 by Flemming Funch
The open space of the NCN member area keeps being a puzzling creature, with a somewhat dysfunctional life. It is meant to be a meeting place, a grand central station, where assorted world changers might come by, share their stories, put up their business card on the wall, find some good people to work with, borrow a conference room, make grand plans, and go off and rock the world. A good deal of that has been going on over the years, but it also often happens that somebody will join, as if joining an organization or cause, with great hopes for what we will all accomplish together, and then will hang around talking with people in the lobby for a couple of months, waiting for things to happen, waiting for a common agenda to crystalize. And when they suddenly realize that no such thing is happening, and they're really just standing in the lobby talking with people -- they get angry, and they feel betrayed and cheated. People get into fights about what is supposed to happen in the lobby, and whether it really is a lobby, and who's in charge of the lobby anyway. And small groups of disgruntled travelers sometimes gather, with torches, looking for somebody who's fault it might be. And if it is anybody's fault, it is probably mine. I just haven't figured out yet what I'm doing wrong. People wouldn't stay upset for months if it were just a matter of bad software design - they would just go use something else. Maybe I put the wrong sign at the door. Maybe there should be a sign saying "No loitering in the lobby. Please go straight to your train or to the appropriate club lounge to meet with your group."
I'm reading in "Human Action" by Ludwig von Mises. I somehow ended up in the chapter on monopoly prices. The ideal presented is that, if there's a free market, everything sort of adjusts itself, and things get produced and exchanged at the most fair price. But there's the phenomenon of monopoly pricing which screws things up. It is when somebody has such a grasp on a certain market segment that they will profit more from limiting the supply of a certain good and fixing its price, than from producing and selling as many as they can produce, or as many as people want. It isn't just that there's only one supplier of an item, or that the supply is limited. It is when somebody artificially limits the market, in order to get himself the highest possible profit, rather than trying to serve the wishes of the consumers. I can think of many examples of that. Microsoft is an obvious example. The price of Windows doesn't change according to market conditions - it is kept high and distribution is kept limited to those who will pay it, in order to maximize profit. The music distribution business is another example. CDs cost so-and-so much, and if you don't want to pay that much, you can't have the music without 'stealing' it. Wouldn't income tax be another example? It is calculated to bring in what the government wants, regardless of how people value it. Well, Mises says there has to be a monopolized good which is withheld for it to be monopoly pricing, so I don't know. Anyway, he doesn't seem to have a whole lot against monopolies, other than those owned by governments.
Stepford Citizen Syndrome: Top 10 Signs Your Neighbor is Brainwashed. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were both involved in the coverup around MK-ULTRA, one of CIA's Mind-Control experiments, feeding LSD to unsuspecting subjects. It sort of got off track when somebody jumped off a roof.
MIT has started an OpenCourseWare pilot. The aim is to put up the full curriculum and all materials for many different courses, for the common cause of shared learning.
Li Ching-Yuen died in 1928 in China. He was a Chi Kung master, an herbalist, and spent much of his life in the mountains. He founded Nine Dragon Baguazhang. It appears that he was born in 1678, which made him 250 years old at his death. A piece of advice from him: "Keep a quiet heart. Sit like a tortoise. Sleep like a dog. Dance like a Dragon. In this way you will attain long life."
I was just watching Amelie. Ah, what a delightful, quirky, life affirming film. Like it says about the plot: "Amelie, an innocent and naive girl in Paris, with her own sense of justice, decides to help those around her and along the way, discovers love."
"I hate quotations" --Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|