Capitalism is lie

I have seen some friends posting about capitalism and socialism and I feel compelled to explain what I understand about capitalism, first off that it is a lie, or at least that we tend to buy into it because of a lie, the lie being that everyone can succeed and be rich.This is not true, at least, not the way many people believe. It is true that capitalism is a system that give the everyone the chance to succeed and be rich, but it is not true that everybody will be able to achieve it at the same time. Capitalism is dependent on the same structure as every other system in the world, for the top 1% to have everything at the expense of the other 99%. This is because wealth is a relative measure, in order to have rich, there must be poor, in order for anyone to succeed in this structure they must do it at the expense of others, this is an unavoidable truth. The only exception is socialism, but we are generally afraid of socialism because the prime example of socialism we have to measure the system by is communism which in pratice has been communist dictatorships which are ultimately capitalism skewed to an extreme. Communism fails because it is not pure socialism as it was menat to be but an extreme monarchy in which on person gets everything and everyone else gets to share what is left equally, and that's not much, and they excuse it because they claim they desrerve it for the responsibility of taking care of everybody else. This stems from an innate, natural problem with any social strucure, but more on that later, first let me explain socialism.

Socialism is actually the idea that resources are allocated equally among everyone. This is a good idea, it takes care of everybody, if it's done right. The reason it doesn't seem to work, the reason we're all afraid of this is, if we do the right thing and take care of everybody, there will be no more rich. This is bad news for rich people and anyone who aspires to be rich. In socialism, we need to be responsible enough to make sure that our resources first go to important things like healthcare and food and housing for anyone and everyone who may need it, including those who may not be able to afford it under capitalist circumstances. This would mean using tax money to benefit the poor, and that money will probably come from the rich. The rich hate this because they work hard for their money and they don't want it taken by free loaders. They explain this to the rest of us and make us feel like it's not in our best interests because there is no point in working hard if your money is going to people who don't work. There are a few flaws with this argument that many do not think about, they just take the "I work hard for my money and I don't want it going to free loaders" argument at face value. The truth is, socialism generally seeks to make sure everyone does their fair share, run properly it does not support freeloaders, it provides for people who can not provide for themselves for legitimate reasons and makes sure the rest of us work for the greater good. Capitalism on the other hand rewards entrepreneurs. This sounds good because any of us can be entrepreneurs, that is the lie we are told. The tuth they do not tell us is that entrepreneurs need money, so if you don't have it to begin with, you're probably screwed.

Also, many of the rich in our country don't actually work hard, they rely on the labor of middle class citizens who are currently paying taxes because the rich have loopholes and the poor have no money to pay at all. Many rich live off of investments, meaning the stock market. The stock market is basically high stakes gambling. To understand the stock market, you need to understand that there are three types of companies, private, partnership and corporations. What makes corporations different is that the other two types are owned and operated by the same people, but corporations sell out shares to other people so they are at least partly owned by people other than those who actually run the business. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, it happens when a private or partnership business gets large enough that they need more money to grow and they get it by selling the company, and by selling it in small parts, none of the other owners have enough ownership to actually claim the company with any control, but they do put money in and they get paid back in dividends. The problem is that the stock market manipulates this by creating artificial value by having people trade their shares. This is the part that sucks for the rest of us, because when these stocks are being traded the money is not going back to the company, the shares no longer have anything to do with their namesake companies, they still have dividend yields to whoever is holding the hot potato when that time comes and those who hold enough shares have some degree of control over the company, but mostly the market is relying on people buying low and selling high. Stock brokers make their money by selling stocks at higher prices than they buy them for, and often do this within days, or even minutes, too little time to actually have anything to do with the company. This means that the vast majority of people who make their money in the stock market are not doing any actual work that benefits anybody, they are simply gambling and the stocks are no different than race horses, dice, cards, or numbers on a roulette wheel or lottery ball. The only difference is that the idea that somebody might actually do something productive makes the system legal. For example, I managed to acquire one share of stock in Hershey's, and as along as I hold onto this, I have a vote that I could use a stock holder's meetings at Hershey's, a vote which will be overshadowed by people who own many more shares than I do, but still, I do hold a share of the company in exchange for paying the company or at least reimbursing someone who did, and for that I get paid about $2 a year. Assuming I just sit on this stock, I am effectively a part of the Hershey's company and I am in some small way helping them, I have covered the cost of wrapping some Almond Joys. Hwever, I could decide to sell this stock and get some money back in my pocket right now, and if it was more than I bought it for, I just made profit. This is legal because I have purchased a share in good faith that I believe in the company and support them as a part owner. Someone else who also owns shares in the same way can do all of this on a much larger scale, and there is no legal way to discern between good faith ownership and high stakes gambling with the same resource, Since it is all based on something legal that affects major companies there is no way to challenge the legality of this practice without destorying the American economy. I'm not saying we should challenge it, I'm saying we need to recognize that many of the people who claim they work hard for their money are getting their money this way and leading us to believe that they deserve to keep their millions more than we deserve to be paid for actually working for those companies and doing what actually gives them value in the first place. Just think about that the next time the 1% argue about how we all deserve to keep our hard earned money instead of giving hand outs to lazy unemployed poor people.

Now for a quick history lesson: For most of human history we have relied on monarchies or in a few cases theocracies. If you don't know the difference the difference is that a monarchy is ruled by a monarch (king, queen, emperor) whereas a theocracy is ruled by God. Now, you may think, how does a god rule? None of us have ever actually seen a god, so how exactly does that work? Simple, the law of God is related to us through his priests and prophets who can communicate with God. In a theocracy, the basic principle is that everyone believes in God and questioning whether priests and prophets can talk to God is questioning God himself, so ask God if those priests and prophets are lying. God didn't answer? That's because you aren't a prophet, God only speaks to the priests, so now you have disobeyed God and questioned his chosen, which is invariably a crime under theocratic law. Convenient how that works? So yeah, theocracy is basically monarchy with a creaive twist that makes it less questionable to all of those within it. Relative to these systems, democracy is very new. Ancient Greece invented democracy, and it was practiced again to a cerain extent in the Roman Empire, but thn was largely ignored until it was reinovated in America when it was discovered that the six tribes of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy had figured it out on their own and it seemed better than listening to the king who lived across the sea. The problem is that the founding fathers of America decided to make our democracy more familiar and igestibel by basically making it a monarchy with a replacable maonarch we call a president. Someone once asked me "What is the difference between our president and a king?" He was tryign to make a point about government corruption by proving there wasn't a difference, but I replied without hesitation "Once every four to eight years we can replace our president without a bloody coup." Basically this is what we managed to accomplish, which is kind of a big deal. With monarchies, the only way to change leadership is to replace the monarch which gernerally require the death of the current monarch. With theocracies, the only way to change leadership is to change religions. With democracies, we change leadership by votign in a system that we all agree is open to any citizen to try. We claim the system is broken, but the ugly truth is that it's not really democracy, it's the constituents.

So now we are ready to go back and discuss the inherent natural flaw in social structures I mentioned earlier. In nature there are two types of animals, solitary and social. Innately we are all actually selfish solitary creatures, but circumstances sometimes lead us to find benefits in social situations. The primary situation would be mating, as animals that reproduce sexually, we need to get along with at least one other individual at some point in our lives in order for our species to survive. For some of us, sharing parental duties long term is beneficial, one can accquire food while the other protects offspring, and after offspring have grown up and left, it's easier to mate again with the same mate. From here we go to the family unit so the larger group takes care of everybody. This continues to grow to clan structure, then town, then city, then nation, then empire. At every stage, we need a leader, because everybody wants to do their own thing and we pretty much argue until someone lays down the law. At the family level, this is the elder, usually the father, sometimes the mother, at the clan level it's the chief, at the town or city level it's the mayor, at the nation level it's the monarch, president or dictator, and at the empire level it's the emperor. We naturally gravitate toward a leader, there must be a leader, otherwise we have anarchy which is a whole bunch of solitary people who are likely to act selfishly and the large population invariably collapses. Communism, or socialism on paper demands equality, which means having no leader, or at least a leader who recognizes he is equal while also mainting authority. But that doesn't really happen, because humans are selfish, and if we are in charge, we expect to get somethign for it.

This leads to the problem with capitalism and American democracy. Until the institution of American democracy, most companies just belonged to the govenrment, but in free cpaitalist America, the companies are free to do what they want. In believing in this freedom, we have created a blindspot that we are missing how companies are becoming empires. We use the term in a joking manner, but the reality is that companies are relying on the same social structure as government and they restrict us in the same ways, and by allowing them freedom we allow them to take over and oppress us the same as every other govenrment does. and they do it because of the lie that capitalism is for all of us.

Guns

I try to keep things light on this blog and just have fun with my inane hobbies of cartoons and video games, but this past week has seen events that I can not in good conscience ignore. Last weekend there were two shootings in Orlando, Florida. One of thses shootings resulted in the death of one girl, the other was a mass shooting that led to many deaths, none of which can be explained with any reason whatsoever. Normally I kind of shrug this off and accept the sd truth of how horrible our world is that these things happen, but this time I found it take on a new dimension. Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton took politcal action calling for gun control in sympathy for the victims. By Monday, my Facebook newsfeed became filled with propaganda from gun rights supporters who were afraid Democrats would take their guns away. It took about twenty four hours for a violent attack to go from tragic deaths to second ammendment rights. Victims had yet to be buried let alone was there enough time for their next of kin to mourn, and already we're more concerned about protecting our guns than protecting each other. I have never seen anything so obnoxious or selfish as gun nuts feeling they need to protect their own guns than take a moment to express concern for the shooting victims.

I have friends who even went so far as to make arguments for the second ammendment by comparing them to other ammendments as if there is nothing anyone can do to possibly violate this sacred ammendment for gun rights. Let us be clear, if you are a civilian you really only have three possible purposes for it, to hunt, to defend yourself, or to commit a crime, and I'm really only giving you credit for the first two. If you want to hunt, there are several guns that you can use to hunt that are at least as good as any automatic or semi-automatic weapon, if not better. If you are defending yourself or your home, you should go with a handgun similar to what the police use. If you get an assault weapon, this only has one purpose, to kill someone. The second ammendment was written at a time when the U.S. was new and so were guns, so they were difficult to use, but worth it to fight against a corrupt system. Now if you want to do that with a pair of assault rifles, one for each hand, good luck facing off against tanks, drones, and nuclear bombs. Military grade weapons simply don't belong in civilian hands, there is no purpose except to kill people. Don't give me bull about putting it on display or shooting cans in your backyard, you don't need an assault rifle.

Someone once asked me "what's the difference between our president and a king?" He was trying to make a point that our system is failing, but I was ready to answer without hesitation "we can replace our president once every four years without a bloody coup." We take our democracy for granted, but in reality, kings have oppressed us unopposed for centuries until we instituted democracy, before that, royals had to be killed in war to be replaced. Now we just wait four years and we can get a new guy, every eight years we get a new one anyway with no war. This is actually a pretty big deal, and to protect this right, the second ammendment was put in our constitution because civilains owning guns was enough to make the Revolution succeed. The world has changed and no civilian needs guns, it won't make a difference.

If you want a gun for hunting or defending yourself get the appropriate arms, but for the love of god, admit that there is no way any law abiding American citizen who is not on active military service has any right to carry a weapon meant for a soldier. And if you aren't going to concede on guns, at least give me equal rights to carry around a sword so I can defend myself from the gun toting crazies out there.If that suggestion sounds absurd, then you know how I feel when I hear gun enthusiasts cry about their guns might be taken away after a politician suggests we increase gun control so assault rifles will no longer be available after a mass shooting. I challenge anyone to explain to me how a civilian has any use for such a weapon other than to commit mass murder.

The problem with adapting to film

"The movie was okay, but the book was better."

"Movies based on video games are a bad idea."

I think these two problems are really the same problem, making a movie based on an existing story. For years the big problem was basing a movie on a book and everyone who read th book complained about what they got wrong. Then came Super Mario Bros. and ever since video games have suffered as much as books. But why? My theory is that it's simply very difficult to change formats. Books have infinite potential limited only by page numbers, movies have to fit between ninety minutes to three hours, unless you're Peter Jackson and turn it into a series, but let's not go there. When a book goes to film, some things just won't make the cut and they may be the most important details to the reader. Video games have a different, but equally difficult problem, they have a first person interactive element that gets lost in translation. Quite simply, everybody who plays a game plays it differently, so when you see the movie and they ran through a different play, it's upsetting. Of course, the biggest problem is that Hollywood just doesn't give a damn about getting any details right on video game movies, but in their defense it's not always easy. Bear in mind, many games are about one character with minimal dialogue, that does not translate well to the screen. Sometimes as they insert dialogue they lose track of what they are destroying in the process. Largely the problem is the audience, now that we've seen many failures, we are set up to expect it will suck and few of us have patience for anything. The result is that even when Hollywood does make something halfway decent, we still give a negative response. Hollywood just hasn't learned yet that you can't just slap a name on something and make that an instant hit. But consider some of the ideas we have given them to work with.

Super Mario Bros. - Two guys in caps and overalls run and jump through realms of bricks collecting floating coins and mushrooms that slide around coming out of boxes that, like the coins float in midair for no reason, while fighting turtles, venus flytraps and evil mushrooms, in order to rescue a princess only to be foiled by not one but seven cosplayers who all have the same message "Thank you, but our Princess is in another castle."

Double Dragon - Two brothers fight a street gang...eventually they get to the boss and rescue a girl, but only after fighting...a lot of gangsters... actually the same ones over and over again.

Street Fighter - self-explanaory, supposedly a tournament...there's a yogi that stretches beyond reason...a guy who is green and can electrocute you for no apparent reason...for even less reason half of the cast can throw energy projectiles...main antagonist is both psychic and psycho.

Mortal Kombat - another street fighter, only now we have more supernatural combatants, more blood, more violence...surprisingly the best out of the first four to become a movie.

Tekken - another street fighter, because even though UFC isn't as big as the NFL, we're going to bank on movie theater audiences paying to see fighting movies. Tekken doesn't really add anything new to the formula, no worthy dialogue or story, just fighting, little to no supernatural anything.

Doom - one guy fights an endless army of demons with a wide variety of guns.

Mostly I was disappointed by Final Fantasy which was made in house by the company that made the games and they managed to still screw it up, presumably because a distributor thought it would be easier to put out in theaters if they followed Hollywood's lead of marketing to the masses at the expense of the fan base. honestly these are the only ones I actually even looked at until Warcraft. I have heard of a lot of others, but aside from the ones above, many games that were turned into movies have had good stories to begin with. The problem with later games is that they have stories that were written for a single player to interact with, not for a large group of people to passively watch. Arguably, you could probably get better entertainment on Twitch watching someone actually play through a game than watch any of the movies based on them. But in Hollywood, executives are mostly older people who started before video games and still don't actually play them, so they don't know crap. These are the guys that approve the budget and they will not allow film makers to make movies unless they are confident in the film and they won't be confident in the film until they see a script, and as someone who has tried to make a script, generally submitting a few pages of dialogue interspersed with fight scenes noted to be choregraphed later doesn't inspire confidence for someone to part with millions of dollars with any hope of return on investment. To write a script they need to pad with a lot of material that doesn't make any sense. When you add in the director, now you've got a third person who has added a third irrelevant perspective. At no point, apparently, does anyone ever take what is filmed and compare it to actual game footage to consider if it looks right at all, and if it does occur to someone, it's not somebody in the driver's seat.

Personally, I say we need to let more fans make movies dedicated faithfully to source material, and until then, we need fans to relax or Hollwood will give up on us too.

Hunter X Hunter

This anime has been on Toonami for a few weeks, so it's time to review it. So far I like it, pretty by the numbers anie, but then again, considering how 7th Moon is kind of that, I can't hate on it. The show is all about Hunters, people in a fictional world with monsters and magical type folks that must be handled by specialists called Hunters. To be a Hunter one must first take a licensing exam which is so elaborate, it took about three episodes just to get to the exam starting point and now they are still in the exam process. This is actually pretty standard for anime, I have seen a lot where they like to testthe heroes, but this is the first time the story juststarts out with the test and drags out how this test needs to be passed for anybody to actually do the actual work.

At the heart of this story is Gon, a young kid with exceptional abilities far beyond reason, because it's sort of a rule that if you want to follow in the footsteps of the Big Four(DBZ, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece), you have to star an overpowered, overly optimistic, overly friendly kid. Next on the archtype list is Kuripika, the last of a dead clan that is seeking vengance, no word yet on exactly why he survived when all the rest died, but apparently they all have eyes of a distinctive red hue that can be harvested and sold for big bucks which was the motive for the Phantom Troupe, his sworn enemy. The good news is, he will get his vengance as soon as he passes the exam. Then there's Leorio, a prospective doctor with positive ambitions but in dire need of money to pay for med school, so he decided to become a Hunter because he has been told that this job pays better than any other. Then there's Kilua. a kid the same age as Gon who is also overpowered for his age and size. Together they try to pass the exam despite horrible odds since usually only about one every three years actually passes on the first try. But these boys will beat the odds.

I peeked ahead on Wikipedia, after they complete the exam, Kuripika goes after the Phantom Troupe with some help from Gon and they succeed in getting vengance. The end of that story dovetails into a story arc about chimera ants which sounds like a cool monster hunting plot. Then Gon finds out his father isn't just a Hunter, he's one of the elite twelve leaders of the Hunter organization. I don't really know what happens after that, but over all it sounds like standard fare, the Hunters seperate into classes that use powers similar to RPGs and every anime that has been the slightest bit cool.. I'm not really complaining mind you, in fact I appreciate the throwback. While everybody else is trying to be edgy, Hunter X Hunter goes back to basics and does it well.  It may not be original or offer anythin gnew at all, in fact t some extent it seems to be an excse to be lazy brainless anime fun. But I like that, so I like this show, and I suppoort the idea that somebody can just put together something like this and it can be successful. If you like this sort of thing then tune into Toonami and enjoy Hunter X Hunter.