Why has the demand for durable goods dropped?

The same reason why demand for housing dropped - there's too fucking much of it!

Yet, despite this abundance, tens of thousands of people are homeless and you still can't get a cheap flight from NY to LA.

So, why the paradox?

In this amazing essay, Against Zionism explains the dynamics behind it. --qrswave

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"The history of modernity is the history of engineered scarcity. It is a story of cutting people off from land, and from the fruits of their labor. It is a story of ever-worsening enslavement, which has been accomplished through war, privatization, and debt.

Everywhere you look, there is nothing natural about the scarcity we live with today."
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zIONISM and the "Free Market"

I wasn't going to write any more posts for personal reasons, but QRS suggested I reconsider, so here's another...

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Do you think we have reached “peak oil,” and the world is running out of resources?

Do you think the human race must live within ever-tighter limits?

Do you think the world is about to end?

If so, you’ve been duped.

This post will expose a simple error in logic that I see throughout our society. If you understand this error, you will have a small part of your general anxiety relieved. (I said a small part.) I will tie all this into zionism at the end. I will show one reason why Anglo-American culture is so vulnerable to zionist lies.

My basic point is very simple, and I will repeat it many times below.

Here it is: you were seduced into confusing (1) natural scarcity with (2) artificial scarcity (caused by central banks, corporations, and ultimately anyone who holds a monopoly).

Let’s examine how this seduction started, how it is maintained, and how it negatively affects us. Some of my ideas come from Iain Boal, an Irish historian of science and technology.

Before we get going, we need to first understand the nature of a monopoly, since this is central to my argument. The power of a monopoly comes from many things, but mainly from the ability to control supplies, and thus impose scarcity.

For this power to work, a monopoly must seduce people into thinking that artificial scarcity (engineered by the monopoly) is natural scarcity (outside the monopoly’s control). For example, most people assume that money is naturally scarce. In reality, money is artificially scarce, because private central banks have a monopoly on it. This fact is so obvious that it is usually overlooked. Likewise, the role of artificial scarcity is so obvious that it is usually overlooked.

You will see below that this illusion (artificial scarcity = natural scarcity) is everywhere in our society. It’s killing us, and it helps zionism stay in power, as I’ll explain at bottom.

Oil is another example. The problem for oil companies is that there’s too much oil. In other words, oil companies must work to keep oil artificially scarce.

Maybe oil really is about to run out. Maybe not. My point is not to examine natural scarcity, but the mechanisms of engineered scarcity, and to ultimately tie it into the workings of zionism.

To understand how scarcity is engineered, and why economists are so obsesssed with scarcity, let’s examine the propaganda about the “free market.”

This propaganda began with the famous “Essay on the Principle of Population” by Thomas Malthus (1766 – 1834). Malthus' model has ruled the western world since the essay was published in 1798.

Malthus said population growth, especially of poor people, inevitably outruns food supply, unless the poor are restrained from breeding. He advocated that poor people be crowded together in unhealthy housing as a way of checking their population. He advocated other ways of controlling their population as well. Why is this important? I’ll get to that in a moment.

First, what motivated Malthus to write this essay?

Five years earlier, the utopian anarchist William Godwin (1756-1836) was excited by the French Revolution. A corrupt monarchy had been overthrown, and future possibilities seemed endless. Godwin wrote a very influential essay titled “Enquiry Concerning Political Justice” (1793), which was a devastating critique of the State, or what we might call the “corporate machine,” or simply, monopolies. Godwin explored how society might work without this machine. His ideas were opposite to the book Leviathan (1651) by Englishman Thomas Hobbs (1588-1679), which said that the State or the Corporation or the monopoly is “efficient” and a good thing.

Across the Channel, Thomas Malthus wanted to show why Godwin was wrong. Hence Malthus wrote his “Essay on the Principle of Population.” (1798)

The importance of this essay was that Malthus conjured up an "iron law of nature" to cut away the existing welfare system in England that was a safety net for the poor. Malthus called his ideas “scientific.” In reality they were capitalist ideology masquerading as science. Ever since Malthus, most Anglo-American economists have also spouted capitalist ideology that masquerades as “science.”

Malthus became the world's first paid economist, in the service of the East India Company, which started in 1600 with a charter from Elizabeth 1 to secure a monopoly on trade with Asia. (Rich people in England didn’t want ordinary people trading with Asia.)

The East India Company ruled India, Burma, and Hong Kong. A single monopoly sucked blood from a fifth of the world's entire population. The monopoly shared some of its spoils with the British Crown, and had its own armies of mercs, but the private soldiers carried the British flag.

To justify the East India Company’s imperialism, Malthus devised a “science” of economics based on scarcity. (Most of the chatter about “supply and demand” is b.s., so ignore it.) The problem with Malthus is that he deliberately created the illusion that artificial scarcity is the same as natural scarcity. (Today when the Bush regime sponsors a civil war in Darfur in order to steal the oil there, economists study the artificial famine as a “natural” phenomenon. Economists fill entire books with this trash. All of it conceals the truth.)

Before Malthus wrote his essay, English people tended to live on “common land,” or in “commons.” You can get a very rough idea of this by thinking of the term “commune.” For centuries, people lived together on a patch of land. They farmed it, worked it, traded on it, and produced their own food.

Greedy capitalists needed slaves for their factories. They got those slaves by breaking up the commons. They built fences on the land, forcing people out of settings where they had lived for centuries. Capitalists bribed parliament to pass laws that made this “legal.” (Today, israelis build barriers to help break up Palestinian solidarity.)

Malthus provided a new ideology to justify all this, and called that ideology a “science.” Today this “science” is the bizarre cult of the “free market.” Among other things, the cult hides the fact that most of the natural shortages we read about are artificial shortages deliberately caused by monopolies.

By 1800, British people who had once lived in communal settings (i.e., “commoners”) were slaving in factories. They were disconnected from their land, and cut off from the fruits of their labor. They were always kept on the threshold of starving, and began to live in an artificial scarcity engineered by the rich. Malthus’ essay called these artificial scarcities “laws of nature” that could be “scientifically” studied. (Three hundred years before that, Thomas More saw the beginnings of this awful process, and denounced the process in his famous essay Utopia, published in 1515.)

Soon the enslaved peasants became so brainwashed that the term “commoner” came to mean a lower-class person. In reality, the few people who still lived on commons were the only free and happy ones.

Today the capitalist / globalist project is doing the same thing on a planetary level, thus reducing all remaining “commoners” (free people) to a global class of rootless and disposable slaves.

Monopoly holders (including central banks) say they must do this because we are “running out” of resources. In reality, it is they who create shortages in order to boost prices, and increase dependency. It’s all part of the grand process of enslavement. The central bankers are only part of the picture. The root of the problem lies in the very nature of any monopoly.

Malthus’ cult infected almost every discipline, from biology, to genetics, to demography -- whatever. For example, environmentalists worship Malthus when they say our problems stem from a scarcity of finite resources. They assume that scarcity is natural, global, and inevitable.

Rubbish.

Most scarcity is artificial (deliberately engineered).

Scientists and biologists worship the cult when they describe nature as something of which humans are just a part. Their perspectives are outside or above local politics and economics. Like Marxists and capitalists, these scientists think “globally.”

An example is Jared Diamond, a tropical ornithologist that now writes as a historian of the fate of human societies. Diamond promotes the Malthusian lie that artificial (institutionalized) scarcity is natural and unavoidable. So does Paul "Population Bomb" Ehrlich, plus entomologist E.O. Wilson, and many other influential people. All of them promote the lie that artificial scarcity is “natural.”

Thee “scientists” fancy themselves students of Charles Darwin, but they twist Darwin to support their lies and their “globalist” outlook. Darwin said species change by adapting to varying natural and local conditions of scarcity. Capitalists twist Darwin to justify artificial and global scarcity. They call this process “evolution.” They speak of “natural selection,” when they really mean artificial selection through engineered scarcity.

The sixties counterculture preferred a gift economy, and was partly a reaction against the Malthusian cult of engineered scarcity. It had a kind of primitivist strain, and inspired the book Stone Age Economics by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins.

Sahlins realized that capitalists and their helpers had projected their lies and propaganda onto all of past history. The propaganda said there had always been shortages, and always will be. They concealed the role of engineered shortages. Sahlins challenged this propaganda. He offered a counter-myth that imagined a neolithic world of abundance. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau did the same thing, two hundred years before, with his “theory of natural man.”)

Despite Stone Age Economics, the Malthus cult continued to dominate the environmental movement of the sixties, plus events like "Earth Day," and back-to-the-landers with their Whole Earth Catalog. All of these speak of overpopulation, famine, and above all, scarcity. All of them confuse natural scarcity with artificial scarcity.

In the 1970s, Francis Moore Lappe wrote a very popular book titled Diet For A Small Planet. A “small planet” means a planet of scarcity. The book begins with a discussion about "reaching the very limits of the earth's capacity to produce food," and how a vegetarian diet was a way out of the "the earth's natural limitations.” Once again, the book confuses artificial scarcity with natural scarcity. Thus, this book worships the Malthus cult.

True, the earth’s resources are limited, but there’s no need to confuse natural scarcity with artificial scarcity (engineered by the rich).

Before the age of mass-engineered scarcity, the question of supply was not “global,” and not a “science.” Instead, the question was local and practical. How much water is available? How much grazing will a pasture allow? Who's encroaching?

In those days, commoners had “use-rights” to pasture animals, or collect firewood, or pick fruits. People only had “use rights” if they lived on that land. They were limited to taking certain amounts depending on the local community’s knowledge about what would stretch the common too far. Thus, questions of “scarcity” were addressed by specific people living on specific pieces of land. Most scarcity was natural, and could be dealt with.

With Malthus (and with most economists since then) “scarcity” became “studied” from a global perspective. This sustains the lie that natural scarcity = artificial scarcity. Even “micro-economists” buy this lie.

Of course there was natural scarcity and ecological destruction before Malthus. For example, over-farming by Imperial Rome caused the deforestation of coastal areas around the Mediterranean Sea. However, most (not all) of these disasters were caused by non-local elites and absentee landlords. They raped until there was nothing left to rape.

Malthus did not merely say that rape is good. He went futher and made a “science” of creating famine-for-profit. He blamed his victims for the scarcity he caused. Economists have been blaming the victims ever since.

Consider Garrett Hardin's famous 1968 essay, "The Tragedy Of The Commons,” published in the journal Science. (A science journal!) Hardin was a Texas zoologist. He knew nothing about the actual history of communing. He offered no sociological research whatever – but he didn’t need to, since he approached economics from an ideological angle. Hardin championed the Malthus cult of artificial scarcity. He said all common resources (such as pasture) inevitably end in ruin, because selfish individuals over-exploit them. He hides the fact that selfish individuals are elite non-locals.

Thus, like Malthus (and like Satan) Diamond twists the truth into its opposite. He says rich capitalists (non-locals) will save the world. He says we must not treat the earth as a "common treasury.” He says we must be ruthless and greedy, or we will perish.

In the 1970s, globalists took Hardin’s lie and made his cult into the "scientific" foundation of World Bank and IMF policies. For people like Hardin, facts are irrelevant. All that matters is ideology and profits. (Bush, the World bank, and the IMF would agree.)

Cult worshippers say privatization and monopolies are good, because such things are “more efficient.” Once again, this is the exact opposite of the truth. How can artificial (engineered) scarcity be more efficient than a natural process?

Let’s look closer at this "efficiency" lie.

A lie is something that runs counter to reality. It fights with reality. Thus, a lot of energy is needed to prop up and sustain a lie. This makes all lies extremely inefficient. At first they work, but soon they can only be maintained by force (and force can only be maintained through lies).

One example of the nexus between lies, inefficiency, and brutality is the U.S. Navy when it seized dozens of small islands around the world in the late 1800s to secure supplies of guano. This guano was needed to fertilize US continental soil, which big agricultural interests had ruthlessly depleted.

But you see, this depletion was a “natural” process, which includes ordinary people who live on that land, right? Thus, as always, the blame falls not on greedy capitalists, but on ordinary people. They are victims of capitalist greed and artificial scarcity. Natural scarcity is seldom severe. Artificial scarcity is always severe.

Because a lie is extremely inefficient, it is extremely expensive to maintain. The oil industry, for example, depends on subsidies, price fixing, tax breaks, and hidden costs. What would be the price of a gallon of gasoline if we factored in the cost of the Sixth Fleet and all military bases around the world?

The capitalist lie factory threatens to destroy us all, but its lies are concealed because – once again -- everyone confuses natural scarcity with artificial scarcity.

Malthusian cultists (which includes most economists) say competition is good because it yields progress, plus the survival of “superior races.” In reality they want to minimize competition for themselves (by getting monopolies) and maximize competition for everyone else. By getting monopolies, they impose scarcity. They force the poor to fight for a crust of bread, which in turn prevents the poor from even noticing the monopoly, let alone uniting against it. For instance, many people squabble over money, but how many notice the monopoly we call the Federal Reserve?

In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond uses Malthus to justify European imperialism, but he clothes his lies in anti-racist drag. Diamond says that life is a struggle for survival amid global scarcity.

Really? It’s true that millions of people are starving, but (contrary to Diamond and most economists) this is not because of any "iron law of nature.” It is because of engineered scarcity. Diamond's latest book, Collapse, continues these lies by giving historical horror-stories of resource exhaustion and social catastrophe.

EVANGELICAL “CHRISTIANS”

When you confuse artificial scarcity with natural scarcity, you erroneously think scarcity is out of everyone's control. This error fits nicely with the apocalyptic thinking of religious fundamentalists. Apocalyptic thinking takes the world out of man’s control. It says everything will end, and there's nothing we can do about it, just as scarcity is “natural,” and there’s nothing we can do about it. In reality, there is no "end," just as there are no "natural scarcities." Societies tend to survive catastrophes, although the result may not be pretty or comfortable. New crops can be grown.

Much of western culture is based on apocalyptic “endism,” or the idea that the human drama is played out on a finite global stage. Obviously this notion is false, since we keep going.

This contradiction between “endism” and reality confuses fundamentalists. Indeed, Darwin had no breakthrough until he finally abandoned his Christian catastrophism with the help of the great geologist Lyell, who posited a non-biblical idea of immensely slow and gradual change.

After World War II, everyone feared nuclear Armageddon. Then the USSR fell, and the USA drifted with no “enemy.”

Now “endism” is back with propaganda about the final “war of civilizations.” Entire nations in the west are caught up in this delusion, whether or not they are religious, for they see a global shortages as “natural” and inevitable.

Capitalists love to main this delusion. They say that only privatization can avoid global catastrophe. Of course, it is they who hasten disaster through their privatization and engineered scarcity. Like Malthus, they twist reality into its exact opposite. Black is white, and white is black. Bush is wise, israel is a victim, and pigs have wings.

When we study the natural history of earth, we must consider sudden catastrophes like earthquakes, plus slow gradual events, like wind erosion. This is obvious, but the apocalyptic mindset only looks at the catastrophic side of the equation. And the monopoly holders (including central banks) are happy to help them. There are indeed natural catastrophes, but the human race goes on.

Another reason why apocalyptic thinking is back in vogue is that the industrialized world is finally seeing the dire results of five centuries of engineered scarcity. British colonialism produced famines in India and Africa (often deliberately). The west calls these things “natural," or even, "acts of God." This illusion is further helped by the fact that some of the African landscapes look like the Apocalypse, with war, death, plague, and pestilence.

All this combines with Christian-style “endism” to make people feel that civilization is about to end. Monopoly holders (bankers, etc.) say that only they (the rich) can stop it, when in fact they intentionally cause these disasters.

Amartya Sen, the sociologist of famine, says famine doesn’t occur where there is genuine "democratic" entitlement to food. Of course there are natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, droughts, and so forth, but capitalist exploitation makes natural disasters into full-blown famines. The severity of any disaster has as much to do with human (artificial) decisions as it does with natural forces.

To repeat, natural scarcity is rare. It is usually not severe, and it can easily be dealt with. Artificial scarcity is everywhere. It is always severe, and is impossible to deal with (unless you break the monopoly behind it). What threatens us is not natural scarcity, but artificial scarcity. We must unmask the ideological nexus behind artificial scarcity and neo-catastrophism.

Ecologists worship the Malthusian cult when they claim that victims, peasants, and the human race as a whole are destroying the earth.

Nonsense.

It’s rich capitalists that are destroying it, not their victims. Again, this “science” of blaming-the-victims has continued since Malthus. We should indeed be talking about catastrophe, but we are illogical if we blame the poor. We must stop thinking that artificially induced nightmares are the result of “natural” forces.

Ecologists also worship the cult when they say things like, "The world's food supply is going to run out in five years!” They overlook the fact that capitalist exploitation kills forty thousand children each day from malnutrition.

Another way the Malthusian cult appears is when the West brings supplies to rescue people from so-called “natural” catastrophes that are really engineered catastrophes. For example, there is nothing “natural” about the Darfur famine. It was planned. Imperialists deliberately brought it about so they could eradicate people from the land, and then grab the oil. Everyone feels good about saving people in Darfur, and therefore feels good about worshipping the Malthusian cult that enslaves us.

When capitalist greed causes famine, and then sends humanitarian aid, the Malthusian cult is reinforced. Imperialists engineer disaster, and then bring food, and then say, “See? Privatization will save us all!” Of course, it was privatization that caused the disaster in the first place. Indeed, humanitarian aid is just another a weapon of imperialism. It keeps people dependent.

In the global division of labor, Africa's role is to provide raw materials, both mineral and vegetable. Value is added elsewhere. Disaster is planned and calculated. Then aid is given on the condition that victims sell more of their assets to private interests. This opens the door to still more artificial disasters. It’s a never-ending cycle of ever-greater enslavement and misery.

To repeat once again, this entire process is hidden because everyone buys the Malthusian lie that artificial scarcity = natural scarcity. (I told you I’d repeat it a lot.)

This confusion is at the bottom of all this. Books like Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine are interesting, but they don’t go deep enough. They’re not simple enough.

Today we hear Al Gore demand that the world to "do something" about climate change. Why doesn’t Gore address the Malthusian cult that got us here in the first place? Reason: he’s rich, and he’s enjoying the spotlight. Why spoil the party with truth? For people like Gore, facts are turds in the punchbowl. (For zionists, facts are kryptonite.)

Consider Toyota and British Petroleum. They say they want to help stop global warming. Fine, let’s start with a global moratorium on highway construction. If this hurts local economies, Toyota and British Petroleum can help out with money. But they would never agree to that, since it might hurt short-term profits.

Quite typically, British Petroleum has just offered a half billion dollars over the next decade to the University of California and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (whose main function is to design nuclear weapons). This money is supposed to help develop crops to make alcohol fuel. At one stroke, British Petroleum seems sincere in its desire to combat global warming, and its desire to address the “natural scarcity” of oil. What a sham! It is companies like British Petroleum that deliberately maintain scarcity. Once again, artificial scarcity masquerades as natural scarcity. Oil companies can charge high prices, since oil is supposedly “running out.”

We don't really live in a world of Malthusian scarcity. Far from it. Even Malthus himself acknowledged this when he spoke of "nature's mighty feast.”

The history of modernity is the history of engineered scarcity. It is a story of cutting people off from land, and from the fruits of their labor. It is a story of ever-worsening enslavement, which has been accomplished through war, privatization, and debt.

Everywhere you look, there is nothing natural about the scarcity we live with today.

zIONISM

The Malthusian cult helps explain why Anglo-American culture is so vulnerable to zionist toxin. Gentiles from Christian-based nations easily overcome natural scarcity, but they bow to artificial scarcity caused by monopolies.

zionism was founded on artificial scarcity. Scarcity is Satan’s weapon, for Satan says salvation is scarce, and only by submission to Satan can you be saved. (Only through the “free market” can you be saved.) Once you submit to Satan or zionism, you are used and discarded. Some are discarded right away. Others are allowed to live a while longer.

Practically speaking, zionism gets its power through monopolies. As I said above, the power of a monopoly stems mostly from its ability to create artificial scarcity. zionists have an artificial monopoly on suffering (the “holocaust”), on divine favor (the “chosen people”), on money (central banks), and many other areas. Monopolies (and engineered scarcity) are central to the zionist project. For example, the Jewish company of DeBeers has a near-monopoly on diamonds. Crystallized carbon is rather common in the earth, but the diamond monopoly allows DeBeers to keep diamonds scarce, and thus keep diamond prices high.

The Jewish monopoly on mass media and entertainment allows zionists to lie, of course, but more importantly it allows them to make information scarce, and therefore valuable. This scarcity of information keeps the Goyim glued to zionist TV, even when the Goyim know the TV is lying.

For zionists, the ultimate monopolies are the “holocaust,” plus control of information, and above all, control of banking and currency. These yield infinite wealth and power, and provide the ultimate camouflage. (Of course, not all central bankers are zionist Jews. Some Gentiles worship Satan too.)

In Anglo-American Gentile society, no one complains when zionists get monopolies, since, “that’s what America’s all about.” If you are a victim of artificial scarcity, it is “your fault,” or your “bad luck.” It is “fate.”

Economists can “prove” this “scientifically,” since (according to them) all scarcity is a “natural” phenomenon.

Fundamentalists “Christians” can "prove" this “scripturally,” since (according to them) all scarcity is “natural,” and is therefore “God’s will.”

Therefore it is “God’s will” that zionists and capitalists should rule, and you should be a slave of them.

Fundamentalist “Christians” are happy to serve zionists, and increase suffering in the world, since the sooner the world ends, the sooner the fundamentalists will be whisked off to a luxury resort in the sky.

CONCLUSIONS

>Only artificial scarcity is “inevitable and worldwide.” Natural scarcity is not inevitable, and not worldwide. If we are destroyed, it will be by artificial scarcity, not natural scarcity. When you hear someone say, “Supplies of X are about the run out!” you must ask who is saying this, and who is behind him.

>The easiest way to control prices is to create scarcity. If your village has only one well, and you own that well, your task is to raise prices as high as possible, without raising prices so high that villagers kill you. You want to keep the villagers on the threshold of dying. If you cross the threshold, you will be killed. Where is the threshold? It changes from day to day.

>All propaganda about “free markets” is a quest for global monopolies, and the power to impose artificial scarcity.

>Marxism is not true commune-ism. Marxism seeks a monopoly in the State. Capitalists seek a monopoly in the Corporation. Both monopolies are inefficient and destructive, and can only be maintained through lies and force. True commune-ism is a natural state. It opposes all monopolies. It is local, and preserves human self-interest. It lets people acquire things within the natural limits of the common, or the commune.

>Most wars are between (1) One party that seeks a monopoly and (2a) another party that seeks a competing monopoly, or (2b) people that oppose monopolies.

>One reason why capitalists get away with blasting socialism is that capitalists equate socialism with Marxism. This comparison is only valid if the State becomes a monopoly. Capitalists say they are the only defense against a State monopoly. Marxists say they are the only defense against capitalist monopolies. Each is a demon, claiming he is the only defense against the other demon. Satan is behind both.

>A monopoly is not necessarily evil, so long as it is fully subject to democratic forces. For example, the founders of the USA felt the State should have a monopoly on coining money, and on “providing for the common defense.” This monopoly was meant to be controlled by elected government. True democracy prevents the State from becoming one big monopoly, or a network of monopolies. Of course, we now have uber-monopolies such as the Federal Reserve.

>The worship of monopolies is not at the original core of Anglo-American culture. However, the worship is now so widespread that zionist culture (which has always worshipped monopolies) finds a servile host in Anglo-American culture. Thus, anyone who praises “free markets” automatically praises zionism, which is pure tyranny.

>We must never confuse natural scarcity (which is usually not severe) with artificial scarcity (which is always severe). If we make this confusion, we fall into the Malthusian-capitalist-fundamentalist-zionist trap. Watch for this trap everywhere -- even in biology textbooks when you see universal statements about competition and resources. Universal statements may or may not be valid.

When someone says that such-and-such material is about to “run out,” you must always ask (regardless of the material discussed)…

Really? How do we know the shortage is natural, and not ENGINEERED?”

Thanks for reading.

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Some of the above info was taken from a Counterpunch article.

http://www.counterpunch.com/boal09112007.html

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