heads, i win – tails, the fed bails me out

on march 20th 2006, the fed quietly announced they would no longer publish “M3″ data. the “M3″ is the amount of cash the government prints to put into circulation.

the federal reserve prints money. it prints money when it feels like it. it prints money without the knowledge of most americans.

in the last year the fed printed over $100Bn. most of that was to bail out the banks because of the home loans they gave, without discretion, to people like gary coleman.

if there is no M3 data, how do we know exactly how much money the federal reserve is printing? I couldnt find the exact number, but it is hard to make $100Bn+ appear out of nowhere, usually the number shows up on the front of a newspaper, so i kept tally… however, it turns out it is pretty easy to make $1Bn disappear (this government has lost that much money on several occasions… one such incident was when $1Bn in cash was being transported to Iraq – why, is a different question – they supposedly loaded money onto a plane, 5 feet by 5 feet by 5 feet of $100 bills, and it disa-fuckin-ppeared).

we act like its about government spending… its actually about capitalism, credit, and consumerism.

money can be created out of nothing in two ways:

1) banks create credit

2) the fed prints money

the banks find ways to give credit to people. the banks know they will get their money back. maybe from the person they lent it to, but if not, then the fed prints money and gives it to the banks – i am not sure how literal “gives the money to the banks” actually is.

that is why you get policies that a 6 year old knows are doomed to fail. the biggest banks in the world gave hundreds of billions of dollars to people who have a history that says they probably wont pay the loans back.

but the sub-prime “crisis” is just a symptom of a flawed system… granted its a pretty bad symptom.

the united states economy has a value of about $11Trillion. the losses due to the sub-prime market have estimates running as high as $2Tn, in terms of credit and liquidity.

in a society where money is valued above all else, the power to create money has been given to the federal reserve and the banks. those power wielding forces do not have to answer to anyone – they just have to make it look like they do.

when more people know more about who anna-nicole-smith’s-baby-daddy-is than what the federal reserve is, the system is entirely compromised… or is it?

the system is working perfectly for those people who control it.

equality isnt the goal, dont pretend it is.

Genes or Memes? – Evolution

Anything that reproduces itself effectively, will be more numerous in the next generation than something that reproduces itself less effectively.

Dogs are all one species. The difference between a poodle and a dalmatian is a few genes, but it is those genes that are under selection. all breeds of dog, for a fact, have a common ancestor in a wild wolf. This speciation event has taken place under certain selection pressures. Not natural selection, but Human Selection.

I would argue that human biological evolution is slowing down, and it is only a matter of time until Gattaca (where we alter our offsprings genetic code).

Human genetic diseases are being solved. The human genome has been mapped and studied. Our technology has replaced the need to keep sharp our physical abilities, unless of course, you would like an advertisement deal with nike.

There is no particular trait that necessarily leads to more children, but there are traits that make it more likely that you successfully have children. Family planning is a very popular practice among certain cultures.

Evolution is too powerful. It is not just a biological theory, it is a theory to explain All complex phenomena. It explains Why things are the way they are, How they got this way, and Who benefits.

Evolution has no aim, it only acts. Making predictions based on evolutionary theory is interesting, but might be nothing more than palm reading.

Human kind has gained control of its biology, which has moved evolution’s effects to our thoughts, psychology, culture… and in effect society.

Memes are a theoretical unit of cultural information. Basically, an idea. A meme propagates from one mind to another (like a gene goes from one body to the next).

Memetics is the application of the theory of evolution, to thought. Our thought processes evolve.

Anything that reproduces itself effectively, will be more numerous in the next generation than something that reproduces itself less effectively. “Anything” is very important.

Genes reproduce themselves very efficiently through the use of DNA.

Memes may have an effective way to reproduce themselves. The human brain does a lot of things that we are not familiar with, I suspect memes utilize the human brain in ways we can not understand.

There are three main requisites of [biological] evolution… lets see if they can be applied to memetics.

1) Heritability – natural selection requires heritability, the characters need to be passed down from one generation to the next.

Memes are heritable because they can pass, generally intact, from one brain to the next. One piece of information could have been gathered by only one human brain, but it could easily pass on to other brains.

2) Variability – if everyone is passing on two eyes, that trait is not under the pressures of selection; there needs to be differences for natural selection to act upon.

One idea can be different from the next, but do memes compete with other memes in the same way the allele for blue eyes competes with the allele for brown eyes?

3) Differential Reproductive Success – all memes dont find themselves in the next generation in the same proportions as the preceding generation; some ideas “stick” better.
The term generation might not seem like it applies to memes, but one belief system can be completely replaced by another.Whenever a particular meme’s existence ends and another begins, I would consider that a generation (a generation does not necessarily have to have a set time length).

Our ability to think, our minds, and our consciousness Can Possibly trump our biologically implanted selfish genes.

How we think is clearly effected by the society we grow up in, but what more is society than culture and a Reflection of what other people Think life is?

In effect, society is a conglomeration of the memes that are Currently the most influential on human lives.

In this society certain memes do better than others. Like those for selfishness, greed and dishonesty… in a capitalistic society should we expect anything else?

It can be determined that certain memes fair better than others because of their observed prevalence. The quantification of memes is going to be exciting.

Memes can be used to observe the Cultural Evolution of Society, and perhaps with better understanding, change that course towards something better.