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America's Black Friday Frenzy As Seen From Abroad
Submitted by Simon Black of Sovereign Man
You Definitely Want To Avoid This
Some friends and I spent most of the weekend touring the future site of our resilient community in central Chile, just a few hours’ drive south of Santiago on a very modern highway.
As I’ve mentioned before, the site sprawls across roughly 1,000 acres in a gorgeous setting; a healthy chunk of the property is already planted as a working (and profitable) farm, and it was exciting to see so much in bloom over a beautiful, sunny summer weekend.
We picked organic vegetables out of the ground and made a fresh meal with full knowledge of exactly where our food had come from and how it had been grown. This is real power. And freedom.
When I returned to my apartment in Santiago and got caught up on major news events from around the world, some friends sent along the usual batch of Black Friday shopping videos. They’re hilarious… and utterly pathetic.
Almost without exception, the situation gets worse every year. People get bruised and bloodied as crowds battle each other for deep discounts. Last year several people died… and in response, most of the major retailers adjusted their specials and staggered their stores’ opening times to reduce the crowd levels.
It didn’t help much, as this year’s barrage of Black Friday incidents underscores yet again how hopeless the mindless culture of consumerism has become. People still trample each other, fight each other, etc. Now they are pepper-spraying each other… or even waiting in the parking lots to mug each other as shoppers exit the stores.
(A friend even told me one unconfirmed story of a group of Wal Mart parking lot muggers who themselves got mugged by a rival group of Wal Mart parking lot muggers.)
Then there’s this video showing the utter chaos and calamity that ensued when shoppers were fighting over towels put on sale at $1.28 each. Towels.
If this is how people act when towels are on sale, it certainly makes one wonder how well society will function when there’s actual chaos– like supply disruptions for food, fuel, or electricity.
Have you ever seen those UN Aid videos where mobs of Africans start violently looting the trucks carrying humanitarian supplies? Or the more recent videos of Haitians battling each other in the streets over bags of rice? Western society is not much more advanced.
If you truly believe there is a 0% chance of social unrest occurring where you live, then I encourage you to do absolutely nothing. And this is what most people will do.
If, on the other hand, you see several issues on the horizon which may threaten the smooth, orderly flow of modern society, then I encourage you to watch those Black Friday videos and answer a simple question– “Do you want to be around those people when it happens?”
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Foreigners are just jealous. 57% of American's who live below the poverty line have statelite TV's. You need to be upper middleclass in Euroland to enjoy this same standard of living! :) Just sayin...... with 0/sarc
dishes are everywhere in the Me. I call fake.0/sarc.
Eu pop is not a bunch of lard assed whales with only the remote between them and insanity.
Yes indeed. The same towel on sale, adding in the VAT, would equate to $25.
I don't have a TV.
People in different cultures are brought up with different values.
HTH.
Doug Casey's Estancia Cafayate... kind of product is apparently, from what I understand, what is marketed here.
The above quote is from Ferfall's blog about the Casey project http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2009/06/doug-casey-on-argentina.html
Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.
Dance puppets! Dance!
utter chaos and calamity that ensued when shoppers were fighting over towels
Did you watch the video? They weren't fighting, actually were slightly cooperating. The video and others like it are embarrasing for Americans, but so what, you don't live here anymore, as you incessantly point out. I don't participate in Black Friday but I do watch the videos for entertainment value. Most of the people are having fun, a small percentage are out of control. There's not much fun in many Americans' lives anymore, for a variety of reasons, and it's cruel to demean people with less education and even less opportunities than you have for participating in a carnival of sorts. Chile is not better than America. We are the same. I'll bet you have guns on your farm just like most farms in America.
A worthwhile analysis.
This just shows how stupid we are as people.
There are intelligent person's, quite a few of them but as people we are freaking stupid!
There is no "we as a people". That abstraction exists only to lure you into a snare of self-sacrifice while chasing your intellectual tail.
Frankly, I don't know who I'd rather have as my neighbors.. those Walmart crazies or Zerohedge commenters.
You have not spent enough time among those Walmarians or you would know the total losers who are attracted to those soul crushing Wallys.
other threads have outed some ZH'rs as faithful WalMart shoppers, sooo stealthy, maybe a neighbour already?
(and some even bank at the TBTF banks like BofA - a diverse lot these avatars)
I shop at Walmart. Best deal on kitty litter. I don't feel as if that makes me a bad person nor is it something I attempt to hide.
What's the difference between the public’s stampede on Black Friday and the world's stock traders stampede just about every other day. - Nothing!
They are frothing bulls much like the ones that sent SPX up 3%. Maybe Walmart paid some to rush and create a ruccus and then the mob follows, pretty sure most did not get a chance to see the price - towels or toilet paper, if there is a bull run they want a piece of it.
This is bullish for Soylent Green.
At least you get to hear a rousing version of Beethoven's Sixth and see one hell of a light and video show before you go.
Well the Italians have the Running with the Bulls and we have Black Friday...lol
These people look like they are about to explode. All that bad fat shit running through their constricted arteries....makes people crazy mad. Image Buffalo Wings (or what shit ya call them) on special ? Carnage people ! AUFFR?
The very worst of America is on display every Black Friday. It makes me ashamed to say I belong here.
really Bruce? "the very worst of America"???
I could list hundreds of worse crimes being committed on global humanity, going on RIGHT NOW, all in the name of AMRKA - a few WallyWorld towel-fests, and the stupid who shop the sales - that's not even on the radar by comparison.
I side with Bruce on this one as I see his point. Yes, the things being fought over are towels, trivial by any measure, but his point is that if such behavior can be condoned for things of such trivial nature, what behavior will be condoned when food, fuel or some other necessity is at stake?
what behaviour is condoned in the resource wars, the atrocities committed by "patriotic military" on behalf of the corporate banking class?
"food, fuel" and other necessities ARE at stake for the humans being killed and/or poisoned daily, in NUMEROUS nationstates, right this very minute, and the next - just because amrkns are still in 'holiday" shopping mode does not negate these truths.
no corporate crime is as vile as these videos show?? really???
The worst of America is displayed by our government. Individuals can not keep up with the destructive power of those armed with urban assault vehicles, missile drones and nuclear weapons. I wouldn't trade you one Walmart shopper for all the politicians in DC.
Was the fifth golden ticket in there?
How anyone can expect a people crushed by imperialism (sorry, Globalization) over the past 40 years to act differently (much like Haiti which used to be a rice exporter...until the free trade monetarists let big agro undercut them with their cheaper rice.) is beyond me. When the top has no rules, it does filter down as well.
What's the common ground? The people of America, Haiti, and elsewhere, were pushed into idiocy, through same levers. The dogma of monetarism adopted.
Free trade, outsourcing, fraudulent debt, and you all know the rest of the list of bullshit thrusted upon us like Dirk Diggler in a porno.
I got a golden ticket....I got a golden ticket
Oh wait, it's a fucking towel.
Glass-Steagall
The power to enforce Glass-Steagall is found in a misinterpretation of the Commerce Clause. It is the same misinterpretation which allows government to take any role they choose in manipulating the economy. It is the same misinterpretation which has lead to bank bailouts before and after the replacement of Glass-Steagall with the even more extensive Grahm-Leech-Bliley Act.
Forget Glass-Steagall. Forget asking the government to play nice when they interfere in the private sector. Government interference in the economy is at the root of the problem.
I don't want to hear anybody whining about "corporate greed" on Wall St. when we have more than enough personal, real selfish-bastid greed on "main street"!!! You fucking pigs (in the video) make me physically sick. Go fucking die, especially that fat ass with the "This guy needs a beer" T-shirt. You fat ass slob, control yourself. You are an embarrassment to men and to the white race.
Comparing or equivocating corporate greed into the hundreds of trillions (and no it wasn't ever needed, monetarism, never was) with a few people rushing for towels is a bit asinine and out of touch. The two are so far from equal, your comparison is funnier than Eddie Murphy in Raw. You're misinterpreting greed with desperation. They were put there by banksters. Know the difference, because Wall Street didn't corrupt our congressmen to repeal Glass-Steagall, or start the fed, or any of the other bs because of desperation, it was of greed. Even if those people were greedy with towels, the others were greedy with the whole system to the tune of quadrillions. Yes those things are equal.
Yes the person, probably on the lower end of the pay scale (because those are the ones who NEED these types of sales), thus they all congregate together like some sort of sick lab experiment, and they are not the entirety of the human race.
The real embarassment to the HUMAN race, is that we have monetarist assholes who are dumber than Forrest Gump running thing (as unqualified as they are), and who are the real drag (and biggest) on society.
Desperate people with real problems, engage in desperate acts.
There was never such an excuse for Wall Street. Ever. Even in the 20's.
Apologists like you make me sick even more than the banksters do. These walmart animals have minds of their own. They chose this behavior out of all the available options. They are not poor and downtrodden. They live free comfortably.
Their welfare income puts them in the top 10% income bracket world wide. Look it up. I have. Poor does not equate to being unhappy or immoral.
yes, the greed is relative, the spoils exactly the same, the peoples harmed equivalent.
are people seriously surprised that the qualities exhibited by "leaders" are emulated by the "peoples"?
greed is good, I gots mines.
I didn't see any discounts!! The prices were pretty much the same. The only I did see was ALOT of psyops advertising making you believe that there were discounts.
If you have a brain, you can plainly compare the prices that the same stores had the previous days/weeks and compare them to "black friday" then you'll see the same prices listed.
Okay, there might be a little shaving here and there, but barely.
I do see people throwing towels.
They are the ones who said, "I don't need this crap," and threw in the towel.
Simon,
If you can post video's you sure as hell can post a scan of your passport stamps.
Until, then just STFU.
Those who think that people on public assistance are doing well and have lots of free cash to spend are idiots.
the "neo-worshiped-idol" of the new millennium,... "God's of Consumerism"
hahahahahahahah
That towel mob didn't look too bad. No blood, no violence. And that big store cop making sure the folks don't get too far out of hand. Well planned sales event, I would say. So what if the folks get a little rowdy over bargain towels? They are obviously going to need towels after all that exertion. Maybe WalMart should have had soap on special at the other end of the store. Aerobics for the masses - beats walking the mall. No dental floss or deoderant specials though - wouldn't create a spark of interest.
I AM THE PRESIDENT OF CHILE.... and i am keeping the peons all cool while i let all the stupid ass rich people move to my beloved chile. then when you are all here i will steal all your shi.t.......
DOESNT ANYONE EVERY F'ING READ HISTORY....?!?!?!?!?.....LOL
I must admit I find it amusing that he keeps throwing Chile, home of thousands of "disappeared" within our lifetimes, as the place we need to go to achieve serentiy and liberty. The US is not looking so much like the Land of the Free these days, but Chile has a long way to go to look any better, and I would sooner take my chances trying to climb into the 1% in the US that to be the 1% of Chile.
We live in the best nation in the world. Who friggin cares what people abroad think.
*laughs*****sheilds himself from rotten veggies*
Wal-Mart to 1000 per share. Dow to 20,000.
Simon,
Your "resilient community" sounds great and all that, but damn, I just can't see that having you as a neighbor constitutes a better world. That would be like going to eternal reward in heaven and finding out Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson really did make it past Peter at the Pearly Gates.
Do you have anything in , say, the Maldives?