You Were Born to Make People Ungrateful

 

Extract from Denis Diderot's 'Jacques the Fatalist'

"You can do nothing for me. I'm heartbroken that I owe you anything, and I'll never again owe you anything. You do more harm with your insults than you do good with your deeds. If I had the money I would throw it in your face, but I haven't got it so my daughter will become whatever God pleases and my son will get himself killed if necessary. As for me I'll go begging but it won't be at your door. I'll not incur any more obligations towards such a wicked man as you. Make sure you get yourself paid out of my oxen and horses and implements - and much good may it do you. You were born to make people ungrateful and I don't want to be ungrateful.
Goodbye forever."
~Denis Diderot, 'Jacques the Fatalist'

Catch a cab and tip big - Migrant workers need our help

Just got caught in the rain with my lappy in my bag, so I caught a taxi home. I asked the cabbie if there was much work. He said he was earning $40 a day with a wife and kids. I asked him if he was a citizen or a migrant, and it turns out he's here on a student visa. I said "so does that mean you're getting no support through this?" He said no. I asked him how he's paying rent and he said he's couch-surfing. I said "and you can't go home"..."no...it's really getting to me, I'm very depressed." He didn't know what he was going to do.

I told him I'd been reading a lot about the deregulation of the global workforce and how it's migrant workers who are paying the highest price. I said that they already get exploited and take jobs many Australians would refuse to do. Important jobs that we rely on like cabs and cleaning. I said "we really need you guys, you provide important services and we should be looking after you."

I know I shouldn't have done it, but I'd just been paid and I thought of all the food I had in the fridge, and the alcohol I had on my lap, and the books I'd just picked up. I thought about the fact that I did nothing to earn it and still have a stimulus on the way. I gave him $50...more than a full days pay for him at the moment, and refused to take any change.

I asked him if he knew about the support services and charity organisations around the place. He had no idea where to start. So I took his number, and gave a few charity places a call to make sure they service non-residents, then sent him all the numbers including Colony 47 for housing.

I told him what I was getting from the government and that I don't even work to get it. I said "it's not right."

If you want to do some good, catch a cab and tip big.

Conspiracy Theorist? Not Really

People keep bringing their conspiracy theories to me as if I'm into that sort of thing

I put it down to the fact that we're so unused to asking ourselves certain questions and we feel we don't have permission to float certain ideas. But although I read a lot of books with unconventional thinking, I'm very careful to source my information from credible people. I use the same research techniques you'd use write an essay. And I'm not that smart myself, so I am careful to always reference people far smarter than I am. Leaders in their fields.

Anyway, I've had all kinds of conspiracy theories put to me about this virus from "it's all a hoax" to "it was engineered." Someone today asked me if I thought this virus was deliberately introduced. I'm very careful how I respond to this kind of idea, because I believe it's just as silly to dismiss an idea as untrue without proof than as it is to treat such ideas as true without proof. There's nothing wrong with saying "I don't know."

So I said "I've got no reason to think it is. An epidemic is always a risk. It's bound to happen sooner or later, that's why we have hygiene." But I didn't say it wasn't true either. I mean I think it is highly improbable, but strange, unlikely things do happen.

I said I thought there were enough credible things going on to be worried about without inventing things without proof.

I used the example that I thought our monetary system is like a big pyramid scheme, and that banks and the super rich are perfectly aware of it. You leverage the market with debt that can't possibly be paid in the long run, at some point the bubble bursts, people default on their mortgages and whole swaths of land go to the bank. I told him that's why they want to get rid of cash. They're gearing up for the biggest global depression in human history. They want to get rid of cash so we are forced to accept negative interest rates.

I often tell these people the reason I pay no attention to outlandish conspiracy theories is that there are enough real problems in this world that are just as mind-blowing and serious as any conspiracy theory. I mean in a lot of cases they ARE conspiracies, but only in the sense of a group of people conspiring to their own advantage. I mean that's the corporate world isn't it? A big conspiracy to get as much profit as possible regardless of the consequences.

I've come to accept that while I'm reading books that are critical of various systems as they are that I will always be seen as some dinky conspiracy theorist, especially since I don't work, don't study formally and have a history of drug use. And to be honest I sometimes lean into the image just to watch peoples reaction. But to be honest, most conspiracy theories bore me.



I get a kick out of what I read because a lot of it is like an elaborate conspiracy theory, but it's REAL. I get a kick out of finding out crazy things throughout history, or in the system as it is now that are mind blowing BECAUSE they're real. Like, "I can't believe the world works like this!" or "I can't believe that actually HAPPENED!"

And it really frustrates me to talk about or think about things I know are unknowable. The world is an amazing, bizarre place. The world of provable things is full of strange and interesting facts. Why then waste time on mulling over something you can't really prove one way or another when you could be spending that time understanding the world as it is. It's as exciting as anything you could make up. And who knows? Maybe we can find some solutions along the way.

[I just kind of wrote this on Facebook, then copied and pasted it here. It's not particularly well written. Just a bit of a rant. Please excuse any errors I may have made, I didn't bother editing this one either. Take care guys!]

With Love - Mr. Robot

From Paul Scott's 'The Raj Quartet' (part 1)

“They were predictable people, predictable because they worked for the robot. What the robot said they would say, what the robot did they would do, and what the robot believed was what they believed because people like them had fed that belief into it. And they would always be right so long as the robot worked, because the robot was the standard of rightness.

From Paul Scott's 'The Raj Quartet' (part2)

There was no originating passion in them. Whatever they felt that was original would die the moment it came into conflict with what the robot was geared to feel.”
~Paul Scott, 'The Raj Quartet'

"Much of my enthusiasm for Romanticism is the result of my discovery that I am the way that I am because of it."

~Curtis White

Happy Valentine's Day! xxx

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPYCtErvMyA

Reading in Conspicuous Places

Reading Guy Standing's 'A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens' in Santa's chair.



Reading Gerald Posner's 'God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatacan' at a Catholic Church.



Reading Michael Hudson's '...and forgive them their debts' inside St David's Cathedral



Reading David Graeber's 'BullSh*t Jobs' in Job Network.



Reading a heterodox macroeconomics textbook in the town hall.



I'm not sure if this counts.



Reading Nicholas Shaxson's 'Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World' outside KPMG.



Reading James Boyces 'Losing Streak: How Tasmania Was Gamed by the Gambling Industry' in at the pokies (a gaming room).



Oscar decided to give it a go. Not sure he gets the idea.



Reading David Graeber's 'Debt: The First 5000 Years' outside the Commonwealth Bank.



Reading about the commons (in Guy Standing's 'A Precariat Charter') in the commons (public library).



Reading 'Disciplining the Poor' in Centrelink (welfare office).

And after I'm done, I pop them in the Town Hall for others to read.

Blackboard Adventures

I've taken to popping quotes up on a public backboard in the middle of Hobart City. The results have been surprising

The backboard is in Mathers Lane, which cuts through a block in the middle of town. All kinds of people pass through there every day.

For those of you who don't know, Hobart the small capital city of the state of Tasmania, Australia. It's not very big, and you can walk the span of the city centre in a couple of minutes.

So to begin with, I put this one up. I was feeling a little frustrated that day, and I think perhaps it shows. You're going to have to ignore the glaring errors, like the "It's" in the Friedrich Schiller quote above. I get very nervous and do it all the time. Ooops!



It may be difficult to read. It says:

"Successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The next time the government cries poor, remember: around half the worlds wealth is funneled through tax havens."

I had fun doing it, and got the thumbs up from a passer by.

It was wiped down immediately. I went down the next day to find someone had removed it.

I was a bit miffed, so I went back home, got some more chalk and did this one:


The top part is the Vice Chair of the Panama Papers Committee Eva Joly Mep, and it's a quote I got from the documentary 'The Spiders Web: Britain's Second Empire':

"We need the citizens to understand what is happening. That they are the ones who are carrying the burden. And that some individuals having the power are exonerating themselves [I misspelled exonerating by the look of it!] Ordinary people are paying taxes, rich people are not. So this is inequality, and it is leading up to populism because it shows so clearly that the people today leading the world are not able to take care of the interests of ordinary people."

Below, I have Sandford F Shram:
"Social work increasingly comprises forms of psychological services focuses on helping realise the disciplinary demands of the neoliberalising state, which is now ever more dedicated to managing rather than serving disposable populations. It is the end of social work as we know it, and the ascendancy of a neoliberal regime that disciplines subordinate populations to be market compliant regardless of the consequences."

Then theres Keith Payne, from his book 'The Broken Ladder':
"...the mother of all biases: Most people rate themselves as more objective and less biased than the average person."

And economist John Maynard Keynes:
"Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."

That one stayed up for awhile.

Then I kept going:


This meme might be easier to read:
 

From Brooke Harrington's 'Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers of the One Percent':



A bit of Curtis White:


This meme might be easier to read:

 
 I had a bit of agreement on this one:

A bit of Kurt Vonnegut:

 
 Then I had a bit of an interaction. First I put this up:


But someone kept putting "Trump 2020" up on the board, and it kept sparking mad left/right warfare. So instead of rubbing it down, I did used the "Trump 2020" in a sentence.


It says:

"Failing to look after the interests of ordinary people only increases the chances that someone like... 'Trumpo 2020' ...will win. Because when people are angry, when people are desperate, they lose their ability to be rational. Meet the precariat, the new global class fueling the rise of populism."

Then I put some information on Guy Standing and a URL to more information.

I saw people taking photos later that day.

Then I thought I'd put up a few varieties of precariat, and the URL for my blog.



A little cartoon about the commons, and some more information about the precariat:




And a quote regarding the commons from Guy Standing's book:


The 'BRAINS' tag was done by a local passerby.

Then I wiped it down and put "BE CREATIVE" to give other people a chance. This is the result:


The next one is based on a concept I found in David Graeber's 'Bullsh*t Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work and What to Do About It':


A bit of Curtis White:



Richard Wilkinson + Kate Pickett, 'The Inner Level':


Charles Cooley:


Some more from 'The Inner Level':


Thought I'd give others another shot:


This is one of my favourites:


Added a bit of Seth Tobocman, or an interpretation at least:


And here he is with the original piece:


Billy Bragg, "Some Days I see the Point'. I was feeling quite flat that day:


And the last thing I left on the board was a lyric:



If you're curious about the song, here's a link to the track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5-gja10qkw

Memes