By James Kwak
I feel like I should have something deep and original to say about Corey Robin’s fascinating article on nineteenth-century European culture, Nietzsche, and the economic philosophy of Friedrich Hayek. In addition to the things I’m better known for, I studied European intellectual history at Berkeley, with Martin Jay no less, and I’m pretty sure Nietzsche figured somewhat prominently in my orals. But Robin has far surpassed my understanding of Nietzsche, which is almost twenty years old, anyway.
The story, in very simplified form, goes like this. For Nietzsche, and for other cultural elitists of late-nineteenth-century Europe, both the rise of the bourgeoisie and the specter of the working class were bad things—the former for its mindless materialism, the latter for its egalitarian ideals, which threatened to drown the exceptional man among the masses. One set of Nietzsche’s descendants was the political theorists like Carl Schmitt, who “imagined political artists of great novelty and originality forcing their way through or past the filtering constraints of everyday life.” Another, which Robin focuses on in this article, is the “Austrian” school of economics led by Friedrich Hayek.
People often like to think of the Austrians as advocates of liberty, both for its Economics 101 properties (free choice in free markets, under certain assumptions, maximizes societal welfare) and its moral properties. Robin ties Hayek’s conception of liberty, however, back to Nietzche’s. Hayek cared about liberty for ultimately elitist reasons: liberty is not an end in itself, but a condition that enables the select few to make the world a better place. In his words, “The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.” And those select few are likely to be the rich, for only they have the requisite time and freedom from material concerns: “However important the independent owner of property may be for the economic order of a free society, his importance is perhaps even greater in the fields of thought and opinion, of tastes and beliefs.”
This idea is obviously echoed in Ayn Rand’s novels, which celebrate the individual genius standing out against the backdrop of collectivist mediocrity. It has also trickled into the contemporary conservative worship of the ultra-rich. The phrase today is “job creators” (whatever that means), but it has the same moralistic overtones as in Nietzsche and Hayek—a class of people who are better than the rest of us, on whom we depend for our salvation and prosperity, and whom we should not presume to question or constrain through, say, safety regulation or higher taxes (“penalizing success,” in the jargon).
I used to say that most Americans voted against their class interests because they thought they would one day be in the upper class: there’s some poll statistic floating around according to which X percent of Americans think they will one day be in the top 1 percent by income, where X is some high number like 40 or 45. But today, five years after the financial crisis, with median income below where it was fifteen years ago and social mobility at developing-world levels, I can’t imagine many people really believe that vast riches are in their future. An alternative explanation is that many Americans just think the rich are better than they are and that it’s wrong to question your betters. (This is not inconsistent with George Lakoff’s model of the Strict Father and a hierarchical universe as the governing principle of modern conservative ideology.) Nietzsche would no doubt be horrified by most aspects of contemporary American society, but that might give him some comfort.
The Baseline Scenario 
I think many rich Americans feel they are better than the rest simply by looking at #’s of ink on some white paper, rather than on the intellect it takes to manage that same money. They are two totally and completely different things, which is the reason for the term “Having a senior moment” or excuse my ignorance while I change the subject.
“I can’t imagine many people really believe that vast riches are in their future”
The voting is based on the successful messaging that the government is all that stands between one and riches.
Its a powerful story – almost everyone has been frustrated at the DMV, or stuck in traffic, or while filling out a tax return, and doesn’t make conscious notice of roads and schools and rural electrification.
To be fair to Nietzsche, I never detected in his books any great admiration of the materially wealthy. The great men he envisioned were spiritually and intellectually outstanding, not just financially wealthy. His disdain for the masses was in large part disdain for their crude pursuit of material wealth rather than “higher” values. I wouldn’t locate him on the philosophical map anywhere near the swamps of Ayn Rand…
Good article James. It got me thinking about one of your earlier entries on luck and most of life being completely random. If one agrees with such premises as I do, then the pretense of moral superiority disappears, as does the illusion of being in control and the certainty of being in the “top 1%” at some point.
I also believe that most people are scared by such thoughts of random chaos and likely causes existential crises for those that need certainty (religion as a mental crutch to explain the random walk of life is another example). We are more biased as a species than rational (Daniel Kahneman highlighted a few).
Throughout history, people have always invented reasons to enhance the superiority of one class over another – bloodline, race and now wealth. The same pattern repeats over and over, and I think ideally the role of government should be to prevent this from happening. But of course, over time the government itself is influenced more by those “superior” few. Intensely disappointing for a species that claims to be intelligent – I wonder how much of this tendency to proclaim oneself better than others is innate/biological.
Sorry if this post itself appeared random, just thinking out loud.
PS – I wish you’d write more often.
Any yaddayadda that ignores the reality of the free will of man is delusional.
If chaos ruled, you would not know the location of where the sun will rise tomorrow on the horizon.
Every human being has the right to make their life less miserable through honest work.
Man OWNS his life and the rest of the bookkeeping is about how he interacts with the web of life on this planet. Time is equally distributed throughout space as the “NOW”. It’s the brake on stupidity, or used to be.
If approaching the people in another ancient culture and civilization in the “NOW” is done based on the mental masturbations published for the sole purpose of denying people the dignity of acknowledging what they have already EXPERIENCED – enjoyment of the fruits of their HONEST LABOR – then blather on…
Only two senses are involved in gadget world – see and hear.
Thing about how retarded in human experience one becomes, over time, in virtual land…
Selfishness is the acme of ugliness. Every “ism” is a horror.
And no one cares what those men had to say in the “Now”.
I believe the poll numbers you seek are somewhere on the UConn campus, at what used to be called The Roper Center for Survey Research. Another interesting thing in those old polls (at least those I examined in detail 25 years ago): almost everyone in all income strata tell pollsters either that they are “just getting by” or “doing OK.” Very few think of themselves as wealthy. It would be interesting to see how (or if) that has changed since the 80s.
As for Hayek’s devolution, I recommend Angus Burgin’s ponderously complete “The Great Persuasion,” which illustrates his and his movement’s descent into its dangerous and grubby idiocy.
Even Jane Austen called the money to live without working an “independence.” I think it was just considered blatantly obvious in the 19th century that they only people who were truly free to think and say what they wanted were those who didn’t need to work for a living.
Everyone else is subject to the Upton Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
The meaning of the concepts of “liberty” and “independence” seems to have changed a lot over the centuries.
I don’t at all believe that Americans vote against their class interests because they think the rich are better than themselves. The very notion of class seems so much less a part of the American mentality in comparison to many other Western countries–think of France: you’re not getting home on the train today because there’s a strike! Again. I once drove through rural Greece, timing it so as to be able to get gas. There was a strike that shut down the entire electric grid of the country section by section, one section at a time. A few years ago, management tried to interfere with ferry workers on the service between Marseille and Corsica, and a ferry crew pirated a ship and headed out to the deep blue with it. Where they were planning on sailing to who knows. Days later, the French Navy had to land commandos by helicopter to retake it. Class militancy seems so much more a part of the European mentality than the American.
Rather than class, there is something in American beliefs that so rebels against government and entities like it that many Americans end up voting against government in ways that work against themselves and that benefit the rich. At the same time, there is a growing sense of what’s the use of it–look at voter participation rates. It seems that many, many Americans regard the two party system as a complete sellout to special interests and to lobbyists backed by the same. And isn’t it? So this very large and growing number of Americans politically express themselves by simply not voting. This too benefits the rich, leaving the management of governance all the more to themselves.
The filiation between Nietzsche, Hayek and Rand is quite interesting–thanks for the post. Isn’t it an irony that in critical theory the elitist Nietzsche has played such an important role in “liberating” students from the oppressions of ideology?
You bring up an interesting point there TR. One that most people don’t consider deep enough as to where the problem exists. Proving the constitution faulty is no big deal, convincing enough citizens is a completely different story. Just one example is that if no one voted except the 1%, they could still vote themselves in office and continue to operate as they do today, there is nothing but bad feelings and ignorance standing in there way of the constitution. And we are a long way off from 99% of the citizens realizing that their vote really don’t count here, and once you vote, you agree on everything your politician does in the name of being elected and democratic freedom. Breaking free from the chains of life is all the wealth one needs to succeed, regardless of the century or adventure.
“….And we are a long way off from 99% of the citizens realizing that their vote really don’t count here,….”
I think the proof is otherwise, statistically speaking. Closing in on a BILLION in guns – that kept “trickling down”. So, yeah, keep poking your fat finger in people’s eyes and tell them that their vote doesn’t matter – engineers, architects, surgeons, farmers – what they DID with their lives did not matter because you wrote on baseline scenario’s blog today that THEY DON”T MATTER.
Very definition of *delusional*.
The “rich” after this decade of pre-emptive war are scum and We the People have NO respect for you. None. Zip. Nada. If you ever become real threats, you’ll be gone in a blink of an eye.
There’s “thinking” about what it means to be human that leads to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and then there’s the monkey brain neuronal activity that insanely convinces its whombat gonad impulse that the problem is that human beings exist.
None of you are Americans.
But the PROOF has already been supplied – the geeks are using their “freedom” to land robots on Mars. The goons rape pillage and plunder.
Re: Why Do Most Americans Vote Against Their Class Interest?
To be a little more specific, the question is “why do so many white working class voters vote Republican?”
Having grown up in a working class Republican household, having several white working class Republican friends, and having been a white working class Republican myself for many years, I would submit just a few reasons. The first reason, I think, is because the average white working class person often works 50 or 60 hours a week in a job they probably hate. So they are resentful of people they percieve as living high on the hog at government expense. In their minds, they are working there butts of for a modest salary, while others live a leisurely existence on the government tab. Hence, the reason why they often resent welfare programs and the Democractic Party, which they think mainly stands for taking their money and giving it to “unworthy” people.
Another, reason, I think, is that the Republicans have simply done a better job of getting their economic message out. Many white white working class voters simply believe that if you just cut taxes on the rich and de-regulate everything, it will lead to economic prosperity for everyone. The average white working class person doesn’t spend a lot of time resenting the wealthy. Nor do they spend a lot of time thinking that they themselves will be rich. Instead, they are more focused on whether they will have a decent paying job and they believe that Republican economic policies will lead to those jobs. So, in their minds, cutting taxes on the wealthy is more than a fair trade because it will produce more high paying jobs.
Personally, I think most of the Republican economic message is garbage. Tax cuts don’t pay for themselves, cutting top marginal tax rates doesn’t produce rapid economic expansion, etc, etc. But, the Republican economic message is simple to understand and, at least, plausible. Since, most working class people don’t sit around analyzing data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis,it is easy to see why many of them would buy into Republican economic doctrines.
And the Democratic party, certainly doesn’t help itself because its economic message is often garbled. I think Barry Ritholtz put it best when he said, “I am not a Democrat, because I have no idea what their economic policies are; And I am not a Republican, because I know precisely what their economic policies are.”
I think the point I am trying to make is that we liberals can’t sit around saying, “Golly, I just can’t understand why white working class voters vote Republican.” We have to understand from their vantage point why voting Republican makes sense. And then we to have a clear economic message and explain why social safety nets are meant to protect them instead of being a burden to them.
Wow, 40-45% of our great population thinks its wrong to steal from one group to give to another and you explain it as if they are too stupid to vote the money into their own pockets.
Frankly to say that Hayek cared about liberty for ultimately elitist reasons is just wrong. Quite the contrary, when Hayek argues for instance that “only markets can aggregate knowledge that is not given to anyone in its totality” he rejects elitism… Yes in some very narrow markets, like the one for Picassos, the opinion of some few elitists might dominate, but, in most markets, the opinions of all consumers are worth basically the same. You see there is a limit on how much cereals the richest of the rich can eat.
And to turn what constitutes a hymn of individualism “The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use”, into being a hymn solely destined to benefit the rich, sounds to me more like someone out looking to benefit from the majority.
Anonymous, a few points.
1. If taxation is theft, then I want an apology from George Bush and the Republican Party because I was forced to pay for a war I did not support.
2. Most of the white working class people I was talking about do support social security and medicare, which always seems under threat from Republican Party elites like George Bush, Paul Ryan,etc. Here is the point, most people don’t think of social insurance programs as “stealing”, including many people who do vote Republican. But, hey, feel free to call those programs theft and see how many elections your party wins.
Your partisan angle doesn’t work on me. Yes. Progressives have control of both parties . That’s sad. I am not holding bush up as a beacon. U created a straw man. Taking from one person and giving it to another is theft. War is not giving to another person. Check your logic.
Anonymous, are you suggesting for even one moment that the oligarchy does not steal the fruits of the labor of the working class? Are you suggesting that just because market policy implemented and controlled by the oligarchy allows this to occur it is not theft. If so, I have a bridge in Broooklyn you may be interested in purchasing.
Its your logic that is flawed. So according to you, its perfectly fine to tax
to pay for a war, but its immoral to tax in order to fund social safety nets. WTF?
Sorry, but I am not buying your libertarian hogwash. According to you, its
immoral to provide police protection to the poor. What an ugly world this would be if libertarian ideology was fully put into practice.
And you say I am holding up a straw man. But, I bet you voted for Bush because getting a tax cut was the most important thing to you and you probably didn’t give a second thought about whether his war in Iraq was wise.
I may not understand the intent of your big words but u and are free to not go to work tomorrow. We r not threatened with loss of our freedom if we Dont go to our jobs. U set up some mystical oligarchy as the enemy just as I would do the same with a tyrranical govt. I Dont work for the oligarchy. Many of the oligarchy maintain their position with ties to the govt. We both agree there are problems there that can be fixed. U think a larger tyrannical govt should play robinhood with
I will be going to work tomorrow. And I am glad I have a job. And fortunately,
I didn’t lose mine back in 2009.
But, you know what? I had several friends that did. Some of these guys
I knew had worked the same job for 15 or 20 years before getting the pink slip. Fortunately, for them, they were able to get unemployment insurance to tide them over, until they found new ones, which took a while for some. I am glad they got it. I don’t want them or their families to be put out
in the streets. That’s exactly why we liberals put it into place.
I won’t be making any apologies to libertarians for supporting social insurance.
Instead of reaching for ways to get into the socialist-libertarian noise, I would have enjoyed seeing your take on the proposed Brown-Vitter legislation. And as noted by one responder above, I would like to see a little more from you a little more frequently…but assume you’ve been otherwise occupied. We all get busy living life.
While we’re on the subject:
“In “Conservative Thought,” an unjustly neglected essay from 1927, Karl Mannheim argued that conservatives have never been wild about the idea of freedom. It threatens the submission of subordinate to superior. Because freedom is the lingua franca of modern politics, however, they have had “a sound enough instinct not to attack” it. Instead, they have made freedom the stalking horse of inequality, and inequality the stalking horse of submission. Men are naturally unequal, they argue. Freedom requires that they be allowed to develop their unequal gifts. A free society must be an unequal society, composed of radically distinct, and hierarchical, particulars.”
Out of Place by Corey Robin
June 4, 2008 http://www.thenation.com/article/out-place-0
Read more: http://www.thenation.com/article/out-place-0#ixzz2TtkfYbCh
The entire article is thick with insights that clarify the class hypocrisy of
Hayek (Serfs are not American but they were in Hayek’s Austria; meanwhile the road to serfdom is paved with slavery in America).
Everybody thinks they are one of Nietzsche’s high priests / uber-cool exceptionalists love to site him and make themselves feel superior.
Real AMERICANA:
On James Fenimore Cooper
[Excerpt]
“In 1831 in The Bravo Cooper examined an urban commercial aristocracy. Though set in eighteenth-century Venice, Cooper claimed “the Bravo” is “in spirit, the most American book I ever wrote.”21 The “moral” of the tale, he explained, is that throughout history republics have been transformed into aristocracies (LC, 14). It happened to the Republic of Venice. It could happen here as well. “I had an abundant occasion to observe that the great political contest of the age was not” between “monarchy and democracy” as most think, he explained. Monarchy, “except as it is fraudulently maintained as a cover” by “aristocrats,” is “virtually extinct in christendom” (LC, 11- 12). Thus the real political contest of the nineteenth century was between aristocracy and democracy. The Bravo warned Americans of the threat of aristocracy from the dangerous combination of business interests and the legislature.22 In The Bravo the Doge, “a tool of the aristocracy,” is chief of state in name only; like the King of England, his power was long ago usurped by a “luxurious and affluent aristocracy” (B, 367, 104). Commercial interests have transformed the Republic of Venice into an absolute aristocracy in which the people have lost their freedom.
In the era of the American Revolution, Venice was a symbol of what could happen to a free people who were not vigilant about their rights. At the heart of the republican ideology of the Founding Fathers was an intense awareness of both the preciousness and fragility of the liberty for which they fought. Cooper drew upon that ideology and the symbol of Venice to express his fear of an American business aristocracy, the effacement of the Constitution, and ensuing loss of liberty.”
http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/ala/1996ala-axelrad.html
credit:
James Fenimore Cooper Society Website
This page is: http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/ala/1996ala-axelrad.html
Cooper, Aristocracy, and Capitalism
Allan M. Axelrad
(California State University at Fullerton)
Presented at the Cooper Panel of the 1996 Conference of the American Literature Association in San Diego
©1996 by James Fenimore Cooper Society
[may be downloaded and reproduced for personal or instructional use, or by libraries]
Originally published in James Fenimore Cooper Society Miscellaneous Papers No. 7, August 1996
spoiler alert: JPMorgan Seen to Defeat Effort to Split Top 2 Jobs at Bank: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWSyAwyszGQ
“TAMPA, Fla. — Jamie Dimon, the nation’s most powerful banker, appears set to hold onto his title of chairman after JPMorgan Chase’s shareholders defeated a proposal to split the two top jobs, according to people who have seen the preliminary tallies.”
P.S. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oqAU5VxFWs )
Well, collectivist mediocrity is a thing, but it exists in the modern alienated economy, not in an artisan one. Youngsters are not collectively mediocre. The dim multitudes who work in retail wouldn’t be either, if they didn’t have to work in retail.
As an outsider I see Americans being aware of a status quo that robs the middle and working classes, but not believing that any other way is reachable. It’s too big and too uncertain a leap. People believe that property and corporations and IP rights deliver a livelihood as much as they do and nothing else is possible because you know the USSR and Viet Nam and Cuba did not succeed.
Thats a tight response.
Pavlos,
Nobody is saying that we should become the Soviet Union. Come up with a better argument.
“An alternative explanation is that many Americans just think the rich are better than they are and that it’s wrong to question your betters.”
No, I think it is more that they believe this is the best they can do. They are persuaded by the anti-Keynesian arguments and the deficit hawks. And why not? They hear and see them every day.
It’s a form of despair, really—the idea ultimately that neither individual nor social effort can never improve on aristocracy, and a very convenient one for would-be aristocrats. The discredited efficient markets hypothesis is one form of it: no matter what you do, you can never outsmart the all-seeing, all-knowing MARKET. But of course it isn’t true, not even close to true.
And, likewise, the despair is nonsense; economic history from 1950 to 1980 shows it wrong. But living memory does not stand against the endless repetition of the message of helplessness.
There is no aristocracy in the USA.
I’m actually enjoying a laugh at that *faith* that the cabal of people who so OBVIOUSLY used savage brute force – WAR – to become the trillionaires actually think that people RESPECT them for their nihilistic sadism!
ROTFL
Boy, that IS too stupid to RULE…
Like I said – check out how many guns and other weapons are stashed away as *private property* in USA. Then keep telling people that their votes don’t count, that CRIMINALS are too big to prosecute, that MORE manufacturing will be dismantled and shipped to – where? the Congo? or is your blood pressure medication going to come from former cocaine labs in Columbia? Gee, what’s the GLOBAL PLAN for crapping all over the civilizations that people EARNED THE RIGHTS TO THROUGH HONEST WORK? The exact opposite is the truth, go figure.
I guess there are some puppies that won’t stop crapping in the house until you grab them and stick their nose in the poop to make it clear what the problem is…
There is though an AAAristocracy in the US
http://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-financial-aristocracy-in-us.html
With this crowd, have to be specific about WHY there is no aristocracy in the USA.
Occasionally, there were aristocrats in various European and Russian and Oriental and Persian times, LONG past, who were “classic” in the sense that they were the guardians of the quality and the mechanics of their GREAT CIVILIZATIONS. They became GREAT when their educated and genetically health and SANE Middle Class thrived. Like, duh.
You can hardly call the filthy rich in USA today – the war/drug/slave lords renting themselves out as world police while throwing people out of their homes in a massive fraudclosuregate, closing even the factories that make medicine because after de-regulation, the immigrants were peeing in an open bucket next to the manufacturing line that is making diabetes meds – “aristocrats”!
How long are these puerile word games going to go on? I’d suggest STFU for ONE DAY with the promotion of the Luciferian Doctrine as genius new ideas – look it up in the Urantia Book…
One of the “hardliners” of the old guard writing in the 1950s-
Decline of the Old Right
by Murray N. Rothbard
Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) was dean of the Austrian School, founder of modern libertarianism, and academic vice president of the Mises Institute. He was also editor – with Lew Rockwell – of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, and appointed Lew as his literary executor.
“After the death of Taft and as the Eisenhower foreign policy began to take on the frozen Dullesian lineaments of permanent mass armament and the threat of “massive nuclear retaliation” throughout the globe, I began to notice isolationist sentiment starting to fade away, even among old libertarian and isolationist compatriots who should have known better. Old friends who used to scoff at the “Russian threat” and had declared The Enemy to be Washington, D.C. now began to mutter about the “international Communist conspiracy.” I noticed that young libertarians coming into the ranks were increasingly infected with the Cold War mentality and had never even heard of the isolationist alternative.”
====================================================
Cold War mentality in transition; but don’t take the “left’s” word for it!
Per wrote;
‘…when Hayek argues for instance that “only markets can aggregate knowledge that is not given to anyone in its totality” he rejects elitism…’
Exactly right, the elitists are the people–the author of this post for one–who deny Hayek’s insight. It’s in THEIR class interests to obfuscate what Hayek’s philosophy is all about, because that philosophy makes it hard for them to extract economic rents from the rest of us.
http://www.thersa.org/fellowship/journal/videos/michael-thompson
Patrick R. Sullivan
You explained it right as I meant it.
Thanks.
I guess it depends on what is human vs. monkey behavior, occasionally, there is a difference. Not, I guess, when it comes to waving it around for everyone to see – from “the greatest city in the world”, here’s AIPAC at work
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/anthony-weiner-2013-mayoral-race_n_3316704.html
Wall Street’s scrapping the bottom of the barrel to find their sycophants…
Hmmmm…….. ‘Diapers’ vs ‘Twitter package’ in the voting booth, you got me on that one, close call nonetheless: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUlQLOmKD8E&feature=plcp
Talk to the Left; Walk to the Right…Talking Points Austrian Eco 101
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AustrianSchoolofEconomics.html
Menger argued that economic analysis is universally applicable and that the appropriate unit of analysis is man and his choices. These choices, he wrote, are determined by individual subjective preferences and the margin on which decisions are made (marginalism). The logic of choice, he believed, is the essential building block to the development of a universally valid economic theory.
————————————————————————————-
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/AustrianEconomics.html
Methodological individualism. Economics, to an Austrian economist, is the study of purposeful human action in its broadest sense. Since only individuals act, the focus of study for the Austrian economist is always on the individual
&
Methodological subjectivism. An individual’s actions and choices are based upon a unique value scale known only to that individual. It is this subjective valuation of goods that creates economic value.
&
Processes versus end states. An individual’s action takes place through time. A person decides on a desired end, chooses a means to attain that end, and then acts to attain it. But because all individuals act under the condition of uncertainty—especially uncertainty regarding the plans and actions of other individuals—people sometimes do not achieve their desired ends. The actions of one person may interfere with the actions of another. The actual consequences of any action can be known only after the action has taken place.
————————————————————————————-
Rational Choices and market forces:
Interesting! Liberty and Justice …for whom & at what market price?
Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.
The Destruction of America’s Middle Class
CORPORATE FASCISM
Note: At 0:12:09 minutes (freeze frame) minutes into this video you will see a graph for the National Debt represented from 1940 to the Present. It is IDENTICAL to the graph for wealth distribution depicted above in the video “infographic” on the distribution of wealth in America provided above this posted entry.
Make of it what you will…but see for yourself!
Looks like the market can’t set a price on *liberty*.
There is NO PLAN to beat the swords back into ploughshares, so to speak.
I am not talking about disarming, I am talking about stuff like using the “technology” we hold as a UNITED STATES and build a type of bomb shelter in a place like “tornado alley” where people have to live only because of the digging out of oil…but instead, people are being blamed for “procrastinating” – really? Building a school for kids 4-10 years old without a strong room was the fault of an INDIVIDUAL? Or was it a corp plant in the local school board saying “No, too expensive”?
As a country, how much more clear is it that we are not being ALLOWED to set a course that adapts to the NOW – which part of the country has not been knocked down by forces of nature? Being FORCED by made-up monkey brain *isms* to be stupider than the good lord made us!!
WE have the RIGHT to make our lives less miserable and that means telling the vicious apparatchik planted by a corp on the school board to stuff it where it don’t shine – it is NOT too expensive. It just means YOU can’t use government to rob Peter to pay Paul – the goal for managing the shrinking pool of cash among the “working class”.
Paper 154 of The Urantia Book for a discussion about “liberty”. Why be ashamed to fly your freak flag instead of pretending that the *economy* has relationship with the human species anymore?
The health and well-being (MATERIAL vs “liberty”) of the American People is NOT the priority of a federal government that does so much “in secret” that they say has to be done for “national security”. Spending trillions to kill 4 people a Saudi did not like, well, THAT’s what’s important.
Meanwhile, the IRS story is off the public airwaves and replaced with the speculation and prevarication about who is going to get more guns in Syria. Like THAT matters to 330 million USA citizens with a LOT on our plates in the NOW!
Happy navel gazing! Just because there is never an end to being selfish in new and more vicious ways ways does not mean that selfishness is a new “idea” about “liberty” Hardly worth the MIT tuition…
“But living memory does not stand against the endless repetition of the message of helplessness.” Yes, the plutocracy’s ever more efficient public relations juggernaut effectively drowns out most other voices.
Someone’s not getting enough maintenance powder, and they are on their last nerve, and i’m gettin on it.
http://teamcoco.com/video/conan-monologue-05-21-13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/24/i-5-bridge-collapse-caused-by-oversize-load_n_3331363.html
Unbelievable PROPAGANDA – the problem was a “heavy load” and NOT that the bridge should have been “maintained”. Idiotic reporting with a 5year olds ability to understand cause and effect….”straw that broke the camel’s back” is not PC?
There is no other way to go than a SERIOUS and take-no-prisoners Ethical Scientist’s Union. Need to just go in and take over from the DELUSIONAL. USA is completely up for grabs and I think people would “vote in” their own ethical scientists over the *global* filthy rich War/Drug/Slave Lords.who have stolen more viciously than when USA was just a “colony”. Freekin’ CONGO savagery by monkeys in suits dragging their knuckles down Wall Street – wait until the harvest is done, kill them all, and then SQUAT in THE civilization of the slaughtered.
No one has a duty to be ruled, either as an individual or as a collective, by those who OBVIOUSLY have lower intelligence and are completely at the command and control of iniquitors.
A neighbor stunned me with his observation that he never felt threatened by the men who kept their women slammed down with a boot on their throat because he figured they were too stupid to be a threat. I don’t know what woke him up, but he shared with me that “…we’ve been doing the same thing here!….”
I’m getting recruits into my army against the resident “deliverance boy” filthy rich CRETIN here on MIT baseline without any effort. You WILL be taken out. Everyone hates YOU.
Operationally, we have an Apollo 13 moment with the economy.
So all you’ve got are the tools available to use to fix the problem. If life as we know it on the planet is at risk from an algorithm, you don’t have the tools on deck to fix it? No one believes that you don’t. Everything is here in the “Now”, which is all you’ve got with which to work.
Here’s to you Annie.
Corey Robin’s view expressed in The Reactionary Mind is, that conservative=reactionary=counter-revolutionary. Everything that people like Nietzsche and Hayek state in their political/economic philosophies is designed as a justification of hierarchy, inequality, and class stratification that will enable those who are better off to maintain their advantages and pass the advantage down to their children.
Insidious and invidious consumption by the 1% : Media concentration and cultural capture (via free speech but for whom?): OR; Publicity as Public Capture; Privatizing the Commons.
(1)
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/05/25/pbs-why-i-watch-but-dont-contribute-part-deux/#more-64714
(2)
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/27/130527fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all
Convolutions of dissent and reverse reactionary “capture” of reforms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_dissent
Types of suppression include:
Direct action
Indirect actions
Self-censorship
Of course:
“Freedom of speech is a cardinal rule for a free society.[citation needed] Dissent is essential to allow all points of view to be given and considered…”
[However]:
“In academia, the peer review process is occasionally cited as suppressing dissent against “mainstream” theories (part of an overall system of “suppression of intellectual dissent”). Robert Anton Wilson, in “The New Inquisition” (New Falcon Publications, 1991), called this an inquisition of the editors and reviewers of scientific journals, of leading authorities and self-appointed “skeptics”, and of corporations and governments that have a vested interest.”
Techniques of military counterinsurgency appear to be practiced by reactionary groups that seek control over oppositional modes of expression including language, phrases and the operational technology of communication itself that permits the dissemination of alternative thinking from being presented in credible modalities. Rush Limbaugh among others screamed about “equal time” and created a monster movement of ranting against what they popularly slammed as the politicized “left” (red scare associations), BIG Socialism and the “Liberal” media. But the “Capture” of media is much more subtle. REFORM is used to characterize neo-liberal political agendas that privatize the public domain. The ability to finance propaganda matches an ability to put campaign money behind political capture and legislation that follows with insidious results. Witness the past attempts to cancel public broadcasting from political centers that literally hold public finance dangling as a “reform” issue and simultaneously demand “equal” time for private interest views: …using both as an excuse to coerce existing legitimate dissent but not just “pulling finance” but by replacing it. The results complete convolute the system and continues to present itself as free speech and public minded views. Of course the “private” people are always considered as Part of the Public so that “Public Private Partnerships” begin to obscure the lines…but ONLY in one direction.
You are a sick predator, Anonymouseturd. And the very definition of DELUSIONAL. There is NO ONE other than me who has led my life. I have a NOW, always. Already eternal – do you get that?
You are the worse kind of idiot that it is possible for a man to become – one who thinks that every woman is exactly like every other woman. I considered throwing myself against the wall to knock myself out rather than have to continue to stay in the company of pompous, IGNORANT and completely cretin-ous at a genetic level gathering of “American” businessmen making it up as they go along with that one goal in mind, and only that goal. It was that painful to be in their company. Their kind of stupid is SUFFERING for people who KNOW SO MUCH BETTER.
Think about that. Wouldn’t it just be safer for the interests of the “american people” in a stew of 7 billion to acknowledge that there are people in the NOW who YOU understand as much about as a dog knows about the calculus in your excel sheet?.
@Woych, it’s always a trifecta, isn’t it? And way too easy, they have over 2000 pages of how to live in harmony with the original pattern of Paradise, and they launch the opposite of every single step in the process. It’s 1000% nihilistic. Full on nihilism. And who is the virtual reality “commander in chief”…? None other than a cosmically insane alien who was sent here to nurture and protect the earth up through the primary stage of barbarism to a planet of interesting and original lives that are devoted to the adventure of pursuing truth beauty and goodness. “It’s too good” was the dismissive criticism. “let’s try this experiment instead, let’s make a square circle”….I can’t dismiss the possibility of Caligastia since I was 10 years old when I first wondered what went wrong with God’s Plan here on earth….prima facie scientific evidence EVERYWHERE….the hand of man….
Congress tweaking Presidential power, passing the Patriot Act and de-regulating FINANCE while putting a hood over the head of commerce – gee, what could go wrong there for a “superpower”? It appears there never was a “superpower” to begin with…? With the majority of USA history happening after the printing press, was there ever total truth in any of what has been documented in the institutions? It’s been a super extraction of natural resources, and that’s it. Two decades – 50s and 60s – to pop out a little REAL western civilization culture (so BASIC – Lady Bird Johnson just planting flowers along the side of the roads) – and deliverance boyz self-radicalized against even THAT in a hurry and the zios, as you observed, believing that it was Hitler’s use of movies as propaganda that turned the tide against them so they took over control of the media – wave your weenie in their stupid faces so that they let you be the one in charge….
480 people worth a collective total of 2.08 TRILLION have done THEIR math and the numbers work out for spending 40 more years scratching and clawing out the oil from rock and THAT is their “investment” in the future. NO ONE is allowed to mention that for every gallon of gasoline, 1000 gallons of chemicals are left behind and the planet is already covered – oceans included – with a one foot deep layer of discarded plastic that will take centuries to “dissolve”…
So all this self-proclaimed genius in math and science expends itself on financial shenanigans – math for psycho take overs of a super-power in the name of religion?! The very DEFINITION of delusional, no?
Having an “Energy Plan” is the work of the devil?!
As for Obambi – heck, dude, you’ve got the right to have at least 5 mini presidential security detail drones hoover above you (note to self – build in an umbrella pattern) and only you have the “go” button built in as a chip under your skin to push at will, we trust you will use it only as a last resort….everyone has the right to protect their lives against IMMEDIATE force and fraud…not like a militarized and SELF-RADICALIZED CIA is “no prob, man”….you’re going to need a friend or two to really take out that circle jerk of billions in cash, never mind, you promised not to touch them…I forgot….
Rahm shutting down schools to build a basketball court in Chicago is not ADDING to the stories of the devotion people have to the gifts of civilization they WORK to hand down to their great great grandchildren…
Call your members of Congress, and tell them to protect funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting….
Appropo to LIBERTY FOR WHOM…?
Highly recommended:
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/05/25/pbs-why-i-watch-but-dont-contribute-part-deux/
PBS: Why I Watch But Don’t Contribute: Part Deux
Published 1, May 25, 2013 Free Speech , Media , Politics , Society , Uncategorized 28 Comments
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
====================================
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/16538-the-corporate-dictatorship-of-pbs-and-npr
The Corporate Dictatorship of PBS and NPR
Wednesday, 22 May 2013 14:53 By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Program | Op-Ed
““Citizen Koch” is a documentary about money and politics, focusing heavily on the uprising that took place in Wisconsin in 2011 and 2012.
It talks about how the Citizens United decision paved the way for secretive political spending by major players, including the Koch Brothers.
As Brendan Fischer over at the Center for Media and Democracy’s PRWatch points out, the documentary was originally supposed to air on PBS stations nationwide, but its funding was abruptly cut off when, it appears, David Koch was offended.
But why would PBS care if David Koch didn’t like one of their documentaries?
Because, according to Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, David Koch has donated upwards of $23 million to public television. And when you donate $23 million dollars to public television, you get more than just a tote bag or a coffee mug – you get to dictate the on-air programming.
This is the kind of influence and control that we see in mainstream media today too.
Thanks to the giant transnational corporations that own them, mainstream media outlets tailor their programming to appease their corporate backers.
We can’t do anything about the big corporations that own our so-called “mainstream” media, but Public Broadcasting is still, at least in part, both legally and morally a part of our commons.
It’s time to take back our public airwaves, and cut-off the corporate and billionaire control over them, so that David Koch and his buddies don’t get to choose what you watch on TV.
And the only way to do that is to fully fund public radio and television.
Call your members of Congress, and tell them to protect funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, so that it can pick back up its work to “enrich man’s spirit.”
[full credit]:
(This article was first published on Truthout and any reprint or reproduction on any other website must acknowledge Truthout as the original site of publication”
Annie you talk a good tangle, but don’t say a LOT. The stress of you life is more than I can even bear. The loss for answers and constant hunt for them and food at the same time makes me wonder when it is you get a chance to sleep. You’ll get yours in due time, until then stay frustrated and recall, he who smelt it, dealt it, when referring to Mr. predator. And I don’t see you as an eternal, more likely to be extinct in couple years along with a large part of the rest of the crowd who deserve the same treatment. Like I said before, the lord is petrified of your presence, she is terrified of you and for good reason. The level of denial in your country has space like status, and the hate for non like minded individuals is not be believed. Which is why the two of you can never meet, or even know of each other. Because being on different paths leads to different places, and we can’t afford to go where it is you are headed, for that would only lead to civil war, and who wants to live that type of life over again?
I think my dog will do calculus (using excel speadsheets, of course) before Anonymouseturd’s and his DELUSIONS about “your country” understands the only and biggest TRUTH – free will of man.
If you choose to be eternal, you are. Tada! How different is the hand of God from the hand of man? The “difference” in the mind of the “other” – GOD – that the DELUSIONAL mind of man cannot begin to see from inside his burkha of selfishness and sadism and greed.
Meanwhile, what won’t the DELUSIONAL in USA do to ruin the health of the NORMALS? Harvard Professor claims to be able to diagnose a 3 year old with “bi-polar” disorder so as to produce a lifelong consumer of drugs for his pocketbook. Meanwhile, cretins like mouseturd are NOT diagnosed as insane and a threat to society. Ridiculous!
Who CARES about the Kochs? No one listens to their “media” anymore. Especially when all they do is whip out the weenie and wave it in your face….
It wasn’t the use of media by Hitler that turned everyone against a 1%. It was HONEST LABOR having the paperwork proof of institutional abuse from an “IRS” back in that day, also….Koch is DELUSIONAL – yanking documentaries off PBS. How pathetic that billionaires have nothing better to do with their billions than to CONTINUE to be predators – to HATE the lives of GOOD and NORMAL people so much that every minute of every day they spend on thinking of ways to destroy everything that HONEST LABOR earned the right to have as life-maintenance.
If all Koch et al arm themselves with against the 99% is a rehash of a Nietzsche reading from a poison ivy tower dedicated to the creation of addition Gowanus water pollution through philosophy, then the civil war has already been won.
Yes Annie, the animal spirits from within you are speaking loudly. But the logic of your maintenance and the sustainability of the health care costs of that maintenance are not on par. They are par for the course of problems in this country, but the country’s debt solution show how this has manifested itself into a state of repeated denial. You are the definition of insanity, saying or doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. That’s you in a nutshell honey, and you all are on overtime and don’t even know it.
@ Annie and hippopotamus:
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/05/04/you-say-you-want-a-revolution/
You Say You Want a Revolution?
From Mike Spindell over at
JONATHAN TURLEY
Res ipsa loquitur (“The thing itself speaks”)
(quoted excerpts):
“The Republican Corporatists in effect believe that the majority of Americans should be left to their own devices, while the Democratic Corporatists mildly look for palliatives that won’t disturb their benefactors who are really in charge.”
“Many people, perhaps the majority of the populations anyplace are afraid to stand on their own judgment and seek the authority of some political/economic system, or most especially a religion. I wrote about that awhile ago: http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/21/the-authoritarians-a-book-review-and-book/ . That guest blog was about the “authoritarian mindset” as detailed by the book “The Authoritarians” which was written by Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. The book is free incidentally and a link to get it is included in the blog.”
{add}
“Another way of putting that is that much more than one third of all Americans believe that our system of government and our Constitution has failed, or has been failing.”
(205 Responses to “You Say You Want a Revolution?”)
Got one a brewin next year Bruce, but right now were playin with the fun and games crowd, who are going broke in a hurry and not afraid to show it either.
@Anonyomouse:
I know the crowd your talkin about Anon, they don’t speak revolution they speak Revelation and revaluations in the shadows.
What would you do if your bank confiscated your hard earned deposits to pay their bills? What happened to taking personal responsibility for their mistakes? Too big to fail, too big to jail and now, too big to cover their own losses! Is it any wonder that the banks want no part of Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Protection Agency?
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/03/31/could-the-banksters-grab-your-bank-deposits/
Lawrence E. Rafferty- Guest Blogger @JONATHAN TURLEY
Res ipsa loquitur (“The thing itself speaks”)
==================================
also by lawrence E. Rafferty:
Do the Big Banks Control Everything?
Published 1, May 26, 2013
http://jonathanturley.org/2013/05/26/do-the-big-banks-control-everything/
Could they? They already have, and now they are back for more. But fool me once shame on me, fool me twice shame on you applies here, as do the consequences for the original theft they thought they left behind them. But it’s the free insurance ponzi that troubles me. First deny it exists (global warming), then insurance it too the hill so we don’t have to talk about how far off track we got back there, and instead just make rules so it won’t occur again.
The pharmaceuticals have gone off the deep end before they could finish their research, or pay the consequences for past misdeeds for that matter. It’s a mess out there no doubt, which is why I work today for tomorrow and beyond, you can’t love um, and you can’t trust um. So if they try to get in your way, you just got to run um down.
Health care is an integral part of Main Street COMMERCE. That’s why it evolved rapidly when there was a thriving Middle Class who KNEW HOW MUCH IT WAS WORTH AND HAD THE $$$$ TO PAY FOR IT. Not to mention research was devoted to searching for cures, not hiring PR firms coughing up theories about genes and breast removal.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-24/germans-find-new-evidence-of-shady-soviet-era-drug-trials
How can life-maintenance/health care commerce pour BILLIONS into technology that will NEVER deliver an “app” on a cell phone that cleans and sanitizes the dirty diaper the slave nanny waves in front of the cell phone.
A CIA dude (moussad friendly, of course) in NJ is operating his own biotech company – too big to regulate…AND it’s all “secret”….funded by the lying thieving murdering future leaning “anonymouseturds” hedge hogs who just committed to 40 years of squeezing blood out of a stone – oil out of the rocks – and perpetual rockets red glare in the MiddleEast.
CASH flow compliments of Afghan Opium Lords…one big SAVAGE circle jerk….
Go figure how “revelations” can happen when you stop ignoring Prima Facie evidence ALL AROUND YOU…
FYI – no one likes being USED to demolish *liberty* for goodness to ACT in the world, not even NYC jem’hadar “peace force”…
With nearly three months having elapsed since MSNBC host Chris Hayes took over at the helm of his network’s 8 p.m. block — previously occupied by Ed Schultz — the show has regularly delivered disappointing ratings. His innovative weekend program Up often earning the applause of opinion leaders, Hayes was thought to be bringing his refreshing style to what had become the stale routine across the cable news spectrum in prime time. But in the weeks that followed his debut, MSNBC has been hemorrhaging viewers.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/whats-wrong-with-msnbcs-chris-hayes/
Annie, I hear you messed up 6 kids lives. Congratulations on extending the unsustainable health care situation in your community. We all knew where that road lead years ago, financially that is. Keep up the good enough work for slave wages, we hope it was worth the extra effort to tough it out, but we fear that it won’t.
Charles Koch to Friedrich Hayek: Use Social Security!
In a 1973 letter, the right-wing billionaire urged the libertarian philosopher to collect Social Security and to use Medicare coverage when visiting the United States.
Yasha Levine and Mark Ames
September 27, 2011 | This article appeared in the October 17, 2011 edition of The Nation.
Read more: http://www.thenation.com/article/163672/charles-koch-friedrich-hayek-use-social-security#ixzz2UXC7jQrz
Charles Koch, billionaire patron of free-market libertarianism, privately championed the benefits of Social Security to Friedrich Hayek, the leading laissez-faire economist of the twentieth century. Koch even sent Hayek a government pamphlet to help him take advantage of America’s federal retirement insurance and healthcare programs.
Read more: http://www.thenation.com/article/163672/charles-koch-friedrich-hayek-use-social-security#ixzz2UXCGRh5x
This extraordinary correspondence regarding Social Security began in early June 1973, weeks after Koch was appointed president of the Institute for Humane Studies. Along with his brothers, Koch inherited his father’s privately held oil company in 1967, becoming one of the richest men in America. He used this fortune to help turn the IHS, then based in Menlo Park, California, into one of the world’s foremost libertarian think tanks. Soon after taking over as president, Koch invited Hayek to serve as the institute’s “distinguished senior scholar” in preparation for its first conference on Austrian economics, to be held in June 1974.
Read more: http://www.thenation.com/article/163672/charles-koch-friedrich-hayek-use-social-security#ixzz2UXBiUGsz
(Keep in mind that ‘Charlie’ Koch …could have easily arranged for the medical attention out of his lunch money!)
Koch Brothers and the Road to “Citizens United”
Transcript @ The Real News Network:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9023
You are completely making stuff up, mouseyturd.
@reddit – enjoy the classic
13 minutes, nine seconds in…..”every dog should have a boy”
It’s too late to admit defeat now Annie, you’ve just gone too far this time. Can you say “consequences”??
Once again – you have mistaken me for someone else, mouseyturd.
You are the very definition of DELUSIONAL.
What you “heard” about me while listening to the insane voices in your brain – especially about kids – is DELUSIONAL. YOU ARE DELUSIONAL. Medical FACT.
http://www.healthcare.gov/using-insurance/low-cost-care/childrens-insurance-program/
What is your point in posting here besides providing a constant reminder why having a 1% of DELUSIONAL filthy rich global sadists blowing things up to stay rich and poisoning children with brain destroying chemicals is a problem that needs to be solved with an equal amount of brute and opposing force and that day IS coming.
@reddit – no calculus in the human equation:
More misery for others = More $$$$ for ME ME ME
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/forbes-capitalist-tools_b_3343422.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics#comments
Even Huff and Post gets better comments these days….major agreements from all sides about re-establishing Unions. Ethical scientists need to UNIONIZE immediately and retake corporate decision making in order to protect the web of LIFE on this planet.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100769478
“Liberty” for no one “born this way”…
Annie: That is an extremely valuable and significant link: Thank You.
(It will travel far today: I promise you it is going to some essential and interested sources)
Regards:
Bruce
Also Annie: very nice piece above that on “Beware Capital”
I made a comment in regard to a statement on comparative advantage; and I’ll pass here to you before it gets buried in the stream over at “huff & puffs” outlet:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/forbes-capitalist-tools_b_3343422.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics#comments
Here goes: (quote 1st):
“Comparative advantage is nice in theory, but in a world where powerful global corporations are using every strategy imaginable to maximize their profits and powerful governments are strategically employing market access to develop their economies, it’s just theory.”
Reply:
Comparative Advantage is when things go right and I trade what I make best for what you make best and we are mutually enhanced. In the big world markets it is actually misrepresented and presented as competitive advantage (leverage more than mutual enhancement) for maximizing profits which end up, in the zero sum arena, with someone losing. Ultimately it is part and parcel of competitive exclusion and the ultimate game planning of “taking advantage” not making them.
=================
…Isn’t there an implied presence for “Liberty for whom?”…? in that arrangement of obfuscations?
New York Times reviewed this movie (2012), describing it in the ‘search results’ as “Claims a Corporate Cartel Conspiracy”
http://www.americanempirethedocumentary.com/
@Woych – Have to act in the “Now”. “…It’s the environment, stupid….”
Man to land ratio…the only thing we own is our life, the rest is how we interact with the environment.
Pharisaism is the launching of insanity into the lives of a human beings.
Every human being has the RIGHT to make their lives less miserable through honest work.
Yea, corporations are completely out of control – they are delusional materialists making rapacious deals in countries run by the delusional “strong man” (AKA arming the counter-insurgency).
How can you be building large haldron colliders while at the same time, in the same “science” public space, commit the EMPIRE to squeezing oil out of rocks for the next 40 years???!!!
It’s called the division of labor, Annie. Adam Smith explained it over 2-1/4 centuries ago. The Chinese understood it a couple of thousand years before that. You know, this is supposedly an economics blog.
Btw, what has done more for humanity–about which you oft proclaim to be concerned–oil or the Hadron collider?
@Annie: Man to land ratio…the only thing we own is our life, the rest is how we interact with the environment.
In nature it takes 10 square miles per person to support one Human being per annum (wild game and foraging) and remain in complete homeostasis.
Check out Manhattan and others:
Just as interesting, the exclusivity of Manhattan real estate appears to have actually “reduced” that density since 2010 (only 3 years) dramatically (but what does that mean demographically and for the rest of the sprawl since population obviously did not reverse itself proportionately in 3 years?
Add “fracking” into the mix…(environment” and the consciousness of people in NYC appears to equate it with energy and generally favor it since the consequences are not in their market plans. But they get their water from the Ashokan Reservoir and the “informed-intelligent” people of New York State know that fracking will contaminate New York water resources (and the gas will be sold overseas…it will not benefit NYC or change any prices for the cost of living). So when you say “…it’s the environment stupid…” say it loud and clear to the wealthy jerks making the money that are now inhabiting NYC over its original “baseline” and let them know precisely what the “scenario” will be as they serenade themselves in their evening luxury towers!
And here’s the lullaby:
Ashokan Farewell – Music by Jay Ungar
Words by Grian MacGregor
Music by Jay Ungar
The sun is sinking low in the sky above Ashokan.
The pines and the willows know soon we will part.
There’s a whisper in the wind of promises unspoken,
And a love that will always remain in my heart.
My thoughts will return to the sound of your laughter,
The magic of moving as one,
And a time we’ll remember long ever after
The moonlight and music and dancing are done.
Will we climb the hills once more?
Will we walk the woods together?
Will I feel you holding me close once again?
Will every song we’ve sung stay with us forever?
Will you dance in my dreams or my arms until then?
Under the moon the mountains lie sleeping
Over the lake the stars shine.
They wonder if you and I will be keeping
The magic and music, or leave them behind.
©1983 and 1991 by Swinging Door Music-BMI, PO Box 49, Saugerties, NY 12477
Liberty for whom…?
Revisiting Carrying Capacity:
Area-Based Indicators of Sustainability
by William E. Rees, The University of British Columbia
http://dieoff.org/page110.htm
“For purposes of game and range management, carrying capacity is usually defined as the maximum population of a given species that can be supported indefinitely in a defined habitat without permanently impairing the productivity of that habitat. However, because of our seeming ability to increase our own carrying capacity by eliminating competing species, by importing locally scarce resources, and through technology, this definition seems irrelevant to humans. Indeed, trade and technology are often cited as reasons for rejecting the concept of human carrying capacity out of hand. [According to orthodox theory, free trade is invariably good, resulting in improved living standards and increased aggregate productivity and efficiency — increased carrying capacity — through comparative advantage.]
This is an ironic error — shrinking carrying capacity may soon become the single most important issue confronting humanity. The reason for this becomes clearer if we define carrying capacity not as a maximum population but rather as the maximum “load” that can safely be imposed on the environment by people. Human load is a function not only of population but also of per capita consumption and the latter is increasing even more rapidly than the former due (ironically) to expanding trade and technology (http://dieoff.org/page110.htm)”
(read on…good summary article on ecological economic concerns)
Liberty for whom…?
(http://dieoff.org/page110.htm)” The wealthy already consume on average three times their fair share of sustainable global output.
(one factor among several…read the rest with the article)
==============================================
Why is the global economy constrained by the energy cost of energy?
http://www.jayhanson.us/index.htm
From Capitalism To Democracy:
From Complexity to Simplicity
By Jay Hanson — updated 7/10/2012.
[This paper is hereby placed in the public domain and may be reprinted without further permission.]
This file is archived at http://jayhanson.us/index.htm
A PDF version of this page is archived at: http://jayhanson.us/index.pdf
A PDF version with panels open is archived at: http://jayhanson.us/index_open.pdf
{excerpt: please read it all}
“In order to understand the nature of our crisis, one must evaluate two systems simultaneously: our energy production system and our political system. More specifically, one must evaluate the inexorable decline (literally, impossible to stop) of global “net energy” concurrently with the present use of the “market system” as a means of social control. The information required to gain a basic understanding of these two systems is available on the web page you are currently reading.
Calculations show that the market is not efficient! When economists claim the market is “efficient,” they actually mean “the efficient distribution of benefits”—NOT “the efficient use of materials.” In fact, Americans could be wasting something like two billion tonnes (metric tons) of oil equivalent energy each year! The market system is the most-inefficient social system in the history of the planet!
I assume that capitalism has now become illogical. We are destroying the natural world and consuming the remaining resources in exchange for fiat money —which will be worthless when the resources are gone. Moreover, the ongoing planetary destruction is making most Americans unhealthier and unhappier (http://www.jayhanson.us/index.htm)”
http://www.ecoglobe.ch/overshoot/e/over-2.htm
Chapter 2 of Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change
(University of Illinois Press, 1980)
Bruce, you better put that behind you bud. I remember now, me and Annie were trippin on some acid, and it lead to haste making waste, in a big trusting momentary way.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that, we arn’t going to be doing her any good responding at this point, the children are a waste, and time will certainly sweep this under the rug.
What a load of horseshit.
Who’s excretion would that be? And where did it come from??
Aaron, one man’s horseshit is another man’s fertilizer.
I guess cutting taxes on the filthy rich and putting pre-emptive wars that inflamed the Middle East on a “credit card” are “balance sheet failures” that the Middle Class is responsible for doing?!
Talk about manure…this is a PERFECT example of the psychobabble that is quintessentially the tool of the vicious Pharisee. No wonder the story goes that Jesus pretty much forgave everyone else – the woman with a husband who pimped her out, the thief who *stole* an apple, the centurian who protected injustice…everybody got forgiven BUT the pharisees….
The pharisee speaketh:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june13/economy_05-31.html#transcript
FIAT $$$$ issued as “debt” – what kind of double entry bookkeeping is that? Once you start rationalizing economic genocide as “they deserved it because they were stupid” we’ve got a situation that WILL lead to worse “revenges” than concentration camps…people who just a few months ago were still not talking “revolution” have now weighed in and said that change will not come through any another way. Too bad the echo chamber of the propaganda machine passing itself off as news is not just dumb, blind and insulting beyond belief, but definitely deaf to boot….
@Paddy – the sun shines in equal measure on the just and the unjust – so I’d say the that web of life on the planet has benefited the most from the original plan – solar energy – and you keep burning that blueprint hoping that FACT eventually stops being re-discovered by the gene pool that still has half a brain cell functioning…
So what’s getting passed on as “inheritance” from parent to child now – a filthy depleted environment and your “smart phone” that goes obsolete in a couple of months….?
Without assigning any negative connotation to the term “filthy rich”, but using it only as an expression of quantity, I must ask, just out of curiosity, is there anyone or anything remotely as “filthy rich” than the US government?
I mean if we were all filthy poor citizens how could we defend ourselves against filthy rich governments? Of course I would like myself being one of those filthy rich but, if I can’t be me, I still prefer some other fairly filthy rich to exist, with some capability to stand up again the absolute filthy rich.
And don’t get me wrong, I come from a country, Venezuela, where the government gets over 97 percent of all the country’s exports… and that’s no fun.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/hrh-the-prince-of-wales/prince-charles-global-sustainability_b_3371842.html?utm_hp_ref=world&ir=World
The more filth left behind, the more filthy rich one can become.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gowanus_Canal
The eternal pessimist who has yet to find God, but is concerned about the future of 9 billion people. Around here we take care of people, one at a time, and even that requires mucho denero, patience, and time. Who even cares about the filthy rich? Try just looking out for #1 for a change, and not the hoard of junk that orbits your world.
Yesterday, at the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames, I saw a wonderful production of The Tempest. As you will know, that’s the play with the furious and thwarted Prospero, in which the illicitly deposed Italian nobleman creates through his knowledge of necromancy, gained by the reading of many books, a storm that brings to his island those who deposed him, including the King of Milan. He terrifies them through the conjuring of shock and awe wrought by spirits only he can see. When he has his foes flat on their backs he forgives them, and he is restored to his former prominence. Finally he breaks his staff upon his neck, and joins the human race once more, no longer able to see his helpful spirits. He may no longer be a magician, but he will no longer be a colonial oppressor – his slave Caliban too, the only true resident of the island, is now free. When Americans decide they can be rich, and forty per cent do believe that, according to James, I wonder if it occurs to them that, by comparison with most of the rest of the world, they already are? And I wonder if, in their efforts to become truly, really rich, rich in the way Americans consider really very very rich indeed, they stop to consider the damage they are doing to people who are not interested in being rich, but just want to stay alive? By the way, the Brits learned these lessons in India hundreds of years ago. Clive of India was not a popular, or indeed a nice, man. Eventually we got the hell out, building the railway as we left. Look at India now! And, by contrast, look at us!
Again, the resident sadistic stalking misogynistic whacko looks in a mirror and projects his sin on others…..”squeeeeel like a pig, Annie…”
I never lost “God”, so I never had to “find” what was never lost….go figure how that works…the only “God” you found is the singularity that launched the steal it all algorithm – that’s the physics behind the FRB, right? It’s the singularity lord that giveth the trickle and sucks back the river…?
USA was put up for grabs thanks to the self-proclaimed morally righteous who can IGNORE the sustainable science geniuses sprinkled among 7 billion in favor of their own monkey brain authored “holy book” authoritarianism that is FAR worse than the hypocrisy of the pharisees 2,000 years ago! Not to mention the way you all suck up to the global War/Drug/Slave Lords for “protection” against “risk”. You all did far worse than bend your knee to them…as DELUSIONAL as that was….
From barbarism to decadence – narcissistic hedonism is not “culture”, especially when that’s all there is after 10,000 years of civilization.
USA Middle Class EARNED a high standard of basics because the way we used to roll is based on the FACT that every human being has the right to make their lives less miserable through HONEST WORK. Massive extraction of natural resources is not HONEST. 40 mores years of investment in sucking oil out of rock is INSANE.
@40 mores years of investment in sucking oil out of rock is INSANE.
Which always begs the question, are yeast smarter than people?
why are you guys bent on destroying the value or this post?
Just hungry for a good fight I guess.
@Bruce – that’s all he does – waves his weenie in your face…nihilists….
Here, Son, I pay $150 every month to hang on to your inheritance – my obsolete “smart phone” version 9.0 that allows me to speculate, in nanoseconds, on who gets the Syrian weapons contract and how much oil will cost when they do…allah be praised….
That all well and fine, but please leave me your house when you are finished using it. We need to store Mark Twain’s wealth there when the time comes. I’m certain that you won’t object, since you were not familiar with place when we parted and showed no interest since we last chatted. I mean I’m all for football players and cheerleaders mind you, just not at my cost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embezzlement
I did not get the memo, when did it become legal for capitalists to embezzle the entire planet?
Forgot – the Bile-derBurgers are seizing control of the planet today….
More misery for others = More $$$$ for ME ME ME
The blowback against Pharisaism is always as vicious as the tactics used to enforce it – “opposite and equal reaction”
Wall Street CELEBRATING the extraction from the unemployed Middle Class.
More misery for others = More $$$$ for ME ME ME
“There will be blood”…
JUST WAR.
No, just the lost war on drugs.
WRONG.
Your ISRAEL MUST SURVIVE WARS are being paid for by 16 TRILLION in *lost* wealth – THE ENTIRE MIDDLE CLASS.
good golly miss molly you can’t be so stupid and RULE…
WHERE IS THE FNK PLAN FOR “beating the swords back into ploughshares? That was a GREAT time to build a LASTING layer of the economy – the Space Program…
No way is the drone crap the next trillion dollar suck up. We all have the line that when crossed, we take it to the mat. The Gowanus shit – the corporate SIGNATURE accomplishment – does not survive as a “business model” no matter how many drones you cough up with your PROFITS…
You can HAVE it. It’s all yours as a “collective” science research project – most geniuses in one place, right? NYC?
Look, they actually drive around and call women over to see their weenie hanging out. Don’t talk to me about the *melting pot* and what MONEY BUYS.
Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door.
More interpretations on *liberty*. Game, set and match?
If all three branches of the government conspire to retroactively make what was illegal, legal, then it’s legal.
That is pharisaism. It defies science, the logic that a circle is not a square, and the entire climb of man’s history to be human. They argue Nihilism – there is no foundation to law. We can make it all up on Twitter.
“….And so President Obama’s defense today is, this is not illegal, all three branches of government are on board for it, the courts are overseeing it, Congress authorized it and oversees it, and so therefore there are no rule of law concerns.
Obviously, civil libertarians might beg to differ on constitutional grounds, but certainly it will be an uphill climb to make that case with three branches of government behind it…..”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs/jan-june13/surveillance2_06-07.html
You just want to slap the yapper spewing this crap.
They have been BLOWING UP the better mousetrap for 30 years.
Build a better mouse??? Only to have the technology snatched by some predator class oligarch. I do not hold the psychopathic greed, ruthlessness, or obdurate disdain for my fellow citizens that infects the predatorclass. Nor do I harbor the delusion of superiority over anyone, (though I will gleefully confront and smackdown any rapscallion who imagines superiority over me, or anyone.)
Better to build better a better society based on, and honoring the quaint old forgotten notions of equality, freedom , and justice for all.
Tragically – we in inhabit a fascist state today where predatorclass psychopaths and criminals own and control governments and the bulk of societies wealth and resources. These cold dark hearted fiends will never relinquish their ill gotten gains peacefully. Too much insatiable greed! Too much ruthlessness!!! Too much bigotry, racism, fascism, hate, and the dim delusions of superiority infect the den of vipers and thieves in the predatorclass and their spaniels and bedfellows in the socalled government.
Burn it all down! Reset!!! It’s the hope!
Patent Assertion Entity? How about rabid monkeys stealing the banana tree because they ran the gene profile on their laptop?
http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/episode-455-407/
Looks like the analysis of “meta-data” is the new world order version of *Astrology*.
By all means, let’s debate that.
“Liberty for whom?”. Indeed!!! The “prism disclosures and the frenzied cries of treason besmirching an individual revealing TRUTH – should be a lesson to us all. And who and what do we fear??? A pack of perverted barbarians, back by the House of Saud, sanctioned and shielded by the fascist in the bushgov. And who is this mortal threat! A bunch of jihadi’s with box cutters, AK’s, and IED”s. Really??? This is our enemy? This is who we fear so pathologically??? Really? A brood of perverts, freaks, and religious psychopaths with no Navy, Airforce, or WMD. Any any of you partisans that pimp WMD threats are either grossly ignorant, or pathological liars – because IF our imaginary enemies actually had any access to WMD, – they would have already hit us. No!!! We fear phantoms! Conjured superthreats that have no more substance or basis in reality than the Joker of Batman comic strip lore!!!
We fear a conjured enemy that is no real threat, – but one that has been majikally amplified and sensationslized for profit into an existential threat to America that warrants our subservient acquiescence to the horrific rape and dismantling of that thing we call the Constitution and every right , freedom , and protection our forefathers fought and died to defend !
Amerika is a nation of ignorant idiots , cowards, and psychopaths! We have long ago lost our way. We are a nation of cowardly idiots believing that a brood of perverted barbarian jihadi freaks with no real weaponry are an existential threat to our society – and ignorant to the reality that a den of fascist vipers and thieves are devouring and destroying our nation from within in broad daylight, right under our sniveling noses .
Shame ! Shame! Shame !
We deserve whatever fiery pit and hell our fascist pathological liar, predatorclass overlords hurl us into!
What a pathetic heap of ignorance, apathy, and cowardice defines Amerika today !
Sad!!! Tragic! Horrifying !!’
Burn it all down ! Reset ! It’s the only option !!!
Don’t forget those same fascist pathological lying predator class overlords deserve the same treatment as we are going to get. And they will too.
woohoo! taxpayer paid ‘tutes for everyone at *Academi*
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/13/obama-syrian-rebels_n_3438625.html#comments
The way you guys jumped on the misogynist bandwagon to favor militarism – THAT was proof of ABSOLUTE (philosophy and physics) COWARDICE.
Tru
For the liberty of whistleblowers :-)