Thinking devoted to the task of survival is a different task than thinking as a way to create happiness. At times it makes sense to emphasize thinking for survival. Without survival happiness is not a possibility. Without surviving somewhat above the subsistence level happiness is not very likely. Continue reading
Google and other companies that manage the flow of information are killing what is left of our free market system. Continue reading
Perform a great kindness. Find a sound bite conservative and explain that to defend corrupt capitalism is the same as promoting Socialism. Corrupt capitalism uses big government to create and manage markets and thus redistribute wealth outside of a free market setting. Rebuking stupidity requires overcoming lots of inertia. To let stupidity go unchecked is certainly the path of least resistance and the path most often followed.
The sound bite conservatives are brainwashed into promoting their own poverty and unfortunately the poverty of the rest of us as well. Wall Street firms and other corporations have taken over government and converted it into a tool for enriching themselves. There is nothing conservative about encouraging this arrangement to continue. During the TARP days of 2008, the corporations that the sound bite conservatives are so bent on protecting had more influence on their representative’s vote than they did.
The truth is that the players the sound bite conservatives have adopted as role models have done more to turn the U.S.A towards Socialism than the entire avowed leftist and liberals have accomplished in their combined lifetimes.
I really like the Wall Street protestors. These are really gentle mobs. This is not what I would call genuine civil unrest. I remember during the bailout days of 2008 that the public was something like 100 to 1 against and they let their representatives know it. At that time I recognized the fact that citizens had lost control over government as a bigger danger than the bailout itself. These people see themselves as paying consequences for laws they were opposed to from the outset. They are in the street because of the failure of democracy.
The real fools are the protestor’s detractors who mistakenly see themselves as free. You are only free in your imaginations. Democracy doesn’t work if citizens cannot control government. At least the protestors understand the predicament they are in with respect to government.
Here is how the Occupy Wall Street protestors are misguided. Wall Street has no authority. Wall Street used government as a tool to attach the resources of the rest of the country. In that respect blaming Wall Street makes no sense. The problem is citizens refusing to control government.
Wall Street only did what multitudes of other people try to do, including most of the protestors who are carrying signs. Virtually all Americans try to use government as a means to reap where they have not sown. Wall Street was successful in that effort. The mindset of the entire public has become corrupted.
The protestor’s efforts would be more rightly focused if they understood that congress was the culprit.
Suffering is the only known remedy for consequences brought on as a result of stupidity. When I talk with today’s professed conservatives I find their minds are stuffed to capacity with conservative sound bites that their minds have recorded like tape recorders. These sound bites are then re-repeated as if they are reflections of the speaker’s original thoughts. There is never any depth of knowledge behind any rhetoric these minds repeat back. If it isn’t a sound bite you aren’t going to hear it from them. Suffering has the potential to punish people until they start thinking out of desperation.
There have always been anti-capitalists and lots of them show up at the Occupy Wall Street protests. That is to be expected. What is absurd is that almost all professed conservatives are wildly supportive of corrupt capitalism. Well, corrupt capitalism is not capitalism at all. Advocates of corrupt capitalism are criticizing anti capitalists. Now, does that make any sense?
Our founding fathers guarded against many potential problems inherent in democracy. They had no idea how easy it would become to manage public opinion. Today, we have several belligerent mindsets successfully bending public opinion to their benefit. These belligerents are the source of the sound bites that fill the minds of today’s professed conservatives.
We need conservative who actually think. We need genuine conservatives, the kind who can tell the difference between capitalism and corrupt capitalism.
So far, in this depression, suffering has not been severe enough to cause professed conservatives to think hard enough to reach the depth of their minds that exists below recorded sound bites.
What do you have in common with the occupy Wall Street protestors? Like them you have no representation in congress.
The seven or so major news organizations have no problem with coordinating their coverage so as to black out certain news stories. Sometimes like back when the bailout of 2008 was being proposed they blocked all disagreement. Today the major news organizations are blacking out coverage of the Occupy Wall Street Protests.
A recurring sentiment of the protestors is concern over too much greed on the part of corporations. The protestors are young and lack experience in identifying the causes of problems. They are absolutely right that a great injustice is being done. They can feel it in their bones but they honestly don’t know what the problem is.
Self interest and greed are not the same thing. Greed is stronger than self interest and breaks moral and ethical boundaries that society puts in place. A business that sells as much of a product as is humanly possible is no more greedy than the consumer who buys gas at the station with the lowest prices. In economics, folks who expect others to act any way other than in self interest will always be disappointed.
When businesses cheat by breaking laws, that is greed and outside what is allowed in a free market. When businesses use the legislative process to create demand for their product or to create markets, that is greed also. When businesses convince the Federal Reserve to increase the money supply as a means of bolstering profit margins that is greed. When monetary policy holds prices up when they would otherwise fall, that has the effect of reducing the real wages of working Americans.
Corporations do in fact use government to steal from the general population. News organizations benefit greatly from the status quo so they black out news that will upset their apple cart. News organizations present themselves as being objective. Fox News constantly claims to be fair and balanced. Publicly claiming to be one thing when you are another, for you own profit, is immoral and thus constitutes greed.
The protestors are on to something but don’t yet know how their accusations apply. When a country faces a severe financial calamity, the knee jerk response is to blame it on capitalism and free markets. The problem is always actually caused by the corruption of capitalism and government failing to maintain a fair playing field.
The act of blacking out news stories is incredibly destructive. The civil discontent is real and thinking it just needs to be stifled will only make it worse and possibly result in violence. The naïve protestors remind me of the anti war protestors of the 1960’s. They were naïve and inexperienced but sensed something was wrong. Like today’s protestors they were not getting any unfiltered information. They hit the streets, stayed there and eventually the truth started coming out. These protests are just getting started.