Mike LaChance – The exodus out of California is real. People are fleeing the state in droves for greener pastures in Arizona, Texas and other low tax states.
For years, many people were willing to put up with the high taxes in California but the COVID lockdowns, combined with Governor Gavin Newsom’s policies, are driving people away.
For the first time, the population is shrinking so much that they may lose some representation. Continue reading
Paul Rosenberg – It recently struck me that the people we think of as “geniuses” tend to arrive, over time, at surprisingly similar sets of conclusions.
It further struck me that a simple list of such thoughts might be of value to my readers.
So, here is a list pulled from my quotes file and presented without commentary. Enjoy:
Albert Einstein
Rod Serling
Arthur Schopenhauer
Thomas Jefferson
Charles Hugh Smith – Correspondent Dani A.M. (of Removing the Shackles) was kind enough to identify three bits of advice from my recent conversation with Max Keiser on Summer Solutions (25:45): (9:20 min: “We’ve been brainwashed into financializing the human experience.”)
1. Stop financializing the human experience
2. Acquire skills, not credentials
3. Vote with your Feet
These are the themes I’ll be addressing this week.
It means turning everything into a financial transaction that profits an enterprise and the state. Since the state needs profitable enterprises to generate its tax revenues (and to pay wages that generate payroll/income taxes), the state is an implicit partner in every financializing the human experience transaction.
In an increasingly cashless, debt-dependent culture, every financial transaction generates income for banks: credit card and debit card fees, interest on credit cards, etc.
Here are some common examples:
— Mom and Dad work long hours to afford childcare. Maybe they like working for the state or Corporate America more than caring for their kids (or sharing the care of several kids with other parents), but the system incentivizes maximizing income and paying for childcare as a profitable transaction.
In other words, childcare for many has been distilled down to a financial decision.
— Dinner with friends is purchased, generating income for an enterprise, a bank and taxes for the state. If people no longer learn how to cook, then sharing a meal with friends necessarily becomes a financial transaction.
— A sense of self must be purchased via signifiers of identity and self-worth.
The obsession with brands and other signifiers of belonging reflects one thing, and only one thing: a pervasive fragility of self. Unsurprisingly, our selfhood is incredibly fragile in a culture that glorifies the impossible (thin, fit, super-smart, witty, personable, creative, wealthy oh and of course humble) and sows insecurity as a means of selling you something.
That each of us remains the same person regardless of what we wear, drive, drink, etc. is obvious but verboten in a culture that profits from insecurity and self-doubt. As Caroline Caldwell observed, “In a society that profits from your self-doubt, liking yourself is a rebellious act.”
I would modify this slightly: liking yourself regardless of what you wear, drink, drink, etc. is a rebellious act.
Liking yourself is not the same as narcissism. Narcissism is the result of the consumerist society’s relentless focus on the essential project of consumerism, which is “the only self that is real is the self that is purchased and projected.”
The narcissism bred by consumerism has nurtured an emotional isolation and immaturity that I call permanent adolescence which leaves many young people without the tools needed to handle criticism, collaboration and the pressures of the workplace.
Personal gratification is the driver of narcissism and consumerism, which are two sides of the same coin. Consumerist marketing glorifies the “projected self” as the “true self,” encouraging self-absorption even as it erodes authentic identity, self-esteem and the resilience which enables emotional growth–the essential characteristic of adulthood.
Personal gratification is of a piece with self-absorption, fragile self-esteem and an identity that is overly dependent on consumerist signifiers and the approval of others.
The only way a consumerist economy and the state that depends on it can flourish is to turn every human interaction and emotion into a financial transaction. Just reached a personal goal? Celebrate by going to Disneyland and dropping a packet.
Feeling low? Cheer yourself up by buying a new signifier of self-worth.
Sensing something is terribly wrong with your life? Buy another self-help book that repeats the all-important narrative: It’s not the system, it’s you.
The problem isn’t that the system is deranged, dysfunctional and crippling; no, it’s you who are deranged, dysfunctional and crippled. But maybe some costly therapy will help you cope with your bottomless inadequacies.
By holding the system blameless for the fragility of our sense of self and identity, the conventional consumerist narrative fragments any social roles that aren’t dependent on financial transactions and consumerist signifiers.
In this financialized hall of mirrors, narcissism replaces identity and the authentic self is rendered incoherent.
Charles Smith is a Guest Contributor for Shift Frequency
SF Source Of Two Minds August 2015
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Charles Hugh Smith – When do we get to exercise democracy and fire every factotum, apparatchik, toady and lackey in the state who has abused his/her authority?
Everyone lauds “creative destruction” when it shreds monopolies and disrupts private enterprise “business as usual.” If thousands lose their middle-class livelihoods– hey, that’s the price of progress.
Improvements in productivity and efficiency can’t be stopped, and those employed making buggy whips and collecting horse manure from fetid streets will have to move on to other employment.
This raises an obvious question few dare ask: does this inevitable process of creative destruction include the state? If not, why not? Aren’t the state and the central bank the ultimate monopolies begging to be disrupted for the benefit of all? If government is inefficient and unproductive, shouldn’t it be “creatively destroyed” in the same fashion as private enterprise?
The obvious answer is yes. Why should a monopoly (government) remain untouched by new knowledge and competition as it skims the cream from society to fund its own monopolies and grants one monopoly/cartel privilege after another to its private-sector cronies?
Under the tender care of the state, we now have uncompetitive, inefficient parastic cartels dominating higher education, national defense, healthcare insurance, pharmaceuticals and hospitals– to name but a few of the major industries that are now state-enforced cartels thanks to the heavy hand of the state (i.e. regulatory capture).
Under the tender mercies of the state, prosecutors have a 90% conviction rate thanks to rigged forensic evidence, threats of life imprisonment (better to plea-bargain than risk years in America’s gulag) and other strong-arm tactics that presume guilt, not innocence. We have the best judicial system that money can buy, meaning you’re jail-bait if you can’t put your hands on a couple hundred thousand for legal defense and the all-important media campaign. Continue reading
I’m going to take you deep into the rabbit’s hole. This is NOT for the unaware, the sheep who are still asleep. It may even go over the heads of some of those who are awake. As always, don’t take my word for it. Do your own research and draw conclusions that make logical sense to you.
There is a tremendous amount of debate over firearms rights, and proposed legislation for what advocates call “gun control”. I’m not trying to repeat what’s already going on in the echo chamber. There are plenty of unawakened people who are well enough informed to successfully fight that battle. Nor will I analyze the serious psy-op being conducted in the aftermath of the school shooting in Connecticut.
In my ever continuing quest to enlighten as many people as possible to use their own mind to think for themselves, I am offering here an opposite consciousness analysis of what’s really going on in a larger sense.
The system absolutely must not permit you to think outside of their controlled argument. It’s always been framed in the confines of Democrat vs. Republican and their associated value systems. Let us never forget that the purpose of the modern monopolized press is not to inform but to generate and maintain the consent of the governed. Mostly by promoting the premise that the State is necessary and benevolent. We’re fed endless debate over policy and personalities but we’re never permitted to discuss the source of the problems: the system itself.
The monopoly media is reporting these stories from within the confines of the false Left/Right paradigm and is ignoring the written purpose of the 2nd Amendment by attempting to frame the debate as one of crime and an irrational fear of violence. We see endless discussions from collectivists insisting that citizens do not “need” military type weapons for hunting or self defense – the system’s accepted purpose for your irrational desire to own firearms. So called assault weapons are evil and unnecessary, therefore only the police should be thus armed. The so called Right counters that gun bans do nothing but make crime worse and that citizens must be able to defend themselves, with these weapons if need be.