Unraveling The Economic Morass

[NOTE: These posts are an ongoing presentation, meant to be read beginning with the earliest and ending with the most recent. If not read in that order, there is a potential loss for the reader in an overall understanding of what is being presented. You have been warned.]

Well, we’ve taken a good look at energy. There are alternatives out there and they have been suppressed for a very long time. All of the misguided people who so quickly spout their skeptical reasons why these won’t work need to back off and give them a chance. Skeptics are a dime a dozen and always have been. They, along with other critics, never produce anything of value other than opinions. But opinions, on their own, without any constructive action, are empty. They are essentially worthless. If these new ideas won’t work, then why has government and big business gone to such efforts to stifle them? And when the government is working on these alternative energy systems themselves (Los Alamos & the Labs for almost 20 years that I’m aware of), why is it kept so secret.

Did you know that both HP and IBM have had the capability in their labs for 2 decades to store billions of characters of information holographically inside of a crystaline cubic centimeter using lasers? That’s gigabytes in a cubic centimeter, stored and retrieved at the speed of light. Why isn’t that technology on the market? One of the underlying reasons is that it might shake up the market as we know it. So screw everybody else. It’s kept secret until they can figure out how to turn it into a money-making machine, until they can figure out how to “control” it. And that’s the same way it has always been with new energy.

Anyway, it’s time now that we started talking about what we can do about the economy. I’ve deliberately saved this until later because aspects of what I am going to share with you are radically “out there.” But I’ve also been saving it because I wanted to give you a chance to see how absurd our present economic system is before I share with you my own economic perspective. What is happening presently in the world economy is so ridiculous that I’m hard pressed to understand why anybody believes it. And I’m also amazed at how few people are standing up and declaring how selfishly stupid all of this is.

I want to begin by letting you in on a little secret. Now, because it’s a secret, you might think that I’ll ask you not to share this knowledge with anyone else. But the fact of the matter is that if you do share this secret with someone else, the chances are that they won’t believe you. In fact, when I reveal this secret to you, you may very well not believe me. And that’s why this secret is such a success as a secret, because people don’t want to believe it because they don’t think that it’s possible, so it remains relatively unknown, which means it is good as an ongoing secret. So pay attention.

When we last left off, the world was under the control of the Great Pirates. A good place to get more detail on how this all came about can be found in Bucky Fuller’s books, “GRUNCH Of Giants” and “Critical Path.” GRUNCH is an acronym for “GRoss UNiversal Cash Heist” and is Fuller’s mapping out his warning that international corporations are taking over running the entire world. “Critical Path” describes what Bucky feels is necessary to save humanity from destroying itself (Warning: these aren’t easy reads). In the thoughts I’m about to share with you, I’m going to use Bucky’s ideas as a starting place and then add a few new perspectives of my own.

Things went relatively well for the Great Pirates for a long time. They had their battles with one another, but the conflicts were always executed by others whom they hired to do their fighting for them. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about here, we can look at Christopher Columbus. In America we grew up celebrating Columbus as the man who “discovered” America. But we overlook the fact that he died in debtor’s prison. How can that be? My God, the man is credited with discovering what was to become the greatest influence on the development of civilization on this planet. But, you see, he was just a pawn in the game. To his “bosses,” King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, he was just another employee to be discarded when he outlived his usefulness.

For centuries, the people of this planet struggled for survival with occasional outbreaks of combat. Please note that historically speaking, most people have attempted to live their lives without trying to kill other people. I know that that is hard to believe when one reads about how many people were killed by other people. When people did get involved in combat, the overwhelming majority of them were conscripted by unscrupulous people who felt driven to dominate others in an effort to expand their power and their wealth. These power mad manipulators used others to achieve those ends. So we’re back to the eternal conflict between the dominators (those who want to control the lives of others) and the liberators (those who desire to control their own lives).

Over the centuries those who desired to dominate have constantly been on the lookout for justifications for their bloodthirsty desire to have power over others. Well, as Bucky points out, when the British Empire expanded to encompass the entire world (the sun never set on the British Empire) the chief economist of their “company,” the British East India Company, was Thomas Malthus, and he was the world’s first recipient of an accounting of the world’s resources. Remember, the Great Pirates influence was extended through their merchant ships. The captains of those ships were not just sea captains. They also were knowledgeable in how to build forts, to communicate with indigenous cultures, to inventory resources in far flung parts of the world, and how to set up procedures for acquiring those resources they had discovered and transporting them back to their “bosses.”

Anyway, when Malthus examined all of this data, he said that it was obvious to him that humanity was multiplying (geometrically) faster than the necessary resources were being produced (arithmetically) to support humanity’s needs. Therefore he concluded that there was not enough to go around. Life thus would always be an ongoing battle for survival. Hey, the dude didn’t know about things like refrigeration and high speed transport and fertilizers and pesticides and ways of prolonging shelf life of products.

Next, enter Charles Darwin, a scientist commissioned to study the various life forms around the planet. Through his observations he concluded that life evolved over time through a process whereby those that were most adaptable, or most fit, to exist in their changing environment, were the ones who survived and created descendants who would also survive. They call this idea “evolution.”

Then we have Adam Smith who builds upon the foregoing conclusions that there is not enough to go around and that survival is the result of who is fittest, and he claims that it’s obvious that from an economic standpoint, those who are most likely the fittest for survival are those who are smart enough to master the collection and distribution of resources and services.

Not to be outdone, Karl Marx comes along and says that he agrees with these other two dudes that there is not enough to go around and that life is therefore a matter of survival of the fittest, but he disagrees with Smith and claims that the fittest is the worker who actually, through his own effort and sweat, produces the products which drive the economy.

Throughout all of this the Great Pirates continue to collect wealth through the domination of others. Meanwhile, the followers of Smith begin to gather under the flag of capitalism while the followers of Marx gather under the banner of communism, all the time eyeing one another warily. And the Great Pirates chuckle as they set up business deals with both sides.

And then something out of the ordinary begins to happen. Humanity begins going invisible. Here’s what I mean by that. Generally speaking, up until the twentieth century, life experience was composed of what was detectible by our physical senses: sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. In the 17th Century, through the use of optical lenses, Galileo had been able to expand his field of vision and see what no one else had seen when he looked out at the universe and discovered that we were not at the center of it. The Catholic Church condemned him for what amounted to the next 369 years for what he reported seeing. His discoveries were thereby effectively buried for centuries. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that we even knew that there were galaxies besides our own. And now we know that there are more galaxies than we can count. (For an expanded look at this topic, see the August 18, 2002 entry “In A Little Grain Of Sand” at my Weblog “Still…..After All These Years.”)

The same experience held true for the new world that optical lenses opened for us through microscopy. Early discoveries were denied and covered up. But it wasn’t just visually that our awareness was beginning to expand. It was also through discoveries of the vast possibilities of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Humans were not only discovering new possibilities but they were also turning those discoveries into useful artifacts, into products that began to feed the economic world machine.

An unexpected result of this move into increasingly non-sensorial realms was that the Great Pirates began to lose touch with what was really going on. They were very physically oriented, but we were quickly moving into more and more non-physical realities. This caused the Great Pirates to rely increasingly on others for information and data that they, themselves, didn’t fully understand.

Then along came World War I. Now I say that as though it just sort of happened. But that was not the case. Remember several days ago when I told you that until the mid-twentieth century that the greatest leaps in discovery, technology, and inventions came in conjunction with war? Well, if that’s the way things always have been, and new possibilities in research and development are begging for funding, then what do you do? Why you throw a big war and invite everyone to join in. And that’s exactly what they did. But they didn’t anticipate what would happen next.

The game of war had escalated from earlier times to new levels. The world moved into chemical and biological warfare. We developed refrigeration. Wired and wireless means of communication came into being. New medicines were developed to treat the war wounded. War began moving from the ground to the air. And through all of this, the Great Pirates began to lose control, even as their fortunes escalated.

If that wasn’t enough, however, another calamity of sorts occurred when the whole world’s economy went belly up. That’s right. In the middle of World War I the world’s economy went bankrupt. The crash of 1929 was nothing more than an acknowledgement of what had already transpired a dozen years earlier. And why do I claim that the world’s economy went bankrupt? It was because the output resulting from the incredible curiosity, creativity, and capability of humankind had gone into an overdrive mode that overwhelmed the world economic model. This is a very important concept to comprehend, for it lays the groundwork for what I am about to proclaim.

In order to finance the buildup to what became known as World War I, the German republic began printing more money to pay for their new war machine. Remember, the economy was based upon “stuff.” It was based upon what could be comprehended by the five physical senses. Although Adam Smith had declared that the “Wealth Of Nations” is in its people, he was only referring to the ability of the people to produce products that therein caused wealth to grow. Nowhere was, or has there ever been, an economic accounting of the part that thought, ideas, desire, drive, enthusiasm, commitment, or logical design play in the creation of wealth. In other words, the actual creativity itself has never been quantified. Therefore there is no way to fit it into the world’s economic models.

To give you an example of what we’re talking about here, between 1971 and 1972 the United States sent 3 Apollo missions (15, 16, & 17) to the moon, each including a 463 lb “lunar rover,” a vehicle which had been designed specifically to allow the astronauts to “drive” around on the surface of the moon. Including a 4th moon rover that was built for use as spare parts, the total price for those 4 vehicles was $38 million. That’s about $7.5 million each. The 3 that were sent to the moon were left behind. That’s $22.5 million worth of vehicle left on the moon. There was an outcry from many about the waste of such a move. Yeah, well, $22 million seemed like a lot of money in those days. However, the truth of the matter is that only a few hundred dollars worth of stuff was left behind on the moon after each mission, because that is what the material that comprised the moon rover cost. It was only the material, the stuff, that was left on the moon. The knowledge and the tools necessary to turn that “stuff” into a moon rover never once left this planet. The value stayed right here.

Now, how did they figure out that “value?” Well, through a lot of complicated calculations essentially having to do with measuring time, materials, and tools invested. When I say complicated, I’m only scratching the surface of what has transpired in the intervening 100 years since world economic bankruptcy. The economy is so complex, that no one truly understands it.

Example: in 1969, the head of the Internal Revenue Service was being interviewed on 60 Minutes and he admitted that no one person, including himself, understood all of the IRS’ Tax Code.

Anyway, the world economy was swamped by indescribable forces during World War I and it never recovered. The world economy went bankrupt. R.I.P.

Wait a minute. That’s a bunch of crap. We all know that the world’s economy has been functioning just fine for the last 90 years. Well, maybe not quite “just fine.” After all, there was the crash of 1929, and the Great Depression, and other economic challenges and boondoggles. And, too, there’s the current “meltdown.” But the world economy is still functioning, even if it is limping.

“So what do you have to say about that?”

Well, what I have to say is, “Fasten your seat belts!”