Capitalish

This might sound a bit on the strange side but I've been working on balancing the World Economy since the market destabilizations of the 2000's and the housing crash of 2008.  Listening closely to economic professionals.  Studying the growth and expansions of the various world powers and how the world market has grown, changed, and fluctuated since trade and barter were established.  

The most important thing to remember when studying economics is that Money, technically, has no real value.   Money, it's self is a tool of measurement for for things of value.   Much the way that a ruler is not a distance but measurement of distance.  

Think about that for a second.  

So, going back and looking at the earliest uses of money it was simply a token or a marker.   
For example a wood cutter would go into a town, city, keep, or where ever a market would be set up and check in at the warehouse or wherever a storage facility would be set up.   The market manager would issue tokens with a mark representing a pre determined amount of wood.  The wood cutter would then take the tokens into the market and trade and barter their lumber as per usual.  Then, at the close of market the wood worker would take their remaining tokens back to the market manager and return the tokens that were not traded as well as tokens for other bulky trade goods like bags of wools and sacks of grain that would have had tokens issued for them.  

One of the misconceptions about money that many people have in the current market place is that  trade and barter are no longer practiced.   That's both true and untrue.  It is true because many of the goods and services represented in the market have established values but the bartering comes in the form of the logistical side of the market.  In the barter of work wages and the value/cost of production of trade goods.   The barter and negotiation process is done on the production and labor side creating what is supposed to be a more stabilized marketplace. 

The Capitalist market it as it exists now was established on this system but the standard for trade was based on the trade of guns and slaves. Before the gold standard was fully established it was the value of a slave. As the slave trade was systematically outlawed new value basses were found, like gold, then oil, then housing.  

The reason we've had market crashes in the capitalist market since the removal of the slave trade as it's basis of value is because slaves are essentially a never ending, exponentially multiplying "trade good"
It's a cold and analytical way of looking at it, but it is how the market was established. Each of the replacement standards have had finite pools and storage capability but the market never readjusted to compensate. 

In recent years digital goods and services have taken over as the trade good of value and has stabilized the market in the short term. 
But we also run into a larger problem with the digital band-aid is that digital goods do not match up to the physical goods that are needed to be distributed in the "market" or rather, in the world. 

The strength of capitalism as an economic system is that is brutally efficient at calculating supply and demand.   However that brutal efficiency was based on and developed around the basis of exponential growth in a time when land was considered boundless and would never run out.  When the only real limitation was how quickly that land could be developed.   However, under the capitalist market, with the aid of industrialization it has been very harshly discovered through economic hardship and famine that the land and space available on the earth is also finite. 

Moving into the modern era two forms of government rose to prominence to fill in the labor gap that was created by the absence of slave labor.   Communism and Socialism. Both direct responses to the industrialized economy.  

Communism as an very authoritarian system that rose from the scarcity of resources and many of the nations that have grown into it have done so based on their farmlands and water sources being corrupted or cut off. 
Where as socialism arose under slightly different circumstances which I'll get to momentarily.   

Both systems as a  result of the wars and colonialism that shaped our modern geopolitical landscape.  
After the end of World War II capitalist nations such as the U.S. grew out of nations largely untouched by the ravages of the war.  Communist nations out of the nations that lost much of their ability to produce food to feed themselves and had to develop severe austerity measures to survive.

Socialist nations and practices grew out of a balance between the two.   Nations and that were ravaged by the war but had trade and support from outside capitalist markets that fed their excess resources and goods into them to facilitate the socialist supports that helped them recover after the wars.  

Many of the places where fighting is still taking place is based on the two extremes capitalist and communist governments are clashing over which is the better form of management and recovery while socialist nations have been slowly stabilizing.   

That's the odd thing though.   Socialist nations could not exist without a capitalist market and communist regimes would not have gotten such a strong foothold if the period of extreme scarcity that was seen by the world during the period of late 1800 to early 1900's.  

This is all very longwinded and as I've been working on my economic theory I've been trying to figure out ways to more concisely explain it. And the easiest way I can explain it is as follows.   

Capitalism is a brutally efficient and flexible way of  handling goods and resources but it's success and management method is based on "limitless" labor and resources.   

Communism is an equally brutal and efficient method based on authoritarianism that is given it's foothold and legitimacy by scarcity of stable food sources. 

Socialism is a form of labor management that is resource heavy yes but a humane alternative to slave labor.  

A replacement to the needs and drives that slave labor facilitated during the process of colonialism and industrialization.  
I'm still working out how to get this argument on a more understandable level but it boils down to this. 

For our economy and world to be able to stabilize and adequately a capitalist and free market place is needed to facilitate innovation and  quickly adapt to market needs where as a socialist work force is needed to keep that market functional and stabilized. 

The only thing that is necessary to fully stabilize that market is addressing what it is that gives dictatorships and authoritarian communism their footholds in the world.  And that is access to clean water and healthy and adequate food sources. 
So arguably the new gold standard needs to be established to keep the market from outgrowing it's self. 
A plan and concept that I argued a few years ago. 
Water, storage, food, medical care. 
Need and balance. 
 The hard and scary part is preventing another population boom.   The world can't handle it and is currently suffering from the hardships of one caused by the prosperity and relative peace that industrialization brought to the world.

Still working on how to find a balance between the three systems to avoid the one child rules later 1900's China and the brutal dictatorships that grew into the voids caused by the over production of early industrialization.

Because we have entered into a new period of history.  The Industrial period that helped develop the ways and means for producing enough goods and resources to meet the demands of the worlds population and into what is arguably the Digital Era.  An period of unprecedented prosperity that has been tasked with managing and stabilizing the logistical hurdles of  distributing the goods and resources that industrialization has made available.  

It's funny.  

The problems of the early world was pure and simple survival.  
Then after survival was figured out through agriculture and irrigation. 
We entered into a world of exploration.   
The world explored, or at least the boundaries within which that exploration could be done it was figuring out how to provide for large and settled and populations and industrialization took hold. 

Now the boundaries of exploration established, the ways and means of providing for a world population developed the task before the current generations is finding fair and humane ways of distributing the goods and resources while still giving the world the room to breath and inhabitants the freedoms to explore, learn, and develop. 

Long Pauses

 My writing has taken a bit of a back seat over the past couple of weeks.  Part of this has to do with the relocation.  Trying to find my place and rhythm in a place that is both new and old at the same time. 
The other issue is that the place I find myself in is haunted by many memories and photos of people that though I've come to peace with the parts they played and the times we shared good and bad cause a lot of self reflection and questioning about myself and my place in things. 

Not just that but the quite isolation that I thought I would be holding has not been as quiet as I had hoped.   There is an option that would move me to a quieter space but it requires a lot of work that though I have the time to do I do not have the resources or the drive to do it on my own. 
That's the thing.  I work and do most things by myself or on my own and, at least currently, I don't have the motivation to do them anymore. 

It could be that I have not fully recuperate from the hardships and nonsense that I dealt with over the last year, or it could be that I feel like someone is coming and I'm waiting for them to arrive.  Or I'm hoping that someone is coming.   Or, and the more probable of things, is that I'm not really certain how long I'll really be staying where I am. 

All of these things dance through my head as little snippets of the stories I've been writing try to to coalesce between the thumping and pounding that I can just never seem to get away from. 

The other thing that I'm crunching and munching on is all of the data I've been sorting through.
Little things, big things, world things.  Trying to find the balance that would see an end to these endless wars.   Or at least a peace that the world has not truly experienced yet.   It seems impossible but as I reflect on the last year, beyond the personal hardships and sorting through the wreckage of the past decade I realize that it is much more possible than I originally thought.  That for some insane damned reason the world has been following an outline, dare I say, a plan that I postulated a handful of years ago.  

Then again, it could just be that the trajectory was already set and what I put forth was not so much a plan as a notation on what already was coming to pass.  I'm not sure, and with little to no outside support beyond the blind kindness of strangers simply trying to keep positivity going in the world and my own need to help other struggling with their own identities and place in the world I just don't know. 

My what I do know is that my year on Tik Tok is nearly over and I'll be compiling a years worth of videos into something, what I don't know, but something.  

I honestly don't know if I'll keep the existing account and making a new one or just be stepping away from the platform all together, but I will be compiling none the less. a project that will take awhile to be sure.  Luckily the videos and things being limited to only a minute at most and my posting relegated to a handful of videos per day means that I will not have an impossible amount of footage to sort through. 
Approximately 120 hours on the long side.  I'll need to format that ps4 external drive to create enough space for the videos and edits though.

that hurts my heart a bit. 
out of all of the tools and toys that have been stolen or broken over the past few couple of years loosing that one hurt the worst I think.  That system and it's set up rebuilt what few friendships I had and reminded me of who I am/was before all of this nonsense started.
It is what it is though.
I still wish I had help in doing the actual work and editing part though. 
Knowing me I'm going to get lost in the editing and nothing real will come from it.
But we'll see.
I'm thinking I might pull out the story book and start typing up some of the story I have written for the Emerald so far.  I was hoping to finish the notebook before doing so but not having a truly peaceful space to work or the Cannabis necessary to  still my mind long enough to pull the stories together that part might need to be put on hold. 

That's the thing, I don't know if it's a broken part of me or what but the fantasy and story telling often comes from the hyper focus and stillness that partaking of cannabis brings to me.  While formulating the background and foundations of the writing and research come from the ever cascading and unfocused nature of my anxious and broken psyche. 

Either way, I'm back in a place where it is unavailable to me, one of the last states in the U.S. refusing to recognize the medical and scientific benefits.
Either way, the year is almost over and the mountain of videos will be needing compiled and the many papers I've been pecking and picking at will need to be finalized and published in some form or another.

in the mean time, back to the pop culture research and trying to figure out what this Frankenstein's Monster of a body and mind is still capable of. 

Stay Safe out there.

First Day

 There is already a change of tone just from the questioning during the press briefings.
I don't want to say that's it's back to the usual in regards to how press briefing feels much like it did under other presidents.  Much less "What is the fire we're putting out today" and more "This is the plan, what clarifications/concerns are there."   

Granted this is only the first day, but it defiantly conveys a stronger sense of leadership even at the level of press secretary.  If the rest of the administration handles themselves with such clarity I have a lot of hope for where we'll be heading over the next few months. 

I'll admit, I've never been a fan of Joe Biden.  And no offense to his body of work but I always felt like, during the 2008 elections that he was much more a concession given to the more conservative wings within the Democratic party and a way of assuaging the fears of many of the more centrists within the Republican party.  

At that level of the political game such things have to be done to keep tone and tenor civil.  
A thing that the Trump administration kind of forgot about, and in some situations, completely ignored.  It's understood that there are leanings and drives from party affiliation within the executive branch but the purpose of the executive branch is to bring balance and unity to between parties and objectives from all fronts. 

 At least that's the ideal of it. 

One of the things that many of more conservative parts of the nation and individuals in the government will cry foul about is that Mr. Biden has not chosen a Republican representative within his cabinet.  Typically this is done to keep balance in policy discussions and actions.  However, after the Trump administration we had a very hard and heavy shift in the balance of the Judicial branch towards the conservative and many of the appointments and administrative decisions made by the Trump administration were in the vein of placing "loyalist" at high levels.  
An action, which it would appear, has backfired.   
When approaching the Republican party currently much caution needs to be taken with the emboldening of the the more radical actors within the party. 
Honestly, in President Biden's shoes I would have made much the same move.  
Hell, before the Trump presidency my leanings were much more Republican on the political spectrum than democrat and I'd still have chosen largely a Democratic cabinet.  Because that would be the job.  
I've always been more of the mind of small, focused, uses of government resources and placing much more control into the individual and local governments hands.  The federal level of government, in my view is more for book keeping and consolidation of resources for larger interstate projects and for use in aiding on a global scale.  
Some would argue that a global view isn't a very conservative standpoint.   

However, having studied weather and geological sciences over the past three decades and weighing those against the teachings in some of the worlds oldest texts and belief systems I've found that global government, especially at current population levels requires such a view and scale of cooperation. 
The resources of our world are not infinite and no matter which texts or belief you stem from the common factor amongst all of them is that we are either part of or stewards of the lands were we live and travel.  From a true conservative standpoint finding the wisest ways to utilize those resources and lands is our responsibility the rain, wind, and birds in the sky do not recognize political borders or fence lines. 

If anything the pandemic that the world is experiencing right now has shown a bright and harsh light on this truth.  That a global recognition of need and responsibility is our next logical step.  If the United States is going to be a leader in this global world then the swing towards representation that the incoming Biden administration is not only symbolic, but highly necessary from a number of stand points. 

The first of which is honoring the American and U.S. ideal.   A government where "All men are created equal."
The second of which is getting voices to the table that have been previously barred or largely quieted by those that believed that such voices shouldn't be in such positions of responsibility. 
And the last is that of symbolism.  So that the various people that live in the U.S. and the outlying regions feel like they are represented and have a "dog in the fight".  

We're all in this together and we all have our parts to play no matter how large or small. 

The only real concerns I have over the coming weeks is demilitarizing.  That alt right and supremist organizations militarized and attacked the foundations of the government, trying to undo over a hundred years of progress made since the end of the Civil War in regards to equality and Civil Rights. 

I'm going to say something that many people that have known me over the years hate hearing from me.  
"I told you so." 
Placing someone who from the start of their political career was bent on destabilization of leadership and in focused on the spectacle of the office over the nuts and bolts of it was bound to put us in the position we find ourselves in.  
Let's be real. 
Even though the Presidential office is the leader of the Armed Forces and can offer much in the way of moral boosts and motivation it is, at it's core a largely a clerical position.  
Checking and rechecking intelligence and balancing it against the needs and goals of the nation. 
The leader of a team and one that has to make decisions on matters that many situations that many do not even want to consider. The President is not a King, George Washington was clear on that when he chose not to take up a third term despite the desires of many that would come to be his successors.  

The loyalty of the armed forces and intelligence community is to the office of President not the person or party that holds it. That is a distinction that Former President Trump failed to recognize and why we find ourselves so militarized for the first time since the heart of the Civil Rights movement. 
President Biden has a hard road to tow, but my current analysis of his focus and actions says to me that he may very well be able to walk it.  
The Nation needs him to because there is a lot of clean up to do before we, as a nation, can re-emerge from this pandemic as strong, or possibly stronger than we were before. 

Stay Safe. 

Vibrational Disharmony

 One of the reasons I've always sought out my own living place.   A cabin in the woods. An insulated home that only hears the sounds of nature and the silence of a recording booth is because of vibrational sensitivity.  

I don't know if it's a form of autism or just a strange fluke in my brains development but I'm very sensitive to the sounds of my  environment.   Particularly when I'm trying to compose or write.   

My writing process is weird.  It's more like composing than penning in certain regards.   
As I take in data, information, or set my brain on a path of creating a word scape you'll see me nodding my head, my fingers dancing in the air, and often times just trying very hard to tune out the things around me.   

And that's because I hear the words, feel the pen under my finger, feel the resistance of the keys.  So that when I do finally sit down with paper or keyboard the words flow with something more like a violinist running their bow of strings or a flautist keying out the melody of a concerto.   

So when, after a night of preparation I let myself drift off into what is never really a restful sleep but a constructive one that takes all of the random bits of information and snatches of tunes a formed piece, or sections of one, or a story will have coalesced into something comprehensible and I'll haul myself in front of my keyboard or pull a notebook to me and start drafting.    

The problem I have trying to write while living around other people is the interruption to the rhythms. Like having a wrench thrown into an engine running smoothly, or a runner in a sprint having someone stumble into their path.   

The damage is rarely irreparable but getting back into stride is a process in and of it's self.   

And right now, as with this piece that is largely complaining about the interruptions to the process I find myself floundering after being woke by thumping on the ceiling and tinny music being blasted to the point of ear damage a full weeks worth of prep is essentially set back to null.  

Now...fuck...gone...rhythm gone. 
 

New Year Old Stories

 2021 started with me on the road. 
To be honest I feel more comfortable with the chaos of travel than I do sitting still so it was a good way to start. Though, continuing on the honesty front, I don't know if I'm heading in the right direction or just traveling backwards.   Either way I needed to move and this direction is the one all the signs pointed to so here I am.  

I tried to make it work where I was but at the end of it I couldn't find the work I wanted and what was offered was the same work I could literally do anywhere.  So why not head somewhere that offered me the space to stretch out and be able to work on my projects with a semblance of peace.   

That's the funny thing though.   I thought I was returning relatively unknown but my reputation travels ahead of me. 
Though, as I'm looking back at where I left and where I've returned to I can't help but think of the trail of broken hearts I've left behind.  To be more accurate the trail of pieces from my broken heart...
Actually the more realistic way of looking at it would be a sea of shards of broken hearts from both my own and others.  

Me, always the romantic, wearing my heart on my sleeve. 
Part of me hopes that one of the broken pieces of my heart will be returned to me with a hand delivery. 
Reality on the other hand tells me that I will be where I am until job comes up and this time rather than loading up everything I own and moving it all to a new place I'll take only what I need to work. 

I honestly thought that at some point I would have found at least one person that would be willing to work with me on all of this crazy. And, I have, to some small extent but I'm just too much for anyone really.  

At least that's what it feels like, seems like. 
Some days I'm even to much for myself.  
The anxiety and ptsd has gotten better and easier to manage but it still exists and without a team to work with I've had to find ways of sorting through it largely on my own. 

The choice to go public with my work and research was something that I don't regret but people really don't believe.  

Or they do...I don't even know because I'm so used to just tuning out everything but my research and the bits roleplaying and writing that keep me sane while I sort through it all. 
 My life is so strange sometimes. 

The biggest question I have as I sort through the years of study and paperwork is "Which version of me does the world see?"  
The cover that acted as bait and I would shoot on sight if it where true?
The broken and disabled ball of anxiety that by all rights I should be?
Or the person that I am really am?  
Maybe some mixture of those and other definitions I don't have for myself. 
That's the problem with what I do. 
The way that I work. 
The world, if the last four years really are the way that they are being presented and what my mind has been processing it as, got the first taste of what and who I truly am over the past two years.  
If that's the case then 2021 is going to be even stranger than the last. 
Either way over the next four years I have a job. 
 The same job I've been working on since 2004...2003. I don't know the exact  my mind and body where destroyed and rebuilt during that time and with out access to full suite of files I can only go on my broken recollections and what clues I've left myself. 
And of those clues, and if the news presented to me accurately reflects the state of the world and events over the past two years I am both terrified and hopeful about what is to come.  
Terrified because the world is watching...and waiting...
Hopeful because it means that we may actually see an end to this endless war. 
It is a new year, and in ten days a new administration with a new direction. 
Even without those two things there is something very different about the world now.  
Not just the effects of a global pandemic causing the world to pause and sort through centuries old baggage and issues. 
 But something shifted, something massive and the world is ready for a change. 
Hopefully we can figure out what that is, hopefully we don't break it in the process. 
And hopefully in four years we'll be one step closer to the Moon.
Amongst some of the other projects and plans that I've been working on. 
Until then I need to figure out what I'm going to do about the debt and work situation.  
Stay safe out there, and if you are holding a piece of my broken heart know that I'll accept it back with open arms.  
Though knowing me the people holding those pieces would probably rather shatter and scatter them than return them let alone into open arms.  

Stay Safe out there.
I'm trying to do the same. 
And hopefully by the end of the year the war will be over and I cna finally get something clsoe to real rest for the first time in nearly twenty years.