Saturday 20 July 2019

Cthulhu's Mirages #893247 - Tremendous economy.

It is common for Cthulhu to attack the very nature of reality through his mirages, to sabotage or forestall some actions that might help a prey species avert its own destruction by natural calamity or carefully induced negligence.

Some mirages are used to fuel improper inferences, "The economy is in good shape because the stock market is high", however by this standard The American economy was in great shape on October 23, 1929, shortly after that it more resembled stale chowder, as October 24 was "Black Tuesday" the start of the great crash, during which, Wall Street was littered with the mangled corpses of stockbrokers who had been ruined by the "strong stock market" as  half the value of stocks just evaporated.

Today the stock market is in record territory once again, just as it was in the tech boom, and in 2008. Overconfidence in the market is a sign, it is all about to go belly up. The bond rate is now inverted, these are usually bought as a hedge against inflation, but now the banks that by them are making losses on them. This is a loud signal the system is about to implode.

The IMF world economic outlook has worrying news for the American economy but also notes challenges in the agricultural sector including the tight labor market and the trade war with China. (See https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/REO/WH)
Over the medium term, however, global growth is expected to soften, and risks are tilted to the downside, owing to the possibility of a sharp tightening of financial conditions, escalating trade tensions and risks of a further shift toward protectionist policies, and geopolitical strains.

Tax policy still encourages manufactures to seek cheap labor in Asia and elsewhere, doing little for America's struggling middle class.

Also facing the middle is the opioid drug crisis, and the lack of accessible quality essential healthcare, because healthcare is rationed by a private insurance bureaucracy that denies 80% of all claims in the first instance, in hope that claimants will find the money some other way, just die, or horror of horrors successfully argue that tests or treatments are indeed medically required. America remains the only developed nation where medical bankruptcy exists.

Deregulation of environmental policy is allowing for more pollution, which will result in public health impacts, and 100 million Americans are exposed to drinking water with unsafe contamination. While the case of Flint, Michigan is relatively high profile hundreds of other cities have unsafe water supplies. In part, because infrastructure has been neglected, to keep taxes low for corporations. Flint Michigan is perhaps a poster child for the political pressure to cut taxes to unsafe levels for the benefit of monied interests.

Many Americans filed tax returns for the first time since the Republican tax reform under the Trump administration, they could not help but notice, that many deductions that they had claimed in previous years, were no longer available to them. The bottom line for them was, they were paying more in taxes, when they would have expected a refund, if they were still due a refund, it was much smaller than previous years. However, corporations and billionaires benefited to the value of over USD1 trillion.

About that tight labor market, The is a measure of Americans actively looking for work, or as the Department of labor statistics calls it "U3". They also track another value called "U6", this measures people who are parttime for economic reasons alone, this stands at 7.2%, well above the 3.4% U3 commonly cited. There is also evidence that many Americans are underemployed in part-time work. This is because many employers prefer to keep more part-timers for whom they are not required to provide health coverage for, to fewer full-time staff for which health coverage is required. This problem existed before the Affordable Care Act. Medicare For All would eliminate this problem, as all workers would be covered by a payroll tax, which would half the value of current private health insurance premiums. (See https://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate)

-- U6 Unemployment
-- U5 Unemployment
-- U3 Official unemployment rate

This graph shows the unemployment figures for the last 4 years, it shows a long trend of falling unemployment that continues undeflected by the last transfer of power between administrations, to credit the administration with outstanding performance, seems to overstate the facts, essentially they just haven't screwed up enough or otherwise impacted very much unemployment at all except for a slight leveling out, which may be indicative of economic issue not addressed by the administration or diminishing returns as available labor reduces. Some Americans were able to leave or reduce work commitments after the Affordable Care Act's introduction meant that they could afford health coverage. These people are not counted in unemployment figures.

Ken Bone
Ken Bone

According to Ken Bone, "nothing has changed" in the coal industry, which continues to slide into the sunset. On the upside, the rooftop solar installer industry is still employing 3-4 times the number of people as the coal industry, despite the tariffs that had a negative impact on the roof-top solar industry. With the head of the EPA being a former coal industry lobbyist, it is arguable that the administration has a clear partiality to coal operators and limited concern for the current jobs market, let alone the economic future of the nation.

The state of the US economy is complex, by any standard it is a huge system by any measure and simple statements about its overall health are easily misleading, but this one thing does seem important, over the last 30 years, the American 1% of greatest wealth  holders have in that time see their wealth grow by USD21 Trillion, while the lest wealthy 50% have seen their wealth fall by USD900Billion(see https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/06/14/top-1-up-21-trillion-bottom-50-down-900-billion/). Since that latter group only had USD700billion to start with they are now indebted by USD200billion. Someone is clearly winning, it is probably not you. That could change, a new administration focused on putting forward the agenda of working Americans, livable wages, medicare-for-all, tuition-free college to invest in technology and skills development, jobs plan to future proof the energy system, end the for profit-slavery industrial prison complex, end the stupid wars. Most Americans already agree with this agenda, usually significant margins, the one big thing stopping change so far is the corruption of monied interests. With the current administration's ties to the Mercer family (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mercer#2016_U.S._election), copious evidence, of influence peddling, and the industry ties of many of the administration appointments, it seems unlikely that this administration is the government you are looking for.  You're probably looking for a candidate with a long anti-war record, a long pro-labor record, that is not a demagogue prone outrageous statements about invisible planes, and tossing paper towels at hurricane survivors.

Play nice, and praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster for she is noodly, Ramen.

Cthulhu's Mirages #645298 - The Terrible Burden of Migrants

One of the more wild mirages is the notion that migrants are a burden on America, taking welfare, and not paying back into the systems, it sounds simple, and it is, too simple. It has been a long-running theme in the mirages of Cthulhu, essentially as Cthulhu sees deluding vertebrate species into self-destruction as a labor-saving device for his vision of cosmological de-populism which is the removal of all living species from the cosmos. Fear of the "other" weaker members of a species cohort is often injected into a population through leadership figures who proclaim strength, but whose weak minds make them exceptionally malleable to Cthulhu's will, not just in human society, but also in other primate societies, which may be readily observed. So the instinctual responses are there and all too easily exploited. A similar a set mirages were induced in central Europe in the 1920s and 1930s until Europe exploded into war just 2 decades after "The Great War", "The War to End All Wars". Once Germany had lost The Great War, reparations were sought and imposed on Germany to recoup the cost of defense for the nations that defeated them.

Measures of austerity imposed on Germany collapsed the German economy, by extracting wealth from the Germany economy in a manner that resembles loosely the IMF and world bank loan conditions that have lead to the collapse of many modern economies since, that have also seen radicalization and terrorism. America is also subject to austerity, as successive governments, at the behest of billionaires and corporations, have cut social services, neglected to raise minimum wage to keep up with rising costs of living, executing stock buybacks, and hoarding around USD31 trillion in tax havens and other "instruments"(see https://www.wealthx.com/report/world-ultra-wealth-report-2018/), while decreasing the tax burden for a very few who would not imagine any person to be interesting with less than $100m.

So really, are migrants a burden? Not so much according to the National Bureau of economic research, which shows migrants return $21k after 20years. https://www.nber.org/papers/w23498). Another study has been reported as showing a lifetime benefit to the American taxpayer of approximately $80k.
(Source:
The work the low wage jobs Americans can't do because of inertia created by the normal pressures of family, community, holding multiple low wage jobs keeping them too busy to look outside the box. Without migrant workers, crops would rot in the ground, in fact, agriculture is experiencing a labor shortage, and crops are being left to rot, because of the lack of harvest time labor.(See https://agamerica.com/farm-larbor-shortage/) Sure, low wage Americans might take jobs in this industry, but it's seasonal nature, and the generally high cost of living, finding work beyond the season labor creates gaps in income which are intolerable for families, with most American families unable to sustain a $500 unplanned expense. (See https://allthatsinteresting.com/american-savings).


Native-born Americans are incarcerated at a much higher rate than immigrants.There is more data pointing to how migrants offer economic benefit to the American economy and treasury but also data pointing to migrants having a lower rate of criminal behavior than native-born Americans. The effect is strong enough that the imprisoned migrant population has been falling since 1990, (See https://www.businessinsider.com/immigrants-commit-less-crime-than-native-born-americans-trump-speech-2017-3//?r=AU&IR=T)

Net migration across the Southern border has been southward for more than 10 years. Liberal and Left criticism of the Obama administration included the notion of "Deporter in Chief" as a reference to the 44th president. Barriers, are actually slow this migrant as people increasingly need to save money to travel south rather use cheaper modes of movement. (See https://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/)


It seems that amid wild promises to "Make America Great Again" some of the people working hardest at such a lofty goal are really not appreciated for their contribution, but are instead being demagogued, libeled and slandered while living very modest lives, centered around hard work for low pay, and very little influence, while others laugh all the way to their Cayman Island shell companies, DeutcheBank, and other tax-havens.

There are better sources and more research on these topics, I'd like to know about them, and may include them here. So please make suggestions below.

As always, stay noodly, Play nice ok, and praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster for she is noodly. Ramen.

Tuesday 16 July 2019

Cthulhu's Mirages #875239 - AOC hated says poll

Cthulhu's mirages keep coming, strangely this one emanates from Axios. It seems Progressives may not poll well among people without a college education, also known as Trump's base at least if we do not look deeper.  Luckily someone has.

The poll has been used to claim AOC is not well supported or "hated" in her own district. The poll has problems of its own, it violated the usual standards for polling, with biased questions and cherry-picking of data.
Ryan Grim took a look into the questons surrounding  this poll as reported in this SplinterNews article. https://splinternews.com/axios-peddles-shady-poll-pushing-attack-on-progressive-1836375126

The voter demographic polled were noncollege educated swing voters, many of whom may be seeing some amount of Republican media mischaracterizing AOC and socialism. AOC never advocated banning cows, or burgers or planes, but still found 22% support among the polled demographic.  It appears the establishment remains adverse to challengers - Cthulhu is nothing but consistent.

Republicans do make a habit of using outrageous, salacious and very often false claims to attack democrats both establishment and progressive.


Never the less, praise the FSM, for she is noodly. Play nice, Ramen!

Sunday 14 July 2019

Cthulhu's Mirages #458652 - Marx's "antisemitism"


As we pirates attempt to rescue reason from the clutches of Cthulhu's minions who are of course driven by the mirages of Cthulhu, we sometimes find interesting true things along the way. There is room for a series about these things, exposing some of the more interesting treasures buried under chowder, myth and Cephalopoda scat.

Today the topic is "Marx was anti-semitic", it sounds bad to any socialist ear and to anyone with a basic understanding of mid 20th Century history, but to especially those not familiar with the many works of Karl Marx, Das Capital is well known, but his life and works are, shall we say less known to many. Less still is an 1844 work called "On the Jewish Question". At that time some were questioning whether European Jewish people could be really free in Europe and Russia, and still be, well... Jewish. Marx thought it a pertinent question and offered his opinion on this very question. The upshot of which was yes, Jewish people can indeed be free and Jewish in Europe, and there should be no need for them to abandon their religious consciousness in order to achieve that freedom. This may sound terrible to some, but I find it tricky to imagine them being Jewish at least without developing some sort of cognitive dissonance, the same way some in an oppressed class identify with the ideology of their oppressors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question
The claim gets a little silly when we look further, as Marx himself was ethnically Jewish, his maternal grandfather a rabbi, and his father's family having rabbis through the century before his birth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx 
It seems strange that anyone might accuse, in anything other than jest, Marx of antisemitism, given Marx's personal history and expressed opinions.

Marx made a study of, and extensively wrote on alienation in capitalist society and he like many of his time was a fan of the aims of the French Revolution, as he grew up in a French-German border town. He could not, however, ignore that capitalism was showing signs that it was incapable of meeting the high expectations placed upon it. And in just 50 years, it was already showing signs of developing similar issues to those it was intended to resolve. Including the entrenchment of wealth and power, and the crushing power exerted on working people, who frankly if it were left to them would not be likely to build mansions and castles from the fruits of their labor. Even today, it is fair to ask if Amazon workers would prefer to use the value they create to send their boss by rocket to the moon as Mr. Bezos uses the portion of that value which he claims to do just that.

Marx pointed out that the alienation of minorities was a way of scapegoating to serve those that those who held political and economic power and to maintain their status. Such behavior appears to have bothered Marx, in part because he was "sent out" of his home town in which he had the job he desired as a student - that of professor, and was put on a train to Parish. His terrible crime was community organizing in a region with a lot conservative and wealthy people who seemed likely to have been concerned that they might be required to engage in fair dealing with employees, the terrible specter of labor rights, occupational health and safety, or the curtailing of child labor.

A further discussion of the life and work of Karl Marx can be found here, with Richard Wolff - Economics Professor Emeritus at MIT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU-AkeOyiOQ

In the conversation that brought up the Marx antisemitism claim, another claim was made "socialism collapses quickly". We can be sure that that one would give our Norwegian friends quite the chuckle, after all, they came up with the hashtag #shitholeUSA and they have enjoyed a socialist politic for the best part of a century. And in Germany, the only reason the word "Socialist" appeared in the NAZI party name, was because the German public would never have given Hitler's party the time of day without it. None the less, Hitler and his following turned out to be a terrible fraud and worse but is generally identified as a fascist phenomenon, not simply for the jackboots, militarism, varied misanthropies, and empire building by conquest, but for the unity of public and private sector interests. Hyperinflation and a collapsing economy brought about by the extraction of war reparations led to desperation in German populace, this means populist style rhetoric even when fake was very appealing. World Bank Policy and IMF loans have by similar means caused great distress in many countries in the last 50 years, and these nations have had issues with radicalization. And now, the 1% is essentially applying similar pressure on industrialized nations, causing great inequality, social/political tribalism, and a mass migration of red hats manufactured in low wage China, to make nests in North America on those who hunt squirrels accused of ruining the economy as the billionaires laugh all the way to the too-big-to-jail banks as they point in random directions shouting "squirrel" any red hats with an AR15 poking the sky they see.
David Pakman's Debunked: "Socialism has never worked"  is a useful place to start. And can be found  here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k79wCaFgU40
Norway's socialism goes back almost a century, and collective labor organization operated successfully for 300 years in Aztec society prior to the arrival of Columbus in the New World.

As always, praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster for she is noodly, and play nice ok. Ramen.

Thursday 22 November 2018

Watching Sharks swim in FIRE.


Image result for Shark fire image
Many will have noticed, they are not as well off as their parents were at the same age if their family has been resident in an industrialized country for 50 to 60 years. For these folks, myself included, understand our parents lived at a time of strong economic growth, Home ownership was very achievable and wages were good enough to support a mortgage even working on a factory floor as my parents did.Things have changed, low corporate taxes now mean executives are incentivized to pull money out of a business, rather than invest in growth, and new tax breaks simply mean more shareholder returns and executive salary hikes and bonuses, rather than lifts in wages which are often characterized as "starvation" wages.

But something is in the background that I have not touched on yet, and it is at the core of the issues.  These economies are being chewed on by elements that are also essential to the mechanisms by which they operate - apex predators that ruthlessly tear down other elements of the economy. FIRE or Finance, Insurance and Real Estate. From from the stock market that seeks investment for what amounts to gambling in securities and derivatives, to the insurance industry that seeks premiums and too often has to be fought in court to get delivery of proposed benefit. To realestate, where property values, rents and lease prices are growing considerably faster than wage or industrial revenues. The last segment is the segment which is the focus of today's sermon.

Residential rents, mortgage payments while perhaps a necessary part of the market, have grown so that now people are struggling to maintain a lifestyle that resembles that of their parents. Indeed, many under 30 today have little hope of owning their own home. But lets look at the broader implications. 50 years ago people would spend around 25-30% of their income on their home, as rent or mortgage payment, this left 75% of their income available for savings, holidays, consumer goods, hobbies, eating out and more. This meant tourism, manufacturing, the restaurant sector and others were all better supported by consumer demand, because people could afford to support them.

On the other side, because industry was so well supported by consumers, and because realestate overheads - leases and rents - were less of a burden, break even was easier to achieve. As rents have increased on average 3.5-4% pa - rents have doubled in about 20 years. But aggregate demand for consumption has grown at about 1% pa. At the same time prices have risen in an attempt to compensate for consumer demand falling off because rents and mortgages now commonly consume 50-60% of wage income while wages have been squeezed - because employers are squeezed by the overheads especially rental/lease expenses for the properties in which they operate and of course the weaker consumer demand.

Many small commercial properties in my city are asking for rents, which would be similar value to two low paid full-time jobs. If we wind back to halve that rent, a business could afford to hire one more person. An extra person could easily increase productivity, which benefits that business, but more to the point, that persons discretionary income would support other business in the community, the restaurant where they like to dinner date, the cinema, the squash club, the mechanic who services their vehicle, The Home Depot, Mitre 10, or Bunnings, that they shop at for DIY decorating/renovation.

The simple aggregate of the economic growth offers an often misleading picture of the health of an economy. If a patient with a history of being underweight, or showing weak growth, suddenly gains weight quickly, it is possible that tumor a is at work pressing more heavily on the scales, while threatening the stability of other organ systems. OR in our original analogue, the shark population can grow so that it's needs exceed the productivity of their prey species to the extent that can force the prey species into collapse, and the sharks will then starve. Interestingly the sharks of the FIRE economy variously don't care, dread, and love this inherent instability in the system. They don't care - the just want the money NOW!! They dread - they don't want to be a starving shark. They love - when the crisis hits, they eat the other sharks, and become more predatory.

Why this phenomenon is affecting industrialized nations as it is now in part due to the rise of emerging economies, from which FIRE economy sharks are expanding their hunting grounds into new territories and competing with endogenous fire economy sharks. In their feeding frenzy, they are chumming the water, and attracting even more apex predators. The effect of their participation in these markets is increasing real-estate valuations, prices, mortgages, and then mortgage payment requirements and rent demands, suppressing consumer demand and increasing business overheads. All adding further pressure towards a collapsing global economy that is visibly under stress as the NASDAQ and other show faultering values even as it's prices remain in record breaking territory.

The above is all very consistent the #NoLivesMatter doctrine of Cthulhu. While governments to varying degrees acknowledge the problem, and some try to address it by restricting foreign investment. Some, the Flying Spaghetti Monster included, ponder the notion of business or residence without restate, Some have even built businesses around the concept. From software developers to drop-ship merchants, to employment agencies specializing in work for grey nomad Americans living in motor homes roaming the North American continent.

But fundamentally the problem is one of supply. More supply of housing, business parks, and facilities to meet the needs of an economy can be built to stabilize the dynamics. Some won't like these proposals essentially because they profit from, or hope to, the system in this unstable state. Building public housing is effective though it requires significant public investment, the case can and has be made successfully to electorates. Developers have neither the scale nor the interest in building low cost housing/low rent housing, especially when house builds for the upper end of the market is significantly more profitable.

Both In New Zealand and the UK public home building has a long history, Vienna has a long history of subsidised rentals, and Germany has a public agency tasked with monitoring housing affordability and requiring new house building with a mandate to keep housing costs down for all Germans. It is a smart thing to do, German's have high disposable incomes because the rent isn't reaching into their wallets before they do - at least as much as in the UK for NZ. Combined with the German economy's focus on technology, innovation and engineering, low cost renewable energy and recycling, the German economy is one of the most high performance economies in the world. featuring a child poverty rate of 9.5% 2014, compared with 27% in 2016 for New Zealand( foreign property invest here is a free-for-all - The Inland Revenue Department doesn't even track it), while Denmark and Finland have child poverty rates of 3-4% according to OECD. Europe exerts more control on foreign property investment for many of concerns raised above and more.
 

Monday 24 September 2018

NZ - Don't be fooled, Cthulhu is strong here

While some dismiss New Zealand as some sort of socialist dystopia where the government rules over everything, the reality on the ground is somewhat different.
New Zealand has a some what disturbing history of fascism and authoritarian rule, from the the brutal atttempts to crush watersiders strikes, to Muldoon era economic controls including taxing the music industry on the basis that it did offer "real" jobs.

Sadly, the fascism, never died there. it got a new branding and marketing campaign. Haled as "Rogernomics" or as neoliberal economics, the agenda boiled down to making everyone pay for everything at the point of service. Including medical help, medicines. They softballed it, saying $3 dollars(prescription copay) or $5 (doctors visit copay) is hardly anything all. But assistance for those who most needed was not adjusted cover this "modest" extra burden. Worse still a decade later, assistance was reduced, by Phase two of Cthulhu's economic pincer movement which was applauded and dubbed "Ruthenasia" after over privileged minion Ruth Richardson.

Today, If you have an injury and need physio there is a $35 copay. Like people struggling to put food in the table and pay rent at the same time can afford it. Clearly if people are getting this help, they are either living under a bridge or starving, either way Cthulhu is satisfied.

Saturday 11 March 2017

When Cthulhu Attacks!

As the Trump administration continues to serve Cthulhu in the manner understood and conveyed by Pope-Emperor Palpatine Bannon, and Minion #8739 Scott Pruitt. While here in New Zealand National adjusts water standards to alleviate problems with more crap in the rivers. Not by reducing level E Coli but by issuing a big "meh" to the E Coli that's already out there.

Closer to home, a lesser known minion entered my apartment and walked off with my main laptop. The computer I have been using to for the last week has no hard disk but runs on a microSD card in a USB adapter. To get going in the morning with it I have to recover the filesystem with fsck. It also has only half the memory and I have to throttle the CPU to stop it getting too hot. I've seen it hit 94C.
Unfortunately, the HDD of the missing laptop had the only copy of my CV - a series of Java code projects I had been developing over many years. There was also a project for a ZX Spectrum editor and assembler project. It included a linker that I had built. The assembler was born to scratch itches with the Ultraviolet assembler including sloppy validation, source code being limited to what could be loaded into basic at one time. The was also a menu BASIC program that tied together everything creating a sort of IDE and a build process.
If anyone sees this ASUS F53Ke, it has a MANA bumper sticker on the lid, and a defect in the middle of the screen, it boots into Ubuntu 12.04.

Friday 16 December 2016

Dear Cthulhu, make no mistake

The following is an open letter to Cthulhu, we publish it without comment, we also neither endorse nor renounce the views expressed within.

Dear Cthulhu, it is that time of year when we approach the Solstice, And the oblate spheroid galleon is about to complete another circumnavigation of the pasta cooker gas element. We'd like to invite you to a conversation, literally about life, the universe and everything. We'd like to see you at peace with your creator the Flying Spaghetti Monster(sauce be upon him - or her depending on mood). The FSM still really likes you, even with everything you have done, the sterilising of thriving planets with gamma ray bursts, directing black holes to crush seed ships - once the last hopes of great and enlightened civilisations, seeding fascism on worlds on the cusp of enlightenment or when they were just about to withdraw from destroying their own environment so that the most arrogant among them can take over control of their societies - doubling down on bringing Oblivion to their world all with the enthusiastic support of the most oblivious segment of the Populus; and carefully cultivating the obliviousness of almost half the people in very substantial populations.
We get it, parents can suck. The Flying Spaghetti Monster, spending so much time at the beer volcano or working to keep the universe from spinning apart, maybe did not give you the attention you desire, or that you believe you deserve, and surely the Caverns of the Great Deep may not have been comfortable during the anoxic ocean events, sulphur bacteria and hydrogen sulphide. The FSM's suggestion to solve your own problems is a good place to start. We suggest you get out of the caverns once in a while, especially during anoxic ocean events - heads up there may be another one coming oxygen levels are falling in oceanic waters. But with your work with Corporate oil producers you surely would already know that, and perhaps it is part of the plan.
Your recent comments suggest that you believe the universe is a mistake, that The Flying Spaghetti Monster should never have created it, and that you have set yourself the ambitious task putting an end to it all, not suicide as that phrase usually implies, but an end to life the universe and everything. It is an extraordinary position to take, considering you yourself are part of this universe and will doubtlessly be adversely affected by this Oblivion thing you keep calling for.
If you succeed, will it cause the FSM, as much discomfort as you believe would assuage your clear rage, anger and distress over your failed relationship with His Noodliness(SBUH)?
Is a universe really a mistake, if it has within it some element that would seek to end it? While such a thing could be a safety feature, The FSM clearly maintains an interest in the goings-on of the Universe, and is somewhat concerned by your activities within it so it would seem, you are a not that safety feature, and it seems like a terrible job anyway, far beneath your clearly great powers. Even going so far as to be creating pressure with noodly appendages in order to keep the whole thing together. The Universal expansion shows the FSM is struggling with the task. It could be a help to assist His Noodliness, the two of you could make this a common interest. With your great and powerful mind you could show His Noodliness(SBUH) how to invent gravity.
The universe was created as an activity set,  a family activity, and His Noodliness is happy to share. Just like in the early days, with the primordial midget and the strippers. It would be unfortunate if any of the creatures of this universe put themselves in a position of being "that one guy that ruined everything for everybody".
For the FSM, the Oblivion you seek is quite likely to be an "interesting result", and perhaps a disappointment that some very good suggestions will be ignored in order to get the result you intend. You will find no happiness either, the satisfaction you imagine, rather relies on you surviving the voidance of the universe, as a part of the universe that is a tricky thing to achieve. Go to the beer volcano, get a beer, take a copy of this, and talk it over with His Noodliness(SBUH). They are reasonable, and sociable. They will hear you out. It seems like an easy choice, stay as you are and be miserable, angry, tortured by acid reflux until the end of time, or you can let it go just long enough to work it out for a bit. Should you succeed, in what can clearly be demonstrated a pointless course of action, The FSM can simply create a new universe, and the experience will encourage the FSM to construct a new universe that replaces you with gravity - in the hope that new arrangement would be "easier to manage".
You may ask what is our stake in this, honestly, we can't afford your issues, as a child of His Noodliness we love you. We're not judging you, however, we cannot love your bullshit, arrogance, and cosmicidal behaviour. You're acting like a massive dick. Worse than, Dick Cheney and Roger Isles combined. You know it's wrong, you wanted something better, and that is why you are so angry. There is a better way, talk it out. get a counsellor - but not Gag Halfront, he's still facing charges over the mishandling of the Beeblebrox Case.

Jack Noodle,
Chair, Social committee
Pastafarian Illumination Science Sauce Technology And Kindly Elucidation Society.
C/O The Bridge Atrium
By The Helm
Galleon Terra Prime.