Sunday, September 25, 2011

Lunacy

Greetings good citizen,

It must be one of those ‘what’s wrong with these people’ weekends, yesterday I ragged on the so-called progressives, today it is the capitalist’s turn!

If any of you were wondering how we find ourselves today in the exact same spot our grandparents stood in 80 years ago, have a gander at this:


It is utterly impossible, as this country has demonstrated again and again, for the rich to save as much as they have been trying to save, and save anything that is worth saving. They can save idle factories and useless railroad coaches; they can save empty office buildings and closed banks; they can save paper evidences of foreign loans; but as a class they can not save anything that is worth saving, above and beyond the amount that is made profitable by the increase of consumer buying. It is for the interests of the well to do – to protect them from the results of their own folly – that we should take from them a sufficient amount of their surplus to enable consumers to consume and business to operate at a profit. This is not “soaking the rich”; it is saving the rich. Incidentally, it is the only way to assure them the serenity and security which they do not have at the present moment.

The next move you saw (the above speech is from 1933) was the raising of the (top) tax rate to 90%…is this what Ms. Yves is cheering about?

Understand good citizen, it is from this very same polluted well that the Military-Industrial complex sprang from!

Causing that much money to ‘accumulate’ anywhere will create more trouble than its worth!

Which is to point out that it is easy to see why we lurch from disaster to disaster…nobody, much less our so-called leaders, can think beyond the next step!

Worse, much of the ‘funds/tax dollars’ collected were, er, ‘mis-appropriated’, which is to say stolen outright or squandered on boondoggles that paid kickbacks to politicians.

We should have been living in utopia (or at least a lot better off than we are) but we didn’t have the right ‘monetary controls’…and we still don’t!

So is it a wise idea to ‘save’ predatory capitalism after our grandparents saved it 80 years ago?

Isn’t it time we establish a system of commerce that serves the need of society rather than the greed of its owners?

Perhaps a more interesting question might be how might we go about saving capitalism?

As Ilargi point out, pull the rug from under the finance system will cause it to collapse…

Short version: by issuing trillions more in debt, governments and central banks -apparently- hope they can turn around financial markets, and have them recover to heights that would turn today's losses into tomorrow’ profits (or at least more bearable losses).

There are lots of voices that will tell you that we didn't need to be where we are, that things could have been done: (If Leadership Fails, Prepare for Recession!). They all mean more or less the same things: capital injections into the financial industry. A financial industry that is by and large broke and now depends on money from governments and their taxpayers all of whom are by and large broke.

Amidst all the fear and panic and selling, let me repeat what I've said a thousand times by now: there is no way out of this crisis that does not involve defaults on debt, restructuring of debt and bankruptcies caused by debt. Nothing else will achieve anything other than window dressing. In other words: all we've seen so far has been window dressing, and of a very expensive kind.

All of which is to ask, good citizen, if we stick our necks out and subject ourselves to more of the same, we will get precisely that; we’ll be back where we started in no time!

But not to worry good citizen, there is little chance we will even be asked to make a choice. Hell, I suspect there won’t even be a ‘public service announcement’ until after the fact! (Which is to say after the panic is quelled…)

Those ‘in the know’ can’t help but act upon their knowledge, even if they know they’ll be punished for doing so.

This is the same factor at play when ‘grabbing/accumulating’ huge sums for the (alleged) public good…it is the ‘god helps those who help themselves’ factor.

And nobody (except those in a position to scoop from the till) wants that.

If we are to ‘right’ our civilization and put our species on a sustainable track then we must eliminate ‘income streams’ wherever they are found!

A part of the puzzle that has worked for thousands of years is the concept of 'you work for money.’

The ‘catch’ has been that it wasn’t universal, not everybody had to work for their supper…and that, for some bizarre reason, was never viewed as a failing of the system…but neither has the ‘fuck you, stick ‘em up! aspect of capitalism been viewed that way either.

Will, since we’re here, I’m telling you that both are glaring systemic failures that doom society itself to a path of failure…like the one we tread this very day!(and you won't see anybody nominating Me for a Nobel prize...or a Pulitzer for that matter!)

We can fix this good citizen but capitalism IS NOT the way. It IS NOT the ‘best’ or THE ONLY way to get the job of creating a self sustaining civilization done.

And it ain’t been for lack of trying either.

Which is to belabor the obvious, the only ones interested in ‘resurrecting’ capitalism are the same people it gives a ‘free ride’ to today.

The rest of us need to make them get off their dead asses and DO something for their billions!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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