The Illusion of Proletariat Capital Wealth

I signed over the web 2.0 version of a homestead to Olga in our divorce. She took a cash out loan to improve the place. Although the mortgage is not upside down (yet), there is not very much equity left. So I asked myself the obvious question - what is it that I own that counts for real value and hence a capital investment in property, the only capital the proletariat pretends to hold. Don't forget my 401K! That is real. Actually the small amount left is mostly real or mostly not real depending on how I look at the remaining balance. But the time value of money when using Black Swan risk assessment is that given another nano-depression is 0.shit.

The only real value of this homestead is to Lowe's, Home Depot and The Furniture Barn. Without drywall the patch, walls to paint every 3 years, landscapes to spruce and a lawn to mow - my consumer spending would almost dry up. The virtual wealth accrues to the retail sector and not the proletariat wealth.

What I own is dept, vast dept, unimaginable dept. A sharecropper in Mississippi owned the same capital as I do. Actually, after interest payments I owe more to 'the man' than that cracker with no teeth and no education. Like the sharecropper I don't even pay the interest on my dept.

So in the limit - the only thing better than capital; the only thing that is real is education and experience. With education I can participate with 'root priviledgte' in the information economy. Facebook and Twitter are my source of wealth. For most people my age, even this is out of reach. My brother-in-law spends hours and hours on his computer
1. Playing Solitaire
2. Playing Fantasy Football.

Period. End. When I bring up the blogs I read I get a sneer. "Blogs are a waste of time and will never amount to a thing'. I don't bother to show him my Google Reader RSS feed that gives me all the news in manageable chunks. That is my only source of useful information.

But wikipedia is unreliable. OK smart-ass - find two mistakes in Wikipedia. Take all the time you need. Again, this posture is worth 0.shit. The open source credo is 'many eyes make shallow bugs'. In other words if there is a small vestige of bad editing - it will disappear before breakfast tomorrow because a Wiki has the capability to be self correcting.