1. |
The Price of Progress
06:03
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(Ensure that there are)
No more barriers to foreign entry.
We seek Freedom of Markets
over the freedom of human beings.
Invest in the Chain Industry.
We are the liberators,
here to set you free
with a pocket book
and an army.
Just invest in the Chain Industry.
Buy some stocks.
It’ll bring you freedom,
you’ll see.
It’ll bring you and your people liberty.
And us profit.
Tit for tat:
Our prosperity will come at
the expense of yours.
And you will thank us for it.
An investment in the Chain Industry
is an investment in Freedom.
The global chain industry
must expand,
reaching out to new markets,
to new peoples,
to new lands,
exploiting new hands.
The global chain industry
must expand.
Expand or die.
Expand or die.
It matters not
if you have to kill in the process.
Expand or die.
Such is the price of progress.
Invest in the Chain Industry.
Invest in Freedom, Progress, Prosperity.
Build your infrastructure around the chain industry.
Force your people into the 21st century.
Enslave the worker; free the economy.
(Ensure that there are)
No more barriers to foreign entry.
We demand Freedom of Markets
over the freedom of human beings.
We are the Financial Freedom Fighters.
We are the Monetary Mercenaries.
We demand freedom to enslave the free.
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2. |
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The global chain industry
must capitalize.
It must control everything around it,
lest it stifle potential profit.
The global chain industry
must accumulate,
capital, labor
nature, lives.
The global chain industry
must expand or die.
Resources might be confined
to a planet that is finite,
but the chain industry demands
infinite growth,
infinite gains.
To not heed its commands would prove
a most dire mistake—
the world might lose its chains.
Empire has a heartbeat.
You can hear it if you just
stay quiet and listen.
Empire has a heartbeat.
You can hear it if you just
work hard and stay obedient.
Fret not.
The global chain industry
is a conscientious one.
Imperial heartbeats.
Omnipresent,
always beating.
Omnivorous,
always eating.
Imperial heartbeats are the
sounds of its subjects
trying to breath,
trying to live.
Palpitations of stifled life.
Stifled life
or stifled profit?
Choose one.
(The question is,
whose life?
whose profit?)
Palpitations of stifled profit.
Imperial heartbeats
beat the life
out of you.
Listen.
Can you hear?
That’s the sound of freedom,
freedom upon the horizon.
Can you feel it?
Pain is weakness leaving the body—
the body,
that same vessel empire beats like a drum,
in a desperate attempt to show some sign of life,
any at all.
Repeat after me.
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3. |
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The global chain industry is a
kind, benevolent empire.
It seeks only to help its subjects,
those ungrateful barbarians.
Out of the kindness of its heart.
Out of the kindness of its bloody, beating heart.
It brings Commerce,
Almighty Commerce,
to “backward” peoples.
It teaches Skills,
Almighty Skills,
to “backward” peoples.
(Press the button on the machine,
so the rich men can make some
more money.
Look how skilled we are now!
Glue the chip right into place—
nothing more,
that’s not your job!—
so the rich men can make some
more money.
Look how skilled we are now!
Cut the cloth in the right spot—
don’t put the button on,
or sew the pocket,
or patch the hole,
that’s not your job!—
Cut the cloth in the right spot,
so the rich men can make some
more money.
Look how skilled we are now!)
It creates Jobs,
Almighty Jobs,
for “backward” peoples.
(Almighty jobs.
Celestial jobs.
Holy jobs.
Jobs!
Jobs, jobs, jobs!
Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs!
No commerce in a dead society?
No skills for dead people?
No jobs for dead people?
The chain industry is not
concerned with the long term.
After all,
its heart can’t beat forever.)
Don’t go to sleep.
Don’t you dream.
Don’t even close
your old, worn eyes.
‘Cus we are watching,
monitoring overhead,
counting our overhead
protecting “freedom.”
Sleep is for the weak.
You are a worker, not a sleeper.
You toil, not dream.
Pain is for the weak.
You are a worker.
You are the blood flowing through our commercial veins.
Your cries of anguish are our imperial heartbeat.
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4. |
Business Lesson 101
05:31
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Too many people are losing their chains,
the only thing they have to lose.
Too many people are noticing their chains.
That seems to happen when they move.
So let’s make sure they can’t.
We’ll send in the army to keep them still,
destroy their homes,
so they can’t escape the chill
and the sound of bombs falling
in the cold night air.
We’re giving them freedom!
But all those ungrateful barbarians
do is despair.
We’ll impose sanctions to
keep their food and medicine scant.
We’ll enforce blockades,
put the whole country on a diet.
The hungry stay quiet.
The sick and dying are obedient.
The starving are easy to appease.
The homeless are easy to please.
They’ll buy whatever you want them to;
they’ll do whatever you want them to do;
when they’re dying and diseased.
Business lesson 101:
Everyone’s a customer
if you try hard enough.
Make them need it.
And they’ll buy your stuff.
You can make anyone a client
if you sell it to ‘em right.
The secret is to
threaten them with violence.
The best kind of “voluntary association”
is the involuntary kind.
Force them into your economic empire.
Remind them they’re choosing freedom!
Empire guarantees customers.
The imperial customer is the most obedient
and devoted of them all.
We’re giving them freedom!
But all those ungrateful barbarians
do is despair.
Do they even care?
Why aren’t they thanking us?
We’re giving them freedom.
We’re selling them chains.
The least they could do is thank us.
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5. |
Democracy in a Bombshell
07:00
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We have created a system.
A system of pure liberty.
A system that will never fall.
Because it is the greatest system of them all.
Welcome to the end of history.
The rich rule.
And the rest get one day
to pick their rich ruler.
Some call it plutocracy.
We call it capitalist “democracy.”
It’s the most efficient order.
It’s the natural way.
We have attained freedom.
Absolute freedom
for the predator to feed on the prey.
Freedom for the privileged over all.
And we will defend this privilege
by any means necessary.
If we have to crush the ungrateful barbarians,
so be it.
We will call up our monetary mercenaries.
We will send in the loans and the guns and the military.
This is what happens when they
try to assert themselves.
We’ll bring them democracy
whether they like it or not.
They’ll invest in the chain industry.
Or else.
We’re bringing them democracy
at the point of a gun.
We’re bringing them democracy
at the tip of a bomb.
And by “democracy” we mean capitalism.
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6. |
A to-Die-for Deal
05:41
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We’ve got a to-die-for deal.
Made especially for you.
It really is quite the deal.
Buy now and get not one, but two.
You can’t pass it up.
Two chains for the price of one.
You won’t pass it up.
Consider that a threat.
If humans are born free
but everywhere they are in chains,
those chains have to come from somewhere.
That’s where I come in.
I’m a leader in the chain industry.
And I only presciently recognize and meet a pressing need.
Don’t blame me for my philanthropic deed.
I’m just overseeing what is sold.
I answer only to the Market.
And the Market beckons.
You need chains.
I have chains.
It is often safer
to be in chains
than to be free,
those chains still have to come from somewhere.
That’s where I come in.
I work in the chain industry.
And I only sell different
styles, and fashions, and colors, and brands of chains
to people like you and me.
Don’t blame me for making a living.
I’m just doing what I’m told.
I answer only to corporate.
They give me stock investment.
You need chains!
You just haven’t developed the skills to see it yet.
Chains of freedom.
You need chains!
You just haven’t developed the knowledge to know it yet.
Chains of freedom.
Twice as much freedom for the price of half.
A to-die-for deal made on your behalf.
And, guess what—
it’s your lucky day.
If you buy now,
we’ll also throw in two locks.
Useful, to keep disobedient workers on the clock
and those inefficient unions at bay.
We can’t ensure a lifetime guarantee.
But if your workers break their chains,
we’ll be here to replace them any day.
Of course at a fee.
We do nothing for no pay.
As much as we like doing good,
what we like infinitely more is money.
(After all, anything is infinity greater than zero.
And profit’s at the absolute top of our list.)
Twice as much freedom for the price of half.
A to-die-for deal made on your behalf.
Chains of freedom.
Here comes the waiter
with your final meal.
No need to tip.
This is the end of your trip.
And in just a moment
you’ll need it.
Get out your wallet
Prepare yourself
for a true to-die-for deal.
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7. |
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8. |
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Empire and peace cannot coexist.
Choose one.
We choose empire.
We choose empire over peace.
Peace is overrated anyway.
It’s very difficult to profit off of peace.
Peace is a lousy investment.
We live in a world with a new kind of peace,
the only kind that matters:
peace for markets,
peace for the chain industry,
peace for our corporate masters.
Welcome to the end of history.
A time of universal peace
and freedom.
Peace is a lousy investment.
If everyone’s healthy and merry,
and they all have that they need,
where’s the room for us
monetary mercenaries?
Where’s the room for greed?
Peace is an ideological term.
Peace is subjective.
And seeing as we own the
books and the press,
we redefine peace
to serve our imperial objectives.
We’re tired of your utopian visions.
The rich need their slaves.
And we know how to keep those slaves appeased,
with illusions of freedom and peace.
We’ve already built our own utopia,
on the broken backs of countless wasted workers.
It’s name: bourgeois capitalist “democracy.”
And in it,
war is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
God is the chain industry.
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9. |
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Welcome to the end of history.
A time of universal peace
and freedom to do anything,
including enslaving the free.
|
PECULATE
Progressive metal and mathcore meet jazz fusion and avant-garde classical music ||| Metal in Opposition ||| (PECULATE is the solo project of composer and musician Ben Norton)
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