One of the newly posted talks to the TED website this week is one by Clay Shirky, author of here comes everybody. In it Mr. Shirky discusses the impact of how we organize ourselves and our efforts and the way that is effected by the fact that the internet drops the cost of communication to virtually nil. What's fascinating about this talk is that he discusses the subject matter in a kind of ideologically agnostic way that makes it clear how many debates this phenomena pops up in. He only explicitly discusses three: photography, journalism/blogging, and software development, but he makes clear that he believes that the impact will be of similar magnitude to the invention of the printing press.

Follow me over the fold for the embedded version of the talk, a little background on TED, and my own commentary on the talk.

The pundits are always telling us that our candidates need to move to the center to win over voters.  What they never explain however is how it is possible for a member of congress to take a centrist position on a bill.  When a bill is voted on our members of Congress either vote "yes" or they vote "no", but there is no option to cast a vote half way between yes and no.

Because there is never a centrist option when it comes to voting our pundits have came up with a simple solution to define what the center is, to them the way to be a centrist is to vote for the Republican position.  It doesn’t matter where the American people stand on any particular issue, if a Democrat votes with Republicans our media considers them to be a centrist even if their votes go against what the vast majority of Americans want.

(Cross-posted on my blog.)

In case you hadn't heard, Gush Liebaugh, bloviating liar and hypocrite extraordinaire, just got a new contract worth a reported $400 million.  On the same day, the business section carries a story about another 25,000 auto workers getting the axe (that's in addition to the 100,000 or so that have already gotten it in the past two years).  For the trifecta, there's the news that payrolls have shrunk for the sixth straight month (but we're not in a recession -- oh no, the "economy is growing" thanks to guys like Liebaugh).

We all know this is SFUIBB (So F-d Up It's Beyond Belief), but the stories are related in ways we may not have considered.

“Nor can we deny that we all eat and that each of us has grown strong on the bodies of innumerable animals.  Here each of us is a king in his own field of corpses.”

Elias Canetti

Yesterday I advanced the notion that Capitalism is the great equalizer and will with Herbert Marcuse's observations find a way to make product out of anything that can be sold in a free marketplace.

David, the dude in the Old Testament who took down, um, I think the big dude's name was Goliath, with his little old sling and a flat stone, screwed somebody else's wife, David, I mean, the Goliath guy was long dead, and he, David, got a tad carried away with the wealth and pomp thing of being a king. I mean, the dude was a simple, uneducated sheepherder kind of guy and he hadn't been properly brought up for kingship.

Independence Day
By David Glenn Cox

There is nothing new under the sun, the murder of Caesar or the shots in Dallas. Conspiracies demand either victims or adherents. You’re either with us or agin us, sound familiar? We must all hang together or certainly we shall all hang separately. Ah, but that’s the point entirely! To hang you separately! You, who toil for a living, to educate children or deliver bread, or drive a beer truck or embalm the dead, all separated like the fingers on a hand.

Cross-posted at bobgiloth.com.

"A new movement is afoot that promises to save the world by revolutionizing philanthropy, making non-profit organizations operate like business,and creating new markets for goods and services that benefit society. Nick-named "philanthrocapitalism,"...[i]t sees business methods as the answer to social problems, but offers little rigorous evidence or analysis to support this claim, and ignores strong evidence pointing in the opposite direction."

"But where was the Roman people to be found? Not surely amongst the mixed multitude of slaves and strangers that filled the streets of Rome; a servile populace, as devoid of spirit as destitute of property."

About 2,000 years ago, a hyper-militarized, authoritarian state dominated by professional soldiers, domestic security forces, and international financiers, publicly auctioned off their nation's most prestigious political office to the highest bidder.

Another thought related to carbon capitalism: McCain's $300 million boy scout electric car battery badge is such a telling mockery of what American 'market-driven ingenuity' is supposed to be about it, I can't help but laugh at the sheer childishness and hypocrisy of it. The 'winning' patent technology would be so much more valuable to, say, the inventor, the inventor as entrepreneur, her investors, the new industry she's created, etc. than McCain's lame, anti-capitalism pandering prize it's flat out amusing. Isn't the 'invisible hand of the market' supposed to address this supply/demand, once-in-a-millennia business opportunity on its own? Guess not. This is a $300 million dollar acknowledgment of free market failure. Priceless.

Why not just give all 300 million American citizens $1,000,000 each to be used towards the purchase of a Tesla Roadster? Or to install solar panels on their home? Or to open a bike shop? Just send John a copy of your receipt(s). That's a guzillion times better plan for economic (and environmental) stimulus!

In one of my previous articles titled; "A Divine History," I gave a snapshot of the rich, royal and magnificent past of African people and the tremendous contributions that people of African descent have made to religion, spirituality, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, science, architecture, literature, and the first civilization based on communal order.

Considering the apathetic state of many of today's Black people, one could scarcely surmise that these are the same people who have traveled from exceedingly majestic origins to being the social pariahs of the world.  What happened?

I stumbled onto an article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic which discussed one of the places in the West Virginia Panhandle, where I live, that I have shopped at: the local Wal-Mart.

Or, as he put it, the "crappiest Wal-Mart in America".  An exerpt:

If you want to see the underside of the unregulated capitalist economy, the people who can't find the non-existent escape ladder from poverty and its pathologies, visit the Martinsburg, West Virginia Wal-Mart. Morbid obesity; spontaneous, public bouts of corporal punishment directed against dirty children; ten-year girls dressed as whores; tattoos running up necks and down legs; smoking like you only see these days in Baku; it's all here.

I was surprised to read in yesterday's paper: "prices at the gas pump are finally easing in California." Really? And the evidence? Brace yourself:

Diesel in California: down nearly half a cent. Gas costs in Oakland: down a quarter of a cent. Santa Cruz, Sacramento, Yolo, Merced, Santa Barbara: slight declines. The nationwide average is down slightly and the statewide average in California has fallen, albeit one-hundredth of a cent to $4.609 a gallon from $4.610 earlier this week.

Whether it's private corporations or public operations like parks, schools, or mass transit, the operative philosophy in this capitalism run amok society is that everything must turn a profit (or at least break even). Imagine what would happen if it didn't. Well, you needn't imagine in the case of mass transit, because yesterday Bay Area transit agencies offered free rides (I think as a "marketing tool" rather than as a result of a "Spare the Air" day, because free ridership on the latter has been discontinued as "too costly") and here's what happened:

BART set a single-day record with an estimated 394,000 passengers, and Caltrain saw an 88 percent jump from its average weekday ridership.

Ridership on buses run by the Valley Transportation Authority increased 21 percent, with 123,993 riders compared with 102,500 for a typical Thursday. Light-rail ridership also soared, with 42,809 passengers up from 32,134 a week ago for a 33 percent jump.

Ferry ridership nearly doubled, and ridership on the ACE trains was up 17 percent.

For America's Lil' Three (now down to 3.1%of total U.S. GDP (personal consumption spending now accounts for 70%)), the answer is likely to be Mexico. The reason? Automotive unions in Mexico have agreed to cut wages to 'near China levels':

http://biz.yahoo.com/...

[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]

For the average little person in the United States the mighty pantheon of American economic capitalism is often a belittling, contradictory rationale of daily life.  50 million Americans suffer from no health insurance for the platinum principles of competition and the open market, yet one notices that simply turning a certain age or being employed by State or Federal government instantly renders these implacable cruel yokes of capitalism moot.  Poof, forget about that ridiculous social science, have some health care.

If one is an insulting, obnoxious financial company that roared the glory of capitalism for 20 years, sneering at the free-loaders on welfare while blowing up billions of dollars in a orgy of incompetence, why, the Federal Reserve will rush right in to back up their failure with the people’s money, capitalism, heh, those were some good times, eh?

A list of my in depth articles about the speculation being the MAIN cause of the high price of oil.

The Oil Panic of 2008
By David Glenn Cox

Like any panic, the root causes are always disputed; heroes are vilified and villains deified. Some say the root cause is the ever-expanding, worldwide demand for oil, exacerbated by the emerging economic tigers India and China. Others point to oil traders' and speculators' involvement, and even the traders themselves find they are torn by their allegiances. CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera took umbrage at a Congressman for describing oil company profits as obscene. Explaining that most of their viewers are investors and view profits as a deserved expectation, "What then, Congressman, makes profits obscene?" she asked. "What makes profit obscene?"

The Sucker Rally
By David Glenn Cox

Great news! Discover Card has come out with a new kind of credit card. Not a credit card to help eliminate the need for carrying cash, or writing clumsy checks when you are out of town. In fact, this card isn’t for buying things at all; it is for helping you to pay off the balances on all your other credit cards.