Capitalism is the limit of free exchange as the world shrinks.

When the world was large, exchanges were rare and not based entirely on specie. Effects from religious or cultural obligation to a desire to curry favor helped to find a room or a meal in a strange town.

As the world shrank exchanges multiplied, commerce and specie spread.

Two hundred years ago fifty species shared the capitalist world, then a handful sufficed, until  one; and then, there was one money and no specie behind. A piece of a dream. 

War has returned and money will fracture and become a basket if not a thing, as Marx predicted.

Happy Mother's Day

 Only by removing capital's 'freedom of speech' can humanity recover control. The 14th amendment has made all OF US slaves to capital. No corporate spending on politics . Capital lives forever, humans do not. It will dominate if not resisted politically. We will be farmed by eternal masses of capital, generations getting smaller as capital survives in a burning world, ruling through a workforce of intelligent machines and a few survivors.

Student debt might be only the beginning

I'm beginning to think there may be a solution to MS(E&M).  Krystal and Saagar could become a force congealing from below funded by users not by capital.  It might interrupt the smooth flow  of advertising that is the Main Stream Media and their Elite rulers ( Chomsky et al). Will people pay to  hear the truth from sources they can trust.  Today seemed filled with hope.  At least, enough to push Ukraine out of my mind.

Today seemed cheerful - with Ukraine gone from the world, if only.

It begin with a segment highlighting Elon Musk, the iconic billionaire, and moving on to family wealth and it's influence.  We see the billionaire class not as an evil enemy, but as a conglomerate constructed to shield its most nefarious members from the scrutiny they require.  It is thus the monetized value of profits not reinvested in the commons from which they were extracted.  price paid by earnings on stored capital  inherited, rather than returned to the commons through legal shenanigans.  

The billionaire class - if we measure it by total wealth, is not Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.  They are the poster boys.  They have done things we admire.  They are vastly under-represented in the world of wealth.

Student Debt - Bernie must run.  He is our hope.

Financial Fraud uncovered - sigh -

Some is too funny. 

and at first  first, you want to think how nasty the world that spawned his is, that he can be ignored in it.

Thing I think that make me wonder.

Today, in the basement laundry of the building where I live, I met a nameless woman who has done wash there since 1978.  We bemoaned the state of the machines. and as the elevator rose shared a brief ride together.  

In Edinburgh the public drying rooms were a source for social improvement.  

Today the poor wash their close together, the rich apart.

 Capital opens with

The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”^[1] its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.  

Which is a rather amazing sentence.

Reading Marx

I was not surprised  to learn that

Karl Marx gets a bad rap.

• Marx understood capitalism.
• He was impressed by its vigor: total wealth produced
• He was distressed by distribution of the excess profit.
• He assumed this could not be modified and justified revolution.

He was cancelled: his ideas declared heresy.

His cancellation cost us greatly since Marx' Capital is as fundamental to capitalism as  Darwin's Origin is to biology.  For more than a hundred years, the scientific capitalist west has  ignored Capital and tools it contains which might improve governance.  Ideas verboten because of Marx' cancellation.  Truth cannot be cancelled.

We are now entering a time, where we can no longer afford to endure the effects of unbridled capitalism.  Chomsky explained Marx' cancellation as a consequence of the Manufacturing Consent.  We must overcome this process and apply  the tools of Marx, if we are to save our planet while  addressing  problems that drove Marx' followers to revolution.  

 

It is a problem in any organization

when a subgroup uses the power of the organization rather than the power of persuasion  to control the members of the organization, i.e. to demand unwilling assent.

I feel a bit of the archaeologist here, observing (and joining) the tribe which has ruled my building.  They have grown close over years of feasting and I, (sadly for me) was the first to sign up and be stuck with the bill.  So I follow the rules and am admitted to the tribe of rulers.  We rulers, of course, are sworn  to follow only the interest of the group of shareholders.

What follows...

is the next meeting of the rulers, in which the wicked queen  lashes out  to 

America's Christian rulers once again starve children.

 Our governments vilest strategy, denying food and medicine to those ruled by those declared to be our enemy, e.g. Cuba, Afghanistan(Taliban), and Iran.

America, thy name is Hypocrisy.