A core tool is holding back everything.

Knowledge is power. I find every day more and more evidence pointing towards this proverbial fact, and with this knowledge of evidence, I learn more about the correlative newfound power that I hold.

A lot of people like to state that money is power. I think that this is a bit of a misunderstanding (Or, perhaps in the case of those with the money telling people this, misinformation) through common materialistic philosophy - Many people have money, but not all are powerful. Take people that win the lottery, for instance. They win it, then have most of their "winnings" taken away through mindless consumerism, taxes, etcetera. Then, on the other hand, we have people that have knowledge of money. Take people that run the lottery, for instance. If you don't believe that these people are running a tax on the stupid and/or ignorant, you probably aren't thinking from a point of view with knowledge of how the system works on a mathematical level. Without the knowledge of what your money is and how to use it, you are nowhere with it. To summarize it in one sentence: Money is not power; Without knowledge humans will just waste it, and those with the knowledge of how to convince others to blow their money on things will subsequently have your money.



Power really is only half knowledge. The other half of power is action, not only physical but mostly mental. There is the preliminary action to assert and direct yourself towards goals, action to persevere, action to stick to the principles you set out in your goals where it matters and action to change goals (Also determined with flexibility in mind to take in account this rule of action towards power) when necessary for advancement.

Money, very basically, can be defined as a system of abstracting worth, putting it into terms of wealth. Wealth is defined as (from a definition from the princeton.edu wordnet online dictionary):

Noun

* S: (n) wealth, wealthiness (the state of being rich and affluent; having a plentiful supply of material goods and money) "great wealth is not a sign of great intelligence"
* S: (n) wealth (the quality of profuse abundance) "she has a wealth of talent"
* S: (n) wealth, riches (an abundance of material possessions and resources)
* S: (n) wealth (property that has economic utility: a monetary value or an exchange value)

The interesting thing here, however, is that what we are looking at is wealth represented and controlled by an abstract system. While this is not the problem itself, the problem with this abstract system is that it is run by those with the knowledge and who also take action and therefore seize the power over the abstract system. The problem lies in our very human nature, and how certain humans have taken to the practice of manipulating systems for individual gain. Many systems have been compromised this way, but the one system that helps most to compromise other systems, including social, environmental, educational, and perhaps most painfully, individual psychological systems, is the one that is the focus of this article.

In order to cause more change in these other systems, which is the focus of this site, the simple solution that may come to many people's minds is the destruction of money. However, destruction by its very nature not the simplest solution - Destruction leads to chaos, and chaos is the antithesis of ordered simplicity. To use a quote from the late philosopher and architect [definition of architect: one who creates plans to be used in making things)] Buckminster Fuller that I found on the spacecollective.org gallery: "“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete". There's an even more pertinent quote from the same man: "Don't fight the system. Rather, create a new one".

When a new system of abstracting wealth is introduced as not just an alternative but the norm, I believe that we can finally start flying into the future at warp speed. We may be telling ourselves that we are going fast now, yet the issue of how we manage worth has been in the way of achieving full human potential and even, as studies have shown, are beginning to throw us backwards. The late scientist Carl Sagan makes a very good point in a paragraph from his 1970 book "The Cosmic Connection" [Available for somewhat further reading here or at your local library/bookstore]:

"There are many viewpoints on the present and near-future costs of space science and astronomy. Because of the annual costs of ground-based astronomy are only a few percent of the costs of the scientific space program, I will concentrate on the price of the latter. It is customary to compare expenditures on space to annual expenditures in the United States for ethyl alcohol or bubble gum or cosmetics. I personally find it more useful to compare the costs with those of the U.S. Department of Defense. Using a report of the government's General Accounting Office (The New York Times, July 19, 1970), we learn that the total anticipated cost of the Viking mission to land on Mars in 1976 is about half that of the cost overruns in the so-called safeguard anti-ballistic missile system for fiscal year 1970. The cost of a Grand Tour exploration of all the planets in the outer solar system (Canceled for lack of funds) is comparable to the 1970 cost overruns on the minuteman III system; the cost of a very large optical telescope in space, capable of definitive studies of the origins of the universe, is comparable to the 1970 cost overruns on the Minuteman II missile, and a major program of Earth resource satellites, involving several years of close inspection of the surface and weather of the planet, would cost approximately the fiscal year 1970 cost overruns on the PC-3 aircraft. A decade-long program of systematic investigation of the entire solar system would cost as much as the accounting mistakes on a single "defense" weapons system in a single year. The scientific space program is small change compared to the errors in the Department of Defense budget."

Wow. Does that not blow your mind when you extrapolate with the fact that the cost overruns of military, destruction-based projects is probably the highest in human history right now? Where does that leave humanity?

Now, there are a few problems that I can point out with my idea of starting a new system of abstracting worth. I don't have solid ideas to propose involving such essential points for reworking such an essential system such as checks and balances. I realize that such a system would take a lot of time and energy to complete, and I also realize that lots of time and energy is something that many people believe is worth their time and, well, money. I realize that my math is stuck in grade 11 high school math and I couldn't really begin to start constructing a system like this at the point where math is a requirement, I also realize that so far I'm not much more than a somewhat lazy 18 year old who spends too much time dicking around. However, how things have been going in other ways give me a lot of inspiration and hope. Other systems, such as those for operating computers (BSD, Linux), delivering catalogues of information (Wikis), or the very web server that is delivering you these words (Apache running on CentOS Linux), have been developed under principles of open source. I'm thinking of starting this as an open-source project, and inviting mathematicians, scientists, thinkers, maverick spirits, programmers, and the entire world to build, review, and implement such a system.

First, though, if this is going to be an open-source project, I will definitely need input on what I've just written. What do you have to say?

Wed, Dec 26, 2007  Permanent link
Categories: money, wealth, systems, worth, future, everything