Saturday, December 11, 2010

CAPITALIST TEN COMMANDMENTS

1. Do unto others before they do it unto you. Beggar thy neighbor and trade their employments without offset, tariff, or compensation to secure a bountiful profit from the greater slave. Engage the most authoritarian of regimes and let no morality, nor powers of the vast majority, interfere with the greater profits to be had from preserving disparities and all the powers of predation enjoyed by the rich.

2. In all things, see that your capital-defined Efficiency shall remain the only god, and let no morality, freedom nor ecological concern interfere with your divine right to profit and enclose for your benefit.

3. Thou shalt make money and power thy only god and pursuit, and not suffer any foolish idleness opening one to other occupations or dangerous revelations.

4. To secure thy power, thou shalt not let the people own or control their central banks – despite constitutional purse powers to the contrary – for debt money is the central power and motive force before which all others pale and remain impotent.

5. Thou shalt own and control all media and news dissemination agencies. Let not any editor be elected lest the people influence what they see, hear and read. Let all books, media, and education grow our values exclusively. Let not any fairness doctrine nor any notion of labor-capital “factor” balance interfere with this, our grand design.

6. In all things, thou shalt make Growth and per-capita ruin thy only gods, and defeat Balance at every turn. Thou shalt see that humanity endlessly multiplies. Let no balance of population arise which might serve to pass on the same quantum of freedom, earthly space, natural right and pleasure even to thine own children – as this would destroy our precious and profitable Growth.

7. In all things, thou shalt resist Balance, and both factor and gender equity for I, your male SkyGod, have told you so.

8. Let no freely communal or cooperative emerge, nor non-profit venture succeed – for such competition is to be feared and prohibited. Privative everything and control the reigns of power so the vast majority own no debt-free estate or may access any means with which they might secure their domestic freedom, independence, and democracy.

9. Let Nature’s realm be conquered and set to your profit purposes. Patent and own nature’s pharmacopeia. Change the nature of animals and humans alike to serve your ends. Render off limits those fertile lands and plants by which the masses might enjoy leisure, acquire natural freedom, secure refuge from our Free Market, or stumble upon revelations of a non-egoic, cooperative, and spiritual nature.

10. Let enclosure reign, for the landless and dependent are fodder for thy greater objectives. Let our Interdependency forever be mediated by the rich and powerful, and secured in the name of an Efficiency serving our ends alone. Seek to destroy any remnants of natural freedom, commonwealth, and domestic independence. Let our Free Market of neo-slavery prevail and thy will profit beyond one’s wildest dreams.”

Thursday, November 11, 2010

The Inevitability of Debt

Admiral Mullen said that the US national debt is the #1 security issue. In 2012 the US will be paying 600 billion dollars in interest alone.

What do you think will happen when the US tries to impose austerity measures on its citizens? What do you think will happen when the US tells China it can’t possibly pay what it owes? The problem is, those in charge are psychopaths, and they have their foot on the gas pedal. Historically speaking almost every country that was on the verge of default of debt will resort to war to make their economy better. Attack your creditor and you have a chance of canceling your debt or at least make it not worth their while to collect at the same time stimulating your economy be kicking it into war time production.

So is that the answer? More war?

When are we going to wake up as a species and realize the truth that is the brotherhood of man? We are all related. Bombing the Chinese or nuking the Iranians is just like killing your extended family. Why not try to find another way?

Obviously our economic system is broken and it has been broken for a long time, from about the beginning of the 1900’s. Just last century we fought two of the most brutal wars our species had ever experienced, which also happened to be the same century that our powers of innovation had begun to harness mechanical labour. Also at the same time the central banks became fully entrenched in the US thus consolidating their hold on the rest of the world. Is this a coincidence?

On the face of it you can say that we as a species just become more efficient at killing each other, but if you look at the technological innovation that allows for that efficiency you will see that it is the root cause of the pressure that lead up to both world wars by disrupting the balance that existed in our economies.

Mechanical labour improves productivity allowing companies to produce way more for way less, but also has the side effect of displacing human labour. So you are left with many products to sell but few people to sell them to. Initially you can raise wages and reduce hours allow your workers to become consumers, but eventually the profit motive wins out and to cut costs you cut people. This leads to unemployment and unrest and eventually leads to large standing inventories and stagnant sales.

A wartime economy allows a country to make full use of productive capacity of machines and the consumers become soldiers/government. Wartime economies encourage full employment as they try to gun down their opposition and this restores balance to society by providing jobs to the people and profits to the corporations and gives the country purpose. After the war, old patterns re-emerge with advancing technological innovation causing mass unemployment and profits through production stagnating. Now that we are in an era of globalization, we are hitting a wall, no new markets to exploit to continue this cycle, but yet technology advances on. Unemployment continues to increase and there are hints of yet another war on the horizon. We need to break the cycle.

What do we do?

1. Let deflation take hold. Divide the fruits of technological productivity between workers and owners. We work less and earn less but things cost less, this is a natural evolution.

2. Repeal corporate personhood. Corporate structure is set up entirely to limit liability and the only good to a corporation is the good of profit.

3. Stop loans at interest or create the interest by allowing the government to spend money into the economy. By removing the onus of businesses having to create a profit to pay back loans and bonds the business can then focus on innovation and making quality products. As long as costs are covered and employees are deriving a livelihood that should be the sign of a successful business.

4. Provide the basics in abundance, thereby making it nonsensical to charge for it. Like the air we breathe and the water we drink, both are in abundance and we can have for free. We need to extend this to food and eventually to travel and shelter.

This will act as the template, a stepping stone, to the resource-based economy that the Venus Project proposes.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Why Money?

A brief history of money is as follows: before money most people lived in communal tribes where everything was shared and most labour was general and simple (i.e. hunter or gatherer), then came barter which allowed more specialization (i.e. farmer, rancher) but was incredibly ponderous as it fell on the people who had the surplus resource to find someone else who wanted that surplus resource but also had what you wanted. Then came the development of money that allowed for easy exchange and allowed for more specialization in labour (engineer, scientist, teacher, fashion designer).

Money is a step in a social financial evolution that has not yet culminated. Money is not the last step. Sharing, barter, money are each steps that have laid the ground work that has advanced our knowledge socially and technologically. However, money has runs it’s course and the next step in this on-going evolution is on the horizon, the abolishment of money replaced with access to the necessities for all the world’s people.

Money works best in an environment of scarcity and economic growth (expanding into new markets). There was nothing more efficient at allocating scarce resources than use of the price mechanism. The only problem is that the two key environmental factors that allow for the optimum use of money are no longer true, the factor of scarcity and the factor of economic growth.

Scarcity has been defeated through technological advances and globalization has allowed businesses to reach the saturation point of new markets. There are no more new horizons, economically speaking, that will allow for the growth that we’ve experienced perpetually for the past few centuries. Of course you may be thinking that how can I say we’ve defeated scarcity when some 3 billion people are underemployed and of those 2 billion people world-wide are underfed and of those 1 billion people are actually starving. So don’t we have scarcity? Yes we do. So what am I talking about? I am talking about the fact that we could solve this problem today if we wanted to. It is not that we don’t have the resources, we do. It is also not that we don’t have the labour; we have that in spades, 3 billion people’s worth. But do we have enough money? No we don’t.

Money is our bottleneck.

Money was the solution to allocating scarce resources because the system was designed to assume that all resources are scarce. Notice that resources that are not scarce have no price attached, like air, and until recently water. Money’s strength has now turned into a weakness by restraining productivity and causing inefficiency to maintain profit.

Profit is directly tied to scarcity and inefficiency. The more abundant something is and the more efficient it is at its function the less profit exists. In an economic system that has as its incentive profit will produce an inefficient system that thrives on scarcity. Solutions that offer anything contrary will be ignored, bought out, or suppressed.

How is that you say? Look at all the advancements we’ve gained through our current capitalistic system, cars, computers, NASA, cell phones. Granted in a system based on competition in growing markets, innovation and efficiency can gain you market share at the expense of your competitors. In the environment we see ourselves in today we have the corporate trans-nationals, cartels and monopolies that through lobbying local governments to prevent entry of new players into the markets through excessive regulation and are themselves not curtailed or limited by any one government, do not have to innovate their products anymore, generally speaking. What the transnational are doing, since new markets are becoming less common with globalization, is they are using any means necessary to cut costs to enhance their earnings per share and the primary way they do that is through technological automation which leads to a phenomenon called technological unemployment, the replacement of human labour with machine. Productivity as delivered by machine is constantly rising while human labour is falling off as rapidly. A good video that describes this is called Awakenings available on-line for free.

http://www.truththeory.org/awakening/

Money ultimately means nothing, resources mean everything. We live in a unique time in which we can pull off that which would have been considered impossible just 20 years ago. Some still think it is impossible. I think that it is a failure in their imagination.

Monday, September 20, 2010

5 years is too long

I recently stumbled back onto my blog a few months ago, since then blogger had been snapped up by Google so my old login and password didn't work so I ported it over then promptly forgot my login information. So after some fits and starts I managed to hack my way back in, so here I am...

5 Years! So I guess I should fill you guys in on what has happened in the meantime. The girl I proposed to, she stuck around to marry this poor slub. And for that I am thankful, she is a great girl and I'm pleased to say that we are still together and she still mostly likes me. :) This happened on October of 2006. About a week earlier I had quit my job. So technically she did marry for love and not for the money.

I had no worries though, I got a call for an interview a few days in to our impromptu honeymoon. When we got back I put on my power suit and interviewed with prominent regional grocery retailer for an accountant position and I guess my confidence shone through because they offered me the position. I have been working there ever since.

Approximately a year later my first born arrived. She was a firecracker then and she is still a firecracker today. But I love her, she is so much like me.

Fast forward to this year, I had two major life altering events. In chronological order, I passed my accounting designation. A huge relief for me. I had been pursuing this designation since 2002. Now I get to do something else other than study. My wife says she has never known a non-studying me. She is scared of what I will become :).

Then midway through this year my son was born. He is a great lad, very easy going and easy smiling. I can tell he is going to be a ladies man.

Now that I'm back I can take up where I left off, although 5 years have left me a little less ranty and a little more conciliatory.