Saturday, June 27, 2009

My New Apartment and My New Life

I have just moved into a new place. It is a studio apartment basically. I am experiencing a more high-class type of existence since I am right next to the university and not only that but right across from the research library. That is where I do my work sometimes. What I do is economics. It is my own version of economics. I am a private scholar. And I have some observations --rather a question, about my new neighborhood and about the world.
In the world we live in, what makes a person a good person? Our world of course can be something like our culture or our society. It can be our society. Other languages, like French or German, are better at dealing with the signifier of "society" than English. I would assume there are some peculiarly American or Anglo-American reasons for the denuding of the concept and the refusal to assign a valid set of words. Whatever that reason is, it is still fully obvious that humans have got to live in some kind of an environment and to get at this with the best term, we may choose and revert to: "society."
So, what makes a person a good person in the world, or in our world? It really seems to me that the best answer one can give to this question is this: simply if one has money, he is a good person. Of course that is a bit simplistic. I know it. But we are trying to get at the truth of capitalism: with the abolition of class, not much else identifies the individual as respectable ---- it is the matter of whether there is money in your pocket.
And that is my basic observation. What implications flow from this supposition? What we are saying is that this is about all that identifies one as a good person, in society, or better put: higher society. We are really asking about "good" society and "high" society. Because it works differently in the ghetto. There personal relations come into it.
Before this week, I was living in a bit of a borderline ghetto. Something like that. Now I would say that I would seem to be around a lot of high class persons. What makes them the good people? It's kind o' hard to figure out. I just hope I am one.

I intend to work really hard, in my new surroundings, and I'll do it by trying to do better at being an economics theorist, which I am doing in some sense for (by) myself. So, maybe: being a good person is strictly internal, subjective. This idea makes sense.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

I have a newspaper in my hands...

I have a newspaper put out by our community in Madison ("community" meaning the whole freaking liberal town) and it's got an article with quotes from James Galbraith and William Stigli, two economists who are willing to tell the truth with a minimum of jargon.

Some matters involved in economics do not hardly even require any kind of technical talk or anything subtle or hard to get that we cannot figure out for ourselves. Of course you do need at least a third-grade education. Is that too much to ask?

For example what is the antonym of the terms one hears of or reads in the newspapers' accounts of our world, such as "toxic" or, James Galbraith says, "poison?" The proper antonyms are "exhuberance" , "hyperactive" and "bubble." "Hyperactive" and "exhuberant" (this is actually Greenspan's famous term) mean that you really, really want to get close to something and "poison" means you really, really want to avoid it.

They were printing free money and they were raking in free money an' that was the fake, toxic bubble that burst! It's really, really simple - once you understand it. It is most interesting, really, that the economists don't. And that's all I am going to say right here!

How much does it take before we realize these economists (some of these economists I should say) are bullshitting us? A failed bank ought to be nationalized. That is not hard to get, even if they won't "get it." Or is someone going to buy it? But why would you buy something that only represents money (and is a failure at that)? Give me a break. The economists have their (ahem!)

head completely up their asses. I guess that when you're in the dark crack hole of self-deception (as least Mr. Bush required the actual material drug substances) you just cannot see the money on the wall.

Message for the economists: You are in the dark. Take your head out of your ass and start thinking for a change.

All the words are lies. The language is fake. Why would anyone buy a business that is "toxic"?

It's an assault on language basically, not just on your pocket book. This is, in fact, a matter that I have probed to some degree.

better give away my email

worldcitizenjs@gmail.com

They Create Myths

Obviously, the one who "isn't making sense" is me, since I just doubled my own post. The one for April 29 doubles another one. So what.

Well, here' today's post:

They create myths. Myths are good. At least they are real structures.

Intellectual structures. These are intellectual structures. There are, it seems, material as well as intellectual structures. Thirdly there is just blank ignorance.

For ex. the intellectual idea is that there's this free market or this economic thing out there. And so forth...until we have built a little Hansel & Gretel fairy tale. The "free person" goes out and "gets a job."

But there is one thing that's not a myth and that is that this world is built on sickness and corruption.

One never, eve, ever gets a job in a free market. The free market may exist to an extent, but it doesn't sell persons jobs. That's crazy.

On the other hand, I suppose all societies need their myths.

(p.s. this seems like it would be good with the post from February 23)