1. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

i’m feeling this one matt. my anwser to this, or my opinion rather, is, it’s a new dawn and a new day. i think we as conscious human beings, need to let go of the old way of thinking, when it comes to this country….just simply let it go. i think the trauma (fear) comes in, when we try to hold on to the past, and refuse to acknowledge, and accept the reality of what’s really going on…alot of us are like, “well, if we do “a” then maybe “b” can go back to “normal”….please, as much as we would love to believe that…it’s just not going to happen. some of us want that old thing back so badly, that, when we watch the news we become fearful, and depressed.

i say, face it head on…remove yourself from the box, and start looking in. it’s time to embrace humble livings and thinking…i actually found the silver lining in all of these job losses…i mean call me naive…but i think it’s actually a good thing. first off, it should show people that the government, and job market really does not give a fuck about us…so maybe, just maybe we shouldn’t really give a fuck about them. secondly, at the rate that we’re losing jobs, it should make people ask the questions, “if the US has lost more jobs than any other period during my lifetime, what would there be for the next lifetime?” AND “why is that, no matter how many jobs we lose, the fat cats always find a way to get fatter?”

i think this “crisis’ should start making people look inward, at themselves. maybe some of us will finally stop running on the endless wheel to no where, and finally start thinking about who we really are, why are we here, and what do we really have to contribute… besides, blood, sweat, and tears to corporations and governments that don’t give a rat’s ass (no pun intended) about us and ours. maybe people will start realizing that it’s time we do for ourselves, it’s time we discover who we really are. for decades we were lead to believe that a “good” job, with lots of money and benefits, determined our worth….NOW look, all of that is in the shitter…now what do we have?…now what are we worth??? think about it…we’ve been working all this time for aimless reasons, one in particular..MONEY.

and for some odd reason, money is now letting us down, it’s no longer faithful, nor reliable…and all this time we were so faithful and realiable to it…how sad

America is like Frankenstein…it was created to be this beautiful, marvelous entity…but in return, turned out to be this big disgusting MONSTER. once the creator(s) of this monster realized how ugly it’s become, they’ve decided to turn their backs on it…but they refuse to tell anyone what they’ve done. they just continue to run and point fingers…

it’s time to wake up and smell the roses. it’s time for us think about our own futures and destinies, and not allow for anyone else to determine that for us…

just my opinion

peace.

2. james wrote:

i refuse to feel any kind of fear. ever. except in instances where it’s entirely appropriate. for example, somebody threatening physical harm, or the possibility of attaining some sort of premature or accidental death. on that last score, sometimes a get a bit nervous in heavy traffic at high speeds, or high places with loose footing and no fences, but never would i worry about the character of my country or the world to get through an economic downturn. they happen all the time. history is full of them. in general, people do survive them. people are, on the whole, because of evolutionary principles, pretty resourceful entities.

questioning whether americans are spoiled is a superficial concern when it comes to a discussion about the building or displaying of character in “hard times.” despite what some may believe about our consumer society, people are never truly judged by their possessions. for the most part, people are judged solely on their ideas, actions, and reactions to other humans. i’ve never had anyone say they didn’t like me because i don’t have an iphone or drive a cadillac. i’ve never had any say they would like me better if i upgraded my internet service to a faster speed. consumer society has very little to no effect on the personalities and characters of human beings, just like the industrial revolution, again, in general, didn’t make us any better or worse as human beings; it just changed our lines of work. “the heart’s deep core,” as yeats would call it, is not effected by the economy. if you are a killer, you will do so regardless of your economic status. if you are a lover, the loss of your job just means you have more time for that, and so forth and so on….

3. john p wrote:

I did not vote for Obama for a number of reasons. My family and friends are giving me the ice cold shoulder when I tell them. I am in Siberia right now.

I liked what you wrote and Dr. Hill wrote a funny article today in a newspaper I read, so I checked out his website…. Regards to Rusty

For the past five years, every MLK Day, I read the Constitution and I read his speech. He said “Judge a man based on the content of their character and not the color of his skin”. Those are easy words to live by until you are a minority and the person your judging has the same color you do. Voting against or for Obama based on the color of his skin is racist by definition and opposite of what Dr. King asked us to do? I thought we were all in this together.

My problem with Obama was that although he was selling “Hope” and “Change”, he seemed like a cheerleader for failure with respect to Iraq and the Economy. If you think that the fundamentals of the economy are flawed, what can you be hopeful about? What is the plan to fix the fundamentals? My father’s position is that you need to shuffle the deck politically every decade or two. I want to know more than that.

I didn’t buy that this election was a referendum on Bush or “Trickle Down” economics. The problem is bigger than George W. Bush and the easy and irresponsible answer is to scapegoat him for all of it. What we’re dealing with is not a vertical rich versus poor problem where we blame the rich for our problems and based on that theory tax them more and spread the wealth. The problem is horizontal in nature. The model works like this: we are a consumer nation that doesn’t manufacture much stuff. Our nation prints money by borrowing from China and then with the money we print, Americans buy stuff from China and we send the money we borrow right back to China. When we offer stimulus packages we just accelerate that process and go deeper into debt. It’s not a vertical problem it is a horizontal siphon, trade deficit problem.

The question is “Why are we a consumer nation?” The answer is that we live in a delusion where we think it is possible to have autoworkers in Detroit making $80k to stamp out bumpers when our competitors’ in China can pay someone a lot less than that to do it. We signed NAFTA which allowed automakers to build cars in Mexico. So the deal is this, on the one hand we complain about losing jobs, but on the other hand what do we do with that stimulus money? Do we do the right thing and invest it in companies that are growing so they can hire more people or do we run out and get flat screen televisions from China? We want our cake and eat it. We love or I-Pods, our cell phones, our CD’s and DVD’s that are made cheaply in China and we drain our wealth all over to China in the process. It is not responsible to know that we are doing this and then turn around and say that trickle down economics don’t work. Look at the toys people have, and like you were saying, what the poor have in China and India is a lot less than what we have here.

The reason why it is wrong to blame the rich is because the rich in this country pay a lot of the freight. In other countries the rich hoard the wealth. Look at the disparity between the rich and poor in Dubai. The poor in other nations do not have the education system we do. The bottom 50% of wage earners only pays 3% of the cost of government. The top 25% pay 86% of the cost of government. Do they get 86% of the benefits of our Nation? They pay for our public schools, our Military, our police, firefighters, social workers, community colleges, welfare programs, and corporate welfare. The bottom 50% complain about corporate welfare, do they actually think they are paying for it? Most aren’t paying for anything, yet they complain. I don’t understand that. I believe a responsible leader would ask people to be thankful to someone who was paying and giving to others. JFK asked his countrymen “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Do you think we’ve gone soft? Do you think we are in an age where in order to get elected you need to tell people that even though they aren’t contributing, we’re going to give them “Tax Credits”, or free money? Aristotle warned about the dangers when the poor voted their own interests and made the rich pay for everything. It’s kind of like everyone raises their hands and makes one guy pay for the bar tab.

Here’s where I shift gears. What I do like about Obama is that he got people to believe in and engage democracy. What we need now, more than anything is for people to believe in and engage in capitalism. Our country needs democracy and capitalism. Capitalism is teaching a man to fish. Capitalism is building a middle class by giving people the tools to compete. Capitalism believes that people are capable of surviving. If people are willing to get up and work hard we will have a middle class. Contempt for the rich, as is quoted in the Godfather II, is the way you keep the poor from becoming rich. Blaming the rich is a delusion and it will keep you down. What the rich want is to have the poor stuck in this powerless delusion and just sit passively and take their handouts and bailouts. What they fear is Joe the Plumber. They fear competition. Joe the Plumber dreamed of having his own business and was working long hours to get it. If Joe the Plumber can outbid the fat cat plumbers that are lazy and overcharge in his market, he drives down the price of the service to one that might be more affordable to all and in doing so; he spreads the wealth through capitalistic means. Industrious hard working people start small companies that take on the rich Goliath’s; they throw the rocks and defeat the Goliaths that suffocate the poor with their controls of the markets. Yes, Dr. Hill, I read your article about the rocks and Goliath… If you don’t like overpaying for certain goods and services you have to empower the little guy to go out and take on the big guns. That’s capitalism, that’s America. I think people need to know who to throw the rock at. For instance, when gas was $3, 2/3’s of the price was the price of crude oil. Futures traders drove that price up. In July, a barrel of oil was $147. Today it’s like $59 a barrel. The oil companies only made 55 cents a gallon when it was at $3. You can check at U Penn’s website factcheck.org. For those 55 cents, the oil companies needed to refine the crude oil transport it all over the globe and nation, pay for the pumps and the free bathrooms that we all use when we’re on the highway etc. The government taxes up to 45 cents a gallon. The oil companies make like a 6% profit, which is less than most industries. Again, if you think that they are gouging us and there is a ton of fat in there, be my guest, go right out there and start your own oil company; its America you’re free to do it. You got your President elected and reached the pinnacle in Democracy, who is to say that you can’t do it in Capitalism. Please do it and make my gas cheaper. Further, if you have a problem with Halliburton, go start a company to provide logistics for the Military. I’m serious, you’ve got Obama now go out there and build those companies and make the cost of government cheaper by competing with Halliburton. Be the Jackie Robinson of capitalism because we’ll all be better off. Honestly, Chicago would have been better off if Tony Rezko had some competition. Take your slice of the American Pie, the more hard working competing capitalists, the bigger the middle class. You build a middle class through incentive not by handout. McCain wanted to take the tax burden off of small businesses so that they could start taking down the goliaths that have overcharged us. I believe McCain believe in Capitalism while Obama was selling disdain for the rich. I hope I’m wrong and he unleashes his followers out as hungry capitalists that will no longer be taken for a ride and sit like helpless prey in the capitalistic wild. I hope he inspires them to engage capitalism and go out and earn their piece of the pie. Capitalism is like sports, it was born out of the idea that all men are created equal. It doesn’t matter what color you are or who your father was, you go out there and offer a better deal, work harder, work smarter or make a better mousetrap and you win. If you can put the ball in the net and put the points on the board you win. If you want the price of gas to drop, shop around and drive to the cheapest station and give them your business, be a smart shrewd consumer, a good capitalist.

The problem with capitalism is that you’re burdened with having to turn a profit. Government workers or politicians don’t have to turn a profit. Profit is what keeps this country moving. Profit is the horsepower that tows the load. People that thump their chests and talk with lofty rhetoric sometimes aren’t burdened with having to go out and turn a profit; they are trading on another’s dime. Politicians’ name bridges after themselves. You don’t see anyone ask to name a bridge “Taxpayer’s Bridge”, or “Taxpayer’s Hall” at a University. They don’t want to acknowledge the taxpayers because they want the credit, and they want to live in the delusion that the money appeared out of thin air. They don’t want to acknowledge the blood, sweat and tears it took to build what we have. In the balance of democracy and capitalism, if political forces get too strong and government controls wealth, the wealth will not make it to the industrious people that can create the abundance necessary to feed the herd. Think about politicians and government, they screw up everything they touch, they do because they don’t’ need industrious values to be a politician. They need to be a good snake oil salesman. So what do you think happens when politicians control wealth, they give it to their friends? The Iraq War gave Bush and Cheney an opportunity to give work to their friends. What we needed in that situation wasn’t a do-nothing Democratic Congress of 06 and 07 and 08, we needed a private company to step up to the scratch line and take on Halliburton. People didn’t like the no-bid contracts for Halliburton but can anyone name a competitor of Halliburton? We needed a capitalistic force in the fight so that the American Public didn’t have to take on the burden that Halliburton put on us. John McCain when asked where he could see an opportunity to cut said, surprisingly the Military. Now if someone is dialed in to military spending and being a Republican pork barrel spender, that statement out of McCain sent shock waves. For a Republican to say that he was going to trim the pork out of the Military was like a Democrat saying that they were going to negotiate with a union to give the taxpayers a better deal. I don’t ever see Democrats stepping up to the plate to challenge the Unions. They know most don’t care, because most don’t pay taxes to begin with so if the minority of the people paying the taxes gets ripped off even further, what do they care? Most State’s have “Public Bidding Laws” which means that you just can’t give a construction project to a friend of a politician. You have to have a transparent open advertisement and public opening of the bids. This is how capitalism bleaches out corruption of politics. To build this Nation we need hard working, hungry, industrious capitalists who build a middle class. These people are the sled dogs that pull the freight, the sheep dogs that protect us and the hunting dogs that find opportunities. These people are what give us horsepower; they are what give us a load bearing capacity to build a nation. We don’t build a nation of lightweights who don’t’ want to work and are delusional and feel entitled and disdain for those that do hustle and work hard. Right now, that 25% of wage earners who pay 86% of the cost of our government aren’t just paying for our people, the money we pay for our Military which is significantly more than other nations provide the blanket of security that protects Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Western Europe, etc. etc. etc. Who would lay a finger on Canada; they know the US would defend them in a second. So guess what, Canada doesn’t have to pay for a world class Military because they trade on ours. So Canada can afford to have socialism, free health care, long paid vacations, etc. The danger of socialism is the delusion that you are entitled and the resentment you have to manufacture to avoid feeling guilty to those that pay your share. Despite not having a world class military, most Western European nations tax their people worse than us. The taxes build and build and build and it just weighs their people down. The best and brightest from those countries come to the United States. Brazil had a socialist win an election and now we’re seeing waves of industrious Brazilians wanting to come to America. We have to cherish our sled dogs; we have to cherish our sheep dogs that protect us. Socialists are dangerous because at the base level they feel entitled something they don’t contribute to, and then the delusion grows and then they start to steal and then they become predators.

With respect to government subsidies, whether it is corporate welfare or farm subsidies, bailouts, or student loans or the Community Reinvestment Act’s Amendments in 1995 allowing the securitization of subprime loans, these subsidies screw up the balance of capitalism through distorting the natural affordability limits that would keep prices in check. For instance prices for college tuitions and housing have skyrocketed since we have subsidized the market. When the government lets you get a guaranteed student loan for $6 grand, that’s $6 grand more the college will charge you. Those colleges will pump your head with socialism, but they practice greedy capitalism as cut throat as any other. If you compare the cost of higher education against the price of gasoline, you’ll begin to see who you should have been throwing rocks at.

What we’re going through is bigger than George W. Bush’s doing. This is a global problem and each nation will chose a leader and set of policies differently. The last Depression we had before WWII, each nation had a different approach. The US became isolationists and protectionists and had a Hawley-Smoot Tariff (which didn’t work). England had Neville Chamberlain, a great economist but an appeaser to Germany’s Hitler. Germany became delusional socialist predators. They scapegoat the Jews and began a wave of nationalism that wasn’t grounded in fundamentals. It was false pride and delusion used to justify taking from someone else. They felt superior and entitled and they sure didn’t want to work hard for anything, they wanted to take it from someone. So today, what will Russia do, what will Iran do, what will Venezuela do? Will France and Germany sit idle like they always do? Who is going to stand up to the pirates who are raiding ships in the Middle East? How will the world like it if we become protectionists and isolationists and we let an Iran stomp on whomever they want? Well, we stepped in Iraq and the Americans didn’t like having to pick up the mess. Iraq had a dictator who was evil and committed genocide. We didn’t’ find WMD but we sure found signs of genocide. We built Iraq, we did what Bush said we wouldn’t do and that is nation building. It wasn’t all Americans who paid the price; it was those in uniform and those who paid taxes. I don’t’ know what the rest of everyone else is complaining about. Were we supposed to appease a Saddam Hussein and let him build to a point where he could have been an Adolf Hitler? Hussein went into Kuwait just as Hitler went into Poland. Instead, this time the United States took action. Thank God we don’t have a chapter of Saddam Hussein’s reign that would have been like the Nazi’s. That chapter doesn’t’ exist because of the actions that our Nation took, yet people think George W. Bush is the evil one. Bin Laden gets his support from Radical Islam. These people weren’t given an education on math and science and engineering and commerce, they were given a concentration in Religion. The people that flew the planes into the World Trade Center hated the modern world and saw it as materialistic and detrimental to their way of life. They didn’t want to see their kids listening to I Pods and having P-Diddy t-shirts and playing video games like Grand Theft Auto. They wanted the purity of a simple life. They did not see that you could have a virtuous society that was a modern capitalistic society. They didn’t’ see the value of capitalism and how it bleaches out the corruption of political power. These people were not equipped with the industrious skill sets to compete. Because they don’t have women in the workplace, they limit the productivity of their society. Again, this isn’t just a vertical trickle down issue with our country, the trickle down now applies globally, and to many emerging nations, the people that think they are poor in the United States are the fat cats that they want to destroy. Just like our “poor” have disdain for our rich, so too do other emerging nations have disdain for all of us.

On a technical side of things, as far as why trickle down economics didn’t work it was as described, globalism and horizontal flow to emerging nations for investment and by all Americans buying foreign made products and transferring our wealth, but it was also due to this new phenomenon called derivative. If you Google “pyramid of liquidity”, you’ll see that 75% of our wealth is tied up in derivatives. Oil trading futures is a form of derivatives. Only a small percentage of money is in the form of liquid cash. The normal course of events would have been to have too much wealth up in the sky in these derivatives almost like having too much moisture in the sky, enough to create raindrops which would have fallen and watered the crops below (trickle down economics). Instead, the universe of derivatives expanded and expanded and we never got the pressure in this gaseous atmosphere to create the rain drops. We need to contain the derivatives on a global level so we can build up the pressures of wealth to make it rain down on all. This is much more sophisticated than just scapegoat Bush, and it will work. If you don’t think that there is wealth out there, Wikipedia “Money Supply” or M3. You’ll see that the FED has actually pumped too much liquidity into the economy and as some assets like house prices have buoyed with all that liquidity, wages have not. Wages haven’t because there is no work to do when you are a consumer society. It is like Bread and Circus in Rome where the people just sat around and wanted entertainment and food for free. This delusion is the beginning of the end. We’re finished, its curtains if we lose our industrious values and worse, have disdain for those that dream of earning a better life. This is America, we don’t believe in Kings, we don’t believe in Fairy Tales or Super Heros. I don’t wear a T-Shirt of Spiderman because I know if I want to stop crime, I need to call the cops or take down a license plate number. I hope people don’t sit back passively and think Obama is a superhero. I hope they help him like they did during the election and I really hope he unleashes his followers in the world of capitalism and we end up stronger.

In my heart and in my brain I am a minority. I am a weird dude. It isn’t the wrapping paper, its inside. Thank you for giving a potentially opposing opinion the time of day.

God Bless and as Dr. Hill say’s Peace!

4. R.oB. wrote:

Matt, some of the fear is like Y2K hysteria. Plausible but overblown. To be sure the risks are real and there is pain ahead but we can deal with this together. You are right that the crux is the character of America. Will we step up? I think we will. Despite being spoiled, we also respond like humans when crisis hits…extremes. I’m hopeful that with the proper leadership, i.e. Obama, we can respond like the common people to Katrina when the government failed. Like civilized people with a sense of common destiny. If McCain/Palin was at the helm. I’d buy a few assault rifles. Stock up on ammunition, And move to the woods. I shit you not.

5. R.oB. wrote:

WYLTK, I sympathize with your frustration, but you are dealing with a nation that puts individualism on an altar. So asking for others to “give a fuck” about you is a non-sequitur in that mythology. And the rugged individual is a myth. It’s the fundamental flaw in conservative (even libertarian) ideology. You are responsible for yourself. Jokes. Employees by definition need others to survive. Sick people need drugs they cannot produce. And so on. Obviously there is more going on than being responsible for oneself. Ultimately, we have to become more collectivist if we are to survive. The question is how.

6. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

Rob i see where you’re coming from, and i guess i am a bit frustrated. what i was trying to get at..is if we as individuals would stopped grinding so hard for the next man’s twisted plans…then maybe we would have the time to realize something greater in ourselves…which will inevitably, better us as a whole. i think we all possess greater skills and abilities than we give ourselves credit for. and i also believe that we’ve spent so much time chasing “the american dream”, that we haven’t actually discovered those things within us. Now that the well is drying up, and the resources that were once so plentyful, are practically gone…i think it’s an opportunity for people to finally think about those things…after all, we have no choice….the question in everyone’s mind is, what’s next??? and as scary as that question is for some, i actually embrace it, and i feel more should too. maybe we’ll discover things, we never knew existed…if that makes any sense.

7. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

“Employees by definition need others to survive. Sick people need drugs they cannot produce. And so on.”

also, employers need employees to survive, drugs need sick people to be produced, and so on…

where there is a “flip” there is a “reverse”…and that is what i mean by thinking outside of the box. the wheel can go many ways besides forward…

8. R.oB. wrote:

“drugs need sick people to be produced” – now that’s existentialism!

9. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

that could be true Rob.

but i also believe that with every sickness there is a natural cure….i don’t think we really need drugs for anything. i think some (all) of these drugs actually cause sickness….

i know this is definitely up for debate.

my mother use to take a shoe box full of pills. and at the end of the day, she eventually became sicker…one thing lead to the next…and i believe it was because of all the drugs…

hey but if it isn’t written in text…then i guess it’s existentialism.

some would say that Dr. King’s dream was existentialism too…

10. Regkam2 wrote:

I would suggest that everyone check out ‘Hijacking Humanity’ (Google Video) and Zeigest addendum (Google video) to understand what is going on behind the scenes. The worst is yet to come…….

11. jordan wrote:

WYLTK – I think I see what you’re getting at, and I feel it too. (not so much the drugs bit, but the general idea.)
I’ve had the strange realization lately that this may be our generations’ “thing” to work out. The “thing” is having lived in a world of ease and consumer excess, and then having watched the bottom fall out. I have to imagine this will shape who we are, but it won’t be the world our kids know. Our strange attitudes about the world will become more apparent when we encounter the next generation.
I spent a great deal of time growing up with my grandparents, who lived a block away. They experienced the great depression, and had attitudes about money that I couldn’t really relate to. I find it funny (strange not haha) that I might be the opposite type of grandparent. I might NOT buy expired can goods in bulk. I might not bring flyers to the grocery store and insist on being given their competitors’ sale prices.
The world will change, it tends to. We can choose to be the dinosaurs of a bygone era or we can try to evolve.

12. james wrote:

okay, regkam2, i checked out the zeitgeist addendum. one important failure of this otherwise successful and artsy film is the lack of information on how, exactly, we would make a successful transition from a monetary system to a resource system. for example, with robots doing everything, what am i supposed to do all day? write poetry? learn to play the piano? hike and bike and lead a life of leisure?

regkam2, do you actually believe that humans could survive and actually enjoy living without all of the sick drama caused by the lust for money and fame? the monetary/debt system developed alongside our existing human nature. the film seems to discount biology and human nature entirely, chalking up our current status to the monetary system and behavioral issues arising only from that supposedly evil and shadowy system. for me, this lack of information sufficiently hamstrings the feasibility of the venus project.

13. econwhat wrote:

I know few people who would want to pack their bags, move to China or Brazil right about now, same for some of the Euro countries, I know few people who would want to fling themselves out of high-rise offices as was done in the great depression. Sleezers (sp) nowadays lack a guilt-complex, lack the need to consciously reflect on the “do no harm” mentality, but they definitely got a high-stakes gambling jones that can never be satisfied. My girl, damn I can hope can’t I, says that people need to listen to the wisdom from above and perhaps in response to this particular financial crisis more people will listen, learn and act like they received a survival message from that Joseph with the technicolor coat who was ordered by Pharod to run a tight ship so that everyone would survive lean times. At least that’s what I thought I heard…I was too busy slaying devish thought bubbles.

14. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

econwhat….true story:

i was just reading the story of Joseph..hmmm i’d say about 5 MINUTES AGO…i’m a rastafarian, therefore, i represent the twelve tribes of Israel….and i come from the tribe of Joseph…it’s my birth right….to break that down right now would be a bit much…and i’m really no good at explaining things….but i will say, you just creeped me out with what you’ve wrote…in a good way of course…

peace.

15. Regkam2 wrote:

James ask…..”regkam2, do you actually believe that humans could survive and actually enjoy living without all of the sick drama caused by the lust for money and fame?”

James, try not looking from a 200 yr perspective, but from an 1,000 or 2,000 world history perspective. The answer is yes. Besides most people in the world are not suffering from what we do here. I believe that in order to grow and evolve one must travel outside of his/her immediate environment (sometimes outside of his/her national borders).

James continued….”the monetary/debt system developed alongside our existing human nature. the film seems to discount biology and human nature entirely, chalking up our current status to the monetary system and behavioral issues arising only from that supposedly evil and shadowy system.”

What does biology and human nature have to do with the creation of the Federal Reserve and a monetary system that is squeezing the life out of Us citizens? What did biology and human nature have to do with enslavement of African people and destruction of indigenous people in this country? What did it have to do with US being driven by military conquest every 10 yrs or less (Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, Iraq/Afghanistan War, and all the CIA wars that the public doesn’t know about)? Human beings can progress or they can regress in history. Just because time is going forward doesn’t mean that the art of human being being civil toward one another is going in the same direction.

16. wouldn't you like to know? wrote:

Regkam…agreed.

have you seen the documentary on earthships??? i thought it was a very cool concept…if you haven’t, look them up when possible…you can youtube it actually…

i’m starting to believe that james kinda likes all this bullshit going on…

17. james wrote:

regkam2, the current world history that i know, dating back to the origins of humanity, is one of conflict and competition for the acquisition of resources and fame, and that this need for constant entanglement may very well be part of what sustains many human beings and gives their lives a sense of purpose. now, even if don’t agree with that view, how would the venus project initiate a successful transition to the resource market it advocates?

18. econwhat wrote:

Comment #13 – “econwhat….true story: i was just reading the story of Joseph..hmmm i’d say about 5 MINUTES AGO…i’m a rastafarian, therefore, i represent the twelve tribes of Israel….and i come from the tribe of Joseph…it’s my birth right….to break that down right now would be a bit much…and i’m really no good at explaining things….but i will say, you just creeped me out with what you’ve wrote…in a good way of course…
peace.”

wouldn’t you like to know? – Yeah, I’ve been know to creep folk out in a “good way” from time to time.

19. anita wrote:

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

George Bernard Shaw