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John Michael Greer: Systems That Suck Less

Last week’s post on political economy attracted plenty of disagreement. Now of course this came as no surprise, and it was also not exactly surprising that most of the disagreement took the shape of strident claims that I’d used the wrong definition of socialism. That’s actually worth addressing here, because it will help clear the ground for this week’s discussion.

The definition I used, for those who weren’t here last week, is that socialism is the system of political economy in which the means of production are owned by the national government. Is that the only possible definition of socialism, or the only definition that’s ever been used? Of course not. The meanings of words are not handed down from on high by God or somebody; the meanings of words are always contested among competing points of view, and when a word has become as loaded with raw emotions as the word “socialism” has, you can bet that every one of the definitions you’ll be offered is slanted in one direction or another.

That’s just as true of the definition I’ve offered, of course, as it is of any other. I want to talk about who owns the means of production in society, since this is arguably the most important issue in political economy, and it so happens that socialism, capitalism, and many other systems can be defined quite neatly in this way. A century ago, when it was still acceptable to talk about systems of political economy other than capitalism and socialism, the definition I’ve proposed was one of the most common. You don’t hear it very often now, and there’s a reason for that.

Since 1945 the conventional wisdom across most of the world has insisted that there are two and only two possible systems of political economy: socialism on the one hand, capitalism on the other. That’s very convenient for socialists and capitalists, since it allows both sides to contrast an idealized and highly sentimental picture of the system they favor with the real and disastrous failings of the one they don’t, and insist that since the two systems are the only available options, you’d better choose theirs. This allows both sides to ignore the fact that the system they prefer is just as bad as the one they hate.

Let us please be real. In theory, socialism is a wonderful system in which the workers own the means of production, and people contribute what they can and receive what they need. In practice, as seen in actual socialist societies? It sucks. Get past the rhetoric, and what happens is that the workers’ ownership of the means of production becomes a convenient fiction; an inner circle of politicians controls the means of production, and uses it to advance its own interests rather than that of the workers. Centralized bureaucracy becomes the order of the day, fossilization follows, and you end up with the familiar sclerosis of the mature socialist economy, guided by hopelessly inefficient policies mandated by clueless central planners, and carried out grudgingly by workers who know that they have nothing to gain by doing more than the minimum. Eventually this leads to the collapse of the system and its replacement by some other system of political economy.

In theory, equally, capitalism is a wonderful system in which anyone willing to work hard can get ahead, and the invisible hand of the market inevitably generates the best possible state of affairs for everyone. In practice, as seen in actual capitalist societies? It sucks. Get past the rhetoric, and what happens is that social mobility becomes a convenient fiction; an inner circle of plutocrats controls the means of production, and uses economic power backed by political corruption to choke the free market and stomp potential competitors. Monopoly and oligopoly become the order of the day, wealth concentrates at the top of the pyramid, and you end up with the familiar sclerosis of the mature capitalist society, in which the workers who actually make the goods and provide the services can’t afford to buy them, resulting in catastrophic booms and busts, soaring unemployment, and the rise of a violent and impoverished underclass. Eventually this leads to the collapse of the system and its replacement by some other system of political economy.

Yes, this is as true of capitalism as it is of socialism. Unrestricted capitalism has already collapsed once—the aftermath of the Great Depression saw it replaced by social democracy, socialism, or fascism over all of the industrial world—and we didn’t begin to return to it again until the Reagan-Thatcher counterrevolution of the 1980s. Now that we’ve gotten back to something fairly close to unrestricted capitalism, we’ve got all the same spiraling dysfunctions that brought things crashing down in the 1930s. The possibility that it could end the same way, with a similar quota of armbands and jackboots, is rather hard to dismiss out of hand just at the moment.

At the same time, the notion that we can fix the current mess by exchanging capitalism for socialism doesn’t bear close examination. We know how socialism works out, just as we know how capitalism works out. As previously noted, both of them suck. The obvious solution—unthinkable these days, oh, granted, but obvious—is to look for other options.

The best way to do this, it seems to me, is to pay attention to the core similarity between capitalism and socialism. Both systems reliably end up dominated by massive bureaucracies—corporate bureaucracies in the former case, government bureaucracies in the latter—and the bureaucracies do so stunningly bad a job of getting people the goods and services they need that it becomes necessary to paper over the gaps with propaganda and police violence. There’s a reason for the similarity, and it’s one that people who studied political economy a century and more ago had no trouble at all recognizing: in capitalism and socialism alike, control of the means of production is concentrated in too few hands.

Promoters of socialist systems like to pretend that if the means of production are owned by the government, they’re really owned by the workers, but I trust none of my readers are simple-minded enough to fall for that bait-and-switch tactic. In the same way, promoters of capitalist systems like to pretend that if the means of production are owned by stockholders, a little old lady who has five shares of Microsoft has just as much effective ownership as Bill Gates; here again, the old bait-and-switch tactic gets a hefty workout. In socialist systems, control of the means of production is kept within a small circle of upper-level bureaucrats; in capitalist systems, control of the means of production is kept within a small circle of upper-level plutocrats.

That’s not something either socialists or capitalists like to talk about, in turn, because once you start looking at who owns the means of production, it really doesn’t make sense to insist that the only choice your society has is either to hand them over to a small coterie of bureaucrats, or to hand them over to an equally small coterie of plutocrats. Most people, considering that choice, will quite sensibly ask why some other arrangement is out of the question—and that is not a question either socialists or capitalists want to answer, or even to hear.

Here again, there’s good reason for that. In a modern industrial society, after all, the people who control most of the wealth are also the people who exercise disproportionate influence over the political system. The choice between capitalism and socialism thus amounts to asking whether you want the means of production in the hands of corporate bureaucracies owned by the elite class, or political bureaucracies controlled by the elite class. “Meet the new boss,” sang the Who, “same as the old boss.” There are other options, and they begin with getting the means of production into many more hands.

What happens if we ask ourselves how control over the means of production can be spread more widely? Why, then we would end up revisiting the lively world of alternative systems of political economy that existed before 1945, when the US and the Soviet Union between them squeezed out every alternative to social democracy on the one hand and socialism on the other, and kept on squeezing. We would find that the question of the ownership and control of the means of production was the focus of vigorous and thoughtful discussion from the second half of the nineteenth century straight through the first half of the twentieth. There were quite a few systems proposed during that time, but those that didn’t gravitate either toward capitalism or toward socialism generally embraced one form or another of syndicalism.

Syndicalism? That’s the form of political economy in which each business enterprise is owned and run by its own employees.

Before we go on, I’d like to encourage my readers to stop, reread that definition, and remember that we’re talking about the ownership and control of the means of production. It’s possible to approach political economy from other directions, sure, and there’s a point to those discussions as well, but—ahem—not when those discussions are used to try to stonewall discussion of who gets to own and run the means of production. We can talk about those other things later.

Okay, with that settled, let’s talk about the most important feature of syndicalism: it’s already been tried, and it works. Right now there’s a very large number of employee-owned enterprises in the United States, and an even larger number elsewhere in the industrial world. They are by and large just as successful as companies owned by stockholders who aren’t employees. There are several different ways to set up a worker-owned enterprise—the two most common are the worker-owned cooperative, on the one hand, and the closely held corporation whose stock can only be owned by employees, on the other—and they’ve been around long enough to have had the bugs worked out. Thus we’re not talking about a pie-in-the-sky system, we’re talking about something with a long and relatively successful track record. You’ve probably shopped at worker-owned enterprises, dear reader; I certainly have.

In a very real sense, syndicalism is what happens when you take the basic unit of a market economy—the individual sole proprietor with no employees, who sells the product of his or her labor directly to customers—and maintain the same relationship with the means of production at a larger scale. In a capitalist society, only the owners of capital own the means of production: the mass of the population, not being rich enough to be able to invest in ownership of the means of production, are excluded from any economic activity other than selling their labor at whatever wages employers want to pay, and buying products at whatever price companies want to charge. In a socialist economy, no individual owns the means of production: everyone is an employee of the state, and the bureaucrats who draft the latest Five-Year Plan in blissful ignorance of shop-floor realities have no more of a personal stake in how things turn out than the working stiffs on the shop floor who have to carry out the dictates of the plan despite its obvious cluelessness.

In a syndicalist society, by contrast, every employee is an owner. Every employee benefits when the business prospers and suffers when the business takes a loss. Every employee has some influence over the management of the business—the usual approach is to have employees elect a board of directors, which then hires and fires the management personnel. Every employee thus has a personal stake in the business—and every business is owned and run by people who have a personal stake in its success. That’s one of the reasons syndicalism works well.

Let’s deal with some of the usual questions at this point. Do sole proprietorships exist in a syndicalist system? Of course. An individual who goes into business for himself or herself is the simplest form of syndicalist economic organization:  a business wholly owned and operated by its one employee. A family business—the sort of thing where Mom and Dad own the business and their kids work there—is also a syndicalist business in miniature. It’s when things get larger than that, and there are employees other than the individual proprietor or the members of a family, that the classic forms of syndicalist ownership come into play.

Wouldn’t syndicalism mean that new employees coming in could simply take over the business and throw the founder out on his or her ear? Not at all, because the way you organize a business in a syndicalist society prevents that. Let’s say you’ve founded a blivet-making business, just you and your blivet press, and you do well enough that you need a second employee. You hire someone, and part of the terms of hire are that she gets a share in the business for each year of employment. The business is worth thirty thousand dollars at the time of hire, we’ll say, so she gets, as part of her compensation package, one share with a five hundred dollar face value each year. This cannot be sold or transferred; it remains with her only as long as she remains an employee of the company; but it gives her voting rights in the shareholders meeting and a cut of the annual dividend. A year after she’s hired, she has one vote in the shareholder’s meeting and you’ve got fifty-nine, so she’s not going to be throwing you out any time soon.

By the time she’s put in thirty years, she owns half the original value of the company, but of course by then you’ve retired, and your shares are the basis of your pension. (Your shares revert to the company when you retire, remember—they can only be owned by employees—but your pension makes up for the income.) In the meantime, as the business grows and you bring in more employees, they also start earning shares on the same basis. A hundred years down the road the business you founded is a thriving blivet firm with three hundred fifty employees, all of whom are part owners, and each new employee starts out in the same place as your first hire, working for a year and getting that first share. Again, this was all worked out a long time ago.

Can you fire someone in a syndicalist company? Of course, if they’re not doing their job, or do something that deserves termination. That’s why the employees elect a board of directors, and the board hires management: so there’s somebody who’s not on the shop floor who can take responsibility for hiring and firing, and the other tasks management has to do. A management team that tries to offshore jobs to Third World sweatshops is going to be out on its ear in a hurry, of course, because the board of directors has to worry about being thrown out by vote of the employees; in the same way, any board of directors that tried to pay a management team the kind of absurdly kleptocratic salary packages that management thinks it deserves in today’s America had better empty its desk and pack its bags in advance. When every employee has a personal stake in the success of the enterprise, though, firing somebody who’s not pulling their weight, or is a problem in some other way, is rarely a controversial issue.

Now, the big one: could such a thing actually happen? Of course it could, for the same reason that unrestricted capitalism gave way to social democracy, socialism, and fascism across the industrial world in the 1930s. Capitalism, as we discussed last week, has a self-destruct button wired into it:  as the distribution of wealth becomes more and more imbalanced, the production of goods and services stops being profitable, speculative booms and busts replace investment in productive activity, and sooner or later the economy hits a crash devastating enough that the voters turn to somebody who promises to replace unrestricted capitalism with something else. We’re arguably not that many crises away from such a moment here in America right now.

That’s why it’s time to start talking again about the alternatives to capitalism and socialism. Since, as already noted, both of them suck, and the third alternative most often tried back in the 1930s—fascism—sucks even more, other options are worth considering.

It’s worth noting that classic social democracy is also an option. That’s the system we had in the United States from 1932 to 1980—a period, please note, when this country achieved the highest standard of living and the widest distribution of wealth and income in its history. As mentioned in last week’s post, social democracy balances the power of government against the power of the corporations. It’s an unsteady balance, and eventually breaks down when the wealthy forget that limiting the excesses of the capitalist system is the one thing that keeps them from being strung up from lampposts, but during the time that it works, it sucks less than either of the two alternatives that get all the air time these days.

It’s also worth noting that syndicalism comes in many flavors. Those of my readers who happen to be Roman Catholics will want to check out distributism, the specifically Catholic version of syndicalism, which draws its basic principles from encyclicals issued by Leo XIII and Pius IX in the nineteenth century, and was worked out in some detail by G.K. Chesterton in the early twentieth. Those who aren’t Roman Catholics, or sympathetic to Catholic moral doctrines, will probably not find it to their tastes, because it incorporates quite a bit of conservative Catholic morality; I mention it here partly because I have quite a few readers who are either Catholic or comfortable with Catholic moral thought, and partly as a reminder that syndicalism isn’t necessarily associated with the political left—you’d have a hard time convincing anyone who knows the first thing about Pius IX or G.K. Chesterton that either man was a leftist.

There are other versions, ranging from anarchosyndicalism on the extreme left to national syndicalism on the extreme right. The version I tend to favor, as previously noted, is democratic syndicalism: the system of political economy that combines a syndicalist economy with a politics based on constitutional representative democracy. I also favor a firm distinction between public utilities, which are best owned and operated by local governments, and private businesses, which are best owned and operated by the people who work for them; readers of my book Retrotopia already know that I consider banking to be a public utility rather than a private business, but that’s a matter for another post.

Is what I’ve just very roughly sketched out a perfect system? Of course not. In the real world, there are no perfect systems.  Every possible system of political economy will inevitably turn out to have glaring flaws, for the simple reason that human beings have glaring flaws. The best we can hope to achieve is a system that sucks less than the ones that have been tried so far.

I think that’s potentially within reach, even given the many other pressures on the United States and industrial society in general as we lurch through the opening phases of the Long Descent. If such a thing is going to be possible, though, the first step is to break out of the mental rut that insists that the only choice we’ve got is between capitalism and socialism, two systems that both unquestionably suck. Attention to the ownership of the means of production is one tolerably effective way to leave that rut and start exploring the vast and interesting spaces outside it.

Ecosophia by John Michael Greer



330 Comments on "John Michael Greer: Systems That Suck Less"

  1. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 12:53 pm 

    OH, forgot to add “pussy” for good measure because you cannot accept responsibility for your failures

  2. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 12:53 pm 

    OH, and you are a racist Nazi. LMFAO

  3. Cloggie on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 12:54 pm 

    Good, Davy bites.

    Explain to me why Chamberlain had said in private to Joseph Kennedy that Americans and “world Jews” had pushed Britain into WW2:

    https://documents1940.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/chamberlain-and-the-forrestal-diaries/

  4. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 12:56 pm 

    Tulip, your personal WordPress is not recognized as history.

  5. Cloggie on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 12:56 pm 

    Furthermore… do you deny that in the days before the Japanese attacks against Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt was informed from hour to hour where the Japanese fleet was and knew they were going to attack but that his only concern was that the commanders of PH would NOT find out about it? Roosevelt intentionally sacrificed the lives of more than 2000 service men because he was keen on entering the war.

  6. Cloggie on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 12:59 pm 

    Tulip, your personal WordPress is not recognized as history.

    Huh? We are talking about the Forrestal Diaries and Life Magazine that published them.

    Now don’t chicken out Davy with fake arguments.

  7. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 1:01 pm 

    Nazi tulip, we are talking Europe not Japan. Quit shifting the topic. You are becoming more and more like mad kat, a complete joke.

  8. Cloggie on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 2:49 pm 

    No, we are talking WW2. And Pearl Harbor was the way for Roosevelt government to get into his desired war with Germany and en passant to colonize Europe.

    Now what is your big picture story, Davy. Let me guess.

    Davy: Natzi-Germany wanted to conquer the world and notorious noble USA and USSR were standing by to stop them, right?

    Here is my counter thesis:

    Clog: the USA had 29% of global GDP but were a geopolitical backwater and they wanted to change that and start “the American Century”. They hooked up with the USSR as of 1933 and had in Britain Churchill in the pay to head the UK war party and bring the UK into war with Germany.

    Are you OK with the stakes, Davy?

  9. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 3:24 pm 

    Nazi racist, history does not support your extremism. You are a fringe dellusionalist. I do not believe everything I have heard about WWII but please the total revision of it by a Nazi racist pretty much pegs you Tulip. FRAUD

  10. GregT on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 3:29 pm 

    MM,

    “Also that number doesn’t include any recession so if that happens it will be lower. And 40% of the GDP is nothing more than stocks,bonds, currencies, so really its almost half that much. We are basically in a never ending depression headed for an economic collapse..I think it will be the oil shortages coming because that will cause the price of oil to double or triple. And our system will collapse.”

    Agreed. Except that I don’t see oil shortages per se, but rather shortages of cheap oil that our economies can still afford.

    More of what we’ve already being experiencing post 2008. Oil prices double or triple of what they have been over the last 100 years, during non-recessionary periods.

    The system is already well into the process of collapse. It’s all just a confidence game now.

  11. Cloggie on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 3:44 pm 

    Nazi racist, history does not support your extremism. You are a fringe dellusionalist. I do not believe everything I have heard about WWII but please the total revision of it by a Nazi racist pretty much pegs you Tulip. FRAUD

    Davy predictably resorts to name-calling rather than cool rational debate.

    OK, you say not everything may be true. Fine. But what in a few lines is according to you the history of WW2. Or put differently, who wanted the war the most?

    I’m patiently waiting…

    http://www.nationalists.org/library/hitler/daily-express/judea-declares-war-on-germany.png
    (1933)

  12. GregT on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 4:05 pm 

    MM,

    “I think it will be the oil shortages coming because that will cause the price of oil to double or triple. And our system will collapse.”

    Food for thought.

    Russia is still a net exporter of oil and nat gas, mostly to the EU, and China.

    https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=33732

  13. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 5:27 pm 

    Greg, You are correct, as usual. The Eurasian continent is not short of resources at this time or in the near future. Any “shortage” is in the Americas, and mainly the US and Mexico. Trump sees this and is opening up all of the untouchable areas to FF search and recovery. Not to mention ores and minerals now imported from Asia. Goodbye clean beaches and national parks. Too little too late, me thinks.

  14. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 5:51 pm 

    me thinks you thinks whatever is an extremist anti-American position is correct as usual. Of course the Eurasian continent is short of resources. We are all in this together and there is a shortage per populations and consumptions for the entire global world. It is called peak everything. The Eurasian continent is especially short of food the most important “energy”. So, yet again, the mad kat chooses to put his foot in his mouth peddling his bias agenda. SAD

  15. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 5:52 pm 

    “I’m patiently waiting…”

    What a loser. Get a life Nazi and learn there is more to life than racism. DISGUSTING

  16. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 5:56 pm 

    Cloggie, From my research, WW2 with Germany was started by the US demanding that the war reparations from WW1 be paid in full ~40 years before it was due, causing a recession to become a depression in Germany and allowing Hitler to rise. US trade with Germany continued into the war until the Germans started sinking US cargo ships going to the Allies. Then the profits of war were lost.

    The 9/11 of the Japanese war was Pearl Harbor. The US knew it was going to happen and made it possible by ignoring the incoming Japanese bombers that showed up on radar. That the two US carriers were not there that day is proof that the US expected the raid. The two carriers were critical for a war with Japan and could not be sacrificed. The thousands of American lives were just “collateral damage”, like 9/11.

    WW2 pulled the US out of the Great Depression and into Empire.

  17. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 5:58 pm 

    Cloggie, Davy has nothing to rebut with except putdowns. A history illiterate. Typical uneducated American.

  18. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:06 pm 

    mad kat, many times there is nothing to rebut with you two losers. You warp and twist the truth. You both promote hate and discontent then wonder why you are disrespected. Duhh, old man, put your glasses on and see what you are doing and the consequences.

  19. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:07 pm 

    “WW2 with Germany was started by the US demanding that the war reparations from WW1 be paid in full ~40 years before it was due”

    “That the two US carriers were not there that day is proof that the US expected the raid.”

    LMFAO at the WWII scholar. FRAUD

  20. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:08 pm 

    Davy, what is this “we” shit? I’m not in your position. Greg is not in your position. Cloggie is not in your position. We live totally different lives than you do.

    About 7.5 billion people live 7.5 different lives. The future will affect us in 7.5 billion different ways. Some will die early. Some will be hurt, but survive. Some will not even notice the collapse. There is no “we” where everyone suffers to the same degree.

    The US has to import a lot of it’s necessities. That means it will be hurt the most when global trade contracts. The Ps imports mostly foreign foods that go to the foreigners visiting/living here. The average Filipino cannot afford them so they will not be missed. The per capita oil use is two cups per day. Again, mostly by the cites for buses, taxis, etc. Not by the common person. Again, not missed. Etc.

    Get the picture? No “we”, just you.

  21. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:10 pm 

    Davy, you really do need help. Or you are always high on some drug or alcohol. Can’t you hear us laughing at you?

  22. GregT on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:17 pm 

    “We are all in this together and there is a shortage per populations and consumptions for the entire global world.”

    Then what have you spent all of these years preparing for?

  23. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:18 pm 

    “what is this “we” shit?”
    AHH, try again mad Kat. The “WE” is humanity. I know you think you live outside of that world but that is not the case. In fact, mad kat, the “we” applies more to you than anyone here with you being in the overpopulated part of the world called Asia with 4.5BIL.

    “Some will not even notice the collapse. There is no “we” where everyone suffers to the same degree.”
    Of course not dummy, Asia will suffer the most having the worst population to resources pressures unless some other situation like NUK war affects the US. This is very much a ‘WE” and that is why your agenda is so screwed up and lame. Everyone will experience collapse and the worst will be the poorest that live around you. They are going to starve and I imagine you will too.

    “The Ps imports mostly foreign foods that go to the foreigners visiting/living here”
    P’s is a net importer of food, mad kat. Google it and weep.

    Yea I got the picture, It is WE BUT THE YOU IS YOU ARE IN THE WORST OF ALL PLACES IN THE WORLD.

  24. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:19 pm 

    “Davy, you really do need help. Or you are always high on some drug or alcohol. Can’t you hear us laughing at you?”

    LOL, that is a cop-out if I ever heard one. Translation: I just got my asskicked in the debate.

  25. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:25 pm 

    “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

    – Edward Bernays, “Propaganda”

    Brainwashed Americans prove his assessment to be true in every way. The “American Dream” brought to you by Disney. Reality is a foreign thought, never visited. Snowflake Nation.

  26. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:31 pm 

    “Brainwashed Americans prove his assessment to be true in every way. The “American Dream” brought to you by Disney. Reality is a foreign thought, never visited. Snowflake Nation.”

    Americans easily rank above the brainwashed and willingly controlled Asians in this regards. Sorry mad kat, you just told on yourself.

  27. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:31 pm 

    Davy, there was no “debate”. There was a statement of facts by me. An immature putdown by you, as usual.

    That was not a debate. That was just a rant by a school yard bully trying to hit me with harmless words. Your mind sees things that are not there. Delusional is the word for you, Davy.

  28. GregT on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:36 pm 

    “Yea I got the picture, It is WE BUT THE YOU IS YOU ARE IN THE WORST OF ALL PLACES IN THE WORLD.”

    When things fall apart it will be location specific. Not continental specific, or country specific. That being said, those who are the least reliant on JIT delivery systems, gasoline, and banks, will be the least affected.

  29. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:38 pm 

    nope mad kat, you are disrespectful of others on purpose and methodically and then wonder why you get slapped silly daily. I guess you have gotten away with being an asswipe during your life maybe when you were at the Mormon church or with your family but not with me. I have shown you you can’t get away with disrespect. What comes around goes around and you are getting a healthy dose of it.

  30. GregT on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:48 pm 

    Name calling, childish rhetoric, delusional accusations, and all caps, are all signs of frustration, because you do not have a reasonable argument.

  31. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:50 pm 

    “The American Dream is the American Illusion.”

    “By one estimate, documented in a three-minute clip posted on Instagram on Christmas Day, there are 20,000 people living on the streets in downtown LA’s Skid Row alone. The UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty visited this area as part of his recent tour of high-poverty areas in the United States, and cited it as part of his report, which concluded that for many millions of people,…

    A record cold wave extending from the Upper Midwest through the Great Lakes and into New England contributed to numerous deaths across the United States Christmas week. Homeless people and the elderly were particularly at risk, but the greater stress imposed by severe weather has yet again laid bare the social crisis affecting all sections of the working class….

    An even greater death toll comes from the rising number of house fires, frequently triggered by space heaters or other precarious methods of keeping warm in severe weather. These fires for the most part represent the intersection of the cold wave with the bad housing conditions endured by impoverished layers of the working class.”

    http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/12/29/cold-d29.html

    And the American winter is just beginning.

  32. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:54 pm 

    Davy. What’s that saying? “Sticks and stones…” I do not direct my article posts to you, but you cannot help yourself from making it personal.

    We are laughing at you, Davy. Get help.

  33. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:57 pm 

    ”Filipino families who consider themselves poor rise to 10.9M”
    https://tinyurl.com/ydyhcz55

    “MANILA, Philippines – More Filipino households consider themselves poor in the third quarter of the year compared to the previous quarter, according to the results of a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey released on Friday, December 1. The results of the 3rd Quarter 2017 SWS survey, done from September 23 to 27 but released only on December 1, showed that 47% or an estimated 10.9 million families tagged themselves as poor. This is 3 percentage points higher than the findings in June 2017, when 10.1 million Filipino families perceived themselves as poor. (READ: No poor Filipino by 2040: Can Duterte gov’t set the stage?) This means that between June and September, 800,000 more families considered themselves to be poor.”

    “Self-rated food poverty at 32% Families said they need at least P5,000 in food expenses so they will not consider themselves “food-poor.” The survey showed that 32% or 7.4 million families rate themselves as food-poor, the same rating in June 2017. Self-rated food poverty rose in Balance Luzon by 5 percentage points to 32% in September from 27% in June. The rating also increased in Metro Manila to 20% from 16%. Self-rated food poverty in Mindanao declined by 7 percentage points to 34% from 41%, and also in the Visayas where it fell by 6 percentage points, or to 38% from 44%.”

  34. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 6:58 pm 

    “We are laughing at you, Davy. Get help.”

    Translation: I need help grehg

  35. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 7:10 pm 

    ““We find ourselves in a more dangerous situation because our population of violent extremists has no difficulty gaining access to weapons that are quite lethal. I wish that weren’t so.”…

    The very best thing that could occur in the united States would be a simple repeal of each and every restriction and pretended law against weapons. The American people can be vigilant against terrorism if we were simply allowed to do so.” LMAO Vigilant? They are not even awake.

    https://freedomoutpost.com/head-national-counterterrorism-center-easy-access-weapons-makes-america-dangerous/

    Insanity in 3rd world America…

  36. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 7:19 pm 

    “Rural poverty in Asia – Rural Poverty Portal”
    https://tinyurl.com/y8tgjz58

    “More than two thirds of the world’s poor people live in Asia, and nearly half of them are in Southern Asia. Poverty is basically a rural problem in Asia: In the major countries, 80 to 90 per cent of poor people live in rural areas.”

  37. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 7:27 pm 

    “In South Asia, Violence Against Women is On the Rise”
    https://tinyurl.com/y8abrok3

    “Violence against women in South Asia has become so common and normalized that, instead of decreasing, it is on the rise.”

  38. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 7:49 pm 

    “The steady Self-Rated Food Poverty rate in the third quarter of 2017 was due to increases in Metro Manila and Balance Luzon, offset by decreases in food poverty in Mindanao and the Visayans”

    Of course food poverty is rising in Manila. More poor are moving there and the cost of food is higher than in the provinces. Rice is about P40/K in the provinces and about P70/K in the city.

    You didn’t notice … ? (Self-Rated Poverty Threshold (SRPT)) Note that it is ‘self-reported’. Feeling, not fact.

    I congratulate your actually providing a ref for your assertion. Unfortunately, polls are not indicative of truth or fact. 1,500 people out of 30,000,000 is a 1 in 20,000 survey. Not very indicative of the general population. Like walking into the town I grew up in and asking one person for his feelings on an issue.

    And, any pollster picks the people (s)he wants to poll. I could give you any numbers you want (who signs the paycheck) Ask the people in Makati, or Rockwell and you would get a very small percent of ‘poor’. Ask in the slums and you get almost 100% poor. Surveys are not fact. (Yes, slums exist here just as they do in the US and everywhere people live.)

    I also bet you did not read all of the report and study the graphs. I did. Interesting, but then I live here and see reality. I see a lot of fat people begging. Doesn’t support the supposed food situation does it?

  39. MASTERMIND on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 7:54 pm 

    Davy

    They are sick fuckers in Asia..the Chinks are so dumb. And China doesn’t even let their people use Youtube or facebook or twitter…Talk about under total control…Big brother!

  40. MASTERMIND on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 7:58 pm 

    Hey Madkat

    If American’s are so brainwashed then why do we publish the most peer reviewed scientific papers every year?

  41. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 8:02 pm 

    Interesting Davy, but I did not see mention of any ASEAN countries. India and Pakistan are far different cultures, and not even close to the Ps in distance (2,000+ miles) or culture.

    If I used your method of comparison, I could say that the US has the same culture/problems as Brazil. Lumping all the countries in ‘Asia’ and giving them the same problems/culture shows your lack of actual knowledge of the places you rant about.

  42. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 8:06 pm 

    MM, because you are brainwashed into believing that that is the only way to get the facts. It is hard to see reality when you are in a box and fed shit 24/7/365 from birth. That is how propaganda/brainwashing works. Some times it is also called indoctrination. If the program is good, the indoctrinated do not even realize they are indoctrinated. And the US appears to be Number One in indoctrination.

  43. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 8:15 pm 

    So Mad Kat, you are now saying there are no poor in Manila?

  44. MASTERMIND on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 8:16 pm 

    Madkat

    You deserve to be in an insane asylum. You everyone is being brainwashed and TPTB are trying to collapse America. And you don’t even have any evidence of who TPTB even are or that they are trying to collapse our system..You are just a very deluded person who has watched to many movies and read to many fake news stories because you refuse to vet your sources properly.

  45. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 8:20 pm 

    BTW: MM, you might wantto check outthis site and see that THE US is number 18 in the number of PRP published.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/20k5dk/top_40_countries_by_the_number_of_scientific/

    “Peer review improves quality, but its use to screen papers has met with limited success. Current procedures to assure quality and fairness seem to discourage scientific advancement, especially important innovations, because findings that conflict with current beliefs are often judged to have defects.”

    In other words “Don’t rock the boat!”

    You might want to read this: http://cogprints.org/5197/1/peer_review_for_journals.pdf

  46. Davy on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 8:20 pm 

    Interesting, Mad Kat, you are now telling on yourself. I posted those two Asian articles to mimic your behavior of off topic and with personal agenda as the motivation. When the post are pointed your way it is interesting to see how your behavior changes. You have the personality of a two faced fool.

  47. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 8:22 pm 

    The last resort of the ignorant is violence.

    The US IS collapsing and gaining speed. It started before you were even conceived. It is now out in the open for the world to see. It is your future.

  48. Makati1 on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 8:29 pm 

    No Davy, you picked them as proof of your vision of the Ps. You gave no indication otherwise so don’t try to evade your ‘mistake’.

    My ‘behavior’ doesn’t change. It is only in your delusional mind that you want to see change. Better be more careful in the future when you try to prove a point. Look and think before you hit send.

    Going out to shop for New Years Eve party stuff. It is sunny and 83F w/ 65% humidity. A perfect day.

  49. MASTERMIND on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 8:37 pm 

    Madkat the US is number one with over 300k. Second is China with around 150k..Can you not count anymore you deluded idiot..You just posted a source to prove my point..LOL So dumb.

    http://i.imgur.com/g5sdKFr.jpg

  50. MASTERMIND on Fri, 29th Dec 2017 8:41 pm 

    Madkat

    How are Americans so brainwashed when we publish the most peer reviewed science papers? You chinks are very good with the sciences..All that IQ and nothing to show for it. Sorta like owning a corvette and no gas….LOL

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