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ROTA: Mindgames

Lessons in Despair

Alpha Edition 14 June 2025

Lessons in Despair (2003)

Contents


Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter because nobody listens.

Nick Diamos

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Hanlon's Razor

Even a paranoid has some real enemies.

Henry A. Kissinger

Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Mulder, The X Files, 1993

Observation makes behavior understandable and predictable. If you know someone's environment and behavior motivation categories, you can guess what he or she will do.

This isn’t quite the same thing as someone’s demographic. Demographics are based on age, sex, race, socio-economic class, and ethnic, cultural, and religious background — not generally on individual behavior. Demographics identify groups of people with similar backgrounds. If you know someone’s demographic, you know what is likely to appeal to them. You use that knowledge to attempt to manipulate their behavior. You use that knowledge to attempt to make them buy whatever dream or addiction you are selling.

When you observe and categorize people based on their behavior patterns, you are attempting to predict what they will do based on self-motivation. The categories are based on self-selection. You generally can’t control the details of what people in each category do, but you may be able to benefit from knowledge of the category by making one path or another towards their goal easier or more difficult.

For convenience, there are several estates defined in a culture. The estates are broad categories that define a basic interest. Within each estate, there are different Paths of Power. To learn how a culture behaves, you have only to understand the approved and disapproved Paths of Power.

The Paths of Power are of limited use for predicting what people will buy, but they are a very good indicator of what criminal behavior is tolerated and what criminal behavior is encouraged.

You can learn a lot about a society by examining which behaviors it values, and which behaviors it fears. You might even learn who the true rulers of the culture are.

The Religious Estate

The Keeper of the Library was a Scholar. He was a wise man who understood the contents of the Library.

His successor was an obsequious fund-raiser. He knew all the right things to say to all the right people. He knew the proper behavior for every occasion and understood nothing. He was very well trained.

Others have different reasons to distrust their rapists.

Can You Trust Your Archpriest?

Faustus:
How comes it then that thou art out of hell?

Mephistophilis:
Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think'st thou that I that saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
In being deprived of everlasting bliss? . . .

Christopher Marlowe,
The Tragical History
of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus
1616 text, Act 1, Scene 3

Blaming others for overlooking the safety of children while transferring pedophile priests from parish to parish is the mark of a sociopath. Blaming God or a psychiatrist for a rape that you could have prevented is a sad way of repaying trust and faith.

When it appears that the Hand of Lucifer1 is at work deep within the Holy Church, there is a basic attitude problem that no amount of behavior substitution will ever set right again. Perhaps there will be a new Reformation.

  1. According to The Dallas Morning News on 06/12/2002, “Roughly two-thirds of the top U.S. Catholic leaders have allowed priests accused of sexual abuse to keep working.” The paper stated that men who have protected accused priests or other church figures head 111 of the nation’s 178 Catholic dioceses.

    “The 111 bishops' involvement took many forms, from ignoring warnings about suspicious behavior to keeping priests on the job after admissions of wrongdoing, diagnoses of sexual disorders, legal settlements, even criminal convictions.”

Can You Make a Deal With God?

People don’t change until the price of not changing becomes too high.

People will do almost anything to avoid changing because of the hidden agenda. What people do instead of changing is to substitute new and different methods of acting out the same old attitudes.

To actually change the outcome, the attitude has to change. Otherwise, it’s just substitute behavior that leads to the same old place.

People try to make deals with God. They promise to change their behavior without changing their attitudes if God will grant them some favor.

People make worthless deals with God and wonder why God doesn’t come through.

Can You Trust Your God?

Can your God trust you?

The Religious Institutional Personality

The (Western) religious industry is based on the principle of hierarchy. Power and authority flows from god to priest to the common folk. It is “rule by Divine right.”

Obviously there are failures. Obviously there is a failure somewhere, or the “Will of God” wouldn’t be used as an excuse for raping or killing others.

It’s not about God.
Worship is never enough.
It’s about the Power.

Religion

Black Warning Bang Warning!

To keep your people-suit in good repair, you need to understand the reasons and the attitude, and not the specifics, because the specifics will change over time and place, but the attitudes almost never change.1

I’m tired of all the lies.
I’m really tired of all the lies.
But the worst lies of all
are the lies told in the name of God
to justify hurting others.

  1. This is a work of fiction. Don’t believe everything you read here. I may lie as much as the religious establishment does. The incredible stupidities being committed in the name of God are reported on the news channels all the time. Do your own research.

The Business Estate

A business, or partnership or corporation, is an “artificial person” in that it is a single entity under the law. Usually, a business is allowed to engage in any activity that a person could, and to enter into contractual arrangements as an entity. A business does not necessarily have the same rights as a person.

When a person commits a crime, the person usually goes to jail. When a business commits a crime, there is often no punishment, only a promise not to do it again. Infrequently, there is a small fine, usually much less than the criminal profit. This is not reasonable.

A business does not have the same rights as a person. Sometimes, it apparently has more. When a business commits an offense that would be a crime when committed by a person, it would seem fair that:

It would also seem fair that none of them ever get out of jail until full restitution and compensation has been made to all of the victims. Sort of: “all for one and one for all.”

Why so drastic? People resist change. Businesses are like people in that they develop personalities. The personality of a business is called the corporate culture. Corporate cultures have hidden agendas and won’t change either. Once a corporate culture has played the game of “screw the customers,” it will always find some new way to do it again, and again.

To change a corporate culture, you must replace all Directors, all Officers, all Partners, and all policy-making employees. Otherwise, whoever’s left will just substitute different behavior that has exactly the same results, and will train the new replacements to do the same old things. To set a good example for the replacements, you need to put all the old Directors, Officers, Partners, and policy-makers in jail. That usually gets the message across.

Unfortunately, the people who run corporations are seldom held to account. Instead corporations are used to provide protection from criminal prosecution. It works so well that the corporations have bought the government.

There are some things that are intrinsically a crime:

The real problem with a corporation is that it limits stockholders liability to the loss of their investment. Greedy stockholders encourage illegal actions by the Board of Directors and Officers to make more profit. Stockholders act sociopathically on the basis that they only own the corporation, but don’t control it. Give the stockholders a share in social responsibility and watch them run.

All of the directors, officers, and shareholders of the tobacco companies, their public relations firms, attorneys, advertising agencies, and apologists, and all of their descendants have profited from the death of others. The Profiteers of Death should find their names, faces, and addresses publicly available3 so that the friends and families of their victims can know what they look like and where to find them. Don’t forget to include the tobacco farmers.

  1. “An estimated 47 million adults in the United States smoke cigarettes, even though this behavior will result in death or disability for one out of every two regular users. Tobacco use results in more than 430,000 deaths each year, or one in every five deaths. Paralleling this enormous health burden is the economic burden of tobacco use: more than $50 billion in medical expenditures and another $50 billion in indirect costs.”
    Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
    www.cdc.gov
    12/2002
  2. “On April 25, 2002, the shareholders of Philip Morris Companies Inc. granted the Company's Board of Directors the authority to change the name of the holding company to Altria Group, Inc. The company is now moving into the final phases of its plan to change the name of the parent company to Altria Group, Inc., and now anticipates making the name change official in late January or early February 2003.”
    Phillip Morris Companies, Inc.
    www.philipmorris.com
    12/2002
  3. In 1984, Public Law 98-474 required four specific health warnings on all cigarette packages and advertisements. This is the so-called “Surgeon General’s Warning.” This is a public event that clearly shows when it was generally known that tobacco products were deadly to their users. The faces of death should probably should begin with directors, officers, and stockholders of record in 1984, but exclude those who received stock as payment for tobacco industry acquisition of other companies, provided they got rid of the tobacco stock within two years.

Can You Trust the Pharmaceutical Industry?

The pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry in the world.1 The pharmaceutical industry regularly demonstrates an amazingly creative talent for maintaining exclusive markets for overpriced prescriptions. Newer, patent-protected prescriptions are regularly promoted to physicians and the public even though they don’t work as well as older, generic prescriptions or over-the-counter drugs. The pharmaceutical industry regularly makes billions from prescription tranquilizers that are less effective than marijuana.

Some paranoid Africans believe that the HIV virus, the cause of AIDS, was deliberately created by the American government as a form of genocide for blacks.2 Governments just aren’t that creative. More importantly, a government doesn’t profit from genocide — but the pharmaceutical industry does profit from selling a cure to a deadly disease. If you really believe that the HIV virus was deliberately created, the pharmaceutical industry seems like a much better candidate for the blame.

The profit-driven biotechnology industry is far more dangerous than any government in the history of the world.3

Biological weapons are a real problem when you don’t have the cure or the vaccine for yourself.

  1. An analysis of pharmaceutical industry profit (using the Fortune 500 numbers as raw data) by United States Congressman Bernard Sanders (I-VT) shows the top seven pharmaceutical companies took in more in pure profit than the top seven auto companies, the top seven oil companies, the top seven airline companies, and the top seven media companies.

    Sanders said, “the 12 pharmaceutical companies in the Fortune 500 made $10 billion more than the top 24 motor vehicle industry companies, which includes Ford and GM. At the same time, the pharmaceutical industry has spent millions on television advertisements and lobbying against serious prescription drug legislation.”
    Congressman Bernie Sanders bernie.house.gov 12/2002
  2. In an article in the Summer-Autumn 1990 issue of "Top Secret", Prof J. Segal and Dr. L. Segal outline their theory that AIDS is a man-made disease, originating at the Pentagon bacteriological warfare labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Top Secret is the international edition of the German magazine Geheim. It is considered by many to be a sister publication to the American Covert Action Information Bulletin (CAIB). The article, "AIDS: US- Made Monster" and subtitled "AIDS - its Nature and its Origins," provides footnotes and references. The article is available at some libraries, or can be ordered from:
    Top Secret/Geheim Magazine
    P.O.Box 270324
    5000 Koln 1 Germany
  3. The pen may not be mightier than the microbe. (See also: Wells, H.G., & Welles, Orson, The War of the Worlds.)
  4. ABC News Show: World News Tonight (6:30 PM ET), March 7, 2001, Wednesday: Africa's AIDS Epidemic and Drug Companies Trying to Stop Generic Forms of AIDS Drugs

    This program quotes several drug industry representatives discussing why they are against lowering prices or providing generic drugs for the poor all over the world who are victims of AIDS.

    Ms. Mirryena Deeb (South African Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association):
    ”We are not in any way trying to hinder access to affordable medicines, including HIV/AIDS, in South Africa.”

    Ms. Judith Bello (Executive Vice President, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America):
    “We need to continue patent protection to stimulate private sector investment and innovation.”

    Mr. Mark Groombridge (Cato Institute):
    “If today they're able to do that for AIDS drugs, why tomorrow wouldn't they be able to do it for cancer or heart disease drugs?”

    Ms. Bello:
    “The industry alone can never be a solution to a problem that is vastly larger than medicines.”

Can You Trust a Salesman?

Never, under any conditions, can you trust anybody you didn’t seek out yourself, selling you anything. The opportunities for fraud have overwhelmed all legitimate offers. 99.999% of all telemarketing or email solicitations are fraudulent. The problem is that the unit cost per solicitation is so low that the crooks find it attractive. The advantage is that telephone fraud and email fraud cross borders so no single government has jurisdiction — convictions are difficult. It doesn’t take a lot of startup money. One person can run a wire fraud all by himself. One person can send out 100,000 emails in an hour. It would be prohibitively expensive to do the same thing by mail fraud. This is as pure as Worship at the Alter of the Great God Greed gets.

Don’t be stupid enough to do business with a salesman who called you or emailed you, or even rang your doorbell.

If you didn’t initiate the call, don’t even waste your time listening — just screen it out.

It doesn’t matter what they are selling. Just leave the salesman a message that you promise not to buy the product, you promise not to vote for the politician, you promise not to contribute to the charity, you promise not to invest in the business, you promise to sign or not sign (whichever the caller finds most obnoxious) the petition, you promise to call down a curse upon the practitioners of the religion being evangelized, and it’s your policy to refuse to participate in surveys or answer questions.

Can You Trust Trade Associations?

The industry associations for music and other entertainment feel you should pay a tax to their members every time you listen to your favorite music or watch your favorite program. In the good old days, before recording technology, you had to hire musicians or entertainers every time you wanted to hear music or watch a passion play. You had to pay the musicians or entertainers for each performance. In modern times, the rich and powerful own the music, and want that payment every time. The players and musicians don’t get the money. Instead it goes to the greedy record companies.

Can you think of anything more profitable for the recording industry than collecting a fee every time you listen to music while having sex? Show your goodwill towards the Recording Industry Association of America and all of its member companies by refusing to buy their products. Buy directly from the artists you like instead — that way the artists get the money and not the greedy record companies.

Another trade group for the catalog shopping industry has a “voluntary,” national do-not-harass-me-with-sales-calls list that everybody ignores. The Direct Marketing Association thinks a “voluntary” list is enough to fool the people and prevent government regulation. (The trade group requires its members to use the list for screening. There is however, no serious penalty for ignoring it, and companies that are not members cannot be forced to use it.)1

A government backed do-not-harass-me list with real teeth in it would raise the cost too high for the scams to continue.2 Even local laws allow exceptions for political scams and charity scams.

Most industry trade associations generally attempt to meet two objectives:

In both cases, campaign contributions help. A lot.

If the incentive is high enough, elected representatives can use “giving the industry time for ‘self policing’ to work” as an excuse to not do anything for years until it has been absolutely proved that industry self policing is totally unworkable — and a whole lot of people have already lost a whole lot of money to a legal fraud. After all, we have to be fair to the rich and powerful and believe their lies until we can prove them wrong even though they have told this “self policing” lie over and over again, and it has been a lie every single time.

These mail order, telephone, and email outfits are the same people who sell your name on mailing, calling, and email lists whenever you order anything. That way you get every catalog (the catalog sucker list), call (the telemarketing sucker list), and email (the email sucker list) from every merchant who sells something similar to what you already bought.

The same thing happens when you subscribe to a magazine (the subscription sucker list), use a credit card (the has-credit sucker list), donate to a charity (the charity sucker list), answer a public appeal (the public appeal sucker list), or get taken in a scam (the scam sucker list). They know all about you. They tell each other — for a fee — who the easy marks are.

Of course, the politicians want to use these cheap methods for raising campaign funds and selling the candidate. So to give inaction the appearance of action to their constituency, after the maximum amount of delay, they make ineffective laws that exempt politicians and charities.li

In some cases, 97%4 of your charitable contribution goes to pay for fundraising, and most of the rest for administration at the charity. It’s completely legal. Private, for-profit companies raise funds for both charity and for politicians. This is extremely convenient, because it gives the fund raising companies year-round business while keeping them available to work for free at campaign time.

There are even charity trade associations and political trade associations.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have the names, faces, addresses, home & work telephone numbers, and home & work email addresses of all of the directors, officers, and shareholders of the companies that make or use outbound telemarketing, junk faxing, or email SPAM? These people have profited from intruding upon the lives of others. The victims of these time-wasters would like to know how and where to intrude back upon them with complaints. Don’t forget the politicians, the political parties, and the charities.

  1. For a number of years the Direct Marketing Association has operated the "Telephone Preference Service" (TPS). The TPS is strictly a voluntary system, and only members of DMA — many telemarketers are not members — face a mild sanction for calling consumers who have signed up for the TPS. The FTC's national "do not call" registry will provide consumers with greater control over what telemarketing calls they receive.
    USA Federal Trade Commission
    www.ftc.gov
    12/2002
  2. FTC Proposing National Do-Not-Call List
    December 18, 2002

    The Federal Trade Commission is proposing a national Do Not Call registry to protect consumers from unwanted telemarketing calls. Telemarketers are not amused and are planning to fight the measure in Congress and the courts.

    The Direct Marketing Association, the leading telemarketing trade group, was quick to denounce the plan, calling it "unlawful in a number of respects."

    The DMA contends that there's no need for the government to intrude into an issue that private industry is able to handle on its own, and it says the proposed rules may unconstitutionally restrict companies' free speech rights. In the past, industry leaders have also said telemarketing operations would simply move offshore, beyond the reach of U.S. laws.
    ConsumerAffairs.com
    12/2002
  3. Political solicitations are not covered by the TSR. Telemarketers calling to solicit charitable contributions are not required to drop registered numbers from their call lists, but if you make a request to a specific organization that they not call you, they are required to honor your request. If they subsequently call you again, they may be subject to a fine of $11,000.
    USA Federal Trade Commission
    www.ftc.gov
    12/2002
  4. Solicitation costs as high as 97% were reported in 2002. The telemarketers for the American Cancer Society appeal received 97% and the charity received 3% according to New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer in an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, December 11, 2002, on Fox News.

Can You Trust Not-For-Profit Corporations?

Not-for-profit corporations are businesses. Not-for-profit corporations are simply businesses that are organized for “purposes” other than making a profit. They have to use most of their funds (after deducting expenses) for the stated purpose. There are a number of legal ways to make a profit anyway:

The problem is, once people feel this way about one charity, they won’t trust any charity.

black bang Warning!

The charities have fouled their own water hole. There is no longer any way to tell the true from the false.

People resist change. Corporate cultures resist change. Charity cultures resist change. The hidden agenda always resists change.

Since most charities, religions, civic, and political organizations are set up as not-for-profit corporations, there are some other interesting ways to make a profit:

Yellow Caution Bang Caution!

It’s usually a good idea to refuse to participate in surveys and public opinion polls where you can be individually identified, or where the pollster knows your name, your home address, your telephone number, or your email address. Most of them are fraudulent in one way or another.

Yellow Caution Bang Caution!

It’s usually a good idea to be very certain where charity dollars will go (unless you want to support fund raisers, officers, and directors), and to donate as anonymously as possible unless you want to be pestered ever after.

There are two basic kinds of not-for-profit corporations:

Pick the form appropriate for the scam you wish to perpetrate or the purpose you wish to serve.1

  1. The WeaverOfWebs Foundation is a not-for-profit Directorship corporation.

Can you Trust Public Utilities?

The public utilities have enriched the language by enlarging the list of legal crimes:

Public utilities don’t work as regulated monopolies. Public utilities don’t work as unregulated suppliers. Public utilities don’t work with public ownership. There is too much coercion involved in the basic fact that everybody needs the products or services. There are too many opportunities for thievery. A better solution is needed.

Can You Trust Advertising or Advertisers?

Advertising has only one purpose: to get you to buy or buy-into something. The advertising may be for a product, or for a brand. The advertising industry has developed an amazing collection of techniques to make sure you buy their client’s product, whether it be an actual physical product, a candidate, a religion, a war, or an idea.

The drug companies have done an amazing job of advertising. Since the Federal Drug Administration began sending citations for false or misleading drug promotions in 1997, the FDA has sent out 564 citations.1

Obviously, some of the citations are for more than one deception. It works like this:

Of course, there’s no penalty.

  1. Statistics compiled by Consumer Reports Magazine, February, 2002.

A Modest Proposal for the Business Estate

There’s actually not much wrong with businesses that couldn’t be very simply fixed. Of course, the results might be disastrous because it would eliminate most of the opportunity for thievery. It would put a whole lot of people in jail, and it might result in a redistribution of wealth.

Consider petty fraud as any activity that results in the advantage of one person or company to the disadvantage of another person or company when misinformation, misrepresentation, or dishonesty of any sort has occurred, whether intentional or not. Whether or not a fraud has been perpetrated is a jury decision, not the details of the law. For each count of petty fraud, a one-year jail term is the penalty. Any three counts of a similar nature within a short time period is sufficient to prove as many counts of a similar nature as have been committed within or adjacent to that time period. All sentences must be served consecutively. For a public corporation, each officer and director gets to serve an equal share of the total number of years. For a privately held corporation, add all shareholders and partners to the list of persons who share the total number of years. For example, a one-man telemarketer or email spammer who defrauded 1000 people would only have to serve one year for each fraud, or 1000 consecutive years. If a company defrauded 35,000 people, its directors and officers would have to serve almost 2000 years each (assuming 12 directors and six officers). For frauds that are bigger than petty frauds, the only differences are that the number of counts is usually lower, and terms are usually longer.

The key thing here is that the directors and officers of a company are responsible for its actions — period. If they claim that they didn’t know, it doesn’t matter, because they should have known. There are no personal excuses whatsoever. If a company commits a fraud as determined after the fact by a jury, the officers and directors pay the penalty because they didn’t fulfill their due diligence functions and prevent the fraud. The only defense is to be the whistle blower, and that only works before the indictment. The Community is not trying to punish the directors and officers; it’s trying to protect itself from ever again having to deal with their avarice and/or their incompetence. Dishonesty is simply not allowed!

The Business Corporate Personality

The business world is filled with young tigers who think they’re smarter than you are. They think you’re a rube and a mark. They’re smart, but not brilliant.

The brilliant have better things to do. The brilliant make sport of shooting arrogant young tigers like fish in a barrel. The brilliant are the old tigers who own the business world. That’s one of the intrinsic problems with Greed — who is using whom?

It’s not about the money.
The money is never enough.
It’s about the Power.

Business

Black Warning Bang Warning!

To keep your people-suit in good repair, you need to understand the reasons and the attitude, and not the specifics, because the specifics will change over time and place, but the attitudes almost never change.1

I’m tired of all the lies.
I’m really tired of all the lies.
But the worst lies of all
are the lies told in the name of the Shareholders
to justify hurting others.

  1. This is a work of fiction. Don’t believe everything you read here. I may lie as much as the business community does. The incredible stupidities being committed in the name of Profit-for-the-Shareholders are reported on the news channels all the time. Do your own research.

The Financial Estate

In the 2000 years since Christ threw the moneychangers out of the Temple, the public hasn’t learned anything.

The Financial Estate is the High Priest class of the Worshippers at the Alter of the Great God Greed.

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,

And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

The Holy Bible
King James Version
Matthew 21:12-13

They just moved into a new Temple of their own.1

  1. I haven’t learned anything either. Christ got in trouble by attacking the financial community. He called them “thieves.” I may have done worse. I have made their new temple visible and identified the god inside it.

Can you Trust Financial Advisors, Brokers, and Investment Banks?

Stockbrokers are giving “misleading stock ratings” so that their partner investment bankers won’t lose money. Merrill Lynch got caught and paid a small fine (so far).

Can you imagine a brokerage firm that thinks 100 million dollars in negotiated settlement fines plus a few hundred million more for image advertising, and the public will forget and let the brokerage get back to the business of making billions by finding some other way to abuse their customers instead of serving them?

“There’s always a smart place for your money. Together we can find it.”

Merrill Lynch advertising slogan, 2002.

Let me get this straight! Merrill Lynch just abused their customers and they want me to trust them with my money? Is it that they think I’m crazy, or that they think I’m stupid?

Twelve major investment banks including Merrill Lynch were investigated for fraudulent research practices.1 These banks have chosen to settle with the New York State Attorney General and the Security and Exchange Commission for somewhat more than 1.4 billion dollars. These are the same investment banks that make about a billion dollars a week?

The investment banks don’t want to go to court. They prefer that the public never find out what really happened. The politicians don’t want the public to know either. The politicians are afraid the people might demand laws against abusing customers, and that would be bed for Wall Street. It would displease the rich and powerful, and have a negative impact on campaign contributions.

There is something wrong with this attitude. Abusing customers is not something that can be cured. Abusing customers is ingrained in corporate culture. Some corporate cultures are abusers just like some people are abusers. Corporate cultures are no more capable of changing attitudes than people. Both people and corporate cultures lie about what they are doing to make the public think that things have changed.

The stock market needs small investors to create demand and give value to the stock owned by the rich. Otherwise, lack of demand makes capitalization at high levels impractical. The little guy has figured out that he’s just a spear carrying extra player. The small investor is sitting out of the market because the small investor expects to get screwed. Nobody has gone to jail!

Screw me once, shame on you.
Screw me twice, shame on me.

The small investor isn’t stupid. It would be stupid to ever again trust those twelve investment banks that have screwed him once already.

If they’ve misled you once, would you ever want to do business with Citigroup (Salomon Smith Barney), Credit Suisse First Boston, Merrill Lynch, UBS Warburg, Lehman Bros, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, US Bancorp (Piper Jaffray), or Thomas Weisel Associates? Would you ever want to do business with any other company that ever hired a director, partner, or officer from one of those companies? Shame on you! You do business with them when you know they’ve misled their customers before, you deserve to be screwed.

The high priests of the Worshipers at the Alter of the Great God Greed can never change. They can never be trusted again.

  1. Citigroup (Salomon Smith Barney), Credit Suisse First Boston, Merrill Lynch, UBS Warburg, Lehman Bros, Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, US Bancorp Piper Jaffray, and Thomas Weisel Associates.

Can You Trust the Banks?

If the banks fail, the government will fall. Therefore, the government will guarantee the banks with public funds. Yes, the banks will fail, and yes the public will pay. It has happened before and it will happen again. You can trust the bankers to rip off the public till, and you can trust the politicians to let them get away with it.

The banks are selling your personal financial information to advertisers and to criminals.

The banks are also mortgage brokers and insurance sales agencies. It works like this:

The high priests of the Worshipers at the Alter of the Great God Greed can never change. They can never be trusted again.

Can You Trust Insurers

Insurance companies play the statistics the same way that gambling casinos play the statistics — except:

Insurance companies don’t like risk. Higher risk means higher payouts and less profits. Insurance companies are gamblers who want a high payoff and little payout. They want a sure thing. They want to rig the table.

So if there’s any serious chance of you ever collecting the insurance payout, either they won’t insure you, they will exclude coverage on whatever worries you, they will make the cost of insurance higher than the cost of a loss, or they will demand impossible record keeping. You’re not going to get very much for your payments.

If you read your policy, you’ll also learn real quick that most insurance fraud has to do with small print and confusing language in the insurance policy documents, and that most insurance fraud is committed by the insurance companies.

Can You Trust Accountants?

Accountants are paid to find ways of avoiding paying fair shares of taxes to support the civil and military services that protect the corporations. Accountants are paid to represent the company to the stockholders in the best light possible. Sometimes, accountants are paid to cook the books.

Arthur Andersen is now the Poster Child for the Accounting Industry. Arthur Andersen is now extinct. Arthur Andersen got caught obstructing justice over Enron’s possibly cooked books.

There’s such a high payoff if you don’t get caught. I’m surprised how few others have been caught. It must be the size of the payoffs. They make the crime syndicates seem like small stuff.

Several of the other top accounting firms are under investigation for similar reasons. All of them should be put in a position where they can no longer cover up frauds or cheat on corporate taxes.

Of course, if the laws were simplified, and made universal, you wouldn’t need accountants (or lawyers) because there wouldn’t be any loopholes. Then corporations couldn’t escape paying their fair share and employing their fair share. The people would be the winners. The rich and the powerful would not be as rich or as powerful.

If they’ve cooked the books once, would anyone ever want to do business with an accountant again? Would you ever want to do business with a company that had a book-cooking accountant as its auditor or advisor? Would you ever want to do business with any other accounting firm that ever hired a director, partner, or officer from that accountant? Shame on you! If you do business with a company that has an accountant that you know has cooked or overlooked the books before, you deserve to be screwed.

The high priests of the Worshipers at the Alter of the Great God Greed can never change. They can never be trusted again.

A Modest Proposal for the Financial Estate

There’s actually not much wrong with the financial industry that couldn’t be very simply fixed. Of course, the results might be disastrous because it would eliminate most of the opportunity for thievery. It would put a whole lot of people out of work, and it might result in a redistribution of wealth.

Separate the finance industry by function: traders, investment bankers, mortgage bankers, analysts and reporters, insurance, retail banking, commercial banking, accounting, consulting, etc. Any one company is allowed to do any one thing and no others.1 There is absolutely no interlocking between financial companies. There are no common parents or joint children with any other financial company. There are no contracts or agreements with any other financial company. There are no mergers or acquisitions between financial companies. There are no trade organizations that include more than one category of financial company.

In short, let them stab one another in the back instead of stabbing the public in the back. Force each company into the commodity business and let them compete.

The Financial Corporate Personality

Evil is absolutely predictable in some regards.

There are two basic problems with evil:

  1. You can’t trust anybody not to get overly greedy and spoil it for everybody. Too much is never enough for some people.1
  2. You can’t trust anybody. Sooner or later, you’ll fall victim to your own kind.2 Are you using your friends, or are they using you?

Poor, stupid, rich kids,
you’ve screwed yourselves again
by being too greedy.

If the stockbrokers and the company executives are crooks, and the poor middle class know it, why would the rich stockholders expect the poor to stay in the financial market and prop up stock prices with demand until the rich could sell out?

If there’s no demand, prices fall farther and farther and the rich get poorer and poorer.

And all those rich analysts who live by telling stories about the market will lose their jobs as well as their portfolios.

And all those rich financial reporters won’t have anything to report except their own dwindling portfolios because new laws will have taken most opportunities for fraud out of the industry (as well as most opportunities for outrageous profit).

The politicians want power more than they want your money. The politicians will eventually be forced to go with the people who want harsh punishment and strict regulation.

Poor, stupid, rich kids,
you’ve screwed yourselves again
by being too greedy.

When a business sends all of its work offshore, where does the business expect the out-of-work people to get money to buy its products? Does the business really expect to save more money on payroll than it will lose to sabotage?

Poor, stupid, rich kids,
you’ve screwed yourselves again
by being too greedy.

When the uneducated classes got desperate they took their guns to work and shot their bosses and coworkers.

The scientists and engineers you put out of work are just as desperate, but a lot smarter. You’ve destroyed their lives and harmed their children. They’re not going to take their guns to work and shoot their bosses. They have bigger fish to fry.

The Directors, Officers, and Stockholders all have their names and addresses on the web. So do their children and grandchildren. Reap what you have sown.3

Poor, stupid, rich kids,
you’ve screwed yourselves again
by being too greedy.

And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

The Holy Bible
King James Version
Mark 8:34-38

Poor, stupid, rich kids,
you’ve screwed yourselves again.
What did you gain by selling your soul?

  1. Killing the egg that laid the golden goose.
  2. There is no honor among the dishonorable. Watch your own back
  3. Whoops! You’re too late. One of the people you fired was a microbiologist or a writer

Finance

Black Warning bang Warning!

To keep your people-suit in good repair, you need to understand the reasons and the attitude, and not the specifics, because the specifics will change over time and place, but the attitudes almost never change.1

I’m tired of all the lies.
I’m really tired of all the lies.
But the worst lies of all
are the lies told in the name of Greed
to justify hurting others.

If what they are saying doesn’t make sense to you,
it’s because they are all lying.
Some of them even believe the lies they’re telling;
it makes them look more sincere.

  1. This is a work of fiction. Don’t believe everything you read here. I may lie as much as the financial establishment does. The incredible stupidities being committed in the name of Greed are reported on the news channels all the time. Do your own research.

The Media Estate

The entertainment industry will find something to entertain you, even if it’s the pornography of pain. The entertainment industry doesn’t care if the pornography of pain creates mass murderers, because mass murder becomes material for more entertainments. Just count the entertainments based on the half-decade of World War II. Nowhere near as many entertainments have serial murders for a theme.

Can You Trust the News?

A company that includes manufacturers of the machineries of war owns at least one of the global networks.1 Companies with equally questionable credentials own other networks.

All of the networks make money by selling advertisements at rates that depend on audience size and demographics. Wars are newsworthy and exciting.

More people watch more news during a war
than at any other time.

Network advertising
rate card

Do you think it’s possible that some news networks sponsor or deliberately provoke wars? Have the networks ever been accused of “manufacturing” or “managing” the news?

For those of you who wish to watch, the end of the world is now being televised on the all-news, all-the-time channels.2

  1. General Electric, a major defense contractor controls the NBC network. (12/2002)
  2. Research based on self-promotional material provided by the news channels.

Can You Trust the Free Press?

The free press is free to say anything it wants to, whether it’s true or not. Look on the web for a thousand versions of history. Look on the web for a thousand versions of anything. Talk to two people for two different versions of the truth. Which is the truth? Which can you trust?

You too have the freedom to say anything. Fortunately, or otherwise, the freedom to say anything does not obligate anybody to publish, read, or listen to your ravings. You don’t even have to read this book.

The Communications Corporate Personality

The communications industry is filled with young celebrities who think they understand the world. They tell you what to think by how they select and present the news and entertainment. They have to make things very simple because they have only an eight-second sound bite for each story. They think they have knowledge that goes beyond the simple. They don’t understand people or history because they are too close to both people and history, and because they care too much about how history affects them, personally, and not enough about how history affects the world.1

It’s not about the knowledge.
The knowledge is never enough.
It’s about the Power.

  1. Actually, they’re your best hope. By rooting around for sensational exposés, they will eventually out the truth about governments, religions, corporations, and financiers.

Media

Black Warning Bang Bang Warning!

To keep your people-suit in good repair, you need to understand the reasons and the attitude, and not the specifics, because the specifics will change over time and place, but the attitudes almost never change.1

I’m tired of all the lies.
I’m really tired of all the lies.
But the worst lies of all
are the lies told in the name of Truth.
in eight-second sound bites,
to justify hurting others.

  1. This is a work of fiction. Don’t believe everything you read here. I may lie as much as the commercial entertainment media does. (They call it: “Putting on a Show.” The Show would be dull, boring, and take forever if they presented it the way things really happen.) The incredible stupidities being committed in the name of God, Shareholders, and Greed are reported in the popular entertainments all the time. As much fun as “Bond, James Bond, Double Oh Seven” may have been, it is SPECTRE, the post-Soviet, world-wide terrorist conspiracy, sometimes known as al-Quada that is the inspirational legacy of Hollywood. Ian Flemming didn’t invent al-Quada, but he might have inspired Osama Bin Laden. Do your own research.

The Social Estate

It is generally advisable to avoid the need to find out whether you can trust your neighbor.

Can You Trust Your Pharmacist?

All of the major pharmacy chains have deals with the drug companies to help switch you to new prescription drugs as the older drugs lose patent protection from competition.

The drug company suggests you ask your doctor about their new product by name. Otherwise, your doctor might suggest a competing generic product that costs a little less, or an over-the-counter remedy that works just as good and costs a lot less.1 Since some form of insurance pays for most prescriptions, this is legal insurance fraud by the drug companies on a large scale. It’s one of the reasons that health insurance has become prohibitively expensive.

You can probably trust the pharmacist, but not the company he or she works for.

  1. This is most notable in antihistamine/decongestant drugs, acid reflux stomach remedies, and arthritis pain-relief remedies. In most cases, some over-the-counter products are actually superior.

Can You Trust Your Physician?

Do you have any idea what portions of your medical fees go to support:

People make mistakes. Even A students make mistakes. Do you ever make a mistake? Did you ever take a short cut in school? Some lawyer will show you how to make both yourself and the lawyer rich because some poor doctor made a mistake. Let’s look at the pressures put on your physician.

Where is all the money going?

It’s not going to the victims of malpractice.

It’s going to the lawyers.

In some places, you can’t get a doctor because the cost of malpractice insurance has made it impossible for doctors to offer medical service.

It would be more fun if doctors refused to accept lawyers or their families as patients. Since most politicians are lawyers, they might clean this up real fast.

It would be more fun if lawyers who file frivolous suits were disbarred for malpractice of law. It would prevent a lot of legal extortion.

The pharmaceutical industry has a solution. The pharmaceutical industry is doing its best to make your physician into a “pill pusher.” The medical diagnostic companies are working on machines to automate diagnosis. The machines will eventually do a better job than humans and won’t miss anything obscure. That way the drug pushers can cut out the middleman, eliminate the malpractice insurance, and dispense the drugs directly into your arm at a higher price, with lower overhead, and with no chance to shop for alternatives.

No wonder we expect there to be a pill to fix any problem.1 No wonder there’s such a large marketplace for fake cures and quacks that promise a fix for what ails you. If there’s a pill to fix any problem, we don’t have to take responsibility for creating the problem ourselves.2

It’s a good idea to take charge of your own health care — assuming you want to survive.

  1. Aren’t Snake Oil Salesmen wonderful?
  2. Of course, if we take a drug for every problem, so will our children.

Can You Trust Your Lawyer?

Human beings get along with each other in four basic ways:

Otherwise, they either aren’t in the same place, or no more than one of them is awake.

A lawyer is a “fixer.” Unless something is broken, or you want to prevent it from being broken, you don’t need a lawyer. When you’re ready to make a deal, you call the lawyers in to negotiate the deal. When a deal has gone bad, you call the lawyers in to negotiate a settlement. When the lawyers fail, you have a “trial.” This might be an actual trial in a criminal or civil court, or it might be trial by combat, or it might be trial by harassment until one party runs out of money or succumbs to the stress.

If you look carefully, the negotiators seem to be negotiating the best deal for themselves.

The lawyer gets paid more if the client wins. So it’s to the lawyer’s advantage to fight hard for the client — unless the lawyer is part of a scam or running one of his or her own.2 You look at all the rich and powerful lawyers, and you have to wonder who they’re really working for?

So, after all of that, can you trust your lawyer?

See also: Can You Trust the Government?

  1. “It’s beyond me; Help me Mommy! I’ll be good; you’ll see. Take this dream away.”
    Brad Majors
    Rocky Horror Picture Show
    1975.
  2. The most common scam is a class action suit against a company with deep pockets. The lawyer gets a percentage of a huge settlement for doing the same amount of work it would take to sue for a single person and get the same percentage of a small settlement. Class action suits aren’t for the benefit of the people who get hurt, they’re for the benefit of the lawyers.

Can You Trust a Politician?

There may be one or two honest politicians in the world. I don’t know who they are. Any politician complaining about my general lack of faith in the political system can claim that he or she is the one honest politician that I never met.

I just don’t see any possible way to trust any politician who gets death money from a tobacco company. But it’s not just tobacco. It’s the entire business world. They’ve all got their bribes in, through campaign funds, issue support, lobbyists, or just plain payoffs.

Companies can’t vote. They shouldn’t be allowed to influence elections or legislation in any way.1

Of course, if incumbent politicians got to retire when they didn’t run for the same office again, or got the death penalty if they ran again and lost, the people would have a very precise way of telling politicians exactly how they felt about representative government, and how good a job they think a politician has done in office.2

  1. Closing the loopholes for businesses would also close them for foreign nations. Foreign nations can’t vote. They shouldn’t be allowed to influence elections or legislation in any way.
  2. This is probably not a good idea in this form. However, the general principle of rewarding or punishing politicians significantly at the end of each term is very appealing. So is the general principle of disallowing professional politicians by having single term limitations.

Can You Trust the Government?

Representative government is based on the idea that “Politicians” are trained negotiators (lawyers), and will get the best-possible deal for their constituency, but the Politicians are prepared to fight or walk out if necessary.1 The problem, of course, is that as long as it is the constituency that is fighting and dying, and not the “Politician,” the Politician considers it a good outcome.

Totalitarian governments (religious or secular) are based on the idea of a “charismatic” leader who can negotiate among powerful supporters by going around them and stealing away their constituency. The problem, of course, is that an insane charismatic can create an insane constituency.

How do you look out for your own interests when nobody is on your side?

If you have enough money to outbid all the other contenders and buy the politicians, and you have enough money to hire a bigger army than the politicians, you might be able to trust the government, providing you don’t turn your back on it. You will, however, always be vulnerable to overthrow by a higher bidder.2

One basic problem is the winner-take-all system of elections. If there isn’t any chance of winning because of the way the system is structured, people feel hopeless. Hopeless people don’t care about others — they can’t afford to. When people vote against the greater evil instead of voting for the greater good, you’re losing the battle for democracy.

Areas with winner-take-all elections have the lowest voter turnout. Many people don’t bother to vote, because voting for anybody other than the winner means no representation — and the mud slinging in the primary campaign has made it clear that neither of the candidates is qualified for anything but a crown as the Prince-of-Lies.

Proportional Representation is a better alternative:

Center for Voting and Democracy
www.fairvote.org
August, 2002

There is still hope for a change, but if you want change, you’re going to have to build a Community to do it. The politicians certainly aren’t going to do it for you. It’s all about the power.

Of course, with a little legal simplification, and a Community willing to enforce it, we wouldn’t need most of those politicians and lawyers. There are tens of thousands of law books holding millions of laws. Most of that could be simplified to a few principles without loopholes.6

We’d still need things like rules of the road, and building codes, but we’d have a lot less need for lawyers if we made laws simple enough to understand, always interpreted them in the public interest, allowed no exceptions, no excuses, no loopholes, and no second chances, and let juries determine the fate of the actors.

  1. See also: Can You Trust Your Lawyer.
  2. It is impossible to overthrow a modern government by force. The array of weapons available to the government is so far superior to those available to the people as to make this silly except in very primitive countries. If you want to overthrow the government, don’t waste time with violence. Just buy the government if you’ve got the money, or be a charismatic and go directly to the people. (The pen is mightier than the sword, and preachers shouldn’t be allowed to be politicians.)
  3. “He voted against increased benefits” usually means: “He voted against increased taxes.” Similarly, “He voted for higher taxes” usually means, “He voted for increased benefits.” Either way, it’s a lie to tell half the story to harm someone else’s reputation.
  4. Unless we assume that lying is a primary qualification for the job.
  5. Actually, at least as far as foreign relations are concerned, being effective enough to win the campaign is the primary qualification for the job. Effectiveness at mobilizing the nation is a significant advantage in dealing with other countries.
  6. You need juries because of the Unix Syndrome. Unix commands do exactly what the MAN (Manual) page (documentation) says they do, whether or not it makes sense in all conditions. The point is that the effect of each command is absolutely deterministic, if sometimes silly.

    You can’t avoid the problem of trying not to be silly sometimes by making loopholes; you avoid the silliness by having juries. Nobody cares if you violate the letter of the law; it’s violating the spirit of the law that is cause for excommunication. Excommunication is not punishment. It is self-defense. If you’re incapable of understanding or complying with the spirit of the law, you are a danger to the Community.

    If laws are too complicated, or juries are too insular, their Communities will stagnate and die.

The Political Personality

Politics, whether in the smallest business office or organization (or family) is always about establishing dominance. Politics is greed for power. One of the intrinsic problems with Greed is who is using whom?

It’s not about the title.
The title is never enough.
It’s about the Power.

Society & Government

Red Danger Bang Danger!

It’s a really bad idea to do things that are illegal and irritate the government or interfere with the tax or bribery processes.

Black Warning Bang Bang Warning!

To keep your people-suit in good repair, you need to understand the reasons and the attitude, and not the specifics, because the specifics will change over time and place, but the attitudes almost never change.1

I’m tired of all the lies.
I’m really tired of all the lies.
But the worst lies of all
are the lies told in the name of the People
to justify hurting others.

  1. This is a work of fiction. Don’t believe everything you read here. I may lie as much as the government does. Do your own research.

The Family Estate

She was a bloated bag of rotting flesh, smelling of death, seated on her velvet cushion on her Chip ‘n’ Dale throne. The whole family groveled in weekly attendance — oh, and how she loved the little children, pinching their cheeks with malice, daring them to scream when they knew it would embarrass their parents. “This is my Mother, you must Love her,” said my father.

Speak for yourself.

She hated men. Her own husband had left her with three young children, and she didn’t know how to care for them. She was raised by her first-born daughter. She hated her daughter’s husband. She told her grandson terrible stories while daddy worked late, first for the war, and then to avoid her.

She complained constantly and nagged incessantly. And she began to die. So there she was — wish her dead, but beg her over and over to take her medicine so she can live a little longer. So they sacrificed the living for the dying, because she would accept the medicine only from her dutiful grandson, and only after much begging. “And This is my Mother, you must Love her,” said my mother.

Speak for yourself.

Eight. They were all old! Even the young ones were old. It’s not that they didn’t play, and it isn’t that they didn’t have any imagination; it’s just that they put walls around their imaginations. They have a list of behaviors that will never let them out of the box. They have no understanding of their boundaries, and no knowledge of why the boundaries are necessary. They are comfortable and blind. They try to put me into one of their convenient boxes, but I don’t want to fit. They don’t quite trust me because they can’t predict my behavior. I don’t quite trust them because they worship at the Chip ‘n’ Dale throne. Having found the door locked, they would never think to look again to see if the door is unlocked now.

Speak for myself.

Three. One frustrated charity executive,1 one aspiring professor in a non-academic subject,2 one mid-level government bureaucrat. They have drawn their boundaries very carefully, to serve their ambitions, to escape from poverty and their harridan mother. They are uncomfortable and wary. They try to put me into one of their convenient boxes, but I don’t want to fit. They don’t quite trust me because I won’t commit to “get with the program.” I don’t quite trust them because they are each too busy pursuing their own agenda to stop and listen to anybody else. They have room for only one dream.

Speak for myself.

The extended family plays politics, plays power games, and doesn’t cooperate for the benefit of family. It’s the problem of the rogue elephant. If you don’t feel that you can rely on your family to help and care for you, why should you care what happens to them?3

  1. Women executives weren’t welcome in industry in this time period.
  2. Women weren’t welcome in serious academia in this time period.
  3. Particularly if there’s never a crisis to test the situation — an occupational hazard of the moderately wealthy and the powerful.

Can You Trust Your Spouse?

That depends on how you built the relationship. Generally, Trophy Wives marry Trophy Husbands, and neither is trustworthy. Relationships built on communication, growth, companionship, and trust have trustworthy partners.

Getting to that point of trustworthiness is sometimes a problem. The two partners never understand each other until they are both willing to explore their own hidden agendas.

People don’t change until the price of not changing becomes too high.

People will do almost anything to avoid changing because of the hidden agenda. What people do instead of changing is to substitute new and different methods of acting out the same old attitudes.

To actually change the outcome, the attitude has to change. Otherwise, it’s just substitute behavior that leads to the same old place.

Couples try to make deals with each other. They promise to change their behavior without changing their attitudes if their partner will grant them some favor.

Couples make worthless deals with each other and both wonder why their partner doesn’t come through.

You wanna trust your spouse, you gotta work at it.

Can You Trust Your Children?

Yes. They will take your actual family values and interpret them differently. They will do as you do, not as you say. You can trust them on that.

Can You Trust Yourself?

That’s really the question, isn’t it?

If you can’t trust yourself, the others don’t matter.

The Family Personality

Family power structures are based on pecking order. There is a “top dog” or “top cat” (usually, but not always the oldest) who controls the family through force of will or by owning the purse strings. There are supporters and detractors playing in the Court of the Incumbent, there is usually an Heir-Apparent, an Other Woman, some poor fool reduced to a Jester, and lots of political intrigue.

It’s not about self-worth.
Self-worth is never enough.
It’s about the Power.

Family

Black Warning Bang Bang Warning!

To keep your people-suit in good repair, you need to understand the reasons and the attitude, and not the specifics, because the specifics will change over time and place, but the attitudes almost never change.1

I’m tired of all the lies.
I’m really tired of all the lies.
But the worst lies of all
are the lies told in the name of the Tribe
to justify hurting others.

It’s about time your parents stopped protecting you
from the world they lived in,
and started teaching you how to protect yourself
in the world they built,
that you must live in.

  1. This is a work of fiction. Don’t believe everything you read here. I may lie as much as family members do. I’m not going to go there. Do your own research in your own family.

The Naked Truth

Even paradise needs vultures.
Somebody has to keep the streets clean.

The Role of Dung Beatles in Atlantean Society,
3rd Annual Conference on Recycling,
Keep Atlantis Beautiful Campaign

Sharks and Bottom Feeders

Every ecology is a multi-tiered system with branching nodes and complex interdependencies. Somebody has to raise (or be) the food. Somebody has to provide the water. Somebody has to repair the toilet. Somebody has to collect and process the waste. Somebody has to collect the taxes to pay for collecting and processing the waste and keeping the streets clean.

We have words like “sharks” to describe the lawyers and businessmen who screw others. We have works like “bottom feeders” for con artists who prey on the old and the weak. And there are “vultures” and “parasites” and “predators.” They all have ecological niches.

Leave them outside the Community. Put them on the other side of a wall. Let them prey on each other as long as they don’t prey on the Community. If they do prey on the Community, why, then do what mankind has always done: hunt them down to extinction.

A Pyramid Scheme

The human ecology is like the upper and lower pyramids of an octahedron: A “light” four-sided pyramid, point up, on the top, and a “dark” four-sided pyramid, point down on the bottom.

You can’t have the top without the bottom. If you tried to separate the pyramids at their bases, each would rot inward from the surfaces. The 3-dimensional structure of a four-sided pyramid is not stable. A regular tetrahedron and a regular octahedron are stable.

So there are hundreds of lattice points, above and below, each of which is an ecological niche — and each of which is filled.

All competition, money is scorecard.

Very little difference in personality between tips of octahedron.

Each side tries to make itself more attractive.

The “light” side has to get rid of the crooks.

A Sample Ecological System

The tobacco industry sells deadly products for profit.

The government sanctions murder for profit — as long as you are rich and powerful enough to pay taxes, campaign contributions and bribes.

Stockholders sanction murder for profit. Stockholders not only sanction murder for profit, they encourage murder for profit. As long as they don’t get their own hands dirty.

Stockholders!

Look what you’re doing to your own children!

You’re killing the ones who are too stupid to stay away from your products.

You deserve each other.
Stockholders for your cupidity,
Stockholder’s children for your stupidity.

We may need the Hangman,
but nobody invites Jack Ketch to dinner.

Not even his children.

Too Much Is Not Enough

Some ambition is necessary.

If you are not among the rich and powerful, the social system (dark or light) needs to provide paths of achievable upward mobility within the system so that your children can have a better life than you do. When any system fails to provide these paths, the system invites overthrow by violence. The Israelis have proved this with the Palestinians. Several South American countries are learning the lesson all over again. The International Monetary Fund is paying the same criminals who created the problem to solve the problem.1

How much greed is too much?

Greed is too much the moment it starts hurting others around you. You don’t have to look out for the whole world. You do have to look out for people you have personal or business relationships with.

You know you have too much greed when you become a Worshipper at the Alter of the Great God Greed. When Greed is more important to you than your own personal integrity. When you’re willing to hurt someone else for your own gain.

Red Danger Bang Danger!

The worship of Greed is the root of all Evil.

You can have all the ambition you want, as long as it’s not at someone else’s expense.

  1. Secret bank accounts have no place in an honest society. Societies require governments, and governments should never be considered honest. That’s why the politicians have the secret bank accounts.

The Emperor Really is Naked!

To keep your people-suit in good repair, you need to understand the reasons and the attitude, and not the specifics, because the specifics will change over time and place, but the attitudes almost never change.

You cannot trust anyone by category,
including your family, church, economic system,
businesses, government, and press.
You can only trust individuals,
and only when they have earned your trust.

In the end,
each individual has responsibility
for his own actions.

Our Gods define what we wish to become.
Show me what you wish to become by your daily actions.
Then I will name your personal Gods.
Your Deeds shall tell Their Names.

I’m tired of all the lies.

The only way to keep power
is to relinquish it.

The lies lead only to despair.