This Pope On Politics and Economy - What To Do

Right wing and anarcho-capitalist (internal contradiction) Catholics are criticizing this Pope for most of what he says on economics.  It is unseemly, like the demons who screamed in fear as Jesus approached.

“Our world economic system can’t take it anymore,” says the Bishop of Rome in an interview with La Vanguardia. “I’m no illumined one. I didn’t bring any personal projects under my arm.” “We are throwing away an entire generation to maintain a system that isn’t good,” he opines with respect to unemployed youth.

Yes, capitalism is over, done with, like the Soviet system, and yes, we have thrown away two generations of entrepreneurs.  The people who depend on new business to have their sinecures funded, social security, pensions, etc, have denied the formation of the economy that might have funded the promises made.  Sort of condign punishment coming, slow motion.

As opposed to the Pope, I have a plan, a personal project.  As I survey the working parts of the economy, the imbalance between small and big business is a clear manifestation of the damage done by the federal "get big or get out" mandate.  Small business needs to be promoted, but this cannot be a Government project, for the Government has already done to small business what it has done to the American Indian and "health care."  Although I am not going to worry about that, I do advise we collective elect to end all that.

For my part, my classes have always been focussed on start-up and small business.  Over the last 30 years what I have seen is the atrophy of the innate sense to trade small and grow, and the learned skill of selling.  So my curriculum is beginning to emphasize these two points:

1. The MOQ FOB - it has always been in my curriculum, but what was once a reality noted is now an imperative to be restored, a lack to be addressed.

2. Trade Show Booth Management - the trade show is the World Cup of the business.  The booth is the match.  The business activity is directed to the upcoming show, and capitalizing on lessons learned from the last show afterwards.  There is so much to this, it is often farmed out to experts at the small business level. But to farm it out, to farm anything out, you must be a good consumer of that which you wish to farm out.  If you know nothing about trade shows, you can hardly judge anyone who is running trade shows for you.  And people who are working for you without any standards come back from trade shows with a stack of business cards and call those "trade leads." So I am cobbling together several start-ups ready, willing and able to sell worldwide into one trade-show-booth-as-working-seminar, this one the first:  http://www.johnspiers.com/Export_Agriculture/Advanced.html

The result - supply for nascent demand, the means to discover new markets, to grow a small business.  The bad news is we are imbalanced as to small business vs large, the good news is a start-up is automatically leveraged, has exponential value since it is rare.  The payoff will come with the changes apres-deluge, when property "values" drop to zero, and taxes go to 90%.  Those were the golden days of small business last century. They are coming back.

The Pope goes on, after decrying fundamentalism (extremism), and lauds radical (roots) revolution:

 For me, the great revolution is going to the roots, recognizing them and seeing what those roots have to say to us today. There is no contradiction between [being a] revolutionary and going to the roots.

See, when your education includes vocabulary, you can communicate ideas.  We pay more for an education for each American in the USA than it cost to educate this Pope, but we get miserable results.  But back to the point, radical and revolution.  So far so good.

I know that something could happen to me, but it’s in the hands of God. I remember that in Brazil they had prepared a closed Popemobile for me, with glass, but I couldn’t greet the people and tell them that I love them from within a sardine tin

And something probably will happen to him, because such voices don't get the mic long.  And the next Pope will go back to the bullet-proof security.  The blood of martyrs, etc...

Now to his views on economics, that sends the right wing crazy:

It’s proven that with the food that is left over we could feed the people who are hungry. When you see photographs of undernourished kids in different parts of the world, you take your head in your hand, it incomprehensible. I believe that we are in a world economic system that isn’t good.  ...
The economy is moved by the ambition of having more and, paradoxically, it feeds a throwaway culture. Young people are thrown away when their natality is limited. The elderly are also discarded because they don’t serve any use anymore, they don’t produce, this passive class… In throwing away the kids and elderly, the future of a people is thrown away because the young people are going to push forcefully forward and because the elderly give us wisdom. They have the memory of that people and they have to pass it on to the young people. And now also it is in style to throw the young people away with unemployment. The rate of unemployment is very worrisome to me, which in some countries is over 50%. Someone told me that 75 million young Europeans under 25 years of age are unemployed. That is an atrocity. But we are discarding an entire generation to maintain an economic system that can’t hold up anymore, a system that to survive must make war, as the great empires have always done. But as a Third World War can’t be done, they make zonal wars. What does this mean? That they produce and sell weapons, and with this the balance sheets of the idolatrous economies, the great world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money, obviously they are sorted. This unique thought takes away the wealth of diversity of thought and therefore the wealth of a dialogue between peoples. 

Whew!  Exactement!  Today all famine is state-sponsored, the desired result of state interventionism.  Young and old are thrown away, exactly, I've been watching the last two generations be sucked into FIRE (Finance, Investment, and Real Estate), in essence pointless rearranging of the deck chairs, and the computer "revolution" in which massive resources are martialled to keep straight who owns what chairs and where the are located, on the Titanic.  And a war based economy is exactly right: droning wedding parties to terrorize people into giving up their resources is necessary to fund USA empty pensions.  And this regime crowds out the division of labor that would emerge if we did not cheer on the human sacrifice of the war economy (thank you for your service!).

Bankrupt balance sheets, division of labor, proper definition of wealth, wow...  someone else out there thinks like I do.

Well understood globalization is a wealth. Poorly understood globalization is that which nullifies differences. It is like a sphere in which all points are equidistant from the center. A globalization that enriches is like a polyhedron, all united but each preserving its particularity, its wealth, its identity, and this isn’t given. And this does not happen.

Whoa...  spot on!  Then he is asked about independence movements -

All division worries me. There is independence by emancipation and independence by secession. The independences by emancipation, for example, are American, that they were emancipated from the European States. The independences of nations by secession is a dismemberment, sometimes it’s very obvious. Let’s think of the former Yugoslavia. Obviously, there are nations with cultures so different that couldn’t even be stuck together with glue. The Yugoslavian case is very clear, but I ask myself if it is so clear in other cases. Scotland, Padania, Catalunya. There will be cases that will be just and cases that will not be just, but the secession of a nation without an antecedent of mandatory unity, one has to take it with a lot of grains of salt and analyze it case by case. 

Exactly.  Why should Ireland fight for freedom only to return to under the British boot?  I am keen on Scottish independence, but the pro-independence people seem to have a program of "worse than English" rule.  If Scotland were to be emancipated from England, then they would have free markets and grow in peace, prosperity, wealth.  But no one is talking freedom as a part of Scottish independence.

And on participation in politics -

Maybe they talk about the same problems but with a new music, and this I like, this gives me hope because politics is one of the more elevated forms of love, of charity. Why? Because it leads to the common good, and a person who, [despite] being  able to do it, does not get involved in politics for the common good, is selfish; or that uses politics for their own good, is corrupt.

Ouch.  As an anarchist, this is challenging.  But anarchy is politics, too.  I myself refuse to participate in politics because I am one of those who would use politics for my own good.  I am no better than the criminals we have in office, except that I know better than to claim looking out for #1 is holy.  Anarchy keeps people like me out of power, and we are legion.

I wonder if the Pope is warming up to condemn interest?

Here is the Pope's dive, Mina Mazzini -


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