on money (in the abstract)

[alice wellintown]

Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> Fuck Yea, what's another genocide? Fuckin Sand Niggers, who gives a shit about anybody but good ol me and them stars and stripes. Fuckin environment, who needs that shit. Wade in and get it while you can.

Now you lookin in the mirror, son. There ain't no use to all that
belly blubbering about the whole big world of problems. Shit, you
know, there was a time when a man with a gun could be taken as a
serious hero, a fighting man. But you aint that man and those times is
long gone, son. We got nukes now makes the single man with his rifle
rediculous. Killing Japanese, mud and blood up to your hips. Who needs
that? You can't save the planet or prevent the next genocide. Hell,
you can't even make a world of difference in some tiny and
insignificant corner of the corner of your little blobe. Stop taken it
so serious and laugh.

We are more peaceful, at least internally, now that we have achieved a
level of complexity in our social interations,  and externally, there
is little chance of a major conflict, the nukes will keep that in
check if nothing else does; we are more connected, more unified, this
is in large measure owed to trade and business and exchange of ideas.
But business, good as it is at unifying peoples, is no match for the
political weapons political folks, the kind you seem so stuck on, can
employ, such as war and terror. SO, despite the cost of war and
terror, the politicals are determined to keep it an option always on
the table. But money and business are far more powerful than war and
terror and must win in the end. So, yes, get what you can is a better
option than political conflict that uses war to gain advantage or
upset the balance or create chaos so progress is halted. But the
weapons of politics, the violent options, have run their course. We
are too vulnerable now. Imagine what would happen if war came to NYC.
How quickly the city would fall. Great cities like NYC are so fragile,
a disruption of the technological means of delivering water and food
and people would cripple a city like NYC in days. We learned from 9-11
that the disruption of the functions of a city are enormous and
lasting and that the mere threat of it, the threat to a halt in trade
is nearly as debilitating as war itself and thus, like the old
mutually assured destruction, a cessation of trade is not sustainable.
There is not fight to be had, Joseph. The nature of conflicts has
changed. A young man who takes up the fight is a waste of a young man.
We are all, now, in the soup. In it together sez B/Tuttle in Brazil.
But here is the catch; because you are rich and live in relative
prosperity, you must give up the gettin while the gettins good so
others, poor people, may now prosper. Otherwise, pirates and suicide
bombers and all manner of troubles will persist. Of course, you can
just laugh at it all too. Laugh, as I do, all the way to the bank.