Economies and the collapse of civilization

Over the history of the Earth, there have been many great civilizations.  Many of these great civilizations like the Romans, Mayans, and Mesopotamians, grew to greatness and then crumbled.  There are many theories as to why, but none of them are really satisfying.  I'll put forth my own unsatisfying theory here:

Capitalistic economies will eventually cause all civilizations who partake in them to fail.
This is true for these ancient civilizations where their currencies and economies were fairly isolated, but also true for today's world where the economy consists of the entire world.  The reason for this is that the way capitalism is setup, the system must grow in order for institutions or individuals to make money.  If the economy becomes stagnant, then the economy fails.  I'm not sure I understand this completely, but it does seem to hold across different times and cultures who have some sort capitalistic economy.  Economies can't
possibly grow indefinitely.  In modern times we have become creative and have used technology to increase output.  We've created fancy financial packages that somehow generate revenue from nothing.  It's great, and it's fun and profitable while growing, but what happens when there is no more growth to be had, or people are getting too creative with their financial instruments.

Our world is now seeing signs of problems to come.  These days, instead of hitting the peak of our growth and crashing, our governments are artificially propping up, or applying cpr to the economy.  How can borrowing billions of dollars and spending them on questionable projects across the country be a good idea?  The fixes for our current problems are a boom in population, or a real crash.  Let the big banks fail.  Let Greece go under.  Once we work through the really tough times following that, the economy will pick up again and find a way to grow.  Otherwise, we're just delaying the inevitable.

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Government and Religion

The Supreme court ruled yesterday on a memorial cross in California that had been erected on public land.  I don't think the ruling was important, but I do think there are some important issues here that people don't seem to grasp.

Why are we wasting millions of my money to argue about whether a cross in the middle of the desert should be taken down or not?  Aren't there more important things to be worrying about?

I want to examine the role of government in respect to religion.  If we look at our caveman ancestors establishing government for the first time, why would they have anything to do with religion?  I would argue that religion was likely a form of government for these cave men.  What can you wear, how do you have to be to hunt with the men, how do we treat the women, who is a valid sacrifice, what is sacred.  The problems start as soon as you end up with a real government as well as a religious government.  How do they handle disagreements?  If there are multiple religions, which one is more important for the government to side with?  I think in matters where separation of church and state questions come up, the litmus test should be: are we trying to govern by religious principals?

For this particular case, the cross is a memorial for fallen soldiers of foreign war.  It was not commissioned by the government.  It does not play a part in actually governing the people.  It does not tell people that they must worship Jesus in order to remember these fallen soldiers.  If I'm in a foreign land and I see a shrine commemorating an ancient disaster, I don't have to understand, or agree with, the religious significance of the shrine in order to appreciate the memorial.

The next case I want to repeat here is the one involving gay marriage.  Again, the fact that so much money is being wasted by government on this issue is sickening.  I think the federal government needs to come to it's senses and provide leadership to the states on how to handle this so that we can move on.

The resolution:  Government's role in marriage is to enforce a contract between two people.  That's it.  If that contract is between two men, a man and a woman, a woman and three men, it doesn't matter.  As soon as government starts dictating what marriage is, they start governing by rules established by religion.  It doesn't make sense.  In my caveman days, a small government created to take care of community issues would be worried about clean water, protecting the land and food they depend on, and mediating and deciding conflicts amongst the people.  There's no reason my caveman community would need to declare that only certain people could live together.  There would be no point in that.

Speedo Training I: Day 3

We're on day three now of this competition and I weighed in at 181.5 lbs this morning.  Not exactly on pace for my 2lbs this week.  I'm especially worried about this because I'm leaving for Las Vegas Sunday morning and I'm not sure if weight is one of those things that's supposed to "stay in Vegas".  I'm going to try pretty hard, but I don't know if there will be opportunity to eat well and I don't know how much time I'll have for exercise.  If I can come back Wed at 180, I will be very happy. 

Plastics and Buildings

I was listening to a story on NPR this morning on the effort required to fix the dome of the State Capitol building in Denver.  Seems like years of rust and corrosion from whether are making it unstable.  So now the taxpayers are looking at a significant bill to repair the thing.

Not my main idea here, but it's really frustrating to me that our lawmakers need these ornate buildings to work in.  It says we're all about appearance and not so much about substance.  I want to see some state build a capital building that is purely practical.

Okay.  So since we've already inherited old buildings that we're not likely to tear down.  Why not protect some of them with a layer of clear plastic.  Wouldn't it preserve a lot of buildings in whatever state they're in?  I know this isn't practical for entire buildings, but things like a dome seem like they could have their life extended by a coating to keep the weather and other elements away.  Also, would a coating like this add strength to buildings that may not be very strong?  What about coating buildings in earthquake prone areas like this?

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Speedo Training I: Day 1

Ok.  I weighed in at 181 this morning.  I have 8 weeks to basically get down to 175 or 170.  I'm pretty sure if I get down to 170 I'll win and I'll be at a great weight for me.  I think the Overweight label goes on me when I get to 180 as a 5'10" male.

I'm planning on completing 5 weightlifting and 5 cardio workouts each week.  Some days I will combine these and some days I may have a dedicated weight lifting or cardio workout.

I'll also try to eat "reasonably".  I don't think I need to actually diet and I think that often leads to bad things.  Usually my biggest problem in losing weight is that I'll eat ridiculous amounts of food.  I would be embarrassed to actually publish what I ate some days.  I'll try to keep a log of what I'm eating.

Just for some background on my current health state:
-  I feel athletically better than I have in years.
-  Bench Press:  110 lbs for 3 sets of 12.
-  Squats:  110 lbs for 3 sets of 12.
-  Pullups:  4 (this is twice as good as the 2 I could do a year ago.)
-  Running:  I ran 1 mile in 9:50 seconds.  This is better than I have ever run a mile.

Speedo Training I

The gauntlets have been laid down.  My best friend Isaac and I have decided to try and lose some weight together.

The stakes:
The loser will have to buy a jersey of the winners choosing.  This will likely be a Broncos jersey for me and a Chargers jersey for him.  The loser will then have to wear that jersey for the entire day both times the Broncos and Chargers play.  There will be pictures to document this.  In addition, the loser will have to change their Facebook profile image to be one with the jersey on.

The rules:
-  We are starting with a weigh in April 7, 2010.
-  Final weigh in is May 29, 2010.
-  A loss in weight of more than 2lbs in 1 week will reset the initial weight down by the amount over the 2lbs lost.
-  The competition will be void if the winner does not get below 175 for me or 199 for Isaac.

I have setup a shared Google spreadsheet to track our progress.  It's rather unimaginative now, but maybe it'll improve as the competition goes on.

Fundraising in Schools

When I was a kid, I remember having to do fundraisers for my elementary and middle schools.  I'm not sure what exactly that taught me, but now that I have kids of my own, the subject is really irritating to me.

I think in general education is a very important subject to Americans.  There is an ideology at work that I think most Americans would agree with.  Everyone should have access to education, and no publicly funded schools should receive more or less money based on their social status, race, or any other factor.  I think many people would even say that children of illegal immigrants should receive education even though opinions as far as other services for illegal immigrants are usually negative.

The problem I have is that you still end up with public schools that are much better off than others.  One reason for this is that schools are constantly asking kids to participate in fundraising activities.  The money these kids raise is not coming from a general pool of people that is available to everyone.  This money is coming from those kids families and friends.  This generates a distinct advantage to schools in affluent or upper middle class areas as their families and friends are likely to shell out more cash for that child's fundraising.  In effect, this process is creating a social structure amongst our public schools that ensures that rich kids will grow up better educated and poor kids will receive a poorer education.

I believe that either this practice should stop, or that we should require all fundraising to schools to be put into a pool for the district or state.  I believe this is the same practice used for property taxes.

Immigration and the Economy

I'm pretty sure none of what I'm saying here is ground breaking, but I'm surprised people don't talk about this more often.

It seems to me that economies are built from the ground up.  So, you need tons of minimum wage workers, then you need a lots of trade workers, and then some specialized technical workers, and then a very few executive type workers.  I know I'm oversimplifying here, but the point is that you need to make sure your base is solid or the rest of the pyramid will not fill out.
What I see in the US historically is that there has always been a healthy level of immigration to our country, whether that is legal or illegal.  This immigration produces a large number of minimum wage workers that help support our economy.  I think that because of this historical immigration, the US economy has always been one of the strongest in the world.  The funny thing is, that as soon as the economy shows signs of weakness, the government goes after illegal immigrants and tries to deport as many as possible to theoretically improve the job market for US employees.  My theory is that many of the people who are deported are not actually replaced and overall, this hurts our economy.  In addition, when economies are down, it's not the minimum wage jobs that we really care about, it's the trade jobs and specialized technical jobs that are most important to us.