Welcome toSTOANOVA

Problem 2 Make Capital More Efficient

1. Background

An article of faith among economists, including those who call themselves conservative (whatever that means) or liberal (whatever that means) is that people make economic choices strictly according to their own self-interest. The interests of the rest of the world are not considered.

If you show those economists any of the dozens of packages of products in any supermarket that tout “good for the planet” or “Earth friendly” they’ll change the subject. Reality is outside their assumption set. But most people do want to do the right thing – especially if they know they’re not the only ones doing so.

Society has relentlessly worked toward moving the money aspects of doing the right thing from religious congregations and private charities to the realm of governments and legal systems. For their part in that migration, religious congregations and charities seem to be led by people who view technology as dehumanizing; the consequence being that they leave themselves with good feelings about resisting dehumanization while steadily becoming less effective as providers of solutions to social problems. The combination of avoidance of technological solutions and deferral to government results in convoluted and ineffective laws. That, in turn, helps build the sport of finding ways to defeat the intent, but not the letter, of those laws.

Until the nineteenth century, the merchant bankers of Europe lived by a code that made insider trading socially unacceptable. If you wanted to maintain your place in that society, you just didn’t use privileged information to your own benefit. If you did, someone would know about it, word would get out, and you would find yourself without counterparties to negotiate deals with. That’s the way social norms work.

When insider trading subsequently became illegal, the practice became socially acceptable as long as law enforcement didn’t get wind of it, giving illustration to the old expression “You can’t legislate morality.”

Author’s corollary: “And when you attempt to do that (legislate morality,) you release people from the need to own, and live by, their own moral code.”

Charitable deductions from income tax represent an acknowledgment by government that it’s possible that individuals and private organizations can be more effective in their efforts to do socially beneficial things than governments are. Governments have accepted the idea that if a taxpayer deploys her capital to some socially beneficial purpose, with no means of personally benefiting from it, then the amount deployed is deducted from taxable income.

But putting governments in the position of deciding what is beneficial to society creates a minefield. In 2013 staffers at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service singled out conservative organizations with “tea party” or “patriots” in their name that were seeking tax-exempt nonprofit status, giving them extra scrutiny to see if they were abusing the political activity provisions of U.S. tax law. They did it because many of those organizations amounted to scams, preying on the willingness of the more emotional component of the American conservative movement to send money to anything and anyone who put the American flag and patriotic catchphrases on their website. After that practice was uncovered by the media it became a simple matter for the scammers to convince their “members” that the Democratic Obama administration was using the tax authorities to suppress them and their political agenda.

Let’s step back.

The deployment of capital, whether through nonprofits or commercial enterprises, is generally beneficial to society. It produces jobs and it gets things done. If society wants clean water and clean air and clean energy then society creates demand for those things and capital is deployed to manufacture clean water and clean air and clean energy. It’s not the deployment of capital but rather the corruption of the process of deploying capital that causes the persistence of things that society does not want.

In fact, nonprofit has a problem. By definition it is unsustainable. The caption on a recent New Yorker cartoon says it well: “Yes, we’re a charity tackling skyrocketing income inequality, but we’re also a charity that should be saying ‘I love my billionaire funder.’”

Holders of capital pay a lot of attention to the return that the capital produces, as well they should. Capital that produces a healthy return also produces jobs and other measures of health in the economy.

The economy isn’t the only party that likes to see a good return on invested capital of course. The individuals who own that capital also like to see that return.

But why? It’s often noted that above a certain level of wealth, no louche lifestyle could possibly consume the money as fast as it’s being produced. The biggest new houses typically are sold at fire sale prices after their newly rich owners discover what a pain they are. Old money – wiser money – prefers smaller homes.

Why do people like their wealth to keep growing after they have more than they can spend on themselves? One big reason is the freedom to do big things with big money. Bill and Melinda Gates get to make a dent in living conditions in vast swaths of the Third World. Can you imagine the personal satisfaction that provides?

But commercial uses of personal capital are also worthwhile. Producing a new app that makes money while doing something useful for its users is a worthwhile use of one’s own capital.

It’s the wealth that people lavish on themselves that people have a problem with, not the wealth that is deployed to create more wealth.

Earlier we mentioned a pair of truths that we hold to be self-evident. Here’s another:

• Sustainability equals profitability.
• The love of money is a root of all sorts of evil ⁷

Somehow society has come to believe that those represent contradictory points of view. They are not. Money isn’t evil; the love of money is.

Money is like economic fertilizer. It makes things grow, just as the best fertilizer, manure, makes things in the botanical world grow.

It’s true, big accumulations of such fertilizer tend to be smelly, unpleasant, and certainly hard to love. If you love such a pile of fertilizer for itself rather than for what it can do, something’s wrong with you. These days, sadly, you have plenty of company in that illness.

A nonprofit depends for its existence on donors who make profits. If the donor’s income is stable, and if the donor remains committed to the nonprofit, that arrangement can be sustainable. Typically, nonprofits spend a lot of their resources on the work of keeping up the donations, i.e. begging. A better model is for the nonprofit to find a way to make a profit, that is, to be genuinely sustainable.

Tax laws in most countries tend to offer a deal: if with your own money you do some of the work that governments try to do, then some of that money will count against your taxes. Wealthy families have traditionally created foundations, which apply the accumulated wealth to accomplish some public good. But in order for that money to qualify as tax deductible it needs to be donated to an organization that the tax authorities certify to be unprofitable, i.e. unsustainable. And often, avoidance of taxes becomes a game.

Tithing is something that’s akin to taxes. One may say that tithing is voluntary, and as a matter of law it is just that. But in a strong values-based community with well-defined social norms, “voluntary” doesn’t mean the same as it does outside that community. “Expected” is a better word. You are expected to do your share. You are socially accountable. Again, social norms can be powerful.

2. Problem Statement: Requiring Unprofitability In The Use Of Personal Capital Is Counterproductive.

3. Known Modes of Failure

• Organizations that could be sustainable focus on donors at the expense of a focus on sources of revenue from customers or from others who benefit from their activity
• Executive pay that is extremely disproportionate to the general pay scale of other employees causes a variety of problems

4. Proposed Solution: The Stoanovan Personal Foundation

The Stoanova Personal Foundation is the vehicle for reviving and amplifying the benefit of social norms to socially worthwhile work. But while the Stoanova Personal Foundation has the “community expectation” aspect in common with tithing, it is not tithing. Unlike with tithing, control of the assets in the Personal Foundation remains with the person who created it, their family, and any other designate. However...

A Stoanovan of means lives by a revised version of principle used by taxing authorities in North America and elsewhere. Their accumulated money is put into two piles: money to live on, i.e. discretionary funds, and money to accomplish things with, i.e. capital. The principle that taxing authorities use, where anything donated to a charity may not in any way benefit the giver if it is to be deducted from taxes, also applies to all of a Stoanovan’s money that is designated as capital. In exactly the same way, money that has been designated as “capital” by a Stoanovan cannot be subsequently used as personal spending money.

Unlike the tax rules, however, it can be used as capital. It can be invested to make more money, and the instruments of the investment can and should remain under the control of the person who invested it or their heirs – for who would know better than they who made the money what is the best use for it? It’s just that, as with charitable donations, once declared as capital it can never be used in any way that personally benefits the donor -investor. Once money is designated as capital, it, and its earnings, are capital forever.

From time to time, tax laws do favor those who recycle their earnings into long term investments, i.e. capital. When that same principle is used in Stoanova, that capital can be deployed not only where it produces the most return as measured financially but also in the quality of life for all stakeholders where it is invested.

Control of that capital, and the business power that comes with it, remains in the hands of the person who initially designated it as capital or their designees, and its deployment can benefit other entities which that person controls – as long as it doesn’t find its way to benefit their lifestyle. Lifestyle is paid for only by salary or other compensation for work performed, or by retirement benefits – not by capital.

This is enforced as a social norm, not a law. A transgressor who uses Personal Foundation money for personal expenses may be subject to judgment by Stoanovan peers, but jail time is not part of the disincentives.

This may be hard to grasp in a world where the relationship between personal financial benefit from the use of capital has been governed by law rather than by social norm, as was the case in parts of Europe in centuries past. One reasonably contemporary example, however, can show how it’s done.

Billy Graham accumulated enormous amounts of influence and capital for his organization, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Organization. That influence and capital could easily have been leveraged to provide him with a lavish lifestyle, as we have seen popular evangelists do with saddening frequency. But he chose instead to live only on the modest middle class salary provided by his organization. That willingness to live modestly by separating capital from compensation exemplified the kind of moral leadership that the Stoanova Personal Foundation calls for.

If we assume the ongoing robustness of the governments, national and provincial, that make and enforce the world’s tax laws, then the Personal Foundation idea will provide benefits only inasmuch as it may encourage those governments to return to treating capital gains differently from ordinary income. If, however, national governments slide into the kind of irrelevance that characterizes county government in many U.S. states, systems of social norms will become important. Rather, they will continue to be important in governance of jurisdictions that exist only in social media, as social media resumes the maturity that it once had.

⁷ The Bible (NASB) 1 Timothy 6:10

Problem 4 Engineered Peace

1. Background

“A terrified and angry pacifism is one of the roads that lead to war."

C.S. Lewis

I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield
Wonderful, now how are you going to get your adversary to do the same?
Because if you don’t, your adversary will view your decision as an invitation to attack.

I ain't gonna study war no more
Then how are you going to figure out how wars start – and how to prevent them?

I'm gonna lay down my heavy load ⁸
Wait. Lay down the load after we fix the problem.

U.S. Congressman: “What do you think is the is the prospect, then, for nuclear war?”
Admiral Hyman Rickover: “Well I think we'll probably destroy ourselves. So what difference will it make? Some new species will come up that might be wiser than we are."

from a “60 Minutes" Interview with Diane Sawyer

On October 27, 2012, the climax of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro sent a cable to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev calling on him to fire nuclear missiles on Washington, D.C., New York, and other American cities with a warhead 60 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He knew that that would mean that Cuba would be annihilated.

The consensus of historians seems to be that Adolf Hitler intended to use nuclear weapons in the second world war, and would have done so if he had had them in his arsenal.

The next Stalin or Hitler or Genghis Khan will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons. The existence of nuclear weapons is inspiring some unstable megalomaniac as you read this.

Engineered Peace is not pacifism. Pacifists dwell on the desirability of peace, overlooking the fact that their audiences are already on that page and thus wasting resources by preaching to the choir. Demonstrative pacifism (noisy street protest) makes things worse through behavior that their intended audiences view as juvenile, discrediting their own cause.

Engineered Peace is as the name implies, an engineering project. Engineering projects start with a definition of the problem, followed by a description of the known modes of failure that account for the problem.

2. Problem Statement: War, the practice whereby nation-states instruct their citizens, through the military, to murder the citizens of other nation-states, has evolved to the point where one mentally unstable person in power can cause the destruction of most of the Earth. Therefore a means must be found to remove war from the realm of possibility.

3. Known Modes of Failure

© 2017 Tom Gauld. Used with permission

• The military’s practice of advocating military conflict to their governments in order to keep their soldiers trained and tested in battle
• Narcissists in positions of power
• The practice by the leaders of nations of portraying other nations as aggressors in order to distract attention from problems
• The view that war helps economies, particularly those in a state of recession or depression
• Alliances, particularly secret alliances, that obligate a nation-state to go to war against the enemy of an ally
• Peace treaties from prior wars whose harsh terms re-ignite animosities and create new ones
• The common perception that war is an option in dealing with international conflict
• The defense contracting industry (Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex”) creates economic incentive toward war

  “Once, weapons were manufactured to fight wars. Now, wars are manufactured to sell weapons.”
  

  Arundhati Roy

• The “emergency” gambit, where politicians get their constituents to enter a war by citing urgency, so that people don’t have time to think about it analytically
• The “wounded national pride” gambit, where a politician attempts to place the value of pride at the same level as, or above, the value of human life
• The lack of organized study of, and therefore awareness of, modes of failure leading to all the wars in history

4. Proposed Solution: Engineered Peace

Stoanova members initiate, and participate in, efforts to analyze those and as yet uncovered modes of failure and in efforts to eliminate those modes of failure.

For starters:

1. Use PR to create a clear distinction in audience perception between engineered peace and pacifism.
   1. Show that demonstrative pacifist behavior (demonstrations, stunts, etc.) discredits people who want peace
   2. Create public understanding of the distance between demonstrative pacifism and engineered peace
2. Analyze the means by which “By right of conquest” can be eliminated from international law and from all legal systems as the basis for any change in jurisdiction that occurred after the year 1900.
3. Any dispute over the jurisdiction of any territory is to be settled using the following method:
   1. Residents of the territory shall be enrolled to an Identity Quality score of at least 22.
   2. Residents of the territory shall vote to determine the identity of the government to which the territory owes its allegiance, as follows:
      1. Residents of the territory receive a number of votes equal to the number of years they can demonstrate to have lived in the territory.
      2. Residents of the territory whose birth certificates attest that they were born in the territory receive an additional sixteen votes.
      3. If a child’s parents or guardians consider a minor to be too young to vote, and if the child consents, then their parents may vote the child’s proxy.
4. Include in the Stoanova K-12 curriculum an ongoing global research project that will discover the modes of failure that have led to all known wars in history
   1. Using a platform that supports certificate authentication, create a global online community for a project entitled Study of the Causes of War, to be populated by students aged 10-24 using accountably anonymous credentials of Identity Quality score of at least 18 on a scale of 0-72.
   2. Using optimocratic methods, the members of the community elect chief moderators for each of the languages represented by participants
   3. Contributors to the study, i.e. members of the online community, led by moderators, organize a global effort to assemble a definitive war chronology starting with the war between Sumer and Elam in 2700 BCE
   4. An objective of the study is to classify the causes of every war, large and small, since 2700 BCE, yielding a Table of Causes of War with number of wars and casualties associated with each cause.
   5. Contributors to the study will be encouraged to cite, in social media and elsewhere, comparisons between current political situations and entries in the Table of Causes of War.
5. Find ways to replace democratic methods with optimocratic methods. The use of optimocratic methods will deprive megalomaniacs, narcissists and psychopaths of the use of simplistic, emotional, populist tools such as the creation of artificial enemies as an easy path to elective office, especially its top levels. It’s the megalomaniacs, narcissists and psychopaths who most commonly cause war, and they’re put into power by emotional appeals to less thoughtful voters. Optimocracy will keep them out of the picture.
6. No secret alliances. And limited alliances in general.
   1. Educate decision makers to emulate Switzerland and other peaceful countries
      1. Free of alliances
      2. Simple, flat military
      3. All politics in Switzerland is truly local. The average Swiss citizen doesn’t know the name of the country’s president. That’s progress.
7. Define and address the problem of Warfare As Preparation For War
   1. Prepare model legislation for all jurisdictions that will end the practice of military establishments pushing for small wars as a means to keep their troops trained.
   2. Develop PR to reach military leaders and rank and file with the message that war should not be used as a means of preparation for war.
8. Include the methods defined in The Anatomy of Peace ⁹ 1in the Stoanova K-12 curriculum

After Stoanova gets done with this, future generations will find it difficult to believe the essence of this problem, which is that we train young people to murder and then we order them to commit murder.

⁸ From Down by the Riverside by Louis Daniel Armstrong and Terry Rendall

⁹ The Anatomy of Peace by The Arbinger Institute, copyright 2006, 2008, 2015. Barrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Problem 6 Lack Of Means Of Dealing With Prurience And Bad Behavior

1. Background

Protection of the rights of individuals is a bulwark of a free society. The U.S. Constitution’ Bill of Rights has served as a model for similar guarantees of personal rights in many countries. The first of ten Amendments to that Constitution protects freedom of expression as well as separation of church and state. It stipulates that in almost all cases, the state cannot stop anyone from saying or writing or showing anything they want.

Naturally, the principle of free speech gets tested. We’re all exposed to things we would rather not see, read or hear. And of course the definition of what one would rather not see, read or hear varies by person and by the group or community of which they are part. One person or group might find it perfectly acceptable to use a common expression referring to an oedipal activity, while another person in the group finds it profoundly offensive.

2. Problem Statement: Definitions of prurience applied by external authority are defective.

3. Known Modes of Failure

• Freedom of expression can lead to a race to the bottom in terms of the way a society communicates. Repressive societies then cite that as one more example of why they are right and that we should all be told what to say and how to say it.
• Consequent to the first mode of failure, attempts are made to mitigate the license provided by the First Amendment in the U.S. and the equivalent in other countries. It appears that child pornography is a fairly easy call – reasonable people just don’t want to have it around. So child pornography is made illegal in spite of constitutional mandates. We’re compelled to be hypocritical.
• “Community standards” are cited by entities such as the U.S. Supreme Court; but in the age of social media, what is a community?

4. Proposed Solution: My Bill of Responsibilities

Stoanova, like websites and social networks, provides its members with a personal profile platform. Since Stoanova supports Accountable Anonymity, one’s profile, while disclosing non-identifying attributes about its subject does not disclose identifying information except to people to whom the subject has granted a license to specific pieces of information.

Your profile includes a section called My Bill of Responsibilities. It consists of two sections, where you define each of two personal standards:

• What constitutes bad behavior
• What constitutes prurience

The definitions should be concurrent with those of other Stoanovans as much as possible, such that an API would be able to read your list of keywords and determine programmatically whether or not you would want to see the content of some app or website.

In Stoanova, a part of personal responsibility is to inhibit the propagation of what the member considers to be prurient. For example, a work that includes a certain expression for oedipal behavior may be blocked. If enough people include that blocking in their profile, writers will learn to avoid the expression if they want to maintain the size of their audience.

Words defined in your profile as prurient will be the start. With the application of fairly simple pattern recognition methods, the individual can enforce the kind of filtering that management of social networks cannot do effectively for everyone.

Limiting exposure to bad behavior can’t be so easily automated, but including it in My Bill of Responsibilities does give the individual an opportunity to let others know, without being personal or confrontational, what they consider to be over the line.

Problem 8 Costly and Ineffective Healthcare

1. Background

Did you know that you cannot legally waive your right to sue your doctor? You can sign whatever paper you want, but because you are considered to be a child in the eyes of healthcare law, your waiver will not have any effect.

This may seem as though it protects you, but what it really tends to do is

• Make your doctor view you as an potential litigant;
• Steer your doctor to “CYA” excessive costly diagnostic procedures;
• Opt for surgery to remove a problematic limb or other body part rather than risk the possibility of litigation if a retained limb or other body part later turns against you;
• Avoid treatments where the likely benefit outweighs the risk, to cover the possibility that you may turn out to be one of the unlucky minority for whom the result of the treatment is not what was hoped for;
• Makes your doctor’s insurance company part of your doctor’s methods of practice;
• Causes liability premiums to make healthcare much more costly than it needs to be.

Ask a friend who is part of the healthcare system: “How much effect do legal concerns have on medical practice?” Prepare to be dismayed.

2. Problem Statement: Litigation Risk Makes Healthcare More Costly And Less Effective

3. Analysis of Modes of Failure

• Healthcare providers who are overly influenced by concern over liability order unnecessary and costly tests
• Healthcare providers who are overly influenced by concern over liability avoid procedures whose possible risks are outweighed by probable benefits
• Healthcare providers who are overly influenced by concern over liability are distracted from attention to care
• Healthcare providers who are overly influenced by concern over liability cause healthcare to be unnecessarily costly

4. Proposal

Emancipatient: Allow Adults To Sign Releases

Emancipation is a process that allows a person who is younger than the age of emancipation to appear before a judge and demonstrate that 1) they are responsible for their own finances and for their life in general; and 2) they are capable of understanding the financial, medical, and legal issues that are part of adulthood. If the judge agrees, they become “emancipated,” and are legally an adult.

Emancipatient will be the same process, to be initiated by a person of any age. An emancipated adult will be allowed to sign a waiver, or any contract, which will then be legally binding.

“What?” you say, “As an adult I can sign any release or agreement or contract I feel like signing!” And indeed you can. But if the instrument you’re signing releases a physician from liability, it will be null and void. You cannot be trusted to make such decisions on your own behalf.

That’s how our laws treat individual responsibility.

And that must be changed.

Adult emancipation is not a blanket waiver of medical liability. An emancipated adult may waive the right to sue one doctor and not another. Emancipation simply means that any such waiver will legally be in effect.

State and provincial legislatures are of course populated with lawyers, and lawyers don’t like to see people waive their right to sue in court. This will take some effort by Stoanovans to put into effect.

The proposed legslation allowing adults to be adults must include a provision making it illegal for healthcare professionals to advocate, or even mention, adult emancipation. Only well-informed adults will even know about adult emancipation. And when they take action they will see a new class of higher quality, lower cost healthcare appear on the scene, just for them.

Problem 10: The Brain-Boss Barrier

1. Background

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!
- Upton Sinclair

In his book The Society of Mind, Marvin Minsky shows a model of the human mind that seems notably schizoid. The neurons and axons of our brains are organized in such a way that our minds are composed of some large number of “agents,” all advocating for their own agendas.

So when we say, “I know I need to lose weight; why do I keep eating?” it’s because some agent in your limbic brain has discovered that it can provoke a shot of dopamine if it can overpower that rational part of your prefrontal cortex and get you to put that cupcake into your mouth.

You are, in effect, a society of little people in your head.

So are we all schizoid? As different agents in our minds vie for dominance, or take turns in the role, are we effectively different people? I think it’s just a matter of definition of the word “schizoid”. We’re all most of the way there.

Consider the old image of the cartoon character with an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other, each whispering in the ear of their host, each trying to get him or her to act on the impulse that they respectively advocate. Two very different people in one body.

Now consider a society that consists of the employees of an organization, for example a pharmaceutical company. That society depends for its survival and growth upon generating revenue. And what if those “agents,” that is, the human employees of that organization, all understand that their personal sustainability and professional growth depend upon the sustainability and growth of that revenue stream? And suppose that company uses an ethically dubious technique of distorting the perceptions of prescribing physicians to push its very profitable but addictive drug.

Is the company not another society of mind, with each employee being an agent in that “hive mind”? And within the employee’s mind is the agent that says “This is my livelihood, my career, a big part of my self-image and the image of me in the minds of friends and family. So let’s just try to keep those ethical agents in my mind busy with things other than the nature of what my employer is up to.”

On April 10, 2019, Scientific American published an article by Lydia Denworth describing the use of group electroencephalography confirms that the brains of members of a group of people engaged in an activity do indeed sync up at a neurological level. The hive mind is real.

Does the hive mind have a conscience? We don’t have to look as far as the Third Reich or the Rwandan Hutus for an answer. We see it in every large company that engages in some activity that its employees individually would consider to be well over the line ethically, which they nevertheless go along with.

This is a problem.

2. Problem Statement: The Consciences of Individuals in an Organization Become Disabled By Pressure To Advance The Organization’s Agenda

3. Analyis of Modes of Failure

Organizations get away with behavior that most of their employees find unethical.

4. Proposal: The Whistleblower's Circuit Breaker

This solution calls for an organization to be created which would solicit donations to a fund called the Whistle- blower's Circuit Breaker. The fund needs to grow an endowment large enough to fund the salaries of its staff.

Its staff would consist of people who have performed as whistle-blowers in large organizations. Anyone can submit an anonymous encrypted report on the ethically challenged activities of the organization; but in order to be awarded a career in the Whistle-blower's Circuit Breaker organization they must not only demonstrate that the offense is genuine and serious; they must also demonstrate by way of previous and current employee review reports and / or other means that their whistle-blowing is not an exit strategy for someone whose future with the organization is already in jeopardy. The motives must be transparently not self-serving. In keeping with the “Pompeia principle”, the salary with Whistle-blower's Circuit Breaker must be marginally less than their salary with the organization on which they blew the whistle. An element of sacrifice underscores the genuineness of the motive.

Problem 12: Resistance to Standards and Standardization

1. Background

Creation of standards is like the creation of legislation, which in turn is follows the old maxim, “Laws are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made.”

Standards are created by standards bodies, which tend to consist of groups of people who have a strong financial interest in the outcome. That tends to corrupt the process.

And yet good standards are immensely important. To illustrate, Imagine being one of history’s first historians, trying to record for posterity not just the events of the Pelopponesion War, but also the dates when they happened. M. I. Finley’s introduction to Rex Warner’s translation of the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides shows modern historians how thankful they should be for the standard global calendar...

How does one go about writing the history of a long war fought in many theatres? Thucydides had no precedent to fall back on, no book, no teacher from whom he could learn the business of being a historian...

Thucydides was soon brought up against the elementary problem of dates. We say that the Peloponnesian War began in 431 B.C. An Athenian had to say that it began in the archonship of Pythodorus, which was meaningless to non-Athenians, and indeed to Athenians twenty or thirty years later, unless they had a list of the annual archons before them as they read...

...if one were to ‘trust any reckoning based on the names of magistrates in the various states’, there could ‘be no accuracy, since a particular event may have taken place at the beginning or the middle or at any time during their periods of of ice’. He might have added that he would have found it dif icult to pinpoint his informants about chronology as well, coming, as they did, from many dif erent Greek states.

Introducing months would not have helped. Every city had its own calendar: the names of the months were not all alike – more than 300 names are known today – nor was the order nor even the time of the new year. The peace treaty of 421, according to the of icial text quoted by Thucydides (V, 19) ‘comes into ef ect from the 27th day of the month of Artemisium at Sparta, Pleistolas holding the of ice of ephor; and at Athens from the 25th day of the month of Elaphebolium, in the archonship of Alcaeus’. To write a coherent narrative, therefore, Thucydides had to invent his own system. After fixing the beginning of the war, he dated all subsequent events first by counting the number of (solar) years that elapsed from the start, and then by dividing each war year into ‘winter ’ and ‘summer ’. Simple enough, yet the scheme was unique and Thucydides was openly proud of it. It was also incomplete: he does not say whether winters and summers began on a fixed date nor does he narrow the time within each season beyond ‘early’, ‘middle’ or ‘late’.

Today we have the benefit of the global synchronous calendar. We all benefit from not just the practical benefit of being able to plan events across continents, knowing for certain that an online meeting scheduled for 07:00 on March 7, 2025 Boston time will be 17:30 the same day in Bangalore. We also get to share with fascination the amazing ability for the whole world to know the precise time when a particular astronomical event will take place. I can know for certain that we can expect a lunar eclipse visible (clouds willing) in Boston on Monday, June 25, 2029 with its peak at 22:22 local time. If calendar and time standards had not been developed and made available to astronomers, we would never know of – have our minds blown by – the incredible precision of our solar system.

Yet there are still ancient calendars that are shared by religions and cultures that have nothing to do with the globally synchronous modern calendar. In the Hebrew calendar that same date will be the 7 th of Adar in 5785, and in the Hijri (Muslim) calendar it will be Ramadan 7, 1446. Wikipedia lists eighty-five calendars.

Technology has brought about two changes in the way time, days, weeks, months and years are accounted for. First, everyone everywhere that does anything synchronously with the rest of the world has for practical reasons settled on the ISO 8601 calendar – basically the Gregorian calendar with Coordinated Universal Time and leap second adjustments. Second, the number of people with knowledge and understanding of ancient calendars, and the level of communication among them, has greatly increased.

If technology causes a universal language to become a de facto worldwide standard, it will not mean that other languages will be forgotten. People still study Latin and ancient Greek, and they will continue to study them as long as they are interesting and as long as things written in those languages continue to be of interest to someone.

For selfish reasons I hope the universal language is some variant of English, but whatever it turns out to be, it will be a positive development because practical global standardization fosters understanding, which in turn fosters peace.

Why are we still messing with daylight savings time? Why can’t the world have a standard way of telling time?

And...let’s just say that some of us get irritated when it starts raining as the sun goes down in some city we’re visiting in a car we just rented.

Where’s the headlight switch?

The wipers – do you move the lever up in this car to turn them on, or down?

And why am I wrestling with this lack of standards a hundred years after cars became popular, when I need to be paying attention to these unfamiliar streets?

The reason, of course, is that the commercial interests of car makers conflict when it comes to making those standards.

2. Problem Statement: Resistance to Standards and Standardization Inhibits Human Progress

3. Analysis of Modes of Failure

• Travelers everywhere are inconvenienced by differences in electrical plug standards, voltage standards, and frequency standards
• Media uses different standards
• Cars use different driver controls, causing distraction
• How to go from a left-drive country to a right-drive country:
  
  

4. Proposal: Grassroots Standards created through an optimocratic process

The answer to the question of why the world can’t have a standard way of telling time is that the traditional way of making standards is for a variety of constituencies to appoint a variety of official commissions to engage in very political tugs of war until one of them is victorious. But then the losing commissions will likely refuse to honor the decision of the battlefield.

With optimocratic standards setting, anyone on Earth can participate in the voting as an individual inhabitant of this planet – provided that they keep up with the debate on the subject at hand. In the case of a decision about the world’s clock, every human being has as much influence as any other, and because of that the decision of the group is much more likely to be accepted and observed.

Anyone can watch standards sausage being made this way, and the sausage will be palatable to everyone.

Problem 14: Oppressiveness in Reputational Services.

1. Background

We’ve all heard about China’s state-operated reputational system, where basic services such as the right to travel are withheld from those with low scores in the system. It’s virtually guaranteed that the government of China will use it to repress individuals and groups which it sees as challenging the authority of the state.

And yet, reputational services are inevitable. Users of eBay have had the benefit of a very efffective and useful reputational system for decades. Yes, it can be subverted, but not easily or permanently.

eBay, AirBnB, and many sharing-economy sites all have their separate reputation-reporting systems, letting users report on their experiences dealing with each other. Inevitably these reputational systems will start sharing their databases. When that happens, we will see the same kinds of behavior we’ve seen in social networks: doxxing, bullying, and extortion. “Do this or I will go around to all the places that report on your reputation and I will trash them all, ruining your consensus reputation...”

A reputational system must be designed which makes reputation sabotage difficult or impossible. The system must be built upon measurably reliable identity credentials, which make those reporting on their dealings with others accountable for what they report.

2.Problem Statement: Reputational Services Lack Controls

3. Modes of Failure

• Reputational reporting services that do not include accountability on the part of the reporter make it possible for friends, relatives, employees and paid professionals of the entity being reported upon to game the system and unfairly boost the ratings of their principal.
• Reputational reporting services that do not include accountability on the part of the reporter make it possible for adversaries of the entity being reported upon to game the system and unfairly damage the reputation of the principal.
• Reputational reporting services that do not include accountability on the part of the reporter provide no means of calibrating the standards of the reporter. Thus “three stars” from one reporter might signify excellence, while “four stars” from another might signify serious deficiency.

4. Proposal: Accountable Reputational Systems

With measurably reliable identities, plus reporting by percentile, fair and accurate ratings can be obtained. Reporting by percentile means that the reporter might choose a number of stars, a rating on a scale of 1-10, or any other system. However, that report is turned into a percentile, as in “over this person’s lifetime, they have reported
in the lowest 20%
21%-40%
41%-60%
61%-80%
81%-100%

This person has rated this product, service or person three stars. Since this person’s median report is two stars, the effective rating is four stars.

Problem 16: Control of the Right to Drive a Motor Vehicle

Problem Statement 1:Texting while driving is a major cause of accidents.

Problem Statement 2:Disabling phone communication inside a car affects all passengers, not just the driver.

Problem Statement 3:People with revoked or expired drivers’ licenses can and do drive. The only disincentive is the low probability of law enforcement happening to stop the driver on a particular trip.

Known Modes of Failure

People who understand the risk of texting while driving are easily tempted to violate their own better judgment.

Proposal

Use Digital Certificates in Phones as Drivers’ Licenses

In order to start the car, the driver must have a valid Bluetooth enabled driver’s license app and digital certificate. When the app is used, the phone cannot be used for any communication-oriented purpose.

Problem 18: Silicon Valley, The Broadband and Media Industry, Governments, And Digital Organized Crime Are All Trying To Own You And Me.

1. Background

Magic Quadrant (MQ) is the brand name of a market research product offered by Gartner Inc. Magic Quadrant rates vendors in a market on two criteria: Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute.

“Ability to Execute” is pretty easy to grasp, being simply an assessment of a company's command of resources necessary to deliver on its marketing promises. But what's this “Completeness of Vision”?

We'll explain in a moment, but first let's introduce you to one Robert Friedland.

Robert Friedland was expelled from Bowdoin College in 1970 after being arrested for the possession of $100,000 worth of LSD. After two years in federal prison he managed to get into another college, where he befriended a student with whom he shared an interest in Eastern spirituality. Then when Friedland's uncle made him caretaker of his orchard near the college, Friedland and his new buddy, without the uncle's knowledge or consent, turned the orchard into a Hare Krishna commune called All One Farm. With the help of LSD, he invented a scheme for creating an alternate reality: the “Reality Distortion Field.”

Friedland's friend also pursued a sketchy path. After the commune experience, he joined the infamous John Draper aka Captain Crunch in hacking the AT&T phone network. While Draper went to jail for it, Friedland's friend managed to get a job with Atari. Because he refused to bathe, Atari put him on the midnight shift.

LSD? Hare Krishna commune? Phone phreaking!? Banishment for not bathing? You'd be forgiven for guessing that those two guys now live in homeless shelters.

Well, not quite. Friedland subsequently founded Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. and led the company to a successful public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1996. He now operates Ivanhoe Capital from its corporate headquarters in Singapore. He's quite wealthy.

After his Atari gig Friedland's buddy also launched a company, but was fired by its board of directors because of his insistence on managing it using Friedland's Reality Distortion Field. He had been inspired by the orchard experience in naming the company. He named it Apple.

Yes, we're talking about Steve Jobs.

A decade after Jobs was fired by Apple's prudent, sensible, intelligent board members, that same board had driven Apple into the ground. They then begged Jobs to return, and to please bring with him the ideas behind the Reality Distortion Field.

Jobs eventually did just that, and turned Apple into the most valuable company in the world.

“Reality Distortion Field” is simply the process of drawing a picture of tomorrow, based upon the knowledge that tomorrow will always be different from today. If you think about it, isn't Reality Distortion Field just another term for Gartner's Completeness of Vision? The Reality Distortion Field is an approach to building a picture of the way the world is going to be, rather than the way it has been up to the present.

The Authenticity Institute and its Alliance introduce “PKI Done Right,” aka Authenticity™, adding an InDoor layer of pervasive accountability to sit atop the old “information highway” - the outdoor public transport facility known as the internet. The vision we bring to that job is quite complete.

Do you believe that tomorrow will be the same as today? That is, do you believe in browsers? Do you really think there's a future for the Web? Do you believe that information security technology actually works?

If so, then thank you for your time, let’s not waste any more of it.

Or do you understand that tomorrow will be different from today.

After all, that's the founding assumption behind the completeness of our vision.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
Goethe

Tomorrow will be different from today. While most people would agree with that claim, they tend to act as though they don't believe it.

Today's assumption is that the business model that permanently drives online media is the awareness model, that it's all about advertising. Eyeballs and clicks. And data mining on those eyeballs and clicks because, you know, “people don’t really care about privacy…”. Tomorrow will bring new ways to generate new awareness, more page views, more eyeballs, more clicks, more personal data to mine. Translation: the online media business is the billboard business. It's about commercial messages that appear in your face as you “surf,” that is, as you drive around this outdoor information highway space.

The online medium has demonstrated its fundamentally social nature ever since the Emisari network first appeared around 1973. The real implication of social media is that the online medium emulates life in the physical world. What do real people really do while online? They socialize. Just as they do in physical buildings.

And because of assumptions brought to online media from traditional media about how online spaces must be built and managed, they socialize in spaces that are largely insecure, where authenticity cannot be assumed.

Authenticity is the final ingredient that makes online spaces truly habitable, by making them trustable.

Authenticity is a major inflection point, which means that it is built upon assumptions that established sources of capital and infrastructure support will not see until they have become everyday reality.

To illustrate: which of the following enterprises could get funded by venture sources today?

• Micro Soft Corporation (now called Microsoft Corporation)
• Quantum Computer Services Inc.

The father of Micro Soft’s founder retained people from his own law firm to talk his son out of squandering trust funds on the abject folly of software for personal computers. Unfortunately, the money was the son’s to squander. So is the son now wandering the streets of Seattle, dirty and homeless, muttering to himself about this strange fantasy he calls “personal computer?”

Not quite.

In 1986, believe it or not, the common thread among investors was that the social media battle was all over, CompuServe had won, there was no sense directing any resources to this mature consumer online services market. That was well before consumers began using the Internet, well before Quantum, renamed America Online by its new CEO Steve Case, acquired CompuServe and then shocked the world by acquiring Time Warner. What had been deemed a mature market grew seven-thousand-fold in the next decade.

The world was swept up in the promise of the amazing possibilities presented by personal computers and the Internet. Now the world wonders whether worms, spam, ransomware, breaches, security vulnerabilities, zombie hosts, human trafficking, child predation, identity fraud, violations of personal privacy and other signs of growing anarchy have betrayed the promise. Organized crime is taking over the world’s information infrastructure, while that infrastructure claims an increasing portion of our time, attention, and money.

By contrast, physical spaces employ methods and designs and applications of authority that provide what real estate professionals call quiet enjoyment. Quiet enjoyment is nothing less than security and manageability and peace and quiet in the spaces where we pursue our agendas.

Think about it. What is it that buildings provide, besides protection from the weather?

Buildings provide accountability. A way of knowing who is in a bounded space with you. A way of designating bounded spaces for particular uses, by particular people. Accountability within those spaces.

The essential construction material for digital buildings has been around for decades, and it is rock solid. It’s PKI.

In the past, PKI has been deployed in incomplete bits and pieces, and without simple governance standards.

Authenticity™ is our name for PKI Done Right.

Authenticity™ is a means of bringing about quiet enjoyment in online spaces. That is, habitable and secure online buildings.

The organizations that deliver quiet enjoyment to digital spaces will experience incredible growth and prosperity over the next decade.

The time has come once again. This moment has a familiar look, feel, sound and smell. I’ve been here before. In the mid seventies interactive computing was in the air. A decade later we were getting a taste of what it was like to have our own computer on our desk. The nineties opened up the amazing Internet to us.

It was a lot of fun.

It’s about to be even more fun.

Join Stoanova as we help give birth to an inflection point that will make those of timesharing, the personal computer and the Internet seem like warmup acts.

This one is going to be the most fun of all!

Meet with others in the Stoanova Clubhouse. You’ll find it in the Civic District in Authenticity Village.

Help us bring Authenticity to online spaces through the application of the Quiet Enjoyment Infrastructure.

What is PKI Done Right, i.e. Authenticity?

In a nutshell, Authenticity is Pervasive Accountability with Privacy.

Expanding that a little,

AUTHENTICITY™ is the condition that exists when we have

• Digital Signatures Everywhere backed by
• Measurably Reliable Identity Certificates that are
• Owned by their Users and which provide
• Privacy via Accountable Anonymity.

The Authenticity Infrastructure is actually one of three infrastructures that constitute the Quiet Enjoyment Infrastructure.

2. Problem Statement: Silicon Valley, The Broadband and Media Industry, the NSA, And Digital Organized Crime Are All Trying To Own You And Me.

3. Known Modes of Failure

• The prevailing revenue model of social media companies consists of burglary and theft, as they break into their user’s information home an steal personal information which they then fence to political organizations, marketers and others;
• “Silibandia,” that is, Silicon Valley, the broadband and media industries acts as an unelected government, disenfranchising the world’s population;
• Hacker networks have evolved into a global mafia;
• The security technology industry claims everincreasing budgets from organizations, while failing to solve security problems;
• In the failing attempt at security, users are expected to memorize dozens of different passwords
• A superb construction material for building online spaces where all of these modes of failure could be eliminated continues to be ignored, misunderstood, and unused.

4. Proposed Solution: The Quiet Enjoyment Infrastructure

QEI is a set of inventions, plans and standards which can be universally deployed to provide online authenticity (measurable trustworthiness of assertions), which in turn begets a secure and manageable information environment. It is based upon the premise of our position statement: Identity Is The Foundation Of Security™.

QEI consists of twelve parts, called Components that fall into three groups: People, Places and Things. The twelve instigations in the three groups are:

PEOPLE The Authenticity Infrastructure

1. PEN Component
2. Public Authority Component
3. Enrollment Component
4. Identity Reliability Component
5. Personal Information Ownership Component
6. Accountabiclity Component

PLACES The InDoors Infrastructure

7. Building Codes Component
8. The Tectonics Component
9. Professional Licensing Component
10. Community Component
11. Public Roadways Component

THINGSThe Ontology Infrastructure

12. Ontology Component

The people portion of the Quiet Enjoyment Infrastructure is called The Authenticity Infrastructure.

The places portion of the Quiet Enjoyment Infrastructure is called The InDoors Infrastructure.

The things portion of QEI is called The Ontology Infrastructure.

Those are the names of the twelve components of QEI. Let’s now look briefly at the function of each, that is, the authenticity question that is answered by each component.

Twelve Questions Answered by the Twelve Components of the Quiet Enjoyment Infrastructure

Part I of QEI

People: The Authenticity Infrastructure

Question 1 Authenticity calls for pervasive digital signatures made by reliably identified human beings. How do you protect the PENs (private keys), while making them available for digital signatures?

Answer 1 The PEN Component

Nothing we do with computers, phones, tablets, or other information appliances will be secure until there is a sound way to keep files, directories, identifiers, and other important items in a truly protected space. That in turn requires isolation of private keys, or PENs, as specified in The PEN Component.

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Question 2 Reliable digital identity certificates, professional licenses and occupancy permits call for a reliable source of issuing public authority that is independent of any geographic jurisdiction. Where do we find such a source of duly constituted global public authority?

Answer 2 The Public Authority Component

On March 7, 2005 the City of Osmio was chartered at the Geneva headquarters of the oldest international governance body in the world, the International Telecommunication Union. Osmio’s Vital Records Department is a certification authority that limits its practice to creating, maintaining, and protecting identity certificates. Osmio’s Professional Licensing Department will issue licenses that will allow architects, contractors, and building inspectors to sign plans for facilities and occupancy permits. Osmio's authority is strictly limited to those who choose to accept it, and its governance is as participatory as that of a small New England town.

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Question 3 How do you establish identity in the first place?

Answer 3 The Enrollment Component

Enrollment can be costly or not, depending upon the level of rigor needed by relying parties. The Enrollment Component ensures that evidence supporting a claim of identity is gathered properly for the requisite level of rigor and presented along with the public key in a certificate signing request to the Osmio Vital Records Department.

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Question 4 When someone identifies herself to you, how do you know how reliable is that claim of identity?

Answer 4 The Identity Reliability Component

The foundational identity certificate is accompanied by other certificates and by an identity quality record. Very little might be revealed to a relying party about the person identified other than their identity quality information and the fact that the identity certificate has not been revoked. Despite that anonymity, the Identity Reliability Component establishes accountability.

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Question 5 ersonal control of information about oneself has been a long-sought goal of privacy activists. How can a universal identity credential restore privacy rather than erode it even further?

Answer 5 The Personal Information Ownership Component

The foundation of real privacy is your own control over information that identifies you. Without such strong controls, individuals will rightfully resist the idea of a strong identity infrastructure. While the companies that accumulate information about you regard that information as their own corporate asset, the PIOC provides technological and legal tools by which you can reclaim that asset as your own personal property. The PIOC accomplishes accountable anonymity, letting you assert your identity without revealing your identity.

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Question 6 We value anonymity, but at the same time we want others to be accountable. What happens when someone whose privacy is protected anonymously harms me, my community, or my country?

Answer 6 The Accountability Component

As QEI must protect your privacy, it must also protect your right to recourse if you are harmed by someone whose privacy is similarly protected. Law enforcement must also be able to seek a court order to intercept communications when a legitimate court deems it necessary to protect public safety. The Accountability Component ensures that due process prevails even in jurisdictions that are not known for adherence to due process.

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Part II of QEI

Places: The Indoors Infrastructure

Question 7 By what standards are we assured that an information facility is habitable, that is, secure and manageable?

Answer 7 The Building Codes Component

Your information is never secure in a private, cryptographic tunnel if it is exposed at the ends of the tunnel. Indeed, a tunnel can be less secure than the outdoor space around it, because it gives its occupants a false sense of security. Building codes are sets of standards and procedures that ensure the integrity of the virtual buildings that enclose, for example, the ends of tunnels.

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Question 8 How do we bring the benefits of InDoor spaces to our computers, tablets and phones?

Answer 8 The Tectonics Component

Established operating systems are invitations to plantation owners to help themselves to the contents of your information home.

With the new continents, we will exchange the vulnerable and cranky old operating system foundation in computers and phones for a more reliable, secure, and manageable set of foundations for places rather than “apps.” Montaigne, Dorren and Glenda are continents.

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Question 9 Who decides whether a facility is habitable, that is, that it conforms to building codes?

Answer 9 The Professional Licensing Component

As with physical real estate, our bounded online spaces need qualified architects, contractors, property management people and building inspectors to ensure that they serve our purposes. The Professional Licensing Component provides a system of certification of their professional credentials and of the results of their work. The Professional Licensing Component does the same for the attestation profession and for other professions as well.

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Question 10 How do we bring privacy and authenticity to social media?

Answer 10 The Community Component

Where are these online buildings built? Who owns them? Who pays for them? How do they connect to each other in a rational way? How does online real estate become economically sustainable, that is, profitable? We find our answer in the surprising intersection between skills and methods in the media industry and those of the urban planning profession.

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Question 11 Can the outdoor public transport system also benefit from QEI?

Answer 11 The Public Roadways Component

The roadway system, the Internet, is far ahead of the real estate – the secure online places where people can safely gather. Its protocols, like those for the next generation of concrete Interstate highways, are well established. But the facilities that control the Internet are entirely too vulnerable to criminals and vandals. Access controls based upon measurably reliable identities must be put in place.

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Part III of QEI

Things: The Ontology Infrastructure

Question 12 Strict definitions of terms reduces confusion in the world of building codes and permits. Can terminology standards reduce rampant “FUD factor” confusion in information technology?

Answer 12 The Ontology Component

What information technology provides to the online world is no more mysterious than what architects, contractors, and property managers provide to the physical world. The Ontology Component requires the use of standardized terminology in the permitting of new facilities. By using the well-understood language of real estate, management can finally direct information technology, rather than the other way around.

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As you can see, the real estate theme is not just an illustrative metaphor. QEI is indeed about indoor spaces. Think about it: where do you go to get things done, to pursue your life’s various agendas? While we enjoy the outdoors, we get things done in buildings.

Some people a long time ago told us that the Internet was a highway and that our use of it resembled the use of a highway. Fine. A principal use of highways is to bring us to buildings. Learning, shopping, and doing business by the side of a busy highway is just a nutty idea. It is the source of our problems.