GOOD GOD
Well, I have to try to blow through this post real quick. But it's important. Another Econ 101 post - there's a fuller one back there a bit: "Why Are Egyptians Hungry", or such... Anyway, my health sucked today, and I got a little done - but hardly enough.
I've been writing for YEARS that Capitalism is based on SCARCITY, which seems counter-intuitive. But the concept has to do with entropy, and then how we humans manage entropy, as well as info-process it. A few at the top try to create order - make money - but can only do so by making life ultimately, eventually, even worse for the sum masses, environment, all externalities included.
Profiteers rise to the top, stepping on the backs of others, as well. Very proper, codified - it's nonetheless a bully logic: "I'll steal your luch money, unless..." Or, starving a bunch of people, throwing in a few bits of food, and watching them all fight each other off for it.
When corporations are young, many, and resources are easilly got - including via slavery, perchance - they fight amongst themselves, and strive to keep prices low, to out-compete, and gain as many customers as possible. Thos customers also are generally the very people who work for them, live in town, and such.
But when corporations succeed in their competitions - sometimes by finding ways of cheating - bribing gov't officials, hiding toxins, and so on - and when they dwindle to a only a few corporations, they look around and say to ech other, (sitting as these guys are, on each other's boards), what are we fighting each other for? There is no bully lording over us! We control the SUPPLY! And that means we pretty much can control the GOVERNMENT. So, they gang together and decide it would be very nice if they started raising prices, all together. This creates inflation. Inflation is a manufactured, general SCARCITY. It's kind of a coming together of lots of the variously-radiating externalised costs, exponentially, demanding that SOMEONE actually PAY for them - and that someone is always the people ate the bottom, and middle.
And, if this expense happens to cripple their customers, and their ability to purchase products, they don't care so much. Why? Cuz they are short-term exploiters, interested in making the CEOs at the top rich - it's THEIR scheme after all, to collude. They can always go into banking, derivatives, or China.
And, since competition put them up there in power, then they must be somehow better and wiser than anyone else, what with this whole libertarian, supply-side, trickle down voodoo economic theory and all. It worked for them,(they assume), and everybody wants to be them - so everyone is expected not to follow the sane Adam Smith economics which ORIGINALLY created the real wealth, but the insane Ayn Rand economics which is simply an excuse for egoism, money-superstition, and hyper-capitalism.
Capital, rising to the top in these new conditions, wants to circulate as if in an addiction - it wants to make more and more false wealth, by investing in money, investing in money, investing in bullshit, basically. While Wall Street says everything is improving, the fact is that inflation is leaking in from every crack, in a spiral, and, indeed, the economy is being robbed of true wealth, or CAPACITY, and this is, en sum, a kind of general scarcity, rising throughout. The boys at the top love it, they feed off it like drunken fruit-bats or pick your metaphor.
Anyway, they care less and less about their customers, and so don't mind raising the prices, because they find so many alternative ways of making bullshit money off of bullshit money. And, relative to the masses, the value of their investments rise WITH inflation. 'Tis a vast scam, it is.
So, yeah... I've written how profiteers look for scarcities, like say corn, rush to invest in corn, thereby raising the price and making corn more SCARCE. Then, with the price so high, they dump their stock and make billions $$$. Nevermind that thousands of people may have starved, Nevermind that agriculture - and environment - gets all ripped up in the process. And so forth.
Not only do the divinely-greedy seek out scarcities, in this and other ways - THEY DELIBERATELY CREATE SCARCITY, so they can run similar schemes. Make water scarce somehow, and then sell water. Make oil so expensive it is virtually a scarcity, exploit it. Create false scarcities with electricity, as did ENRON, and then sell it at expensive process, including to the gov't.
That's why the Koch Brothers are in Wisconsin. They want to buy up and control energy, so they can turn it into a scarcity, blame the environment, and make a literal killing on their raised prices. They control the supply, they raise the prices, creating the scarcity, forcing us all to fight amongst ourselves just to grab the right to keep warm in the winter.
Speaking of big ideas... David Koch prides himself on being the biggest libertarian GENIUS on the block. He has all the great ideas. How to raid, how to create TeaBaggers and Glenn Becks, how to hold the Gov't by the balls, how to shrink the gov't and drown it in a bathtub. For decades, the Koch-created CATO INSTITUTE think-tank has been studying and planning and advising. You better bet, he has big ideas...
Well, some guy called into the Norman Goldman Show tonight, saying he had an INSTINCTUAL feeling that the ultimate goal of the Koch Brothers is to control - OWN - Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. And you know what, THAT GUY IS 100% ON THE MONEY, as I see it. He is absolutely right. I'm amazed the thought never occurred to me.
But, look, Cato Institute isn't stupid - BP, Koch, etc. - they're not stupid: THEY KNOW GLOBAL WARMING IS IN THE CARDS. And they're positioning themselves for it. Milking oil for all they can. Milking water - which will be becoming more and more scarce as years go by. Milking the Great Lakes, from the congesting heart of the Dairy State. That's what's going on here.
Where have all these states been - these states where the GOP is relentlessly attacking Public Workers, Public Utilities, Public Education? They are ALL along the great lakes: Wisconsin, Illinois (just watch), Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, they tried for New York, but they're succeeding in New Jersey. This is a GEOPOLITICAL WAR, just as much as is becoming in the Arctic, among countries.
This is pretty damn serious stuff, folks. Fresh surface water is diminishing on Earth, and the Great Lakes is a Golden Goose. Yes, the attack is on in other states, as well, but not as coordinated as it is here.
This is the beginning of civil war, if it isn't stopped in time.
I've been writing for YEARS that Capitalism is based on SCARCITY, which seems counter-intuitive. But the concept has to do with entropy, and then how we humans manage entropy, as well as info-process it. A few at the top try to create order - make money - but can only do so by making life ultimately, eventually, even worse for the sum masses, environment, all externalities included.
Profiteers rise to the top, stepping on the backs of others, as well. Very proper, codified - it's nonetheless a bully logic: "I'll steal your luch money, unless..." Or, starving a bunch of people, throwing in a few bits of food, and watching them all fight each other off for it.
When corporations are young, many, and resources are easilly got - including via slavery, perchance - they fight amongst themselves, and strive to keep prices low, to out-compete, and gain as many customers as possible. Thos customers also are generally the very people who work for them, live in town, and such.
But when corporations succeed in their competitions - sometimes by finding ways of cheating - bribing gov't officials, hiding toxins, and so on - and when they dwindle to a only a few corporations, they look around and say to ech other, (sitting as these guys are, on each other's boards), what are we fighting each other for? There is no bully lording over us! We control the SUPPLY! And that means we pretty much can control the GOVERNMENT. So, they gang together and decide it would be very nice if they started raising prices, all together. This creates inflation. Inflation is a manufactured, general SCARCITY. It's kind of a coming together of lots of the variously-radiating externalised costs, exponentially, demanding that SOMEONE actually PAY for them - and that someone is always the people ate the bottom, and middle.
And, if this expense happens to cripple their customers, and their ability to purchase products, they don't care so much. Why? Cuz they are short-term exploiters, interested in making the CEOs at the top rich - it's THEIR scheme after all, to collude. They can always go into banking, derivatives, or China.
And, since competition put them up there in power, then they must be somehow better and wiser than anyone else, what with this whole libertarian, supply-side, trickle down voodoo economic theory and all. It worked for them,(they assume), and everybody wants to be them - so everyone is expected not to follow the sane Adam Smith economics which ORIGINALLY created the real wealth, but the insane Ayn Rand economics which is simply an excuse for egoism, money-superstition, and hyper-capitalism.
Capital, rising to the top in these new conditions, wants to circulate as if in an addiction - it wants to make more and more false wealth, by investing in money, investing in money, investing in bullshit, basically. While Wall Street says everything is improving, the fact is that inflation is leaking in from every crack, in a spiral, and, indeed, the economy is being robbed of true wealth, or CAPACITY, and this is, en sum, a kind of general scarcity, rising throughout. The boys at the top love it, they feed off it like drunken fruit-bats or pick your metaphor.
Anyway, they care less and less about their customers, and so don't mind raising the prices, because they find so many alternative ways of making bullshit money off of bullshit money. And, relative to the masses, the value of their investments rise WITH inflation. 'Tis a vast scam, it is.
So, yeah... I've written how profiteers look for scarcities, like say corn, rush to invest in corn, thereby raising the price and making corn more SCARCE. Then, with the price so high, they dump their stock and make billions $$$. Nevermind that thousands of people may have starved, Nevermind that agriculture - and environment - gets all ripped up in the process. And so forth.
Not only do the divinely-greedy seek out scarcities, in this and other ways - THEY DELIBERATELY CREATE SCARCITY, so they can run similar schemes. Make water scarce somehow, and then sell water. Make oil so expensive it is virtually a scarcity, exploit it. Create false scarcities with electricity, as did ENRON, and then sell it at expensive process, including to the gov't.
That's why the Koch Brothers are in Wisconsin. They want to buy up and control energy, so they can turn it into a scarcity, blame the environment, and make a literal killing on their raised prices. They control the supply, they raise the prices, creating the scarcity, forcing us all to fight amongst ourselves just to grab the right to keep warm in the winter.
Speaking of big ideas... David Koch prides himself on being the biggest libertarian GENIUS on the block. He has all the great ideas. How to raid, how to create TeaBaggers and Glenn Becks, how to hold the Gov't by the balls, how to shrink the gov't and drown it in a bathtub. For decades, the Koch-created CATO INSTITUTE think-tank has been studying and planning and advising. You better bet, he has big ideas...
Well, some guy called into the Norman Goldman Show tonight, saying he had an INSTINCTUAL feeling that the ultimate goal of the Koch Brothers is to control - OWN - Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. And you know what, THAT GUY IS 100% ON THE MONEY, as I see it. He is absolutely right. I'm amazed the thought never occurred to me.
But, look, Cato Institute isn't stupid - BP, Koch, etc. - they're not stupid: THEY KNOW GLOBAL WARMING IS IN THE CARDS. And they're positioning themselves for it. Milking oil for all they can. Milking water - which will be becoming more and more scarce as years go by. Milking the Great Lakes, from the congesting heart of the Dairy State. That's what's going on here.
Where have all these states been - these states where the GOP is relentlessly attacking Public Workers, Public Utilities, Public Education? They are ALL along the great lakes: Wisconsin, Illinois (just watch), Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, they tried for New York, but they're succeeding in New Jersey. This is a GEOPOLITICAL WAR, just as much as is becoming in the Arctic, among countries.
This is pretty damn serious stuff, folks. Fresh surface water is diminishing on Earth, and the Great Lakes is a Golden Goose. Yes, the attack is on in other states, as well, but not as coordinated as it is here.
This is the beginning of civil war, if it isn't stopped in time.