Friday, November 22, 2013

Conspiracy Theories–The Economic Savior?

The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other. - Douglas MacArthur

Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences. - John Buchan

Whenever you're faced with an explanation of what's going on in Washington, the choice between incompetence and conspiracy, always choose incompetence. - Charles Krauthammer

I upset a lot of people with my blog post the other day entitled Obamacare–Harbinger of Doom? where I suggested that the government’s inability to deliver a simple system is a warning regarding its ability to deliver protection against more complex cataclysmic events, manmade or natural.

The second addendum attached to that post has really upset some people also, not because it’s a lie but because it reminds them of what’s going on in the world.

My apologies – while we live in an amazing world filled with mind-boggling potential, reality can still suck sometimes.

After a series of meetings this week, I got to thinking that we can turn a lot of our worries (real or imagined) into a real boom to the economy.

<<Putting my logic-based, analytical hat on>>

Think of what would happen if we embraced such worries and just ran with them, officially admitting that there is a possibility that all the risks are real and imminent.

1. A certain percentage of people would not be able to deal with the news and would not stick around.  They may suffer the same fate soon anyway (thinks some emergency preparedness people) and so their actions would solve a significant logistics problems for planners.

2. The news media, wired to report bad news or sensationalist items instead of useful information, would experience a huge upswing in media spending.  Instead of 400 useless channels on TV, we could have 4000 – all drilling bad news into us incessantly. They could even dare to ask viewers to pay for the right to be depressed by them.

3. A large percentage of people would go crazy for a while, probably rioting or committing other acts of violence.

4. Riot squads would be needed to settle down the populace and martial law would need to be invoked for a while while the wave of insanity passed over people.  Maybe then we will finally find out how our privileges are restricted as defined within Executive Directive 51.  Most of don’t us like Congress or the Senate these days anyway so would it matter if they were dissolved?  Since many (not all) politicians are out of touch or in it for themselves, elections would be seen as an unnecessary expense, with the money saved from banning elections being used for an awesome annual fireworks show instead.  The significant portion of people who don’t vote would also appreciate this more appropriate use of government funding.

But once realities set in and everyone calms down, we would see an economic boom in the sale of things like riot gear, weapons, survival shelters, personal survival equipment, SPF 50000 suntan lotion, real gold bars (not gold certificates) and extended shelf life food.

We would finally get around to building a massive asteroid deflection system, employing millions of people.  We could name it after Bruce Willis just for fun.

We could finish those climate control systems like HAARP (or is it mind control – I don’t remember). During the testing, a few nations will be fried to death by drought while others would be flooded out of existence but hey – they’re taking one for the team.  We can always remember them with a cool monument.

We could finally sell our nuclear stockpile to terrorists, knowing that the proceeds would help pay for the new nuclear protection dome that we build over each nation.  We would be impervious to the terrorists then anyway and we could start a new Truman-like reality show where we watch them blow themselves up. 

Think of the ratings!!!!!

We could also prepare for every natural disaster known to man and build every solution, driving employment levels to new highs.

Pharmaceutical companies would have a field day as doctors overprescribe medications to help all of us cope with this sudden success in society.  As Aldous Huxley suggested - "A gram is better than a damn".

Advances in medicine would also allow us to consume anything in unlimited quantities without fear of dying early from an illness caused as a result.  The fitness industry would be a victim to this progress since we would ban them as being counter-consumer and thus anti-progress!

We could finally acknowledge that one of the single largest drivers of increased Internet bandwidth is pornography and could make watching it mandatory to encourage research and development into a better Internet.

Speaking of making things mandatory, we would need to make sure that people’s minds aren’t too sharp and so in order to ensure this, we would make pot smoking and the playing of Facebook games mandatory.

And yes …. let’s not forget the potential boom in the tinfoil hat industry …. just in case.

We could even combine form with function – perhaps a nice tinfoil lining inside your favorite fashion statement.

And since we’re on the topic of alien invasions, don’t forget the boom in the personal lubricant industry, just in case the aliens don’t bring their own.

For the next 5-10 years, our economy would go ballistic, setting revenue records like we have never seen before.

To keep up with such an economic boom, we would have to print a lot of money and go insanely in debt without justification.  However, if you check our global resume, we’re already pretty good at that so it shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish.

At the end of it all, our nation and the world would be prepared for practically anything, wouldn’t it?

Admittedly there might be an adverse affect on the planet’s ecosystems but who cares – we’re not doing much now anyway outside of talking about it so it doesn’t matter.

Once we have finished Operation Preparedness (every good project needs a strong, assertive name to rally people blindly), we would then be able to be audacious, daring anyone to come after us since we would be safe from practically everything outside of a natural, cosmic event.

Ahhhhh …. Life would be sweet as we revelled in the security of our brilliance.

<<Removing my analytical hat – damn – I didn’t realize I had put my sarcastic one on by accident>>

Sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it?

Or does it?

Does it sound any more stupid to over prepare than it does to under prepare?

I’m not sure.

But I do know one thing.

This damn tinfoil hat sure scratches a lot. I wish we could stop thinking about Obamacare, the Canadian Senate, Rob Ford, global climate change and all of the other stupid stuff long enough to design a better one.

After all, priorities are priorities.

Don’t you agree?

In service and servanthood,

Harry

Addendum – The Umbrella Man

My friend Kevin shared this video with me regarding the Kennedy Assassination.  Take a look – it’s not what you think.

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