Financial topics

[Higgenbotham]

Now let's say the average low income apartment is 900 square feet and since Dr. Patterson's numbers are conservative we have let's say 50,000 cockroaches in said apartment. We therefore have 129,600 square inches of space in said apartment and the cockroach population for all intents and purposes is blanketing the apartment.

[John]

> I believe cockroaches will be on this earth long after humans have
> exterminated themselves. If you objectively watch humans, they are
> programmed, just with programming that is inferior to that of
> cockroaches, ants, etc., from a survival standpoint. When I fly
> over major cities, to me they resemble anthills. There is very
> little thinking or intelligence involved beyond that of genetic
> programming. When there is, the significant result is to create
> something that will eventually be lethal and creates more useless
> human drama, like various kinds of weapons or waste.

That's an interesting way of looking at it and I agree, but there's
also an issue of "special purpose" versus "general purpose."

A clock is a very simple special purpose object, and does only one
thing -- tells the time -- and a well-designed clock can last for
years or decades, even centuries.

A general purpose computer also tells time, but does many other things
as well. Because of its complexity, even a well-designed computer
won't last more than a few years.

The same principle applies to cockroaches and humans.

A cockroach is a very simple special purpose object, and does only one
thing -- survive and propagate. (That's two things, but you know what
I mean.)

A human being also has to be survive and propagate, but also has to do
many other things, such as build major cities. Because of their
complexity, humans and human beings are a lot more fragile than
cockroaches.

> Here it says cockroaches can live without their heads for a month:
> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... earth.html

> If humans could figure out how to live without their heads they
> might have a better chance.

Once again, this is news to me. I know a lot of humans that manage to
live without their heads.

[Higgenbotham]

A human being also has to be survive and propagate, but also has to do
many other things, such as build major cities. Because of their
complexity, humans and human beings are a lot more fragile than
cockroaches.

I think my comparison would be a bit better if humans were still organized as hunter-gatherers. I think the hunter-gatherer form of organization is quite resilient and comparable to an anthill or a cockroach nest since there are many discrete and separate "colonies". Since the human cities are all linked now, it's not quite right to compare them to isolated anthills.

The other thing I would agree with is that some humans are given the OK and the responsibility of propagating while other humans are given the responsibility of organizing and maintaining the civilization and for them to propagate is looked down upon. So whereas it is fine and dandy for a 16 year old in a slum to have a child (usually several by age 18) and collect welfare benefits (the civilization pays her to propagate), it's not OK for a girl who goes to Harvard to have a child even at age 20 while attending classes at Harvard (the civlization pays her to attend classes at Harvard). She is not even supposed to have a child until she is around 30 and "gets her career established" which by then it is often too late. Whereas all cockroaches are given an equal chance to propagate.

[Higgenbotham]

Once again, this is news to me. I know a lot of humans that manage to
live without their heads.

Yes, a lot do and for those that do, it makes for an easy life at present.

[Higgenbotham]

This thing in Baltimore is getting interesting. Now they're going to try (or pretend) to sacrifice 6 cops, 3 white and 3 black. I wonder if the cops (meaning the whole force) are going to fight back or what they will do. Notice how the Mayor used the divide and conquer tactic on the force in her speech.

When talking about this earlier this week, I mentioned the idea that there's an issue the media and the authorities don't want to discuss re Baltimore and other slums. That is, little known to most people, the gangs have already taken over areas that the police are unable to patrol. There are probably certain areas the gangs are butting up on now that they cannot lose for strategic reasons. Therefore, violence is going to be inevitable.

Charging the cops sends the message that the soldiers that are maintaining the boundaries of the empire are being sacrificed. That may embolden the gangs for the time being. Then we'll have to see if they convict the cops or quietly drop the charges.

There was a guy on a video talking about the fact that a few Baltimore cops killed a guy several months ago and no charges were filed. Now all of a sudden it is important to file charges as the population gets restive. The hypocrisy and corruption is clearly evident.

This has to do with the fact that the authorities have illegitimately grown population levels for personal gain in the manner previously described.

I think Limits to Growth can also mean: How much can you let the dependent population multiply before they lose control of the cities as appears to be happening in Baltimore? Got any Harvard or Johns Hopkins graduates having babies in Baltimore? That is funny. It is such a preposterous thought as to be funny.

[Higgenbotham]

Dangerfield cruises his domain on rent day in a midnight-blue Rolls Royce touring sedan, shadowed by a squad of armed bodyguards in a white Humvee military vehicle. He points his finger, and a private army springs to do his bidding.

"Don't tell me about the law," witnesses recalled Dangerfield telling one tenant as his troops smashed the man's furniture and threw it into an alley. "As far as you're concerned, I am the law."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-housing ... tml#page=1

This article is from 1999. The problem can only be bigger now and it's my opinion this type of thing is no longer reported because it's gone critical. But I saw it myself as described in past posts. Not in Baltimore though.

[Higgenbotham]

.In June 1997, two of Dangerfield's tenants complained that he had refused to fix a broken-down rowhouse at 1943 N. Patterson Park Ave., where they were renting a room for $55 a week. The plumbing leaked. Wires hung out of the walls. Gas hissed from the broken stove. Rats and roaches teemed in the basement. Perusing the long list of deficiencies, a housing court judge ordered the landlord to fix the property and barred him from evicting his renters in the meantime. Two weeks later, on a hot July night, Dangerfield eased his Rolls Royce onto Patterson Park Avenue, parked it under a street light and watched in a pinstriped suit as five of his men tore the door off its hinges and herded the occupants into the street, witnesses later testified. "I felt like less than a man that night," recalls Eric Holmes, a 41-year-old disabled Army veteran who lived there with his wife. "But there was nothing I could do. They dragged us out of bed. One guy had a gun in his belt. The rest of them were all crowding around us, knocking stuff over and yelling. You ever seen a barroom brawl? That's what it was like. "Next thing I knew, I was on the sidewalk in my underwear. And George was laughing at us. They all were laughing at us. "As his troops shoved Holmes' belongings out a rear window into a garbage-strewn alley full of chained guard dogs, Dangerfield leaned on the gleaming hood of his Rolls out front, holding court for his many tenants on the block of rowhouse shells, court records show. Dangerfield owns four houses there, partitioned into tenement flats for three families, all sharing the same kitchen and bathroom and paying their rent week-to-week. Called into court for violating the judge's order, he pleaded guilty to wrongful eviction and received a $500 fine -- small consolation to Holmes and his wife. "It's like something out of a Charles Dickens novel," says Kenneth M. Walden, a poverty lawyer with the Public Justice Center who is now suing Dangerfield for assault and trespass in the incident. "We deal with some fairly desperate clients, so we're used to seeing bad conditions. But this is a new low. "That Mr. Dangerfield can get away with using tactics like these is a sign of how bad things are out there.

[John]

I read some additional comments on that ZeroHedge article, and one
of them has a nice summary of Obamacare:

> I happen to work in a medical field. I can tell you that Obamacare
> is a slow-motion economic train wreck you will watch in real
> time. It is going to show what happens when people who know
> virtually nothing about an industry take control for political
> purposes and to punish.

> I do not have the energy to elucidate every negative aspect, nor
> do I think I know all of them. However, just envision the fact
> that people have less than half the coverage at twice the price
> and no extra healthcare is actually being delivered anywhere, even
> at twice the price (insurance). It is a first rate economic drag
> and only the poor are laughing all the way to the doctor's
> office.

I particularly like the sentence: People have less than half the
coverage at twice the price and no extra healthcare is actually being
delivered anywhere, even at twice the price (insurance).

I've tried to explain the same concept, but this sentence does it
better than I did.

[gerald]

John & Higbotham --- regarding limits of growth, basically there are none. But growth is limited by knowledge ( which includes scientific) and societal structure ( which includes political and religious - belief systems ). Examples of previous potential limits, whale oil for light, trees for fuel, and the sound barrier for speed. These proved not to be limits at all. Limits are generally self imposed by lack of knowledge and existing societal structure.

If there were no limits to growth the earth would be covered with a layer of cockroaches, or take your pick of species. Flies or rabbits or bacteria would be good choices as they also multiply quickly. Could you say that the fact that the earth (and solar system) isn't blanketed with cockroaches is due to lack of knowledge of the cockroaches?

Your limits stated are Earth and current physical body structure. Earth is not the only planet and humanity is messing around with genetics. As for cockroaches and other things, Nature sets limits within a specific context, leave the context and the "limits" change.

[gerald]

This is news to me. I thought that the world WAS blanketed with cockroaches.

John, we just need more low income apartments.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid= ... 4201&hl=en

Dr. Richard Patterson said the cockroach survey, the largest ever conducted by the US Department of Agriculture, concluded that 18,000 to 40,000 cockroaches live in the average low income apartment.

"That is a conservative estimate," Dr. Patterson said in an interview.

The above estimate for cockroaches is, from experience, about right, their just pets you know.