Some Knowledge

I live in America.  America is a great country.  In America we choose the most popular person to be our leader.  For some reason, the people who founded our country thought that the best person to lead a nation would be the person who got the most votes.  This was not an original idea.  They got it from the Greeks, who also had a democracy in ancient times.  For unknown reasons, this has worked out fairly well.  The same person can not lead America for more than eight years.  Perhaps they chose this style of government in an attempt to give political power to the people.  At least that’s the story you learn in government class in highschool.

The most popular person might in fact not be the best qualified person to run a country.  People don’t cast votes for the person they think is the most qualified.  They vote for the person they like the best.  This is human nature.  So, we have a president that most of the people like.  Does that mean he or she knows anything about how to run a country?  Does that mean they are responsible enough to know when to push the button on the nuclear weapons.  Hell, most of our presidents can’t even pronounce nuclear, let alone know how the things work.  We’ve even had actors elected to office.  The most popular person is nothing but the most popular person.  They are not necessarily the person who knows how to do the job they are applying for.

Is there a better way to govern a country?  There must be.  We don’t let students graduate from school unless they pass a test.  Shouldn’t there be some kind of test that a presidential candidate has to pass before they can run for office?  This would weed out the candidates of obvious morons.  Morons are dangerous.  Maybe there should be a test they could design that would select our leader as the person best qualified to make executive decisions.  Unlike many Americans, I have no religious belief in the soundness of our political system.

Then there is the question of money.  It seems political candidates are allowed to beg for contributions.  If I go out in the city and ask random people for money, the police will come along and arrest me for panhandling.  Why are politicians allowed to beg?  They spend this money on TV advertisements in an attempt to make themselves more popular.  This is annoying.  It’s bad enough advertisers are trying to brainwash me into buying stuff, now they are trying to form opinions on who should lead the country in my battered mind.  The whole situation is ridiculous.  Whoever has the most money from begging will fool the most people into voting for him.  This is how we select our leaders?  No wonder they’re all crooks.

I’m not sure who I am going to vote for on election day.  I generally pick the least popular candidate.  What I should do is hire a private investigator to investigate all the candidates and tell me what they really want out of the election, but I already know.  They want power.  Money and fame are not enough for these people.  They want to send soldiers to foreign countries to kill people.  They want to spend all the money in the world on their pet projects.  People who want to lead like to tell other people what to do.  This is just the kind of attitude that should disqualify a person from ever being elected.  Of course, I am just one person and only have one vote, so what I want is meaningless in this great country.

It’s cloudy this morning.  The air is cool and there is only a bit of a breeze.  I noticed yesterday while driving to my brother’s house that the sumac is starting to turn red.  Fall is coming on fast.

I think that autumn is probably my favorite season.  I like the heat and sun of summer, but the season lacks the drama of Fall.  Still, it is a season of things dying and is in that way sad.  I do not like cold weather or snow, but that comes along with the changing seasons.

I’ve been writing in this blog for just about seven months now, almost every day adding something.  It’s nice that I’ve gotten over 40,000 page views in such a short time.  Still, the interest in what I write tends to focus on things that are popular.  I guess this is logical.  There’s only a slim chance that some person is going to read random thoughts about the weather.  I may move on to another project.  I think I should devote my time to something that may pay off eventually.  Perhaps I will write a novel about some boy wizard who takes over the world.  Wouldn’t that be original?

With the cooler weather of Fall comes jackets and warm clothes.  I have a good collection of things to wear and don’t pay attention to what the latest fashion trends are.  I am wondering what I want to do this afternoon.  I don’t think I really want to sit in front of my computer reading and writing.  Perhaps I will go out and do some shopping or take a walk in the park.  Perhaps I will come up with an idea for a book I can write in ten days and sell for millions.  Who knows, the future holds many possibilities.  What I need now is just some time to think.

It has to start with an idea.  This has to be a good idea that improves things in the world.  Your idea that you should be king of the one world empire does not work here.  Perhaps your idea is that there should be one world government, administered over the Internet.  Maybe this would be a good idea.  Maybe your idea is not that world changing.

Maybe you have an idea that people shouldn’t be starving to death in a world where food is often thrown out.  Sure, that’s a great idea.  What would you have to do physically to make this idea work?  Would you design some kind of meal replacement bar that would keep for ten years and did not require refrigeration or other extreme storage measures?  Maybe you could make this bar out of corn and soybeans and oats and surplus fruit for a low cost that people could afford.  Maybe you have an idea that you can sell your products to the government and they will distribute your balanced, vitamin-fortified food product to all the starving people.

Maybe your great idea is that doctors and pharmaceutical companies should be paid by the government for their services out of tax money and any sick people can get health care without having to pay extra.  I mean, insurance companies make money on health care, why shouldn’t a government be able to do the same?  Maybe you think it’s stupid to have to pay thousands of dollars a day to stay in a hospital, when all the other healthy people can get by in their homes.  Maybe you have an idea for how everyone can benefit by health care being made available to everyone.

Of course, you might have this radical idea that war and violence are wrong and destructive.  Maybe you have some idea for a world court that can settle international disputes without the need for guns and tanks and bombs.  Maybe you think nations of people should behave like civilized people and not engage in acts of kamikaze terrorism.  Maybe you think that the idea of separate nations of people in conflict with each other because of differences in ideology and religion is just stupid and wrong.  Maybe you think that money spent on weapons and armies is worse than wasted.  Maybe your great idea to change the world is called peace.

So, you have all these great ideas.  What do you do about them?  Do you keep them to yourself and nobody ever knows that there are different ways to think about the problems of the world?  Do you drive your friends crazy telling them about all your great ideas?  Maybe you should make a plan and try to implement some of these world-changing ideas.  Maybe you should form a group where any person on the earth can join and leave their comments, like on a blog, and you can do something about the death spiral the world is headed into when the oil runs out and people are left without power.

One person can not do much to change the world.  It is the acts of certain individuals that cause a lot of the problems we face in the world today.  Any time a nation lets one person have the power of life and death over other people, problems are created.  There is no reason to be ruled by an elite class of political strongmen in a world where the individual has the power to communicate with anyone else on the surface of the globe.  Groups of people working together for good ends solve problems.  Changing the world is as simple as convincing another person that something must be done to solve an obvious problem.

My inbox was flooded this morning with a dozen emails from different marketers.  It’s not really spam, I think, because I signed up for all these mailing lists.  Still, it’s a bit annoying to read through so many sales pitches for information products on how to make money on the Internet.

It’s obvious how to make money on the net.  You sell an ebook or video series on how to make money on the net.  This does not even have to be good information.  In fact, it can just be a small ebook on how to sell information products with a website.  I watched one video from Frank Kern on how one group of people set up a site and made $400,000 in a week.  Wow, very interesting.  And to get the same information all I have to do is give you $2000?  Wow, I see now how to make the real money.  Sell information on how to make money.

What gets me about these various schemes is that they produce absolutely nothing but more websites on how to make money.  A shoe factory makes and sells shoes.  People buy shoes to wear and everyone involved makes some cash.  A publisher makes books that entertain or inform people.  The publisher sells the books to people who are looking to be entertained or informed.  An Internet guru takes a file on how to make money online and sells the file to people looking for information on how to make money online.

So, my email account kept me busy all morning.  I think I wasted two hours looking at all the pointless videos and sales pitches.  If I ever have to, I could probably write my own sales pitch for these kinds of products.  Maybe I should reply to all these hucksters and offer my services as a copywriter.  I could cash in on some of their good fortune at selling information to people on how to make money selling information to people.

I don’t know why I got so many of these sales pitches today.  Maybe the impending market crash has got people scared.  Maybe the email marketers are ramping up their operations to try and get all the cash out of the system before it all goes to hell.  I don’t know.  I think I may end up taking myself off all these pointless lists and go back to just deleting random spam from unknown persons as my email activity.  It’s interesting to see how these people operate on an email list they spend so much effort generating.  If this is how real businesses operate, it’s no wonder the whole economy is going bankrupt.

I read about Solar energy for a while this afternoon.  There’s a company in China called Shine Solar that makes solar panels for a low cost.  They have 500 or so people working at their factory.  I thought it was interesting that a company in China would be trying to make cheap solar panels.  Most of the companies in the western world who make solar panels pride themselves on making expensive solar panels.

I looked up on Google approximately how much it costs to build a solar cell factory.  Apparently this is about a hundred million dollars.  The Sharp solar panel factory is supposed to produce 480 megawatts of solar panels a year.  It would take a lot of factories like that to replace all the coal and gas fired power plants.  A typical coal plant might produce 2000 megawatts, if memory serves me right.  The Sharp factory would have to run for a lot of years to make a dent in conventional power production.

I’m not sure why car companies can not figure out electric cars.  You have Chevy getting ready to build a hybrid they call an electric because it can go 40 miles on a charge.  They haven’t got the battery figured out yet.  Maybe it’s because they are trying to reinvent the lithium ion cell that a lot of other companies already make and hold patents on.  Maybe GM should grow a brain and buy batteries from a battery factory.  But no, the car companies have to try to do every bit of design themselves because they don’t want any other companies to make a profit off their precious car product.  Tesla buys batteries.  Their car goes 200 miles on a charge.  Why is GM so backwards they can’t appreciate years of research already done?

It would be nice if the world ran on solar power.  People would not have to burn oil and pollute the atmosphere just to have energy.  It would be nice if there were safe, efficient electric cars.  The oil companies have been suppressing that technology for over 100 years.  It would be nice if appliances were not designed to break down after a given number of years.  It would be nice if houses were built so that they didn’t blow down in a storm.  We don’t live in a world where things are made to last.  We live in a world that works, after a fashion, until it breaks down and people have to fix it again.

I can’t help thinking that the economic problems that the world faces right now are tied to the high price for energy.  It takes energy to do anything.  I’m using energy right now to type this on my computer, and the server that stores this data is using energy just to stay online.  The cost of doing any kind of operation or business is tied to the price of energy.  When costs go up, prices must go up, and then sales drop off.  There is a lot of feedback in the economy.  When it costs more money for people to do their web surfing, page views will drop off.  Of course, maybe people are just watching TV to see if the world is going to end yet.

I’ve been looking around the net all morning reading about the financial crisis, trying to find out what caused it all to happen.  There’s some pretty basic problems in the way businesses handle money in this world.  In the first place, they take money from people for nothing but a promise and a piece of paper, if you’re lucky.  Paper is pretty cheap.  Ink and printing is a bit more costly.  Still, a nickel max for a sheet of paper that a stock or a deposit receipt is made out of.  A piece of paper and a promise that it’s worth something.

What happens to the money after you give it to the financial institution?  Why, they give it to somebody who wants to use it to run a business or buy something expensive like a house.  So, some investor gives money to a bank, and the bank lends this other person’s money to a person buying a house.  If they can’t pay the mortgage, the bank is stuck trying to sell the house.

Alright, that’s the general principle of the business.  Once the bank makes the loan, it gets it’s money plus interest back over a period of several years.  The problem comes when the economy goes to hell.  People lose their jobs, because the work goes to a factory in China.  Jobless persons can not pay mortgage bills.  Loan goes bad.  Bank is stuck trying to sell a house.  So many people lose their jobs, a lot of houses go on the market.  More houses than people can buy, the price goes down.  Bank is forced to sell house for less than it paid.  Bank loses money and goes broke.  Now, people who invested in bank or finance company are stuck, because their money is gone because some executive made a bad loan.  Government comes along and prints up a lot of money to buy the bad debt from the bankrupt company.

None of this addresses the problem of why so many people lost their jobs and could no longer pay for the things they borrowed money to buy.  The financial crisis is a manifestation of the greater problems in a society where people can not find jobs to make money.  Every industry in America is affected by this problem.  Companies don’t manufacture things in America any more because they would have to pay workers a reasonable wage.  Greed for more profit causes them to build factories in countries with lower standards of living.  The same greed that causes companies to outsource jobs undermines the consumer base for purchasing their product.  If people can no longer afford the product because some business president sent their job to Mexico, the company can no longer sell them a car and their profits decrease.

There are a lot of businesses and companies and government agencies involved in a working economy.  Money is created by the government to form the trade basis on which the economy runs.  Businesses manufacture products that people buy, and part of this money goes to pay the wages of the people who make the products.  Business owners and governments collect money from the cycle of manufacturing and sales.  There is a constant need for more money in the economic system so that people can save and collect money from their activities.  This need for outside input of monetary units makes the system unstable.  When you consider foreign trade, and the exchange rates between different currencies, this adds more instability.

Financial companies make money by moving money around between people who need money for various reasons.  For a financial company to be stable, it needs a continuous input of more money from its loans.  When the ability of people to pay back loans is compromised on such a wide scale by factors like job loss and falling prices for housing, the finance company gets hit.  Loaning money at an interest rate really does not produce anything that can be considered a product that can be sold at a profit, yet lending institutions try to further profit off loans by selling derivatives to speculators.  The whole system is a house of cards that depends on people producing more and more.  Resources are limited on this planet.  There is a finite amount of any kind of thing available to people.  Maybe it’s time economists started thinking of a stable system of trade that benefits all people instead of trying to think of yet another way to rob from the poor to support the rich.

I had an enjoyable day reading stuff on the net and watching videos. I found a bunch of MLM marketing videos by Katie Freiling that were interesting. I have no intention of investing in any of these marketing businesses. It was just nice to watch somebody so enthusiastic about what she does for money. Besides, Katie’s cute.

It’s a nice day outside and the sun is shining. I read some strange things about WordPress just a while ago. This one site said things like your basic blog will get deleted if you run any advertising or paid posts on it. Then, I went to the terms of service link at WordPress and read through all the terms, which said nothing about advertising, just not using the blog as a link farm for a commercial site. So, I don’t get tons of traffic anyway, and I’m not about to advertise or sell links, even though Google somehow gave this blog page rank 5 for some reason. I don’t much care about making money with this little blog right now. If I wanted to make money on the net I would create a site that posts links to various credit card companies and make money as an affiliate directing people to credit card applications. I hear some of those sites clear $90,000 a month doing that. Besides, a static site like a credit referral site wouldn’t involve tons of typing.

I haven’t done much fishing around for popular topics lately. The other day, my most popular entry was something I wrote off the top of my head about solving physics problems. I hear CERN is having some physics problems these days with a blown transformer and fried wiring. Too bad. I guess they have to wait until Spring to see if they can form tiny black holes that destroy the earth, as if that was even possible.

Well, that’s about all I feel like writing about today. Maybe I will go back to searching for MLM marketing videos on the video hosting services. It’s strange to me how some people can get so excited about selling such useless products or services. If Internet marketing was about setting up factories to build solar cells or windmills or electric cars, I could see the point. As it is now, unless they can ship it in the mail or by truck or just download it directly, it’s probably not being sold much online. Then again, real estate is big business. With all the foreclosures and the depressed market, it would be a good time to stock up on houses and sell them when the market recovers. Then again, we may be in for another dark ages. Why does that make me laugh?

First, you need some kind of product.  This is important.  If you don’t have a product all you have is a pyramid scheme, and that’s illegal.  So, you get a product.  The product should either be something expensive, like a travel club membership, or something that has a recurring charge, like diet food sales.  In general you will want the cheapest kind of product that can be distributed with minimal cost.  Perhaps some kind of ebook would be ideal.

Once you have your product, you will need to decide on a structure.  Most MLMs are based on a simple pyramid structure.  Those who enter early on the top of the pyramid have a lot of people under them.  Those who enter later have fewer people under them.  Perhaps divide the people under a person into several teams.  You should sort out the structure of your MLM before you publicize it.

Now you will have to set up a website.  This is the most cost-effective means of promoting your business.  Write a nice long sales letter and get accounts set up so you can start taking payments from the people who fall for your scheme.  You will want to set up a forum for your employees/customers so they can arrange themselves into teams and exchange information on how to make the most money from your MLM.  This is good for your business, because as the organization running the show you get a good cut out of every sale.

Now, you will want to really get the word out about your offering.  How you do this is for your customers/employees to set up their own websites selling your high profit product.  The more people you have trying to sell your product, the more money you will make selling your product.  Everyone who buys your product becomes a sales person for your product, so potential growth is exponential.  Be sure to capitalize on all the new websites your customers are going to set up by selling them hosting packages at an outrageous rate.

Once you have several hundred people actively promoting your ebook or travel club or diet food on the net, the money will start rolling in.  You will have to keep track of your profits and of your payouts to your MLM customers so be sure to take some of your profits and hire a good accountant.  As long as you pay your taxes and report anyone who makes more than $600 to the IRS you should be OK with the law.  Soon you will have an empire of moneymaking websites pulling in a constant stream of cash for you and your family.

I went out to the bookstore this afternoon and looked at various books on writing.  Seems I have read lots of these already.  I read the first chapter or so of the Oxford Essential Guide to Writing, but it seemed a bit basic.  I don’t really need advise on how to form a sentence.  I read over the information on how to find topics to write about.  Basically, what this book says is to find something interesting that you know something about, but not something you know so much about that you will get bored writing about it.  Wow, some obvious information.

Books are expensive these days.  Maybe that’s why I haven’t bought any in a while.  I can’t see paying $20 for a book on how to write comedy that tells me nothing about how to write comedy.  Of course, I still have this book.  Maybe I should take a picture of it and try to sell it here on my blog.  People could bid on it in comments, then send me a money order for the price, plus shipping charges and I would send it off.  Of course, that would be a lot of work, keeping track of all kinds of bids.  Then there would be all the comment email spam in my email account.  More useless words to delete.

I think I gave away something like ten books about writing some years ago.  I am running out of shelf space for books.  I should just put a sign out front saying “Book Store”  and let people browse for something they might be interested in.  I’ve read two or three books on writing this year, and they were a bit non-specific in their information.  I don’t even know why I find myself reading so many writing books.  I am in the middle of one right now about writing horror.  Of course, if you’re reading this you already know that my writing is pretty horrible today.

So, I looked over a lot of books about writing than went to the magazine section to see if they had any mags about writing or literature.  Of course, I had no luck finding these.  I think I just wanted to get out of the house for a while this afternoon.  I’m thinking the future doesn’t look too good for paper book vendors.  I think people will soon be reading more electronic media on their computers.  So, I will continue to visit book stores every week or so until they go the way of the dodo and become extinct.

Brainwashing is a term that comes from the old cold war.  It is variously described as changing a person’s beliefs against their will.  TV uses many of the same tactics as brainwashing to achieve its goals.  What are the goals of television?

Advertising dollars fund TV.  Even public television gets money from advertisers.  An advertiser is either a company trying to sell some product or service, or a politician trying to get elected.  The bottom line in any mass media enterprise is “who’s paying the bills?”  Advertisements make viewers aware of some product, service, or leader hopeful, and programming puts viewers in a receptive state.

Look at the content of a typical commercial on TV.  They show happy people enjoying some product.  The product will give you happiness.  It doesn’t matter if it is a car, a piece of clothing, a chair.  All products or services are depicted as supplying happiness.  This is a basic principle of mass market advertising.  Even the political candidates are there to give you a happy life, and their opponents will make you sad.

Now, we look at the programming.  Programming is the bait TV broadcasters use to get people to watch the advertising.  What is a typical TV program about?  Bad things.  All the bad things that happen in real life are on the news programs.  All the bad things that happen in fiction are on the drama programs.  All the bad things that could possibly happen in the world are on the science and nature programs.  All the bad things you could possible eat are on the food and travel channels.

How do all these negative images on TV programming get people to buy more stuff?  It is simple.  Bad images and thoughts make people unhappy and disturbed.  A person made unhappy by seeing negative situations on the programming watches the commercial and sees happy people.  The happy people have some item that makes them happy, the offering.  Unhappy people watching the programming are shown how to be happy again.  All they have to do is give their money to the advertiser for the offering and they will be happy again.  It is a simple psychological tactic.

Most people are not aware of the subtle influence of TV and the mass media.  If they were aware of what was being done to their minds by this commercial manipulation, they would not be susceptible to this kind of brainwashing.  Television uses this technique on every member of the population who uses their form of entertainment, or programming.  The tactics are blatantly obvious in children’s programs, even though children have no money to spend on the offering.

Once you are aware of how television is brainwashing and mind control, you begin to notice the tricks they play to get your money.  The mass media is a business that makes money by selling many different things.  Broadcasters are not doing the public any favors when they produce and show programming.  These businesses attempt to manipulate people emotionally, because they know this is the way to get people to spend their money on things they might not need.  Broadcasters even use the content of programming to get people to want to take vacations, eat at restaurants, and buy cars and building supplies.

Like most people, I have watched a lot of TV in my lifetime.  I have been subjected to every kind of psychological tactic to get me to think Ford first and to hunger for Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Awareness of the attempts at subtle or overt influence used in the TV medium is the best way to develop immunity to their tactics of brainwashing and mind control.