Category: Economic Bullshit

World Bullshit Turmoil from a Capitalist’s Perspective

I will give this talk pretending that I am a capitalist.

I am a capitalist. No, I am an entrepreneur.  That sounds more innocuous. What does that mean? It means I have a business which provides services and/or I have a factory which produces widgets. In both  instances, I need wage-workers who will provide the services and the labor of manufacture. Also I need a market — a place to sell my services and products.  But the indispensable factor here is the workers. Where am I to get cheap workers?
Well, they are everywhere in abundance. They are, as it were, a reserve army of potential workers. They are people who without work are basically the homeless. You say that the homeless are only a small minority. Well, yes, because once they become workers they stop being homeless. But if they do not work, or are not involved in crime and dependency on others, they become homeless. The government — which, of course, works for me — has set up the laws in such a way that you are mostly either homeless or you work for someone like me. And as an entrepreneur,  as a business person, that is how I want things to be.

My fear is that this pool of the potentially homeless, that is the pool of potential workers (in short, as Marxists call them, the proletariat) is somehow removed from me.  How can this happen? The greatest danger is that the government falls into the hands of those who will institute — God forbid — an agrarian reform. “Agrarian reform” is a eulogistic term for giving away land to people for free. If people have access to free subsistence land, then it will be very difficult (or unprofitable) to hire them. This is the greatest possible evil that can occur to someone like me, a capitalist. To prevent this, I will muster all the forces of government to prevent this from occurring here or anywhere else in the world. My government must intervene in all places where there is any whisper of “agrarian reform.”

There was danger of this occurring in Ukraine in 1918 under the anarchist Nestor Makhno, but miraculously the Bolsheviks prevented this from succeeding.  Then another anarchist revolution occurred in 1936 in Spain, but thank goodness Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin by backing Franco prevented this disaster. Then in 1954 in Guatemala, that no good Arbenz tried to get the land back from the United Fruit Company. But our CIA under Allen Dulles orchestrated a coup, and put a stop to this nonsense. Then there were those nasty Sandinistas in Nicaragua who came to power in 1979. They too were full of “agrarian reform.” Well, my hero, President Reagan, though having to use illegal and brutal clandestine methods, put a stop to this danger. Unfortunately, the only place in our hemisphere where agrarian reform succeeded was Cuba. But we quarantined this disease of Cuban agrarian reform through a series of embargoes, which still exist. You say that Cuba is a small place relative to the world. But you forget that such examples are contagious, giving rise to ideas of reform or even revolution.

And of course we have to stop agrarian reform everywhere, directly as in Vietnam, we burned their villages and drove them into the cities where they had to look for work or remain homeless. We — I am talking about us, the American businessmen — helped (indirectly) Indonesia to get rid of those useless villagers in East Timor.  Imagine! These people tried to live independently of the market economy. Good riddance!

Talking of revolutions, all these velvet, orange and other multicolored so-called revolutions which have happened recently have simply replaced one president by another — something not unlike voting for a new president. I, as a capitalist — I mean entrepreneur — am not bothered by this. It has little if any effect on my business enterprises. In fact, I am in favor of stirring up people into marches and protests. I like all this hullabaloo about racism, immigration, police profiling, and especially all this attention and preoccupation with President Trump — a Russian probe, pussy grabbing and sexual harassment. I love it. I hope he remains in office for all 4 years; even better for 8. He is a capitalist’s — I mean America’s — godsend.  Why do I like all this? Because it distracts people from the root of capitalism — the fact that people do not have access to free subsistence land.  As long as there is no talk of agrarian reform — quarrel away, and demonstrate all you will. I on the other hand will use the police and the military in such a way as to pretend that I am terribly frightened by these outbreaks of violence, I am  oh so frightened by Neo-Nazis and Muslim terrorists. Yes, I want to create some violence in the expectation of people thinking that because the police are used to quell this violence, that the protests are serious and dangerous for the government.  Yes, that is what I want people to think.  And it will keep them preoccupied with what to me is a distraction, as I rake in some more  cash.

The Art of the Bullshit Deal, or the Con (remind you of anyone?)

Peter Joseph characterized Stefan Molyneux as being either a pathological bullshitter or a classical (conscious) con man. This made me think about the nature of a con man and how he achieves his goal, which is to get something from you fraudulently — like money. And he does this by persuading you to trust him, or, in other words, having confidence in him. I found the Wikipedia entry “confidence trick” very helpful, particularly the bibliography.

Thinking about this reminded me of the movie The Sting. Here is the trailer.

It also reminds me of the 1955 song by The Platters, “The Great Pretender.”

Furthermore, thinking of frauds also reminded me of Economic Bubbles and Ponzi Schemes.

Here is a cartoon about John Law and the Mississippi Bubble.

Here is another cartoon about the South Sea Bubble. You can read about both these bubbles, and about other delusions, in Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, 1841.

As to Ponzi schemes, here is a Wikipedia entry: Ponzi scheme
And here is a List of Ponzi schemes.

The largest Ponzi scheme was that of Bernard Madoff, he ripped off 65 billion dollars. Here is a trailer of a movie about him: “The Wizard of Lies.”

Jan Lewan, a Polish polka band leader, pulled off a Ponzi scheme, as portrayed in the film: “The Polka King.”

The most important sense of “bullshit”

I regard the use of the word “bullshit” as a ubiquitous term of rejection or condemnation.   And I regard the most important type of rejection, the rejection of the trivial and irrelevant — that which is not important or valuable.   I know that what is valuable or important is relative to what one is trying to achieve.  But to achieve anything, one has to be alive — and hopefully, healthy.  In other words, the necessary condition of doing anything is being alive.   So, even if you are willing to sacrifice your life for some cause such as the well being of your loved ones or your country, you must be alive.   So, as I see it, sustaining your life (for whatever cause), is most important, at least as a precondition for anything else.   And to talk of what is necessary for life is to talk about human needs (as contrasted with desires).

What everyone needs is air, water, food, shelter and anything which will maintain necessary body temperatures (e.g., clothes, fire, air conditioning).   We who live in cities, in houses, condominiums, or apartments know that necessities are bought with money, and so we invariably will think of the necessity of a job to get an income.  But is it true that a job is necessary?  And if you lose your job or can’t find one, you picture yourself in the plight of the homeless.  You imagine getting some kind of welfare, soup kitchen, begging, scrounging through garbage, and sleeping in some tunnel or make-shift shelter.

But for millennia,  people have lived off the land — either as hunter/gatherers or as farmers and herders.  And many still do.  So, the alternative to working for a wage is to live off the land.  And to do so one must have free access to land on which to hunt, fish, gather, farm or herd.  Does anyone have such free, legal access to land?

Thomas Skidmore, The Rights of Man to Property! Being a proposition to make it equal among the adults of the present generation: and to provide for its equal transmission to every individual of each succeeding generation, on arriving at the age of maturity, 1829.