Lao Tzu (6th century B.C.): “The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished...The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be...”
“The Sage says: ‘I take no action, yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves...’”
Chuang Tzu (369-286 B.C.): “I would rather roam and idle about in a muddy ditch, at my own amusement, than to be put under the restraints that the ruler would impose. I would never take any official service, and thereby I will [be free] to satisfy my own purposes.”
“There has been such thing as letting mankind alone; there has never been such a thing as governing mankind [with success].” The world “does simply not need governing; in fact, it should not be governed.”
Pao Ching-yen (4th century A.D.): “Where knights and hosts could not be assembled, there was no warfare afield...Ideas of using power for advantage had not yet burgeoned. Disaster and disorder did not occur...People munched their food and disported themselves; they were carefree and contented.”
Ssu-ma Ch’ien (145-90 B.C.): “Each man has only to be left to utilize his own abilities and exert his strength to obtain what he wishes...When each person works away at his own occupation and delights in his own business, then like water flowing downward, goods will naturally flow ceaseless day and night without being summoned, and the people will produce commodities without having been asked.”
Dec 27, 2011
Dec 19, 2011
Dec 12, 2011
Newsoftheobvious
President Obama’s revelation that he has asked Iran nicely to hand back the super secret US drone is an embarrassing climb down, but we are not dealing with sane people. The attack on the sleeping Pakistani soldiers was meant to soften up the Pakistanis, and it had predictably the opposite effect. The civilian government is holding the hand of the military, who have ordered all aircraft penetrating their borders to be shot down. The chances that Pakistan would renege on China, its main support, with whom it has a border, to switch allegiance to the crumbling US were always zero. But we are not dealing with sane people here.
That the drone program had a self replicating worm affecting it is fairly old news, (See http://wahyusamputra.blogspot.com/2011/11/roughbeast.html comment posted at Hallowe’en) and that’s without counting the fifty or so countries working on their own drone programs, by theft, gift, or imitation; Pakistan is merely the first to install a drone station on one of its naval vessels. That the worm is, as feared, capable of allowing the drone itself to be controlled by others than those sending it is the new news that has now been illustrated beyond argument.
It does blow a large and visible hole in the attempts to box in Iran, however. Any day now the news will leak out to the US press that the Pathans (Pashtuns) are the largest tribal group on earth, artificially obstructed from any presence in the military, half of whom live in Pakistan, and half in Afghanistan. The border between them, the Durand line, drawn by a nineteenth century British administrator, which runs through the infamous Khyber Pass and some of the toughest terrain on the planet, has never been of the slightest interest to them; they have always ignored it.
That the drone program had a self replicating worm affecting it is fairly old news, (See http://wahyusamputra.blogspot.com/2011/11/roughbeast.html comment posted at Hallowe’en) and that’s without counting the fifty or so countries working on their own drone programs, by theft, gift, or imitation; Pakistan is merely the first to install a drone station on one of its naval vessels. That the worm is, as feared, capable of allowing the drone itself to be controlled by others than those sending it is the new news that has now been illustrated beyond argument.
It does blow a large and visible hole in the attempts to box in Iran, however. Any day now the news will leak out to the US press that the Pathans (Pashtuns) are the largest tribal group on earth, artificially obstructed from any presence in the military, half of whom live in Pakistan, and half in Afghanistan. The border between them, the Durand line, drawn by a nineteenth century British administrator, which runs through the infamous Khyber Pass and some of the toughest terrain on the planet, has never been of the slightest interest to them; they have always ignored it.
Dec 4, 2011
Thetrap
A very neat formula:
There are world wide around three billion adults ready and willing to work, but, owing for example to mechanization of agriculture, only about 1.2 billion jobs that really need to be done.
What do we do about the missing 1.8 billion we don't really have work for?
Resources available, food, housing and such are adequate to provide for the entire world population. Are those who work willing to let those who don't, live for free?
No. Not on my dime! There's the real problem, at least the first half of the real problem.
In theory of course, if you're content with what you do, why insist on being able to control others? If you're not, get out and do something else.
(Voltaire put it rather neatly "The comfort of the rich demands an ample supply of the poor.")
The second half of the problem is commercial and financial. Who is going to buy the mountains of goods and services the corporations hold in their inventories?
(Debt is a form of currency, and the 1.8 billion can be, and often are, forced into selling their children, their bodies, and their internal organs, but this only buys time, pushing the problem into the future, while the rich enjoy the comforts Voltaire describes. Militarized oppression can hold them down, but the debt slaves still have no money to buy the inventories.)
Just saying.
There are world wide around three billion adults ready and willing to work, but, owing for example to mechanization of agriculture, only about 1.2 billion jobs that really need to be done.
What do we do about the missing 1.8 billion we don't really have work for?
Resources available, food, housing and such are adequate to provide for the entire world population. Are those who work willing to let those who don't, live for free?
No. Not on my dime! There's the real problem, at least the first half of the real problem.
In theory of course, if you're content with what you do, why insist on being able to control others? If you're not, get out and do something else.
(Voltaire put it rather neatly "The comfort of the rich demands an ample supply of the poor.")
The second half of the problem is commercial and financial. Who is going to buy the mountains of goods and services the corporations hold in their inventories?
(Debt is a form of currency, and the 1.8 billion can be, and often are, forced into selling their children, their bodies, and their internal organs, but this only buys time, pushing the problem into the future, while the rich enjoy the comforts Voltaire describes. Militarized oppression can hold them down, but the debt slaves still have no money to buy the inventories.)
Just saying.
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