Kansas - Drastic Measures

 

... and here it is, the punchline we've all been waiting for, i don't think we're in Kansas anymore, David Paich. Ha! The old Bottle switcheroo there. David Paich, Toto, you get it. Drastic Measures often require a sense of humor, and whoo! that bazooka as a chamber music instrument makes me chortle. 

The bad news is that it's not a Kansas album. This is an Elefante Brothers 80s pop rock album, with 2 Kerry Livgren songs at the end (the 3rd Kerry Livgren song on side a is literally "sorry we're making this garbage album, everybody"). 

But, here's the thing, it's good. Really good. If you're completely averse to Kansas making a Foreigner album, then you're gonna throw breakable things at the wall, but if you just accept that this is a different band in a different genre playing songs about how frustrating this runaway train crash really is, then it's thoroughly enjoyable. They know they're crashing, we know they're crashing, that's how this story plays out. They eventually work out their differences and get back together. 

Believe it or not, that's the story of Capitalism. For the umpteenth time, capitalism isn't "business" or "freedom" or "the free market." Capitalism is a structural system superimposed on top of normal human relationships, a siphoning of money out of the system of trade. I'm tired of ranting about it. The war inside Kansas is between the members who don't want their music being used as a mouthpiece for Christian proselytizing, and Kerry Livgren who is perfectly happy letting that happen. Kansas, according to Kansas, isn't "a Christian band." The irony is that they ended up making a great record about how much it sucks to compromise your ideals for the sake of chasing popularity, but nobody liked it and they broke up. 

It's tricky because i can't hand Kansas any money; I can hand Steve a few bucks in exchange for a Kansas album. I want Kansas albums, but i can't make them magically appear. 

Here's how the monetary system actually works. The Fed picks a number, let's say that number is 5,000, and it sells that 5k to three banks at some additional charge, say 1,000. It gives 2,000 to that bank, 2,000 to that bank, and 1,000 to that bank. Those 3 banks loan that money out to people for an additional charge, then slowly pay back the total 6,000. The original 5,000 is cancelled out, the additional 1,000 gets pushed back into the system wherever it needs to go, and the juggling show continues until it all crashes into a pile of rubble. Yes, that's a simplified description, we actually live in the in-between part, but it's structurally accurate. The system as a whole can't function if the money never gets back to the Fed. I can't repay my loan with interest if the people who have money refuse to pay me for something, i can't spend the same dollar twice. If everybody saves but nobody spends, the whole shebang falls apart. The tricky thing is that anyone can forget or misunderstand which function they serve at any given moment. People with money can mess up the larger system by refusing to exchange it with people who don't have money, or refusing to pay taxes, or wasting it by gambling on the side, or injecting it into the economy of another country. The more you save, the higher the cost of creating new money for everyone. Now, obviously, if you put a crazy moron in charge of determining interest rates and selling securities to the open market, then we're gonna have a problem. Conversely, if everyone starts following terrible advice from half-brained money manipulators, then we're gonna have a problem, too. The moral of the story, and my standard kind of joke that only i find funny because it's the title of the album plus a reference to another work of creativity, is this: 

Stop creating situations where we all have to take Drastic Measures just to eat, pray, love on a daily basis!