Never think of a title until the conclusion has been penned.

Legend has it that on one Saturday morning each year, I will arise from my slumber to publish a mighty rant, and then return whence I came. It's not true, of course; even though it's Saturday and I just woke up, I don't see myself going back to bed again this morning, and I do think it's a lot more likely that my rant will be weak and fruitless. In fact, maybe I should just stick to theses. After all, that's why I write and why you read: journals are interesting inasmuch as people's lives and thoughts are interesting, but they are always more interesting when they help illuminate the larger world that all of us share instead of just playing with the toys in their own little corner. This makes a great segue for out first theory in ages:

Postulate #18: Einstein's statement about compound interest is lost on a lot of people.

Einstein may have been being facetious when he claimed that it was the most powerful force in the universe, I guess I could research the context a bit better before cookin' up a theory centered on it. But, why I think he was misunderstood on this is because compound interest is a special case of interest of a more general and greater kind: self-interest. Barring divine intervention, there is no force that I see having a greater potential to influence human action than that of an accumulation of self-interest. In reality, nothing does shape society as much as people looking out for their own needs; often even people who are supposedly acting altruistically are unwittingly trying to justify themselves before society or trying to justify society before themselves. Either is ultimately self-serving. And so we rediscover the need for a greater external force if we dare attempt the challenge of denying ourselves and carrying our cross.

Postulate #19: Our generation will use the vast wealth of information available to it to make itself more closed-minded.

Now that anybody with fifteen minutes and something to share gets to broadcast it to everyone with web access, certainly there is more tractable information out there then ever before for the common citizen, which makes this so absolutely incredible on the surface. But when I read comments on political blogs I totally see this. People still flock to the pundits who they most agree with, who in turn are more than happy selling the advertising space on their sidebars as they preach to their choir. When a person can only read so much in the minutes they have available, the human need for community seems to trump the human desire for objective information, and as such people are better equipped than ever before to reinforce their existing schemas (the consensus definition is here, for those of you are forgetting what you learned in psychology). Maybe you don't agree with this, but then ask yourself, are you thinking about bailing on this post for something else that cyberspace has to offer that you'd find more agreeable? Does that change your mind any?

Corollary to postulate #19: The free flow of information that the web offers serves more to publicize things that are already popular than it does to "flatten the world" and give everyone a chance of being heard.

I say this based mostly on my own behavior: when I search for songs on i-tunes, I include popularity as a predictor in my mental models of song quality. When I want to listen to a podcasted sermon instead of reading the bible, who do I listen to? Mega-church pastors Mark Driscoll and Matt Chandler. When I need to clarify some facts, I turn to the great vending machine of truth-by-consensus Wikipedia, like I indicated above. All of these seem to confirm the axiom "To him who has, more will be given".

Postulate #20: Either paper currency in America or internet anonymity will be short lived.

Before you dismiss this as another one of my libertarian anti-inflationary diatribes, understand that I'm not talking about the debauchery of the US dollar right now. What I am saying in this case is that cash, or anything used as a medium of exchange that doesn't get saved on an electronic record for that matter, is too hard to track. That presents a problem to anyone claiming that they own every transaction that occurs within a set of geographical parameters, like a national border, for instance, and wants to take a cut of the profits. One of the world's sad realities is that stuff has to be paid for, and governments have three options for payment of said stuff: they can borrow, they can inflate their currency (essentially a form of borrowing from existing currency), and they can tax their citizens. The third option is pretty much the only one with any wiggle room. Taxation will need to increase, and so simultaneously, the powers that be will look for more control over what they can tax while people will have greater motivation to make untraceable and therefore tax-free transactions through Craigslist or equivalent sites for internet commerce. Since banks are already property of the public (or is it the other way around?), it's not that much of a leap to think that electronic transfers can be monitored for tax purposes. But people using online media to coordinate in-person cash exchanges still represents a loophole in the system big enough to drive an armored truck through. And so, I get to worry about things like the compromise of free speech because the internet will need to be monitored more rigorously in order to provide our country with the funding to "keep our freedoms safe".