How Things Work, About Stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8


Okay, there is a lot of insight and truth to this but it sounds like a speech straight from United Nations. Reduce consumption, ride a bike to work like in the model society, or People's Republic of North Korea or China.

Their solution: The way to get there is to of course tax the evil corporations.

One thing that is not mentioned is that most of this insanity is driven by the credit bubble. In a fiat money system, you have to spend. Saving wealth is counter-productive. Going into debt works for you. Most of the time anyway.

So it's half-truths leading to bad conclusions.

It honestly wouldn't be a bad idea to model an economy based on something besides consumerism. Capitalism doesn't necessarily mean consumerism and planned obsolescence. The US economy functioned fine for decades based on the principal of selling people quality products designed to last, not cheap junk which either breaks or becomes obsolete within a year. I'm personally sick and tired of the excess of the last two decades. It's quite one thing to use discretionary income on frivolous things. However, the trend the last decade has been people borrowing money from the roof over their head to buy things they really don't need. Having an economy based on this is a surefire recipe for failure in the long term. Housing prices can't continue to rise at double-digit rates in excess of inflation forever.

This isn't Cafe material. It's Underground political discussion material. Closed.