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How To Start A Populist Movement In Under Three Minutes
How To Start A Populist Movement In Under Three Minutes
In business, the extremely successful business is one whose product or service appeals to a widely perceived need (whether real or manufactured) and can be quickly and efficiently scaled up if and when demand explodes. There is nothing worse in business than to create or identify a need and then not be able to satisfy demand.
The same can be said about ideas or concepts. Every now and then I stumble across one that is instantly recognizable as correct in every way imaginable. Its simplicity is often deceiving because the deeper you dig, the more applications it can be applied to. It screams truth and is self evident and the more you think about it, the more you see. And it is scalable to infinity.
In my view, the entire purpose of the ZH blog is to expose the lies of the Ponzi and to speak truth to power. There are endless comments (including mine) bemoaning the fact that so many people are either ignorant or in denial of the truth. I suspect the vast majority of us would like to see a movement of some sort to throw the bums out and bring sanity back into vogue. But how do you do this?
This extremely short Ted Talk video by Derek Sivers is remarkable in its power, delivered in pictures and words. Watch it twice, then watch it again. During the first viewing, watch the video in the background as Derek speaks. Feel the power of what you are seeing. During the second viewing, focus solely on what Derek is saying. Think about how to apply this in dozens of ways. Then watch it the third time for the shear joy of the experience.
If I were to condense this idea down to the 30 second elevator pitch, it would be as follows. During the critical first moments of a budding populist movement, it's not the leader who's most crucial but the first follower, who validates the leader, and the second follower, who validates the first. Herd mentality can work both ways.
http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html
Same video, different location.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V74AxCqOTvg
And another derivative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPShQ_hVJqY&feature=related
Be public. Be easy to follow.
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Rock on, CD!
This may already be common knowledge on the forum, but I just ran across this. Here is yet another brave/foolish soul -- in many ways, he may likely be one of the Tylers...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_David_Steele
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4lLzSJhEPA&feature=player_embedded (excerpts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afb8H-1fcYU&feature=fvw (full speech)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlVCbWlx5y8&feature=related
He seems to think there IS an essential value in communities like ZH -- and has some interesting suggestions as to what to do about the state of affairs.
Last night I found in my Mom's album collection one with MLK Jr's speeches.
Here's a line from it.
"Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And when I come and look at America, I say to myself, the parallels are frightening. And we have perverted the drum major instinct."
Here's the speech. Awesomely powerful. Too bad Ron Paul is such a drip.
Thank-you CD for this post.
This is worth a half-hour of your time. Pay attention at 22:40...talks about poor whites and how they should be marching with him! What a brilliant man. How come the good guys always get whacked?
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_...
johnny D, if you desire more of a fix from the good doctor:
http://littlefish.podbean.com/2008/01/21/doc-king-dom-free-mix/
Holy cow, I just noticed ADL site says "Since 1913..." and they sure seem to be pissed of at people refusing to recognize taxes as legal. If you read up on the "sovereign citizens" they even printed their own fractional reserve notes. That must have hit the nerve. Is it all a coincidence?
CD - Very well said and an excellent observation of and contribution to the debate. Trends generally do find their genesis in two or more folks deciding to engage in the same activity.
B9K9:
Every time someone has an inspirational post that at least shines a couple of photons of light at the end of the economic ponzi tunnel, you immediately respond that (paraphrasing) 'We're going down, and if you don't aree with me, your logic skills are crap.' This trend is deeply troubling, and makes me wonder exactly what motivates your posts.
The United States economy is far more resilient than you lead people to believe, and while I agree that everyone should be prepared for the worst, stating that this economy is going down and hard is by no means a certainty. While the next few years will undoubtedly be painful, a complete breakdown of the economy is by no means a certainty.
CD- Just hearing stories about the civil rights movement makes me realize how very ordinary people become extraordinary in certain times...I think the individual leader makes a huge difference and conversely I also think such way above average folks are a bit like pearls to swine in the wrong times..I heard of people who were major leaders in Civil Rights who got started because of things like they walked out of a pool hall to get a sandwich and happen to walk into a march/demonstration, got caught up in it, spoke to the crowd and never looked back. And who would have Malcolm X and MLK been if they had been born 15 years earlier or later? Huey Newton and Fred Hampton, clearly exceptional people in terms of intelligence, charisma, organizational skill and political understanding, but if they had come to young adulthood 10 years earlier or later? Not that MLK, Malcolm X they would have done nothing, they likely would have been prominent community leaders...but would they have been speaking to people all over North America? and would they have inspired freedom fighters, movements for democratic rights, and independence movements worldwide?
If you subtract a few key personalities from the American Revolution, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and things might not have turned out the way they did, but if 15 years earlier, people were not combustible enough to be sparked even if people like these leaders existed..
...And the only reason I'm
singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar
situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a
situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into
the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get
anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement...
(Arlo Guthrie-from Alice's Restaurant, 1967)
I'd weave Woody into the loop I made above if I had more time. It's the same thread as us, it's all Cronshaw's persian carpet, the pattern.
Yes. That tiny point of light within each of us is the only thing that there is. So much of it is merely the 'other' of society, the layers of onion that wrap our essential being. But at the core is the pinpoint, the spark that is our being that cries for truth and beauty.
A place like this, we nurture that spark, that mote of being.
What I'm about to do I'm sure will be ill-advised and confusing, if not outright unsuccessful: an attempt to connect several thoughts in this thread in a personal and philosophical way.
Begin with a literary figure mentioned above, Eric Blair, who used the nom de plume of George Orwell. Many of us were fortunate to read him in a public school. I hope that holds true today. In his writing and especially his essays he communicates awareness of the oppression of thought. My favorite essay of his is on how the English language has been corrupted. I spend too much of my life conforming to this standard: there is no powerful subject-verb dynamic in much of our writing. Legal documents, business emails, the effect is profound. The pervasive use of the passive style and the ponderous and meaningless nouns like "implementation" that fill our written language oppresses our entire existence in an insidious way. I am sure to refuse admission of my own passion and vision in this very article because I am so affected by this trespass of English.
Orwell was influenced most by Somerset Maugham, a writer that Chindit mentioned yesterday, and perhaps my favorite writer. While Maugham was not a cynic, he was in many ways the epitome of the free thinker. His writing style is that of a child filled with wonder. It's too bad he's not the best role model for the family man that I want to be.
Maugham and Orwell were both strongly influenced by Joseph Conrad, the writer of the work "Heart of Darkness". Conrad is a great node in this network. His story is one of struggle with events very similar to those we discuss here. From wiki:
Conrad was one of those souls who 'got it'. His greatest achievement was to tell us it's what's inside that matters, and it's the only thing that matters, but sadly what's inside is more hollow than we want to admit. I encountered an article on American Scholar about leadership, a theme throughout this thread, the other day that referenced Conrad's work. It was an address given by William Dereiewicz to West Point freshmen:
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/
For those not inclined to read it, the address stated that it is the vision formed in solitary contemplation that leads to true leadership.
Conrad's influences were also wide. In addition to making an impact on Orwell and Maugham, his work also strongly influenced the poets Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Many of us are aware of the work commissioned by Pound to Eustace Mullins, which lead to an investigation of the Jeykll Island conspiracy and an exposition on the power and behavior of the Federal Reserve. This work continued with the writing of Greiner and Griffin, who also followed the Fed Reserve rabbit hole to its terminus--at least Griffin more so than Greiner. At this point it's appropriate for me to take pains to denounce the ignorant anti-Semitism of Pound. In that respect he was a fool. As he stated later in life, the root cause was AVARICE.
Which brings me to T. S. Eliot. T. S. Eliot was influenced by Conrad, which is especially notable in his poem "The Hollow Men", but he was even more influenced by the work of the master, Dante. Of significance in Dante's work "The Inferno" is the role of the Leopard, which symbolized the avarice of the most powerful entity of the time, the Church. Much of the greed that Dante noted in the Church of the time was identical to what we witness now in our own society. Who was Dante's guide? The poet Virgil, who offers the quote:
Discite iustitiam moniti et non temnere divos! (having been warned, study justice and learn not to despise the gods!)
So I don't know where that brings me, except to say that the conversation we are having now has been had in the past, and since it keeps coming up, it might be a conversation worth having.
Conrad was one of those souls who 'got it'. His greatest achievement was to tell us it's what's inside that matters, and it's the only thing that matters.
I would never dispute that what's inside is critically important, but the only thing that matters?
It is not possible to 'lead' a polycultural society any more than you can herd cats.
It is ludicrous to believe in the power of the POTUS who at best has 35-40% of the people on his team.
We are a divided nation in need of DIFFERENT leaders, a country so vast and differentiated region by region, state by state.
We are like Europe without the boundaries that separate the Spanish from the French, they from the Italians and so on.
Wise founders realized this unassailable fact even when we censused at 5,000,000 people.
The splintering of the church over time into all its sects is proof again that 'true leadership' is confined to a relatively small number to be led vs what the Federal Government have been doing so piteously and with abysmal failure for 200 years, getting worse and worse with each admenstruation.
Time to give it up and recognize that effective governance can only be had with a bust up of the unUnited States. Otherwise we perish together. There is no upside to staying in this horrific bigamist marriage.
CD: Always enlightening to read your frames. I am one does not plan to stick around for new order. I am lucky to surround myself with great thinkers who share their knowledge of reality of what is in store for this country.
I go about my daily routine and prepare to exit, whilst I still have assets.
To be surrounded by great, engaging thinkers makes it.
Sqworl,
Thank you for your kind words. I enjoy posting because of the special relativity math at play here in ZH. I always get back 10 times more than I put in. How can you beat that equation? It's the closest I've ever come to a sure thing.
Fantastic thread, fantastic conversation.
Once again, thanks CD for your contributions to ZH.
I am bit too wet behind the ears to have any knowledge of what the people of this land have been doing to prior 1990s. So when the AP article mentioned "sovereign citizens" mailing letters to governors telling them to resign it interested me enough to find out.
Guess what the 2nd hit on google is? The Anti-Defamation League has a nice Guide to Extrimism and keeps a pretty good list of all the "enemies" of the system (kind of curious why as they are supposed to be protecting the good name of a certain minority) I think for newly out of the matrix, this is cliff notes guide on who has been out of the matrix for a while. http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/default.htm . It think it also shows that in small numbers these movements are not going anywhere but to jail or heaven. ( Ron Paul and Irwin Schiff are mentioned in there as well.)
My personal observation is that I am surprised about my ignorance on this topic as if that wasn't by chance. Are additonal "movements" better than supporting the existing ones. How long before ZH is added to that guide? Unite or else?
Interesting links on that site. So, an animal rights activist who caused $10,000 in damages will go to jail and have to pay more than $60,000.
Today there was a news item about a 12-year-old girl who was led out of school in handcuffs because she doodled with an erasable marker on her desk.
Let's see now... mortgage brokers interfered with underwriters who raised red flags about fraudulent loans.... giant sea creatures and other TBTFs are raking in millions front-running HFT algos whose bets were funded by QE... How about arresting some of those creeps and forcing them to repay sixfold the bonuses they stole from this country?
"How about arresting some of those creeps and forcing them to repay sixfold the bonuses they stole from this country?"
Good question. We have been trained since childhood that it is natural and expected for violence to flow downhill, along with the shit. That's how Michael Millikin can be hailed as a philanthropist and the 12 year old can be the terrible destroyer of public property. And for the most part, we buy into it hook, line and sinker because we are an American Idol culture. We are taught to worship the Celebrity Gods and the more money you have the more God like you are.
Violence flows down hill and money flows uphill. It is unthinkable for a policeman to rough up a CEO of a Fortune 500 company even when he's being arrested for massive fraud. But the man hooked on drugs who is pulled in for "routine" questioning can easily be beaten to death and the video tapes of the killing "lost" and no one puts up much of a fuss.
Hey, its the way the world works. Law of survival. Doesn't matter if it's a rigged game. It's the way of the jungle. Like I said, we buy into it, thus making it real.
What's the law on making a citizen's arrest? How's that for a thought? ZHers converging on TBTF HQs with our homegrown warrants in our hands? Any attorneys here? What's the law on that? How about if we file our own FOIA requests concerning trends in securitization of life insurance policies and other such tasty morsels? We need some lawyers.
we need some dancers
"If I can't dance, I want no part in the revolution." - Emma Goldman
Thanks for the link.
"How long before ZH is added to that guide?"
ZH is on double secret probation. After that, there's no where else to go but THE LIST! :>)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hostgKc7qV4
How how heavy is that foot, do you think?
Heavy enough that even before Tyler opened the doors to ZH, he was thinking about black helicopters and black ops. When ZH becomes believable or even just plausible to the general population, that is when ZH will be a danger to the powers that be. And that is when the boot will come down.
The Premise Is Correct
Nothing in the people's favor is going to happen from the top down. It has to be initiated from the bottom up. Otherwise it is Obummer smoke and mirrors disguised as "reform." In reality it is more corporate welfare and elite looting.
Egalitarian Non Hierarchical Societies
What a great concept. There was such a society on this continent, Native American culture, until corporate colonizations (read: Hudson and Bay and Dutch West Indies Corporations} exterminated Native Americans and that idea...
They Are Better/Smarter Than You Or I
Elite corporate rule is diametrically opposed to non hierarchical egalitarian structure. No leaders takes away one of the main justifications for the elite1% to control 70% of the wealth and resources. They are better and smarter than you or I. Therefore they deserve the wealth and power.
In reality, what ZHers see everyday, is the rules are rigged in the elite's favor... so idiots like GW Bush and Robert "The Rube" Rubin fail upwards and make rigged fortunes in the process. Fixed Market Oligarchy Capitalism.
Howard Zinn Corroborated That
In presentations and speeches I have heard Zinn assert that the "heroes" of history were individuals that capitalized on a mass movement of the people and road the wave created from the bottom up. That is why Zinn wrote "The People's History of the United States."
HOWARD ZINN: "Holy Wars"
Ruling Elites Are Always Reactionary
The power structure is reactionary. The elite, the owners of this society want the status quo... we the masses work... they take, skim, seek rents, exploit. Elite wealth buys the government as a proxy operating against the people in the oligarchies favor.
So top down "reform" or "change" is an absurdity by its very nature. Hence... Obummer, the Wall Street patsy..
Nice post CD, +1
Now there is some analysis as opposed to pontificating...
Your comment, as well as many others, is why ZH is dynamite wrapped tight. Thank you.
Here's another populist movement... take your business away from any business still doing business with anything Ponzified.
Support local restaurants that don't accept credit cards. Another way to starve the Beast. Tip the waitress and the owner, and watch how this translates into free food on your next visit.
Support small hardware shops and auto repair that will discount for cash.
Seek out doctors who are unplugging from the system because of the new healthcare fiasco, and let everyone know about them. Cut back your health insurance to all but catastrophic coverage. Save up for the little stuff, and ask your doc what his cash up front price is. (This is already a BIG movement, btw. Sometimes you can get a bagful of free samples for your loyalty and willingness to pay up front.)
Drink wine made by smart people. Velobabe is associated with Woody Creek Cellars. Ergo, that wine will make you smarter. Transfer this idea to all other sorts of consumables. My milkman runs a local dairy, is active in the National Guard, stays debt free, and distrusts the government. His cows must be smarter, too, and their milk is pure brain food.
I've always been comfortable being the lone nut. In fact, any other existence is pretty boring.
Family first, then community. Right on!
Here's a populist movement... immediately after some flowery nonsense about either the jobs report, consumer sentiment, housing starts, mortgage applications, or the economy in general gets posted on CNBS website, pepper their comments with facts and links to the truth.
I've been doing this for past couple of weeks, watching my comments disappear after a few hours. Sometimes just my comment, and other times, the whole set. Anyone else notice the same tactics? Anyway, someone on their side is watching and playing asteroid with unwanted comments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V74AxCqOTvg
Same video, as Ted.com seems to be jammed, or has already been taken down by US Govt
Good questions. How I see it?
Example: Audit the Fed campaign
a. fed says we are audiited, congressional budget office does that
b. experts have all kinds of fifty cent word opinions most on one side, economists
c. person in power, president has little to no expertise or desire to gain it, thus, he goes with advice which is basically if it ain't broke don't fix it
d. you're average person feels total confusion, and no clarity so they have other more pressing matters
Martin Luther King, "All Men Are Created Equal"
a. all religous faiths profess this, most people are religious
b. everyone knows they are not walking the walk
c. experts cannot take the other side of the arguement, ie, slavery no one believes in that, experts advise the person in power
d. over time mass sentiment demands action
overall timing plays a key, at that time in history all the population had had many postive interactions with black people, and many had close emotional ties, thus they saw it as injustice that must be righted
this is very similar too gay marriage issue, about 30 years ago, more followers came out of the closet, over time the precise example is all of us here at zh hedge have had interactions with gay people, most of those emotions are positive, whether it be a family member, friend or friend of a friend etc., we factually interact with them and bad things do not happen, thus sentiment grows there way
so when i look at it, or think about it, what can be championed that all experts would have too agree on?
and since economics is somewhat philosophical and artistic, it means opinions upon opinions upon opinions tthus the emotional connections are on an exponentail scale
so, it's looking for a needle to thread that haystack
now, i could be totally wrong about it, jmho
Good article, CD.
So if we start a movement, how do we do it?
And more importantly, how do we build it in such a way that it's:
A) effective in informing the American people about what's really going on, and
B) resistant to attacks and subversion from the inside? (i.e. hijacking of the movement by those who would like to see it fail)
A simple statement, very understandable and repeatable, works time and again. "Mister Moneymaker" is an example of that very meme. Matter of fact, most "pop" songs have a catchy verse that is easily repeated.
So should the financial awakening that ZH exposes. My baptism in this site's financial waters was only less than a month ago. With a second financial dictionary web site at ready I started to read the articles, but more importantly the comments. The learning curve was steep, but short. I now "grok". If I can do it anyone can.
An example of a small insignificant fact that changes the mindset of sheeple is the following:
"Yesterday I told my 75 year aunt who never has surfed the web and reads only NYT and listens to NPR that last week Farm Credit securities sold for a smaller rate than Treasuries. I laughed and said that we are in one hell of a situation when farmers can be counted on to repay their debts more than the U.S. government. Her mind snapped, and a sceptic was born.
This site does the same for me everyday.
Heinlein was a great sci fi imaginative writer. i totally 'grok' it.
That was a giant break for your aunt. My gal(89) raised up her arms and said "i dont want to know" Now she knows, is handling it well and more interested. You just helped add time to her life. We die early when we lose interest and connectedness.
The way I see it we have any number of lone nuts pointing to individual segments of the greater problem most of us here at ZH see (TPTB buying off a corrupt government to bleed us all dry) . The seperate lone nuts only see the individual segments and this may well be all their joe sixpack followers can grasp. While each lone nut needs the first and second follower in this scenerio to validate momentum for that segment of the movement, once done, what's then needed to achive the critical mass required to overcome the sheer cash of the political machine mentioned above is both a spark and a leader of one greater magnitude to convert the former lone nuts cum followers into the first followers of the greater movement.
I am not recruiting for either of the two major political scams, neither do I claim any political expertise of the manner excercised today. I am simply saying that it will require a fresh face with the vision to create a cohesive force of all the lone nuts who have found followers to overcome the daunting resources of those supporting the status quo.
Joe likely does not understand the bigger picture in the manner we discuss here but there are individual issues which resonate with him which can incite him to vote his own congress-critter out of office if properly framed. Each individual Joe can look to his own leader for that incentive. To gut the corpse of our bought-off congress will require someone who can tie all the seperate segment leaders of disgusted electorate together to clean out the cesspool which has become DC.
Many seperate individual movements will simply split the vote and be absorbed into the hive. Cohesion requires 1) the spark and 2) the individual who can create "e pluribus unum" and he needs to get in front of a camera soon.
Timing is crucial for the above to work.
All of this ignores the impossibility of change in a complex system, especially one as Rube Goldbergian as the global financial 'system'. Unless you consider Armageddon a positive outcome.
Joseph Tainter has already explained succinctly why there is only one outcome: the collapse.
He provided several cogent, powerful examples of them including Rome, the Mayans, Great Britain and other empires.
That makes more sense to me than the hope for change thru a system rife with insects like Goldman Sucks, JpMorgan, and their monopoly over our 'government'. They have eaten out Capitalism's heart and guts to make themselves omnipresent and obese.
My bet is a slow somewhat managed disintegration that people will adjust to as a frog in the pot adjusts to the ever rising temperature of the water until it finally perishes.
Then the leader written about above might stand a chance.
Let's consider for a minute that nothing really transpires in respect to America's global standing (militaristic dominance and financial stronghold). I've mentioned this in many posts before that the US has undergone worse threats from abroad and within throughout it's short history. My neighbor has a bomb shelter for a basement from the 1950's. Does anyone realize what that means? Do we prepare for Armageddon more than our previous generations did? That shelter is now being used as a babe lair for her 18 year old son.
I also remember the stink in the 80's about the Japanese buying up all the Gold Coast properties. Less than a generation later, Australia is still considered the lucky country, for the Chinese.
Point is simple. Don't sink the ship in anticipation of a storm.
" I've mentioned this in many posts before that the US has undergone worse threats from abroad and within throughout it's short history."
The Illusion of External Threat
Without the illusion of external threat, the masses won't run to their government and its military apparatus for protection from perceived threats.
Now add the responsibilities inherited by issuing the reserve currency of the world, and you have a situation where perpetual global conflict cannot be avoided.
yeah, that's the tough part, 300 years for rome, what are we in year 30 or 300, or 40, or 280
that's the tough part i think about
what i see is less and less of a path of stability for the middle class to climb the ladder, as denninger points out the math does not add up, law of large numbers and all that
What was missing from Rome and the Mayans was the internet and other forms of immediate communication. That's likely why it took much much longer to implode. Although our communications are far faster today, there are billions who do not avail themselves of what is truly happening, present company excluded. That slows it down a bit but eventually it will bite everyone on the ass and try as they might, they will not be able to ignore it.
We see some evidence of it in smaller countries where we might get a heads up as in France amongst the black population that fires up their anger once or twice a year and the worse it gets for them the greater the chances that the other 85% who are not yet affected materially will be in jeopardy and either join them to change things, as they just did turning against Sarkozy who did badly in the recent elections and he's only been there a couple of years. Now essentially a lame duck.
My bet is that the rate of change, the pace and tempo of our hectic civilization will make it happen sooner rather than later.
The middle class is right now living at the atomical beginning of a radical change in their lives, and it is palpable.
"My bet is a slow somewhat managed disintegration that people will adjust to as a frog in the pot adjusts to the ever rising temperature of the water until it finally perishes.
Then the leader written about above might stand a chance."
You may very well be correct. My post didn't say anything about timing, just possibilities. We must first imagine a reality before we can create it.
George Orwell, in his preface to Animal Farm:
"Ever since my departure from Spain, I had the idea of exposing the 'Soviet myth', but the idea took shape when I saw a young boy beating a cart horse. It struck me, " he explains,"that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat."
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27570771/George-Orwell
Here, here. I believe, that as a general rule, individual focused effort that makes rational sense (or helps others to make rational sense) is not wasted action. It is the false propaganda and wishful thinking that will tend to kill you (sometimes very slowly, ala the frog in pot of water as the heat is slowly turned up).
I never quite believed the "frog in a pot" story. I believe the frog would want to escape the pot even before the heat was turned up. My friend's father was a chef. He had a similar slow-cooking theory about lobster. Put seaweed and cold water in a big pot. Add lobsters. Put on stove. Turn on the heat. For 15 agonizing minutes, all I could hear was the frantic scratching noises as the lobsters tried to claw their way out. I was told they taste better. I couldn't eat them.
Let's agree that a pot is not where we want to be. The outcome is assured.
Everyday I email friends and family articles from ZH. I summarise the article in a way that I think will get the person interested. They are starting to ask me questions that tell me they are spreading the information. Whenever I get discouraged at others, I remember how I used to see the world. It is hard to forget what you think you know.
Interesting video but one must scale our situation up. What I mean by that is we don't just have one group trying to form but many "lone nuts" as well as many existing groups. To overlook peoples attachment to their current group would be foolish. I spoke to man today who after I he asked I identified myself as a libertarian he quickly identified himself the same way, but "Well I'm a Republican because a libertarian could never get elected". People are already in groups, so we would need to extract them to their current worldview which says that everything is ok and the Ponzi is the best thing ever.
You are referring to something called the 'Asche Experiment', but we may as well be discussing the boy who truthfully identified the king as having no clothes (i.e., it has many of the same pressures, but one critical difference). Social pressure is very strong, and every now and again a person blissfully unaware of the unwritten rules of the game and/or scam may blurt out a game changer, which in turn works to enforce the same kind of social pressure that helped to cause the first round of silliness (a reversal or sorts). We now have more than one 'child' pointing out what is now obvious to many here (for example, the answer to too much debt isn't more debt); the question is will enough people enforce that game changer in their voting patterns, in their other actions, etc. At some point I say yes, the question is will it be too late? For me, it is necessary to push as hard as possible to maximize the chance that it won't be too late.