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"The Gap Between Those With Money & Those With Knowledge Has Grown Catastrophic"
Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
I want to know what’s to stop this revolution from turning into a violent, destructive mess. Steele is characteristically optimistic. “I have struggled with this question. What I see happening is an end to national dictat and the emergence of bottom-up clarity, diversity, integrity, and sustainability. Individual towns across the USA are now nullifying federal and state regulations – for example gag laws on animal cruelty, blanket permissions for fracking. Those such as my colleague Parag Khanna that speak to a new era of city-states are correct in my view. Top down power has failed in a most spectacular manner, and bottom-up consensus power is emergent. ‘Not in my neighborhood’ is beginning to trump ‘Because I say so.’ The one unlimited resource we have on the planet is the human brain – the current strategy of 1% capitalism is failing because it is killing the Golden Goose at multiple levels. Unfortunately, the gap between those with money and power and those who actually know what they are talking about has grown catastrophic. The rich are surrounded by sycophants and pretenders whose continued employment demands that they not question the premises. As Larry Summers lectured Elizabeth Warren, ‘insiders do not criticize insiders.’”
- From the recent incredible Guardian article: The Open Source Revolution is Coming and it Will Conquer the 1% – ex CIA spy
This article that I am highlighting today is the most powerful and optimistic piece I have read in all of 2014. It also follows on perfectly from my post this past weekend, which I strongly suggest reading before continuing titled: Networks vs. Hierarchies: Which Will Win? Niall Furguson Weighs In.
Whereas Niall questions whether networks will ultimately prove able to topple hierarchies in the face of being co-opted by the status quo, Robert David Steele, like myself, has little doubt. More importantly, his opinion holds a lot more weight than mine. Mr. Steele is an incredibly impressive character. A former Marine, CIA case officer, and US co-founder of the US Marine Corps intelligence activity, he is also the number one Amazon reviewer for non-fiction across 98 categories. In his latest book, The Open-Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth and Trust, he lays out his optimistic, decentralized and open-sourced vision of the future.
Fortunately for us, he also recently sat down with Nafeez Ahmed for a Guardian article. My favorite excerpts are below:
Robert David Steele, former Marine, CIA case officer, and US co-founder of the US Marine Corps intelligence activity, is a man on a mission. But it’s a mission that frightens the US intelligence establishment to its core. With 18 years experience working across the US intelligence community, followed by 20 more years in commercial intelligence and training, Steele’s exemplary career has spanned almost all areas of both the clandestine world.
Widely recognised as the leader of the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) paradigm, Steele went on to write the handbooks on OSINT for NATO, the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Special Operations Forces. In passing, he personally trained 7,500 officers from over 66 countries.
In 1992, despite opposition from the CIA, he obtained Marine Corps permission to organise a landmark international conference on open source intelligence – the paradigm of deriving information to support policy decisions not through secret activities, but from open public sources available to all. The conference was such a success it brought in over 620 attendees from the intelligence world.
But the CIA wasn’t happy, and ensured that Steele was prohibited from running a second conference. The clash prompted him to resign from his position as second-ranking civilian in Marine Corps intelligence, and pursue the open source paradigm elsewhere. He went on to found and head up the Open Source Solutions Network Inc. and later the non-profit Earth Intelligence Network which runs the Public Intelligence Blog
I first came across Steele when I discovered his Amazon review of my third book, The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism. A voracious reader, Steele is the number 1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction across 98 categories.
Last month, Steele presented a startling paper at the Libtech conference in New York, sponsored by the Internet Society and Reclaim. Drawing on principles set out in his latest book, The Open-Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth and Trust, he told the audience that all the major preconditions for revolution – set out in his 1976 graduate thesis – were now present in the United States and Britain.
Steele’s book is a must-read, a powerful yet still pragmatic roadmap to a new civilisational paradigm that simultaneously offers a trenchant, unrelenting critique of the prevailing global order. His interdisciplinary ‘whole systems’ approach dramatically connects up the increasing corruption, inefficiency and unaccountability of the intelligence system and its political and financial masters with escalating inequalities and environmental crises. But he also offers a comprehensive vision of hope that activist networks like Reclaim are implementing today.
“We are at the end of a five-thousand-year-plus historical process during which human society grew in scale while it abandoned the early indigenous wisdom councils and communal decision-making,” he writes in The Open Source Everything Manifesto. “Power was centralised in the hands of increasingly specialized ‘elites’ and ‘experts’ who not only failed to achieve all they promised but used secrecy and the control of information to deceive the public into allowing them to retain power over community resources that they ultimately looted.”
Today’s capitalism, he argues, is inherently predatory and destructive:
“Over the course of the last centuries, the commons was fenced, and everything from agriculture to water was commoditised without regard to the true cost in non-renewable resources. Human beings, who had spent centuries evolving away from slavery, were re-commoditised by the Industrial Era.”
Open source everything, in this context, offers us the chance to build on what we’ve learned through industrialisation, to learn from our mistakes, and catalyze the re-opening of the commons, in the process breaking the grip of defunct power structures and enabling the possibility of prosperity for all.
“Sharing, not secrecy, is the means by which we realize such a lofty destiny as well as create infinite wealth. The wealth of networks, the wealth of knowledge, revolutionary wealth – all can create a nonzero win-win Earth that works for one hundred percent of humanity. This is the ‘utopia’ that Buckminster Fuller foresaw, now within our reach.”
This week, I had the good fortune of being able to touch base with Steele to dig deeper into his recent analysis of the future of US politics in the context of our accelerating environmental challenges. The first thing I asked him was where he sees things going over the next decade, given his holistic take.
“Properly educated people always appreciate holistic approaches to any challenge. This means that they understand both cause and effect, and intertwined complexities,” he said. “A major part of our problem in the public policy arena is the decline in intelligence with integrity among key politicians and staff at the same time that think tanks and universities and non-governmental organizations have also suffered a similar intellectual diminishment.
So why isn’t it happening yet?
“Preconditions are not the same as precipitants. We are waiting for our Tunisian fruit seller. The public will endure great repression, especially when most media outlets and schools are actively aiding the repressive meme of ‘you are helpless, this is the order of things.’ When we have a scandal so powerful that it cannot be ignored by the average Briton or American, we will have a revolution that overturns the corrupt political systems in both countries, and perhaps puts many banks out of business. Vaclav Havel calls this ‘The Power of the Powerless.’ One spark, one massive fire.”
“Our entire commercial, diplomatic, and informational systems are now cancerous. When trade treaties have secret sections – or are entirely secret – one can be certain the public is being screwed and the secrecy is an attempt to avoid accountability. Secrecy enables corruption. So also does an inattentive public enable corruption.”
So what exactly do you mean by open source everything? “We have over 5 billion human brains that are the one infinite resource available to us going forward. Crowd-sourcing and cognitive surplus are two terms of art for the changing power dynamic between those at the top that are ignorant and corrupt, and those across the bottom that are attentive and ethical. The open source ecology is made up of a wide range of opens – open farm technology, open source software, open hardware, open networks, open money, open small business technology, open patents – to name just a few. The key point is that they must all develop together, otherwise the existing system will isolate them into ineffectiveness. Open data is largely worthless unless you have open hardware and open software. Open government demands open cloud and open spectrum, or money will dominate feeds and speeds.”
On 1st May, Steele sent an open letter to US vice president Joe Biden requesting him to consider establishing an Open Source Agency that would transform the operation of the intelligence community, dramatically reduce costs, increasing oversight and accountability, while increasing access to the best possible information to support holistic policy-making. To date, he has received no response.
Given his standing as an intelligence expert, Steele’s criticisms of US intelligence excesses are beyond scathing – they are damning. “Most of what is produced through secret methods is not actually intelligence at all. It is simply secret information that is, most of the time, rather generic and therefore not actually very useful for making critical decisions at a government level. The National Security Agency (NSA) has not prevented any terrorist incidents.”
This is something I highlighted last year in my piece: NSA Chief Admits “Only One or Perhaps Two” Terror Plots Stopped by Spy Program.
His most intriguing premise is that the 1% are simply not as powerful as they, and we, assume them to be. “The collective buying power of the five billion poor is four times that of the one billion rich according to the late Harvard business thinker Prof C. K. Prahalad – open source everything is about the five billion poor coming together to reclaim their collective wealth and mobilise it to transform their lives. There is zero chance of the revolution being put down. Public agency is emergent, and the ability of the public to literally put any bank or corporation out of business overnight is looming. To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, you cannot screw all of the people all of the time. We’re there. All we lack is a major precipitant – our Tunisian fruit seller. When it happens the revolution will be deep and lasting.”
I want to know what’s to stop this revolution from turning into a violent, destructive mess. Steele is characteristically optimistic. “I have struggled with this question. What I see happening is an end to national dictat and the emergence of bottom-up clarity, diversity, integrity, and sustainability. Individual towns across the USA are now nullifying federal and state regulations – for example gag laws on animal cruelty, blanket permissions for fracking. Those such as my colleague Parag Khanna that speak to a new era of city-states are correct in my view. Top down power has failed in a most spectacular manner, and bottom-up consensus power is emergent. ‘Not in my neighborhood’ is beginning to trump ‘Because I say so.’ The one unlimited resource we have on the planet is the human brain – the current strategy of 1% capitalism is failing because it is killing the Golden Goose at multiple levels. Unfortunately, the gap between those with money and power and those who actually know what they are talking about has grown catastrophic. The rich are surrounded by sycophants and pretenders whose continued employment demands that they not question the premises. As Larry Summers lectured Elizabeth Warren, ‘insiders do not criticize insiders.’”
So how does open source everything have the potential to ‘re-engineer the Earth’? For me, this is the most important question, and Steele’s answer is inspiring. “Open Source Everything overturns top-down ‘because I say so at the point of a gun’ power. Open Source Everything makes truth rather than violence the currency of power. Open Source Everything demands that true cost economics and the indigenous concept of ‘seventh generation thinking’ – how will this affect society 200 years ahead – become central. Most of our problems today can be traced to the ascendance of unilateral militarism, virtual colonialism, and predatory capitalism, all based on force and lies and encroachment on the commons. The national security state works for the City of London and Wall Street – both are about to be toppled by a combination of Eastern alternative banking and alternative international development capabilities, and individuals who recognise that they have the power to pull their money out of the banks and not buy the consumer goods that subsidise corruption and the concentration of wealth. The opportunity to take back the commons for the benefit of humanity as a whole is open – here and now.”
Wow.
Full article here.
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It's too easy to remain uninformed.
Does he know how to make nuclear weapons magically disappear? No? Goodbye "open-source" bullshit. Nuclear weapons ensure that civilization will continue as it always has.
"Civilization originates in conquest abroad? and repression at home." ~Stanley Diamond. (1981.) In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization. p. 1.
Besides, drawing the artificial borders that define real property requires aggression.
Aggression Axiom:
Holding real property--Monopoly use of Land--requires State aggression.
200 years ago, the State forced Indians off my land with guns into privation, then redistributed the earth's wealth via an entitlement program, Land Title. We privileged owners pay support via property tax to the State for its aggression. If anybody treads on my private real property, I call a State officer to perform the exact same armed aggression done to Indians 200 years ago.
State Might Makes Real Property Right!
Nothing that Ayn Rand hasn't already taught us about civilization and the right to take:
"[The Native Americans] didn't have any rights to the land...Any white person who brought the element of civilization had THE RIGHT TO TAKE over this continent." ~Ayn Rand, US Military Academy, West Point, 1974
I suppose some anarcho-wingnut will call me--OMG!--a "Statist." LOL! Awe, my feelings are so hurt.
"The small landholders are the most precious part of a state." ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1785
I've got mine. What's your problem? Can't compete, loser? Well then you fail, as capitalism dictates. Going to protest, or "occupy"? Then the Protectors of Property Values--the cops--will deal with you swiftly.
"Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment...unleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares?" ~Murray Rothbard
Let them eat Nutraloaf.
self-empowered citizen-farmers will hold the homestead in a perpetual wealth-trust of sovereign humility, building aggregate surples for the betterment of all mankind
the lion shall sleep with the lamb
the hierarchy will lay down its sword
hugs,
road to roota
Another stanza of Kum-Ba-Yah, please.
P.S. The aggression of the State was necessary to create viable Homesteads and markets. Ask the pioneers with arrows in their backs, who got a little to far ahead of the State's protective violence.
<< It's too easy to remain uninformed. >>
Uninformed about what?
Predatory capitalism is based on the privatisation of profit and the externalisation of cost. It is an extension of the fencing of the commons, of enclosures, along with the criminalisation of prior common customs and rights. What we need is a system that fully accounts for all costs.
Open Source Everything demands that true cost economics and the indigenous concept of 'seventh generation thinking' – how will this affect society 200 years ahead – become central.
Dees libtards iz getting out of control.
Yes, you are. Next!
Fuck this shit. We invented Starve the Beast. Everyone gave up. It would've worked.
Forward!
" Ask the pioneer [...]"
Okay, here goes:
"Did you think you wouldn't get arrows in your backs (tomahawks to the head, free scalp and/or heart removal) for trespassing on someone else's territory?"
Are you one of those self-styled "anarcho-capitalists" (LOL!) who thinks you can shoot, or scalp, somebody for "trespassing?"
Read the law someday, before you end up in prison for murderering the kid walking on your lawn.
Top Gear probably you should've read the article..
@Top Gear:
Please change your avatar's picture. It's a kind of ugly.
In Indiana, it is legal to shoot even a cop who trespasses on your property. In most other states, any trespassers can be shot without warning if the property owner can reasonably demonstrate that they felt their life was in danger.
How about YOU read the law?
Distracting from the issue. You can not stop what will happen and is already happening.
the revolution will be decrypted, comrades.
open source and bitcoin for the little people, black-budget covert ops, back doors, and infinite fiat for the masters.
don't fall for the twaddle, ladies.
Road to Roota my ass. I unsubscribed to that guy's emails about a year ago after he confidently called the collapse for the third time in as many years. His grand fairy tale is comforting but delusional.
If ends up being right I will eat my hat. Promise.
How much do they pay you?
In a nutshell what you are saying is that the state protects your property rights by violating your property rights.
Double plus good. I can see from the avatar that you're a mouth breather.
I do. Economic collapse and political disintergration. Nuclear weapons and delivery systems for them are extremely costly to make and maintain. They are completely useless in making others bow to ones wishes. So when a country's economy collapses and it goes through a political disintegration, nuclear weapons will be one of the first things to go. Exactly why former Soviet states like Ukraine had no hesitation in giving up the Soviet nukes stationed on their territory and becoming signatories to the NPT as non-nuclear states.
I love it -- hope at last!
- when police departments lay down their newly aquired military gear, armored Humvees, and submachine guns, I will have hope.
- when politicians address the actual problems of their constituents instead of bending every rule to benefit the upper class, I will have hope.
- when corporations are barred from having their employees occupy public office, and ruling in favor of their former employers, I will have hope.
- when the justice system is relieved of every former corporate lawyer for Monsanto et. al., I will have hope.
- when fundamentally basic things like medical care, having a roof over one's head, food, water etc. are recognized as a basic right of all human beings, I will have hope.
Until then I am stacking food, gold, silver, lead, charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur...and sharpening my guillotine.
I never suggested you stop doing the right things, but through knoledge and skills we can have real hope those steps want be needed.
BTW that would be a great speech!
Our local semiconductor company is in the process of laying off every white male over 45, saying there is no work, while hiring college grads who Facebook all day. Only the syncophants are left, but none of them know what they are doing anymore.
In the meantime, our state politicians are so afraid of hiking the gasoline tax a few cents so that gasoline tax revenue can return to 2000 levels, that they have resorted to turning every freeway into a toll road.
I hear that. Almost every new road in my state is a toll road, the worse new one charging $1.85 to travel 4 miles on it!
IV, no one suggested this would be a smooth transition. Stay right on your plan.
I doubt that anyone here would argue that the politico-economic landscape will look drastically different by 2020, and this strikes me a one of the more plausible roadmaps I have seen so far.
Does UN Pay Tolls? Looks like UN armored trucks are here now. Probably wise since government is not representing the people any more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdpo7Vbh99w&feature=youtu.be
"but through knoledge and skills we can have real hope those steps want be needed."
'The Tree of Liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of despots and tyrants.'
The only knowledge and skill that is required has to do with the handling of the appropriate weapons to wield when called upon. Other than that, when you are backed in to a corner and disarmed and they begin to slowly take your life from you, do you think that you would be able to talk your intellectual talents in to ovecoming the blood spilling out of your body in the torturous ritual that they like to do while they murder you?
If you are 'polite' do you think they'll give you a PERRIER and a hit of Cocaine before they begin to disembowel you while you are still conscious?
BTW.
I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation.
<< 'The Tree of Liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of despots and tyrants.'>>
Ever read Jefferson's whole letter, in context?
He also said, in regard to the "The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them."
monticello.org/site/jefferson/tree-liberty-quotation
I'm with Jefferson, so don't mind if I set you right to the facts, and watch as you get PACIFIED by the government if you rebel.
Public education? You don't understand the term pacified in the context in which it was written.
That "remedy" was to PARDON and (thereby) pacify the bad ass mofos who decided to water the Tree of Liberty with the blood of deposts, tyrants, tax-men, and their hired guns...
In what passes for English in post-Bernays 21st century America, Jefferson was saying:
"HANG A BANKSTER, RECEIVE A PARDON"
Hear, hear.
dude, you're awesome. you're almost too textbook. Hunger Games: Mockingjay
"if you resist the system, you starve yourself, if you fight against it, it is you who will bleed."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dCB2U9lX48
@violinist
YOUR COMMENTS ARE JUST ANOTHER SET OF THE MANTRA THAT "WE ARE HOPELESS".
Caps
I ordered the book to see whether there are solutions rather than bitching about just how bad we know it is at present. I have done a few things to ensure the decent livelihood of my employees by having food for them if TSHTF. Even though it was done on a large scale (6-12 months for each) I get nothing but ridicule.
I am not willing to write off my family and my employees to your hopeless vision. You seem to be writing off whatever makes you human to the mythology that the goomint/banksters and the crony state are unassailable and we should just knuckle under to their predations.
You speak for your sorry self.
"the crony state are unassailable and we should just knuckle under to their predations. You speak for your sorry self."
Other than buying foodstuff - what are your solutions?
I am interested because other than (1) armed rebellion, or (2) rot into a SHTF scenario, I can not think of an actual way to end the crony capitalism as it is globally constructed. Elections and/or some power to the people movement are not viable and pie in the unicorn sky.
Fiddler says, "when fundamentally basic things like medical care, having a roof over one's head, food, water etc. are recognized as a basic right of all human beings, I will have hope."
You mean to say that those takers of those fundamental rights are perfectly OK with shoving a gun under my chin and demanding that I supply your folks with their rightful goods and services and that their rights to those goods and services outweigh my efforts to supply same to myself and my family. IOW, they get their stuff prior to what I have worked for for my family benefit.
I now expect you to squirt ink all over as a cuttlefish to present another statist rationalization for your immoral demands. Have at it.
You are paying for that troll. Treat it as a sunk cost.
Ouch! Spanked by a tapeworm! :>D
As a charitable matter, it is desireable to see to it that everyone, somehow receives basic medical care, but it cannot be defined as a "human right". The founder's of this country realized that right's cannot include things that others must pay for. That's just slavery redefined. It's amazing how many people are completely immune to this explaination.
While we are at it why not add laptop/desktop, internet, car, paved roads, personal jet/helicopter and landing space for them also among basic rights of all human beings? Any idea whose "duty" it is to provide these "basic rights" to all human beings or are they simply available out there for all human beings and some are preventing them from getting them?
There are no such things as basic human rights, nor rights of any kind. There are only privileges, or in other words, ways in which neither nature nor man has decided to fuck us over at a given point in time in a given way. Some of these privileges are more achievable and/or sustainable than others. For example, when we say "property rights", we really mean to say "property privileges", and these exist due to the grace of nature and one's fellow man deciding to not be an asshole and take it from us by force. These are privileges we should cooperate with each other in order to try and maximize, but they are not and never will be rights. Maybe one day when we all have robotic doctors and the replicators from Star Trek such privileges will be almost universal, but even then they will never truly be rights.
If you don't agree, just ask a fucking hurricane or a tornado to respect your so-called right to have a roof over your head, and let me know how that goes.
No shit. Look at how many ignorant people there are on the comments in here who are too stupid to understand climate change.
We do understand 'climate change'.
In the old days we just called them weather cycles.
Well.... she/he *is* posting under the moniker 'Milliondollaranus".
I, personally, have a hard time finding fault with those who practice truth in advertising.
Just sayin'...........
See 4896897
But that was back then. Now the climate is even affecting normal business cycles and the GDP (God-Damned Ponzi).
/s
I say we block out the sun and ban electric lighting to stimulate candle demand. That ought to help the GDP. If it works, we can all thank Bastiat for documenting that idea around the year 1850 (minus the electricity part of course). If that doesn't help things, at that point we can try hooking up a generator to Bastiat's corpse, because I'm sure he will be spinning in his grave quite rapidly at that point if it just so happens that the Obama Admin actually tries out that idea, which seems quite likely at this rate.
Winter.
Spring.
Summer.
Fall.
(Wait for it)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ga_M5Zdn4
In the 1970's the 'climate scientists' tried to scare us with 'a new ice age'. That one didn't work...
In 1996, the worldwide 'stratospheric engineering' tests went live. That one has REALLY FUCKED THINGS UP, by the way.
In the early 2000's, the 'climate scientists' tried to scare us with 'Global Warming'. After the East Anglica email trails came out the showed that the numbers had been manipulated, that one failed BIG TIME. ALGORE had to go home and play with (oops, I mean BY) himself, and now even AUSTRALIA is seriously considering repealing their 'GREEN' law, if you can imagine that.
The FALLBACK BULLSHIT MEME is 'CLIMATE CHANGE'. Oh, SHIT, WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER, FALL!
Sometimes, a rose (in a pile of shit) by any other name would smell as foul (kind of like your avatar and your posting).
Master of sarcasm!
You mean how the actual temperature readings show that the US has been cooling since the 1930's instead of the bogus weather model numbers that the Gore types use to swindle investors and taxpayers out of their hard earned money? Yeah, I feel ya.
What climate change? The cyclical global cooling?
Human beings, who had spent centuries evolving away from slavery, were re-commoditised by the Industrial Era.”
That's a really interesting (as in bizarre) opinion as pror to the Industrial Revolution a large part of the population were serfs. Societies have between tens of millions and billions of people (China) to contend with: we must feed, clothe, educate and entertain them. Commoditisation is inevitable and not necessarily a bad thing. We are not all master craftsmen, beauty queens or philospher kings. That's just the way it is.
randroid with a marxian twist! awesome.
...posterior to the industrial revolution, we are all commodities devoid of human rights (slaves, putlocker).
Uh, I never said people should be devoid of human rights. But the vast, vast majority of us are just cogs in a big machine. That's how I feel after 30+ years of working anyway.
rbg81 said:
"Societies have between tens of millions and billions of people (China) to contend with: we must feed, clothe, educate and entertain them."
Allow me to correct that statement, from groupthink to self-reliance, as in,
"Societies have between tens of millions and billions of people (China) to contend with: THEY must feed, clothe, educate and entertain themselves."
As we like to say around these parts, "fixed it for ya."
THIS, my friends, is THE problem. Human beings have been conditioned to rely upon the STATE, or government for their well-being. It is the overwhelming world view of democrat/socialists world-wide. It is up to INDIVIDUALS to provide for their own well-being, without the aid of, or, diminution by, the STATE.
We are up to our ears in levels of government, rules, regulations, laws and taxes. It is well past the time to throw off the yoke of oppression by the oligarchy, because it will soon be replaced by tyranny.
Cicero: On the way up, tyrany, oligarchy, republic. On the way down, republic, oligarchy, tryanny. We have lost the republic and are currently ruled by an oligarchy. Whether or not we - as a people - can prevent the coming tyranny, and upset Cicero's dictum, remains to be seen, though the odds are unlikely (too many zombie sheeple). However, INDIVIDUALS must begin to escape and engage in alternative self-reliant strategies. It is only by this escape from the power control centers that the new paradigm of a republic emerging from tyranny can occur.
As with just about everything in our reality, there is no black and white, only shades of grey. While many will knuckle under to oligarchies and eventual tyrannies, a few will survive relatively safe and unscathed, mostly in outback, rural environs, eventually to emerge to form a new republic.
In my most humble opinion (and, I'm not humble very often), I believe we are well on our way to tyranny, if not having already arrived there. Fortunately, for some, the tyrants are - as usual - not very bright, as they know only how to coerce with threatening power. In fact, it could be said that the current regime in America is the last of the would-be tyrant line, seeing as President Bush, so often derided as incompetent and a buffoon, has been overmatched by the Obama White House. Of course, this could be wishful thinking, but, looking logically at the current situation, it seems that over the past six years, the federal government has actually begun to lose control rather than gain more power.
The number of citizens with strong belief in the federal system is waning and the opposition is growing. Of course, when the opposition to the federal government becomes a self-sustaining force, expect the statists to do only what they know best, issue dictums, threaten and show force to quell the uprising. The revolution has already begun in America, but, so far, it has been quiet. False flags and incidents such as the Bundy Ranch are early signs of the opposition catalyzing. As the referenced writer in the article above mentions, all is needed is a spark, and, like a black swan, we do not know from where the spark will come, but, it is coming.
Be prepared.
Wow--hyperbole much? Honestly, I am all for self reliance. Just a poor choice of words on my part seems to have set you off.
Commoditization per se not necessarily bad, although I would argue people are most definitely not commodities, but the scale of it. We've not only commodititzed everything in sight but are exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet in the process. Unsustainable. Epic fail.
Vote non-incumbent. Pass the word.
Networks vs. Heirarchies? You gotta be kidding me. Networks have always existed, well before the internet or computers. Access is easier and they work much faster now, but the flip side is they're very easily coopted and embedded with beacons that easily indicate who did or said what. You think the NSA shit is by accident? How many networks do you know of before the Internet that could be monitored and mapped IN TOTAL, every nook and cranny? Modern networks work FOR the heirarchy, not against it.
By the way, you're all on the NSA 'possible terrorist' list just for coming here, same as me.
Not me. I hacked their systems and took out my name.
I know. You crashed their one hard drive where all the data existed.
You hear that NSA, it was the guy up there that did it, go do your job now.
> No Debt sez: "Modern networks work FOR the heirarchy..."
True. As does the whole machine.
In fact, government itself is merely a technology.
/wiki/Technology "Technology is...systems, and methods of organization..."
What is the government machine other than a system and method of organization? Sure it uses force. So do bulldozers.
So don't hug the trees and get with the program.
Also see:
• Jacques Ellul (1954) "The Technological Society"
• Lewis Mumford (1967) "The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development"
• Ivan Illich (1995) "Blasphemy: A Radical Critique of Our Technological Culture"
• Alf Hornborg (2001) "The Power of the Machine: Global Inequalities of Economy, Technology,? and Environment"
support open hardware, it's the only way to verify that there isn't Intel Inside™
Awesome!
"the gap between those with money and power and those who actually know what they are talking about has grown catastrophic. The rich are surrounded by sycophants and pretenders whose continued employment demands that they not question the premises."
The same could be said for America's political elites who are under the control of the 1%. Neither the 1% nor their government stooges are anything but interested in wealth transfer and power accumulation. The real economy upon which they prey is increasingly being destroyed by government policies of police state repression and crony capitalism. Both work to kill off real economic activity in favor of rent seeking and tax seeking.
We are overdue for revolution. Todays hoax democracy is a problem not a solution. In short, "Who you gonna vote for? A republican, a democrat? How, might I ask, are either of these choices really a choice?
"R Lee Emery for President!"
There is no crony capitalism. Only crony communism.
crony: a close friend or companion.
I like doing business with my cronies, my friends and companions.
You, who is unable to do adequate business with your piss-poor friends, must be envious of my friends.
So do you advocate some bullshit system such as "adversary capitalism" where one can trade with only anonymous strangers?
I thnk you'e mising the point. When a compound word is made, ofter the strict meaning of one of the words is not taken literally. Actually crony capitalism isn't capitalism at all. Just like a social contract isn't a contract at all.
Some people will never understand dialectics.
What a shitload of tripe. You suck government tit, admit it.
How much Fascism will Top Gear ignore.
I'm new here, but almost every post I've read of yours deserves a +100. And your avatar would look better in anime ;-)
Democracy is always a problem rather than a solution. In fact, hierarchy is precisely the solution to the problem which is democracy. But taking current circumstances as we find them, the whole idea that it makes no difference whether one votes Republican or Democrat has got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. It makes a huge difference.
" But taking current circumstances as we find them, the whole idea that it makes no difference whether one votes Republican or Democrat has got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. It makes a huge difference."
Explain the logic underlying that conclusion please. If voting for one party or the other made a difference you would have seen changes to government policies when a different party took control of either the presidency or congress. The fact that there have been no substantive changes to the course of the ship state for the last 40 years proves, at least to me, that there is NO difference between voting Democrat or Republican.
The republicans had all three branches for some time and the democrats had all three branches for some time.
Other than a few bones tossed to each's base - the overall course has been the same - and that course lines up with _____. (you know the answer!)
"Either you're born with a billion or you're Larry Ellison."
Next time buy the Battleship Missouri!
I mean "space flight"?
It's so much cheaper the load up on the world war 2 stuff..."become America's debt collector."
Anywho...if it can happen to Beethoven (ended up in prison) it can happen to any "smart person."
The existence of Russia itself is proof positive that brains are over rated.
Good thing the US doesn't have to depend on Russia for rocket engines .... oh wait
It is important to remark that, although Russian universities often don't even make the various world rankings, Russian education, especially in the spheres of Science&Technology, has always been of the best quality. Amongst the Russian technical universities, the best ones are the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Tomsk State University of Control System and Radioelectronics, Tomsk State University and Novosibirsk State University.
Moscow State University ranked in top 100 universities You really are disabledDublinmick has a point. Check out the student breakdown for some of the top high schools in Merika like Bronx Science HS and Stuyvesant HS both in NYC. If I remember correctly their student bodies had a majority of Vietnamese and Russian background students. If someone knows differently then correct me but that's what I remember b/c I was pretty impressed/surprised.
It would be a mistake to underestimate these folks.
"............1% capitalism......." WTF?
We can hope.
oohh nooees ....
open source gives me diarrhea. open source is diarrhea. it's the millenial solution to all problems. it is exactly the wrong thing to do. it completely gives up control to anyone who wants it. it demands no payment for very valuable work. it does not feed the kitty.
the only reason it sort of sometimes appear to work is that it makes the path of oppression longer and less visible, and much of the FOSS movement involves giving stuff away that actually nobody can use except you, but you do it publically, so you benefit after all. it quickly becomes a cartel of a handful of people per product, and a royal pain in the arse for a million others. it looks free but the cost of ownership is immense - but the FOSS people are not owners and don't care, but mostly they don't even know. 99% of people working on open source might as well be working in the bowels of Microsoft, it makes no nevermind to them.
...
but let me say, I do agree strongly with the topic of the article, just not with "open source networks" as any kind of solution.
"it's the millenial solution to all problems."
And the Boomer and Gen X "solution" of whoring yourself out to corporations and governments while they plot your destruction has been so successful... Uh huh...
The boomer solution was founding what are now the big, monster companies.
The boomer solution was for the most part never about going to work for big companies, old or new. You did that for training, then jumped out.
The social media are post-boomer, omg are they post-boomer.
The classic solution is not whoring yourself out, that's what you do with open source, whore yourself for no money at all. The classic solution since the founding of America has been entrepreneurship. But it's true, it's not for everyone. Neither is open source.
ps - not to mention open source started as a boomer project anyhow, but the vibe was completely different, it made a kind of sense at first. it'd be an interesting exercise to compare it then and now.
OK because you are not giving up as so many of those that post to the tune of "We are helpless".
The Liberty idea has been neglected for generations yet when even a Ron Paul version of it was out there in the last election cycle it got traction among those that we do not know. They showed up and some caught on. It is the duty of the remnant of we old farts that know of Liberty to pass it on to the minds of the young where they might free themselves.
Signed, Pollyanna.
+++++++++++++++++
edit--------- I was replying to "I write code".
"much of the FOSS movement involves giving stuff away that actually nobody can use except you,"
Last I checked 99% of every executable file on this harddrive is strictly FOSS.
"it completely gives up control to anyone who wants it."
Precisely. I can inspect and compile your code from source myself, including all dependencies, and I can even, *gasp* modify it.
Your entire post is intensely confused. Nevertheless, anyone who thinks open source anything is a silver bullet for any problem other than a certain aspect of software distribution is drinking the Silicon Valley Koolaid. Case in point: most open-source developers use Mac Book Pros (you get *nix executable compatibility, without any of the benefits of using a GNU-Linux OS, oh, and really really cool graphics too).
We have been manipulated by lies from day one. Are we to believe that an all knowing truth will set us free? The reason we are fucked is not because we have been lied to and manipulated but because we want to believe the lies. Truth has NEVER had a chance. Just look the fuck around. And now we have to listen to another "preacher" offering Utopia AGAIN. This is the second time this month!
What is the chance of a non violent revolution? And this guy is a marine? Where the fuck did he serve where he saw revolution in clasped arms and loving embrace? Iraq? Egypt? Libya? Where?
He sent a letter to BIDEN! The end.
That is the absolute truth Tyler. The 1% is only concerned with making more money. Their feverish consciousness cannot conceive the idea that there can be no economy without a sustainable environment.
You cannot frame the debate anymore succintly than this.
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/6nations1.html#part1a
There is a reason the native Americans referred to us Europeans as younger brother, indicating we were created last by the Gods. Out understanding is very limited. I am happy I do have a smidgeon of Seminole indian blood although I look like an Irishman.
A decade ago my Angel Investor was a guy on the Forbes list...he made a billion plus in commercial real estate...lost it and then made it back again...attorney & mba...sharp dude...he knew how to make money in real estate BUT he invested in tech...a small start-up...he got a shitload of bad advice...he replaced the mangement team...I was in the second wave and we won a huge reasonably profitable contract...we needed maybe $15 million in capital...he didn't want to come up with the money (he had laughed off his sons losing more than that in dot com) but he would not let another investor come in...what happened...we shut down...put maybe 150 people out of work with no notice....I remember making my pitch for the $15 million and he said "WTF...I don't build buildings with my own money...you want $15 million?" Moral of the story is tech and real estate people should not mix.
Agreed. Too bad that idiot didn't invest. If this was back in 2007, we would of tripled his 15 million return. Just my opinion.
We had the best technology...we had all the big cell guys interested...won a BIG contract with Motorola...were working with Nokia and Ericsson...this was 2001 Summer...BUT...the margins were relatively low...maybe a bit better than making solar cells now BUT the business was viable and we had a stunning technology path that I think was really possible that had HUGE possibilities...BUT...too much risk and too far out for a real estate guy...tech and real estate...oil and water...I think it was a winner...not ever going to be another Intel but not many are...but..a good business that could be built...just was not fast enough or cheap enough...so it goes...the wealthy want it and want it now with no risk and no money down.
Interesting story. Was a huge fan of Nokia. Jumped ship during M&A. Switched to BlackBerry. Apple phones are hediuious.
Back then I lived in the world of components..specifically the semiconductor package which is what the die sits on and in this case the RF power amp...the beautiful copper on ceramic material had GREAT high frequency response...everyone tested it and it significantly improved battery life...back then your phone became warm because of the power dissipated in the transmitting amp and a signiicant component was due to the package...our copper on ceramic had MUCH better performance and mil spec reliability...technically...from a process perspective it was fun/pretty stuff and we had some GREAT IP...we could also quickly get to finer lines...I think standard then was 75 microns...we could get to 25 quickly (just add money) and were good to 30 GHz plus...we needed an investor that was into more than instant gratification...and...that was not him...Chicago guy...did some serious fund raising for barry which I am certain paid off.
Money now flows to things like facebook....what a fucking waste...our materials and processes had a shit-load of applications...I have no idea what is being done now but we could build 3d structures that were photo definable...$15 million would have put us on our way...Solyndra...look what they got for something that was clearly non-workable...and the list goes on.
No such thing as real estate people. They're actually tapeworms.
WTF is "predatory capitalism"? Give me a break. Crony capitalism, predatory capitalism, whatever. Code used by communists to make capitalism sound like a bad idea.
And the dude wants ANOTHER government agency? I got an idea. How about eliminating a ton of government agencies. The dude wants to rid the world of hierarchy but then sends a letter to Biden. Like he gives a rats ass.
Sorry, not getting it. I am not a fan of government, but I personally am not aware of any laws against networking or open source prohibitions.
The road to serfdom will lead to the yellow brick road. Your version of eugenics will blow up in your face. Exercise to keep healthy in dodging a 30 round clip spray.
We didn't start this elite bullshit agenda, you did. How about this idea, mind your business and don't bother us. Food for thought.
By the way they are making plans to seize the Sioux Indian reservation.They are basically people who just want to be left alone.
http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/06/25/feds-threatening-third-wounded-kne...
same as it always was. didn't our stellar gubmit give the Injuns the black hills region only to have Custer grab it back when some knob discovered gold in them thar hills. Kinda make the term indian-giver seem a bit backwards
I always thought that the term, "Indian Giver" was a rightful slur on the white gombit that lied about the sanctity of their treaties. If I am wrong, I have been wrong for close to sixty years.
If the enyuns on that horrid reservation get the support that they deserve from the cowboys, I will get renewed faith in the folks inside the outer borders.
The maggots that have taken over the reservation have been a sore for decades, The central governing body sells out the enyuns for their own enrichment. Of course the US goomint only deals withe the bought and paid for tribal council. I was never too happy with the worthless enyun type, but now there are real councils that actually give a damn for the people of Pine Ridge, and they seem to be unanimous in standing for what little they have left after the Indian Givers had their way. Go Idians and cowboys. Bless them in the stand that they must take. If I wasn't such a physical mess I'd go there to volunteer.
Ayn Rand would have approved.
Reading that was 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back. I guess once a spy not always a spy, eh.
all it takes is someone telling them they are smart a few times and they start beliving it and trying to convince the rest of us. sadly there are significant portions of the public just waiting and hoping fo someone to come along claiming to be smarter and willing to take on the job of looking out for our best interests that we simply don't have the time or inclination to care for ourselves. We have to love being lied to or we are just plain stupid.
utopia
give me a fucking break
The error is to believe their hired hacks are smarter. How can an ignorant elite or its selected government know who's smarter or omniscient? Nature always provides surprises.
Mind The Gap Tylers...
KCCO
Everybody Knows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEQldSi-heE
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ft5Drv2Bw
We are not close to this happening - Why? Watch the crowd go wild when an American soldier is introduced at a sporting event and touted as a "defender" of our freedom...Watch as Americans re-elect 95% of CONgress which allegedly has a 7% approval rating...Then again, this could all change on a dime...
that 7% is misleading. Its 7% of everyone elses congress critters. Mine's just super!
Additional reason revolution will not be forthcoming is the fifty plus percent of citizenry receiving some kind of monthly check from the fedgov. Stop those payments, however, and riots will erupt overnight.
I saw this earlier on Mike's blog, and I'd love to think he's right, but the pollyanna aspect that "leaders" will bubble up from the bottom of this cesspool is difficult to imagine.
At bottom, you can only lead yourself. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to agree, but I can't.
Unless and until 'the people' begin to defecate upon the shrines erected to these inbred fucks who pretend to lead us, nothing will change.
The world is divided between psychopaths obsessed with power and money at all cost and healthy people, with healthy thoughts, brains and feelings.
I studied 1% and actually met few of them. They are dull, manipulative, vicious and very dangerous.
They all should be locked up in some special institutions and never be allowed near normal people.
Once somebody told me that stupidity is the fastest road to money, nowadays, I tend to agree with this statement.
Because they lie to you and you believe them says much more about you than them. There are dangerous people everywhere in every class. just because some liars and thieves are more successful than others doesn't make them more evil. Instead of devoting ourselves to the destruction of those smarter than us, maybe we should work on wising up ourselves. To imprison liars says a lot about ourselves.
open source consensus like this???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2yYiULZ0hA
no thanks, I'll pass.
the chair recognizes the gentle lady from bumfuck...
He is absolutely correct. The recent articles about gold manipulation were designed to make the public believe they are still in control... they are not. We can change the system simply by converting their bubbles into real assets (physical cash that cannot be misused for prop trading and gold). Let those responsible for this mess onboard all the risk.
Fucking fascinating
Thank you.
"Today’s capitalism, he argues, is inherently predatory and destructive:"
Bullshit! Today's economies are ridden with the cancer of the banksters and their partners in theft and violence, government--crony capitalism.
To look around at the current economic state of things and come back that capitalism or the free market has failed is ignorance at best and propaganda otherwise.
"As for the inflation of the banksters, one could build a wheelbarrow or a guillotine. Only one is a permanent solution."
What happens at the end of a monopoly game? Capitalism is coming to it's natural conclusion. You think the last player is looking to provide jobs? to distribute wealth? to provide economic atvantages to it's remaining competetors?
Most of the comments I read in this thread the posters must be living in a dream world. People looking for economic saviors in capitalism just need to pull out the old monopoly board game. We were taught at a young age what happens to such a system it is only in our older ages we were taught who to blame it on or what economic system to blame it on.
Why are you using the word capitalism? We don't have a capitalistic system. We have facism.
Easy boy, some people are fresh off the farm and don't know what Fascism is.
man wishes for stable systems, the universe seems to move toward entropy,,that is why we will never have stable systems, but systems that change mostly for the worse. embrace entropy, the cycle of physical things birth to death..the poor souls who cannot will see ashes taste ashes and knash their teeth. examples in history abound, one that has lasted is the Jewish life- for they are blessed by ...the amish come in second, but perhaps those on ZH know others, look at the catholic church for the rapid decent to oblivion destroyed from within, much like america today.
That is it in a nutshell Alcoholic Nativ, free enterprise is great but not when bankers in the city of London shovel money to their favorite agents here in the Americas. (Goldmon Sachs) Not when anti-trust laws have been laughed at for decades. The winner of the monopoly game takes all the money and the other players simply (theoretically die). In the real world you may die for real. You become a useless eater because you lost the game.
"What happens at the end of a monopoly game? Capitalism is coming to it's natural conclusion. You think the last player is looking to provide jobs? to distribute wealth? to provide economic atvantages to it's remaining competetors?
Most of the comments I read in this thread the posters must be living in a dream world. People looking for economic saviors in capitalism just need to pull out the old monopoly board game. We were taught at a young age what happens to such a system it is only in our older ages we were taught who to blame it on or what economic system to blame it on."
India meets the free market and capitalism, British style
http://ajitvadakayil.blogspot.nl/2011/09/amartya-sen-gets-nobel-prize-fo...
Even the "knowledge" can be stolen and patented. File 13 all of the fairy tales about western cutting edge civilization, entreprenuership yada yada. India was a bit too "open source."
http://ajitvadakayil.blogspot.fr/2011/01/isaac-newton-calculus-thief-cap...
the cronies, best satire cartoon ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDXuPQ9ML9E
"The rich are surrounded by sycophants and pretenders whose continued employment demands that they not question the premises."
This is utter nonsense. This is all intentional. I get tired of smart people saying things like "Congress is incompetent", "The Fed is wrong again", "the moneyed people are being led astray" etc. Horseshit! This is all intentional and by design, and you can bet your ass they are very effective at the outcomes they are targeting!
I think that we are at a crossing in the roads of history, history in the grand sense. One road already appears clearly laid out, at least in its general orientation. That’s the road of the loss of meaning, of the repetition of empty forms, of conformism, apathy, irresponsibility, and cynicism at the same time as it is that of the tightening grip of the capitalist imaginary of unlimited expansion of ‘rational mastery,’ pseudorational pseudomastery, of an unlimited expansion of consumption for the sake of consumption, that is to say, for nothing, and of a technoscience that has become autonomized along its path and that is evidently involved in the domination of this capitalist imaginary. The other road should be opened: it is not at all laid out. It can be opened only through a social and political awakening, a resurgence of the project of individual and collective autonomy, that is to say, of the will to freedom. This would require an awakening of the imagination and of the creative imaginary.
- Cornelius Castoriadis, Figures of the Thinkable, p. 146.
"The rich are surrounded by sycophants and pretenders whose continued employment demands that they not question the premises."
This is utter nonsense. This is all intentional. I get tired of smart people saying things like "Congress is incompetent", "The Fed is wrong again", "the moneyed people are being led astray" etc. Horseshit! This is all intentional and by design, and you can bet your ass they are very effective at the outcomes they are targeting!
Sorry for the double post.
the gap between those with money and power and those who actually know what they are talking about has grown catastrophic.
EXCELLENT. I am so glad to hear someone besides me say this (though I usually say this with slightly different words).
-----
Properly educated people always appreciate holistic approaches to any challenge. This means that they understand both cause and effect, and intertwined complexities.
EXCELLENT. While I cringe a bit at the term "properly educated" because it almost implies "educated by authorities rather than exposure to reality and private thought", that's probably just me being [?overly?] sensitive to that distinction.
-----
Our entire commercial, diplomatic, and informational systems are now cancerous.
EXCELLENT, and no kidding!
-----
Steele sent an open letter to US vice president Joe Biden requesting him to consider establishing an Open Source Agency.
MISTAKE. No positive solution would sully, pollute and endanger itself by submiting to the very evil that must be eliminated (centralization and authority). I am surprised to see this guy make this mistake, given all he seems to understand.
-----
There is zero chance of a revolution [of the 6-billion poorest against the 1-billion richest] being put down.
IRRELEVANT. True enough. But there is zero chance of even 10% of that 6-billion poorest being smart enough to take coherent, effective, efficient action.
-----
Open Source Everything overturns top-down ‘because I say so at the point of a gun’ power. Open Source Everything makes truth rather than violence the currency of power.
WRONG. The power of truth is productive. The power of violence is destructive. And destruction is inherently, fundamentally, metaphysically vastly more powerful than production.
Example: To produce a modern home requires an investment of a great deal of time, effort, talent, wealth and resources. To destroy a modern home requires a few minutes of time, almost zero effort (sprinkle a little gasoline around and strike a few matches), no talent, almost zero expense (free matches and $4 worth of gasoline), and no other resources.
And THIS is why predators always win. Or more specifically, the reason predators always win is... they prey (producers) hate to destroy, and so they rarely take advantage of the power of destruction to... destroy the predators/destroyers.
And so, the predators will dominate mankind until and unless the producer-prey adopt aggressive SELF-DEFENSE. And I mean physical self-defense... which means aggressively identify, hunt down and destroy the destroyers.
-----
Bottom line. This is one of the best, most insightful articles I've read on ZH in a while. It only needs a bit of tweaking to become a viable guide to the liberation of mankind.
Too bad that will never happen.
Thanks, I'll be borrowing this, (or a slight variation ie truth/lies, harmony/violence).
The power of truth is productive. The power of violence is destructive
Also appreciate the example which leads me to understand that productive power is distributed whilst destructive power is concentrated. That bieng the case my overriding concern vis a vis the knowledge gap discussed in the article continues to be with any lack of imagination or education that disbles an empowed few from seeing over production/ capacity as an extraordinary opportunity.
Pretty much everybody makes this their 1st and most important Mistake, ... they assume people are inherently smart, intelligent, wise, good meaning, altruistic and even know "what is best for them", all of those assertions are false for 98% of Humans in the West and 80% in the 3rd World (they are closer to reality than we Westerners).
Everybody tries to Liberate this mythical (freedom loving, benevolent, nature loving) creature called the "Human Race" .. which simply does not exist.
Take care of your self and people you personally know and care about, forget the rest, instead manning the water-buckets on the Titanic, grab a damn life-boat!
It doesn't take all kinds of people, there just are all kinds of people.
All kinds there are. In my observations, when anxiety levels go up, people's personality quirks become disorders. Compelling leadership could put people back on the right track, give them a direction, a form of thought, because that's their job, would stop the crazy behavior we are seeing in the people. If Martin Luther King, JFK, RFK, any of the great and murdered leaders would stand before us, and tell us, "Have faith, keep your head up and your feet on the ground. We're working on it," the people would follow those instructions. This unraveling began a while ago. 911 caused it to go full throttle. Anxiety is energy sapping and unsustainable state for us. Sleep deprivation makes us go over the edge and then, revolt or die.
I'll take attofoxes for $200, Alex.
... reading over the responses on this thread, it becomes ever more painfully obvious that you are correct. 98% - 99.9%.
It just is.
Upvoted you for your post but take issue with your last point. Not necessarily true.
Much of the power of truth is not visible. For instance, consider the notion of "moral authority". If the elites ever lose the moral authority to govern, the implicit consent of the majority, they eventually lose the ability to govern. Destructive power or not. I would suggest that this process is well underway in the West. Stay tuned - it ain't over by a long shot.
Obviously this is a case where I hope I'm wrong, and hope you're right. Sadly, I see little sign any significant number of sheeple-chimps will stampede.
The reason why is fairly simple. When an individual is confused, they are very hesitant to take action, especially action that might get them caged or killed.
So all predators-that-be need to do is... keep the herd confused.
Even with the potential power of the internet to break through the statist mainstream propaganda, the sheeple-herd is still quite confused and conflicted. Too confused to load up on gold, guns, ammo and self-sufficiency, then go out and hunt the predators who abuse them from birth until death.
Man is presented with viable alternatives from time to time. One of those being the theories of Nikola Tesla. Unfortunately he was murdered. As Thoreau would say there goes the path less traveled. We are way past the point of no return. Let us hope after the total destruction of the planet, after the earth shift and several thousand years from now when the radioactivity is decreasing, the Nefilim come back with better genetics the next time around.
For those who have taken a look at the Enuma Elish or Sumerian cuneiform tablets, the Annunaki Enlil considered us earthlings a cancer to the planet and a threat to the universe itself. Was he wrong? The majority of earthlings will ignore facts and reality rather than challenge the neural connections which have been seared into his brain by the programming. There is nothing left but observing the ship hitting the rocks at this point.
The Kali Yuga always ends this way. See the war between Kauravas and Pandavas.
http://www.indianetzone.com/13/pandava.htm
Speaking of Ydhishthir:
Sometime around 23 hundred years ago we see in the Mahabharata Ydhishthira has a vision of the age to come: I see the coming of another age, where barbaric kings rule over a vicious, broken world, where puny, fearful men live tiny lives, white hair at sixteen, copulating with animals, their women perfect whores, making love with greedy mouths. The cows dry, trees stunted, no more flowers, no more purity, ambition, corruption, the age of Kali, the black time."
"Open Source Everything overturns top-down ‘because I say so at the point of a gun’ power. Open Source Everything makes truth rather than violence the currency of power."
I love that, the man has a way with words and his insights are great too. It's a modern take on the pen is mightier than the sword (still don't mean you shouldn't have a sword, always speak softly while carrying your big stick). One of the more hopeful and uplifting articles I have read on ZH. Everyone should make an effort to arm themself with truth so they will be weaponized when the time for more aggressive corrective actions arrive.
"There is no forgiveness in the blockchain."
Can there even be moral hazard in the absence of morals? Does functional capitalism require a Judeo-Christian ethic while networks just require submission in exchange for convenience. When you consider the kill switch just how powerful would a network need to be (say Bitcoin or Ethereum) to crack PGP or at least to square Zooko's triangle.
Open Source Everything demands that true cost economics and the indigenous concept of ‘seventh generation thinking’ – how will this affect society 200 years ahead – become central.
I need some help here. Our world is absolutely cancerous with unsustainable processes (ballooning debt, voodoo-levitating fiat money systems, hockeystick federal debt, to name a few), and somehow spontaneously issuing forth from our largely self-obsessed population will come citizens who base their decisions on the effects 200 years hence?
Maybe I'm just too stoopid to reconcile this one.
In a triple entry accounting system the map IS the territory, the receipt IS the transaction, the network IS the hierarchy. Click to submit.
www.tradewithdave.com
"The wealth of networks, the wealth of knowledge, revolutionary wealth – all can create a nonzero win-win Earth that works for one hundred percent of humanity." - I don't think that is even Theoretically possible however we can have a World for the 99% instead (as we do now) for the 1%
(Not talking Communism or any shit like that ofc)
"Top down power has failed in a most spectacular manner..." ...and... "...the gap between those with money and power and those who actually know what they are talking about has grown catastrophic."
So true. When enough people realise this, the tipping point will have been reached, violent change will be inevitable and will happen fast.
I consider this more proof in a manipulated world that few people really understand the economy. The study of economics is often baffling and confusing. Many economic theories exist but many are full of holes and conundrums. Much of how people react to a policy may have to do with timing and perception instead of reality.
Economics is full of loops that feed back upon themselves and unexpected pitfalls based on expectations. All this can become quite abstract. Economist predict events that never tend to unfold as expected or planned. Many of the "modern monetary theories" in use today have not been proven over time, but reflect an attitude that we can control economic cycles better than in the past. More on how few people really understand this very important part of our lives in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/03/few-people-really-understand-econ...
Economics is not baffling and confusing but the sheeple are told that it is. The same sheeple that somehow successfully use craigslist, ebay, flea markets, and yard sales to buy and sell goods. Price discovery is easy in a free market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgEDOBgYg-g
Yes, it is worth 1 hour, 2 minutes, and 17 seconds of your time.
You can stop endlessly talking theory and doing nothing, and actually take action right now!
It may be helpful to consider "open source governance" in terms of the transition from:
a) Wait til Otis sees us!!
and
b) Do you mind if we dance with your dates?
http://tradewithdave.com/?p=21302
Another guy who thinks he has found the very best snake oil. Sounds suspiciously like Erhlichism and neo-Marxism dressed up in new clothes.
Telltales:
“Over the course of the last centuries, the commons was fenced, and everything from agriculture to water was commoditised without regard to the true cost in non-renewable resources. Human beings, who had spent centuries evolving away from slavery, were re-commoditised by the Industrial Era.”
"Properly educated people always appreciate holistic approaches to any challenge." (And if you are not properly educated we will make sure you are!)
"The open source ecology is made up of a wide range of opens – open farm technology, open source software, open hardware, open networks, open money, open small business technology, open patents – to name just a few."
Open source is a positive new development with Wikipedia and Firefox being two good examples. But this dude is in lala land. He should send his book to Putin and Xi Jinping and ask them for a review.
This guy is full of bullshit. His premise of 'properly educated people' is a joke - having an education just means that you have been properly brainwashed into being a good compliant stupid sheep consumer who will follow orders and not think for yourself. Understanding cause and effect requires intellegence, and more importantly, common sense.
Last week I saw more commonsense on display at a Farm show / tractor pull than I have seen elsewhere for a long time.
Maverick