Capitalism ("Freedom") is headed for a train-wreck UNLESS...

Capitalism’s one inherent weakness will come back
to bite it, in spite of its inherent strengths.

Capitalism works really well for Capitalists. But one small detail seems to have been overlooked: ..the majority of people aren’t Capitalists.

In fact, most people are Workers (aka “Human Resources”) employed BY Capitalists. This little detail is why the Rich are getting richer at the expense of the Poor: it's a deliberate strategy. Hard-nosed and greedy.

(The mystery, for me, is why the poor continue to elect the rich to rule over them, thereby prolonging and intensifying their own oppression. Both Thailand and Australia are cases in point: Thaksin and Howard have a lot they could chat about.)

A capitalist, for the sake of this article, is a person who is already wealthy enough to earn income merely by manipulating and investing capital. On the other end of the scale, a person who ‘works’ for a living, a wage-earner, doesn’t qualify. In reality, these opposites form a continuum, given that mums and dads (like us) can dabble in small-scale investment.

Capitalism’s supply-and-demand model is text-book perfect. Simply supply what others need, and you get rewarded. Capitalism has already successfully supplied core needs (food, water, shelter, health-care) to most western countries. Now there are too many goods chasing too few needs. Yet, in the words of Benjamin Barber, whose ideas I have nicked, Capitalism requires us to need all it produces in order to ensure its own survival.

Given this crisis, Capitalism has two basic options (apart, obviously, from the logical and preferred one of reducing production). It can either:

[a] ...continue to try to sell its warehouses full of stuff to EXISTING wealthy customers by advertising and artificially creating wants… as opposed to needs. After all, it seems logical, even simplistic, to target people who already have money available to spend;
.............................................OR

[b] ...find NEW and genuinely needy customers.

Unfortunately for the billions of the world’s poor, Capitalism has chosen [a].

By doing so, it is allowing a worm to slowly eat a hole in its own heart. It’s a fatal worm called Short-Term Thinking. Examples? Annual Profit/Loss Report to shareholders, contract horizons, The State of the Union speech, fixed-term elections, etc. For the Capitalist, results must be forthcoming in the short term: there’s no incentive for long-term thinking. Gratification cannot be delayed. The obvious extreme example? Bush and his pet arse-licker Howard stubbornly continue to prioritise Corporate Profits over Global Warming, threatening our whole planet's very existence.

So Capitalism busies itself with propagandizing frivolous and wasteful wants for the existing wealthy, while ignoring the core needs of the poor. Global inequality means that the wealthy have too few needs, while the needy have too little wealth. We (the wealthy) still work hard due to the cursed protestant/catholic work ethic, but only so we can pay for the nose job, mag wheels, nutritious Pringles chips, or those extra cable channels we're told we need:

A useful day's work packing Barbie dolls in plastic wrapping
while someone else's children starve

FunkyPix2 will now showcase a range of our INCREDIBLY USEFUL all-new products, tempting you well-heeled layabouts to assist the even better-heeled Capitalist CEOs to survive. Bugger the rest - they should get real jobs.

..............6 YOU CANNOT SURVIVE WITHOUT THE FOLLOWING ITEMS 6

---

FUNKYPIX2's ONLINE CATALOGUE OF
INDISPENSIBLE NEW PRODUCT LINES !!
Credit available no matter what your age or rating!!


A combination wardrobe-coffin saves you money!
Buy one, get another one FREE! Useful!!

...

...

Gosh, why hasn't anyone thought of it before?

This Backscratch Instruction Kit will assist your friend to locate THAT precise itchy spot.

..

...

..

...

...

Vital for your office. Shredding Scissors for when the electric shredder is on the fritz.
Dick Cheney used these to get rid of those inconvenient email printouts from Karl Rove! You too can be just like Dick!

.

..

...

The 42-string internally-illuminated Pikasso guitar.

.

.

...

...

Rude-olph, the ideal Xmas gift for the boss.

...or maybe John Howard (but why not add a few non-chocolate ones too?)
..

.

Your Moggy craves mental stimulation too, just like you.
This realistic Radio-controled Mouse will build his intellectual cat-pacity and physical fatness too!
It (the mouse) squeaks pitifully when pounced on!

..

...

You'll never know how you got by in the past once your house has a Telephone Sheep tethered in every room.

...

...

Children have so much energy it's a pity not to put it to good use AND prevent global warming at the same time.
This Tricycle-Mower is the solution to reducing your family's carbon footprint.

...

..

Now there's NO MORE WAITING for your noodles to cool. With this fabulous Noodle Fan, your quality of life will be enhanced beyond belief.

Comes with one FREE chopstick AND a packet of noodles for your convenience.

Need to go? The Porta-Loo offers instant relief from Bangkok's traffic-jams!

(click here to see more useful toilets at the Bangkok International Toilet Expo)

Every lifestyle-conscious house now features a Day Clock.
This useful piece will enhance your Quality of Life and PERSONAL STATUS enormously!!
(Rich people and film stars all own these, of course)

...

As Benjamin Barber says, the easiest targets for advertising propaganda are children. Children can be empowered as shoppers by legitimising and channeling their un-formed tastes, then subtly detaching them from their "gate-keeper" parents and teachers. Toddlers can often recognise brand logos before they can talk:

They are baby Einsteins who, via consumption-directed play, can shop before they can walk. The strategy: first create the addiction, then provide the coup-de-grâce… easy credit. Vast shopping malls are environments designed to be ALL about consumption, whereas in the old days the town square used to have a library, a corner shop, a park, a school, town-hall, pool, church, art gallery and homes.

Is it POSSIBLE to re-direct Capitalism’s strengths to a more moral end, the satisfaction of real human needs for the majority, rather than artificially-inflated wants for the few? Is it possible for the mice to bell the cat?

Yes it is (in theory), but Capitalism must first learn to defer profits and take steps to empower the poor and needy. How can people be good customers if they earn less than a dollar a day? Billions of people need help to become customers. In this way, Capitalists could regain a lot of much-needed goodwill. But that will require Capitalism to temporarily defer profits, defer gratification, to bell the proverbial cat.

Micro-credit is one small way into this minefield. With a pump, for instance, villagers can get sufficient clean water to drink and avoid the human (and financial) costs of worm-borne diseases. Pharmeceutical companies should be thinking about how to sell inexpensive retro-virals to Africans with HIV instead of pushing Botox to the “forever young” customers they are trying to create in LA or London. And parents could refuse to relinquish their gate-keeping role (Ah, if only they could recognize their own victimhood first!).

If just a handful of visionary Corporations could lead the way and demonstrate to Wall Street the massive long-term profits to be made from a little co-operation and patience, Capitalism just might survive. There are literally BILLIONS of potential customers out there in (so-called) "developing" countries. Here's one such simple invention to ease the daily chore of carrying water-drums on the heads of millions of people:

More ideas like the Q-Drum are needed.
There's an excellent article in the International Herald Tribune here.

Otherwise WHOA, baby, put on your seat-belts for Capitalism’s fast-approaching train wreck... it is so incestuously focussed on itself that it will continue to go round in ever-smaller circles until it vanishes up its own arse.

The next question: What will replace Capitalism? We suggest benevolent World Dictatorship by the staff of FunkyPix2... with appropriately huge salary, stock options, company car fleet, gold bath-taps, etc).
Hey, lackey, peel me a grape...

Forget Mars and colonising Outer Space – we haven’t even explored INNER Space yet

(Theme music: “I Do Love to Be Below the Seaside”)

This luxury bedroom is not the box referred to in the article below.

Mirroring FunkyPix2’s article on the colonization of Mars, we hail a young visionary Australian scientist who is re-opening the question “Could humans live under the ocean?”

Lloyd Godson is planning to spend two weeks submerged in a 3x2 metre steel box under a lake in NSW, supporting himself with a bicycle-powered generator and using algae to produce oxygen. Listen to the ABC Australia’s AM program report.

Lloyd calls himself an Aquanaut, claiming that re-colonisation of the oceans is a logical and more practical alternative to colonising outer space. After all, three-quarters of our planet is covered in water, and land-masses are shrinking due to climate change. The ocean's also a lot closer to the corner store - let's face it, Mars isn't so convenient if you suddenly find you've run out of fresh milk.

I must be anally-fixated. My first question was "How is he going to dispose of his Porta-Potty residue on a long-term basis?"

Update: mission accomplished!

Update on my post about Thailand's Chatakam Amulet

Crowds push to obtain vouchers for the limited number of Chatukam (Jatukam) amulets

A woman in Thailand has been trampled to death in the stampede to get one of the prized Jatukam Amulets. The 'magical' amulet is supposed to bring instant good luck.

Details of the Thailand's obssession with the Jatukarm talismans are here in a previous FunkyPix2 article. Charms and amulets, even though they are not Buddhist in origin, are superstitiously revered by most Thais. There has been recent criticism of Buddhist Wats for profiting enormously from sales of blessed amulets, and for contriving to manufacture more when supplies run low. Some of the original ones, dating back to the 1980s, are selling for between US$16,000 - $18,000 each.

Like other systems of belief, things can go all wrong when Ritual takes precedence over Common Sense, when commerce wrenches dominance from benevolent spirituality. I don't think this is a culturally insensitive thing to say, just an observation. I live here and love Thai people, but by the same token, it helps to be on the outside looking in - an 'alien', as Thai Immigration so genteely expresses it.

This sadly twisted amulet fixation serves to throw light on the Thai people's present mood of uncertainty, and shows how commerce has taken advantage of people's fears and hopes, nay, even their desperation to secure a safer future. Condolences to the unlucky lady's family.

To read more detail in Thailand’s Nation newspaper, click here.

May 27 2007 update: Sanity prevails - a revered Buddhist monk has been courageous enough to be a whistle-blower. He aligns with FunkyPix2 when he said that education for greedy monks should be stepped up so they could learn the difference between Buddhist and Brahman [sic] beliefs. Someone had to bell the cat.

Thailand's Songkran Festival? Um... maybe not...

"War-terfare" in Chiangmai. The pun is apt in Thai as well:
the almost-identical Thai word 'songkram' translates as 'war'.

We get the hell out of Chiangmai every year during the Thai festival of Songkran. The ancient ritual of gently pouring water over the hands of elderly citizens to show respect has morphed into raging country-wide water-wars. Chiangmai, with its ancient moat, has become the epicentre of this annual madness.

Last year we escaped via a trip to Europe; this year we escaped to a small reef-fringed privately-owned island (Koh Talu) in the Gulf of Siam. It's about 4 hours by road south of Bangkok and a 15-minute speedboat ride away from the Songkran aqua-anarchy. No water-throwing allowed. Peace and quiet. Snorkelling to hand-feed bananas to thronging tropical fish. Early morning white sand beach walks with coconut palms obediently bowing to the ocean, leisurely canoeing before a brief refreshing "five-o'clock" tropical downpour. Then it's curried Thai dishes with spiced seafood so fresh it almost bites you back. Retirement sucks, but dammit, someone's gotta do it :-)

Meanwhile, back on the mainland . . .

. . . mayhem rules. Traffic accidents proliferate among inebriated teens and tourists, broken glass litters the roads, and large colourful plastic water-cannon on the backs of roving pick-up trucks go squirt-berserk. Talc paste is smeared and liberally flung by the fistful onto people, cars, and shop windows alike, without fear or favour. Un-announced ice cubes arrive suddenly down your collar. If you're on the street, you're fair game, especially if you're female and wearing a t-shirt. Bugger Global Warming, Social Responsibility or boring road rules. Yee-hah... this is Thailand's Catharsis.

Read more about Songkran and our experiences in 2006 with some photos towards the bottom of this page on the original FunkyPix site. There are more on Page 26 if you click on 'Next'.

CORRUPTION in Australia and Thailand: a brief comparison of styles

The rear entrance to John Ducklips Howard’s residence in Keeyan-bruh,
where legislation can be bought (Payment by Stock Options preferred)

Most Australians seem to accept unquestioningly that Australia is one of the leading countries on earth. “We’re the guys in the white hats. Other people are corrupt, not us. How can we be bad? We’re Australians, for goodness sake!”

Well, as Robert Mugabe once (mockingly) quipped, Australians have convict genes. We picked up a thing or two about betrayal and crime from our abusive parent, Mother England. We’ve been doing Corruption long enough now that we’ve learned how to cover our tracks very well, so the system runs smoothly enough. Every now and then, someone gets caught and a convenient scapegoat gets roasted:

. . . but most of the time australian corruption stays safely concealed behind thick corporate walls, buried under sedimentary layers of creative accounting.

The difference between australia and Thailand is this – corruption in Thailand permeates every level of society from street-vendors to politicians: it's a chain of interdependent deals. Pull out one link and the entire chain collapses (think domino metaphor, pack of cards, etc). As a result, corruption is very difficult to eradicate (as Thailand's Surayud government is discovering) because it is necessary to prosecute everyone from the Prime Minister all the way through the long chain of deals right down to the street-vendor and the taxi-mafia. The folks at the top probably don't even know who the folks at the bottom are. Right, Mr Thaksin? Mr Thaksin? Hello? ....Hellooooo??

In Australia, on the other hand, corruption resides mainly at very high levels of business and politics, leaving the masses of workers struggling to work more hours to support the resulting top-heavy system…. the rich getting richer at workers' expense. At least in Thailand, everyone scores a few extra baht on the way. Maybe that's the price australians pay for having a convict background - we often tend to defer to (and naively trust) "THE AUTHORITIES". Social genetics are powerful, affecting everything from families to nations.

As a simple illustration of an Australian Who Dared to Question, here’s a letter a FunkyPix2 reader wrote to the ATO last year:

Dear Australian Tax Office,

Enclosed is my 2006 tax return showing that I owe $3,407.00 in taxes. Please note the attached article from Hansard, wherein you will see that the Australian Defence Forces are paying $171.50 for hammers and the Australian Barley Board has paid $600.00 for a toilet seat.

I am enclosing four toilet seats (value $2,400) and six hammers (value $1,029), bringing my total remitted to $3,429.00. Please apply the overpayment of $22.00 to the "Prime Ministerial Election Fund," as noted on my return. You can do this inexpensively by sending them one 1.5" Phillips Head screw (article from Hansard detailing how ASIO pays $22.00 each for 1.5" Phillips Head Screws is enclosed for your convenience.)

It has been a pleasure to pay my tax bill this year, and I look forward to paying it again next year.

Sincerely,
A Satisfied Taxpayer

Tigers? Endangered? No sir. FunkyPix2 finds thousands in China

Tigers galore: Sleepless in Shanghai.

A report in Citizen’s Voice Newsletter Citizen’s Voice StopMAI Newsletter in Western Australia, gives a chilling account of battery-farms in China. Not chickens. Not pigs. Tigers.

At Xiongsen Tiger Park, near Guilin in south-east China, is a typically depressing zoo where tourists can watch tigers roam freely and be fed. That’s where similarity with other zoos ends.

This theme park features its own Restaurant with – you guessed it – tiger on the menu. Why not try stir-fried tiger with ginger? Tiger soup? Tender strips of red curry tiger and vegetables? Then wash it down with wine aged in Siberian tiger bones. Make you strong hard, mistah sir. Cheep cheap.

Logically, there is no reason to tut-tut the abuse of tigers as somehow morally more reprehensible than similar abuse of chickens, pigs, or any other animal. It's just that some species of wild tigers are endangered, nay, genuinely close to extinction. Personally, I like most westerners shrink from eating any carnivorous animal from the top end of the food chain. However, many people around the world do eat shark, tigers, snakes, or dogs and cats, and we shouldn't be too surprised.

Behind the scenes at Guilin, out of sight of the public, are rows of sheds housing about 1,300 mass-bred tigers, ready for slaughter on an industrial scale. There are at least three such farms in China, and probably more, given the Chinese appetite for tiger products.

A typical Chinese ‘herbal’ medicine market in Hong Kong. There are big profits to be made, particularly from exploiting male pride.

Breeding carries on apace, ensuring supply meets demand. Ain’t market economics grand? Some specialty tigers are more expensive such as the Siberian or White Tiger. There are fewer than 100 left in the world, so at that rate this stunner at Thailand’s Dusit Zoo rates celebrity status:

Pampered puss in Thailand: tasty ice-block on a hot day.

Not quite so in China, methinks. Whereas breeding programs are strictly controlled in most places, China does whatever turns a buck fastest. (For a communist nation, ironically, they are the champions of unfettered free enterprise.) If two closely related white tigers mate, there will occasionally be a cub which is not deformed by the unavoidable inbreeding, like this one lucky one:

Knut the polar bear has a new Chinese competitor.
Again, with feline.

This cub will be kept as a working show pony, trained to perform for tourists. The rest, the deformed majority are kept imprisoned permanently out-of-sight in battery cages to grow into adult tigers like this:

Deformed by generations of inbreeding like the British royal family, they end their days skinned and processed into soup, pills, wine, or Tiger Balm ointment.
And oh yes – curries.

In the run-up to the Olympics next year it will be interesting to observe the gaping gulf between the cultures of China and most of its guest nations. Issues such as human rights, press freedom, the trade in human body parts, Copyright, and the treatment of tigers will suddenly be the focus of the world’s cameras. More presently...

Massive TSUNAMI hits Queensland’s Gold Coast: Japanese tourists blamed and beaten up

A passenger in a joy-ride aeroplane headed for Coolangatta Airport snapped this dramatic photo of the Gold Coast on her mobile phone just as the tsunami struck.

Australia’s coast from Rockhampton to Sydney has been wiped out by a massive tsunami which struck at 9.11 am this morning.

Even the most experienced surfers came ashore before the wave struck Bondi Beach this morning. People in Sydney Tower could see the giant wave coming for several minutes, and did their best to telephone warnings to beach-goers. There has been recent criticism of the efficiency of australia’s tsunami warning system.

This afternoon, most of the Gold Coast is still missing-in-action, and a large quantity of beach sand has been washed inland past Beenleigh, which has now become the New Surfers Paradise. Surfers immediately tested the waves there but declared it was “still a little choppy... too soon to tell”. Many suburbs of Brisbane have been submerged.

(If you don’t believe such flooding is possible, check out this NASA-Google interactive Global Warming satellite map of Queensland’s south coast. When the link opens, select “14 metres” in the "Sea Level Rise" drop-down menu, then watch in trepidation which areas get flooded. Have your water-wings ready - let's hope we don't get a tsunami and Global Warming and a high tide on the same day.
PS: the home page of Global Warming Floodmaps is among the links located in the right-hand margin of this blog.)

Japanese tourists laugh as they flee the wave at Tewantin, but the tsunami turned out not to be a routine promotional stunt by the Tourism Authority.

Ethnic gangs of australian youths went on a drunken rampage, beating up Japanese tourists and blaming them for inventing the word “tsunami”.

“It’s their fault”, claimed one young surfer. “Why do them bloody nips have to cause disasters like this in our peaceful country”. A young Japanese man has been hospitalised after being hit with an australian flag(pole) after deliberately thrusting his own head violently against a broken beer bottle.

This cruise ship was washed inland past Beenleigh.