—Alexis de Tocqueville

I agree with everything in this post 100%—it's spot on and well worth meditating on over the course of several years, combined with some serious reading in the ancient philosophers.

Ultimately, ain't it a bitch that the law of diminishing marginal utility causes the demand curve to have a negative slope!?

IMHO, that happens to be the best proof that a gift culture is a higher ideal to aim for than an efficiently allocated capitalist society premised on the FUD illusion of artifical scarcity. It is better to give than to receive(or accumulate) after all. (I recommend the writings of Buckminster Fuller more than nearly anything).

Everything that everyone thinks matters, doesn't. I can't wait for the day when American "culture" gains the escape velocity to free itself from its own materialism. On the bright side, the American Empire is well on the way to smashing into the rocks, and shattering into an impoverished 3rd world nation. At least our collective happiness, sanity and basic decency will be restored.