Guest Post: Habituating to Contraction
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
Habituating to Contraction
The Savior State has pulled out all the stops to prop up the Status Quo. Its gargantuan borrowing and spending have fixed nothing. Contraction is replacing expansion as the new normal.
For the past 67 years, Americans have been conditioned to expect expansion and more of everything: more income, more stuff, more opportunity, more benefits, more medical care, more government entitlements, and so on.
As a result, Americans have habituated to permanent expansion. The concept that contraction--less of everything--is the new normal simply doesn't register; it is rejected, denied, or decried as a great tragedy. The notion that it is simply reality does not compute with a populace habituated to permanent "growth" that is at worst interrupted by brief recessions.
U.S. politicians have learned that Soaring Rhetoric (TM) about "morning in America," "the New Frontier," "hope" and other ritualistic appeals to permanent expansion win elections, while accurate descriptions of reality lose elections.
The voting public's demand for "permanent good news" promising permanent expansion has spawned a feedback loop of officially sanctioned manipulated statistics and media spin (a.k.a. propaganda) that expands with every administration, even as the real economy visibly weakens. Though the Obama Administration has perfected the techniques of presenting "permanent good news," the divergence of the real economy and the official "story" that "we've returned to permanent expansion" is widening.
The real story is the "expansion" has cost the taxpayers trillions of dollars in new debt and trillions of dollars of backstops, shadow purchases and money-printing by the Federal Reserve. Roughly speaking, $6 trillion in additional Federal borrowing has been blown to simply keep the Status Quo from imploding, and around $13 trillion in guarantees, backstops, asset purchases, and losses made good have been issued to keep the Status Quo's financial sector afloat and in charge.
By any credible, unmanipulated measure, for example, the number of people with fulltime employment or household income, the economy has yet to recover to 2007 levels.
This reality must be denied, both by the power-obsessed politicos who fear the truth like vampires fear garlic-garlanded crosses, and by voters who fear a reduction in their personal share of the swag.
Humans habituate quickly to a wide range of conditions and expectations, but once they've settled into the new habitat, they are resistant to new conditions. Needless to say, humans prefer a future in which there will be more of everything over one with less of everything, as permanent expansion means there will be few if any troublesome cost-benefit analyses, hard choices or painful triage, and little need to adjust to new realities.
Changing conditioning is difficult and often arduous.
Americans have been conditioned for three generations to expect the Savior State to "do something" during downturns to "make it right." The idea that systemic problems are now beyond the reach of the Federal government does not compute; there must be something the government can do to "fix" everything.
This notion that the Central State is effectively omniscient and all-powerful is central to the belief system of Americans now. The concept that the government cannot fix the problem, or that government central-planning has made the problem worse, is anathema to everyone conditioned to believe government intervention will "save the day."
The basic reality is the Federal government has already pulled out all the stops in the past four years to "make the economy recover," and all its unprecedented actions have accomplished is to maintain the Status Quo via unsustainably gargantuan borrowing, spending and backstopping.
If we scrape away the rhetoric and bogus statistics, at heart the current fantasy that the U.S. has "decoupled" from the global economy and will remain an island of "permanent prosperity" in a sea of recession boils down to this belief: the Federal government "won't let us stay in recession." In other words, it's within the power of the Central State to make good every loss, guarantee every debt, maintain the Empire, solve every geopolitical challenge and find technological or military solutions to potential energy shortages. All we need is the "will" to force the government to use its essentially unlimited power to "fix everything."
A people conditioned to this expectation will have great difficulty accepting that their government has already done everything possible, and that these stupendous debt-based expenditures are simply not sustainable going forward. Some problems are not fixable by more government intervention; indeed, government intervention in the marketplace is like insulin: the system begins to lose sensitivity to Central State manipulation and intervention.
2012 is looking like the year that the American public will have to face up to the fact that the Central State's massive efforts to "fix the economy" have failed, and that Central State support of the Status Quo cannot fix what's broken.
We will have to habituate to contraction, and the belief in a god-like Savior State with unlimited powers and money will fade as the economy's systemic illnesses--extreme concentrations of power and wealth, corruption, financial leverage, excessive debt and so on--reassert themselves.
All that has happened for four long years is systemic problems were papered over to benefit the Status Quo. Everything that is broken awaits real repair.
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Gargantuan...there's that word again. Twice in one week. I'm impressed.
You know what's coming, don't you?
A new proposal by Geithner and Benocide. It will be a "solvency fund" by the Fed and Treasury, aimed at backstopping and bailing out the US Government. No joke. They'll sell the concept to the public, and most will buy it. A bailout fund BY the largest gov't to bailout THE largest gov't. Ass backwards, I know. But as you stated above, 67 years of conditioning is hard to throw away.
J6P wants to believe that Superman is coming to save this pig.
Don't be ridiculous. This fund already exists - its called the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America. Their balance sheet is unlimited and is being strategically leveraged for maximum impact on interest rates and growth. This is the genius of the elastic money supply.
I'm with you buddy lemming. Let's go!
All hail Obama, our benevolent dicktaster.
How soon they forget the housing meltdown. The govt hasn't done much still to this day to fix the mess created by that. And they think while we're still reeling from that storm....that the Fed will be able to deal with another dose of reality check?
What housing meltdown ??? The houses are still there, and are being kept out of the hands of truly deserving families by greedy capitalists like Mitt Romney.
Define truly deserving families.
Perhaps you're referring to the ones who can't afford to pay back the loan it would take to purchase said house? Too much debt. Maybe you're referring to the 'investors' who bought like 12 houses or so to 'fix up' and resell? Too much debt. Maybe it's time to start settling for less, otherwise you're going to be very disapointed near term. Seriously, I don't mean to be an asshole here, I really would like to know your definition of the American 'deserving family'. That might provide a useful frame of reference. Thanks.
The only families that are "deserving", have been doing the right thing all along, and DO NOT need Govt handouts!
Judeo Gucci exponentialism MDB it's all yours hope it fits
All that has happened for four long years is systemic problems were papered over to benefit the Status Quo. Everything that is broken awaits real repair.
Guess Bob Dylan was right; "Everything's Broken." :>(
Fo sho maan!!
Even god could not have created this much money!
MinionDumberBoner will more Socialist wet dreams as usual...
It's not a balance sheet. A balance sheet has assets.
I guess people thought I was joking when I said Peak Oil implies sustained global recession
If the Peak Oil thesis is correct, then you are right. We will have a long global recession. We have to DRILL here as well as find ways to conserve our energy use, work on sustainable energy technology, everything. But, what does a Bearing know, really KNOW? Not enough...
Its not about Peak Oil. The world, the empires, manipulations and the tyrannys have existed before oil and will exist when the oil will be gone. What we need is an oil freely traded in whatever currencies, so no one country or group of countries can use it to enslave and manipulate other countries.
Perhaps traded in gold and silver (bitches!!!!)
Arabs can get gold for their oil, but they will be willing to pay even more gold for water and food. Water is more expensive than gasoline in some Arab countries!
Nature has a balance, only humans interfere and fuck it up.
It has EVERYTHING to do with Peak Oil (peak oil exports).
Those who believe that Mr. Market will resolve it all is in for a BIG surprise. You're all predicating it on the System that you know, the one that WON'T exist when Mr. Market is truly free. There will no longer be these propped up "economies of scale;" that which isn't sustainable won't be a road traveled. That oil infrastructure won't, despite your desire to be able to throw you puny PMs at it, be able to work when the overwhelming majority of humans cannot also participate.
Perhaps oil will be traded in food (and or water), which is, after all, one of THE fundamental NEEDS (not PMs or anything else excuse that those who are too lazy to do the work today often hide behind).
The Market will still succeed and thrive. It will do so through demand destruction. If things get really bad the Market will create wars and pestilence to force the demand destruction. After all, what is the Market but the human ecology?
We suffer from human folly, which begets peak oil and other symptoms of our collective stupidity.
The balance you see in Nature is the result of brutal uncaring forces that impose limits to growth. We are no exception.
Time to break out of the petri dish -- The surface of a planet is NOT the correct place for an expanding, technological civilization.
We have done a marvelous job of substituting bubbles for growth for the last forty years and convincing the ME to sell us their oil for large bundles of green cloth. Our hegemony has allowed us to convince the entire world that these little pieces of cloth have intrinsic value.
Like all cons, this con only works as long as the marks are deluded. At some point, the bezzel shows through the embezzlement and the trick is over.
What is amazing to me now is that it’s obvious that almost everybody knows it’s a con but the game goes on. We are like the nobility in the story of the Emperor Has No Clothes. We know it’s a fraud but we play along to keep our status just a little while longer.
Water is more expensive than gasoline where subsidies allow.
How can the most compact form of energy ever discovered not be the most significant factor to the world economy? Everything depends upon it. Everything is built out of it. Most of our food production is tied to it. We go to war for it, lie for it, and turn on our own for it. That should give us some clue to its value. Of course empires have existed before and will long after, but that does nothing to diminsh its mark on human history. The global population exploded because of it along with everything else. So now we have billions of people just entering the petroleum feed trough and production has not only peaked but has entered an irreversible decline. Trav is not the only one saying this will cause an unstoppable depression. You're right we need to develop other forms but we need to recognize a number of serious problems. No energy alternative comes close to its return. The structures we need should have been started decades ago. Because of our leaders stupidity, greed, and dishonesty, they have kept this information from us and delayed this necessary change resulting in astronomically larger costs and suffering in what will now be a brutal transition.
+10000000000000000000000000
PEAK OIL IS EVERYTHING! Skip forward to 2:23:43 of Zeitgeist Moving Forward and you'll understand... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
Interesting thing, how internal combustion engines can run on natural gas.
And, they can run on ethanol and wood gasses. Your point?
Just because something CAN be done doesn't mean that it can be done sustainably OR that it SHOULD be done.
NG reserves, if we switched to them over oil, would then increase the rate of depletion!
Yeah, if NG was available to just ME then sure, I'll go for it!
Just switching our transportation fleet's from diesel to nat gas would cut opec by 50%. Very sharp move imho. Just for example our food travel's 1400 miles on the average to market. Get our truck's on nat gas asap would atleast give us some breathing room. How many war's would this curve from starting in our future as well?
http://www.pickensplan.com/
We also need sound money period imho.
Ron Paul 2012
No, no, no, retard!
It is NOT the cost of fuel to move food from one place to another, in almost every inhabited area of this planet, it's the fact that someone wants strawberries EVERY DAY in a climate zone where strawberries will not grow at this time of year!
And it's the same EXACT story with nearly everything else we do as species. Normalcy bias at it's absolute worst.
Example: NO varieties of chilli peppers grow naturally in the UK. But yet, I manage to have a constant supply of 11 different varieties year round. I grow them on my windowsills.
We've done the diversity thing to the point where almost anything you want can be grown in some degree in your own locality, provided you don't want it every moment of every day.So my locally sourced diet can be enlivened with a bunch of other fun things to relieve it from the monochrome 17th century diet it would otherwise be at any given time of year.
Nothing other than food and water actually matter to you and your family, if you have the skills to do the rest absent 'money'.
And if you learn to eat what IS good around you, you'll eat less crap that's been Monsanto-farmed by the exploited natives of wherever and taken a ride for hundreds of miles in a flatbed.
Indoor plumbing and refrigeration would be no fun to give up.
great post. food is the ultimate weapon, the ultimate currency, and the ultimate equalizer.
Pickensplan is a scam to claim property rights through eminent domain for transfer of water from the ogallala aquifer. Don't let the old fox fool you.
Interesting thing, how everyone running their car on natural gas would make it go from lasting 400 years to less than 100.
My son and I are sick and tired of waiting around for the collapse. I do not have enough time during the day to sit down to learn economic theory, kondratieff market cycles, study charts and read economic world news. When is the collapse going to occur?
We know the bailouts didn't work, QE was a failure, mark2myth... were just to delay the inveitable FAR WORSE crisis that will now occur in the very near future. The whole Bernanke 'Time man of the year' who saved us from a repeat of the Great Depression was a farce and will be laughed at in the future when this thing blows up epically in everyone's face.
I need your expertise!
Those willing to devolge the information to my son and I won't go unnoticed. In fact, we will pay you the lump some of 5,000 dollars of which you will receive half up front right now and when the Apoclaypse does finally happen, you will get the rest of the money. I know many of you junk posts like this often in these threads. My request is a serious one. The doom is really getting the best of me and I am not getting any younger. I want to protect my son, I want to know how long I have left to prepare and get my affairs in order.
Collapses often take a long time to happen. Foreplay for years. Then sometimes BAM! See the Roman Empire.
You do not need to offer to give away your money. The answers are everywhere, including (especially) here at ZH.
You want to protect you and yours? Buy gold. A little here and a little there will add up.
No one knows how long we have to prepare. Best get started now.
Rome's decline actually played out over a few centuries while all the while continuing to style itself as a continuing Republic of the people (SPQR, dude). You might even say it went on for a millenia or so if you count the Byzantine empire as the natural extension of the Roman empire.
America will soldier one for at least a few decades, maybe a couple centuries before it becomes clear that the Republic has truly gone the way of history.
December 24, 2012 = THE END!
Mayan End Time
My 66th birthday
Send cheques to Zero Hedge slush fund.
Merci!
Typo? You meant the 21st...
As the earth moves through the galactic plane the Earth's magnetic poles will reverse.
It will take "three days" to re-establish the Earth's rotation in the opposite direction.
..............................................................
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky
Velikovsky argued that electromagnetic effects play the most important role in celestial mechanics.
Planet Earth has suffered huge natural catastrophes, remembered on a global scale in humankind's recorded history.
A short summary...
2012: The Polar Shift Explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lhs7VR52Bg&feature=related
Nasa Confirmation 2012 Pole shift
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s689wjbpkuQ&feature=related
Magnetic polar shifts play out over a far longer time frame than you let on. The fact that birds still fly and migrate largely by reference to electromagnetic fields through all these millenia suggest the effects are not as dire as many might think.
Come on... help me! ... I'm trying to hussle up $5000 for the ZH slush fund here.
........................................................................................
Catastrophism is the theory that Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. The dominant paradigm of modern geology is uniformitarianism (sometimes described as gradualism), in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance. This view holds that the present is the key to the past, and that all things continue as they were from the beginning of the world. Recently a more inclusive and integrated view of geologic events has developed, changing the scientific consensus to accept some catastrophic events in the geologic past.
From my corner of the universe...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sthelens1.jpg
One day later...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MSH80_eruption_mount_st_helens_05-18-80.jpg
See "Punctuated equilibrium"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium
How old is your son?
You will now the collapse is coming a few hours before.
Watch for yellow ribbon around gas station. Cash only 20$ max.
On TV, you will see monkeys saying everything will be OK by the next week.
The extend and pretend game will end shortly after, trust me.
AND YOU WILL BE FUCKED.
"I need your expertise! Those willing to devolge the information to my son and I won't go unnoticed... The doom is really getting the best of me and I am not getting any younger."
Dude! Keep your wallet in your pocket and listen up (I'm taking your post at face value):
The best advice is to keep your perspective intact.
The gyrations and mechanations of the financial world have been going on for a long time--long before you found this website or even heard half of what you've heard, and it will continue long after we're all dust. That's how that is.
What really matters? If you can sit down at a table with a roof over your head and enjoy a nice meal with people you care about, and go to sleep in a bed with some measure of comfort and safety, and wake up reasonably healthy and with something to do, then you already have all you really need to get by. The rest of it is just drama...
One other thing--yeah, things can get really shitty in ways where having a bed to sleep in or food on the table is tough to come by, but keeping your perspective can only help in worst case scenarios--a mind free of clutter enhances your chances to plan and respond appropriately.
One thing that can help you keep your perspective intact--there's an unstated sense out there that if we suffer an economic armaggedon, we'll somehow end up back in the stone age (however you want to define it.) Not true. Supply chains will be disrupted and we'll see just how little power the nanny state actually has to keep things running all sunny and bright, but we won't suddenly forget how to do things, nor will our neighbors. Most important point there.
For example, Alan Watts (not an economist) pointed out how absurd the role of money can be when compared to how reality actually works. He likened the depression of the '30s to the following situation: A carpenter shows up for work one day (like every other day) but instead of going right to work, he gets called over to the foreman's office.
The foreman says "Well, I've got bad news. We're shutting the site down because we ran out of inches. No more inches--so no work. Go home."
In other words, if we 'run out of money' that doesn't mean that crops can't grow in a field, or that people will suddenly not know how to treat each other. The priorities and methods may change, but the fundamentals remain.
Good luck, and don't be rash.
Also, you may need a gun.
Yes, there are some essential items to consider keeping nearby, just in case.
Speaking of, I wonder how many people have though of stockpiling basic tools? You always hear about water, PMs, ammo, beans, etc. but what about hammers and saws and such?
http://www.survivalblog.com/2012/01/the_teotwawki_tool_guy_by_kdc.html
+1 for the link
Already ahead of ya (of course, that's because I do woodworking...)
http://www.frontiernet.net/~jimbot/marquetrythumbs.htm
Save your money. What's most likely is a 10 year, slow-grinding deflation, followed by rather high inflation, but no dramatic collapse. I've been studying this since 1992, and knew what was coming back then. I use demographics in my work, which requires estimating future economic conditions and trends. My projection of the housing crash was off by 16 months, no problem. I got out of the bad stuff early enough, and kept the good stuff. I live in a tiny town now, out of the way. I also have a fallback place waiting, 400 rather isolated acres with wells and a house.
The article does point out one great conundrum of our times. The more govt fails, the more we ask of it. We'll figure that out, and there's going to be plenty of time to do so. Good luck with your preparations.
There will be some people who understand that fortunes are made during times like these. They will do well.
"The more govt fails, the more we ask of it. We'll figure that out. . ."
We will?
What's the answer to that riddle, "If we stop asking government to actually accomplish anything, our government will then finally be effective?"
Eventually, the moochers and the Ignorati will give up on Big Brother riding to the rescue. Either that, or they'll die of starvation. :>(
You're right...except for the 'slow-grinding' and the 'followed by'...replace with 'sharp' and 'and persistent' and you've got it.
It's a bit like the return of Jesus. Christians say He's coming, but no one knows the hour.
Seriously, though, economies are not deterministic. Yes, you can predict certain outcomes, eventually, but when central-planners (governments & central banks) have so much power over what goes on in the market place, any rationality or true price discovery takes a back seat to politics and interest-group pandering.
We might still be sitting here 5 years from now predicting imminent economic collapse. Keep an eye on things, make sure your hedges are in place and adjusted to events, and then try to forget it all and get on with your life.
Advice I should take myself, someday...
Why is it you are concerned with the Apocalypse and not the termination of your life or your son's life? Last I checked the stats are still the same. 100 out of 100 still die. The real key is to find out what life is and if you have it. If you have real life you will be unconcerned as to how it all goes down. Realize the doom of this world and your earthly life aren't going away; it will get worse-much worse. Read a Bible and compare it to other religious literature. Who knows, maybe you are one of the few chosen to inherit eternal life. If not, then kiss your eternal(and earthly) life goodbye. disclaimer-long AG + AU physical and Spiritual /no sarc
1st: Save your money for you and your family. People elected Obama to solve THEIR problems; no one can solve your problems except YOU
In a general sense, we all have about a year or two left. In that time you can do one of two things (if you live in America or northern hemisphere):
Move to a country that no one hates and has a localized economy (preferably to the southern hemisphere due to nuclear fallout if that happens)
or
If you choose to stay, get a reliable rifle and know it well. Acquire good quality ammo (police rule will become non-existent for many communities). If you own property, grow your own food and learn permiculture (selfsustaining, organic farming). But most importantly, build a community of like minded people that can diversify strategies for independent living. You cannot do everything on your own. Be friendly to everyone who lives near you, you will need all the friends you can get.
And if you really want a glimpse of the future, read "Dies the fire" by R.L. Stirling.
Except gunpowder will still work.
"But most importantly, build a community of like minded people that can diversify strategies for independent living. You cannot do everything on your own. Be friendly to everyone who lives near you, you will need all the friends you can get."
+1
Sounds like a good idea whether the world comes to an end, or not.
If we were all working along those lines in the first place, maybe we wouldn't be where we are today?
Those willing to devolge the information to my son and I won't go unnoticed. In fact, we will pay you the lump some of 5,000 dollars of which you will receive half up front right now and when the Apoclaypse does finally happen, you will get the rest of the money.
Pfft.. Dollars will be worthless after the collapse...
Got a daughter to trade? :D
I have a Daughter, but her 3rd-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do sez "I'm not telling her what to do!"
Go long Katanas! (27" or better!)
Hello Tungsten,
No one can give you an exact date, because the unravelling of industrial society is a process, not an event. The process has already begun.
The key issue is energy. The trajectory of Western industrial civilization proceded from current solar in the form of food (slave/muscle power) to current solar in the form of wind, water, and charcoal, to solid stored solar (coal) to liquid stored solar (oil). Humanity had hoped to leverage this to fission as a stepping stone to fusion, but that hasn't worked out. So, as the supply of stored solar begins to dwindle, industrial civilization will be slowly asphyxsiated.
The current economic system requires constant increase in available energy (called "growth"); as the supply of available energy declines, the economy will contract. At some point the contraction may become a collapse, but no one really wants that scenario, so all of humanity is trying to keep the system going. Problem is, everyone wants to keep their current level of energy consumption (or increase it!) while pushing the contraction onto someone else.
The point of all of this: get ahead of the curve. Localize, and start your transition to harvesting current solar energy to the best of your ability. As Dimitry Orlov wisely puts it, "chose proverty [on your terms] before poverty choses you"!
No, they'll just be selling some extra special "Rescue" bonds or like the Italians "Patriot Bonds" to save America. There might be a few more dollars out in those backyards and beds.
Squeeeeze Timmeh, squeeeeez!
http://www.savingsbonds.com/bond_basics/patriotbonds1.cfm
These sorts of things need to boil down to a nice, catchy little acronmym, so the name would need to be something more along the lines of "Freedom bonds" (Free-B's)or "Liberty Bonds" (LiB's) or "Restoring American Greatness bonds" (RAG's) or , a little more obscure, "Self Reliance bonds" (SeRB's).
"Solvency Bonds," coming to a 401k near you. No need to sell them, everyone should "voluntarily" allocate 25% to them.
Brought to you by Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs. First closing in November.
talk about gargantuan... euro going to par? http://hedge.ly/zd3qgq
Yep, that's the cultural narrative, at least since the 1930s through WWII, the Cold War, the New Frontier, the Great Society, Carter's Malaise, etc. But it started to crack under Reagan; the Soviet Union wasn't fucking eternal, Japan's economic dominance was short-lived, and now it seems the artificial contrivance known as the European Union is itself coming unraveled like a cheap Soveit man's suit.
Whatcha bet Charles we return to a more Teddy Roosevelt, muscular nationalism? We can start by ceasing to subsidize the very industry, residential real estate, that became the overleveraged trigger mechanism of our current predicament, huh? Stop treating it as a national sacrament; it isn't motherhood, apple pie, or baseball; it's just the largest single consumer durable out there. Hey, we stopped subsidizing automobile credit financing more than 2 decades ago.
In it's place, let's develop a speedy, transparent localized system of "real estate dealers" who make markets locally, and can do so via their own equivalent of what retail auto dealers do using the wholesale auto auction. It's all very do-able, but of course since there aren't any Mercedes or Beemer sales lot guys making 6-10% on the gross, like real estate salespeople (and with zero inventory/transaction risks whatsoever!), it's gonna be real hard to get by those RE industry distbags at the NAR, national Association of Realtors. They should really make, maybe 1%, OK I'll go 2%.
"More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subversives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish the need for such laws in the public mind. Instead of realizing that there is a conspiracy, conducted by a handful of men, the people reason -- or are manipulated into reasoning -- that the entire population must have its freedom restricted in order to protect the leaders. The people agree that they themselves can't be trusted.” ? Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, The Eye in the Pyramid, 1975
By the way Entropy kicks in too
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/01/the-missionary-chu...
The First Church of Pirate BayThe city of Uppsala has seen its share of religious congregations. In ancient times, it was the main pagan center of Sweden, famed for its temple to the Old Norse gods. In the Middle Ages, it became a Christian stronghold. Today, Uppsala is home to Isak Gerson, a bright, polite, twenty-year-old philosophy student and the spiritual leader of the Missionary Church of Kopimism, which last week became Sweden’s newest registered religion. Modern Sweden isn’t known as a particularly religious place: in a recent poll, only seventeen per cent of Swedes said that faith is an important part of their lives. But Sweden is known, in recent years, as a hotbed of online piracy and anti-copyright activism. That’s the tradition from which Kopimism arises.
...
The Missionary Church of Kopimism picks up where Piratbyrån left off: it has taken the values of Swedish Pirate movement and codified them into a religion. They call their central sacrament “kopyacting,” wherein believers copy information in communion with each other, most always online, and especially via file-sharing. Ibi Botani’s kopimi mark—a stylized “k” inside a pyramid—is their religious symbol, as are CTRL+C and CTRL+V. Where Christian clergy might sign a letter “yours in Christ,” Kopimists write, “Copy and seed.” They have no god.
“We see the world as built on copies,” Gerson told me. “We often talk about originality; we don’t believe there’s any such thing. It’s certainly that way with life—most parts of the world, from DNA to manufacturing, are built by copying.” The highest form of worship, he said, is the remix: “You use other people’s works to make something better.”
Fittingly, it was exactly this kind of collaborative spirit that led to the founding of the Missionary Church of Kopimism. In a blog post last week, Peter Sunde, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay, suggested that Kopimism as a religion had originated from a comment made by one of its opponents. Several years ago, he wrote, a Swedish lawyer for the M.P.A.A. was asked about file-sharing advocates. She replied, “It’s just a few people, very loud. They’re a cult. They call themselves Kopimists.” Sunde thought this cult business sounded like a good idea, and looked into registering Kopimism as a religion, but never followed through. Gerson did. “This is one of the essential things with how the internet and kopimism works,” Sunde wrote. “If you don’t do it, someone else will.”
Well written! Accurate and sad that people have become conditioned so.
solving the US debt problems are just as easy as turning piss into wine!
Rob Kirby
13/1/2012
It’s all about control. Derivatives products – well intentioned when they were conceived – have been utilized to prop-up a failing fiat currency / undermine capital through the establishment of a phony, crony, price control grid. As such, derivatives have become very dangerous tools in the hands of a gaggle of miscreant sociopaths – who think, speak and act as if they are doing god’s work - that now occupy the U.S. Treasury / Fed and rule Wall Street.
As a staunch supporter of GATA I’ve been writing about it for at least 8 years. The folks at GATA are very familiar with and have been documenting the systemic abuse of our capital markets since 1998 -
LONG before ANYONE ever heard of Kyle Bass and years before the world ever heard of ZeroHedge.
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The $U.S. Dollar Centric Derivatives Complex: Progenitor of Parasitic, Ponzi Price-Fixing
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1326469500.php
Those Gata people are not exciting. They aren't fast moving. But they will take you to the nitty gritty where you can't get off the sandpaper without losing your ass.
I can turn piss into ammonia.
I pee on my feet in the shower.
Cures Athlete's Foot.
No shit.
I wouldn't shit on my feet either
Conditioned to believe in infinite growth in a system with finite resources, say it isn't so.
bbbbut...bbbbut IONIC LIQUIDS!!!!!11
Also, silver can peak but oil CAN'T. It JUST CAN'T, ok??? Because.
Fck oil, ride a saddle horse Trav.........
Was good while it lasted. Did not have to work. Arabs gave us the oil for worthless dollars and a few planes they can’t fly. The Chinese similarly gave us their free labor to make stuff for us. We are in the 9th inning, losing with 2 outs and Bernak at the plate.
Well, have a good weekend anyway!
That's the premise of the Zeitgeist movie and movement... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guXirzknYYE
Anyone expecting the conditioned masses prone to magical thinking to lose their religion in goverment, money, infinite growth, or God during a time of crisis is optimistic. And we think it's surreal now. I expect it to get bizarre once the unrelenting pressure of reality applies itself.
Its time for The United States Of America federation experiment to come to an end. No super federal goverment is needed. The greatest experiment in the world needs to come to a stop. The US Dollar experiment needs to be stoped.
Change the word US to Europe and you understand how silly the argumentation is.
"Change the word US to Europe and you understand how silly the argumentation is."
actually, changing the word strengthens the argument. the U.S. is simply too big and diverse to govern as a single entity anymore. our loss of liberty is, in part, a result of the government's need to force everyone into the same mold, in order to efficiently govern them.
America is the New Atlantis...
...however, its not going to be fun for the majority.
"This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius...."