Producing quality goods that aren't addictive or obsoleted in a few years--there's no money in that, fool. Get real. You want to get rich, "invest" in a bet in the casino. Is placing a bet in a casino an "investment"? Absolutely! An "investment" is now defined as a wager, often leveraged, at a gaming table in the casino. Anything that offers...
From low-Earth orbit, we see only the mighty sprawl of immense power. The internal gearing driving contradictory dynamics is buried beneath the grandeur and the euphoria. The consensus holds that things are looking up as the mighty forces of technology, political change and the market are all in confluence, reinforcing each other in a New...
If we study the problems outside the force-field of mythological beliefs, we find that there are no systemic solutions, there are only partial, local solutions. The status quo rests on a foundational belief that all problems, regardless of their nature, can be solved by technology, the market or the government (i.e. the state), or some...
When 21% interest rate credit cards are the only thing keeping the lid on awakening and revolt, that's not a sustainable fix. The easy credit, high interest rate swindle has been a financial feature of the landscape for so long it's rarely examined for what it is: not just a reliably profitable swindle, but as a safety valve for a broken...
That's the problem with deploying play-acting as "solutions:" play-acting doesn't actually fix the problems at the source, it simply lets the problems run to failure. By now, we all know the name of the game is narrative control: we no longer face problems directly and attempt to solve them at their source, we play-act "solutions" that leave...
The status quo has it backwards: low rates are now essential to prop up the wreckage left from previous doses of default and cascading losses. The economy depends on two related drivers: low interest rates and asset bubbles. These two feed back into one another, as low rates / loose credit enables those marginal buyers who otherwise wouldn't...
The artificial hill of pottery shards is puny and localized; the consequences of our system will bring down the system in ways the system is completely blind to. We're all familiar with the plot device of the self-destruct sequence counting down while our hero / heroine frantically tries to find the kill switch that turns it off. The...
In a functional economy with real competition and transparency, every one of these cartel-corporations would be driven out of business by their 'too big to care' incompetence. We've all heard of Too Big to Fail, a description of the consequences of consolidating capital and power in a few corporate entities, the net result of which is...
You see the irony here: the more successful the old solutions were, the greater our compulsion to cling to them even as they fail. Humans use inductive reasoning to solve problems. If a solution fixed a problem in the past, we assume it will solve the problem again. This is a rational expectation based on prior experience. But if conditions...
"Whenever you want to cheer yourself up, consider the good qualities of your companions." We turn to Marcus Aurelius for the realistic wisdom of stoicism, but he has another gift to offer us. What's striking--and rarely discussed--about his Meditations (free online text) is the nature of the first chapter of the book. Book One is a lengthy and...
Speaking of lean years, it took the NASDAQ stock market index almost 17 years to recover its March 2000 high of 5,048. The core skill going forward--frugality--is largely a forgotten skillset. So let's examine frugality. Conspicuous waste is part and parcel of conspicuous consumption, which is a signifier of wealth and status. The more one...
Addiction, illness and derangement are all immensely profitable, along with monopoly, cartels and collapsing quality. The economy has failed the American people, but it's taboo to say why because that would undermine the entire power structure that so richly benefits the few at the expense of the many. The few have an extremely compelling...
All three pillars propping up workforce spending are cracking. Plan accordingly. Karl Marx and Henry Ford both understood the key pillar of an industrial economy: the workforce has to earn enough to buy the output of the economy. If the workforce doesn't earn enough to have surplus earnings to spend on the enormous output of an industrial...
I think of Bill whenever the breeze brings his chimes to life. Today I want to honor Bill Murath, a friend and fellow craftsperson who recently passed away from AML. (Acute myeloid leukemia). Like the vast majority of those I have come to know through countless emails, Bill and I never met in the physical world, but we bonded in the realms of...
This is proof-positive we're not just poorer now than we were 40 years ago, we're much, much poorer. Armies of well-paid apologists, apparatchiks and propaganda peddlers--economists, pundits, statisticians, influencers--spend their entire careers pushing a big shining lie; we're more prosperous now than ever before. This is demonstrably false,...