There's this book by a Wall Street Journal reporter, called "Wrong About Japan"--and in one sequence, he asks the creator of Godzilla (a monster created by a nuclear accident/testing, who rolls around destroying...Japanese cities, even if inadvertently)---about it's relationship to WW-II and being the target of nuclear weapons...and the Japanese creator flat out denies it. Says the West doesn't understand that Godzilla is actually about bureaucracy.

What a special and odd place.

You're right but at the same time I have quite enjoyed television movies and low budget films with that special someone in the cast. For example, I thought the Amityville Horror with Patty Duke (the 4th movie, I believe) was pretty interesting, and not even despite its low budget, because of it.

Besides you're not 100% correct about how the single star drains the pool of resources. Oftentimes these stars act as investment magnets, so people are more willing to help produce the film if it has a star such as Shirley MacClaine. Look at Reservoir Dogs -- did Harvey Keitel detract or attract from the success of the film, and the long term successes of Quentin Tarrantino, Steve Buscemi, Tim Roth and Chris Penn? Like international acclaim -- for a low budget flick from a nobody.

I'm always very curious about these types of films. It requires, for me, an almost scientific, socioeconomic evaluation of the film making process to fully appreciate, or just a curiosity of film and social interactions portrayed in film and around film sets and the bureaucracy of generating the funds and jerryrigging devices to fulfill smaller budget scenarios which drive such a project as this to fruition.

I'm very interested in seeing this movie because it looks like it could actually be good and not just a thing to pan because of the limitations.

I had a film professor who wrote a couple Jean Claude Van Damme direct to DVD movies and his view of film projects was that they are nearly impossible to complete objectives that require self sacrifice and a warrior spirit to fully realize.

Films remind me of how different societies growths are based upon resource allocation, so some societies become empires and some remain scattered tribes and disparate families. Same as in film; this is like a missing link. Strange and curious to behold but human.

Besides, you don't give a fuck about mermaid movies. This is being made for kids that like mermaids lol -- I grew up watching Disney's Little Mermaid, had every word of the film memorized, but I'm certain it didn't matter that it had a better staff and bigger budget because I also had a made for tv dinosaur movie's rap song memorized and written down in phonetic child sound language.

@vil
i was going to reference hitchhikers guide to the galaxy,because the parallels are there,except without the humor.

i have read many a sacred text,and even though the book of urantia is written in a similar format,it read more like a government procedural book than anything.i simply could not get far into the book at all.

still,as a text that lays out the workings of the universe,i felt i should add this book to the pile.

no fantastical stories of resurrection,or miracles,or interventions by a supreme being.just a break down of your basic universe's bureaucracy.

I was off school on the few days they covered long division, 15 years ago or so, and never bothered to learn it. To this day I never had a clue how to do it... but i don't think i'll ever forget divide, multiply and subtract, bring it on down and bring it on back.

I think the excess bureaucracy in teaching these days takes away from teachers being able to tailor and refine their methods to deliver things in a memorable way.

I honestly believe the bureaucracy is so monolithic that "President Trump" won't be any more or less effective than any other president in the past 50 years. He won't be any more or less dangerous, any more or less "disruptive".

In two years (a flash half-second politically) if he does anything weird or scary, the populous will elect a majority Dem congress.

It just the kind of cutting-off-nose-to-spite-face shit Americans seem to be enamoured with of late.

First of all, Flassbeck is the only(!) prominent economist in Germany arguing strictly against the madness of austerity. But he's living in the border region between France and Switzerland, so he's a European more than a German.

Among all the economic think tanks in Germany, only the union-sponsored IMK makes a credible case against this madness. Everyone else is more or less in line with the neoclassic perspective. Not a Keynesian in sight, much less a post-Keynesian group.

But now to the meat of the issue. There will be no major political shift in Germany in the near future. As Flassbeck stated, only a single party opposes the financial inquisition commonly known as the Troika. Unfortunatly, it's the socialists, and despite overwhelmingly popular policies, they are still an absolute no-go for large swaths of the demos thanks to the authoritarian regime in East Germany. Sucks, but it is what it is.

So it's up to the French people once again to save the continent from itself. Noone else has the balls or the influence to put an end to this misguided union. How likely is it for the French government to openly challenge German hegemony soon? I wouldn't bet on it. Which means the Greeks are fuuuucked².

In any case, what would it take for Greece to stabilise? And by stabilise I'm talking about a return to a manageable level of unemployment, a working healthcare system and social safety net. A conservative guesstimate would be a public deficit of ~10% of GDP for at least 5 straight years. Alternatively, the EIB would have to prop up Greece with €50b a year for the same number of years. To get a working bureaucracy, to undo four decades of nepotism, Greece would basically need a generation to reestablish itself as a state – and it would require appropriate financing.

Now remember which of Syriza's demands is painted as most controversial right now: debt restructuring. Debt restructuring, while neccessary at some point, is entirely pointless as long as the fiscal policy remains contractionary. Greece needs austerity to stop, right the fuck now. Greece needs to provide income-generating jobs for its people. All the talk about debt is utterly pointless, because at 25% unemployment, we're looking at permanent damage in every way imaginable. The social toll alone should be completely unacceptable within Europe if we truly gave two shits about human dignity.

So, even if Syriza get their way tomorrow, Greece would still be flushed down the shitter. Syriza's proposal is contractionary. Any primary surplus in this situation is contractionary.

Greece is done within the Euro. The use of a foreign currency makes it impossible to use appropriate fiscal policy on their own. Unfortunatly, but also intentionally, the currency issuer, the ECB, is placed outside the democratic control of the European Parliament, or any national parliament for that matter. Fiscal policy within the EZ was taken out of the control of our elected representatives to ensure that the neoclassic/neoliberal approach was irrevocably built into the system. We can thank Germany for that, by the way.

There is a shortage of spending in Greece. There is a shortage of spending in Spain. There is a shortage of spending in Portugal, Ireland, Italy, France. There is a shortage of spending in Germany, for fuck's sake. Put the ECB under control of the EP, add full employment (2-3% unemployment) to its mandate, and have them finance the appropriate programs at the national level. The output gap in Europe is so massive, the un(der)employment so vast, they could spend a trillion Euros and inflation would still not reach the agreed upon target value of 2%.

All it would take to change the rules is consent from every national parliament in the union. Might as well go skinny-dipping instead.

Greece accumulated debt in a foreign currency (Euro). Had they been using a free-floating currency with Greece as the sovereign issuer, it would have been much less of a problem. But that's a different discussion.

You brought up retirement benefits. These benefits have been a major talking point over here in mercantilistic Germany. Unfortunatly, a lot of inaccuracies crept into the debate over time. A closer look reveals that it's not as black and white as it is made out to be. One point at a time...

The effective retirement age, if we look at OECD stats, is basically the same for men in Greece and Germany. The age of 56 is often thrown around as the expected average retirement age for workers in Greece, but that's only for the totally messed up public sector. The average for the private sector is significantly higher, as the OECD numbers indicate.

Yet the size of retirement benefits is even more controversial. There are, in fact, some very dubious practices going on in Greece, which result in rediculous retirement benefits for a select group of people, even at very young ages. Decades of nepotism, that's what it produces. But even so, pension expenditure as a % of GDP was not significantly higher in Greece before the GFC than in Germany. When Greek GDP collapsed, expenditures as a % increased, naturally. Some have gotten absurd benefits, but the majority got a pittance. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Greece doesn't have a social safety net, unlike Germany. There is no welfare. Many people have to take early retirement at reduced benefits to have any income at all.
So I'll say it's bad in Germany. Last decade's changes to our retirement system have a metric fuckton of people (~40% of workers) heading straight into poverty when they retire. It's social security for them, and nothing else. Still, it's bliss compared to what the plebs in Greece now ended up with.

However, even all those beautiful OECD stats have to be taken with a grain of salt. Germany has a working bureaucracy. Everything is documented. Greece is a mess. Therefore, all comparisons are guesstimates at best.

Finally, as long as the Greek economy produces enough goods and services, it is for them to decide how to distribute their wealth. If they want a lavish retirement system, so be it. Our governments opted to create a true underclass of the working poor, and gutted a retirement system that made it through two world wars unscathed. If German retirees want to bitch about their benefits, it should be aimed squarely at our governments and their intentional deconstruction of our social welfare state.

I don't fear the black, yellow or other taking my job because of race? I don't freaking care. May the best candidate get the job. I have had many jobs in my life and would find another if I needed to.

Do you think I would hire a black? not in a million years? You would be wrong at that. I had 1 opportunity to hire 1 candidate. I picked the best educated person that would fit the job and he was a black man.

You think my wife and kids are Lilly white. You would be wrong at that also. My family is so mixed that I am the lone token white.

You have any other falsehoods you wish to inquire about? Go ahead I answer them too.

Bottom line I don't care what "you" are. All I care is that you are trying to get ahead in life and that you are a peaceful neighbor.

I have little sympathy for those who desire to stay at the bottom out of convenience, leaching off our tax dollars and blaming others for their misfortune. I not bitching about those given a shitty hand in life or those needing a helping hand. We all need a helping hand at times. But not decade after decade. The nation spends about 3% on social needs, Fine make it 5% or something. Just don't waste it on looses and government bureaucracy.

You would probably make a fine neighbor and work colleague.

You asked me once how old I was and I answer 53. So out of curiosity how old are you?

Yeah, John Oliver is wrong on this one. Biosecurity in Australia is not some arbitrary bureaucracy, there are genuine reasons behind it.

But what's worse is he (and everyone else) missed the real story.

Johnny Depp's dogs entered the country illegally. They were given a few days to leave and then flown out on a private jet.

Meanwhile, actual human refugees seeking asylum in Australia are held for years at a time in an island detainment camp where they are subjected to sexual assault and living conditions that even non-celebrity dogs would be horrified by.

But yeah, what really matters here is some idiot minister talking to an idiot talk radio host about some fucking puppies. Sometimes I despair for humanity....

Actually, it's worse... When they show you the underneath of that area, you can see where they placed a piece of conduit in the concrete before pouring.

I get the feeling the wires were supposed to be moved but for some reason -most likely bureaucracy and/or corruption- they didn't, and the bridge builder went ahead anyway, probably expecting the wires to be moved later (if they even gave a shit).

Net neutrality is not bureacracy?

It is now, at least in the US. The gov't just decided to regulate it, which means we'll soon have a Dept. of the Internet.

I understand that some bureaucracy is inevitable. Again, bureaucracies are made to grow and grow and grow, which is what we now see in the US. It's large centralized power, which was not the intent of the founders.

Also, I don't see much benefit from socialized medicine. It only feeds the debt, which will be unsustainable. This is a concern since Obama has added at least $8 trillion to the debt in his 6 yr reign.

But I know with socialists...debt is just something invisible, or we'll let our great-grandchildren deal with the collapse.

Net neutrality is not bureaucracy, any more than "not allowing organised crime to extort people" is.

Obamacare obviously has some significant overhead to it, but as the system beds in, people will streamline it and make it more efficient.

The majority of the world has found that some bureaucracy is a reasonable price to pay for the benefits of socialised medicine. It's never perfect. The question is whether you throw the baby out with the bathwater.

No-one is arguing for "large, unwieldy debt-ridden monstrosities", if that is happening, then measures should be put in place to deal with that. But in a country of 320 million people, some bureaucracy is inevitable.

I think gov'ts are quite essential. My problem is with bureaucracies...the first priority of which is to grow and grow and grow and grow, which means debt and debt and debt and debt.

But if you think large, unwieldy debt-ridden monstrosities are good for anyone....well, everyone has an opinion.

You are absolutely right, the results of elections in Greece do not create an obligation for fiscal transfers from other European countries.

But that plays right into what Varoufakis has been saying for years, doesn't it? The program over the last seven years has reduced Greek output by a quarter, and thereby its ability to service and reduce its debt. The troika is offering more loans, loans that cannot be payed back, in return for a further reduction in Greece's ability to pay back those loans in the first place. Extend and pretend, all the way. Nevermind the humanitarian cost or the threat to democracy itself.

It is either counter-productive or aimed at a different goal entirely. Greece wants an end to those loans, and all the loss of sovereignty that comes with it, while the Eurogroup in particular wants to stick to a program that only increased Greece's dependency to a point where they can throw the entire country into unbearable misery at a moment's notice (e.g. cut ELA access).

Take the privatisation demands as an example. The program demands that Greece agrees to sell specific property at a specific price. Both parties are keenly aware that this price cannot be realised during a fire sale, yet they still demand a promise by the Greeks to do so. Any promise would be a lie and everyone knows it.

Same for the demanded specificity of Greece's plans. After decades of nepotism, a fresh government made up entirely of outsiders is supposed to draw up plans of more detail than any previous government came up with. And they cannot even rely on the bureaucracy, given that a great number of people in it are part of the nepotic system they are trying to undo in the first place.

Taxes, same thing. The first king of Greece (1832'ish) was a prince of Bavaria who was accompanied by his own staff of finance experts, and they failed miserably. Greece went through occupation, military junta and decades of nepotism, and the new government is supposed to fix that within months.

Those demands cannot be met. The Greeks know it, the troika knows it, the Eurogroup knows it.

Zizek called it the superego in his recent piece on Syriza/Greece:

"The ongoing EU pressure on Greece to implement austerity measures fits perfectly what psychoanalysis calls the superego. The superego is not an ethical agency proper, but a sadistic agent, which bombards the subject with impossible demands, obscenely enjoying the subject’s failure to comply with them. The paradox of the superego is that, as Freud saw clearly, the more we obey its demands, the more we feel guilty. Imagine a vicious teacher who assigns his pupils impossible tasks, and then sadistically jeers when he sees their anxiety and panic. This is what is so terribly wrong with the EU demands/commands: they do not even give Greece a chance – Greek failure is part of the game."

Aside from all that, the entire continent is in a recession. Not enough demand, not enough investment, unsustainable levels of unemployment. Greece was hit hardest, Greece was hit first. It's not the cause of the problem, it is the canary in the coal mine. And Italy is already looking very shaky...

It's commerically built, and governed by FAA restrictions.

That's how much your RC plane would cost if done "the right way" with all the extra steps and testing the bureaucracy demands.