the coming war ...

Charis Johnson is hard at work, way behind the curve still ...

CJ means well, and I do not mean to slight her in any way.

If you have not kept up with Ms. Johnson since her run-in with the SEC, you might want to visit her blog and new site ...

http://www.charisjohnson.com/
- http://iiii.eponym.com/blog/_archives/2006/5/21/1974662.html

Once you have read what is there as of today's date, you will not be surprised to see a reactionary shockwave run through the entire autosurf industry - terms changing, new "disclaimers" and advisories ... a general melee all around.

The SEC would very much like to extend its heavy hand as far as possible to prevent "financial anarchy" in America. Put another way, the government some of us have grown to love so dearly over so many years would dearly love to keep us dumb and poor. In other words, we are not supposed to know there is any other way of doing business than what is sanctioned by U.S. government, which allows us to make a certain amount only ( and no more than that legally ), in order for the banking system some of us have grown to love so dearly over so many years can make 10 times as much or more ( legally ) so there will be no bank failure.

Now if you really think about that you will realize that I am not anti-American or anti-government ... but as most anyone who is able to think something through to some degree, that does not mean I agree with everything Americans are or do or say these days, nor with everything the government might do, or wish me to do. Truth of the matter is that for what I know, I am having a very hard time deciding whether to stay in the U.S. - again, NOT because I am anti-US, but because I am aware the COST of staying here is unecessarily HIGH.

The main problem with "sound banking" for most of us is accumulation of wealth among the few, while the many are left to scrabble - which is what dependably drives our overall economy after all. Not to say there is no better way of doing business though, is it ?

The real difficulty is that such a scenario assumes we are rather stupid self-flagellants - a not unreasonable argument as long as benefits provided us as American citizens are relatively equal to our cost of purchasing those benefits ... but more and more, our reasons for needing some of those benefits are less and less ...

In a sense, it could be said the actions of agencies such as SEC cause the very "financial desperation" which makes promises of "unrealistic returns" so appealing.

CJ is fighting to save herself, and who can argue against that. She started out knowing not enough, and hardly has had opportunity to catch up since. Instead, she must "set an example" for others as penance. Still would like to have a face-to-face sitdown talk with her ...

... because there is much more happening here. Any website or program owner who wants to avoid SEC intrusion will most likely follow the "guidelines" CJ posted to her sites today, but that is the easy part. Those owners know that heaviest concentration of money to keep their sites going is from the U.S. market. Most non-US Internet operators would not be in business long on the Internet if they depended solely on what they could collect in membership fees, advertising profits and other monetary input from their own country by itself. Without U.S. input, most of them cannot profit.

Some autosurfs will simply close. Others will "run the risk" and maybe pay a price (maybe not), for which a lot of innocent people will lose, and for which ultimately SEC and the like will have more ammunitiion to back up their case. Scams will continue, and probably to increase.

Some honest program owners will do a very smart thing: They will "close" their membership from U.S. participation. There are plenty of folks outside the U.S. who can benefit from a successful autosurf not subject to SEC regulation. Any autosurf positioning itself properly will do very well helping to redistribute wealth in an innovative way. Although that process will be somewhat slowed without so many American dollars flowing in, that "obstacle" may serve as improvement to such programs - keeping overall growth more manageable.

Do not be deceived, however, to think that because honest programs close to Americans that Americans will not find ways to participate. What you are seeing is one of the opening battles of a "war" in which big governments are already reacting to loss of power to dominate; in which cost of extorting their own citizens through taxation will increase as revenues decrease. In turn, services provided by government will become more efficiently delivered or disappear. As big government withers, it is less able to extort (demand taxes in greater proportion than services provided in return). Sovereignty will become commercialized as individual humans "vote with their feet" realizing they can find "protection" from another provider for less cost, for which governments will have to become more efficient facing competition for revenue.

In the short term, there will be increased pain for all. Rather than serving interests of American "consumers" at it was intended to do, SEC "heavy-handedness" either forestalls the inevitable, or brings it on faster. Desperation has a certain smell to it - moreso as it becomes fear. The major difference between the industrial age we are now "living out of" and the Information Age we are already part of, is that until a few years ago, a back was more valuable than a brain. Anyone could operate a "dumb" machine with no more than a couple hours "orientation" - hardly a "skilled" position, though often thought of as such ( encouraged by union leaders ).

Now, what you know makes all the difference. Anyone in any country who KNOWS how can DO with no regard for physical location; ie. they do not have to live within driving distance of the "factory" because they can be, or already are, connected via Internet. Which means if that person can do the job for less, that person gets the job. Hope that helps you understand "outsourcing" ... : )

Unfortunately, I will likely have more to say about all this ...

Scarcity amid Abundance ... ?

Sometimes the way we think about a thing makes not much sense. We live in a society which has produced "too much" for a long time - longer than some of you have been on the planet. My parents did not grow up with the wealth of things I have taken for granted. Even the way our society produces things has changed since it began producing so much. Used to be things lasted longer - now they are "programmed to self-destruct" so they can be replaced ... and in turn we have come to expect that we will replace something we paid enough for that it should have lasted years.

We throw away things that almost anyone elsewhere in the world would salvage and be perfectly happy to own - only because it is scratched, or cracked, or just "used" as in NOT NEW ... and god forbid we should be seen as so impoverished as to not be able to afford BRAND NEW !

In that way we do not recognize value of a thing once it has passed on to being used - even somewhat used, or slightly used, makes a thing "valueless" to us, and so we continue the hunt for more, for NEW, better, faster, louder things that will very quickly also have no value to us.

Nothing much there seems odd compared to what most of us seem to want most of all: MONEY. We want all the money we can get, and we do not care if it is real or virtual, crisp or wadded from the washer (or from a sweat soaked pocket), clean or germ-laden or drug saturated, new bills and coins or old are all the same to most of us - just never ever enough MONEY.

The things we throw away to replace with brand new often retain more VALUE than the money we cherish more than anything else.

If all the precious things which have been manufactured in the six decades of my life had been cared for properly, not replaced so quickly, and precious skills of repair been maintained, we would all have enough of those things to last decades to come WITHOUT making ANY more of any of them ... if people took more care and let go a lot more pride, they would not wreck so many cars and give up what still works just not quite as well as it did yesterday ...

... for which we would all have more, or at least enough, and not be driving so hard to get more and more, but that is the way our stupid economy works.

Not because there is not enough of a thing its price is high, but because we figure out how to make it harder, or seem harder, to get, or to keep. So we pay more and assume we will get more, and have more to pay for more - until we run out of time. While we still have time, we create artificial needs, and find ways to fill them while we find ways to pay for filling them, and in so doing we lose sight of what we have, or who we are and of what we are capable.

We have enough already. We do not value what we have. We have good health, which we use to work ourselves to death so we will have more time to enjoy our good health. We have good skills which we set aside to concentrate on maneuvering to get more money in exchange for our skills which eventually go unused because no one will pay enough to utilize them. We have a good team which, if encouraged and nourished, could do anything, but we impoverish and stifle it by focusing on how many dollars we can stuff in our own personal bank account.

Who factors into GNP the number of skilled hours which go unused every day ... ignored because a worker is "scratched, or cracked, or just "used" as in NOT NEW" - even though such a worker likely brings more dedicated knowledge and experience to a task, and could sometimes be employed for less than one "brand new" ... ?

Were we to stop and count up what we have among us, we would likely find we do not have enough money, but we have everything we need. We can do anything we need to do with the skills combined in our community, and one of those skills is matching the "haves" with the "needs" while another is the ability to keep records.

Poverty is generally a measure of having too little money, yet just about anyone you could point me to as being "in poverty" can do something, whether digging in the earth or pounding a nail, changing a flat tire or threading a needle, making a better soup or soothing a sick child - and for every one of those "haves" there is a "need" to be filled ... so is poverty no more than an artificial product of a monetary system ?

I ask you to put your own mind to work now in the post-industrial time and think whether the way you think makes as much sense as it could ?

are you destitute ... ?

destitute
Pronunciation: 'des-t&-"tüt, -"t(y)üt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin destitutus, past participle of destituere to abandon, deprive, from de- + statuere to set up -- more at STATUTE
1 : lacking something needed or desirable [a lake destitute of fish]
2 : lacking possessions and resources; especially : suffering extreme poverty [a destitute old man]


Is there perhaps a mental switch in some minds that says,
" If I associate which a group that seems to have no $$, how will I be viewed by others ? "

That very notion is "sold" and fortified on the Internet constantly.

Television itself, advertising and print media, help condition us to think those who *have* are motivated and those who do NOT have are NOT motivated (else they would have ). Such perverted logic says little or nothing about how those who *have* got what they possess; does little to gauge honesty of those with less. Most often what is produced by "big advertising" dollars has not much to do with how the world actually works.

Being "destitute" is not necessarily a financial condition.

Could be a spiritual condition, an ethical dilemma, or a mental deficit ...

"Extreme poverty of the mind" perhaps.

Someone may be extremely wealthy and live in a community which is in poverty - in which case it will be more expensive to "contribute" to the *need* of the community, whether through taxation to maintain law and order (government protection), cost of other personal protection; more expensive in what is lost through theft and extortion when protection measures fail ...

Which leads to a simple choice as I see it:

- Devote assets to building walls, maintaining a "security" force, fortifying assets against loss, or ...
- Enable and encourage prosperity of others by means of available resources (assets) by funding education and facilities, employment, and more

Taking the first route ensures a community in which resources are devoted to building more and more walls - when anyone acquires something, to "protect" their assets, they do as they have been taught - demonstrate a need to fortify their property. People are more and more separated.

In a healthy community, all members, at whatever level of ability or acquisition, learn the value of sharing and teaching, contributing to success of others, so that others also become healthy individuals, prospering the entire community. The more we teach, the more we learn.

is it a scam ... ?

From Webster:
Pronunciation: 'skam
Function: noun
Etymology: origin unknown
: a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation

Talking with some folks, I hear "scam = Internet" ... and in too many ways, I cannot argue with them : )

The Internet is the new "Wild West" - governance is not fully formed.

Who should "govern" the Internet ?

" In the beginning, there are no rules. " ... save for those basic ethics and morals given each of us by our mothers, and sometimes by fathers ...

... assumes everyone honors those gifts and lives by them, which they do not.

Add to that common sense and survival skills, which in my view are less than evident within some individuals.

A new movement online states as its aim to " ... educate key groups of the community about the true nature of illegal internet investments in order to help eradicate these programs and protect as many people as possible" - good idea as far as that goes, and I do not mean to abuse anyone personally so I will not here give a link or more info about that "movement" ...

... because I see that statement as short-sighted. Aside from the fact that the particular website is "penance" (for which I cannot gauge its sincerity), an underlying view seems to be that the SEC [United States Securities and Exchange Commission] governs the Internet. Certainly the SEC has a role to play - particularly in regard to proliferation of scams on the Internet, and SEC has answers for Americans ( who pay for its existence ). Having said that, SEC has no jurisdiction outside the U.S. SEC does NOT *govern* the Internet. The Internet is a phenomenon which crosses / disregards ( not outside of, but beyond ) all physical geographical borders.

What is best for the U.S. government is not necessarily what is best for the human beings of the world ... and before you think I am lapsing into politics here, realize that my focus is on what is best for people - everywhere. If the SEC truly has answers for the entire world, then perhaps it would find "within its jurisdiction" opportunity to say or do something in regard to the $400 million ($400,000,000) retirement package given to Lee Raymond at a time when Katrina survivors are still in a daze, when children are being orphaned every day in so many places around the world ... when so much misery could be at least moderated in some way.

In fairness to Mr. Raymond, I do not know what charities ( if any ) he makes contribution to.

Short of yet deciding what is *legal* on the Internet, I believe it relatively easy for you and I to decide what is a SCAM on the Internet. Just because an idea does not fit tidily within some law book does NOT make the idea a scam, nor mean it is illegal. If an idea reveals itself to be fraud [specifically : intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right b : an act of deceiving or misrepresenting : TRICK] then the perpetrator is revealed and will be dealt with.

New ideas, different ways of doing things, are not easily understood when they come to us outside of our usual frames of reference. The tendency for some of us is to not trust, not get involved, and nothing wrong with that - "wait and see" harms no one.

Innovation [1 : the introduction of something new 2 : a new idea, method, or device : NOVELTY] can make significant difference in quality of life and how systems operate, but innovation needs a place to begin to grow. The Internet must be maintained as such a place. In a free environment, market forces will decide success or failure.

Those clever enough to perpetrate "cyber violence" - deceive and steal from you - will exist wherever there is sufficient return from such violence. Others will ferret them out - no reason for you to tolerate such activity any more than you would a physical assault. It is up to us to inform each other to dry up a crooks profit.

In this "Information Age" Kusum in India can know the same thing I know in Oregon at the same time the rest of you know that same thing wherever you are, with no distortion from any agency which might wish to deflect us from knowing.

You do not yet realize how much you are a formative part of a new age in human existence. It will be a century or two before someone will boldly proclaim the "old era" has gone, and for now most of us will deny that what we have known is passing away - too much for most of us to wrap our minds around just yet ...

virtual disappearance ...

Well, where have I been ... ?

One of my most trusted advisors is in absence - his entire blog consisting of dedicated work over many months pulled down as of yesterday ...

He had not posted new since April 22, nor responded to my e-mails for most of that time - just after encountering major interference with his project, for which he was paid nothing other than satisfaction of providing a much-needed service to others ... a service for which I would gladly pay subscription ( in case he might read what I am now writing ).

As you know, I have repeated, "Conspiracy theories do not thrive in the open."

His absence leaves me to wonder:

- Was his life ended prematurely ?
- Was he offered employment he could not refuse ?
- Was he accused of being "unlicensed" to inform others ?
- Was he threatened in some other perverse way ?
- Is he so disgusted with things as they are that he decided his information would do no good ... ?

... or maybe he met someone and fell in love.
That still happens, does it ... ?