TransAlta Culpa (Again) ?

A bottomless pit of contrivance?
(from office.microsoft.com)

A few days ago in Alberta, a heat spike was forecast. The power-generating giant TransAlta seems to have anticipated its own spike as two of its large coal-fired electricity generating plants were shut down for “unscheduled maintenance” creating a classic supply and demand divergence—huge demand with limited supply, with the resultant classic free-market spike.

Are we surprised? Why shouldn’t this be the rational, transnational strategy for all corporations that “live and breathe” the bottom line? Makes perfect cents (by the trillions).

Oh, and yes! We have seen this before. As recently as February of this year at:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/transalta-accused-of-manipulating-energy-prices-in-alberta-1.2554508?cmp=rss (*) Quote:

“Alberta's power-generating giant TransAlta has been accused of market manipulation again.
“The power company is in trouble with the province's electricity watchdog — the Market Surveillance Administrator (MSA).
“It says the company shut down some of its power plants on four occasions during peak periods in 2010 and 2011, driving up prices.
“TransAlta rejects the allegations, but the case is already prompting calls for tougher regulation of the electricity market. …
“… this isn't the first time TransAlta has faced allegations like this.
“The company was fined $370,000 in 2012 for market manipulation.”

So what does free market really mean? Free to manipulate supply and demand for profit? Free to get off almost scot-free when caught? Free to repeat in endless déjà vu?

And what power-generating corporation has not clued into this “spike and spin-dry” strategy? When weighing gains and losses, who can resist?

So, in years to come, will our current free-marketeer defenders be judged as blind and deaf to “realities” (as passionately unobserving) as those we have judged from the so-called “dark ages”?

Is dummkoph-ish the word that springs to mind for our day (and for all of us who sit back and let this happen time and again)?

-----------------------------/
* See also: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/transalta-admits-to-manipulating-electricity-prices-1.976969

High-Frequency Déjà Vu

If you are a believer in “free-markets” and laissez-faire, perhaps an excursion beyond Milton Friedman (& company) might prove useful.

Here is one suggestion:

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis © 2014

In trying to unravel a Wall Street mystery, several people, hired and headed by Brad Katsuyama of RBC (Royal Bank of Canada), pursued the threads of evidence and history. One of those pursuers was John Schwall who went “digging around the Staten Island library” looking at other Wall Street scandals. Here is how Lewis describes it:

Several days later [John Schwall had] worked his way back to the late 1800s. The entire history of Wall Street was the story of scandals, it now seemed to him, linked together tail to trunk like circus elephants. Every systemic market injustice arose from some loophole in a regulation created to correct some prior injustice. “No matter what the regulators did, some other intermediary found a way to react, so there would be another form of front-running,”^[1] he said. … He’d learned several important things, he told his colleagues. First, there was nothing new about the behavior they were at war with. The U.S. financial markets had always been either corrupt or about to be corrupted. Second, there was zero chance that the problem would be solved by financial regulators; or, rather, the regulators might solve the narrow problem of front-running in the stock market by high-frequency traders, but whatever they did to solve the problem would create yet another opportunity for financial intermediaries to make money at the expense of investors. ... (p. 103)

So, here is a suggestion for those who “worship at the altar of the free-market”² (like conservative Gerry Nicholls²). Please: open your eyes and ears to the high-frequency déjà vu of the faux-free, faux-efficiency, faux-self-correction, faux-hype, etc., etc., surrounding corporate capitalism.

from office.microsoft.com

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1. “Front running is the illegal practice of a stockbroker [or high-frequency trader, et al.] executing orders on a security [or buying/selling] for its own account while taking advantage of advance knowledge of pending orders from its customers [or other investors, buyers, sellers, or brokers.]. …” quoted from  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running
2. Quote from conservative Gerry Nicholls at minute 9:50 on CBC “The Current”: episode titled, “What is the Future of Public Broadcasting in Canada?” broadcast May 14, 2014.) http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/current_20140514_13102.mp3

ECON 013 ~ Aptly Named?

The Gods must have an infinite sense of irony to have inspired the naming of this modern behemoth.

Is this not the latest, perfect symbol of ten-thousand déjà vus since the days of Cain?

Is this what we champion with our capital addictions?

Isn’t this the inevitable legacy of the Randians?

Isn’t there a better option? like maybe a third way? not right or left, but UP?

Just asking.

Econ 013 ~Clip art from MS Office 2000

Truth & Consequence?

“Capitalism cannot coexist with the morality of altruism.”

That was a statement¹ made by Ayn Rand in 1967 on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (at 22:12 minutes).

Considering her well-documented admiration of unregulated capitalism and her disdain of altruism, she meant it as a commendation of capitalism. But when we look at the “ways and means” of capitalism over the past century, perhaps the truth about capitalism is the reverse of what she intended. That is not to say that capitalism has been a total failure. Many significant innovations have come out of the spirit of competition, though it is this writer’s contention that the spirit of cooperation² would have resulted in every benefit we now enjoy, (plus untold others that competition crushed), while at the same time avoiding numerous capital sins.

Perhaps (ironically), the greatest use of capitalism has been its amazing ability to test every soul’s altruism and their gradation of maturity beyond the terrible two’s of “Me & Mine.”

Does it not seem equally amazing and ironic that so many die-hard capitalists cling to the “Me-Mine” philosophy that sprang full-fledged into the mind of Ayn Rand when she was but 2½ years old³?

In retrospect, are these die-hard capitalists but déjà vu age 2? An age group that:⁴

▪ may play with other children for a short time, but aren't yet capable of true sharing
▪ can be easily frustrated
▪ can show feelings of jealousy
▪ can be extremely demanding and persistent
▪ is very possessive - offers toys to other children but then wants them back
▪ can find it hard to wait
▪ may have frequent temper tantrums
▪ can have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy
▪ enjoys make-believe play
▪ can't understand reason or control their impulses
▪ can show aggressive behavior and the intent to hurt others
▪ can be destructive to objects around him when frustrated and angry.

If Ayn is right that “Capitalism cannot coexist with the morality of altruism” (which I suggest she probably is considering the evidence), then why are we so surprised at the state of our economics? Isn’t it a case of cause and effect; truth and consequence?

If seeing, we would but see; and hearing, we would but hear the truth and consequence of capitalism!

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1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBmViYDlrjU
2. The spirit of cooperation is not communism. Communism is the spirit of coercion and one of the extremes of economic theories. When that continuum of economic theory is bent into a circle, the extremes share more than we care to admit.
3. See the reference source for her words at http://www.dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2012/11/betraeus.html
4. Sources for age traits: http://www.nncc.org/Child.Dev/ages.stages.2y.html http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Child_development_(6)_two_to_three_years There are many others.

A Series of Massive Delusions*

(or The Toxic Fallout from Ayn & Uncle Miltie)

Posted in observance of April [etc.] Fool’s Day

Here are a few quotes from Boomerang by Michael Lewis—a déjà vu of “what you sow is what you reap [eventually**]”:

“They created fake capital by trading assets amongst themselves at inflated values, … This was how the banks and investment companies grew and grew” (p. 17 ~ quote from a London hedge fund manager).

… bankers buying stuff from one another at inflated prices, borrowing tens of billions of dollars and relending it to members of their little … tribe, who then used it to buy up a messy pile of foreign assets (p. 19-20).

One of the hidden causes of the current global financial crisis is that the people who saw it coming had more to gain from it by taking short positions than they did by trying to publicize the problem (p. 20).

Inside Greece [or nation X—take your pick], there was no market for whistle-blowing, as basically everyone was in on the racket (p. 63).

Extremely smart traders inside Wall Street investment banks devise deeply unfair diabolically complicated bets, and then send their sales forces out to scour the world for some idiot who will take the other side of those bets (p. 153).

… Morgan Stanley designed extremely complicated credit default swaps so they were all but certain to fail, so that their own proprietary traders could bet against them … (p. 153).

The American bond traders may have sunk their firms by turning a blind eye to the risks in the subprime bond market, but they made a fortune for themselves in the bargain, and have for the most part never been called to account (p. 161-2).

They’d [Americans] been conditioned to grab as much as they could, without thinking about the long-term consequences. Afterward, the people of Wall Street would privately bemoan the low morals of the American people who walked away from their subprime loans, and the American people would express outrage at the Wall Street people who paid themselves a fortune to design the bad loans (p. 202).

“We have lost the ability to self-regulate, at all levels of society. The five million dollars you get paid at Goldman Sachs if you do whatever they ask you to do—that is the [reptilian scarcity/abundance trigger that short-circuits long-term benefit for short-term biology/gratification; in other words, diet versus] chocolate cake upgraded” (p. 205, quoting/ paraphrasing Dr. Peter Whybrow—UCLA neuroscientist).

The extent of the corruption, self-service, and criminality is so pervasive and incredible that too many view it as just that—not credible; or in the alternative, as a regrettable, collateral zit on the divine face of free markets. These nice-people-in-suits who furnish/entice us with consumables, loans, investments opps, and aspirations can’t be so bad!

Well folks, the bad news is: it is BAD, BAD, BAD; BADDER (Yes! BADDER because worse doesn't sufficiently describe it) than you even imagine. And the toxic fraud and fallout will continue till we demand a new cultural paradigm of balance, where libertarianism is seen for what it is—an untenable extreme of individualism—as untenable and devastating as extreme collectivism. (What it really amounts to is a concentrated collectivism on the right as opposed to a supposedly broad one on the left. At both extremes, the status of the majority is impoverished, despite the hype.)

Perhaps it is time the “masses yearning to [be] free” of massive fraud and corruption demanded a massive right-wing correction in a déjà vu mirror image from 1987: “Tear down this Wall Street!” And “Let my people go find a more just and equitable way.”

------------/
* p. 198 from Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis (2011)—a book every adult should read; every libertarian should read twice (a day); and every bond trader (and accomplice) should have piped into their Leavenworth/FCI-Tallahassee (etc.) cell 24/7 on a rotating basis with other exposes, including The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine also by Michael Lewis.
** If not now, then hereafter, as in “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (New Testament 1 Timothy 6:10)

“Tear down this wall!” reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tear_down_this_wall !

Confession of a Dupe Dealer

(va: To dupers and dupees everywhere)

The Thinker by Auguste Rodin
at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor
Image from Wikimedia Commons
Public Domain: Author, Karora

On odd occasions, one can encounter contrition in the red-white-&-blue, balloon-strewn ballroom of 6-AM, post-convention chaos. That’s where I encountered PR. He was alone, seated in Thinker repose, a damp hanky drying upon his knee. He’d had a dream, he said. Maybe more like a vision. If he publically confessed, he said, there was some unspecified chance he could clear the inside edge of outer darkness. Infinitely better than achieving the nucleus, he’d been told. Thus, he’d descended from his sky-suite to make confession. Not a “public” soul was anywhere in sight. He was grateful I had come, he said. Did I think I could be considered public enough? I said I didn’t know, but perhaps we could try. (I didn’t tell him I was there to recycle the balloons. He never asked.)

He wanted his confession recorded, he said. Maybe that would make it public enough. I turned on my phone recorder. He spoke:

▪ I preached that repeating a fabrication often enough made it sound true. It does, but it’s still a lie.
▪ I claimed that crafted words would cover a multitude of sins. I was wrong.
▪ I crafted lies to malign the strengths of opponents. Such was inexcusably wrong.
▪ I thought selling colleagues my right words would be smart. It wasn’t. They sounded scripted and mindless when juxtaposed.
▪ I sponsored lies to counter worse lies. I severely offended truth.
▪ I thought pointing fingers would deflect judgment. It doesn’t.
▪ I claimed that free/unregulated markets were fair. They’re not. They never have been. They always become regulated by tyrannies of some form or other.
▪ I said unregulated markets would control greed, excess, and inefficiency through competition. It was a lie.
▪ I said profit seekers could be trusted to self-regulate. They can’t.
▪ I said invasive redistribution of wealth was wrong. I was right. Except I was wrong about the historical and persisting direction of flow.
▪ I said employees would be honestly and fairly compensated in the competitive profit system. It was mostly a lie.
▪ I disparaged the time, talents, knowledge, skills, and labor of workers as the purest form of wealth (excepting, of course, when considering the upper-crust). I was wrong to foster that demoralizing corruption.
▪ I said corporations were like people. I was wrong.
▪ I said corporations were the job creators. I was less than half-right.
▪ I claimed money did not compromise democracy—that it lubricated it. Another lie.
▪ I promoted that extremism in defense of liberty was no vice. I was extremely wrong.
▪ I said riches were God’s reward. I was wrong. They are His toughest test.
▪ I claimed socialism/communism was our worst enemy. I was wrong. We capital dupers are.
▪ … … … [etc., until—]
▪ In short, I have been a dupe dealer all my life—a 1st-class duper. Actually a super-duper. I’ve taught and scripted thousands of other dupers. I have, with my crafted words, created millions of dupees. I told myself it was justified. It was for a good cause. It was in defense of God, country, and free-markets. It turned out to be the precise opposite.
▪ I was shown an even more skilled super-duper. I was shocked. I’d been a dupee, too! OK, OK, I wasn’t really shocked. I kinda knew all along. I just didn’t want to admit—I really enjoyed being a super-duper. It fulfilled all three of the Big Temptations. It was incredibly rewarding. I was warned about that, too—about confession and then recidivism.
▪ I’m very conflicted. If this really goes public, what will become of me?
▪ Anyway, it’s all just déjà vu, from what I saw.
▪ Dupers and dupees everywhere.
▪ Hearing and hearing not. Seeing and seeing not. I read that somewhere once. I wonder where that was?

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Thanks to Calvin Trillin for sparking this title idea with “Confessions of a Dupe” from With All Disrespect: More Uncivil Liberties by Calvin Trillin © 1985, p. 80.

Econ 012 ~ WorldCon (aka Global-ism)

Econocentric—Our current GODD

~
Not so long ago—say 400 years or so—the powers-that-were claimed the earth was the center of the universe—AS IN geocentric. [Update: it appears as of 2015 that the question has reopened.*] A newer version of these “good old dogma days” (GODD) has been with us now for over 100 years—AS IN econocentric—wherein money (under the wings of capitalism) has become the center and measure of all things. This déjà vu of GODD is in dire need of utter rejection. Here are three quotes from David C. Korten’s book, The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, to speed the process of awareness and action:

In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy and the market economy. For those of us who grew up believing that capitalism is the foundation of democracy and market freedom, it has been a rude awakening to realize that under capitalism, democracy is for sale to the highest bidder and the market is centrally planned by global megacorporations larger than most states (p. 1).

Life rather than money is the appropriate standard for evaluating economic choices and performance. Using money as a proxy measure of our wellbeing shifts our attention from life’s priorities to money’s priorities. We thus seek to maximize the returns to money rather than the returns to life. If we were to use life as our measure, it would lead us to ask which among a number of financially viable options will yield the highest anticipated contribution to improving our lives and the health of the planet. These, of course, become questions of values that cannot be reduced to simple numbers and therefore call for broadly participatory choice making (p. 156).

This poses a truly revolutionary idea for a species that spent much of the last hundred years tearing itself apart in the often violent struggles between those who called for the suppression of the individual in favor of community (communism) and those who rejected the obligations of community in favor of unrestrained individualism (capitalism). Life is telling us that these are both pathological extremes. In fact, life tells us, there is no conflict between community and individuality—indeed in a healthy living system they support and strengthen one another (pp. 116-7).

It’s all a matter of balance in a world that has become critically unbalanced by accepting and perpetuating a scheme that is as flawed as other abandoned  "knowledge." Perhaps it is time to raise our awareness of the many latter-day voices crying in the wilderness of GODD, urging us to wake up and smell the catastrophe.

--------------------/
* See: http://dejavu-times.blogspot.ca/2015/12/the-babylon-con.html

Back to Square 1601

~
Why 1601? Because those were the good old dogma days when “truth” had no obligation to conform to observed reality and measurement! Those were the days before the enlightenments of Galileo, Bacon, Locke, Newton, etc. Those were the days when the Church (or King or Baron or local aristocrat) spoke and “truth” reigned.

Now, in 2011 we begin a new cycle of good old dogma days for libertarians are announcing their run for POTUS. And what have they to offer? Plain and simple dogma espoused by the Church of the Laissez-faire (CLF).

None of the staunch members of the CLF seem the least bothered by the follies, fabrications, failings, and frauds of laissez-faire. Like the generally compliant masses of 1601, these latter-day devotees have received their wisdom from ivory-towered contemplations or pronouncements therefrom, and such is sufficient. No need to ponder, analyze, evaluate, understand, or actually consider the reality of:

▪ the inevitable concentrations of wealth and power in Big Business and the monied aristocracy under CLF dogma
▪ the inescapable greed and corruption that prevails when profit-motive runs rampant, unbalanced by other values
▪ warnings from founding fathers (and others) about monied aristocracy and concentrations of economic power
▪ the necessity of checks and balances upon any and every power
▪ ubiquitous, recycling booms and busts (which booms the few and busts the many)
▪ the fact that most share purchases contribute NOTHING to business capital—the prime purpose being to extract WEALTH after acquiring shares FROM other speculative shareholders—setting up the ultimate, ubiquitous MORAL HAZARD where those who contribute nothing, command corporate loyalty and mine the WEALTH produced by someone else’s LABOR¹
▪ the laissez-faire Chilean debacle (and every other mangled country where laissez-faire has been imposed—in the name of freedom!)
▪ what Adam Smith really said
▪ etc. 

Perhaps it is time for the Church of the Laissez-faire to have a little Baconian method and Newtonian observation applied. Perhaps it is time we quit being so gallingly complacent about the dogma that prosperity revolves around the self-interested global globe of laissez-faire. Shouldn’t we have learned a thing or two over the span of four centuries about self-serving, revolving dogma?

Next time you hear a POTUS applicant (or supposed pundit) serve up justification for laissez-faire dogma, take a page from the book of Galileo, Newton, and friends and ask: Does this reflect fact or prevailing fantasy?

Surely, it’s time for the challenge to escalate—let us put every dogma of the Church of the Laissez-faire into the cross-hairs of unflinching examination.²

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1. Reference: Marjorie Kelly's Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy, © 2001, 2003
2. Perhaps a beginning, fruitful inquiry could address the question: If a few bad apples dominate the top of the idea barrel, is spoilage speeded and exacerbated by Newtonian gravity? (Note: Revelations will follow here, in the coming week, concerning “A Few Bad Apples?”

Econ 011 ~ The “Right” Stuff (or NOT) ?

~

Twelve Truths My Economist Never Told Me

~SMS~
1. Markets are rational—except when more frequently, they are not.

2. Moral hazard is to leverage your leverage.

3. There are stock puffers & stock prickers—and therein lies the grub.

4. Efficient Market Hypothesis is a congenital myth—somewhat like Santa Claus.^[1]

5. Oversupply and under-demand are the norm—except when less frequently, they are not.

6. Losing someone else’s money is less stressful than losing your own (aka: your Broker’s Credo).

7. There is ONLY ONE THING more tempting than a large, quick profit.^[2]

8. The “long shots of short-term” kill the goose & gander exponentially more often than the farm manager.

9. The daily SPANDEX comprises the rationale and ratings of money and market fluctuations elucidated by the former yet current Mr. Greenspan, and like-minders (herein dubbed spandexers).

10. Hedge funds are strongly regulated by temptation.

11. Insider-trading is a branch (perhaps a limb) of Quantum Mechanics. “It’s what happens when no one is looking” (or just as effective, when someone is looking the other way).^[3]

12. A self-regulating market is a “wild speculative paradox,”^[4] if proof is in the pudding (or lack thereof).^[5]

Freebie 13.^[6] It has been speculated that “broker” is derivative from the verb “to break.”

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[1] Santa Claus (sometimes pronounced Claws)—a fiction that receives highly-marketed credit for things this Mister Claus neither made nor paid for.
[2] No one yet knows what it is.
[3] Further out on that same limb someone would invariably find tax fraud—if someone were looking.
[4] Attributed to Alexander Hamilton, man on the US10$bill.
[5] Perhaps more accurately, the proof is in the déjà vu of markets and mania.
[6] As in a baker’s dozen.

Econ 010 ~ Then & Now

(Tea Party 1 : Tea Party 2)

To the offended: You may be adamantly against the recent stimulus packages and bailouts of Big Business (as proffered by GWB and BHO), but if you are a laissez-faire capitalist or corporate libertarian, you are a porter for economic tyranny (as in T-Party) whether you admit it or not. Why? Because that is the inevitable evolution of BOTH the far-right and the far-left as diagramed at http://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2011/05/econ-011-right-stuff-or-not.html and http://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2009/09/are-we-there-yet-at-t-point.html . Warning voices abound everywhere.

Econ 009 ~ Church of the Laissez-faire

~

http://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2009/08/ten-dictates-practicalities-of-laissez.html
http://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2010/06/yes-we-get-it.html

ECON 008 ~ "Give & Take"

~  (Laissez-faire style) ~

Adam Smith: The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it. (The Wealth of Nations, p. 287-8—I.XI.III)

----
Related posts:
Wealth Redistribution: http://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2008/10/wealth-redistribution.html
Beyond the Mark: http://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2009/12/beyond-mark_14.html
Who ate my cheese? http://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2010/05/who-ate-my-cheese.html

ECON 005 ~ "A Person"*

(*with proxy claims for equal human rights! Goes way beyond a "board" game.)

Note: (All ECON sketches may be used pursuant to the Creative Commons License noted herein.)

ECON 002 ~ Handwriting on the Wall

~

ECON 001 ~ The (In)Visible Hand($)

~

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Note 1: Because symbols and pictures can sometimes be more direct than words, I have undertaken to sketch some thoughts and observations of the current state of dire affairs between Big Business, big government, small politics, and the beleaguered citizen (formerly “a person with equal rights”). Hopefully over time my rough art will improve. Where abbreviations in the sketches are not provided, some aids to deciphering (and pondering) may be found in the posts that share labels or in references noted below the sketch. For example: Refererence: http://dejavu-times.blogspot.com/2009/10/crimes-against-people.html

Note 2: All ECON sketches may be used pursuant to the Creative Commons License noted herein.

Yes, We Get It!

(Lessons from the “GULF”¹ between theory and practice; between words-then and words-now; between seeing and not seeing; between astute and stupid; between talking sense and talking points; between …; between …; between … . Oh! Déjà vu!)

Yes, we get it.² Oh! how WE GET IT!

WE GET that deregulation exacerbates greed, corruption, cutting corners, oppression, collusion, cover-up, irresponsibility, finger-pointing, hypocrisy, asininity, ETC., ad infinitum.

WE GET that laissez-faire is a false and pernicious theory that has mugged reality LONG ENOUGH.

WE GET that the absence of appropriate business law and regulation leaves exploiters free to do their worst damage.

WE GET that government is not the enemy; the enemy is the voracious, unregulated profit-seeker.

WE GET that government can become an “enemy of the people” when it sells itself to unregulated profit-seekers (thus, presenting a “state” of GUI: Governing Under the Influence).

WE GET that profiteers seek to have government defined as “people’s enemy #1.”

WE GET that those who denounce government intervention are amongst the first to denounce its failure to intervene (in the right amounts and ways, of course) in order to save us from the worst of the profiteers. (Such denouncers constituting “fair-weather” laissez-faires.)

WE GET that it’s time to account the social (etc.) costs of business against their profits.

WE GET that the extreme right is as dangerous and anti-democratic as the extreme left—perhaps even more so.

WE GET that hubris and hypocrisy eventually trip themselves up.

WE GET that common, ordinary people eventually do and pay for most of the cleanup of our many and various “GULF” disasters.

WE GET that it’s time to be accountable and to demand accountability of our legal fictions (business entities), beguiling investment portfolios, and our, WE THE PEOPLE, (distracted) government.

WE GET that it’s time to forge a balance between individualism and the common good.

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1. April 20, 2010: British Petroleum (aka BP) and their drilling agents suffer a deep-water oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that kills 11, sinks the blazing rig, and begins an oil spill disaster that goes beyond damage control.
2. At least those who have not become so loyal to or romanced by theories (stiff-necked syndrome) that they cannot/will not brook questions or criticism.

Crimes against the People

(And we are all guilty—some more than others—in some way or other)

▪ Unregulated laissez-faire markets*
▪ Excessive government regulation of markets*
▪ Tax structures that are both onerous and full of loop-holes
▪ Massive concessions to big-business while pretending the market-place is free, fair, and level
▪ Financial IVs for too-big-to-fail corps (too seldom spelled corpse)
▪ Revolving doors between big-business and government service
▪ Reorientation of local governments from service to profit (by taking on the business model)
▪ Equating collectives (corporations) with individuals and then favoring the collective
▪ Pretending HyPEs (Highly-Paid Employees such as CEOs, CAOs, CFOs, etc.) are capitalists and entrepreneurs.
▪ Allowing HyPEs to fleece shareholders
▪ Discrediting the import of government and the public good
▪ Selling public assets to private parties for their profit
▪ Serving special-interest collectives rather than electors
▪ Redefining individualism to mean self-interest instead of self-expression & -development
▪ Contributing to the profits of unethical business through consumer purchasing
▪ Fear mongering for power
▪ Secrecy
▪ And so forth
-----------
*Yes, crimes come from both the right and the left.

The TEN DICTATES (& Natural Selections) of the Laissez-faire Market-Place

~~~
1. Thou shalt have no other economic theories before you.^[1]
2. Thou shalt^[2] research, develop, and manufacture goods and services, but above all, the DESIRE for goods and services; and NEVER bow to any attempts to regulate the natural order (and flow) of desire and laissez-faire markets.
3. Thou shalt not permit critics of the laissez-faire market-place to remain guiltless and uncastigated.
4. Remember the seven holy days of the market-place are scarcely enough.
5. Thou shalt honor Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman as principal advocates of self-interest, meritocracy, and pure and free-markets.
6. Thou shalt kill the competition (before they kill you).
7. Thou shalt acquire, merge, and control as many businesses and assets as possible.^[3]
8. Thou shalt steal trade secrets, market share, insider information, and anything else that thou canst reasonably expect to get away with.
9. Thou shalt bear false witness whenever brand or corporate respectability are at risk.
10. Thou shalt covet all that is thy neighbors,^[4] for only in this way can there be eternal growth, profit, and prosperity.
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[1] Yea, NOT EVEN a mix; except during unexpected crises when public assistance is temporarily necessary.
[2] With all thy heart, might, mind, and strength
[3] Déjà vu: Ahab v. Naboth (1 Kings 21)
[4] (corporate or not) including secret government subsidies, earmarks, preferential loans, favors, favoritism, special legislation, private ownership of public assets, perks, status, etc., etc., etc..