The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

[bart]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

Your claim that Bush's pollster invented the phrase "Climate Change" in 2002 in some scheme to reframe the Global Warming debate to their evil ends has one obvious problem--the UN body studying Global Warming is called the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change--the IPCC...and it's been called that since 1988.

The phrase "Climate Change" actually originated with the enviro types because it's easier to find "change" than something specific like "warming".

Frank Luntz is a pollster and was simply telling his employer that the phrase "Climate Change" polled better than "Global Warming"--probably with Bush's Conservative base.

All politicans do this. That's why we've been listening to Obama drone on for the last few months about "Corporate Jet Owners" and "Millionaires and Billionaires" while the Republicans repeated "Obama's Blank Check" ad nauseum.

You're better than this EJ. There is no conspiracy here. Your claim is Denninger tin-foil quality stuff.

I think you may have inadvertently made one of EJ's main points for him - not about climate change, but about the incredibly pervasive influence of P.R... that is almost invisible, or so taken for granted that its not recognized as such.

For anyone interested in some history, I recommend some research on Edward Bernays. Its not conspiracy, it's a real live subject that has been taught for many decades and is also part of advertising and marketing "technology".

• "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the [public] is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."
  -- Edward Bernays (1891-1995) "Father" of modern public relations (PR) and director of the U.S. Committee on Public Information during World War I, on government propaganda. Source: writing in "Propaganda" from "Food & Water Journal'' (1928)
• "It is not necessary for the politician to be the slave of the public's group prejudices, if he can learn how to mold the mind of the voters in conformity with his own ideas of public welfare and public service. The important thing for the statesman of our age is not so much to know how to please the public, but to know how to sway the public.
  Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."
  -- Edward Bernays (1891-1995)
• "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it."
  -- Edward Bernays

Edward Bernays - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I found this quite worthwhile too:
A very good short essay on "Unconscious Conspiracies".

[necron99]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

Well, I for one am rankled a bit by EJ's kinda selective use of the history of "Global Warming"/"Climate Change" as a meme. But I won't dispute it. I think he gets his point across, if we all can just curb our knee-jerk political responses. I don't wish to negate EJ's "Climate Change" meme example, but I submit that there are a lot of other memes we could discuss. And the sheer quantity of those changing memes bolsters EJ's case that they are a dangerous political tool in the hands of short-sighted carnies and sharpsters.
The re-branding of the Inheritance Tax from a penalty on the "idle rich", into a "Death Tax" punishment against mom-'n'-pop convenience store owners, for example, strikes me as meme management.
Over a period of many decades, the re-branding of "War" into "Defense" so that we can pretend we were forced unwillingly into it and it's harder to oppose.
The conflation of "Medicine" and "Insurance" into the term "Health Care", so that it appears like insurance and administration is a biological requirement to keep people well.
The name change from "Advertising" into "Marketing" to likewise pretend that Madison Avenue and image management personnel are an essential part of any monetary transaction.
The change from "News" and "Reporting" into "Media" in order to make journalism seem more neutral: it's not even there, it's just the agar, the 'media' that we're all swimming in... in the face of a growing 'media' trend towards bias and editorializing or even outright inaccuracy, error and falsehood.
And so on, and so forth.

One may have preferred the meme before or after the management; but I think the speed with which those memes changed, without corresponding changes in the fundamentals of each situation, argues for the existence of heavy-handed, deliberate management. What the remedy is, though, I really have no idea. A Constitutional amendment seems impractical and unworkable -- I wonder if EJ just tossed that comment out as metaphorical, illustrating the severity -- I would prefer to see people individually educated to resist meme manipulation, but obviously our education system isn't up to the task.

Meanwhile, I am struck with kind-of a larger philosophical question: is it possible to make money morally in such an economic climate? When investment, for the most part today, basically means buying up somebody else's debt, institutionally becoming a robber baron and joining those who use political clout to shift the risks of speculation onto the powerless. When market-based value creation is almost certianly foredoomed by the death of the consumer economy and looming resource scarcity, no matter how clever your idea is. And when even hoarding money under your mattress is futile, as the money shrinks and evaporates away due to poor fiscal policy. It just seems to me like one's choices are either to abandon morals, community and citizenship and go for the quick buck in the few moments remaining before the guillotine falls; or else to withdraw, spend that money to buy real things like land and gold and water and security, and just try to survive. At what point does the fiat money system itself become tainted from all the atrocities committed in its name?

[Thailandnotes]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

And so on, and so forth.

1.) You left out the switch from "citizen" to "consumer."

2.) Your question of whether it's possible to make (invest) money morally should be something everyone wrestles with. Once upon a time, it was possible to know the owners of local banks who in turn knew and loved the communities they lived in and lent money to get good stuff done. You could buy shares of the bank, watch them grow, and feel pretty good about it.

[necron99]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

Bingo on both counts!!

Even apart from the moral hazard, the complexity and high-tech, speed-of-light nature of modern financial scams makes it seem to me like it is inadvisable bordering on impossible these days, to make money from something you can't see and touch right in front of you. A completely solid, honest investment these days might get bought out by a Gordon Gecko liquidator start to finish in-between two issues of your quarterly prospectus. I think that smart investors these days will need to reverse another one from my list of meme changes -- from "profit" back down into "wealth" -- and focus on things that are intrinsically valuable, understandable, and tangibly beneficial again, rather than just numbers on paper outsourced to some distant land. And not from any sense of altruism. It's that, or die off.

To use a fanciful metaphor, the plains are filled with badass, hungry dinosaurs these days. No matter how quick of tooth and claw, how savvy you think you are, there's a bigger, faster dinosaur out there somewhere slavering to bite a chunk off of you. The ones who survived the Age of the Dinosaurs turned out to be, not the most aggressive or sharp-toothed beast, nor the best armored, but rather the small, timid mammals. The environment changed and the biggest, meanest creatures could no longer support themselves. Our Chicxulub meteor may have hit in late 2008. It probably took many years afterwards for the Tyrannosaurs to finally die off, but it happened.

[c1ue]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

Even apart from the moral hazard, the complexity and high-tech, speed-of-light nature of modern financial scams makes it seem to me like it is inadvisable bordering on impossible these days, to make money from something you can't see and touch right in front of you.

None of these scams are new. All of them existed with the same mechanical principles, only in a different environment, in the past - sometimes very recent past.

The other item you're perhaps not addressing is that all those financial predators - their fangs and claws (toolbox) didn't arise spontaneously.

While I am not a conspiracy theorist, at the same time it is abundantly clear that the last 2 decades have seen a concerted rollback of protections passed in the Great Depression era combined with perhaps ideological, perhaps cynical cutbacks in regulatory powers and agencies.

[Slimprofits]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

Propaganda The Formation of Men's Attitudes (excerpts) By Jacques Ellul (1965)
worldcat library listing

worldcat library listing for 2004 reprint of Bernay's Propaganda
Bernay's The engineering of consent
Bernay's Crystallizing public opinion

[lakedaemonian]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

EJ Quote: "I'm talking about also dumping grandma, veterans, widows and orphans, small business owners -- anyone without an effective political action committee or high paid lobbying firm in Washington to aggregate campaign finance funds to protect them."

"Some day it will be widely understand that a tool of public opinion shaping that can be used to sell legislation and to start wars needs to be regulated by constitutional amendment."

I'm confused EJ...seriously confused.

Why would we need a constitutional ammendment to regulate the shaping of public opinion(which in my eye would require differentiating advertising/marketing focused on making me buy laundry detergent from marketing/advertising focused on making me support a conflict) when it would appear to me that if we had a constitutional ammendment outlawing private campaign contributions(or at least anything short of 100% donor blind contributions) to cut special interest groups off at the bloody knees would be simpler to develop and regulate as a piece of legislation(if not implement due to overwhelming special interest opposition).

After spending time in the 3rd and 4th world and seeing the terrible destruction tribal politics plays on their economies(get what you can for your tribe without any remorse before you are removed from power), how are we any different if we exchange their corrupt tribal politics for our corrupt special interest politics?

How exactly can a constitutional ammendment, acting as "Mom and Dad" to monitor and regulate what cartoons and advertising Little Billy constituent/consumer watches, fix what I believe to be the far more serious problem of the special interest sand undermining the foundation of the house.

I certainly don't dispute the incredible power of malignant, immoral, and unethical societal perception shaping....but isn't it a bit further down on the list compared with cutting special interests off at their political knees to allow constituents to take back the political process?

[nathanhulick]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

The re-branding of the Inheritance Tax from a penalty on the "idle rich", into a "Death Tax" punishment against mom-'n'-pop convenience store owners, for example, strikes me as meme management.
Over a period of many decades, the re-branding of "War" into "Defense" so that we can pretend we were forced unwillingly into it and it's harder to oppose.
The conflation of "Medicine" and "Insurance" into the term "Health Care", so that it appears like insurance and administration is a biological requirement to keep people well.
The name change from "Advertising" into "Marketing" to likewise pretend that Madison Avenue and image management personnel are an essential part of any monetary transaction.
The change from "News" and "Reporting" into "Media" in order to make journalism seem more neutral: it's not even there, it's just the agar, the 'media' that we're all swimming in... in the face of a growing 'media' trend towards bias and editorializing or even outright inaccuracy, error and falsehood.
And so on, and so forth.

But that's been going on for a long time, hasn't? Years ago when markets collapsed it was a panic, then in 1929, government assured that this would be no panic, it was merely a depression in the economy. It turned out so badly, that decades later there were so many negative connotations associated with that word, it had to be changed again, to recession.

Decades from now, perhaps, our grandchildren will hear stories about the great recession, and be happy their current economic crisis is only an inverted recovery, or some other term to signify the same thing, but lacking the same negative connotation.

It just seems that no matter what laws you pass, how can you stop people with an agenda from avoiding a term with negative connotation in favor of a new term?

[nedtheguy]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

redacted

[metalman]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

In terms of searching for memes and themes, I've found Google to have a couple of interesting resources:

http://www.google.com/trends- Google Trends to see what people are searching for on the web. It's interesting to plug in "Global Warming", "Climate Change", "Housing Bubble", "JP Morgan Silver Manipulation" or whatever trends you want to search on and see how many times these terms have been searched over time.

http://www.google.com/insights/search/ - Google Insights. Similar to Google Trends, but you can narrow category searches, look for different types of searches, and even add stock quote searches.

Data only goes back to 2004, but it's interesting to see how search trends rise and fall. Of course, companies have known tricks about manipulating Google search results for years, so I'm sure they are busy working on ways to make sure their (or their clients') interests appear in the list of the latest trends for Google, Twitter and other social media, as EJ has pointed out with the Wired story. One can only imagine the Terabytes of data that Facebook is amassing every day.

itulip = fin-oligarchy false meme dis-assembly... truth reconstruction... profit... $$$

[Chris Coles]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

Well, I for one am rankled a bit by EJ's kinda selective use of the history of "Global Warming"/"Climate Change" as a meme. But I won't dispute it. I think he gets his point across, if we all can just curb our knee-jerk political responses. I don't wish to negate EJ's "Climate Change" meme example, but I submit that there are a lot of other memes we could discuss. And the sheer quantity of those changing memes bolsters EJ's case that they are a dangerous political tool in the hands of short-sighted carnies and sharpsters.
The re-branding of the Inheritance Tax from a penalty on the "idle rich", into a "Death Tax" punishment against mom-'n'-pop convenience store owners, for example, strikes me as meme management.
Over a period of many decades, the re-branding of "War" into "Defense" so that we can pretend we were forced unwillingly into it and it's harder to oppose.
The conflation of "Medicine" and "Insurance" into the term "Health Care", so that it appears like insurance and administration is a biological requirement to keep people well.
The name change from "Advertising" into "Marketing" to likewise pretend that Madison Avenue and image management personnel are an essential part of any monetary transaction.
The change from "News" and "Reporting" into "Media" in order to make journalism seem more neutral: it's not even there, it's just the agar, the 'media' that we're all swimming in... in the face of a growing 'media' trend towards bias and editorializing or even outright inaccuracy, error and falsehood.
And so on, and so forth.

One may have preferred the meme before or after the management; but I think the speed with which those memes changed, without corresponding changes in the fundamentals of each situation, argues for the existence of heavy-handed, deliberate management. What the remedy is, though, I really have no idea. A Constitutional amendment seems impractical and unworkable -- I wonder if EJ just tossed that comment out as metaphorical, illustrating the severity -- I would prefer to see people individually educated to resist meme manipulation, but obviously our education system isn't up to the task.

Meanwhile, I am struck with kind-of a larger philosophical question: is it possible to make money morally in such an economic climate? When investment, for the most part today, basically means buying up somebody else's debt, institutionally becoming a robber baron and joining those who use political clout to shift the risks of speculation onto the powerless. When market-based value creation is almost certianly foredoomed by the death of the consumer economy and looming resource scarcity, no matter how clever your idea is. And when even hoarding money under your mattress is futile, as the money shrinks and evaporates away due to poor fiscal policy. It just seems to me like one's choices are either to abandon morals, community and citizenship and go for the quick buck in the few moments remaining before the guillotine falls; or else to withdraw, spend that money to buy real things like land and gold and water and security, and just try to survive. At what point does the fiat money system itself become tainted from all the atrocities committed in its name?

Very good questions; perhaps the answer is to look at what is happening with the Arab Spring where ordinary people have reached their limits and have decided to say; STOP!

We should never discount our instincts where they tell us that something is wrong. That in turn leads to:

Originally Posted by necron99

And so on, and so forth.



1.) You left out the switch from "citizen" to "consumer."

2.) Your question of whether it's possible to make (invest) money morally should be something everyone wrestles with. Once upon a time, it was possible to know the owners of local banks who in turn knew and loved the communities they lived in and lent money to get good stuff done. You could buy shares of the bank, watch them grow, and feel pretty good about it.

That is a description of what we once knew worked well in every community. It is also the underlying concept of local community investment that I incorporated into my thinking on a set of rules for such investment which formed the basis for The Capital Spillway Trust during my conversations with the Bank of England in 1994. So in a very real way, the debate is at last returning to the fundamental basics and the instinctive reaction is to, at long last; believe that there must be a better way forward than what we have today.

[jk]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

itulip = fin-oligarchy false meme dis-assembly... truth reconstruction... profit... $$$

re eric's interview: eric says the blog provides an ongoing analytic framework - he uses the word "context"- that allow for understanding, and more importantly predicting, economic processes. he uses the example of the housing bubble. this he contrasts to the regular financial media who report isolated "events" and, by the way, continually deny that anything abnormal or dangerous or devastating is going on.

i question this "amotivational" model of the regular media. my first thought was about fox news: can anyone deny that fox news has an analytic framework or "context" in which it reports? one difference, of course, that fox news' context is implicit, and not subject to analysis by fox news itself. similarly, the financial news' constant astonishment at the occurrence of events long predicted here, itself represents a "context" being communicated to the readers. stuff happens. it's not that, for example, tbtf banks are deliberately distorting and exploiting their economic ecosystem. no, it's just that stuff happens and continually "surprises" the media. that "context" of ignorance is part of what the financial media is paid to promulgate.

[Slimprofits]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

i question this "amotivational" model of the regular media. my first thought was about fox news: can anyone deny that fox news has an analytic framework or "context" in which it reports? one difference, of course, that fox news' context is implicit, and not subject to analysis by fox news itself. similarly, the financial news' constant astonishment at the occurrence of events long predicted here, itself represents a "context" being communicated to the readers. stuff happens. it's not that, for example, tbtf banks are deliberately distorting and exploiting their economic ecosystem. no, it's just that stuff happens and continually "surprises" the media. that "context" of ignorance is part of what the financial media is paid to promulgate.

excellent

[Slimprofits]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

This is what's making the rounds on facebook today. People have a sense that something is amiss with the mass-media, but they can't quite put their finger on it.

Last week Amy Winehouse died, but so did Justin Allen 23, Brett Linley 29, Matthew Weikert 29, Justus Bartett 27, Dave Santos 21, Jesse Reed 26, Matthew Johnson 21, Zachary Fisher 24, Brandon King 23, Christopher Goeke 23 and Sheldon Tate 27. They are Marines who made the ultimate sacrifice last week for US. There is NO media for them and NOT ONE mention of their names. Please help honor THEM by reposting this..

[Fiat Currency]

Re: The Big Bet revisited - Part I: Turkeys grounded - Eric Janszen

Last week Amy Winehouse died, but so did Justin Allen 23, Brett Linley 29, Matthew Weikert 29, Justus Bartett 27, Dave Santos 21, Jesse Reed 26, Matthew Johnson 21, Zachary Fisher 24, Brandon King 23, Christopher Goeke 23 and Sheldon Tate 27. They are Marines who made the ultimate sacrifice last week for US. There is NO media for them and NOT ONE mention of their names. Please help honor THEM by reposting this..

People like to make fun of Canada's "colourful" hockey commentator Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada. However, for every fallen Canadian soldier in Afghanistan since 2002 - he shows their picture, tells their story, and names the fallen's loved-ones, while sending his condolences for "their ultimate sacrifice". All 157 of them. Politics-of-war aside ... a class act if you ask me. As in your list above - I am often saddened by their average age. Fight meme control.