Barrel of Fun

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empty barrel
Yes, it’s an old oil barrel, but go with me here…

Disclaimer: Thoughts on Mitt Romney. You’ve been warned.

Go ahead. Look at the barrel. Well. Go ahead. It’s a barrel. Right? And get this. The barrel is empty. The barrel is rotten. But it wasn’t always so. Look at it again. There was a time when the barrel was full of beautiful, luscious, sweet and tart apples. Yes, once. In fact, there was probably a moment where apples were consumed and the barrels were cleaned and all was renewed and all was good. It didn’t matter if sometimes there were more red than green apples. Nor did it matter if sometimes there were way to many sweet apples. Everything was super-duper, double okay, golly gee. There was a time where barrels of apples were as beautiful and aplenty as the idear of free markets.

Indeed, there was once a market for barrels of apples. It was a dynamic market. But one day something happened. Yes,Centralised happened. It was as though The Invisible Hand reached in and changed everything and it did so in somewhat contrast to what Adam Smith originally intended (for that hand). This caused there to be something akin to tides where tides need not be. Being unnatural, inorganic, something out of nothing, barrels of apples (a natural resource that costs nothing to grow unless you decide to grow too many of them; not unlike oil) ceased to be aplenty.

One day a pristine barrel of apples was discovered by a new generation. True to human form, the barrel was hoarded for fear of the consequences of leaving such a precious thing to the whims of supply and demand, i.e. that which Das Volk believed in but also that which Centralised could not afford to tolerate. In order to maintain control, the heads of Centralised applied trickery that would go right over the heads of a dumb-downed voting constituency. Hence, fiat barrels of apples were suddenly everywhere. And Das Volk worshipped these barrels as if they were demigods who controlled (red herring?) fractional banking (and/or oil). There were even Volk who could have more than one barrel through the magic of mortgage backed securities and other financially engineered money-miracles. (Oh, the prowess and creativity of bankers!) No one gave a second thought to the human apathy, mediocrity and mendacity that was behind all the false (fiat?) barrels of apples. And then the day arrived, true to human form, where there were once (fiat) barrels aplenty, there was now… the margin call.

Pay up, give up or shut up, said Centralised. And Das Volk abided. Sure, they kept what was left of their precious and now sentimental barrels. To this day when they scrape the crud and grime, the residue of what’s left from the rot that they didn’t know was rotten from the inside of those barrels, they still refuse to question anything. They go about their business as if that business is actually their own. Little do they know that history will tell their story differently because it’s obvious that no one wants to rewrite this aspect of it. Not even Centralised cares if it’s retold. For there’s no profit to such telling. Yet it is entertaining to look back at it all. For worstwriter has no sympathy for the dumb-downed. I just laugh at Das Volk as so many of them still scrape the sides of their barrels and gorge themselves on the rot in the name of all that they think is theirs. Praise be to the Deity Fiat, praise be to Centralised.

Today, dear worst-reader, we blog about the 2012 election year and choices at hand. Obviously, I’m not one to wax poetic when it comes to politics, but something compels (me). Wait. Maybe it’s better if I put it like this. Something need be introduced. As though all-things-worst could introduce anything. Hence the (thr)ills of having a blog that no one reads.

The thing I’m concerned about today is the fact that #americant cannot ween itself of all the remaining rot that is inside the luscious barrels of goodness, aka, barrels of apples that represented a time gone and a time never again attainable. That’s right. I have visions — and I used to have them more but they are waning as I age — where hoards of Das Volk, all dressed in grey sweat tops, huge jeans and sneakers with Wal-Mart labels still attached, go about their lives without a thought. Indeed. Ka-ching has been replaced with the approval jingle of a swipe of a credit card.

So here’s a thought for ya.

Reading up on Mitt Romney and running across a bit of info about his father got them gerbils running inside that wheel in me head. Romney, a founder of a über-successful private equity investment company, is the son of one of the last CEOs of American Motors. You know, the company that gave us Gremlins and Pacers. The company that lost out when others were bailed out (Chrysler, GM). But get this. What do you think George Romney could have passed on to his son Mitt from the vast experience of competing, not so much with the then Big Three car makers that were awaiting AM’s demise, but the rotting barrel of apple culture that was/is #americant? Well, here’s worst-writer’s o-pine-yun about that.

George Romney, in the days where he knew American Motors was doomed, must have said at one time or other to an impressionable Mitt, sometime in the late 60s or early 70s, the following: You cannot beat the system. And because of who we are you will not be able to be part of it. Not only will the emerging centralised economy rule and control everything but you will also never be able to get around the only way to make profits in America if you decide to go into made-in-America business. America has lost its competitive advantage. In a centralised economy, without an advantage, a business can survive only by controlling costs. Period. Since the only way to control costs is if a business’s main activities are about the process of reducing labor expenditures to zero, the centralised economy will inevitably move those costs where it can get them to zero. You know, the easy wrong instead of the hard right. Now, my dear son, here’s what you do based on what you’re old man experienced when there were four American car companies. While the centralised economy is moving labor abroad, there will be a swath of businesses on the economic brink run by fools who think they can beat the system (centralised). They believe if they just hone in, focus, American ingenuity and buy-American (or something like that) will do the trick. Again, my young whipper-snapper, how do you make money in a centralised economy? That’s right. Very good. Get rid of costs–especially all those greedy workers that should be more thankful than they’ve been. Now. Go out there, see the world, do what our church requires of you–even if centralised laughs–and then come back and then you can start something called a private equity company. With this company you can buy up all the business that can’t compete against the centralised economy and sell off their assets. You’ll make billions–on the easy wrongs. And after that. Maybe. Then they (centralised) will accept us for who we (really) are. Are you ready, junior? That’s my boy.

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Rant on.

-tgs-

PS centralized=controlled. I think. ;-)

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