RPG of a Post World Order

Yesterday during my commute home from work I smelled smoke. I thought perhaps a building was on a fire and I look around yet saw no plumes. Must have been a barbeque. Down I went into the subterraneae of the subway and waited for Blue Line at Chicago. It arrived, for once there was room on a rush hour train and I got on the train. Then the smell of an electrical fire became an intense stimuli to everyone and the the conductor announced for everyone to get off of the train. A mass of people streamed out into the gathering smoke and up we went, unhappy, gasping, a hipster had a hissy fit, and we all split into different groups waiting at the nearest bus stop. I called my girlfriend and luckily caught her during her drive home and convinced her to pick me up. Whenever I read about Congress not getting along, and European debt problems, I feel a pseudo glee that the status quo of the money world is going to be disrupted and we will be living in a world similar to the post apocalyptic RPGs of our childhood. There's something exciting in that right? Something dangerous. Something fresh for all of us. Because then an IPO will not have any more power than an animal or a volcano. But then I think about my cat. Transporting him from tent town to tent town in the woods would certainly rouse panic beneath his soft fur. Desperate, hungry people might try to eat him. I'd try my best to protect him, to make him understand and to talk strategy with him. He might become curious of the outdoors and get lost, scratching his way out of the canvas sheathe at our camp. Then the fantasy becomes less a game and the dire concerns that come with fatherhood to any degree are churned. I still can't believe no one has found a real solution to the economy. Perhaps if we laid it all out, all of the criss-crossed problems of world community, into and RPG game and gave it to an enthusiastic fat kid to play all day we would come out the better, into the bright euphoria of a successful revolution.

Econo-Rant

I agree that solving the Federal Budget deficit and debt ceiling is a complicated algorithm. I'm surprised that congress really hasn't seemed to acknowledge the people's cries for job creation. I would think that would be a good thing for their fiscal problem. Get more people working, making income, paying taxes. Trickle down economics is a phony philosophy that has proven not to work, only serve the accumulation of wealth of a small percentage. Solving this economic crisis is simple, get people working. They want to work. The government gets more tax money (without even having to raise taxes) to start paying down it's debt, keep itself operating, and people start buying goods and services which will then increase revenue for business. But the U.S. congress does not serve the people. It serves Lobbyists. Congress doesn't care about job creation, doesn't want job creation, because that will cut into the gargantuan profit margins of the Fortune 500, which will cut into their campaign contributions.

I think we're getting to a point in time when dealing with supply and demand that the word profit should be phased out and replaced with benefit. Profit doesn't solve. What is the physical benefit of doing business on behalf of the business owners, the employees, the customers? The delivery of a need somewhere in the pyramid of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. What does the human body do with profit? What does the soul do with profit? Perhaps I am being too literal and melodramatic here, of course money let's you buy your basic human needs; your hot dogs and potato salad for dinner, your toilet paper, your medication, and the items at the top, the self actualization, your yoga classes, scuba diving trips, hang gliding adventures. But money didn't really create that scuba gear or your prescription refill...materials did, human labor did. Material and human labor are churned through and tossed aside without much regard in the current economy, but the value of a dollar, how dare we let that slip on the index.

Commerce and governance continues to run via an engine of bullshit. The population grows, needs grow, global warming continues to bring us stronger storms than we've seen in the past yet we continue to elect and place our faith in leaders that cling to old Politcal philosophies and deny adaptation to the above. We currently have no innovators in the law making body.

I am okay with the U.S. defaulting on its debts. I am okay with all of Europe defaulting on its debts. I am okay with the value of Yuan sinking. Because maybe then, and only then, will everybody be forced to rethink how we pay for shit. The laws of supply and demand are not as fixed as the laws of chemistry, they can be altered. Hell, we can synthesize chemicals, we can synthesize buoyant economies with smart management of resources.

A little innovation, because commerce and governance continues to run via an engine of bullshit. Let's think benefit. Profit doesn't have the same ring as it once did.

A Nation Buried Alive Needs the Right Spiritual Spade, and That Spade is Not Money

I've been watching the show Cities of the Underworld on the History channel. It documents and shows underground tunnels and chambers of different historical focuses. Yesterday I watched an old one on a bunker in  West Virginia underneath the Greenbrier 5 star hotel. This was the place where congress would be rushed off to in the event of nuclear holocaust during the cold war. Once entering they would be stripped, showered and issued military uniforms, which set a weird image in my mind of old white dudes walking around in fatigues and how that would alter their partisan relations.

Today I watched one on Vietnam and the intricate network of tunnels below the jungles and a whole underground village under the coastal town of Vinh Moc. Dug out by bare hands. Thick clay. My girlfriend asked me if I thought Americans would rally together to dig out and cooperate on a safe haven. And I wonder if they would. I don't mean to knock on Americans necessarily, but there is the air of uncertainty about the degree of governmental and personal roles in shaping a nation and reacting to crisis. If a war were to suddenly land on American ground, our spirit as a nation of solutions and production is currently wounded, and I'm feeling our resolve is in a doughy shape. I'm not talking about patriotism. There's plenty of that as evidenced by the rowdiness of 4th of July weekend. I'm talking about my worries of us as a nation of innovative adaptability. If you look at our congress, our lawmakers, everyone seems to clinging to old models. Republicans vs democrats. This worked. That worked. Well in the end you look at our economic situation, none of this or that worked in the long run. It got us in a trench without the right tools to dig us out.

This is America. We pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Yet I don't feel that confidence emanate from much of the American population. The old feeling of local comraderie seems to be thinning with the enlarged communications of the global population. And America is battered by big worries about business. Business complexities. The complexities that have popped kinks in a nation that has become a business.

America is a melting pot of creativity and as a people we need to get that jiving back whether Wall Streets wants to share with Main Street, whether congress can shift gears and become a little more solution minded or not. I want to see all of us people, not wait on the big business men to sprinkle vitality on us through paychecks, but to find a way to eat, and play and make things without the agreed upon nonsense of money.

I've read about various forms of community currencies popping up as experiments. I read about one example in Japan where say for example you help out a neighbor by picking up his kids when he's sick. You in turn get a token which you can redeem for goods or services in the community, say, get a cup of coffee.

My question to us is do we really want to let our cities and states degrade while money figures out what it wants to be for us? Or do we want to create or own local systems for providing basic human needs and joys in a fair and organized way to reward those who want to pitch in and contribute? I don't mean to harp on and denigrate Americans and world citizens, this really applies to the whole world, but what the fuck, this economic crisis is bullshit and we're all agreeing to this bullshit preventing us to think outside the cardboard box and get shit done.

A nation buried alive needs the right spiritual spade, and that spade is not money.

The Power of Thinking Things are Shitty (while hanging out with money)

I’ve been thinking a touch on the economy. How dismal it is still projected to be, the slim job market, low stock dividends, profits slipping, slipping. And it’s interesting, especially when you try to digest it from a scientific, physical, chemical perspective. One of the laws of energy is that it can neither be created nor destroyed. In the public eye there is the bombardment of the image that wealth is vanishing. But no, it’s still there, it’s just held on to, stockpiled. Which leads me to think; that this financial crisis is not of a physical nature. The physical money has not disappeared, the dent in finance is of a mental origin. The cries and moans of Wall Street on the mess they created for themselves created shockwaves of perceived panic and loss which cause so very many to cringe and freeze their wallets and accounts. Businesses announced their wage freezing, budgets had to be cut all around because shards of trepidation were pumped into everyone’s mind, that of shortage, so everyone acted accordingly. Well, the mind shapes its environment…maybe not directly, but it influences the comings and goings just enough to make wishes, gleeful or dour, come true. Even money. Greenbacks, copper, and nickel do not like to hang around the nervous energy of panic, they’ve made that much clear. Perhaps the various currencies should douse themselves in chamomile and valerian root powder and tickle us to relax us enough into loving them again. For then, and only then, will money wear out its welcome. Again.

ITB S2 E8

We have a new episode up of our comedic variety show podcast, Inside the Barrel. In this episode we interview funny gals Ever Mainard and Rasa Gierstikas of The Shit Show, a kickass stand-up open mic here in Chicago. We also feature the band Lola Balatro! We tackle some slightly economic and educational issues in some of our sketches. But why listen to me yak about it, listen to it! -> ITB S2 E8.