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Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Perverse Society: The Illusion of Freedom in the Market Economy

We may want to believe we are free...but the truth is we are not.

The culture of debt and addiction to which we belong ensures that we are forced into bondage, in order to ensure our very survival.

Those of us who can "afford" higher education must usually go into debt to do so. Those who cannot have their options forever limited by their lack of education into a life of servitude.

In either case, the very things we depend on for our survival can and are denied us, unless we yield to the will of our masters.

How many times have you been told "If you don't like your job you can always quit"? How many times have you thought about quitting, and then realized that you simply could not afford to do so?

You have rent or a mortgage to pay. You have to buy food. You have to pay utilities. You likely owe a great deal of money to one or more credit card companies, who are charging you an obscene amount of interest for the privilege of going into debt with them. They make their money off those interest rates, because most people work so very hard for not nearly enough money, so all anyone can afford to do is pay the minimum monthly balance, thereby ensuring their debt load increases.

Do you own a car? Outright, or are you still paying it down? More debt, and more expenses: license fees, registration, insurance...gasoline...gas prices keep going up and up and up...the gas companies tell us it's more expensive to import and refine crude oil, and they are making billions upon billions of dollars of RECORD profit, every year. Do not believe their lies. They are raising the cost of fuel in order to inflate their coffers.

There is, supposedly, a worldwide food shortage right now. Why? Because so many farmers were "encouraged" to grow crops for ethanol production that not enough food crops were produced. What lies. Every year in the United States, Canada and Western Europe farmers are paid subsidies to let grain ROT in silos, because it is more cost-effective to do that than to put that grain on the market. The "food crisis" was invented to do one thing: to make people reject Ethanol, which is a legitimate and viable alternative to the oil monopolies stranglehold on our society.

If people reject ethanol, demand for fossil fuel will increase, which the fuel companies will be able to use as justify increasing the price of gasoline.

Higher gasoline prices mean higher costs for the transport and manufacture of goods, which translates to higher prices overall. Higher prices overall mean you have less earning power. Less earning power makes you a slave.

Has your salary been indexed to the cost of living? In other words, is your employer raising your salary to match the price you must pay for your drive into work, the food you eat, the clothes on your back and all the other necessities one must buy to even eke out a subsistence existence? I didn't think so.

So, while everything else gets more expensive, you aren't earning enough to keep up. This increases your debt, which in turn increases your dependence on your job for your very survival.

You are a slave.

You are not free to quit unless you have another job lined up. You can't line up another job without going on interviews. :You can't go interview elsewhere, because prospective employers expect you to be available for interview during the day, which is likely when you're at work. Is your boss going to give you time off to go on a job interview? I didn't think so. Can you just call in sick whenever you have a job interview elsewhere? No...I didn't think so either. And if your employer finds out you're shopping around for another job, will they do anything to keep you, or punish your disloyalty by terminating your employment?

So, then, how can you claim to be free? You spend eight hours a day in service to others, laboring under their yoke. Whatever earnings you have are taken from you to pay your debts. What little you have left over after paying for the necessities goes into savings--if you're lucky--so that you can hopefully one day stop working. And if that is the case, you must hope that you die before the money runs out.

You are not free. The supposedly free society that you live in is designed to give you the illusion of freedom, while keeping you completely controlled.

This is known as trickle-up economics. Follow the money. It always flows from your pockets, away from you and towards corporations, financial institutions and then into the hands of greedy pigs who already have more than their fair share of the wealth.

Now, how are you supposed to break free? How are you supposed to liberate yourself?

Well, what happens when you don't pay your bills? The accounts go into collection. And what happens if you default on accounts in collection? Your credit rating is affected.

All your credit rating truly determines is how much deeper in debt creditors are willing to let you get.

So, do you want to know how to break free? Stop paying your bills. Not the utilities, not the rent. The frivolities. The car; let them repossess it. The credit cards? Stop paying them and watch your income go up. Take public transit, buy what you can afford, save up for the things you want, and prioritize rent, food and utilities. You stop paying the frivolous debts and you'll have money enough. You stop paying the frivolous debts and your economic slave masters will lose their power over you.

But what about your credit rating? Why do you need it? You don't. Let your credit rating be ruined. Imagine this: If everyone stopped paying their credit card bills, their student loans, their car loans...if everyone just stopped for one month, for two months...the economy would collapse, because it isn't industry or hard work that runs our society, it is debt and dependency.

Start a revolution: Get three friends to stop paying their credit card bills. Get each of them to get three friends to stop paying those bills. If everyone who was in debt stopped paying their debts for 120 days, the financial world would be shaken to its foundations. Credit ratings will become useless and, deprived of their only source of revenue, the creditors will die, like parasitic leeches deprived of the lifeblood of their victims.

And then what? Well, the oil conglomerates and the financial institutions are the pillars of control. One cannot exist without the other. The oil companies rely on our dependence on their product, they rely on us to be in their debt. But if we use public transit, if we refuse to pay their ransom for gasoline, if we find alternative sources of heating our homes, such as space heaters, warm clothing and more blankets on the bed, what then? They will fall.

Alternative fuels like ethanol, alcohol based fuels, hydrogen fuel cells and other renewable fuel sources are dangerous to these parasites. And if we start turning to the alternatives, if we turn our backs on the fossil fuels and the financial institutions, they will have no further power over us, as we will have no further need for them.

No, it would not be easy. No, it would not be pleasant. But the path to freedom is not an easy one. The road to liberty is littered with the carnage caused by those who fight against those yearning to be free. There will be unemployment as the credit and oil-sponsored industries collapse. But in times of such collective destitution, there comes change. We have been conditioned to look out for ourselves, when we should be looking out for one another. If everyone worked towards helping everyone else, we would all prosper.

In this new war for freedom, money has been the weapon of choice used to keep us enslaved. Now it is time for us to use that weapon against our masters. Deny them the power they have over us, by denying them those goddamn pieces of paper that they have taught us to believe have any real importance. Crush them by using those same pieces of paper to starve them.

It is time to break free.

3 comments:

Bobby Revell said...

Hi Steve! This is one of the best articles I've seen in a while. I completely agree with everything you've said. I already do most of those things because I refuse to hand my hard earned money over to a bunch of corrupted, greed infested scumbags.

People do not realize that they can change the world, but they just don't know how. Your ideas are a fantastic start! Anyway, you helped inspire a post from me. I linked to you and this article. I hope to send some readers your way, I'm at:
http://revellian.com

Anonymous said...

Awesome read- however Americans are lemmings & we would all rather go down the cliff together clutching our Gucci handbags stuffed full of credit cards then to actually live life.

I agree with everything you wrote- my husband and I are going to try to modify our car shortly to burn less gas and I believe use water or something other then what's at the pump (since I am mechanically illiterate) I am not sure exactly what he is doing on my suggestion...

I would love to find 3 people who would stop paying on their credit cards. I know several people who have let their houses go recently to foreclosures- yet they had jobs. In one case a relative just lost their home last month- yet they are both wage earners her and her husband. I am trained an accountant and yet I have still to figure out where then the money went?

Steve Karmazenuk said...

Bobby, Michelle...

When I wrote that article, I was one person.

Now, we are three.

Spread the word, spread the virus.

Those of us who are awake have the inexorable duty to wake those of us who are not.