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Guest Post: Marx, Labor's Dwindling Share Of The Economy And The Crisis Of Advanced Capitalism
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
Marx, Labor's Dwindling Share of the Economy and the Crisis of Advanced Capitalism
All attempts to reform the Status Quo of advanced finance-based Capitalism will fail, as its historically inevitable crisis is finally at hand.
It is self-evident that conventional economics has failed, completely, utterly and totally. The two competing cargo cults of tax cuts/trickle-down and borrow-and-spend stimulus coupled with monetary manipulation have failed to restore advanced Capitalism's vigor, not just in America, but everywhere.
Conventional econometrics is clueless about the root causes of advanced finance-based Capitalism's ills. To really understand what's going on beneath the surface, we must return to "discredited" non-quant models of economics: for example, Marx's critique of monopoly/cartel, finance-dominated advanced Capitalism. ("Capitalism" is capitalized here to distinguish it from "primitive capitalism.")
All those fancy equation-based econometrics that supposedly model human behavior have failed because they are fundamentally and purposefully superficial: they are incapable of understanding deeper dynamics that don't fit the ruling political-economy conventions.
Marx predicted a crisis of advanced Capitalism based on the rising imbalance of capital and labor in finance-dominated Capitalism. The basic Marxist context is history, not morality, and so the Marxist critique is light on blaming the rich for Capitalism's core ills and heavy on the inevitability of larger historic forces.
In other words, what's wrong with advanced Capitalism cannot be fixed by taxing the super-wealthy at the same rate we self-employed pay (40% basic Federal rate), though that would certainly be a fair and just step in the right direction. Advanced Capitalism's ills run much deeper than superficial "class warfare" models in which the "solution" is to redistribute wealth from the top down the pyramid.
This redistributive "socialist" flavor of advanced Capitalism has bought time--the crisis of the 1930s was staved off for 70 years--but now redistribution as a saving strategy has reached its limits.
The other political-economic strategy that has been used to stave off the crisis is consumer credit: as labor's share of the economy shrank, the middle class workforce was given massive quantities of credit, based on their earnings and on the equity of the family home.
The credit model of boosting consumption has also run its course, though the Keynesian cargo cult is still busily painting radio dials on rocks and hectoring the Economic Gods to unleash their magic "animal spirits."
The third strategy to stave off advanced Capitalism's crisis was to greatly expand the workforce to compensate for labor's dwindling share of the economy. Simply put, Mom, Aunty and Sis entered the workforce en masse in the 1970s, and their earning power boosted household income enough to maintain consumption.
That gambit has run out of steam as the labor force is now shrinking for structural reasons. Though the system is eager to put Grandpa to work as a Wal-Mart greeter and Grandma to work as a retail clerk, the total number of jobs is declining, and so older workers are simply displacing younger workers. The gambit of expanding the workforce to keep finance-based Capitalism going has entered the final end-game. Moving the pawns of tax rates and fiscal stimulus around may be distracting, but neither will fix advanced finance-based Capitalism's basic ills.
The fourth and final strategy was to exploit speculation's ability to create phantom wealth. By unleashing the dogs of speculation via a vast expansion of credit, leverage and proxies for actual capital, i.e. derivatives, advanced finance-based Capitalism enabled the expansion of serial speculative bubbles, each of whcih created the illusion of systemically rising wealth, and each of which led to a rise in consumption as the "winners" in the speculative game spent some of their gains.
This strategy has also run its course, as the public at last grasps that bubbles must burst and the aftermath damages everyone, not just those who gambled and lost.
Two other essential conditions have also peaked: cheap energy and globalization, which opened vast new markets for both cheap labor and new consumption. As inflation explodes in China and its speculative credit-based bubbles burst, and as oil exporters increasingly consume their resources domestically, those drivers are now reversing.
Advanced Capitalism is broken for reasons conventional economics cannot dare recognize, because it would spell the end of its intellectual dominance and the end of the entire post-war political-economic paradigm that feeds it.
Let's look at some charts to see what conventional economists must deny to keep their jobs.
Take a look at this chart. What reality does it reflect? A failure to cut taxes enough? A failure to print enough money or extend enough credit? No. What it reflects is labor's dwindling share of the economy.
The structural reality is that employment is declining:
Meanwhile, after-tax corporate profits have steadily climbed to nearly 10% of the entire national income:
If we look at disposable income, we find that direct government transfers have masked the systemic erosion of labor's earnings and employment:
By at least some measures, the top 1% are paying a greater share of total taxes than they were 20 years ago, which suggests that "tax the rich will solve everything" stopgaps have limited purchase on the deeper structural ills of advanced finance-based Capitalism.
Marx identified two critical drivers of advanced Capitalism's final crisis:
1. Global Capital has the means and incentive to keep labor in surplus and capital scarce, which means that capital has pricing power and labor has none. The inevitable result of this is that wages, as measured in purchasing power, fall while the returns earned on capital rise.
This establishes a self-reinforcing, inevitably destructive dynamic: once labor's share of the national income falls below a critical threshold, labor can no longer consume enough or borrow enough to keep the economy afloat with its cash and credit-based consumption.
We are at that point, but massive Federal borrowing and transfers are masking that reality for the time being.
2. The dual forces of competition and technology inevitably drive down the labor component of all manufactured goods and technology-based services. Mechanization, robotics and software have lowered the labor component of everything from running shoes to computer chips from $20 per item to $2 per item, and that process cannot be reversed. While the wage paid to the workforce designing and manufacturing the products and providing the services may actually rise, the slice of revenues given over to all labor continues shrinking.
This is what I have constantly referred to (using Jeremy Rifkin's excellent phrase) as "the end of work."
Put another way: the return on capital invested in techology greatly exceeds the return on labor. Industries and enterprises which fail to leverage capital invested in technology that lowers the labor component of their good/service eventually undergo rapid and inevitable creative destruction.
We are about to witness this creative destruction in the labor-heavy industries of government, education and healthcare.
Marx's genius was to recognize the historical inevitability of these internal forces within advanced Capitalism. He also recognized the inevitability of finance-capital's dominance of industrial capital--something we have witnessed in full flower over the past 30 years.
Finance capital now dominates not just industrial capital but the machinery of governance, rendering real reform impossible. Instead, the Status Quo delivers up simulacrum "reform" which change nothing but the packaging of the Central State/Cartel Capitalism's exploitation and predation.
Add all this up and you have to conclude the final crisis of finance-based advanced Capitalism is finally at hand. All the "fixes" that extended its run over the past 70 years have run their course. Life will go on, of course, after the Status Quo devolves, and in my view, ridding the globe of financial predation and parasitism will be a positive step forward.
The real solution is to understand advanced finance-based global Capitalism will unravel as a result of the internal dynamics described above, and be replaced with an economic and political Localism that I describe in my new book An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Times.I don't claim these ideas are unique to me; many others have described the same dynamics and historical trends.
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short explanation of Marx's bad end for capitalism idea:
every corporation tries to work for profit that means it tries to sell its goods for higher price than it pays its workers in wages. But since in the end the buyers are the same workers they run out of money unable to buy all the goods they've produced so we have a crisis of overproduction (which in reality is a crisis of diminishing payable demand). This problem was temporarily resolved buy offering consumer credit (reaganomics period starting in 70s) but eventually we loaded consumers with so much debt that they can not take any more. This is the essence of the main contradiction of capitalism (profit driven corporations consume all the wealth and suck the worker out dry)
Except not every corporation makes a profit. Some of them lose money. Just one reason out of many that Marx was completely wrong about everything. I will give Marx credit on one thing, though...unlike Keynes he made definite, falsifiable predictions, all of which turned out to be wrong, which is why he is completely defunct as an economist.
"Except not every corporation makes a profit."
Such corporations go out of business pretty fast and we have a skewed system in which very few corps lose and very many workers lose not the vice versa. But year theoretically there would be a balance reached. Among other things this would mean that for example in constant amount of money (gold standard)out of 100 loans at 10% interest rate after a year 10 of them would fail
Except the amount of money is never constant, including under a gold standard. Even Adam Smith understood that when he studied the Scottish banking system. There's a reason Marx isn't studied by economists any more...he was wrong about everything. Introduce marginal utility, the subjective theory of value, and a more comprehensive understanding of money, and the internal contradictions of the Marxist system expose themselves rapidly.
Here's another place it breaks down: All profits end up in people's hands, too. Those people buy things. There's your missing money. Marx's inept distinction between "capital" and "labor" completely breaks down when you examine who actually owns stock in corporations.
Another place: The condition in which every company always makes a fixed rate of profit is static nonequilibrium...the problem is that the economy is never static. It's highly dynamic.
It's all so stupid there's no point in going line-by-line through Das Kapital and showing every place that he's wrong.
What Smith mistakenly calls "Advanced Capitalism" is nothing less than plutocratic fascism. It's a shadow of what "capitalism" once was. This is the source of "class" in our society today, not capitalism. Let's also not forget that the dollar has lost 95% of its value since the inception of the Fed (1913). Who do you think gets all that new money first? The financial institutions that are an extension of the banking cartel.
The cure is sound money, for starters, and abolish plutocratic rule, the Fed and its bank cartel.
I stopped reading after the author uttered the term "Advance Capitalism". Is this the new euphemism for "plutocratic fascism" as one poster noted?
Until we get rid of the pretense of American exceptionalism and capitalism, we are in deep radical shiite. At least in most third world countries and banana republics most people accept the fact that their governments are corrupt.
Tyler, Thank you for posting this. It is refreshing to see a Marxist in ZH. The only problem I have with Smith's analysis is the assumption that crisis will vanquish the status quo. He may be right, but I see no evidence of such. Please note that in the 1930s, when labor and Marxism were much stronger than they are today, the crisis led to some socialistic reforms, but the imperative of "saving capitalism" prevailed. Where is the public mood today? Where is the media? I note that some commenters above attack Marxism with the vigor of Stalin, even if their arguments are vapid, they are intensely felt. So, the belief that some benevolent, socialistic form of localism will rise like a Phoenix from the ashes of the old order is mere wishful thinking. Aside from this minor complaint, I applaud Mr. Smith, wholly agree with his analysis, and tip my hat toward London and Highgate Cemetery.
Did Marx have a late-stage, advanced, terminal government thesis?....or is it cool if that shit just grows forever?
Capitalism isn't dying, our constitutional government and it’s monetary system are dying. Stop letting the government prevent markets from clearing, bad banks from failing and mis-deployed capital from biting it's owners in the ass. Arrange things so that you don't have to pay a million different taxes, fees, licenses, assessments and other bullshit to open up a business and let's just see if supply doesn't meet demand.
Back to vacation.
"Advanced Capitalism is broken for reasons conventional economics cannot dare recognize"
conventional economics works with open-ended systems where you have some "outer" source for growth (e.g. focusing on one company activity in ther larger economy or focusing on one country economy trading with outer world etc). It is amazing how very very few books really talk about economy as a closed system which has no outer sources for growth
I would have called it "Advanced Capitalism Carcinoma", but ok, it's just a label. Great article -- Gonna save this to read at the Jubilee.
Blah Blah--failed smailed---- history is just going in circles like its supposed to--
When I used to sit in coffee shops and argue Rand and Communism and religion the concensus was that Jesus was a communist-- and of course there was the Little Red book to prove a point. --And out of that came Amway and a new business model( the ponzi) --with a new gods of tech-- and old gods of profit- and all this means ---- is shit-- same old shit thats been around for 10,000+ years--boring.
Its a merry go round-- take your eye off the ring,get off the horse, walk to the center and see whats really happening-- the merry-go-round is speeding up-- What took a thousand years in the past, now takes 50--
Apples up in the past ? five years and so now Job is dead (for all practical purposes) and the Kindom of Apple will be no more (depending on the emotion of the investor). Medival kingdoms lasted for hundreds of years and ancient kingdoms lasted for thousands--
Whats the new thing--why its "Chaos"-- and we are Maxwell--on the side of goodness and niceness---blah blah
er, what ancient kingdoms lasted for thousands of years?
Waht a breath of fresh air. great post.
Gawds. The comments are amazing.
The hatred expressed for someone that so few people have *any* exposure is an amazing demonstration of how effective the indoctrination/propaganda system here in the USA is.
"Marx" wasn't an economist, but a philosopher. He didn't "blame" capitalism for all the world's ills, but described a theory which doomed it to failure. "Marxism" isn't an economic system. Marx was not a central planner. Marx read and understood "Wealth of Nations."
For all the haters who pride themselves on their free-thinking and such: do yourself a favor and read the stuff. It's not that difficult, and you will LEARN SOMETHING about why it is so crucial that you were programmed to hate "Marx."
For full disclosure: I am not a "Marxist" in the same way that I am not a Christian. The guy was a fuckin' utopian who expected that individuals (in general) had much higher demands for self-directed behavior than they actually appear to have. A significant percentage of the population literally cannot come up with a way to spend its time unless someone tells them they should do. For that reason, the world *needs* agenda-driven sources of social control. It is pretty obvious that these sources of social control are going to promote choices which benefit the proponents--whether private industry seeking profit or power-seeking political institutions or whatever. The church, the state, the business--they all contribute to the same competition of systems of thought about "how the world should be."
One thing's for sure: the prediction of the collapse of capitalism has been borne out several times in different times and places. Clinging to the notion that "capitalism cannot collapse because it's perfect and no system which collapsed was ever capitalist" is about as sensible as the excuse the communists give about how "communism has never collapse because it's never been properly instituted."
Free your minds. Learn something new.
Less rote more notes. right right right. As usual bd, respect.
no, i don't think he is right, here, G_F:
1) maybe he doesn't "know more" abt communism than others here. does he understand the difference between a "philosophy" and an "ideology" especially as it applies to his understanding? imo, no.
2) many of us here, including moi & thou, do NOT think "capitalism cannot collapse because it's perfect and no system which collapsed was ever capitalist". so, he's putting up the straw man and knocking it dowm, just like the fuking douchebag ideologue that he is!
3) after what i have been thru with the asswipe, here, i personally see: Free your minds. Learn something new as pretty much a textbook projection and quite an emotional one, at that, "disguised" as an intellectual "victory lap" due to his identifiable mental illness, or do you think he has proven:
nope, not to me. all he is doing is raving, imo. i'm sure you can see and think forself what is going on, here, in spite of your obvious compassion and reluctance to tear the toy-boy a nice new asshole in fight club, tonight. scared? no, just "nice to a freaking fault", dammit!
http://mises.org/store/Requiem-for-Marx-P522.aspx
"After the fall of communism, and certainly after this wide-ranging demolition of Marxism by Austrian scholars, who can possibly defend Marxism? Plenty of people, many of them smart otherwise but uneducated in economics. This book is the antidote, covering the whole history of this nutty and dangerous system of thought...as a triumphant finish, Rothbard offers a wholesale revision of the basis of Marxism. It was not economics, he says. It was the longing for a universal upheaval to overthrow all things we know about the world and replace it with a crazed fantasy based secular/religious longings. Rothbard finds all this in the unknown writings of Marx and his post-millennial predecessors in the history of ideas. "
if you mean fascism is bad news, pls see these guys, too!
Funny shit! I think it's cute reading all of this intellectual crap but at the end of the day at some point MOST of you will have to choose a side and will have to fight to the death defending what you believe. I'm afraid most of you will probably be killed trying to articulate reason and logic to the enemy. Best of luck! I think someone tried to tell Lincoln that violence never solves anything. Aaah yes, such a timeless sentiment. Wheeeeee! Hair bands rock!
good call. Something about true power and gun barrels?
Perhaps I've overlooked it, but what Mr. Smith fails to mention is peak oil. Without cheap shipping costs, Asia's labor cost advantage disappears. In other words, it will eventually be cheaper to make stuff here than to have it shipped across the planet.
Alternatively, he never mentions tariffs either. For a very long time, we did without an income tax because we relied upon tariffs and other restrictions on 'free trade'.
Call the current system what you will; it cannot survive without ever-larger injections of fresh money from the Fed. In a few years, Americans will be buying groceries with gold, because stores simply won't accept dollars anymore. The military will be scaled back to homeland defense plus nuclear missles, regulatory agencies (EPA, OSHA, etc.) will close, and hundreds of programs for the poor, elderly, and disabled will disappear. Riots will erupt but quickly subside because (a) rioting requires energy that starving people don't have and (b) there's no money to pacify the rioters, but there are bullets.
What then? If you have a real job producing real goods that people pay real money for, you'll be OK. In fact, you'll probably be able to buy a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood, and hire a cook, a nanny, a maid, and a gardener. If you have a fake busywork government job, prepare to be someone else's cook, nanny, maid, or gardener. All this help around the house means that productive people will be able to have more of their own children, instead of paying ghetto rats to sit around and breed.
everything will be produced by robots
What a ridiculous defense of the worst economic theory in human history. ZH should feel shame for publishing it here.
Remind me, which `economic theory` is being defended?
Just why forward thinking Charles Hugh Smith would choose to wrap his ideas in a Marxist theological wrapper is a mystery to me. It discredits his entire line of thinking to jam it in an ideological mold where it doesn't fit.
I admire CHS for his excellent writing and valid reasoning. His downfall is that he feels some compulsion to force it into the five-generation old Socialist/Communist/Capitalist/Democracy "debate" that was never even framed to reach a valid, actionable conclusion. It only produced confusion, chaos and violence while promoting an increasingly dominant and repressive world order.
The world has moved on, as Stephen King would say. The industrial age is over.
We are in a chaotic transition to a new age. Alvin Toffler called it the "Information Age" for lack of a definitive word for something that did not exist when he wrote "The Third Wave" in 1980 and "Power Shift" in 1990.
Another mystery to me is that ZH presents the most useful news summary available anywhere, but the comments at ZH amount to little more than adolescent wise cracks.
Cordially,
TwoHoot
Do you have no sense of haha?
Quit your whinging; it's free, it's a speakeasy, so naturally there is a blend of the worthwhile and the worthless, which you've obviously missed completely.
Glean.
Got plenty of haha sense and nonsense. I haven't missed the mix of worthwhile and worthless either.
Then again, I am past the age of giggling about farts. The last time I was impressed with someone's ability to say "fuck" was over 40 years ago when my innocent little pre-school daughter brought me her tiny red tennis shoes and said, "Daddy, will you help me put on my fucking shoes"? Maybe you learn all you ever need to know at pre-school day care.
Yes it is free and I am here because I choose to be. That doesn't mean ZH comments are too sacred to take a little poke now and then. So where is your sense of haha?
Just take what they may give you and give but what you can ...
Cordially,
TwoHoot
There was a fart joke on this thread I missed? Damn! Could you point it out please? To be honest I am a little nonplussed that anyone who references Stephen King wouldn`t find such japes humourous, or are you typing while wearing one of his patented "shit eating" grins?
"...but the comments at ZH amount to little more than adolescent wise cracks." Uh, did you skip a dose of gilatide today? 'cuz, contrary to your conflicting assertions, that sure sounds to me like you've been unable to separate the wheat from the chaff (worthwhile/worthless) in the comment section
"...That doesn't mean ZH comments are too sacred to take a little poke now and then." Heavens no, but if your first comment was meant to be funny, I suggest you stick to peddling farts and children using expletives; much more likely to find bawdy material there IMO (natch).
Ultimately I must agree, it does indeud appear you lost your sense of humour over 40 years ago; my condolences.
Just my two pfennig.
Warmiest steaming regards,
Goin.
PS. "...Marxist theological wrapper (wtf? )is a mystery to me. It discredits his entire line of thinking to jam it in an ideological mold where it doesn't fit." Hunh? Erm, speaking of 'chaff' in the comments section, you and your Capitalist religious packaging are in the top ten for being blown to the wind from this thread, IMO.
nice, and perhaps i've misjudged how "nice" you BE! yay! may i be the first to apologize? my bad, ok?
however, even tho the theological wrapper doesn't seem to fit for you, we can stipulate to that, and still end up w/ marxism = ideology, imo. natch
if we take ideology to = a "system" which explains everything, we come up with the first two, quite easily: catholicism and marxism. b/c both these ideologies are "belief sysytems" folks get confused about the "religious aspects" and whether they are definitive, or not. if we are willing to see them both as ideologies, we see that the "religious aspect" is not definitive in understanding how much they are alike as "systems which explain everything" to their "believers"
likewise, the "fact" that blunder_BiCh claims not to be a marxist (ideological believer)does not mean that he is not a communist, politically, does not recognize/respect the Constitution as an american "citizen", and wants to put his political imprimatur on the definition of money/currency, even tho he is clearly an ignoramus about the reality of PMs as "money/currency" right NOW
and you know, whether you agree w/ me or not: that is not nearly as important as your willingness and ability to try to understand what i am saying here. of course. something that one or two others, here, may be coming up quite short on
The US hasn't been a capitalist country for about 100 years. That is when the Gilded Age Marxists took over. Every Marx has an Engles. Every Obama has a Soros.
http://www.greatyoutube.com/images/books/wall-street-and-the-bolshevik-r...
We never got to "Advanced Capitalism" ! This Hybrid-Keynesian Fubar economy is not Capitalism ! Monedas 2011 How the lemings fall on their swords to protect Socialism's sacred honor !
Just what is Capitalism? Is it the economic ecosystem it is purported to be, in which individual entities/organisms rise and fall according to ability, luck and lower legacy costs, ie. old age, or is it the mediums of exchange and financial circulatory systems required of an advanced economy?
'Capitalism" and "Free Markets" are not necessarily synonymous. If it is a privately controlled medium of exchange, then the rest of the markets are just sharecroppers for the banks.
Politics used to be privately held as well and I doubt anyone wants to go back to being the King's subjects. Mob rule might be messy at times, but we make it work by delegating power where it is most responsive and responsible, not by allowing it to coalesce into one particular entity. To create a stable public banking system will also require some balance of powers, such as local community banks as shareholders in regional banks and they as governors to a central bank.
When people come to realize that money is not a commodity that can be manufactured to infinity, but as a multiparty contract, is a public utility, they will naturally develop more organic methods of exchange and storage of wealth, such as maintaining natural wealth and strong communities.
Right on. The most common error displayed by the most virulent of our fellow commenters here is an inability to recognize what "capitalism" actually means. It's most commonly mistaken for a "free market," or for a meritocratic means of distributing resources, but the critical ingredient is the system of international financial manipulation.
Most folks, even the rabid crazies here, seem to recognize that something is badly wrong "at the top," but to draw the obvious conclusion is too difficult.
So we hear a lot of displaced rage instead.
"Just what is Capitalism?"
Capitalism is a society system where individual members of society are allowed to have private ownership of capital (exclusive rights to control tools and resources)
We have that, so everything's hunky-dory, right?
Derp derp.
well, blu_dogg, at lease we have what bro_10 is "looking for" (paste): When people come to realize that money is not a commodity that can be manufactured to infinity, but as a multiparty contract, is a public utility, they will naturally develop more organic methods of exchange and storage of wealth, such as maintaining natural wealth and strong communities. (end paste)
bro_dix is a bro to me, and i hope he realizes we already have this in the legality of owning gold and in US Mint-produced gold and silver coinage, as our basic "currency" constitutionally, in these United States, as the basis of his "monetary theory" and also as our national legacy
maybe you guys think it can get better than that, but i beg to differ, and would ask you both to re-consider if you do. think it through, and then re-focus where and as needed. thxz. there as a lot of poeple trying to "re-invent the wheel" according to some thing(s) they have learned. as am i. thxz again
I like brodix's post too, as should have been obvious.
Here's the problem: "The Constitution" has already been put out to pasture. The US government is very unlikely to dismantle itself--that's antithetical to the development of bureacracy.
We can all piss and moan about Federal encroachment, but it didn't happen in a vacuum--it happened because the people with real influence on government policy DEMANDED it over time. Contract disputes created "public" (primarily corporate) demand for government intervention in every aspect of our existence.
When it was no longer profitable for the "Constitutional" definition of a dollar to be adhered to, it was IGNORED because of "public"* demand for new legislation.
You don't really think there's a Constitutional "fix" for all this rot, do you? We're going to elect a President/Congress that's suddenly going to put itself out of business? The judicial branch is suddenly going to dispense with 200 years of case-law?
I get what you're saying, but I don't see any point.
As to whether it can get "better" than a gold/silver currency standard--I think it can by defining your standard in units of energy. That's really the distillation of placing stored value in any rare commodity, so why not just cut to the chase? But "what I think" is about as relevant as your opinion about the best possible solution.
yes, it is (as relevant)
why not just use the PMs, held world-wide, already, btw, for other currencies (paper?) and then (or simultaneously) for enrgy, itself. or, if things get choatic, to barter. don't we have enuf diff "debits & credits"? physical gold and silver (coinage or not) has no counterparty! it doesn't need to be "defined" in anything but troy ounces. nothing else comes close, simply b/c this stuff is in a class by itself!
if it ain't broke don't fix it. just sayin
re: The Constitution of The United States of America, no matter what your opinion of its current "status" or mine, or how badly what it obviously says has been twisted and virtually disregarded, at least you and i both know what it says, there, eh?
i hope your modernity and intellectual rendering of the rendering of that "quaint document" doesn't make you, essentially, treasonous to our nation (ass-u-ming you are US), for all.the.very.best."reasons", of course, but why not just accept the gold and silver coinage of the US as REAL FUKING MONEY just as bro_10 defines it? huh?
again, if it ain't broke in this aspect and you're tilting at windmills, why not spend your time, (and zeroHedge's?) a little more wiZely, here, ok?
if you want to make a "paper" "based" on "ergs" or joules or calories or horsepower, or oil, or electricity, or some "weighted basket of the aforementioned" please go ahead and be my guest. it will keep you out of trouble and give your life meaning, and when you are done, the real will value your "standard" in terms of grains of PMs, as you must surely know, b/c you travel these boards and can read. and, it will factor in the "counterparty risk and inflation" as always, too. trust me!
i'm inviting you to think this through from the standpoint of legal US coinage and stop pretending that you need to fix anything regarding real currency in the USA. it is already here; we are already doing it; L0L!!!---join or die!
if you don't have PMs then i understand and wish you good luck! yer gonna freaking need it!
You sure do like the sound of your keyboard.
What's your POINT? Do you EVER have one?
If it makes you feel any better, I'll agree with you that back in the olden days everything was just great and good and I support you in your desire to live like a 19th century subsistence farmer.
Fuckin' A good for you, bro.
What would someone have to do to be "treasonous" these days, anyway? The concept doesn't even make any sense. If you support use of gold/silver as currency, I'm sure there's some Federal prosecutor somewhere who'd love to prosecute you for it--they could probably find a way to bring charges of treason. Why not? They're the guys who decide, not you or me.
(As to my ownership or lack thereof of your preferred form of currency: you can mind yer own fuckin' business.)
why the upset? lose something?
i'm not a subsistence farmer. what are you dreaming about me & thee now? for someone to be treasonous? how about reading the definition of treason and applying it to the situ and even to yourself if that's not oo, uh, you know,...uncomfortable...
you don't seem to understand where i stand, and what i'm (unlike you) not afraid of: prosecution and charges, for example. how long have you been clinically paranoid? they may decide for you, 0 defeated one, but (and) not for slewie if ya catch my drift, there, toy-boy
it seems you are an "american" and, for the record, i didn't ask you about anything you "owned" except your moronic shitforbrained ideas about "money & currency" and the Consitution, which you apparently do not recognize as law
so, as i've said to so many semi-psychotic asswipes who somehow lose the ability to think when discussing their "loves" w/ me, and object to me taking up so much room here (dude, i don't even know how to type, yet i have passed typing "tests" [somehow]):
Eat Shit, Lay Eggs, & Die Young
You're still pissed I called you a drivel-peddling slushbrain, eh?
Too bad you can't demonstrate I was wrong. You're wasting your time sniping at me. I assure you no one as stupid as yourself is going to hurt my feelings.
All the best.
listen, shitforbrains:
OOOOH I just make you SO MAD!
Come meet me in NYC someday, ole' man. Let's see about that paper-asshole.
(Fuckin' pussy.)
You got more fun and games for us? Have another bong-rip and try again, moron.
Oh, by the way, while you were busy losing a war against the damn commies, my ancestors were getting an education after a few years' service. You should've taken advantage of the same opportunity and you might be able to string together a coherent post once in awhile.
Sucks, huh?
i'm in nyc all the time, you moron!
why should i go there for you? so i can BE coherent, and you can pretend that i'm not?
again, you keep fantasizing about me and thee; i earned my second grad degree on the GI Bill; i didn't "lose" anything in vietNam, much less the war; and we'll just let folks who read this string judge between you and me, my dear, little blunder_BiCh!
you do talk like a commie w/ a paper asshole b/c you ARE a commie with a paper asshole. please, don't blame me for that too, asswipe!
Oh, so I'm the kind of "paper asshole" you're too much of a pussy to meet in person?
I get it.
Moron.
(You still haven't figured this, out, eh? Dance for me, you monkey. I'll reply as long as I can.)
dude! wake up & smell the coffee! i've met you HERE! we had a big fight. rilly. already. it's over. obviously we both "think" we won! one of us is right; the other is insane. there is no "honest misunderstanding" here, dude
maybe you won. maybe i'm nuts, ok? i'm not saying that isn't "possible" especially given your "intellect" and how "powerful" it actually is in some respects. but, if i honestly thought you had "beat" me, here, i would certainly acknowledge it. that makes one of us, doesn't it?
if you think this "should be settled by meeting in person and trying to kill each other" and that i'm a "pussy" for not meeting you in a real duel, please be advised, this has been a real zH duel. and, you may have waxed slewie's ass, but if you did, it certainly escaped me!
again, that makes one of us, doesn't it? this is why we're here, man! relax and enjoy it! it isn't just anybody who gets be the one talking like a man w/ a paper asshole when slewie is around, ya know? when you "showed yer ass" over bro_dix's standard post abt currency being a utility (which he and i go round on quite often and still get along, b/c we respect each other as bloggers) i tried to talk w/ you respectfully, yet pointedly. how you (and i) did w/ that is here, as a record, until it gets "archived"
requiem for a heavy "weight", either way, doncha see? don't answer that! it's rhetorical!
go to bed. me too, ok? night-night, mr. blunderdog!
Fascinating bd. How's this for an extrapolation:
Gold in hand represents work that has already been done/energy that has already been expended to procure the metal, whereas debt as money is only a promise of work/energy to be expended in order to create the perceived value, and this value in actual 'work' is at the whim of the issuer.
So the transfer from gold to, say, kwh representing units of energy/work as money is effectively tautological; eg. electricity stored in some sort of portable/reliable 'battery' physically suitable for being used as a unit of exchang.
The only question would be how to compensate for inflation caused by the Sun.
I love it, seriously!
by george, i think (s)he's(?) got it!
Inflation will probably track population growth as greater levels of energy efficiency obtain through technological development.
Really, everything tracks population growth, anyway. That's what defines labor's value, and the rest follows.
Remember our real dilemma is SOCIAL.
Oh, and to mention: this solves the issue of "interest" ultimately being unpayable because as interest rates climb, that demonstrates an implicit bet AGAINST future technological development which decreases the relative value of kWh a year from today.
Chances are, if the species survives, we're going to find a way to continue to drive down the value of tomorrow's kWh, assuming current resources are priced properly.
you are insane, dude
you have no idea what either G_Fawr or you are talking about!
why don't you just stop and go curl up somewhere w/ your "self"?
Slewpie,
i had a small pile of gold once, about ten years ago. Sold it to buy another race horse. Mistake. Fact is, gold is boring and that's how this mess got started in the first place. Money used to be PMs and people liked to put it in a bank, because other people might steal it and the banks issued gold certificates and it all went from there. The only time the average person has really benefited from a gold standard is when they could dig it out of the ground. Then they go and spend it on the stuff they really do need.
Fact is, gold is a commodity and the reason it works as a currency is because people trust its value, because other people trust its value. It's another form of herd behavior. Sometimes going with the herd is a good idea, sometimes not. Make your choice and take your chances. That's life.
yes, bro_gone_brain-dead! currency/money ACCEPTANCE is a form of "herd behavior"! bingo!
yours too, right? i can see how enthralled you have become w/ the "script" idea from the local school system. what's the diff between that and gold and silver US coinage?
George Hamiltion IV If You Don't Know (with lyrics) - YouTube
no, gold being "boring" is NOT "to blame for this mess"! neither is gold being "exciting, interesting", or anything but REAL with NO counterparty. no counterparty, einstein!
this is 100% "correct" in that it will hold water: "Fact is, gold is a commodity and the reason it works as a currency is because people trust its value, because other people trust its value." good for you!
yep, and so is real silver coinage or even silver bars! trust me! even if you don't trust yourself. listen, you have enuf "real assets" that i don't think you have too much to worry about with any currency, do ya? you're not too far in debt are ya? you don't need a "new standard" quick, doya? i think you got your shit rolled pretty tight even w/out PMs, bro_d, at least i sure hope so, friend
i guess i need to act intelligently b/c i am poor, and have only owned one "race-horse" a registered, very highly "trained", quarter-horse mare named "p____" who got totally freaked when some asshole tried to cut her tendons w/ a scalpel down @ los al, and he got the worst of it, too! eventually, the wonderhorse came to me and my son, roughly 30 years ago. that's "life"
poor me! you take care, man, ok?
This article is so blatantly stupid that it's even worse than when that tool Leo posts something.
The fatal flaw of Capitalism is that it is predicated on growth.
In order to increase profits (an end goal of capitalism) there has to be growth.
We live in a finite world (finite resources).
Therefore Capitalism is destined to fail because it presupposes an incorrect first principle. (Infinite resource).
When I was growing up in business, I had a boss who always kept harping on the importance of the balance sheet. He kept saying that there are a lot of ways to increase profit by taking on more risk and sacrificing the balance sheet, but the good financial manager is one who can continually strengthen the balance sheet AND make a good cash return for the owners of the company.
I see the failure of the Western Economies to be human failure disorder, a moral failing. The dream is the fast buck with no risk and no work. "Use other people's money", "Use other people's labor", but don't give anything of yourself or take responsibility to ensure long-term success and survivability. This has brought about a culture that glorifies wealth gathered by any means and the more quickly and the less work required to accumulate the wealth, the more glorified the person, even if they are merely a criminal or crony. CEOs hop from job to job within the club circle, giving each other greater and greater shares of each company's wealth (balance sheet and cash flows) and giving less back to the company and to the labor. This club is a club of locusts who care nothing for the long term and are reinforced by their cronies in a circle jerk of self-agrandizement ... "possibly" never really believing that they are deserving or doing the right thing, but understanding that they and their cronies are the beneficiaries and better them than someone else.
Is it asking too much to think that people can grow up and exhibit the degree of self control and long-term thinking required to benefit an entire society? It seems that Marx did not believe so ... and historical evidence indicates otherwise as well.
"importance of the balance sheet"
what is good for a part (individual company tapping into outer sources to be able to grow) is bad for the whole (total economy as a close system with no outer sources for growth)
Socialism is thievery with the angry mob's blessing ! What a noble foundation for a society to build upon ! Monedas 2011 Socialism is for people who actually prefer public restrooms and whose social life is anoying fellowing citizens who are a captive audience waiting in line for stale bread and stinky fish !
No Socialist government ever paid it's workers 4 troy ounces of silver a day ($5 silver dollars) ! Henry Ford did ! The workers that laid the transcontinental railway were paid one silver dollar a day ! What's the pay in North Korea or Cambodia under Pol Pot ? Monedas 2011 Marx was an idiot, Keynes a fool and FDR was a better looking Barney Frank of his time !
socialist government in the USSR subsidised its citizens with free energy and resources of the country. People were much better off than they are today exactly for the reason that they had their share of the country's resources.
Fall of the USSR was in the interests of the communist party elite (to privatize natural resources and do not share them with the general population anymore)
Sorry, but what our economy is facing is too much gov't akin to marxism rather than the reverse. How can anyone claim we have capitalism when we have an unnacountable Federal Reeserve, minimum wage laws, no secret ballots for unions any longer, and 47% of the work force working for the gov't? Gov't regulations are estimated to cost damn near $2 TRILLION annually. That sound like a free market system to ANYONE? We have corrupt politicians paid off by big business and immune from their own legislation. Meanwhile, the answer yet again is to tax the slim number of tax payers we have at an even more ridiculous rate. We have the narrowest tax base on the planet with our entire tax structure being an inverted pyramid where the tip is supposed to support thr weight of the entire pyramid. Can anyone show me a single study that shows that increasing taxes on the productive makes the poor wealthier? I can show you the direct cause and effect of taxes on jobs, productivity, etc.
Sorry, the answer is not to quote Marx, whose policies are ALREADY killing the economy. The answer is to start quoting Mises, Friedman, Hayek, etc.
Has ZH been hijacked? This article is a stinking, steaming pile. The economy's problems are many, but only a fool would find the solutions in Marx and his ilk.
Marx was much more concerned with consequences/inevitabilities/relations than solutions.
Freud is the only 'paradigm thinker' more misunderstood than Marx
This is all good Marxist drivel, because it ignores the fact that the American federal, state and local government is now approximately 43% of GDP. Marx saw a world with an A or B solution. A being capitalist and B being colectivist. He never could have believed that government would grow to such span and depth. It is the unbridled growth of government consumption spending has destroyed America’s productivity leadership, driven entrepreneurs to off-shore production, and destroyed middle class wage rates.
Adam Smith described how new wealth was rapidly created and compounded over time form the productivity gains of the Industrial Revolution that leveraged the value of workers and led to higher wages. But from 1988 to 2008, America’s productivity dominance collapsed by 70%; shrinking from 2.5% gain per year to only .7% per year. This crash in American leadership was the result of 98% of the 27.3 million new jobs created during the period coming from the lower productivity, and thus lower wage, “consumption” sector of the economy. Higher productivity, and thus higher wage, “goods-producing” sector grew by only 620,000 jobs. The root cause of this substitution for lower productivity jobs was a 23% growth in government, to 22.5 million workers, and a 63% growth in government dominated healthcare, to 16.3 million workers. Productivity for the American goods-producing sector continued to grow by a healthy 2.3% per year, but productivity of government workers sunk by 4% and productivity of healthcare workers plummeted by 9%.
In 1988 the average value added for American workers was $75,000. Over the last twenty years, America’s revolution in information-technologies helped drive up the valued added of a goods-producing American worker to $115,200 per year. But the productivity value of government and healthcare worker tumbled to $72,000 per worker; dragging down the average value added of American workers to only $90,750. That $24,450 loss of productivity explains allot about why the American middle class wages have been shrinking in the United States.
Adam Smith identifies the "entrepreneur" as the invisible hand that shifted economic resources out of lower and into higher productivity activities for and greater reward. If the invisible hand is expected to be busy shifting resources from lower to higher productivity; why has America shifted resources from higher to lower productivity jobs?
Welcome to the wonderful world of the “dead hand” of government. Over the last two decades the U.S. government has vastly increased punitive taxes, restrictive regulations, and enforced monopolies in favor of their crony allies. This result has been a loss of 7.5 million goods-producing jobs in the last twenty years. That trend accelerated over the last ten years with the closure of 57,000 factories and the loss of 5.5 million higher paid goods-producing jobs.
Entrepreneurs are not stupid! They did their arithmetic and figured out that the outrageous costs of paying twice China’s corporate tax rate, complying with punishing regulations, and competing against cronies like General Electric over-whelmed the productivity advantage of hiring an American workers. Entrepreneurs also recognized that even though they did not benefit from the 13.7% compound growth of government spending; the Congressional drumbeat to raise taxes on millionaires to pay for trillions of dollars of deficits, are “code words” for taxing entrepreneurs.
The bottom line is the “dead hand” of government has diminished the productivity of American workers by changing the structure of our economy to favor of the lower wage consumption sector, at the expense of the higher wage goods-producing sector. This government coercion has resulted in the invisible hand of entrepreneurs closing U.S. factories, moving goods-production off-shore, and impoverishing middle class wages. Entrepreneurs will not build new American factories and bring back higher paying middle class jobs until our government cuts taxes, deregulates industry, and stops favoring crony allies.
Marx was, and has been, proven wrong many times. Schumpeter probably ripped him in the most effective manner, as he described economic cycles and the power of the entrepreneur and innovation.
Marx's vision is simplistic and he left no blueprints. He had no idea what post-capitalistic society would look or act like, and made no suggestions. He was a bitter man who survived on the aid he received from friends. He ignored his wife and family, for the most part. He was egomaniacal and the Hegelian Dialectic has extended to include former "conservative" thinkers like Fukuyama who used it to compose his concept that history had come to an end (I know, a simplistic discussion point that isn't exactly what he said - but I can't spend hours writing this).
The fact is the Hegelian Dialectic has failed. It was bankrupt at the start, anyway. It has tried to be revived many times, in many places, and it never has a single positive projector. It has only angry, bitter people as its spokespeople, people seeking to tear things down and who have no idea what to replace it with except their own egos. They desire to believe that dragging others down raises them up.
I reject this entire article on the grounds that it is a discussion that shows up every so often as things slow down. We are not in a crisis of capital. We are in a crisis of government intervention and over regulation - and anyone with half a brain can see this.
And for the moron who said Libertarians need a perfect human, just like all other "isms" I'll point out that Libertarianism actually can SUCCEED IN SPITE OF human flaws - indeed is designed to mute the effects of the non-perfect human by aggregating up the total energies of humans.
Capitalism WILL survive and grow if we can get the government out of our pockets and out of our way. It's time to shrink our government back to an economic structure which is geared toward growth.
Hmm. All this pro-Marx stuff, methinks no-one has studied Das Kapital, or you USA bods are still obsessed by Cold War programming. Comments are correct that Marx didn't predict the cold war, or our current plight.
Time to change the music. Bakunin got the cold war spot on. You might get a thrill out of these:
I am sure that, on the one hand, the Rothschilds appreciate the merits of Marx, and that on the other hand, Marx feels an instinctive inclination and a great respect for the Rothschilds.
Critique of the Marxist Theory of the State - 1873
They [Communists] will concentrate all administrative power in their own strong hands, because the ignorant people are in need of a strong guardianship; and they will create a central state bank, which will also control all the commerce, industry, agriculture, and even science. The mass of the people will be divided into two armies, the agricultural and the industrial, under the direct command of the state engineers, who will constitute the new privileged political-scientific class...
Modern capitalist production and bank speculation inexorably demand enormous centralization of the State, which alone can subject millions of workers to capitalist exploitation. Federalist organization from the bottom upward, of workers’ associations, groups, communes, cantons [counties], regions, and finally whole peoples, is the sole condition for true, non-fictitious freedom, but such freedom violates the interests and convictions of the ruling classes, just as economic self-determination is incompatible with their methods of organization. Representative democracy, however, harmonizes marvelously with the capitalist economic system. This new statist system, basing itself on the alleged sovereignty of the so-called will of the people, as supposedly expressed by their alleged representatives in mock popular assemblies, incorporates the two principal and necessary conditions for the progress of capitalism: state centralization, and the actual submission of the sovereign people to the intellectual governing minority, who, while claiming to represent the people, unfailingly exploits them...
The exploitation of human labor cannot be sugar-coated even by the most democratic form of government ... for the worker it will always be a bitter pill. It follows from this that no government, however paternalistic, however bent on avoiding friction, will tolerate any threat to its exploitative economic institutions or its political hegemony: unable to instill habitual obedience to its authority by cajolery and other peaceful methods, the government will then resort to unceasing coercion, to violence, i.e., to political control, and the ultimate weapon of political control is military power.
The modern State is by its very nature a military State; and every military State must of necessity become a conquering. invasive State; to survive it must conquer or be conquered, for the simple reason that accumulated military power will suffocate if it does not find an outlet. Therefore the modern State must strive to be a huge and powerful State: this is the indispensable precondition for its survival.
And just as capitalist production must, to avoid bankruptcy, continually expand by absorbing its weaker competitors and drive to monopolize all the other capitalist enterprises all over the world, so must the modern State inevitably drive to become the only universal State, since the coexistence of two universal states is by definition absolutely impossible. Sovereignty, the drive toward absolute domination, is inherent in every State; and the first prerequisite for this sovereignty is the comparative weakness, or at least the submission of neighboring states...
A strong State can have only one solid foundation: military and bureaucratic centralization. The fundamental difference between a monarchy and even the most democratic republic is that in the monarchy. the bureaucrats oppress and rob the people for the benefit of the privileged in the name of the King, and to fill their own coffers; while in the republic the people are robbed and oppressed in the same way for the benefit of the same classes, in the name of “the will of the people” (and to fill the coffers of the democratic bureaucrats). In the republic the State, which is supposed to be the people, legally organized, stifles and will continue to stifle the real people. But the people will feel no better if the stick with which they are being beaten is labeled “the people’s stick.”
To unpack that for you: Bakunin posits that the Marxist state will be an oppressive centralist one [+1 accurate] and that a Capitalist state will be a representative 'democracy' controlled by state violence [+1 accurate] and that each state will strive for monopolistic dominion [+1 accurate]. So, essentially, Bakunin in 1873 nailed the history of the 20th Century. Read some more, he nails Fascism / Corporatism as well. Oh, and he's big on Rothschild / international banking cartels.
This is the reason that in 2011, people are still urged to 'report Anarchists' and Anarchist groups (as well as environmental groups) are unfailingly infiltrated by state agents. July 2011 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/31/westminster-police-anarchist-wh...
The reason is that, unlike Marx, anarchist thinkers really had their shit together.
p.s. Yes, we're all aware of Bakunin's antisemitism.
Marx and Bakunin were fierce competitors, but the long-term "aim" for both of them is practically indistinguishable.
Bakunin ...what... lost patience, shall we say? with Marx as a socialist politician, but tell me how big a distinction you can really draw between the Bakunin "anarchist collective" and the Marxist "pure communism." Seriously.
Marx was a lot more tangled up in the "how to get there from here" than Bakunin was, which resulted in a power struggle. Marx won a bit too handily because Bakunin didn't even want to recognize the legitimacy of the institutions he was a member of!
perhaps it is in the role of "the party" in the collective? you know, till they get everything "right" which will never happen? seriously.
I would like to know what you're talking about, once in awhile, but it's not really worth the trouble.
Little lesson for you, because you obviously know nothing of the subject: Marx's "pure communism" was stateless.
(I can't believe my 2nd cousin didn't come back and we're stuck with you instead. What a fuckin' rip.)
i wasn't talking about your "pure" communizzzzm, you moron!
i was talking about the difference between bakunin's collective and real communism in which the "party" assumes dicatatorship until something completely unreal (except to you) "happens" to go to "pure" communism which never has and never will happen
b/c you are living a paranoid psychosis, you rilly don't understand that what you are talking about isn't real
what i was trying to say is that i think bakunin's strenth is that he doesn't accept the "transitory" role of the "dictatorship" in his "community" you cretin!
the idea that marx "won" anything idealogically as a response to Use_weapons & slewie is just another "corner you disappear around" while trying to defend the UN-real b/c you have an identifiable mental illness, whether you are yet aware of it (i'll bet you are at some level) or not
what you are defending and arguing makes no sense at all given what the people are saying to whom you are attempting to "respond" so intellectually
something is "interfering" with your "intellect" and it rilly rilly isn't very pretty, toy-boy!
I would like to know what you're talking about, once in awhile, but it's not really worth the trouble.
no, you "don't know where it leads" either, do you? the crazies really don't understand the cogent. ever. pls be advised
if you could be so "troubled" as to actually understand what the people you are blogging with are saying to you, i think you might find it, eventually, to be very well worth the "effort" dude, no matter the discomfort and "cog dis" at first blush. i think you can do better than this, and if you are willing to try, i will back you up. if you are not, i will wipe these boards with your fuking BEing, my dear, little blunder_BiCh
A few things you need to understand about trolling...
1) You need to convince OTHER READERS you know what you're talking about.
2) You need to find a way to irritate your target.
You are nothing but fail.
I'ma have to go bed soon, the soup's almost done, but I think you should keep trying.
Moron.
night-night
you don't have a normal response to getting yer little ass waxed here by slewie, b/c you are too fuked up to realize my bonging is way better than your "thinking"
again, we have a record, here. slewie & his new, little, toy-boy, his own and well-owned, here, crack-potted blunder_BiCh!
I confess, I thought at first you might be interested in a conversation. That...really...is all we have here.
I treated you with all the courtesy you ever displayed.
well, excuse me! L0L!!!
here is "you" @ 01:45 (paste):
OOOOH I just make you SO MAD!
Come meet me in NYC someday, ole' man. Let's see about that paper-asshole.
(Fuckin' pussy.)
You got more fun and games for us? Have another bong-rip and try again, moron.
Oh, by the way, while you were busy losing a war against the damn commies, my ancestors were getting an education after a few years' service. You should've taken advantage of the same opportunity and you might be able to string together a coherent post once in awhile.
Sucks, huh?
and, here "you" are @ 03:27, not that long ago (paste):
Oh, so I'm the kind of "paper asshole" you're too much of a pussy to meet in person?
I get it.
Moron.
(You still haven't figured this, out, eh? Dance for me, you monkey. I'll reply as long as I can.)
right! this isn't an etiquette contest, it's a fight club fight. beyond the insults we were talking about ourselves, our thinking, our values, what it means to fight with complete freedom of expression on these boards. perhaps you don't know what a projection is, or why, when you reveal yourself as a traitorous commie, you end up wanting to kill somebody over it. i don't want to kill you. it;s not your fault that your mother is a fuking whore! nor is it mine. thanks so much for the intelligent conversation and for treating me with such respect! you might as well pretend you are a much nicer guy than i am. maybe you are! remember anything about where "nice guys" tend to "finish"? huh? do ya mr "nice guy"?
and yes, is see where you once again "equate" (or try to) with my ability (not interest) to "converse" here. again, just let the record, here, speak for both of us, ok? and please try to stop talking like a man w/ a paper asshole, ok, you big, brave, tough guy?
night-night
slewie out
Ah, so you admit it's all just bullshit and trash-talk.
Learn something, and maybe we can talk.
no, b_d! i did NOT "admit" that it is all bullshit and trash talk, although i will freely admit that i admit (said) that it is PART bullshit and trash talk. b/c that is real & true
you are so passive-aggressive and blind to yourself that you do not seem to realize that you have lost the ability to distinguish, logically, between "all" or "part" and, thus, to understand what i am trying to get thru to you
if you can't think straight, which i've been (successfully i think) trying to point out to you for hours, now, you may want to own it, now, or eventually. you may even be responsible for what and how you are "thinking". i can guarantee you, i'm not responsible for the mess you have made here, tonight. i will be responsible for what i said, ok? and if you can't understand what i am saying (for psychological reasons i have postulated) please stop trying to change what it is i am saying & doing here. people aren't styoooopid, b_dogg, and this is not the first time somebody "bit" on what i was saying and ended up in their own box canyon
you've now gotten me "wrong" so many times, tonight that i just give up trying, as above. rilly. why tf don't you give it a rest, too? you are making a fool out of yourself, against me. i ask you again, please go back and re-visit this, without "changing, deflecting or mis-interpreting what i've said.
Learn something, and maybe we can talk, is not my idea of a "conversation". it is the attitude you seem to have brought to this string tonight, imo, ok? i'm not the only person you have said or intimated this to. the fact that you are very smart doesn't necessarily mean you are more intelligent than anybody else you tried to push around, here. i'm not saying you can't fight, man, i'm questioning your ability to think and write rationally about topics i have already (hours ago) enumerated. again, if you don't recognize the difference between all & part/some where i am concerned, maybe you didn't do as well, tonight, as you "believe"
i'm trying to hang in here and tell you something important. if that's a crime, i plead: guilty! thanks for the good fight and maybe we'll get thru this, together, somehow. who knows? now, it's pretty late here and it's rilly late in nyc, so let's get some sleep and see how this looks in the morning or maybe by the weekend, ok? you and me. i think that's the best we're gonna do, for now, and i hope you agree with me (!), so let's US do that, if you please would, at this point. thankZ in advance
and i will stipulate that you do "understand" trolling way better than i do
as a matter of fact, after this, that will be about all that the other zeroHeads will know you truly "understand"
trust me!
You're still touching your own shit while you think about me, aren't ya?
I never junked ya. Pussy.
Y'all come see me whenever yer ready.
Moron.
Mention Marx....sit back watch mouths foam, heads explode.....
To the foaming exploders: This was really just another article that points to the inevitable financial collapse of our bankrupt system...but nooo, can't say Marx or use his analysis in any way cause that would be unmerican or something...
I'm sure those of you that 'hate' this article are big fans of the notion of unregulated capitalism and 'free trade.' Swell. So was Marx. Well, in a sense...: "But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade" So, Marx was a 'fan' in that he saw that the less regulation the sooner the collapse.....I'd say the only reason unregulated capitalism hasn't/isn't failing faster is because of....regulations...Hmmm the Marx haters and old man Marx want less of those...just saying....Marx wanted the greed of capitalism to collapse the system, some just want the greed of capitalism.
Let us go back to the balance sheet. Assets are Main Street. Liabilities and equity are Wall Street. Wealth is created on Main Street. Wealth is stollen on Wall Street. Of course the bastards need to be regulated. They are the Socialist especially when they want to socialize their losses. As we have seen of late, the act of financing is political.
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Bottom line; with humans at the wheel, THERE IS NO PERFECT SYSTEM. There are only a better systems and a worse systems. I am willing to bestow the title of "Most perceptive economics critic in the past 200 years" on Marx, but sadly his bungling alternative is an unmitigated nightmare. I will take Capitalism and its foibles all day long, over Marx's "genius" alternative. Which, in practice seems to have invariably resulted in terrible standards of living, general long-term malaise and 10s of millions of dead people
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