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Topic: Economic Totalitarianism - page 106. (Read 345758 times)

sr. member
Activity: 268
Merit: 256
July 18, 2015, 08:05:00 PM
@generalisethis - parasite is accurate. The mathematics of the financial system is
very similar to the parasite-host, and that of the predator-prey systems. There
are some important additional factors: whether the parasite adds any survival
advantage to the system; and whether the system we have converges to a bad
equilibrium.

The present financial system resembles "Monopoly" too closely. Society relies
too much on the ability and sophistication of the political system as arbiters of
coercion. When the political system is pwned by the monetary system the parasite
becomes the host. We rely on the kindness of sociopaths, of the kakistocracy,
as promoted by this system, for our survival.

So, do not rush to judge Greece, or Germany. Had the Greek parliament decided
that chaos was better than the prospects of a "bailout" we might have gained
some insights and answers while watching from what we hope is a safe distance.
As for the eternal question Qui Bono? see also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xu5sTyAXyAo#t=526

It is interesting that Ireland will pay billions for decades in a modern form of
Danegeld and only a select few insiders aware of the flow. Expect the flow to increase
until it can no longer be hid. 
legendary
Activity: 2940
Merit: 1865
July 18, 2015, 11:04:43 AM
I realize this is nothing new, but I feel it is relevant to the discussion, I have noticed a sharp rise in degenerate behaviour over the past 3 months which is adding fuel to  big bang

There is no voice calling for liberty in Greece. Give us more, is the call, both from the political class and the people. (or else...you go down too).



Erdogan, clap, clap, clap.  Great observation: MOAR, MOAR, MOAR!  And make the other guy pay.

No cries for liberty.  "The dog that didn't bark"
legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 1005
July 18, 2015, 09:29:34 AM
I realize this is nothing new, but I feel it is relevant to the discussion, I have noticed a sharp rise in degenerate behaviour over the past 3 months which is adding fuel to  big bang

There is no voice calling for liberty in Greece. Give us more, is the call, both from the political class and the people. (or else...you go down too).

legendary
Activity: 2940
Merit: 1865
July 18, 2015, 12:45:43 AM
...

They'll need lots and lots of bearings in Peru for a long time.  And since we (our Peruvian bearing import company) have very little debt, we stay out of the clutches of the banksters for a while longer.

And if we do our "Plan B" (move there), they won't be replacing my body parts for a long, long time (Peruvian doctors?).


EDIT: When my time comes to die a natural death, I hope to welcome just that.

EDIT 2: Yeah, trollercoaster, all of this bad behavior has been building at a seemingly accelerating pace.  And has everywhere I have ever been recently.  Ugh.
legendary
Activity: 1750
Merit: 1036
Facts are more efficient than fud
July 17, 2015, 11:57:02 PM
I realize this is nothing new, but I feel it is relevant to the discussion, I have noticed a sharp rise in degenerate behaviour over the past 3 months which is adding fuel to  big bang

Quote from: Charles Flatt, Sheila Allen; Los Angeles Times; 1990
Democracy has been described as four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Unmoderated majority rule means that the mistakes, the ignorance and the prejudices of the majority will become law. Minorities will be devoured, and the resulting society will be one of enforced and fearful homogeneity.

Quote from: Dale Wilkerson, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Nietzsche’s philosophy contemplates the meaning of values and their significance to human existence. Given that no absolute values exist, in Nietzsche’s worldview, the evolution of values on earth must be measured by some other means. How then shall they be understood? The existence of a value presupposes a value-positing perspective, and values are created by human beings (and perhaps other value-positing agents) as aids for survival and growth. Because values are important for the well being of the human animal, because belief in them is essential to our existence, we oftentimes prefer to forget that values are our own creations and to live through them as if they were absolute. For these reasons, social institutions enforcing adherence to inherited values are permitted to create self-serving economies of power, so long as individuals living through them are thereby made more secure and their possibilities for life enhanced. Nevertheless, from time to time the values we inherit are deemed no longer suitable and the continued enforcement of them no longer stands in the service of life. To maintain allegiance to such values, even when they no longer seem practicable, turns what once served the advantage to individuals to a disadvantage, and what was once the prudent deployment of values into a life denying abuse of power. When this happens the human being must reactivate its creative, value-positing capacities and construct new values.

Quote from: David Konstan, “Epicurus,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2014
[Epicurus] regarded the unacknowledged fear of death and punishment as the primary cause of anxiety among human beings, and anxiety in turn as the source of extreme and irrational desires.

As capitalism marches off the plank of zero marginal costs, what happens to physical value? Are we simply going to replace physical trading of assets for stuff with trading non-physical assets for non-physical values such as someone plunking down $200 dollars for a Spartan race or a tuff mudder(literally signing a death waiver and risking being burned, electrocuted, and even making good on that death waiver) just so they can put up pics online and share their accomplishment with their friends? Rats in a maze paying tolls...

Capitalism is dead and we're all scared shitless so we keep running around the track playing the "remember when?" game.

What replaces this system? We don't have a choice, but identifying it early and understanding its workings offers more insight and advantage than talking politely at the wake or discussing who was mentioned in the will.

I'll say territorial governments will be cannibalized by kinder-gentler (more efficient) corporations who will in turn be swallowed by more cost-efficient (zero-to negative* cost) DAC's.

*negative costs (at least earthly ones) could be achieved by mining resources off-world--Blade runner had this world around 2019, maybe push it back 10-15 years and add DAC's instead of the pharaoh "overlord of AI." If you've read Nick Land's Meltdown and combine it with Blade Runner, I think you'd have my vision of what the future will look like--we lose to AI, but win, because we lose our humanity 'organic parts" in a slow-burn entry into godless eternity, heaven, hell--less borg, more darth vader with R2D2's knack for going full matrix. After awhile it becomes clear, "If you don't need an organic arm or a leg or face or liver or brain....." Boom, welcome to eternal-spirit-states live on a universally expanding network of ohms. Who says those God myths weren't good for anything? They've been building our subconscious towards this goal all along.  Grin
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 250
Knowledge could but approximate existence.
July 17, 2015, 10:03:12 PM
I realize this is nothing new, but I feel it is relevant to the discussion, I have noticed a sharp rise in degenerate behaviour over the past 3 months which is adding fuel to  big bang

Quote from: Charles Flatt, Sheila Allen; Los Angeles Times; 1990
Democracy has been described as four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Unmoderated majority rule means that the mistakes, the ignorance and the prejudices of the majority will become law. Minorities will be devoured, and the resulting society will be one of enforced and fearful homogeneity.

Quote from: Dale Wilkerson, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Nietzsche’s philosophy contemplates the meaning of values and their significance to human existence. Given that no absolute values exist, in Nietzsche’s worldview, the evolution of values on earth must be measured by some other means. How then shall they be understood? The existence of a value presupposes a value-positing perspective, and values are created by human beings (and perhaps other value-positing agents) as aids for survival and growth. Because values are important for the well being of the human animal, because belief in them is essential to our existence, we oftentimes prefer to forget that values are our own creations and to live through them as if they were absolute. For these reasons, social institutions enforcing adherence to inherited values are permitted to create self-serving economies of power, so long as individuals living through them are thereby made more secure and their possibilities for life enhanced. Nevertheless, from time to time the values we inherit are deemed no longer suitable and the continued enforcement of them no longer stands in the service of life. To maintain allegiance to such values, even when they no longer seem practicable, turns what once served the advantage to individuals to a disadvantage, and what was once the prudent deployment of values into a life denying abuse of power. When this happens the human being must reactivate its creative, value-positing capacities and construct new values.

Quote from: David Konstan, “Epicurus,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2014
[Epicurus] regarded the unacknowledged fear of death and punishment as the primary cause of anxiety among human beings, and anxiety in turn as the source of extreme and irrational desires.
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1001
July 17, 2015, 10:00:52 PM
I realize this is nothing new, but I feel it is relevant to the discussion, I have noticed a sharp rise in degenerate behaviour over the past 3 months which is adding fuel to  big bang
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 250
Knowledge could but approximate existence.
July 17, 2015, 09:44:04 PM
Quote from: Winston Churchill
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

A heterarchical currency enables every individual holder of the currency to draw against the balance of every other holder of it. In the case of the G.E. coin, an individual holder's inflation of the monetary base (effectively) draws capital from other holders in accordance with the magnitude of their GEC holdings, mitigating each holder's personal losses while, simultaneously, maximizing their provision. (Furthermore, it incentives one to minimize [perhaps, through destruction] its currency holdings.)
legendary
Activity: 2940
Merit: 1865
July 17, 2015, 08:43:09 PM
...

To mangle Churchill:

"Capitalism is the worst system, except for all the others."


Quoting Margaret Thatcher:

"The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."


I would have thought that Serres would have been smart enough to recognize that all collectivist systems lead to ruin.  

Collectivism is the opposite of freedom.  Collectivism leads to, well, Economic Devastation.

Down with Collectivist Totalitarians, all of them: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Pol Pot, Lenin, Mussolini, Castro.  All for the guys at the top, nothing for anyone else.  Don't (didn't) like it?  Gulags or Death.

Like it or not, our country (the USA) is headed that way.
legendary
Activity: 1750
Merit: 1036
Facts are more efficient than fud
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1001
July 16, 2015, 08:46:06 PM
https://youtu.be/jjxwVuozMnU the ghoulish wench from planned parenthood discusses harvesting body parts
newbie
Activity: 42
Merit: 0
July 15, 2015, 05:10:11 PM
There's a war coming
sr. member
Activity: 268
Merit: 256
July 15, 2015, 03:16:01 PM
Also from http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/07/yanis-varoufakis-full-transcript-our-battle-save-greece

“So what we have is a non-existent group that has the greatest power to determine the lives of Europeans. It’s not answerable to anyone, given it doesn’t exist in law; no minutes are kept; and it’s confidential. So no citizen ever knows what is said within. … These are decisions of almost life and death, and no member has to answer to anybody.”

I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling with peoples lives is going on in this establishment.
Where are my winnings?

If you believe that this group has more functionality than a chocolate teapot, I have some islands you may want to buy.

And do not become too fixated on MA he is dealing with reality in his own way.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
July 15, 2015, 01:30:30 PM
Oh golly, from 58% chance of being unmasked to only 5.1%  Roll Eyes

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/tor-astoria-timing-attack-client/

Who wants to risk their life and limb(s, toes, fingers, eyeballs, and tongue) to a 5.1% dice roll every time they transmit sensitive data over the internet  Huh

Tor and I2P are fundamentally flawed for being NSA-proof. You'll need an entirely different design.
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1001
July 15, 2015, 05:13:54 AM
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/codename-citicoin-banking-giant-built-three-internal-blockchains-test-bitcoin-technology-1508759

From the horses mouth: Moore said: "We have up and running three separate systems within Citi now that actually deploy blockchain distributed ledger technologies. They are all within the labs just now so there is no real money passing through these systems yet, they are at a pre-production level to be clear.

"We also have an equivalent to bitcoin up and running, again within the labs, so we can mine what we call a 'Citicoin', for want of a better term. It's in the labs, but it's to make sure we are at the leading edge of this technology and that we can exploit the opportunities within it."
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
July 15, 2015, 04:08:20 AM
But it doesn't distract too many brain cells to comment on Armstrong's continued myopia on the manipulation the axis powers are doing by pretending to be antagonists. I wish someone would email this rebuttal to Armstrong and demand he justify his nonsense. I got tired of emailing him.

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/34968

Quote
IMF Says Greek Debt Should be Foregiven

Even the IMF has come out now and warned that Greece may need a complete debt write-off. That is sending an economic earthquake through Europe for it undermines the political position of Merkel entirely. There is no doubt about this, Greece cannot pay and cannot raise taxes yet simultaneously still have any viable economy. This is the collapse of Socialism.

So why has the IMF turned around? If Greek’s debt is not written off, the harsh economic conditions being imposed will merely send Greece into the waiting arms of Russia. This is now becoming political with the IMF agreeing with the Obama position.

What you need to understand is that the grand plan (further behind the curtain than Armstrong has access) has been ever since the Euro was created, is that the irreparable debts would be consolidated onto the entire EU balance sheet. The plan all along was a new world order government and financial system, with the 10 Kings regions from the Bible (European Union, Asian Union, North American Union, South American Union, etc) as the next step towards that goal.

So this above with the IMF, Russia, Merkel is just more of the usual Hegelian dialectic (a.k.a. good car salesman, bad car salesman) ploy wherein there appears to be antagonists, but in reality they are all just pretending and squeezing the masses in between a rock and a hard place so the ultimate result is towards the shared goal of TPTB in all regions and nations.

So the IMF will pretend to be the good guys, so Germany will be forced to accept unifying the debts of Europe in order to prevent Greece from falling to the bad guys Russia.

Sheesh, Armstrong is as gullible as a 5 year old sometimes.

Edit: this interview is illuminating:

http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/07/yanis-varoufakis-full-transcript-our-battle-save-greece
legendary
Activity: 1050
Merit: 1001
July 15, 2015, 04:05:42 AM
the fine for drink driving here has increased to $40 000, starting aug 1
legendary
Activity: 1750
Merit: 1036
Facts are more efficient than fud
July 15, 2015, 12:04:15 AM
Quote
There is no single form of government that will ever be perfect. Whatever its form, government will self-corrupt and both sides will fight between the people and government perhaps eternally. The best form of government for brief periods of time are benevolent dictators, monarchs, or emperors, such as Julian II, who even decreed that whatever laws he passed must also apply to himself. Such individuals are rare indeed and once they are gone, the system will revert back to its corrupt state.

Can't we migrate to corporate states where you buy the government you want?

Are our lives about to be so infused/guarded/controlled by technology that it isn't impossible to believe that future generations won't live their lives the same way you live (via avatar) in a video game? Of course the worst crime in these systems of government by computer design won't be murder or theft, but hacks that allow for you to manipulate game/life play. If you violate a patch, you simply won't be able to live in the communal environment. If you turn off your DRM, you won't be able to see your virtual family again. Turn off your computer, and you'll get to see that your house in now a cage and the computers are building their world outside and your resource allocation is as meager as a mouse living in a cage--

back to the maze [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RFwhEvVqnA]....
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
July 14, 2015, 05:10:14 PM
@TPTBNW - I finally figured you out - you are an optimist!

Correct. So many people thought I was spreading doom assuming I was pessimist, when in fact my goal was to wake people up and generate the demand for solutions.

I stay busy on finding a solution to anything that threatens me, including Multiple Sclerosis.

Some background information re China:
Prof Steve Keen expects a crash in China within the next two years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKy6_yy3C3U
“This is the talk I gave at the FT/Alphaville conference in London, covering why we crashed in 2008"

Asia will decline from 2016 to 2020. Asia will bottom in 2020 and it will rise while the West will continue spiraling down for decades. But that doesn't mean Asia will a refuge for Westerners. I believe the Asian Union will enforce our home country's expropriation on us. Non-asian men can not obtain citizenship in Asia (except Cambodia but I believe these will be revoked later).

I would have thought that Martin Armstrong, after what he has been
through, would have a better insight into our future. He seems to believe
that if socialism is eliminated all will be well. It looks to me that he
may need to take another look at the output from his models.

He recognizes that. He has stated nothing will be a permanent solution. He is just trying to find the least painful way forward. (but imo his "solutions" are all wrong)

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/33825

Quote
COMMENT: ...The Founding Fathers put restrictions in place to shackle government, but that didn’t seem to work for very long either. How long would it be before the 5% cap is moved to 7%, 10%, then 12%?  Or they could simply change the calculation of GDP to boost their ability to spend.

The income tax was originally touted as only a tax on the “rich” or the top 1%. Now here we are with the average American having at least a third of their income confiscated and consumed by unproductive bureaucrats. Nothing ever changes.

REPLY: We are talking about a palatable solution, not a revolution. Ideally, you are correct. We should eliminate career politicians. But we must comprehend, they would never eliminate their own jobs. The best we can hope for is that the older ones will vote to end career politicians, imposing term limits on their way out the door. So how do we save our future without revolution and bloodshed?

The solution presented is one that assumes there are no benevolent politicians, but ones who would vote for something that makes the basic changes we need without driving a stake through their own hearts. So this is by no means the PERFECT solution, only a palatable one.

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/34699

Quote
The only way to prevent this type of system was to adopt what the Founding Fathers did in the USA – two-year terms for Congress – because there was no pay and they met only for a few weeks each year. That was closer to a citizen government. The mistake was this should have been hard-coded into the Constitution for once they tasted power they began to pay themselves, becoming career politicians. Jefferson agreed to Hamilton’s proposal of a national debt, provided it was paid-off. This was actually accomplished, as illustrated above. You can see there was no national debt and there was no direct taxation (Income Tax) until 1913.

To solve the problem, there should be NO career politicians and the government should be barred from borrowing money. Those are the key issues. Claiming to make a gold standard or some other nonsense to make “sound” money is pointless. You cannot create sound money with taxes and borrowing intact. We had a gold standard and that failed because politicians borrowed and spent more than there was when gold was fixed at $35. Therefore, a gold standard will always flop because you are trying to use that as a restraint upon government. Deal with the problem directly, for indirect means will never succeed.

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/24607

Quote
There is no single form of government that will ever be perfect. Whatever its form, government will self-corrupt and both sides will fight between the people and government perhaps eternally. The best form of government for brief periods of time are benevolent dictators, monarchs, or emperors, such as Julian II, who even decreed that whatever laws he passed must also apply to himself. Such individuals are rare indeed and once they are gone, the system will revert back to its corrupt state.
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