Hopium and Copium...
I suppose the term "Hopium" is often used in crypto circles, but it really applies to the broader world, as well.
Speaking purely from a personal standpoint, I find that I am often hoping that "things will get better" — in my local world, as well as in the greater world — but the truth is that I see virtually no evidence that there's anything happening that doesn't involve getting flushed down the cosmic toilet.
It's important to keep a positive attitude!
While there is definitely some value to such assertions, it's not an easy thing to aspire to when you eternally feel like you're trapped downwind from where the proverbial excrement is engaging with the whirling apparatus.
Of course, I do find my positive and joyful moments... in the very small things — my cat purring in his basket next to my desk, a pretty sunset, flowering jasmine and forth — while watching the big things head to hell in a handbasket.
Of course, the cousin of "Hopium" is often "Copium," that state we slip into where life is essentially little more than a game of barely staying afloat, while we hope things will get better.
The sad truth is life will likely never get better.
Yesterday, I was watching an investigative report about real estate in the USA, and one of the experts interviewed estimated that by 2030 — in the USA — 65% (a full two-thirds) of all single family dwellings will be owned by so-called "Private Equity Investment Firms" rather than private individuals.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I can still hear that creepy old dude from the World Economic Forum stating "You will own NOTHING, and you will LIKE it!"
I don't like it. I don't like it, at all.
Not because I am opposed to the idea of renting where I live, but because I am opposed to my landlord being an organization solely focused on extracting as much money as possible from tenants while offering as little as possible in return. Most Private Equity firms are notoriously horrible landlords.
The whole "commodification of EVERYthing" bothers me, on some deep level I can't quite explain.
You're going to take away my opportunity to have anything, and then you're going to lease it back to me for more than I can afford... and I will virtually KILL myself trying to afford it, because my only choices are "pay your price" or live in a tent on a street corner somewhere.
Reminds me of certain aspects of the healthcare industry where prices for procedures are outrageous for no reason other than "pay our price... or die."
Apologists for the existant system often talk about capitalism and free markets, but we have no such thing.
"That's the price the market will bear," they insist, a statement — while technically true — turns a blind eye to the fact that organizations beholden only to the profit motive also do not possess any kinds of morals and values, leaving human beings as little more than bar-coded profit centers.
I really don't enjoy living in this world of "Copium" very much... but I see very few alternatives.
Mind you, I am open to the possibility that this is primarily a USA-based issue, and other parts of the world may have better ways of dealing with things.
Who knows...
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Created at 2025.09.09 20:02 PST
1422/2686
Oh no! unfortunately it is not just an USA-based issue. The financial attack comes from all sides and hits us from all flanks. The dirty tactics, techniques, and strategies of corporations, banks, and governments around the world against us, they all seem to be very well orchestrated and tuned under the direction of a single and the same digital baton.
Oh, I'm sure Venezuela is it's own special brand of circus-mongering... and no matter where we might be, the puppet masters are working towards that whole "you will own NOTHING, and you will LIKE it!" ideal of the World Economic Forum.
Thank you!
The conflation of the American economy with free markets is irritating. Everything is regulated, taxed, licensed, and subjected to price controls to benefit the politically-connected at the expense of the Everyman. Laissez-faire it ain't, but freedom is always treated as a bogeyman by those demanding more power.
Instead, we are told a parasitic political class can magically make us all prosper if we ignore history and let themanage even more tightly. These corporate monsters are direct consequences of government laws and government fiscal policy, yet they are held up as proof we need more laws and fiscal surveillance.
"The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."—Frederic Bastiat
What I find really ironic is the way "the land of the free" has actually become less free than the Danish "social democracy" in which I was raised. It may have higher taxes, but you (and business) have way more freedom to do your own thing, and pressures for "compliance" with fixed/regulated way doing things (or NOT doing thing) are farm more socially oriented than legislatively oriented.
No system is perfect, of course... but the corporate-political circus in the USA is getting increasingly scary and invasive.
The USA likes to proclaim itself as a free market economy with a representative government serving the people by preserving their liberties, but in reality we have a morass of interventionism and authoritarianism. Scandinavia ranks higher in economic freedom in spite of their welfare state.
Real progress in America would require ending the drug war, ending foreign interventionism, ending the government subsidies to the military-infustrial complex, and replacing the Byzantine taxation and regulatory system hampering the economy. None of this is incentivized by politics.