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Oct 30

Three Dragons That Steal Your Financial Wealth And How to Fight Them

by Chris Billows in Business Beller 0 comments tags: Smart Money Management
Do you believe in Dragons? No, I didn’t think so. While I do not believe in dragons as actual, living beings I do believe that they exist as three harmful things that can steal your financial wealth. Just like the King Arthur tales of old, these dragons will steal your wealth. Yet evolution has taught these dragons to be more subtle and sneaky and take from you without you even knowing it. Like a Knight of the Round Table you need to challenge these beasts to protect your financial kingdom. The purpose of this article is to tell you about these dragons and how you can fight them. Meeting the Dragons 1) The first is known as The Dragon of Taxes, 2) The second dragon is known as The Dragon of Inflation, and 3) The third and most important dragon is known as The Dragon of Poor Performance. Why is the third dragon the most important? Well, the first two dragons you cannot defeat. The Dragon of Taxes and the Dragon of Inflation are immortal! You see, the Dragon of Taxes represents the government’s ability to levy taxes on your earnings and wealth. Governments are always hungry for more revenue […]

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Oct 22

Having Bad Teeth Doesn’t Make You Qualified to be a Dentist

by Chris Billows in Mental Mischief 0 comments tags: Foolishness, Human Condition, Quotations
Because of political correctness and democratic absolutism, we are afflicted with a ridiculous conviction that because somebody has experienced something, they somehow are fully qualified to be an expert. This is particularly rampant in the Social Work and self-help industries. The theory goes that the best therapy is administered by somebody who has suffered the same disease, problem, etc. It is a lazy assumption that I sum up as “Having Bad Teeth Doesn’t Make You Qualified to be a Dentist”. Would you consider a dentist to be qualified to do his job if he had bad teeth? No? Yet that is exactly what some people advocate when they believe that experiencing life’s difficulties gives them authority. Would a person who is having a mental health problem be qualified to help other sufferers by the virtue of their shared illness? No. There is something more to it. Experiencing something does not mean that it has been correctly understood. What is even more twisted is when the sense of victimization becomes a badge of pride and exclusivity. I remember being told by at least three different women that because of their terrible experience at the hand of male spouses, their suffering made […]

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Oct 15

The Winner of the October 14 Federal Election is…

by Chris Billows in Political Ponderings 0 comments tags: Change of Mind, Human Condition, Political Opinion
The Winner of the October 14 Federal Election is… Nobody. The Conservatives received another well-deserved minority government. They definitely did not deserve a majority government. What is more interesting is the losers. The poor Green Party received nearly a million votes, yet did not receive a single seat. Ouch! What is interesting is that they appear to have benefited from the decline of the Liberals. Another loser is the Media. What a bunch of tripe they tried to push on us with their election coverage. What I saw on CBC demonstrated the levels of desperation and hyperbole they were prepared to stoop to in order to create an event out of a non-event. Soon after the polls opened in Alberta, one of the CBC analysts breathlessly reported that a Liberal candidate had pulled ahead. She failed to mention that it was only one poll. I found it more interesting to follow the results via the Internet. The final loser is Democracy with only 59.1% of eligible voters turning out. The lowest rate ever. Why is this? I have some speculative reasons: Canadians no longer care about voting because they hate politics and politicians. Canadians are so comfortable and richly entertained […]

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Oct 11

What the Disabled Community Teaches Us

by Chris Billows in Spirit Speculations 0 comments tags: Extrapolation, Free Enterprise, Human Condition
The movement to integrate peoples with disabilities into mainstream society is rooted in cultural awareness and technological advances that developed after World War II. What I find most fascinating is that the people who are the most physically dependent are actually messengers of a libertarian philosophy that generally runs counter to the values of the larger society. The Independence Living movement believes that everyone is entitled to live as independently as possible regardless of one’s physical capacity, each person should be enabled to exercise maximum control over their lives. It is not independence in a literal sense, but independence in a philosophical sense. The presence of people with disabilities provides a fresh perspective on how we can define what being a person means. People who are completely physically dependent are given control over their own lives to the fullest extent they can have. We have so much more to learn from their example – it can help us to understand life and liberty. The disabled community do not self-identify so strongly with their disability, but with what they are able to do. It is a magical transformation of perspective that all of us stand to benefit from. The hidden challenge […]

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Oct 04

Even the Best Systems Fall Victim to Garbage In Garbage Out

by Chris Billows in Spirit Speculations 0 comments tags: Human Condition, Institutional Learning
Working in health care you work in a collection of systems. There is service delivery, information collection and dissemination, legal adherence, and even more. The administrators of the the health care system are always looking for efficiencies and ways to improve it so it can do a better job. While I cannot disagree with the nobleness behind this, they fail to understand the principle of GIGO or Garbage In Garbage Out. GIGO comes from the world of computer programming. There is a recognition in that industry that computers and programs are fundamentally dumb and they will only do what you tell them to do. If the user puts in garbage, then the user will get garbage back. The best programs cannot think for the user, they are simply tools. This has been lost on administrators and bureaucrats in health care (and likely elsewhere). The greatest system designed will not protect against laziness, incompetence, mistakes, and simple bad luck. This coupled with the gross deficiencies inherent in our socialized health care system, it is little wonder how Garbage In becomes Garbage Out magnified. Good system design has an important role to play, but like any instrument or tool, the user is […]

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Sep 28

Beyond Left & Right Politics

by Chris Billows in Political Ponderings 0 comments tags: Change of Mind, Political Opinion
When I was part of the Green Party, we kept telling ourselves that we were beyond Left & Right politics. In fact we said, we are neither Left or Right but out in front. We told everyone that we were thinking forward. In its own way, it made sense. The Greens have helped expand the political debate which has illustrated the inadequacy of the Right vs Left dichotomy. I believe that the entire Right vs Left political spectrum is so archaic it should be completely thrown away. Its history stretches all the way back to the 18th Century which may indicate why it no longer is relevant to modern times. The Right vs Left spectrum was born during the French Revolutionary era, where the Right and Left political positions refers to the seating arrangements in the various legislative bodies of France. At that time, the aristocracy sat on the right of the Speaker while the commoners sat on the left. “The Right” was made up aristocratic or royal interests, including the church, while “the Left” was represented mainly the interests of the bourgeoisie and early capitalists. At that time, support for free market capitalism were issues promoted by the Left […]
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