Raw Deal....

Doug Stanhope is a good man. He's also an intelligent man. And while browsing several interviews from the "Sicko" himself, I came across this interesting little aside discussing humans as a commodity.

City Paper: You're known for pushing your body to the extremes in terms of drug use. How do you feel about extreme sports?

Doug Stanhope: If you take unnecessary risks with your life in what's considered an athletic or sporting endeavor — mountain climbing, etc. — it's applauded. But if you do the same with your brain — psychedelics, etc. — you're a fucking moron. Evidently it's socially acceptable to get your thrills if it results in great calves and a tan, but frowned upon if it only gives you empathy for the human condition.

CP: Any other suggestions for feeling empathy for people?

DS: Stop making them. People are no different from any other commodity. The more there are on the market, the less their value. Slow the output and watch their market value skyrocket.


While he's obviously ripping on meat heads on muscle beach, you have to wonder how he came to the conclusion that humans themselves, having invented commodities in their many shapes and forms, are their biggest commodity.

I enjoy my life at present. I don't have a lot of spare cash for the things I want, but I was never the kind of guy to frequent upper class escorts to begin with. No, I've just about done my bit for society over the years. I believe working a gas pump for 2 bucks an hour was taxation that was inherent in the act. So now my payslips come with a social welfare stamp and begruding closing salutation from the pawn behind the desk at the post office. But for all of my hard work over the years, I now drag a shitty 197.50 every week with which to live on. This is the governments budget on pocket money for the people.

Now if people are to be considered consumers, but also considered a commodity. Then does this make any investment in them a put-option from the beginning??? For those of you who don't know what a put option is, it's a negative investment in a stock. It's essentially investing in a stock with the hope that it will fall. A negative wager.

Now, the basic principles of supply and demand can be rooted out of almost any daily chore. We don't like some of our friends in life, so we say we like them "in small doses". So, someone spews so much bullshit but their not a bad person, so the demand is small, thus, over supplementation will lead to a greater fall in demand until it becomes null altogether.

Now we apply this to a larger group than one person. Say, a whole town. And let's say this town was filled with the greatest underachievers in our society. Actually, let's just take Finglas, North Co. Dublin. Now, if you were to remove Finglas and it's inhabitants overnight. The demand for scum may increase slightly in the areas of, binmen, shelf stackers, prostitutes etc. But now comes the interesting part of our little stock market.

When supply for one commodity drops, or vanishes completely. It is replaced with the nearest stock to fall into the same category or that at least quells some of the requirements of the previous stock. This is a domino effect in all it's glory. Kind of like that movie Alive. When you run out of food, eat your best friends pancreas.

So, taking the reverse of this fundamental. Some stocks demand other stocks to maintain their own value. For example, there's no point in producing crank shafts for a Ford Focus if the car is no longer being made. So, taking our town of recently cleansed Finglians, they demand many things. Pampers, Aldi supermarkets, 9mm ammo, and most importantly, welfare payments. So when demand for child benefit and unemployment support has a drastic fall in one area, but when their is a still a market for such commodities (ie, the rest of the north side) the supply see's an increase in these areas.


Now if you haven't been following , or you have some literacy problems and seem to forget any information you've read up to 5 lines previous to this one, then here it is in a nutshell.


If we kill a load of people on the dole, then we'll get more money for doing nothing! :D

I'm sure there's a communist ideal underlying all of this.

Iron Curtain? More like an Iron facecloth.