August 17, 2008
There are kind people in the world. There are cruel people too. By my data, many more conservatives are cruel than not. Except to their peers, whom they respect, or masters that they fear, they are not kind, though they often use a mask of kindness, if some gain is to be made by the deception. Among conservatives, those who would by predilection be kind are often self coopted by their greed for the goods and property of the community.
Libertarians are a tossup. They cloak their cruelty with amazingly self hypnotic rationalization. That’s what they have to do to freely exercise their greed.
Even genuinely kind people can become disillusioned. Usually they are cozened by conservatives who never cease to work at perfecting the illusion. They pretend to be saddened “by the hard fact that kindness is weakness.” That way you root the tendency from yourself in reluctant self interest that is your only rational choice. They place the responsibility for poverty on the victims of their greed. Their economic violence has become commonplace and accepted by almost everyone. We are conditioned and programmed to believe their lies.
Truly intelligent people are not so easy to fool. They understand that without kindness and compassion it will not register to the greedy few and their thralls that an economy that works for one in ten is broken. If the condition persists, not only will that economy fail but the greed, concentration of wealth and disregard for the general population can threaten the society and the entire Human culture. Our parasitic elite leaders are trying to fuel a walk across history by eating their legs.
So progressives tend to be kind for practical reasons. Their superior intellects allow them to see that to reserve decent treatment for too small a clique is unhealthy for the community that sustains US all. They know what Marie Antoinette didn’t. They know why she lost her head.
The New Deal was practical compassion. FDR saw that the pyramid scam of finance - capitalism is a fraud of bankers and investors - had concentrated wealth. He knew no-one would believe the truth. That economic collapse is as inevitable a result of laissez faire and caveat emptor as concentration of wealth, which leads to the same disaster, is of capitalism, is obvious to any intelligent, honest and sincere person. Knowing this, the New Dealers sold the revitalization of productive economy to the bankers and other parasites, by promising the consumer/workers would be able to buy products on which profit could be made. The manufacturing infrastructure was idle and FDR’s stimulus of public works projects provided the wages to get it up and running again. Not only that, he built up the country’s transportation and energy infrastructure in the process. By 1968, after 34 years dominated by New Deal policies of support for labor unions, higher wages, better health care and other benefits, social security and expanded educational opportunity, all underwritten by Keynesian economics, we experienced the greatest most widely shared prosperity the world has ever known.
Since 1968, the nation has been dominated by the anti New Deal philosophy and economics of the Libertarian Milton Friedman’s Chicago School of Economics. He was the champion: of social spending cuts, school vouchers that divert public school money to the rich and deny educational opportunity to those who need it; tax cuts for the rich; deregulation that brings curses like e-coli in our unpoliced food supply and lead paint on toys; privatization like Blackwater who charge the taxpayer $1500/day and pay mercenaries recruited from Pinochet’s and other’s death squads as little as $50/day, and which suck tax money faster than government bureaucrats; repression of unions and wages and promotion of the evil idea that corporations have no responsibility to the community - only to the stockholders. - “So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not”
- Milton Friedman.
Friedman’s [and his torch bearer Martin Feldstien of Harvard and many other sycophants of “the great man”] belief that this time around laissez faire and caveat emptor could lead to anything but what we have - the out of control, wealth concentrator, pyramid scam of rich investors, bankers, brokers and their CEO ministers - is absurd. The real economy is in free fall. It’s outsourced and the more and more ethereal trade and finance doesn’t produce real home made products to give our fiat currency a true standard or basis. Government bailouts of the neo con artist bankers and brokers can only exacerbate the problem of too much money, which is in too few hands, and too little domestically produced goods, which are the only thing that can give a medium of exchange value.
The stimulus must have something to stimulate. That must be the production of goods and salaries for consumers to spend to get that production going again. If the bankers at the FED just print the money to loan to the banks to loan to US to buy more goods from China, inflation, debt and the trade imbalance is the only thing that will be revitalized. And it all started with the pursuit of cheap labor, to increase profits, counseled by Friedman and even more destructive profits through outsourcing. It works for ten percent of the population. They can’t see a problem. “I don’t see that America has a problem.” - Dubya to Bob Costas from the Beijing Olympics. “I think that’s [Bush’s obvious stupidity] our biggest problem.” - John Stewart, The Daily Show.
But we can’t restart what we no longer have. The acme of stupidity, since Milton Friedman died, Martin Feldstien, said the stimulus didn’t work because people saved it and only spent 15%. He must have confused saving with paying off debt which is the only economic activity that originates in America. Only an economist could be so great a moron as to believe any amount of re-liquidation of the Ponzi of finance could do anything but put US deeper in the hole. This isn’t 1932. We don’t have idle factories. We have no factories to produce consumer goods. The trade imbalance, destabilization of the dollar, falling consumer incomes (and lately even the number not just the quality of jobs) and inflation, prove that the things we do at home have no real value. Finance and investment without an underlying real economy is nothing but a perpetual motion pyramid scheme. Face it! Not only our country but our “great minds and spirits, our movers and shakers,” are intellectually, spiritually and literally bankrupt. They’re fools. And we follow them.
Can I really be serious that kindness and compassion are the self serving characteristics that can save the Human Race? Well, yes and no. Seriously, that is what’s required, if we are to provide ourselves with a salvation. I don’t seriously believe that the fools who populate this Planet, especially the leaders, will understand it. The uneducated are easily confused by the words of those who are schooled in their own self interest instead of the common good. The educated bourgeoisie foolishly believe they may take whatever they want without damaging the community they loot to get it. But they have the gift of gab - and the power to punish anyone who speaks the truth to their treachery. So while they have the potential to understand what’s wrong, the rich and their minions and ministers won’t. We must get rid of the clowns running this circus if we wish to survive. We must know that truth. I don’t expect that it will come to common understanding that equitable distribution of the wealth of the community, born of kindness, compassion and intelligent self interest, is what’s required to save the Human Race from auto-destruction. I don’t expect the morons, especially the elites and their bourgeois ministers and minion/sellouts, to catch on. Not seriously.
They accuse those of US who speak the truth, about the unkindness that destroys America, of disloyalty. They say we never have anything good to say about America or that we don’t show that we’re proud to be Americans. The fools can’t see that America has been defeated by the global corporate empire. They are too unconscious to realize that they are collaborators with the conquerors of America. The corporations, the investors who own them and the fools who are loyal to them are the traitors to America. It is not America they are loyal to or proud of. Anyone who is proud to be a minion and thrall of Citicorp [Dubai], Bank of America [China] or EXXON is a traitor to the real America those parasites defeated in the past forty years. You shills of the evil corporate empire that’s defeated America, you thralls, you traitors and your masters are a threat to the survival of America and the Earth. No, I’m not proud to be associated with you in any way! You allowed the corporate empire to conquer America without a shot fired, by taking over the minds of fools like you. Moreover, even if this is the best country on Earth, it’s not good enough any more. You morons have allowed America to be undone by the greed of a few rich investors. Those who have theirs and screw the rest are the most foul and evil parasites who’ve ever lived.
Every country on Earth is run by gangsters, bandits, kings, tyrants, thieves, con artists and other minions of the rich. It doesn’t matter whether they’re called parliaments, congress, president, dictator, king or emperor. They all administer the people and put US to work to make profit for the rich, whom the leaders often are or certainly wannabe. From their position in the middle class, which is a sometimes larger and sometimes smaller clique of sellouts, sycophants and other minions, they manage and oversee the people who work for the profit and increasingly sole benefit of the rich and the selfsame managers and politicians. The traitors are bankers, brokers, politicians, CEOs and the lesser elites or the fools who support them. In America the con artists dominate though many of them are undoubtedly the heirs of criminal gangsters. But every other kind of parasite has its place in corporate America. More or less violent and ruthless, the abominations of Human Nature by corruption of social instinct have burdened the Human Race and threatened the survival of decent people, by what they take from the community for themselves. This evil has been resident for six to ten thousand years in places. Will we continue to allow the rich to afflict US, with their not merely unkind but downright cruel and destructive to the community greed, until they’ve made the Planet unlivable and killed US all?
A good example of the destructiveness of corporate investor’s and bourgeois greed is the Iraq war.
In most cases we take the motives for the Iraq war at face value. That’s true whether we believe the administrations various and constantly morphing account or assume it was done for oil alone. True, the ability of EXXON and the rest to profit from Iraqi oil, to a much greater extent than the Iraqi People (that is to rip off the Iraqis by enriching a few of their leaders as was done in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) is a factor. That and the morale of troops, the well being of Iraq, the spread of freedom [to profit from other peoples suffering or resources] distracts US from the even more onerous truth, which even many of the radical perpetrators of this crime can not countenance. The lives of our children and our treasure are spent for the profit of MIC investors in the most privatized, and costly, war in history. But we ignore the empty trucks that contractors send out to tempt the IED resistors to domination. The investors risk the lives of drivers and security details and the frauds of many others are perpetrated in order to pad the bills to the taxpayer. [see Iraq for Sale] Instead, we talk about the evil of Saddam or the Al Qaeda menace that we neglect in SW Asia, while we pretend to engage them in the Mideast but really just fill the pockets of Cheney’s Halliburton and the rest. That last is the real reason for the war and why they won’t let it end while there’s still money to be made by looting our treasury to bring more pain and suffering to our children and to Iraq’s.
The bought and paid for philosophical, moral and economic theories of the rich, as articulated by sellouts like Milton Friedman, have it that corporations’ duties are to make as much money as possible for the rich investors, regardless of the consequences to the community whose consumption and well being make that profit possible. Meanwhile as many as ninety percent of US are suffering so the few can live in luxury. I predicted this result as early as 1970, though I didn’t write it down until the mid 1990s. [goto: agkaiser.org, click on Greg’s index. Some of the earliest work published there is contained in “Victor’s Denial.”] We’re losing our houses, because we can barely buy the gas to go to work and still put food on the table. We have no health care. If we are lucky enough to get a college education there are fewer and fewer positions in the preferred job market every year. We have no health care and with “welfare to work” we have two jobs and no possibility of properly caring for our children.
This is what any sane person would have predicted to be the result of the implementation of Friedman’s selfish, greedy, unkind, compassionless and absurd free market recommendations. The closer we get to realizing them the worse it gets for most of US. This will not do! “The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.” - Milton Friedman. “A definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and to expect a different result.” - Albert Einstein. The conservatives and libertarians tell US over and over that the market works, while we get poorer and poorer. Yet we expect that they’re telling US the truth and we continue to trust them. That works for them but it will not do for most of US!
We will have adequate food, clothing, housing, health care and educational opportunity. There will be trouble if these things continue to be denied to most of US in the name of competitiveness and the profit of a few rich investors. Fuck you. Fuck your banking and finance pyramid scams. Fuck all of your frauds. Fuck you to death! We won’t hear any more of your lies you evil parasites.
Forget your lies about competitiveness, profit and the sanctity of your private ownership of the community’s property. Forget your freedom to exploit the Human Societies for your individual benefit and well being. We’ll hear no more of your bullshit, like fairness to you demons and your evil moral justifications for your greed that threatens the survival of the Human Race. You’re destroying the American economy by looting it and US for short term gain. Fuck you and everything you ever were and are. Fuck your children and grandchildren. Fuck the bourgeois morons who’ve sold out to you for a few dollars more. Fuck you all to death.
Burn it all down and start over again. If you don’t like my solution that’s OK. My greed didn’t create the problem. I don’t have to offer a solution. Burn it all down. I don’t care. If you don’t like my offering - you who’ve profited by looting America - offer a solution of your own that works for all of US. If it doesn’t provide adequate food, clothing, housing, health care and educational opportunity, you will not survive the consequences of your greed. I don’t care how you provide it. I only care that you provide it. Your avarice created the ill distribution of goods. It is intolerable. Unless you have a change of heart and redistribute your ill gotten gains more equitably, it will be taken from you - one way or another. As it is, your behavior and attitude, your possession of the common wealth and property of the community are not acceptable. Give it up. Or it will be taken from you. Can that shit about competition and the profit of investors. That is not an acceptable answer. I warn you. Your greed created this problem. It’s yours, not ours, to solve. Leave it to me and we’ll burn it all down and you with it. That would be a reasonable preemptive act of self defense.
I don’t care what you think is fair. I don’t care what think you should be paid or I should be not paid. I don’t care what you believe you should have or I should not have. I don’t care that you believe you deserve your excess or delude yourself in the first place that this is a meritocracy and that the market determines the value of people. I care about adequate food, clothing, housing, health care and educational opportunity for everyone. If it continues that ten percent of the population have everything for themselves and believe they merit it, while the rest of US suffer from growing discomfort, want and poverty, we will have your heads.
I don’t care about the morality of it. I don’t care about any of your bullshit. I want results. We didn’t create this problem. Your greed created it. You better damn well fix it or you will lose your heads you fucking morons. Forget your twisted “meritocracy,” where ten percent of you have merit evidenced by your ownership of all the property and the instruments of debt that enslave US to you and guarantee our poverty. Forget your sophomoric notions about individuality and the freedom to have US work for you to make you rich. Forget the propaganda you’ve spread that says you have no responsibility to the community you loot to make yourself rich. Hard work my ass! You never did a day’s work in your life. Rugged individual. Hah! You couldn’t live a day without help from a thousand people. But you claim that they are your dependents! You have an opportunity to pretend, like FDR, that you will allow US what we need out of kindness, compassion and largess. But one way or another . . .
A related comment on individuality:
Imagine yourself alone in a wilderness, while you contemplate the ideal individual. The perfect one possesses nothing that it hasn’t made with it’s own hands and mind. All that it has is from it’s own hard work. It’s clothes and tools and everything, the one must create. It possesses no knowledge and skills but those it’s devised by it’s own thought and practice. It has no social skills because it has no society. All of it’s wealth and property is it’s own alone. It had no help nor anyone to work for it. It deserves and truly merits all that it has. I don’t see any such in our society. But of course, to live in a community and benefit in any way by the work of others would compromise the ideal of individuality. I know noone who desires to live the life of the “individual.” In fact, our notion of individuality is largely an illusion. The animal does not exist on this Planet.
Our life is ruled by the individual’s desire for the produce of the society. We want others to work for US, so that we may be rich. We want to have more of the produce of the community for ourselves. But of course, elementary zero sum* analysis demonstrates the impossibility that more than a very small percentage of the population can have much more than average. That is only possible if the rest of US have much less. It should be obvious! The right to own property must be limited by the harm too much concentration of wealth does to the community that produces it. Our worship of individuality is an absurd divergence of social evolution. It is self destructive indulgence of the greed of the few that threatens the survival of the Human Race.
*Zero sum equations are what economists use, though not well fit to the task, to describe equilibrium, which they don’t care to talk much about, possibly because they don’t really understand it very well. The zero sum concept is really designed to divert our attention from the truth. Mathematically, it can be shown that only a few can do well in a capitalist economy. Just imagine that everyone on Earth has more than average and that we all live by investments. So when I use the term zero sum I mean equilibrium, even though it’s not technically correct. The deliberate deviousness of most economists, so that we’re distracted from the impossibility of success for more than a few of US, may be inferred from their use of deliberately misleading terminology.
The few who own almost everything claim this is a “meritocracy” and that they deserve their excess. But they have led US to the brink of destruction - economically, environmentally, socially and spiritually - in the promotion of their individual well being. Too small a percentage of the population owns too large a fraction of the property, either directly or as collateral for debt. Morality, philosophy, economics or law that support such imbalance are destructive to the majority, whose well being decreases in inverse proportion to the concentration of wealth with the rich.
No one should be able to grow rich by the work of others. The wealthy acquire their excess by appropriating the profit from the work of others directly, or they take it from US through abstract means like banking and finance. The first step is too ban all usury and rents. We must correct this and all social evils that have been contrived by the aristocrats and plutocrats to loot our community. They are a threat to our survival. All such services that we the people require must be done on a non profit basis of, by and for ourselves.
Individuals or corporations that hoard wealth created by the work of others [their employees] are abomination of Human Nature by corruption of social instinct. It’s not acceptable for a few to own so much property or to have others work to create wealth for them. All the land and natural wealth of our Planet belongs to all of life. Privatization of land, which one does not live and work upon, or the production of goods, which we cooperate to create, steals from our common property and community for the benefit of individuals. Inheritance of this stolen property, over and above that required to serve individual needs, is greater abomination than that done by the greedy antecedents of today’s elite parasites.
contact me:
Greg Kaiser
email to
agkaiser1@gmail,com
I'll feed myself and provide other necessary resources so that I may continue to write.
A G Kaiser