Chaos Dynamics, Cybernetics, and the Interaction of Humans and the Biosphere

Chaos Dynamics, Cybernetics, and the Interaction of Humans and the Biosphere

Control

A boat by fitting with a rudder, thus limiting its freedom of action, its “variety”. Every type of control is a effort to reduce the “variety” presented by the object we want to control. In the mathematical discipline called “cybernetics”, the study of control mechanisms is begun with the “Law of Requisite Variety” which states that to control something, we must match its variety, or reduce its variety to that which we possess. An example would be a football team. If we want to control it, we have to put in another equal team. Another example is the service queue problem at a bank or a performance ticket counter where to provide efficient service and avoid chaos they limit the variety they are faced with by having a limited number of service points and then sorting people into that number of queues, which in turn are fed by only one queue.

Competition

to get ahead of others, to seize” control”, to win. Seems the aim is always to control access to a particular space, limit it to the controller and whom he designates. To control by setting the rules and enforce them, hence a “game”. A strategy might be to change the rules unilaterally, so as to control access to the space and win the game. In the stock market, an option buyer or a bankster making loans can be bankrupt if the counter parties don’t pay up, thus making loans can put one under the control of the borrower.

China has to support other countries these days, including the US so as to maintain its markets and keep its people from rioting for lack of food money. So others borrow from China without the need to pay back. Of course this game ends when this “something for nothing” Ponzi scheme collapses. The rapidly growing complex structure of finance, factories, roads, interacting expertise, education, health and elder care, etc. that is Chinese society today, cannot be kept going on the work and purchases of the Chinese people alone. And if others can only supply it with paper promises in return for its products, it must inevitably collapse, from lack of the energy required to keep it expanding. It’s instability is made worse by its necessarily increasing complexity as it grows.

International trade

Note that the role of fiat money, paper money, is only to facilitate the exchange of goods. Countries exchanging different currencies must eventually exchange goods or services equal to the balances of currencies owed, unless one or another country has the spare capacity in its work force to continue supporting others with a free donation of goods and services, in a form of charity, or the system collapses. Imagine a farmer, or anyone with the ability to make or dig out of the ground, something that others want are willing to exchange what they make for his products. He can get all the other things he needs in life from the product of his work. If he has a lot of capacity to do this work, he can support a large family who need do nothing but keep him entertained. In effect, one of his needs is this large family, and his work keeps it going.

This picture is not often presented by whole countries. Saudi Arabia might be an example. They can dig incredible riches of low cost oil out of the ground, for a few more years a least, and thereby earn the money to pay for whatever else they need and have plenty left over to buy toys such as expensive weapons systems and modern buildings, and lifestyle goodies. They could offer their own people a lot more than they do, and the growing poverty (earnings per capita used to be $18 000 and are now $8000) in that country is reaching a tipping point into violence I hear.


Large and growing populations

Large and growing populations that do not have the education, or access to jobs to make goods or provide services they can exchange for the lifestyle goods and services they desire generate unfilled expectations that can tip into sufficient violence to destroy any civility in the society.

Large populations that destroy the habitat around them to meet their needs for food, water, raw material, create conditions for their own collapse from the excess stress of major weather events, drought, flood, hurricanes, or volcanoes, or global warming. They exacerbate their problems if they fail to produce goods that can be traded with others to meet their needs. Sometimes other countries will come to their rescue, but will impose such conditions on them as to effectively make them into slaves, unable to exist except through charity. Haiti and the United States are a good example of this syndrome.

These two paragraphs are part of a positive feedback loop that, as forecast by the mathematical models of Chaos Dynamics, will eventually destroy any society caught in it. Which these days is most of mankind.

The human condition

Humans are programmed to Ponzi scheme addictions,that is, to desiring and believing they can take out more than they put in. Humans are also addicted to status consumption. Consumption to display status, of food, housing, clothing , entertainment, complexity of technological gadgetry, cars, boats, recreational toys. This is particularly a syndrome that emerges with uncontrollable force, similar to any major addiction of the sort we are familiar with, drugs, alcohol, etc. , when they get together in large populations.

Humans also have the thinking capacity to create means of generating and applying work energy, machinery and inventions, far beyond the individual capability of any particular human person. They clearly have the capacity to use the planet’s raw materials beyond the capacity of the planet to replace them, and to grow additional humans at an exponential rate, having no natural predators, except perhaps each other, and some pandemic diseases which may erupt.

The basic human condition, over the millennia, has generated a population load on the planet that is unsustainable by the planet's life support systems.

Chaos Dynamics and Cybernetics applied, see attached diagram.

Planet Earth becoming a desert

I've been paying a lot of attention lately to the climate heating problem we and our children and grandchildren are heading into. This, plus the end of cheap oil looming, should be our main preoccupation, but, of course, are not. I ride my bike, eat vegan, and use public transport. My CO2 footprint is now 0.6 tonnes per year, compared to the average for Toronto of 10.0 tonnes per person. And I am meeting regularly, as we try to plan a future, with the Transition Town group in my village of Durham, Ontario. Look us up at localmotiveproject.com/transitiondurham. The movement is described at transitionnetwork.org

Above is a greatly simplified diagram of what's happening, or about to...

Stuff That’s Not So Bad

1. Lots of ever expanding obesity among humans. Children playing virtual games instead of real physical ones. North American lifestyle junk food diets. Associations of people trying to get fat, aiming to be 600+ lbs. and set Guinness records. Other Associations to build the self esteem of the overweight.

What else do we know?

We know we have a health care cost crisis. We know the overweight have shortened life spans. We know they cost the health care system less than the people of normal weight and exercise regimens who live long and make up about 70% of total health care costs. We know the DNA of those prone to addictions, including food addictions, and too stupid to take charge of themselves, should not be encouraged to proliferate. Logically, we should encourage those addicted to grossly fattening foods to gain as much weight as possible, as soon as possible.

But they don’t need encouraging, they’ll do it to themselves.

That’s not so bad.


2. People in North America and elsewhere in the world are running out of potable drinking water, agricultural water, and arable agricultural land is disappearing everywhere.

Severe and rapid climate change threatens life everywhere.

40 000 years ago humans and their domestic animals made up only 1/4 of 1% of the vertebrate biomass on earth. Today, humans and their domestic animals comprise 95% of the vertebrate biomass of the planet.

Where is the good in this?

Humans are the cause of these problems. And because of their stubborn addictions to unhealthy foods, enormous petroleum energy consumption, substitution of machines for human effort and exercise, and procreation, they are not likely to solve any of these problems without a drastic, forced reduction in total human biomass.

The planet herself will take care of herself by getting rid of humans. All they have to do, which is all they are likely to do, is go on as they have been, indulging their addictions and encouraging all nations to join in the party.

That’s not so bad.

4. In Ontario, $42 billion of a budget total of $100 billion goes to health care. $14 billion goes to education. Health care costs are rising without letup at 6% per year. In 6 years time, by 2016, the increase in health care costs will wipe out the entire education budget.

We know that health care costs per person are about $200 per year until age 60 or so, when they start to rise dramatically, reaching $10 000, $15 000, $20 000 per person per year by age 75-80. 70% of the total health care budget goes on chronic (that is incurable) illnesses of the elderly, palliative care merely, just keeping them alive longer.

Note I have no bias in this, I’m 75 years of age in May of 2010.

It doesn’t matter what people want, or what the Government says, we’ll have to spend the education budget to keep the elderly alive beyond their time. Without all the expensive drugs and other interventions their time is of course limited by their unhealthy lifestyles, including the wrong kinds of food all their lives.

In places, known as “blue zones”, in many locations around the world, people live to age 90 without much health care at all, then die. How come? Look it up. Google “blue zones” and get the data. It’s being vegan, getting exercise, and living without stress. Simple, and inexpensive.

So the warfare between the old and young continues. The old who vote grow in percentage of the population and demand the limited budget taken from the earnings of the young taxpayers be spent on palliating the result of their lifelong addictions to unhealthy lifestyles. The young grow fewer in numbers, and with poorer educations cannot compete with the global education and internet job sharing systems of India, China, Brazil and their 100’s of millions of young people. Canadian companies out source their work globally with no loyalty to Canadian youth. We lose lifetime jobs we used to have making stuff in our communities, our neighbourhoods. Sure a few can earn good incomes in the resource extraction businesses, oil and mining, as long as that lasts... But that is only the few.

We will lose our civility if this continues.

But you and I don’t have to do anything. Our whining and ranting won’t change people. The lack of enough money, as it always has throughout history, will force the needed change.

Governments will be forced to make health care a user pay system for those over 60, for those addicted to unhealthy food, tobacco, drugs and alcohol. The vast mass of the people will not be able to afford health care by the current medical establishment model, composed of Big Pharma and expensive doctors. To stay alive and be healthy, we will have to alter our lifestyles, change our food and exercise habits, be more at ease with ourselves and our families. In the words of Huddie Ledbetter, the last verse of “Good Night Irene”, “Stop your ramblin, stop your gamblin, stop stayin out late at night, go home to your wife and children, stay there by your fireside bright”.

That’s not so bad.

Donato April 16 2010

Our Money is About to Vanish

This chart shows how every extra dollar of government borrowing is actually reducing the GDP, the “financial economy” is strangling the “real economy".



Our Money is About to Vanish

The history of paper money is that it always at some point vanishes in a storm of hyper inflation and has to be replaced . The US dollar which has been the world’s trading currency since it was imposed on all economies by the armed might of the US after the 2nd World War is about to undergo its final flameout. The Canadian and other currencies will likely be taken with it.

How will this happen?

The background

The money lending ( and therefore money creation) activities of the world’s central banks, and the money borrowing of the financial world’s large hedge funds, mortgage issuers, commercial banks and financial “insurance’ entities have brought us to the edge of the precipice with now nowhere to go but over.

Money gets created and put into circulation whenever and wherever it is loaned by any bank. This money continues to circulate until it is extinguished by being paid back by the bank to the central bank from which it was drawn. And the commercial bank can't pay it back unless they first collect what they have lrnt out. If too much money is created, beyond that needed to handle normal business transactions of the “ real” economy, then, money becomes plentiful, it becomes worth less because it is seen as plentiful, and hence prices rise, and interest rates rise, as people seek to preserve the purchasing power of their savings, and of the goods they are holding to exchange for other goods they need to maintain their lives and business and other activities. this is called inflation. When I was young, in the '40s a good pair of skates cost about $2.50, now they are over 100 times as much. It’s obvious that banksters, and their supposed masters in government cannot restrain themselves from printing too much money, thus eroding its worth over time through steady inflation. In a hyper inflation, the price of those skates will rise to maybe $10,000 or more very quickly. Commerce shuts down. Business and household finances collapse. Savings and pension funds disappear. Civil chaos may well ensue, as it did in Germany in the 1920’s leading directly to the takeover by the Nazi regime of ill memory.

The mechanism

We have essentially two different economies to consider. Though they are intertwined, they are separate. One I designate as the “real economy”, the other, the “financial economy”.

The real economy maintains itself through the making and trading of goods and services with money as the medium of exchange. It involves primarily real activity and real production by the participants. The financial economy maintains itself by “renting” goods, and money in return for money, which is a form of gambling, betting that the borrower will pay back the loan plus interest, or by providing various forms of ‘”insurance”, which is another form of gambling .

To describe these and their interaction further let us consider a useful analogy. Imagine being at the horse races. What you see is a grandstand full of people, maybe 2000 or so, watching horse races in which 10 or so horses race in each race. Suppose the real economy here is the grandstands, the food and drink vendors, the horses and their owners and all the workers, jockeys, grooms, etc. including those who own build, and maintain the track. The financial economy is the activity of gambling by those in the stands watching. The race track owners rent the right to bettors to participate in the pools of money available. They ensure they won’t go broke by paying out less than they take in, which is also what car, house, and mortgage and other forms of insurance companies do.

Now imagine we expand the activity of gambling on the races to many thousands, even millions of participants, on the internet, or by other forms of communication. We might imagine the races taking a long time to complete, so there would be the question of which horse and jockeys would last, and for how long, and even some might change jockeys and so on. So in a $10, 000 prize race, with 10 horses, we have betting activity amounting to millions of dollars. Then, extend this further. Imagine some clever financial people start to offer insurance to the bettors, in case they lose too large a sum of money. Imagine also they begin to offer the opportunity to bet on the success of individual bettors, rather than just on the horse. And further suppose that all this “financial activity” is supported by central banks loaning huge sums to the participants. Loans to bettors, loans to those insuring the bettors, loans to those selling "packages” of bets. (Today, anyone who buys a house counting on its value to increase so they can use it for their pension fund, or as an ATM machine, is gambling. Recognise the scenario?) And so on.

This is exactly what the “financial economy” has become in our life time. It is now some 100’s of times larger in the amount of money in circulation within it, than the “real economy” on which it is supposedly based. When all those “financial” instruments, such as “mortgages” and other far more complex and unsaleable paper promises, begin to be perceived as not likely to be paid back, the “renters” will start trying to sell off their paper promises. Only the first few to do so will get out with any value. All the rest will be lost as the entire house of cards comes down. But, here is the rub. The money that was loaned into existence to enable all this “financial” activity will still exist. And it will be seeking a safe haven to preserve its purchasing power. The price of solid assets and of goods and services in the real economy will skyrocket. Hyperinflation will roam the land destroying savings, wealth, purchasing power, even survival for many.



Donato April 15 2010




This chart shows how spending money is already starting to flood out of the “financial economy”, in quantities far greater than needed to sustain the “real economy”.




A QUOTE FROM AN ONLINE SOURCE:

These days, the (US) Administration’s watered-down “Volcker rule” – which will likely be diluted to water-like reform legislation in Congress – excludes the government debt markets from proprietary trading restrictions. Government finance is today’s unfolding Bubble and, not surprisingly, this Bubble is off limits for regulatory reform. Government deficits are integral to the Bubble, and there will be no serious effort to rein them in. The Fed’s balance sheet is a serious Bubble issue, but it also remains untouchable. Treasury, GSEs, and Federal Reserve Credit are viewed as the solution, and a historic Bubble is emboldened and builds momentum.

The markets’ perception of “too big to fail” has for years been an integral facet of Bubble dynamics. And despite all the talk of trying to rid the marketplace of this notion, the markets remain more persuaded than ever: the unfolding global government finance Bubble is much too gigantic for policy makers to risk letting it come anywhere close to failing. Massive U.S. deficits and near-zero interest rates ensure a steady flow of finance (newly created as well as an ongoing exodus out of low-yielding instruments) to debt markets around the world. Confidence runs high that ultra-loose U.S. financial conditions will continue to underpin Credit expansions globally. Politicians may talk tough, and they do put on a good show. Meanwhile, markets function with reticent aplomb, knowing they’ve got policy makers right where they want them.

Run Barefoot for health and fun

Running Barefoot

First appearing about 130 000 years ago, Neanderthals were taller, stronger, heavier, likely larger brained than homo sapiens, the Cro-Magnon's who superseded them to become ourselves. Almost exclusively predators they were highly skilled, highly organised, to hunt large predators in forested areas. They were flat-footed, too heavy and t0o awkward, with their strong muscle and bone structure, for running over long distances.

When ice ages began about 40 000 years ago, and the forests gave way to grassy plains they could no longer trap the large prey animals they needed to survive, because those animals could now just run away from them. They died out completely about 25 000 years ago

But the smaller lighter upright running Cro-Magnon's who then appeared could live where the Neanderthals could not, and so outlasted them to become ourselves.

Our variety of humans began living first on the grassy plains because that was where our bodies were best suited to catch the prey we needed for food. We were first hunter nomads. Agriculture came much later.

Evolution gave us several distinct and crucial body features. Eating meat, we developed big brains, not much different from those of the Neanderthals. Walking upright on arched (not flat) feet , with an Achilles tendon for spring inour legs, and a unique muscle at the back of our neck to keep our head erect and eyes front, a light body with large lung capacity.

All these enabled us to run fast, barefoot, or with only light foot covers, for long distances in pursuit of such prey animals as antelope and deer. Other features give us the ability to actually run down our prey animals. We sweat to reduce body core heat generated in running, which we must do or die from the effects of overheating. Other animals must pant to cool off. They can’ t sweat. Panting restricts breathing in animals. After quite short distances running at high speeds they have to stop to pant and cool off. We just keep going, and not as fast as they in short bursts, but fast enough for long distances to keep them going, no time to stop long enough to cool, and so to eventually run them down, walk up to the prostrate animal and knock it on the head. It might take an hour or two, or even a day or more as good trackers, but eventually they are done for.

Furthermore, by carrying dried carbohydrate food, (most calories, quickest digested per unit weight) and a little water, we scarcely need to stop at all. Animals must stop to drink, to eat, to lie down and digest their food. We just keep coming. Our eyes and brains give us enormous tracking skills. Our bodies enable us to run for literally 100’s of miles almost without stopping or sleep.

There are people today who run like this for endurance races. They run barefoot over very difficult even rocky desert and mountainous terrain at 8 miles per hour for 60 hours straight.

By running and walking a lot barefoot you will recreate the healthy body structure of the ancients, without damage to tendons, to knees to hips to the spine, all the muscles.

Marathoners apparently never had much problem with damage to their bone and muscle structure until the 1970’s when they started using arch supported Nike running shoes. Since then, with all runners and joggers using arch supported shoes, about 80% get serious muscle tendon and bone damage from running.

With arch supported padded shoes, the heel hits first and jars the whole body structure. The foot arch, designed to cushion this blow, can’t function properly, and is made increasingly weak by getting support and thus no exercise. Running barefoot, the ball of the foot comes down first, the arch can do it’s work of cushioning the blow, saving the rest of the body.

Studies have shown that the more expensive the running shoe, the more damage the jogger or athlete will eventually have to his/her body. Using cheap flat shoes, or running barefoot, will cure all these problems.

Trainers of log distance runners everywhere are are beginning to adopt barefoot running techniques, at least for training.

There are now annual 100 mile races between people running barefoot and people; on horseback. Usually the barefoot runners win.

Prescription:

Go barefoot as much as possible. Learn to jog barefoot in the park, or on roads with only thin-soled flat shoes. Start slow and build up to it!!

When you walk, roll your foot at each step upon onto the ball of the foot. Try walking a while by pacing with the ball of the foot coming down first.

This exercise benefits the whole body.

Here are some Url’s about this stuff.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwbzpyterI&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7mELaYQ-uI

http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/

Donato 09/21/09

Tiny Township dump site 41 fact sheet

Tiny Township dump site 41 fact sheet

1. The proposed dump site and design is a about as safe as any method of waste disposal could be for this location and this number of users.

By a roadside in Tiny Township there is a pipe flowing clear spring water, needing no pump, year round. People line up to fill their water bottles. the water flows because this part of the Alliston aquifer the pipe taps into is under pressure. Obviously, then, no water from the surface can flow down into it, contaminating it. The Alliston aquifer is enormous in extent, from Georgian Bay to south of Lake Simcoe, almost to the Oakridges Moraine. There are probably dozens of dumps on the surface over it, including the entire city of Barrie. One more small dump is not going to add any significant threat not already present.

2. The citizens of Simcoe County have voted consistently for the past 25 years for county councillors who pushed for this dump. They have spent 25 years, thousands of person hours, and $11 million dollars studying the facts, weighing alternatives and likely costs and compromises. If anybody expected to make short term profits from this, those people are long gone.

3. Only the citizens of Tiny township will be able to use it

5. It would be constructed to confirm to all the environmental assessment and legally required safe guards mandated by the Province of Ontario ( and even and beyond those).

6. The major opponents of the proposal, spearheaded by David Suzuki and Maude Barlow ( Council of Canadians) have put out a huge propaganda and communication effort, unable to be matched by the relatively small number of voters in that County. These environmental jehadists and cohorts from Toronto have not offered, that I can discover, one word of educational description or of science on the facts of this proposal or its likely effect on the environment.

7. This proposal and its success or failure is the responsibility and the accountability of only the residents of Simcoe County None of its outside detractors have any accountability for the results or the costs of their tyrannical overthrowing of local democracy.

8. I am extremely disappointed to discover how those in the media and in the environmental movement, in the forefront of it, can so blithely ignore data and facts, in their pursuit of publicity for their cause.

9. The lesson that the elders and the media are teaching the young over this, is that is far more exciting, and much easier, to try to get decisions by marching and shouting slogans publicly, than it is to study issues, debate, consult, compromise and vote. No wonder young people don't vote, what's the point of going to all that effort, if any bunch of well financed jehadists with time on their hands, wielding false propaganda and media hype, can overturn the tiresome slowness of democracy ?

Donato Cianci Sept. 7, 2009
donato@donatopoetry.com

Mother Earth

Poetry of Mother Earth 2

I don’t want to hear the words Mother Earth again, so boring, says the 40+ journalist in the morning paper devoted to explaining what to expect of events before ever their meaning could be any more apparent than that of a cosmic ray striking a fragment of gonadal DNA on the way to destruction or producing Einstein or a cancer, which may not a different outcome to a nearby wolf.
I say to him Confine your indifference to your own possibilities in life. She needs none of us.

That’s the problem we have journeyed towards for 50 centuries or more, since the invention of agriculture and writing, more and more humans have tried to avoid hearing the words “Mother Earth”. If you had a Mother who for sure would outlive you, might you not be appalled, feel trapped? How much worse if she is willing to provide all you need for life, if you are but willing to use it respectfully. This Mother has built self destructive mechanisms into her gifts, which you may not reject. You will swallow that medicine whether you wish it or not. Whether it becomes good medicine or a poison to you, depends on what your body does with it. Tobacco is sacred, or it is a poison, it's up to you. You'd better get control over your body. Be sure she will watch your death indifferently if you abuse her food.

Since you have such a Mother, whose food you must eat whether you die of it or no, how can you deal with her? She also gave you intelligence. If you did choose to use it, you would be among the few. Standing Wolf whoseesus Julio Donato Nov. 25 08