Time gentlemen, please.

I gave a list of things going on yesterday, but I'm writing about something else entirely. I think this will become a weekly saturday blog now.


I've been reading again. Some book by an economist. Recommendation on the cover by the author of Frakonomics. Amazing how many self-proclaimed rogue economists there are about, and how orthodox they are for rogues. It's a form of vanguardism. They don't just think of themselves as better than normal people, but on a different level of consciousness even from other economists. The image he conjures up is of him in a coffee shop instantly aware of the many processes needed to make a cappucino, from the rolling of the steel to make the cappucino machine to the milking of the cow for the milk. Only economists understand these things, you see, and only thrusting young economists understand the real world, not those worthless greybeards in their ivory towers. He gives an anecdote: a Soviet official asking wonderingly "who controls the bread supply in London?" He is supposedly shocked and confused at the answer "nobody". It's the market, you see. Invisible hands feeling up supply lines. There is a problem. The supply of bread in Britain is dominated by two companies and they supply 90% of the country's sliced loaves. As for the other few percent, even in the Soviet Union it wasn't illegal to bake your own bread.


I don't like vanguardism. Modern art relies on it. Normal people just don't understand why a pickled fish is art. They don't understand why tinned human excrement can be sold to a tax-funded gallery for more than its weight in gold. It's a good job the modern art crowd are so much better than us, leading us to a bright new future. The original vanguardism, of course, was Communism before the advent of the popular front. A small revolutionary party would drag the society as a whole kicking and screaming into the inevitable revolutionary future. As a fan of democracy I don't like it.

I don't like economists, either. Back in the 50s the RAND Corporation in America, the ones who sent Jenkins and Healey right wing, came ot the conclusion that people play games to win. This led to the birth of game theory, as chronicled in Adam Curtis' The Trap. They extraploated this to life a concluded that people always tried to beat each other and didn't care for empathy or compassion. they eventually got around to testing this most unfalsifiable of theories. Only two groups behaved as the model predicted. One was psychopaths. The other was economists.

See here for some economists. Also here and here. Friedman, Volker, "Nobel Prize" for economics.

I had another book at the same time. Called the Bottom Billion. Apparently the world's getting better. Only one billion people are now poor, apparently. No longer 1 rich and 5 poor, now 5 rich or heading that way and 1 poor. South Africa is one of those moved from poor to rich. He also gives some figures for growth which state increased growth since 1980, which is contrary to the truth. South Africa is, in fact, worse off since apartheid ended. More people live without electricity and without running water. Median average incomes are lower. Of course the rich have done well. Just like in Zimbabwe where the regime members have taken land (which was paid for by Britain to give to poor blacks) and become part of the ruling land owning class. South Africa is more industrialised, or it was, so they're had to be a bit more clever.

The one recommended by Frakonomics man claimed the free market led to honesty and "perfect information", as Adam Smith said the market needed to function. It's wrong, of course. The market leads to profitable lies. No-one advertises the faults of their products. Only government forces stops rampant fraud. Adam Smith also said the rich should pay more than proportionate to the wealth. Of course, the right wingers in the Adam Smith Institute aren't too eager to retail that quote, are they?

I believe Naomi Klein has written a book called "Shock Doctrine". Well named. It's about CIA trauma economics. Crush unions, drive people into poverty and they become more easily programmable. It's normal trauma based mind control on a grand scale and with more poverty, less buggery. On an unrelated note I saw an advert for Dragon's Den last night. A woman in high heels crushing a tiny little would-be entrepreneur. I don't know if she's the one who made her money from A4E.

Women wear dot on their foreheads in Hinduism and also in some brands of neo-paganism. For example to one I've cited elsewhere in which they dance naked on pews. Symbolises the goddess within, apparently. I think it's no coincidence that the left hand path is the god within.

That is all.