Amerimacka - The Cosmic Game

Amerimacka - The Cosmic Game
Thievery Corporation

I really like the horns that play early on then again at the 4 minute mark.

I'm thinking that everything we have built are all devices to expand the reach of the most savage animals on the planet. Humans, shoot, all living things are almost infinitely complex. No matter how much we have learned about the human body, we have only scratched the surface. Everything we have figured out is like a cheat code to get us past some obstacle. Someday, maybe, we will understand it all, but I suspect it will be more than one person can comprehend. We might need a hive mind to be able to really understand it all. Some people might be okay with being a member of hive mind, but I suspect most people won't be. Or maybe I overestimate the desire for independent thought.

I've been hearing the argument about capitalism versus socialism since forever. It occurs to me that the big problem with capitalism is that it makes no provision for anyone but the winners. As we develop new technologies, all those who learned a trade under the old ways will find themselves out of a job. Some of the new kids will learn the new ways and be incorporated into the capitalist hive, but because they are more productive, the hive won't need as many of them, so all the excluded are going to be pushed out to the edges. Problem lately is that productivity has been improving faster so we have new waves of technology constantly rolling over the landscape. These wave went from 10,000 years (think fire and ax) to 1,000 years (stone buildings) to 100 years (sailing ships) to ten years (rockets and satellites) to one year (smart phones) to monthly (I can barely keep up) to daily (I'm swamped) to hourly (we're all swept away).

All this talk getting rid of billionaires isn't helping. Take a billion dollars from one person and distribute it to ten million people and each person gets $100, which might buy a tank of gas and, if you're lucky, a six pack of beer. And a week later, where are you? Howling for another billionaire. You would need 50 billionaires to get everyone $100 a week for a year. That ain't gonna work.

We've seen that welfare doesn't really work. Giving money to the poor has just given us a permanent underclass. The biggest problem is that it is very difficult to organize a group of people into a productive operation. The problem is not that we have a shortage of organizers. We have plenty of organizers doing non-productive things, like running scam calling centers, or defrauding the government. To build a productive organization you need an idea that is a least plausible, and someone who is willing to take the gamble that it will pay off. It might work out and it might not, but someone has to be willing to try.

But all this fussing about jobs and housing and war is just avoiding the elephant in the room - the umpteen zillion old folks on social security and Medicare. All I can see is that inflation is going to continue to increase. I suspect it might be ten years before the rate starts going up monthly. About then the rate will start going up exponentially and within months we'll be using trillion dollar bank notes to buy groceries. That's when people will start using the Chinese Yen or Crypto-bit strings.