Michael B. Duff

My life, in cat-based metaphor.

…at minimum wage, no less.

This video gives a great example of suspicious trading activity and a lucid explanation of why this kind of trading is a form of fraud.

As a consequence all attempts to apply Keynes' theories to the economy in the real world wind up being a Ponzi Scheme. The government applies a "stimulus" during bad times and then finds itself unable to withdraw that stimulus during good times, having embedded a structural deficit. This in turn sends a false demand signal to the economy, which responds by filling the falsely-indicated demand. When the inevitable recognition of overcapacity occurs, you get another, deeper recession. Government in turn responds by doing the same thing it did the last time, building an even DEEPER structural deficit into the economy. Eventually you run out of suckers, er, Ponzi Participants when the credit wall is hit in the broad economy. Government, being the foundation on which private credit is computed (that is, it's the allegedly risk-free return) typically can continue this cycle once or twice.

"But earning 18% only gets back what they take from my dad. They’re still not matching what my dad would have done with the money. Say my dad can do 7% (he’s not on TV), so that one year later, his $1000 is now $1070. That means the government actually needs to make about 26% on the $847 ((1070/847)-1), which is harder still."

When government assumes the power to destroy new businesses, inspectors can be frightening, destructive bullies. Moreover, when the government codifies lots of rules describing what an acceptable business must look like, it stifles innovation. Complex laws written to govern a traditional business model—a restaurant with a single operator in a particular space—often outlaw future innovations as an unintended consequence. Government needs to give entrepreneurship space to grow and bear fruit, rather than poisoning it with senseless rules, red tape and bleach.

This video is about to top 5 million hits.

It works because this team gets it. The Internet isn’t just a medium. It’s a culture, with its own values and its own way of reacting to the real world. The Internet isn’t blindly anti-corporate, but its profoundly cynical and deathly allergic to the hard sell. The Internet generation was raised on Monty Python and ubiquitous sketch comedy. Absurdity is a virtue here, and Old Spice has turned absurdity into art.