MSN Money: Smart Investing in the Future Police State
Posted Nov 26, 2007 7 comments
Found a very frank and fascinating article this morning: "How to Profit from a Police State." It's a blunt market analysis, and provides a continuation of Skilluminati's recent theme about "paranoia" being a self-abusive form of "pragmatism." If possible, cancel out the Fear and stay focused on the Facts.
The article is by Jon Markman, a regular columnist for MSN Money. (I also recommend his equally honest and educational article on who benefits from recessions and bad credit.) Markman offers a very concise summation of the Police State landscape:
In the midst of a six-year war on terrorism, widening income inequality and a growing fear of immigrants, America has become something of a police state, according to a new study, with as much as 25% of our entire labor force focused on protection rather than production.
The evidence is all around us, from the 47% increase in U.S. workers classified as security guards since 2002 to the sharp advance in the number of men and women under arms in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Similar calculations of guard labor for 18 other countries suggest that the United States is pretty much the leader in this category, slightly trailing Greece, a former military dictatorship, but well ahead of Western democracies such as Switzerland, which has just a 10th of its labor force devoted to guard labor.
It hardly needs to be stated that this is a recipe for disaster, right? Any profit model based on creating jobs by locking human beings up will confront an inescapable cieling envisioned decades ago by William S. Burroughs, when everyone in your labor pool is either locked up or guarding the prison. You will eventually run out of either criminals, or employees, most likely both at once. This is nothing less than a social version of cancer.
Markman plainly states facts that few "political science" experts will even admit to being aware of:
The increasing focus on protecting the existing economic pie rather than making more pie has important implications going forward, especially as we head into a year in which something like $1 trillion in adjustable-rate-mortgage adjustments will hit low-income and middle-class homeowners like a pie in the face.
You don't need a Ph.D. in behavioral science to realize that a material number of household heads, faced with the loss of their homes and cars to foreclosure and repo men, will turn to theft, drugs and violence amid a sense of frustration with their deteriorating status, just as they have in past periods of economic dislocation.
Indeed, a Ph.D. is probably the biggest handicap you could have, in this day and age. Markman's social cybernetics are remarkably similar to the famous "conspiracy" document, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. These sorts of calculations are ugly, determinist, but inescapably correct. His logic is evil, without question, but it's instructional to see how a money man looks at the Death of America:
Key names in the industry that we need to focus on are prison titan Corrections Corp. of America, which sports a $3.3 billion stock-market capitalization; Geo Group, which has a $1.1 billion market cap; Cornel, which has a $340 million cap; and Brink's at $3 billion. You could probably throw in the major drug companies that make antidepressants Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, too, but we don't really need to go there. Let's look at the three in detail.
Of the bunch, Geo looks in many ways the most attractive. The second-largest operator of private correctional facilities in the United States and provider of rehab, educational and mental-health services to boot, Geo operates numerous maximum- and minimum-security prisons domestically and in Scotland, South Africa and Canada.
What a great line, eh? "...but we don't really need to go there." Can't be laying things out too plainly, after all. People might start looking at it as One Big Prison System, and that might just jolt them enough to start making changes.
Here's hoping we do.
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Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.1. cadeveo on Nov 27, 2007 at 3:51 AM permalink
Spot on analysis. And yes, the FEAR part of conspiracy theory is the part that paralyzes and prevents it from being useful, second only to the “mere entertainment” aspect that others latch on to. The part that says, “Well, here’s where we’re at and this is what it means for my personal life. Now what am I gonna do about it?"--that’s the powerful and positive aspect of CT.
As a side tangent. I work with an individual who has two jobs: One is as a part-time teacher. The second: as a security guard. In some ways, it’s just one job, two different populations…
2. CJF on Nov 27, 2007 at 3:11 PM permalink
A prison is an enclosed society.(aren’t they all?). The means of control are more easily observed; but, since dealing with the same
problem (human) the methods will be the same. Keeping large numbers
in a state of atomized individuals is one goal. One organization keeping another confined is not as easy. All forms of interaction,
including language itself are based uppon assumptions. Another word
for ‘assume’, is ‘trust’.
Saying this to most people will get disagreeable reactions. “I face
my enemies; may the gods protect me from my friends” is a reasonable
thing to assume.
3. John on Nov 27, 2007 at 7:07 PM permalink
The effects of “dumbing-down” seem to result in “dumbing-up”.
Don’t ask, don’t tell. Don’t know, don’t care. Just say “Duh”.
Surprised some retailer hasn’t used the term “S-mart”. The world’s
oldest profession is marketing. Watch what you say; and, how you say
it. Watch what you don’t say; and, how you don’t say it.
Concentration camps are industrial parks with the ideal business climate. No wages, medical experimentation (now, exploitation?), a
meat processing plant retirement, and guards that will be automated
into prisoners.
I think it was Carnegie who said “Don’t tell me about the working-
class. I can pay half the working class to kill the other half”
He could’ve saved his money. They do it for free, every day.
4. Steven on Nov 29, 2007 at 12:59 AM permalink
The point brought up in the “who benefits from recessions” article is one point I try to make to anybody I talk about economics with. The other point I try to bring home to people is the “confidence game” nature of all economies, even pre-fiat currency.
I appreciate you throwing the chemical restraint industry in there with the rest of them. You took the words from my mouth. You can also include the post-cell “guard” industry of electronic monitoring and surveillance of parolees including, soon enough, implantable chips. In fact, I’m sure in the future it will be more cost-effective to “restrain” convicts electronically or chemically rather than board them centrally. That is, unless you have plans for all that centralized, cheap manual labor, which technology is reducing the needs for every day.
A world where everybody is either a prisoner or a guard is terrible for the prisoners, terrible for the guards (though decidedly less terrible than for the prisoners) and Utopia for the guards’ bosses.
5. Wes Unruh on Nov 30, 2007 at 5:50 AM permalink
the prison is there to convince you that you aren’t living inside one
6. Zig Zorg on Dec 01, 2007 at 9:45 PM permalink
prisons rock.
free food.
roof over your head.
companionship.
can’t be fired/laid off from your job.
don’t knock it hippie boy.
7. John on Dec 01, 2007 at 10:44 PM permalink
If capital punishment makes the state a murderer, does incarceration
make it a gay dungeon master ? (Think that was Wilson or Black)
THX1138 with exception. Pre-WWII (and even during) did not have the
biological technology;and, required prisoners for work. The goals’re
obvious: drastic population elimination and maximized use of the
human resources during that elimination. This means extraction of
medical elements from the prisoners upon their elimination.
The cost of synthetic production vs cost of rendering the human resources down to their useful components.