I found myself doing a "Visa commercial" recently, not for pay, not officially, just I was saying in some email that I'd take Visa over a visa any day, a dig at the game of nation-states, which isn't working for so many.
We went to MercyCorps on International Refugee Day, Glenn and I, to learn more about those ejected from "the system" (so-called) and what engineers have been coming up with to compensate.
Yes, we blame the non-nations, the corporations, for not letting nations have their way, but then the corporations do not require those huge contiguous tracts of land, so problematic on the maps.
True, a soy bean farm in Brazil may run to many acres but it's still not exactly a state, not that private property is any friendlier. Is it a hospital, a hotel, a university? Expectations vary depending on the namespace and of course one's role in whatever scripts (processes, scenarios, time tubes).
We have a lot of players that are non-nations, NGOs in particular.
So are church groups NGOs? Temples? Do we worship in NGOs on Sundays and Saturdays?
The nomenclature is not clear.
Many a Friends Meeting is indeed a 501(c)(3) on paper, shorthand for a kind of institution that does the same kind of work as the USG i.e. serves a public ("the people") and as such is tax exempt.
One may even donate to such tax-exempt corporations, known as charities, and claim those donations off the top is if those were taxes already paid. Not every penny need be rendered unto Caesar.
Like, why sponsor a corrupt government, overrun by plutocrats and their minions, when you might earmark for the sleeker charities of your choice? Many a donor billionaire has just such thoughts.
What I like about Visa is it's somewhat freed of the taint of nations and suggests that more of the real wealth, the real work, is not performed by humans at all. The latter weave a final set of products and services and network amongst themselves, but the heavy lifting is done by water and wind, cosmic forces (gravity etc.).
Visa plugs into all that, in my imagination (PR), whereas old money still bears the face of a "sovereign" to whom credit for great works was assigned.
I have nothing against great works mind you, I'm just not one to encourage humans arrogating all credit to themselves for much of anything.
We humans didn't design our own human bodies and have yet to figure out how they work in many important respects. We have our myths in which humans are made to be boss, but they're called myths for a reason.
Anyway, don't mistake this for some religious argument about deities. I'm just sharing my realistic assessment of value added through Work (i.e. expending Energy in physics terms), saying I'm not about to give humans all the credit, as if humans were the only source of anti-entropy in this world.
We'd get absurd forms of bookkeeping from such an anthropic premise. Our narratives would fail to hold water after awhile. So lets keep it real if we want to keep our currency hard. That's really not a new concept.
We went to MercyCorps on International Refugee Day, Glenn and I, to learn more about those ejected from "the system" (so-called) and what engineers have been coming up with to compensate.
Yes, we blame the non-nations, the corporations, for not letting nations have their way, but then the corporations do not require those huge contiguous tracts of land, so problematic on the maps.
True, a soy bean farm in Brazil may run to many acres but it's still not exactly a state, not that private property is any friendlier. Is it a hospital, a hotel, a university? Expectations vary depending on the namespace and of course one's role in whatever scripts (processes, scenarios, time tubes).
We have a lot of players that are non-nations, NGOs in particular.
So are church groups NGOs? Temples? Do we worship in NGOs on Sundays and Saturdays?
The nomenclature is not clear.
Many a Friends Meeting is indeed a 501(c)(3) on paper, shorthand for a kind of institution that does the same kind of work as the USG i.e. serves a public ("the people") and as such is tax exempt.
One may even donate to such tax-exempt corporations, known as charities, and claim those donations off the top is if those were taxes already paid. Not every penny need be rendered unto Caesar.
Like, why sponsor a corrupt government, overrun by plutocrats and their minions, when you might earmark for the sleeker charities of your choice? Many a donor billionaire has just such thoughts.
What I like about Visa is it's somewhat freed of the taint of nations and suggests that more of the real wealth, the real work, is not performed by humans at all. The latter weave a final set of products and services and network amongst themselves, but the heavy lifting is done by water and wind, cosmic forces (gravity etc.).
Visa plugs into all that, in my imagination (PR), whereas old money still bears the face of a "sovereign" to whom credit for great works was assigned.
I have nothing against great works mind you, I'm just not one to encourage humans arrogating all credit to themselves for much of anything.
We humans didn't design our own human bodies and have yet to figure out how they work in many important respects. We have our myths in which humans are made to be boss, but they're called myths for a reason.
Anyway, don't mistake this for some religious argument about deities. I'm just sharing my realistic assessment of value added through Work (i.e. expending Energy in physics terms), saying I'm not about to give humans all the credit, as if humans were the only source of anti-entropy in this world.
We'd get absurd forms of bookkeeping from such an anthropic premise. Our narratives would fail to hold water after awhile. So lets keep it real if we want to keep our currency hard. That's really not a new concept.
