Archive for the ‘Excess and Algorithms’ Category

A government of the people, by the people, for the people in a world where cash rules everything around me.

We’re getting closer to the traditional national gaslighting of people to vote for the lesser of two evils. Gaslighting and voter shaming being the only options left of a corporate captured media and government.

Keep the facade going, there’s motions to go through. There’s time slots to fill, content to create, and appearances to make.

If people can barely survive after a decade which saw both political parties have control of government at one point or another, what is the point of voting? Unless voting third party. That’s where the gaslighting and voter shaming come into play. I wonder what Jill Stein will be blamed for this election season.

What a better life? GET A JOB! So then what do I need to participate in the farce of the decaying corpse of democracy for? Don’t super delegates pick who runs in the general election anyway? Doesn’t the electoral college mean that only a few swing states decide the presidential election anyway?

If voting was so important why isn’t it a national holiday? Like it is in other countries…

Vote local? Well that’s where I can see one vote having some value. Probably why we never hear about local elections. Hard to make us hate our neighbors over referendums and country treasurer battles.

If the masses are doing worse than they were before, habitually, for generations…what good is government? What is the point of elections?

Political theater, divide and conquer, evoke emotions, distract, tribalism…

How else can the 1% get the 99% to hate each other?

Red hates Blue

Blue hates Red

Elephant hates Donkey

Donkey hates Elephant

Blue Collar hates White Collar

White Collar hates Blue Collar

North hates South

South hates North

Half the country hates the other half

What a shame, what a waste, what a farce…

In America, we don’t have a democracy, we have economic totalitarianism.

One must pay attention, and do just a baseline level of research to find this truth although it becomes more obvious every year. The economic elites find less and less need to hide it. It’s becoming more common to say the quiet part out loud, in the open, on live mics on livestreams.

Keep the masses running the rate race fueled by promises and propaganda. Coerce them to work for a living until they’re burned out, bankrupt, or dead.

Just go along to get along. Gotta make rent, gotta put the groceries on credit. Can’t attend the protest cause I’m out of PTO, can’t take my PTO cause my copay went up again, can’t afford my copay cause groceries got more expensive for the forth year in a row.

What a shame, what a waste, what a farce…

What is the stock market? A central marketplace to buy and sell stock. The NYSE dates back to 1792. It was likely never explicitly stated that it’s a private club. Because of the term publicly traded company, many people probably assume the public interest is being served or that the stock exchange is a public place. It is not.

10% of the populated owns nearly 93% of the stock market. As the late, great George Carlin used to say “it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it”.

10% of the population…wow, and the government gave them how much bailout money in 2008?

I wonder how the public could have benefited from that money? Healthcare, pot hole repair, college debt forgiveness, homeless sheltering, food banks, community gardens, jobs programs, etc. But that’s going into fantasy land. A fantasy where the rich don’t get richer.

Is there a middle ground where the poor don’t have to get poorer?

It is something to see so much data and evidence pile up that America is living in a capitalist controlled oligarchy. The illusion of direct democracy fades for all but the heavily propagandized. Unfortunately the heavily propagandized is still the majority of the civilian population of America.

The evidence of that fact shows up every election season. Red vs blue, republicans vs democrats, neighbor vs neighbor. Tribalism weaponized to keep the unwashed masses fighting amongst themselves rather than looking upwards and their oppressors.

That third parties are still relegated to joke status because the duopoly has people convinced lock, stock, and barrel that they need to vote between the lesser of two evils OR ELSE, is also really something to behold every election season.

How many billions need to be spent on war and corporate welfare each year before something changes? Is there a number? Is there a flash point? Is there a turning point? Do we as a people have it in us?

It is easier to just get by. Take less and be lead. Settle on the sidelines and complain through small talk or comment sections.

However, it is also getting harder to deny reality. Even in a time of compounding misinformation and infinite propaganda, a study that shows that 10% own 93% of the stock market comes out. The same stock market that is used by every mainstream news source as the indicator of whether the economy is doing good or bad for the whole country.

So if 10% are doing good we’re all doing good? No. But every news anchor and every politician in America talks about how good or bad the economy is doing based on how the stock market is doing. So what does it mean if the stock market is doing good, 10% of the population are doing good, the media and politicians all in unison say we are doing good as a whole, but the vast majority are experiencing the toughest times of the past century?

Modern culture, built on a foundation of a capitalist paradigm, is about, more…always. Infinite growth on a planet of finite resources.

Media and entertainment as we know it in any form, was built by, in the service of advertising. What is the purpose of advertising? To inform, persuade, and remind. Information and reminders have long since exited the chat.

Persuasion. Advertising’s purpose is persuasion in the modern world. For each small business, non profit, and NGO one can point to that use advertising for the greater good, there are literally thousands of examples of advertising persuading people that they need more, more, more…always.

More things, more experiences, more goods, more services, more products, more placements, more, more, more…always.

If our eyes or our ears are open there is some entity using some form of media to persuade us that what we have and/or who we are isn’t enough, we need more, more, more…always.

We are expected to do more, be more, buy more, say more. Keeping up with the Jones’ is a full time job that like many real jobs, doesn’t pay enough to stay out of debt.

Being human can be hard enough. Modern life seems to get more and more complex year to year. Sometimes we’re not going to be our best self. That’s not only okay, it’s normal.

Optimal isn’t always optimal regardless of what the caucasian male with a podcast universe would have us believe. Hustle culture creates a thousand burn out victims for every one that achieves a measurable external success by trading away a minimum of two thirds of their life.

We can’t thrive if we don’t survive. Some days just doing enough to survive isn’t just fine or good enough…it’s literally all there is. A dead entity can’t optimize, it can only decay.

Enough is greater than more. Enough is optimal.

Those who always want more will never have enough and will always try to convince those with enough that they need more.

There’s nothing wrong with goals. There’s nothing wrong with growing, evolving, striving or achieving. There is value and maybe even necessity in metaphorically always moving forward and towards.

It is also becoming more and more of a necessity in an optimal obsessed world to remember that we can’t strive if we don’t survive.

Surviving comes first, always.

Wage slaves with Stockholm Syndrome that wrongly identify themselves as capitalists love to use theory as a defense to the practical horrors and injustices of late stage capitalism that we’re currently living in.

The most frequent meme of this is when they use pictures or scenes from capitalist economies as a visual aide to show the theoretical horrors of socialism.

Those types also like to ignore the socialized aspects of many developed, first world countries throughout Europe and South America. They play dumb when you bring up Universal Basic Income and the results of the studies and trial programs that have been enacted over the past decade. They play dumber when you ask them about tax cuts and bailouts for billionaires and corporations.

What’s the difference between feudalism and historic income inequality and wealth gaps under capitalism?

Technology.

Humanity posses the technology to ease the burden of work of the individual so they may devote more of their life to things other than “earning a living”.

Yet the small minority of people with the greatest concentration of wealth, resources, and therefore power choose to use this technology as a weapon against the masses rather than an aide by forcing competition amongst the people and the technology that can do their jobs better, faster, and cheaper.

What of the people at direct risk of homelessness and starvation because of technology being weaponized against them rather than being put to use for their benefit? Well I guess there’s always prison. And prison labor is the cheapest labor of all.

“They got money for war, but can’t feed the poor” Tupac Shakur

Anytime I mention the >$845 billion annual budget for the Military Industrial Complex I am always greeted by either confusion, deflection or anger.

Anger is the one that gives me that kind of self mutilating joy. Such sadness and disappointment at my fellow human that they feel the need to take up verbal defense of an entity that literally has more money than any other entity on Earth…for “defense”

What’s worse than an exploited worker in false class solidarity with billionaires? Military Industrial Complex bootlickers.

It’s not their fault. America is the most propagandized country in the history of the world and it’s not even close. Germany? North Korea? Wake up.

Have you looked at a screen ever? What is advertising? What are commercials? Who owns the news? Who owns the media? And why? Exactly.

It’s in our nature to think we’re the good guys. We’ll already justify our own actions to ourselves regardless of their external effects unless we suffer immediate negative repercussions.

You take that part of our nature and subject us to a literal non stop, inescapable propaganda machine in every home, public space, purse, and pocket and how can the masses in America not have the consciousness be corporate captured?

We know in our hearts poverty shouldn’t exist in the world with so much wealth. But what our eyes see and our ears hear, our mind believes. And those two senses are under a never ending attack of seduction by entities that want us to live like donkeys chasing the carrot to avoid the stick.

And if we’re too buys mentally, verbally, and physically fighting each other or buying things or working ourselves to the bone to avoid poverty, then we certainly can’t unite for the greater good of the 99%.