Introduction - So I was pondering the great paradox of our free market economy. Namely in the field of innovation. Basically, our government attempts to do as little as possible to interfere with the market in the name of efficiency. I applaude our governments efforts to not screw up the economy. I really do. But there is a major problem with our money-based system.
--++ Expansion on the Audit for Progressive U post ++--
Outline for experiment with the Progressive U Forum:
1) Create a status bar that is attached with a persons name. Include in this bar these attributes:
Ability to communicate (mispelling/organization)
Ability to retain focus (content)
Ability to retain dignity (content - R/NC-17)
Having all 3 tags means that you have been 'validated' as a higher-member of Progressive U, and are not simply spamming for the $1000.
Introduction - It has come to my attention that our entire economy is based upon oil. Well, it came to my attention a long time ago, but thats not the point. The point is, our need for reliable, cheap, convenient energy has grown so great that the removal of petroluem oil would surely cause the collapse of the world economy. Just as telephone services, electricity, and water has become a utility, I believe the government should step up and force oil to join the club.
This was a comment to The Cadet Who Will Never Be Censored's post on the infiltration of this forum by n00bs.
Problem - Too many people flooding an public forum whose aims do not coincide with the aims of the public forums creators.
Solution - Create a differential-status for people whose aims coincide with the aims of the forum creators. We can start by creating tags for people who always spell correctly, people who post blogs relevant to current ideas, etc.
Story - I've been running into people here and there on these forums who machine out answers such as "Participate in public debates" or "Write to your local town official". As someone who cares about the environment (not insinuating that the people 50+ years older than me DONT care about the environment...) and long-term cancerous issues arising today [iraq, global warming, wars on ideas, integration of church and state, party-seperation of america, aids, cancer, viagra, networks] I got to thinking about what kind of effect public debates have had on issues in the past. I haven't really noticed any broad social reform or new technology arising from public debates. Mostly, I have witnessed complaining, people making outlandish observations, many other people debunking the outlandish observations, and people arguing arguments that have been argued a thousand times before with no clear answer.
Backstory - This is an argument about how us people who dont smoke/get high/drink in high school sometimes have an ill-will toward people who do. The topic started at:
http://www.progressiveu.org/160000-who-else-cant-wait-to-see-their-classmates-fail#comment-22711
However, I posed a question about society in my reply comment, at the bottom of this post, so I figured it was worth putting on my blog.
Dilemma - I'm thinking the root reason here (if someone didnt point it out already, I didnt read all the comments) is that society says that those people who smoke and drink and get high all the time are throwing their lives away. Unfortunately, theres no 'instant results' to this catastrophe, and its not 100% positive that it will happen. We (by this I mean me) wish bad things to happen to them because we want gratification that we (the people who didnt smoke and waste money on marajuana) are better off than them.
Backstory - in Kruncha's blog of Reason vs. Emotion, a spinoff argument arose over the correlation between emotion and reason, and their usefulness to society, the universe, and your brain.
"If memory operated by emotion, then why wouldn't I constantly be harassed by thoughts of arguments, beggars in streets, starving children, and war?" - Protagonist
Story : Ever wonder how everyone can be touting the 'greatest minivan ever invented' or the 'most sophisticated blender ever to grace your eyes'? Its pretty obvious, but overlooked, that any invention created at the present will be the best there has ever been, or it will be worthless to advertise. However, its not as good as it could be, which is the actual problem with cars, ovens, refridgerators, and cellphones. This is a paradox that exists in our capitalist environment. On the one hand, innovation is rewarded by vast monetary gains, and therefore spawns a lot of new ideas in a search for some groundbreaker such as the 'furby'. However, this same monetary system makes it more lucrative to draw out improvement upon those ideas until you have exhausted the consumers will to buy the present one. Consider the DVD market. They are waiting for everyone to buy DVD's before they release widespread use of Blu-Ray discs, which hold 25 GB each. (By 'they' I mean of course all Japanese home electronics manufacturers)^_^
