A list of essays released in 2002

Usenet regulars

There are a lot of discussion groups whereby people communicate through the Internet. Not everyone is familiar with either the Interent or discussion groups, but it is reasonable to assume that there are a group of regulars in every discussion group.

It appears that regulars make a lot of postings and, in many instances, they have to indicate they are some sort of authority on topics of interest. Their postings often answer questions raised by others.

Most people obtain their answers without paying anything. Of course, they sometimes contribute also by answering questions. This is exactly the way discussion groups work.

But human beings are human beings and discussion groups gradually become being controlled and used for benefits. The regulars play an important role in this process and many of them are in fact those who are benefited.

For an example, a regular was very active in a discussion group and spent little effort in advertising his website through which he was able to generate a significant income.

How, then, to become a regular?

Not easy. Additional regulars would mean imminent taking away part or all of benefits from existing ones.

Look at this case. A regular disappeared for almost two months and there were some jobs which were supposed to be done by her within this period. At this juncture, a man volunteered to help and got the job done with a prospect of taking over the job permanently. When the regular was back, a fight began.

A human civilization rule dictates that benefits are subject to challenge. From time to time, people post their oppositions against the regulars who, naturally, fight back to protect their interests.

Basically, the tool they employ is uniting together, forming strong barriers to resist intrusions. They very possibly label intruders as trolls or impose definitions to justify the intruders' postings are out of topic.

An intruder may challenge a specific regular over a specific issue. In this case, very possibly protection comes from another regular who indicates his or her difference in opinion. Depending on the subsequent waves of attack more regulars then participate in the struggle and, in most cases, dismiss the challenge.

In some cases, they complain to the internet service provider of the intruders and proudly announce the driving away of the trolls. It is worthwhile to note that such announcement postings are truly out of topic.

Despite the hard work they carry out, the regulars have their good times. When it comes to festival seasons, most of the regulars equip themselves with most beautiful words they can possibly locate from dictionaries and congratulate one another for the happy occasions. They have to do so to indicate their status.

If a non-regular try to boradcast similar congratulation message to the regulars, he or she will most probably be ignored.

The usenet circle is basically the same as other sectors of the world. Occasionally the regulars fail to do their duties and subsequently they become weak. In this respect, the trolls, aprart from some of their funny behaviour, help to bring down some of the regulars. Otherwise all regulars will hold power for a time period long enough to bring down the usenet.

Conditions for accounts

A customer wanted to open a savings account with a bank. She was asked to sign an agreement known as conditions for accounts prepared by the bank. It was well bound in the form of a small pamphlet.

A total of 24 paragraphs were there. Paragraph 20 was entitled "Additional Rules" and read "The Bank may at its sole discretion issue from time to time rules regulating Accounts, and the Customer agrees to be bound by such rules which shall have such force and effect as if expressly incorporated herein."

This was absurd.

This simply implied that the bank could do whatever it wished to the savings account and the deposits placed by the customer were not protected at all.

May be this was one of the reasons why the bank was penalized when it encountered difficult times, for an example, during a bank run.

Immigration

In many parts of the world, especially those which are not well developed, human immigration to a well-developed country appears to be fashionable. Some even regard it as a symbol of status and something to be proud of.

In many cases those who emigrate do not know about the countries in which they are going to settle down. What is important to them is that it is something which creates admiration among friends and relatives.

Nevertheless, to emigrate or not is not something of importance to them. They are the sort of people who prefer to get more without putting in sufficient effort for the earning. This attitude is likely to stay wherever they go.

What appears to be miserable to them is what they are going to encounter in their new countries. They are certainly creatures of inferior grades. When it comes to critical moments they are sacrificed.

Here is an example. An immigrant had a traffic accident and the other driver was a native and happened to be a first class one. A policeman came and quickly drew a conclusion that it was the immigrant's fault. Not a surprise at all.

Partly because of the traffic accident and partly due to the fact that he was one of the small group who eventually woke up from their dreams, the immigrant tried very hard to adapt to the environment and raised a happy family.

But the ending to him and other emigrants will be the same. A war will break out between his old country and new country. How he and his family will be treated by the new country is obvious.

Attack on militants

It was reported that there was a bomb attack made by Palestinians to an Isreali bus which was loaded with militants.

This made sense.

Be it a war or else, it had nothing to do with civilians, Palestinian or Isreali. It was something to be settled by those with power on both sides.

Both of them wanted something and both of them recruited helpers to be termed as militants.

Eventually, the winning side, if there would be one, would share benefits among those with power and their helpers. Nothing would be passed onto civilians.

Therefore it would be logical to indicate that civilians should not be targets of attack.

Ignorant investors

Corporate executives together with accountants inflated stock prices and thus were able to make huge profits out from stock markets. Their gain came from those ignorant investors who put their money into stocks and eventually suffered.

This was in fact an act of gambling. In this situation the investors were the losers.

Did they deserve a pity?

No. Not at all.

From time to time they had chances to watch rising prices of their stocks, while peasants work hard under the sun for their crops.

In the evenings, they joined social gatherings, using trivia of investment experience as topics of conversations to enlarge their contacts. At this time of the day, most peasants were already in bed, so that they would be able to get up early in the following morning, enabling them to start another day's work.

The downward trend of stock prices might provide a good opportunity to these ignorant investors to take up solid and meaningful work.

Corporate executives

Subsequent to Enron and Worldcom scandals it was widely expected that there would be revealing of more corporate accounting malpractice.

People learnt that many corporate executives accumulated wealth in an illegal way. They built large houses. They bought beautiful yachts. They certainly enjoyed their livings in most luxurious ways.

But when it came to their position in a beings hierarchy, the situation was totally different.

They were at the bottom of the list.

They were unable to feed themselves. They did not cultivate. They even did not know the meaning of cultivation. It was also true that they did not earn their livings through a secondary means, for an example, like providing a service. What they did was to cheat and steal valuables from ignorant investors.

Manipulation of oil prices

How oil prices have been manipulated can be both simple and complex. The simplicity comes from the fact that oil supply in most countries has been controlled by those who have grasped power and their associates.

On the other hand, the complexity brightens the picture with different ways of profit maximization resulting in exploiting the mass public. Not too many people can escape it as most of the world population need to use oil in one way of another.

For discussion purposes, just take a simple scenario. Oil supply of a former British colony is still done by British companies, despite the fact that there have been the presence of other suppliers from other countries, for example, America. Local companies may be there also but the market share is generally small.

Then, how have they been able to controll the oil prices effectively? It is by co-operative monopoly.

At any one time the oil prices quoted by different suppliers have been more or less the same and the behaviour of responding to price fluctuation has been also more or less the same. In other words, there has not been competition as far as price is concerned. They have all responded fast to price increase but slow to price decrease.

How have they been able to do it remains a mystery to outsiders.

Cancellation of ATM cards

A young woman went to the counter of a bank and was greeted by a teller.

"Good morning! Could I help you?" the teller politely addressed.

"Yes, please. I want to cancel my automatic teller machine card," answered the woman. She then handed the card to the teller.

The teller filled out a form and asked the woman to sign it. Then she asked, "Can I help you on something else?"

The woman asked, "Would you give me a receipt to indicate that I have returned the card to your bank?"

"I am afraid not. We will send this card to our processing centre and it will be cancelled."

"I think you have to give me a receipt. Otherwise how I could prove that I have returned the card to your bank?"

"You had already signed the form of card cancellation."

"But the form is kept by you. Not by me."

"But we did the same to all customers."

"I think you are in a difficult position. Could you please ask your manager to speak to me?"

But the issue, despite the fact that it was a simple one, could not be easily resolved as it was difficult for the staff of the bank, and thus the bank itself, to easily understand that a bank and a customer are of equal entities.

Vote sensibly

It's election time again! It's a great time especially for the politicians. It's the only time they have voters really in their minds.

This is just normal under current human civilization. In other words, nobody shows surprise over such phenomenon. What makes the difference is how much a politician would do for the general public.

No doubt she or he would do so as far as possible if her or his priorities have been achieved. What are her or his priorities?

The most important one is that her or his future is fully secured. It could be a consecutive second term of the same position. It could be the creation of a new position of even better benefits. It could be a streamed income to a company to which she or he is directly or indirectly associated with. It could be anything if anyone would care to observe and look into it.

This is also normal under the current human civilization. Therefore, no voters should regret if the politicians they elected turn out to be creatures of the above-mentioned sort.

Ultimately, under normal circumstances, these creatures accumulate wealth and voters can only and should hope that they spend the wealth, most probably later, in their country, thus contributing to the prosperity of the economy.

But the economy would definitely not be benefited if voters elect those who hold foreign passports. Why? Because the wealth accumulated would certainly be spent in foreign countries as those politicians would simply go there at the appropriate time.

Therefore, it is important to vote sensibly.

The son of a senator

A bright young man became a senator and made a good fortune after a few years. His son was born then and was brought up in a nice and warm environments. He was educated well and loved by almost everyone, including relatives and friends.

At his sixteenth birthday, he received his first convertible as a birthday present.

But certainly it was not comfortable to drive in a convertible for long distance travelling. Therefore a helicopter is employed for such occasions.

One day, an accident occurred when he was travelling in a helicopter.

People learnt about it and things about him. He led a good life. He received good education. He never worked. He had never been enlisted.

One said he did not contribute to the community at all.

Another one argued that he did, because, as a celebrity, his accident helped to ease the minds of the massive group who had been exploited. Thus the small group who had gained advantages could continue to lead luxurious life.

Administration expenditure

Every organisation incurs expenditure, directly or indirectly associated with administration. So does a charity organisation.

A point of interest is the percentage of funds it receives being spent and treated as administration cost.

It depends on its objectives, structure, personnel and many other factors. For discussion purposes it is wise to keep it simple by assuming that all funds received are registered in books.

It is run by human beings and human beings must survive. Therefore a percentage of the funds is paid as salary to them.

It needs to transport some food to a distant land which suffers from flooding and therefore another percentage of the funds is incurred as transportation charges.

In order to ensure the transportation be effective, a supervisor, duly authorized by a manager, has to communicate with the local authority of the flooding area on necessary arrangements and hence a further percentage of the funds is taken out.

Upon their return, the supervisor writes a good report and there is a corresponding reward to all involved, most probably including the manager. Needlessly to say, another percentage of the funds is required.

Having done a good job, a senior staff of the organisation contacts local press to publicize their good work. A press conference or else other means is therefore arranged. Thus another small percentage of the funds is allocated.

The next day it becomes one of the newspaper headlines. As it is considered at this juncture that the organisation will be capable of raising further funds effectively because of such nice publicity, another celebration dinner becomes necessary and duly arranged. The expenditure could sometimes be considerable.

A list similar to above could only be limited by imagination. Nevertheless, all can be, if one likes, classified as administration expenditure.

Productivity again

So, to cite an example again by using lawyers. Most probably a lawyer leads a better life than a farmer. It is not difficult to give a reason.

It takes years of study and practice to become familiar with laws and thus effective as a lawyer. And hard work should be rewarded.

Perhaps a long time ago there were two parties who agreed to settle a dispute by employing an arbitrator. All of them agreed that any of the two parties could make use of a third party as a representative in the process of presenting arguments.

This third party was very good on the job and eventually won the case. Good work was rewarded. People began to visualize the possibility of earning a living in such an easy way.

In order to be a good practitioner in such a way they spent a lot of effort on technique of carrying out arguments. The better they performed the more rewards they would be able to obtain. Why should they go to farms everyday to grow the crops they need when they could make use of such rewards to buy more?

As human life became more complicated, the need for arbitration became more, so thus the need for the existence of such third parties.

Unlike farmers who produced tangible crops, these third parties produced products such as advice or help. Perhaps because of this reason or else some others they grouped together to protect their interest. Such grouping could ensure their existence and block further intrusion by outsiders unnecessarily.

Perhaps they thus called themselves lawyers as laws seemed to be important and they introduced concept and language difficult to understand into their trade. Anybody who wanted to share their fortune should spend a considerable period of time on understanding the generated complexity.

As times went by a system of examination and recognition was developed. Like else others, this system went on perfecting itself to serve its purposes.

To lawyers, it worked well.

But the nature of their productivity has never changed. It has been intangible.

Productivity

What is productivity? A simple yet extremely difficult question, due to the abundance of factors associated with it.

Products and production agents are two of the factors.

Examples of production agents are farmers and lawyers.

Farmers produce crops. Without them, beings, especially human, will be in great difficulty in order to survive. Undoubtedly the food chain will be hugely disturbed and the civilization in force has not indicated how an equilibrium could then be achieved.

What about lawyers? They obtain their reward, often in the form of money, from their clients and in return they do something favourable for the clients. In the case of a law court, it could be justice for one but injustice for another. Of course on a topic like this lots and lots of further issues could be discussed. Perhaps it is wise to view from the perspective of lawyers only.

The money given to the lawyers enable them, quite a substantial number of them, to enjoy their life.

Often a lawyer's house is bigger than that of a farmer's. Often a lawyer goes to restaurant but a farmer cooks her or his own meal. Examples can be more.

Why should it work in this way? Why should those who produce something so important as crops live in a smaller house than those who produce something so vague and not meaningful?

And this is not the only trade whose practitioners are perhaps far better off than farmers. There are many others. Lawyers are just an example.

An important issue to ponder.

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A dedication to beings of all universes.