Max Sawicky wrote, >> you'll have to bring this down from poetry >> to prose for the more dense among us. Ian Murray wrote, >He's talking about the big, bad wolf, Little Red Riding Hood. You better believe it's the big, bad wolf. But who and what is the big bad wolf? Death? Living unloved? Making a fool of one's self? Getting a haircut and smiling through yet another fucking interview only to be told for the umpteenth time that you're too innovative and creative to be saddled with a steady paycheque? In prose, what I'm trying to say is that the real fears are too obvious for either the cult followers or the protesters to address. Both apocalyptic ballet and power shopping are trivial distractions, but the point is they do distract. When they are over they leave an emptyness that can only be filled by more of the same. The political economy runs on fear. But as Roosevelt said there is nothing to fear but fear itself, which would be a disaster for the political economy. So Bastiat and Hazlitt are wrong after all. The broken window is the thing that keeps the ball rolling. No, it doesn't add to output but it preserves the spectre of scarcity and it is that spectre that makes whatever the hell the output is never enough. The day will come when there are no more farmers or tailors or carpenters. Only glaziers, security guards, rock throwers, glass sweepers, bankruptcy lawyers, media commentators and political economists, drunken tanker captains, public relations agents, cappucino baristas, basketball stars, rock musicians, pyramid salesmen, gurus, corporate lobbyists and anti-corporate counter-lobbyists. On that fine sabbath day, we can thank God for all the labour-saving technology He hath wrought but we better not take the day off or we'll fall behind the competition and we'll starve, go naked and be homeless. Amen. Glossary Amen: a primeval Egyptian deity, worshiped, esp. at Thebes, as the personification of air or breath and represented as either a ram or a goose wolf: to devour voraciously wrought: archaic past participle of work Tom Walker Bowen Island, BC 604 947 2213
