Friday, October 3, 2008
Modern Society - Episode FinanceIt is an ultra-consumerist society we are living in. To keep the money flowing, we MUST buy all kinds of shit. Trade by definition is the exchange of money between people. A country that doesnt do trade is in trouble. Frankly, it is ridiculous that the world is in a huge crisis simply because the virtual cash isn't changing hands quickly enough. Using a warped version of the blank state thought experiment, imagine that you are an alien with absolutely no prior knowledge of Earth. Wouldn't you be utterly confused as to why people panic when numbers they have created moves down? I mean, 'OMG the earth is cracking!', 'OMG everybody is turning blue in the face and dying for no reason!' or 'OMG the sea's going to flood Holland!' Fine. Panic. 'OMG some numbers are falling!' Hmmm.
Two financial corporate managers are walking down a road. They see a piece of dog shit. One bets the other $250,000 that the latter wont eat the dogshit. The latter calculates the trade-off and agrees. He eats it and recieves $250,000 from the first guy. Then they see another piece of dogshit. The second guy bets $250,000 that the first guy wont eat it. Once again, a long series of cost-benefit follows, and the first guy agrees. He eats it and receives $250,000 in check as well.The first guy goes, 'Jimmy, we both ate dog poop and neither of us are better off, it was not a good piece of business.'Jimmy replies, 'But James, at least we have each involved in $500,000 worth of trade.Yes it is joke in rather poor taste, but the sad thing is that it actually make sense...
What is a financial crisis anyway? Where is the money going to? There are 2 scenarios here, either somebody is gaining from everybody's losses, or everybody is losing. We must stupid fools to create a system wherein we can all lose, which must be the pinnacle of non-intelligence. And if somebody is gaining from the'crisis', then aha, so its a crisis is caused by some selfish bastard. Who is that most likely to be? The CEOs, the owners of the big big corporations. And what do we do? We pump their pockets full of tax-payer money to restart the cycle. Why the hell should American pay the big banks money for screwing up their savings and investments? Why? Because if they don;t, they get screwed even more. Aha. Irony right there.
Instead of having the top talents in our society working in the government or other sectors wherein thay can actually benefit us, they work in finanical institutes, wherein they manage all this virtual numbers that change hands in the virtual world of computers. In the crux of it, what do these financial people actually do? They most certainly don't produce anything, they actually offer us any solid service. What is happening is that they take money and throw it around to invest in other companies, whom in turn throw around that money to invest in other companies. what comes out of it? Money. Is there any practical use for money? No. you can't eat it, you can't get any entertainment value out of it, and you most certainly can't live in it.
Okay so the evil genuises of the world are flinging cash around at each other like nobody's business, getting paid much more than regular job people, and with absolutely nothing to show for it. So? Who cares as long as we can listen to the latest music and buy the coolest gadgets?
When you buy useless junk that big companies say that you need, you pump millions of currency into the big companies to throw at each other. Whe companies invest money in other companies, what happens next? The companies expand themselves, increase their production, allowing them to convince you that you their crap better, produce more crap to sell, and thus earning even more money to fling around, possibly even back at the first company. Meanwhile we all just sit around and pay them for shit that we didn't need.
Very nice.
What I am getting at here is that the modern capitalist-consumerism society is completely screwed up. Human resources wasted in management of the virtual 'resource' known as money. People whom don't produce anything as paid shitloads of money for sitting there and lending other people their shit load of money (Which is in fact a definition of capitalism, wherein capital is king). The rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer is the inescapable conclusion of capitalism.
Why do we persist in such a screwed up system then? It all very simple actually. Who controls the power in capitalist-democratic society. The governmetn that is funded by big companies, whom just happen to own about 1003147803298403849031 times what you own. Are they likely to change the system and lose their extragavant lifestyles? do kings abdicate when they feel they have become tyrants? Do lords give up their land when they see the people starve?
Don't worship those big wealthy tycoons. Most of them are out to suck you dry so that they can buy their 54657th mansion. To be fair though, what would you have done in that situation? This is a pitfall we created for ourselves. Ican alsmot foresee that in maybe 100 years time, we would be back in situation similar to a monarchy, with a few people control all the money, and everybody else trying to make a living off whatever electronic cash they have.
This post probably isn't very coherent. zzz. Tomorrow I bitch about the consumerism side.
C H R O N O I Z E D
11:10 PM
