Another way to go about this then is not to begin with predetermined notions of good or desirable - which is somewhat more impossible ( if it is possible to be more or less possible)
And further more the vast majority of readers won't understand what I am saying anyway - but that's alright because I don't intend to make money doing this.
ALF is still preparing his sequence of releases. Actually part of the fun, for us is realizing tunes that are in effect responses to the world situation. We've guarded our privacy intensely throughout the years and partly that is because of an adversion to schtick. You see the first thing a business business manager and/ or agent. company etc wants to know is "How do you intend to market yourself?" and that question usually comes in the form of "Who do you sound like?"
As one twerp said to me once "They ( meaning the big boys in the front office who don't associate with the scum who actually make the music) want you to be different - but not too different."
This is not to say that we are somehow better then everyone else or more moral - but in actuality the music business is in such sad shape that by keeping our distance from these creeps we've been able to keep out of trouble - so far - and we hope to continue to do so.
But anyway the big production pieces will require more finishing touches and in the meanwhile we'll try to let lose a loose units. Sort of like when pop music meant something.
Next to sum up the epilogue to the technology/information age question I was intriqued by a statement by Mukesh Ambani. He's sort of the Warren Buffet of India. When asked about global events first off - India is comparitively free of the more negative effects of globalization - the labor force is certainly not overpaid. but much more importantly he said that the economic problems currently plaguing the world would evolve into sovereign problems. Note he did not say what most would say which is that the economic problems would become political problems - because essentially they cannot be solve in political methods. This is both good and bad news. The problems can be solved but unfortunately, as I see it, we are not even at step one on the road to doing so.
For God's sake we don't need promises of hope - we need specific remedies - like bring back the 70% top tax rate - or if not that then some actually decisive move- but such is impossible given the current political situation and about fifty years is a good gestimate as to when change will occur and we may also suggest that change will coincide with some disaster which will crush the current funding methods once and for all - in the way that world war one ended the rotten empires of China, Russia, England, and Austrohungary.
---------------
One day I chanced to find myself in a large room with a larger then man sized snake. There were no windows in the room, nor any other source of light other then the snake itself, which glowed with and iridescent blue light. For a few moments, it being not Sunday, we said nothing. The snake, it’s head moving back and forth, seemed to be observing me. Finally it said
“I know that you have been sent here by your masters to kill me, yet I sense no eagerness on your part to do so.” The expression on the snakes face then changed from curious to a knowing smile.
“Would you betray them?” It asked.
“Not at all,” I said, “But..”
And here, at this point I realized the gravity of the situation. I realized that I have been in that same room, with that same giant snake, countless times before and had I but eyes to see the numberless corpses of my past lives would be all around me.
The snake which dances to the music of time slumbered awake again and again asked,
“Would you betray them?” It smiled.
I realized that the inquiry was of the nature of what is called a trick question.”
The key was in the concept of betrayal. Can one betray they whom have betrayed one? And what if the promises made and broken were not specific but rather implicit, suggestions rather then hard and fast agreements?
“You have your sword, Tamlin. Why don’t you use it?” Said the snake.
My instructions had been simple. “Go forth and kill.” It was then I realized, with a chill, that we two were not alone in the room. There was a third presence, unseen, unheard, unperceivable by ordinary means yet there, and it was hungry! It thirsted for knowledge it hungered to make itself known but throughout all the eternities it had lived until this moment it had failed to do anything other then bring death to our universe.
I had not it in my power to set the snake free but I could at least refrain from enslaving it. The snake read my mind and for the first time I felt a glimmer of sympathy shine forth from it. This sympathy was somehow akin to an incommunicable sadness and I was a little relieved to see that it was not going to share it’s understanding with me.
I turned around to discover that I was once again in that world which we know as home.
The previous story was inspired by a comment made to me by a physics teacher when I was an undergraduate. His name was Sterling Gorril and he was talking about calculating reverberation times in rooms as a result of the various factors. He said “When you take a shoebox and you put some marbles in it then either you’ve taken them out, or they are still there.” It’s self evident, but an amusing symbolic representation of basically, everything. The shoebox is time/space – the marble is the moment or if you like, reality. Far less then one in a hundred will understand this, at least in our day and age. Moving the marble from inside the box to outside the box without tearing a hole in, or opening the box, is the essence of quantum mechanics. It is the content of the universe, and what we call the fractal arrangement is the form. That method of form creation permeates everything from organic life, to planetary construction and arrangements, to galactic organization. Once again Tvat Tsam Asi”
Okay, on to current events. I must apologize for misspelling the Mayor of New Yorks’s name last time out. It’s Bloomberg – not Bloomburg.
Starting with “the Mayor” I’ve lived much of my life in the shadow on NYC and can suggest two parameters needed to be aware of when one is the major. One is you have to move fast or else you’ll find yourself being blamed for the previous mayors faults and in turn the good that you do is not recognized until you’re out of office. The other is the people on the street are always going to be far to the left of the people in the boardrooms.
Don’t worry. The world doesn’t need yet another blog about Occupy Wall Street and I don’t plan on writing one. My role here at the mediaco named after me is to do the large scale system analysis, which I then bring to the ALF and he ignores me! Actually he puts up with me but we understand that our core interests have to take precedence over any seemingly apparent strategic opportunities. To do otherwise would be to adopt the mindset of our competitors and that seems pointless. What’s the sense of being better then everyone if you’re going to behave just like them?
This is not to say that strategy isn’t fun, just that it’s not reliable in the long run.
So the OWS demonstrators have been evicted. Many thought the authorities would wait for the snow to push them out but the surer course was taken. Firstly what if the snow doesn’t come? Then there is the spectacle of people, essentially arguing for economic readjustment, at Christmas time. Images of “A Christmas Carol” are the last thing the bankers need at this point.
And lets also consider the guy who makes the quite rational point that the OWS movement is like a cancer that must not be allowed to grow. Steve Allen used to rant about commercials and when people would reply that commercials were not in fact controlling our minds he’d reply “Well someone ought to tell CocaCola that because they’re spending millions on trivialities.” Likewise we learned from the recent Middle eastern wars that buy not allowing dissent to begin one can virtually remove it’s coming into being. This is done in seemingly minor ways, by controlling things that seem trivial, such as music and media, but . like advertising, it works.
Actually it’s almost like a card game – the two sides play their hands one after another. The irony is that the US supported the Arab spring wholeheartedly , but now that the idea has spead to America, it’s less welcome.
In any event one of the remarkable aspects of OWS is the global reach and this calls to mind
1848, when the empires of Europe were at risk. They did not fall for another fifty years, and it took the first world war to bring them down. To some extent the promises of progress do come true. The English middle class did eventually benefit from the industrial revolution – but only after several generations of poverty and disease.
That is frightening. As it happens technology is impacting on baks, if anything, more then on some other fields, but the critical factor is this. If they woke up tomorrow and wanted to change to help the poor they would have no way to go about it. The mechanism isn’t there.
A well known aspect of the industrial revolution is the change from an agrarian, decentralized economy, of (Ironically) Jeffersonian gentlemen farmers to that of the centralized urban manufacturing wage slaves. To do this required immense amounts of Capital and there Marx was not blind in that he saw that this was necessary. In the past Capital expenditures had been the prerogative of the state – they built the walls around cities and the castles. Capital, as distributed by the Rothchilds was the silent third partner along with business and government. The government needed to change the laws to prevent individuals escaping the clutches of the businesses. The businesses had to do the actual manufacturing and Capital had to establish the firms in the first place.
Now, here’s an interesting idea, suggested by the bond trader, Bill Gross. It reminds me of what Jerry Garcia said about ‘The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test” – he said that Tom Wolfe, being a writer tended to see Ken Kesey, another writer, as the center of the “trip” but most other people saw Neil Cassidy in that role. Which is to say that Bill is probably predisposed towards seeing the current and varied financial fiascos in terms of the bond market, but nevertheless I think he may be on to something. At least he's willing to say something different, which is there has got to be a better way to allocate funding then what we have at present. Neither he nor I at this point dare suggest what that may be because my gut tells me whatever it is will be very unpopular sin some quarters.
Like the empires of the middle nineteenth century, however efficacious they may have been in the past it is becoming painfully obvious that the current financial system is obsolete and It needs far more then tinkering around the edges to become viable again. What we are just about barely capable of realizing is that the European fiscal crisis and the inability of the US banking system to stabilize cash flows are related.
At that point I begin to fuzz out. As a musician I can only suggest more D major chords, but Bill Gross suggests that the entire system of using bonds to capitalize major expenditures needs to be changed. And of course the difference between stocks and bonds is somewhat more conceptual then actual. Both involve spending money and justify that via a return on investment.
While we must expect investors to look for the high return opportunities for them to function requires the full gamut of services a modern society can and must provide. Such services, including, but not limited to infrastructure are generally less profitable, but they also entail far less risk.
Unfortunately what one man might call a no brainer, building a highway for instance, others may object to. In any case we may as well look across the Pacific to China we see concrete evidence of the virtues of distributed economic planning according to practical and not ideological commands.
-Tamlin
No comments:
Post a Comment