Moral Innovators perspectives on geology and climate

Geology as we know it today is largely based on the concept of plate tectonics, a concept developed by Professor Jason Morgan of Princeton University for 50 years and popularized within our lifetimes.  It is difficult to highlight the importance of geology because it is measurable but not easily observable.  Climate, on the other hand, can be observed such as 2023 is likely the hottest year on record, and most of the hottest years have been in this past decade.  It would be great to have these concepts presented as part of experiential learning in schools as part of our education.  Please note that geology, by definition, is not creationism.  It does not conflict with creationism because Adam and Eve, as defined by Monotheism, are modern day concepts in geological timeframe.  This blog will introduce our world until the emergence of Creationism.

This is the shape of earth from 4 billion years ago to 250 million years from today:

Within the last 100 million years, the relevant snapshots in time include:

• Montana was the west coast of the USA which is consistent with the amount of dinosaur fossils found in Montana.  California was an island that, when collided with Montana/Utah, created Salt Lake in a way similar to the tectonic plate collisions in the Middle East which created the salty Dead Sea.  This geographic similarity could be part of the basis for Mormons’ beliefs.
• The asteroid strike near Yucatan, Mexico 65 million years ago triggered a massive 11-magnitude earthquake and volcanic eruptions that lasted 300,000 years, killing all dinosaurs.
• Primates, before they became hominin and humans, did not exist in Africa until species like Teihardina migrated into Africa from Asia, Europe and North America over water, when Africa was still an island until 20 million years ago.  It is not likely that hominin evolved only in Africa when parallel evolution happened in Asia, Europe and North America.
  • Mediterranean Sea was a swamp until 5.3 million years ago when the Rock of Gibraltar opened.  Note that 6-million-year-old footprints were found in Crete, an ancient city I visited.  (https://greekreporter.com/2023/09/09/crete-footprints-6-million-years-old/). It is likely that European hominin archaeological evidence has been submerged.
  • Southeast Asia was a gigantic rain forest as recently as 15,000 years ago, before the last ice age ended, and the sea level increased by 400 feet.  The islands of Indonesia and Philippines were created at that time.  It was possible to walk from China or India to within a short distance of Australia.  A submerged city off the west coast of India has been found.  Java Man and Australian aboriginals have a long history dating back at least 1.5 million years.  The latitude of this Southeast Asian rain forest is the same as that of Kenya in Africa where the oldest hominin fossils were found, meaning the climate should be similar.  It is likely that Asian hominin archaeological evidence has been submerged.  

• 7 million years ago, humans as we know them today evolved from primates like Gibbons, Orangutans, Chimpanzees, and Gorillas.  The key difference among them was one single pair of chromosomes that we have labelled as Chromosome #2.  Instead of two short pairs in primates, there is one single longer pair in humans.

• 10,000 years ago, the earth’s climate stabilized to within one degree Celsius.  This supported the settlement of humans into agriculture, away from nomadic lives.  This chart shows the volatility of temperature for the last 350,000 years.  The Y-scale of these 2 charts have been aligned to show the spikes close to a continuum.   From these charts, we can see the large spike in climate change projected to the year 2100, clearly showing the impact of what we are doing as humanity continues to ignore climate.

• 5,000 years ago, Creationism emerged.  Over 90% of humanity lived in the four most popular sites that are about the same distance from the equator, implying climate was a factor in the settlements.  There were also similar settlements in South America that have been identified.

Moral Innovators’ perspective on financing global industrialization

There are many scholarly publications on industrialization and why China did not industrialize despite her advanced economy.  As recently as 1820 (200 years ago), China commanded 35% of the global economy (or Global GDP).  Today, China and USA are the top two economies on earth, each with about 18% of the Global GDP.  Mindful that industrialized economies are much bigger today, can you imagine the combined economy of USA and China is what China alone commanded 200 years ago?

Our schools mention “opium wars” without sharing 1 million tons of opium were forcibly imported into China against Chinese laws in exchange for $100 trillion (2010 USD$) that left China with millions of opium addicts.  This occurred over 100 years or about $1 trillion USD every year on average for 100 years.  We all remember the sub-prime crisis in 2008 when $5 trillion dollars were “lost” over a five-year period.  This means the opium wars were 20 times longer than the sub-prime crisis we experienced, exasperated by an economy full of opium addicts in China. 

We cannot change history, but we need to understand our history better to strive for a more harmonious future.  USA has become notorious for excessive gun violence when we have more guns than people.  We are numbed to accept mass killings.  Without change, violence and conflicts will continue to increase.

The bulk of the transfer of $100 trillion dollars out of China occurred between 1850-1900.  England, Dutch, USA, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Italy were the Europeans who collectively forced the bulk of the 1 million tons of opium into China.  Russia took land about 1/3 the size of today’s China that gave Russia the only port in the Pacific not frozen in the winter (Note:  Russia is trying to have another port not frozen in the winter – Crimea in Ukraine.  Japan raped innocent women throughout Asia and conducted chemical experiments on Chinese citizens that textbooks in Japan’s schools today say these activities were to “defend Japan.”  This new Axis of Evil was most obvious when (the now assassinated former Prime Minister of) Japan nominated the egotistical narcissist former US President (who lost the popular vote by millions of votes in 2016) for Nobel Peace Prize.

We know that Harvard, Yale and Princeton all received donations from “China traders” but how about actual industrialization?  Let us use an example of the Second Empire in France between 1852-1870.

Like the USA transcontinental railway that was built mostly by Chinese Americans, France built the grand railway network that facilitated and centralized commerce to Paris.  The rebuilding of Paris with broad boulevards, striking public buildings, elegant residential districts for higher class Parisians followed the public works projects that included sewage removal and clean water supply.  Given the many wars during this period such as the Franco-Prussian War that ended The Second Empire in France, the right question to ask is:  Who supplied the capital or the money to finance these public works projects?  One obvious possibility is the money collected from China for the illegal sale of opium.  This community of moral innovators will strive to deliver this knowledge after asking the right questions.

We start with education.  Our students are entitled to know facts before they decide what they want to do for their lives.  Let’s leverage internet’s data to support the pursuit of knowledge by students.

Moral Innovators’ perspective on humanity today

Moral Innovators focus on humanity and to thrive with knowledge of your place in the world. 

Earth was formed ~4.5 billion years ago.  Our Last Universal Common Ancestor (or LUCA) lived ~4 billion years ago as life evolved through photosynthesis with Rubisco enzyme to deliver oxygen from carbon dioxide that changed our atmosphere.  Geology (i.e. land mass) and climate cycles through the last ice age 15,000 years ago have shaped today’s earth.  With a stable atmosphere, humans were created/evolved and settled down to domesticate animals that produced more food than we can consume.  Languages and arts/music emerged as some humans did not have to concentrate on food and shelter.  Today, three communities represent over 90% of humanity on earth:  1) Atheists in China, 2) Henotheists in India, 3) Monotheists in the rest of earth.

Until 200 years ago, Atheists and Henotheists commanded the global economy with the Silk Road, bigger than Roman and Ottoman Empires.  Christian Monotheists industrialized for 300 years by taking treasures and enslaving other humans.  Britain sought all global treasures.  When the 1773 Boston Tea Party happened, Britain gave the British East India Company (BEIC) the monopoly power to trade opium that same year (1773).  BEIC produced opium in the newly colonized Henotheist India and delivered opium into Atheist China.  For over a century until World War I, a united front of Christian Monotheists took treasures (i.e. capital) out of China.  After the puppet-state Japan replaced Shogun culture with Meiji Restoration after the 1854 US Commodore Perry visits, the radicalized Japan under Hirohita tested and used chemical weapons in Atheist China and raped/killed civilians throughout Asia with no remorse.  Even today, textbooks in Japan generally defended Japan without teaching Japanese students the inhumane Japanese invasions across Asia.  Japan colonized Korea, Ryukyu and Taiwan until the atomic bombs ended World War II in 1945. 

The global human population grew from 1 billion in the year 1800 to 2.5 billion in 1945 through the US Gilded Age and Jim Crow Laws when Christian Monotheists led immoral innovations under the name of opium trade to take US$100 trillion (2010$) capital from Atheists China until there was no more capital (i.e. money) to be taken just before World War I.

Adolph Hitler was democratically elected via a coalition government to become Chancellor using the platform that Germany should no longer pay the obligations under the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I.  To rebuild the depleted German capital, Hitler radicalized USA eugenics under the name of an Aryan race that first took money and then annihilated a large portion of Jews through the Holocaust.  Today, students in Germany learn the Jewish holocaust.

Following the footsteps of Portugal and Spain who declared ownership of the world beginning in 1493, USA and Japan signed treaties that declared Hawaii belong to the USA, and Ryukyu (its largest island is known today as Okinawa) belong to Japan.  As recently as 2019, Japan’s now assassinated Prime Minister Abe nominated the radicalized USA egotistical narcissist Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Britain identified fossil fuel as the engine to sustain industrialization. After the 1874 demise of BEIC, British Petroleum (BP) was incorporated in 1908 after the discovery of oil in Persia (today’s Iran). In 1953, Winston Churchill convinced USA’s President Eisenhower to use CIA in a coup d’etat to replace the democratically elected President of Iran with the puppet Shah of Iran in order to control Iranian oil.  This is one of the root causes of poor US-Iran relations today.

Monotheist Muslims did not emerge until OPEC flexed its muscles beginning in 1973.  Each one of the more than 8 billion humans today contributes to an average of $2 trillion dollars of profit to the owners of fossil fuels for the last 50 years.  This is like delivering the 8^th largest economy on earth (i.e. Canada) to the fossil fuel owners each and every year.  Unless we take action to mitigate giving our money to the owners of fossil fuels, we are like a frog in heating water – we may not survive.

Unlike frogs, we must jump out of the heating water and focus on the root cause – the widening wealth gap.

Moral Innovators’ perspectives on impact of wealth preservation and trade on mental health

Moral Innovators know that global industrialization in the last 500 years happened with a focus on innovations at the expense of morality.  For example, Tordesillas and Zaragoza Treaties declared that the world belongs to Portugal and Spain without input from Chinese, Indians, Native Americans, Africans, Muslims nor other Caucasian Christians in Europe.  In business terms, the return on investment for Christopher Columbus’ voyages has been artificial high due to the very low cost of investment.

After the Tordesillas/Zaragoza treaties, treasures were taken from around the world for 300 years before Caucasian Christians recruited Japan to force 1 million tons of opium into China against Chinese laws in exchange for $100 trillion (2010 USD) that supported the first US Gilded Age which allowed families like Carnegie, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt to join Medici and Rothchild in Europe.  When China ran out of money by the beginning of the 20^th century, Caucasian Christians tried Versailles Treaty to extract money from Germany through the world wars until humanity’s reliance on energy led to the OPEC cartel and rise of the Muslim Gilded Age led by Saudi Arabia.  In the last 20 years, the stock market supported another Gilded Age led by Bezos, Gates, Buffet, Musk and Google founders Page and Brin.

If we dig deeper along the two pillars of investments to industrialize our world, we see a pattern of wealth preservation by the Caucasian Christians to maintain or expand the wealth gap.  It is no longer possible to restrict wealth only to Caucasian Christians because Saudi Muslims have large oil reserves.

Let’s look at the first pillar – capital (or money) using USA to illustrate events today.  We had a eugenicist narcissist win the 2016 presidential elections via electoral college while he lost by 3+ million popular votes.  (Note:  This means USA is NOT A DEMOCRACY but a republic, the subject of another blog.) Like Reagan, the eugenicist narcissist leveraged partisan politics to deliver tax cuts that artificially inflated corporate profits (due to lower taxes) and drove stock growth even as federal budget deficit grew by $1.9 trillion dollars per year (highest rate in US history).  Unlike Reagan, estate tax dropped to 40% rate with $11.6 million exemption per parent by 2020, compared to 77% rate with $0.09 million exemption in 1976.  The net result is preservation of wealth that Caucasians have ~10 times more wealth than African American families which impact education and related career opportunities.  Like China, USA is also  sacrificing the environment to support growth like quaternary oil recovery methods (e.g. fracking).

By digging deeper into related issues like trade, European Christians in the form of OECD nations established GATT as international treaties in 1946 (the predecessor to WTO).  Where was the equivalent of GATT (or WTO) when equivalent OECD nations (like Spain, Portugal, Britain, Netherlands, etc) extracted treasures from around the world between 16^th to 19^th centuries and completely ignored illegal opium imported into China against Chinese laws in the 19^th century?  GATT expanded through OPEC with the most recent (2001) round of meetings in Doha before WTO emerged.  This is an example of lack of morality when we focused on the extraction of wealth from around the world. After wealth has been accumulated, moral or ethical rules have been added to make it difficult for others to accumulate wealth, while Caucasian Christians devise methods to preserve wealth they had accumulated, including from unethical means. China is the largest trade nation that helps modernize and update WHO rules of trade through the Belt-Road projects. While some in WHO allege unfair trade and human rights violations, there are regional trade organizations such as ASEAN, APEC, BRICS, and others that are also bigger than EU which represent mostly the Caucasian Christians in Europe. China plays an important role guiding trade rules among different organizations with 2,000+ years of global trade (silk road) experience.

A similar pattern can be found for the second pillar – labor.  From slavery to peony age and Jim Crow laws, we have unequal wages and gender/race discrimination leading up to Anti-Asian violence and Black Lives Matter issues we see today.  We can examine that evolutionary process in a separate blog.

These may be root causes for the growing mental issues we face.  When we cannot logically understand what is happening and feel trapped with few opportunities, violence is the easy way out.  If we pursue knowledge through a moral innovations framework, there will be more opportunities for our children to decide their future.

Moral Innovators’ Perspectives on benchmarking Russia’s interests in Ukraine

Moral Innovators look at root causes instead of symptoms.  For example, Iran and USA would have a very different relationship if USA’s President Eisenhower did not listen to UK’s Winston Churchill and deployed CIA assets to depose a democratically elected president of Iran and replace him with the Czar of Iran in 1954.  Search the term Project Ajax to find out more.  It is interesting to note that Winston Churchill became an honorary US citizen via an act of US Congress 59 years ago today.

In the case of Russia and Ukraine, we need to go back over 1,000 years when the Grand Prince of Kiev Saint Vladimir I accepted Christianity as the official Russian religion in the year 988.  This is like the Catholic church when Constantine declared Catholicism the official religion of the Roman Empire in the year 380.  The difference is the fact that Russia (and Grand Princes of Kiev) took on Orthodoxy instead of Catholicism through the 1054 schism.  There are 90 million Orthodox Christians which represent over 60% of Russians today. 

Whereas Buddhism, Hindi, and Confucius focus on morality and karma, many Christians leverage their access to power to focus on becoming super-wealthy.  As Christians, Russians (through the Romanov Czars) accumulated so much wealth that, by 1917-1921, the Bolshevik Revolution transferred the wealth to Union of Soviet Socialist Republic with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Transcaucasia (today’s Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan).  Communism won in Russia to create the oligarchs, but Socialists rule today by providing very limited private property ownership to sustain human motivation and progress.  It is interesting to note that the Romanovs ruled Russia in approximately the same time frame as the Qing dynasty in China.

Like Project Ajax between Iran and USA, search the term Gulags and you will find that Stalin, from Georgia, intentionally starved Ukrainians (and many Lithuanians and Armenians) to create resources for USSR to grow and compete with the European Christians.  Stalin killed many people, but Russia did grow fast under his brutal regime.  China learned the wrong lesson and failed miserably with the Cultural Revolution.

Russia took land 1/3 the size of China by supporting the illegal opium trade to gain an open water (year-round) port in the Pacific Ocean.  Russia sees Ukraine’s Crimea as another open water (year-round) port in the Black Sea to get closer to Europe and Middle East.

This is a millennial war within Christianity, while the Crusades continue as a war within Monotheism (Muslims and Christians) in the Middle East.  Learning from US’s Lend Lease and the Marshall Plan, China and India may be beneficiaries of these Monotheism wars.  The key question is:  What will happen to the billions of dollars of frozen and confiscated assets from Russia?  Will US and Europe just absorb the assets which will transfer wealth among Christians?  Stay tuned.

Moral Innovators’ Perspectives on “origin”

Each one of us is entitled to our beliefs or faiths which give us confidence and hope, but not knowledge.   We gain knowledge when there are facts and evidence to confirm our beliefs or faiths.  Humanity faces conflicts when we focus on faith and thrives when we focus on knowledge with balanced morality and innovations.  Since the 1960s under Catholic Vatican II, the Pope can designate a human Venerable, but two confirmed miracles are needed to reach Sainthood. 

Extending faith back to the origin of everything:  If we believe in the Big Bang, we do not have knowledge what came before the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.  If we believe God created the universe, then who created God?  We are very far away from knowledge on the origin of everything. Similarly, no one has knowledge on the origin of humans.  Excavated fossils and DNA may support an African origin that ignores geology and climate.  Tectonic plates became generally accepted only in the year 1967.  Montana used to be the west coast of the current day USA which makes the formation of Salt Lake in Utah similar to the Dead Sea in the Middle East.  The sea level in the Mediterranean Sea increased by up to 900 feet when the rock of Gibraltar opened 5.3 million years ago.  The sea level increased by 400 feet in Southeast Asia 20,000 years ago after the last ice age that submerged fossils at similar latitude (or climate) as Africa’s earlier civilizations such as Omo and Aksum (or Axum) in current day Ethiopia today.

South America, Africa, and Asia had land with similar climate 200,000 years ago

Primates such as Teilhardina were believed to have migrated from Asia, North America, and Europe into Africa between 20-50 million years ago.  The climate in Southeast Asia 20,000 years ago would have supported homo sapiens similar to the Omo fossils found in Africa.  There are other speculations: 

1. Equator cross three large landmasses with similar climate 20,000 years ago. 
2. Asia’s rain forest fossils and artifacts were probably submerged 20,000 years ago.
3. Little is known about South America after the separation from Africa 100 million years ago. There are 5,000 year-old pyramids in Supe Valley in Peru, South America.

Until we gain knowledge on our origin, let us acknowledge and respect the faith of others through a balance of morality with innovations.

Moral Innovators perspectives on World History in 25 chronological points

1. No one knows who created God, and no one knows what happened before the Big Bang, so the notion of what happened at the beginning is currently not knowable.

2. Based on what we know today, earth was created 4.5 billion years ago, and the first “living” thing about 4 billion years ago. Again these are educated guesstimates.

3. Primate fossils were on earth 50 million years ago both in Africa and Asia. The notion that hominids came out of Africa is an empirical assumption.
– Asian fossil history is probably underseas because the sea around Singapore, Indonesia and Philippines was one big forest as recently as 20,000 years ago

4. Hominid fossils go back as far as 8 million years, and these first fossils were discovered in Africa (again, because Asian fossils are under the ocean).

5. Among the first evidence of using fire (specifically for cooking) was identified in a Chinese cave that dates back about 1 million years ago.

6. Peking Man is between 750,000 to 300,000 years old. There is a long list of Chinese sites with ancient cultures.

7. Homo sapiens, as we know them today, emerged about 200,000 years ago as tool using nomads.

8. Human population began to explode about 10,000 years ago because of agriculture. Agriculture both:
– helped humans settle down to enjoy life, and
– harvested more food than can be consumed, so humans with a lot of food can explore other things that eventually led to trade of spices/porcelain/etc. and the Silk Road

9. About 90% of global human population on earth of about 10-15 million people 5,000 years ago lived in four central communities: Egypt, Sumer, India and China.

10. Egyptians evolved into Monotheist Christians. Sumerians evolved into Monotheist Muslims. Indians remained in India as Henotheists, and Chinese remained in China as Atheists.

11. About 90% of global human population on earth of 8+ billion people today live in four central communities: Monotheist Christians, Monotheist Muslims, Henotheist Indians and Atheist Chinese.

12. India and China controlled 50% of the global economy and trade between 2000 years ago and 200 years ago. The Chinese Silk Road was a key source of wealth.
– This means China and India were bigger than Egypt or Roman Empires from an economic perspective.

13. The world changed faster after Christopher Columbus returned to Spain in 1493. The Tordesillas and Zaragoza treaties proclaimed the world belong to Spain and Portugal.
– 500 years ago, Spain claimed the Americas. Portugal claimed all of Africa and Asia (including India and China).

14. Britain started as pirates who looted the Spanish ships returning with treasures from Americas. Spain decided to teach Britain a lesson, but was defeated in the 1588
Spanish Armada by Britain. This emboldened the British and Dutch to start British East India Company and Dutch East India Company between 1600-1602.
– Britain and Dutch joined Spain and Portugal to extract treasures from around the world. Indonesia was corrupted by Dutch East India Company
– From Chinese’ perspective, they had zero idea about Tordesillas/Zaragoza treaties, or care less about the trading companies from Britain or Dutch. Chinese like to trade.

15. India and China did not pay enough attention as their economies were still strong. China controlled 35% of the global economy in the year 1820, or 200 years ago.
(China was the world’s biggest economy, by far, at that time, partly because India was colonized by others for centuries, started from Persians and Alexander the Great.)
– The magnitude of the size of economies changed by a whole lot, but USA’s peak was also about 35% of the global economy after World War 2, about 70 years ago.
(However, if you look at this from a per capital basis, USA is much much stronger because China has a much much larger population.)
– Today, China and USA each produce about 18% of the global GNP. Imagine China was the size of the top 2 economies combined today. That was China 200 years ago.

16. British government gave British East India Company the monopoly power to trade opium in 1773. Opium was produced in India and shipped to China.
– not sure if this was correlated to the lost of USA as a colony that declared independence from Britain in 1776.

17. Between 1820 and 1900, Christians led by Britain (and Russia is still dominated by Orthodox Christians today) forced 1 million tons of opium into China, against Chinese law, and extracted an estimated $100 trillion dollars (2012 dollars) out of China, including 70,000 tons of silver.
– China was bankrupt around the year 1900, so the Christians had no more money to get out of China.

18. Without money from China, Christians fought among themselves for wealth. After World War 1, The 1919 Versailles Treaty demanded $33 billion dollars from Germany.

19. Germany paid about 10% of the $33 billion when they democratically elected Adolph Hitler, and through a coalition government, made him the German Chancellor in 1933.

20. Hitler lost World War 2, but the USA was the economic winner by supplying to both side of the war, plus the Lend-Lease program that propelled USA to become wealthy.

21. USA could not sustain the wealth growth with a gold standard currency. Bretton Woods collapsed in 1971 because there was not enough gold to back up the currency.

22. USA supported the growth of OPEC oil partly because the USA dollar was the fiat currency or “black gold” standard that replaced the Bretton Woods system.
– oil was/is just the beginning. There is a lot more wealth in the refineries into gasoline, or plastics out of the petroleum industry that sustained the USA economy.
– Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is believed to be the largest single shareholder of ExxonMobil (through multiple channels of ownership).
– by looking at the cost of production in Saudi Arabia and the price of oil, an average $2 trillion dollars per year is pumped into the oil and gas industry each year for 40 years.
– Saudi has so much wealth with offshoots that financed Osama bin Laden, and now Wahhabism (the most oppressive form of Islam against women that is reaching Malaysia today).

23.The last time USA federal government had a budget surplus was when oil price was around $25/barrel.

24.The root cause of the wealth gap is this $2 trillion per year of profit pumped into the owners of oil and gas properties.

25.The next thing after oil and gas may be technology (such as 5G, Bigger Dipper Satellite based position system, and Blockchain Services network (BSN)). In the longer run look for water. May be good to be in Canada where water is abundant.

Stay safe and healthy through Covid19!

Moral Innovators perspectives on conflicts among humans

We are energized by this $2 trillion CARES Act package in the backdrop of a disorganized and political federal government to fight Covid19. Moral Innovators are mindful that this is just the average amount of money everyone one of us contribute to give to the owners of oil and gas every year for the last 45 years!

On a global scale, after 45 years of wealth separation from the owners of oil and gas from everyone else, fewer of us who are not owners of oil and gas can join the wealthy elite. Notable exceptions are technology pioneers in Silicon Valley and Seattle, plus small pockets scattered around the USA such as the Walmart clan in Arkansas. With the low estate tax of a maximum 40% after an exclusion of $11.4 million per person, we have many more legacies such as Donald Trump who is trying to forward more of what he received from his father to his children after 2016.

The genesis of modern human conflicts was the 1493 Tordesillas and 1529 Zaragoza Treaties signed by Spain and Portugal that claimed the entire world 500 years ago. Vasco de Gama arrived in India in 1498 to claim India as Portuguese territory, only to be expelled, and then returned in 1502 to subdue the Indians. Another group of Portuguese reached Macau in 1513. It took over 40 years to negotiate a rental agreement of ~41 pounds (19 kilograms) of silver for each year of occupancy of Macau beginning 1557 that ended in 1999 when Macau was returned to China.

Over Christmas in the year 1515, a dying Spanish King was receptive, and his 16 year-old successor approved the first large volume shipment of Africans to become slaves in Americas to seek treasures. The collected treasures were intercepted in large quantities by Protestants (or more precisely, the Anglicans) who, by not being Spain or Portugal, were excluded in the world defined by Tordesillas and Zaragoza treaties. When the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588, the British and Dutch wanted to directly seek treasures from around the world. The British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company were incorporated in 1600 and 1602 to directly participate in the global collection of treasures that Spain and Portugal had claimed exclusively for a century.

If you were in Africa, you were being hunted for shipment to work as slaves in Americas. It did not matter which group you faced, you were being transported out of your homeland. If you landed in North America, there was a higher chance of survival. Probably due to the lower quantity of slaves were being shipped there, North American slaves were being bred to sustain generations of slaves, instead of being worked to death mostly in South America.

If you were in Asia, you get the first wave of Caucasians (Spanish/Portuguese) to claim the land you call home, followed by these companies that spoke a different language (English/Dutch) trying to use corrupted trade to extract money from the same land you call home. Instead of hard work to make a living before the arrival of these Caucasians, you have a choice of being subordinate to one segment (Spanish/Portuguese) that claims your homeland belongs to them, or become corrupt and take advantage of others by learning from another segment (British and Dutch). Either way, you are learning to question the moral foundations you have known for thousands of years as “tradition.”

The British East India Company went to a more extreme frontier when British Government gave the company monopoly power to trade opium, a banned substance even in Britain. One million tons of opium took China, the world’s largest economy in 1820 with 35% of global GDP or one third of the global economy, to bankruptcy by 1900.

After China’s bankruptcy, Caucasians had to fight each other for wealth. World War I ended with the 1919 Versailles Treaty that declared the loser, Germany, must pay $33 billion to the winners. It was Germany’s opposition to pay this amount that democratically elected Adolph Hitler in a coalition that gave him the Chancellorship of Germany in 1937. After a holocaust and Marshall Plan, USA became a global leader with a rapidly growing economy that peaked at about 34% of global GDP, similar to China’s 35% in the year 1820. When there was insufficient gold to keep up with the growing economy, the Bretton Woods monetary system collapsed in 1968. Oil and gas became the de facto “black gold standard” beginning in the 1970s.

The side effect of black gold is the transfer of an average of $2 trillion profit to oil producing countries such as Saudi Arabia. With the new wealth, Wahhabism that is among the most oppressive religions against women’s rights surfaced, after financing the global terrorists such as Osama bin Laden.

If we don’t tackle this trend at its roots, we will continue to destroy humanity until, perhaps, we will make movies such as “Planet of the Apes,” “Elysium,” or “Logan’s Run” closer to reality instead of an inclusive “Star Trek.”

Moral Innovators perspectives on Covid19 – Comparing to historical events

I found on the internet the first instance of chemical warfare in North America. Gen. Jeffrey Amherst (the namesake for the town of Amherst, Massachusetts) wrote a letter dated July 16, 1763 that approved a plan to intentionally distribute smallpox infested blankets to Delaware Indians to “extirpate” them. Our textbooks also include lessons to explain the American Indian population declined by over 80% allegedly due to new diseases that Caucasians brought to North America. Given where we are with Covid19 and the dire need for medical supplies especially for those in need (i.e. not wealthy), a good class exercise is to imagine being an American Indian at that time when the Caucasians have been vaccinated or were immune. What is the right thing to do today, and what was the right thing to do back then? Let American Indians die like what actually happened? It is heartwarming to read that former NBA star and current Chinese CBA basketball coach Marbury appears to be arranging 10 million PPE face masks to help New York.

When we take another step back and think more, we can draw a parallel to the opioid crisis that has been estimated to cost USA $1.5 trillion dollars over the last 20 years, and over 62,000 deaths in 2017 alone.

The British government gave monopoly power to British East India Company which used the power to produce opium in India and Burma/Myanmar that were delivered to China. The resultant 1 million tons of opium ultimately consumed in China destroyed China that had 35% of the Global GDP in the year 1820 and became bankrupt only 80 years later around 1900. We know that USA and China are the two largest economies today. Please note that USA and China combined today has about 35% of the Global GDP – that China alone delivered in the year 1820.

You ask: What is the relation to the opioid crisis? Let us start with the fact that India is still today’s largest producer of raw materials for painkillers. We have read many stories that the over-prescription of painkillers is a major issue in the opioid crisis which is borderline legal because over-prescription is a judgment call. Outside the law, Indian and Burmese farmers learned from the British to plant very high value harvests for opium that eventually can be processed to heroin. The farmers in South America already knew cocoa leaves have similar effects, so the farmers who considered farming outside the law have a choice of heroin and/or cocaine in different forms. The world would have taken longer to lower our moral standards in selecting to produce opium or cocoa, but when the governments openly and successfully exploit places like China by selling illegal drugs for profit, humans quickly adjusted by lowering moral standards, leading to what we now know as opioid crisis.

Bottom line: What goes around comes around. Let us learn from history and raise our moral standards together. If we do not focus on our collective moral standards, we will have chaos like we see today under a narcissist government. Narcissists will perish like all humans. Please be mindful that Macedonian Alexander the Great, one of the few “undefeated” generals in the last 2200 years, had his entire family and relatives annihilated within 15 years of his death. No power is permanent. Crimes can be prosecuted under new leaders.

USA is a republic, not a democracy, that explains why Donald Trump was elected. USA started with a requirement that only property owners could vote 250 years ago. Today, the cost of elections, when combined with the unlimited contributions by superPACs, sustain the widening of the wealth gap, and consolidate power back to the equivalent of property owners 250 years ago.

The easiest first step to change is to reverse the estate tax that allow the super-rich to keep their wealth from generation to generation. While we can respect the true entrepreneurs like Bill Gates who accumulated tremendous wealth during his lifetime, why should the children of the wealthy keep most of the wealth that they did not earn? Donald Trump is an example of a spoiled child from wealthy parents who was allowed to keep his wealth…

Please stay safe and healthy!

Moral Innovators perspectives on Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism

Imagine a pendulum that swings up and down, and you can see Capitalism at one peak, Communism at the other peak, with Socialism at the bottom of each swing. Here is how to look at this:

Capitalism, at its extreme, is everyone for their individual benefits, and everyone else be damned. Morality is irrelevant, and a useful tool if morality can be used to enhance individual benefits.

Communism, at its extreme, is no one owns anything by themselves. Everything belongs to the collective. Innovation is irrelevant, and there is no motivation for any individual to do anything.

Socialism is a hybrid that the collective (or the country) shares ownership in the form of entitlement, while individual ownership is an integral part of society. If you listen an watch the media this past century, you will see that Communist countries like Russia and China have migrated toward socialism, and Capitalist countries like USA and Europe have also migrated toward socialism.
Let’s observe the tools used by each.

Donald Trump is painting socialism as an evil, because the top 1% individuals that control a majority of wealth want to preserve Capitalism at its extreme which started 500 years ago as slaves, and continues today in the form of an estimated $2 trillion dollar per year of wealth transfer from 8 billion people on earth to the owners of oil and gas around the world like OPEC countries, oil and gas shareholders. This wealth transfer to widen the wealth gap is the second largest transfer of wealth in all history among humans, but is rapidly approaching the largest transfer of wealth among humans which was the opium war 200 years ago.

China was founded as a Communist country and re-emerged as a socialist country beginning in 1978 when Premier Deng Xiao-ping started the drive for a market economy.

We can see many features of Capitalism in China today, just as we can see bits and pieces of Communism in USA today that we label socialism. What we are fighting today is in the dimension of time, and the victim is the environment. Eventually, we will self-destruct, but not now.

Don’t be shy. Socialism is where we are heading. Socialism avoids extremes, and provides less incentives for radicals to organize and create another extreme dimension – the militarized form of jihad.