Inflation?

Inflation is when too much money chases too few goods.

The shelves are fully stocked, the only reported ‘shortages’ out there are in energy ‘futures’ market so what’s up with Google?

Like Yahoo, a stock that started out trading for a few dollars that soared to over $440 a share before the bubble burst, Google is now trading at over $300 a share.

Could this be too much money chasing too few investment opportunities?

Where do you suppose this money is coming from?

Why yessiree Bob, it’s the billions of tax dollars that we’ve poured into Iraq. It’s sitting there in the world’s largest money shredder, waiting to be vaporized.

The ‘bubble’ will burst, the stock will drop like a rock and ‘poof’ the money will ‘disappear’ (into the pockets of the insiders, just like the eight trillion that ‘evaporated’ when the Internet bubble burst.)

But wait, does that money really vanish?

What really happens when a stock ‘loses’ value?

Those who invested in the company definitely take a hit on the head but where do those very real dollars actually go?

Somebody has to get them, the money is still out there somewhere. Heck, somewhere out there the first dollar ever minted is still floating around.

So the money is not actually ‘lost’ it just changes hands.

Who gets it and why is something I think we’d all like to know.

For there is a whole segment of the market that bets against stocks, a weird and more than a little shady proposition.

‘Shorting’ stocks can be done at any time, even as the stock starts to fall and could conceivably make a stock fall farther than it ordinarily would.

I don’t trade stocks so I don’t know the answers to these questions. This may make me ignorant but never confuse ignorant with stupid.

Google is a search engine that sells ad space to companies on their web pages.

From what I gather in the papers, the profits to earnings ratio don’t justify the high price of the stock so what the heck is going on?

Is this an example of investor stupidity or are we witnessing another boiler room operation designed to fleece the greedy?

Seems they fall for it every time, don’t they?

Rationally speaking, there should be no such thing as a ‘stock market’ just as the ‘rules’ regarding money and it’s ‘legal’ uses are total BS.

Like time, money is a human invention. Both are physical manifestations of something that in reality doesn’t exist.

To put a finer point on it, you’re busting your stones for nothing. Money is a figment of your imagination, the pieces of paper and the six coins are exactly that, pieces of paper and stamped bits of metal.

While these items ‘represent’ wealth in our minds, the fact they are not in themselves valuable leave the real producers of wealth vulnerable to being robbed by those who issue this worthless representative scrip (i.e. central banks.)

And so you have it good citizen, a situation where huge sums of cash are resting in the hands of too few people.

While our society crumbles.

Some people, some, are making huge profits from the war while others are making tremendous commissions by loaning out tons of foreign subsidized mortgage money to anyone with a pulse.

When these damnable/irresponsible lending practices come home to roost, these people will have made a ton of money by burying their fellow humans in debt that can’t possibly repay.

One can only imagine that their response will be, ‘We can’t help it if you’re stupid!’

While it’s hard to gauge whether or not the concept of labor driven society is gaining any traction out there, the fact that all debt and debt instruments would instantly become illegal will certainly go along way towards making the idea much more attractive.

While almost everyone has investments the true investor segment of our society is that top one thousandth of a percent of our population.

They are a parasite that we as a society can no longer afford.

Everyone pulls their weight and in doing so reaps their share of the bounty, equally.

No one who wishes to participate will be left out. Don’t have a job now then a job will be created for you. Don’t want to work; you will be invited to be elsewhere. There are no free rides save for those totally incapable of participating through no fault of their own.

In this way we will achieve a balanced economy. Everyone works and contributes thereby providing them with the means to procure the items they want or desire.

Like all change it will be a tough slog in the beginning. However, a vast majority of us will instantly be a hell of a lot better off than we are now.

Only the wealthy or those precious few people (like CEO’s) that right now make more money than they can spend will feel a ‘crimp’ in their lifestyle.

I think it’s a small price to pay for elevating millions out of abject poverty, providing them with a future as well as giving them a stake in the success of our society.

We can save ourselves and our children from the coming crisis but the will to act must be there.

I leave this matter in your capable hands, trusting that you will finally act in your own best interest now that a vehicle to do so has been provided.

Thank you for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Better 'n you

Would you agree or disagree with the following statement:

‘Many of the problem with society these days are due to the fact that people no longer respect their betters.’

Before you go off on a tear, try to understand that our entire society is based on the disturbing premise that some people are ‘better’ than others.

If you (amazingly) agree with this statement, how would you quantify a ‘better’?

Are their ‘superior’ qualities due to their education, their breeding or a combination of both?

If you have two brain cells that touch one another, the above statement should set your teeth on edge! Who the heck is anybody to think that they are ‘better’ than anyone else?

Yet these value judgements are made every day, all day.

The ‘pecking order’ within our society is determined by these same dubious distinctions.

Since our society is the sum of its parts, any claim that one part is somehow ‘more valuable’ than any other just don’t hold water, yet our ‘betters’ seem to think otherwise.

It’s why they get paid the big bucks!

Somehow the idea of ‘better than you’ being equal to ‘richer than you’ doesn’t seem to fly.

While it’s true that we are not all intellectual equals, many of those that are looked down upon as ‘grunts’ are the only ones that possess the knowledge vital to keeping the lights on and the production lines humming.

It’s a sad statement to make about any society when the only thing that separates the knowledgeable worker from their clueless boss is a piece of sheepskin.

So, who is better ‘n you?

While it can truly be said that we are the author’s of our own destiny, do not delude yourself for a moment that this is a journey that you undertake by yourself.

In a society where a degree could more accurately be described as a pedigree, a stumbling block set up to keep the ‘lowlifes’ in their place, we must recognize such tactics for the lies they are.

These artificial barriers to universal prosperity must not be allowed to stand. If humanity is ever to rise above the level of preying upon one another for personal financial gain, we as a society must permanently level the playing field.

The first step toward leveling the playing field is placing the law beyond the reach of any individual or group that is smaller than our whole society.

The second step is to outlaw anyone from exploiting anyone else for personal gain.

The only way for a society to succeed is for all of its members to pull together as a team, reaping the rewards and sharing the pain equally.

Let no individual set themselves above any other. Even those who lead will have no power over the law. Anyone that abuses a position of authority for any reason will have the benefits of society withdrawn from them.

It takes every one of us to make the world what it is. For that reason alone we are all entitled to our fair share of what society has to offer.

No human is a rock, nor an island. We shall sink or swim as one or we shall become extinct, thanks to the ‘leadership’ provided by our ‘betters’.

Deny the lie! Refuse to be marginalized!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Shazam!

While it’s nice to think that the Downing Street Minutes are finally gaining some traction, I wonder how many of you noticed that the price of crude broke the sixty-dollar a barrel barrier?

I have a sneaking suspicion that the sinking poll numbers mean little to ‘history’s actors’. As this administration has telegraphed from the outset, they have many irons in the fire and an agenda within an agenda.

Never have so many issues confronted the average citizen, who is coincidentally powerless to do anything about it, while they helplessly watch our society circle the drain.

Of the many irons the current administration has in the fire, the most powerful one is the energy card.

Whoever controls the price of energy has us all by the short hairs.

When the price of energy rises the price of everything goes up (everything moves and the cost to move it is added to the price.) Wages will continue to sink ever lower due to the ‘domino effect’ of small business closures brought on by the rising cost of energy.

A strategy that should work nicely to solve the military’s little recruitment problem even if the ‘crisis’ is make believe, just like it was in the seventies and early eighties.

You can bet your bottom dollar that once the blackguards get what they want, we’ll be swimming in oil again.

This dovetails with yesterday’s piece where I pointed out that the political party in charge at the time of a debacle matters little. At the end of the day the big boys always get what they want. The ‘politics’ only serve to confuse the issue.

Even if what they want is to send your children off to die in their illegal war. Things will get so tough around here that the kids will have no choice but to enlist.

Sadder still is the fact that no one will raise a finger to stop them. The media will pound the drum and the public, knowing full well that they are being lied to, will do nothing.

Fortunately, the plan to convert to a labor driven society is a complete plan. It includes a way to bring the greedy to their knees without bloodshed.

As stated above, their vulnerability lies in transportation. Who ever controls transportation controls the country.

High fuel prices will not stop the engines of capitalist commerce but a lack of drivers, dockworkers, longshoremen and air traffic controllers will.

Money is nothing, labor is all.

The Natives of Bolivia ousted their president in recent months merely by taking control of the nation’s highways.

Singular, isolated incidents will be easily over come but a major turnout of the people will be impossible to resist.

We have the power to shut down every road, every seaport and every airport in this country and to keep them closed until the government capitulates.

If the wicked run, let them. The first act of the new leader will be to declare their money worthless and to nationalize all of the country’s assets.

Then this will truly be our land, a place where we can build a better tomorrow for our children.

Or you can let them get away with murdering your children, the choice is yours.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Ideology

Since it’s the only game in town we are forced to pick sides when it comes to political discourse in our society.

While the label ‘independent’ is becoming more common, there are still only two teams in the race for the independent to chose from.

Labels aside, I ask you if you have ever wondered about these two diametrically opposed points of view and if it has ever crossed your mind just how convenient it is that things are set up this way?

The interests of commerce sit on one side of the fence while the interests of the workers reside on the other.

Yet take a moment to see who represents whom.

All representatives come from or owe allegiance to just one side of the debate, the side the money comes from.

So it is good citizen that the ‘good guys’ never win.

It’s more than a little ironic that the Bushes and the Kerry/Heinz’s have net worth in the neighborhood of a half a billion dollars.

How many billionaires do you know?

The whole political debate is a sham, a farce, window dressing that provides an ‘illusion’ of participation.

Your vote, a vote that is rarely cast directly upon and issue, is worthless. Case in point. Massachusetts voters defeated seat belt legislation 2 to 1 not just once but four times at the polls…and we ended up with a seat belt law anyway.

To the best of my knowledge, not once has the question of a smoking ban ever appeared on a ballot anywhere but the bans are now everywhere.

Tyranny is defined as having the will of others forced upon you whereas Liberty is defined as freedom from tyranny.

The point, good citizen, is that what passes for political debate is in reality a one sided monologue. You will do as they say. You will do exactly as they say and like it or else.

Thus do the few terrorize the many through their control of the laws.

There are no Democrats just as there are no Republicans. There is only the wealthy and the sham of representation that is passed off as ‘participative’ government.

Your children deserve better. They deserve to have their say in how the world is run and how its resources are spent.

Make no mistake about it good citizen, royalty is still with us and they still believe we are too stupid to think for ourselves.

If you fail to see through the thin ruse they have set up for us, they may be right.

The parties, all political parties, are intended to divide the people, to create conflict where none exists. The issues these parties wrestle over are not the issues that plague our everyday life.

The parties serve to deflect and misdirect the outrage of the people when unpopular decisions ‘somehow’ end up becoming the law of the land.

At the end of the day there are only two parties in the political debate, the wealthy and those who made them that way, their victims.

So what’s it going to be? Will you live on your knees or die on your feet?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Inferno

Some commentators just don’t get it. How these guys get paid good salaries for being so stupid is beyond me but I suspect it has something to do with the fact they are more willing to take liberties with reality than my humble self.

Today’s outrageous proposal; let ‘em work longer! Like this isn’t throwing gasoline on a blaze that is already out of control!

In context, this was put forth as a solution to the current administration’s perceived crisis looming over the future of Social Security.

Back in 1865 when Germany enacted its Social Security program, the retirement age was set to 65. When we enacted our plan (72 years later) we adopted their age 65 retirement guideline.

Today age 65 doesn’t seem ‘old’ but back when the social safety net was first unfurled, the generational mortality rate stood at 98%.

Statistically speaking, only two in one hundred people lived to see their 65th birthday. This has crept up to 72 years of age in our current society and you cannot currently collect your full benefit until age 70.

Remember, 72 is the AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTENCY. Most people die before age 72. Every year past the age of 72 and the number of survivors begins to drop geometrically.

The odds of you living to be 100 are more than a million to one against.

So this ‘crisis’ in Social Security is over paying people (that have paid into the system their whole lives) an average of $1,700 a month for TWO stinkin’ years!

Thus Bozo’s solution is to let ‘em keep working! Let ‘em keep paying in and never collect, that would solve the problem nicely, wouldn’t it?

Draconian as this is, it fails to take into account the real reason why it is such a stupid idea; there simply aren’t enough jobs.

America’s Job Bank boasts just over a million job openings nationwide…but there are eight and a half million folks (officially) on the unemployment lines.

The official figures choose to ignore at least that many again by speculating that these people are not looking for work. They are excluded from the real unemployment picture under a classification created during the Regan years called ‘not in the workforce’.

To make matters worse, a vast majority of these ‘million’ job listings are outdated. Those that aren’t either pay spit or make you wonder if anyone is qualified to fill the position by the way that the requirement is written.

If kids can’t find work (even at minimum wage) how is making people work into their eighties going to ‘solve’ our economic crisis?

Under the fluff this editorial was in reality a ‘shot’ at our age discrimination laws. The writer posits that if we were to make these laws more ‘employer friendly’ the aged might stand a better chance of finding work.

What this hopeful sentiment ignores is one of the primary practices used by corporate America to keep wages low and profits high, a practice commonly known as ‘churning’.

As a worker builds up service, gaining more vacation and sick days, companies routinely downsize them and hire new employees at half the wages and none of the benefits.

Companies defend this practice as a means of staying ‘competitive’ but I ask you once again, what good is a competitive marketplace when it impoverishes our society?

The only people who ‘win’ are the owners.

Remove the ‘profit motive’ (a.k.a. owners lining their pockets with whatever the market will bear) and the need for competition (to supposedly keep prices down) stops in its tracks.

It will also eliminate wasteful redundancy that is harmful to the environment.

You, good citizen, must wake up to the fact that your ‘shelf life’ is short and getting shorter. If you haven’t ‘made it’ by the time you are thirty-five, it’s not likely that you will.

The ‘solution’ to this problem lies in work sharing and reducing the number of hours in the standard shift to facilitate this. Unfortunately, this is not possible under pay as you go capitalism.

Work sharing would cut into what has traditionally been known as profits instead of increasing them.

Ironically, eliminating owners does away with the need for ‘profits’ altogether. Instead of some pie in the sky ‘dollar value’ our markets would be driven by the benefit reaped by society as a whole.

This is key. Money is make believe! It’s a human invention created to simplify barter but it has become a monster.

Be very afraid because at the end of the day MONEY IS WORTHLESS! Only labor counts for anything.

While labor driven society will still utilize ‘money’ its nature and the role that it plays in our society will be substantially altered.

Money will serve the purpose of regulating access to perishable/high demand goods and services. While most things in life will be free, there aren’t enough of some things to go around.

There will no cash or any cash substitutes. All funds will be electronic and there will be no way to transfer funds between individuals.

What that means is nobody gets your money, not even you.

When you ‘spend’ your money on a desired object it is merely erased from your account.

When you die, your money dies with you, your account is erased. Everybody makes their own way in labor driven society.

The basics in life will be free. No rent, no mortgages, free healthcare, free utilities, free education for life and no taxes.

You’ll use your salary to build the kind of life you want to live as you fulfill your social obligation to society by surrendering your labor to help build a better world for us all.

As for retirement, we are already at a point where we have more workers than things to do. While it remains to be seen how things will fall into place, retiring at age fifty isn’t as far-fetched as it would be under our current circumstances.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Star of the Day

Star of the Day

Today’s topic, as promised, is who will lead. If we check back to where we left things off we find we have a society with absolutely no legislature that also specifically bans the practice of politics.

Who the heck will lead this rag tag bunch and more importantly, how?

As you may know, good citizen, words are powerful things and some words invoke powerful responses.

So it is with this word for management has abused us all.

It is not the practice of management but the practitioners that have brought down the value of this important word.

For the moment I will ask you to bear with me as I outline the path that leads to the top of the ladder.

For in this case it a ladder anyone and everyone can climb. The moment a new member embarks upon their career within Labor Driven Society they will also have set their feet on the path that could lead them to the very top of our civilization.

Make no mistake about it, every member of our society has a ‘real’ equal chance of becoming the leader.

Entry level personnel must first learn the skill of their choice. Upon mastering that skill, they are eligible to enter management.

The leap to management is a personal choice. There is no requirement to enter management. If you do take the plunge (and decide later it’s not for you) you can quit and return to the shop floor of your own volition during the next test cycle.

The management pyramid has thirteen levels. One must climb these levels one at a time, skipping none until they reach the top.

Sound too easy? Here’s the catch. In order to cross over into management one must wait (and prepare) for the competition.

All people that are eligible to hold any management position will compete with one another for the position on an annual basis.

If you’re already in management, not only do you compete to hold the job you have but you MUST also compete for the next job up the ladder.

There’s no such thing as a ‘stationary’ management position. Fresh blood will be the rule rather than the exception.

Losing in the competition one year does not bar you from trying again the following year. You are always a candidate for the next level regardless if you never make it.

Those who get ‘bumped out’ of the competitions (lose both their bid to defend as well as their bid to move up) will return to the shop floor BUT, would continue to be paid at the highest position they held.

As an incentive to do better, the higher you climb the more you’d make along with other fringe benefits…benefits you can keep should you fall in the competitions.

At the low end the tests will focus more on the job itself, decision-making abilities and people skills.

As you progress, your character will also become a factor for advancement.

At the top, your vision as well as you ability to devise workable solutions to complex problems will weigh heavily in the tests.

In this manner we, the people, will know that the best person for the job has won the right to lead us.

One can stay at the top for as long as they continue to win the competitions, although there is no obligation to do so.

It is important to spell out that management under Labor Driven society will be different than it is under our current capitalist model.

Since the term profit will be redefined as the benefit reaped by society, so will the term management be redefined as those who facilitate getting the job done rather than the old version of those who oversee the task at hand.

Our new style manager will be very much the hands on type. Since they will have risen directly from the shop floor, they will know first hand what it takes the get the job done.

While it will be possible to jump from industry to industry, climbing the ladder is an internal task. One must know their field inside and out in order to succeed.

Management positions will always be filled from the bottom up regardless of the ‘qualifications’ people knocked out in other fields may bring to the table. A management position is a reward for achievement, not a privilege for the educated (but otherwise clueless.)

One of the core principals of labor driven society is that everyone makes their own way. To facilitate fairness, the ‘playing field’ will be as level as possible. Nepotism, as well as creating ‘employment opportunities’ that circumvent the career ladder will be a criminal offense.

There you have it, good citizen. A society managed by those who will prove (through thirteen levels) that they have what it takes to be at the helm of our society.

Their job as leaders (there will be three, not one) will be to solve the problems facing society and to put the possible solutions before us to vote upon.

These leaders have no power to enact legislation or to modify existing laws on their own.

That power rests squarely where it should, in the hands of the people.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

'La La Land'

I heard something again tonight that never ceases to amaze me yet I’ve heard it so often that it made me wonder just how prevalent this sentiment really is.

How many of you are tempted by the idea of heading for the hills. Finding yourself an isolated spot where you would just live off the ‘fat’ of the land?

I’ve heard this from young and old alike. I can forgive the young, they are invincible, but I have no pity for anyone over thirty that still thinks they can just bug out and disappear.

The ‘practicalities’ involved are staggering. If heading for the hills were even a remotely viable option, one would expect to find same said hills already overrun by homeless people.

What these people are really saying is they want to be left alone to live as they please…even if it means having to forsake human companionship in order to achieve that peaceful ‘ideal’.

Not having anyone to tell you what to do and when to do it does not go away when it comes to surviving on your own. It won’t be people but Mother Nature that will keep busy from sun to sun tending to the needs of survival.

But that’s not the half of it. People need people, especially when ‘shit’ happens. Get hurt or too sick to forage for food and there’s no one else around to pick up the slack, you’re either going to make you way back to civilization as quick as you can or…you’re gonna die.

In context, when most people wish out loud like this, they are really saying they are sick and tired of putting up with their bosses’ useless horse shit everyday.

This is a symptom of a fairly recent disease where instead of offering workers an ‘incentive’ to produce more, it is offered to the boss instead. He gets a ‘bonus’ if you work harder for no extra pay, good for him, sucks for you.

Even though human interactions have become scarcer and increasingly confrontational, heading for the hills is hardly the answer.

What we are experiencing is a symptom of a larger problem, one that’s been with us for time out of mind and it’s known as the self-important SOB syndrome.

While most acknowledge that we are all in this leaky boat together, the self-important SOB has made it clear they aren’t beyond pushing others around if it will win for them an added measure of power.

The self-important love to talk about teamwork and everyone being on board with the plan but they fool no one. The only team member they care about is good old number one; the rest of you are replaceable.

Time to go back ‘on message’.

Whipping workers or hanging them out to dry when goals aren’t met serves no one. The push, push, push of capitalist overlords isn’t about teambuilding it’s about ‘making the most of their assets’. The harder you work, the more money they make.

Very few give a damn about the almighty, worthless buck. It’s the few misguided souls that do who make it miserable for the rest of us.

If you want to stop the whippings, you need to take away the whip! In a largely unemployed world you have to wonder when the term ‘right sizing’ refers to having just enough employees to get the job done (with many of the survivors doing what used to take three people to do.)

The main objective of labor driven society is the elimination of want. It is not enough to eliminate poverty. The goal is to elevate every member of society to a comfortable, sustainable lifestyle.

While some would argue that guarantying everyone a job would eliminate the incentive to work, fostering an environment where workers would do as little as possible since their job is protected by law, nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead of overlords there would be standards which would spell out what a reasonable amount of output is for time spent on the job. Like life, labor driven society offers no free rides.

It stands to reason that most people would work harder knowing their efforts were building a better life for everyone rather than just lining the pockets of the boss.

Those who fail to appreciate the benefits of civil society would have those benefits withdrawn from them. Never arbitrarily and rarely for a single instance of abuse but if it’s the punishment that fits the crime, you’ve dug your own hole as there will be no prisons in Labor driven society, only exile.

Folks who fail to appreciate that we’re all in this together will be invited to go it alone.

So it’s not all hearts and flowers, peace, goodwill and endless understanding. Dis the rules and you will win a one way pass to live however you please, naked and alone in the wilderness.

Well, not all alone. There will undoubtedly be others that will manage to survive somehow, I just think that you wouldn’t want to encounter any of them after sundown…

Crimes will be few but punishment will be harsh. Freedom has a price. If we are to prevent our children from being enslaved by the unscrupulous, we must not suffer them to live amongst us.

This is life under the Golden Rule, a society that puts the rights of others first rather than the ‘if you don’t like it sue me!’ that we suffer now.

Who will decide? Your fate would rest in the hands of a jury of your peers. With no lawyers to speak for you and no judges to buy off, you are guaranteed a fair trial.

To make it fairer, three of the jurors would know you (and know what kind of person you are) the other four would be strangers. Notice the odd number of jurors? No possibility of a tie and a simple majority decides the outcome.

The admonition here is to make as many friends as you can. You never know when your life may depend on it.

Yes, falsely accusing someone of a crime is a crime in itself and one of the few that will get you booted for a first offense.

While no system of justice is foolproof, you draw a line in the sand and do the best you can with what you have to work with.

It’s a pet peeve of mine to see social alternatives that are either overly reliant on goodwill or that are so draconian in their usurpation of liberty (by building huge authoritarian governments filled with appointed officials) that your free in name only (like now.)

So much for crime and punishment, I hope I’ve shown there is no ‘la la land’ here. Next installment, who runs the show!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Case in Point

I’m borrowing the methodology of the diarists at Dkos for today’s offering as it illustrates the point I made in yesterday’s post.

In today’s NY Times you will find this editorial:

Editorial

Iran's Sham Democracy

Published: June 17, 2005

Today's presidential election in Iran is an affront to true democracy, just as the past record of the front-running contender, Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, is an affront to true moderation. As President Bush rightly noted, the voting was effectively rigged in advance by the council of unelected clerics that decided who would and who wouldn't be allowed to run. And this is for a presidency, remember, that has no power to do anything the unelected clerical establishment does not want done, as amply demonstrated by the frustrating eight-year tenure of the departing incumbent, Mohammad Khatami.

While anyone here can ‘run’, a candidate that wants to win their party’s nomination must first ‘sell’ themselves to the party’s main contributors in that invisible selection process known as fundraising. The person with the largest ‘war chest’ usually wins this rather flagrant popularity contest by promising to ‘repay’ the contributions in the form of political favors.

As for Mr. Rafsanjani, his moderate reputation is plainly undeserved. His two previous presidential terms, from 1989 to 1997, were scarred by state-sponsored terrorism at home and abroad.

Like Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the US warship The Maine, 9/11 could very well turn out to be another inside job. Abu Gharib and Gitmo being likened to parts of the Soviet era gulags speak for themselves. It’s this kind of two-faced journalism that has US citizens up in arms over the media’s coverage of the news.

Yet Mr. Rafsanjani now claims to stand as the sensible centrist alternative, between a right-wing former police chief and a reformist pediatrician whom the clerical council allowed to run at the behest of Iran's real ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

While the evangelicals don’t have a ‘Pope’ (or an Ayatollah for that matter) the current degree to which religion has been mixing with politics lately makes that fact moot. Those who claim to speak for God have no place in the decision making process of a ‘free’ nation…yet here they are!

These manipulations have tempted millions to stay home, so as not to legitimize this sham exercise. They should steel themselves and vote anyway. Boycotting the election would benefit only the most antidemocratic forces on the clerical right.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Either way their ‘vote’ is meaningless as ‘the people’ will not be allowed to use it to decide issues, the exact same set of circumstances that we face here.

For all of its multiple flaws, this election is the best tool available to the Iranian people to indicate which way they want their troubled country to head over the next four years. Its outcome will affect how Iran is run and how it deals with the world.

Herein lies the ‘thrust’ or warning of this article:

Particularly important is the nuclear weapons issue, now even more critical in light of the latest disclosure that Tehran has been experimenting not just with enriched uranium but also with an alternative nuclear bomb fuel, plutonium.

Despite repeated reports that Iran doesn’t have any bomb making capabilities, the media continues once again to doggedly build a case for something that doesn’t exist.
More plainly put, a heap of Plutonium or enriched Uranium does not a bomb make.

Some European leaders have been quietly rooting for Mr. Rafsanjani, who is close to the top ayatollahs, in the hope that he would be most able to reach an acceptable nuclear deal and then sell it to the clerical establishment. There is little in his record to justify such hopes. The world would be better off if Western leaders used their little influence to press for more authentic democracy in Iran.

Looks pretty ‘authentic’ from here. The power elite has a firm grasp on the process. The only thing the public is allowed to do is ‘select’ who will make decisions in their name without their ever being consulted.

This is the same ‘process’ found in every so-called democracy. At the end of the day, the entire election process changes nothing, it’s all window dressing because ‘the people’ never get to determine even one issue for themselves.

Make no mistake about it good citizen. We are in the exact same position as the people of Iran.

Gone are the days when you could just shrug it all off, the days when politics were something that took place on a different planet, only occasionally intruding upon your world.

Big brother now watches us far too closely. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

When they kick down your front door, how you gonna go? Face down on the pavement or waiting on death row?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The crux of the problem

Problem, what problem? Like the twelve steps, the first step is admitting that a problem exists. Once we agree that we indeed have a problem, the next step is determining what is the root cause of the problem.

If we fail to strike at the ‘heart’ of a problem, we will fail to solve the problem.

This is simple and easy to understand. If you don’t attack the root cause, all you’re doing is putting out fires.

In our far less than hypothetical situation, we are currently ‘ruled’ by a handful (700 out of 293 million is a tiny handful) of handpicked criminals.

If you don’t get either party’s endorsement, you’re not a candidate for anything. If you actually want to make things better for the citizens you’ll be elected to represent (at the expense of those who are making things worse) it stands to reason you will not pass muster with either party.

Thus is this system broken right out of the box. If you don’t get the nod, your only choice is to run as an independent. Even if you win, you will be one against 573 or 100 respectively.

Not to put too fine a point on this but a bunch of people that you don’t know and with whom you personally have nothing in common with (besides being members of the same species) get to tell you what to do.

Taking this one step backwards, any system that denies the individual the ability to decide (vote) directly on the issues is the same thing as a dictatorship.

If said dictator gets you mad enough you have the ‘option’ of not re-electing them. Unfortunately, this does nothing to reverse the four years of economic carnage they were able to wreak that you are powerless to stop.

Without a direct say on the issues, you are powerless.

Let’s take it back another step. The whole ‘concept’ of representative government is seriously flawed. People establish governments to uphold the law.

When the people elected to public office rely upon the deep pockets of those who the laws are most likely to affect, we arrive at serious conflict of interest.

Globalization is a prime example. An entire segment of our society is being ‘sold down the river’ so a few can make obscene profits, and our lawmakers are cheerleading for them.

Putting a nation’s workers out of a job, sending the work off shore then re-importing the end result guts the fabric of the affected society…while enriching the few how hold sway over our ‘elected’ officials jobs.

When the working class ‘disappears’ all you have left is the wealthy (who can live anywhere) and the poor, who have no job and no money.

When this is over, all that will be left is the retail outlets of the wealthy, the rest will be a smoking ruins.

You can’t ‘vote’ for change because you don’t get to ‘vote’ (directly) on the issues. The ‘Constitution’ doesn’t protect you, it was written to protect the overlords, who coincidentally ignore it whenever it stands in the way of a desired goal (otherwise the current idiot would already have been impeached.)

Where does this leave ‘us’, Jane and Joe average citizen?

Same place we’ve always been, up the creek without a paddle.

The crux, the very center of this entire issue, is rooted in ownership.

In the infamous words of John Jay (the idiot responsible for setting up our ‘justice’ system), "Let those who own the land, rule the land!"

Can you give me a rousing chorus of ‘Long live the King’?

Thus do owners rule. As for the rest…tough luck.

Technically nobody owns anything but we humans decided to buck Mother Nature on that one. We created our courts and pieces of paper that serve as proof to the contrary.

And what a fine mess it has created.

In order to solve this problem, we have to roll all the way back to the beginning and start fresh.

While this sounds like a monumental task, it’s actually very easy. The hard part has already been done.

There’s no tearing down and starting over involved. Labor driven society is our species next logical step.

Shouldn’t say no tearing down. Representative government and political parties will cease to exist, replaced by direct democracy.

The banking industry will vanish as will insurance. The stock market, poof, gone along with the professional interpretation of law.

That’s right, no more lawyers or judges although the lay jury system will remain as will the presumption of innocence and the concept of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Why target these ‘institutions’?

In every case they enable a few to hold within their power the life’s blood of the many. None of these institutions are essential or even desirable within a ‘rational’ society.

We would start over using the Golden Rule of ‘do unto others’ and measure all new laws against that primary guideline.

If I can solve the problem in less than a page there must be something to it. The only time you hear an issue being described as ‘complex’ is when those involved are trying to pull a fast one.

While it is easy to envision spending a good portion of your free time voting for or against whatever someone perceives to be an ‘issue’, let me assure you voting will be a rarity. If a proposal can’t pass the litmus test of the golden rule, it doesn’t get put to a vote.

It will start fair and stay fair, guaranteed.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

R U Nuts ?

The shocking answer is probably. If we rephrase this question to ‘how nuts are you?’ you’d be relieved to find that the bats in most people’s belfries are about the size of mosquitoes, more annoying than anything else.

However, many serial killers were know to be pillars of their community before their thirst for taking the lives of total strangers became public knowledge.

If the term 'normal' represents nothing more than what is acceptable within a given society, the term ‘nuts’ (as in insane) becomes somewhat harder to define. Eating the flesh of a member of your own species certainly sounds ‘nuts’ to most of us but it is 'normal' for a cannibal to behave in this manner.

To put a finer point on the issue, a poor person that acts irrationally is ‘nuts’. A wealthy person that behaves irrationally is ‘eccentric’.

If we take it for granted that we all have at least a few screws loose, this makes the task of judging who has a grip and who doesn’t that much more difficult.

While violent mood swings and a volatile temper are indicators that someone may be heading over the edge, it’s safe to say that we are all guilty of having had a ‘meltdown’ at one point or another.

It’s having them several times a day that is not a good sign.

We are taught that when we pray, we are talking with God. I don’t pray very often but more importantly, never once has that conversation been a two-way exchange.

I talk, he/she/it ‘listens’.

There are more than a few many famous figures in history who have been quoted as saying they have ‘spoken in their hearts with God’, who then follow up that claim with how God told them marching into war was the ‘right’ thing to do.

How God manages to endorse both sides of the conflict remains a mystery. Guess it’s that God thing happenin’.

People who hear voices in their heads (that aren’t their own) are without question, ‘nuts’.

Here the yin and yang of good and bad come into play. It seems that when some people think ‘bad’ thoughts, they like to pretend these bad thoughts come from the bad person inside them, it’s that bad person who is always arguing with the good person inside them.

Splitting these warring parties or worse yet, naming them, is the first step down the slippery slope of schizophrenia.

Perhaps scarier still is the notion of once ‘saved’ always saved. Admit a love for Christ just once and after that anything goes! You’re going to heaven regardless. You’re free as a bird, off the hook. Whatever you do in this life is of no consequence. Rape, murder, lie, cheat, steal, it’s all good! Proclaim your love of Jesus and he is GUARANTEED to make room for you in Heaven…

Which might explain why so many criminals tend to be ‘born again’ (and vice versa.)

This isn’t so much an example of nutty behavior but of nutty logic. It’s hard to tell which part is worse, believing it yourself or telling others you do.

So the point is we’re all a little nuts when it comes to certain things and given the incredible amount of happy horse shit that is passed off as the truth, it’s not all that surprising.

I’m sure some of you think my plan for a labor driven society is ‘nuts’. Given our inbred resistance to change that may well be true.

Because in the end it’s all relative.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Creditworthy

We are all taught to live within our means. While this means different things to different people it can be more simply put as not spending more than you have.

Which, as most are aware, is far easier said than done.

It’s commonplace these days to see people using credit cards to buy groceries or people obtaining interest only mortgages to stretch their buying power…what can you say?

Spending more than you have is asking for trouble, especially in a job market where job security is a thing of the past.

Bankruptcy, everybody’s doing it and why not? The system paints you into a corner with easy credit and loads of instant equity must surely know it’s creating a huge black hole of debt from which few will escape.

When anyone, a person or a business, goes bankrupt the creditors take a beating, collecting pennies on the dollar or nothing at all on what they are owed.

To ‘recover’ from these losses, they simply increase their prices. So when anyone goes ‘insolvent’, everyone pays.

A large percentage of consumers are stretched to the limit. Any small bump in the road such as taking ill or losing their job will put them into a tailspin from which few recover.

This is the ‘source’ of our indigenous homeless population. Once their credit rating is destroyed no one will rent to them.

Everyone needs someplace to be. With this as a given, how can we as a society deny anyone a place among us?

The game we call laissez-faire capitalism says the rules are the same for everyone. Fail to play by the rules and pay the price.

Unfortunately, the rules aren’t fair…not that there’s anything about capitalism that is.

The rules are made to protect the lenders. Anyone that needs to borrow in order to establish themselves becomes the lender’s willing victim.

There’s no more ‘new’ land over the horizon. Even the most inhospitable places on the planet are owned by someone if only to force the issue that you must pay to play, whether you want to or not.

I hope I’m making the point that these rules are made by humans. They are not natural rules but artificial ones designed to protect the interests of those who got here first.

Rules that are subject to change.

Usually for worse rather than better.

The capitalist experiment, which might better be called ‘let every man be king’ system is a miserable failure.

I’m not being sexist here. The system was set up and is still run by men.

The democratic republic that props up this enclave of wealthy tyrants is also a miserable failure.

Representative it is not.

It’s a bit perplexing to think that our society will be run off a cliff by the poorly thought out rules instituted by and for the protection of the greedy.

But there it is.

Using the twisted logic of capitalism, if a creditor gets stiffed due to their own mercenary lending practices, aren’t they getting what they asked for?

We must all learn to live not only within our means but with one another. Making laws that give one group near absolute economic control over the rest of us is not to be tolerated.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The nature of work

Employment is and always has, been on a temporary and as need basis. Even those who own places of employment have no guarantee that the product or service they provide will remain viable forever and a day.

So when desire meets capital, resources and management are set in motion to bring forth goods and services.

Which step could be eliminated from this formula as ‘useless?’

The human invention, money, a.k.a. Capital.

Yet in our current society nothing is done without capital.

The point that is often missed about this statement is that a venture, proven to be worthwhile, would be done regardless of the existence of capital.

But this doesn’t happen in a capitalist society.

Which brings us to taxes. Why do taxes exist in the first place? They exist to pay for necessary services that cannot be done ‘profitably’.

Those who received a private education or received public ones but do not themselves have children often complain about being taxed to support public schools.

Like living in a world filled with functional illiterates is something they’d prefer.

But those that possess the ‘pay only for what you use’ mentality ignore the pitfalls of such an arrangement.

Sure, there’s nothing stopping you from drilling your own well for water, maintaining your own power generation equipment and making use of a private (Title 5 compliant) septic system but what of the roads, the traffic signals and the maintenance thereof?

They supposedly support ‘privatizing’ these public ways and the associated tolls that would necessitate.

Think of the added costs this kind of lunacy would inject into an already overburdened economic system.

Ironically, labor driven society is totally free of taxes. It’s someone’s job to keep things rolling and their division pays them to do just that so there’s no need for you to pay them too!

Sound simple? It is.

What’s missing? Owners.

Why? Because it will be illegal for anyone to make their way in this world using someone else’s sweat.

Here perhaps we need to burst one more bubble of conceit. Do you have a job? If you answered yes, do you know how to do that job? Once again, the answer should be yes. Everyone who has a job knows how to do that job…whether or not the boss is breathing fire down their neck; they already know how to do the job.

So who will run things?

Who runs them now? The most clueless person in the company is the guy or gal that sits in the biggest office. The only thing they know is that the own the trinket shop. Where the trinkets come from and how they are made is a mystery to them. They don’t know nor do they want to.
The guy or gal that actually ‘runs’ the department usually worked their way up to that position of responsibility.

From that point up, the level of ‘cluelessness’ starts to rise. This is due to the insane practice of hiring in managers who have never done anything in their life except sling fries while they went to school.

Those of us who are forced to work for these wretches know intimately what it’s like.
In division society one must climb from the very bottom of the ladder to as high as your skill, ambition and integrity will take you.

Yes folks, the kind of person you are will have a direct bearing on whether or not you get promoted. Who will have this say? Your peers and those who would have to work under your direction.

Thus management roles would become facilitative rather than authoritative. We’ve already established the workers know how to do their jobs, the only thing ‘management’ needs to do it help them get the things they need to do them.

Couple that with generally shorter workday/weeks and the environment of work is looking a lot better already.

Why is the boss up your ass? He want’s to make more money! But in Division society, ‘profit’ will be redefined as the benefit reaped by society rather than the cash reaped by an individual or a group of investors.

Oh, there is one more thing. You’d have to ‘defend’ your new management position on a yearly basis via the tests.

Every year, everyone eligible to hold a management position would compete for the ability to do so through the skill-testing program.

Geez. That would mean you’d really have to know what you were doing to qualify for the job…how unnatural would that be?

Since this is the case, we’d no longer be locked out of good jobs because they were reserved for the boss’s progeny (whether they're qualified to hold them or not.)

No more dynasties, no more waiting for someone to die to even have a shot at being promoted.
A true dynamic of continuous improvement, driven by beneficial competition.

Which brings us back to the ‘at will’ nature of employment.

It all starts with outlawing the exploitative employer/employee relationship.

All laws start out as ideas.

What do you think of this one?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Gun Rules

Better know as the ones with the guns make the rules. While many of us admit to an aversion to confinement, it’s really those nice men with the guns that get our attention.

Regardless of what ‘the law’ says, if the boys with the guns want you bad enough there really isn’t much you can do about it.

There was an expose in the NY Times today about police corruption in China. It seems two off-duty cops, neither knowing the other, got into a beef at a red light. The end of the story…the local cop got his buddies to beat the other cop to death.

Then they found out he was a cop.

While I get both the LA and NY Times in my e-mail, I don’t subscribe to the local major paper, I get the local rag instead so I can keep up with the goings on around town.

Even in sleepy little ‘Nowhereville’ we have our share of police corruption. The most recent involving a Lieutenant accused of raping his girlfriends daughters for a period of years.

I’d be remiss in not mentioning the Assistant Medical examiner for a neighboring state who created her own cottage industry by signing off on cremations she’d never examined.

Do medical examiners pack heat? Probably, heck the Eco cops around here have guns and no, I’m not out in the wild west. I live where the pilgrims landed.

Back away from the tree and nobody gets hurt!

This is where the rubber meets the road, where the law meets the individual and it’s a truly frightening picture.

Because it’s your word against theirs...and they have guns.

The average law enforcement individual does an honest day’s work for, well, pay most of us can only wish for in the private sector.

They may work around the clock to make those stellar paychecks but it’s the gun thing again, you and I can’t do ‘details’.

To adjust the viewpoint slightly, these guys are ‘public servants’. No, not your servants, it’s the politicians that tell them what to do.

If ol’ El Presidente decides he needs to declare a ‘State of National Emergency’ to keep from being prosecuted for war crimes…guess whose face they’re going to stick that gun into?

No, not his, yours!

Good, bad or indifferent, these guys are sworn to follow orders…even if the orders are illegal.
Think about military law for a minute. If you ‘refuse’ to obey a direct order in a combat situation, you can be summarily executed.

For those who don’t understand the concept of' summary execution' it means the officer whose order you refuse to comply with is within his rights to shoot you on the spot!

Under a state of ‘martial law’ (the end result of a State of National Emergency) those same rules would apply to our civil servants. (as well as anyone else that doesn't do what they're told, when they're told to do it.)

Another added kicker to this sorry situation is that there’s no such thing as ‘human rights’ violations under a state of martial law.

If you’re related to a politician or even if you’re not, be sure to make it well known that you are connected if the situation ever arises or the treatment you receive may be less than courteous.
Local reps don’t count. You have to use someone big like a senator or a well-known US congressman.

Which brings us to the ‘disconnect’.

I’ll bet most of you think that ‘it couldn’t happen here!’

You couldn’t be more wrong. It’s not even a question of if but a question of when.

Suicides aside, the crash of ‘29 was a relatively peaceful event. Speculation is that the poor didn’t play the market so they didn’t much care that it melted down.

Now we’re all in whether we want to play or not. If you have a IRA or a 401k or even an old ESOP, you’re in the market.

If you have a mortgage that you’re buried up to your eyeballs in…a market crash could end up being your worst nightmare.

Or if you’ve been living off your credit cards. Because all of these things, when added to the huge federal deficit and the enormous trade balance our nation is carrying come together it’s gonna cause the mother of all meltdowns.

My depression era parents say most people survived the last depression by living off the land, America was still largely an agrarian society in those days and almost everybody had a relative that had a farm.

In the past thirty years we’ve gone from being the world’s largest exporter of food to being the world’s largest importer.

Thank you ADM.

The load of misery that’s heading for us like an out of control freight train is being brought to you by, your multinational capitalists.

Is it possible to have a trade deficit with yourself? Most of the companies involved in creating this debacle are US or formerly US based companies that have operations in the cheaper there.

Did I mention for profit society is insane?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Percent

The economy gained 78,000 jobs in the month of May. A significant drop from the 274,000 posted in April.

April showers bring out…landscapers, construction crews and builders.

See the reason behind the April spike in job growth now?

Still, May is the beginning of the summer hiring season. Only 78,000 new jobs doesn’t bode well for recent grads.

In any respect, 78,000 is still far too few for the eight point three million people collecting unemployment…or the seventy million working aged people who aren’t included in the unemployment figures.

It’s okay. They’re not looking for work. The government said so.

Still, if they were, there’d be a thousand applicants for every job opening.

Those seventy million people are getting money from somewhere. Perhaps we are a step closer to cracking the mystery of how we went from minting the first billionaire in history thirty years ago to having a hundred and fifty seven of them today.

Seventy million people getting paid to do nothing because the commerce can’t ‘profitably’ employ them.

Herein lies the head of the beast. Companies run as lean as possible, meaning they employ as few people as they can get away with. The leaner they run, the more they make.

Companies in Capitalist Utopia would have only one employee, The boss. Everything else would be automated.

Where does this leave you in the grand scheme of things? It’s every human for themselves out there. Even if you succeed in building a better mousetrap how many times can you do it only to have your ‘competitor’ either buy you out or crush you price wise in the marketplace thanks to their deeper pockets?

That’s what you and everyone else is up against.

One percent of the world’s population controls ninety percent of the world’s wealth and one percent of them control eighty percent of that…

Well, percent of six billion is sixty million. One percent of that is six hundred thousand. Since we only have one hundred and fifty-seven billionaires we have to repeat the process two more times to reach sixty.

So we have a percent of a percent of a percent of a percent and our billionaire group is less than three percent of that.

Flip the equation over and you’ve got a whole shit load of poor people.

Maybe it’s just me but there’s something wrong with this picture.

If I adjust the POV, maybe you can see it too.

If everyone that made less than a hundred thousand a year vanished tomorrow, the wealthy wouldn’t miss us.

There’d be a lot of unhappy six figure earners out there as they’d become the new grunt class but due to it’s ‘exclusionary’ nature capitalism would actually thrive if there were less players.

Think about that for a minute and be afraid, be very afraid especially if you don’t currently earn six figures.

This brings us back to that percent of a percent thing. A hundred grand is a tenth of a percent of a billion dollars.

With the world becoming increasingly more automated and consolidated, what’s to become of it’s teeming billions, especially in light of the fact they aren’t needed?

Is participative (labor driven) society starting to look more attractive now?

The way the ‘pie’ is sliced right now there are those who have and the rest of us…who are intruding on the party.

I never considered myself or my fellow humans to be excess baggage but there it is good citizen. A bad situation that’s getting worse with each passing day.

This isn’t new. Even Dickens wrote about the ‘surplus’ population in his famous ‘A Christmas Carol’.

The ‘more for me crowd’ has always viewed the rest of us as a scourge to be tolerated at best and despised almost always.

When things go sour, like they always do, it won’t be they who suffer, it will be you. Who will be the author of your torment? They will. That handwriting is already clear upon the proverbial wall.

They’re turning this nation inside out, squeezing every last dime they can out of the public till so the collapse will crush as many as possible.

78,000 jobs, a tenth of a percent of what is needed to put every working aged US citizen back to work, earning their better life.

Don’t be deceived. You too will soon be redundant, useless, unnecessary and tossed upon the scrap heap like so many millions before you.

So a few can be rich.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

No Says You!

The folks in Europe aren’t buying the new EU Constitution. The talking heads posit that this is due to dissatisfaction with the local governments.

They further say people don’t want to see their ‘safety net’ cut out from under them. People know things can’t go on the way they are much longer but nobody’s willing to suffer the inevitable pain these ‘necessary’ policies will inflict.

Perhaps it’s the politicos that don’t get it.

Between automation and the rampant consolidation of markets (competitors gobbling one another up) and the resultant downsizing of the ‘redundant’ departments, commerce doesn’t need as many people as it once used to.

Job security, the situation being what it is, is virtually non-existent.

Now that we have fewer people working, it’s small wonder that there isn’t enough income to sustain social benefit programs.

Nice and simple. The world’s population continues to grow and commerce’s need for workers continues to shrink.

Something’s gotta give because everybody needs a way to make a living.

Whether those who rule over us cut the safety net or not, these social programs will eventually run out funds due to more people drawing upon them than paying into them.

Why, you might ask, is this? What has changed?

A vast majority of us are being denied the means to support ourselves so a few can be rich.
At the end of the day folks it’s all about dividends for the shareowners, fuck everybody else.

Not exactly a ‘rational’ way to run a society, is it?

So I ask you, good citizen, what makes more sense? DO you want to live in a world where your value is directly proportional to how willing you are to sacrifice your own well-being for the benefit of the company or would you rather live in one that equitably cares for all of it’s citizens?
Full employment is not and never will be the goal of a capitalist society. Those who cannot be profitably employed (by for profit enterprise) must get by somehow, thus the social safety net. Make those with jobs support those commerce doesn’t need.

Is it any wonder those who do nothing for a living (at both ends of the spectrum) regard those who slave their lives away for a meager paycheck as chumps?

The folks in Europe have an ‘advantage’. All they need do is look across the pond at what’s happening in the Almighty US to see their future.

Our economy is a disaster. If the media ever reported the truth, the whole house of cards would tumble down overnight.

Something that’s likely to happen anyway if history is anything to go by.

History has shown that whenever commerce gets too greedy, the society that commerce was built upon comes tumbling down.

Labor driven society, one in which everyone works and thereby providing them with the means to support themselves is the basis for a rational society.

Since no one task is more valuable than any other in creating this world of ours, would everyone be paid the same?

Hell no.

You wouldn’t pay unskilled help the same rate you paid a master, would you? Where’s the incentive to do better?

If all you want out of life is a roof over your head and food in your stomach, you could do that and be content in a labor driven society. All your needs would be met by virtue of supplying your labor for a few hours a day or a few days a week depending on the needs of the task at hand.

We have far more people than things to do. In order to put everyone to work, the workday would have to be shortened.

Thanks to the fact that labor driven society will be completely debt free, many job classifications will disappear.

Don’t worry, there’s still plenty to do.

Would a four-hour shift ruin your day? Live to work? Get two jobs or three! Make as much as you want…be greedy! Just understand there is no such thing as cash. You’d be paid electronically and when you ‘spent’ your money, it would simply be erased from your account…no one gets it.

It would also be impossible to transfer funds between individuals. It’s that debt-free thing happening.

Retire? You’d probably be able to retire at a ‘magic number’ of seventy-five. Years of age plus years worked, which would make most people eligible at around age fifty.

You’re never going to see social benefits like this coming out of more for me Capitalism a.k.a. cash driven society.

Cash driven society is a joke. Whoever controls the (value of) your cash controls you…think about that one for a minute.

‘Dissatisfied’ with the government? Good ‘cuz there isn’t one in Labor driven society. No political parties of any kind tolerated.

All issues will be decided by direct democracy…not that there would be many issues without politicians to create them.

Work, achieve, be rewarded. It’s not utopia but it’s better than the current sham that robs you blind then leaves you high and dry after you’re spent.

Stop being a sucker, the Europeans aren’t buying, why should you?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner