Idea: Mass Feeding

So here's an idea I had a while ago which I am going to share with you, maybe someone wants to execute it.

Lets take a look at something. Assume there are say 500 people living around you (by some metric), divided in 215 families. Every day, at least once, at least one member of that family takes food out from storage, wastes some time preparing it and feeds the family.

If we accept the assertion of 215 families, we realise how much of a waste of time, money and resources it is to have 215 different storage, purchasing and preparation units every day. So the idea is to centralise it.

Imagine you have a 'subscription-based' take away of sorts. To join in on this you pay some money every month. In return you're guaranteed a meal (two?) a day. With the money the company could afford to buy in bulk, hire a professional chef and offer a balanced diet. Theoretically, if enough people take on the offer, the cost required to purchase, store and prepare the food will be less than if everyone made it themselves.

"But they already invented that," I hear you say, "It's called a restaurant". Well this idea is different in two ways.

Firstly this idea is non-profit and intended to save the community money. Its a more efficient way of doing things, and it'll save people time.

Secondly, restaurants are there to offer attractive food as a form of entertainment. This idea would offer well-cooked balanced food instead of fancy stuff which is bad for you and which would be eaten irregularly.

Please feel free to Discuss.

The Llama

Economics

Once upon a time, a new species came upon this earth. Didn't have too many special abilities to survive, except for its larger brain. However they formed communities and tribes and they survived. A large part of this I believe was the ability to work in groups - they could hunt larger creatures and survive against predators. Unfortunatly once they mostly settled down, they started to prey on each other instead.

The way economics works is a brilliant example of how we prey and abuse each other for our own personal gains.

A 'rich' person is one who has a lot of money. You need these magical pieces of papers to get food, lodging and other things. Assuming that the world has a fixed amount of magical pieces of papers (ignore inflation or other things). Therefore whenever you are gaining some money, someone else is losing money - a zero-sum game. So by extension, there are ALWAYS going to be poor people, there are ALWAYS going to be people who can't afford anything, and we like it that way.

Lets take a theoretical example. You have a group of poor people living in a country. They lack basic sanitation, food and water. While many people would hate to live there, and feel sorry for the people there, they are a necessary part of the economy - they can be given rubbish jobs for poor pay. If they were richer, they wouldn't want to do those sorts of jobs - so they shouldn't be paid much either, we don't want them to crawl out of that hole. So when people collect money to save children in Africa or whatever, they're not treating the cause, they're slightly treating the symptoms. And the economy doesn't want those causes to be changed.

While as technology increases certain basic things will become affordable, there will always be people desperate enough to work for rubbish pay.

And this situation isn't likely to ever get any better. Rich people like staying rich, and rich people spend money on things which gives lots of profits to richer people - while a poor person might spend the money on food, a rich person will buy items which are produced by larger companies and which have a larger profit point - think about how expensive a luxury car is - how much of that is the actual cost of the materials and labour?

Sure you could argue that wealth will 'trickle down', but lets take some real life values - a particular company had the following values last year:

Revenue: $ 65.23 billion

Profit: $ 14.01 billion

So, lets take a look. The Revenue is the amount of money that people lost to buy this company's products and services. The difference of course is the amount of money it gave to its employees in return for their services. The difference is still a significant amount - where does that go ? To the pockets of shareholders who are already very rich.


So we can see the economy as a partition between the richer and the poor. The rich absorb more of the world's money - both though buying/selling of services amongst each other - and by giving not-so-much to those who don't belong in this special group.


And we fight and bicker amongst ourselves instead of living as a society which cares for each other.


Llama

For the People

(Note: This article is based on my experience in Malta, it may be different for other countries, so YMMV)

Elected Politicians have a tendency to be rich. There are many reasons for this, not-in-the-least the pay they get for doing their job (they got a nice pay rise a few months ago over here). One could argue that becoming an elected Politician requires money, which would imply already being rich. Bribery or 'lobbying' or 'donations' or whatever is the fancy word for it these days helps already. Either way, the end result is that Representatives (I will be using this term instead) are generally much richer than the people they're meant to represent.


Now this raises a question. In Representational Democracies, they are meant to represent the people. But the majority of people don't live in villas, don't have a private chauffeur, nor do they have large amount of shares or their own companies. So how is a Representative supposed to understand the plight of his people? If there is an increase in the price of a basic good, a rich person will not be effected, while the majority of the population will.


So in my opinion, if a person wants to Represent his people, he should live lie his people. He should suffer the problems that the people suffer, and he should work out what needs to be fixed. You don't understand your people from behind the tinted windows of a Limousine, you understand your people by spending 15 minutes waiting on the bus stop in the sun.


So in my opinion, elected officials should be forced to live like the lowest of low. Minimum wage, public transport, and a small house. This way I'm positive that many of the problems which plague us will disappear. In addition, this sort of sacrifice requires true dedication, and you can assume that this person will be enticed to help the country (by raising the bar) instead of helping himself.


Of course this has no chance of happening ever. If only citizens were allowed to pass legislature. I would be very content to see the prime minister waiting for the bus next to me.


Llama

Free As In Market

[A short story I wrote after reading too much 1984. The names were assigned pseudo-randomly and are not related to the person's character or opinions.]

FREE AS IN MARKET

“Today we celebrate 15 years of Freedom...”, spoke the loud voice over the microphone. The owner of the voice was a fat man dressed in a hand-made silken suit, with neat golden buttons and a bright red colour – a stark contrast to the mass-produced dark coloured rags everyone else in the room was wearing.

The speaker was the Manager of the local WeSave, the largest supermarket in the parts. In fact the only supermarket left in the country. To be exact the only food market of any kind left. The crowd in front of him was pretty much everyone in the village, including a particular young lady named Chantelle.

She wasn't there because she wanted to be there. Saying she was forced would be too hard, it was a free world after all. However at these sort of events they generally handed out coupons, so it was always worth spending 20 minutes cheering and clapping.

The speech went on for longer than expected, but the crowd never ceased its feigned interest. He went on to speak of how much better the world was without government interferences, about how much content the world was when the government signed in the “Freedom of Economy” act, which greatly reduced the power of the government. Nobody had seemed to notice that the Honourable Dr Byron was the owner of the largest Telecommunications company in the country. It was the first time in history that both political parties had agreed that they both liked money, and they would be able to make much more without pesky interferences. Of course this was not part of the speech, the speech was all about how now everyone was free to live their own lives, and how they now had a choice what they wanted to do.

Finally the speech was over, and Chantelle, not feeling much more comforted, walked over to her car. She drove a Walzbach – same as a third of the population. A few days after the Freedom of Economy act, the Union of Car Manufacturers had a meeting.

Within this meeting, the three largest car Manufacturers reached an agreement. Research and Development, and producing different styles of cars was too expensive. Moreover the market was already big enough to divide amongst three without needing to waste additional money trying to compete. And so the three companies produced a car each, and pulled the rest out of market. There was no difference between the cars – equal price, equal specifications, equal body. The only difference was the symbol on the front of the car. Of course there were people who would bet anything that the Walzbachs were the most fuel efficient, and others used to choose the rarest car in their neighbourhood so they'd be different – but the truth was,they were exactly the same inside.

She got into the car and sighed deeply. Fuel was running low again. It was always running low. She decided to go to the supermarket and cash in her coupon, she could use the food anyway, and there was still an hour left until she was needed at her job. She pulled her car into gear and drove off the the local WeSave.

She reached the store within a few minutes. A large sign bore over the entrance “WeSave : The Only Place to Shop”. It was true, literally and metaphorically. All the other shops had be bought by the WeSave company a while back. Those which resisted were undercut with special offers and coupons being handed out. That's how progress works of course. If you can't compete, you disappear into nothingness. That was also part of today's speech of course.

She walked in. An exceptionally large queue each register caught her eye. It seemed as if everyone chose the same hour to go shopping. Around the shop stood a number of private security guards, keeping an eye out for shoplifters and those who were banished from the shop. A large wall of shame stood near the entrance, with photographs of those who were disallowed entry. Chantelle spotted one such character being dragged out of the shop by a pair of security guards. A third was walking behind them and having a loud conversation with the man who was none too happy at being dragged outside.

“Sir, you're not allowed entry for this week. Its your own fault for complaining about the queue the other day. Next time if you shut up and just waited like everyone else, you would be able to get your groceries. If you don't like our policies you can just go to another shop, or start your own. That's how the free market works.”

The man being dragged out yelled loudly back, “There is no other store for 30 kilometers, and the closest store after that is another damned WeMart. As for starting my own, when Mr Andreas tried to do that, no supplier wanted to give him anything, citing exclusive agreements, and you kicked him out of here for life.”

The guards finished dragging him out of the building, and the chief security guard muttered “Troublemaker” to himself as he modified the length of the banishment to account for this latest event.

Chantelle sighed a bit. She had seen it happen tons of times already so she wasn't impressed. Eventually they'd all go in, beg for the general manager to forgive them, or turn to stealing. Anyone found giving foodstuffs to one of those banned ones would be banned themselves, though there was a minor black-market for such goods.

She found the bakery section and picked up some WeMart branded Flour. It was the only brand available, and was composed mostly of chalk – apparently an unpublished scientific article discovered that adding chalk minimised a large amount of Medical Problems. WeMart themselves had paid for this research of course. It was a good thing too, she thought to herself as she placed it into the basket, for she couldn't afford the hospital if she got ill.

At least, she was free. Free as in Market.

Floppy Awareness Week

You're a few years in the future. You're working on a document, and you come to save it. You're on a Windows machine. You look for the icon, and you wonder...

What is this strange symbol you're pressing. A blue box with a white box in the middle. How confusing. And its all over the place too.


With the death of the floppy disk, how long before this situation happens? Will the next generation know the strange symbol they are clicking on?


Therefore, Kevin and Myself are declaring this week to be Floppy Awareness Week. To raise awareness for this great future problem.

On Funerals

So, I was thinking about this for a while...

In life we are born, we live for a period of time, and then we die. What happens after we die isn't certain, but we are at least certain of what happens while we live. (More on life as a process at a later blog).

And at the end of it all, you generally have a funeral, but during that period you're dead. Now, funerals are generally tied to spiritual things. You wish the soul or whatever to do well in the next life, or afterlife or oblivion or whatever the beliefs are; and you stay musing upon the person's memory and mourning the loss.

Now here's the problem. The only person not being effected by this is the person being celebrated. Even if you believe in an afterlife, there is no guarantee that the person is watching, is able to watch or wants to watch. Maybe he reincarnated already, maybe he's enjoying permanent happiness and doesn't care about the affairs of this world, maybe the afterlife doesn't let you see what's going on. We don't know.

So here's my proposal to turn it into a humanist ritual. This doesn't have to replace the current spiritual funerals, and both can be done. This requires the subject to be alive at the time, so it can't be done in certain cases, but where death may be predicted its possible.

So, you call upon the subject's friends, family and well-wishers. You place him in a large enough location - it doesn't matter where. The person then gets to meet his friends and people who care about him - which should make him feel happy or comforted. You then place him in a location where all can see him - the head of a table, a platform or whatever, and a list of all the person's achievements are read out, and appriciated by the crowd there.

These achievements could be anything, and depend on the person's own philosophy. They could range to the jobs he performed, his academic achievements, creative ones... The idea is to show what a full life the person has lead, and for those present to appriciate what the person has done during his life - while the person is guaranteed to see it.

Of course you can have an additional spiritual funeral later. At least this way the person is alive to see how his life fared and whether it was all worth it.

Llama

Tanning

Its that time of the year again when men and women absorb a bunch of UV rays in order to make themselves look more attractive (for some reason).

So, would someone kindly explain to me while looking like someone from a different (darker) ethnicity is considered more attractive than looking your usual colour? It gets even worse when in this brilliant country of mine, men appear to have an inkling towards white-coloured foreigners and treat pretty much everyone else with suspicion. I'm not trying to pass a racist remark here, its just the way things tend to be.


It gets even worse when you realise that getting tanned isn't good for you. Nope its not. Yes you can get cancer, or skin which looks like leather (hrm, curing leather is called "tanning"). Granted its not nearly as bad as staying away from the sun ALL the time, but I'm talking about doing it on purpose. Like going on a nice beach somewhere, or even worse, using one of those machines.


Meh, but I'm sure you've all heard this rhetoric tons of times. What you might not know is why tanning is considered 'attractive'. Predictably its one of those social conventions which started out borderline logically. So here we go:

Originally (Ancient Times) tanning was thought of as being ugly. Because it meant your family was poor and you were labouring in the fields all day and getting sunburnt. You inferior person. If you were rich you'd be at home all day doing whatever rich people do all day. Play the equivalent of modern computer games presumably. This meant you had white skin.
Then the industrial revolution came. This moved workers away from the fields and into factories which did not have the sun on them. Now the working class had white skin. Now if you were rich you wouldn't want people to think you were one of those lower class people who work in factories all day, so you'd stay sunbathing on the roof or whatever. You'd have darker skin, and they would have lighter skin.


Given in this day and age where a woman going to work isn't considered bad anymore, and that staying out in the sun too long is bad for you... WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE STILL DOING IT?


Llama