Almost all of our relationships begin, and most of them continue, as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods. ~W.H. Auden
I noticed something today (as opposed to yesterday’s ostensible notice that the free drugs are the illegal ones). Bartering must be something inbred into every human being.
Stop and think about it for a minute, children who have no siblings to trade with will still trade toys in what they feel is a mutually favorable trade. Even young children who have no concept of money the way adults do will trade with one another if they both feel it’s mutually beneficial.
I started thinking about this, all the way back as far as I could in my poor over taxed cranium, and found that barter (along with war) is as old as mankind itself. Stop and think about it for a minute, caveman A has extra pelts from last month’s hunt, caveman B has extra meat from this week’s hunt, caveman A hungry, approaches caveman B with an offer of pelts for meat, should caveman B be in need of pelts a trade is likely, if not then caveman A needs to learn to hunt better or go find another caveman with a surplus of food and no pelts.
What is money after all but a representative store of value (the actual value being the goods that the money purchases). Money in the form of gold and silver coins, rocks (artistically made), sticks( marked with the kings markings), and even sea shells have been over the years used as a means of exchange, they are all easily divisible, easily transported in large quantities, and have a given “value” per quantity. Whether through mutual agreement as to their value, or necessary direction from whatever government happened to be in place at the time.
All money really did was move from a direct barter model to a distributed barter model where a person took some “money” (for our argument we’ll assume it’s something that meets the above criteria) and spend it with a merchant for those pelts he needed. The person would then take the pelts home, and make say shoes out of them, and then sell the shoes to some other person for more money than he paid for the pelts. By doing so the people involved did not have to worry about obtaining the animal themselves, or making the pelt usable for something.
They could keep their money in their pockets until it was needed to purchase whatever it was that was needed, as they traded goods and labor for more money they could keep the “money” for longer periods of time without worrying about it going bad or spoiling, spending only what they could in equivalent labor or products.
I would venture to guess that this was a natural evolution of civilization, as man became more agrarian he no longer needed to “fair trade” with his neighbors for things that he needed some approximation of his labors that he could keep without having to worry about it going bad. He could also save his new money (read labor) for something that he (I use he to as a general reference to both genders) could not otherwise generate a sufficient amount of labor for at one shot, if he took his corn, beets, carrots, or whatever to market, and sold them to the various people who came around at one time he may not be able to afford that shiny new whatever he really wanted for his hovel, however if he saved a portion of the proceeds from his labors everyday at the market he would in time have enough for the shiny whatever he wanted for his hovel. Perhaps it was a new more efficient plow blade that allowed him to be more efficient in his labors, thus giving him more bang for the “buck” and allowing him to take more to market on a given day.
One thing is for certain however, and that is when money was a fixed supply of whatever it was, gold, silver, shells, artistic stones or sticks, there was no inflation. A pelt was worth X number of whatever was in vogue, should a merchant want to make more than that he would either have to come up with better quality pelts, or more of them at a given time. He would eventually spend whatever “money” he had anyway obtaining the things he needed on a day to day basis, so the money circulated and was said to have velocity, this velocity of money is what caused an economy. For those who could labor and bring more to market they received a larger portion of the economic pie.
All I know is somewhere along the line we lost sight of bartering, and it’s a skill even the youngest among us has, we should all take a lesson from the kids, trade for what you want, starve the beast of corprotacracy and regain a real value for what you need.
04 December 2010
Hail Citiz...er Consumer
Take the so-called standard of living. What do most people mean by "living"? They don't mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science, in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives. ~E.E. Cummings, Introduction, Poems, 1954
It’s most unfortunate that without the internet I could not write this stuff and put it out for the singular person in the universe who actually takes the time to read it. If I were to attempt to typeset all of this it’d never sell.
I have mentioned in the past my feelings about consumerism, well the holiday season is upon us now, and the interminable shopping begins, the lines to grab the latest plastic pumpkin from china mart have begun, I can’t even go get groceries without running into some lady (who by the looks of it is not poor at least, and who paid for her groceries with something other than an EBT card) huffing and puffing in front of me in line and asking for help with her groceries out to her car, now I understand some people need the help, and had she been 80 some odd years old I’d have helped, however this ladies only excuse (as far as I could tell) was that her basket was full of ding dongs , ho-ho’s, and Twinkies; Along with Doritos (R) and a few other choice items of food. Nowhere to be found was anything even remotely resembling food. Now I like an occasional snack, some Reese’s, or a Butterfinger, but not all the time and those items do not solely make up my diet.
Couple that with the fact that she was buying undergarments for the man in her life (whose size I could not help but notice was roughly 50), now why do you think she needed help to the car? Because she’s a lazy CONSUMER, we have stopped being citizens and become consumers. We live to feed the corprotacracy that is now my America. We are too fat and lazy to do anything, now I know the only place this blog is linked those people don’t fit this mold.
Our entire economy is based on consuming, not making anything mind you, after all we are too high priced to keep stuff made here, no one will buy it because well, we don’t make enough money for that so we export our manufacturing capability to China, Taiwan, Mexico and South America. And what do we have here? Not a damn thing. Used to be you could get American made products everywhere, you can’t anymore, why? Because we don’t make one damn thing here in the U.S. anymore, we simply can’t afford it.
What’s worse is that we now have how many people out of work, and at the time of this writing CONgress has failed to pass yet another extension to the jobless benefits, so right around a week or so (maybe two depends on who you talk to) before the Christmas holiday roughly (again depending) 2 million people a week will start to lose their jobless benefits, welcome to Christmas except this time Ebenezer’s name is really Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geitner. Between those two fools all the money gone to the banks and not into the pockets of those who could really stimulate the economy is it any wonder we now have QE2 and will end up with QE nth at some point? Let’s keep feeding the beast that ate the economy, this is a good plan, right up there with sacrificing virgins in the volcano to appease the lava god.
Look, I’m just a computer programmer in an insane asylum, I don’t know a whole hell of a lot, I do know however that if you’ve dug yourself a hole too deep to get out of the first thing you do is quit fricken digging. I feel sorry for those who are losing the only lifeline they have in the coming weeks, no Christmas goose, and just some 10 year old fruit cake in their futures.
It’s most unfortunate that without the internet I could not write this stuff and put it out for the singular person in the universe who actually takes the time to read it. If I were to attempt to typeset all of this it’d never sell.
I have mentioned in the past my feelings about consumerism, well the holiday season is upon us now, and the interminable shopping begins, the lines to grab the latest plastic pumpkin from china mart have begun, I can’t even go get groceries without running into some lady (who by the looks of it is not poor at least, and who paid for her groceries with something other than an EBT card) huffing and puffing in front of me in line and asking for help with her groceries out to her car, now I understand some people need the help, and had she been 80 some odd years old I’d have helped, however this ladies only excuse (as far as I could tell) was that her basket was full of ding dongs , ho-ho’s, and Twinkies; Along with Doritos (R) and a few other choice items of food. Nowhere to be found was anything even remotely resembling food. Now I like an occasional snack, some Reese’s, or a Butterfinger, but not all the time and those items do not solely make up my diet.
Couple that with the fact that she was buying undergarments for the man in her life (whose size I could not help but notice was roughly 50), now why do you think she needed help to the car? Because she’s a lazy CONSUMER, we have stopped being citizens and become consumers. We live to feed the corprotacracy that is now my America. We are too fat and lazy to do anything, now I know the only place this blog is linked those people don’t fit this mold.
Our entire economy is based on consuming, not making anything mind you, after all we are too high priced to keep stuff made here, no one will buy it because well, we don’t make enough money for that so we export our manufacturing capability to China, Taiwan, Mexico and South America. And what do we have here? Not a damn thing. Used to be you could get American made products everywhere, you can’t anymore, why? Because we don’t make one damn thing here in the U.S. anymore, we simply can’t afford it.
What’s worse is that we now have how many people out of work, and at the time of this writing CONgress has failed to pass yet another extension to the jobless benefits, so right around a week or so (maybe two depends on who you talk to) before the Christmas holiday roughly (again depending) 2 million people a week will start to lose their jobless benefits, welcome to Christmas except this time Ebenezer’s name is really Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geitner. Between those two fools all the money gone to the banks and not into the pockets of those who could really stimulate the economy is it any wonder we now have QE2 and will end up with QE nth at some point? Let’s keep feeding the beast that ate the economy, this is a good plan, right up there with sacrificing virgins in the volcano to appease the lava god.
Look, I’m just a computer programmer in an insane asylum, I don’t know a whole hell of a lot, I do know however that if you’ve dug yourself a hole too deep to get out of the first thing you do is quit fricken digging. I feel sorry for those who are losing the only lifeline they have in the coming weeks, no Christmas goose, and just some 10 year old fruit cake in their futures.
02 December 2010
It Just Dont Make Sense
It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one single remedy. ~Chinese Proverb
I do not partake in this particular lifestyle by the way, so this is written strictly from an intellectual honesty academic exercise view point.
I noticed something today…well, not noticed per se, but I connected some dots that have been there in the blatantly obvious positions for years I’m certain, I just never noticed it till today. It dawned on me while having a conversation with someone that all of the illicit, illegal, and warred upon drugs all share one thing in common.
With the exception of methamphetamine they all occur in nature. Opium (heroin), cocaine/crack (the latter being a derivative of the former), peyote, magic mushrooms, and marijuana all grow naturally in our environment, and with the exception of the first one don’t cause houses with little children to blow up. What’s worse is anyone wanting the first on the list drug just needs to doctor shop their high fructose laden child around for a bunch of Ritalin prescriptions; it’s the same damn substance. So for the sake of argument we’ll concentrate on the latter, all natural products.
Now this makes no sense to me in an intellectual capacity. I cannot legally partake in the bounty of nature, but let me go to 5 different doctors for an oxycodone prescription and I could probably get it. Just ask Rush.
Could this just be a case of “follow the money” since there is no money in growing products such as these (they are more intensive to grow than corn in a single row mono agriculture that we are so flipping fond of in the U.S.) and if they were legalized I suppose the CIA, NSA and any number of alphabet soup agencies would pretty much be out of a job, after all how sexy is it to chase some doctor shopper in Florida when you can get the guy with the Uzi.
We actually have no idea what the potential medicinal qualities of any of these plants are since our wonderful we know what’s best for you government won’t allow the research to take place, could it be that our Native American (both north and south variety) knew something we didn’t? After all they managed to survive, some in pretty harsh conditions, for centuries prior to Leif Ericson landing on our shores and trading pelts with them with this stuff literally growing wild around them.
Allopathic medicine it seems has made us a bunch of junkies, I personally wont drink the tap water just due to the fact there’s no telling what the hell is in there as far as pharmaceuticals go. I take my vitamins that the body cannot make on its own or does not store in quantity, C and D (I don’t spend enough time out of doors), the rest I get from what used to be a pretty good diet, I’ve slipped recently however (I know shame on me) due to other obligations. And yes I filter my filtered water, and then distill it.
It seems to me if we wanted, truly wanted to solve the drug problem, we would legalize something nature provides, and make the crap being shoved down our throats by the likes of Pfizer on the illegal list.
I do not partake in this particular lifestyle by the way, so this is written strictly from an intellectual honesty academic exercise view point.
I noticed something today…well, not noticed per se, but I connected some dots that have been there in the blatantly obvious positions for years I’m certain, I just never noticed it till today. It dawned on me while having a conversation with someone that all of the illicit, illegal, and warred upon drugs all share one thing in common.
With the exception of methamphetamine they all occur in nature. Opium (heroin), cocaine/crack (the latter being a derivative of the former), peyote, magic mushrooms, and marijuana all grow naturally in our environment, and with the exception of the first one don’t cause houses with little children to blow up. What’s worse is anyone wanting the first on the list drug just needs to doctor shop their high fructose laden child around for a bunch of Ritalin prescriptions; it’s the same damn substance. So for the sake of argument we’ll concentrate on the latter, all natural products.
Now this makes no sense to me in an intellectual capacity. I cannot legally partake in the bounty of nature, but let me go to 5 different doctors for an oxycodone prescription and I could probably get it. Just ask Rush.
Could this just be a case of “follow the money” since there is no money in growing products such as these (they are more intensive to grow than corn in a single row mono agriculture that we are so flipping fond of in the U.S.) and if they were legalized I suppose the CIA, NSA and any number of alphabet soup agencies would pretty much be out of a job, after all how sexy is it to chase some doctor shopper in Florida when you can get the guy with the Uzi.
We actually have no idea what the potential medicinal qualities of any of these plants are since our wonderful we know what’s best for you government won’t allow the research to take place, could it be that our Native American (both north and south variety) knew something we didn’t? After all they managed to survive, some in pretty harsh conditions, for centuries prior to Leif Ericson landing on our shores and trading pelts with them with this stuff literally growing wild around them.
Allopathic medicine it seems has made us a bunch of junkies, I personally wont drink the tap water just due to the fact there’s no telling what the hell is in there as far as pharmaceuticals go. I take my vitamins that the body cannot make on its own or does not store in quantity, C and D (I don’t spend enough time out of doors), the rest I get from what used to be a pretty good diet, I’ve slipped recently however (I know shame on me) due to other obligations. And yes I filter my filtered water, and then distill it.
It seems to me if we wanted, truly wanted to solve the drug problem, we would legalize something nature provides, and make the crap being shoved down our throats by the likes of Pfizer on the illegal list.
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