This is a very long post and may be my last for a while. I’ll be back. Probably May or early June at the latest. If the title topics are of interest, the most pressing analysis of what is really happening today is near the end. This is a pulling together of countless posts over the years and an expansion of many topic discussed on here. I generally don’t provide such level of detail about certain topics because of the endemic plagiarism and pilfering on the internet but today I’m sharing an unfiltered stream of conscious post. Frankly, I decided to do this after reading David Stockman’s recent NYT editorial glorifying the good ole days of capitalism. This is truly hilarious and completely unhinged from reality. Although I appreciate and respect Stockman for his unvarnished honesty and share his outrage at how morally-bankrupt the corporate state is. They have certainly abrogated their moral authority and thus have forfeited their moral right to serve the people.
I doubt you will read anything similar to much of the later analysis below. Especially many of the points made with regards to what I suspect is the coming demise of “free market” corporate capitalism’s reign of terror. That is, unless I am subconsciously channeling someone else in my analysis. I surely can’t be the only person who understands some of the dynamics that are endemic to capitalism that are pushing it to the brink of self-destruction but those within the current system, both bulls and bears, both supporters and detractors, are often very biased in their perceptions of reality. Many people are limited by what others tell them is real. Too many let others define their reality by outsourcing their thinking. Reading what confirms our beliefs and surrounding ourselves with like-minded people instills roteness, conformity and ideology into our perceptions of truth. And it does so unknowingly without the mindfulness of our own ego-motive. This obviously imprisons our perceptions to fit within an ego-defined control structure or false belief system. Ego-motive is nearly all consuming within people who have benefited from this system unless they have somehow experienced some crisis of conscience that allows them to awaken to greater truths.
The below analysis of corporate capitalism and its likely collapse, similar to communism and the Soviet-bloc structure, is unique and it is based on factual contradictions inherent within its structure. Capitalism is essentially a finite-state machine that is used as a control system. Capitalism is in a finite state today that is very, very dangerous. There is no way out of the current state without the use of force. If you don’t understand the concept of a state machine, think in terms of playing chess, which is essentially a finite state machine. Your opponent has just checked you. Being chess is based on control, your next moves are limited to a finite number of states. Any of those moves could very well determine checkmate. Game over. If checkmate happens, we are likely to have global monetary crises as well as the end to capitalism. Not a dollar crisis. A global crisis. Something I have been writing is imminent for the last seven years as the dollar trade settlement system is overdue to freeze up, collapse, disappear, etc.
I hope this post gives many readers a greater perception of the extent of the false reality that exists in the world today. A false reality created through political and economic control. Remember, control is but an illusion. It exists no where else but in your mind. And it is created only through false perceptions of reality One day all of us will awaken to a completely different reality. A return to truth will happen.
Let me make one more remark before continuing to the post. Below I use the term state quite frequently. State as in the artificial system of control or organized polity that enslaves people around the world today. Not to be confused with the finite-state machine remarks above. For new readers or even existing readers, as a reminder to my voluminous posts on the state, my definition of the “state” is that organized political bureaucracy which exists outside of self-rule or local-rule. It is a class-based bureaucracy that serves itself. It is that political bureaucracy which is hidden from the view of self-rule and citizen government. In places like North Korea, the state is nearly an all-consuming manifestation of the polity. There really is no appreciable self-rule or local rule in North Korea. A simple way to explain the differences between the state and self-rule is that the state derives and maintains its existence through force & violence and democracy derives its existence through the consent of the governed or self-rule and a rule of law based on natural rights. That is, nature-given or God-given rights that limit the lawless violence of the state and allow us to live as we would were the state nonexistent. ie, As nature intended. In today’s world, I would have to say the vast majority of the activities of organized polity around the world are highly statist. There is very little true self-rule or freedom or polity based on natural rights anywhere in the world today. What there is plenty of is force and violence that defines the state and gives it purpose.
“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.” -- General Smedley Butler, 1933, Author of War is a Racket: The Profit Motive Behind Warfare
How wonderful it is to read Smedley Butler wax poetic about the good ole days of capitalism. If we could only return to those good ole days of a century ago when capitalist economic slavery was the norm. Or maybe two hundred years ago when the king’s corporate capitalism led to the Revolutionary War. Well, and when capitalism’s economic slavery was supplemented by outright human ownership, human trafficking and indentured servitude to serve our capitalist masters.
Let’s start with a follow-up to my post on the BRICs trade clearinghouse bank meant to replace the IMF and World Bank. In that post I remarked of Chavez’s death and that of eight other South American leaders since 2009. All caused by cancer. Let me say that I’m not a Chavez advocate or detractor. I have no dog in the hunt of vilifying or worshiping him. Regardless, I suspect he was much more virtuous than the CIA, the American military-industrial complex and most American politicians. Especially since he came out publicly against America’s policy of murder and war as a method of spreading freedom. I would also say that it’s apparent to me that Venezuela under Chavez was much more free than our nation currently is. And the fact that American politicians despised him so much is some level of proof to me of that reality. Regardless, the people of Venezuela should be allowed to decide their own democratic fate and elect whomever they wish. And that is what they did against the wishes of the United States corporate and political interests.
We are going to see an election in Venezuela to replace Chavez in less than a week. U.S. politicians have meddled in Venezuela continuously and there is some evidence the CIA tried both to kill Chavez and then overthrow his democratically-elected government some years ago. Do your own diligence but you’ll find substantial evidence of this effort that is consistent with past U.S. meddling in Central and South America as Smedley Butler notes above. And for the exact same reasons. That is, corporate power. Obviously, since we live in a country where the state is the source of endless secrecy, and self-rule is dead, we don’t really know exactly what is going on in Washington, or for that matter, any of our state capitals. But we do know there is enough circumstantial evidence to investigate U.S. meddling further. That is, if we had a functioning form of citizen government capable of doing so.
The U.S. appears again to be involved in attempting to manipulate this Venezuelan election. (By the way, international election organizations have participated in onsite election monitoring and have sanctified Venezuela’s elections as honest and valid; something that has never happened with U.S. political hypocrites who are constantly meddling with election laws, voting rights, election districting, etc.)
I bring this up because Venezuela’s election is very important for many reasons not well understood by most. America has essentially operated under the Monroe Doctrine for almost 200 years. Not exactly new news for most. That is, Central and South America are fair game for American intervention whenever we deem it appropriate as noted in General Butler’s comments above. That intervention has typically been on behalf of American corporations rather than any form of true justice or self-rule. That policy has led to constant meddling, murder, mayhem and puppet governments in Central and South America courtesy of U.S. politicians and its violent, covert corporate-capitalist-inspired operations. Some of this was certainly rationalized because of past European colonial, capitalist and then Soviet communist meddling. But, two wrongs don’t make a right. It was also the basis of Ronald Reagan’s arms for hostages crimes that apparently may have involved selling crack cocaine to African-American communities in America. Chavez’s election was a karmic response or blowback to that endless meddling that has created massive poverty and injustice while keeping entire nation’s beaten down by American debt enslavement and corporate capitalism. And, importantly, as it pertains to this post and this topic, Chavez championed The Bank of the South and maybe even more importantly, started selling Venezuela’s massive oil reserves to China in yuan thus threatening the lynchpin petrodollar and global U.S. corporate, military and financial hegemony.
The Bank of the South is an institution very similar to the BRICs effort that I wrote about a week or so ago. This bank, formalized in 2009, is meant to get the IMF and World Bank, U.S. institutions of corporate hegemony and debt enslavement, out of South America and to replace the dollar in South American trade with a common settlement currency system designed to encourage economic development rather than economic colonization and exploitation.
The IMF and World Bank have been used by U.S. politicians to enable American corporations to loot, manipulate and dominate South America for the past 65 years. But that policy really gained traction in the last thirty years since Reagan institutionalized neoliberalism or comparative financial advantage as an economic policy and used the dollar trade settlement system to enforce it. It just so happens that of the five of the founding seven member nations of the Bank of the South have seen leaders die of cancer since it was conceived a handful of years ago. Coincidence? We just don’t know. But given The Bank of the South would shut out U.S. corporations, the military-industrial complex, financial institutions and the hegemony of U.S. power, there certainly are very serious reasons to be suspicious.
My point is that with Venezuela championing these efforts at South American independence from U.S. corporate, military and political power, and its substantial threat to the petrodollar, it certainly made Chavez and his hand-picked successor candidate enemy-number-one for the U.S. corporate state. Just as Iraq, Iran and Libya that also announced plans to move away from dollar trade settlement. Without oil settlement in dollars, what else is left? The dollar reserve currency will fail without oil settlement; our nation has nothing anyone wants to buy with those dollars except real estate. Well, and a few other glorified, Soviet-style, state-backed industries. In a nation that has institutionalized a policy to murder its own citizens when deemed a threat to the state, is it really hard to imagine murder being a possibility when anyone’s actions, even if legitimate, threatens to bring down the American corporate empire and the military-industrial complex?
This upcoming Venezuelan election is worth watching. There is little time for the U.S. to destabilize the country before elections but I am quite certain they are trying their damnedest as I type this. Just as they have done in Libya, Iraq, Iran and anyone else who has ever threatened petrodollar hegemony or American corporate state interests. I guess all trade is free trade as long as it involves dollar and American corporate enslavement. That clearly includes within our nation’s borders as well as around the globe. You know, just like all trade was free trade in 1776 as long as it was backed by the British Empire’s private, for-profit bankers debt-based money and controlled by the British trading and land corporations. Corporate capitalism at its finest.
It is actually globalization and the dollars created through the current trade settlement system which is driving another U.S. real estate bubble as I type this. ie, Dollars accumulated by other nations through the dollar reserve currency status or global trade settlement are rushing back into the U.S. to buy the only tangible products we actually “make” that other nations and their elites can buy with their trade settlement dollars. That is, military weapons, genetically-modified foods, financial products & financial transactions (mergers & acquisitions, stocks, bonds, U.S. intellectual property, etc) and real estate; all reflating their respective bubbles. For now.
American bureaucrats in political and corporate positions have actually subverted our citizen’s property rights and, as payment for maintaining their global empire they are allowing noncitizens (foreign corporations and foreign elites) to buy American real estate, intellectual property, publicly-owned corporations, sold off public assets in distressed municipalities and states, etc. as a form of hush payment or legalized bribery to maintain their empire. This while millions of Americans are being shoved out of their homes and denied their own property, economic and democratic rights. Most of these foreign elites are benefactors of American corporate neoliberalism. They include thugs, mafioso, drug lords, dictators, communists and murderers to name a few. The Saudi elites are major buyers of U.S. real estate, foodstuffs, financial products and weapons as an example. Regardless, almost all foreign and domestic investors rushing back into American real estate have benefited from American neoliberal hegemony in some form or another. A capitalist system of economic slavery. Even if they have no idea they are, in fact, supporting it. Hegemony that suppresses global self-rule and freedom.
This is why China, Russia and Japan have acquired so much in dollar-denominated Treasury debt with their surplus trade-settlement accounts. Not that their statist economic policies are any more virtuous because they certainly are not. But there is literally almost nothing else for them to buy with the amount of dollars they have accumulated. What else are they to do with dollars other than burn them for fuel or buy real estate, weapons, foodstuff or American intellectual property, stocks, bonds and corporations to maintain their own mercantilist-statist schemes?
The fact that equities and real estate are once again pushing higher as the U.S. economy has record poverty aren’t bullish signs at all. They are proof points that the dollar trade-settlement system is failing - monetary velocity temporarily screams higher in these sectors due to an excess dollar glut of capitalism’s globalization while money is nearly nonexistent in the U.S. capital-creating and capital producing sectors that actually drive wealth creation for our nation. This is no coincidence. It is contrived by politicians and corporations. On that note, if you think the “newfangled” service economy creates wealth or even surplus value, you really are deluding yourself. It may create marginal but economically-undefinable value but there is little, if any surplus in doing each other’s laundry. That fact will expose itself in due time. Of this I am completely certain. The mythical service economy is nothing more than another scheme rigged by the dumbed-down political and corporate clowns who created this mess.
Isn’t it hilarious to listen to faux economics fanatics talk about the need to avert trade wars after the 2008 crisis? That it was these supposed trade wars that caused the Great Depression and we must not repeat history; a statement I have clearly remarked many times on here is nothing more than propagandized nonsense. Corporate capitalism is in itself a constant, covert system of violence. Capitalism is itself a never-ending trade war. Corporate capitalism, an invention of the state, is a constant source of violence, predation and exploitation. It is inherent in its structure. As an invention of the state that is enforced by the state, capitalism was a control system created by European feudal lords to loot the world. It is a nondemocratic, statist, class-based control system that was devised by elites to maintain their grip on economic and political power while exploiting the only method they had to accomplish this. That is off of the labor of the masses, be they slaves, indentured servants, born without class rank or corporate-controlled assets that we now call employees. And after their political monarchies fell, it was the only way they maintained their structure of class, title and wealth.
Europe is still enslaved to the same elites since the fall of aristocratic, feudal Europe less than a century ago primarily due to corporate capitalism. Who do you think is causing the austerity crises targeting the middle class and those without a voice aka the impoverished in Europe? The same aristocratic families and elites that were once part of the ruling class of feudal lords, private for-profit bankers and corporate capitalists. The same forces that started World War I for reasons of maintaining capitalist empire, power and class. There is almost complete social stratification in Europe. It is the same stratification that has existed for 500 years. It is a system of dead weight at the top where the wealth remains concentrated in the same aristocracy that has always existed. Corporate capitalism is a major source of this transgenerational aristocracy. Corporate capitalism, as it has always been practiced, (not as a democratic, merit-based economy needs to be) is not consistent with self-rule or freedom. We see that in the endless injustices created by capitalists in Europe today. The reality is corporate capitalism is the last vestige of European feudalism that remains with modern societies and it almost certainly in the process of dying just as another violent and repressive state-enforced control system, communism, did. Just as monarchies and birthright privilege did.
I have noted on here before that this control system can only continue with the use of greater and greater violence and force. You must appreciate how this dynamic is required to maintain any inherently unstable, complex finite-state-based system that continues to destabilize. We see this around the world with excessive, almost unbelievable use of force by the most outrageously outsized- military the world has ever seen. A military that serves a primary intent of enforcing a dollar-driven global control system rather than America’s defense or global democracy. We see similar force being applied to Europe, the founders of corporate capitalism, as it too spins out of control. This excessive force is necessary or the system would destabilize out of control. Without the use of force, we would have already seen the end of dollar hegemony and American corporate empire and a birthright-privilege-driven aristocratic Europe long time ago. That said, I wouldn’t be so certain that Russia, Venezuela, China or any external factor will destabilize this system. Some see this so clearly they believe a dollar collapse is inevitable. The U.S. control system is beyond historical precedence. It is massive in its power and has countless adherents, global elites and leaders, who have become rich off of this exploitative system. Rich at the expense of the vast majority who have suffered needlessly. You know, Adam Smith’s invisible hand of self-interest.
I seriously doubt any nation or nations can take this system down. The U.S. has knocked them off one by one whenever their threat became large enough. The only force large enough to potentially stop this system is corporate America’s colony, China. But doing so would come with grave consequences for the communist elites. Remember, while there have been countless people calling for a dollar collapse, the long term thesis on here written of countless times is the dollar is putting in a major bottom and likely to rise violently at some point. I said it before 2008, when it rose violently during the crash, and evidence based on fact (supply & demand) still supports this outcome. The dollar doesn’t need to collapse for this system to fail. It may be counterintuitive to many but it certainly is the most likely outcome given how this system is constructed. Remember, this system eventually will fail for no other reason than it requires greater and greater force, exploitation and predation applied not only to other nations but to the American people not because a prospective dollar collapse. To me, the most plausible outcome for this system is the Soviet or Roman Empire outcome of failure from within due to the endemic contradictions or instabilities of this control system.
Saving this system is impossible once the chain-reaction of destabilization has reached critical mass. The only question is when did or will that happen. There is ample evidence that happened under Reagan for many reasons. That includes the ideology that Reagan took mainstream that government deficits don’t matter. This was clearly forbidden in Bretton Woods because other nations recognized that excessive money creation by the state would lead to empire. Hence the limiting factor of gold backing agreed to in Bretton Woods. (The Triffin Dilemma is not a necessary function or outcome of this system as many have incorrectly remarked it is.) That said, the original Bretton Woods system was doomed to fail at some point because gold as a form of global trade settlement does not work under capitalism for many reasons. Given that capitalism is an invention of the state and relies on the force of the state to survive, and that private, for-profit capitalism is driven primarily by the need for greater and greater profit, a dynamic also driven by force, all that happens under a gold trade settlement system is that the game becomes which corporate state can acquire all of the world’s gold or all of the world’s profit. Now, can anyone tell me how this exploitation benefits your fellow man in other countries? Taking their profits for your nation’s self-interest? Is this self-rule or consistent with spreading self-rule? Well, gold trade settlement also permanently enslaves impoverished nations to its capitalist masters and creates exploitative and predatory capitalist mercantilist and colonialism policies. There are certainly other major flaws in this system as well. Gold is not democratic money as explained on here countless times. It is a control system of looters and lords.
The desire for the profit-motivated capitalist state to acquire all of the world’s gold is what led to the U.S.’s disproportionately enormous Great Depression collapse when it had successfully accumulated most of the world’s gold or its profits in 1929. This was nothing more than state-sponsored economic warfare. The policies that created this dynamic were exploitative, predatory and violent. This is endemic to private, for-profit corporate capitalism created and enforced by the state. If you are an ego-motivated capitalist, then you certainly have no problems with exploiting other nations or people. But, the intent of discovery and truth recognizes others around the the world were exploited and preyed upon in order to loot the world under this dynamic. Is the intent of garnering the majority of the world’s profits, and in the process exploiting its resources and peoples, really any different than bombing another nation into submission? Is it any different than American military interventionism on behalf of capitalism we see today or which Smedley Butler opined about a century ago? Clearly these corporate capitalist principles are not consistent with democracy, freedom, self-rule, humanism, human-centric philosophies or any of the world’s religions. Well, other than the religion of ego-motivated selfishness and immorality. It’s the same insanity that has created today’s mess.
Contrarily, you might consider that China’s state-driven trade policies today are the exact same policies that pushed the U.S. economy into a total collapse starting in 1929. China’s state-enforced, predatory, violent, mercantilist capitalist policies have looted the world of its gold (U.S. dollars in today’s capitalist trading system) and it will pay the consequences with its massive capitalist production overcapacity. Something no one seemingly understands as the dumbed-down economics, political and financial communities continue to wax poetic about China as they do about free market capitalism. Once again, debt is not the issue the world or any nation is facing. Don’t believe mainstream media, financial oligarchs or politically-contrived myths planted by the criminal class who enslaved us to this debt.
Reagan clearly abrogated the U.S.’s legal responsibility to the rest of the world by institutionalizing the policies that deficits didn’t matter. This clearly created both a military and corporate empire and broke the intent of the dollar-based global trade settlement agreement with violent, exploitative, predatory institutionalized economic policy. (Yes Nixon broke the gold peg for benefit of waging American wars but Reagan institutionalized it with formal economic policy and with the massive military spending needed to create and enforce corporate capitalist empire.)
The Reagan administration’s use of the IMF and World Bank as blunt objects of Reagan’s militant foreign policy was also an abrogation of that legal responsibility to Bretton Woods partners who agreed to use the dollar to settle international trade. This was the first truly institutionalized use of these systems as extensions of militant American economic warfare rather than being used as they were intended for global development and global good. This overt and intentional change created by Reagan’s policy enforced the dynamic of American-created neoliberal-economic/financial-comparative-advantage between nations that enslaved global production to declining wages and American empire. It also created the dynamic of debt & austerity used as a political tool to “loosen” up global assets in developing economies for American corporate theft. This enabled U.S. elites and corporations to loot the “developing” world. Like in Central and South America. Like Venezuela. Chavez clearly came to power as backlash to Reagan and Clinton’s neoliberal policies. (The Reagan administration also looted the Social Security Trust Fund and middle-class Americans to pay for tax breaks for corporations and elites. The Reagan administration was comprised of the greatest number of criminals in history as noted on here before. Is it really any surprise politicians renamed an airport in Washington D.C. as Ronald Reagan National Airport? He gave megalomaniacal American politicians unprecedented power and purpose by creating empire.)
Now it is just a mere formality as to when this control system fails. In other words, George Bush senior was right at the time to call Reagan’s economic policies voodoo or nonsensical. But he was right for the wrong reasons. ie, His remark that deficits did matter was defined by the support of a faulty, anti-democratic, private for-profit, debt-based monetary system. That said, we certainly don’t want the state to spend all of our money which simply enslaves us to a ruling class like the Soviet Union or the British Empire or as Reagan and all politicians have since.
The reality is U.S. capitalism was collapsing right alongside Soviet communism during Reagan’s reign of terror; something I have noted on here countless times. But it was papered over by money printing and global looting; a luxury the Soviets didn’t have. So much for the mythical political propaganda of Reagan’s legacy in defeating communism. Reagan’s faux legacy still continues today and was (neo)liberalized even further by Clinton, Bush and Obama. Reagan’s true legacy is the beginning of the end of deregulated capitalism. Capitalism that had to be deregulated by Reagan because that was the only way to save it. Yes, capitalism was already collapsing during Reagan’s time in office. As noted on here many times, America’s peak economic output happened around 1980, give or take a few years. More on this another time.
Again, the failure of this control system is all good news (long term) for the U.S. economy and democracy. That is, if the U.S. survives in its current form. It is clearly plausible that it may not. Our economy could recover rapidly with the right policies as I have noted countless times on here over the last eight years. When this system fails, it will suck to be you if you have been looting the U.S. public treasury – global elites benefiting from American-created neoliberalism, Chinese communists, Saudi Arabia, U.S. elites, the military-industrial complex, hyper-consumerism aka the mythical make-work “service” economy, American political parties, the investor class, Wall Street, industrial food corporations, the corporate healthcare system, multinational corporations, etc. I hope this will give you a greater appreciation for why so much force is being applied to maintain this system. Because with out it, the entire Ponzi Scheme of control will collapse. Not just in the U.S. either.
This is exactly how the Soviet Union failed. Exactly. And its state-propped up corporations - control systems - fell with it. The Cold War was never about freedom versus communism. It was the battle of “isms”. It was a war between corporate capitalism and communism as two state-enforced economic control systems. Our society is substantially similar to that of the Soviet Union in its structure. We have state-backed corporate and political bureaucracies that essentially control the people in this nation. We don’t produce what we want or need. We produce what the bureaucrats want us to produce. Sometimes they are corporate bureaucrats and sometimes they are state bureaucrats. Just like in Mother Russia. And we produce it in excess. Just like Mother Russia. There is no self-rule in this nation.
What corporate capitalist proponents fail to realize in our corporate capitalist system of control only exists through the force of the state just like state-propped up Soviet corporations. And that central planners exist in capitalist corporations just as they did in Mother Russia. In fact, central planning in corporate capitalism is necessary for its success. Without quota-driven overproduction created by corporate planners, profits disappear and so does capitalism. This isn’t some new development either. This is corporate capitalism in its full regalia.
In a truly free society with true economic freedom, can you imagine people volunteering to work as mindless drones collecting serfdom debts under the dull hum of fluorescent lights in their brown JP Morgan cubicle for the benefit of an authoritarian megalomaniac like Jamie Dimon? Or chained to a desk, essentially unable to move for twelve hours a day, staring at miniature parts through magnifying goggles to overproduce smartphones so you can have a shiny new toy every six months and do this for a slave wage of $2 a day? Or overproduce enough prescription drugs to turn our nation into a society of emotionless zombie workers fit for corporate state exploitation? Or purchase endless amounts of generally useless junk made through a nonliving wage after being fed a healthy dose of marketing propaganda in TV infomercials whose intent is to prey on your insecurities? And then be forced to the front lines to wage economic war on behalf of our corporate masters and do so for the lowest possible wage? Does anyone actually think people voluntarily participate in these and other forms of corporate slavery needed to keep this system going? Seriously? Ego-motivated delusions and rationalizations. Is this really different than the dull hum of a meaningless existence as practiced under Soviet control? The Soviets were all alcoholics. We are all drug addicts. Well, and work addicts, alcoholics, gambling addicts, shopping addicts, and on and on – outcomes of emotional dysregulation created in large part by an inhumane corporate capitalist social value system. The reasons for dysregulation in the Soviet Union and the United States are the same. Being forced into a Godless state-enforced system of control that steals their humanity. Corporate capitalism has only ever survived because the state forced people, like cattle, into this control system just like they forced people into other control systems like communism, socialism and every other “ism”.
“isms” and other institutions of control, or institutions of the ego, are created by weak people for the benefit of weak people. They are created so weak people can prey on and exploit others who are vulnerable through methods that wouldn’t exist without isms. They are also created so weak people can become powerful by making strong people weak. This is done by forcing people into a conscription system that allows weak people – those who will do anything to their fellow man to gain authority, power, status, class and control - to become powerful. While truly strong people will recognize how unjust such a system is and will have a harder time rationalizing selling their souls to the proverbial devil (the “ism” created by the ego for purposes of control) in order to gain such ego-motivated authority, power, status, class and control. Or a strong person will eventually rationalize the abandonment of his virtues to conform to this exploitative system. A truly strong person, one who recognizes theirs strength comes from their inner divinity and thus recognizes their love for all of humanity, understands that no person should ever be granted authority over another human being. And that no person should ever be conscripted into economic slavery or any control system based on force. The weak person almost always rises to the greatest levels of power in any “ism” or any bureaucracy and that dynamic weakens and destabilizes everyone else.
We need solutions that strengthen all of our citizen’s inherently divine or decent qualities including compassion, community, economic freedom and creativity so that all people have an opportunity to become who they were meant to become. And as part of that to be emotionally-responsible and where appropriate, physically-responsible for themselves. Only with responsibility comes the freedom of empowerment. Not to become who capitalism or any other forced “ism” tells them who they should become. We need an economic framework that protects vulnerability rather than exploits it. So that all people have an opportunity to walk the path leading to their own greater divinity and power. Then all people will be raised to a higher level of quality-driven existence through the expression of our divinity and our humanity.
Never in the history of humanity have we seen such a growing global mindfulness of how insane this corporate capitalist control system truly is. Even if just and honest people in the system are too afraid to admit it. Too afraid because they are forced to participate in the system to survive its endless violence.
The Soviets maintained empire by ensnaring a sphere of influence based on a control system that benefited a ruling class in its satellite or Soviet-bloc states just as neoliberalism has for those states in America’s sphere of influence be that Japan, Russia, China, emerging markets or elsewhere. Communist China, a wildly corrupt class-based (control based) “ism” with rampant poverty, has simply created a new class of elites that have benefited by submitting to the American corporate empire while hundreds of million of its citizens live in abject poverty.
As the Soviet empire started to destabilize, it was unable to purchase its quota of goods and services from its satellite nations, the Soviet-bloc, that kept these nation’s peoples employed (docile or controlled) and their corrupt elites beholden to their Soviet master. Over a period of years the Soviet Union was increasingly unable to buy its quota of goods from the Soviet-bloc and the working class in these nations started suffering greater and greater consequences. In other words, the Soviet Union’s empire was based on a dumbed-down, proletariat, quota-driven system of corporate overproduction just as corporate capitalism is. So, when overproduction was no longer sustainable because of this control system’s many inherent contradictions aka instabilities, the system became even more unjust, people more impoverished and the control system started its destabilizing descent. Soviet and bloc wages were suppressed even further so that more money could be diverted into maintaining empire. ie, More of the wealth of society could then be forcibly-diverted into guns rather than butter –> greater and greater control needed to maintain a control system from destabilizing. You know, just like the U.S. today. Much of this was first experienced at the edges of Soviet empire. Can you say Solidarnosc? And then Perestroika? Both growing signs of a control system’s inability to maintain stability. We see the same wage and impoverishment dynamic has been unfolding in America for decades. And just like in the Soviet Union this statist-driven austerity for poor bastards is sold by lawless elitist political criminals as a necessary sacrifice for our own good. Umm, that is the reason for our massive debts. Living wages are denied so that the wealth of society can be spent so the bureaucrats and central planners can expand and maintain corporate capitalism.
Our corporate capitalist system too is driven by that same dumbed-down, proletariat, quota-driven overproduction and its necessary propagandized glorification of work to serve our private, for-profit corporate capitalist masters. Capitalism too is driven on the artificial requirement for never-ending, quota-driven production increases to serve its artificial and unsustainable need for growth. This contrived system of control is need to serve the primary need of ever-increasing profit of private capital or capitalism. This control system maintains its power under the exact same dynamic as the Soviet and Soviet-bloc elites. That is, by enslaving a society to state-enforced, quota-driven conscription or corporate work. Corporate capitalism, just as the Soviet Union, too is proletariat in that glorifies work above all other human expression because doing so is necessary to maintain its control. Quite honestly, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union are/were enslaved to a system of make-work. This enslavement is not only physical but because it is propagandized and glorified by the corporate state, it is also psychological. ie, It is institutionalized.
The economic parallel today includes U.S. hyper-consumerism. This is both a function of capitalism and because it is concentrated in the U.S., it is a function of corporate capitalist empire enforced by the dollar. It would be the same were the yuan or the pound were the reserve currency. ie, The respective nation would have the same ability to over-consume. If the world’s reserve currency were a basket of currencies, it would still be the same. Capitalism would still require more nations to over-consume in order for it to survive. Over-consumption is an inherent flaw of capitalism given it is a discounting mechanism for future production as noted on here before. In other words, it is essentially the same Soviet quota-driven overproduction system requiring the purchasing goods from across our empire and sphere of influence to maintain control. But rather than the Soviet-bloc, for the U.S. it is China, Japan, emerging markets, etc. that are enslaved into the dollar-based global capitalist production system. And if it wasn’t the U.S., it would have to be someone else. Regardless, in order to keep overproducing we must keep shopping. You know, like George Bush told you to do right after 9/11. By the way, the pseudo-capitalist service sector is also reliant on this shop till you drop paradigm, a point clearly missed by the dumbed-down proponents of a post--productivity or even post-science economy. Now we are now witnessing the same Soviet-style overproduction collapse today around the world as Americans and others, denied their economic freedoms and living wages necessary to maintain empire and capitalism’s requirement for constant growth, we have increasingly exhausted our savings to keep this global overproduction Ponzi Scheme afloat.
When other nations in our sphere of influence can no longer rely on the U.S. to buy their endless supply of excess production and outright overproduction, the control system loses its fundamental influence or power and worse. Just as the Soviet system lost its influence over bloc nations for the exact same reasons. This is easily measurable today by the systemic crisis in global unemployment, underemployment and poverty in the capitalist system. This unemployment, underemployment and poverty is massive and unprecedented in scale. It is a far larger problem than the substantially smaller Soviet empire or communism’s forced, quota-driven production. This control system cannot and will not be restarted. Period. There is no recovery and never will be as I have uniquely written of incessantly over the years. Nor are we going to export our way to prosperity (more overproduction) as Obama wrote in the Wall Street Journal op-ed during his first term. Something I mocked as nonsensical blatherings of a bureaucrat at the time of its printing. Now some are starting to recognize something systemic is wrong and it is a global issue. This is what is wrong. Capitalism is dying. The horror of globalization, as it has been created by our corporate capitalist masters and their beholden political idiots, is dying.
Not surprisingly, many pundits are incorrectly focused only on the U.S. because it drives their confirmation bias. This narrow fixation or false perception of reality and its associated confirmation bias prevents their minds from seeing the true reality as it exists. This is a very key point and the most important to remember in this post –>> The U.S. is not failing. The control system of corporate capitalism is failing across the entire globe just as communism did. And that means America’s corporate capitalist empire, the corporate state and modern capitalist society are failing along with it. You read it here first. I have been writing exactly this for years.
Don’t let anyone tell you the issue in this nation or anywhere else is debt. Debt is an illusion created by corporate capitalism to enslave people to a system of overproduction. The issue of our day is that corporate capitalism itself is dying and the U.S. corporate capitalist empire and the financial slavery used to create it must also therefore die. That is why we see excessive use of force around the world today. The corporate capitalists are trying to save the system and it must exert greater and greater control as this complex control system continues to destabilize. Just as happened in the Soviet Union and Soviet-bloc states. Once again, this is corporate capitalism as it has always been practiced. It is only created and maintained by patriarchal state force and it is violent, repressive, exploitative and predatory. Those who wax poetic of the good ole days of capitalism are deluding themselves rather than opening their minds to discovery and truth.
So if you didn’t know, now you know why Japan has been experiencing deflation for 25 years yet hasn’t had a debt collapse. And why the rest of the world has joined Japan just as I wrote it would back before the 2008 collapse. Debt deflation is a myth perpetuated by a flawed post-facto analysis of the Great Depression by Irving Fisher. One that has been adopted by people who outsource their thinking. Debt is a dependent variable in the deflation equation as I have noted. And if you didn’t understand before, you also now know why the Federal Reserve cannot fix our economy by printing more money. Do we need to build more roads and bridges and could we with printed money? Sure we could. But Japan has been building & tearing down and building & tearing down bridges, roads and buildings for 25 years. They have turned it into a system of permanent make-work. Yet they haven’t solved any of their economic issues. And they never will under this global control system.
Do you know how to solve these dilemmas permanently and democratically? I have hinted and remarked of numerous structural changes over the years. No, it isn’t another “ism” or a dumbed-down state glorifying proletariat work. Gold-backed money? lol. That would crash this system quicker than anything else I could imagine. The answer doesn’t even involve money. The answer certainly isn’t more jobs either. That’s simply more nonsense trying to keep us enslaved to a dumbed-down control system of state-enforced corporate work. To give you one indication of how proletariat we have become as a corporate capitalist society, what invariably is one of the first things someone asks when they meet you? What do you do for work? More than anything else, corporate capitalist society defines us by our label of work. How rote and meaningless that we create a primary label for people in society based on what they do for work as opposed to uncovering the many layers of their inner beauty? When your identity is primarily perceived through work, who cares about anyone’s inner beauty? There is little social demand to even develop it. How often have you experienced that reality? Corporations and the corporate state don’t care about your inner beauty. Or your uniqueness. Or your emotional development. They care about your mindless conformity to a system of conscripted work. And boy do good corporate capitalists love to work. Just like Mother Russia.
I can tell you how capitalism has historically solved the issue of overproduction. Well once you understand this is a control system of violence and exploitation, it becomes obvious. War. Sometimes economic. Sometimes military. What better way to remove the world’s overproduction than to blow up your competition and then start all over again? Of course, sometimes we don’t even need to wait for overproduction. Just blowing up the competition for profits or to achieve greater profits or new markets can’t seemingly wait. Then there are the endless trade wars of capitalism. Do you know how many wars, both overt and covert, trade and military, the world has fought in the last 500-odd years because of capitalism? (Capitalism was practiced well before Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations. He simply wrote the magnum opus for corporate state-based corporate looting.)
Are wars actually planned by capitalism? You know, like Soviet planners? Hmm. Some certainly are. Trade wars are created with intent. They are planned. This global capitalist system is a planned trade war. Our political and corporate masters conspired in secrecy to create it. Now capitalism may not plan all military wars but as Smedley Butler noted and we see today, they certainly conspire to create some wars. And, as noted on here before, World War I was created with intent by capitalism. War is simply another outcome to the state-enforced violence of capitalism. Competition for greater and greater profits and greater and greater resources needed for those profits and the greater and greater markets needed for corporate overproduction simply leads to the inevitable. As Randolph Bourne opined, war is the health of the state. That certainly applies to state-enforced capitalism’s economic warfare. Warfare that is always fought by the minions as both corporate slaves and in its military campaigns. Umm, that would be us. Bourne’s remarks more pointedly are simply that the state exists through violence and thus must maintain this violence for its own health or existence. Capitalism, war, empire… just different manifestations of state violence.
Do we need to make things society needs or even wants? Of course. Do we want to do this under the control over Soviet-style government bureaucrats? Hardly. I don’t want to drive a Trabant or buy a Soviet-built house. But we don’t need this violent overproduction and the artificial need (control) for endless corporate capitalist profits that unnecessarily rapes the natural world, preys upon the mass of people to maintain its control, subverts democracy for the benefit of the few, forces societies around the world into unnecessary, destructive emotional competition, economic slavery, conflict and violence, and socializes all of its losses while privatizing the gains for a very few. Not through the predatory, private, for-profit corporate capital mechanisms that define capitalism as it has always been practiced. We have turned the world into a garbage dump and an internment camp for most people. There certainly is a substantially more quality-driven existence than this.
Maybe now many can start to appreciate why I have remarked that money is nothing more than an institution of control and that some day we will see the concept of money disappear. Forever. There is endless money around the world for state-enforced overproduction required by capitalism but seemingly no money for billions of people around the world to acquire that overproduction of food, to cite just one example. Ditto with healthcare. Ditto with homes. In many regards, the process of money’s death has already begun. What are food stamps? One could consider them to be a form of specialized money. Or, they could be considered the start of a trend in a movement away from money. Why can’t everyone have a food voucher in this nation to receive their natural right to our nation’s food supply? Obviously with natural right stipulations of personal responsibility to community or a nation or whatever. This is simply one instance where money is showing appearances of dying. There are many. Is the trend of it temporary or a permanent trend? A world without money would be a far more quality-driven existence for humanity and true freedom. And by quality, I mean something along the lines of Robert Pirsig’s metaphysical view of quality. Not a new Ferrari or second mansion driven by the self’s fatally-flawed subject-object perceptions and its insatiable desire for amusement. Another post for some day in the future.
"My friends, each of you is a single cell in the great body of the State. And today, that great body has purged itself of parasites. We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of facts. The thugs and wreckers have been cast out. And the poisonous weeds of disinformation have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Let each and every cell rejoice! For today we celebrate the first, glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directive! We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is a more powerful weapon than any fleet or army on Earth! We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion! We shall prevail!"
Institutions of the ego or of control always fail. Corporations, communism, the state, capitalism, rules, institutionalized science, rationality, university-conscripted corporate education and laws not based on natural rights…….. On and on and on. It’s just a matter of when. Some may question if this is just another hiccup for the systemic violence and inherent contradictions or instabilities of capitalism. Don’t bet on it. How do you plan to create jobs for the 50 million Americans on food stamps? Or reverse the fortunes of 150 million Americans who have just enough to barely make it? Now, take this dynamic global and it is in the billions. Remember, one of my long term theses is that we are in a cycle of volatility – one of the most accurate outcomes written about on here over the last eight years. There are esoteric factors not appreciated by mainstream or institutionalized perceptions of reality that are driving this crisis. These factors are are now. In this cycle. And if you open your eyes, you see it everywhere.
Just as when the Soviet’s control system unwound it created collapse all throughout its empire of Eastern Europe and elsewhere, so too will the entire corporate capitalist control system around the world likely experience the same fate. Does that mean a post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max? Well, if the capitalists have it their way, then yes war and violence is possible. Remember, the Soviet Union and Soviet-bloc really fell with little more than a peep. A system of inherent instabilities and contradictions that is perpetuated by statist ego and ego-force only exists through illusion. One day people woke up and the illusion had disappeared. Freedom is first a state of mind. Releasing our ego’s attachment to illusions that create and perpetuate our own suffering.