And -- fight the immense and all-encompassing at all government and industry levels.
1 Trump and GOP are truly HORRIBLE.
2 DNC oligarchs (Biden, Pelosi, Schumer) are even WORSE (censorship, they concocted Russia-gate hoax, torture of Julian Assange, Daniel Hale’s persecution for Obama’s drone crimes, $16+B Haiti-corruption under Hillary/Obama – Biden-family corruption pales in comparison)
The ONLY solution – vote THIRD party – now and forever. ALWAYS vote – but VOTE for a Third (or fourth, fifth..) party – at ALL levels, especially at LOCAL levels (vote OUT each and every incumbent).
“If you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less.” [Ralph Nader].
Only ACTION: Sustained organized mass civil disobedience - not distractions like DNC-controlled hollering and tweeting....
Among "the contemporary original sins" one could include the Russia-gate scam of the century -- concocted by Obama, Hillary, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, etc...
And a bit on St. Obama:
A Company Family: The Untold History of Obama and the CIA
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - October 1, 2021
A Company Family: The Untold History of Obama and the CIA - CovertAction Magazine
Can you please clarify what do you mean with -- "a rent-extracting healthcare system"? Why use of "rent-extracting"? I am not an economist and the use is puzzling to me...
I really liked this piece even though I think it has more than its fair share of poppycockery. I see things somewhat differently. There are two things (for lack of a better word) to consider here. One is the political system and the other is the economic system. This essay has thus far focused on the economic system which is the lesser of the two “things” as the economic system is supported by the political system, not the other way around.
So what are our choices? In the economic sphere there are two primary ones. Socialism and Capitalism. These two stand at opposite poles and there is a range of choices that result from a blend of pure socialism (aka communism) and pure capitalism (aka the US in the late 19th century). For political systems you have a wide range of choices. Democracy, totalitarian dictatorship, oligarchy, theocracy come to mind immediately and most of them have flavors.
But you started with Gibbon. So let’s talk Gibbon. The term he actually uses in the D&F is degeneracy. A degeneration of the old Roman republic values. Remarkably the old Roman republic looked a lot like the original version of the US’s democracy. In Rome, only the patricians (i.e. landowners) had the vote and could be in the Senate much like the US where originally only property tax paying landowners could vote. Gibbon blamed the degeneracy on wealth and the polity becoming overly focused on pleasure (generally made possible by Rome’s wealth) which he claimed caused them to lose their republican virtues. He misses out on the change in the Roman government from one of being a republic to becoming a dictatorship (the latin word for the dictator is imperator). He blames the lapse of the republican values for the eventual collapse of Rome which he notes was actually as a result of military defeat. No actual economics here.
You move on to a more fraught reference - JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Tolkien and his best bud, CS Lewis (of the Screwtape Letters and the Chronicles of Narnia), and the guy you never hear of Hugo Dyson were a real river of Christianity (real Christianity, not the faux type pushed by the evangelicals) running through the literary scene and these stories take more from Christianity than you seem to realize. The scene in the Lord of the Rings is between Frodo, the hobbit who is supposed to bring the ring in the last line of the rhyme and cast it into the fiery pit to destroy it and Galadriel, the elven queen of Lothlorien who already has one. Sauron made rings for the Elves, the Dwarves, and men with “one ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them”, that’s Sauron’s own ring and the one that Frodo has. This is all about power and Galadriel instantly recognizes that she would simply become a different version of Sauron but no less evil. I’m not going to tell you how this ends if you don’t already know. However American exceptionalism isn’t the American one ring to rule them all, that prize goes to manifest destiny, the delusional belief first that the US should occupy all of America which morphed into the belief that American culture, values, and rules should spread like scourge across the earth.
When I think of the sorts of things that you note and then note that the problem isn’t so much the problems we face, as it is the sclerotic nature of our society that is unable to address problems and issues or if we do actually try to address the problems our solutions fail because of preconceived notions and we are unable, once started, to change our response because of our rigidity. As Nicolas Van Rijn (CEO of Solar Spice and Liquors in Poul Anderson’s libertarian stories) says whilst trying to solve problems, I look for parallels and skews to see where I am. We have a parallel. I recommend John J Norris, A History of Venice. Venice became the most serene republic around the year 800 AD and started out as a rude democracy of fishermen and traders. They got very good at trading and it was a very open society. Then they acquired mainland property thanks to some wars they won. Then they got really rich (Marco Polo was neither a one-off nor an aberration) and some had more than others, a lot more, and they morphed into an oligarchy when the populace effectively lost the ability to vote on anything. The society became more and more rigid over time and they developed the most feared secret service in Europe. Any of this sound familiar?
So, no, I don’t think there’s anything we can do by way of economic changes. The rot is more pernicious and pervasive and will require changes in the society to address it. Galadriel turned away from the drug of power but your typical CEO in either the government or industry would not do that nor would most anybody else.
Moreover, accumulating power and expecting the sociopaths in charge not to play Risk with it is about as realistic as leaving a giant unguarded pile of uncut honk out on front of a cokehead and expecting him not to indulge.
Before prescribing the ought, there has to be some comprehension of the is.
Nature is always going to be about ups and downs. It's a flatline otherwise.
While the various countries and civilizations of the Old World have several millennia of such cycles to inform their cultures, The United States has only history's greatest growth spurt, geographic, population, innovation, industry, technology, science, on which to base its culture. Yes it occurred as a world wide phenomena, but America has ridden the wave like no other.
Now we are looking down and even the credit cards no longer seem to be working their magic.
Debt doesn't matter, until it does, then the party is over and the hangover begins.
Which means it is time to truly look ourselves in the mirror and not blame what we see on someone else.
For one thing, everyone has rights. It's in our founding documents and our DNA, but who has responsibilities? In a nutshell, that the problem. Rights are great, when it's all growing, but responsibilities are what gets a society through the hard times.
People complain about life having no meaning, or purpose, but that's what being responsible gives us.
Consider the role of money in society. We all want to save and store it, because we experience it as quantified hope, but the reality is that it functions as a contract, that can be traded around. A medium of exchange, which enables mass societies to function and where the asset is backed by a debt. Even gold backed currencies are just the receipt, not the actual gold. A contract, in other words.
Since we are all constantly trying to mine money out of society, ever more has to be added and ever more metastatic methods of storing what has been extracted have to be devised. Which means generating debts to back the assets. As this builds, the more frenetic it becomes.
As the asset is drawn to the center by positive feedback, while the debt is pushed to the edges by negative feedback, it tears apart the social organism, like the heart telling the hands and feet they don't need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get.
Meanwhile the government serves as debtor of last resort. The capital markets couldn't function, without the government siphoning up trillions in surplus investment money.
The reality is that the functionality of money is its fungibility. We own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing through our bodies. It is a public utility and has to be recognized as such. It's not our picture on it, we don't hold the copyrights and are not responsible for its values as though it were a personal check.
There simply isn't the investment potential to individually save what we need, but we do save for many of the same reasons, so eventually the commons will have to be resurrected.
What enables a commons to work though, is that rights and responsibilities have to remain within shouting distance, otherwise it's the "tragedy of the commons," of everyone taking advantage and no one being responsible.
Safe to say, we are now at the fire burning down the old stage and the next up cycle will be when we reach the bottom.
And -- fight the immense and all-encompassing at all government and industry levels.
1 Trump and GOP are truly HORRIBLE.
2 DNC oligarchs (Biden, Pelosi, Schumer) are even WORSE (censorship, they concocted Russia-gate hoax, torture of Julian Assange, Daniel Hale’s persecution for Obama’s drone crimes, $16+B Haiti-corruption under Hillary/Obama – Biden-family corruption pales in comparison)
The ONLY solution – vote THIRD party – now and forever. ALWAYS vote – but VOTE for a Third (or fourth, fifth..) party – at ALL levels, especially at LOCAL levels (vote OUT each and every incumbent).
“If you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less.” [Ralph Nader].
Only ACTION: Sustained organized mass civil disobedience - not distractions like DNC-controlled hollering and tweeting....
Massive censorship and surveillance -- technology monopolies and corporate media are fully integrated with huge US security complex:
Facebook's Partner: The Atlantic Council (5 Frightening Facts) (rumble.com)
https://rumble.com/vleq6v-facebooks-partner-the-atlantic-council-5-frightening-facts.html
Facebook's Partner: The Atlantic Council (5 Frightening Facts)
YouTube demonetizes Jimmy Dore for criticizing AOC -- by using her own words
YouTube Suppresses Jimmy Dore's Criticism Of AOC - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9DbTimhVJc
Among "the contemporary original sins" one could include the Russia-gate scam of the century -- concocted by Obama, Hillary, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, etc...
And a bit on St. Obama:
A Company Family: The Untold History of Obama and the CIA
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - October 1, 2021
A Company Family: The Untold History of Obama and the CIA - CovertAction Magazine
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/10/01/a-company-family-the-untold-history-of-obama-and-the-cia/
( Barack Obama is a spook, from a spook family, and his political campaigns were financed by spooks… )
Can you please clarify what do you mean with -- "a rent-extracting healthcare system"? Why use of "rent-extracting"? I am not an economist and the use is puzzling to me...
Many thanks
I really liked this piece even though I think it has more than its fair share of poppycockery. I see things somewhat differently. There are two things (for lack of a better word) to consider here. One is the political system and the other is the economic system. This essay has thus far focused on the economic system which is the lesser of the two “things” as the economic system is supported by the political system, not the other way around.
So what are our choices? In the economic sphere there are two primary ones. Socialism and Capitalism. These two stand at opposite poles and there is a range of choices that result from a blend of pure socialism (aka communism) and pure capitalism (aka the US in the late 19th century). For political systems you have a wide range of choices. Democracy, totalitarian dictatorship, oligarchy, theocracy come to mind immediately and most of them have flavors.
But you started with Gibbon. So let’s talk Gibbon. The term he actually uses in the D&F is degeneracy. A degeneration of the old Roman republic values. Remarkably the old Roman republic looked a lot like the original version of the US’s democracy. In Rome, only the patricians (i.e. landowners) had the vote and could be in the Senate much like the US where originally only property tax paying landowners could vote. Gibbon blamed the degeneracy on wealth and the polity becoming overly focused on pleasure (generally made possible by Rome’s wealth) which he claimed caused them to lose their republican virtues. He misses out on the change in the Roman government from one of being a republic to becoming a dictatorship (the latin word for the dictator is imperator). He blames the lapse of the republican values for the eventual collapse of Rome which he notes was actually as a result of military defeat. No actual economics here.
You move on to a more fraught reference - JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Tolkien and his best bud, CS Lewis (of the Screwtape Letters and the Chronicles of Narnia), and the guy you never hear of Hugo Dyson were a real river of Christianity (real Christianity, not the faux type pushed by the evangelicals) running through the literary scene and these stories take more from Christianity than you seem to realize. The scene in the Lord of the Rings is between Frodo, the hobbit who is supposed to bring the ring in the last line of the rhyme and cast it into the fiery pit to destroy it and Galadriel, the elven queen of Lothlorien who already has one. Sauron made rings for the Elves, the Dwarves, and men with “one ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them”, that’s Sauron’s own ring and the one that Frodo has. This is all about power and Galadriel instantly recognizes that she would simply become a different version of Sauron but no less evil. I’m not going to tell you how this ends if you don’t already know. However American exceptionalism isn’t the American one ring to rule them all, that prize goes to manifest destiny, the delusional belief first that the US should occupy all of America which morphed into the belief that American culture, values, and rules should spread like scourge across the earth.
When I think of the sorts of things that you note and then note that the problem isn’t so much the problems we face, as it is the sclerotic nature of our society that is unable to address problems and issues or if we do actually try to address the problems our solutions fail because of preconceived notions and we are unable, once started, to change our response because of our rigidity. As Nicolas Van Rijn (CEO of Solar Spice and Liquors in Poul Anderson’s libertarian stories) says whilst trying to solve problems, I look for parallels and skews to see where I am. We have a parallel. I recommend John J Norris, A History of Venice. Venice became the most serene republic around the year 800 AD and started out as a rude democracy of fishermen and traders. They got very good at trading and it was a very open society. Then they acquired mainland property thanks to some wars they won. Then they got really rich (Marco Polo was neither a one-off nor an aberration) and some had more than others, a lot more, and they morphed into an oligarchy when the populace effectively lost the ability to vote on anything. The society became more and more rigid over time and they developed the most feared secret service in Europe. Any of this sound familiar?
So, no, I don’t think there’s anything we can do by way of economic changes. The rot is more pernicious and pervasive and will require changes in the society to address it. Galadriel turned away from the drug of power but your typical CEO in either the government or industry would not do that nor would most anybody else.
Power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats.
Moreover, accumulating power and expecting the sociopaths in charge not to play Risk with it is about as realistic as leaving a giant unguarded pile of uncut honk out on front of a cokehead and expecting him not to indulge.
Incomplete without taking Tainter's analysis of collapse into account.
Before prescribing the ought, there has to be some comprehension of the is.
Nature is always going to be about ups and downs. It's a flatline otherwise.
While the various countries and civilizations of the Old World have several millennia of such cycles to inform their cultures, The United States has only history's greatest growth spurt, geographic, population, innovation, industry, technology, science, on which to base its culture. Yes it occurred as a world wide phenomena, but America has ridden the wave like no other.
Now we are looking down and even the credit cards no longer seem to be working their magic.
Debt doesn't matter, until it does, then the party is over and the hangover begins.
Which means it is time to truly look ourselves in the mirror and not blame what we see on someone else.
For one thing, everyone has rights. It's in our founding documents and our DNA, but who has responsibilities? In a nutshell, that the problem. Rights are great, when it's all growing, but responsibilities are what gets a society through the hard times.
People complain about life having no meaning, or purpose, but that's what being responsible gives us.
Consider the role of money in society. We all want to save and store it, because we experience it as quantified hope, but the reality is that it functions as a contract, that can be traded around. A medium of exchange, which enables mass societies to function and where the asset is backed by a debt. Even gold backed currencies are just the receipt, not the actual gold. A contract, in other words.
Since we are all constantly trying to mine money out of society, ever more has to be added and ever more metastatic methods of storing what has been extracted have to be devised. Which means generating debts to back the assets. As this builds, the more frenetic it becomes.
As the asset is drawn to the center by positive feedback, while the debt is pushed to the edges by negative feedback, it tears apart the social organism, like the heart telling the hands and feet they don't need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get.
Meanwhile the government serves as debtor of last resort. The capital markets couldn't function, without the government siphoning up trillions in surplus investment money.
The reality is that the functionality of money is its fungibility. We own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing through our bodies. It is a public utility and has to be recognized as such. It's not our picture on it, we don't hold the copyrights and are not responsible for its values as though it were a personal check.
There simply isn't the investment potential to individually save what we need, but we do save for many of the same reasons, so eventually the commons will have to be resurrected.
What enables a commons to work though, is that rights and responsibilities have to remain within shouting distance, otherwise it's the "tragedy of the commons," of everyone taking advantage and no one being responsible.
Safe to say, we are now at the fire burning down the old stage and the next up cycle will be when we reach the bottom.