Sunday, May 26, 2013

The High Cost of Faking It

All Ponzi schemes are premised on a grand lie. 

The globalized Ponzi scheme is based upon the biggest lie of all...

It's Easier to Fool A Million People Than It Is To Fool Ten
Of course, the basic lie behind every Ponzi Scheme is that those who are at the bottom of the pyramid, "last in" as it were, will ever attain any improvement in their standard of living. Unfortunately, they of course more than anyone, are the net payers into the system and will never getting anything out of it.

Taken in layers, it's interesting to contemplate just how exactly 7 billion people have been conned into accepting a pyramid scheme that is already collapsing from the bottom up, in real time...

Life In the Penthouse
At the top of course, it's all good. The largest number of billionaires in world history and a 10-fold increase in just twenty years. Corporate profits as a % of GDP at an all time high in the U.S. These people don't just control the "system", they own it. They control the medium and the message. All broadcast information and political policies get filtered through them first. No decisions get made without their express permission.

Ponzi Management aka. The Bourgeois
Generally speaking, the 5-10% of people below the billionaire-set, run the system. In many ways they are more bought in to the status quo than the billionaire-set, who seem to have an inherent instinct for understanding the fragile nature of ponzi economics. Not so the management class. They look up with envy and down with loathing. These are the hatchet-men for the billionaires - the ones who carry out the orders ruthlessly and otherwise seek ever greater profit and share price regardless of the social consequences. Granted there are a subset among them disguised as limousine liberals - these are merely the wolves in sheep's clothing.

The Rest
Below all of these other subjective stereotypes I like to use, is everyone else of course. Not all the same by any means, but in the same boat, to be sure. The real question on the table is how can so few at the top, control so many at the bottom? This is a question historians and archaeologists will be asking themselves for ages. It all started of course, with the big lie - Ponzi capitalism. Globalization. The spreading of wealth and opportunity etc. etc. This big lie of course got shit canned unceremoniously in 2008. No longer could the masses-at-large pretend that the system "was working". 

The Age of Fear
If the big lie had been exposed, how then did the beneficiaries of the system put humpty dumpty back together again?  Easy - since 2008, we have lived in an age of economic fear. 2008 scared the bejesus out of everyone, including those at the bottom, even though they have little or nothing left to lose.  The globalized Ponzi has created a massively entrenched system of dependency between those at the top and those at the bottom. Those at the top become ever-more obscenely wealthy, while those at the bottom live on the left-overs dropping from the big table. Trickle down ponzi economics on steroids. That dependency only deepened after 2008 and went into overdrive with the asset monetization programs which are solely intended to inflate the asset values of the ultra wealthy. The big lie in other words, is no longer a secret. It's openly acknowledged.

The Fakest And Most Cynical Culture in History
This brings us to the key point of this post and the high long-term "cost" of living openly under a commonly acknowledged lie. What kind of society accepts the fact that its poorest citizens are now essentially peasant slaves to the ultra wealthy, with no upside in life beyond receiving another roll of food stamps? Have we become so morally depraved that knowing and worse accepting a way of life this pointless, phony, and ephemeral is worth it in the short-term, when the longer-term consequences are only growing massively in their scale and inevitable impact, with each passing day? More importantly, a society that runs away from adversity at each encounter, is not taking steps in advance to prepare for the inevitable point in time when reality appears seemingly out of nowhere like a brick wall. Carrying on with all of this obfuscation and fakery in the meantime, is only going to make the outcome 10 times worse. Clearly this is not a society with any capacity to deal with hard times, given that the Prozac is already flowing hot and heavy and the bubble hasn't even burst yet. It's a direct consequence of a culture for which maintaining superficial appearances is everything and sustainability is nothing.