Skip to main content

Capitalism and Ponzi


Capitalism and Ponzi - 2008-06-30 09:58




Capitalism is a Ponzi scheme writ large.

It depends on growth at all times or it falls apart.

Imagine years of 0% growth in the United States -- there would be riots.

Growth depends on only two things -- both evidenced by the term productivity -- getting more from more, strip mining; getting more for less, people mining.

Think of a credit card that sits quietly in your pocket. Every year gets 4% added to the bill. That's capitalism. In order to work, there must be 4% more of something to get it balanced.

The way that the bill gets paid is productivity -- you either dig a finite resource out of the ground, or find a person who can do more work for less money.

Some good stuff happens with capitalism -- as the % grows, standards of living grow -- people have a more and better lifestyle in the commonly accepted way it's determined (health, diet, longevity, security.) But it's all based on continued growth.

This would work better if resources were infinite -- planets and stars were waiting to be plucked and abused. But we are getting to the point that we are functionally living in a closed system and a zero-sum game. If we take from one place -- another place suffers.

This is the mother earth concept that is seeming more valid every day. Our children can't be paying our bills for stuff they aren't going to get -- they are not that stupid or bovine -- they will figure it out at some point and make us pay our pounds of flesh.

What this seems to mean is: we need to pay our bills, live within our means, clean up our mess (see pay our bills) and get comfortable with less.

Or figure out a way to star travel.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Satoshi Nakamoto claim

I met a man claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto outside a building I work at near the SF train station. He asked to talk to me. He was white, 50ish, with a 3 day beard that seemed trim.  He was dressed in high quality, slightly worn Patagonia gear.  He spoke in a quiet voice and didn’t appear obviously crazy after a brief talk with him.  He said that he had worked with people in the building that I’m at, but was confused about the details.  “You ever had amnesia?,” he said, not knowing who he was talking  to. “It’s like that.” Having enjoyed our talk - he then asked if I would do him a favor and,  “get the message out that I’m back in town —that’s all,” he said, “They’ll figure the rest out. “ “marshallmathersfoundation.com,” he added,“ they’ll need to know that. “ He’s wearing bright orange gaiters if interested. He’s probably going to be around for a while.  He’s maybe nutty, but since he didn’t bring up Deuteronomy during our conversation, I’m giving him the benefit of a doubt. Later -

Free Willy

“…Some say it's just a part of it We've got to fulfill the book.” B. Marley Before I completely run away from the point, the subject of this essay is free will, or, more accurately, the illusion of free will. It will be interesting to see if free will even comes up laterally over the next few hundred words now that I’ve set it up as a specific goal.  The imp of the perverse makes it a sure thing that I won’t – but that surety might also double back and force  me to stay on point. There are no dogs to pick  in this fight and it’s not a fight,  and if I’m right, none of this is anything but documentation for a litigious god that will never see it. Like quantum mechanics, life is about either time or place, never both, and how we choose to pretty up our choices is neither the point, or even a choice – it’s after the fact punctuation we use to justify and make sense of our ontological messiness.  (Science has proven that we decide things with our body before the brain

We sit in passionate apathy

"You can’t debate with someone who hates you." C. Hitchens   Reason has become a tool to manipulate you into thinking things are true that you know are not true. Science and math have become a tools for the wealthy to increase the piles of money they then use to Rent the laws.  Religion continues to be a form of racist nationalism – a nation built on manufactured words that demand the permanent death of all humans who follow different words. The more the others believe their truths, the more they need to die. Welcome to the new hybrid theocracy -- based on the Eastern Orthodox, but with just enough Texas to really pop. The intellectual framework for western society no longer works for most people – faith has been lost and now ridiculed; common sense beliefs passed down for generations are being discarded while children are being raised as docile pups to be eventually clubbed into the correct forms of submission. We no longer question and an