Re-Visiting The Economy: A Riveting Tale of Buzz-Words and Unkillable Myths

Macro Economics

The biggest surge/spike of hits that this blog ever received was in September of the Year 2011 when I wrote on the subject of Economy.

Here: My Mind on Economy and Economy on My Mind

It's a very silly article which sort of pokes fun at the absurdity of today's human world by attempting to create humor by using examples from a very old video game. The conclusion attempts to compare the concept of "Economy" to the concept of a giant dinosaur.

I'm not trying to offend when I poke fun at things, you know. I just don't think any topic should have a sacredness surrounding it. I don't think religion should, I don't think nationalism should...and I don't think a concept as presently in-style as "economy" should have any sacredness devoted to it either.

The concept of Economy is becoming the new religion of the times. It will or already has become the flavor of the week in our ever-transgressing human timeline. The results of elections in most countries are decided by how a politician talks about the Economy. Re-wind to 500 years ago, rulers and rule-makers were decided by how a person talked about Religion.

Now, we look back at the way things worked in the 1400s and laugh. We think, "wow they really trusted some king because he said he was sent down from heaven by some whacky god? Haha." Or we think, "holy crap, they really honestly believed that someone lived in the sky and watched over the earth? What a bunch of dorks."

Fast-Forward to 500 years from now and people will be saying the same thing about us. They might say, "Wow, those morons created a currency system based on shiny metals and then let the whole system take over and control their lives? Wow, that's stupid." Or maybe people in 2513 will say something like, "Holy crap, they used to elect their rulers by which ones used the cutest buzz-words to describe their currency system? What a bunch of dweebs"

Similar to Religion and similar to Nationalism...the notion of "Economy" has to be routinely subjected to satirical jabs or barbs to ensure that people never take it too serious or extreme.

Economy as Religion / Economy as Nation

The land of Economy is as much make believe as the lands in our minds that exist when we attempt to conceptualize Religion or Nation.

In the magical land of economy a great benevolent force known simply as "the Market" watches over us and makes sure we never come to harm. The Market will solve all problems, it will cure your aches and pains, it will make your penis 3 inches larger (or your breasts on cup size larger). The Market will never hurt you...it's your friend. You can pray to the Market...you can even ritually sacrifice small creatures to it.

Hey, if you were Ronnie Reagan you could hire an astrological see-er and have her cast astrological projections on the mysterious Market (100% true occurrence). If you live in the Asia, you can read the Book of Changes and throw sticks on the ground to try and figure out the future of the Market.

The funny thing is, just like the deities in all Religions and the heroes of all Nations...there never was and never will be a divine force known as The Market. A "free market" is literally people doing whatever they want...and you can tell by how many white collar rules and laws exist that no one can do whatever they want.

The "Market" is rigidly chained together by texts, books, sheets, and copy books of LAWS. The businesses who talk about how "free" the "market" is are the same businesses who spend billions of dollars to lobby the governments of the world to change laws to customize the playing field in their favor.

Lawyers are CEOs best friends. Don't believe me? How come mp3s and other formats are so easy to share online within seconds...yet it is 100% illegal to put an mp3 on the internet for others to save to their computer terminals? Because someone lobbied to the government of your country to make a law which disallows you from doing that. The simplest way for human A to share a song he/she likes with a human B is just to send the mp3 to their computer....but that's 100% illegal. When the simplest way of doing what you want to do becomes illegal then you know something is up.

Yo, fucking Apple has paid lawyers to patent EVERYTHING. Another company can barely even offer a service using the alphabet without being attacked by Apple's lawyers. They paid billions of dollars to get the patent on things you wouldn't even believe could be patented.

In this blueprint, Apple applies to patent "turning a phone 45 degrees."

Apple is not a huge success because of how "free" some made-up buzz-word is. Fact is, it (and many other businesses) have meticulously carved away the laws it doesn't like through litigation, lobbied to customize the rules to conform to their strategies, and purchased through bribery the patents on concepts that cannot be patented by any sane judge.


Buzz Words

Certain words, even simple and obvious words like "market," take on a new aura of ridiculousness in order to surround a concept in a multi-colored smoke.

Lingo, terminology, language. Whatever you want to call it.  Words that develop some sort of hidden character behind them are very important in large scale doctrines.

For a taste of full-on business man lingo try some of these random bull shit generator sites:
(just hit the button on the sites and be filled with business wisdom)


Gobbledygook:  http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/gobbledygook-generator.html

Corporate Jargon: http://www.changedesigns.net/public/other/leadership-jargon.html


The one that always bugged me in these retarded "meetings" and/or "evaluations" with so-called "super-visors" was the term "you gotta think outside the box!" This term has become so over-used in the last decade that society might want to think about officially retiring it. A standard business meeting with your super visor at work probably goes something like this:


Team Leader: Hey Team! The higher ups just told me our productivity is way down this quarter!

Team: Oh.

Team Leader: Ya! It's really bad you guyz! This quarter we're trying to work directly with the customers to facilitate theirs and the movements of the stakeholders so that we can change the way we project and transform accounts so the innovations are maximized! But, it seems you guyz are slipping and we can't achieve our mid-year goal. Any suggestions on how we can remedy this?

Team: No....but something tells me you have one.

Team Leader: Ya! I do! Get ready for my trouble-shootin', problem solvin' solution of the century you guyz!!!!

Team: Okay...

Team Leader: This coming quarter....we just have to start THINKING OUTSIDE DA BOX!

Team: Sigh.


That's the truest definition of a buzz word. It doesn't solve anything, it doesn't help anything, and it ultimately doesn't mean anything to anyone. It's easy to talk like this and the sad thing is people will actually think you're smart.

To truly be a fire-brand preacher in the religion of giving the business...you need to watch that Gordon Gecko movie a few times, buy a nice three piece suit, and fill your brain with enough buzz words to last you through the next decade (don't worry they never age or go out-of-use or obsolete because they never meant anything in the first damned place).


How 'bout we Make some New Buzz Words?

Look, I honestly believe one thing that will strengthen any economy is raising the minimum wage. If you look at common stats that economists look at like Consumption, Savings, and others you will quickly realize that no matter what country you live in...

...Consumer Spending is at least 2/3 of your country's gosh darned economy.

No joke. No matter how many times you're told otherwise by some lobby group or your government...your county's GDP is over 60% internal consumer spending.

Knowing that, what do you think wrinkly old guys like Allan Greenspan or Ben Bernacke (or the equivalent wrinkly old dudes in your country) do when they notice a drop in consumer spending (i.e. the consumption of consumer goods in a nation)?

Do they,

A) Increase minimum wage to increase the spending cap of millions of their citizens to create an influx of consumption.

or

B) Lower interest rates to almost 0% so everyone can BORROW money and go into DEBT to buy the food and items they want/need in order to artificially create an influx of consumer consumption.

The answer in real life is, of course, (B) they lower interest rates so people borrow money to buy the homes, vehicles, and other items. The down side to this of course is the average debt of the average consumer in your nation synergetically rises in reaction to this.

While if they went the course of (A) and increased Wages to create an increase in Spending...it would not have been an artificial increase but a tangible increase.

It seems quite logical, yet anyone who speaks about increasing minimum wage in any nation is met with scorns of "yer a commie" or shit like that...even though it makes pretty ligit and economically structural formulaic sense.

Thus, we need to create a buzz word...I guess. Arguing to raise minimum wage in a nation should not be referred to in those terms any longer. It should be referred to as Maximizing Consumer Consumptional Power.

You think I'm joking? I'm not joking. Hey, if you go around town going "hey let's raise minimum wage!" you're gonna be called an ingrate, a commie, a bum, and a hundred other things. Yet, if you walk around town going "hey you guyz! I suggest our nation think outside the box here and attempt to Maximize it's Consumer Consumptional Power!!" you probably wouldn't even get one angry look.

Business buzz words are so ingrained in today's society that you might even be met with awe and wonder when you phrase it like that.

Conclusion

A large central core of humans abide by the religion of economy in today's dog-eat-rat world of worlds, and word on the street is...

...you gotta learn the language of business no matter how dumb and absurdly retarded it is.

Raise Consumptional POWER.

Opinions on the Occupy Movement (part 1)

on War of Imagery

The McMedia always seems to refer to the occupiers as not knowing what they are doing or what they want. To me, this movement in a nutshell is an awareness campaign to highlight global economic corruption, and I think it's at least getting a dialogue going on the matter.

Observers of the movement, for the most part, don't involve themselves in that dialogue, they choose to let their conclusions fall into two simple categories. They conclude either that:

A: "look at all these bums camping in the street, don't they know the economy made them those cool Ipads? They should get off the street and go pay homage at Steve Jobs tomb and beg forgiveness"















B: "Why are the police arresting them and beating them up? Are we actually living in a police state? This sucks."
















These are the two most popular opinions and with good reason. These are the two groupings of images you see most concerning the Occupy Movement...and it has literally become a war of images.

Concerning conclusion "A", I do feel despite Apple's horrid sweat shop labor practices that they are indeed a ligitamate business that researches technology and creates employment. Personally, I have never owned an Apple product (except for a free download of Quicktime to watch .mov files) but I don't think it makes the Occupiers hypocrites for having these products.

I think conclusion "B" is a little more damning than "A", holding down men and women and beating them is a much more shocking image than some pictures of I-shit. The police make themselves look like the worst possible sort of thug when they act like that. They look like government ordained street gangs out there. (Edit: These images were mostly spread by foreign news networks to make America look bad it seems).

on Ronnie-boy Paul

Ronnie-boy

The most odd development in the Occupy Movement (in the US anyway) has been the cult following which has sprung around Bible Belt politician Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is very fringy, and a beloved member of the John Birch Society. On abortion for example, he believes the moment the sperm hits the egg it is considered a human (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctity_of_Life_Act).

In 1964 he wrote congress to convince them not to pass the Civil Rights Act which gave equal rights and opurtunities to black Americans. Both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X died trying to make these human right gains and help blacks to not be treated like second class citizens. It's very odd to be against equal rights. In fact, in 2004 on the anniversary of the Civil Right Act...Ron Paul addressed congress with this:

"...contrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty."

(Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul188.html)

Passing a bill which prohibited businesses from refusing to serve black customers apparently was bad according to Ron Paul because it limited those businesses' freedom. Give me a break.

Take another example of the John Birch Society's interpretation of "freedom." In the 1970's women caught the equal rights fever that was going around and various women's groups wanted a 1923 law proposed by Alice Paul (one of the chicks who spear headed the women suffrage movement in 1920 which won female Americans the right to vote) to be ratified. This law was the Equal Rights Amendment which simply stated that, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." (http://www.house.gov/house/Amendnotrat.shtml). The main opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment was the John Birch Society who felt that this amendment would "limit freedom."

pronounced: Shlaff-Lee

The John Birch Society assigned the loveable Phyllis Schlafly to be the leader of the anti-ERA squad, and the main rhetorical claim used was the same old "it will limit your freedom" which is basically the JBS mantra. Elizebeth Kolbert gives a good summary of Schlafly's opposition to the ERA in a 2005 New Yorker article,

"American women, she wrote in the Phyllis Schlafly Report, were blessed to live in a country where Christian traditions of chivalry still held—'a man’s first significant purchase (after a car) is a diamond for his bride'—and where free enterprise was continually improving life for the weaker sex. 'The great heroes of women’s liberation are not the straggly haired women on television talk shows and picket lines,' she asserted, but 'geniuses' like 'Clarence Birdseye, who invented the process for freezing foods.' Why, Schlafly demanded, should women 'lower' themselves to equal rights 'when we already have the status of special privilege?' Leaders of the pro-E.R.A. campaign found it hard to take such arguments seriously: according to one contemporary account, copies of the Report became collectors’ items among feminists, acquired for their comic value."

(Source: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/11/07/051107crbo_books) 

The John Birch Society sees change of any sort as the collapse of its image of America. The U.S.A. of yore is a story book in their minds, a picturesque beautiful place with eagles and all kinds of nice shit. Their vision of U.S. history in their cute little brains doesn't include images of the slavery, or civil war, or public hangings, or the KKK....just eagles and frozen food. They have nostalgia for an age which never existed.

Ron Paul wants the gold standard back for that reason alone, because that's the way it used to be when America was "normal." He wants everything back to the old ways when negroes and women couldn't vote and everyone prayed to Jesus...to Ron that's "normal." Returning to the "old ways" isn't going to stop corruption, I'm sorry but returning to gold is not the answer.

Having Ron Paul as president of a country would be really fucked up.

My Mind on Economy and Economy on My Mind

The economy is pretty bad right now, in fact it's the worst it has been in a very long time. What's up economy? What's your deal anyway?

My Economy Teacher

This is going to sound stupid, but my foremost understanding of the Economy is not from the Macro and Micro classes I took in school but from an old Super Nintendo game called Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons. I used to play this addictive Koei game in my halcyon days as a human youth and I can straight up assure you that I learned more about how the global economy works from this game than I did from school. I played the game as a young Turk named Ali Vezas living in the 16th century, me and Ali bought a beat up ship with our best friend Salim and proceeded to sail around the world and become gazillionaires.

We talk about the term "globalization" as if it's something new, but the economy has been globalized since we invented ocean-faring vessels. We still to this day ship goods by boat, nothing has changed since the 16th century. The boats got bigger and faster, but aside from that nothing is different from the times when me and Ali conquered the world together.

Koei's simulation of the global economy of the era was quite interesting. To keep you a bit more on your toes they wrote an algorithm into the game which fluctuated the price index at all port cities, but not at random, it fluctuated by how much money was coming in and out of the port. So me and Ali came up with this great idea, what we did was:

1. We Bought all the goods at one port city (call it Port A) in order to put money into that port and strengthen its economy. Now, since more money was in the port (currency used in this era was silver ingots), naturally money was worth less at this port (experts call this "inflation").

2. So then we sold all that shit we bought in Port A into another port city (let's call it Port B) and we didn't even really care if we made a profit on it. All we cared about was that this city now has spent money to buy the goods and that its currency is now more scarce then it previously was (i.e. their money is worth more).

3. Now we kept doing this over and over ad nauseum until Port A's currency was rock bottom and Port B's currency was through the roof. Then we just bought all the cheap goods from Port B (who's money was still worth something and sold their goods cheap) and sold them to Port A (who's money was as plentiful as water and would pay through the teeth for goods because you can't eat/drink/do-anything with a stupid thing like money) and we made a KILLING!

Three easy steps to motherfuckin' success! Me and Ali were buying Art from the port in Athens and selling it to the port in Istanbul, then bought carpets with the profit and sold them into Athens' now saturated market. We were swimming in dough, it was really sweet!

So there we were bustin' around Istanbul flashing our coins around town and bragging about how we discovered Lake Titicaca, when the great Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mr. Suleiman himself, hears about how chill and rich we are and calls us up to this palace. He's all like:



Sultan: "Yo bros! You're stinking rich! That's sick son!

Us: "Ya guy! We're buying all this faggy Art shit from Greece and selling it to the hip cats here!

Sultan: Sick!

Us: Ya!

Sultan: But yo, check it. Why even buy that Art fag shit for? Why not just give Athens money for free!?

Us: What?

Sultan: Yo, they'll have so much money in the port that it won't be worth anything at some point.

Us: ?????

Sultan: Dude! If you just dump money into the port it'll completely saturate their economy, get it?


Us: That's a brilliant idea guy! Let's just give them money for free! Sick! Dude, you're the smartest guy.


Sultan: Straight up. Here take 100 silver ingots and go dump them in there and other ports. For real gangstas!


Us: Thanks man!

Over 2000!?

Why didn't we think of that? Our goal is just to drive down their currency, so why even bother buying their dumb art garbage for? Let's just throw money at them for free until their price index collapses and they start paying through the teeth for any commodity. Seriously, what are they gonna do with a bunch of money? You can't eat money or do anything with money. Plus, because we were giving these people money for free they loved us and even gave us tax free permits to trade with their port without even paying taxes to their local government.

At this point we were selling Athens (or you could do it with any two ports in the game really, Athens and Instanbul were just near where they start Ali Vezas) Carpets from Instanbul at insanely high mercantilistic prices. They had more money than water...the trouble is...it wasn't worth diddley squat.

Then we thought...why not do this all over the globe at every fucking port and just leave a few ports unsaturated to buy cheap goods from? Every port (except a select random few who's currency was kept strong so we could buy cheap goods) was saturated with currency overkill and would pay us insane sums of money for our cheap goods. Needless to say, me and Ali were literally gazillionaires.

I paid Luka 10 pennies per year

Then Ali's like, "yo, guy...what do we do with all this fucking money 'scro?". Good question, what do we do with a ridiculous amount of money like this? We can buy whatever cheap shit we need whenever we want because commodities are cheap. We can pay anybody we want to work for us for table scraps because many ports are so saturated that they'll work for anything (we were paying our crew in bread and water and our captains 10 gold pieces per year). I concluded that we should put all this money into a bank in one of the ports and let it grow interest so we can keep watching the numbers get higher and higher. Do you know how much interest 10% of a gazillion is?

Basically, we globally crashed the entire economy then took all the money back and let it sit in a bank just to watch it grow for no other reason than some sick numeric fetish to see how big the number could get.

To buy a bag of peanuts...

How 'Bout in Real Life?

Could something as deranged as that be occurring in real life? Currency is a human made invention and runs on algorithms just as the one used by Koei to simulate a world economy. Are real world humans trying desperately to find little loopholes in the system that will make them rich?

A great historic example (this one had no evil motive behind though) of a market being ruined simply by adding money to it is the case of King Mansa Musa of Mali. Old Mansy took a trip down to Mecca to get down with the Islam in 1324 and brought a few too many gifts from Mali with him,

Ingots

"Mansa Musa organized a massive pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324. Included in his large entourage were hundreds of servants, thousands of soldiers, and eighty camels bearing twenty four thousand pounds of gold. Most of which he gave away to strangers in Mecca and Medina. In Cairo he gave every officer of the court a large amount of gold, causing acute inflation in the Cairo market. It took twelve years before the gold market recovered."

-http://www.kurahulanda.com/west-african-kingdoms/west-african


The currency system was designed to help people coexist, to improve the barter system and let people with different specialized jobs create something and then trade their extra stuff for other things from other folks with different specialized jobs. Has the currency system become nothing more than a giant mess of loopholes being exploited and then re-exploited for the sole reason of watching numbers get bigger in a bank account? Is most of the money that exists in the system (the life blood of the economy) sitting in some bank somewhere?

You ever looked at how the Commodity Exchange works? Basically,

1. A farmer makes a smooth batch of corn
2. Around 12 to 1000 people buy and sell this corn back-and-forth from their computer terminals
3. Finally the guy who really wants the corn to use it to make something purchases it and receives the corn.

The second step of the process is where guys like me and Ali pull all sorts of shtick and exploit so many silly loopholes in the system. It's completely unnecessary in the process but it gives people the chance to make a profit or at least saturate or de-saturate a market.

What about the stock markets? Well since they got them all over and in different time zones the traders can play the games 3 times in one day,


1. They open the NYSE in the morning and millions of traders buy low and sell high.
2. Then they open the LSE and the same money from the same traders is used over again for another round.
3. Next they open the Tokyo Stock Exchange and they play with the same money again.
4. When the millions of traders had enough they put that money back in its coffin...the limitless Swiss Bank Accounts in everyone's favorite "neutral" country...where it rests until the next day of trading.

It's not just one person exploiting the loopholes in the current system that causes all the problems in the world. There are millions of Ali Vezas's all over the globe in every city exploiting loopholes and together they literally ruin the world. I'd say 99.5% of people in the world today are Luka Ullmans, having to work all year for pennies just to buy overpriced goods they farmed/created/manufactured themselves to begin with.

Luka sailed through Africa and fought Moquele Mubembe with his bare hands to make 10 bones.

Is Moquele the myth? Or is "Economy" the REAL MYTH? Am I Right?