• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

In abundance, we freely spend what's "cheap" and in shortage we mourn what is now "dear." It's not difficult to see the same pattern repeating today.

While it is possible for humans to fashion long-term plans out of self-interest, we are peculiarly ill-equipped to make the critical distinction between relative scarcity and absolute scarcity. Thus we will hunt a species to extinction without regards to the long-term negative consequences for own diet.

To a mind selected for hunting and gathering, the local scarcity (that is, relative scarcity) of any one critical food or energy source is remedied by simply moving on to a new hunting ground with relative abundance.

In cases where humans have hunted a species to extinction, such as the woolly mammoth, then the human solution remains the same: move on.

In the event some other tribe already occupies a territory of relative abundance, the human response is to begin hunting their own species of the "other tribe." In terms of straight kilocalorie analysis, this is entirely rational: the "cost" of war in terms of lives lost and calories expended is well worth the long-lasting benefits of conquering new fertile territories and eliminating competitors.

Thus it is not at all specious to suggest that monopoly capital and conquest by whatever means offer the most attractive cost/benefit ratio have long been a human strategy to maximize gains. Marking off another human group as the "enemy" is a highly useful tool to gain support of one's own tribe for conquest/looting.

Monopoly capital finds eliminating competition to be far more profitable than competing in a free market. Thus mature industries with high barriers to entry by new competitors (often these barriers are political or regulatory, purchased by the Plutocracy for modest sums) end up being dominated by a mere handful of enterprises. The global mass media is but one example.

A similar mechanism is the exempting of capital and high-caste Elites from risk--that is, from the risks inherent in free markets. Just as monopoly capital strives to eliminate "uncertainties" (i.e. losses) by eliminating competition, capital and high-caste Elites (public employees, technocrats, etc.) strive to exempt themselves from risk by constructing fiefdoms protected by the State.

Risk is not a characteristic of capitalism or free markets; it is a characteristic of life which markets simply reflect.

In both cases, the goal is to lock in returns without being exposed to risk. The returns are funneled to the Elites while the risks are spread to the middle class via public bailouts and guarantees. This is called privatizing profits and socializing risks.

The advent of language gave humanity tremendous powers of knowledge acquisition, and the storage and transfer of information. It also provided methods whereby our interpretations of experience could be influenced and managed.

For example, it has become culturally correct to support "taking care of the elderly;" this now automatic public support has enabled a relatively small group of enterprises to reap enormous profits. They play on an induced consensus without ever quite defining what it means. Medicare, costly new medications and treatments, care given without appreciation of the consequences of reduced quality of life – all of this can increase suffering in the elderly and diminish them.

But it is profitable to the sloganeers. Spending on such programs now increases at twice the rate of the overall economy, year after year, despite dubious results. The formulary of drugs increases because it is profitable to those who manipulate our expectations. The same can be said of the manufacturers of costly new diagnostics and cutting edge equipment. Expense be damned, say those who eat from the plate of a profit-induced shibboleth of great momentum: "health care."

The tool, language, easily becomes a weapon in skilled hands, and the strongest group will do all in its power to protect its own interests.

The compelling catch phrases which