Methods of Control: Criticism of Rules For Radicals

Rules for Radicals is a book by Saul Alinsky, a guide for people trying to institute change, this is part of my pieces on methods of control. Essentially this book aims to help "the revolution" through cheap tricks. It's like The Art of War but for political upheaval. To use the same Einstein quote again "in a debate there is a thesis and antithesis, when successful the outcome is a synthesis", this book discourages that. The name using "radicals" makes the indoctrinated feel special, part of a group that are the only ones who understand them.

"Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have." Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. "Have-Nots" must build power from flesh and blood.
It's innocent enough and good advice on the front but it instills the us and them mindset encouraging aggressive behaviour with "build power from flesh and blood", there is no us and them just individuals. Some who think a like but none think the same.
"Never go outside the expertise of your people." It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.
This is essentially, 'pick your battles' but going outside your expertise is how you learn. It also stops the "radical" from seeing things from the opponents point of view and potentially stops them understanding why they're wrong. This seems cultish disconnecting the indoctrinated from anything that will veer them away from being controlled.
"Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy." Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.
A fairly simple attack method, similar to what I mentioned talking about cults but this stops the opposing sides from reaching a common ground managing the us and them mentality. This stops the synthesis of ideas forming.
"Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.
This is a diversion tactic, wasting resources is as greedy as hoarding them. It does nothing but divert the opponent and hinders development.
"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defence. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
Childishness, to get Machiavellian the sooner one has to resort to insults and shouting the less validity their argument has. It also diverts from actually discussing the issues or topics, distracting the "radical" from opposing views and makes them afraid of being ridiculed, keeping the indoctrinated on side and not questioning what they're doing.
 "A good tactic is one your people enjoy." They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They're doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones.
Back to my cult piece, this is a method of indoctrination and control to stop people questioning what they're doing, no one wants to be the one ruining the fun and be ostracised from the group.
"A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." Don't become old news.
No one wants old news, seems fair enough but this stops people being able to formulate reasonable arguments against you and stops the indoctrinated from realising what they're doing might be wrong.
"Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.
Another one to inhibit discourse and to stop people from coming to an agreement, there will be no peace with tactics like this.
"The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself." Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.
If people are afraid of you they won't question you, then you can get away with anything.
"The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition." It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.
Keep them under pressure and they'll fuck up. Giving the "radical" the opportunity to cease control.
"If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive." Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathises with the underdog.
Play the victim and you'll get bwahs, this isn't development or bettering society it's simple manipulation. No good will come if it and when people realise what you're doing, it'll lose you more than it gained.
"The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative." Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem.
More blocking of development and a synthesis of ideas.
 "Pick the target, freeze it, personalise it, and polarise it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
This is just dirty tricks, classic Ad Hominem and alienates those in opposition. This is best highlighted in the modern left calling ask those that oppose them fascist or Nazis regardless of their actual politics.

This all seems to be a way to create Lenins 'useful idiots', destabilising one authoritarian system to replace it with another. It also seems to be more about keeping the indoctrinated on your side. A truly developed society cannot be forced by the will of a few but one that facilitates the freedom and liberty of all individuals. Rules for radicals encourages an aggressive take over without regard to the wants and needs of all people, with its cultish methodology those involved will not realise what they've done or who they've done it for until it's too late.
Like with all my methods of control I write this to highlight how we are manipulated and controlled, the more aware of these you are the more in control of your own life you are.

Full disclosure I have used these in a business environment, often with those unwilling to improve but as a last resort to drive Kaizen when speaking to them reasonably has failed. It's a real, "I can wash but never be clean" situation for me. I have great concern for those who use these methods without remorse.

The Myth of Altruism

Altruism:
Disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.

I postulate that altruism is a myth. That we all do things for a reason, these reasons are a product of our minds and fulfill a goal we are praxeological beings. Some of this is based on my own experience and feelings.

Take an example of a way someone might help a person, like giving up a seat for an elderly person,

Societal:
It's what's expected of someone.
It's to help encourage the society around them to do the same should they be in need.
On most public transport it's the rules.

Id massage:
By experiencing a selfless act this satisfies someones Id, this creates a flow of endorphins and then satisfies the ego.

Virtue signalling:
To show the world how good a person you are, this raises the individuals sense of worth within there community and gives others the impression they're a good person.

Fishing for compliments:
Just doing it for the thanks.

Proving me wrong:
After reading this article you'll never know if you're doing it just to prove me wrong or if you're being altruistic.

None of these are reasons to not help others but it's important to be aware of what you do and understand your motives. Only if you're true to yourself can you develop as a person, know yourself and know those around you.

A Piece on DMT

Dimethyltryptamine AKA the God molecule. It's one of the most common chemicals in ethnobotanicals (plants that let you see God). It occurs naturally in most mammals as part of our endocrine system yet its purpose is unknown it's hypothesised to be integral to dreaming. As such its amongst the least dangerous hallucinogens, it still has its risks but it's accessible to the newer psychonaut but essential to the experienced. As it's a substance our body produces it gets broken down quickly, ingesting it alone has no effect as the stomach acids destroy it immediately. If it's taken alone it should be smoked in plant or crystal form or it can be made into a tea with an MAOI like Ayahuasca.

What plants?
There's a multitude that contain it but the 2 most powerful are Salvia Divinorum and Acacia. It's recently been postulated that Acacia is the burning bush through which the Judaic God spoke to Moses.

What is it good for?
People take it to commune with God, for me this has been a direct link from conscious to sub-conscious and a feeling the universe is talking to me. The latter isn't as strange as it sounds, to truly understand the world outside one needs to look within. The sub-conscious holds our connections to past lives that's where this connection feels like the universe is talking to you.

Whats it like?
My preference is to use it as an aid to my mediation, whilst it has some fun fractal hallucinations in the waking world it's ability to facilitate enlightenment far out weighs that. I will load a pipe, start my chant and try still my mind. After that prep of about 15 to 20 minutes I'll smoke the bowl, drawing the smoke as deep as possible and holding it. Finish the bowl and let the trance take over. It will begin with fractal like visuals in the darkness forming into archetypal images, dragons, the Buddha a multitude of things. From there through previous attempts I focus on an opening happening at my crown this feels to facilitate the connection better. I find it best to let what comes, come. Allow the sub-conscious talk to me and question as I need. All in all the trip only lasts about 15 minutes but while I'm meditating it feels like a few hours, this demonstrates the flimsy nature of time and our perception along it linearly.

What have I learnt?
There are a few personal revelations that will remain personal, I'll just say it will help you realise the things you do wrong and help you improve.
People fear intelligent individuals, the ones willing to learn and expand their minds. We're a threat to those seeking to control.
To know the world outside you, you must look within.
Always be prepared to change your mind.
Try not have beliefs.
Never assume you're more intelligent, better or worse than anyone else, we all have skills others don't.
Perception is key to everything.
Our perception of other people is a reflection of ourselves, we view aspects of ourselves in other people, often when we don't like someone it's most likely we don't like something we see of ourselves... Sometimes they're just ass holes.
It is essential to remember this is how people interact with us too.
Question everything even the mundane. Small answers help us understand other things we may not expect.
Experiment with other ideas, think like that, experience like that but remember you don't have to stay like that.
I got my chant from a DMT trip, 'ho chi jah roh' it doesn't mean anything as far as I know, it helps me still my mind.
Using previous trips, recalling and remembering them during meditation will help induce the state.

Shareholder Returns Failing Business

This will be a short post. What's the harm in shareholders? Businesses owing to shareholders become focused on profits for a small group of people, trying to make a larger profit than the years before. Sounds like a good plan but that can't happen, there's a finite amount of resources and customers. It can be achieved through developing newer or better products but that requires funding R&D, something that doesn't always have a payoff as quick as needed to satisfy shareholders. This leaves the profit having to come from extra expense on customers and reduction in wages to the producers in a business. Adding expense on customers is a very short term benefit, usually giving any competitor an opportunity to undercut and take customers. Reducing pay and/or bonuses to staff is slightly better, given the cult of business people will find it hard to leave and when they do there will be someone willing to take the job to get there start even at a lower wage. Take out the shareholder and a business may expand slower but is more in control of its direction, its funding could be better supported through business loans, as long as it keeps up the minimum payment they've little to worry about and keeps its autonomy. Leaving it room to develop as a business that can benefit its consumers with products or services they want or need.

Ibrahim Halawa, freedom or speedy trial

This maybe unpopular but I'm writing it anyway. Ibrahim Halawa travelled to Egypt in August in 2013 to join protests against the dispersal of sit in protests against the removal of the then president Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim brotherhood by the military, in a "day of rage". It's hard to pin down what he's being charged with as it's a group trial with charges from murder, attempted murder and banned protest, not all but the core charges.

Lets break this down a little, the Muslim brotherhood are a more fundamental Sunni group, who belive Sharia law should be in all aspects of life for all peoples. That in itself is fundamentally wrong and impinges on an individuals freedom and liberty, Google Sharia law and make up your own mind but I think you'll find it's not for you. They're also responsible for a number of terrorist attacks, so really seem to be another group misusing the Muslim faith for the system of manipulation (I don't believe all Muslims are dangerous but any religion can be abused for controlling people into dangerous things, more on that later). This is who Ibrahim chose to support.

Now onto my main point here, Ibrahim has been imprisoned for the worst part of 4 years without trial, a speedy trial is a fundamental human right and this is what people should be campaigning for. Instead people are demanding the immediate release of someone who went out of their way to go a country erupting in violence to support a violent group. Is that what people want? For the perpetrators and supporters of the suppression of freedoms who use violence to get there way to be allowed to free.

People need to step back from there feelings and take a look at the cold facts of what's happened here, be reasonable and campaign for what's right, a speedy trial. His youthful foolishness needs to be taken into consideration but that's no reason for a person to not face trial and every country has a right and duty to enforce its laws fairly.

Why not co-op insurance?

Short post, a lot of people complain about high costs of insurance and it being forced on people. So why not co-op based insurance? Credit unions demonstrate a market for community based financial based institutions.

The biggest blocker is current legislation (in Ireland) requires an insurance company to have €1 million bonded in the country for the purpose of paying out on funds they may not have. As you know from my bio I'm strongly in favour of market deregulation and would happily see this go, consumers should demand companies prove ability to deliver the service. Without that my following loose idea should work.

Co-op insurance:
The core idea here will be community based. People who join the co-op do it for there own gain and to benefit their community, similar to the how and why credit unions operate. Essentially over a given number of people you can assume averages of what diseases will be prevalent so from the outset you can easily assume an average annual policy cost, this will give a baseline policy cost. Genetic testing would be essential here, this will cause an increase to premiums for the individual but being a community minded co-op most the cost should be spread across the consumer base, similar can be applied with pre-existing conditions. If the initial baselining was done accurately the mark up wouldn't be to great. Why the mark up for those more likely to have illness? It'll keep the costs down for the rest of the group and make the scheme more attractive to people less likely to require the insurance fund, the more people you have not needing the fund the cheaper it is for those who will be using it regularly.

Competitive medical market:
This hypothetical insurance co-op would benefit by encouraging people to find doctors. Give the customer a ball park cost for the procedure they need and keep a directory of doctors but not limit the customer to this doctors. Allow the customer to contact and negotiate the best price with simple haggling, call a few doctors find who has the best rate, use that to drive down costs with other doctors, this could be done by the co-op for a low enough administrative fee but complacency or back handers will happen.

So why not co-op insurance?

Methods of Control: Cults in Business

I write these to help people identify when they're being manipulated. Once you are aware of them you can protect yourself and make your own decisions rather be manipulated into making the decisions others want you to make.

The cult method:

1. Aim for people who feel marginalised, this is easier than it seems, practically everyone feels unique, that there's no one like them and no one really understand them.
2. Use language that makes them feel special.
3. Use words only the cult knows to get them curious.
4. Once they're in, be over stimulating, loud noises, chanting in groups, lots of cheering whooping and applause for the new initiates.
5. Next start degrading the target, make them crave the above praise.
6. Convince them the only support they get will be from the cult.
7. Convince them no one else understands them, this is reinforced by the language used by the cult.
8. Offer levels to go through to improve themselves as a reward system, give them the praise they crave.

Now to go through where these are used, now Scientology would be the obvious one to go for but I think it'll be more interesting to use business to demonstrate this. Six sigma will be the main one I use but not limited just to it.

• Marginalised people: aiming for people under pressure to make improvements. Management are a minority often disliked by those under them and pressured by those over them. The junior employee underpaid and desperate to get ahead. These are prime targets for indoctrination.
• Getting people into these methods appeal to peoples egos, telling them they're intelligent and their position makes them special.
• Six sigma and many other business methodologies are rife with there own words, SIPOC, Kaizen, MoSCoW and RACI. While others like Agile have scrums and waterfalls, which make sense outside the business world so have the hook to get people in.
• Once you join things turn in to a Tony Robbins seminar with cheering and applause for the new people. Reassurance that you can do it if you dedicate your time to it thus distracting you from alternatives.
• Then comes the degradation, convince people that what they've done so far is useless and that using their method is the only path to success.
• Dependency on the method, using the buzzwords show how things can only be achieved using their methods, use case examples from big name brands and companies to convince people their method is the only path to success.
• Support, convince the initiate that they can only use approved websites and reading materials, most of which require membership.
• Support of other members, once the initiate is indoctrinated enough they'll be using the methods language, the only people who can understand them are other initiates, this also convinces others they need to be indoctrinated.
• Levels, most notably with six sigma there's 2 grades. The tests for which need to be paid for, again using language people know but don't fit in the business world, green belt and black belt. The lower level green belt is a continuous certification, the exam isn't standard entrants must study together and develop together, this strengthens the cult situation, the exam then isn't about right answers but about prime having similar answers, showing a group mind not individual thought. The more illustrious black belt is tested the same but on a much harsher scale followed up with regular retesting based on project work from your given business.

Don't be mistaken six sigma isn't all bad and does have some useful elements but so do others like agile but they use cult methods to keep themselves relevant and in businesses, you shouldn't keep yourself limited to just one. I use business methodology to demonstrate the innocuous places methods of control happen. Thinking for yourself will always be more successful, common sense and thinking things through will always be a stronger than someone else's ideals. Be adaptable, be creative and be yourself.

The needless fear of automation

There's a lot of fear with automation going around. It'll be interesting to see how the next couple of decades to with it but the fear is over hyped, the looms didn't ruin textile industry neither did sheet music ruin live music.

Every time we've seen a major change in industry there's been massive leaps in safety and productivity. As we see regularly, artisan crafts remain popular and in demand. Home automation with IoT is a emergent field providing a market for many a start-up. There is still employment available, with any of these leaps in industry jobs have evolved out of what was new, there will obviously be a field for automation repair, work flow development and a perfect opening for kaizen process improvement.

Some benefactors of automation.
Agriculture:
High definition cameras in sheds save a farmer a lot of time in checking, similarly the user of drones checking livestock and searching for lost livestock, combined with RFID or similar the tracking could be made a lot quicker and easier.
Stock delivery:
Most large shops already use this, entering incoming stock in to there point of sale systems, tracking sold goods and triggering alerts when goods need to be replaced, but it could be expanding to when and which shelves need to be restocked. This can be extended to vending machines, using something small like the raspberry pi, stock can be monitored, fed back to a central server, where the person handling stock can download there orders and load their van with exactly what they need. This cuts back on excess fuel consumption and journeys to machines that don't need it.
Retail:
Very few 'bricks and mortar' retailers take advantage of reservations like Argos or Schuh. Whilst it's a natural extension of Argos' retail model, Schuh have blended convenience and consumers want to view, handle and try a product. This is a very simple integration into a shops POS and massively improves the consumers perception of a company whilst helping solidify there place competing in an internet environment.

The automation resistance seems like a reason to bring in universal basic income, UBI a rant for another post. I worry people will cheat themselves out of opportunity being co-opted in to opposing what should make there lives better.

Those who fight change will die out.

Berkley and the suppression of free expression

With more Berkley riots I felt compelled to change focus from what I was writing. Whilst I don't agree with alt-right ideology I firmly believe people have the right to congregate, form political ideals and express themselves. Einstein said "In any successful debate you have 2 parties entering with a thesis and antithesis, if successful they come out with a synthesis". Only in good debate can you develop new ideas and that's what the political landscape needs. New ideas not violent clashes between 2 old and useless politics. Both of which have a history of failure at the cost of peoples lives, be it the fascist regimes of the 30s and 40s to the many failed socialist experiments in Russia, China, North Korea or Cuba.

Further irony is groups often needing the right to free expression like communists and anarchists fighting free expression, burning posters reminiscent of free expression protests from the 60s and inciting violence against those who oppose them. I will have no sympathy for those injured inciting violence in an attempt to suppress free expression.

In the 30s the brown shirts arose because Nazi meetings and rallies were regularly attacked like we've seen at Berkley. This gave the Nazis a sense that they had to defend themselves, this is what we're seeing at pro-Trump rallies with alt-right and 'the proud boys' arming up ready to fight. These things will only escalate to proactive attacks on opposition, if people don't learn to discuss we will see extreme violence like shootings and bombings.

This can be resolved peacefully, through debate and discussion. The opposing sides have common ground they can start at, working out from there they can educate each other on what the opposite is wrong about and come out with the synthesis Einstein talked about. That is what free expression is needed for, the ability to say what you think and for it to be explained why you're wrong. Without it we develop a climate of ignorance and fear, but maybe that's what people want, a fearful and ignorant populace, easier to control, manipulate and trigger.

Nobody Writes the Date Right

So this is a habit I picked up from the incredible XKCD this will be hard for you take but YOU ARE ALL DOING WRITING YOUR DATES WRONG. It's pretty simple, today is the 14th of April in 2017, if you're European that's 14/04/17 if you're American it's 04/14/17 but according to ISO 8601 it should be 2017/04/14.


It's simple numbers we're taught it all as children in base 10 numbers i.e. 0 to 9, the highest integer is expressed on the right so two thousand, five hundred and eighty three is expressed as 2583, if we used the European date format that comes out as 3852 and even worse like the American date format 5283, way to go America shit like this is why you don't use the metric system.

So apologies to database admins, they use this constantly in databases which brings us to why this is useful, in a database time can be expressed to the millisecond in one string 2017041415283350. Now obviously this won't work in a 32 bit environment but you knew that.
And now you know why my dates are funny on my posts. Next time on shit you didn't need to know, how to make sour dough bread from your thrush infection.

Universal Basic Income

Update another interesting UBI post in favour here.
Preamble:
The 2 most convincing arguments around UBI I've seen so far
Dangers Of Universal Basic Income
Libertarian Case for Basic Income

I'm still opposed to it, essentially it comes down to these points.
People need encouragement to develop, it's often said that the greatest developments come from war, it's not necessarily war but the act of competition, some of the greatest innovations in road safety come from races, the space race was a dick measuring contest between the US and Russia, whilst part of the cold war it wasn't a conflict, so on that a competitive wage market or even a lack of money are major contributing factors to people to do something. Personally I would never have gotten interested in process development and analytics if I hadn't ended up in role that paid more. Some will end up working in science or medicine to make things better but most end up disillusioned through the college process and crippling debts.


Not pushing people into a state where they need to work could be unhealthy, leaving them complacent, watching drivel, reading some rambling ranty blog or playing video games. Taking away there routine and allowing people to slip into an unnatural sleep cycle and poor diet will cause depression.

Where does the money come from before you say "gummerment", back to my usual point, where do they get there money from? Taxes, what's the largest source tax? Income tax. As you reduce the number of people employed or having to be employed you reduce the number of people who can be taxed, so that leads to higher VAT (sales taxes) and/or higher income tax on the few left working. You might think it can come from corporate tax, some sort of automation tax but like how Ireland gets companies into the country, we risk losing them to countries with lower automation tax and looser environmental laws.

In favour there's a simple argument for UBI it should be a single payment unlike our multi-payment system we have now, a fairly simple payment to all citizens cutting back on the bureaucracy needed to issue social welfare.

Further to that it should leave people free to develop as they want, study what they want and work a lot less if not at all. As I said above I don't see it working like that for the vast majority.

Rant on analysis 1 of many

There's nothing I enjoyed more in my old job than a fresh streaming pile of raw data, give me a months data and a quarter to compare it to, I'm like a pig in shit. Nothing teaches you more about statistics than wading into it up to the knees. From fucking around with SQL to force a database into giving you what you need, to performing black magic with vlookups holding a concatenate referencing a pivot table makes my dick tingle. It's not just the joy of a good script coming together but the overview showing you in clear numbers or charts for the discalcic.

Then you must do the hard work RCA (Root Cause Analysis), comparing the results to the reality, then the horror kicks in. When looking into the causes of contact, often by listening in to calls you slowly realise that data gets skewed by laziness, things like 'billing' isn't the top call driver it's the top of the list. Then you need to start a new table, list the user, the reason given and the actual cause. From that you get what I call "frequent fuckers",
essentially an exclude list of users that misuse logging and cause anomalous data. Go back to the original piece of data, create a new tab with a table of the "frequent fuckers" to to your raw data putting in a vlookup against the new tab, if they're on the table get it to give a mark, throw in a ifna to keep it clean, rebuild your pivot table but this time add a filter to exclude the "frequent fuckers" and then this look different.

The worst thing someone can do is over use averages, averages are often the bit in the middle that no one uses, providing solutions on averages gives these best solution for no one.

Try it yourself, http://www.pewresearch.org/data/ has lots of data sets, see can you get to the same results they do, more interesting is if you don't, then you get to figure out why not. Any questions leave a comment, who knows I might even get back to you.

Water charges

One of my biggest political annoyances has to be the anti water charge protests. I can't argue that people don't have a right to clean water but it's ludicrous to think it won't cost. With treatment and distribution there is an expense, an expense our government need to account for from a consistent source.

That rules out things like the Apple tax payment or other corporate taxes the EU deemed unjust, no company tax is an assured income as low tax rates are given to encourage employment remove that and jobs will be lost. By encouraging employment not only is there income to tax but it reduces the number on social welfare freeing up funds that are needed elsewhere from education to healthcare or even just those with serious reasons not to be able to work.

Back to the cost, the fairest way to do it like any commodity is by usage, when you buy petrol it's based on what you take not an average of what everyone uses, otherwise someone with a small efficient vehicle will pay for more than that use. From an environmental perspective by charging people for what they use will mean people will be likely to be conservative a precious resource, fixing leaks and not wasting it hosing down there lawns.

As we've seen meters are not an option which leads to flat rates, which has already failed but not for the reasons it should, to go back to the petrol analogy it forces people who are being economical to pay for more than they use which goes against any sense of fairness. It also encourages a blasé approach from those wasting water, "I paid for it I'll do what I want with it".

This leads me to where we seem to be going with it, a false idea of not paying for it. The attitude of the protesters seems to be "the gummerment will pay" without an understanding of where the "gummerment" get their money taxes, the majority of which is income tax. So we still pay for it but don't know it, either in an increase to basic PAYE, sneaking it under PRSI or just not reducing USC. Now I know 0.5% of VAT is meant to be for water services but that's not working otherwise we'd have a working water system free of leaks etc. Other than that the only option is to benefit from the rewards of other people's labour without reward or recompense, in other words slavery.

That leaves this writer to continue to insist metered water charges are the only way forward. To placate people who will use the what about the elderly or "won't somebody please think of the children" this can be addressed through similar to the heating allowance, whilst I disagree with government subsidies as they cause unneeded inflation (more on that later) it does aid those who need it whilst ensuring those who don't still pay.