Michael Hudson had this excellent piece on economic rent in Global Research’s series “The Insider’s Economic Dictionary: The Antidote to Euphemism” yesterday.
Yes, maybe American banks being more willing to support asset bubbles than the real economy might also help explain Detroit’s bankruptcy?
Go, Michael!
I can’t make the same distinction you do about slavery, Robin. A slave is a slave. Most of us today are no less slaves than the Jews of Ancient Egypt IMO. We just need to see it or to continue on in our ignorance. I have hopes for the former.
Yes, but what about the dependent people who keep selecting banks as their masters? Blaming banks and landlords is a superficial cause.
This professor is gatekeeping that knowledge very well indeed. The principle job of the intellect.
Dependency is the problem, not slavery. As it always has been
“Its a subtle difference.
People in general, in all history, have never really campaigned for the end of slavery.
But was there ever really a thing called slavery, as we know it today? The records show most slaves were relatively happy with their lot. In general most masters looked after their property like a person looks after their dog. Emperors trusted some of their slaves more than their
bodyguards.
An ambitious and astute master kept his property well so they would produce more for him with their labour. A foolish master neglected his property and often went under.
So long as the master is kind enough to us, we will acquiesce into submission, forgoing our obligations to others and duty to our own free will. And that of our family too, no less. The master comes
before the ones we claim to love, else why do we keep voting for a system of dependency?
So slavery as we know it today, never really existed. We have only ever cared about:
WHO “WE CHOOSE” TO BE DEPENDENT ON
Who will be our leader, our ‘father’, our master, and how well will he treat us. What is the relationship between trading our free will and how much my master will provide for me in exchange?
Dependent people have always asked the masters to bid for their dependency, and the highest bidder always wins. We the people have chosen this social condition, at auction, every time, and there is
nothing new in the world that is as important.
Today we are dependent on the providers of the land, the credit, the state and its welfare. Both the right and the left wings of political economy. Both are different degrees of ‘our master’. They are both the same thing in kind as was the Roman senator with 10,000 servants.
The polarised politics are just a cop out, a false battle, for dependent people without the courage to stand up and meet the
obligations to others and ourselves, placed on us at birth. Professors help us with their intellect to ignore this. The intellects lack of wisdom and ignorance is boundless.
And we accept this social state willingly. Only complaining that we are still the dependent and not others and then not complaining that much about it anyway. So long as we can still sell ourselves to the
highest bidder at auction.
All of us aspiring one day to be a provider of dependency goods and services to others. To one day be a master. Never calling to abolish dependency and embrace a life.
The poor in spirit will say this all sounds negative to tempt you. That is a terrible mistake.
This is a call to you to ask yourself not who you are now.But who you can be if you really want it.
What can be more positive than that?”