Vivat Veritas

* In earlier essays, I've contemplated the social and economic benefits of elevated truth/lies ratios.
* For example: Lies and conventional wisdom
* and Rupert Murdoch punishment
* and perhaps Reaganistic economist deceives
* I wished for some way to oppose the deception-industrial complex. Well others have been laboring in this vineyard. They have produced a real-time fact checker. I'd love to see it deployed as imagined in my earlier essays referenced above.

Rupert Murdoch punishment

* Back when Rupert Murdoch felonies were in the news, I dwelled on the question whether he could be punished for the lies and gratuitous hate heard on his property, Fox Talk Radio.
* It was just over a decade ago when the FCC stopped requiring broadcasters to balance partisan rhetoric with opposing views. They still forbid certain obscenities under some circumstances. Why not forbid lies or at least require them to be exposed during a 10-minute cleanup segment at the end of each hour?
* Note to judges: Condemn all guilty Murdoch executives to wearing a digital-radio necklace that plays Steve Gill, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin from 7 am to 7 pm relayed via a fact checker who inserts a buzzer noise at the end of every lie.
* This might be a pretty good punishment for all Republican white-collar criminals, in addition to restitution. Democratic white-collar criminals could be punished with a digital-radio collar playing NPR relayed from a buzzer-wielding fact checker, in addition to restitution.

Lies and conventional wisdom

I recently sent the following thoughts to a friend, and I recently found out how to get back in my blog. By way of introduction, let me say that the most important fact concerning our existence is the rising ratio of human demand for resources to the amount of resources. Everything else pales by comparison. The merits of any policy should be measured against its effect on this ratio. Those in power are ignoring this most important fact, which will defeat any attempt so far contemplated to solve social or economic problems. * Well, I'm thinking about ways to make broadcasters accountable for their lies, supposing that they would likely tell fewer of them if they had to pay for them or explain them or apologize for them. The FCC could implement such a policy as easily as they forbid obscenities. After all the spectrum belongs to the public. Something similar might apply to newspaper staff writers and columnists. * A non-governmental way to address broadcast lies would be a copy of the broadcast or excerpts thereof on podcast with a buzzer going off at the end of every lie, possibly followed by insertion of an explanation. But who has the patience to listen to the deceptive broadcasts. * I'd like also to make honest people examine the conventional wisdom that they convey to fill their 24/7 communication. For example, all leaders, economists and journalists want to solve our social problems by stimulating economic activity, including international trade. Some international trade is needed, but much of it is wasteful. In any case, the earth simply cannot support continually stimulating as the means of solving the worlds social problems. We are destroying the earth's support systems at a rapidly accelerating rate, owing to population growth and newly gained prosperity in some very large countries. One of these days, when we are fighting over insufficient commodities whose prices are skyrocketing, leaders may understand this and seek a way to better share an unstimulated economy that is sustainable. It is time for the conversation to happen in public. * I believe that at least half of economic activity is wasteful and wouldn't be missed if we agreed to forgo it. We could substitute cultural/intellectual/recreational engagement for much of the vain quest for seductive stuff that eventually fails to satisfy. Certainly, there is no need for people to work 40 hours per week when everything really needed could be produced if everyone worked 20 hours per week. Imagine that we jumped from 1911 technology to 2011 technology overnight. What would be the just thing to do with all the excess labor? I think what we did with labor over that century wasn't very just. * More later.