And the answer is to obfuscate this ethical twinge with an unconvincing egotism?

To answer your questions, I have an ipod that I haven't used in about two years. I do not have an iphone. I haven't purchased music in months. I can only assume some shit of mine has been made in sweatshops. None of this is an implicit endorsement of the conditions that produce them.

Your message isn't to consume less, it's to quit whining and keep your head down. Shit, you're more down this rabbit hole of anti-consumerist self-contempt that I can imagine. I remember reading it in between your "The Secret" go-get-em amoralism that you coached when the crash was just starting to hurt and some here couldn't find work.

Capitalism is shit, I'm pessimistic that socialism is capable of providing anything superior. This isn't sanctimonious leftist dogma, its a spiritual catch-22.

i'd rather have a dictator or some other shit running this country as long as they didn't pretend they weren't doing it. that's what pisses me off the most, these douchebags are no better than nazi death camp operators and they act like they're helping to advance the human race positively. example iraq: no reason to invade at all so it should've never happened or iraq should've been conquered and made part of the u.s. instead those assclowns hade to fabricate some reason to "liberate" the iraqis.

It's the record industry's own fault for spewing out disposable bubblegum while continually repackaging rock's glory days (the Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, etc.) and letting truly talented, groundbreaking artists rot on the vine for years. If the music business had any sense of progress, there would've been an iTunes long before there was a Napster. The technology was there.

well, then, mr.bradley, that's when we try to imagine a middle term with the lesser of evils.

and as for the record industry, they had plenty of time to reinvent and save themselves, they chose not to, so fuck them.

nobody is really complaining, except for lily allen.

You mean the ye olde Keynesian liberalism? Should I pick up Rawls again?

I doubt the existence of this middle with lesser evils.

didn't your grandma say it gets to a point you gotta make do with what you have?

I have grown to love you so..

That's all perfectly true but then those who blindly attack capitalism as some all-evil political monster don't see it as a progression out of those earlier (with the exception of apparatchiks) modes. Marx, as you know, was a massive believer in the merits of Capitaliism, he just didn't see it as the historical end point that many of those on the Right seem to (Fukuyama's whole 'End of History' thing, for example). Whether Marx was right in suggesting that a full working through of capitalism was crucial to providing the conditions necessary to support a progression into socialism is, of course, massively debatable, and has indeed been debated not just within centrist politics or the Right but even factions within the Left itself.

The problem with things like the anti-capitalist movement seems to be that it has no real vision of anything that might replace capitalism beyond some half-digested anarchism or, more usually, some sort of 'friendlier' capitalism. It's as though the movement itself can't really envisage an end of capitalism so has had to reconcile itself merely with trying to restrain it - 'ye olde Keynesian liberalism', as PBradley mentions already.)

I own both an iPhone and an iPod which I use frequently.

often, I dream of the day when the entire planet has been strip-mined so that all of gawd's chillun can experience my joy.

and if the "natives" complain, well, that's nothing that a neutron bomb can't fix.

That right it sounds great and only works in theory because we don't have enough people ready to live that way. Less government is only at the federal level. I'm not sure how it would work with exxon-valdez or Katrina but could it be any worst than how the present folks handle it?

I'm not sure if it is true about things being worse pre-capitalism, from what this guy says, and he seems credible, the middle ages were much more fruitful for the average person than is commonly thought
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOBWhVe68os

all I can honestly say is AMEN! You know I sincerely said some Rosary prayers last night because I felt so guilty for accidently leaving the sprinkler for an hour wasting more water than a hundred people would drink in a day. Its not about destroying capitalism, its about become religiously conscious consumers. We need to know how much resources our products consume, we need to know how much people are exploited for our prices to be competitively low..

after all it has been written, "Be careful not to bite and eat one another, lest you be consumed by each other!" Apostle Paul


Thats my point exactly. Its all the same facade year after year, Obama.. Bush.. Clinton.. Bush.. Reagon.. Carter.. what the fuck is all the difference? Obama's deficit is Bush's deficit.. Bush's military situation is Clinton's military situation.. It is a chain of mistakes, the names are only symbolic to keep historical reference, the individuals are powerless to control the forces at work.. If americans would get honest with themselves like other people in the world, and accept the myth of democracy to be rosy painted authoritarian system, perhaps we might stop depending on the big govt and focus on our tangible, local efforts instead of being so distracted, spun and brainwashed by politics.


Don't let the paranoia fool you, the record companies are not going anywhere. Sales may be down, but the record companies still make billions of dollars. Just because the pie is sliced more, does not make it smaller.

The only reason the left has to be so extreme in its rhetoric is because the right is so frighteningly insensitive to helping each other out. Social services, welfare, even public education are constantly attacked by the Rightists of all political systems who believe that the poor should fend for themselves, failing to understand that if you let the problem fester, it will inevitably find its way to your country clubs and gated communities. Ironically, rightists want less government, public services even education, but seem quite comfortable expanding military, police and prisons, all strict tools and economy of authoratarianism and aspects of totalitarian states..

would you like to go back if you could?

what is currently called capitalism is no more capitalism than socialism was actually socialism under the Soviets.

Its all about States controlling markets to the benefit of elites. profit is privatized, risk is socialized.

There will be no politics when I am overlord of the Earth

finally you speak some obvious and well-accepted truth. But its as Peter Tosh said my brother, "Suppose I tell some guys the truth (snaps fingers) guys drop dead seen?!"

someone has to pay for the physical infrastructure of wire and rotors and switches behind the scenes, all powered by ELECTRICITY, which is not free. The internet is NOT "green" - its POWERED and most likely from nukes somewhere along the line. Accessing the net requires some kind of technological interface, and Steve Jobs can recycle all the plastic he wants but making chips is not "green"...

have you seen how much Google/Yahoo searches have been modified by advertising? The Top 100 searches used to be based upon momentarily popularity and now it is based on advertiser interest. If you search something, the vast majority of the first ten pages of results will be advertiser oriented and generally trying to sell you something in relation to the search or at least send you to site somehow connected there of.

That's very true. What both systems ultimately suggest aren't so much problems with either Communism or Capitalism as the problems that can arise when a theory (regardless of whether it's Marx's or Adam Smith's) is put into practice in such a way that forces it to use actual people instead of idealised social 'types'.