1is_many

In regards to the 'economic crisis'-hey, let's have some fucking perspective here, shall we? Looks to a large degree like said economic crisis had some foreshadowing, re: the Enron fraud...oh, and now Telecomm has jumped on the fraud wagon, with it's promised fiber optic re-wiring of america (around 206 billion, as of cash out) that never actually happened-lotsa of people, primarily taxpayers, paid extra for the same old copper wiring delivery system. Fraud, basically. Or that there real estate thang-well now, when you provide housing, which, in terms of materials, costs not all that much, for six, seven, and more times someone's actual yearly income (and nevermind that said housing is of inferior quality, and costs shitloads to heat, etc.) that joe six pack finally sez "can't afford it" and then whine, when the growth rate dips a few percentiles, well, that aint a crisis-or, at the very least, someone's greed got in the way of their brains.

A few years ago, a bunch of people I know, in saskatoon, suddenly realized that real estate outside of the city was cheap. One couple bought an entire school, maybe twenty minutes outside of town, for eight to ten thousand, yeah, that little, and converted it into a huge house. Others did the same, and after awhile, the realtors in these towns got wind of it, got overexcited, and jacked up the prices, crashing a potentially good market. All that's changed, by the way-house and rental rates in toon town are currently pretty damn close to Vancouver's prices.

what am saying here? That the current 'economic crisis' is only such, if one decides that fraud and scam artists, bloated and too greedy and fat on the unchecked growth of money from, their various scams are suddenyl screaming, because the incoming deluge of monies has dipped by a few terrigying percentiles. Instead of experiencing regular growth, in the billions, some rich fuck loses a few billion. Imagine Bill gates whining and crying over being reduced to oh, say, 70 billion.

Yeah, right. To place some perspective: There are two types of billion-one type, if you spent a million a day, it would take you a million days to spend it all. Or roughly 2,739 years. Unless my math's wrong. In case someone might grumble, in bar speak, it'd take a long fuckin' time to spend all that money, even if one was blowing millions a day.

aint an economic crisis, it's a fucking diet. Naturally, when we're talking fatcats, they're gonna look around for victims, and others to shoulder the responsibility.

It's also indicative of a major shift in not just economics, but entire ways of thinking, and the current economic system, that is just going to accelerate. Witness RIAA, who finally announced they're droping lawsuits, or any pretense of trying to stem the tide of file sharing. Because they were moribund, possibly somewhat retarded, it took them years of lawsuits, that failed on two fronts: bringing in any amount of money, and stopping file sharing. Nor did it stop the technological developments. RIAA is an old, outdated model of corportate robber baron greed, that will take a long time to die, but the signs of wear and tear are starting to show. This reminds me of a conversation with a technophile, the other night, where he said computers and the internet are built to route around any blockage, damage or problem, and later I thought, "No, that's humans-we're built to route around any problem." we just currently are expressin git through computers.

There are other changes on the horizon-we are hitting peak oil-no, oil's not running out, just less and less accessible, and the smart corporation will get out, downsize, when they realize that the staggering profit margin aint gonna be coming in. without even resorting to weird ass quantum physics, and rumours of over unity devices, i can tell you that more and more people are investing the time and money in pursuing known technology, to free themselves from the grip of hydra, er, I mean hydro-there's a type of house that can be built, utilizing a ridiculously simple construction-that of an exterior shell around the house, that extends into the foundation, and contains biomass. It uses osmosis, the tendency of all kinds of shit to balance, as it's heating system. And apparently can withstand rugged sub zero temps. while passively reducing one's heating and electrical to a very small bill. there are tons of electrical alternatives-someone discover a new catalyzer, that quickly, cheaply, and efficiently sperates oxygen from hydrogen, making an incredibly cheap, home based hydrogen power system entirel possibly. Alls you need is the ctalyst, the machinery, and water, to do the job.

Recently, some scientists hacked a cellphone, of all things, to make an amazing, and really cheap blood tester-it can test for all kinds of things, aids, virii. works on the principle that blood cells refract light differently then not blood cells. They're thinking of marketing these to thrid world countres.

and there's more. what we are witnessing, is exactly what Buckminster Fuller predicted-that a new design idea, or technology, the development thereof, is very nearly a force of nature, and cannot be stopped. it can be delayed, depending on robustness of opposition, but not stopped. He might as well have said "Human directed innovation is unstoppable."

The economic crisis is just an early onset signifier of a major sea change in the way it's been done. Like colin's comic on the wobblies, when the corporate robber barons just could not wrap their minds around the idea that joe worker was suddenly willing to risk life and limb to work the way things are done to benefit joe worker a bit more.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of small examples, like when Macs came into town, and the old printers, if they didn't switch over, die. Make a machine that cna do better than the previous machine-do more with less, and it will inevitably replace the previous. Though the timing might vary. the same can be said for what computers introduced: The means to reproduce knowledge and information, quickly, and en masse. For instnace, there are currently desktop cnc machines-they can only handle light materials, but that too, will change. with a computer, and an improved desktop cnc, one could simply get the raw materials, and make what one needs. even science is becoming increasingly public accessible. all one needs to know about science, is that if one has intuition, which we all do, the rest is just memory. That's really all it is. Heaps and heaps of memory. which our big giant brains have in excess. I think somewhat worked out that if we were able to live a thousand years, at the end of that time, we might have just about tapped out the limits of our memory storage capabilities.

I feel certain things are changing, massively, and far quicker than we though. sexual politics and expression, are in end stages of a long time massive overall revolution. Technology is incresingly leading us in the direction of "doing more with less" both in terms of energy, materials and waste, and money. In fact, the economic crisis heralds the beginning of what might be a bit of a long process. Not that money and it's cousin, and/or ancestor, trade and barter, are going to go all star trek and dissappear entirely, but that the current hundreds year old feudal top down Malthus guided economic system is undergoing a major overhaul, if not a probably painful, and entirely necessary total reboot.

even environment is getting into the picture. For the first time in awhile, we are being forced to consider environment. The smart ones will adapt.

It's almost as if Bush and co were kind of a last fling with the ways of old empire, the snotty idiot rich kid at the helm, unaware that the ship is running aground, and/or sinking, and fast.

anyways, those are my christmas thoughts. That, and more than tough, we humans are endlessly adaptable, always a plus.

Not that anyone is even reading this. But I figured if I was gonna get on the stump and pontificate about this and that, the chance that some odd soul, somewhere, might give this at least a cursory glance, is a damn sight better than mumbling to myself.