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A/I, Follow the Money Part II

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Way back in March of 2019 I wrote that “America is due for a big-time governmental/economic scandal of tsunami proportions.” I never considered myself as a some sort of wizard with a crystal ball or prognosticator of future events. And from the looks of it, if I did, I would consider myself ill-equipped to make it that in that sort of profession. Another words: Don’t quit your day job.

But yet here we are in 2026, seven years later with the stock market humming and the economy hanging tough; despite tariffs, tax cuts, Doge and a military excursion/operation against Iran–that’s only real accomplishment has been to raise inflation and gas prices around the world; and maybe spike EV sales.

It is easy to say something is going to happen, if you say it long enough it is bound to come true. I am sure there were New York Knick fans who said in 1974, and every year after, that the Knicks are going to win the title next year– 53 years later they were right.

Throughout history, for instance, there have been some bold predictions on when the world would end, which I guess could be a harbinger of economic scandal. Much like our recent belief in a computer meltdown with Y2K. We live in a tech world swimming with malware and hackers. It seems as if we are just one click away from possible doom. Especially now with all the talk of A/I ending humanity as we know it.

For a lot of us our first encounter with A/I was with “the computer” on Star Trek. We sat back and were absorbed with how the computer in Star Trek could figure out how many Class M planets there were in a certain quadrant of space. Or how some unknown space disease was mutating human bodies into some sort of alien creature–and then figuring out a cure to reverse the process! The other side of the story comes out around the same time. We learned from 2001: A Space Odyssey how a computer without “parental” controls could lock humanity in deep space.

But when it comes to the ending humanity it is religious leaders who squawk the loudest with their predictions of fire and brimstone. And like Y2K it was the millennium change as a reason to fear the end. According to historysnob.com, Pope Sylvester II put the Medieval world into a dither with the belief that the Second Coming was imminent when triple zeros showed up on the calendar. As if God is working on a manmade calendar. And then, I ask, which calendar: The Julian or the Byzantine. Or is God working of a lunisolar calendar? Just asking, because I think Sylvester didn’t inform God. I mean, who knows maybe the world ends in 2037 in the next year of the Snake. After all the snake shows up early in Genesis. That slithering serpent put an end to the Garden of Eden. I am just saying.


It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
(It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine
(It’s time I had some time alone)
I feel fine–REM

But back to the Popes. Not to be out done, Pope Innocent III predicted in 1213 “the world end in 1284–exactly 666 years after Islam’s founding.” I am not sure of the significance of that. An easy google search says: “The number 666 is commonly linked to the Roman Emperor Nero, known for his persecution of Christians. This connection arises from a method called gematria, where letters are assigned numerical values. This sounds more like figuring out the cryptogram quotes on the puzzle page of the daily newspaper. (What’s a daily newspaper?) When Nero’s name is transliterated into Hebrew, it adds up to 666. Good enough for me. I like the logic. However, my gut tells me the snake thing makes more sense.

Here in the United States we have had our religious prognosticators, too. Cotton Mather predicted the end times in 1697, 1716, 1736. I am not sure what methodology he used–the entrails of a witch, maybe. However, he died in 1728 not knowing he was wrong.

And then there was Harold Camping. History Snobs says: “This radio preacher twice announced Judgment Day: first on May 21, 2011, then again on October 21, 2011. Billboards went up worldwide, announcing the end of the world.” Both dates came and went and we are still here.

 There are others like Isaac Newton. I think I might take his prediction a bit more seriously. After all, he did give us the Law of Gravity and three Laws of Motion that seem to be pretty consistent over time. Newton “studied biblical texts obsessively and predicted the end might come around 2060.” We will have to wait and see.

I am more in the mode of Charles Wesley, a founder of Methodism, who had a more open-ended approach to predictions. History Snobs says, “To his credit, he didn’t try to set an exact date or time, although he made it clear in his sermons that he felt Christ’s return was imminent.” I am not sure what Wesley said about the Second Coming in his sermons, but he died in 1788. We may need to define the word imminent. However, I feel the same way about an economical scandal of Biblical proportions in the near future. It is imminent.

But to get back to the looming economic scandal just around the corner. I base my prediction on technological innovation and greed and a simple concept of follow the money. In my March 2019 blog I mention the coming of the railroads and the land grants handed out to railroads, particularly the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific. These two companies were involved in an 1860s version of a moon race. However the Russians were not involved. And like A/I today, the problem back then was not so much engineering as it was financing. Engineers and hard labor cleared the Sierra Nevada mountains but it was the good old use governmental funds greasing the palms of Congress that kept the Greenbacks flowing and the trains rolling.

“It’s gonna take-a money, a whole lotta’ spending money. It’s going to take plenty-a money. To do it right…”–George Harrison’s

The axle turning the wheel of this scandal was the Union Pacific’s construction company, the Credit Mobilier. The company over charged the government to the tune of $44 million and spread the wealth amongst their shareholders and several dozen Congressmen as well as the Vice President of the United States, Schuyler Colfax. Nothing really happened, nobody went to jail. A few Congressman were censured, the railroad got built and it was just chalked up to a typical business project during the Gilded Age.

The next governmental scandal centered around oil–drill baby drill. The global economy was shifting from a coal based economy to oil. One institution making that shift were navies of the world. So it really made sense back in 1910 to set aside land with known oil as a reserve for the US Navy.

This was an era before petrodollars. But shrewd oilmen knew the value of buck. There may not have been gold in “them there” Wyoming oil land reserves; but there damn sure was money to be had just lying there to be pumped. The Navy Department convinced President Warren Harding to transfer the land to the Interior department where Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, began leasing out the Teapot Dome oil reserves to Mammoth Oil Company and Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company–both in non-competitive bids. Sound familiar?

Interestingly leasing of the lands was not a crime. The real problem with these sorts of scandals is in the creative art of accounting; particularly when somebody is left out of the art of the deal.  It only takes one disgruntled individual, in this case a left out oilman, to start following a money trail of  illegal interest free loans and bribes. Just a few of the financial incentives Fall received as compensation for his generosity to Harry F Sinclair’s  Mammoth Oil Company and Edward L Doheny’s Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company. A Senate investigation of Fall’s financial shenanigans lead to Fall serving nine months of a one-year sentence. Sinclair spent six months in jail not for financial malfeasance but contempt of Senate. Doheny was acquitted of any charges. And so goes Jazz Era justice.

Now I will be honest. I could be shooting in the dark here. I don’t know whole lot about A/I. I am smart enough to figure out we are moving into the next phase of the Information Age. I also realize that there are various companies lead by very rich men that are developing the computers to run A/I and setting up data centers. (Check Forbes as a list of the top 50 A/I companies: forbes.com/list/ai50/) I do know from watching the news and reading about A/I is it is going take a ton of financial investments to get A/I to become a reality. And here again, I don’t want to sound like someone predicting the end of the world when A/I spreads its roots deep into humanity and really comes to some sort of fruition. But before that happens it has to be built. And if history is any indicator there is always somebody ready to jump the line with a paper bag of cash or stocks to get a leg up.

From what I can gather, A/I is here and being used today. My guess is we have only scratched the surface. It took the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific nine years to complete the transcontinental railroad. In 1914 the USS Texas was the last US Navy battleship built with coal burning engines. The “Mighty T,” was converted to oil in 1925. I am sure A/I can be rolled out just as quick as linking the coasts with a railroad line or putting a gas station on just about every corner in America. Of course with the right financial government funding you can send celebrities into low earth orbit. I am sure right now there is a money trail being laid out from Wall Street to our governmental hallways attracting the right palms to grease to give somebody a leg up on everybody else. But as George Harrison sang it is going to take a lot of spending money, which brings us to the mantra “follow the money. Once the grease is applied, then we can worry about the end of humanity.

“It isn’t what you do, but how you do it”

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I stumbled across a quote from John Wooden the other day that made me stop for a moment and think about what is going on in this country right now. Wooden said, “It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.”

This is not some sort of topsy turvy quote from Soren Kierkegaard like, “It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.” Okay. I get it sort of. But try putting that on a T-Shirt or running that thought through a town hall meeting.

Wooden, according to UCLA athletics was “the most successful coach in the history of college basketball, guided his UCLA teams to an unprecedented 10 national championships in his 27 seasons (1949-1975).”

People who watched Ted Lasso on Apple TV saw Jason Sudeikis, as Ted Lasso, pin Wooden’s Pyramid of Success on his office wall. It was a pyramid of success that took Wooden’s teams to the peak of success. His teams “compiled an overall record of 620-147 (a winning percentage of .808) and won 19 conference titles. Under his direction, the Bruins captured a remarkable seven consecutive NCAA titles from 1967-1973.” Whether you are a sports fan or not Wooden’s record is impressive. So maybe we can twist Wooden around a bit and say something like “how you do it, is what you get.”

To me, how we are doing things today militarily, with AI, government, immigration to name a few, has created a lot of confusion, discontent, discord and given us, for the large part, what we don’t want; and creating an existential crisis, within and without.

Britannia says that such a crisis is a “period of inner  conflict during which a person is distraught over questions about identity, meaning, and purpose.” Britannia further says that at the heart of this crisis is a period of anxiety and a conflict “often considered to be related to spirituality.” Can this existential crisis befall an entire country? It looks to me as if we are there or if not hurtling towards it quickly.

Now I may be straying a bit from Wooden’s quote a bit. But, the Socratic-Method.com says at first glance we can see it isn’t what you do, but how you do it. How you do it “emphasizes the importance of the approach or methodology employed in any given task, rather than solely focusing on the outcome. This idea challenges the conventional notion that success is solely determined by the end result.”

This brings to mind the popular idiom: The ends justify the means. This phrase is attributed to Nicolo Machiavelli. Biography.com says he was an “Italian diplomat best known for writing ‘The Prince,’ a handbook for unscrupulous politicians that inspired the term ‘Machiavellian’ and established its author as the ‘father of modern political theory’.” The main theme of the book has been interpreted by many as a “political philosophy that one may resort to any means in order to establish and preserve total authority.”

Machiavelli may not have actually said the ends justify the means, but according to academichelp.net, the phrase “embodies a fundamental principle of consequentialism. This ethical theory suggests that the morality of an action is entirely dependent on its consequences. It’s a perspective that looks at the end result of an action to determine its ethical value, contrasting sharply with deontological ethics. Deontology, on the other hand, posits that certain actions are inherently right or wrong, regardless of their outcomes.” I believe we are living in a time, more than ever before, where we focus solely on the outcomes, particularly besting the other side–as if that is the sole purpose of life.

Wow, slow down. Too many isms, ologies and theories in there. We have now gone from the simple sentence into the compound world of and ethics. As far as I know philosophers theologians are still trying to determine “how many angles can dance on the head of a pin.” The two groups were perfectly confused unit a third group, mathematicians got involved.

In a round about way both Wooden and Machiavelli are talking about the same thing. The “consequences.” And it is here things get tangled up in ethical theory. We started out with two phrases. Wooden’s is ten words with no word longer than four letters. Machiavelli’s is half as much with one word seven letters long. How did we end up with fundamental principles of consequentialism to existential crisis?

To clarify let’s look at ethical theory. Philosophy Terms says, “ethical theories are ideas that help us decide which actions are good and bad by leading us to ethical choices that bring positive outcomes for everyone. These theories go deeper than just following rules; they help us see the bigger picture and understand why certain actions are better than others…(it) show(s) us the way to make decisions, even when it’s hard, and help us think not just about what’s good for us, but what’s best for everyone involved.”

This brings us back to consequentialism, which ebesco.com states “is a normative ethical theory that evaluates the morality of actions based on their outcomes. The central tenet of consequentialism is that an action is deemed morally right or wrong depending on the results it produces, with a focus on maximizing positive outcomes for the greatest number of people.”

I think the normative ethical theory can be dicey because of what is normal, particularly today. Wikipedia defines it as “the standards of what people ought to do, believe, or value. It is a quality of rules, judgments, or concepts that prescribe how things should be or what individuals may, must, or must not do.”

For instance, we have always been a country based on two legal concepts: One, the legal rule of law; and two, nobody is above the law. We have seen the Constitution’s words twisted around like a pretzel to achieve certain outcomes never before imagined. Thus creating a period of conflict and anxiety across, gender, race and religion. Never mind political beliefs. Those beliefs have been trashed long time ago.

Our existential crisis is not one of doing but how we are doing it. We have cast aside the ethical norms that have guided our country for 250 years. And without a doubt those norms have changed, in some case drastically, through our history. But we have always, as a nation had guiding principles that we could look to. We knew what was the right thing to do. It may have taken us awhile to come around but we have. We have been a beacon on a hill that has attracted people from all over to our shores because of those guiding principles.

Frederich Nietzche said “There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends how you use them.” It seems to me that we are living in a glass house in the mist of a rock fight.