Well there's not too much left to April fools day all but 25 minutes or so...but time enough to get my first post of April out there and concentrate for a few minutes on a concept which you may find interesting as this is so pertinent to the evolution in our lives caused by the last 15 years of technological innovation we have experienced, most namely the impact of the Internet and digital convergence.
I've been chanting the mantra of digital convergence since the mid 90's following the changes in the FCC communications act, and the mandating of DTV and the eventual intersection of telecommunications companies, broadcast networks, cable companies, and the mass media markets. Unfortunately...this has all been engineered to produce minimal disruption to the masses and optimal profits to the stakeholders who have herded our political leaders into believing that the best interest of the people is had by protecting the best interest of the corporations which tend to our needs. And after all is said and done...its still just ONE-WAY Communication. Stuffing our ears, eyes, stomachs, and mouths with whatever turns a profit.
The fact of the matter is...that attempts such as Web 2.0 and SaaS are all tactics by the New Age Robber Barons to fortify a "protectionist" model of intellectual property, not via rights of innovation and ingenuity, but via milking the masses for static stupid content via one-way digital servers on a pay for view or use basis.
Consumers...yes we are no longer referred to as humans anymore, have less rights than corporations, which are not living breathing things, and which have no conscious, nor ethical dilemmas.
We don't own our Credit Reports, we don't own our Medical Histories, we don't own our background checks, and the fact of the matter is that the majority of us are owned by the institutions that we are indebted to, the bank cards, the equity loans, the car loans, the mortgage loans, the school loans, the medical premiums, the insurance companies, the property taxes, the department stores. It's the "American Way".
Well, I'm sorry to say...but its not right.
While we pine away licking our wounds over the loss in value of our dollar, the indebtedness we find ourselves in ... due to our dependence on oil, our negative balance of payments, our inability to take care of our aging population, our absurd medical & insurance boondoggling and our runaway societal pillaging by our Banks and lending institutions via predatory pricing and unjustifiable fee & interest structures, our Oil Companies with record profits at our expense, our Insurance Companies raising rates and obscuring the reality of hundreds of years of accumulated capital, and with all this...we have no voice, no defense. We are at their mercy. The dollar continues to slide.
We've been fed so much misinformation, that we believe we have only 3-4% inflation in this country. But ask anyone how much it cost to work, eat, bathe, see, ...in other words live today as opposed to a year ago...five years ago...etc. and you'll find another story. One rule of Finance and Foreign exchange projections is that you can't have prolonged inflation without a corresponding impact in devaluation of a currency. In fact FASB52 & 8 specifically sets forth rules for the valuation of accounting in extreme cases. The opposite also holds true...you can't have a prolonged devaluation in a currency without a corresponding increase in a proportionate amount of inflation. The dollar has lost approximately 50% of its value over the last 3 years or about 15% annually. This equates to approximately a 12% real rate of inflation...yet our political leaders have changed the formulae to read only 4% per year...so...where's the 8% difference? It's in the pockets of our bankers charging 29% interest to our poor on their easy request credit cards, its in the gas prices, the war, the artificiallly low interest rate cuts, and oh yes...in all those deflated home prices, stock market crashes, foreclosures.
Well, technology is changing this. The big players know this. The smart consumers use technology to empower themselves. It's time we all got together and combine the technology to protect "US HUMANS" against these robotic companies that have one single program: To take your money
Empowerment means having power (like duh!). Historically power was had by means of violence. If you wanted to take over a rival tribe, you had to physically show force and take their ground and consequently defend it of all intruders and oust the previous leaders. As we became progressively civilized, we institutionalized this violence by means of religious pretext, then later civil structures and democratic models, and more recently our judicial and correctional institutions. Of course being the civilized societies that we are.. we don't see that as violence, just the act of removing undesirables to society and physically taking their ground and defending it via police forces, national guard, or department of defense.
We need to empower ourselves to make up for all those powers lost to the capitalist engines of the Bush era. Its not that capitalism is bad, but "runaway capitalism" without brakes or global concern or unwillingness to find new solutions...that is bad.
We need to re-balance the powers..to bring some common sense into the mechanics..
We need to combine our voices into a Center Channel that will be heard by anyone who wants to do business with us.
We need to...because no one else will.
