PRay TeLL, Dr. Hash

<p>Science has a lot of unappreciated concepts that need review:</p> <ol> <li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Quantum Theory is randomness is stochastic processes is emergent order is evolution is the secret of the universe.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Landing on the moon was much more than a moon landing.&...

<p>"Climate Change" has been exposed as a Trojan Horse for political Globalism but that doesn't mean there's nothing to it. The climate's going to change regardless of whether humans played a part, but even the worse projections are well within the range that earth has experienced in its long history. Whether the change is for the better or worse hasn't even been determined, but p...

<p>Electric cars are almost here, thank goodness. Burning up incredibly valuable and irreplaceable petroleum just to move our overweight butts around borders on criminal. We need petroleum for so many more important things, such as plastics, chemicals, lubricants, asphalt, and fertilizers; not to mention the environment damage of releasing all those hydro-carbons into the atmosphere. However...

<p>Maybe because it makes people uncomfortable, or perhaps folks just aren't aware, but no one ever talks about how wars, disease & famine leave the survivors better off in a physical prosperity & available opportunities sense. This concept has a lot of the zero-sum-gain view of an economy that central planners hate to admit exists, but the truth is, your neighbor's loss is your gain...

<p>The term "Luddite" is used to describe someone who wants to stop innovation & science, even go back to some imagined simpler time. That would be okay, the Amish certainly prove it's possible, but Luddites aren't satisfied with just having control over their own destiny, they want everyone to do as they say for their own selfish, sanctimonious reasons: stop artificial intell...

<p>My childhood was defined by moon landings. Every kid wanted to be an astronaut, and science ruled in schools. That simple footprint in the lunar dust created a generation of engineers; an otherwise tough, unrecognized, poorly remunerated, but incredibly important field. It wasn't just the idea of space travel that captured our attention, it was the youth of the whole thing: Controllers at...

<p>You hear the word "quantum" used a lot in popular culture & quack science, though its origins is real science. It was postulated by German physicist Max Planck in 1900, for which he won the Nobel Prize, but what does it really mean? Ironically enough, it means the opposite of what Einstein said it meant when he quipped, "God does not play dice." Oh, but He does....

<p>The concept of conning people doesn't seem to be sinking in, let's review:</p> <ol> <li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">You are judged based on your status, not your competency.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">The Wealthy assume their financial success is due to their own efforts, and that everyone else simp...

<p>America's National Debt has increased for the past 40 years, and there's no reason to think that trend is going to change. Stimulus spending keeps things going, that plus the U.S. dollar being the world's reserve currency, but at some point, things that can't go on forever, won't. Our current trajectory is not sustainable, especially with the fracturing of political power into diverse gro...

<p>Humans are born optimists, it's evolutionary: tribes that trust their members survive as a group and lone-wolves parish. In modern times, this optimism has led to Stock Markets, pension funds, Social Security & landing on the moon. Not a bad trade-off, really, but one wonders if it can go on forever? We don't tax The Rich enough, which requires Government to print money to give to the...

<p>Non-Governmental Organization, NGO, is the Politically Correct term for charity because charity implies a non-egalitarian situation where one person gives to another out of kindness, rather than forced to as Marxist doctrine would dictate. Another huge difference between NGOs & charities is shame: people who provide charity would be ashamed if they siphoned off the majority of the con...

<p>Nothing says predicting the future like saving for retirement, and when somebody else is supposedly saving for retirement for you, that is a recipe for disaster. The bailout of the auto industry was to keep the pension payments going to their almost one-million retirees. Puerto Rico is seeking statehood in a last ditch effort to save their pensions, and of course, the Wall Street bailout...

<p>Ponzi schemes have no real money of their own, they take in new money from the many, and pay out slightly less to the few, while the middle-man takes a cut for organizing the whole thing. There is no connection between what you pay in & what you supposedly get out, the money goes to other people & some amount is skimmed off the top. Virtually all insurance policies are Ponzi schem...

<p>1%ers sit in financial conferences congratulating themselves on their prescience & business acumen. In their world, wealth is to be accumulated by the forward thinkers, innovators & hard workers like themselves. The fact that they are a small minority of the population, and that their gains are at a relative loss to everyone else seems somehow righteous to them. They are the speci...

<p>Rational thought in financial matters is probably the third of forth thing influencing people's decisions. First & foremost is the search for higher status; what other people think of you has more impact on your success than any single factor, and certainly influences what you think of yourself. This distorts the decision-making process, allowing completely erroneous & illogical i...

<p>The concept of future money is completely misunderstood, let's review:</p> <ol> <li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Saving money is an attempt to predict the future.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Investment is a smokescreen the Nouveau Aristocracy use to justify their vast accumulation of wealth.</p>...

<p>Liability must change dramatically. This country would be much better off if "liability"' became a Government function, where everyone who truly needed help got it, not just those lucky few who happened to get injured by someone with money. As it stands now, it's "jackpot justice," benefiting the legal profession rather than fulfilling the intended purpose of making th...

<p>Liability is a devil's bargain between attorneys and insurance companies. Big business is protected from liability through a legal technique called"securitization," where the shell companies exposed to liability have no seizable assets. Mom & Pop businesses are the only ones still liable because they don't make enough to protect themselves through similar means. Everything t...

<p>The insidious invasion of insurance into every aspect of our lives is what makes Insurance companies the most profitable big business in the world. The combination of usurious insurance costs, perverse incentivized liability, and our sanctimonious Blame Culture has distorted the concept of responsibility into something unrecognizable. Most people simply expect that any catastrophe in thei...

<p>If small businesses mostly fail because their profit margins are so limited, how can gigantic corporations manage double-digit returns year-after-year? Unfortunately, the answers are almost universally detrimental to the Free Market: monopoly, regulatory capture, patent exploitation, usury, legal obfuscation & campaign donations. Anybody so-called investing in Big Business stocks is l...

<p>Most people start their small business using their savings, retirement, a mortgage, or inheritance, based on naive optimism that almost always results in failure, yet it's vitally important to the American mystique: working long hours for little pay and no benefits simply out of the belief that you're the one who's going to make it. Many small business owners even have their wife and kids...

<p>It doesn't take much predicting the future to know the future of money saved for retirement; there isn't going to be any. Before anybody raising kids today can retire, whatever they have saved will be gone. Most of it's gone already, you just don't know it yet. Retirement funds operate on the assumption that they get some kind of return, 4 or 5% at least, some need double digit returns ju...

<p>The very idea of stocks relies entirely on faith; faith that the stock you're buying is worth anything, faith that the company you're investing in will operate profitably & faith that somebody will give your money back if you ask for it. That's religious levels of faith, but you're a lot more committed to stocks than you ever have to be to a religion, and religion has the strength of...

<p>Often the argument given for tax breaks is investment, and that word has taken on mystical connotations, so-much-so that conniving politicians call The Rich “Job Creators,” inferring the super rich are important to a society's well-being. The Rich then use that excuse so they can accumulate even more wealth, and because their vast accumulations would seem obscene otherwise. But the co...

<p>Savings is something Monetarists praise. It fits into their conservative narrative of home budgets & conscientious behavior. It's a dogma taken on faith, never examined because accepting that savings is bad for an economy would make whole careers & reputations worthless. However, on-the-flip-side, Keynesianists, believers in fiscal policy, the imaginary money often called stimulus...