Corporate Dishonesty

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/app-installed-on-millions-of-phones-secretly-records-all-activity/

This sickens me. Seriously, how many blatantly dishonest people did it take to get this onto millions of Android, BlackBerry, and Nokia phones? From now on, anyone who tells me that they have any doubt that corporate America is utterly corrupt and evil is either too stupid to do their research, extremely gullible, or part of the corruption. To get this software onto so many phones, first a number of people had to knowingly create and market this to phone companies. Then, a fair number of people at each of those companies had to endorse the software and install it on their products. This must have required the cooperation of large numbers of corporate officials, upper management, engineers, and software developers. This attack on the American people, from within, should be treated as treason by our government.

The behavior of these companies and individuals is very close to that of revolutionaries. Historically, powerful organizations have used their influence to infiltrate and control the general populace. In the past, this was done by getting sympathizers to record and report the behavior of people around them that might be a threat to the movement, or that might be potential sympathizers themselves. These people might also record data on business transactions and other things that the organizations might be able to use to increase their power, or to gain control of people. Often this data was used to blackmail or even assassinate those who could be dangerous to the organization. It would sometimes be used to control those with sensitive information, or even as a means of collecting sensitive information, without detection. Now, we have technology that is, evidently, extremely easy to misuse for such purposes, with much smaller chances of detection.

If you are not convinced that this is dangerous enough to warrant charges of treason, consider one more thing: How many government officials use Android, BlackBerry, or Nokia phones? How many of these officials use those phones for confidential communications? Right, there are probably rules against that, but don't kid yourself. If you know anything about the ethics of our government officials, you should have no doubt that nearly all of them have, at least once, used their phones to transfer, or at least store sensitive information. While this by itself is only a potential security risk, if those phones contained this software that logs and reports key strokes to some company, this is no longer a "potential security risk." No, it is a leak. In this case, it is potentially thousands of leaks.

By putting this software on their phones, without informing their customers, these companies have created potentially one of the biggest security risks the US government has ever faced. These companies first should be given extremely heavy fines, for their crimes against their customers. Second, they should be exhaustively investigated by the US government to ensure that no sensitive data was obtained using this extremely unethical system. Third, any of these companies that has obtained sensitive data should be charged with treason, and further investigation should be done to determine who else may have obtained that data. In addition, each individual who was involved with, or knew about this and did not report it should be charged with crimes against the people who's data may have been compromised by this system, and with treason, if any of the companies involved obtained any amount of sensitive government data. None of these people should ever be allowed to work in communications jobs again.

It may seem hard to believe that this could have been intended for harmful purposes. I submit that if this were really just some innocent plan devised to learn habits of customers and how they use their phone software, it would have been advertised as a feature, not hidden from view and kept extremely secretive. This was intentional dishonesty, not some innocent plan with unexpected side effects. It should be treated as such. If we do not send a message that we will not tolerate this kind of violation, eventually some company will gain enough information to become a very serious threat to our freedom.

Lord Rybec

xkcd Money Chart

http://xkcd.com/980

I am tempted to print this on my 2' wide printer and put it on the wall. This is the most comprehensive chart of where money in the US is/goes that I have ever seen, and I just finished extensive research on this subject for a paper. I wish this had been posted a week ago.

Ok, so there are people starving in the US, while our government is spending $11 billion on military aid, and another $11 billion on foreign humanitarian aid (not certain if that is yearly, or total, but yearly makes more sense). Total US population (in 2009 according to Google) is 307 million. That is equal to $71 per person. If you discount the 50% of the population that is totally above the poverty line, and does not need the money, that is $142 per person. Note that this is not money that we are paying for our own defense. Also note that in the past this money has been used explicitly against us (by Iran and Iraq, for instance).

Corporate tax deductions are at $125 billion, which is equal to $407 per person.

Cost of war in Afghanistan is $321 billion, at $1,045 per person.

Iraq war was $784 billion, at $2,553 per person.

Stimulus spending was $206 billion in 2008 and $748 billion in 2009, totaling at $954 billion and $3,107 per person.

Recent bailouts totaled around $393 billion, $1,280 per person.

US annual charitable giving: $295 billion, at $960 per person.

And a bunch of small stuff that probably totals at several more trillion (not willing to take the hours to count it all).

So, the totals of the stuff that I provided values for is $2,872 billion. That comes out to $9,355 per person. If that money was distributed only to those that actually need it (the lower 50%), it would be $18,710 per person. xkcd.com assumes around $22,000 as the poverty level (on a per household basis). In a household of 2 people, $18,710 per person is enough money to survive on for a year, without even working a job. Many of the above are yearly figures, meaning that the government could dramatically improve the standard of living of the bottom 50% by giving them money, instead of wasting it on useless projects (admittedly, some of the money is spent on useful stuff, for instance, stimulus includes some education grants).

Note that the lower 50% includes households that earn less than $55,000 a year. Those making more than $40,000 a year and only include 2 people could be excluded based on research showing that $20,000 a year per person is the optimum income for happiness. This would further increase the per person payout of the nearly $3 trillion counted above.

Also, a wage cap and a profit cap for businesses would extremely dramatically redistribute wealth. A $500 million profit cap (I support something even more aggressive) would save $15.5 billion from Walmart (I'll be rounding down to the nearest $.5 billion), $29.5 billion from ExxonMobil, $5.5 billion from PepsiCo, $11 billion from Coca-Cola, $2 billion from VISA, $1 billion from MasterCard, $11 billion from GE, $12 billion from Berkshire Hathaway, $5.5 billion from GM, $6 billion from Ford, $19 billion from AT&T, $1.5 billion from Bank of America, $16.5 billion from JP Morgan Chase, $2 billion from Verizon, $10 billion from Citigroup, $51.5 billion from HP, $13.5 billion from Apple, $18 billion from MS, and $8 billion from Google. That totals to $239 billion, which is another $1,557 per person, and this time entirely on a yearly basis (and automatically adjusted for inflation even). And, this only includes a very small number of businesses that make over $500 million a year. If this money was distributed among the lower 50%, it would be $3,114 per year per person, enough to pull quite a few people out of the poverty level.

I don't want to do the work for finding the benefits of the wage cap, but I am certain they are at least as dramatic as the profit cap.

In short, if our government would quit squandering money, and if it would enforce a wage and profit cap, everyone one in the entire US could be living above the poverty level. (Hmm, according to the dollar section of the xkcd.com chart, the average CEO in the US makes $5,420 per hour. I could work for a single day every year at those wages, and be just barely at the poverty level. I take this to mean that each day of work for a typical CEO is robbing one person of an entire year's salary. Of course, this is presuming an 8 hour work day.)

If, in addition to this, taxes for the top 10% of wage earners was increased by even a little bit (ie, a few percent), it would generate enough more money to put the entire US population in the middle class. Note that this does not include large businesses, which would generate far more than that with a similar tax increase.

Anyhow, I like this chart. It gives very complete information (and would have made a nice reference for my paper, if it had come a week earlier).

Lord Rybec

Wage Cap

The 200 year experiment has failed. While we have shown that large businesses with centralized mass production reduce the cost of producing goods, we have failed to show that they reduce the prices of goods. Mass production is good and useful. When done properly, it decreases production costs and increases quality. Centralizing mass production has not been good or useful. Centralized production requires robust transportation fleets, which are expensive in fuel, time, and maintenance of both vehicles and roads. The failure of the experiment, however, is not related to transportation costs. The experiment has failed due to greed and corruption.

Large companies have slowly robbed their employees and customers more and more. With this ill gotten gain, they have paid our government to make laws that give them even more power. We now live in a nation of slaves and slavers. The majority of us are slaves, while the rest are the slavers. There is no middle ground. Most of the people in the US work to produce enormous profits and are then paid only enough for room and board, while the profits they have worked so hard for go to some CEO or other person that does less work than they do. The people are now rebelling, but our government does not even know what to do, because they have never thought about how to best serve the people they govern. I have some suggestions.

I propose a wage cap. Presuming the average adult needs 8 hours of sleep a day and that this leaves them with 16 hours during the day that they could work, and presuming that the average person is capable of working like this 6 days a week, a person cannot reasonably work more than 5,000 hours in a year. Also presuming that a well trained individual can do work valued at over 10 times what the average McDonald's employee's work is worth, it might be reasonable to say that this individual should be paid $100 an hour. Given this, this person could earn $500,000 a year. If you want to argue that the work of the McDonald's worker is worth less than 10 times the trained individual, then the trained person cannot eat fast food and then shall only be able to work 13 hours a day, since he now has to spend 1 hour per meal in preparation time. So, I propose that a maximum wage be mandated that prohibits payment of more than $500,000 in combined wages and benefits per year per person. This is enough money for anyone in the US to survive quite comfortably, and it would affect less than 5% of the population.

In addition, I propose a profit cap for businesses. This should be a percentage and should represent a reasonable profit margin, that cannot be considered extortion (there should also be a fairly large maximum dollar amount, to limit the size and influence of businesses). Costs for maintenance and replacement equipment can be taken from the total profits, but research and expansion costs should not be (they must be counted as profits). Elective costs should also not be subtracted from profits, including charitable donations (it is unethical for a company to donate money that was generated by their workers). If a company generates more profits than are allowed, those profits should be equally distributed among employees (that have not reached their maximum wage) and a fine should be charged against the remaining profits (a company may instead choose to distribute before filing taxes to avoid the fine).

These two things would make a huge difference in distribution of wealth. Large businesses would be paying much less to officers, because of the wage cap. The profit cap would require the businesses to do something with this money and the rest of their overages, that does not directly benefit the company and that does not just get rid of it to charities. The only options would be to either use the money to pay the employees fairly, or reduce prices dramatically to avoid the overages in the first place. Either of these would be good. The first would directly ensure that employees get a fair share of the profits. The second would increase the value of the US dollar so much that even current minimum wage would be quite lucrative pay. In addition, many workers could cut their work hours, opening up jobs for the 9% of unemployed Americans.

An interesting side note: Those who already have large amounts of wealth would also benefit greatly from the second scenario (prices dropping), as the value of their accumulated wealth would double, triple, or even better.

I realize that this solution has some holes. The actual legislation would need to carefully address the question of exactly what costs a company can exclude from their profits, to avoid holes that would allow companies to use overages in ways that would not benefit the employees. The wage cap legislation would have to also avoid loopholes that would allow any form of compensation to not be counted in the cap. I am neither a lawyer nor a politician, so I am not qualified to actually draft this legislation, but I do feel that I am qualified to suggest a good framework that could be used in drafting legislation, by those who we pay to do that job.

I believe that this particular course of action would not only solve the distribution of wealth problem, but I believe that it would also solve most of the problems with our economy as well. It could potentially double the value of the US dollar, making us a real contender in the world economy again. It could put many Americans into higher tax brackets, which would solve the budget issues with our government (or at least make them less severe). Fixing the distribution of wealth problem would create more jobs (fewer people would need to work multiple jobs, some people would choose to work only part time, and many people would start small businesses), potentially entirely eliminating the 9% unemployment we are currently facing.

It is certain something needs to be done. As I have mentioned, I believe that we are on the brink of revolution, especially if the government does not act quickly to fix these problems. I believe this solution would fix a great number of our current problems. It would affect our capitalist economy (which, in case you missed it, is failing) by slowing expansion and limiting rates of gain, but it would not replace it will a more oppressive system, nor would it interfere with it significantly. This would benefit a vast majority of the US population, and those who did not benefit would not be significantly harmed. We need to do something, and I think that this solution would fix the most urgent problems the most quickly and the most permanently.

Lord Rybec

What's it Worth?

There are many different types of value. Humans perceive value based on usefulness, need, rarity, mental stimulation, work or resources that went into an object, age, and many other factors. Probably the biggest factor of real value is need. What value is a big screen TV when you are starving the death? Usefulness and cost of production are also very strong factors of real value. Humans have invented another factor of value though. The phrase, "It is only worth what people are willing to pay," has been misconstrued to mean that the value of a thing is the highest price people are willing to pay for it.

The phrase, "It is only worth what people are willing to pay," was originally intended to convey the fact that an object which is appraised at a high value is only really worth that if you can find someone willing to pay that price for it. It was not intended to mean that it is ethical to charge any amount of money for an object, if someone is willing to pay that much. In fact, the US has anti-extortion laws to prevent businesses from taking advantage of shortages of goods needed for survival by raising prices (laws which have not been enforced during the last few disasters of sorts that those laws were created to cover).

I find that the most ethical method of determining value of goods for sale is to base the price on the cost of production. If a device costs $50 in parts and labor to produce, then that device should not be priced at $1,000. If it is, then it is extortion and theft. Of course, if the production of that device requires expensive equipment, then the cost of the device should reflect that, but it is still not ethical to make the first 100 customers pay for the manufacturing equipment and then keep the excessive profits from future sales.

There are many industries that abuse capitalism in ways that rip off the customer. Companies that produce electronic media are a major contender for the least ethical business practices. Electronic media is especially easy to do this with, because it only has to be produced once and then unlimited numbers of copies can be made at almost no additional cost. A music artist may spend 320 hours (2 months at 40 hours a week) composing a new album. The artist might then spend 20 hours recording all the tracks. Several people (3 maybe) at the studio will also be working to record the album and they might then spend 20 hours editing the tracks and mastering the first copy of the album. The record label might spend 100 hours working on advertising and pay some radio stations or TV stations for advertising time. The label will then copy the master onto thousands or millions of CDs. After this, people or stores will order the CDs, but they will pay shipping and handling, so the label does not have to worry about that. If each person involved gets paid $50 an hour (which I doubt), then the total labor costs through creating the master comes out to $25,000. The cost of the actual CDs (let's say 500,000) probably comes out to less than $50,000 (10 cents a piece is probably a high estimate). If each CD sells for $15 and the record label gets $10 from each, that comes out to $5 million. Presuming $500,000 in advertising costs, the company spent $575,000 on the entire thing and just made nearly 10 times that back. That is 1,000% return. That is absurd, especially given that the stores only made a 50% profit. Worse though, if the CD sells well, then the record company can quickly make another 500,000 copies for less than $50,000 and make another $5 million, at a 10,000% rate of return. Right, some money goes to royalties, but the pathetic rate of royalties for nearly any form of media is negligible (ever wondered why many musical artists keep going on tour, even when they have repeatedly stated how much they hate it). Why do we let the companies keep charging us for a product when society has already paid back several times what it cost to produce? This is extortion. Continuing to charge for a product that has already been paid for is theft.

It is not just media companies that do this though. Whenever new technology comes out, prices start very high. They generally slowly drop over time, but not at the rate they should. I understand that the cost of research and development has to be paid. This does not bother me. Once it is paid off though, quit charging us for it. New computer technology can take years to perfect. A lot of money goes into research. When it is finally ready, the prices are necessarily high. Most technology research is paid off within the first year after release. Somehow, even though devices like laptops only cost $50 to $100 to manufacture, we are still being charged $1,000 or more five or ten years later. When I found out about the low cost of manufacturing laptop computers, the technology was 5 years old. Now, 3 or 4 years later, the prices are finally dropping to more reasonable rates (though, $200 from $50 is still 400% return). The funny thing though is that they are not even using the old, cheaper technology. The new laptops are using new technology, which leads me to believe that $50 a piece was a high estimate and that modern laptops cost more like $25 (or less) to make, which means the return on a $200 laptop is 800%, which is still extortion.

Most of the world may disagree with me, but I am here to say: Charging the highest prices people are willing to pay is not ethical. Cheating people because they don't know better or because they are desperate is wrong. The value of merchandise should be based on how much it cost to produce, not on some math that maximizes profits but puts it out of the budget of people who really need it. What happens to those people that need food, but the math excludes their budget? Ever wonder why so many people need welfare just so they can afford to eat? Charging more than the poor can afford for food just to get a few extra dollars is evil and wrong. People are going hungry in the US because businesses have convinced us that it is ethical to rip off anyone who can afford to pay. It is not ethical to base prices on what people can afford. This is what is destroying our economy.

Lord Rybec

Class Warfare

Mitt Romney made a statement essentially accusing the Occupy Wall Street movement of inciting class warfare. I find this interesting, given the fact that one basis of our original government was that it was a classless system. How then, if our government is supposed to be a classless system, can Romney claim that any political movement within the US could be inciting class warfare?

This actually brings up a much deeper problem within our society and government. The very existence of social classes within our society is in opposition to the basic precepts of the US Constitution. If anything can incite class warfare in the US, then our system is deeply flawed. The problem is not that anyone or anything is inciting class warfare, but the fact that class warfare is even possible. Instead of attacking those "inciting class warfare," we need to be questioning the existence of social classes in our society in the first place. If we were living in a truly classless system, class warfare would not even be possible. Occupy Wall Street is justified, by the entire concept of the US government, in inciting class warfare against any social class that believes that they are above another (or that even sees themselves as a separate social class). The upper class should not exist. The lower class should also not exist. How then is it that distinct social classes have come to exist within our society?

Our founding fathers left Europe for two reasons: first, to gain religious freedom, and second, to escape the oppressive class system that allowed the upper aristocratic classes to lord over the the less fortunate. They created a government system designed to allow each person an equal chance in life. They swore off the social and financial class systems of the European nations and designed the new government system to not tolerate classes. However, as our society has evolved, our government has not. The old system worked fairly well for the technology and knowledge of that day. Now though, we have much more complex economical systems that are not sufficiently covered by the old system. In the old system there have been found many loopholes that have allowed social classes to reappear. We now have the ability and power, which was not had in the past, to fix this problem. Unfortunately, our current government does not have the ethics of our founding fathers. Our founding fathers actually cared about the people they governed. Our current government does not.

We need a government that will eliminate social classes. We need a government that will listen to the people and do the will of the people, not the will of the companies or the will of the 1% of the population that is rich. Many people in Europe immigrated to the US to escape oppressive social classes. We do not have the luxury of a place to run to, to escape oppression. We have been backed up against a wall by an oppressive government that is allowing itself to be controlled by an oppressive social class that should not even be allowed to exist. The peaceful protests of Occupy Wall Street should be taken by our government as the warning hiss of a cornered wild cat. Guess what will come next?

Occupy Wall Street

It is time for me to discuss a number of political ideas that I have had that could solve many of the current problems with the economy and the distribution of wealth issues that plague our nation and much of the world. First though I would like to discuss the Occupy Wall Street movement and the obvious implications of not fixing these problems.

Occupy Wall Street is the child of oppression. Much like the communist revolutions in Russia, Vietnam, Korea, and China, this movement is a response to the continued oppression of the poor and middle classes by the rich. As with the communist movement, I believe that if these problems are not fixed in a timely manner, this will end in a bloody revolution and the utter destruction of the US government. Thomas Jefferson once said that he believed that every government needs a good revolution at least every 200 years. The US government has gone far over that, and really has not done too badly. If the US government wants to survive though, it must bend to the will of the people that it was designed to serve. The American people have a strong sense of entitlement (which I do not necessarily agree with, but which exists nonetheless). This sense of entitlement is evolving into the sense of freedom that our founding fathers had and people are beginning to realize that the people of the US are no longer a truly free people. As the Occupy Wall Street movement points out, 99% of the US population are enslaved to 1%.

We may not see this as slavery, because we have the freedom to quit our jobs whenever we want. No one is applying physical force to cause us to provide them with labor. Further, the labor that we provide is compensated. It is easy to miss the fact that we are indeed slaves. Maybe I can make it more obvious. The 1% of the population that are the slavers require that we work for them. They force us to do so by taking away opportunities for us to work for ourselves. Small businesses have an extremely high failure rate. Obviously, some of the problem is that not everyone has the skills to effectively run a small business. However, a larger part is that small businesses have to pay full taxes, while large businesses get many tax cuts. Also, the monopolistic practices of large businesses make it impossible for small businesses to be profitable in a vast majority of markets. Occasionally slaves do escape, but often only to join the 1% that are enslaving the rest of us. Furthermore, the black slaves of the South were also compensated for their work. They were given room and board. Likewise, most modern jobs provide only enough pay for room and board, and many do not even provide that. A majority of Americans are literally being paid like slaves were in the South and a good portion of those are getting paid less than that. Evidence of this is that so many people have to rely on the welfare system to survive. Like slaves, most Americans are being forced to work for wages that are far less than fair.

The people of the US have finally begun to protest against the slavers and against the corrupt government that is supporting the slavers. Occupy Wall Street is the organized embodiment of a literal slave uprising. It is growing at an ever increasing rate as the slaves are recognizing the truth it is preaching. Thankfully, unlike historical slave or peasant uprisings, the people of Occupy Wall Street have chosen to begin the uprising in a civilized manner, with peaceful protests. Now it is the government's turn to act. It can either decide to eliminate corruption from within its ranks and reform our entire economical system, or it can do what it has become accustomed to and take bribes in return for keeping the slavers on top. This time though, that could be a fatal mistake. If peaceful revolution fails, our government will eventually be destroyed.

Occupy Wall Street has been criticized for choosing not to make any formal demands. Attacks have been made claiming that the movement must be disorganized and without focus. I agree with the assessment that an organized protest does not need to make specific demands. Occupy Wall Street is demanding reform that will correct a number of problems, problems which they have stated loudly and clearly. They are not required to provide the solutions; that is the job of the government. Frankly, most of the people of the Occupy Wall Street movement are not qualified to suggest solutions and they obviously realize this. Given this I find great wisdom in their choice to not make demands. The goal of the movement is not to correct problems. The goal of the movement is to identify problems and then demand that those problems be corrected by those with the responsibility to protect the 99% of the population that they have been neglecting.

We need an economy that allows us to escape slavery without becoming the slavers. We do not want wealth at the expense of everyone else and we do not want others to be wealthy at our expense. We have a government that we have hired through elections to protect us. It is their responsibility to provide us that. Instead of criticizing Occupy Wall Street for not offering solutions, our government needs to step up and earn their pay. It is their responsibility to enforce fairness, not that of a group of regular citizens that have no training in policy making. It is our job to tell our government what we want. It is their moral obligation to figure out how to do it. All we want is an honest government and our fair share of what we have worked so hard to create. Occupy Wall Street is not making demands because it is only asking for honesty and fairness. If the people of a nation must demand honesty and fairness from their government, it is time for that government to be overthrown and replaced.

Occupy Wall Street is an uprising of the oppressed peasant and slave classes that have been oppressed since the middle of the last century (and some would even argue much earlier). This is the US equivalent of the communist revolutions that spread across the Eastern Hemisphere at the beginning of the last century. If our government ignores this movement, we could end up in the same situation as many communist countries did, when their governments were overthrown and replaced with governments that eventually became tyrannical dictatorships. I support the Occupy Wall Street movement and I hope that our government has sense to act before it is too late.

Lord Rybec

An Allegory About a Villiage

There was once a small village. In this village lived an older man. He was in the business of producing a useful product for people in the village. Three of the older boys in the village worked for him, building this useful product. When he began, this product had never been dreamed of before, but now it was integral to life in this village and also in nearby villages, some of whom had similar businesses producing this product.

In the past, the man had not treated the boys fairly. He had required them to work long hours without breaks. He kept most of the profits of the business for himself, paying only enough to keep the boys from quitting.

One day, many years ago, the three boys realized that they were not being treated fairly, and demanded higher wages. The man was forced to comply with their demands, because he could not keep up with demand by himself and he was also getting old and was not able to work as fast, or efficiently as the three boys.

One year, there was a drought. The people in the village started being more careful with their resources. The man discovered that his business was doing poorly. To further complicate matters, some of the nearby villages were offering the product to people in the village. Their product was higher quality, because they were careful to treat their workers well, giving them regular breaks and shorter hours, so that they would not be tired when they worked. Their products cost slightly more, but lasted longer and worked more efficiently. Most of the people in the village decided that they did not want the lower quality product and started buying the higher quality products from other villages.

The old man realized that his business was going to fail if something was not done. He had enough wealth to retire, but he liked being able to buy anything he wanted whenever he wanted. He did not want to have to sell all of the fancy decorations, furniture, and clothing he had accumulated and he especially did not want to have to give up his giant hut. Of course, there were also the three boys he employed. He did not care about them much, but he did realize that they would probably starve if they lost their jobs, or worse, they might try to get the village elders to seize his production facilities and give them to them, when he was unable to pay their wages.

He cooked up a plan. He went to the village elders and plead his case. He told them the sad story of the three boys who relied on him for employment and for their very survival. He explained his current situation and how the drought had caused the people to quit buying his product. He closed by asking the village elders for assistance to help him keep his business operating.

The elders debated. One wanted to just let the man's business die. He explained that the man had done a poor job of running the business and that allowing the business to fail would help improve the economical situation because it would reduce waste and it would encourage others to run their businesses more carefully, if they knew that they were on their own. Another disagreed, pointing out that this man's business was an important source of revenue for the village. A third said he agreed with the first, but that he could not support such a plan because it would harm the three workers employed by the business.

The three each argued their point and then finally it was put to a vote. The final conclusion was that the village elders would provide some resources to help this man's business, not because they cared about the man, but because it was an important source of revenue for the village and because they did not want to see the three workers starve.

The next morning the village elders went to the hut of each villager. From each villager, they selected a few goods which they took. When they had taken some goods from each villager, they brought all of the collected resources to the man and gave them to him, to help prevent his business from failing. The village elders when home, happy that they had been able to help the village and the three boys.

The man brought the goods home. He used some of them to trade for more supplies for producing his goods, he used some to pay the wages he owed the three boys and the rest he kept for himself.


Analysis:

This is a story where the bad guy wins. This man runs his business poorly and treats his employees unfairly. As a result of producing low quality products and the consequences of treating his employees poorly (they unionized), he is put in a position where minor economical problems result in his loosing business and having more expenses than revenue. When the villagers decide that they no longer want to support his business, he goes to the local government for help (in this case, the local government is analogous to the national government, as they are the only governing body over the village). Their solution is to take resources from the people and give them to the man's business. In other words, when the people choose to stop supporting the man's business, the government forced them to support it, by taxing them and giving the man their money anyway. The big difference being that if the villagers had voluntarily supported the man's business, they would have gotten something in return for their money.

If you have not figured it out yet, this allegory parallels our own country's government bailouts. When we chose not to support some businesses in our country, our government stepped in and forced us to support them by taking our tax money and giving it to them. And, worst of all, we did not get anything in return for our money. This is nothing short of legalized theft. When we chose not to spend our money (or invest our money) with specific companies, the government forcibly took our money and gave it to them anyway, with no strings attached.

Right, there were a lot of people who's jobs were at stake. Besides the fact that we obviously did not need the product they produced, which made their jobs pointless (if you read my last allegory, think, digging holes), there were several better solutions to this problem. My personal favorite was that the government should have evenly disbursed the money with tax returns and told the people to stock up on food and other necessities, then just let those companies crash. In the long run, the recovery would have resulted in a much stronger economy that would be more likely to avoid the things that caused the problem in the first place. Another solution would have been for the government to allow the companies to go bankrupt, then appease the unpaid workers by awarding them full ownership and control of the company and all of its facilities.

While the first solution is my favorite, the second solution is probably better. It would leave those who caused the problem out in the cold, where they deserved to be anyway, as a consequence of their greed and incompetence. It would also give the innocent employees a way to continue getting their paychecks and would give them much bigger paychecks since their hard work would no longer have to support the extravagant lifestyles of those freeloading bums that caused the problem in the first place. It would also likely have resulted in higher quality work, and lower prices, which would have allowed US companies to compete with foreign imports.

I don't think it was intentional, but our government's decision to use our hard earned money to support companies that we had already chosen not to support helped the bad guys to win in this particular situation. It is our responsibility to regulate our government through our decisions on who we vote for. Obviously we have failed and have instead elected people who are willing to steal our money to support causes that we have already chosen not to support. Now the question is: Are we going to vote for this same den of incompetent thieves again?

Lord Rybec

An Allegory About a Family

There is a family of five. There is a father, a mother, and three children. In order to make sure that everyone is pulling their own weight, the parents decided to set up a chore system. Each child must earn each meal, a small allowance, and a place to live and sleep by doing some amount of household work. The parents decided that each meal costs an hour of work, allowance costs an hour, and living space costs two hours. So, for three meals a day, a few dollars a week allowance, and a bedroom and bed to live and sleep in, each child was required to work for six hours each day (maybe they were allowed to take weekends off without penalties). Any child could take time off, but they would have to sacrifice meals or allowance, and if they skipped enough work, they would even have to leave home and find another place to live.

When they started this plan, it was easy to come up with enough work for their three children. One did laundry by hand, for several hours a week. Another mowed the lawn with a mechanical push mower for several hours a week. The third spent a few hours a day cooking meals. They all spent a few hours a week cleaning the various rooms in the house. The entire family lived fairly well. Each child earned their three meals a day, their weekly allowance, and their living quarters.

One day, the father came home with a new invention. He had a gas powered lawn mower. The child that mowed the lawn discovered that the gas mower could mow the entire lawn in 30 minutes, instead of the 2 hours that were required for the mechanical push mower. Fortunately, there was always more work to be done and the hour and 30 minutes that were saved were instead spent doing other work.

Sometime later, the father came home with an electric washer and dryer. The child that did the laundry suddenly found that a task that used to take most of a day only took a few minutes here and there, leaving 5 hours of time to fill. With a little work, he found other jobs to take up this extra time.

Next came a microwave oven and microwave dinners, which left the third child with a few hours a day to make up. The same day, the father also brought home a vacuum cleaner, which cut several hours a week off of all the children's work. There was barely any work left to fill the extra time. The child who had been cooking meals found that he could only manage an hour of work a day with what was left. The other two children still had enough work for 3 meals a day and for living quarters, but not enough for any allowance. When the third child went to his parents begging for more work, they told him that there was not more work left to do. His two siblings told him that he was not looking hard enough for more work and told him he was lazy.

The parents discussed several solutions. First, they discussed dividing the work evenly amongst the children, but did the math and found that dividing the 11 hours of work 3 ways came out to 3 and 2/3 hours, which was only enough for each child to have living quarters and a single meal a day, with a second meal every now and then. This was discarded, since it would leave all 3 children malnourished and the current situation was bad for only 1 child. They considered just giving the third child food and shelter anyway, but found it unfair that he should be allowed to break the rules while the other two children had to work hard for their food and shelter, though they did decide to give him a little bit of food, so that he would not starve.

Eventually they found a solution that was not unfair to anyone and still provided the work that the third child needed to survive. They bought a shovel and assigned the child to dig holes on the land they owned just past the edge of the back yard. He was assigned to spend 7 hours a day digging holes, since he was already spending an hour a day making meals. No one needed the holes to be there and nobody benefited from their creation. The entire purpose of the work was to give the third child a way to fairly earn his food, shelter, and allowance.

Analysis:

Ok, if you had not yet guessed (and not read the title), this is an allegory. The parents are those in authority and power, including the government and large businesses. Of course, in real life the work that the "children" are doing directly benefits the "parents". Specifically, the parents tell the children what work to do and how to do it, and then keep a majority of the proceeds for themselves, giving the children only enough to survive and a little bit extra to prevent rebellion.

When the parents in this story obtain technology that reduces the work required for the same amount (or better) of production, instead of allowing the reduced costs of production to benefit the children, they require the children to do other work and keep all the increase for themselves, much like modern businesses.

When the work available is not enough to support all of the workers at the going rates for labor, the businesses blame those that do not have enough work and encourage other workers to believe that they are lazy, regardless of effort spent trying to find work.

When the government steps in to help those that are suffering due to lack of work, they are attacked because it is not fair that people who are not working are getting food and shelter. In short, many people believe that those who are unable to find work due to a lack of available work are the ones at fault and should starve out on the streets.

The current solution is to invent new work to employ some part of those that cannot find work. Much like the child that was given work digging holes, much of this work is pointless labor that accomplishes little or nothing. Further, much like the boy digging holes, some of this contrived work damages the environment and saps resources that we may need in the future.

The best solution the parents in the story had was to divide the work evenly amongst the children. Now, many people may find this to be a poor choice as it would spread resources too thin and none of the children would be able to survive. This is not true. Our economy, even when is was failing recently, is producing far more than is needed for our entire country. It is producing more than is needed for our country and all of our exports. If the analogy is accurate, the parents in the story had more than enough resources to feed, house, and pay their children, even if they were each only doing 3 and 2/3 hours of work a day (note that the children were accomplishing the same volume of work during the 11 hours total that they had previously done over the course of 18 hours; the parents were benefiting no less, even though the number of hours spent working was nearly halved). The reason that they did not split the work evenly is that they did not want to change the rules and they did not want to pay more for labor than they had originally decided on. In short, they liked living like kings at the expense of their children and were unwilling to give up any part of their own obscene salaries, even if it meant that one child was going to starve.

Over the last two centuries, we have advanced technologically by leaps and bounds. Work that used to require hundreds or thousands of people can now be done with only two or three people making sure the machines are working properly. You might argue that the machines have upkeep costs and initial costs that are fairly high, but keep in mind the businesses would not be using them if they cost as much or more than the human labor they replace. Machines that cost thousands of dollars over their lifetimes generally save millions of dollars in the wages of the people they replace. Somehow, in the last two centuries, businesses are making enormous amounts more money, while individuals are only making slightly higher wages (dollar amounts may be significantly higher, but measured by the value of the money, people now are making only barely more than people 100 years ago, and many are making less).

The point of this is that our society would not tolerate a family that was run like this. The parents would be subject to legal action for neglect and for exploitation of children. The workers in this country may be mostly adults, but we are being exploited just like the children in the story. Our government is playing the part of the good guy that makes sure everyone has enough to survive, but just like the bad parent, they are benefiting from our exploitation as well, and are not willing to make sure that we are treated fairly if it means that have to give that up.

I suggest that the best course of action would be first, to set a wage/salary cap. This would cap the hourly wage, as well as the yearly salary, of anyone working as an employee of a company. This includes board members and executive officers. If an owner of a company is taking a wage or salary, it would apply to that wage or salary equally. I further suggest that mandatory overtime pay begin at 20 hours per week (and 6 hours per day), instead of the current 40 and 8. This should not apply on a per job basis, but on a total hours worked. If a person has more than one job, the two jobs should split the overtime pay based on the percentage of time spent at each job. These requirements should be strictly enforced and heavily fined for infractions.

The intent of this plan is to discourage people from working multiple jobs (and discourage employers from hiring people already working another job), and to discourage employers from scheduling employees more than 20 hours in a week. This would double the number of full time jobs available and further increase jobs available as fewer people work multiple jobs. This is essentially forcing work to be split up more evenly. Employers would be forced to raise wages and/or lower prices, since 20 hours a week is not currently enough hours to survive on (and if they choose not to increase wages, they will loose employees or end up dealing with very large unions). The first step, capping wages and salaries, would help facilitate increasing wages and/or lower prices, since a lot of money will be saved by decreasing the wages of board members and officers of large businesses. The large companies are making enough to pay all of their employees fairly and still have plenty for upkeep and expansion. The problem is first, the extremely uneven distribution of wages and second, to rapid of expansion and development.

It is absurd to me that we are producing far more than we need and still we expect those that cannot find work to work for a living. I thought that the objective of technology and advancement was to reduce the amount of work required for people to survive. The information age would never have existed if we had not gotten to a point where we can produce enough for everyone, without needing everyone to work. The Renaissance would never have happened if the Greeks had not had slaves that were able to produce enough goods for the entire civilization, allowing everyone else time to theorize and philosophize, and now we have the ability to do this without slaves and yet somehow we are stuck expecting half of our population to find work that does not exist. We need to take advantage of this unique situation. I think the best way to do that is to reduce the work week by half, and encourage the populace to use the extra time doing things that are productive, like learning new things, experimenting and helping advance technology, and generally working to further improve our quality of life.

At the rate we are going, we are going to entirely replace the workforce with machines, produce extreme surplus, and everyone is still going to starve because we don't think it is fair that they should get any of those goods without doing their 40 hours a week.

Lord Rybec

What does that yacht represent?

If you asked your average CEO this question, in reference to a boat that he owns, he would probably tell you that it represents years of hard work. He would be right, but there is one thing he would not tell you (and probably does not even admit to himself).

That yacht represents years of hard work, but not his hard work. Yes, his work is represented in it, but only a very small portion of it actually represents his work. In reality, that yacht represents the hard work of thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of minimum wage grunt workers (ok, maybe a bit above minimum wage, but not by much). Furthermore, the money that paid for it actually was probably earned in weeks or months, though the hours added together probably do add up to years.

If you do not see what I am getting, what I am saying is that the money that paid for that yacht was money fairly earned by bottom level employees, that was given to the CEO, instead of the employees that earned it. Now, I am not saying that every bit of profit generated should only go to the person directly responsible, but rather that each lower employee is being robbed a few dollars an hour, so that the CEO and upper management can have more money than they will ever need.

You might disagree with this (please shut up about it if you are in the upper management category, since you have a vested interest in opposing my position), so I am going to give you my reasoning.

Normal bottom tier employees in the US get paid $10 an hour or less. Now, assuming that this is the actual value of their labor, what do you think fair hourly wages would be for someone with a masters degree or PhD would be? Additional education does increase the value of one's work, so obviously, they should get paid more. In addition, they had to pay for this education (actually, in the US, most students are only paying for part of their education, while the government covers the rest), so the cost of time and money spent to gain the education have value. I submit that if the inherent value of education makes it worth paying for, then once you have graduated, the entire cost of your education has been compensated by the increase in value of your work. In other words, you can either claim added value for the education, or for the cost of the education, but not both.

Work experience also generally increases value of work (generally, but definitely not always). So, a person with an equivalent degree to a PhD, with twenty or thirty years of work experience obviously is capable of more valuable work than someone without, again, in most cases.

So, back to the question: How much more is this person's work worth? I think that 10 time is probably a bit low. It is probably fairly reasonable for someone with a masters degree or maybe 25+ years experience, but I would buy that it is a bit low for a PhD with decades of experience. How about 100 times? Is it really possible that one persons work can be worth 100 times that of another person? It probably is possible. In engineering, it is not uncommon for one engineer to be 100 times more productive than another. In business, though, does 100 times seem reasonable? Note that we are considering value of work and productivity, not the actual money generated from that work (businesses do this all the time, when they choose to pay their lowest employees, who make up a majority of the workers, orders of magnitude less than the relatively small number of upper management). I think it is safe to say that 1000 times seems a bit absurd. Even in the above mentioned engineering example, generally a small group of 5 or 6 engineers can get similar productivity as a single 100 times engineer (this may not make mathematical sense right off, note that I am not adding the individual work of 5 or 6 people, rather I am accounting for the fact that generally groups working together can accomplish far more than each person working individually, especially in engineering). So, if 5 or 6 people can do the same work as the one, it cannot be considered reasonable that someone should be paid 1000 times that of the lowest workers. (Another thing to take into account is that complex executive style decisions can usually be made better by large groups of entirely uneducated people than one highly educated person. So, if 100 grunts can make group decisions better than one executive, the value of the work of the executive cannot reasonably be considered more than 100 times the value of a single grunt, even if his decisions generate far more profit than that.)

So, by this reasoning we have established that it is very likely that the work of a CEO cannot be worth more than 100 times the work of a single grunt employee. Now let's assume the grunt employee is getting paid $10 an hour. This means that the highest reasonable hourly wage for a CEO is $1,000 an hour (and even then, this value seems absurdly high). We are going to select a grunt that works 40 hours a week, with no vacation or sick time to determine yearly wages. With 52 weeks in a year, that makes his yearly pay $20,800. Now, I'll give the CEO the benefit of the doubt. Let's assume that it is fair to say that he works around the clock, every hour of every year. At $1,000 an hour, 24 hours a day, and 365 day a year, he would make $8.76 million a year. Ok, so most CEOs actually make less than this. Some make more and some, a lot more. Now, since we know that CEOs need to eat and sleep like the rest of us, let's see what happens when we make this more reasonable by assuming they work 16 hours a day (it is probably much closer to 12 or 14, if even that). Let's also give them 4 weeks (28 days for the math) of vacation time (time not spent working is non-productive and thus cannot be considered into fair pay). That gives us $5.392 million. A lot of CEOs do make more than that, though not by a whole lot.

Ok, so the grunt makes $20,800 a year, without vacations, while the CEO makes $5.392 million a year with. Even after the above reasoning, this seems pretty absurd. The CEO is getting paid over 259 times more. Yes, he works more hours, but does is really seem fair to pay him that much more for less than twice as many hours and several years of education?

Now, other things to keep in mind are cost of living. Everyone has this. If we assume that the grunt is renting an small apartment for $500 a month (from my experience, this seems to be a fair guess at a national average for reasonably habitable 1 bedroom apartments), then we can subtract $6,000 a year. If he pays $100 a month for food (this guy never eats out, always buys in bulk and rarely or never buys prepared food), that is another $1,200 a year. We will just assume that he never has doctor bills, utility bills, walks everywhere (no gas or insurance costs), and does not need things like toilet paper or deodorant. This means that he is getting $13,660 a year in spending money. The CEO, is getting $5.385 million in spending money. Yes, I know, he has a bigger house, a car, a yacht, etc... to maintain. These things are luxuries. He has them, because of the spending money. All he really needs to get by is the same things the grunt needs.

Ok, so now for the point. If the grunt is getting $13,660 spending money and the CEO is getting $5.385 million spending money, the CEO is getting 394 times the spending money that the grunt is. Now, in real life, the grunt is probably paying well over $12,000 a month for cost of living, and is bringing home less than $8,800 a year. The CEO is bringing home more like 611 times the spending money of the grunt, but even 394 times the spending money seems pretty absurd.

So, where is this money coming from? Don't tell me it comes from the corporation. The corporation does not make money, they just do business to earn money from people who are willing to pay for their products. You might tell me that the money comes from the customers and you would even be half right. If you follow the actual cash flow, the money does seem to come from the customers. It also comes from the employees, at least, in any instance where the employees are not being paid fairly.

Again, my reason is as follows. Let's take a company that starts out charging fair prices and paying fair wages. This company is essentially neutral. It does not unfairly take money out of the economy or withhold money from parts of the economy that has fairly earned it. Now, let's say this company raises its prices. It does not raise wages equivalently. It is now ripping off both its employees and its customers. By raising prices, it requires that others pay more for goods. When others have to pay more for goods, they will have to raise their own prices (that, or they will suffer unfairly). Eventually, everyone will have to raise prices, to compensate. If this company does not increase the wages of their employees, they are now paying their employees less than they were originally. Now, you might think that the employees are still getting paid the same and if you are counting pay only in dollars, you would be right. The catch is that the inflation caused by the increase in prices reduced the value of the money itself, thus if the people are getting paid the same amount of money, they are being paid less value for the same amount of work. In other words, the money that the company is overcharging is also the money that they are underpaying. When a company pays one person more than the value of their work, the company is helping that person steal money from their customers and their employees.

Now, let's take this one step further. Most CEOs also get many extra work benefits. To get a fair representation of how much they are actually making, you have to quantify the value of these benefits. Yes, the grunt is also getting benefits (he is working 40 hours a week, after all). Now, assuming the grunt can afford all of the benefits (most can't), the value of his benefits are still hundreds of time less than those of the CEO, if not thousands (this is not unusual, and that is just counting stock options). So, the CEO is making 200-500 times what the grunt is. Some of this is fair, but even if his work is only worth half of that, he is still overpaid by $2.69 million a year. He is stealing $2.69 million a year from the employees and customers of the business. That amount of theft is considered grand larceny. In the US, it is illegal for a poor person to commit this crime, but for a CEO no one even blinks.

Ever wondered why our economy is doing poorly? It is because the bottom resource is not even valued enough to pay for its own upkeep. Some products are fair to negotiate the lowest price for, but since labor costs actual man hours, if it is treated like one of these products, the economy will continue to flounder until it fails.

So, what does that yacht represent? It represents the theft of millions of dollars from those who can afford it the least. It represents the work of thousands or millions of other people, from whom the value was taken forceably and without consent. It represents the largest flaw in our legal system. Any other form of theft would be punished with severe consequences. This form, though, is rewarded with more riches than one person can ever spend.

Lord Rybec

Polygamy

You may have heard about the TV show about a real polygamist family (Sister Wives). My wife has been watching it and I have caught most of it as a result. It is a very interesting perspective, especially considering that polygamy is still widely practised in other parts of the world, though rather differently.

As a Mormon (mainstream Mormons have not practised polygamy for over 100 years), I have a different take on polygamy than most people and a better understanding of the situation than most people. Many polygamists in Utah and nearby states (who use the early doctrines of the LDS Church as justification) do not practice polygamy as it was taught by Joseph Smith (the founder of the LDS Church). The family on the TV show does practice it as taught by Joseph Smith, for the most part.

This family has come out and admitted to practising polygamy. As mentioned on the show, this is extremely unusual for LDS Fundamentalist polygamists. They have said that their intent is to show that not all polygamists are bad (in the last 10 years there have been numerous cases of polygamist families getting in legal trouble for forcing underage marriages, sexual abuse, and many other horrific crimes). From what I have seen, they have done a decent job of showing this. Actually, most polygamists are not bad; misguided maybe, but not bad. (I served a mission in Utah and heard and saw a lot about polygamists living there.)

This family is now under investigation for polygamy. One of the wives had been fired from her job for practising polygamy (is it any wonder that most polygamist families are secretive about it). They took a huge risk to try to show the world that polygamy is not the evil cult that it was thought to be and now they are suffering for it.

I would like to mention here that I do not condone polygamy. It is against the standards of the LDS Church (of which I am a member) and against the law. This is what I would like to discuss.

This family is being investigated because polygamy is illegal. The original reason it was made illegal is that non-LDS men living in primarily LDS communities often had a very difficult time finding a wife. This was partially because the LDS faith recommends against marrying outside of the faith. It was also partially due to the fact that some LDS men had several wives. These non-LDS men blamed the lack of interested women on polygamy and lobbied for it to be made illegal and were eventually successful. The LDS Church outlawed polygamy when the US government outlawed it. (One of the commandments within the LDS Church is to obey the law of the land. Since this and polygamy were conflicting commandments within the Church, it was decided that the commandment to obey local laws was of higher priority and the practice of polygamist marriages was discontinued.)

Now, it is also illegal in the US (at least, in all states that I am aware of) to have sex with anyone that you are not legally married to. Of course, this law has not been enforced for nearly 100 years. This and the law against polygamy (which prohibits being legally married to more than one person) essentially covered all the bases. If you were legally married to multiple people, you were breaking the law, and if you had multiple wives, but were only legally married to one, you were committing adultery, which was also illegal. Now though, since adultery is no longer considered or prosecuted as a crime (though it is generally still illegal), things work differently.

Polygamy is now often prosecuted even if the participants are not legally married. This is, of course, not how the law against polygamy actually works, but our legal system seems to allow judges to make decisions based on personal beliefs, as opposed to codified law.

This family only has one legal marriage: the first. The other marriages were performed by religious ceremony, but no licenses were obtained or sent in. Technically, there is no law against this, but the marriages are not legally binding or recognized. This does not fall under the legal definition of polygamy (it does fall under the legal definition of adultery, but it would be extremely hypocritical to attempt to prosecute for this).

This situation is barely different from one where a married man has three mistresses. It is also very similar to the situation where a male high school student makes a point out of trying to sleep with as many girls as possible. There is only one major difference. This man takes responsibility. He is not hiding his "mistresses"; his wife is totally aware of them (and in most cases recommended them and in all cases approved them; approval of additional wives by the first wife was a requirement of original LDS polygamy). He takes responsibility for the children that have come from these relationships and makes sure that they are being well cared for. He is providing separate living areas for each woman and her children (something mentioned by Joseph Smith when teaching how polygamy was to be practised). And, last but not least, this guy is being accused of moral and legal transgressions.

If we are going to prosecute polygamy, we should also prosecute anyone who has sex with someone they are not married to. By prosecuting this family, but not the high school student, we are saying that irresponsible sex with multiple partners by people who are not even capable of dealing with the consequences (children) is more morally correct than responsible sex with multiple committed partners by people who are capable and prepared to deal with the consequences. We are also saying that secretly committing adultery is more moral than having an open, committed sexual relationship with someone that has been approved for this by our current spouse or spouses, and who we are willing and able to help support and be responsible for.

This is extreme hypocrisy. Our society condemns the man who openly cares for and supports several women, but considers secret uncommitted flings to be a matter of privacy and personal preference. We stand behind a law that was clearly intended as religious discrimination, but ignore laws that were intended to protect people from breaches of contractual commitments. (Adultery is now only considered in divorce cases where a pre-nuptial agreement covers it, even though adultery is legally a breach of the marriage contract.)

While I do not condone polygamy, I do think that if we are not going to start rigorously enforcing laws against adultery and fornication, we should stop prosecuting polygamy, at least, if there is not more than one legal marriage. Otherwise, we are discriminating against religious beliefs. We do not prosecute Catholics who commit adultery, even though it is against their religion and the law. So, why is it that we prosecute against polygamy when it is not against the religion of the polygamists and is technically the same crime as the Catholic committed if there is not more than one legal marriage? Again, the difference being that the polygamist is doing it responsibly and with the consent of his wife.

Lord Rybec