LBO is a near-dead list. It was my favorite. Now, I lament is has too few observers. Participants can't be good observers.
I welcome quibbles of concern over the use of any word "x," or any other faint indications the message got through to the LBO list. Caution: Verbal abuse might reveal it has been briefly viewed. Silence might indicate a taboo subject, which would be the safe thing for those who don't wish to avoid being labeled horriblists.
I suppose Doug, who's possibilites are revealed by his wonderful KPFA programs, has moved on from this list, leaving emails such as this without the full derision they surely deserve and which he is too polite (or too busy) to express.
Barry
********************** Whatever:
Having been born wrong the first time, for many people it seems necessary to accept the bs world and just join the herd of suicidal victims swimming denial propaganda. (mortality first) We are stuck being trapped in a world and a life we never choose, and which we don't control, or don't control very much.
Even though we seem to have toasted our planetary Eden gift, is is interesting, and maybe even useful, to to imagine how we could have made things work out well for our group of earth parasites.
The smartest among us are not smart enough to make shit into big-macs without market help, yet the gap in understanding among us is so large that smart people should overcome the humility imposed by reality in order to scrape some bs off the windshield, leaving a sticky fog, which is slightly better than total blindness.
As one place to jump in to reality, imagine without pride two things: 1. We are parasites on the planet earth. 2. We have been very stupid and very bad stewards of what we have been given. We may say thank you to some Godversion, and yet still inconsistently we may somehow feel we have EARNED what has really been given/taken. (laugh track here)
The idea that we create wealth by work is denial of what we have been given. That denial supports an odd theory that more work is what we need, as is the planet (Eden) does not provide the source of all wealth (machine harvested). Although our planet, Earth, is already overloaded by we human parasites, we pretend that more growth is a solution to our problems, as if a lack of growth indicates our failure and not urgent necessity.
Do we need growth? Contraception has been invented (bs/innovated). Investors could do very well without asset appreciation so long as dividends provide the accepted return on investment. Growth in consumption, merely in order to preserve our imagined need to produce as much as possible with full employment, is folly. Can't we see that consumption beyond what we really need is a waste of wealth. Our denial of our limits, and the vulgar pride of human wealth creation that has blinded us to the most basic solution to the reduction in the need for human labor, which is an acceptance of un-earned income, unearned income which today only the 1% get. Can we have real capitalism without capital for ordinary people? Can demorcacy exist without being a facade?
Capitalism allows profits, while computerized automation shifts income from wages to profits by eliminating wage costs, and thus unearned income must become available to the other almost redundant 99%. That will allow the needed jobs to be done without a need for hyper-active consumption, or for any need for the insecurity of wage dependence.
Wage dependence is hell for those living in an economy hell-bent on elimination of labor costs. Let's go ahead and cut labor costs, then let's face the necessary results, which will be a reduced need for human labor. I like automation and the leisure and unearned income it makes necessary. Cut the jobs for more profit, and then let the 99% get the extra profits. Those made redundant will not find paid jobs.
Why continue to let false pride in the imagined human creation of wealth to make things worse? Why not forgive those who dream of humility in the driver's seat. All endangered, both owners and workers are mere parasites on our fragile planet. Pride does go before a fall, because it requires our loss of touch with the obvious simple reality of our parasite status in the order of nature.
Be more? Be more what? Be more full of shit, more wasteful. and more destructive? More destructive is hard to imagine. PBS is far too politically correct. so they must front for consumption growth, and pc hyper-active economics. PBS has been funded by biz far more than by the public, so we get the "be more" crap, frequently. Oppression and folly have so many varieties each of which is terrific.
Barry Parasites Unite! Be Less
Note on unclear use of words: Terrific, once simply meant terrible... causing terror, now to be clear we must call it horrible or even better one must use the full monstorsity, "horrific oppression and folly." Don't become a horriblist! There will soon be a law against supporting horriblists. Will horrific began to mean something very good as terrific has come to mean very good? Horrific would sell movies. Could it become flattery to be called horrific?
For now, if someone says you are terrific just say, "I didn't mean to scare you." Why be understood?
http://home.earthlink.net/~durable/