Another example of how the medical field mindset is stuck on capitalism to its own peril

Medium article about metformin as an anti aging drug

I highlighted the following passage from the article and then commented on it below the quote

Once metformin has the official labeling language to back up scientists’ anti-aging claims for the drug, the theory goes, pharmaceutical companies will be inspired to invest in more daring ventures — and then the truly miraculous drugs, the ones that could have us living healthily to 115 and beyond, might begin to flow through the pipeline.

The following is my response to the above quote from the article:

by Glen Wallace

 This mindset of looking to pharmaceutical companies to bring us our cures and treatments still depends on the capitalist market to get a medicine to patients. Time and again I see the research community struggling to find ways to get a promising drug or medical device to the market just so the product can get to the patient that needs the product. I like to call it the Rube Goldberg method of healthcare delivery. The clear solution is to cut out the capitalist middle man and socialize medicine from initial research to manufacture and distribution to patients. The federal government and other public entities has the ability to research, manufacture & distribute medicines and medical devices at cost or no cost to the patients according to their need. Clearly there is a need for an anti aging medicine for all the associated maladies of old age, therefore the government should respond by first engaging in researching such medicine, then manufacturing and distributing the medicine that has been shown safe and effective for the condition. No need to woo, beg or plead drug companies into researching & developing such drugs. If the public has a need then the public should exercise its prerogative to satisfy that need through their own government.

Capitalism is failing medical field -- Need to nationalize or make public medicine

The following is my comment in response to above video:

By Glen Wallace

It wouldn't have to be a public company. I often compare the idea of public manufacture and distribution of pharmaceuticals to the longstanding US Government Printing Office, AKA Government Publishing Office, that for many decades has manufactured and sold printed materials from pamphlets to books and sells those materials to the public. So we could potentially open a US Government Pharmaceuticals & Medical Devices Office that researches, develops, manufactures and distributes meds and medical devices at cost or no cost to patients according to need. But yes, regardless of what it is called, we need a public pharma that is patient need based instead of the current Big Pharma medical system that is market profit based. The current US medical system relies on the unsafe assumption that what is good for the corporation is also going to be good for the patient and the general public. We need only look at the price gouging with insulin to prove wrong that assumption of a symbiotic relationship between capitalism and good medicine. Insulin prices show there is often an antagonistic relationship between capitalism and good medicine. And yet most of the medical field mindset is in the monkey trap that traps the monkey by putting a sweet nut inside a cage, monkey puts its hand into a small hole to grab the nut but finds it can't get its hand out while its hand is clenched on the nut and is thus trapped by the cage tethered to the ground because it doesn't occur to the monkey to just let go of the nut. Similarly it doesn't occur to the vast majority of the members of the U.S. medical field and the politicians governing the field to just let go of the nut requiring meds and medical devices only be delivered by way of the capitalist market -- they remain fixated on the idea that they must have med products go through this Rube Goldberg device of capitalism first before the products can possibly get to the patients. And a public pharma shouldn't have to limit itself to just generic drugs. Laws could be passed exempting the public sector from patent restrictions for meds and medical devices. Any complaint that such an exemption would disincentivise research & development with private pharma, could be countered by nationalizing the research & development of medicine and medical devices also. Most of the scientists go into the field with the goal of finding cures and helping people anyways; making their research part of the public sphere would just give them the resources to find those cures along with allowing them to better direct the research according to public need instead of current private for-profit research that is directed by the corporate bean counters that will veto any research if it doesn't have good promise of big profits regardless of how much promise the research may have at finding a cure.

Single payer government health care as an incentive to bold entrepreneurship

by Glen Wallace

From the perspective of what I like to call 'applied social political philosophy', I prefer to bypass the whole debate about whether health care is a privilege or a right that the state is obligated to provide.  Instead, I ask the question, is a society that provides universal health care coverage achieving an ideal compared to a society that doesn't?  Can that ideal be practically achieved using a reasonable level of human and material resources?  If the answer to those two questions is 'yes', then proceed with taking steps towards the state providing universal coverage.  If there isn't yet sufficient support from the constituents for such coverage, then proceed with arguments and facts to sway them otherwise.

Regarding any counter arguments about government coverage leading to complacency, I think the facts and reasons point in the opposite direction.  If memory serves me correctly, I believe I read a statistic that European nations are greatly outpacing the U.S. in rates of business startups.  And given that universal single payer coverage is much more common in Europe, it would stand to reason that that difference is a fundamental reason for Europe besting the U.S. in such bootstrapping.  That's because here in America, the worker is much too dependent on their employer for health care coverage and thus discouraged from even dipping their feet into the business startup waters.  

Compare the American worker with dreams of starting their own business but are wary of leaving their employer with its comfortable health insurance coverage with the Scandinavian worker who knows they and their family would be assured of health care coverage whether their business startup idea works or not.  Our system of private insurance, generally provided through employment, acts as a disincentive to bold entrepreneurship.  Conversely, a single payer universal coverage system, by limiting risk, would act as an incentive to the sorts of bold bootstrapping that built the United States business empire -- an empire that is now showing signs of flagging compared with the rest of the developed word that wisely provides universal healthcare coverage.

Google Censorship Test Using Nonsense Words aberabledoople afoblezoodeedolup cruxlveracitude duleefelangerhanz

by Glen Wallace

I am conducting an experiment to help determine if Google is censoring search results based on ideologies.  What I suspect is that Google is deliberately either blocking certain authors or written works that present a system of beliefs or ideology or paradigm that is contrary or critical of the modern system of market capitalism that the Google corporation absolutely depends on for its very existence.  Also, keep in mind that Google is a private for-profit business that is just allowing us members of the public use their website because the Google corporation believes we will help them make money.  I think we often make the assumption that Google is some sort of public utility or service like a public library whose existence is to serve the public in an unbiased manner so that we can freely pursue our intellectual growth in whatever direction we believe is right.  But that would be a false assumption.  Google is under no obligation to be unbiased and impartial.  Their website is their space and I am not aware of any criminal or civil laws that would prevent them from modifying search results in a manner that would steer the users towards an ideology that is supportive of the form of capitalism that has been so fruitful for them and away from a form of communism or socialism that, if adopted by the general public, would be detrimental to Google's bottom line.

 I think some analogies can be made between Google and an indoor shopping mall where even though it may feel like public space while walking down the halls, it is not public but rather private property we are on when in a mall.  And when on private property like a mall we do not have the protected right to assemble and freedom of speech.  If mall ownership does not like what we are saying or protesting while in a mall they can lawfully throw us out at any moment.  Likewise if Google does not like what someone has written, they, as far as I know, can lawfully remove or block the piece from showing up in any of their search results.  I think that people think of Google as being like a pubic library's online catalog and searchable databases.  But that is just not the case.  A public library belongs to the people and it has all sorts of oversight and accountability to insure that it is acting in the general public's interest by acting in an impartial matter towards the library patrons searches.  But, we, the general public do not have access to Google's search result algorithms nor do they have any of the public oversight the same way a public library does.  Instead, Google keeps those algorithms a tightly held secret so that we have no idea how our search results may be being steered in some direction.  


I suspect that I am one of those authors that Google is engaging in at least some degree of censorship.  To test my theory I am going to include some made-up nonsense words that as of my last search just before typing this piece, produced no returns from a google search, into both the text, title and labels or tags of this and other of my essays on my blog and on scribd.com.  Later, I will search in Google for these nonsense words again.  And if 'no matches' continue to occur, I will see that as confirmation of the sorts of censorship that I suspect from Google.  Here are a list of four such words:

aberabledoople

afoblezoodeedolup

cruxlveracitude

duleefelangerhanz

I have already done some informal tests of this nature and came up with more or less confirmations of my hypothesis.  But this so far is the most extensive and thorough examination and test of the subject of alleged Google censorship.  I will wait in eager anticipation of the results.  But even if confirmation is achieved, what recourse do I have?  Well I can spread the word of what is going on so that others may be made of aware of this concerning trend.  I don't think this is any small matter as software and media companies in 'the cloud' become more central and influential in their role as the medium for the exchange of ideas among the citizens around the world. 

Socialize the Social Network & End the Facebook Monopoly

by Glen Wallace

“Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes we can turn to another.”

- F.A. Hayek 'The Road To Serfdom'

Should social networking sites be considered monopolies? I contend that Facebook and similar sites effectively prevent competition not through deliberate monopolistic trust efforts but just by being successful. While there may be competition in the fight to become the dominant social networking site, once any site has achieved that status then the choices of the consumer become very limited. For instance if I want to announce something to my friends online at one website, then I have no other option, if I want them to see the message, other than posting it on Facebook. I mean, I suppose I could post something on MySpace or Google+ if I prefer either, but who is going to see the post? Where is the competition induced meritocracy that is supposed to exist in commerce when it comes to online social networking? The very nature of such sites prevents competition to exist much at all. A fundamental difference exists between a site like Facebook and other sites whether it be a search engine like Google or a news site such as nytimes.com. If I want to search for something on Google or read a news article on the New York Times online site, it doesn't matter if I'm the only one using the site, the quality of the content remains the same. But with a social networking site, the quality deteriorates according to how much less other people use the site.

While one might point out that with some products, the only way for a company to provide a product is if they have a large number of customers to provide the revenue to make the capital intensive product. The difference there, however, is that it is still practical to have more than one vendor for any given ordinary product. There may not be as many vendors to choose from as compared to a less capital intensive product, but still there should be at least a few vendors that are able to raise sufficient funds to run a business that provides any given product or service. But with social media, it is so inconvenient for multiple users to use multiple vendors that a certain degree of cooperation is necessary among all the consumers to use just one portal as a vendor. A similarity emerges between a general social media website like Facebook and a public utility that acts as a well regulated monopoly. The problem of course is that Facebook is not regulated like a public utility even though it still behaves and functions like one.

Personally I would rather such a de facto public commons website be either a non-profit like Craigslist, or a government, citizen owned public website or some sort of cooperative. People often complain about the changes that Facebook makes and their use of users information and posts. But really, the users have little to no control over what the behemoth Facebook corporation does, leaving users at their mercy.
I also don't like the fact that I am inundated with all the ads on Facebook that pay for the huge executive salaries and helped turn Mark 'Hoodie Boy' Zuckerberg into a billionaire, and many of his minion of employees into multimillionaires. Why should we the users be made to feel like ungrateful users when complaining about a free site that has so many ads, when in fact it is us users that are really the givers, providing the valuable content that drives the hundreds of millions of visitors to the site to see the ads that provide the fortune of revenue to Facebook?  Without the content that us 'users' provide, with all of our 'status updates,' without any expectation for remuneration from all those Facebook millionaires, the whole Facebook website would be completely worthless and all those young Facebook employees would all be just another worker bee struggling to make ends meet instead of being in the very comfortable financial position they are today. They should be on their knees thanking us 'users' for doing all the work that made them so rich. It is, after all, our content about our daily lives and thoughts that is unique and special and not the ordinary glorified cloud database software that is Facebook that the engineers there seem to be constantly busying themselves trying to fix what aint broke. Or to provide an another analogy, we the users are providing the goldmine of data and interesting personal stories and the Facebook corporation is providing an ordinary utilitarian mineshaft that has nothing special about it and any other mineshaft builder could have just as easily built and maintained just as well or better than Facebook has done. But in the field of social networking, I may want to use someone else's 'mineshaft', but if almost everyone else is using another mineshaft builders shaft (Facebook), it doesn't matter how much better the others mineshaft is to use, without the gold at the other end, it's of little use.

That's why I'd like some other choices, but know that effectively I do not due to their monopoly over social networking. In terms of commercial user input websites, I would prefer something like wordpress.com were the default social networking site due to their minimalist approach to placement of ads. While wordpress is more of a blogging site, because it already allows 'following' and user updates, it wouldn't take much modifications to turn it into a social website also. But despite the assurances provided by Hayek's quote at the opening of this essay, even though Facebook refuses to satisfy my wishes there is no other social networking website out there to turn to that both satisfy my wishes of minimalist ads and also a goldmine of online socializing. No freedom of choice exists because there is no competition due to the unique nature of online social networking.

So what is the solution? The situation is unique here compared to other monopolies such as the famous Standard oil which was simply broken up into smaller parts that could compete with each other. But how would one go about doing that with a social networking site? Would you have to have your friends list get broken up into separate parts with each part going to a new social networking site that could compete with Facebook? That wouldn't make much sense. The only viable solution that I see is to nationalize Facebook (and Twitter for the matter) I think I would then change the name of the site to something more appropriate, like 'The Public Commons.' The only problem I see with such a nationalization is that, even though we are supposed to be living in a democracy, the federal government and its programs, often has become too much of an ivory tower organization, distancing itself from public input as to how it operates. Therefore I would insist that new 'Public Commons' website be a truly of-the-people organization with a barrier of control separating itself from the rest of the federal government. Therefore the new website would be one run entirely by a combination of open source and referendum votes on implementation of various open source solutions to the websites problems and proposed improvements.
back to home page

Why there is a need for a good non-profit internet search engine

By Glen Wallace

When one thinks of how nice it is for just about anyone with a an internet account to become a published  author, there are some assumptions involved that may not be entirely true.  If we think of the term 'publish' as being 'to make public' or 'to make publicly available' then in the strictest sense that is true but what one has in mind by the idea of 'publicly available' and the reality of the relationship between one's work that one thinks is now 'in the public' may be significantly different.  If some other member of the public does a search on the internet in a quest to find ideas about the subject that you wrote about and made public by publishing on the internet outside of any publishing house, then you might tend to think that that other person would not have too much difficulty coming across your work upon doing that search.  My contention, however, is that the difficulties encountered by that other person in finding your work, unless they already knew the exact title of your work, can be so considerable that in many cases the stranger doing the search will be highly unlikely to come across your work.  Now, compare such an internet search to someone doing a search at a public or university library using the libraries card catalog system of organization.  Such a library search would be many orders of times easier to search and would come across a variety of works that the searcher may be entirely unfamiliar with as compared to doing an a comparable search for the same ideas or information on the internet using an internet search engine.  And I don't think it is just a matter of the internet having a higher quantity of works, but rather I believe the libraries card catalog is so much more organized that doing a search in what would supposedly be a very antiquated system still provides a much higher quality search experience compared to doing an internet search using an internet search engine. 


 In my opinion the search results using google or any other for profit search engine yields very messy results.  What is returned is just one big hodge podge of different categories of websites from shopping sites to encyclopedias to newspapers to university professors' papers.  However, one trend that I did notice when searching for a subject like communism is that the search results seemed moreso skewed towards Wikipedia type descriptive entries rather than what some might classify as opinion piece like my essay on communism.  In my essay I tried to look at the subject of communism from a new, unique and inciteful angle that I think might open some minds to the possibility that maybe communism is not only not that bad after all but in some respects it is downright utopian in nature.  Which leads me to wonder if that is why it is so hard to find my
essay 'The freedom that communism brings' -- could it be that the giant corporate behemoth Google can see in my work a potential for a burgeoning meme that could eventually result in a complete overthrow of the capitalistic empire and all those behemoth corportate giants like Google?  But regardless, it is still my contention that Google search results are a disorganized mess where one looking at the results will have a hard time sifting through to find the sorts of sites that they have in mind.  Any search engine should have some basic operators as part of the search that through the searches selections, categorize ahead of time the kinds of results the searcher is looking for whether it be purely factual, opinion, do it yourself instructions, helpful hints, fiction, scientific, pop-science, or philosophical. I'm thinking also that maybe what the search engine itself searches could be categorized in a manner similar to or even identical with the old library standard, the Dewey Decimal System.


I was thinking how nice it would be to have a non-profit internet search engine available.  My impetus for that wish started by looking at the view numbers for this very blog.  This blogging website provides a nice feature called 'stats' where the blog's creator can view the number of views for each posting on one's blog.  Well, my stats in terms of the number of views is rather paltry.   While I've been blogging with some regularity for about one year now with a total of about 30 published posts, I've only received around 800 total visits to my blog over the course of that year.  But when looking at the number of views  for each published essay and add them all up the total number of view is much lower still -- maybe around 150.  And I think the views per post gives a more accurate picture of number of real people actually interested in what I've written and accessing my blog from a search on the topic I've written about in a published post here.  So that got me thinking and wondering how difficult it is to find my essays on this blog if I do a Google search for the keywords covered in my essays here.  Well, I found it rather difficult indeed.  Now keep in mind I wasn't looking for a confirmation of any conspiracy theory from the start.  I know how large the content of the internet is and how easy it is for that content to get 'lost' in the mass of internet 'noise.'  But even after doing some advanced searches where I entered all my keywords along with limiting the results to items published within the shorter time frame that my post I was searching for was published within, on at least one search I couldn't find a link to my essay anywhere in all the results that were returned from the google search.


 In supposedly helping make it easier for one's posts to be found by a search engine blogger.com offers something called 'labels' where the author of the blog post can write in some keywords the author thinks are relevant to what he or she has just written and someone who wants to find the relevant essay in a internet search can hopefully do so by typing in some of those label keywords into an internet search engine such as Google.com.  So I searched for those keywords that I had already entered and published in the 'labels' field some days before my search, presumably giving the search engines bots plenty of time to crawl to the post, note those keywords and make my essay available to be found based on someone searching for those keywords.  And yet I was entirely unsuccessful in finding my own post after searching using all of what should have been the right words to enter in that search to find my essay.  I didn't think that would happen, I wasn't looking for a conspiracy but I'm left to wonder if maybe I have found one.  You may have already guessed where I'm headed with this -- could it be that my posts are being deliberately hidden from search engines because of the nature of the content of my posts?  Perhaps you may be thinking that I am just flattering myself by thinking little old me with no prestigious titles or academic or literary reputation, could be considered important enough that the words I present need to be effectively censored from widespread public access. Well maybe I am flattering myself, but the power of the written word still is very great and reason itself is a great equalizer that doesn't recognize titles, prestige or awards.  Memes can be just as effectively infectious in a positive way coming from someone with no prestige as someone with a great deal of it.  That is because it is the idea itself that takes on a life of its own as a meme in a way that the intellectual milieu of the very culture with the propensity to forge a sea-change in the sociopolitical governance that guides the direction of society.  And a theme can be found through many of my essays here of what some might construe as anti-capitalist.  While whether or not those posts where anti-capitalism or not is a matter of question, but I certainly can see where someone who does not want to see the principles of capitalism and what they see as a 'free market' tarnished might want to take measures to prevent my essays from being viewed by anyone who might be influenced by my essays in manner where the ideas presented therein might be spread in an exponential manner on into the collective conscious and unconscious of the society at large.  One interesting tidbit is that the website I've been blogging on, blogger.com, is owned by the Google Corporation.  I believe blogger.com started as an independent organization that was subsequently bought by Google Corporation.  Which makes me wonder, why did they really buy Blogger.com?  Was it for the ad revenue or did they want an easy access to the idea generators out there like myself that they wanted to be able to keep a close eye on and easily block from search results if they so desire?  One must keep in mind that Google is a publicly traded corporation and as such must abide by certain rules and laws that all public traded businesses must follow.  One of the most important rules, I believe it is a law actually, is that a corporation must act in the best financial interest of the shareholders of that companies stock.  Just imagine what would happen to the value of Google stock if the ideas I have presented in the essays I've published here were to be implemented into the governance of the U.S.? I think it is safe to say that Google owns a great number of patents and thus enjoys the revenue from those patents.  If patents were to suddenly disappear, those revenues that Google currently enjoys from them will correspondingly also disappear.  In one of the essays I have written, I openly advocated for the abolishment of patent protection.  If my arguments in that essay convinced enough people, then maybe patent protection would finally end and with that, presumably so would go the gravy train Google currently receives from they patents it already owns. I have also written essays that have advocated for the expansion of a form of communism as a replacement for the current form of capitalistic tyranny we all suffer under.  Let's face it, Google has grown into a behemoth of a corporation with a market cap as of this writing at 262 billions dollars.  That's a lot of dollars riding on the success of a corporation that has grown to that size largely by tapping into a capitalistic system of commerce by matching up buyers and sellers of goods and services for the private enjoyment of the purchaser of those goods and services.   It is hard to tell what the effect of the implementation of my ideas could possibly have on their program of revenue if my ideas were implemented by law, but since I do advocate for less capitalism and more communism, I think there is reason to believe my ideas, if implemented, might have a detrimental effect on Google's ad revenue.  In a capitalistic system of commerce, the goal is to seek out profits, not benefit mankind.  In my essays I advocate for breaking down barriers that have been set up by capitalism for its benefit but have been disguised as being for societies benefit.  Those barriers include the patent monopoly protection and our entire system of mainstream medicine.  If those barriers were removed then a lot of industries would lose an enormous amount of revenue.  If I did a Google search for, for instance, patent lawyers, I'm sure I would find an abundant number of enhanced search results with ads to the top and to the right of the search results screen for patent lawyers hawking their services to those doing patent law searches.  If patent protection would entirely disappear, then presumably there would be no need for patent lawyers anymore and as a result there would no longer be any patent lawyers buying ads from google any longer either.  That revenue would completely disappear for Google if my recommendation for the elimination of patent protection was implemented. 

 While Google may have the motto "don't be evil" I don't find that motto any more reassuring than I am reassured by Asimov's '3 Laws of Robotics.'  The value of the motto and those laws are only as good as the fallible humans that run the corporation or build the robots.  In a way the corporation that Google now is, is similar in some ways to a robot -- a revenue seeking robot that the builders and maintainers of which are required by real laws of the land to look after the financial interests of the shareholders but I'm not aware of anything in those laws of the land about "not being evil" or following Asimov's robot laws. 

 Ok, I had put this essay on the 'back burner' for a while thinking that maybe I was exaggerating things.  Since I had written this piece (and saved it here but not published it) I did some more searches using Google and had a little more success.  And my stat numbers were looking ever so slightly better.  But after my most recent published post that to date is my longest one yet, and one of what I thought was one of my more important posts about the failings of the moonshot for cancer program I had only received a grand total of 2 hits to that essay. Usually I quickly get at least 3 visits within a day even if after that for a lot of my essays there is a plateau and may stay at just 3 visits.  But for the moonshot essay it took the full day to reach 2 views.  Before then there was just one view.  So I did a search for some of the keywords in that essay; both 'SU2C' and 'Moon Shot' and in separate searches on google that were narrowed down to searching for sites that had been updated within a week, I did not get a single search result linking to my moonshot essay!  Are the people at Google trying to mess with me?  Or am I just flattering myself to think that anyone at such a giant corporation as Google would go out of their way to keep people from finding my blog because of the anti-capitalism arguments that are often found on the essays on my blog?  Ok, I just did a word for word Google search without quotes of the title of one of my blog posts and I am to page 22 of the search results and I have yet to see my essay come up.  Instead I am seeing a great myriad of different combinations of those search terms scattered about in the tittles and content of the websites in the results.  The only way I can get my essay to come up is to put the title in quotes and then only my blog comes up and no other results for any other web sites.  Update: my 'moonshot' essay has now been up for 3 days and I have still only had 2 views for that essay.  Additionally I did a Google search using my title, verbatim, without quotes, of the moonshots essay restricting the search to web pages updated within a week and after looking at every single result I got to the end of my search and my essay was nowhere to be found.  I'm really finding more reasons to be suspicious here.  

While there is a popular non-profit browser called Firefox, and a popular non profit website that offers public domain items that can be streamed or downloaded called Archive.org,  why is there no non-profit internet search engines? (Well I just recently have been making some effort to find some non-profit open source search engines and have been largely unsuccessful at least in terms of finding anything like a non-profit equivalent of Google.com where someone could go to a web page and punch in a few terms and see a listing of other web pages that supposedly reflect or match your search.  While there does appear that some individuals have made an effort to start something similar to what I have in mind, I'm still not finding any working web site that is comes very close to what I have conceptualized.)   It seems like if ever there was a need for a non-profit in the world of the internet it would be in the form of a search engine.  After all, Chrome and Internet Explorer are not really any worse at opening a non-profit or communist website than Firefox.  It's not as though when one tries to go to Archive.org using Google's Chrome browser to legally download public domain movies or music, that some screen pops up saying something like "wouldn't you rather go to Amazon or Netflix to download the latest releases for nominal fee?"  Nothing like that happens at all if you use a browser built by a for-profit software company.  But it seems like to make the most out of the internet as a free exchange of ideas from across the world, an impartial search engine without a conflict of interest as a median of idea exploration would be preferable the current search engine choices.  As it is, you can decide between a variety of for-profit search engines, it is like if you had a radio station and you were told you had a selection because you could choose between one of the two stations -- either the country station or the western one.

It is rather hard to tell what the algorithm Google uses to determine which websites get top billing in any given search result such that the top billed site ends up at or near the top of any search result listing for any given search , or in my case whether my blog gets any billing whatsoever.  I think Google keeps there search algorithms as a very closely guarded secret.  That kind of secrecy just raises the suspicions of a conspiracy theorist like myself.  Now I wouldn't necessarily have problems with such secrecy if the algorithm was just for commerce searches where the determination was for what sites end up near the top of anyone's shopping search result.  But I do have a problem with Google as a de facto internet search engine that keeps secret the reasons why the search results come up as they do for all information and ideas on the internet whether or  those ideas or information are being put forth for commercial purposes or just because someone like me is trying to create a better world through their ideas. 

Why the 'Moon Shot' cancer research program is using a poor analogy

 By Glen Wallace

A recent push by celebrities and scientists frustrated by the slow pace to finding a cure for cancer has led to the creation of the moonshot effort by the researchers and something called 'stand up to cancer' or SU2C by a collaboration of celebrities helping to fund groundbreaking cancer research.  The moonshots title is given to the cancer research program to emphasize and describe both the nature of the effort to find a cure and to provide the hope that a cure can be reached just as we reached the moon despite the seemingly daunting nature of the task.
 
One problem with the moonshot for a cancer cure analogy is that when we got a man on the moon we could say "mission accomplished" just by that alone.  Sure, we wanted to get the astronauts back alive and well, but once we got one of them onto the moon, alive, that alone was enough for we as a country to say that "we did it, we succeeded!"  But you may be thinking "well, why couldn't we call one of our researches finding a cure for cancer as a success in reaching our goal?"  The answer -- what good would such a finding be if we just stopped there and that cure never got to the patients suffering from cancer now and in the future?  It's not enough just to find a cure, that cure has to get to the patients and heal them before we can say "yes, we did it, we made it!"   Now you may thinking "of course a cure, if found, would find its way to the cancer patients, why wouldn't it?"  I'll tell you why a cure might not reach the patients -- the researchers in the cancer cure moonshot program are not the ones who are going to manufacture and distribute any cancer cure.  As our current system of mainstream AMA and FDA approved system of medicine is set up, the only way a pharmaceutical drug of any kind reaches a patient is if some for-profit drug company decides it is in there best financial interests to do so.   When a cancer patient goes through chemotherapy, unless they are in some research trial, they will be buying that chemo either through their insurance company or directly out of their own pockets, but either way the patient is only getting the chemo because a drug company decided it was in their best financial interests to manufacture the drugs and will bill for them and expect to be paid.  And the compensation that the drug companies receive from drug therapies is very handsome.  I believe I read somewhere that the average cost for an entire course of cancer treatment averages over a hundred thousand dollars.  So if one of those moonshot researchers finds a cure that for whatever reason, the drug company will not be able to profit from at least to the same extent as the current cancer drugs they sell, then why would they bother to manufacture and sell that money loser just because it cures cancer?  While there may be a great number of non-profit charities trying to raise money to help fund some cancer treatment research trial, I'm not aware of a single drug manufacturer that is a non-profit organization.  And that's where the patient gets their medicine from -- the drug company, that is only in it for the money, and not from the charity that cares so much for the patients.  The refrain I usually hear at this point is "given that humans are running these drug companies and they already know the toil that cancer has wrought and many of them already know someone or even a loved one that has cancer then surely they would step up and say the heck with profits we're going to manufacture and sell this cure even if it bankrupts us."  Maybe so, but keep in mind, for one, many of these drug companies are publicly traded corporations and as such have a legal obligation to look after the financial interests of their shareholders.  While they may have a legal obligations to insure some degree of safety of their drugs, they otherwise have no legal obligation to act in the best health interests of the patients who consume their products.  Additionally, many worker bees within some for-profit business act as a mere cog in the whole operation that limits their ability to see beyond the single specific task they have been assigned and as a result are unable to see the effects of their actions along with their other coworker 'cogs' working together in a business operation that as a whole behaves like a machine or robot that was designed from the ground up to achieve the single goal of reaping a profit for the owners of that machine.  And the owners of that business machine may never pay much close attention to all the damage it has wrought in its path as that business robot machine stomps its way along, harvesting those profits.  All that the capitalist owners of the business robot machine pay attention to is whether the robot is functioning properly and harvesting the profits or malfunctioning and not harvesting enough or any of those profits.   

There are a variety of reasons why a cancer cure might not turn out to be profitable for a drug company.  The most likely reason for non-profitability is that a drug providing the cure may not be patentable.  Most whole herbs, for instance, as naturally occurring plants, cannot be patented.  There is even one common substance found in the pantry of most households, baking soda, that one alternative cancer treatment doctor has touted as being able to offer outstanding results against cancer.  But even if a drug company were able to patent a new cancer cure, eventually the patent protection for that cure would run out and which would grind to a screeching halt their patent protected monopoly gravy train the drug company had been riding for so long.  Given the current state of affairs in the cancer treatment realm, there is this ongoing struggle where the land of milk and honey is always just over the horizon, where there is always hope to spur the struggle to find the next patentable drug before their current patents run out but never get to the promised land of a cure because then there will be no hope of and endless supply far into the future of the monopoly profits that patent protected medicines provide.  A cure then, even if it was patentable, would effectively be a dead end for the drug companies that have for so long have been enjoying enormous revenues and profits from cancer treatment chemotherapy drugs.      
 
  This brings us to another problem with the moonshot analogy -- with the moon landing we could all be pretty sure that we were the first and no previous space program had sneakily snuck someone onto the moon and didn't tell anyone before the Apollo 11 program did the same.  If someone did the moon landing previously we would surely all know about it.  But with cancer cures, the picture becomes much more vague.  All it takes is a quick internet search to reveal that there are numerous claims that many different cancer cures have already been found that either have been suppressed or ignored by the mainstream medical field.  How can we be so sure that none of those claims are accurate?  While some might argue that if any cure had already been found, then the mainstream medical establishment would have recognized it even if the for-profit drug companies decided not to manufacture it.  Such an argument, however, makes the critical thinking error known as 'the argument from authority.'  The argument from authority commits the error of attempting to substitute good reasoning and logic with the prestige of academic titles awarded to some group making a statement.   But since there is not form of logic whereby a title such as Doctor or PHD can be used as an operator that creates a valid argument out of an argument that would be invalid without those titles in place, the academic prestige of someone presenting an argument is useless in determining the validity of that argument. Therefore the fact that the prestigious mainstream medical community has not accepted the belief that a cancer cure or cures already exists in no way impairs the degree of veracity of such a claim.  But even so,  I believe many prestigious doctors and other individuals within the mainstream medical field have already stated that cancer cures already exist but have either been ignored or worse, ridiculed until they either make stop making such statements or they leave the field entirely.  Please remember that the individuals that make up the medical field are humans and as humans they are still social creatures to the same degree as the rest of us despite all their years of rigorous analytical academic medical training.  As an example, I used to work in a hospital radiology department as a clerical worker.  As part of their training, medical residents and students would gather for weekly conferences in the radiology dept where one of the radiologists would go over cases with them to help the residents better understand diagnostic radiology.  For a while, I was stationed with my desk in the hallway right where the residents had their conferences.  My desk was facing a wall and the computer screens and x-ray film viewing lights were all against the wall right behind me.  On many occasions there was a rather good turnout of residents to the point where it got rather crowded in that hallway with all those residents gathered in one location.  Often the residents would arrive early for the conferences and would chit chat about things like who was getting married or what their future plans were for some occasion -- rather ordinary mundane socializing.   Sometimes, when it was all crowed, I still needed to get in and out of my desk.   And you know what I noticed -- when it was crowded by my desk with the residents just socializing before the conference got started, it was a lot more difficult for me to get their attention for them to move aside for me to squeeze through to my desk than it was during the actual conference when the radiologist was showing and talking about the radiology images up on the screen.  The point of that whole story is to illustrate and emphasize that the power of  the social instinct seems to be no less strong in those individuals dedicating their careers to medical practice.  The need for social acceptance among those residents is automatic and acts as a sort of glue binding them together that I had to struggle to break through to get to my desk.  Their desire to socially connect eliminated the need to make a deliberate effort to maintain that connection once it had already started with another individual.  However I believe they had to make more of a deliberate effort to listen to the radiologist and as a result, the residents could be more easily distracted to get their attention.  If true, there may be some psychological factors at play in the medical field whereby the social influences that automatically occur, even if the individuals are not fully aware of, within the minds of practitioners of medicine that pushes them in some direction that supersedes any purely academic or intellectual reasons for move in some direction.  Therefore, a medical doctor may psychologically block from their minds some belief that the acceptance of which could result in ridicule from their academic peers who by default are also their social peers.  Correspondingly, a doctor who may have vested herself in some belief such as 'no cancer cure already exists' may without realizing it lash out at someone who suggests otherwise and do the ridiculing out of some sort of psychological defense mechanism because the thought of being so wrong for so long about such an important matter may be too difficult to consider. 

A third problem with the moonshot analogy and one that ties in with the first problem above, is that the entire moon landing program was entirely a publicly funded and run operation from start to finish.  With Apollo 11 the orders and goals were clear and all parties involved were given all the funding and operational prerogative to reach the ultimate goal of landing a man on the moon.  While despite what I have already written some may still persist with the belief that no cancer cure has already been found and if these moonshot researchers do find one then that treatment will surely get to the patients that need it.  From that I respond -- well if you are so sure then it wont hurt to make it all legal and official.  By that I mean let's write and enact laws that require what so many assume will happen anyway without the laws.  That is, create, by law a medical system whereby the goal in medicine is to help the patient from a medical standpoint.  We should make it illegal to withhold information about some medical treatment whether that treatment be for the common cold or a cancer.  Require by law that if a cancer cure is found that everything that is possible is done to insure that it gets to every patient that needs it regardless of their ability to pay for it.  And if a manufacture refuses to make such a cure, then take the next step in more closely emulating the moonshot analogy by instituting a publicly funded and run program to manufacture and distribute the cure.  If ever there was an appropriate time for the refrain of "if we can put a man on the moon..." surely then this is it.  If necessary maybe we can put the whole cancer cure program under one program just like Apollo 11 where from the start of research to the discovery or rediscovery of a cure, to the manufacture and distribution to the cancer patients so the ultimate goal of curing those patients can be reached.  Often times we hear people bad-mouthing government run programs, but we only need to remind those naysayers that the moon landing was a government program from start to finish to give the naysayers some serious pause.  So let us create a program that is a much truer analogy to the original moonshot program where the goal, ability and funding to reach that goal of a cancer cure accessible by every cancer patient, is all provided under one program with all the focus and determination of the original Apollo 11 program. 

The misguidance of charities funding medical research

By Glen Wallace

In a Minneapolis Star Tribune article, hope is presented that activating a naturally occurring molecule found in cancer cells called p53 will provide hope that a cure for a wide range of cancers could be found.  The p53 molecule is inducing the desired result in cancer cells of a phenomena known as apoptosis, or programmed cell death.  A number of herbs have shown promise in inducing apoptosis but pharmaceutical companies are not interested in whole herbs because whole herbs cannot be patented.  If something cannot be patented then the drug company has no hope of reaping the monopoly profits from the drug once it is brought to market.  And the only reason a drug company is going to manufacture and sell a drug is if it is going to be profitable for the drug company. 

While there are many charities that are non-profit trying to raise money to find cures for cancer there is no such thing as a non-profit drug company that sells a cancer treatment.  Think about it -- where does a patient not in a research trial that is receiving drug treatment for cancer get those drugs from?  The patient buys those drugs from a for-profit drug company that decided it is in their best financial interests to sell those drug to patients.  But the non-profit charities continue to make the assumption that first, the drug companies will only look at the treatments with the best potential for a cure, and second, if a cure is found then the drug companies will automatically manufacture and sell the cure to patients.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  First, drug companies only spend money researching what they can hope to make a profit from and second, even if the research is very promising they will not manufacture and sell any drug at all, no matter how promising it is for the patient, if the drug company concludes they will not profit from the drug.  And in a mainstream medical setting,  if a drug is not being sold, then the patient will not  receive the drug. 

So when a charity says they are raising money for a cure, even if they have the best of intentions, what they really are doing is raising money to help the drug companies find their next money maker.  As a result, we can only hope and pray that a cure for cancer is found that is more profitable than the current chemotherapy treatment model -- because given how our current medical system is set up, that is our only hope for a cure in the FDA and AMA approved mainstream medical world.

Or, we can stop making the unsafe assumption that there is this great synergistic relationship between capitalism and good medicine.  If anyone in medicine were to step back and look at the medical field as a whole and apply just a little of the same scrutiny to the whole paradigm that they do to individual treatments, they would quickly discover that the current capitalistic model of medicine is inherently flawed.  A complete paradigm shift is needed where it will be the drug companies that have to hope and pray that the next treatment or cure will be profitable for them because the new system will put the patient rather than profits first.  But creating such a paradigm shift will not be easy.  There are many very powerful interests, including multinational pharmaceutical corporations, that are vested in maintaining the capitalism and medicine synergy illusion within the public consciousness.  But that illusion can be broken by persistently educating and spreading memes about the truth of the current flawed medical research and treatment paradigm.  The current system does not exist due to any law of physics but was rather created by fallible humans and as such we humans can change it for the better.  

Free markets can not exist but the label is a tool of manipulation

By Glen Wallace

Advocating for a free market is like advocating for a square circle -- an impossibility.  Markets operate much like a game, and just like a game needs rules that all the players are bound by for the game to work, so does a market require rules that players are bound by as well in order for that market to operate at all.  The terms 'bound' and 'free' are mutually exclusive terms. 

I've never heard of a free market advocate suggesting, for instance, abandoning the Universal Commercial Code (UCC) that most all businesses abide and are bound by.  Instead there is a general recognition that there needs to be some set of rules that everyone in the business community more or less agrees to bound by in order for the markets to run smoothly.  The UCC is just one example of the myriad of different types of rules, laws and contracts that the market is bound by, both within and without, that even the free market advocates would agree are entirely necessary for the markets to exist at all, let alone run smoothly.

The 'free market' just seems to be some vague pie in the sky variable ideal that people fit into all their fanciful capitalistic hopes and dreams.  The problem with vague goals is that some powerful forces can use them as a means to reach their own personal goals by leveraging the masses that struggle for their goals using as their goal what they think is the same goal as the ruling elite.  What the masses never realize, is that the goal of the ruling elite and the masses never was the same but rather the goal of the elite is at the expense of the masses.  But still the elite create this deliberately vague goal that they call a 'free market' and convince the masses that reaching this goal will lead to
everyone's hopes and dreams being realized.  And of course the elite will give the masses step by step instructions on how to reach that goal.  The instructions are given because the elite cannot reach their own goal without riding on the backs of the masses who mistakenly think not that they are carrying the load of the wealthy and powerful trying to get more wealthy and powerful, but rather that they are working to achieve their own goals that they have fitted into the label of 'free market.'

But it has never been the plebs that have designed the so called 'free market' but rather it is the bourgeois that have designed the market system to operate in their best interest at the expense of the proletariat that have carried on their backs the bourgeois to any given market system.

Inevitably for those who fail in any market they either will blame themselves or blame the markets for being not free enough and often then will just work harder to create a system that the winners who have already designed the current system say that needs to be done to create a 'truly free market.' But what the winners who design the market system just try to do is tweak the markets in whatever manner will allow them to squeeze out a little more profit because there is never enough profit for them and it is always a fun challenge for them to see how much more they can gain the system in their own advantage.

But the point is there is a vague goal created such that a great variety of goals in the minds of individuals can easily fit their own goal into the vague goal in the sky.  Now you have a great number of people chasing after the goal with one label and therefore everyone chasing that goal with the same label thinks that they are chasing after the same thing even though the goal of each individual in the chase varies widely.  The only question left then, is who is going to design the path to the goal with the same label.  It will of course be those already with power that design the primrose path that
everyone follows because they are convinced that is the one route to their seemingly shared goal.  Now, everyone with different goals in their minds effective pull the ropes that pull the bourgeois chariot down the primrose path by advocating for legislation that the proletariat  have become convinced will help them reach what they believe is the same shared destination but in reality is the route to a very exclusive destination for the ruling elite that in all likelihood each member of the middle and lower classes has already been excluded from reaching.     

In Spain workers now have to sacrifice their labor for the sake of the banksters

By Glen Wallace

The New York Times article For Spaniards, Having a Job No Longer Guarantees a Paycheck , seems to be describing a situation in Spain that is more dire than how it appears in the mainstream media here in the U.S.   Apparently there is a fairly widespread problem over there of people with jobs getting paid either very irregularly in small amounts or not at all.  Often the workers not getting a paycheck see few options since they think they will have even less chance of finding another job at all if they leave there current  employer.  But on the other hand if they try to hold their employers publicly accountable for the non or slow payment of wages, the workers are afraid that will hurt the business they work for so much that it will tip over into bankruptcy. 

I had no idea this was going on over there.  I imagine many will blame their plight on socialism.  I would tend to disagree and if anything lay the blame in the opposite direction on the capitalist bankers that encouraged and profited from the indebtedness that has lead to the current European crisis.

The economic systems that we all live under exist not because it grew out of nature or as some law of physics, but out of the decisions of fallible humans.  None of the people featured in the article had any goal or expectation of living lavish lifestyles off of the income they were assured of from their employment.  Rather they just wanted to live a simple modest life from the fruit of their hard work in their jobs.  But now even though they are working and many more in their country are willing and desirous to work and be productive, they are struggling just to keep a roof over their heads by keeping up with the mortgage payments.  Isn't that kind of a funny expression -- 'keep the roof over our heads' -- I mean, where is roof going?  Is it blowing away and you're trying to hold onto it?  Of course not, but economics is supposed to be fundamentally about the relationship between humans and the material world that makes up modern civilization.  Those of us who are satisfied with a modest standard of living should demand an economic system that supports a symbiotic relationship between our participation in that system and an adequate maintenance of its supportive economic structure.  The roof is not going anywhere,  it is the bank that is deciding that the people living underneath the roof must go and the law enforcement that is supposed to be advocates for the people show that in reality they are advocates for the banks when they use force or the threat of force to evict the people living underneath the roof.

 It doesn't have to be this way -- remember, the laws that govern our economic system are not laws of physics but are rather malleable rules created by humans.  One of the individuals featured in the story, who is owed $13,000 in back pay, is a woman working in a factory hand rolling paint onto tiles.  I wonder how many square feet of wall space in houses all those tiles she has painted could fill?  I ask that question because I wonder how much labor is really needed to support a smoothly running modern civilization where most citizens simply want to live a modest life with a modest roof over their heads.  What if we were to forget about the big banks and debt?  Could we create a system that functioned solely with the goal of first meeting the basic needs of food, shelter, water, sewage, heat, electricity as the top priority and look to how that goal can be met given the available resources of labor and land.  If, and only if the basic needs for modest living are met, then those that are especially ambitious can be allowed to pursue a few extra niceties and comforts of life - but only if doing so in no way depletes or takes away from society meeting the first priority of basic needs.   Instead, in our current bankcentric economic model, I'd be willing to bet that tile painter is, in effect, through no choice of her own, sacrificing her labor in order to make sure debt obligations are met that keep the banksters living in luxury.  What kind of economic system allows that sort of injustice?  Clearly a rotten one that needs to be tossed into the compost bin.  And from the lessons we have learned we can grow a new fruitful society nourished by the soil fertilized by the mistakes we now know to avoid.  

On the Need for Regulations and Tariffs

By Glen Wallace

I think we tend to take for granted the regulations that protect the consumer.  As an example there was the problem with the toxic drywall from China that had it been manufactured in the US perhaps the existing regulations in this country would have prevented the problems from occurring in the first place.  Additionally there are certain food and drink manufacturing regulations that we count on to insure that those products are safe to consume.  But these are the sorts of regulations that the consumer both wants and needs.  I think both of those factors must be present before regulatory restrictions are implemented on any given product.  If the consumer wants to consume something that the government believes is unsafe for the consumer, then the consumer should still be allowed to consume the product.  The government should not be taking on a 'Big Brother knows best' approach where they exist to be our masters that protect us from ourselves.  Rather government should be the servant of the people and only takes on the role of protector when we ask it to, but quickly backs off when ordered to do so as well.

The following is a post I wrote somewhere in response to a speech/testimony by Peter Schiff:

Mr Schiff is so selective in his arguments, only pulling out the best examples that appear to support his positions while selectively ignoring the glaring refutational examples.  For instance in the case of Henry Ford the workers and the economy benefited by the wisdom and benevolence of Mr Ford.  But given human nature we can not count on all the heads of business to have such virtuous characteristics.

All too many in business suffer from a case of tunnel vision nearsightedness, where if they can get away with squeezing every last dime of productivity without killing their employees they will do it.  I'm thinking of the sort of characters as Scarlett O'hara from 'Gone with the Wind' and her treatment of the prison laborers in her husbands lumber mill.  It is for those sorts that government regulation is absolutely necessary to protect the worker from abuse by the Scarlett O'haras and pre-epiphany Ebenezer Scrooges of the world.  I also think back to the working conditions as featured accurately in Upton Sinclair's book 'The Jungle'.  There wasn't much unions or government regulation then either.  What did the free market do for those workers Mr Schiff?

But on the other hand I believe supporters of heavy regulation in the US often have an out-of-sight-out-of-mind approach in ignoring how a lack of regulations on foreign businesses with regard to workers rights and the environment, creates an incentive to offshore work to those countries with factories that abuse the environment and their workers due to lack of regulations.  But when it comes time to import those foreign made goods, the pro regulation set is silent and by their silence, imply that it is perfectly fine to buy those goods and thereby support those foreign factories that may be paying slave-like wages and polluting the environment.

It doesn't make any sense to support regulation under the pretext that it is being done to protect the workers and the environment when there is no disincentive to offshore the work to countries where workers and the environment are not being protected.  As a solution I would suggest implementing a tariff system that varies inversely with the level of regulation in the country of manufacture for a product.  For instance, a very high tariff would be levied against Chinese made goods whereas little to no tariff would be put on products made in Germany.

Why capitalism can be a disincentive to good medicine

By Glen Wallace

There have recently been some prominent news stories featured on the mainstream media about shortages of certain drugs faced by hospitals and emergency rooms.  In addition to shortages there has also been problems with price gouging by pharmaceutical manufacturers of certain prescription drugs.  And one more problem that I recently saw featured on the mainstream network national news was about the growing problem of antibiotic drug resistant bacteria. What all those problems have in common is an inability of the drug companies to adequately respond to the needs of the public using those drugs.  The drug companies are not responding to the public's needs because they are not directed by those needs but are instead being driven and directed solely by the profit motive. Drug companies price gouge because they can get away with it because the drug patents can provide a total monopoly in cases where there are no comparable alternatives.  New antibiotics are not being developed at the rate that is needed to respond to drug resistance because there is not enough money to be made off of any new antibiotics to justify the enormous cost necessary to bring them to market.  And shortages are occurring because production capacity may be more profitably utilized by some other drugs. Once they are done making their money makers then if they have time maybe they will make more of the less profitable drugs for which there is a shortage. All this is recognized by the media and the medical field but few seem to put two and two together and realize that capitalism has been an abject failure at promoting good medicine.

So far I've only discussed the problems between capitalism and medicine that are already readily recognized by mainstream media and medicine.  But if one turns to alternative medicine one sees further evidence of the antagonism between Capitalism and good medicine.


The problem is that drug companies will not spend money at all on research that they cannot see a potential return on.  The only goal of the big pharmaceutical corporations is to make a profit, not benefit mankind.  Therefore, if there is already some research showing promise on an herb or compound that cannot be patented then there is no incentive to spend all the money on further research to bring the product to market.  Additionally, keep in mind that most big pharmaceutical companies are publicly traded corporations and therefore have a legal obligation to act in the financial interests of shareholders and not in the medical interests of the users of the pharmaceuticals that those corporations produce.

For instance I heard of a study of mice where their Alzheimer's disease was halted and reversed when the mice consumed caffeine in an amount that was the human equivalent of 5 cups of caffeinated coffee per day. 
 I have also read anecdotal reports of Alzheimer's patients improving just through the consumption of coconut oil.  Currently pharmaceutical corporations are enjoying a nice gravy train of profits from drugs for Alzheimer's that are not a cure but a treatment where the patient continually takes the medicine and therefore pays for the medicine over a period of time that will likely amount to years.  Why would the for-profit pharmaceutical corporations want to spend money to research something like caffeine or coconut oil that they wouldn't be able to patent, but instead if the caffeine was found to be as useful in humans as it is in mice for Alzheimers, or if the anecdotal reports about coconut oil and Alzheimers were scientifically verified, the drug companies would  be facing an elimination of the currently reliable long-term revenue stream that they already enjoy with their prescription Alzheimer meds?

As another example, there is an alternative medicine doctor by the name of Dr. Tullio Simoncini from Italy, that is using ordinary baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to treat cancer with what he claims is very successful results.  Currently the cancer treatment industry is very profitable as is; but if drug companies were to explore and find baking soda is indeed superior to any of their current chemotherapy meds, then billions in revenue would be eliminated if cancer patients were to be prescribed a non-patentable product like baking soda that can be had for fifty cents a pound.

There is a great deal of collusion and cronyism between such organizations as the FDA, the AMA, University research facilities, the mainstream media and congress.  Any close examination of those organizations reveals that they are clearly working together with the goal of maximizing the profits of big pharmaceutical corporations.

Have you ever watched the commercials during the breaks on the big network national TV news?  Those commercials are filled with ads for prescription pharmaceuticals still under patent protection that offer huge monopolistic profits to the big pharma companies buying the expensive ad space from the large TV networks.  The networks want to keep their largest sponsors happy so you'll regularly see features on the national news badmouthing any alternative medicine that would replace big pharma's monopoly profits if those 'supplements' became 'replacements'.

Anyone trying to bring a non-patentable drug to the mainstream medical market with FDA approval,  will be going against the collusion of cronies mentioned above.  Just to get a drug approved by the FDA requires investments of 100's of millions of dollars by an organization that is already set up to do the research.  Much more if you're not already a drug company or University that has the facilities and know-how to do the enormous research required for FDA approval.  As for universities, they are either already getting grant money from big pharma or they are already enjoying profits from patent medicines.  Universities get a lot of their funding from patents for medicines they own. 

There is a widespread assumption that there is always a synergistic relationship between capitalism and good medicine.  But the evidence indicates that the opposite is true; there is an antagonistic relationship between capitalism and good medicine.  If only the medical field would apply the same testing standards to the for-profit medical paradigm as they do to individual drugs, they would soon discover widespread refutations of the belief in the necessarily benevolent nature of the overall for-profit capitalistic setup of the mainstream medical system.

The only solution as I see it is to eliminate medical patents and nationalize most medical research.  There already are plenty of people that go into medical research with the highest of ideals, but only their ideas that have the potential to profit the company they work for, will be supported.  Instead, we need to set up a system that eliminates the profit variable and allows those idealistic individuals to act as both the researchers and executives in the medical development field, whose decision making control of what avenues to pursue is only measured by other members of the medical field and the citizens observing and funding their work.

The NIH has already set up a division to study alternative medicines, but even though I've seen promising results from at least one of their studies, it seems like we only hear about the the results on the mainstream media that are not so promising.  In Germany they've set up a government run organization called the E commission, that studies and gives rulings on herbal medicines and what they can be prescribed for.  Those are a couple of examples of the nationalization of medical research that are good starts in that direction.  But to achieve the ideal of  good medicine, the profit motive from patent monopolies needs to be completely eliminated.  The allure of those patent monopolies is too corrupting because there is just too much money that can be made with them. 

The Theft of America's Natural Resources

By Glen Wallace

When natural resources are obtained from federal land, the same financial relationship that exists between a private land owner and a business obtaining the resources from private land, should also exist when a business removes natural resources from federal land. That is, the US citizens should be treated from a financial perspective as the group that owns federal lands in the same way that an individual or business that owns private land.

Our legislative representatives, then, should be acting as just that, our representatives acting in our, the citizens, best financial interests in much the same way that a lawyer should, if retained to handle someone's financial affairs. But to the best of my knowledge, our best financial interests are not being looked after by our so called representatives. Instead, to my understanding, if, for instance, a lumbar company wants to do some logging on federal land, all the lumbar company has to do is pay a small fee for the logging rights to a particular parcel of land and in return gets to keep the entire bounty of the logging companies logging operation in that parcel. But if it were private land that the owner wanted to harvest the trees for lumbar, the owner would seek out bids to log it. Eventually the winning bid by the private logging company would be the amount that the private land owner would be paid and be an amount commensurate with the value of the timber minus the cost to cut and clear the timber from the land. If I am correct in the preceding analysis of how logging works, then this country and its citizens could be losing out on a large scale from the profiteering off of citizen owned federal lands. I'm sure some people would come up with arguments why it might be impractical to treat federal lands financially the same as private lands. I would counter that for every reason someone would give why it couldn't work I would ask then why does the system work just fine for private lands -- I would essentially turn their arguments around and try to use the same argument but replace the words 'federal' with 'private' and show that their argument makes just as much sense that the current system dealing with private land transactions shouldn't work then either, but of course it does work just fine and therefore should work just as well with federal lands.

An added benefit to contracting out federal land resource extraction in the same manner as done with private lands, is that the logging operation would be scrutinized more carefully due to the desire to be sure the people get their money's worth. That extra scrutiny could help insure that loggers do not remove more than what is allowed in the contract. As it stands, with the current system of paying small fees and being let loose on federal lands there is little scrutiny and a lot of incentive to exceed the limits of the specific logging rights, and remove trees that may be protected, such as some old growth forests. Or perhaps an even better system to protect protected lands is to set up a system where the US Forest service does the selling of the felled trees on the open market, selling them for whatever the market will bear. And then for the logging itself the bidding would be for what we would pay the logger to fell, clear and stack the logs. Then if the contractor extracts more resources than contracted they would just be doing more work than that they were paid for -- it wouldn't make any sense! Doing so would be akin to a builder that had been contracted to build an office tower and then, just for fun, decides to add a few extra floors to what they had been contracted to build.

I've focused mostly on logging with this essay but I believe we are being cheated out on most all of the resources being extracted from federal lands in the US. As it stands, it seems like we have a sort of wild west approach to private profiteering on public lands even though all the land has been carefully and specifically plotted as far as ownership rights are concerned. This no longer is the wild west and insofar as we do allow natural resources to be extracted from the peoples lands, we should be taking full advantage and reaping the financial windfall from doing so. But instead just a few large companies are reaping the benefits from our land while left with just the shaft.

The amount that the citizens are losing out with this, what could only be called a scam, is hard to calculate. But not only would our taxes most certainly would go down, the return from the natural resources from this bountiful land that are supposed to belong to us, could be significant enough that we could have all citizen taxation eliminated along with receiving a dividend check every year just for being a citizen.

Another possible area of lost revenue for the US citizen is in the area of communication airwaves.  To the best of my knowledge, a given block of bandwidth is first owned by the federal government and then is sold to a private company.  If that is how it works, then I don't believe our best interests are being looked after.  A much more fiscally prudent method would be for the federal government to retain ownership and simply rent out the airwaves for whatever the market will bear.  After all, the airwaves would present all the benefits for the owner of renting out without any of the usual hassles of maintenance and repair; no calls in the middle of the night by a tenant with a broken radiator or furnace.  Airwaves just don't suffer from wear and tear with use like regular material property usually does.  Additionally when renting out, the rental rates can keep pace with inflation and with the increased demand that the modern computer age is likely to continue to bring.  Couple that increased demand with a very limited supply of usable bandwidth, and an investment owner of that property, the US citizens, should be presented with a dream scenario that they will want to have the price structure nimbleness that renting out affords.

Categories of Capitalism

By Glen Wallace

In the movie Wall Street the character Gordon Gekko makes a famous speech before shareholders where he states "greed, for a lack of a better word, is good." I would counter that 'greed' is neither necessarily good nor bad. Greed, rather, is simply a motivational tool that can, if allowed, motivate people to make money by taking advantage of workers and the environment. But greed can also motivate someone who has lost their job to start a new small business that provides a needed good or service, along with perhaps some jobs to provide or manufacture the goods, to the community. Therefore the correct approach to greed and capitalism is a pragmatic one. Greed and capitalism should be seen as a powerful team of horses that needs to be directed to aid society, but if not guided would run wild trampling people everywhere. Herein lies the fundamental flaw of the free market capitalists: they seem to be in some kind of fantasy land where they only imagine how capitalism can be beneficial to society and assume that it then is always beneficial if allowed to roam freely unfettered by regulation or laws imposed by the government. First they don't recognize the fact that where the capitalistic business has benefited society, that business has been carefully directed to so by intelligent people with benevolent intent. Therefore, it is not capitalism itself that is acting like some intelligent machine or robot looking for ways to help humanity, it is people that are directing the machine properly. But if the robot of business is being run without regard to humanity by its operators, anyone in the way of that robot better scramble away or hope for luck that the robot randomly veers away from your direction. The only way that we can insure that the robot of business is directed in a manner benefiting the community is to have a powerful government oversight imposing regulations that mandate that the business robot or the team of greed horses are directed in a manner that will benefit the community and not trample it. How else can we insure that the human designers and operators of the capitalistic business are driving their machine with benevolent intent? The free market capitalists, however, never bother looking at the manifold examples that refute the belief that unfettered capitalism is so great for the whole world. The free marketeers would rather live in their lala land where every business is this nice mom and pop operation that pays all their employees great wages, never dumps any toxic sludge out the back door, provides a product or service that the community greatly needs and would be facing hardship if the business never existed in their community. This brings me to my theory of the three basic forms of capitalism: 1) Crony 2) Parasitic 3) Symbiotic. The free marketeers in the fantasy land of their own minds prefer to imagine that if it were only allowed to roam free, then all businesses would be operating under the third form of capitalism, symbiotic. The symbiotic form is one that exists much like the mom and pop business example I described above where there exists a mutual benefit between the owner of the business and community where that business exists. The parasitic form of capitalism is where someone finds a way to drain money off of the flow of currency without putting anything back from where the money was drained. The best example of the parasitic capitalist brings us back to the start of this essay: Gordon Gekko. In the movie he gives the example of a painting he bought for X amount of dollars and could turn around and sell it for a much greater Y amount of dollars today. He didn't do anything to the painting -- he didn't improve it in any way. That is the goal in parasitic capitalism -- to take out from the flow of currency more than you put in. Any example of 'flipping' is an excellent example of parasitic capitalism. The term flipping is often used in the sale of houses where someone buys a house and immediately turns around and sells it for a profit without doing any improvements to the house. If that is the definition, buying something and without improving it in any way, sells it for more than what was payed for it, then most all forms of stock market trading would be considered flipping. The only possible exception would be if someone in buying shares used that opportunity to use their stake in the corporation to influence the board of directors as to how the company is run. It is a little ironic that we come back to him since he's the one that said that greed is good. But in parasitic capitalism the only sense of 'good' exists for the parasite himself. Now it sounds like I'm painting a rather bad picture of parasitic capitalism, but I think just as with capitalism as a whole we should treat this subset of capitalism pragmatically as well. While due to its nature, it's hard to see how parasitism could be beneficial to the community at large, I do think there can be, like in the biological world of parasites, where the negative effect for the host is either insignificant or nonexistent. Perhaps, to a degree, I'm trying to defend myself since I have in the past and am currently trying to 'play the markets.' In so doing I'm trying to come up with some way to realize some capital gains, but I'll have to admit I don't see how what I'm doing in playing the markets, in itself, will benefit humanity. However, if I succeed, that will leave me with more time to write essays like this one with intent to benefit mankind and without regard to the commercial success it might have with whatever I write. Additionally, especially considering the very small amounts I have to play with, I'm lead to believe that I'm engaging in the neutral form of parasitic capitalism where there is little or no negative impact on the host of commerce. But like in nature where there can be parasites that are very harmful to the host, the same problem exists in the world of commerce. An example of malevolent parasitic capitalism exists in the movie Wall Street (and I suppose I should issue a **spoiler alert** for what follows for those who haven't seen the movie) where Gekko tries, after buying it, to break up and sell off in parts the fictional Blue Star Airlines. Along with the break up, all the jobs would be lost along with the all benefits of the airline to the community where it was based. Gekko was planning to sell the airline, in parts, simply because he thought he could suck off more capital gains that way than by running it as a symbiotic business. Of course there is very often a great deal of overlap in all the categories of capitalism when looking at real world examples of how businesses are run. A business may alternately by parasitic at times and symbiotic at others or some parts or divisions of the same business may each be engaging in the different categories. However, its hard to imagine that one particular business act could be simultaneously parasitic or symbiotic. It would seem that the two terms are mutually exclusive if were using them as the business equivalents of the same two categories in the biological field. That is, if the relationship between two or more entities is mutually beneficial then I don't think that in biology that it would be correct to call the relationship parasitical. Rather the relationship if mutually beneficial would necessarily be called symbiotic. While the free marketeers seem to be completely oblivious to the reality of capitalism often devolving into malevolent parasitism, they do, to their credit, recognize the harm to society of capitalism engaging in its third basic form: Cronyism.

Motivational Categories

By Glen Wallace

I'm thinking of modifying my motivation theory to having just two very general categorize of types of motivation; Social and Creative. In so doing the altruistic motive would be merged into as a subset of the Social motive.

The practice of engaging in computer games is a very popular activity that usually involves both of the basic categories. Even when a human is playing just against the computer I believe the social motive still comes into play. The human player ends up anthropomorphizing the artificially intelligent computer generated competitors. The human also brings imagination to play by imagining that there are real human spectators either watching the event on television or are in the stands viewing the event. And when the human does well against the computer generated components, in the mind of the human player, the same reward with the sense of having ones social status among both the competitors and spectators exists just as it would in the real world with real human competitors and spectators.

Why People Love to Work for No Money

If we are to abandon paying for work the question arises of what will motivate anyone to get anything done. Unfortunately, many subscribe to the jackass fallacy whereby people wont do anything unless they have a carrot in front to walk towards. Motivation is a complex subject that deserves careful study. But instead of examining the subject carefully, the entire modern western society is largely based on one simpletonic, poorly examined, poorly thought through belief that humans are required to have a paycheck to chase after in order to get anyone off their duff and do anything. It doesn't take too much examination to refute the 'humans are jackasses' premise. One only need look at the practice of engaging in hobbies to see that people engage in work and get things done, not only without being paid but usually the hobbiest ends up spending a great deal of money to make the work possible. Similar to the activity of hobbies is the activity of fitness and athletics. I'm a competitive distance runner and let me tell you it is a lot of work and I have never won any money and while it's conceivable that I could win a cash prize from a race, I'm certain I could never 'make a living' from competitive running. So why do I do it? What is the motive? Well this brings me to my theory that there are three basic primary motivators for any given activity and competitive running satisfies two of them; those being status and creative motives. The status motive pays heed to our very social nature and our tendency to frame ourselves in comparison with others. In any competitive activity whether it be athletic, business or academic the status motive clearly plays an important motivator role. But there is also the non-status social role of the camaraderie that one enjoys when sharing a hobby or athletic event or any other activity with others. Typically this social role of camaraderie becomes an strong motivator in the conventional work experience where co-workers become like a family and a worker looks forward to going to work just to be with that family. I believe camaraderie is an especially strong motivator in the military where every soldier in a unit feels a need to look out for their fellow soldier with the same zeal that they look out for themselves. I strongly suspect the military organization fully takes advantage of the social camaraderie motive to drive soldiers to work to lengths that they would never go to without that motive.

While the creative motive may seem to be an odd motivator for a competitive athletic activity, I'm using the term in a rather broad sense of involving any activity whereby work is mixed with the physical realm to create something that did not exist before the work was done. And I believe a 'something' that is created can include completion of a run. Additionally the planning of workouts and race strategy also involve creativity. Often times, creativity is the primary motive for hobbiests. Whether that hobby is gardening, painting, or wood working the spark of creativity is perhaps the strongest driver of the activity so that people will spend great amounts of money so they can experience the process of creating something. Therefore, in theory, an economic system could be set up whereby instead of paying people to do something that needs to get done, the only incentive necessary to attract employees would be to offer the tools and supplies for a worker to get the job done. And anyone with an interest in practicing that activity would flock to the job in order to experience the same creative rush that motivates hobbiests to engage in their activity. But status often also plays a role in motivating hobbiests as they compare each others projects. The third primary motivator is altruism - the desire to help others. Now one might say that those engaging in altruistic acts are doing it for selfish reasons - to make them self feel better or give them self a good feeling inside. That may be true, but that is true for the other two motivators that ultimately the fundamental motivator is coming from the felt state resulting from engaging in the given activity.

I think the role of parenthood employs all three motivators. I've even worked on jobs where co-worker moms have said that they consider coming to work a break from the job of motherhood. That just shows to what lengths people will go to do a difficult job that doesn't pay but instead costs a lot, such as motherhood, when the basic human motivators exist for a job -- and none of those motivators involves getting paid money to do the job.

The Freedom That Communism Brings

By Glen Wallace

Perhaps I should have elaborated that some element of capitalism can be both beneficial to humanity and also exist harmoniously with a system of communism.

So the communism that I'm suggesting is not absolute but rather broadening of its implementation in this country and abroad. It would be a broadening because this country utilizes a lot of communism already. Not only does communism already exist in the USA, most people use and enjoy it, without thinking that they have become the least bit of a 'pinko commie.' What I'm referring to is the publicly owned property that nearly all of use such as sidewalks, roads, parks, bike paths, lakes, rivers and streams. Those properties are owned by the community for all to use and therefore to advocate and support the continued creation and maintenance of community owned land and infrastructure is to support communism.

Without the existence of widespread communism in this country our lives would be much more restricted and less free than they our today. Imagine a world where as soon as you walk out of your front door having to pay a toll just to walk on a sidewalk. And that's if your lucky enough for a vendor to have created the sidewalk. Maybe the owner of the property outside of your front door doesn't like pedestrians or anyone for that matter and has put 'no trespassing' signs everywhere, causing you to be a prisoner in your own home! What an awful world. But that is just the sort of world that you might face if the supporters of free enterprise capitalism had there way. But it's not the sort of world I want to live in. I love being able to stroll down the

sidewalk anytime without having to swipe my credit card at every intersection just to pass through. I love having beautiful parks, full of nature where people like myself with little money can visit and be with the towering trees that birds flutter about in. Anyone can look up property records online and see that most city parks have valuations in the millions of dollars that I'm sure some greedy capitalist would love to get there hands on to bulldoze and turn into a high-rise condo with big iron gates surrounding the property to keep out the unwashed masses like myself. I'm sure it also irks many capitalists that I can go the public library and be able to check out a book or movie without providing the least bit of revenue to some profiteer.

I think whenever someone sees the term communism, people tend to automatically assume the word is referring to the system used by the so-called communist states of the former eastern block and some Asian nations. I say so-called because they are/were pseudocommunist nations that merely paid occasional lip service to communist principles to help build what was in reality a tyrannical oligarchy that only cared about gaining power and cared nothing about the welfare of the community they were governing.

Perhaps the biggest mistake was to use Karl Marx's philosophy on the relationship between a worker's labor and the material wealth created by that labor, as a complete playbook for how to run an entire government system. I don't know if Marx ever even intended for his philosophy to be used as a complete system, but some did and in doing so, it left the door wide open to the abuse of power. And when it comes to political power, if you give an inch they take a mile - and a Marxian system gave several feet of leeway to the bureaucrats. And it's now historical record that the bureaucrats that got that leeway used it in such a horrific manner that the some of the pseudocommunist perpetrators such as Stalin and Pol Pot have become rightfully vilified as ordering some of the worst cases of mass murder not just in modern history, but in recorded history as well.

The solution then is to implement a communist system measured by libertarianism. While most people automatically consider libertarianism and communism to be mutually exclusive, close examination reveals that not to be true at all. Instead, utilitarianism; the belief that it is acceptable to sacrifice justice for a few individuals for the betterment of the society at large, is the antithesis of libertarianism.

Utilitarianism has been, and continues to be used, as a justification for restricting the freedoms of individuals, in order further the goals of both capitalist and communist systems. While many may be very familiar with the ways utilitarian principles have been used to justify communist tyranny - sending dissident writers to the gulag was justified by the belief that their authors beliefs presented an obstacle to reaching a utopian Marxists state, but few realize how often utilitarianism is used to justify restrictions on freedom because exercising that freedom is believed to result in lower revenue for certain industries. The most obvious example of this is the efforts by the music recording and motion picture industries to restrict the freedoms of individuals to copy, share and manipulate digital works as the individual sees fit in the privacy of their own home. The recording industry argues that it is ok to sacrifice the freedoms of the individual owners of copies of artistic or intellectual works, because if freedom were allowed in that case, society as a whole would lose out on future works because the creators of those works would no longer have the incentive to create because the guarantees of profit from those works would be gone. The problem with that argument is twofold. First is the mistake of prioritizing values whereby specific freedom of action is given a lower priority to vague theories about both to the benefits to society as a whole in the form of better arts and entertainment and improved profits garnered from sales that would have been lost to file sharing. Therein lies the problem with utilitarianism: some theory about the benefits to society as a whole can always be thought up to justify any given restriction on freedom and justice for individuals. And typically there isn't any demand by lawmakers that the theories about societal benefit be in anyway corroborated with evidence. Rather if the theory makes any sense at all, by the principles of utilitarianism, it is justifiable to impose any degree of draconian laws that impose tyranny on a people, if it can be successfully argued that in the long run society will be better off for it. What ends up happening though is the government or corporate official puts forth the appealing utilitarian argument for the tyrannical measures while at the same time, being motivated by entirely different, selfish reasons for implementing the measures. If utilitarianism is allowed any acceptability by society, all that is required by the ruling elite to impose a harsh draconian tyranny onto the populace, is merely a little creativity to generate a useful fiction that the people will buy.

While some may argue that the injustice faced by those that can no longer file-share pales in comparison to the injustice endured by the millions of individuals sent to Stalin's gulags, I would counter that, in a way, we already effectively have our own sort of gulag system in this country in the form of the prison industrial complex. And there are many capitalists that benefit tremendously from our prison system, that since the start of the war on drugs, this country has incarcerated millions of citizens for engaging in the non-violent act of merely possessing or selling a substance that people wanted to use out their own free will in their own bodies. Industry groups that act either as vendors for government run prisons or operate privately run prisons, have lobbied legislatures to pass laws recommending or mandating longer prison sentences for non-violent drug offenders. The utilitarian justification presented for the longer prison sentences is that society as a whole will benefit by limiting the scourge of narcotic drug intoxication but undoubtedly the real reason for desiring the longer prison sentences is that it will result in more prisoners requiring more product and therefore more profit for the prison vendors and private prisons operators. It may be a very poor justification for the grave act of taking away someones freedom and putting them in a cage for years at a time, but therin lies the problem with utilitarianism - an excuse, reason or justification that has some appeal to the public can always be found with it for implemmenting tyrannical measures. But the actual reason for measure that would be unappealing to the public, can remain hidden by the tyrants.

The solution then is to implement a communist system measured by libertarianism. While most people automatically consider libertarianism and communism to be mutually exclusive, close examination reveals that not to be true at all. Instead, utilitarianism; the belief that it is acceptable to sacrifice justice for a few individuals for the betterment of the society at large, is the antithesis of libertarianism. Utilitarianism has been, and continues to be used, as a justification for restricting the freedoms of individuals, in order further the goals of both capitalist and communist systems. While many may be very familiar with the ways utilitarian principles have been used to justify communist tyranny - dissident writers were sent to the gulag because their beliefs presented an obstacle to reaching a utopian Marxists state, but few realize how often utilitarianism is used to justify restrictions on freedom because exercising that freedom is believed to result in lower revenue for certain industries. The most obvious example of this is the efforts by the music recording and motion picture industries to restrict the freedoms of individuals to copy, share and manipulate digital works as the individual sees fit in the privacy of their own home. The recording industry argues that it is ok to sacrifice the freedoms of the individual owners of copies of artistic or intellectual works, because if freedom were allowed in that case, society as a whole would lose out on future works because the creators of those works would no longer have the incentive to create because the guarantees of profit from those works would be gone. Once again, no attempt by the recording industry is made to either prove that any individual that illegally copies would have instead legally bought the recording instead of just going without owning the recording at all. Nor is any attempt made to prove that people would no longer create music without the incentive of money. Rather the theory is put forth and the legislatures consider the theory, especially a theory coming from large campaign contributor, sufficient justification for restricting the freedoms of individuals handling digital works. Freedoms are something that should be held with a degree of sacredness by those who are responsibly for managing them. In a free society, it should be the freedoms that come as a first priority, and it should then be problem of business and police to find ways to deal with the requirement of citizen freedom, not the other way around as it is quickly becoming in this country. In the communist system I envision, a society is organized to allow the most freedoms possible with the understanding that there is a certain degree of necessary scarcity in the world. In any given community, there is only so much space for roads and sidewalks on the surface area within the confines of that community. I think there is a degree of unwritten understanding by individuals of that fact already and has resulted in the open widespread willingness of citizens to think there is a need for public roads and sidewalks and use and enjoy them and not think they should be converted to privately owned and operated entities with the same accompanying property rights by the owner as a homeowner has. But in a society that values capitalism and free enterprise while decrying communism so much, the properties owned and used by the public are rarely called by the communist leading term 'the peoples' as in the peoples sidewalk, or the peoples library. Instead the leading term 'public' is used even though both 'the peoples' and 'public' used in the same contexts mean basically the same thing, regardless of whether you live in a communist country or a free market capitalist one.

I would contend that Stalin and company perverted and thus gave a bad image and reputation to the term 'communism' in much the same way as the Nazi's perverted the swastika symbol. Just as the swastika is one of the oldest known symbols that were used by mankind for literally thousands of years before the rise of the third Reich, communism as a form of ordering society was used for thousands of years before the communist part was ever formed. In fact, communism is such a natural and fair way of running a community, that I believe it has been used throughout human history, recorded or not. I believe most native american societies were using a form of communism before the invasion by western Caucasians. Communism was such a common sense idea to the first nations peoples of this continent that they didn't really have a conception of land ownership like the colonists did. Rather, it was intuitively obvious to the native american peoples that the land was created for everyone to use in a responsible and respectful manner.