Blame and Responsibility

Societies will blame their ordinary members for the problems of the society. Obviously, this is complete nonsense, as any society's ordinary members have neither the power to either change or to direct the operations of the society. The powers and prerogatives rest with the elite of the society and those elite jealously guide their privileges. So let's take an obvious current example. America has problems and those problems are of a financial nature. Americans are stigmatized as being both foolish and extravagant; since their improvident actions have directly resulted in the present credit crisis, causing both massive unemployment and bankruptcy. That's the story that's been told, and it's absolute nonsense. What happened was this: financial institutions, the banks, the brokerages and insurance companies set up off-balance sheet investment investment vehicles in order to avoid capitalization requirements and to evade state domestic taxation. The financial institution personnel creating the investment vehicles amounted to, at most; just a few hundred individuals, less than a thousand. The vehicles were all situated in tax-haven countries. They're called qualifying special purpose entities and they're utilized to sell-off packages of bank bad loans. The vehicles amounted to over thirty trillion dollars, which is double the GDP of the USA, and they're worthless. The truth is: American public was blamed for the foolishness of few.

Solutions and Politics

Many of the most pressing problems have obvious solutions, but they'll lack political feasibility. For instance, in the United States, sixty percent of all personal bankruptcies are caused because patients are unable to pay for medical services contracted for, even though they have insurance. The reason for medical services' high costs is restricted supply of physicians to provide services. The smaller the number of physicians and other such medical specialists, the more limited those numbers are, the higher are charges for their services. If the charges exceed deductibles on the insurance policies of patients, those charges cause some patients to seek bankruptcy protection. The obvious solution would be simply to increase the number of physicians available to provide services so that the increased competition for patients would decrease amounts charged for the medical services rendered. But that would require government to found and to certify federal medical schools, in which the students paid no tuition; whose graduates (similar to graduates of federal military academies) would be mandated to provide services to the public at little cost, in public clinics, for a specific period of time, upon receipt of their federal medical degree licenses. But politics prevents such implementation. It would disturb the existing oligopoly in medicine.

Solutions and their Implementation

Solutions to problems are easy to propose, but much harder to get implemented. Everyone has solutions, but most of their proposed solutions could never be implemented. For instance, in the USA, there's severe problems in collecting sufficient revenues to keep government operational. Tax collections are no where near adequate. That problem could be solved by the imposition of a thirty percent VAT tax and by abolishing the existing income tax, employment tax, excise tax and estate tax structure---simply do away with it, and replace it with a thirty percent VAT tax. VAT tax has the advantage of easy audits (without audit no tax at all would be collected), as the VAT rate is flat and applied at each level of production; so a VAT forces production to decrease levels of complexity to be more efficient while controlling inflation, as VAT is a consumption tax. Seems a perfect solution until one realizes that America was founded upon obese consumption.

Perception is the Problem

No problem can possibly be solved if it's not recognized as being a problem. Articulation through correct stating of problems is difficult, especially if those problems are personal. It's easy to see problems others might have, but almost impossible to see one's own. Even friends with the best intentions might identify your problems, but not the sources or the solutions for those problems. The source of problems is false perception. Human perception is false because it is so limited. So, what's the solution? To make perception not limited. How to do this? It sure isn't easy!