Cash. Beautiful cash. This bread is supposed to be over 200 million US. In another country, another continent and another time, this amount in post war Germany would have bought you a few days food supply. In Zimbabwe, currently, this will get you approximately 5 months worth of rent in your 1 bedroom unit. We should see Mugabe run out of Zimbabwe or killed because he can't even pay his own bodyguards now. If he pays them it will be worthless by the end of the day. Good Job, Robbie Mugabeee!
So the question of the day as opposed to the soup or the catch du jour, is whether you would sacrifice half of the years of your life, for enough money to live in excess or very very comfortably. Lets say, would you, if you were 15 years old, take the offer of 200 million dollars US, and live like royalty until you were 55. At age 55 your life would end. No tricks, you get the dough, and give up your life at 55. You can take the money in gold, silver, oil, Euro's... whatever, but at 55..... GAME OVER! All you old farts... you are 15... what is your choice?
I noticed that Iran has enforced fuel rations today. They have all the oil they could ever want, but lack refining facilities. Citizens are now forced to live on 100 litres per month. Iran relies heavily on receiving imported fuel. Interestingly enough, part of the reason they have an inflation rate of nearly 20% is because they subsidise their petrol, which makes the cost per litre a mere 11 cents. The government is worried the US is going to sanction this foreign oil, which would throw their already teetering economy into chaos. President Happy Mood, a.k.a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is quite an unpopular character right now. How fickle the people are, as he was very popular just months ago while he defiantly told the world he was going to have his nuclear program and didn't care what everyone else thought. I can't help but wonder what would happen if he had some secret talks with, the Americans and suggested he would stop sending over suicide bombers to Iraq, and stop his nuclear ambitions in exchange for assistance in normalizing their fuel supply. Secondly, if he was to build a few refineries, it would create jobs, more stability, and a stronger economy. His people would be better for it, and the world would be better for it. How is that for a diplomatic solution? Will it happen? Don't make me gag.
10 comments:
"All you old FARTS"
You referring to ME?
Well, it's true I am OLD I just won't admit it. Ooops, I guess I just did admit it.
Do the math. A Wage earner over 40 years makes 2.4 Million dollars. Then a hockey player or a baseball player might make 200 Million or more. Either way they both give the best years of their youth in exchange for cash.
Then at 55 they get turfed out, or in the cast of a hockey player it might be 35 and they are finished.
Not necessarily DIE but priorities change.
The definition of OLD also changes now that people are living until 100 or more. So, 55 might not be old but might be considered PRIME.
Ya, the oil thing... Well, who is making the money? We have been sold the idea that the Arabs make all the money. The real story behind all the propaganda is that the refineries, and the government are taking more than the producers. The story about Iran being short of gas only brings out this truth. The Arabs do the easy part and just pump it out of the ground. If they did the refining too then we would be in real trouble. However, the western refineries can put sanctions on the producers to keep them in line.
Money, greed, power just human nature expressing itself. The real freedom is not getting taken in by it.
....Words from an old Fartost.
I spent eighteen years of my life working my way through the education system in Canada, first the public education system until grade twelve, and then university for my bachelors, to arrive at a very respectable level of achievement in mathematics and computing science. After spending all this time clawing my way through exams and stressing out over trying to understand every new concept that came my way, sometimes giving up in exasperation, I continued trying to make my way in a workforce that has more respect for how well you smile and nod than it does for what your skills are. That is capitalism.
Then I discovered that I could live on a relatively meager living doing what I had always loved doing in the first place: playing music. And all of a sudden for the first time in my life I was blissfully happy. And I haven't looked back. I am so much happier living my life for time with my friends and music and loving the things I do that I can't imagine how some poor directionless soul would sell a minute of their life away for any amount of money. If you truly love your fellow human beings then you really wouldn't want to have any more or less than any of them anyways. You'd want to be provided for and comfortable as those around you, and share what you could, and accept graciously what was shared with you. If some of the world's most malevolent people (Mugabe, Bush, Bin Laden, or the now defunct Pinochet, for example) had had lots and lots of really great sex, and lots of love for the people around them, and parties with their friends, they wouldn't be doing the damage they're doing. I wish happiness on them, because only when they find happiness will they cease their destructive struggles.
As far as Iran having more oil than they'll ever need, I don't believe it. I heard quite a convincing argument from James Howard Kunstler recently that every single oil producing well in the world is past peak production now, and we're spiralling towards depletion of the resource. We're in for a rude awakening folks. Start imagining your life without your vehicles, because the more we prepare for it, the easier it will be to transition into the new era of rediscovering the horse and carriage. Please! Accept reality! Wake up and get your heads out of the sand!
When we are running out of something, do we share what's left of it, or fight over it to be the last one to have it?!?!
Psam,
On your first point "that is capitalism" you are wrong. Dead wrong. That is not capitalism. I think in that instance it was a kind of nepotism. Lastly, how do you know that 'dubya' doesn't get great sex, or bin laden for that matter....
some guy
Let's just say I'm a connoisseur.
Isn't doing something you love and charging people to listen to what you love to do capitalism?
As far as oil goes there is more oil untouched in canada and the u.s. then there is in the middle east. They are just getting started in alberta and haven't begun in sask. yet. Not to mention all the oil off the coast in the maritimes. All this talk of no oil is just a way to charge us more at the pumps. Rumors started by the oil companies themselves.
Bench
Capitalism is all about trying to be the richest kid on the block. Making enough money to support yourself is not capitalism. Do not misunderstand the definition of capitalism.
Having a form of liquid currency to make sharing and trading easier to keep track of is an economy. But as a planner of your society, you create this currency to give people an easier time co-existing, NOT so that one person can hoarde masses of wealth and have an implied ownership of everybody else and all their possessions. If this ends up happening, then that is what is called capitalism, and it is a misuse of the currency that has been created for a benign purpose within society and then twisted into being used as a method of having massive unfair distribution of power. It's the equivalent of constructing a hammer for the purpose of building a shed, and then using it to beat your neighbour in the back of the head. That is capitalism.
"Using a hammer to beat your neighbour in the back of the head"
That is Capitalism?
I think Puhsamy just had a brain fart.
Never heard that one before made me laff. Whoever made that last comment is right. Building a shed to beat people in capitalism? Psam you are a worry.
Caboolture
Interesting responses. One anonymous and one, surprise surprise, caboolture. Both of you, I realize that you're on the short end of the ability-to-grasp-complex-concepts spectrum, so unfortunately, you should just expect to not understand a lot of what I say. Don't worry, there are intelligent people in the world trying to improve ways of educating people, even ones like yourselves, so that you can gain new abilities to follow what people are saying. Some day, you'll get it.
I just don't get it.
Feels like I have been hit in the head with a hammer..........
maybe in the next life....
i'll get it.
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