Also, if OWS protesters are Capitalists, then what does it make Tea Partiers? The former ostensibly wants someone else’s money through government force, the latter to keep their own by reducing government force.

PL: The piece is about the artificiality of the labeling used by OWS critics. Of course your initial observation is subsumed in its general message. How couldn’t it be?

Tea Partiers are absolutely Capitalists. Just as much as the OWS people, and the bankers. They are, quite effectively, using their assets to create more wealth for themselves.

Now, if all they’re doing is protesting peacefully with the implicit threat of lost votes, that’s Democracy in action; but it’s not an economic exchange.

PL: Capitalism is using the capital you have to create more capital. Businesses sue each other and lobby for regulations to put one another out of business every day. This behavior is indistinguishable from a strike, or a protest, and it is accepted as a form of Capitalism.

There are no limits to Capitalism. To see it defined narrowly is to entirely miss the nature of the thing.

I’d argue most of the 18-25 year olds I know are the *first* to cling wildly to the left or right, and regurgitate the hot button issues the media promotes. I wonder what it will take for our generation to finally understand that we’ve inherited some formidable problems that are going to require a new way of thinking.

* Political science majors, amazingly, seem the most clueless about our real political problems

PL: “Bread and circuses” is the easy cynical answer. But that’s only half of it. Fifty percent of people are, well, idiots – easily bought off with gadgets and amusements. Their focus doesn’t stray anywhere beyond pop culture, and shit pop culture at that. The other fifty – the non-lowest-common-denominator – are the far more interesting of the two. They seem to think:

a. They can win the rigged game (some can, but more could if the rules were adjusted in a fashion that put us on a more sustainable economic trajectory);
b. Until it immediately impacts them (when it’s too late), it’s Someone Else’s Problem; and
c. There’s no solution.

When the bad Populist tax policies that follow these sort of economic resets are employed (and they will be), the bill will fall on the upper middle classes. Exactly the kids in the latter 50% a few years after graduation.

Better to deal with it now. But as many anthropologists far smarter than us have noted, most people, particularly in matters political, do nothing until a situation becomes dire. The majority of society tries desperately to hang onto the status quo, and when the govt can’t hold it for them through some policy fix anymore, they then pretend Everything Is Fine! At that point, it all goes to shit.

Don’t be afraid of what might happen when fearful stories about Greece defaulting hits the markets and our economy, or stories about any other priced-in events subject to doom and gloom discussion. Be afraid of what will follow periods of artificially-created calm. It’s when things seem too good to be true in light of the underlying data that something craters, a raft of bad news comes out suddenly, the curtain is lifted and emperor is found to be naked once more, and things get truly troubling.

We’re bullshitting ourselves in so many ways right now. Things could implode, and at shocking speed, and yet the surface appears somewhat placid. The perception management at work is amazing.

Well that’s a relief.

Picked up On The Road the original scroll, today. This is weeks before I graduate, take a 6 day trip to Vegas for the biggest electro music festival outside of Europe, then board a one-way to the Philipinnes. Here’s to life, dude.

PL: I love hearing stuff like this. Don’t turn around until you feel like you’ve seen everything you needed to see.

Salut… L’chaim… Na zdrowie!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_internet_rules_house_vote

It reminded me of what you were saying about crony capitalism. The only real medium where substance wins is being legislated into corporate shackles.

PL: You didn’t think the government was going to sit there and allow the Internet to remain in a state where large corporate players have difficulty mining profits from the thing, did you?

Corporate America had a difficult time finding business models that worked with fickle Internet consumers and audiences. They took a shot at a few, after they realized none could create the kind of sustained, predictable revenue they desired, they did the thing all good crony capitalists do: Bought an edge… Bought some politicians… They went and got DC to change the game.

PL: Green energy isn’t large enough to undo the process at hand. U6 under/unemployment will reach 25% in the next few years. (Some say it’s there already.)

The math is simple. Technology + robust population growth in cheap labor locales = less unskilled labor needed here. Some will say, “Oh, people have worried about that before and it never came to pass. Every technology winds up creating new jobs inevitably.” That’s true, but the important word there is “inevitably.” What happens in the interim – between the emergence of the technology and our use of it in a fashion that creates, rather than eliminates jobs – is the ugly story nobody wants to discuss.

You and I have the interesting luck to have been born into that interim period.

This is why America can’t make any social progress. We can’t reform our unhealthy and destructive food system. We can’t institute clean energy or end poisonous drilling practices. We can’t wrestle healthcare free from the insurance industry. We can’t end our murderous wars that fatten defense contractors. We can’t prosecute white collar criminals because of regulatory capture (read Matt Taibbi’s latest Rolling Stone article).

And of course, the ultimate corporate coup is our perpetual debt servitude. Sure, PL, you may be up to date on your mortgage, student loans, credit card, etc. But are you factoring in your share of national debt as an American taxpayer? It’s $44,900 per person; $91,500 per working adult. So even if you manage those other debts, your government is spending that additional money on your behalf, whether you like it or not. At what point have we ceased living for ourselves and begun living to enrich controlling interests?

I, for one, am terrified. The individual really has little control of their well-being in the face of these overwhelming forces. I vacillate between cynically embracing the predatory capitalist lifestyle and wanting to flee to some remote Tibetan monastery. Honestly, I’m so deep in the hole from doing the “right thing” and going to college that financially it might only make sense for me to start a fresh life abroad. At least I’d be at zero instead of in the red.

PL: You’re only controlled to the extent you’re not willing to accept the consequences of going off the grid. There are millionsof people who opt out and do their own thing every year. They tank their debts, jump off the merry go round and do what they like. It’s a tough life for them, but not much tougher than living under the corporate yoke.

It’s not so tough if you never go into debt. Somewhere right now, a guy with a finance degree is driving a parasailing boat off Maui. He’s never going to get the satisfaction of having been CEO of anything, or creating much wealth. But he’ll have been free. (Well, save some permitting issues and paying taxes…)

There are loads of people who’ve checked out all over the place, and as a person who’s spent his life around licensed professionals of all kind, I can assure you of this: Your doc, lawyer, accountant… They all dreaming of quitting and doing something simple. The only reason most of us don’t is they have families. They get caught up in the barbed wire of this bullshit American Dream and can’t get loose because they owe the kids a “stable upbringing.”

Your only wealth is time. I like my expensive stuff just fine, but if I get a terminal illness tomorrow, what’ll anyof it be worth? What will a title be worth? They change the name on the door when you die… Another guy takes the office and as important as you think you are, you’re forgotten. The only question that matters in the end isn’t “How productive were you?” but “Did you get the most out of your time?”

But then you should also take into account the fact that the average annual salary in the DC/Boston corridor is higher than $46k.

Not that I disagree with your general premise. Just your numbers. In that area, housing would eat up more of the money, then health insurance. Cell, Cable, Clothes would be lower-because they would have to be.

PL: Good point. But as we both acknowledge, this is a “six or half a dozen” thing. The costs shift around from place to place, but the point stays the same – for the average American, cost of a decent living is “too damn high.”

Like you once said, in the end, we’re all just shaved apes fighting over imaginary green pieces of paper. It’s amazing how the system we’ve developed around the pieces of paper could potentially crumble, sending the standard of living world-wide crashing down. Just goes to show you how stupid and greedy the shaved apes can be, I suppose.

Good stuff, man. Keep up the great work.

PL: I find it fascinating to watch the enormous efforts expended to keep the status quo in place. Any remaining conceit we had a real free market is forever destroyed. The only question now is how fictional we’ll become… how much a puppet show of central planners, propped up entirely with artificial means, we’ll be. People keep using the phrase, “When this mess is finally over,…” I don’t think it will ever be over. I think we’re in Socioeconomic Life 2.0: All Virtual. Any trend negatively impacting the political class and their largest benefactors, or a too big to fail sector of society (currently, pensioners and baby boomers who haven’t saved enough and as a result can’t concede any entitlements), will simply be adjusted out of existence via govt tinkering directly in the economy. And picking winners – aggressively, without shame.

Your math is funny here. I have (610 – 588) / 610 x 100% = 3.61 percent.

What’s worrying me is the focus on finance over industry. Sure, banks ensure a smooth flow of funds, but you can’t drive a bond or eat a vault. We’re efficient enough that there really aren’t jobs for the majority of people. I don’t know the answer, but it’s something I like to daydream about. Massive investments in next-generation infrastructure like high-speed and mag-lev trains, along with research into actually effective green energy? Huge push into space, with cheaper lift capability and a moon base and lunar space elevator? I don’t know. I do think that taking 100 billion a year from military corporate welfare that makes really advanced systems to destroy infrastructure to 100 billion in corporate welfare in infrastructure improvement or new industries like space that might not be that practical now, but can deliver huge benefits in the future would be better for our economic health in general.

PL: Good call. I took the .08% decline in overall debt listed in the article and placed it in the wrong spot. Or botched the English horribly. Either way, thank you for the correction.

Finance has eaten the country. It’s our obsession, but as you astutely note, when it becomes all we have and there’s nothing left to invest in, all that money becomes worthless. If the investor classes make millions in the US by funneling money into emerging markets to the point where nothing is built here anymore and taxes are jacked up by enormous percentages to pay for a bloated entitlement state that can’t find work, what achievement have we reached? I’m not fan of his left-leaning policies, but Robert Reich makes an excellent point: Who’s going to buy shit if we don’t have a middle class? Call it noblesse oblige, call it smart business, call it a “pigs get slaughtered” lesson… If we destroy the middle class, the country craters.

It’s tough, really, because a lot of the middle class deserves to lose. A guy who does nothing but oversee procedure and push paper should be thrown overboard to make way for someone who gives a fuck about life. But then, we need a lot of cattle to buy shit, and those middle managers piss a lot of money away at the mall… Catch 22, as always.