The following blog is intended to be a small, tiny cry of warning.  Indulge me.  I just have to say it out loud to people I care about.  I have no idea if it should be taken seriously.  But I take it seriously.  

There is no doubt that some things today make me optimistic.  Others pessimistic.  But, in the end, I have to look at ‘the system’ we have invested in (or better put: been conscripted into).  And I don’t like what I see.

The system is not designed so much for ‘the benefit of the people’.  It is designed for the management of the people.

Before I ‘drag’ you through something you don’t want to read, please see Alex Morton’s piece on salmon.  It was the subject of an article in the New York Times.  What she says about salmon is what I am saying about just about everything.  I am just not saying it as well as she does.

Please see: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/ 

If, after that, you are still willing to read further, let me take you back a smidge…

Private property has always been in the hands of the rich and powerful but it became entrenched in law after the Enclosure Act in England.  And they didn’t do that back then for the common good, you know.  They did it to manage the common man.  Prior to that legislation, the people had access to the ‘common lands’ on which they farmed, gathered, grazed animals and hunted as they pleased.

After the Enclosure Acts, the peasants had so much less ‘commons’ that they were impoverished.  If they ‘poached’ or otherwise trespassed on the private land, they could be punished or even executed.  They needed to be managed and so they were herded into factories and mines.  And wars, of course.

Private land ownership was not a reward for the peasantry.  It was management of the peasantry.  And it hasn’t gotten any better for the poor or the middle class of today.   Imagine being 25 and looking at a half-million dollar mortgage to have a ‘starter’ apartment in downtown Vancouver?  ‘Handcuffs’ and ‘jail’ and ‘life term’ come to mind for me.  Über managment!

In fact, owning a home isn’t really a good idea at all.  It’s a mug’s game.  Owning real estate is a con!  You never stop paying for your house.  In fact, in 40 years most people have paid in taxes again what they originally paid for the house.  Live there longer than 40 years and you pay for it again in a much shorter period of time.  And if you don’t pay your property taxes they take the house!

Was it ever yours?  No.  It never was and it never is.  It is their house.  That, too, is part of the system.  Property ownership is just a subtle form of enslavement.  It is ‘capturing the taxpayer’.  You paid for your own jail (so did I)!

More evil is done in the name of paying the mortgage than all the crimes of theft and fraud rolled into one.   

And they don’t stop herding the sheople there.   Remember: they only ‘keep you to tax you’.  Think:  Matrix (the movie).  It was Ronald Regan who pointed out that there are 151 taxes in just a loaf of bread!   Eat the bread, and pay them the tax!  That is the system.
    
Friends of mine are selling their house for almost $900,000.  It’s a simple cul-de-sac type house in a boringly flat neighbourhood.  Nice place, actually.  But no mansion.  2000 sft.  They are doing this to ‘downsize’.  1200 sft.  Good idea.  They are going to buy the new house for $800,000.  But they won’t ‘pocket the difference’.  There are taxes and commissions and professional fees that will eat up at least half.  Not to mention moving expenses and ‘making the new-place-home‘ expenses.  Plus HST all over the place!  They may break even.  The government and the real estate industry will make out like bandits.  Because they are bandits!

My friends will pay the same if not more (similar tax rates and strata fees) to live in their down-sized home.  Who wins?

As I said, it ain’t just the real estate business.  It is everything.  In the early United States, nature provided all the meat and protein the populace at the time could want – given a little management.  Deer, pheasant, turkeys and wild produce were plentiful.  The bison herds of the plains covered the areas as far as the eye could see.  But then the American ”Enclosure Acts” came along with the railroad.  And all the deer and the antelope and the bison were slaughtered and replaced by cows, sheep and steers on ranches.

Ever seen a modern chicken factory?  A modern pig factory is even worse!

The landowners raised domesticated meat and charged the peasants for it.  They didn’t bother to restore the free bison herds.  Who would profit from that?  What was free for the poor person (Native American mostly, in this case) was now an expense for everyone.

The system: most of our protein was privatized.

Fortunately for the powers that be in Canada and the United States, the population embraced the industrial revolution (AKA captivity) with increased gusto and soon most everyone could buy their Wonder Bread while wearing a grey suit and living in a ticky-tacky box instead of living off the land.  But, of course, people had to work 8 hours a day back then to be able to do that.

Now we have to work that and more.  So does our spouse.  So do our kids.  That allows us to buy the suit, the box and the Wonder bread.  Well, smaller houses, maybe.  All stuck close together.  And Big Macs instead of real food.

151 taxes in a loaf of Wonder Bread helps perpetuate the system but you can be assured that it is not only bread and real estate that is ‘controlled’.

Monsanto is trying to privatize seeds!

GE was and is trying to privatize water!

Fish farms are trying to privatize fish!

And our (?) government is collaborating with all of it!

Just in case you are missing the point still: they do not own the bread!  It is not theirs to tax.  They don’t own the salmon.  They didn’t own the bison.  They don’t own the land or the water or the air we breathe.  They think they do but they don’t own us either! 

Don’t get me wrong: if you are going to have hundreds of millions of cattle, ooops…….. people, then ‘providing for them’ is necessary.  I guess.  And, of course, there is no point in having them just to provide for them, is there?  Ya gotta work ’em!  They are not pets!  They have to make a living, earn a profit and feed the machine.   The system makes sense to the system.

Not to me.

Capitalism.  It is not about the money.  The ‘system’ is also about keeping us ‘in our place’.

It seems that when we organize and ‘do business’, the only ones who benefit are those who ‘tax’ or control the basic necessities.  But the small producers (farmers etc.) don’t do well.  Neither does the fisherman.  Hunters went the way of the dodo (fittingly, I suppose).  Gatherers are now minimum wage exploited wet-backs from Mexico.  And even artisans and skilled producers are being replaced by cheap overseas labour and automation.  The rich get richer.  The poor get poorer.  Those who tax are responsible.

And the wild fisheries get privatized.

Soon the professional class will feel the constraints.  According to the ‘Occupy Movement’ they already are.

This is where the warning gets more close to home:

With modernization and globalization, we have also become even more dependent on the system and we peasants of the 1st-world are also fast becoming redundant to it!

Pretty soon, the rich won’t want to keep some of the more demanding peasants around any longer.  Why should they when they have plenty of eager, work-for-less peasants all  around the world from whom to pick?  Do you really think that the governments that bring you war, enclosure acts, lies, corruption and taxes are going to ‘treat you good’ when you are no longer useful?

They won’t even do that for the beautiful, harmless, free resource of magnificent salmon.  And they didn’t do it for the bison or the cod.  Or the dodo.

They ain’t going to do it for you.

No, they aren’t going to kill you.  Not directly.  But your pension will evaporate in some slight-of-hand.  Your cost of living will exceed your ability to meet it and sections of the ‘system’ you rely on will be withdrawn.  To do that, they will bolster the police, the laws and the regulations.  Hint:  some governments will go bankrupt so they don’t have to pay the people what they owe.  I know that only because that is what is already happening.  We can measure that today.

I have no idea what more they have up their sleeve.  But the writing is on the wall.  It reads: Warning!