Life under Capitalism – Page 27

Capital, it fails us now

Published on December 2, 2008

This crisis has been a real eye opener, hasn’t it, in that it made visible how much of the world economy was based on credit driven overconsumption, both on a consumer level as in the more rarified air of Wall Street. Ever since “communism” was “defeated” we’ve forgotten how wasteful capitalism is. we’ve been conned into believing there was no alternative, that we could not control its dexstructive tendencies and at best we could hope to only migitate some of its worst excesses, but that ultimately we were locked in a race to the bottom that would however somehow bring us untold riches someday, if we followed the rules of the free market. The fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the death knell for the perverted version of “communism” practised in the USSR, could this recession bring the same for thriumphant capitalism?

Because one thing is certain. We do have the resources, the abibilty and the ingenuity to make everybody in the world rich without destroying the planet and without engaging in the danc eof mutal assured destruction that is free market capitalism. But it would mean the end of the priviledged classes and they’ve never given up their power without struggle. One good suggestion to start the struggle comes from Ian Welsh, on how to stop the obscene bonuses and salaries managers and CEOS have awarded themselves over the years:

The simplest thing is to just count all income equally, tax it all at the same rate, don’t allow deductions beyond a ertain level (50K or so) and tax all income above, say 1 million at 90%, 95% for all income above 5 million. Don’t allow too much income deferral and there you go. Slap on some “in kind” rules for corporations (yes, if your corporation pays for your car, that’s salary) and while there will always be loopholes, you’ll still rein in the worst excesses.

This of course presupposes a government anywhere in the western world on the side of the workers, rather than the rich, which might be a problem…

Schadenfreude part 2

Published on November 17, 20081 Comment

The Moustache of Understanding is frantically calling on Obama to save the economy. As is expected of Friedman what he urges Obama to do is inane –apparantely Obama needs to be a true leader and urge the American public to “go shopping” to save the economy, the idea that people without a house, car or job not quite being in a position to restart the global economy by buying more Christmas presents not yet having penetrated his thick skull — but there is an extra franctic tone to his appeal. I wonder why:

That’s because the author’s wife, Ann (née Bucksbaum), is an heir to the General Growth fortune. In the past year, the couple—who live in an 11,400-square-foot mansion in Bethesda, Maryland—have watched helplessly as General Growth stock has fallen 99 percent, from a high of $51 to a recent 35 cents a share. The assorted Bucksbaum family trusts, once worth a combined $3.6 billion, are now worth less than $25 million.

Ah.

No wonder the guru of neo-liberal globalisme, the arselicker of the new world order, is now reduced to stupid pleas for someone, anyone to save him.

Wingnuts In The Workhouse

Published on November 10, 20086 Comments

Things are getting a little bit Dickensian for some wingnut bloggers.

Roy Edroso at Alicublog writes the sad story of the crash and burn of a wingnut blogger post-election: after having placed his faith (and his family’s future security) in the simple business formula of repeating rightwing talking points online like a parrot in return for ‘donations’ from readers, blogger Kim DuToit is surprised that his plan failed. But how could such a moneymaking scheme ever possibly have failed?

So strong was this blogger’s belief that blogging would rescue him from a life of wage-slave misery and potentially degrading manual toil (isn’t that what the bleks are for?), South African import DuToit spent seven fruitless years pursuing his dream of national punditry, during which time all it gave him was gout:

I hadn’t thought about Kim du Toit — celebrated author of “The Pussification of the American Male” and other two-fisted screeds on self-reliance — for quite some time when pure, blind luck led me to this fascinating essay by his wife, explaining why Mr. du Toit will soon cease blogging, despite an alleged flood of reader protests: “The truth is folks, we can’t afford it.”

Astonishingly, blogging has not been the bonanza the du Toits might have wished for, and as Mr. du Toit is unable to “contribute to our financial requirements” with a more traditional job because of his gout, times have grown hard. Mrs. du Toit cashed in her IRA last year, but that money was all spent on a “last hurrah around the world with our kids,” lap-band surgery for their daughter, household repairs, and servers for Mr. du Toit’s blogging.

“We’ve staid-off bankruptcy, but just barely,” says Mrs. du Toit. “The truth is, we spoke to an attorney about bankruptcy, but we’d be forced into a two year commitment of repayment, not debt forgiveness, and the kid’s college would be the expense we’d have to stop under that scenario.”

More…

Let me get this straight.

After deliberately getting themselves into humongous debt and deliberately wasting what few assets they had on a] personal pleasure and b] a business that had yet to show any return (other than the aforementioned gout), these people now want the whole lot written off and show no intent to repay anything at all? There’s conservative self-reliance and pioneer moral fibre for you.

“So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I began to contract a quantity of debt.”

Dickens, Great Expectations

A commenter to the post likens the DuToits to Dickens’ Veneerings; I think Dickens would have recognised them as more general but no less self-interested types. They’re Pecksniffian sanctimonious hypocrites (“Some people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there”) whilst and at one and the same time they’re Mr Micawbers, with their an unshakeable faith in a providential turning up of something: but most of all what they are is Pip from Great Expectations, with his secret grandiosity and feelings of entitlement but without the charm.

We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.

Great Expectations

I wonder how many more smalltime wingnut bloggers are getting a visist from the skeleton truth about now? Dare I mention Pyjamas Media?

I might feel a bit sorry for the deluded idiots. Yes, even the DuToits: they thought the Republican reich would last forever, they thought that if they could just be strident enough, loyal enough and vicious enough that the rightwing media gravy train would slow down specially for them, just in time to catch their free ride to fame, fortune and future Fox punditry.

I might feel sorry for them, but I don’t. That’s because this yummy schadenfreude is so delicious. Please sir, can I have some more?

And Still They Come…

Published on November 3, 2008

How very mysterious: yet another giant Lego figure has washed up on a European beach, this time in Brighton rather than Holland:

The Lego man is 6ft tall in red, yellow and green. It is presumed to have washed up on the beach, but whether it has come from a cargo ship or from across the Channel is not clear.

Brighton resident Gerry Turner, 34, said: “It’s very odd. God knows how it got here but people are saying it’s from Holland because it’s got some Dutch writing on it. It must have fallen off a boat of something. The kids love it.”

Children helped stand the Lego man up on the beach, but are still mystified as to where it came from. One said: “It’s great, but we don’t know why it’s here.”

A spokesman for Brighton and Hove City Council said it didn’t know the origin of the Lego man, but said it was fine for it to remain on the beach.

He said: “There’s no problem at all. It will be interesting to see how long the Lego man stays there for. We’ll keep an eye on it.”

Here’s the Lego man that washed up in Zandvoort in 2007:

You know what this means: either it’s a PR stunt gone horribly wrong, or there’s at least two (and possibly an entire flotilla) of giant Dutch Lego men bobbing along quietly below the radar off the coasts of Europe, for all the world like unanimated golems waiting for their moment to come ashore and get the magic word and follow their prime directive.

I wonder what the activating command might be?

Sins of The Times

Published on October 21, 2008

You know the world’s gone a bit kerflooey when The Times devotes a couple of pages – complete with a big quote from Eric Hobsbawm – to an analysis of whether or not Karl Marx was right.

Of course it being a Murdoch paper the other quotes are from careerists from Living Marxism and Spiked, and the former comic, now smug bourgeois author Alexei Sayle.

That said, Sayle puts his finger on one consequence of this rediscovery of Marx – the secret glee many leftists surely indulge in when we think no-one is looking:

From out of the dusty corners and fetid holes where they have been hiding for so many long decades of pain, his true disciples are emerging blinking into the light. At last they are being asked to write small pieces in newspapers and appear on late-night political TV shows hosted by men with strange hair, and with one voice these true disciples of Karl Marx are saying: “I told you so! I bloody told you so! I’ve been going on about this stuff for years but you didn’t listen, did you? Instead you just stopped inviting me to your dinner parties and didn’t answer my increasingly desperate text messages. Now you’re sorry, aren’t you? But it’s too late. Ha ha ha ha ha.”

Yes. Well. I’d never do such a thing. Mwahahah… oops.

Take a hundred lines. “I will not indulge in schadenfreude… I will not indulge in schadenfreude…”