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Showing posts from June, 2016

""Tribes" - Should we be looking backward for answers today?

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Tribe “Nasty, brutish and short.”    That’s how tribal life was described by Thomas Hobbes, an old, rich dude with time to write and think back in the 1600s.   Better to have some inbred man or woman originating from one family in charge than allow the chaos of ignorant masses to reign.   Akha Hill Tribe Mother and Daughter Dudes we met trekking north of Chiangmai, Thailand.   Ironically though, it would appear that humankind was happier when we were living like these two little dudes.  Everyone was relatively equal, we didn’t work nearly as hard, and we were never alone or without companions.   This was a point of frustration for the earliest European settlers to North America.  When given a taste of tribal life, they preferred it to their own.  Ungrateful women and children captured by North American Indians and later freed by the army wanted only to be returned to the tribe.  Said one observer back in 1763, "The Shawanese were obliged t

Dark as in “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer

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Let’s say you had 14 billion dollars in 2008.   Your brother had the same amount and you knew that you were going to continue to build on that fortune.   Would the purpose of your existence be based on making more of that money or would $14 billion be enough?   Would you organize a bunch of your fellow billionaires to coordinate their considerable resources for the purpose of protecting your billions from the greedy hands of the government?   After all, this is America.   If a person wants to get ahead, then they should jolly well learn how to work for it.   Government takes away from initiative.   It doesn’t add to it.     Then, the people went and elected the socialist Barrack Obama.   Obviously, they don’t know what’s good for them.   They certainly don’t need minimum wage laws or a public health care system or environmental controls placed on the upstanding resource companies you happen to own.   Your companies have to compete with others around the globe, many that don’t h