Debt Rattle May 15 2014: There Are No Markets Anymore
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Arthur Siegel Farmhands drinking beer, Jackson, Michigan Fall 1941 It’s a fun day in finance so far today. Eurozone growth is not going anywhere, but
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle May 15 2014: There Are No Markets Anymore]I don’t know whether I’m going crazy, or the world is any more. I read most of the same articles you do. Why does it seem so few of us notice? Or care? There are less than 10,000 reads on most Zero Hedge articles. A really good one gets 30,000. I feel like part of a very small subset of people who notice all of this. It’s better than being a lone tinfoil hatter. I guess mostly it happened because the people in charge got so good at propaganda. If a nice looking person on TV smiles and says it, then it must be true. Very few people question anything they hear. One keeps wondering how much longer it can continue? Or are we the crazy ones thinking it has to collapse?
khiori – good questions. You’re not crazy; you’re just ahead of everyone else in seeing the moral decay. Probably more intelligent, more questioning.
“…we prefer this propaganda illusion to the harsh reality.
Why? Because half of us are getting a direct check, benefit or payment from the state. Over 61 million people get a check from Social Security, over 50 million draw Medicare benefits, another 50 million get Medicaid benefits, 47 million receive SNAP food stamp benefits, 22 million people work directly for the state on all levels, millions more work for government contractors that are effectively proxies of the state, millions more receive Federally funded extended unemployment, retirement checks, Section 8 housing benefits, and so on.
Orwell underestimated the power of complicity. Once a citizen receives a direct payment from the state, the state has purchased their complicity, for no matter how much that citizen may complain privately about the state, he or she will never risk the payment/benefit by resisting the state in a politically meaningful way. […]
We don’t hate Big Brother; we don’t care about Big Brother or the fear-mongering or the rewriting of history or any of the rest of it, as long as the state’s money flows to our individual account. Our complaints are as hollow as the state’s financial “facts.”
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug13/1984-improved8-13.html
And the wealthy aren’t going to complain because they made the game, rigged it in their favor and are making out like bandits. Bread and circuses, and lots of propaganda. If food and oil prices rise very much more, though, we may start to hear some noise from ordinary folk. It seems every time I go to the store now, someone mentions how high the food prices are.
I actually think that people would care more if they knew more, but the media is bought too, and they’re just not getting the information they need. That Frontline piece a few days ago on the NSA was brilliant (second part next week). If there were more programs like that, people would begin putting two and two together, but they’d have to be good in order to pry them away from their iphones.
As Jim Quinn said, people are held in check pretty tightly: “Technology is used by the state as a means of control, surveillance, censorship, and bilking the populace of their wealth. And if you don’t like it, the IRS, DHS, FBI, CIA, BLM, HHS, or some other three letter government agency will harass, arrest, fine, or kill you for not ‘cooperating’.”
I think the people who visit financial blogs are a diverse lot: some have lost and they’re angry, some just want to know what’s happening so they can benefit, others are worried about their country and the loss of its laws, some for their children. But to awaken the masses, something significant will have to happen. When they lose, when they feel some pain, look out! It’s going to come, and the elite know this too, otherwise they wouldn’t be gearing up for it like they are.
Hi Khiori
You’re crazy – but look at what normal is!!! Being crazy is healthier – for my part sometimes I have to take a break from reading economic news, because all it does is confirm what I already know in general, even thou there is always something new that surprises me and I didn’t know. But all this information just buildings up inside of you and you want to find someone, anyone to discuss it with, and that’s when you realise you’re crazy – because there is no one else to discuss it with!
What is normal? What is crazy? I had thought I was normal, but I’ve had people tell me I’m crazy. People younger than 50 likely think this bubble world is normal because that is all they have known, but us older folks remember differently. I guess being normal or crazy depends on one’s life experiences.
“…we prefer this propaganda illusion to the harsh reality.
Why? Because half of us are getting a direct check, benefit or payment from the state.
Eh, no. And honestly, not close.
Optimism bias is a deeply embedded part of the human mind, which has nothing to do with a government or what it hands out. It goes back way before there were governments.
The clinch is in defining reality as ‘harsh’. If we could convince people that the new reality is not as bad as they think, they would be much more likely to jump in. But people want what they have, not what they could have, and the longer they cling on to the illusion that what they have now can be maintained, the harder the new reality will be, both in perception and in reality.
Our brains are “organized” in such a way that they become self-defeating if not self-destroying. And maybe that’s an evolutionary thing. Maybe that’s the one trait that will keep our numbers in check. Still, though that has a whiff of optimism in it, it would be a huge threat too to those alive now, so it won’t wash. The best thing for the planet would be for you to leave, it’s not a popular theme.
“Maybe that’s the one trait that will keep our numbers in check. Still, though that has a whiff of optimism in it, it would be a huge threat too to those alive now, so it won’t wash. The best thing for the planet would be for you to leave, it’s not a popular theme.”
The best thing for the planet is for us not to have egos. Without ego, individuals demands of the planet would decline. Hopefully we could then mange the societal change, as we would all be willingly letting go of, celebrate even, the loses. Just “to leave” (which it may come to), shouldn’t ever be a popular theme, because it is no more advanced than people “just living”. It would be a continuation of our failure.
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