Sunday, July 27, 2008

Why is the Government Spending $7000 dollars on a fridge?

Throughout my years I have always had a problem with authority. I tried and tried but I could never see that what they required of me was reasonable and what they gave me in return was worth my output. As I grew older and more mentally aware I began to notice that the entire system we live in is full of hypocrisy, bad decisions, laziness and greed and that these poor traits lead our society into what I like to call oligarchical automation. In an oligarchically automated society a few very rich individuals own and reap benefit from every action we take without us even realizing the true effects of our actions. When I use the term action I am referring to EVERYTHING that we do. What we eat, what we drink, what we read, how we play, how we love, how we fight, what we watch, and how we entertain. All of these actions fuel the oligarchs that own us by fueling the actions that shackle us from our freedom. Our actions fuel consumerism which provides power to those who are already rich and powerful and inevitably allows them to garner more power by which to blind and restrain us for their benefit. 

We trust the government and the institutions that run this society because they have developed highly researched technologies and tactics to distract us and manipulate our actions. The media in every form is one of these tactics. Our education system is one of these tactics. The industrial era standards by which we live and judge success is just another example of one of these tactics. All of this is in place to blind us from what is really going on. 

So what is really going on? How are we being screwed by our government and societal institutions? I will explain... Our government and our societal institutions are a part of a large system designed to create wealth and power for a very small elite class of people in our world. Notice I did not use the word country, I used "world." This is by design. Our institutions are designed to make the hyper-rich more rich with little regard for the poor. Some of the beneficiaries of this are not even Americans. 

The Oligarchs get away with this because they lead us to believe. They lead us to believe that there is hope, that we have freedom, that the rights inherent in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights still hold true today. This is exactly what they want us to believe. The more they have us thinking that there is still hope and that the opportunity for class transcendence still exists the more power they will garner. While dreaming for the American Dream we will be paying our employers to let us work (through taxes) and then producing the products that we will eventually purchase from them by sending the money we were just paid by our employers back to them. To make this all worse at some point in the cycle there is a filter that discreetly grabs a few dollars to distribute to the aristocrats throughout the world. Any inefficiencies found in this system (such as missing money that may have gotten stuck in some unknown filter) are then paid for by us, the taxpayer. 

Who loses and who gains from this system? We the people of the United States of course. We produce for the benefit of the few and they take from us at every step throughout production. They take our resources, they take our time, they take our families time, they take our health and they take our minds. This to me doesn't sound like freedom. 

What has truly created this rant of mine is a story of how our government takes our tax dollars and then uses the Iraq war as an excuse to funnel wealth to a few rich guys who the politicians in our government feel should be more rich. 

In the February, 2006 issue of Readers Digest there is an article about frivolous spending by the Pentagon in regards to the war in Iraq. What was discussed is how the government grossly over pays for products that cost normally much less in regular society (when they are not sold by defense contractors to the government). Here are a few examples. A plastic ice tray that normally costs no more than 99 cents at most stores in America was purchased by the government for $ 20 dollars. Are you kidding me? Where is the common sense. What government administrator allows these things to go by without raising an eyebrow? Everyone knows that there is no way an ice tray could cost that much. Another example, is a mini refrigerator that one commonly finds in a college dorm room. You can generally find these things for around $100 dollars at any store in the United States. Guess how much they spent for them? $7000 dollars. That's right... $7000 dollars! WTF! WHY!? What ever happened to economy of scale. The principle that holds whereas the more you buy of something the cheaper you should get it because buying in bulk makes producing and shipping that product more efficient and thus lowers the producers and sellers costs. It's the same principle that allows you to get such great deals at wholesalers such as Sam' Club or Costco. Apparently this principle doesn't hold true when you're selling to the government. 

Are our government administrators so ignorant? If so someone needs to teach them some basic level economics and accounting. This is elementary for god sakes. A sixth grader could run a more efficient government. So why is this occurring?

This occurs not because of ignorant government officials. This type of frivolous spending is done by design. These actions are all part of the system put in place to make the rich more rich. Our lawmakers actually have created a policy that promotes this type of frivolous spending. The policy forces government administrators to use a few select vendors when purchasing military equipment, even when purchasing ice trays, refrigerators, and god knows what else. They passed this law claiming it would speed up shipping processes. What it actually has done has amounted to a reduction in competition and has thereby created an environment where the vendors could charge the government whatever they would like because the government can't seek better prices from the competition. Wow? That was a smart move. I wonder if that wasn't done on purpose to benefit some campaign contributor indirectly. 

It's not about freedom anymore America! It's about wealth, and the generation of more wealth for the hyper-wealthy. The only way we can stop the pillaging of our resources is to open our eyes and look behind what is going on in order to see what is actually occurring. Do your research America... and trust no one!