Thoughts and Insights

[Santiago]

National debt is something that could easily be eliminated, if only people and the government would see money, or currency, for what it actually is. Money doesn't have any intrinsic value. We, as a society, assign value to currency. This being the case, if the government wanted to get out of debt, it could simply print more money. This may seem like a naive assessment, but it's actually the truth of the matter.

[Del Ivers]

You may want to turn on the captions, the narration is a bit garbled.

[Santiago]

I checked out the video and some other ones. Basically, the common claim is that printing money would cause inflation. This, however, is misleading because the government would not be arbitrarily giving out money to the masses; the government would merely print enough money to pay off its debt.

Money would not lose its value.
The reality is that the phenomena of prices rising occurs already, even without the government printing money to pay off debt. It's something that venders choose to do, usually based off the value of their merchandise.

If vendors raise their prices too high, they will lose money, as people will cease to purchase their items. This is a natural deterrent of over pricing.

This whole "inflation" excuse seems like a lot of intellectual acrobatics and nonsense to justify something probably akin to how the military industrial complex covertly seeks to prolong wars, due to the copious amounts of money made from war. I wouldn't be surprised if government officials somehow make money from the illusion of national debt.

[Santiago]

A Psychoanalysis of Modern Western Clothing

Jeans, the type of pants that virtually everyone wears, are congruent with the contemporary Western obsession with work. When one wears jeans, one is never, really, in a state of complete ease or comfort; the rough material of the jeans precludes a sense of lesuire. This is often why people will change into silky pajamas, when they go to bed. Furthermore, jeans are often created to be relatively tight fitted and constricting around the crotch area. This, compounded with the rough material of the jeans, causes sexual frustration.

Moreover, employers often require their employees to tuck in their shirts and have their pants pulled up, while a belt is firmly fastened around their waste. This does two things: it causes a sense of limited mobility; when one has their shirt tucked in, it is cumbersome to move from side to side, to bend over, and so on, because one's tucked in shirt is tautly pulled down inside of their pants. Also, a belt firmly fastened around one's waste causes further sexual tension, as it rests upon the erogenous zone located near one's testies or ovaries.

Having your pants pulled up and your shirt tucked in, while your belt is firmly fastened around you, restraining you from having a sense of full mobility and bodily freedom, is, quite frankly, a means of creating a sense of servile humility and domestication.

Additionally, it just makes the individual look goofy and ridiculous; overly prim and proper.

To put it crudely, it's the employers way of saying to the employee, "You are my little punk b#tch, now get to work and don't rest, be constantly productive... Work, work, work!"

[promethean75]

To put it crudely, it's the employers way of saying to the employee, "You are my little punk b#tch, now get to work and don't rest, be constantly productive... Work, work, work!"

one's not a punk b#tch because of conforming to a dress code while at work, per se. but one is most certainly a punk b#tch by willingly entering into a business relationship in which they are giving the vast majority of the fruits of their labor to some freeloading shmuck who's enabled and protected by property laws. i am one such punk b#tch, in fact, who might as well say to his employer 'yes, hi. if you would be so kind as to let me build this five thousand dollar deck, give me only three hundred and twenty dollars, keep all the rest, and still pretend to be dissatisfied so to discourage me from asking for more of my own money via a raise, i would sure appreciate it, because i'm a punk b#tch. oh, and if you could contribute absolutely nothing to the labor required to build the deck, that would be even better. i'd like to do every bit of the work in exchange for the smallest fraction of the profit. the smaller the better. you know what? just let me do it for free. fuck it.'

no seriously though, have you ever noticed the hidden premise behind the capitalism banner? check this out. it can absolutely not be a system that encourages everyone to accomplish it... because if everyone did, it couldn't work. there has to be an exploited class in order for it to function. well that or it would devolve back into mercantilism... and that certainly ain't happening. so what does this seemingly innocuous fact mean? any profound philosophical wisdom to be gleaned there? i think so. capitalism is intrinsically immoral (or amoral, for the honest ones... but those are extremely rare. you'd have to go full stirner to be so) because it demands that its highest ideal not be realized by everyone. and when that happens, you have an ethics that everyone cannot share... as material relations are embedded in any system of ideals, and vice versa, so that if a particular kind of ideal cannot be realized by everyone engaged in those material relations, the entire system of ideals cannot apply to everyone.

but to the capitalist's advantage, the 'philosophy of ethics' is such an obscure subject to begin with, that just about anything can be either overlooked or made believable. that's why, say, something like what weber called the protestant work ethic, has prevailed in the west for so long. such a super-narrative is able to conceal a fundamental flaw in itself that, if recognized, would bring the whole thing down in flames.

now it would be one thing if the state did not criminalize the individual who refused to sell his labor and decided to leave society, claim a patch of woods, and build himself a hut. but you can't do that because you'd be 'trespassing'. so then you shack up in a homeless shelter and eat at the soup kitchen. now you're a parasite just like the capitalist. fuck, you might as well start your own business, in that case, right?

the fact is, in the world today you are forced to become either a parasite, a punk b#tch, or a frickin' vigilante anarchist renegade.

i quite agree with your assessment of the jeans. i don't ever wear em... i'm a sweat pants guy. got a pair for every day of the week. but denim, being such a durable and easily made material, is and was made popular by that fact alone. it was only later that such pejorative associations in/for class identity began to form in society. but that comes with the territory. commodities, especially clothes, are not simply objects in a free market; they acquire all kinds of imaginary 'metaphysical niceties', as marx called them, which become arbitrary signifiers for wealth and class.

think about a diamond. a chunk of pressurized coal that costs 23,000 dollars. pressurized coal, dude. oh but wait... a diamond represents all kinds of symbols and metaphors that we can give poetic meaning to; crystal clear with perfectly faceted symmetry, no messy lower-realm material blemishes or disorganized, disproportionate geometric shapes, full of light, no dangerous, frightening unpredictable darkness. hard, long lasting, millions of years old... like our love for each other. gosh i love you so much and what better to express this than...uh, a chunk of carbon i guess?

fuck your diamonds and fuck your jeans, erik redbeard. i hope you didn't just get a job that you have to wear jeans to. nobody just makes a random post about the plight of wearing jeans to work unless they just got a job like that. this isn't one of those random thoughts that one thinks 'hey, i think i'll post this thought at a philosophy forum.' it was just discovered that there's a helium shortage on earth. now why wasn't that your random thought, instead?

no, i think something's up. i think you're wearing jeans (and probably diamonds, too). unfuckingbelievable.

[Del Ivers]

it can absolutely not be a system that encourages everyone to accomplish it... because if everyone did, it couldn't work.

Bingo! That's what people on the left, middle, and right are realizing, some sooner than others.

[Del Ivers]

Santiago

Read this: Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle

It goes way beyond jeans.

It's the best PDF version of it with side-panel bookmarks. Save it as a PDF.

[Jakob]

So Zoot, you have here defined morality as to include that which provides equal access of the ideal to everyone.

Is that your stance on what morality is?

Socialism does indeed reduce all peoples opportunities so that even the luckiest has next to nothing. Is this preferable to capitalism where at least some rise to wealth and leisure?

Obviously nature is economic enough with her drives that it can never be the case that everyone is completely satisfied. This would mean absolute decadence.

[MagsJ]

Obviously nature is economic enough with her drives that it can never be the case that everyone is completely satisfied. This would mean absolute decadence.

..reminds me of a few events I've been to.. choosing what to experience in life, rather than life choosing for us..

[Jakob]

Obviously nature is economic enough with her drives that it can never be the case that everyone is completely satisfied. This would mean absolute decadence.

..reminds me of a few events I've been to.. choosing what to experience in life, rather than life choosing for us..

Or the government masquerading as life.

If London wasn't so absurdly expensive Id be living there now, its one hell of a place to have an experience.

[MagsJ]

..reminds me of a few events I've been to.. choosing what to experience in life, rather than life choosing for us..

Or the government masquerading as life.

If London wasn't so absurdly expensive Id be living there now, its one hell of a place to have an experience.

I think our Government are currently masquerading as MPs.

Prices have risen here since Brexit was declared triumphant, but not on all things.. the EU scaremongers us with insinuating scarcity of a certain biscuit or chocolate bar or whatever, and oh how we laugh.

I mean, seriously.. Brexit v biscuits? Come on! And while they're at it, they can also take their banned physically-debilitating toxin-riddled consumerables (food, medicine, anaesthetics, inoculations) with them.

But yeah.. London is pretty pricey. Tube fares, kebabs, smokes, the cost of living, have all gone up.