Musings #8
(2/26/11)) from oftwominds.com
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The big story of the
week/month/year:
As I discussed in Thursday's entry, the loss of legitimacy of
governments
in North Africa and the Mideast is a one-way street: the genie cannot be
put
back in the bottle.
Correspondent Bram S. sent in this computer-metaphor for the
process:
The loss of legitimacy is a
complex process
which defies encapsulation. The key element now playing out in
Arab
nations is "the consent of the governed" is being
withdrawn.
Once a people remove their consent,
even the most
repressive, dictatorial regimes quickly fall: consider East Germany, the
acme of
a totalitarian Police State built on distrust and betrayal. The
film The
Lives of Others offers a poignant exploration of
these
themes. Note that the 1989 unraveling of Eastern Europe's "consent of
the
governed" occurred quickly and without the Internet as an enabling
technology.
From this we can infer that the Web is not an essential element, it is
either a
catalyst or an enabling extension of much deeper forces.
I am now seeing this process of
"delegitimization"
in a number of settings, both in the recent past and the present, in
both
developed and developing
nations.
One characteristic which has defined
the 20th
century is the dominance of the nation-state as a model of
governance.
Allegiance and loyalty to the Central State enabled governments to
conscript
millions of citizens to fight and die for the nation-state.
I now see the end of Selective Service
(the draft)
in 1973 as the end result of the loss of legitimacy of conscription in
the U.S.
as a policy which had the consent of the governed. Conscription
had been
the bedrock policy that enabled the U.S. to persevere and accept
casualties in
the hundreds of thousands during World War II. But the Vietnam
Conflict
eroded the citizens' belief in the benefits of the policy, as young men
were
shipped to a distant, unwinnable war to lose their lives in vain, for
"causes"
unconnected to the survival of the nation-state.
As a result of this delegitimization of
conscription, I.e. the loss of consent of the governed for this policy,
then
U.S. wars are now much more technology-dependent. The Armed Forces are
now
professional, with high pay and benefits and intensive training. When
the Armed
Forces aren't large enough, as in Iraq, then professional mercenaries
are
hired--quite often ex-military civilians.
The governing class in the U.S. is
slowly but
surely losing the consent of the governed. The TARP bailout of
"too big to
fail" banks, for example, was widely hated, yet the Ruling Elites pushed
it
through all too easily. This "victory" of the Ruling Elites deeply
eroded faith
in the governing Elites and indeed the system itself.
On a very large scale and on a long
timeline, we
may be witnessing the slow delegitimization of the entire nation-state
model. Correspondent Bram S. submitted this link with a powerful
comment:
"Governments will look different in 20 years because of the
internet.
People don't need someone to say what they need to do because of all the
information is now available to everyone." (The site
is written by
a Swedish author/professor).
We are seeing examples of this process elsewhere in the world.
India, as we
all know, is deeply corrupt, and the bribes and "fees" levied by the
Elites and
fiefdoms act as a huge tax on the poor. Bypassing the
bribe-demanding
bureaucrats entirely eliminates corruption as an unproductive and
selective
tax. Technology and the Web offers some opportunities to do so. If
permits
can be obtained online, then the local bureaucrat who once collected a
bribe to
issue the permit has been cut out of the loop. The citizen has more
disposable
income as a result.
In the U.S., we see this process in the growth of peer-to-peer
lending,
which bypasses the entire parasitic financial Elites cartel /banking
sector.
In an unpredictable way, what was legitimate and consented to can
suddenly
be recognized as repressive and needless. In North Africa and the
Mideast, this
is the Status Quo and Ruling Elites. In the U.S., Europe and Japan, it
may be
the banking sector which is slowly being delegitimized by over-reach and
the
extreme concentration of political and financial power. (That is of
course one
major tenet of the Survival+ critique.)
I will be exploring these slow and
uncertain
processes in future blog entries.
Item #1: Creepy advert campaign: pressing the flesh, literally
(thank you, Michael
Goodfellow)
Sit down on a bench in shorts, and when
you stand
up, voila, you're a walking advert.
Item #2: Tipping Points
2011 (via
U. Doran)
Interesting vector analogy--down we go
toward chaos
etc.
Item #3: Will MySpace condos help save your
Internet? (thank
you, David Harrison)
Interesting concept: if a large group
of users
purchased MySpace as "condo owners," then this would "save" or conserve
certain
aspects of the web from corporate control.
Item #4: Comic Steve Bridges
does G.W.
Bush, Bill Clinton and Pres. Obama
I didn't watch all the clips, but it's
pretty
amazing that one comic can spoof three very different
presidents.
Item #5: Rare Earth Trading and
extreme
risk
"I Was a Rare Earths Day Trader -How a
naval
confrontation in the South China Sea created a global investment bubble
-- and
cost me half my life savings." (Thank you, G.F.B.)
Item #6: The power of
parenting
Correspondent Kent K. submitted a
fascinating and
profound observation which I think ties directly into the process of
deligitmization/removal of consent: "I worked for many years in the
human
services field. I have worked previously in a women's shelter (in my
early 20's)
and was surprised at the number of times an abused woman would
return
to the abusive relationship. Seven times is the average,
though
there was cohort that left sooner: women who had children who were also
being
abused. They left after one or two instances."
This suggests that parents may change
what they
consider legitimate and acceptable once they perceive their children are
being
sacrificed for the benefit of some ruling Elite.
Item #7: undervalued small oil
stocks
(investing idea)
The rise in oil may have just
begun. If a
major exporter (note the difference between an oil exporter and
producer--the
U.S. produces 9 million barrels a day of oil but exports essentially
none) is
disrupted to the point that exports are dramatically cut, then oil could
rather
easily rise by 50% to $150/barrel or even by 100% to $200/barrel.
Are
there tiny little oil companies out there with oil leases that are
unrecognized
by the market? I suspect there are. Yes, the trick is finding them and
being
able to assess the value of their leases.
Thanks for reading--
charles hugh
smith
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