Forum Post: Parasitic Economic Activity
Posted 3 years ago on Sept. 16, 2020, 11:52 a.m. EST by agkaiser
(2516)
from Fredericksburg, TX
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Why are some useful and necessary economic activities systemically parasitic and what can be done about them?
Any activity that concentrates wealth is parasitic. If it grows an enterprise exponentially, like a bankers compound interest does, the business is among the most serious and dangerous economic diseases. Finance, Insurance and Real Estate [The FIRE Sector] present the greatest danger to human survival. Lending at interest that compounds when profits grow the lending capital has been known to be an economy killer for at least 4000 years.
Why are these assertions true? If the obvious parasitism continues, the perpetrators must own everything. Look around you. We grow closer to that every day as we have less and the owners consolidate more and more by extraction, merger and acquisition. You don't have to understand the theory, when the evidence of the practice is plain to see.
What is the cure for the economic disease that threatens our existence? Community ownership and operation, on a non profit (cost only) basis of critical services and production will minimize the damage these "necessary evils" do to our society. That is: What we need in common must be done in common on a non profit basis of, by and for the people.
Who are the most offensive parasites? Any who, like the Wall St. Oligarchs, make money from money and directly produce no material product or service. Banking and investment, buying and selling without material value addition, dissipate economic energy the fastest. Whether goods, services or property of any sort are traded, such FIRE Sector activities are dissipative in their conception.
In the future I will discuss other activities that are dissipative due to price manipulation, monopolistic perpetration or other harmful practices, whether legitimate or not.
Video link https://youtu.be/YepiJPkXil0
What is the cure for the economic disease that threatens our existence? Community ownership and operation, on a non profit (cost only) basis of critical services and production will minimize the damage these "necessary evils" do to our society. That is: What we need in common must be done in common on a non profit basis of, by and for the people.
https://youtu.be/YepiJPkXil0
For #S17, after considering ...
"What is the cure for The Economic Disease that threatens our existence? Community Ownership and operation, on a non profit (cost only) basis of critical services and production will minimize the damage these "necessary evils" do to our society. That is - what we need in common must be done in common on a non profit basis of, by and for the people." now consider the Necro-Economics; Turbo-Crapitalist ideology of our times, that so few can name let alone define ... NEOLIBERALISM:
et fiat lux ...
The call for an alternative has not been heeded ... yet. Monbiot wrote the article in 2016. The greatest harm produced by neoliberalism is the financialization of the economy, resulting in rent seeking concentration of wealth rather than production and distribution of real goods and material services. I'll keep hammering on the thick skulls of the true believers that docilely support their own destruction through ignorance and inaction. Sadly, I don't know that anything more substantial than words can be thrown into the struggle at this time.
And alas "Americans Tend to Trust Only News ... That Confirms Their Beliefs; Highly Educated Americans Are by Far the Most Closed-Minded Group"! by Eric Zeuss:
BUT also remember that it may only take perhaps 3.5% of people to change things permanently in US.
https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/publications/35-rule-how-small-minority-can-change-world
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
et dum spiro, spero ...
Two billionaire groups sparring against each other is still better than a single-party sitting Ducktatorship. Of course, I would like two millionaire groups to spar against each other in New York, NY, USA. It'll be democratization alright. New York State is so very one-sided politically blue that its political minorities don't really have a say in many elections ( AOC is a notable exception ! ) The highly educated people tend to do fairly well in the U.S. so yeah, they tend to be far more concerned about other people's being bamboozled by disinformation and misinformation from the media @17:36, @17:46 "Trump is a businessman; he knows how to run a business; so he should know how to run the country" than about themselves being misled. Success breeds conservatism ( unless there are extenuating experiences and/or heritage; my earlier tasks/jobs in New York before I became highly educated involved mopping floor { Dad got me this job before my attending college--I think that he was trying to show me different career paths; I liked the all-you-can-eat ten different flavors of ice creams and free foods in one of the jobs but I remembered his taking me into a place of higher learning after our returning from a visit to a park on a weekend and spoke in an awed, humbled, and hushed tone to me with no one around us so yeah, although it was just rock, metal, and glass in a dimly lit entrance hall with no great minds present, I knew then that I wanted to become "educated" } emptying out office garbage, and wielding a toilet plunger to kill a mouse ¿Redwall? in the office waste bin and clean it out but I had also witnessed how boardroom-imposed systemic discrimination worked for White dominance; most average Whites didn't originate the discrimination but they are accessory to the firing of dark-skinned foreign-accented competent people in the same sense as the guns in "guns don't kill people; people kill people;" I don't mind having do-nothing and well-paid figureheads but I object to the firing of competent people, regardless of the colors of their skin or their foreign accents because someone must create the quality product to fend off poverty for all involved; foreign accents and cultures are objectionable to Whites because they may irk White-dominance clientele; White figureheads are sometimes justified by being the sales interface to a White-dominance clientele; without the successful sales people dispatching the product, there is no Market. )
In Russia, it seems that the voters have been brainwashed. Below is one interesting narrative about events from an apparent Russian which reminds me of the hahaha! ingenious interpretation in some shortwave radio broadcasts by Radio Moscow which I had heard in my childhood days in Hong Kong:
Isn't it interesting how facts have been distorted? Russia was the supplier of the air-defense system which shot down hundreds of innocent civilians flying high up over East Ukraine. Most highly knowledgeable people probably could have guessed correctly at that, once they had been told that the MH-17 flight was flying transcontinentally. Only Russia had the technological sophistication near there ( there are other countries allied with the U.S. which can do this, too, but forget about them delivering such a system to a backyard of Russia; the U.S. does restrain its arms sales { Obama administration restrained arms sales to volatile conflict zones--why do you think there was so much news about Ukraine in the muddling of U.S. election, extremely well-paid board directorship for politician's kid, and Trump holding off arms shipments to Ukraine for political campaigning help? Our politicians want money, money, money ! Don't give a shit about U.S. national interests but money for "our consultant-grade kids" is great--very unselfish and loving indeed ! } and have influence to hold back at least some allies because the U.S. operates a global intelligence network for largely military self-defense purpose due to the history of its territories and homeland being surprise-attacked: Pearl Harbor, Guam, and 9/11/2001 ) to make the high-altitude guided interceptor which killed the civilian airliner at cruising altitude. Russia, Russians, or highly trusted arms customers of Russia were culpable in the mass murders of innocent civilians.
Martians chomping baklava honey spoke Russian, dressed in Russian military uniforms, and used Russian weapons during their incursions in East Ukraine. Russia has transplanetary cultural influence. It must be very cold on Mars, too, because of the ski-mask-like balaclava which we of the more temperate U.S. tend to associate with either bank robbers or terrorists.
Signs of authoritarianism being on the march now and back then include: "Moscow", "Istanbul", and "Saigon".
The Tangorangatang Blubber Baby, and his robotic mannequin wife ... have got COVID19 Corona Virus, so now's the time to try that IV bleach ... but note that his RWNJ base may become a serious problem if he doesn't pull through ...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/01/proud-boys-white-supremacist-group-law-enforcement-agencies by Jason Wilson ... however, good folk are watching these RWNJs:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/01/white-supremacist-protest-activism-emily-gorcenski by Sam T Levin and finally .. NB Ms. Gorcenski's web-site: https://first-vigil.com/
Don't know what your ramble was pertinent to yet again grapes so maybe engage with the above links?
per aspera ad astra?
The TBB needs money because he loves his kids. His supporters will give him money if they have money given to them. There are countries which have U.S. penalties imposed upon them and they need favors done. ( The rich and powerful trade favors while the poor and weak trade labor, to be confiscated by the former via fake money: loans to be discharged via persistent systemically generated moderate inflation created for the smartass with Fair Isaac's ( not [Dark] Ishmael's ) scoring and bankruptcies for 》unsren schönen blausäuren Donbass《 district of East Ukraine next to Russia. ) They can pay up to funnel money to the TBB to buy favors indirectly via Citizens United decision protected channels. Paying up for the U.S. court judgment of US$500 million for the wrongful death of Otto Warmbier at the hands of the D.P.R.K. is totally legal and gloriously just. It can also free up the U.S. from being fearful of Putin squeezing oligarchs to call in the outstanding loans to the Trump Empire.
All patriotic Americans should support this scheme of buying the TBB this get-out-of-Brokeland-free card. It's a damned cheap price to pay. We have already spent trillions of dollars with nary a blink. Some people wondered where the U.S. had hidden all that money for all these years. Hahaha ! Of course, there are also others who believe that the wealthy people keep much of their wealth in cash. These are obviously ne'er-do-well poor people who don't know the finances of "billionaires." The wealth of the U.S.A. is in our creditworthiness and credibility which were inherited largely from our forebears in our institutions and Constitution.
Recall WWII? Our forebears and allies paid dearly ( yep, there were many Red Army soldier deaths, too, to vanquish Fascism.) When World leadership was for the U.S. to take up after WWI, it shirked its responsibility to impose justice. We are still living through all of that shit and muck from the late 1910s even after having already sacrificed so much by all sides in WWII ( we did get decades of peace postwar.)
Why did Germany become so anti-Jews although Jews had already been so deeply integrated into German society? ( German speakers and Jews were literally fucking each other in private; how else did Hitler get his "Jewish" genes? ) The Treaty of Versailles.
Why did Nationalist China refuse to sign it? Qingdao in German hands was handed over to Imperial PacMan Japan although Nationalist China was on the winning side of WWI. China's Century of Humiliation continued. Why did the Chinese Communist Party form? To redress the wrongs of this Century of Humiliation so it arose from wrath, a destructive force. CCP only knew to "political-struggle" and Not Much Else. Its idol was Stalin who pushed hard to industrialize the U.S.S.R. costing tens of millions of lives.
The repression and mass murders all began with the U.S.S.R. and Red China forming out of the fucken European War spilling out worldwide in WWI and WWII. Why did my Dad get torpedoed by a U-boat? Imperial Japan had already turned China into a warzone so Dad was given a chance to get away from it all by moving over to the Atlantic to work for the British but the Germans were soon attacking the British shipping in the Battle of the Atlantic. Japan also felt humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles despite its having defeated multiple European nations. The League of Nations couldn't work to resolve conflicts--the "essential nation" of the U.S.A. was absent.
Dad was made into a global pinball, from the coal of Newport News, Capetown, Madras ( I think it's where he got the anti-travelers'-diarrhea opium-extract liquor which saved so many { >100 } Chinese lives; there's no explaining to U.S. Customs why we immigrating to the U.S. would have an heirloom opium-stained empty glass bottle in our possession so we had to let go of it,) Hong Kong ( his British home base away from home, which was also a regional headquarters to his Father { i.e. my Grandpa } while Grandpa was trading with the coastal seafaring northern Europeans which helped modernize East China ), to the shores of Pearl Harbor, Yokosuka. There's no escaping from the war !
Paraphrasing President Lincoln for modern times: Saving the Trump Empire is fine with me, so is not saving it but Putin cannot be allowed to hold a leash indirectly on our President because this is our U.S. President, not this Poo-Tin's. Although I have never shed my blood for this country, I know of the hell our forebears have gone through to get us to where we are so... someone with big money, please pay up to rescue the Trump Empire in order to rescue the sovereignty of the U.S.A. ( We have actually sprouted some sharp teeth already in the Magnitsky Act to shield against the Russian Mafia due to our having legislated to "do the right things" so "God blessed and shielded us." ) Thank God we still have Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case decision to shield where the money is coming from ! The cure for corruption is even more "corruption" in the opposite direction. The seed of a solution is in the problem. General strikes can bring any country to its knees but they need to be prepared for by the populace beforehand to minimize pain. There's always a safety limit on how long one can stay away from the scalpel or a meat cleaver to treat a cancer. Even the fearsome Mongol conquerors in China with extremely repressive policies were overthrown in a bloody revolution. General strikes are more peaceful than that but the populace should prepare for possible escalation to general violence or guerilla warfare behind the enemy line. Remember that vast deficit spending { Mom became homeowner under the duress of us either being evicted or supporting the newly widowed landlady's living indirectly with mortgage payments; our adopted Grandma knew the proper choice and helped, } austerity programs, increased taxes, etc. can all be positive, depending on the GOALs which they help to achieve. The Chinese people slaughtered the Mongol troops amongst them in a coordinated synchronized mass slaughter still being commemorated centuries later in the Mooncake Festival.
My Mom used this for escaping the authoritarian Red China: Wealth given in exchange for the caring for my elderly paternal Grandma ( who had resolutely made her decision to have everyone else leave her in order to avoid more predicted deaths due to a curse incurred by Mom "the know-little-about-countryside-living city girl" for her ignorantly taking a "shortcut;" Grandma eventually died shortly after my birth ) and hopefully freedom for her posterity, me included eventually. The freedom part was perilous to achieve but Mom didn't end up as a "salted fish." Hong Kongers likely got this euphemism for bloated floating cadavers from bacalao, the technique of making which being of Portuguese origin from nearby Macau/Macao. What happened to Syria? What happened to Beirut which I remembered reading an article in the 1960s saying that it figuratively had streets "paved with gold?"
Hmm, maybe the Palestinians as founding members of the Global Land Justice League can recruit Germany ( Kaliningrad/Königsburg,) China ( land south of Lake Baikal and outer Manchuria, cities of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk,) Japan ( Kuril Islands,) Poland ( Gdansk/Danzig, the Prussian free city,) and Ukraine ( Crimean Peninsula and seaport Sevastopol ) for a multi-pronged coordinated attack to get their cities, land, islands, seaports, etc. back from Russia. Since so many different places with the @2:37 "wide roominess for dreams and living" in Russia carry so much life-giving water in the many rivers and solidified distilled water in all that snow and ice, will become available for resettlement, as leaders of the Global Land Justice League the Palestinians just need to take their picks as preferred. Gazans need not have problem lacking water again in their new Lebensraum.
This isn't my horse-shit. This is hippopotamus-shit ! We are all wet so we need a big Me-thane expulsion. ( U.S. policies and directions can be bought discreetly as it has been decided in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case--just watch out for election campaign financing laws and route free-speech unlimited amount of money through multiple "independent" corporations each of which can claim innocence of not knowing the source of the money; this wasn't foolproof though as some banks were somewhat heavily fined when they were found out "laundering money" but this scheme obviously worked well for the culprits of the 2008-2011 Great Recession; no one except Martha Stewart went to jail and even AIG paid out cushy executive bonuses while it was under U.S. Government's financial life support; even more peculiar was the forced-out-in-2008 Chairman of the Board eventually suing the U.S. Government for depressing his possible gains by providing the life support to buy AIG shares at depressed near-bankruptcy prices in order to rescue the corporation he had driven into the ditch, the bankruptcy of which corporation threatened to halt 90% of all commercial flights globally; guess what AIG did for years to get "innovative" insurance profits and what the ethnicity of this greedy former AIG Chairman of the Board was ! An arsonist sued the fire-fighting brigade for breaking the windows of his burning house to put out his fire. )
Re. 11 paragraphs of ever expanding, psychotic bull, horse or "hippopotamus" shit above; U can simply fk off because you are absolutely the only one reading it here, dick! However re.OP, there's this to read:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55686.htm or re. your b-s,
consider this .. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55680.htm
et 'two time twit' - temet nosce!
Democrats are focused on showing the poor how things will be good for them - they have failed not only to convince the middle class but to implement those things which will strengthen our middle class. Democrats continue to allow our system to rail the working middle class. The middle class needs relief. How can they trust Democrats in this regard? How is it good for them to have their wages stripped and to have to pay in more and more in local taxes, when they are barely keeping up; when wages have failed to keep up with inflation for twenty years or longer; when their jobs are no longer stable? I hear lots of promises to the poor. When the middle class hears those promises what they KNOW is that means they will have to pay more. Unless Democrats can figure out a way to get Wall Street to pay their fair share or to pay their workers a fair share and to generate more jobs, then I think maybe the middle class is correct to be leery of Democratic leadership, for their own personal wellbeing. What are Democrats doing to stop offshoring? What are Democrats doing to create more jobs? Why aren't Democrats protecting private unions and advocating for more unions and more worker protections? Where have they been while Trump's labor department had their way with the working class during this pandemic? Busy figuring out how to take more money away from the already stripped down working class and give it to the poor. Is this right? Until they make something anything happen in this regard their promises to the poor are hollow. Without a strong working class, there is no funding. The working class is being used and abused and taken advantage of. They are being asked to sacrifice their own well being without first having self care or security for themselves and their families. It's wrong. It's wrong and so they will look for relief (and false hope) in Trump.
Democrats and Republicans are working together to abuse the middle class coffers in order to help themselves in the name of the poor. All subsidies go back to corporations and rich landlords. Those subsidies come from a middle class which is being taken advantage of.
And I come back to move to Amend. Occupy Wallstreet. Wall Street is not the key to jobs. Downsizing Wall Street so others can have a fair playing field and self reliance is. We need the opposite of Wallstreet. We need things to get smaller and more local. We need to break down corporations like Amazon and WalMart which holds a monopoly on our economy and end the trading system which allows hedge funds and derivatives trading to flourish. We need a complete system overhaul.
Don't get me wrong I want safety nets and to have plenty of aid to help the poor. But the failure to focus on the working middle class - is CAUSING more poverty, not less, and ultimately there will be even less available to aid that growing poverty. It's disaster. Trump is a disaster in this regard as well - all he did was grow the corporate swamp. But Democrats in office really didn't bother to stop all that. I think in fact they liked it. Sanders was a threat to the swamp - so we have Biden.
Where are the good jobs (not some BS Gig shit) ? Where is the union advocacy?
Democrats in fact fueled division in this nation as much as Trump. Instead of pulling our party back together to focus on rebuilding our middle class they ran around telling them to give and give often - in fact telling them they don't deserve the things they worked for. It's fairly incredible that this entire time they failed to point out that those who need to give more are the GREED MONGERS on Wall Street. That in fact the middle class are working harder than ever for less than at any other time in history - that their productivity and labor has made Wall Street and investors richer than at any other time in history. They could have pulled us together and fought back. Instead they fought the hard working people of this economy and told them they don't count, that they need to continue to sacrifice more and more to the Wall Street volcano as if that helps the poor somehow. And they told anyone who felt the injustice of this system that now they must obviously be racist to boot. If Trump wins Democrats lost this election. Trump didn't win it. If you take off the top 5 percent - no we on the whole as a nation and people are not all privileged - we are barely hanging on. More than 50 percent of us make less than $30,000 per year.
Do I despise Trump - yes. Do I trust Democrats - no. What have they done for the working class? What will they do for the working class? How do they exactly plan to strengthen this economy and bring back a healthy middle class? Funding the poor I'm sorry to say is not exactly the answer. Where is that funding going to come from? The middle class is not riding around in yachts. In fact they barely have enough savings to cover a month of bills. This new normal and status quo is destroying our country - Democrats don't discuss this, they do not DO private union advocacy. They support public unions but then again the working class pays for them too. I blame Democrats more than Trump for their obvious failure to rebuild our nation and dismantle this greed driven system which has the working class pulling the wagon for everyone but themselves. They do deserve the things they have worked hard for, they do deserve to keep what they have built. They don't deserve to have Wall Street or our government take it all away. This election I predict the working class is going to protect themselves in the ways they think they can. They can't get job creation, they can't get stability, savings, or good paying jobs or Wall Street to pay their fair share - what they can or think they can do is hold on to some of their tax dollars. It's about money. It's always about money - it's about survival. Race or whatever issues get dragged onto the table - the most important thing to the middle class - is how to keep a roof overhead, how to feed their families, how to make ends meet. It's that simple.
BUT there is an answer and that is that ALL of us left and right poor and middle class come together to DEMAND an end to the corporate rule of our government. Our goveration has done terrible things for anyone who is not in the top 5 percent. We can change this. We can join on this issue which does effect us all, which is currently destroying our democracy and way of life. We do need to make America great again - and the way we do that is by getting money out of politics and ending the corporate takeover and rule of our society. Neither Republicans or Democrats are going to do this for us - we as a people must come together and change this, whatever happens this next election we must do this together. It is our duty and it is our greatest weapon against the things making our country terrible - our unity is our greatest weapon in the fight against greed. No it is not the middle class who is greedy and asking for too much - it is Wall Street, it is our banks and insurance companies, and corporations who are taking too much from all of us, they have brought down our nation in so many ways - it's time we take it back together.