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We are surrounded by the voices of authority, few of which are even remotely in a position to advise us.
Look at the means by which we are advised - television, for many, the most absurd. Every science officer on the USS Enterprise and Voyager have at one time or another been paid to voice-over science shows - 7 of 9, Geordi, and Spock, absurd that they are in any way qualified - as actors, yes, as representatives of science or reason, no, and yet it's an inane formula repeated time and time again, their voices alone, from having played fantasy characters in fantasy "science" fiction movies set in the fantasy future is enough to lend credibility to whatever "science idea" you're trying to promote. It's ludicrous.
Consider celebrity, every celebrity having used their elevated status to advise us on issues of health, religion (think Tom Cruise...), ethical treatment of animals, vegetarianism, you can't quote the cause that some celebrity hasn't thrown their status and presumed expertise behind to endorse.
There's politics, being a politician - an elected position with no formal qualifications whatsoever (whatever qualifications are incidental, not required), yet upon achieving office they are now authority figures that not only advise but enforce policies on morality, crime, environment, taxation and business. The lately dethroned Harper is one such example; from a background in economics he created and enforced policies on immigration, censorship, environment, etc., many with a devastating legacy and effect.
And there's wealth - possession of which alone is enough for many people to consider you not only an authority on wealth, but on happiness, family values, charity, politics and spirituality.
None of these "authorities" are even slightly credible, yet their voices abound and clamor to be heard, very often over those better qualified to advise or promote the cause. Think Donald Trump.
This is a segue into another argument I'll be making shortly, in the meantime I'd suggest you reject all authority until you've entirely done your research. Or, at the very least, question it heavily..
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An interesting article in The Atlantic on a curious star that might (slender might, probably not-might, but curious nonetheless) have a Dyson Sphere built around it.
Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-most-interesting-star-in-our-galaxy/410023/
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The next few articles will be attempting to deal with some of the issues presented by Capitalism run wild. This is the first of these.
The idea of a progressive, or fairer, property tax.
In Calgary, as the system stands, property taxes are based on the assessed value of your home, run through a formula that then disgorges a tax bill.
Now in what will probably come as a surprise, I'm going to suggest that property taxes based upon the value of a property are wrong. To increase taxes for anyone investing in their home/business/etc., or set a higher tax rate upon it, turns that asset into a liability. People that maintain and invest in their homes both make great neighbors (and if you've ever lived next to someone with a run-down trailer in their driveway, a few mattresses in their yard and a pile of corn-cobs under their barbecue you'll understand), contributing not only to the value of their homes but the value of their neighbors, and generally speaking crime, drugs and other negative influences associated with poor areas are somewhat mitigated. As neighborhoods gentrify these effects are magnified, reducing the amount of policing, healthcare, and other related social services. It seems obvious, an enriched environment is an improvement upon an impoverished one, taxes should reflect this.
Secondly, property taxes should attempt to define the "direction" a city is going in, in Calgary, as with many other North American cities, that direction is Urban Sprawl, forever harvesting outlying arable lands to be used in low density suburbs. Some of the many objections I have to this:
- Generally said suburbs are ugly, low density places to live that require constant consumption of resources, both in the commute to/from work, but as well in the foraging for and delivery of groceries and entertainment.
- The further a suburb is away from the core of the city, the more in consumes of it's resources, both in terms of the delivery of services - such as Gas, Electricity, Water, Sewage, Cable, Internet, Public Transport etc. and in maintenance. As it stands the property taxes do not reflect this, inner city homes, factoring in for desirability, pay the same or more as the farthest flung houses on the outskirts of the city.
- Quite simply, we're losing arable land and our wild places to maintain the illusion of infinite resources. Land is not, however, infinite, nor are things like water, gas and electricity, which the suburbs consume at a far greater rate than higher density inner city homes.
What I propose is this. Firstly, to encourage higher density living nearer the core of the city, property taxes be based upon the square footage of a property at ground level. As the property rises up (vertically) square footage increases, but the taxation rate drops for each subsequent story added to any structure.
In it's simplest form, a 1500 square foot infill on a 1500 square foot lot pays double the property tax that a 1500 square foot infill on a 750 foot lot pays. There is no factoring in for the perceived or assessed value of the home, taxes are assessed purely on the size of the lot.
Secondly, the city be divided into zones, a sort-of bulls-eye pattern that increases taxes the further you are away from the core. This reflects the increased costs of delivering and maintaining those services like electricity, water, sewage, etc.
Thirdly, the city should have a system whereby vacant, untenanted and undeveloped properties pay substantially higher taxes than those that are occupied. This is a logical workaround to landlords and property owners that lower the value of neighborhoods with unkempt and untenanted properties, as well as preventing any perversions of the supply and demand economy that occasionally sees landlords keep properties vacant to artificially inflate prices. In any urban environment, higher density is generally correlated with lower overall costs both to the city and the citizen, and a better quality of life.
Transitioning from the current system to the one I propose would be simple, although not timely, but a gradual transitioning would more efficiently manage and preserve our environment and resources, deliver more efficient public transport, more interesting urban architecture, a richer culture, reduce consumption and a host of other benefits, too many to list here.
Just an idea...
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Refer to the original: From Art to Artifact.
Art, when it becomes currency, has a variety of possible evolutions ahead of it.
There is, of course, the endless replication of it, which generally raise money, or more currency, in the instance of music, for the artist while alive, for those in the visual arts more often when they are dead. Music, we've come to accept that the primary revenues for a successful musical artist will come from the reproduction of their works, whereas with the visual arts the primary revenue comes from the sale of the original; there are entire conversations to be had on that topic, but that's not where I'm going with this.
This will be about Copyright. This is the inherent right of an artist to maintain control over their work and realize a profit, the original point of which was to allow the artist to make money in their lifetime without fear of plagiarism or being undermined with cheap imitations. At the end of their life the copyright would expire (most people, artists or otherwise, have no need of an income in death). A good and a noble idea, but let's see how it's played out...
Copyright laws evolved such that they became currency as well, the artist could sell the rights to his/her work for an initial lump sum, and the purchaser would be free to exploit the work as they saw fit. For some artists this would be good, lacking the means to reproduce their work, the new copyright holder could make prints or records, commercialize the art and bring it to the largest possible audience. This freed up the artist to create, no longer do they need to worry about the manufacture of product, but it very often paid them a fraction of what their art would prove to be worth. With this new paradigm Art becomes a commodity.
Those "brokers", who purchased the rights to the work, then lobby to extend copyright to allow them to increase revenues from the purchased work - in Canada, Copyright duration is the creator of the works lifetime, plus 50 years from the end of the calendar year that the creator died. We begin to see the perversion of what was once a great idea. The arguments made that posthumous profits could be used to support the artists heirs are largely spurious - why, a) should the artists work be expected to support his/her heirs, and b) in application it's largely used to benefit the people who've commoditized the work and seek to maximize returns.
Abuses of this are now legion, think of Time Warner's Claim to Copyright on Happy Birthday, now largely invalidated, but still having denied for decades fair public use and collecting tens of millions in fraudulent royalties. Think of every format change in media - you bought the Beatles Record, 8 Track, Cassette, CD, and finally you want to throw it on your iTunes, you should expect to pay YET AGAIN for "copyright", when in fact you should have bought personal rights the first time, subsequent purchases applying only to have your "right" as purchaser rewritten onto the new media.
The system, as it stands, is rarely enforced by artists and frequently enforced by corporations and brokers who have no legitimate claim upon the work. "50 years from death", in the age of the internet, given the population of the planet and abundance of media being created, is easily equivalent to the previous 10,000 years of human history. While I have no simple solutions, it might be time for some intelligence and reason to fairly visit again the notion of Copyright.
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An interesting article on how women carry the Y chromosomes (or DNA) of former lovers about in their bodies.
Link: http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(05)00270-6/abstract
Which leads to a few questions & speculations, addressed here: http://jenapincott.com/do-you-carry-the-dna-of-your-former-lovers/
In a sense, though, if you've every done LSD or mushrooms, this should come as no surprise. We are all - at every scale and distance, inextricably intertwined, and our every interaction and idle thought shapes both ourselves and others. But if you haven't had that trip, well, consider this a little more proof to add to the pile...