(It's almost as earth shattering as fiddling with foreign exchange rates as a response to trade "imbalances," you know to cure poverty. Because we all know that poverty is fixed by economists and trade negotiators. They never get together to make their penny at the expense of others. They're fucking disinterested saints, not men bought up by corporate academia. I mean, really y'all - economists aren't Babylonian soothsayers who've set up shop in the courts and sanctioned school houses of the powers that be. Not at all. When economists talk numbers, hungry mothers never have to go without to feed their hungrier children.
For fuck's sake, Capone did more for the poor than any economist ever did, or ever will. And Capone was a fucking sociopath.)
Observant and cynical people ought to file this under "education works."
Or, beneath the header: "How to invest the minimum in standardized propaganda as public education and get decades of positive returns."
It's about as stunning a development in American politics as is the average House and Home monthly revolution in the art and science of kitchen rearrangement. See, instead of placing the toaster next to the microwave, the average kitchen user ought to move the toaster next to the coffee maker, the better to maximize...
Well, you get the point. Or you don't.
Anyhow, Billie Holiday is singing in the background, and I know I'm at least richer for that...
7 comments:
The real heavy lifting is done by the statisticians, Jack.
Paine and Behtune have convinced me: I'm wrong, because my efforts aren't at a high-enough level of seriousness, and I don't pretend my efforts affect millions who suffer from "poverty."
Think of the children! They suffer in poverty if we don't manipulate foreign exchange rates!
I like to think of Jack as "the internet's conscience."
Crow, I had to laugh when I saw op call you a "pwog cut out"... dude be flailing.
Belief in economics reminds me of innocent people who think its a good idea to talk to the police when accused of a crime. In reality any time you open your mouth around a cop it will only serve to hurt you. It can never help you. Economics is the same way, its a tool invented and wielded by power. It can never help humanity. It will only serve the interests of power. Even if you devised a way to use power's tool against it, you will lose because control will never let you use it in the way you wish.
This is why a third party is fucking shit. If you think economic reform and a new political party will lead to radical positive change, then you misunderstand the game. Every modern nation-state is a net-loss for humanity and always will be. They all require resource concentration and oppression.
dr g,
This is key: "resource concentration." I once wasted close to ten paragraphs trying to explain what you just summed up in two words.
No state operates without a captured resource and population base, which it then has to budget to maintain - which means a portion of all state resources must be dedicated to the preservation of the organization of the state. That preservation is, of course, it's primary focus. It's reason for existence. Any state which does not preserve itself - to yogiberra the sentiment - fails. The Committees became the Directorate became the Napoleonic Empire because even revolutionary states must become capture resources, populations and arms. Especially revolutionary states - which have no footing in memory or tradition, and therefore have to prove their mettle and value with force. It's no wonder that every revolutionary state since 1848 has become a mockery the revolution within a decade.
As for op - fuck him. I'll read Mr. Smith and Mr. Schumann any day, but Paine is an aging "revolutionary" who hasn't yet and won't ever figure out that bourgeois trained bureaucrats, technocrats and tenured academics exist to make the system work for the owners. Always.
That he's pathologically incapable of not wasting a thousand words on people he's already theatrically dismissed - usually anarchists and other people without world dominating systems - says volumes, no?
Ken,
I can't live up to that. I'd stab, bludgeon and shoot my way through strangers to save my wife and kids. My country has four citizens, and my conscience, in the end, is only big enough to handle them. This here blog is my excess outrage. It's a guilty pleasure to vent and have people agree with me, but I have no illusions as to efficacy. Thank you for the kind, though. I am humbled.
Karl,
No doubt we loose cannons, non-systematizers and silly individualists are the real reason why the philosophers of a glorious tomorrow never manage to convince the benighted masses to rebel up and put them in charge.
If only the economists and professional revolutionaries didn't have to contend with critics within the camp, they'd have figured out how to make the most benevolent state evah.
I read the post and the entire comments thread at SMBIVA, and I have to say, I have no idea what the fuck op was talking about--but then it's probably because I'm a "know-nothing," too.
"If only the economists and professional revolutionaries didn't have to contend with critics within the camp, they'd have figured out how to make the most benevolent state evah."
Great. What really amuses me is the camp's self-appointed guard dog's constant hand-wringing over the sorry state of "the left" and his touching simultaneous belief that the one true message is nevertheless still being heeded, if only too slowly.
Nice catch, Joe. I have a friend in Lancashire who once described the fragmenting of the local left-labor alliance in similar terms (one true message, vanguardism).
While they grumbled over the correct message to the masses in preparation for the glorious revolution, She Who Must Not Be Named swept the state they wanted to capture completely out of existence.
your efficacy is in your ability to make others who think similarly feel even one little bit less alienated and thus more sane
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