[ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians

[Jeff Davis]

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 11:04 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>...dealing drugs implies tax evasion, which really is
> illegal as all get out.  ...  If so, it would explain the hiring a
> string of tax evaders to help out in the whitehouse, and attempting to hire
> still more.

Spike, you're trying so hard to invent -- out of whole cloth,...out of
no cloth...out of thin air -- some sort of misdeed here.  You've got
Obama dealing, and then you've got him tax evading.  If you just had a
time machine, with the same striking dearth of evidence, you could
blame the Lindbergh baby kidnap/murder on him, claiming perhaps that
he wanted the ransom money in order to feed his habit.  This ain't
Dilbert, it's "The Far Side".

> Jeff suggested the income source was prostitution.

Not exactly.  JOKINGLY, I suggested that if you want to go all
Republican la la on us you could make a silly game out of conjuring up
an endless stream of alternative possibilities.  It seems I should
have started with alien abduction, since handsome, charming, Hawaiian
party guy clearly wasn't la la enough.

And, having thought a bit more about it, I think it high on the list
of reality-based explanations of how a guy with limited financial
resources could have experimented with coke in his teens.  He was
young, smart, handsome, with world-class people skills -- as
demonstrated by his stunning political achievements.  Such a
personality is going to have a social life.  Well duh.  And being such
a class act, will hang with others of similar "quality", who will no
doubt have among them individuals of financial means.  In short, the
more prosperous of his crowd supplied the party treats.  That's the
ticket.  I think Occam would agree

So wean yourself from the obsession with dissing him, and start
thinking about proposals for the new administration about how to
transition LockMart from death machine welfare queen to extropic
vanguard of new paradigm life-enhancing technologies.

...
> We must recognize that 2009 is a critical turning point in history, or
> rather it looks like it to me.

I'm inclined to agree, but the media over-hypes everything these days,
so I'm not sure.  "The sky is falling, the sky is falling" is a
time-tested strategy for getting eyeballs.  But the sky doesn't fall,
now does it?  Hard to tell what the real situation is when one is
carried along in an avalanche of bullshit.

> This isn't politics as usual, for it appears
> to me we are somehow pretending that all this wild spending does not need to
> be paid for.

A concern not raised when the shrub was spending trillions -- doubled
the national debt from 5 to 10 trillion -- on destruction: destruction
of Iraq and Afghanistan by bombs, destruction of the US by paying for
the bombs.

> But we will pay for it, repeatedly.  We are acting as though
> we can move on past the usual economics of scarcity, the notions societies
> have always carried.  Perhaps we can move past that *eventually* with some
> super advanced means of production, but in the mean time, we have
> corporations and capitalists that create wealth in the old fashioned way.

Indeed, this is the goose that lays the golden eggs.  Hoorah for that.
 But along with that comes the criminal minded who, in the older "old
fashioned way" look for any opportunity to game the system subverting
it into an unregulated and ***LEGAL*** Ponzi scheme slash casino.

> If we discourage those corporations and capitalists, it isn't clear to me
> what kind of future we are entering.

How are we discouraging them?  Taxing them to make them pay for the
misdeeds of their criminal brethren?  Oh, wait a minute, I forgot,
we're not taxing them, we're bailing them out, and then taxing the
working schmo, in perpetuity.  Same old same old.  And the
corporations and the wealthy just go on parasitizing the working man.

So I ask again, where's the discouraging?

> But it doesn't feel to me like the
> glorious techno-future we as extropian-minded people envisioned ten years
> ago.  We may find ourselves crushed by the burden of the interest alone on
> the debts we are running up in this and the next few years.


Crushed by debt or crushed by the collapse of the economic system,
it's still crushed.  But if you try to put out the fire that's burning
down the goose house (cf. "golden egg"), then maybe just maybe you
save the bird.  My personal view: the goose is cooked, we're over the
cliff headed for the sudden stop.  Game over.
>
> All businesses need to be bailed out or prevented from failing, rather just
> the opposite.  Governments must not attempt to repeal the business cycle.
> The US has just tripled our national debt attempting to prevent a recession.
> But that recession is coming anyway, in fact it will likely be much worse,
> partly because of the billions in taxpayer dollars have been dumped into GM
> and Crysler, which will likely fail anyway.  They must fail now: who would
> buy the cars, knowing the companies likely will not be around to service the
> warranty?

Well buy Toyotas, etc just like we buy Sony tvs.  Globalization means
global labor arbitrage, which means we reach economic equilibrium when
Chinese workers and American workers command similar salaries, ie
American workers are screwed.  That's the new paradigm, unless we get
off the old paradigm and play to our strengths:
"modernization"/technical innovation mediated by investments in R&D
and higher education.  At the moment we're dumping everything into the
toilet of militarism.  As Dr. Phil is fond of saying, "How's that
working out for you?"

> We have just wasted all that taxpayer money, which takes away
> from individual freedom.  Bailing out the car companies was madness.

Destitution takes away from individual freedom.   Saving the car
companies is an exceedingly excellent idea, even if it requires govt
subsidies.  We need to protect and save jobs (ie livelihoods) during
this down period or period of transition.

And another personal note:  I would personally prefer that rather than
print money and pass the debt responsibility on to future generations
of working schmos, that the rich be made to pay the whole damn bill.
They came to the land of the golden goose and enjoyed the benefits,
now, by any sense of justice, it's time for them to pony up and pay
for the damages.  If they don't like it, let them be free, free to go
somewhere else.  Where they gonna go, the Caymans? And if they decide
to leave, fine, then let's have a nice hefty "departure tax" so they
leave the necessary cash behind

> All our transhumanist dreams of enhancing our minds and bodies will cost
> money, and that money must be in the hands of individuals, who will
> experiment and show the rest of us the way.  Governments will never pay for
> your brain enhancements while your neighbor is suffering from diabetes.  I
> fear the current government spending spree is killing our future.

Our transhumanist dreams won't come from any one national group.  The
US is on a path to wither and die from an inability to adapt to
changing times and from the debilitating recalcitrance of defects in
its political and economic systems.  But the world will not come to an
end just because the American moment of glory does.

YMMV.

Best, Jeff Davis

"We're a band of higher primates stuck on the surface
of an atmosphere-hazed dirtball. I can associate with
that. I certainly can't identify with which patch of the dirtball I
currently happen to be on, and which monkey tribe happens to reside
therein.

Only by taking the big view we can make it a common
dream, and then a reality. It's worth it."
                             Eugen Leitl