Oct 222017
 
 October 22, 2017  Posted by at 2:02 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Alfred Wertheimer Elvis 1956

 

New Zealand’s new prime minister Jacinda Ardern calls capitalism a blatant failure. Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis says capitalism is ‘merely’ coming to an end because it is making itself obsolete. Mathematics professor Bruce Boghosian claims that without redistribution of wealth, our market economy would not be stable, because wealth always tends to concentrate. The people at Artemis Capital Management write that the stock market has begun self-cannibalizing like a snake eating its tail, and the only reason we’re not in a recession already is ‘financial alchemy’.

At the very least we can say that the system is under pressure. But what system is that? It would be nice to have a clearcut definition of capitalism, but alas, there are many, about as many as there are different forms of it. That doesn’t make this any easier. Americans call many European economies ‘socialist’, which seems to mean they are not capitalist. But Scandinavian countries don’t function like the Soviet Union either.

And if you see how much money is involved in transfer payments to citizens in the US, the supposed bastion of free market capitalism, it’s tempting to conclude the system has already failed. But even with transfer payments, inequality is at record levels. That would seem to confirm Boghosian’s statement that “even if a society does redistribute wealth, if it’s too small an amount, “a partial oligarchy will result..” So what then?

 

 

Varoufakis and others want a “universal basic dividend”, or “universal basic income”. Would that be the end of capitalism as we know it? Or is it just a -perhaps more extreme- form of ‘state capitalism’? Varoufakis deems it inevitable because technology will eradicate so many jobs from societies that people won’t be able to make money from work. Personally, I’ve long thought that the pending large-scale demise of pensions systems will lead to some form of UBI.

37-year-young Jacinda Ardern is very clear in her assessment of New Zealand’s form of capitalism. If you’ve got the worst homelessness in the developed world, you have a broken system. If the system fails the people, it’s no good. Other people might argue that capitalism never promised to take care of everyone. Or rather, not through state interference. Labour’s Ardern has her view:

 

New Zealand’s New Prime Minister Brands Capitalism A ‘Blatant Failure’

[Jacinda] Ardern, has pledged her government will increase the minimum wage, write child poverty reduction targets into law, and build thousands of affordable homes. In her first full interview since becoming prime minister-elect, she told current affairs programme The Nation that capitalism had “failed our people”. “If you have hundreds of thousands of children living in homes without enough to survive, that’s a blatant failure,” she said. [..] “When you have a market economy, it all comes down to whether or not you acknowledge where the market has failed and where intervention is required. Has it failed our people in recent times? Yes. How can you claim you’ve been successful when you have growth roughly 3%, but you’ve got the worst homelessness in the developed world?”

So to which extent should a state interfere in markets, and in society at large? There are obviously wide ideological divides when it comes to answering that one. Does that mean there is no answer possible at all? Perhaps not. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that the system is predestined to fail, as Boghosian’s mathematical models suggest: “Our work refutes the idea that free markets, by virtually leaving people up to their own devices, will be fair..”

That doesn’t necessarily demand a lot of interference, we could ‘simply’ write the rules of the game in such a way that the ‘natural tendency’ towards wealth concentration is blocked. An example is the history of the top US income tax rate. Arguably, the nation was doing a lot better under Eisenhower and Kennedy, with a top rate of 91%, than it is today. If you put a few rules like that in play, perhaps including Varoufakis’ idea of a ‘common welfare fund’, maybe the state doesn’t have to interfere much otherwise.

 

 

One of the main underlying claims of capitalism, and of macroeconomics in general, is that markets -and societies- will sort themselves out if left alone. Bruce Boghosian says this is not true, and that he has the math to prove it. The entire notion of markets tending towards a ‘supply-demand equilibrium’ is nonsense, he says (echoing Minsky, Steve Keen et al). Trickle-down economics is a figment of the imagination, while trickle up-economics flourishes.

This refutes much of what our economic systems are based on, which would appear to indicate that we need an urgent revision of these systems. Unless we would agree that Darwin-on-Steroids is a good idea. We don’t and won’t, because it would mean Stephen Foster’s “frail forms fainting at the door” all over the place. A market ideology that causes widespread misery has no future.

 

The Mathematics of Inequality

Seven years ago, the combined wealth of 388 billionaires equaled that of the poorest half of humanity , according to Oxfam International. This past January the equation was even more unbalanced: it took only eight billionaires, marking an unmistakable march toward increased concentration of wealth. Today that number has been reduced to five billionaires.

Trying to understand such growing inequality is usually the purview of economists, but Bruce Boghosian, a professor of mathematics, thinks he has found another explanation—and a warning. Using a mathematical model devised to mimic a simplified version of the free market, he and colleagues are finding that, without redistribution, wealth becomes increasingly more concentrated, and inequality grows until almost all assets are held by an extremely small percent of people.

“Our work refutes the idea that free markets, by virtually leaving people up to their own devices, will be fair,” he said. “Our model, which is able to explain the form of the actual wealth distribution with remarkable accuracy, also shows that free markets cannot be stable without redistribution mechanisms. The reality is precisely the opposite of what so-called ‘market fundamentalists’ would have us believe.”

While economists use math for their models, they seek to show that an economy governed by supply and demand will result in a steady state or equilibrium, while Boghosian’s efforts “don’t try to engineer a supply-demand equilibrium, and we don’t find one,” he said. [..] The model tracks the data with remarkable accuracy, he said. He and his team will soon publish a paper on how it relates to U.S. wealth data from 1989 to 2013.

“We have also begun to apply it to wealth data from the ECB, and so far it seems to work very well for certain European countries as well,” he said [..] It turns out that when agents do well in early transactions, the odds are so increasingly stacked in their favor that—without redistribution from taxes or other wealth-transfer mechanisms—they will get more money, and keep accruing wealth inevitably.

“Without redistribution of wealth, our market economy would not be stable,” said Boghosian. “One person would run away with all the wealth, and it would keep going until it came to complete oligarchy.” And even if a society does redistribute wealth, if it’s too small an amount, “a partial oligarchy will result,” Boghosian said.

If markets and societies cannot survive under current rules, theories and ideologies, what do we do? The Artemis guys strongly suggest we stop the practice of excessive stock buybacks- even if they’re the only thing propping up the whole market system. Because they’re leading us straight into a recession. Because they’re making that recession a lot worse.

 

Volatility and the Alchemy of Risk

The Ouroboros, a Greek word meaning ‘tail devourer’, is the ancient symbol of a snake consuming its own body in perfect symmetry. The imagery of the Ouroboros evokes the infinite nature of creation from destruction. The sign appears across cultures and is an important icon in the esoteric tradition of Alchemy. Egyptian mystics first derived the symbol from a real phenomenon in nature. In extreme heat a snake, unable to self-regulate its body temperature,will experience an out-of-control spike in its metabolism. In a state of mania, the snake is unable to differentiate its own tail from its prey,and will attack itself, self-cannibalizing until it perishes. In nature and markets, when randomness self-organizes into too perfect symmetry, order becomes the source of chaos.

The Ouroboros is a metaphor for the financial alchemy driving the modern Bear Market in Fear. Volatility across asset classes is at multi-generational lows. A dangerous feedback loop now exists between ultra-low interest rates, debt expansion, asset volatility, and financial engineering that allocates risk based on that volatility. In this self-reflexive loop volatility can reinforce itself both lower and higher. In a market where stocks and bonds are both overvalued, financial alchemy is the only way to feed our global hunger for yield, until it kills the very system it is nourishing.

 

 

[..] At the head of the Great Snake of Risk is unprecedented monetary policy. Since 2009 Global Central Banks have pumped in $15 trillion in stimulus creating an imbalance in the investment demand for and supply of quality assets. Long term government bond yields are now the lowest levels in the history of human civilization dating back to 1285. As of this summer there was $9.5 trillion worth of negative yielding debt globally. Last month Austria issued a 100-year bond with a coupon of only 2.1%(6) that will lose close to half its value if interest rates rise 1% or more. The global demand for yield is now unmatched in human history. None of this makes sense outside a framework of financial repression.

Amid this mania for investment, the stock market has begun self-cannibalizing… literally. Since 2009, US companies have spent a record $3.8 trillion on share buy-backs financed by historic levels of debt issuance. Share buybacks are a form of financial alchemy that uses balance sheet leverage to reduce liquidity generating the illusion of growth. A shocking +40% of the earning-per-share growth and +30% of the stock market gains since 2009 are from share buy-backs. Absent this financial engineering we would already be in an earnings recession.

Any strategy that systematically buys declines in markets is mathematically shorting volatility. To this effect, the trillions of dollars spent on share buybacks are equivalent to a giant short volatility position that enhances mean reversion. Every decline in markets is aggressively bought by the market itself, further lowing volatility. Stock price valuations are now at levels which in the past have preceded depressions including 1928, 1999, and 2007. The role of active investors is to find value, but when all asset classes are overvalued, the only way to survive is by using financial engineering to short volatility in some form.

Yanis Varoufakis doesn’t so much argue that capitalism has already failed, he says it is bound to fail in the near future. Because new technology, including artificial intelligence, will destroy too many jobs for society to continue to function intact. That is already happening, in that we both produce and consume Google’s ‘products’, but we get none of the profits. An example:

 

Google’s Plan To Revolutionise Cities Is A Takeover In All But Name

Alphabet’s weapons are impressive. Cheap, modular buildings to be assembled quickly; sensors monitoring air quality and building conditions; adaptive traffic lights prioritising pedestrians and cyclists; parking systems directing cars to available slots. Not to mention delivery robots, advanced energy grids, automated waste sorting, and, of course, ubiquitous self-driving cars. Alphabet essentially wants to be the default platform for other municipal services. Cities, it says, have always been platforms; now they are simply going digital.

“The world’s great cities are all hubs of growth and innovation because they leveraged platforms put in place by visionary leaders,” states the proposal. “Rome had aqueducts, London the Underground, Manhattan the street grid.” Toronto, led by its own visionary leaders, will have Alphabet. Amid all this platformaphoria, one could easily forget that the street grid is not typically the property of a private entity, capable of excluding some and indulging others. Would we want Trump Inc to own it? Probably not. So why hurry to give its digital equivalent to Alphabet?

Google aims at taking over our entire communities, and claims this will be to our benefit. We let the new technology companies expand far and wide, to a large extent because our ‘leaders’ don’t understand what is happening any better than we do. But that is not a good thing, for many different reasons. It’ll be very hard to whistle them back later, both because of the wealth they’re building, and because of the intensifying links they have to government, including -or especially- the intelligence community.

 

Capitalism Is Ending Because It Has Made Itself Obsolete

Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has claimed capitalism is coming to an end because it is making itself obsolete. The former economics professor told an audience at University College London that the rise of giant technology corporations and artificial intelligence will cause the current economic system to undermine itself.

Mr Varoufakis [..] said companies such as Google and Facebook, for the first time ever, are having their capital bought and produced by consumers. “Firstly the technologies were funded by some government grant; secondly every time you search for something on Google, you contribute to Google’s capital,” he said. “And who gets the returns from capital? Google, not you. “So now there is no doubt capital is being socially produced, and the returns are being privatised. This with artificial intelligence is going to be the end of capitalism.”

Warning Karl Marx “will have his revenge ”, the 56-year-old said for the first time since capitalism started, new technology “is going to destroy a lot more jobs than it creates”. He added: “Capitalism is going to undermine capitalism , because they are producing all these technologies that will make corporations and the private means of production obsolete. “And then what happens? I have no idea.”

Describing the present economic situation as “unsustainable” and fearing the rise of “toxic nationalism”, Mr Varoufakis said governments needed to prepare for post-capitalism by introducing redistributive wealth policies. He suggested one effective policy would be for 10% of all future issue of shares to be put into a “common welfare fund” owned by the people. Out of this a “universal basic dividend” could be paid to every citizen.

Has capitalism failed already, as Jacinda Ardern claims, or will that happen only in the future, as Varoufakis says? It may be a moot question once the system and the markets start collapsing. That they will, and must, is not a question but a certainty, even a mathematical one. Whatever your ideology, that is not a good thing. And the current ideology has caused this, that much is clear.

If the remaining wealth is not divided better than it is today, those who have gathered most of it will also find themselves in non-functioning societies and communities. Unless perhaps you’re George W. and have property in Paraguay.

But even then. We’re eating our tails.

 

 

Home Forums Is Capitalism Dead or Merely Dying?

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  • #36626

    Alfred Wertheimer Elvis 1956   New Zealand’s new prime minister Jacinda Ardern calls capitalism a blatant failure. Former Greek finance minister
    [See the full post at: Is Capitalism Dead or Merely Dying?]

    #36627
    Diogenes Shrugged
    Participant

    C-section makes it possible for women to bear children with heads too large to fit through their birth canals. It’s artificial childbirth, not natural childbirth. Everybody cheers that mankind has slapped the face of Darwin, so to speak, and made viable the most helpless and imperiled. Never mind that the longer this “system” continues, the greater the number of people will be carrying genes for big-headed babies. Or, if you prefer, the greater the number of women with too-narrow birth canals.

    Quoting from the essay, “Unless we would agree that Darwin-on-Steroids is a good idea. We don’t and won’t, because it would mean Stephen Foster’s “frail forms fainting at the door” all over the place. A market ideology that causes widespread misery has no future.”

    You can have a continuous, unbroken trickle of “frail forms fainting at the door” or you can circumvent and postpone that trickle, but postponement only means that someday there will be a flood. We’re still debating how to prevent the trickle while ignoring the imminent flood.

    Quoting Milton Friedman, ““There are only two ways of co-ordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion—the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals—the technique of the market place.”

    Varoufakis says the market place has failed. Sounds like a pitch for the alternative. Except that we’ve been practicing the alternative all along, a fact he seems not to realize.

    #36628
    earth999
    Participant

    There is a multiple major flaws in the writer’s arguments.

    Yes money has been concentrated and not getting distributed. THe real reason for this is not capitalism. “True capitalism is the best possible system.”

    The system we have now is a) Crony capitalism b) Fed creating money and market intervention, Central banks buying stocks and bonds (Fed, ECB, BOJ, Swiss central bank, BOE and ECB mainly, PBOC , Canada bank and Australiamn banks also participate), PPT intervention c) Margin DEBT based pumping of stocks and bonds (treasury, corporate, mortgage and other asset based bonds (secured as well as unsecured) d) No Glass-steagall LAW to separate banks (investments banks from retail banks)

    SOLUTION To solve this problem:

    (0) Prevent banks from creating money from “THIN AIR”
    (1) Reinstate Glass steagall
    (2) substantially increase transaction costs on all kinds of trades done by anyone ( banks, hedge funds, private equity, sovereign wealth funds , individuals etc etc )
    (3) remove margin based trading
    (4) ban derivatives
    (5) ban obamacare
    (6) remove ALL market indexes, index funds, market ETFs etc etc
    (7) FREE market should have only stocks of companies, nothing else
    (8) remove most unnecessary insurance companies ( insurance is a huge PONZI anyways)
    (9) Ban shorts and LONGs who are playing/gambling in the markets
    (10) remove welfare schemes ( like minimum wages, medicare, medicaid, Soc Sec supplemental, Soc security and all welfare schemes and replace them with a single lumpsum (not tied to any indexes to people under a particular net worth (not income) level)

    DON’T blame capitalism ….

    CAPITALISM is the only system that truly works. but what we have now for the past 100 years is NOT CAPITALISM after creation of the federal reserve….

    .

    #36629
    Diogenes Shrugged
    Participant

    Let’s start by being fair to those who need it most. For instance, to all those people scavenging garbage dumps in India. Now, a fair system would ensure an iPhone for each of them. Along with health insurance and an education. And a basic income, decent shelter and the right to vote.

    If the people in the U.S. had any empathy, we’d at least be sending all our garbage to India. Or generating it there the way we do in the Middle East and northern Africa.

    EREOI is falling. All grand plans for “new systems” are Towers of Babel. How an atheist like me finds himself at the very point in history when Armageddon is about to occur remains a bit of a fascination. I feel like I’ve won a lottery of some sort with infinitely lower odds.

    Darwin’s coming, nobody can stop him, and he’s not very happy.

    #36630
    Diogenes Shrugged
    Participant

    A “new system” to be presided over by “leaders” who demolish 110-story skyscrapers into tiny piles of rubble, burn down California neighborhoods with directed energy weapons, and who poison us with chemtrails, vaccines, pesticides, GMO’s, fluoride and toxic pharmaceuticals. Governed by people intent on indoctrinating our children in prison settings. People who murder civilians in foreign countries with reckless abandon. Who subject us to back-scatter x-rays, random blood draws, and body cavity searches before confiscating our wealth under the banner of “civil asset forfeiture.” When they aren’t confiscating, they’re extorting, fining and taxing. And imprisoning.

    Yes, our beloved “leaders.” Faithfully representing somebody’s needs and desires. Aren’t they just great? Let’s have a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen. They serve us selflessly, tirelessly, and (REDACTED).

    They’re crony criminals, bribers, blackmailers, liars, rapists, child traffickers, illegal organ harvesters and active pedophiles. These people practice torture, defend torture, relish in torture and drink blood from severely tortured infants.

    Why do we tolerate people like this? Isn’t that a form of suicide? We’ll later claim it was genocide, but in reality, we committed suicide. Amazingly, people devote time, energy and wealth to these monsters, HOPING to put them in charge.

    How can I be proud of my country when I’m so deeply ashamed of my species?

    During the presidential campaign of 1928, a circular published by the Republican Party claimed that if Herbert Hoover won, there would be “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Well, it’s 1928 all over again, and I think the Republican Trump shouldn’t be too chicken to give us pot, and sex robot car mechanics in every garage. Just add pot and robots to the growing list of entitlements, and presto!

    Capitalism isn’t the problem, numbskulls.

    #36631
    John
    Participant

    Re: CAPITALISM is the only system that truly works.
    Re: SOLUTION To solve this problem

    1) There’s no such thing as capitalism or socialism. There’s only the smart-n-savvy people manipulating the less smart-n-savvy people resulting in the smart-n-savvy people winning.

    2) When you put the word “true” in front of an ISM or philosophy it becomes a religion (eg There hasn’t been TRUE [communism, socialism, anarchism, pick-your-ism] because [fill in country that tried it] [fill in why it wasn’t TRUE].)

    3) To implement your 10 points requires a government strong enough to deal with (confront) the smart-n-savvy people; which means after doing so you don’t have TRUE capitalism either (and the smart-n-savvy people always run the government anyway, so why would they take-on the smart-n-savvy people; it’s the same crowd).

    Sorry, the only truth is that the smartest-n-savviest people always win (regardless of the worthless “ISM” name used). They capture the government, form monopolies, and create BS for the dumb-n-clueless about how great things are.

    #36632
    zerosum
    Participant

    @ john

    I like your point # 1

    I would add that secrecy/knowledge would be needed to take advantage of other people.
    The web is an equalizer.

    #36633
    Patricia
    Participant

    For any Country to be run successfully there needs to be a combination of capitalism, communism and socialism.. When anyone of those isms becomes paramount then the country starts to fail. Certainly in my country, New Zealand, since around 1984 capitalism has become paramount and that has caused a deterioration in the standard of living. Certainly some people have benefited but not the majority. Hopefully the new Government will start to rctify it but it will take a long time. So much damage has been done.

    #36635
    Nassim
    Participant

    Anyone who calls what there is at present in New Zealand “Capitalism” is in for a rude awakening.

    #36636
    Patricia
    Participant

    Nassim, what we have experienced, in the name of neo liberalism over the last forty years is definitely a form of capatilism that we never had expetienced before.

    #36644
    SteveB
    Participant

    Capitalism=trees
    Exchange belief=forest

    The game won’t end on its own, merely reset. It can only be ended by a critical mass of people who understand that it is more trouble than it’s worth.

    #36646
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Over time the system has become as far away from Capitalism as is possible to be. They claim the failure of Capitalism, then proceed in their own words an examples to highlight a hundred trillion, possibly a quadrillion of market interventions worldwide, naming central banks, bond control, stock buybacks, etc. What did I just read on $400k tax incentives per employee to attract Amazon’s new HQ? And Pa’s Diner in Muncie is going to get a $400k incentive for each busboy? No? That’s not Capitalism.

    Practically speaking, if you make employees expensive, like France or using Obamacare, and you make capital equipment free with 0% money then you guarantee, you force, on pain of instant bankruptcy, you demand, coerce, and enforce mass unemployment and the replacement of man with robots. It took $100T bailout and $10s of Trillions a year in interest rate suppression to insure that happens. Does that sound like it’s happening naturally? Does that sound like a free market? 90% of the NYSE is below the 200dma. But you’re going to “wealth distribute” from the 10 remaining companies — most of which like Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, have never made a single day’s profit — back to the people Tesla just destroyed with robots and autonomous cars? And since those 10 companies and their brethren SET the policy, TOOK the $100 Trillion in subsidies, and DEVASTATED their entire host populations, they’re going to say, “Oh sure pal, take all the profits I don’t have and never made, and set up a UBI. It’s the least I can do.” No, Tesla, Amazon, Excellus, they take UBI FROM the people at the point of a gun. That’s how and why they exist at all. If government didn’t steal for them, they’d collapse. Mussolini had a name for this system.

    Newsflash: Unemployment, Welfare, the Dole, was never about helping the poor. If they ever wanted to help the poor, they’d just stop stealing from them. Illegally. With bribery, fraud, extortion and graft. ”Welfare” is about protecting the Rich Protecting them from having the poor come over to their neighborhood and burn their house down. It’s a payoff, hush money, a racket. Let me say again, They do not care at all, in any way, in the slightest about the poor, their life or death or suffering. The sale of their men into desperation, opiates, suicide, violence, into the Army, and the sale of their women into rape, pedophilia or prostitution is an active side benefit to be actively encouraged. Think I’m kidding? Visit Greece, Chicago, Akron, or Manchester. That’s why you want a UBI: you’ll really have them by the balls then because anyone who ISN’T on the dole will be instantly be priced out and die in a box, just like happened to honest farmers when farm subsidies started. So let’s not have a sanctimonious discussion about “helping” anyone, Varoufakis. If they cared they wouldn’t murder Greeks, much less Syrians. You of all people know power structures help no one but themselves. Ever. In history. That’s why you want them as small as possible, not ever-larger. OUT of the market, not in it. It’s been 100 years, can we stop doing the same wrong thing now? Just ’cause it has backfired and increased wealth disparity 100 times in a row?

    PM of NZ is a gold-framed example to all: after decades of standard Democratic Socialism lite which has all the interventions above, after those 50 years of tax subsidies, 0% rates, and market rigging have driven housing prices in AU and NZ to the highest on earth, locking out a generation and holding them as indentured servants, holding both nations hostage to some form of financial terrorism, she finds the PROBLEM to be the market and the ANSWER to be more government, more intervention, more market rigging. Miss, we have 0% interest rates worldwide and purchases exceeding $100B a month for 10 years, and that is the free market? More than 100% of stock prices are from spiraling debt from rigged 0% rates. Draghi and Abe have bought up their ENTIRE markets. Is that somehow inadequate to you? Requiring more control, MORE intervention? I’m sorry, what “Capitalism” was it you were talking about? Because with no price for money, no possible failure, and government choosing E.V.E.R.Y winner and loser from Beijing to Berlin, we don’t have that. But she has to say it, because the alternative is to say, “We screwed up. You don’t need me, you don’t need government. Honestly, we sociopathic screw-ups need LESS power, to do LESS for you, and do more for yourselves, like honest men and neighbors.”

    And your solution? We’re going to “Redistribute wealth?” MNC’s already don’t pay any taxes, ‘hon. Billionaires already pay practically zero taxes. If anything, the taxpayers pay THEM, in bailouts, in monopolies, in S&P futures levitation, in 0% rates that advantage only the 0.001%, probably less than 100,000 total people. So I don’t think raising a 30% tax rate they don’t pay, to a 90% tax rate they don’t pay, will make any difference. They didn’t pay it in 1965 either, that’s why the Beatles moved to the U.S. and why the French have left Paris now. But I’m sure since as they admit, the rich own the government, they’ll be sure to tax themselves good and hard this time and make themselves not rich any more. Breathtaking.

    Boghosian is nearly so. He ran numbers from 1989? Gee, why not since Thursday last? That data set is probably just an artifact of one era’s fashion, one flow of tax policy, of one or two Administrations. In short, it means bupkis. You’d have to run at least 2 Kondratieff waves of 72 years to know anything this big. All it means is, yes, when rich people are allowed to bribe and murder at will, — with entire armies killing a million civilians each by invading 15 countries if they so choose – can print money freely, run competitors out by law, shift 3-5% of total GDP to themselves each year, they can indeed collect a lot of money. And you think tax policy, redistribution will fix this? Are you for real? And this is because, like apparently everybody else, he actually believes we live within 1,000 miles of a Capitalist system, anywhere on earth, east or west. Bruce, neither trickle down or trickle up is going to work if the oligarchs own the government and can bribe, collude, arraign, and murder at will. But he’s set to give the bribers and murderers ever more power to “fix things” by redistributing wealth away from themselves. Sure pal. Just this time.

    Leads to the next conclusion: The society is not the government. They are not the same thing. Society will decide what governments, what oligarchs are permitted to do, what their incentives are. Right now, like Boghasian and Ardern, society is working tirelessly to give the violent, oppressive, extractive force more violence and more force and wonder why there is yet more extraction. They, with society, are applauding every underhanded, illegal, immoral payoff and act of violence, and lying, cheating and stealing to give the liars, cheaters, and stealers more power. Until that changes, it won’t matter what you do.

    But please for the love of things holy, let’s not call this “Capitalism”, shall we?

    #36647
    ₿oogaloo
    Participant

    Now that was an inspired rant.

    #36648
    seychelles
    Participant

    It doesn’t matter what ism with which we waste our time playing silly word games.
    Our single most pressing problem is to greatly reduce the population of humans on Earth by moral and proactive means. Why do we keep ignoring this “elephant on the sofa” until the only means available is by acutely increasing the death rate?

    #36649
    earth999
    Participant

    Jacinda Ardern is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing ??? ” She is just a paid agent of london city…???

    https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2017/10/17/kiwi2_0.png

    Whatever, she should decide does she want to be a fashion model or labor leader ?? LOL …. She can’t be both …

    Establishment trickster !!!!

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