Interesting narrative - but maybe a bit too simplistic. "the boomers have all the assets" - really? is Bezos a boomer, how about Mark Z? There are some wealthy boomers, as there have always been wealthy individuals in the older generation - but lots of boomers are doing their best to survive on Social Security - maybe because they yielded to the siren song of consumerism. (a statement as simplistic as the claim that boomers have all the assets...). Technology has destroyed lots of middle class jobs - the working community displaced by technology is, as they always have, struggling to adapt. Some have adapted better than others. But the simplistic mantra of free college/university for all is a fraud when too many illiterates are being graduated from high school and too many parents are totally unconcerned that their children continue to advance in primary and secondary school with completely inadequate skills....
That's the thing with simple answers for the world's problems, they're usually wrong...

While it's true that today's consumerism is much heavier reliant on planned/forced obsolescence, it is also a survival bias to say "they don't build them like they used to".

Old stuff that lasts for a very long time lasts that long because it was originally constructed well. So 99% badly manufactured stuff disappears and gets replaced.
Is there no high quality products that were manufactured to be that 1% either by choice or by luck?

If the statement "they don't build them like they used to" was true, cities would be 100% ancient buildings and we'd still be driving Model Ts.

This video talks about it much more eloquently:

radical islamic terrorism is the usage of a rigid fundamentalist interpretation as a justification predicated on abysmal politics.

ill-thought and short sighted politics is the tinder.
hyper-extremist fundamentalism is the match.

ISIS would never even have existed without al qeada,who themselves would not have existed without US interventionism into:iran,egypt and saudi arabia.

and this is going back almost 70 years.

so lets cut the shit with apologetics towards americas horrific blunders in regards to foreign policy.actions have consequences,there is a cause and effect,and when even in the 50's the CIA KNEW,and have stated as much,that there would be "blowback" from americas persistent interventionism in those regions.which stated goals (in more honest times) was to destabilize,dethrone (remove leaders not friendly to american business) and install leaders more pliant and easily manipulated (often times deposing democratically elected leaders to install despots.the shah and sadam come to mind).

see:chalmers johnson-blowback
see: Zbigniew Brzezinski-the grand chessboard.

or read this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881

so to act like islamic radicals just fell from the fucking sky,and popped out from thin air,due to something that has been boiling for almost 70 years is fucking ludicrous.

radicalization of certain groups in populations have long been understood,and well documented.

and religion,though the most popular,and easiest tool to motivate and justify heinous acts of violence for a political goal,is not the SOLE tool.

nationalism is another tool used to radicalize a population.
see:the nazi party.

but it always comes down to:tribalism of one kind or another.

@transmorpher

so when you use this "ISIS themselves, in their own magazine (Dabiq) go out of their way to explain that they are not motivated by the xenophobia or the US fighting wars in their countries. They make specifically state that their motivation is simply because you aren't muslim. You can go an read it for yourself. They are self confessed fanatics that need to kill you to go to heaven. "

to solidify your argument,all i see is someone ignoring the history and pertinent reasons why that group even exists.

you may recall that ISIS was once Al qeada,and they were SO radical,SO fanatical and SO violent in their execution of religious zeal..that even al qeada had to distance themselves.

because,again...
religion is used as the justification to enact terrorism due to bad politics.
but the GOAL is always political.

you may remember that in the early 90's the twin towers were attacked and it was the first time americans heard of al qeada,and osama bil laden.

who made a statement back in 1993 and then reiterated in 2001 after 9/11 that the stated goal (one of them at least) was for the removal of ALL american military presence in saudi arabia (there was more,but it mostly dealt with american military presence in the middle east).

but where did this osama dude come from?
why was he so pissed at america?
just what was this dudes deal?

turns out he was already on the road to radicalization during the 80's.coming from an extremely wealthy saudi arabian family but had become extremely religious,and he saw western interventionism as a plague,and western culture as a disease.

he left the comforts of his extremely wealthy family to fight against this western incursion into his religious homeland.he traveled to afghanistan to join the mujahideen to combat the russians,who were actually fighting the americans in a proxy war.and WE trained osama.WE armed him and trained him in the tactics of warfare to,behind the scenes,slowly drain russia of resources in our 50 year long cold war.

how's that for irony.

osama was not,as american media like to paint the picture "anti-democratic or anti-freedom".he saw the culture of consumerism,greed and sexual liberation as an affront to his religious understandings.

this attitude can be directly linked to sayyid qtib from egypt.who visited the united states as an exchange student in 1954.now he wasnt radicalized yet,but when he returned to egypt he didnt recognize his own country.

he saw coco cola signs everywhere,and women wearing shorts skirts,and jukeboxs playing that devils music "rock and roll".

he feared for his country,his neighbors,his community.
just like a southern baptist fears for your soul,sayyid feared for the soul of his country and that this new "westernization" was a direct threat to the tenants laid down by islam.

so he began to speak out.
he began to hold rallies challenging the leadership to turn away from this evil,and people started to take notice,and some people agreed.

change does not come easy for some people,and this is especially true for those who hold strong religious ideologies.
(insert religion here) tends to be extremely traditional.

so sayyid started to gain popularity for his challenge if this new "westernization",and this did not go un-noticed by the egyptian leadership,who at that time WANTED western companies to invest in egypt.(that whole political landscape is totally different now,but back then egypt was fairly liberal,and moderately secular).

so instead of allowing sayyid to speak his mind.
they threw him in prison.
for 4 years.
in solitary.

well,he wasn't radicalized when he went IN to prison,but when he came OUT he sure was.

and to shorten this story,sayyid was the first founder of the muslim brotherhood,whose later incarnation broke off to form?

can you guess?
i bet you can!
al qeade

@Fairbs ,@newtboy and @Asmo have all laid out points why radicalization happens,and the conditions that can enflame and amplify that radicalization.

so i wont repeat what they have already said.

but let us take dearborn michigan as an example.
the largest muslim community in america.
how many terrorists come from dearborn?
how many radicals reside there?
how many mosque preach intolerance and "death to america"?
how many imams quietly sanction fatwas from the local IHOP against american imperialistic pigs?

none.

becuase if you live in stable community,with a functioning government,and you are able to find work and support your family,and your kids can get an education.

the chances of you become radicalized is pretty much:zippo.

the specific religion has NOTHING to do with terrorism.
religion is simply the means in which the justifications to enact violent atrocities is born.

it's the politics stupid.

you could do a thought experiment and flip the religions around,but keep the same political parameters and do you know WHAT we find?

that the terrorists would be CHRISTIAN terrorists.

or do i really need to go all the way back to the fucking dark ages to make my point?

it's
the
politics
stupid.

CONSUMERISM!!!!!!!!!!!!! *TRUMPETS*

America's problem is not guns, it's the awful social situation that rampant capitalism and consumerism has landed it in. Same as drugs aren't the reason why large communities of black people are stuck in the same cycle of drugs/gangs/violence/death. It's not because of the drugs, or the people themselves, it is because they are pretty much abandoned by society.

Guns are just a means to an end, and an easy one at that. They are an easy answer when you want to cause violence to someone else, or yourself.

The fact that so many people want to cause violence to others or themselves is what needs to be looked at.

I've visited many parts of the US and the people have generally struck me as friendly and polite to a fault. People will just strike up a conversation with you as if you were a long lost relative. I've had people sit with me on a public bus well past their stop just to make sure I got off at the right place. At it's heart, it's a great country. But the flip side is that currently, it's built on basic inequity and inequality. I was in LA when Katrina hit, and watching what happened was freaking unreal for me as a person who lives in an area prone to cyclones. When we get hit, the entire community bands together and takes care of each other. When New Orleans got hit, it was post apocalypse dog eat dog.

Getting rid of guns in the US won't stop inequality, it won't stop senseless accidents and it won't stop violence. The UK has had strict regulations on guns for years and *surprise* has a very high rate of knife crime. Australia introduced tough gun legislation after the massacre at Port Arthur massacre, but we didn't really have serious violence problems before that so while people claim that bans on semi-autos etc "worked", it's very hard to quantify going from "very little gun violence" to "very little gun violence" as much of a shift... It's a core difference in the social fabric of countries.

People who completely focus on banning the gun are neglecting to look at the bigger picture, and are often doing so deliberately because the bigger picture is far harder to solve. Same as the war on drugs. Regulate guns, sure, enforce safety and bring in high penalties for misuse or allowing your weapon to be misused. But banning them won't fix anything.

I don't really mind the video, thinking twice before owning a firearm is a good thing. But I think it misses the point.

My own take on this is that I shouldn't just buy more expensive clothes...

I can do things to make my clothes last longer and that they aren't treated as a disposable commodity by reducing the number of washes (always bugs me when people wear a pair of trousers for a day or even just a few hours and then chucks them in the washing machine) as well as picking appropriate clothing for whatever task I'm currently doing.

I can help recycle clothes by making better use of charity shops, both in giving clothes to them and by purchasing from them.

I can buy clothes from retail stores that audit their entire supply chain. I'm fed up of retailers who have one or two lines of responsibly sourced clothing that they use for marketing and advertising purposes, but the rest of their stock does not receive such diligence. It doesn't seem right that they can paint a fair image of themselves by only selling one or two garments of clothing that come from sources where employees are treated and paid decently.

Most importantly I can do something simple like ignoring fashion trends. I am comfortable with my choice of clothing, I don't need to buy what everyone else is wearing. Unfortunately it's hard to make this point stick with others when our culture is so heavily dominated by consumerism and we're made to feel 'uncool' because we're not buying into the latest trends.

Totally understand your cynicism @deathcow, in all likelihood it's what'll probably happen. I guess I'm just gonna focus on what little I can do to make a difference

@newtboy
we agree.
i think the difference lies in this:
1.you attempt to change the system by using the very system you acknowledge is corrupt.i find this extremely noble,and yes..optimistic (sincerely) ,but is about as effective as chewing bubble gum to solve an algebra equation.

2.i find the system to have made itself irrelevant by the very virtues it purports to uphold.
equal under the law? not even close.
for the people by the people? oh yeah? which people? certainly not you or i.
defense and security? if that means wars of aggression.
civil liberties? for whom? in this security and surveillance state?we are the most surveilled...the most propagandized..the most indoctrinated.

the system we have now is no longer representative of the original intent of our forefathers.who were looking to build an empire but as a republic,pretty inventive and ingenious.

i do not submit to this authority because they lost the right to that authority.
i know the real power is where it has always resided:the people.

the system is broken and it is time it is taken down.

but as you stated,some are under-educated and i'll add that some are over-educated and indoctrinated.either way,we find ourselves in a society of vapid consumerism,immense inequality and where we,shamefully,criminalize the poor.

so when is this revolution starting? i'll bring the beer.
cuz i aim to misbehave....

Yes, the U.S. invented consumerism, but after destroying the middle class it's now a broke ass dust bowl.
Countries like Japan and the U.K. have taken shallow robotic consumption to a whole new level.

BBC - Will Self - Are we all suffering from consumption?
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28756372

Once food and accommodation are put to one side we see the bulk of our economy is consumerism. Wonder what would happen if we weren't so concerned about having the latest shiny... Automation is inevitable, no getting away from that, but what happens if the majority of automation is made obsolete because we give up our desire to buy stuff we don't need, and instead choose to be content with what we've got?

People miss the point with net neutrality.

The internet is a packet delivery system.
You are literally paying your ISP for a packets-per-second delivery rate across their network.

That literally means, that the ISP is obligated to make an honest best effort to route your packets at the rate you subscribed to.

Any action to deliberately throttle your packets down to below your subscribed rate, is deliberately not providing a paid for service - i.e. fraud/stealing/whatever.

Net neutrality is the concept that they deliver all packets without prejudice.

That they don't inspect your packets, and decide to treat them differently based on their content.

Kind of how the postal service charges the same to send a letter from point A to B, regardless of what you wrote in that letter.
The postal service doesn't say things like :
"This letter describes a picture. We only allow 3 'letters describing a picture' per month, and you already sent 3, so this one will have to wait.".



So for example, comcast v netflix.

Reports such as this build a case for deliberate throttling : http://www.itworld.com/consumerization-it/416871/get-around-netflix-throttling-vpn

We know comcast wanted netflix to pay for network integration/improvement.
One way to do that is by twisting their arm : deliberately throttle netflix traffic to netflix customers, until netflix pays up (and along the way, selectively not deliver paid for bandwidth to comcast customers)

That would be singling out netflix packets - a non-neutral action.

(blah blah, I changed ISPs because my own experience suggested netflix throttling.)

-scheherazade

Tags for this video have been changed from 'couch gag, banksy, dark, western consumerism, eastern explotism' to 'couch gag, banksy, dark, western consumerism, eastern explotism, Bansky' - edited by RFlagg

Shite like this is the reason I moved out of California, living in good old Saint Paul, Minnesota now. Oxnard California is like a mini-Oakland. Here I have a 3000sf home built in 1901, 1 mile from downtown and no worries. My daughter is 10mos, one due in July, and we so enjoy walks in the neighborhood in the summer. My stepson walks to baseball 1 mile away, we meet him there pushing baby and walking dog, walk home as an American Family. It makes it all worth while. My wife is a CPA but I am a blue collar truck driver.

I think there are ALL KINDS of problems that lead to places like this in Cali... Fresno is almost as bad. Parts of the low desert are very bad, etc. If you want to write 2 page posts defending your view of WHY, maybe that's one of the reasons why as well, and you should define it, man up, and put it in there at number 12 or whatever. Sure "democratic stronghold" is part of the problem. American counter-culture has also been rewarding consumerism above all else for decades. Asians, Latinos, and Blacks cash in today and sell out tomorrow. The west coast is also way too expensive, real estate is too high, and money is the only incentive.

Obviously there is a problem. The left wants to look at answers that sound might or will help but accountability cant be ignored. The right wants to go to war and justify a police state when we are all Americans defining our on future together.

As a side note I might have had 10-15 encounters with these types over the years in and around Oxnard and if their skin was white and I was armed, maybe they would have died...or me. Who knows, there are always more than one way to deal with a problem. In the end the minorities pay the price and it isn't fair. They get worse jobs, their property isnt worth ShXXt, their children receive a poor education. Cookie-cutter whites, in the end, benefit on the left. The drive their Volvo SUVs on highways to schools or doctors or what have you paid for by the masses.

> "[Austerity] frees up resources for private investment" is a statement that
> does not match my perception of reality"

Well, far be it from me to try to introduce you to some basic epistemologies to which you may not be familiar: like rationalism, deduction, etc, in order to move you away from "authority" as the only path to knowledge you seem to use. Unfortunately, however, this "authority" method is inappropriate to the study of economics.

> "So, demand vs supply... we all know that discussion won't be resolved here,
> ever."

Keynes and Hayek were at it for a while. It's all in the two hip-hop videos.

> "It's utterly pointless."

Yes. There is nothing new not covered by Keynes vs. Hayek.

> "Shamelessness was my addition, my interpretation. "

Bad thymology (my interpretation).

> "He "weakens" society, economically, by suppressing aggregate demand.
> The more wealth you accumulate, the less of it, as a percentage, translates
> into demand."

I see. So, by this logic, any making of money is, in itself, a "weakening" of society. Unless I'm a socialist, like David Simon, then I cannot make money without also "weakening" society.

> "But since you apparently share the views of Hollenbeck, all of that was
> probably hogwash to you."

Yes, at best hogwash. Alas, I've no interest in going into this with you, especially since you've no have interest in actually looking at it. Had you any interest at all -- or studied the subject beyond deferring to the "authority" method of epistemology -- you could at least provide me with a concise explanation as to why you think the Austrian/Misean economic position falters. Rather than thinking for yourself, however, you dismiss it as "wrong," "right-wing," or "pointless" to debate or go into. "Here Be Monsters, period."

The Keynes/Hayek debates have the similar tones, with Keynes simply ignoring all of Hayek's points, evasions, and going off into something else. You clearly agree with the Keynesian approach/theory, which likely means you cannot really explain anything except through unfounded claims, that are "pointless" to argue, debate, or rationally defend.

As I have said before, one cannot have this sort of intellectual relationship with those either unwilling or unable to grasp basic economic principles, like for example those clearly explained by Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson." There's simply no common language through which to communicate. Confronted with these kinds of beliefs, one can either try to educate (but only those who ask for it, since attempting to educate those who do not want to be educated will likely fail, as any public school teacher can tell you) or one can pull out the snake oil and the cash register. The third option involves ignoring such ignorance altogether, and use what one knows for one's own financial and life benefit in ways that don't involve such people in the first place.

There are so many errors in the Keynesian 'demand' theory of economics (you can find much on that if you want to read up on it), but Keynesians tend to avoid any real debates. You're coming from the Keynesian fallacy of saving money as being bad for the economy (because spending it all/consumerism is supposedly what gets the economy going). And the even more absurd fallacy which presupposes (with no proof of it at all) that rich people keep most of their wealth stored somewhere outside of circulation. When in reality, rich people only save some and the richer they are the more they spend/invest. Of course, when the economy seem fragile, due to central banks meddling, bubbles, etc., investors get nervous and don't invest as much a they otherwise would. When they don't invest, it shrinks supply of things people would want to spend on. Demand does nothing, it doesn't exist, if there is nothing to supply that people want to buy.

In fact, I am starting to think that central bankers are not really Keynesian at all, in the sense that they don't really believe their own bullshit. They know better but also know how to exploit their positions as central bankers, making folks like @radx buy into it, the snake oil. For example, he may not care for gold, but bankers do. Whatever they say against it, folks will still buy it, both for themselves and the banks they run. And as @radx rightly says, he's a human. And apparently he can sell his 'charm' if push comes to shove.

love how people think Country music is somehow more wholesome than other music when it's just like other music genres.

pussy and consumerism.

but then again, I did just describe America there.

This ends on a positive note so not too dark really. Just a tale of hatred towards consumerism.

Our social contract with government changes in the same way that the Apple Terms of Service changes. No way to back out of it and live a life of remote peace... SPEND.. YOUR. MONEY. Taxes, shmaxes, there's no more better judge of WASTING your goddamn money than your own judgement.

Sir, you are at risk of not spending every last fucking dime at Walmart. Or Target. Or Best Buy. Do you want your economy to be destroyed? Your leaders have already given up on you, so this is your last chance before monetary disciplinary action.

But getting trampled to death in a black friday savings riot does not represent risk because the true risk that matters in this world is the risk of assholes not getting your money.

Because fuck you if you don't want to be part of the dogpile.