The "culture of narcissism" wasn't invented after WWII and it's not even western. You could see the modern kind of moral decay even in Tokugawa Japan 200 years ago.
How To Make Trillions Of Dollars
121–130 of 144 posts
Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars
#122Only one way to make trillions of dollars, be born into the Rothschild family or marry into them. They are worth trillions and own banks and own a lot of nations' debts. Because they own a lot of debt, they charge huge interest rates on them, and profit from them a lot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family
I was under the impression that a Government sells a bond, with a interest rate the Government sets. How would the Rothschild family buy bonds (Government debt) and ask for a higher interest rate than that was set in the first place?
Government goes to market wanting to sell ~6b of bonds at as low an interest rate as they can achieve. So if the market buys at 1% they take it, if the market only offers 7% then they take it (if it is below the rate threshold at which they won't sell)
If the Gov doesn't sell enough then it defaults as most debt buys are in part to pay off old debt, we saw this within the Eurozone where Spain has to buy at a much much higher rate than it would like.
Rothschild can simply refuse to buy below a set rate, and if the Gov needs their money at that rate then they buy. But it is not really demanding a higher rate?
(I am not an asset manager)
Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars
#123great points on life skills, understanding marketing motivation, worthless hate. i don't believe the author is implying a conspiracy theory - but maybe i'm missing it - do we need conspiracy for each marketer to do their job?
Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars
#124Happiness, health and stability are not core objectives of our society. The production of wealth, as measured by GDP, or by the stock markets, or consumer spending, is our yardstick of success. I hope that in the remainder of the century we can can transition to better forms of society where the health and happiness of the general population is more important than the efficiency of our economic structures.
Emergent phenomena don't have "objectives", mate. GDP is a derived statistic. > I hope that in the remainder of the century we can can transition to better forms of society where the health and happiness of the general population is more important than the efficiency of our economic structures. And your proposal is? A lot of alternatives have been tried in the past several thousand years and almost all of them suck.…
> Emergent phenomena don't have "objectives", mate. GDP is a derived statistic.
Either you are nitpicking (an economic system doesn't have goals ("objectives") in the same way you do), or you're making a pretty strong claim here. If you try to do the latter, I would say you're wrong. Marx has written a good primer on the topic, which shows that the primary objective of capitalist society is capital accumulation.
Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars
#125This is a classic example of the animism fallacy. Lightning flash, terrifying thundercrack. The Invisible Skygod is mad! All bunkum, of course. But it fits how humans usually think about the world: that every event has agency , has some directing cause which involves intelligence. The idea that the world we see emerged from a massive, incomprehensible complex system? Bah. Can't be. I see the lightning and hear the th…
>But it fits how humans usually think about the world: that every event has agency, has some directing cause which involves intelligence. The idea that the world we see emerged from a massive, incomprehensible complex system? Bah. Can't be.
The two are not mutually exclusive :)
Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars
#126Am I the only one who finds irony in the fact that he recommends throwing out the things with a low ROI yet at the bottom of the article he recommends "liking" the blog on Facebook?
Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars
#127Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars
#128Different people have different goals in life. Just because others chase GDP or work all day doesn't mean that you have to.
Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
> dash of conspiracy theories. It doesn't matter if it's a conspiracy or not, the fact is it's a reality of the world we live in. Acknowledgement of a problem is the first step to fixing it, or at the very least minimizing it's impact.
The conspiracy theory is central to the larger theory. If you believe that the world we live in has one, or a few, central intelligences directing how it has unfolded, then it's relatively easily changed. Find those people, usurp their levers of power. If it's bullshit and nobody anywhere has that kind of influence, then it's impossible to usurp the Secret Masters and use their mechanism. So. Yeah. It matters to the…
> It matters to the argument if there's a conspiracy.
I don't believe it does. Taking the dot-points as fact (People work almost all the time, etc.), which I believe they are, then we accept that as the reality of our world, and we can make a choice to do something about it as individuals (i.e. stop buying stuff), or not (i.e. keep buying stuff).
For an individual to make that choice and take action, it makes no difference why that is the current reality of our world. It only matters that it is.
We don't need to usurp any powers from anybody (real or imagined), or use any kind of mechanism as you suggest, we just need to change our actions as individuals (if we decide we're not happy with the way things are) or keep doing what we're doing (if we're fine with the way things are)
Re: How To Make Trillions Of Dollars
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's amazing to me how much expense comes out of fear. If you are amazed by that, I suggest you spend a chunk of time outside America. The rest of the world is not run by fear. I spent last week in America, and was amazed by how pervasive that culture is there.
The distinction is unclear to me. What test can I apply when observing someone taking an action to determine whether or not they did it out of fear?
You can monitor the inputs to their decision making to see if fear is a factor.
In the rest of the developed world the news, TV, radio and media in general do not talk of things that create fear. Advertising is not based on fear. People do not talk of losing their job. People do not talk of going bankrupt (or financial trouble) because of health care/university loans. People do not talk about home invasions or terrorist attacks like they are a real thing.
In short, fear is not an input to the decision making process in developed countries. It is an extremely strong input in America.