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  #11  
Old 03-27-2013, 10:55 AM
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Great thread!
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  #12  
Old 03-27-2013, 11:27 AM
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Looking at the big picture, we are probably a communist nation right now. We just don't call it that. Workers slave for Wall Street/Washington DC and Wall Street/Washington DC decides who gets what. That's what you get if you make a ribbon with Wall Street on the far right, Washington DC on the far left, and then staple the ends together.
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  #13  
Old 03-27-2013, 06:22 PM
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Exactly.

What is the real difference between a populace languishing at the mercy of powerful government officials, and a population languishing at the mercy of powerful government officials acting at the behest of wealthy individuals and corporations?

The answer is;

Damn little.

Immediately after the 2010 election, the NeoCons stepped up their campaign against organized labor and minority voters with the battle cry of returning to the ways of the Founders..........

Which was a world in which the government protected slavery and allowed chld labor at the behest of wealthy individuals and privately owned businesses while only allowing male, wealthy, white, and propertied landowners the right to vote.

Call it what you like. It stinks of TYRANNY to me.

Dave
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Last edited by BlueStreak; 03-27-2013 at 07:13 PM.
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  #14  
Old 03-27-2013, 07:08 PM
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Look me up if you ever get out to the Left Coast, Ed. I would like to buy you a beer or three.
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Old 03-27-2013, 07:31 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BlueStreak View Post
Exactly.

What is the real difference between a populace languishing at the mercy of powerful government officials, and a population languishing at the mercy of powerful government officials acting at the behest of wealthy individuals and corporations?

The answer is;

Damn little.

Immediately after the 2010 election, the NeoCons stepped up their campaign against organized labor and minority voters with the battle cry of returning to the ways of the Founders..........

Which was a world in which the government protected slavery and allowed chld labor at the behest of wealthy individuals and privately owned businesses while only allowing male, wealthy, white, and propertied landowners the right to vote.

Call it what you like. It stinks of TYRANNY to me.

Dave
Welcome to the Gilded Age, part deuce.
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  #16  
Old 03-27-2013, 08:04 PM
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A few people make politics more complicated for the masses than it has to be. Probably the best book I ever read on politics was Pat Buchanan's "Suicide of a Superpower". To put it in a nutshell I took the following from his book.

Big thinkers will always make a mess. They try to come up with a seating plan for a wedding party that will never end. But history shows again and again that people will cluster with their friends by the end of the night.

If that is the Truth then politicians would do better to speak in a way that brings us together every day rather than to scare us away from each other.

Music is a big part of harmony. Maybe that is part of discussion. A friend is a Catholic priest and he told me that one of the signs of being chosen for priesthood is an appreciation for music and being able to create it.

I dunno. But I do like 99 Luftballoons.
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Old 03-29-2013, 08:29 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ebacon View Post
A few people make politics more complicated for the masses than it has to be. Probably the best book I ever read on politics was Pat Buchanan's "Suicide of a Superpower". To put it in a nutshell I took the following from his book.

Big thinkers will always make a mess. They try to come up with a seating plan for a wedding party that will never end. But history shows again and again that people will cluster with their friends by the end of the night.

If that is the Truth then politicians would do better to speak in a way that brings us together every day rather than to scare us away from each other.

Music is a big part of harmony. Maybe that is part of discussion. A friend is a Catholic priest and he told me that one of the signs of being chosen for priesthood is an appreciation for music and being able to create it.

I dunno. But I do like 99 Luftballoons.
Some interesting points there. !984 is the year I usually associate with a transition. I think of it as when the MBA brats and their associated cadre of fellow thought tinkerers garnered enough power to begin running major businesses. The beginning was palpable in the business schools in the late fifties and early sixities. That, together with the growth of information technology incubated the notion of information manipulation and superior information acquisition as a quicker method to generate income than actually producing something tangible. Hell, the Dot-com bubble was only a little blip compared to the bigger and much longer view IMHO.

PS: I also like Nena (AKA Gabriele Susanne Kerner).
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Last edited by bhunter; 03-29-2013 at 08:32 AM.
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  #18  
Old 03-29-2013, 09:06 AM
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You mean the internet is bad?
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  #19  
Old 03-29-2013, 09:33 AM
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You mean the internet is bad?
Not bad, it is simply that it is 5% factual, 45% conjectural and 50% bullshit.
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  #20  
Old 03-29-2013, 09:50 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bhunter View Post
Some interesting points there. !984 is the year I usually associate with a transition. I think of it as when the MBA brats and their associated cadre of fellow thought tinkerers garnered enough power to begin running major businesses. The beginning was palpable in the business schools in the late fifties and early sixities. That, together with the growth of information technology incubated the notion of information manipulation and superior information acquisition as a quicker method to generate income than actually producing something tangible. Hell, the Dot-com bubble was only a little blip compared to the bigger and much longer view IMHO.

PS: I also like Nena (AKA Gabriele Susanne Kerner).
Your observation parallels what Greenspan wrote in his book. Greenspan basically argued that too big to fail institutions, together with superior information from IT systems to allocate risk, created a structure that was immune to collapse.

Having worked in the auto industry I knew it all bullshit even before the financial collapse. An economy breaks down when consumers are up to their ears in durable goods. At that point demand goes to zero and the system screeches to a halt. The irony is that Greenspan's economic theory needs constant demand to survive. I think he knew it and was intentionally trying to crash the system. There's no way that he spent fifty years getting blown by that Soviet Ayn Rand without her finally telling him what was going on during one of her amphetamine benders.

Sure enough Greenspan showed his true colors when the housing system crashed. Someone called and asked him what to do. Greenspan simply said to calculate the number of excess homes and then burn them down.

What a dick.
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