Welcome to Alternative Ideas...

Providing a platform for new and different voices...

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Quick note on the Profit Maximizing motive...

So with an AT&T messaging package you get 30 days to use it. Today is the 31st of January. Purchased today, what days would you think this would last till? Now don't forget, February has 28 days. So... 28, plus two should give me today and the 1st of March no? The entire day I would think. If they were really doing it properly, they would go thirty days from the exact time of purchase – which should be 12:30pm on the 2nd of March. However, in actuality, they only give me until 12:01AM on March 1st. So they call all of today as one whole day and then they give you until March 1st (the 30th day), great - EXCEPT - they only give you ONE minute of that day!?!?! So in essence, I got about 28 1/2 days of usage. Hmmmm.... And this system is best for me and the consumer? No, they want us to give them the most money possible, while they give us the least service for that price... And the system rewards them for it. They achieve a higher profit margin, and their share price goes up, yet the customers get shorted. How is this right? Yeah I could go to another carrier, but they would have some other tricky little quirk just like this one. They are after all in competition for investors – who are of course after the same returns and the same profits... and in competition to see who can get the most out of us for the least effort and cost. I just don't see how that is ultimately a good motivational foundation for a system to be based upon.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Alternative Ideas

Human life is about patterns.  Each day we follow a similar pattern to that of the previous day - yes of course we have the weekends to break the truly singular pattern of everyday (but then again, in a larger view, isn't this again a pattern for a single day?).  But it is bigger than that, it is about the things we do and the moments we spend, the people we meet, the social and political world we inhabit - the entire life we live is patterned and predictable.  We need to break these patterns, we need to start thinking about alternatives, finding different ways to depaternize our lives.  We need to come up with alternative ideas.

Our 'society' was here before we lived, and unfortunately - as it is structured today - it will change little while we are here.  Unless we grasp for change through our free intellect, our own unique observations, our own innate human abilities to think and do.  We all have the ability to act independently, to blaze our own alternative pathways through life.  To mark it down and others find a more rewarding and alternative way.  But this is not just about us - as individuals - but about all of us, as a society.  We need to change the world, to find an alternative idea on how our whole social system is structured, one that is more inclusive, yet still allows us to act as ourselves.  Neither slaves to business nor government, where one individual is never more important than the whole and the whole is never more important than a singular person.

How do we get there?  This question can not be asked yet.  There is no alternative idea for a place other than 'today'. To get from A to B, there first must be a B.  That way, when the world slouches back into another/the next economic crisis, there will be something else to talk about, an alternative idea for a different way of living, a different way for society to structure itself.
  

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Is it really yours?

If you 'own' a piece of property, is it really yours?  I mean after all, some one else 'owned' it before you did and someone else will 'own' it after you do.  So what makes this moment in time the most important of ownerships?  It would seem to me that each piece of land should be thought more to be held in trust for all of humanity and the current day 'owner' as caretaker from one 'owner' to another.  After all, we all share in the world we live in, we all breath the same air, drink from the same water cycle, and all in all, inhabit the same spaces throughout and over time.  So why is it that at this one time, that this one space is more important than any other?

It is not 'yours', it is the worlds.  It is not even humanities as animals, plants, and insects all inhabit that space that some currently recognized 'legal' entity of the day says is yours - yet these creatures don't claim lordship over it.  They don't try to tell you what can and can't be done there.  All property should be viewed as being maintained in trust for and from, previous and future, generations of inhabitants - of all species.

That land is not yours, that is only what we have been taught to think of it as.  Property ownership is simply a temporary right of use.  We should learn to respect the history of that space, and leave it in good condition for the future use of it...  We each own nothing, because we all use everything...

Friday, January 22, 2010

But it's not a religious war...

No matter how quickly and easily the American and perhaps even the Western world will brush this off, there is no way that the Islamic world will simply let this go - nor should they.  We can claim its one company doing it, and that it doesn't indite or even indicate an entire society or country.  But three hundred thousand rifles used by the US military that have biblical references as the first / last thing a soldier sees as s/he targets and shoots at someone?  Just that sentence there picked up abroad is all we need to let hatred further fester and to foster more militants and more militant responses.  We just emboldened and enlarged the small percentage of militant islamists out there that are fighting against the West.  One stupid company, one stupid government acquisitions officer... yet still, it went 'unnoticed' (or unobjectionable that is) to the entire US fighting force and had to be spotted by the British.  Therefore, I guess the US and its military - through non-action - have in fact sent a very 'actionable' message abroad that this is in fact a holy war.  If this was a sporting contest this would be called "bulletin board material".  The West and American in particular, just keeps creating its own enemies...

Sunday, January 3, 2010

An over indulgence in poor thinking...

Great Article...  
"Solution to killer superbug found in Norway"


Actually something so thoroughly needed to be heard in the western world its sickening.  But the answer to the final question, "Why are they fighting for this not to take place?" is far to simple.  Profit maximizing motives, and entrenched ignorance/arrogance... Summed up beautifully by the Japanese:

"Dr. Satoshi Hori, chief infection control doctor at Juntendo University Hospital in Tokyo, says doctors overprescribe antibiotics because they are given financial incentives to push drugs on patients."

And somewhat conquered by the norwegians:

"All workers are paid on days they, or their children, stay home sick. And drug makers aren't allowed to advertise, reducing patient demands for prescription drugs."


"Penicillin is not a cough medicine..."