DarkCloud

This fits in with what happens in the Bible.

I don't get where do the "regular" balloon danglers come from... Do they just choose to go up with a balloon?

The balloons are stories right? Like it's a visual metaphor... But then does that mean people are only reading one story per person in the entire world?

How did people end up in the bog? Did they just let go of a story they didn't like? So are the danglers are people writing stories rather than reading them, and the danglers are the authors?

That makes sense.... A comic book author writing about an aggrandised version of themselves. That checks out from my experience hanging out with authors... But they don't give away or latch on to each others stories that I've seen, that doesn't seem common.

Where do the danglers come from again? Because the guy constructing the balloon wasn't dangling from it... Are the green people minions in some reading dimension?

I don't think I really get the metaphor. Maybe it's just not supposed to be examined. Lots of fiction collapses under examination.

This is why you don't rig a fair system... Because your 'rig' may one day be used against you.

It's not a question of class, it's a question of labour vs motivation/reward.

This still has a behaviouralist slant though, and perhaps that's because I find the concept of unalienated labour hard to envision the practicalities/pragmatics of. Perhaps due to having never seen such a thing (having always lived under Capitalism).

I had none of the misapprehensions you've assumed I had, and was not making any case against Marx (but against ideology instead). That said, maybe someone else will read your comment and understand more about Marx.

Ideology does that to people. I don't think Marx liked ideology, and I believe he said that he's not a Marxist.

He also played the stock market.

I wonder whether Israel asking their Christian churches to pay taxes nation wide will change anything, highlight the decay of Israel-US relations.

All transitions to a new system are temporarily vulnerable to becoming one party, or one person dictatorships.

(there's a video on YouTube called "rules for rulers" that explains this more).

This is a classier version of how lobotomy started as a procedure... It was pioneered by a scam artist who wanted to be a doctor, and his employee who was a vet. A large amount of his practice was honed being hired to make asylum patients quiet and more docile. Gruesome stuff... And being untrained he was completely unsanitary about it.

Most countries are corrupt backwards dictatorships.... So that might be the best standard to use.