Siouxrose:

"The UNREAL never is; the REAL never is not. Those who see this separation in forms have attained the end of all knowledge. That Which pervades and sustains the universe is indestructible; no power can change this unchanging, nor perish the imperishable REALITY. The body is mortal; the LIGHT which dwells in the body is eternal and infinite..."
(Bhagavad Gita)

"Beyond the senses is the mind, and beyond the mind is reason. Beyond reason is the Spirit in man, and beyond this is the Spirit of the universe, the evolver of all.

And beyond is the EFULGENT LIGHT, all-pervading, beyond definitions. When a mortal knows the LIGHT, s/he attains liberation and reaches imortality.

IT'S form is not in the field of vision: no one sees the MOST HIGH with mortal eyes. LIGHT is seen by a pure heart and by a mind and thoughts that are pure. Those who know the MOST HIGH attain enlightenment in life immortal."
(Katha Upanishad)

Hermes: " You have taught me these things well, as I wished, O TA'AT. Now tell me how the way back is found?"

TA'AT: " First in the dissolution of the material body, one gives up the body itself up to change. The form you had becomes unseen, and you surrender to the divine power, your habitual character, now inactive. The bodily senses return to their own sources. Then they become parts again and rise for action, while the seat of emotions and desire go to mechanical(material) Nature.

Thus a man starts to rise up through the harmony of the cosmos. To the first plane he surrenders the activity of growth and diminution;to the second the means of evil, trickery now being inactive; to the third covetous deceit, now inactive, and to the fourth the eminence pertaining to a ruler, being now without avarice; to the fifth impious daring and reckless audacity and to the sixth evil impulses for wealth, all of these being now inactive; and to the seventh plane the falsehood which waits in ambush.

Then, stripped of the activities of the cosmos, he enters the energy of the eigth plane with his own power, and he sings the praises to the ONE with those who are present; those who are near rejoice at his coming. Being made like those who are there together, he also hears certain powers which are above the eigth sphere, singing praises to the MOST HIGH with a sweet voice. Then in due order, they ascend to the OCEAN of LIGHT and they surrender themselves to the powers, and becoming the powers they are merged in the LIGHT. This is the end, the Supreme Good, for those who have had the higher knowledge; to become LIGHT. "
(The way of Hermes)

Peace be with you sister in this time of sorrow.

Aymon

Stephen Jay Gould would be turning over in his grave were he to read this. He disliked the comparisons between Darwin's Origin of Species and theories of market place dynamics and other types of human interaction.

I don't believe that there is anything predictable about the longevity of corporations, and just like the dinosaurs, they might someday die out.

I remember when cows (you know, sacred cow, based on the one the Hebrews fashioned as idol as they awaited Moses' return from his Mt. meditation summit) were placed all around New York City. It seemed almost Biblical to me, a return--by metaphor--to a bona fide worship of the golden cow. Friedman's idol is mammon; and the short-sightedness of a model fostered on destroying the ecosystems that are necessary to the sustenance of life will not be lost on the generation left to wrestle with the destabilized paradigm they are about to inherit. Traded for $16 in trinkets, Manhattan Island the Wall Street commerce center it hosts is the extreme embodiment of a philosophy antithetical to the values of the Indigenous the turf was taken from (in a seminal bad faith deal, one of many). In her book, "Voices of Our Ancestors," Indigenous writer Dhyani Ywahoo speaks about the ecology of her lineage. It was often the circle of GRANDMOTHERS, those who have given and nurtured life who were asked to make decisions about life's continuation. They did their best to think ahead to the well-being of the next SEVEN generations. Contrast that view with corporations living for quarterly profits, cooking the books, making money out of NO effort (trading this illusion of wealth/ownership for that one, as in Hedge funds, etc), promoting conflict to profit from weapons sales, using PR to get the public to eat foods that compromise their health, or use products that diminish their lifespans, and on and on. It's been said that "Man is the only beast that fouls his own nest." Indeed.

Perhaps "Survival of the Richest" would be a proper motto for the present batch of conservatives and Republicans. Conserving their wealth seems to be the motive for any action they take or word they speak.
Capitalism is an economic theory, nothing more. Presently, our economy, and our market system requires ever increasing expansion and production. This is fine if there are markets to expand into and materials to extract but in the long term this is not sustainable. There is a limit to how much we can extract from the earth in terms of materials, energy, food, and water. This extraction cannot expand forever. A sustainable plateau must be reached at some point. Hence pure Capitalism is not indefinitely sustainable.
Perhaps these present day conservatives realize this and are hoarding their wealth.

I always thought "Hal" of 2001 Space Odyssey was a metaphor for the corporation..." Daisy, daisy... we know what we have to do...

We must curtail corporate power by removing the legal structure of "personhood" and remove "limited liability".

"the late free-market economist Milton Friedman, declared that any corporate management failing to function so as to maximize profit should be sued by shareholders."

To put Milton Friedman in charge of economics is akin to putting shaman in charge of NASA. His false ideas, a repetition of long ago debanked ideas of Vienna School of Economics, is mere makeup to cover up The Global Loot, which is in its third decade already.

Participants of Common Dreams will do well by skipping post that mention that poisonous shaman preaching deregulation unlimited. Thanks to Friedman we have hedge funds that will put final nails into coffin of Plutocracy. For if Plutocracy of old was based on chests full of gold, our modern type depends entirely on magnetic spots and invinsibility of network security.

New Attila the Hun or Bush the American may destroy plutocracy by turning switch of international grid.

I agree with Bevandavies about Darwinian evolution being a poor analogy for the business world. Where corporations are supposed to survive competition through profitability, species survive through reproduction.

On another point, I have no objection to corporations as such. They are merely one type of voluntary association; remember that there are even nonprofit corporations. I also don't have a problem with limited liability since aggrieved parties can "pierce the corporate veil" in court if a corporation's managers fail to respect the formalities or hold the managers personally liable if they commit fraud. And if rich people didn't have corporations to work their will upon us, they'd turn to some other tool instead. One could argue that the corporations should act even more ruthlessly in pursuit of profit by refusing to excessive pay to upper-level managers and by booting them out without severance pay or benefits when they perform badly. But managers are able to screw shareholders the way politicians are able to screw voters.

I know it's fashionable to bash corporations and that not wanting to be a part of that world is seen as epitomizing "slackerdom"...

...but what do they do for someone like me?

It's fashionable because it's true. It's almost become common knowledge that corporations are inherently antisocial entities.

I mean me becoming an executive as about as likely as Pat Robertson embracing Wicca. I'm not getting into that club. But why would someone like me even want to be sitting at that table?

Maybe I'm being classist here, but I see these people whenever I'm downtown during the day. I've even come into contact with them.

They scare me.

I am intimidated by people in power suits. Hell, I am intimidated by people in power, period.

I can't trust them. I look in their faces and don't see compassion or selflessness. They appear so smug. They don't smile, they grin. They flash their pearly whites like wolves. They don't laugh, they cackle.

When they do speak to you, it's almost as if they're reading from a script. The phoniest people I have ever met were those in positions of corporate power.

And forget about them looking you in the eye.

I want a free-market fantasist to answer me a simple question.

Do we need corporations? If so, do we need CEO's and executives? If we do need them, why must they make 500 times what their average employee makes?

Why is it that a nation supposedly "under God" utilizes a system that is so inherently Satanic?

The fact that the late Milton Friedman is "late",should be the perfect example of the limitations in our world.We often see aging,billionare,businessmen,spruiking various methods of increasing profits.Too late to get a life,I suppose,but no need for the rest of us to get on the same treadmill.

In the real world, quite often morons are at the top of the pyramid, many become captains of industry and even presidents (we have one).

In the military as well as the corporate world it might be more important who they know and their political connections than any ability to further the organisation's goals.

Survival of the fittest ?

All economic theories are based on assumptions most often than not reflecting the political values of the theoretician, not what you would expect of a scientific discipline.

Economic theories are as sound as voodoo or astrology, not science. I prefer Karl Marx's "points of view", at least they are more humane and less predatory.

In an earlier post sometime in early June, I had mentioned the concept of RISK SHARING.

Basically, if people here do not ubderstand this conept, which is as true as a Law of Nature such as Gravitation, and is under the control of no corporation, but is meant to produce safety nets for large groups of people against man -made or natural difficulties, then you will simply be overwhelmed by the complexity of the financial world. And that confusion will make you throw away such humane RISK - SHARING institutions as:

Universal Health INSURANCE

Home ownership GUARANTEES

Post College education JOB-INSURANCE

Social Security INSURANCE

World Climate Change RISK REDUCTION Fund.

I know whereoff I speak because I have taught this material and supervised Ph.D theses on these conepts for 30 years. The economist whose work that is mainly responsible for the larger part of our understanding of these crucial concepts and on which the plethora of financial instruments from ordinary stocks to complex hedge funds are based is Kenneth Arrow, Professor Emeritus at Stanford, Nobel Laureate, and among the cognoscenti, the "Einstein" of Economics.

This great man, like Noam Chomsky, is committed social progressive, and one of those righteous and formidable Jewish intellects who stand tall for justice and humanism. Needless to say, he is my hero because it is from his writings that I learnt most of what I know, and what is scientifically true in economic science. When I was being recruited for my first professorial job by two top academic institutions in the US, I chose to go where Arrow was going even though I was going to be paid $6,000 less, a large amount of money when my yearly salary started at $22,000. Why? To learn at the feet of the great man.

He is self effacing, humble and socially conscious individual, and the most formidable enemy of Friedman and his inhumane, Pseudo-Darwinist, mumbo- jumbo, plutocratic economics that masquerades to day as "capitalism". Of all the economists in the world, Friedman, the showman and PR genius, fully funded by AIPAC, is msot scared of Arrow. I was present at a debate between Friedman and Arrow at Stanford, one of the most major policy debates of the time when Neo-Conservative economic ideology was coalescing around Friedman and The "Chicago School" - - an ideology that was to lead us into the fascism we see today. The debate was attended by many top economists of the "left" and "right", and many Nobel Prize winners. I have preserved the cutting from the Stanford Daily on the next day summarizing the debate.

Arrow wiped the floor with Friedman, even though Arrow was arguing for the proposition that America could move towards a socially just and democratic society and economy gradually over 10 or so years without any diminution of its productive capacity and wealth, but in fact acquiring a lot of social wealth in the process. Arrow is also a formidable mathematician which Friedman is not. So Friedman was left sputtering at the end of the the debate because he could not argue his way out from the box Arrow had put him as he is able to do in the flim-flam he is able to peddle in the conservative news media such as the Wall Street Journal.

But Friedman is a vindictive person. He had made a chilling promise at the end of the debate which went something like this: "Professor Arrow may be correct in his technical arguments, but he does not understand that political economy is based on power, and I have the power[under Ronald Reagan]." That is one resaon why Arrow has been marginalised in the AIPAC controlled media, inasmuch as Chomsky is, and that is why the general public, including most progressive academics in the sciences do not understand what economics is, but flail away at phantoms. They would throw away the baby with the bath water.

Arrow is not alone; there are 10 Nobel Prize winning economists with him, such as Robert Solow and Paul Samuelson at MIT, George Akerlof at Berkeley, and Amartya Sen at Oxford. And they are all progressive Democrats, with Arrow being on the board and, perhaps, later chairman of Economic Advisors to JFK. Just before the 2004 election, they issued a comprehensive statement to condemn George Bush's economic policies at home and abroad in the strongest possible terms. Of course the, the MSM completely ignored it, but the "dumb as door knob" Kerry (to use his own words) also ignored it. Why? Because I bet he and his Democrat "handler" minions with 50-point IQ's also do not know them.

It has always been a surprise to me when I saw Grenspan, the perfect obfuscator and devotee of Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss (Straussians include Wolfowitz, Pearle,Feith, and others of the neo-con cabal), mumble his way through his monthly or 6 weekly testimony in the Senate Finance Committee, and how all those senators, Dems and Repugnants alike obsequiously genuflect before him. Only Paul Wellstone, another righteous Jew, had the balls to not accept any BS from GSpan. However, because of their pathetically low knowledge of financial markets and the economy, GSpan was able to get away selling snake oil to them. None of them ever thought to bring in Arrow or Akerloff to such hearings and allow them to question the slimy GSpan. GSpan would have been chewed up and spitted out within 10 minutes by these guys.

So, there you have it. Your whole life will always depend, whether or not progressives or conservatives come to power, on money. Money by itself is purely a means to conduct transactions other than by strict barter. Secondly, please stop believing in the Malthusian canard that there is scarcity of resources in the world and the world will come to an end if there is economic activity of any kind whatsoever. There is no way to go back to the life of hunter gatherers - - most of humanity now lives in cities.

Malthus was another calvinist,Neo-Darwinist idiot in the 18th century (or was it the 17th?) who like chicken little kept on saying the "sky is falling". People just take anybody that the media hypes up as an "authority" in economics. How can a defunct, priest turned apocalyptic "economist" have any relevance today?

The greatest resource in the world, of which the world has an unending supply, is the HUMAN INTELLECT. If properly used in RISK -SHARING and away from WAR MONGERING which is the POLAR OPPOSITE of risk- sharing and a total waste of resources, then the world will prosper. This despite whatever stupidity some Prussian plutocrat - - Bismarck - - blathered, and which is religiously quoted by "great power" players like Kissinger, that "War is the extension of politics by other means". IT is NOT! WAR is the MOST stupid economic DECISION, even for arms manufacturers who can easiliy convert their advanced technologies to peaceful purposes ("swords to plowshares") for larger production of wealth for all, inclucding themselves.

WAR is like the EASTER ISLANDER decsion to chop down the last tree. This is where economic Neo-Darwinism of Friedman and other neo-cons pulls the wool over the eyes of the economics- challenged lay people and non-economics academics. They say: "Human life is a zero-sum survival game, as in Darwinian evolution, in which you kill the other so that you can get your share of a fixed pie that is not adequate for all"

The Human Intellect is the most formidable instrument for making the pie more than adequate for all without ever straining the ecology of the world. THIS IS A FACT, and all the people who understand this will tell you that it ceases to be a zero-sum game when RISK- SHARING comes into play. Observe that risk-sharing is NOT a material resource, but an INTELLECTUAL PRODUCT.

So when you hold you savings money anywhere, you are helping the curent corporate structure whose risk-sharing arrangements such as hedge funds are skewed in favour of the rich and senior managers and CEO's of Corps. When one removes that skewing, enough money will be released for the best risk -sharing arrangements such as Universal Health Insurance.

The corpoarte FORM of risk-sharing by millions of small shareholders, protected by "limited liability" (which means you don't lose you shirt and the roof over your head if your $1000 investment goes bust) is NOT BAD per se. You will have to have this form even for Universal Health Insurance. It is the misuse by insiders such as CEO's and their lackeys in senior management that has made the economy a "Managerial Capitalist" (in the words of Adam Smith - - a "Mercantilist" economy which he condemned throughout his book as a theft of the people's wealth by the rich and powerful).

So when the progressive victory comes about, hire Kenneth Arrow and his group, otherwise the victory will by Pyrrhic as in Orwells's 1984.

aymon

iwarrior,

Good points - corporate-suits ARE a spooky lot. And they do NOT achieve their positions of power through intelligence, inventiveness, or even hard work, as their social-Darwinian friend Friedman (a silver-spoon billionaire himself) would have you believe.

A a Civil engineer who occasionally has to deal with them, most are dumb as bricks, but they are dumb bricks with a single-minded power-lust. Bush himself is a classic example of this corporate-suit personality.

The old robber barons Carnegie, Frick, Schwab, were awful bastards, but nothing like the current lot. As a fellow Yinzer, can you imagine what it would be like to sit at a typical power-lunch at the Duquesne Club?

aymon, Well said

I would add to your RISK - SHARING proposal: free Education.
Everyone should have free education, similar to the system in France and Germany.

For me it does not make any sense that highly capable talented poor people will be deprived of education, and from developing their full potential.
It is in the best interest of society that the best people will get the best education, no matter how deep the pockets of their parents are..

vets;

It is heart warming to see you allow your basic humanity to come out. I had told others that you had good heart though sometimes you became incensed.

But you are absolutely right. Free education is a sine qua non for any free society and for the preservation of fundamental values of compassion, justice, truth and love for knowledge. Without education, there can no civil society, nor any civil service. But this is essentially what taxation is - - namely to collect in a pool some of resources of society from everyone to share the risks of running civil society which includes an independent judiciary, free education, and market monitoring agencies that make sure that no businesses take actions that would bring harm to the public good.

There are lots of modalities to running an economy justly and the works of Kenneth Arrow, Amartya Sen, and others of their progressive group such as Paul krugman have laid out the details in their writings.

These investments in what are called "public goods" such as education, transportation, judiciary and so on are absolutely necessary for the economy to run smoothly without strife between different sectors of society resulting from greed and selfishness, or the desire to hoard wealth and not allow money and goods to circulate.

Whilst I agree with Marx in his feelings for the down trodden workers which you can see in Charles Dickens' books, he did not understand the advanced notions of risk sharing, knowledge based goods and services and things like that to be applicable to a modern, social democratic economy. Workers should also be owners of the capital of the businesses in which they work by appropriate risk sharing arrangements between the people as a whole through their Government and the workers. In "workers" I include managers right up to CEOs. The pyramidal structures of current large, globalised fascist corporations in which CEOs become effectively feudal lords have to be abolished or otherwise we sink back into the mess we are in right now.

peace

aymon

Aymon: Thank you for the elucidating economics lesson (this not being my area of expertise at all!). I applaud the generosity of your nature in sharing your wide understanding with readers of this forum. Gracias.

Thank you aymon for the great post. I had never heard of Mr. Arrow, so all this is very refreshing to me. Of course, I know some of Rand and Greenspan and there theory of motivation, which I disagree with. I believe cooperation will work and at this point environmentally speaking, there is no other alternate. When I have discussed this topic with others who doubt that people would make intellect and science progression, I use Bill Bryson's book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, because it has many fine examples of people who loved their field of study.

I actually think there's alot of connection between biology and business. Also the weather. Basically, all three are complex systems that move energy from a state of quality to a state of dissipation. Energy moves through them, which energizes their motion (and some of their motion involves the long time-scale evolution of more and more complex structures). But the analogy to biological evolution may be business-theory, or the way businesses are put together. Also, the evolution of government, and the government-business connection.

Businesses respond to energy (where the 'agree-upon' currency for energy is money) not to people. The attempt to get them to do a better job responding to the needs of people represents, to me, a kind of 'variable viscosity' in society: and government is the evolved-structure that imposes that viscosity. That the lifting of some should be accompanied by the lifting of many could be seen as a kind of 'quicksand': a higher viscosity than water or air. No wonder businesses resent it. But, being a 'people', I don't resent it at all and encourage it. I don't want to kill the goose, but I do want to tax its eggs for the population at large. So, people need to realize that government is a PEOPLE'S REACTION TO BUSINESS. If business is allowed to buy the government or otherwise get around the will of the people, it'll definitely not act in the peoples interest, but in the interest of money (that is, energy).

Government is a method of imposing quicksand on the otherwise unrestricted energy-flow sought by a complex evolved system, the corporation. We should NOT allow government to be as beholden to the corporations as we currenty allow: THEY ARE NATURAL ANTAGONISTS (Predator-Prey).

Siouxrose, thanks for your kind appreciation. hopefully you may be able to circulate this to many liberal progressives. Because after the rapacious gang now in power is removed, the economy will have to be run properly, or in the chaos that will invariably follow, a more nasty fascism will emerge, if that cahos begins to create economic hardships for the people. This is a message from the Light and you are one of the few among the many here that acquire knowledge intuitively from the realms of Light, Mercy and Compassion. Please get Kenneth Arrow and his group - - they are the only ones who understand properly the vast forces in econmies and general equilibrium to be able to stop a precipitousslide of the American economy into a disaster in the next 10 years. I may or may not be around to effect or persuade others in the progressive movement to take care of the much nastier fascism that awaits.

Nanoo: Just Google or Wikiped or both for the following key words - - Kenneth Arrow, George Akerloff, Joseph Stiglitz, arrow Debreu securities, risk aversion, Arrow-Pratt measure of risk aversion, risk premiums, general equilibrium and follow the threads. good luck. sorry I can't give you a more detailed overview and some paradigm examples. It will take too large and ofetn technical a post to do that.

ubrew12: I think you need to start at the basics of supply and demand curves, prices and markets etc. instead of following your hunches. This is a vast area and prone to simplistic analogies. also nobody, at least not me, if see this post and my previous one, is trying to kill the goose. I am only trying to suggest a cure for its current constipation that is not yielding golden eggs by lots of smelly stuff that is killing the environment, causing wars, and making hard working honest and decent people not able to put bread on the table. go read Jeffrey Scachs at Columbia Universirty for starters.

One thing that gets me is how people overcomplicate these things. Are they really that difficult to understand? If our country can engage in illegal wars and squander money on products like the useless Star Wars program, She can invest in Her own people via free education and health care. Do people need doctorates in economics to understand that? I have the feeling that you could explain this stuff to the elites until you're blue in the face and trump them left and right in debates, and it won't make a difference. They know capitalism doesn't work for the majority of the people, but it works for them, so they don't care.

Our country is like the company I currently work for. It won't invest in itself. They make a profit hand over fist, yet their computer system is obsolete and crashes regularly, the buildings we work in are falling apart, half of the equipment we use is shoddy and needs replaced, they're understaffed in several areas, they're running out of room for everything, and everyone is miserable and hostile.

But the Old Man was able to go sailing again this year, so all is well.

*sigh* I'm gonna get fired. :)

aymon, -"It is heart warming to see you allow your basic humanity to come out. I had told others that you had good heart though sometimes you became incensed."

Thank you for your nice words. I'm have acting human all along. There is perfectly logical explanation for times where my reaction is seemed by you as "incensed". If you have read "The Selfish Gene", by Richard Dawkins you would understand why.

One thing I would add to this paper is the thought that although corporations are often immortal, or seem to be, the employees, executives and shareholders of those corps are all too mortal, and know it. They are all too subject to the faults and foibles of mortal doubt, anxiety and insecurity. And so what do they do? They operate from the insecure stance of grabbing wealth and privilege, without a thought for tomorrow, or for the greater good. So you have mortal beings driving an immortal and very powerful entity like a hand puppet for the duration of their paltry days, only to hand it off to the next generation of mortals. You gotta admit, it's a pretty weird scenario.

Let's put it this way: you'd have a hard time explaining it to your dog.

iwarrior

"One thing that gets me is how people overcomplicate these things. Are they really that difficult to understand?"

Yes, the world is quite complicated, even if humans were not present on it. for example, I really do not know a thing about carpentry. So I would be stupid to start building a house. i could read up some colourful "do it yourself" manual and think i know everything there is to know about carpentry, but I would still make a mess. A master carpenter looking at my handiwork would suggest that a cheaper and better route would be for me to do my job and let a professional carpenter do her job. I assume that it takes many years, perhaps as long as a doctorate 9 about 6-7 years) to become a master carpenter. I would be presumptuous to accuse the carpenters organization that they
"overcomplicate these things ...they really [be] that difficult to understand."

If you had to have cancer surgery, would go to your barber to have it operated upon? Cancer is a very complex disease that takes years to study. removal of cancers by surgery is even more complicated. a trained caner surgeon would probabaly have spent 12-14 years of study and practice to be let loose on the general population.

Is AIDS a complex disease? You answer that and then consider the problem of running an entire economy of 300 million people worth about $14 trillion a year. You may try and solve that with nostrums if somebody allows you, but don't bet on it.

all of us have different talents and I bet you have plenty Ain which I am a complete dud. I don't feel bad because we can exchange and risk-share towards win -win outcomes that are better than our staus quo.

And by the way, I agree with you that "capitalism" is a terrible system if by "capitalism" you mean the current 'zero-sum, beggar-thy-neighbour, 'let them eat cake'" system. But that system is a metastatised cancer, and trying to remove it with a meat cleaver rather than a team of top class "economics surgeons" like Arrow and Stiglitz using precison instruments is very unwise, don't you agree?

peace

Aymon

AYMON: I take your words to heart as a spiritual teacher and HIGHLY informed individual. I needed them today as there has been a significant family loss, right on astrological time, I might add.
VETS: There are people who are so identified with justice and so MOVED by the calamitous injustices in our midst that they may come on strong from time to time. I am a candidate for as much. Emotions are the hardest aspect of human nature to tame. It's not about the selfish gene when an individual becomes incensed by stupidity on the part of leaders poised to make yet greater insane decisions... please extend your humanity to those who are trying to educate and/or improve the situation. It is TESTING all of us, and in this community of like minds, progressives, we MUST show tolerance for one another. If we can't do it, what role model for the masters of hate and divisiveness to our "right"?

Aymon - one point that no-one seems to mention when discussing the incorrigible Friedman, is that he was an avowed anarchist! Now, view his Free Market 'theories' through this lens!

Also, I believe that Milton Friedman was merely a figure-head, selected and groomed by power-brokers, to utter his vile beliefs upon a gullible world, in order to create this smoke-screen behind which the current brand of fascism could thrive (yes, boys and girls, the US is now fascist - compare what we have with the economic descriptions of Bennito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler). I have read of the Arrow-Friedman debate, and would have welcomed a Sen-Friedman debate - Friedman would not have lasted a second - GOD, would I have loved to have seen that pompous idiot get his come uppance!

What to do - unionize, organize, STRIKE!!! Rabid Reagan started busting the unions (and Moggie Thatcher followed suit - seems like the second time that the US has had a poodle in Downing Street), in order to create the environment for fascism to flourish - text book Hitler. If we the people organize, the government will have to start taking 'proper' action.

economic darwinism. the religion of capitalism.
discussed in detail in this free electronic paper I wrote called
fractional reserve banking as economic parasitism

endorsed by two phd economists. printed in nexus
magazine, 60k world circulation. #1 top downloaded
economics paper. used by economics
teacher in australia as standard classroom material.

more info on request.

recent supporting material:

confessions of an economic hit man by Perkins
money as debt video by Grignon
Congressman pres candidate Dennis Kucinich
at last years
2005 Monetary Reform Conference

Sioxrose, my thoughts are with you. My father suffered a heart attack last night, so I can very much empathize with you at this time.

Aymon, thank you for your response. I didn't mean to try and step on your toes or any such thing. Perhaps it's due to my negative experience with university which has somewhat and perhaps wrongly made me "academia-phobic". For some reason I feel as if academics are in these ivory towers looking down on everyone else, not that I feel you are one of those people.

"and that is why the general public, including most progressive academics in the sciences do not understand what economics is, but flail away at phantoms."

True, I think the mainstream media keep the populace in the dark and misguides them in every aspect possible.

But, and maybe it's just me, everytime I try to read some sort of thesis on subjects such as economics, I always feel as if it's this huge equation that begs to be simplified. And it seems as if it's the most daunting to the people who are the most vulnerable, as if the elites purposely don't want John Q. Public to understand wealth and how the economy works. For if they did, they'd see how truly unfair it is, how it really doesn't work for them, and how it's likely in its current state to never work in their best interests.

This could just be due to my own insecurities, but when it comes fo academics, I often feel as if I'm being intentionally mystified by them. :) Not that you're doing that or that I can't comprehend your posts on these subjects as well as spirituality, but I always fear for the laypeople (me included) being alienated. They more than anyone need to know, well...what the hell is going on! :) If they're left scratching their heads, then it plays into the hands of the elites.

On the other hand, I've said before that this site should not only be used to educate and thusly get people to climb over to the progressive side of the fence, but also to push people to THINK as well as take sort of action.

I can be a stubborn fellow, and I'm young and male which means I like to think that I know everything sometimes. :) It could be that I was meant to cross paths with you in order to be "pushed" by you.

If I can, I'd like to ask you a question aymon. What do you think of Mike Gravel's idea of doing away with the income tax and instead going with a progressive national sales tax, The Fair Tax as he calls it? Do you think it would help enforce risk-sharing?