Amazing transitions! Enjoy!

Definitely worth watching if you have 20 minutes. I don’t want to get into too much pertaining to what I think of as, ‘the more controversial aspects,’ of his talk, (that’s what the comments section is for, assumptions provided,) but personally, I found the message, both enlightening, and in some respects, acting as an act of affirmation; his approach, and at least one of his conclusions, and presumptions aside. Just click on the article title to get to the video page, if you are looking at this from the site’s homepage.

I recently came across this video posted on facebook, by one of my “facebook friends.” I hope it puts a grin on your face as well; a touch naive, sure, but utterly charming none the less. Just click on the article title to be taken to the video.

The above quote, by then President Abraham Lincoln, I hope to use as both a poignant reminder, and literary device, to begin a discussion of both points of parity, and points of difference, between socialism, and capitalism, as a means of distributing raw materials, and or manufactured goods.

In this light, it seems in at least one respect, the capitalist, and the socialist share at least one proclivity, and that is that as both are benefited from the work of others, both strive to manage and contain the work of others, to further both their personal means, and their ideological ends.

On it’s surface, one might be tempted to say that the end of the capitalist is, relative to the socialist, self serving, but that would presuppose that the former would not see fit to use his or her gains to benefit hearth, and community, or even share said means with a perfect stranger, should need or want arise. It is a very rare person whom history has judged not to be in such company.

This is not to say that held power has not proved to more that what many, many, people could hold while sustaining even a tepid amount of grace, or as in so many instances, throughout times both past and present, while sustaining even the slightest shred of human decency.

I do not see where power delineates itself between the socialist, and the capitalist, and as such hold those seeking the same in either category, and for its own sake, as suspect, and both, or either, on the whole, as needing to mitigate tendencies toward depravity,

As our analysis begins, it seems the socialist has the metaphorical upper-hand in the area of management, as she or he strives to manage others, and their work, for not only their personal benefit, but also for the benefit of others, and if successful, others often unbeknownst to the worker in question.

I suggest our scenario must be tempered with another point of parity, and promise to return to address said position in relatively short order.

Perhaps, if our socialist, as conceived, is truly successful, we might even say that said ideologue has inspired our worker(s), toward more efficient labor, as more benefit is extracted from, and more directly, and for more people. Ironically, not differing entirely from the early days of American Industrialism, when it was hoped by many capitalists, that the “most goods,” could be manufactured for the most people.

However, I don’t think it’s fair or wise, to label our socialist as utterly altruistic, as self benefit, has been both sought, and at least within our theoretical construct, ensued.

It would also be difficult for me to argue that there is nothing noble in such an approach, as it may well be that we, as of yet, do not have the capacity to service all of our citizenry with the best of all we have technological access to, thus providing the evidentiary framework of the nobility of a system, and the people maintaining it, as the latter seem willing to accept less goods from said system, while in a position to acquire more, and in addition, provide relatively more, to those in want of both capacity, and what many consider necessities.

I have little doubt that many might seek to interject at this point with many varied, and valid arguments, which I by no means mean to dismiss out of hand; issues of property, and ownership, and individual rights, and how they seem inexorably linked under our present system of government, at least in so far as one has reached a somewhat arbitrarily set, age of majority.

It is chiefly for some sake of brevity that I continue unabated, though not necessarily unforlorn to take these matters up again, in the future.

A prominent difference between capitalism as practiced, and socialism as conceived, and in some instances, the tenets of which practiced even among us today. See: Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, and his 10 planks of Communism, one of which is a heavy progressive income tax.

In my opinion, this difference renders down to an issue of “free will,” at least in so far as how each chooses to mitigate poverty, assumptions provided; argumentation as to effective policy, while acknowledged, will not be broached for the purpose(s) of this post.

The difference between choosing to spend earned resources on those less fortunate, or not, as opposed to having one’s wealth, and possibly even then, the lack thereof, taken under the threat of force, and or imprisonment, and moreover, in quantities disproportionate to most of our fellow citizenry, assumptions granted, presents itself to me, as contrary to the mantra of equality, as often perpetuated by those of us capitulating for the same, from an ideological perspective.

I previously promised some further tempering to my position, at one point, and as such, you shall have it.

There seems to me another very telling point of parity between capitalism, and socialism, and that lies in the fact that both, are inclined toward mandatory taxation, although admittedly toward often differing ends, however, this is not meant to gloss over the very stark difference that while both are not disinclined toward threat of force and or imprisonment toward seeking the necessary liquidity to sustain agendas, socialism seems quite content toward justifying disproportionate collection on the basis that the lion’s share of labor may have, and to be fair, often does account for the means by which the capitalist has obtained his/her profits, while discounting not only the efforts of, but also the risks taken, by the entrepreneur initially.

It should also be noted that while capitalism can at least, usually boast toward the reality that it’s laborers have been acquired of their own free will, socialism cannot necessarily do the same, especially if it should achieve it’s end goal, that being the communist state.

Toward that consideration it seems, as both are not recalictrant toward taking what was not earned by them for the purposes of serving their sometimes differing, sometimes similar agendas, perhaps we should begin to consider assessing both systems in terms of trading goods, and deciding ownership, with a strong focus toward the latter, as with it brings what I think I feel is, while a much more entangled web of illusion vs. reality, a scenario no less intriguing as well.

The agrument, if it is one, seems to be far less over whether freedom exists, but rather how much of an illusion of freedom should be maintained, and to what ends should “the government,” or any government play, if any, and where gathered resources should be spent, if anywhere.

I’ve decided to share with you my take, from a business/political perspective, on the deal J.P. Morgan Chase just struck with the U.S. government to take over all of Washington Mutual’s assets, and some of their debt. That’s right, I said only some of their debt.

I’ll start by telling you how the game is supposed to be played. People buy shares in a company. Shares represent ownership of the company itself. If a company has to liquidate, (sell of it’s assets, in an effort to pay its debts,) whether it be forced to do so by the courts, or chooses to do so, because the shareholders decide it is the best route to recouping as much of their investment as possible, the shareholders will at least get what’s left over, after the company’s creditors get their cut, with the idea being that the shareholders at least have a chance of getting a recoup on their investment. I think it is fair to note though, that is not often what happens; often the debts of the company are so great that the bond holders, who are considered creditors, end up owning the company, that is, if the assets involved are too meager so as to pay them off sufficiently. Much of this is contracted ahead of time.
No shareholder in their right mind would prefer this option. It is a measure of last resort. Let’s say you are working for a company like TPG capital who reportedly invested over 7 Billion dollars in an effort to start the revitalization of WAMU, and you find out that WAMU went under, so then you are thinking to myself, wow, we are going to take a very dramatic pinch on this one, but at least the company owns prime real estate in 23 states, to the tune of 5300 locations. That’s a great asset. Worst comes to worst, and we sell it off piecemeal. We have been paying our insurance premiums to Uncle Sam, so they will pick up the customer deposit up the $100,000 per account type. The losers in this version of the game will be the customers that are holding over $100,000 in their accounts, as they will not get reimbursed past $100,000, and the of course everybody loses access to their funds while Uncle Sam gets around to paying off it’s debt. Worse things could happen.

Keep in mind that this isn’t some kind of hand out. This is an insurance policy that the banks pay into to make sure that their customers are not going to lose everything if they mismanage the banks funds like they did at WAMU. It is mandated on their part by the government. Like any insurance company/business, the government should be coming out ahead on the deal, if they are not incompetent, and or corrupt in their fiscal management practices, after all, they have been collecting their premiums for decades.

As you may have heard, however, that is not what happened, the government instead chose to seize WAMU’s assets, and let J.P. Morgan Chase take over.

J.P. Morgan Chase struck a great deal. They get the assets, the customers, the deposits, (which means they can loan money to customers) the land, the locations, and didn’t have to take on the worst debt that WAMU was going to have to content with, such as their senior unsecured debt.

What do the creditors and the shareholders get, as reward for following the American Dream, they get a big fat middle finger stuck right in their face. How come they don’t get anything? Simply because the Feds saw fit to seize the assets instead of letting it default.

Now, you might be asking yourself, isn’t this the kind of madness we would expect from a third world tyrannical dictatorship?

Sorry folks, simple politics. The deposit holders at WAMU far exceeded the stockholders, and we only get one vote per person. The government gets to save it’s insurance money for a rainy day, that’s assuming they haven’t been mismanaging “their” money to begin with, and that’s a big ‘if,’ if you ask me, but you didn’t so I won’t belabor it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s enough to remind you what Congress did with Social Security.

The problem, besides the fact that it’s so against the principles we are supposed to stand for as America, is that the message to corporate America is, - as long as we can save the government money and a little embarrassment, the rules don’t apply to us, the rights of everyday people are ours for the taking.

I’m not too sure, if this is the bunch, you’d want walking with that particular swagger. It’s not like your kids are going to go to school with theirs’, assumptions provided.

Well, as promised, you have my metaphorical two cents. As a bonus to any of my readers who might be worried if their bank, and or investment is next, this is one of the places I go to check on my bank’s financial standing. www.bankrate.com

However, what I heard only once during the past 6 years, were ideas, and or instruction, pertaining to what it means to think critically, as only one class I took even broached the subject, and that was a 200 level Macroeconomics class, I took from Prof. James Craven, at Clark College, in Vancouver, WA.

Okay, now that I have given credit where credit is due, as it was the in-class handout, of his article, Some Elements of Critical Thinking - “Separating the Pepper from the Fly Droppings. that both inspired me as to this topic, and others, but also provided the warp and woof, for what I like to call, “Strategies and Applications for Thinking Critically:”

Strategies and Applications for Thinking Critically

First things first. Let’s focus on being ‘critical.’ I’m starting by telling what being critical DOESN’T mean. Being critical doesn’t mean that because someone within your sphere of influence has made a point, or is attempting to make a point that you either don’t agree with, or anticipate you won’t agree with, that you are honor bound to attack their personal character, and or something as petty as how they present themselves, in an attempt to discredit their social standing, and fluster their gravitas, just because you think you feel you can, as doing so could very well lead to a perfectly respectful debate devolving into a metaphorical grudge match, and people invoking Plato, and other such laments, that would further call into question whether democracy in general, and you in particular should be replaced for a more efficient model.

You know who you are! Change your ways!

Quite frankly, if some egghead is plugging away day and night on how to make my air significantly more breathable, remove pharmaceutical contaminants from my drinking water, or devise some manner of artifice to accommodate the burgeoning toxic load that SEEMS to have resulted from damming the earth, and laying waste to the wetlands, an area that would normally be ideal at filtering out much of our chemical madness. (to be fair, at least the part of our chemical world that is madness) Well, before I ‘digress’ too much, if ’such and so’ sees fit to wear purple shoes with green pants, as an example, that might be a good thing, as at least you’d be able to pick them/they, and their iridescent proclivities out of a crowd, should you want to inquire where you might want to consider relocating your hearth and or home, in an effort to avoid imminent flooding, whether global warming be a natural cycle of ‘nature’ or not.

There is a time and a place for personal attacks based in and on style contents, and fashion statements, and evidently that time and place is a rap contest.

Can’t we all just get along? No seriously,… and, as I’ve heard said, the show must go on…

Separating Correlation from Causation. For those of you who are saying to yourself, “Woe Nelly, they already are separated!” I say, “Very commendable, very commendable.” Here’s your gold star, better yet, I’ll upgrade you to platinum, oo, la, la. (Okay, now imagine you are getting a big shiny star And of course your obligatory pat on the head, — pat, pat — — pat, pat.)

For those of you who might be waiting for me to get on with it, here you go,…I recommend you think of it like a game. The stronger the correlation is purported to be between let’s say, eating sugary foods, and tooth decay, the greater the POSSIBILITY that limiting, and or eliminating sugary foods from your diet will curtail your chew tools from slowly rotting out of your head.Though when we utilize the word “possibility,” it is meant to mean that it is no guarantee, as it may or may not be true. We’ll delve a little deeper into this aspect of causation and correlation in the next post, moreover, and as an example, even if we were able to study every person who ever had tooth decay, (see: elliott-smithtimemachines.com) and every person who does have tooth decay, and were able to ascertain that the only statistically significant correlation was that people with tooth decay ate high sugar content food, that does not NECESSARILY prove that sugar causes tooth decay. Now you might be thinking to yourself that I need the proverbial, “check up from the neck up,” as ‘everybody,’ knows that cavities are “caused,” by eating sweets.

Well, as it turns out there is current research in preventing a person’s capacity to get tooth decay as an adult, by eliminating a bacterial presence in the forming fetus. Last I checked, there was even some effort to work with adults, by utilizing an antibacterial topical agent in toothpaste. So, in terms of keeping your chompers biting, and intact, and discarding what I suspect will be a vigorous debate as to whether mucking about with ‘nature’ in this instance, and for such a purpose, is wise, well, at least until the FDA gets sufficient corporate pressure to relent to our profit making/job creating juggernauts, and continues the ‘great,’ human biochemical experiment that is Americana, there you have a ready example of how what seems to be a cause, very will might not be “a cause,” assumptions provided.

In short, hopefully today’s lesson is patience, carpe diem, certainly, but please position yourself opportunely, as correlation does not necessarily prove causation, it is much rather a relationship to be celebrated in terms of it’s power to solidify better questions, and should you be still pontificating the glow of your platinum star,…well, maybe I’ll find a way to ‘hook’ you on the go around.

Should you feel in my debt, feel free to click on an ad, and then do what comes natural, or leave a comment, or subscribe to an RSS feed, or all three,.. whatever, it’s all good, though I’m most certainly not here to pretend that all are equally “good.”

The next post in this series will delve a little deeper into correlation and causation; specifically some of those wonderful questions I alluded to previously.

Until then…