The Rich Get Richer Part 2.: A More Fair And Natural System

This presumes you read part 1.

This is the second story mentioned in “The rich get richer” post. This one removes the forces of money, interest and capitalism. It instead focuses on the labor part of the equation. Where the version of the story concentrated on an auction outside the bakery, this time we concentrate on the inside workings of the bakery. It shows how, when that is removed, a more natural driving force of creativity and invention results. It is a much shorter story where charts won't be required. (But I could if you really want one.

Back at the bakery

So, we return to our bakery. The same set up as in the previous post. A baker makes bread for a community of 10 families. All 10 have a single provider, and require one loaf of bread a day. The 10 people are exactly the same in every way. In this case though, the baker needs 5 people to work for one feverish hour every day. The work is hard and draining, but everybody is capable of doing it. He pays a loaf of bread to every laborer who works. The baker has a short term memory problem and can never remember from day to day who worked for him. (This is to remove an prejudicial treatment or cronyism from the equation.) So every morning, he opens up the back door and has all 10 pick numbers from a hat. The first 5 come and work for their bread. The baker represents all the possible employment in the system. The bread represents the basic needs to have a socially acceptable “humble” lifestyle in the community. Those who are strong and motivated will get picked the next day or the next day, just so long as they are there.

Innovation in a capitalist system you say?

US style capitalism is great for solving a problem once. (Take a gas engine or A/C current for example.) After that, even if you come up with a better idea, the buy in is so overwhelming. People who are profiting from the old system are motivated to make that truth even more so. The options for powering our vehicles are numerous, the ability to power our house with wind and solar are available, but they are too costly from most people. Plus, we have been conditioned to believe using them makes us different, weird. “That guy is driving a hybrid.. what a pussy!” “I don't want to see my neighbors windmills from my house!” or “ you want to live in a smaller house or on a boat and work a few hours a week to provide your needs?” Capitalism will not suffer this mentality, It needs to germinate consumers and overly reward the competitors.

The “innovation” in a natural system comes from the people who didn't get picked. With an extra hour and an extra incentive, they distract themselves from their hungry belly. Or it comes from those who did, but with free time and a passion, they used the other 23 hours to invent an airplane, light source, telephone in their garage. They have their bread, they have their strength, they just need some meaning in their life. The community prospers, evolves, and moves forward as one.

Disability

Any inequality is provided by nature. It sucks, that is the reality, but if you are born with no arms, you are not going to be able to pick a number. You will probably remain a burden on your family or taken care of by the community for the duration of your life. That is a true disability. (In our culture the inability to contribute even with some normally crippling disadvantages has been reduced.) A just and fair culture will have to decide what to do with their physically and mentally disadvantaged. That is what makes us human and not like the other animals. Though I look around and wonder if that is true these days.

Welfare system for the unlucky, not the lazy.

Currently the capitalist welfare system rewards people for making bad decisions. Make no mistake that it is because places like Wal-Mart and McDonald's benefit from that situation. Likewise China is raking in the US wealth because of it. There wealthy have always found benefit in keeping slaves and indentured servants. It doesn't not (more do the people that opposed it) discern between the lazy and the unlucky. US capitalism does not recognize that a kid being born to a crack head mother in the projects has not the same advantages as the one born to a hotel chain mogul. It is one thing to allow nature to make sure that doesn't happen in the first place and provide disadvantages when it does, a completely different thing when the government encourages it with payment.

As in the disability system so is the welfare system geared towards what is natural. It is good to help you neighbor who has had a run of 3 or 4 days without bread. That is just unlucky in the context of this thought experiential. Bad luck is minimized by equality and humanized by compassion. So, it is good to help, but when you neighbor stop showing up and expecting you to just give him part of yours, that is immoral. The community will have to allow that family to suffer the consequences. Somebody recently said to me, “Starvation is a powerful motivator.” I tend to agree for the most part. If the human mind perceives no hope of getting out of a situation, it will resolve to starvation as a form of suicide.

Who controls the wealth disparity?

So who controls the wealth in this version? The baker? No, not really. If he gave less than a loaf, his community would starve and become too weak to help. Then he too would starve. They would either eventually turn on him or leave to find another baker. The individual laborers, do they set the gap? No, they just show up, and with a statistical advantage, they pick from the hat. But they have to show up. The natural system set the price. There is no need or use for bread beyond your basic needs. There is no way to get a second loaf. No way to extort the money for it from your neighbor. This version works more like a family. What was that thing they call a large family of people who support each other. I think the original inhabitants had such a community.

The perfect system is one that isn't perfect

In a perfect system, there would be a need for 10 laborers and 10 loafs of bread would be produced. But that is in contrast to human (or any living thing) nature. That would be stagnant. Another family would move in. Then slight unrest would begin this system as described. The reality is that it is healthy for a community to have just under its perfect amount of resources, as it will drive innovation. Just under is important. There needs to be hope, a way to envision making the system better, a way for a family who is unlucky to see a way out. Too much disparity (as shown in Part 1) causes “despair” and people just give up. There must be hope. Expecting the bread maker to make more or set up another bakery is silly. You are relying on his desire to take his excess time and solve something that isn't a problem to him. He might, sure. He has the knowledge, that is true. But that is only part of the equation.

“What isn't natural is artificial. What is artificial consumes finite resources. What isn't natural isn't sustainable. What isn't sustainable, eventually collapses. It has to.” - (Paraphrasing something said over a few different conversations with my buddy Pete Cammarata.)

Petition on wage reform and minimum percentage idea

The White House offers a service that they will address any issue that can get first 150 people through email and FB alone and then it is opened to the public for 100,000 people visiting the website.  If nothing else it would be nice to have it addressed by Obama himself.  For those not familiar I have long advocated forcing a company to pay its lowest paid employee at least just 1% of its highest paid employee.  You pay your CEO $10,000 then pay your janitor 1% of that. He has to be worth at least 1% of your CEO's efforts.  
vote for it here.  Also Please forward it to people you think might be supportive of this idea!

Minimum Percentage Petition to White House web tool

If they really wanted to Ballance the Budget

The Rich Get Richer. The Futility Of Being Poor In The Capitalist system.

   Let’s call it “The Alice in Wonderland principle”. Sometimes while trying to understand and explain something small, one stumbles upon something much bigger.  This happened to me writing this post. I set out to explain how in a community where there is no money, Only the barter system to acquire needed goods and services, people are truly equal.  What I found was a way to graphically represent the mechanics behind the fact and statement “The rich get richer”.  This is true and in the following text and spread sheet is how I arrived at that conclusion using nothing more than math. 

 Some Basic Economics Laws. 

 First, “Value” is defined as the highest price of a good or service that a consumer has both the desire (willing) and resources (able) to pay for it. Imagine everything you buy at a store, online, or from a private citizen is a giant auction.  For one single Item, the highest bidder takes the “widget”.

 “Equilibrium Price”- The state in which market supply and demand balance each other and, as a result, prices become stable. Generally, when there is too much supply for goods or services, the price goes down, which results in higher demand. The balancing effect of supply and demand results in a state of equilibrium.

The Equilibrium Price is found in a market where there are multiple consumers and multiple providers using the “Law of Supply and Demand” (that is right, they are natural “Laws”, not merely suggestions).   There are 4 of them.

1.If demand increases and supply remains unchanged, a shortage occurs, leading to a higher equilibrium price.

2.If demand decreases and supply remains unchanged, a surplus occurs, leading to a lower equilibrium price.

3.If demand remains unchanged and supply increases, a surplus occurs, leading to a lower equilibrium price.

4.If demand remains unchanged and supply decreases, a shortage occurs, leading to a higher equilibrium price.

“Thought Experiment”  - The Baker and his daily bread.

“Thought experiment” - "the most ancient pattern of mathematical proof". Thought experiments have existed before Euclidean mathematics, where the emphasis was on the conceptual, rather than on the experimental part of a thought-experiment.”  “Schrödinger's cat” is one of the most famous. As with all experiments, the idea is to isolate just one control.  The use of analogies and figures to represent something larger is common.  People attempting to disprove or reject the conclusion of a "though experiment" often try to parse these generalizations.  Sometimes they are accurate to do so and point out an important constraint that actually changes the results.  Others try to re-expand the simplification that called for a use of an analogy. For example, In this example could say, "But people can change their earning".  Which A) forced one to consider deeper and more complex economic principles that were by designs meant to be simplified and B)  minimizes the fact that the graph shows that unless you make giant changes in your income it doesn't matter.   This intentional attempt to cloud the point is to the thought experiment what somebody saying to B.F. Skinner "but humans are not rats".  The math and the principle are sound no matter what levels you wish to apply them at.

Analogies, Where Things Mean Different Things

In this experiment we have a few “figures”.

 “Baker”- equals the sum of all the employers in the economy and every job available.

 “Bread” or “Loaf” – The Sum of all the basic needs of any given family unit. It has been proven that the there is a point where people would feel an overall sense of well-being and earning more money loses its “return”.  A point where those things, such as a warm, well kept, and secure living space, adequate nourishment, and the fear of external threats are minimal can be determined by assessing those places within 100 miles of one’s birth and looking at property values, school district graduation and college grad rates, crime type and rates, teen pregnancy, single parenthood, per home medical costs, and ownership to mortgage ratio.  Take the average of the top 10 with the most favorable ratings, and average their “food shelter and clothing rates.  That “quality of life” is symbolized by “Bread Loaves”.

“Top %” is meant to symbolize the wage breakdown.  The reality is that the disparity between the top and bottom wage earners in the US is much much greater. 

"Day" is a time period of income. Could symbolize a week, a year, a lifetime.

All The World Is Indeed a Baker’s Auction

  This was originally the 2nd version of a story I will re-post later. I meant for it to show how those at the top control the choices available of those at that bottom. I used a sample of 30 people in that version to demonstrate some other unique points.  In this version, I will use 10 to represent 10% breakdown in income brackets.

  The Set up.: There is a community, remote and undisturbed by any other outside force.  There are 11 families in this town including the Baker. In this town, there is a bakery that has the capacity to put out 7 total loaves of bread.  (However, that equates to only 6 available since the baker takes one for himself every day.) Because of the location needs and the cost to build, there is no other way to build another bakery.  However, to maintain an acceptable standard of living and quality of life, each family must have 1 loaf of bread per night.  The 10 other families all earn 10 different wages from $10 per day down to $1 per day.  Every morning the baker opens his doors and starts the bidding. Like any auction, the guy with the most money to buy with sets the price.  (In an auctioneers voice) As the bids come in, “$1, then 2, $2 then 3, Now $3 give me $4, got $4, can I get $5, Now $5, who will give me $6… Anyone..  Anybody give me $6?  Sold to ‘Top Ten’ at a price of $5. How many do you want?”  That first day, the top 6 people get their loafs of bread at a rate of $5.  The bottom 5 go home.  But the next day, everything changes.  This graph shows that The price goes up.  The rich always get bread and always save.  I went on to extrapolate this data out.  At day 9, a turning point occurs in this example.   On that day, the “Ten” has enough money to buy 2 loaves at the current price. The poorest “hundred” were finally going to get a loaf that day, but instead, it was snatched from them.   What “Ten” chooses to do with that money and loaf can send ripples and effect the choices of all those involved.  Does he sell it the next day adding supply and driving the market down?  Does “10” offer the loaf to a family who doesn't have the money that day, for an interest payment spread out over the next few days?  Any way you look at it, the most wealthy take control of the entire economy at that point. Everybody’s liberty and happiness is based upon what they chose. BUT, they are removed from acknowledging it by saying, “I am just buying stuff at market price.  Everybody has the opportunity to buy at the same price I do.”  Below is the graph of the first 9 days. 

A final thing to be noted here is that the poor don't actually save the money they don’t spend.  In reality, if they have enough income to buy 40% of the total needed to sustain, then they spend it on 40% of a loaf. They continue to play the "catch up" game.

Continue The Experiment Yourself

 Now apply some of the most common "conceptual beliefs" about an auction based economy to this.  (I will send anybody my spread sheet if they request it.)  Here are some questions to ask

What happens if we tax everybody equally? add a "0" to the end of the wages, and tax them at 10%.

What if we let the "investors" keep more of their money? 

What happens if another bakery is opened and the top earner wins the bid and buys as much as he wants?

What happens to the overall income of the baker if you introduce another bakery and set his operation costs at $30 per day?

What if loans take place?  The poor guy on "Day 9" is offered the bred snatched away from him by the rich guy for $10.  He will have to pay the next 2 days wages to "Ten"? 

Last, the point I was trying to make, what would have to happen to in order for "Hundred" to just get to "Fifty" and what happens to "Fifty" when he gets there?

If I Were Writing Obama's State Of The Union Address.

The appropriate "State of the Union Address" should go something like this. "The state of the union, folks, is bad. It is bad because the policies of George W. Bush and the people controlling the House and Senate at the time made some stupid and selfish mistakes that not only plague us today, but will probably plague our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. Yes, consequences simply don't stop because leadership changes and the US is a giant ship with bureaucratic and cumbersome system. I have offered many painful and honest approaches to correct this by way of my "American Jobs Act" and several budget proposals, but they were rejected for grandstanding and issues that had nothing to do with the budget and much to do with minority obstructionism. Much of the weight of these proposals fell on those who gained from the poor previous administrations policies. Whether they know it or are unaware is of no concern to me. We have to deal with the fact that they spent $4 trillion on unnecessary wars instead of educating our citizens. Sent troops to Afghanistan to do a job that required and I ultimately achieved with a small precision team. They couldn't find Bin Laden, but they sure found the world's largest reserve of lithium. They sent more men and women to their deaths under intelligence they knew was false about Saddam Hussein's WMD. For reason that can only be answered by those who attended Dick Cheney's “energy commission”, just months before 9/11 and had him claiming he was a member of the legislative branch in order to protect just the list of names, the intelligence of the IAEA inspectors and the educated advice of Hans Blix was rejected. As a result, we have had a half million people at one time employed to conduct that war. Now, I must either unethically continue these unjust war policies or release these Americans back into the private sector to become part of the unemployed. Either one will draw forceful criticize by the malice and believed by the ignorant. This is not the first time that the CIA has caused such irrational disruptions in the state or the union. The the early 90's Bill Clinton had negotiated the stationing of inspectors, cameras live and operation on the facilities, and ultimately the dismantling and destruction of their nuclear weapons program of North Korea. A country to be noted that we are technically still at war with. This was in exchange for light water reactors that can not be used to make nuclear weapons, but only supply energy that the people of North Korea so disparately need to step into the 21st century. The CIA assured Clinton that were still secretly working on their plutonium program. Accusing our adversary publicly and openly wasn't met with open cooperation. It would take another 3 years before the IAEA would be allowed to test the sites the CIA had claimed were secret labs. Testing of the soil and other in-depth tests showed that there was no merit to those claims. In December of 1999 the agreement was again reached to restart the process of building these reactors. By the following march George Bush would go on to renege those obligations. By 6 months later, he would be threatening them diplomatically. In the State of the Union address of 2002 he would be including them in this nearly comic book fantiful “Axis of Evil”. A year after that, one of 3 included in that group no longer existed. I don't know about you, but if somebody publicly threatens me and two other people and then kills one of us, I am going to start arming myself. That plays right into the reason for our second amendment. So now we have cost associated with keeping North Korea at bay. It will be difficult to get them to trust us to make agreements with the US again considering when we change administrations we no longer feel held by previous agreements. I don't blame them. So we have to deal with that, somehow. They are poor and starving and the only resource they have to sell is something we don't want in the hands of our enemies.

Domestically we are collapsing. Our unemployment rate keeps going down, but it is because people have either given up, taken jobs that leave them unable to pay their bills, or gotten extremely lucky for the time being. George Bush promoted, or rather I should say marketed, this idea of an “ownership society” that was another fairytale philosophy that was designed to make a few rich people even richer and trick a bunch of ignorant people into believing they could gain benefits without consequences. Perfect for a selfish coddle generation entering the job market. Rational requirements to prove you could afford to own a home were thrown out for paper guarantee. As any basic econ student can tell you, if demand goes up faster than supply can keep up, the price goes up. For some reason the purchasing public thought paying 5 and 6 times their yearly wage for a house was a good idea. Compounding, the new policies didn't use real money to do this, but rather fictitious money produced by a magic trick between the Federal Reserve and the US mint. An economy can not remain stable if everybody is allowed to produce counterfeit currency. For awhile everybody will be flush with cash. But, the fairytale has has ended, the piper has finished his performance, and it is time for payment. Too long we have concentrated on “growing” everything. Grow our economy, grow our influence, grow our GDP, grow our population. Americans, as one of you and as your leader, I say this with the concern and reasoning of a parent scolding you for not doing your homework and getting bad grades. Americans, we are fat, ignorant, lazy, selfish, belligerent, and oblivious to the consequences for our actions. It is time to start concentrating on shrinking. First our population. No, we are not going to let people into this country. If you committed or benefited from committing of a crime to get here, too bad. Get out. The system can not support more people and maintain the quality of life we have promised our citizens. We are going to have to s top encouraging people who can't afford to feed themselves to have more kids that the system has to feed for them. Too many generation have went by with out real parenting producing adults capable of being parents. Our schools are not where you send the puppies that you no longer want to be kenneled. Schools are designed to teach academic subjects, not be your babysitter. We are not just growing in numbers, but in sizes. For all the talk about how many people die from guns, it is dwarfed by the number of people who die from poor diet. Proper diet is something that is passed from generation to generation through the family choices. It is time we start encouraging better diets and less eating just to feel more secure. It is my goal to see the US population numbers shrinking be the time I leave office. Let me assure all that paranoia pandering insanity insecure conspiracy theorist that I do NOT mean to start some kind of genocide or aggression against American people. I mean to promote legislation that encourages people to be more responsible with their reproduction activities. Finally, as expected, I will address the gun issue. Look people, our founders made a lot of mistakes. Not clarifying the 2nd amendment or even putting it in there to begin with was was wrong as calling salves less than human or prohibition. A person can not forcefully take another person's 2nd amendment right away using the 1st amendment. However, many (maybe even my own after this speech) have had their 1st amendment right forcefully taken from them by the 2nd amendment. I am going to work to shut down the manufacturers of this repression, then through attrition guns will be removed from our society. Let me restate that clearly. Nobody is coming to your door to kick it in and take your guns. But if they are used in a crime or found to be Carrier illegally or found in a home where domestic violence is occurring or psychotropic drugs are being consumed, then they will be removed from circulation. Don't commit a crime, use it to legally defend your life and home, and carry them legally, you will have them in your family forever. They will one day be very highly valued.

Look, for too long our only message to our citizens and the world we have had a message of hypocrisy in the US. We have nuclear weapons, but nobody else is allowed to have them. We don't want the world to pollute, but we do. We only believe in democracy when in out countries when it is good for us. We promote equality with our foot on the heads of the poor and weak. We claim to be a peace seeking and at time “Christian” nation. We claim it is important to have just cause and evidence in order to maintain a peaceful and civilized society, and we don't practice what we preach on the world stage. We claim humanitarians don't torture people, yet we condone it. So many of our policies have not started with “if the people we are about to execute this action against did this to us, would we consider it wrong?” While our media and policies promote some of the most violent and hateful behaviors ever known to man. It is time to stop being hypocrites and start leading the world by examples. It is time we push aggressively towards meaningful policy that affirms the beliefs we spelled out in our founding documents of equality, life, liberty, happiness, and tranquility. It is time we give to our children something no other generation of humans have ever been able to give. A chance are real and honest lasting peace on Earth. It will take a long time for people to believe us, and we will have to suffer a “passion walk”. But for the first time in humanities existence, it is possible and I intend to take the first steps forward.

Tired Of Campaigning Commercials, Unkept Promises, And More Negative Lies Then Informative Descriptions?

Born of Political Commercial Nightmare

    I have an idea (a dream) where a ballot is a questionnaire.  You answer about 100 questions about your feelings on policies and how important they are to you.  The candidates all answer the same questions and are held accountable for any past votes they have made. They would have to file an official change of position if they chose to do so, on standard questions. So for instance, "How do you feel about legalization of Marijuana?" Answer choices are for or against.  Then you have a "how strongly is this issue of a concern."   At the end of it, a computer compares you, the voter’s answers, with those of the candidate’s answers, and spits out your selection.  Take the marketing of BS out of the elections.  Vote for ideas. 

  The Questionnaire.

   As person who decides to run for election, after collecting a certain amount of signatures to put themselves on the ballot. That part is easy enough. Once the nomination is certified by the Board of Elections, the candidate would get a ballot. This ballot would have some 50 to 100 questions.  “Do you think abortion should be legal?” “Do you think there are acceptable cases for rape or incest where abortion should be legal?”  “Do you think everybody should have the right to own fully automatic assault rifles?”  “Do you think people earning more than $XXX per year deserve a tax break?”  “Do you think illegal aliens and children of illegal aliens should be deported?” With each question a candidate have to choose a rating of maybe 5 grades of concern for the issue addressed in the question.  From “Of little concern” to “Strongly concerned” and you have to use 5 of each for a 100 question ballot.  

    A computer database would compare the ballots and the weights of the questions.  So somebody who is for and somebody who is against an issue, but neither are very strongly influenced by that issue, the vote point may even be given to the opposing candidate.  There will certainly need to be some crafting of the computing process.

Refocusing Of Advertising

  Here is the concept.  As of right now, lots of money pours into each candidate’s election fund. They use it to either make you feel good and confident about their decision making skills about them OR to make them feel afraid of the other candidate’s decision making skills.  Most often it is negative anti other candidate propaganda.  Most of the time the content of the ads and media attention is on things that have absolutely no bearing on one’s ability to make good, functional, healthy decision for our culture, our economy, and our security.  Much money has concentrated on birth certificates, angry preachers, war records, and reactions during hurricanes.  None of which has anything to do with making good decisions at the presidential level.

   With this issue driven election, the different ad campaigns will have to focus on changing your mind about issues.  More time would be spent convincing voters supply side economics is bad or that we should not be invading other countries.   This would completely shake up the debates and the TV advertising campaigns.  Lots more graphs and pie charts, lots less deep voices and flickers of anger and fear. 

Flip flop and incumbent advantage.

    While this seems to be a good idea, we can rest assured there would be two teams of lawyers assembled for each side.  One team to figure out how to take advantage the new system, anther to sue to get the thing changed back to the old broken confusing system.  The team trying to figure out how to corrupt and exploit the system will be trying to figure out how to Influence the questions and how to gage what their candidate should answer.    Incumbents would have less of an advantage then they currently do.  As of now, the most important trait a candidate can have is name recognition.  Ask the Kennedy’s, Bush’s, and Clintons to about that.  But this approach will make ballots nameless.  Unless you know exactly how to answer the questions the way your candidate did? You are not going to get assigned a pre-determined candidate. 

   There would always be some standard questions about the biggest issues in this country.  Gun control, abortion, religious influence, environmental issues, and union support to name a few. Once a candidate runs and is an incumbent, they would be stuck with their answer on those staple questions. They may move the level of importance they place upon it, but their answer to “Do you believe Social Security should be privatized” would have to stand.  They of course could change their position, but they would have to submit a formal letter of change with a paragraph accompanying it as to why they changed. What new information came to light? There may be a limitation to the strength you can choose on a new position for a specified number of years or terms.  Knowing that your opponent switched positions would be public knowledge. Your opponent could actually use that to strengthen his/ her position. 

No more choosing between “lesser of two evils”, 3rd party candidates have a chance.

  With no names and parties on the ballot, people who are afraid to vote for a candidate they actually believe in, will lose that fear under this voting approach. As of now, people vote for party and players in politics with the same zeal as they root for their sports team. That would stop. Instead, they would be expressing their ideals and electing candidates who share them.  The libertarian party would have just as much of a chance as the Republican Party.  The country may wake up one day and find out that it is actually communist or, dare I say it, socialist.  But a release from being controlled by fear and spurred on by divisions and hatred would be truly set the place free.

I found this presentation magnificent,  funny and informative. Dan Baber lives up to the TED standards.   He talks about the subject of fish in our diet.  More specifically of “farm raised fish.”   He talks about how he was duped at first by that marketing term. He talks about how different real sustainable fish farming looks.    I think that what this guy point out can be applied not just to fish farming.  That is obvious by the way he describe the one he fell in love with.  That ecology and human sustainably will depend upon a system.  I remember when my buddy Pete was fighting to save perch fishing, he explained that it is important that we take so many fish per year for the ecology to remain healthy.  Imagine we humans are as the fish.  For you Christians, that shouldn’t be too hard to do.   I wish somebody from this area would look at this body of work and the "fish farm" in Spain.  Maybe they cold bring back some of the ideas to this area. Though I am guessing that industry is not cohesive to good ecology.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EUAMe2ixCI

Bad Seeds or Good Soldiers? Why Some Cross The Line?

“You take a mortal man, put him in control. Watch him become a god, watch people's heads a roll.”

A Brief History of Soldiers and War:

Throughout the ages, protectors of the community have been part of any multiunit social gathering. Hunters doubled as soldiers, knights, braves, and warriors of every culture are staples that define a “race”. Much akin to music and religion. (The deeper reasons that is part of our natural psychology is an issue more for thehumansystem.wordpress.com.) The approach to the soldier's station in life in more primitive civilizations, were the result of test of skills. In the more civilized societies, they were apprenticed and had to learn not only physical skills but tactical and moral ones as well. In the early days, during war, every citizens was charged with protecting the community. There were no civilians. As early the civil war the US started forcing people to fight as soldiers. Only 2% of the military were forced to sign up to go fight for a the cause. That grew by the time we reached WWII. Also during that time the war machine had been created and had learned the value “pleasure principle” and found a new way to operate. While a full 60% of the soldiers in WWII were drafted, 75% of the voting public felt that such a draft should exist. So a bridge period where people were forced to go to war, but agreed with that concept. An anomaly in logic for sure. By the end of the Vietnam war, a draft was no longer the most efficient way as the community had turned against it. It was also no longer needed, as there were other ways to make people believe such “service” was the most pleasurable option. To contrast, in the early days all citizens agreed upon a perceived thereat and then rose up against that threat. Today, many will kill simply because the threat they feel comes from a source other then the person or obvious distinct threat from the group of people they killed. Many times it is a fear of social rejection that drives them.

Who is a modern soldier?
“Thy shall not kill.” Ironically a large amount of the outspoken members of the US military claim to be “Christian”. However, the Christ left no room for war in his doctrine. So what is it that leads to such complex individuals that make up soldiers to make that decision. Soldiers come from every walk of life. Rich/ poor, academic/ physical dominate, and all races (even natives to the continent which has another layer). From the age of kindergarten we are “groomed” for that possibility by being forced to learn “The Pledge of Allegiance” and “The National Anthem”. There are disproportions when looking at the military as a whole. We have all heard the sayings/ arguments. “Kids aught to be forced into military service 'cause they lack discipline these days.” I know of at least a half dozen personal stories where they faced either jail time or joined the service. Or, “If you want to get out of poverty, go join the service.” What we know about the American soldier, overall, is that they are driven by money and perks. We know this because the volunteer military would not exist if it offered only room and board, no salary. We know that they utilize signing bonuses, free college education, and free medical insurance to increase its numbers. It is a rational conclusion then that people who are driven by a need for money are a common thread. Jesus generally would not have made a good soldier.

I would go one step further and say that , “The belief that the North Korean's, Vietnamese, or Muslims had the desire and means to be a threat was not inspirational enough to staff the military during the past 10 years.” Another benefit is that soldiers get much praise and social acknowledgment. In a “borderline society” where adequate attention is commonly lacking in most family structures, it is a very appealing option for those looking for a “meaning to life”. In their superiors, many “children” find parental (especially “Father”) figures they had been lacking. In their fellow soldiers, many find family and solidarity of values they lacked in their childhood. “Hoo-Rah”. So along with the monetarily driven, a personality type of wanting to be accepted and acknowledged, and directed are also candidates. This makes public schools darn near unfair grounds for recruiting. “Fish in a bucket.”

The Creation of a Soldier
It doesn't matter whether you are plucked from the inner city projects by a recruiter who keeps one from going to jail, or from a well-to-do military family who have financial success and even preconditioned at a place like West Point, the goals are the same. When you emerge from “boot camp” a soldier is to have six specific qualities. First, they must be able to suppress their individualized personal belief, moral and ethical systems and accept the ones the military psychologically conditioned them to. Your personal beliefs are to be conscious and second nature. Second, they must be able to act as a unified singularity in step with their unit and they must be able to do it with mechanical accuracy. Third, they must be able to act without questioning the consequences. Focus only on what is asked of them, there are not allowed to be existential or deeply philosophical. Fourth, one must be able to bond with their new “family” and the lives of the friends they are in the “fox whole” with is as far out as they can think. Fifth, they have to have the ability to close the doors of the past, absolve themselves of guilt, immediately and to only a forward looking perspective. Last, the value of life needs to be a fluid concept. The lives and definition of the enemy are have no meaning. They have no family, nor friends, no community. They have been deemed “the enemy” and therefore as meaningful as a mosquito.

It is the job of the recruiters to find candidates fear, insecurity, or deficiency, and convince them that the military can fill/ accommodate that missing component. Most common are a lack financial, futuristic, or family identity. The easy ones are those who want to impress parents. It is the job of the drill instructors to find those fears and expose them to the group. Tear each individual down in front of everybody else. Forcing the group to share emotional pain, makes them all exposed to the “What happens in..” syndrome. It also creates psychological bonds with the members that have been long documented. The icing is everybody is in the same uniform, looking the same. This suites to see that the mind subjugates what the eye sees to a predisposed kinship whenever they see another soldier. So these feelings of unity easily transfer to other soldiers long after boot camp. We all just “want to go someplace where everybody knows our name.” As evident by the creation of VFW's American Legions, AmVets, and the like.

Out the other side of boot camp, you have members of a society that outwardly advocates freedom, self expression, family, individuality, and value of life that have been conditioned to give all of that up and find comfort in exactly the opposite.

The Creation Of and Enemy.
Just as important of creation of a soldier is creation of the enemy. The war machine has learned to start this via propaganda long before they ask the soldier to go to war. At the end of the day, the soldier spent his formative years in the general population, and family and past doctrines still conflict with the new ones. In this voluntary military constraint, the population generally has to feel a threat from an enemy. Since many of us have German or European roots, it was hard to make an enemy out of them. They looked and acted too much like us. But, the Asians however, that attracted Pearl Harbor, they could be differentiated. This is the key. The military heads need to convince the families of the soldiers to support the act of killing. Carving out a race of people and treating them as if they are an inferior and “less then human” species is pinnacle to that goal. So the short, slant-eye, suicidal, non-christian, jap, gook, yellow, strange food eating, dictatorial, ect.. group of people were deemed as monsters. The military would make allies with the ones would support their efforts. Those were often the deviants of their own culture and monster in their own right. Communist, especially the soviets, and today the Muslims have all suffered the same propaganda. Simply ridicule and degrading a race or society of people isn't enough though. There has to be an obvious act, incident, or threat. The leaders who wanted war had to find a way to provoke the US into fighting in the past had to use such events as rallying points. Most often there is an element of conspiracy behind the events. Information release have shown that the US provoked (http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/con_korea.cfm) the Russians and North Koreans into the Korean war. The Gulf of Tonkin is the event that sparked the Vietnam war AND it was faked. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident). This technique has been part of the American expansionalism since its birth. The continental natives were the first to be treated as something less then human. Today we have 911 and oh so many questions about not only the incident, but the response. No matter, the result was the same, the US war machine had a new enemy. Some of the terms I have heard US soldiers use to refer to Middle Eastern Muslims are “Towel head”, “sand nigger”, “camel jockey”, “desert turds”, and of course they are all “terrorists”. Their religion, philosophy, family structure, governing structure, social laws, and traditions have all been called “inhumane” or “inhuman”. The only reason given for the rag tag group of men who attack the US was that they “hate our freedom”. It doesn't matter that the explanation doesn't make any rational sense, the American culture is one that is designed to desire to extract revenge, and any flimsy excuse will do. With that, the public supports its soldiers. An enemy is created.

The Result: Environment meets Soldiers Confirming The Stanford Experiment.
To sum up the environment that leads to combat, I'll recap. We have a people who are trained to and find value in life by being protectors of the community. In modern US those people are driven by financial gain and/ or family respect, condition not to question or weigh the rationality against their own beliefs, and willing to kill without question and feel socially justified in doing so. The society has to support the soldiers and affirm the belief that the targeted group are something less then human and a threat. You have to have leadership willing to absolve themselves from guilt for being the trigger finger on the weapon.

When you have these elements and combine with the psychology of war, the result of soldiers treating the entire population, enemies and allies alike, with degrading disrespect is a given. It has to work out that way. This was proven during the Sanford Prison Experiments. (http://psychology.about.com/od/classicpsychologystudies/a/stanford-prison-experiment.htm)

So are they “bad seeds”.
The simple answer is a resounding “NO!” In fact they turned out exactly how the military expected them too. They are actually too good of a soldier. The acts of Abu Ghraib, Mahmudiyah, and the incident with the peeing marines are all natural results if you have any belief that psychology exists. It is one of the rare test we could conduct on human psychology that we can prove as a law with scientific method validity. People granted authority will use it to maintain their power. Once the group starts to participate in something of this nature, even the one with the weakest indoctrination will come around. “Causalities of War” made a great movie, but the reality is that would be so much the exception then it would the rule.
What we do in the west to the psyche of a human to make him/ her a soldier is dangerous to say the least. It is why we must only use them as method of last resort, and only when confronting real and inevitable threats.