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Creating a better society

Part 8: 
How would a government manage society?

20 October 2012


C
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When do children become adults?
Marriage and families
How would the government develop products?
What type of social environment is best for us?


When do children become adults?
 
 Lower the beginning of adulthood to age 16
Children are not "tiny adults" who simply grow larger during their childhood; rather, they "mature" into adults. Their brains becomes more intelligent and their emotions change to make them more responsible, self-sufficient, and independent. At a certain age we consider a child to have matured into an adult. Most societies consider a child to have become an adult when he is either 18 or 21, but I suspect that our prehistoric ancestors expected their children to start behaving like adults when they were about 16 years old. I think we have increased the age of adulthood partly in response to the children who do not mature properly, and partly because society has become very complex.

The current attitude in every nation is to design society for the worst behaved people. For example, when a college student has trouble controlling his consumption of alcohol, most people react by demanding that we treat all college students as children, such as by prohibiting them from having access to alcohol. A better policy would be to tell children that they start to become an adult at age 16, and those who cannot handle alcohol, gambling, food, or drugs are defective, retarded, or pathetic. We should stop feeling sorry for the people who cannot cope with life.

In California, where I live, a child has to be 21 years old before he is allowed to purchase alcoholic beverages, and many people consider 21 to be too young to get married or have children. Monica Lewinsky was treated by the media as if she were a helpless child, but she was 22 years old when she began seducing Clinton, which is the age that my mother was married and pregnant with me.

Lewinsky was not a young, innocent child who was taken advantage of by an adult man. A 22-year-old woman is not a helpless child. She was a fully grown adult who made a decision to work for a crime network and arrange for the president of the United States to be blackmailed. She knew what she was doing. My mother chose the path of a wife and a mother, but Lewinsky chose the path of a Zionist whore, and she should be held responsible for what she did. We are fools to let 22-year-old men or women justify their obnoxious or disgusting behavior on the grounds that they are "young".

I think it would be better to lower the start of adulthood to age 16. Most 16-year-old children in the world today, especially in America, are unprepared for adulthood, but I don't think it is because they are too young. I think there are three primary problems, and as the rest of this section of the article will explain, we can easily solve all three:
1) Schools are not preparing children for society. For example, schools do not teach children about credit cards or bank loans, or how to start a business or purchase a house. Schools also do very little to help children prepare for or find a job.
2) Children are being contaminated by a variety of idiotic and unrealistic propaganda about religion, feminism, money, and happiness, and this is causing a lot of confusion and frustration which is requiring many years for them to make sense of.
3) Our society is not designed for 16-year-old children to become adults, and so they have no practical way of providing themselves with a home, food, and other supplies, and traveling around the city.


Children today need to be prepared for society

Our primitive ancestors had such a simple life that they didn't have to do much to prepare their children for adulthood. They were essentially on an eternal camping trip. Parents didn't have to provide their children with homes; help them find jobs; or help them meet people of the opposite sex. The children learned everything they needed to know simply by growing up around other people.

Our lives and jobs are becoming increasingly complex. We must update our society to help children make the transition into adulthood. For example, consider the issue of housing. During prehistoric times, the teenage boys could easily move out of their parent's home and into their own home because their homes were extremely simple and temporary structures of animal hides and branches. Today, however, the homes are so expensive that many people cannot afford a home of their own until they are over the age of 25.

Transportation is another problem today. During prehistoric times the people traveled with their legs, and so parents didn't have to worry about their children learning how to drive automobiles, use train systems, or afford an airplane ticket. By comparison, in nations such as America, transportation is primarily by automobile, and that requires we purchase an automobile, learn how to drive, and get some experience.

The difficulty of making the transition from childhood to adulthood is inadvertently forcing teenagers to remain with their parents for a longer period of time than they want to. I think we should alter society to fix this particular problem. One change that I would make is to provide the basic necessities to everybody for free. This provides every young adult with access to a home, food, clothing, and other supplies. Another change is to design a city without automobiles, thereby allowing everybody of every age to travel by train, bicycle, or foot.


Force teenagers out of their home

I promote what I refer to as a "City of Castles" in which the basic necessities are provided for free and people are living a large apartment complexes. I have already described some of the advantages to this type of city, but I didn't yet mention that one of the reasons I prefer this society is because it makes it easy for teenagers to move out of their house.

There would be special, large apartment buildings in the city specifically for the teenagers to live in. They would be similar to the dormitories of a college. The teenagers would not have to worry about food, clothing, rent, or school supplies. With a train system in the city, the teenagers would be able to travel anywhere without an automobile or driver's license. Since the apartment complex would be entirely for teenagers, we could refer to it as "Teentown".

For example, imagine if the apartment buildings in the image below formed Teentown, and the boys and girls were in separate buildings. An underground train would take the teenagers anywhere in the city, and the schools would be within walking distance of their apartments. The teenagers would live among bicycle paths, swimming areas, and gardens.

This brings me to another concept that I haven't mentioned yet. Specifically, I think that the teenagers should be removed from their house at age 14 and required to move to Teentown. Society would then take over as their parents. If a teenager was ready to move out at age 12 or 13, that would be acceptable, but it would be mandatory by age 14.

From the point of view of the teenagers, living in Teentown would feel as if they are in a "boarding school" until they are 18 years old. When they became 18, all of the teenagers would either be ready to start a full-time job, in which case they would move into a home for adults, or they would move to a college dormitory if they were learning a skill that required more of an education.

Some parents might complain that they would not want their 14-year-old children to be taken away from them, but parents would be allowed to visit with their children whenever they want. In a City of Castles, the parents would be outside all the time for meals and recreation rather than spending most of their life inside their house like a caged animal. Since parents would be outside every day, it would be easy for them to occasionally arrange to visit their teenage children at Teentown or at some other place in the city.

Furthermore, the concept I mentioned about food applies to teenagers. To refresh your memory, food will taste better when you are hungry. Likewise, parents will enjoy teenagers much more when the parents see them only occasionally. Teenagers and adults do not have a lot in common, and so when they have to spend every night together in a house, they are going to annoy one another. Forcing adults and teenagers to spend time together is likely to drive them apart.

Although the teenagers would be provided with free housing, food, clothing, and other items, they would not be pampered. Unlike a boarding school, in which the school officials have to appease parents and students, the officials supervising Teentown are under pressure to prepare the teenagers for either college or jobs. As I described in Part 7, I would divide a city into three school districts, and each would have their own Teentown. This would allow us to compare the school districts to see which of the three officials was doing the worst job of preparing children for adulthood, and that official would be replaced so that somebody else could have the chance.

All of the teenagers would be expected to participate in the work that was necessary for their support. For example, they would have to take turns in the kitchen to make their meals and clean up the mess; they would have to take turns cleaning their buildings; and they would take turns with the gardening chores. The adults would only provide the services that the teenagers didn't have the skills for, such as repairing a broken refrigerator.

Adults would have to provide supervision to the teenagers, but I would make as many of the jobs on a part-time basis as possible so that the parents could do them. These jobs would allow the parents to work around the teenagers in a supervisory role, just as if they were living at home with them. For example, one parent might work one morning each month supervising the teenagers in the cafeteria kitchen as they make breakfast for the other teenagers in the dormitory, and another parent might work one evening each month supervising the teenagers as they clean the hallways and elevators. Another parent might work one Saturday afternoon each month to supervise recreational activities for the teenagers. To prevent the problem of parents giving special favors to their children, parents would not be allowed to directly supervise their own children.

We could also require all parents to have at least one part-time job in Teentown or with one of the other schools. We could say that every parent has a responsibility to get involved with the education and supervision of their children. This might seem to be imposing a burden on the parents, but supervising a large group of children in a school is much more efficient than each parent taking care of his own children. Therefore, parents would actually spend less time dealing with their children in this system than they do today.

I suppose that some parents would complain that they are willing to supervise their own children, but not other people's children. These people consider everybody else's children to be inferior, worthless creatures. This attitude is natural for animals and primitive humans, but it is inappropriate for modern society. Parents who want to titillate themselves with their own children and who have no concern for anybody else's children are too much like an animal. This modern world needs people who consider children as the next generation of humans, and who are willing to help everybody's children.

Another of the advantages to removing children from their homes at age 14 is that the homes do not have to be designed for teenagers. This allows homes to be smaller, thereby increasing the density in the apartment complexes. I also think that removing the teenagers would make life in the apartment complexes much nicer for the adults.

Some people might worry that Teentown will have gangs or crime, but that would happen only if the adults behave like frightened rabbits and hide from the troublesome teenagers. If we provide ourselves with a police department that has the emotional strength to identify and evict teenage criminals, then Teentown will be free of crime.


Teenagers should be encouraged to meet people

I would suggest that the apartment buildings in Teentown be designed so that two or more teenagers are sharing a room. However, we should not assign roommates for them, or force them to tolerate any particular roommate. They should be allowed to select their roommates, and they should be able to change roommates whenever they please. This prevents such problems as the mixing of homosexuals and heterosexuals, as in the case of Tyler Clementi.

Furthermore, they should be able to change their roommates whenever they decide that they don't like them, or whenever they want to get to know somebody else. They should not have to justify getting a new roommate. Rather, we should have the exact opposite attitude. Specifically, the teenagers should be encouraged to get new roommates once in a while in order to get to know a lot of people and find friends who they truly enjoy.

We have to face the fact that we must be much more finicky than our primitive ancestors when we look for friends and a spouse. Our ancestors didn't have to worry much about compatibility. Today we have so many activities and options that we have to search for people who have similar interests in recreational activities, food, entertainment, sleeping habits, music, and jobs. Our prehistoric ancestors never had arguments over gambling, alcohol, religion, politics, or what to do with their vacation. Today we have to look through a lot of people in order to find somebody who is compatible. We should not be embarrassed to want to meet a lot of people and try to find friends who we truly enjoy being with. We should not accept friendships out of guilt or pity.

Many people today are lonely, and they react with fear to the thought of losing a friendship, but we don't solve our problems with fear. We need to create more homogenous cities, and we need to provide ourselves with lots of activities so that we can easily meet people. We should promote the philosophy of exploring the world and experiencing what it has to offer. We should encourage children to terminate a relationship that they are not happy with. Children should be taught to find friends who they truly enjoy rather than force themselves on other people, and rather than accept a friend who they do not enjoy. Children should also be taught to find a spouse and friends who like them for what they truly are. We should not feel guilty about discontinuing a friendship.

The teenagers who resist getting new roommates once in a while, and the adults who resist meeting people, should be regarded as social defects who are more like a solitary savage than a modern human. The teenagers should be taught to take advantage of the roommate situation while they are young because when they are older, they will be less interested in having roommates.

This same concept applies to neighbors. When a society provides housing for free, we can easily move from one home to another without any concern about buying or selling property. We are fools to live among people who we dislike, or who do not enjoy us. We should try to find neighbors who like us for what we are. By comparison, the attitude all around the world today is that everybody must be tolerant of their neighbors, regardless of how much we dislike or fear them. Americans compensate for this policy in several ways, such as providing databases of pedophiles so that we can figure out if pedophiles are living in our neighborhood, but this doesn't really solve the problem of living among people we dislike.

If you think that a pedophile database is making your life better, imagine an extreme situation. Imagine that instead of a simple database, we embedded GPS tracking devices inside the skulls of all pedophiles. Imagine being able to look on your computer or cell phone to see the current location of every pedophile. Imagine that this sensor was also monitoring their penis and was constantly transmitting their sexual arousal information.

Imagine that we also install these GPS devices inside every Jew, teenage gang member, rapist, burglar, lawyer, gypsy, heroin addict, and car thief. It would certainly be interesting to have this tracking information, but would it really improve your life? You and your child would continue to live and work among the freaks. Your child would be able to look on his cell phone and discover that the man who is staring at him is a pedophile, and that he is in a state of sexual arousal, but does providing your child with that type of information really solve the problem of pedophilia? I don't think so. I think it would simply cause people to waste more of their time watching the pedophiles. Besides, it would only show the pedophiles who have been caught, not those who are still active and working as policemen, doctors, school officials, and Boy Scout leaders.

We have only one, very short life. We are foolish to waste it living among neighbors we do not like, and we are even more foolish to live among people we fear or despise. Instead of encouraging people to tolerate neighbors they dislike, society should encourage us to meet lots of people and move near our friends so that when we open our front door, we are within walking distance of people we enjoy being with.


Teenagers should be assigned a variety of jobs

Although society would take care of children once they become 14, the teenagers would not be pampered. In addition to doing the work necessary to feed themselves and keep their dormitory complex clean, they would be provided with a wide variety of jobs outside of their dormitory complex. The obvious reason would be to help the teenagers get used to work and to figure out what jobs they like and dislike. The not so obvious reason may be understandable only to those of us who have done a wide variety of jobs. Specifically, it helps us to understand how society functions, and how to improve it. It also gives us a better appreciation of the work that other people do.

For example, every child knows how to clean floors, furniture, and dishes because every child has seen other people do these operations, and many children have had to do a bit of cleaning at home. However, the teenagers who have to take turns cleaning the elevators, hallways, kitchens, bathrooms, and windows of their condominium complex will have a better understanding of this issue. When one of those teenagers becomes an architect, their experience and memories of cleaning large buildings is likely to influence their work. For example, they will be more likely to be concerned about cleaning and maintenance of the building.

By comparison, the architect who grew up as a pampered prince will not have much experience with cleaning, so he will have to be taught to consider these issues. Somebody will have to explain to him why certain floors in a building have curved tiles in the corners, and why certain floors have a very slight slope. The pampered prince will not understand what is obvious to the people who have had to do "real" work.

For another example, when a teenager has to spend some time working in a machine shop to produce some of the items that other teenagers are designing, he will become more aware of how some of the students are specifying holes that are not standard drill sizes, and therefore require extra work, and he will also become familiar with typical mistakes that the students are making. If he becomes an engineer, he will be more likely to design items with standard tools and with fewer mistakes.

By comparison, the pampered prince will have no understanding of what the machinists are doing in a machine shop, so somebody has to teach him about a machine shop, or else he will be more likely to request operations that are more difficult to do, and send drawings to the shop with more mistakes.

All of us who have done a variety of jobs will agree that the experience is valuable. You get a better understanding of something by doing it rather than by watching other people do it, or by listening to somebody teach you about it. It is best to get involved and do something. The people who are afraid of work are fools who are denying themselves an opportunity to learn about themselves and the world.

If the people who were studying to be engineers had to spend some time working in a recycling center, they would be more aware of the issue of recycling. If more people had to spend time unclogging the toilets of teenage girls who use toilets as garbage disposals (this happens frequently with the college students near me), then they would more be aware of this problem, and that in turn could cause them to be somewhat more willing to do something about it. If an architect had to work as a window washer on a large building, he would be more likely to think about how to design an automatic window washer.

When a person has to work on a farm and help produce food, then they will associate food with all of that work. When they see food being wasted, they will be reminded of all the work that had to go into producing that food. By comparison, a person who has never put much effort into producing food will not see food as representing "work". When they look at food, they will see an object that tastes good. They will not associate the food with work.

Some people might respond that my philosophy about jobs is silly. They may point out that they, or people they personally know, have already had a variety of jobs as teenagers, but they learned nothing from those jobs. They might point out that they know an architect who spent a lot of time cleaning windows and mopping floors, but he has no concern for the maintenance of the buildings that he designs. Some people may point out that they know somebody who worked on a farm, but he wastes more food than people who have never worked on a farm. Some people may point out that they know an engineer who worked in a machine shop, but he continues to request holes that are non-standard sizes, and he shows no concern about the mistakes that he makes on his drawing. Some people may point out that they know somebody who worked on a farm for years, but he still loves having food fights and shooting bullets into watermelons and cantaloupes.

I pointed out that every day of life is a learning experience in Part 3 here. However, stupid and retarded humans don't learn much of anything as they go through life. They merely exist from one day to the next, as do animals.

If we were to provide every teenager with a variety of jobs, some of them would learn a lot about themselves and society; others would learn only a little bit; and others would learn virtually nothing. We are foolish to design society for the lowest quality people. We cannot be concerned about the people who behave like animals. We should design society for the higher quality people. The higher-quality teenagers will benefit by having a variety of jobs and experiences while they are young, and by getting to know lots of other teenagers.

None of the teenagers should have any special privileges or pampering, regardless of who their parents are. The teenagers would be treated like soldiers in a military, not like customers who are paying for entertainment at a summer camp. The teenagers would be in a submissive role, not the dominant role. Although their parents would be allowed to work part-time in supervisory roles, none of the parents would be able to directly supervise their own children.

Children today are not treated equally. The children of parents who are famous, wealthy, or have certain jobs in the government are given special pampering. One of the reasons I suggest that society take over the raising of children at age 14 is to get all of the children away from their parents so that they can all be treated equally. The adults who supervise these children will be like instructors in the military who treat the children as a group, not as individuals. For example, jobs would be assigned to groups of children, not selected for each individual child, and so it will be impossible for parents to pressure the instructors to give their particular children special pampering. The teenagers will learn that they have to earn whatever they want in life. They will not get any special favors regardless of who their parents are.


Design society for what we want children to be

If we give a group of 8-year-old children unlimited access to alcohol, gambling, drugs, and candy, a large percentage of them will have trouble coping with those items. Many will become an alcoholic, or become sickly from the candy, or waste a lot of time gambling. If we wait until that group of children is 16 years old, a smaller percentage will have trouble coping with the items. If we wait until they are 24 years old, then there will be even fewer people with problems.

Many people react to this rather obvious characteristic by making some items illegal; making others by prescription only; and by putting age limits on other items, such as 18 or 21. However, restricting our access to these items is not solving the problem. People are continuing to have troubles with these items even with the restrictions.

Rather than design society for the worst behaved people, we should design it for what we consider to be the proper behavior for people of different age groups. The people who cannot meet the standards should not be tormented, reprimanded, or punished. Instead, we accept them for what they are but prohibit them from reproduction.

If society takes control of children at age 14 and starts preparing them for society, they are going to differ in their ability to handle the responsibility. Some of them may have trouble working in jobs, or working in teams, or handling criticism. Some may have trouble dealing with unlimited access to food, alcohol, video games, gambling, or whatever we provide them with. Rather than torment the teenagers who have trouble dealing with life, we should use the opportunity to pass judgment on which of them are worthy of reproduction. Eventually this will result in children who mature at the proper rate and who develop the qualities necessary to deal with modern society.

Imagine living in a world in which babies pass through the diaper stage within a month or two; the five-year-old children are well behaved and responsible; and the 16-year-old teenagers are self-sufficient adults who can handle unlimited access to food, alcohol, toys, gambling, and drugs without adult supervision.


Children are not happier than adults

Some people might respond that taking children away from their parents at age 14 will force them to become adults earlier, thereby denying them a few years of childhood. This is an idiotic theory that is based on the assumption that being taken care of by parents is more fun than being an independent adult. In reality, which is more fun depends upon a person's mind.

The adults who assume that childhood is better than adulthood are simply the adults who have trouble coping with life. They don't enjoy being an adult, and they assume that the reason is because adulthood is terrible. They want somebody else to take care of them, just like their parents took care of them. They want lots of waiters to pamper them at restaurants, just like their mother would pamper them at dinner. They assume that what they want is what other adults want, but it isn't. There are some of us who prefer being independent and self-sufficient. In my opinion, Americans are getting excessive pampering from waiters, airline stewardess, and retail store clerks. I consider the pampering to be so extreme that it is annoying.

Randy Constan doesn't want to abandon the Peter Pan fantasy. Although he is unusual, he found a wife with this page. By comparison, Larry Greenfield is having no luck finding a wife who is "beautiful, thin, smart, Jewish", and I attract Peggy Borger, who continues to call me on the phone; 14 October 2012 is the last time so far.
My mother read the Peter Pan story to me when I was very young, and I can still remember fantasizing about remaining a child forever, just like Peter Pan. I was thinking to myself that I was having so much fun as a child that I didn't want to become an adult. I wanted to do more finger-painting and climbing in trees, not yard work, as my father would do. I wanted to spend the day exploring the nearby creek with other boys, not driving to whatever job my father was doing. I was under the impression that children were having a much happier life than the adults.

To my amazement, as I grew older, I remained just as happy. Obviously, my mind was changing with age. I lost my interest in playing with cardboard boxes, skateboarding, and putting a playing card in the spokes of my bicycle. I also lost my desire to be Peter Pan. The activities that I used to enjoy now seem idiotic to me, and some of the activities I looked at with horror are now enjoyable.

Whether you enjoy adulthood has nothing to do with your age. It has to do with whether you matured properly for your particular environment. If a child doesn't develop properly, he will become an adult who has trouble fitting in with the other adults. He may be more comfortable around children. Our tendency is to feel sorry for him, reprimand him, punish him, ridicule him, or try to cure him of his problem, but we should accept him for what he is, unless he is destructive to society, in which case we should evict him. The child-like adults are defective. They are the human equivalent of a caterpillar that becomes a butterfly with wings that did not develop completely. However, tormenting them does not help anybody.

Another reason that I think we should allow children to become adults sooner is because we develop our most intense memories during our childhood. My memories of childhood have faded, but I still have intense and pleasant bits and pieces of memories of childhood. For example, when I was in kindergarten (or first grade?), a school bus would stop in front of our house to pick me up. I cannot remember anything about the bus or the school, but I still remember my mother sitting with me in the grass in the morning while we waited for it. The grass was full of clover, and I remember picking some of the flowers and showing them to my mother, who was sitting next to me. It may seem like a silly memory, but the reason I remember it is because it was so emotionally pleasant.

I think that one of the problems with life today is that many people have a dull or miserable childhood. Although the environment cannot change a person's genetic characteristics, it has a tremendous effect on a child's attitude, mood, and memories. Some adults eventually deal with their miserable childhood and figure out how to set up a life for themselves that they enjoy, but I think it would be better if all children had pleasant lives and accumulated a lot of pleasant memories.

If children were to have pleasant memories of their childhood, they would enter their teenage years with a good attitude towards life. I think our teenage years would normally be an especially exciting time of life because it is a transition period that we go through only once. However, I don't think many teenagers today are enjoying their transition.

By taking all of the teenagers out of their house at age 14 and putting them into "Teentown", the adults will be able to prepare them for adulthood and provide them with lots of activities. Instead of spending their evenings and weekends with their parents, or by playing video games, or by standing around a shopping mall, they will be involved in more sensible activities with other teenagers. They will develop real friendships, not telephone or Internet friendships.

Our teenage years should provide us with wonderful memories.
I think the teenagers will accumulate some intense and wonderful memories about becoming independent and self-sufficient; flirting with the opposite sex at courtship activities; learning about the different types of jobs available; and exploring the city they live in. Those intense memories will remain with them for their entire lives. Compare that to the teenagers of today who waste their teenage years in confusion, frustration, awkwardness, loneliness, drunkenness, and miserable relationships. When they become adults, many of them want to forget their childhood.

Most people claim to be happy, especially those who are wealthy, but I think most people are actually suffering. Some people seem to be suffering simply because they picked up a lot of idiotic and conflicting goals and attitudes. Those people have the potential of learning more about life and figuring out how to enjoy it.

However, most people seem to be suffering because they don't have the emotional or intellectual ability to deal with modern life. They are primitive savages who are overwhelmed with this modern world. They don't enjoy jobs or schools, and they don't want to learn, think, be responsible, or deal with society's problems. All they want to do is titillate their emotions with food, sex, babies, status, material items, drugs, toys, and other entertainment. They enjoy the technology of the modern era, but I think they would be happier overall in a more primitive era.

Many people, including myself, fantasize about a different life, and I think the reason is because we don't like what we have right now. Some people fantasize about becoming rich and being pampered by servants; some fantasize about moving out into the forest and living a more simple life; and some fantasize that a loving God is taking care of them and watching over them. Although I also fantasize about a different life, I'm not trying to get away from work, government, or schools, and I'm not looking for pampering by servants, either, or for a God to love me. I am trying to improve our societies, not escape from reality or responsibility.


Children need to learn about life, not be pampered or protected

Humans are arrogant, and each of us assumes that we are the standard to judge all people. As a result, parents are likely to assume that their children have the same desires as they do. If the parents fantasize about being wealthy and pampered, then they assume that their children will also enjoy such a life. As a result, the parents who want to be pampered will pamper their children, such as by providing them with lots of material items, and permitting them to get away with virtually any type of behavior. By comparison, the adults who enjoy being self-sufficient are more likely to prepare their children for becoming independent adults rather than pamper them or try to extend their childhood as long as possible.

If we were to pamper a baby tiger or a baby wolf, we would hurt that animal. The pampering would prevent the animal from learning how to take care of itself and interact with other animals. It would become a socially dysfunctional creature, and it might have trouble feeding itself.

As amazing as it may seem, a baboon is not born knowing how to swing around in tree branches. They have to be taught by the adults, and they need to practice. If we were to pamper a baby baboon, it would become a nonfunctional adult whose muscles didn't develop properly and who doesn't know how to properly climb trees or find food.

I think that many Americans are pampering their children to such an extreme that they are interfering with their proper mental and physical development. Parents should prepare children for society, not play with them as if they are toys, or treat them as if they are delicate creatures, or try to extend their childhood by an additional 10 or 20 years.

Most adults believe that they are protecting their children by keeping them ignorant about childbirth, sex, breast-feeding, masturbation, digestion, and other aspects of the human body, but children are not damaged by this information. I think it is better to teach this particular type of information to children while they are still so young that they are not annoyed or titillated by it. Young children are not bothered by anything. This makes it very easy to teach them about the human body.

Thousands of years ago the children grew up without any privacy. They would have seen and heard adults having sex, and they would have seen mothers breast-feeding their babies and giving birth, and they would have seen people pee, poop, and masturbate. How did those children survive? The answer is simply that children are not bothered by reality. It is the adults who have trouble with these issues.

Adults assume that what bothers adults will also bother children, but children are not miniature adults. Children are more like animals. Most parents are foolishly "protecting" their children from useful information while allowing their children to be exposed to dangerous people and information. For example, our society allows children to be manipulated by businessmen, feminists, and religious fanatics. Children need to be protected from that type of abuse, not from information about their bodies.


When will we deal with masturbation?

When I grew up, during the 1960s, many of us boys were incredibly ignorant about sexual issues. The bathing suit and underwear section of the Sears and Roebuck catalog was our only source of information about a woman's body, but that did not provide much information. For example, I had heard remarks about oral and anal sex, but I didn't realize people actually did such acts. I assumed that they were jokes. I had heard about masturbation, also, but I didn't have any idea of what it was. I had no understanding of an orgasm, either. I knew that men produced sperm, and that a woman produced eggs, but I couldn't figure out how the sperm was getting from the man to those eggs. As amazing as it may seem, the concept of sexual intercourse is not obvious to a child. All throughout history children have been learning about it by watching other people do it.

One evening when I was about 14 years old and getting ready to go to sleep, my penis had a somewhat uncomfortable feeling, and so I lightly rubbed it, as I might do with a sore muscle. That make it feel a bit better, but it started to get a bit larger and harder, and started feeling extremely good. It got to the point where I couldn't stop rubbing it, and I had an orgasm. I was surprised and excited. I was so ignorant that I had no idea this was going to happen.

I assumed that the liquid was semen. My first thought was to call my mother and show her what I had done, and so I took a small plastic container that I had in my room, which was about the size of a small bottle of prescription pills, and I scraped up as much of the semen that was on my stomach as I could. I was planning to run out of the room naked with that little vial of semen to show my mother. I wasn't interested in showing my sister or two brothers, but I wanted to show my mother.

As I was looking at that little vial of semen, which seemed like a lot but which I now realize was hardly any, I was having doubts about whether I should run out of the room naked and show my mother. It was late in the evening, and everybody was in their rooms and getting ready for sleep, and maybe they would be embarrassed. I decided that I probably should keep quiet about it. If it had happened during the day, and if my mother had been on the other side of my bedroom door, I probably would've called her, "Mom! Look what I just did!"

Our prehistoric ancestors didn't have to teach their children anything about sex, menstruation, or masturbation, so the human race never developed an ability to deal with sexual issues. Evolution gives us only what is vital, not what is useful. As a result, it is difficult for humans to deal with sexual issues. There is a lot of obnoxious toilet humor on television and on the Internet, but there is almost no serious information about these issues.

We are not ignoring sexual issues because it makes sense to ignore them. Rather, most people are following their inhibitions like a stupid animal rather than thinking intelligently like a human. This is creating a lot of unnecessary sexual problems and ignorance.

In addition to providing children with sexual information, I think we should go even further and provide both boys and girls with guidelines on what to do when boys are sexually frustrated and the girls are either not interested in sex or too young for sex. For example, the girls could be told that if they want to do the boy a favor, they could put some lubricant on their hand and let the boy use their hand for sexual relief. That avoids diseases and pregnancy, and the girl doesn't even have to take off her clothing. All she has to do is tolerate the boy grabbing a hold of her and using her hand for sex.

It may seem bizarre to provide girls with suggestions on how to satisfy a sexually frustrated boy, but I think it is much more idiotic to allow boys and girls to grow up in a state of ignorance and confusion. I think it is even more idiotic to allow children to grow up around sexually frustrated adults, especially if an adult has a history of forcing children into sex acts. We need to control our sexual inhibitions and start experimenting with different policies.


When will we deal with abnormal sexual development rates?

Every baby animal and plant has to grow to a certain extent before they become sexually mature. The process can be affected by the environment, but the rate at which an animal matures is set by its DNA. Because every creature is genetically unique, some animals and plants mature too early, and some mature too late. Nature decides which of them is maturing at the proper rate for their particular species and their particular environment.

Humans also become sexually mature at different ages, and the environment will have some effect over us. At what age should a human become sexually mature? There is no right or wrong answer to that question. Nature used to make the decision for each tribe of humans. For example, if a girl became pregnant while her pelvis was too small to give birth, then she would likely die during childbirth. At the other extreme, if a woman didn't mature until late in her 20s, she would be less successful in reproducing because she would be too old to properly take care of her children.

Nature used to determine when humans were maturing at the proper rate, but today we have to make that determination. Some girls are maturing at age 10, and if they are maturing early because of their genetic design, then if we don't prohibit them from reproducing, the next generation will have even more girls who are maturing too soon. There are also women at the other extreme who are maturing very late, and if that is because of their genetic makeup, then if we don't prohibit them from reproducing, then the next generation will have more women who don't mature until late in life. Eventually we are going to have an incredible variety of defects, from girls who are sexually mature at age 4, to women who are not sexually mature until they are 40.

We should also consider the possibility that chemicals, foods, and other environmental factors are affecting the rate at which we mature.

We have to pass judgment on what we want the human race to become. Do we want girls becoming mature at age 10? It might seem cruel to tell a girl who matures too early that she is not allowed to have children, but it is more cruel to create even more girls who are maturing too early.

Thousands of years ago the girls who matured too early would have suffered tremendously, and those who did not die during childbirth would have been unable to properly care for their children, causing their children to suffer. The human body and mind evolved certain characteristics as a result of a tremendous number of our ancestors who suffered or died. We have excellent 3-D, color vision because for millions of years, our ancestors with defective eyesight suffered or died. Our heart is very reliable because for millions of years, our ancestors with faulty hearts suffered or died. We can digest food because for thousands of years our ancestors with digestive problems suffered or died.

Evolution is a cruel process. In this video, a pregnant wildebeest is attacked by two hyenas, and they tear her baby out of her while she is alive, and then they kill her. Why did that particular wildebeest die rather than another? Why did her baby never have a chance at life? We will never know the answer, but these type of deaths are usually not random. Usually the animals that get caught by a predator are those that are physically or mentally inferior to the others, or weak from old age. Perhaps this wildebeest was too inept to properly use her horns to defend herself, or perhaps she was too physically weak. Regardless of the reason, after millions of these type of deaths, the wildebeests will evolve into more intelligent, more talented, and stronger creatures.

When I was a young boy, I noticed that every time I hit two objects together very hard, such as hitting two rocks to break one in half, I had an uncontrollable craving to shut my eyes at the moment the objects hit one another. Why would I do that? It is because for millions of years our ancestors who did not have a tendency to shut their eyes when they hit rocks had a greater tendency to injure their eyes. If we could go back in time a million years, we would find that some of our ancestors were hitting rocks together, but without closing their eyes, and the end result is that they sometimes got sharp pieces of rock in their eye. They then suffered pain, possibly blindness in one eye. They may have been wonderful people, but they didn't have the characteristic of shutting their eyes when pounding objects together.

It is also impossible for us to keep our eyes open as we sneeze, and that feature may have developed because a lot of our ancestors injured their eyes when they sneezed with their eyes open.

A phenomenal amount of animals and primitive humans had to suffer in order to provide us with the physical and mental qualities that we have today. Since we no longer let nature do its job, we have to make decisions on who among us has the necessary characteristics for the next generation.

Marriage and families
 
 How do we decide who is worthy of reproduction?
In the world today, everybody is allowed to have children, even if they don't want the children. We can also have children without marriage, and we are allowed to have children with as many of our multiple partners as we please, thereby creating families that are a mixture of children from different parents. We have incredible freedom in regards to reproduction.

Reproduction should not be considered a "right". It should be considered a "responsibility" to the future of the human race. We should restrict who among us is allowed to have children, but how do we make such decisions? We simply set some standards on what the human mind and body should be, and we pass judgment on who is close enough to the standards to be authorized to reproduce.

Every city would maintain a certain population level, and so they would allow only as many children as is necessary to maintain their population. People would be divided into three primary categories; namely:
1) The "breeders" who are authorized to reproduce.
2) People who are allowed to adopt the children that the breeders are producing specifically for adoption. This type of adoption would be respectable rather than shameful.
3) People who are unfit to be parents. These people would not be allowed to reproduce or adopt.

I would prohibit people from having children until they are at least 18. Just before a person turns 18, he would be classified into one of those three categories. However, the classifications would not necessarily be permanent. A person who is classified as a breeder may turn out to have terrible qualities that were not noticed during his youth, and so he may need to be reclassified to prevent him from reproducing. The opposite could also happen.

A government agency would be responsible for classifying teenagers into those three categories. We could call it the Reproduction Agency. The full-time officials in this agency would not actually make decisions about reproduction. Rather, when a teenager is about to become 18 years old, this agency would put together a temporary team of people to pass judgment on how to classify him. With teenagers becoming 18 every day, this agency will be putting together a lot of teams throughout the year.

I suggest that the teams consist of two groups of people:
1) At least one scientist who has proven to have knowledge and experience in biology and genetics.
2) Ordinary people who personally know the teenager being analyzed.

I think this mixture of scientists and "ordinary" people would be best because the scientists would be able to provide technical information about the teenager, such as his genetic history and medical problems, and the "ordinary" people would be able to provide their personal opinions, such as whether they like the teenager.

It might seem ridiculous to let people make decisions about who should reproduce according to whether they like or dislike a person, but this is exactly what has been going on for thousands of years. This technique has allowed the human race to evolve into what we are today. For thousands of years people have been selecting their friends and spouse according to who they like.

I am not proposing anything new. Rather, I am suggesting that we continue to do what we have been doing for thousands of years, but in a more efficient, more intellectual manner. All I am doing is suggesting that we add some scientists into this process to provide information about a person's genetic and medical history. This information will allow us to make better decisions about reproduction compared to our ancestors, who judged people solely according to what they liked. I also suggest that we don't allow the people who are below-average intelligence to participate in the process.

During prehistoric times, each person, regardless of his stupidity or mental illness, was involved in the decisions of who reproduces, although they didn't realize what they were doing. They influenced reproduction simply by selecting friends and lovers according to their emotional reactions. They also influenced reproduction indirectly when a tribe would split into two or more pieces. They would never split at random. Rather, they would split according to their emotional attractions to one another.

All throughout history, both humans and animals have been forming relationships according to their emotional reactions. Nature made the final decisions about who lives and dies, thereby deciding whose relationships were the most appropriate. After thousands of generations of selecting people according to who they like, humans developed certain personality traits, physical qualities, and mental abilities.

Our environment today is different, so we must change how we look for a friend and a spouse compared to our primitive ancestors, but the point I want to make is that we must continue making decisions according to what our emotions like in addition to making intellectual decisions. We have to live with one another, and so we must be emotionally satisfied with one another or we will not enjoy life together.

In addition to judging people according to whether we like their personality, we should also consider whether we like the way they look, including their body. I think that the adults who supervise Teentown should occasionally arrange for the boys and girls to have swimming events in which they are naked. One reason is to get the teenagers accustomed to nudity so that they don't become inhibited adults, as we find in the world today. Another reason is to allow the adults to pass judgment on which of the teenagers are too physically ugly or defective to reproduce. It might also help expose the boys who have trouble controlling their sexual cravings.

The people with ugly bodies believe that they have a right to hide their body and reproduce, but I would respond that the future generations have a right to be healthy and good-looking. The ugly people waste a lot of their time feeling sorry for themselves, hating other people, having cosmetic surgery, and being envious of other people. They are also very self-conscious. We don't need more ugly, miserable, hateful, envious people in this world.

Nature allows everybody to reproduce, which might seem "fair", but it is brutal, inefficient, and cruel. When we take control of this process, a lot of people will complain that it is unfair that they cannot reproduce, but overall there will be much less suffering.

In addition to restricting who can reproduce, we also have to restrict who is allowed to participate in the teams that decide who is allowed to reproduce. We would not allow the people who are classified as "below average" to join those teams or get involved in the decisions. This is another example of why it is important for us to design schools so that they do a better job of classifying people as "below average" in intelligence, as I described in Part 7.

For an example of how this process would work, imagine that a teenager is just about to become 18 years old. Everybody who personally knew the teenager would be eligible to participate in the discussion of how to classify the teenager. They would send their request to the Reproduction Agency, and those officials would select everybody who had been classified as above average in intelligence. Some of those volunteers might like the teenager and want to allow him to reproduce, and some may dislike the teenager and want to prevent him from reproducing. All of the volunteers would become part-time, temporary government officials in the Reproduction Agency whose sole task is to participate in a discussion about that particular teenager. It would be like jury duty, except that instead of passing judgment on whether a person is guilty of a crime, they would pass judgment on whether a teenager should be allowed to reproduce, adopt, or neither. We could describe this team as a "Reproductive Jury".

The officials in the Reproduction Agency would find at least one scientist who is capable of understanding the genetic and medical information about the teenager. The scientists would get together with the volunteers who personally knew the teenager, and they would discuss their opinions and make a decision on how to classify the teenager. The discussions would take only seconds for the teenagers who are at the extremes of the popularity chart, but for the other teenagers, the discussions could go on forever if there is not some way to stop them. I would give the scientists more authority than the other people. If no decision is reached after a certain amount of time - which would be up to the scientists to specify - then the scientists simply make a decision.

After a decision has been made, everybody would return to their regular jobs. Everybody in the Reproductive Jury would also have to add their name to a document along with their reasoning, and that document would be added to the teenager's database. The document would be full of personal opinions, such as, "I don't think he should reproduce because he repeatedly demonstrated undesirable behavior. For example, when he was 11 years old he had a tantrum..."

If a person disagreed with a decision, he would be allowed to develop his reasoning into a document and present it to the Reproduction Agency. If the agency felt that his reasoning was potentially valid, they would put together another Reproductive Jury to analyze his complaint. As you can imagine, allowing people to complain about decisions could create a situation in which a person complains about a decision, and then, when his complaint is rejected, he complains again, and so on, year after year.

America's legal system allows us to bring cases to court over and over, but we should change that attitude so that a person who brings up cases that turn out to be failures will have an increasingly difficult time getting government officials to listen to him. Everything a person does should be recorded in a publicly accessible database, and nobody should be allowed to hide their history. Instead, we should analyze a person's history and use it to pass judgment on whether we should listen to their suggestions or tell them to shut up. People who fail over and over should be regarded as idiots who are wasting other people's time and resources. By comparison, a person who repeatedly does good work will have an increasingly easy time getting people to listen to him. This philosophy rewards people with good performance and penalizes people with bad performance.

Some people will complain that we have no right to set up juries to pass judgment on who reproduces, but we already allow mysterious people to pass judgment on who among us is allowed to adopt children. What is the difference between passing judgment on adoption and passing judgment on reproduction? We also pass judgment on who can fly an airline and be a dentist. The main difference between what we have today and what I propose is that I propose making the entire process open to the public rather than allowing it to be secretive. We would be able to see who is on each Reproductive Jury, and what their reasoning is. We would also be able to look at every teenager's life history. Nobody would be keeping secrets.

Many people will object to the concept of a government passing judgment on who should reproduce, but parents should not think of themselves as "owning" their children. Instead, parents should think of themselves as "raising" the next generation of humans. Children are not toys for parents to play with, and they are not slaves that the parents can force to become beauty queens. Children belong to society, not to parents.


What restrictions should we put on marriage?

Many nations have set age 18 to be the minimum for marriage without parental consent. I would leave the age at 18, but I don't think many people would get married at that age in the society I propose because there would be no financial or political benefits to marriage. The women would have no reason to rush into a marriage, as they do today, because all of them would be provided with a home and other basic necessities. I think the women would become more finicky and wait until they found a man they truly wanted to spend their life with.

In the world today, both marriages and divorces are significant financial and emotional events. As a result, parents are very concerned about their children getting into marriages that fail. However, in the society I propose, if there are no children, a divorce is a simple process. The reason is because there are no homes or material items to divide up, and no concern for alimony or child support. The childless couples would get a divorce simply by notifying society that they are divorced, and they would do this with a computer. This would change their marital status in the database. Each of them would then move into their own separate homes and continue with life. A divorce would not require lawyers, courts, or paper documents. A divorce would not be a burden on the couple, their families, or society.

I am not suggesting that we encourage people to form frivolous marriages. Actually, I think that even childless couples would be happier if they were capable of forming stable marriages. I am simply pointing out that a divorce is such a simple procedure in this type of society that we don't have to be concerned about them.

For the people who have children, divorce is more significant, so we want couples to form stable relationships while they are raising children. However, I don't think additional restrictions on marriage will improve the success of their marriage. I think the best way to improve marriages is to improve society, such as by removing the political and financial benefits to marriage, and by providing lots of courtship activities for teenagers so that they truly get to know a lot of people.

We will also improve marriages when we change our philosophy towards finding a spouse, friends, and coworkers. In the world today, people behave like frightened animals. They worry that they will never find a job, a friend, and/or a spouse, and so they deceive other people into hiring them, being their friend, or marrying them. People often get themselves into jobs or relationships that they don't really like because they are afraid that they will never find anything else. We need to design society so that we have lots of activities to meet friends and a spouse, and we need to design the economy so that it is very easy for us to find jobs. None of us should be in fear of being alone or unemployed. We need to be relaxed when we meet people and try different jobs.

Another possible method of improving the stability of marriages is to shift the emphasis of the marriage from the wedding to the anniversaries. As I mentioned in a previous file, society could provide everybody with one wedding, but we could make that wedding very simple in order to reduce the emphasis on weddings. There are different ways that we could shift the emphasis to anniversaries. For one example, the city could have festivals throughout the year to honor people who have been married a certain number of years. The festivals would be more elaborate for the longer anniversaries. This would make the wedding seem dull by comparison, and that might encourage some of the young girls to fantasize about anniversary parties and stable relationships rather than weddings.

You might find it interesting to note that businesses do not celebrate the hiring of an employee, and the military does not celebrate the recruitment of a person. Rather, businesses and the military honor people who have been with the organization for a long time. They celebrate anniversaries, not weddings. We could follow their example and not have any ceremony for the wedding. The first ceremony could be after 10 years of marriage.


Is 18 too young for marriage?

From my personal observations, most American parents believe that their 18-year-old children are too young for marriage, a family, and alcohol, but I think that 18-year-old men and women are adults, and they should be ready to take care of themselves. I think that if we lived in a more homogenous, more sensible society, the teenagers would be much better prepared for life, and most of the men and women would be ready for marriage by age 18. Not every person will find a spouse by age 18, and not everybody will want to get married at that age, but the point I want to make is that 18-year-old people are adults, and they should be ready to take care of themselves, join society, and get married.

Most college students are at least 18 years old, and we should stop treating them as "children". They are adults, and they should behave like adults. If they cannot handle alcohol, jobs, food, or relationships, that is their problem, not your problem. Feeling sorry for adults who haven't matured properly doesn't help them, and it doesn't help us. There are some people who cannot handle marriage, alcohol, or gambling until they are 50 years old, but that doesn't justify raising the age for marriage or alcohol to 50.

By designing society for the higher-quality people, and by doing a better job of preparing children for society, the "normal" adults will be ready for marriage by the time they are 18 years old. However, most will probably not want to get married at that age. When there are no financial or political benefits to marriage, people will become more finicky about marriage. This is especially true of the people who do not want children, or who are prohibited from reproducing. A lot of those people might prefer remaining single until their 30s so that they can spend more time flirting, going to social affairs, doing things with their friends, and pursuing whatever activities they enjoy.

In the world today, being single is very lonely, but in the society I'm proposing, there would be lots of activities for people, and we would be able to freely move to a different home so that we can live among people that we enjoy. Being single wouldn't be as lonely or boring as it is in the world today.


Raising children has advantages and disadvantages

Our emotions cause us to consider children to be "bundles of joy", but in reality, children are a tremendous responsibility. Raising children requires that we give up a lot of our life for our children. Our emotions cause us to believe that people who raise children are having more fun than the rest of us, but there is no best way to enjoy life. Raising children has advantages and disadvantages. The people who become parents are analogous to people who volunteer to be full-time nannies, maids, restaurant waiters, and childcare workers.

Do you know anybody who has volunteered to become a full-time nanny or childcare worker? Actually, to make this question more realistic, it should be, do you know anybody who has paid thousands of dollars a year to become a full-time nanny or a childcare worker?

The people who choose to become parents are not merely volunteering to be nannies or childcare workers. Rather, they are paying to do it. To understand the significance of this issue, consider prostitution. Prostitution is illegal in most areas, but there are men all around the world paying women for sex anyway, and it has been going on for thousands of years. If prostitution were legal, there would be even more men paying for sex. And if prostitution were also an accepted activity, then it would become even more popular.

If a man considered taking care of children to be as exciting as sex, then the equivalent of prostitution would exist for raising children. For example, men around the world would offer to pay children, or their parents, to spend some time being a father. We could make that activity illegal, but many men would continue to pay for the opportunity to be a father.

Sometimes a man becomes so frustrated about his lack of sex that he pushes a woman into sex, or rapes a woman. If men enjoyed being fathers to the same extent that they enjoy sex, then sometimes a man would become so frustrated that he would force a child to let him make him dinner, clean up after him, show him how to fix his bicycle, and help him with his homework.

Some women have cut open pregnant women to steal their babies, and even more women have tried to steal babies at hospitals. If men had the same cravings to be fathers that women have to be mothers, then men would be equally involved with these types of crimes.

Many women have a difficult time resisting the urge to grab at people's babies and kiss them, and if men had the same cravings for babies, then instead of grabbing at women on crowded trains, they would be grabbing at babies and trying to kiss them.

Men have been regularly paying women for the momentary use of their body, but has any man ever paid a woman to spend a few minutes being the father to her children?

Women enjoy taking care of children so much that many grandmothers are happy to provide free childcare services for their grandchildren, but grandfathers are more likely to fantasize about having sex with the grandchildren.

The point I want to make is that people have the wrong attitude towards life. They think there are certain things they must do in order to enjoy life, such as be rich, famous, or have lots of children. However, there is nothing in particular that you need. Everything has advantages and disadvantages. Raising children has advantages, but it has a tremendous disadvantage, also. Being married has advantages, but it also has disadvantages.

People who want children are choosing to put a significant burden on themselves. Parents have to spend a lot of their time dealing with their children, whereas childless couples and single people have much more time to do whatever they please. In a sense, the people without children have more life to live.

Understanding this concept can help you to understand human emotions. For example, women have an intense attraction to babies; they are titillated by babies. This is not because nature wants women to "enjoy" children. Rather, it is because children are a tremendous burden on parents, and the only women who survived the competitive battle for reproduction were those who had such an intense attraction to children that the pleasure they received from their children overpowered the burden of raising children.

This also explains why men have such a strong attraction to visually attractive women with a pleasant personality, and why we have such a strong craving for sex. It's not because nature wants us to enjoy women or sex. Rather, it is to cause a man to form a stable relationship with a woman. Taking care of a woman is a burden. When a man gets married, he is essentially taking over as the father for some other couple's daughter. A man doesn't have much in common with women, so a man will not spend much of his time talking with his wife, or doing things with her. Furthermore, as soon as she starts having babies, his burden will increase dramatically.

Why would any man put up with the burden of a woman and her children? The reason is because the men who survived the competitive struggle for life were those whose attraction to women was so strong that it overpowered the suffering caused by taking care of a woman. The men also had a certain attraction to children. However, the men did not pick women at random. Male animals do not care which female they reproduce with, and male humans don't actually care who they have sex with, either, but we are finicky about who we accept as a spouse. We form more complex relationships with women than the male animals do, and so we want women who we consider emotionally pleasant and visually attractive. This makes the burden more bearable.

We could describe life as "cruel". Animals were not designed to enjoy life, or one another. The relationships between males and females, and between parents and children, are merely to serve a purpose. We could say that nature has tricked men and women into forming relationships with one another and raising children. The men have been tricked into thinking that a woman will provide us with sexual ecstasy, and women have been tricked into believing that they need children in order to enjoy life.

The female lion in the photo is another female animal that has displayed what we call "love" or "concern" for the baby of another species. She had just caught and ate a female antelope. After she was finished eating she noticed the antelope's baby. She was not hungry, so she tried to scare the antelope away, but the baby antelope was too young to realize that the lioness was a predator, and so it did not run away. Instead, it acted like a baby, and its behavior eventually triggered the mothering emotions of the lioness. She reacted by treating the baby antelope as if it were one of her own babies. Some people assume that she is playing with her food before eating it, but I've never seen a cat or dog behave like that with an animal that it was going to eat or kill.

Our emotional reaction to a photo like that is to assume the lion was truly concerned about the baby antelope, but she had absolutely no concern about the antelope. I suspect that the baby antelope titillated her "mothering emotions", and she was simply reacting. A lion is not capable of intelligent thought. She was not thinking of what was best for the antelope. She was titillated by the baby antelope, and she reacted by trying to satisfy those emotions. She was using the antelope like a dildo to stimulate herself with. She was selfishly trying to satisfy herself.

It might be easier for you to understand this concept if you look at male animals. When a male animal become sexually titillated, he tries to satisfy his cravings. If a dog becomes sexually excited around a receptive female dog of his own species, then he will inadvertently reproduce without having any idea of what he is doing. However, a dog has no understanding of why he has the cravings, and so he will satisfy his cravings with whatever he can find, such as this drunken man. How about this overweight woman who was too weak to hold back a large dog, or this Chihuahua that uses a toy duck? How about this rabbit that uses a balloon?

Most people would say that a female wolf is "cute" when she treats a stuffed animal as a baby, but it is as idiotic as a male dog trying to have sex with a drunken man.
The same concepts apply to female animals. When the mothering emotions of a female animal are titillated, she will react by trying to take care of a baby, but since she cannot think very well, she won't understand why she has the cravings. As a result, she will take care of anything, such as the baby of another animal, or, as in the photo to the right, a toy. What is the difference between a dog trying to satisfy his sexual cravings with a drunken man and a human woman trying to satisfy her cravings for babies by playing with a doll? In both cases, the creatures are trying to selfishly satisfy themselves.

The reason animals can behave in such a selfish manner is because the competition for life has caused the emotions of each species to be compatible with their needs. The female lion developed cravings that match the needs of baby lions. However, if a female animal tries to raise the baby of another species, there may be a mismatch between their emotional cravings and the needs of that other species. The end result is that the female animal will inadvertently hurt or kill the baby by giving it the wrong food, training it for the wrong lifestyle, or playing with it in a manner that injures or kills the other animal.

These concepts also apply to humans. Female humans are just intelligent versions of female animals. If the baby of another species looks and behaves in a manner that can trigger a woman's mothering emotions, then she will react by wanting to take care of it. However, if the baby looks or behaves in a manner that does not trigger her emotions, then she will ignore it. For example, baby dogs and cats can easily trigger a woman's emotions, but baby beetles do not.

When a female human takes care of a puppy, it is because she is trying to satisfy her emotional cravings; she is trying to titillate herself. She doesn't actually care about the puppy. The difference is subtle but significant. She will treat the puppy in a manner that her emotions want her to treat a baby, but that is not necessarily appropriate, or even safe. For example, the emotions of a female human cause them to talk to babies and kiss them, but when they treat animals in this manner, they can get bit in the face, as did Kyle Dyer, who suffered serious injuries.

If a woman was truly concerned about taking care of a baby animal, then she would have the same attitude towards children as an airline mechanic has to an airplane engine, or as a zoologist has to the animals in a wild game preserve. Specifically, she would learn about the animal and do what is best for the animal. For example, if a woman was really interested in taking care of a dog, she would not kiss the dog. Dogs do not want to be kissed. Dogs lick and bite each other, but they do not kiss. However, most women don't care what their dogs want. Women kiss dogs to titillate themselves, and they don't care what the dog wants.

Human babies like to be held on their back, but not dogs, rabbits, or cats. How many women can control their emotions and do what is best for the animal?
For another example, most animals do not want to be held on their back, but that is how humans want to hold babies, and so many pet animals are forced to tolerate this abuse. We could describe what women do to pet dogs as "emotionally raping" the dog. We consider it wrong for a man to use a dog or a doll to satisfy his sexual cravings, so why don't we consider it wrong for a woman to use a dog or doll to satisfy her cravings for babies? A man can be arrested for having sex with an animal, so why not arrest women who use animals to satisfy their cravings for babies? Why not arrest the women who kiss animals? Or, if we are going to allow women to titillate themselves with dogs, why not allow men to titillate themselves with dogs, sex dolls, or prostitutes?

When a woman kisses a baby human, it is because she wants to kiss the baby. She is not doing it for the baby. However, baby humans and adult women evolved together. As a result, the cravings of a woman will closely match the needs of her baby. For example, when a woman titillates herself by talking to and kissing her baby, she inadvertently teaches her baby a language, and her baby enjoys the attention. Her children will also learn about manners, and how to interact with people.

When a woman is titillated by a baby animal, her emotions want her to treat the animal as if it was a baby human. She should use her intellect to control her emotional cravings, but most people cannot do a good job of thinking or controlling their emotions. Instead of thinking about what is best for the animal, they do whatever titillates themselves. Men are expected to control their sexual cravings, so why not tell women to control their cravings for babies?

Furthermore, why don't we expect people to control their cravings for food, status, fame, money, and revenge? Why do we focus on sex? I think we focus on sex because the only purpose of animals and plants is to reproduce. The humans that survived the competitive battle for life were those that developed sexual characteristics to prevent them from reproducing at random or from rape. We are extremely concerned about who is having sex, and why.

Humans and animals are selfish and arrogant. Women tend to treat their children like dildos, and men tend to treat their wives like sex toys. Our selfish behavior worked very well in prehistoric times, but our emotions are becoming increasingly inappropriate for this modern world. Since each of us is slightly different, there are subtle differences in how we treat animals and people. The men and women who are the most selfish and abusive need to be prohibited from reproducing. We need to become more compatible, and we must develop a greater interest in understanding ourselves and other people.

It is obvious that different species of animals have slightly different emotional needs, nutritional requirements, and lifestyles, but what about different human races? I suspect that there are subtle differences in the emotional qualities of different races, and if so, even if people ignored race, we would have a tendency to separate by races because we would form the closest friendships and marriages with people of our own race. I also suspect that there are subtle differences in the medical qualities and nutritional needs of different races.

When I was younger it seemed to me that the Russian couples who were involved with Olympic ice dancing were technically excellent, but their dance routines seemed to be more robotic and less artistic and romantic. I assumed that the Russian coaches were concentrating on jumps, spins, and other tricks in order to impress the judges and audience, but today I think it is due to a subtle personality difference between us. The reason I say that is because I see the same difference between me and the American Jews. Their television shows, dance routines, and other entertainment also seem more robotic, and they also have what I consider to be teenage-level sexual titillation and toilet humor.

Furthermore, each animal evolves to like the visual appearance, sounds, and smell of their particular species, and I suspect the same has happened to humans. Although humans are degrading into ugly, stinky creatures with voice and speech disorders, each race should find their own race to be visually attractive, and they should like the smells of their own race. This is another reason that the races will have a tendency to separate from one another.

The differences between the races are one of the reasons that I suggest we create a world in which there are semi-independent cities that are allowed to have their own cultural differences. Each city would cooperate with the others, but each city would be able to have their own foods, clothing, social activities, sexual attitudes, marital policies, and work environments. India and China seem to consist of several different races, and I suspect that they would be happier overall to break their nation into lots of semi-independent cities that are slightly different from one another.


It is becoming increasingly difficult to form a stable marriage

All of our emotional and physical qualities make sense for our prehistoric ancestors, but in this modern world, the relationships between men and women have to become much more advanced. A woman has to want a man for more than just financial support and sperm, and a man has to want a woman for more than just sexual relief and status. The relationship between parents and children also needs to become more advanced. Women need to raise children, not use them like dildos.

In prehistoric times, if a man and woman could not form a stable relationship, their children tended to die. The end result is that the people who survived the battle for life were those that developed certain emotional qualities that caused them to form a certain type of relationship. That relationship was crude, but it was all that was necessary in that primitive era. Today we are interfering with nature. For example, some women are successfully reproducing even if they don't have or want a husband, and even if they cannot hold a job. In some cases they put their children up for adoption, and in other cases their parents help them to raise their children, and in other cases they use welfare, inheritances, or crime to support their children.

The anti-abortion fanatics are even trying to force rape victims to raise the child of their rapists. Rebecca Keesling was conceived from a rape, and although her mother wanted to abort her, after she visited two illegal abortion clinics, she decided to have the baby instead. Keesling is on a crusade to encourage more women to keep the baby of their rapists, but who benefits by allowing rapists to reproduce?

We also allow lesbians to become impregnated by businesses that sell sperm. It should be noted that some of the women who are involved in lesbian relationships may not be homosexual. Rather, some of those women may simply be turning to another woman to fulfill their emotional cravings for affection and sex, similar to how lots of women turn to dogs. The women who form close emotional and/or sexual relationships with dogs are not "dogosexual". They are simply using a dog to fulfill their emotional cravings. Incidentally, I think the reason prostitution is so common is because men have such a strong attraction to women that we want real women, not dolls or dogs. By comparison, women have such a low attraction to men that they can be satisfied with dogs and dolls.

Our attitude of encouraging everybody to reproduce, and to raise the children of criminals, rapists, and retards, is going to cause each generation to become more disgusting, ugly, neurotic, psychotic, selfish, dishonest, manipulative, and socially dysfunctional.

Women have strong cravings for children, but their emotions don't have any concern for whether they are raising healthy children, retarded children, the children of rape victims, the children of other species, or children without brains.

Another reason each generation is becoming increasingly defective is because neither men nor women have much of a concern about the mental quality of their spouse. Women are looking primarily for entertainment, financial support, and babies, and men are more concerned about personality and visual appearance. Both men and women are willing to marry a person who is infantile, dishonest, psychotic, alcoholic, or stupid.

If we don't restrict reproduction to the men and women who form the most sensible relationships, then the future generations will have even more unstable and bizarre relationships. There will be more prostitution, loneliness, and miserable marriages. There will also be more relationships with dogs, and those relationships will become even more intimate. Eventually we will have the robotic technology to allow people to form intimate relationships with robots.

During prehistoric times, women needed intense cravings for children in order to push them into doing the incredible amount of work that was required to raise children in that era, but their craving for children is excessive today. Women no longer have to dedicate or sacrifice their lives to their children. Raising children is becoming increasingly easy, and as a result, women need to have less of an interest in children and a greater interest in other activities.

Male and female animals do not interact with one another very much. They rarely do what we would describe as "socializing", and they never get together for dinner or leisure activities. Some animals live in groups, but the male and female animals do not have "relationships" with one another. They get together only briefly for sex. This crude relationship was acceptable in prehistoric times but it is inappropriate in the world today.

Imagine if a woman had the same personality as a female ape. She would occasionally enjoy the attention of a man, and she would enjoy getting gifts of food, but she would have no interest in the world, no interest in having a conversation with a man, and no interest in doing anything with a man during her leisure time. Men would describe that type of woman as cold, unromantic, dreary, and boring.

Now imagine if a man had the same personality as a male ape. His primary concern would be status. He would not form much of a friendship with other men because he would be constantly competing with them to be the dominant male. His interest in women would be primarily sexual. He would be considered as extremely selfish, arrogant, dominating, and dull.

None of us behave exactly like apes, but we differ in our human qualities. For thousands of years, people have been forming friendships, marriages, and tribes according to who they like, and nature has been putting these groups into competitive battles with one another. The people with the more human qualities have been dominating. Unfortunately, this natural process is no longer working properly. We must now restrict reproduction. Women need to develop less of an interest in children and more of an interest in men, the world, social affairs, and activities. Men have to become less interested in their status and more capable of working in teams and forming friendships.

These issues will become increasingly important in the future, especially if we create a society in which the basic necessities are free, and everybody has to earn whatever they want. Two reasons are:

1) Women will not need men for financial support.
When every woman is provided with a home, food, and other basic necessities, they will not need men for financial support. Also, when everybody has to earn what they want, women cannot gain anything through marriages, divorces, or inheritances. How many women have enough of an interest in men to want to get married when they cannot benefit financially or politically? If we also allow women to get pregnant and raise children without a husband, then even fewer women would be interested in marriage. In order for the future generations to form stable relationships, women must develop a greater interest in men, and both men and women need to become more compatible and more sociable.

2) Mothers will have more leisure time.
When society provides all of the necessities to both adults and children, then parents don't have to worry about providing their children with food, clothing, housing, or toys. During prehistoric times, raising children was a tremendous effort, but it will become very easy when society provides us with our necessities, and when restaurants are providing meals for both adults and children. This type of society would provide parents with more leisure time. If we also become intolerant of crime, then children will be able to spend more of their time with other children, further increasing the leisure time of their parents. What will the mothers and fathers do with all of their extra leisure time? Will they enjoy it?

Everybody wants more leisure time, but neither animals nor humans evolved the characteristics necessary to deal with leisure time. The proof can be seen by looking at people who have a lot of leisure time, such as the people who have become wealthy through inheritances, gambling, investments, divorce settlements, or royalties. Those people remind me of pet dogs who get bored and occasionally make work for themselves. However, instead of pushing a ball with their nose and then chasing after it, their preferred activity is to arrange for some event where they can be the center of attention and feel important.

We have to change our attitudes towards children. Many women, including lesbians, believe that they have a right to have babies, but reproduction should not be treated as a right, or as a joy. It should be regarded as a responsibility to the human race, and it should be considered as "work" rather than as entertainment.

Every society encourages people to have babies, but we should not encourage anybody to have babies, and we should not create the impression that people who reproduce are happier than people who do not. Our emotional cravings are fooling us into believing that we must have what we crave, but there is no best way to enjoy life. Businesses add to this problem by promoting the idiotic philosophy that there are certain products and services that we must purchase in order to be happy, and each religion promotes the propaganda that we must follow their religion, and other groups of people insist that we must follow their particular guidelines, but we don't need anything in particular.

Life is like a smorgasbord. There are lots of things in life to enjoy, and you don't need anything in particular. Your emotions can easily fool you into believing that you need something in particular, but don't believe your emotions. Try to follow your intellect. If you cannot enjoy one particular activity, then enjoy another.

Furthermore, it is important to note that we don't actually need to reproduce in order to enjoy children because we can enjoy other people's children by getting involved with schools and/or activities for children. This option allows us to enjoy other people's children only when we are in the mood for children, and we can walk away from them when we are tired of them. By comparison, parents have to deal with their children even when they don't want to.

The same concept applies to women who are pregnant and nursing. Specifically, pregnancy and nursing has both advantages and disadvantages. The women will sometimes enjoy being pregnant and nursing babies, but they will also sometimes be annoyed by the burden of pregnancy and nursing. Women who never get pregnant will miss out on the pleasure of pregnancy, but they also miss out on the misery of pregnancy, and they will have more leisure time for other activities. They can enjoy other people's children, such as by working in schools or recreation centers, and that allows them to enjoy children without being responsible for diapers, or other unpleasant aspects of children.

Incidentally, when society provides the basic necessities for free, the people who choose to adopt children will be free of the financial burden of raising children. They won't have to worry about food, clothing, supplies, or housing. They will only have to worry about caring for their children. This will encourage more people to adopt children.

Some male animals will kill the babies that they are not related to, but humans should stop behaving like this. We don't have to be biologically related to a child in order to become his parent. There is a sensible reason for animals and primitive humans to raise their own biological children, but if we restrict reproduction to the "better" people and eliminate the defective children, then we can provide high-quality children for adoption, which in turn makes adoption a sensible and worthwhile activity.


I think couples should have babies at an earlier age

Animals and primitive humans reproduce as soon as they are sexually mature. Today many couples are delaying reproduction until they are in their late 20s or 30s. Some couples delay children for financial reasons, such as waiting until they can purchase a home and become established in a career, and some are delaying children simply because they are confused about life or worried that their marriage may not be stable. Some feminists are promoting the philosophy that women should develop a career first, and have children afterwards.

I think it would be better if the women who wanted children were getting married and raising children at an earlier age. Furthermore, I think this is what nature intended for us. For example, when girls are around 14 years old, they start becoming flirtatious, and the reason is because nature wants them to make themselves look pretty and put themselves on display for the boys. By flirting with the boys, they get to know one another.

The women who are authorized to reproduce might be tempted to delay marriage and children, but before we encourage women to delay having babies, we should seriously investigate the issue of whether couples produce higher quality children when their eggs and sperm are young, and when their bodies are in good physical shape.

Even if older couples are capable of having healthy children, I think couples will have a better life overall if they had their babies as soon as possible. The most difficult aspect of raising children is dealing with the first few years of the child's life. The mother has to do a lot of work and has to put up with a lot of abuse, and the men are not interested in participating in that stage of a child's life. Therefore, it is better that women go through this unpleasant stage while they are young.

If a couple gets married between the ages of 18 and 24, and if they start having their babies immediately, then the woman will deal with the unpleasant "baby stage" while she is best able to deal with it. Meanwhile, her husband will be developing his career and exploring the world. By the time they are 30 years old, their children will be walking around and talking, and this will provide the women with a lot more free time for other activities, such as social events, schools, and jobs, and the men will be ready to settle down. The couple will then be able to enjoy each other and their children.

If, instead, the young adults spend their youth on careers and exploring the world, they will certainly have a lot of fun, but then a woman has to go through the pregnancy and diaper stage while she is in her 30s. It will be more difficult for her to give birth, deal with the lack of sleep, and recover from the pregnancy. Meanwhile, her husband will have become established in his career, and he is ready to settle down, but he will not want to settle down with babies in diapers.

The feminists would respond that if a woman had babies at an early age, she would be wasting her most productive years by raising children, and when she is in her 30s, she will be unskilled and almost unemployable. This fear is valid in today's societies. Many American women who started having children at a young age did indeed they waste their young adult years sitting at home with their babies.

However, the solution to this problem is not to tell women to have babies later in life. The solution is to design society specifically to deal with pregnant and nursing women rather than ignore them. For example, we can provide different working conditions and hours for women who are pregnant or who have babies so that they have a variety of part-time jobs to choose from. Mothers have to spend a lot of time with newborn babies, but they do not have to sit at home all day with older children.

Contrary to the feminists, raising children is not a full-time job. Raising children is difficult today because many parents have defective children, and because crime is so rampant that parents are keeping their children inside their house rather than letting them go outside to play with other children. By altering society so that there is less crime, the children can spend more of their time outdoors with other children.

Furthermore, by switching to electronic education, mothers would be able to learn whatever they want to, whenever they want, and wherever they happen to be. They would be able to continue their education while they are raising babies. Their babies would constantly interrupt them, but over a period of several years, they would acquire a useful education.

Also, in the society I propose, everybody is getting their meals at restaurants, so none of the mothers have to waste their time shopping for food, making meals, or cleaning the kitchen. This gives the mothers more time for other activities, such as learning a skill or working at a part-time job.

Special restaurants would be provided for mothers with young children, and those restaurants would need employees, and so some of the mothers could work part time at these restaurants. Working at a restaurant might seem to defeat the purpose of going to restaurants, but a restaurant can feed people much more efficiently. If all of the mothers with young children were taking turns working in the restaurants that were specifically designed for mothers and children, then each woman might have to work only one day a month. That would be better than making meals every day. A few women working in a restaurant can serve hundreds of women and children. It is much more efficient for society to provide us with restaurants than it is to expect every person to shop for food, make meals, and clean up after themselves.

Another reason that I think it is better for women to have children as soon as possible is because that is what nature designed them for. When a woman is around 18 years old, she has intense cravings to be a mother. If she doesn't have children to take care of, she is likely to get a substitute, such as a dog, or - even worse! - an emotionally disturbed boyfriend who needs a mother to take care of him. By a time a woman is in her 30s, she does not want to take care of babies in diapers.

Another reason I think young adult women should have babies first and a career afterwards is because jobs are becoming increasingly complex. There have been a lot of women who have followed the feminist philosophy to spend their young adult years studying to be a scientist, engineer, business executive, pilot, or supervisor, but by the time they gained experience and became productive, they were about 30 years old, and then many of them wanted to quit to have children, which wasted all of the time and resources that were spent on training them.

I think it would be better to encourage women to have babies early, and as they raise their children, they can learn some skill on a part-time basis, or do some part-time job that gives them some training. By the time they are 30 years old, they will have many years of training and experience, and their children will be self-sufficient. They will then be able to do something of value for society without being burdened by babies.

I doubt if the 18-year-old girls in prehistoric times were afraid to get married and have babies. I think that the fear that teenagers are showing today is a symptom of an inappropriate social environment. The teenagers are confused and frustrated, and our society doesn't make it easy for them to get a job, afford a home, and raise a family.

We will have to use trial and error to figure out the best way to raise children, but I would suggest that we start by removing children from their home at age 14 and prepare them for adulthood. They would be given a variety of activities and jobs to help them meet one another, learn about themselves, and learn about society. When they became 16 years old, they would be given more privileges and responsibilities, and they would be expected to behave like an adult. By the time they were 18 years old, I think that they would be ready for marriage, although most of them, especially the men, will not want to get married at that age because they would rather explore the world or meet more people. Their decision to delay marriage would be a calm, sensible, intellectual decision, rather than due to a fear of marriage or families.


Humans are losing their freedom

My proposal to create a society in which the government has total control over the economy, social affairs, and everything else may seem bizarre, but that is the path the human race is on right now. In prehistoric times, there were no laws at all. People could do anything they please, including rape, kill, and then eat their own children, and in front of other people.

During the past few thousand years, humans have been forming increasingly complex societies in which we live and work in close contact with one another. We are no longer individual savages with total freedom to do as we please. We are now gears in a machine, and we may as well face the fact that we are heading into a world in which the government is supervising our lives.

Instead of whining about the inevitable reduction in freedoms, we should discuss what sort of control we want the government to have over us, and what sort of freedoms we should have. For example, consider the issue of children's clothing. Many American children have already been told to go home or turn their shirts inside out because school officials did not approve of the images or words on their shirts. In California, a nine-year-old boy was told to turn his shirt inside out because it had skull and crossbones on it. His mother became so angry that she attacked the school principal, and was put in jail for a while.

In Mississippi, a 13-year-old boy was told to turn his shirt inside out because it had a drawing that prominently displayed the rear end of a dog. In Brooklyn, Brianna Demato, a bisexual teenage girl, was told that she cannot wear her shirt with the message "I enjoy Vagina". Her mother insisted that children should have the freedom to wear whatever clothing they please.

In the world today, people are arguing over whether we have the "right" or the "freedom" to do something. However, it makes no sense to argue over rights or freedom. We need to analyze issues from the point of view of their effect on society. The school officials are doing this occasionally, but the parents are not responding in the same manner. For example, the school officials complain that the shirts are a disruption to other students and teachers, but the parents are responding by whining about freedom or rights. The parents should respond by explaining how the school officials are incorrect in their assumptions that the shirts are disruptive.

We should discuss such issues as, What effect do these shirts have on the other students and teachers? Who benefits by letting students dress in these shirts? Who will suffer if the students are not allowed to wear the shirts? What is the overall effect on society by allowing students to wear these shirts, and what would be the effect if the students were not allowed? Which creates a better society?

I agree with the school officials. For example, the T-shirt with the rear end of a dog is not my idea of "art". I can understand why children giggle at butts, anal sex, poop, vomit, farts, and toilets, but now that I am an adult, I do not want to look at the rear end of a dog, horse, or any other animal, and I don't like looking at their poop or pee, and I don't like smelling it or stepping in it. That particular T-shirt may not bother the children, but it will bother some of us adults. That particular T-shirt is supposedly supporting the Marines, but the Marines already have a more pleasant image of an eagle on a globe. The Marines don't need to be identified with the rear end of a dog.

When only one child is wearing an unpleasant shirt, we tend to ignore it, but if we don't set standards for clothing, then we allow this behavior to continue and increase. Imagine being a teacher in a classroom in which every child is wearing a shirt that has the rear end of a dog, horse, pig, or human. Would you enjoy being a teacher when you have to look at butts all day?

The school that didn't want the boy wearing a shirt with a skull and cross bones was concerned that it was used as a gang logo, and they want to suppress gangs rather than ignore or encourage gangs. I agree with the teachers. We should not tolerate gangs of any type, regardless of whether they are children or adults. The children will deny that they are in a gang, but even if they are not gang members, nobody is harmed by prohibiting those type of shirts. No child has a need for such "art".

Brianna Demato's "I enjoy Vagina" shirt is a different issue. I don't think she was wearing that shirt because she thought it was visually attractive or because she was in a gang. I think she was wearing it in an act of defiance or anger, or an attempt to intimidate other students. I suspect that she is upset about her bisexuality and because she is treated as a misfit, and she is reacting by becoming rebellious and angry.

If the schools allow her to wear that shirt, then other rebellious students might decide to wear a shirt to express their particular anger. Imagine if every student in the school was wearing a shirt that had some angry, rebellious, religious, or political statement in an attempt to intimidate, frighten, or manipulate other people.

And then imagine that this behavior spreads to the adults. Imagine that all your coworkers are wearing shirts with angry messages, and imagine that all of the employees at all of the restaurants, museums, doctor's offices, and exercise centers are also wearing such shirts. Imagine that everybody on television is also demanding the freedom to wear shirts with whatever angry, sexual, or religious message they please.

Dressing children like this could be described as "child abuse".
It is also important to note that young children don't have a good understanding of the messages that are on their shirts, or on other people's shirts. We prohibit children from having access to alcohol, airplanes, razor blades, and marriage until they are old enough to handle them properly, so why not prohibit children from promoting religious, political, and sexual opinions until they are old enough to understand what they are doing? I think it would be better to tell the children to keep their stupid opinions to themselves until they become an adult.

To make the situation more ridiculous, some of the children do not even choose to wear the shirts. Instead, adults are giving them the shirts because they want to use their children like a billboard to advertise their particular political, religious, or other opinions. We could describe this as an abusive and disgusting use of children. None of us benefit by allowing parents to use their children as advertising objects. Businesses should not be allowed to use children to advertise products, either.

All living creatures produce offspring with different characteristics, and nature decides which of them is best suited to life. Now that we are interfering with nature, we have to watch over everybody and pass judgment on who among us is behaving in an unacceptable manner.

Modern society requires that we restrict our freedoms. Government officials must make a lot of arbitrary decisions on what we can and cannot do. I'll discuss this issue later in this article, but for now I will point out that I agree that we should provide people with as much freedom as possible, but I disagree on how we should determine what our freedoms should be. Most people are selecting freedoms according to their emotional reactions, but I think we should select freedoms according to the effect on society.

For example, when determining whether we should have the freedom to wear shirts with messages, instead of asking ourselves, "Should people have the freedom to wear shirts with messages?" we should ask, "What would be the effect on society if we provide people with the freedom to wear shirts with messages? Will this freedom make society more pleasant overall? Or would society be nicer overall if this freedom is restricted?"

When you look at freedoms from that point of view, then some of the freedoms that we have right now would be prohibited, and we would be permitted to do some of the activities that are currently illegal. For example, we do not have the freedom for assisted suicide, but why not? If there were two societies that were identical in all respects, except that one of them provided its citizens with the freedom of assisted suicide, what would be different about life in those two societies? Which of those societies would be more pleasant to live in?

The society that prohibited assisted suicide would have a larger number of people who are suffering a slow death due to old age or disease. I think life would be worse overall for everybody in that society because: 1) A lot of people who are dying would be miserable, and some of them would beg for assisted suicide. 2) The children and grandchildren of those dying people would have to watch their parents suffer a slow death, and some of them would have to listen to their parents beg for assisted suicide. 3) The medical personnel who have to deal with those dying people would also have to watch them suffer and listen to them beg for assisted suicide. 4) Some of those people would fail at their suicide attempts, and other people would have to deal with the problem of trying to bring them back to life.

By comparison, the society that allows assisted suicide would have less overall suffering among both the people who are dying, and their children. The people who oppose assisted suicide might respond that they would be suffering mental anguish because they oppose the policy, but that is as idiotic as a person in India claiming that he would suffer mental anguish if India allows people to eat beef, or an American claiming that he would suffer mental anguish if Americans are allowed to eat dogs and horses. That type of suffering is self-inflicted.

Every freedom and every law has advantages and disadvantages. We have to consider the overall effect on society. I think it is better overall to allow people to have the freedom for assisted suicide. People should also have the freedom to eat beef, cows, horses, rats, and dogs. The people who don't want those freedoms will whine about having them, but we should ignore their whining rather than feel sorry for them or be intimidated by them. If nobody is harmed by a particular freedom, and if some people benefit, then we should provide it.

For another example of why we must put restrictions on our behavior, consider the names that parents give to their children. This page has a few bizarre names that people have given their children, such as "Preserved Fish", "Encyclopedia Britannia", and "Toilet Queen". The actress Uma Thurman just named her baby "Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence Thurman-Busson", and Gwyneth Paltrow named her child "Apple".

Incidentally, this is another example of how parents are using their children as toys to titillate themselves with. How many parents can control their emotions well enough to think of what is best for their child?

We should not discuss such issues as whether parents should have the freedom to give their child any name they please. We need to think about what is best for society. If we do not restrict names, then because of our natural desire to compete with one another and feel special, names will become increasingly absurd as people try to win the competition for unusual names. The entertainer with the idiotic first name of "Prince"  wanted to switch his name to a symbol, and some people want to use numerals. If we don't restrict this idiotic behavior, some parents will give their child a photograph for a first name, or a mathematical equation, or an inaudible tone frequency.


Either evict a person, or accept him as he is

One of the concepts that I emphasize over and over is that a person's life depends upon his mind, not on mysterious, outside forces, such as the devil, or a lack of money. Even if we could raise every child in an identical and ideal environment, our genetic differences would cause them to grow up to be a wide variety of adults. The environment has a tremendous effect over our opinions and skills, but it doesn't have a significant effect over our emotions, personality, or intellect.

If we were to provide everybody with unlimited access to food, alcohol, prescription drugs, and candy, we would find that some of them can control their consumption of these items, while others become fat, sickly, or alcoholic. Whether a person can handle marriage, babies, drugs, food, or alcohol depends upon his mind, not his age. There are some people who are 50 years old who cannot handle marriage, alcohol, or gambling.

The people who have trouble coping with alcohol, candy, gambling, or other items are often ridiculed or tormented, but nobody benefits from this. These people are already suffering. We gain nothing by tormenting them further. Children have a craving to torment the inferior children, and we cannot do anything to stop children from behaving like this, but adults can and should control themselves.

If we are going to allow a person into our society, then we should accept him as a team member; we should accept him for whatever he is. We don't have to let him reproduce or adopt children, but we should accept him as a member of society. For example, consider the issue of retarded babies. Every society is currently abandoning retarded babies in orphanages, on the streets, or in hospitals. What is the sense of bringing a child that nobody wants into our world? We are torturing the people that we do not want living with us.

Imagine a football team boasting that they love all people so much that they accept retarded people as players. However, they don't let the retarded people play with them. Instead, whenever a retarded person joins their team, they put him into a car, drive him to the other side of the city, and then dump him on the sidewalk. How is that behavior any more sensible than an anti-abortionist who boasts about loving people so much that he cannot tolerate abortions, but every time an unwanted baby is born, he dumps the child in an orphanage? Since we are not going to accept retarded people, then we should kill them. It is cruel to let them live and then abandon them.

For another example, if we are going to allow people to smoke cigarettes, then we should accept the behavior rather than torment both them and us by forcing everybody to listen to public service messages about the dangers of smoking, or by putting photos of cancer patients on the cigarette packages. We can restrict where they smoke, and we can prevent them from reproducing if we conclude that they have a genetic problem, but we gain nothing by reprimanding them over and over. It is idiotic to allow somebody to become a member of your team, and then torment that person.

For another example, if we are going to allow people to become obese, then they should be accepted as members of society. We should not torment them with sarcastic remarks or public service messages about how they are going to die early. They are already suffering. We gain nothing by tormenting them further.

The same concept applies to both students and adults who don't want to follow our standards for clothing or grooming. There are some people who want to wear clothing, body piercings, or tattoos that we find irritating. We dislike these people, and the end result is that some of them have trouble getting jobs, and some of them are ridiculed, but nobody benefits by ignoring or tormenting them.

In order to create a more stable society, we have to set standards for behavior, evict the people who cannot meet the standards, and accept everybody else for whatever they are. We are making life miserable for everybody when we create a society in which we ignore, despise, or fear some of our members.

How would a government develop products?
 
The government would be in the role of investors
When a group of people want to start a business in a free enterprise system, and when they need funding to do it, they begin the process by creating a proposal in which they explain what they plan to do, how much money they need, and how much time they need to accomplish their goals. Each of them will also provide a resume to describe themselves and their achievements. They will then present their proposals and resumes to banks or other potential investors.

When the government has control of the economy, and when the government has a database of everybody's performance, then there are no banks or investors, and nobody needs to bother with resumes because the government already has information about everybody. Therefore, if a group of people want to start a business, all they need to do is create a proposal of what they plan to do, and how much time they need to accomplish their goals. Instead of asking for money, they would ask for resources, such as buildings, equipment, supplies, and employees.

The government officials would be in the role of investors, except that they would not be looking for proposals that will make profit. Instead, they would be looking for proposals that offer to improve society. Therefore, the proposals would have to show evidence that the business is going to help society.

The government would follow the philosophy that everybody should have the opportunity to create their own business, and so the government would have no resistance to people making proposals. However, as with investors in a free enterprise system, the government would be resistant of proposals that come from young people who have not yet accomplished much in their life, or from people who have failed in their previous projects. The people who will have the easiest time getting their proposals approved are 1) people who have had success on previous projects, and 2) people who do not ask for much time or resources.

The first reason is rather obvious, but the second is more complicated than it appears. The most obvious method of reducing the time and resources needed for a project is to propose a project that is technically simple. However, there is another method, and that is to figure out what sort of resources are already in existence but sitting idle. For example, imagine that a group of scientists offers to do some research to determine whether it would be better for people to use hydrogen peroxide, rather than toothpaste, to clean their teeth. If those scientists asked for equipment, buildings, and supplies that were not yet in existence, they would be asking society to invest a lot of resources into their project. By comparison, if they look through the existing buildings and resources, including the available technicians and other people, and if they design their project according to what is available, they will have a much easier time getting it approved.

Since the government is in control of all businesses, the government would have a database of all of the equipment that it has. That database would show which equipment is idle in a warehouse, and which is used only on a part-time basis. The government would also have a list of all of the supplies that it produces, and the supplies that are stocked in warehouses. The government would also have a database of all of its buildings, and that would show which buildings have vacancy, and what type of building it is. Since all of this information is available to the public, the scientists could look through the database of equipment, supplies, and buildings. Their proposal will have a greater chance of being approved if they ask for equipment that already exists but is sitting idle, and if they can use supplies that are already in production, and if they ask for some of the vacant space that already exists.

This brings me to an issue I want to emphasize. When the government has control of the economy, we can do a lot of things that are impractical in a free enterprise system. Scientists in a free enterprise system cannot propose to use equipment that is sitting idle because everything has to be purchased. But when the government controls everything, it wants the idle equipment to be used. People who make proposals to use the idle equipment would be doing society a favor by putting it to use. When they are finished using the equipment, it goes back into storage and somebody else can use it.

Sharing equipment will add wear and tear to the equipment, but that is better than creating more equipment. With technology changing rapidly, there is no point in saving equipment. It makes more sense to get maximum use out of our equipment, and then replace the old equipment with new and improved versions.

We could put RFID tags on equipment so that we know where they are, when they are in use, and when they are idle. The computers could automatically keep track of the hours that the equipment is used so we know how to schedule maintenance. When people borrow equipment, we will know who is borrowing it and when it is back in storage.

It should be noted that allowing a computer to track resources would be simple only if we live among honest people. If we are tolerant of criminals, then we will have to watch for people removing or altering the RFID tags, and manipulating the database. The more honest a group of people are, the simpler their lives will be. Conversely, the more dishonest they are, the more time they have to spend on crime prevention.

Is not practical for businesses in a free enterprise system to share equipment. Everything in a free enterprise system has to be purchased or rented. This requires that businesses waste some of their time on rental or lease agreements, or on purchasing the items. If the equipment is expensive, the business may need to arrange for loans or some type of payment options. To make this situation even more difficult, there is no database for us to look through to find what is available to purchase or rent. We have to look through catalogs from different businesses. Unfortunately, there may be millions of catalogs in the world today. Which of them do we look through? Before we can look at catalogs, we have to figure out which businesses might have the item we need, and then we can get catalogs from those businesses.

Another problem with purchasing items in the world today is that we are so tolerant of crime that businesses have to constantly watch one another to ensure that they are getting the items that they ordered. Businesses in the world today cannot trust one another.

The purchasing and leasing of equipment is so time-consuming that many large companies have departments specifically for purchasing.

Another problem with the free enterprise system is that it is not easy for businesses to get rid of equipment that they don't need. They cannot simply return the equipment to the business that they purchased it from. Instead, they have to work out some arrangement to trade it in for new equipment, or they have to figure out how to sell it.

When the government takes control of the economy, and when we become intolerant of crime, we have incredible options to increase our efficiency. We can even do things that are impossible in a free enterprise system. For example, if a group of scientists needs access to a particular piece of equipment, but they only need it a few hours each week, and if another group of scientists already has the equipment, and if they are also using it only a few hours each week, then that second group of scientists could propose to share the equipment.

Most companies would not even consider such an arrangement. For one reason, they would have no idea if the other company can be trusted with their equipment. For another reason, the free enterprise system requires people to work out payment deals, and unless there is a large potential profit for the company to rent their equipment, they're not going to want to waste their time trying to work out some financial agreement.

In a government-controlled economy, the government owns all of the equipment, not the businesses. The government can easily tell the scientists that they are going to share the expensive equipment regardless of whether they want to. The scientists would not have to work out any financial arrangements with one another because none of them own the equipment. Society owns it. This is similar to what is happening right now with telescopes in which astronomers are told to share the big telescopes rather than expect total control of them. We could apply this concept to lots of other items.

If a group that is sharing equipment turns out to be irresponsible and damages the equipment, that will be recorded in the database, and they will have a more difficult time sharing equipment the next time. They will be penalized for their irresponsible behavior. Conversely, the people who share equipment without causing trouble will have an easier time sharing equipment in the future.

In a free enterprise system, businesses do not want to share any of their equipment with their competitors. They are fighting one another for their survival, and so they don't want to help one another. Furthermore, in a free enterprise system, businesses can make virtually unlimited amounts of money, which causes many people to develop neurotic cravings to destroy their competitors and become extremely wealthy.

By comparison, when the government controls the economy, the businesses are in competition to improve society. The businesses are not trying to hurt one another. If a business fails in their project, they simply propose another project, or the business vanishes and the people get jobs somewhere else. In a free enterprise system, failing in a business is devastating, but when the government controls the economy, failure is almost meaningless.

Since the government is helping people to get jobs and start businesses, nobody has to worry about going hungry or homeless. And since all of the basic necessities are free, nobody can get rich, and so the businesses that are successful don't get any reward. There is no financial incentive for a business to hurt a competing business. When the government is providing everybody with their basic necessities for free, the people in a business don't gain anything by destroying their competitor. Actually, the people who are caught hurting other businesses would be considered destructive to society. It would be equivalent to one department within a corporation deliberately sabotaging, cheating, suppressing, or in some way hurting another department. The executives of the company would be furious with that type of behavior. Each of us should also be furious with people who sabotage, abuse, and cheat their fellow citizens. We should be working together, not fighting one another like stupid animals.

With the government in control of the economy, it becomes possible for businesses to help one another and work together. The government doesn't judge a business according to its ability to appease consumers or make sales. Rather, it judges them by their ability to bring improvements to society. If two groups of scientists are willing to share an expensive piece of equipment, then both groups would be considered better than the scientists who have such personality disorders that they cannot share their equipment.

This system would also allow an employee to work for several competing businesses at the same time. For example, if there is a particular engineer who is excellent at a certain task, and if two or more businesses need his expertise, in a free enterprise system, only one of those businesses would be able to hire that engineer, even if they only need him on a part-time basis. However, in a government-controlled economy, competing businesses would be able to hire the same person, either on a part-time basis, or one business might hire the person for a month, and then another business hires him for the following month.

For example, imagine that there are three businesses competing with each other to develop an improved cell phone. However, they are not proposing to develop new radio circuits for the phone. Rather, they are competing to develop a better user interface. Therefore, since they are not competing in radio circuitry, they would be able to use the same radio expert and the same radio circuits.

A radio expert could work part-time for all three businesses at once, or he could work at one business for a month, and then switch to another business for a month. He wouldn't be designing anything new; rather, he would simply be helping them to integrate the existing radio circuitry. All three businesses could use the same radio circuitry because there are no copyrights, and none of the technology belongs to any particular business. All technology belongs to society. From the point of view of the radio expert, he would be in the role of a teacher who is helping his students with their projects. He would not be trying to hurt any of them.

This brings me to another point I want to make. When the government controls the economy, businesses can be established simply to improve one particular aspect of a product. Cell phones are an example. There are very few engineers today, from my casual observations, with experience in radio circuitry, but there are lots of engineers with experience in digital circuits, software, and mechanical design. Therefore, it is possible that a lot of people would want to propose improving the software and/or physical design of cell phones, while using existing radio circuitry.

In a free enterprise system, it would be impossible for a group of people to get funding for a business that proposes to modify an existing product because of the copyright and patent infringement problems, but when the government is in control of the economy, all technology belongs to society, and that allows people to make proposals for all sorts of modifications of existing products. For example, a group of software developers could propose making a variation of Microsoft Windows in order to fix one or two of its irritating qualities, and a group of engineers could propose to change some aspect of microwave ovens that they don't like. Since the technology belongs to society, the source code for Microsoft Windows would be available for everybody, and so would all of the engineering data for refrigerators, lightbulbs, and microwave ovens. No business would own any technology. This allows the government to support businesses that propose improvements to existing products, such as a business that proposes to improve the design of airline seats, or business that proposes to improve the paper mechanism of computer printers. This system allows and encourages people to improve upon the work of others.

This brings me to another point I want to make. In a free enterprise system, large businesses have a significant advantage over small businesses, but when the government controls the economy, the size of the business is irrelevant. Actually, it becomes more sensible for businesses to be much smaller and concentrate on one task. For example, General Electric is producing lightbulbs, airline engines, and lots of other products, but what is the sense of having one company produce so many different products? The engineers who design lightbulbs gain nothing by being in the same company as the engineers who design aircraft engines. It would be better if they were separate businesses.

In a free enterprise system, large businesses have an advantage because free enterprise creates a certain amount of "overhead". When small businesses merge together, they can reduce their total number of accountants, sales teams, purchasing departments, and other people who are not directly contributing something of value. Furthermore, large businesses allow people to become extremely wealthy, and so people who want to become wealthy are pushing businesses to become larger.

When the government controls the economy, and when the basic necessities are provided for free, none of the businesses have to worry about sales, advertising, purchasing, healthcare benefits, payroll checks, or retirement plans. An enormous number of nonproductive jobs are eliminated. This makes it practical for businesses to be small. Furthermore, nobody can get rich in this type of system, so there is no incentive for people to form gigantic businesses.

Another reason that I prefer small businesses is because the smaller businesses are easier for the government to observe. For example, General Electric has thousands of employees, and they are producing a lot of products, but who exactly is responsible for their products? By breaking the company up into smaller businesses, it becomes easier to analyze them and pass judgment on which of the people are productive, and which of them need to find other jobs.

You might wonder how it is practical to break large companies, such as Boeing or Airbus, into little pieces. Consider that both Boeing and Airbus are already dependent upon lots of companies for some of their components and services. For example, they buy some of their engines from Rolls-Royce or General Electric. Breaking the company up into pieces simply requires that they get even more of their components from other businesses.

If we were to break the Boeing company into lots of smaller businesses while maintaining a free enterprise system, the result would be a disaster because it is extremely inefficient for a business to get components from thousands of other businesses because of the overhead involved in every business.

It is also important to note that breaking Boeing into pieces would be a disaster if we remain as tolerant of crime as we are today. American jails are full of people who have smoked marijuana, but business executives are regularly abusing one another without getting in trouble. The crime is causing businesses to be very suspicious of one another, and this causes them to waste a lot of time and money on lawyers and legal contracts. If we don't become intolerant of abusive behavior, we will never come close to achieving our full potential.

We also hurt ourselves by being tolerant of incompetence. One of the reasons some companies are so large is because the executives became irritated with incompetent suppliers, and so they decided to produce as many of their supplies as possible. We must stop ignoring incompetence and start replacing business executives who cannot do their jobs properly. When the government is in control of the economy, businesses will be encouraged to complain about incompetence rather than ignore it. The government will then be able to investigate to determine if a businessman needs to be replaced.

When the government controls the economy, then the businessmen are just employees of the government. They are equivalent to the managers of a department within a corporation. None of the businessmen own their building, land, equipment, or employees. The businessmen are merely supervising their particular team of employees. Each business is essentially just one gear in a transmission, and everybody in society has a responsibility to keep the transmission functioning properly. If we encounter incompetence, we should let the government know about it so that they can investigate and determine if a businessman needs to be replaced.

This type of economy also prevents monarchies. When a businessman dies, he cannot give his business to his children or spouse. He does not own his business, or his employees. Society owns the building and equipment, and each of his employees is an individual citizen, not the property of a businessman. When a businessman dies, or retires, the government simply selects somebody else to be the supervisor for that business. If this concept seems bizarre, consider that it is going on right now in all corporations. When the manager of a department decides to retire, he cannot give his department to his children or spouse. Instead, the executives select somebody to replace him.

My suggestion of encouraging businesses to complain about one another may seem ridiculous, but, as I have repeatedly mentioned, I am not proposing anything that we are not already doing. This policy is widespread inside of all businesses. For example, if one department of a business is incompetent in supplying components to another department, the manager of the department that is suffering does not ignore the problem. He would be criticized if he did nothing about the problem. Rather, he will notify his boss that he has a problem with supplies, and his boss will analyze the issue and try to correct the situation, such as by replacing incompetent managers, or by giving them some training, or by changing some of the equipment that they are using, or by shifting resources to give them additional help.

It would be worthless for businessmen to make sarcastic remarks about one another, but they have a responsibility to ensure that society is functioning properly. We are members of a team, not prehistoric savages chasing after pigs. If a member on our team is not functioning properly, the entire team will suffer. We should not feel guilty about pointing out that somebody is behaving like a broken gear. Everybody has a responsibility to keep the team working properly, so we should notify management of problems, and our leaders should look into the issue and try to correct it.

The people we complain about might respond that we are "tattletales", or that we are "whining", but don't be intimidated. There is a significant difference between making idiotic remarks about people, and providing useful, constructive criticism.

Another reason it is difficult for businesses to depend upon other businesses in a free enterprise system is because the businessmen are struggling to get rich. For example, the companies that supply parts to Boeing are doing so for money, not to help Boeing or society. They are focusing on profit, not on creating an airplane. The difference is subtle, but significant. The focus on profit causes businesses to waste time arguing over prices, and there have been cases where some businesses have substituted lower quality items, such as lower strength bolts, in order to increase profit.

I personally know of a machinist who owns a small machine shop. One day he got an order to make ejection pins for a military aircraft. These pins have extremely tight tolerances, so they were difficult to make. I can't remember how many he had to make, but it was about 1000 units. Apparently these pins are replaced regularly, so the military needs them on a regular basis. Anyway, he made these components and shipped them to the aircraft company. They inspected the pins and rejected quite a few, somewhere around 25%.

The machinist was upset that so many of his pins were rejected, so he inspected them all again, but he could find only a few that were borderline. He could understand how the borderline pins could show up as out of tolerance on somebody else's equipment, but he was confused as to how they could find so many imperfect pins when he could not find anything wrong with them. He put the good pins in storage and hoped that he would get another order for the pins, and that the company would accept them the next time.

Many months later he received another order for 1000 pins, and so he first shipped the pins that had been rejected, and this time the company accepted all of them. He then made the remaining pins, and to his surprise, about the same number were rejected as imperfect.

This cycle happened a couple of times before he figured out what was going on. The company was ordering 1000 pins because they wanted to pay the unit price for 1000, but they actually needed only 750 at one time. Therefore, they would order 1000 to get the lower price, and then reject 250 as imperfect.

In a free enterprise system, this type of abuse is considered as a "clever business technique". The free enterprise system rewards people who can devise these type of tricks.

When the government is in control of the economy, and if we also change our attitude towards abusive businessmen, then we can create an environment in which businessmen can trust one another. The businessmen would not have to waste time or resources on complex legal contracts or arguing over prices. When the government is in control of all businesses, whenever a businessman is caught misbehaving, even if he is following the law, the government will have the authority to replace him, and they will also be able to prohibit him from ever acquiring a leadership role again.

If a businessman is extremely destructive, the government will be able to evict him from society. This will not prevent crime, but it will reduce it to such a low level that businesses do not have to worry about being cheated. By keeping crime down to very low levels, and by making it possible for businesses to trust one another, it becomes easier for small businesses to supply one another with components. It would allow Boeing to be reduced to just a design and assembly company.

When the government is in control of the economy, businessmen are just employees of the government. The businessmen will have the freedom to supervise their business as they please, but they will not have as much freedom as they have today. The government would be watching over businessmen and judging them according to their effect on society. The businessmen would be under pressure to do something useful for society. The businessmen who couldn't fit into this system would be replaced.

If you wonder if this system is realistic, just remember that this type of activity is happening right now inside of a business. There are departments within a business that are cooperating with one another in the production of products. The people in those departments are not working for profit. Rather, they are doing a job for the entire organization. They have the freedom to supervise their team as they please, but they are being watched, and if they misbehave, they will be fired. It's also important to note that different departments within a business can trust each other so much that they can supply components to one another without complex legal documents, arguments over prices, or lawyers.

We can also see a similar process happening within the military. There are different groups of people in the military who are supplying one another with food, supplies, maintenance services, and training services. Those people are not doing these services for money. They are doing them for their job. Their goal is to help one another, not become rich or destroy their competitors. The people in the military can also trust one another so well that they don't have to waste their time arguing over prices, or asking lawyers to make detailed contracts. The people who abuse the system are removed from the military.

There are lots of jokes about the military being chaotic, such as SNAFU, BOHICA, and FUBAR, but that is true of all large organizations. Don't let that frighten you. There will always be confusion and chaos. We just have to do our best.


It is possible to operate without money

A group of officials in the world government would be responsible for the monetary system, which should be electronic rather than physical coins or paper bills. However, it should be noted that it is possible for the entire world to operate without any money. Money has its greatest value when societies are of different abilities. Money becomes a burden when all societies are virtually identical.

It would be easy for the nations of America, Japan, Taiwan, and Germany to become members of a world government and work together without any money. They would simply divide their products up among themselves. You can visualize this as all of them putting their products into a big pile, and then dividing the pile according to their population. They would all benefit by getting rid of the money because they would be able to eliminate all of the jobs involved with financial transactions and money. The people who are currently wasting their time on those jobs would be able to do something more useful.

However, if those nations were to then invite Greece, Venezuela, and Bangladesh to join them, those three nations would contribute only a few simple things to the pile, such as bottles of olives, grass baskets, and barrels of crude oil. Those items are useful, but when the pile of items is divided up, the people in Taiwan, America, Japan, and Germany will discover that a lot of their technically advanced products have been replaced with a bottle of olives and a grass basket.

If the world consisted of semi-independent cities, and if each of the cities consisted of people who are virtually identical to the people in other cities in regards to their technical abilities, then we could dispense with money because each city would be producing virtually the same monetary value of items. They will produce different types of items, foods and raw materials, but the monetary value will be the same. Therefore, they don't have to bother selling and buying their items. They can simply divide the items among themselves.

By comparison, when societies have significantly different abilities, money is useful because it allows the nations to trade with each other even though their products are extremely different. Money takes care of the differences. We simply put a value on everything we produce, and then we let people purchase whatever they can afford. This method is simple, but it doesn't always provide the most sensible results.

For example, consider Hollywood. They make enormous amounts of money, and they use it to produce some very expensive movies, such as Avatar. The gambling industry also has a lot of money, and with that money they consume a lot of engineering, computer programming, and other labor and resources. Would you describe this as a sensible use of resources?

Money is helping different nations deal with the problems of trading products between each other, but it is a chaotic, inefficient, irrational system. Some very useful businesses are barely surviving, and some businesses that are virtually worthless have enormous amounts of money to waste on absurd projects.

Executives of credit card companies don't have to run marathons to cover their business expenses, so why should scientists?
For example, Shinya Yamanaka took part in a marathon (photo), to raise money for his research in stem cells. Hollywood directors do not need to run marathons to raise money for their movies, and the businessmen who operate gambling casinos in Las Vegas and Macau do not need to run marathons to raise money for their casinos, and NFL directors do not need to run marathons to raise money for football. Why do scientists have to beg for money?

A lot of people will respond that they don't care about science, and that they would rather have casinos, credit cards, Hollywood movies, and sports. However, everybody would benefit tremendously if we had more advanced technology. Casinos depend upon technology, and so do movies and sports. Furthermore, many of the athletes would benefit if we had more advanced stem cell and other medical technology because a lot of athletes will end up with brain damage, broken joints, arthritis, and other medical disorders. The more of our resources we put into gambling casinos, Hollywood movies, and sports, the less we have for the development of robots, medical research, and other technology.

If we get rid of money and take direct control of the economy, then we can make intelligent decisions about how to use our resources. We will have tremendous control over our future. However, taking control of the economy puts a very big burden on the government. A lot of government officials would have to put a lot of time and effort into making decisions that are being made automatically by money.

The government officials would make decisions about how many bicycles to produce, which research projects to support, and how many bananas to produce. The officials would also make decisions about how many people should be involved with producing movies, cosmetics, jewelry, and other nonessential items. In addition to deciding which items to produce, and in what quantity, the officials would also have to figure out how to divide up and distribute those items.

This system would work properly only if we can find government officials who have the desire to work for the benefit of society. If so, all of the cities would operate as if they were a military unit, or as if they were divisions of a giant corporation.

From the point of view of the "ordinary" citizens, eliminating money would make life very simple for us. None of us would have to worry about money, banks, credit cards, bills, tips, or prices. Each of us would simply do our jobs and contribute to society, and in return the government officials would divide up the material items among us. It would feel as if we were children in a family. The movies, documentaries, musicals, and television shows would be available for free to everybody. Nobody would have to buy tickets or subscribe to television networks, and there would be no advertising of any type. Children would be able to play sports without looking for businesses to sponsor them.

From the point of view of the government officials, however, eliminating money requires that they do a lot of discussing, analyzing, and compromising. We need government officials who can make wise decisions about which products to produce, and how to divide them up. How many robots should we produce each year, and which type of robots? Which factory should get the robots? How many pairs of shoes should we make for each woman? Would products be easier to recycle if more of the steel was replaced with aluminum? Or would it be better to replace more of the aluminum with steel? Should we put more computer programmers on the tasks of developing robots and CNC equipment, or should we have more of them working on video games, electronic gambling devices, and special effects for television? How much of our resources and scientific talent should go into understanding food, health, and nutrition?

In a free enterprise system, the decisions on how to allocate resources are automatic. When the government takes control of the economy, the officials have to spend a lot of time analyzing issues and making decisions, but the rewards are incredible. We will have total control over our destiny.

We also have a lot of options for how to divide up scarce resources, such as truffles, opals, and vacations. For example, we might decide to let people take turns having access to the scarce resources, or we might choose to let some scarce resources be used as rewards for unusual achievements, or we might decide to tell people that if they want truffles or opals, they can go look for them during their leisure time because society is not going to bother supporting the activity. We also have the option of creating some type of money or credits for people to purchase vacations or other scarce resources. There is no right or wrong way to deal with these issues. We simply pick one of our options to experiment with, watch the results, and experiment with changes to make it better.


The government would analyze prototypes

As I mentioned in a previous file of this series, products should be developed on a cycle. For example, complex products, such as commercial airplanes, could have a very long cycle of 10 or 20 years. This would provide the engineers with a lot of time to analyze their earlier models before trying to develop an improved version. For less complex products that are changing rapidly, such as digital cameras, they might be developed on a 3-year cycle.

The purpose of developing products on a cycle is to prevent businesses from producing new models that are trivial improvements over existing models. A lot of resources and labor are required to manufacture a new product, and we shouldn't put that effort into a new product unless it has enough advantages to justify the burden of producing it. In order to eliminate the peasant class, we have to keep factory workers and other undesirable jobs to a minimum. Therefore, instead of producing a new model every time somebody develops an improvement, the improvements would accumulate until the next manufacturing cycle, at which time all of the improvements would be combined into the next production model.

The government would have to create lots of temporary teams of officials to review prototypes and pass judgment on which of them should go into production. The manner in which the government reviews prototypes would depend on the type of product. For small products, such as restaurant equipment, cameras, and computers, it might be best to have a variation of a trade show in which the prototypes are sent to a large convention area where they are put on display. For large products that are difficult to transport, the government officials might have to travel to the company that is building the prototype.

Regardless of whether the prototypes are sent to a convention center, or whether the government officials have to travel to see the prototypes, the government officials will not be passive viewers of sales presentations. Instead, they will be in the dominant role, and the businesses will be in the submissive role. The government officials will be like executives of a corporation who are observing the work of their different departments. The government officials would ask the businesses to demonstrate their products and explain the details, and, if possible, the government officials would be able to operate the items. These tradeshows could continue for weeks or longer so that the government officials have the opportunity to learn about and experiment with all of the different prototypes.

The government officials would produce the type of analyses that we find in the magazine Consumer Reports, except that the government officials would be reviewing items to determine which prototype to put into production rather than to give recommendations to consumers on which item to purchase. None of the government officials would be able to operate in secrecy, however. Each official would produce an analysis that would be accessible to the public through the Internet, and that would allow us to see which prototypes each official has reviewed, and why he approved or disapproved of it. This would allow us to verify that each official is doing a sensible job.

It is easy for the government officials to pass judgment on certain items, such as hammers and screwdrivers, but there are some products that are personal opinions, such as chairs, bicycles, and clothing. The officials who have to review prototypes for chairs, clothing, and bicycles cannot select the "best" models. Rather, they have to select a variety of items, and then they let the consumers experiment with them. However, the officials would not select products at random. Instead, they would give preference to the products that were designed by engineers whose previous prototypes had already been put into production and judged to be a success in regards to their acceptance by the public, their reliability, their ease of maintenance, and their ease at recycling.

At the other extreme, the businesses whose prototypes were put into production and later classified as a failure would have an increasingly difficult time getting their prototypes approved. After a businesses has had a certain number of failures, the government would force them to find another job so that society doesn't waste any more resources on their attempt to develop products.

In a society in which people are allowed to share all of the products that are available, the government knows which products are being used, how often, by whom, and even what days and times. By putting RFID chips on products, it would be very easy for the government to track the use of a product. This allows the government to figure out whose bicycles, office chairs, row boats, scuba equipment, and laptop computers are the most popular. The people who design the most useful items will have the easiest time getting support for their subsequent projects, and the easiest time getting approval to put their prototypes into production.

It should be noted that the government would not judge a product solely according to its popularity. Since the government is involved in the production, maintenance, and recycling of products, they will know how much labor and resources are required to produce, maintain, and recycle each product. Therefore, they will consider every product's burden on society in regards to production, maintenance, and recycling. If a product is very popular but requires a lot more factory or recycling labor than a competing product, then the government might insist that it be redesigned, even if that reduces the public approval, or the government might decide to replace it with a competing product. The government would make decisions according to the available factory workers, resources, and other issues.

If product A is almost as popular with the public as product B, but if product A is significantly easier to build, maintain, or recycle, the government may judge product A to be the superior product. In a free enterprise system, the engineers are under pressure to titillate the consumers into purchasing their products, but in this system, the engineers are under pressure to consider the overall, long-term effect that their product has on society.

Clothing design
In our free enterprise system, the design of new clothing is dominated by a small number of people who are working full-time, and many of them seem to be mentally ill. They have idiotic fashion shows in which they display clothing that is impractical, and there seems to be a lot of sexual abuse in the industry. When the government is in control of the economy, the production of clothing would be completely separate from the design of clothing, and the government would encourage everybody to get involved in the design of clothing.

The government would treat the design of clothing differently than the design of most other products. For example, in the case of engineers who design complex items, such as jet engines, the government would want engineers who specialize in the field and who work full-time at the job. In the case of clothing design, the government would want the opposite situation. Specifically, instead of a small number of full-time clothing designers, the government would want a large number of people to occasionally participate in clothing design. The reason for this is that it would provide more variety.

A person who wanted to design an article of clothing or a shoe would simply go to the building that the government has provided for clothing design. It would be similar to an arts and crafts center. It would provide people with materials, sewing machines, and other items, and there would be people to provide instructions and assistance. A person would then be able to create an article of clothing. If it turned out awful, he would put it into the recycling bin, but if he produced something that had potential, then he would present it to the government. The government would have a type of fashion show in which the prototypes would be displayed and reviewed. The people doing the reviews would also be volunteers from society. The government would make decisions on which ones to put into production.

The people whose prototypes turn out to be a success would have an easier chance getting their prototypes approved the next time, even if they design an article of clothing only once every five years. The people who were successful would also be eligible to be on the review team for the fashion shows.

Some people might want to occasionally design clothing for children, or for certain types of jobs, such as pilots, welders, farmers, or policemen. Some people might want to get involved in the design of costumes for singers, dancers, or other entertainers who perform at festivals or concerts. By encouraging people to get involved in the design of clothing and shoes, I think we will eventually end up with more functional shoes and clothing for work, and we will have more variety and decorations for social affairs and entertainment.

Some people might respond that it is ridiculous to expect the government to provide us with a building full of fabrics, sewing machines, leather, buttons, zippers, sequins, tassels, and other items, and allow us to make clothing. However, there are already businesses and individual people around the world with rooms full of this type of equipment and supplies, and they are experimenting with new styles of clothing and shoes. All I am suggesting is that we change this activity from a few businesses to all of society. Let everybody participate, and as seldom as they want, rather than just a few people who are working full-time.

Imagine living in a city in which the government has provided a wide variety of activities, one of them being the design of clothing and shoes. You can think of it as a social club, except that you don't have to make any commitments. You would visit the "Clothing Club" when you were in the mood, and either by yourself or with a friend. Your first visit would be to introduce you to the club and its equipment and supplies. Depending upon what you wanted to do, you might need to come back for more education and training. However, since there were no commitments, you would visit only when you were in the mood.

You might worry that this type of club will allow people to waste an enormous amount of resources, but remember to look for solutions to whatever you worry about rather than become incapacitated over the fear of potential problems. If the people managing this club are responsible, then they would not provide people with access to equipment or supplies until they knew what they were doing. After people learned about the equipment and supplies, they would begin with simple, inexpensive materials. Only after they have demonstrated an ability to do something useful would they have access to the more expensive materials.

We can do the same for food. Businesses and breweries have large kitchens and are regularly experimenting with new foods and drinks, but I think it would be better if the government provided some social clubs to encourage people to participate in these type of activities rather than letting other people make all of the decisions. Some people might enjoy visiting some of these clubs once in a while simply to watch other people and learn what is involved in producing clothing, beer, or shoes.

Bicycle paths, plazas, and footpaths could be decorative, and the decorations can change throughout the city so that we don't get bored looking at the same design.
The government can also provide lots of social clubs for arts and crafts activities. This would provide people with access to painting supplies, CNC wood routers, laser cutting machines, rock cutting machines, and other arts and crafts items so that people can experiment with making decorations for the city; murals for the walls; colored tiles for a plaza; and polished rocks for a footpath; and more comfortable and decorative benches for a city park.

We could provide ourselves with a city of decorative trains, beautiful stairways, and attractive bicycle paths, but creating a beautiful city requires a lot of people to do a lot of work. We can't all be pampered Kings and Queens. Who is going to do the work?

By creating lots of different social clubs that nobody has to make commitments to, and by encouraging people to participate once in a while, we will be able to do a lot of impressive work for ourselves. Even if each person spends an average of only one afternoon each year doing this type of work, it will add up to a tremendous amount of work after a few decades.

If a city has 1 million people, and if 100,000 are adults who are willing to work only one afternoon per year, that is 100,000 afternoons every year. If they work 4 hours in the afternoon, that is 400,000 hours of work every year. Can you imagine what 400,000 hours of work each year can do for a city?

As I pointed out in this file, there are a lot of people putting a lot of time and effort into hobbies that have no value to society. There are also lots of people wasting a lot of their time trying to become rich through the stock market, gambling, or crime. If we could create a city in which the people were willing to spend just a small portion of their leisure time on activities that are beneficial to the city, we could create an incredible city.

If we were to build a new city, it would initially have dreary, gray, concrete sidewalks, but through the years we could cover them with polished rocks, color tiles, and pebbles. The buildings would also initially have bland walls, but we could slowly add murals, tapestries, or other decorations. Initially the parks would be just barren areas of dirt, but by creating gardening clubs, people would be encouraged to plant some flowers, grass, and trees, and create some ponds and canals.

Furthermore, by getting involved with these activities we would meet people. Do not underestimate the value of that. In our modern society, we have a lot of leisure time, and so we need to find people who have compatible personalities and leisure activities. By encouraging people to try different activities, we will figure out what we enjoy doing, and we will eventually meet people who have compatible desires.

I think that this type of city would be much more satisfying than what we have today in which people waste most of the leisure time. However, this type of city requires people who are more advanced than a talking monkey. This type of city requires people who have an interest in society and who enjoy discovering life.

Scientific research
The agency that reviews prototypes would also review proposals for research projects. Scientists, and everybody else who had an idea for a research project, would send their proposal to this agency for review. The government would review the proposals and pass judgment on which of them should be authorized. The scientists who have already been successful with their previous projects would be much more likely to get approval for their proposals.

A lot of people promote the concept of "pure" research, rather than "applied" research, but we have to be careful about authorizing somebody to do pure research because they can waste an incredible amount of resources. In a previous file I complained about the particle accelerators (eg, the Large Hadron Collider), so this time consider controlled fusion.

It seems to me that the scientists working on controlled fusion haven't made any progress since the 1960s. When faced with such endless failures, I think the best solution is to tell the scientists to switch to some other, but related, project, and when the technology improves, they can reconsider whether it makes sense to try another fusion reactor. For example, the scientists claim that they need more powerful lasers, capacitors, and magnets, and if so, what is the sense of having them waste time and resources on fusion reactors when the equipment is incapable of giving them what they assume they need?

It would make more sense for them to stop developing fusion reactors and switch to the research and development of better lasers, capacitors, and magnets. That would put the scientists on projects that are beneficial for everybody, not just fusion reactors. If, in the future, the technology exists to create the type of fusion reactor that they assume is necessary, then they can submit another proposal to try again with a new and improved reactor.

Building a fusion reactor when you are not sure of the equipment you need, and the equipment that you assume you need is not even technically possible yet, and may not even be possible, is as silly as building a time machine when you don't know what type of equipment you need, and none of the equipment that you assume you need is technically possible yet, and may not even be possible.

In a free enterprise system, it is difficult for scientists to switch to other projects. The fusion scientists cannot simply return their funding and look for a different job, or tell the people who funded their project that they are switching to a different project. However, when the government is in control of the economy, then the scientists are employees of society. If they are not making progress on a particular project, then the government will be concerned that they are wasting valuable technical talent. They will help the scientists find something more productive to do. Since the government will be in control of all of the scientific research, they can tell the scientists to help with some of the existing projects, or they could create some new projects.

Temporary officials would dominate this agency
The government agency that reviews prototypes and research proposals would depend primarily on people who work as government officials on a temporary basis. The reason for this is because this agency would review so many different types of products and proposals that it would be unrealistic to expect full-time government officials to be able to make sensible decisions. Nobody could possibly have enough of an education to make decisions about thousands of different types of products and proposals.

People who are familiar with a particular product or research proposal should offer to become a temporary government official to deal with that particular issue. For example, if a group of businesses were developing a new type of DVD drive or a new USB port, some scientists, managers, technicians, and engineers who are knowledgeable in that particular product should offer to become temporary government officials so that they could get involved with the analysis and discussion of which of them, if any, to put into production. Some technicians might want to get involved to add their comments on the maintenance or recycling aspects of the product, and some engineers might want to get involved to add their opinion about the technical aspects of the product.

You might respond that the government officials could simply ask the scientists and technicians for their opinions, but by making them temporary government officials, they will have authority to do something. They will not be submissive consultants.

I think the scientists, engineers, doctors, and other people who are supposedly knowledgeable and intelligent, should get involved with society instead of allowing other people to make all the decisions. There are a lot of products that a group of full-time government employees would never be able to make good decisions about. For example, how many government officials would be able to make good decisions about plasma torches, CNC lathes, or induction furnaces?

I think the best solution to this problem is to encourage people to get involved with society. Furthermore, I think a variety of people would make the best team. Specifically, some of the engineers who design these products; some of the people who use the products in their jobs; some of the people who have to manufacture the products; some of the technicians who have to maintain them; and some of the people who have to deal with recycling or disposal of products should be given a part-time job in the government to analyze the prototypes.

That type of team would be able to analyze products from a variety of different points of view, and by being government officials rather than consultants, they would have the authority to determine which prototypes to put into production, and which prototypes show potential but need to be redesigned. After they made their decisions, their government jobs would cease to exist, and they would return to their primary jobs until they were needed in the government once again.

I think that the best decisions for reviewing prototypes will come from a mix of people from different job categories. The job categories would depend upon the product, but I would have these type of categories: People who use the product, design the product, repair the product, recycle the product, and manufacture the product.

After the businesses describe their prototypes, the team of users, technicians, and engineers would experiment with them and analyze them.
When a business contacts the government to notify them that they have a prototype for review, one of the government officials would put together a team of scientists, engineers, users, and technicians who are interested in that prototype, and who will become temporary government officials to pass judgment on whether it should be rejected or put into production.

The full-time government officials will not get involved in the decision. He will merely arrange for the team to form and get together, and he will ensure that the team is accomplishing something rather than just arguing with each other. The government official will also be available to help the team with issues they may not be familiar with, such as how to access data about the products that are already in production.

If a member of the team turns out to be troublesome because of his idiotic arguments or strange personality, that information will be recorded in the database and he will have an increasingly difficult time being selected as a temporary government official.

If you wonder why I suggest hiring a mixture of engineers, users, and technicians to analyze prototypes instead of hiring only one group of people, the reason is because each group of people will see a different aspect of the prototype. The engineers will see the "invisible" aspects, such as the technical details of how it works and what it can do, but the users will be able to determine whether it is actually better than what is already in production, and other people will be more aware of how easy it is to maintain, manufacture, and recycle.

The tradeshows of a free enterprise system provide people with only superficial access to products. The visitors to the tradeshow can look but not touch. When the government controls the economy, the businesses are in the role of the visitors. The businesses demonstrate their products to the team of government officials, and then they go home. That team of users, engineers, and technicians can then use the prototypes to determine if any of them are actually better than the existing products, and to determine their ease of maintenance.

I should point out that there is a specific reason that I want the users of the product to be working with the engineers when they are analyzing prototypes. Specifically, the engineers will be able to see if the users are using the products as intended. In case you are unaware of this concept, a lot of people use products and software in a manner that the designers never expected. There are different reasons that this can happen, but the one I want to bring to your attention is that sometimes people use a new product in the wrong manner because they are trying to use it in the same manner as the existing product that they have become familiar with. When this happens, the team that is analyzing the prototype has to make a decision about whether it is better to make the new product compatible with existing products so that people don't have to learn something new, or whether the new product is truly an improvement, and therefore, the user should be told to get used to it.

In a free enterprise system, people have a tendency to copy what is already successful on the market, but this can result in stupid features being perpetuated decade after decade. For example, consider automobile taillights. Both the brake lights and the taillights are red, and this makes it impossible at night to figure out when people are applying their brakes. If the taillights had been orange, yellow, blue, green, or purple, then it would be immediately obvious when somebody was applying his brakes. However, no automobile company dares to deviate from the standard that everybody has learned, and so they are continuing this idiotic practice. Only when the government controls the economy is it possible to make a dramatic change in products. The government can plan and schedule a change, and they tell everybody to get ready for it.

It is important to note that the users of the product can be useful to the engineers even if they are uneducated or stupid, and even they do not have to even say anything about the prototypes. Simply observing their use of a product can be beneficial. An example are the gardening tools, such as shovels and pruning shears, that have a nice appearance, but break very easily. Why do so many American gardening tools break so easily? Five of the many possible reasons are: 1) Engineers are deliberately designing them to break in order to increase sales. 2) The engineers assume that only idiots purchase the flimsy versions of products, and they don't care about those idiots. 3) The engineers are only concerned with a paycheck and don't care whether their work has any value to society. 4) The engineers are so naive that they don't realize that their products are breaking easily. 5) The engineers tested their gardening tools by themselves on simple gardening tasks, and they do not realize that most people are two to six times stronger than they are, and that many people put a lot of stress on their tools because they are trying to do their gardening at a rapid pace.

Regardless of why so many American gardening tools are so flimsy, when we allow the users to get involved with the testing of prototypes, we can often determine very quickly if the users can understand how to use the product, and whether it breaks easily. The users don't have to do anything other than use the product as they normally would, and let other people observe how they use it. The users don't have to be capable of analyzing the product.

You might respond that I am proposing a government that is going to have to do a phenomenal amount of work. The department that analyzes prototypes, for example, will have to put together teams of people to analyze thousands of prototypes every year, and that means they're going to have to be putting teams of people together constantly, and all throughout the year. It will be a lot of work. The government officials are going to have to keep lists of people who are willing to work in these teams, and they are going to have to occasionally observe the people and listen to a variety of their complaints and suggestions, and they will have to pass judgment on which members of the group do not have the personality or sense of responsibility to handle this type of job.

Before you worry that this type of government is unrealistic, there are two concepts to keep in mind. First of all, I am not asking people to do anything that they are not already doing. Businesses are already putting together teams of people when they design products. Some of these teams are small, but some of them are large groups of engineers, users, artists, and technicians. The managers of these groups have to listen to complaints and suggestions, and they have to observe the behavior of the people so that they can pass judgment on whether they are suitable for this type of task.

Businesses are already putting teams together to analyze prototypes and determine whether they should go into production. All I am suggesting is that we shift the analysis of prototypes to the government. This allows everybody in society to observe the process, and participate in controlling it.

The second concept to keep in mind is that when we let the government take control of the economy, we are not necessarily going to create more work for ourselves. It may seem as if the government has to do more work because they will have to do everything that the business executives are doing right now, and in addition they will have to do some of the tasks that the free enterprise system handles automatically. However, the government will be able to do a more efficient job than thousands of separate businesses, so overall, there may be fewer people in management positions with this type of economic system.

Although this type of economic system puts a big burden on the government officials, it will significantly reduce the burden on businesses. For example, the teams of engineers only develop prototypes. They don't have to be concerned about the much more complex issue of manufacturing and distribution. This allows small teams of engineers to survive as a "business" because all they have to do is make a successful prototype once in a while. They don't need marketing departments, purchasing departments, distribution departments, sales departments, or even manufacturing departments. And since the government provides everybody with their basic necessities for free, the businesses don't need to worry about retirement plans, medical care, or paychecks.


Most people could participate in prototype reviews

Since everybody is a user of products, each of us would be able to volunteer to be one of the temporary government officials in the "user" category who reviews whichever products we happen to use. The only people who would be prohibited from these government positions would be people who have been classified as too stupid or mentally ill.

The engineers would be able to volunteer for the "engineer" category for the products that they design, and people who repair items would be able to volunteer in the "repair" category for whichever products they repair.

In a free enterprise system, prototypes are analyzed for their profitability, but when we put together this type of team to review prototypes, products will be analyzed from several different points of view. For example, the people who are involved with maintenance will be able to complain that a new prototype requires different spare parts than what they already have in stock. They can put pressure on the engineers to figure out if the item can be redesigned to use some existing parts. The people who have to design assembly lines might complain that the prototype requires some new assembly lines, and they can put pressure on the engineers to determine if they can use any existing components or assembly lines. The people who recycle items will be able to complain about the difficulty in recycling the item.

In a free enterprise system, magazines, such as Consumer Reports, and individual citizens will provide reviews of products, but it would be better if the people who want to review a product would get involved as a temporary government official and participate in the decision of whether to put a particular prototype into production.

When the government has to review a prototype of no real importance, such as children's crayons, they may put together a team that consists of only a few people, and the team may spend only a few hours analyzing the issue, whereas the groups that review more complex products, such as industrial equipment, robots, computers, and cell phones, might consist of several hundred people, and they might spend weeks or months analyzing and discussing the prototypes.

Your initial reaction to the concept of a small group of people making decisions about products might be to worry that you will be forced to use cell phones, computers, and other products that are terrible. Perhaps you have visions of the communist Chinese of the 1960's in their dull, drab, green clothing. Perhaps you prefer the much wider variety of black suits that the free enterprise system is providing American men.

Hopefully you can understand that the dreary clothing of the communist Chinese had nothing to do with communism. It was the result of the miserable, dreary, crude personalities of the type of people who dominate communist nations. Likewise, the dreary black suits of business executives in a free enterprise system have nothing to do with free enterprise or democracies. Rather, this clothing style is the result of the aggressive, crude personalities of the men who dominate the free enterprise system.

The people in society, especially those in leadership positions, determine what life is like for that society. If we put respectable people in our government, then they will make wise decisions for us about cell phones, laptop computers, and clothing. If instead we fill the government with Hollywood directors, religious fanatics, criminals, feminists, and Jews, then we are going to end up with idiotic decisions regardless of our economic and government systems.

Our natural tendency is to be afraid of change and look for potential problems so that we can justify keeping everything as it is. A better attitude is to look for potential solutions to the problems that you worry about.

It doesn't matter if a small group of people make decisions about products. What matters is who those people are. A group of temporary government officials are not necessarily going to make terrible decisions about products. It will certainly be true that fewer prototypes will be put into production, and therefore, your choices will be noticeably reduced compared to a free enterprise system, but reducing your choices will make society more efficient.

For example, by producing fewer products, those products can be manufactured in larger quantities, which increases efficiency, and we also reduce the burden on the maintenance people. This in turn allows the engineers to spend more time developing products and technology. We also reduce engineering work because we don't have to produce so many different factories. We are wasting engineering talent and resources by producing hundreds of variations of cell phones, computers, and cameras. It would be better to produce fewer of them, and put some of our engineering talent into new technology.

To understand the advantage of the system that I'm proposing, imagine that there are two cities that are equal in all respects, except that one is using free enterprise, and the other is following my suggestions. The city with free enterprise would provide their people with much more options for laptop computers, cell phones, and lightbulbs, so we could say that their wider variety of choices is making life nicer for them. However, since the other city would be putting less engineering talent and resources into the production of a wide variety of products, more of their engineering talent and resources could go into something else, such as the development of new technology. Therefore, as time passed, we would see that their city is developing technology at a faster pace.

Which philosophy you prefer depends upon what you want from life. If you want variety, then you will prefer free enterprise, but if you are more interested in advances in technology, then you will be willing to sacrifice some variety for better technology.


Example: automobile battery terminals

For an example of how this system would be better than free enterprise, consider the battery terminals of automobiles. The photo shows one of the terminals on the battery in my car. This type of battery has tapered, lead terminals that requires a tapered connector that squeezes the terminal. The problem is that these connectors can slowly loosen from the terminal, thereby reducing their electrical conductivity, which in turn causes the battery to slowly lose its charge.

Eventually the battery becomes so weak that it cannot start the car. This wastes some of that person's life as he tries to fix the problem, and everybody who helps him get his car started will waste some of their life, also. Some people pay for a tow truck to take their car to an auto repair shop, and some people assume that their battery is bad, and so they purchase a new battery.

This problem may seem insignificant, but it has happened several times to me, and it has happened to other people that I know, so it must be happening to a lot of people. I suspect that each year it is wasting thousands of hours of human life; causing thousands of batteries to be discarded prematurely; and wasting a lot of time and money on tow trucks.

From the point of view of society, it is idiotic to put these type of terminals on batteries. It would be better if batteries had some type of more secure, more reliable connectors, such as the terminals in the photo to the right. Each terminal could also have a hole so that we can put a bolt and a nut through them, making an even more reliable connection.

The competition of the free enterprise system is supposed to take care of this problem. Specifically, those of us who are annoyed by this problem are supposed to start our own automobile or battery company and offer batteries with more sensible terminals. Consumers are supposed to respond to the improvement by purchasing our automobiles or batteries, thereby causing the competing businesses to either improve their batteries, or go bankrupt. However, it is impractical for us to start such large and complex businesses.

Furthermore, in a free enterprise system, consumers purchase what they want, and that is not necessarily what is best for them. When consumers are offered batteries with a more sensible terminal, they may ignore the battery and concentrate on which automobile has the most exciting visual appearance, status value, and price. Furthermore, the businesses that sell batteries or provide towing services are profiting from this idiotic design, so they have no desire to encourage more sensible battery terminals.

When the government has total control of the economy, these problems can easily be solved. Anybody, even if they have no connection to the automobile or battery business, can make a proposal to the government to replace the tapered lead terminals with a more sensible alternative. All he has to do is describe his suggestion and provide some intelligent reasoning for it. He can then post his proposal on the Internet and tell the government officials to look at it. If he is already a government official, or if he has already achieved success in some intellectual area, then he will have an easy time convincing people to read his proposal. However, even a student who has never accomplished anything would be able to make proposals.

If the government officials considered the proposal to be worth experimenting with, then they would order the battery manufacturers to change their terminals. The government officials would then watch the results. If, after a few years, the government felt that the change in terminals was beneficial, then the person who came up with the idea would be credited with an intellectual achievement. The government officials who approved the proposal would be credited with a success, also, and the officials who had rejected the proposal would be credited with a failure.

If, instead, cost of the new terminals was high, and the batteries were loosening just as often, and if the government decides to give up and revert to the original design, then the person who came up with the idea would be credited with a failure, and so would all of the government officials who had approved it. If the new terminal showed some benefit but was not performing as expected, then he will be credited with a "partial achievement", and the government would put out a request for people to find improvements to the design.


Example: CNC controllers

A CNC controller is a computer, and some of them are using the same circuit boards as your home computer. The CNC controllers have a few extra circuits in order to control electric motors, but the primary difference between a CNC controller and your home computer is that the CNC controller is running different software.

During the 1990s, the software in a CNC controller was incredibly crude compared to the software that was running in a low-cost printer for home use. For example, in 1990 you could plug a printer into a computer, and the printer would identify itself to the computer, and it would let the computer know if it was out of paper or toner. By comparison, the CNC controllers in 1990, or even 10 years later in 2000, did not send any feedback to the computer. When you connected a controller to a computer, there was no way for the computer to determine that it was connected, or what model it was.

During the 1990s, there were printers that would connect to a computer through either a serial port, parallel port, or network cable. However, the CNC controllers would connect only by serial cables.

Some of the CNC controllers in 2012 have network connections, but they are still crude. For example, they have the math abilities of a 12-year-old child. The only geometry that most of them are capable of processing are lines, arcs, and circles. They cannot cut an ellipse, spline, 3-D mesh, or even a rectangle. In order to cut a rectangle, the controller needs four line segments. In order to cut a spline or ellipse, the controller needs either a series of line segments, or a series of arcs, that approximate the spline or ellipse.

The free enterprise system expects those of us who are irritated by these crude CNC controllers to start our own business, but this is not practical for several reasons. First of all, all of the CAD/CAM software already deals with the limitations of the controllers. They are breaking lines, ellipses, and other geometry into a series of line segments or arcs. If we were to put a CNC controller on the market that could process splines, meshes, and other advanced geometry, it would be wasted because none of the software programs would use the feature.

This brings up an issue that we could describe as the chicken and egg dilemma. The people who design CNC controllers do not want to add features that are going to be wasted, and likewise, the people who design CAD/CAM software are not going to design their software for a controller that is not selling in large quantities. In the free enterprise system, this can result in nobody doing anything, or we could say that it results in everybody waiting for somebody else to do something.

When the government is in control of the economy, this chicken and egg dilemma doesn't exist at all. A person could put together a proposal in which he suggests modifying CNC controllers to handle meshes, splines, ellipses, rectangles, and other geometry. All he has to do is explain the advantages, such as reducing the bulk of the CNC programs, and allowing the controllers to do a better job of acceleration and deceleration because they will know what geometry they are following. For example, when a CNC controller today is given a series of line segments, it doesn't know whether it is truly following a series of line segments, or if it is actually being given a series of line segments that closely match the shape of a spline or an ellipse. If, instead, the controller is told to cut an ellipse, then it knows what type of geometry it is supposed to follow, and that allows it to do a much more accurate job.

When the government has control of the economy, a person could make a proposal to add advanced math features to a CNC controller even if he has no idea how to create software or do the math operations. If the government likes his proposal, then it would be listed on the government website in the area that shows proposals that have been approved. Programmers who are interested in the project would offer to work on it, either full-time or part-time, and either by themselves or in a team that they create. Since the government encourages competition, the government officials would want at least two different groups to compete on the project.

It should be noted that the person who created this proposal may not want to work on the project, and he may not even be capable of providing any assistance. He may simply be aware of the problem and proposing a solution to it. In a free enterprise system, it would be very difficult for a person to make a proposal if he is not involved with the project. Imagine a person having a conversation like this with a bank official:

Joe: I would like you to loan some money for two teams of computer programmers to compete in the development of an improved CNC controller with better math functions.
Bank official: OK, how much money do you need?
Joe : I don't know.
Bank official: Well, who are the two teams of computer programmers that need the money?
Joe: I don't know. I only have the idea for the project. I want you to find the computer programmers, figure out how much money they need, and make sure they get the job done properly. After they are finished, I want you to analyze their software and determine which of them has done a better job. And be sure to give me credit for this because I am working on some other ideas, and I don't want to deal with so many silly questions from you the next time I come in with a project for you to fund.
When the government has control of the economy, the officials do not care who creates projects or who works on them. The government will accept projects from anybody. When the government looks over proposals, it is simply looking for ideas that show potential for helping society. The government will announce the accepted proposals, and look for teams to work on the projects.

If this concept seem strange, consider that it is happening right now in businesses. Some of the people who devise projects for their business are simply coming up with the ideas. They don't necessarily do any of the engineering, computer programming, artwork, or whatever else is needed.

When a business puts together a team of their employees to work on a project, they rarely create a second team to work on the same project in order to provide competition. Most businesses cannot afford to have their employees competing with each other. They will set up competitions only when they have a project that has a deadline, and they do not know the best way to accomplish their goal. They may then set up different teams to try different solutions. In a free enterprise system, businesses normally compete with other businesses, rather than setting up competitions among their own employees.

When the government has control of the economy, the economy is essentially one giant business. Therefore, it is impossible for that business to compete with other businesses. In order for there to be competition, the government has to create competing teams. This would be equivalent to a corporation setting up teams of employees to compete against each other.

These competing teams would add a burden on the government officials because they have to create the teams, watch over them, and compare them to one another, but this system provides us with tremendous control over who is competing, and what they are competing for. This control allows us to do things that would be impossible in a free enterprise system.

For example, in a free enterprise system, a manufacturer of toys may have enough money to hire some of the most talented engineers, scientists, and computer programmers. Meanwhile, a company that's making CNC controllers may have so little money that they have to hire the engineers that the toy companies rejected. When the government has control over the economy, then the government decides who is going to compete on which projects. The best engineers could be told to work on the more important projects, and the trainees and less talented engineers would be given the jobs that are less significant.

When the government passes judgment on the abilities of an engineer, some of the engineers who are classified as "substandard" might complain that they feel insulted, but we should not try to appease those people. Everybody should learn to understand their talents, accept what they are, and contribute what they can. If a person is not very good as an engineer, then he should control his arrogance and do whatever engineering jobs he is capable of doing properly. He should be grateful that he has some engineering skills rather than whine about how he belongs at the top of the hierarchy.

In a free enterprise system, the competition between businesses is automatic. Nobody has to tell the businesses how to set up their teams, or give them deadlines to complete their projects. When the government is in control of the competition, the government officials have to do what free enterprise did automatically, such as make decisions on how many teams should compete on a project; what their deadlines should be for different milestones; and how to review their performance.

For example of how this would work, consider the project of adding math functions to a CNC controller. This type of project is entirely software because it does not require any new hardware or other resources. Therefore, the government needs to put together two or more teams of computer programmers, and the government has to provide those teams with some office space and computers. The teams could be as small as one person in the case of small projects.

The government would set certain milestones, such as four months for their first performance review and 10 months for completion. However, we cannot expect a government official to know enough about every issue to be able to set milestones on their own. Instead, they would start the project by talking with the teams, and together they would plan the project.

If they set four months to be the first milestone, then at that point in time the government would look over what each team has done to ensure that they had accomplished something. If any of the teams was showing signs that they were significantly inferior to the others, they would be told to find another job. This would leave the groups that were making some progress. The government would then give them another period of time to work before their next review.

When the deadline is reached, there is a good chance that none of the teams will be completely finished with their software. This happens all the time with engineering projects, especially software. The government officials will react to this problem just like businesses are doing today when one of their teams of employees is not meeting their deadline. Specifically, the officials would take a look at the progress that has been made and then make a decision about whether they are making enough progress to continue supporting the project, or whether the people are so far from completion that the project needs to be abandoned, or whether the project should be altered.

Eventually one or more of the competing teams will complete the project. In a free enterprise system, after a business develops a new product, they put their item into production and on the market. The consumers then make the final decision about which, if any, of the products is a success. However, when the government has control of the economy, the consumers usually do not play much of a role in the decision of which product is considered to be a success. It depends on what the project is. In the case of projects that have no effect on consumers, such as a CNC controller, then the government will make the decision about which of the competing teams has produced the best software.

However, when the government is in complete control of the economy, there is no proprietary hardware or software, and there are no copyrights or patents. All the technology is put into the public domain. This allows the government to add one final stage to the competition. Specifically, after teams have competed with one another to develop a new product or software, the government puts all of their work into the public domain, and then each of the teams is told to look at what the others have done and take what they consider to be the best features from one another to put into the final product.

When several teams of programmers or engineers are competing on a project, there is a good chance that each team will develop some features that are better than their competitors, and that no team has the truly superior design. Using the CNC controller example, one team may have superior functions for doing B-splines, and another team may have superior functions for cutting an ellipse. Therefore, from the point of view of society, after the competition is over, all of the teams should look over everybody else's software, and each team should take what they consider to be the best features and create the final, best version.

In some cases, each team will create the same, final version, but if they disagree on what is the best, then they will produce slightly different versions. The government would then have to pass judgment on which of those versions is the best overall.

There are no losers with this type of competition. If one of the teams of programmers is too incompetent to produce useful software for CNC controllers, then that would go on their record as a failure, and they would have to work on simpler programming tasks the next time, or, if they repeatedly failed to create useful software, the government would help them find another job. They don't suffer homelessness or unemployment. The teams that contribute something to the final result will have that success recorded in the database, and they will be allowed to continue working as computer programmers.

In a free enterprise system, businesses never put their software or hardware in the public domain, but when the government controls the economy, all of the software and hardware belongs to society. This allows us to have competitions in which we try to improve upon whatever already exists, and at the end of the competition, whatever we created becomes public domain, and then we repeat this process.

By eliminating secrecy and allowing the government to keep everybody's job performance in a publicly accessible database, we will be able to see who has been the most successful with their projects; who is best at estimating the time and resources needed for a project; who is best at meeting their deadlines; and who is most successful in managing teams of people. The people who build up a record of success will have an easier time getting their projects approved, and it would be easier for them to get into government positions, either on a temporary basis or full-time.


Example: Software for users

In a free enterprise system, businesses that want to make a living by creating computer software have to produce some software and then sell it. If they are successful, they remain in business. When the government is in control of the economy, all of the software is free and in the public domain, so the government has to decide which computer programmers to support, and which of them should be told to find another job. How can a government make such decisions?

To begin with, I would divide software into two primary groups: 1) industrial software, and 2) user interfaces. When developing industrial software, the government would have teams compete with one another, and the process would finish with the government selecting only one software program as the best for society, as I previously described with the CNC controller example. The reason the government would provide society with only one program is to ensure compatibility and to simplify maintenance. For example, if somebody discovers a problem in the controller software, then we have to fix only one program, and all of the controllers can then be updated. In the world today, by comparison, I am personally aware of one controller that has certain math problems, and another brand of controller that has some different math problems, and there are some other controllers that have some other problems. Fixing the controllers would be much easier if there was only one version of the controller.

Furthermore, some of the CNC controllers are not compatible with the others, and of those that are supposed to be compatible, there are a few subtle differences between them that can make it impossible for us to take a CNC program that runs properly on one controller and give it to another controller. It would be easier for us if all CNC controllers were running the exact same software. Since some controllers have significantly different hardware, the software would have to be modified for them, but they would remain compatible with all of the other CNC controllers. Likewise, it would be best for society if all airplanes were running the same software, and if some airplanes need changes to deal with different hardware, it would be best to modify the software for those other airplanes rather than create new and different software.

However, the software for user interfaces would be developed in a very different manner. Consider digital cameras. The software in a digital camera could be described as consisting of some industrial software, which operates the hardware of the camera, and a user interface, which is what the user interacts with.

The government would want all digital cameras to have the same industrial software, with only minor changes to deal with the differences in hardware. The teams that create the industrial software would compete to produce the best autofocusing functions, JPG conversion functions, image stabilization functions, memory storage functions, and other features that the users are usually oblivious to. At the end of the competition, all of their software would go into the public domain, and they would put together the best features.

In my example of how CNC controller software was developed, I didn't mention the likely possibility that teams will sometimes create functions that are not clearly superior to the others. For example, if three teams are developing software to control a camera, they may each come up with different auto focusing functions, but none of them may be clearly superior. Instead, each function may have advantages for a particular situation, and it may not be possible to combine all of the advantages into one software package. In a free enterprise system, each of the businesses would boast about their particular autofocusing functions, and consumers would have the dilemma of trying to make a decision between them, but when the government is in control, it can put several competing functions into one camera. The user can then switch between them. The users would essentially have the option to switch the mode of their camera from Sony to Olympus to Nikon.

Most people would be overwhelmed by a camera that offered different functions for autofocusing, image stabilization, and aperture, and they would leave the camera on its factory defaults, but for people who were more involved with photography, it would provide them with the option of essentially switching brands of cameras simply by making a menu selection. For example, if one of the auto focusing functions was best at close-up work, and another was best at dealing with rapidly moving objects, then the users would see a menu option such as:

Auto-Focusing: close-up / motion

The other category of software is user interface. This is the software that provides menus, and it is the software that we interact with when we use cameras, phones, or computers. The government would develop this software in a very different manner. Instead of choosing the best software, the government would allow a lot of people to develop user interface software and put their version on the Internet for people to download and experiment with. The government would keep track of whose software was actually being used, and those would be the people who would be allowed to continue working as computer programmers. The people who consistently failed at producing software that people wanted would be told to find another job.

To understand how this works, imagine that you are a computer programmer, and you dislike some of the features of Microsoft Windows. You, either by yourself or with a team, could download the source code for Microsoft Windows, and then change whichever function you didn't like, or add whatever functions you wanted, and then when you were finished, you would upload your version to the area on the Internet where computer programmers are posting their user interfaces. People would then be able to experiment with your version of Windows. You would not get any credit for people who experiment with your software. However, if people liked it so much that they decided to switch to it, you would get credit for being successful, and that would justify allowing you to do more computer programming.

For another example, assume that you want to change some of the features on the Apple cell phone. You would download the source code for the user interface, change it however you pleased, and then upload your version. If your version is preferred by some percentage of the population that the government considers a "success", perhaps 10%, then you will get credit for developing some successful software, and the government will allow you to continue developing software. If you cannot produce software that people use, you will be told to find another job. In that case, if you wanted to continue developing software, you would have to do so in your leisure time.

If a person could develop some desirable software in their leisure time, then they would be given the classification of "computer programmer". That would allow them to work as a computer programmer for their primary job. However, everybody who is classified as a computer programmer would be expected to produce something useful every once in a while, and if a person couldn't regularly produce useful software, then he would lose his classification and have to return to doing some other type of job.

If this concept seems bizarre, consider that it is going on right now inside of businesses. When a person is hired by a business to be a computer programmer, he sits at a computer and does whatever he pleases. Most people have no idea what he is doing, or whether he is doing anything of value. However, he is expected to produce something useful to justify his paycheck. Therefore, the management will occasionally take a look at what he is doing and pass judgment on whether he is contributing enough to justify his paycheck, and if not, he will be given some other job, or he will be fired. As long as he routinely does something useful, he will keep his job classification of "computer programmer". All I am suggesting is that we expand this concept so that the computer programmers are essentially employees of society, and they have access to all of the software in society. Their boss will be the government officials.

To summarize this concept, everybody would be allowed to get involved with the development of user interface software. Nobody would have to ask the government for authorization. The source code for all software would be in the public domain, and so anybody would be free to modify any of it. People would be allowed to develop software in their leisure time, but if a person wanted to do this for a living, he would have to be classified as a "computer programmer".

There would be certain job categories, such as computer programmer and scientist, that allow a person to do whatever he wants during the day. To prevent abuse and waste, the government would occasionally look at what these people are producing to ensure that they are occasionally giving us something of value in return for the support that they get from society. Everybody in this system has to justify their existence. If a computer programmer or scientist was only mediocre, then the government might demand that he compensate for that by working part-time at some other job where he is more productive.

The government would also be able to get involved in the development of user interface software by putting teams together to develop it. This would be useful for software that nobody was developing, or which was not being developed fast enough. For example, as robots become more advanced, we are going to need user interface software, but nobody is going to develop that software until the robots are developed. This is another of those "chicken and egg" dilemmas. In a free enterprise system, the robotics company is most likely to hire computer programmers, and occasionally a small engineering company will instead try to work out some type of deal with a company that develops software to create the software they need.

When the government is in control of the economy, we have more options available. For example, the engineers designing the robotic hardware can concentrate on the hardware, and the government can put together teams of computer programmers to develop the user interface for the robots. The advantage with this is that the engineers don't have to worry about the user interface software, and instead of getting only one version of the user interface, we will have different versions to experiment with.

Honda is making robots right now, but they are providing only Honda software for the user interface. When the government develops robots, there is be no such thing as proprietary hardware or software. This allows all of the computer programmers to create the user interface software for robots. They would put their software on the Internet for people to experiment with, and their source code would go into the public domain so that other programmers could try improving upon it.

As you can imagine, this system is going to provide us with potentially thousands of versions of Windows, Photoshop, cell phone interfaces, and spreadsheets. How could any programmer make a living when he has to put his software on the Internet among possibly thousands of other versions? He might have created a truly superior version of Windows, for example, but if there are already 1000 other versions, who is going to notice his?

You might have visions of what is happening in the publishing industry in which there are millions of people pushing us into purchasing their magazines, books, poems, and movies. There are also lots of people trying to convince us to purchase their style of sunglasses, ice cream, and jewelry. However, I don't think this situation will get out of hand. One reason is that nobody gains anything financially by being successful in this type of economy. In our free enterprise system, a person can become rich simply by making a silly game for cell phones, such as Angry Birds, but when all of the software is free and everybody is provided with the basic necessities, the only reward to a computer programmer for being successful is that he gets to keep his job classification as "computer programmer" for a while longer.

I personally would not support the production of cell phone games, but if a society wants to support that type of software, then with the system I'm proposing, after a person created the Angry Birds game, he would be expected to create something else, and something else after that, and so on. He would never become a rich, pampered king. He would have to regularly justify his existence. Therefore, the only people who would be interested in producing games for cell phones would be people who actually enjoy doing that for a living. We would not have the situation we have today in which people are doing jobs simply for the money.

Another reason the situation is not likely to get out of control is because when we eliminate secrecy and keep track of everybody's performance, the people who fail will be penalized. As a result, the only people who would want to download the Apple cell phone software and make changes to it are the people who actually believe they have some chance of success. They would very likely be programmers who have already been successful with that type of software. For anybody else to attempt such a task would not only be a waste of their time, but if they fail to produce something of value, it will go into their record as a failure. If they continuously fail, they will have an increasingly difficult time getting people to take them seriously. They will be regarded as arrogant jerks who have a terrible understanding of themselves and their abilities.

By comparison, the free enterprise system has no concern for failures. In fact, people can profit by setting up businesses, incurring enormous amounts of debt, and then declaring bankruptcy. After a few years, that bankruptcy can be erased from their records, and then they can do it again. Some people have been arrested for financial crimes, and after they got out of jail they were given high-paying jobs for their "expertise". I think we need to change our philosophy. We should not allow people to erase their failures, and we should not consider criminal behavior as an admirable quality.

By putting all of the software in the public domain, by keeping track of every computer programmer's performance, and by being intolerant of crime, the only people who are going to be successful as computer programmers are those who are actually capable of regularly producing software that a certain percentage of the population considers valuable. Of course, in order to keep this process working properly, the government must insist that the programmers write their code in a manner that others will understand. For those of you who are not familiar with computer software, some people are diabolical and will deliberately write code in a manner that nobody can understand in order to make it difficult for other people to work with their software. The people who do this should be considered as destructive to society.

We should try to improve upon the work of others, and requires that each person provide his work in a form that other people can understand and improve upon. Therefore, in addition to determining who is producing useful software, the government also has to pass judgment on whether their source code is understandable, and if not, somebody would have to improve it. The programmers who cannot behave properly will have that personality disorder recorded in the database.


What type of standards should software have?

Incidentally, the issue of writing software that is understandable is more interesting than it might appear. Unlike human languages, computer languages have only a few words, and each is precisely defined. This makes it very easy for us to create precise standards for computer languages. However, I suspect that if we were to ask people to design standards for computer languages, we would find that they can be classified into one of two primary groups, which I would describe as the mathematical style and the nonmathematical style.

The reason I say this is because I've noticed something peculiar in regards to how I do math and how I write computer software. I don't know what it means, but I suspect that it gives an indication of how the human mind thinks, and how each of us is slightly different from one another. I suspect that there are two primary differences between our minds, and I would describe these as our mathematical abilities. To begin with, I will explain the two problems I have with math.

Math:
Mathematicians use variable such as i, i', i'', x, x2, and x3. If the equation is very simple, I have no trouble, but if it's complicated, I am very likely to forget what one of the variables mean. As I am trying to solve the problem, I have to remind myself what i' means, and later I forgot what i'' means. The second problem is that the variables are visually so similar that I sometimes get them mixed up as I am solving the problem.

If an equation is complicated, I cannot solve it because as I am continuously forgetting what one of the variables means, and/or getting them mixed up with each other. It creates an image in my mind of trying to hold a lot of ping-pong balls in my hands, and eventually one of them slips out of my hands, and as I bend down to pick it up, another slips out of my hands. Eventually they all start dropping and I give up.

I have more success with complicated equations when I use names for variables, such as height, length, and angle, rather than i, i', and i''. The long variable names make it very difficult to solve a math problem on paper, but when I write computer software to solve math problems, the long variable names are no problem at all. If I have to write software to solve a simple equation, I can use short variable names, but if the function is doing something complicated, I have to use descriptive variables or I cannot keep track of what is going on.

Computer software:
When I first read the book about the C programming language, I was immediately attracted to the language. Pascal is similar to C, but there is something about it that I don't like as much. I looked at some other languages, also, but they didn't appeal to me as much, either. Why do we like some programming languages more than others? What does this tell us about the human mind? The emotional feeling that I get from C is that it was designed to get jobs done quickly, whereas Pascal gives me the emotional feeling of somebody who is more relaxed. I suppose C fits my personality better.

When C++ was developed, it was promoted as being better for teams of programmers who are working on the same project, but I could not understand how it would help me, as an individual who works alone. I tried a few times to learn it, but I found it confusing, and gave up after a while. It seemed like a high-level version of C, but if I wanted a high-level programming language, I would use something like Visual Basic or one of the database programming languages. Am I simply too old to learn C++? Or does C appeal to certain personalities, and C++ to others?

Although I like the C programming language, there are two aspects of the language that annoy me, and I think these annoyances tell us something about the human mind. The most annoying aspect of the C language is that it uses punctuation marks for a variety of different purposes. For example, we find statements like this in a C program:
   if (x == 2) 
   y = 3;
   if (z != 0)
   if (q && w)
   if (s & 2)
   if (r || t)
   if (t | 4)

When I first started writing software in C, I would occasionally discover that the reason my software was failing was because I was getting these punctuation marks mixed up. It might seem simple to be able to see the difference between them, but I have the same problem seeing the difference between punctuation marks as I do between i, i', and i''. Fortunately, the C language allows us to create substitutions for most everything, so I substituted is, isnot, and, and or:
   if (x is 2) 
   y = 3;
   if (z isnot 0)
   if (q and w)
   if (s & 2)
   if (r or t)
   if (t | 4)

That solved most of the problems for me, but there were a few times that I wasted hours trying to figure out why my software wasn't working correctly, and eventually I discovered that I mixed up "is" and "isnot". Apparently, "is" and "isnot" are so visually similar to each other that I sometimes didn't notice that I was using the wrong one. I then switched it to "aint":
   if (z aint 0)

That solved the problem, but why? Why does my mind need variables that are so visually different? Is this some form of dyslexia?

Because I have a problem with cryptic variable names, my variables and functions tend to have longer names than those of other programmers. For example, here are three lines from one of my functions:
   chordSweepForCalculatingPolyineArea = 20 * CONVERTTORADIANS;
   tempPtr = CreateArrayOfPointsFromPolyine (pptr, &numFloats);
   area = CalculateAreaWithinArrayOfPoints (tempPtr, numFloats);

A minor annoyance of the C language is that the standard practice is to put the opening braces at the beginning of the line, like this:
   char IsPolylineClockwiseUsingAreaCalculations (...)
   {           <-- opening brace
   if (...)
   {           <-- opening brace
       ....
   }
   }
For some reason, those braces make the program visually unpleasant. They also cause the program to require more lines, which increases the amount of scrolling that is necessary to edit the program. I could substitute a word for the braces, such as "begin" and "end", but that would be a lot of extra typing, so instead I move half of them out of my primary visual area by writing programs like this:
   char IsPolylineClockwiseUsingAreaCalculations (...)  {
   if (...)  {
       ....
   }
   }
The difference is subtle, and it makes matching the braces more difficult, but I find it visually more pleasant, and it makes the functions more compact, which reduces the amount of scrolling that I have to do. Why does my mind want those braces out of the way?

What does all of this mean? I don't know, but I wonder if some children would do better at math if they were given math problems that had descriptive words for variables rather than short, cryptic variables and Greek symbols. It would be difficult to use descriptive names in paper books and for assignments on paper, but if we switch to an electronic education, the math lessons would be on a computer, and that would make it possible for students to have a choice between cryptic and descriptive variables. It might be useful to understanding the human mind to observe what happens when students have that option. For example, we might find that the people who prefer the cryptic variables are better at some tasks, such as language or chemistry.


Product development would be separate from manufacturing

In a free enterprise system, businesses tend to manufacture the items that they create. When the government has control of the economy, the best policy is to completely separate product development from manufacturing.

For example, consider cell phones. In the world today, the companies that design cell phones are also producing them. Some of them also have their own phone networks. When the government has control of the economy, it is better to have a lot of small businesses because small businesses are easier for people to form and dissolve, and it's also easier to watch over small businesses. Small businesses should also waste less time on meetings because they don't have to deal with executives who have no idea what they are doing.

The teams of people that design cell phones would be small, and they would most likely concentrate on different aspects of the phone rather than design the entire phone. For example, some businesses would concentrate on developing the radio circuitry, and others would design the user interface, and some might concentrate on the physical design. The government would look over all of their prototypes and select some for production.

For another example, consider integrated circuits. In the world today, IBM, Intel, and other companies are gigantic, and they are involved with the research of circuits, the design of circuits, the manufacturing of circuits, and the sales and distribution of circuits. When the government controls the economy, all of these different functions would be separated. The engineers who design circuits would only do the design. They would not worry about manufacturing. The scientists who do research would be independent, also.

The teams that design the manufacturing plants for integrated circuits would be independent from the teams that design the circuits. Those teams would design fabricating plants in the same manner as I described for the development of software for CNC controllers. Specifically, the government would give the teams a certain amount of time to develop a fabricating facility, and at the end of the competition, the government would put all of their designs in the public domain, let them look at them, and then let them take the best ideas from everybody to create the final fabricating plant. This system would allow us to produce the best possible fabricating plants rather than what we have in the world today, which is a variety of different manufacturing plants.

As long as a team of engineers was contributing something to the final design, they would be able to continue designing fabricating plants. The teams that consistently failed to produce something of value would be told to find another project, or another job if they are truly incompetent as engineers.

The same process would work for the engineers who design the integrated circuits. For example, the engineers who design microprocessors for laptop computers would do the development according to a certain cycle, such as every four years. At the end of that four-year cycle, they would submit their designs to the government, and the government would put all of their designs into the public domain. Each team would be able to see what the others have done. They would then combine the best features to create the final microprocessor. If one group had developed a better math coprocessor, and another had developed a better memory controller, and another had developed a better logic unit, they would be able to take the best features from the other teams and put them into one final design. The engineers would then start on their next four-year cycle to develop an even better microprocessor. As long as the engineers were contributing something to the final microprocessors, they would be allowed to continue developing them. If they could not contribute, they would be told to try a different project.

It should be noted that it is impractical to expect government officials to make decisions about these technical issues. The only people who could make good decisions on such issues are the people who are involved in the design and development of these items. This system requires that the engineers, scientists, technicians, and other people get involved with society and volunteer to become temporary government officials to make the decisions about products, manufacturing plants, mining operations, farming, and other issues. We need people who will participate in society.

When the government has to manufacture an item, they would try to set up at least two factories to produce the same or similar items. Each factory would be an independent business, and there would be one person in control of each of them. The factory manager would be equivalent to the business owner. However, unlike in a free enterprise business, he would not own any of the items in his factory, or any land, or the building. He would simply supervise the factory. He would not have to make decisions about which product to manufacture, or what quantity to manufacture, or how to distribute the items. His only concern is manufacturing the items as efficiently as possible, and providing an appropriate environment for his employees.

By setting up competition between the factories, the government can pass judgment on which of them is doing the worst job, and that person can be replaced so that somebody else gets the opportunity. However, it is important to note that the factory managers would not be judged solely on their production of products. Rather, they would be judged according to their overall effect on society. For example, if the employees in one factory were frequently quitting, the government would investigate and try to figure out if it is because the manager had created an unpleasant working environment. If so, that manager would be replaced, even if he was producing products efficiently.

In a free enterprise system, all that matters is profit, but when the government is in control, we can take into account the effect a factory has on the environment, the employees, and the neighbors. For example, if a factory is producing excessive amounts of pollutants, the manager could be replaced even if he is doing an efficient job of producing products.

All factories need raw materials, and in a free enterprise system, if a factory is having trouble with one of their suppliers, they have a lot of options available to them, such as producing their own materials, looking for another supplier, or redesigning the product to use some other material. When the government is in control of the economy, if a factory manager is having trouble with his raw materials, he has to complain to the government. The government will then investigate to see if his supplier is incompetent.

This government wants every business to operate efficiently, and therefore, if a business is having a problem with another business, they should notify the government so that the problem can be investigated and solved. We should not hide from or ignore troublesome people. This requires that everybody stop promoting the attitude that complaining about somebody is being a "tattletale" or a "snitch". We have to think of ourselves as team members. When one of the gears in a transmission is not functioning correctly, we need to investigate and fix the problem. We should not be intimidated by a broken gear who whines that we are a tattletale. We should tell him that it is his own fault that he is a broken gear, and that he has no right to ruin the transmission.

In this system, the manager of a factory does not have to deal with the designers of products, the distributors of the product, or any executives or stockholders. The manager of a factory is his own boss, but he doesn't have to make decisions about what to produce, or the quantities, or how they will be distributed. The government officials handle all of those decisions and are responsible for bad decisions about products, quantities, and distribution.

All of the managers who produce something, regardless of whether they are producing wheat on a farm, chickens at a ranch, or bicycles at a factory, would simply operate their particular farm or factory to produce whatever the government told them to produce, and in the quantities requested. They would not have to be concerned about what happens to their products.

Each factory manager would be responsible for hiring and firing employees, and providing them with a job environment that they are happy with. As with businesses today, this can result in different working environments at different businesses. The government will not tell the managers of a business how to run their business. Instead, the government officials would occasionally compare the businesses together to determine which of them is doing the worst at producing products or maintaining a pleasant work environment, and those managers would be replaced so that other people have a chance to try a management position.

When a business needs employees, they would contact the government employment office to let them know about their available jobs. A city would have only one government employment agency, although it might have more than one office within the city. Everybody who needed a job would be in contact with that one agency, but they would not necessarily contact the agency in person. Some people would do everything through a computer. They would access the database of jobs, and that would show them which ones are available at that moment, and which will soon become available.

The government officials would not hire people for any of the businesses. They would merely maintain the database of jobs. Their role would be similar to that of the counselors of a high school, or the employment agencies of a free enterprise system. They would be primarily useful for the younger people who need help in figuring out which jobs to apply for; whether they should get training before they apply for a job; and whether they are even capable of doing a job that they are interested in.

The older people would be likely to ignore the government employment agency. They would use their computer to directly access the database of jobs, and they would select the jobs that they are interested in.

Regardless of whether a person needed assistance from the government officials, the end result would be the same. Specifically, a message would be sent to each business that the person was applying to, and that message would have the person's entry in the database. The businesses would click that link and have access to all of the person's previous job history, medical information, school records, and whatever else was in the database. If the job was not critical, the business might hire the person immediately, in which case the person would get a message to come by and start working. If the job was more critical, the business might send the person a message to come by for an interview.

When somebody is fired, the government agency would be notified of the available job and that the person was fired. If the person didn't start applying for jobs immediately, the government agency would contact him and help him find a job. If a person had trouble finding a job, the government agency would have the authority to force him to do something while he looks for a more appropriate job. There is always work to do in a city, and so the unemployed people would be put to work while they are looking for a job.


Farming and ranching

The concepts that I just described for industries would apply to farms and ranches. From the point of view of the government, a farm is just a factory that produces edible products. The people who supervise and work on the farms would be in the same situation as the people who work in industries. Specifically, they would produce whatever food items that the government told them to produce. They would not have to worry about finances, land, which items to produce, or the quantities to produce.

If a person wanted to supervise a farm or ranch, he would apply for the job just as if he was applying for a management position at a factory. The farm supervisors would be responsible for operating their farm efficiently and dealing with their employees, but they would not have to be concerned about purchasing or renting land, distributing their products, or even figuring out what type of farming equipment they need.

The farms and ranches would be designed by other people, just as the manager of a factory is not responsible for designing his factory. You can think of a farmer in this system as being like an airline pilot. A pilot flies the plane, but he does not build or maintain the plane, and he is not responsible for figuring out the airline routes. Likewise, the farmer in this system is simply supervising a farm. He does not have to create the farm, distribute his products, select any equipment, or be responsible for bad weather.

Government officials would make decisions on how much of each food item to produce, and how to distribute the items. The farmers would not be responsible for droughts, insects, hurricanes, or tornadoes. If a tornado destroyed some greenhouses, the farmers simply work with the government officials to clean up and fix the problem. The farmers don't suffer from natural disasters in this system, as they do in a free enterprise system.

In a free enterprise system, a farmer who produces wheat may have many months in the winter with nothing to do, and so some of them will produce pigs or chickens. With this system, the farmers are just government employees, so they can do any job they please when they are not needed for their primary farming job. They could either do a different type of farming job, or they might do something completely different, such as welding, teaching, fishing, or working at a factory.

In a free enterprise system, it is difficult for farmers to find a business that would hire them for part-time and temporary jobs. Furthermore, even if the farmers could find such jobs, transportation is so difficult and time-consuming that they would not want to travel back and forth between their farm and the job. However, in the type of city I suggest, it would be practical for farmers to travel to different jobs.

I suggest we design a city that consists of large apartment complexes, and other large buildings, all of which are surrounded with grass, bicycle paths, gardens, and parks. The farms, airports, greenhouses, factories, large recreational centers, large research centers, rocket facilities, and other bulky, noisy, or unpleasant businesses would be outside the city.

Many artists prefer elevated trains, but inside the city I would want an underground train system to connect all of the buildings together, and there would be high-speed trains that radiate outward from the city to the farms, airport, factories, and recreational areas. The train system would be designed before we designed the city. This would allow us to design the city's interior train system according to the land, canals, and earthquake faults, and it would allow us to design the high-speed trains that travel outside of the city to easily cruise at 200 km/hour or faster.

High-speed trains would rapidly shuttle people between the large apartment complexes and the businesses outside of the city. On weekends, the trains could take people to the large recreational areas.
After the train system was designed, we would put apartment complexes, office buildings, farms, and factories at locations that provide us with easy access to the trains. For example, we would put a train terminal in the basement of each apartment complex so that everybody is within an elevator ride of a train terminal.

In addition to having a terminal to the city's interior trains, the apartment complexes along the edge of the city would have terminals to the high-speed trains, and so those apartments would be especially attractive to the people who worked outside the city. If a person who works outside the city moves to the apartment complex that has the terminal to the particular high-speed train that he needs to get to work, then he would have direct access to that high-speed train without switching from one train to another, and at the same time, he would have a terminal to the city's interior train system.

If we also design the city so that all of the apartments are designed for the same class of people, as opposed to designing some units for wealthy people and some for poor people, then it would be very easy for people to freely move around, and many people are likely to move to whichever apartment complex has the train terminal that they need to get to their particular job. This will reduce the time that we waste on transportation. This will also reduce our energy consumption, and the wear on the train system.

By having everybody live inside the city, when a person is not needed on the outside, such as a farmer who is waiting for his crops to grow, then he can either remain in the city and do some work in the city, or he can take a high-speed train to a factory or a research lab that could use his assistance.


Developing products for farmers

In a free enterprise system, private businesses provide farmers with seeds, greenhouses, irrigation equipment, new varieties of chickens, and improved versions of tractors. Each farmer has to analyze the different products and make decisions about which ones to purchase.

In this system, all of the items that farmers need would be considered as just more types of manufactured products, even if those items are alive, such as ladybugs. Therefore, the concepts that I mentioned earlier about battery terminals and cell phones applies to farming supplies. Specifically, anybody would be able to make a proposal to develop a new variety of chicken; to improve some aspect of a wheat harvesting machine; or to do research on whether hydroponic farming would be practical for carrots. People could make proposals even if they had no idea of how to accomplish what they were asking for. The government would analyze the proposals, and those that they considered to have potential would be authorized. I'll give an example of how this would work.

As I mentioned near the beginning of this file, the teenagers would be taken away from their parents and assigned a lot of different jobs, including at the farms. Since the teenagers would have to do the unskilled labor, some of them would have to help with pulling weeds at farms and in the gardens of the city. After many hours of this physically demanding task, one of the boys might wish that robots were advanced enough to do this chore. He might realize that the robots are not yet capable of distinguishing between weeds and plants, and that the robots cannot yet figure out where the base of a weed is, so he creates a proposal to develop a robotic arm that will destroy a plant after he identifies the base of it. As he walks down a row of carrots, strawberries, or other crop, he identifies the base of a weed with either a laser, a camera, or some type of probe. The robotic arm travels behind him and destroys each weed at the location he specifies.

In his proposal, he would point out that he can identify weeds at a much more rapid pace than he can remove them, and therefore, less human labor is needed at the farms. He would also point out that this technique makes weeding so physically easy that people who have trouble bending over would be able to do this type of weeding. He could also point out in his proposal that once the robotic arm was developed, future improvements in software and cameras will allow the arm to become more automated, eventually getting to the point where the robot is doing the work on its own. His proposal would conclude with the argument that the engineers may as well start the process of developing a robotic arm that is capable of such an operation.

If the government officials considered his proposal to be sensible, and if there was enough engineering talent available, then they would put together some teams to develop such a robotic arm. If any of the teams produced a prototype that showed potential, then the government would put it into production and observe the results. If there were not enough engineers available, then the government might encourage the schools to develop such an arm as an engineering project. Without copyrights or patents, students would be able to take one of the existing robotic arms and modify it for destroying weeds.

Not many teenagers are going to come up with sensible projects, but I wanted to bring this possibility to your attention to point out that this system allows everybody to contribute to new products, new farming techniques, and new research projects. A person in this system is judged by his abilities, not by how much money he has, or whether he has important parents or friends. People in this system are judged by their accomplishments, not by their promises or their associations.

The farmers would operate the farms, but they would not be responsible for the design of the farms, or the equipment they use. The government would have teams of engineers doing research into farming techniques, greenhouses, hydroponics, and other issues. Those teams would be doing the work that is currently being done by such businesses as Caterpillar, John Deere, and Monsanto.

In a free enterprise system, all of the businesses that provide products for farmers have to put them into production, put them on the market, and fight with their competitors to attract the attention of the farmers. In the system I propose, all farming equipment would be developed in the same manner as I described for other products. Specifically, small teams of engineers would produce prototypes of farming equipment, and then the government would analyze the prototypes and select some for production.

The farmers would not make any decisions about tractors, irrigation equipment, or silos. However, the farmers would be encouraged to participate in society by becoming temporary government officials who help decide if a new prototype is better than the existing equipment. If a farmer had experience with wheat harvesting machines, for example, then he should become a temporary government official when the engineers develop prototypes of new wheat harvesting machines. He can then contribute to the decision of which, if any, of those machines are better than what he already has. If a farmer has experience with hydroponics, then he should become a part-time government official to help to make decisions on which, if any, of the new prototypes to put into production.

In the free enterprise system, there is a big financial incentive for companies, such as Monsanto, to develop "Terminator seeds". When the government has control of farms, the biologists are under pressure to produce food with the least amount of labor and resources. Ideally, no farmer would ever need seeds. For example, imagine if farmers could plant some wheat, and then, after they harvest the wheat, new shoots grow up from the roots, just as new grass grows after being mowed. Imagine if tomatoes, strawberries, and other plants lived for decades.

The businesses in a free enterprise system put pressure on farmers to purchase excessive amounts of fertilizers, pesticides, and weed poisons, and the businesses do not care if any of their products are harmful to human health or the environment. When the government is in total control of the economy, the environment, the medical businesses, and everything else, then the biologists are under pressure to not only use the least amount of labor and resources to produce food, but they are also under pressure to produce food in a manner that doesn't interfere with our health.

The government would also have the option of producing food in an unprofitable manner if they felt that the quality was worth the burden. For example, the most economical way of providing cities in cold climates with a year-round supply of certain vegetables is to import the items from other cities, but if a city is a long distance away from the farms, then either the quality of the food suffers because of the transportation, or they have to import a "tougher" variety that doesn't taste as good. Therefore, the government might decide to create some greenhouses so that they can produce their own vegetables. This will make those vegetables more expensive, but the government could justify it on the grounds that it was providing them with better tasting and more visually attractive food.

The concept of a government authorizing unprofitable businesses might seem idiotic, but it is better than letting the free enterprise system make these decisions for us. We are regularly supporting a lot of "unprofitable" businesses. For example, we don't need meat, clothing with colors, or houses with glass windows or furniture. We could live in simple cages like animals, and we could sleep on piles of grass, and we could eat algae.

We currently produce a lot of unnecessary, unprofitable, luxury items, such as furniture, colorful clothing, pets, video games, strip clubs, and gambling casinos. The decision of which of these luxury items to produce, and in which quantity, are currently being made according to the manner in which people spend money. When we take control of our society, we can discuss these issues and make decisions that are much more intelligent. We will have tremendous control over our economy and our future.


Will people be motivated to do anything?

The free enterprise system follows the philosophy that humans are like dogs on a race track, and that the only way we will produce products or develop new technology is if we can get a significant financial reward in return. Therefore, the free enterprise system allows us to copyright and patent our creations, and we can make unlimited amounts of money from them.

There are possibly millions of people in the world today who are struggling to develop new products, new songs, new video games, new artwork, and new inventions that they hope will sell in large quantities and allow them to become wealthy. How many of those people will be interested in creating new products when the government is providing us with our basic necessities, and when nobody is allowed to become wealthy? Will anybody be motivated to do more than the minimum necessary?

The answer to that question is: it depends on the person. Some people are so much like animals that they are not going to do much of anything if we do not offer them a reward, but we are foolish to worry about those people. For example, a wealthy Neanderthal named Thomas Peterffy is spending millions of dollars on television advertisements (as of October 2012) to warn us about "socialism". What is "socialism"? Apparently, Peterffy consider socialism to be a society that does not allow people to become extremely wealthy, or as he described it, a "less stratified society". A few of his remarks:

“If we cannot become billionaires, we will stop working hard, and then you dumb Cro-Magnons will be sorry! You cannot survive without us!”
• "America's wealth comes from the efforts of people striving for success." 

• "When you trash the leaders of businesses, they stop working hard. They go on vacation."

If we create a society in which there is not much of a difference between the wealthiest and the poorest people, Peterffy and all of the other billionaires may have a temper tantrum, and all of them may refuse to work and go on a vacation. Your initial reaction might be to worry that if those supertalented billionaires stop working, all of our industries will fail, our farms will stop functioning, our electric power plants will fail, and we become hungry and homeless.

The billionaires create the impression that the reason they are so wealthy is because they are millions of times more talented than each of us. They have fooled a lot of people into believing that if we give them tax cuts, especially on inheritances, some of their incredible wealth will trickle down to us. They have convinced a lot of people that modern life is possible only because of their amazing talents. However, the people who believe their propaganda are as foolish as the medieval peasants who believed that they needed their Kings and Queens.

As amazing as it may seem, life will continue without a wealthy class. We don't need a peasant class, either. It is entirely possible to create a society in which everybody is expected to contribute something, and in which people are treated in a more equal manner. Reducing the differences between the wealthiest and the poorest people doesn't cause society to collapse. Rather, it simply changes the environment that we live in. When the environment changes for any species of animal or plant, life continues, but different individuals becomes dominant.

If the Navy offered a phenomenal salary to its submarine commanders, such as $1 billion a year, an enormous number of people, possibly even Thomas Peterffy, would want to become a submarine commander. Some people would cheat, blackmail, and murder to become a submarine commander. If the Navy then reduced the salary of the commanders, the number of people applying for the job would decrease, and some of the commanders would whine that if their salary is reduced any further, they will stop working and go on vacation, and then all of us will be sorry. If the Navy found the emotional strength to ignore those whining commanders, and continued to reduce their salary, eventually their salary would be so low that the only people applying for the job would be those who were actually attracted to the job rather than to the money. I think we would discover that the commanders actually become better quality.

Likewise, if a school offered a salary of $1 billion each year to their principal, people from around the world would cheat, lie, and murder to become that principal. However, those people would want the job for the money, not to deal with the school's problems. Financial incentives do not guarantee good leadership.

This concept applies to business executives also. If the business leaders have to live in the same type of home as the factory workers, different people rise to dominance in business. Furthermore, I think it will be a higher quality group of people. When there are no significant rewards for being a leader, the type of people who become leaders will be those who actually want to do the job rather than circus seals who are performing for fish.

There are millions of people in the world today pushing their particular products, songs, or artwork on us, but not because they believe that they have something of value for us. Rather, they are struggling to become wealthy. By changing society so that nobody can become wealthy, the only people who will get involved with producing new products, songs, music, software, and electronic circuits will be the people who actually enjoy doing that type of work. I think this will result in a much nicer society. I think there will be fewer people pushing their idiotic products on us.

If a person in this type of society wants a better home, then, since everybody lives in the same type of apartment, he must find a way to improve the apartments for everybody in the city. He cannot think of just himself. As a result, a better group of people will rise to dominance. Instead of selfish, crude savages who regard us as their servants, we will get leaders who are team members.


How will artists make a living?

In a free enterprise system, a musician who produces a few popular songs can become very wealthy with only a few hours of work. He can then spend the rest of his life taking drugs, having orgies, destroying hotel rooms, and getting drunk.

When musicians are not allowed to copyright or sell their songs, they have no financial reason to create songs. A musician's only reward for creating a popular song is watching other people enjoy it. Therefore, when we remove the financial benefits to making music or songs, the only people who are likely to create songs are people who are truly interested in creating songs that we appreciate.

However, just because a person is interested in creating songs doesn't mean then he will be allowed to do so on a full-time basis. The artists will be in the same situation as scientists and computer programmers. They will have to justify their existence; they will have to earn the job category of "artist". If a person wants to be supported by society as an artist, then he has to regularly produce something that we consider worth the burden of supporting him.

When the government is in control of the economy, we will be able to decide if an artist is so talented that he deserves to do his artwork on a full-time basis, or if he should have a part-time job doing something useful and do his artwork only on a part-time basis, or if he is so mediocre that he is only allowed to do his artwork during his leisure time.

Everybody in this society has to earn the position they want. In order for a person to work as a scuba diver, welder, scientist, chef, or engineer, he has to repeatedly show evidence that he can contribute something of value to society in that position. Likewise, if a person wants to be a musician, singer, sculptor, magician, comedian, actor, or other type of artist, then he has to show that he can do something as an artist that justifies providing him with food, housing, electricity, and other items. Otherwise, he has to do his art as a hobby, or with a social club.

As with all of the other decisions that the government officials have to make, they would not be able to make decisions about artists in secrecy. Every government official would have to post their decisions on the Internet. This would allow us to see who each government official was authorizing as an artist, and what their reasoning was, and who each of them was rejecting as an artist. As long as there are some people in society watching what the government officials are doing, this is not going to cause any problems. Businesses are regularly making decisions about artwork right now. They make decisions about the artwork inside their building, and they also make decisions about whether there will be any type of landscaping around their building, and if so, what type of landscaping.

If Mozart and Michelangelo were alive today, we could say they have the talent to be artists, but how many of the people who refer to themselves as "artists" are producing something that you considered to be worth the burden of supporting them? I think that most artists should do their artwork for a hobby, or with a social club, rather than expect to make a living from it.

Furthermore, I think a lot of artists would prefer to be part-time artists. For example, how many people would want to play music or sing on a full-time basis? I don't even think it is physically possible to do such an activity on a full-time basis. I think the people who sing and play music should do so on a part-time basis, such as providing entertainment during an evening or on a weekend. Since that would be a part-time job, they would do something else part-time to justify their existence, such as having a part-time job in schools, restaurants, gardening, farming, social activities, recreational centers, or, as in the case of Tom Scholz, who founded the music band Boston, mechanical engineering.

In this type of society, the artists will live among the ordinary people in ordinary homes. None of them will be wealthy or pampered "celebrities". The concept of a "celebrity" will not even exist. Everybody will be "people". Furthermore, with the government in control of the media, none of the news reporters or photographers will be allowed to chase after any of the artists. The government will not produce gossip magazines, for example.

It might seem ridiculous to allow government officials to pass judgment on who qualifies as an artist, but people are already making decisions like this in businesses. Many businesses need one or more artists, and that requires the business executives to pass judgment over who qualifies as an artist, and they also have to decide whether they want the person working full-time as an artist, or only part-time. The executives also have to pass judgment on whether their artwork is of any value, or whether they should be fired.


Men must stop having "intellectual beauty contests"

Since I am proposing a government that encourages us to get involved with society by making proposals for new products, social activities, educational materials, and everything else, we have the potential problem of people complaining that the government is ignoring their brilliant proposals and authorizing other people's inferior proposals. This type of society requires that people have a better understanding of their emotions, and that everybody be capable of looking critically at their own opinions and favorably at other people's opinions. It also requires that society have some type of law enforcement agency that has the ability to stand up to people and insist that they shut up. In this section, I will point out that I think men can get a better understanding of themselves by looking at the beauty contests that women enjoy.

As I mentioned in Part 7, the differences between men and women is very subtle. By studying men, we can improve our understanding of women, and vice versa. This time consider that a woman's attitude towards her daughter is similar to a man's attitude towards his opinions. Women are extremely biased in favor of their children, and they push both their sons and their daughters into becoming excellent at something, such as beauty queen, athlete, cheerleader, doctor, musician, or scientist. Women will boast about their children, and they are so biased in favor of their children that they cannot see that most children are "ordinary", and half of them are "below average". Women seem to have an especially strong bias for their daughters.

In prehistoric times, mothers treated their children as slaves; as toys to play with; as dildos to titillate themselves with. However, in prehistoric times this behavior made sense because as the women tried to satisfy their cravings and titillate themselves, they inadvertently pushed their children into truly valuable activities. For example, when they pushed their daughters into looking pretty, they were teaching them grooming, manners, how to make and maintain clothing, and how to clean themselves with primitive technology. When they pushed their daughters into going out into the public to show off their beauty, they were exposing their daughters to the available men. When they pushed their sons into becoming the best at hunting or toolmaking, they were encouraging their sons to learn vital skills. When they praised their children incessantly and told them how wonderful the future would be, they helped their children maintain a good attitude in what was actually a very dangerous environment.

By following their emotions like a stupid animal, the women were inadvertently preparing their children for life. However, during the past few thousand years, the situation has changed dramatically. A woman today has to use her intellect to ensure that she is pushing her children into learning something useful. If a woman doesn't think very well, or doesn't like to think, she may push her children into training for a worthless activity, such as a beauty contest, or she may push her children into becoming Hollywood celebrities, thereby exposing them to pedophiles and drug users.

It makes sense for parents today to push their children into learning how to speak, read and write, do arithmetic, clean their room, ride a bicycle, get dressed by themselves, and participate in household chores, but it makes no sense to push a child into training to become a beauty pageant queen. Some children enjoy the beauty pageants, such as Honey Boo Boo, but even the children who enjoy it are being pushed more than they want to be pushed. Some of them, such as Brooke Breedwell, are pushed to such an extent that they resent their parents.

In prehistoric times, it made sense for the girls to look pretty and then display themselves in public, but in this modern world, many women are getting carried away with expensive and worthless beauty pageants. Young girls gain nothing from becoming a beauty pageant winner, so there is no sense in pushing them into practicing for such an activity. A beauty pageant should be casual fun for young girls, similar to the way they enjoy dressing in their mother's clothing. Adults should not take control and manipulate a child's playtime activities simply to titillate themselves. The children do not gain anything from such manipulation; the parents do not gain; and society does not gain.

In a free enterprise system, businesses can make a lot of profit by offering beauty pageants and training classes for beauty pageants. There are also a lot of businesses that offer training courses for children to become athletes, musicians, actors, and cheerleaders. When we take control of our culture, we can make intelligent decisions on which type of training programs to provide children; how many children we want to train for different activities; and how extreme and intense the training courses will be. How many children do we want training to throw a javelin? How intensive should those training courses be? Should they be 60 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, from the time the children are four years old?

We can easily justify training programs that teach children to become mechanics, machinists, engineers, and scientists, but we don't need a lot of young children going to intensive courses to play rugby or practice the Rubik's cube.

Today both mothers and fathers have to control their emotions and analyze their children seriously to help them determine their abilities and desires. They should not treat their child as a piece of clay to mold as they please, or as a slave. Parents should be like guidance counselors who help their children figure out what they are good at, what they enjoy, and what their limitations are. They should encourage their children to try a lot of activities and experience the world.

Understanding women can help us to understand men. An intellectual creation is to a man what a daughter is to a woman. Men proudly boast about their ideas the way women proudly boast about their daughters. Women are so biased in favor of their children that they consider their children to be exceptional, even when other people consider their children to be obviously retarded. Men are so biased in favor of their opinions that they consider their opinions to be brilliant even when other people consider them to be obviously flawed. Women are extremely protective of their children, and men are extremely protective of their ideas. It is difficult for a woman to look critically at her children or see the good aspects of other people's children, and it is difficult for men to look critically at their own ideas or see the good aspects of other people's ideas.

What is the difference between women participating in thousands of beauty contests, and men participating in thousands of award ceremonies for science, architecture, engineering, and other intellectual activities? What is the difference between women proudly displaying dozens of beauty pageant trophies and men proudly displaying trophies and award certificates? In case you are not aware of how many awards men give one another, here are just five for the chemists: 1) the Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry from the American Chemical Society. 2) the Centenary prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry. 3) the Arthur C. Cope Scholar from the American Chemical Society. 4) the DSM Performance Materials Award from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. 5) the Inter-American Photochemical Society Award in Photochemistry.

Some people justify the intellectual awards on the grounds that they encourage intellectual achievements, but where is the evidence that the awards are any more beneficial than beauty contests? I think we merely "like" the beauty pageants and award ceremonies. I think we are designing activities to titillate our emotions rather than thinking about what would be most useful for us. If we were to put some effort into controlling our emotions and discuss what is best for us, I am sure that we can develop more useful methods of inspiring one another. For example, as I described in a previous file, a beauty contest would be more useful if we modify it to be a courtship affair in which single men and women can meet and get to know one another.

I think that the award ceremonies that scientists, engineers, mechanics, scuba divers, teachers, gardeners, chefs, and other men give one another, can be modified into more beneficial social affairs. Exactly what the affair is would depend upon the achievement that we are honoring. For example, if a gardener was being honored for his achievements in maintaining some aspect of the city park, then the affair could be held at the park that he was working at. The gardener would not receive a trophy or other prize. Instead, his only reward would be some momentary attention and the opportunity to meet people who appreciate his work. It would be a social affair designed to educate people about the job he does, and what he accomplished. Everybody who attended the affair would have a chance to learn about and see his work, meet him, and meet whoever else attended the affair.

To honor a scientist, engineer, farmer, scuba diver, or mechanic, we could have the affair in a factory, farm, museum, or laboratory so that we can see what they accomplished, or, if there is nothing to see because their work is intangible, the affair could be some type of lecture or slideshow so that we can learn about what they did. The affairs may also include dinner or other activities.

These type of award ceremonies would be useful social affairs for a variety of reasons. One is that they would also give us a better understanding of the work that other people are doing, which in turn can help us develop a better understanding of the type and amount of work that is necessary to support a modern society. This awareness of jobs would be especially useful for people in leadership positions, teaching, and employment offices. Teenagers might enjoy these type of affairs to get a better idea of the type of jobs available to them. I also think that these type of award ceremonies would be psychologically beneficial to everybody by reminding all of us that everybody's contribution to society is both useful and appreciated rather than ignored or looked down upon. The affairs would also give us a chance to meet some of the people we live with.

Since these type of award ceremonies would not have any prizes, they would not require any resources, thereby making it very easy for a society to support them on a regular basis. They would be simple social affairs; similar to the "field trips" that teachers arrange for students to see a factory or farm. We could have award ceremonies for virtually every type of job category, including factory workers, janitors, plumbers, farmers, and fishermen. These type of ceremonies would be primarily educational rather than like the award ceremonies of today in which a person is treated like a King and given absurd amounts of praise or prizes. These type of award ceremonies would help us learn how factory workers make bicycles, how people make colored glass windows, and how refrigerators are recycled. These type of affairs might seem boring, but until we experiment with it, how will we know? All of us might enjoy going to some of the ceremonies once in a while.

I think women would be especially useful in arranging these type of social affairs. All throughout history women have been arranging activities for both their children and the adults, and I think women should get more involved with society by arranging activities for both children and adults. I think women should spend less time with their dogs, hair, jewelry, and television and more time contributing something of value to our lives.

The reason I wanted to point out how worthless beauty pageants are, and how women have incredible bias for their children, is to point out that men are behaving the same way, except that men do it with their intellectual ideas instead of their daughters. When men get together for a discussion, their behavior is similar to a group of women who are displaying their daughters in a beauty pageant. The men are excessively proud of their opinions, unable to look critically at their opinions, and unable to look favorably at other people's opinions. The men are not seriously discussing their opinions. Rather, they are essentially proudly parading their stupid opinions in front of an audience, just like women do with their daughters.

Men treat their opinions with the same extreme bias and pride that women treat their daughters.

Both men and women routinely need a slap in the face.

It is important for men to control their craving to be the know-it-all, super-genius because when the government has complete control of society, we are encouraged to get involved in proposing new engineering projects, social activities, software, sports, holidays, and scientific projects. It will be unpleasant and unproductive if all of the men are proudly pushing their opinions with the same bias that women are pushing their daughters in a beauty pageant.

Men have to learn to understand and control their emotions. If men were to set up a discussion according to what our emotions want, then it would be more useless than a beauty pageant because men have a much greater desire to feel important, and we are much more sensitive to criticism and failure than women. We do not want discussions to be critical analyses of our opinions. Instead, we want to feel important and be given praise. For example, we thank one another with such idiotic remarks as, "I may not agree with everything you say, but I appreciate your efforts! Thank you very much for presenting your opinions to us!" Our discussions are essentially an "emotional circle jerk".

The story of King Arthur and the Knights who sat at a circular table is a good example of how men's emotions interfere with discussions. Have women ever argued over the shape of a table? Men are so concerned about their status that they will also argue over their location at the table and where the doors are in the room. Our current philosophy is to appease these type of men, but we should regard them as apes who are unsuited to this modern world. We should demand that people in leadership positions behave better than this, and we should demand that they have productive discussions.

The debates that American political candidates go through are worthless because of our extreme concern about our status. The candidates do not actually discuss or analyze one another's opinions. Each candidate simply promotes his opinions. They are free to make insulting remarks and jokes about one another, and they are under no obligation to provide serious analyses of one another, and nobody is in the role of a judge or jury to verify anything they say or pass judgment on which of them is making the most sense.

Political candidates regularly state "facts" during the debates, and their opponents regularly claim the facts are inaccurate, but nobody bothers to settle these disputes. They regularly make vague remarks without anybody demanding an explanation. They also regularly make promises to reduce crime, create jobs, lower taxes, improve the schools, and cure baldness, but nobody demands that they explain how they will achieve such goals.

For example, in the debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan in October 2012, Paul Ryan was asked to explain his proposal for a 20% tax cut, and I would say that his avoidance of the question was one of the most blatant that I have ever seen, but do any of the voters care? The people in the media seem more interested in complaining that Joe Biden was frequently smiling and giggling. I  smiled a lot during that debate, also, but not because I thought Paul Ryan was funny. Rather, I was shocked and embarrassed that a grown man who wanted to be a leader of America would make such remarks in front of the world. How can the Republicans be proud of their candidates? (Incidentally, understanding why we laugh would be quite useful. I will discuss the issue of humor later in this file.)

After a debate is over, somebody might research one of the facts and discover that it is inaccurate, but candidates do not seem to suffer by making inaccurate statements, or by making promises that they have no idea how to fulfill. Most of the voters are so incapable of thinking intelligently that the candidates risk nothing by lying, exaggerating, and deceiving. Most of the voters seem to vote according to their political party, regardless of how idiotic and dishonest their candidate is.

I think that the girls in a beauty pageant are given a more thorough analysis than the political candidates. Our political debates are equivalent to a beauty pageant in which there are no judges, and the girls merely display themselves, boast about themselves, are given praise, make inaccurate statements, and make sarcastic remarks about one another.

Scientists have discovered through centuries of trial and error that praise and insults are worthless in regards to scientific research. They discovered that every opinion has to be essentially put on a laboratory table and dissected. We should look for flaws in a person's opinion, and the people who show signs of faulty thinking should not be praised or thanked; rather, their flaws should be exposed. If a person repeatedly shows signs of faulty thinking, then he should be prohibited from participating in the discussions. We should stop promoting the attitude that everybody is a super-genius.

During the 1500s, the Catholic Church started having a "Devil's Advocate" for certain types of debates. This technique helped the church officials, who are not very good at thinking, to do a somewhat better job of analyzing an issue. A devil's advocate can help a person analyze an issue from a perspective that they would not normally see. In order to develop intelligent opinions, we must be capable of routinely analyzing our opinions in a serious manner. Giving an opinion a critical analysis is like putting rocks into an acid bath. A person who truly has something intelligent to say will welcome an analysis. The people who are afraid of analyses are those who don't have much confidence in their opinions.

The point of this section is that our debates are useless struggles for status and dominance, and as we more thoroughly understand our emotions, we will understand why we do what we do, and we will become better at designing a society that provides us with a more enjoyable life. With a greater understanding of ourselves, we will design better debates, more useful educational materials, more enjoyable social activities, and more pleasant job environments.

Understanding our emotions can also help us avoid being manipulated by other people. For example, after the first presidential debate in October 2012, a lot of people in the media and on the Internet immediately began insisting that Romney "won" the debate. My reaction was that it was a typical political debate in which both candidates made vague and confusing remarks. If I had to say one of them looked better, I would say Obama looked slightly better because Romney seemed to make the most vague remarks.

“Hey, everybody, Romney won the debate! Follow me to the Romney supporters!”
Most of the people in the media were reporting that Romney won the debate, but I don't think they did a poll of people's opinions and discovered that this is what the majority of people think. Hopefully you are in the habit of wondering why the media chooses to promote certain people and opinions. I think that the Jews in the media are trying to manipulate us by taking advantage of our tendency to follow the crowd. It is very important to understand this behavioral characteristic so that you don't become one of the suckers who mindlessly follows a Pied Piper. Don't be so arrogant as to believe that you don't have a desire to follow other people. Each of us has it, so each of us has to watch out for people who try to exploit it.

Incidentally, once you become aware of this characteristic and actively watch for people who are trying to take the role of a Pied Piper, instead of being fooled by them, you might find that some of their attempts to manipulate us are so bizarre that they are amusing. For example, Ann Barnhart claims that she did not watch the presidential debate, but that she analyzed the remarks of people who did watch the debate, and her conclusion is that if Barack Obama gets reelected, his masters will set him up for assassination, and that they use the event to take control of the world. She suggests that we arrest him rather than elect him, thereby saving his life and sparing the world from tyranny. Her article should be saved for the future generations as one of the more bizarre attempts to manipulate us. (Look for Truly Scary, posted 3 October 2012 or click here for my copy of her brief article.)

Ann Barnhart is another example of what I wrote about in the previous article of this series; namely, that we need to analyze people's documents and pass judgment on whether they are showing signs of intelligence. I would say that her document is an attempt to deceive us. She should be classified as a criminal. Furthermore, her crime is worse than that of a shoplifter because she is trying to manipulate millions of people. She is committing a crime against all of us.

The second presidential debate on 16 October 2012 seemed as vague and meaningless as the first debate, but fewer people insisted that Romney won that debate. However, a poll taken the next day claimed that Romney's support has gone up by 6%.

It is important to note that one reason all political debates are vague and confusing is because all candidates seem to be involved with illegal, selfish, and/or immoral activities. For example, Romney promised that the wealthiest 5% of the population will continue to pay 60% of the federal income taxes. What exactly does that mean? My interpretation is that he is saying that he is going to keep the tax rates for the wealthy people as they are as of today. By comparison, Obama claims to want the Bush tax cuts to expire so that the wealthy people have to return to their previous, higher tax rate.

Neither candidate will be serious or descriptive about taxes because they don't want the voters to realize that both of them are very wealthy, and both of them are taking advantage of tax policies that help the wealthy people. They also want to ignore the fact that many wealthy people are cheating by putting money in Switzerland, Barbados, and other nations. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of government officials are cheating on their taxes and expense accounts.

Incidentally, it should be noted that the nations of the world do not have to be afraid of the banks of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Barbados, or other nations. Those nations believe that they have the right to help criminals around the world to hide their money, but they have no right to protect any criminal. Imagine a more extreme example. Imagine if Swiss banks were providing secrecy and protection to the crime networks that kidnap children and sell them as sex slaves. Imagine if the Swiss banks provided special cages to hold the children.

Imagine if your child was kidnapped, put into a Swiss bank cage, and was up for sale. Imagine traveling to Switzerland to get your child back, but when you ask the bank for the name of the person who has your child, the bank officials tell you that their duty is to protect the secrecy of their customers. When you complain to the Swiss police, they tell you to shut up, and when you complain to the American government, you are told that the Americans cannot do anything because Switzerland is an independent nation.

The world does not have to tolerate any type of abuse. We should follow the philosophy that no nation, government, business, or other organization has the right to exist or the right to do as they please. We should instead insist that everybody and every organization has a responsibility to behave in a respectable manner. Unfortunately, standing up to abuse requires people who are better than animals. An animal reacts to abuse by running away and hiding in the bushes. We need to find people who have the emotional strength to remove criminals.

What type of social environment is best for us?
 
How would you design a zoo exhibit of humans?
Another technique to help you understand your incredible options for your future, and to help you realize that we must design society according to what is best for us rather than what we want, is to imagine if a giant asteroid is on a collision course with the earth, and it's going to cause the extinction of everything except some bacteria. Imagine that some aliens from another planet decide to take several thousand humans to their planet, and that you are one of those people.

However, they regard us as monkeys, so they are not interested in living with us. Instead, they want to put us into a zoo exhibit. They realize that because we are more intelligent than the ordinary monkeys, they need to provide us with a much nicer environment than a metal cage, so imagine that they ask you to design your exhibit. They have much more technology than we do, so they can easily create virtually any type of exhibit you ask for.

Would you ask for the equivalent of a "wild game preserve"; specifically, a large amount of land that is full of animals, plants, rivers, and lakes? Would you ask to live on that land in a very simple manner, just like our prehistoric ancestors? Or would you ask them to build a city that resembles those in Europe during the Middle Ages so that you can live like our medieval ancestors? Or would you ask them to build you a city that has some of their technology, such as their magnetic trains, robots, and moving walkways that can turn corners? Would you ask them for any sports equipment, video cameras, swimming pools, or bicycles? Imagine that they will give you anything you please. What would you ask for?

The reason that scenario might be helpful to you is because our cities are essentially zoo exhibits. We do not live in our "natural" condition. When we create cities, we mark the boundary for our city; kill the animals and plants that we don't want living with us; create some buildings, roads, swimming pools, and parks; and bring in whichever animals and plants that we want to live with. We are doing for ourselves exactly what we do for the polar bears, monkeys, and alligators in a zoo. We are essentially creating a cage for ourselves to live in. However, unlike the animals, we are allowed to go beyond the boundaries of our cage and enter the "natural world", although most people enjoy their cage so much that they visit the natural world only briefly and occasionally.

The people who design zoo exhibits try to understand the mental and physical qualities of the animals so that they can create an environment that keeps the animals happy and healthy. Our zoos are successful with certain animals, but there are some animals that we still do not understand well enough. We can deduce that something is wrong with their exhibits because those particular animals either do not reproduce, or they behave in noticeably different manners compared to their relatives who are living in the wild. We are not providing them with the proper environment, and the result is that their behavior is abnormal.

What about the cages that we have designed for ourselves? Have we designed our cities in a manner that keeps us in our optimal mental and physical health? I doubt it because our cities today have not been designed. Rather, our cities developed inadvertently and haphazardly. We are not following any plan, and there is no coordination.

If we create some new cities, we should not design these cities according to what we "like". Instead, we should consider ourselves as creating a zoo exhibit of humans, and our goal should be to design a city that will keep us in the best emotional and physical health. We should try to understand what would be best for the humans in regards to homes, transportation systems, schools, working conditions, social affairs, holidays, sports, and parks. We have to do what is best for us, and that is not necessarily what we want to do.

For example, all of us, especially men, are very concerned about our status, and so our natural tendency is to promote ourselves rather than be honest about ourselves. We are afraid to do something that we might fail at or be mediocre at because we want to create the impression that we are better than we really are. We behave like this because we are animals who are competing for mates, but in this modern world, we need to control our craving to promote ourselves so that we can be relaxed around other people and participate in activities.

Businesses take advantage of our inhibitions by encouraging us to become passive consumers of their particular entertainment products rather than active participants in our own entertainment. They encourage us to purchase tickets to Lady Gaga concerts, watch their television shows, and purchase the songs that they produce for us. There is nothing wrong with being entertained by other people, but I think we would enjoy life a bit more if the city provided activities that encouraged us to occasionally get involved with our own entertainment.

The business that produce entertainment create the impression that only Lady Gaga, Barbra Streisand, and a few other people are talented enough to entertain us, but every city has lots of people with talent. Not everybody has the talent or desire to sing or play music, but everybody can participate in other types of entertainment, especially game shows, as I will mention further down in this document. Some people can play music, and lots of people can give interesting lectures or entertaining slideshows of their work or their travels. Some people can entertain us with cooking, and some can entertain us with snorkeling tours in a lake. No matter who you are, there is something you can participate in. Some people can do gymnastics, and some can put on entertaining skits, and some can provide hikes through a forest. You have no excuse to spend your life in front of a television, avoiding participation in social and recreational activities.

When most people fantasize about providing themselves with entertainment, they fantasize about a big television with an expensive audio amplifier and giant speakers. Some people also fantasize about purchasing tickets to entertainment shows. We are so concerned about our status that we want to be a voyeur of entertainment, not a participant, but I think we would create a more pleasant social environment if we would help one another control their emotions and occasionally participate in activities. I also think we would enjoy the entertainment more when we personally know some of the people involved in it.

We should help one another to relax and participate in activities.
Many parents have noticed that they have to push their children into meeting people and trying new activities because children are naturally shy and submissive, but nobody pushes the adults into doing anything. Is this really the best policy for us? I don't think so. In this modern world, I think the adults should encourage one another to control their cravings for status so that they can meet new people, experience new activities, and discover what life has to offer.

Adults, especially men, need to be reminded that we have an animal-like craving to impress and compete with one another. We need to distinguish between working and socializing. Competition is valuable and necessary when we are working, but during social activities, we need to relax so that we can enjoy life and other people.

I think that women used to provide what we could describe as the "social glue" to help adults and children get together, but in this modern world the women are spending too much of their time with dogs, watching television, shopping, and other useless activities. I think women should get more involved with organizing social and recreational affairs for both adults and children.

Two more examples of how we should ignore what we want and do what is best for us are that men are attracted to sexual images, and women enjoy looking pretty. Businesses exploit these characteristics by providing sexual titillation every day to both young boys and adult men, and the women are spending an enormous amount of time and money on makeup, jewelry, hair colorings, and cosmetic surgery. Men and women are doing what they like to do, but is this really providing us with the most pleasant life? I don't think so. I think our lives will be nicer overall if we control our emotions, eliminate the sexual titillation, and tell the women to look pretty only for the social affairs.

We design zoos according to what we assume is best for the animal, not what the animal wants. For example, we assume that alligators need pools of water, and that monkeys need items to climb on. We also provide the animals with what we assume is their proper diet. Some animals might prefer to eat some of our modern, artificially flavored foods, such as potato chips, bubblegum, or candy bars, but we don't give the animals what they want. We give the animals what we assume is best for them.

Unfortunately, we are not designing our societies according to what we think is best for humans. Our societies are developing inadvertently as each of us pushes for whatever it is we want life to be. Each of us is essentially turning off our intellect and trying to satisfy our emotional cravings.

For example, the reason every society, even communist nations, have wide differences in income is because each of us is trying to satisfy our emotions rather than thinking about what is best for us. Men want to be dominant, and women want to be the center of attention. Our emotions are not attracted to the concept of "equality". Each of us wants to be special, and our natural tendency is to regard other people as inferior to us. As a result, we push for society to give us more money that other people, and special pampering. We also want special treatment for our children, so we push for inheritances, monarchies, and nepotism. We also push for social affairs that provide us with awards or praise.

For another example, consider the issue of exercise. When we create a zoo exhibit of rats, and if the cage is small, the rats enjoy getting exercise on a treadmill. At the other extreme, when we create a zoo exhibit of spiders, the spiders do not want any type of exercise equipment. What about humans? When designing a city for humans, should we do anything in particular to provide people with exercise? For example, should we provide people with exercise machines? If so, what type of machines, and where should the machines be located? Will people use the machines if they have to travel a long distance to get to them? Or should they be located within walking distance of their homes? Or do most people need them inside their homes? Or would people be more likely to use the machines if we put them near their jobs so that they could use them during lunch or after work? Or would it be better to design a city so that people get exercise from walking, bicycling, rowing, hiking, swimming, and sports? Should we design any social activities to push people into getting exercise? Should schools push children into getting exercise? Or will both adults and children naturally get all of the exercise they need?

In addition to designing a city to deal with our physical needs, we have to design the city to keep ourselves in good mental health. Will we be happy in apartment buildings? Or do we need single-family homes on individual plots of land? If apartments are acceptable, how do we design hallways and front doors so that we enjoy the building? How much space do we need in each apartment? How tall should the ceilings be? What type of landscaping should we have around the buildings? How much of a difference should we have between the homes of the rich and the poor people? Is it best to have wide differences, small differences, or no differences? Would we be happiest with apartment buildings that are rectangular blocks, or should we make much larger structures that enclose large courtyards?

The buildings in the image below, for example, are just towers, but by making those buildings much larger, like medieval castles, they could enclose large courtyards, and it would be easy to cover the courtyards to provide year-round protection from weather and insects.

We also need to provide social activities for humans. Should we have city festivals, and if so, what should the people do at these festivals? Should we celebrate New Year's, and if so, what would be the most appropriate activities? What type of recreational events should we provide? How should we design weddings, birthday parties, and holiday celebrations?

How should we feed the humans in a zoo? Do we provide them with unlimited amounts of potato chips, candy bars, and donuts? To do a proper job of feeding humans, we need to understand our nutritional needs; how our digestive system works; and the health effects of cooking, preservatives, pesticides, and processing.

The greater of an understanding we have about the human mind and body, the better we will do at designing a city that keeps us in optimum mental and physical health. As of today, our cities and social activities are developing haphazardly as a result of every person, business, religion, crime network, and government agency who inadvertently or deliberately tries to manipulate our culture. I think one reason people want to rush home after work is because most of our cities are unpleasant. I think our social environment is miserable, and that is why there are so many lonely people, unpleasant marriages, and people searching for happiness.

I don't think our cities today are providing us with what we need. Our social activities are especially idiotic. For example, consider our city festivals. They are primarily business ventures and tax opportunities. Some businesses and government officials arrange for some simple entertainment to attract children, which in turn attracts their parents, but the primary purpose of the festival is to allow businesses to sell crude snacks and gifts, and for the government to tax those transactions. Is this the type of social affair that will keep us in good mental health? I don't think so. These activities are not designed for human life. They are designed for profit. I would describe all of our social activities and holidays as idiotic, annoying, and wasteful.

We should experiment with new social activities, as if we are starting over with life on a new planet. Our holidays, courtship affairs, recreational activities, city festivals, sporting events, and other social activities should be designed for more sensible purposes, such as to provide us with exercise or entertainment, or to help us meet people, or to allow us to do something useful for society. We should forget about the past, and experiment with activities that truly make our lives more pleasant and interesting. Don't mimic your ancestors; try to impress your descendants.


What should our homes be like?

If we were to design a home for ourselves according to our emotional cravings, each of us would design a gigantic palace for ourselves, and we would put it on a very large amount of land. However, I don't think the type of home our emotions are attracted to is the type of home that we would be the happiest with overall. I think the large homes on large plots of land are adding to the problem of loneliness and boredom, and they waste a lot of our time on traveling. A lot of people dream of having a longer life, but you would have more life if you did not have to waste so much of your time on traveling or driving your children.
Adults should stop being afraid of criminals and start providing themselves and their children with a city that they can safely wander around in.
I think the most pleasant environment for humans is for our homes to be primarily for relaxing and sleeping, not for spending every evening and weekend. I think we should design a city so that there are lots of social areas for people to be together in the evenings. I should once again remind you that this type of city requires that we reduce crime to such extremely low levels that children can safely wander around without worrying about pedophiles, gangs, and bullies. By bullies, I mean "real" bullies, not what the Hollywood celebrities are whining about. Children need to feel as safe in their city as they did during prehistoric times.

By allowing children to start leaving home at age 12, and by forcing them all out by age 14, the homes can be designed smaller because they would not need separate bedrooms for each teenager. They would need only one large bedroom for the children. I think children would be happier sharing a room. Today there is paranoia about mixing brothers and sisters in the same bedroom, but I think it would be better if the boys and girls were together. They are not going to be damaged if they see one another's naked body. Actually, I think children evolved for an environment in which they learn about human bodies and sex while they were young and did not yet have any sexual desires. I think it is a mistake to let children grow up in ignorance about sexual issues.

Only trial and error will help us determine the best environment to raise children, but I think that the families who have only boys or only girls, or who separate their boys from girls, are denying their children one of the necessary parts of childhood. I think we should experiment with methods to reduce the sexual ignorance and awkwardness that is widespread in all modern nations. For example, I would not produce bathing suits for children. I would tell them to swim naked, and I would explain to them that they are naked so that they can become accustomed to what human bodies look like.

By removing all the children by age 14, the home for families needs only one large bedroom for the children, even if they have four children. Furthermore, since people would be expected to spend most of their leisure time outside their home, the homes would not be designed for socializing or visitors. The homes would be more like luxury hotel suites. They would not need bathrooms for guests, for example. The parents would have a bathroom for themselves, and the children would have a bathroom, but since the bathroom for the children would be for their use only, I would design it for children. The sink, toilet, and shower should be designed for short children, not tall adults.

When I was a young child, one of the aspects of toilets that confused me is that they look like chairs, and I assumed that I should sit in them like I sit in a chair, with my back against the toilet seat cover. However, every time I sat on a toilet, I was in a crouched position at the front of the toilet seat. A few times I tried to sit "properly" on the toilet, but for some reason I could not poop in that position. I assumed that the reason I could not sit properly was because I was too small to fit. When I became older it occurred to me that the reason we crouch on toilets is because humans are animals. We poop the same way as cats and dogs. Therefore, we should design toilets for a person in a crouching position, and the toilet should be smaller for children. It is awkward for a child to be sitting on a toilet seat with his legs dangling above the floor. It is more natural for us to be crouched. Unfortunately, designing proper toilets requires adults who can overcome their inhibitions about human bodies, sex, digestion, and waste products. How many adults are capable of designing a toilet without constantly giggling and making childish jokes?

We also need to deal with the fact that low flow toilets don't work properly. Why are we trying to save water in our toilets? If we can fake a man on the moon, we can figure out how to provide ourselves with enough water to flush toilets properly. For example, if we design a city so that all of the sewage is sent to a treatment plant, then the water can be recycled to rivers, farms, or toilets. In this modern era, it is idiotic for us to suffer with nonfunctional toilets.

This brings me to another reason why I designed the City of Castles so that nobody has kitchens, and nobody does maintenance on their bicycles, and nobody has automobiles. Also, nobody owns their home, so nobody is allowed to do any type of maintenance or modifications to their home. The city handles the maintenance of bicycles, automobiles, and apartment buildings. The reason I prefer this type of society is that it allows us to prohibit people from having access to paint, paint thinners, cement, roofing tar, motor oil, or most of the other chemicals that make it difficult to recycle sewage. In the City of Castles, the sewage is primarily organic and easily broken down by bacteria.

The social clubs will provide people with a lot of chemicals so that they can do arts and crafts, and other hobbies, but those chemicals will be controlled by the social clubs, and they will have their own disposal systems. This allows us to keep much better control over our chemicals.

If people are willing to share washers and dryers, then nobody needs their own machines. Not only does this provide ourselves with much higher quality machines that do a better job of washing clothing, but it also gives us much better control over cleaning chemicals and lint that gets into the sewage. If dry-cleaning machines can be designed to either completely recycle their chemicals, or use biodegradable chemicals, then we would not even need to use water to wash clothing.

This type of city will put people in close contact with one another, which would be a disaster if the people despised or feared one another, or if they were speaking different languages, but if we created a more homogenous society, I think it would be a much more pleasant social environment for both adults and children. It would be like living in a luxury hotel with your friends on an island in which there is absolutely no crime.


Which aspects of life should society control?

Every society provides some freedoms to their citizens, and some restrictions. As I mentioned earlier, we do not yet have the freedom for assisted suicide. The American government also restricts our access to prescription drugs, and forbids the use of marijuana, cocaine, and certain other drugs. At the other extreme, we have complete freedom in regards to consumption of food. The government requires businesses to follow standards for food safety, but each citizen is allowed to eat whatever foods they want, in any quantity, and at any time. Each of us has the freedom to become as obese, anorexic, and malnourished as we please.

We have the freedom to get married to whoever we please, although until recently marriage was restricted to heterosexual couples. We are restricted to having only one spouse, and although we discourage extramarital affairs, we do not arrest people for doing it.

It is impossible for a modern society to allow everybody to do whatever they please. We must make decisions on which activities are prohibited, which are restricted, and which are tolerated but discouraged. Unfortunately, we are making policies on freedom primarily according to our emotional reactions. We need to make decisions based on intelligent reasoning. We should insist that everybody show evidence for how the law or freedom that they propose is beneficial to society.

The policies we follow today developed haphazardly, and they were influenced by religions, businesses, and other groups, and I don't think many of them are sensible. For example, why are we restricting access to steroids and similar hormones? Is it to make sports more fair? Or are we trying to protect the athletes from harming their health? Or did this policy come about purely for economic reasons, such as for doctors to force us to get prescriptions, or for drug companies to be able to charge higher prices for their drugs?

Each law imposes a burden on society because it requires some people to waste their time on law enforcement. Every law also creates an emotional burden on us because we do not like the government controlling our behavior. Therefore, every law should have a benefit that outweighs its burden. So, what is the benefit to restricting steroids, and does the benefit outweigh the burden?

If you respond that our restrictions on steroids are to prevent people from harming their health, then why not apply this policy to alcohol and food? Why not require us to get a doctor's prescription for breakfast, lunch, and dinner so that the doctor can ensure that we are eating meals with appropriate proportions and nutrition? Why do we allow people to ruin their health with food and alcohol, but not with steroids?

If we remove the restrictions on steroids, who among us would suffer? Some people are low on these particular hormones, and so their lives would be more pleasant if they had easier access to them and could experiment with them. If an athlete has a naturally high level of these hormones, he can hurt his health by taking more of them, but why should we care? We do not care if a person abuses food and becomes obese and sickly, so why do we care if a person abuses steroids?

I suspect that there are more people spreading venereal diseases than there are people who would abuse steroids. Some of the people who are spreading venereal diseases are athletes. Why do we prevent the athletes from taking steroids but not from spreading venereal diseases? If we are going to protect athletes from their stupid behavior, then why not stop them from spreading venereal diseases? Why not require that they get a doctor's prescription to have sex? The doctor would be able to ensure that they and their partner are free of diseases.

There are also lots of people having abusive marriages, and many people are having unwanted children. Therefore, why not require us to get a doctor's prescription for marriage, and to get another prescription if we decide to have children? Why not require women to get a doctor's prescription for shoes so that the doctors can prevent them from causing permanent damage to their feet?

It's also interesting to consider that we have the freedom to carry guns, and there are thousands of accidental shootings every year. There may be more people who accidentally hurt themselves with guns than there are athletes who would hurt themselves with steroids.

We give Rush Limbaugh the freedom to become obese, become intoxicated with alcohol, and to smoke cigars, so why not give him the freedom to abuse the painkiller, OxyContin? Why do we want to stop him from hurting himself with painkillers but not stop him from hurting himself with food or alcohol?

Humans are arrogant, and we want to impose our views of life on other people. In every society, there are groups of people battling for control of each policy. The policy that gets implemented is the policy that is supported by whichever group can dominate the others. However, nobody is designing policies according to their intellect. Instead, everybody is trying to impose policies that appeal to their emotions. Policies based on emotions create a lot of anger and resentment because the people who support the policies have no intelligent reasoning, and therefore, their opponents can correctly claim that the policies are irrational. For example, the people who want to use marijuana instead of alcohol can point out that the people who promote alcohol have no intelligent reasoning for pushing alcohol at weddings, restaurants, social affairs, holidays, television programs, and movies, while putting people in jail for using marijuana.

The people who want to use alcohol became furious with prohibition in 1920, and they demanded the freedom to use alcohol. However, they are not providing that same freedom to people who want marijuana, cocaine, or other drugs. They treat the users of other drugs in the same manner they complained about being treated. They also want to restrict our access to prescription drugs. How do they justify their drug policies? They do not justify their policies.

Everybody is selfishly following their personal emotional cravings. This creates resentment because nobody has any intelligent reasoning for their drug policies. The end result is that people are fighting with each other over which policies to implement. The policies that dominate society are whichever policies have the most support, regardless of whether they are rational.

American society does not merely tolerate alcohol. Rather, we push it. Why promote alcohol while prohibiting or restricting marijuana, cocaine, OxyContin, and insulin? The reason is simply because the majority of Americans enjoy becoming intoxicated, and they selfishly want to impose their desires on everybody else. If the marijuana users were to form their own society, then they would push marijuana on us. In their society, the people who wanted alcohol would be the oppressed minority.

Our policies for drugs should make more sense. For example, we should describe alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and other drugs as "recreational drugs". Alcohol should not be described as an "adult beverage" or as a "drink". We should be honest about what drugs are, and why people use them. Also, if we are going to allow alcohol while prohibiting other recreational drugs, then we should provide a more honest reason for the hypocrisy. For example, we should admit that alcohol is a dangerous, recreational drug, but that we tolerate alcohol because an enormous percentage of the population enjoys becoming intoxicated on a regular basis for reasons that we don't fully understand, such as to mask internal pains, or because they have trouble socializing while sober. We should explain our prohibition of the other recreational drugs as being due to their lower popularity, not because alcohol is a "better" drug.

That type of reasoning will explain our toleration of alcohol, but it doesn't justify pushing it on people, and it doesn't justify alcohol abuse, such as people who become so intoxicated that they cannot work properly the next day, or who become unconscious on the city streets. We should not promote alcohol or any other recreational drug, and we should not tolerate abuse of any recreational drug.

If we design a society in which each city can be culturally independent of the others, then one city might prohibit all recreational drugs - including alcohol - and another city might experiment with allowing or tolerating some or all drugs. For example, one city might tolerate all drugs, but with restrictions, such as the drugs are available only in certain facilities, similar to how Amsterdam tolerates marijuana and prostitution in certain areas. With this policy, there would be certain facilities in the city that are authorized for drug use. Another possible restriction is to require that marijuana be used as a drink, like tea, so that the smoke doesn't bother anybody, and to reduce fire hazards. They could also put restrictions on the hours that the drug facilities are open, such as restricting them to a few hours in the evening during the weekdays, and all day Saturday and most of the day on Sunday.

By restricting drugs to certain facilities, we can forbid it in public areas, such as apartment buildings, parks, museums, and music concerts. If people want to listen to music while on drugs, they would have to arrange for the music concert to be at one of the drug facilities. The city could also insist that the drug users remain at the facilities until most of the drug has worn off. This would prevent people from wandering around the city while on drugs, and it would prevent the problem of people being drunk or on drugs in their home, which can annoy their neighbors.

Many people assume that if we allowed everybody to have access to recreational and prescription drugs, there would be a significant increase in drug abuse, such as people being on drugs while working. However, if the legalization of drugs caused a significant increase in drug abuse, all we have to do is evict the people who cannot control their drug use. This would create a society in which there is much less tension between the public and the government, and there would be no need for any of us to watch over other people and try to stop them from using drugs.

Many alcohol users will complain that they don't want to tolerate other drugs, but if the other drug users are keeping their drug use under control, why should we waste our time trying to stop them from using drugs? We have to accept the fact that a significant percentage of the population does not enjoy reality, and rather than try to stop them from using alcohol, marijuana, or cocaine, some cities should allow drug use. However, I would restrict the drugs to certain social clubs, and require everybody to keep their drug use under control so that it doesn't interfere with their jobs or annoy other people. Also, we should prohibit the drug users from reproducing. Eventually this will create a race of humans that enjoys life as it is, with no need for drugs. It is better to eliminate the desire for drugs than to control that desire.

I think we should change our attitude towards recreational and prescription drugs. Some of the changes that I would make are: 1) Schools should teach children that all living creatures are defective, and that each of us should watch for symptoms of defects. Students should be told that cravings for any type of recreational drug is a sign of a mental or physical disorder, and so is a craving for abnormal amounts of material items, sex, food, fame, babies, sleep, or water. Schools should encourage children to compare themselves to other people in order to figure out what their problems are. 2) Everybody should have access to honest information about both recreational and prescription drugs rather than sales propaganda or anti-drug propaganda. 3) We should provide everybody with easy access to blood tests and other medical procedures in order to keep us in good health. Society should provide us with the facilities to do the simple tests ourselves so that we are not a burden on the medical professionals. 4) Everybody should have access to prescription drugs so that we can experiment with them. People may as well also experiment with marijuana, and whatever other drugs they want to experiment with. For all we know, some of these drugs would be useful for dealing with cancer, migraine headaches, depression, or other problems.

I think we are fools to promote the philosophy that alcohol is a wonderful "adult beverage", and that the users of other drugs are evil and should be put in jail. It makes more sense to understand why some people want alcohol and other drugs. Likewise, we accomplish nothing by ridiculing fat people, or reprimanding people who have excessive cravings for sex, money, or fame. By changing our attitude from punishing strange behavior to encouraging people to figure out what their problem is, I think a lot of people are going to discover that their cravings for drugs, food, fame, and other items is due to something that is partially or completely correctable with modern medical technology, or by a change in their diet or environment.

If a person becomes a disruption to society because he is too irresponsible, stupid, or mentally ill to control his drug use, we should evict him, not torment him. Everybody we invite into our society should be accepted as one of our team members. We create a miserable environment when we are living among people we despise, punish, or torment.

This philosophy will also encourage people who have acne pimples, restlessness, insomnia, digestive problems, bulging eyes, or other physical disorders to analyze themselves to determine if any of their problems are due to something that can be partially or completely corrected. For example, Marty Feldman's bulging eyes are one of the symptoms of excessively high levels of thyroid hormones.

From my experiences with thyroid hormones, this hormone has an incredible effect over all of our body and mind. It is an amazing hormone. I suspect that millions of people have thyroid levels that are slightly too high or too low, but they don't realize it because their problem is not extreme enough for current medical technology to notice. However, the abnormal levels will have an effect on their mind and body. I suspect that a lot of these people are reacting to their problems by turning to drugs, money, fame, sex, food, extreme sports, and crime. Since about 10 times as many women have problems with thyroid levels, this could explain why so many women have abnormal moods and behavior.

This article claims that Adolf Hitler's breath was unusually stinky. Most people react to a person with bad breath by ignoring the problem or avoiding the person, but we should react by wondering if the person has a physical disorder. Many people assume that bad breath is due to the food that we eat, but I think food has only a small and temporary effect on breath. I think the truly stinky breath is the result of people with physical problems of some sort, such as blood sugar levels that are too high or low, hormones that are abnormally high or low, or internal organs that are not properly regulating some chemicals. These physical disorders can alter the composition of the blood, saliva, and mucus. When the saliva changes its composition, it can allow bacteria to grow in the mouth, resulting in bad breath and tooth decay.

If everybody was carrying around a futuristic medical monitoring device on their body, and if it was transmitting medical data continuously to a database, I suspect that we would discover that a person's mood is usually worse when his breath is stinky. The reason I suspect this is because when your body is not functioning correctly, you are likely to be more irritable and miserable. I think that eventually we will be able to do some medical diagnoses by analyzing saliva.

The human race has to stop acting like stupid animals. When we encounter a problem, we should analyze it, not run away from it or react with anger. When somebody has bad breath, for example, you should let them know. If a person were to keep track of when his breath stinks, he might notice a pattern that can help him to figure out what his problem is. Ignoring somebody's bad breath is like ignoring a cancerous lump on their face. We should be helping other people to understand themselves, and they should return the favor by helping us to understand our problems. We should stop pretending that most people are healthy and that only a few of us are sickly. We have to face the fact that everybody is defective. Each of us should be trying to figure out what our particular defects are, and we should help other people identify their defects.

The people who have cravings for alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs should admit that they have a problem rather than pretend that they "like" the drugs, and they should consider the possibility that their craving is due to a problem that can be partially or fully corrected. We are not helping ourselves or the drug users by tormenting them or punishing them. Besides, they are already suffering. We are not going to make them better by adding to their suffering by ridiculing them, putting them in jail, or punishing them in some other manner. We need to understand what is causing these problems, and we need to restrict reproduction so that each generation is healthier than the previous generation.

There is no way to create a society in which everybody has the freedom to do whatever they please. There will always be restrictions on some activities, and other activities will be prohibited completely. However, I think we can come up with more sensible laws than what we have today. For example, what is the sense of making marijuana illegal when 20% to 40% of the population is using it regularly? This creates an enormous problem with crime. America is wasting an enormous amount of money by locking people in jails for marijuana use or sale. What are we gaining from this? It does not prevent marijuana use. All we are doing is wasting our money, wasting our police force, and irritating people.

Unless a city consists of people who truly do not want drugs, then there is going to be drug use. We should acknowledge this problem and design a society specifically to deal with it. Two changes that we could make to deal with drug use are:

1) Design transportation systems for people on drugs.
It is idiotic to mix alcohol with automobiles. Even when people keep their alcohol level below the limit for driving automobiles, the alcohol will have a detrimental effect on their performance. Therefore, in any city that permits alcohol or other drugs, we should design the city with some type of automated transportation system, such as trains.
2) Reduce financial incentives for promoting drugs.
I am willing to tolerate drug use, but it is idiotic to promote drug use. However, in a free enterprise system, businesses do not merely tolerate whichever drugs are legal. Rather, businesses push drugs on us, such as by creating deceptive advertisements for television that promote their sleeping pills, alcohol products, digestive pills, pain relieving pills, caffeine products, and sexual enhancement pills.

There is an especially large financial incentive to pushing alcohol. The reason is that intoxicated customers are more likely to spend money than sober customers. Restaurants, social clubs, sporting events, and other businesses have a financial incentive to push their customers into becoming so intoxicated that they will spend more money than they otherwise would.

I also suspect that one of the reasons alcohol is being pushed by so many men is because they want to get women intoxicated so that they can have sex. Hopefully we can reduce that problem by providing more courtship activities, which should help people form more stable marriages.

If we are going to tolerate drug use, then we should not provide anybody with financial incentives for pushing drugs on other people. One way to accomplish this is to create a society in which all of the basic necessities are free. None of the manufacturers of drugs would have any incentive to push their painkillers, antihistamines, or sleeping pills. None of the restaurants, music concerts, weddings, recreational events, or other social events would have any financial incentive to push alcohol or any other drug. Actually, when chefs are providing their food for free, and when musicians are providing music for free, and when other people are arranging other events for free, they will want customers who are sober and who appreciate their efforts rather than a bunch of drunks.

If we allow each city to be culturally independent of the others, then we are likely to find that each city develops slightly different policies for alcohol and other recreational drugs. The advantage to letting each city be different is that the cities that do not support certain recreational drugs do not have to torment the people who want those drugs. Instead, they can evict them to the cities that allow drug use. We will not be able to satisfy everybody, but it will be better than what we have today, in which a significant percentage of the population is being tormented.

Rather than try to control people's use of recreational drugs, I think it is better to give everybody as much freedom as possible and instead restrict reproduction to the people who are better suited to the modern world. This prevents the problem of babies with drug addictions and drug-induced birth defects, and eventually the human race will evolve into a species that can enjoy life without drugs. This requires that the cities that allow recreational drugs face the fact that there is something genetically wrong with the drug users, and that drug users are cruel and selfish to pass their problems onto their children.

Since people, especially women, have intense cravings to reproduce, we have to face the possibility that some drug users will try to use drugs secretly in order to deceive us about their drug problems. In such a case, we will end up with the ridiculous situation in which drugs are legal, but some people are using them secretly and illegally in order to pretend that they don't have any interest in drugs. However, as I will describe further down in this document, all types of illegal activities will be more difficult in this type of society, so this problem should not be very severe.

It's also interesting to consider why the human liver has the ability to break down alcohol. The only sensible explanation is that our primitive ancestors were regularly exposed to alcohol. Animals that eat fruit will occasionally eat fermented fruit. Since alcohol interferes with an animal's mental performance, the animals that had a difficult time handling alcohol tended to have a lower success rate in life. Through the centuries, the animals with the best ability to handle alcohol dominated the others. When our ancestors developed containers to store water, honey, fruits, and other items, they occasionally but accidentally created fermented liquids, thereby increasing this problem and requiring a liver that can break down even higher levels of alcohol.

It is important to note that our ancestors developed an ability to handle the level of alcohol that was typical for their particular environment, but we are no longer living in that environment. During the past few centuries, we have been creating fermented drinks with extremely high alcohol levels, and we have been producing them in very large quantities. Many people are now drinking more alcohol than their liver can handle. Some of these people are dying as a result, such as from automobile accidents, but most of them are surviving and reproducing just like everybody else. This is increasing the number of people who want to get intoxicated. If we also allow other drug users to reproduce, then each generation will also have more of an interest in marijuana, LSD, cocaine, and other drugs.

The human race is currently on a path to destruction. We need to do what nature used to do for us. We can allow people to get drunk, smoke marijuana, and use LSD, but we should restrict reproduction to the people who have less of a need for drugs. Eventually this will create people who can enjoy life without any drugs.


We should reduce financial incentives for all crime

Providing the basic necessities for free would do a tremendous amount to reduce all types of crime, except for such crimes as vandalism, graffiti, rape, and child molesting. In such a society, money would be useful only for scarce resources, such as vacations and truffles, and that would make money much less desirable to the crime networks.

We can further reduce crime by eliminating cash and using only electronic money in order to make it very easy for the police to follow transactions, thereby making it virtually impossible for crime networks to do any type of transactions with money. We could go one step further and prevent financial transactions between individual citizens. The money that a person earns would be for his use only, so he could not give any of his money to anybody else, not even his children, spouse, or friends. That type of money would vanish when a person dies. Anybody in this type of society who wants money has to earn it for themselves. This would make it impossible for people to give money to crime networks, and it would be impossible for people to borrow money from one another.

By making those changes to society, crime networks could not sell their illegal items for money. They would have to trade their illegal items for something, such as some other illegal items, sex, better grades on school tests, or a job. Likewise, they would have to bribe people with offers of sex or illegal items rather than money. These types of transactions are occurring in the world today, but it is on a much smaller scale because it is not as desirable as money. Therefore, making these changes would do an incredible amount to reduce crime.

If we also remove the secrecy that protects people in leadership positions, then it would be even more difficult for the crime networks to get away with bribery or any type of special favors. When we watch over our leaders and insist on intelligent behavior, it would be easy to figure out when an official is doing somebody a favor, or when they got their job as a result of a favor.

When there is very little incentive for criminals to produce or distribute illegal items, then most of the people who want illegal items would have to produce it for themselves. For example, if drugs are illegal, some people might grow their own marijuana, or make their own methamphetamine. Criminals could also make their own explosives. This type of activity is occurring in the world today, but this problem will also diminish in the type of city I am promoting. For one reason, everybody would have a very similar and small home, and they would not own their home. This would make it difficult for people to use their home for illegal activities. Nobody would be able to justify bringing hydroponic equipment, chemicals, or other items into their home. They could do their illegal activities in the forest, but in a city in which there is no way for people to keep secrets, their frequent travels to isolated areas would become suspicious.

Another reason it would be difficult for people in this type of city to be involved with illegal activities is because the ordinary citizen wouldn't have access to industrial supplies. We would have free access to food and clothing, and we would be able to use bicycles, cameras, computers, phones, sports equipment, and lots of other items, but we wouldn't own any of the buildings, swimming pools, or material items. The city would own and maintain all items. None of us would be allowed to do construction on our home because we wouldn't own our home, and since we wouldn't own any land, we would not even have access to gardening equipment. As a result, no ordinary citizen would have access to the types of chemicals, tools, and other supplies that are needed to do some of the illegal activities. There would be nothing equivalent to the Home Depot retail store, for example.

The government would be in control of all of the businesses, and none of them would be allowed to provide citizens with chemicals, tools, butane tanks, or welding equipment. Some of the social clubs would provide access to potentially dangerous items so that their members could engage in arts and crafts, scientific research, and other hobbies, but all of those items would be under the control of the organization, and the people would not be able to take them home for secretive, personal projects. The end result is that criminals would have a difficult time in this type of society.


How can we prevent suicide?

There are claims that suicide is increasing, and in response, groups of people are forming to stop suicide. Not surprisingly, these people expect us to provide them with donations or tax money. For example, in September 2012, $56 million of tax money was authorized for suicide prevention program that began in 2004. Some organizations are trying to alter our culture to support October as the National Anti-Bullying Month.

I think that if we were to study the issue of suicide, we would discover that everybody who commits suicide is suffering from some type of physical and/or mental disorder. The only suicidal people who can be helped are those who are suffering from a problem that is either temporary, such as the result of the environment, or who have a medical problem that can be fixed. (Note: I am referring to real suicides, not murders that have been disguised as suicide.)

For example, when war or natural disasters cause us to suffer sleep deprivation, stress, and improper nutrition for long periods of time, we start suffering mental or physical problems. We should not become suicidal simply because of poor nutrition or lack of sleep, but because we are different, some of the people in this condition will experience more physical or mental pains than others, and that can lead to thoughts of putting an end to their misery. We can help those suicidal people because their suicidal thoughts are due to a temporary and extreme environmental problem. As soon as we give them a better environment, they will become better.

However, some people have such defective minds or bodies that they are suffering mood changes, pains, and other problems under ordinary environmental conditions. Unless their problems can be relieved with medical technology, there is nothing we can do to help them.
However, if a person's mind or body is so defective that even under normal conditions he is suffering from mental or physical pains, then there is no relief possible for that person. These people are in a perpetual state of misery, and they either have to suffer forever, or commit suicide. If we prevent them from killing themselves, we are simply prolonging their misery.

Another way to explain this concept is to consider bribery. Some people have agreed to do murders for relatively small amounts of money, such as a fraction of the typical person's yearly income. Could you be bribed into murdering somebody? You might think that you cannot be bribed into committing a murder, but everybody can be bribed. The difference between us is that we have a different "bribery level".

Since most bribes are offers of money from crime networks, you may not be interested in taking their bribes. Therefore, it would appear as if you cannot be bribed. However, if some aliens from another solar system were to visit the Earth and offer you something that you considered more valuable than money, such as using their stem cell technology to fix the problems with your body and make it younger, and the only requirement was that you murder somebody, chances are very good that you would ask such questions as, "Uhhhh, who do I have to murder? And how do I know that you will give me what you promise?" You would find yourself looking for reasons to justify the murder. For example, if the person was getting old, you might say to yourself, "Well, he is old and is going to die soon anyway." If the person was young but lonely, you might say, "Well, he isn't happy, so I may as well put him out of his misery."

The point I want to make about bribery is that each of us have a different bribery level, although some of us may have a threshold that is beyond realistic. This same concept applies to suicide. There is no dividing line between the people who commit suicide and those who do not. Each of us have a different "suicide level". At one extreme are the people who are so much like animals that they will not kill themselves under any circumstance. Suicide requires a certain amount of intelligence, a certain ability to think, and a certain ability to override emotions. A person has to be able to think about his life and his future, come to the conclusion that his life is not worth living, and then override his powerful craving to live. Animals are not capable of doing this. Likewise, stupid people and people who have very little control over their emotions will not be able to commit suicide, either. The ability to commit suicide is actually a very advanced mental quality.

You may think that you would never commit suicide, but everybody who is capable of thinking and controlling their emotions is capable of suicide. However, we have a different suicide level. Some people have such a high tolerance for pain, suffering, and misery that they will survive virtually anything that is realistic. Other people would commit suicide only for unrealistic situations. For example, imagine if aliens from another planet were to capture you, take you home to their planet, and then put electrodes in your brain to torture you day after day because they consider it entertaining to listen to you cry, similar to how we enjoy listening to birds chirp. If you had to go through that torture decade after decade, you might eventually come to the conclusion that there is no sense in living any longer.

Now consider how these concepts apply to suicides. When we are suffering from lack of sleep or poor nutrition due to war or natural disasters, our body and mind will suffer. We will experience physical pains, and our brain will not function properly. Our mood will change; we will be much less pleasant and cheerful. If our mind and body have been designed properly, we will realize that the misery is temporary, and we will look forward to ending it. However, each of us have a different ability to deal with miserable conditions, and we have a different suicide level. If our suffering exceeds our suicide level, then we will commit suicide.

Years ago I read an account by an American soldier who was in the Korean War. (I can't remember where I saw this article). He said that he was with a group of soldiers who were accidentally bombed with napalm by the American Air Force. Some of the soldiers who were burnt very badly by the napalm were laying on the ground and twitching, and some of them were begging the other soldiers to kill them and put them out of their misery. The other soldiers tried to calm them down, and I think that most of them survived. Those particular soldiers probably didn't think of themselves as suicidal, but they were begging for assisted suicide. You might not think of yourself as suicidal, either, but you might have lots of suicidal thoughts run through your mind if somebody were to spray you with napalm.

Incidentally, there are so many incidents of "friendly fire" that you have to wonder how many of them are really "friendly". Once you realize that Jews are instigating the wars and secretly manipulating them, you ought to wonder how many of the friendly fire situations are the result of their manipulation.

Suicide increases during wars and natural disasters because life becomes miserable for us, and as the misery increases, more people reach their suicide level. The only suicidal people that can truly be helped are those who become suicidal under abnormal conditions. We can help them by getting them out of their miserable situation and putting them into a more normal environment.

By comparison, if a person is suicidal in a "normal" environment, that is a sign that he is suffering from so much physical or mental pain that he has exceeded his suicide level in what should be a pleasant environment. These people cannot be helped unless their problem is due to a medical disorder that we have the ability to fix, such as with insulin or other hormones, or by changing their diet, or by removing whatever they are allergic to. By fixing their medical problem, we reduce their physical and mental pains, and that puts them below their suicide level. Unfortunately, the people who work in the suicide prevention programs are not providing medical analyses for the suicidal people. They are more likely to provide pity, sex therapy, or religion.

People who are suicidal should not talk to psychologists. They should instead check with medical doctors to see if there is something wrong with their body or mind that can be fixed. If they have a problem that we have no ability to fix, then there is no sense stopping them from committing suicide because we would simply be prolonging their misery. It would be better to offer them a method to kill themselves in a pleasant manner.

Another important issue regarding suicide is that most of the people who try to commit suicide don't seem to be interested in committing suicide. I think that most suicide attempts are similar to a child's temper tantrums. Specifically, the people are upset with their lives, and they don't know what to do, and they are trying to attract the attention of other people in order to get their pity and help.

There are more people today working in suicide prevention then there were centuries ago, so if the reports are true that suicides are increasing, we could conclude that the suicide prevention programs are failures. Why are we paying people to prevent suicide when suicides are increasing? Would you regularly pay a doctor to remove lice from your body if the number of lice was continuously increasing? We need to reevaluate our attitude and policies towards suicide when faced with such an incredible failure.

Since a person is just a random collection of genetic qualities, there are always going to be defective people who have miserable lives. The American attitude is to feel sorry for the "Underdog" and the "disadvantaged", but feeling sorry for miserable people doesn't help anybody. We should not allow people who are living among us to suffer. Eventually we may have enough medical technology to understand and prevent every suicide, but until then, we have to face the fact that some people are going to be so miserable that they will want to kill themselves. We should provide everybody with free access to a very pleasant suicide center where they can kill themselves in comfort, such as relaxing in a chair while listening to music. They could drink something that first puts them to sleep, and then kills them. If a person was too physically disabled to drink the liquid by himself, then somebody would assist him.

A young girl in Canada, Amanda Todd, committed suicide, supposedly because of "cyber bullying". The news reports try to make her appear to be an ordinary girl who was driven to suicide by bullies, but I suspect that she was a mentally defective girl who had trouble dealing with life's routine problems, and the other children did not like her.

She claims that one of the most emotionally distressing incidents was when a boy posted a photo of her lifting up her shirt and showing her breasts, but how does such a photo make a woman suicidal? Some women make money by showing their breasts, and some women become famous when they release video of them having sex. However, Amanda reacted to that photo by becoming emotionally distressed, and she started cutting herself with a knife (That photo comes from her video).

A few days later the secretive group, Anonymous, exposed the cyber bully. They want us to believe that they are heroes who are saving us from bullies, but if they are heroes, then why are they secretive about who they are? More importantly, why are they refusing to expose the crimes that are committed by Jews, such as 9/11, the Holocaust, and the kidnapping of the Bollyn family? I suspect Anonymous is connected with the international Jewish crime network, and I think they are exploiting the Amanda Todd suicide in order to make themselves look like heroes in order to increase their popularity. I would not be surprised if they murdered her in order to create the incident.

It may be true that some of the boys who were harassing Amanda Todd are destructive freaks who should be removed from society, but that doesn't change the fact that Amanda Todd was also mentally defective. Feeling sorry for Amanda Todd is as idiotic as a gardener who feels sorry for sickly, dying plants. A gardener should remove the sickly plants and take care of the healthy plants. Likewise, we should create a society of healthy, happy, honest people, not a society of freaks who hate, torment, cheat, deceive, rape, and abuse one another.

If the anonymous group, or anybody else, was truly interested in doing something useful, then they should help us to understand these issues, and they should recommend policies for us to experiment with. For example, my suggestion to reduce the problem of cyber bullying, spam, annoying email, and related problems is to change our philosophy towards secrecy. Nobody should be anonymous on the Internet. You would not let secretive, anonymous people into your house while they were covered in clothing and masks. You want to know who enters your home. Why not apply the same philosophy to telephones and the Internet? Why should anonymous people be allowed to contact you and your children through a telephone or computer? You would never let secretive, anonymous people into your child's bedroom, so why let them get into your child's bedroom through a computer or telephone?

The only people who benefit from secrecy are criminals. Don't be afraid of criminals; don't behave like a frightened rabbit. We should follow the philosophy that everybody has a responsibility to identify themselves to other people, and that everybody has a right to know who is contacting them. We should not tolerate secretive or anonymous people. Don't let them intimidate you into believing that they have a right to hide their identity. Instead, demand the right to know who is trying to enter your life and influence you.

Getting back to Amanda Todd, we have to face the fact that some children are defective, and they are having a miserable life, and there is nothing yet that we can do to fix their problem. Preventing them from suicide is simply prolonging their misery. We should offer them a more pleasant method to end their life.

Some people will respond that suicide centers would cause a lot of unnecessary deaths, especially among teenagers, because many people would kill themselves when they were in a bad mood. My response to this concern is, so what? If a person has such an unstable mind that he will kill himself when he doesn't really want to, then he should kill himself. We don't need people like that living with us or reproducing. Our lives will be much nicer when we are living among people who are happy, healthy, responsible, and honest, not people with wild mood swings, psychotic tantrums, suicidal tendencies, violent rages, or fits of self-pity.

When a person becomes suicidal during wars or natural disasters, we can help him, but if a person is suicidal while living in a pleasant environment, and if medical technology cannot fix his problem, then rather than stop him from committing suicide, we should make it easy and painless for him to do it.

When somebody is frequently whining about their miserable life, we should point out to them that they should go to the suicide center and put an end to their misery. If they are our friend or child, we could offer to go with them so that they don't feel alone at the center. That might be especially nice when our parents become old but don't want to die alone. We could even develop a custom for having a party for our old parents who are ready for the suicide center. We would celebrate their life, and at the end of the party, the final toast would include the suicide potion.

Many people are too much like animals to be able to calmly deal with the issue of death and suicide, but the human race has to evolve into a more advanced creature. Death is a part of life, and we should stop treating death in the same crude, hysterical, irrational manner that we treat sex, waste products, and childbirth.


We should encourage physical activity among adults

All young animals and humans have a natural craving to engage in physical activities. As a result, we don't have to push young children into getting exercise. During elementary school, for example, children have a natural tendency to spend their recess and lunch breaks on physical activities. However, as we grow older, we become increasingly sedentary. When we are in high school, for example, we get almost no exercise during breaks or during lunch. Some high school students get a lot of exercise from sports, by riding a bicycle to school, or at their jobs, but I think that most students need more exercise than they are getting.

The situation gets worse after we graduate from school and get a job. Most adults do not get any exercise during their breaks or at lunch, and most of them do not want to ride a bicycle to work or engage in any type of recreational activity during their leisure time.

Although it is natural for us to become increasingly sedentary with age, is this desirable? I don't think so. I think we should design our society to encourage teenagers and adults to get more exercise. I think we are becoming sedentary with age because we want to, not because it is best for us. We are following our emotions to do nothing, like a pet dog, rather than following our intellect and keeping ourselves in good health.

How do we design a society to encourage adults to get some exercise and maintain their health? Should we provide exercise machines for adults? Should we arrange for a variety of sports or other physical activities for adults? Should businesses provide employees with the opportunity to get exercise at lunch, and if so, what exactly should the businesses do?

There are some businesses that provide exercise rooms and showers so that their employees can get some exercise during lunch, but we could develop that concept much further and apply it to an entire city. By designing a city so that the transportation system is underground, the surface is available for grass, bicycle paths, trees, and swimming areas. By providing office buildings and factories with showering facilities, it would be very easy for people to ride a bicycle to work, or to get some exercise at lunch by either going outside into the grass between the buildings to play some sports or swim, or to use some type of exercise equipment.

We could also develop some sports that are specifically intended to provide us with exercise. I think that most of our current sports are worthless for exercise. Our sports have evolved into intense competitive battles for trophies. The emphasis on winning is so extreme that people are pushing themselves to the point at which they injure their body during the sports, and some of them risk their health with drugs. The purpose of exercise is to help us maintain good health, but I would not be surprised if the people involved with sports are actually doing more harm to their health. It would be interesting to study the people involved with sports to see what their health is like after the age of 40. How many are suffering from brain damage, arthritis, or damaged joints as a result of their sports? Greg Valentino not only used steroids excessively, but he got infected when he became careless and didn't bother with sterile needles.

I think some sports need to be redesigned so that they provide us with some useful exercise, and other sports, such as arm wrestling, need to be abandoned forever. Not many people want to watch or participate in arm wrestling, and it doesn't provide any useful exercise, so why do we bother to support it? Furthermore, lots of people break bones in their arm from it, such as this man. We are not going to improve the health of the adult population by encouraging that type of sport.

Designing better sports and designing a city to make it easy for us to get exercise is not going to be good enough. We must also become intolerant of crime. One of the reasons that businesses and employees resist exercise today is because crime is so rampant that employees need secure facilities for storing their clothing, shoes, bicycles, and other sports equipment. The steel lockers are visually unpleasant, the locks are a nuisance, and they prevent airflow, thereby creating stinky locker rooms. Storing bicycles in this crime-ridden society is also a nuisance.

If we were less tolerant of crime, then people could put their bicycle on a circulating hook, as I described in a previous file, and the bicycles could be stored in the basement. People could also store their clothing on circulating hooks, either in mesh bags or baskets, or they could put their clothing in lockers that don't have doors. Either way, the people wouldn't have to waste their time with locks, and air would circulate around the clothing, thereby reducing the problem of odors and mildew.

Our policies on crime are causing our cities to resemble jails. If, instead, we evict criminals, we can eliminate a lot of the locks, and this will make our cities significantly more pleasant for us, and visually more attractive.
Do you want to waste your remaining years of life living in fear of people who steal or vandalize your possessions? Or would you prefer creating some cities with such high standards that you can trust the people you live with?
We should also look into ways of improving the problem of showering. It would be impractical for every office building and factory to provide each of their employees with their own private dressing room and shower. Most businesses that provide showers solve this problem by providing a large shower with lots of shower heads so that a lot of people can take a shower at the same time. I think we should start experimenting with better solutions.
I suggest we experiment with a "rinsing tunnel". It would be similar to a car washing machine, but without the mechanical rollers. When a person steps into the tunnel, he activates a water spray, and warm water sprays him from all directions. The velocity of the spray could be adjusted with a lever on the wall. He would then rinse himself off. He then steps forward into the drying section of the tunnel where he is blasted with some warm air to blow off the large water droplets. Then he steps forward to pick up a towel to finish drying off, and then he gets dressed.

I should point out two concepts. First, contrary to the propaganda of the cosmetics companies, you do not need soap or shampoo to remove perspiration. All you need is water. Soap will remove your natural oils and leave your skin dry and irritated. It is better to rinse yourself with water. Furthermore, without soap, people can pass through this rinsing tunnel at a very high rate because they don't have to waste time scrubbing themselves with soap, and then rinsing off the soap.

Second, we should not encourage the obsessive-compulsive people who want to spend a few hours in a shower in order to cleanse themselves of every molecule of dirt and perspiration. People should be told to pass through the rinsing shower fast and not worry about leaving a few molecules of perspiration because as soon as they get out, they will resume perspiring. It is idiotic to think that you can wash off all of the perspiration.

Some people have horrible body odors, and they might assume that they need soap, but soap cannot fix their problem. Even when they scrub themselves with soap, they remain stinky. The only solution to stinky people is to restrict reproduction to the people who are naturally attractive and nice smelling.

If we can design a compact rinsing tunnel that people can pass through at a high rate, then it becomes very easy for us to put one or more in every factory and office building. This would encourage more people to get some exercise.

For example, a person might decide that the weather is so nice that he will ride a bicycle to work. He would put on his exercise clothing, put his office clothing into a bag, and then pick up a bicycle at the basement of his building. He would then ride to work. When he arrives, he would hang his bicycle on one of the circulating hooks, and walk over to the rinsing tunnel. He would take off his exercise clothing, pass through the rinsing tunnel, and switch into his office clothing. It would only take a minute or so if people could get over their obsessive-compulsive desire to scrub themselves with soap for 30 minutes.

In addition to encouraging people to ride a bicycle to work, the main reason that I suggest we experiment with a rinsing tunnel is to make it more practical for people to get exercise at lunch. In the northern climates, the weather is usually pleasant during lunch, but almost everybody wastes the nice weather by spending their lunch in a cafeteria, sitting at their desk, or driving through traffic to get to a restaurant. If we designed a city so that the buildings were separated with grass, bicycle paths, trees, and foot paths, and if we had about an hour for lunch, then more people would be interested in going outside and doing something prior to eating, such as walking, playing a sport, riding a bicycle, or using an exercise machine to check their heart or lungs.

In our society today, it is difficult for women to ride a bicycle or walk to work, or get exercise at lunch, because they cannot walk or ride a bicycle in sexy clothing and high-heeled shoes, and they don't want to get any exercise at work because perspiration will ruin their makeup, false eyelashes, and hairspray. However, with society in control of everything, we can put pressure on both men and women to wear practical clothing for school, jobs, and recreation, and wear sexy and attractive clothing only for social affairs. Women would not be allowed to wear makeup, jewelry, or any type of sexy clothing or shoes while at school or work. They should not even be allowed to do anything special with their hair while they are working. By remaining in their natural state, it would be easy for them to ride a bicycle to work or get exercise at lunch because they could rinse off quickly and would not need to waste time reapplying makeup, jewelry, hairspray, and false eyelashes.

One of the advantages to letting society take control of children when they become 14 is to make the girls become accustomed to looking pretty only for social affairs, not for school, work, or exercising.


We should design jobs for humans, not for profit

Before I continue, consider our philosophy towards jobs. The treatment of employees has improved significantly during the past two centuries, but most employees are still in the role of a peasant who is serving a wealthy and pampered King. The people who dominate business do not consider their employees or their customers to be their friends, team members, or equals. They are still not showing much concern about the quality of life for their employees or their customers. Rather, they are still focused on themselves, just like the medieval Kings and Queens.

Most people go to work only because they don't know how to avoid it, and they spend a lot of their time looking at the clock to find out if it is time for lunch or to go home. They want to get home as soon as possible, and they want to retire from their job as soon as possible. I would say that this is a sad way to live.

Ideally, there would be no peasant or pampered class. A city should consist entirely of team members who make an attempt to provide everybody with a job that they can enjoy as much as possible. We will frequently have to do tasks that we don't care for, but we should enjoy going to work. We should be willing to experiment with jobs and working conditions so that everybody's life becomes more pleasant.

Most people today are working inside of a building during the daytime, and some of them rarely see the sunshine. When they are finished with their work, they rush home to eat and sit in front of a television. I think we should experiment with different working conditions, such as extending the lunch of people who work inside a building so that they have an opportunity to get outside at lunch. Our bodies are more interested in getting exercise during the day rather than the evening, and by getting outside during lunch, we can enjoy the sunshine, the flowers, and the birds.

In most cities today, it is unpleasant to "go outside" for lunch because the outside is ugly, concrete sidewalks; noisy, filthy automobiles; homeless vagrants; street vendors selling worthless gifts and disgusting food; and criminals. Furthermore, many of us are working with people we fear, despise, or have nothing in common with, and those people have no interest in having lunch with their coworkers.

However, if we lived in a more homogenous, crime-free city with an underground transportation system, then our city would be a beautiful park with trees, ponds, gardens, plazas, foot paths, and bicycle paths. Scattered among the trees and ponds would be office buildings, apartment buildings, factories, schools, and scientific research labs. In some climates, a lot of the park would be partially or completely enclosed to provide year-round access to the grass, bicycle paths, and flowers. In that type of city, when an office worker goes outside, he would be entering a beautiful park. By extending the lunch time, the people would have time to take a walk, ride a bicycle, play games, or go swimming in a pond. It would give them an opportunity to enjoy the daytime, and it might make going to work much more pleasant.

Many employees today prefer a short lunch so that they can get home as soon as possible. However, in a City of Castles, there is no reason to rush home. The restaurants are providing free meals, so nobody has to waste any time shopping for food or making meals, and with a low crime rate, parents don't have to rush home to be security guards for their children. I think that in this environment, a lot of adults would want to extend their lunch so that they can enjoy the daytime.

It's also important to realize that we can design society to fit our work schedule. For example, the restaurants would not be available for dinner until after work, and the music concerts and other activities would not start until after dinner. In such a city, there would be no reason to get off work early because everything would be closed.

In our world today, some restaurants are open 24 hours a day, and many museums, theaters, and other businesses are open 10 to 18 hours a day. By creating a society that doesn't have a pampered class, the city can be designed entirely for the working people. We don't have to provide activities for the wealthy people who have nothing to do during the day.

A lot of people complain that our welfare programs are allowing parasitic people to live in society without contributing anything to it, but we could apply that philosophy to the spouses who don't do anything. There are some wealthy spouses, especially women, who consume a lot of food, electricity, automobiles, clothing, cosmetics, and other resources, but they give nothing in return. Some of them do not even raise children. These parasitic relationships did not exist in prehistoric times. All of our prehistoric ancestors, including the teenagers, had to take care of themselves. Today, however, a lot of spouses are being treated like Kings or Queens. Why complain about welfare programs but not parasitic spouses? Why not tell everybody in society that they must contribute?

I think we will create a better society when everybody has to be responsible for themselves and contribute something to society. In that type of society, everybody would be working during the day. All of the restaurants, museums, music concerts, and other activities would be closed while people are working. Restaurants would open briefly for breakfast and lunch, and then they would close. There would be no theaters, concerts, or other entertainment, while people were working. I would also shut down television during the daytime. There would not be very many people available to watch television during the daytime because there would be no housewives in this type of society. The adult women would either be taking care of babies, or working. They would not be sitting at home. Some of the mothers with babies would want to spend some of their time in their home, but most of the time they would be doing something in addition to taking care of babies. They don't need to sit at home all day with a baby.

Most of the transportation systems would be reduced to a low level while people were working, and the museums and zoos would be closed, although teachers could arrange for a group of students to visit a museum or zoo, in which case it would open for those particular students.

Shutting down the city like this would save resources, but the main reason I suggest doing this is because I think it would be psychologically better if the people who are working do not feel as if they are missing out on something. The only people who would not be working would be those who are in bad physical health due to old age, accidents, or disease.

If a young adult was unemployed in this type of city, he would feel isolated and alone. However, there would be no unemployment in this type of society because the government would help us find jobs, or train us for new jobs. Nobody would sit around their house doing nothing. If the government was having trouble finding a job for a particular person, then he would help with some of the simple tasks that don't require much training. There is always work to do.

Crime would be more difficult to commit during the daytime in this type of city because most people would have no way to justify being anywhere in a city other than their job. Only mothers with babies, old people, and people who work the night shift would be wandering around during the daytime.

We can also apply this philosophy to children. For example, instead of providing children with television programs and snacks all throughout  the day and night, we can restrict their television to a narrow portion of the evening, and we can restrict their access to food.


We need two categories for sports

Getting back to the issue of how adults tend to become increasingly sedentary with age, I think one way to encourage more physical activity is to develop sports that the ordinary adults actually enjoy playing, and which provide them with some useful exercise. I discussed the issue of sports years ago here, but now I will provide some more details on the issue.

To begin with, we could define a "sport" as a competitive physical activity. If an activity is not competitive, then it would not be a "sport". We would call it something else, such as exercise, recreation, entertainment, or socializing. For example, consider bicycles. If you ride a bicycle to go sightseeing, then you are not engaging in a "sport". Instead, you are engaging in entertainment or recreation. If you are riding a bicycle simply to get some exercise, then you are not engaging in a sport, either. Rather, you are engaging in exercise or recreation. Bicycling would only be a sport if you are in some type of competition, such as competing to ride a certain distance, or to ride the fastest, or to do tricks with the bicycle.

Among the people who are involved in competitions with bicycles, there are some people who have very casual competitions, and there are others who have extremely serious competitions. For example, some employees of a business might ride bicycles at lunch and compete to see who can ride the fastest, but they don't keep track of who wins or loses, and they don't give the winner any prize. Instead, their competition is intended to inspire them to get some exercise and finish the bicycle ride as soon as possible so that they have plenty of time to eat lunch. In that case, the competition is friendly and beneficial because it is intended to inspire one another.

At the other extreme are the professional athletes who play sports as a career. They play for extremely significant prizes. They put phenomenal amounts of effort into practicing and winning, and some of them cheat, sabotage, and use drugs. The competition among the professional athletes is so extreme that it is encouraging destructive behavior.

We don't make much of a distinction between the sports that the professional athletes play and those that the "ordinary" people play, but I think we need two different groups of sports; one for the professional athletes, and one for us "ordinary" people. We could describe these as professional sports and casual sports.

By creating these two categories for sports, it becomes easier to understand that we should design sports differently for the professionals. In the world today, there is only one type of baseball, soccer, and golf. However, the sports for the professionals should be different.

Before I continue, it's important to understand the concept that all of our activities, regardless of whether they are sports, holiday celebrations, birthday parties, or weddings, have a purpose. Since our culture has been evolving haphazardly and inadvertently, the purpose for most of our activities is irrational, or to help businesses make money, or to promote religious propaganda. I would say that most of our activities are worthless from the point of view of human life. When we design a sport, holiday celebration, or any other type of cultural activity, we should ask ourselves such questions as, what is the purpose of this activity? What are we trying to accomplish? What value does this activity have to our lives?

For example, most people don't think of Christmas as having a "purpose", but that is because it has evolved for the idiotic purpose of providing opportunities for businesses to make profit and religions to promote propaganda. Christmas, and all of our other activities, should be designed to provide something of value to our lives. All of our activities should be analyzed to ensure that they provide us with some benefit that justifies whatever burden they impose on us.

In regards to sports, both professional and casual sports should be designed to provide us with some benefit. This requires we make a decision on the purpose of professional sports and the purpose for casual sports. After we agree on the purpose for each category of sports, then we design the sports to fit those particular purposes.

I think that the primary purpose of casual sports should be exercise. Therefore, the casual sports should be designed to create games that we find so entertaining that we occasionally want to play, and that we get some useful exercise when we play. By comparison, the purpose of professional sports is to entertain an audience. Therefore, the rules they follow would be intended to create a sport that we find entertaining to watch. The professional sports don't need to provide the players with exercise. When we design sports according to these purposes, we will end up with professional sports that are very different from casual sports. I will suggest some changes to professional sports in Part 9 of this series. In this document I will concentrate on casual sports.

Some changes I would make for casual sports are: 1) Eliminate the emphasis on winning. The competition in casual sports should be to inspire one another to get some exercise. One method to achieve this is to stop the practice of giving prizes or awards to the winner. The winner of a casual sports event should get nothing. Another method is to discourage people from practicing a casual sport. Only professionals can justify practicing their sport. Practicing a casual sport should be considered as senseless as practicing for a birthday party. 2) Modify sports to be more entertaining to play so that more people become interested in participating. 3) Modify sports so that they are more useful in providing us with exercise. This requires changing the rules so that more of the players can get useful physical activity rather than just standing around or exercising only one or two muscles.

To summarize the previous paragraphs, the casual sports should be designed to encourage us to get exercise, but I don't think any of our existing sports are achieving this purpose. We need to design completely new casual sports. The professional sports, by comparison, should be designed to entertain an audience, but many of the professional sports are so boring that almost nobody wants to watch them. The professional sports that are boring should be abandoned, and of the popular sports, we should modify them to make them more entertaining, less dangerous to the athletes, and less of a burden on society.

A lot of people will be traumatized if we abandon some professional sports, change the others, and create new sports, and they will have a difficult time with the concept that casual sports should be different from professional sports. Therefore, before I continue, I will provide the following three reasons to encourage you to experiment with changes in our casual sports.

1) We should encourage participation rather than voyeurism
During prehistoric times, sports would have been carefree competitions between friends, but during the past few centuries, sports began evolving into idiotic activities. One of the bad influences on sports is the wealthy people who have a craving to feel special. They have a tendency to push sports into becoming expensive activities that only they can participate in, thereby allowing them to feel special. I think this is the reason that such sports as polo, foxhunting, yachting, golf, and tennis have evolved into silly, expensive sports.

When the wealthy people engage in these sports, they get almost no significant exercise. It is even debatable as to whether they should be described as "sports". It might be better to describe them as social affairs in which the wealthy people jerk themselves off.

When I was a young child, tennis was a sport of the wealthy, but as the nation became wealthier during the following decades, many businesses and condominium complexes began building tennis courts. Lots of ordinary people began to play tennis. Today the tennis courts in the area where I live are usually empty. I think the reason is simply because most people consider the game to be idiotic or boring, and they don't get much useful exercise from it. Some of the professional players might enjoy the game, but I don't think the wealthy people enjoy the game. I think what they are truly attracted to is being seen in tennis clothing and with a tennis racket. They like the fantasy of being special, not the sport itself. They are just jerking themselves off.

When Prince William visited California in 2011, he played polo. Why didn't he play basketball, badminton, volleyball, or soccer? Is polo truly more fun than other sports? I don't think so. Actually, I think that if everybody owned horses instead of automobiles, and if all of us could easily play polo, most people would rapidly lose interest in it. Many people would enjoy riding a horse once in a while in a forest or park, but I don't believe many people would enjoy playing polo.

Our natural tendency is to admire people who are wealthy, and this made sense in prehistoric times because primitive people had to earn whatever they wanted, but today people are becoming wealthy because of crime, inheritances, lotteries, divorce settlements, and all sorts of other idiotic reasons. I think these wealthy people are a bad influence on our culture. We should not admire or mimic them.

Another bad influence on sports is free enterprise. Businesses look for opportunities to profit from sports, and so they are pushing sports into requiring expensive equipment and supplies, and lots of expensive courts, grass fields, or stadiums. They also want people to become emotionally involved with the competitive battles so that they will purchase T-shirts and other gifts that have their team logo.

Another bad influence on sports are the men who have excessive cravings for dominance. These men push sports into becoming overly competitive events. These type of men are like animals. They cannot play for fun. They must win, and they will go to extreme lengths to win, including cheating and risking their own health. These excessively aggressive athletes are putting pressure on the sports to become even more competitive. These men focus on winning the games rather than enjoying them.

The extreme emphasis on winning is causing both professional athletes and ordinary people to practice their sport, and spend a lot of money on equipment, supplies, and training. There is so much emphasis on winning, and so much profit available to the winners, that cheating is common. As I mentioned in a previous file, the coach of one football team was offering bounties to his players to hurt the members of the opposing team. These people are not "playing sports"; rather, they are fighting with one another like dogs.

The end result of all of these bad influences is that sports have evolved into expensive, dishonest, and irrational competitive battles. Many people enjoy watching professional sports, or they watch their children play sports, but they don't want to participate in sports. Sports are no longer casual fun, and most of them do not even provide much exercise. The baseball player in the rightfield, for example, is almost as motionless as a Buckingham Palace guard.

Rather than let sports evolve in a haphazard manner, we should decide which sports we want to support; what the rules will be for each sport; who is allowed to be a professional athlete; which of the athletes are full-time athletes and which are only part-time; who is allowed to be a coach; and what type of casual sports we want. We should decide whether we want golf courses, and if so, how many, and how much labor and resources to put into maintaining the courses; whether we want football stadiums, and if so, what type of stadiums; and whether we want auto racing, and if so, what type of vehicles and race tracks to provide. We should also make decisions about whether the schools should provide training for professional athletes, and if so, for which sports, and how extreme the training programs should be.

Which professional or casual sports do you want society to provide for you? I think all of our modern sports have evolved into worthless activities. I think that we can improve all professional sports and casual sports. I think some sports should be abandoned completely, and all of the others need to have their rules changed. I'll talk about sports for the professionals later in this document. For now I will point out that we should experiment with casual sports that are so much fun, and so easy for us to participate in, and so useful in regards to providing us with exercise, that many of us actually want to occasionally participate in sports.

The free enterprise system encourages voyeurism but we should encourage more people to participate in activities rather than watching other people. Businesses want us to pay them to do things for us. We are encouraged to watch other people sing, play sports, dance, go scuba diving, explore a forest, and grow orchids. I think our lives will be more pleasant when we provide ourselves with a wide variety of activities so that we can occasionally participate in some activities. I have no objection to watching other people, but voyeurism should be an occasional activity, not our exclusive activity.

If we could create lots of casual sports - and other activities - that we enjoy participating in, then more people will spend more of their leisure time participating in activities and less time watching other people. This will reduce the demand for professional athletes, sports stadiums, and televised sports. Parents will also have less of an interest in wasting their Saturday afternoon watching their children play baseball or soccer. Parents would prefer to spend their afternoon doing something, either by themselves, or with other adults. Parents will occasionally enjoy playing with their children, but adults should not spend several hours every weekend watching their children play sports.

2) It is impractical to support every possible sport
It might seem that the best policy is to let everybody engage in whatever sport they want, but it is impossible to do this. One reason is that some sports require a lot of equipment, but the main reason is that every sport requires a certain amount of land. A tennis court might seem small, but only two or four people can play on a court, so a city would need a tremendous amount of land to provide everybody in the city with the option to play tennis on a Saturday afternoon. Golf also requires an enormous amount of land, and an absurd amount of maintenance.

The reason America can support so many different sports is because only a small percentage of the population are participating in sports. Most of the adult population in America is sedentary. Imagine living in a city of 1 million people, all of whom are healthy and physically active, and all except the very young and very old want to play sports every weekend. People who enjoy arithmetic might want to calculate how much land area would be needed for tennis courts, golf courses, ice-skating rinks, ice hockey rinks, skateboarding, baseball fields, polo fields, and soccer fields. And then consider that some people will want to go waterskiing, jet skiing, automobile racing, motorcycle racing, horseback riding, and snow skiing.

An enormous amount of land area would be necessary, and that would require spending a lot of time traveling from our home to a sports facility. Furthermore, maintaining all of those large sports facilities would be a significant burden on society. We should experiment with sports that don't require much land or equipment so that we can play some of them within the city. If we designed a city in which the buildings are surrounded by grass, trees, and canals, then we could play sports simply by walking out into the area between the buildings, or walking to a city park.

3) Human happiness has nothing to do with sports
It's important to understand that animals and humans have a resistance to change. Children easily adapt to whatever culture they are provided with, but once we become adults, we want to behave like trains on a track. In regards to sports, our emotions create the impression that the sports that we learned during our childhood are the only sensible sports possible. If society changes our sports, our emotions will resist the changes, so we have to calm ourselves down by reminding ourselves that we don't need any particular sport in order to enjoy life.

If we were to change the rules for some sports, eliminate other sports, and create new sports, we will create emotional trauma for all of us. All of us will have to adapt to the new sports, and some people will have more trouble than others. The people who have the most trouble adapting will spend a lot of their time whining that they must have their particular sport, and that their life is no longer worth living. It is important for us to understand this aspect of the human mind so that we realize that we are not hurting those people. They assume that they are suffering, and our natural reaction is to feel guilty for hurting them, but they are not suffering. They simply have to adjust to the changes. We have to ignore their crying. If we feel sorry for them, we encourage more of their whining. As soon as they become accustomed to the changes, they will continue with life as if nothing had happened.

After we create and modify our sports, we have to observe the results. We should then experiment with changes to make them even better. However, every time we make changes, there will be some people who whine that their life is no longer worth living. We have to expect this idiotic behavior and be prepared to ignore it.


Casual sports should be... casual; spontaneous; carefree

Some people play games that require teams, such as tennis, baseball, and volleyball, but since they focus on winning the game, they have a tendency to play with the same team members over and over, and they also have a tendency to practice the game with that team. Although I promote the concept of becoming a team member, in the case of casual sports, there is no point in forming teams that persist beyond one game. The people who form persistent teams will become increasingly better as a team, but winning the game has no value, so there is no point in forming persistent teams.

The casual sports should be designed for exercise, so forming a persistent team for these sports is as silly as forming teams to go to a gym to use exercise machines. There is nothing wrong with going to an exercise facility with the same group of friends year after year, but we should not promote the attitude that we should form teams when we exercise. Likewise, it is acceptable to play sports with the same team members if you want to, but we should not promote the attitude that people should form persistent teams.

People should be more casual and spontaneous with sports teams. Because humans and animals have a tendency to remain with the same group forever, it might be beneficial if the rules required the teams to be created at random prior to every game. This would put pressure on us to get accustomed to meeting and working with new people. This would be especially useful for children.

If we alter sports to make them more entertaining and more useful for exercise, and if we stop emphasizing the winning of the game, then it would be possible to have spontaneous sports events at public parks and beaches. For example, a person could walk into a city park on a Saturday afternoon by himself, and join a group of people who are playing some sports event, even though he doesn't know any of the people, and they have never played together.

If the idea of joining a group of strangers for a sports game seems bizarre, consider that we already do this on a smaller scale when large groups of people get together at a park for a party, such as when businesses have picnics for their employees, or when families have reunions. Some of the people at the party will pick up a volleyball, or whatever, and then ask if anybody wants to play, and teams will form with people who have never played with one another, and some may not have even met each other before. They play for fun and exercise, not to win.

These spontaneous sports events could happen on the scale of an entire city, but only if we create a more homogenous city. We must live among people that we trust and respect. In our cities today, especially in America, it would be unpleasant to go to a city park on a Saturday afternoon by yourself, and then try to join a sports game with strangers, because there is a very good chance that the people in the park will be a mixture of religions, nationalities, ethnic groups, and races that want to remain isolated from one another, and there is also a good chance that some of the people in the park will be people we fear, despise, or are suspicious of.

If we were to create a city that doesn't have a peasant class or a wealthy class, and if membership to the city was by invitation only, and if we evicted the people who didn't fit in, then we would be living among people we trust and respect. They would be people similar to ourselves. We would not be afraid of strangers, or worry that they are pedophiles, drug addicts, burglars, or mentally ill freaks. It would be easy for us to join strangers in a sports game. I think this type of society would encourage more people to do something during their leisure time rather than sit in front of a television and watch other people.

Living in a city that is homogenous would be like living in a gigantic family. Imagine what your life would be like in a city in which there is no peasant class or wealthy class, and there are no homeless people, retards, criminals, religious fanatics, or mentally ill people. Imagine living among people who are healthy, happy, honest, and responsible. In that type of city, you would have no fear of other people, and they would have no fear of you.

Unfortunately, creating a homogenous city of honest people requires evicting people who are disruptive. How many people are capable of carrying out such a policy? No society yet even cares about removing pedophiles. For example, on 21 September 2012, the news reports were claiming that Jerry Sandusky was involved with a pedophile ring. Two members of the ring, Phil Foglietta and Ed Savitz, are dead, and the third member, Lawrence Scott Ward, is in jail for child pornography and pedophilia.

What a coincidence that Jerry Sandusky's pedophile ring consists of two dead men and one man in jail rather than hundreds of men who are still working in our schools, hospitals, FBI, courts, police departments, and government. Incidentally, take a look at the description for Ed Savitz, such as the remark that he "told the boys to eat cheese to make the feces taste better." We are not going to create a safe, friendly, homogenous city when people react to pedophiles, corruption, and other problems by hiding, like a frightened rabbit.

There are organizations, such as ECPAT-USA, and television shows, such as To Catch a Predator, that claim to be stopping pedophilia, and they want us to contact them if we have information or want to help. I suggest you wonder, are they really trying to stop pedophilia? Or are they doing damage control?

Creating a better society requires removing the badly behaved humans. Can you do that? If not, can you at least support the people who are capable of it?


How do we design more useful casual sports?

The purpose of casual sports is exercise. This requires we change the rules so that the players get some useful exercise, and we also have to change the rules to make the game so much fun that people want to play it. In an earlier file about sports, I mentioned a few ways to make baseball become more useful for exercise. In this file, I will show how changing the rules for soccer, (football to most of the world), would make that game much more useful for exercise and much more entertaining to play.

I think one method to improve the game of soccer is to eliminate the position of goalie. The person who plays that position doesn't get nearly as much exercise as the other players, and he doesn't make the game any more fun. Having a person on a soccer team to guard their goal is as idiotic as adding another person to a basketball team to guard their basketball hoop. A "basketball goalie" would not make the game any more fun, and he would not get as much exercise as the other players.

Actually, I think a goalie creates a bad psychological effect because the goalie is in the position of a person who is defending his home. It makes the sport less fun and more like a battle. To understand what I mean about the psychological effect, consider the difference between playing basketball with and without a "basketball goalie". Which do you think would be psychologically more pleasant? I think a basketball goalie would make the game slightly irritating because it would feel as if we are intruding on his territory, and that we have to fight with him.

Soccer is an old game, so it's possible that the goalie originally served a purpose; namely, to prevent the ball from going beyond the end zone. Originally people played this game in an open area, rather than a stadium, and so they may have wanted at least one person to stand at each end of the field to prevent the ball from traveling too far. That person would evolve into the position of a goalie.

I think the game of soccer would also become more useful for exercise and feel more natural if we were allowed to hit the ball with our hands, and to catch and throw it. That would give our arms some exercise, and it is more natural to be able to use our arms in a sports game. It would also cause more jumping, which provides even more exercise. As long as nobody carries the ball, there would be no tendency to fight for possession of the ball.

I think it would also improve soccer to make the ball lighter in weight so that it doesn't travel very far, and so that doesn't hurt when people are hit with it, catch it, or hit it with their hands. We ought to experiment with different types and sizes of foam balls and "beach balls".

With these changes, as few as two people can play a game of soccer in almost any area, even a city park. They can use anything for the goals. For example, they could select two trees to be one goal, and two rocks as the other goal. The distance between the two trees doesn't have to be the same as the distance between the two rocks. The field doesn't have to be rectangular, either. It could be a serpentine path through some trees. When the players switch goals, they compensate for any differences in the distance between the goal posts.

I would also change the rules of soccer so that when more than two people are playing, they are allowed to increase the number of balls. For every two additional players, they could add one more ball. With 10 players on each team, there could be as many as 10 balls. That variation of the game could start by giving half of the balls to each team, and having them line up in their end zone. Then each team begins kicking and hitting their balls towards the other goal. As they got near the center of the field, their balls would come together, and then they would be able to kick and hit any of the balls towards their goal.

Increasing the number of balls increases the number of people who are actively doing something rather than becoming frustrated as they watch other people. A soccer game with 10 balls would have so many balls flying around that everybody would be busy chasing after and hitting the balls, thereby providing everybody with exercise. Of course, it should be obvious that in such a game, the balls would have to be very soft so that people don't have to worry about being hit by one of them.

This concept of increasing the number of balls can apply to other sports, also. For example, a volleyball game could use two, foam balls, with each team serving to the other at the same time, or both could be served by one team. A foam volleyball would not travel very fast, and this would allow the ball to remain in play for a longer period of time.

We could have a variation of volleyball in which there are half as many balls as people. It would be similar to the children's game of "hot potato". The game would go on for a certain number of minutes, and at the end, whichever team had the most balls on their side of the net would be the loser. The balls that fell outside of the court would not count until they were picked up and put back into play. Since foam balls don't travel very far, it would be easy to get them when they went out of bounds.

Every sport is a silly game with arbitrary rules, but if we design sports to give us exercise and entertainment, then they become useful. By developing sports that have more than one ball, we increase the number of people who are getting exercise. This makes the sport more useful for giving children some exercise during a brief school recess, and for helping office workers get some exercise prior to eating lunch.

When playing sports at night, people want intense lights on their field so that they can clearly see what is going on. However, it is a burden on society to provide a lot of brightly lit fields for people to play sports at night, and the lights create light pollution for the city. It would be better to alter sports so that there is no emphasis on winning. There should not be any prizes for the winner. The sports should be for exercise, entertainment, and socializing.

With that attitude toward sports, each team would wear a vest with a different color of LED, and the balls would have LEDs inside of them. A volleyball net could also have a string of LEDs along the top, and a couple LEDs could serve as goalposts for a game of soccer. That would allow us to play games anywhere rather than restricting us to stadiums with powerful lights. The players would frequently make mistakes in dark conditions, but so what? Instead of whining about mistakes, we should consider them to be a routine aspect of nighttime sports.

I don't know which variation of soccer, baseball, kickball, or badminton will be so much fun to play that we actually want to occasionally participate in a game, but there is no risk in experimenting with our sports. We cannot hurt ourselves, and the potential reward is tremendous. The reward is encouraging us to get some exercise and entertainment. Some sports could also offer socializing opportunities. We have nothing to lose and lots to gain.


The benefits of a sport should outweigh its burden

Everything has advantages and disadvantages. Every sport provides benefits while imposing a burden on society. Auto racing, for example, requires a tremendous amount of resources and land. What does society get in return? The people who participate in racing do not get any exercise, and neither do any of the spectators. There is not much socializing going on at the events, either. The sport could be justified if it was entertaining people at a reasonable cost, but racing is an extremely expensive sport, and how many people are actually entertained by it?

My impression of the audience at automobile racing is that their primary source of entertainment is alcohol and drugs, not the sport. Some of them seem so drunk that we could cover the race track with a giant, oval, LCD monitor, and then have some computer-generated images of automobiles racing around. The computer could offer replays of the crashes in slow motion. Some of the audience would be so intoxicated that they wouldn't think it was strange that the officials were giving instant replays of crashes.

The point I'm trying to make is that we need to analyze all of our sports and other social activities. What is the purpose of the sport? Who is benefiting from it, and what is the benefit? What is the burden on society? Does the benefit justify the burden?

When we take control of our social activities, we can decide if we want auto racing, motorcycle racing, bicycle racing, or horse racing. If we decide to support auto racing, we can decide what type of automobiles to use, what type of race track to provide, and what the rules will be for the sport.

For example, we could design some simple, quiet, clean, slow-moving vehicles that are much safer, similar to those in the photo, thereby allowing more people, including children, to participate as drivers. We could also make the racetracks more visually interesting, such as providing them with lots of turns, tunnels, and small hills, and by lining the track with trees, plants, grass, and pools of water.

This brings up an interesting philosophical issue. I suspect that if we were to alter automobile racing so that the majority of people want to participate, we would change the sport of automobile racing into a form of non-competitive entertainment. I think most people would want to drive the cars for fun, not to win a trophy. I think this is also true for horseracing. How many people want to participate in competitive horse races? I think most people would want to ride a horse only if they could do so for entertainment, and only if they could do so in an attractive area, such as a forest, not at a sports track.

I think we should alter our sports so that more people are interested in participating, but if we alter the racing events to appeal to the majority of people, they are no longer "sports". They become "entertainment". This then leads us to the question of why we bother to support the racing sports. The burden on society is tremendous, but who benefits from those sports? The audience might get a bit of entertainment, but I think they would get much more entertainment if we provided ourselves with activities that they could participate in.

We should review all of our sports and make a decision on which of them we want to design for professionals, and which of them we want to alter for participation by the ordinary people. After we design or alter a sport, we should watch the results and experiment with changes to see if we can improve it. A sport should be judged by its overall effect on society. For example, if a sport is supposed to provide exercise, then we should take a look to see whether the players are actually getting some useful exercise.

Every sport puts a burden on society, and we have to consider whether the burden is worth the benefit. For example, consider cleats. Soccer players, baseball players, and other people who play on grass want to wear cleats, but cleats destroy the grass. Furthermore, when people are stepped on, the cleats cause more physical damage to the person's body. What benefit do cleats provide to compensate for their destruction of the grass and the human body?

If we choose to support professional soccer players or baseball players, then we can justify letting them wear cleats so that they can do extreme running, jumping, and diving stunts, but we should not let the ordinary people wear cleats. Sports for the ordinary people should be designed for exercise, entertainment, and socializing, and cleats do not help in any of those purposes. Cleats do not make the game "better". The casual sports should be designed for ordinary shoes or for playing barefoot.

Another issue to keep in mind about cleats is that they require people to work on assembly lines to produce them and install them in shoes. Every item we manufacture should be able to justify its use of labor and resources. We can justify cleats for professional athletes, and we can justify shoes with spikes for people who have to climb trees, but there is no justification to put people on assembly lines to produce cleats for ordinary people because cleats have absolutely no value in casual sports.

In order to make sports more appealing to the ordinary people, we need to design sports so that we don't need expensive equipment or clothing, and we should be able to play the game virtually anywhere so that we don't have to travel to special stadiums, fields, or tracks. For example, by changing the game of soccer, as I described in the previous paragraphs, all we need is one or more foam balls. We don't need special shoes, stadiums, or goal posts. We don't need very much land, either. This makes it possible for us to play soccer in any grassy area between buildings, or at city parks, or at a beach.

This variation of soccer would be so simple that children would be able to go out of their apartment building and into the grassy area between the buildings in order to have a game of soccer. They don't have to travel to a large soccer field, and they wouldn't need any special equipment or shoes. They would not need a large team, either. All they would need is a minimum of two people.

Factory and office workers would also be able to easily play this type of soccer during lunch. They would change into some exercise clothing, take some balls out into the grassy area between the buildings, and get some intense exercise in a short period of time, and with very little land area.

You might wonder why I propose experimenting with changes to sports if the primary goal is to provide us with exercise. Why not get our exercise on machines instead? The answer is that humans are sociable. The machines are useful for testing purposes, such as to monitor your heart rate or lung capacity, or determine your physical abilities, or to give specific muscles some exercise, but it will be much less boring to get exercise with other people. Also, sports will help people get outdoors, and I think that would be psychologically beneficial, at least for men. By having a lot of very large, covered courtyards, even if they are only partially covered, we would have year-round access to grassy areas for sports.


Relationships with subordinates

In this modern world, most of us work in close contact with other people, and most of us have to work in a hierarchy. An enormous number of employees are lonely, even though some of them are married. No society provides activities specifically to help men and women meet one another, and the end result is that a lot of the lonely people look for a spouse while they are supposed to be working. Their flirting can irritate other employees, and it sometimes results in a person of authority becoming romantically involved with one of his subordinates. These relationships usually do not cause much of a problem for businesses because businesses react by separating the couple into different departments, but this type of relationship can become a serious problem in schools.

Our societies ignore the problem of lonely people, but we have to face the fact that we are team members, and we need to help one another. We can no longer go through life trying to satisfy ourselves while ignoring everybody around us. None of us benefit by living among lonely people. Everybody will benefit if we can help one another become more productive, more pleasant team members.

As I described in other files, we should create a variety of courtship activities specifically to help men and women meet and get to know one another. By providing lots of courtship activities for everybody, we can insist that everybody do their flirting at those activities rather than while working, going to school, riding a train, or visiting a museum. This allows businesses and schools to prohibit the women from wearing sexy clothing, high-heeled shoes, cosmetics, and jewelry. It also allows the businesses to become intolerant of the men who make lewd remarks to women or who rub up against them. The people who cannot control themselves and who insist on flirting in inappropriate situations should be evicted from society so that they don't bother us. It is not nice to evict people, but consider the effect on society. It would make life very pleasant for those of us who are capable of controlling ourselves.

The problem of people in leadership positions flirting with their subordinates is most significant with schools. This problem will become more significant if we switch to an electronic education and let the government provide us with jobs and training programs because there will be more people in the role of a teacher, and there will be lots of adults going through training programs. The adult training programs will often expose adult students to teachers who are the same age, or younger, thereby creating the opposite problem that we have today in which older teachers are becoming romantically involved with younger students.

We need to experiment with changes to society, such as creating courtship activities. Then the teachers have no excuse for flirting with their students. If a teacher continues to flirt with his students, then we should evict him from society. In the case of adult teachers who are teaching adult students, if they are interested in getting to know one another, they should agree to meet and flirt at the courtship activities so that they don't create a disruption.

Our current policies towards this problem are being designed according to our emotional reactions. Specifically, we become angry when teachers become romantically involved with their students, and our anger causes us to want to punish the teacher. Our emotions are especially upset when a teacher behaves in a manner that is abnormal. For example, Brittni Colleps, a 28-year-old female teacher, was sent to jail for five years for having group sex with four of her 18 and 19-year-old students. Why does she have to go to jail for five years for having sex with adult men who wanted the sex, when church officials who have been accused of child molesting may not even be investigated? There are also accusations of pedophilia in Hollywood, but nobody cares. Why is there so much anger towards Brittni Colleps?

I suspect that we are more harsh on the female teachers because they are behaving in a manner that is very abnormal for women. Women are supposed to take care of children, not be sexually attracted to them. Furthermore, Colleps had sex with four men at the same time, which is also unusual for a woman.

Animals and humans are like trains on a track. When we encounter somebody who is not following the track, we regard them as a potential danger. For example, Brittni Colleps had sex with four 18 and 19-year-old men, and that puts her on a completely different sexual track from the rest of us. Our natural emotional reaction to anything that is out of the ordinary is fear, caution, and suspicion. We regard anything out of the ordinary as a potential danger. As a result, we are more disgusted by the people who do something unusual, such as eating dog meat, than with Hollywood directors who rape children.

If a 28-year-old male teacher were caught having sex with four 18 and 19-year-old female students, would he have been sent to jail for five years? Not necessarily. He would not evoke the emotions of fear that the unusual people evoke. Our emotional reactions to him would be more mild, and most people would interpret those milder emotions as evidence that he is less dangerous to society than Brittni Colleps. I think a 28-year-old male teacher would be considered more of a danger if he behaved in a more abnormal manner, such as having sex with 80-year-old women, dogs, young children, or other men.

We have to stop using our emotions to set policies. We need to develop more intelligent policies for relationships. To begin with, we should classify relationships into one of these four categories:

1) Relationships with children
Any sexual contact between adults and children should be considered unacceptable on the grounds that the children don't have a fully developed brain and are easily taken advantage of by adults. However, I suggest we lower the age of adulthood to 16. We should not encourage 16-year-old boys and girls to think of themselves as helpless children. They should be told that they are "young adults", and they must be responsible for themselves. They should not be allowed to misbehave and then use the excuse that they are just children. They know what they are doing at that age.

By taking the 14-year-old children away from their parents, they can be put into an environment where they can be provided with information about society, relationships, sex, and other issues, thereby reducing a lot of the confusion and frustration that the teenagers today are suffering from.

2) Forced relationships 
We don't want men to rape anybody, but as with everything in life, there is no clear dividing line between issues of rape. For example, is it possible for a husband to rape his own wife? Is it possible for a boyfriend to rape his girlfriend?

I don't think it is practical or desirable for society to get deeply involved in people's relationships, regardless of whether they are marriages or friendships. Society should only deal with the extreme cases, such as couples who fight so loudly that they annoy their neighbors, or who destroy property.

I think the best way to reduce the rape between couples in a relationship is to change society. For example, some women are getting involved in miserable marriages because they want a man for financial support. Therefore, by providing everybody with the basic necessities for free, women will have no reason to marry men for financial or political reasons.

Another problem in the world today is that people are allowed to be secretive about themselves and their history, and this is allowing dishonest, psychotic, and disgusting people to deceive one another into marriages. We can improve this problem by putting everybody's life in a publicly accessible database, evicting the destructive people from society, and by providing lots of courtship activities so that people can easily get to know a lot of people.

By making those changes to society, the healthy, normal, respectable people have an excellent chance of finding friends and a spouse. If they end up in a unpleasant marriage, they can easily get a divorce and find somebody else. Nobody would have any reason to remain in a miserable relationship and cry about it.

However, there will be some people who are either too stupid, too much like an animal, or too psychotic to form a stable relationship. For example, some crude women will get married simply to have babies and to get affection, not because they want to form a relationship with a man. Some crude men will get married simply for sex and status, not because they want to form a relationship with a woman.

It is very possible for people with crude personalities or mental illness to form abusive relationships and torment one another. What are we supposed to do with these people? Should we put cameras in their homes and try to figure out which of them is abusive, or, if they are both abusive, which is the most abusive? Even if we could figure this out, what would we do about the situation? How do we stop a husband and wife from abusing one another? And who among us wants to watch over these people? Would you want to do that for a job?

I think a better policy is for society to tell people to be more responsible for themselves. If a person gets involved in an unpleasant relationship, and if they choose to stay with that person, that is their decision. It is not our concern. If they become so disruptive that they annoy people, we can evict them from society, but we should not bother trying to stop them from doing what they want to do.

Furthermore, we should not allow women to lie about being raped. There are already cases of women doing this for various reasons, such as to explain their pregnancy, or to get revenge on a man, but lying about rape should be considered just as disgusting and detrimental to society as rape itself.

3) Pressured relationships 
As I previously mentioned, there is no dividing line between what is and is not "rape". Another example is that there are some men and women who do not technically rape a person according to our current legal definition. Instead, they use emotional pressure to manipulate a person into a sex act. We do not consider this as "rape", but we should consider it just as disgusting and detrimental as rape.

For example, some students try to manipulate their teachers into giving them better grades by offering them money, by crying and pleading, or by offering sexual favors. If a teacher takes one of the offers for sex, he will get in trouble, but why is he the only person who gets in trouble? The students who behave in this manner should be considered as bribing a teacher. Bribery should be considered abusive and disgusting, and we should not tolerate people who behave this way.

If you think this problem is insignificant, imagine it happening on a large scale. Imagine that you are a supervisor and all of your employees were routinely trying to manipulate you with tears and offers of sex. You might be able to resist their offers, but would you enjoy working with those people? Imagine that when you ride a train, the passengers are routinely offering to perform a sex act on you if you will let them have your seat, or give them your coat, or scratch their back.

There is a lot of behavior that you will tolerate on a small scale, but which would irritate you tremendously if it were happening on a large scale. When we allow disgusting behavior on a small scale, we are allowing it to grow and eventually become worse.

4) Voluntary relationships 
Brittni Colleps had voluntary relationships with those 18 and 19-year-old men. In fact, those men defended her in court rather than complain about her. Their relationship was unusual, but if we are going to punish Colleps, why not also punish all of the men that she had sex with? None of those men were forced into traveling to her home, taking their clothes off, and participating in an orgy. They did so because they wanted to do so. Everybody in that relationship was a willing participant, so how does society benefit by putting Colleps in jail?

Our reasoning for putting a teacher in jail rather than the students is because the teacher is in a position of authority, and the students are children, but in her case, her students were 18 and 19 years old. Those are not helpless boys. Those are grown, adult men. They knew what they were doing. Why should a woman be responsible for the sexual behavior of adult men?

I agree that teachers should refrain from forming relationships with students, regardless of whether they are romantic relationships or friendships. An exception to this rule would be when the adults are going through brief training programs with other adults. This occurs frequently in businesses, and it would occur even more frequently when the government is helping us to get jobs and providing us with training programs. Unless the news reports are not telling us something, it seems like there is an abnormal amount of anger towards Brittni Colleps.

If we were to remove the secrecy that is protecting everybody, I think we would find that there are a lot of single people and married couples who are lonely, or suffering from some medical disorder, and who are reacting to their problems by getting involved in strange sexual activities with other people, or with dogs. I think Colleps is only one of many unhappy people. Should we watch over everybody's sexual activities and put people in jail when they get involved in an activity that we regard as weird? We are not solving any problem by putting these people in jail. It would be better to understand why they behave this way; make changes to society to help us form stable relationships; and to restrict reproduction to the people who are better suited to this modern world.


Give people as much freedom as possible

I think the best situation is to try to give adults as much freedom as possible, and when people behave in a manner we regard as inappropriate, we simply restrict them from reproducing. In the case of Colleps, who had already reproduced by the time she had the orgy with the young men, we would be extra finicky with her children, and if they showed any signs of strange behavior, they would be prohibited from reproducing.

I think the reason we are so concerned about sexual behavior rather than more serious crimes is because sex has a stronger effect over our emotions, and we are designing our policies according to our emotional reactions rather than our intellect. When fully grown adults voluntarily get together to have unusual sex acts, our emotions are triggered, but putting them in jail doesn't provide any benefit to us or them. Meanwhile, there are men in the churches, government offices, schools, hospitals, and apparently even some police departments, who are routinely raping children and getting away with it. Our priorities are irrational. Some people seem more upset with Colleps than with Jerry Sandusky and his pedophilia network.

We have to face the fact that teenagers are going to experiment with masturbation, and that many people are going to experiment with sex. Rather than worry about what type of sex acts a person engages in, we should ask ourselves such questions as: "What would happen if future generations become more like this person? Would that create a more pleasant world for the human race?" For example, imagine if future generations of women were like Brittni Colleps. Imagine if all of the women were getting married, raising children, and having orgies with young men. There is nothing right or wrong about that, but we have to decide if this is what we want the human race to become. However, even though Colleps is showing signs of undesirable behavior, we have more important people to worry about. She should be among the last of our concerns.

These concepts apply to more than just sex. For example, consider food. We all have cravings for food, but some people have trouble controlling their cravings. Furthermore, people who are unhappy will often stimulate themselves with food. We all enjoy titillating ourselves with food, but there are some people who are doing this to excess, and we could describe them as having "food orgies". If we are going to put people in jail for sex orgies, why not put fat people in jail for having "food orgies"? Furthermore, some people could be described as having excessive cravings for money or fame. Why not put billionaires in jail for having "money orgies"? Why not put some of the Hollywood celebrities in jail for having "fame orgies"? Why do we consider excessive sexual activity to be a problem, but not excessive cravings for money, food, or fame? Some people build houses that are excessively large. Why don't we put them in jail for having "house orgies"?

Putting people in jail for excessive cravings for sex will not help them or us. The most appropriate reaction to people who display unusual or self-destructive behavior is to first consider whether their problem is caused by something that we can correct, such as diet, allergies, or hormone disorders. For all we know, some of the female teachers who are having sex with their students are suffering from something that can be corrected with modern medical technology, but they don't understand that they have a problem, and they are using sex to bring themselves some relief. However, we make no attempt to understand the cause of strange behavior. Instead, we react to problems with our emotions.

If Larry Ellison was having sex orgies every day, people would consider him to be emotionally disturbed, or suffering from low self-esteem, but how is his intense craving for money or status any less psychotic or disgusting? Why do we reprimand people with sexual problems but not other types of emotional disorders? I think the reason is because we are not thinking about the issue. We are simply reacting with our emotions.

Instead of focusing on sex acts, focus on what the world would be like if more people were like a particular person. For example, imagine if all of the men in the future generations were like Bill Gates. Imagine all of the men in the future trying to isolate themselves from other people in a gigantic mansion. Is that your idea of a healthy society? We put Brittni Colleps in jail for five years while admiring what I would describe as seriously disturbed billionaires. Britney Colleps has abnormal behavior for a woman, but she is not a threat to your life or my life. By comparison, the neurotic billionaires have a significant and destructive influence over the world. It would be better if our first priority was dealing with the people who are the most destructive to society, and after we dealt with those people, we worry about the people who are less significant. Don't judge a person by his sexual activities. Judge him by his effect on society.

The billionaires are behaving like medieval Kings and Queens. Enormous numbers of people are pampering them with mansions, yachts, and other items, but what does society gain from this? We can accomplish much more by working as a team and for the team. We could be building beautiful cities for ourselves, developing better transportation systems, and providing ourselves with greenhouses.

These concepts also applies to adultery. We need to understand adultery rather than react emotionally. We need to develop policies according to what is best for society rather than what our emotions want. Adultery is not a right or wrong issue. From the point of view of evolution, adultery is beneficial because it causes more genetic variety in the children. We need to understand adultery and make intelligent policies about it. If we were to analyze all of the people who are involved with adultery, I think we would find that they can be classified into three primary groups:

1) Affairs due to misery.
This type of affair is the result of people who are unhappy, such as a person is suffering from some mental or physical disorder, or because the person is becoming confused and frustrated as they go through the transition into old age. These people are reacting to their misery by trying to find some relief. When some people are miserable, they react by eating, shopping, drinking alcohol, or playing with their dog, but some people sometimes react by looking for affection or sex.

These type of affairs are detrimental and miserable, and most people react to these type of affairs with disgust or anger, but I don't consider these people to be any worse than the people who react to unhappiness by eating excessively, going shopping, or struggling to become famous. Rather than react with anger, we should tell all of the unhappy people to consider the possibility that there is something wrong with their body that they can fix with medical technology, or that there is something wrong with their attitude towards life which can be fixed by thinking more often, changing their goals or expectations, or becoming more educated.

2) Affairs due to incompatible spouses.
I think a lot of people are unhappy with their spouse, and this is causing them to occasionally fantasize of meeting someone that they are more compatible with, and this in turn can sometimes lead to extramarital affairs. Becoming angry with these people for having an affair is worthless because they are already suffering. Nobody benefits by tormenting them even further. I think these type of affairs can be significantly reduced by making changes to society. For example, by providing a variety of courtship affairs, single people will have the opportunity to meet and get to know a lot more people, thereby increasing the chances that we find somebody who is compatible with us.

However, courtship affairs are not enough to stop these unhappy marriages. I think we also have to change everybody's attitude towards life, marriage, and human behavior. Some of the people who are in incompatible marriages may actually be in very compatible marriages, but they don't realize it because they are expecting something unrealistic from their spouse. For example, the feminists are fooling a lot of women into expecting men to behave like women, and this can result in a woman becoming upset with her husband for being a "normal" man. I think it is unrealistic for a woman to expect her husband to be excited by babies, or to be with her when she gives birth. A lot of men would be fascinated to watch a birth, but from a man's point of view, it is only a curiosity that rapidly becomes boring.

I think there are significant differences between men and women, and these differences prevent us from spending a lot of our leisure time together. I think society needs to provide lots of activities for us, and husbands and wives need enough confidence in their relationship to allow their spouse to engage in activities on their own without becoming paranoid that their spouse will leave them for somebody else. The people who are afraid that their spouse will abandon them should be considered as neurotic.

Men and women need to understand one another and deal with our differences. For example, women like to dance much more than men, so a woman should expect her husband to have less interest in dancing than she has. The women should dance alone, with other women, or with whichever men enjoy doing it. This requires people change their attitude towards their spouse and stop treating their spouse as a personal possession. There is nothing wrong with a man's wife dancing with another man while he is at some other activity. She does not have to avoid contact with other men or give him reports on who she has met.

Many people have the attitude that their spouse is their personal possession, and that their spouse should not have any contact with people of the opposite sex, but I think this is a crude, unrealistic attitude. There is nothing wrong with men and women enjoying one another at social affairs.

I think the reason some couples get divorced when they are free to flirt with other people is because many people foolishly believe that when they encounter somebody who is entertaining, that the other person would be a more exciting or compatible spouse. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily true. You might laugh at a comedian, but that doesn't mean you would enjoy living with him as a roommate, marrying him, taking a walk in the park with him, or being his neighbor. Just because a woman enjoys a man as a dance partner doesn't mean that she would enjoy living with him, having dinner with him, or raising children with him.

Our primitive ancestors could form relationships based entirely on their emotional reactions to one another, but we have to be much more serious because we have more leisure time, and life today is much more complex.

You might enjoy flirting with somebody at a social affair, and you might enjoy doing it on a regular basis, or you might enjoy riding horses together, or going scuba diving together, but just because you enjoy some activities together doesn't mean that you would enjoy living as a married couple.

It's important to note that most people have very little control over their emotions. This is why most people eat excessively, drink excessively, gamble excessively, and avoid responsibility. They want to titillate themselves, like children or animals. They don't want to think or control themselves. When these crude people encounter somebody that they find entertaining, they may abandon their spouse and marry that other person, and later, when they meet somebody else that they find entertaining, they may repeat the process. When these crude people see a donut, they may eat it, even if they are already full. We cannot worry about these crude people. We have to design society for the more advanced humans.

We should provide ourselves with lots of activities, and we should encourage men and women to let their spouse enjoy activities on their own. Our attitude should be that if you are incapable of forming a stable relationship, that is your problem. By restricting reproduction to the people who form more stable relationships, we will create humans who are capable of enjoying other people, including flirting with other people, without the jealousy, envy, hatred, and marital problems.

Most people give me the impression that they are looking for a spouse that they enjoy; a spouse that they can have fun with. They are like children looking for somebody to play with. Most people seem to think of a marriage as endless amounts of romance, sex, and entertainment. However, most of the time that a husband and wife spend together are on the "boring" aspects of life, such as waking up in the morning, getting dressed, going to sleep at night, and dealing with children. Therefore, people should concentrate on finding somebody that they want to live with. The person you prefer to live with is not necessarily the person that you want to dance with, sing with, or even take a bicycle ride with.

In prehistoric times, people knew each other intimately. They knew when they woke up in the morning, how many hours they would sleep each night, and whether they snored at night. It was easy for them to pick out a spouse that they would be happy to live with. Today, however, instead of seriously looking for somebody to live with, both men and women are trying to impress and titillate one another. They each put on a phony image of what they are, and they try to make themselves appear exciting and entertaining. They are trying to deceive one another. This is an idiotic way of meeting a spouse. We need to know people much more thoroughly. We need to know if we have compatible sleeping hours, and we should have some leisure activities in common. We need to know if we are going to enjoy being with them during the "dull" moments in the morning and at night.

One of the advantages to putting teenagers in Teentown is that the adults can arrange for a lot of activities for the boys and girls to get to know one another. Although the girls and boys would be separated in different buildings, the adults would be able to experiment with lots of activities to help them get to know one another. They could even experiment with camping trips together.

I think another reason that marriages are unstable today is because husbands and wives are spending too much of their time together in their homes. One reason is because we are living in houses that are far away from our friends, and that makes it difficult for people to get together for activities. The solution to this problem is to live in apartment complexes that give us easy access to the social activities in the city, and to allow us to move freely from one apartment to another so that we can live among our friends. Although single-family homes are very desirable, I think we would be happier overall in apartment complexes.

Another improvement would be to remove the people from leadership positions who promote toilet humor and who portray women as sexually promiscuous. This is giving teenage boys an unrealistic impression of what to expect from girls. A lot of television programs also portray the men as incompetent, infantile idiots, and the women as leaders. We need to be more realistic.

3) Natural affairs.
Some of the adulterous affairs seem to be due to human nature. Women are extremely resistant to sex, but they are not resistant when they encounter a man who is high on the social hierarchy. Take a look at women when they encounter a Hollywood celebrity. They are willing to line up and offer themselves sexually. We have to face the fact that humans are nothing more than intelligent apes, and that women have a tendency to offer themselves to the dominant men. Men were not designed to resist such offers. Actually, it is a man's fantasy.

These type of affairs are likely to be unnoticed because both the men and women are enjoying themselves, which means that nobody is complaining, and both men and women have a tendency to have their affairs discreetly and then return to their regular lives. However, in the world today, a lot of mentally disturbed men are becoming rich and famous, and they have a tendency to have wild and disgusting affairs, often in front of other people.

These type of affairs can be reduced significantly by treating men in a more equal manner. Our emotions do not want equality, but I think it would be better for us. When none of the men are rich or famous, then the women will not offer themselves to anybody. This requires designing a society so that all of the men have virtually the same homes, and nobody is treated as a "celebrity".

You might wonder how it is possible for nobody to be famous or a "celebrity". Recall that earlier I mentioned that we could modify the award ceremonies into a more useful social affair. If we were to regularly have social affairs that honored gardeners, factory workers, carpenters, scuba divers, and everybody else, then everybody would occasionally get some attention. It would also remind people that everybody is doing something of value to society. I think this would help reduce the problem we have today in which a few people are being treated as better than the rest of us.

I think it is important to note that the type of adulterous affair that I'm describing as "natural" may not be very common today, but I think it's going to become an increasingly significant problem as soon as we start creating homogenous cities and restricting reproduction. Imagine living in a city a few centuries in the future in which all of the people are intelligent, nice-looking, nice smelling, well behaved, and have pleasant personalities. You would be surrounded by people that you are attracted to, and who consider you to be attractive, also.

In our world today, most of us live and work around people that we have nothing in common with, and we dislike, despise, or fear many of them. Almost everybody today is in contact with thousands of people, but there are only a few of them that we want to be friends with, and there are even fewer that we want to have a romantic relationship with. We can easily walk around our city, go shopping, and meet our neighbors without becoming interested in forming a friendship with them or becoming their lover.

Imagine living in a future city in which all of the people are healthy and happy. Imagine walking into a city park, office building, factory, restaurant, or recreational area and finding yourself surrounded by women (or men, if you are a woman) who are physically attractive, have adorable personalities, and are intelligent, honest, and responsible. In that type of a city, you wouldn't have to search through very many people to find a friend or spouse. Actually, you would be constantly encountering people that you would like as a friend or spouse.

Imagine adorable government officials. Imagine adorable nurses. Imagine going outside at lunch and finding adorable office and factory workers.
The future generations will have to deal with the opposite problem that we have today. Today most people are very lonely, and they are struggling to find friends and a spouse. We have trouble finding friends because we dislike most of the people we live with. Our cities today are essentially a human garbage dump. In the future, the people are going to have to deal with an excess of potential friends and spouses. They are going to have to turn people away.

The people in the future will be more attractive in both their physical appearance and personality, and so they will have greater temptations to form adulterous relationships. Therefore, the people of the future are going to need a much better understanding of human emotions and relationships. They must be capable of developing courtship activities that truly help them meet people and find a spouse that they enjoy living with. They have to do a better job of analyzing potential spouses for compatibility. They must also figure out how to form more stable, more satisfying marriages.

Our prehistoric ancestors could easily survive and enjoy life simply by acting like monkeys, but modern society requires both men and women to develop a better understanding of their own emotions and that of their partner. This is especially true of sexual issues. People must become less inhibited, less dishonest, and less ashamed of themselves so that they can understand their own sexual feelings, and learn how to satisfy their partner.

Imagine being a teenage boy in a school in which all of the girls are intelligent, well behaved, and beautiful.
This upcoming problem is also one of the reasons I suggest that we separate the teenage boys and girls in school and at work. In the world today, there is not too much of a problem with mixing the boys and girls because most of them do not like one another, but imagine yourself in a classroom in which you are surrounded by girls, or boys, that you find attractive. Would you be able to concentrate?

In the world today, there is sexual titillation in all of the advertisements, television shows, and movies. Many businesses deliberately design outfits for waitresses to be sexually titillating. I think this causes trouble today, and I think the problem will become even more significant in the future when the women are even more adorable. Imagine being a teenage boy in the future when all of the girls are adorable, and you are being stimulated constantly by television, businesses, newscasters, and waitresses.

In a free enterprise system, businesses benefit tremendously from sexual titillation, but nobody else benefits. Allowing businesses to titillate boys and adult men is as destructive as allowing businesses to create the impression that money brings happiness, or that diamonds are a girl's best friend. This is creating problems for society. Nobody benefits from this type of manipulation.


Why are quiz shows so popular?

Television has a lot of popular "game shows" and "quiz shows", such as Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. What is it about these shows that people enjoy? I suspect that we are titillated by these shows because they provide us with the opportunity to solve a simple puzzle.

All animals are titillated by solving certain problems. For example, when you tie a piece of string to a stick and move it around for a cat to chase after, the cat has to figure out how to catch the string. If you move the string behind an object, the cat has to figure out whether it will come out on the other side of the object, or remain on the same side. Dogs love to chase after balls, but what they are really doing is capturing the ball by predicting where the ball will be when they try to grab it. When a dog jumps up to catch a ball, it cannot jump at what he sees. Rather, its mind has to perform a very complicated analysis of the motion of the ball, its jumping ability, and how much to flex each of its muscles so that its mouth will arrive at the ball at the proper time.

Pet cats and dogs enjoy capturing objects. They put a lot of mental and physical effort into the activity, so this implies that they are receiving emotional titillation for solving this particular type of problem. They are not doing this because of hunger, or because they feel obligated. I think they are behaving just like young boys who are throwing a ball to one another. They are titillating themselves by solving the problem of predicting the motion of an object in 3-D space.

It's interesting to note that our robots, even if they had the mechanical ability to move like a dog, would not be able to capture objects as quickly as a dog. Our robots have to process a lot of information and do a lot of math calculations in order to predict the motion of an object, and the computers of today cannot perform the calculations fast enough to match the performance of a dog. MIT has developed an airplane that can fly around obstacles, but it has to be preprogrammed for the area that it is flying in. It is not capable of processing information fast enough to allow it to go into an uncharted forest and fly through tree branches, as a bird can do.

Our robots make movements according to precise math calculations, but animals may be doing approximate, analog operations. For example, the closer a cat is to a mouse, the greater the tension will be on the cat's muscles that tilt its eyes, and the greater the tension will be on its cornea. The faster the mouse is moving, the greater the activity will be of the muscles that are moving its head as it tracks the mouse. It may be using that information to set its muscles for pouncing. Animals may not do complex math operations. Since this analog circuitry would have to be "calibrated" after birth, that would explain why the young animals play with one another so often. Perhaps the only way we will ever get robots and drones to make decisions as rapidly as the animals is to provide them with similar features.

Humans get pleasure from solving certain types of problems, just as the animals do. Another reason we enjoy solving puzzles is because it makes us feel intelligent and educated. We love feeling special, especially men. Therefore, solving a puzzle allows us to imagine that we are special people.

Unfortunately, the emotion that causes us to enjoy solving problems was not designed for this modern world. It has no concern for whether the problem has any value to us. This emotion works properly for animals and primitive humans because the problems that they must solve are truly important to their lives. However, in this modern world, we can create an unlimited number of artificial and completely worthless problems. Some examples are the Rubik's cube, jigsaw puzzles, and crossword puzzles. These problems are essentially dildos, except that we use them to stimulate a different emotion.

Some people believe that some puzzles are educational, and perhaps a few are, but some of them may be as worthless as a cat chasing a piece of string. When people solve problems that have no value to them, they are merely titillating their emotions. Furthermore, these people are usually doing this alone in their home. They are doing "emotional masturbation". The activity makes them feel good, but they accomplish nothing.

As we get a better understanding of our emotions, we can do a better job of designing activities for us that are both emotionally satisfying and somewhat useful. We can certainly design puzzles for children that help prepare them for society or help them to learn a useful skill. We could also create puzzles for children that require the children to work together in some manner so that they meet other children, get some exercise, and get accustomed to working in teams. I think it is foolish to encourage children to sit for hours by themselves and titillate themselves with a Rubik's cube, jigsaw puzzle, or crossword puzzle.

If a person were to spend hours a day sitting at home alone and stimulating himself sexually, we would consider him to have a problem, but what is the difference between stimulating yourself sexually and stimulating yourself with crossword puzzles, Rubiks cubes, or mathematical puzzles? Businesses profit by selling products for self-stimulation, but do any of us benefit from it? Does society?

I'm not suggesting that everything we do have a value. There is nothing wrong with relaxing once in a while by yourself or with your friends, and doing something as useless as watching the clouds blow around, watching children play, or watching a hummingbird. I am not opposed to people who stimulate themselves sexually, either. I am simply pointing out that we should not mindlessly do whatever brings us some emotional titillation. We should try to understand our emotional cravings and think more often.

Children are more interested in games than adults, and we certainly have the intelligence to design activities that are at least partly useful for them. I don't think they are benefiting by sitting at home for hours with the existing puzzles and games. We certainly have the intelligence to create some puzzles or games that are more educational, and we can create activities that get them out of the house, help them to meet other people, get some exercise, and possibly learn something useful or do something useful. If we start thinking about our activities and start experimenting with changes, we will certainly develop activities that are just as much fun, but more beneficial to us, as individuals, and to society.

Getting back to the issue of quiz shows, notice that they tend to provide a lot of simple problems rather than a few very complex problems. A typical Jeopardy program, if the advertisements are removed, has about 20 minutes of questions. During that time period, they might ask as many as 60 questions. Would jeopardy have been popular if they had provided only one question that took 20 minutes to solve? Or how about four questions that took five minutes apiece? Would an audience want to watch the contestants do research on an issue, discuss the issue, and think about the issue? Some people might, but I think most people would lose their interest in the show because we don't want to think. Our natural tendency is to behave like an animal. We want to look in our memory, and then make a very rapid decision based on what we find. We do not want to spend any time researching, thinking, or discussing.

The Wheel of Fortune requires a few minutes to solve each puzzle, but the people do not have to spend any time thinking or researching.

A television murder mystery might take an hour to solve, but it doesn't require any serious thinking or research. The audience is provided with clues every few minutes, and all the audience has to do is make a simple decision about which of the clues is intended to confuse them. They don't have to put much effort into solving the puzzle. A murder mystery is more like a jigsaw puzzle than a complex, intellectual problem.

The game and quiz shows provide a lot of entertainment for very little resources. However, I think our free enterprise system is a bad influence on the quiz shows. The television businesses want to profit from their shows, and their primary technique is to attract people to their show by offering very significant prizes, usually of money. I think it would be better if there were no prizes at all, and the games were purely for fun.

In my discussion about sports, I suggested that we encourage more participation and less voyeurism. The same concept applies to game shows. Instead of watching the shows on television, a city could have several shows happening at different locations, such as at theaters, at restaurants after dinner, or in a park. When there are no prizes, nobody has to be concerned about winning or losing, and so people don't have to practice for the events or worry about failing. The game shows would be more spontaneous and fun.

Instead of sitting in your home alone and watching strangers on television compete for money, you would go to an event in your city and watch some of your own friends, neighbors, and coworkers participate in their own version of Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy. These local, community game shows would be for fun, not prizes. Some people would volunteer to be contestants, some would volunteer to be hosts for the show, and some would volunteer to create the questions that the contestants have to answer.

In addition to entertaining people, I think the shows would be beneficial by helping people get over their inhibitions about participating in activities and doing something in front of other people. Initially most people will only want to watch other people play the games, but since we will occasionally know one of the contestants, we will eventually notice that none of the contestants are suffering as a result of participating. That will cause some people to find the courage to participate in a game, also. The more people that participate, the easier it will be to convince other people to give it a try. Although it is enjoyable to watch other people, voyeurism should not be our only leisure time activity. I think people will be happier when they occasionally participate in activities.

The free enterprise system does not want us to arrange for our own game shows. We are encouraged to pay other people to entertain us, but is that really what is best for us? I don't think so. Most people today would probably refuse to participate in a game show as either a contestant or as a host, but I think that most people would eventually get over their inhibitions and give it a try. It might take some people a few years, but it would eventually happen.

I think the primary reason that people are afraid to participate in activities is because they worry about doing poorly in the contest, and a minor problem is that many people are embarrassed about what they look like. However, these fears are ridiculous. First of all, the people who are afraid to participate because they worry about their appearance are foolish to worry about this because everybody who knows them already knows what their physical qualities are. They are not going to fool anybody by hiding in the back of the room. For example, if a person is ugly or fat, he may be afraid to be in front of a group of people because he worries that other people will regard him as ugly or fat. However, everybody who knows him will already regard him as ugly or fat, so he should stop worrying about it.

A fat person who worries about his fatness has two problems. First, he is fat, and second, he is self-conscious about it. It is better for a fat person to ignore his fatness. A fat person who is self-conscious or inhibited is a neurotic fat person, and that is much worse than a pleasant fat person.

The same concept applies to people who worry about doing poorly in a contest. These people are worried that we will discover what they really are. They want us to believe the image that they have created for themselves, and they worry that if they participate in some activity, we will discover that they are less talented than they claim to be. These people are making themselves look arrogant, or neurotic, or inhibited, or suffering from low self-esteem. They should relax and accept themselves for what they are rather than create a phony image of what they want to be.

One of the problems with society today is that people who do poorly in a contest will be ridiculed by some of the audience members who have a nasty, bitter, sarcastic personality. The other people in the audience will remain silent. There is nothing wrong with laughing at people's mistakes, but the people who make sarcastic, bitter, envious, or angry remarks should be forced out of the audience. Don't let them intimidate you.

People should also be encouraged to participate in making questions for the quiz shows. This would allow us to create quiz shows for specific groups of people, or about the city we live in, or for specific events. For example, at a children's birthday party, the adults could arrange a quiz show in which the children have to answer questions about all of the people who are attending the birthday party. People could also arrange for a quiz show at a wedding or anniversary.

I think that if a city were to encourage us to experiment with holding our own game shows, there would initially be a lot of embarrassment and awkwardness, but we will get used to it. I think that most people would discover that they prefer watching live shows in which they know the contestants rather than watching strangers on a television. After a while, a lot of people would relax enough to participate as contestants or hosts.


How do we design better entertainment activities?

In addition to experimenting with new sports, I think we should experiment with new social activities of all types. I don't think there is much value in our birthday parties, city festivals, wedding ceremonies, Christmas holidays, or Valentine's Day holidays.

To create a more useful activity, we first have to decide on what the purpose should be. Every affair should provide us with some benefit, such as exercise, socializing, entertainment, education, or something beneficial for society. If an affair requires equipment or supplies, then we have to consider whether the burden of producing those items is worth the benefit.

For example, what is the purpose of a child's birthday party? In a free enterprise system, businesses exploit the parties to sell gifts, cakes, ice cream, candies, candles, and other items, but when we provide the basic necessities for free, there is no point in giving gifts. When we take control of the economy, we have to decide if we want to produce items for the parties, such as candles or ice cream, and if so, that means some people have to work in the factories that produce those items. Is the burden of producing those items worth the benefit? What exactly is the benefit of a birthday party?

The typical American birthday party, without gifts, is just an orgy of sweet foods. How do the children benefit from that? We should not try to please the children. The children will love having excessive amounts of sweets, but they don't benefit from that. Actually, we could say that they suffer from it. We have to ignore what the children want and experiment with a birthday party that has some value, such as entertainment, socializing, exercise, or education.

In order to do a good job of designing birthday parties, holiday celebrations, sports, wedding ceremonies, and other activities, we need to understand the needs of the human mind and body. We cannot design activities according to what our emotions want. A child would love to have candy, ice cream, and cake at a birthday party, but that is not what his body needs. Likewise, adult men want to feel important, but that doesn't justify providing them with thousands of award ceremonies, and adult women like to be the center of attention, but that doesn't justify providing them with thousands of beauty contests.

Our city festivals and holiday celebrations are opportunities for businesses and governments to make money, and for religions to promote propaganda, but these activities should serve a more useful purpose, such as encouraging people to try some new activity; providing entertainment; providing people with exercise; getting some of the people who like arts and crafts to contribute to an artistic project for the city; or giving teenagers some practice with talking or performing in public. After we decide on the purpose of a particular activity, then we have to experiment with methods to achieve that purpose. This will be a trial and error process, but we have nothing to lose and lots to gain.

Designing entertainment activities requires that we understand what the human mind finds entertaining, and why. The remainder of this file will discuss the subject of humor. I cannot provide much of an explanation for the subject, but hopefully I will inspire other people to think about the issue and add to it. As we learn more about such issues as humor, we will do a better job of figuring out how to design "entertainment".


What is "humor"?

As I mentioned in part 7, the more we know about a subject, the more divisions and subdivisions we create. The subject of humor has no divisions. This is a sign that we haven't learned anything about humor. We cannot make any distinction between different types of humor. We cannot figure out if there is a difference between laughing at a slapstick comedian, laughing at a sexual joke, or laughing at a person who falls down.
Why are some potentially dangerous accidents amusing while others are upsetting?
What causes us to laugh? What causes us to groan at "puns"? What is the difference between a joke and a pun? Why do we consider some types of accidents to be amusing while others are frightening or sad? Why do some people laugh at certain jokes, while other people complain that the joke is stupid or insulting?

Automobile accidents are sad and frightening when we witness them in person, but when watching them on video, we sometimes laugh at them. We are not laughing because a person may be dead or injured, so what are we laughing at?

You might find it interesting to watch some of the compilations of automobile accidents and notice if you react to any, and if so, which ones. I think the Russian drivers provide some of the most bizarre accidents. For example, here is number 27. At the one minute mark is a strange accident, and seconds later is an even more bizarre accident. Try to relax and be honest as you watch those videos. Notice which accidents are most likely to cause you to laugh, make noises, or shake your head. I am most likely to laugh or make noises about the most bizarre accidents, and more likely to feel saddened by the more "typical" accidents.

Why would we laugh at bizarre accidents? I suppose it is the same reason we laugh at slapstick comedy. My guess is that as our mind watches the automobile or the slapstick comedian, it is trying to predict what is going to happen in the future, and when something completely unexpected happens, it creates what we refer to as surprise, shock, or amazement. For some reason, we are stimulated by the unexpected. Perhaps this developed for safety purposes. During prehistoric times, if something unexpected happened, even if it was just an unexpected noise, we would be alert to danger, but when watching slapstick comedy or video of automobile accidents, we realize that there is no danger, and so we seem to enjoy the stimulation rather than be worried about it.

If you have already watched a lot of automobile accidents, then you may not have much of a reaction to them, which is a sign that we are reacting to the surprise of what happens rather than to the accident. In other words, we are not laughing at the accident; rather, we are laughing at being surprised or shocked by it.

The type of laughter we do when watching automobile accidents is not the same type of laughter as when we listen to a comedian tell jokes. We also make more noises and body movements when watching automobile accidents.

I think the human mind has more emotions than we have ways of expressing them, and so laughter is being used by more than one emotion. This creates confusion because we cannot be certain why a person is laughing.

We know almost nothing about the subject of humor, and so the category is very broad and vague. As we learn more about humor, we will create subcategories of humor, and we will be able to distinguish between different types of humor and laughter. We will also find that some jokes are amusing for a variety of reasons, and other jokes are amusing for only one specific reason.

I think the main reason we find jokes amusing is because we receive some emotional titillation for solving certain types of problems. The jokes that we regard as "funny" are jokes that require we solve a problem, and when we solve the problem, we are momentarily titillated. The reason a joke is not as funny the second time we hear it is because once our mind has decoded it, it doesn't have to do any significant work the second time, and so the portion of our brain that enjoys solving puzzles is not triggered. By comparison, if we like a song, a food, or a recreational activity, we will enjoy it over and over. The fact that a joke becomes less funny each time we hear it is an indication that the funny aspect is in the decoding process, not in the joke.

Children cannot think very well, and they don't have much experience with the world, and so their mind will be titillated by problems that adults consider obvious. This causes children to giggle at jokes that are meaningless to an adult. An example is the proposal by NASA to send scuba divers into the Pacific Ocean to explore the sun when it sets in the evening. To many children, that is an intellectual puzzle, and therefore, they will be titillated by solving it, but most adults can solve it without any effort.

It's also important to note that whether we consider a particular joke to be funny depends mainly on the context of the joke. For example, if a political candidate were to make that joke about NASA during a serious speech, it would likely be regarded as a sarcastic remark about NASA rather than a joke.

A song is always a song regardless of whether a political candidate uses it in one of his campaign speeches, or whether construction workers are playing it while they work, or whether a person is listening to it while he is relaxing at home. The same is true with a pizza. It's always a pizza, regardless of the environment. However, a joke can change from funny to disgusting to sarcastic simply by changing the environment that it is presented in. This is another indication that jokes are not "funny". Jokes are "interpreted", and so they are only funny if we interpret them in a certain manner.

For another example about how the context changes a joke, imagine some friends sending text messages to one another on their phones, and that one of the friends, Ling Wu, has a strong Chinese accent. We might find text messages like this:

John: No, I'm not suffering from confusion. I love every minute of it!
Jim: LOL!
Ling Wu: ROR!
Bob: What is ROR?
Ling Wu: Raffing Out Roud!
In that particular context, most people would consider that remark to be amusing rather than insulting because, for one reason, a Chinese person made the remark, and for another, they are friends with each other. Actually, I think most people would consider Ling Wu to be clever if he had been the first person to think of that joke. However, that same joke would be regarded as insulting if somebody made it in a sarcastic manner. In that case, the momentary titillation that we receive from decoding the joke would be overpowered by the intellectual realization that the person was sarcastic.

The emotional titillation that we receive from solving a problem is momentary, whereas our intellectual conclusions can be persistent, and so our intellectual interpretation of a joke can easily dominate the brief emotional pleasure that we receive from a joke. The more we think about a joke, the more our intellect will dominate our interpretation of it. Jokes will be funnier if we relax and try not to think about them.

Comedians have a difficult job because every joke can be interpreted as funny, insulting, or stupid. Only certain people are successful as comedians. From my casual observations, they are the people who excel in presenting jokes in a very amusing manner, and they often have a visually amusing appearance. Their behavior and appearance puts us into a particular mood. They cause us to relax and expect jokes, and this causes us to become biased in the favor of interpreting jokes as amusing rather than as insulting. They make us less likely to "think about" the jokes and more likely to enjoy the "visual slide show" that appears in our mind as we decode their jokes. Most of their jokes, if presented by somebody else in a serious manner, would be considered stupid, rude, insulting, or disgusting.

The type of jokes that we are most likely to interpret as funny are those that have no reference to anybody in particular, and merely require that we solve a problem. We especially find jokes amusing if they decode into images or concepts that are slightly unrealistic, such as the automobile bumper sticker that says, Honk if you love peace and quiet. I suppose we find these funny for the same reason that we find slapstick comedy funny; specifically, they decode into images that are "abnormal", and that alerts us to danger.

The safest way for a comedian to make jokes about people or about human behavior is for him to make the joke about himself or an imaginary friend rather than a real person. For example, you might be momentarily amused if a comedian told you that he is taking some adult education courses in statistics, and he has just figured out that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the world's population. However, what if he told you that Al Gore was just awarded a Nobel Prize for making that discovery? If you admire Al Gore and the Nobel prizes, you would likely interpret that joke as an insult, but if you are disgusted with Al Gore and the Nobel prizes, you might consider the joke to be somewhat amusing.

An insulting version of a joke will be more amusing than a non-insulting version if you are angry with the person that the joke is about because in that case our minds get stimulated in two, separate manners. First, we get some titillation for decoding the joke, and second, some other section of our brain is titillated by the insult. We might describe that other section of our mind as the area for anger, resentment, or disgust. An example are the jokes about groups of people that we don't like, such as politicians, lawyers, and Jews. The people who consider these jokes to be amusing are the people who dislike the subject, whereas other people will consider the jokes to be rude or insulting.

The insulting jokes frequently change according to current events. For example, did you hear about the high school football player who was unusually quiet and sad as he was putting on his uniform in the locker room? A teammate asked, "What's wrong?" He replied, "Both of my parents died in a car accident last night." His friend suggested that he see the coach before the game begins. "He'll make you feel better!", to which he friend quickly responded, "Oh, no! Sex is the last thing I want right now!" That joke would probably have been considered idiotic prior to the exposure of Jerry Sandusky.

A lot of people complain about the insulting jokes, but they all developed for a reason. Therefore, when a politician, Jew, or lawyer complains about the jokes, we could respond that it is their own fault for providing source material for the joke. It is not a coincidence that there are more angry jokes about lawyers and Jews than there are about airline pilots and Eskimos. If more football coaches are caught raping boys, then there will be more jokes about pedophile coaches. At the other extreme, if everybody would behave properly, nobody would feel a desire to express their anger about a group of people. We could say that these jokes are an indication of a problem with society.

Another example of these insulting jokes are the references to Arabs as "towel heads" or "sand niggers". Our mind has to decode those phrases to understand them, and we would normally be titillated when we figure them out, and children may consider them amusing, but most adults will quickly realize that the person is expressing his disgust of Arabs rather than making a joke. We will receive a bit of titillation when we decode the joke, but that will quickly fade and we will interpret the joke as an insult. The people who dislike Arabs will be titillated by the insult, whereas other people will be irritated by it. It would be very difficult for a comedian to use these insulting type of "jokes" in a manner that we regarded as amusing.

I think that another reason some jokes appear to be funny is because they are actually embarrassing us. Disregarding the fact that we don't understand what "embarrassment" is, the sexual jokes are an example of this category. I would not describe many of the sexual jokes as "funny". These jokes seem amusing because our reaction is to giggle, which is similar to our reaction to a funny joke. However, our giggling at sexual jokes is not exactly the same type of giggling as for amusing jokes. It's an awkward, self-conscious giggle. The sexual jokes are titillating some other section of our brain, and so they should not be described as "funny".

I previously mentioned that Joe Biden and I were reacting to some of Paul Ryan's remarks with smiles or giggles. Why do we sometimes smile, giggle, and laugh at what are supposed to be serious remarks? It might be because some of their remarks are titillating that section of our mind that causes us to feel embarrassed.

Humans have a lot more facial and body expressions than animals, but we seem to be using some of the same expressions for different reasons. For example, we giggle from the enjoyment of learning something new and from figuring something out, but we also giggle when we are embarrassed or feeling awkward. There may be several other reasons that we giggle. When a person laughs at something you say, he might be laughing because he considers your remark funny, and/or because your remark embarrassed him, and/or because he is embarrassed for you for saying something like that in public.

I think a sexual joke causes us to giggle when it triggers the emotion that we refer to as "embarrassment". One reason I think this is because these jokes seem to be most amusing to people who are easily embarrassed by sexual material, especially children who are going through puberty. These jokes are the least amusing to the older adults who are not easily embarrassed by sexual material.

I suppose embarrassment could be considered as a "quality control feature" of the human mind. Unlike solitary animals, we are concerned about what other people think about us. The emotion that we call "embarrassment" seems to review our thoughts, and if it considers our thoughts as possibly detrimental to ourselves and our relationships, it gives us an unpleasant feeling in order to stop us from doing it. Emotions cannot speak to us, so we do not hear voices in our mind giving us such commands as, "Don't behave in that manner, you idiot!" Instead, each emotion tries to influence us by creating feelings, which we describe as nervousness, awkwardness, pleasure, fear, or embarrassment.

Whenever we feel nervous, awkward, or embarrassed, it is because your mind is trying to stop you from doing something. Rather than ignore or suppress the feelings, you should ask yourself, "Why is my mind so worried? Why is my mind trying to incapacitate me?"

These emotions had a very important purpose in prehistoric times. Today they are frequently getting confused, but we should not dismiss them. Sometimes our mind is trying to warn us to stay away from a particular person or a particular situation. You will especially notice this emotion if you try to do something that you know you should not do. It doesn't matter whether the activity is legal. If you know you are not supposed to do something, this emotion will try to stop you.

Unfortunately, this emotion doesn't understand modern society, and so it frequently tries to stop us from doing things that are acceptable today, or even necessary. For example, it is necessary for people today to stand in front of a group of people and talk to them, but this emotion considers that type of behavior to be abnormal, and so tries to stop us by making us feel nervous. The more unprepared we are for giving a talk, the more strongly this emotion will try to stop us. Also, the larger the group is, the more nervous we will be. Our prehistoric ancestors regularly talked to one another, but they did not stand on stages in front of thousands of people. They talked to one another just like friends talk to one another. Our emotions were not designed for giving lectures to large groups of people, or for singing on a stage. We have to become accustomed to this type of activity through practice.

I think another category of humor are jokes that trigger self-esteem. These jokes require us to have some special knowledge in order to "decode" it. The people who have that knowledge can then imagine that they are special people because they "get" the joke. For example, the two T-shirts to the right would be meaningless to most of us, not amusing or attractive.

These jokes provide two amusing qualities. First, we are titillated by solving the joke, and second, the people who solve the joke can titillate themselves by telling themselves how smart or educated they are. In a sense, these jokes encourage emotional masturbation. In other words, after you solve the joke, you titillate yourself for being smart.

If we were to keep track of which T-shirts we are attracted to, and which jokes we laugh at, we would find patterns that would help us to understand ourselves. We would also find that our reaction to jokes changes throughout the day and as we grow older. When we are upset with Microsoft Windows, for example, we will laugh at jokes about Microsoft that we would otherwise consider as idiotic.

I cannot explain humor, but the point I am trying to make is that as we learn more about the human mind, the better we will do at designing a society that fits our mind, controlling ourselves, and planning for our future. Do not underestimate the significance of understanding the human mind.

Prehistoric humans didn't need to understand anything about themselves, but today we need an understanding of our mind and body so that we can understand and control our cravings for food, material items, money, pornography, drugs, sex, fame, children, and trophies. We need to understand why we laugh, why children torment misfits, and why we become embarrassed.


Control your tendency to blurt out answers

We have to be aware that we have a tendency to solve problems rapidly by looking in our memory for information, filling in any missing details, and then creating a conclusion based on that real and falsified data. Men also have to be aware that we love to feel important. We have to keep our arrogance under control, and we have to remind ourselves to do research on issues, and spend more time analyzing them. For example, why does the moon look larger when it is low on the horizon?

At different times during my life I have heard children ask that question, and if there is a man in the area, he will blurt out an answer within microseconds. A man will be proud of himself for solving the problem immediately, but has anybody actually put any serious effort into studying this issue? Most of us don't even have enough of an understanding of optics, the effect the atmosphere has on light, or how the human mind interprets visual images, to do a good job of answering that question. Most people are answering the question simply by looking in their memory and making a rapid conclusion based on what little information they find.

Most of us have heard that the moon only looks larger because our mind is misinterpreting the visual image when the moon is low on the horizon. I don't know much about optics, either, but I suspect that this explanation is incorrect. I suspect that the atmosphere is having an effect on the image.

Did you know that NASA claims to have sent 11 Apollo crews into either earth orbit or to the moon? They were Apollo 7 to Apollo 17. All of the Apollo astronauts could have told us whether the moon looks larger when it is near the horizon of the earth, and the astronauts who circled the moon could have told us whether the Earth looked larger when it was near the horizon of the moon. They might have helped us resolve this issue of why the moon looks larger near the horizon.

Both the moon and the sun look larger and more reddish when they are near the horizon, but I don't think this is because our mind is misinterpreting the visual image. I think the atmosphere is affecting the image. In the diagram to the right, when the moon or sun are at the horizon, the light has to travel through much more of the atmosphere, and that will cause more of the light to scatter. This would increase the diameter of a beam of light. This has the effect of magnifying the image. The larger image will be blurry, but because it is larger, it will activate more of the cells in our eyes, thereby creating the illusion that the moon and sun have become larger. Since more of the blue light will get scattered, the image will also have a reddish tint.

Furthermore, I suspect that the change in density of the atmosphere causes the atmosphere to behave like a glass lens. The way to test this theory would be to put some air in a glass container that is the shape of a lens or a prism, and then put the glass object in a vacuum, and shine a beam of light into it, as in the three images below.

In the images below, a hollow, glass prism is filled with air and put into a vacuum.
Ignoring the effect of the glass walls, would the air have an effect on the light?
Light changes direction.
No effect at all.
A spectrum is created.

 

What is the difference between crying and producing tears?

Why do people cry? What is the difference between crying and producing tears? Why don't men cry as much as women and children?

We associate tears with crying, but I think there is a subtle difference between the two. For example, some people cry when they fail at something, such as when Honey Boo Boo cries after losing a beauty contest, but they do not always produce tears. Some children cry when they don't get what they want, but they don't always produce tears, either. Actually, some of them become angry and violent.

It is also interesting to note that tears are sometimes produced from intense physical pain, but a person doesn't necessarily cry from the pain, and tears are also produced over pleasurable events, such as weddings, and that doesn't always produce crying, either. Why would our eyes produce tears for both pain and for pleasure?

The act of crying seems to have originally developed for babies to manipulate parents into providing them with assistance. However, the production of tears may have developed for some other reason, such as a reaction to any intense emotion as a way of ensuring the eyes remain clean. Perhaps the production of tears became exaggerated in humans so that it could be used for expressing emotions.

Some people promote the theory that the men who never cry are actually suppressing the desire to do so. This theory implies that there is only one type of crying, and that men all throughout the world and all throughout history have decided to suppress their desire to cry. However, this theory requires explaining how and why men around the world, who do not know each other, and over thousands of years of time, would suppress their craving to cry even though millions of them do not suppress their craving to steal, rape, or lie. The most sensible explanation for why adult men rarely cry is that we have less of a desire to cry because the mind of an adult man is slightly different than that of a woman and child.

Furthermore, even though most adult men never cry, it seems that every man is capable of producing tears at emotional events, such as weddings and deaths. As of today, we put all displays of crying and tear production into the category of "crying", but I would separate crying from tear production. I would describe crying as a signal for help, and tears as an emotional display.

Crying is a regular activity for babies. A baby will cry whenever something bothers it because it has no idea what to do. This type of crying developed as a signal to let the adults know that something is wrong. Crying could be described as "manipulative" because babies do it to stimulate other people's emotions and manipulate them into providing assistance. Babies cry whenever they want pampering. With babies, this behavior is necessary because it is the only way that they can deal with their problems.

Crying is primarily an audio display, although children often use physical displays, also, such as hitting, throwing objects, and pinching. The production of tears is optional with crying.

As children grow older they develop a greater interest in solving their problems on their own and less of an interest in crying for help. When a boy becomes an adult, he should lose his desire to cry for help, although because people are different, some men retain that desire to some extent.

The production of tears, however, is different from crying because it's not a signal for help. When men cry over a death, song, or at a wedding, they are not pouting or looking for somebody to help them with a problem. They are not trying to manipulate anybody. They're not looking for handouts or assistance. The production of tears by itself, without the crying, is just an emotional display, similar to a facial expression.

Why do I bring up these issue of crying and tears? Because a better understanding of these issues will help us design a better society. As of today, we are not distinguishing between the different types of crying, and the end result is that men are embarrassed to produce tears at emotional events, and we often struggle to prevent tears from forming, but why should we try to suppress tears? Producing tears over emotional events is not the same as the crying that babies do. We need a better understanding of our emotions so that we can make a distinction between crying and tears. Otherwise we will make the assumption that a man who produces tears at a wedding is behaving the same as a baby who cries when he is hungry.

I would restrict the word "crying" to the manipulative behavior that we see with babies. The production of tears during emotional events is completely different, and we should create another word to describe it. When a man produces tears at a wedding or a funeral, we should not describe him as "crying". We need some other word because he is merely displaying emotions, not trying to manipulate us. The production of tears should be in the same category as facial expressions or tones of voice.

It is silly for adults to produce tears during emotional events, but this characteristic developed for a reason. However, we may not consider the reason to be very sensible. For example, the proboscis monkey has a giant nose, and male peacocks have elaborate feathers, and the reason is to titillate the females. Perhaps male humans produce tears because it titillated the females.

We were not designed by a loving god. We were designed by random changes to DNA, and there is no way evolution can overhaul the design of any creature. Once a feature develops, it may remain that way forever. For example, we have a nerve running along our elbow, which is idiotic, and men have testicles dangling between their legs, which is even more idiotic. Unfortunately, nature cannot overhaul our design.

It's interesting to consider that if a god had created living creatures, he could have given us some amazing features. For example, imagine if the cells that produce sperm were taking some of the information in our memory and encoding it into the DNA, and then inserting it into the sperm. Babies would be born knowing how to speak a language, perform math, operate a computer, or whatever the man happened to have learned. And imagine if we had conscious control over this process. This would allow a father to decide which information he wants to pass on to his children. He might want to provide them with some images of his grandparents, for example, or some information about where he used to play as a child. And imagine if women had the ability to encode information in her eggs.

A loving God could also give us the ability to erase information from our minds that we don't want to bother remembering, and write-protect the information that we want to save.

Getting back to the issue of why men don't cry, if we define "crying" as manipulating other people into helping us deal with our problems, then it should be obvious as to why boys lose their desire to cry as they become adult men; specifically, the men thousands of years ago had nobody to cry to. The men who were best adapted to a primitive life were those who reacted to problems by looking for a solution. The men who reacted to problems by crying or having temper tantrums were significantly less successful.

Today natural selection is no longer functioning properly. Men who react to problems with temper tantrums, crying, or giving up in frustration are being taken care of by women, other men, and by society. Eventually this is going to create a lot of child-like men.


Distinguish between crying and learning

Understanding human emotions can also help us distinguish between when a man is "crying" and when a man is "learning". For example, if a man is failing to accomplish some task, or if he is accomplishing it at a very slow rate, and if he stops to ask for advice, some people will react by telling him to figure it out himself rather than "crying" for help. There is no dividing line between anything in life. We have to learn more about our emotions so that we can make better decisions about when a man is trying to learn how to do a better job and when he is giving up too easily.

When a person is looking for advice, he is trying to become a better person. If he succeeds, he will become a more valuable member of society. People should not be embarrassed to ask for advice. They should instead be embarrassed to fail over and over. However, people who ask for advice "too often" can become a burden on other people. When should we give up and ask for advice? How many times should we fail before we look for help? There is no answer to these questions. As life becomes more complex, everybody needs to become more intelligent and better able to analyze themselves and one another. This modern world requires that we think a lot more often.

Why are some people more successful in life than others? I'm not referring to success in making money. Rather, I am referring to being successful at setting up a nice life for yourself. Some men have acquired a lot of money, but if they are not happy, then they are failures in life. One of the reasons that some people are more successful at enjoying life seems to be that some people are better able to analyze themselves. We have to make good decisions on which information to learn, and which to ignore, and when to give up on a task, and when to continue struggling with it. Being successful in life today requires understanding and controlling your emotions, thinking more often, and making better decisions about what to do with your future.