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Capitalism Explained In 2015: "You Have Two Cows..."
Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
When I was a kid, I used to proudly wear around a T-shirt explaining different economic systems using ‘two cows’ as a metaphor.
It started off like this:
Socialism: You have two cows. Give one to your neighbor.
Then
Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both and gives you some milk.
And
Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
I started thinking about this last week when I was in Caracas, because it turns out that Venezuela is a real life example of the two cows metaphor.
It started back in 2001 when the then-President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, introduced a law that called for the redistribution of land.
According to their ‘Bolivarian socialism’ pipedream, it was immoral for any single person or company to own too much land. So the government started confiscating people’s private property.
And any property owner who resisted was imprisoned. It makes for the perfect entry on that T-shirt I used to wear:
Venezuela: You have two cows. The government steals your land and imprisons you.
Needless to say, the law had an enormous impact on the Venezuelan cattle industry.
Cattle obviously require a lot of land; and running a profitable cattle operation often means having thousands of acres or more.
So when the government started seizing people’s lands, beef production in Venezuela collapsed. Duh.
They went from being entirely self-sufficient in terms of beef production in 1998, to, within a few years, becoming the second largest beef importer in the world.
Unbelievable.
Of course, now they have an even bigger problem.
Venezuela’s currency is in freefall, and foreign reserves are dwindling.
So not only has beef production collapsed, but now the country can no longer afford to import beef either.
Beef imports to Venezuela are down over 80% this year compared with 2014.
And what little beef does enter the country is subject to the government’s severe price controls.
This has caused massive shortages and empty grocery store shelves– textbook consequences that any high school economics student could predict.
Prosperity isn’t achieved by government price controls, redistribution policies, and bureaucratic regulations.
It’s achieved through freedom. By giving people the opportunity to work hard and take risks. And letting the market determine prices and the allocation of resources.
That’s supposed to be what capitalism is. In fact, that was the last entry on the T-shirt:
Capitalism: You have two cows. Sell one and buy a bull.
Sadly this is no longer the case.
Certainly the West is in much better shape than Venezuela. But the vast regulatory apparatus being built in the so-called ‘free world’ is simply appalling.
Here in the Land of the Free, the federal government alone issues or proposes over 80,000 pages per year of new laws, rules, and regulations.
This means that, right now as you read these words, you are likely in violation of a dozen different regulations that you’ve never heard of, each of which can carry severe criminal, civil, financial, and administrative penalties.
Children get chased away from running lemonade stands. Teenagers get turned in to Homeland Security for going door-to-door offering to shovel their neighbors’ snow.
Businesses must suffer a constant onslaught of new regulations, licenses, permits, and taxes.
Meanwhile the government continues to expand its debts at an astonishing rate, saddling future generations with the obligation to pay a bill they never signed up for.
And the entire financial system is manipulated by an unelected committee of central bankers who fix the price of money (i.e. interest rates) as foolishly as the Venezuelan government fixes beef prices.
This is not the path to prosperity either. In fact, if I were to update the T-shirt for today, I would include these entries:
US government: You have 330 million cows. You milk them down to the last drop, tell them that they’re the freest cows in the world, then train them to be afraid of men in caves.
Federal Reserve: You have two cows. You give them to the banks for free. The banks slaughter them and eat all the meat. You conjure money out of thin air and buy them two more cows.
Wall Street: You don’t actually have any cows. But you rake in billions from selling out your own customers and illegally manipulating the price of milk. The government gives you a slap on the wrist.
Silicon Valley: You have two cows. They don’t produce any milk, and your operation loses $500 million per year. Top VC firms invest in your cows, valuing your company at $25 billion.
US small business: You have two cows. You cannot sell the milk without a permit. You cannot drink the raw milk that comes from your own cows. The government fines you $10,000 for failing to file form BS-01519.
US big business: You have two cows. You hire the former head of the FDA to be your corporate ‘advisor’. You get a huge government contract. Now you have two million cows.
How about you– any ideas?
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You have one cow. She wears pants suits, drinks handles of Jack Daniels, Cackles, and is "married? to a serial rapist.
Camille Cosby?
<heh heh heh!>
Certainly the West is in much better shape than Venezuela. But the vast regulatory apparatus being built in the so-called ‘free world’ is simply appalling.
Here in the Land of the Free, the federal government alone issues or proposes over 80,000 pages per year of new laws, rules, and regulations.
So then the West doesn't practice free market capitalism. That would be the point. What's with the current trend I see which condemns capitalism based on the fact that capitalism has been replaced with fascism and socialism and due to that change wealth inequality has skyrocketed? Why not blame socialism and fascism for the problems they cause and not the freer markets which existed in the past?
Libertarianism + Disintermediation: I have two cows. I slaughter one for beef, and I milk the other, so I don't need any government cheese.
Freedom: You have two cows and do whatever you wish with them as long as it does not infringe on another's rights.
To me it seems, at least using every society in history as an example, that any "-ism" involves a system of coersion. Which leads to the powerful in the system buying protection from the rulemakers.
This even applies to a simple system of authority that only enforces property rights, which are claims on property. Even that system is subject to cronyism and corruption.
pods
Correct.
"The movement that I'm in favor of is a movement of libertarians who do not substitute whim for reason. Now some of them do, obviously, and I'm against that. I'm in favor of reason over whim. As far as I'm concerned, and I think the rest of the movement, too, we are anarcho-capitalists. In other words, we believe that capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can't really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism." -- Rothbard
smaller cows for the smaller allotments.
or maybe goats.
rabbits are a possibiity.
or squirrel.
hell, even grub worms. you've seen that on episodes of survivorman.
You have two cows that shit a lot. The EPA requires you to treat the fecal matter in a treatment system. The run-off is monitored to make sure the Waters of the US are not poluted.
The shit also stinks. The DEQ makes you building a cover for it while it is waiting to be processed.
PETA protests in fronts of you home and business, driving customers aways, because they say that you are stealing the milk and raping the cows for meat.
Most cows are women; without a bull the supply of cows will dry up. Gay bulls are bad for reproductive purposes.
Fat women, oftened referred to as cows, want you to move farther away from the population so they won't be compared so to the local livestock.
Jet fuel can't melt steel cows. Never forget!
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Pods said: "Freedom: You have two cows and do whatever you wish with them as long as it does not infringe on another's rights."
I agree.
The problem is that the gubmint makes up rights (read the EPA, et al) that make it so that they can control you and your cows. Remember - the gubmint claims that cow farts cause "global warming," infringing on other's "right" to have Earth's temperature where they want it, so the gubmint must regulate cows. Humans exhale CO2 - cause global warming - so they must be regulated. It never stops. Never mind that global warming is false to start with.
You have two cows. Walmart's milk will always be cheaper than yours because producing milk is cheaper at their scale. They move into town, your cows starve and die, then you starve until you become a walmart greeter. Eventually you live in Walmart's corporate owned housing, no pets allowed, especially COWS!
People can CHOOSE if they want Walmart milk or not, just like they can choose a toyota or a ford.
Blame government, blame business, just don't blame your neighbor or yourself.
I buy organic milk at the Wal-mart for about 20% less than I'd pay for the same brand at the nearby corporate competitor.
I wouldn’t trust organic anything at walmart. I used to buy their house brand Worcestershire sauce. I am fairly certain Lea & Perrins bottled it for them. The last time I stopped in to buy some, I noticed the bottle had changed. Fortunately I had my glasses with me. I read the label, and it now contains HFCS. I quit buying meat there when they got rid of their butchers. I quit buying produce there when I found out where they got it. Now I don't trust anything from there.
That is true in that you cant trust the gov regulators. Think SEC vs Madoff
They are people who are afraid to run their own stuff and want the gov tit safety net.
That organic stuff is supposed to be regulated by the fda
You have two cows. Dennis Gartman mistakenly thinks they're bulls & tells you to buy stocks. The market immediately tanks.
Kardashianism - You have 4 cows and one bull that identifies as a cow.
No matter white or black, as long as it's the good (winning) cow...
But then, ...
Oh fuck the winning cow. Wining depends on whose news you acknowledge. You know the remainder.
Capitalism at gunpoint: You have 112 billion cows. A group of military industrial complex shills and part time dairy farmers come to power in the United States and allegedly want to "rebuild america's 'defenses'". After invading you, the Coalition Provisional Authority quickly begins issuing many binding orders privatizing your economy and opening it up to "foreign investment". They drop the corporate tax rate from around 45% to a flat tax rate of 15% and allowed foreign corporations to repatriate all profits earned in your country. The new government announces no-bid contracts to Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP along with Chevron to service your largest dairy farms. After murdering, torturing, and raping a portion of your citizens in a notorious prison, they break out and form a terrorist group and start killing people.
And all because of Obama. @_@
VERMONT:
you have two cows. you put them into a pristine field that you don’t even dare to walk on for the risk of losing your organic certification. the cows shit, and you collect it into a big pile. you put a white wig on the pile, and somebody notices the shit is leaking smelly brown stuff from the bottom. you put the smelly brown stuff on a campaign poster, and the pile with a white wig runs for president on the comparative merit of the shitpile drippings.
I know, it hurts to see what a pile of shit W was. Don't worry history will be reinvented soon enough about how the occupation was "winnable" (apparently the point of an occupation) if we had just handed enough money over to the military industrial welfare queens. Perhaps we'll even go so far as to paint ourselves as the victim! I mean, with the media completely obscuring the declassified truths about Gulf of Tonkin, we managed to go on ignoring that we murdered 3,000,000 Vietnamese, poisoning their coutryside, and basically leaving a race genetically wounded by our chemicals and paint ourselves as the victim as we fly POW/MIA flags.
We will probably go on to elect someone ignorant enough to tweet: "I still can't believe we left Iraq without the oil."
I wouldn’t trust organic anything at walmart. I used to buy their house brand Worcestershire sauce... it now contains HFCS.
Nobody but Wal-Mart uses corn syrup as an ingredient.
Billy, go try to buy a bag of hamburger or hot dog buns at Kroger this weekend without HFCS. Even in the bakery. For that matter try to buy barbecue sauce, or ketchup anywhere without HFCS. I usually don't buy any of those, but I read the labels when I am in a pinch for time and have to buy.
Making a sourdough starter is easy. Mix some flour and water until it is about the consistency of pancake batter, then set it on your counter covered with something that lets air flow but keeps insects out. Wait until it puffs up. People did this several thousand years ago, so it obviously wasn't that complex. Then, you feed it about once every day or two with more flour and water, or you put it in the fridge and feed it once every week or two. Sometimes you get a bad starter doing this. Don't worry, you'll be able to smell that it is bad. Then, you can go get whatever flour you want from whomever you want, even if you do have to pay more than you would for all purpose flour, and make your own kickass bread. Really, all you need is flour, water and a little salt. You can add honey or molasis, whatever grains you want for flavor or texture, etc... I normally add green chile, because green chile sourdough bread totally kicks ass.
This way, you get bread that is fully fermented, which is similar to what our ancestors ate, you get to avoid ingredients that you don't want, and after you fuck up a couple of loaves while learning, you get bread that stomps the shit out anything that doesn't come out of a specialty bakery for a lot cheaper than what you'd pay at the specialty bakery.
Though there is one local specialty bakery that I do believe deserves some patronage for using locally grown ingredients.
That being said, HFCS wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't in so many foods that we eat. On a hunting trip a couple of years ago, I was hungry, and there was a can of ravioli. Chef Boyardee or some shit. I hadn't had anything like that in years. I was shocked that I could taste the HFCS in it. Seriously, Americans don't just eat some HFCS, they eat shitloads of it. I don't actively avoid it, but my tastes mean that I eat a lot less of it than most.
You are not the only one who notices how much better crap-free food tastes.
You are a capitalist making food products. You hire some MBA who tells you that you can increase your margins if you use cheaper ingredients. You take his advice and find your sales flat-lining because the people who notice the difference are now making your product at home. You quickly adopt an advertising campaign which temporarily revives your sales because you have developed a strong brand and, let's face it, there are a lot of lazy fucks out there. You immediately sell out to your largest competitor who is amassing market share. You reap a mint off your stock options, consider yourself a genius, and look for the next company in need of a CEO.
Theoretically; not you personally EV,
If you use dwarf wheat flour (IE, all commercial flour) for your sourdough you're still eating something that didn't exist until a few decades ago, and was obtained through radiation and chemical mutagens. You should use Einkorn or Buckwheat if you really care to eat shit-free stuff.
Yes, but if you use Khorsan wheat (tradeneme in US Kamut) you are using an ancient grain with superior grain size and better texture (H/T Meat Trapper).
Who brought dwarf wheat into this discussant in the first place? And Why?
We are waiting....
I have better things to do with the remaining hours of the night than wait on.gov to respond. Good Night All!
sorry you guys have so much trouble finding ketchup and bbq sauce without HFCS, its every where in FL. I haven't bought either of those things with HFCS in years. I refuse to eat that shit whenever possible.
Fucking govt and their bullshit sugar protectionism.
You have two cows. You pay a veterinarian's assistant to come by regularly to inject the cows with growth hormones and antibiotics on the sly and sell the milk and beef as organic to Walmart.
American Cronyism:
You have two cows. They each make one gallon of milk per day. You sell junk bonds with promises to make 200 gallons of milk per day. You also sell calves in the derivatives market despite the lack of a bull. The Federal Reserve extends credit with artificially low interest rates to Wall Street to speculate on your cow herd. You take the fiat dollars and invest in real assets and the Military Industrial Complex. When default is near, you lobby the Executive Branch to go to war with a third world country because their milk is in our national interest. The media outlets you've bought into help scare the public into supporting this. You sell weapons to the government, who pays for them by trading Treasuries to the Federal Reserve for dollars created with the stroke of key, and must be paid back with interest.
American Keynsianism:
You have two cows. You decide aggregate demand is too low so you shoot one of them. You also decide unemployment is too high so you break the other cow's legs.
Amish Capitalism:
You have two cows. You sell raw milk to your neighbor. The FBI raids your house, shoots your cows, and throws you in jail for selling a non-FDA-regulated product.
Indian Capitalism:
You have two cows. You hire some kids to help tend to the cows so they can help their families buy food. Westerners shut you down because of child labor. The kids turn to theft and prostitution.
Iranian Capitalism:
You have two cows. You want to make milk but Israel has claimed for the last 20 years that you're 2 years away from making a cow bomb. The US puts sanctions on you and impoverishes your people.
Pakistani Capitalism:
You have two cows. You are gifting one to your new in-law family at a wedding. The U.S. determines that someone at the wedding might be a terrorist. Unbeknownst to you, they fly a drone overhead and drop a hellfire missile into the wedding. You, your cows, and your family are burned to death.
Greek Capitalism:
You have two cows. You promise the tax payers 100 cows. You default and there are riots. You must borrow cows from the EU. The people elect a new leader. He promises them 200 cows.
Venezuelan Capitalism:
You have two cows. Just kidding. The state has all the cows and there's a milk shortage.
Icelandic Capitalism:
You have two cows. They're probably related.
Libertopia Capitalism:
You have two cows. They graze strictly on marijuana plants. You and your spouses protect your cows with automatic weapons. You sell milk on the black market for bitcoin. There are no roads.
African Capitalism:
You have two cows. You also have malaria.
funniest post ive read today. gave you a plus one even though you seem to think that no one except a government can build and maintain a road. don't know how it is where you live, but they don't do too good of a job at it here. no big deal though, good shit.
You misunderstood. There are no roads.
pssst. wanna buy some hay? we take BTC.
fantastic comment carni : )
RUSH / Clockwork Angels / Carnies - live in Dallas 2012 with The Clockwork Angels String Ensemble
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at3OFycpRMQ
^^^ carni's post was worth the read. ^^^
+1 my friend.
And paved roads are another example of useless government spending. You should have seen the shit that I was driving over this weekend. I didn't need 4 low to make it over the terrain, I needed 4 low so that I could go slow enough to not kill myself. Bumpy motherfucker. But, it was a youth hunt, and we did get the kid on a nice elk that he whacked at over 400 yards.
Awesome!
I am so on board! Who needs roads!?
very funny
r
A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.
A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive…
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.
A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.
A GREEK CORPORATION
You have two cows. You borrow lots of euros to build barns, milking sheds, hay stores, feed sheds, dairies, cold stores, abattoir, cheese unit and packing sheds.
You still only have two cows.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.
SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
Actually, if you have your own cows then the milk will be cheaper for YOU. It's always better and cheaper to produce your own necessities rather then relying on someone else to supply them to you.
I had three goats. I had to register them in, vaccinate them, build them an adequate refuge, and assure the official no one other than me would even touch them without a permit (let alone purchase their milk). 6 months later time had come to eat one of my animals. The official told me i could not. The only way i could slaughter and eat my own goats was to have a sanctioned butchery do it (for a price, of course). As i was planning to put my goat in my truck, the official quickly noted i could not, for it was not an approved transportation method for live cattle. I had to hire such a transportation method for a considerable fee.
Long story short, i am emigrating to a second world country. Not before paying taxes on my now non-existant three goats, though.
American Plutocracy:
A handful of Plutocrats have a billion cows each, largely from generational wealth handed down from corrupt ancestors involved in a fractional reserve cow system. 99.9% of their countrymen have -5 to +5 cows each. Using the power of their cows, the Plutocrasts buy political influence to change tax and regulatory laws that allows their herd to automatically grow every year while the herd of the 99.9% shrinks. Eventually Plutocrats own all the cows in the country, and their countrymen owe them more cows than they can possibly pay back. They have become totally dependent on the few remaining Plutocrat cow owners, needing to rent cows from the Plutocrats in order to have milk to feed their children. The 99.9% eventually figure out that the Plutocrats have been rigging the game against them through the power of their cows. They rise up, take the cows, hang the Plutocrats from lamp posts, adopt a sound cow system, and write new regulations in order to stop blind greed and corruption from ever indebting their entire country again.
EDIT: repeat every 200-250 years with larger flags and more detailed constitutions.
You know approximately where we are in that process. Nick Hanauer knew what he was talking about in his open letter to his fellow billionaires.
Bandra Kurla Holy Shit
You have anarchocapitalism therefore you live in Somalia.
i did not have sex with that woman, hillary clinton
Great. But your missing something.
You have two cows and some private property to keep your cows.
You buy some guns to keep nomadic foragers ("homeless people" and Democrat politicians) from entering your property and poaching your cows.
An American ("John") walks into a bank and asks a Jewish banker ("Abraham"), "Can I borrow $100, and I will return $200 in a month -- you can take this cow as a security deposit?"
Abraham replies, "Sure, no problem", takes John's cow and gives him $100; John takes those hundred bucks, goes back to the door and when he's about to open it, Abraham suggests, "Listen, would it not be too hard for you to return two hundred dollars in a month?"
John thinks for a moment and agrees with him, so Abraham continues, "Then why don't you return one half right now?"
John gives him the $100 back, walks out and is thinking, "I've no money, no cow -- and still owe Abraham one hundred bucks, but why everything looks so right to me?".
PS
_Kapitalism_ is an euphemism for systemic parasitism (just the good sheep edition).
John is stupid.
And Abraham is not an ethical "Kapitalist" because he did not earn the "time of money" for his money.
This is not capitalism, it's anti-semitism. It's just saying that Jews are crooks.
> John is stupid.
John is a hard-working victim of the draconian system created by the ruling class, but according to Torah and Shulchan Aruch, all goyim are stupid animals and to rob them is a way to please your god YHW (Yahweh).
> And Abraham is not an ethical "Kapitalist" because he did not earn the "time of money" for his money.
Nice try to sell Zionomics 101 to an engineer, that made my grey balls laugh. "Time value of money" is an euphemism for the compounding interest.
> This is not capitalism, it's anti-semitism. It's just saying that Jews are crooks.
Jewish definition of anti-semits refers to all non-Jews, i.e goyim.
Not just crooks, but war criminals responsible for several hundred million goyim lives claimed by the WWI, WWII and countless conflicts ever since -- with Israel being #1 and the only source of terrorism in the world.
"Time value of money" is the essence of capitalism.
It was invented to help tribalists understand that they would be less likely to starve to death if they hunted on a regular basis instead of just when they were hungry.
You sound like a person who enjoys starving to death.
1) > "Time value of money" is the essence of capitalism.
Yes, War is Peace, there can be a "negative growth" -- and a "discount rate" is in fact a "time value of money".
The interest rate is the crux of the problem, say, there is $100 worth of goods in the whole economy and the annual interest rate is 5%. If banksters issue loans for $100, how can $105 be returned in a year -- don't forget, you only have _equivalent_ of $100 in the whole economy so far? So the only way to get away with it, temporarily, is by expanding the markets, and now that the whole Earth is consumed by this model, what are you going to do? Right, let's start another goyim slaughter to reset this sick dysfunctional system.
Your elders were smarter and every 50 years they would allow debt forgiveness or _Jewbilee_ for goyim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_%28Christianity%29
[...]
In the Biblical Book of Leviticus, a Jubilee year is mentioned to occur every fiftieth year, in which [goyim] slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest.
[...]
But those were Levitts and Cohen/Kogan, i.e. the _real_ "Jews" (high priests) with a better survival instinct, not some gypsy wannabees like our Abraham, who are still slaves to Levys and Cohens and soon will be scapegoats again.
Interest rate is the essence of systemic parasitism, but "Capitalism" is totally hopeless by its own definition, since private owners are not capable of long-term planning and will never invest in strategic projects or into infrastructure: anything you enjoy around you is a result of some kind of government/public-sponsored projects.
Your "capitalist", re-seller (read, parasite) Jacob can only buy cow's milk for cheap and sell high -- and that's the only thing the primitive capitalist system is capable of.
2) > It was invented to help tribalists understand that they would be less likely to starve to death if they hunted on a regular basis instead of just when they were hungry.
> You sound like a person who enjoys starving to death.
That's a classical example of Chutzpah, it's like claiming that slavery is there just to make sure slaves do not starve.
This world is run by engineers, but has been owned by ethnic parasites who don't even allow our John grow his own veggies in his backyard anymore.
Money circulates and as such debts can be repaid even without exponential growth.
Say a banker issues a $100 loan. The process creates $100 of new money for the economy and $105 worth of new debt, which is seen as an asset by the banker. The banker also gets a liability of $100 as he credited some account. Overall, he gains $5 on the difference.
A year later the banker gets paid his $105, which takes $105 from the economy. The debt is extinguished and substracting from the previous gain of $100 thats a $5 loss.
It would seem that only by issuing a new and bigger loan could the loss of circulating money be compensated for. No? And even bigger later.
The fact is that bankers are more than happy to put that $5 back into circulation by purchasing assets. Its his profit. When a banker makes a net profit beyond the initial loan, that does not take money out of the economy. It allots some of that money to them, as profit, for their own use. Any extra money beyond the initial loan does not dissapear when the loan is paid, it is only transfered to them.
When a farmer sells a crop, does anyone accuse him of taking money out of the economy?
The crux of the issue here is the interest rate and the monopolies that come with having a licence to print money that no one else but them has. Without that monopoly everyone could become a banker, and it would no longer be so profitable.
Then there is Vega-ism:
"You have two cows.
You eat the cows."
There's one 'ism' that that steps away from coersion....
Anarchism.
I'm thinking you already knew that, but forgot to mention it.
;-)
Anarchism is the state of having 300,000,000 governments all wishing to run your life.
Well you can subtract me from that number because I have no desire to run your life. I can't imagine anything that could possibly be as boring as looking after you.
If anarchism was a viable ISM, we would have it now, just like pacifism.
Oldwood circa 1902: If man was meant to fly God would have given him wings.
Anarchism was the only ISM for the vast majority of human interaction. Governments haven't existed in their current form for more than a few thousand years, back to the time of Hammurabi's Code.
Tribes and anarchism were pretty much the norm until recently, with the invention of kingdoms/States/fiefdoms/etc.
Kingdoms, states, and fiefdoms have something that anarchism doesn't.
Slaves.
Much of human interaction today happens outside of the purview of the state. For one example out of many, gambling is illegal in many places but folks still get together for a game of poker and large sums may be won or lost but no one calls the cops and very few people end up getting beaten or shot. People can interact with each other perfectly well without the benefit of an overseer.
People also get their knees busted by Vinny for not paying gambling debts. But that is our nature. So long as I'm allowed to shoot Vinny if he comes after me for the debt incurred by a friend or relative, I'd take that over not gambling and having to pay a debt anyway.
But again, most people want leaders. Real liberty frightens them. They want to wait for the cops to clear their house if there is an intruder without realizing that the cops will either get there after somebody who didn't want a fight has left, or after it is far too late.
If an innocent life is threatened, of course you can or perhaps should shoot whoever is being a real threat.
Call 911, then die.
If you want to get rid of kingdoms/states/fiefdoms/etc... you need to get rid of agriculture. And I bet that even before those existed, there were power structures and hierarchies. It's just that they would have been in small enough groups that when the sociopath de jure failed to deliver, he was murdered or ousted. Agriculture is what allows for large groups of humans to congregate, and too many of us humans want leaders. You can wish for better times, but, unless we come with some new technology that is beyond our understanding of physics, you're pissing up a rope. Those of us in developed countries who are old enough to post here have lived through the best times in all of human history, and I don't see it getting better in the near future.
But maybe we can figure out how to be content with what we can do, for our descendant's sake.
I'm not opposed to leaders. The world is full of leaders and most of them are not elected. In a free market a leader who leads in the wrong direction can be fired immediately. People will simply stop following him. You don't have to wait for several more years until his term ends while he leads you further astray.
US government: You have 330 million cows. You milk them down to the last drop, tell them that they’re the freest cows in the world, then train them to be afraid of men in caves.
As much as it pains me to praise simon like this, that is one of the best, if not the best, description of our situation that I have ever heard.
Revolutionary: You have zero cows. You have nothing to lose. You are truly free.
Those with no assets are the least free people there are. Kris Kristofferson was way off base with that lyric.
Freedom: You have two cows and do whatever you wish with them as long as it does not infringe on another's rights."
Hold on a minute. Cows have rights too you know.
Free The Cows!
One steak at a time....
A farmer had a horse and used it to plow his fields.
Another farmer did all his plowing by hand and he noticed how easy the other farmer worked and made a good profit.
He approached the other farmer and offered $2 for the horse. And the farmer agreed.
The next day the farmer that sold the horse thought about how he would now have to plow by hand and decided to buy the horse back. He offered $4 and the other farmer agreed.
Well, this went on and on up to $12 when a stranger approached the farmer and offered $14 for the horse, and he sold it.
The next day the other farmer came back to buy the horse again and the other farmer told him he sold it.
The farmer replied, “you fool, we were getting rich off that horse”.
So THAT'S what they mean by wealth effect. Brilliant!
Crony Capitalism....
You have a cow. On the way to the market Jamie Diamonds and his good friend Blandfiend offer you some magic beans for your cow. You accept and get your ass beat by your mom when you come home for being a dumbass. You plant the beans anyway and when the stalk grows, you climb and fe fi fo fum Diamonds and Blandfiend try to beat your as as well, but you steal their gold as well as their goose that lays the golden eggs. You scurry down the stalk and start chopping away. Too slow......., shit. Diamonds and Blandfiend fall from the sky, but you are stealthy enough to pull out your akm 7.62x39 and thirty rounds later all is good.
Obviously, you are not alone. Everyone that had been scamed and cheated were at the bottom of the stalk with their own ar/s and pitchforks and hatchets and guillotines.
The Cows stage a revolution!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMbXvn2RNI
where's the fucking poetry Billy? If by freemarket capitalism you mean unfettered capitalism you are closer to it now than at any time in history except perhaps equially with the golden age of the robber barons. If you think freemarket capitalism is the small entrepreneur buying labour and material and producing a product for a profit in an unrestricted open market; that has never happened, and would turn out to be a disaster faster than you can say "monopoly isn't just a game".
where's the fucking poetry Billy?
If by freemarket capitalism you mean unfettered capitalism you are closer to it now than at any time in history
Prove it. Put up a sign on your front door that says "bank." Take deposits, make loans and maybe even print your own currency. When the Feds show up and throw you in prison tell them that you are participating in an unfettered free market and that this can't be happening.
I'll make it easier for you. Open up a barber shop and refuse to get a license. When you are fined and told to shut down until you get a license refuse to do so. When the police drag you away tell them that you are participating in an unfettered free market and that this can't be happening.
If you think freemarket capitalism is the small entrepreneur buying labour and material and producing a product for a profit in an unrestricted open market; that has never happened,
So my great-great-grandfather was not an independent operator of a tannery in Jefferson County, PA? That would be news to him except that he's dead.
that has never happened,
Why do some people think that this is a good argument for avoiding innovation? There has never been a society in which rape has been eliminated so by your line of reasoning no one should try to avoid rape or make sure that one's community is as free of rapists as possible. Likewise cancer has not been eliminated so by your criteria cancer should be encouraged. But of course that's only because you are either ignorant or insane. Intelligent, rational people can and do make the effort to create a better world despite the fact that perfection is impossible.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Free market! Fucking TARP, QE1, QE2, Operation Twist and QE3, Bitchez! And let's not mention the whole revolving door between regulatory agencies and private companies being "regulated" by those agencies. Or regulations being written by the companies being regulated. Aww hell, let's just sum this up in one acronym:
TBTF
WTF is it with all of these people who think we have free markets? Sell some raw milk on the open market without trying to hide what you're doing for fucks sake. Free markets my fucking ass.
The problem with the "two cows" as stated above and in other memes that I've seen shows "Socialism" as being Charity or Volunteerism. Socialism should actually read, :You have two cows,The State takes one and gives it to your neighbor."
Even worse, I've seen socialist liberals use the two cows analogy as stated in this article as though Socialism is a good thing.
Socialism. You have two cows. The government takes one. The government makes sure the pasture remains in good condition, and makes sure your cow if fed and taken care of in lean times. Pretty soon your cow is happy and healthy and birthing new cows for you.
Fuck you and the government, bitch!
you have one cow.
????
baby cows.
And then your one cow dies and you become dependent on .gov. Then you beg and plead for .gov to take MY cow and give it to you so you have a cow again, right?
Dipshit.
You have two cows and then you're too stupid to realize that you only have one cow. Then you wake up and realize it was all just a dream and .gov feeds you some hay.
If only government worked like that, vlad. When in history has it?
More likely, the government requires permits to use your own pasture or else they send thugs out to make sure you do and then take 1/2 of of the milk, and 1/2 the cow... because you know... taxes and redistribution of wealth so everyone is equal. Especially the people that don't work or create value... because they need to eat too so they can vote for more government.
End result, we all die hungry after a few weeks after the last of the 1/2 cow runs out... including the government parasites who don't understand how wealth is created.
(dupe...internet timing out)
Im not very old (30) but when I was in school, the tragedy of the commons was still taught. this guy should look that up
It's socialism.
It only looks like it makes sense to people with no sense at all.
Yeah fuck the government, I agree. But you're forgetting that the government is going to take some cows no matter what system you're living under. Show me a Libertarian paraside, it doesn't exist. So anyways, you can either get something back in exchange for your cows, or get nothing back in exchange for your cows. Somewhere in there is the sweet spot.
right now we are 'getting back' a government that is trying to disarm us while also spending billions of our tax dollars spying on us, while simultaneously giving weapons to terrorist organizations it created overseas so that it can justify taking even more of our money to buy more weapons to defend us against the terrorists it just created and armed. and if we call the police, that we also pay with our tax dollars, to help us if someone attacks us, they may just accidentally shoot our dog or our child in a moment of terror(they are mostly cowards, apparently) and walk away. so what benefit do it get out of all that? Ill admit I kinda confesed myself with all that, but it seems like Id be better off with a couple cows instead of all that bullshit....
Yes, I agree, a libertarian parasite is quite impossible as liberatarians believe in personal responsibility just a much as they value liberty! Finally, a sensible thought from Vlad. (Unless you meant paradise is which case you're quite inane and possibly insane)
Those cows in Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea sure seem happy don't they fuck tard?
You know we pay you government disninformation assholes, what, $8 hour, to be a tritor to your country. You could at least try, fuckhead.
The cows in Cuba -Venezuela-Chile where so much happier under capitalism that they had a (violent) rebellion to bring in various degrees of socialism so they could be unhappy and that capitalism wasn't attacking them enough so that they could go back to being "free" fucktard indeed! Unregulated and unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that comodifies everything and proceeds to exploit any resources, from a planet to its inhabitants, until depletion or exhaustion. "Buttt heah give me capitalism in all its glory cause its super good or so I've be told and seeing as I don't think that'll have to do"........
where is it that you are seeing this "unregulated and unfettered capitalism" ? It isnt anywhere in the western world, nothing central bank intervention and govt bailouts here
Socialism. You have two cows. The government takes one. The government makes sure the pasture remains in good condition, and makes sure your cow if fed and taken care of in lean times. Pretty soon your cow is happy and healthy and birthing new cows for you.
Yeah, if you're a banker. For the little guy, not so much.
For those who have forgotten, the central bank is a communist institution:
The Ten Planks of the
Communist Manifesto
1848 by Karl Heinrich Marx
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Never forget.
Not even close the the reality of how it really works
government seizes 10 cows and fields:
1 field turns out fairly decent and is constantly heralded as the greatness that is government.....but never mentions it costs 4 times the amount to operate than a normal field does and is only succeeding because competing fields are being regulated out of existance
4 fields are mediocre and require tax credits or government loan guarantees to keep functioning
2 field owners are paid by the USDA to not do any farming even while government statistics says millions go to bed hungry
1 field is declared an endangered species sanctuary/wetlands conservation area
2 fields turn into desolate wastelands and sit fallow as they are processed through tax/bankruptcy proceedings from being unable to meet the tax bills required to fund the above government interventions
" The government makes sure the pasture remains in good condition,"
not true if they are outsourcing the cows to other countries for them to take care of them. The gov has "empty" overpriced
over taxed land sitting there while the cows are now in china. As the land sits empty everyone gets taxed to the bejesus in order
to pay the government guy to watch over the empty land now to make sure no one actually uses it anymore.
With magic cows and a mythical benevolent government anything is possible. Is the milk chocolate too?
You are all cows. The farmers at the top nurture you in the same manner as a rural farmer, ensuring that you produce at your optimum capacity. You are an extractive resource, the power elite applying animal husbandry's "best practice" guidelines (vetinary services, controlled growing conditions, security and shelter and the very best milking machine in the history of farming) as a tool to reap the most returns from their stock.
Baa...... baaaahhhh, mooooo. We're getting shorn, milked and harvested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOMdILcxoZI
True story
You are all cows. The farmers at the top nurture you in the same manner as a rural farmer, ensuring that you produce at your optimum capacity. You are an extractive resource, the power elite applying animal husbandry's "best practice" guidelines (vetinary services, controlled growing conditions, security and shelter and the very best milking machine in the history of farming) as a tool to reap the most returns from their stock.
Baa...... baaaahhhh, mooooo. We're getting shorn, milked and harvested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOMdILcxoZI
"Socialism. You have two cows. The government takes one. The government makes sure the pasture remains in good condition, and makes sure your cow if fed and taken care of in lean times. Pretty soon your cow is happy and healthy and birthing new cows for you."
But I could've done that. I don't need a government to make sure that MY COW is taken care of. That's my job and MY COW.
"Pretty soon your cow is happy and healthy and birthing new cows for you." (emphasis mine)
How does that work when the COW IS OWNED BY THE STATE?!? The cows belong to EVERYONE at that point!
Cronyism....you have two cows...the FED takes them and give them to Goldman...You die
Socialism should actually read, :You have two cows,The State takes one and gives it to your neighbor."
Well, no.
Socialism is where the gov takes both cows gives each party (two) some low grade filth for food proclaiming how everyone is taken care of while telling people how glorious the socialistic state really is...
"The problem with the "two cows" as stated above and in other memes that I've seen shows "Socialism" as being Charity or Volunteerism. Socialism should actually read, :You have two cows,The State takes one and gives it to your neighbor."
In some half assed socialist systems yes. But actual socialism, no. The state owns the means of production. In a real socialist society, the state takes both cows, and if you are lucky, you get to tend both of them and skim skim some of the milk. And I'm not talking about low fat skimmed milk there, I'm talking about skimming profits.
Free trade! Free market!
The government does not think it means what you think it means.
What they actually meant was: Two-tier legal system.
Sell the 2 cows to your uninformed neighbor before they come. Move to another place. Duh. World is big and plenty of almost free space, I know your going to say what about your great grand kids? That is their problem, I wont know them, maybe they will run out of places to go, then its time to pick a place and have a revolution.
~"You have one cow. She wears pants suits, drinks handles of Jack Daniels, Cackles, and is "married? to a serial rapist."~
You guys are just jealous because she is obviously the greatest mind in cattle futures the world has ever seen. I think your posts are rather catty, er.., cowwy. /sarc
LOL No Debt. +1 for originality and avoiding the obvious.
Hillary?
Is that you, Bill?
New Zealand: You have 6 million cows. You piss off the only growth market for milk (China) by signing up for the TPP and scratch your head when they stop buying your milk.
Super Storm Sandy hits New York and New Jersey.
Power is out everywhere. A shit sandwich. The few gas stations that are open, have lines a mile long.
Then, the Governors and Attorneys General, mandate price controls. Can't have store owners fucking their customers, can we?
Result? Why open? Why, if you are a supplier, would you risk the trip, if you can't charge more? Gas stations with no power, could have rented generators, and paid premiums to get deliveries, but could not pass on the cost. So they just said " fuck it" .
And even today, so called intelligent people will argue you need to impose these rules, to prevent gouging, whatever the fuck that is.
What would be the value, of a seat in a lifeboat, if you are on the Titanic?
Let the market work.
Crybabies in 3, 2...
you are quite correct. another point that is lost on people, it gives a much better distribution of resources. If I still charge 5$ for a case of water, people will buy as many as they possibly can with no regard for others who might need this water. If I can charge 25$ for a case of water, becuase thats what the market will pay, people will typically think out how many they actually NEED for a couple days, and only buy that many. Same with gas after hurricane sandy. I own a gas station, and the gas I can pump with my generator is worth 15$ a gallon. People are only going to buy what they NEED since its so damn expensive, so they won't fill up their cars and every small gas can they can get their hands on. THis means that more people will get the small amount of gas that they actually NEED.
Plus, if you are a smart gas station owner and you are the only one in the area that even has the ability to sell gas, should you not be rewarded for being smarter and better prepared to serve your customers? Personally, in that situation Id much rather have a gas station be open and charging 15/gallon than them all be charging 3/gallon and all be out of gas
" You HAD two cows. We took them, re-hypothecated them, sold off credit default swaps and derivatives, and lost the whole works to the New World Order Global Bank.
But - they were YOUR cows - so you owe the bank two million cows.
Have a nice day. "
+1 for the jug handle ref.
"Prosperity isn’t achieved by government price controls, redistribution policies, and bureaucratic regulations."
- Simon Black
"Nobody cares the state of the empire over which they rule so long as they rule over it absolutely."
- NoDebt
It aint called capitalism it's called plutocracy or corporatism.
Exactly. Why do so many people fail to grasp this?
But isn't the logical outcome of capitalism taking your excess capital and buying favor by those that run the game so your can ensure profits indefinitely?
Serious question.
pods
Not at all. Even a rich individual benefits from free market capitalism. Without it innovation is slowed and price discovery becomes impossible which breaks down markets and further reduces innovation and production. Anyone who undercuts the freedom of others hurts themselves whether they realize that fact or not.
A rich capitalist does not benefit if the innovator has a product that will make his obsolete, correct?
That is the problem I am trying to address. I am not taking sides and all your Randian sycophants can suck my fat one.
Does not capitalism inherently lead to those with money (the capitalists) buying off those charged with keeping the rules for that system?
If capitalism is merely the theory that capital is deployed where it is most beneficial for each INDIVIDUAL in said system, why would it not be most beneficial for the horse drawn carriage owner to set up barriers to entry for the automobile?
And, when this system has progressed to its logical outcome (say our medical system), can you blame the system itself for how things turned out?
I would say yes you can. The system doesn't change simply because the outcome is different than how you thought it would when it was set up.
pods
I hate to say it, but ultimately the fault lays with the public.
to explain:
government is set in motion with laws to govern its behavior
capitalists employ their wealth to distort or circumvent those laws
the system is no longer captialism. it has diverged into a different system: cronyism, fascism, socialism, etc
at this point it is the public's duty to demand that the laws be enforced and the original system be restored
should the system resist these demands, it is encumbant on the public to drag the offending captialists and their political lackeys into the street and hang them from lamp posts.............
the most violatile members of society traditionally leading such revolutions are young people and the poor who suffer disproportionately from the above corruption. todays young people are far too busy playing virtual shoot-ups, watching reality tv court jesters, or texting about their latest mall haul, and government handouts keep the poor just satisfied enough to not cause wide spread trouble, except on an as-needed basis.
The most violatile members of society traditionally leading such revolutions (mass social/religous movements) are the undesireables/easily manipulated/ poor/disenfranchised true believers...
why would it not be most beneficial for the horse drawn carriage owner to set up barriers to entry for the automobile?
They did, but the adoption of the automobile wasn't a vanity. It averted a very real crisis. The horse manure crisis of 1894. When it had to happen it did happen, and that's the way it's always going to work. The problem isn't the system. People are the problem, so go ahead and try whatever wacky ideology you want to try, but we're always going to be the fly in the utopian ointment.
In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day...
http://fee.org/freeman/the-great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894/
Can you imagine the methane emissions from all of those horses? Cap and trade could have saved the horse powered taxi industry, if only they thought of it at the time. (Sarc)
A rich capitalist does not benefit if the innovator has a product that will make his obsolete, correct?
That is the problem I am trying to address.
Not necessarily. The rich capitalist has a large quantity of capital equipment, real estate, employees and distribution channels. It may very well be in the best interests of the innovative entrepreneur to join forces with the rich capitalist in order to develop, manufacture and distribute his new product.
See, this is where central planning fanatics lose it. They think that they can imagine scenarios which must be true and therefore avoid all pitfalls and create a better world through denying others the freedom to interact voluntarily.
But every situation is different and there are billions of people on the planet, each with his own unique talents, faults and desires. To suggest that the rich capitalist would do some untoward thing in a given situation ignores the fact that you have not and can not take into account all the variables in a given situation. Self interest does not necessarily mean that an individual will act in a violent or coercive manner. In fact, a free market is the best way to ensure that individuals act in a peaceful and productive manner because under such a system that is the only path to success.
Does not capitalism inherently lead to those with money (the capitalists) buying off those charged with keeping the rules for that system?
No, because true capitalism is anarchism as I pointed out above. In an anarchic system the only rule is natural law: the right of the individual to be secure in his person and property by means of voluntarily organized self defense. There's no one to bribe. You'll have to have a government for that.
If capitalism is merely the theory that capital is deployed where it is most beneficial for each INDIVIDUAL in said system, why would it not be most beneficial for the horse drawn carriage owner to set up barriers to entry for the automobile?
How could he possibly do that if there is no government for him to bribe?
And, when this system has progressed to its logical outcome (say our medical system), can you blame the system itself for how things turned out?
You're going to have to explain why you think that Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare are capitalist institutions. As I said above you are blaming capitalism for the faults of socialism. The government has subsidized housing, medical care and college education and those are the biggest bubbles we have and they threaten the entire economy. Blame the socialists as that is their doing.
You dont need natural law or a right to self defense to defend yourself. You can just defend yourself.
This constant invocation of natural law and natural rights is superfluous. Next you'll debate about the source of natural law and over which angel enforces it. Its a superstition.
Animals defend themselves whenever possible, and they dont first mention their natural rights.
Buying lawmakers used to be illegal and when prosecuted resulted in jailtime.
It's hard to buy a lot of loyalty if your campaign contributions are limited to $500.00 each.
Corporations may be made up of individual people but they, themselves, are not people.
Fundamental problem identified. Bad law.
But bad laws are good for the right people, if they pay.
So why should bribing not be considered a capitalist investment?
@pods, thats a problem with government, not capitalism.
The point is not destroy all the market, just the parts of the market that compete against you.
What you are saying is actually true, the problem ( im sure you know this) is that we are buying off government, not private parties , so that negates any capitalism.
So the logical outcome is to game the system? Okay, but look outside or in the markets and ask if you really want that system to keep running.
Ideally you take you excess capital and reinvest in your business, store for wealth, donate to charity, invest in a start up, etc etc etc. Buying off a regulator to gain unfair advantage is not the logical outcome to me.
Guys, i don't think he is disagreeing with us, he just brought up a point to think about. What he described is what is currently happening. The ( i thought obvious ) issue with this is that we are supposed to buy out government, when instead if needed, we buy favors from private parties...that would be capitalism.
I think sometimes I long for the days of the old ZH where long, deep, well fleshed out arguments were talked about.
Maybe sort of an old ZH acid flashback?
It has always bothered me that nobody can answer that question I posed over and over again.
If the best use of my excess capital, in a capitalist system, is to buy favor from the regulating parties (in a legal fashion) to ensure profits for myself, why is this not capitalism?
pods
It is not capitalism because you would be paying the state...You are buying favors from the state, and not from private parties. Capitalism is where private parties are involved without government intervention.
---------------- cap·i·tal·ism noun noun: capitalism an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.The state is also a private party. The division between private and public is arbitrary.
You select your state leaders like you select the waitress at a restaurant.
I have to agree that, under the terms you outlined, you are correct. That is capitalism.
Much like the word "democracy", the real definitions of "capital" and "capitalism" have been truncated so that only the beautiful parts remain in view.
"Don't turn that "rock" over, you might not like what you find. Better to leave it alone."
And, IIRC, Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR were run by democratically elected governments that kind of turned out to be not so beautiful.
The answer I usually get is that they didn't have the right amount of democracy or that it was subverted. Rly?
All economic systems require "capital" to operate. Some require that the capital remain in the hands of the owners. Some require that the capital is divvied up between all the participants in the system.
My 2 cents is that when people try to add properties to "capital" that it does not possess (like a moral center, say), therein lies the rub.
I don't have an answer for you either. But I, too, long for the days when things were batted back and forth here and some real knowledge was imparted.
It has always bothered me that nobody can answer that question I posed over and over again.
If the best use of my excess capital, in a capitalist system, is to buy favor from the regulating parties (in a legal fashion) to ensure profits for myself, why is this not capitalism?
But I have answered your question at length as have others. Note that you didn't say that no one answered your question in a way which you found convincing, you said that it hadn't been answered at all. This leads me to believe that you are not reading the answers which are being provided to you. Otherwise your complaint would be with the nature of the answers and not a blanket statement that no answered have been provided.
Determining what's the best use of capital is not a simple, single dimension problem. It's not about just how much money you will get, it's about how much all your capital will be worth over time, and more. For one, you need to take into account the fact that you will likely be losing partners' trust, your reputation (intangible capital), etc. Those things are hard to measure, but vitally important.
Then if you consider how everything plays out over time, it will turn out that it is not actually worth it, in the long run, to buy favors that are unfair to others. It may be worth it buying favors that are good for everyone anyway (e.g. legislation that closely follows natural law).
Too theoretical for me. From where i'm from if you dont bribe several layers of government you cant do business. No way around it.
Well theres the black market way, but that also involves bribing people.
This presumes that there are no moral constraints at all on either end.
Do not moral constaints come from a system of morality?
What if my morals are more strict than, say, a moneylenders?
idk, call it Philosophy Friday. I just get tired of seeing people cheer systems that are clearly flawed and logically lead to where we are today.
People shout that we do not have capitalism here in the USA today. (I don't disagree)
But, when did we? And when you give me that example, I can find information where capital was used to protect your interests.
It is an inherent flaw in that system. Each individual is looking out for his own self interest, but the sum means we end up where we are today.
pods
It isn't the fault of a person protecting their self interests, these issues lead back to one thing...government. The only thing that can fuck up a free market system is for it to be regulated....once you have any government regulation, shit gets thrown out of wack and its all downhill from there.
Would you not need a code of laws providing equal protection? How would they be enforced? By some "governing" body?
Reading pods comments reminds me when I waited for daybreak...then it dawned on me!