Ecstatic Statistics   The charm of capitalism is its attractive form, a self-organizing system without all those rules and constraints, something for the free-spirited and enthusiastic mind. Since the rules are not set, or at least not known (as we all have noticed in connection with various global crises), you can throw yourself into the mysteries of capital and, with luck, emerge with new wisdom. The stock market is an extremely complicated adaptive system. We at Powerbase can only marvel at those stock market traders, who sit for hours in front of their screens, tracing the minute fluctuations of the market, catching a strange attractor now and then, and surfing on the infinitely rich information flows. As an added bonus, there is the thrilling life-and-death urgency (because you might lose everything you own at any instant) which makes the adrenaline, mixed with a number of triple espressos, flow through your veins, making the experience a kind of holy rapture. Sure, we admire chaos theoreticians as well, but parsing those bit streams in real time is only for the heroic. For those of a less devil-may-care disposition, studying corporate structures can offer an alternative. It is a true delight to examine in detail the top-down structures and information flows of a large corporation. Nothing beats sitting down with a cup of coffee and some left-over secret intra-corporate memos with statistics, efficiency figures and output goals. It is fascinating to see how many corporations manage to generate huge amounts of money from products with nearly no function or content (like this website). The quest for a deeper understanding of corporations may lead you to study some of the hot-shots of the moment, like David Tang of Hong-Kong, who once uttered the memorable remark: "Monopoly is the purest form of capitalism." Money equals pure condensed information. It is the consumer's choice to convert it into a pleasant form of information. Once the basic needs (food, costs of living etc) have been satisfied, why not go for some hedonism? In the last few years, the kind of magazines that promote expensive living for the masses have finally reappeared. Wallpaper, for instance, assumes that it is everyone's birthright to own designed houses, fly by Concorde, and buy outrageously expensive furniture. This is a reassuring trend. It's boring to avoid 'sell-out' bands and writers just because their work has been 'soiled' by money. Consume, and revel in it without feeling guilty. Reckless consumption of sell-out stuff just adds that extra edge to your offbeat personality. Swallow capitalism, instead of getting engulfed by it. by Mikael Huss