Apparently however he plays the bongos very well (no joke).

“- The pyramids in Egypt were built by slaves as part of a State Owned project for the Pharoahs.
- The cathedrals were built throughout Europe by feudal guildsman as State Owned projects for their Kings and Queens.
- Capitalist Germany and Italy had state owned companies throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s.”

There’s a great book by Neil Diamond called “Collapse: Why Societies Choose To Succeed or Fail”.

One of his best case studies is the people of Easter Island, who locked themselves into a race-to-the-bottom scenario by endowing enormous stone Moa with “stored value”, which could be bought, sold or traded (with interest). The several different tribes of the island bankrupt themselves (and destroyed nearly all of the arable land) by blowing all of their productive output on building bigger and bigger Moa, eventually resulting in so many Moa, of such great size, that the implied value of the Moa vastly outstripped the annual productive output of the island. At some point the tribal leaders no longer believe the other tribes could make good on delivering the “value” stored in the Moa, and liquidity froze.

Island commerce failed, the basic commodity’s of the island were consumed in attempts to repay debt and their civilization collapsed.

While Mr. Diamond mostly focuses on resource depletion, watching the financial fireworks of the past year have made me wonder if some of the above-mentioned entities (pyramids, cathedrals, monolithic state run enterprises), were just expressions of the same problem we’re seeing now with fiat currency : where to store all this supposed profit.

The lack of written records from the high periods of Egyptian civilization make it impossible to know the whole story, but perhaps those giant pyramids are just attempts to store wealth in the form of future debt obligations.

At this point, I’m all for scrapping the dollar and issuing kilowatt-Koins or Kilo-Calories or something (anything) tied to actual productive labor. How about an incentive to stockpile actual potential energy, instead of these paper pyramids?

Woah. I may have drifted off into Dubuque territory with this post…

The issue isn’t just decency, He nit-picks things that people say (particularly me, but it has gotten to the point where other readers who have seen it happen to others in comments are taking offense) then adopts a condescending tone and proffers views that are often simply not factually accurate. I don’t go after him when he is wrong or misleading (frequently) because I figure more attention will simply encourage him.

He is aggressive about offering supposed superior insight when a fair portion of what he provides is off base, sloppy, or debatable.

And he often offers asides which are completely narcissistic, self-congratulatory, off topic, and degrade the thread. In addition to what you see above and in other posts, I’ve also had some readers complain via e-mail.

If he were obnoxious but he was accurate and fact based, it would be one matter. I’ll admit he is a borderline case, but this is also the first time I’ve had so many people speak out, so he is creating more ill will the longer he keeps this up. And I’ve given him REPEATED warnings and he seems unwilling or unable to moderate his behavior.

emotions are really high now, so to speak. I’m against banning M.D., or anyone for that matter, who does not overstep boundaries of good manners and decency. M.D. never did, what’s the big deal? Because if it’s a just matter of his opinion, banning him is inexcusable.

How Prophetic”

And of course,

“I believe that camrades bernanke, paulson and trichet deserve to be awarded with the “order of lenin” medal.

I hope they wear it hunging from their nuts…”

Yea lets keep these quality comments coming but kick out the people who happen to make some sense. You sure are running one hell of a comment forum here!

In light of that experience, there is another term that might be more appropriate instead of “socialism for the rich” – Fascism.

I have given you repeated warnings and readers have given you plenty of negative feedback. You have not been willing to clean up your act. If you continue to fail to do so, you will no longer have a forum here.

OK, I really have a problem when people use the word “socialism” when describing the fascist junta that’s running this country.

Marxism has nothing to do with bailing out the semi-criminal financial oligarchies at the expense of the working masses, put down your crackpipes, Americans.