Capitalist Jack and The Adventures in Fiscal Control

Rumor has it that a capitalist beast has broken out of prison and is wreaking havoc on wall street, and as Mr Obama reminds us, Mainstreet too. Well, I don't know a Mainstreet. I guess i have decided that maybe the shady corners are the set for me. I don't wanna act in the middle of a crowd. I run off there from time to time, when sun sets for a cold winter, and freezing white caps freeze to ice upon my soul. Then one day, my life changed for ever.

I read a four and three quarters hand report, that was 72.3% honest, 22.5% exaggeration, and 5.2% blatant lies. It was from a man who just hopped a train up from new york. I don't know whether he paid the ticket. A fellow can do it these days. Even the Conductor is so exhausted from Capitalist oppression that if you time it just right, you can hop from seat to seat and avoid him. I mean the man works on a long train, so it is conceivable that if you start out just a few in front of him, you can make it most half way up the coast before he gits from one end of the train to the other. And if a fellow been broke. If he has been robbed by humanity. If a fellow lives a life of a scavenger, making non but tacit decisions, he is left with the worst kind of oppression, even if he has been promised a free contract. Forgive me, I have traveled off the course again.

I really don't think my words an get his story across. Why a sane man might think me gone around the bend if i were to write a thing like that. And if a Christian Dude heard me, he might think me sent here by the devil. He might even wish i were aborted. I mean, this crab surely would cut at this man's ankles, and I think he'd be so far in the ass of his fundamentalist ideology, that the thing would cut right through the bone.

Well like I said, the man didn't speak too well. He could barley write, spell and couldn't rightful count neither. But as much as you might think it the work of a psychotic, the man is no less a part of our sinking souls. So I best show you his picture.

Crisis: institutions and communication

To my comrades and me, the recent Financial Crisis has brought such chaos that the stability of society as a whole seems suddenly in question. In a wave of fear, confusion and lies, the value of stock in once prestigious financial institutions has plummeted, promises from banks long considered beyond reliable have defaulted, and the words of authority hitherto taken for granted have been proven false. To a group of college students already critical of modern western capitalist thinking, this crisis in New York and in Washington has adopted the long heralded image of revolution. With the strongest economic powers, the owners of the very capital that powers production, seeming to collapse upon their own foundations, traditional thinking has fallen apart.

While I do not realistically claim that the modern capitalist system is headed for an inevitable decline, I suggest that a new paradigm in social analysis might help to explain phenomena that classical economics fails to notice. It is my belief that the cause of instability like the current Financial Crisis lies not in any single policy decision, bureaucratic loophole, or business model. Each of these might explain the behavior of a single actor in the economic system. Laws, policies and plans can certainly change segments of our system. However, as modern means of communication, organization and commerce take an increasing precedence in our economic and social lives, the actions of single institutions are decreasing in relevance. The impact of electronic technology has made the relations of production and consumption so complex that these become sort of null terms: any attempt to break the system into production and consumption seems into actors fails at the onset. As our relations of production and consumption have grown in complexity, the old divisions – the divisions of labor and the divisions of consumer – turn upon themselves.

In a system so complex and interconnected that it cannot be separated into pieces, it is only the routes of communication – the language, voice and reasoning that informs economic decision making – that can lead to a cohesive description of current events. What is necessary is a communicative theory of economics, politics and society. What we need to do is measure the exchange of information, explain actions by the connections between their actors, and listen to the general tune of modern life. In the age of networks and global communication, we are uniquely able to connect with the human element of society. As communicators, we are all on an equal footing. The traditional power structures that separated rich from poor, elite from the masses, and even man from state collapse when we are all speakers.

Though the ultimate objectification, modern network life has given a net by which we can elevate ourselves above the material world. Only through an understanding of communication can we seize our liberation.

neuron, man and society

Here is an example of a neural system mapped out a way analogous to the cartoons posted on this website. Each of the boxes in this diagram corresponds to a part of the human brain. Each part, which neuroscientists refer to as a "nucleus", can be analyzed in terms of electrical signals, called action potentials. As discussed in the introduction, the number of action potentials produced per second by a neuron can encode information and messages. Each nucleus of neurons serves as a computational center that receives information as action potentials, processes it through spatial and temporal integration, then transmits results again as action potentials. By analyzing networks of nuclei and their transmissions, neuroscience has developed accurate and insightful models that show how the human brain works.


I see it as possible that society works, and can be analyzed, in a way similar to the human brain. Biology, psychology and sociology all seem to agree that there is no clear boundary that can sharply define the individual. Rather, the sense of self and personhood that convinces each of us that we are discrete beings is a neurological, evolutionary and social construct. In practice, there is no enduring boundary between the neurological centers known as nuclei, the physical self and larger social organizations. While different phenomena, all share a common pattern of existence. It, I or we, all material terms we use to differentiate nodes in a more general network of communication.

My argument is twofold. First, the human mind is less cohesive and defined then traditionally thought. It is an evolving entity adapting through genetic nature and environmental nurture. Surely psychological phenomenon such as "multiple personality" are evidence of the arbitrary nature of our physical bodies. Second, social units of organization are less static and solid that usually conceived. Rather society is composed of poorly defined units constructed through a process social interaction. Taken together, these two points suggest that there is no real difference between the neural networks in our brain, and social the social networks present in society.

In fact, the shape and order of the brain is a product of social experience. Just as the neurology and sociology are so intertwined, the same tools of analysis that work in neuroscience should also work as a valid methodology in the analysis of social interaction. The same computational and network models used in neurobiology may make accurate predictions about social networks. As social networks become computationally intertwined with the human mind, scientific frameworks we use to analyze the biological phenomenon might be relevant to our understanding of the social phenomena.

Sex and broken windows

Mullets, hippies and the culture war