Little Timmy’s Older Sister

Little Timmy: Uncle Stuart, I am not old enough to vote, but my older sister is, and she doesn’t know who to vote for; she just told me that she has no money and she hates everything right now. What should I tell her?

Uncle Stuart: Well Timmy, I’m glad you asked. However, I must warn you that there is no simple explanation nor is there a single answer to this quandary.

Little Timmy: You don’t know what my sister should do? But Uncle Stuart, I thought you were smart? Didn’t you go to school for like… a million years?

Uncle Stuart: Ha-ha, Oh silly Timmy, school doesn’t make you smart. School merely educates you in currently accepted social constructs and gives you the mental acuity by which you may expand on those paradigms and even manifest your own.

Little Timmy: Ok… what is a paradigm?

Uncle Stuart: You are a sharp kid Timmy, that’s why you’re my favorite nephew. You’re asking the right question. A paradigm is a way of perceiving the world.  Every human being sees the world in a unique way. People even see the world differently at different times in their life because paradigms evolve with society (inorganically) and with age (organically). Do you remember when you were really little and you thought that being a grownup would be so cool?

Little Timmy: I’m still a little kid and I still think being a grown-up would be cool! You guys get to drive cars! And make lots of money! And stay up as late as you want! and eat candy whenever you want! And..!

Uncle Stuart: Whoa there Timmy, that’s enough. All those things are true, but we also have all sorts of responsibilities as grown-ups that we didn’t have as kids. These responsibilities placed upon us by ourselves and by society inorganically make being a grown-up kind of suck. Our physical bodies change organically as well, we can’t stay up so late and eat as much candy as we used to without repercussions. You hear grown-ups talk about these things but you don’t understand because you are young. When you experience the paradigm shift yourself, or think really deeply about it, then you will understand and perceive what it is to be an adult. A current state of mental perception is a paradigm. The change in that state is a paradigm shift.

Little Timmy: I think I understand. It’s like when I thought that I really wanted to play the electric guitar, but then when I got one because I cried at my parents, I didn’t want to play anymore. I suppose if I had really thought about what I wanted instead of just acting on emotion then I would have known that before my parents spent all that money… but then again, you never know until you try.

Uncle Stuart: You really are wise for your age Timmy, but I would have advised renting the guitar to see if you liked it rather than buying it.

Little Timmy: Yeah-yeah, ok, my mistake, so what does all this paradigm stuff have to do with my sister voting?

Uncle Stuart: Just wait, I’ll tie it all together. Not only can a paradigm apply to a single person, it can be shared throughout a society. A common idea or belief becomes more common and accepted as more people believe it.

Little Timmy: That’s stupid, if more people believe something because people believe something, then won’t everyone eventually believe the same thing? A certain point of view will just spread like the chickenpox that Brian Scrash brought to school did.

Uncle Stuart:  Precisely Timmy! People are very stupid in large numbers. It is the same concept as stampede; however, instead of cattle running from a loud noise, it is people becoming infected with a paradigm, or way of thinking, about the world. People in the marketing fields know this very well and there are even math formulas to model these sorts of patterns in human nature. One such formula I have encountered is the Zipf Curve. It is used for many Peer-to-Peer networks to systematically decide which files to replicate across the strategic machines in order to keep up with changes in demand due to changes in perceived popularity.

Little Timmy: Wow, Uncle Stuart; you’re making me think that being a kid might be better than being a grown-up after all.

Uncle Stuart: There you go Timmy; you are experiencing a small Paradigm Shift through thought and self-reflection without actually having to experience being an adult. But again, you never truly know until you try it. Be careful though because some paradigm shifts cannot be undone. Though, I personally enjoy my perception of the world more as adult than I ever did as a kid, so there is hope for you yet.

Little Timmy: ok… I’m bored.

Uncle Stuart: All right Timmy, stay with me here. Let’s go over a few common paradigms of American society today. First, there is the meaning and goal of life; second, there is money and economics; third, there is the role of government in society; finally there is the rest of the world. The meaning of life is hard to button down. Nobody knows the answer to it, but the founders of the United States had a pretty good idea when they scribed down, “Life, Liberty and The pursuit of happiness.” That pretty much covers what everyone wants in a generic fashion, but how do we interpret this and make it happen in a literal sense?

Little Timmy: Um… our parents do it for us? So, the government decides for adults?

Uncle Stuart: Oh no, no, no, Timmy my little commie. Don’t you think that you are the best judge of what is best for you? Well, maybe not yet, but when you are my age, and you have done the reflection that I have done, you will know, and you will continue to accrue a clearer picture.

Little Timmy: Ok, so by what means can I decide my fate, and still get what I want from other people without mom, dad, or the government telling them to give it to me? They certainly aren’t going to do it out of the kindness of their heart. I wouldn’t either.

Uncle Stuart: Perhaps they should have made you read up on Adam Smith and David Hume in public school. They were a couple philosophers of disestablishmentarianism about 200 years ago, and you may have read my mention of Hume in prior blog postings.  But then again, why would an establishment facility such as the public school system, teach students about disestablishmentarianism, the basis of the beliefs on which United States was originally based.

The word disestablishmentarianism was originally defined as going against the church, but it also refers to going against the established order, as the church and government were one in the same at the time of Hume and Smith and before the United States. The ultimate idea is that, rather than following some government, church, or illusory god’s idea of what is best for us as individuals, we are the ones who know what is best for us as individuals.

However, with personal freedom comes a whole new set of problems.  Because there is no central system of governance, dealing with the inherent greed in humans, the intrinsic lack of empathy for those not within one’s social circle, the coordination of what needs to be done in society, are all new vexing elements to the equation. A radical concept when proposed, but the ultimate solution for distributed self-governance, is a meta-value that humans put on everything.

Little Timmy: ok, what are you talking about?

Uncle Stuart: I’m talking about barter Timmy. I’m talking about free trade in the free market. ‘Free’ means that there is no interference from any central government. It can even mean ‘free’ in the sense that it does not cost anything, but I will get into that later. The beauty of the system is that you decide the value of something to you. If you do not believe that one cookie from your classmate is worth one of your juice boxes, then you don’t trade. When the other student realizes he really wants juice, and no one will trade him a juice box for his cookie, then he may offer you a second cookie if he feels your juice box is worth it to him. Finally, if you feel that two cookies is worth one of your juice boxes, you make the deal, and both of you walk away happy. The established value of one juice box is two cookies in this free market. However, if everyone in the classroom had lots of juice boxes, then the other student may be able to find a juice box from someone for less than two cookies… therefore, as the supply of a resource increases, the value of it decreases. The inverse is also true.

Little Timmy: That is pretty cool, I never really thought about the value of resources to individuals other than myself; I guess the combination of our perceived values establishes the true value in the classroom system. But I have a friend named Greg who said he is a communist and that he believes we should go back to the barter system. Isn’t this what he is talking about?

Uncle Stuart: Wow Timmy! You’re going to have your doctorate in economics before you know it! However, your friend is greatly mistaken. A communist society is one in which everyone owns everything equally, meaning, someone can eat your cookie and drink your juice box if they so please because they co-own it. There is no bartering involved as there is no system of individual ownership. Generally, in a communist society (like a church or community organization) an established government decides who gets what and who needs to produce what. It might work out ok in a system of 20 people, but who can keep track of 300,000,000 people’s desires and capacities to produce? There is no super-computer in the world that could handle that, let alone a cabinet of human leaders. Make no mistake about it; any form of barter is a primal form of capitalism. 

Little Timmy: I thought capitalists use money? And my teacher says capitalism is bad. She says that rich people keep getting richer and poor people keep getting poorer and the government should redistribute the wealth to the people who really need it.

Uncle Stuart: I’m glad that you are bringing all of this up Timmy, let’s start with the money and I’ll move into the subject of wealth.  Money is a Meta value between items. Let’s say your juice box isn’t worth exactly two cookies, let’s say that, to you, it is worth a little more than one cookie and a little less than two cookies, but the other kid says he won’t break one cookie in half? We use money to create a linear value system by which everything can be compared on a continuous value basis. If the other kid doesn’t want to trade 1.5 cookies, he can trade you 1.5 cookies worth of Meta units (we call dollars) and you can find another kid who will either sell you 1.5 cookies, or will sell you two smaller cookies that are worth 1.5 larger cookies. Get it?

Little Timmy: I kind of do, but how do I know what money is worth? 1.5 moneys aren’t always worth 1.5 cookies.

Uncle Stuart: Brilliant Question! The value of something is defined by the current social paradigm. How much members of society want cookies compared to everything else, and how many cookies exists to satisfy those members of society, defines how much money cookies are worth. People come to an agreement on a floating value that is based solely on supply and demand of everyone. This means, that people who can produce cookies will if they see that the price is high, and people will stop producing them if the price is low. Price of a resource directly reflects exactly how much society wants and needs that resource. Furthermore, something that is absolutely worthless to you may be worth lots to others; in this case, what you get in return for it is literally free. With this system, we don’t need any government to tell us what to make, or who to give it to, we can decide ourselves.

Little Timmy: That is pretty cool, but my older sister is pretty poor. She took a $20,000 student loan and bought a car with part of it, then totaled it. Then she moved out of our mom’s house into her own house and bought another car. She failed her classes because she didn’t have time to study and now she is on academic probation, out of money and $20,000 in debt with huge interest payments. I want a president that will take money from those greedy rich people in cushy office jobs, and will help her out. Capitalism hasn’t done anything for her.

Uncle Stuart: Whoa there Timmy! I believe that she is exactly where she should be with her behavior. Your sister needs to have foresight and needs to learn to govern her own actions, and not expect someone else, or society to take care of her. She needs to be an active party of society, and think of helping herself. The best way to help everyone succeed in life is to take care of oneself. If you can take care of yourself through diligence and foresight, and have a little left over for others, then everyone in the world will flourish. When your sister learns to control her behavior, then she will flourish as well. If your sister wants to continue destroying the resources of others; then she should consider moving to a nation with more socialist views. However, the resources of a social system come from somewhere, and if everyone contributes less than what they consume, the social system WILL fail.

Little Timmy: Uncle Stuart, my sister has had one baby that she gave up for adoption; she has a second one that she has kept; and she had a third one that was aborted; they were all from different fathers. I hear that one of the candidates for president is against abortion. I know she doesn’t want that one in office because she is worried her rights as a woman will be removed.

Uncle Stuart: Eweewheehhewwwgrrrooooossseeeeee… how do you know this? Never mind; gross. I have no idea, but I think that if she were more responsible in all aspects of life, then she wouldn’t have to worry so much about what the government decides on what constitutes murder. Many people who are anti-abortion are so because they believe that irresponsible people are using it more often than they should and are using it very late in the process.  But, again, I believe families and free markets should decide these matters, not governments. It sounds like your sister may not have received the moral principles and virtues by which to conduct her life from your parents.

Little Timmy: Yeah, my sister is a lot like my mom.

Uncle Stuart: That quite often is the case. It takes a strong person to rise above what they were handed in life by their parents. I believe that parents are most responsible for the mental health of society, next comes the public school system. Unfortunately, parents are often depressed themselves, or very busy working. Furthermore, the public school system merely teaches people to be sheep to the establishment; this is not an outrageous claim seeing as it is a part of the establishment. The establishment always promotes itself.

Little Timmy: So I should drop out of school?

Uncle Stuart: No Timmy, stay in school; but take what your professors have to say seriously, and then research it for yourself. I once had a philosophy of science professor that proclaimed that the reason you find more democrats in places of education is because people of educational institutions are more educated, and are more prone to using the scientific method, thus, naturally siding with the Democratic Party, which itself, generally sides with ideologies of more government control over society.

My field of study is Computer Science, and it is an exact science. There is no room for estimation, assumption, or prayer within these machines; they are based on exact algorithms that ensure the deterministic behavior of a balanced, efficient system. For computers, the most efficient solution is ALWAYS a distributed one. That is to say, for each machine that joins a network, the machine offers up its resources to help accomplish a common task of all machines on the network. This is counter to the traditional client/server model in which one very powerful central machine handles all processing and tells the clients what to do.

I believe that you are astute and you will have noticed by now that this is a similar model to government/individuals. Bigger government with massive control is like the traditional client/server model in which a central established order decides your fate. Conversely, having individuals in control, as observed in a capitalistic culture is more like the distributed peer to peer model. The very same model on which your favorite P2P programs like LimeWire, KaZaA and SoulSeek are based.  I am not advocating stealing music; I am however, advocating freedom of your own fate, freedom to make your own decisions, good/bad, and being able to enjoy/suffer the consequences.

Little Timmy: Wow, so if I save my money and study hard, I’ll have a nice job and drive fun cars too?..

Uncle Stuart: Exactly Timmy, you will be able to choose your work; if you want to sell home-made items at a booth in Seattle, you can. If you want to have an office job and do research like me, you can. If you want to go beyond that, you can! We’re not quite done yet though, just one more small point; the rest of the world. You know how there are people at school that are mean no matter how nice you are to them?

Little Timmy: Yeah! That Ryan Spreck is always mean, he is spoiled and he tells other kids what to do and they do it because they are dumb-dumb heads.

Uncle Stuart: Well Timmy, kids of those personality types grow up, and when they are my age, they are the jerks who are mean to other people at work. Then those kids get even older, and they assume positions of power in many countries without the distributed system of power we have here in the United States. They think that they can treat people like garbage; they generally support centralized systems of government because it is easier to control the media and masses in order to make people do, and believe what the ‘establishment’ believes is best. Leaders such as these cannot be reasoned with, because of their nature, just like Ryan Spreck at school; and the people of the nations they control are difficult to reason with because they all subscribe to the paradigm forced upon them by their government. To believe that reason will always prevail is naïve; weapons wielded by bad people will always silence the most intelligent voices of reason. Anyone who has looked at the patterns of the world would realize this. My proclamation about members of the educational community’s political views is that they were born, and have always lived in, a society surrounded by like thinkers who cannot fathom an irrational foreign leader pointing weapons at them for no logical reason. It is sadly the case that those with the desire to conquer will conquer those who are not vigilant in their own self-defense.

Little Timmy: I’m tired… just tell me who to tell my sister to vote for.

Uncle Stuart: She needs to decide for herself. Trusting the media is like trusting the establishment, so just make sure she does her research before she goes changing any paradigms. Like any distributed power, the power to vote comes with serious responsibility because it affects everybody.

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