Artistic Footprint

Most people who live in the western world are either entirely ignorant how the world operates, or have an understanding of political sociology, but blindly believe that it is the best system and should be a world standard.

However, communism, for example, isn’t an evil thing. It’s not something that an evil person thought up in order to herd citizens like cattle for his iron fist. Communism simply says that people work as a community for a common goal, and you relinquish your right of choice in return for loyalty, service, and “steadiness”

Now of course we know this doesn’t work, and there’s a huge amount of repercussions due to communism that involves assimilation, greedy power, genocide, etc. But IN PRINCIPLE, communism isn’t inherently bad.

But I’m not trying to barter communism, but instead discuss a side of capitalism that is subtley mentioned amongst us all, be it in gossip in a coffee shop, or the newest trend for political comedians. Capitalism, again is good in principle. The choices you make dictates your success and wealth. You can be whatever you want to be, and solving problems makes you money.

But capitalism is a parasitic weed. Its inherent design, utilized religiously by the United States, is to be completely unregulated in order to work. This is the “freidmanistic” capitalism. I don’t mean to constantly bash the United States, it just so happens to be that they are a prime example to use.

Because capitalism feeds on solving problems, why not create your own problems, and charge for someone to fix it? A term coined as “planned obsolecsence” is where a product is designed to fail at a certain point in its life, forcing you to become acquainted with it, perceive it as a necessity, then have it cease to function. This would include things like your Ipod, laptop, or, ironically your car. consider that if you were to go to any town north of the 60′ parallel, the only vehicles you see are japanese made vehicles at least 10 years old. We’re talking about the hottest, coldest, hard as fuck wilderness, and yet you don’t see any raised chrome-grilled dodge rams or F-150 harley models. Just beat up, rusting toyotas and hondas, a jeep here and there. Is this because ford and GM don’t see a fiscal interest in sales in the north? or is it because they know that their vehicles simply can’t handle the stresses of that environment, and fear the repercussions of so many unhappy owners?
Now of course we all know about the buyout, and how GM became a public company, bankruptcy, this and that. But now, ford and GM are advertising quality in design. Isn’t that the same as saying: “oops! we’ll actually give you what you’re paying for now” its a change in the marketplace. People see the automarket in decline, and they want a steady, reliable vehicle to get them through the lull of high prices of cars and fuel. American motor companies have to reestablish themselves to continue selling cars.

Money can also manipulate:
Recently toyota recalled 175,000 cars due to a faulty gas pedal that was known to stick down with an open throttle, an obvious safety issue. In the finer print, however, the vehicle was being manufactured in Ontario, and the gas pedal itself was designed and manufactured by an American company. Now I’m only speculating here, and I only mention it because the situation doesn’t surprise me at all, but WHAT IF GM and Ford needed to boost their stock? which is the same thing as lowering the stock of their competitors. What IF the gas pedal manufacturer was bribed into intentionally producing faulty car parts in order to put their arch-nemesis at a disadvantage? just a speculation. Would you be surprised?

Now lets say Toyota was a dishonorable corporation, and knew of the gas pedal issue, but decided to do nothing?
I believe that a company cares more about the fiscal goings on of its business than the actual job their doing. The car CEOs would sit atop a skyscraper, discussing over their mahogany table, the risk/benefit ratio of such a recall. “Is it best to call the product back and save lives, costing us millions, or deal with the lawsuits and media setbacks of hundreds of incidents, costing us thousands?”

Now lets say that someone gets in a serious accident due to the faulty product, and their way of life is now flawed. They take Toyota to court. But is trial really fair? Or is it a duel of wallets? statistically, who has a higher probability of winning a case? the rich or the poor? I don’t think we need to speculate an answer, but the question leads to some obvious results. But a system of law, legislation, civil rights – all mandate a fair trial. But apparently fair doesn’t include a highly paid team of full-time lawyers, or evidence manipulation, or simply just “paying them off” and such.

How does money relate to politics? Well for starters, a political campaign in itself costs millions. That’s gotta be paid for and sponsored by somebody. Then of course there’s the lobby groups. People who literally pay for presidential decisions. Of course, by law, politicians must relinquish their assets and stocks in their current affiliations before entering office – which of course wasn’t too hard for Cheney and Rumsfeld to bypass. Now consider where your loyalties lie when you decide to go to war and are choosing which military firm to contract, where you literally create a market for you and your company.

What about international? Where Capitalism meets Communism, or meets no system at all – a failed state. The term “disaster capitalism” is where situations like an tsunami or earth quake or hurricane – Three recent, HUGE and devastating events in the world. Most of you watch your TV in hope and despair for those affected. Some few of you raise money or go down to pull people from the wreckage – kudos to you, seriously. But there are a bunch of oh so very rich folk that get a twinkle in their eye. the Coming of seizing an opporunity. A fishing community lived for generations on the beaches of _______. For years, hotels have wanted the deeds to their land to squander in the resort quality environment, but the locals relentlessly protected their way of life. Now a Tsunami hits, “conveniently” wiping the beaches free of huts and markets. A “clean slate” – being the particular phrase in disaster capitalism. Now the hotels have everything they need to exploit the opportunity. “Problem Solved”

What about Iraq? I finally had a realisation the other day, of what it might be like to live as an afghani or Iraqi, and the way of life of a small boy carrying and AK-47 or an abused wife in a burka, and the hardships they endure. On THIS level only, I agree with the coalition providing the necessary force to provide people with the freedoms they deserve. There is some good in what we’re doing over there. But everyone really cares about the true motives of the war. Terrorism? we already know that terrorism is not held to borders, airports, or one nation in particular. Oil? pretty fucking likely. But hey – it’s not Bush’s fault – it’s YOU who needs the oil and are willing to pay for it. But the military contractors? There’s a good example that’s hiding behind the shadow of oil motives. How many military CEOs love the idea of a new war? If one fighter plane costs upwards of 50 million apiece, then consider the firearms, nukes, military bases, etc etc etc etc x a thousand – that’s a god damn lot of money – 2 TRILLION dollars as of like 2006 or something. Here’s an interesting figure. What would happen if we didn’t engage in war with the middle east and just GAVE them 2 trillion dollars? would we be worse off? perhaps we’re more comfortable with the seizure of a nation’s resources than the legal trade of it.

This concept of problem solving, market creating, and market manipulation goes from terrestrial to cellular. Consider a baseball game with your son. They’ve decided to pack your popcorn with salt to make you thirsty, so you buy a pop. Then the corn starch in that fountain drink is grehlin producting (which makes you feel hungry) and you buy a hot dog. Wonder why the Western world is fat?

Does this not scare any of you? because it scares the living piss out of me! The “free-est” nations in the world are governing themselves with a corrupt and flawed system with only principle values. Tie it in with fear-driving media telling that you need these things to survive, conspiratory methods of conflict resolution, and falsified, weightless values of freedom and liberty, and you have yourself a civilization of robotic, ignorant, malnourished, pop star wannabe generation believing everything they see in mass media. Please don’t be one of them!