categorizing this stuff (and this is going to take a long time....i'll finish up to before nov 2011 tonight and then try and do about a month per week until i catch up) is getting me thinking about a few things.

it's inflation. i agree. this mess we see around us. but that doesn't mean we should abolish the existing currency system. as problematic as inflation is, serious scarcity in currency is something that cannot have anything but a violent end. so long as population growth is positive, we need to have inflation; if we can start reversing population growth, maybe i'll start agreeing more with deflationary currency models, but that's a different question. i don't want to fight over scraps of gold.

the question is more about how to control inflation, and people are at this inherent disadvantage due to the monied class having control over it. it's as nightmarish from a class analysis perspective as it is from a social darwinist perspective. i lack the naivete required to believe that a state under the people's control can fix it.

so, fuck it. abolish currency. i'll come back to this prescription repeatedly, but it doesn't make it easier to live in it's constructs so long as it exists - or come up with an algorithm for it's destruction.

i know the philips curve is wrong, but i sort of yearn for that sort of simplicity. for a few decades there, it seemed like everybody understood this perfectly. such simple, causal laws. if only it were that simple....

...but yes. it's inflation. it's monetary. this is the dominant, primary cause of the broken economy. and fixing things in the short run requires addressing that, albeit not in the ways you hear the libertarian right suggest.

a convergence in opinions as to cause, a divergence in opinions as to the way forwards.

something else that comes off as ridiculous: the credit rating fiasco of late 2011. talk about an extortion scheme. yikes.