...And now I know what will become of “Father” Joseph.

@2,

Alternate title for this piece:
How Tim became Tom through Ted

Another Charles Mudede post, another prediction of the crash, of the end of capitalism.

And yet the crash only comes when the crash is ready, and capitalism keeps right on going, ignoring the crash, making a mockery of the predictions of the anti-capitalists who worship the crash.

Capitalism, like all things, will end some day. But it will not end in the ways demanded by Marxist analysis and its many offspring. This has been demonstrated over and over again; the evidence is overwhelming and conclusive.

@3 fixed tom and ted. @4, i was not doing what you I was doing.

@5

You are always doing it, Charles, even when you are not quite aware of it. You can no more avoid predicting the end of capitalism than you can avoid exhaling carbon dioxide.

This is why you fall short of becoming a Keynesian in any significant sense, and instead find yourself in constant retreat from it. It is simply too late. The habits of thought so carefully cultivated in youth have ossified; there is no changing these things of stone.

Charles' catalyzes my thinking; this is his gift to me. I find 'value' subjective and self-evident--absolutely sensible and existent only in relation. 'Wealth' I define as a sort of immorality--a circumstance of social imbalance where ease is enjoyed by one via imposition on another. Tim Hortons had value for the man who died. Wealth played sure parts in that death.

@9: Charles could make a meatloaf recipe a condemnation of capitalism.

No one has died under Marxism and Communism. I heard that from Mudede himself after three beers at Oddfellows one night.

@12 You know Chuckles is a Marxist right? From the ruling Zimbabwean socialist class, many of whom took their corrupt earnings and used them to send their sons to be educated in London (along with a plethora of Ugandan, Kenyan & Nigerian marxists). Even they seemed to know capitalism meant a better education for their wayward sons.

I should know, I sat next to a few of them.

Meanwhile in Venezuela inflation has hit 25000%, because when you run out of other peoples money, and you discover state run enterprises always run in deficits, you simply start printing it.

Charles, surely you remember James Callaghan going to the IMF cap in hand? If it wasn't for Thatcher the British would be eating cats and rats like Venezuelans have to today. But everyone would be equal I suppose. And dying.

@15, Anyone who knows me, knows that while Zims, I was actually a capitalist. In the TV debate show The Road Socialism, I sided with the black African business man and thought the ZANU PF socialist was nuts. Though I still think he was nuts, my position on capitalism did not shift until I visited Sweden, a high school graduation gift from mother. My short time there changed me permanently.

With errors fixed, it is 10:30: @15, Anyone who knows me, knows that while in Zims, I was actually a capitalist. In the TV debate show The Road Socialism, I sided with the black African business man and thought the ZANU PF socialist chap was nuts. Though I still think he was nuts, my position on capitalism did not shift until I visited Sweden, a high school graduation gift from my mother. My short time there changed me permanently.

Folks should consider that often function of writers is to make you think, not to always be "right". I don't always agree with Mr. Mudede's conclusions, but he always makes me think.

CM does tend to cherry pick what he talks about when dealing with the dark side of Socialism. He's quite quite about Corben's antisemitism and Venezuela where the children are down to eating rats just to stay alive.

@9:

"Not everyone gets to live in expensive cities." But, those of you who can afford to live in expensive cities still need to have shit get done: your toilets scrubbed and homes and offices cleaned, your double-tall, half-caf-half-decaf, almond vanilla mochas made, your power lunch orders taken, your yards mowed, your drive-up fast-food prepared, your $4,000 Armani suits rung up, etc., etc., and those people have to live somewhere, preferably somewhere they don't have to spend hours and hours every day getting to and from.

At least in the Uber-Capitalist dystopias depicted in films like Metropolis or Brazil the workers (as abjectly abused as they are) get to live in the immediate vicinity of their job sites, which is still a fair sight better than your "I got mine - fuck you! Move to the suburbs proletariat scum!" bourgeoisie classism.

"in a city whose housing crisis is more acute than ours, Vancouver BC."

Vancouver's most recent One Night Out Count indicated 2,181 homeless persons; Seattle's count indicated 11,643.

The most recent population data I can find for Vancouver's shows a population of 631,486. Seattle has 704,352.

What is it about these figures that has led you to believe Vancouver's housing crisis is worse than ours, Charles? By any objective measure, our homelessness problem is exponentially worse than Vancouver's.

“Lamarckian evolution”? Really?

@23 I'm neolamarkian. Its scientifically respectable.

@23 I'm a neolamarkian. It's scientifically respectable.

"Seattle's count indicated 11,643."

No, that was King County's total. And that included people in shelter. So now you can be homeless with a roof over your head apparently.

Also, the counters look at any tent and assume two people are in it. Which is why Mike "hug-a-bum" O'Brien takes his shit-eating grin on what is little more than a propaganda exercise rather than actual data collection.

Pretty much all the numbers the pro-hobo folks use are manufactured and unreliable. What we have in a Seattle an influx of addicts and ne'er do wells, with tents and RVs moving in, and setting up shop because the city won't bother them.

@26 there are quite a few RVs parked in South Beacon Hill along the power lines. The neighbors there don't seem to mind as they are neat and tidy and per the Times story today have one of the lowest crime rates in the city. Being homeless doesn't make you a criminal, though it's more convenient to think that way.

@27. Great, we'll send them all to you. Enjoy.

This essay is too intellectual for me to understand but RIP Mister. I had an older co-worker whose life came to an end when she slumped over her keyboard one morning and died right there at her desk. I would prefer not to die at my desk at work, would rather die in a coffee shop surrounded by good aromas and people. When the ride is over, it's over.

@25

Neo-Lamarkism is neither scientifically respectable nor a coherent scientific theory to begin with.

At best the term describes a century or so of assorted scientifically rigorous experiments that either failed, or were later discredited.

Oh my, Cecil Taylor.
RIP Ted (and Cecil).