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McDonald's Could do a Better Job!
Originally posted at http://capitalistexploits.at/
In 1945, after WWII ended the United Nations was formed. Its mandated purpose was to:
“promote and facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, political freedoms, democracy, and achievement of lasting world peace.”
Now those are noble goals, to be sure, and admittedly they set the bar pretty high for themselves. However, 68 years later the UN is an abysmal failure, and it's abundantly clear to anyone that is paying attention that literally every single principle mentioned in their charter is being consistently and repeatedly broken, oft-times by the founding nations themselves!
What about that peace mandate? There are currently over 36 wars being waged globally, so you be the judge...
As a "quasi" world government, the UN is able to extract money by force (do government's have any other play book?). The result has been the Mother Ship expanding like kudzu, spawning in its wake organizations such as the WHO (World Health Organization), the ILO (International Labor Organization) and dozens of other useless, bureaucratic nightmares. Mind you they have grown exponentially whilst achieving less and less with each passing year. In the same way that Amtrak "successfully" operates solely via grotesque theft from the US taxpayer, so too the UN will keep sucking in tax dollars and engorging itself like a video game-playing fat kid downing chips and sodas 12 hours a day. The only difference being that the fat kid makes no assertions that he is bettering human kind.
Rest assured, new “problems” in need of meddling will be found, ensuring more capital is “urgently needed” mis-allocated, or outright wasted. The UN is one of the most opaque, diplomatically immune, unaccountable to its funders, (largely the US tax payer) entities in the world, and much like any other bureaucracy views the tax dollars which fund it, not as a privilege to be earned, but as an "entitlement".
I've personally seen some of the most ill-conceived UN-sponsored projects, debacles that no sane person would dream up, get implemented. They all came complete with false, UN-created reports which were cobbled together in order to enlarge the scope of said "assistance" program. These "programs", I might add, are typically just transfer of payment mechanisms from "poor people in wealthy, developed countries", to "unbelievably wealthy, corrupt politicians in poor countries".
These NGO folks are driving around Africa, Asia and most of the poor countries of the world in their air-conditioned Land Cruisers, spending money they don't deserve on projects that most third graders would scoff at.
We saw it plain as day in Cambodia last week. They've got it good...and they know it. I met a woman on the plane from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap who worked for the WHO. What a joke. She was "living" in a $250/night resort, being chauffeured around in, you guessed it, a Land Cruiser. She was agitated when I met her because her Cambodian driver, who is likely getting paid the minimum $70'ish per month, forgot to pick her lazy butt up at 6 AM and shuffle her to the airport. She had to take a taxi... God forbid!
NO way they let the party end! Sadly, and almost unbelievably, many of these same individuals believe in what they are doing, which just accelerates the growth of these parasitic institutions. Make no mistake, they ARE parasites!
The UN's existence is absolutely destructive, period. Remember, before you send me email from Ohio telling me I'm wrong, I grew up in Africa, I have seen this crap first hand. I won't argue that many well-intentioned successful projects the UN may have had in the early days don't exist, but those days are long gone, and certainly on balance and for the enormous amount of capital squandered this institution now simply leaves in its wake a destructive, powerful, bureaucratic force. The fact that today the UN has any legitimacy left is testament to the Walmart car park ignorance of an intellectually indifferent, media-fed populace.
So what's the answer?
Undoubtedly what has had the greatest impact throughout man's troubled history on this ball of dirt, has been harmony created by trade. Centralized, top-down administration of principles, when forced on people of differing beliefs, whether they be religious (Hindu, Muslim, Christian, etc.), political or otherwise has a spectacular failure rate. Free trade and the free flow of goods and services - allowing individuals to choose how and with whom they trade - has had THE highest rate of success, bar none.
Let's take multinational corporations for example...they are everything that the UN pretends to be. They are filled with people from various cultures working in countries scattered across the globe, they are characterized by people of all religions, race, ethnic groups, and they are all trying to help each other rather than obliterate each other. Whats more is they are producing goods and services which the market desires and turning a profit doing so.
Why? Because the free market works. It is in essence people acting of their own free will to further their own objectives. It's not selfish, it's human!
Humans are self-interested animals. That should be apparent. Let's get over the concept that we're inherently chivalrous, philanthropic, self-less spiritual beings with our sole reason to exist being to better the lives of everyone else. Bull$%&#. For the most part we are always going to look after #1. Doubt me? Next time you're on an airplane and the stewardess (sorry, flight attendant) gives you the safety demonstration take note of who she tells you to put the oxygen mask on first (hint: it's YOURSELF!). The reason for this should be obvious, but if not I'll spell it out: We are incapable of helping others if we ourselves are not safe, secure and stable... This same "safety" principle extends to economics and personal finance.
Multinationals work on the premise that humans ARE self-interested. Thus they produce products which they believe cater to the self-interest of consumers (also humans, by the way). They are forced by the market to adjust their actions, products and business practices all over the world, almost in real time.
McDonalds in New Delhi serves curried burgers. In Asia you can buy a green tea and red bean ice cream sundae, and get seaweed seasoning for your fries. In Japan they will sell you shrimp burgers. Even in Hawaii the traditional "orange drink soda" is replaced with fruit punch!
I would suggest that McDonald's has done more to “promote and facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, political freedoms, democracy, and achievement of lasting world peace” than the UN ever has...and this from a company that sells God awful cardboard masquerading as food!
- Chris
“None of us is as good as all of us.” - Ray Kroc
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When speaking of the Chinese Citizenism New World Odor, and roadside habits of them, one cannot help but reflect on signs made expressway for this situationizing:
http://www.holytaco.com/well-since-you-said-please/
http://www.holytaco.com/shame-this-sign-needed-to-be-made/
AnAnonymous roadside crapping is as Chinese citizenism does.
Welcome to the era of the Dung Dynasty. One should hold one's nose, you'll see.
Let 1000 Roadside Turdblossoms Bloom!
Western, Eastern, Southern, Northern Europe and the UK are all over the place. Generally, there are tons of places in Europe that I would like better than the USA. The USA? Well there are a lot of great places. Parts of California are fantastic but the taxes, police state, regulations,sprawl, illegals and stoopid f*c*ing people are a major drawback. CA still has a lot of nice people too.
So there are nice places in Europe and the USA.
The people? I think most Europeans are a little smarter but a lot are pretty brainwashed with a leftist mindset. Not all but quite a few. Many Germans and other Europeans love Obama. How f**king stupid is that?
Today, I think more and more Europeans are as TV and Hollywood brainwashed stupid as most Americans.
Germans love Obama because their press loves him. They think he's doing a good job because the truth about him is almost never reported. I spend lots of time educating those I know about the Bozo-in-Chief. They know nothing about his using executive orders to subvert our consitution, or about his scandals. And by the way, Germans I know are so worried about being called the "N" word, they won't even fly their own flag unless it's World Cup time. I usually close my conversations with with with, "I thought 'W' was the wost president we ever had. . . until Obama came along.
That being said, it must be a constant embarassment to you that such stupid idiots constantly have to rescue you from imploding your Eurotopea.
Think about that this D-Day.
90% of Europe's WW2 was fought between the Germans and the Russians on the Eastern Front.
The idea that D-Day saved Europe is a Hollywood and yankee fiction and invention.
When the real truth is revealed, if ever, it was the Germans who saved Western Europe from the Soviet hordes who had amassed 22,000 tanks ready to roll all the way to the English Channel on the eve of WW2.
Oh please. Without the U.S. in WWI and WWII, all of Europe would have been speaking German since the middle of the 20th century. Of course, all of Europe is currently begging Germany to take their sovereignty, so no doubt by the middle of the 21st you all will be "ja wohling" away. And after all, what's a century or two in the grand sweep of history?
But why did they invade Western Europe, and genocide over 11 million people? What does that have to do with saving people from communism?
didn't you chide me not long ago that I would "turn things into nationalist pissing contests"? your comment is a classic
D-Day cannot be explained without going back at least to the British & American intervention in a continental war - WWI
and then there was no hint at all of any "utopian projects". just empires ganging up on each other
don't mistake the reasons for war with the propaganda used in them
My remark was in response to an "unbelievably stupid" stereotypical reference similar to many of yours.
then perhaps we are both overreacting? I have often the impression that I'm just reacting/responding to over-stereotypical references, including some of yours (no, not talking about visual references, I do understand that visual combat has to use the broadest of all brushes)
one meta-comment: intelligence is a very, very loaded word in the current American political discourse. it generates very emotional reactions, and it seems it's very useful for trolls like the one you replied to
Ghordius,
When I paint a picture I am usually drawing on historic contexts which I recognize are loaded with meaning. I try to channel the history to appropriate targets.
You will find that I do not tolerate personal attacks individually or on a people (national, ethnic, religious etc). And I am past the point of trying to ascribe blame to the man or woman on the street for the actions of their governments, which are controlled by power elites.
I am serious when I say that I currently spend more time apologizing to people for the behavior of my country's government than espousing the American way. And I always wind up saying you cannot blame all of the American people for something they have no control of. Right now their government is out of their control.
I also don't think it is fair to characterize Zero Hedge as a megaphone for the American way. Zero Hedge is a borderless political/economic gadfly afflicting the global crony establishment where ever. So when you read ZH targeting things in Europe, you should bear that in mind.
Cheers,
WB7
full agreement from my side. in fact I think I should calibrate my comments a bit better to better reflect on what we do agree
cheers
Not all of us are stupid. And people in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones.
This regards williambanzai's reply as well: I apologize if my comment offended someone, it was not meant to do that (in hindsight I agree it was not very smart of me to postulate my thoughts the way I did). Of course, there are smart people and stupid people everywhere in this world and those who generalize about an entire population are no smarter than those they themselves accuse. What I observed instead, was that, on average, you could hardly have a conversation with an American without them making a positive reference to the government, to how great the president is, to how amazingly the tax system works, to how proud they are of their nation and bullsh*t like that. Oh and God forbid to ask them to question the things they are force-fed by the "news" on TV! I was looked upon like some sort of covert Soviet trying to recruit them for the KGB.
It sounds to me like you spent all your time with Rotarians and FBI trainees, and I am pretty jaded about my own people.
You are pretty jaded about your own people, yet you assume only Rotarians and FBI trainees would think that way. Slight incoherence in thoughts, don't you agree Mr. Banzai?
The truth is the American people are by and large too busy watching American Idle and TMZ or monitoring Instagram or struggling to make ends meet to have time for the "My Country Right or Wrong" jingoism that you seem to think is the "typical" American mind set. That is a relic of history. Most of them just could not give a flying rat's ass what is happening beyond their national borders (unless it involves terrorist boogey monsters) and get a headache hearing words like EURO.
I think you are making a seriously outdated generalization regarding their view of their government given the record numbers of disaffected, economically oppressed and unemployed today. You would be very hard pressed to find that kind of mentality in the current environment except perhaps in hardcore pockets of Obamian stupidity and Facebook.
And I challenge you to find anyone besides the Ex-Acting IRS Commisioner et al who thinks the tax system should be deemed a universal paradigm.
Seriously, right now I would say the only generalization you can safely make about Americans is they are all pissed off about something.
"The problem here is that the assets of these countries are held by a small number of wealthy individuals while the debts are shouldered by the ordinary people of these countries through their governments. ..."
Sounds like the US and the rest of the West now.
"hilarious and Taliban-like to us that some backward countries have age 21 as when you can legally drink !"
So true.
hujel
Maybe that 21 drinking age in US may to do something with car driving as main and sometimes only way to go around?
Go into any McDonalds in most places in America and most of the time you are magically transported back to Africa.
Bulls#!t..REAL Africans would NEVER eat that CRAP....!!
Not when they can eat each other.