Run The Jewels - JU$T

Mastered economics 'cause you took yourself from squalor (Slave)
Mastered academics 'cause your grades say you a scholar (Slave)
Mastered Instagram 'cause you can instigate a follow (Shit)
Look at all these slave masters posin' on yo' dollar (Get it? Yeah)

Look at all these slave masters (Ayy) posin' on yo' dollar (Get it? Yeah)
Look at all these slave masters (Ayy) posin' on yo' dollar (Get it?)
Look at all these slave masters (Ayy) posin' on yo' dollar (Get it? Yeah)
Look at all these slave masters

Ayy
Business time, I'm on mine, I be mindin' mine (Make money)
Every time on my grind, I'm just tryna shine (Stay sunny)
Make a dollar, government, they want a dozen dimes (No cap)
The petty kind, might kill ya 'cause they see you shine (Stay strapped)
I done had to have a talk with myself plenty times (For real)
Am I a hypocrite 'cause I know I did plenty crimes? (Yes, I'm is)
I get broke too many times, I might slang some dimes (Back to trappin')
You believe corporations runnin' marijuana? Ooh (How that happen?)
And your country gettin' ran by a casino owner (Ooh)
Pedophiles sponsor all these fuckin' racist bastards (They do)
And I told you once befo' that you should kill your master (It's true)
Now that's the line that's probably gon' get my ass a-assassinated (Yeah-yeah, yeah)

Master of these politics, you swear that you got options (Slave, yeah)
Master of opinion 'cause you vote with the white collar (Slave)
The Thirteenth Amendment says that slavery's abolished (Shit)
Look at all these slave masters posin' on yo' dollar (Get it?)

Look at all these slave masters (Ayy) posin' on yo' dollar (Get it? Yeah)
Look at all these slave masters (Ayy) posin' on yo' dollar (Get it?)
Look at all these slave masters (Ayy) posin' on yo' dollar (Get it? Yeah)
Look at all these slave masters

(Confucius say)
Man, you better duck out, get the bag and then bug out (Uh)
Try to run home, you might run your luck out
'Cause just when your bases loaded
They'll roll a grenade in the dugout (You're out)
Earth folk, not a mellow bunch
We got our thumbs in the air like Hell or bust (Uh)
Look at who we done blessed with our trust
I don't think we'll be left with too much
Hand on my heart and my mind on my drugs
Got a Vonnegut punch for your Atlas shrug
They love to not love, it's just that dumb
Lord, sweet Buddha, please make me numb
Brain bounce off walls like a sentient Roomba
Just found out his creator's stupid
Lit by the supermoon, I'm too lucid
Plus got shrooms in the blood, I'm zoomin'
Beep beep, Richie, this is New York City
The X on the map where the pain keep hitting
Just us ducks here sitting
Where murderous chokehold cops still earnin' a livin'
Funny how some say money don't matter
That's rich now, isn't it? Get it? Comedy
Try to sell a pack of smokes to get food
Get killed and it's not an anomaly
But hey, it's just money

Mastered economics 'cause you took yourself from squalor (Slave, yeah)
Mastered academics 'cause your grades say you a scholar (Slave)
Mastered Instagram 'cause you can instigate a follow (Shit, yeah)
Look at all these slave masters (Yeah-yeah)
Let it sink in (Yeah)

20/20, run the map
Raw, I'm uncut in my hourglass
Don't watch it spill to the bottom half
You see the piece, now run it fast
On the tarmac in a Starter jack
C4 when I run it back
Like a track star run a record lap?
Nah, like when his needle catch (Yeah)
Clean look, poet pugilist
A shooter's view, a Zapruder flick (Yeah)
Too rude for ya rudiments
Who convinced you you could move against the crew in this?
Comin' up through the fence
Offshore outta Port-au-Prince (Yeah)
Louverture left his fingerprints
On our hearts at the gate and the world our residence
How can we be the peace
When the beast gonna reach for the worst? (Yeah)
Tear all the flesh off the Earth
Stage set for a deafening reckoning
Quick like the pace of a verse
So I'm questioning this quest for things
As a recipe for early death threatening (Yeah)
But the breath in me is weaponry
For you, it's just money

I got recommended to read Atlas Shrugged by a friend of mine. That friend turned out to be a beret-wearing high-art-snob ponce, but i didn't know it at the time.

I managed to finish it and whilst there were reasonable ideas in there that i think in some way we have paralleled in reality - whilst i find that most of her characters are sociopathic to some degree, i can very much sympathise with the idea of being led by the least capable in society who abuse the system of power that they shape and build to implement bad ideas badly.

I like the idea that the world would grind to a halt if the morons in charge did not have the ordinary, hard working people to keep things afloat... but that's about all i like about it. And i think we genuinely can see it happening in the world today in a less exaggerated fashion - the recent recession clearly demonstrated that the people in charge of money and property do not understand what they're doing and ignored the warning signs for years. Furthermore, our feckless leaders have done nothing about it, property bubbles continue to grow and bonuses for the upper echelons are still outlandish whilst the lower workers are struggling to get by in the recession. And then the expenses scandal of the MPs in Britain literally stealing money from the public pocket to have their moats cleaned (that actually happened) and such. Yesterday the watchdog looking into the scandal has decided that the investigation will take place in secret from the public and punishments will also be kept secret. Et voila, two clear instances of those in charge having no clue and no moral compass swept under the rug and forgotten about.

In conclusion, Ayn Rand is a very small minded individual who thinks that everyone in the world must think like she does. That is the only reason i can think of for the approximately 30 pages i read about the female lead character's personal sexual obsession with being taken aggressively by a man and made to feel defiled and used, and how all women feel that and all men wish to dominate and use a woman in turn.

But i think she got it spot on about how being led by those least capable morons will bring the world to its knees, and it won't require the hard workers to quit either. It just requires them to let it happen. And there's no little paradise to run off to, there's just Earth.

@artician - that's exactly it. The characters have no human empathy in Atlas Shrugged. I don't understand why it has to be all or nothing for most people - all conservative or all liberal. Why not the best of both? It IS possible to be ethical, productive and innovative at the same time.

Please file this under "Battlefield Earth" and "Atlas Shrugged" for "Crappy books that made crappy movies".

I assume it's exactly the fact that such a "special" relationship with politicians and regulators exists that's the problem and moreover that these are exactly the sort of thing market controls are needed to prevent (even if the existing ones have largely been co-opted to serve the Plutocrats).

If you want to define "free-market"as completely free and unregulated then yes this is not a free market, however what regulation we do have is by this stage so ineffectual and corrupt that basically all the problems with a true "free-market" have already very much manifested.
That said I think I'm actually agreeing with you here, we might even say we have the worst of both worlds where the colossally rich have the market "freedom" do do what they like but can also co-opt socialist regulation to both defend themselves and aggressively suppress and exploit potential threats from the lower end of the economy.

The argument I guess is because SevenFingers is using the term "free-market" in a much more pejorative sense here than yourself. To him I'm guessing it simply means largely unopposed Plutocracy i.e. the misused existing regulation etc. is a product of an unregulated market running amok and corrupting every institution it can get its hands on.

If this is indeed the case then you only have a problem with incompatible semantics (meaning is use).
The real argument you guy's should be having is whether moving towards a Randian "true free-market" would make this situation any better or worse. Personally I can't see how this would make things anything other than worse for the vast majority of us.
In my head a true free market would basically be akin to just giving up and putting Weyland Yutani in charge, because sooner or later that's what you'd get. Atlas Shrugged made me sick to my stomach!

I propose the solution lies in replacing our existing systems of government and regulation with something both stronger and more importantly 100% transparent. In the age of the internet we could make political corruption virtually impossible and the old capitalist vs collectivist paradigm is becoming old, tired & increasingly irrelevant.

Time for a higher synthesis and a new dialectic cycle.
The thesis was anarcho-capitalism,
The antithesis was Totalitarian socialism
The synthesis is Meritocratic socio-capitalism!

(M) for the Movement
(M) for Meritocracy
(M) for Mindlessly repeated slogans!

I think he was trying to say that if the assholes in town force all the good natured people out, it will cause the collapse of that town faster because there will be no mediating force to balance things out. It will just be horrible people doing horrible things to each other not accomplishing anything good.

That's kind of the plot of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Instead of staying in 'civilization' having the mob of idiots tear apart their creations and perhaps themselves, the intelligent inventors, engineers, artists etc.. all leave and go to live in a hidden utopia where they are free to be excellent and create incredible things that improve the lives of everyone around them.

If I was living in a place were my neighbours were threatening or attacking me, and they were beyond reason, I would leave too. It's a really nice idea that the 'good' people stay in a community and fight to make things better, all the power to them, personally though I would have no interest in becoming a martyr. Just my 2 cents.>> ^A10anis:

>> ^Yogi:
Whether it was morons or assholes, they are the worst people imaginable. I'm not a pacifist or a vegetarian but in my heart I feel that someone has to be seriously messed up in the head to harm a kitten.
Also I have to agree with Cenk here and I don't often. This is similar to my theory that if you're gay move to the coasts. If your town is full of complete morons, leave. Just leave do whatever it takes because it could seriously ruin your life one day if you stay. Get the Fuck out of that town. It's basically the Ayn Rand theory, but a bit different, the more intelligent, kind, and tolerant people leave these horrible places the faster they will collapse.

First, I cannot see the correlation between being a pacifist or a vegetarian to animal cruelty (one could be all three). Second, I cannot see your "theory" as viable. What evidence is their that abandoning your home to the mob brings about their collapse? I would argue that throughout history people have striven and fought, from within their community, for what is right and just. These are/were brave people who we have to thank for many of our freedoms. Simply walking away from a bully is not an assurance that he will stop.

I've swam through a few of her books,the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged,and I think her philosophy of Capitalism is Holy could work except for one basic problem:human nature. And her supporters in the GOP really don't get where she was coming from either. The protagonists of these books are people who run large companies struggling to provide their excellent products and services in spite of heavy regulations at the hands of the small minded government. They are personally involved with their companies,willing to go the extra mile and get their hands dirty in the persuit of delivering the goods and providing livings for their extended families of employees they feel responsible for. Yet the government in pettiness and jelousy scheme to thwart them in this:making the Creative Movers of Industry gasp under the strain of mad laws written by parasites to sap the energy of the Doers to feed the gluttony of the lazy masses. More or less this. Unfortunatelythis fairy story is a bit backwards nowadays...
Instead of clever creators marketing their dreams,we have souless corporations dissecting the labours of the many to feed the obscenely rich the lions share of profits,and existing only to figure out new ways of paying themselves incentive bonuses while the companies they run heave and expire beneathe them from the sheer weight of their greed. Emploees are not families to these executives,all cooporating with the mutual goal of seeing the company succeed,but disposable pawns easily replaced and forgotten,not worth providing benefits for and certainly not worth considering when cheap if not competant labour is available elsewhere.And regulations ? Taxes? Blasphemies!

Some of Rand's opinions I find valid:armies of the unambitious would swollow every dime you earn with demands for welfare and other government mandated largesses. For every brave sould with a creative spark there are a dozen happy to make them fall for the perverse pleasure of simply watching a great idea fail. These exist:but a socialism is not on the genda in this future of ours...it seems to be evolving into a new sort of feudalism where the Rich rule and the serfs provide the neccessaries. And I suppose there are entrepreneurs out there fighting the good fight,and fighting it with style and dignity for themselves and their employees.

They just don't make the headlines.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/11/11/the-atlas-shrugged-movie-continues-to-suck-in-a-spectacular-fashion

Pretty dang funny.

As far as this F&F clip, yeah, sickeningly obvious puff piece. The number of screens did go up a bit in the second weekend, then fell off. It will hang around for a while only because of independent theaters who are run by conservative owners.

To compare the per screen numbers he said were "staggering":

Atlas Shrugged opening weekend: $5,640 per screen (299 screens)
Same weekend's number one movie, Rio: $10,252 per screen (3,826 screens)
Fast Five opening weekend: $23,655 per screen (3,644 theaters)

It's only staggering when you were expecting absolutely nobody to see the film.

Can you say "word of mouth"? Word of mouth kept folks away, not some liberal plot.

The. Market. Has. Spoken.

>> ^MaxWilder:

The movie failed because it had no distribution deal. It opened on 299 screens. Thor opened on 3,955 screens. It is also the lack of a distribution deal that prevented an advertising budget.
After all the negative press, my expectations were quite low. So when I found it to be quite watchable, I was pleasantly surprised. It is quite flawed in a number of ways, but the abuse it is taking is without merit, and probably politically motivated. I recommend it to anybody who has read the book without feeling the need to vomit. My personal opinions partially agree with Objectivist philosophy, so I didn't find the book as revolting as many do. My nit-picks with the film are pretty much the same as any book to screen adaptation. Too much plot, not enough character development, things left out or glossed over, that sort of thing.
@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/shuac" title="member since March 6th, 2008" class="profilelink">shuac - When have you ever seen the per screen metric used on something other than a span of days? Even on boxofficemojo where you got your numbers, it shows the per screen over the opening weekend. Perhaps you are talking about the numbers that get discussed by movie insiders, but as far as the public goes, per screen is always combined Fri-Mon. The only time I have ever seen it discussed on a per-day basis is when a major blockbuster does fantastic numbers on a weekday, and somebody compares those days to the weekend numbers specifically to show how a movie is packing seats during the week. A rare exception.

I'm sure they will be thrilled to know that part 2 is coming:

http://videosift.com/video/Atlas-Shrugged-Part-II-Trains-Dialogue-Trains-Trailer

>> ^heropsycho:

What completely, utterly blows my mind about this clip is the repeated insistence this would appeal to the Tea Partiers, who are very often very religious. Does the Tea Party/Fox realize Ayn Rand was probably more atheist than Karl Marx, and advocated extra-marital affairs so long as it's not hidden from your spouse? (Google Nathaniel Branden!) Good times!


What? In order to realize that, first one must be at least somewhat literate, and second one must be able and willing to do some research into actual facts. Neither of these follows the party's platform.

Those TP'ers who do realize such are usually more manipulators than believers, and don't really care what the facts are.

>> ^EMPIRE:

You're involved in the making of this movie?


No. No. I made a different movie. Shot it in 2007. It had a limited release in 2010 and 2009. We then ran out of money so we haven't made the DVDs yet.

I love you.

In reply to this comment by RedSky:
Both MSNBC and FOX provide a biased view of events and distort the truth. Everyone knows this, somehow I never see you attributing this on both sides of the fence though.

Socialism is a broad term than means everything to everyone. Yes, countries like the UK and Australia provide more baseline social services like health care provision and social security but that is the only real substantial difference.

The average worker's disposable income is roughly the same:

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/01/taxes_and_dispo.html

Whatever you call them, they're both free market economies, with the same rights for individuals on the things that matter. Using a phrase that can simultaneously refer to a single party regimes based on Marxism like China and Vietnam is misleading and you know it.

How about the other G8 countries? Last time I checked every other country in it: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia all had much more in common in terms of civil programs with the UK/Aus than the US.

Distortions aside, the fact of that matter is that most people living in developed countries would consider the views of conservatives in the US far right wing. They would probably consider a publicly subsidized, individual mandate including, private health care system like the one Obama proposed, Romney enacted and Republicans proposed in the 1990s as a right wing proposal. The fact that you probably think it would destroy the economy should be proof enough who's really on the extremity of opinion.

For that matter, I'd be interested in your take on this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/obama-revealed-a-moderate-republican/2011/04/25/AFPrGfkE_story.html

Feel free to point out any inaccuracies you can identify.
>> ^quantumushroom:

Britain and Australia? Those countries have a two-party system: Socialist and Even More Socialist.
And it's not that the libmedia here "make fun" of conservatives. They distort, lie, omit and cheat the public every day and have done so for 60-plus years. They neither challenge nor question authority when it's a Taxocrat in power. Liberal shills do not good journalists make.
It's odd how the left instantly sees the bias of Fox news but never their own.

>> ^RedSky:
If you think the liberal networks make fun of where American conservatism is, you should see what people on British or Australian talk shows say about them when the topic comes up.
Are they DNC mouthpieces too?>> ^quantumushroom:
Do you think—could it be possible—that Fox News lied in order to promote a conservative agenda?
If they did, they still have 60 years of playing catch-up to the libmedia, who work out of DNC hindquarters.

"Our movie"????

Please elaborate! I sense an interesting story.



>> ^blankfist:


" For our film, we spent tens of thousands to get it into theaters knowing full well we'd lose that money completely. It was never about making a profit for us, though that would be really nice. It's about exposure and building a career."