as i’ve been saying for awhile, aren’t co-ops & employee-owned business models – where profits from all employees’ labors are distributed back to the employees themselves – or for co-ops, the owners – a etiological, surgical way to stem the on-going income inequality caused by a board of wealthy CEOs ending up with the majority of the profits from all labors?

isn’t that what eating the fruits of your labor is – as opposed to someone taking most or nearly all the profits of all employees’ work?

we could subsidize this more sustainable form of capitalism economically; cultivate it culturally — say it is a more ethical/sustainable choice, because it is; & also blend the two by governmentally advocating it – in PSA’s, speeches, & other forms.

shouldn’t we give co-op/employee-owned business models their place in The Sun – so we can temper the excesses of capitalism?

let’s do that & all the other good ideas we have for income inequality everybody has.

Thanks.
– Joe

have you ever noticed television — a welcome addition to our toolbox — seems to have created a sort of fascination with culture since about the 1950s — meaning video-recorded culture?

everything before video-recordings didn’t really happen – we sort of think — or things that did are just ‘old:’ obsolete; irrelevant.

all that matters is what was captured in motion picture.

well, i am here today to say that 6000 years worth of traditions has the tried & true, time-tested ‘way’ for our lives to be lived, much more than the “new & improved”, “latest & greatest” novelties in our little sliver of history.

tradition just makes sense, when it comes to a new communications medium ((the computer/internet)): weigh the meaningfulness of the cream of the cream from the last 6000 years of written work, with a recent decade’s cultural works — say the 1980’s — there’s little comparison: the cream of the cream coming out of the last 6000 years of cultural works hangs huge in its meaningfulness, juxtaposed with 50 years or so of admittedly fun, american elation & celebration — as fun as it is . . .

now don’t get me wrong – i was just dancing to a ’60s pop hit this morning — & i hope  you’re doing all that too, because it’s fun.

but it’s simply a numbers game. 6000 years of cultural works will have more superstars, more actual bearers of cultural mantles, than 50 or 60 years.

we need to learn from the whole of the past, what traditions we should guide the seeds of this current culture toward — the Information Age’s culture — & use these ideals like navigational stars — especially with the seminal role it is shaping up to play;

we need to build our culture on the tried & true foundations of all-time; timeless, time-tested, proven ideas.

go out there & find some classics. read The Bible, read Plato, sit at the feet of Ralph Waldo Emerson for a spell.

& still get those Hippy Hippy Shakes tho =)

*insert hippy hippy shakes*

– joe

July 2015: The continuation of this is Follow-Up To “Re: Computers”: Cultural Subsidization Helps Our Civilization Grow, Culturally – Let’s.

i am not a medical professional, but i came across a stat that puts me in the eye of a perfect storm for a possibly major national health job.

i was carousing PubMed studies one day, when i came across a study on turmeric that happened to mention that of the approximately 400,000 species of plants on Earth, only 7,000 – or not even 2% – have been studied for use as medicine, food, or textile.

that was astonishing in itself . . .

but then it came to me that we might have created what i would call an artificial market in synthetic medications via the patent system. the pharmaceutical patent system artificially inflates the profitability of production, the demand via advertising (etc), & therefore the use of synthetic chemicals as medicines, which are statistically 7,750 times more dangerous than herbal supplements, & 62,000 times more dangerous than nutritional supplements, according to a study of all the relevant available data in Europe.¹²3

so… one thing i would say is, i would put as an idea to ethical, intelligent entrepreneurs – people like Dr. Joseph Mercola  or maybe (Sir haha) Richard Branson – to what-i-termed ‘genetically experiment’ on these unresearched plants – as an example, give 50 volunteers with one medical condition each a their own unresearched plant, & study them. if one shows hope for safe effective & perhaps accessible medicine, (that is, affordable & available), do controlled experiments on it to make certain it truly is.

creating artificial demand for substances that are thousands of times more dangerous, & at by the same turn of the hand choosing to neglect the cornucopia of safer, effective  medicines, makes no sense.

we also need to investigate fixing this artificial inflation of production/demand of exceedingly dangerous “medications” legislatively.

are patents really the right thing for civilizational growth? or do they more concentrate wealth at the expense, in this case, of our health.

let’s get down to it.

Thanks,
Joe