The necessity of the Burning Man ethos

[can't sit still]

Ms Crypto, do you remember the scene from Dr Zhivago when he comes to the family house in Moscow and there are dozens of comrades moved in?
Americans aren't real "tuned in" to the idea of amicably sharing a domicile. They fight over; TV, Radio, fridge, parking places, hot water, trash, dishes,etc, etc.
Pensions are going down the tubes. A LOT of the poor are going to be old folks. I hit on a couple of things that could work out to help people.
There are lots of folks who have a bit of ground but, don't have the energy to prepare it for a garden. I thought of doing free rototilling for people who would maintain a garden but, didn't have the energy to prepare it.
The other thing that occurred to me was to set up a community kitchen. I've met people who managed to get a few cans of food but, had no stove or pan. Plenty of people know how to trap rabbits and catch fish. They just have no facilities to prepare the stuff.

A community toilet and shower facility is a great idea also. If drifters are crapping behind every tree, it eventually runs into community watershed and pollutes everything. Then, the water and fish aren't safe. Porta toilets are a cheap investment to maintain a clean water supply. Free haircuts are a good idea too. It cuts down on the fleas, lice and ticks. The more that is done to make life bearable for those living on the streets, the better it is for all. Less crime, less pollution

I've got several acres of land. I was thinking of doing some "sharecropping". The possible "plan" is to give someone a plot of ground where they can cultivate and build a lean-to. I feed them while they plant crops. They are required to pay back what they have consumed when the crops ripen. It could be a workable plan.
Street people have LOTS of time.

[can't sit still]

I did mention a community kitchen.
"One man had already cleaned his fowl and was arguing with a hot dog vendor about frying it on his hot dog grill. The homeless held a bloody knife and shook the pigeon in the vendor's face. "
http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... html?cat=9

[AntiM]

Utah has volunteers who go look for the homeless in winter, trying to get them to come into the shelters. Found another man frozen solid last week during the cold snap. Just an off tangent ramble.

Dad let a homeless guy move into the basement. He helped a lot until mom died, then he started hoarding trash and hiding the laundry. Dad had asked us not to go into the family room/bedrooms in the basement when the guy lived, so we did not. After dad died, we saw the extent of the damage; water from a leak he covered up, torn up carpet, peeling tile, mold, mildew, trash seepage, holes in the walls. A fried light fixture where he'd putin a 200 watt bulb, lucky the house didn't burn down. Eventually I had to evict the poor guy. We could't let him stay, we're trying to sell the place. Weirdest thing was he'd take the flatware and kitchen dishes to his day job and never bring them home. Dad was down to half a dozen spoons and forks from the dollar store....

.. so my view of letting homeless folks move in is dim. Boarding houses, perhaps, but the "snoopy landlord" is going to be a must in order not to destroy the buildings themselves. An unconditional gift is generous, but to receive abuse in return? I don't know, my personal situation is coloring my view too much just now,

[theCryptofishist]

Certainly SRO hotels are rife with the problems you describe. Although, I have to assume that they aren't in the best condition to begin with. And what an appreciable of the homeless need is more in the nature of halfway homes or supportive housing.

[graidawg]

My personal experience

in 2003 i split up with my gf and was having a breakdown i phoned a friend who had offered to let me stay at his place for a few weeks, 3months later he said as i was working he was going to ask for rent, the same day i was going to tell him i had found somewhere else to live.
So due to the gift of that friend who basically gave me the space to get my life together and asked for nothing in return I am alive and relatively sane, without that gift i would probably be dead by my own hand.
Ever since that day i have tried to return that gift (my life) by helping others in any way i can, be it friends, strangers on the street or people i chat with on the net. Equally i try to step in when i see injustice.

its a question of morals. What can i do (not what should i do or will i do but can i do)

[can't sit still]

Good story graidawg.
I had something else I wanted to bring up. The Daily Reckoning has an interesting article. They talk at length about an economy being a moral system. There is a lot of truth to that. Business involves a lot of trust. All morality and trust is currently absent at the higher levels of business. You've all heard the term 'honor among thieves".
If you think about this, it would imply that even a cadre of thieves need a moral system among themselves to survive. What does this imply for the economy in general? Here's the article;

An economy is not really like a machine at all. It is not a mechanical system. It is a moral system.

Yes, dear reader, it is a system that punishes sin and rewards virtue. It gives no one what he expects...and ALMOST everyone what he deserves. The "almost" is an important qualifier, to which we will return...

What do we mean when we say it "rewards virtue"? Well, that's what it does. It rewards saving, thrift, hard work, innovation, honesty, thinking about others, self-discipline, creativity and all the other qualities you normally associate with decent people and financial progress.

As for sin, it punishes the obvious ones - greed, vanity, short- sightedness, extravagance, envy, laziness, lying, cheating, stealing, stupidity, self-indulgence...and so forth.

When the Fed creates money out of thin air, for example, it is a lie. It is a sort of fraud. It is trying to get something for nothing. It is distorting the facts and encouraging mistakes. It surely will be punished. When? How? We can take a guess, but it's not for us to say....

Likewise, take a fellow who works hard and saves his money... Will he be wealthy? Again, we don't know. All we know is that he OUGHT to do well...

So, we should return to our qualifier...it USUALLY works that way.

Some greedy bastards do get rich. Some lazy fools win the lottery. We never know for sure who will make money and who won't.

Why not? First, because we're not God. He sees things we don't see...and He has his own plans that he doesn't share with us.

Second, because there is sin and virtue IN THE SYSTEM itself...to which we are all subject. When the Roman Empire fell apart, and Rome was sacked by barbarians, even the most virtuous Roman probably suffered a decline in his standard of living. Not much he could do about it.

Why would a system that rewards virtue and punishes sin be so frustratingly unreliable?

Well, that's just the way it is. It's a moral system, remember. And moral systems do not make it easy for you. If all you had to do to get rich were to respect the moral rules it would not be a moral system. It would be a simpleton's system. Everyone would follow the rules. Moral systems are more demanding. They require you to follow the rules without being sure what it will do for you.

As every theological thinker from St. Augustine to Billy Sunday has noticed, you can't get to heaven just by following the rules. That would be too easy. Instead, you follow the rules...and HOPE to get heaven by the grace of God. Similarly, you have to follow the rules of an economy...knowing you might not get rich after all.

There's no gaming the system. There's no pretending. There are no quick fixes...no shortcuts...and no guarantees. And even if this isn't true, you're better off believing it anyway.

You have to love virtue for its own sake. And hate sin.

And keep your fingers crossed.

Regards,

Bill Bonner,
for The Daily Reckoning

[can't sit still]

This is a very interesting article. It's a composite from many Mayan elders.
“We are no longer in the World of the Fourth Sun, but we are not yet in the World of the Fifth Sun. This is the time in-between, the time of transition"
http://stevebeckow.com/2011/03/carlos-b ... ders-2012/

It's well worth a read. It talks about the hoped-for changes as we cross the galactic plane.

[jkisha]

My personal experience

in 2003 i split up with my gf and was having a breakdown i phoned a friend who had offered to let me stay at his place for a few weeks, 3months later he said as i was working he was going to ask for rent, the same day i was going to tell him i had found somewhere else to live.
So due to the gift of that friend who basically gave me the space to get my life together and asked for nothing in return I am alive and relatively sane, without that gift i would probably be dead by my own hand.
Ever since that day i have tried to return that gift (my life) by helping others in any way i can, be it friends, strangers on the street or people i chat with on the net. Equally i try to step in when i see injustice.

its a question of morals. What can i do (not what should i do or will i do but can i do)

Why don't you just pay your friend the back rent for the time he let you stay with him and relieve the guilt so you can get back to living your life without feeling you have to save the world?

[graidawg]

My personal experience

in 2003 i split up with my gf and was having a breakdown i phoned a friend who had offered to let me stay at his place for a few weeks, 3months later he said as i was working he was going to ask for rent, the same day i was going to tell him i had found somewhere else to live.
So due to the gift of that friend who basically gave me the space to get my life together and asked for nothing in return I am alive and relatively sane, without that gift i would probably be dead by my own hand.
Ever since that day i have tried to return that gift (my life) by helping others in any way i can, be it friends, strangers on the street or people i chat with on the net. Equally i try to step in when i see injustice.

its a question of morals. What can i do (not what should i do or will i do but can i do)

Why don't you just pay your friend the back rent for the time he let you stay with him and relieve the guilt so you can get back to living your life without feeling you have to save the world?

what fucking guilt? i live my life and try to help others live theres'
its got absolutely fuck all to do with guilt. Its morals you idiot, i CHOOSE to help others because of the EXAMPLE my friend showed me, i chose to learn from that and become a moral person with ethics. I choose to try and help my fellow human beings when i can if i can however i can.

[gyre]

Some of you are way off the mark.
"Gift" economy is inherently misleading.

It is essentially based on universal reciprocity, not an uncommon economic model worldwide.
It is a hardship economy.

The reason it is now believed we replaced the neanderthal is group support, in whatever form.
So weakness in dire circumstance?
No

You find examples among homeless and there are rainbow folk practicing it all the time.


There are vast numbers of hidden homeless, being supported or moving constantly.
Some choose to be totally homeless, or have personality or mental issues.
One I know was very successful in california before crossing that thin line everyone thinks can't happen to them.
He could recover if he could overcome his issues that people would tolerate if he had more money.
Most homeless recover eventually with enough help, if there aren't overriding issues, no work like now, health or disability - common, and so on.
The costs of having a home again are staggering to someone homeless.

[gyre]

Some of you are way off the mark.
"Gift" economy is inherently misleading.

It is essentially based on universal reciprocity, not an uncommon economic model worldwide.
It is a hardship economy.

The reason it is now believed we replaced the neanderthal is group support, in whatever form.
So weakness in dire circumstance?
No

You find examples among homeless and there are rainbow folk practicing it all the time.


There are vast numbers of hidden homeless, being supported or moving constantly.
Some choose to be totally homeless, or have personality or mental issues.
One I know was very successful in california before crossing that thin line everyone thinks can't happen to them.
He could recover if he could overcome his issues that people would tolerate if he had more money.
Most homeless recover eventually with enough help, if there aren't overriding issues, no work like now, health or disability - common, and so on.
The costs of having a home again are staggering to someone homeless.

[addison4]

Being a student of the Austrian Free-market school I'm tending to agree with Can't Sit Still.

I liked the article at the beginning of the post. This is a major issue among high-level economic thinkers. I would describe it as an essential difference between Austrian (morality and natural rights based free market economics) and the Chicago School pure utilitarian "free market" thinkers.

So Austrians vs. Chicago School...

Actually, I don't think the Chicago School are very free market at all! However, they are the most influential intellectual force in politics and law in the 20th century, and the proposition of the world being "commoditized" is largely a result of them. Their basic idea is that economics reigns over morality. A corollary to that is that their models of "pure free markets" treat all of us like lifeless vending machines. These are the models being used by governments and in anti-trust and externality law suits!

True economics is moral and prizes the individual, who is the entity with their own ideas who will change the world for good. Individualism is what makes prosperity.

So BM needs to be about individual expression and all this anti-commoditization ideology is generally a good thing.

What is our BM purpose greater than that? I would say to have a moral and ethical community without legalism and government forced on everyone. We basically are proving the old liberal idea that man can exist in peace when away from a powerful state.

Also, we tend to find a universal spirituality and ethics which everyone can engage in. For those of you who don't know, BM is largely based on Zoroastrianism, which is like Christianity without some of the garbage. This is where the whole gifting and the other 10 principles really come from. It's a nice thing how people can find a common ethic at BM and economics no longer dominates us. I used to be a boy scout leader; pastoral community is a good thing too.

Oh yes, the economy isn't going to implode as the article in the first post suggests. We're just going to have to get our books in order, and that means cutting our political state back to a manageable level. The fiat issues are real obviously, and those of us who learn to invest in resources that retain value or trade (as I trade) will always be getting the lion's share in our fiat/debt based economy. The solution is a hard money economy, and we are very far from having that as an option with our current entitlement obligations. Someone would have to lose their entitlements, which is a reality that we must face. If you have guessed already, it won't be savvy people like me.

[can't sit still]

Addison 4, have you read on social credit? C.H. Douglas,,,, Soddy,,, Eustace Mullens?
I'm sure that you're familiar with the Luddite ideas and Malthus. I believe that both of these people will eventually be proved correct. We're automating everything and substituting carbon-energy for food-energy.
The Chicago School has given us the "corporatocracy". The corporatocracy has NO intention of paying ANY of it's dividends to ANY non-producer.
Social Security is housed in a decrepit building with horrendous computers and infrastructure. The intelligence business is spending trillions on their facilities. The Ca. state payroll system runs on COBOL.
The Fortune 500 companies are $ 250 million in arrears in funding their in-house pension plans. This after record profits. SS is defunded.
Everywhere that you look, you see funding for current producers and pennies for non-producers.
The Corporatocracy sees NO profits in being moral. Hopefully, in the end, they will eat each others children.

[addison4]

True; there are a lot of people who consolidate the wealth, but at least more of it is being created. Malthus' constraints have had effects, but have fallen away to better production so many times I doubt they are useful for anything other than trying to create political power.

The main political push from back when those ideas of limited resources ruled resulted in the revolutions of 1848. Even then, things normalized, and the schools of economists and politicians failed to expand beyond the government sector. The fall of communist Russia, and the opening up of China basically insure that we don't have anyone taken seriously who wants to try to set prices in the private sector. Basically, its never has improved the welfare of a country long term.

I will take Gary North's response to "Social Credit" as an idea. Yes, Douglas has some points, but he's known because he is weak opposition for the inflationists. If I was running a central bank I would want guys like Douglas to oppose with with those caliber of straw man ideas. Like North I think it is a false dialectic. It frames the argument as: what type of inflation do you want? Print money/credit to the people, or print it to the ruling class.

Regardless of what happens inflation alway steals for those who are not able to plan for it, basically the lower classes. It is worth studying North's brand of Austrian Economics to see that the strongest way to create wealth for everyone is with sound currency as a store of wealth. However, such currencies have been relatively rare since the invention of the printing press. (There is a VERY small bit of truth behind antisemitism.) However the real banking policies in action are what is important. Currently the Chinese are better organized with a more solid currency and sturdier investment ethics, which could be what makes them #1 in the next century. However, the U.S with its free markets is an incredible wealth generating engine; and that will increase our standard of living in the long run.

Yes, we have much to fix in our country. Fixing inflation/debt and helping people find ways to invest around it is the top priority. However, it seems like we'll always have the same classes and wealth distribution regardless to an extent. Economics is individualistic after all. Even though, it is important to understand that inflation theft and government redistribution both keep wealth from being generated and also limit individual liberty through coercion.

Feel free to dress up like Andrew Jackson on Tuesday and go around 1776 accusing Native Americans of siding with the banks if you'd like. 8) I'm sure you will get some fun econ feedback.

I also think people who are too into money get the hellish world they deserve. My job in finance is really lame BS work. I crunch numbers all day. It isn't anywhere near fun. Just today I was with a Hedge Fund guy who was a real lame duck! These guys only see money, which sucks the charm out of life. It scares me to think I could turn into one of those penny-pinchers. A fate worse than death I'd say. Plus there is no morality; which rots their souls!

[can't sit still]

This is an excellent article showing that enterprise rather than greed is what creates wealth and prosperity;
http://dailyreckoning.com/enterprise-no ... ter-world/
Blood-sucking parasites have NO inclination to share. In the end, they bring it all down.

[addison4]

What you call "greed" I call (1)fraud, (2)theft through counterfeiting, and (3)excessive usury.

FRAUD:
Fractional reserve banking is fraud. In storing any other commodity, operating with fractional reserves is considered fraud today. The American banking system is illegal under common law and constitutional law.

COUNTERFEITING:
Our banking system is fractional reserve fraud backed up by the unconstitutional ability to counterfeit. The constitution only grants the treasury the right to "coin" money. Meaning the money must be minted in solid coins. The coin act of 1792 made counterfeiting coins punishable by death!

EXCESSIVE USURY:
Back before the printing press people used to consider all lending usury. The Catholic church condemned it and prohibited it. It was regarded similar to how we regard fraud today. This is understandable because serfdom was common place, so unfairly putting people into serfdom was itself considered a crime. Now that we don't have slavery and serfdom we let debt run wild, and its has a similar way of ruining peoples lives for extended periods of time today.
The sick thing is how people choose to go into debt to try to preserve their wealth from inflation! People sign crazy loans to buy real estate and try to save long term. Obviously, debt is a money maker for lenders, and so net many people will lose big in the credit/debt game. The very sad thing is the amount of debt simply because of the expected inflation. I'm not advocating specific legal control of debt, but if we had a sound currency, the amount of debt would be a fraction of what it is now. (I won't take the idea of capping debt off the table, but it has been nowhere near being an option for several centuries.)

THE "GREED" THAT IS NOT THE PROBLEM:
I have a very difficult time differentiating between enterprise and greed. Obviously we want to produce and be efficient. Obviously we want to be thrifty, avoid waste. However, so much of a modern economy is simply allocating resources, packaging them, or organizing them. Yes, we are adding value all the way down the pipeline, even the middleman is moving resources to the people that need them and adding value.

THE DIFFICULTY: The individual allocating resources to produce will catch inflation, and will have to deal with debt, as it is so prevalent. So differentiating between bad and good on the individual level is impossible, because the issues are systemic and deal with the entire banking system. This is why we get these capitalists doing legit things, while at the same time grabbing much of the money that is stolen from us by the banking system.

Thus the problem is (theft and fraud, and the resulting) debt and inflation, not "greed" as part of the real creating and allocating of goods. This is important, because it separates the issue of greed from "commodification", which is just the emergence of boring efficient standards of commerce. I think Larry is right on with commodification, but only artistically, culturally, and spiritually, not economically. Commodification, or standardized culture and products are symptoms of mass production, which is vital to the production of wealth.

Thus the struggles that the country's banking system faces are different than the ethos of Burning Man to fight boring "reality" culture. This doesn't mean Burning Man is any less important. Far from it. But it does reduce Burning Man to an escape from broken culture, and not a solution for economic ills. Perhaps then we should just escape more often?

[Simon of the Playa]

"Get a Room"...

[can't sit still]

Great analysis I don't think that the DPW could build Black Rock city every month. You would do well to read the book by John Tainter,, The Collapse of Complex Societies.
So very few people are actually engaged in producing for necessary consumption that all the rest have to subsist on shuffling around things connected to non-necessary consumption. The complexity is the burden.
On usury; recall the only time that jesus got pissed off was with the money changers.
Mohammed's final parting words were a condemnation of usury.
I wouldn't dream of attempting to come up with a scheme for unraveling the complexity.

How would the country appear if it operated on the Amish model? Do we need the advanced science? Would we need to defend ourselves from invasion? Being a pacifist is OK IF everyone else is a pacifist. Suppose that we had the Japanese model with just self-defense forces? China has had to cut way back on the number of people that they send to higher education. They found that there was just no need. Worldwide, there is high unemployment in graduates.
Are we better off with advanced science? What is the best agricultural / industrial / financial / educational / societal model? Who defines best?

[wedeliver]

"Get a Room"...

What?? Did you mean "Get a life"

whats with the room? Whats gonna happen in that room? What color are the walls, is there a big screen TV?

Oh, I see, you mean the 2 socks above ya should get a room. What would they do in the room, use crayons to make money? Talk about the end of the world? I see.

[addison4]

Three idealized societies for anarcho-capitalists are:

America up to 1850, right when Jackson and company could still fight the banks politically

Germany before WWI: basically the old Habsburg Empire, expand empire by marriages and not war, sound money, many independent German city states

Venice before the 18th century, pure trade wealth, simply incredible

[Simon of the Playa]

im sorry, i drink coffee, not tea.

[theCryptofishist]

Germany before WWI: basically the old Habsburg Empire, expand empire by marriages and not war, sound money, many independent German city states.

Does anyone else see this as a mess?

[gyre]

What could go wrong?

[addison4]

Yes, old Austria/Germany was a mess, however it was a hugely productive mess! Vienna itself was a major cultural center. That is the concept behind Austrian economics: major diversity of production, and various market places. This actually means faster development of more market ideas and better market ideas rising to the top more quickly.

Also, common law worked in all the different city states. The "friction" between going from one government into another is caused by troublesome governments. The "mess" of different governments didn't exist in Austrian/ German states because traveling from one country to the next was as easy as we think of driving from one city to another today.

The region was lawful, ethical, and highly diverse... a lot like Burning Man. You may think of BM as an out of the ordinary festival, but there have been cultural centers in history as robust as BM... and Austria/Germany was a great example of those.

I will go even father to say that BM is so unique because of its way of dealing with money; AND Austria/Germany was equally unique in having a commodity based currency. (People transacting real, meaningful, commodities, and not paper and debt.) Much to consider as to their similarity on that part...

[theCryptofishist]

That was not the mess I was looking for...

[can't sit still]

This is a simple comment that I ran across. It DOES demand consideration.
"Susan Butler said...

The financial crisis is the pathological end-point of a profit-as-the-highest-value system, which pretty much most people suscribed to. New norms and values are now emerging out of the absurdity, panic and cognitive dissonance evident in this crisis.
April 5, 2009 12:40 PM "
I LIKE it.

[Trishntek]

CSS wrote:

An economy is not really like a machine at all. It is not a mechanical system. It is a moral system.

So whose moral system do we embrace?

The basic principle of investing on a sharia-compliant basis is that when you are introducing any leverage, any financing, that leverage has to be compliant. This means you cannot receive or pay interest on borrowed money. In conventional finance, there is a distinction between usury and interest. Regulators in the United States and western jurisdictions regulate and distinguish between interest rates that are considered reasonable and interest rates that are considered usurious. Under Islamic sharia, any interest—even 0.01 percent—is usurious. There is no distinction between acceptable interest and unacceptable interest. So if you are financing a sharia-compliant investor, you have to figure a way to inject that financing other than borrowing and charging interest.

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/07/20/sharia-compliant-finance-will-make-america-safer/

[addison4]

Who's moral system...

Well, Christians used to take the same view against usury as Muslims. Honest persons in every culture know what steeling is, and know when they are stolen from after the fact. Really it is a matter of if the honest persons can define and stop the theft. Moral relativism is a result of the failed system, but the moral principles we need transcend every most cultures.

The basic history of the world for the last 500 years is that ENTIRE monetary systems have become fiat scams. When currency theft is forced on everyone, personal responsibility is rare. The problem becomes larger, political, and more complicated, and this is the reason for the fraud and theft.

The solution is hard assets and responsibility in banking; which more people are gravitating towards these days. The world hates the US dollar, and we will have to see how bad it must get before our banking system changes. The three changes I recommend specifically are:

1. Reenact Glass Steagall
2. End the political independence of the FED; make FED's meetings public
3. Target 3% inflation by law

Long term we need to do these additional things to mitigate future crashes:

1. Raise reserve requirements on at least a certain tier of investment banks
2. Reduce FDIC insurance to partial reimbursement in exchange for access to zero percent interest rates (or other low low rates) at the FED window
3. Freeze the assets of public servants and expand the requirement of private bonds, held in escrow, for public servants

Just some ideas. The system could be much more visible and stable, however getting people to agree to such improvements is difficult. Obviously the current system made them plenty of money. Plus they'll find a way to 'game' this one down the road eventually.

[lonestoner916]

I'm trying to pull a TomServo and be the most recent poster for an entire "View posts since your last visit" page.

[can't sit still]

This is an article from Automatic Earth. VERY sad. I'll just do a few quotes and 2 links.
"The best we can do is to continue to tell people to get closer to their family and friends, to establish closer communities."
"So your children will once again be your pension plan, just like they were throughout the ages, and they still are throughout most of the world"
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2 ... s-die.html

"In several hundred cases I have been the person to whom somebody hands the keys as they walk out of their house for the last time - I get the keys, I hand them a check for somewhere between a few hundred to several thousand dollars. In exchange they don't get evicted.

I've had people point out the spot in the basement where their son committed suicide, I've seen the hand painted murals on the kids' rooms' walls, I've been asked if they could come back when the ground thawed so they could retrieve the flowers that were retrieved from the top of their mother's casket.

They tell me their stories - death, divorce, lost jobs, murders. Sleazy bankers, unreasonable mortgages, jail, accidents, strokes and heart attacks and cancers. They tell me because I'm the only one who will listen. Almost all of them tell me that I'm the only person who was ever nice to them during the process, and I'm often told that I'm the only one who told them anything at all.

Sometimes I see them put their pets in the car for a trip to the shelter because they can't keep them where they're going. Sometimes they tell me that they are on the way to the shelter themselves. Or across town, state or country.

Sometimes they simply vanish and I'm the first person to see what they left behind - the wedding photos, the kid's homework, sometimes the pets (ever see parrot skeletons on the floor surrounded by a puff of feathers?) Sometimes the pets are still alive.

Sometimes there are bloodstains on the floor, bullet holes in the walls. At times a plastic container filled with ashes sits on the mantle. Half eaten meals on the table, cigarette lighter by the bed, a calendar with dates circles for events that may never be kept. Receipts for one way tickets out of the country, summons notices, credit counseling literature, names of lawyers and doctors.

I've seen it all."
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comme ... at/c2ha0il
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comm ... job_is_to/

The world is fast changing. The "ME" generation is going to have to learn to survive without a pension. The kids are going to have to learn to live with a full house.
The wisdom of Rodney King will be the thought for the day,,, 'can't we all just get along"? The dreams of affluence and family will turn to tears for many people.
There are currently 130 million Americans in the work force That leaves 200 million who don't work. 52.5 % depend on a check from GOV. 1/3 of all income is from GOV transfer payments. The debt is increasing about $ 3.95 billion a day.
Many people will have to learn new ways to survive. They will have to learn to be nice to other people.
Americans bought 15 million guns this year. Evidently, the existing 300 million just weren't enough. I'm not convinced that everybody plans to be nice.
I hope that Burners can set a good example. Not so much by giving, but, by teaching.