The Rev

In Orwell's "1984", he talked about the purpose of the ongoing war between Oceania and Eurasia/Eastasia. He said the purpose of the war was not to win, but for the war to be continuous and neverending. The reason for this was the destruction of capital. No matter how much was produced, it was all to be consumed, and whatever was left over, was to be destroyed, through the war. Of course, only the amount necessary to survival wasn't destroyed, so the people were kept in a constant state of poverty, and therefore always dependent on the government.

Well, it seems to me that our culture works in much the same way, except that there isn't simply one big government controlling everything. Instead, it's a partnership between large corporations, banks, and government, each playing a role in the destruction of capital, and the creation of "poverty" for the majority.

With government, of course, we have wasteful spending and war. We take the product of our national industry and either destroy it outright, in war (and this includes human capital), or they deploy it in ways that ensure it's immediate consumption (all government spending is, essentially, waste, since it is not put toward building more means of production). With banks, we have inflation, which errodes the value of the dollar, leaving individuals with less in savings, and provides the government with more money to spend in destructive ways (every war in our history has been financed through deficit spending, the funds coming from bank credit expansion). And with large corporations, we have advertising, creation of false wants, the propagation of fads and other wasteful avenues to dispose of income.

We think all of this is to use the average person, the worker, the guy with a job, to create wealth for an elite class. However, if this were the case, wouldn't more wealth be created for the elites if they didn't engage in such wastefulness, especially war? If you build a jet and keep it, that's more wealth than building one and sending it to be destroyed, right?

I think there is a similar strategy at work in our own culture to what Orwell described in his book. Power is maintained by removing capital from the hands of the ordinary person, not by its accumulation by a small majority. People are kept in a state of modern "poverty" where they cannot quit their job, lest they lose everything; and they cannot save, because the money becomes more worthless every year; and they are encouraged to believe that basic satisfaction will come from consumption, just in case they are inclined to do without in order to accumulate some capital of their own.

I think this is how the modern power structure works. Societies have always been built upon the strong subjugating the weak, and this is how they do it today, in a literate and somewhat educated society.

Thoughts?



The Rev

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Grieves

Apathy leaves one to fathom a life without desire...

If the world had balance, there would be no elite, we would all be baseline, none up, none down, we would mearly function...Without drive or desire we return to nature, return to form vs function, return to ourselves...


You be the one to convince 7 billion and climbing to believe that tripe..

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The Rev

I have no idea what you're trying to say, Grieves.



The Rev

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Grieves

Either we live in a world of competition/corruption, or we live in a world of minimalism/equality...

You can't have your cake and eat it too, everyone can't be rich, just as everyone can't be poor, with the amount of resources, you could either let the 1% hoard and then distribute, or you could distribute equally to everyone which would stretch the resources thin, and kill desire(the drive to want), making everyone live closer to the middle(or baseline) than everyone being towards the top("rich")...Why would anyone want to go and do anything if everything was already taken care of?

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The Rev

I understand, but that wasn't what I was talking about.



The Rev

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kamikazi89

competion isn't defacto corrupt, equality is best applied when it comes to oppurtunity..outcome should be based on merit(imo) the free flow of ideas goods and services should be encouraged
..having said that i think most US residents are unaware just how fascist the global economy is,for the most part they view it as just and somehow neccasary

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katie west is the best

The Rev

In the Antebellum South, it was illegal to teach slaves to read. This ensured that they would never become educated, as well as ensured that they would never learn of different ways of life, and become disgruntled in their place. And while this state of affairs helped the white minority control a black majority, it also made any kind of forward societal progress impossible. The mass of the labor force could never rise to a better lot, by investing its efforts in better ways to do things. The average slave could pick cotton, but he couldn't invent a machine to do it more cheaply. Those kinds of avenues were shut off, guaranteeing stagnation of the Southern economy.

Well, we're doing the same thing now, but with capital (wealth produced which is not consumed). Our system of complicated taxes and regulations make it nearly impossible for the average person to save or start a business, or get one off the ground if they do start it. We are encouraged, instead, at every turn to consume everything we make (that we are allowed to keep), and what is taken is in turn consumed or outright destroyed (a percentage of our income that exceeds 50%, if you consider ALL the taxes and fees we are required to pay). This system enslaves people to their jobs, and limits their ability to get ahead in life, much as prohibiting education kept the african slave in his place 200 years ago.

But, it also stagnates progress, and errodes the economy (our apparatus and ability to create wealth) from the inside, as it limits reinvestment to a fraction of what it could be. You add to that the government's propensity toward deficit spending (comsumption/destruction of TOMORROW'S capital), and you have a recipe for economic degradation, all in an effort to maintain the hegemony of a few power brokers. It's like Hitler letting Germany burn before he'd surrender to the Allies.

I wonder if it isn't through similar means that most, if not all, civilizations fail.



The Rev

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Grieves

It happened on easter island...It can/will happen anywhere...

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The Rev

Easter Island. LOL. I have to wonder what they were thinking when they cut down the last tree.



The Rev

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Grieves

"Lets build some big stone faces that will weird the world out, then die"

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kamikazi89

you know just last week a few establishment liberals bemoaned the fact that federal early education programs were fail;ing to meet the needs of the military..and yet no one bats an eye

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katie west is the best

BudSniffer

Thanks Rev... I've always thought that the gov keeps us in our place, in a way to make it almost impossible to advance or acquire wealth, almost as slaves, but I've never quite thought about it in the way you described....I've read 1984, but back in high school many, many years ago Don't remember a lot about it....
But the way you pieced it together, sounds logical and as lowdown as I perceive the gov and the wealthy to be

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"Nobody thinks the way that I do, I guess nobody dares. My head's so full of things, I set my mind free of them. I'm breaking the rules, breaking all the rules. " -Ozzy Osbourne

kamikazi89

many of americas largest employors depend on government contracts..whole towns(bigones), even states would go bust without them

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katie west is the best

John F. Kerry

well i finally found the time to come here and reply to this thread. it made me think about, perhaps surprisingly, the us tax law for capital depreciation and how that relates to this subject.

rev, in tax law, you can deduct a percentage cost from your costs (to buy buildings, equipment) etc... each year. so a 200k building, you can call it worth 180k for tax purposes 1 year later, 160k 2 years later.... and so on...

now you say this is because of waste or people on top being in charge and manipulating things. but i say, this law for tax, and your observations, flow from a simple fact of life- that things wear out and break.

a shiny new machine to produce goods today, is simply not shiny and new 1 year from now, and not very good 10 years from now... thats not because of elite powerful people, nor is it because of the government.... its because of wear and tear, erosion, breaking down, and various other natural processes and semi-artificial processes that cause things to break and ware out over time.

....to bring this to your 1984 comparison. I dont agree. Because , in that book, presumably it was possible to make enough goods to satisty everyones wants and needs, but to keep industry growing , etc, they would tell people to consume tons of goods and to play "electric golf" etc... to waste products so they would need to build more, also the war part, to use up goods so they could keep production going.

The problem with 1984 is that it was written before computers came into the fold. First of all, we dont produce enough today to fill everyones wants and needs- far from it. so the idea that we need to have war to keep the industrial complex going is interesting, and worth considering.... but i think ultimately we could have full employment easily just by providing for the needs of the people in society.... and we dont have anywhere near full employment today, nor anywhere near all needs fulfilled.... so i dont think there is actually a large amount of extra capital that needs to be wantonly destroyed. if we had lots of extra b2 bombers , we could sell them to our allys, or use them strategically around the world- we wouldnt have to go to war to destroy them just to justify them existing....

So back to computers.... I can forsee a time when computers will be doing 90% of the production of goods- at that time, production of capital goods will have nothing to do with employment.... a few robot operated factories can and will even more in the future be able to roll out enough goods for millions of people, with almost no human work involved. at that point, the idea of destroying capital to keep people employed by building more, is pretty moot. assuming we can find ways to replace finite resources with renewable ones, there is no limit to how many goods we can produce.... assuming we find ways to tweak and increase the carrying capacity of earth thru science and technology.... there is no reason why a situation couldnt exist in the future where there are simply more than enough goods for all the people out there. at that time, hypothetically the whole idea of an economy based on scarce resources will be gone.

....i was gonna try to keep going with this, but its already pretty long and if anybody finds any part of this interesting then please respond , maybe itll give me a direction to flesh out here... or if all i get is greives and flamingnun talking shit, i wont have wasted 20 more minutes...

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Nasa under Obama

Dr. Nick Nasty

I think the OP summed it all up.

Our post World War II change from a capitalism of production and savings turned wholesale into a capitalism of consumption-which produces nothing, only creates, as you said, false wants.

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