(no subject)

[johnny9fingers]

Another goodie showing the pervasive evil of the late capitalist system:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2106336,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12

If the Chinese think market forces are too strong to resist in this case, then....bye-bye oil reserves, bye-bye trying to keep a lid on climate change....The market, the market will decide. Not any moral sense we have, not any idea of enlightened self interest, nor an idea of protecting ourselves, and certainly not any rational analysis of our situation.

I notice that the marketplace can bow to China's need to control information.

I'm beginning to hope the crash takes out all of the economists, accountants, bankers and business people, and anyone who has ever parroted the insanity that the market is/was the only and absolute arbiter of change.
The unfettered marketplace has no brakes.

The runaway train ran down the tracks.....
I'm going to have such fun saying I told you so.

Comments

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

You have a damn good point....however for a considerable time I was pretty optimistic about all sorts of things, including our ability to rise above our idiocy and sort out the problems we face.
I no longer have any optimism. I cannot see any damage limitation mechanisms in the marketplace, and I think if the trends to development continue as they are we're looking at an unsustainable lurch to some tipping point beyond which chaos reigns.
As an example: peak oil....softside has posted digests on this stuff for more than two years: he's pretty well-informed.
Politics in the US (which are the only politics that really count - this may change when China starts to flex its muscles...but....)
Politics in the US is led by party finance (as is Politics everywhere), which in this case means the policies of the marketplace finance both sides of an otherwise one-sided debate.
The anger-laced nihilistic reaction comes from impotence. There are few mechanisms for influencing change. I don't, for example, approve of revolution, and I no longer believe that the democratic process is anything other than a cloak for oligarchical money: and I'm of the opinion that the people who achieve power, for however long, are more interested in keeping it, rather than implementing difficult policies, like road pricing. Even if road pricing happens in Blighty, it's never going to happen in the US, so why bother?
It's a nasty little malaise; deep and abiding cynicism, but this week, it's all mine (and a few other kindred souls).
I don't think that folk are immoral or unenlightened or anything until I can actually say, hopefully without too much of a sneer, I told you so. With all these things I'd rather my opinion is wrong. But even so, nothing short of a ranting passionate nihilism is going to shake folk out of their smug optimism. I don't quite know that our goose is cooked for certain, but I'm willing to give you odds that things are going to get worse, not better. Two normative words, searching for a semantic debate.

[towith.livejournal.com]

It's not really the pessimism, you could easily argue that a degree of vigilance is healthy, it's simply the rut of turmoil that catches my attention. Does it really need to follow that a sense of disempowerment, must lead to constant self-pity?

I've always held that the worst personal tragedy, would be death. I don't believe there's anything beyond death however, so being rendered a corpse can't hold any strong emotional response. It's simply an existence without consciousness. Yet death is still a frightening thought and as far as I can tell, this is because my plans, goals and relationships would be scuppered, or at least not self-realized. You can understand then, how a life of complaint without action would seem terrible to me. That said, I do very little to change the world around me, beyond turning one head at a time.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

As I said, I don't approve of revolution. However, complaint in public, however small the forum, is action of a kind, and has been so traditionally, from Classical times. We are the clamour, my dear, that's all: the chorus from the wing shaking their spears. Pure disgusting demogoguery, to counter the same I see from the folk who would, for whatever reason, like to keep things on the road I perceive to be disasterous. I don't have scruples about fighting dirty anymore: so all I want to do is craft sentences or phrases that others will echo, and pass on the whispers I hear which I'm prepared to believe (not that many, actually, but a default cycicism is sometimes useful).
Turn one head at a time. At least it's something.