Keeping the Money Coming In
san_jose_guy
money was invented for handing to women, but buying dances is a chump's game
We are at a meeting in an undisclosed Manhattan high rise. At issue is the much observed fact that millennials, even if not already completely saddled with college loan debt, they are still said to "invest like depression babies." And then with the unprecedented high stock market, it has become very hard to keep drawing in new money. So many are getting frightened.
But we have a newcomer to the meeting, a man wearing a top hat and sporting a carefully waxed long mustache.
"The kind who create the AI or own stock in the companies will love it for a while, but at some point it will even be time to phase them out. "
And then,
"The natural predilection of kids out of college seems to be to favor the tech companies or the hot fintech startups, so the old companies are either not attract much of the new talent or are forced to outbid the tech companies with some staggering offers."
And then,
"Yep, revenge of the nerds for now. Then they either build the AI which makes us all immortal or they build SkyNet which wipes us all out."
Now the older men sitting around the table are completely baffled by these statements. But then the newcomer explains that to keep drawing in money, given that many of these young people derive pride and satisfaction in the work that they do, it is necessary to first instill in them a sense of fear about the future, followed by the idea that by putting money into the stock market instead of into their own affairs, that they are smarter than other people, and that they will be some of the few who fair well in the coming world changes.
SJG, your fly on the wall reporter
Also Sprach Zarathustra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcgG02I4…
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Yes, automation has been big. I've seen this first hand at the company I work and in the industry I work. It reduces the need for labor and headcount with saves on labor inputs (net loss of jobs) across the entire organization except at the top. What will we do in the future when say for example only 1 in 10 (I pulled that out of the air but I've read that figure in UBI studies) needs to be employed in the somewhat near future? True capitalism creates excesses and net-net is a good thing. But what then? What if the other 9 in 10 people? I'm not advocating for socialism or wealth redistribution but what else ? Serious question. UBI along with low paying supplement jobs like art or microbusinesses? More robotics engineers and computer scientists? Maybe Dougster or SJG has input?
The other thing: the argument business can't afford higher wages for the rest of us is that there aren't sufficient profits or money to pay them. Okay. Those corporate profits belong to the corporation (essentially a virtual person) so it's not my say or the Govt's say. I get it. But is the typically allocation ( ~50%) of corporate funds (cash) for stock buy-back, is that a good idea? How is that not a subsidy to those at the top (who tend to own stock or be compensated in stock) versus a subsidy in higher wages for the rest of us, who work hard? Or is it just a myth the rest of us work hard? Maybe we're doing the *wrong* hard work. Is that good for America? Is this the new American Dream? Stock prices pushed up via Corp profits of stock buy-back? If so, I need to get some more stock ASAP! Who Moved My Cheese (R)?!? ;). Maybe Dougster or SJG has input?
This is just some musings as I believe in hard work and making the American Dream work.
^"Everything written on this site should be considered a work of fiction."
Now with the stock market, as the prices on the newer companies are driven by the perceptions of pension fund and hedge fund managers, the odds are already built into the current prices. You can read all you want about various issues, but these assessments have zero predictive power. All they do is rationalize why the price is what it is today.
So with Dougster lecturing about finding industries less amenable to automation, like I would suppose strip club prostituting, he is just baiting people, trying to get them to put there money somewhere which does very little for anyone.
What has driven labor declines is in part automation, but this is not something new. In the 19th Century this country had around 40% of its population employed in agriculture. Today that number is less than 4%.
So some critics of these recent decades of neo-liberalism have said that if all you wanted to do was create jobs, then all you have to do is outlaw farm machinery.
If ever see pictures of how houses and larger buildings were constructed, like say only going back before WWII, you will see that the ways they did things used far more people, and far more materials too. The productivity gains of these last decades have been huge. But it has also been understood that these gains in productivity were to be passed along in terms of higher wages. And it had indeed been this way.
But with everyone of these boom and bust cycles of the last 30 years we are moving further and further from that unwritten rule. So labor declines, because labor has not been able to effectively advocate for itself, and because the labor movement never has been good at reaching those at the bottom.
And so people have tried different things. In some other parts of the world, like South America, there have been experiments with worker owned factories. But then what people have observed happening, is that they end up getting run by the "Coordinator Class", the people who do the talking and work between departments. They are the ones who have the overview and will end up leading.
So what is the solution to this? Most say that it is broader job descriptions.
But this still shows how things go, once you get people to submit to some sort of a structure and organization, then those who do well in that environment will end up running it.
And then from there it ends up that those who control the money, will end up running everything. They have nothing to do with the work itself, but they present themselves as masters of the Big Picture, and as having all the keys to life, when actually they do nothing except take advantage of other people. And this I suggest is the real reason for labor decline, and the real threat on the horizon, a world run by financiers.
So seeing this is indeed how Marx's ideas developed. But what he was predicting that workers would take over. Nothing like this has ever come anywhere close to a happening.
And so while the insights of Marx are essential, there are others in the 160 years since who have offered updated analyses, more fitting the current era. One such:
This guy Jean Baudrillard has got at least some of it, with his object value system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudr…
It's just that we here in the US are undereducated, or mis-educated, so we don't understand these kinds of ideas, yet.
As it stands today though, the primary assault on the value of people doing real work, is this investor ethos. This devalues people's work, and also there personhoods. How can work be valued when instead the idea of getting rich is valued?
In the organization I am building, things will not work this way. Now this does not apply to the general population, and we are nothing like a nation state. But our people will be well taken care of, and all will be engaging in life long education, and be able to do meaningful and always challenging work, and have a very high quality life and tremendous financial security. But we don't get this by the upwards mobility ethic or anything else like that.
As it stands now, it is only a segment of the population that really has any path towards education and self-actualization via a livable career open to them. And if things were really that much different for these vocal proponents of the political right, they would never say the kinds of things that they do.
And the real danger is that the Right is again promoting Social Darwinism and Eugenics, as a justification for formally splitting society into two tiers. Maybe in past eras this would have been based on race, but today it is more based on who is a scapegoat of the middle-class family.
So the people at the bottom have got to organize and start fighting back, understanding that passivity and non-violence only support those who promote Social Darwinism and Eugenics.
SJG
The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPJXEMKt…
Hero or Murderer? 15-Year-Old Bresha Meadows Faces Life in Prison for Killing Abusive Father
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/31/he…
National Railroad Map
http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/r/p/rp…
http://www.mapsofworld.com/usa/usa-rail-…
http://www.acwr.com/economic-development…
http://www.usa-by-rail.com/
the future
http://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0362
The Rolling Stones - Tumbling Dice - Live 1990
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tja-4CXl…
If I see this correctly, this is how the grass roots organization founded by San Jose Guy will start. Am I close, SJG?
We will have an outreach program, but we will never call it Recovery or Rehabilitation. It will be Restorative Justice. But the only people who get in it will have demonstrated a high capacity for self-understanding and political consciousness.
Most of our people, at least the men, will already have been rather well off, and politically conscious. And the men especially will have been held to extremely high standards, before they get in.
With the women we will be a bit more open, feeling that they need to see how things work first hand, rather than just having things explained to them. But before they get to governing rank they will have been subjected to the same standards the men have been.
No, I don't like the idea of repairing junker cars. Cars are for most people just a money sink. We have very definite economic plans, involving things on a much larger and more forward looking scale.
We will have units to take care of our own vehicles, but these will be organizationally owned, and they will be maintained to very high standards, no less than it is with police and fire vehicles.
No, you really aren't close to seeing what is happening.
But, to expand beyond our local handful of people we need credibility, and this comes in one form, SCALPS.
I am counting the Pentecostal Daughter Molester is my own first scalp. A scalp means bragging rights. I need to do more things, usually taking other people down, that I can brag about. Passivity is not part of our organization, not at all. So I am involved in other things right now which could give me the chance to take some scalps.
SJG
I find this quite amusing, SJG, as you have been calling the stock market a "bubble" that will inevitably collapse for quite some time now. So people who manage money have zero predictive power, but you have something greater than zero? How can that be?
This probably lays into your confirmation bias of following the numbers game so many intellectual people play into, especially in their predictive powers for the stock market or any other human behavior. Fact is you can't predict human behaviors with numerical logic.
SJG, does being an engineer/auto mechanics professional help your bias towards science and math?
Depends exactly what you mean by "predict". You can definitely know that some things will be more likely than others.
We have talked about this before. All sorts of analyses are published about the various stocks being offered. But this information is also much better understood by the people who control pension and insurance funds. It is these fund managers who, using their power to buy and sell, largely determine the prices.
If you bet on an athletic event, or even on what tomorrow's weather will be, you will get odds. But with the stock market, the odds are already built into the current pricing.
So if a stock today sells for $25 a share, then that is because that is what fund managers and the market as a whole think that that company's shares are worth. And it isn't really just for today, based on current balance sheet. It is more what they believe the balance sheet is likely to say at some time in the future.
But how far in the future has a great deal to do with what interest rates are. It is with these that you can do a Net Present Value calculation, for a result likely to be realized at some time in the future. The lower the interest rates, the farther into the future one can realistically look.
But if somehow you or I could reliably know that today's $25 stock would tomorrow be worth $30, then $30 would also be today's price. No reason to accept anything less for it. And the same applies to stocks expected to lose value. If you really could know the future, then the future prices would be today's prices.
So lots of amateur investors spend half of their time reading analyses of how various companies are doing, and of what the prospects are for their stocks. And then they spend the other half of their time patting themselves on the back and bragging about how smart they are. But they really don't anything more than what is already reflected in current pricing.
If the analysis looks good, or if it looks bad, this helps explain the current pricing. But it does not have any predictive power beyond that.
Most of these investors do not even know much about the various industries, just gossip, buzz words, and who's who.
If you wanted to have an edge, you would have to actually know what the current activities inside the company are, and actually know the people who are carrying them out. With that, you would be able to have an edge over the fund managers, and hence recognize when their assessments are off. But this is exactly the kind of information the law prohibits us from using. And every company does it's best to maintain industrial security, as to its future plans, as to it communications with customers and suppliers, and as to its accounting. Attempting to penetrate this constitutes industrial espionage, and such is completely unlawful.
And then as far as a company you actually work for, or perhaps even are running, you cannot be buying and selling shares after every board meeting, or every customer meeting.
All you can really do is obtain shares upon joining or founding the company, and perhaps as compensation at some later date. And then you cannot generally sell any until the company is public. But even then it can't be directed by internal information. So basically you hold them, and then generally at some point, with the help of a broker, you start cashing out or trading out.
But the idea that just by reading these analyses of various companies, or by listening to someone like Dougster boosting for the BOOM, that you are being smarter than the average bear, is totally nonsense. What you are doing could just as well be done in Las Vegas, or at the horse racing track, because it really is no different.
CIA Director William J. Casey was sending out daily buy and sell orders, and I'm sure he did very well. But that was highly illegal and unethical.
Dow Jones Industrial Average - 1900-Present
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/histor…
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c…
TO BE CONTINUED
SJG
Herbie Hancock - Dis is Da Drum (Full Album) 1994
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS92R6nw…
I asked how YOU are able to know the stock market is a bubble and going to collapse but at the same time you claim that nothing can be predicted beyond the current price. Why are YOU able to know something beyond current price, but money managers can't?
Bottom line is your claims are mutually contradictory and therefore at least one of them is wrong.
Now I still need to add this before proceeding, there is a huge difference when you or close associates are running the company yourself. I don't mean in buying and selling, I mean in just holding while you do what it takes to make the venture work. This is a far better use of one's money because they are using it to back up their own efforts. And this is the mode I am moving into and will be in for the rest of my life. Everyone should have the chance to put their money into their own efforts, and to be part of a team of people that they know long term and who back each other up. And if sometimes things don't work out, that is still okay as someone else will have something which is going well, and you'll always be opening new and important doors for yourself, and for the entire team.
Much better than just sitting at a computer and watching these markets, or even worse, listening to these financial news talking heads.
It is very wasteful that people have been encouraged to put money into the stock market, as that is a just about the most completely unproductive use of it. It just sits. The more money that goes in, the more prices go up. But nothing else comes from this. Just a big Ponzi Scheme.
And I believe Rick Dugan was correct in saying that as the economy is not doing that well, money is going into the stock market as there is no place else to put it. High stock market is a sign of weakness, not strength, and not that much different from 1929.
It is also not that much different from how the Dot Com Ponzi Scheme started, people putting lots of money into extremely speculative and iffy things, simply because there was nothing better happening.
And when people are told to put money into the stock market, that just devalues their own abilities, saying that they are of no relevance.
So how do I know that this is a bubble? Well, none of us can predict what these markets will do tomorrow. But there are some generalities we can draw, and they come from completely outside of the stock market.
First of all, Hebert Hoover was completely unable to understand the Great Depression. He kept counseling belt tightening. He had no idea how severe the problem was or how long it would take to work out of it. What he could not see was that our economy had come to be controlled by very soft needs, by consumer consumption, or non-essential, or luxury items. The largest part of these were of course automobiles.
So when times are good people keep buying, to maintain their social status. But when times are hard they stop, and they repair their cars to keep them going as needed. And they just drive less.
So this is always the problem with capitalism, that it results in gross over production and over consumption. This will go on for a while, not solving any problems, only creating them. Then something will cause it to stumble, and then it all comes down. Even as late as 1940, the unemployment rate was still quite high. The problem was that severe.
But what also happened is that FDR switched us over to a Keynesian system. This is not destroying capitalism, it is actually supporting it by saving it from its own worst excesses. So by using taxation, and spending, and making adjustments as needed to interest rates and the money supply, things are kept from overheating.
This worked well for over 40 years. Then the neo-con movement finally was able to take over with the election of Ronald Reagan, and he and his people dismantled most of what had worked. Of course G. H. W. Bush had called this approach Voodoo Economics. And so we have had boom and bust ever since. I lose track of them.
This is the way Capitalism will always go, if there are not some external controls.
And this also devalues labor. You seem to think that labor gets devalued because of automation. This needn't be so. Historically there has been the understanding that as productivity increases, that these are to be passed along in higher inflation adjusted wages. Why is this not happening now? It's because of the shift in focus to something completely irrelevant to the well being of working people, the stock market.
So when the Dot Com Bubble broke, what went first? The German car dealerships. They vanished. The Metro Newspaper announced the collapse of the Dot Com Bubble with a cover illustration of an over turned Porsche Boxter.
Those cars and the BMW's were all over our roadways. That was the thing, funded by speculator money, one may not be able to buy a house, but one could buy a yup mobile and make a real impression everywhere they went. But as this whole episode was built on living beyond one's means, it had to collapse. Individuals were spending money they did not have. And the companies were spending money which was not the result of any steady revenue stream.
And so each time there is one of these bubbles, there will be a bust. The bigger the bubble the longer and deeper the bust.
Very difficult to stop a bust once it starts because it does run on fear. But if we can refuse to support the bubbles, then there can still be some mitigation.
And so what is it exactly which makes a bubble? A bubble is always a deception. The deception is that it is stable and sustainable economic growth. Like what Herbert Hoover said in his 1928 campaign, "Another 8 years of the same policies and poverty in America will be completely eliminated."
The bubbles capitalism creates are not sustainable because they create more problems than they solve. And so sooner or later one or more of these problems will trip it up. The bubble never was driven by industries that serve crucial or high priority needs. It was always driven by hype over the perception of being able to gain control of one or more markets. The bubble was driven, not just by greed, but by ignorance and fatalism. Pitch masters were able to keep the money coming in, and then fear and fatalism induced people to go along with it, because underneath all the hype was the fear that this world is collapsing, and so unless you can strike it rich, life is not worth living. And so of course this hype on top of fatalism is completely anathema to an appreciation of labor, or advancing the interest of labor. The fortunes of working people continue to decline, as the emphasis is only on the promulgations of these market bubbles.
And so what are these problems which capitalism sets up or at least exacerbates?
Well for one thing it promotes hyper conformity, making people into a mass who only identify with what they can conspicuously consume. Everyone is to be judged by how high up on the hog they are. And so this hyper conformity increases racial prejudice, sexual orientation prejudice, and prejudice against the poor. And it intensifies gender politics, which is what keeps the birth rate and the consumption rate high.
And so you have huge social inequity problems being created, as the cost of living skyrockets, led by housing costs. An eventually these lead to one form or another of crisis. You can't solve serious social problems just by hiring more police and building more prisons. Eventually something will give.
And then you have natural resource waste, more buildings, more highways, more population, more automobiles. And then all these people driving their cars to work, using up lots of fossil fuel resources, and mostly just so they can pay for their cars. Total waste. There are all sorts of other things that these people could be doing, community based projects which address real needs. But this impossible when everything is judged by market standards. The market just means the herd, but backed up by the state. This is a crazy system, one which has only existed since the rise of the middle-class, with its standards and norms for what is and what is not a legitimate way to live.
So we are always running into hard limits, because capitalism does not solve problems, it makes problems, and then tries to expand to get around them. So we have this neo-liberal movement, eating away at the self-actualization values of the Enlightenment, and working to make everyone into a surf for The Market.
So with all of these problems being created, and with all the external limits, and with all the strife currently being exacerbated, and when this is all happening via over consumption, there has to be a crash coming, and it cannot be too far away. And I don't say this in any gloomy way. I mean when the crash comes, that will be a burst of sunlight into what now is a very dark abyss.
With each of these crashes we have the hope that people will have learned something. And in the 1930's that certainly was the case. Since? There are powerful forces behind this new Right Wing Media, and that has got a huge number of people just completely disconnected from reality. But I still believe that if people put in the effort and try to lead by example, that people will learn.
So while no one can predict what individual stocks or these indexes will do tomorrow, we do have the last 35 years of post Keynesian history, and the Great Depression, to look to as examples to understand how it work. The more it seems to depend on boosting, the more likely it is that a crash is not that far away.
SJG
Synth Improve, quite good!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUgele46…
Bellydance Evolution: Saplak (tribal bellydance music)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCZFNO6t…
Solace, Bellly Dance Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXd6KnM4…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzxcV3Zm…
Dude, all that babble you post and you still haven't resolved the contradiction.
If you really believe in the efficient market hypothesis and nothing can be known beyond the current, then it follows that buying now is just as good as any time in history. In fact it's the best time to buy because if you wait you'll be missing out on the interim returns.
But go ahead, keep typing and typing and hope if you type enough we won't see the basic contradictions in what you are posting.
It's true that the vast, vast majority of hedge funds would do better if they just became index funds and "bought and held". But I can think of at least four that have consistently beaten the averages over the long term.
If what SJG was saying was true, and we could know we are in a bubble then money managers would also be able to see it, and there would be returns greater than the average to be made on the short side since they would have knowledge beyond current price.
What he is saying is logically inconsistent. The thing is he is one of the few people of this board who actually knows what a logical inconsistency is, and he is generally honest, so I have no idea why he is persisting down this line.
Let's ask him here.
@SJG: do you advocate violence against any of the following: Motorhead, doctors, Christians, or middle class parents?
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
^I would agree with this as the productivity gains in the economy are not reflected in wages gains for the typical worker. I suppose this is by design, but it sucks. It really sucks.
SJG --> "Much better than just sitting at a computer and watching these markets, or even worse, listening to these financial news talking heads." --> end quote SJG
^I don't understand why this type of work is rewarded with $$. It seems like masturbation and quite frankly a waste of good resoureces and talent. C'est la vie!
SJG --> "money is going into the stock market as there is no place else to put it" --> end quote SJG
^I know why. Because going into business for yourself is frightening. The stock market is attractive because (we're told) it averages 9% returns year over year. It is more or less guaranteed! (we're told)
SJG --> "And when people are told to put money into the stock market, that just devalues their own abilities, saying that they are of no relevance." --> end quote SJG
^I think it has more to do with risk-avoidance. Investing in one's own venture is extremely risky and very likely could fair. How does one diversify that or hedge that bet?
SJG --> "So this is always the problem with capitalism, that it results in gross over production and over consumption. This will go on for a while, not solving any problems, only creating them." --> end quote SJG
^Capitalism (free markets) seem to solve the problem of how to efficiently produce. It does seem to followly (loosely) the pareto principle: 80/20 rule. I guess its saving grace is the 20% that does produce produces A LOT. (or whatever the percentages are). The questiont that remains is how to we get more people engaged?
Clearly (to me) capitalism and free markets are working VERY WELL for a small minority. I do feel for the vast majority, that collectivizing or unionizing or organizing is in labor's best interests. I know the far right hates to admit that but much of the gains of the middle class were from organized labor and unions. Some CEOs and business owners are best served with their nuts-in-a-vice from a union boss. I write that with a smirk and with pride. My wife's father used to be a union boss.
And when it is all said and done capitalism and free markets are the best thing (and most efficient) thing we have going. With all due respect to Karl Marx, what he proposed isn't nearly as productive, sadly. So I'd like to salvage capitalism / free markets and make it work for everyone. So how to we account for social darwinism. How much social darwinism should be tolerated? Somewhere between 0% and 100% I would think. Just how much intervention is good?
SJG --> "And this also devalues labor. You seem to think that labor gets devalued because of automation. This needn't be so. Historically there has been the understanding that as productivity increases, that these are to be passed along in higher inflation adjusted wages. Why is this not happening now? It's because of the shift in focus to something completely irrelevant to the well being of working people, the stock market." --> end quote SJG
^I would agree. This is too much focus on stocks, stock prices, last quarter (3 months), next quarter, stock buy-back, pushing up stock prices, etc.
I don't know enough to criticize the bubbles, boom & bust markets. I know those swings benefit the rich and not the average worker. The rich are able to be more nimble with investments because they have so much more $$ over their basic needs than the rest of us. Plus they have the time and motivation to study and understand the markets (since they have sufficient $$ to make worth doing so!!)
The problem I have with capitalism is the "landed aristocracy" we are creating. This is see as no good. This was the English model of the 1700s that the U.S. wanted to get away from. This will be our undoing. Ready the gullotines! The system is not equal opportunity. Currently the biggest determination of wealth is the wealth of ones parents. This is fucked up. Life isn't supposed to be fair but that is seriously unfair. Fucked-up unfair. C'est la vie.
Dude, all that babble you post and you still haven't resolved the contradiction.
"
I'm not endorsing the idea that markets are perfectly efficient, ie that they are based upon complete knowledge. I'm simply saying that without insider knowledge there is nothing you or I could know that would give us any predictive ability about what individual stocks will do tomorrow, beyond what is already indicated in their current prices.
But as this insider knowledge does exist, there may be people who know. But other than that, the markets are basically efficient, it is just that lots of buyers, pro and amateur, are just responding to hype and boosting, and so this would argue against a totally efficient market.
So then as far as being able to know that there is a large probability of a substantial crash at some time in the not too distant future, and whether or not this contradicts the efficient market hypothesis? I would say that the market efficiency is compromised and provisional. It takes very little to scare investors off, and this is why these crashes tend to happen in big notches, where as the increases usually happen more slowly and progressively. So much of the market is just feeding on itself. And so I think this is one of the places where the efficient market theory falls apart.
So no, the analyses people read and the corporate financials do not give small investors any predictive power. But there is still good reason to believe that a crash is coming. Not like 1929, because there is still some residual of keynesian controls, but maybe like a loss of 50% value. I believe it was about like this in 2008. And then very long term, our present economic system is wreaking horrid environmental and social damage, and it is just about impossible that things can go on much longer as they are. Each boom and bust cycle leaves more people in more marginal types of employment. So eventually there will have to be one form or another of anarchy and chaos.
I certainly have no interest in the stock market. I see its highs as strong indicators of national insanity.
I want more out of life than just a pile of money.
SJG
The people at the bottom, at the margins, must start organizing and defending themselves. What is at stake is the re-emergence of the pseudo sciences of Eugenics and Social Darwinism. So passivity and unlimited commitments to non-violence only encourage it.
So it is going to be necessary to use not just Any Means Necessary, but to use All Means Available.
And one of the most severe issues is the kinds of child abuse perpetrated by the middle-class family, and usually with the assistance of doctors of various types, then followed up by psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and clergy.
SJG
So there should be tons of money to be made here on the short side contradicting your claims that money managers can't do any better than the averages.
If your ideas are good there is no need for violence to implement them. You need to work on your persuasiveness instead of having these fantasies about violence.
Also sounds like he is waiting for superior aliens from space to discover him and proclaim him the intellectual and spiritual leader of Earth
BTW remember this, history is littered with the detritus of hucksters that have been running around proclaiming that the sky is falling as long as I have been alive.
--------------------------------------------
...well, except for 20 or so hucksters that bet against mortgage bonds with credit-default swaps in 2008 and became billionaires in the process.
-Dominic
"
The people at the bottom, at the margins, must start organizing and defending themselves. What is at stake is the re-emergence of the pseudo sciences of Eugenics and Social Darwinism. So passivity and unlimited commitments to non-violence only encourage it.
So it is going to be necessary to use not just Any Means Necessary, but to use All Means Available.
And one of the most severe issues is the kinds of child abuse perpetrated by the middle-class family, and usually with the assistance of doctors of various types, then followed up by psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and clergy.
"
So again, people are going to have to start defending themselves, using all available means, and the most destructive thing people could do is give any open ended commitments to non-violence as a way of life, as that only encourages those advancing Eugenics and Social Darwinism.
MLK's mistake was committing to non-violence as a way of life. He misunderstood Gandhi, and he created problems in leftist activism which continue to this very day.
And as far as Dougster's claim that the welfare state will grow, this will be true of we go in the direction of Sweden and The Netherlands, which is what I say has to happen. But I do not know if this is how things will go. As it stands right now, more people are being forced into an untouchable caste ( notice I am not calling this a class ). And the justifications being given for this, are always Eugenics and Social Darwinism. Each one of these boom and bust cycles makes the situation worse.
So again, the people at the bottom need to be prepared to fight, and using all available means.
Twentyfive is saying that after these crashes, that the markets always come back and reach new heights. And yes, I would agree that this has always been true. But I do not know that that is always going to happen. There could be larger types of crashes, even ones which cut the guts our of our currency itself. The future really is unknown, simply because there is so much unworkable about our present situation.
And yes, as Dougster said, it is possible that one could make money by shorting the S and P. For all I know, Dougster is doing that himself right now.
But the fact is, I don't care, because I want more out of life than to have made money off of other people's losses.
What I would like to see is a collapse of the present market bubble, and then see people learn that we must start doing things other ways, not by speculation.
Dominic77 wrote:
"^I know why. Because going into business for yourself is frightening. The stock market is attractive because (we're told) it averages 9% returns year over year. It is more or less guaranteed! (we're told)
"
Yes, I agree with what he said. I don't know if the stock market always averaged 9% per year. Looking at the history of the DOW, it looks like there were decades when it was flatter. These would have been back in the 50's and 60's, when our nation's economic growth was stronger and the fortunes of working people were rising faster. And this was because we had better Keynesian controls at work, and more progressive income tax. Downward wealth transfer grows our economy because it grows from the bottom up, as the bottom where wealth recirculates faster.
Now, that the stock market rises 9% per year today, could mostly be true. Of course if your objective is to make money via the stock market, then to me it would seem to make more sense to buy in during one of these busts, like 2008, than at an all time high like today, which Dougster seems to want people to do.
Okay, but I don't think our GDP is rising at 9% per year, and certainly exports versus imports is not rising at 9% per year. So what does this tell us?
Well one of the things that controls the stock market is just how much money there is available to put into it. So we have had income tax reductions during the 80's, along with the tax breaks for 401K and IRA, all of which tend to push the stock market up. But there still must be some limit to this. So that it keeps going up at 9% per year is probably just the result of upwards wealth transfer. The stock market is fueling itself.
And so this is the threat that working people, and our entire society, always faces, that actual work becomes worthless, while financial maneuverers gain more and more power.
Various measures have been given about how many more times all of the money in the stock market is, compared to the actual amount of commerce being made.
The parasites of our society are the financial sector, arranging it so that they have most of the power, yet they contribute absolutely nothing of real value.
So then Dominc77 spoke of how the idea of starting your own business is scary. I understand this exactly. But know that in the organization I am building, that fear factor will be well mitigated. Specifically, with people who have large outside income, and who have skills to run a company, we will hold their hand. We will work with them to develop a business plan and we will build the business for them the first time. We will have no equity participation, as it is their money, and so they will always have all final authority. But, in part to reduce their taxes, in part to help them obtain equity which gets them around personal income tax in the present, and also to help our organization build a power base within some industries, we will help them to build their first company, providing them with everything they need except capital, but including customers, clients, and contracts, and then we will help them build follow on businesses once the first one is producing revenue. One of the objectives will always be to help them get large benefits, but without that having to be in straight salary or dividends, and then to help build the power and expertise of our organization. We will always be supplying them with experts who know how to make things work and to stay safely within legal limits. And we will be able to fix it so that the minimum scale is quite small.
Dominic77 also wrote, "And when it is all said and done capitalism and free markets are the best thing (and most efficient) thing we have going. With all due respect to Karl Marx, what he proposed isn't nearly as productive, sadly. So I'd like to salvage capitalism / free markets and make it work for everyone. So how to we account for social darwinism. How much social darwinism should be tolerated? Somewhere between 0% and 100% I would think. Just how much intervention is good?
"
Marx and Engels published their thesis in 1848, a long time ago. Much has been written since. What they predicted was that workers would take over. Nothing like that has happened, nor does it seem likely that it ever will.
The examples that the Right seems to like to hold up a negatives seem to be U.S.S.R., Cuba, and Venezuela.
Well none of these places have any experience with democracy. So they are totalitarian regimes, which to some degree or another have their polices rooted in socialism.
Well this is about the same as when Napoleon found that he could wed the revolutionary principles of Equality, Liberty, and Fraternity, to Nationalism and his vision of empire.
It is not anything like what was intended, and it is nothing even close to democracy. So if you want to see what socialism looks like when it is democratically obtained, look again to Sweden and The Netherlands, and I would say also to the policies of the French Socialist Party. In all of these countries they have elected governments, and there is open debate about what is right and about how far things should go. They do most certainly have higher taxes. And there is open debate about how high they should be.
So I think these Social Democracies of Western Europe are the examples to look at and discuss, not U.S.S.R., Cuba, or Venezuela.
What it comes down to is political consciousness. If you have it, then you will have working Democracy, and you will also have society which takes care of its people. It will be like what Bernie Sanders said about Francis 1st, that socialism means that you put taking care of people first.
So if you have political consciousness, you will have a working democracy, you will have Social Democracy, just like they have in many parts of Western Europe, and in most of Western Europe to a degree.
If you do not have political consciousness, then you will have people listening to Right Wing Media, people believing in the pseudo sciences of Social Darwinism and Eugenics, people supporting the idea that the middle-class family should harm children by forcing them to believe that their innate instincts are wrong, and that instead they must submit to the Self-Reliance Ethic.
Remember I played a large role in putting one such father into San Quentin. He was using sexual molestation to break his daughters, and he used to psychiatric system to break his eldest son.
And you will have the people who actually do any of the work, considered less and less valuable, as all power goes to the financial sector, people like Dougster, and we will become a two-tier society.
This term two-tier has specifically been on the table in recent decades with Germany's Right. I am sure someone like Angela Merkel knows better than to talk about this openly, but behind her, and to her right, there are people who push for it.
And so again I emphasize emphatically, those on the bottom and at the margins, must be prepared to fight if necessary and using any an all available means.
Our society used to use immigrants and ethnic and racial minorities as it's scapegoats. Today, less labor of any kind being needed, it gets it scapegoats directly from the middle-class family. So those so abused are not likely to be well prepared to speak for themselves or to defend themselves from further abuses.
Racial and religious minority groups do respond when casual prejudice is found in the media. But so far, there has not been any concerted response to Eugenics and Social Darwinism. There is going to have to be.
SJG
The Filthy Souls - Destroy You (Official Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZDtZawK…
This would be something good to look into. What I do know is that they have an economic floor under people, and so once they have this, church attendance tanks. People just don't think in the same sorts of fatalistic ways anymore. Less people willing to dance around in circles calling out the name of an idol, hoping that he will finally get up off the toilet and hear them and make it rain on them.
I am quite sure that these Social Democracies are not perpetuated by royalty or aristocracy. And you don't find the kinds of poverty there that we have here. Remember, poverty is created by social marginalization. And a great deal of this social marginalization comes from the Upwards Mobility Ethic itself. Here we maintain stratification by using things like ethnicity as a justification.
Rifkin is a Labor Activist
https://www.amazon.com/European-Dream-Eu…
SJG
If he isn't any better reason to vote against liberals, then there is no other reason.
SJG
I only got involved in the Pentecostal Daughter Molester case after I'd convinced myself that if there were no other way, that I'd be happy to take care of him myself.
So I wasn't asking the government to lock him up, just because I want that. I was placing them in a situation where to maintain their hold on power, they would have to lock him up. They did a very good job too. And in this, police, jurors, prosecutors, a journalist, and judges got an education, as did I.
Right now the survivors of middle-class child abuse usually get shunted into psychotherapy, recovery, and religion. All just more abuse.
Recently in Cleveland a 14yo girl shot her father dead.
SJG
Children can tell when they are being instructed by people who do not practice what they preach, and that the preaching is just a way to try and look good.
Children very quickly learn how our world works, what is real, and what is fake.
Most of the problems come in when people are using children, and this is how the middle-class family developed.
The idea that children someone need to be corrected is based on something very similar to racial prejudice. And it is justified by the "Self-Reliance Ethic", which is derived from the religious doctrine of Original Sin.
The guy who was going on and on about how bad his eldest daughter was, was using a tried and true method of making her believe that her sexuality was dirty, paternal molestation. He never said anything to me which directly indicated guilt, but I was completely blown away by the emotional energy he had invested in scapegoating his daughter. And in each communication to the prosecution and to the court, I emphasized this.
I was very glad when he was convicted, sentenced, and then transferred to San Quentin.
https://www.amazon.com/Childism-Confront…
SJG
April Wine - I Like To Rock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlcY_enz…
SJG
https://www.sccgov.org/sites/ssa/dfcs/ab…
This is what our society is saturated with. And the problem is that the survivors don't understand how they have been harmed.
SJG
Class treats children. You can't speak of some things you know nothing about, like how to raise happy children.
JimGassagain has posted,
"
You have to look through the trees to see the forest. And much of the forest is riddled with the infestation of the poor lazy types who want to suck on the teat of the "welfare nipple". Soon other's look at their free ride and the abuse spreads to others around them. It's why when the poor start moving into a neighborhood, the successful ones leave to greener pastures, upward mobility.
There are far less examples of the entitled rich 1% suppressing the system as opposed to the constantly immobile poor sitting on their butts sucking the welfare system and our tax revenues. The poor have had no better standard of living ever in history, and they have the many of those rich pioneers who've developed ideas and technology to progress our current standard of living. Many more examples of successful pioneers who took the risk in capitalism to make not only their lives better, but society as a whole due to their innovation. The poor lack innovation and motivation to progress their lives, they look to others to do it for them, and they have the middle class and top 1% to thank for the best standard of living ever acquired in the history of Earth!
"
and
"
Look at how many poor people get free smart phones, ebt cards, and free housing. All due to the Economic success from capitalism. 40 years ago nobody has time to deal with media because they were too busy working, and those who weren't working were too poor to have any amenities. Now the poor in today's world can type on the internet all day disincentive zing them from looking for a job. The poor don't want to do well, they just want free stuff.
"
So Jim, is this how it is for you? Is this the JimG who sells out shows throughout Ohio and Indiana? Is this what your shows consist of, defaming poor people? Do people really buy tickets to listen to that?
And Jim has also written,
"
SJG until you have raised any children, I think your unqualified to say the things you say about how the middle
Class treats children. You can't speak of some things you know nothing about, like how to raise happy children.
"
So is this also how it is for you, using children to justify yourself?
And are you disputing the Santa Clara County CPS web site? Which parts of it, and why?
www.sccgov.org/sites/ssa/dfcs/abuse/Page…
SJG
The worker take over which Marx and Engels predicted has never happened and almost certainly never will. But you do have now in Europe a number of social democracies. They have little to do with U.S.S.R. , Cuba, or Venezuela. But they are democracies, probably even more so than the US. These are the examples to look towards and to try to better understand.
https://www.amazon.com/European-Dream-Eu…
But the problem here with Dougster's frequent references to automation, AI, and to there being more social benefits, is that Dougster is still seeing the bulk of our population as being clients of his Masters of the Universe, receiving what they give out as an act of pity. He still sees he and his ilk as running the world, while the people who do the work become less and less important. And in fact, the wages from doing work, are irrelevant to him.
And this is always the risk working people have faced, people who install themselves over them and who gain control.
Veblen talked about this as the Barbarians who rose to rule over the savages. They do no real work, but they do engage in warfare and punishment. The Barbarians hold the symbols of power, symbols of divine selection. And then the fact that they do no work, is what ultimately legitimates them
Dougster wants something very similar.
And so today as you have less and less need for work, but you have a middle-class which generates its own scapegoats living on the margins, and you have Dougster and his political allies completely opposed to anything which would result in participatory democracy, just this agenda of automation and AI, while passing out tokens of pity. That will never work. That we even have something like that today makes for a very dangerous situation.
And so I again emphasize that those at the bottom and on the margins need to be ready to use all available means to defend themselves, as even the current state of affairs is completely unjust and wasteful.
SJG
Tarkus Full Album [1971] [2012 Remaster] - Emerson, Lake & Palmer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2_a73go…
Once again you've stepped on your own dick by not knowing the topic you speak of. I am raising 5 children whom of which will be running their own organizations some day. SJG, you may want to study something about the power of compounding as you may be building one organization, yet due to compounding I am building 6 organizations, my 5 children plus my marriage. I believe that qualifies me to know much more than you through experience, and also a successful entertainment career, which basically makes over 7 organizations I've built, because my fan base is much larger than your puny little false organization you say you've created.
So yes, you can say my children justify me, along with my career, my large fan base, millions $$ in the bank with financial security, and the fame that people recognize my comedic brand. What's your brand? Please SJG, tell me what more do you have over me to justify yourself larger than my forthcomings? As I've said before SJG, until you have the experience to share that your successes are greater than others like mine, please do so or STFU! I will be happy to stand in front of your face marine "military" style and whip you up and down the block giving you direction. I played varsity football at Purdue and Georgetown, so I highly expect you to respect my physical
Presence or be willing to deal with the consequences. That will be my biggest justification to the ilk of SJG folks like you that have never procreated and given true expansion to this world we call
Life!
The world welcomes the doers like me much more than the talkers like SJG. Right?
Well JimG, you seem to be intent on proving my central point about the middle-class, that it is based on using children, exploiting them, in order to legitimate the adults.
The reason for this is that the middle-class lives in Bad Faith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith_…
"
Bad faith (from French mauvaise foi) is a philosophical concept used by existentialist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir to describe the phenomenon where human beings under pressure from social forces adopt false values and disown their innate freedom hence acting inauthentically.
"
Another way of putting this is simply to say that the middle-class does not admit that it has choices, and so people are not living up to their own values. The middle-class is the first group of people who actually have choices. But they don't like this, and so they act like they don't have choices. And so specifically they are having children in order to try to give themselves legitimated adult identities. The middle-class is the first group that is having children deliberately, but this always amounts to using them.
The world does welcome doers, but I for one would never be talking about my own affairs in an online forum unless I had multiple levels of extremely secure fire walls, placed exactly where they need to be, separating my online life from my f2f life.
JimG also wrote,
"
I played varsity football at Purdue and Georgetown, so I highly expect you to respect my physical
Presence or be willing to deal with the consequences. That will be my biggest justification to the ilk of SJG folks like you that have never procreated and given true expansion to this world we call
Life!
"
You make me laugh! Like I said before, you sound like an oversize 10yo. You don't seem to understand, I'm not interested in bar fights. That would be just a waste of time. And you like to defame poor people, and this seems to be central to your conformist world view, and you talk just like the Pentecostal Daughter Molester did, trying to use his children to justify himself. Really not very funny at all. Down right creepy.
I want people I can inflict severe consequence upon. like putting the Pentecostal Daughter Molester into San Quentin, and for a very long time. I want to do things like that, and more, and then be able to brag about it.
You seem interested in athletic contests. Well I couldn't care less about such things. I am part Native American, and what I like is taking scalps, because that's what gives me bragging rights.
SJG
Neil Young - A Man Needs A Maid/Heart Of Gold Suite (Live At Massey Hall-1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYANlIfQ…
That was a hell of a firewall you put between your online handle and your real name, right?
Isn't that his real name? Yeah, nice firewall SJG.
I am extremely politically visible. But I could never do the kinds of things I do if I worked for the government.
SJG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsVwj_QE…
http://www.interreflectionsmovie.com/
I just watched a few minutes of it, but I have heard the ideas before, even with I think the same narrator. Hard though without investing lots of time to discern where exactly this film maker wants things to go.
What I do go along with is Deleuze and Guattari's two volumes, Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Anti-Oedipus and Thousand Plateaus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism…
Though more often than not misunderstood, these books are completely against The State. Buy this they mean the Ur State. It is always the bad guy. They wanted the French student and worker protests of May 1968 to take the state down. And they would have if the Communist Party had not switched sides and gone with the government.
However, you are never going to get beyond it or away from the state. And the White Male dominated American Libertarian Anti-Government Movement is one of the strongest forces in maintaining government power and coercive social conformity.
What Deleuze and Guattari say, in division 4 of Anti-Oedipus, using mathematical analogies, is that as bad as the State and Capitalism are, you can always add more axiomatics. You can add axiomatics for women, minorities, and the poor. And I say we also now need to add axiomatics for children and the survivors of the middle-class family.
If you do this, you will end up with something more like the social democracies of Western Europe, and like the French Socialist Party. But it will not be like U.S.S.R., Cuba, or Venezuela.
For the above interpretation, and for a very good overview of Deleuze and Guattari's Ant-Oedipus, see:
https://www.amazon.com/EPZ-Deleuze-Guatt…
SJG
Then 25, that must wherever you are at.
SJG
Are any of these thoughts inherently evil? (1) "You eat what you kill." (2) "Social Darwinism" (often preached by proponents of Libertarianism.
" Or are you still using the competition from capitalism but instead redistributing the excesses of competition from the group's participation with the outside world among the members?"
I think what you are asking about is what Marx and Engels called surplus value.
So no, we don't exploit labor. We take care of our own people.
As far as the membership dues, those pay for the buildings and a shuttle van fleet, and my salary of $1 per year. Doesn't get much more simple than that.
But as far as the businesses we run:
1. Some owned by me. The profits get ploughed back into the business, and into starting others. Taking money out only means paying personal income tax or corporate income tax. So better only to accrue equity and to let the company do the things which are needed.
2. Some set up specifically to reward our long term members, so they are equity holders, subject to a vesting period. So they should gain great financial wealth, but via equity, not much of a salary, because of tax codes. But well diversified, and with a large brain trust making sure that things work out.
3. Well most of our people will work outside anyway. So they will get paid and pay taxes as they had. But, we will help them greatly with career development, and so their salaries should be boosted far and above what they are being asked to pay us in tax deductible dues.
4. We won't ever be asking people to give up large salaries, or large incomes from things like sex work. We will be leveling up, not down. So some of our people will be those who did not have much of anything. But others will have been well off to start with. In many cases we will be helping people to start businesses, using their own money. There are IRS rules about deducting the costs of businesses which have zero revenue, and then about deducting the costs of businesses which have revenue, but still run in the red. But we will always be helping people to use what income they do get, to start more businesses, and making sure that those businesses work out.
Generally, and to the extent the law allows, you want to shift away from this model where you get a paycheck and pay taxes and then buy things, to letting the real benefit be in equity to be taken out at some time far in the future, and letting your company buy the things you need.
No recreational consumerism here. Work, Play, Education, all merged.
And then our own activities will give people far far more than what most people get from their recreational spending money anyway.
And then, our women are partners, also getting dealt in on the equity, and sometimes doing all the things the men are doing too. Always they are getting a great deal and not really being asked to give up any outside financial options.
Consider this, what do most guys spend their money on:
1. Impressing the opposite sex
2. Keeping up with the Joneses.
Well with us there will be zero need for any of this.
And our women will always be having lots of fun and always supplied with a full collection of slut wear, and their long term financial and security needs will be extremely well met. Never need to spend money on them, or to give money to them, or to spend money to impress them. They are already extremely well taken care of.
Getting around the constraints of Capitalism usually involves some elements of communalism, some elements of alternative religion which counters Original Sin / Self-Reliance Ethic, and then some community political and financial interests.
We aren't defeating Capitalism, we are just using it to our own extreme advantage, and often making it impossible for others to compete with us.
And then with our industrial concerns, we will always be providing a high degree of utilitarian value, never contributing to consumerism, or to gambits for the control of technological standards. Our approaches will always be extremely open. And in the current era, this way usually does work better.
And yes, this is nothing like a nation state. It is always completely voluntary. Those who stay in and those who opt at some point to drop out, will still be doing very well.
"
Are any of these thoughts inherently evil? (1) "You eat what you kill." (2) "Social Darwinism" (often preached by proponents of Libertarianism.
"
No I agree with all of that. Actually the Libertarian Anti-Government Movement is one of the greatest sustainers of government power to regulate people's lives, and one of the most coercive enforcers of social conformity, and it is based on the logic of Social Darwinism.
And we will never run any Ponzi Schemes, which is what this thread was originally about.
SJG
Jimmy Smith - All the Best (FULL ALBUM)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4TbadjO…
Take a look at the preview pages of this most interesting book which I always recommend:
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Boxes-Life-…
SJG
Very few people feel that they don't need to prove themselves or justify their failings. And this all, in my opinion, comes directly from the abuses which the Middle-Class Family is built upon.
SJG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_corporat…
SJG
Actually, I think that structure would work well for the types of things women usually set up.
SJG