Comments on: Fleeing The Sinking Ship

By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 06:05:50 +0000

In reply to Badtux. Yes, a conscience is a terrible failing in the current business climate. I blame on my parents and teachers who destroyed any chance I had at being a member of the 1%. Of course my ancestors played a part, buying land from the Iroquois rather than stealing it, and selling it off to settlers at reasonable prices while running a tavern. They could have set us all up at the top of the heap, like many of the Dutch in New York, but they insisted on dealing fairly and making a good living rather than amassing a great fortune. I was doomed from birth to be just an average working person.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 04:53:15 +0000

Oh, I think you and I know enough of the rule book to follow it if we wanted. Thing is, we have these little things called “ethics” and “morals” that would keep us from stealing a blind man’s pencils, pennies, and dog. One of our ruling oligarchs and their flunkies, on the other hand, wouldn’t feel a thing, they’d just do it and chortle.

– Badtux the Ethical Penguin

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:00:17 +0000

Well, the rule book is only available to ‘members of the club’, so they rest of us aren’t ‘privileged’ enough to read them.

You are damn straight it won’t work and it sure as hell isn’t capitalism by any stretch of the definition. It is feudalism with better PR, but it is still a matter of the biggest crooks sitting in the ‘castles’ with the serfs working for a pittance.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 05:02:06 +0000

Au contraire, there *are* rules nowadays. They're just completely corrupt rules, like "You take without conscience or shame. If you see a blind man selling pencils on the street, steal the pencils. Steal his pennies. Steal his dog." In short, our rulers view us as a nation of suckers, to be fleeced at will. But the problem is, you can't run an economy that way. Not efficiently, anyhow. What you end up with is a corrupt banana republic where people don't even bother trying anymore because if they get ahead, the oligarchs will just find some new way to take everything away from them again anyhow, so why bother? Corruption on that scale corrodes everything in an economy. It just doesn't work. - Badtux the Non-corrupt Penguin (thus why I'm not rich).

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 04:14:09 +0000

Vegas and Monaco have honest games with known odds, a much better investment.

The rate of return is equal to the risk involved. High returns means high risk, i.e. gambling. These days even low returns involve high risk because there are no rules anymore. Stocks are selected and traded by programs, not people, and the people who understand the programs know nothing about the economy or markets.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:46:13 +0000

Playing in the U.S. stock market today is as hazardous as playing in the Russian stock market. If you don’t have the right connections to the right corrupt officials and/or oligarchs, you can kiss your money goodbye. The result is that investment in Russia is far lower than it would be in an honest environment, and the same is starting to become true here in America. Even in the Silly Cone Valley, investors are starting to wonder which of the startups are actual enterprises intending to compete in the marketplace and which ones are actually scams to take their money for the benefit of well-connected founders and venture fund managers. (The stories I could tell….).