Let's see: profit is what remains after costs are subtracted from value. Therefore, The World minus Your Soul = the Bottom Line.
Speaking of profits, I see that Pope Francis just called capitalism "the dung of the devil." But I wonder if that is what he actually said, for the piece later quotes him as referring to "the unfettered pursuit of money" as "the dung of the devil," which is something else entirely.
For example, Greece -- an anti-capitalist pile of devil dung if ever there was one -- is clearly engaging in an unfettered pursuit of money, the difference being that capitalism actually earns the money by producing something people want. Conversely, Greece produces nothing anyone wants and wants to be paid for it.
Robbing a bank is an unfettered pursuit of money. Offering things people want at prices they can afford is definitely fettered, as any businessman knows. Among other things, it is fettered by production costs, by taxes, by regulations, by competitors, by consumer preferences, and by civil law.
Where but in a socialist tyranny is the pursuit of money unfettered? Even Obama- or Clinton-style crony capitalism is somewhat fettered, unless you believe people send all those millions to the Clintons with no expectation of a return on their investment.
Anyway, back to the econo-pneumatic question posed in paragraph one. As awkwardly alluded to at the conclusion of yesterday's post, time is the economics of eternity. What I mean is that there can be no economics of eternity as such, being that by definition it has no scarcity.
Unless, as I suspect, time and eternity are actually complementary, in which case you might say that time is like a limited supply of eternity. Perhaps it's easier to conceptualize vis-a-vis finite and infinite: finitude is like infinitude bounded and thus limited.
Of which it seems we all have a kind of vertical recollection, as exemplified by mystics everywhere and everywhen. What I mean is that the mystic reverses perspective, as it were, in such a way that the infinite is seen in the finite, the eternal in the temporal, the absolute in the relative, the slack in the conspiracy, etc. Or just say creation.
If this weren't the case, then Jesus's ultimate profit-and-loss statement would make absolutely no sense to us. Of course we would trade our soul for the world, since it would amount to trading nothing for everything.
However, without coming right out and saying so, Jesus implies that this would be a bad deal, because we would actually be trading everything -- or something of infinite value -- for nothing -- or something of finite value, for all the finitude in the world does not add up to a single drop infinitude, which is a quality, not quantity.
Which reminds me. Adam raised a Cain. Or Cane, rather. Rosebud...
In short, bartering away the soul would be a core catastrophe, a spiritual blankruptcy, an eternal mortgage with a fatal balloon payment.
There are numerous other allusions to economics in the Bible. In fact, what is religion but a form of exchange with God? It is never a one way deal. For example, the whole thing starts with a contract between God and his people -- who become his people by virtue of the contract.
Likewise, God "gives" his son, but not without a price. The mystery there is that he does exactly what he says we shouldn't do, in that he sacrifices infinity for the sake of finitude.
More generally, the whole concept of sacrifice -- present in all religiosity -- entails an implicit awareness of spiritual exchange, however warped. For example, the Buddhist sacrifices the ego to nirvana, the leftist our prosperity to his resentments, the Islamist innocent men, women, and children to his transcendent sadism.
And now we are perhaps in a possession to grasp the perfect nonsense on p. 252, e.g., either pay your deus or be nilled to a blank, the rend is now redeemable on your mirromortal garment, and no body crosses the phoenix line lest it be repossessed and amortized. However you say it, Eloha, that's a good bye for the Love that removes the sin and other scars.
79 comments:
"For example, Greece -- an anti-capitalist pile of devil dung if ever there was one -- is clearly engaging in an unfettered pursuit of money, the difference being that capitalism actually earns the money by producing something people want. Conversely, Greece produces nothing anyone wants and wants to be paid for it."
Yep. Which makes me think that HUD ought to relocate this fellow to Occupy Greece:
http://nypost.com/2015/07/09/this-vulgar-panhandler-is-times-squares-new-welcome-wagon/
And the capitalist 1% sacrifices little or nothing.
Trickle down depends on the fact that the wealthy will provide opportunities for a better life for their employees.
One group of wealthy has, for the most part, has adopted a code that values mass education and human rights; held up public service as both a duty and an honor; and the belief that once you made your wealth, you had a moral duty to do something positive with it for the betterment of mankind. Their legacy depended on this.
Among the presidents that embodied this were the Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and GHW Bush. Among financial elites, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet - both partake strongly of this traditional view of wealth as power to be used for good.
On the other side you have the presently dominant conservative wealthy capitalists that show an utter lack of civic interest, hostility to the very ideas of democracy and human rights, love of hierarchy, fear of technology and progress, reliance on military and force to maintain “order,” and with no concern of inequality, as if it were an order divinely ordained by God. Elites who dare to argue for increased investment in the common good, infrastructure, and believe that we should lay the groundwork for a better future, are regarded as just silly and soft-headed.... even socialist/marxist.
Conservative capitalists talk about "losing liberty," the loss of the ability to dominate the people and property under their control -- and, worse, the loss of status and the resulting risk of being held accountable for laws and taxes that they were once exempt from -- is what they're really talking about. Anything that gives more freedom, benefits, and rights to lower-status people can't help but viewed as a loss of capital and limiting the freedom of the wealthy to use the working class as they please.
These type of wealthy conservative capitalists have come to dominate present day America. Given a choice for the betterment of the worker, increasing benefits, wages, etc... or making a few less million, today's wealthy does the thing most conservatives would call "good business". Sending jobs to China and sheltering taxes in offshore accounts.
That is where your delusion of trickle-down is destroyed. Fortunately, all but the most ignorant Americans understand this, and that is why it pays the right wing to keep Americans less educated, bound in a menial life-style, and confused with fear of 'waning liberties,' religious imperatives and other things to promote them to vote against their best interests.
Perhaps you might name one of these wealthy people with an utter lack of civic interest, hostility to the very ideas of democracy and human rights, love of hierarchy, fear of technology and progress, reliance on military and force to maintain “order,” and with no concern of inequality, as if it were an order divinely ordained by God.
This is just an externalization of your own delusional hatred.
Al Gore.
George Soros.
Tom Steyer.
I could go on and on.
Seven years of Obama and William Catsnuggler is no less bitter than when his Cartoon Capitalists were in charge of the show. From a psychoanalytic standpoint this is entirely predictable, because when delusions aren't fulfilled, they only deepen.
For example, I recently saw someone who believes his coworkers are spying on him and recording everything he says and does via his cell phone. Any evidence to the contrary is immediately reframed as part of the conspiracy.
... time is like a limited supply of eternity ...
So could we say something like, hell would be "no time" as opposed to timelessness or the "more abundantly" Jesus talks about. In hell, time does not exist because it has all been spent. In heaven, time is not an issue because one cannot run out.
I think of hell as endless nothing as opposed to eternal something. Hell would definitely have to be timebound, or maybe time without eternity. Or as Hegel put it, "bad eternity." Painful boredom, like one minute before school lets out, forever.
Or maybe insomnia without end.
An endless speech by Obama.
MSNBC on the airport monitor while waiting for a plane that never arrives.
OK. That would be hell.
Or listening to a feminist list all the complaints she has against the patriarchy.
***
I'm so tired of hearing people whine about inequality. There is nothing intrinsically wrong or evil about inequality. There is a lot wrong with institutionalized corruption, with people who make laws that they themselves will never follow, with using governmental force to steal from the productive and encourage the dissolution of the very fabric of society - practices which do result in dramatic income inequality, certainly. There is something wrong with having protected classes of people living in sanctuary cities and committing crimes with no repercussions until someone ends up dead, while elsewhere families are terrorized by petty bureaucrats for refusing service or letting their kids play outside. There is something wrong when people can have their hard-earned assets seized by police with no charges filed and nothing criminal suspected, beyond the having of what they worked for.
Again, certainly there is inequality there, but that is not the problem, it is simply an outcome.
Incidentally, I suspect this is why the Robin Hood stories were popular for so long. It was never so much about robbing from "the rich" and giving to "the poor" as it was about returning to those who had little to begin with what was taken unrighteously by a decadent class of thieving elites.
I'm for a wall of separation between capital and state.
Only in the zero-sum economic world of the left does one person have too little money because another has too much, or does one person's success come at the expense of another's failure.
It's a bleak, depressing, and paralyzing worldview. No wonder it appeals to the losers among us.
And so dreadfully wrong. But at least it gives them an excuse to sit around and whine about the unfairness, instead of doing anything to change their circumstances.
The wonderful thing about America, at least as it has been, is that poverty need not be a permanent state for anyone willing to do work that someone else is willing to pay for. Compare to any third-world hellhole, where if you're born poor you will probably die poor, sooner than later, no matter how hard you work to support yourself and your family - indeed, depending on the culture, where rising above the circumstances of your birth (or simply expressing a desire to do so) may have serious negative consequences.
Or compare to socialist paradises such as France, with permanent double-digit unemployment and no growth, not to mention reduced standard of living for all.
True unemployment here is also double-digit.
Trouble is, something like 25% of our population is unemployable.
Which is why they are employed by the state.
I look at the state as a vast unemployment agency to suck up the ineffectual people produced by a state education. The circle of liberalism!
Obama himself being a prime example.
I've never understood why people like William feel "controlled" by corporations instead of liberated by them. Unlike the state, they don't force anyone to do business with them. There are trade-offs to be sure, but, for example, I really love Coscto because it's the cheapest and most convenient way to get the meds for my diabetes. Likewise, my glasses broke the other day so I had to get a new pair. At Costco the frame and progressive lenses with anti-scratch and anti-glare came to a grand total of like $180, where you can easily pay three times that at another place. Economic efficiency creates more wealth and frees up more money for everyone.
I do wish the state would end all corporate welfare, but that's not what states do.
Sometimes I weep for the cat.
Economic efficiency creates more wealth and frees up more money for everyone.
Your note about government employing the unemployable really gets to the point. The state specializes in inefficiency. Anyone who has ever worked for or with a government agency -- including the military, probably -- knows that it is managed to maximize its budget and personnel. The government's motto is, "We do less with more."
The fact that there are occasionally good people working for the government who use the ridiculously extravagant resources confiscated by the state to do some small amount of good doesn't unwaste all the rest.
"Unless, as I suspect, time and eternity are actually complementary, in which case you might say that time is like a limited supply of eternity. Perhaps it's easier to conceptualize vis-a-vis finite and infinite: finitude is like infinitude bounded and thus limited."
Salvation, now, for a limited time (and unlimited time) only!
You can't afford not to.
If you wanna get to Heaven, you gotta raze a little hell.
The problem with leftists is, they wanna raise a lotta hell.
"Your note about government employing the unemployable really gets to the point. The state specializes in inefficiency. Anyone who has ever worked for or with a government agency -- including the military, probably -- knows that it is managed to maximize its budget and personnel. The government's motto is, "We do less with more."
The fact that there are occasionally good people working for the government who use the ridiculously extravagant resources confiscated by the state to do some small amount of good doesn't unwaste all the rest."
That's true, about the military, Mush, although to a lesser extent. It largely depends on how competent the commanding officer, senior officers and senior enlisted are.
The PC officers put up obstacles (endless meetings about sexual harassment, and awareness of the most popular, leftist PC BS, or blindly support assinine ROE that put our troops in needless jeapardy), as opposed to the officers Obama hates, that run their commands efficiently, effectively and actually focus on getting the job done without all the idiotic and life threatening PC BS.
"I've never understood why people like William feel "controlled" by corporations instead of liberated by them. Unlike the state, they don't force anyone to do business with them. There are trade-offs to be sure, but, for example, I really love Coscto because it's the cheapest and most convenient way to get the meds for my diabetes. Likewise, my glasses broke the other day so I had to get a new pair. At Costco the frame and progressive lenses with anti-scratch and anti-glare came to a grand total of like $180, where you can easily pay three times that at another place. Economic efficiency creates more wealth and frees up more money for everyone."
Precisely, Bob. Lefties hate it when they can't control businesses they never built (envy, personified). And like the mob, they get hostile when they don't get their cut for not attacking the businesses that won't kowtow to their idiotic policies.
To leftists, success and hard work is evil.
Julie said it better than I. :)
Leftists hate anyone who makes life easier.
While I agree in principle about corporations, or at least businesses, there are some problems. With no size cap, some of these entities become state sponsored, like Comcast or Monsanto. In the same way that big gubment sponsors big agribusiness (get big or get out), they do so with many other large and influential entities. There's something in the nature of size that makes a business turn from being competitive to influencing the state to destroy their competition.
Actually, the state influences big businesses to pay protection money (or campaign money) to the slimey politicians and as a reward the state will hurt or take out their competition.
Yes, if the state weren't so gargantuan and influential, there'd be no need for businesses to buy it off.
A long time ago I came up with the idea that elections are so expensive mainly because of TV advertising, that TV advertising is done by politicians because people are stupid, and that people are stupid because of public education.
Therefore, nothing short of making people more educated will solve the problem, but that will never happen with liberals in charge of education.
Another beautiful liberal Circle of Death.
Liberals pretend to want to "get money out of politics," but doing so would simply leave the field wide open to huge corporations such as CBS-NBC-ABC-CNN-NY Times-LA Times-Wash Post, etc., not to mention liberal wackademia. In other words, it would effectively quash dissent from liberalism.
Certainly, now, it mainly works from State seeking business help. But, even before the state became insanely huge, there were JP Morgan types, buying off politicians to destroy competition.
Let's start by getting rid of government monopolies such as public education, the post office, and social security.
Gagdad said "Yes, if the state weren't so gargantuan and influential, there'd be no need for businesses to buy it off."
Yup. And it got that obese by incrementally, one is tempted to say 'progressively', violating proper law (those which uphold Individual Rights and punish criminal trespasses against them) to do that which is popular. Beginning with Railroads, then Banking and foods, the more that govt regulators can cause harm to a biz (or benefit a particular co by harming is competition more than them), the feeding frenzy progresses and expands.
And Oh how easy or is to appeal to both sides of the issue, for the benefit of the Kronies, in gov & out.
32 get pet second, per second, all fall down together. ...
"Let's start by getting rid of government monopolies such as public education, the post office, and social security."
If we can just get rid of the monopoly of public (mis)education, the rest of the governmentopolies would follow within a generation. I would prefer now, but realistically, most likely not gonna happen.
However, Pub ed would be the easiest to get rid of because most voters actually want school choice. Particularly parents.
This is billed as a horror movie:
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?blog=86&post=357790
A movie about SJW's who are trying to "save" the rainforest and make a difference (lol), who get captured and eaten by non-white cannibals.
But it looks like it's a comedy too.
You know the Education factor is my candidate for being The central issue, for our renewal or destruction.
Of course the House GOP just betrayed yet another round of promises to grass roots by angling the vote for renewing NoChildLeftBehind (they're all tied together) to pass, just when it seemed we might be able to let it die out.
And our dear MO Sen. McCaskill sent a survey around, asking what we little people would like her and her fed kronies to do for us to 'help' education even more. My unusually brief reply was:
"I'm a member of one of Missouri's HB1490 Curriculum work groups, the History 6-12 group. What I'd like to see Congress do to help us better handle and direct Education in Missouri, is to stop trying to help us in educating ourselves.
Disengage; whether by law, finance, regulation or agency directive - cease and desist. Please. The long history of federal involvement in education, and that of recent decades in particular, demonstrate that the Federal Government cannot even attempt to assist us, without effectively distancing each and every one of us - from that of the State agencies, and on down to the Local level - ever further from the Education of our children.
Please. If you really do want to help, have the political courage to leave us alone."
Yehhh... bet that gets taken to heart.
BTW, if you haven't seen this gem, you ought to:
http://thekronies.com/
Some light Saturday morning reading:
http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html
Perhaps what we look at helps create it. Which is a whole new argument against pornography.
All my life I've been ignored by people, and finally, after years of being overlooked, I found I have the power to disappear.
I've worked for a state government for 7 months now. We use "private contractors" who are every bit as flummoxed about how to run a business as the State is. We're losing, because the GenPop is sliding backward at an alarming rate. A spreadsheet or a flowchart is the handmaid of the Devil, to be shunned.
The State, in order to make up for farming out the work, hires more people to complicate the flow of money to the contractor. In my work, I get them paid within a couple of weeks, but it takes 7 layers of approval before the check is cut. No protocols or written procedures, it's all verbal lore as to who does what and why... and it changes depending on who has the power-play that week, or the best coping skills, or the best drugs and psychologist.
To work with the gov't IT department is an exercise in head-desk-bang! The ego-angst-inferiority issues survive the binary disciplines of computing and interpretation only to produce a 69-page primer on how to use the new tab of information in the database. It's like it takes the bodily constitution of 10 people to produce one turdlet, but it's by-gawd a gilded turdlet!
Meanwhile, in other news, it appears that we are soon to be headed for another Maunder Minimum. Which if true, suddenly makes me wish that all the overblown terror of anthropogenic global warming had a basis in reality - it would be the only thing standing between us and several decades of world-changing changing cold temperatures. And frankly, Florida is already too crowded.
I'm sure the polar bears will love it, though.
Joan, this is the kind of dedication we've come to expect from our government workers.
Going back to solar activity for a moment, if there is a minimum during which the two dynamic layers of the sun offset each other and produce a minimum of activity, must there not also be a maximum period, wherein the layers are fully in sync and the activity is at a high? And if so, and a minimum produces a little ice age, what effect does a maximum have? Further, when was the last solar maximum, and how was the weather?
Had I just kept reading, some of my questions might have been answered. Notably, though, the authors are very careful not to make any pronouncement whatsoever about correlations between temperature readings within the past century and the corresponding solar activity. Though they are more than happy to make observations about magnetic field activity.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/379954/catholics-against-capitalism-kevin-d-williamson
Kevin Williamson gets it.
This is hilarious:
http://www.independent.org/lovegov/
Since Obama was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009, Standard & Poor’s 500 index has gone up approximately 125 percent, the Dow Jones industrial average has experienced a growth rate of 146 percent and, perhaps most impressively, Nasdaq has grown in size by 188 percent. Two thousand days into his presidency, the major stock indexes under Obama have had average gains of 142 percent — compare that to the record under Reagan, who saw gains at 88 percent during that same time period.
Russ Britt of MarketWatch notes, “the average stock-market gain under four post-Depression Democrats through each one’s 2,000th day in office has outpaced the average gain of the four Republicans in the era by a factor of nearly 4 to 1. Democratic gains have averaged 133%, while Republican market advances have had a mean of 33%.”
I cannot see how anyone can read these numbers differently. When delusions aren't fulfilled, they only deepen.
I realize that's not a very cogent spin on the worst economic recovery in history, but cutting and pasting from far left web sites takes time.
Wealthy investors would do even better if the damn Fed would reduce the interest rate from .25 to zero.
Kevin Williamson speaks to Catholics about the economy. The Milton Friedman link in that article is such a nice aperitif to this disucssion!
Oh hai, Leslie. Didn't see your previous link! Worth linking twice, however. :)
It's almost like the low growth/high stock market of Obama-style crony capitalism helps the wealthy and hurts the poor or something.
The story of Obama's presidency should be called Rich Mob, Poor Mob.
People of Toronto, thank you.
The economy is doing so well under Obama's pay to play plan that real unemployment is in the double digits around most of the country, particularly among blacks, and health insurance is more expensive and harder to find. What a deal. But at least Obama's wealthy buddies, like Jon Corzine make aout like bandits.
Oh, I'm sorry, did I say like? They are bandits. Obama is the anti-Robin Hood, he steals from the poor (and middle class) to give to his rich donors.
Anyone who believes the economy was good during the Carter years never lived in the 70's (but hey, don't let history stop you from being a fool, anon).
And the only reason the economy wasn't horrible under Clinton is because he went along with conservative principles most the time.
Your revised history indoctrinators must be very proud of you, anon.
In the left's own terms Obama has been a smashing success, with more people out of the workforce and dependent on the state then ever before in history.
Any president can run the economy, but it takes a real genius to drive the poverty rate back up to where it was before the War on Poverty started.
Kevin Williamson is an excellent writer.
He is. His Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism is an excellent primer on leftist economic magic.
Smashing is right. I'm sure that when the left runs out of other people's money we will be as well off as Greece.
Jest think about it, intead of retiring at 65, or 51, people will be able to retire before they ever even get a job.
Thanks Bob, I'm going to get that one next.
Man, leftists sure do like their magic shows don't they?
Sowell says price controls are lies about supply and demand. Then as a result of the lie, there is a misallocation of resources based on it.
The stock market certainly reflects this, as the federal fund rate is a huge lie that is channeling money into stocks instead of savings.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression & New Deal is another eye-opener.
Not only were Roosevelt's economic policies disastrous, but if the left were morally consistent, they would be much harder on him as a war leader than they were on Bush. I have no problem with him as a commander in chief, because he was as ruthless as he needed to be to win the war. But nowadays the left would rather lose a war than do what is necessary to win.
Speaking of price controls, I heard recently that Venezuela has finally reached the utopian stage of socialism: no more toilet paper.
In the USSR they had too much toilet paper and too little sausage, so they used the former as filler in the latter. Problem solved!
"Sowell says price controls are lies about supply and demand. Then as a result of the lie, there is a misallocation of resources based on it.
The stock market certainly reflects this, as the federal fund rate is a huge lie that is channeling money into stocks instead of savings."
Precisely. Yet another bubble in the making, and this one is gonna be devastating. Leftist economic policies have more bubbles than Lawrence Welk ever used.
"In the USSR they had too much toilet paper and too little sausage, so they used the former as filler in the latter. Problem solved!"
Their kielbasa was killer with filler. Killbasa, the official sausage of the KGB.
You don't want to know about when they had to use sausages for toilet paper.
No wonder Obama likes House Of Cards so much. His policies are based on nothing but that.
You're right, Cuz, we don't.
I read somewhere that each enforced, artificially low, interest rate point represents nearly a trilion dollars. It will bite us all in the ass eventually.
It cannot be overemphasized that the economy is an information system. Fill it with bad information, and bad consequences cannot help but follow, as in the 2007 mortgage meltdown. In that case, the state forced banks to make bad mortgages while pretending they were good. The "bubble" is the space between good intentions and stubborn reality.
The bubbles: where lofo becomes badfo.
Liberalism itself is a bubble between intentions and consequences, dependent upon people failing to see the connection.
Van, that Toronto piece was hilarious! About time Raccoons got some respect. ;)
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