Free will

Free will, as given to men, is a strange thing.

If free will exists in men, then indeed we should be democratic, and free market economy should be the way, since that is an expression of free will, that people can exercise free will in free trade.

Yet animals, that have no free will, but behave by instincts, are more equal than men who are free.

Animals are more egalitarian, where even the leaders do not have great superiority of resources than the the lower.

Pack and herd animals have social hierarchies, but no great resource disparity.

In free market economy, there is a rule of thumb, the "Law of Perato", the 20-80 rule, that 20% of all customers are responsible for 80% of all business revenue for a particular business.

And yet, the "perato law" is useful across multiple scenarios.

And overall, 20% of all people controls 80% of all resources in an ideal free market economy.

Looking at the world today, that is certainly very true. The upper 20% of the world population do control around 80% of all world resources.

If "free will" exists in men, then why is it that such huge economic disparity exists in the world.

The answer is in multiple possible reasons.

(1) 80% of all people willingly give up their free will and control to the minority 20%
(2) 20% do not stop and continues to accumulate to maintain their dominance in resources.
(3) "free will" is restrained by competition and limitations of resources.

I would say that all 3 reasons are true, but (3) is the underlying factor/cause.

Man may wish to exercise "free will" all the time, but we are forced to deal with the necessities of life, food, housing, clothing, medicine, etc.

To obtain these necessities, we are forced to compete with each other like animals. We cannot raise ourselves beyond animals during competition for resources.

But (2) men do not stop competing, because they want to accumulate competitive advantages over time so to make competition easier in the future. The wealthy accumulates wealth and power, so they do not have to compete as hard in the future.

This forces the economic disparity to grow over time, maintain a perato law trend.

The reality of this is true for political power as well. 20% of all people in a democracy, control 80% of all political authority.

Which means that "representative democracy" is most fitting to the perato law reality of political power scheme.

"true democracies" would in fact slowly evolve toward the 20-80 "representative democracy".

If that is indeed the trend, then it is perfectly acceptable to have a "dictatorship" of 20%.

In reality, representative democracy is precisely that.

Does man have "free will"?

Yes, only tempered by reality of life and competition, which forces us to evolve to conform to the 20-80 rule.

But we still have "free will" only in our knowledge. We can choose to learn and know things. Our knowledge is unrestrained by the reality of life and competition.

Religion often say man has "free will", and yet God has laws.

That is a logical contradiction. If God has granted us true "free will", then we are "free" to decide what is Good and what is Evil.

If God already told us what is Good and what is Evil, then we did not have "free will" in that 1 true decision.

Compared to that 1 decision, all other decisions in life pales.

Thus, I think, man to have "free will", must not take Religious laws. For true God would not force such a decision upon creatures he gave "free will" to.

No, If I asked God, "what is Good?"

God would answer, "I cannot tell you that. For if I did, I would have chosen all decisions for you in Life."

Forgiveness, tolerance, love in Christianity

Forgiveness is Divine, said Christ.

I never truly understood that simple statement until yesterday.

As I pondered, I realized, Forgiveness is divine, because true forgiveness is so difficult.

So many Christians fill themselves with the criterion of Sin vs. Not-sin, that they cannot forgive anything, at least not truly.

What is true forgiveness, by Christ's message?

It is this. That only God is fit to decide who shall be forgiven, and who shall not be forgiven. And God can forgive anyone.

By this, it is also implied that all people are imperfect, and yet can be forgiven.

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Said Christ.

By that, he said all men have sins, and thus should all ask for forgiveness.

In the Christian doctrine, God carries hope for all people, and God does not give up on anyone.

Even if a murderer asks for forgiveness, God will grant him so.

Then it is unfortunate, that so many Christians take upon themselves to be so intolerant of others.

If God can wait forever to forgive someone, why must some Christians deem it necessary to cast others as "sinful" and seek to banish the sinful from public life.

God knows when a man will truly ask for forgiveness.

Does it benefit God or the man, if others forced him to ask for forgiveness before his time?

And what if the man does ask for forgiveness, out of fear of threats, rather than out of sincerity?

What if the man is killed by the Christians before he could ask for forgiveness?

So the Zealous Christians would undo their God's work. And I saw this in their own arrogance, that they usurp God's authority.

I shall ask such a Christian, if it is God or them who held the final knowledge of when each man is to be forgiven.

The answer is simple, only God can ultimately forgive us all for our own sins.

And Man is only responsible for asking for forgiveness, NOT to decide who among his fellow man shall be forgiven by God.

For a man knows only when he has sinned against his God, but cannot be certain if others have sinned against their God.

And for that is tolerance and love, and Hope of divinity.

For to ask for forgiveness, is to ask God and others to have hope in you.

For to give forgiveness, is to give God and others Hope in you.

Simply to say, this is the only way of Love, through the path of forgiveness.

For a man who does not ask for forgiveness, has no hope in himself.

For a man who does not give forgiveness unconditionally, has no hope in others.

Eminent Domain and Property Rights

The recent ruling by the Supreme Court on the New London Conn eminent domain case came as no surprise to me, in the sense that it is an old unsettled issue.

Why so many Americans are surprised is beyond me. For decades, the Government has used "eminent domain" to take people's properties away.

Perhaps another sign of basic American ignorance in their own civic matters.

"Eminent domain" was inherited from the British Common laws, it is a fundamental recognition of ultimate State ownership of all property.

This too should not be a surprise. I have said many times, that we don't really own any land in any country.

Here, in US, we have to pay real estate property tax each year, even if we do nothing with the land, and no income is derived from the land.

It's a small percentage tax to be sure, but still we must pay the "tax" or the government will seize our land, and perhaps sell it off.

What sort of "property" is it that we must constantly pay "tax" on?

Answer: It's not "property" that we own, but "property" we RENT. And it is not "tax" we pay, it's "rent" we pay.

"Eminent domain" is the precise legal recognition of that arrangement, ie. if the Government really wants to, it can kick us "renters" off the property.

Now, it is willing to compensate us for our troubles, but make no mistakes in illusions, we do not OWN any land, the Government does.

Why this arrangement? Ultimately, it is national security. We can't have foreign countries come in and buy up all the land, and then proclaim the land as theirs once and for all. Even embassies are technically "rented", and can be taken away.

The other reason for this arrangement is economic. Long time ago, when currency is pegged against local economies instead of GOLD, currency and national property value became linked in value. In other words, the power/value of the US dollar is pegged to precisely how valuable the US land is worth.

What we have is not really Capitalism, it's a form of Advanced Feudalism. In old Feudalism, the King owned EVERYTHING, which meant, the Lords and other subjects merely "rented" from the King, and thus must pay the King tribute for the use of the land.

The British recognized this in Magna Carta, in that they did not dispute King's ownership of everything in/on the land, merely that they restricted and limited the King's ability to kick off "renters".

However, this is still open to abuse, and the power transferred to the British Parliament, who could exercise "eminent domain" in the name of the King.

In Colonial days, British military also exercised "eminent domain" on various corners of the British Empire.

When the Americans established independence, they tried (without much luck) to establish additional limits on the "eminent domain" power, ie. via the legal term "public use".

Trouble is, no one in the federal level ever passed a law to define "public use". The Founding Fathers, being somewhat emphatic about State Rights, left it up to the States to define "public use" as they saw fit.

But again, like so many other issues, State rights have led to trouble.

It used to be that "public use" was more or less that, "public use", ie. for building public projects, highways, government offices, etc. But later, "public use" became stretched to mean private development of "blithed" areas.

In the New London case, the City council sought to buy out a group of home owners, in favor of a group of corporate developers who wanted to build office space and hotels.

The case was first heard in the local court, who ruled in favor of the home owners.

Then it was heard in the Conn Supreme Court, who overturned the verdict, and ruled in favor of the City of New London.

Finally, the appeal reached the Supreme Court, which affirmed the Conn Supreme Court ruling, narrowly, by 5 to 4.

This decision is though not so clearly cut along idealogical lines, O'Conner, a traditionally liberal judge, was in the dissenting minority, which did not see New London's "eminent domain" use as proper in this case.

The 3 traditionally Conservative judges, Rheinquest, Scalia, and Thomas, all dissented.

Stevens, Kennedy, Ginsberg, Souter, Breyer, affirmed the Conn Supreme Court.

(1) Legally, strictly by the words of the law, this decision was a CORRECT one, based upon all available arguments.

The counsel for the home owners argued that this development of their land cannot constitute "public use".

This argument, by all legal standard, is flawed, because it asked the Supreme Court to impose a new definition of "public use" over US and all 50 states, which the Supreme Court cannot legally do.

For one, there is not a single piece of federal legislation that defines "public use" in "eminent domain" for all 50 states.

The 5th Amendment was deliberately left as a State right to define "public use" in "eminent domain", thus the Supreme Court cannot intervene without any established federal definition of "public use".

Thus, the 5 justices of the majority, voted correctly, to affirm the right of the State of Conn and the city of New London to define "public use" as they see fit.

Thus, the Plantiff's counsel's legal strategy in this line of argument is extremely flawed, and lacking in basic legal understanding. Clearly, they are no specialists on Constitutional law.

The basic power of "eminent domain" cannot be challenged, nor can the right of the local government in defining "public use". The courts are not in the position to challenge these powers.

(2) however, Plantiff counsel should have approached this via another position.

That the City of New London acted in breach of Separation of Power.

Namely, the City of New London acted as an extra-judicial arbitrator for 2 groups of private entities in a private dispute.

If Plantiff party does not wish to sell to developers, the City cannot rule in favor of the developers. The city council is not a court of law, designed to settle such disputes.

Property rights as far as eminent domain is concerned, should not be legislated on the fly any more than individual rights can be legislated on the fly.

States, for their definition of public use, should be established by prior legislations and legal precedences. This particular legal dispute, should have been between the home owners and the developers. The city council should not be involved in such an economic dispute, any more than any legislative body has any business in any merger/acquisition negotiations between any large corporations.

In this very sense, this new definition of "public use" is establishing a new precedence of economic control by the Government.

Afterall, "Community development" itself is not legislated in any fashion. If indeed "eminent domain" and "public use" can be proclaimed by the most loose definition of "Community development", then why could not the city of New York take control of the NY stock exchange with "eminent domain" and turn it over to the management of any specific corporation in the name of "Community/economic development"?

Indeed, in such a deed, the "eminent domain" smacks of illegal Government acquisition of private assets.

In defining the limit of "eminent domain",

The unique strength of the culture of "play" in America

One may warn and lament the possible downfall of America, and the rise of China or some other nations.

It is true that China has a culture of thriftiness and education and single-minded potential of an upcoming superpower.

There is nothing I would personally wish more than to see my fellow countrymen in China enjoy better standards of living, and be proud of a strong and prosperous nation.

But reality sinks in, and I must be frank over the real possibilities.

And the truth is, there is one unique strength of American culture which the Chinese people have not truly learned.

Because it is a strength that often has been said to be a weakness in American Culture.

A statistics commonly quoted, is that Americans, some 280 million people, are attributed to 40% of all world wide resource consumption.

This, many of us have said, is a waste, a sign of American decadence, weakness, and future downfall.

That is true to a degree.

We have seen the down side of this mass consumption in America, poor people spending more than they can earn, on "credit". The American debt system overburdens the entire society.

However, there is a serious upside to this life of "luxury", and it is in the way Americans "play".

The closest analogy I can draw to this talent, is how a lion cub learns to hunt by "playing", with food, and siblings.

Cats, in their nature, instinctively like to "play" to hone their hunting skills. Even household cats play sometimes by pretending a ball or a feather is a prey.

By equal token, I have surmised, that the success of American culture in the 20th century is actually largely due to its nature of "play" and "leisure".

Americans are not a very serious people, by comparison to say, the Germans or the Chinese. Americans spend enormous amount of energy and wealth and resources on leisure activities.

And yet, this is the very thing that spurred many inventors and technologies, in both civilian and military applications.

Afterall, even the early German program of rocketry was manned by people like von Braun, who started as a member in a rocketry club. "Playing" becomes serious business over time.

I am also reminded by the Chinese history of the Han Wu Emperor, who ascended the throne when he was very young. He was prevented from making serious decisions by his Grandmother. So the figurehead young emperor prepared for his career by organizing "hunting expeditions" with his personal body guards. He trained 800 of his body guards to be future generals, by pretending herds of deer as enemy calvary troops, and making his "hunting expeditions" into grand scale battle scenarios. In such exercises, in "playing", he managed to hone his skills and the skills of his men in battle.

Yet in nations, governments alone cannot make the people learn to "play". The people learn to "play" by themselves.

And in "playing", the people hone their diverse skills in all fields.

The American ingenuity, comes from their constant "playing" with everything they can get their hands on, from cars, boats, to computers and cosmetics.

Afterall, the Personal computer industry came from a bunch of computer geeks who "played" around with spare parts in their own homes. And from that, arose Apple, IBM.

We Chinese, lack a tradition of "playing", but we can still learn.

Sometimes, we Chinese look down upon our own young, who spend too much time playing.

But this is a wrong attitude.

The young should "play", as long as they still work and study. Let them work hard and play hard.

Let us not be so serious as to only think about work and family.

"Playing" is good for the creativity of our society and our people, which will hone our skills for the future, give us new ways of looking at things.

On Capitalism

As everyone knows, Capitalism, or free market economy, is devoid of guarantees of fairness.

And this is dangerous in 1 way that it enables secret "trade wars" to be waged between parties, be they individuals or even nations.

Afterall, there is nothing in laws any where that can prevent one's enemies from leveraging you to pay for a higher price than they would normally charge their friends.

So, without much public declaration, "trade wars" are secretly being engaged everywhere in most part of the world.

Some we call "competition", which is valid, because they are limited to the extent of delivering better prices and products for the consumers.

While others are more destructive, in that they create addictions and dependencies.

Capitalism, or free market economy, is a sort of legalized system of voluntary slavery and servitude, with the ultimate aim of the powerful obtaining sufficient wealth and control of resources to force the not-so-powerful to succumb to material dependence.

The only redeeming quality of this system, is the possibility of the not-so-powerful becoming powerful by playing the game of Capitalism.

Sarcastically, Capitalism is based upon the inherent weakness of human beings to degenerate.

Capitalism functions, by taking social restraints away, so that the spiritually weak and hopeless, will continue to conduct self-destructive acts, while the strong may profit from these acts, and the system can collect taxes in the transaction.

It is a games of "who's the biggest loser", where the entire society is set up like a giant casino with glittering lights to lure the "losers" in to loser more and more money.

But the "losers" are quite happy while losing, being dazzled by the lights of it all.

The casino, and hence Capitalism, is in the business of making people feel good, while they lose money.

The casino is not fair, but no one is forcing anyone to gamble. That's the justification behind the game. That's the system.

That's the undeclared "trade war" between you and the casino/system.

Why? Because in this relationship, there is at least 1 clear loser, you, John Q. Public Consumer who does not own the Casino.

And the only way you can win, is if you built your own casino and got into the gaming industry yourself.

On "Out of the Box Thinking"

There is modern slogan in management, on the virtue of "Out of the Box Thinking".

It is similar to the notion of "Paradigm Shift" in philosophy of science, where a drastic change in basic assumptions must be changed in order to make greater advances in science.

Management with the "out of the box thinking" works on the same line of reasoning, that sometimes, a completely new way of thinking can change the nature of business drastically. Those who first achieve the new way of thinking tend to gain competitive edge in business.

So management want to recognize and promote "out of the box thinking" in businesses.

But in my experience, this is nearly impossible.

On the contrary, "out of the box thinking" are typically ignored and typically went unsupported, until many of such thinking die in management.

Why?

Because it is very difficult for people to recognize "out of the box thinking" from someone else.

When I was in management, when I had a truly new thought "out of the box", I knew I was "out of the box", because most of the other managers can't understand what I was talking about.

They were "in the box", and they couldn't see me any more, literally NOT knowing where I was coming from when I spoke of the new ideas.

They could not relate to my ideas any more, because I was "out of the box".

I have been in meetings, where I tried to convince 20 or so managers of new problems and new solutions, and I get 20 blank faces staring back at me.

Pure "out of the box" ideas simply do not work. No one can understand them, except the guy who thought of them. So no one will support them, devote time and money to them, or find ways to help them.

And because there are too many of these "out of the box" ideas, and not all of them will necessarily result in success.

In reality, what must happen is, the most successful revolutionaries of business managers, seek to keep "one leg in the box, one leg out of the box".

They must keep grounded in the box, and try to move a little bit out of the box over time.

This allows them to better convince their colleagues of the merits of their ideas, giving them something to relate to.

But this process is often too slow to be truly useful, as there is only so FAR that the "box" will be allowed to stretched, and so FAR a single person can keep his/her stance with "one leg in the box, one leg out". It limits the radicalness of the new ideas.

Some revolutionaries, like Edwards Deming, had to literally abandon the "box", and go find supporters among people who had "no box".

The lesson here, is that for management to truly embrace "out of the box thinking", they need to learn to make a few Leaps of Faith on the most radical of their employees.

Given that truly radical new ideas often cannot be understood by the average human being, it is not necessary for the management bureaucracy to "study" the New radical ideas too much. The simple reality is that "Studying" a new idea too much will kill the new idea with bureaucracy.

And for employees who might think that they have "out of the box" ideas, beware of management, and do not put too much hope in their slogan of "out of the box thinking".

Majority of new ideas will not receive any support from any management.

But do not give up hope either. The simple trick is, you have to try to sell your new ideas to a lot of different managements, until someone listens.

Sometimes your local managers don't get it, but someone else might.

It may require you to change your jobs to make the new ideas happen.

Or it may indeed require you to use your own expenses and resources to make them happen, without the help of any large corporations.

But that is the reality of "out of the box thinking". You should not be confused to think that just because "out of the box thinking" is a common corporate slogan, it will make it easier for innovators.

It remains largely a "slogan".

I never wanted to be a manager.

I always just wanted to be a simple engineer, to do what I do well, get paid, and don't want to be in charge.

I sought to run away from leadership roles as much as possible. Politics was not in my nature, I felt.

But all that changed five years ago.

My crazy story of how I started in management had to do with a rather unbelievable series of events.

First, the set up. I graduated from University of Florida with a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering. Straight out of Master's program, Corporation hired me to their California site as a Product Engineer. Five years into it, I was still somewhat of a junior engineer, knowing enough to be independently dangerous, but rarely exposed to the limelight of leadership roles.

Second, the trigger. My boss in year four was a very capable and decent manager, an engineer with solidly respected reputation for honesty, integrity, and no non-sense work style. In year five, he took a mandatory sabatical of eight weeks. While he is away, another manager in our department made a "power play", and convinced the upper management to let him take over much of the responsibilities of my manager.

My boss came back from his sabatical to find that he's now reporting to his former colleague, a man he didn't respect too much. My boss decided then that he was going to get a new job elsewhere.

The following events. Soon after this political transition, commonly referred to as "management reorganization", I found myself working for a new boss, and he had managed to grab up a large portion of the department. So he had about 30 people working for him.

But soon it was apparent that there was little cohesion in his large team, and he was scrambling for help.

I was rather oblivious to all this. Or I should say that I knew what was going on, my awareness of the political situation was in fact extremely clear. But I had my work as an engineer, and I didn't care. Most of my colleagues didn't care either. Our philosophy was, let the managers fight it out.

But I was about to be put through a challenge of my life.

The Leap of Faith
The irony of management is, it is often a crapshoot, or as Forest Gump said, "like a box of chocolate".

One day I was just an engineer working on products for a large company. Then my manager intercepted me in the hallway, and asked me a simple question.

He said, "Chen, we are having some technical issues in the stress lab. We need someone to take charge of these issues. Can you do it?" (Or something to this effect)

By this "simple" question, I mean it is very simple in its vagueness. I had no clue as to what "issues" my manager was talking about.

But in my "simple" eagerness to please my new manager, I naturally wanted to give it an old college try.

So I replied collegiately, "I'll give it a try."

Then my manager said cheerfully, "Great. Thanks." He walked off briskly and happily.

Too happy. Immediately I sense that I was in some kind of trouble.

Sure enough, when I got back to my cubicle after about five minutes, there was a short email from my manager, broadcasted to the entire business group of 400 or so people, that "Chen is now in charge of the Stress lab", ie. "see Chen for all the problems, he's now the scapegoat".

Me and my big fat mouth!

I kept going back to that moment, and trying to figure out what exactly transpired. There seemed to be some strange collision of cosmic anomolies that took place. Conspiracy or Destiny?

I thought I was just "in charge of issues", I wasn't supposed to get a new job and become a manager! I mean, some ambitious junior engineer probably waited years to get into management, and I just took his/her spot! And I didn't want it! I never wanted it! Many people who wanted to be in management, studied for management, went to corporate training classes, go through new interviews, and still end up without any opportunities to become managers. But me, I get into management after a 5 minute hallway conversation! Unbelievable!

But it happened, despite my lack of interest, despite my avoidance of leadership, despite my refusal to try, it happened!

I could only conclude with some degree of paranoia, that it was pre-ordained in my cosmic destiny. Though I am a person of science, this was one of the few moments in my life, when God appeared, with all his mysterious purpose and design for my very strange so-called life.

And if this was God's will, who am I to question the wisdom in the events he chose to insert into my life?! If God took this much trouble to change my life/career, I should not refuse his gift.

I decided, I would take this Leap of Faith, to see where it leads me. If I was to fail, there is something important I was supposed to learn from my mistakes.

First Year Manager, Trial by Fire,
God has a funny sense of humor, and by funny, I mean, only God can see the humor in it.

For one, I didn't exactly get any rewards out of my advancement to management.

I ventured to guess, that it was because people expected me to fail within the first year.

For soon after I became the manager of the lab, I realized how bad of a shape it was in. A little bit of history told me, that this lab was the most politically unstable lab in all of the corporation. It had a long list of managers with short tenures, and equally long list of switching organization funding and structures. It had four employees, all technicians, and all demoralized.

Things were not getting done fast enough, the equipment are getting old, no one wants to fund the lab any more, and there were many serious mistakes in the work.

All of these bad things reinforced one another, and there were talks of dismantling the lab.

Three business groups paid for the lab and the salaries of the personnel, but two were threatening to abandon the joint venture.

All of this was creating a headache for my junior management inexperience.

Before I could even solve the major problem, I had a serious small scale problem. The most senior technician in the lab found a mistake in his previous timecards for the past 4 years, where he was not getting paid for overtime he put it.

It immediately became a labor dispute with the company. The backpay was in the amount of over $100K, and the legal department and the HR department was having a heart attack.

On the one hand, they can't pay him that much, or it was going to be a major accounting problem for the departments.

On the other hand, if they didn't pay him, it could turn into a lawsuit.

I had to get into the negotiation, and keep my technician calm, until the legal department had a chance to settle with him.

The end result was better than I hoped, which was a general avoidance of any ugly situation. Fortunately, my company was quite fair, and gave my technician a generous settlement package for the dispute, in return the technician agreed to sign a non-disclosure and no-fault agreement with the company.

This was actually the first time, where I learned something about negotiations.

After that, I negotiated with the two business groups and my