So now the whole world will understand what it means to be an artist in America. Welcome to my world Keith. It all depends upon what you agree you will have your "psycho-pursuit of values" in. You love shiny things. (What the Nahuas called the "shit of the sun.") What the Jamestown colonists started wars and murdered children for in a five hundred year journey that murdered 33 million people (not counting the unborn) and continues down to the present. On the other hand I love aural abstractions. Values are everything. As I hear the moaning around me as people experience the world I know, live in and actually prosper, if you consider happiness capital, then it becomes clear that the only answer to this will be an ultimate tragedy invented from the mind of a tyrant. Something on the order of the American Presidents to my people, Hitler to the Jews who provided jobs for the Germans by dying or the kulaks who provided jobs and property for the Soviets by dying as well.
The knee jerk response to complexity is never to solve it through competence but always the Alexander solution to the Gordian knot. "Just cut the bugger and get on with life." Until the asteroid or some other REAL problem in life just wipes our provincial asses off the earth and restarts the whole experiment. Meanwhile, old men in the act of dying can "act out" the psychological mechanism of "projection" and believe that the world isn't a problem of solving complexity through competence, human compassion and design. Believing that the complexity is "out there somewhere" when it is really between the ears. "Nothing is complex if you have the competence to solve it without resorting to violence." Peace is as much a matter of competency as is war. Instead we treat peace as the absence of violence rather than the creative design of a society that helps every citizen achieve their dreams and purpose in life. What I find ludicrous is the acceptance of the usurer as the method and final judge of the society within your head. I would just as soon shoot him, (my version of Alexander's knotty problem). Maybe that will be the next war that happens every 25 years in European and European influenced cultures. We say that to answer a person is to honor them. I honored you with my time this morning. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 3:52 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] Close to the end of the present phase In 1945 at the end of World War 2, after the manufacture of scores of thousands of tanks, tens of thousands of airplanes, and thousands of warships -- and at least as much spent on ammunition -- American national debt had risen to 120% of annual national production (GDP). From the end of the war onwards the mighty industrial machine and huge inflation turned as one to making and selling a whole range of consumer goods that half of the population had been unable to buy ever since the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. Due to this consumer take-up and continuing inflation (with higher tax bands thus being reached) the American National Debt declined to less than 40% of GDP by 1990. By then most households possessed most consumer goods, there were no new ones on the horizon, and replacement goods or marginal improvements to them were then increasingly supplied by Japan, Korea and China. The latter countries were able to institute the very latest automated methods of the West right from the start of their production runs -- as also, in their early rejuvenated years, using high-value components still being made in the West. But by then things were beginning to be sticky in America and Europe. Unemployment was rising, particularly among the young, and the real wages of the new service occupations that replaced the old industrial ones were declining from year to year. From then onwards (President Reagan's time) America's national debt rose to over 60% (with corresponding rises in those of West European countries). It sank a little during President Clinton's time but then started rising again during the two terms of George W. Bush to over 80%. Today it's rising at an even faster rate and is already past 100%. President Obama shows no sign of being aware of the dangers of further money-printing. America's national debt could easily go above 120-140% of GDP in the next 12 months -- as indeed several European countries' already have (with several others close behind). When that level of debt is reached then it becomes impossible to pay back those debts out of normal taxation. The public have been aware in a vague way of the rise of inflation and the rise of national debts since 1945. What they haven't been aware of has been a concerted campaign by governments and central banks to suppress the price -- and thus the validity -- of gold. Above all governments didn't want gold to resume its role as currency because that would prevent governments from steadily (and often not so steadily!) devaluing the price of their own currencies in order to reduce the real value of their debts. Central banks suppressed the price of gold by selling large quantities of it from time to time. To a considerable extent this policy has succeeded since 1945. But at various times, whenever national currencies showed signs of fragility or inflation, the price of gold would go up for a while until central banks managed to quietly suppress it again. But since about 2000, governments have been failing to hold the price of gold in check and it has risen, on the whole, steadily, all the way up to $1200 an ounce today. This is a fourfold increase over the course of a decade. And it is still rising. Previously, the price of gold had an inverse relationship with the price of national currencies, mainly the dollar and the euro. As they devalued, the price of gold increased. But also, during the strong deflationary period of the past two years, gold has continued to rise. In fact, gold now has the confidence of so many investors (including the governments of China, India, Russia and the oil-rich Middle East countries) who are now doubting the future validity of Western national currencies that it will continue to rise and become the de facto new world currency. This is as it was before and during the greatest growth phase of the industrial revolution (19th century) before governments started printing paper money to pay for armies and major wars. Unless something miraculous happens to somehow restore public faith in national currencies and some miraculous formula is found to somehow neutralise national debts then a day of reckoning is now not far off. To English readers of this posting I would suggest that they take little notice of the pseudo-cheerful bits of news that one reads in the press most days of the week (after all, the media have an interest which they ought to declare!) but to pay careful attention to the meaning behind the words of those who really do know the real situation -- the Governor of the Bank of England perhaps or the bosses of Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury, etc. They know that the toughest times ever in the history of the industrial-consumer revolution are now upon us. We are now very close to the end of the great governmental experiment in printing paper money. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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