short term retard

SHORT TERM RETARD

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We briefly touched in the comments section on the idiotic movie that was supposed to be a spoof on the making of Apocalypse Now.  A spoof of a documentary of a movie.  Okay.  Hollywood has been out of ideas before ( or at least the slime creatures that okay the funding for movies ).  They still are.  I knew not to waste my money on it as, number one, it is a film from Hollywood ( better ones are coming from Canada for Christ sake ) and much more importantly, it had Ben Stiller in it.  There is no better indicator that the movie will blow nearly completely undigested bloody chunks.

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Ah, newsflash Tech Porn idiots, the “new business model” of Kindle Unlimited and Netflix isn’t working because it is the next new bright and shiny digital masterpiece ( Amazon and Netflix are all about stock inflation and buy-outs from the founders, not operating at a profit, which they don’t.  If you can’t say “this time it’s different at Pets.com”, you are a moron.  These are bubbles, people ).  They are working because the quality of books and movies are such complete feted fowl feces that only by paying pennies per viewing are you getting any eyeballs on the product.  It is quantity due to lack of quality.  I’m getting more enjoyment out of Family Feud 1980 on Amazon Prime than most of their new shows ( one exception would be the well done “Tin Star” ).

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I think the reason all this super hero crap is doing so well is that the Chinese audiences of the demographic that loves comics, age 16-25 or whatever it is ( probably the same age group that can’t afford a bride due to the old One Child Policy and has plenty of disposable income as a result ), is probably bigger than the entire US domestic audience.  That is the only reason Hollywood is still in business ( are the sexual assault “revelations” the final act of an imploding business?  The Enron equivalent of some suits going to jail? ).

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I’m actually happy that the spoof ( “Tropic Thunder”? ) was such a piece of crap.  Serves them right for trying to gay up one of the best cinematic masterpieces of all time ( the era might have brought us “Heaven’s Gate” which I loved but which showcased the financial aspect of creator control getting out of control, mores the pity, but it also gave us Godfather 1 &2 and Apocalypse Now, amongst others ).  So, what did they accomplish spending $80 million?  They encouraged more of this slop ( I do believe it still made a profit ), and it gave us the phrase “full retard”.  That is about its sole pop culture contribution. 

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Granted, that was private money ( unless the DOD threw in a bunch of free toys for filming ).  But it highlights the Way Beyond Point Of Diminishing Returns in our economy.  Millions and billions get thrown around, for almost no effect.  I know, Hollywood is a rather poor example.  Their business model has been poor for a very long time.  There was always a turncoat screwing everybody else for an immediate profit, completely endangering the current model, going back to the Great Depression and television.  You could call it creative  destruction.  I call it cutting off your nose to spite your face.

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You could say the same about the airline industry.  It starts with taking away one olive from the salad on the in flight meal to save a couple of million a year.  It ends up with cuts in the maintenance schedule.  Or baggage and other fees closing in on doubling the ticket price.  Or forcibly removing passengers due to overbooking.  Or how about that retail industry?  Start by screwing over the local town by moving in with bank credit for undercutting small businesses profits.  End up by screwing your customers with empty shelves, shoddy products and minimum wage workers who have zero product knowledge ( Radio Shack ). 

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Everybody is cutting off their nose to spite their face.  Short term profiteering.  Going Full Retard.  The bankers might not have known that Peak Oil would kill the economy rather than just give us a recession, but then they only learned to embrace Too Big To Fail afterwards.  Right back to short term thinking.  The educational industry is great for short term thinking.  Teach to the test.  No long term learning, retention or problem solving.  Which was the whole point of public education to begin with.  More knowledgeable citizens make better workers and the whole of society advances ( it makes sense this started with the Prussian state, lacking in resources other than human capital.  Or why Japan emulated their behavior, also surrounded by enemies and without resources ).

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What is the educational system churning out?  Total retards.  Of COURSE political correctness appeals to these idiots.  They have zero capacity for critical thinking.  But the point is, only profit short term is a criteria.  Look at the energy industry.  They sought out business users to sell excess capacity, lowering industrial rates.  Which still makes sense because you need to generate extra electric around the clock.  But that lowers profit, so you defer maintenance.  Which lowers profits when you replace rather than repair.  Or, you lower your generation numbers and cause blackouts and brownouts.  Next thing you know, you are subsidizing energy efficient appliances so your residential homes use less electric.  But they pay the higher rates!

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This all might seem insane.  Full Retard!  Yet, what do you do personally?  If you don’t have money since taxes are up, mandatory medical is up and hours are down, what do you do?  You defer maintenance on your car, wait for something to break, then put the repair on a credit card.  Then, to make that payment, you begin deferring home maintenance.  Something breaks and you watch a YouTube video on how to fix it yourself, which you do using very low quality materials which postpone another costly repair for a short while.  Are you any different that American Airlines or the electric company?

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The only difference is that their decisions immediately impact future income, whereas you have a waiting period before the next yearly medical insurance costs increases or the next cut in your hours.  They get income reduction in months whereas you can wait up to a whole year.  And the only way you can avoid this entirely is to sacrifice to the point you insulate yourself from their short term profit model.  Downsize your home to the point it doesn’t need to be financed.  Get out of the medical insurance game by earning under ten grand a year.  Which means you ride a bicycle or moped to enable you to drop vehicle insurance.  You’ll be exercising more being off grid, much more manual tasks such as hauling water, to help offset the lack of medical insurance. 

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With lower income you don’t eat out, fixing all your own food from scratch.  Saving money and getting healthier.  Home school rather than having a vehicle to take the spawn to the county bus stop.  No one wants to hear about doing all that, not even preppers or survivalists ( which, hello!, is pretty embarrassing ).  Yet otherwise you are on the same treadmill as all of the rest of the short term profiteers.  There is no more growth.  Ask Paladin Press or half the freeze dried food sellers.  Growth, which almost every business model needs, is gone.  Adopt to the contraction.

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