Selling the Rope
An essay about short-sighted greed...
“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
I went on the internet and tried to figure out who said that; Vladimir Lenin or Joseph Stalin or Karl Marx or maybe one of the Marx Brothers and it turns out nobody knows for sure and there’s a decent chance an anti-Communist made it up and attributed it to a Communist to make them sound like Evil Dicks and frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn because the quote still makes a good point about short-sighted greed which is the theme of today’s post.
And we’ll start with guacamole-making robots.
According to the following CNBC article, the restaurant industry is facing a “sustained labor shortage” which if you think about it is bullshit. What the restaurant industry is actually facing is a shortage of people who are willing to work for what the restaurant industry wants to pay them.
Because humans are just too expensive, Chipotle announced they’re testing a new guacamole-making robot and as the cartoon suggests it’s just the beginning of people being replaced by robots that work cheap, don’t need bathroom breaks or a dental plan and don’t form unions.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/12/chipotle-tests-robot-to-prepare-avocados-for-guacamole.html
Just in case you were wondering and I was, according to the following article, in 2022 Chipotle generated revenues of $8.63 billion:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/221457/chipotle-total-revenue/#:~
And according to this next article, in 2022 Chipotle’s gross profits for a 12-month period ending on March 31, 2023 came to $2.25 billion:
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CMG/chipotle-mexican-grill/gross-profit#
But clearly that’s still not enough money because Chipotle’s CEO Brian Niccol only earned $17.2 million last year (which was down from the $17.9 million he earned in 2021 so he’s clearly just scraping by) but $17.2 million was still enough money to earn about 1,703 times the amount the median non-CEO Chipotle “team member” makes and I don’t know if that includes his use of a private jet (which I didn’t make up) and you gotta love how some people get to fly on private jets and other people have to clean toilets and corporations still try to sell the idea that they’re all on the same “team.”
If your job requires the regular use of a mop and a bucket and you’re on the Chipotle “team” I got news for you: you’re not the quarterback.
Y’know what?
I’ll support robots replacing humans when they start replacing CEOs.
But as you might have already noticed the people at the top only want to use robots to replace the people at the bottom, which has gotta make you wonder just who is going to buy all the products the people at the top are selling when the people at the bottom no longer have jobs.
That’s short-sighted greed and I’m glad Harpo Marx pointed it out.
Parts of the US and Mexico have been hit by extreme heat and places that are used to hot weather were still having problems. Phoenix had 12 straight days of 110 degree temperatures and because of trips to spring training I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Phoenix and whenever anyone in Arizona said: “Yes, it’s hot, but it’s a dry heat.”
I always replied: “They say the same thing about Hell.”
Which reminds me of the time we held the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists convention (yes, there used to be such a thing before newspapers started folding like journalism origami and I used to get paid to attend them) in Phoenix and on the final day of the convention, which was always a Saturday, we held a softball game.
A bus took us from our hotel to a giant Phoenix softball complex and as we drove past empty field after empty field I realized there was a field available for us to play on because everyone with a three-digit IQ didn’t want to play softball during a smoking hot Saturday afternoon in Phoenix, Arizona which, as the cartoon indicates, may have a 666 area code.
And speaking of three-digit IQs…
I once played a baseball double-header in 100-degree heat and the second game went 15 innings and my players started making fundamental mistakes they usually didn’t make and I was wondering just what the hell was going on and why we were playing so badly and then I started making fundamental mistakes and I realized we were all suffering from the heat.
According to the internet, about 80% of your brain is water (unless you’re a heavy metal fan and then the water has been turned into Jell-O by listening to Metallica’s Enter Sandman with the amps turned up to 11) so go ahead and heat that brain water up until it starts to boil and see how many great decisions you make.
And the way things are going with climate change, we’re going to find out and if you think people do stupid shit now, just wait until our brains get cooked.
The first time I saw the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination I thought, “Jesus, the conspiracy theorists are right…he got hit from the front and to his right” and then some government entity (I forget which) provided an expert (I forgot who) that explained I didn’t actually see what I just saw.
On many subsequent occasions that expert would have come in handy because he could have explained that people didn’t actually see whatever fucked up thing they just watched me do, so if anybody knows who that expert is and has his phone number, get in touch.
Anyway…
The House Select Committee on Assassinations was created in 1976 and finished their work 1979 and concluded that the CIA and the FBI had withheld evidence that supplied possible assassination motives for Fidel Castro, the Mafia, the CIA or maybe some combination of them and the committee’s conclusion was John F. Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy.
And then all the politicians packed up and went home, possibly because digging any further into the topic might be a good way to get shot from a grassy knoll.
After that, more textpert experts with their own murky motives explained why the committee got it wrong and there was no conspiracy (and I really hope you appreciate the I Am the Walrus reference) and I bring all that up now because it’s just one example of what Congress could be investigating, but the Republicans have decided we need to get to the bottom of Hunter Biden’s all-important hijinks instead.
Not that Hunter is completely innocent because I doubt he is, but I’d rather know who felt comfortable about assassinating a president or what the Department of Homeland Security has been getting up to these days or how the fuck it’s possible for about nine weird and unusual things to happen simultaneously, which is the current explanation for Jeffrey Epstein’s “suicide.”
Oh, sure, here’s a guy who knows exactly which celebrities are Charter Members of the Elite Pedophilia Club and have been collecting Frequent Flier Miles on the Lolita Express and that guy has every reason to cut a deal with prosecutors and name names, but he – to a bunch of powerful people’s great relief – decides to commit suicide instead.
I don’t trust the people who say there was no conspiracy to kill Jeffrey Epstein, but considering their track record if Congress decided to investigate, I probably wouldn’t trust them either.
And now that I’ve got that off my chest, let’s get back to our regularly-scheduled program.
Because the climate had gone Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs faster than we thought, apparently the scientific community has decided it’s now OK to relocate species threatened with extinction and the cartoon you just looked at suggested a species they could add to their list.
According to the internet an “epoch” is: “A period of time in history or a person's life, typically one marked by notable events or particular characteristics.
And according to those uncomfortably-informative scientists we entered a new one sometime between 1950 and 1954 which is when I was born so I apologize for screwing things up for everybody else because the scientists say that’s when humans began ruining the climate like it was a fulltime job and apparently we thought we could burn fossil fuels and detonate nuclear weapons and dump tons of plastic into the environment forever and ever and without consequence.
So it’s kinda like visiting your son’s apartment when he’s away at college and turns out he apparently thinks there’s an inexhaustible supply of clean dishes hidden somewhere in his apartment which is the only plausible explanation for why he believes he can go four straight years without washing a dish and how you wind up using an upside down Frisbee for a plate.
The scientists have suggested we name the newest epoch “Anthropocene” which is derived from the Greek terms for “human” and “new” although you’d think they squeeze in the Greek terms for “shortsighted” and “greedy” which is the best explanation for how we’ve run down the planet and the next species that lives here (because I’m pretty sure humans aren’t going to be around much longer) is going to say:
“Jesus (apparently the Earth’s new tenants are some type of Christians and will also be meek because the Bible says they’re going to inherit the Earth, but the Bible failed to mention the Earth won’t be worth a damn when they do) didn’t these people ever think about cleaning up?”
Creating the cartoon you just looked at was interesting and a bit of a challenge because I had to cover up the one word of profanity, but leave enough clues that the new epoch ought to be named “Up shit creek without a paddle” which is our current location because we got too greedy and sold the rope.
Have a good weekend if I haven’t already ruined it for you.
According to the stories, it sounds like Epstein was a sex addict, needing it multiple times every day. So maybe sitting in jail was physically unbearable. Not that he might not have received willing help, and then everyone was happy.
Back to the start. Many of the restaurant and other positions could be filled with some organized, legal immigration.