Young whippersnappers miss this point
More thinking about Batya's magnificent message on the media.

One point she makes repeatedly in various interviews is correct in general but not quite in specifics:

She says that before TV, there was typically one newspaper in a city. One newspaper doesn't want to divide the people, because it wants to advertise to everyone in town. Now we have divided media, so CNN and FOX can satisfy and amplify the most extreme views of the two teams.

She's correct about the unifying effect of a normal business in a smaller city or state. But the history of media doesn't really match the normal business model.

Before TV, newspapers WERE the dividers. As I've noted before, every village above 200 population had one weekly paper. Every town above 2000 had one daily. Cities above 20000 had more than one daily, often 5 or 6 in a city like Topeka or Spokane.

One-paper towns were TINY. The vast majority of the population lived in cities with two or more papers, so the vast majority could pick their favorite brand.

The real unifier was radio and TV, specifically because of the Fairness Doctrine, which was SERIOUSLY ENFORCED from 1934 to 1980. News and entertainment, including comedy, had to be STRICTLY NONPARTISAN. Batya is too young to remember FAIR radio.

= = = = =

We tend to think that monopoly creates disconnection from customers, and thus enables extreme or crazy views.

The causation is reversed. Monopoly vs competition isn't the driving variable. Disconnection from customers is the driving variable.

A profit-seeking business of any size wants as many customers as it can get, so it doesn't try to repel customers unnecessarily. (Obviously no business wants a non-paying or criminal customer.) This is true whether the business has a monopoly or not.

In the current globalized "market", big corporations DON'T WANT CUSTOMERS. They want SHAREHOLDERS, and SHAREHOLDERS all have one insane set of values and opinions.

This is not a monopoly problem, it's a complete failure and loss of BUSINESS AND CAPITALISM.

Labels: Constants and Variables, the broken circle

  ¶ 2:54 PM

  Fitting finale
A fitting conclusion to my series on IBM in the '50s:

Chris Arnade, the chronicler of collapsed America, has a new article on Binghamton and Endicott, the cities where IBM flourished until it moved to China.

Binghamton's Main Street, the commercial spine, bisects downtown and then makes its way through Johnson City and to Endicott. Once you cross west over the river, things immediately feel on edge, ready to burst out at any moment. A busy road of fast-food franchises, vape shops, abandoned and reclaimed buildings, and large wooden homes of single occupancy apartments. It is also filled with college kids, drunks, and various people with no clear motives, all whooping it up and disrupting working people rushing to and from work. All of it is encased in the constant smell of weed that never leaves.

One of the boarded-up buildings, an old cleaners and leather refinisher, has a public notice pasted onto its plywood window. A notice for an upcomping hearing “for the establishment of a Crematory in this building.”

Looking around I spotted nobody who would or could take notice, because almost nobody was around, besides a few cars zooming by. The few people who drifted by looked like the time, technology, or desire to comment was beyond them. Not that anybody would listen to them anyhow.

Says it all.

Watson ran IBM in Social Economics style like NCR and Ford and Conoco, giving his employees a REASON to be loyal and efficient. So the loss was more dramatic than a company of the normal American robber baron style.

In other words, IBM maintained two-way loyalty with its customers AND its employees.

.... I just realized I'm using a Lenovo PC, made by the Chinese spinoff of IBM. Hadn't thought about the connection before. It's a good computer, quiet and fast, ten years old and still holding up. But it didn't contribute anything to the people in Endicott, and didn't use their well-developed skills.

Labels: endless hell, skill-estate, the broken circle

  ¶ 6:44 AM

  More on timelines and rentalizing
Following on this item about timelines in tech.

The overall pattern, true for everything from land to telephones, has three steps:

1. Feudal relationships came first. A two-way loyalty between the seller and customer, or landlord and tenant. The land or product was in the hands of the customer but owned by the landlord. Rental created a lifetime connection, with personal OBLIGATIONS on both sides.

2. The myth of private property came along with the myths of "natural rights" and meritocracy. These myths served to DECOUPLE the aristocrat from the peasant. After paying interest for 20 or 30 years, the peasant "owned" the land or car or computer. He was then free to sell the item for much less than he had paid in interest. The landlords no longer had any obligations to keep the peasants alive, no obligation to take care of the property, and no obligation to employ local peasants. They could ship the work offshore and ignore all service calls. (See 'let the fires burn'.)

3. After deleting the two-way obligations, we've returned to renting with a one-way obligation. Now the landlord has total control of your land or computer, and has no need to take care of it or insure that you can even use it. The landlord has no vested interest in your survival or purchasing power or employability or skills.

= = = = =

I've been modeling IBM's 1957 RAMAC accounting system, a landmark in disk tech and a landmark in service. Previously IBM had made a wide range of individual machines for business, including timeclocks and intercoms as well as computers. RAMAC was a set of computing equipment plus software designed to work together for one purpose.

The timeline shows up starkly when comparing IBM 1957 (real feudal) versus Microsoft 2021 (neo-feudal).

IBM rented about 1000 of the RAMAC systems. Not a high quantity. The most basic system rented for $3200 a month, equivalent to $25k now. Extra equipment and extra usage charges brought some rentals up to $12k a month, about $100k now.

The expense meant that only middle-to-large companies could afford them. What the companies got for their rental was a full range of close-coupled services. IBM wrote a series of books showing how the RAMAC accounting system could be used and programmed by different types of business, and provided programming services as well as repair services. IBM was committed to HELPING the businesses thrive, so the customers could continue paying the high rental. Profit maintained the relationship.

Now Microsoft rents Windows 11 for "zero" dollars, and provides NEGATIVE service. Constant updates and spying ("telemetry") keep your computer tied up so you CAN'T do your own work properly. Constant Github updates to every piece of software keep you jumping, always behind the curve, always catching up with the latest change that invalidates all of your previous work. Memory and storage and amortizing are impossible. The "free" cost removes the profit feedback loop. MS doesn't need customers, and doesn't try to help them prosper.

Labels: 2000=1000, defensible times, From rights to duties, the broken circle

  ¶ 1:58 PM

  More on medieval mode
John Horvat, writing in Imaginative Conservative, makes a strong case for the CORRECT UNDERSTANDING of feudalism. I've been hammering this point for quite a while in the context of agrarian vs sweatshop "slavery".

Horvat starts with an unconvincing example from current events: soldiers who helped evacuate their Afghan assistants last month. The military has always maintained a special form of teamwork which doesn't readily extend or apply to normal life.

He brings the point home here:

As shocking as it may sound to modern ears, these ties have something of a feudal nature. The historically misunderstood feudal bond consisted of mutual ties that bound people together in friendship and service. It was a flexible and creative bond inside a family-like relationship where each party agreed to be at the disposition of the other—even risking life if necessary.

Unlike the cold bureaucratic relationships that bind people today to abstract corporate and governmental structures, the feudal bond was extremely personal. Each party seriously assumed duties and responsibilities to the other and saw it as a sacred duty.

Starting in 1700, London and NYC financiers ripped these bonds asunder, and simultaneously turned the definitions and stories upside down. All propaganda and all written history since then has told us that feudal bonds were "slavery", which was uniformly horrible for the slave and wonderful for the owner. The same propaganda instructs us that impersonal NON-CONTRACTUAL relationships give freedom to the employee.

Madman Lincoln was acting for those financiers, who had prepared the ground for his holocaust by sending bands of ascetic RELIGIOUS activists to spread sweatshops in the West.

Outside of agrarian serfdom there were other commercial bonds, equally strong and bilateral. Apprentices were BOUND to the masters for 7 years. Some bad masters exploited the apprentices in the same way that a wage-paying capitalist exploits his "free" employees. But other masters recognized the talents and skills of their apprentices, and sacrificed profit to develop the skills. The latter story shows up repeatedly in the biographies of inventors and scientists and leaders, from Carver to James Ferguson.

Labels: 2000=1000, Carver, Equipoise, the broken circle

  ¶ 1:51 PM

  AI missing a BIIIIIIIIIIIG point.
In MindMatters as usual, Stephen Berger explores the ethical problems of 'Creative Destruction'.

Berger has solid empathy for the drivers and assembly workers who are displaced by DESTRUCTIVE DESTRUCTION (correct name) but he doesn't remember the world before Share Value.

Applying the Golden Rule to AI-driven innovation means being mindful about how AI is introduced and what jobs it replaces, especially initially. If the impact of AI is to take old junkers off the road, that is probably a societal benefit unless you are the owner of the old junker, now on the shoulder of the road, and it is the only way you have for getting around.

The problem is that AI is developed using that other Golden Rule, “He who has the gold rules,” and it is developed in a competitive environment with other AI developers. The most appealing business cases are the ones that will get funded. These business cases are seldom a secret. Other innovators see the opportunity and develop competitive solutions. The first company to bring a solution to the market will enjoy a very significant advantage. Who has the time or energy to worry about social impacts? If you don’t develop the system others will and you will be out of business. The focus is drawn to competitors and winning with little room left for contemplating the impacts of innovative AI technology.

This situation is relatively new, beginning around 1980. Before globalization and Share Value, the invisible hand WORKED. An industry that eliminated its workers, or moved its plants to China, would quickly feel the impact of the lost wages IN ITS OWN CITY. The feedback loop was CLOSED.

Industrialists didn't need to be nice or altruistic. Their own PROFIT forced them to maintain and increase employment, and to maintain loyalty by decent salaries and decent treatment.

Globalization broke the feedback loop with employees. A company that sells everywhere has no motive to maintain employees in one location or plant.

Share value broke the feedback loop with customers. Investors want to see ZERO PRODUCTION AND ZERO CUSTOMERS AND ZERO EMPLOYEES. Investors want to see pure math, pure stock manipulation, with no physical limitations.

So the only real solution is to constrain both globalism and share value.

Return to the laws and regulations of 1939. Delete all laws and agencies formed since then, restore all laws and agencies of the New Deal.

Labels: AI point-missing, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, the broken circle

  ¶ 4:48 PM

  Company towns
MindMatters is getting its panties in a wad about Big Tech building new company towns in Nevada.

Company towns aren't automatically a bad thing. They can go two ways.

Social economics companies 100 years ago built beautiful company towns with strong culture and social support. Ponca (Conoco) and Dayton (NCR) were beautiful places .... until the company died or moved elsewhere. The good time lasted for a century.

Mining towns were more typical of Nevada. They were hastily built without any social structure at all, ran wild and rowdy for 20 years, then quickly turned into ghost towns when the silver or gold was exhausted.

Google and Facebook are data miners, and their overall attitude is similar to the fast-growing fast-shrinking Gold Rush.

Social economics was killed in 1975, so we can be sure new company towns won't be like Ponca or Dayton. They will be mining towns.

The real two-way alternative now is between HONESTLY NAMED company towns and HIDDEN company towns. Right now Google and Amazon and Bloomberg exert total uniform absolute power over all cities, while cities pretend to be running their own affairs. Company towns would at least be openly controlled, so the people can KNOW who is destroying them.

See also Symmetrical Scapegoating.

Labels: the broken circle

  ¶ 11:51 PM

  Random thought about feedback loops
As I get older I can tell that my negative feedback systems are getting weaker. More sensitivity to temperature, more difficulty with balance, less regular sleep, etc. All of these functions were automatically held constant when I was young. Now I have to apply more conscious thought and caution.

Parallel: The same thing happens to countries and empires as they age. Before 1946 we had a somewhat functional feedback system. Bad decisions led to economic consequences that forced governments to revise the bad decisions. Error signals were carried by taxation.

Starting in '46 and accelerating after 1970, the economic loops were weakened and deleted. Now the feds don't need taxes at all. They function solely on counterfeit numbers. Without the dependence on tax, the feds don't need industry or production or work or people. They've already killed most of the industry. Since 2008 they've been openly killing the people.

Negative feedback is life. No feedback is tyranny. Positive feedback is instant death.

= = = = =

Later: The parallel fails because nobody is applying conscious thought and caution. Instead, the elderly country is chained and muzzled in the attic while competing fake "heirs" gamble and drink up the remnants of the estate and sue each other over the provisions of the will. Our politicians are Anna Nicole Smith vs Erin Fleming.

Labels: coot-proofing, Natural law = Soviet law, the broken circle

  ¶ 9:54 AM

  Another example of language in (ahem) flux.
Found another example of experimentation in language from the Ayrton book.



Transcribed:

The particular specimen of Weston instrument shown is called a "milammeter", because a current may be directly measured with it in "milli-amperes", or thousandths of an ampere.

Condensation of unit and prefix happens sometimes when the prefix and unit meet in a vowel. Megavolts and Gigavolts are uncondensed, but Megohms and Gigohms are condensed. Milamps would seem to follow the same rule as Megohms. Not clear why it didn't last. Is a front vowel more sticky than a back vowel?

Incidentally, Weston was among the companies that followed Social Economics, treating workers well and receiving quality and loyalty in return. Newark, America was a rich city with abundant hi-tech jobs as late as the 1960s.

Labels: Equipoise, Language update, the broken circle

  ¶ 6:25 AM

  More rambling on localism
In nature and in human organization, modularity is crucial. Every loss of a layer means more tyranny, because every loss of a layer means a loss of a local feedback loop. Nature functions by feedback within each level, from mitochondria up to hives and populations.

Negative feedback is life. No feedback is tyranny. Positive feedback is quick death.

The current holocaust has dramatically exposed an exception to this rule, which was already starting to show up a few years ago.

Traditionally cities are the most important module in governance. A neighborhood or unincorporated settlement isn't large enough to make useful rules or perform useful services like policing. A city can perform those services, and it can shape them to local preferences. Cities that grow too large lose the directness of the feedback loop, and they generally start losing population until they fall back to a rational size.

Cities can also be "corrupted" by local gangs, some of which are called corporations. This form of corruption isn't necessarily bad. Mafia-controlled cities are usually pleasant places with very little ordinary crime. Before globalism took hold, corporations created local jobs, and many of them created real beauty and real social services for their employees, which also made life easier for the non-employees. When a creative force like Conoco or NCR had total control of the city government in Ponca or Dayton, the city was vastly better off.

Since 1975 this model has been gradually decaying, as corporations gradually pulled away from products and employees and moved into pure finance, sucking free money from the Treasury's tit. The source of pure numbers is NOT in places like Ponca or Dayton. It's in NYC. So all corporations now serve the tastes and needs of NYC.

About ten years ago the NYC loop became personal, as Bloomberg started buying up all the mayors. Now the cities are not just abstractly serving NYC "values"; they're directly obeying Bloomberg himself. For several years cities have been ruining local police to satisfy Bloomberg's NYC tastes. In 2020 all mayors acted in unison, starting and encouraging riots, ferociously enforcing and aiding the holocaust, trying to countermand sane governors.

This is NOT how cities are supposed to work.

It was easy for Bloomberg to buy the cities since they no longer had local revenue sources and local "corruption" to fend off outside money.

Now more localism just means more places for Bloomberg or Bezos to buy and run in deadly unison.

What's the answer? Ideally a strong national figure like FDR, who knows how to fight the blackmailers, and who insists on using the national government to BREAK the NYC control. FDR broke the stock market and investment banks, and his regulations prevented the regrowth of giant monsters like Bezos and Bloomberg for several decades.

Unfortunately there's no way to get there, except by prayer.

A smaller and more incremental solution might be through TAXATION.

We've seen this in the clinical trial of the current holocaust. "Party" turned out to be a meaningless variable. The most important real variable is TAXATION. The states that remained sane depend on REAL local farms and industries. They decided not to lockdown and shutdown their industries because they depended on taxes from those industries. The crazy states are either mainly dependent on DC, or derive taxes from Bezos and Zuck and Gates, who are the main cui bono of the holocaust.

Labels: Asked and badly answered, the broken circle

  ¶ 1:16 AM

  Let's Riberty! Let's Lushmore!
Somehow I get the feeling that the Japs didn't enjoy being occupied by Yank troops in 1950. They gained a much more serious and meaningful revenge a few years later, by picking up all the industries and jobs we were suicidally discarding.

Labels: Entertainment, the broken circle

  ¶ 10:33 AM

  How, What, Who REPRINT
Cited this in previous item. Worth a full reprint.

From 2010, mainly focused on the 2008 Stock fake panic.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Three types of knowledge: How, What, Who.

All three types are necessary, and everyone uses all three types all the time, but the dominant type strongly influences the form and the success of a culture.

= = = = =

How-ism is based on skills, on knowing the way. How to build, how to cook, how to repair, how to keep people happy, how to keep them under control. How-knowledge comes directly from the senses, tempered and conditioned by comparison and proportion, with a constant awareness of feedback and cycles. (Does this work better? How can I tell when it's better? When does it repeat?) How-knowledge can be passed with no words at all from mother to daughter, father to son, master to apprentice.

What-ism is based on facts, on knowing the data. What-knowledge requires language, symbols and formulas. You can acquire what-knowledge by reading or listening.

Who-ism is based on identity and quotation. Who-knowledge requires a strong sense of status, an up-to-date reading of comparative authority, and a tape-recorder mind. If the high-status person says "2+2=5" and wears Prada, we must say "2+2=5" and wear Prada. If the low-status person says "2+2=4" and wears J.C. Penney, we must mock "2+2=4" and discard everything with a J.C. Penney label.

= = = = =

In basic neurological terms, How belongs to both genders, What belongs to the male-type brain, and Who belongs to the female-type brain. [Caveat: this raw gender correlation is dramatically obvious in simple-minded people but somewhat submerged by other capabilities and shapings in smarter types.]

In chronological terms (again loose and overlapping!), America was dominated by How until WW2, by What from WW2 through 1990, and by Who since 1990.

= = = = =

The high point of How-ism in America was the era of invention from 1840 to 1920. Morse, Bell, Edison, Carver, Ford: all were How-ites, developing a vision based on a set of skills, and knowing how to turn the vision into a real device or method with some assistance from What-ish data and numbers. Ford was probably the purest Howite, since his best inventions were methods and social structures, not devices.

= = = = =

The high point of What-ism was clearly the Apollo moon shot, though Apollo 13 was famously saved by the ductape of How.

= = = = =

And the final wild spin-out of What-ism is the recent stock market crime. I've been listening to the Congressional hearings and I'm struck by the total absence of any proportion, any comparison, any sense of cycles, even any curiosity among the conspirators. The investigators (especially the magnificent How-ite Elizabeth Warren) constantly ask questions like "Didn't you stop to think?" or "Didn't you wonder why this was happening?" or "Didn't you ask what's wrong with this picture?" And the Wall Street Mafiosi on the other side of the table simply DO NOT COMPUTE the questions. Their answers are synthetic and nakedly numerical: "Value Goal Credit Default Swap Senior Tranche ... Calculating ... Eight Three Dot Six." Obviously these biped enumeration modules were not programmed for pattern recognition or comparison or wonderment, except for "Which action brings me more money?"

= = = = =

Verbal Who-ism is the mark of the Royalist, the Catholic, the cultist. If the current King/Pope/Leader says "X", I know "X" is true and I will defend it to the death. If the Pretender to the Throne says "X", I know "X" is false and I will fight against it with all my energy. In most cases "X" is the same thing, which means the Who-ist defends and opposes the same idea at different times.

Visual Who-ism is the mark of the Paparazzi. A photographer who gets the right candid shot of Britney Spears can receive half a million dollars for one click of the shutter. Why is this one image so valuable? Because lots of people want to see Britney Spears. Why do lots of people want to see Britney Spears, when better-looking women can be seen on the streets of any city? Because "news" sources, working together with Britney's agents, have stirred up the buzz. This circular process makes a lot of money for a few people but contributes absolutely nothing to the progress of civilization. In fact, by monopolizing media channels that might otherwise carry a wider variety of entertainment and info, it displaces What and drives civilization backwards.

Who displaces both How and What on the verbal level. You can see this in any web forum. In Who-land, observation is illegal. You're not allowed to examine nature or events and draw a rational inductive conclusion. You're only allowed to quote a credentialed authority who belongs to Team A or Team B. If your quote is precisely accurate, the authority's own team will cheer and the opposing team will boo. If your quote is inaccurate or (horror of horrors!!!!) you cite nothing more than plain reality, you're out of the arena. Banned for life.

Newsreaders before 1990 were free to say something like "It appears that the protesters are trying to push back the police." You won't hear that today. Instead, you hear "Some say that the protesters etc." Everything must be a quotation or a citation, and the Team Membership of the citation must be clear. When a sentence starts with "Critics say..." you know the rest of the sentence will be the heretical view, the racist/sexist/homophobic/Halliburtonist view that you're required to mock and disdain.

Finally, when you apply Who to an area of life that should be treated exclusively with How and What, you get the Global Warming Conspiracy. For many millenia the How-ites have observed and understood the ups and downs of Earthly seasons by watching plants, animals, sun and moon. Around 1700 the Whatians made it possible to measure temperature reliably and record the numbers for future generations, thus helping us to understand the longer cycles, the hyper-seasons of the world. Since 1988 science has been replaced by money, power and peer review, the essence of Who. Any data that disagrees with Commissars Maurice Strong and James Hansen is Undata. It does not exist, and those who continue to use it are Unpersons, subject to Liquidation at any moment.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Footnote: Some of the names in that piece are obsolete. Britney is still around but not a big deal. Halliburton is still around but not used as a cussword. FUCKTRUMP has subsumed all other cusswords. Now that FUCKTRUMP is out, the left will have to find lower level cusswords, which might be less universally effective. Strong is dead and Hansen is either dead or out of action. Algore is also out of action. There aren't any equivalent Big Names in the "global warming" genocide lately. Greta was briefly in fashion but seems to have faded. The "virus" holocaust took all the glory and fame from the Carbon Cult. Recently there are signs that the Carbonites are getting dissatisfied and trying to reclaim the top spot, which might be somewhat helpful for the peasants who are dying like flies from the "virus" lockdowns and masks. Distracted psychopaths are marginally less lethal than tightly focused psychopaths.

Labels: Carbon Cult, skill-estate, the broken circle

  ¶ 10:48 PM

  Sales and service
Returning to the vague subject of radio and culture from a different angle, which may be more relevant.

Profit vs share value. With corporations that sell a physical product, the change is easy to define. Companies that seek a profit want to sell a product that SATISFIES the customer, and they also want to have a customer class that can afford to BUY the product. So they want employees, and they PAY employees. PAY FOR VALUE in both directions.

Companies that seek Share Value don't need employees or products or customers. Share Value rises to infinity when all employees are gone and all customers are dead.

This change happened in most industries in the '80s, and it ALSO happened in radio at the same time.

Rush brought in the Share Value mode aka Silicon Valley mode. He claimed falsely that he had no employees, and he made it clear that the listener was the PRODUCT, not the buyer. Listeners existed to provide calls that he could ROAST or SMASH or DESTROY.

Profit-based companies focus on SERVICE. They want live and solvent customers who return to buy more of the product, so they want to be sure the product satisfies the customers.

The Philco slogan said it all. Sell merchandise that doesn't come back to customers who do come back. This was an internal slogan, not a fake advertising phrase.



Service in broadcasting was harder to pin down because the product was abstract entertainment, not cars or appliances or soap. Nevertheless, many stations and programs provided specific services and opportunities to participate. The FCC demanded real evidence of real service before renewing licenses, so this was good business AND legally required.

The most common service was local daytime women's programs, which acted as an exchange for recipes and household 'hacks'.

Several syndicated or national programs provided specific services, either steadily or occasionally.

Examples I've noticed:

Dick Tracy was all about participation and learning. Young listeners were organized into clubs and invited to help solve this week's case, using the 'secret' codes and methods provided in the 'secret' manual.

An odd west coast program called In the Crimelight was similar in some ways to Strange As It Seems, focused strictly on crimes. Each episode discussed a specific historical case or a type of crime. At the end of each episode the host, a retired cop, offered to help or advise listeners with crime-related problems. He gave his address and promised to answer every letter in a helpful way, whether he could solve the problem or not.

At the end of one 1945 episode of It Pays to be Ignorant, Lulu McConnell, who posed as a drunken Irish barfly, dropped out of character and sweetly invited lonely soldiers to write to her.

We don't know what happened to those invited letters, but we know for sure that they weren't simply Product. The Crimelight host never used the info in the letters, and Lulu didn't mock the writers in other episodes.

We could use a little more sweetness and a WHOLE FUCKING LOT LESS mockery and arrogance and condescension.

Labels: Alternate universe, defensible thymes, defensible times, the broken circle

  ¶ 12:45 AM

  Silly expectation
This episode of Can You Imagine That features a long-term bet. In 1932, two Louisiana dudes made a bet about the newly built state capital in Baton Rouge. One said it wouldn't hold up, the other went along with the public promise that it would last 500 years. Each of them put down $2.50, and went to the trouble of registering the bet formally in an escrow account at the bank. The bet was to accumulate interest at 4%, and would be payable to the heirs of the winner in 2432.

The bank figured out that the winner would theoretically receive $2,084,495,605.22 in 2432.

First, the typical interest on savings in previous years is surprisingly hard to find. I've often looked in various bank and census publications, but it's not listed. So this provides a useful datum that 4% was standard and expected at the low point of the Depression. Many of those publications implied that interest had hit zero around then.

Second, of course interest DID hit zero in 2008, and will never rise above zero again. The dudes and their banker and the program's writers automatically assumed that interest on savings was a necessary and permanent part of banking. Wrong.

So the real payoff would have stopped gaining in 2008, and would have stuck at 91 dollars from 2008 to 2432. Assuming the two dudes were about 20, there's a slight chance that they were still alive in 2008, and their sons or daughters would very likely be alive in 2008. They should have canceled the bet and collected the 91 dollars.

(The building is still serving as the state capitol now. 90 years down, 410 to go.)

Labels: Alternate universe, storage, the broken circle

  ¶ 10:31 AM

  Missed point, doesn't matter
An article by Phil Mullan in Spiked makes a good argument for change but doesn't ask whether the change CAN happen.

It is said that crises provide fertile ground for innovation. This is only partly true. The acute pressures, the falling away of pre-crisis norms and the sidestepping of regulations, liberate individuals and teams of people to come up with great ideas about how to do things differently. This fresh thinking can originate better, more effective and efficient ways of conducting existing productive activity, or it can conceive brand new products or services that improve people’s lives.

We are not just in a period of crisis, but a crisis within an existing state of economic depression. Depression is not simply an extension to recession, in the way it is being discussed today. It is a protracted phase of economic sclerosis that has become self-reinforcing.

Mullan places the blame where it belongs, on debt.

This is what our distinctive shutdown recession is beginning to reveal. It is bringing into the open what hitherto was being camouflaged, not least by all the extra liquidity central banks pumped out ever since the late 1980s, and especially since the 2008/2009 financial crash. ‘Liquidity’ means putting cash into the economy so that there is enough spending going on to maintain a sense of functionality.

This was also true of the 1930s. The 20s had been a period of fast numerical growth with zero change. The 30s had slow numerical growth and fast positive change in both industry and government. When you compare cars or radios from the two decades, the growth is dramatically obvious. 1920 radios and 1930 radios are similar. 1940 radios are an entirely different species in appearance and function. 1920 cars and 1930 cars are indistinguishable. 1940 is a brand new machine in appearance and function. Same with government, except that the 20s were a period of actual decline, not stasis. Harding had tried to innovate and got killed as a reward. Coolidge and Hoover learned the lesson and followed NYC's orders precisely. The Dow sucked out the life and soul from government and business in order to grow exponentially.

Most writers are missing this long-term trend. Wolfstreet has been doing the best job of placing the holocaust in context. The businesses that are failing were ALREADY in prolonged decline. From retailers to universities, all had lost their soul and mission 30 years ago and were losing customers steadily. Many of them were intentionally repelling sane customers to satisfy the crazed monstrous NYC demons who buy shares and donate to endowment funds.

What's the driver of decline? Reliance on debt and Share Value instead of savings and profit.

Real positive change in products or government requires RELIANCE ON PROFIT or RELIANCE ON TAXES.

When business has to sell products for profit, it makes the products better to gain more profit. Business also PAYS WORKERS so they can buy the products. When government has to sell services for tax revenue, it makes the services better to gain more taxes.

The comparison to the 20s works precisely for business. In the 20s corporations were solely seeking Share Value just as they are now. It doesn't work as well for government, because Coolidge and Hoover were not trying to run solely on counterfeit numbers from the central bank. They simply rode the rising tide of tariffs and income tax from the steady numerical growth. They understood that they needed to have businesses and people, so they weren't able to kill everyone. Today's governments don't need anything outside the president's mansions, so they are free to kill everyone.

FDR didn't need to disconnect the central bank from government, so his task was a bit simpler than the task of today's reformers.

Doesn't matter anyway because there aren't any reformers. They've all been Epsteined into total submission.

= = = =

Later, from the opposite angle: If big businesses had not ALREADY lost their souls, they would have RESISTED the shutdown actively and effectively. When you have a soul you don't want to be killed. Small businesses want to live, but they're too small and weak to resist effectively. Corporations and universities don't need factories and students and employees, so they WELCOMED the forced shift to virtual abstract operations. This has been their GOAL AND PURPOSE for 30 years. Pure numbers and pure software.

The ONE AND ONLY EXCEPTION proves the point. Elon has been verbally opposing the holocaust from the start. Last week he ACTIVELY AND EFFECTIVELY resisted, reopening his FACTORY to employ REAL WORKERS. Because Elon has both Share Value and Epstein connections, his resistance has BULLYPOWER. Holocauster Newsom surrendered.

Labels: Answered better than asked, skill-estate, the broken circle

  ¶ 4:05 AM

  Good jab 2
UK Telegraph makes a comparison:

In the history of expensive software mistakes, Mariner 1 was probably the most notorious. The unmanned spacecraft was destroyed seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral in 1962 when it veered dangerously off-course due to a line of dodgy code.

But nobody died and the only hits were to Nasa’s budget and pride. Imperial College’s modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for Covid-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns will supersede the failed Venus space probe and could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost.

Again, good Twitter point but useless as a rule or comparison.

First: Software in 1962 was a primitive and unsophisticated skill. I don't know how the Mariner code was written, but I suspect it wasn't even Fortran; probably machine opcodes, hard to debug and hard to understand. Modern software has all sorts of internal protections against simple errors, and modern programmers have professional workflow techniques. This is like blaming Ford's safety compliance engineers for a headon crash between 1908 Model Ts. Safety wasn't even a subject in 1908.

Second: In this case the software is NOT THE PROBLEM AT ALL. Blaming the software is Malign Misattribution, a typical Shared Lie. Lots of people write crappy simulation code. I've written some myself. When I animate my old tech models, I'm simulating and predicting how they would have worked, and I sometimes get it wrong. Because I know how the world works in general, I can spot the problem and correct it. The people who decided to use Ferguson's code either don't know how viruses and immune systems work, or more likely they know perfectly well HOW TO WRECK THE IMMUNE SYSTEM.

Third and most important: THEY DIDN'T NEED ANY FUCKING MODELS AT ALL. THERE'S NOTHING NEW ABOUT THIS VIRUS, SO NO NEW RESPONSE WAS NEEDED. PUBLIC HEALTH WAS WELL PREPARED FOR A NORMAL VIRUS, AND PUBLIC HEALTH WAS ALREADY HANDLING THIS NORMAL VIRUS AS IT FUCKING ALWAYS DOES. THE SOFTWARE WAS JUST ONE ELEMENT OF THE HOLOCAUST, NOT THE CAUSE OF THE HOLOCAUST.

= = = = =

The genocidal anti-health officials who chose Ferguson are just like the Wreckers who built fake lighthouses to steer ships onto the rocks. Ferguson is the bricklayer who built the tower in the wrong place. He knew that he was participating in a crime, but he wasn't the mastermind.

Repeating:

Henry VIII responded to the problem by founding Trinity House, a mutual benefit association or guild for sailors, and giving it full authority over lighthouses and navigation. Trinity House still exists and still has the same functions. Remarkable continuity for an organization, breaking all of Parkinson's Laws. Serving the same purpose for 500 years, funded the same way for 500 years. Every ship that docks at British ports pays a user fee to Trinity House.

Is there any way for a modern monarch to create an equivalent Mutual Benefit Association for real science? I strongly doubt it. Henry was just as evil and crazy as modern kings, but he was motivated by loss of tax revenue. Modern Sorosian monarchs don't need taxes, so they don't need a country or an economy. They run solely on counterfeit numbers generated by central banks.

King Henry of Ford and King Henry of England both operated in a closed circle. Henry of Ford realized that he had to pay his workers enough to buy one of the cars they were building. He wanted MORE PROFIT, and the only way to make more profit is to sell things to workers who are making things. Henry of England realized that he needed uncrashed ships to carry the products that England made, or to import products and crops that England couldn't make. If the ships crashed, the economy would crash and his income would crash. Now the circle is broken. Corporations and governments depend solely on counterfeit numbers.

Labels: Jackboot stomping forever, Parkinson, Shared Lie, the broken circle, Trinity House

  ¶ 5:52 AM

  Another home run by Ehret
Ehret gives a straightforward account of the Depression. He emphasizes the assassination attempt on FDR, which happened two weeks before the inauguration. Deepstate wanted to prevent FDR from taking power. Fortunately they chose an inefficient assassin, and his shots were knocked out of line by brave civilians in the audience. Mayor Cermak and two civilians died.

Ehret doesn't say it, but this undoubtedly accounts for FDR's immediate and effective action. If he didn't fully understand the problem before, he knew for sure after the assassination. He knew it was life or death for the country and for himself.

I'm hoping Ehret will take a close look at Harding. He deserves recognition for breaking down Wilson's Deepstate agencies and imposing non-intervention abroad and controls on capitalism domestically. Harding was thoroughly Unpersoned and possibly killed.

Labels: the broken circle

  ¶ 3:37 PM

  Debtoleth = Deatholeth
While futilely searching for info about direct payment from banks to heretics, I came across an 1883 text on banking with lots of nice clear history on banks, governments, and debts.

There's an extremely simple pattern that holds true for a thousand years.

Governments use taxes to finance popular policies. Governments use debt to finance unpopular policies.

Every breakaway from savings and solvency, every breakaway from real value, was "necessary" to finance an AGGRESSIVE WAR that nobody except the leaders wanted to fight.

Every internal genocide, every policy that DESTROYS THE GOVERNMENT'S OWN PEOPLE, must be financed by debt for a brutally logical reason. When you kill your own real-value economy, you kill the source of taxes.

The correlation is so perfect that it can be used as a shibboleth.

If the government uses debt instead of taxes, you can be sure the government intends to kill all real economic activity.

None of our politicians want to raise taxes, which means BY DEFINITION that none of our politicians want to have a functional economy or a functional country. They want to be a free-floating bubble sustained by infinite exponential counterfeit credit.

The oft-quoted "no taxation without representation" misses the mark. Legislatures always end up serving Deepstate, always end up committing genocide against their own people.

I've made half of this point before, in discussions of VAT. A government SHOULD be like a business. It should try to make a profit from its own activities. It should derive its revenues strictly and solely from real economic increase of value, so that it will be MOTIVATED to assist real economic increase. When the government operates this way, decorative filigrees like "voting" are unnecessary. Profit does the voting.

In the previous discussions I didn't see the other side, didn't see that government by debt is AUTOMATICALLY SUICIDAL.

Labels: Leth, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, the broken circle

  ¶ 1:20 AM

  Self-explanatory bull
Heard on money-talk radio: "Drought is bullish."

PING.

Three words show why a Wall Street economy is deadly.

The problem isn't price variation. In an honest and simple market, supply and demand move prices up and down. Drought raises prices for wheat, which encourages consumers to change their habits and encourages wheat-growers to find ways and places to grow more wheat. Price goes down again. This is NEGATIVE FEEDBACK, which is another name for LIFE.

Our problem is that the TRADERS are controlling everything. They control the government and the culture. Banks see debt as bullish, and banks control everything, so we get 100% debt and 0% savings. Traders see war as bullish, so we get 100% war and 0% peace. Traders see low grain supplies as bullish, so our policies are slanted toward eliminating farmers instead of encouraging and training more farmers. Above all, increased share value is bullish, so corporations eliminate all production and employees and customers, focusing entirely on numerical manipulation of shares.

Price is now a POSITIVE feedback loop instead of a NEGATIVE feedback loop. Everything in the system responds in one direction, aimed at increasing the activity of traders and increasing share value. POSITIVE feedback is another name for DEATH.

The alternative is the Soviet system. Businesses make excess value (profit). The government takes the profit through VAT tax, and redistributes it as investment with a goal of satisfying the needs of all the people. Needs = food, housing, clothing, work. No market, no shares, no bulls, no bears. All saving, no debt. Because the government depends on VAT, it wants businesses to make a profit. All negative feedback, no positive feedback.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, SES, the broken circle

  ¶ 8:30 AM

  Y dropouts?
Tuning into the Everett TweakerCam again. It's been dull there for a few days after the cops pulled their monthly cleanout. Today is the 3rd of the month, EBT refill day, so there's activity again.

The location is a classic low point, crossed by a railroad and an interstate, and mainly occupied by city impound lots. Today the cam operator decided to focus on a LONG train passing by.

The 900-car train was carrying nothing but:



and



Wonder why we have a drug and suicide problem?

Labels: the broken circle

  ¶ 3:19 PM

  Time for a reprint on fractional reserve crime
Reprinting this AGAIN. It's an important point because you get what you measure. When your measuring tool claims destruction is growth, you're always going to work toward destruction.

= = = = =

Basic problem: When money creation happens automatically at the moment of making a LOAN, people who are attempting to run their lives and businesses by thrift, without borrowing, are completely ignored. We don't count as part of the economy.

The money supply EXPLICITLY EXCLUDES REAL VALUE.

REAL VALUE comes from REAL LABOR. Turning raw materials and components into a useful product, or cultivating crops and livestock, or arranging and advertising products for easier purchase.

Money creation at the point of lending doesn't even begin to recognize any of these activities.

A business that makes or sells things WITHOUT BORROWING FIRST is not recognized as creating value.

In the Western system, EVERY loan, whether it goes toward real production or gambling or stock manipulation, is recognized as creating value.

The current system treats DESTROYED VALUE as an increase, and completely ignores CREATED VALUE. Perfectly backwards.

Before 1975 the distinction didn't matter quite as much, because many loans went directly toward creating value. Building new factories, improving productivity, redecorating a store. Now that the vast majority of loans are strictly criminal, serving to MURDER real business and expand the already infinite fake "wealth" of the Tribe, the distinction matters.

The alternatives are Sharia and Soviet.

Sharia, when applied properly, should create money exactly when value increases. Unfortunately there is no proper Sharia in the current Muslim world. According to this article, modern sharia banks don't create money differently, but do try to prohibit loans that serve speculation. Might achieve the same goal, but doesn't solve the basic problem.

Unsurprisingly, the Soviet system AS ACTUALLY APPLIED got it right. From this clearly written article:

First, as explained below, [Gosbank] had no discretion over the quantity of money. Its money-creation activity like its credit activity was entirely passive, arising as a byproduct of the production plan.

When a farm delivered its milk output, it would obtain a document from the cheese factory verifying that the latter had received its milk input. The document was then turned over to Gosbank, which credited the farm's account according to the value of the milk delivered, and debited the cheese factory's account by the same value.

Likewise, after the cheese was produced and shipped to the State food store, the cheese factory obtained a document verifying its delivery of cheese. Again, the document was turned over to Gosbank, which this time credited the cheese factory's account and debited the store's account. Finally, when households purchased the cheese with cash, the State store deposited its cash receipts with Gosbank and was given a credit of equal value.

With this simple example, we can see how every transfer of physical output from one location to another, and every bit of value added in production, was mirrored by an associated financial transfer through Gosbank.

I don't know if Marx designed it this way, but this was the reality.


Continued and expanded here.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, the broken circle

  ¶ 12:58 AM