Weblog
17 October 2008
Those of us who have watched the debates between the two contenders for power in America must be marvelling at the great American meltdown. Within months now the so-called ‘big three’ car companies… General Motors, Ford and Chrysler will formally declare bankruptcy… millions of people will lose their jobs; the country itself will enter a period of hard knocks that could make the great depression look like a Sunday school outing, and we are engaged in the spectacle of watching a collection of intellectually inept morons debate issues concerning some mythical Joe Six-pack, Hockey mom, and Joe the plumber and whether these people will be able to pay for obesity care.
Talk about pride before the fall.
No wonder half the eligible voters in the USA don’t bother to go to the polls. Are there actually any intelligent people out there who feel they should vote… for what? More of the same?
It is simply not possible to even start to evaluate the crisis facing the world without acknowledging a simple truth: Gresham’s law: that “bad money drives out good” so obviously applies to social systems. What Nietzsche described as the politics of resentiment … the politics of me... me... me... eventually ends in disaster. It has happened before… To the Egyptiansm, the Hyksos, the Medes the Persians the Greeks the Romans The Brits; and now, in our lifetimes, to America. The land of the free has just moved in one giant leap for mankind into the era of government control over the money pipelines while the candidates for power are completely unaware of the shift… There were two issues: the economy and health care, where the candidates actually swapped ideological positions and were each completely unaware of the fact. Was anyone home when the place burned down?
What we know from the debates is that Barack Obama is a plausible idiot and John Mc Cain is hovering on senility… The country that gave us an intellectual half-wit called Bush is about to elect an equally inept successor… It really doesn’t matter who wins nothing will change: the laws of thermodynamics are in play. The Titanic has hit an iceberg, the ship is going down, a dependent world is sinking with it and the candidates are debating who has the nicest deckchair.
Personally I look forward with considerable glee to the collapse of General Motors. I hope fervently that every arsehole worker who ever pitched up to work drunk on a Monday morning and produced the shit that I gullibly bought gets exactly what is coming to him… For the executives who drew exorbitant rewards for presiding over a metal scrap heap we only have to look at Senator Mc Cain to see that all their ill-gotten wealth will only bring a more comfortable case of Altzheimers.
To the moguls and the half-literate minions of the mass media. When you dumb down to deal with the alleged “Joe the Plumber”, you take yourself down as well. You can only become what you so fervently preach… there is no escape from the slide to mediocrity: once chosen the path leads inevitably to the desired destination.
The Apocalypse so long predicted, awaits us with glee.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Joe the Plumber: the great American meltdown
Weblog
17 October 2008
Those of us who have watched the debates between the two contenders for power in America must be marvelling at the great American meltdown. Within months now the so-called ‘big three’ car companies… General Motors, Ford and Chrysler will formally declare bankruptcy… millions of people will lose their jobs; the country itself will enter a period of hard knocks that could make the great depression look like a Sunday school outing, and we are engaged in the spectacle of watching a collection of intellectually inept morons debate issues concerning some mythical Joe Six-pack, Hockey mom, and Joe the plumber and whether these people will be able to pay for obesity care.
Talk about pride before the fall.
No wonder half the eligible voters in the USA don’t bother to go to the polls. Are there actually any intelligent people out there who feel they should vote… for what? More of the same?
It is simply not possible to even start to evaluate the crisis facing the world without acknowledging a simple truth: Gresham’s law: that “bad money drives out good” so obviously applies to social systems. What Nietzsche described as the politics of resentiment … the politics of me... me... me... eventually ends in disaster. It has happened before… To the Egyptians, the Hyksos, the Medes the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans The Brits; and now, in our lifetimes, to America.
The land of the free has just moved in one giant leap for mankind into the era of government control over the money pipelines; while the candidates for power are completely unaware of the shift… There were two issues: the economy and health care, where the candidates actually swapped ideological positions and were each completely unaware of the fact. Was anyone home when the place burned down?
What we know from the debates is that Barack Obama is a plausible idiot and John Mc Cain is hovering on senility… The country that gave us an intellectual half-wit called Bush is about to elect an equally inept successor… It really doesn’t matter who wins nothing will change: the laws of thermodynamics are in play. The Titanic has hit an iceberg, the ship is going down, a dependent world is sinking with it and the candidates are debating who has the nicest deckchair.
Personally I look forward with considerable glee to the collapse of General Motors. I hope fervently that every arsehole worker who ever pitched up to work drunk on a Monday morning and produced the shit that I gullibly bought, gets exactly what is coming to him… For the executives who drew exorbitant rewards for presiding over a metal scrap heap we only have to look at Senator Mc Cain to see that all their ill-gotten wealth will only bring a more comfortable case of Altzheimers.
To the moguls and the half-literate minions of the mass media. When you dumb down to deal with the alleged “Joe the Plumber”, you take yourself down as well. You can only become what you so fervently preach… there is no escape from the slide to mediocrity: once chosen the path leads inevitably to the desired destination.
The Apocalypse so long predicted, awaits us with glee.
17 October 2008
Those of us who have watched the debates between the two contenders for power in America must be marvelling at the great American meltdown. Within months now the so-called ‘big three’ car companies… General Motors, Ford and Chrysler will formally declare bankruptcy… millions of people will lose their jobs; the country itself will enter a period of hard knocks that could make the great depression look like a Sunday school outing, and we are engaged in the spectacle of watching a collection of intellectually inept morons debate issues concerning some mythical Joe Six-pack, Hockey mom, and Joe the plumber and whether these people will be able to pay for obesity care.
Talk about pride before the fall.
No wonder half the eligible voters in the USA don’t bother to go to the polls. Are there actually any intelligent people out there who feel they should vote… for what? More of the same?
It is simply not possible to even start to evaluate the crisis facing the world without acknowledging a simple truth: Gresham’s law: that “bad money drives out good” so obviously applies to social systems. What Nietzsche described as the politics of resentiment … the politics of me... me... me... eventually ends in disaster. It has happened before… To the Egyptians, the Hyksos, the Medes the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans The Brits; and now, in our lifetimes, to America.
The land of the free has just moved in one giant leap for mankind into the era of government control over the money pipelines; while the candidates for power are completely unaware of the shift… There were two issues: the economy and health care, where the candidates actually swapped ideological positions and were each completely unaware of the fact. Was anyone home when the place burned down?
What we know from the debates is that Barack Obama is a plausible idiot and John Mc Cain is hovering on senility… The country that gave us an intellectual half-wit called Bush is about to elect an equally inept successor… It really doesn’t matter who wins nothing will change: the laws of thermodynamics are in play. The Titanic has hit an iceberg, the ship is going down, a dependent world is sinking with it and the candidates are debating who has the nicest deckchair.
Personally I look forward with considerable glee to the collapse of General Motors. I hope fervently that every arsehole worker who ever pitched up to work drunk on a Monday morning and produced the shit that I gullibly bought, gets exactly what is coming to him… For the executives who drew exorbitant rewards for presiding over a metal scrap heap we only have to look at Senator Mc Cain to see that all their ill-gotten wealth will only bring a more comfortable case of Altzheimers.
To the moguls and the half-literate minions of the mass media. When you dumb down to deal with the alleged “Joe the Plumber”, you take yourself down as well. You can only become what you so fervently preach… there is no escape from the slide to mediocrity: once chosen the path leads inevitably to the desired destination.
The Apocalypse so long predicted, awaits us with glee.
Monday, October 13, 2008
After the Crash - blame the poor
Weblog 11 October 2008
The week the world crashed
Jozi.
Blame the Poor
Some centuries ago an economist named Bernard Mandeville wrote an entertaining satire called the 'Fable of the Bees' in which he illustrated the reality that our glorious market based, individualist driven, self interest motivated, slaughterhouse of an economy has given us prosperity, comfort and joy: such that a 21st century citizen of modest class lives better today, than his wealthiest ancestors of only a few centuries back.
The moralising class has never been fond of this truth, and has persisted with the kollektivist ideal of subjugating the common citizenry into a hive, in which incentives were modest and the work dull and tedious, repetitive, and without seeming purpose. Thus it is in this most Klensed of weeks; as the global, illusory financial edifice, crashes down around our ears, that the moralising class will come into its own and they will rant and rage and take over all our former activities and drive us through the Depression that must certainly follow the folly, of adhering to a moralist precept: that of lending money to the poor.
For ironically it is ultimately the Poor who have brought this apocalyptic catastrophe down upon our heads.
Under pressure from the leftish side of the American political spectrum the idea, that lending money to poor people who had no real means of long term support was counter to historical banking policy, was somehow “spun”, to equate with being a “bad” person. So a new industry came into existence inspired by a new generation of MBA driven, substance enthusiast sustained financial manipulators. And did they have a party: and did the poor get their houses.
The inspired market was driven to heights never before experienced until ultimately the market snapped back. Reality check deluxe.
Those moralists who believed that all economics is inspired by relativity have just discovered that it isn’t. As long as resources are finite so too are the iron laws of economics immutable.
What comfort now then for the moralists.
Somewhere in America will be some citizens who benefited from the plan to flood the market with the so-called Ninja loans [Ninja: no income no jobs atall].
Some will have survived to lift themselves above the poverty datum line through religiously inspired thriftiness, and others through a more secularly inspired gift for self-advancement. Whatever, there will be those whose lives are immeasurably better off today notwithstanding that the whole idea that underpinned the massive boom of the past half decade was floored as well as flawed.
If the idea of lending money to people who can’t afford to pay it back was a flawed one then the idea itself was ultimately floored by something we so completely took for granted that its very speed has shattered our illusion.
In the same way that that 1987 caught the world by surprise so has the crash of 2008 been accelerated by information processors that now move millions of times faster than human beings can think or even respond… let alone agree on strategies that, until they occurred, were treated with denialist disdain.
The week the world crashed
Jozi.
Blame the Poor
Some centuries ago an economist named Bernard Mandeville wrote an entertaining satire called the 'Fable of the Bees' in which he illustrated the reality that our glorious market based, individualist driven, self interest motivated, slaughterhouse of an economy has given us prosperity, comfort and joy: such that a 21st century citizen of modest class lives better today, than his wealthiest ancestors of only a few centuries back.
The moralising class has never been fond of this truth, and has persisted with the kollektivist ideal of subjugating the common citizenry into a hive, in which incentives were modest and the work dull and tedious, repetitive, and without seeming purpose. Thus it is in this most Klensed of weeks; as the global, illusory financial edifice, crashes down around our ears, that the moralising class will come into its own and they will rant and rage and take over all our former activities and drive us through the Depression that must certainly follow the folly, of adhering to a moralist precept: that of lending money to the poor.
For ironically it is ultimately the Poor who have brought this apocalyptic catastrophe down upon our heads.
Under pressure from the leftish side of the American political spectrum the idea, that lending money to poor people who had no real means of long term support was counter to historical banking policy, was somehow “spun”, to equate with being a “bad” person. So a new industry came into existence inspired by a new generation of MBA driven, substance enthusiast sustained financial manipulators. And did they have a party: and did the poor get their houses.
The inspired market was driven to heights never before experienced until ultimately the market snapped back. Reality check deluxe.
Those moralists who believed that all economics is inspired by relativity have just discovered that it isn’t. As long as resources are finite so too are the iron laws of economics immutable.
What comfort now then for the moralists.
Somewhere in America will be some citizens who benefited from the plan to flood the market with the so-called Ninja loans [Ninja: no income no jobs atall].
Some will have survived to lift themselves above the poverty datum line through religiously inspired thriftiness, and others through a more secularly inspired gift for self-advancement. Whatever, there will be those whose lives are immeasurably better off today notwithstanding that the whole idea that underpinned the massive boom of the past half decade was floored as well as flawed.
If the idea of lending money to people who can’t afford to pay it back was a flawed one then the idea itself was ultimately floored by something we so completely took for granted that its very speed has shattered our illusion.
In the same way that that 1987 caught the world by surprise so has the crash of 2008 been accelerated by information processors that now move millions of times faster than human beings can think or even respond… let alone agree on strategies that, until they occurred, were treated with denialist disdain.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
After the Crash... Blame the Poor
Weblog 11 October 2008
The week the world crashed
Jozi.
Blame the Poor
Some centuries ago an economist named Bernard Mandeville wrote an entertaining piece called the Fable of the Bees in which he illustrated the reality that our glorious market based, individualist driven, self interest motivated, slaughterhouse of an economy has given us prosperity, comfort and joy: such that a 21st century citizen of modest class lives better today, than his wealthiest ancestors of only a few centuries back.
The moralising class has never been fond of this truth, and has persisted with the kollektivist ideal of subjugating the common citizenry into a hive, in which incentives were modest and the work dull and tedious, repetitive, and without seeming purpose. Thus it is in this most Klensed of weeks; as the global, illusory financial edifice, crashes down around our ears, that the moralising class will come into its own and they will rant and rage; and take over all our former activities and drive us through the Depression that must certainly follow the folly, of adhering to a moralist precept and lending money to the poor.
For ironically it is ultimately the Poor who have brought this apocalyptic catastrophe down upon our heads.
Under pressure from the leftish side of the American political spectrum, the idea, that lending money to poor people, who had no real means of long term support, was counter to historical banking policy, was somehow “spun” to equate with being a “bad” person. So a new industry came into existence inspired by a new generation of MBA driven, substance enthusiast sustained financial manipulators. And did they have a party: and did the poor get their houses.
The inspired market was driven to heights never before experienced until ultimately the market snapped back. Reality check deluxe.
Those moralists who believed that all economics is inspired by relativity have just discovered that it isn’t. As long as resources are finite so too are the iron laws of economics immutable.
What comfort now then for the moralists?
Somewhere in America will be some citizens who benefited from the plan to flood the market with the so-called Ninja loans [Ninja: no income no jobs atall].
Some will have survived to lift themselves above the poverty datum line through religiously inspired thriftiness, and others through a more secularly inspired gift for self-advancement. Some may well have have sold out at the hight of the property boom and taken the great gift of money back to a reconstituted trailer park and enjoyed a cosy retirement. Whatever; there will be those whose lives are immeasurably better off today, notwithstanding that the whole idea, that underpinned the massive boom of the past half decade, was floored as well as flawed.
If the idea of lending money to people who can’t afford to pay it back was a flawed one then the idea itself was ultimately floored by something we so completely took for granted that its very speed has shattered our illusion.
In the same way that that 1987 caught the world by surprise so has the crash of 2008 been accelerated by information processors that now move millions of times faster than human beings can think or even respond… let alone agree on strategies that, until they occurred, were treated with denialist disdain.
Happy blogging
The week the world crashed
Jozi.
Blame the Poor
Some centuries ago an economist named Bernard Mandeville wrote an entertaining piece called the Fable of the Bees in which he illustrated the reality that our glorious market based, individualist driven, self interest motivated, slaughterhouse of an economy has given us prosperity, comfort and joy: such that a 21st century citizen of modest class lives better today, than his wealthiest ancestors of only a few centuries back.
The moralising class has never been fond of this truth, and has persisted with the kollektivist ideal of subjugating the common citizenry into a hive, in which incentives were modest and the work dull and tedious, repetitive, and without seeming purpose. Thus it is in this most Klensed of weeks; as the global, illusory financial edifice, crashes down around our ears, that the moralising class will come into its own and they will rant and rage; and take over all our former activities and drive us through the Depression that must certainly follow the folly, of adhering to a moralist precept and lending money to the poor.
For ironically it is ultimately the Poor who have brought this apocalyptic catastrophe down upon our heads.
Under pressure from the leftish side of the American political spectrum, the idea, that lending money to poor people, who had no real means of long term support, was counter to historical banking policy, was somehow “spun” to equate with being a “bad” person. So a new industry came into existence inspired by a new generation of MBA driven, substance enthusiast sustained financial manipulators. And did they have a party: and did the poor get their houses.
The inspired market was driven to heights never before experienced until ultimately the market snapped back. Reality check deluxe.
Those moralists who believed that all economics is inspired by relativity have just discovered that it isn’t. As long as resources are finite so too are the iron laws of economics immutable.
What comfort now then for the moralists?
Somewhere in America will be some citizens who benefited from the plan to flood the market with the so-called Ninja loans [Ninja: no income no jobs atall].
Some will have survived to lift themselves above the poverty datum line through religiously inspired thriftiness, and others through a more secularly inspired gift for self-advancement. Some may well have have sold out at the hight of the property boom and taken the great gift of money back to a reconstituted trailer park and enjoyed a cosy retirement. Whatever; there will be those whose lives are immeasurably better off today, notwithstanding that the whole idea, that underpinned the massive boom of the past half decade, was floored as well as flawed.
If the idea of lending money to people who can’t afford to pay it back was a flawed one then the idea itself was ultimately floored by something we so completely took for granted that its very speed has shattered our illusion.
In the same way that that 1987 caught the world by surprise so has the crash of 2008 been accelerated by information processors that now move millions of times faster than human beings can think or even respond… let alone agree on strategies that, until they occurred, were treated with denialist disdain.
Happy blogging
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