Looking into 9/11 and asking basic questions about it does not make one a crackpot, quite the opposite.

It's when things grow huge and monstrous and beyond any human scale that they turn evil. That is what has happened to us.

I recall reading an account of a stockholders' meeting at some company. The company had grown by five percent in the previous year, with a corresponding increase in the dividends declared.

You think the stockholders were happy? Think again. They screamed "Why did we only grow FIVE percent? What's wrong?"

In short, rather than being grateful for the honest return that their business had provided them, the stockholders were dissatisfied that the return wasn't more. And I'm certain that if the increase had been ten percent, they would have still screamed out their dissatisfaction that it wasn't twenty percent.

THAT'S the mentality that is destroying us. The psychopathic compulsion to expand a business beyond any reasonable limits in order to generate the highest level of profits is considered the proper way to go, and anyone who does otherwise is considered a fool.

Capital is what is necessary to found a business enterprise. It is most often thought to be money, but it can also be personnel, goodwill, land etc. Marxists use the term "means of production," which is a fair enough description. I started a business with a desk, a Ford Courier, $300 (which I used to buy a beeper, an answering machine, NCR forms and 1000 call cards.) I lived in a rented townhouse. I'm still in business, and have hired guys who lost their jobs, inspired a dozen people to become self-employed, and served my customers with aplomb.

Capitalism must be the worship of money, it seems to have very little to do with manufacturing, providing community stability, or even having long-term vision. But I do know that something is very wrong with the economy. With the large number of dying mill towns, and migration to Suburbia with it's traffic congestion, and jobs being shipped elsewhere, we have a while to wait before things turn around. But there is hope. Americans are still hard-working even if they're not the smartest folks in the world. Business need to get small, local, and creative again.

Anyone want to comment?

Ever since 1913 and our Central Banking system, we have been sliding into Financialism. Recent activities suggest that the preferred future societal organization will be a Neo-feudalism.

Absolutely correct on those "home equity loans." Encouraging them was a socially destructive as knowingly spreading venereal disease.

Only foolish people would use their homes as equity to borrow money for frivolous things like vacations or cruises. But many people are foolish, and it is at least some part of the responsibility of the rest of us, through law, to protect them from predators.

Capitalism doesn't see it that way. For capitalists, "Caveat emptor" is the guiding principle, and they feel that it is an infringement of their rights if they are prevented from exploiting the foolishness of simple folk. Just ask any businessman or advertising agent. They see their fellow human beings as lawful prey.

This is why it is essential for us to begin to realize that capitalism, at least in the metastasized, malignant form that now afflicts us, is at the root of what is wrong with us. There are plenty of other things wrong as well, but let's isolate this biopsy slide.

Falling home prices were not the only thing, for several years the shysters were saturating AM radio with ads for home equity loans, so foolish mortgage payers could self-indulge with expensive cruises and gambling junkets to Las Vegas. It seemed to me that a portion of the financial "industry" was concerned with turning the denizens of Suburbia into debt slaves. This is the kind of short-sightedness that precipitates finacial ruin on a personal level. When it happens a few million times it becomes a national disaster.

And your ad hominem attacks don't lend you much credibilty. Knock it off!