This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Guest Post: The Longer Trend
Submitted By Warren E. Pollock
The Longer Trend
Alas, it has been five years since I attempted to write and then publish a meaningful trend forecast. In hindsight those forecasts proved to be more predictive than I ever expected. I would rather have been wrong because it would be to everyone’s benefit were we to reform towards functional governance and strategic planning. With progressive action not taking place, and with ignorance being bliss, I am reticent about embarking on new writing because of the conclusions I have reached. However, I view it as a social responsibility to make this forecast, so in that light I accept the pain of publishing it.
Responsibilities must be met. Thus, they are by definition thankless. For now, appreciate in my stead our faithful copy editor Jeremy Irwin, for he faces a greater hardship. Not only must he think about these predictions, he also has to translate guttural American
verbiage into an understandable and concise document, all to the high standards of Queen’s English. I thank him for he has worked tirelessly with me as needed over a span of years.
If you want to do a service, spread the word and prepare to pick up the pieces. Answers can be found in a framework called the Fuller Model, after R Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), which advocates both integrity and “comprehensive anticipatory design science.” It also requires society to embrace overview planning, as for example Singapore has done over the last 30 or 40 years, to its dramatic economic benefit. We are not talking about solutions here. If we were, we would be alone. We are speaking about
trends.
In a solutions-based world, “No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.”1 At this moment we live in a world devoid of sensible decision-making, planning, and solutions. In mentioning these trends to you, I acknowledge the potential unjustified and morally illegal blowback of a brutal response. For now, pervasive detail mongering hides my message in obscurity, thus offering temporary cover.
THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS
To best understand the overview, cast out the devil by denying him the details. There are tens of thousands of people now engaged in the promulgation and analysis of meaningless details. Most of these details were simply made up out of thin air and are as meaningless as they are pervasive. When you pay attention to details you are sure to lose the overview.
“Let the devil catch you but by a single hair, and you are his forever.” 2 Details, you see, are designed to trap by a single hair and in numbers they have the effect of keeping society in a blissful, manageable, and sedated state of ignorance.
In the pursuit of objectivity, I ask that for the moment you forget everything you might know of the spurious field of economics, the criminal vocation of party politics, notions about how the world works, and the divide and conquer effect of ideology.
In developing this forecast, hunting down “doublespeak” proved to be quite helpful. For example, I came to see that our vaunted “information age” might more accurately be called the disinformation or misinformation age, as will be explained.
PERCEPTION ENGINE
If the falsity of details were not bad enough to contend with and overcome, I never predicted the possibility that society would embrace a “white noise” industry. White noise has no meaning whatsoever and thus cannot be understood. Even worse, it prevents useful communication, at distance, by creating auditory overload. In an age of disinformation, an overwhelming amount of noise can deafen. To be effective, our message needs to overcome the keyboard variety of white noise, which is texting and “social networking.” Presently, I am highly doubtful that the message will win out over the drone of a society embedded in cognitive dissonance and white noise.
This affects you personally.
Texting has more downside than upside; already several politicians have fallen into the “social networking trap” of self-incrimination. This select group are trendsetters in this regard. Having been arrested and deposed or booted because of their text messaging, these fellows for once have led by example.
Self-incrimination is a major trend to watch, both for politicians and individuals such as you and I. Recently I stopped a teenager of my acquaintance from advertising an underage drinking party via texting device. “Mom, tnx 4 picken ^ d (B) n vdka 4t pRT, wen RU gunA B outa d hous.” (“Mom, thanks for picking up the beer and vodka for the party. When are you going to be out of the house?”)
In the US of 2010 this incriminating statement could have severe ramifications including felony charges, jail time, forfeiture, civil suit, and confiscation of property including loss of home.
Ironically, some look to texting as a way to effect and organize political movements. Rioting, electoral jiggering and political protest have all been attempted by messaging, with swift and brutal response.
For instance, during a recent G12 conference texting was used by one individual to alert fellow protesters to the locations of police moving around Pittsburgh in hopes of making arrests. Swarms of FBI agents later charged this “offender” with hindering the “apprehension-prosecution” of lawbreakers and criminal use of a communication facility.
“Social networking” would be better called an “anti-social” activity or disorder. This disorder would be defined as a “pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.”3
Teenagers are tied to perception with no better tool or more cruel a mistress than texting. “You are fat,” “I don’t like your dress” and “He’s weird” will cause many a teen to shudder. Individual reflexive coping strategies include hiding or doing as much damage to others as possible.
Face and the loss thereof, once a complex Asian cultural concept, becomes important not to the structure and performance of society but instead to the service of self. Dedicated service of self implies complete disregard of others. Here we have it: anti-social networking.
Here too employers are scanning the online facebooks of would-be and current employees in search of dirt left either by you or your “false friends.”
Collectively, our disinformation age aggregates all the meaningless little pieces of texts and statements into one huge dysfunctional anti-social network of detached individuals who falsely assume that they have functional interpersonal relationships and shared
values.
With all this white noise, the majority of people have placed themselves into lockdown and are now inmates of a “general population” of prisoners and debt slaves. For good behavior, and in forfeiture of a future, the consumer-inmates are occasionally let out for
shopping.
Old folks are too tired to do anything, consumers are too jaded, shoppers at big box stores are too lost, and fast food eaters are too fat. Does hope reside in the texting generation?
What would bind all these independent, disorganized and self-centered fidgets into a new “hero generation”? Would it take a catastrophe? Most seek no more than to be corporate employees and fellow debt slaves.
When looking to identify a trend; why would “law” enforcement be overly concerned with locking down a population already under self-imprisonment?
On the surface it seems to me that millions of people can spin around in self-satisfaction, tweeting to each other like chickens. But then again there are the “patriots” to contend with.
PATRIOTS CAN CONFUSE CONFUCIUS
“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.” Confucius was spot on!
Reform being out of the equation, the knee jerk reaction of a poorly managed country will always be to defend ill-gotten wealth and concentrated privilege to the point of failure.
In failure, internal “police” agencies become the mindless muscle end of governmentsponsored crime-fraud. The people in these agencies are deluded because they think they “are doing the public good.”
To officialdom, internal police are useful as long as they blindly follow orders. As in Nazi Germany, capturing the real estate of these agencies is an essential part of gaining command of a populace. In our doublespeak world, internal police exist to facilitate the legalized criminals of lawyer-based and financial-based “capitalism” (LAWCAP and FINCAP).
Russia, which I still call the Soviet Union to prevent politically correct rebranding, uses LAWCAP and also INTCAP (intelligence-based control) to both rob and dominate its populace. The “isms” of socialistic and capitalistic ideologies are irrelevant except to illustrate ideological perversion. These outmoded theories are useless except in the furtherance of a divide-and-conquer strategy. Today, a super-sized, doughnut-toting US internal police state closely follows the Soviet lead with double helpings of paranoia – and the lack of subtle footprint, for they simply weigh too much.
With the attacks of 2001, external terrorists provided the paranoia necessary to build out a high technology police state. Economic failure due to government malfeasance is used to justify further technology funding while enriching private individuals and those
corporations that are politically connected.
To municipalities, the hiring of police officers can be very profitable because of ticketing. On my calculations, the average policeman provides revenue up to 300 percent of his salary while waiting on-call to eat doughnuts or do the public good. People love policemen up to the point they are ticketed and their quality of life threatened. At and beyond the local level an insidious overview lurks. All these police officials need something to do and they hate people rocking the boat.
Thus, internal groups of “patriots” are now more dangerous to wealth concentration and preservation than are Islamic terrorists. After all, in a badly managed country, patriotism can hatch out with severe consequences. Using doublespeak, patriot easily translates into terrorist. Upon taking power, patriots would soon become nationalists, nationalists would become socialists, socialists would become democrats, and millions of people worldwide would be killed as a result.
Could it be that irony repays itself in paradox? 4 In the 1970s Fuller recognized the potential for the “patriot movement” to quietly and steadily mutate into a new brand of American Nazism. At that point, the world has my blessing to smite the United States with all means possible. Could it be that the police shift paradoxically from persecuting the terrorist to the irony of supporting him?
We have several brands of patriots now under “police state” containment in the United States. These are what I call the want-to-be patriots, the Kool-Aid patriots, and the dangerous pragmatic patriots.
“Want-to-be” patriots wave around the Constitution and hearken back to the good old days. Pity the fool that holds tight to ideology, for he worships virtual idols. In practicality, the Constitution has long been a meaningless and unenforceable document.
To their consternation, hapless “want-to-be” patriots are routinely and randomly arrested for blood sport.
Cling to a piece of paper all you want. Wave it around in court after you have been falsely arrested for texting the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person. Free speech can be very costly. Thus it has become extinct in the dun of white noise. These ineffective patriots read the Turner Diaries, blow up an office building from time to time, and threaten Nancy Pelosi by calling her home and harassing her poor husband.
Hasn’t that poor fellow paid enough for his marriage to a sun baked, highly intelligent Gila monster? Let him suffer in peace. No need to bother Pelosi or any other politician with action or rhetoric. The wounded animal of corruption falls under its own weight. In the future our job will lie in picking up the pieces after the system collapses, and looking to the Fuller Model. For now it resides in spreading “the word” in hopes of preventing the coalescence of a new National Socialist movement, and any other “ists” that might come along. Let me not get distracted, let us move on to the next brand of patriot, the “sipping Kool-Aid” kind.
Deluded Kool-Aid patriots buy some land and a cabin in a remote section of the United States to store canned food and practice marksmanship. In the future these folks will play hosts to an A10 attack plane strafing their compound with a depleted uranium
Gatling gun. They will look on in wonder as eight Black Hawk-rappelling commandos, a hundred policemen and twelve girl scouts assault their compound.
The third category: “pragmatically dangerous” patriots spin details and propaganda, rebrand long defunct organizations with spiffy new messages, and take direction from external lands. These sophisticated intelligence agencies have foreign government sponsorship and training, they infiltrate mainstream media and politics, fund through a growing number of domestic followers, and benefit from the government country collapsing under its own weight.
The police state fears and actively fights the ineffective patriot because he can disrupt the short-term wealth concentration.
Needing work while not raising revenue through ticketing, the police state overacts and occasionally imprisons the hapless want-to-be patriot. From a budgeting standpoint any police state capacity must be used or forever lost. Thus, imprisoning people randomly
protects police jobs and at the same time creates money for LAWCAP’s and FINCAP’s prisoner industry.
Even though they are highly dangerous, the pragmatic patriots are all but forgotten. These “foreign intelligence groups” hide in the shadows and bide time to someone else’s nationalistic agenda.
To me, the solutions reside in a broad picture of planning based on comprehensive anticipatory design science and the dynamics of the physical world – the Fuller Model.
WHEN EMPIRES END
We are at the end of empire, it seems.
At the end of empire, the military becomes the economy and the economy becomes the military. Confucian as it seems, in empires the failure of either condemns both. The military and economic synergy we call empire has evolved over 400 years of history.
Queen Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII, laid the foundation of the British Empire by chartering the East India Company in the 1600s.
Around 1798, Thomas Malthus, an East India company scholar, postulated that based on a comprehensive resource survey, population would rise geometrically, thereby creating shortages in the finite resources of the world. His theories led to economics becoming known as “the dismal science” which now reflects the fatality of economic theory. In fact, not theory, we have two paths into the future. We can choose extinction, or a rich outcome through comprehensive anticipatory design science. I am again distracted. Back to history.
From 1600 onwards, it took 200 years for the Great Sea Empire to solidify to Empire. The deciding moment occurred in Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where the British Navy mastered the sea by defeating the combined fleets of France and Spain.
Mastery of the sea, the control of sea empire, brings with it great economic benefit. Military projection stabilizes the greater world, which would normally be locally disconnected, thus everyone trading becomes richer than they would have otherwise. The potential for a great land empire also exists but it has never been fulfilled as such.
I call the great continent of the world “the great landmass”, and it encompasses the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Ethnicities on the great landmass cannot escape to the sea. People on the great landmass either press against each other or unify. From time to time people on this large island benefit though selective unification, otherwise they are in the flux of conflict. Conflict occurs between nation states and also based on ethnicity.
In recent history, we saw the unification of country-ethnic tribes into an entity called the Soviet Union. We also see a transitory unification of a European Union, with common currency but disparate languages and customs. Asian regions including China have fluxed between unification and segmentation over a longer timescale. Korea has a long history of unification-centered conflict. Many African nations are divided by ethnicity.
When the “clarity” of ethnicity does not exist it can be made up to divide and conquer. An enraged Hutu once said, “I don’t care that you married my sister! It’s off with your head, you rat bastard Tutsi!”
Conflicts on the great landmass are expensive, so in recent history we saw a transfer of empire from Britain to the United States. For a short time the US obtained outside benefit, and bore the cost, of being the center of empire.
A fat, dumb and happy empire benefits everyone. It would be no coincidence that the United States was happy to pay the cost of allowing China to benefit from external trade to the point of catastrophic imbalance. There was lots of money to be stolen in real estate, structured finance, derivates, governance, bubbles, and other brands of systemic fraud.
The crime-fraud party concentrated on removing as much wealth as possible for personal benefit. Instead of acting to prevent mistakes, or even reactively adjusting a trade and currency imbalance, mistakes are instead compounded in favor of theft. Today, even within a police state with unlimited resources, societal fraudsters are never arrested because they are engaged in government-sponsored crime.
It becomes harder to operate a military when you lack an economy truthful enough to absorb the costs of doing business. Integrity is the basic element missing in the United States; what it has instead is the doublespeak concept of “free-market capitalism.” A “monetary” system with “free markets” will not usher in a return to normalcy.
Markets must be paid for with empire. Capital resides in the life support needed to make the poor rich through compressive anticipatory design science. Freedom depends not on details but instead on the integrity of having overview.
I forecast that we are in a breakdown collapse of empire, not a depression. We must work to reverse the myopic and dated concept of Malthusian shortage through integrity and comprehensive anticipatory design science. Shortly we must either act or face the consequence of societal embezzlement, a dark age.
»
- 11129 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Nothings going to change for a LONG while.. flag me!
The Fed can and will continue to Print... and the algos will continue to pump... and the dumbass idiots masses will be lulled into a false sense of security, again and again and so on...
It boils down to how stupid and ignorant the masses are... we the few can not educate the masses.
I am the devil for saying this... but its true..
God Bless us All!
Smith’s Attack on Mercantilism
In the 18th century, European nations practiced an economic system known as
“mercantilism.” Each nation’s goal was to increase exports to its colonies and other
nations, limit imports from them, and end up with a “favorable balance of trade.” A
nation that exported more than it imported demanded the difference in gold and silver.
The mercantilist nations believed that the more gold and silver they acquired, the more
wealth they possessed. Smith believed that this economic policy was foolish and actually
limited the potential for “real wealth,” which he defined as “the annual produce of the
land and labor of the society.”
http://www.fairfightfilm.org/crf/AdamSmithProduction.pdf
"......we the few can not educate the masses."
JW,
You get my vote for the A#1 Zero Hedge negative energy world's-gonna-end-so-kiss-your-ass-goodbye doomsayer bar none. It's not even a contest between you and second place.
Of course, since you're doomed, it sure as hell doesn't make any sense to even try to educate, enlighten or even comfort. Just roll over, expose your ass, offer up some K-Y jelly and hope it don't hurt too much. "Game over man, game over."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsx2vdn7gpY
You really are quite pathetic.
Oh come on. You know I've authored darker screeds than this guy!
Idiot masses, indeed. The ox was in the well 300 years ago and only now are we noticing. The generations now living will have the (unenviable) opportunity to witness/endure the most spectacular implosion and fall from greatest seen on this planet since the C-T extinction event. Those dinosaurs didn't know jack about going down in flames. We will totally roxorz at this!
"Oh come on. You know I've authored darker screeds than this guy!"
Cougar,
1) You can actually write coherent sentences separated into paragraphs that explore a thought or idea from beginning to end. You also understand an extremely complex subject known as "edit".
2) The thoughts you post are YOUR thoughts, rather than the "cut and paste from hell" drivel coming from Florida guy.
3) You weave humor, philosophy and logic into your posts and always acknowledge the other side of the fence.
4) You're a good looking Maine coon "puddy tat" as well, though you're a little green around the gills.
:>)
I totally agree with you, when this implosion happen it will be something that won't be controlled. We have never in the history of this planet had a country of this many people (300 million) implode and essentially go broke. Usually it's some small country or medium sized country and/or population that got over it's head. It will be felt planet wide and this will be one time where words and obfuscation won't be able to hide the simple truth, and that is we bankrupted ourselfs via the politicians.
"I totally agree with you, when this implosion happen it will be something that won't be controlled. We have never in the history of this planet had a country of this many people (300 million) implode and essentially go broke."
Unfortunately I think we're already there. MBS(s) went to 0 when people defaulted on loans. Our dollar is a debt backed note... not much difference. I personally believe the collapse has already occured we are just living in the twilight until some sort of transition takes hold, either from people abandoning the current system, or going to extremes to uphold it.
CD,
You beat me to it.
After reading many of the comments below, I would point out up here that he is available for your viewing pleasure at...
http://www.youtube.com/user/wepollock
Give him a break CD, it is tough out there and at times the situation does seem hopeless.
This next part is directed to everybody: we must continue to do what we can for our fellow man. If during our life we simply take care of our own inner space, our own mind, feelings, etc. just by doing that we are having a positive impact on the world and those around us. This IS meaning.
The next step is to consciously parlay this to those around us, and then they to those around them, and so on.
It will likely take longer than our life span to educate and liberate the minds of our fellow man, and they will resist. Oh yes. But patience is a virtue. The seeds we plant in this life will survive us in many manifestations.
The question we must ask ourselves: do we want to leave seeds the turn into rotting weeds, suffering and pain? Or seeds that turn into love, peace, liberation, happiness and freedom?
The choice, really, is ours. I know what I have chosen and this supersedes my self, my business, my belongings, my ego.
"Give him a break CD, it is tough out there and at times the situation does seem hopeless."
If our man in Florida happened to drift into and out of hopelessness, I would not begrudge him his moments of desperation. We all have them. But this person spends all his time in various stages of desperation and can't escape from his own black hole of negative energy.
Considering how many time this person is flagged as junk (last Friday he or she was flagged as junk a total of over 80 times on one thread (albeit it on many posts) before I stopped counting. I'm not the only one who holds this opinion.
I think he or she should give me a break.
on Wed, 04/14/2010 - 17:11
#300887
I think he or she should give me a break.
Cognitive Dissonance,
You could choose not to read what I write? God gave everyone "Free Will". As for actually sharing what I think is of interest to a great many here, I will continue to do so. You don't have to read it, you don't have to watch it and I don't have a gun to your head making you read it... "Free Will", you choose to engage me, you choose to argue the point of what a big bad meany I am... as opposed too, JW... You are wrong... the people can be reached... and every day someone new reads and watches what is offered here and learns a little more... to the benefit of all. But, You choose... with your "Free Will" to go a different direction. It's your God given right to do so... I guess if it was up to You, Censorship of negative thoughts twords the fucking ignorant masses or the criminal Government would not be allowed in a public forum... Thats your right to say whats on your mind, but I will not stop sharing and double dog daring people to get in the game... I motivate my way and you can spend your time doing what you think will in fact better the situation, it is after all your right to do so.
Be well Cognitive Dissonance, JW
Come on, this is Long Term trends as he points out in the title, not as you understood as 10 year term. Long term means 100s of years term, up and down trends as seen over a 500 year term. Just as you can easily find the trend of stock market when you watching 50 year chart then 5 day chart.
Btw, this was a rewrite of "the Fourth Turning".
But this is a gem :"White noise has no meaning whatsoever and thus cannot be understood. Even worse, it prevents useful communication, at distance, by creating auditory overload. In an age of disinformation, an overwhelming amount of noise can deafen. "
This is creation of "god cult" personality example. Take for example Reagans followers "do not talk against your fellow republican" which if you follow puts fellow Republicans first, country second. Protect your fellow republican at all costs will get you to be against America when protecting their crimes, and yet call yourself "the real american" even tough you are protecting a potential criminal against your own country, which is a treason.
Following Reagan's script you create "god cult leaders" that can not be talked against no matter if you are talking facts or not. Consider Palin"s fake biography with which she was trown on public scene, "God cult" creating of the first magnitude, very simillar to Stalin and Hitler's "god cults"- they all are infalible.
HA HA
Glad he only writes every five years. I recommend ten.
I asked my family to take away my belt and shoelaces after reading this.
And if Consitutional ideology is worthless, from what center of thought do we begin to use his design science?
He's obviously not thought through the philosophy behind the constitution...the fact that it's impossible to make a fair form of governance, so the best thing to do is try to maximize freedom. Hence the Constitution. He's also apparently missed the whole Ron Paul/Mises Inst patriot movement
I actually was a fan of Bucky Fuller, although after reading this insanity I'm going to have to go refresh my memory on him. The one thing I retained from him was that over specialization was the path to to being a tool of the powerful. Humans were built to be generalists.
Confucius was completely owned by Lao Tzu, the espouser of the highest level of 'free markets'. Confucius was a control freak, while Lao Tzu taught that all attempts to control one's self and surrouding were futile. Wu Wei - do without doing.
that was hard for me to read because it supported my thinking in some places (right on...), then bashed it to bits in others (idiot...).
therefore, i am certain it is worth reading again. twice, perhaps.
thanks for the angst. ideological comfort is an unaffordable luxury in these changing times. with comfort comes complacency, and we know where that has gotten us.
so what sort of patriot am i? sigh.
The one you want to be.
Every tick higher for the US market not matched by a commensurate fx deval or rise abroad amounts to Bernanke moving the looting complex abroad, but for oil and gold. Whilst the US may drink the kool aid the rest of the world who can't afford it anymore might take exception. Of course the generiosity sees no bounds with the IMF bailout fund increased. Awaiting a major cross border hostile launched with overvalued cash and stock...ticktockticktock
Integrity got lost in the search for yield.
Always has, always will. The key is to live your life in such a way that you do not become a 'sucker' to any person of the yield-seeking variety.
Wow. Tremendous acerbic wit. Interesting that he quoted Asimov. Over the past couple of years, I have wondered about potential parallels between the Foundation series and the patterns in the history of civilizations on this planet. Wonder if Warren Pollock goes by the name Harry Seldon among friends.
Foundation was just about the creepiest thing I've ever read. Every couple years I'll run into something that reminds me of it and I'll get creeped out all over again.
The guy was onto something.
So who is the Mule?
The Pollock dude rocks. Lay off.
I feel so much better now
collapse is already in progress - the vandals and barbarians - the banksters and politicians - have already raped and plundered (to china)....imperial overstretch - a quaint term - is rotting the corpse....
the usa is ruled by a junta puppet of indonesian citizenship....the constitution is nothing but a goddamned piece of paper - thank you george bush and american sheople....and behind the puppet are rapacious frat boys and bloodthirsty murderers akin to the rockefellers, soros, and buffets....
www.obamacrines.com
www.ae911truth.org
Thought provoking stuff and i should like to hear more from trend forecasters such as himself , celente etc. As much as the sheeple in me wants to deny , its hard to argue we are approaching a dark hour. Only the human surivival instinct prevents me from giving up the day job and moving to the beach in my flip-flops and robe with deckchair in hand and sunglasses on , hoping the pretty colors will at least happen at night so to enchance that one last view.
The juiced manipulated stock market seems to irrelevant when you think about it. Those puts certainly wont pay out even if im right.
Those puts certainly wont pay out even if im right.
Sadly true, me thinks as u doo.
"Fuck it".....so says the Dude.
-
Mostly kick-ass but this kind of stuff bugs me:
"Deluded Kool-Aid patriots buy some land and a cabin in a remote section of the United States to store canned food and practice marksmanship. In the future these folks will play hosts to an A10 attack plane strafing their compound with a depleted uranium
Gatling gun. They will look on in wonder as eight Black Hawk-rappelling commandos, a hundred policemen and twelve girl scouts assault their compound."
Like trying to provide for your own family's safety and desiring to live as a free man after the currency collapse is somehow a pointless exercise.
When FRN's no longer buy anything, how will FedGod maintain the incalculable logistics and infrastructure to keep A10's and Blackhawks in the air? And second of all, do you think bombing remote cabins is going to become a military priority for a government with dwindling resources? It makes no sense.
Although, maybe he's right. If he is, at least I'll go out Dan Fong style, instead of on my knees. I can just see the JBT's when they come to get him, "Where's you're Buckminster Fuller now motherf__ker!"
On some levels he strikes me as just another know-it-all who thinks that if he was put in charge, he'd get everything all figured out.
Functional and prosperous societies are not designed. They arise when you have certain conditions; rule of law (no fraud or theft) and freedom. (real freedom, with consequences and responsibility and stuff - not the BS we call freedom now)
He does have it all figured out:
"To me, the solutions reside in a broad picture of planning based on comprehensive anticipatory design science and the dynamics of the physical world – the Fuller Model."
I see lots of angst but little planning ... Frankly, I'd rather have Obama rule than this fruitcake (well maybe not)
Right.
"Woo hoo!!! Let's hear it for central planning!"
If we could just get smart people, and give them absolute power, we'll live in a worker's paradise.
He should talk to these people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2BgMu32Yuk
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8639026381197734332#
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3272903211813223143&hl=en#
If anybody missed "Pandora's Box", it is a must see. WE NEVER LEARN. Plain and simple.
"It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false." --Paul Johnson
The below is an example of him being an idiot:
Russia is not the Soviet Union. Millions aren't killed or placed in gulags just for being Orthodox Christians, or some other religion, in defiance of militant atheism. That "little" difference alone makes insistence on using the name "Soviet Union" absurd, if not delusional.
it's still a disruptive read for me, parts of which ring more true than i care to admit. but i agree with your point as well as his having quite a few other problems.
he pigeon-holes patriots into a pretty small set of categories...
how about the patriot that just wants to be left alone to do his own thing - the guy who doesn't really like or believe in the collective intelligence of his community(s), because he keeps getting fleeced by them for their interests, not his own. let me pay for the roads, police, fire-dept, national defence (not offense). i don't want to pay for county busses to cart around senior citizens to bingo, for cripes sake! or community college grants for english lit majors. you want lit, you pay for lit - with money from a job.
i believe this is a valid 'fourth patriot' archtype, and actually the one that formed this country and the constitution.
and i'm not going to concede that the constitution is obsolete. on that count this author is a defeatist and an idiot, or... he is a troll who is actively trying to deflate resolve.
personal freedoms are not given to us by any collective. this will never be an obsolete concept.
Well said.
I agree - this is more than a curmudgeonly misconception - it is utterly ignorant. Russia itself may not have changed all that much following the break up of the Soviet Union, but the 14 other nations which made up the USSR are now independent states (Ukraine, Khazakstan etc). The USSR is well and truly part of history.
Also, what's with the obsession about the "evils" of txting, lol?
I feel like I just paid $3.00 for a community carnival ride -- it looked exciting at the onset, then I made the commitment to read all of it, and then I finished it, and said "that was it?" I don't feel this article or the observations therein are zerohedgeworthy: laboriously written, embellished with unnecessary ideological detours, and generally unfulfilling (although somewhat interesting).
+100
nicely put...
Your money is no good here....er ..anywhere?
Lots of whipped cream -- no pie.
Ted Kaczynski is that you??
Mr Pollock is a very intelligent and educated man.
But his messege is too complex and nuanced for this blue collar dumshit.
No Fear, cause i am tired of it and there aint a damn thing any of us can do. Dumasses in DC already have their plan, and we can do what about it? We are in 2 wars already and none of are doing a damn thing about it.
So now we have the nationwide protest about to start. If a few show up they will be ignored or put down. If a lot of us show up we MIGHT have a chance.
in any event, at some point the system will fall. I would love to still be here when it does.
i think they're scared... which motivates the hell out of me.
Sounds alot like Buckminster Fuller---alot.
Isn't this Morrissey? I thought I heard he got into economic philosophy after the Smiths broke up.
Great, more Marxist ramblings promulgated on Zero Hedge. What happened to you, Tyler Durden? you used to be so cool.
What are his predictions that he promised? I was disappointed and he seemed to be showing off what a deep thinker he is with all the strange detours. However, I did like his point at the end about this not being a depression but rather the end of an empire. However, he did not flesh this idea out or really explain its significance. Also, I hate verbs like "fluxed". There's a funny French singer named Arthur who sang about wanting to "flux" Madonna, carefully noting that it doesn't mean the same thing as the other f-word.
Excellent effort. It seems to me that one of the keys to the failure we are experiencing as a world society and its structure is that along with infinitely diffused chains of responsibility is the social requirement that responsibility always rests with another, greater .. loser, villain or whatever. Until failure can not only be expected, but planed, structured for and accepted I hold the prospects for the current structure slim to none. I suspect a big reason the white noise volume is so high is to drown out the capacity to recognize failure for those who subscribe to the failed notion that appearances = reality.
What are his predictions that he promised? I was disappointed and he seemed to be showing off what a deep thinker he is with all the strange detours. However, I did like his point at the end about this not being a depression but rather the end of an empire. However, he did not flesh this idea out or really explain its significance. Also, I hate verbs like "fluxed". There's a funny French singer named Arthur who sang about wanting to "flux" Madonna, carefully noting that it doesn't mean the same thing as the other f-word.
That was just depressing. I was having a pretty good day up till the end of that.
Two minutes of my life wasted.....
Shorter Pollock: This should be fun, here we go ... Details are a distraction, you need to stay above them to see anything clearly. Most information technology is just generating noise and propaganda. Public safety is a revenue stream and little more. Patriots are irrelevant. The last standing empire is vanishing and will take the global economy with it, leaving the military in its place. Malthus was right of course but if we pull together maybe we can fix that. Seriously, you'll have to focus less on the details -- get above it, see the overview -- and demand more integrity from the system. Otherwise epic fail lulz. And have a nice day.
CD was right... you're good.