meme of the day

after reading about our better’s plans for us, especially when it comes to resource usage, allocation, and population control, etc I want to start a new meme.

“Bill Gates is Thanos, prove me wrong”

Feel the love

There was rumored to be a movie set where the director was worried about all the cacophony from traffic disrupting his shoot. A stagehand thought about it and said, “tell you what, just put out a bunch of signs saying “honk if you love Joe Biden” on the street. “ So they did, and almost immediately an eerie silence descended on the entire neighborhood. They finished the shoot, packed up the gear, and then fired the stagehand.

This sounds familiar

from PJmedia https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2023/03/13/the-biden-economy-is-falling-apart-everything-everywhere-all-at-once-n1677787

“SVB and Signature are the second-and third-largest bank failures in U.S. history, respectively, with combined assets in excess of $300 billion. Depositors will be made whole, even deposits greater than the $250,000 covered by FDIC insurance. “Federal Reserve also said it is creating a new Bank Term Funding Program aimed at safeguarding institutions affected by the market instability of the SVB failure,” according to CNBC.”

In other words, they are just going to create more dollars out of thin air, write big numbers in little books, give them to the major players, pretend it’s all about the small investors, and everything will be just dandy. The fact that this is what got us here in the first place will be studiously ignored, glossed over with a lot of blather about how noble and caring they all are. Soon the can they are kicking down the road will be so big even Hercules won’t be able to move it, and then things will really start to be fun.

Saw this comment today…

Saw this comment today, one of many echoing the same theme, and was inspired to rant a bit.

“Even if it’s all a hoax, isn’t getting large corporations to stop polluting and care about their impact on their surroundings, a good thing?” “Why are people against basic climate policies. Even if they climate fear is being weaponised, it’s by corporations doing it”

I’ll give them a pass on the bad grammar, mine’s not so good either.  On the other hand, about the sentiment being expressed,

Wake up!

There is no such physical, individually accountable thing as a corporation, there is only people. The term corporation is one that is used to identify the organization of a group of people of indeterminate size expending effort for a particular purpose(s). Cities and other governments are incorporated, it gives them structure and an identity, it doesn’t call any material thing into existence. It’s just a bunch of people going about the business of government.

If pollution is being generated, it’s because it’s part and parcel to the activities of the people doing whatever it is the corporation has been called into being to get accomplished. Corporations can’t care about their impact on anything, caring is a trait pretty much reserved for humans. Creating a hoax to get said people to take action and place your interests and opinions about their “impact”, ahead of the interests of the people who employ them, is not a good thing, it’s the proverbial road of good intentions, and I’ve heard stories about where that road ends up. If you and yours are really that concerned, start up your own organization offering the same goods and services meeting the same desires as the ones you are complaining about, somehow without the negative effects that you are so against. Don’t forget to match the salaries, dollar for dollar.

In the same vein, there is no such thing as a greedy corporation, this is just an emotion-laden term used to justify an attack on someone’s business, usually by a process akin to extortion, with the ultimate goal of taking some of their money away. There are, of course, greedy people, but corporations do not have a monopoly on them, and the term is a finger that can point both ways simultaneously. 

The legal fiction of a corporation mainly exists to facilitate the organization of efforts to produce goods and services, hopefully at a profit, with said profit going to the individuals who founded and invested in it. It’s not greedy for it to generate as much money as it can, that is what it is supposed to do, maximize the returns on someone’s investment. Even nonprofits try and bring in more money than they spend to exist, the excess is just called something else. It doesn’t make what they are doing more moral than the for-profit model.

Making money for the founders is what they are formed to do, in response to a perceived need. Starting a business is a risk whereby someone takes their resources, both personal and financial, and invests them in the hopes of a gain for themselves and anyone who tosses in with them. They could lose everything, and no one outside their personal circle would care. They are not calling an enterprise into existence to create jobs for anyone, but it’s awesome when they do. Quite a few of us owe our own position on the money tree to the willingness of other people to take a risk, sacrifice their time and money, and start up something new. They don’t have any special obligation to sacrifice their mission to save the planet or support anyone’s political agenda of the moment unless that is the expressed purpose for the formation of the organization. Being successful and profitable does not give anyone else a right to harass and plunder them, or to demand that they give any portion of their earnings, time, or energy to other people’s causes.

With regard to the concept of corporate liability for doing something wrong, I’ll use this illustration. My friends and I, including Lou, go bowling every week. On the way home, all of us except for Lou decide to piss on our neighbor’s car. We have done a wrong, each and every one of us.  The next week, we decide to incorporate our team, to make it easier to get a sponsor. On the way home, all of us, wearing our new team jerseys with our corporation name on them, again, except for Lou, pee on the cars. You catch us, see our name, and file a complaint against the corporation demanding redress. You have now done Lou, who is blameless, a wrong, since he is a member of the corporation you have taken action against, but would suffer the same penalty as the rest of the members of the corporation if a judgment was rendered against it.

Moving on, by way of more examples, the current push to make everything electric in the name of saving the earth, in line with current “climate policies”, has spawned a lot of corporate effort, especially in the production of raw materials and their conversion into appliances, motors, and batteries to meet the new demand, however it was ginned up. In the process, a whole lot of pollution, some of it quite toxic, is being generated all over the world, but mostly out of sight of the do-gooders leading the charge.

Mitigating the negative effects, especially doing something besides creating gigantic landfills, is expensive. In a normal course of events, the extra expense above production costs would need to be paid by the consumers by being added to the price they pay for the stuff they want. This is how the marketplace feedback loop is supposed to work.

Needless to say, really making things right and adding in all the real costs to do so would cause a case of sticker shock akin to a heart attack, so instead either the mitigation is not done, or the price is kept artificially low by getting “subsidies”, i.e.; making someone other than the consumer pay part of the price, like it or not.  This hides the true financial impact of the virtue-signaling purchase so someone can proudly claim to be doing their part to “save” the planet. None of the chain of decisions leading up to all of this was made by the “corporation”. Individual human beings, occupying positions with the power to say yes to any actions, with their own personal motivations and goals, made the calls, from the first ditch being dug to the final bit of packaging that is about to be thrown away. You can’t ask to hold their feet to the fire without first looking to the people whose needs and desires they are trying to fulfill, at a profit above and beyond what they are putting in, just like the rest of us.

At any rate, in the interests of full disclosure, I own zero stocks in any corporation of any kind, and my parachute is a far cry from being any kind of golden. However, based on the observable track record, both historical and current, I’ll take the corporate model over any of the alternatives being touted these days. That doesn’t mean that I think corporations do not have flaws that can be exploited by the unscrupulous, but what organization doesn’t? And with regards to the environmental record of those expressly not-for-profit organizations, like leftist European entities, I refer you to the casual disregard they held towards the environment during the cold war era. At the very least review the footage of the Russians dumping garbage cans full of nuclear waste into the oceans, there to pollute it essentially forever, because it was cheap and no one could tell them not to.

Cheers

Sound the alarm

Another day, another “too big to fail” catastrophic bank failure. The ones responsible for this kind of thing are routinely portrayed as the smartest around, having them in charge is why it’s so safe to put everybody’s money in their hands. They’ve got it all covered, they’ll tell you, along with a smug look, if asked how things are doing. And it’s true, they are smart, so smart that they and their friends have rigged the system so no how badly they mismanage things, in the end, the taxpayers will probably pick up the bill. In fact, as I write this, the FDIC is busy trying to figure out who to start handing money out to first.

There is nothing to fear they say, we’ve got you covered, just show us the receipts and we’ll start backing your debt. No matter how tenuous the connection between John Q Public and the decision makers who brought the current house down, they will look to have the bills paid by the American citizen, again.

As the fallout grows and the feds take over day-to-day operations, underlings may lose their jobs by the hundreds, but the people who made the decisions leading to the massive losses will remain untouched. Their giant salaries will continue to roll in, and their bonuses, perks, and golden parachutes will remain intact. In fact, they’ll still be lauded as leaders, visionaries, and, of course, experts. They will find other juicy positions at the top of the heap in the financial world and have quite a chuckle as they dine in the best of accommodations wherever they go. If they are feeling generous, the staff may even get a 10 % tip. And of course, in the end, it’ll be another “who could have seen it coming”, “better luck next time” finale as the economy staggers from another vicious blow.

But never mind all that, somebody drove over a rainbow flag painted in the street, couldn’t see that one coming either, better call out the gendarmes and grab some resources, this is REALLY important, we gotta investigate this dastardly deed toot suite.

Thoughts

Profound comments seen in the wild today:

Farming is the biggest problem/polluter, we should stop farming.

Make food free.

Raise money (through your efforts and expense) to address poverty.

I gotta throw down on this one: In January, 1964, then U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced an “unconditional war on poverty”. This was the beginning of a war where countless dollars have been seized from the people who earned it and then distributed through various programs to other people, with a handsome cut off the top for the burgeoning bureaucracies that sprang up to dish it out.

Let’s face it, the reason it was called a war, and an unconditional one at that, was to gin up support for a program that was completely unconstitutional and totally against the original principles of this country. Federal Social Welfare programs, along with the Great Society program at large, are nowhere to be found in the principles of limited government envisioned by the country’s founders. At the stroke of a pen, an unstoppable behemoth was born. To cap it off, because it’s a war, you’re not allowed to object or criticize it in any way because that means you’re not helping to “win it” for the country.

That was 55 YEARS AGO! That’s more than double the age of some of the cuddleheads I have heard spouting this nonsense. And yet, over the years the poverty has only grown worse, and the cry for money is endless. The fantasy that this will work if only they are allowed to spend more and more tax dollars lives on through endless government-sponsored propaganda preached to vulnerable young minds.

The Bernie Sanders’s of the world know it’s all BS, but after 3 or 4 mansions get tucked under their belt they are unlikely to change their tune. And the institutions it spawned are now eternal, the process of doling out the cash is a lifelong career choice for functionaries too numerous to count. There are thousands and thousands of these people who in no way will ever vote against the party that created this monstrosity.

I mean, come on, after over a half-century of failure it is time for even the most stubborn proponents of this to admit it isn’t working, and it isn’t ever going to work. I don’t have the answer to the problem of poverty, but I’m pretty sure that this isn’t it. It is time to stop pissing this money away and try something else.

Irony

When the service provider that handles your message service sends you a message saying they will message you when their messaging service doesn’t work. Of course, they’ll also send you a message telling you when it is working again, so you’ve got that going for you.

Celebrate

I’ve been bombarded by messages all day telling me to celebrate woman’s day today, sponsored by people who can’t define what a woman is. Redbox has done a bang up job of depicting the kind of empowered women we are supposed to be celebrating, “strong female characters taking the lead” with handguns at the ready, stern faces, and big swords for cutting people’s heads off. There isn’t a soft, feminine face to be seen in their women’s history month lineup. No wonder our birthrate is in the shitter.

Photos via Redbox

Maybe we should have a “marginalize a man” day as well, just to put a point on it.