inside voice

desertofreality:

“The big lie about capitalism is that everyone can be rich. That’s impossible. Capitalism works only if the vast majority of the population are kept poor enough to never quit working, are kept poor enough to accept distasteful jobs society cannot function without. If everyone were a millionaire, who would empty the trash or repair the sewers? It follows that the poorer the general population is made, the greater the worth of the money held by the wealthy, in terms of the lives which may be bought and sold with it.”

—

— Michael Rivero (via fucknobigbrother) (via fuckyeahmiserablethings) (via zeitgeistmovement)

Millionaires have evolved to such a high level of existence that they no longer produce excrement? Have they become so efficient in everything that they no longer produce any waste? Have they evolved to a point that no longer requires any action? They take on no hobbies, work on no projects? Do they sit still, stagnate, and let their wealth sit in a dark room never to be touched again? Obviously not.

So really, do you think millionaires enjoy sitting around in garbage heaps? Or maybe they enjoy finger painting with human waste? Again, obviously not. So I ask, will there really be absolutely no jobs in trash collection or wastewater systems?…

btw, the premise and the implications derived from that premise. All wrong.

ryking:

“Record food prices are likely to be sustained this year because of high crude oil costs and smaller crops, said the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization. “The potential risk is crude oil may continue to go higher, and if floods and drought happen again, we’ll face further price increases,” Hiroyuki Konuma, the FAO’s regional representative in Asia, said in an interview today. “Now we’re in a much better situation than the crisis in 2008.” Global food costs advanced to an all-time high in February, according to an index compiled by the FAO. The increase has contributed to riots across North Africa and the Middle East that toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia. Prices surged as bad weather ruined crops from Canada to Australia and Russia banned grain exports after its worst drought in a half-century. “We will get an increase in production but not sufficient to ease the market,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior FAO economist. “High, volatile prices will continue in 2011 and even in 2012,” he said in a video briefing today in Bangkok.”

— Global Food Prices Will Probably Be Sustained at Record This Year, UN Says

Rising prices on anything in the market. Always the fault of riots, or floods, or droughts. But NEVER the fault of monetary policy.

whatembersconsumed:

“Money perfectly manifests the desires of our culture. It is safe. It neither lives, dies, nor tots. It is exempt from experience. It is meaningless and abstract. By valuing abstraction over living beings, we seal not only our own fate, but the fates of all those we encounter.”

—

Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

Where there is no sound economic theory, or plenty of misguided theory, there will be be people spreading ideas like these.

Money, which is nothing more than the most commonly accepted medium of exchange is, contrary to the author’s claim, full of meaning and of importance. It allows for a more perfect calculation of profits and loss that would have been impossible to make under a barter economy. Money is what has allowed civilization to progress beyond the extreme poverty that is our natural state. It has raised our standard of living.

The lack of money and its concomitant market processes and calculations, as defined above, are the reason you’ll never see isolated tribes produce beyond what they’ll need tomorrow. 

Derrick Jensen on the other hand, fights to impoverish man kind. He fights against the civilization that money was instrumental in creating. He wishes to reduce our standard of living and plunge us back into the poverty from where we came.