ECON Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out

Dozdoats

Deceased
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay13/opt-out5-13.html

Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out (May 17, 2013)

What happens to everyone in the ruling Elites and those desperately trying to join the ruling Elites when the debt-serfs stop paying and the tax donkeys drift away to lower-cost, lower-income lifestyles?

Turn on, tune in, drop out was a famous slogan of the 1960s counterculture popularized by Timothy Leary, who stated that slogan was "given to him" by Marshall McLuhan during a lunch in New York City in 1966.

Tune in referred to gaining an awareness of the countercultural spectrum of ideas and values, turn on referred to mind-expansion via psychedelics and drop out meant to drop out of conventional society; Leary later explained that "drop out meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change."

In 1967, Leary modified the slogan thusly: Drop out. Turn on. Drop in.

Here at oftwominds.com, the slogan has been updated to Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out: tune in means to become aware the status quo is unsustainable and deranging; turn on means to become engaged in self-reliance and taking control of one's life and livelihood, and opting out means opting out of supporting our financialized cartel-state Neofeudal Debtocracy by being a compliant debt-serf and tax donkey.

People all over the world are tuning in to alternative narratives, turning on to self-reliance and low-cost/low-impact living and opting out of the status quo culture of consumerism, debt and complicity with a parasitic, exploitive financial-state Aristocracy/Plutocracy/Oligarchy/Kleptocracy (take your pick--it's still the same rapacious Elite whatever name you choose).

The most direct path to an alternative way of living is to opt out of debt and the associated consumerist fantasies of store-bought selfhood: multiple university degrees, brand name clothing, luxury autos, etc. This renunciation of consumerist consumption and debt is called Degrowth (May 9, 2013).

Once you opt out of debt and excess consumption, you need a lot less money to live; that means one can work less and have more time for family, gardening, self-cultivation, entrepreneural enterprises, etc.

For many, the cash economy and generous state benefits beckon. I am not recommending any particular lifestyle or set of choices here, I am simply stating what can easily be observed in any developed nation should you remove the mainstream media/state propaganda blinders: people are earning their livelihood in the informal cash economy, avoiding VAT and sales taxes, and many are drawing some sort of state benefit for one reason or another: unemployment, disability, early retirement, etc.

Others are occupying housing units without paying rent or the mortgage, i.e. squatting. A tide of squatters spreads in Spain in wake of foreclosures:

A 285-unit apartment complex in Parla, less than half an hour’s drive from Madrid, should be an ideal target for investors seeking cheap property in Spain. Unfortunately, two thirds of the building generates zero revenue because it’s overrun by squatters.
“This is happening all over the country,” said Jose Maria Fraile, the town’s mayor, who estimates only 100 apartments in the block built for the council have rental contracts, and not all of those tenants are paying either. “People lost their jobs, they can’t pay mortgages or rent so they lost their homes and this has produced a tide of squatters.”

As I have ceaselessly explained here for years, this is the inevitable result of financialization and state-enforced rentier arrangements in a Neofeudal Debtocracy:

Bernanke's Neofeudal Rentier Economy (May 7, 2013)

The Fatal Disease of the Status Quo: Diminishing Returns (May 1, 2013)

College Grads: It's a Different Economy (May 3, 2013)

Why Krugman and the Keynesians Are Lackeys for the Neofeudal Debtocracy (April 24, 2013)

What happens to everyone in the ruling Elites and those desperately trying to join the ruling Elites when the debt-serfs stop paying and the tax donkeys drift away to lower-cost, lower-income lifestyles? The ruling kleptocratic financiers and the vast political class of toadies, lackeys, apparatchiks and grifters that do their bidding will be like a bloated general staff who finds their malnourished army of conscripts has slipped away into the night; their parasitic empire will implode because nobody is left to do their bidding.

If you think Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out sounds ludicrous, check back in four years (2017) and eight years (2021) and see how many of your fellow debt-serfs and tax donkeys have quietly abandoned the bloated cost-structure, debt and derangement of the Neofeudal Debtocracy's twisted consumerist dream.
 

Dozdoats

Deceased
Oh - and it's not as if you have a choice about the above or anything... you don't. Either you drop out of 'the system' now and learn a different way of life while you can, or the system will drop out from under you.
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Video at the link...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-19/jeff-gundlach-we-are-drowning-central-banking

Jeff Gundlach: "We Are Drowning In Central Banking"
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/19/2013 13:15 -0400

Last week, Bill Gross did not mince his words when he said that he now "sees bubbles everywhere" and that "when that stops there will be repercussions" but for now Benny and the Inkjets, not to mention his band of merry statist men, who take from the poor and give to the wealthy, are playing the music on Max, and so one must dance and dance and dance. And after one legacy bond king, it was the turn of that other, ascendant one - Jeff Gundlach - to share his perspectives Bernanke's amazing bubble machine. His response, to nobody's surprise: "there is a bubble in central banking. We are drowning in central banking and quantitative easing.... And it's not ending until there are some negative consequences."

What are those negative consequences? This too should be perfectly expected for regular readers: currency devaluation leads to trade wars (as either is a zero sum game, and in a zero sum game it is very easy to blame someone else for one nation's suffering and economic malaise), trade wars lead to real wars (see the 1930s), and so on. We are not there just yet: quote Gundlach "With global growth slowing not everyone can increase their imports [indeed: observe just how it was that Spain managed to post its first "trade surplus" since 1971 - hint: not by boosting exports] you're playing a market share game." But it is rapidly approaching: "We are looking at competitive currency devaluations, which causes rancor, causes unhappiness, and fingerpointing and god-forbid tariffs and things that cause even slower economic growth a la the 1930s." Good choice of words, considering it was just a week ago that none other than stagnating metals magnate Lakshmi Mittal, head of ArcelorMittal, who was urging Europe to just go ahead already and declare trade on China asap. For his own selfish reasons of course.
 

Mzkitty

I give up.
Well......... where did THEY think people without jobs would really live?

I know under bridges would suit them, but squatting seems to be the IN thing to do. Got to have a roof over your head somehow.

It's all crazy.

:shr:
 
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