How are capitalists bad?

On the history channel, the presidents series, Herbert Hoover was quoted as saying the only thing wrong with capitalism is capitalists. This got me thinking about what was wrong with capitalists and how what is wrong with the economy might be attributed to bad capitalists.

Capitalists are market participants seeking to maximize value. Their accumulated value represent capital they apply to accumulating more value. It is in the interest of capitalists that there is a thriving market. We are all capitalists since nobody want to minimize value. Rather than bankruptcy they seek to improve their lot.

The hallmark of every golden age is a thriving economy. Capitalism has dominated all successful economies. There is no proven alternative. Most everyone benefits from a thriving economy.. But economies often have downturns or contractions. Often the poor suffer while the rich languish. The few drain the wealth of the many. Capitalism is generally good in a growing economy, and woefully bad in a contracting one.

The economy has an evolutionary nature, and is stimulated or suppressed in various ways. The wealth of the general population provides the markets that can be capitalized on. Human enterprise produces value in the markets. Certainly capitalists that produce value in the market are good capitalists.

However, there is another side to capitalist activity, cornered markets, exploited resources, and vulture capitalism that profits from the destruction of value.

Those who cherish the promise of capitalism to enable humanity to thrive such that their are strong markets with free enterprise, but then there are capitalists who are willing to kill the golden goose, and hurt the market they are playing in.

The strength of economy can be improved or detrimented by the capitalist. Detrimental activity is at the expense of many for the benefit of a few. It is self defeating activity that can lead to economic downwall as overall value is reduced. Such capitalism is infective in sustaining growth. It capitalizes on and depletes scarce resources.

The world is rich in resources and opportunities, capitalizing on abundance is how civilization can thrive and we can populate the galaxy and beyond. Capitalizing on scarcity will lead us down the road of civilizations that have perished to go the way of the dinosaurs.

Effective

Email Identity Theft.

My gmail account was hijacked apparently. Many of the addresses on my address list received spam from me at 9:00 am EST 4/24/2010. This makes the issue of email identity theft personal for me. It is an issue that needs to be addressed before it effects you.

I've changed passwords, etc. But once they have an email list, it gets shared among spammers and I cannot stop them from using the email addresses forever. Damn.

What most likely happened is that a sight was hacked where i registered with the same password as gmail. Shame on me Or, I shared my address list on a social networking site that was hacked, shame on them.

If your email was in my address book beware of links presumably sent by me but not signed "Jim". They are not from me really, they are spoofed. Sorry folks.

Now I understand why emails clearly not spam from some members are flagged as spam in groups I moderate, and why email from some people often gets blocked as spam. I had wondered if they had been spammers in their past that they were being punished now. It makes more sense that they had been victims of email identity theft as I now am.

I ban members from my groups who enter spam, and report spam when I receive it. Unwittingly I have been victimizing the victims of email identity theft. As I judged, now I am judged. If the spammers send a lot of email from my account my electronic world will get smaller and smaller. The victims of email identity theft will become isolated and not contribute what they otherwise could to society.

I am still trying to notify everyone in my email address book, but there are too many addresses and gmail blocks me from sending email for 24 hours when I hit the limit. I can't even defend myself.

It is impossible for any national government to control email identity theft. China. a most repressive nation is where must of the spam originates or is relayed. It is a good thing the internet is an open bottom up protocol. Only name services are controlled centrally. The problem is not the freedom of the internet, the problem is that 99.99% of us are not using digitally signed email.

This will not change until email clients people use to send email validate and encourage using digital signatures, and that will not happen until people choose to only use clients that do. A digital signature uses cryptographic techniques to provide verifiable proof of authorship. This has not happened because standards need to be accepted to accept digital signatures in emails that are backwards compatible with the billions of legacy clients. There is no accepted standard means of including a digital signature in a plain text unencrypted ordinary email. Any suggestions?

The problem is the transition. If there was a standard way to digitally sign a plain text email in the header or the body, any email client that already had your public key, or could get it, could flag spoofed emails as not really from you. Email programs that did not support the signitures would still work fine but with no identity check. Email providers and mailing list and forwarding programs could have keys for their email addresses and support this

The use of a service, one time, to create and serve your keys, and an email client that supports it, is all that is needed.

If one big email provider, like google, supported this, I think it would give them a market advantage, and every client would follow along. The threat of email identity theft and spam generally would be greatly reduced.

Jim

Links to more info:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=50200
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/14096.html
http://www.scamdex.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

Remembering GrampScarver

[My memorial service testimonial plus added missing sentiments expressed by others, afterthoughts, etc.]
 
The financial crises has left me out of regular employment and I have been thus blessed with the wonderful opportunity to be with mom and dad through our challenges of the last year.  Dad lived well and died well.  It was almost a year ago when he announced his intention to die.  He told us all he had lived a good life and done everything he wanted to do.  Near the end, he blamed me that he lived too long for taking too good care of him.  I feel, he was not going anywhere until he was convinced my mom would be okay.

In the end he said he was making no more decisions.  He was delegating to me the hard job of making all the decisions for him.  I said "dont be silly, taking care of you and mom is easy and I am happy to do it.  It is a blessing for us all that I can be here now."  I am beginning to see the gravity of the responsibility I accepted that is only increased in his death.  To do his will, I must remember all that he taught us by his words and by how he lived.

He was the independent individual in many ways.  He was always ahead of his time technologically.  We were years ahead of the croud in having a rotary lawn mower, video game, microwave oven, digital watch, calculator, computer, etc.  He never bought what was the current fad, he got what he wanted that nobody else had. 

You would not call him gregarious as he shied from social activities. He seemed a bit cold and distant on first impression.  Yet everyone liked him and he was most always pleasant, helpful, knowledgeable, and intelligent.  Everyone respected him.  Many sought his council.  He was an avid reader. 

Delegate everything.  His business ran like clockwork without the necessity of his involvement.  Instead he spent time learning, strategic planning, and working alongside every employee every year.  His employees, for the most part, loved him, and too good care of business for him.

Every problem is an opportunity, the challenge is finding it.  There are no problems, only solutions.

When I wrapped the new family car around a tree, and said, "Gee dad I'm sorry." he said, "No problem, things are not important, people are."  That material things are not important to me is a great gift he has given me.  I do not suffer, as many do, over material things.  Money was never a problem, so it was not important.  He was frugal though he did not need to be, and never succumbed to consumerism.

I grew up thinking he knew everything.  Sitting on his knee he taught me everything from psychology and political theory to quantum and space time physics.  It was not until I was 35 that I asked him a question and he was not familiar with the prevalent views and issues and said simply, I don't know, leaving me in a state of shock.

Whenever we said, "it was an accident", he would interject, "There is no such an accident, everything happens for a reason.  "

Only you are responsible for what happens to you.

He had a  most unconventional wisdom and was a master of reverse psychology.  He gave old adages a Twainian twist that was uniquely Franklin.

Spend your money, don't save it.  Any idiot can put money in the bank, the real challenge is to spend it well.

Never set an attainable goal for your life, since once you attain it, your purpose in life is lost.

If you are only willing to try 99 times, don't bother trying

If you try to do two things, you will not succeed at neither.  If you do one thing, nothing is impossible.

The most intelligent person is the one who makes all possible mistakes first.

It is better to act, and be wrong, than to not act.

When he attained his financial goals in business he no longer had any interest in business and began a new technical career from the bottom.  He told us to never set an attainable goal for our life, since once attained, purpose in life would be lost.

Never concern yourself with what you cannot do, only consideration of what you can do is worth while.  If you can't change it, don't worry about it, just stay out of its way.

Do not try to please other people, all that really matters is that you please yourself.

Don't care about what other people think, care what you think.

Don't do what I tell you to do, do what you believe is the right thing to do for you.

Don't do anything you don't want to do unless there is no reasonable alternative.  It is doing what you like doing that will be most fruitful.

In words he taught us to be selfish.  He spoiled us.  He let us do almost anything we wanted to do.  He sometimes expressed what he thought the negative consequences might be, but he did not try to control us.  All my friends wished they had my parents.  It was not called love, but not controlling us was the expression of his love.  He told us we were free to face the consequences of anything we wanted to try, but was there to pick us up when we fell down.  There could be no greater love.

By his example, in deeds he exuded selflessness, deep respect for the feelings and wishes of others, and encorgagement of others to be all they can be.  He taught us how to love.  Many have expressed eternal graditude toward dad for encoraging them to change careers, or otherwize fulfill their dreams rather than compromising who they could be and accepting less from life than what they really wanted.

When a group of NJIT colleagues and I incorporated our company, Xanthus, we used my dad's attourney.  who asked us if we thought we could conduct business with the same degree of integrity as my dad.  After a pause, I said confidently, YES.  Hw lowered his eyes and said softly, "I don't think so."

My sons could not come here today but are with us in spirit.  Jeff said it well, this should not be about death, but about life, and that dad lived and died as we all should.  Their mom put it best, that he has always supported us in so many ways, and most significantly, he taught us how to think

In some ways he had a contrary nature, though he respected others beliefs, he often expressed opposing viewpont in a Socratic fashion.  Much interaction with dad was argumentative,  Jeff said he argued with him fruitfully for almost 35 years, for me, it is nearly 60 years.

In his final days, a new sweetness of character, formally reserved for my mother, emanated from him.  He complimented the health aids and nurces profusely.  With happy eyes he would welcome me with, you are a good boy jimmy, I love you.  The last days he spoke, I asked how he was doing today, and with great warmth he replied, wonderful.

Although many remember him as a very spiritual person, who influenced their beliefs profoundly, at the same time, he believed in nothing himself. He did not deny the possibility of anything, and was always searching for answers.   But he held virtually no doctrine, save the wisdom of Socrates, which he posted prominently on the refrigerator,  "The only true wisdom is the knowledge you know nothing.".  He challenged the objectivity of any belief in God.  In the end, however, he found a notion of God he was comfortable with, the power of truth in a complex world that is beyond any possibility of human comprehensioon.

In his last days he asked my daugher if he was a bad man.  She said he was good.  He asked what made a person good.  She said "the capacity to love".  He asked what about the capacity to live?

And today we are here to celibrate the wonderful life he led, and take on the responsibity of continuing his legacy of thingkng out of the box, and living his mandate that we live our lives our own way as he did it his way, wonderfully so.

Mom said it best.  "He was a wonderful husband, father and friend.  He was exceptional in every way."

My son Jeff said, "everyone should live as he did."  He taught us how to think and act, and delegated his thinking and acting to us.  In the end I think he believed his legacy would be fullfilled though us.  I wish I was so confident.  I cant imagine anyone filling his shoes.  Together we can only try. 

His goodness depends on our capacity to do as he did.  For him love was action, not words or feeling, and his love was expressed in how he lived.  His religion is not one of belief, it is one of right action being true to oneself, while enabling others to be true to themselves.  For me this is not different from loving God, and loving one another as he loved us.  Like Jesus, grampscarver is a great example who's time of realization is yet to come as we are only beginning to to learn how to emulate him. 

His example demonstrates that to be selfless, we must first be selfish, or we have no self to share with others.  His life is a great gift for all of us, and gives us a hope that in remembering him, and following his example, we might live and die well, as he did.

JimScarver