When Will The Economy Collapse?

[Tyger]

Corporations are owning everything, and governments are going along so that we reach this nonsense: "When it comes to owning the seed for collecting royalties, the GMO companies say 'It's mine.' But when it comes to contamination, cross-pollination, health problems, the response is: 'We're not liable.' " ~ Vandana Shiva

Cause-and-effect, taking responsibility for the consequences for one's actions - not learned in Kindergarten, methinks. We are one spoiled brat I sometimes think. It cannot go on this way. It won't - the implosion will come, is coming, has come.

Time Magazine just had a cover story on "A World Without Bees". In a world where every quote seems to be attributed to Einstein, he did say this: "“If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years to live.” ~ Albert Einstein

LINK: Un-bee-lievable! by Barbara Uskovich « Stonewall Gardens

"Einstein was not a botanist or entomologist, better, he was an observer and thinker. His statement, decades before environmental awareness, was to garner attention to motivate people to be conscientious and knowledgeable of their surroundings.

Without pollinators, honey bees, pollen and seeds can not be transferred from one flower to another fertilizing the plant so it can grow and produce. Bees help in the pollination of about 30% of the world’s crops and 80-90% of wild plants. Bees need undisturbed sites with plenty of sun. They need diversity of nectar and pollen rich flowering plants. The greater the selection of flowering plants, the greater the number of bee species that are attracted to an area. If you have had the opportunity to see the diversity of our school garden, many have suggested selling tickets to bee colonies."

It's not about ownership - this paradigm has run it's course. We have no right - no one has the right - to be wealthy at the expense of hundreds of millions living in abject poverty, barely surviving on crusts of bread while they work at menial tasks. Robotics is the wave of the future and we will have unprecedented time on our hands. We must develop a new vision of how we survive together with all our leisure. There is the possibility for immense creativity to be unleashed but not via ownership. There are other ways of looking at the world.


Just got sent this on FaceBook. LINK: http://imageshack.us/a/img20/6693/obty.jpg

 

[Randall]

Funny - ha! - I find him compelling. He's not entertaining the audience - he's a man on a mission. Many who hear his views dismiss him as being naive or declare his ideas too simplistic. They wish. He knows what he's talking about imo.

OK, so I watched the rest of the video, and while I tend to agree that the ideas he presents are rather simplistic and that it's naïve to expect the change he'd like to see happen, I certainly don't dismiss it. He has a vision of a much fairer world for everyone, one that is possible to achieve if people only wanted it bad enough. I imagine his detractors would start crying about everything entering into a state of mediocrity, but I think that's an unfounded assumption. I think that in the end the vast majority of people would end up better off than they are now.

True, the excessively rich would find their mini-fascist dictatorships crumbling, and part of me thinks that in some cases that might be too bad. I don't believe all rich people are evil. For example Sir Richard Branson seems like a fairly cool excessively rich guy and now we've got Bill Gates going around handing out millions to charities all over the place. But for the most part, I empathize more with Wolff's sentiments regarding the out of balance distribution of wealth in the present system.

In his Q & A section I was hoping someone would ask how an individual stuck in the present system is supposed to initiate change when doing so will leave them facing permanent unemployment within the existing system? Is it reasonable to expect those who have succeeded in this lousy system to martyr their careers for the sake of these ideals? That is pretty much what would be required, and that's why it's naïve to think it's going to happen.

 

[stonehart]

Nice thread so far all... Just going to sit back and read for a bit.

No matter what one thing is for sure if we keeping going down the path we are we are going to hit a very nasty wall at the end of the line.

 

[Tyger]

OK, so I watched the rest of the video, and while I tend to agree that the ideas he presents are rather simplistic and that it's naïve to expect the change he'd like to see happen, I certainly don't dismiss it.

Yay! I am heartened, ufology!

Dang it! Why won't those smilies show up where I want them to - they always post at the beginning of the quote/post for some reason and I have to cut-copy-and-paste them to where I want them - strange....

He has a vision of a much fairer world for everyone, one that is possible to achieve if people only wanted it bad enough.

That's the thing - the economic 'catastrophe' will cause people to re-think the economic paradigm we've been laboring under. They will want the change 'bad enough' - sooner for some, later for others. It definitely requires a different way of thinking and being in the world. It also sophisticates one pretty fast to all the intricacies of decision-making in a business that has a sense of social responsibility.

It's also not new - consider the social ideas put into practice by Henry Ford and Milton Hershey. LINK: Milton S. Hershey - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and LINK: Henry Ford - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Actually, the cooperative economic model is not new to the American scene and was more common and commonly expected than seems to be remembered these days.

I imagine his detractors would start crying about everything entering into a state of mediocrity, but I think that's an unfounded assumption. I think that in the end the vast majority of people would end up better off than they are now.

I had an interesting conversation with one of my parents the other day. She's British and as she says, she grew up in a 'welfare state'. Unfortunately, in the moment I didn't have the opportunity to explore that with her (though I will at some point). She clearly has a view about it (of course). She did bring up Denmark, where everyone gets paid the same amount of money - from the street sweeper to the doctor - all the same, with the same 40% tax rate. Denmark is the country that always shows up as number one in the happiness quotient - and when I mentioned that, she made a face and said 'Not sure about that.' Hmmm...she commented that the Danes are extremely conservative. While the living experience may be satisfying, it may also be stultifying - though a high happiness index says otherwise.

I have always heard anecdotal stories about Sweden, too - though Swedes are famously dour and depressed (so say Swedish acquaintances - not just my observation) - not sure socialism is the cause of the perceived problems.

I think places with monarchies - and long class-based cultures are a very different kettle-of-fish from the US - and Canada, though I am aware of differences with the US.

True, the excessively rich would find their mini-fascist dictatorships crumbling, and part of me thinks that in some cases that might be too bad. I don't believe all rich people are evil. For example Sir Richard Branson seems like a fairly cool excessively rich guy and now we've got Bill Gates going around handing out millions to charities all over the place.

Oh, don't get me onto Bill Gates! Just because someone is wealthy doesn't mean they know what they're doing when it comes to shaping the world via philanthropic money flow.

We have the example of Andrew Carnegie who did know where to spend his money - but the outstanding question for anyone like Gates and Carnegie - why do their workers have to be so middling in their wages to make them super rich? Why are they determining where the money goes rather than hundreds of thousands of people making that decision? Even the very cool Mr Branson.

But for the most part, I empathize more with Wolff's sentiments regarding the out of balance distribution of wealth in the present system.

The divergence in wealth has been a warning sign many have been pointing to. The scandal of the off-shore Bahamian tax-havens recently revealed regarding the banks the US taxpayer bailed out, is yet again evidence of the lack of social responsibility evident in current business-think.

Banned TED Talk: Nick Hanauer "Rich people don't create jobs."
LINK:

In his Q & A section I was hoping someone would ask how an individual stuck in the present system is supposed to initiate change when doing so will leave them facing permanent unemployment within the existing system? Is it reasonable to expect those who have succeeded in this lousy system to martyr their careers for the sake of these ideals? That is pretty much what would be required, and that's why it's naïve to think it's going to happen.

That is exactly how the system maintains itself - always - through fear and self-interest. There is another way - and it takes courage to take that first step. It's a step I know I will be making in the next few years - exactly how I don't know - but I know I need to join the movement off-the-grid (which does not mean squirreled away from life - I could never do that - but it's a level of self-sufficiency in the midst of the whirlwind. It can be done - many are doing it now). Yet, I heard the tail end of a news report the other day that said the local electric company would be charging a fee to users to pay for the households on solar power. What? Isn't there federal monies in the mix to make solar power a win-win? I don't know enough - the bane of the common man - but something fishy, per usual.

 

[TalkingMeatSuit]

I think all we need is a good solar flare to reset everything and put us back on equal footing. Then all the 1's and 0's on bank computers around the world wouldn't mean jack. All the imaginary value we've created via printing press and computer would be gone.

Really though, where'd all the money go? There's more of it now than ever. If the answer actually is that the top of the top is ruining things for everyone, don't they realize that they're pissing in their own water at this point?

 

[Randall]

Yay! I am heartened, ufology!

Glad I could put one of those pesky smiles on your reply . I use MSIE 10 and the smiles insert wherever the cursor is. The problem I'm having is that highlighted drag & drop text inserts itself at the bottom of the post instead of where the cursor is, so I end up just cutting and pasting instead.

You might not want to canonize Henry Ford quite yet. He was an authoritarian anti-union thug hiring epitome of the fascist corporatocrasy. Simply because he paid his workers a few dollars more doesn't make up for the rest of his behavior.

A good clip of Nick Hanauer. I've been saying the same thing ever since they started with that mantra about jobs and the rich. The truth is that corporations tend to consider their largest expense to be wages and tend to minimize employment as much as possible, thinking it will increase their bottom line, resulting in multiple job descriptions being condensed into impossible expectations that burn out employees and lead to lower customer service and satisfaction, hence lower sales, and the vicious cycle starts all over again, while the people at the top just dig themselves in deeper to preserve their disproportionately large incomes.

We have the example of Andrew Carnegie who did know where to spend his money - but the outstanding question for anyone like Gates and Carnegie - why do their workers have to be so middling in their wages to make them super rich? Why are they determining where the money goes rather than hundreds of thousands of people making that decision? Even the very cool Mr Branson.

Why are they determining where the money goes? Well ... because it's their money, and I'm not convinced that hundreds of thousands of people are necessarily any better at deciding how money should be spent than they are. Our governments are the current model for that kind of thinking, and they tend to screw up things and become corrupt, plus they all have to be maintained, and larger government isn't necessarily better government. If we take a look at guys like Gates & Branson, these people are already responsible for building industries that distribute wealth to a lot of people within them. I'm not saying they're perfect, but IMO given the system we've got they're modern age heroes in an otherwise corrupted system. Gates actually supports higher taxes for the wealthy. I think there is a way to keep the dream of becoming independently wealthy alive while fixing the issues we've been talking about. All that is needed is for people to unite and do it. The POB know this and that's why they do things to keep us from doing that, like creating Tea Party politics and other Laissez Faire Capitalist propaganda.

 

[Tyger]

Just got this via FaceBook - sorry for the huge type - it's a copy-and-paste (too lazy to type it out) that won't allow me to reduce the size or de-bold.

Imagine If There Were A Town In The USA Where You Couldn't Get Any Water. You Can Stop Imagining.
LINK: Imagine If There Were A Town In The USA Where You Couldn't Get Any Water. You Can Stop Imagining.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Or watch the CBS TV show (based on a Stephen King book), "Under the Dome." They dealt with the water issue in last week's episode.

 

[Jeff Crowell]

I breezed through a few posts here and thought I'd chime in on a point in the original video... I read an article on a popular news site the other day, stating that massive amounts of domestic oil reserves have been located within the United States and her territories. Also, a huge reserve was found in Australia with another slightly-smaller one found in Africa, each of which will have a serious impact on global dependency on OPEC/Middle East oil. What I took from the article was that the US will no longer need to funnel billions of dollars or massive amounts of military "protection" into the middle east any longer just to protect our interests there...because we won't have nearly as much interest there.

If the dollar is dependent on oil and the military to hoist it's value, what will happen when we no longer have to export that value overseas? Could this lead to a time when, if a major OPEC country falls, say, like Egypt , the US just sort of went, "Oh well," and moved on? Wouldn't this also, too, imply that we are, actually, on a financial up-swing, and that the whole doomsday financial collapse all the conspiracy theorists are fearing is much farther in the future?

Truthfully I keep a stock of food for myself and my family. I have a few firearms for sport and for personal protection. I believe in security and "prepping" to an extent but my fear in doing so is against tornados and blizzards, not some ghostly economic collapse justified and "discovered" by self-made economists, as what was pointed out in that video. Sorry, I won't subscribe to the fear-mongering..at least until I see a LOT more evidence that's not tainted as soon as it's posted or recorded.

My two pennies.

J.

 

[pixelsmith]

The elite are buying up land over natural aquifers.

 

[pixelsmith]

Just got this via FaceBook - sorry for the huge type - it's a copy-and-paste (too lazy to type it out) that won't allow me to reduce the size or de-bold.

Imagine If There Were A Town In The USA Where You Couldn't Get Any Water. You Can Stop Imagining.
LINK: Imagine If There Were A Town In The USA Where You Couldn't Get Any Water. You Can Stop Imagining.

Of course they blame global warming as a possible cause...

 

[Jeff Crowell]

The elite are buying up land over natural aquifers.

Not to play devils advocate, but what's your evidence of that? Who are the 'elite'. If it's the wealthy, then it only makes sense that they would buy land where there's ready-water. That's not a conspiracy, that's just common sense. Too often we see threat and dangerous intention in normal, every-day actions is all I'm sayin'.

 

[Tyger]

Of course they blame global warming as a possible cause...

What do you mean 'of course' about blaming Global Warming? There is a pretty a-typical drought taking place - perhaps that is why the correspondent mentioned Global Warming - maybe?

 

[Randall]

Imagine If There Were A Town In The USA Where You Couldn't Get Any Water. You Can Stop Imagining.

Up here I've seen oil companies get away with draining fresh water lakes and rivers for hydrofracking while we're told to go on water rations. How many other people think there's something wrong with that? You'd be surprised to know that few people complain because fossil fuels are such a huge part of the economy up here. The government here is basically just another wing of the energy sector. Our Premiere goes around at the taxpayers expense lobbying for them to build pipelines and expand production. If this were any other privately run industry they'd have to send their own executives around at their own expense to lobby both the local government and those outside our borders. But apparently not when it comes to oil. I may not know all the facts, but on the surface it looks like the Premiere's just a shill for the oil companies.

There's also a disturbing lack of transparency in how much wealth is actually being generated and taxed. Plus we have that same old "Don't raise corporate taxes or royalties or they'll have to lay people off" crap. What we need is a politician up here with some backbone who will say, "Fine, if you don't want to pay the taxes then move out, and we'll take over. These resources belong to the Alberta Government, not you, and I'm sure we can manage fine, maybe even better, without you." These companies make billions and yet they have the nerve to poormouth while they're destroying the habitat. It's just sick. Even federal government environmentalists declared the tar sands an environmental disaster, yet I think it was only mentioned briefly in some obscure part of the news.

 

[stonehart]

well oil company's want to do hydrofracking here in Canterbury.
Yeah great idea, we are a very active earthquake zone right now and hydrofracking has been linked to quakes ... but the worst thing is what will happen to our water under the plains.
The water cycle here in Canterbury takes around 100 years from when the rain falls on the southern alps until it gets to the aquifer under Christchurch City.
The bed rock in 100's of meters deep under layers of built up river shingle (this formed the coastal plain in the first place), which acts like a giant water filter.
The water is pure (drink it right from the tap), and tastes clean and cold. So what will happen to it if and when hydrofracking happens in the rock layers below this aquifer?
I for one do not want to find out.

 

[Tyger]

For pity's sake, Ufology and Stonehart - breaks the heart it does. What a world we are handing off to future generations. It must stop. How do we stop it? Why are so many bought-and-paid for? How does it happen?

 

[stonehart]

For pity's sake, Ufology and Stonehart - breaks the heart it does. What a world we are handing off to future generations. It must stop. How do we stop it? Why are so many bought-and-paid for? How does it happen?

Greed

 

[Burnt State]

Greed

The age old motivator - greed for power, for excess, for as many serfs, slaves and subordinates working for the man. The only difference now is that even if the worker bees of the hive had the wherewithal to question their labors, and for whom their sweat and blood is being sacrificed, the distance between the powerless and the powerful is so vast that we have no arrow nor stone that could be hurled far enough to hit them. We are so weakened by the narrative of purchasing products designed to fail that we love to live in This Perfect Day in 1984 munching on Soylent Green while this Brave New World rolls over our bodies.

Anybody got an ankh to help direct us to sanctuary?

I'd also settle for a large supply of high test soma.

 

[stonehart]

 

[stonehart]

The age old motivator - greed for power, for excess, for as many serfs, slaves and subordinates working for the man. The only difference now is that even if the worker bees of the hive had the wherewithal to question their labors, and for whom their sweat and blood is being sacrificed, the distance between the powerless and the powerful is so vast that we have no arrow nor stone that could be hurled far enough to hit them. We are so weakened by the narrative of purchasing products designed to fail that we love to live in This Perfect Day in 1984 munching on Soylent Green while this Brave New World rolls over our bodies.

Anybody got an ankh to help direct us to sanctuary?

I'd also settle for a large supply of high test soma.

Yes.
Cut your credit card up.
Turn off the TV
Buy only local
Avoid chain stores
Get involved in your local community
Hold the ass holes in local and federal government accountable.

Yes I know its easy to say and hard to do but the power of the people is much larger than the rich few.... if only they were not so distracted.