by Robert Gore

Posted on December 2, 2017 |

This article will not go viral

Professor Charles W. Kingsfield Jr. announces his mission statement to his first-year contracts class at Harvard Law School.

You teach yourselves the law, but I train your mind. You come in here with a skull full of mush; you leave thinking like a lawyer.

Kingsfield is a fictional character, from the novel, 1973 movie, and television series The Paper Chase. John Houseman, as Kingsfield, had as memorable a voice and almost as fearsome a demeanor as Darth Vader, who would appear four years after The Paper Chase movie. Houseman won an Academy Award and became the spokesman for Smith Barney, stating its tag line with aristocratic frost: “They make money the old fashioned way…they earn it.”

Teaching his charges to think like lawyers meant developing and honing their ability to think logically, to analyze, and to present arguments and conclusions with precision and clarity. More’s the pity Kingsfield was fictional; most people would benefit from such instruction. Harvard’s fictional One L’s were a bright lot. If their skulls were full of mush, then skulls today are full of the polluted runoff from TV, internet pornography, texting, and social media.

Garbage in, garbage out, as the computer programmers say. It’s far beyond the scope of this article to examine all the garbage out there that passes as thought. We’ll look at a sliver, what can be termed group attribution. Beyond the quality that defines a large group, it is generally impossible to make a categorically true statement about all of the members of that group. Yet, the fallacy is ubiquitous across the political spectrum, from social justice warriors babbling about white privilege to alt-righters claiming that members of various races are inherently incapable of living together.

White men can’t jump. Except that most of the 16 men who have cleared the 2.4 meter mark (7 ft., 10 1/4 in.) in the high jump have been white, hailing from places like Russia, Eastern Europe, and Sweden. (The world record, 2.45 meters, is held by Javier Sotomayor, a Cuban.) The problem with group generalizations is that a counterexample invalidates them.

What difference does it make? Group generalizations are usually based on an average characteristic within the group. Let’s say the average white man can’t jump 3 feet (that may be too high, given the obesity epidemic). What’s more interesting, the mass of white men who can’t jump that height, or the exceptions who can jump over twice that height? Do you wonder why the average white guy can’t jump very high? Or how men or women of any race can learn and train themselves to jump over a foot higher than their own height? Who would you study if you were trying to improve your own jumping?

Most of our social structures are geared to the average, or worse. Students on the far right side of the intelligence bell curve (yes, there is an intelligence bell curve) are stultified in schools so oriented. Escape and refuge generally involve paying large sums of money for the comparatively few schools ostensibly devoted to educating the bright and brilliant. In higher education, a significant part of the social sciences (a misnomer) are wastelands focused on groups and averages, using that dreariest branch of mathematics, statistics.

Imagine an Olympic training facility that accepted any white male, devoting its resources to raising the average high jump from 36 to 37 inches, though its trainees would win no gold medals. Isn’t that analogous to the education system? The best universities draw applicants from around the world and accept 5 to 10 percent of them, indicating a shortage of high quality institutions relative to the demand. Meanwhile, billions are spent raising average academic performance the equivalent of 36 to 37 inches.

That’s accepting the charitable assumption that our education system accomplishes its stated goals, which it does not. These days, illiterates with no mathematical skills beyond counting on their fingers graduate from high school.

Anomalous individuals, not the average ones, propel civilization. The fixation on groups and their averages is intellectually and practically counterproductive. Even the notion of identifying the exceptional is falling into disrepute, and that has something to do with the present state of the world. Overall quality of life is a reflection of overall quality of thought: garbage in, garbage out.

Muslims are violent, bent on world domination, and are guided by the Koran, which justifies their behavior and goal. One can find that generalization in various forms all over the internet. No denying that it’s true for some Muslims. However find one peace-loving Muslim who doesn’t read or follow the Koran (Do all those who call themselves Christians read and follow the Bible?) and the generalization is invalidated.

What difference does it make? Take the generalization to its logical end, and you can justify a preemptive genocide stretching from Indonesia to Morocco. If every one of 1.3 billion Muslims is bent on ruling the world and killing you, you’d better kill them first. A “Clash of Civilizations” has been invoked to justify US military interventionism in Islamic lands. Except by the warped standards of its promoters, that effort has not gone well: a never ending war on terrorism that begets more terrorism, huge refugee flows, increasing hostility towards the US, destruction, chaos, and a massive waste of blood and treasure for all concerned. Garbage in, garbage out.

Contrast the US effort in the Middle East to Russia’s, which seems to be guided by a more precise and accurate formulation: some Muslims are violent and bent on world domination. Russia identified such a group operating in Syria and Iraq. At the invitation of the Syrian government and allied with Iranian, Iraqi, and Hezbollah militias, it has reversed ISIS’s territorial gains and is in the process of exterminating those members who have not fled. In so doing, Russia has enhanced the security of ordinary people in Syria and Iraq and raised its diplomatic status throughout the Middle East. Smart in, smart out.

One problem with logic, clarity, and precision is that like Professor Kingsfield, they’re not warm, cuddly, fuzzy, and friendly. At the end of The Paper Chase movie, after months of back and forth with Kingsfield, student James T. Hart, played by Timothy Bottoms, tries to tell the professor how much he and his class have meant to him. Kingsfield doesn’t even remember Hart’s name. He‘s so deep into the fascinating nooks, crannies, and interstices of contract law (they are fascinating) that everything else has become secondary or irrelevant.

Logic, clarity, and precision are hard work and won’t get you invited to parties. They are also the foundation of the scientific method, which deals in hypotheses and theories, but never the comforting certainties of prejudice, generalization, and belief. The scientific method can lead to self-induced cognitive dissonance for those who cannot hold in their heads inconsistent hypotheses simultaneously.

If the world appears wildly chaotic, bordering on insane, check the programming. Garbage in, garbage out. The current state of affairs reflects the predominant quantity and quality of thought. What’s true at the individual level—there is no hope of improving life without improving thought—applies to groups, including the group known as humanity.

One hypothesis can be advanced with virtual certainty: among the masses hooked into the internet, exchanging pictures of cute animals and the fascinating details of their fascinating lives, this SLL post will not go viral.

Priss Factorsays: • Website

November 6, 2017 at 8:50 am GMT • 3,200 Words

But now let’s try this: If you agree with James Watson, are you a racist? That is, does anyone say of himself that he is a racist? Does your answer strike you as a little odd?

‘Racist’ blurs race and ism and confused people. The proper spelling should be race-ist. That way, people are more aware of the true meaning. Race means race and Ism means belief. So, race + ism = belief in reality of race, racial differences, and/or necessity of racial consciousness.

So, I say that I am indeed a race-ist. Ism means belief, and race + ism should mean belief in race reality. Ism doesn’t mean hatred, chauvinism, or supremacy. It means belief. Now, race-ism can be radicalized into supremacism, as with Nazism or Black Islam stuff or even certain extreme strands of Zionism, as with Meir Kahane. But rational race-ism seeks to understand race and racial differences for what they are.

The big problem is ‘racism’ has been defined to mean Racial Supremacist Hatred. But when Ism is defined in such a way, it negates the possibility of having a useful term that simply means belief in the reality of race and racial differences. Because mere race + ism has been defined to mean Racial Supremacist Hatred, it’s difficult to come up with any objective term about race reality. The term ‘racism’ was specially designed to suck out all the air so that a neutral rational term is near-impossible.
Suppose I define heliocentrism as a hateful supremacist ideology that the sun is great and everything else sucks eggs. Such should be called helio-supremacism or helio-chauvinism. Heliocentrism should just mean the belief that planets revolve around the Sun. It’s a belief in objective fact based on science. But if heliocentrism is defined as hateful supremacy of sun-worship, then a neutral term is impossible.
Or take the term ‘humanism’. It doesn’t mean humans are the bestest thing in the cosmos and has supremacy rule over everything. It means humans have both limits and worth as moral beings and that humans should be mindful of their role, responsibility, and rights as humans on the planet.
But suppose ‘humanism’ is defined as hateful supremacy of humanity or a conviction that humans are the greatest things in the universe and all must bow down to humans.
Such an attitude should be called human-supremacism, human-chauvinism, or human-megalomania. After all, Ism just means belief. So, there is no reason for ‘humanism’ to mean anything extreme. As it happens, ‘humanism’ is defined properly. It doesn’t carry supremacist meaning.
But for some reason, ‘racism’ has been defined to mean ‘my race is the best and all others better be our slaves or be exterminated’. Since when does Ism mean something that extreme?

Same goes for nationalism. It should mean belief and defense of one’s nation. Nationalism can turn cancerous and become imperialism or jingoism, but nationalism as nationalism isn’t extreme. It is belief in the right of one’s nation to survive as territory, history, and identity. But the PC media have defined nationalism(esp among white gentiles) to mean something extreme. So, even the most basic nationalists in Europe who want self-preservation and self-determination are labeled as ‘far right’. Mere bread-and-butter nationalism is now associated with imperialist Nazism.
So, if Poles and Hungarians [and Romanians] want to preserve their nations(while respecting other nations), they are compared with ‘dark forces’ of Nazism and extremism and ‘far right’. When something normal as basic nationalism is defined in such extreme way, it sucks out all the air in the room. When mere nationalism is ‘nazism’, then it’s impossible to have a term that simply means belief of national independence and sovereignty. When a neutral or basic term is defined radically, it serves as a terminological black hole. It sucks in and destroys all other possible meanings. It is because a neutral term like race-ism has been made extreme that there is, as yet, no effective term for Basic Belief in the Reality of Race and Racial Differences. This is why the most important thing is to rehabilitate the term race-ism to mean what it should mean: Belief in reality of race and racial differences, and/or realization that such awareness will naturally lead to racial consciousness.

As ‘racism’ and ‘antisemtism’ are used in America today, they mean the failure to show proper deference, even reverence, for blacks and Jews. It also means daring to say NO to blacks or Jews or daring to notice negative aspects of the black experience or Jewish influence. So, if in the past, ‘racism’ and ‘antisemitism’ meant treating blacks as inferior or Jews as suspect, now it means failing to treat blacks as superior and Jews as the rightful masters. Today, ‘racism’ means the right of black superioirty, and ‘antisemitism’ means the right of Jewish supremacism.
Same thing with ‘homophobia’. What used to mean an extreme animus against homos just minding their own business has come to mean the refusal to bend over backwards to worship homos. So, if a bakery won’t bake ‘homo wedding’ cake, it is ‘homophobic’. If a politician refuses to march in the homo ‘pride’ parade, he or she is ‘homophobic’. Or, if a church says NO to homo colors and banners, it is ‘homophobic’. (Granted, even the original use of the term ‘homophobia’ was bogus since ‘homophobia’ doesn’t exist. Phobia is a clinical terms for extreme pathological panicked fear of something harmless. While it’s true that many people feel revulsion about homo, it’s not an irrational fear. It is natural healthy reaction to the icky act of homo fecal penetration or tranny penis or poon mutilation.)
Those terms now guard black, Jewish, and homo supremacism. Blacks, Jews, and homos have become difficult and arrogant because they’ve gotten used to their privileged status as Magic Negro gods, Super Jewish Masters, or wonderful homo angels. Even jokes about homos and trannies will not be tolerated. You better call him Caitlyn.

“it was once the case that being a racist had something to do with a person’s feelings or beliefs”

Again, the problem was the willful abuse of terminology. Ism was used to mean something extreme when Ism just means belief. The problem began with how the term originated in the first place.
From the start, it should have been called racial bigotry, racial chauvinism, racial supremacism, or etc. Extreme racial attitudes should not have been called ‘racism’ as it implies that ism, when applied to race, means just about all the negative connotations under the sun.
Worse, it wasn’t just the definition that did the trick. It was the ‘idology’ and ‘iconology’ of how the term came to be defined. While dictionaries offer definitions in words, the real power derives from the term’s association with certain images and sounds. This is why ‘racism’ has power only in relation to blacks. Hollywood and PBS and education have given us lots of images of saintly noble blacks martyred by KKK, rednecks, police brutality, and etc. So, images of black victimhood are baked into the minds of millions in association with ‘racism’. There used to be some degree of that with American Indians in the 1960s and 1970s, but interest in Indians faded, partly because Indians have little entertainment value and also because the Indian experience invokes what happened to the Palestinians. (It’s interesting that Tarantino’s Western deals with southern slavery than with American Indians. It goes to show how much the red man has fallen off the radar, even within the domain of the once most popular movie genre.) When people hear ‘racism’ in relation to non-blacks, there’s just a faint sense that it’s wrong but no great passion. After all, Hollywood, TV, and education don’t dwell much on Magic Mexican, Suffering Chinese, or some such. And certainly not much on Palestinians. This is why there is no sympathy for Palestinians among most Americans despite the tragedy of Nakba, Occupation, and now apartheid. While most Americans will theoretically agree that ‘racism’ against Palestinians is wrong, their minds haven’t been instilled with iconography or idolatry of Palestinian martyrdom. But suppose Hollywood, TV, and public education produced lots of movies, TV shows, songs, and symbols of Palestinian victimhood. Things would change. But when most people think of Arabs, they think of some Hollywood villain yelling “I will die for Allah” and blowing up people. (‘Iconology’ matter a tremendous deal. Consider ET. It was all just make-believe. No such creature ever existed or arrived on earth to befriend some boy. But Spielberg’s movie made ET so lovable, and so many adults and children were made to weep over ET. So, even though there are so many 100s of millions of people suffering all over the world, more Americans felt more compassion and love for a fictional space creature than for fellow mankind. No less fantastical than ET is the mountain-sized Negro who luvs a wittle white mouse in GREEN MILE. Negroes that big usually play NFL, beat up white boys, and hump white women. But GREEN MILE has white boys and girls weeping at the poor saintly Negro as some divine god figure.)
So, what matters is not just the control of terms but controls of icons and idols in relation to those terms. As a child, I saw ROOTS and there’s a scene where Chicken George bawls after his chicken-of-freedom done get killed. It is a wrenching scene, and it makes you feel esp sorry for the suffering Negro. That image is baked into my mind. It’s like BLAZING SADDLES. Even though the white townsfolk are socially anti-black and hate the idea of ‘black sheriff’, the Negro’s clever use of ‘iconology’ of the Hepless Negro just tugs at people’s heartstrings. Even though I eventually grew out of Magic Negro Myth, it took some time and struggle since I got so much of that Holy Brotha and Sista stuff on PBS, what with MLK orating about the Dream. It took some effort to wean myself from Negropiate and see the Negro what he truly be: Crazy.

What we need to do is rehabilitate the term ‘racism’ as ‘race-ism’ and define it properly. Race-ism should just mean a rational and neutral belief in the reality of race and racial differences. Now, race-ism can be rational and objective or it can be based on crazy theories, like that of Nation of Islam that says Dr. Yacub grafted the white race from the black race. Rational Race-ism on blacks would have to conclude that blacks pose a threat to the white race because blacks are more muscular and more aggressive. So, white race-ism in relation to blacks is multi-faceted. When it comes to general intelligence, whites have superiority and advantage. But when it come to muscularity and masculinity, it’s the blacks with superiority and advantage. So, if whites were to struggle for racial independence and liberation from black thuggery, it must be on the basis of white inferiority. Blacks are superior as thugs, and racial integration will destroy white manhood. Race-ism notices both advantages and disadvantages of one race vis-a-vis other races. White race cannot survive without white manhood since white women won’t respect men without manhood. White women will go with the negro and create mulatto babies who will turn out like Kaepernick the vile hateful Negro who looks down on whites as a weak and wussy race. (The fact that his mother is white doesn’t make him respect whites. After all, his white mother rejected white men and went with a Negro as the superior stud. This is why cucks are so dumb. They think that if more white women go interracist and have kids with blacks, it will make blacks nicer to whites. No, it will make blacks feel even more contempt for whites as a race of cuck white boys and jungle beaver whores.)

Proper rational ‘race-ism’ is still a work in progress. After all, consider how much racial theories have been revised in recent yrs. Many social scientists assumed that very little evolution happened in last 10,000 yrs. Now, we know much happened. Also, it was believed that Cro-Magnons did NOT mix with Neanderthals. But recent studies have shown that Europeans are anywhere from 1 to 5% Neanderthal. By one-drop rule, one could say Europeans ARE INDEED Neanderthals. (I mean if Elizabeth Warren is an Indian and Shaun King is Negroid.) So, true race-ism is still a work in progress.
Granted, past race-ism claimed to be scientific and led to horrible things, esp with the Nazis. But it’s a fallacy to say that because an -ism was abused in the past, it must be wrong in its entirety. That’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. After all, socialism also claimed to be scientific and led to communist excesses that killed millions. But the excesses and crimes of ‘scientific socialism’ doesn’t meant that socialism has NO value. Socialism has great value in right doses. Even American Conservatives are part-socialist. All but the most extreme libertarians believe that there is a collective need for certain attainments and guarantees.

Once we properly define race-ism, we can then prove that everyone is indeed race-ist. Everyone in America notices race and racial differences. Their thoughts and behaviors are affected by racial differences, and this includes everything from residence, education, entertainment, sports, sex, marriage, leadership, respect, contempt, and etc.

It is not uncommon for blacks to say they can sing louder or dance faster. And even white Liberals say as much. It’s not uncommon for Jews to say that, hmmm, maybe they are smarter.
It gets confusing because noticing racial differences is sometimes deemed ‘anti-racist’ and sometimes deemed ‘racist’. How can this be? If anti-racism is the belief in the equality of races or the disbelief in race as a valid category, then how can so many people comment on racial differences and be deemed ‘anti-racist’?
It all depends on context and tenor. ‘Racism’ in current usage really means saying something that reflects negatively on blacks. So, if someone says, ‘blacks are less intelligent’, that is deemed ‘racist’. But if someone says ‘blacks are natural athletes and run faster and win medals and bring glory to America’, that is ‘anti-racist’. But both statements are predicated on racial differences.
Similar thing with Jews. A commentary on Jewish intelligence can be antisemitic or philosemitic. If someone says, “Jews are smarter and use their cunning to maximize Jewish power”, that is antisemitic. But if someone says or implies, “Jews are smart and contribute so much to medicine and science and are the holy men of our society who should be blessed and respected”, it’s philosemitic. So, even though both views are predicated on superior Jewish smarts, one is denounced while the other is praised. Of course, it’s like walking a tightrope, but there is an acceptable way to imply that Jews are indeed smarter as long as this reflects well on Jews as a wise, wonderful, and noble race.

But, what about some people who are adamant about race being an invalid concept. The kind of people who ideologically believe that all races are equal, and racial differences are bogus.
But even they are race-ist on another level. Ideologically or intellectually they may be anti-race-ist and egalitarian. But ‘iconologically’ and ‘idologically’, their attitudes, choices, and behavior do reflect race-ism, i.e. on the sensual, emotional, or subconscious level, they notice and act on racial differences.
No one who has seen sports over the yrs can really believe that races are equal in athletics. Also, why do the most egalitarian progs prefer to listen to black music than Mexican music or Chinese music? Because blacks got more rhythm. And if someone’s child has to have brain surgery, almost all progs will be more relieved if the doctor is Jewish than a Somalian or Peruvian-Indian(even if educated in America). And if a Jewish/white/Asian guy has a grade point average of 4.0 and if a black person also has the same grade point average, even most progs will sense, at least subconsciously, that the Jewish/white/Asian person got a real 4.0 whereas the black person very likely got 4.0 thru grade inflation of a generous professor. I mean how did a nonentity like Michelle Obama make it through Princeton and Harvard? Surely, if a Jewish woman and a black woman both graduated with A’s from an elite college, even most progs are gonna sense on some level that the Jewish woman got a real A whereas the black woman got an ‘affirmative’ A.

And then, look at sexual behavior of Europeans. As we know, most Europeans are proggy and cosmopolitan. In Europe, there is the far left, left, cuck center, and mild right. Anything right of mild right is ‘nazi’ or ‘far right’. So, most Europeans range from centrist to far left. And ideologically, they subscribe to the notion that all races are the same. But ‘idologically’ and ‘iconologically’, they behave with the full awareness of racial differences. On the sensual level, black music is appealing because it is funky and sexual in the age of hedonism. Europeans generally don’t listen to Arab music even though EU is filled with so many Arabs and Muslims. I mean even Arabs and Afghans in Sweden are likely to listen to rap and hip hop. So, there is a sense that blacks got natural funk and rhythm.
Also, consider sex tourism. Europeans, even on the far left, see Africa as the Penis and Asia as the vagina. This is why white women fly to Africa to have sex with Negroes with big dongs and white European men fly to Thailand and Vietnam for yellow hookers. Now, ideologically, these people may say all the politically correct things, but in terms of preference in entertainment and sex, they feel and act totally race-istically.
And this goes for business too. If Europeans have to build factories, why do they prefer Asian nations to African ones? Again, even if they ideologically believe that blacks are same as yellows, white businesses figure yellowd are more diligent, industrious, obedient, cooperative, and earnest than blacks who tend to be jivey, yibbity-yabbity, and given to funkyass tomfoolery.
So, have the Asians assemble the audio devices and let Afro-funk play on those devices.

So, if we are honest, we can fix the terminology and we can prove that everyone is race-ist, and that is not a bad thing. To be race-ist is neither good nor bad. It is just what it is, like breathing air or drinking water and peeing. It’s just part of reality.
Surely, if a white Prog sees a Mexican thug walking towards him, he will be more confident in fending himself against nasty Guillermo. But if a white Prog sees a Negro thug walking toward him, he will be shi**ing bricks. Why? Because from sports, crime reports, school experience, and general observation, he knows deep inside that races are NOT the same.

By Endgame Napoleon

I remember a ZH article from a long time ago, describing the problem with too many unsecured loans in China and a so-called expansion of American financial services jobs in places like credit processing to investigate those loans. It seems like Chinese speakers would get those jobs, but maybe not.

It was probably those financial “activities” jobs that raised the job numbers slightly one month for back-office mommas in $10-per-hour jobs like credit processing. The low-wage daycare worker job numbers arose in alignment with those hires, as financial services jobs are dominated by near-100%, non-college-educated, frequently absentee mom workers in the state where I live.

I do not see how this will change the job scene in the USA very much, and that is what concerns Deplorables about trade with China: JOBS, not stock market gains or ownership opportunities for the rich.

But maybe, the Chinese will hire a [lot] of foreign workers, not just a few highly paid experts in that field, married to other highly paid people, which will change the dynamics of the employment scene here very little.

As for the rich and their investments in foreign countries, it seems like ownership of unsecured loan bundles would be a recipe for another 2008, even if “bundles” of married, Chinese homebuyers are better bets than bundles of American, single-mom homebuyers with help from government to purchase homes they cannot afford due to their womb productivity.

During the housing collapse, which was close to a decade ago now, it was also made clear that Asian life insurance policies were a big part of the business of one of the bailed-out companies.

Interesting.

Knowing plenty of licensed insurance agents who struggle to cover rent here in the USA, I find that pretty interesting.

Without a large and responsible middle class in the USA to pay premiums regularly, licensed agents working in pyramid sales arrangements on straight commission, paying twice-as-high SS tax due to 1099 employment, with expenses for leads and other things, also must weather more cancellations than in past eras, when the mostly married, middle-class households in the USA were a much more stable clientele.

Now, we have a 62% out-of-wedlock birth rate and mommas, getting more pay-per-birth freebies from government than ever before in history—free rent, free food, monthly cash assistance, electricity assistance and child-tax-credit checks that, at the $6,269 max, equal four months of full-time wages in many insurance jobs. But they still do not provide a stable market for agents.

They would rather spend their $6,269 “child” tax credit checks on trips to Florida with their latest boyfriend than a life insurance policy to protect their kids. Although the few married households have two incomes to cover major expenses, like rent, they, too, are not the market they once were due to the same type of parent-pampering allocation of available funds.

Agents who actually made a decent amount of income for all of that effort and expense sold most of their policies in the pre-fake-feminist era, when jobs were more stable due to less humans with unearned income for womb productivity chasing jobs and driving down wages, to people who maintained them over time, possibly because parents had a greater commitment to their children when they made more sacrifices for them, rather than being showered with welfare, tax-code welfare and workplace privileges for sex and reproduction.

As the middle class decreased to a narrow sliver of the US population, shipped off to China and other countries, more policies cancelled. If you have ever worked in insurance, you know that it is often the first thing people drop when they experience a job loss or a pay downgrade.

These giant companies make straight-commission agents who also have zero company-provided benefits pay chargebacks when policies cancel.

Most of the companies staff corporate offices and call centers with almost 100% unlicensed moms, with one or two licensed signers. They pay the mommas between $9 ad $11 per hour, and many talk about receiving EBT free food, reduced-cost housing and child tax credits up to $6,269 that bridge the gap between low pay and living expenses for unlicensed moms selling insurance. Other mom-gang employees have spousal income or child support that covers their major household bills.

Insurance management talks openly about locating in areas where many such unlicensed moms, willing to work for beans due to their unearned income for womb productivity, live, and they indulge them with lots of excused absenteeism and frequent mom-bonding activities, like Halloween dress-up days and baby-mommy-look-alike-bulletin-board-decorating contests.

In other financial services, like credit processing, all the distraction of mommy-baby hoopla and absentee employees likely does not serve the interests of customers, seeking loan refinances, etc.

Meanwhile, agents who were told that licensing was a legal requirement for insurance sales pay recurring license renewal fees and take state-required test after test after test to get and maintain these licenses, while mom-gang workers sell insurance without licenses in many cases, when they are not absentee due to all of the back-watching gangs in “financial activities” offices.

On the sales side, with an upsurge in foreign business, I wonder if any of that will change to the benefit of those who jump through all those hoops to maintain the so-called legally required licenses.

Doubt it. It probably just gives the rich another place to invest their money, with a trickle down of jobs to the same ole groups.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The solution is a new decentralized way of living that bypasses the chokepoints of centralized political and financial power.

I’m going to tell a story here using charts–a story that leads to one conclusion: we need a New American Social Revolution–a peaceful revolution that transforms our understanding of the corrupt, destructive status quo we currently inhabit, an understanding that leads to a withdrawal of our consent of the governed and a national search for new social, political and economic structures that actually serve the interests of the entire citizenry rather than the interests of a self-serving parasitic elite.

Solutions abound outside the confines of the elite-controlled centralized status quo.

The story has three dynamics: energy, debt and money. (If charts leave you cold, just read the short descriptions of the dynamics.)

Here’s the happy story we’re told: economic growth no longer depends on rising energy consumption: our GDP can shoot to the stars while energy consumption continues moving higher at a modest rate of expansion.

This chart contradicts the happy story that we can grow consumption to the sky using only a bit more energy every year.What the first chart doesn’t show is what we’ve used to grow the GDP–debt, i.e. borrowing from future earnings and future energy consumption.

My insightful colleague Lance Roberts of Real Investment Advice published this chart of total system leverage (i.e. the amount of debt piled on actual collateral) that shows leverage is climbing higher while GDP growth declines: the yield on increasing debt and leverage is diminishing rapidly.

Look at how debt in all sectors–household, corporate and government–has skyrocketed while GDP growth has been weak. Borrowing from future earnings and energy consumption only works when debt and leverage are low. Once the total cost of interest absorbs much of the national income, debt service chokes off growth.

The rising tide of debt and financialization has eroded the share of the economy going to wages for decades. Simply put, financialization takes money out of the wage economy and funnels it to financial elites who are closest to central bank credit spigots.

This reality is visible in measures of rising wealth inequality. The incomes of the bottom 90% have gone nowhere for 45+ years when adjusted for inflation. The financial elites have enjoyed a nearly 400% increase in income during the same time span.

This chart, again courtesy of Lance Roberts, depicts how the bottom 90% has managed: by borrowing money to fill the gap between the rising cost of living and their stagnating real income. All that debt accrues interest, which flows to banks and the owners of the debt.

And we don’t “owe it to ourselves:” the vast majority of financial wealth such as debt (bonds, etc.) is held by the top 5% of households, and the vast majority of that concentrated wealth is owned by the top .5%.

Here’s how the status quo has attempted to mask the destructive consequences of relying on massive expansions of debt to paper over our insolvency: rising home prices. As real incomes have gone nowhere and the debt loads on the average household have soared, the financial trick that makes it all right is to boost the price of homes so the owners experience a “wealth effect”: you’re not poorer, you’re richer–look at your expanding home equity.

That these sorts of credit-asset bubbles eventually pop is not mentioned. Once the asset bubbles pop, the illusion of wealth that can be drawn upon for decades to come vanishes.

The solution is a new decentralized way of living that bypasses the chokepoints of centralized political and financial power. Technologies enable such arrangements; now all we need is a social revolution in which we become aware that the dominance of a parasitic, self-serving elite class is not ordained; it is the output of the way we create and distribute currency at the top of the wealth-power pyramid rather than at the bottom, where people are actually working to improve their communities and households.

Why do we need a social rather than a political or economic revolution? Political and financial systems–including money–are social constructs. Political revolutions simply substitute one elite for another–Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The bedrock of systemic solutions is social revolution that re-aligns the social constructs of governance (politics), money and production / work / ownership (economics).

My book A Radically Beneficial World describes a DeGrowth Community Economy with full employment paid by a currency that’s distributed at the bottom of the wealth-power pyramid where useful, valuable work–the work we need to accomplish–actually gets done.

There are many proposals for a new way of living that isn’t exploitive and designed to enrich and empower parasitic elites at the expense of everyone else. We need to seek these systemic solutions, rather than tinker with worthless tweaks of broken, corrupt systems.