Why do we lie so much?

Everyone lies.

Politicians, media, government officials, corporate officials, entertainers, radio people, tv people, authors, friends, neighbors, relatives; they/we all lie a lot.

People like to talk, but are very poor at listening.

People will believe almost anything if it supports their point of view, or if it attacks an opposing point of view, even if there are no facts or any supporting evidence for the thing they want to believe. So we not only lie to each other but we lie to ourselves.

People will ignore the truth, ignore facts, will ignore plain obvious information right in front of them if it detracts or discounts or disputes a belief they have.

What we really need to do is instead of believing everything we hear, or everything we want to believe, we should assume everything is a lie. Then you need to look at what is motivating the liar to lie, and then decide if you want to follow that course or not.

Why? What is it about humans that makes us so inherently dishonest? We spread rumors that aren't true, we tell stories that aren't true, be trick people, scam people, we believe things that aren't true. We have entire industries that seem to be built on lieing to people, tricking them or getting them to believe someting that isn't true (the advertising industry).

Why?

Ceasefire in the war on Terror?

Is it time for a ceasefire in the war on terror? Are our military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan really accomplishing what we want? Are we really any safer now? Are the Iraqi or Afghan people safer now? Are they better off now?
Has the progress been significant enough to justify the loss in life required to achieve it? Or the dollar expense? Are our military actions reducing the number of terrorist, or are we just motivating terrorism and creating more terrorists with every military action, with every death or injury? Do we understand what motivates terrorism, or what is pushing them to such extreme actions? Would we be more effective taking actions to address the things that motivate terrorists?
Would doing something about hunger, unemployment, poverty, inadequate health care (physical, dental, AND mental), education, economic injustice, social and cultural prejiduce be more effective than military offensives? Would building roads, or schools, or health clinics be more effective than dropping bombs?
Instead of just trying to kill everyone who hates us, maybe we should ask ourselves why they hate us, and see if there is something we can do to change that, other than simply killing them.


Instead of paying the american military industrial corporations billions of dollars to build huge nuclear submarines that our navy doesn't want, or fleets of cargo planes that our air force says it doesn't need, instead of paying them to build stockpiles of nuclear and chemical weapons, or build fleets of fighter jets designed to fight a war against the huge air forces of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union; instead why don't we pay the american military industrial complex to bomb Iraq and Afghanistan with food, medical supplies, tools, and books?
Instead of building gigantic nuclear submarines with missiles carrying dozens of nuclear warheads, why don't we build schools, health clinics, hospitals, libraries, community centers, wells, housing?
The problem is that corporate america likes making money building things that kill people, they can hide behind "security", and if they build a bomb that kills 100's of people everyone's happy, if the bomb doesn't work no one cares, they don't get in trouble, if the bomb misses its target and kills innocent people they still don't get in trouble, they can hide behind "security", or "its classified", or "its top-secret". But if they have to build a school or a library or a bridge that won't collapse and kill innocent people they have nothing to hide behind. Its also easy to hide outrageous expenses and excessive profits behind "security", or by giving it the "top-secret" label, but its not so easy to justify or hide huge cost over-runs when you're building a two-room school house.
This is why our country has come to be a war machine. This is why our country thrives on military action rather than humanitary aid or political negotiations or compromises; because corporate america can't make obscene truckloads of money that way.
Is this how we want our country to be? IF this were truly a democracy would a majority of our people really want to live like this?

Greed as the American way of Life

Greed is the central factor in most if not all our problems.

Greed is pushing business to increase profits, to increase executive compensation, to increase stockholder value.
That in turn is pushing business to cut wages for the majority of employees, to spend money to influence government, to try to avoid rules and regulations that might impact profits,

Some greed can be written off as basic self interest or self preservation. But in the larger scheme of things there are more and more situations where greed should not be a factor or where it is not in the best interest of the parties involved, but more and more greed is creeping into those situations as an influencing factor.

Why?

There is a huge brain drain at the highest levels in our corporate and government world.
What has happened is that more and more government and business is being driven at the highest levels by people who are high on motivation but low on skills and intelligence, they are lacking in foresight and long range planning, and in some cases are lacking in morals and ethics. They are mainly driven by greed, so since they lack the skill and creativity to come up with new or innovative or stable or sustainable or ethical ways to make money, the resort to the easiest ways to make money. Rather than make a new mousetrap, just keep making the same old mousetrap but try to charge more for it, or cut the wages of the workers making it, or cut the pensions or health care, or out source the jobs to somewhere else, or try to sidestep health, safety, or environmental rules to allow you to cut the cost of making the mousetrap, or try to influence government to give you a tax break or impose tax burdens or import restrictions on your competitors.

Current american business and government is operating with this kind of an approach, and is ignoring more feasible, stable long term approaches.; and ignoring major problems with their current approach.
1) Influencing government to get assistance or tax breaks. This is a classic house or cards. Its kind of like the classic blackjack strategy of doubling your bet everytime you lose, in theory it will work, as long as you have an infinite supply of money to cover any long losing streaks. Trying to survive by goverment favors for your business is the same, the well is only so deep, IF every business, industry, or special interest group got all the breaks and benefits from government that they want where would it end? Who will pay the bill? It has to stop somewhere. american business in every industry whether its wall street financial companies or the iowa corn syrup lobby, or logging, or mining, or automakers, or drug companies, or insurance, or whatever; they need to stop relying on favors or special deals from government to help them. Will they? Probably not? Why? Any sensible person looking at the situation can quickly and easily see that its an unsustainable model, eventually the government is going to run out of money, 2 years, 5 years, 10, 20,or 50. It doesn't matter when, it will happen, and any intelligent business will see that and realize that they should not operate their business to rely on that.

2) Outsourcing, cutting wages, etc
These are different situations but really cause the same problem. Most businesses relying on selling some product or providing a service that in large part is bought and paid for with money that came from wages they have paid out to their employees. It the mousetrap factory cuts the wages of its employees, then they're going to have less money to buy mousetraps, or if jobs are outsourced to a foreign country then their will be more local people out of work, with less money to buy mousetraps.
Outsourcing has the added short-sighted problem in that outsourcing to a less developed country is attractive because wages are lower in that country. BUT eventually wages will increase to the point where its no longer beneficial, 2 years, 5 years, 10,20, 50?? Again it doesn't matter, a business with foresight will understand that eventually it will be a big problem for them, and that they are better off to keep the makers or their mousetraps and the consumers of their mousetrap more closely aligned.

2) Sidestepping rules and regulations
Love Canal, Bhopal India, W.R Grace mines in Libby Montana, West Virginia coal mines. Are short term profit increases really worth the risks?

Another example of short-sightedness, or the inability to be innovative is american industries reliance on the war machine approach to business. american industry did some amazing things during World War II, and our industrial effort may have had nearly as much to our victory as military tactics, BUT american industry became addicted to that business model, a large customer with a large checkbook, with a huge demand for products, and more concern for immediate delivery and not much concern for cost. That is a very nice situation to be in if your are a producer of one of those products, but again it is NOT sustainable and very short sighted to tailor your business to rely on that model, and most of american business is using that model. Maybe not all of american industry but there is a large part of american industry who benefits by the american military being involved all around the world using up bullets, bombs, MRE's, gasoline, tires, uniforms, helmets, etc., sadly a side-effect of using all those products is that people die.
Again the short-sightedness. Why hasn't the american industrial war-machine transitioned into a less lethal product line? The brain drain? Laziness? Lack of creativity or innovation? Greed? Ethics?

Ever since World War II, there have been very few times when the american military was not actively at war somewhere around the world. Its one thing to have a good defense and to protect our citizens, but many of the locations where our military is operating are not threats to our citizens, and many of the weapons and technology they are using are not protecting our citizens from any real threat.

There are a couple of conflicting or possibly compatible quotes that apply.
"Walk softly but carry a big stick",
And
"You can catch more flies with honey, than vinegar"

There are many bad people all around the world, and there are countries and dictatorships that do terrible things and treat their people badly, but are we really accomplishing the effect we want by stomping into a country and kill people, even if our weapons were 100% accurate and we only killed the "bad" people, it probably doesn't achieve the result we hope for, people are different, cultures, religions, geography, whatever, you can expect or force other people to think the same way you do.
Again the short-sightedness, and greed, maybe not greed in a monetary sense, but greed in control and power.
The short-sighted approach is "kill all the bad people that hate me"? Will that work? Maybe a better approach would be to
undertand how they think or feel, what it is that they hate about me, maybe its something I can change, maybe I could explain to them why I do it, but trying to kill them is not going to do any of those things.

In Iraq and Afghanistan carpet bombing those countries with money may have been a much better solution to the problems, but it would NOT have made nearly so much money for the american industrial war complex.