Corruption & The Path to Political Purgatory

Syndrome of Distortions. With the exception of economically destructive natural disasters, every financial or political crisis is caused by either a corrupt regulatory process, prodigal fiscal policy, short-sighted monetary policy, or all of the above. Distortions in any one of these three processes can cause great damage to a nation’s economy and its democratic processes. This […]

Beware of the Congressional Experience Myth

“Is experience in Congress required to be a good congressional representative?” This question is rooted in a common misconception perpetuated by the politicians themselves and all the lobbyists and staffers who feed from the trough of the existing political establishment. As we learned previously, the reality is that approximately 80% of a politician’s time is consumed by […]

A Sorrowful Political Party Prison

Rise of the Political Party Machines. The two-party political system in the United States has not always existed. The U.S. Constitution contains nothing about political parties at all because the U.S. Founding Fathers never wanted party-based politics to dominate and corrupt the political system. In fact, when the U.S. Constitution was signed in 1787, there were […]

Exploiting Sick Americans to Subsidize Foreign Wars is Bad Policy

The CIA, Crack Cocaine, and the Sabotage of Nicaragua. During the 1980s the White House and several influential members of Congress gave explicit and detailed orders to the State Department, CIA, DEA, FBI, and the NSA to actively sabotage and overthrow the Nicaraguan Government. This included using U.S.-owned C-123K military cargo planes (among other vehicles) […]

The Paradox of Campaign Finance Reform

How Do You Take Away a Citizen’s Rights Without Violating Their Rights? Trying to compel the U.S. Supreme Court to reduce or cap private campaign finance spending is a monumental waste of time and national resources. There is no logical or intellectually consistent way to ignore the deep, philosophical conundrum that has perplexed the Supreme […]

Debunking the Collapsing Gulf Stream Theory

Introduction to The Gulf Stream Collapse Theory. Since the late 1980s, there has been interesting research (and here and here) into the impact that the melting Greenland Ice Sheet has on the Gulf Stream, which is the “conveyor belt” that transfers warm water from the South Atlantic Ocean to the North Atlantic. In short, the idea is […]

The Solution to the Climate Change Debate

Evidence of Climate Change. Human activity does not explain the past 100 million years of global warming and cooling cycles, nor does it necessarily cause super storms and other severe weather. However, there have been numerous historically rapid climate changes occurring, including: rising global sea levels, rising global atmospheric temperatures, rising global ocean temperatures, shrinking glaciers, shrinking […]

Can Swarm Intelligence Save Democracy?

From Agile Feedback Loops to Real-Time Swarm Intelligence. Swarm intelligence is very different from group intelligence and it is logically the final evolutionary step of the Agile Mindset. In contrast to the delayed feedback loops of individual and group decision-making, swarm decision-making produces real-time (or near-real-time) feedback loops within a clearly defined “decision-space,” which can be comprised of any number of structured […]

Democracy & The Tragedy of the Commons

Suffering from the Tragedy of the Commons. Voting in a political election is a form of opinion polling, which reveals individual opinions and decisions within a group of citizens. A majority vote represents the decision of the group. In the United States, a majority vote determines who moves into the White House or into the 535 seats in […]

The Power of Agile Democracy

The Value of Agile Development. Individuals, teams, organizations, and nations can all benefit tremendously from applying rapid feedback loops to their critical decision-making processes. This principle is exemplified in the impressive efficacy of “Agile Software Development,” which is a philosophically and technically distinct approach to managing software development projects. Agile Software Development dramatically improves upon older approaches by significantly accelerating the feedback loops between […]