Monday, October 31, 2011

Halloween Threesome - Radical; Communication; New York Tourism


                                                  The World of Communication
    Finally, after 1,000 years of steady technological progress they created electronic toys that amused their constituencies. The electronic toys made life enjoyable; everyone felt less need to talk to one another. Now each one is supplied his of her own electronic gadget, and isolated. This was counted as a victory, for the principle of individualism. And they communicated through the gadget itself – which was called social networking. They weren’t really living – they were just going through the motions.
     Now there were some, naturally, who persisted in making trouble. These are the “Wall Street” group, the Occupation New York folks, for example. But the police, largely recruited from society’s misfits, have their methods to keep the protesters in line.

                                                        Radicalism
    On compuses, radicalism is prominent. It is surprising how much so: not on the part of the students but rather on the part of teachers. They seem to have come to a consensus that radical approaches work best when it comes to finding viable options, for a vibrant intellectual culture.
    They speak in whispers. Although they are there, they are part of a “polite” tradition of the Western culture, the same tradition that, heavens to Betsy, would not think of interfering with National Socialism – not until 1939. Not until thousands of Jews and trade unionists had already had the shit beat out of them, or, killed. (This is confirmed in a book I recently saw, from 1934!)
    And as for these radicals in academia, the rest of the world arranges the furniture so as to easily ignore what the college teachers are up to. The academics do not seem to mind; they don’t seem to.
    For example, when Bill Clinton nominated Lani Guinier to be something http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lani_Guinier everybody immediately came together to get her out of the society in general, or the general life of the society, and create their own little enclosure movement to get her back where radicals belong in academia. And the academics themselves seem to be in accord with this.
     They’ll be speaking, but very, very softly, in a whisper as it were – like a soft breeze rustling through the willows. This way they also avoid confrontations also with one another. Everyone is polite to everyone else; this is the only way the culture has ever know how to behave, as if all we have is our civil behavior – and that is the table around which everyone gathers, to become confused. And, after all, academic work requires long hours of study. So, everybody has to be nice, and where does that leave us?


                                                              “Autumn in New York”
    New York is outrageously beautiful. The way to see it, if not in photographs, is to get up enough money first, and then, when you go, you can go from museum to restaurant to theatre without even having to think about the poor much less respect them. Yet remember as well New York is a hotbed for liberalism —there’s a tradition of diversity. Or as Jay Carney, press secretary to the president would say, “a great American tradition”—of diversity. Maybe he would say that. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/10/27/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney ]
    I would even say that, given a solid background of history and tradition, the New York liberal reformer, as long as she is kept in her place, has a kind of zest or spice. Which of course is just one small part of the whole magic that is Broadway. And, it is known: the only place to see a Broadway play is Broadway!
    So, then: why are these Wall St. “occupy” people ruining it? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that they are doing so?

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Based On The Present ... What Kind of Tomorrow Shall There Be?

___
How is it that, in the last 100 years ---- (that) in the last 100 years, we've come to consider it a virtue to base the entire society on trade? Or, we are getting pretty close to it. If we start about 100 years ago and proceed forward what we might call the social basis in money seems to be getting stronger rather than weaker. Even churches sell "tats," says Molly Cato, a blogger from England. Today, in fact, what we have is a social elite that spends all of its time doing nothing but transferring money around to each other. Heavens!!
     Persons try to create wealth, to attract wealth, for something they have created, be it art, furniture, or any other product, like those cute little "investment vehicles" they have --- and that person is valued by their society. (see the Tod Volpe book on the art world - http://www.todvolpe.com/tv.html - )
     Success greets persons who have money---success is money. And this seems disturbing. This cannot go on, so something else must be coming. There will be some kind of change. Such a system cannot last. That's pretty obvious isn't it? It seems to be quite clear. Meanwhile, we'd like to ask this question: is our dependence on money and trade, or our money-based society, truly negative? And, if it is, how so?
     For sure: It is only natural to want to know whether this social basis in money is right or wrong. But it is much harder to figure that out than the simple-minded "anti-capitalists" seem to believe. It is a hard thing to make a judgment on this. Why? I would say that this is the case because, before we determine the true level of negativity to assign to the dependence on money, we must recognize and accept that this is our society. Right or wrong has to be put on a back-burner; Because reality comes first. This is how we live. This is our life.So to some degree we have to accept it. We have to (in other words) "love it or leave it." Existence before essence and all that. (Thanks, J.P. Sartre; You were there when I needed you!)

     There is a character, in "the Adventures of Augie March," named Simon. All he cares about is money. It is to his ruination, as the panelists of the CPL discussion (see a few posts back for this matter) seemed to pretty much agree. Surely, Simon is not the hero of the story, or the anti-hero. Augie is.
     This 100-year history of basing the whole ball of wax on the glommed-together mass of human behaviors related to money-chasing and making it is simply a particular strategem that was employed in the past. Are we to make ourselves over as fools --- as slaves of money? Shall history stop here?

 relevant links -----
http://gaianeconomics.blogspot.com/2011/10/mammom-1-god-0.html
http://jacksgreatblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/conventional-editor.html

Both (Hybridity, and a mention of Homi K.)

Wealthy persons generally speaking live in a more congenial, pleasant world. Unless I am badly mistaken they seem to have better manners, a pleasanter existence. And they are wealthy because they made more money. Thus it can be argued that making money is just an excuse for getting along with others, a mere preliminary to entering the more pleasant world and leaving behind the unpleasantness of a dog-eat-dog existence. But alas. All that flies in the face of another competing view or argument, that it is already a dog-eat-dog world and it is self-interest that rules. So, considering two possible views, how do we know which is the correct one? Which?

It's both. Both are correct, and I would argue that in many, many cases it is not a matter of one or the other. It is a bit more like the "fuzzy logic" thinking Brad Kosko wrote about, and that the Japanese feel comfortable about --- it is a bit of both. It is not an "or" but an "and." I would like to adopt Homi K. Bhabha's term hybridity here. There is a tendency to accept one view or the other rather than see the hybridity and grasp the one view "and" or "with" the other, harder since, of course, that is slightly more complex.  A successful analysis of capitalism needs badly to be even handed, because of the simple fact that the nature of these things is simply beyond all the binaries we normally get hung up with.

In my work, this concept of "hybridity," and also of "ambiguity" (again the Bhabha correlation) is quite important, actually. Capitalism, rather than being one thing or the other, is usually both. Let's understand the real nature of capitalism rather than rushing to extremes and being so sure we are right about that.

Some persons

____
Some persons, like Molly Scott Cato, actively declare themselves to be "anti-"capitalist. But, capitalism, if it can be anthropomorphosized, as if capitalism can have an opinion about itself, would not have any "pro-"capitalist view of itself. So, "who" is capitalism? If capitalism were a person it would not be "pro-" or "anti-" capitalism.  
     "Who" is it? It is just a kind of a transformation that happened to human society. It is a kind of re-positioning of the subject in regard to the object. It does not operate on behalf of, nor against, the "home" society, the place where it has managed to get embedded. Capitalism just establishes itself in human society, like a parasite, or a herd of fleas in the furry coat of dog, and hitches a ride with us for awhile. You don't kill the dog, just because it done up and got fleas.
     Right now, on the date of October27th, capitalism is "hot," because the stock market jumped up 3%. But it is not. It is not hot. Nor is it cold; it just is.

Foiled

I am really getting tired, tired of persons using the word "capitalism" like a cape to wave in front of a bull. When the cape is moving, it's kind of hard to really see, but when we slow down and try to really enquire into capitalism, and all the things associated with the term or concept it is no longer so easy to be "anti-" capitalist.

     Once the cape stops waving all over the place, the subject of capitalism, which implies all kinds of things the more you think about it, only becomes ---Well, for me ---intriguing and mysterious.

     If you wave it around like a cape however ----- it is just a foil.

Money - The Bashful Bride

We can do all kinds of things for money. We can teach each other how to  cook; we can read a a book; we can translate English into Portuguese. We can jump through hoops and we can build a ship in a bottle -- we can do anything in exchange for money, it seems -- except to tell the truth about money.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Monday, October 24, cont. (science and soc.)

____
    These "sensationalist" ideas that were developed in the 17th cent. are very nice ideas. At the stage when you have no "science" yet, the first thing that "works" will do; it will be very nice. It's great. You have a square peg that fits into a square hole; and this feels nice to you.
     It needs to work. It can't be just anything. It must work for you; it just has to sound good, or good enough. That itself is the requirement—a "nice" feeling. Later, you can start arguing over competing paradigms—which is to say between a plurality of more than one of the "paradigms," to use Thomas Kuhn's term. But my how slowly this Western civil society moves forward like an inchworm. It seems that way to me, and Sachs says that the influence of Newton and Locke has continued to be in force in some sense. Sacks seems to say that all the way up until the seventies it was hard for alternative views to get a fair hearing. Imagine that. OK, the seventies are not yesterday, but, pretty close to it. Well, at least that's the way I read Sachs—he actually said the seventies I think.
     So, you finally get to the next stage where the first thing isn't the obviousity that it was, and now you at least have a choice of two contrasting theories. Congrats, Western Civ!!! Now they can battle it out. But at the earlier stage, when the thinking fellers' club has but one, the "sensationalist" theory seems fine, nice even, not to mention, Well—sensational. Because there is no competition. This also causes the famous dictum, "I think therefore I am," to morph into, "It wins because it is."
     The Lockean or the Newtonian theory will do. That's the one—that'll do. It wins because it is. At that point, it's wiggling on stage like a lone burlesque dancer in a crowded theatre. There was no other idea of how the thing might work. Specfically, then what are they all a-fire about? What's the Lockean theory of sensation?

     The theory seems to theorize that the sense-data itself is merely a (Sachs says "passive") transmission of what "really" "is." This is commuted piece by piece from the object to the subject, or to the person doing the receiving of data. It sounds to me like the data has existence. And it is perceived by the eye, and this data, or "sense-data," is projected onto a film screen on the back of the head where the "self," whoever that is, somehow "reads" the information. Do I do the idea justice?
     And today there is a big argument about whether this is the right idea or not. Or, at any rate, according to Sachs, the sensationalist (or physicalist) theory (of Locke or Newton) held up (or should I say constituted?)scientific progress from the mid-17th cent to the late 19th. OMG. And as long as the philosophers, who have now been replaced by a priestly class called "scientist," hold to the older way of putting the world together they will be doctrinal—which is to say that they will hold to their doctrine and reject any information that contradicts their primary doctrinal bias. "Doctrinal" is, again, Sachs' word, in his book.
     I would also like to add that—maybe—the Lockean theory that Sachs describes may have not been that bad. That would mean that "science" has a little more to do with "fiction" than we might suppose it does.  Maybe the word we associate with "science" should not be "truth" but something else, like "theory." At the beginning, according to this two-part series of essays, anything that "works for you" is acceptable, since you have no explanation. You have zero explain. "Science" ain't been invented yet; nor do you have "philosophy or science" or "history of ideas." You just have people, and ideas. At that stage you are still trying to invent science. Science is innovation and creativity and excitement; only the greats know that.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Rights

     America's small town and rural folk are worried about oppression by government, and they have a point. These small town & rural folk, who vote conservative, and are Republican, have ideas about the kind of world they'd like to live in. It may come as a surprise but they have a point so let us examine for a moment their frustrations and worries.
     These ideas and worries of theirs are a surface manifestation of a deeper frustration, a frustration which runs deep, a frustration with where America has gone. America is leaving them behind. I'd be pissed, too. For America has taken a path towards internationalism, and cosmopolitanism, without much concern for the small town type. After all, they live in small towns, but they do have their values; and, the U. S., as it barreled into its global, climate-changing, catastrophic yet cosmopolitan and electronic future, has largely forgotten them.

     What do they mean, with their worries allegedly about too much oppression by the government?

     Who needs the government? they reason. White privilege ought to just about take care of everything for us. If not, then try "Republicanism." Anything but "Governmentalism." Ah. They are reading Foucault.

     Government, they feel, is just dangerous by nature. Republicans (or whites) ought to do better without it, as the rugged individualists they truly are.

     And they have a point, after all. It is truly is better not to turn to the government to solve all your problems. Where, then? If not government, where? This is the problem with this point of view or this kind of talk. Indeed, it is immature for us always to expect the government to solve all of our problems. It is, indeed. However, also there is a problem.
     That view does not correspond very well to the actual American experience the experience of the continuous expansion of human rights. That is the basic problem. Also, this localized, self-absorbed view does not correspond very well to the "democratic" side of that experience. Thus, the U.S.A. that experienced the continuous expansion of individual rights is what there is, and certain practices have tended to be associated with that. Maybe all of these tendencies are not good, but they need to be dealt with, because it exists. The basic historical tendency is not towards the kind of self-absorbed local-ism conservatives feel comfortable with.

     Since there is no history attached to this kind of conservative individualism, their idea is just an idea. It is an ahistorical one; and, not a very good one. They want to hit a button and delete the government, but the view is ahistorical. And they have nothing at all to replace hated "government-ism" with. So, it does not work. They have no interest in the real story of the United States of America, which in any case the government is not sharing with them, which is why they make up fairy tales about it. The story is a political story, and it is a story that has as one of its major themes the expansion of human rights. Not white rights, or Southern Rights, or any other local kind of rights. Those rights, in turn, are linked to governmentality (Google that last word along with "Foucault" and see if anything comes up, OK?)
     And those are the rights the grass-roots conservatives use when they go to the voting booth to vote and they vote like everyone else does. This is totally embedded in a political process that is anything but ahistorical. So, if you get rid of the government, what else do have? What do you have left?
     You have nothing but your own vanity; that's the answer, and that is why self-appointed claimants to being "leaders" of sincere, decent grassroots conservatives (whom I know are sincere people because I have lived with them) are phony leaders. When they finally get a "leader" sort, a representative, that guy who claims to represent them, do not, not really. They can be kind of phony, even if it is a "she" like the ones named "Michelle" or "Sarah."

Monday, October 24, 2011

Science and Society

In the 17th century Europeans started building a world. They felt a need to explain things. This world they started building was a world inside their heads, a world of explanation. Why was this necessary? Because as for the "real" world or the world of experiencethat one they had. It was at this time, when there had come to be great cities, and some of the physical structures that correspond to and complement civilization, that they felt the need to bring some explanations into it. They began to build up the explanations that served as the corollary of this civilization that was developing, or sprouting, all around.
    The world around them had grown up. The world had changed. Now they needed to come up with the explanations for it. Where did all these buildings come from? Suddenly, the constructions needed to receive the accompanying explanations, that is to say: the "explain" component.
 
      In other words no sooner did a built-up, civilized world begin to "be," than there began to appear (only slightly later) the intellectuals, bent upon this task of explanationthe project of explaining, or of creating a narrative story. They needed the explanation to go with this organized and increasingly sophisticated environment. Thus, 17th century Europe has its complement of scientists and intellectuals. All of them labored to build a world. This time, a world of explanation: they needed one of those.

    The world had grown. Now we had a bigger world: one that required a bigger explanation. Where did all the fancy buildings come from? And: why was wealth (and science and technology) increasing (for a few)? The textiles were getting finer. The world itself was getting finer, more refined and extensive. How could that happen without the act of explanation? What these philosophers, scientists and intellectuals were doing was engaging in the mind's need to know, the act of explaining. Life could scarcely go onhow could it?without the act of creating a narrative, the narrative that was needed to accompany their world's mysterious enlargement? Let's get rid of all those fancy verbs, though, and just call it "the explain."
    And thus, Oliver Sacks, in his book (1995), refers to the "sensationalist" theory that Locke upheld, in parallel with some work that Isaac Newton was doing, at the same time. They provided the explanatory nattative society needed. Any view would have worked. Sacks sums up the situation well in an excellent paragraph, p. 20. Sacks understands "sensationalist" theory as a "doctrine," and the ensuing objections to any contradictory evidence, i.e. contrary to the Lockian/Newtonian view, as "doctrinal in nature." Yet, this is the life work of these people --- of the 17th century scientists/philosophers. Nevertheless, it seems that, for us educated persons of today, it can be summarized in the writer's one brief paragraph. (Sacks 1995)
    The theory of Locke comes across as quaint. But it was not quaint to the 17th cent. philosophers. No --- because it was the only "explain" they had available.
    If the only show in town is a dancing elephant you are going to be enchanted by that elephant. Any view would have worked equally well. They did not see it as quaint; because, they did not have any other explanation.

Ian

http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=5449#more-5449

"   Every day we see more evidence that capitalism, which was once the basis for an unprecedented wave of creativity and liberation, has transformed itself into a force for destruction, decay and death.   "

    Well, that's a little grandiose, isn't it, Ian? I definitely agree with the second half of the sentence, "...has transformed itself into a force for destruction, decay and death", and I do hold, in my important (and thus for completely ignored) body of work (OK, it's my own fault, I'm bad at blogging), that capitalism contains these elements that are unprecedented. And those are not necessarily negative elements.
     Kind of depends what country you are in. For someone like myself, who was born in the U.S.A., it can seem kind of positive. It is also positive or negative, depending on a lot of things --- like which year it is. On one's deathbed, is capitalism positive or negative? For a European or a Chinese?
    And, it is quite remarkable that (this thing that Ian seems to understand so well,) capitalism (,) is the keyword, the "thing" held responsible for all this. But, at the moment when the whole ecology, or the "whole earth," crashes will anyone really care whether it was "capitalism" that crashed or simply the earth? Whether I am dead or not is the question, isn't it?---not whether I am dead by "capitalism"! I won't really care!

     One really has to wonder about the psychology of these blokes, sometimes.
   

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Are We Really All One?

http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=5306&cpage=1#comment-16471

"
Instead of lumping all people together into one destructive human mass, it’s important to carefully assess which human activities harm the environment and which enhance it. CBD blames overpopulation for the accelerated extinction of plant and animal species. Missing from this simple picture are the ways in which different systems of production yield very different environmental results.
Take the case of food. Industrial agriculture typically erodes biodiversity, while peasant farming often protects crop genetic diversity and creates a welcoming habitat for birds and other species. A Monsanto executive and a Central American small organic farmer may both be part of the human population, but there the resemblance ends.
"

     Are we "all one"? Really? I have yet to find the people who act like they truly believe we are all one human mass. Everyone, I have written elsewhere, favors their own. That is not, I do not believe, a bad or cruel thing to say. How do we make change, if we are not at least realistic about who we are? How do we make change if we are lying all the time?
     Here is "socialist" blog that cuts through the mustard. It's called:

     Climate and Capitalism
Ecosocialism or Barbarism: There is no third way

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Economic Growth (Not Again!)

Economic "growth" is the creation of new material things --- and, at the same time, the corruption of same, for the process of material production is corrupted, by the process of "making of money from nowhere."

This is how, at long last, the people are swindled.

Conventional Editor

____
Everybody knows the world is fake;
Everyone intelligent, I guess I should say;
And the businessmen? They talk to one another
As if they are human. Which they are but, you know
It's fraudulent - the whole thing

If you believe in it though, probably you are a newspaper editor, because no one else does.

Well I don't know where the poem ends and the prose begins exactly but ... the other day the CPL (Chicago Public Library) held a dialogue in the main building downtown with this man who was something like the best human being at not only the Chicago Sun-Times but at "Pioneer Press" as well. This latter is a family of suburban papers. That's a really a very impressive position, you know, dude, so Congrats on your brilliant career (1). He seems very proper. He seems of the carefully-moving sort. That is to say he moves deliberately monitoring himself as he moves. This is not a flamboyant type. This man offered a well-worded question or observation or two, to his more flamboyant and unconventional guest, Martin Amis, the well-known writer. The former in very ordinary business dress, the later, as said, more flamboyant-----a bit less predictable than this newspaperman, who seems at the very highest levels at the two businesses, the Sun-Times and Pioneer Press. And the editor is a literary critic. An editor and a literary critic to boot! Well, as I said, good for him. I don't understand this kind of critter, not exactly. Does he know that the world is fake? Probably not. He doesn't know that jacks great or fake blog exists either. Just as well...the guest is named Martin Amis, and they were discussing "The Adventures of Augie Meyers", a book. Bellow.
Such a distinguished editor. Would he believe in the world?

Can't say much about Amis; though. I just do like him ever so much!


the notes:       (1)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Brilliant_Career

The Horrible Topic of Money Revisited

Those with authority over the areas of economics and trade are involved in making mistakes. The mistakes are part of capitalism and have been ongoing up all the way up until the present.

What they seem to be involved in is that they are involved in practices that serve to throw more and more money into the system. According to my sources of information, these procedures actually increase the money supply. But there is something here we do not get and what we do not seem to "get" is the matter of how this is wrong ---- a morally wrong thing. This is the case, though, and it is so: the money is being created in a capitalistic and democratically-oriented system. In this system persons must be equal in their political rights. They are allegedly equal in political rights. So, to create money in a system like that, where all are equal in regard to this parameter of their rights (political rights), it appears to me important that we distribute any such monies equally to all persons, to all of those who are the constituted equals.
     This follows from the assumption of economic equality, an equality wherein each person has the same economic/market rights. That's the basis. This means, for example, in terms of job-seeking. Or, for example, how to spend income gotten from working at the jobs. Another example is the right to start a new business --- no bias can be arbitrarily introduced into such a system. It is therefore the indication that any such monies would need to be distributed to everyone equally, in the democratic, equalistic society. That in turn implies that it would done in a centrally-coordinated way, which we would expect would proceed under government authority, or, perhaps, some surrogate of government. At the same time, all this does not mean that capitalist countries need to add new money. I don't know about that. The idea of introducing money seems a fairly abstract one.
     What is not right morally, and what is not right in any general or logical terms whatsoever, is for private banks to create and distribute any such money. However, using credit mechanisms, they do so. That this happens does not seem to be in doubt. There is a general consensus between two groups - activist groups and established institutions such as universities - that banks do create money. The difference between the two lies in whether it is scandalous or not. Is it fundamentally wrong, or no? I think it is more accurate to comprehend it as being wrong. But it is as if the college professors are on sleeping pills or something. They do not seem to get the fact that is obvious to a child?, that there is a basic problem with private entities, for example like bankers?, simply cooking up their own money? It contradicts which I would expect to see in the economic system, because this economic system is, should be, linked with democracy.
     There isn't anything wrong with saying that. And it is not anti-capitalist. It is simply following out some extant social-economic institutions to their logical conclusions. So what I said is true: there are some persons with authority over the areas of economics and trade that are involved in making ongoing mistakes.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Gaian Economics: Why is it easier to imagine the end of the world, than to imagine the end of capitalism?

I wish I wish I wish
-I wish I knew how to link! I do not seem to do it very
well. I had just wanted to put My
link onto Their blog.


But, this seems to be genuinely difficult to impossible for me due to my being
what is called autistic. In my particular case,
I do not "get" the distinction between myself and another individual. I
can see other people and I know they are not myself but the problem is

in the interests linked to the individual person. I do not seem to think in terms of
private property being linked to a specific individual.
As a result, I am lost, because social relationships usually depend on a close identification
between an individual and that individuals' properties or interests.

Perhaps --- what I have understood about capitalism and about economics is
that capitalism is a bit like I am.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Extraordinary Contortions

The title of this post, above, refers to the way the G8 or G20 or whatever it is that comprises the governance aspect of trade seems to squirm as they try to figure out what to do in the face of problems. The situation in the world today is that you have all these independent individuals. I do not deny that capitalism consists of different individuals. They are the individual capitalists, running the firms and corporations; they are business agencies. If the sea is the capitalistic human world (the existing economic theories, however, say this is not so; it "is" a mathematical world --- which is ideological, and wrong), the businesses are ships on that sea. Some have actual ships plying the seven seas, some operate the ports of call for those ships. Some have the telephone transmission wires; and, some just hedge-fund; yet, all seem to get along well. And all are welcome in this big trade club--as long as you have money. That remarkable human construct is called "globalization," which is ready to crash now.
     So, now they need to save their system. They cannot do it. Hence the contortions, or squirming, or, as blogger Molly of "Gaia," put it --- she was carried by "Green Conduct" --- "extraordinary contortions."
     I see them as if contorted in their seat at the big conference. Persons involved seem to be pure individualists. Hence they are unaware of the social aspects of economics, and they are yet forced to come to conferences to coordinate what they are doing as if they were social beings after all, and they cannot do it.
     So, we must ask, what then is economics? There are so many possible answers --- maybe economics is what we make it. In our day, though, is economics all about these individuals playing their money games like different ships on the sea? But then 1) that system is not going to be working anymore; it is over, and 2) you have always this controversial other player --- authority. You have this other player in this fascinating sea of capitalism --- authority. But of course. You didn't think there was no government, did you? (Hi, anarchist!) That means "political" authority, government. Businessmen have gotten along just fine until now. I can understand how this could lead some less deep persons to remove government from of the equation altogether. Government and business seem to work on two different principles, yet it seems surely to be the case that government, as well as the private actors, remains in there somewhere.
     When we say "G" 8 --- or 20 --- the "G" is the semiotic sign there-----the one that admits of government----so, we know there's government-----as long as there is that little "G" there: government needs to be there (which is plausible, right? --- unless you are one of the two exceptions: libertarians and anarchists, and we have to reserve also honorable mention here, or partial exemption, for those lovable drooling, pencil-tapping idiots, the absolute free-market maniacs, those politely called "free-market fundamentalists" by Stiglitz --- such a nice man --- you know them: "government interference in markets," bla bla bla---yeah, those guyz; the Chicago boyz). But, at any rate, thank g-d for language, and that little "G" shows us that government is there --- which you believe, right? Now we know. But they are, of course, "carrying water" --- for business. I can't help remember that phrase from this one leaflet given me recently by a virtuous protester-person I chatted with, at the university --- it happened in Chicago, and, despite what they say ----- despite what the segments of the population who think government has or should have no part to play say in their idea lives or their ideological life, at the end of the day government is there; it has some importance.
     Government is a bad problem too. No argument. This makes the world difficult, Rousseau knew it; this difficulty inherent in operating a "government of the people," as I recall, is what "Social Contract" deals with in great part. But the acknowledgment of such grave difficulties does not necessitate reverting to an anarchist position like a turtle retracting into its shell in the face of difficulties. In other words, you can say that you don't like Obama, or you don't like Reagan, but you can't, truly, say they don't exist.

     So. Why are they having such a problem down there in the G20 meeting? Why is it so hard for the government part of the equation to act in solving economic problems? Why is it so hard for government to reason out its proper role? Why is it that these 20 governments cannot come to an understanding of that role which, actually, comes down to an understanding of what it means to intervene? Have they been reading too much garbage from the right? Too much "non-interventionist" idiot propaganda on the coffee table? Do they simply believe the stuff about "less government" influence in markets?
     Not exactly. The problem is that they do not know how to act as governments. They do not know how to question the orthodox economics language. The business sector has simply taken over and the government can't get a word in edgewise. The ideology of business rules. I do not know if even the businessmen themselves believe it. But they are stuck in their own game and the only ones that can break  the spell, i.e. the government, cannot do so. The website "Green Conduct" linked me to a blog mentioning a Czech book title, and this is referenced here at http://www.greenconduct.com/articles/2011/10/17/  ---  why-is-it-easier-to-imagine-the-end-of-the-world-than-to-imagine-the-end-of-capitalism/.
     I don't know what the book is about (how could I? I have been writing this all day; also, book is written in Czech). Basically, the question that this blog post brings up is that of why the government side of economics goes through such extraordinary contortions. Which I feel as if I am going through right now. (Gavel hammers down.)

     (Back to order!)

     The governments are discussing economics, but they shouldn't be. They should be discussing politics. They are not economists, and neither are they businessmen sailing their private business ships upon the human sea. Governments are governments. So, what part of that are we not understanding? They aren't businessmen, rather they are governments and they are supposed to govern; and, they either get along with one another at a conference table, or they do not. The role of governments in capitalism is to regulate, to oversee, to monitor, to adapt to changing conditions. They can fix their problems together or separately, I don't care. I do recommend separately, though, simply because except in wartime I do not see that the governments have ever gotten along with each other. Who are we fooling, then?
     Governments govern; they don't run the free market system. Nature does that all by itself. All governments can do is govern; they will necessarily either to do so well or do it poorly. Governments do need to figure out something about economics, directly or through others. That is a part of their duties as governments. Alas, there is a problem. The problem is that all they have are bad theories. These bad theories --- "capitalism is private property traded by private actors" --- an example --- are promoted as the "ideological" part of the business actors' lives. They generate ideology like teenagers generate acne pimples.
     Generally, capitalist actors have felt the need to develop bad theories of capitalism. Why? Well, I don't know how to put this in a smooth, stylish way, but, to cover up their evil or whatever. In fact, bad theories have been essential to capitalism's success like an eye patch and a bandanna is essential to a pirate. But yesterday's medicine could be today's poison; it doesn't follow that what was essential yesterday is essential, or even desirable, today. But they cannot get up off their lies (which of us can?) and so, they "contort" in their seats.
     But times change; the actors in the economy --- government, businesspersons, regular people, leaders, followers, markets, the private actors, the public actors, the liars, the cheaters, the flatulent hypocrite bankers with phosphorescent slime running down their noses and dribbling down their chins and eating acidic holes into their business suits --- all of these great persons of our brilliant social organism need to work together somehow and that's a matter of politics.
     Therefore, the piece on the "Gaia" site carried as a Green Conduct article speaks of "extraordinary contortions," which are --- in my opinion, maybe not the author's --- the squirms of G20 actors who don't want to do their job. Which is?

     Discriminating right from wrong. Acting ethically. Serving the people. A responsible government is government that runs its country in the right way, not the wrong way. It's pretty simple.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Green Conduct

http://www.greenconduct.com/articles/2011/10/17/why-business-schools-should-join-occupy-wallbay-street/
"    The Occupy Wall Street protests have ballooned into one of the most powerful grassroots social movements since the Great Depression and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. Once perceived by the elite to be a trivial display of immature angst by a bunch of hippies, the mainstream media has had no choice but to cover the protests to the chagrin of their corporate owners.
...
Naturally, business is expected to side with the right, defending their powerful position in society by putting forth rhetoric that touts the societal benefits of free markets such as job creation, access to cheap goods and services, and (perhaps taken to the extreme) individual freedom. ...  "

JACKSGREATBLOG COMMENT:

Yeah, business is "expected" to side with all of that. But it's just not true. It is all garbage. All this stuff about "the societal benefits of free markets" and so forth is a false story, and it sounds stupider and stupider as time goes on. It is an old, false story. This is what I have understood and wanted I think to express on this blog. Still, the fear of coming right out and saying what one knows makes it difficult. What I knew others knew, too. But we were all afraid of the empire.   
     One day, the drapes are just pulled back and we see it for what it is. Until that day, we just believed all the garbage we heard. We did not really "believe" it. I just wanted to say it that way. But we sort of followed it or believed in following it. It seemed like it was society's truth and we felt we needed to be very careful in what we said against it. And I watched myself doing this and I watched everybody else doing it.
     Then these protests happened. The first thing was that the corporate-owned media just ignored it. That was the first thing. I want to note what these newspaper non-reporters did---a sort of non-happening. "You don't exist. You are not there." Then, the police tried to crack down. What next?
     More persons noticed it. And more persons had real, spontaneous responses. Not theoretical or ideological responses. That was important. False language constructions about "the societal benefits..." no longer hold. Those real responses, instead of corporate ones, form a platform. Our prior inklings become grounded. Now the phony theories can be opposed by other, different theories. The electricity of our thoughts does not destabilize but returns to a stable ground from which it can re-emerge at will, seeking to form light, and shadows.
     Communication starts to happen again. We can be people again. Life becomes what WE say it is, not what the tough and powerful say it "must" be. This powerful clique has, over the years, become more and more toxic and unrepresentative of either reason, ethics, or the majority of persons in the society. Using rights guaranteed by the nation in the 18th century, and upheld within the very capitalism that no longer functions correctly, the ground of discourse shifts. That crusty old elite, of pigs and bullies, no longer has the upper hand. Nor the final word.

http://www.greenconduct.com/blog/ A new blog discovery for me.

Sorry, Doc, I'm Not Feeling You


     In such a culture such as ours, a multiplicity of books are available. One may browse.
     Browsing the other day at the commercial kind of bookstore reveals the real idiot swill books. I mean to say the higher type idiocy: nonsense by people with “Ph.D.” after their name; or “M.D.” For example, one book there about an imputed fact that autism is a mislabeling; therefore, no such thing. There was a whole book about this, or at least I think there was (maybe I’m dyslexic and I imagined it).
     Of course the reason that any of this is plausible in the first place is the same reason that autism got ignored for so long. This M.D. or Ph.D. writer or whomever he thinks he is can bring together all the well-known, famous, imputed “truths” out there. That's how science works, you know.
     For example: autism – or for  that matter one’s health – may have something to do with food – it probably does – Temple Grandin knows this already, by the way. Then if my health has to do with food – but I am using the word “autism” to describe some part of that – it follows that there must not be any autism in the first place. The word is a false imputation; I’m just not eating enough broccoli (hmmm…come to think of it, didn’t I already discuss broccoli? [Thurs., April 28th ]).

     We are talking about a certain kind of book here, written by a doctor well-versed in all the standard cultural swill, what Dylan called “The Idiot Wind.” You see, dear reader, there is no autism. It is all a hoax concocted by radicals. There is even a chapter in this piece of rot on the "support group" for the poor victims --- persons (parents?) falsely labeled with autism.
     It seems to me like this is a kind of guy who goes with the grain; while, for instance, radicals get points for going against. But there is also something surmounting all that--the fact that it doesn’t make any difference. They are both just strategies. It doesn't help anybody per se: that we are going either against or with the trends; it's like a false issue that just confuses things. I don't think there is any inherent value in either. What I usually notice is that we live in a world that is idiotic in general. So, I'm a "critic." OK; but I sell neither a "normal" reality, nor the radical one. 
     Greek writer Hesiod noted that there were five winds that blow on to Athens. Of the five winds Hesiod spoke of, three were bad; and of the two good winds one was very unpredictable. Not much has changed.
      So what is happening, here, is a good doctor has surfaced, or published, and he, this respectable voice, this good man, speaking in the name of science, has graced us with the account of autism as false imputation. Something highly ironic about that (hmmm… maybe it is iron I’m not getting enough of!!!)

Election Cycle

Just saw three sentences from the president on television. Three sentences. Maybe that's all I need.

I think I have it -- the method. The mechanical call-and-response of the clockwork election cycle of a dead society.

The method? Here it is: 

We wait for the conservatives to tilt too far right. When they go too far, B.O. steps in basketball smooth talking progressive. Talking that way. Just talking that way. Just posing. Doing the progressive number. The old progressive slapstick number. "I'm a Liberal." He ain't no liberal. The old tap dancer, even...

Then he wins, and turns out to be far less progressive than that.That's how the cycle runs itself off, it's not creative. Just runs itself off, like clockwork. Like a machine. Nobody home.

This is all he knows how to do. It will all go exactly according to schedule. But where is the reality behind it? is, I guess, what I'd ask.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Nice Guys

Capitalism eventually creates a nice society. A friendly society, at the core.
     It is hard to argue with genteel, upper class persons-----and capitalism creates a lot of them, albeit only in capitalism's core central areas-----these are, to give just an example, the kinds of persons I am usually seeing in the area where the present author has been staying. Here we find persons belonging to just this international (lots of foreigners; it is international) capitalist core population. First I stayed in the old hotel I might have told you all about in some earlier posts, now, because it got condemned, I moved! The new place is both similar and different. But all the other persons I usually notice --- my "proximity" people --- look like population at the capitalist core. Anyway, everyone --- core persons or not core persons --- seem to accept the niceness of it. Hard to argue with that. We tend to accept it.
     We tend to accept the genteel---the "better sort" as it has been put. Even the leftist movements are almost always headed by some upper class individual. Or, perhaps declasse'?

     But the ultimate test of our system and method of being, and the ultimate test of capitalism, is the question of whether niceness spreads. That's the test of whether your capitalism is going in the right direction. It depends on whether this benefit is spreading. That's the crux of the issue. If it just remains within one little core area, within the small circle, that is not the process of capitalism. There seems no possibility whatsoever of a radical break with the past. I don't see the "revolution" (I do believe it is a nice word though), so as Dean Baker said, capitalism is what we have. And capitalism, in my view, requires a spread, not a retreat, of inclusion. That is simply the nature of the beast.
    What I really hate to see, on the other hand, is a bunch of seemingly nice happy people in the core location, in contrast to, and having no empathy with, a great suffering in other parts of the system (the global system, get it?). That's niceness gone to waste, niceness gone bad.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Narrow Thinking

____
Nature's got variety. Human beings lived in the midst of nature's richness --- in all of this "got milk" richness --- for a million years more or less. OK. They communicated by words and by hand gestures. Worked pretty good. They were no dummies either. No; you guys were the smartest things in nature, at least outside of fairies and spirits, and things like that.
     But to comprehend how human spirits (orig: beings) of the current era think, read the Financial Times.  Can you do that? It's that salmon-colored paper that is written from the perspective of the British. Their decision to print on salmon-colored paper was a brilliant decision to print on salmon-colored paper. You jolly well know it was. The thing is actually interesting, too.  The FT can be revelatory, even, when I read it, or rather analyze, thorughly. It's a lot of work, but I find it positively worth reading this way. Or, I should say --- analyzing.
     In the world of the writers of the ft what is considered "good"? What are their "valuations," so to speak. What is their right and wrong of it all? I have to wonder about that, particularly when I see that simply because a given company is not making big profits, the ft writers tend to say that this poor thing is "struggling." Come on, is that the best you can do? Why? Who sets these doctrinal agendas? That is what Noam Chomsky calls the "narrow ideological spectrum."
     So, what in their world is "good"? Profit is good. Well, yeah, I really nailed it there but why is profit good? And---another question---do they actually believe this stuff? That's always a good question, but which we'll never know the answers to. There are so many. I wonder if these writers have different opinions or if they are all the same "business brain," belching out the stale fumes of conformity. (And yes, I know about the "Economist," where personal bylines are not allowed.)
     It is obvious enough that all are just trying to make something true, or good, where no such logic applies. Of course, we could call that "ideology" or "superstructural ideology" if we like but at any rate these newspapers are there, and this is how our world works. This be how the human beings communicate. We shouldn't be too pessivistic or too optimistic---about the value of these human communication endeavors; but rather realistic. They are what they are. Why do they make a positive valuation for, say, strong demand for aluminum? In two separate articles ft tells that market demand is slowing for aluminum and as well for steel. But why is it "good" for demand, and hence output, to be strong? Why isn't it good for demand to be weak-----instead? Why does the world need more aluminum? Why does the world need more steel?
     I don't get where the need comes from: albeit that FT says in two separate articles (Mon, Oct 10, p.15) that demand is slowing for aluminum and steel, ask me if I care. There is an apparent consensus opinion that there needs to be growth. What I do not get is why. Why this apparent consensus opinion that if companies do not grow it is bad? Why is that bad? It makes zero sense. Why not good? I do not get why that is. Isn't buying only the other side of not buying? The Financial Times, and everyone in general, seems to be unseemly (monolithically) stuck on the "growth" concept, where "growth," near as I can discover, is some kind of a technical term for the ability of firms, or individuals in the market, to record a profit. So, this is the mania, then: everyone must grow.
     But what kind of a concept is that? What if it should happen that we do not need as much aluminum? That is not a crime. Neither is it some kind of a natural calamity, or a calamity of nature. Why do we need to dig for ore? It is clear that there is no inherent need to do that. It will eventually wreck earth; that it will do. If capitalism has any value at all, what is the greatness or goodness of it, or even its saving grace, the saving grace, if you like, of capitalism? The capacity to wreck the earth it is not. The capacity to wreck earth? That is not the greatness of it. Why is it necessarily good to remove ores from ground? Why? Ft tells us this material is for markets. It is "...for markets from packaging to construction to aerospace." Oh, I see. And this leads to the next thing. That "...makes it [aluminum] a barometer for the world economy."
      Aluminum has this quality? That's great but I thought it was flexible and light. And I thought it was for tin foil. But its great that aluminum is a barometer, too, and that the great ft has told us about its "barometer" quality.  I guess it is barometer-like for the purpose of illustrating whether the world economy is growing. That would be the linguistic of it. Well, the business culture too has qualities and characteristics. They are a culture that is hooked on their own ignorant and ingrown opinions. Wait a minute here though. (Cartoon of Disney character screeching to halt with emergent dust storm) Doesn't a market system thrive on variety, or on the existence of different individuals, and different products and firms, and, dare I say also, even different opinions? That, Um --- "compete"?
     In Nazi Germany everyone had the same opinion. You had to be like everyone else; and you had to support Hitler. And that was just about the end of it. And that kind of system was called "fascism." That kind of system is totalitarianism, authoritarianism, extremism, and the dominance of one party's ideology over the truth; and, what it is not is actual, reasoned thought --- mankind's basic creative capacity for thought.
     The reporters at FT come out of a certain English, and also world-wide, experience, one that involves money --- money and trade and things like that.
     And they, in turn, somehow represent --- OK, serve --- some kind of capitalistic experience that Britain has had, also a world experience, an aspect of the recent human experience --- of "history."
     But, if they are so smart, why no ability there to see the limits to growth, outside their own little box? Why can't they do it? Because it's a simple concept: an aluminum plant does not NEED to be open, and, if open, does not NEED to be producing at full capacity. There is no NEED for aluminum. It is not aluminum that is needed, and it is not growth that is needed. And if a plant is not needed it can close. Let's not be idiots. I don't think there is any doubt about the matter. Why do we have to become fascists? Is this phase of capitalism just a matter of a different kind of fascism? Fascism in italics.
     If there is no inherent need for growth, why can't we say so? Why is admitting something obvious --- what has been called the "limits to growth" --- not an option? Why does there have to be this insistence on a false idea related to this technical concept called "growth"? I do not know, really.
     Nor can these people, or these reporters, propose (report?) basic changes to the financial structure. Let us say that the kind of capitalism we have had for some time now needs to change. Who will do it? They are  monolithically stuck.
     This inability to propose basic changes to the financial structure is reflected in this news that they issue, the news about the countries of the European community, in trying to change the financial structure. But they cannot do it.

     Europeans are peculiarly ineffectual creatures.

     Sometimes they seem good and perfectly elegant.
     And the rest of the world loves their poetry, and their courtly novels. They have produced a beautiful stream, in terms of literature. Yeah, well some people like it, anyways.
     But they are so ineffectual. They did not do anything to stop Hitler. They knew about it from 1933, and did not do anything. They cannot act as a group, for their own good. The Europeans can only act individually, but this is no fault of persons, per se, i.e. of individuals. Persons, the species itself, are not that stupid.
     Then why are they? -- why are they that stupid? What golden calf are they (FT writers I suppose, if not the leaders of states) bowing down to?

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Some Perspectives on Economics

Here is something about my views, as a preface to the piece that folows. The fashion in which the piece below begins declares of perhaps a negative view of economics and economists. (Here I have to take time to mention something intriguing: what we mean by "economics" or by "what economists study" is ambiguous as to whether it means ideas about economics or the actual trade practices and the "items" you put on trade.)  I eventually developed a unique and particular view of the "idea" side of the matter, or the economics profession, that is - yes - striking for being a negativity. It is true that it developed that way but I was not looking for this or striking out intending to be negative. It happened that way. First, there was the studying. There was some school work, too; I did it in school, first. Eventually, I have over the course of my study and investigation and my observing the (dual) world of economics (i.e. the ideas and the things all mixed up together) come to some conclusions. I see it as not being biased, although others may say that it is impossible to be without some biases. But I have the subjective experience of knowing how I did this: I looked at the field honestly, and my views developed over time. I think very few other persons would have done this in as honest and openhearted a fashion as I did. But of course that is not for me to judge.
____
     For economists the economy is not a system of human social relations but rather some kind of an exotic god.....    

 one that needs to be propitiated so we can all keep buying twinkies.

     The questions pertaining to the field of "economics" are in reality questions of authority amongst human beings. That being so, these are really political questions. They are social since they are not apolitical decisions of the individual. This later is the program of the orthodox, or neo-Classical theorists. It is all, therefore, social and political; and, what it is not, is a matter of "self-interest," the term used by the orthodox university economists -- they like to say: "rational self-interest." I do not doubt that people have rational self-interest; but I do not think it has a thing to do with economics. When working within the field of economics, if, as we suggested, questions are in fact political or authority questions, we also have to admit that these social or political questions do not merely apply to one society, but, a bit oddly, to a plurality of them, in fact, in the age of globalization, to all -- at any rate to all the societies that participate in the trade system. Which is just about all of them. There are questions, then, of relations between societies. It all gets very international. So, these matters are matters of trade "international trade" — and yet, they still relate to authority.
     The question of economics in general could be put: "why should one person have something, but another person not have something?" That is the question of economics. Economics has objects, too. The objects of economics are (matierial) wealth objects. The objects are desired generally, by everyone. Who is it that makes these decisions, then, decisions about the satisfactions others may have? That matter is the matter of "economics."     
     It occurs to me that "economics" may sometimes  (especially in earlier times) mean something like "authority over objects." The objects interpolating themselves into the functioning of authority. 

     If the matter is linked with authority, we should say "political." But ---- of course ---- Americans never say "political" economy. No. That's a pesky habit of the Europeans.

     In every human case, or every known human case, in economics or where we may begin to haltingly to speak of "economics," there is first a primitive phase, where everyone owns everything. This is the case for the primordial species members homo sapiens, on this planet. And, later---a condition, in any given society, where there are higher and lower classes. Capitalism is perhaps the phase that comes next, and in this phase anyone (although of course not everyone at once) can use economics (trade) to advance himself beyond what class would have ordinarily acceded him.

     But when the globe is covered, when the whole space of the geography of the earth has been covered by this capitalist phase --- globalization --- and the environment is stressed if not deeply threatened and man is even affecting the climate, "growth" can be seen for the absurd, overly simple concept that it is. 
     It is quite awful: denial of what has been called "The Limits of Growth" is a worse thing even than the other great denial, the denial of global warming or catastrophic climate change.

     Some people are winners and some people are losers. It is just the matter of how we figure out who to put where. And there will always be winners and losers—even if we need to make the biosphere the loser.

     As we have seen, at first everyone is the same --- the primordial man or woman, their infants, their elderly, their healthy and sick. But then --- I am not sure why --- "development" begins to take place such that there are a new kind of class-startified societies like Catal Huyuk, in present day Turkey, which I have read about somewhere. And then the next development, and then the next, and then the next, until we are where we are, in the present phase. And behind all of it, a struggle to develop a fair society—or perish.

                    perhaps you expected a bed of roses?


Monday, October 3, 2011

Restaurant Review: Su Casa

dining notes: (at "Su Casa," 49 E. Ontario, Chicago):

     In Mexico, they smileas soon as they see another person's face. The waitress did that. To me. She did it as she approached the table, smiling immediately when she saw me. This is touching, isn't it?
     The whole country is friends with itself. 
     Mexico attempts to survive as a culture of empathy, but its world seems to me traumatized, dominated by the culture to the north. That culture to the north is a frenzy of suicidal individualism. 
     There are two different ways of life here. These are of course two different ways of life: individualistic and socialistic. But one dominates the other. One society is dominating the other one. The country of Mexico is traumatized. This is so because the world to the North turns its back on empathy. It will not admit to empathy. This traumatizes Mexico, and Mexico becomes a world traumatized by a world to the north that turns its back on empathy. Or seems to. This is all pretty simple and death stares from the wall in the form of
the wooden statue of a Spanish Conquistador. In fact there are two statues. The face of the second is hidden in shadow. But from the boots, it looks Spanish.


     This restaurant could also be called "57 varieties of weirdness," of which the conquistador statues erupting from the wall are only one example. And that includes some of the people who work there.

Ugly People and Economics

____
capitalism is fascinating if we overlook how ugly it is in general. The human race is an ugly race. Human behavior over the past two thousand yars ain't pretty. And into this ugly world emerges capitalism.
      Capitalistic behaviors are behaviors engaged in in the world by these ugly persons of the human species/race. Once you consider the circumstances you see that the phenomena of capapitalism are neither bad nor good.
     What are capapitalist behaviors? Capitalist behaviors are certain behaviors of individuals within capitalism. What is the nature of these behaviors? Can we clarify? They have as a goal the making of money ----- that phrase is itself vernacular, and crude, of course. If not ugly.


     Now, when these persons do what is called making money, what are they doing? This is the kind of question that a real scholarly study concerned with the subject matter of economics would pose but that is not what universities do. When they engage in he scholarly study of economics, they continue instead to study the wrong thing.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

October 02, 2011

____
Why don't stupid people just go away? Why do they need to bother me today?
     All societies need to deal with their resident stupid peoples so this is a philosophical question of deep significanceI mean it. I might not be putting it into the right words exactly but it gets at a deeply relevant area of inquiry. Sort of an "ask, don't tell," maybe thing. Thing<-->maybe. The question could be askid bout any society. A humane society is humane period. To the stupid as well; but they have to be somewhere. Where? And we have in the past done a lot of inhumane things to them so I do know that it's sensitive.
     But perhaps what is also relevant is that the stupid are just getting too much equality and power.  After all: all they need is money. In this stage of capitalism, do you really think that there is any systematic means by which certain irresponsible members of society are kept from it? Not only do the stupid have too much money but also they've all done got their own websites. So, that's the problem. Earlier today I accidentally bumped into yet another "Austrian" economics website.
     This kind of person is economically stupid, or, you might say, stupid-plus-thinks-he's-an-economist. He is not even slightly interesting to me. No, not anymore, because I have seen enough! Aren't they supposed to be living in the Alps? Or maybe in a tar paper shack somewhere. Maybe just outside of the little town that kicked them out.
     Hiding under a rock, perhaps I meant to say. Somewhere? Over the rainbow? No, not over the rainbow. Instead, they think they are actually intelligent. And there my friends is the problem.
     Yes, I think I nailed that one. And I think it is really a problem. The internet is not some great development for "the cause" of democracy and etc. and so on and I don't know whether anyone still believes that. This is the whole point. No, just the opposite: the internet should have been properly regulated; what you should have done is have both a business internet and a public access internet---two sections to it. It should have been diverse. Start dividing and sorting one thing from the other. The internet had the same need for diversity as everything else in a democratic and capitalistic society. But you can't do that because it is blocked by the same forces which tell us you can't regulate capitalism. If we would just regulate capitalism...then it (and we) could have a chance...

     Remember that stuff about how we're an empire now? It was a big, popular theme there awhile around 2003 or something like thatsomehow linked to the American aggression in Iraq. "We are an empire." "Empire Lite." Well, OK. We rule the world for a little bit of time. Now regulate capitalism.

     I agree that we need to have an "open" society. This means that  bums should be on the same streets as the professionals are, as the businessmen are. Maybe this is about "identity." I know I am seeing that word around lately. I have stopped reading post-modernism, though, some time ago.

     There are some questions here about "integrity." Where the integrity in a human society? It has to be there no doubt. But how is integrity to be preserved? How is integrity to be preserved in a free society? Such a society is one where those lacking in integrity (that's the real meaning of my word "stupid," I suspect) mix right in with everybody else.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Big Welcome to a New Reader

A big welcome to officer Simmons of the C.P.D. You have a big city to pacify, officer. Good luck.