Decades ago I thought about being an economist. I proficiened the first two classes - intro to macro and intro to micro - and would have done the same to intermediate except it wasn't allowed.
After those four classes I clearly realized economics was, and is, a mess. Think "Paul Krugman."
As an example, I remember the debate about NAFTA. I wondered what was going on. Ross Perot was all over it, claiming it was terrible.
So I looked up two things: Mexico's GNP and the average IQ.
Mexico had a GNP that was 4% of America's and the average IQ was 89. Which meant that Mexicans were not going to be buying American products and never would be able to.
On the other hand, the minimum wage there was about $1.60 an hour, if I remember correctly. About then I realized American companies were going to send hundreds of thousands of blue-collar jobs down there so they could close plants here.
And that is exactly what happened.
In Mexico, shacks without water or electricity sprung up around these plants. It's where the workers lived.
It gets worse. "Capitalists" traded with Nazi Germany during WWII, they traded with Communist Russia, and now they have sent our wealth and knowledge to China to enrich and arm them. They are our enemies. I don't just mean China.
And now the U.S. is spending billions defending itself against China.
"Free trade" - globalization - is not working. Flooding the U.S. with workers with IQs far less than 100 (open borders advocates are utterly clueless) depresses wages and brings massive crime into the country.
I've had open-borders nuts tell me borders are incompatible with freedom. Without borders - which is like ripping someone's skin off - there can be no freedom.
Let's be blunt there - freedom is a white thing (just like "libertarianism" is a clueless white nerd thing). Africans, Arabs, Asian Indians aren't free because they don't want to be free, and not everyone is the world has an American inside of them trying to get out.
Most people would rather have "stuff" instead of freedom.
We have one of the worst possible things - enemies within our gates. And, of course, claiming to be our friends.
Africans, Arabs, Asian Indians aren't free because they don't want to be free
ReplyDeleteOh, they want to be free, alright. Free from responsibility. Drink, fuck, sleep in late and smoke dope. Cradle to grave, baby.
Most people love their slave status. Public schools certainly do not do a real good job of questioning the system we live under. George Carlin has some good skits about this.
ReplyDeleteEduardo. Who wouldn't? From time to time I think these people are much smarter than we are in any case. They are just trying to be happy and get some for themselves and at least most of them you know have families and stuff
ReplyDeleteWe plow ahead all these hours so rich people get richer and idiot geeks strive build technology that puts the entire human race at risk and so we can buy more crap we don't need.
This makes no sense and its little wonder the birth rate is so low. We are living in a human zoo. Hell I'd argue you and me are deeper in slavery than any campesino in Old Mexico. he at least has his familia and faith and customs. He probably knows he isn't that free but we are deluded enough to think we are which is worse.
As I figure it we modern people pull 50-60 an hour work weeks to be mostly miserable and to sustain an enormous complex system to keep them that way. Hell they are often are so busy that they don't bother with families
Our most primitive ancestors granted lived precarious lives but it was at most maybe 20 hours of work a week on average and we evolved this way for tens of centuries I suspect they were much more at home in their world than we are and mentally happier.
Sometimes I wonder if more slacking, drinking, screwing and the like and a little be here now, fuck it wouldn't be a good thing sometimes.
Its like Captain Capitalist's Enjoy the Decline theory
An yeah I know, we'll never go to the moon or whatever grandiose scheme our leaders have cooked up. Seriously, who cares? Even if somehow we can manage to climb out of the mess almost none of us are never going there anyway and if we did 9 or 10 folks would get diddly squat from the experience.
There is no shiny space future, hell we'll be lucky if there is a future and if there is 1000 years from now, I'll be in the after life and my lineage will probably be long gone? I'm fining it hard to figure why I should care for something that doesn't benefit me.
And yes I know I'm talking to folks on a computer, its great but these things are as much as hazard as a benefit.
Some Cultures Are Better Than Others:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JXrDwtiqQs
@10:49 I don't think your point is up for debate.
ReplyDeleteHowever is the West better if it dies out as is replaced or is replaced by barbarism?
As mark Steyn says, the future belongs to those who show up.
And here in Oz, we import "refugees" - people who grew up in war zones, who don't have the education or background to make a life in a place that isn't one. Screwing up the sewers by using newspaper in the toilet, because they just plain don't know any better. (TP is designed to fall apart into fragments when it is immersed in water).
ReplyDeleteMadness.