Dauntless
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tomjasz said:
Bernie's a turd, he's way over 45, we count on your vote.
Anyone who says Mr. dual birth claims in Kenya and America when one gets him more than the other Is somehow not a liar has been a dick 8 years longer.
I will be voting for Bernie Sanders
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Bernie's a turd, he's way over 45, we count on your vote.
Anyone who says Mr. dual birth claims in Kenya and America when one gets him more than the other Is somehow not a liar has been a dick 8 years longer.
The Toecutter
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Dauntless said:
About that...
https://technical.ly/baltimore/2016/10/12/geofeedia-baltimore-county-police/
https://www.rollingstone.com/cultur...tary-technology-to-secretly-track-you-126885/
The police in Baltimore were using facial recognition technology to arrest peaceful protestors during the Freddie Gray protests over warrants issued for minor "crimes" like unpaid court fees and parking tickets, while letting the violent rioters go and destroy the city. Something as innocuous as getting a drivers license or ID card gets one enrolled into a facial recognition database to be weaponized against them, with no opt out. These enrollment photos are then used to match one up to social media accounts and other public datasets, or even live footage, without the consent of the person whose likeness is exploited. Somehow, we're expected to believe this is not a violation of the 4th amendment or that we're still a "free country" when this same government criticizes China as a dictatorship for doing the same thing.
Talk about the priorities of police and government in this country...
The power elite allow plenty of meaningless, unfocused, "nonsense" dissent. It's when the elite are challenged by something effective and meaningful that they crack down, as France's government did to the Yellowvest movement. Those who fall into their crosshairs quickly find out they have no rights. Nonsense dissent is as good as none at all as far as the powers that be are concerned.
The Toecutter
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neptronix said:
If you're ever targeted for prosecution/persecution, you will find out first hand just how far the authorities are willing to go to get you to comply. Official policy can be summarized as "comply or die."
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/03/john-w-whitehead/the-truly-good-citizen-in-a-police-state/
While it is true the lawmen are grossly outnumbered, everyone they target is generally kept isolated and quickly drained of resources when they fall under their crosshairs to serve as an example to any others who might defy them.
What the authorities fear is the people banding against them. Why? Because it works. The bullies only know force, and it's an equal or greater show of force that must be presented to get the bullies to back down. It worked for Cliven Bundy during the standoff with the Bureau of Land Management. The government stood down, knowing that they'd have significant losses and knowing that their target had widespread popular support around the country.
The authorities greatly fear the people turning on them. This is why they have set up infrastructure for massive, ubiquitous, instantaneous, unconstitutional, and constant surveillance of our finances, our health records, our use of our electronic devices, our travels, our biometrics, and everything else that can be spied upon with current technology. The law enforcement, intelligence, and military organizations funded with our tax dollars have done training exercises that involved locking down entire cities, some of them even live drills on American citizens under the guise of fighting terrorism(Remember Boston in 2013?). This is also why they want to disarm us, and they're getting a right-wing president Trump to voice his support for the "red flag" laws as one of the steps toward that end, as they know that if a Democrat supported this unconstitutional proposal, the right/conservatives would likely revolt.
You can indeed get away with a lot. I sure as hell have broken many laws(although I'd argue that what I did is not a crime, as there was no victim). However, things change if you ever are placed under scrutiny by those in power, even if you have done nothing wrong at all, and all of us are being spied upon so that every piece of data about us can be weaponized against us should someone in power deem it useful to their ends.
Dauntless
100 TW
The big thing with the left now is to get you realizing they know they're wrong without being honest about it and admitting they are wrong.
I've been in the crosshairs, I've taken care of it. But I'm not the 'Oh hopeless me' type. You will not understand anything about our political system until you accept that the Trump campaign WAS this 'Effective and meaningful challenge to the elite.' Their crackdown hasn't worked yet, has it? And no, their is no explaining it away.
People need to stop romanticising about the revolution and start thinking how to fix the broken pieces. Trump hasn't quite been 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,' but he sure hasn't lived up to the promise. Obama was certainly WORSE than the old boss. Viva la revolucion.
[youtube]cT0loK0UEBQ[/youtube]
Oh and, the article is WRONG. If you don't want to be in a fight, don't start one. Don't tell yourself that your get tough attitude is going to do the trick. Don't tell yourself you're going to fix this right here, right now. And especially don't tell yourself you're going to win. There is the real story.
John Blake said:
Ryan Cooper said:
The Toecutter said:
I've been in the crosshairs, I've taken care of it. But I'm not the 'Oh hopeless me' type. You will not understand anything about our political system until you accept that the Trump campaign WAS this 'Effective and meaningful challenge to the elite.' Their crackdown hasn't worked yet, has it? And no, their is no explaining it away.
People need to stop romanticising about the revolution and start thinking how to fix the broken pieces. Trump hasn't quite been 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,' but he sure hasn't lived up to the promise. Obama was certainly WORSE than the old boss. Viva la revolucion.
[youtube]cT0loK0UEBQ[/youtube]
Oh and, the article is WRONG. If you don't want to be in a fight, don't start one. Don't tell yourself that your get tough attitude is going to do the trick. Don't tell yourself you're going to fix this right here, right now. And especially don't tell yourself you're going to win. There is the real story.
The Toecutter
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Dauntless said:
The problem with the "left" is that those in U.S. political positions of power on a Federal level that identify as such aren't really leftists, aside from Bernie Sanders, AOC, Ilhan Omar, and the rest of a small group that can be counted on your fingers. None of those who could qualify as left in the U.S. are actually hardcore communists, and at most, a number that can be counted on one hand very slightly lean towards being socialists(usually in the "Nordic democratic socialism/hybrid Capitalism" sense and in not in the "seize the means of production and make them worker-owned" sense).
The rest of the Democrats, most of whom have the gall to refer to themselves as leftists, are to the right of Ronald Reagan on economic issues, firmly in support of the corporate takeover of the U.S. and monetization of every aspect of existence, are actively engaged in selling the nation's economic future out to multinational corporations on Wall Street, and with the with the exception of a narrow range of identity politics issues the "left" is every bit as if not moreso authoritarian than the Republicans with their adamant support of unaccountable government secrecy, the deep state, the erosion of free speech, unconstitutional mass surveillance, persecution of whistleblowers, obsession with crime and punishment, and endless wars. And of the "left" that actually is truly left and exists in U.S. politics, practically none of them are competent.
The Democrats in positions of political power at the federal level, like the Republicans, mostly range from an authoritarian variety of quasi-Capitalists to outright totalitarians and fascists. There are precious few actual centrists, libertarians, or leftists among any of the Democrats or Republicans at the Federal level. It's almost entirely neoliberals and neoconservatives in both parties, with perhaps the exception of Bernie Sanders(slightly left-wing authoritarian), Rand Paul(far-right quasi-libertarian), AOC(left-wing moonbat with low IQ and almost no discernible platform outside of identity politics), Illhan Omar(quasi-socialist more concerned with identity politics issues than economic issues), and Tulsi Gabbard(what appears to be an ACTUAL CENTRIST), and a precious few other exceptions.
Sure, there is a contingent of Democrats in congress that are hardcore cultural Marxists, but that has zero to do with actual Marxism and the economic theory Marx proposed, and more to do with forcing a new series of authoritarian cultural precepts and identity politics issues in effort to destroy white culture while enforcing some bizarre view of "equal rights" on everyone by giving special privileges and rights to small minorities of the population at everyone else's expense. The cultural Marxists are rabidly anti-free speech under the guise of supporting political correctness, and do everything they can to deny biological and physical differences between groups of people. But the Democrats are every bit as capitalistic and extreme as the Republicans when it comes to economic policy and support of aristocracy. It boggles the mind why the unrepresented left-wing in the U.S. supports the Democrats, as they have very little in common. In fact, Trump's platform during the 2016 (s)election was to the left of Hillary's when it came to economic issues, and Trump is rabidly right-wing, so it was quite amusing seeing all the left-wing snowflakes reduced to tears that their chosen Queen Tapeworm wasn't coronated as planned after the DNC rigged the primaries to keep Sanders out(Wikileaks released the emails proving this).
You can have your fascism with discrimination against white men(Democrats), or you can have your fascism with discrimination against minorities, immigrants, LGBTQs, and women(Republicans), but you're never allowed to vote for a candidate that falls outside the narrow spectrum of ideals found between neo-Liberalism and neo-Conservatism, two extreme right-wing, totalitarian, fascist ideologies. Most of the American people fall outside of this narrow spectrum of ideologies, so it is no surprise that congress often has approval ratings in the single digits and increasing numbers of Americans no longer vote and feel as if their views and input doesn't matter.
Of the common people who identify as leftists(as opposed to politicians at the Federal level), including economic Marxists, socialists, left-wing anarchists, left-libertarians, authoritarian-leaning left-wing populists, and the like, they have almost zero representation in U.S. politics. Candidates with such views are screened out of the Democratic party and as a result of being forced into 3rd parties in order to run for office, are kept off the ballot by a series of rules lobbied into place by the Democrat and Republican parties. The actual left is at least 1/4 of Americans, and having virtually no representation, they are growing increasingly restless and frustrated at the disenfranchisement they have suffered since the middle of the 20th century. Bernie Sanders grabbing their attention and gaining the support he did in 2016 occurred because he spoke of a small number of the issues that concerned these unrepresented demographics composing both the left and the actual center, regardless of whether or not he was authentic.
And by the looks of things, Mr. Sanders is not at all authentic. While Sanders has one of the less-bad platforms of the candidates in the race, don't expect him to deliver on his promises if he gets into office. He's a sellout to bloated defense contractors while claiming to want to draw down the wars and wasteful spending they entail. He won't even pay his own staffers the minimum wage he claims to want everyone else to have, a minimum wage that really wouldn't even put us where we were in the 1960s in terms of purchasing power per hour of work, let alone account for productivity increases.
To me, Tulsi Gabbard seems to be perhaps the only genuine candidate of the Ds in the race. It doesn't help that, like Trump, she is a gun grabber of sorts.
The Toecutter
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Dauntless said:
Do tell.
Was it effective and meaningful? Was it any kind of change at all?
The consolidation of wealth into increasingly fewer hands at the expense of the rest of society, the militarized police state, the forever wars, the coddling of Wall Street, the endless purchasing of laws and policy by K-street lobbyists, the increasingly bloated size of government, the endless deficit spending and fiat money printing, the unconstitutional industrial-scale surveillance of everyone, the declining living standards for the common person, the unaccountable nature of the Deep State, all continues unchecked no matter how many Americans become frustrated and angry at it all. Americans pay the taxes, but the special interests get the representation, and the cultural Marxism offered as "opposition" by the Democrats changes not a damned thing about it and only serves to further divide the American people along superficial lines.
Trumplet, Dumplet, toilet crumpet winning the 2016 (s)election did not occur in a vacuum. There's a deeply seated discontent with the status quo in this country, and it shows.
Unfortunately, Trump isn't draining the swamp. He's populating it with his favorite critters as he expands it. This administration has been suffering a constant plague of scandals and resignations, dare I say even MORESO than the last one, and it's not easy to top O'Duce's two terms of a horror show on this metric before one's first term is up.
The crackdown is not yet even in full force. The surveillance infrastructure that has been built around us since 9/11 is something that not even the East German STASI had. In many ways, certain conditions in this country regarding civil liberties are comparable to or even worse. It's not just the intelligence agencies hiring informants to infiltrate and sabotage protest movements, the constant and unavoidable datamining, and the gradually decreasing personal autonomy. It's the totality of constant surveillance weaponized against you, not just in little ways like denying you employment through background checks/credit reports/security clearances and being forced to submit to government piss inspectors, but in bigger ways such as your family being able to be broken up by corrupt agencies that have been caught trafficking and sexually abusing children if you do something the government says you're not allowed to do or get arrested at a protest, or SWAT teams busting down your door at 3AM for no reason at all and having the ability to murder you and your loved ones with next to no accountability or recourse.
The crackdown can target anyone, for a frivolous reason or even no reason at all. The resources to expand it continue to be allocated, and if you are targeted by it for persecution, there's virtually limitless resources to be allocated towards that end while you will drain your life's savings fighting it in court if you even get the opportunity to do so. Surely you understand that the construction of the massive NSA datacenter in Bluffdale, Utah, the operation of fusion centers in all 50 U.S. states compiling comprehensive dossiers on U.S. citizens, the monitoring of our phone calls and financial transactions, the gathering of our health records, the gathering of our biometrics through drivers license and ID card issuance with infrastructure being built to track said biometrics in real time in order to monitor everything everyone does, are not being conducted and financed with taxes and debt without the eventual intent to use it.
“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities. ”
― Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era
It's not a "few broken pieces." Society itself is broken. It no longer is working for anyone but a small few. The working people pay the taxes, but the wealthy and the special interests get the representation and write the laws. There's nothing romantic about a revolution, but it is definitely a necessary course of events to destroy the status quo, for better or for worse.
This we can agree on, and Obama's predecessor was pretty damned awful, having started two unconstitutional wars of aggression and ushering in a surveillance state that would make Hitler and Stalin green with envy. Kind of hard to top that. But will Trumpolini prove himself even worse than O'Duce on the whole?
Dauntless
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https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-sector-income-finances/highlights-from-the-farm-income-forecast/
The Toecutter
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Dauntless said:
At the same time...
https://www.tsln.com/news/farm-loan-delinquencies-and-bankruptcies-are-rising/
http://endoftheamericandream.com/ar...t-farming-crisis-in-modern-history-is-upon-us
https://www.fsa.usda.gov/news-room/...-planting-crops-on-more-than-19-million-acres
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-16/midwest-farm-loan-repayment-issues-hit-highest-level-1999
Meanwhile, while the family farms are going tits-up, Mr. Trump is bailing out all of the businessmen posing as farmers:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019...y-slickers-dc-lobbyist-and-farms-golf-courses
...with emergency meetings on their behalf...
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019...armers-prompted-emergency-oval-office-meeting
In short, what the government is claiming(the USDA this time), once again, is not lining up with reality. Big agribusiness will use this as an opportunity to further consolidate its control over the nation's food supply. You'll be able to have all of the GMOs, glyphosate, neonicinotoid pesticides, artificial flavors, high-fructose corn syrup, nanoparticles and colorings you can afford to eat when there's no more family farms to produce real food and get to bleed out of your asshole on a regular basis as your organs rot from the inside out due to a steady diet of this semi-edible nutrition-void poisonous flotsam posing as food. Then when the abuse of the soil from the repeated monocultures, over-application of pesticides, constant injection of synthetic fertilizers, death of micronutrient-cycling worms/insects/fungi takes its toll and kills the ecosystem off, maybe you'll get to eat Soylent Green!
[youtube]6zAFA-hamZ0[/youtube]
The Toecutter
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Looks like the DNC is dead set against winning the (s)election again by trying to find more bullshit ways to exclude candidates that the establishment doesn't like, this time, their target of exclusion is Tulsi Gabbard:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/a...d_by_dncs_dubious_debate_criteria_141055.html
If she does somehow make it into the next debate, it will be interesting to see what happens. It doesn't help that google censored her candidacy by taking her out of search results and blocking her ad account, which she is suing over:
https://www.libertyheadlines.com/gabbard-sue-google-discrimination/
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/a...d_by_dncs_dubious_debate_criteria_141055.html
If she does somehow make it into the next debate, it will be interesting to see what happens. It doesn't help that google censored her candidacy by taking her out of search results and blocking her ad account, which she is suing over:
https://www.libertyheadlines.com/gabbard-sue-google-discrimination/
Dauntless
100 TW
She needs qualifying 4 polls at over 2% each. Tulsi was a part of the bringing down of Wasserman-Schulz. Some people don't get over it quickly. The Clinton blood feud included having their boo bird hit squad going after her at the convention. I put the video up on the last page, the Clinton campaign sent people into the aisles to handle getting people booing when THEY wanted it, you see Tulsi the target in the video but as she spoke the cheers began to drown them out. Super heroines take many forms.
She has even kept going even with the Democratic party refusing to help her fund raising. Like, if you REALLY want a candidate who isn't sold out, here's one proving it, they can't break her. I mean, I had serioiusly given up on the party, then here comes the dream candidate. Except they're treating her just as I EXPECT them to treat such a godsend.
[youtube]BzYoDOXsNm8[/youtube]
She has even kept going even with the Democratic party refusing to help her fund raising. Like, if you REALLY want a candidate who isn't sold out, here's one proving it, they can't break her. I mean, I had serioiusly given up on the party, then here comes the dream candidate. Except they're treating her just as I EXPECT them to treat such a godsend.
[youtube]BzYoDOXsNm8[/youtube]
The Toecutter
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Dauntless said:
She's getting the Ron Paul treatment precisely because she is sincere about not starting new wars and is highly likely to stop or at least draw down the existing wars. The wars are bankrupting this country. The military-industrial complex that has a disproportionate share of the influence in this country's policy decisions, moreso than the American people themselves have, is seeking endless growth on a finite resource base and feels entitled to other people's money. The war machine that is destroying and enslaving hundreds of millions of people around the world is gradually becoming pointed inward at the people of the United States as their discontent with the status quo grows and massive widespread civil unrest becomes increasingly probable.
The Clintons are thoroughly owned by this military-industrial complex. Hillary even wanted war with Russia, which is a move that could have assured our annihilation had she been placed in office. Instead we got Trump.
To appease this military-industrial complex, Trump has been threatening to start wars in Venezuela and Iran, the latter of which would be especially stupid due to the natural-fortress terrain of its landmass and its capital city and the well-armed allies that Iran has. To his credit, unlike O'Duce this many years into his first term, Trumpolini HAS NOT started any new wars as of yet, in spite of all the blustering and carnival barking. He's also tried to forge peace with North Korea through negotiations, something no other president has dared to attempt.
Had Hitlery Clinton been in office, there's no telling whether there would have been anything left of civilization at this point given her desire to go to war with Russia, given that in all likelihood, it would have quickly went nuclear. Vladimir Putin is not making threats when he talks, he means what he says. Not that the elites care, as they have taxpayer funded bunkers stocked with food and supplies that they could hole up in for the next few years as they let everyone else die of the consequences of their actions...
Tulsi Gabbard, in contrast to the above, represents a fresh dose of sanity. Were her own party not actively engaged in sabotaging her candidacy as they did to Sanders last time around, she might have a very good chance at winning the election. The Democratic Party would rather lose to Trump again than win with an honest candidate.
One would think that the Democratic Party die-hard true-believers would catch on to this scam... but alas. The bulk of the Democratic party followers who call themselves left-wing or centrist yet go on to support right-wing fascists who are pretending to be center-left all because the candidates have a "D" next to their name, remind me of the crowd present in the following scene from the remake of "The Manchurian Candidate":
https://youtu.be/mw8HAgJ_ccw?t=71
You know, as they all say, art imitates life...
tomjasz
1 GW
Dauntless is a secret libtard.
Dauntless
100 TW
tomjasz said:
And it's no secret you're always just a tard.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/27/americas/brazil-rejects-g7-aid-amazon-intl/index.html
The Toecutter
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Dauntless said:
It's a shame to see the indigenous cultures destroyed in the manner that is occurring. The rainforest is irreplaceable. The amount of biodiversity present within it is staggering, and there are many unique/rare species within it going extinct every hour due to habitat loss. The real tragedy is that there is no real need to destroy it to make farmland. Were the wealth in Brazil more evenly distributed, there would be less of the poverty driving the desperation that causes people to destroy the rainforest at the behest of the industry leaders seeking to make more money from its destruction, desperate people doing the job for a mere fraction of the wealth generated while the captains of industry take the bulk of the loot. The soil in the forests erodes away very quickly when the forest is cleared, and the farms are only viable for a year or two. That turns the modified land into a permanent desert, with not much of anything living on it, as the indigenous species to the area are adapted to life in the forest. If enough forest is destroyed, the weather patterns could irreversibly change as well, leading to more deforestation.
The tribes live a totally different life from the rest of Brazil. The individuals within the tribes generally devote much less than 30 hours a week to obtaining the necessities of survival, they do not need money to live, and they are generally happy with what they have. They have plenty to eat and sufficient shelter to be comfortable, and lots of leisure time to you know, live, free time that that workers in industrializing and industrialized countries never seem to have. There are plenty of Brazilians that work 60+ hours a week and are perpetually deprived of the things they need to live, never having enough to be satisfied. The fact that the Brazilian leadership wants to take this away from the tribes by destroying their land and their way of life is disgusting.
This said, I'm not sure if the translation of what the tribes have spoken is correct in the video. Watch the song they sing then look at the translated subtitles. Something seems odd about that, as the sung lyrics don't change when the translation does?
I would not be surprised if the Amazon rainforest were to be completely torn down at some point in my lifetime, decades from now.
The Toecutter
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https://www.activistpost.com/2019/0...ly-serving-insiders-with-money-and-power.html
Here's the poll:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6336787-19305-NBCWSJ-August-Social-Trends-Poll.html
It's a broken system, top to bottom. The rot is in every level, from the unaccountable deep state at the top of the Federal Government all the way down to the local level. Intuitively, increasing numbers of Americans are beginning to realize this. Fixing it isn't going to be easy, if it's even possible.
Here's the poll:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6336787-19305-NBCWSJ-August-Social-Trends-Poll.html
It's a broken system, top to bottom. The rot is in every level, from the unaccountable deep state at the top of the Federal Government all the way down to the local level. Intuitively, increasing numbers of Americans are beginning to realize this. Fixing it isn't going to be easy, if it's even possible.
Dauntless
100 TW
My guess would be that once the Amazon is burned down, there's no need to preserve it any longer. They can build what they like. 'The indigenous what? We see nothing they could be indigenous TO!'
https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/reports/sarah-begum-485566
https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/reports/sarah-begum-485566
The Toecutter
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Dauntless said:
If it ever gets to that point, the area where the rainforest used to exist will be uninhabitable outside of climate-controlled buildings. Just think of the sorts of dust storms and extreme weather that would result without those forests. The people living in the area might be able to then build what they want, but it likely would be of little value once any available resources are strip-mined away. There's a good reason that most deserts have very low population densities or are sometimes uninhabited altogether.
The problem with most modern capitalists is that they only think of short term immediate gains, most of which end up flowing to those at the top of the hierarchy. What makes the natural world so valuable is that the resources it provides are renewable, if and only if it is properly managed and cared for, and as that natural world is destroyed, the society destroying it becomes more reliant upon resources that are non-renewable, resources already controlled by a small few and require money for individual people to acquire, as opposed to what the natural world could provide to everyone for free. As the resources eventually become more scarce, living standards will inevitably crumble, and the society may even get to a point of collapse as a result.
The problem is, that when such a collapse occurs, and there's no natural world left to support what remains of that society, the population of the society will collapse and scarcity will be a way of life for anyone who remains. Easter Island is a perfect example of this, where the people who lived on it stripped the island bare in order to build more Maoi.
In spite of all of our science, technology, and industry, humans are not above the laws of nature. At least the tribes in the Amazon, among others, still understand this, at least in part because they still know how to live within it and the live with constraints it imposes and benefits it provides. The vast majority of those living in the industrialized world do not understand this. Ted Kaczynski did, and he was considered an extremist at least in part because of this understanding. Agree or disagree with his actions and/or writings, he saw the writing on the wall.
Turning the entire planet Earth into a giant globalist plantation riddled with McMansions, gleaming "smart" cities, and shopping malls for those born into privilege, and slums for everyone else, webbed with roads and utility infrastructure everywhere, will probably make it more resemble the Earth depicted in Blade Runner 2049 than Easter Island, and humanity very well could get the Earth there this century. China has already destroyed 99% of its forest.The renewable resources the Earth can currently provide are diminishing due to habitat destruction, and what remains is not going to go very far among what is projected to be 10.5 billion people sometime this century. It doesn't help that the wealthiest 1% of the population account for more of the resource consumption than the bottom 90% combined, either... so most will not benefit from the arrangement.
Should humanity succeed in killing off the ecology that nurtured its existence, humanity too will likely die off. Afterwards, the natural world may or may not recover over hundreds of thousands or even millions of years depending upon the extent of the damage.
“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish has been caught, and the last river has been poisoned will we realize that we can not eat money.” -Alanis Obomsawin, of the Abenaki Tribe
stormie sondors would get more votes.
the ebike, let alone the dude.
the ebike, let alone the dude.
MJSfoto1956
10 kW
The Toecutter said:
a.k.a. "those pesky externalities". Modern capitalism has an externality problem. Sweeping the mess you make under the rug so that someone else bears the cost is not "capitalism" per se but something else. What we need is a reboot: Capitalism 2.0 wherein externalities are taken into account by the venture and mitigated by the venture by floating bonds to cover externalities and/or insurance. If the costs of such externality-mitigation is too great to show a profit, then that venture has no right to exist. Back to the drawing board.
P.S. it is always the taxpayer who ends up footing the bill
Dauntless
100 TW
More proof Bernie ain't up to the fight.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/08/28/boxing-bernie-sanders-moos-pkg-ebof-vpx.cnn
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/08/28/boxing-bernie-sanders-moos-pkg-ebof-vpx.cnn
The Toecutter
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MJSfoto1956 said:
While there is an externality problem present, there's a few problems with the solutions bandied about. "Floating bonds to cover externalities and/or insurance" will not bring back a rainforest, or put the methane released from the Siberian permafrost back into the ground, or raise from the dead those who have died from cancer caused by a company dumping toxic waste into the air/ground/water. For that matter, all of these things are difficult to put a price on, not just because renewable resources or human lives can continue producing things humanity uses, not just because GDP is a flawed measure(and a highly manipulated and political number at that), and not just because these things are worth something greater than the impact of the sum of their parts on the marketplace. What's the price of a can of beans to a man who is on the verge of starving to death and cannot find anything to eat, at any price? What's the price of a tank of oxygen to an old man living off of an iron lung? What's the price of a bottle of water to someone in the middle of the desert on the verge of dying of dehydration? What's the price of electricity to someone whose got a family member living at home on life support and the power is cut off from inability to pay?
If you can actually figure out a process to find a numerical price for these things, then you are thinking little different from Martin Shkreli. And that there is the problem with the economic system we are living under. EVERYTHING is being monetized, and less and less things are free in this world. Then, with so many things monetized, what advantages does that confer to those who control the supply of money and the printing press? What disadvantages does this confer to someone who has no money or access to money?
Pricing externalities into everything, while a good idea on the surface, fails to address the problem inherent in the economic system we live under. Things that are priceless, cannot be accurately monetized, and monetization of more things only adds yet more opportunity for exploitation and corruption by those with more money than most, and more layers of red tape and bureaucracy between people and those same people living their lives.
Man's perceived dominion over nature is one of his greatest follies. With nature itself generally having been parted out, monetized, and sold off to those with money, it has put humanity at a crisis point. There was a time before money existed, when people could get everything they needed for free. Sure, they still had to WORK for what they needed, and they did not by any means live in a utopia where they always had what they needed or wanted, but there was something to be said about the state of humanity before people were reliant upon money for every little thing they wanted to do. The paleolithic period of humanity was very much egalitarian. There is no reason industrial civilization couldn't be closer to egalitarianism than it is now, and it would alleviate very many problems by itself, but Capitalism tends very much away from egalitarianism by its nature. So to does Government itself.
ZeroEm
1 MW
This is well put, hats off.
Dauntless
100 TW
The Toecutter said:
That's just too much. When John Smith said "He who does not work, does not eat," he was saying it to the spoiled aristocrats hanging around Jamestown waiting to be waited on. For there to be any food, there would have to be more farming activity. It worked until a conspiracy (Apparently) caused an "Accident," so that the injured Smith was sent home and a more amenable administrator was allowed to show the proper respect. The cannibalism began shortly after.
So many seem to expect to say they NEED something, causing it to exist. It doesn't. You're going to talk as though some wonderdrug has to be provided to someone regardless, but if they can't pay the bills producing it, then no, it won't exist. Don't waste time demanding.
Sometimes I can't help but wonder what people think that egalitarian and altruism mean. Nonnative english speaker Ayn Rand was so confused at hearing the way it was used in the U.S. she made speeches decrying this stealing from one poor party to give to another that we Americans called "Altruism," when in fact she was right, that's not altruism at all. Charity at the point of a gun is not charity, it's crime. No skin off the nose of the one doing the "Charity" for the third party.
Don't know if she made this up or not, but Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum (Ayn Rand's real name) got one thing right. Charity and justice are the polar opposites. Justice is not charitable, charity is not just. Sounds like something Aristotle would have said, but I've never seen it attributed to him. The Randian point is that without the efforts of the rational and the just, society collapses. Keep in mind this woman was the mentor of Alan Greenspan.
Oh, but the surrational always seem to rule the day, eh? "You can KEEP your current health plan." And of course it's WRONG to acknowledge reality when it bites.
The Toecutter
100 kW
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Dauntless said:
I find no disagreement with any of this.
I do have a problem with an economic/political system where there are people who do indeed work very hard but don't eat, which exists today, all so that a small minority of people can eat AND have everything they want along with riches working people will never see, without having to work for any of it.
In the case of the wonderdrugs, Mr. Shkreli didn't produce them. He bought patent rights off of others who did, and hiked the price up to whatever his captured market, which had no viable alternative other than to do without(and possibly die), would pay. A drug that had a nominal break-even cost of $1.00/pill to produce went for $700/pill.
The workers who actually brought the drug into existence got almost none of the profit from that. Due to patent law and U.S. drug import restrictions, competitors weren't allowed to step in and undercut that outrageous price.
You see, having vastly more money than everyone else in this society currently does give you the power to demand, just like Mr. Shkreli demanded yet more from sick people, who would do whatever they could to pay. People very similar to Mr. Shkreli were able to demand the government allow them a monopoly and a captured market, for products that they themselves did not produce or develop, a government using the barrel end of a gun to enforce whatever the Mr. Shkrelis of the world demand.
There was nothing necessary about any of this. In fact, a society that seeks stability should not tolerate this. It is also one of the points I was making in my last post.
Of course, the rich will keep demanding, even after there's nothing remaining on the planet to be demanded. Then they will eat each other, figuratively AND literally, when that time comes.
Those are two entirely different words with entirely different meanings.
Agreed.
The modern version of capitalism(or crony, parasitic socialism/capitalism hybrid, whatever you want to call it) that is the economic system we are living under is indeed robbery(as opposed to charity) at the point of a gun. Working people are looted not just by the government to give petty handouts to the poor, but they are looted by employers that take most of the money generated by the employee's work, employers that generally enjoy a tax structure that taxes them comparatively less than their employee is taxed.
The looting by the employer is less direct, but given that the U.S. has gone from a society where people had possessions to one where people own entire pieces of the natural world as "private property", and given that most people have no true ownership of "private property"(allodial title issuance being a thing of the past and all, today only held by dynastic banking families like the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Morgans, Warburgs, ect, forcing those without allodial title to pay the state rent on property they supposedly "own"), and given all of the various anti-vagrancy laws and such on the books, the looting by the employer is every bit as much done at the point of a gun as is the looting by the state. Indeed, a law enforcement apparatus exists to assure the rich "employers" aren't looted of their gains by those who have far less, whether those gains are ill-gotten or not. Howard Zinn, among others, has documented a long sordid history of law enforcement and its ancestor organizations acting on behalf of wealthy employers to keep labor from demanding and receiving a more fair share of the fruits of their work.
People generally don't spend most of their lives working to make others who are already rich even richer off of their hard work because they want to. They do so because they are deprived of what they need to survive or thrive when they refuse to cooperate with this unfair arrangement or even if they don't have the opportunity to cooperate in their desperation. Couple this with the fact that alternatives to this arrangement are generally non-existant due to societal constructs, alternatives that would otherwise have existed freely in nature(there's a few exceptions that exist for those wealthy enough and with the right opportunity to be self employed, or those who "own" land, but that requires a favorable series of conditions that most people can't meet).
There is nothing rational or just about the actions of people like Mr. Shkreli, and those similar to him that are ruling over the rest of society. It's pure unbridled greed, to the point that society has enabled those with vastly more money than everyone else to dominate everyone else.
Charity and justice aren't necessarily polar opposites, but they are totally different things altogether. There are even a limited set of conditions where the two can overlap.
The government we are living under today is neither charitable, rational, nor just, even though it pretends to be all three. Indeed, collapse is very likely to follow.
You mean the former Federal Reserve Chairman that inflated the housing and credit markets into bubbles with his low interest rate policy and adjustable rate mortgages, bubbles that then crashed the economy as those with the money pulled out at the height of the bubbles and stiffed the rest of society with the consequences. All in the name of more growth, growth for it's own sake, growth bought on credit, "money" printed out of thin air via keyboard and loaned to everyone without it at interest. THEN those who got the money after it was first printed, who got to loan it out at interest, got a massive series of taxpayer-funded bailouts when the whole scheme predictably blew up in everyone elses' face? The rich DID get a lot richer from all of this though, and it was no accident... Almost everyone else has either stagnated(if they're lucky) or lost.
Of course, you do know that growth for the sake of more growth IS the ideology of a cancer cell, right? So it makes perfect sense that someone with this ideology had Alissa Rosenbaum as a mentor. It explains in part why this country is a mirror image of the country she fled from, largely due to its economic and monetary policies leading to a sort of authoritarianism. Sort of like "liberal" Californians moving to Austin, Texas and bringing their failed ideologies with them, even from those who possess a seemingly different or even opposite ideology from the reigning ideology of the place they left. This, set in the background of a creeping global ecocide and massive human population bubble.
I for one was not a believer in the "hope and change". There were a lot of desperate people that were willing to believe ANYTHING after Greenspan's monetary policies were a major factor in the series of events that caused them to lose most of their life savings and assets that they spent their lives working to make payments on(with ownership always seemingly out of reach), desperate people who had no choice but to take out loans at interest to afford those things due to the easy availability of credit flooding the markets with "money" and driving inflation of big ticket items like homes, cars, healthcare, and college educations(prices so high and so rapidly accelerating that hard work and savings was inadequate to ever afford them), or be forced to do without. Some "hope and change" that was though, as this "hope and change" continued the series of bailouts for the wealthy institutions that helped cause the financial crisis that Greenspan's tenure preceded when Americans who were already sick of getting looted voted for that "hope and change", many "hope"ing to stop the ongoing theft.
Sadly, even with someone else in office, after two terms of the "hope and change", this someone else promising to "make America GREAT again", the theft continues under his watch just the same. A good number believe Bernie Sanders will fix it. I don't.
Dauntless
100 TW
None of this undoes the comparisons to Martin Shkreli. Which is simply not befitting. Nor is laying much at the feet of Alan Greenspan. How do you convince someone to not to not buy a house they cannot afford? It doesn't take convincing to get them to do it. Greenspan never enters the picture. Over attribution.
As for all these people claiming they can't eat, I'd say in the case of so many it's all that high living. These struggling to survive families whining about their finances after the expensive trip to Disneyworld. My relative who demands to buy a new household appliance, washer/dryer, refrigerator, stove, whatever, before what she has is ten years old. These things work fine when she blows all the money on the most expensive new one out there. Boy, does she howl about the family money troubles. As a teenager her son started lecturing her about money management; he didn't want to hear all the squalling about being so broke after she's squandered everything. Huge numbers of families are like that and refusing to admit it's their own fault.
As for all these people claiming they can't eat, I'd say in the case of so many it's all that high living. These struggling to survive families whining about their finances after the expensive trip to Disneyworld. My relative who demands to buy a new household appliance, washer/dryer, refrigerator, stove, whatever, before what she has is ten years old. These things work fine when she blows all the money on the most expensive new one out there. Boy, does she howl about the family money troubles. As a teenager her son started lecturing her about money management; he didn't want to hear all the squalling about being so broke after she's squandered everything. Huge numbers of families are like that and refusing to admit it's their own fault.
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