Unfortunately, while spinning through radio stations during a drive last week, I landed on an NPR station during an interview with Alan Greenspan.  If you hadn’t known who he was beforehand, you’d dismiss him as merely another moderate leftist with a very pragmatic economic sense.
One section was especially intriguing with regards to his views towards redistribution of wealth.  He initially labels “market capitalism” as the “most effective thing since the enlightenment”, but  when asked about his views on a “redistributive” tax system, Greenspan implied that Capitalism would fail because of the repercussions of “income inequality”, and that he could see several “non-market advantages [to income redistribution] required to support the system as a whole…”

I guess to Alan, the word market in “market capitalism” means ‘infinite government tinkering.’

The entire interview can be heard @ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14537573

The section I refer to above starts @ 5:52.

Our country is, without a doubt, slipping into the bowels of Socialism. Virtually every single law, bill, directive or decision by our government is geared to steer us away from the individualistic, free-market republic that our founders envisioned towards the statist, collectivist-euphoria that our politicians dream of.

If you’d like to test my analysis… if you don’t believe or refuse to admit this transformation is happening, try this litmus test. Every time you hear about a decision, bill or directive perpetuated by our government (federal, state or local), compare it to the list of ten guidelines below (in bold).

Does it bear relevance to any guideline below?

Does it fall in line with the guideline, or does it go against it?

Does it bring us closer towards the Marxist vision or away?

Section II of Marx’s Communist Manifesto is titled II – “Proletarians and Communists.”

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to communism.

We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

I’ve just wandered into pedal land and I wanted a way to begin to get my head around all these strings and moves. I designed this spreadsheet to be able to visually detect where relevant chords are for a particular key. There may be something out there that is similar, possibly much better… but I couldn’t find it.

I know there are so many more chords than what I’ve covered here, but it’s a decent start. Eventually, I’d like to include as many common positions as I can.

I’m going to continue to revise as needed. I thought other people might find this useful, so I decided to post it. Lemme know of any bugs or glitches. I’ve been using it for a few days and it seems to be somewhat stable.

If there are any very useful string groupings that really need to be included, let me know and I’ll add them.

It’s pretty easy to use, enter your tuning and setup in the setup area by changing the notes as needed and adding ‘+’s and or “-”’s where appropriate. Each + or - is a half step. Currently, only 3 half steps are supported and double moves on a pedal or lever are not supported. Additionally, because of the way my guitar is setup (courtesy of Jeff Surratt in Nashville) my lever titles (D,E,F,G) may not correspond with what other people call them. I’ve specified LNR, LNL etc. below them in the attempt to add clarity. After you enter your setup, you can simply change the key in the ‘Key’ dropdown and the I, IV, and V frets will be highlighted. The radio buttons simulate the pedals/levers and will change their respective notes accordingly.

If the note triad that corresponds to the sting grouping matches a defined chord, the degree of the chord (I, IV, V etc.) will be displayed as well as the notes making up that chord. Currently only three-note major, minor and diminished chords are detected. I know this is probably a major handicap, but plan on adding 6th and 7th chords in shortly. Additional chords were omitted partially because of the work involved to get them programmed (btw, according to my brain, there are 1320 unique, non-repeating, three-note permutations of the 12 notes in our chromatic scale… adding the forth note jacks up the dataset quite a bit) and also because I’m new to the instrument and don’t yet know which are the main chords I’d like to see. I’m still trying to learn all the locations of the root triad and all its inversions!!

I welcome and encourage any feedback. Enjoy.

Download Here

-bh