I’m tired of the phrase, “Flip-flop”. You know, a politician could change his mind on an issue because he learned something new, and not simply to pander to the needed demographic. It’s possible, I bet. After all, if you’ve not changed your mind on an issue lately, it’s probably because you haven’t learned anything new lately. And no, NPR… By ‘learned’ I don’t mean “turned more Liberal.”

Key 1: Image

The first thing to understand is that the majority of Occupation Protestors want to address an injustice, or more accurately, they want to take on the image of a fighter for justice. But they have three fundamental problems in doing so.

First, they live in America so they have no significant injustice to address, no more than a college student does in protesting the disparity among grades. Second, they don’t have the talent or understanding of the world required to make serious change, like doctors, scientists, and entrepreneurs. Third, they don’t have those talents, or aren’t using those talents if they do happen to have them, because they lack the fortitude to make an investment in real change, like dedicating their lives to a science or otherwise contributing to society.

Key 2: Zero-Sum Fallacy

They chant it and rant it. The top 1% control %90 of the wealth. (It’s actually 42%) Regardless, they see this as an injustice. Why? Because the Occupation Protestors collectively suffer from the Zero-Sum fallacy. In other words, if you have a dollar it’s because someone else does not have that dollar. So they, and Liberals/Progressives, want more aggressive income redistribution, so things will be fair.

Because their logic is based on a fallacy though, it won’t work. There is no tap from which wealth pours. The top 1%, or top 5% or 10% of wage earners or wealth controllers didn’t get their money due to a system that unfairly distributes wealth. They created or earned that wealth doing things and creating things of value in a system that allows people to create wealth. It’s called freedom or Capitalism. If you decide to start redistributing their rewards for doing and creating these valuable things, they’ll find something else to do, and that wealth you were counting on redistributing will disappear. The Occupation Protestors don’t, or refuse to, understand this.

Key 3: Goals

To a person, none of these protestors can articulate what the movement wants. This conclusion I came to from listening to NPR’s coverage. The best they can do is cite “education” as their goal… Not education in the form of educating themselves on how the world currently works, but rather in the form of informing others of profound things they have recently learned but the rest of us have known for the past 20 to 80 years. Interestingly, if you listen to NPR’s coverage, about two thirds of these protestors happen to be students or recent graduates of ivy-lead schools, almost everyone they interview.

Key 4: Actual Goals

Do you wonder how so many people can just take a few months out of their lives and go camping—especially in a country that is supposedly so economically unfair? Could you afford to do that? There are supporters. Many of the supporters are no different than the average protestor. They want to take on the image of a fighter for justice, but without having to actually fight. So they contribute funds to the big make-believe fight.

Other supporters include Leftist groups. These groups want a pure form of democracy, the kind that moves swiftly to European style socialism. These groups’ goals have been on life support since the near, and still possible, collapse of the Euro zone and subsequent move toward austerity, and since the Tea Party movement abruptly and rudely kicked the training wheels off the Obama administration. They need something that looks like a populist movement in America to prevent the erosion of what little progress they have made in recent years, and to possibly get them another juicy chance to pass more Progressive Change.

Summary

So essentially that’s it, they are a force for Socialism. They are trying to close those ports in order to harm corporate profits. Not any corporation specifically, but corporations in general, because they disagree with the inherently unfair system that allows the creation of profit-seeking entities. The fact that regular people will lose jobs and see increased living costs is worth their long-term goals fairness and equality. Of course, their goals will never be achieved because, as I’ve explained, they’re based on a Zero-Sum fallacy.

I’ve got a quick rant. I was listening to NPR, and they were doing one of their pro-interviewee interviews of this lady who was running a book store at the Wall Street Occupation.

At the end, the interviewer lets the Occupation librarian explain her philosophical thoughts. She explained that she doesn’t like the way our country treats our weakest members, minorities, etc. Not unreasonable, right? Then she goes on to explain that her biggest issue, the thing she think is the priority, is to transition to a carbon neutral  society, and that the reason we aren’t is because the ‘oil companies’ are preventing it. lol

It’s this kind of utterly ignorant thinking that makes my teeth itch. Earlier in the interview she was saying that the library represents the Occupation movement’s purpose of educating people and educating themselves. lol I guess there aren’t any math books in that library, or books on business or technology.

So, I have some questions about this:

1.       Which “oil companies” is she talking about?

2.       If these oil companies are humans, residents of earth, and they know of a technology that could replace oil – Why do they stick with earning peanuts selling oil??? 

3.       The idea that there’s a secret technology the oil companies are hiding, for several decades has been a favorite random claim of idiots who think making erroneous statements sounds smart. Assuming they’re wrong, we’re left with non-secret non-carbon-releasing energy technology. In that case, remembering that you’re already concerned about how our weak members and minorities are treated, how are poor people going to eat and not freeze to death????

“North Korea” and “rationality” should never be spoken in the same sentence.
– Condoleezza Rice

He’s finally dead. That’s what you get, Mr. Captain Crazy of the strange brigade.

Right, that’s one thing that improves our competitiveness. Some modern factories can run all night with no people there. It’s like a big copy machine, you just set it up and let it go. Annoyingly, last time I had a conversation with someone who repairs robots, which was a couple years ago, the robots came from Europe. That seems like something we should make.

Essentially, it’s a solution to our high labor costs. We can’t pay low-skilled laborers a globally competitive wage because our standard of living is too high, or because unions have corporations by the balls. So you replace 320 workers with a set of robots, a setup guy, a programmer and a repair guy. The programmer and repair guys service numerous factories. It’s like one human doing the work of 10′s or 100′s of humans. Or, it’s like a single $100/hr human doing the work of 10′s or 100′s of $50/hr humans. China can’t beat that, nor can Africa. Although, robot technology does have a ways to go yet. And items usually have to be designed, at least somewhat, with robots in mind.

The trouble is, we can set these factories up anywhere. US regulations not only make factories expensive, they make them take longer to build. Every day that a factory isn’t running can be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. And with idiot bills like cap/n trade, and Presidents who have proclaimed that electricity bills will, “Necessarily sky-rocket,” it makes for a poor case to locate in the US. There’s also the high corporate tax along with the capital gains tax on all this stuff.

So basically, we don’t need to build robots, we need to adjust regulation. If it’s profitable to build things here, then people will build things here, and it will most likely include robots.

Maybe Obama should unwisely invest some of our tax dollars in an obsolete robot company instead of obsolete solar panel companies? LOL, just kidding. That’s poison. Robots don’t join unions. If the Democrats don’t have unions, they’re kind of screwed. Can you imagine the shit Obama would get thrown at him if he advocated automation out-loud? LOL He’d have to dress it up, “Robots only do the jobs that are too dangerous for people, or jobs no one wants to do.”  Maybe Pelosi will pass a law that requires some dumb-shit union asshole to babysit each robot. There’s a Washington solution for you.

Dana Vashon said something interesting on Red Eye a few weeks ago, It’s not a lack of demand, it’s a drought of good ideas, and it’s got me thinking.

Let’s understand where we are. We’re not in a recession. Recessions are a psychological condition where a people hangs onto its money due to uncertainty. In our case though, the recession has lasted too long, and we know that many of our economic loses are permanent. This is a retraction, a permanent change in size.

We’re undergoing an information and technological revolution, and many of the jobs we’ve lost have been replaced by that technology. Much of the consumer demand our economy became accustomed to was fueled by home equity and wildly available credit. But through the housing collapse we lost over $2 Trillion in home equity, which shut off the easy-credit, and that won’t change because the home equity came from a pumped-up housing market. We’re also seeing our overseas competition advancing in all areas, including technology, America’s former monopoly.

During a recession, stimulus can be effective in “shocking” the economy back by filling in the missing demand and alleviating uncertainty. But in our situation, the lost demand is permanent, that’s why stimulus has been so miserably ineffective (and the fact that it wasn’t honest stimulus). The thing we’re trying to shock awake is gone. Washington sprinkling borrowed money into our economy isn’t going to recreate those lost jobs or consumer spending. Many of the unemployed people lack the skills required by the new jobs, and many of the consumer spenders now have under-water mortgages, are paying high rent, have ruined credit, or are trying to pay down expensive debt. Stimulus won’t make those people spend.

Technically, we’ve recovered from the recession, according to growth figures. The trouble is, we’re still missing the jobs we lost. Businesses and investors both have a lot of money safely penned-up. One of the reasons they’re keeping this money safe, besides the high level of uncertainty, is the utter lack of good ideas to put that money in.

To use Dana’s example, Facebook is valued at nearly $50 billion, and what does it do? It reduces productivity… Why are people investing in Facebook? There are no better ideas worth investing in.

I had an epiphany today, about hillbillies. I thought – well, wait a minute, let me back up…

So the other day, I’m outside doing some work. Down the street, one of my hillbilly neighbors is using a leaf blower to push all his leaves out into the street. This is not necessarily an uncommon practice. Perhaps, some people feel it’s easier to bag the pile once it’s on the pavement. Maybe they plan on burning them? I don’t know.

In this case though, the hillbilly found himself with a huge pile of leaves in the street, and not the initiative one needs to do anything responsible with it. So… With the help of hillbilly resourcefulness, he backs his truck out of the drive and up the road a ways, and, repeatedly, speeds it through the pile, each time, lengthening the pile until it stretches half the block. I guess he figured that was cool. Now even people without trees have a bunch of his leaves all over their easement.

Now back to my epiphany today. I thought “We need to end ‘reproductive rights.’” I’m all for personal freedom and so on… but we have to stop the hillbilly cycle. The trouble is, anyone can become a hillbilly. You just feel self-entitled and turn seriously lazy. But children of hillbillies… They’re screwed. What can they do? Even if they are a naturally industrious type, all they have to follow are benefits-drawing fat smokers.

Pragmatically speaking though, ending reproductive rights isn’t realistic. The technology isn’t there yet, nor is the political will. And even if the political will was there, it wouldn’t, because the big mommy government side of the aisle relies on hillbillies for election.

 So how can we approach this creatively? Let’s outline some knowns:
1.       Liberals like to spend money on useless stupid shit that makes hillbillies happy.

2.       Hillbillies like to do stupid things.

3.       Hillbillies especially like to do stupid things when a video camera is available.

4.       Hillbillies like internal combustion engines.

 Based on these facts, I’d like to propose the development of a motorized unicycle, one that’s affordable enough to package with a video camera. Then, we need to lobby for a program in the next stimulus bill to provide them to hillbillies free of charge, along with food stamps.

Sure. Sure. Sure. Not everyone on food stamps is a hillbilly. Also true, not all hillbillies are on food stamps. However – and this is a point that will be lost on the Liberals – the non-hillbillies will sell their motorized unicycles. And who in the world would buy a discount motorized unicycle? A hillbilly of course.  

 Thoughts?

Now let’s remember some of the dumbest things you’ve ever heard:

Rules:
1. They don’t have to be exact quotations, although that would be cool. Paraphrases are ok, as long as they’re summarized fairly.
2.  Indicate who said the phrase, as best you can, and give a short description of why the quote is so utterly ignorant.
3. And no Daily Show style cheap-shots or hear-say Liberal/Conservative narrative.

Paraphrase: I can’t believe the arrogance of these people who create these things [aerial drones] assuming they won’t be raining down upon us eventually.
— Lady who called in to NPR

Obviously, if you don’t want future weapons raining down upon you and your camp, you have to have a set of your own, preferably before your enemies do, as a counter to those weapons or as a deterrence. Not developing the catapult for your kingdom in no way reduces your danger due to catapult innovation.

Paraphrase: [In reference to dealing with the Taliban and their funding through poppy production] Instead of spending money on guns and bombs, buy the opium harvest outright.
— Idiot who emailed NPR

This is just another symptom of over-privileged kids’ gross misunderstanding of economics and reality. Assuming there was some central way to even make Afghan farmers an offer on their opium, all it would do is drive up the price of poppies and stimulate poppy production. In fact, I’m not sure there is a better way to increase poppy production, or the Taliban’s profit from poppies, than to start buying it up.

Paraphrase: [during the flu vaccine shortage of some years ago][rant about corporate greed] We’ll take the formula from these drug companies, who want to keep it to themselves and make profit off of it even though we have a shortage.
— Some stupid asshole congressman

It take millions upon millions of dollars to develop a single drug or vaccine. If a belligerent congress were to confiscate a vaccine formula from a manufacturer, that would basically blow the profit model for developing vaccines, which already sucks, and result in slower vaccine development, or maybe kill it. Regardless, this was an irresponsible thing to say, regardless of who you’re pandering to today.

Paraphrase: [Said during the healthcare bill debate, when the Democrats were trying to find enough Democrat votes in their super-majority to overcome the filibuster rule.]   Doing away with the filibuster will result in more negotiation between the two sides in congress.
— Barak Obama

I think it’s obvious why this is utter stupidity. This kind of thinking only makes sense in peoples’ minds like Obama, who think negotiation is the process of making people do what you want.

Quotation: “Medicare for all.”
— Denis Kucinich

This one sounds nice, unless you understand that Medicare only works now because it only makes partial payments to doctors and hospitals, something like 60% of what everyone else pays. This works, and Medicare patients are currently slightly ‘profitable’ because doctors and hospitals can shift the Medicare patients’ costs onto private insurers and individuals.

Quotation: “But we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”
— Nancy Pelosi

This one isn’t as stupid as it is delusional and insane, because it’s illogical on so many levels. It’s one of those things that reaches such a loud level of utter derangement, that a semi-normal brain, after hearing it, will pause for several moments, unable to process.