What do you call it when someone wants more money, even proportionally tiny amounts, yet is willing to go to great lengths to get them? I’m surprised psychologists haven’t come up with a term for it, though I suppose it could be a manifestation of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
There is topic I’ve wanted to explore but haven’t because I am not sure how to explain it or make sense of it, but thanks to the NYPD I think I’ve figured it out. The problem is “what does ‘helping’ someone mean?” at a strategic level.
“What happened to Abu Zubaydah’s eye?”
People who watch the surveillance state have known about this stuff since the early 1980s. My personal theory is that spooks talk to each other (as spooks do) and eventually word starts to leak; it’s too clever a scam to miss. Then, when a program becomes huge enough, there are tens of thousands of people using the data from it; it’s pretty easy to figure out where the data is coming from. I first encountered the international reach-around when I was at a conference and wound up talking to an interesting fellow who turned out to be a journalist that had been investigating the surveillance state for a very long time.
A friend of mine retired from an IT executive job and she and her husband decided to become wealthy capitalists in their retirement. Since the evils of capitalism are a frequent topic here on FtB, maybe it’s a good idea to do a quick explainer of how a few of those evils work. These are the simple ones, and I’ll describe them as cleanly as I can so you can understand what’s going on when you hear about it elsewhere.
The ‘collectible’ book market on Amazon is pretty interesting. A few years ago I thought I’d get a friend of mine a copy of one of my favorite monographs by Erwin Olaf, and I was stunned to discover that it was over $1000.00 on Amazon. There appear to be a small number of gamblers who like to buy books and then list them for high prices so they can score a tidy windfall if it turns out someone wants them that badly.
Years ago, I read Massey’s Dreadnought and the Coming of The Great War [amzn] and one tidbit stuck in my mind: naval blockades are an act of war. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, usually cutting down to the core of the conflict – war supplies or food.
My accountant says “there are only two kinds of people in hell: those who were caught in the act, and those who kept records.”
The intelligence state has not been collecting data for its own entertainment; they have to find a use for it. Remember back to when the Bush administration’s secret interception program was disclosed? Probably the most painful bit of news in it was that the NSA wasn’t (yet) capable of doing anything particularly interesting or useful with the data.
David Landes’ The Unbound Prometheus is on my recommended reading list; [amaz] it’s an account of the changes in European societies brought about by the industrial revolution. It’s a book you can pick up, open to a page at random, and learn something fascinating.