While writing a number of these Diaries and my blog (Trenz Pruca's Journal), I kept a list of epigrams and the like that I enjoyed creating. I thought that the readers of Daily Kos might appreciate reading some of them.
Aphorisms, Apothegms, Epigrams and Maxims.
On the Meaning of Words:
Whitehead and Russell taught us that words have no meaning unless backed by mathematics. In other words, it is all blah, blah, blah unless it has numbers. Godel then taught us that mathematics is based on unprovable assumptions. In other words, blah is still blah.
On Economics as a Science:
In Science a physical theory that is logically consistent may be considered truth only until falsified. In Economics a sociological theory that is logically inconsistent is often considered true even when falsified.
On Supply and Demand:
There is no such things and supply and demand because they are both infinitely manipulatable.
Wherever you have supply meeting a demand you will have someone trying to make a profit by making it not so.
On Competition:
The last thing anyone enters a competition for is competition.
Competition in a 100 yard dash lasts about 10 seconds. Competition in the market lasts about the same length of time before someone tries to game it.
Only a fool enters a race to compete, everyone else enters to win.
On Markets:
There is no such thing as a free market. There is always a transaction cost.
Those who manage the transactions ultimately make all the money.
A market is something that one goes to to buy groceries and usually has a prefix affixed to it like "super". Everything else is a casino.
On Ponzi and other Schemes:
All fortunes are based on Ponzi schemes.
Global Finance is a Ponzi Scheme.
All Ponzi schemes are based on gullibility and government is usually the most gullible of all.
On Outsourcing Governmental Services:
The outsourcing of governmental services is the road to tyranny.
On Scoundrels:
The last refuge of scoundrels is not patriotism but the claim that no one could see it coming.
Most wealthy individuals are scoundrels, only very few admit it and they usually are already in jail.
On Corporations:
The only country that a corporation has allegiance to is its own management.
A corporation cannot be considered a citizen, it cannot serve in the military for less than minimum wage.
Corporations were created to carry out specific goals of the state. Now the state appears to exist to carry out the specific goals of the corporations.
Corporations would not exist if their investors had to assume the same economic risks as any other individual in a free society.
On Free Enterprise:
The goal of every business enterprise is not to maximize profit but to separate risk from reward.
The most important goal for any democratic government should be to avoid removing risk from enterprise. Yet it currently appears that the only function of government is to shield enterprise from risk.
On the meaning of it all:
It is not he who dies with the most toys wins, it is he who dies with the most stories.