"To each his onus" - J.W.Thrasher, 1969
"Still, write it down, it might be read. Nothing's better left unsaid." - Procol Harum, 'In Held Twas In I',"Shine On Brightly".
Obviously, to me, the current "Great Recession" is a media/government economist defined event, I just think world economics are manipulated by the ruling class, and as such all these predictions of worldwide economic collapse because of deficit spending (by WHICHEVER of the two parties are currently supposedly "in power") are just attempts to prove the other side wrong, because nothing a single government can do is ever going to change the fact that global economic effects are rarely influenced by anything other than a completely secret hegemonic consensus of the weathiest individuals and corporations.
I've thought about and studied this subject for 40 years, and the "truth" as I see it, must delineate 'causes" from 'effects', and you can't do that with a 'sound-bite'. Here we go then, as THE Firesign (Theatre) put it:
"You Know, Everything You Know Could be Wrong."
("One knows, Everything One Knows Could Be Wrong"? ) To wit:
"As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestick industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the publick interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it . By preferring the support of domestiek to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this , as in many other eases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention . Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it . I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the publick good." - Adam Smith, 'Wealth Of Nations', 1776 (substantially true to original text, depen. on edition)
This is where and when I believe the system of mass control of worldwide human evolution becomes 'self-aware', in a sense, with Locke and Hobbes, and Paine's "Age Of Reason" ; and so, with the contraindicative dispositive dialectic of capitalism, feudalism, with its "Divine Right Of Kings", devolves/evolves into the plutocratic and oligarchical hegemonies that today are nation-states and multi-national corporations, with their almost absolute economic power to dictate the very quality of life to humanity on a global scale. Few today seem aware that monetary policy, ultimately, is primarily a mechanism for control of the masses by the wealthy (plutocrats) IMNSHO (as I was first informed in "The Art Of War", by Lao Tzu).
Adam Smith, also, came to believe that the gluttony of the rich was a form of "unproductive labour" as do I, but he could not free himself from the philosophical constructs and beliefs of his milieau to make the requisite ratiocinative leap of faith and demographic probability vector calculus summation (not even a concept then) to conclude that this self-defeating flaw in fact would quite logically then imply that capitalism per se would lead to ubiquitous oppression of the poor by the wealthy (read: exploitation of the proletariat by the 'ruling class' - or read some Dickens or Upton Sinclair).
Yet, such is the case today, I humbly avow, for I believe that capitalism has subsumed and thereby actually annulled the basic precepts of democracy, and defeated that noble ideal at least for the present in this republic. Alexander Hamilton and his 'royalists' made sure of that, the prescience of Paine, Jefferson, Madison and Morris notwithstanding.
REMEMBER, ORIGINALLY HERE IN THE LAND
"OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE"
TO VOTE - YOU HAD TO BE:
RICH ENOUGH TO OWN PROPERTY,
MALE ENOUGH TO KEEP YOUR WOMEN FROM SUFFRAGE &
"WHITE" ENOUGH TO NOT BE MISTAKEN FOR A SLAVE!
The electoral college, and our irrational 'representative' (instead of 'participatory') electoral system is 'part and parcel' of that inculcated 'classist' ethical structure. As evidenced in part by the fact the phrase:
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
originally read:
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of PROPERTY" ! (emphasis mine)
Our society was deliberately and with great diligence engineered to be a Plutocratic Oligarchy! NOT a Republic & NOT a Democracy! Seems History can be ignored in general or generally missapprehended even before it is obfuscated and revised with contumely and disdain by the powerful ("History is only the word of the victors").
Anyway, back to the here and now, and the so called "great decline". I just see this as no more that the reality of the inequitable, anti-egalitarian and insufficiently rational nature of capitalism finally becoming apparent to all, based in fact on the vanishing prospects of future generations to live in an economy as opulent and resource wasteful as modern day America.
I have been an Anarcho-Syndicalist since the '60s when I first read Lao Tzu, Thomas Paine, Norman O. Brown and Marshall McLuhan. Thus I knew of the probable gradual decline and inevitable collapse of a system based upon a fundamental error: 'development' as an rationale for acquisition and investment of capital eventually fails when there are no more goods of "real" value to be produced (based on something like, oh say, Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs") and/or there ceases to be nothing from which anything can be produced. So it has to end sometime, right? This is a well foreseen (if one was paying attention to cutting edge social theorists during the 20th. Century) and evolutionary cultural denoument.
Capitalism is a social and cultural construct, no more. It was not "Divinely" inspired - read Adam Smith's biographers - the dude spent much of his waking life in jocular and animated audible conversations with beings that were not visible to anyone else, and as a Deist never once asserted that his inner voices were divine. Such is the legacy of the social theorist (along with John Locke) who most impressed our Founding Fathers, upon whom in turn much of the mores and folkways, the "gloss". if you will, of our society's interstitial structure depends.
The Founding Fathers did the best with what they knew then, no doubt.
WE NOW KNOW MUCH MORE !
We have the right (and also the duty) to modify this revered, but perhaps obsolete, or rendered less than ideally efficacious, social structure (capitalism) at will if a preponderance of the evidence can be agreed upon by a majority of the voting populace, having thus ascertained our new assertions may provide us with clues to what might modify or amend it to achieve a greater good for a greater number, so where's the beef, eh? "They got the guns, but we got the numbers." said Jim Morrison.
Given the current ossification of political chutzpah and judicious ability to question the 'dogma' of attitudes relevant to the Deists, Masons and tipplers (and make no mistake - almost to a man, the Founding Father's "original intents" were well steeped in rum on a daily basis) who crafted our Constitution, though, I despair at there being a 'populist' solution to this slow decay of "Truth, Justice & The American Way".
Now remember I'm talking here about changing the nature of "capitalism", NOT the Constitution, lest I be accused of being a "Communist" (I am not), or a "Socialist" (I am not, either). The Constitution was, in its ineffable Beauty (yes, I mean the Platonic absolute, because if I worship at any altar, it is at that of the Contitution) designed to evolve, and quite legally and properly, can be changed by a concerted vox populi, applied through the amendment process. It may have to develop the "Taft-Hartley" type teeth that it should have had before the Hamiltonians pulled them to sacrifice all economic justice for the concept of governmental 'laissez faire' practices, I don't know.
As an example, the "Wobblies" - The International Workers of the World, started out as basic Anarcho-Syndicalists (as far as my research has shown). They were of course 'tarred with the same brush" as the 'pinkos' that (I actually use the following word AS DEFINED BY THE OED - which, if everybody adhered to its 'prescriptive' definitions: IOWs - a word means what it meant WHEN FIRST USED IN PRINT; would end these stupid debates over what some vested political interest on either side WANTS the word to mean) . . . Fascist (!) "Tail-Gunner" Joe McCarthy used to forever besmirch the egalitarianism of social theory by anyone other than John Birch. What was lost was the IWW's initial alliance with the "America First" movement ("domestick" economic self-interest as delineated by Smith - see above) and the IWWs noble ideal of freeing mankind from 'wage slavery'.
They also were the only group to hold services yearly for the victims of the "Ludlow Massacre". That occured in 1914 when 19 people were killed (including 2 women AND 12 CHILDREN)! Workers and their families on strike against inhuman working conditions in COAL MINES in Southern Colorado were machine-gunned/burned/asphyxiated/hand-cuffed and beaten to death by THE COLRADO NATIONAL GUARD, sent by the 'ruling class' owners of the mines, ordered to do so with State and Federal complicity, to protect said owner's profit margins (none of the murdering Guardsmen ever served time for their crimes). Why? Because they were doing the bidding of the ruling class! Are mines that much better today? NO, given the vast progress of technology since! Why? Because our society favors greed, and oppresses the poor, as designed. Can the rich still 'buy' more Justice than the poor - You Betcha!
Unfortunately for the proponents of "Free-market growth", economies CANNOT expand forever (unless there really are extra-terrestrials somewhere to whom we can attempt to market our old atom bombs and iPods) because at some point there will be no-where and no-thing left in/to which to expand (unless we colonize space, and seed colonies on habitable planets 'out there', but the vast distances involved, combined with the limitations of light speed on travel, will make commerce irrelevant except in singular cases) .
The current diminution of standard of living was, and is, inevitable, given the finite nature of the biosphere, and the expansion of human population (read: consumers) which will eventually reach an economic "point of diminishing returns" where 'money' will no longer be able to "grow" in "value", because (as you and the' Paul's' , Ron & Rand, so rightly assert) "Treasury Notes" are not based upon the "value" of anything concrete, only the relative productivity (GDP) of the issuant nation-states or corporate hegemonies, AS DEFINED AND MANIPULATED BY THE RULING CLASS (you think the World Bank even cares who is in the White House? NO WAY!) This value will decline as room to grow, and natural resources dissappear.
But NEVER FEAR FOLKS, the 'captains of industry' will devise various and sundry means whereby the populations of "have-nots" will be guaranteed JUST enough of a standard of living as to preclude gross revolution. "Bread and circuses" and "a chicken in every pot" will mollify most into passive acceptance of their diminishing lot, and eventually even the most strident of the "free-trade" crowd will be forced to concede that everyone has enough 'widgets' and 'gizmos' (when the material of which these consumer products are made becomes more valuable than the manufactured items themselves as predicted by Mcluhan).
So, I personally truly see no huge world-wide economic collapse looming because the powers that be will find it in their best interests to continue to delude "man'un'kind" into complacency by manipulating currency standards to prop up this ultimately senseless insistence on 'economic growth'. Or perhaps some plague of global proportions will be engineered to only wipe out those least able, or least favored, to afford consumer products (uh - er - hmmmm - that may have already happened ).
(BTW, I claim copyright to "Probability Vector Calculus" as a means of "remote viewing" most probable futures from my MKULTRA/civilian "Men Who Stare At Goats" type training & "looking down the road" I still don't see it happening as a worldwide catastrophe - gradual decline, yes.)
I have many 'survivalist' friends, though, who have always stockpiled supplies and such and do so to this day. Most of them do it because they still remember their "atomic bomb holocaust" dreams from growing up in the '50s/'60s. Then, there are my old LDS buds in Wyoming, where I helped out at "Freedom Arms" for a couple years. They usually have a year's supply of stuff cached somewhere, just as a matter of principle. "Be Prepared" - Say The Mormon Church & the Boy Scouts. Anything happens, I'm puttin' a couple hundred gallons of gas in the RV and headin' Northeast to the gun plant.
Anyway, I believe perhaps 200 years hence, barring some breakthough in theoretical physics before then, and only then, will things settle into a scant semblance of economic equilibrium, after quite a few people starve, though, and most of the 'heavy metals' and stuff like coltan are mined out.
This hoped for new balance MUST be based upon some notion other then the frightful illogic (see "Life Against Death", by Brown) of:
"Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the Earth." Genesis 1:28 Vulgate
An admonition which is still keeping the Catholic Church from sanctioning the use of condoms, so the poor can overbreed and starve, or die of diease, because the Vatican asserts that is "God's Will", evidenced by that verse.
This same verse I believe is the 'cause', implanted in the collective conservative subconscious, for the "Religion Of Free Trade" effect, to this day.
You know, this whole "recession" could easily even be a ploy by the ruling class to lower wages, disenfranchise workers with 30 and 40 year of seniority, bust unions and wage economic warfare upon the 'proletariat'. They have done the same and worse in the past. Who was responsible for these inequities in divestable capital in the first place? Poor people or rich people? Think about it. Who gave our manufacturing base and bases to the slave-labor wagemasters of the Third World anyway? That's right, you heard right - the ruling classes!
So that's my rant and I'm stickin' to it. "Thank you for encouraging my behavior." - Bobcat Goldthwaite. I'm am truly sorry if I have offended anyone, but "Let us stop talking falsely now, for the hour is getting late." - Bob Dylan
It's kinda' like something another whacko such as I said to me long ago when I mused then (during the anxiety of the Energy Crisis of the '70s) upon much the same issue/argument as you have raised here, Denise, my esteemed 'sister':
" You know, the sooner we use up all the fossil fuel, the sooner things will get back to normal, Grasshopper!" - David Carradine
"That's a butte!" . . . "No, it's a mound." . . . "And right purty, too." - FT
AFTERWORD: Channeling Woody Guthrie
My channeled prose (and this is honestly 'automatic writing') is always 'sesquipedalian' in nature (multisyllabic words). I learned a long time ago that it is really hard to put any "spin" or "Beckify" or misunderstand/misconstrue... words like: "floccinaucinihilipilification". The concepts I attempt to communicate are singular, hopefully incisive, and hard to see through all the "15-second-attention-span" pablum that passes for political commentary today. Read Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium Is The Message". Even the title requires thought. It took me years to plow through it. That's like "The Way is the Goal." Taoist koan.
THE RULING CLASSES DEPEND ON JOE SIXPACK NEVER BEING MOTIVATED TO CRACK OPEN THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY TO SEE WHAT THE WORD "SOCIALISM" MEANT THE VERY FIRST TIME IT WAS USED IN PRINT, IN ENGLISH, OR FOR HIM TO THEN COMPARE AND CONTRAST THAT WITH THE MEANING IT HAS FALSELY COME TO PORTRAY AS A SOUND BITE, OR FOR HIM TO REALIZE THE FACT THAT ACTUAL UNEMPLOYMENT IS TWICE WHAT THE GOVERNMENT AND 99% OF ALL ECONOMISTS, SAY IT IS. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT GEORGE ORWELL CALLED: DOUBLESPEAK !
Hang in there. A paragraph a week, that's all I and my 'Spirit Guides' and channeled 'collective disembodied entities' ask. (lol);{>
Who knows, once I sleep off this hangover from drinking Irish Coffees until 4:00am and channeling the absolutely RIGHTEOUS spirit of Woody Guthrie (or at least the SIMS model of him I keep in my head) I may just renounce my 10 year long self-imposed 'anchorite' vows and start going to Mermen shows, or even . . . political events. This whole writing experience has caused me to remember what it was like in the '60s trying to separate 'truth' from fiction. . .
I'll never forget being chased down the street in Oakland by some Hell's Angels I actually grew up with, 'cause I was protesting the Draft, trying to close the Army depot. But they had held a 'moot' (read: drunken) court and decided to go bust some 'pinko' hippie heads. My first protest. I was a half block away from James Rector when he was shot during People's Park a few years later. Younger people these days have no idea what it was like being there, then.
At least, unappreciated by all the draft age dudes these days who "Ain't no Senator's son"; we killed the Draft, got all my forever damaged buddies out of the jungles, and stopped WasteMoreLand and crew from napalming any more babies.
My sincere regret though, is that NOBODY in Congress remembered that the "Gulf Of Tonkein Incident", the justification for the Congressional vote to enter the war in Vietnam, was proven to be a TOTAL FABRICATION (I actually talked to a former swabbie years later who had been on one of the supposedly attacked ships - NO ENEMY FIRE!) But very few politicians even knew or remembered, when the bogus spectre of WMDs in Iraq was raised, I believe because:
WAR IS GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY! WE CAN MANUFACTURE STUFF TO SELL TO OURSELVES THAT GETS DESTROYED, SO WE GOTTA MAKE MORE STUFF!!!
Yippie - more planned obsolecent profit for the Military Industrial Complex.
WELL, YOU MAY HEAR THIS HISTORICAL FACT HERE FIRST. I HAVE SEEN NO MAINSTREAM (OR ALTERNATIVE) MEDIA REPORT THIS STORY, SO HERE GOES: MY SOURCES(NONE INCARNATE OR HUMAN - DOD/NSA, IT WAS THE "NINE", THE GUYS FROM THE SUN THAT LOOK TO MIND'S EYE LIKE PLATONIC SOLIDS) TOLD ME ON THE FIRST NIGHT OF THE LAST IRAQ INVASION THAT THE REAL REASON BEHIND OUR INVOLVEMENT WAS THE PRINTING OF "BILLIONS" OF DOLLARS WORTH OF AMERICAN CURRENCY, UNDETECTABLE AS COUNTERFEIT BY EVEN OUR TREASURY EXPERTS, BY THE STATE (READ: SADDAM) OF IRAQ AND ITS GOVERNMENT TREASURY PRESSES.
THE PAPER WAS PERFECT, THE INKS WAS BOUGHT FROM US MINTS, AND THE PLATES WERE US ISSUE (COVERT, FOR BLACK OPS FUNDING) TO AN INTELLIGENCE/MILITARY AGENCY THAT SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS. MUCH OF THIS CURRENCY IS STILL IN CIRCULATION TODAY - IT'S GENUINE!
REMEMBER RIGHT AFTER OUR INCURSION, AMERICAN MONEY STARTED TO LOOK DIFFERENT - DUH! SO MAYBE THE 'GLOBAL CURRENCY CRISIS' IS DUE TO A WORLDWIDE GLUT OF NON-FED ISSUED CURRENCY. YOU HEARD IT FIRST HERE. THANK YOU WOODY FOR FINALLY GIVING ME THE COURAGE TO PASS ALONG THE MESSAGE!
"And it's one, two three, what're we fightin' for?" - CJ&TF
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