Tag: capitalism

Late Stage Economic Justice

Late-stage capitalism hardly describes the present state of the US political economy. There are no mechanisms to limit hegemonic Capitalist ownership of all the means of production or alternative political-economic thought.

The egalitarians among us know that society taxes the working poor far more severely than our bloated billionaire caste. Late-stage egalitarianism is the term I would use. The existence of billionaires, and now the presence of a trillionaire in the person of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, informs us that inequality depends upon the maintenance of a series of lower castes to fill the god-awful jobs that no one wants. Only the desperate man the kill stations at a slaughterhouse, undocumented persons either take those jobs or they starve. Yet, our electorate accepts the straw-man fallacy that identifies “illegals” as grave economic threats. The current pandemic is an unexpected but welcome cash cow for the captains of industry. How long must the captains wait until they become quadrillionaires? How many homeless people does it take to create a single quadrillionaire, the logical wealth-management schemes?

Civics classes have long disappeared from US educational institutions, replaced with corporate-sponsored groupthink. The town square as the bulwark of democracy has been replaced with extrajudicial arrangements that remove checks and balances in any form.

Media puppets parrot the pap that substitutes for critical thinking and independent action. In their place is a perpetual unending special relationship with a political economy that feeds the “needs” of corporate hunger for direct access to the rare-earth metals that power electronic chips. Meanwhile, orthodox rightwing true believers rally behind leaders who believe themselves saviors of the American sense of manifest destiny. These true believers believe in a concocted set of histories that seek to explain this destiny as proof of the scoundrel’s generosity: the ones who get assigned key positions in every administration. Where lies the justice in absconding the resources of independent countries. The requirements of the war machine are not partisan, it is loyally supported by Democrats as well as Republicans. The two-party system serves the billionaires and trillionaires who benefit from the spirit of a historical destiny deigned by a god that considers hegemony to be a sign of peace on planet Earth. The creation of alternative political parties might threaten the two-party system that keeps injustice system thriving. Access to the game is thwarted at every possibility.

All societal systems occur over a spectrum, so there is plenty of room from one end of the other. Hard extremists at either extreme can quickly become hegemonies. Fair play is my watchword, there are enough prisoners in this country’s injustice system to explain the over-incarceration, particularly of those who are victims of systemic racism. A topic I plan to cover in another blog entry: Critical Race Theory: another misunderstood reality.

Thanks for reading.

Reverse Racism & White Supremacy

Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations in 1776, an apt enough prologue for a certain declaration signed that very year.

Smith is the theorist who coined an immortal metaphor: the invisible hand

Does it matter that Smith was virulently racist?

Excerpts from The Wealth of Nations:

Such nations, however, are so miserably poor, that, from mere want, they are frequently reduced […] to the necessity sometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes of abandoning their infants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases, to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beasts.

Among civilised and thriving nations, on the contrary […] the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniences of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire…

The list grows quickly, including Turkey and Indostan. To these he adds ancient Egypt, “Mahometan” nations, the Arabs, Africa, the West Indies, Persia, Bengal, Siam, China, and North American indigenous peoples, who comprise “the lowest and rudest state of society”.

Savage peoples: the racism of Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations

In the end, the whole world apart from Europe is characterised as “savage” and “barbaric.”

The Judeo-Christian tradition is a Western European countenance, wearing Whiteface. Stephen Bannon is a racist with wide-ranging ambitions that extend anywhere that his countenance is tolerated. He is the spitting image of a certain conception of godliness, a favorite of White supremacists.

White supremacists flatter themselves as guardians of Western values. They are on a mission to make scriptural misunderstandings tools for geopolitical and racial advantage. The Judeo-Christian tradition is a conversation between Holy Land pilgrims who share a common disdain for Islam. Partners in arms against Muslims. The Church Militant.

The more eons that revered ancestors live under the cloud-laden lands of Europe, the more perfectly do they resemble the acceptable White features of the stereotyped Holy Family in the Holy Land that suffers under the “Mahometan…lowest and rudest state of society” — to couch the concept in Adam Smith typologies.

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, will you know them by their love? I am told that many a citizen of Israel would welcome an exchange of Presidents. Perhaps they could take revolving terms in their respective States.

Is racism against Blacks unknown in Israel? Do Palestinian children on their way to school hear tut-tuts when Israeli soldiers aim assault rifles in the children’s faces? Are Palestinian school kids not snakes that grow into bigger snakes?

Source

Judeo-Christians, will you know them by their loathe?

Let us now return to the wealth of nations. Do Black People have equal access to wealth-management systems? Are opportunities shmopportunities?

Disparities between the ultra rich and the ultra marginalized grow ever wider and ever deeper in the land of Freedom Oil and the home of the genocided Braves. Does racism matter?

Has “reverse racism” so crippled White American dreamers that Whites now scramble for the crumbs dropped by greedy and heartless “savage” and “barbaric” Blacks? Do hedge-fund managers from Black Wall Street refuse equal access to potential White investors? Why is Black Wall Street never more than a footnote, a remark that “mistakes were made” ?

“Of the 2,153 people who made it to the 2019 FORBES list of the World’s Billionaires, 13 of them are Black, up from 11 a year ago.” Forbes: March 5, 2019

Of course, capitalism knows no color bar

Thanks for reading.

Zeitangst

 

“I have a term that I’ve been throwing out occasionally,” Erle Ellis, a global ecologist at the University of Maryland, told me. “It’s the Zeitangst.”

— Robert Sullivan

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. would have warmed to the topic. A perfect folly, an utter absurdity — grist for a writer’s mill. The criminals in this novel are human, inhumane humans. The victims of the crime are both human and non-human — the crime is a kind of murder-suicide. Where is the crime scene? Sol’s third.

marble.earth

The murder weapon was forged from the remains of an earlier extinction event: subterranean flora and fauna under carpets of rock. Rock carpets pulled down by gravity. Intensely energy rich organic substances. Hydrocarbons.

Weaponized liquid fossil delivered by the purest capitalism on planet Earth, understated as Industrial Revolution. Intense energy capsulized in organic molecules created under great pressure, gravity tugs at the rocks above and pressurizes organics below. Stored energy from all manner of organic material, animal and vegetable under mineral.

Black gold, Texas tea

fossil.hand

Flying, crawling and swimming creatures alive at the time of extinction event number five.

During each extinction event the Earth becomes Venus-esque, and it stays that way for the eons it takes for perpetual cloud cover to dissipate.

Terra abides.

Its first victims were guilty of a fatal flaw: being born with an appetizing flesh, tasty organs and texturizable blood.

Kill, Cut and Sell. That’s the name of the game.

chitterlings

How many homo sapiens does it take to consume 70 billion unfortunately tasty species annually?

7 billion. In my eponymous birth-year there were 2 billion humans, far fewer than 20 billion animals were consumed. Wealth breeds waste, waste breeds wealth. Measured in units of GNP. Capital C Capitalism — a motive for the crime.

Veganism is gentle reproach.

Thanks to Mira of Everything socio and eco linguistic for inspiring this post 🙂

Thanks for reading.

Texturized insects as protein and exploitation

I am the proverbial fly on the conference room wall. The topic is climate change: how do we profit from catastrophe. Profit profit über alles, über alles in der Welt.

fly-on-the-wall

Agenda items:

The herbivorous are threats most dangerous in the land of the carnivorous.

A promising opportunity to profitably exploit the human craving system: Feed insects to meat eaters in near future by playing the climate card.

Keep every pipeline fully flowing to fill all shelves. But appear forward-thinking and exciting. Technology sells well. Widen fossil-fuel pipeline paths to permit parallel pipelines for moving bugs to processing nodes. Pump to population centers and employ existing logistical systems.

A fresh idea: suck insects off the swamps that climate change creates. Convert submerged buildings into nesting cells for all manner of swamp-thriving bugs. Purchase real estate at the cheap and use existing food service logistical paths.

profiting-from-climate-change

Sweet secret: we’re going to continue producing meat to satisfy the demand that we expect to continue. A bigger stake in steak if you will. The new insect consuming customers can have their meat and the maggots too. We need risk no jobs/votes from meat cravers.

Never forget politically important States such as Iowa. Meet the meat voter where they eat. Steak, eggs, milk. Meat is forever.

Let me pass this thought for a grub stake. Suggest through advertising that vegans failed to deliver at the marketplace. Vegan diets are passé anyway, tofu = joke, veggie burger = another joke. Vegans will remain the brunt of ridicule, ‘nough said?

It is so wonderful that the fake-news industry grows just as corporations need fake news most.

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Here’s a bold challenge: devote marketing budgets into fake agencies like the Koch brothers funded in the 2016 political arena. The core idea: guise disinformation and cloak actual information. So, vegans are sickly and poorly informed about the role of meat, egg and dairy for healthy families.

Don’t forget that big lies yield big paychecks and bigger lies yield bigger paychecks. Simple economics.

Fortunately for the fine and decent folk neck deep in fossil-fuel sectors: we will shortly enjoy an administration in D.C. that recognizes the eternal vigor of pyramid schemes — envision the eye atop the pyramid as the eye of Trump. Our president arrives in two months, confidence man incarnate. Con artists never lie.

Now, who is responsible for developing an inauguration ploy: something like reports of 444 day hostages crossing free airspace as Reagan spoke in 1981. A symbolic action portrays a phoenix-bird Trump arising from a failed Obama administration.

its-my-choice-to-be-a-stupid-voter

War has always been peace.

Freedom has always been slavery.

Ignorance has always been strength.

And so, seekers of wealth at any cost: the only thing you have to fear is truth.

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