Public Confidence in Smart Technology, Modern Economics, and the Great Swindle

In recent years, there's been a surge in consumer dissatisfaction with large companies and their bedfellows, large governments. Revolving door policies and light or no repurcussions for the perpetrators of the worst economic fraud in history have chiseled away at the public's confidence in the abilities of both mega-corporations and governments to make decisions on the behalf of the people.

The current manifestation of our collective reality is one more frightening than any known population has ever before endured. Or so the historic record says. The closest we can come to historical records of some prior society dealing with something similar involve the ancient tales of the gods flying around destroying everything. Fortunately, we know that technology does not a god make, regardless of the fool who screams otherwise. Of course, with nuclear warheads, heat-seeking missiles, and satellite imagery, one might make analogies (I'll try to refrain).

Today, we have technological capabilities that in some cases surpass that which science fiction has hinted at and in other cases barely breaches the surface of what science fiction hopes to portray. We have computational devices that also act as communication or entertainment devices; they fit in our hands and we carry them in purses and pockets. The statutory GPS and e911 systems insure the devices can be tracked at all times (within the tracking zone - cell towers). Every year the established coverage area increases in size as more rural areas are incorporated within the service areas owned and operated by mega-corporations under charter from the federal, state, and local governements.

The progress we've made in wireless communication has directly impacted the inherent daily value of landlines (i.e. wired telephones); unless of course there's a natural disaster, in which case, the resilience of payphones and landlines are well-proven and cellphones, not so much. Needless to say, the recent invention of the smartphone and the touch screen has ushered human understanding of communication into an whole new sphere of what is possible and how quickly it is possible. That wide-spread understanding collectively sees payphones as obsolete.

Some companies have stepped into the playing field by introducing modernized payphones which offer video calling, internet connection, voice calling, and a credit card reader to accept usage payments. I have no idea how these modernized phones would hold up in a natural disaster, but it'll be interesting to find out (no worries, I'll update).

Meanwhile, the Librarian of Congress, a non-elected official, declared it illegal for Americans to free their cell phones from the locks carriers sneak into our phones. The decree included what is clearly an unjust punishment for any who dare free their purchased property. The punishment: a felony, five years imprisonment, and $500,000 fine. More importantly, where does he get off decreeing anything? This ain't a monarchy. He's supposed to help enforce congressional acts, he's not congress, he doesn't get to make laws. Freeing the phone from the monoplistic hands of cell carriers is a right of consumers.

One might speculate that the wireless carriers are less worried about unauthorized access to copyrighted material and more worried about forcing people to stay customers if they want to keep using their phones. Since smart devices are integral to modern society, one might conclude that wireless carriers and the Librarian of Congress (et al.) are less interested in finding ways to increase customer loyalty, than they are in strong-arming customers into retaining a service they no longer desire.

The myriad uses of a smartphone within the ever expanding frontier of web applications has created a boom in sharing knowledge and tools on the fly. As long as you're "in network" and "paid-in-full" you can access the world wide web in the palm of your hand. There even exists open source wifi applications that allow one to download applications to freely utilize open wifi sources. Some of these applications even give users their own phone numbers.

Every time we switch carriers and purchase a new phone, we're playing into their scheme. And, every time we unlock our phone before switching carriers, we're excercising the right to not spend needlessly. If a phone owner knows how to unlock their phone, then they're technologically advanced enough to understand that the phone's warranty may be voided. A do-it-yourself kind of person has the option to use their property as they see fit, so, if they're good with voiding the warranty, then the device manufacturer has no further obligations; either way that has nothing to do with the service carrier. Besides which, many manufacturers are notorious for not honoring their warranties, which means the do-it-yourself person ought not worry about wasting precious time waiting on the manufacturer to decide.

The thing that pisses me off about this is that no one has their computer locked to a specific internet carrier, a smartphone is a tiny ass computer, why was it locked in the first fucking place? Corporate bottomlines, that's why. Public officials and big businesses promote the portable devices as computers, we use them as computers, so, why the fuck is the Librarian of Congress suddenly changing position on the issue of unlocking phones and ordering punishments that do not fit the crimes?

One reason all should be upset with this blatant attack on the people: it's also an assualt on our small businesses. Smartphones now afford small business owners the ability to accept credit card payments pretty much anywhere, which also zeroes the costs of purchasing bulky credit card machines (leasing and maintenance). If a small business owner gets their phone set up perfectly, but later decides to switch phone carriers, they shouldn't have to worry about transferring their information to a new phone; unless, of course, they want to upgrade their phone.
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The issue of smartphone legality is merely one aspect of a much larger societal problem dealing with product creation, consumability and repairability. For corporations to receive uprecedented profits, year after year, consumers must purchase at uprecedented levels and governments must subsidize corporations. Since the global economic meltdown, some have termed the Great Recession, consumer spending fell, unemployment rose, and government subsidizing of corporations was extended and expanded to unimagined levels. A few factors that negate unprecedented consumer spending: consumers had no jobs, no savings, no retirement, and no way to recover what they had before the bubble burst and the Great Swindle was revealed. Oh, and let's not forget, the biggest stimulus package in the history of the United States was given, not to the taxpayers, but to the swindlers themselves, the very banks that engaged in felonious behavior.

The politicians, bankers, and speculators? Well, they kept on politicking, banking, and speculating, their sins buried in the filth, corruption, and cronyism that permeates through every financial and government district in every part of the world. Their guilt written in the blood of slave laborers; written in the sweat of families foreclosed upon and forcefully evicted by the local police; written in the disillusionment of the police, firefighters, EMS, and teachers whose pensions, paychecks, and union protections were attacked from one side of the nation to the next; written in the LGBT lives lost to homophobia and transphobia in the workplace, the marketplace; written in the tears of women told what to do with their bodies; written in the painful tumors of cancer, PTSD, and fibromyalgia patients who might have experienced relief or cure from medicinal marijuana; written in the lives of American soldiers and Middle Eastern civilians murdered over opium and oil.

So deep does their guilt run, their fortunes all should be confiscated and used to provide services to the people they swindled, the remainder of their lives spent in prison, their children left without inheritance, their estates made into homeless shelters. Every day of their lives in prison they ought to work for pennies pressing license plates, dodging through general population just praying that no one within those walls holds a grudge or a shank. And, should any of them choose the gentleman's way out, suicide is a time honored tradition that their great grandfathers participated in (or, ought to have) after the crash of 1929.

Of course, I doubt any of these douchebags will grow a conscience and suddenly experience absolute remorse over their roll in devastating the economy and causing mass homelessness and unemployment. Which is precisely why the politicians ought to do their damn jobs and seek punishment of all guilty parties, of course, politicians are just as guilty. The perpetrators are psychopaths that don't feel remorse, as such they have to be brought to justice. Unfortunately, our justice system has been hijacked by cronies of the perpetrators (also psychopaths). As such, it remains up to the people to vote, to replace the old blood with new blood, to reject the long-known political families, to elect the younger generation of unknowns, the third party activists. The poor.

Americans have a duty to stand up against economic tyrants who derail our country and poison our people, our food supplies. Every time the government squashes personal freedom in the name of safety, security, or corporate rights, the people's inalienable right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is directly attacked. The people are guinea pigs testing products, pharmecuteical and street drugs, GMO frankenfoods, pesticides, plastics. Our bodies have reacted negatively, cancers and autoimmune diseases play evolutionary games with antibiotics as new strains resistant to old cures find their way into our blood streams, where they cross the blood-brain barrier and lodge their pernicious cells into our minds, before circling back to our hearts. Eaten alive from the inside as tumors spread.

Worse, yet, we've done it to ourselves, because our ancestors did it to themselves and kindly passed the tradition on to us. We are the loyal employees of testing companies, pharmaceutical companies, GMO R&D companies, oil companies, banks, police, military. We are the politicians, the bankers, the big industry policy shakers, the cashiers, the janitors, the site managers. It may feel just to point a finger, to place blame, to point out fraud and claim corruption. In cases where fraud and corruption have occured, it is just. Duty wont allow the finger pointing to stop there. Culpability covers a vast spectrum of humanity when the economic swindle of the world is revealed. The banking system, the players, the backers, the investors, the depositors, the debitors, the debitees: these are you and me and everyone participating in a fiat currency fiduciary system. The dutiful would recognize they've been duped into supporting the very tyranny they would dedicate a lifetime to fight against.

The sudden shift in public confidence evidences the awakening of the sleeping giant, the great wave of humanity's collective consciousness recognizing worldwide injustice, communicating culture and farce, providing humanitarian aid as well as fighting genocide. We were once warned that America is a "sleeping giant." The people of every country, of every nation are sleeping giants. And, unlike Cyclops, when they come out of slumber, wipe the sleep from their eyes, and take a look around, they'll not only see clearly, they'll also see potential solutions. One cannot fix a problem without fully examining the problem. If one doesn't know that there is a problem, one is not in a position to examine, nor to fix the problem.    





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On Perspectives - An Unedited & Uncensored One-Sided Dialogue

When's the last time your jaw dropped and your eyes buldged over something someone else did or said? Can you put yourself in that moment? Do you recall your perspective as you stood there perplexed by your observation(s)? Were you alone, with a handful of people, or in a crowd? In other words, how many witnesses? Did you remain locked in place watching, did you move to stop it, or did you leave to get others as further witnesses? If you remained in place, why? Same question to those who tried to stop it or left to gather witnesses, why?

Can you see the person(s) clearly? The one(s) who caused that confused expression to mold your face for the duration of the event and some time there after? What thoughts and accompanying actions might have led to unsaid person(s) behaving in such a way? Can you find any rationality in the act(s)? Yes, I'm asking you to rationalize the behavior of the person who caused your perplextion.

We know you were thinking: What The Fuck? But, the far more interesting question is: what was their rationalization for such behavior? To examine what the fuck might cause a person to behave in ways that others find confusing requires that we rationalize the behaviors of the confusing person, those around us, and ourselves. Recall again that situation. Can you rationalize it? If yes, was your initial confusion an issue of assumed appropriateness? The other witnesses (if any), did they register similar expressions? Would you care to speculate on the rational behind their expressions if shared? If not shared?

Can you rationalize your reaction during that confusing moment? Have you now rationalized every aspect of the moment? Can you see it from these different angles? Compare the rationalities, the sides, if you will. In your esteem, was the behavior more or less rational than the reaction? We're reactionaries: our faces, our bodies tell more than our words. We are a self-policing species utilizing facial expressions for unconsciously and instantaneously communicating approval or disapproval. We use this ability most effectively in social settings and rather pointlessly when alone.

If you would, apply Newton's Three Laws of Motion to the situation.
The first law: An object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an external force. An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force.
The second law: Change in motion depends on the magnitude of the force and the mass of the object.
The third law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

How does each law effect the "more or less rational" determinations you just made? Were all sides equally subject to the Newtonian physics of the moment? Is it not amazing that people are simultaneously forces and objects each acting upon and being acted on by others? Our lives are but a series of situtaions whereby we are objects and forces. We either act or are acted on.

Newton's laws do not account for people as objects that are also forces. Though he does near the subject in explaining how most objects become forces, this does not explain forces that decide to become objects or objects that decide to become forces. In this sense, people are exceptions to Newton's laws, as the laws apply to that which cannot make a decision regarding its state of motion, an object. For an object change in motion comes from an external force. For a person, change in motion comes from both external and internal forces.

Can you recognize that initial reaction always falls under Newton's laws, while further action is not subject to those laws precisely because people can decide to act contrary to their initial reaction? Does it not speak volumes to you that a person can negate Newton's laws of physics by changing their mind regarding an action or inaction?

The ability to suddenly change perspective and thus action may come as a surprise to some, but all people are quite capable of it. So, the next time you're in one of those awkward situations where your initial reaction comes equipped with a look of bewilderment, recall your ability to negate physics, take a moment to rationalize the situation, and if appropriate change your perspective.