Friends, at first capitalism engenders competition in a way we can understand rationally. It is the competition among individual capitalists for market share, and so forth. We're skipping a lot of steps, but then this competition becomes embodied in nation-states, and the economies of nation-states seem to compete with each other for global market share. At first, this competition seems to be based on the real economy.

And then (always remember the New Money/Old Money dynamic) the competition takes a strange turn. The competition among the bourgeoisie classes of the nation-states of capitalist powers seems to be: who can profit the most by having the least to do with production, the real economy?

Remember we talked about how elite education gives us some clues to deciphering the motivations and behavior of the ruling class? I said that their system of education seems to teach them two things: failure is not failure and reality is what they say it is. I gave examples and suggested a link between this and the CEO pulls down astronomical compensation that is unconnected with performance or how high officials who seem to have demonstably failed in their duties but keep resurfacing and being given more responsibility and power. I told you about a classmate of mine from Canada who started college at sixteen -he was promoted because he was failing his classes in highschool. The interpretation wasn't that he needed extra help, but that he was being bored and needed more of a challenge.

Let me give you a link socialistworker.org/2009/07/29/who-does-obama-answer-to

This is an essay by Brian Jones. He tells us that he had gone to one of the elite highschools in Ohio, on scholarship. The game was soccer. According to Mr. Jones, when they played against a public school and one of their youngsters scored a goal against Jones's school, the team of that school would chant "That's alright. That's okay. You're gonna work for us someday."

A very strange chant. What this shows is that those young soccer players barely had their minds on the game. We can say that they were completely unconcerned with "production" in terms of the score. They had their minds on, in a "mark-to-market" sort of way, on a time literally decades away.

You know, I heard the historian Webster Tarpley say - on an Alex Jones documentary called "Fall of the Republic" say that the "oligarchy," which is the term he prefers, have "values that are almost the reverse of human values." It was out of his mouth that I first heard that Fitzgerald had said to Hemmingway that the rich are different from the rest of us. Hemmingway quipped, yeah they got more money. Fitzgerald said no, it's more than that.

I'm sorry to say that I accept that view a lot more than the one that they "put their pants on one leg at at time" just like you and me. Not really.

After all, why did the Bush and Obama administrations both effectively say of the auto industry "Let them eat cake!" but rush to the aid of the financial institutions?

And in the midst of abandoned car plants in America, why is the U.S. looking to outsource the job of creating high-speed rail in this country? www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/13/us-highspeed-rail-china-t_n_497854.html

www.blnz.com/news/2009/07/15/us_looks_private_investment_highspeed_5754.html

Asian and European firms are being looked at. But the case of China interests me the most. Remember, immediately available rationality has its limits in analyzing human behavior. In addition to everything else, this solicitation of China to build our high-speed rail is an attack on the vanity of the Chinese bourgeoisie by the American bourgeoisie.

Remember, the Chinese were one of the exploited groups who helped build railroads for America in the middle of the nineteenth century. I bet there are racist elements of the American oligarchy who would get a real kick out of the symmetry. No doubt the Chinese bourgeosie know this and will engage in much subcontracting, if they get the contract.

Goodnight.

wingedcentaur