BE redirect

Wed Jun 3 23:11:19 UTC 2020

I agree with you on democracy. Anti-democratic thinking is always chic, it
has been since Socrates, but I don't see it going away. The problem we are
in now, as I see it (and I'm nobody, just some internet rando) is economic
growth, and the obligations associated with it. Markets are great, but
markets are also destructive, (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window), and I think
we've let the destructive aspects of markets, i.e. markets for the sake of
markets, reach critical mass. In a world of atoms, i.e. AtD Colorado Labor
War, I might agree, but we now love in a world of bits. The world of
DeepArcher. There are things like Blockchain and Peer-to-Peer Networks...
I'm not a Bitcoin-Bro, but the potential of these technologies to allow
groups of individuals to form autonomous self-collectives, is rapidly on
the horizon...and these collectives don't have to abide by the status quo...

On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 2:21 PM Charles Albert <cfalbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm gonna get kicked off for sure..
>
> There are parts of the capital markets which are "zero sum", but if it was
> a defining feature of Capitalism, we would never have evolved past Malthus.
>
> As is said of Democracy it is, in many applications, the best of a lousy
> set of alternatives for managing Scarcity.
>
> It makes a convenient bete noir but if it's Amoral,
> it's.....uh.....well......Amoral.
>
> I participate in the game because I really do consider Capital Allocation
> a fiduciary trust, and a perfect alignment of incentives a grail worth
> pursuing. I do so as a Republican ( in exile since 1980) because research
> confirms that there exists a select persistent few, equipped by their Maker
> to lead the Sheep out of their self inflicted darkness.
>
> The machine runs on humans, who sometimes have to squeeze to make a
> mortgage or tuition payment, and as a result prioritize their immediate
> need over those whom they should serve - on a small scale it is friction
> within acceptable parameters, on a systematic scale it is The Great
> Recession.
>
> But that's the Operator, not the Tool.
>
>
> for what I hope isn't the last time,
>
>
> love,
>
> cfa
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2020, 12:26 PM Gary Webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The idea of eternal capitalism might be too grim, and sooner or later we
>> all are going to have to get off the bus before it drives off a cliff, if
>> it hasn’t already... I stumbled across this idea during the height of the
>> pandemic, and it’s stuck with me. I’m not sure where I stand on wether or
>> not rivalrous zero-sum games are hardwired into human nature. Will we
>> evolve into the below criteria?:
>>
>> Creating loop closure within complicated man-made systems
>> Having the right relationship between complex natural and complicated
>> man-made systems
>> Creating anti-rivalrous environments within which exponential technology
>> does not threaten our existence
>>
>> https://futurethinkers.org/daniel-schmachtenberger-generator-functions/
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> >> On Jun 1, 2020, at 6:11 PM, gary webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > 
>> > modern finance is mostly alchemy now. I doubt 90% of those on the street
>> > making millions could explain exactly what they do. alot people hate
>> > capitalism and rightly so in many instances but it's gonna be hard to
>> kill
>> >
>> > 100% agree man... a-and most modern finance is computer algorithm
>> driven, so there are very little rapidly diminishing human inputs... your
>> comment reminds me of kpunk, or Mark Fisher's book Capitalist Realism: Is
>> There No Alternative
>> > (
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism:_Is_There_No_Alternative%3F).
>> It's a little over 10 years old and there really hasn't been a suitable
>> alternative to capitalism proposed and/or developed despite the fact that
>> we've had two major existential crises (2008 & COVID)...
>> >
>> >> On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 5:00 PM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> u could be right about Rosemary's Baby being some great feminist
>> horror. my
>> >> money is on Carnival of Souls.
>> >>
>> >> u know Im reading V again and it's amazing to me he was in his
>> youngish 20s
>> >> when he wrote it, with such world-weariness; like I felt about BE, a
>> man in
>> >> his late 70s to write with such vigor (though I have alot of issues
>> with
>> >> the book)
>> >>
>> >> Pynchon's villains in the later books are front and center--no
>> >> sugar-coating romance of Blicero with the Scarsdale V, Mr Ice types.
>> he
>> >> lays it out
>> >>
>> >> so why convolute things.
>> >>
>> >> modern finance is mostly alchemy now. I doubt 90% of those on the
>> street
>> >> making millions could explain exactly what they do. alot people hate
>> >> capitalism and rightly so in many instances but it's gonna be hard to
>> kill
>> >>
>> >> that;s the thing. the system is like that feeling one had under
>> >> psychedelics that everything was this massive beautiful thing that even
>> >> evil and other shit would be absorbed by the sheer size and weight of
>> it (I
>> >> know this sounds trite) with no fuss or muss (though I did see rumsfeld
>> >> emerge out the side of W's head once like some horror from Carpenter's
>> The
>> >> Thing but that's another story). that's modern capitalism, it just
>> absorbs
>> >> everything but it's not a beautiful thing. it's an efficient thing.
>> and woe
>> >> to us all
>> >>
>> >> finally, that is what Pynchon does, the good old misdirect personified.
>> >> good way not to be played out or irrelevant soon after not that he
>> probably
>> >> cares about that all that much
>> >>
>> >> rich
>> >>
>> >> On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 4:09 AM Cometman via Pynchon-l <
>> pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > Thanks, rich, for the kind words. I did suspect the doctor, but it’s
>> nice
>> >> > to know. The whole story of Rosemary’s Baby has probably been
>> analyzed in
>> >> > feminist terms as the patriarchy presiding over the ceding of
>> autonomy in
>> >> > child rearing, hasn’t it?
>> >> > My analysis of the choice of villain in BE needs a little work.
>> >> > We know what we know (although there is more info than my buffers can
>> >> > store - I guess that is why tv news repeats a manageable number of
>> facts
>> >> > over and over, that and supporting a narrative, of course) but we
>> don’t
>> >> > know the full extent of what we don’t know.
>> >> >
>> >> > But I do know that Horst’s unoccupied office was not part of
>> >> > Cantor-Fitzgerald, so the direction of attention would be towards the
>> >> > relatively humble sphere of commodity trading rather than municipal
>> bonds.
>> >> > And the notion that he’s able to continue his trading in the
>> Midwest, and
>> >> > even make a vacation of it for himself and their sons, suggests a
>> focus on
>> >> > the ways life goes on after a cataclysmic event.
>> >> > The rise of gaming and its implications as a method towards social
>> control
>> >> > (at one point the kids play a game where they shoot people for
>> having bad
>> >> > manners, and at another point they inform an adult that, sorry, kids
>> don’t
>> >> > read anymore) and away from it (DeepArcher); the financial
>> implications of
>> >> > big computing taking its place among multinational movers and
>> shakers in
>> >> > the person of Gabriel Ice; the personification of the executive arm
>> of
>> >> > neoliberalism in Windust, his undoing, and his human side; the rise
>> of
>> >> > Russian influence in the US - all of these and more seem to be larger
>> >> > themes in BE than the events of late Fructidor 2001.
>> >> > Did the Internet (and by extension, the plot of BE, a-and human
>> progress
>> >> > itself) interpret them as damage and route around them?
>> >> > --
>> >> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> >> >
>> >> --
>> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>