IVIV1: Introducing Pynchon's burgher

[Joseph Tracy]

Perhaps your'e overdoing the righteous fury thing here Alice. Making  
things eventually leads to trading things, leads to markets, division  
of labor, laws, enforcement of contracts etc. Doc Sportello is no  
saint but he becomes more selective about what he does and who he  
works for, learning from experience, more attentive to Karma. Not  
everyone who defrauds on a contract is an admirable working stiff.  
Some are just as greedy as your wall street assholes, wanting  
something for nothing. I want a repo man who will go after AIG, Citi  
Bank, Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, UBS etc.. But when someone owes me  
and doesn't pay I have mixed feelings about forgiving my debtors... I  
had some work in a Gallery in Carmel; the gallery sold the work and  
never told me. If I hadn't gotten a surprise chance to visit the  
coast and if I hadn't brought my contract along I would have never  
been paid because they were going out of business. Enforcement of  
contracts cuts both ways, as able to protect as to injure the working  
person.


On Aug 31, 2009, at 9:28 AM, alice wellintown wrote:

> Michael Bailey wrote:
>> Why is a repo person automatically heinous?
>
> Because he don't make nothin with his labor. He's a vampire & a
> Vulture ...just sucking the blood out the poor working stiff's neck.
> Read the NY Times? See what happened to poor people in the housing
> bubble? See what the vultures did to the poor kids who couldn't pay
> off those student loans? A-isn't that one of the reasons all them
> white folk got out there and voted for the President? The Repo man is
> henious if you live in Detroit. Don't ya think?
>
>
>> People buy things on credit, but fail to pay --
>> "what's a mother to do?"
>
> Just doing his job. That's Larry's excuse for turning Japonica in to
> her asshole old man and supporting the Reagan private mental health
> care scam. Just doing my job. Yea, look me in the eyes, the windows of
> the soul, and say that.
>
>>
>> He carries the bag but never uses it.  That's laudable.
>
> Never uses what? The needle? That;s torture. That needle is nother
> invasion of privacy. It ain't exactly constitutional an all. Larry
> violates as many, if not more, civil and constitutional rights as the
> next pig.
>
>> He has a specific mission - to get the goods (as the IWW saying
>> goes, "direct action gets the goods") and - unless all of contract  
>> law
>> is to be thrown out as inadmissible impositions of The Man -
>> he is performing a real service.
>
> Service Sevice Sevice. Pick up a hammar. Do some work. Service my ass.
> Service this. It's prostitution and pornography. Just nein
> professional.
>
>
>> ...yeah, yeah, buy-on-credit places
>> jack up the price, and easily available credit leads people to live
>> beyond their means, so forth, but these are systemic ills and have
>> much more to do with inherent flaws in capitalism, or, to avoid  
>> that jargon,
>> with areas where the human ability to interact gracefully is
>> still developing (sort of like, hey, where was language or algebra
>> a few thousand years ago - they didn't even have a word for
>> antidisestablishmentarianism in Egypt, nor did Greek math have a  
>> zero,
>> so I suspect there's some unknown right now that will make a huge
>> difference in the spreading of wealth sometime, when it takes hold
>> ("the reds are talking hold" - Hunter S Thompson)) so forth, than  
>> with
>> the legitimacy of private collection efforts in any individual  
>> case...
>
> Man, don't you read the papers? Some dude, performing service, got a
> $100,000,000 bonus the other day. Man, I wonder if he's gonna donate
> some of it to all those poor folk who lost their houses to them damn
> alluminum siding sales & usary loans that the government sicked on
> them poor minorities trying to keep a roof over a family's head?
>
>
>
>>
>> but we've established his efforts were non-violent, right?
>
> Non vilolent's ass. You threaten me with a needle, you don't even need
> ot take it out your bag, I'm a consider it a threat. You wanna mug me,
> use a gun or get your ass kicked. Up to you. see?
>
>>
>> His private-enterprise role pretty much prevents him being corrupt
>> to any great extent: collude with one deadbeat and his job is  
>> pretty much
>> toast.  He has to get the car, or whatever, back.
>
> He has to stay out of my neigborhood is ewhat he has to do.