What Kind of Joke

I have to ask myself sometimes what kind of joke is this we're living in. I have to ask. I just don't know. African-American candidate wins on auto-pilot presidential in default election against rabid blood-sucking moronic conservative. Now should we discuss Ms. Palin? One thing I don't get is why everybody in the media has to be so polite.

But, hey. That's reality. Go ask Alice, you know what I mean? The old hippies, it occured to me as I wrote that, had no problem with alternate realities. They could shift realities ... yes, precisely because they knew they had solid ground under them. But we cannot expect them to have expected nor predicted what the world had in store for them and us today and today it is the very ground itself that is shifting under us. And that ain't no Carole King song.

Now, for a short synopsis of David M. Smick's masterwork (that's sarcasm, but it doesn't come across ---- maybe I'll be a better writer some day) praised in the preview pages of the book itself by fifteen or sixteen bankers and hedge fund managers: "The World is Curved." Curved, flat, what kind of joke? Anyway, here goes...


- Hedge Fund Fraud

David Smick tours the world interviewing all the hedge fund liars. Then he spins all of those lies and all of that pure garbage into "truth." There is a genre of books like this. Bankers read them, and they consist of popularization. It keeps all the hedge fund liars on the same, even putting green. The job pays extremely well----then he doubles up on himself. Writes a book telling all the rest of us what the official lie is. Meet David M. Smick, the hedge fund consultant who lets all the rest of us in on his version of truth.
My fear of getting an email from this guy is the only thing that gives me pause about publishing my comments. Ha ha ha. I too, am just kidding, my friends. Everyone is. And what'll be really super-funny is the day the world comes to an end, and we all die. That'll prob'ly be Smick's biggest moment of all. Then he can compete with Thomas Friedman to tell us why we're dying. Either because The World Is Curved or because the world is flat.

[The book that this is a review of is: "The World is Curved," by David M. Smick, Javelin, N.Y., 2008]

B&N Pt. 2

Sometimes, a part of the market (or the market system) works:

...but never does the whole market work.



Jes' like in B&N. Some of the books work, but not all of them

Barnes and Noble

Piles of nonsense have infected Western Civilization.

There is a whole genre of books written by and for morons.

As I sit here sipping on a sparkling grapefruit Izzie at Barnes and Noble I'm looking straight ahead and there is a book straight ahead and it is part of a B&N display case of books. It is a volume purporting that Jesus was not a spiritual being. He's a "life coach."

Should the fact that most of the books here in the large suburban bookstore in the large suburban mall (Oakbrook Center) in the large suburb (Oak Brook) ... should this be, I ask --- a problem? Why should this be surprising? From a logical point of view it is not. The store only wants money. The manager might be a real human being who wants edification and education, but the business Barnes and Noble --- or the moron Barnes and Noble --- want money. From here I'm afraid all roads converge on the point of there being a display case with the sign "The Art of Communication" on it.

Barnes and Noble is a giant money-sucking aphid. An aphid! No more and no less my friends. But as I leave metaphors aside (I almost said something like a giant claw but the thinking mind is faster than the writing hand you kno), let us comprehend that, obviously, we cannot talk Barnes or Borders on a book-by-book basis.
Children want children's books. Adults want adult books. Morons want moron books.


It is infecting society!

Economic Plan

What would happen if some percentage between five and thirty-five per cent of world economic output were extracted out of present commodity circulation and then redeployed for use as a secondary-sector wealth base from which to free the world of severe wealth-deprivation? Humans suffer from malnutrition, lack of drinking water and so forth, in many countries. The number of such persons is, of course, large.
Even a five per cent extraction and redistribution might be enough to give most of the deprived world food and water for their basic needs for physical well-being and normal quality of health. Readers may not know what to make of this idea. Maybe it is new. And maybe it does not conform to the current discussions. Have I got a good idea? It is something we really have to think about. Then, perhaps, we may begin to understand.
Far from being a charity concern, such a redistribution move impacts the interaction between capitalism and human welfare. It is not simply a matter of charity, since it would redeem the social character of capitalism.
It would not be such a big change from the present system of capitalistic economics either. Therefore, it would be an extension of the capitalism and the human cultural system we have now. More or less the same commodities would be made, it is just that some would be removed from commodity circulation as we know it and those commodities would then be used for another purpose ---- in another way. In thinking this over for about eight years, I have found no reason why it could not be done, so I think it would be a legitimate aspect of a more advanced stage for capitalism. "Capitalism," therefore, is seen as a broad method of culture, exchange and society.

Since conceiving this original idea, and thinking it over for around eight years, I have also come to a new understanding of capitalism in general, and now, I think, as well, that perhaps we have all been thinking about capitalism in the wrong ways.

"Exactly" Fifty Per Cent

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A real thing creates a scam thing.

And, capitalism is 50% (fifty per cent) scam.
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(added later): to give some context, consider this text from my December first, 2009 post:
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"Freedom" to Americans apparently means "freedom to cheat." But there had to be some kind of underlying honesty --- otherwise, capitalism could not have succeeded.

Sharing and Caring 2

individual giving is not enough. There has to be a public policy, shared by all advanced, productive nations. In such a policy all of us share together.

It has to be public. It has to be done all together, and each nation would then offer an appropriate share.

What would happen if that were done? It would be a two part capitalism. Some of the products that the advanced, developed capitalistic countries create would be traded in the usual manner but another set of products would be designated to benefit those in the globalized world who are malnourished.

Every time some factory worker would spend the day making some product, he or she would know that some portion would go to help the needy.

The "giver" is developed-world capitalism ITSELF. The "receiver" is anyone who is left out, or deprived, by capitalism and by globalization.

This policy would mean that the entire world would participate in capitalism, which is to say meaningfully, not merely as victim-members. What does "participate" mean, in terms of capitalism? It should mean that you get something from it.

Reich, Silverman

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/robert_reich/2009/03


Robert Reich:
"Is Obama responsible for the meltdown of the Dow? The consistently wrong-headed Wall Street Journal's editorial page says so, as does Republican Fox News, CNN's reliably demagogic Lou Dobbs, and now CNBC (where, full disclosure, I frequently appear as a token liberal). CNBC's Jim Cramer, who bloviates nightly about stock picks, says Obama is pushing a "radical agenda" that's destroying investor's wealth. My friend Larry Kudlow, who rants nightly about nearly everything, says Obama is destroying capitalism. CNBC reporter Rick Santelli's ballistic nonsense about Obama's mortgage plan made him a pop-populist icon for a week or so."

Jack Silverman:
They have false theories.
What is the case if people dont know anything but they still want to talk? If people don't know what they are talking but still need, or want, to talk about whatever is the subject --- economics, for example --- they simply make up things. This is what Lou Dobbs, Jim Cramer, Larry Kudlow and others (I don't really know Santelli) are doing. They don't know anything about economics because NOBODY knows anything about economics. Except for you, if you read this blog.

Sharing and Caring

In a society that has so much wealth, what kind of people are we that we do not share it?

Capitalism: is it about humans or numbers?

Our system is capitalism. It is a human social organizational system. It is what you do with people. It is not what you do with numbers or math.

When you have a lot of people you need to do something with them. Western man, in the Europe that formed itself from the medieval age on, found that trade was more effective than warfare. War is simply too violent. Trade works better.

With the increasing reliance upon trade instead of solely upon violence or war, what developed is the kind of human system called "capitalism."

We ought to regard capitalism, therefore, as a resource. It comes about through causes, not because of some "facts" that "exist" in the abstract world of mathamatics.

Miller Time

Here I am sitting at the Starbucks. The inspectors have been sent by headquarters to obsess on displays.

They have the self-assured poise of them that know they are in control.

They are the totally irrational types who manifest displays of nonstop talk in an attempt at sequential rationality.
Or should I say Irrationality? It is an effort to self-display their normality. Their rationality or their normality.
Ah, but we are all normal my inspector friends, and we always were. We always were.

Nothing they do makes any sense but this Starbucks shall survive another day.

[yr. author has just realized that irrational blog posts are harder to write than rational ones. let's not try too hard to figure this out, though, OK?]

Shy Asian Man

The Asians brought themselves into capitalism. There's a way to do that. This has been demonstrated by certain Asian tigers-or-pussycats. They did bring themselves into modernity --- or capitalistical-ness.

They did. But, Um----what have the Koreans or Chinese got?

What kind of timid persons are they creating? Why did they made the basic choice to adopt capitalism? Nothing else to do? So? What they got?

I pity the rulers who have to figure out what to do with huge populations. They have to administrate nations totally teeming with persons. Then again, once it is democracy you have, you cannot say you "pity" them --- because they ran voluntarily.

I met a Korean man today; he turned out to be so timid, I thought. I though him terrible shy. About 18 yrs. old. Fashionably attired---yes, a young pin-up---of course---probably bubble sunglasses ha ha. A young Korean democrat?)

There is a certain life I am looking for here, obviously. I think it exists, somewhere. In 1776 they needed a certain kind of "life." They had to fight a Revolutionary War.

There is an enormous literature concerning capitalism as the destruction of the human spirit. Capitalism creates a world where everyone is, Um----the same.

What a nightmare.

Not on the subject of nightmares and Koreans... but (at any rate) ...

I remember when C. Hitchens hit these shores. Big media splash, eh. I understood he's an asshole. Right away I picked up on that. I guess some righteous experts, authorities, or writers had to help me. That much I picked up on. But I never actually read a book of his.

Finally I pick up the short bio on Jefferson. This guy is a really good writer.

Anyways, assholes are probably the motor of history.

Yeah, I know --- that had little to do with economics, or Korean people.

Money and Ethics

While the small-minded tell me to care only about money, I choose to give them back their kind advice. I care about what I want to care about, and that includes doing things ethically.