Thursday, December 28, 2017

best digital nomad books

Been reading a lot:
On page 107 of "Blogging for Dummies"
page 192 scanning "Book Yourself Solid"
Cd #7 of "Delivering Happiness"
and 87% through "The art of non-conformity"

I googled "Digital nomad books" to see which ones were recommended most often. Here are the results and how often they were recommended.
I have a recorded copy of 4-hour workweek, and have already heard it several times. My concern is that I often read all the books until I feel totally overwhelmed. LOL! :-)
Veterans Small business boot camp's next meeting is December 14, and homework is to finish 1-page business plan. Which is currently 9 pages long. lol! :-)
Also want to complete my 3-month editorial calendar and I want to start getting people to start reading my blog.   I have a PDF "How to build a blog with 10,000 subscribers" that I hope will show me how.


6   Vagabonding by Rolf Potts
5  The Art of Non-Conformity" by Chris Guilleabeu
5  The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau
3 Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk
3 Josh Kaufman's The Personal MBA
3 'Delivering Happiness' by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh
3 Remote by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
3 Travel While You Work: The Ultimate Guide to Running a Business from Anywhere by Mish Slade
2 Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port




Thursday, December 21, 2017

Importance of Social Choice

Kenneth Arrow
Kenneth Arrow’s impossibility theorem is important. As I heard the story, Mr. Arrow set out to show how modern democracy met the five criteria proving rationality and reasonableness. But, after months of work finally he concluded that it was impossible.
His conclusions were nothing new. We all know that democracy is no great ship of state. We stand on a raft, often ankle deep in water. It is really a lousy form of government; just better than anything else we have found yet.
When I was younger, as county chair pro temp of a local Libertarian party, I got to stand at the back door of the great factory and watch the sausages being made, until the odor of the process made my stomach retch and I was forced to leave.
I have left meetings angry and confused with this many-headed monster. Once I went to a church retreat where we broke up into small groups and picked someone to represent us. I was amazed at how poorly I was represented in even this small incidence of representative democracy. 
But, making decisions in groups is hard as anyone who has been married can attest. Social Choice is an important field because, if in fact Social Choice is impossible, there is no solid theoretical ground for a satisfactory version of political democracy and also any possible version of economic democracy would likewise be invalidated.
Arrow states that there are essentially two means of making decisions in a capitalist democracy: voting and the market mechanism. Arrow shows just how superior a win/win decision making process like a market mechanism is to a win/lose decision making process like democracy.
This is important information that needs to be disseminated. What is really needed is a paradigm shift in the mind of the citizen. These two decision making processes are not equal.
All democracies are not equal. What is needed is a way to distinguish the Pareto optimal of differing decisions. I know I am probably not using that term correctly. A Pareto optimal solution is one that makes people better off without making anyone worse off.
Many political decisions make a few better off at the expense of the majority. Nearly everyone believes that murder, theft, kidnapping and slavery are wrong (life, liberty, and property) and that there should be laws against it.
Fewer people feel that it is important to study the mating habits of exotic toads. What is needed is a way for people to express those preferences so, that we can move from less optimal decisions to more optimal.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Information Age

Within the next hundred years I expect movement from win/lose toward more win/win type decision-making processes in government. Democracy of course is a win/lose method. One candidate wins one loses.
A market mechanism is one example where everyone leaves with smile on their face. But there are other ways too. Check out Doyle and Strauss how to make your meetings work. This book really brought that fact home and changed the paradigm for me.
Nomadic Hunter Gatherers – Agricultural - Industrial
First people were nomadic hunter-gatherers, and then an agricultural revolution helped them settle down into farms. The industrial revolution brought a mass migration from country to city.
Information Revolution, Political Change
Agriculture brought with it Monarchy. The industrial revolution brought Democracy. What changes
Tocqueville
in the political structure will the information revolution bring?
Tocqueville, Progress, Democracy, and Equality
Tocqueville in his book "Democracy in America," talked about how freedom is inevitable, Tocqueville traced the history of France from the early middle ages when coercion existed as the sole mechanism of authority and concluded that every notable development during the interval had benefited equality.
Tocqueville inspected every generation since the middle ages in France and saw a dual revolution. The aristocracy falling within society while the lower groups rose. He felt cities had added a component of freedom to feudalism, publishing spreading equal information to all groups and America providing many fresh roads to wealth.
Tocqueville believed all persons had helped Democracy, some unknowingly some willingly. Tocqueville is describing the industrial revolution. His notion is that at that time everything had been progressing toward democracy and equality. I agree with him.  One of the great western ideas is the notion of progress, how history has progressed.
I have just finished the Rational Optimist and Ridley makes a good case. But has he really said anything new? Interesting to think of how Marx, Tocqueville, Toffler and Ridley all look at this issue. But more about Ridley later.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

PROPOSED STUDY PLAN

I never got my Master's degree. I did write the rough draft of a book back maybe around 1993. I have thought about going back to college to do a contract of independent study to complete the book and the degree. I started this blog in order to work on these ideas and hopefully get a little feedback. So I found this proposed study plan and will publish it for your consideration.



THESIS STATEMENT;
I will study progress by considering how change happens. I will inspect
democracy's political problems using the tools of public choice economics. Then look at some of the new consensual group tools and their possible effect on these concerns.
      In the Evolution and pattern transformation chapter I want to examine progress by researching the Tocqueville theory of how evolution occurs, then go over the relationship between paradigm shift and evolution.
 In the Economics and government chapter I will trace how political structure parallels economic structure and production methods parallel group processes by following the evolution of Monarchy during the agricultural revolution, and Democracy during the industrial revolution, then conclude with my thesis of consensual political development during information revolution.
Tocqueville
 In the Economics of information chapter I will entertain Kuhn’s theory of revolutions by contemplating how to identify key triggers of change and how they operate. Then I will study how society continuously adjusts to changing circumstances by drawing a parallel between an individual’s formation of unconscious knowledge and society’s unconscious operations.  
The chapter on Truth studies how Locke, Mill, and Hayek explained man’s experience of ignorance and concern for accurate information, then rephrases the case for freedom and tolerance.
Thomas Kuhn
The "What goes wrong?" chapter studies how inconsistencies in democratic theory cause problems in practice, and how these problems lead to externalities, then researches how these externalities can lead to a political business cycle. 
 In the "Calculus" chapter I explore the public choice school of economics by tracing its history and theory by looking at pioneers in the field, then apply Deming's contribution of total quality management tools to public choice economics.
      In the Win/win chapter I study natural law by looking at the problems of morality, coercion, and productivity as they bear on how Democracy is practiced.
       The "Consensus" chapter speculates about whether Democracy has failed to fulfill its promise of education and confidence
by looking at group psychology and dynamics. Then I trace the history of consensus and ponder whether small group processes are now able to overcome these problems.
       The "Government" chapter checks to see how interactive small group processes can be used in government, and looks at concerns expressed by opponents, then views tools that may be used to deal with these concerns.
      The "Stores" chapter looks at possible results from these changes, by examining more tools that may be developed, and studying how Politics, Economics, and Ecology are related. Then ends with checking the feasibility of a unified ecological world.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

a