ashvin
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Reverse Engineer post=2014 wrote:
Well, I can’t be entirely sure of the database engine underpinning this forum, but it looks a lot like SMF and similar Forum software. Somewhere in the Admin Tools there should be a provision for Splitting Threads. Basically it enables the Admin to take tangential or off thread comments and drop them into a new thread which you designate with a new Title.If you are working with custom software that does not have such a tool, talk to your techno geek about provisioning for it. It is a very valuable tool in terms of both keeping topics on thread and also provisioning for the commentariat to take a thread into other directions.
We use Kunena. I’ve been through the Admin config, and have not seen anything like that. I’m sure there’s a module for it though, like you say. Thanks.
As far as Abiotic Oil goes, I’ll make arguments on that one after you justify your belief in AGW. I put up my arguments on why AGW is unlikely and Climate Change is more likely the result of Geological forces far greater than that accessible through the thermodynamics of Oil combustion. Shoot it down if you want to take me on with respect to this question, but I think it is the better case than Anthropogenic causes for Climate Change.
OK, I’ll think about it. I’m actually surprised something didn’t erupt about it on Jerry’s article discussing “tipping points”, since he devoted a section to AGW.
ben wrote: newsflash, ash. postmodernism is dead. it’s absolutely a valid reaction to mid- and late-industrialism — i appreciate where it’s coming from certainly i do — but it’s not forward thinking. no doubt it’s a useful tool for protesting the apparatus and engaging long-disaffected gen-Xers but it has its limits because it has paradoxically also been the perfect tool of industrialism for half a century. it is the marketing arm of the machine. the machine has mashed pomo-laced nihilism into people and acclimated them to the self-consciousness of it all. hence the pervasive irony.
Well, ben, that’s actually an interesting perspective. One that is way too absolutist and general for my tastes, but I realize it is a legitimate critique that many other philosophers have. Foucault was actually against being labeled a “post-structuralist” for very similar reasons, and I’m sure you are aware that there are many disagreements within postmodern and post-structuralist schools themselves, with some thinkers accusing others of being too nihilistic and passive about it all. I am not against direct political action, but I do not believe in action for the sake of action and I want to be realistic about its possibilities and limitations.
Anyway, I wish you would be more clear/detailed about your issues with my posts in the future from the get go. I’m sure you understand why your first comment to me was entirely uncalled for.
RE,
I was trying to play nice with you, but now you are just being offensive and deceitful. It was you who first accused me of “ridiculing” conspiratorial arguments, while I was actively engaging them and stating my personal and informed opinions about why they were misleading and inaccurate. I used the word “ridicule” a few times in my responses, perhaps carelessly, but obviously to mean that I am very skeptical and critical of those meta-narratives. Now you are trying to act as if I started insulting the people who brought them up, which is clearly not the case. Just take the time to scroll up this thread and you can see that.
In fact, I have NEVER insulted or disrespected commenters on TAE before they have first done the same to me, and even then I usually do not stoop to their level. If you read the comments in these threads carefully, there are quite a few people here who have recognized that fact, understood exactly what I have been arguing and one has even chastised you and ben for being demeaning in this thread. I didn’t find your comments to be demeaning before, but now your true colors are showing.
My style of writing is a) none of your concern and b) has served me and my readers well over the last few years. For every person who takes the time to comment and complain about it (not many), there are plenty others who comment favorably or read on in silence. I have read your articles on DD, and I find them to be very interesting, but it is most definitely not the style of writing that fits me or is best for my readers. I would appreciate it if you refrain in the future from coming here and telling me how to construct my arguments.
I have had a very productive discussion with Triv on this thread, and he has stated in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t find my responses to be insulting, arrogant, disrespectful, or anything else you claim them to be. He doesn’t need you to defend him from me and neither does anyone else at TAE. Your hypocrisy is clearly revealed when you act like that is your holy mission, and then call me arrogant.
While YOU may think your intellectualized, scientific approach is the Cat’s Pajamas, clearly not everybody here does, since you have been Napalmed in at least 3 threads I have followed so far since joining the fray here on TAE. I’m not even sure the majority approve of it, since many seem to be pining for the days when Stoneleigh and Ilargi ran the show.
Of course some people miss more frequent posts by I&S, including me. It is THEIR SITE, after all. Nicole has always found it difficult to post regularly, but Roel could usually find the time. Now, they are both much too busy on the tour. That’s just life. We had quite a few trolls show up on the old site with a “divide & conquer” strategy. I hope you are not attempting to join their ranks with these remarks. You are taking a few comments and inserting your own spin on them (“napalmed”, “pining”…) to make it seem like there is some generalized revolt against me, my writing and my role on TAE. No one here is buying what you’re selling, RE.
What it does do is squash out discussion amongst others who aren’t quite so academically inclined, and it certainly makes people who hold some of the meta-narratives to be true or at least a good possibility to feel very unwelcome here.
If I wanted to “squash” the discussion, I could do so with the click of a few buttons, instead of responding to every last point made by you and others. Do you really think that people here are “intimidated” by my big words and therefore run off and hide, refusing to express what they would have otherwise expressed? I give the TAE readers a lot more credit than that. You, sir, simply have not been around long enough to understand how it works here. Or perhaps you have been scarred by all the other sites you were banned from, for whatever reason, and now harbor a generalized grudge. If so, you are mistaken to assume that TAE is just like any other old site in the alternative media.
You could split the thread off and AGW discussion could be pursued there. Far as a better choice being abiotic Oil as an example of a Wacko Theory, again though I do not consider that likely I can make a good argument for that one also.
Actually, I have no idea what you are talking about here. How does one go about splitting off the thread? If that’s possible, then I’d love to know how it works.
If you can make a argument for abiotic oil, then go ahead and make it. We’ll make up our own minds about whether it’s “good” or not. But I have a feeling you are just trying to be difficult with me, because that’s your MO on other peoples’ sites. You want to hold up DD as a place where people can escape the intellectual oppression of the sites they are currently reading. Perhaps that’s true of DD relative to many other places, but not here. On this forum, especially, we are allowing any and all comments about whatever theories you want to put forward (or link to, in your case), but don’t expect people here to just sit back and embrace it all without a critical word or two.
backwardsevolution post=1998 wrote: As for Dr. Quigley, he may have said that the influential Wall Street group ceased to exist about 1940, but I’ll bet, if he were alive today, he would surely say they took a deep breath and got resuscitated around the Thatcher/Reagan period, were nursed back to health by the Clinton administration, and that they ARE presently in control of the country, again.
Agreed. It has always been a push and pull dynamic between the working class and the owner class, and since the late 60s, early 70s, the latter has shoved just about everyone out of the way.
backwardsevolution post=1990 wrote: THEY KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY’RE DOING.
My article wasn’t meant to suggest anything about what the “Eurozone mafia” knows or doesn’t know about how their policies are affecting everyone else and where they are leading Europe. We know for certain that they know what policies they are in favor of, and we can be pretty certain that they know how those policies almost exclusively benefit the corporate banking elite, since it’s pretty difficult to ignore when you are that close to the process.
Beyond that, I don’t think we can say that every single person involved knows exactly what he/she is doing or is a part of. A small minority of coordinated Eurocratic elites need the active complicity/support and ignorance of a much broader network of politicians, bureaucrats, officials, civil servants, private investors, etc. These are the people who could do well for themselves and for others by adopting completely different perspectives at multiple scales, because they will eventually be screwed over just as badly as everyone else by the policies they are helping to implement.
With regards to Quigley’s Tragedy and Hope, I would once again say that we must also take note of his own comments about how others have interpreted what he wrote in that epic book (following quotes are from his website).
None Dare Call It Conspiracy, using Quigley’s data, attributed to the Round Table Group a lust for world domination. Its sympathies were pro-Communist, anti-Capitalist, said the Birch Society book.
“They thought Dr. Carroll Quigley proved everything.” Quigley says. “For example, they constantly misquote me to this effect: that Lord Milner (the dominant trustee of the Cecil Rhodes Trust and a heavy in the Round Table Group) helped finance the Bolsheviks. I have been through the greater part of Milner’s private papers and have found no evidence to support that.
“Further, None Due Call It Conspiracy insists that international bankers were a single bloc, were all powerful and remain so today. I, on the contrary, stated in my book that they were much divided, often fought among themselves, had great influence but not control of political life and were sharply reduced in power about 1931-1940, when they became less influential than monopolized industry.”
And this,
“Skousen’s book (The Naked Capitalist) is full of misrepresentations and factual errors,” Professor Quigley said. “He claims that I have written of a conspiracy of the super-rich who are pro-Communist and wish to take over the world and that I’m a member of this group. But I never called it a conspiracy and don’t regard it as such. “I’m not an ‘insider’ of these rich persons,” Dr. Quigley continued, “although Skousen thinks so. I happen to know some of them and liked them, although I disagreed with some of the things they did before 1940.”
Skousen also claims, Dr. Quigley believes, the influential group of Wall Street financiers still exists and controls the country. “I never said that,” Dr. Quigley said flatly. “In fact, they never were in a position to ‘control’ it, merely to influence political events.”
The influential Wall Street group of which he wrote about 25 pages in Tragedy and Hope ceased to exist about 1940, Dr. Quigley claims. He also faults Skousen for saying that Tragedy and Hope’s intention was, in Dr. Quigley’s words, “to reveal anything, least of all a purely hypothetical controversy. My only desire was to present a balanced picture of the 70 years from 1895-1965. The book is based on more than 25 years of research.”
You may generally be right, Andrew P, and if recent history is predictive, then you most likely are. I think timing will be a very important factor in this whole Euro drama, and I think that’s at least one factor that is NOT totally or even significantly within the control of the Eurocrats and their financial masters. The global financial system is well past its tipping point, and issues of financial contagion seem to be popping up much faster than the Eurocrats would prefer, while also having unanticipated financial and sociopolitical effects. I don’t think we should over-estimate just how big their window of opportunity will be when the time of “maximum crisis” arrives.
istt post=1959 wrote: When do you think the US will be impacted the way Greece and Spain are today? You talk of structural changes taking place. Can you be more specific? What do you see unfolding and in what time frame? I realize one cannot be exact but can you give a ballpark estimate?
I see the US reaching levels of unemployment and public debts (in the eyes of the bond markets) similar to those of Greece and Spain in about 2 years for the former and 5 years for the latter (ballpark estimates). Spain obviously hasn’t reached Greek in terms of public debts/deficits yet, but I believe they will get there within 1-2 years. Youth unemployment in the US is already very high, but still nowhere close to the 50% we see in Greece/Spain. We will catch up rather quickly, IMO, once the destruction of debt accelerates again (as opposed to just increasing at a flat rate). That debt destruction will most likely be triggered by financial contagion spreading from Europe to US banks over the next year, leading to widespread panic and asset liquidations, which forces large corporations into insolvency and bankruptcy. The largest banks will most likely be bailed out again, but it’s difficult to gauge how and with what money, as well as the American public’s reaction to all of it (it probably won’t be so much different from that of the Greeks and Spaniards, although maybe a bit subdued at first).
ben post=1940 wrote: sumacarol, if ash isn’t willing to engage in good faith and without arrogance then he deserves to get shit for it. I was mistreated SA last week because I was trying to stick up for Ash and keep the peace but I realize now that SA didn’t deserve that and i’m sorry. do you think he’s been an honest broker of discussion lately?
Just saw this nonsense from you (who else?), and couldn’t let it go. I believe you are referring to a brief exchange with SA on the Teju Cole thread. This is how it went:
SecularAnimist wrote: Good job on getting under people’s skin, Ash. Keep it up
ben wrote: SA, get ahold of yourself.
And, now, YOU are accusing ME of being a dishonest “broker of discussion”, arrogant and not engaging in good faith?
There’s nothing left for me to say to people such as yourself…
TheTrivium4TW post=1963 wrote: Can you provide me with the data that you reviewed to conclude that humans have a significant direct impact on the temperature of the planet. In addition, please provide the logic you applied to the underlying data.
I can, but I won’t. The last thing a thread that has turned into one about conspiracy theory needs is a sprinkle of heated AGW “debate” on top. I’m not going to moderate any discussion of the issue on either side, but I’m also not going to help fuel that fire. It’s my fault for bringing it up in the first place. I should have brought up abiotic oil instead, because I think that’s something everyone here would ridicule, yet it is a very prevalent theory in the meta-conspiratorial world (peak oil is just a ruse by TPTB to impose artificial scarcity on the masses, didntchya know?)
What I will do is direct you to this comprehensive and informative thread on Chris Martenson’s site that I have been following for quite some time. It was started by a guy named Mark Cochrane, who is self-described as a “research scientist and professor with an environmental engineering degree from MIT and a doctorate in ecology from Penn State”. There is plenty of data, analysis, discussion, debate, etc. from both sides of the argument contained within this thread.
Reverse Engineer post=1956 wrote: I don’t generally argue for these ideas as they are not my bailiwick, but I’ll stand up for the people who do when confronted by people who will ridicule them. I’m picking a fight with you Ash because you generally stand on the other side of the Conspiracy Theory line from me and the rest of the fringe crowd out there. I’m just the Fast Gun in the bunch who gets called in when a Gunfighter is needed.
I know… exactly what I figured you were doing after the first time we locked horns on this issue in the other thread. Although, I’d say your more like the guy with a gun who stumbles out of the saloon fully-inebriated when no one really needs him. 😉 just teasing, of course
Basically, your argument is that no ideas about anything should ever be ridiculed, because it is unfair to do so and, who knows, those ideas may turn out to be true, seeing as how they are remotely connected to things that are true. Unless, of course, the idea is one which is highly critical of conspiratorial meta-narratives. Then, ridicule away!
Does that about sum it up?
ben post=1964 wrote: my fundamental problem with you, ash, that as far as i can tell you’re a devout poststructuralist. this will sound harsh but i believe the above excerpt to be pre-packaged, school-grade, poststructuralist tripe, and that it shouldn’t be on the front page of TAE. the deficit in empathy is a function of inhabiting a poststructuralist self-consciousness. all you are doing here is neurotically fretting over the fragments. the unified whole of it may be ineffable but it’s full of truth nonetheless. you just have to let it be.
There you go again, trying to label people and place them in boxes without a lick of understanding about what you’re doing. So mind-numbingly foolish! Yes, I find some value in the ideas of post-structuralist philosophers, but much more so in the traditional post-modern thinkers, as well as the Marxists/post-Marxists, German idealists, logical positivists, so on and so forth.
First, if what you view to be “post-structuralist” analysis of the Greek suicide was your problem in the first place, then why didn’t you just say so, instead of diving head first into insulting comments with no substance? Second, it seems your new problem is that I had the gall to break down and analyze a man’s suicide and, more specifically, his message, instead of just saying,
“wow, what a tragic and sad event!”
and leaving it at that. In your mind, that is the equivalent of me lacking empathy for the lives of other people who are suffering.
I’m not going to even explain to you why you are ridiculously off the reservation with those sentiments. All I can say is that, if you are looking for mindless, emotion-filled commentary on the world’s events, go read Huff Post or The Daily Beast or Business Insider. Thoughtful, objective, critical and deconstructive analysis is mostly what you are going to get on the front page of TAE, and is mostly what you got on the old site too, so either deal with it or stop reading (and complaining like a little child).
RE,
No offense, but you really have a knack for misunderstanding what I write to you on this thread. It’s as if you are just looking to pick a fight no matter what I say. Show me the place where I called what you write “hogwash”. You can’t, because I didn’t.
If you are speculating about the unknowable details of a reptilian-alien conspiracy since the dawn of humanity as if you are 100% certain that this is what informs the totality of our experience, then, YES, it is HOGWASH. Plain and simple.
If you are speculating on why AGW is an elaborate hoax perpetrated by TPTB, despite the sheer abundance of evidence that contradicts your theory, then you are also engaged in the promotion of HOGWASH.
If you argument is that I can’t call ANYTHING hogwash without being arrogant and closed-minded, because all forms of speculation about any issue whatsoever are born equal, then I would call that argument hogwash as well.
The scientific method is not about proving things to be absolutely true, but establishing a credible base of support for a hypothesis/theory. When it comes to social sciences, we cannot expect the same amount of hard evidence as we do in the physical sciences, but we can still generally adhere to the method.
You say that you engage in “speculation”, but, judging from what I have read, that is not true at all, unless you are using the term in a very broad sense. Most of the time, we are simply applying already established theories and new information to the events and broad trends occurring around us, rather than generating our own unique hypotheses for how the world and human society has evolved over time.
First off, ben is the only one being demeaning here. I enjoy discussing these issues with Triv and RE, because they refrain from ad hominem attacks and actually provide substantive responses to my criticisms. Perhaps that’s because they understand that I am simply attempting to explain my alternative perspective, while ben thinks I am being arrogant and dishonest (for no good reason). He probably has not even read a good portion of my recent articles that have focused exclusively on the suffering of the European people, and the Greeks in particular, because he somehow believes I lack empathy for them. You don’t have to read everything I write, ben, but you look foolish when you make such careless accusations.
Second, with regards to the conspiracy discussion, please understand that not everyone is being ignorant and obtuse when dismissing them. I have no idea what Icke said in his interview with Jones, because that’s not what I was referring to when I was critical of him. I, like most other curious people perusing the alternative media, have been following the various theories for awhile now. I have watched many documentaries/interviews with or by Icke, Jones, Bill Still, etc.
Those guys DO raise a lot of valid and interesting points, but that does not redeem people like Icke from the fact that they shill these bogus meta-narratives with extremely dubious and speculative “evidence”. I’ll admit, I am suspicious of his motives for the simple reason that he is clearly a very articulate and intelligent person, yet he proposes such grandiose narratives without any credible support. Why not just stick to the facts and the more concrete and less presumptuous conspiracy theories? Perhaps that’s not really what sells among his targeted audience.
Because so much of this goes so far back in time the evidence you can find is very murky, you’ll never be able to make a “scientific” case for it. However, its also impossible to dismiss it a priori, and that is what Ashvin does once the questions get outside a window of time he is willing to accept evidence from.
No, that is just your flawed assumption. There is no time window, and I am not dismissing anything “a priori”. I have always kept an open mind and listened to what these people have to say. Like most people, I find their theories entertaining and sometimes insightful, but I also find them to be generally underwhelming and, ultimately, more suitable for a fantasy and/or sci-fi movie script than reality.
In P2, Ash cops to ridiculing David Icke, and then goes on to declare his ideas to be “pure fantasy and speculation”. He is correct that it’s certainly a lot of speculation, but its not ‘pure’ fantasy since Icke does have his own reasons and evidence he thinks backs up his claims. You can not accept those things as valid, but you can’t say he is engaging in pure fantasy.
If I am presented with ideas that seem far-fetched, I want to hear more about the rationale behind such ideas. Then I evaluate the plausibility of what is being proposed. For me to say anything is not worth considering because it doesn’t fit into the world construct I currently hold as true is hubris of the first order.
Yes RE, despite all the shortcomings of the Enlightenment era, I do find a lot of value in the scientific method. For some reason, you find my refusal to accept speculative meta-narratives about how the world (or Universe?) works through conspiracy, without a shred of credible supporting evidence, to be “hubris”. Obviously my current worldview informs my perspective, by I am not dismissing anything simply because it does not fit in. I am dismissing it because, by and large, it is speculative hogwash with no basis in reality.
One could argue that those of us who are critical of these meta-narratives (yet still engage them) are the people keeping an open mind and trying to “ferret out” the truth, while those who cling to them no matter what and take offense to any criticism of them are the people with a closed-mind and prejudices that automatically rule out alternative perspectives on how human civilization has developed. I don’t believe you are one of those latter people, but I do believe you have convinced yourself that it is your job to go after anyone critical of conspiracy theories, because you generalize us all into a category of being closed-minded and intellectually biased. Sorry, but that’s just not true.
Hi RE, If I understood Ash correctly, he says he thinks it is reasonable to conclude that there is a financial oligarch conspiracy to screw everyone else up via Debt Dollar Discipline / Tyranny.
Triv, I was saying that I believe the debt-dollar disciplinary system is one which contains conspiratorial elements, but does not necessarily require top-down, coordinated enforcement, because the system itself is organized in a way that promotes tyranny and enslavement. The reality of this tyranny, IMO, is a blend of coordinated conspiracy and the natural evolution of socioeconomic structures and institutions. I realize that’s a pretty “boring” perspective which does not really capture the imagination and most definitely would not sell books/movies, but it’s the perspective I find to be the most credible right now. I do appreciate you approaching this discussion with me in a substantive and productive manner.
btw, Triv, I agree that deliberate and malicious acts of fraud, embezzlement, murder and generally tortious/criminal conduct by multinational corporations operating in the industries of finance, pharma, energy, defense, agribusiness, etc. are pervasive in this system, and the evidence to support the existence of such activities around the world is extensive.
RE,
I’m having a hard time figuring out how to make the “no cut-off point” point more clear…
Let’s try this – there is NO point in history at which I start to “ridicule” people for believing a conspiracy between economic/financial elites existed at or before that point. THAT is the reason why you cannot “pin down precisely where it is” – because it doesn’t exist.
What I criticize is the view that all or a very significant portion of human history has developed through a continuous series of inter-connected conspiracies, one informing the next, that have brought us exactly to where we are today. Big difference.
So, yeah, people like David Icke are subject to ridicule in my book. Not because he has the temerity to identify conspiracies thousands of years ago, but because he believes the original alien conspiracy has been the driving force behind every major development in humanity between then and present day. Of course, the original conspiracy itself is based in nothing but pure fantasy and speculation, which is not true of more recent conspiracies for obvious reasons.
Obviously, there has been some confusion over what I was saying in the opening paragraph about the man’s suicide. This confusion can be cleared up by taking the word “understand” to mean exactly what the word “understand” means. It does not mean I disapprove of what he did, or that I think it was wrong. It means that I have never been anywhere close to the circumstances in which this 77-year old man found himself, and I can’t imagine how I would feel or what I would do in a similar situation. On an intellectual level, I’d like to think I would do the “dishonorable” thing and keep myself alive, but, like I said, this is an emotional issue that is beyond my understanding right now.
ben,
I’ve noticed your comments as of late have been full of frustration and devoid of any substance whatsoever. “Empathy deficit”…. where do you come up with this nonsense? Try reading and understanding (or asking if you don’t understand) before making your snarky, yet silly comments.
what’s the cut-off point again, and why, beyond which we needn’t go in order to fully understand your broader and more nuanced reality? and why do you imply that that longer history of yours undermines Triv’s choosing to focus on the contemporary iteration of TPTSB?
Why would there be a “cut-off point” for the influence of coordinated conspiracies on the various predicaments that humanity faces now? I’m not writing a movie script here, with clever twists and an awe-inspiring story arc. As was made clear in my responses to Triv, I am not trying to undermine his focus either. If you read the original post carefully, you may have noticed that I was criticizing Ambrose for not focusing enough on the malicious intent of European policymakers and the financial elites they serve.
I was only explaining why I think we cannot attribute everything that is happening today to that one sole “root cause” of debt-dollar “tyranny”, which was only established about 100 years ago and became fully entrenched in 1971. That is a distinction that most certainly takes on importance when discussing various issues, as evidenced in the Teju Cole thread. If that nuance doesn’t matter to you, then go ahead and ignore it. Or, contribute something helpful to the discussion. Or not.
RE,
I think you meant “somewhere before 911 but after Aliens”. Doesn’t matter either way, though, because I don’t have a “cut-off point”. If I ever do get one, make sure to berate me until I don’t have one anymore.
RE,
You’re probably right about Ambrose, but I still like to reference him once in awhile when he makes both valid points and points that need to be criticized. As goes Dimitris, so goes Ambrose. It’s not really the man that counts for our purposes, but the message.
TheT4TW,
What you call “Debt Dollar Tyranny”, I like to refer to as the Debt-Dollar Discipline. It is a direct reference to Michel Foucault’s theories on disciplinary society in the West, which he argued first evolved in 17th and 18th century Europe. So already there emerges an important difference in the way we view this debt-dollar system – I see it as being another iteration of a capitalist-industrial process that started well before the Federal Reserve was conceived or created.
A system of disciplinary institutions certainly has a dimension of intentional and coordinated coercion of the masses, but it also has a dimension of self-reinforcing coercion/influence by the very nature of the way its institutions are designed and operated. It heavily relies on scaring, shaming, subtly influencing, etc. of the masses so that they begin to constantly discipline themselves and play by the rules of the system, while also marginalizing any elements of non-conformity or resistance.
It is no coincidence that the modern penal system evolved along with the emergence of industrial production as the dominant economic force in Western society. The latter was a system entirely focused on increasing efficiency, where students, workers and soldiers alike were trained to be more obedient, faster and stronger in every aspect of their designated functions. Modern states facilitated this process of immense wealth production by instituting high levels of order on their citizens, or what Foucault would term “discipline”. It was not really a tool for the Kings and Monarchs of old, but rather was more useful for controlling the populations of emerging democratic states
Foucault pointed out the striking similarities of the prisons, schools, hospitals (especially “mental” institutions), military barracks, office buildings and factories that had been established in the modern state, as they were all designed around specialized functions, regimented schedules and high degrees of observation and control. These institutions even shared very similar physical architectures and were typically legitimized by an underlying “scientific” foundation, whether that be criminology, psychology, medicine or economics. It was their ultimate goal to internalize strict discipline within the individuals themselves, so they would automatically follow these societal “norms” without questioning any of their reasons or results. Anyone who strays too far from the expected behaviors are labeled as part of the “delinquent class”, and are deemed to be in need of reform, rehabilitation, treatment or punishment.
The quintessence of this institutional disciplinary structure for Foucault was Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon”, which is a prison design involving a central watchtower with heavily tinted or mirrored windows. The prison cells would be located around the periphery, and prisoners would never be able to tell whether they were being observed or not. Bentham himself described the design as allowing “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”
Dont’ get me wrong here – I don’t dismiss the clear evidence of intentionality on the part of the international financiers to construct a monetary system that primarily serves to extract wealth and enslave the masses with debt. That is certainly a key part of a broader reality, but there IS a broader reality for me. It is one that cannot be fully understood without going back at least a few centuries, and it is not ubiquitously populated by coordinated conspiracies of the minority elites.
I appreciate all the links and videos, though, and I will give them a listen later.
TheTrivium4TW post=1913 wrote: Hi Ash, I think Christoulas made it clear why he killed himself… he wanted to die in a way that was more “dignified” than eating out of a garbage can and being a burden to his children – apparently because his pension was looted by banking oligarch operatives operating within the power structure of the Greece’s Central State apparatus.
Yes, he made his reasons clear, but I still don’t understand the mentality underlying those reasons. Perhaps I will if I ever wind up in a similar situation, or perhaps not. It’s difficult to see how this man ending his own life benefits anyone, let alone his children. Maybe it does in his specific situation… I don’t know.
Take “Communism” for example. There is an idealized version of the word, which I think is how you apply the term. However, there is a practical definition of the word that is essential “sheep’s clothing” for a wicked oligarchical dictatorship.
The latter is the reality. Idealized communism actually sounds like a decent program so long as everyone in the community agrees to go about it in a voluntary way. Once you bring in a government of force (gun and jail cell), the sophisticated criminals lust after gaming that system to their advantage and it then turns into an oligarchical dictatorship in short order. But they won’t call it that… they lie and call it “communism.”
I never use words to imply an idealized concept. Rather, I try to capture the complex reality of the situation as best as possible. When people construct boxes as convenient placeholders for reality, they are deceiving themselves, as you say. One such box, IMO, is that ALL elite institutions and people are intentionally attempting to enslave humanity and create a one-world dictatorship. Another such box is that elite institutions and people are simply playing by the rules of the system and doing what they think is best for themselves or others, with no malicious intent whatsoever. Both boxes fail to capture the nuanced reality that actually exists.
Since you brought up “communism”, I really like what David Graeber has to say about it – “we are already communists”. What that means is that communism in its most basic form is simply a principle – “from each according to ability, to each according to need”. The practical reality of this principle already exists across the world at many different scales, but most notably at the scale of person-to-person interaction. We all probably have people in our lives who we would not hesitate to give everything we had to give if they really needed it.
The important takeaway is that communism, capitalism and other forms of socioeconomic relations can all simultaneously exist, and, in reality, they do, even though the prevalent paradigm is one of fascist capitalism (or what you call “oligarchical dictatorship”). Our reality is filled with many different degrees and blends of structures that combine to inform the totality of our social, political and economic experience. A good deal of that experience in today’s world is definitely informed by purposeful propaganda and manipulation by the elites, as you point out, and a good deal is also informed by the natural reactions we have to the environment which surrounds us.
Reverse Engineer post=1903 wrote: Interesting that the Krauts can attempt to exercise some “Democratic Rights” in their Parliament that the Greeks were unable to exercise in theirs. “Democracy” appears to work better for the Creditor Nation than it does for the Debtor Nation. LOL.
Amen to that. Parliamentary democracy in European nations is a much more complex tradition than the American presidential republican system, as it cannot simply ignore thousands of years of European history, politics, culture, etc. The EU is really an attempt to squash those traditions and homogenize the nations, just like the US states under a federal fiscal republic. That is a major reason why any and all expressions of democracy at the national level in Europe have become anathema to preservation of the Union.
Anyhow, even if they manage to exercise some Democracy here, if they vote to stop subsidizing the Greeks (and Italians, Spics et al), they’ll just end up crashing their own economy, so keeping Democracy functional in Krautland doesn;t do a whole lot to ameliorate the problems here.
If we define the problem as ignoring reality and continuing with BAU until it is much too late to mitigate any damages to national populations, then I’d say functional democracy still carries possibilities of amelioration, if for no other reason than forcing Euro governments to confront the impossibility of remaining in a cohesive Union. Our definition of the problem is slightly different from theirs, though…
Golden Oxen post=1902 wrote: I had thought the Fed said QE 3 was on the back burner UNLESS the economy weakened again. It was the only truthful comment they made IMHO.
They’ve been saying something to that effect for about a year now. They never say QE will certainly come back if the economy weakens, but rather that it remains a viable policy tool. What’s the alternative?
“QE3 is off the table no matter what happens to the economy or markets. Sorry, folks, better luck next time!”
Then watch the markets melt down?
Everyone knows that economic health is reflected by stock market valuations, because that’s what the propaganda has made us believe. So now we can’t get QE until the markets crash, but the markets refuse to crash as long as QE is still possible… any day now. There are, of course, other factors that have made QE3 unlikely in the first half of this year, as I’ve explained many times in my posts. The elections are one factor, but that’s more of an issue when the general campaigns get fully underway. Another important factor is that QE has simply lost a lot of effectiveness in the eyes of the banking elite, so they must wait longer and longer before they can get significant marginal benefits from turning on the liquidity faucet again.
Bot Blogger post=1878 wrote: When 3 postings come out from you, Illargi and Stoneleigh on the same day it’s a bit like too much cake. You eat and eat and still there’s more, so you put some of it aside ’cause you can’t finish it and then it gets stale…Time your postings. May of course require sorting according to temporal importance.
I don’t believe that has ever actually happened, since I&S have been busy on the tour. Sounds like one of those good problems to me.
On the old site you had a great picture up front from Shorpys and then the article right away. Now there is an article stub of something else first then the Shorpys pic and then something else and something else. I can never make sense of what is the feature article. Prioritize by using those great old pics first!
What you are seeing is the latest commentary, followed by the latest feature article, followed by a few more commentaries. The reason a single commentary goes above the feature is because they don’t stay up as long, and may go unnoticed if put below the feature that stays up for a few days. You can tell the difference by looking at the tags below the post, which clearly show the author, category and type (commentary/feature).
Oh yeah and do whatever you can to get El G back!! He may have been a curmudgeon but man he was funny and smart! Ask forgiveness. Tell him you’ll wash his socks…whatever it takes. 😛
I have no idea where El G is. Maybe he’s without internet, or maybe he just doesn’t feel like posting here right now. Either way, I don’t consider it my responsibility to bring anyone anywhere.
TheTrivium4TW post=1823 wrote:
The more people focus on NON ROOT CAUSES, the better for the ROOT CAUSE, no? What is the root cause? A very few criminal, thug, murderous, thieving, lying, genius level Machiavellian psychopaths that rigged the monetary system to covertly asset strip ALL PEOPLE, REGARDLESS OF SKIN COLOR, and to transfer the wealth to themselves.
As long as you keep thinking like this, you aren’t going to appreciate what I’m saying. Of course those types of people exist and operate extensively, but to label them a “root cause” of all our predicaments to the exclusion of every other significant factor, including our own passive support and complicity (which necessarily ties in with racial and cultural issues), is completely missing the point. Like I said before, whether our complicity has naturally evolved or has been gained through top-down manipulation (or a combination of both) is irrelevant to the fact that it exists and must be confronted if there is to be any meaningful change at ANY scale of society.
As to the specifics of conspiratorial meta-narratives, perhaps you missed the discussion between El G, RE and I on the other thread, or perhaps you would like to reignite the discussion. That’s fine with me, but my position on that hasn’t changed. Not everything that happens in this world is an elaborate psy-op perpetrated by the evil psychopaths who have planned it all beforehand, and are watching it unfold while they sip on some fine champagne and nibble on a few dinosaur eggs.
Gravity,
Why is that our public schools mention European thinkers like Locke, Tocqueville and others when discussing the American political/legal system, but never mention even one of the steady stream of thinkers that have been highly critical of those systems over the last few centuries? Shouldn’t we at least get a different perspective when learning about these things, so we can decide for ourselves?
I was not referring to the hypocrisy of the founding fathers earlier, although there was plenty of that, but rather the fundamental flaws of the system they designed with the aid of ideas from the Enlightenment thinkers (which, coincidentally, was very favorable towards property owners such as themselves). Jefferson is actually a notable exception, as he was an anti-federalist and anti-industrialist, so I would hold the DoI in higher regard than the US Constitution. Not that it matters, because the DoI does not constitute enforceable law in the US, and generally is not even used to help interpret the Constitution.
The problem, first and foremost, is that we are socialized to think in binary terms. Either the Magna Carta, subsequent common law and constitutional frameworks are “good” or “bad”. Either the “Enlightenment” age was a huge step forward for humanity, or it was complete rubbish. Personally, I try to take a more nuanced approach and recognize the benefits and the costs of those developments at different scales; the intent, the ideals, the realities, etc.
I have been convinced by the thinkers who cannot be mentioned in public schools that the broad political economic paradigm that has taken root in the West since the Enlightenment-industrial age has imposed very severe costs on humanity as a collective species, even when ignoring the environmental issues. Maybe it’s just because the schools fail to provide this perspective, and I find that very shady behavior. I’d like to think it’s also because the substance of those criticisms just make too much sense, and fit in with everything else I know about complex systems.
So, no, I don’t agree that the US Constitutional system is necessarily or obviously better than previous frameworks, or even that democratic and “rational” ideals borne of the Enlightenment at large scales are better than those of Divine rule by the Monarch. It’s just not that simple… ever.
TINW post=1853 wrote: What in the world are you going on about at the end there? The best thing the Germans could do at this point would be to ratchet up wage inflation so the south can become more competive. 6% over 2 years is nothing, not even a fraction of what is needed, and yet it sounds like you are implying that the germans should be accepting austerity in solidarity with the south.
A little too late for all of that “let’s make the peripheral Eurozone nations more competitive” talk, donchya think? The best thing Germany could do is cut their losses, get out and start planning for a completely different future than they expected before, which, incidentally, is the best thing all of the countries could do. How can it be the best thing if it leads to instant economic depression and social unrest? Well, that’s where we are headed anyway. Wage inflation in Germany sounds great, but, with most everything, it’s the context that counts. Doing that while keeping the Union together by essentially mandating wage (and standard of living) destruction on the workers of other sovereign countries is a recipe for an extremely painful future, despite the few marginal inches that the can may travel down the road. Either they keep you alive until the pain itself finally kills you, or they feed you pain killers and let the terminal illness take you away in relative peace – I would elect for the latter.
But if large institutions like national government or multinational corporations would not disappear, then an equally large constitution is required to restrain them and limit their powers of abuse.
To me, that statement sounds like the classic case of positive feedbacks that end up nowhere good for the collective. You are correct that this dynamic is the one that naturally evolves, as problems of complexity are always confronted with more complexity, until those complex solutions no longer work. You may think that a simple document with simply-worded protections is not a “complex solution”, but it is when considering how those words must be interpreted and enforced in a vast array of different situations.
Good Gravity, Ash, you’re being arrogant and self-righteous to dismiss an entire cultural heritage which was once the last stand against the tyranny of lesser laws.
Look, none of what I’m saying is anything new and is certainly not borne from anything so mundane and simple as my arrogance or hatred of American constitutional democracy. My views are built on hundreds of years of much more brilliant and insightful minds than my own, including Proudhon, Engels, Marx, and a bunch of others that came after them (including the subject of this article). What I’m arguing is only very “radical” to a small subset of people who were taught in Western public schools, including me for the better [or worse] portion of my life.
I understand the infatuation with our founding fathers and the constitutional framework they produced. I have been through the wording and interpretation of the document more times than I’d like to remember, including the first three articles for the three branches of government and the BoR, as well as subsequent amendments. Sure, there has been a vast amount of intellectual firepower wrapped up inside that document, and I may very well find myself relying on one of its protections to save my ass in the future.
That doesn’t change the fundamental criticism I have of appeals to a fundamentally flawed system to guide us through the current predicaments that humanity faces. Don’t confuse centuries of well-reasoned theory and supporting evidence for my personal arrogance or my disdain for some document. I am not the only one with harsh criticisms of this “cultural heritage” that you have nearly deified as the greatest legal framework ever conceived by man, and certainly not the brightest.
I understand you here, you expect all political boundaries to shift inwards or collapse, but if the totalitarian control system doesn’t die off from lack of credit or energy or will make unjust laws to feed itself by unconstitutional justifications, an idealistic frame of reference from a less barbarous age might be useful to navigate towards.
Again, I feel like everything you are arguing here stems from the initial presumption that the US Constitution is a superior framework for governance and protection of individual rights than anything that has come before it, which leads you to claim that 18th century colonial America was a “less barbarous age”. Perhaps by some metrics it was, but certainly not by others.
Do you now feel that the Americans are better poised to fight off totalitarian oppression than the Dutch, due to our superior document, if only we could muster the will power to use it properly? Given your frequent posts referencing the US Constitution, prosecutions for treason, etc. in response to many different issues, I imagine you do believe that. Well, I don’t. And that has always been the disagreement between you and I. Nothing has changed.
Supergravity,
Given your frequent reference to complex systems and “emergent properties”, I would think you would understand the concept of scale-dependent structures. Let’s put it this way – I find much more value in the protections afforded by U.S. State Constitutions than I do in the U.S. Constitution, even though much of the actual wording of protected rights is the same. How can this be? Well, it’s simple. Those words have no value outside of the context in which they are being applied, and the large-scale “democratic” nation-state model has simply run its course, thanks in no small part to the seeds of authority/oppression sown by the Constitution itself, along with its self-appointed arbiters.
I’m dealing in the reality of our complex evolutionary systems, while you are fantasizing about their ideals. Nowhere is that concept more evident in our political system than in the Declaration of Independence.
The declaration of independence is the only legal document in history explicitly stating that the sovereignty of the people precedes that of their government, and that the people must reserve the right to alter or abolish any government that becomes destructive of those ends of life, liberty/property and the pursuit of happiness.
Don’t you find it troubling that such a document would be placed on so high a pedestal, despite the fact that it was effectively revealed to be a sham as soon as the independent republic was born? “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…”?? I think not. The people “reserve the right to alter or abolish any government that becomes destructive of those ends of life”? Fat chance.
If I found grandiose and obviously bogus language like that in any other contract to establish a meaningful organization, which is supposed to have clear operating principles and protections of life/liberty/equality, I’d crumble it up and use it for toilet paper.
We’re working on getting a module for streaming the latest comments from all different threads in the forum, which should help.
TheTrivium4TW post=1776 wrote: [quote=ashvin post=1740]
Ashvin, I don’t think you made the case that color is important in this discussion. The problem is a lack of character in the West – especially in the Western controllers, but also in the apathy and lack of morality in the society at large.If everyone’s skin color reversed overnight, nothing would change. Skin color truly doesn’t matter UNLESS you can be convinced it does.
That’s quite a counter-factual scenario. Why would any such thing ever happen? If it did, then a lot of things we know about evolutionary systems would be flat out wrong.
I get where you’re coming from with regards to TPTB, but I don’t think you can say the same. There is nothing about Cole’s argument that can be distilled down to “black vs. white”. He would never presume that the color of one’s skin is the “root cause” of anything, or that black people are not capable of mistreating other blacks, or white people aren’t capable of being mistreated by black and white leaders alike.
No one here is trying to construct a race-based litmus test to determine whether people are ethical and have good character. The only reason race is an important thing to consider here is because, like you said, it has become deeply ingrained in the way many people view other cultures, as well as themselves and their own cultures. Let’s go at it this way:
Do you agree that there exists a “savior industrial complex” in the Western world? Whether or not it has naturally arisen or has been “installed” by TPTB through propaganda over the course of decades is irrelevant to me. Either way, it is a mentality and mode of operation that exists within our culture and serves to propagate the system that you label “evil”. What races of people are the ones who have primarily done the “saving” and what races of people are the ones who needed to be “saved”?
“Disaster capitalism” is another variation on this same concept, and more alone the lines of the intentionality of the TPTB that you refer to. Until very recently, these practices were almost exclusively targeted towards poorer parts of the world, whether we are talking about Central/South America, the ME or Africa. It is hard to deny the stark color/racial contrasts that have existed between the politicians, bureaucrats, corporate execs, etc. that have set up shop in these locations, and the indigenous populations.
If we completely ignore that aspect of the situation, then we are refusing to confront the historical reality, and without confronting it, I don’t think there is much hope of moving past it. As a non-white person, I don’t say any of this lightly, because I know it sounds as if I am trying to place the “blame” on other people, and that’s not at all what I want to do. I simply want to understand the various ways in which human civilization has operated and continues to operate.
In short, Cole is asking white Americans to soul-search and ask the really tough questions about their historical roles in our current systems, so that they can gain a better perspective on what needs to change. It’s not the color of their skin that needs to change, but their mentality as members of a culture that has distinct racial overtones and has been centuries in the making. It takes a lot of courage to confront the momentum of such a culture and work to escape it.
As Big Finance Capital and the system in general begin the devour their own central hubs, which is already well underway, then I think one potential positive result will be that people of all races will be forced to confront the true nature of their cultures and how it is destroying both human societies and the planet. Of course, the exact opposite could happen as well, with the casting of blame along racial lines only growing larger, and it could all be too little, much too late.
Viscount St. Albans post=1757 wrote: Ash: I disagree.
A glance around the globe suggests the entertainment industry persists no matter what. It’s as fundamental as birth and death.:huh:
I think professional soccer (or “football”) may actually have the roughest time of it, in so far as it has come to rely on coordinated action by many different countries that are only going get more hostile towards each other as their economies contract (not to mention the fans). I wonder what would happen to the World Cup tournament when the EU breaks up? Real Madrid soccer star Ronaldo may end up being repossessed, since he was pledged as collateral to the ECB by a Spanish savings bank (no joke).
TheTrivium4TW post=1734 wrote: As for the topic, I think the bad reaction to it is because people took the title personal to themselves… Maybe using the term “white” in the title helped promote that idea.
Martin Luther King’s whole message was that color doesn’t matter, content of character matters.
Well, as Bukko implied up thread, race does matter in this context. Historical developments have ensured that it does, including centuries of colonialism and this latest iteration of Western neo-colonial expansion. Cole’s title is not meant to impune the character of all white people in the West, but to identify the role white populations of N. America and Europe occupy in relation to non-white populations in much poorer parts of the world, such as North/West Africa and the ME.
The fact is that much of the world’s wealth is now concentrated in white populations, and many of these people have developed a mentality in which the extremely “poor” must be brought up to their level by re-creating the structures/institutions that surround them, ignoring the fact that these structures have helped contribute to the serious problems facing those populations in the first place, and they usually continue to enrich a very small minority of financial and industrial elites at the expense of everything else.
There are obviously some tangible benefits to specific forms of humanitarian aid and intervention, but they have no chance of producing sustainable progress in eradicating the poverty, famine, disease and violence that plagues these locations. Of course, there are blacks and other wealthy minorities in the West who feel the exact same way, but they have not primarily defined the “savior” culture over the course of decades.
RE,
The courthouse dockets are filled with robo-lawsuits for payment on outstanding consumer debts, and usually it is the debtor who doesn’t show up (perhaps they mysteriously never received the summons that was “mailed” to them). It really isn’t that expensive for a large creditor or debt collector to plant an attorney in the courthouse and go through a bunch of lawsuits each day, most of which don’t last more than a few minutes before the judge. The only reason this isn’t pursued more for student loans is because the bubble is only now starting to falter. Give it a few years, and I think we’ll be seeing just how well the legal process can work for private creditors in this country.
OTOH, I think it is clear that the MO of creditors right now is to find ways of keeping people in debt and milking them for all their worth, without necessarily foreclosing on all their under-secured assets, like you say. When the ability of the central government to extend and pretend is significantly diminished (most likely in the very near future), that MO can start changing rapidly. I think many of the people living “rent free” right now will find themselves out of a home. Once the debtors/taxpayers/investors have been squeezed dry, the benefits of keeping those homes “off the market” will not be so great for the banks.
Advice to completely stop paying off debts might be good in specific contexts involving specific people, but I would never generally advise that to anyone, without knowing a lot more first. The idea that any such actions are risk-free for most people right now, let alone in the near future as financial repression is forced into higher gears by necessity of the system’s survival instinct, baffles me.
RE,
At this point, you are tap-dancing all over the place with your logic in order to reach a pre-determined conclusion – that people who have taken on massive amounts of student debt really shouldn’t be worried any more than the average, debt-free person. When you were talking in terms of what’s most likely to happen after 30,40,50-100 years, your argument held weight. Now you are back-tracking and making blanket generalizations about how students with debt will have no jobs, no assets, no parents with assets and basically nothing that can be stripped of them by their creditors or third party debt collectors.
Sorry, I don’t see it. In fact, I see the opposite already occurring to people I know who are working jobs and struggling to pay off their student debts, along with bills and sometimes mortgages. They still have assets that can be stripped in the near future (within 10-20 years). If you want to claim that not ALL of those debts will be repaid to lenders in any form, then I’m with you on that, but a good portion of it will, in one form or another.
FrankRichards post=1711 wrote: This is Ash’s second “America is exceptionally horrid but isn’t exceptional” post in the last 10 days. There is a definitional problem there dude.
In all fairness, I’ve been saying stuff like this about American imperialism and capitalism since I started writing. The ironic thing about it is that it is a much more complex argument than “America is unconditionally evil/horrid”, but that’s almost always how Americans interpret it as soon as they see it. I wonder why? Would you care to refute or critique the substance of Cole’s article, or America’s imperial exploits in general?
Also note that TAE is a site that has always critiqued the destructive policies of the global banking system over the course of decades, both here and in poorer parts of the world, and it is hard to ignore America and the UK’s unique role in that system, as well as the complicit support of Americans and Brits who use it. So why you think it is suddenly “jumping the shark” now, I really have no idea.
RE,
After your last post, I’m not sure there’s actually much of a debate. Like you said, you are taking the very long view of things (I consider 20-100 years the “very long view” in this environment), while I am talking within the next 50 years at most. If students graduating now are either 22 or about 25-26 when they finally get out of school (perhaps older for med students and others who started their “higher education” late), then I’d say the consequences they reap from that debt will last over the better part of their lifetimes.
I do understand what you’re saying about the the value of assets belonging to students (or perhaps their parents), including their labor, in the very long-term, and believe it is a valid point. I have never argued that TPTB will be able to maintain complexity at the scale of a nation-state such as the US in the very long-term, regardless of how much slave labor they have. One must wonder, though, how that changes as we move down to smaller political entities, which may continue to be corrupt/oppressive in their own ways?
Anyway, good discussion!
Reverse Engineer post=1685 wrote: Things get messier in the Dark Ages when a lot of the movement of the wealth captured by the Roman Empire was moved through the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
Why did I have a feeling “things” were going to get messy?? 😉
Seriously, though, it’s clear that we are not going to agree on this. There are the truly knowledgeable historians such as yourself, and then there are the rest of us fools who simply can’t connect the dots staring us in the face! Hell, the reptilian-human hybrids are only ONE dot away from the previous dot, and that one isn’t too many dots away from the catholic church, or the [insert your obvious conspiracy here]…
Well Ash, I don’t think people should be allowed to inherit anything at all.
I can agree with you that, theoretically, it would be nice to have systems of socioeconomic organization without private property, and, therefore, without inheritance of said property. OTOH, I recognize that many people have structured their lives around a completely different system, and it will be extremely painful for them when those sand castles are washed back into the sea. Not to mention the injustice of their property becoming the property of someone else in the 1%, rather than returning to aid any common good.
Reverse Engineer post=1680 wrote: In any event, Debt collectors may try to go after assets held by those remaining alive, except the assets aren’t worth anything. Their labor is not worth anything. There is nothing to collect, and there never will be. So the debt is irredeemable. It CANNOT EVER be repaid.
Care to explain those blanket statements? I find it very unlikely that productive assets and resources, human labor being one of many, will be worth nothing, to anyone. Or maybe I just forgot how energy is harnessed, food grown, water cleaned, shelters built, etc. If we are talking about “assets” such as money/cash flow/investments/etc., then they will most certainly be worth something until the monetary system completely collapses, never to return.
You are down a Rabbit Hole here which you just don’t seem to get, or perhaps are just willfully ignoring because it doesn’t fit your narrative of debt slavery.
I brought up debt slavery as one possible scenario that people may find themselves in (and many around the world already do). You, however, have constructed a narrative in which there is only one outcome that will arrive with certainty, and it involves a mass die-off within relatively short order. Oh yeah, and, those who have the luck/skill to survive will be free to “start over”, because the cost of using any productive assets they possess, including their own labor, will be too much for anyone to handle.
Reverse Engineer post=1679 wrote: Now you are just quibling about the level of complexity anyone chooses to work their way through in terms of developing a coherent narrative. Although I personally tend to be fairly conservative in terms of how far past the “obvious” Conspiracy with its locus at the BIS I will speculate on, I don’t have any problem with others who will draw further connections beyond that. I don’t have some arbitrary line where somebody has “crossed over” and “gone too far”. IMHO, that is very parochial thinking and limiting in what might in fact be truth, or at least have a grain of truth to it.
No. Now, I am just explaining to you the original argument I made from the very beginning, which you misunderstood. Call it “quibling” if you want. Perhaps you don’t have a problem with people drawing non-existent connections and distorting reality for the convenience of their own arguments (and, many times, their own pocket books), but I do. The line I use is only arbitrary in the sense that it is impossible for me or anyone else to establish an empirical cut off point at which legitimate conspiracies turn into fanciful myths and stories. I use PO and climate change as one of my litmus tests because I am very confident in their scientific reality, and those who argue against them, despite all contrary evidence, lose a lot of credibility in my book. It is by no means the only reason I would dismiss their theories, though.
Anyhow, the most IMPORTANT Conspiracy and the one which I believe is inarguable is that in fact there never has been a “Democratic” FSofA, or even a Republic for that matter. Its just a shell, with the real power held by multinational corporations, descendents of the British and Dutch East India Companies. Yet most people even here would likely scoff at the idea that the “USA” of their imagination has NEVER existed at all. Most people here seem to think its ust with the passage of the Patriot Act and NDAA that the FSofA is “becoming” Fascist. In fact it always has been so. I’ve been aware of it since boyhood, and I am past 50 years old now.
Inosfar as all the various subterfuges and assassinations over the years, come on,do you really think Lee Oswald was operating on his own? Several large towers collapse on their own footprint, one of which did not even sustain an impact?
Your relatively recent arrival on this site shows here. I have written many times about the nature of our oppressive capitalist system, and how we have never had a truly “democratic republic” in which “all men are created equal”. In addition, many others at this site generally agree on that point. Even on this thread, you can see my rants against the US Constitution as a “shining beacon of liberty”. In my response to you up thread, I stated that I am very skeptical of the official 9/11 story (basically, I think it’s bogus). So, nothing new there.
To think these things happenned randomly boggles my mind, the statisticl probability is nil. We ARE being controlled by a large scale criminal conspiracy, and it has been in operation for a very long time. Far before the founding of this country/shell corporation.
What boggles my mind is that you said “I personally tend to be fairly conservative in terms of how far past the “obvious” Conspiracy with its locus at the BIS I will speculate on” in your comment, and then go on to say “we ARE being controlled large scale criminal conspiracy, and it has been in operation for a very long time.”
Really? Are we being controlled or manipulated/influenced? Is it some hegemonic elite that has been determining almost all major developments for centuries, or are these developments more a function of a diverse set of powerful factions vying for control, extracting energy/resources and interacting with resistant populations? There’s a big and important difference. Perhaps you don’t think so, but I do.
istt post=1670 wrote: To Ashvin and/or Ilargi, could either or both of you respond to the idea that the stock market will continue to go higher and higher as the US dollar is debased. Just as in Zimbabwe, as the Zimbabwe dollar tanked the market soared. Certainly the US is not and never will be Zimbabwe, aren’t we seeing the same thing play out in the US and European stock markets? Some would say it is the same as putting your money in gold but the stock markets continue to soar even as gold stabilizes. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you.
If the idea is put your money in the market and wait to collect some phenomenal returns, then it’s a very bad one. Even if/when the dollar is debased into oblivion, the currency valuation of stocks will be outpaced by the devaluation in purchasing power. In a deflation, of course, the nominal value of stocks will plummet. The only way stocks are good for returns is if you are a very short-term speculator or you think that we are returning to a healthy and productive economy soon, after the bad debts are all cleared out, and that’s not something you should be thinking.
Reverse Engineer post=1676 wrote: There are consequences to be sure. Many Dead People for one. Dead People do not pay back debts. EVER.
Tell that to their spouses/children/beneficiaries who are not only left in the world without them, but have to fork over their potential inheritance to a fascist government or a ruthless debt collector.
The only thing that is almost certain in this Universe and its various systems is the conservation of energy, and that is something we cannot escape, even in death.
RE,
None of that is disputed by me. I think you simply misunderstood the scale of conspiracy I was referring to by “meta-narrative”. All of the stuff regarding the Western capitalists, their puppet politicians and their central banking system over the course of many decades, including secret policy meetings (such as the one on Jekyll Island to create the FRA), seems quite obvious to me at this point. The problem for me is when people take legitimate conspiracies, along with other accurate information/data and isolated historical events, and attempt to weave it all together into one giant story, narrated by an all-powerful, all-encompassing group of human beings (and perhaps aliens). I’m not accusing anyone here of doing so, but Alex Jones (for ex.) is on the wrong side of that line for me. Indeed, anyone who confidently claims that climate change (and perhaps peak oil as well) is a complete hoax perpetrated by TPTB has already crossed over too far IMO.
