#No life at all. Everyone exists just to create product and keep the economy moving

[seafoam-taide]

I feel insane. Listening to some people talk about struggling with balanced consistent eating and out of every point they make to why it's a struggle they keep circling back to its so expensive. I feel like. Can people hear themselves. Does anyone hear how insane that sounds. Food is hard because it's so expensive. Food. That thing you need to. You know. Survive. To live . The most basic. Food is so expensive nowadays it's so hard to eat enough. HELLO? THAT'S INSANE

[anthonybialy]

Pain by Perspective

It’s easier to measure what didn’t happen than it is to make enough to buy rations and shelter.  Inflation cruelly decided to inflict itself randomly just as Joe Biden got his chance to bring universal joy.  An indifferent result is a partisan hack.  Money becomes increasingly worthless with every sentence.  Noting how much energy costs becomes obsolete faster than can be typed.

Proving a negative may seem impossible.  But withstanding endless negative outcomes makes the contrast sadly recognizable.  Victims miss the relatively carefree days when earning income was the day’s biggest pain.  Alleged wage slaves never thought they’d yearn for completing enough tasks to afford basic needs.  The case for how much life particularly sucks is presently easier with countless examples of how things were nicer way back three years ago.

It’s possible to know what blessings we possess even if we’re accustomed to cushiness.  Eternal gripers just have to be grateful for what things and concepts are presently present.  That leaves out liberals, who are sure that stupid freedom and cruel free exchange cause the entirety of misery.

Little treats becoming unobtainable luxuries has made the universally deprived miss the benefits we enjoyed without realizing it.  Biden taught us to be more human by confiscating simple pleasures.

Seeing what happens when what’s working is discarded makes society feel unemployed.  It’s easy to sense how life has gotten woeful if anyone needed the perspective of pain.  All it took to make us beg for ordinary irritations was the incumbent getting what he wants.

Crime is treated like a problem of bitching victims if you wonder where the last of your stuff went.  Cracking down on wrongdoers seems so elitist.  It’s better to blame everyone else.  A victim isn’t about to seek revenge like some misunderstood felon.

The ability to flee truly hurts the social justice effort to end crime through understanding.  Companies don’t feel like doing business in places where fiends can steal at will just like residents look to move to jurisdictions where potential muggers know they face arrest or a barrel.

The economy works best when everyone is allowed to work without getting punished for it, noted the person visiting Earth for the second day.  The same aspect that makes free markets amazing becomes apparent once meddlesome hands replace the invisible one.  It’s only when pushy presidents decide there’s not enough wealth or that people who don’t donate to him have too much of it.

Free is the most costly price.  Village elder and idiot Joe Biden attempted to get away with the oldest vain attempt to scheme, namely trying to get something for nothing.  Those he sees as subjects got plenty of the latter.

The attempt to get rewarded without creating value has defined Biden’s life.  Worst of all, he figured everyone else is also a grifter who relies on parasitic preying.  Him getting away with it inflicted tremendous loss on a once-productive nation.

Printing money somehow didn’t make everyone rich.  Presses can’t keep pace fast enough to enable affording opulent groceries.  Food is today’s equivalent to yachts.

Feeling the urge to infringe is bad enough.  The fact it’s always those least qualified to interfere in the work of the productive just spreads flames.  Opening the oven door then wondering why the cake doesn’t rise is the culinary approach of present cabinet secretaries.  Shoppers can’t afford extravagances like flour and eggs.

International turmoil becoming normal might feel calm.  Growing accustomed to marching invaders ruining your flower beds is the best hope for dealing.  Being mean to villains doesn’t cause them to be naughty, enemies of understanding are surprised to learn.  It’s almost like evil’s existence isn’t the fault of the virtuous, which is news to very proud Americans who presume America is the worst.

Global dirtbags got what they wanted, namely a president who’ll back down like it’s his job description.  Scoundrels forgetting to set the parking brakes on tanks or to set centrifuges on sleep mode are just something that’s part of life if you let oafs chart its course.

The measures interdictors claim caused agony prevented it.  Sufferers are not exactly smirking at appreciation of irony.  It’s tough to giggle while worried that the last of your material goods is about to be stolen.  Police were serving as a barrier against involuntary donations, which is why Democrats think they’re government’s only bad part.

Blaming those enduring doesn’t assuage.  Guarding against nefariousness was the prevention instead of the cause in case very smart liberals outthought themselves again.  The simple act of trading what we have for what we want benefits both parties.  Nobody’s partying right now.

I wish there were a better way to know what it’s like to not ache.  Imagination should be sufficient.  Living through deprivation is helpful to those struggling to picture how well life functioned before those who pretended everything was awful decided to initiate unneeded repairs.

Philosophers who think there’s no certain way to know what good is without bad are in luck, sort of.  We can tell what was working by comparison to how everything’s broken now.  Blame capitalism for the results of constant interference with that very process.  Nostalgia is the only thing functioning.

[pokemonswshbutionlyplayedsword]

I thought of this a long time ago but I never really put much thought into it. It's like a turf au or an apocalypse au I don't really know. But it's like it eternatus wasn't defeated galar went into this state of panic and basically collapsed. Now like everyone's against each other and like galars divided into the cities themselves based on the gym type. So most dragon trainers in hammerlock's and so on. The wild area would be life free war areas just thought it would be a cool postgame thing.

Okay, so I’m kinda new to the idea of turf aus, but I like what I’ve seen so far. As for apocolypse aus??? I love them. Like, a lot. One of my favorite types of aus. And now, Anon, you’ve got me thinkin about it, so sit down and lemme tell ya, cause I’ve got somethin’ to say. And tonight I’m feeling like ranting, so buckle up.

So here’s the plan, you’re on the right track. Eternatus demolishes Galar. There’s no leader that can ease the chaos that’s broken out. The economy is just gone. Wyndon fell apart and every other town was either mostly destroyed or abandoned. Now, what exactly is preventing Galar from putting itself back together? Good question. If you know me, you’ll know that my favorite game is Hollow Knight. In Hollow Knight, the player battles a plague caused by a godlike creature known as The Radiance. The Radiance creates this infection to gather the bugs of Hallownest and restore them to her hive mind (Yeah, I know that’s a lot to take in, but just go play the game. You’ll understand and you’ll also love it because it’s the best game.)

Now, I’m not saying that Eternatus creates a plague of sorts to bend the people and pokemon of Galar to its will, except that is exactly what I’m saying. That is what is happening. No other region can come help them because there’s nothing they can do, and even if there was some way to help, there’s no way for them to know if there’s actually anything left to save at all, and since Galar’s a big island, there’s no way for it to spread, so they’re on their own.

Here’s the vibe. Y’all ever heard of Darkwood? Yeah, another video game. Fantastic, incredible, intense and emotional. Aside from the fear and desperation to survive the night, the players of Darkwood will experience foreboding, hopeless and violent feelings. Protect what is yours and trust no one, essentially. Kill on sight kind of vibes. You know what I mean. And if you don’t, well, go play Darkwood, you won’t regret it. Warning, though, it’s graphic, bloody and can be really gross at times. But, like, that’s the aesthetic of it.

So, as a quick recap, what Eternatus has done: Effectively destroy most of Galar, especially the northern part of it; scorch the earth where Wyndon used to stand; spread plague and disease to technically enslave people and pokemon to only their base, animalistic instincts; and pretty much ruin the lives of the people who weren’t killed by the blast.

And, for the sake of convenience and my poor little heart, let’s say that no one was present for the event. Yes, Eternatus emerged in Hammerlocke, but it wasn’t defeated and it moved to Wyndon, taking possession of Rose Tower before creating the devastating blow that caused Galar to fall. No, no one we know dies, so that’s nice. But Eternatus is gone. There’s no tower to climb. No evil to defeat. No way out of this hell hole. Oh, and dynamorphing is officially cancelled, too.

ANYWAY, here’s where things get interesting. We now get to see what happens to our dear characters.

Milo is in Turffield. It’s a mess, but it’s not the worst place to be in Galar. He was there on his farm when it happened. Almost every plant was wiped out. Most barns were destroyed and the pokemon in them were either released or killed. It was hard, but Milo and his farmhands were able to salvage what was left and create a new, less impressive farm. Still, they have the most reliable food source in Galar. They had to build a lot of defense and acquire a lot of guard pokemon. They had to get really aggressive about defending their things because so many people would try to steal. But they get everything they need by trading with the other mini-societies that formed when the dust settled.

Nessa was in Hullbury. Things are extremely hard, but they’re on the sea, so a lot of the survivors tried to sail away. Nessa stayed, but she did help them try to leave. This was before the plague spread, so it was relatively safe, if not dire. After that, and when things get bad, she finds Sonia and Magnolia, and they go to Turffield to work and get protection. Magnolia definitely needs the sanctuary. Hullbury was abandoned.

Kabu is leading Motostoke the best he can. There are some survivors that follow Kabu, and they keep the production that comes from Motostoke, you know, metal production and shit. Most of Motostoke is abandoned. There’s a line of large warehouses and a nearby grocery store that the people made into a base. They’re a large crowd, but they do well because they’re so close to Turffield. There’s a lot of paranoia, though, because there’s not a lot of room for trust.

Bea is an excellent fighter, of course, so she protects Allister and the rest of the people who stayed in Stow-on-Side. They moved into the cave with the statue of the two kings. It’s so easy to fortify and, in fact, due to their pokemon, and the fact that a lot of people there have the right kind off pokemon, they are able to carve the cave out more and make an actually viable place to stay. They struggle with food a bit because they’re far from any reliable source, but they’ve made it work for their small group. There are very few of them left, so there’s a lot of trust.

Allister stays close to Bea. He’s terrified of what’s happening. He does his best to help, but mostly he stays in and tries to think of ideas. He’s come up with the idea of making tunnels to the other mini-societies. He understands that they survive if they have something worth trading. They have the power to make transportation possible. He’s currently looking for other ideas, too. If they make resources easier to access and they get means to acquire them, they’ll have a better chance of survival.

Opal knows that the woods around Ballonlea are thick and hard to traverse when the proper paths are not kept up. Thus, she has a choice to make. Does she make her town vulnerable or does she isolate herself from any other resources? She chooses isolation. They build into the trees to expand. They’re able to make farms of sorts, but they also forage. The survivors in Ballonlea isolate themselves from the plague and survive by living like the fairies- with the fairies. Most of the outside world don’t know if Ballonlea still exists. Opal knows she likely won’t live to see the end of this situation, she can only hope that she can teach her successor to lead the people of the forest.

Melony sets aside her problems with Gordie to protect her family. She works with Circhester to isolate herself from the rest of Galar. It’s hard to get to Circhester because the event caused the snow to come down harder. That makes resources hard to come by as well, though. The hot spring and a large home that houses the survivors are their stronghold. They’re not worried about being stolen from. However, monthly a group of people have to take their pokemon out and journey to the rest of Galar to trade and get resources. It’s risky, but its their only option. Melony normally leads these expeditions, and Gordie takes over while she’s gone.

Gordie is the second in command in Circhester. He’s the strategist, so to speak. He comes up with the plans. He takes care of everything while Melony is gone. He’s especially protective of his younger siblings. It’s going to be hard to grow up in a post-apocolyptic world. He used to sit around and think of what would happen in this situation, but now that he’s actually here...? He’s completely forgotten about his problems with Melony before the disaster.

Piers counts himself extremely lucky. Spikemuth has walls. It protected everyone within the city from the blast. But the walls are thin and they were already poor to begin with. The thing about Spikemuth is that they’re survivors. They may not specialize in anything, but they scrape by any way they know how. Piers may come off as an apathetic and careless person, but in this disaster, Piers steps up to lead Spikemuth. He fortifies the town with metal from Motostoke, he manages to barter with Milo to get food. They’re on cliffs right next to the sea. Some days it’s an Arceus send, some days it’s another way for Eternatus to laugh at them, but it does bring in food and scavenge sea garbage. In a town full of Zigzagoons, what else do you expect? One of the things they barter with is sending people to be temporary warriors/bodyguards. The people of Spikemuth can mf SCRAP.

Raihan fled from Hammerlocke with the rest of the survivors. They went to find Leon in Wedgehurst. There was nothing left to salvage in Hammerlocke. Some people split off from the main group. Raihan convinced Piers to let them seek refuge in Spikemuth. Some of them joined Milo. A few hoped to find Ballonlea, which wasn’t unheard of. Compared to the rest of the Galar, the rumors sounded like utopia. Raihan still has hope that help is on the way, and he’s used that to lead his people as far as they will go. His pokemon are strong and he can defend himself and his loved ones. He joins Leon in Postwick, where they retreat into the Slimbering Weald.

Leon evacuated Wyndon along with everyone else who was smart enough to leave. He immediately returned to Postwick to join Hop and his mother. The people there were pretty unharmed, since the blast didn’t reach quite far enough. Wedgehurt was abandoned for sure, but that didn’t really matter. They’re close enough to Milo to not have to worry about food so long as people came to help tend to the farms sometimes. Eventually, when things turned even worse than they already were, Leon led Postwick into the Slumbering Weald. With his powerful pokemon, he was sure he could protect them, especially with Raihan at his side. They’ve made themselves a home there, in that Weald, hoping that Zacian and Zamazenta reveal themselves to end this.

Rose is not safe anywhere. The people of Galar hate him for what he’s done, and there’s no one there to listen if he tried to explain himself. He’s not a survivor, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He and Oleana end up leaving Wyndon with a certain small group headed towards Motostoke. He keeps his head down and his hood up. He wants to find the gym leaders and other authority figures around to make a plan to fix the region, but he can’t do that yet. He doesn’t have the means or the plans to make it happen. He eventually branches off from that path because he has no choice but to follow Oleana. She leads him to Spikemuth, and she convinces Piers to accept them. It’s not easy, but Spikemuth is probably one of the safest places for him now.

Oleana stays with Rose. She calls all the shots, but she protects him at all costs. She knows he never meant for this. She’s a fighter and good at surviving. Through rumors and travelers, she learns that Spikemuth is accepting of all stragglers who need walls to protect them. One of two things happen if she takes Rose. 1. They’ll be killed on sight or 2. Piers will accept them and they’ll be safe. Oleana doesn’t ask Rose, because she knows he’s still in shock and not of right mind right now. She thinks she’ll be able to get through to Piers, they understood each other. Luckily, she’s right, but she has to work extra hard to earn both their keep. She doesn’t exactly mind, since she rises through the ranks quickly and proves to be especially valuable to Piers.

Sonia goes with Nessa to Turffield with her grandmother. She regrets leaving Leon behind, but she had no choice. She had no idea if he was even alive. She hears rumors that he’s leading Postwick, but she can’t make the trip to see for herself. She won’t leave Magnolia behind, even if it means mucking around in Wooloo pens to earn her and her grandmother’s meals. It’s a simple life, not much to it, but she knows she’s extremely lucky. A lot of people never got this far. Plus, Turffield is an empire compared to the rest of Galar, and it’s one of the best places to be since they’re so wealthy there and Milo is so kind.

Magnolia is too old and weak to survive on her own. She knows she’s lucky that her granddaughter brought her with her. Turffield is the perfect place to be for them. Sonia earns both their keeps, so Magnolia lives a very easy life. She’s researching the phenomenon that’s happening, and Milo is happy to let her. She really hopes to find out what happened to everyone and to find a way to end this. She really needs Oleana and Rose to help her, but she thinks they’re dead, so there’s no point in looking for them. She’d go to Wyndon to look for answers, but there’s no Wyndon left to go to.

Hop was terrified when it happened. Luckily, not days after the disaster struck, Leon came home and led them all to the Slumbering Weald. He’s been Leon’s apprentice of sorts. He’s been learning to be a leader like him. He hopes that he’ll be able to help more soon. He misses his friends, and right now, he’s been looking into a communication method without cell phones or electricity.

Marnie is in Spikemuth, as Piers’ second in command. She’s incredibly important because she can see things that Piers can’t. He’s fiercely protective of her, more than he was before. She’s looking for solutions to all of Spikemuth’s problems, and she’s the one that convinced Piers to let Rose and Oleana into Spikemuth. She has been listening to all the rumors and stories that pass through, hoping to hear about anyone she knew.

Bede is in Ballonlea, being taught everything Opal knows. He was the one who suggested building into the trees. Opal’s proud of him, but he knows she worries. Bede doesn’t know how long they can last until they need to make contact with the rest of Galar. He’s stressed about the future and he doesn’t know how to fix any of these problems.

Anyway, the point is, Eternapocolypse AU is a thing now, and I encourage all of you to interact with it. I love apocolypse aus so much. Only post for tonight btw because I’m tired and this took an hour to write out.

[serendipitous-magic]

Why Don’t We Read: An Impromptu Essay By Me Because I’m Mad

You know how everyone is always saying “oh, I was such a big reader when I was a kid but I just don’t read books anymore, I don’t know what happened”? And how old people are always griping about “This is called a BOOK, it has no commercials and no loading screens, hardy har har har snorf har”?

What if it’s because we just don’t have time anymore?

Think about it. More and more and more of our time on earth is eaten up at our jobs just trying to survive in an economy where “minimum wage” covers maybe 1/3 of bare minimum expenses. And not only that, but we’re expected to juggle more and more and more things every single day. Long, uninterrupted hours simply... do not exist anymore.

Every day you have to not only commute to work, and then work, and then commute back, plus all the little chores and mundanities that make up every day life, cooking food and then eating food and folding laundry and cleaning and putting gas in the car and don’t forget that dentist appointment and better call Mom and if you have a lawn you have to water it and weed it and you have to figure out if you have enough to pay rent this month and you still have to call FedEx about that missing package and now you have to cook again and now there’s more laundry and so many emails to respond to and it’s been months since you washed your sheets hasn’t it and

BUT THEN

You are expected to do and be and keep up with so many things.

You’re supposed to work out, or jog, or do yoga, and you’re supposed to meditate or do a breathing exercise daily because it’s good for you, and while you’re at it, make sure that your living space looks like a magazine or an Instagram post, you need X minutes of sunshine a day to be healthy and Y minutes of exercise and Z number of steps, and you need to be an environmentalist and make sure you’re doing your part to save the planet, and you need to be constantly self improving, you need to be learning a language on Duolingo and doing projects like crocheting or writing or antiquing, you have to be completely unproblematic and constantly monitor everything you do and say and post because one tiny little thing can have the internet jumping down your throat, you’re supposed to be a nutritionist and a fitness nut and an expert on everything you talk about because society has become so black and white that saying “I don’t know” or “I didn’t know that before” is looked on as unacceptable,  you’re supposed to know what’s in your coffee and where it came from, you’re supposed to be a son a daughter a sibling a parent a student a mentor but also you’re supposed to be an interior designer, a small business owner (if you do any kind of Etsy or commission thing), a revolutionary (you’d better care about every overwhelming, exhausting injustice in the world and you’d better take action against it - see below), a curator (if only of your own blog), a rhetor (you’d better damn well know how to argue or you’re screwed in this society), a teacher (because school districts don’t teach anyone shit), a negotiation expert because it is car salesmen and insurance agencies’ job to fuck you over as hard as they possibly can.

Oh and don’t forget, you’re supposed to simplify your life and live in the moment. That one’s very important.

All of this is most likely while you’re already working anywhere from 20-40+ hours per week.

Keep up with your friends on Facebook, spend time to see what they’ve been up to, spend time posting your own pictures, catch up with your Instagram and Twitter and Tumblr feed, and for fuck’s sake you’d better make sure you’re reblogging all the right things about current social events, and you’d better also be caught up on the news, which all happens and changes so fast now that communication is instantaneous, keep up with all the politics, know every new outrage and be outraged about it, keep up with the politicians, the scientists begging us to listen, the latest news about the celebrity outed as a bigot, the latest shooting, the latest bombing, the latest protest, you’d better keep up with all of that and know what’s happening in the world, every minute of every day, and oh don’t worry about having to seek the news out, it comes to you. Every little ping on your phone is a new piece of news.

And you’d better care about it all. You’d better have enough energy in your body and mind to care about all the politics and all the injustice, and be rightly outraged every single day by the state of the world and every new horror, but you’d better also care about the dying planet and the burning rainforests, the oil spill, the glacial melt, you’d better be outraged about that too and you’d better be able to act on that outrage because those are all so important, and they are, but then you also have to care about insurance companies ruining people’s lives by making it impossible to afford healthcare, and you have to care about how agricultural companies have made cruel and byzantine webs of laws to drive farms out of business and make food, a basic necessity of life, a business, and one that’s designed not to feed and nurture people but to make money. And then while we’re on the topic of money you’d better care that the top 10 richest companies in the world create 70% of the world’s pollution, and you’d better care about how billionaires could fix most of the world’s biggest problems and they simply choose not to, and how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and everyone like them have an amount of money and resources that no single person could ever come close to earning, and how if that wealth was fairly redistributed and recirculated into the economy then maybe minimum wage would actually earn you a living and that’s not even to mention the other systems of brutality and cruelty and injustice in society, the racism, the homophobia, the ableism, the ageism, the sexism, the -ism -ism -ism on for infinity

So you’d better buy and use reusable straws and reusable coffee cups, you’d better cut down on your CO2 emissions, you’d better take shorter showers, you’d better recycle your plastics and spend time at the store thinking about how you can buy things with less plastic wrapping, while you’re also thinking about those big agriculture companies, oh and by the way your eggs? The chickens they came from live in cages, barely being allowed to move for their entire lives, and you’d better be outraged about that too. Where do you think that milk came from? What does that cow look like? How about those peas, were they picked by someone being paid $1 an hour? Every single item on the shelf has some deep horror woven into its backstory. 

You’d better sign every petition you can and you’d better reblog the right things about taking action against injustice and you’d better be vocal about it, you’d better buy your soap and your clothes from small businesses instead of supporting the big evil ones that are much easier to access and much, much cheaper (because somebody suffered, somewhere along the line, to make it that cheap), you’d better remember to save your pasta water to water your plants with instead of wasting it, you’d better make your gifts by hand (if you have the time, which you don’t), and 

And then there’s the beauty industry.

You cannot go a single day without seeing something about “lose weight fast!” or “The Skinny Girl Cookbook!” or “This Weird Thing Burns Belly Fat!”, and everyone you see on screen is twig-thin or muscled, and don’t forget that you’re supposed to take the time to love yourself and practice body positivity too, oh wait no it’s too late, now body neutrality is the right thing to say and think. Every part of your face and body has some malady and you can buy a cure! Spend this much to get rid of acne, spend this much to wax your legs, buy this for wrinkles and that for stretch marks, this cream smooths out your skin to look like an eggshell instead of human flesh, that cream “fixes” those bumps on your arms that apparently aren’t allowed to exist, a basic face of makeup is at least 5 products if not 10, there are countless tutorials on how to make yourself better, because you aren’t okay as you are and you never will be as long as somebody can sell  you something to “fix” yourself. 

Oh, and that’s more time spent, too. Take the time to shave, to moisturize, to do your 3-step skincare routine, to slather all different kinds of goops and goos on various parts of you, take the time to pluck your eyebrows and exfoliate your feet and

Everything wants your attention, every second of every day. Because attention is money. Netflix Hulu Youtube watch this ad look at this ad Twitter Disney+ Twitter again Facebook more ads look at this ad sign up for this subscription package watch this new season of this show, watch this new movie, watch this watch this watch this watch look at this this watch this watch this look at this look at this look at this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this look over here look at this look at this look over here watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this watch this look at this

And then at the end of the day you still have to reserve time for the people in your life that are important to you, and leave time for those long conversations with your sister or time to bond with your kid or time to go on dates with your S.O.

And then you’re supposed to take time for yourself. Self care. Like social media is always saying to do. Take a bath, drink some tea, relax. If you have time.

And all of that. ALL of that. Most likely happens in the small slivers of time before and after your work day, or on the weekend in the small sliver of time before or after you fold that laundry and cook dinner and attend to your personal matters and maybe hang out with a friend if you’re lucky.

And I just described a fairly privileged, not-on-the-brink-of-poverty, not-in-and-out-of-the-hospital, not-constantly-targeted-by-violence-or-oppression life. I just described a cushy life.

Is it any fucking wonder that we all feel shattered? Like our time, even on free days with absolutely nothing scheduled, is made up of tiny pieces? Is it any wonder that it seems like nobody can sit down with a book anymore?

I’m so fucking tired.

[swordoforion]

The Orion Manifest - a Declaration of the Tenets, Mission, and Formal Structure of Orion

Respice ad futurum, respice ad astra. This is the motto of Orion – look to the future and look to the stars. For millennia, humanity has looked up at the stars and wondered what lies beyond, what secrets could be contained beyond such unimaginable heights and distances. Though we have caught glimpses, the vast realm of the cosmos continues to be a mystery, with all of human history only scratching the surface. It stands to reason, then, that in our future, we should and will seek to venture outwards into the unknown, to know the unknowable, the reach the unreachable, to do the undoable.

But though we look to the future and to the stars, they act as only a goal, and our path ahead cannot distract too much from where we lie now. We live in an era of crisis – sea, land, and sky burn as people shed their blood fighting the wrong enemy. The world, wracked by constant war, races toward it once more, as those with power march forward unceasingly to grab more of it. We face threats of extinction from all around us, and though the power to save the world is well in the hands of the people, they do not know that they have it, they do not know how to wield it.

Our mission is one of necessity – to ensure the survival and prosperity of our charge, that being the whole of humanity, we must first ensure that they can survive long enough to make it off this planet and flourish. To do that, we need to ensure that the environmental habitat of Earth is sustainable and will preserve – thus the first Tenet of our mission is Environmentalism.

The damage to the environment has been spurred largely in part by our unceasing and unstable growth – the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century set our worldwide society on a course that has bred such a hunger of its drivers for power that everything – people, species, and eventually the precious few resources of our home planet – is only temporarily capable of sating such an appetite. Following principles that emerged alongside the genesis of capitalism, our second Tenet is Socialism, the transfer from greed-based industry to need-based democracy.

To get to the stars, we need to preserve the environment. To preserve the environment, we need to regulate our industry and secure the rights of the people. But to do this most truly and effectively, it cannot be done in merely one part of the world. To isolate this change would fail to make enough of a dent in our problems and would abandon the rest of humanity to the same fate we seek escape from. Thus, if we are to make a change, it must be universal, and the last Tenet, following suit, is World Federalism, the establishment of a representative world government.

The establishment of a world federation will allow the universal regulation necessary to implement socialist economic structures, allowing us to slow our growth to a sustainable level and put resources towards the revitalization of Earth. With these needs met, we can move forward as a species, at peace and not raising our weapons at each other’s throats but raising our eyes to our final destination – the cosmos. And so, it is with this document that Orion is established – an organization devoted to the establishment of eco-socialist federalism, and to the mission of prosperity and survival of all humankind.

Article I: The Tenets.

Section I: Environmentalism.

The interest of both protecting pre-existing natural resources and species as well as fostering new habitats and growth, to ensure the continued existence and flourishment of Earth’s ecology. Our numbers are growing as a species while our resources shrink, and while there are ways to preserve and help the environment recover, we are not employing them in the interest of economy. However, if we reach a point of environmental decay at which the ability of Earth to sustain human life is threatened, we face a universal and uncompromising threat – extinction. Preventing this climate crisis will take potentially centuries of action, which means that the sooner, the better to make a stand.

To accomplish this goal, we need to lower our output – decreasing emissions as much as possible and slowing production from what will grow the economy to what we need, which will slow the rate of human population, until a time comes at which the world population can sustainably increase at the exponential rate it has kept thus far. Not an end to modern comforts, not a retreat into the Dark Ages – but a matter of prioritizing what we need in our lives, on both personal levels and large-scale, economic levels.

While this is done primarily to ensure that the human population of Earth can survive the oncoming crisis, the preservation of other species and the beauty of nature is both an obligation and a reward. Despite the fragility of other species, continued biodiversity allows us to observe many different types of evolved life, and with that broad spectrum available for our observation, we can discover much more about life itself than if we were to isolate the ecological population of Earth to a selective pool of species.

Section II: Socialism.

While a broad term, socialism in reference to the interests of Orion is defined as a system of economic organization in which the resources used for production of goods and services are made publicly accessible, and businesses are ran democratically by the workers. Unregulated privatization of capitalist economies has resulted in a growing inequality of both power and wealth, which threatens both the ability of citizens to have their basic needs met through economy, as well as the balance of democracy, as the affluent gain more power and representation in elected democratic governments.

The goal of socialism is to focus more on equality than the ability to reach heights of power – instead of the few having exponentially greater than the many, all would be able to live comfortably and have minimal contribution to labor, and be granted freedom through unbiased democratic government. With the people producing goods and services motivated by their own need and not by a unceasing need for profit, not only would a market be more catering to the interest of the common citizen, but would not produce overwhelming surplus that contributes to environmental destruction through rapid resource usage.

Of note is that socialism is not just a matter of political and economic change – it also seeks a change in social order and views, as capitalism relies largely on self-interest and competitive pursuit, concepts which have become engrained in modern culture, at the expense of care for community, for the plights of others who are less successful. Those in power seek only more, and everyone else tries to take what they can, breeding mistrust and greed rather than camaraderie. To establish a more equal and just social order would require an end to the mechanisms, social and economic, that make most see the world as ‘eat or be eaten’.

Section III: World Federalism.

In the face of threats that care not of borders or political history, we must also realize the limits of dividing ourselves off from each other. International relations are long and storied, carrying much weight in the culture of respective nations, but to be bitter and mistrusting of our neighboring countries will only worsen the situation, as we try to keep a fragile peace while also fixing the world. Simply put, the resources needed to compete with other nations are wasted, when a single, cooperative nation could much more easily manage international crises as listed above.

Federalism implies a nation consisting of multiple smaller regional governments, which allows for a balance between sovereignty and uniquity and peaceful coordination. The integration of the nations of the world into a federal nation would mean that limiting systems such as military reconnaissance and deterrence, international trade strategy, and intense border security would lose relevance and importance, allowing far more necessary concerns to take center stage. The need to be the most powerful nation would subside when there is only one entity to be concerned with – economy will be focused on what is best for all people, military will protect every citizen of the world, and government services will be applicable to everyone.

One of the most important elements of such a federation is the vital inclusion of democracy – allowing every region to have a say in the affairs of world government, just as smaller federal governments include representation from their constituent states. A world government that simply commanded the people of Earth would simply create another elitist order on top of capitalist monopolization; the people and individual regions must have a say in what happens to them, and regional governments should keep a degree of authority to better manage their own affairs.

Section IV: Eco-socialist Federalism.

The combination of the above tenets into a single theory, eco-socialist federalism advocates for the creation of a federation of socialist states with expressly engrained policy to preserve and replenish the environment of Earth through universal economic regulation and investment in sustainability until a point at which technology and global ecosystems develop enough to allow for rapid growth in consumption and production.

The socialist federation could continue to manage past this threshold, and environmental policy would remain to ensure that we would not repeat our past mistakes, but the end goal would be to develop the capability for manned interplanetary travel, such that we could create sustainable colonies on other planets to increase our influx of natural resources and habitable space for human population.

Once sustainable human colonies are established on other planets, and the technology of reaching the colonies is efficiently produced, the problem of ensuring the survival of humanity will be dealt with; in that regard, Orion’s goal will transfer mainly to exploration and expansion; the never-ending goal of learning what is out there.

However, with the creation of a socialist federation, there must also be from its inceptions safeguards on fundamental human rights, which are listed below, and must be ensured to achieve the completion of the second goal – the prosperity of humanity. If only a ruling class is to benefit from this change, we have become little better than our forebearers.

Section V: Fundamental human rights.

Important among the principles of an eco-socialist federation is the universal and enforced protection of human rights – equality and freedom are two virtues that must be upheld in any moral society. The fundamental human rights are as follows:

- No matter the circumstance of one’s birth, the color of their skin, their physical ability, their sexual orientation, their gender identity, their religious affiliation, the culture they belong to, or the value of what they own, all human beings are deserving by birth of the same, unalienable rights, and shall not be discriminated against for any of the reasons above.

- Everyone has the right to life and liberty, and as such, either welfare or employment should provide for the basic essential needs (food, water, shelter), as well as proper medical care.

- All should have the right, when charged with a violation of federation or regional laws, to a fair and public trial to determine either guilt or innocence before a jury of peers. Here, they will be assumed innocent until their guilt is proven.

- All citizens shall have the freedom to move within both their own region and into any other region of the federation without persecution or inhibition.

- All citizens, granted they consent and are of legal age, shall have the right to engage in a relationship and be entitled to marriage, recognizable by the state.

- Everyone shall have the freedom of speech and expression, which includes the ability to assemble, speak, write, and/or practice as long as it is publicly safe to do so.

- Everyone shall have the ability to run for public office and participate in democratically elected, representative government, or work democratically in organizations in a market for the acquisition of resources, via the form of goods and services.

- Everyone who, in working, produces goods and services through their labor, earns and is deserving of the value of their labor.

- Every citizen shall have the right to free and equitable public education, with necessary skills and information instituted universally within the federation’s public education system.

- Everyone shall have the right to rest – labor is required only as long as is necessary for those able-bodied to provide it, and any time beyond necessity is up to the discretion of the citizen. Maximum working hours and days on shift shall be limited to humane numbers.

- No citizens will be subject to intrusion or arrest without just cause, and all citizens, regardless of the defined categories, are subject to equal protection and review under the law.

Article II: The Mission.

Section I: To establish the organization.

The establishment and growth of Orion and its branches is necessary first to ensure that Orion exists to seek and bring about this change in the first place. If by any means, Orion is destroyed or somehow disbanded, the next in line for the Operational Manual should use the instructions contained within to reorganized Orion, at least until the other steps of the Mission are completed.

Section II: To spread awareness.

Through both the Sword of Orion, data supplemented by Museion, and in-person movements by Liberius, the first goal once the organization is established is to bring progressive and eco-socialist federalist ideas to the attention of the public, as well as raise support for organizations and movements of interest.

Section III: To connect with allies.

One of the most essential functions of the Sword of Orion will be to find other organizations with cooperative goals, and to build a network to coordinate efforts towards large-scale change, using the resources and reach of allied groups to reach a common goal.

Section IV: To move founder nations towards federation.

The goal of social change is to move key nations towards a political position where their governments would be supportive of the formation of a world federation. While the ideal result would be to have all the nations of the world agree to such an idea upon first suggestion, a few powerful founding members could get the ball rolling, and would prove much easier a task to concentrate effort around.

Section V: To complete world federation.

Over time, once a world federal government is established, other nations could be approached and persuaded to join as members. Of note is that the current power system within a given nation is irrelevant – a government is not its people, and should the structure of a nation change, the decision to be a member could as well.

This Manifest is written to be of universal use so long as the Mission is incomplete, which means that the hierarchy and international organization at the time of writing are always subject to change. Given that Orion has a vested interest in ensuring environmental security and protection of human rights post haste, the pressure of democratic or even revolutionary change is not off limits, so long as the means by which change is acquired is moral, and in the interest of the citizens.

Section VI: To create environmental and economic regulation.

The requirement for states of an eco-socialist federation will abide by the principles of human rights stated in Article II, Section V, as well as to have a minimum level of regulation in their own economies to ensure that output of emissions and use of nonrenewable resources is kept at acceptable levels and that businesses within their markets are registered. A registered business will follow certain guidelines in terms of workers’ rights and representation and will not be allowed to monopolize privately.

Section VII: Develop means of interplanetary travel.

Government research into space travel and technological development will continue and be given adequate funding to pursue the goal of cost and production efficient manned space travel, in addition to sustainable and eco-friendly technologies for public use. The end goal is to be capable of carrying humans to other livable planets, as well as establishing further stations for observation and management in our solar system.

Section VIII: Reach sustainable growth.

The goal of any society is to grow – to grow the population, economic output, technological advancement, and knowledge. Currently, our global society has grown rapidly and will continue to grow on its current rate, but it has done so unsustainably, and puts us at risk. The goal of a stable and rational global society would then be to become coordinated and advanced enough that this pattern of growth can resume without burning our resources at a rate we cannot keep up. By this point in the Mission, society will be self-sufficient with no sign of long-term instability and will be moving to other planets to provide an extra layer of security. Once Section VIII is met, Orion’s function will be relegated to management and exploration.

Article III: The Structure of Orion.

Section I: Sword of Orion.

The Sword of Orion is the first, largest, and most essential branch of Orion – the public face and the means by which alliances are forged and information is spread. The functions of the Sword of Orion are writing, activism, and communication, which means publication of resources and operation of social media to provide news and information on why we need change, supporting action that makes positions clear to public representatives, and assisting and connecting different organizations already in the fight.

The Sword of Orion will be the only branch of Orion to have a multi-chapter structure – wherever available, local chapters composed of in-person or regional online members working to communicate with the people, politicians, and organizations in their area. While there are universal messages that can reach people from all over the world, the advantage of having additional, regional based campaigns is the familiarity and uniquity of regional culture and politics. The problems of one area may require special attention, attention that only people of that area know to give.

Above all chapters, however, is the Sword of Orion’s presence as an online organization. All chapter leaders and members can communicate with each other and coordinate more general writing projects, larger gatherings, and communications with national and international organizations. This online hub allows for an easier form of membership and participation, representation for members without a local chapter, and organization-wide coordination.

The Sword of Orion, in its communication to both the public and with other large-scale movements, is the main arm of diplomacy and democracy, as well as the central structure of Orion itself.

Section II: Liberius.

The second branch of Orion, Liberius is more of an ancillary corps within the greater structure of the Sword of Orion – instead of having it’s own chapters, Liberius members are specialized members of Sword chapters. Where the Sword of Orion focuses on writing and communication, Liberius is a branch of action – activism, volunteering, campaigning, aid drives, and protests are where they will work. Any in-person events that the Sword organizes or assists with, Liberius agents will help head and coordinate, and they will represent Orion at more general, impromptu events like marches and picketing.

As the nature of Liberius involves much more rigorous, hands-on work, Liberius agents will receive more training and preparation for events, consisting of skills like communication, first-aid, and self defense, to both aid and protect people in the case of violence or accident. Liberius Leadership will be responsible for this sort of training, as well as what type of events and work there will be a focus on.

Each branch of the Sword, at full capacity, will have one or more associated Liberius agents, ready for local work and chapter assistance. Liberius, while having separate channels for planning and training, will also communicate organization-wide through online hubs. To become an agent of Liberius first requires membership in the Sword; after which, one can volunteer and apply to do activist work.

Section III: Museion.

The third branch of Orion, Museion, as per its namesake institution of research and study, will be a primarily information and research-based sect of Orion focused on keeping track of environmental status, technological developments, and political trends. Separate from the overall combined structure of the Sword and Liberius, Museion will consist of a singular chapter/organization that functions as a think tank; doing studies of its own and working with other organizations and institutions to provide information to both the Sword and the general public on relevant matters.

The function of Museion is more evident in the later sections of the Mission – scientific research into eco-friendly technological developments for everyday life and economic growth as well as innovation of space travel to allow for interplanetary travel will rapidly become one of the top priorities once the political matters are out of the way. However, not only can Museion provide statistics and news to backup the publications of the Sword of Orion, but starting early on matters of innovation will prove an investment that pays off when the tech we need is started in advance.

Like Liberius, one must be a member of the Sword of Orion before volunteering for Museion, but the partnerships and communications of Museion can be separate from the Sword of Orion, due to being more scientific rather than political in nature. At full capacity, there will be in-person Museion facilities, but online research and organization is always an option.

[letshavanaa]

Pushing their dreams in a cart, the Moving merchants of Bengaluru

Every journey starts with a dream. A dream to embark on an adventure that reaps the rewards of labour. A walk around Bengaluru will reveal the vibrancy of its rich street trade and moving merchandise in every corner of the city. It’s widely understood that Bangalore market alone is a soft corner for the average citizen’s shopping retreat. 

It’s the market places and street trades with moving vendors that mark the vibrance of shopping season. At certain points, you’d find flea markets flocking with eager shopaholics looking to get their hands on the finest accessories and clothing. Where else can you find fine linen, fresh fruits, meat, vegetables, religious items, traditional handicrafts, flowers, crockery, trousers, pet food, appliances and all the flavoursome street food you can imagine at such attractive prices. Although Bangalore is home to some of the largest malls and skyscrapers, there’s a familiar fondness associated to unlimited Gol Gappa at your favourite chat stall by the road. The moving merchants of Bangalore are of much significance to the energized optimism of its citizens.

The Street Trade of Bangalore that Connects People

Street trade has been around longer than most of the buildings in the city. A fresh supply of vegetables, fruits and snacks have been on the rounds for as long as life has existed. When people discover a new flavour, it’s likelier to reach the streets of the city than a Michelin start restaurant. The numerous Dosa vendors lined up at sweet spots in the city are a true reflection of this spirit of sharing and caring. It would be a crime to visit the Garden City of India and not try the best street food on display. Some of the finest, freshest and most scrumptious delicacies are a result of street trade.

If you’re spending more than 10 minutes talking about vegetables, you know you’re on the street bargaining with farm fresh produce. If you’re craving a new selection of comfy pants for your weekends, there are plenty of lucrative options around the corner. Most people want value for their money and street trade has provided access to this value. Shopping in the city streets is not just an individual experience. The experience connects with your locality and shows off the diversity of its people. If it weren’t for moving merchants, handy FM radios wouldn’t be available at such cheap prices. Stainless steel and cast-iron vessels would be hiding in some warehouse fifty blocks away. All the fresh vegetables you eat would have been sitting at a supermarket for three days before you decided to finally go shopping. Not to mention the dhobi who sets up his stall in a corner to collect smelly clothes that hostels never run seem to run out of. It’s just the way the street trade works that makes you think of how lucky we are to have everything within reach. 

With digitization, smartphones are in almost every hand, there’s increased connectivity to online shopping. Occasional legal reforms halt certain street vendors for a while. Regulations in farm policies affect the producers who come into the city to share their loot with the country. Branded outlets have taken a significant share of the fine textiles laid across tarp in the streets. The dynamics of street trade have been changing since its earliest recorded popularity in the 16th century. Yet, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, street trade continues to flourish in various parts of the country! Our street vendors continue to rise up and inventively make their products a hot selling item in the neighbourhood. Moving merchants and local street vendors are responsible for the upkeep of a wonderful city experience that makes us all feel a lot safer. 

Safety and Security with Ease of Access

In many households, children can walk up to the nearest vendor on the street and get some snacks while they watch their favourite cartoon shows. The elderly can take a stroll down the alley and bump into a vendor with lucrative deals on world-renowned poetry and magazines. A working professional can step out of the office and indulge in the sweet aroma of chai across the street. A group of friends can window shop from dusk till dawn at one of the nearby markets with plenty of items on display. The safety and security that city streets of Bangalore are equipped with, is the mirror of every law-abiding citizen. If you take pride in the access to information of the internet, you will realize how the access to street trade has enlivened our neighbourhoods. Bringing street trade online could revolutionize trade and consumer experiences.

Migrant workers can start a stall by the side of the street and sell their local delicacies to make a living. Farmers from rural areas can sell fresh produce in neighbourhoods where more people are likelier to buy. Shoes can be repaired by handy pros, equipped with everything you need to make them look brand new. The finest sarees can be bought off the nearest street corner. The most elegant sculptures are showcased along the pavement of this vibrant city. 

If you want access to buying what you want at your convenience, you have to support the tradition of street trade in India. Find all the street vendors near you, in one place online. This is what could make street trade more popular, livelihoods more stable.

People Connect with Street Vendors

Through technological prowess of the 21st century, we are lucky to gain more and more access to things that are dear to our desires. You can find almost anything online. Almost everything can be delivered to your doorstep in a few hours. Every major business transaction can be automated with technology. People have adapted to digitization that makes almost everything wireless. The city of Bangalore has zero-emission conveyance apps, electric vehicles on standby at the swipe of a button, salon appointments delivered home, grocery shopping online and legal documentation remotely fulfilled. There’s plenty going on with technology and innovation. In fact, Bangalore is rightly dubbed as the Silicon Valley of India. What about our Street Vendors and Moving Merchants? Most vendors certainly accept cashless payments. Kind vendors even offer to take your goods up to your apartment if they want. Some moving merchants list their goods on Amazon. The street trade is evolving and we all want to be a part of the change. 

Havanaa App: The One-Stop Access to local Street Vendors

Street trade has always provided financial freedom for an estimated number of over 10 million Indians. Street trade is a big part of the local economy. The creators of Havanaa thought, “why not connect street vendors and moving merchants to an online platform for increased visibility among customers?” After all, the Covid19 pandemic slowed down sales for many vendors who depend on foot traffic and eager shoppers. Many vendors lost jobs and ended up seeking a new way of financial freedom. Havanaa wants to provide a solution to rising unemployment. Havanaa wants to encourage the local economy and street trade. Havanaa wants to make shopping more convenient for customers of all ages. Havanaa wanted to provide sustainable options to bargain with your local street vendors. The Havanaa App was an idea born to preserve the culture of street vending and better – make it an attractive profession! 

Increased Access and Increased Reliability of Havanaa

Imagine ordering your fresh groceries from the comfort of your living room without having to use a coupon, or subscribe to an offer designed to encourage consumerism at supermarkets. Imagine all the access to farm fresh fruits and vegetables near you. No added pressure, guaranteed quality and directly from the local street vendor and best of all – you pick and choose what you want!. Your kids can find some ingenious toys to keep occupied during holidays. All the local stationary is available at such amazing prices. Customers could browse through fine textiles, household items and fancy gifts that are sold exclusively by street vendors. An order online and you get your favourite chat delivered to you. Wireless transactions, easy negotiation and seamless experiences can make your street shopping experience better, safer and more convenient. Best of all – you are helping someone who is truly in need of that money! The Havanaa App connects customers to local street vendors online.

Customers get access to a wide selection of lucrative items on display. Behind every vendor, there’s a story of hardship and struggle. Everyone has a dream and works every day to attain it. Each street vendor is pushing their dreams in a cart, selling their valuable possessions to you. The Havanaa App is designed to create financial stability, increase shopper’s convenience and promote the local economy by connecting street vendors who are near by to you.

We want you to realize the spirit of street trade and join us on the adventure of promoting local produce, moving merchandise and delicious street food with sustainable options. Havanaa inspires connectivity, reliability and convenience.

So what are you waiting for?

Click here to fill in a form and get 3 months access to moving vendors nearby online.

The Havanaa App is launching soon. Get your hands on fine items and contribute to the street vendors and moving merchants of Bengaluru, pushing their dreams in a cart for you.

[hhollylau]

Why Are We Talking About This?

     I was at an energy conference years ago where the speaker asked a question that has stuck with me ever since.

     “Where do you think the price of oil will be in a hundred years?”

     After a series of “show of hand” votes, the consensus in the audience was clear: no one thought the price of oil would be higher than $0 in a hundred years.

     When we think about work, the essence of our economic lives or in aggregate what we term as “the economy”, what is “the economy” really but the conversion of energy into consumption?  We take water and irrigate fields, so that seeds can turn into food, and food can turn in calories to keep our bodies and minds functioning.  We take fossil fuel from the ground and put it in our planes, trains, and automobiles to move products around, to trade so we can consume more: more quantity, higher quality, and more diversity of goods and services.  Every leap in the history of productivity has been a revolution in energy efficiency – how to yield more consumption at a lower cost: via cattle drawn ploughs, via steam engines, via diesel powered motors, via electric cars.

    What does it mean then if a room of relatively informed professionals expect oil prices to go to $0 in the next one hundred years?  The implication is simple: taking the trajectory from the dawn of time to the industrial revolution and out to the future, we assume that humans will find a cheaper, more efficient alternative than oil for energy to fuel our consumption. After all, how could it be otherwise? The conversion of energy for consumption at present comes with an extremely high, existential cost to the planet. Political partisans may cynically dodge questions about climate change with a “who really knows” shrug, but is there any doubt that the market would at least hedge the possibility of rising temperatures and sea levels?   Why not invest in alternative energy sources that could possibly yield more profit, and maybe not render the planet uninhabitable?

     Then where does it leave us?  What is the point of the Economy as we know it if humans succeed with brutal efficiency in bringing the cost of converting energy to consumption to near zero? What if there is a day, doomsayers be damned, when we live in a near Utopian world where food and housing production can be solved through waste-neutral farming, 3D printing, and other innovations we have yet to realize?  What does it mean for work in the twenty-first century, when so many of our jobs already seem to exist for their own sake rather than creating any productive value for society?

     The phenomenon that many of us may have “meaningless jobs” had been explored by anthropologist David Graeber in the essay “Bullshit Jobs.”  His thesis, in essence, is that there are too many workers with too few actually necessary jobs.   Automation has vastly improved the industrial process.  Bang for the buck, robots can produce more goods and services than a human ever can for things like assembling electronics or even providing financial advice.  We should be basking in those extra hours of leisure, lapping in the luxury of cheaper goods.  But we are not.  Somehow humans have invented more work, peripheral to actual productivity -- work created seemingly for the sake of work.

    John Maynard Keynes predicted the 15-hour work week in 1960.  Instead of living in the paradise of free time thanks to technological advances so efficient at converting energy to consumable goods and services, we find ourselves spending weekends preparing a presentation, responding to emails at the dinner table.  We squared the equation of an oversupply of educated people and under-demand for labor by inventing new types of labor: roles of administrators, consultants, and other actors and supporters of increasing bureaucracy.  As Graeber pointed out, in those jobs, people know they have bullshit jobs, causing what he called “moral and spiritual damage.”  Put in another way, there may be an impending crisis of unemployment due to automation, but the crisis of joyless employment due to some logic to keep everyone busy already has an acute impact on large swaths of the population.

 Why Are We Talking About This?              

     The motivation for writing, whether an academic essay or creative story, is to say something about what is different this time, what’s different about now.  Henry David Thoreau said over a century ago, to paraphrase, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  Films, movies, and books have delved into the extreme anxiety and frustration caused by work (e.g., “Office Space”).  For millennia workers toiled, unhappily, for feudal lords, surviving on scraps and dangling on the precipice of gruesome and miserable deaths.  So works sucks – what is different about then and now?  I’ve come home many days feeling decimated by the pointlessness and pettiness of a corporate setting.  Conceptually it is a far cry from having to stand in an assembly line for fourteen hours straight; vast improvement from shoveling coal into a steam engine.  Shouldn’t we just accept this fate of modern work life in exchange for the material comfort that many of our predecessors couldn’t even imagine as possible?  The most stunning paradox here is that because our economy is so efficient, because technology has enabled us to be so productive, that we have created our own trappings of an unfulfilled life, and I refuse to believe that it is fait accompli.  What if there are other ways to think about work, other ways to define work?  Other ways to busy ourselves, rather than perpetuate the monstrosity that is corporate work life, while we enjoy the fruits of an economy that no longer really needs us?

     My intention is to write a series of essays, grouped by observations and theories of how we got here.   Without the how, it would be difficult to discuss the what of our dilemma, and most importantly, why it does not need to be this way. Classical economists tend to have a “natural laws” view of the world: the belief that the Economy arose from first principles of human nature and society.  Humans are greedy and want to keep moving up the utility curve.  They have the urge to trade as involuntarily as the compulsion to breathe, which is why capitalism is the most natural form of economic organization.  What is is what should be.  It would be a grave mistake to call this current definition of work natural.  It is in its unnaturalness that renders it soul crushing.  It is in its unnaturalness that we chafe against it.   And so we begin with an exploration of what work could be for humans to proper and lead productive lives.

[linkersint]

The “Rich Getting Richer” Argument

This piece of writing is taken from Bestselling Author Rob Moore book “MONEY”. This book is all about philosophy of money, myths we have in mind about this concept, and how we can achieve financial stability and then financial freedom by understanding the nitty gritty of money!

We normally hear an argument that “RICH GETTING RICHER”. Mr Moore claim that this argument is a myth. Everyone can become rich if he/she follows its fundamental laws.  Those who have more money are doing and behaving in certain way than those who are struggling with it. In below chapter, you will learn why “rich getting richer” argument is invalid.

****

from the book

You hear many people debating, ‘why do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?’ Many people get frustrated about this and demand a redress of the balance through higher taxation, setting up unions, and greatly increased philanthropy.

There are simple economic laws that explain why the rich tend to get richer. These economic fundamentals bust many of the myths about the rich and poor divide, certainly in the first world. And guess what? The wealthy know and leverage these, and the poor don’t and are leveraged by them.

Common Sense?

Common sense suggests that something tends to move more easily in the direction it is already going than if it changes direction. You could call this momentum, or compounding or simple common sense. Newton’s first law of physics is this:

 ‘An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion, with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force’.

Of course you’re likely looking for a deeper argument than the rich get richer than ‘because they are already rich’, and the poor get poorer because ‘they are already poor’, but let’s not dismiss something for its simplicity. If you have not attained the levels you desire yet, keep going. Keep on, keeping on, you will get there.

Balanced Economics:

In any monetary system all expenditure must equal all receipts. This means that all spending equals all money received.

People don’t burn money (unless they are The KLF, the British band who set fire to a million pounds of their own money) and even if they did, that money would be out of the system and all existing money in the system would balance between expenditure and receipt. Even when more money is printed, that new money in the system, like all the existing money, balances where all expenditure equals all receipts.

Therefore, of that finite (but huge) amount of money in circulation at any one time: it distributes exactly from those who ‘spend’ the most (expenditure) to those who sell or receive the most (receipts).

 If there is an inequality of balance, which there always is because products and services are not of equal value and humans value money differently, then money moves more freely and in higher amounts from those who value and focus on expenditure higher than receipt to those who value and focus on receipt higher than expenditure.

In other words, money moves from those who value it least (or value expenditure more than receipt), to those who value it most by saving, investing, compounding, (or value receipt more than expenditure). Money moves from consumers to producers.

No matter how many times you may try to use power, rule, unions, regulations, or governments to more equally distribute money, it will always reset its ‘balance’. So, if you want to redistribute wealth more towards you, don’t ever get dragged into the victim mentality of a higher power or system, begging or expecting them to redistribute it for you. The capitalist system is unlikely to change in your lifetime, so it is a huge waste and opportunity cost of your time and energy to fight against it. Instead, learn about and focus on the management, mastery, and rules of money, service, contribution, enterprise, momentum, compounding and velocity, and make it more important to you to understand and value money and wealth. And more will come your way. The more you learn, the more you earn.

Theoretical redistribution of wealth:

It has often been suggested that there should be a redistribution of wealth, from those who have the most to those who have the least. Before we delve into this, there already is a redistribution format: it is called taxation. In most developed countries, taxation is geared towards being a higher percentage of income the more one earns.

The main problem I see in theoretical wealth redistribution is that it doesn’t stay with or serve those it is distributed to. I’m certainly not against sharing wealth with those who need it more, in fact it is contribution that plays a big part in building wealth. However, you can’t manage more money until you learn how to manage what you already have, and the big abundant lack is in education as much as it is in redistribution.

Imagine if a wealthy person owns a betting shop. A gambler comes in and spends all his money, helping the owner make more money. The state increases taxes and redistributes much of the money back to the gambler. The gambler then goes back to the betting shop and makes more bets. The owner might have to increase his margins to compensate for the increased ‘taxation’. This costs the gambler, who keeps gambling, more money. And so the cycle continues, but doesn’t help or change anything other than perhaps the owner moves to another country if too much is taken from him, and the gambler spends more and has a bigger addiction.

Perhaps if the business owner was allowed to create fair profit, was given assistance, protection and tax breaks and incentives to start up, and there was fair competition so that prices self-regulated, then the system would work. Oh, wait a minute, that’s called capitalism. And for the gambler, education and help on the addiction is likely to be far more effective than feeding the habit. While this might seem an extreme example, most people manage their money like a gambler, wasting it and only just keeping their heads above water. It is education that is needed, in our schools and society, on how to manage and master money, not redistribution and handouts that de-incentivize work and contribution.

Lottery redistribution:

   The National Endowment for Financial Education cites research estimating that 70 per cent of people who suddenly receive a large sum of money lose it within a few years. Forty-four percent of lottery winners had spent all of their winnings within five years of winning the lottery. Nine out of every ten lottery winners believe that their new family wealth will be gone by the third generation. Again, you can’t manage more money until you learn to manage what you already have. Interestingly, only 2 per cent of respondents said that they were less happy with life after winning the lottery, despite the data above suggesting a greater percentage can’t handle it, lose it, or feel it will be lost soon enough. Who says money doesn’t make you (more) happy?

   So in fact, there actually is a seismic wealth redistribution right now: from the poor when they get large sums without knowing how to handle it, back to the rich.

Production vs consumption

       Non-wealth, first-world poverty doesn’t contribute. It doesn’t create service, enterprise or economy, and doesn’t care enough about humanity to give value to others. Poverty in this sense consumes more than it produces, and is more selfish than selfless.

      To be wealthy is to give service, to produce for other people in physical (consumable) or ethereal (information) form. To be poor is to consume: wasting or spending money and time-consuming depreciable. The wealthy produce for the poor to consume, and so redistribute wealth towards themselves from the first-world poor. Vast wealth comes from vast production nationally, globally, and in high volumes, whereas poverty comes from a negative differential between production and consumption. Individuals, geography, or governments could cause this.

     The wealthy create enterprise and economy through jobs, value creation, increased flow and velocity of money, contribution to taxes, hope, belief and inspiration to others, service to vast numbers of people. The poor are independent on these to survive.  Virtually all global wealth is now private: 99 percent according to Thomas Piketty in his book Capital. This means that producers finance all state benefits that poor consumers consume. Because poverty consumers more than it produces, this has to be economically balanced by large-scale production, and because of the 80/20 principle, the 20 per cent will produce for the 80 per cent to consume, roughly speaking. And so this will compound in the direction it is already going – the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It is hard to change the velocity once it has momentum, which explains why when starting a new vocation it can be hard to make money in the early years, yet those who’ve been doing it for decades seem to have vastly compounded wealth and passive income, more easily.

For redistribution of wealth to work, consumers would have to take responsibility to produce more than they consume. If you give a drug addict money, you know much of that is likely to go. If you give any consumer more money without the responsibility and education to produce with it, it will be consumed in the same manner all previous money was consumed. If a producer receives more money, mostly through cashflow, increased profits or leveraged loans (rarely through gifts and subsidies), they will invest it to produce more. Of course you could call this greed, but you could also call this growth, evolution and supply and demand. Greed and growth are only differentiated by an individual’s perception. As long as there is demand and a need for the human race to grow and evolve, producers will produce more and more and more, and consumers will keep consuming. The titans of wealth across the last 6000 years are the largest, most vast producers.

The question is: which will you choose to be, a producer or a consumer? Will you get sucked into debating the rights and wrongs of the rich and poor divide, or focus on service, solutions, scale, and contribution, and enjoy your fair share of wealth?

[leaagueofrevolutionarie]

The Amazon-ification of America

By Steven Miller 8-14-2020

Last week, tech leaders spoke to Congress on Capitol Hill. Google’s Sundar Pichai, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos all spoke from prepared remarks. As the US economy shrank by 32.9%, Amazon’s share price rose by half, and Facebook’s growth rate approached 60%.

Congresspeople were supposedly “grilling” these uber-capitalists, but they were politely slobbering at their wealth. Since COVID began, American billionaires have made $637 billion, while 50 million people have lost their jobs. Timidly asking these billionaires questions about monopoly practices, the politicians refuse to address how this mega-wealth could be used to help people out in the greatest collapse in the history of capitalism.

Tech capitalism is fomenting the Amazon-ification and the Google-ization of America, right now in real time. This will culminate in a major re-organization and the State. This is class warfare on the rights of humans to control their own basic needs to live and thrive. Private property is on the march to seize every resource of the public and to re-organize society in its own image.

Microsoft has controlled the Pentagon’s cloud computing efforts since October, 2019. Big tech is constantly making inroads into the military, including $11 billion in contracts in the last 3 years.:

“’As we continue to execute the DOD Cloud Strategy, additional contracts are planned for both cloud services and complementary migration and integration solutions necessary to achieve effective cloud adoption,’ the Pentagon said”. (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pentagon-jedi-idUSKBN1X42IU)

Then just look at what we are already seeing! Capitalism’s massive collapse as a result of COVID means that an estimated 40% of African-American business will not open. One-third of restaurants will never open again.

What happens when the restaurants close? People increasingly order online. Big Tech becomes ever more dominant. Then Big Box stores enter the scene and become the only places that provide the distribution of the necessities of life. Private equity corporations and hedge funds actively finance this extermination. Amazonification aims far higher than replacing mom and pop stores. It also rises to counter the demand for the domination and extension of public property to benefit everyone..

Then Rent Apocalypse is about to hit, with multi-billion dollar corporations waiting to evict up to 28 million people by Thanksgiving. This tidal wave is lead by Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity management corporation. Blackstone works closely with Blackrock, the world’s largest asset-manager, and shadow bank to the world, which was founded in partnership with Blackstone in 1988. While Blackstone proclaims that the rentership society is here, Blackrock manages the government multi-trillion bailout for financial speculators and the financial industry. By driving millions out of their homes, these criminals will keep the homes empty, and turning them into rentals, in an attempt to extract more wealth from our communities..

“Today the fast-growing ETF (“exchange-traded funds) sector controls nearly half of all investments in US stocks, and it is highly concentrated. The sector is dominated by just three giant American asset managers – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, the “Big Three” – with BlackRock the clear global leader. By 2017, the Big Three together had become the largest shareholder in almost 90% of S&P 500 firms, including Apple, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, General Electric and Coca-Cola….

“Giant pension and other investment funds largely control the stock market, and the asset managers control the funds. That effectively puts BlackRock, the largest and most influential asset manager, in the driver’s seat in controlling the economy.”

(https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/24/meet-blackrock-the-new-great-vampire-squid/)

These corporations are hell-bent on impose extractive capitalism on our communities and families. This model that vacuums wealth and information out of communities and sends it to the top. Oh yes, and what about the morality of evicting people to live on the street in the middle of a pandemic? Oh well, it’s just collateral damage.

That, of course, is what the Amazon-ification of America is all about. No longer even pretending to offer jobs, the capitalist class, lead by Big Tech, is re-organizing the economy and the government to extract wealth and give it to themselves.

Before COVID hit, the government had already authorized “Opportunity Zones” in 2017 to re-invest in impoverished American communities. Such predatory gentrification and dispossession is beloved by both Jared Kushner and Gavin Newsome. The giant capitalist equity companies and hedge funds are now in charge.

From “Displacement Zones: How Opportunity Zones Turn Communities into Tax Shelters for the Rich”:

“Boosters promised Opportunity Zones would help bring capital to the neighborhoods that most need it, but in reality allow wealthy investors to benefit from huge tax breaks while they speculate at the expense of the most vulnerable communities. The structure of the Opportunity Zones program was designed with the interests of speculators, not communities, in mind. Communities living inside many Opportunity Zones across the country are already experiencing rapid changes. Unregulated speculative investment will throw even more fuel on the fire. The Opportunity Zones program will exacerbate an already unbearable

“Opportunity Zones were created by the rich, for the rich.

“Opportunity Zones are an invention of the Silicon Valley millionaire-backed Economic Innovation Group, and contain some of the most generous tax breaks currently available. The program gives capital gains tax exemptions that scale up based on the length of time an investment is held, eventually culminating in a 15% reduction in the taxable basis of the principal, and complete tax exemption of any profits made on the investment after 10 years. Because the distribution of capital gains income is highly unequal, the overwhelming majority of these tax benefits will flow directly to the richest investors in the country. Indeed, 90% of all capital gains income in the United States is owned by the wealthiest 10% of people, and 70% of all capital gains is owned by the wealthiest 1%.”         (www.saje.net/.../2019/11/SAJE_DisplacementZones.pdf)

This was before COVID. The virus is now aggravating and amplifying every tendency that existed before its advent. It should be no surprise, therefore, that New York Andrew Cuomo recently invited Google and Microsoft into the state to “re-imagine” the new world where Big Tech companies seize control of telehealth, public education and the entire society.

In other words, Cuomo is abrogating the responsibilities of government to guarantee a safe and healthy environment for everyone and turning this charge over to corporations. They, of course, will place private profit above the public good.

“This is a future in which, for the privileged, almost everything is home delivered, either virtually via streaming and cloud technology, or physically via driverless vehicle or drone, then screen “shared” on a mediated platform. It’s a future that employs far fewer teachers, doctors, and drivers. It accepts no cash or credit cards (under guise of virus control) and has skeletal mass transit and far less live art. It’s a future that claims to be run on “artificial intelligence” but is actually held together by tens of millions of anonymous workers tucked away in warehouses, data centers, content moderation mills, electronic sweatshops, lithium mines, industrial farms, meat-processing plants, and prisons, where they are left unprotected from disease and hyperexploition. It’s a future in which our every move, our every word, our every relationship is trackable, traceable, and data-mineable by unprecedented collaborations between government and tech giants.

“If all of this sounds familiar it’s because, pre-Covid, this precise app-driven, gig-fueled future was being sold to us in the name of convenience, frictionlessness, and personalization.”         (https://naomiklein.org/the-screen-new-deal/)

The Social Response

Yes, the US capitalist class could have responded to the virus by taking steps, similar to Europe, to make things easier, but it didn’t. Now that the capitalist class is doubling down to make ever greater political and private profit from the crisis, we have already seen a decisive social force take the political stage. Two new generations have now mounted the stage of history. The great mass of protestors, though not all, in the massive George Floyd rebellion came from these new generations.

Millennials are roughly those who were born after 1980 and came to political awareness in 2000 or after, and who came into political maturity around 2000. This year they would be 40 years old. Rising behind them is he generation that came to political maturity with the Parkland Massacres in 2018, often called Gen Z by the corporate media. There are 74 million people in the US in this group who were born between 1995 and 2015.

These generations intend to assert their agency. They understand that their future will be there long after the Boomers have passed on. They intend to take control of the situation. For these generations, the American Dream is a hollow antiquated notion. They understood already that their future was imperiled with Climate Crisis. They already were the primary casualties of the digitally-driven laborless-production that is sweeping through every branch of the economy. Somehow, they must survive the Gig Economy that is consuming them. They are a substantial part of a new proletarian class, one that is being replaced by digitally-driven production.

The new social force already clearly holds government for guaranteeing the safety of the public. This issue began with the murder of Trayvon in 2012, and escalated with the response to Michael Brown’s and Eric Garners murders, to name a few. It expresses itself as righteous rage at white supremacy and police murder. And it correctly holds the government and the State accountable. This rising demand for the public good threatens to overflow the narrow limits that the Democratic Party tries to impose. Voices from myriad directions have been asserting that if government cannot do the job, we know very well how to govern ourselves and society.

This new proletarian class has much to learn, but objectively it cannot back down. We are witnessing the concretization for our times of Lenin’s famous statement that revolutions begin when the working class cannot live in the old way and the ruling class cannot rule in the old way.

As society is drawn further into political crisis with re-opening schools, massive voter suppression and an election that may well be suborned, the social response, sooner or later, will build its political consciousness. As Engels observed long ago, the people today are transforming themselves into the people of tomorrow:

“You will have to go through 15, 20, 50 years of civil wars and national struggles not only to bring about a change in society but also to change yourselves, and prepare yourselves for the exercise of political power.” [Revelations concerning the Communist Trial at Cologne]

Steven Miller

Nanodog2@hotmail.com

August 9, 2020

Steven Miller is a retired public school science teacher in Oakland, California

[weekendwarriorblog]

30 Minute Experiment: The Future of Comics #30ME

Okay, let’s do this. I wasn’t going to do a #30ME today cause I was put in a rather foul mood due to something that happened last night, but I’m trying to move past it, also because it’s been a few days since I did one of these. I had other things going on yesterday and Friday that it made it better for me to not spend time on this experiment. Either way, I’m back doing one on Sunday and today’s topic was offered by my friend, Peter, so here goes nothing...

I will freely admit that I am not as knowledgeable about the comic industry as my former boss at ComicsBeat and some of her staff, who cover the comic industry in such great detail and who know so much about the ins and outs of the industry. Right now, comics books are generally in flux and I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. I’ve been someone who has bought and read comics regularly. I’ve also bought comics that I’ve never found time to read. I also have reached points where I couldn’t afford to buy comics at all. And then there’s that thing about selling off my 40-year collection last year for way below what I thought I’d get for it.

I’ve generally been reading comic books since I was 9 or 10 when I found a bunch of ‘70s Superman comics in a clubhouse near our new house in Framingham, Mass. As a rather impressionable kid, I was a fan almost immediately, and even to this day, if you find a kid who likes to read, you’ll find a kid who loves comic books. It’s just something that you can always count on with younger boys and girls... if you hand them a comic book, they will read it. 

I was no different but I became quite obsessed and spent most of the money I earned from various job when I was a teenager and even younger on comics and records, which led to all sorts of issues later in life when I was living in a tiny studio apartment in New York City and was forced to put a lot of my old collections into storage spaces that I eventually couldn’t afford.

But this isn’t about my past with comics and about the future. I’m not sure if you’re aware or even if you’re somebody who still regularly reads and/or collects comics, but shortly after the pandemic struck the States, Diamond Distributors had to shut its doors. The problem was that Diamond was the top distributor of comic books from the publishers to the comic book stores. Even though there were many comics in the works to come out in April, May and June, on April 1, that distribution system just stopped dead and there was no way for the big three, DC Comics, Marvel Comics and Image Comics to get their comics out to the masses. The entire economy of the comic business quickly ground to a halt with no way for stores to pay for comics, no way for Diamond to properly and safely distribute them and very few stores actually open to sell them. At least that was the case in New York where a giant like MIdtown Comics had to close up as it wasn’t considered an essential business.

I felt a little mixed on this because I’ve already tried to quit buying and reading comics a few times over the past few years. In 2018, I thought I had reached a point where I could no longer afford to buy them nor have time to read them even while most of my time was spent looking for jobs rather than doing them. When I couldn’t afford to keep up my mail order subscriptions, I took the opportunity to stop. I then found myself having to get rid of my expensive storage spaces and that gave me another opportunity to quit. That was February 2019 and in the exact same month, I started writing for The Beat, and let’s just say that it’s hard to work for one of the top comic book sites on the planet and NOT be interested in what is happening in comics.

I vowed to keep things in control in terms of my spending and for the most part, I was able to do so, although I still have a lot of unread comics piled up near and around my bed that i just haven’t taken the time to read, especially with so many other distractions during the pandemic.

It’s now been a full month without comics and I still have plenty to read if I want to, but DC Comics have already started to come back slowly and Marvel will soon follow suit. Neither company is releasing nearly as many comics as they did in March when both companies would release 30 to 50 (or even comics) of all types and varieties. There’s just no way for someone with a limited income to keep up with it all so I feel like the pandemic closures gave me another opportunity to get out of my buying and non-reading habits. So I’ve written quite a bit about the topic of “the future of comics” without actually addressing it head-on, and maybe I’m a little biased, but my good friend David Lloyd had the best plan when he came up with the idea for Aces Weekly, which is a digital-only comic book site that offers brand-new comics that have never been seen anywhere else but only in a digital serialized format. No printing costs, no waste of paper... but some of the best comic book storytelling and art working out there that just hasn’t caught on as well as all of the usual superheroics from DC and Marvel who have also made the jump to digital.  What I like about Aces Weekly is that it reminds me of the Heavy Metal of my youth, stories that were in different genres than the usual superheroes, whether it’s sci-fi or fantasy or horror or even comedies. Part of why I got into David’s own work originally was because I regularly read his series V for Vendetta with Alan Moore when it was published in Warrior Magazine. In fact, having to get rid of my collection of original Warrior Magazines was one of the many heartbreaks from Midtown getting my entire collection for way below what I thought it was worth. (I probably shouldn’t bring that up again because it really puts me in a mood.)

But David did have something write that’s perfect for the post-pandemic world and that’s that if consumers are still relying on having physical books in print and there’s still a possibility of COVID-19 potentially being spread via packaging and shipping of such books... then yeah, we just have to go digital. I mean, everyone has a computer nowadays and most people have phones or tablets as well. Aces Weekly was designed beautifully to work in the landscape formatting that we’ve become so accustomed to from computers, TVs and tablets. It was never meant to be read on smartphones as that would destroy the beauty of the artwork and the sequential storytelling which is meant to be read as one does a comic strip in the Sunday papers (which still probably get more readers than the average comic book).

It’s kind of a strange time because comic books are more popular than ever due to the huge amount of superhero and comic book movies that have come out over the past 20 years, both good and bad. The success of these movies, particularly those in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has made it for publishers to get comic books into avid younger readers who want to know more about the heroes they seen on screen. 

And yet, there’s still a big glut of comics being released that aren’t of the greatest quality and are kept around just because someone in editorial thinks that readers want these books. 

We’ve already seen a lot of comics going to digital services and a resulting outcry of comic book stores who realize that some people might be fine reading the stories in that format, thereby cutting out the middle men, but I personally still prefer physical comics, mainly because I can just sit back and read something without the use of technology and the screens that I’m looking at for so many hours over the course of the day.

Sure, I can’t really afford physical comic books and don’t really have the space to store them, plus I’m always in danger of them taking over my apartment and my ability to live comfortably, a constant problem, but I also wonder why more publishers haven’t gone the direction of David’s Aces Weekly and just created a solid product that involves great storytelling, writing and art and just rid the need for printing and paper, which is a bit of an ecological nightmare when you realize that comics are rarely recycled and are frequently just piling up in someone’s closet or backroom as a “collection.”

We’ve reached a point in technology where digital comics should very much be the standard and unfortunately that means that comic book shops need to change with the times and not be as beholden to having huge stocks of comics and toys taking up real estate just for those who show up and want to look around who may have some spare cash to buy something they clearly don’t need. Heck, most comic shops seem to do better business with Funko Pops and statues than actual comics these days so maybe they should be converted into toy or hobby shops... but with a knowledgable staff who can point those who want to read to sites/publishers that offer digital comics.

It’s kind of weird writing this on the day after what would have been this year’s Free Comic Book Day and what would have been the start of the summer movie season with Marvel Studios’ Black Widow, their first movie since Spider-Man: Far from Home  last July, but it seems we’re also at a very clear turning point where now is the time to change things to rid ourselves of the issues (pun intended) that have plagued us, like consumerism, the ecological nightmare that we’ve turned our globe into by destroying trees, and so many other things that physical comic books as they’ve existed for 80 years or more have only contributed to rather than helping us to get away from those issues.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this subject as more books are available from DC and Marvel but I’ve run out of time and Cuomo will be on soon, so back tomorrow!

[johnheintz]

Winners and Losers in the Coronavirus Stimulus

I have a group chat I share with three friends. We are old friends with wildly different life paths. I’m a teacher, lawyer, writer in Chicago, and Jim in an entrepreneur in Chicago.  Steve is a hospital administrator in New York. Pete is a scientist in Vermont. 

Early in January, Pete heard the news of this new virus from a Wuhan, China, wet market. Pete researches disease and drugs for a living, and since he’s talking with friends, he occasionally lets himself be wrong for dramatic effect. 

Coronavirus was big. His posts were dramatic, and when the rest of us teased him, he pushed back, explaining how “we’re screwed.” Over the next month, Pete would be proven entirely correct. By mid-March no one on earth hadn’t heard of Covid-19 and its cause, the novel coronavirus. Even Congress was listening. 

Two disasters loomed. The millions likely to die would only be outweighed by the total failure of the global economy that could impoverish the world in a way never seen in modern times. No reasonable person disagreed with either disaster. 

For the first time in a decade, Democrats and Republicans in Congress started talking. The health crisis required instantaneous action mostly already within the statutory authority of the Executive branch. The economic crisis needed legislative action. People needed to stop moving around and spreading the virus, and it had to happen immediately. This meant no one who couldn’t work from home could work at all. No work meant no money. No money meant no food and no home. People with no money in the bank, which meant most Americans, needed money immediately or they would go to work and spread the virus because they would have no other choice. 

I need to defend Congress here. The President dithered, but the Majority and Minority leaders in the House and Senate moved quickly to act. 

Quick action reveals instincts. When you’re in a crisis, you respond using the reasoning capacities you’ve built up prior to the crisis. When in the crisis itself, you react. Congress reacted, and the subsequent bill tells us a lot about the default positions of the Democratic and Republican parties. 

What is the Act?

It’s called the CARES Act, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. You’ve already heard it’s $2 trillion. The government is spending money, so that’s why it’s being called a “stimulus.” There are good reasons not to call it a stimulus, since governments take stimulus actions to encourage economic growth. This bill is doing the opposite. It’s encouraging people to stop economic activity, or at least to stop economic activity that is not essential. The goal of the bill? ”Freezing the economy in amber“ or ”putting the economy into an induced coma” are two metaphors explaining the goal of the stimulus, but for those of us who live in a partisan world, a world where government is either spending or not spending money, this is massive government spending that can comfortably be called a stimulus.   

Who are the winners?

There are three big winners in the bill. Individuals get 30% of the stimulus. Big corporations get 25%. And small business, state and local governments and public services share the remaining 45%. Democrats insisted on the direct payments and the unemployment increases, and Republicans insisted on saving big businesses, especially the airlines. 

The remaining 45% breaks down with 19% for small businesses, 17% for state and local governments and 9% for public services, mostly hospitals.  

It’s already clear the next bill will help states and local governments. Lobbying is happening at a furious, socially distant pace, but state and local governments cannot run deficits like the federal government. That is, states and localities cannot simply print money, like the The feds will have to provide them support or the downstream effects will create an economic tsunami as great as the coming federal one.   

It may seem like Congress acted quickly, but plenty of horse trading went into the preparation of this bill. Only the cruelest free marketeers can stand up and say government should stay out of this crisis. Those people exist, and they seem to want a certain number of dead bodies before they act. Luckily, enough Americans understand the gravity of the crisis and drown out partisan drum beating in the name of saving our loved ones’ lives. 

Who are the losers?

The worst losers are people on fixed incomes and future debt payers, like today’s college and younger kids. No matter what the feds call it, the US is taking on debt. Since Donald Trump arrived in office, the debt went up $3 trillion bringing the pre-coronavirus stimulus to $23.5 trillion or $70,000 for every person living in the US. Now that debt will be $25.5 trillion. Future generations have to pay. 

A quick side note, this stimulus is a necessary and good kind of debt. As Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff has said, "The whole point of not relying on debt excessively in normal times is precisely to be able to use debt massively and without hesitation in situations like this." Borrowing costs money, but saving lives at this scale is worth it. 

The primary losers, then, are future generations. But that’s a generic reality for government debt. The primary losers that could have been named in this bill but weren’t are more interesting. 

Small businesses are definitely losers. Unlike the checks written to individuals, small businesses has strings attached to most of the money in the stimulus. Small businesses are asking right now whether they are able to keep everyone on their payroll, which is the stated purpose of the stimulus loans. The primary question is whether, if they are already heavily leveraged, they will be able to take on this additional debt. The stimulus provides that any small business that keeps paying its workers will receive forgivable loans, but small businesses aren’t sure how or if that will really work. Small businesses face this uncertainty despite the desire of Congress to pass a decisive bill that would remove uncertainty in the economy. Why? 

At least a sectional of the Democratic Party does not like business. They are still reeling from the Great Recession when, according to the left, bailouts should have gone to individual homeowners and not big banks. Democrats make little distinction between big business and small business. Terms like “profiteers” and “capitalists” don’t allow for subtle distinctions like separating Boeing from your corner mom and pop coffeeshop. Blue Chip Republicans don’t care about small companies much either. They want to ensure companies already running and already providing big products and big services to big quantities of people keep running. That’s why the second biggest winner of the stimulus are large corporations. 

Small business is a blend of Democrat and Republican, so when the crisis arrived and wish lists were created, small business took a back seat to the Democrats’ individual payments and the Republicans’ corporate payments. 

Losers in the stimulus are the environment, education, youth, poor, infrastructure and essential workers. 

Carbon offsets and clean energy incentives like solar, wind and nuclear never made it into the bill. The impact of climate change like mass migrations, regional armed conflicts, ecosystems failed and lives lost will make this pandemic’s worst death toll estimates of 2-5% of those infected truly seem like the seasonal flu. 

Education got money in the stimulus, but it’s not what you think. States run education, not the feds, and federal involvement in education is, compared to the big money spent by states and local governments, miniscule. Schools that are keeping staff won’t be doing it for long. Tax revenues will be small as the effects of shelter-in-place kick in. Schools will be the hardest hit since in most states schools are the largest recipient of state and local revenue that will disappear. Schools will likely hold onto all their workers, even if they know they’ll have to borrow to pay them. States and local governments assume federal help is coming, and Speaker Pelosi has already said the next legislation will help state and local governments, which is code for schools and other less expensive essential services like police and fire. But it’s notable that education didn’t make it into the first stimulus bill. It signals, however slightly, that neither the Dems nor the Republicans care to prop up the existing school system exactly the way it exists today. 

Youth are a big loser in the stimulus. College kids dependent on their parents will not get a check, which should draw the attention of college kids who are going to join the workforce in what’s shaping out to be another Great Recession. Bigger is the future bill youth will have to pay for the excesses of this generation. 

Are you under 30? If so, consider that you will live in a world your parents and grandparents created that benefitted them enormously but that you will never enjoy. China will be the world’s biggest economy soon, and just as the US set the rules when it was the biggest economy, you can be sure China will set the rules when it’s number one. You will be working in a smaller economy and paying bills your parents ran up today based on poor planning. 

Another loser in the stimulus is the poor. Cataloging the ways the stimulus fails the poor require too much space, so let’s focus on the big, obvious ways. First, poverty means people are less likely to file taxes, which means they won’t get a check. Second, poverty means jobs are more precarious, low wage workers were the first to be let go, and they will be the first to run through the additional unemployment benefits in the stimulus, if they can get through to their state’s unemployment agency before they are evicted, have the internet turned off at home or don’t have time to file because they are homeschooling their children since the schools are closed. If the poor have jobs, they will likely need to go and have fewer protections to avoid catching the virus. Mobile phone location data is already coming out showing poor neighborhoods are staying-at-home far less than wealthier areas. But most of all, the stimulus targets the economy as a whole. The American economy as a whole never did much for the poor. They still don’t have quality health care or any health care. They still have worse schools. They still have worse food. This stimulus improves nothing for the poor. 

Buzz in Washington is that another $2 trillion bill for infrastructure is being negotiated. If the feds want to inject a big stimulus in the economy, it should have passed that infrastructure bill in the first bill. We have all heard the list of infrastructure needs, but each is essential. First, the US needs national broadband. Second, the US needs a web of connected transportation options, from transit and air to railways, roads, and waterways, as a means to reduce congestion, protect the environment, and stimulate economic development. Third, the US needs a massive workforce development program to transform workers for the digital economy. Fourth, the US needs to up its funding of Pre-K-12 and higher education to ensure every child is ready for the new economy. Fifth, the US needs a far better public safety program including offering federal leadership for technical assistance that helps all levels of government develop evidence-based community policing programs that build trust, improve community relations and reduce racial tensions and crime rates. 

Essential workers were losers in this stimulus bill, too. The stimulus provides big money for Covid-19 responses that should include making sure essential workers are well protected and well paid. Other countries like the UK and Germany have provided additional benefits to essential workers, identifying them by name and marshaling national resources to ensure they have protective gear and abundant equipment. The stimulus echoes the current US response. It’s vague and indirect. Chicago where I live keeps sending emergency  notifications to all cell phones even while almost every health care worker I know on the front line is telling me they want to quit. Spain is the worst example of endangered essential workers. Garbage bags, old shirts and duct tape do not provide the kind of protection they need, and the US isn’t doing much better. 

Why should we care?

Crises come suddenly, and they reveal core priorities and levels of preparedness. How prepared the US was for this crisis will be readily apparent in the next 6-12 months. What core priorities the US holds is already apparent. We should care about the apparent core priorities of our elected leaders because, if they don’t match our priorities, they need to be held accountable at election time. 

That Republicans support big business and the Democrats support individual workers is no surprise. This is the first crisis felt by all Americans with such far reaching effects. Being optimistic, let’s say a vaccine is developed quickly and life returns quickly to close to its pre-pandemic rhythm. No one will ever forget that when a crisis hit, government was called on to solve it. No matter whether you have a righty Republican’s healthy mistrust of government or a lefty Democrat’s exuberant trust of government, responding to catastrophes is what governments need to be prepared to do. To the extent we are not prepared, it’s time to make a mental note for the future.  

We need to care about the winners and losers of the first stimulus for two major reasons. First, the first time a big bill is passed, it sets the cap on what will be passed in future legislation. The stimulus was the bigest gun Congress could fire in defense of the US. Future legislation could go bigger, but if the infection rate doesn’t decline, and if a vaccine isn’t discovered quickly, the gun wasn’t big enough. Once the infection rate declines a bit, we can expect more politics, more friction, slower decision-making and less powerful effects from the next rounds of legislation.  

Second, when in crisis and you have to negotiate, you resort to your biggest wants. We need to work to ensure the environment, education, youth, poor, infrastructure and essential workers are front of mind, as we continue responding to this crisis and for the next one.  

 The macroeconomic effects of this global shock will almost certainly be felt for decades. China’s claim of a V-shaped recovery seems overblown for China, so the odds of that happening in the US are slim. A big drop is rarely followed by an equally big increase. Make a gun with your left hand. A gun-shaped recovery seems more optimistically realistic. The thumb is the drop, and the pointer finger is the recovery. In other words,  return to normalcy will likely come slowly as winners build their strength and losers lose even more. 

Pete my friend’s worst fear seems right now to be untrue. It’s still early days understanding this virus, but if it mutates, come back annually in winter or never leaves and keeps mutating, the harm to lives and economies will return annually as well. The Spanish Flu came back a second time and killed more people in the second wave than the first. Right now, rumblings from scientists are that this virus isn’t mutating. If it’s not, that means that once there is a vaccine, it will stop the virus completely and allow us to rebuild our economies before they impoverish too many people. 

The question we should be asking ourselves in the moments we can see beyond the immediate crisis is this. Are we happy with the winners and losers Congress chose to create with the largest economic stimulus bill in the history of the world? 

John Heintz is based in Chicago.

[allen-howell]

What is Freedom?

What most working class Americans possess is nothing like true freedom. They are kept just comfortable enough so that they will continue to serve as cogs in the machinery—but their productivity has been harnessed in the same way as has the productivity of those lower down in the pecking order who work 40 or more hours per week and yet still must apply for public assistance. Using data by the U.S. BLS, the average productivity per American worker has increased approximately 400% since 1950. The productivity of the labor force has increased dramatically, but wages have been uncoupled from that productivity—starting at around the Nixon era. From top to bottom—from the highest paid to the lowest paid wage earners (those who actually work)—we receive a meager fraction of the true fruits of our labor. Our wages, adjusted for inflation, are nothing like 400% higher than wages were in 1950. The number of hours we work per week also is not 400% lower. The American dream is predicated on the bedrock principle that hard work pays off. We have been taught to believe that a) the harder a person works, b) the more skill and talent a person possesses, and c) the more ability a person has to work well with others; the more success each such person ought to be able to enjoy. That’s what the concept of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness means to most Americans. Most people who “want to make American great again” probably would accept that definition.

The fat cats who own banks, corporations, governments, and so forth, have figured out how to keep us working their fields (so to speak) in an increasingly profitable manner from 1950 until now. They have figured out how to make our slice of the pie narrower and narrower, although we are the ones producing the pie and helping it to increase in size relative to the overall U.S. population. Even those of us who have figured out how to start our own businesses end up paying most of our profits to the fat cats at the top because smaller businesses must compete on price with publicly traded businesses who are unfairly favored by all three branches of the government. Therefore, small businesses are not able to afford to pay employees substantially more than big corporations pay employees because of the economy of scale created by the unlevel playing field that was becoming the new status quo as Nixon and his Supreme Court appointees began to work things out. They managed to fix things so that “our wealth circuit got plugged into our political circuit.” Government officials who work for the fat cats (pretty much all of them regardless of their political stripes) have continued to rig the game against the little guy. Because of high interest rates, low corporate tax rates, and exorbitant pay for top-level managers, we all end up working for the same few fat cats who exist at the very top of the pyramid.

To keep this system working and to keep us from revolting, all the fat cats need to do is make sure that, in the words of George Orwell, “some animals are more equal than others.” Even though we all get milked, shorn, and butchered, those of us who live in nicer houses in nicer neighborhoods are content to allow those at lower socioeconomic levels to suffer unfairly because their pain doesn’t touch us directly. We watch police brutality on the news but it doesn’t move us. We see public schools that are grossly underfunded and it doesn’t affect us. We have been taught to think of each other as different—depending on race, religion, and so forth. The fat cats have artificially divided us so that we will not work together to fight the oppression that touches all of us—as long as it doesn’t touch us equally: “Well, at least I’m better off than that guy over there.”

When we vote to preserve the status quo (voting for Joe Biden is a good example, but voting for Donald Trump, in a sneakier way, also is), we vote to keep ourselves at our current levels of freedom, which, as I’ve already explained, is not true freedom—because the quality and quantity of our labor has been uncoupled from our wages. The fat cats have figured out how to steal our productivity in the same way that Kings in wealthy kingdoms have stolen from the peasants who work “their” land. We still haven’t awoken to the fact that we all are yoked—that none of us are truly free.

The primary hindrance for all of us is a fear-based belief in scarcity. That’s why austerity is so devastating. “How you gonna pay for that?” We have failed to adjust our expectations higher as productivity has improved. This belief plays right into the hands of the fat cats. In this vastly wealthy country, there is enough for everyone to live well without exhausting the resources of the planet and without bullying other countries. We do not have to live in the world of Charles Dickens. But the fat cats have figured out how to keep the mid-level frogs on simmer so that they won’t align themselves with the increasingly desperate frogs who are being cooked at higher temperatures.

The way out of this dilemma is probably not going to be as simple as “Vote Blue No Matter Who.” As George Carlin points out: “Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU.” The only hope to fix this mess and get our productivity hooked back up to our wages is to reduce the influence of the fat cats who together control the planetary economic system. UNPOPULAR OPINION (at least to the fat cats): WHEREAS, money is the predominant way to control this planet; and WHEREAS, the fat cats possess most of the money; THEREFORE, we need to remove most of their money from them. Until we do, they will retain their influence and easily rig the next system—whether capitalism or communism. The real problem is how money flows and who controls that flow.

The people who are talented and industrious still deserve to be compensated in proportion to their talent and industry—particularly if their high ethical standards match their talent and industry. In a just system, those who would inevitably succeed at the highest levels should be able to live very well, as long as their high standard of living would not require others to live in squalor. Collectively, humanity would need to agree not to exploit and prey on each other and not to exploit the planet. We would need to agree that hard work and talent should pay off but that, at certain income levels, most of the surplus wealth of individuals and of corporations should be used to fund infrastructure and other items that can be clearly justified as beneficial for the common good. Banks and corporations should be limited in size and scope and occupations and industries that exist primarily to skim wealth from regular people should be abolished. The fat cats cannot hope to spend even a fraction of their wealth in ways that benefit them personally so we all should admit that, most of all, their wealth has been used to control the rest of us—their wars, their diseases, their “cures,” and their need for there to be so many of us all crowded together in utter dependence on them and on their systems.

Will the fat cats agree to all of this? Will their puppet politicians write and enforce the laws that would strip their masters of power? In short, can there be a solution that happens at the ballot box—or will the voter revolution that some envision end up with torches and pitchforks (or assault rifles and missiles) after all? If George Carlin was right, we must resign ourselves to our fate: “It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.” He was referring to our educational system that now indoctrinates us in ways that make it easy for our masters to keep controlling us. If he was right, we need to educate ourselves in some other, better way so that we can stand up in unity with our fellow wage-earners and come to some agreements that will not allow for future predation. If Carlin is right, the fat cats will never agree with us. As Frederick Douglass stated: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” For the demand to be made in a way that foregoes bloodshed, everyone who works for a living will need to understand that we’re all in this together. We will need to come to an understanding that is based on the underlying principles of mutual abundance and justice. We will need to overcome our predatory instincts and allow our best motives to come to the front.

Carlin was right about our education system. Not only is education terrible at educating everyone from all walks of life, it is intentionally so. Those on the higher rungs of life have long been taught how to exploit others rather than being taught how to create a rising tide that could lift all ships. Our fat cat masters know where the weak place is in their vicious circle. If people could be truly educated instead of being indoctrinated, everything would change. If viable solutions are available and humanity continues down its predatory and mutually exploitative path, it is because we will be unable to discover the truths that are hidden in plain sight.

[ebeegroup-blog]

ABOUT EBEE GROUP

EBee Group is a registered technology organization in Australia, a company with operations worldwide with software design orders from all continents. At the same time, it is also one of the first teams to dive into Blockchain technology research into practice. EBEE GROUP focuses on exploiting Blockchain platform for enterprise management, human resource management and researching on applying blockchain technology into securities to enhance transparency, convenience, fast and empower people. use.

II BACKGROUND BLOCKCHAIN ​​WORLD. - Speaking of Blockchain technology most people think of Bitcoin, Ripple, Ethereum ... or collectively called Cryptocurrency ...., but this is only a very small aspect of blockchain technology. In fact, no one has fully realized the potential of Blockchain technology and no company has claimed that they have done that. In the context of people in the world thinking that the field of Cryptocurrency is representing Blockchain, it is completely wrong. - Every day on the planet, there are many companies born and bring with it a certain type of Crypto with a future-oriented orientation with the promise of a very high price, but they do not make it. necessary and sufficient conditions for it to increase prices and can keep that price stable. - Many people are doubting the honesty of blockchain as many of the poor crypto issuers are making them lose most of their money invested. - In fact, the blockchain has not brought many benefits to humans when its potential is very large. - Governments' currencies are devalued and inflation rates are huge, military wars and economic wars are everywhere, making people insecure and tend to accumulate a fortune. products that they can take anywhere.  Recognizing the limitations of the 4.0 industry landscape and, more specifically, Blockchain blockchain technology EBee Group has been one of the leading companies to research and develop applications “all in one. ”To bring blockchain technology closer to life, and to show the world that the Industrial Revolution 4.0 has become clearer, less ambiguous as people say.

III VISION The EBee Group vision statement sets out the most important key goals for our platform. By pointing out the main goal for this platform allows our top management team to develop the Company's effective strategy to achieve the stated target strategy. With a unique vision statement, each member of the team unanimously and working effectively up to 200% of the strength and intelligence. “Build a broad, global, member-based financial platform, focusing on utilities, building financial knowledge, and building a life-long secure business network.” IV GOAL EBee Group aims to become the world's leading provider of financial solutions, one of the first companies to apply Blockchain technology in payment and utilities to bring sustainable prosperity. Along with that we stimulate the potential and effective application of human creativity in the era of technology 4.0. Always pioneering as a bridge between the intellect and the place of application with the great purpose of bringing technology into deeper real life. EBee Group is committed to fulfilling our goal vision in ways that respect ethical values, integrity and respect for all people and empower members, communities and partners. Our management team will work with full commitment, dedication and trust to uphold, develop our vision statement. We are ready to cooperate and receive the incidents of people who share our vision to build the foundation and make our dreams come true.

V OPERATION 1: To start implementing the plan, vision and goals of EBee Group, realize that in the current period of strong communication technology development, Bigdata is the most important and indispensable condition of a company. Dynamic economy. According to our research, internet users in the world account for 90% of using social media in one form or another, more than 50% of internet users find products they need instead of go to where they sell. So we think, a social network was created to attract users with more prominent utilities than all the existing social networks in the world today. That's why we launched the social network EBeego. Our next goal is to upgrade this social network to an expanded version with full features integrated in it, which is a miniature society, where you and global internet users can search. everything that we call it "living the full day with EBeego" In the social networking app EBeego we develop leading technologies so that you and everyone no longer have to worry about problems that social networks are currently unable to solve. + EBeego is built on blockchain platform, where your account cannot be hacked by hackers because of distributed data. EBeego exists and operates forever forever even if the EBee Group is no longer available or no longer in business. + With EBeego users no longer concerned about your privacy being compromised, even we as the founders of EBeego will not be able to read messages or compromise your account.

2: In the EBeego system we consider it a miniature society, so there is a need for goods, so the EBee Group integrates into this platform a synchronized system called a closed ecosystem. With a closed ecosystem this will give users the full features they need for their lives. + In particular, we understand that a small society needs money and that money must be liquidated quickly, with good security, with stable price growth, and confidence for users. That's why EBee Group in Q1 2019 launched Bee Coin experiments with code (BEE). And build a separate prospectus for Bee Coin + Not only does the EBee Group (EBEE GROUP) issue their own tokens, there are many other technology companies in the world that also issue their own tokens, but the problem is that the liquidity is not attractive. Therefore, EBEE GROUP focuses most of its human resources on research and application of BPAY services, with the aim of the best liquidity, fastest, safest. + Moreover, EBEE GROUP understands that a Crypto cannot become valuable by itself, just as gold cannot become a precious metal itself or Bitcoin does not automatically become a most valuable Crypto. In order for such inanimate things to be valid, it depends largely on the will of man. Aware of this, EBEE GROUP develops the trading platform in which Bee Coin is the leading, and also accepts altcoins and transactions, however, we must ensure compliance with our strict regulations. Bee Exchange is a decentralized exchange with remarkable fast transaction speeds, processing orders up to millions of transactions per second, even we aim to charge no fees. EBEE GROUP has also built a separate mechanism for Bee Exchange for coin, hold coin and altcoin traders who want to list on Bee Exchange.

+ EBEE GROUP is currently researching and applying Blockchain into the field of intellectual property to submit to lawmakers to protect Stratup with great ideas, inventions ahead of time ... + EBEE GROUP also understands that not only make money, the entertainment needs of people are huge, so we take a breakthrough path into the game entertainment industry and also apply blockchain in management and release. , even game design…. VI HOW ARE WE SUCCESS? 1: EBee Group understands that doing business is like forming a party. To succeed that enterprise must have a credo, guideline as a guideline for action, taking the purpose as a leading development goal. Besides, depending on the time and the world economic situation, specific short-term or long-term strategies and strategies will be developed so that solutions can be transferred to keep up with the development of the world. Take lessons from the world's leading big companies before and now are just names that no one remembers just because they didn't change. 2: We are the pioneers in the research and application of blockchain in practice when the world knows about blockchain less than 1% of the population. 3: EBEE GROUP brings together a lot of technological talents and is constantly moving, constantly recruiting. 4: EBee Group is committed to fulfilling our goal vision in ways that respect ethical values, integrity and respect for all people and empower members, communities and partners. . Our management team will work with full commitment, dedication and trust to uphold, develop our vision statement. We are ready to cooperate and receive the incidents of people who share our vision to build the foundation and make our dreams come true. 5: Trust is the foundation for all businesses and industries. Blockchain is the evolution of value exchange and the revolution of trust because. It allows organizations to continually establish trust and transparency on a large scale. It will eliminate a large number of intermediaries. It is trust that will become the most important factor in the digital era, helping business transactions follow a much simpler model - a peer-to-peer transaction model (users transact with each other).

VII DIFFERENCE At EBee Group, we will always make a difference and move according to the trend, needs and tastes of the market. It is a bridge between trained Members and qualified investors, or a bridge between service providers and those in need of service. All are active in our platform, a pioneering and innovative platform "Better, Quicker, Transparent". With Blockchain 4.0 (EBEE GROUP), it will be a great user experience, in which you are free to show your intelligence and ability to make money. We build a strong and healthy EBee Group community suitable for the EBee Network ecosystem itself (Standards will be determined by our experts).

[machiyuu-wishes]

The reason Sharing Can certainly Power the Future of Marketing

Advertising and marketing have always been regarding the sharing in addition to spreading of ideas, so that the mediums we want to communicate with have got changed, consequently has the dynamics of expressing. Bryan Kramer’s insightful plus perceptive e-book, Shareology needs a broad forward-thinking look at the aspect of giving in the get up of existing trends inside communication, technological know-how, and people psychology and enables extrapolate the impact these adjustments will have in marketing. He's already produced a label for himself with his very influential perform in the electronic digital marketing room and his starting of the #H2H business movements (inspired simply by his prior book There is not any B2B as well as B2C: It is very Human to Human #H2H). Despite his or her busy schedule, Kramer was sort enough to resolve a few questions relating to his ebook and provide also deeper perception regarding locations I thought all of our readers could be particularly considering. As expression continues to enjoy a bigger and even bigger function in the way online marketers interact with stakeholders across programmes, understanding new ways to make your content and company more individuals will become more and more important. Kramer has prevailed in developing a book that may be both an easy task to connect with together with well worth selling.

1. Once you say “being human implies being shareable, ” exactly how do you think a new reality will probably influence advertising and marketing specifically?

Enabling employees to express with their own experiences externally (not just re-tweeting or advertising company-sponsored content) can be potent. We know just how shareable tips are, and allowing people to share their particular stories independently channels for your brand, product or service, or customs is an impressive form of the briefing. It’s trustworthy content that you simply don’t have to generate and it may be in your backside pocket! In terms of employee remonstrance, company market leaders often inquire the wrong query about negative feedback and sociable: “How will i get very own employees to share with you my tips? ” The particular question they should be asking will be, “How am I able to help them show their own material? ” A lot of people want to aid but will just be inspired whenever they feel their particular company stock shares a vested interest in these. Your individuals can be your very best advocates; they will care about your personal brand and also share their very own experiences, however, need guardrails to be sure these are definitely safe, hence setting up sharing guidelines as well as making it possible for them to promote safety is important.

2. Inside the section called “Being a pacesetter in the Individual Economy, ” you go by all of the features required, which usually of these can you find vital to setting up leadership on the new H2H economy?

Completely, most importantly top quality is agreement. Empathy: To be able to understand the over emotional makeup associated with other people; talent in treating people today according to all their emotional side effects. I forecast that emotionally charged intelligence can be increasingly beneficial as your society moves along with robot technology. Regardless of how sophisticated systems get, it will probably never manage to emulate often the miracle in the human brain as well as the ability to prove the features listed above. More specifically, it will never ever be able to exhibit human agape for a contextual moment.

3. “The our economy’s progress will be stagnated by ‘business as usual’ until buyers (en masse) force companies to improve outside their whole comfort specific zones. ”

How would you see that panning out at the moment? What aspects of marketing will probably be most considerably affected by these kinds of changes? The online world of Stuff is a scientific shift here is taking place right this moment where bodily devices are increasingly being digitally attached to create more style. According to Gartner, there will be practically 26 tera- devices online of Factors by 2020. Technology leaders like MICROSOFT and Alternate have been working away at this for quite some time. In fact, Picón even should go so far as in order to call the following evolution the exact “Internet regarding Everything. ” I chatted to Blair Christie, primary marketing official of Cisco, about this in an of this is my company PureMatter’s Substance interview. She referred the concept, while in the context of value, and how that changes the facial skin of enterprise and our life as a whole: Online of Anything is basically another wave. It has how consumers, process, records, and everything is connecting in a fashion that hasn’t taken place before. As an example, we think we’re connected nowadays, but lower than 1 percent of the world is in fact connected to the Net. Today that certainly is less than a couple of billion people. By 2020 it will be near 5 billion. Right now something like 20 to twenty-five billion the drinks is connected to the Internet— by 2020 close to 55 billion items will be attached. That’s impressive! We’re previously having machine-to-machine or thing-to-thing doing lots of interacting, still, we will be discovering more people-to-machine, Machine-to-people, and also people-to-people hooking up and supplying more value because of connection as compared to we’ve ever before seen just before.

you may also be interested in content sharing sites

4. Exactly why do you think it truly is that makes have this kind of a hard time getting “human? ” How might that they best get over these obstructions?

Consumers are puzzled. With an enormous 93% involving communication according to nonverbal body gesture, that results in just 7 percent left to clarify verbally everything we really necessarily mean. So why cannot we ensure it is simple for those to understand what precisely we’re offering, so they can quickly share most of their experiences as well as the value many people felt together with others? More to the point, why is it this what we will marketing frequently does not arrange to true consumer activities? I don’t care everything that language everyone speak, who also your company is or simply what communication you’re trying to send, most of us need to communicate more real human. Too often most of us complicate what we’re attempting to say. As luck would have it, as the world becomes a lot more customer-owned along with socially empowered, we keep seeing difficult, redundant, over-technical, and over-thought mass information getting forced out ~ and shed – in the ether. Can it be really having harder to be able to stand out, with so many facts and information on the market or will be the answer in order to clearly point out what you signify, in clear human words and phrases? The fact is the lines can be extremely far confused now involving the “B2C” (Business to Consumer) and “B2B” (Business for you to Business) promotion segments of which it’s challenging to differentiate. I actually can’t let you know how many gatherings I’ve held it's placed in where acronyms are used frequently that my brain ultimately ends up spending a great deal time wanting to decipher whatever they mean as opposed to focusing on typically the thoughts seeking to be presented. Acronyms get their place, although not when they change communicating information to somebody else who may well not understand your individual world packed with capital words. We all must think just like the consumers we could, putting themselves in the attitude of the customer instead of trying to get rid of.

5. Through the book one talk about the importance of brands to behave more like normal individuals, but on page 147 you interestingly speak about that people may also be becoming similar to brands:

“[The study] incorporated something many of us don’t assume about—that your definition of doing it yourself (their personal brand) includes a large effect on what these shares. ” Are those two factors specific or do you imagine they are converging on several new positions towards a new middle surface? Building an individual brand certainly is not just essential celebrities in addition to high-profile business people. It’s very important for businesses to realize that strength among their employees and to nutriment it. To get a brand to do something more human means adding their individuals out the entrance. We can achieve this task much more for our companies once we empower every individual within those to build a private brand plus share from that. But we are not quite presently there yet. It’s going to “take your village” to really make the mindset move necessary for organizations to adopt this concept. Still as completely, new technologies continue to keep shape just how we hook up and talk, we’ll observe this take place on a bigger scale.

6. Is there virtually any room regarding traditional, top-down, broadcast mass media in this innovative democratic way of life of spreading; or could new participatory and decentralized methods of connection edge you're old protect of marketing entirely?

We are now living in an omnichannel world. All play a role at most touch issue. How we ingest media changes, but the human being sensed will usually need to be achieved in the very same ways some people always have (i. e. noise, sight, feel, smell). The promotion will not alter overnight, but eventually, it will certainly become more concierge-like where folks will assume immediacy and will get personalized recommendations more quickly from men and women they rely on. Support can happen much more swiftly en masse thru Watson-like unnatural intelligence. Yet one thing will continue to be; the shareable contextual times where most people experience thoughts (i. at the. joy, frivolity, sadness) is only going to be produced by us human beings. It’s most of these moments that will make marketing crucial now including the future.

[theemberarchive]

Life on Haakha

The quality of life for most people on haakha is comparable to the life of a human from around the year 1000 AD. Farmers till fields, herders tend flocks, hunters and trappers provide meat and skins, weavers create clothing, woodworkers build furniture, authors write books, and so on. Meals are cooked over open fires. Entertainment comes from a lute player, a group of singers, or perhaps comedic thespians. 

Parents typically raise children, although in some places extended families are common. Many children attend some kind of school until the age of about twelve, when they learn a craft. Some students, usually those in larger cities, go on to higher learning. 

Life expectancy varies wildly, but those who survive to the age of thirty can expect to live to at least sixty. It’s rare but not unheard of for someone to live to be ninety or even one hundred. Those fortunate enough to be rich can partake of the elixir of eternity, and might live twice that long—or longer. 

The dead are usually buried or cremated.

Communities

Communities spring all across the world of haakha in many forms. Whether their a small town of stone work with thatched roofs, a series of chambers and tunnels carved into a cliffside, or even fly high in the sky, one can almost always find a city almost anywhere in the world. 

As the world is a dangerous place, many settlements are built with some kind of defense in mind. Almost all settlements that can afford to build a large wall of some kind around them, so as to protect them from rampaging monsters. Most other settlements tend to have a heavily fortified and durable structure called a sanctuary built so that if a dangerous storm or creature comes and stays for an extended period of time, the citizens can bunker down in relative safety. Although large cities exist here and there (usually near coasts or along rivers, but not always) most people live in small villages. Typically, a village’s population ranges from ten to about two hundred people. A town might be anywhere from a bit bigger than a bit bigger than a village to a few thousand people. A city usually have at least 5,000 people, and plenty have more. The largest cities (not including the ancient pre-cataclysm cities like Thalarion) have 500,000 or more, though these are the exception, with a city of about 20,000 or 30,000 people typically being a metropolis by most standards. The largest city in the world is Thalarion, the city of a thousand wonders, with a population of 3,500,000 people (counting several hive-minds as ‘individuals’, not multiple individuals). 

Almost every settled community has a wall of some kind to defend itself. Haakha is a dangerous place after all. Communities–particularly the walled variety–have a force of dedicated defenders, often double-timing as law enforcement for whatever leads the community. In cities, a dozen or so guards for every thousand residents is the usual minimum.

Life in a City

Life in cities is, generally, better than in towns and villages, with most city dwellers have access to more of everything beyond simple necessities– greater variety of foods, more education, more kinds of entertainment, more health care, more experience with the supernatural, and a wider range of cultures. City dwellers are usually employed in occupations beyond the production of food (farming, hunting, herding, and the like). Food is usually shipped in from surrounding villages. Instead, the people work as clerks, scribes, cooks, messengers, crafters, artisans, scholars, and more, but the typical resident is a laborer. Laborers include porters, packers, diggers, movers, builders, repairers, sanitarian workers, and so on. 

Any sort of standard item or service can likely be purchased in a city. Many cities have their own specialties as well, such as a city known for its textiles, its metals, and so on. 

Cities have schools for young children and very often a trade school or university. Sometimes there are many different temples and churches for a variety of different religions. 

City dwellers rarely know everyone in their town, and thus are usually more accustomed to strangers and outsiders.

Life in a town or village

In towns and villages, residents have limited access to education, entertainment, and so on. There may be limitations on healthcare and food variety as well. Most people in these communities are farmers, herders, hunters, or gatherers– in other words, focused on producing food. 

Townsfolk, in particular villagers, are usually extremely suspicious of newcomers. Travel isn’t very common, so outsiders don’t show up in the community all that often. Traveling merchants come and go occasionally, but even they come with enough regularity so as not to be outright strangers. 

Towns and villages, often fairly isolated, develop their own customs and rituals. It’s not at all odd for such a community to have its own unique form of religion.

Class

Most communities across Haakha have a strict class structure. Although some places differ, in most places there is an aristocracy, a middle class, a lower class, and a slave class. The details can vary, as can how one’s class is determined. Most of the time, however, the class into which you are born is the class in which you will remain for you entire life. 

Thus, the aristocracy are born to their station and have greater wealth and greater access to food, health care, and other resources than anyone else. They also have authority over those beneath them. Sadly, it is the rare aristocrat who does not abuse these advantages. Nobles are aristocrats with titles, such as baron, duchess, and so on. 

The middle and low classes are usually different only in the amount of wealth they possess. Middle–class residents of cities and towns often have their own house, for example, while their lower class counterparts live in communal buildings or on the street. These classes have varying rights, but in the end they are almost subject to the aristocracy. It is possible for a middle–class person to be wealthy or even extremely wealthy, but not technically an aristocrat. This, however, is rare, in that the class system is constructed to keep non–nobles from accumulating much wealth and because in some places, it is possible to buy one’s way into the upper class. 

Slaves are those captured in war or, more likely, the children of slaves. They can also be members of the lower class that have accumulated high debt and no way to pay. Lastly, sometimes criminals are sentenced to be slaves. Slaves have few, if any, rights and can be bought and sold. In some communities, slavery is limited–you might be a slave until you have worked of you debt–but most of the time, it is a permanent status. In a few places, slaves have absolutely no rights and can be killed without repercussion.

Relationships

Although there are many types of relationships, we’ll focus here on the long-term romantic relationships, and in most of these, people are encouraged to choose their partner freely. Couples co-own resources, businesses, or whatever is in their possession. If they choose to split, they work out the division of property by themselves or with the assistance of a mediator. Arranged marriages or the like can happen, but usually only among a few specific classes–among the nobility, slaves, and mage clans. 

Couples of all genders, sizes, and sexual orientations are common. Two-partner, heterosexual relationships the majority, but hey are aren’t the norm, per se. It is actually quite common for people to participate in commitment ceremonies. In this, a large group of adults make commitments to one another, living together and raising children as a communal family. This particularly common among groups of soldiers or, slightly less, among adventuring parties. 

Not everyone is a relationship makes formal commitment to each other, but those who do have number of choices. Ceremonies can be private or public, and take the form of handfasting, feasting, exchanging goods and services, or holding a large, elegant gathering in the presence of an officiant. In many cases, living together for longer than a year is considered the same as having a commitment ceremony.

Economy

On haakha, traders and merchants are some of the bravest folk around, for they are willing to move goods from one community to the next. Travel is dangerous, and communities are often unwelcoming. Merchants almost universally travel in bands with guards overland or in sturdy craft along the coast or rivers. In some places, they have organized into trading companies that help get the right goods to the right places, more out of the need for security than anything else. 

Kals are the primary currency used in Haakha. Their popularity started in Thalarion, and it quickly spread from there as Thalarion adventurers traveled. Named after the material their crafted from, Kals are crafted by ancient machines out of Kalrite (the only way it can be worked) that the Thalarion’s of ages ago found in various locations. Thalarion is not the only nation to possess these Kal minters, which has only added to their popularity. 

While Kals are not the only currency in use, they remain the standard currency in most places. It’s not as if Kals are important, just that they are an easily understood unit that represents barter. In other words, when the butcher tells the woman in the dairy that a certain amount of meat is worth 2 Kals, she knows that she can get it with 2 Kals worth of cheese as payment, even if no Kals are used. 

Kals come in two varieties. The most common is the Kalrite bar, the one simply called Kals. The second is the Kalrite coin (Kal coins for short), which is 100X of a standard Kalrite bar.

[giancarlonicoli]

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Salo News Day

Regular readers will know I am a cynic. Try writing a Daily for over two decades and not be – and events over the last 24 hours underline that fact. Indeed, you could call it a “Salo News Day” in reference to the controversial Italian film “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom”, a loose adaptation of the 1785 novel by the Marquis de Sade. As Wikipedia puts it: “The film explores themes of political corruption, consumerism, authoritarianism, nihilism, morality, capitalism, totalitarianism, sadism, sexuality, and fascism.” In other words, a typical day at work in the markets of 2021.

After all, the Wall Street Journal reports “World Bank Cancels Flagship ‘Doing Business’ Report After Investigation”, frustrating to economists who rely on it. The rub is: “Chinese officials in 2018 were eager to see their ranking improve, and so Mr. Kim and Ms. Georgieva and their staff held a series of meetings to discuss ways that the report’s methodology could be altered to improve China’s rankings.” So untrustworthy World Bank data – and no consequences; a World Bank boss with a stained reputation – and no consequences; and an IMF boss with a stained reputation – and no consequences. That makes it two in a row for the IMF, with the previous one now running the ECB.

At the Fed, “Powell orders ethics review after Fed presidents disclosed multimillion-dollar investments”. Somehow this ethical violation on the part of the people running the global financial system passed them by until now. Yet is this really rare? How about if a rate-setter at a central bank told you over lunch about the land their company was snapping up for development? That happens - just not at the Fed. (As far as I know.)

One can openly trade stocks based on legislation one writes if a member of Congress: House speaker Pelosi is just one example of many. How about the swirls of corruption around the Trump administration, or Hunter Biden’s “Mr 10%” emails subject to an FBI investigation? A grand jury just indicted Michael Sussmann, the lawyer accused of making false statements during the 2016 presidential campaign to slander then-candidate Trump; and as Glenn Greenwald notes, this key story was then sugar-coated at the New York Times by the journalist whose ‘Russiagate’ book Sussmann helped to sell. Moreover, this is hardly just an American problem. What about the scandals around the revolving door, and wallpaper, of the British BoJo administration, former French president Sarkozy, or former German chancellors working for Russia? And have you ever been to an emerging market?

Even in terms of the most existential issues, the same selfishness prevails. We are seeing a flood of money into ESG funds, but Morningstar data published in February shows 256 funds repurposed or rebranded as sustainable in 2020, up from 179 the year before. In Q1 2021, it was 127. Morningstar states: “Transforming existing funds into sustainable strategies is a way for asset managers to leverage existing assets to build their sustainable-funds business, thereby avoiding having to create funds from scratch.” Repurposed funds typically just add terms such as ‘sustainable’, ‘ESG’, ‘green’, or ‘SRI’ to their names. Yet 40-years of the same neoliberalism, then a burst of idealism and Covid-19, have also seen energy prices exploding towards recessionary levels, matched by worries over food prices. The energy spike is likely to force the dirtiest of fuels to be used again, and the economic domino effects are just starting to be felt in an already-unhappy populace as we move towards winter (and more lockdowns?). Keep your fingers crossed for mild weather and Russian generosity on EU gas supply. Maybe Mr Schroeder can put in a good word?

Overall, we may need to coin a new markets term. “Immoral hazard”. Indeed, if 40 years of neoliberalism has rotted everything away, how exactly is liberal democracy not to fail, as some fear? The ancient Greeks, no longer taught in the West, argued government moves in cycles: aristocracy > timocracy > oligarchy > democracy > tyranny (Plato); monarchy > anarchy (Aristotle); democracy > aristocracy > monarchy, and their degenerate forms of ochlocracy > oligarchy > tyranny (Polybius), which seems to fit better.

Of course, that’s why we now have ‘Build Back Better’. However, it needs to get a move on - winter is coming. Years ago, I posited it would be far easier to sell ‘Build Bombs Better’ (i.e., national-security mercantilism) than social welfare. That fits the bill given AUKUS and military-industrial policy is now in play. Which has upsides and downsides. More jobs: but China now says Australia will be targeted in a nuclear war even if it does not have nukes. This morning, both the US and Australia underlined their commitment to strengthen ties with Taiwan, raising tensions further.

AUKUS also eclipsed yesterday’s launch of the EU’s Indo-Pacific strategy, which appears to revolve around trade deals as if we are back in 1995 or 2005. Relatedly, I pronounce AUKUS as “Orcs”, as in Lord of the Rings. Some might see this as a contrast to the perceived ‘Elves’ in Europe. Unfortunately, it is more a case of ‘Hobbits’, the French Bagginses aside. Notably, if not by German leadership, the EU parliament yesterday adopted by a 570-61 vote a new position paper on China, concluding: “We must not be naive when dealing with China. Whilst China is an important trading partner, it is also a systemic rival that poses a challenge to our way of life and the liberal world order. Economic gains should not make us blind to the Chinese Communist Party's ambitious political agenda…”  

China also reacted to the ‘Orcs’ by officially applying to join CPTPP, the trade pact Australia is in: on the same day their press talked about nuking it. There are various takes on this latest move in our Great Game, but here is one more to note. The NAFTA 2.0 deal the US struck with Canada and Mexico gives the US veto rights over either country’s entry into a trade deal with a non-market economy: guess what China is in US eyes? Guess which trade pact Canada and Mexico are members of? And guess who therefore gets veto on Chinese entry into it?

Meanwhile, China, which still teaches the ancient Greeks in ancient Greek, and is very aware of the cycles of government, faces up to, as Bloomberg puts it, the “Nightmare Scenario” of an “Uncontrolled Crash” at Evergrande. The property behemoth is now to hold an auction 30 September to raise funds for investors who bought its wealth management products (paying 13%!), effectively offering cheap apartments in lieu of cash. Yet this is exactly the kind of forced margin-sales that can drag down prices in the whole property market. Things clearly can’t carry on like this; and a crash surely cannot be allowed to happen; and yet a Western-style ‘rich-first’ bailout looks incompatible with Common Prosperity. Build Back, yes - but how, exactly?

In more traditional market terms we also have the traditional looming US debt-ceiling Kabuki; triple-witching of US equity options today; and a backdrop of slightly higher US Treasury yields and a stronger USD due to a US retail sales beat helped by a downwards revision to the previous month’s data.

Now go enjoy another Salo news day. Happy Friday.