Delegated Democracy

Delegated democracy is an idea for a new form of government that looks to realize the values and vision of past democratic models of government, yet failed in their aspirations due to the fact that there was simply no way to reasonably carry them out.

Democracy in America is a democratic republic and in such a republic career politicians are born, political parties become entrenched and gain enormous power, and corruption ensues as rich and powerful third party organization are able to hold sway over the elected officials that act not in accordance to the people’s wishes but instead against them. 

Delegated democracy can be enabled for the first time now via a new technology called blockchain technology; the blockchain is famously known use case Bitcoin, but actually has a wide range of applications, not just revolutionizing money.

The power of the blockchain is that its ledger can show with 100% clarity who has done what and when.  For moving money, knowing these things is very important and thus the growing popularity of Bitcoin, but when it comes to things like elections, it is also very important to know who has done what and when.  Elections right now are a cumbersome process that needs A LOT of oversight, planning, and maintenance in their execution.  But a blockchain can greatly reduce the burden of instituting elections as well as highly streamline the process; that basically a completely different kind of voting and therefore government can be formed, one run far more efficiently and more openly. 

If you were to combine the Senate, the House of Republicans, the US Constitution, and all the law books into one, that would be the blockchain in a delegated democracy.  No more corruption in any of those positions, no more administration costs, no more politicking at foundational levels.  Instead a platform can be made where the peoples will is recording in an ongoing continual basis, updated in real time and reflected in real time.  This can be done through delegated democracy.

People don’t want to vote in every election, and neither can they spend all the time researching each issue fully even if they wanted, and they definitely can’t take the time themselves to debate the crafting of each law word for word.  And so we live in an imperfect system where people watch TV commercials or maybe a couple of debates if that and then going off of that information elect officials that then make all the decisions for the country.  It is frustrating because very rarely do said officials actually do what they say, so at a fundamental level the system is not honest, but instead purposely misleads people time after time.

Delegated democracy can solve these problems by using a blockchain to allow each and every person to vote on each and every issue brought before their government.  In a republic these are issues that the elected officials would normally take care of.  A delegated democracy is real democracy because if a person does not want to vote on every single issue, they may instead transfer their voting power to another trusted person they believe in to vote for them. 

This allows for a completely new system to arise and that instead of being a two party system, a 10,000 party system arises.  Anybody can become a delegate and represent their own party.  And within a party there can be 10,000 divisions.  And in this way each voter can find a delegate that will vote exactly the way they would want them to vote on exactly each issue. 

Let us say a very population delegate arises to power in the year 2040 name Ryan Paul, the son of Rand Paul and the grandson of Ron Paul.  Ryan Paul has veered quite a bit from his father and grandfather’s position and in doing so as a delegate has become quite popular and not just “the other guy”.  And let’s say that I as a citizen really like his platform, except one thing.  I don’t like his stance on business taxes.  Within the Ryan Paul party it will be pretty easy to find a delegate that promises to always vote like Ryan Paul, except when it comes to business taxes.  And let’s say my wife really likes Ryan Paul but doesn’t like his stance on women’s issues, so instead within the Ryan Paul party she finds a delegate that will always vote with Ryan Paul except on issues involving women, and so it goes. 

In this system, Ryan Paul is not a President, or a Governor, or a Senator, but in some ways has taken over some of the most important duties of these people.  He would not get paid, but when laws are introduced or updated, he could vote on them, but as a delegate with a lot of supporters, his vote could hold considerable sway. This job of course would be one that pays $0 a year, but people that transfer their voting rights to him, could also make a small donation to help support him if they so choose too.

This makes the Democratic Party very quickly turn into a rainbow of sub-parties, as well as the Republican Party, and as well as the Independent Party.  And these rainbows start to strongly overlap so that it is now difficult to tell just exactly what the Democratic, Republican, or Independent Party is.  Instead we are left with delegates that express their party’s true values and stances on issues and vote in accordance with them.  And if any one delegate isn’t upholding their platform and doing exactly what they say, they can be voted out in real time at any time. 

In such a system delegates would get paid nothing, but would be voting in accordance with their love for country, city, or state.  Anyone citizen could become a delegate at any time.  In this way the people gain a much more powerful say in just exactly what will and will not be done on each issue.  And of course if a person wants to vote for themselves on each issue that is fine too.  Delegate power could be transferred out or kept private at the city, state, or national level depending on what a person’s interests are.    

All voting or transferring of voting power to delegates can be done very simply and easily at ones cell phone or home computer.  And all votes are 100% transparent.  They are all recorded on the blockchain and fully auditable by anyone at any time.  At no point in time before now could this every have been achieved but blockchain not only does this but does it easily. 

This allows for a revolution.  Once a person is in power they no longer have 2, 4, or 6 years to do as they like.  If they aren’t voting or doing work that the citizen likes, they can have their delegate power revoked at any time.  Competitors will be very quick to point out if a person voted congruently with their promises and if not alternative options will quickly arise and be only a 30 login and transfer away for the citizen. 

Furthermore, and very interestingly, not only can the block chain server as a giant ledger of who did what and when, but it actually has processing and execution power via a new technology called smart contracts.  Smart contracts allow for “if this then that” style of programming execution of value.  So if a vote is made to build a road and a contractor is selected, then the blockchain can release funds to that contractor and only that contractor.  Or if a new law is made banning a flying drones with HD x-technology cameras that essentially allow any one person to see clearly what is happening inside of another’s home at any time, then when a police officer finds a drone operator breaking this law, then when the person is cited, there will be a new citation with a set fine and punishment made in the blockchain that can be referenced that links the operator and the citation and explains how the operator must make amends. 

Via delegated democracy on the blockchain and smart contracts, a new kind of government can be formed and run much more efficiently and with transparency.  And when other blockchain technologies are added such as blockchain based citizen registry and/or land/property management, as well as handling the full process of collecting taxes, government budgets, and paying out this money for services and programs (again all via smart contracts with no overhead costs), then a new vision of government can be formalized, one that comes much closer to upholding the true realization of democracy, transparency, and efficiently run government. 

Thoughts on being a Prepper

I doubt anybody needs to prep, but if a person has enough money and it makes them feel secure, it is okay.  

I got some of my ideas from living in Africa and thinking about the food aid that was given to the poor villagers in need. I couldn't remember the exact proportions of food being handed out as emergency food aid in Africa so I found this qoute "Each family has received 50 kg of rice, 25 kg of beans and 10 litres of oil. This will help farmers bridge the gap until January, when they will be able to harvest from seed the ICRC has also distributed." The basic point was that when a person was starving in Africa, they dropped off a bag of rice and beans, and a bottle of oil.  The qoute dosn't mention it but they also got a small bag of sugar.  

I then calculated that calories per kilo. 

1 kilo of beans = 1300

1 kilo of rice = 1280

1 kilogram of coconut oil = 8600

I reduced the amount of oil from 10 to 6 kilos because that was a lot of oil.  

64,000 calories from rice (50 kilos)

32,000 calories from beans (25 kilos)

51,000 calories from oil (6 kilos)

147,000 calories = 3 months (1630 calories per day)

To buy the food would cost around this much giver or take. 

3 5-gallon buckets of rice $60

2 5-gallon buckets of beans $100

4 1.5 kilo buckets of coconut oil $100

The buckets $50

The mylar bags for holding food and oxygen absorbers $20

Total estimated cost: $330 per person, per 3 months.  

The basic thing when trying to make a meal is that there is the right balance of carbs, protein, and fats.  As long as somebody has those things that can eat the same thing day after day after day.  Lots of people around the world subsist of of a single staple food that makes up the majority of their meals.  Here a person has three!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/05/03/151932410/man-cannot-live-on-rice-and-beans-alone-but-many-do

It is of course really important to have a bunch of seeds in another bucket and also to have a book or printed up guide of how to forage for wild veggies.  As the qoute I mentioned above also points out.  

If a person wanted to really go all out, then add some more kinds of beans and/or lentils and add a bag of sugar, a huge tub of honey (doesn't go bad), powdered milk, salt and bullion.  Gallon of distilled white vinegar, and huge tub of baking soda.  Adding these things should still keep the price under $400 per person but really aren't necessary.  

If stored correctly, such as in a cool dry place with no light, it should last a lifetime.  The exception being the coconut oil for which one might want to replace every 10-15 years.  

http://readynutrition.com/resources/11-emergency-food-items-that-can-last-a-lifetime_20082013/

The last thing is that assuming that somebody is in such a dire situation that one needs to eat this emergency food, we can assume that there also won't be any water, gas, or electricity being serviced to a person's house.  Obviously, first and foremost before prepping food is making sure that there is a good source of water.  This might mean finding a natural source of water like a sring or lake near by and having a means to purify the water, but also it is important to have a way to cook the food.  At a minimum I would suggest a fuel effiecent camping style stove that burns wood $100-$200 but they problem with these types of stoves is that they literally send up a stream of smoke that drifts through the air and can attract unwanted attention from far away.  A far better option is a solar oven.  With a solar oven, a person doesn't have to collect firewood and there is no smoke and no smell.  A solar oven also gets more than hot enough to cook rice and beans just using the suns natural energy.  It even works on days that are a little cloudy for warming food.  On a hot day with good sun, it can definitely boil the water that will later become drinking water. That will be another $300.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00286KQ1W/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=ponparide-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00286KQ1W

For the water filter, which is arguebly the most important thing on this list, I had something very simple like this in Africa.  

http://www.regenerativenutrition.com/water-filter---stand-alone-p-112.asp  This set-up was more than good enough to make dirty pond water drinkable.  The process is easy, first boil the water for more than 5 minutes to sterilize the water, and then pour into this system and let gravity filter the water sparkling clean and potable.   Many people will advocate complicated systems, but a very simple system like this with extra filters can be bought for under $150 and will clean enough water for a family of 4 for a year (I would say at that point might as well get some extra filters for some additionaly years too).  

To get the ovens and water filter will add another $250 - $600 to the budget, which is a one time start up cost of course, but a minimum get the water filter.  It is actually more important than the food in many ways.  

As I said, water is the most 

And lastly, and I am kind of sad to say it, but if a person is going to go to all this trouble of buying this food and prepping it, one might as well get a shotgun and a whole bunch of shells too because there is a very good chance that a person will have to defend there food or be prepared to give it all away when people come looking for food which will be inevitable.  Another nice thing to have would be one of those wind-up/solar radios that can listen to broadcasts from far away.  

Matrix Revisted

The Matrix is a great movie. In the movie the Matrix, machines have enslaved the human race and use humans as an energy source. Most people watch this movie and think about how heartless and cruel the machines are to enslave humans as a mere food source. Yet, human beings enslave animals in an eerily similar manner as portrayed in the movie and humans use them as a food source thinking little if at all about the animal's lives. I wonder..... If the animals had the will, intelligence, and power to rebel as Neo and his friends did in the movie, would they? How would they feel about how they have been treated?

Space, Time, and Consciousness

I have been thinking about it and I think that there might be a flaw in the theory that reality is made up of 4 dimensions.  These are normally thought of as length, width, depth, and time.  I think there are only 3 dimensions though.  These are space, time, and consciousness.  

Furthermore, I think that space as we know it is fractured and has three qualities which are length, width, and depth.  In fact, an alternate reality could in theory exist with only length and width, essentially making that reality's space defined by only two qualities.  

I gather time can be thought of as having three qualities too, which are past, present, and future.  Although this argument is far less reliable.  In reality, the only real time is the present and it is not fractured into three separate aspects in the way space is (at least as it is understood today, if time travel turns out to be possible, then it would indeed be).  

As far as consciousness goes, I am not sure if it is fractured or not, but I gather it has two different states.  These are consciousness on and consciousness off.  In theory I am not sure if it is anymore fractured than that.  While I can speak less about consciousness as one of the three key dimensions of reality and don't understand how it exactly interacts with the other two, there are more than a little anecdotal evidence to support this.  Mystics for past ages have asked questions like, "If a tree falls in the woods and nobody was there to see it, did it really fall?"  If I were to answer the sage that asked this question and if consciousness was fractured into two different states of on and off, and there was no consciousness to observe the tree falling (even though I think there would be in a practical sense) than the answer would be "no" that indeed the tree really didn't fall.  These questions run through many mystic traditions.  I believe these leaders in their fields hit upon something that science is only beginning to point too.  For instance, the two-slit experiment is a good example of how consciousness can effect particles and waves.  It is hard to imagine, but I firmly believe data extrapolated from experiments like this one can help prove that consciousness is the third dimension.    

Apple iPhone 8 (Apple fan fiction)

Apple’s continued integration with Siri continues.  Lists of tasks that she does for you includes: order pizza and Chinese food, alerts you about stock market items, and reads your alerts and news to you in the morning after you wake as well as reviewing your schedule and reminders for the day and week.  Siri can also buy things for you and have them delivered to your house from major online websites including Wal-Mart, Target, E-bay, Amazon, and Best Buy (all of which will accept iMoney, which is described below).  Apple streamlines Siri for iHome and iCar described below.  Siri, gets different names; now a person can choose from a list of about 50.  iPhone 8 is always listening so a person doesn’t have to press a button before talking to Siri.  The new Siri(s) can be set only work with the owner of the phone or other said people. 

Apple further integrates iHome.  A standalone unit called iHome has been released; it is designed as a small central unit about the size of a mac mini.  It wirelessly connects with a person’s phone’s or computer but also has speakers connected to it (many different options of speakers available including wired and not wired, battery powered and plug in) so that a person might be able to play music in any room of the house.  All can be controlled easily with the app available for one’s computer or iphone.  Also, iHome has recently added options for lighting so that iHome can turn off any light in the house associated with iHome.  This is done through cheap inserts that go in between a bulb and the wall mount that maintain a Bluetooth connection to iHome, or through more expensive wall units.  Additionally, iHome has outlet adapters that can be used to control other items too that go in between the wall outlet and plugin.  iHome also has motion sensors that can be added to it throughout the house.  IHome can make the lights and music follow you if you wish.  IHome has even been able to connect to the thermostat and control the temperature.  The idea is that iHome will know a person’s patterns, music, lights, and temperature, so they can all be made into schedules on an iphone and also activated via Siri.  Therefore Siri can turn off any iHome light, control the music, and in case you are coming home early, you can tell Siri to turn on the air/heat for you so that when you get home, so the house will be just like you like it. 

Apple has further integrated with car companies to become the wireless key of your car, so now a person’s car will unlock whenever a person sticks their hand on the car door and the car senses the recognized iPhone is within range.  Many of the options that are mentioned in iHome carry over to iCar so that what you were listening to at home will now be playing on the car.  Also, Siri can be used to warm up the car in the winter.

Apple releases iMoney which is similar to Palpal, who is now one of its partners.  It is released as the main function of Passbook.  It is similar to a prepaid bank account but can be used to pay for things at any of the places that already accepts Passbook.  When a person wants to pay for something, they simple just scan their phone.

With the iPhone 8 the iPhone revolution continues.  The iPhone and Apple become less of a phone and more of an ecosystem of a way of living.  Some people now leave home with no wallet and no keys, but only their iPhone in their pocket.  Because of the total package, Apple is able to solidly defend itself against Android which doesn’t have as deep seamless integration.  Android clearly sells more phones at cheaper rates.  Apple makes more money. 

Two Paths to Perfection

There are two paths to perfection, maybe more, but the two that I would like to examine today are what I like to refer to as the BMW and race car paths. 

In the first path, the BMW, the car is fully loaded.  It has all the options, the best engine, best interior, and best exterior.  It is the type of thing that once sat in and drove restores one’s faith in humanity a little.  One realizes that human beings are capable of something worthy after all.  Hahahaha.  I liken the BMW lifestyle to the man or woman that has everything.  He or she is smart, attractive, and healthy with an equally impressive spouse and children if so desired to boot. This BMW person is rich, has a rewarding career in which they excel at and are acknowledge by peers. They live in a nice house in a nice part of the city belonging to some of the best social circles where their friends can’t get enough of them.  In short, they have it all.  They are living a perfect life and are thus perfect. 

The other type of person that reaches perfection and maybe this is even a greater level of perfection than the BMW person is the race car person.  This person may or may not be likeable, rich, or even smart except in one area.  Just like a race car forgoes power seats, air-con, a radio, even cruise control that can be found in the BMW, this person might not have good social skills, their house might be a wreck, their finances array, and even their health might suffer.  But just like a race car is built for one thing (that thing being speed) and only one thing that it does perfectly, this person might have an area of life that they excel at.  In such a case, this person might change the world.  I am thinking of an Albert Einstein who seemingly couldn’t even be bothered to comb his hair but was constantly walking around while actually being somewhere deep in his mind doing math.  A Bill Gates or Steve Jobs who many people say is a curse (and in many ways a blessing) to work for, yet still they manage their businesses exceedingly well.  These are the people that do one thing really well while neglecting other areas of their life just as a race car neglects all the options of the BMW so that it might be as fast as it can be. 

Other people might try to describe their lives with vehicles too.  Maybe one person is a mini-van as their life centers around their family, or a strong working man might be symbolized as a heavy off-road 2-ton work truck, or a small compact car as somebody who gets the best gas mileage and doesn’t pollute, but I think generally the race car analogy does best to describe the person that is specialized and their life is perfectly arranged around that one thing to let them achieve it best or the BMW for the person that has gone after it all.  

Get over the past, accept the moment, and don’t needlessly worry about the future.

Try to just be in the moment, to allow yourself to enjoy this moment. Allow yourself to get over and accept the past, and not let the future worry you so that you act in a way to sabotage this great time in your life. A very easy way to destroy a great moment is to try to force or wield your vision of the future on another in a selfish attempt to make this moment last longer. Another easy way to destroy this great moment is to act in a self-destructive manner fulfilling a deep-seeded belief that you don’t really deserve to have a nice life. Accept your past and this great moment, live in it, enjoy it, acting in a way that maintains your good standing, but also allowing others to have free will to be with you in their great moment. In short, get over the past, accept the moment, and don’t needlessly worry about the future.