The New Religion

Pretty much been the story of Western civilization since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Maybe longer, but we're not going to worry too much about that. Somewhere I heard that in the New Testament Jesus talked about money more than any other subject. So, yes, I guess, it does go way back. (Jesus walked on the water and I know that it's true...). When you are making things to sell, it makes good sense to make your production costs as low as possible so that you can make more money. After all, you aren't usually making this stuff for your health, you're doing it to make money. Making some things has a high material cost, some things have a high labor cost. Capital comes into play in a couple of way. The first one in is in having enough money for your payroll until you start selling some things. You may or not need capital for material. You might be able to get it on credit, depending on who you are. But you definitely need it for payroll. The second way it comes into play is in reducing cost. If you can buy a machine that will enable you to produce the same amount of stuff but with fewer people, you can cut your labor costs. Or it can enable you to do more processing of the incoming material so you can get closer to the source. Either way you save money. The first thing you have to do is pay for the machinery. If the machinery is worth while, it will continue to save you money after it has been paid for. The Western world has been making tremendous investments in machinery. Volkswagen recently built a new automobile factory in Germany to the tune of a billion dollars. The factories used to build computer chips cost several billion dollars. These are just the ones we hear about. Then there are all those factories that make up our industrial infrastructure. Steel plants, chemical plants, assembly factories, plants for making machinery for making stuff. It just goes on forever. Everytime you turn around there is some kind of machinery in the background making the stuff you are using. If even affects the Amish. I am pretty sure they use steel, and I am also pretty sure they don't smelt their own. This is all well and good, but now we have this tremendous industrial infrastructure and all this machinery being run by a handful of people to produce all the material goods we could possibly want. So what's gone wrong? I suspect part of the problem is that the more efficient a production bussiness is, the fewer people it employs. So we have fewer and fewer people making more and more stuff. The other part is that many manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas. On one hand this is good. It means goods are cheaper here, and it provides employment in places that are very poor, financially speaking. On the other hand, it means many people are out of work over here. I think what's going on is that the more successful our industrial enterprise is, the more people we have who want a part of it. And the number of people is growing at least as fast as our industrial capacity.

Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921) 
The Agitator of Languedoc, 1882 
oil on canvas ( 115 cm c 150 cm) 
Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, France

Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921) The Agitator of Languedoc, 1882 oil on canvas ( 115 cm c 150 cm) Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, France

Credit is a funny thing. Basically the money that banks lend out is made out of thin air. The role banks play is to ensure that the money gets used for some kind of productive enterprise. The interest they charge is incidental. The more important part is they are breathing down the borrowers neck, keeping his nose to the grindstone, making him toe the mark. They are the new inquistion. If you do like Jesus says, and put your money to good use, you will be rewarded, you will be able to repay us, and all will be well. If you are not a good Christian and your enterprise fails, there will be no mercy on your soul. That's the role banks play.

 
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - What Ever Happened To My Rock And Roll (Punk Song)
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
The biggest problem is that people cannot see into the future. No one knows what is going to happen, no one knows what the next big success is going to be. That's why capitalism is good. It puts large amounts of money in individual peoples hands and they get to decide what to do with it. Whatever they do, it's a gamble. It may pay off, or it may be the next black hole of doom. But whatever happens, it's their money, and it's their gamble. Committees are no good at this sort of thing. Committees are good for maintaining the status quo, but they are no help in trying to make any progress. Lately, we've been making some bad bets, or, if you want to look at it another way, we've been making some long term investments that are going to start paying off, well, if not soon, then perhaps eventually. Things like Iraq and Afghanistan. There was also the housing gamble. That didn't work out too well. More of a Ponzi scheme than a real investment plan. Too bad. Problem with the War is that it has been funnelling money into relatively few hands. Some people are making tons of money off the war, and what do you do when you start to get a lot of money? You may buy some fancy doo-dads, but conventional wisdom is that you sock most of it away. Make hay while the sun shines, so to speak. So we have more money going into investments/big gambles. Some of those are going to fail and the money they absorbed will be dispersed. But a lot of it is going back into the military industrial complex. The government is saying this is the way to go, and right now a lot of money is being sunk into these wars. Eventually it may pay off, but right now it is just a big drain on the economy.

Update July 2022 replaced missing picture and video. The picture I found in my blog archive (a directory of post I had downloaded). The video was a little odd. Reposted the video.