The Three Acronyms That Best Describe This Era: TINA, TANSTAAFL and FUGAZI
TINA and the complacent belief in free lunches strip the resiliency from a system and leave it vulnerable to collapse.
It’s tough to select three acronyms that best capture the current perfection of central planning, central banking and centralized propaganda. FUBAR (f**ked up beyond all repair) is tough to beat, and for those with a taste for absurdist humor, ROTFLMAO is equally appropriate–especially when “official” economic data is issued by various Ministries of Truth.
After long deliberation, I’m going with TINA, TANSTAAFL and FUGAZI as best defining our era: there is no alternative, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, and f**ked up, got ambushed, zipped in (to a body bag).
Let’s start with TINA, there is no alternative, because this drives the other two. TINA is the favored phrase of those benefiting from the current arrangement; if they can sell everyone on the idea that this is the only possible arrangement, the tax-donkeys and debt-serfs (i.e. the bottom 90%) will passively accept their lot in life and those at the top of the heap will have a free pass to most of the wealth and power.
But TINA also expresses a systemic rigidity that suppresses the variability and volatility needed to maintain real stability and not just a phony extend-and-pretend pseudo-stability.
