because we've eliminated mankind's reach and the establishment of gradient and opportunity that reach creates. Our present lack of gradient creates fiscal stess on governmental budgets all the way from federal through state and local, all the way to local school districts and above all, into our individual homes and economies. Our current glimmer of hope in this area is the incredible work being done at SpaceX and Orbital Sciences; further advances in this area will result not because of the forward thinking vision of our political leaders, but in spite of their total lack of it.

Well, it took restoration of gradient; war is one way to do that, a negative way, through destruction. Same with natural disasters. Mankind is at the end of a long term 2D surface based gradient wave; not quite mold on the surface of an orange, but nearly so. That is, for dirt-simple geopolitical gradient. Practical evidence of this; it has been over 50 yrs since America sewed a new star on its flag. The rate of change of stars on the American flag has dropped to zero. The official end of the New World. The end of dirt-simple geopolitical gradient has practical consequences; Beth Steel at its peak employed over 330,000 Americans. Not so much today. The initial development wave that spread across AMerica has ended. The replacement in place wave is less gradient, more like stasis. This is a brand new condition in mankind's history; at the very moment our technological range(ability to project command, control, communication, and commerce)has more than circumnavigated the planet, we've reached the end of dirt-simple geopolitical gradient. The broad opportunities once supported by the dirt-simple geopolitical development wave have been -rapidly- replaced by opportunities only in narrow intellectual fields; there are still plenty of opportunities in 'frontiers' but they are increasingly -only- intellectual frontiers these days. The cost of admission is ever more specialized education, and this abrupt change in economic reality has happened way to quickly for mankind to broadly adapt to. It is at the root of our economic problems, from the spreading gulf between the haves and have nots, to the ever dropping participation rate, to the languishing, sick things we call 'the economy' but which are really 'the economies.' Our institutions of government are fighting the last war with their economic tools.

"...2% for looking the mirror twice..." Michael: Of course we need to pay for necessary government. But how long are we going to keep falling for the following argument? 1] We need plumbing, and it needs to be paid for. 2] Therefore, plumbers are emperors, can charge whatever they want, and can set their fees based on any whim whatosoever. After all...we need plumbing. JFK's AMerica of 180 million paid for $100B of 'necessary government' over half of which was for defense at the peak of the Cold War. The current America of 320 million is paying for $3800B of 'necessary government' and the Cold War has been over for over twenty years. JFK's $100B population and inflation/CPI adjusts to -maybe- $1500B/yr today of 'necessary government.' It isn't even close; we are grossly spending more on 'necessary governent' today than JFK's economies-- the ones that last roared. The once untested -theory- that public borrowing and spending was interchangeable on a $ for $ basis for private borrowing and spending is being expensively proved out; but the ever larger government at any cost whatever crowd is clinging to this dead horse until AMerica is bleeding from the a$$. Public borrowing and spending is clearly not the same as private borrowing and spending in terms of economic results. The only remaining question is -- and America can beat the current deadhorse as long as it wants -- is how long will it take America to figure this one out? If ever. THere are plenty of reasons why this is the case -- when we take on public debt, who wakes up the next day with any incentive at all to pay off that debt in the future? Compare that to the incentives associated with private debt. Private debt is an investment in future economies; public debt could be ... but under the discipline of no discipline whatsoever, is not. regards, Fred ,

That was then. Currently, we have as many people pulling at pump handles as we did in 1979. In just 2.5 years since writing that, the number of people who are pulling at pump handles has gone from 'ten years ago' to 'thirty four years ago." And yet our population has increased in that same time, not decreased. That is some recovery. Companies that long ago survived the Great Depression are finding it impossible to survive the Obama Recovery. How long are we going to tolerate government chearleaders putting lipstick on this pig? If we counted unemployment the same way we did in 2000, the current rate would be reported as near 16%. Which is why all this government distortion is showing up as inflated stock prices; wages and other forms of inflation are suppressed by the actually high unemployment. Who are we kidding?

Maher is too much the marketeer, and thinks he can have it both ways. It is not possible to simultaneously be an advocate for free association and forced association at the same time. You are either an advocate of one or the other. If Bill Maher wants to ridicule advocacy of free association, he can't do so without embracing forced association. He should educate us all on why we should respect his advocacy of forced association, and eschew free association. Then he should tell us who in hs worldview gets to be the Emperor of Forced Association, and we can try and keep a straight face. He should like that, he is paid to be funny. We know the difference between rape and an act of love between two people; it is the element of free vs. forced association. The Mahers of the world need to explain why that which makes rape 'rape' should be embraced in our politics-- in our ssystems of dealing with each other as peers living in freedom. If not, then he should explain his advocacy of a non-peer, elite ruling subjects model of forced association, and why any sane person would ever march behind a fasces that embraces rape as a fundamental part of its ethics. If he can't do that, the what follows from embracing free association is libertarianism and a model of interaction based on peers living in freedom. Or, he can snicker at Ayn Rand, and explain why when teenagers grow up they demonstrate that by embracing that which makes rape 'rape' in their politics.

Re: It does not matter a whit if our internal experiences are the same or not. We produce the same external results. Exactly the point! There is no imaginable consequence. If there was an imaginable consequence, then we could imagine an experiment to prove that we either did or didn't. Because there is no imaginable consequence, the most we can conclude about the issue is 'we don't know.' That is not the same as saying we perceive the same color(or sound or taste or smell.) For all we mutually know we are individually 'false coloring' all of the stimuli delivered to our brains; what enables us to interact on a consistant basis is the each of us independently are consistant in our 'false coloring' with external reality-- and there is no interactive consequence if our 'false coloring' is each identical or not. I mean, other than the fact that some are blind and some are not, that some prefer chocolate to vanilla and so on. I don't mean 'false color' in the sense that it is 'wrong' -- I mean, false color in the sense that (in my hypothetical) a perception engine of wetbits applies a self-chose and arbitrary(but consistant) palette of 'colors' to the stimuli delivered by the optic system (or aural system, etc.) No matter what our individual palettes (be they identical or not), we yet do not all agree on the same aesthetics, either visually or aurally. We account for that as 'difference in tastes.' Yet, for all we know, we literally all do have 'different tastes...' "I like these colors together." "I like these patterns of sounds." (We don't all like the same music or paintings or food.) There are other models of explaining these aesthetic preferences; how is it possible to rule out that our perception engines (whatever you want to call the receiving end of all this delivered stimuli from the real world by way of sensory systems) are themselves key to these differences? Isn't that in fact how we explain such differences? We all don't have the same wetbits in detail, only very close approximately. At one level of abstraction, we are all the same, and at a deeper level we are fundamentally not the same, we are unique as individuals. That is or should be a key insight for Objectivists, I would think. Not all will agree; because in the end, we are all different. regards, Fred

Why pose this hypothetical? Because if we do 'manufacture' color in our perception engines, then a blind person could as well. Might as well ask, "Can a blind person dream? Can a blind person imagine? Can a blind person draw?" Some have run experiments with the blind and congenitally blind regarding their dreams.. There might well be a difference in the 'visualizations' of the blind and the congenitally blind, but that observation could be influenced by prefernence for other modes of perception -- those actively exercised. There seems to be a preference with the congenitally blind for aural dreams, for example. But blind people 'visualize' -- and even draw those visializations. What is their process of 'visualization' to drive their drawing. What does it mean to 'visualize' if not some processing of stimuli by our perception engines? Once we've programmed our wetbit perception engines, red is red. So I wonder; do we all program the same colors when we are three weeks old, etc., or do we simply start programming them and move on? Some might claim to know. I don't.

"Even in the womb babies can tell the difference between light and dark. And at birth, they see shapes by following the lines where light and dark meet. Yet, they are several weeks old before they can see their first primary color – red." Are we all seeing the same 'red?' Or is the above describing a fully programmable perception engine filling in its programmable color palette? Do we all have the same identical aesthetics? Is there a One True Aesthethics? Are we all supposed to retch when we see yellow-green next to pink, or do some people like yellow-green next to pink, and others do not? If we have identical color palettes in our reality painting perception engines, and have the same wetbits, then why do we have different aesthetics? There are other ways to explain varying aesthetics than unique color palettes. My question is, how do we prove that we don't have unique color palettes? (We can only prove that we have externally consistant color palettes. "The book is blue...yes, the book is blue....and tomorrow, the book is still blue, and we both still agree...but have not answered my question."

When we are awake, we receive real-time immediate sensory stimulation via our eyes. We see things in color. When we are sleeping, with our eyes closed, at night, in the dark, we dream. Our dreams to us may not be logical but many of us dream in color, and in fact, mostly perceive our dreams as real while we are dreaming, (Not always, but often.) This is an assertion; it seems that our brains have both the ability to process real time stimuli ('reality') as well as playback of past reality/memories that are not limited by physics or anything real. We imagine; what goes on in dreams is not simple playback of reality from a high fidelity recorder or memory; our brains have the ability to 'mess' with out memories, and present a 'playback' of our -perceptions- of reality that is messed with, far beyond false coloring, but with totally imagined actors and actions-- like a 'movie' being presented to -something- our perception engines. That which -recieves- the stimuli presented by either a] reality or b] our memories or c] our imaginations. We have the same eyes. We have the same stimuli collection organs. My hypothetical experiment (I can't imagine how it can be done) is, with this model, how would we ever demonstrate to each other that each of our 'perception engines' is seeing the same 'technicolor' palette of reality? We for sure are able to freely deviate with out dreams and imaginings. Why would the same not apply to our 'false coloring' of the stimuli presented to our individual 'perception engines?' And if we think that isn't possible becuase we have the 'same identical' wetbits, then why do some of us prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla, and others, vanilla over chocolate? After all we have identical wetbits. We clearly don't. My question in, how would we design an experiment to verify that we're all watching identically colored 'movies' of reality on our invidula perception engines? there is no consequence if we are not; if there were, we could identify the consequence and design the experiment. Hot/cold isn't it; if from the moment of your birth, you associated 'fire' with hot and 'cool water' with cool, then whatever color from your personal reallity false coloring color pallette you mapped to 'fire' would be a 'hot' color and whatever was associated with 'cool water' would be a cool color. We are stuck, forced to describe what we 'see' only by comparison with external objects. "That is a blue book....yes, that is a blue book." --- which says nothing about what our respective perception engines 'movies of reality' would look like if it were possible to percieve those movie screens side-by-side (by what? a third perception engine...) For all we know, each and everyone of us has independent color palettes that don't even overlap. We color reality because we must. We do it consistantly because that is what lets us function in the world. If every day we woke up and our color palette was scrambled, we'd lose our minds. We color reality, and we live with it. The question is, do we all color reality the same way? I don't know. But who does? In fact, because we don't know and can't tell...it has no consequence at all. If it did...we could answer the question.

"What “fact” are you speaking of? You listed a bunch of hypotheticals and what ifs." True enuf, I guess. The fact I'm referring to is the absence of any such ability to prove that you and I or anyone else percieve the same color when we see the color 'blue.' The fact is, you and I and anyone else on earth can only confirm that our individual perceptions are individually consistent, by comparison with an external entity. "The sky is blue....yes, the sky is blue." That says nothing about what you percieve and what I perceive as being identically the same perceived color inside of our head. For all you know, my blue sky is your yellow banana, or even, some color never percieved by you, or vice versa. You and I can only confirm that when you look at something that we agree is 'blue' that your perception is always consistant and my perception is always consistant and so of course we agree. We can say things like 'we probably perceive the same color' -- but I won't hold my breath waiting for you to design a hypothetical experiment to actually prove that. We currently have no means of performing that experiment.(Can you or anyone actually see the colors inside my head, or vice versa?) We can query each other's perception engines through the filter of our voices/ears , and pass all of that to our perception engines, then try to describe what we 'see' --- but you and I will ultimately resort to comparisons with external entities. "The sky" "This book." What is playing in the little movie theater somewhere behind your eyeballs? Only you can say, but only using words...which refer to external entities. Yes, the sky is blue-- we agreed on that long ago. That is not the question. Are you claiming it is a fact that we perceive the same sensation? What act of faith are you relying on? When you look at the sky, you see the same color sensation. When I look at the same sky, I see the same color sensation. But I have no way of proving that you and I see the same color sensation; you and I only know that we are looking at the same sky, and then we assume. But whether we do has absolutely no impact on our ability to interact. I don't know of any consequence at all, which is part of the problem of proving that we see the same sensation-- that what is playing on the screen inside your head is exactly the same ordered color palette that is playing inside of my head, or even, palettes that contain the same colors... I'd love to hear the evidence that even sighted people all percieve color identically and how that is established without relying on external entities as reference. The top light on a traffic light is 'red' the middle is 'yellow' and the bottom is 'green' We all agree. But if(I don't know of any means of presently doing this)you were magically able to see what I see when I look at a traffic light, -- stimulate your optic processing and perception engine with the same inputs -- how would you or I know that what you would suddenly see wouldn't look totally different in terms of colors? We don't, and beyond that we can't hypothesize a consequence of any difference. An eye transplant proves nothing -- that is input processing, presenting stimulus to some perception engine buried deeper inside our brain. A 'perception engine' transpant -- if such a thing existed-- might, but then again, there might no longer be a 'you' if you underwent any such hypotheritcal perception engine transpant. My claim that absence is a fact is easily disproved; present the means of proving we actually perceive the same color. Blue is 'cool'. For sure-- just like that body of water out there, the cool one. And red is 'hot' -- just like fire. But what color palette are we using? Do we imagine it? Is that possible? It is when you dream. Where does the color come from when you dream in color? Is it so hard to consider--because neither you nor I know for a fact where perceived color sensation actually comes from-- that what 'delivers' the color is a subjective bit of wetbits, and that what our brains are actually doing is 'false coloring' stimuli?

The companion to this question is, "Do sighted people all percieve the same thing when regarding color?" As we only know by comparison with agreed upon objects ("That is blue...yes, that is blue.") there is no way of telling if sighted people all perceive the same thing. For all I know, my blue is your green -- or something else I've never even imagined. But as long as we agree that green beans are green, then no problem -- no matter what each of us is perceiving. How would we ever devise an experiment to prove that we all percieve the same actual color when regaring an object that we both agreed to call 'blue?' We could prove that each of us was consistant in our perceptions ("Yup--- the sky is still blue.") But not that each of us perceived the same sensation. That we perceived a sensation, yes. But how could we ever prove to each other that we each see the same sensation when regarding 'blue?' And that fact should be of interest to objectivists; it is another nail in the coffin of collectivist thought... What else would have no consequence in a pluralistic tribe where there wasn't just one answer to the questions "Why am I here/what is the purpose of my life in this existence?"

Do you think the U.S. has benefitted from the interstate highway system? If so, how were the resources used to build it misallocated. Similar questions: How about the Hoover Dam? Your local water supply and drainage system? Ba'al Chatzaf Isn't there at least some small irony in choosing projects from periods in time when the relative size of the federal government was miniscule relative to todays life sucking behemoth--and its dearth of similar projects that any of us could actually point to? Hoover Dam? Ike's Interstate? What was the total size of the federal goivernment then, when government actually uised to do such things? WHen JFK's AMerica was building those Interstates, his budget ws $100B in a nation of 180 million, and over haf of that was for defense. $3800B/yr vs what those eras spent on federal government. Hoover dams, Interstates, Apollo Moon programs. Flash ahead to 2013. We're spending $3800B/yr. What great national works is this nation doing with that $3800B/yr in spending? What has all of our youth inspired these days, with what their government is doing? I mean, other than, driving the nation to its knees. Solyndra? SUrely there is something the graduating class of 2013 can point to, to justify that $3800B/yr and their bleak futures? Perhaps its GM, and the Chevy Volt? IBM's tax treatment for its overseas operations? Something GE is doing? Raytheon? Harris Corp? FACEBOOK??? After all, FB employs maybe 3400 people. SUrely, the class of 2013 is proudly pointing at FaceBook and the dancing bitmaps down at FarmVille as the very pinnacle of accomplishment, boriught about as it must be by the careful husbandry of something newly called "The" Economy by our frantic The Economy runners. THere's a solution; let's just go back to JFK's entire budget and form of federal giovernment, rebuild Ike's Interstates, and spend $100B on the federal pig, like that America once did, back when it did. Before it spent $3800B/yr on that pig and fell flat on its back.

This experiment has been run several times in recent history, all with similar results. In 1992, Clinton ran on the premise that he absolutely needed his Stimilus Plan, BTU Tax, and Nationalized Health Care. None of them passed. (He did get passed a symbolic 3.6% surcharge on earnings over six times AWI, and Dr. Laura D'Andrea Tyson, doing the math for us all in her talk in Nov 1997 at UCAL/Berkley, admitted "Nothing we did.") Instead, what he did do was level off Reagan's defense spending buildup -- he spent less federal dollars than planned. The actual result of his 92-93 over-reach was the 94 spanking, the Era of Big Government is Over, and six years of do nothing gridlock tied up over Monica Lewinsky's stained blue dress. The resultig relief in the US economies at this 'austerity' was growing economies. Bush/Obama have done the exact opposite of that 'austerity' -- with the exact opposite results. JFK's America, at 180 million people, and with inflation accounting for only a factor of 7.5 since then, spent 1/38th as much as the current federal government in current dollars in a nation of 320 million -- not even twice as large. . JFK's 100B --over half of which was for defense at the peak of the COld War -- adjusts to maybe $1500B today, not $3800B/yr. By any measure, JFK's AMerica was laboring under 'Austerity' -- and JFK's economies roared. See Germany, Agenda 2010, which Merkel doubles down on. It's not even close.