The Skynet funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn, at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. eastern time, August 29. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.Haha. Money is fake.
-The Governor of Gulleevohrnya
Some investment managers said the crush of mid-day selling was reminiscent of Oct. 19, 1987, when computer programs designed to protect investors from losses provoked a crush of sell orders that sent the Dow down 508 points, or a record 23 percent.
"It feels a lot like '87, when the machines took over," said Charlie Smith, chief investment officer for Fort Pitt Capital in Green Tree.
-The Post-Gazette
I have previously expressed sympathy for crackpot atavists like Ron Paul who hope to return to a gold standard currency. Of course, a better plan yet would be to make a means of exchange that is backed by productive labor. Rather than saying, oh, an hour of your time is worth $7.99 and you are forbidden to eat the leftover bagels at the end of your shift, let's say, oh, $1 is the equivalent of an hour of manual labor and go from there. How's that for a radical reordering of values. The amount of currency backed by the amount of actual work.
Anyway, I guess I have some money in the market, somehow, but fortunately do not give a fuck. Oh no, my Roth IRA! The lesson of yesterdays robotripping sell-off is there is no such thing as money, and we are waaaaayyyyy down the rabbit hole.
14 comments:
are you surprised at my tears, sir?
U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion.
Money is jargon. It works as long as most people cannot speak the dialect.
Well sure, look at it! Young trophy wife, I mean, in the parlance of our times, owes money all over town, including to known pornographers-- and that's cool, that's cool-- but I'm saying, she needs money, and of course they're gonna say they didn't get it 'cause she wants more, man, she's gotta feed the monkey, I mean--hasn't that ever occurred to you...?Sir?
The amount of currency backed by the amount of actual work.
Move to Ithaca and start earning Hours, hippie.
But yeah, given that money is an arbitrary unit of value, I've never actually been able to see the point of the gold standard crowd, since gold is also just some arbitrary, if pretty, metal. It's valuable because we value it. I suppose one can have arguments that it restrains changes in the money supply, since you have to mine more of it or throw it into an event horizon. But this presumes that "money supply" actually means anything, and the goldbugs are usually capitalists who disdain assigning "full market value" to labor anyway.
Seriously, though, typing "billions" instead of "millions" collapses the system? Those old-time telegraph operators must have been flawless.
a co-worker was despondent about the Dow and his 401k yesterday. all worked up and babbling about Glen Beck and the turmoil in Greece.
i said i suspected it was because Wall Street traders are a bunch of excitable morons.
i LOL'ed out loud all the way home when i heard what happened on the car radio.
Anyone who panics that much over a one-hour flux in the average of 30 stocks, picked by the company that prints the Wall Street Journal (impartial observers they!), deserves all the stress they get.
Q: why did the hippie move to Eugene?
A: he heard there were no jobs there.
At least they give you free booze in Vegas.
Bet ya $50 it ain't.
There are many exchanges now in which people trade inequivalent amounts of time, trades which they would be unwilling to make under your standard. We may arbitrarily define what a unit is, but by setting the price of hours all labor (including the manufacture of mudpies, an oft-quoted example regarding the labor theory of value, which is why Marx added the "socially necessary" modifier) the same you are determining floors and ceilings rather than permitting the outcome to emerge as that which people are willing to exchange. But if not prevented, people will inevitably invent money again.
Transcending money. Neat trick.
IOZ, while certainly the attitude you depict of not giving a fuck is the correct one, it seems likely to me that it's an attitude that's much more likely to develop among those from upper-middle class families where (like my own, and, from what you've posted about yourself here, yours) money has never been a real problem, and have the luxury of being able to say "it's only money".
things will change only if all people, or at least the majority of them, realize simultaneously that gold cannot be eaten.
but that is far fetched. however, the concept of basing money on something meaningful and tangible (as in something of inherent value) as opposed to a shiny metal, is extremely important for the socio-economic progress of civilization. if we dont realize that in time, we'll hit a glass ceiling that we wont even know is there.
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