[ilbegone]

This thread wandered off topic. To view discussion about the white nationalist alert, go to the first post and read the thread through.


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A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring. --Anonymous



The other day while on the freeway, it struck me as to what is the true nature of our economy.

The early European exploration and far flung imperial colonization was rooted in merchantalist competition and cutting out the overland middle man in the spice trade. However, one had to either have sufficient wealth to outfit an expedition, have a wealthy sponsor who would gamble on success and take a cut of the anticipated profit, or the money had to borrowed.

I believe that, due in part on Spanish royal proclivity to run an empire on the cheap as well as a continual attempt to monopolize trade in the Spanish colonies (glacial, limited, and prohibitively costly), the majority of pre revolutionary American colonial wealth was derived from smuggling and piracy. Once again there had to be financial backing and a return, ships don't build themselves for free and crews don't sail for the simple fun of it.

Post revolutionary America expanded west and business interests took advantage of natural resources and trade. Carnegie's foundry provided steel for locomotives and rails, which moved beef from Kansas City to slaughter houses in Chicago, and coal to foundries which smelted the steel as well as coal to power locomotives.

People were transported as well as two way shipment of goods to and from towns and rail head settlements, jumping points for more growth. All this required investors and stock holders, as well as subsidization in part by the government, such as the checkerboard pattern of land grant to the railroads on either side of the right of way.

The gold rush in California required some mode of transportation, either by overland expedition or by ship around the horn of Tierra Del Fuego. Yet, with few exceptions, the wealth derived from the gold rush was not in busting one's personal posterior extracting gold from the earth, but by providing outfit gear, supplies, booze, and whores.

The crash, which came about by reckless investment gambling and over leveraging of stocks, as I understand it. In spite of great deficits in a bankrupt nation, I believe the war brought us out of the depression - I'm not sure how. Maybe it had to do with mobilization of great industrial might to prosecute the war, and veterans leaving the cities after the war.

The post war move to the suburbs, which became truly insane over the last two decades, was made possible by investors and an efficient transportation system. Simplified, trees were cut and milled; lumber shipped, houses built, sold, and financed, and everyone in the chain got a cut. Wages were paid, returns on investment were profitable.

Then greed got in the way again, as well as political agenda. Reckless investment, fraud, lenders strong armed by politicians into providing "affordable housing" to those who could not afford to buy in a market burdened by wildly over inflated real estate values. Which led to the "liar loans" and further contribution to artificially inflated values as well as blind shedding of human assets by corporate interests.

So (as I see it) we crashed again.

We don't make much of anything anymore. About our only exports are money and high tech weapons, we import much of what we consume as well as take in people who enter and stay without benefit of legal port of entry. As I have stated, we are becoming a nation of leaf rakers, hamburger flippers, and welfare recipients. What's left of the middle class is due to take a massive redistribution of whatever wealth they have left through taxes. And through it all, our politicians pander and dither and make hollow promises while collecting "campaign contributions" as well as preparing for a post political career as a special interest lobbyist.

"An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought." Simon Cameron, US Senator, 26th United States Secretary of War.

There has to be some greed, or nothing will get done. the trick is to balance greed with what should be satisfaction, or at least control excessive greed by those who pull the strings and reasonably oil the gears of the machine - the common man who's labor makes it all possible. Capital investment doesn't provide return without someone else's labor. On that note, we need to kick some Congressional ass.

And, as stated before, we need to find another economic model which provides prosperity without insane growth and boom - bust cycles, and worn out 60's alternative social theory isn't going to do the trick.


The politician is someone who deals in man's problems of adjustment. To ask a politician to lead us is to ask the tail of a dog to lead the dog.
--Buckminster Fuller