Deranged Musings

Wow, haven't touched this thing for awhile. But time to put more stuff in it.

So one thing that people have been talking about is how capitalism has failed and also about socializing healthcare. So it all revolves around the notion of property and who owns stuff. Capitalism is an ideology espousing private ownership and the ideal that anyone can own stuff. Communism is an ideology where everyone jointly owns everything. These ideas have been modified by political systems somewhat. For example, slavery fits very well into Capitalism, but democratic tendencies point us to a system where each person 'owns' themselves.

These two ideologies were taken up by military power blocks who fashioned their geopolitical struggle as a struggle between these two ideologies. It is very unfortunate because (a) geopolitical power struggles are unforuntate and (b) we tend to associate these ideas with an 'our-side, your-side' mentality. That said pretty much every society using both the ideas on Communism and Capitalism to address the concept of ownership.

For example, the United States uses the principles of Communism when it comes to things like the National Park system (as pointed out by Ken Burns) and the U.S. military. These things belong to all the people and are managed by the government, essentially a trust that governs our communal interests and property. Okay, my statement that the military is communist may confuse you. But I think you would have to agree that we, the American people, jointly owns the military. We own the planes, the tanks, the bases, and so on. You could say that the government owns it, but the government is a group we have chosen to manage it for us. Actually ownership belongs to the people. You might think, of course it is this way. How could it be different?

Feudalism is a system where military force is owned by individuals and they enter into contracts with other groups to form a larger military force. A knight owns his horse, armor, and weapons. He makes an agreement to work for a king, but the military is essentially owned by private individuals. A U.S. soldier doesn't own bases, tanks, or guns. Another way we could have a non-communally owned military is a mercenary army. Companies like Blackwater provide military force for money. You could potentially imagine that the whole U.S. army goes private and the government basically pays them to defend the country.

So once you recognize that almost every society uses both personal and communal property, you can start to ask the questions like what are the benefits of private property? What are the benefits of communal property? In what situations should we use one system over another? If we have a military system owned by everyone and a healthcare system owned by individuals what are the characteristics that make the military better for public owdership and healthcare better for private ownership?

Have you noticed the Batman movies tend to suck?

I think part of this is the fundamental misunderstanding of the character of Batman that many directors, producers, and other schmucks have. When you think of the notion of a masked hero and the stories about them you think of the person behind the mask as the person and the mask as some facade. To paraphrase a line from Lois&Clark, "Superman is what I can do. Clark is who I am." This is the common understanding of a "masked hero". Batman, however, is different. Bruce Wayne, the billionaire playboy, is a facade put on by Batman. The child Bruce Wayne grew up into Batman, not the adult Bruce Wayne. When wearing the mask the man becomes what he truly is. Batman is the anger, the drive of the man. In a way the mask liberates the "true" Bruce Wayne, the wounded and angry chgild who saw his parents murdered in front of him.

Movies about Batman try to focus on the man Bruce Wayne and not the Batman persona. In Hollywood fashion they insert a love interest because it is required in the Hollywood formula. But it always falls flat because the man Bruce Wayne is really an empty persona taken on by the Batman. The latest movie, I would guess, would have the most success. (I haven't seen it.) This is because it focuses on the young man Bruce Wayne becoming Batman. When we see Bruce Wayne we see the formation of Batman and not the billionaire playboy.

Spiderman is the opposite. Spiderman is a mask worn by Peter Parker. When created Spiderman was specifically someone who had real problems as well as superhero problems. He had issues with family and relationships. These were the things the truly concerned and involved him. Often he would wisecrack through his Spiderman existence and only reveal depth of emotion when settling back in to being Peter Parker.

Before the industrial revolution things were made locally. There were few economies of scale and because of that there was little advantage in producing something is large quantities and then distributing them. It was much more efficient to produce on a local scale in order to avoid transportation costs.

With the rise of industrialization this changed. Over the years the savings in production costs due to economies of scale outstripped the costs of transportation. Today, many things that we buy are produced on the other side of the planet and are transported to us.

But what if it changed back? I ask this because of two things that I thought about. The first is space travel. If mankind ever has a presence in space it may very well be in space colonies. These colonies will most likely be built with materials already present in space. Presumably an orbital mining system and refinery will be necessary. A extremely versatile factory system will also be necessary. So you will be required to be a highly configurable factory. One could imagine a factory with a series of components and a programmed system that rearranges those components in order to create specific devices. This factory would take raw materials and actually create a product (or maybe another factory designed to create that product).

Another thing I thought about was the increasing power of individuals to use technology. Using a CAD system you could, with some automated level of assistance, design a variety of objects such as furniture, clothes, a home, a car, a computer, and so on. The ability to design and customize is becoming more possible and more valuable in a society that can leave people with a need to stand out.

So imagine local factories that had stores of raw materials and locals could create patterns or download them that would get produced by that factory. If you want furniture instead of purchasing something that has been built far away and shipped to you you have it constructed locally by versatile machines.

Will this ever happen? It is a matter of economics and technology. Will it ever be technologically possible? I would have to say yes. It would be a complex task, but theoretically possible. The next question is whether it would be economically viable. You remove many costs such as transportation (I mentioned space above where the transportation cost is very high) and warehousing and you add the value of extensive customization. (Remember that people spend money on buying a different color electronic device.) But you lose the massive savings of economies of scale. Most manufacturing relies heavily on economies of scale and still requires significant human involvement so this seems quite a ways off.

So where will it happen first, if it happens? My guess is books, magazines, and clothes. Books and magazines are very similar to each other construction-wise. It wouldn't be too difficult to imagine a customize publishing system that prints individual books on demand rather then shipping and warehousing them. Clothes also share similar features. Clothes are also very fashion dependent. A system that could customize clothing easily and rapidly respond to fashion trends would seem to have many advantages.

Today as I was looking at www.cnn.com, I read two headlines: High court OKs personal property seizures and Rights groups call for end to Zimbabwe's 'crime against humanity'. Human rights group decry Zimbabwe's government because they are destroying people's homes in what they call a kind of urban renewal project. Meanwhile the U.S. Supreme Court legalizes this behavior in the United States.

We should now be very polite to rich people. They can get our government to claim our property and destroy our homes if they come up with some development plan that increases the tax base.