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Do We Want Solutions, Or Just What's Easy?
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
We are so brainwashed by centralized models of state authority that few can even imagine a system where the solution is not one centralized monstrosity ruled by a political/financial Aristocracy but a competing profusion of opt-in, transparent solutions.
Many readers ask me for solutions to the current arrangement's many ills. Seeking solutions is a healthy and positive direction, for highlighting what's broken is not only much easier than proposing solutions, it's a dead-end. Pointing out what's broken is only the first step in crafting solutions.
But I've noticed that what most people want is not a real solution--they simply want what's easy, which means leaving the Status Quo in place but magically making it cheaper and more convenient for them. If the solution requires inconvenience, getting less, accepting more responsibility and making major trade-offs--then it can't be a solution because politicos have overpromised for so many decades that people expect everything to get cheaper (for them, not the system) and easier (for them, not the system).
For example, I proposed a simple solution to the unsustainably costly U.S. healthcare system: The "Impossible" Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash(July 29, 2009).
This solution would definitely lower costs and impose discipline on patients and providers alike--and for that reason, it is seen as "impossible," because the last thing patients and cartels/state agencies want is discipline that forces hard choices and rigorous changes in behavior, diet, fitness habits, etc.
Broadly speaking, the first step in any healthcare solution is to radically reduce preventable diseases that result from lifestyle choices by making patients responsible for the consequences and costs of their lifestyle choices.
The next step is to make the real costs of treatment and coverage transparent, so people--patients and citizens-- can see the real costs and make decisions based on the limits of cost, effectiveness, etc.
Both of these steps are absolute anathema in the current system.
I have addressed the systemic ills of U.S. healthcare (a.k.a. sickcare because it profits from sickness rather than from health), for many years, most recently inObamaCare: The Neutron Bomb That Will Decimate Employment (February 22, 2013). Over the years, I have presented a number of options to the present unsustainable, fraud-ridden, costs-twice-as-much-per-person-as-other-nations system that ObamaCare leaves intact:
A Sustainable National Healthcare System: Prevention Only (August 20, 2012)
How to Cut America's Healthcare Spending by 50% (August 21, 2012)
Nobody likes any of the practical solutions because everyone wants unlimited care and unlimited choice. Expectations in a system where the government can just borrow another $1+ trillion to pay the bills are unrealistically high, and the feedback from reality, i.e. price, has been eliminated in the current cartel/state-fiefdom system.
Everyone talks about "reform," but real reform is impossible in a bought-and-paid-for "democracy" like ours: Why Reform Won't Work (February 7, 2013).
Even more profoundly, the Central State and ObamaCare are the wrong unit size to provide healthcare that is transparently priced, accountable to the consumer, adaptable and decentralized.
What If ObamaCare, Too Big To Fail Banks and the State Are All the Wrong Sized Unit?(February 25, 2013)
We are so brainwashed by centralized models of state authority that few can even imagine a system where the solution is not one centralized monstrosity ruled by a political/financial Aristocracy but a competing profusion of opt-in, transparent solutions.
Rather than a single top-down system, we need dozens of transparent opt-in choices.
Centralized, top-down systems are quickly stripped of innovation and cost control as the political and financial Aristocracy soon capture the regulatory and governance machinery for their own benefit.
As I noted in The Pareto Economy (February 18, 2013), 80% of the benefits could be reaped for 20% of the money squandered on our corrupt, fraudulent, ossified centralized systems.
We suffer not just from a systemic failure of imagination, but from a child-like desire for what's easy and convenient. This is a theme I have explored many times:
Questioning "Progress" and the Poverty of our Imagination (June 11, 2010)
Our Dust Bowl Economy (November 20, 2012)
When the present path cannot possibly lead to success, regardless of the labor and treasure poured into the effort, then risking the unknown by trying something different is the only way forward.
What If We're Beyond Mere Policy Tweaks? (February 6, 2012)
Spoiled Teenager Syndrome (January 3, 2013)
A good first step would be to admit to ourselves that we don't really want solutions; what we want is magic: financial magic that makes healthcare free and affordable, medical magic that fixes all our lifestyle ills without forcing any rigorous adult routines and limits on us, political magic that transforms our system from its current corrupt crony-capitalist paradise into a functioning, transparent democracy and economic magic that makes all the unpayable debt vanish so we can borrow another $50 trillion, or $100 trillion, with no restraints on our spending or cronyist corruption.
I have no idea what it will take to jolt us from our preference for magic over realistic, difficult (i.e. adult) solutions, but I suspect a crisis that threatens to completely unravel the Status Quo will be part of the process.
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We socialized some folks
Easy and free.....it's the way we roll.
The system that really needs an "easy button" is finance. All this "smartest guts in the room", "Gods work", and "complex financial instruments" are fucking the world over. Time to outlaw all that shit and go back to Mayberry banking.
Yes easy. Tell the central banks to stuff our "debt" where the sun don't shine.
Always want more!
that's the problem with bread and circus.
When they stop handing out the bread and no circus.........the crowds are not happy.
Guess .gov needs to print some moar............to supply bread and circus
and on and on it goes........................untill it stops
Then all hell brakes out
same as it ever was
All we have really done is furlough an inevitable day with the giant "easy button" of electronic digits to purchase the bread and circuses and create the massive illusions !
I used to say " Americans have grown fat, dumb, lazy, spoiled and cowardly "? Now it is the world in general with only a few exceptions ? But Americans will suffer the most one day because they are the most spoiled and fattest ! who coulda known ? How many have some derivative of diabetic malady or circulatory heart related issues and taking some form of pharma thinking all is well ? The "easy button" is everywhere you look in many forms ! Not much real thinking going on at any level for anything so it is rather easy to control the masses.
Healthscare Industry and Insurance Companies: We didn't lay off some folks, so you guys need to pay more. We are exempt from market forces because we are special. The police and government agree with us, back us, and employ the same policies as us.
Enjoy!
And yet all those countries with socialized medicine have MUCH lower costs and better public health. And they've been doing it for over half a century.
Of course they want it easy. They want to sit at home all day watching Jerry Springer eating Doritos, playing video games and smoking weed ...
Waiting for the check to arrive or the card to fill. And our elite or betters encourage it.
When you put it that way, it doesnt sound too bad.
The Sheeple are lazy. Everyone knows politician = liar and thief. Everyone knows that the benefits are provided with borrowed money. And now we have the Liar in Cheif pursuing a "tax the rich" where the aggregate gubmint policy has been "benefit the rich"
Until the sheeple suspend their fantasy of politicians fixing problems and face the reality of politician causing problemsl, easy free money for me will be the way.
FDR started this madness with his "must do something" and Keynes provided the vehicle.
Fine, but -1 for "sheeple". It's such a stupid expression.
Why we just want the easy solution of course.
Since all of this is by design, the solution is a revolution and subsequent rebuild of a society built on solid moral, political, and economic foundation. Kinda like 1776.
Here's another one for corporate America. If you're a publicly traded company, you can buy back your own stock if you meet these three criteria:
1. Haven't laid off more than 50 people in the previous 18 months.
2. Given all employees at least a raise that matches CPI in the previous year.
3. The max compensation relative to lowest ratio is no more than 100x (pick a number).
If you meet all 3, buy away with your cash flow. If you borrow money to buy back stock, at least half of the borrowing must go to employee bonuses or to fund retirement benefits.
if we're going down that road, let's add:
4. No employees have sued the company in the previous 18 months.
5. All employees have received a performance rating of at least 4 out of 5 in the previous 12 months.
6. All employees have a cap on their income, indexed to the lowest paid employee, based upon the effort, skill, ability, and assumed risk taken.
I dunno, I kinda prefer free-market capitalism
I think they should just give me the damn company.....and they can work for me.
Companies buying back their own stock to make a few top execs richer isn't exactly what capital is supposed to be used for. Investing in plant and equipment to increase efficiency used to be the reason.
True free-market capitalism would like to pay their employees zero, but they can't. Unfortunately, as we're seeing now, employees that have no disposable income don't buy what companies produce. It will crash eventually. The distortion in the markes caused by 90% of profits being used to buy back stock instead of actually improving productivity or inventing new products has given us the inequality we have today.
So if you turned 50, are a white male, and got laid off so they could hire a kid who Facebooks all day, you shouldn't be able to sue?
And true free-market capitalism would like the employees to make millions per year, and they CAN if they add value that is perceived as worth it to someone willing to pay them. "Free market". No different than buying a car - both parties agree on an exchange of $ for a car where the perceived value is equal. When you go monkeying with that system (like enforcing wage caps, etc) then it is no longer a free market system.
Businesses are doing stock buy-backs because they aren't dumb. They recognize that business conditions don't warrant building another factory. The Fed, etc have just goosed the stock market so that has been the "intelligent" investment to make.
So was Henry Ford a capitalist or not? He didn't have to pay his workers $5/day, double the going rate. His board tried to oust him over the issue. Turns out his workers could now afford to buy what they were producing, a novel concept at the time, but began the rise of the middle class you probably enjoyed as a kid.
Where does that company exist? I've never worked for one like that.
It must be one of those 'white whale' companies that I hear about but never seem to find.
Oh ye wicked whale! Oh ye damn-ed Whale!
Just call me Captain Ahab.
Or maybe Queequake.
That's my go to phrase when anyone presents with a problem, ' Do you want a solution or are you just having a rant ? '
It makes people face up to a choice, for THEM to confront. Then you can either help with solution, or stop wasting time if they just want a rant etc.
:)
Leon Russell - This Masquerade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn-br0h4rZk
Leon Russell - A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4sMSSm0x2A
Who is this "we" bullshit. Seems only conservative libtards have their panties in a wad, us progressives are just fine and dandy.
"We" are those who go to war over our beliefs, that's who "we" are, now who are you?
conservative libtards <--- Is that really the best you can do?
OK....back to HuffPo....say hi to Boehner for me if you see him.
We want MOAR!!!!!!!!!!
Me I want Moar!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFpY0Y3gSo8
Spot on, CHS. And precisely why this time around something profoundly horrible is coming. Think ancient Rome but orders of magnitude worse.
No one is going to anything to change course. Frankly, we blew past the exit a long time ago.
On a similar note... this is how the politicians are going to attempt to pass blame onto the people. Remember, the real PTB use the FED and banking system as a smoke screen, who then blame the politicians (easy as pie) who are the useful idiots, who in turn will blame the people.
In reality, it is true that everyone has blood on thier hands to some degree. Yeah, the most powerful of all deceptions are the ones that hinge on just enough truth.
Magic Mirror / Leon Russell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMwGqfnA19A
A SONG FOR YOU - Leon Russell & Friends (1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37dw2r45Xzg
Just what's easy, please, and what makes us money. Thanks.
With much love,
Your Central Bank
What's with the "We"? The Q99X2 shall never submit their sovereignty to such NWO phraseology.
I have two suggestions: Make work and voting mandatory. A few interestings things will change.
No more suggestions please.
A co-worker suggested that no one should be allowed to vote if they are a net receiver of funds from the gov. (If you paid FICA for your entire working life you would be considered a net payer to the gov, I guess, even though the math rarely works for the average SS recipient)
I don't necessarily agree with that but, my, my how things would change...
Back to killin' snakes
I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.
Alexis de Tocqueville
I've said and written that too.
IF you don't have skin in the game, you shouldn't have a say.
Our 'democracy' is now like a family household that lets kids vote on how mom and dad spend the family's income. New Camaro SS and iPhone 6s for everyone!
It's easy to put a gun to peoples' heads and get them to do what you want.
Without a gun though, it becomes somwhat problematic.
Remember the Statue of Democracy in NY Harbor, and of course our Pledge of Allegiance that says "and to the democracy for which it stands" -- History 2.0
When I was a kid, six years old, I walked to school over two miles every day, and walked home. I crossed a four lane highway as part of the trip, and there was a crossing guard at that intersection, because they EXPECTED kids would walk to school. HELLO! I'M STILL HERE! Now, parents get arrested or are threatened with having their kids taken away if they walk a couple of blocks by themselves ANYWHERE! I even saw a story of a lady who had the cops called on her because her kids were playing in their backyard! Oh, my God! There was no fence around the yard to "protect" the kids! Government is guaranteeing failure in every area of our lives. Friggin' morons.
Here, kids are NOT ALLOWED to walk or ride their bikes to school. They MUST ride the bus or be picked up in a car.
Even if you across the street from the school.
It's for the children. I mean, if we don't turn them into totally dependent frighened sheep who can't figure out how to cross a street, why, we won't be protecting them.
"Why do you hate the children, Refuse-Resist?"
Don't feed the bears in the wild translates to don't give anything the easy way out because that is the choice going forward. Everything has been made easier for Americans and survivalism is no longer a requisite to living.
Dont exercise, take a pill; dont socialize in public, go online; dont cook, get a #2; dont read, watch; dont raise your family, pay someone to; dont live life, work and buy stuff that suppliments that emotion.
Venezuela is a great example, they voted this system in, Chavez won by popular vote. It was for the free and easy life. Now they are only getting scraps but still imprisoned by the mindset. The gov is going to siphon all the resources it can to keep the breadline orderly and dependant.
In some parts of Africa there are signs which warn tourists against feeding baboons and such, saying, "A fed animal is a dead animal".
Might apply to other primates as well.
The solution? Outlaw health insurance.
The perfect model is up and running. Insurance free surgery with actual pricing. http://www.surgerycenterok.com/
"We have no idea what it will take to jolt us from our preference for magic over realistic, difficult (i.e. adult) solutions, but we suspect a crisis that threatens to completely unravel the Status Quo will be part of the process."
Another Great Depression- which the status quo has been working to avoid, for that very reason. It will unravel the status quo.
That cash only change won't effect me or my kids negatively---only the underage are on a family plan-
-My older kids-(over eighteen) are on a "cash only plan" with the family dentist and the family doctor. They negotiate and the price is way low compared to plan co-pay and premiums. Teeth clean, X-ray, and coating is under $80 last time-- They haven't been to the doctor in years-- thats really cheap.
If they keep earnings under the treshold for Obama fines they are on the road to "Affordable Heath Care".
gov't is obsolete
Given human nature, modern conveniences and addiction to entertainment, all people want is to preserve a semblance of that lifestyle.
A: They/We want it Easy.
Easy call to make.
Bingo on the human nature statement. It's primal. Do you take the slow running rabbit, Bison, Wooly Mamouth, etc or go for the one that is absolutely whipping your ass in the foot race?
Modern times - drive the manual trans with crank up windows or gravitate to the convenience laden set of wheels?
Having said that, most of us (well those with at least a molecule of testosterone) know in our heart of hearts that we need some difficulty and challenge in our lives in order to further the develpoment of ourselves and the species. Be they mental or physical, coping with and overcoming difficulties improves us.
Back to killin' snakes