Connect with us

Culture

The Age of Over-Abundant Elites

The coming New Green Deal style clampdowns will make global lockdowns look rather benign, despite an abundance of evidence that lockdowns did nothing to change the actual trajectory of COVID.

Published

on

Chris Bertram/Flickr

I’ve been reading Peter Turchin’s “Ages of Discord”, which tries to look at patterns of societal strife that he found in previous, pre-industrial civilizations such as Rome and France, and examine how it holds up in a post-industrial era. It bears some resemblance to other cycle theories like Strauss and Howe’s “Fourth Turning” or other long-wave models like Kondratiev Waves (K-Waves). The basic premise behind these ideas are that societies undergo cyclical or pendulum-like dynamics between relatively steady states of prosperity and stability, the internal dynamics of which then produce the conditions that precipitate reversions into turbulent periods of strife and chaotic change.

The important thing to keep in mind is that to that the likes of Turchin and other historical statisticians, the periods of societal discord that they try to map may look like this:

Turchin: Long-term dynamics of sociopolitical instability in France, 800–1700 (data from Sorokin 1937).

But when experienced in real life look more like this …

St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, 1572 by François Dubois

If there’s one thing in this highly polarized world that everybody probably does agree on it’s that we are almost certainly already in one of these periods of discord right now.

What I’m finding most interesting from Turchin’s take on this isn’t that periods of stability are not terminated by resource depletion (a la the climate alarmists), or any other “limits to growth” per se. While population growth in pre-industrial societies may bump up against “neo-Malthusian” limits, it sets up a counter-cyclical decline in population growth. How these forces interact in a transition from stability to chaos is that an over-abundance of elites creates a situation of the political class splitting into factions and fighting over the spoils of what is now a shrinking pie in terms of real economic wealth:

 “According to this theory, population growth in excess of the productivity gains of the land has several effects on social institutions. First, it leads to persistent price inflationfalling real wagesrural misery, urban migration, and increased frequency of food riots and wage protests.

Second, rapid expansion of population results in elite overproduction—an increased number of aspirants for the limited supply of elite positions. Increased intra-elite competition leads to the formation of rival patronage networks vying for state rewards. As a result, elites become riven by increasing rivalry and factionalism.

The above passage made me think of the 2016 US election, one that was framed as a populist political outsider taking on the Washington DC swamp… however as Turchin notes, somewhat uncannily….

“all these trends intensify, the end result is state bankruptcy and consequent loss of military control; elite movements of regional and national rebellion; and a combination of elite-mobilized and popular uprisings that expose the breakdown of central authority.”

Democratic Socialism, BLM, whatever comes next all have in common extremely well off elites (millionaires and billionaires) talking up a populist game against some ostensibly amorphous “Establishment”, to which these crusaders are loathe to admit their own membership.

Regional governors and in increasingly more cases, entire police forces are essentially “going rogue”. It all sounds in the ballpark of what Turchin is talking about.

Then the media makes useful idiots of us all, reframing as existential battles between good and evil what are really just internecine conflicts between elites who regard everybody else as serfs (in much the same way that I have always privately thought that World War 1 was, at it’s core, a family squabble among a pan-European dynasty that ruled by divine right).

Via Brookings Institute: The Family Relationships that couldn’t stop World War 1

Which brings us to today, which Turchin doesn’t assert, but I couldn’t help but notice another eerily prescient remark:

“epidemics and even pandemics strike disproportionately often during the disintegrative phases of secular cycles”

Global lockdowns and fiscal stimulus are once again framed as public safety and societal stabilizing measures. However as come commentators (thinking specifically of Danielle Di Martino) observed: The financial system was coming unglued, and the central bankers needed Covid because they were about to pull a Hail Mary to save a rapidly deteriorating globalized economy.

The Great Pivot: Covid-to-Climate

What’s probably coming next: ubiquitous climate change alarmism, can be understood to mean there aren’t enough private jets to go around, and it was even getting crowded in First Class.

Everything coming out of unaccountable policy institutes like the WEF and the mainstream media are just reframings of what Turchin calls “elite overproduction” such that the rabble believes the revocation of their civil liberties and the decline in their living standards is necessary and just.

Via Forbes….

What are the alternatives?

Maybe neo-Malthusianism has its place, given The Climate? This is an important question because the signs are already around us that as the pandemic fizzles The Great Pivot will be from COVID-to-Climate.

For starters, numerous environmental and ecological scholars and thinkers who are concerned about humanity’s effects on the ecosystem are vehemently opposed to climate alarmism, finding it destructive and self-defeating. This warrants multiple separate articles but I’ll mention Michael Shellenberger’s “Apocalypse Never” and former Under-Secretary for Energy under Obama, Steven Koonin’s “Unsettled Science”. The latter isn’t out until next month, but Dmitri Kofinas just had him on Hidden Forces, I strongly suggest listening and sharing it.

The coming New Green Deal style clampdowns will make global lockdowns look rather benign, despite an abundance of evidence that lockdowns did nothing to change the actual trajectory of COVID.

Lockdowns vs no-lockdowns. From Tom Woods’  “COVID Charts that CNN Forgot”

The coming Climate Emergency will embark on some fool’s errand like “15 months to cool 1.5C”, and it will probably be announced from some Davos-style ecological summit on Richard Branson’s private island that all the participants arrived at via super-yachts.

Because as per Turchin, this is final stage that transitions us into a period of chaos and instability:

‘First, the elites become accustomed to ever greater levels of consumption. Furthermore, competition for social status fuels “conspicuous consumption” (Veblen 1973 [1899]). Thus, the minimum level of consumption necessary for maintaining the elite status exhibits runaway growth. Second, the numbers of elites, in relation to the rest of the population, increase. 

The third consequence is that the twin processes of declining living standards for the commoners and increasing consumption levels for the elites will drive up socioeconomic inequality. As a result of the growth in elite appetites and numbers, the proportion of the total economic pie consumed by them will increase. However, there are limits on how far this process can go. Eventually, increasing numbers of elites and elite aspirants will have to translate into declining consumption levels for some, leading to the condition that has been termed elite overproduction (this is reminiscent of population growth leading to overpopulation). Intraelite competition for limited elite positions in the economy and government will become more fierce.

I emphasized the part that provides the most telling signal of them all. If you pay attention to the argument Turchin has been laying out, left to itself, an expanding population with expanding consumption will hit some sort of Neo-Malthusian limit and then begin to reverse under its own constraints.

But this dynamic doesn’t happen at the elite level. The capstone class of society simply continues getting larger and consuming more of the economic pie and owning more of the wealth, exacerbating wealth inequality. The elites are not constrained by limits, until there is nothing left to strip from the underclass and they come into conflict with each other.

Then, well, things need to get serious. We need a world war, or a global lockdown, or a climate emergency to keep the rabble in line so that the people on top can finish sorting out the spoils.

(It is important to note: I’m not saying this is all planned. I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. It’s a dynamic. The people impelling these shifts probably really do think they’re benefactors of humanity and that they deserve to sit atop of it. Divine right persists to this day.)

How about this instead?

What would restore a semblance of natural constraints around both overproduction and overconsumption (and with it externalities like pollution and habitat destruction) would be lifting all artificial attenuators on market signalling. That means: subsidies, bail-outs, governments picking winners and losers, central planning and management by “experts”, all of it has to go.

We have to deal with reality as it is, not as our models insist it is supposed to be. We have to re-gear public policies as responses to facts on the ground as opposed to doubling down on failed models (lockdowns aren’t slowing the spread? Lockdown harder! Masks don’t work? Double masks!)

How about seeing a governor or a premier come out and say this:

“Neither lockdowns nor masks seem to be working, for the next six weeks we want as many people as possible to load up on Vitamin D and Zinc”. We’re going to greenlight Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, and we’re going to launch an operation Warp Speed to study any and all alternative approaches”

In any society in which the incentives were such that the ruling class was really trying to solve the problem at hand, this would have happened without any prompting.

Any business or any tribe that has to weigh trade-offs and can’t externalize their failures would have looked at alternatives to failed models because they would have no other choice.

But the elites and the political class? They get paid either way. They get exemptions. They get priority. And when their “public service” is over, they walk through the revolving door into Big Corporate directorships, lobby firms and think tanks.

All they have to do is get the public to ratify their own servitude every few years, and the elites have the entirety of Big Tech and the Corporate Media to brainwash the public that it’s in their best interests to do it.

In our current age, the dynamics Turchin explored were not mathematically precise and he acknowledged that there would be nuances and subtleties in applying these to a post-industrial age:

While the overall dynamics are complex, the dynamical feedbacks between variables, that is, mechanisms that generate the dynamics, are often characterized by a high degree of determinism.

He is probably onto something that these societal dynamics have set an age of discord in motion, one myself among others have been saying for awhile will be remembered as the end of the age of the Nation State.

To receive future posts in your mailbox join the free Bombthrower mailing listfollow me on Twitter or join the Bombthrower telegram

Continue Reading
Comments

Culture

‘White People, You Are The Problem’: AT&T’s Internal ‘Racial Reeducation Program’ Leaked

I think I found the “systemic racism” we’ve been told so much about!

Published

on

Image Credit: Mike Mozart/Flickr

“AT&T Corporation has created a racial reeducation program that promotes the idea that ‘American racism is a uniquely white trait’ and boosts left-wing causes such as ‘reparations,’ ‘defund police,’ and ‘trans activism,'” Christopher Rufo reports.

From City Journal:

I have obtained a cache of internal documents about the company’s initiative, called Listen Understand Act, which is based on the core principles of critical race theory, including “intersectionality,” “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” and “white fragility.” CEO John Stankey launched the program last year and, subsequently, has told employees that private corporations such as AT&T have an “obligation to engage on this issue of racial injustice” and push for “systemic reforms in police departments across the country.”

According to a senior employee, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, managers at AT&T are now assessed annually on diversity issues, with mandatory participation in programs such as discussion groups, book clubs, mentorship programs, and race reeducation exercises. White employees, the source said, are tacitly expected to confess their complicity in “white privilege” and “systemic racism,” or they will be penalized in their performance reviews. As part of the overall initiative, employees are asked to sign a loyalty pledge to “keep pushing for change,” with suggested “intentions” such as “reading more about systemic racism” and “challenging others’ language that is hateful.” “If you don’t do it,” the senior employee says, “you’re [considered] a racist.” AT&T did not respond when asked for comment. 

On the first page of AT&T’s Listen Understand Act internal portal, the company encourages employees to study a resource called “White America, if you want to know who’s responsible for racism, look in the mirror.” The article claims that the United States is a “racist society” and lays out its thesis plainly: “White people, you are the problem. Regardless of how much you say you detest racism, you are the sole reason it has flourished for centuries.” The author, Dahleen Glanton, writes that “American racism is a uniquely white trait” and that “Black people cannot be racist.” White women, she claims, “have been telling lies on black men since they were first brought to America in chains,” and, along with their white male counterparts, “enjoy the opportunities and privileges that white supremacy affords [them].”

[…] In the “Act” section of the training program, AT&T encourages employees to participate in a “21-Day Racial Equity Habit Challenge” that relies on the concepts of “whiteness,” “white privilege,” and “white supremacy.” The program instructs AT&T employees to “do one action [per day for 21 days] to further [their] understanding of power, privilege, supremacy, oppression, and equity.” The challenge begins with a series of lessons on “whiteness,” which claims, among other things, that “white supremacy [is] baked into our country’s foundation,” that “Whiteness is one of the biggest and most long-running scams ever perpetrated,” and that the “weaponization of whiteness” creates a “constant barrage of harm” for minorities. The 21-Day Challenge also directs employees to articles and videos promoting fashionable left-wing causes, including “reparations,” “defund police,” and “trans activism,” with further instruction to “follow, quote, repost, and retweet” organizations including the Transgender Training Institute and the National Center for Transgender Equality.

Rufo reported earlier this month that Walmart is training white employees that “white is not right.”

Coca-Cola is training white employees to “try to be less white.”

I think I found the “systemic racism” we’ve been told so much about!

Continue Reading

Culture

COVID Baby Bust Accelerates Nine Months After Lockdowns

Bloomberg shows a shocking chart that when factoring all the deaths in 2020 and into 1Q21, including virus-related deaths, U.S. births only exceeded deaths by 45,000 in February and March.

Published

on

Melissa Megginson/Flickr

In a previous note last month, we said one of the biggest deflationary threats looms over the U.S. economy, that is, birth rates have fallen to their lowest level in a generation. Diving deeper into the baby bust, new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows nine months after the virus pandemic was first declared a national emergency, U.S. births plunged 8% in December, according to Bloomberg

CDC data showed an acceleration in birth declines for the second half of 2020. Full-year data shows that the number of babies born countrywide fell 4% to 3.6 million, the most significant decline since 1973, the start of the stagflation of the 1970s. 

The latest CDC data disproves the mainstream media’s narrative of a “COVID Baby Boom” as much of the nation was cooped up in their homes during lockdowns. 

The data appears to show millennials were not in the ‘mood’ to have a child during the global health catastrophe. The declines in births have been occurring for several years as the younger generation, trapped in insurmountable debts, can barely afford rent and groceries, nevertheless raise a child. 

On a state-by-state basis, California in December led the declines, which plummeted 19%. For the second half of the year, New Mexico, New York, Hawaii, and West Virginia saw decreases ranging from 8% to 11%.

We noted California’s population continues to drop as a mass exodus of residents escapes the liberal hell hole of high taxes, unaffordable homes, and violent crime. The younger generation in the state appears to be having fewer children, exacerbated by the pandemic. 

Bloomberg shows a shocking chart that when factoring all the deaths in 2020 and into 1Q21, including virus-related deaths, U.S. births only exceeded deaths by 45,000 in February and March. 

Source: Bloomberg 

In terms of race, births in December had the most significant reduction among Asians, plunging 19% from the same period in 2019.

What this shows are some early signs of a COVID baby bust. But most of this is a continuation of a trend that’s been happening for more than a decade. With birthrates faltering and debts soaring. We believe the primary secular economic trend is, and has been for at least a decade is deflation – as we’ve said before, Japan is a microcosm of what America is facing as the “3-D’s” of debt, deflation, and the inevitability of demographics implosion continues to widen the wealth gap. 

Continue Reading

Culture

Have the Great Reset Technocrats Really Thought This Through?

The only thing left to destroy in a world populated by elites alone, are other elites.

Published

on

Felton Davis/Flickr

The only thing left to destroy in a world populated by elites alone, are other elites. It would seem that the desire to dominate others does not simply come to an end on its own.

With the UN World Food Program announcing that some 270 million people worldwide now face starvation, the ongoing debate about the real aims of the technocracy is profound. The question is whether their aim tends more towards major population reduction, or more towards a new type of slavery.

It appears that philosophical and long-term practical questions remain a mystery. We will argue that evil, not simply the influence of the base upon the superstructure, is at the core of this endeavor. We have defined evil as inflicting the highest degree of pain upon the greatest number of resisting subjects. In short, we have defined evil as sadism, inflicting evil because it brings satisfaction to those inflicting it.

Because evil is fundamentally a destructive force, it cannot create anything: nothing in it is truly novel nor of use to humanity. Its pleasures are short-lived and spurious. It is unsustainable, self-defeating, ultimately leading to self-destruction.

We have adequately assessed from any number of sources that nefarious interests are behind this process, who seek to make the process also about the exercise of power, in addition to several other aims (remaining in power, exercising power in ways consistent with their occult beliefs about evil, etc.). We understand that they are ‘evil’ because they involve a type of ‘power-over’ (as opposed to power-with/consent) which derives this power from fear-mongering and terrorism upon the population. Terrorism here is defined as the operationalized use of fear, pain, and other injury towards socio-political aims.

Had their plans not been rooted in evil, they would have used soft-power tactics like manufacturing consent, to arrive at their ends.

The aim of the Great Reset is to transition the ruling plutocratic oligarchy into a technocratic one. The basis of plutocracy is finance, and the introduction of AI and automation eliminates the basis for finance as the foundation of an economy of scale. This is because automation and deflation move in tandem, making new technologies net losers. Therefore a new paradigm accounting for this post-financial ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, must be introduced.

Side-by-side comparison of auto-assembly line: 1920 vs. 2020 – ‘Humans need not apply

But the ideology of the Great Reset is based within the old financialist paradigm, which is one of cost externalization. When human beings are no longer involved in the valorization process in the production of goods and services, then humanity itself is the cost that requires externalization – elimination.

But how it is that sadism became the occult religion of the ruling class, presents a “chicken-or-the-egg” type of question. That is, did the corporate ideology mutate into occult sadism, or did occult sadism find its expression through the corporate ideology? This question will no doubt form the basis of later inquiry.

We often defer to nefarious motivations or processes in terms of ‘greed’, or ‘self-interest’, ‘power obsession’ or the ‘crisis of capital accumulation’, ‘speculative bubbles’.

And these do not suffice in the final analysis, though they provide explanatory power. The problem arises in predictive power, because while we face a crisis of diminishing returns due to automation (as the increasing tendency towards net loss on new large capital investments), the real psychological needs that motivate the present plutocracy as a power-group are actually undermined in significant and sudden population reduction, or new post-coercive technologies that eliminate human agency. This may seem counter-intuitive, but in light of an understanding of the self-defeating nature of evil, we will explore this question.

When we map out the probabilities of three intersecting policy vectors, we can understand this question even better. Those policy vectors are a.) neuralink/AI/Neural Implants/magneto proteins and related transhumanism, b.) depopulation as part of stated Agenda 2030 goals, c.) automation/roboticization, 4IR, and IoT.

This will follow from our last piece on the subject, The Great Reset Morality: Euthanization of the Inessentials:

Neural Implants

The development and introduction of neural implantsmagneto proteins, etc., can go in any number of directions. Some types of these promise to give elites ‘super-human’ cognitive abilities. However, another very practical application is to mandate that these are used on the general populace as to handicap them or control their thoughts in some way.

In that sense, neural implants can work like pharmaceuticals are used in psychiatry. In the creation of this sort of Huxleyesque ‘Brave New World’, we can easily see the continuation of a paradigm already existing today. This is one where it is common-place to find various predictable depressions, anxieties, and neuroticisms caused by contemporary social conditions, but treated psychiatrically instead of resolved socio-economically.

Neural implants can also perform a similar function, but go even further. Beyond emotions or basic effect on the re-uptake of certain hormones like serotonin, etc.; neural implants can direct thoughts or change whole cognitive processes. Beyond feelings, drives, and impulses, neural implants promise to produce actual thoughts in the minds of the subject.

LLNL engineer Vanessa Tolosa holds up a brain implant – credit: Extreme Tech Magazine, July 2014

In between these two is a hybrid form – nanotech and chemogenetics working with optogenetics. Because the delivery system to the brain can be through injection, nanolipids and other compounds can come in the form of shots. These can be delivered as part of a required ‘vaccination’ regimen (insofar as that term has been redefined), as nanotech features already in the Covid-19 shot.

Therefore, such can be included – whether disclosed to the public or not – in required vaccinations.

The development of these would seem, however, to be a technology that would support slavery, but does not rule out genocide. Certainly the ability to control the thoughts of a population would greatly mitigate risk in the view of the state apparatus, especially as it moves towards genocide.

Depopulation: Myths vs. Facts

Population control and population reduction have long been policy at various institutions and think tanks committed to global governance, from the UN to the World Economic Forum. It was a part of the UN’s Millennium goals, and since the dawn of the 21st century, has been part of UN Agenda 2030.

It is important to now introduce a framework for understanding the problem of population in light of economic development. The long standing view is that economic development leads to population stagnation, even decline. The idea here is that education and urbanization are processes which lead towards better knowledge of basic family planning, in tandem with improved access to abortion and birth control.

The underlying postulate is that people naturally do not want to be burdened with children, that children are an affront to freedom in the abstract. The formula is that as people are better educated and have more meaningful work and interesting lives, they know both how to prevent pregnancy and also no longer have ‘primitive’ inclinations towards large family building.

This mythology was built up around a notion that people are fundamentally self-interested in the narrowest sense, to the exclusion of other desires, needs, and impulses. They are presented as the norm such to furthermore create a broader culture which opposes procreation.

Instead, the real mechanism pushing population stagnation in the 1st world are increased pressures of work, and increased costs of living. Rather than ascribing population stagnation to improved conditions of life, these are more related to austere conditions imposed by late modernity. The costs of property, of rents, of food, and also because of the decline in quality of goods through increased planned obsolescence, has placed more economic pressure on individuals and couples. It has led to the requirement that both members of a household are working full-time. And even with this, home ownership in cosmopolitan centers is practically impossible for most. Austerity has also led to stagnation in life expectancy.

This truth is exposed in actual policy papers like “New strategies for slowing population growth” (1995). Here, the doublespeak is evident, with easily decipherable phrases within it; “…reduce unwanted pregnancies by expanding services that promote reproductive choice and better health, to reduce the demand for large families by creating favorable conditions for small families…”. What could possibly be meant by ‘create favorable conditions for small families’?

Economic development does not reduce population, but if we add austerity and demanding and inflexible work obligations, then we land on an answer. Economic prosperity, as it has for time immemorial, promises to greatly increase the population in the absence of a program of population reduction. Because an organic 4IR not brought in by the technocracy would decrease work obligations and increase quality of life markers, we would expect a population boom.

Consequently, projections that that population will top off at just under 10 billion by the 2060’s are as erroneous as they are linear. Without a technocracy working to actively reduce population, as they believe, an economy based on automation and AI would see a population explosion.

Conclusion

It is still likely that the would-be technocrats have indeed thought out the end-game, and that there are any number of possibilities that will allow them to harvest sadistic pleasure as an exercise of absolute power, in perpetuity. This might mean increasing fear of extermination far beyond actual population reduction. It could mean maintaining many aspects of agency for the controlled population, so that their pains are internalized in multivariate and complex fashions, that include confused feelings of self-blame, identifying with the abuser, resentment, regret, and also violations of will and dignity. Again, if will is not a factor, then all of these potential arenas of psychological pain are not present.

To frame the following, it is fundamental to understand that in a post-labor civilization, the status of humanity no longer exists upon a metric of utility. Either civilization exists to improve the human condition, or to increase human suffering. There are no trade-offs or costs. Society is either good or evil.

But evil is short lived and short-sighted, and this is why: Sudden population reduction is a fire-cracker, it explodes just once. The pleasure in the process of eradicating billions of people, and the fear, pain, and suffering this would cause, within the span of a few short years, only gets to be enjoyed once. It’s a sacrificial ritual upon the altar of Moloch that can only be performed one time.

Likewise with post-coercive technologies: Without agency, controlling people serves no purpose in terms of violating their own will or desire. Causing pain on a subject that does not resist because he has no will, gives the sadist much less pleasure than would pain on a subject against their will.

Moreover, the position of being elite is relative to a number of factors such as distribution of wealth, power, and/or privilege, and the sheer numbers in terms of population, that one possesses these advantages over.

If there are only elites remaining, then they would have merely introduced a new kind of egalitarian society on the foundation of superabundance and a miniscule human population. If living conditions of an existing humanity can be greatly reduced, then the relative privilege and luxury enjoyed by the elites grows in that proportion.

Absent some radical life-extending technology, it is conceivable that science and technology have already reached the zenith point at which privilege and luxury cannot be furthered. A reasonable solution would be to reduce living conditions for others so as to enhance their own relative privilege. The greater number of people who live in reduced conditions, the more privileged one’s position of privilege actually is.

Likewise, it would seem that maintaining some human population as ‘possessions’ would serve to augment ownership over human beings, perhaps the most valuable type of possession because they are aware that they are owned – but only if that humiliates them. For what other purpose is there for slavery, in a world without human labor?

Does it have any meaning, or is any satisfaction achieved, by governing over people without the possibility to have the will to either consent, or conversely, resent the ruler? Here we can understand it along these lines: the possibility for agency means that governing can happen with their support, or against their will.

But neural implant control over cognitive processes, eliminates the possibility for will, which would deprive technocrats of the pleasure of ruling with or against the will of the ruled.

Therefore, the destructive evil framework of those behind the Great Reset is revealed. The use of strategy, planning, and cunning to achieve their desired result is prevalent. But have they examined the foundation of their desires? Do they understand what their victory would deliver to them?

The only thing left to destroy in a world populated by elites alone, are other elites. It would seem that the desire to dominate others does not simply come to an end on its own.

For these reasons, it is likely that some elites have seen the problem in this end game. This would explain the inter-elite conflict which we have explored previously, and will return to in the near future.

Continue Reading