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Our Financial Future: Infinite Greed Meets A Funny Thing Called Karma
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
All those angered by the mere question of the viability of this predatory pillaging in the name of capitalism are incapable of even admitting this cultural crisis exists.
Somewhere along the line, we lost the ability to distinguish between earning a profit and maximizing private gain by any means, i.e. Infinite Greed. If you insist on making this distinction now, you anger a lot of people, as it blows the capitalist cover of Infinite Greed.
The distinction between earning a profit and maximizing private gain by any means angers not just the few benefiting from the useful delusion that Infinite Greed is simply profit on overdrive; it seems to anger everyone who believes the Status Quo of burning mountains of coal to power towel warmers, sitting in traffic burning petrol two hours a day and central banks enriching the already wealthy is not just sustainable but gol-darned good.
If you make the distinction between earning a profit and maximizing private gain by any means, then you realize the status quo is neither sustainable nor good: it is unsustainable and evil. This angers everyone who has rationalized their investment in (and defense of) an evil system, because, well, it's hard to feel all warm and fuzzy about your choices if the phony facade falls and the evil of the system you've defended is starkly revealed.
Every enterprise must earn a profit to survive. A worker-owned collective must earn a profit, as it needs money to reinvest in the business and reward those who have invested their capital (human, social, financial, intellectual, etc.) in the enterprise.
If the collective can't reinvest in new plant and new workers as the old equipment fails and old workers retire, it will weaken and collapse. This is equally true of any business owned by the state (i.e. a socialist enterprise): if the state-owned enterprise doesn't earn a profit that can be reinvested in the business, it can only survive if it is subsidized by some other enterprise that is earning a profit.
But the system we inhabit now is not based on earning a profit; that's merely the public-relations propaganda used to cloak its real heart: Infinite Greed. Maximizing private gain by any means isn't about earning a profit; it's about strip-mining the planet and the labor and profit of others.
If I buy a political favor that essentially eliminates competition in my private fiefdom, that doesn't generate more goods and services; it's simply maximizing my private gain at the expense of everyone else in the system.
Goosing the stock market ever higher only solves one problem: the terrible prospect that the assets of the incredibly wealthy might reset lower. It doesn't make the system sustainable or less evil; indeed, it is the manifestation of the evil at the heart of the entire system. It's not about shiny capitalism for the masses, or earning a profit by producing more and better goods and services: it's about doing whatever it takes to maximize private gain.
The success of this vast defense of those maximizing their private gain at the expense of everyone else appears invulnerable to many. In a system where central banks can print infinite money to further expand the value of the Financial Aristocracy's assets, it certainly seems that there is no force in the Universe that could possibly reduce this mighty Empire that worships only one god, that of maximizing private gain by any means.
Let's say this system is sustainable: the system that enriches the few at the expense of the many, the system that strip-mines the planet to enable private jets and trillions of dollars of wealth to rest comfortably in tax havens, a system that pays Nobel-prize-winning shills to spew nonsensical defense of the patently indefensible: if this is sustainable, we must ask: at what cost?
Is feeding this machine cost-free? Are there no consequences? Can the Federal Reserve not just create money to further enrich the few, but eliminate all cost and consequence as well?
To everyone resigned to the permanence and invulnerability of this evil, and everyone angered by the idea that it might implode and deprive them of their share of the swag, I suggest we consider a funny thing called Karma, which is the simple idea that actions have consequences which cannot be shoved onto others forever.
A similar idea is reversal is the way of the Tao. What appears mighty and invulnerable melts into air, as extremes naturally cycle to the opposite state.
Our loss of the ability to distinguish between earning a profit and maximizing private gain by any means has triggered a cultural crisis, one that few are willing to recognize, much less discuss. All those angered by the mere question of the viability of this predatory pillaging in the name of capitalism are incapable of even admitting this cultural crisis exists. Their response to the question is to accuse anyone who dares question the morality and sustainability of the current system of desiring a financial Apocalypse.
The easily angered are again confusing two distinct concepts: wanting an Apocalypse is entirely different from seeing an Apocalypse on the horizon. A financial Apocalypse wouldn't even touch the assets of the many, because their financial wealth is near-zero. If the $20 trillion (or whatever the number is, nobody really knows) sitting in tax havens melted into air, who would even notice except the pillagers and those paid to defend them?
The cultural crisis angers people because it threatens to loosen their grasp on the few threads of security they believe are real. Those thin threads are illusory, and a crisis will eventually be resolved in one fashion or another--not necessarily in an Apocalypse, but in a fast-spreading recognition of the wrongness and unfairly distributed costs of supporting a system that is intrinsically evil and unsustainable.
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.....BULLISH in america.
Because we worship greed!
It's the American dream to become rich!
Filthy rich, no matter how.
More puerile, broadbrush anti-American Bullshit.
The vast majority of Americans have absolutely no desire to become "filthy rich".
Precipice,
I think you missed Headbanger's sarcasm.
DavidC
Maybe.
I don't visit here much any more, due in part to the infestation of reflexive, sophomoric, anti-American ignorance, so I certainly don't know individual posting proclivities.
So I'm guessing you down voted me for merely pointing something out?
Shad_ow's comment below is quite pertinent as well.
DavidC
Goosing the stock market ever higher only solves one problem: the terrible prospect that the assets of the incredibly wealthy might reset lower.
The stock market can't be allowed to collapse because 200 million people have pensions in that den of theft. Politicians and bankers would not lose just their jobs but probably end up in the slammer in the political backlash.
They'd actually be lucky to only end up in the slammer. In all likelihood, most of them will end up dangling from the nearest light pole.
Nope.
Didn't vote either way.
Just responded to your comment is all.
I did Upvote Shadow because he pretty much expanded on the exact point I made.
it's not anti-american, it's anti crooked bankster owned government policies serving transnational predators rather than the american people.
Correct and the proprietary pillaging has nothing to do with capitalism. It is corruption and theft.
Most Americans have the desire for success and security for their families. Those who are consumer by greed and the quest for power are running the country and our economy into the ground at the expense of hard working Americans who have no say in the matter. This will not end until nothing is left to lose or violence ensues.
Yes, and beyond that is the moral and ethical decay of the society.
To even discuss it quickly devolves into politics or the old 'isms - with the polar emotional angst of teenagers.
A great majority have a sickness of the soul that leads to masking the evil with equivocation, intellectual fogging, and psychobabble.
For society to decay one would have to presume that it was moral and ethical at some point.
Sometimes I wish that I could ignore what I see when I look at what's going on - would probably be easier.
The old 'should have taken the blue pill' thing.
Humanity is floating in a sea of shit and I'm one of the unfortunate few who haven't lost their sense of smell.
Even though they read as much people's happiness index is less than an iguana's.
Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.
If karma was real I am pretty sure we would have seen some action by now. Greed however is very real, just look around, it's disgusting with no end in sight.
"Greed is good." -- Gordon Gekko
What about fertility share?
I keep tryiing to share my fertility, but for some reason get rejected :(
I have to share it with my hand instead.
Might be the best plan!
Fertility sharing can be very expensive!
Unfortunately karma isn't instant. The lords of karma seem to give out plenty of rope, or just maybe, they, along with god are taking a long nap.
<<<<< My karma just ran over your dogma
<<<<< My dogma just ate your karma homework
are you not entertained?
ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?
Is this not why you are here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsqJFIJ5lLs
Best fucking movie clip of all time! +1
Without some fluctuation, it would just be a flatline.
Nature deals with it by having individuals born and die, as the species continues. We are just experiementing with longer period cycles and the current one is peaking.
The power of money is that it is quantified hope and so while the few at the crest of the wave have gained the most, it is still powered by the forces of expection of the many. When the tide turns, then fear rules and likely those who hold those reins will have little use for financiers and feed as many as necessary to the masses, to show them justice rules.
As for God, a spiritual absolute would be the essence from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell. Consciousness moves to the future, as the thoughts and creatures manifest recede into the past.
Blind desire rules. The form is fleeting.
The tribe owes me $30 Trillion in physical gold bullion due immediately or I will add interest charges that are commensurate with major credit card rates. De Rothschild Bank has fucked with Karma long enough IMO.
Time to pay up, de Rothschild!!!
Except in 'Murica that will NEVER happen because ALL TBTF WS Banks have incorporated in South Dakota with the USSC ruling that States' Rights are superior to Federal Rights. While this is a proper ruling taken completely out of context, when one lifts the veil and sees teh intent of this ruling was to "exempt" TBTF WS Banks from Usury Laws teh rest of the Country enforces it shows just how far "murica has fallen.
ALL US Consumer Protection Laws are Federal Laws and the only laws to protect US Citizens from Usury by these Criminal Organizations called, by the highest ranking lawyer in the country at the time - Eric Holder- Too BIg To Jail. SO not only has no one gone to jail but now they can engage in usury, with the full protection of SD and the USSC as teh USSC seemed to not consider that while States' Rights do trump Federal Rights in the case related to US Consumer Protection Laws, the Most-Protected RIghts are CItizens' Rights. And that is what the whole point of US Consumer Protection Laws were formed with the intent of protecting in the first place; or so i thought.
Which brings me to the next set-up which is all these layers of new laws are doing, is to muddy the waters as if we only used teh US COnstitution and Bill of Rights, the Banks and their CEO's would no longer have US Charters to operate as the Criminal Organizations they are and would be imprisoned with all stolen wealth confiscated, respectively.
I am from CANADA, eh.
Mrs. chunga told me her employer (hospital group) has changed things recently.
Hourly employees now get paid by the minute
This is because corporate geniuses have concluded that employees were gaming the 1/4 hour payment system by clocking out at just the right time to cheat them out of 7 minutes of pay. The policy of making sure all your work is done no matter what remains the same. But there will be no overtime.
And if you were really gaming the system, you can clock in to get that extra quarter hour also.
There is no safety behind a security guard making minimum wage.
The wall of separation is an illusion.
When Hollywood burned.
That’s why you create several layers of security troops.
In the middle east, they have the royal troops for examaple. Those are better paid and have more privileges than the normal troops and they supress the normal troops. And their system works so well, that nobody really knows what’s happening there.
Remember, without America toppeling their powers, they would all be still there.
But what when America turns? Will there ever be a power great enogh to topple the American dictators?
The IRA's solution to tyranny was terror.
The American dictator has chosen the tool of destruction.
It will be the paper money breaking.."maybe the Fed" and guards turning on there masters.
If the masses somehow get the paper money is useless unless your superstitions(see. Larkin Rose)
"If the $20 trillion (or whatever the number is, nobody really knows) sitting in tax havens melted into air, who would even notice except the pillagers and those paid to defend them?"
"CHS"
If you don't get what his point is.
I feel sorry for you!
And I envy you just like someone that counts on justice from the USA court system.
I admire how easy it is for so many to just trust a god(give up) and rollover into a grave. It looks peaceful.
Leave me and my banana trees alone.
This society doesn't want to leave me alone.
Now we are getting to the heart of the problem.
Aren't we?
Socialist/communist drivel. Take all the money in the U.S., give everyone an equal share, & watch the whole system rebuild the same as now or worse. The policies of the last few years have enriched the already rich, beaten the middle class almost out of existence, & made the lives of the poor worse. It hasn't worked but the theories sound good on paper. Kumbaya.
The sheeple live to trust. They trust that a good Fed banker will appear. They trust that an honest Attorney General will appear. They believe some god has made them exceptional and will provide.
The price of trust is cheap. The cost of trust is dear.
Unfortunately, the people I know who need to read this won't. They'll remain oblivious to the grave.
Karma? RRiigghhtt. That should be ranked with the meek shall inherit the earth. Or good things come to those who wait. Or vengance is mine sayith the lord. These are scams for the sheeple to fed on.
This is earth and it dont work like that. Talk is cheap. Actions are what matter. Bitch all you want tptb will keep on laughing. Try and get organized and they will sick the dogs on ya so fast. The Tea party got put thru the ringer in record time. Occupy was front run before it even started.
Real change is a result of real actions.
The financial circulatory system is designed for the purpose of rent extraction. So long as it created more value, in terms of broader economic relations, than it extracted, this was not a problem, but success goes to the head.
Now a combination of the natural desire of too many people to get on this gravy train, the increasing predation of the rest of the economy, the over-reliance on monetary means to extend the business cycle and, most of all, the general corruption permitted in order to sustain the momentum, the system is getting very close to a massive breakdown.
The deeper philosophic issue here is that when we try to understand causes to the obvious problems, it is like peeling an onion. Each layer is a consequence of some deeper dynamic, whether it is the basic human desire for all the advantages and needs the possession of monetary wealth seemingly conveys, irrespective of the systems and resources on which it is based, down to the fundamental question of whether reality is fundamentally linear, as the modern, western world assumes, or cyclical, as the ancients and certain aspects of eastern cultures view it. Are we really truly marching toward a brighter future, or ultimately just treading water in an eternal present, through cycles of expansion and contraction.
What CH Smith is discussing here is what I refer to as parasitic wealth. A recent good example is the supposed $500,000,000 that has been "donated" to the Clinton Foundation. It is alleged that approximately $400,000,000 of this total has been paid to employees of the foundation, namely the Clintons and their friends spelled out in the book Clinton Cash. These types of arrangements benefit the pimps, individuals in position to allow access to the public purse or establishment of public policy, as well as the Johns, powerful, well connected interests. Both foriegn and domestic. This wealth accumulation, like this article explains does nothing to increase economic growth through productive capital formation. In my opinion, these are widespread malignancies that need to be abolished. I could write an entire dissertation on the systemic change needed resolve these problems. Maybe some day. Meanwhile, I will continue enjoying the inciteful dialogue here on ZH!
Is it Karma? or A child shall lead them?
Seattle high school junior class skips standardized test in protesthttp://news.yahoo.com/seattle-high-school-junior-class-skips-standardize...
Goosing the stock market ever higher only solves one problem: the terrible prospect that the assets of the incredibly wealthy might reset lower.
What goes up must come down
spinning wheel got to go round
Talking about your troubles it's a crying sin
Ride a painted pony
Let the spinning wheel spin
You got no money, and you, you got no home
Spinning wheel, spinning all alone
Talking about your troubles and you, you never learn
Ride a painted pony
let the spinning wheel turn
Blood Sweat & Tears
Now it's time again for Blood.
We all believe in nature right? Nature always wins?
Well nature has a fundamental law - of equilibrium. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Call it whatever, Karma, Tao or divine intervention, but bad things always get equalised by good things! Those who get (steal) what they don't deserve, will always lose it, it's Nature.
A nice article, well written and accurate!
Instant karma? Im a big fan of that. On the grand scale? Na not seeing it.
If we have to wait for Karma, we're in trouble...I don't care if Bill Gates comes back as chipmunk in his next life.
The 16 families of the Black Nobility like the Borgias and the Medicis, that hold half the world's wealth and control the West, have inbred since the times of caesar and are now genetically sick many generations later.
Not only are these sick people infinitely greed as your article suggests, they also display perverse habits of pedophilia and the drinking of child blood and pineal gland hormones.
These are the same people with a criminally callous disregard for the pain and suffering inflicted on humanity by their concocted depressions and wars and fully take every advantage of human trust and vulnerabilities.
They hide behind their Masonic/Shriner, Zionists and Jesuit agents but thanks to the internet there is a growing awareness of who is behind this waking cluster we suffer daily.
Duplicate . My apologies.
I couldn't put it any better than this;
" When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in society. they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code which glorifies it "
Western capitalism in a nutshell.
Bullshit. I've seen to many good people never get what they deserve.
Great article. Couldn't have said it better myself. As a culture, we threw ethics and morality out the window decades ago. This is the harvest we reap.
Where I come from, a place called Wales; long a colony of the Briish Empire, people mined Carbon from the hills or slaved in the Steel Mills. Initially much profit from these activities was extracted by the Owners. After The War, however, all these companies were nationalised and became a political, rather than economic, reality. As the workers fought for an honourable life, without early death, in these dangerous industries the answer was finally achieved. Everything was shut down......for good.
At the time the argument that these massive industrial complexes delivered no profit and were upheld by subsidies was swallowed by the newly mortgaged who believed that per cent was understandable and the country was being drained of wealth. Only by individual borrowing could prosperity be approached and the old, hard life forgotten; this initiative opening up about 1985 and only now are we looking into the dismal pit of debt after turning our back on real resource and non-interest alignments.
Obviously.