Monday, February 17, 2014

I protest

I call foul play!


In the bookstore in Prague's Main Train Station, somebody has put a book by Thomas Friedman in the "Philosophy" section.  This is an insult to Philosophy and philosophers.


Friedman is nothing but a shill for the ruling class.


As the article linked below puts it,  Friedman has escaped and is writing about economics again.......
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/thomas-friedman-escaped-and-is-writing-about-economics-again

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

America's estebaci

|There's a consequence of Snowden's revelations that I haven't heard anyone remark upon.


Obama would like us to think the people who spy on us are a bunch of patriotic hard-working
folk, just like us. They do their job, like....whoops!  we?....Sorry, forgot about unemployment.


Anyway, the people who spy on us, and collect our mail, copy our envelopes, etc., etc.
They are very well-paid, even privileged.  How much did Snowden say he was making?


And, well, thing is that they don't deserve it.


Well, then again, under capitalism, prices make no sense. Nobody gets what they deserve.


But, still I'm supposed to be embracing these jokers as somehow like me.  Not on your life.  The phrase 'careerism' comes to mind................IE don't think too hard about what you are doing; just enjoy the benefits...............

a poem


Dream and Reality Mix in Unwanted Ways



If what we want is that which extinguishes wanting,

then is it death that we want?


Waiting for the new beds

Or waiting for something I-know-not-what,

A neighbor waiting,

the truck in our driveway confuses me:

what could it be?

And it's a holiday,

They should have the day off!

I speak to my mother and she says,

“It's like the time when you moved the stereo higher”,

And I seem to half-agree,

collecting from somewhere a dim memory that seems to match,

But there was no such stereo,

So, it's just a dream.

And I remember those moments of hope and expectation,

shared hopes and shared expectations,

Rich with the thought that maybe now things will be better,

Thoughts unknown since then,

But, they were no dream.


The workmen are carrying furniture across the street,

My mother studies it,

Comments,

Approves,

And I have mixed emotions,

Half thinking that I'm in no financial position to purchase furniture.



The truck has disappeared from our driveway,

but the men are carrying the furniture across the street.



Like the day they brought my mother's new stove,

Which also, in its own way,

Signaled my helplessness,

and my fading life.



I am rushing away from the present,

but I always return to the past,

The future gets my hopes pasted onto it,

but there is no one to share my hopes;

I hope alone.








Sunday, February 2, 2014

another failure of American society

I cannot keep up with all the autistic economists who keep saying, in one form or other, allowing for differences in personal style, that "the good times are over."  No more health care, no more pensions, no more public education.  Back to the nineteenth (or thirteenth) century!  Wage slavery triumphant. 


My goodness.  I never thought the "good times" were so good.  Have these guys never heard of alienation?


In any case, it's much like a doctor pronouncing that the patient has a fatal disease.  but, hey
with my comfortable post as an economist, I'm not suffering.


Do I shoot the messenger who bears bad news? No, I don't think it's so simple.  There's a lot of pretension in having a profession which is, errr, not fully scientific.  And the idea that we can be "objective" or "value-free" is really confusing these guys (and they are guys)... It is really nothing more than an excuse for not thinking things through fully, or censoring yourself in public.  Either way it's disgusting.


But that's not what I wanted to say.


My parents live in a sort of ghetto.  It's not that they live only with other elderly people.  But they are, in their suburban home, isolated.  And this is not right.


Is there no other possible way to live? Surely there must be.  Something is deeply wrong with a society that's so good at (errr used to be!)  so good at providing STUFF, but leaves out
the connections between people.


Not human. Not good.  Not justifiable. But if we look for reasons, the ugly beast of capitalism will raise its head.... and ....yccch, boy is it ugly!