Business as usual?Follow

Do you ever get tired of berating us? Just curious.

The self-righteous never do. I find the blinders through which they view the rest of us mildly amusing, however pompous and irrelevant they may be.

I have to chuckle at those of you who actually believe we're going to recover from this mess. Isn't it obvious? The Tyler Durden plan of anarchy is coming into fruition. The only difference is rather than some yuppie terrorist organization planting explosives at the corporate headquarters of the main banks (Hellooo! Ever hear of a Disaster Recovery Plan?) they are in stead being destroyed from within.

Buy your shotguns, assault rifles, and army surplus supplies now ladies and gents. Get that underground shelter built while you can still charge it.

I'll be in my shelter watching my generator powered entertainment center, the full cost of which has been applied to my Sears card at 25% interest with a minimum payment of $25 a month which I may pay the rest of the year.

Edited, Nov 25th 2008 2:04pm by Kakar

He's keeping the white man in chains!!! Chains, dammit!

So the plan is for the US (and others) govt. to borrow more yet more cash to allow more consumers to borrow more money so as to allow them to continue consuming at the present unsustainable rate that got the world into the financial mess

Consumer credit had zero to do with the current problem. None. Consumer confidence has a great deal to do with our immediate future. If confidence increases but morons can't spend money because of tight credit: that's bad. Believe it or not, modern macroeconomics is slightly more complicated than "people just need to stop living beyond their means".



Edited, Nov 25th 2008 6:18pm by Smasharoo

Its all self policing. Supply and demand.
Eventually it will cost much too much to transport those nice bananas across oceans to fill the supermarket shelves. They will need to source locally.
It will cost too much to fill a car with fuel to make journeys of only a few miles.
It will cost too much to dispose of plastics and other toxic materials. This would mean our current dispoable toys become so expensive that we will chose carefully and not replace them.
Our hope is invention, of which demand is a good driver.

I'm just left wondering if I should drop out and take up poker on the net as a career ...

Our way of life is just not really sustainable. This is going to get exponentially worse if the standards of living in the rest of the world catch up with ours.

We'll slaughter them wholesale if that point approaches. Have you not studied world history at all?

Soulshaver said :


Its not just the banks tho' is it?.

My original point was that 'we' are being preyed upon by the very system that we support with all our efforts.

We have bought into the church of consumerism with all our heart and souls. We work all day to save up enough money to buy the latest (whatever) because that is how we measure our success. There is a TV in our house to keep telling us how crap we are unless we own the latest (whatever). Billboards all over the place explaining to us how happy we would be with the latest (whatever).



If we can't work hard or long enough to buy what we really must have to prove how happy we are, then someone will lend us enough (at a fee) so that we can prove we are succesful enough to own (whatever). And we wont have to pay a penny for 18 months!! Wich incidentally will be about the same time that the thing that we just had to have will be so far out of fashion/obsolete/broken that we will already be coveting the newer version of the same thing.

I understand what you're saying Smash, but my argument is with the relentless pressure for people to 'consume' as tho' that is the only way to achieve happiness and contentment. Thats why I highlighted in my original post the bit that says :



As tho' that is the magic answer to the long-term mess that has 'suddenly'(?) occurred.

It is that drive to consume that has led to the type of economy that we have, where conspicuous consumption is seen as a virtue.

That drive to consume is required by the corporate business world, supported by Govt. enabled by the financial institutions, payed for by the poor who provide the cheap labour and supplied by the third world who are either giving away their resources for small-change or having it stolen from them via corruption.

While I do understand Nobbys point about the lifeboat we're all sharing, I do wonder if chucking some of the hi-jackers and saboteurs overboard wouldn't at least let the others know that we have had enough of their short-term, short-sided grasping, perhaps prompting them to realise that they need to change business practices.

Unfortunately, that would require the rest of 'us' to admit that we have been suckered into believeing that the worlds resources are infinate and 'ours' to do with as we wish. Until people like Obama start being honest about the limitations and dangers of the rampant consumerism as a lifestyle choice, I guess the only thing to do is for individuals to take the lead and reject consumerism as the only option availiable.


But as long as Obama and others are still handing out piles of fantasy cash to the enablers of this system, I guess its pretty easy to see where their priorities lie.

Hence my statement that nothing has really changed at all. Sure, the driver of the bus has changed, but the bus is still rushing headlong over the cliff.

Hold tight and hope the bus doesn't hit the ground too hard. Or jump off while you still got a chance to grab a rocky outcropping on the way down?

Yes, people have always wanted more and better stuff. Are we to stop technology? Societies change slowly. But it is changing. Three decades ago there was no such thing as a 'fuel efficient' vehicle, two decades ago we wouldn't of dreamed of recycling paper and plastic, today the latest hot selling goodies on the shelves are 'organic' and 'chemical free'.

In the 70's we had Paul with Wings, today he's doing folk.

I don't think we know what Obama's adminstration will bring but I think, or at least hope, it will continue to push the pendulum towards a more conscientious consumer.

Edited, Nov 26th 2008 2:36am by Elinda

Fuck it, just let it all collapse. We came out of the Great Depression pretty well off right? Things were booming during the 40s and 50s.

Good idea!

...does this prove that the current war(s) being waged are not in our best interest?

Well, it's not creating any jobs...including recruitments.

Well, as another example, ask yourself how many miles todays cars are racking up compared to earlier cars. Mile counters used to not even go to 100k, now cars can easily rack up 200k miles and continue to run. That's not even mentioning the fuel efficienies of today vehicles. The rampant consumerism of the 80's and 90's is started to ebb, or at least change in a positive direction. Sustainable, reusable, craddle to grave, and recyclable are all twenty-first century terms.

People are not going to just stop using and buying stuff. But the most wasteful and chemically harmful products are coming at a higher premium. Soon even the US manufacturers will be paying to emit CO2 (they're already paying to emit or forbidden to emit most all recognized Harmful Air Pollutants).

The government bureacracy I work for is using less paper today than it was a decade ago (we did a study being we're an envirnmental org.).

You can ***** and moan all you want about how Americans over-use resources, but as far as I'm concerned it's landing on deaf ears. We do so, because we CAN. You can't change the world overnight, and you can't have a free society if you start dictacting who can have what stuff, and you hardly have a fair, balanced and progressive economy if only the most wealthy can afford the fruits of technologies labors.

But we keep trying to figure out the best ways to hold people and companies responsible for the resources they use and abuse. If that's NOT happening I've wasted the better part of my life in a useless career.