“[Thanks to its Songun Policy and Juche], North Korea gets a high score for both ‘defense’ and “lack of dependence.” [The DPRK] can sever its limited connection to cyberspace even more easily and effectively than China can. Moreover, North Korea has so few systems dependent upon cyberspace that a major cyber war attack on North Korea would cause almost no damage. Remember that cyber dependence is not about the percentage of homes with broadband or the per capita number of smartphones; it’s about the extent to which critical infrastructures (electric power, rails, pipelines, supply chains) are dependent upon networked systems and have no real backup.”
-Richard A. Clarke, Cyberwar: The Next Threat to National Security & What to Do About It, ca. 2010
The Work-Standard and its Post-Bretton Woods rival from Neoliberalism, the “Debt-Standard,” are both capable of operating behind the everyday social fabric of their affected nation-states under normal circumstances. From regular workdays to those special occasions like Christmas, the fundamental differences will still emerge regardless as the Socialization of Young Minds and “Liberalization of Young Minds” respectively. It is the Socialization of Young Minds that will allow any nation-state to eventually abandon Neoliberalism and adopt their own Socialism. The question is not matter of if; it is a matter of when.
But the Socialization of Young Minds, unlike “Liberalization of Young Minds,” has a special application that can only be described as an Economic History Case Study rather than a Third Place Post on The Fourth Estate. This application in question is the meaning link between the Work-Standard and the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) or Christkindlmarkt (Christ Child Market), its point of origin being the German Reich in the 15th century, specifically 1434.
“Wintermärkte (Winter Markets) began to spring up all over Europe.
Over time, local families started setting up stalls to sell baskets, toys, and woodcarvings alongside others selling almonds, roasted chestnuts, and gingerbread. These were often bought as gifts to give away at Christmas.
It was the winter markets that eventually became known as Christmas Markets—the earliest of which are claimed to be in Germany: Munich in around 1310, Bautzen in 1384, and Frankfurt in 1393.
But Dresden’s Strietzelmarkt may have been the first real Christmas Market, dating from 1434.”
More regional food specialties include Christstollen (Stollen), a sort of egg bread with candied fruit from Saxony, and hot Apfelwein and Frankfurter Bethmännchen from Hesse.
Many other handmade items, toys, books, Christmas tree decorations and ornaments can be found at a Christmas Market.
Christmas markets combine the charm of tradition with the excitement of an open-air marketplace. They help rekindle the enchantment of our childhood memories.”
“Well, the TV show started, and one American lady have said: you must stop having sex with your men because of the Afghan War – then they won’t go to the war. And kept pointing at me. Then I answered her: ‘there is no sex in the USSR, but there is love. And you also didn’t stop having sex with your men during the Vietnam War.’ But everyone remembered only the beginning of the phrase. Am I not right? We have always considered the word ‘sex’ almost dirty. We were always making love, not sex. That is what I meant.”
Therefore, as a consequence of relying on Commodity as part of their decision-making process, Liberal Capitalists are going to fall for the Is-Ought Problem of David Hume while trying to “rationalize” or “utilize” the Work-Standard for Social-Democracy. This is of course a discernible trend that I had noticed while evaluating the Commodity concept.
“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it’s necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.”
-David, Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ca. 1739
What the Liberal Capitalists will never tell anyone, including our Socially-minded Capitalists, that the Socialisms reject the “Free Market” for its Spontaneous Order of Natural Selection in terms of its technological and financial applications, its Positivism, its Malthusianism, its Utilitarianism, its Economic Darwinism and its Scientific Racism for denying the existence of the Soul that binds the Individual–the Self–to any Totality. Liberal Capitalists have no conscience, they have no morals, and cannot comprehend why The Work-Standard replaces the “Free Market” with the Tournament. As I had pointed out on several occasions in The Third Place, the arrangement regarding the Tournament allows me to justify the eventual restoration and redemption of a Western tradition known the Marktrecht (Right-to-Market Law). The Marktrecht was a concept described in The Work-Standard as the “Specialty Shop” and “Specialty Department Store”–the Federalist equivalents being the Federal Post Exchange (PX) and the Goldwasser Department Store, followed by the more recent “Germanic Shopping Citadel” from The Third Place.
“Only a [New Great Depression] – actual or perceived – produces real change [with the Freedom-Security Dialectic]. When that [New Great Depression] occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around [like the Work-Standard]. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
-Millard Landau Shlomo (⇌), Security and Freedom, ca. 1982
Here, the phrase “How much Gold is there in existence?” (→) from the Economic Calculation Problem becomes “How many Laws are there in existence?” (⇌), indicating that Parliamentary Democracy relies on Supply and Demand as part of Deregulation. With so many “Commoditized Laws” (⇌) being passed by the Parliament, it is only natural to expect Deregulation to be accompanied by a corresponding Overregulation (⇌), recreating a Círculo Dorado and its Area-Denial Effects with “Commoditized Laws.”
Irrational Exuberance: “Widespread and undue economic optimism. When investors start believing that the rise in prices in the recent past predicts the future, they are acting as if there is no uncertainty in the market, causing a positive feedback loop of ever-higher prices. It is believed to be a problem because it can give rise to bubbles in asset prices. But, when the ultimately bubble bursts, investors quickly turn to Panic Selling, sometimes selling their assets for less than they’re worth based on fundamentals. The Panic that follows a bubble can spread to other asset classes, and can even cause a recession. The investors who get hit the hardest — the ones who are still all-in just before the correction — are the overconfident ones who are sure that the bull run will last forever. Trusting that a bull won’t turn on you is a sure way to get yourself gored.”
Panic Buying: “From a macro perspective, panic buying reduces supply and creates higher demand, leading to higher price inflation. On a micro-level (e.g. in investment markets), Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) or buying triggered by a short squeeze can exacerbate panic buying, into a so-called melt-up. Fear of a shortage of the good is another potential reason for panic buying. Panic Buying can be contrasted with Panic Selling, in which people sell a good in large volumes, driving its price down, usually caused by a fear of a market crash. Panic Buying may result from a number of different events. Generally, Panic Buying occurs from increased demand which causes an increase in price. Adversely, panic selling has the opposite effect resulting in increased supply and a lower price. Conceptually panic buying and selling on a large scale can have dramatic effects leading to market shifts in various scenarios.”
Panic Selling: “The sudden, widespread selling of [any Commodity, Currency, or Liberal Capitalist Financial Instrument (LCFI)] based on fear rather than reasoned analysis causing its price to drop. Often, Panic Selling is due to some outside event that causes [Prices] to drop, which leads to widespread fear. This fear causes people to overreact and sell [to] try and prevent further losses, but due to the large number of people doing this at once, it pushes the price lower, which results in more panic, leading to a positive feedback loop. Stock exchanges will often halt trading in the event of panic selling to break this cycle of fear and selling.”
Debt Bomb: “A situation occurring when a major financial institution, such as a multinational bank, defaults on its obligations which, in turn, causes disruption not only in the financial system of the institution’s home country but also in the global financial system as a whole.”
‘Derivative Time Bomb’: “Descriptive term for possible market mayhem if there is a sudden, as opposed to orderly, unwinding of massive derivatives positions. ‘Time bomb’ as a reference to derivatives is a moniker attributable to Warren Buffett. In 2016 in the annual Berkshire Hathaway company meeting, the legendary investor warned that the state of the derivatives market was ‘still a potential time bomb in the system if you were to get a discontinuity or severe market stress.’”
Cryptojacking: “A type of Malware that uses a victim’s computing power to mine Cryptocurrency.”
Logic Bomb: “A malicious program that is triggered when a logical condition is met, such as after a number of transactions have been processed or on a specific date (also called a time bomb). Malware such as worms often contain logic bombs, which behave in one manner and then change tactics on a specific date and time. Roger Duronio of UBS PaineWebber successfully deployed a logic bomb against his employer after becoming disgruntled due to a dispute over his annual bonus. He installed a logic bomb on 2000 UBS PaineWebber systems, triggered by the date and time of March 4, 2002, at 9:30 AM: “This was the day when 2000 of the company’s servers went down, leaving about 17,000 brokers across the country unable to make trades. Nearly 400 branch offices were affected. Files were deleted. Backups went down within minutes of being run.”
Malvertizing: “A portmanteau of ‘Malicious Advertising’, is the use of Advertising to spread Malware. It typically involves injecting malicious or malware-laden advertisements into legitimate advertising networks and webpages. Advertising is a great way to spread malware because significant effort is put into ads to make them attract to users to sell or advertise a product.”
Ransomware: “A form of Malware, designed to deny access to a computer system or data until ransom is paid. Ransomware spreads through phishing emails, Malvertising, visiting infected websites or by exploiting vulnerabilities.
Ransomware attacks cause downtime, data leaks, intellectual property theft and data breaches. Ransom payment amounts range from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Payable in Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.”
Currency Crisis: “A Currency Crisis occurs when there is a rapid fall in the value of the currency as investors become nervous of holding a country’s assets. A gradual depreciation (like 20% fall in the value of Sterling over the past couple of years) would not be seen as a currency crisis. However, in the case of Iceland, the value of the Icelandic currency fell very rapidly as people lost confidence in the Icelandic financial sector. A Currency Crisis can be caused by a Fiscal Crisis. If governments look to default on Bonds, Foreign Investors will want to sell any Bonds they have causing a fall in the Exchange Rate. A Currency Crisis can also occur in a Semi-Fixed Exchange Rate if [Financial Markets] feel a Currency is overvalued.”
Fiscal Crisis: “A Fiscal Crisis refers to governments struggling to repay its debt and struggling to borrow enough money to meet its budget deficit. If markets fear governments have borrowed too much, and there is little chance of repayments, there will be selling of the government bonds, pushing up interest rates and giving government bonds a very low credit rating. It then becomes a difficult cycle to break. Markets won’t lend. Governments have to cut the deficit by slashing spending. But, slashing spending can cause a fall in GDP and hence even lower tax revenues. A fiscal crisis usually involves governments seeking outside help such as IMF intervention. e.g. European Fiscal Crisis. An economic crisis will worsen a governments budget deficit as tax revenues fall in a recession. Also in a Financial Crisis, markets are more sensitive to risk and may worry if governments look vulnerable.”
Liquidity Crisis: “A liquidity crisis is a financial situation characterized by a lack of cash or easily-convertible-to-cash assets on hand across many businesses or financial institutions simultaneously. In a liquidity crisis, liquidity problems at individual institutions lead to an acute increase in demand and decrease in supply of liquidity, and the resulting lack of available liquidity can lead to widespread defaults and even bankruptcies. Maturity mismatching, between assets and liabilities, as well as a resulting lack of properly timed cash flow, are typically at the root of a liquidity crisis. Liquidity problems can occur at a single institution, but a true liquidity crisis usually refers to a simultaneous lack of liquidity across many institutions or an entire financial system.”
Cryptocurrency Difficulty: “A measure of how difficult it is to mine a block in a blockchain for a particular cryptocurrency. A high cryptocurrency difficulty means it takes additional computing power to verify transactions entered on a blockchain—a process called mining. Cryptocurrency Difficulty is a parameter that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies use to keep the average time between blocks steady as the network’s hash power changes. Cryptocurrency difficulty is important since a high difficulty can help secure the blockchain network against malicious attacks.”
Hyperinflation: “Rapid, excessive, and out-of-control general price increases in an economy. While inflation is a measure of the pace of rising prices for goods and services, hyperinflation is rapidly rising inflation, typically measuring more than 50% per month. Hyperinflation can cause a number of consequences for an economy. People may hoard goods, including perishables such as food, because of rising prices, which, in turn, can create food supply shortages. When prices rise excessively, cash, or savings deposited in banks, decreases in value or becomes worthless since the money has far less purchasing power. Consumers’ financial situation deteriorates and can lead to bankruptcy.”
Kapital Flight: “A large-scale exodus of financial assets and capital from a nation due to events such as political or economic instability, currency devaluation or the imposition of capital controls. Kapital Flight may be legal, as is the case when foreign investors repatriate Kapital back to their home country, or illegal, which occurs in economies with Kapital Controls that restrict the transfer of assets out of the country. Kapital Flight can impose a severe burden on poorer nations since the lack of Kapital impedes economic growth and may lead to lower living standards. Paradoxically, the most open economies are the least vulnerable to Kapital Flight, since transparency and openness improve investors’ confidence in the long-term prospects for such economies.”
Liquidity Gap: “Discrepancy or mismatch in the Supply or Demand for a security or the maturity dates of [Liberal Capitalist Financial Instruments]. Banks deal with liquidity risks and potential liquidity gaps to the extent that they need to make sure they have enough cash on hand at all times to meet requests for funds. When the maturity of assets and liabilities differ, or there is higher than expected demand for funds, the bank might experience a shortage of cash and, therefore, a liquidity gap. The liquidity gap can change over the course of a day as deposits and withdrawals are made. This means that the liquidity gap is more of a quick snapshot of a firm’s risk, rather than a figure that can be worked over for a long period of time. To compare periods of time, banks calculate the marginal gap, which is the difference between gaps of different periods.”
Fileless Malware: “A type of malware that uses legitimate programs to infect a computer. Unlike other malware infections, it does not rely on files and leaves no footprint, making it challenging for anti-malware software to detect and remove. It exists exclusively as a computer memory-based artifact i.e. in RAM.” Information Asymmetry: “Also known as ‘information failure,’ occurs when one party to an economic transaction possesses greater material knowledge than the other party. This typically manifests when the seller of a good or service possesses greater knowledge than the buyer; however, the reverse dynamic is also possible. Almost all economic transactions involve information asymmetries.”
RAM Scraper: “A type of malware that harvests the data temporarily stored in-memory or RAM. This type of malware often targets point-of-sale (POS) systems like cash registers because they can store unencrypted credit card numbers for a brief period of time before encrypting them then passing them to the back-end.”
Rootkit: “A collection of malware designed to give unauthorized access to a computer or area of its software and often masks its existence or the existence of other software. Rootkit installation can be automated or the attacker can install it with administrator access. Access can be obtained by a result of a direct attack on the system, such as exploiting vulnerabilities, cracking passwords or phishing.”
Rogue Security Software: “Tricks computer user into thinking their system has a security problem such as a virus and entices them to pay to have it removed. In reality, the fake security software is the malware that needs to be removed.”
Flash Crash: “An event in [Financial Markets] wherein stock withdrawal orders rapidly amplify price declines before quickly recovering. The result of a flash crash appears to be a rapid sell-off of securities that can happen over a few minutes, resulting in dramatic declines. But as prices by the end of the day, it’s as if the flash crash never happened.”
Stagflation: “Occurs when the Fractional-Reserve Banking System expands the Quantity of Schuld at the same time as constraining the Quantity of Kapital. The most common culprit is when the government prints currency. It can also occur when a Central Bank’s monetary policies create Credit. Both increase the Quantity of Kapital [and Quantity of Schuld by creating] Inflation. At the same time, other policies slow growth. That happens, for instance, if the government increases Taxes. It can also occur when the Central Bank raises Interest Rates. Both prevent companies from producing more. When conflicting expansionary and contractionary policies occur, it can slow growth while creating Inflation.”
Supply-Side Shock: “A supply shock is an unexpected event that suddenly changes the supply of a product or commodity, resulting in an unforeseen change in price. Supply shocks can be negative, resulting in a decreased supply, or positive, yielding an increased supply; however, they’re often negative. Assuming aggregate demand is unchanged, a negative (or adverse) supply shock causes a product’s price to spike upward, while a positive supply shock decreases the price.”
Stock Market Crash: “A rapid and often unanticipated drop in stock prices. [It] can be a side effect of a major catastrophic event, economic crisis, or the collapse of a long-term speculative bubble. Reactionary public panic about a stock market crash can also be a major contributor to it, inducing panic selling that depresses prices even further. Although there is no specific threshold for stock market crashes, they are generally considered as abrupt double-digit percentage drop in a stock index over the course of a few days. [It] often make a significant impact on the economy. Selling shares after a sudden drop in prices and buying too many stocks on margin prior to one are two of the most common ways investors can to lose [Kapital] when the market crashes.”
Viruses: “A virus is a type of malware that, when executed, self-replicates by modifying other computer programs and inserting their own code. When this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be infected. Computer viruses cause billions of dollars worth of economic damage by causing system failure, wasting resources, corrupting data, increasing maintenance costs, logging keystrokes and stealing personal information (e.g. credit card numbers).”
Worms: “Self-replicating malware program whose primary purpose is to infect other computers by duplicating itself while remaining active on infected systems. Often, worms use computer networks to spread, relying on vulnerabilities or security failures on the target computer to access it. Worms almost always cause at least some harm to a network, even if only by consuming bandwidth. This is different to viruses which almost always corrupt or modify files on the victim’s computer.”
Spyware: “Malware that gathers information about a person or organization, sometimes without their knowledge, and sends the information to the attacker without the victim’s consent. Spyware usually aims to track and sell your internet usage data, capture your credit card or bank account information or steal personally identifiable information (PII). Some types of spyware can install additional software and change the settings on your device. Spyware is usually simple to remove because it is not as nefarious as other types of malware.”
Too-Big-to-Fail: “Describes a business or business sector deemed to be so deeply ingrained in a financial system or economy that its failure would be disastrous to the economy. Therefore, the government will consider bailing out the business or even an entire sector—such as Wall Street banks or U.S. carmakers—to prevent economic disaster.”
Trojans: “Any malware that misleads users of its true intent by pretending to be a legitimate program. The term is derived from the Ancient Greek story of the deceptive Trojan Horse that led to the fall of the city of Troy. Trojans are generally spread with social engineering such as phishing. While the payload of a trojan can be anything, most act as a backdoor giving the attacker unauthorized access to the infected computer. Trojans can give access to personal information such as internet activity, banking login credentials, passwords or personally identifiable information (PII). Ransomware attacks are also carried out using trojans.”
Zombies: “Companies that earn just enough money to continue operating and service debt but are unable to pay off their Schuld. Such companies, given that they just scrape by meeting overheads (Wages, Rent, Interest Payments on Schuld, for example), have no excess Kapital to invest to spur growth. Zombie companies are typically subject to higher borrowing costs and may be one just event—market disruption or a poor quarter performance—away from insolvency or a bailout. Zombies are especially dependent on banks for financing, which is fundamentally their life support. Zombie companies are also known as the ‘living dead’ or ‘zombie stocks.’”
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