Capitalism Mythology

Yesterday after our Thanksgiving feast, I enjoyed a nice talk with my father-in-law about capitalism.

He was offended when I said that capitalism is unsustainable. He felt I was attacking free enterprise, and assumed I was advocating socialism instead. He said that there is nothing wrong with someone becoming wealthy through hard work. He said there is not a single country where socialism has succeeded, and that the incentive of profit is needed to motivate people.

I pointed out to him that with unfettered capitalism, the money simply rises to the top. I said that when 5% of the world's population control 40% of the world's wealth, there is a problem. And when you are rich, it's easier to accumulate more wealth. I also pointed out that the middle class are becoming the lower class, and can't afford to buy all the crap that made the rich people rich in the first place. Thus, we have the sinkhole in which capitalism collapses.

I finished the conversation by saying the solution is not socialism, but socially responsible capitalism. On the way home, I realized that this is a fallacy as well. Only government can control capitalism, and that means a larger and more intrusive government. Since the government seems to screw up nearly everything it does, I doubt that they could properly reign in capitalism, which tends to treat humans as a commodity rather than people.

So, I guess the only solution is that capitalists should self-regulate. They must adopt the attitude of not just focusing on the bottom line, but also being environmentally and socially responsible, and, most importantly, remembering that they should also try to provide some decent paying jobs for American citizens. Hey, there is an advantage to that. If you outsource ALL the jobs, there won't be anyone to buy your product.

I don't think most people are intentionally greedy, but the system we operate in IS inherently greedy. There is pressure at all levels of a corporation to turn a good quarterly profit, which increases stock value, and, in turn, means more bonuses and dividends.

I am not sure that sustainable capitalism will EVER work. But, anyway, I digress. Here is a quote from columnist and blogger Chris Hedges:

It is not accidental that the economic crisis will converge with the environmental crisis. In his book The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi laid out the devastating consequences the depressions, wars and totalitarianism that grow out of a so-called self-regulated free market. He grasped that "fascism, like socialism, was rooted in a market society that refused to function." He warned that a financial system always devolves, without heavy government control, into a Mafia capitalism and a Mafia political system which is a good description of our financial and political structure. "A self-regulating market", Polanyi wrote, "turns human beings and the natural environment into commodities, a situation that ensures the destruction of both society and the natural environment". The free market's assumption that nature and human beings are objects whose worth is determined by the market allows each to be exploited for profit until exhaustion or collapse. A society that no longer recognizes that nature and human life have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, commits collective suicide. Such societies cannibalize themselves until they die. This is what we are undergoing.

Polanyi is insistent that "laissez-faire was planned; planning was not." He explicitly attacks market liberals who blamed a "collectivist conspiracy" for erecting protective barriers against the working of global markets. He argues, instead, that this creation of barriers was a spontaneous and unplanned response by all groups in society against the impossible pressures of a self-regulating market system. The protective countermovement had to happen to prevent the disaster of a disembedded economy. Polanyi suggests that movement toward a laissez-faire economy needs the countermovement to create stability. When, for example, the movement for laissez-faire is too powerful, as in the 1920s (or the 1990s) in the United States, speculative excesses and growing inequality destroy the foundations for continuing prosperity. And although Polanyi's sympathies are generally with the protective countermovement, he also recognizes that it can sometimes create a dangerous political-economic stalemate. His analysis of the rise of fascism in Europe acknowledges that when neither movement was able to impose its solution to the crisis, tensions increased until fascism gained the strength to seize power and break with both laissez-faire and democracy.

Industrial Collapse

Photo credit: KWAB

It is Thanksgiving morning, 2010. As I sit on my bed writing this entry I ponder over the collapse of the Industrial Age.

Two cats are keeping my feet warm at the foot of the bed. My wife is in the kitchen making a yummy side dish for our Thanksgiving feast. Life is good.

Garbage
Yes, count me in for some of that liberal guilt. I'll take a round, baby. A waste management engineer once told me that landfills are made in giant bowls, with some sort of lining. When they are full, they are vented, covered with dirt, and all that fast food plastic has a 1,000 years to decay. The waste from the Happy Meals I bought my children 15 years ago are now rotting in some landfill. Tons of methane is rising from the heated pile of crap. Some of this methane is piped and used for "green" energy, but most goes into the atmosphere, where it becomes the worst type of global warming gas.

So, think for a moment, if it takes 1,000 years for all the landfill crap to decay, just how many more landfills will we need in 1,000 years? If we continue at our current pace, there will be hundreds of capped landfills all over the place, emitting tons of methane gas. Is this sustainable?

Chemicals
The average person uses dozens of chemicals, all designed for one purpose -- to make us happy. Some chemicals make us feel better while others make us look better. Much of this crap either ends up in a septic tank or in a sewage system. Since the Industrial Age began, we've created several thousand chemicals, and we don't know exactly how they interact with one another, or how they affect our health and environment over the long-term. Most of the chemicals we buy have long names that we can't even pronounce, yet we have no problem pouring the shit down the drain.

Air/Water Pollution
From cigarette smokers to nasty factories, we are belching tons of crap into our oceans, rivers, lakes, and air. Again, we don't know how all of the waste products interact with one another, and we don't know exactly what are are doing to our long-term health. Again, all this crap is emitted for a single purpose -- to make us happy, and to make our lives more comfortable.

So....
Excuse me, but am I the only one missing the insanity of our situation? We are poisoning the Planet and jeopardizing our health, and the health of all living creatures, just so that WE CAN HAVE SHORT TERM COMFORT. Is that absolutely stupid or what?

The Way We Am
Admittedly, not much has changed since the 1950s. If you look around, you just see people doing what they've ALWAYS done, and what their parents did. No one gives a second thought about jumping into their massive SUV, idling 10 minutes in a McDonald's drive-thru, and then rotting their insides out with a McNasty burger. Why? Because everyone is doing it, and it's ALWAYS been done that way.

Conservative Backlash
Right now we have the Tea Party and other conservative groups rabidly screaming that they DON'T WANT CHANGE. They say they want to get back to the "old ways," and then they start rambling about value concepts, like family, God, and country. They want to be comforted with their illusions as they cuddle by the fireplace with Sarah Palin's latest book. Their delusional values give them comfort, while their Prozac infested poop is flushed into the water system and absorbed by some innocent fish. And, it's for the better because now the fish is no longer depressed about the fouling of its water. And meanwhile, church people hold hands around a bond fire, sing songs, and discuss how Glenn Beck is still their leader, even though he's a Mormon.

Selfish Gene
I half think that people AREN'T inherently selfish. It's just that we have to be selfish because everyone else is selfish. We all have to fight for our own survival. This creates a vicious circle where everyone has to be more selfish to out-compete other selfish people. In the end, our health, environment, sanity, and the well-being of other wildlife are forgotten. But the important thing is that we have tons of chemicals in our bathroom cabinet to make us smell better, look better, and, ultimately, feel better. And, meanwhile, our society collapses under the weight of our own indifference.

Spitting Out the Kool-Aid

I feel different and isolated from most people in the world. I feel like a loner. When I'm with my mother and siblings, it always feels awkward. Long ago I threw out the mythological dogma that enslaved me, and they don't understand why.

My mother, especially, is a ravenous defender of the status quo. She is the greatest prisoner I know to her own indoctrination. She feels that society should return to the 1950s, which was the perfect, idyllic time for her. Any kind of reasoning with her is dismissed. If it's not the Devil behind our global problems, then it's "worldly" and "immoral" people in general who are causing our downfall.

Moving On

If humanity continues its current course, we will soon destroy ourselves both environmentally and economically. There are many debates on the true source of this problem, and some people point to "greed" and "selfishness." Others point out the lack of "critical thinking" in our society, and still others say we need to "mature" more as a species. Well, I think all the above are correct.

Solving the Problem

What can I do as just one of nearly 7 billion humans? The biggest problem is my inability to crack the walls that people have built around themselves. They have all drank the red Kool-Aid of consumerism, God, guns, and country, and they have mixed all of this together to create a bizarre set of values that have nothing to do with our need to survive.

Environmentalists are branded "extreme" and "radical," which certainly is easier than dealing with any problem. If someone starts talking about our environmental ills, they are simply considered "liberals," and the masses of sheep move on with their meaningless, empty, and self-destructive lives.

I can't awaken them, nor can I get them to see that their minds are filled with lies, propagated by those who benefit from the status quo. The myth that the United States is always "good," that there is some deity in the sky that micro-manages our lives, and that buying things helps the economy are all LIES that are drilled into our heads. Yet, people rarely challenge them.

How Do I React?

Am I depressed? Hell yeah, I'm depressed. There are times when I don't want to do anything except sleep. The stupidity of the last election was depressing, Fox News is depressing, the Tea Party is depressing. Americans appear to have sunk to a new low in their insanity, which I guess is a coping mechanism. And as the world gets more screwed up, by their own ignorant indifference, then the masses of sheep will become even more disconnected, disoriented, and generally crazy. Will there be violence? Yes, eventually.

Positive Notes

There are a couple of signs that are positive:

• More women in politics. I was thrilled to see so many female candidates in the mid-term elections. This gives me hope. Total equality for women is, in my opinion, crucial for sustainability. As more women enter the political arena, I can't help but believe they will insert more reason and concern for the environment into our government. They are the mothers who are bringing children into this screwed up world, so I really think that they will insert a sensitivity that few males would ever have.
  
  
• Church membership in decline. Now, here is the really exciting news -- when you Google "declining membership" you will see a long list of articles on how most Christian denominations are losing members by the droves. This is a good thing because Christianity is completely disconnected from the environment and our need to survive (they only teach you illusions). Now, Christianity teaches many good things, like the Golden Rule, but as soon as the sheep leave the church and pack out the restaurants, all the good things are promptly ignored. So, really, I see little use for organized religion. Worse yet, religion is the antithesis for critical thinking. Church is a place where asking tough questions makes you "sacrilegious" or a "heretic." The idea is that if you ask a tough question about the Holy Bible you are "questioning God," which, apparently, pisses him off. Or, more likely, people can't stand the idea that the mythology they've invested their lives into is an illusion. There is a LOT of emotionalism involved. People get defensive not because you are questioning God, but because you are questioning THEIR BELIEF.

In Conclusion

Okay, while I stay depressed a lot because of our species suicide, these past few years have also been the best years of my life, mainly due to some special people I've become friends with. These individuals have opened my eyes and given me more pieces to the puzzle of life. For the past few years, I've felt that the puzzle is almost complete, and I'm wondering if I've hit the last wall, or if there are more doors to open. I feel like I have a grasp on our current challenge, so I guess the next step is to take action. But I haven't figured out how yet. The best I can do is to put little cracks into people's sacred belief systems. When they see my thinking does not conform to their rigid worldview, they do try to ostracize me. I had one high school classmate who recently "defriended" me on Facebook, and my mother uses the tactic of making me feel like a "bad person" for not conforming to the institutional status quo. But, all in all, the best form of punishment for my nonconformism is to simply isolate me, and that's one area where "the world" has done a pretty good job. For the most part, I am all alone. Even my own wife and children have drank the societal Kool-Aid and have savored every last drop.

And what's really odd is that people who are indoctrinated call ME indoctrinated. So, maybe I am indoctrinated by the liberal elite, and I just don't know it. But the difference between me and the sheep is that I question EVERYTHING and don't accept any kind of pre-packaged dogma. So, maybe I'm just indoctrinated at a different level. Maybe, but I doubt it.

Trapped In A Box

I try to explain to people all the time how we are "trapped in a box." It's hard for me to verbalize it. Even some of my seasoned environmentalist colleagues don't understand. The best way to understand is to read the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, which is the best book I ever read.

I've also become a big fan of movie producer Peter Joseph, who has become my new hero. I don't agree with everything he says, but the dude definitely "gets it."

Here is a fascinating quote that he gave during an interview:

Anyone who chooses to challenge establishment orthodoxy; traditional world views, not to mention the system we live in, sets themselves up for venomous attacks. I am well aware of this.

If you look back at the history of anyone who has chosen to challenge the establishment it’s a very dark history. There are a great number of people out there that know something is wrong. But, they do not understand the source of that wrongness because they are “in the box” of indoctrination.

Socrates never speculated on the slavery that was existing during his time; that was normality to him. This goes with every type of political philosopher that’s ever existed, whether it is Karl Marx, whether it’s Plato; they’re all locked into an established paradigm and their thought processes can only go so far; and this probably includes myself.

People are locked into a box. They see the box around them; they see the leaks, the holes, and the cracks. And they go up to the cracks and try to fix them; they try to patch the holes. But they don’t stop to think that maybe there’s something wrong with the box itself. Maybe the integrity of the box that they exist, live in, is inherently invalid, it’s inherently void.

The economic system that we live in is a parasitic paradigm that is only going to lead to self destruction, but people don’t see that. So, if you attack the economic system for what it actually is, everyone’s feathers go up.

Everyone says, “Well, wait a minute. This is the world we all live. We live in a profit based, labor for income world, cyclical consumption; this is what we’re used to. We understand we have division of classes.” They throw in human nature, they throw in everything that will try and make it seem like it’s a part of the natural order of reality, when in fact it is not.

Wow! I have regularly advertised his Zeitgeist movies, and I strongly recommend that them to everyone. Below is an excerpt from Zeitgeist: Addendum, which discusses religious thinking. It has really been on my mind today.

Feeding Lemmings

This morning I had an epiphany! The economy didn't crash because of poor regulation. Rather, it crashed because bankers were running out of people to loan their cheap money to. After a while, they got less picky and started giving mortgage loans to virtually anyone.

But it wasn't their fault! This was necessary to keep the economic engine alive. The banks had to find a place to funnel all that Federal Reserve money, and property was the ideal investment. And with all those dollars chasing property, real estate went up, meaning more equity for home owners, less riskier investments for banks, and more tax revenue for state and local governments. What a grant deal it was for EVERYONE.

Until it all collapsed ...

And it simply collapsed because the banks ran out of credit-worthy people to give cheap loans to.

The Sham

The Federal Reserve is a criminal organization that generates quick wealth and then passes on the debt to our children. This wealth is created by buying securities from big banks and giving them cash to loan.

In a carefully planned racket, the banks then loan out the money to consumers and companies, which results in short-term business expansion and job creation.

But who is paying for this cheap money? YOU ARE!!! That's because every time the Fed dumps money into the economy, there is inflation. If you are a responsible person who saves money, the value of your savings shrinks due to intentional inflation. In effect, inflation is a tax that is imposed upon you. And in effect, you are subsidizing cheap mortgages and business loans. Do you think a bank could really afford to give a 3% loan without subsidization? HA! Your children and grandchildren will be paying the loan's true worth in the form of NATIONAL DEBT!

Debt is Evil

The Federal Reserve is a Ponzi scheme that can only work by accumulating more DEBT. As our government takes on more debt, that means more money is spent paying interest (usually to overseas investors) instead of going back into the economy.

If we had a balanced budget, I wouldn't mind paying taxes because every one dollar I gave to Uncle Sam would go back out into the economy. But right now, many of my dollars are going to CHINA!

Now, Uncle Sam is in a bad predicament, because he is one of the biggest customers in the economy, and if he is spending all his money on foreign interest payments instead of providing goods and services to the people, two bad things happen: 1) Social upheaval, and 2) Uncle Sam must borrow EVEN MORE money to keep the economy alive. As you can see, this creates a vicious downward circle.

Tea Party Wrath

Tea Party folks are pissed off, and I don't blame them. They know something bad is going on, but haven't figured out exactly what. Certainly, our last two presidents and Congress should be held accountable for the serious financial crimes they committed -- the bailouts and stimulus plan. But don't get so mad at them because they were under intense pressure from the banks to take action. This is really bad because instead of punishing Wall Street we rewarded them. The public was told that the bailouts were necessary to avoid a depression, which is just another of the many lies we are fed daily. The truth is that the bailouts ensured that the rich and powerful stayed, well, rich and powerful. And that is the entire point of the Federal Reserve System.

Environmentalists, Wake Up!

Environmentalists are a noble lot, but they are always chasing symptoms instead of addressing root causes. It is the Federal Reserve that has gunned the throttle and caused our economy to grow at an artificially rapid pace. All the cheap money for loan allowed developers to have a feeding frenzy on green space. The rapid growth polluted our air and water, and masses of human laborers were needed to work in the economy, and thus, mass immigration. As an environmentalist, the best thing you can do is work to dismantle the Federal Reserve.

Life Without the Fed

Without the Federal Reserve, life would be slower, but more sustainable. Loans would be hard to get and expensive (since they won't be subsidized by your children). This will force people and companies to live within their means. This means that individuals and businesses will actually have to save up for something before they buy it. Holy crap, this is the way people USED TO LIVE!

Alongside all this cheap loan money, we've created a culture of consumption. Everyone has to have everything, and they want it now. Cheap and plentiful credit is the cocaine that keeps everyone high and happy. But trust me, you really don't need all your crap. You really don't need to put Christmas shopping on your credit card. You really don't.

Inner Destruction

The Fed has done more than just destroy our economy -- they've also destroyed our souls. So many people now grab on to materialism to provide their "high" and short-term happiness. Few people save, and, hell, it doesn't make sense to save anyway since the Fed-induced inflation will eat it away. So, people live for the present, and on credit.

Summary

The two best things we can do for the economy is to balance the national budget and dump the Fed. This is only fair, since passing our debt to a future generation is both immoral and unethical. I'm surprised since parents will sacrifice greatly for their children to give them a comfortable life and education, but the crushing national debt is not on their radar screen.

Wake up, America!