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Neofeudalism's Tax Donkeys (Yes, You) And The Battle For Control Of Resources
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
Those who own the resources and influence the political control of those resources are the New Nobility in a pernicious Neofeudalism enforced by the very government that claims to serve the debt-serfs and tax donkeys.
Let's tease apart several strands of Neofeudalism, my preferred term (along with Neocolonialism) for the Status Quo.
The E.U., Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model (May 24, 2012)
It is increasingly clear that a new form of feudalism has subverted democracy, and that the New Feudalism is powered by concentrations of private wealth and centralized state control: what I call the New Nobility.
Recall my Neofeudalism Corollary #1:
If the citizenry cannot replace a dysfunctional government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only.
The essence of Neofeudalism is: those with access to the low-interest unlimited credit spigot of the Federal Reserve become more equal than others--the perfect Orwellian description of a Neofeudal arrangement in which financial leverage buys not just rentier assets but political power and control.
Neofeudalism depends on the cultural supremacy of Neoliberalism, the belief that the social order is defined and created by markets: if markets are free, participants, society and the political order are also free.
This conceptual framework is the perfect enabler for the dominance of credit-based, leveraged capital, i.e. Neofeudalism. In a "free market," those with access to nearly-free money can outbid everyone who must rely on savings from earned income to finance borrowing. In a "free market" where those with access to leverage and unlimited credit are more equal than everyone else, the ability of wage earners to acquire rentier assets such as rental housing, farmland and timberland is intrinsically limited by the financial system that makes credit and leverage scarce for the many and abundant for the few.
Those with access to the low-interest unlimited credit spigot of the Federal Reserve are free to snap up tens of thousands of houses and tens of thousands of acres of productive land--the classic rentier assets that reliably produce unearned income because people need shelter and food--along with other rentier assets such as parking lots and meters, fossil fuels in the ground, and of course the engines of credit creation, the banks.
In The Neofeudal-Neoliberal Arrangement: Since We Own What You Need, We Own You(June 13, 2014) correspondent Bart D. discusses the many barriers to middle-income households buying and holding productive assets. (Recall that owning a home is a form of consumption; a rental housing unit, an orchard, shares in an oil well, etc., are productive assets in that they generate an income stream.)
Correspondent Kevin K. (among others) has described the many barriers being raised by local government (at the behest of those who have bought influence over local government policy and regulations) to home businesses and small businesses that might offer competition to cartels and monopolies. Should a legitimate (as opposed to black market/cash business) small business manage to open its doors, it faces a blizzard of junk fees, permits and taxes that make its survival a dubious prospect. No wonder self-employment and small business are in structural decline:
The primary role of small business owners and homeowners in the Status Quo is to labor for the government's Upper Caste as uncomplaining tax donkeys. (I coined the term tax donkeys on July 7, 2010 and have found no earlier useage.)
Cash-strapped cities, counties and states are increasingly turning to property taxes and parcel fees to raise millions of dollars to pay their employees' salaries, benefits and pensions, and if there are no "Prop 13" type limits on how high property taxes/fees can be jacked up without voter approval, homeowners are a captive tax base which is ripe for exploitation: homeowners are reduced to tax donkeys, loaded up with ever higher taxes and fees and expected to suffer the whip without complaint.
Opting out of the Status Quo becomes next to impossible as property taxes skyrocket. We have friends in California whose property tax is $16,000 a year--and this is not at all unusual for those who bought homes in high-demand areas of the state in the past eight years. Add in utilities, sales taxes and the unavoidable host of other junk fees, and even the most frugal homeowner has to generate $2,000 a month in net income just to keep the lights on and keep the county from auctioning his house off to pay the confiscatory property taxes.
Add in the bubble-level prices for productive assets generated by competition from buyers with unlimited free money courtesy of the Federal Reserve, and it makes little financial sense for the merely middle class to overpay for an asset and then have to pay local government $160,000 a decade for the privilege of being a tax donkey in their jurisdiction.
That's $320,000 for 20 years of "ownership" and $480,000 for 30 years. Fail to pay your property taxes and your claim of "ownership" vanishes.
High taxes, bubble valuations and multiple regulatory barriers and fees all serve to reduce the opportunities for the bottom 99% to own any essential resources as those resources become increasingly scarce. Those few who scrape up the cash and are willing to mortgage their future to compete against private equity financiers and global corporations (and thieves from overseas seeking to park ill-gotten booty skimmed from peasants) face impoverishment as the cost of "ownership" is crushing for those with stagnating earned income and no access to the Fed's near-zero interest free money.
Those who own the resources and influence the political control of those resources are the New Nobility in a pernicious Neofeudalism enforced by the very government that claims to serve the debt-serfs and tax donkeys.
Control the regulatory and taxation machinery of governance and the essential resources, and you control everything of any value, leaving the debt-serfs and tax donkeys with nothing. If that's not Neofeudal, then what is it?
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Who needs business any way ... I get my SNAP every month
In addition, corporations are able to buy up many of the family farms due to the estate tax that kills family ownership.
This article could have been a lot shorter and more to the point.
The Golden Rule: Them that have the gold write the rules.
But see, we're trying to understand why that is the case.
Otherwise, what's the point of any of this? What are we talking about anyway, and why?
I happen to think we can address the problem of who has all the gold. But I don't think we can solve it. All we can do is end it. And if you think solving a problem and ending it are the same thing then you need to go back a re-read a good part of human history because there are a lot more examples of problems simply going away than being carefully thought out and resolved. I mean it's like 100 to 1 against the latter.
History is lethal. Always. Lethal.
Willful Neglect at Best.
I heard today that Congress mostly only meets 3 days a week, and they they stone wall each other while attempting to Raise Campaign & Lobby Money.
-Leadership used to mean that people took responsibility
-These days they set it up so that many people are involved in a project or organization to spread the blame & get plausible Deniability
-Of Course they are afraid of Political Flack, so they never provide strong statements, background details, reveal the Big Money Interests involved, and don't reveal the History and past efforts lack of follow up or funding
So Our Public & Private Leaders want to Claim the Success, but no Responsibility
-No real Rules for Incorporation
-No Laws to prevent Corporations acting for the Government on things that are illegal for the government to do (Spying for one)
Somehow the End of the US Constitution and all Regulations and all Western Values get destroyed by Big Business Relationships with Big Government.
And beyond that a war on the Family itself.
Either that or they could confiscate private farms outright like Zimbabwe. Starvation and hyperinflation soon followed. I guess they figured the slow bleed method of confiscation would be less painful. How considerate.
Miffed;-)
that's not the point. the point is that that scheme provides more blood for the parasites and longer.
Funny that you mention the connected buying up farms from those that can't pay their "rent" to the local pols and crats.
My dad, who lives in a smallish rural town, heard of a recent RE transaction on some farm/ranchland that was sold for just that reason. He did some sleuthing and found that the corp. and "connected" owned land around pays much less per acre in "rent" than the average local.
He also discovered that the recent transaction that he was curious about had almost immediately had an "adjustment" in tax-basis rammed thru and applied--"Even before the ink was dry.
Funny thing is, they have a lot of “blades of grass” out where he lives.
Yeah, if a big company want to build a new fertilizer plant, they will first negotiate with the Governor for a 5 Year or more Tax abatement.
I imagine that China is a tough negotiator. Not sure if the State of China buys in the USA OR if they are over 51% owned by Private Investors.... I'm sure they get Tax Abatements.
Did you ever look up the Economic Free Zones & the maps of where they are located in the USA. Seems pretty big stuff. Chinese companies can locate in Denver and assemble in the USA to avoid Taxes or Tariffs. Ah, I can't find the Map....
https://www.denvergov.org/oed/DenverOfficeofEconomicDevelopment/Business...
-Some States or Counties allow you to buy someones Delinquent Property Taxes and instead of a Lien, they get ownership of the property apparently. I heard that in 1987.
Family farmers who don't pay property tax on their equipment, never show a profit on their income taxes because of accounting gimmicks, write off their living expenses and toys as farm expenses, have the demand for their product propped up by asinine government energy policy, tariff competing foreign imports, and if the price gets too low wait for the government subsidy. And they whine about paying estate taxes in which the 2014 exemption is $5,340,000.
Boo fucking who... tax donkeys the are not. FSA nobility is more like it.
I wish only those people who paid more into the govrnment than what they received were allowed to vote.
Edit: add a link to explain it.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/e1abab3c2b/god-made-a-factory-farmer
Most family farms I knew were lost in the 80's, mostly because they refused the govt tit. Hard to make a living and avoid ADM, Uncle Warren, Cargile, Monsanto and the rest of the globalists squids. I know of a few that are left but they still have to dodge the buzzards every year. All have diversified and have second jobs or income. If they had to make land payments, they would have been gone long ago.
Democracy= Free Speech & Whistleblowing
Free Speech is preserved by not being afraid of what you might have sent in an email or recorded in video when you were in college or younger.
Democracy= Lots of Small Businesses, Lots of Self Employment, Free Internet, Free Speech, Whistleblowing, fewer Secrets, Less Spying, More Transparent Government
But we don't live in a Democracy.
We got a Military Republic.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/09/epa-claims-it-has-power-to-ga...
Hey, did ya know if your wife calls da cops and says you hit her and threatened to shoot her you get kicked out of your house RIGHT NOW and have your firearms confiscated RIGHT NOW? Did ya? Did ya know this was SOP since the Violence Against Women Act?
No evidence, no trial, no witnesses. No due process.
If you think the Cunstituion has any meaning at all in this country you're an imbecile. The only way you'll see any justice is if you manufacture it yourself.
Well, originally, the Constitution was supposed to address conflicts ONLY between the State and the Citizen. I don't think the Constitution addressed wife-beater vs trash-wife conflicts.
That's exactly why I sold my ex-wife into slavery when I could many years ago.
Got me colladge edjukashun an' wus teeched : 1) Biznezz + $$$ = bad 2) Guvermint + $$$ = gud!
More substitution of "democracy" for "republic". I've been reading this crap too much lately.
"Two wolves and a sheep ..."
It's annoying as hell. If they can't get the basics right in the article, what the hell else do they have wrong?
Spelling corrections:
- Democrazy
- Reap-Public
Syphilisation.
Should clearly be, if you don't own property, you don't get a vote
>> if you don't own property,
Yeah, that worked so well in the middle ages.
Um, the US only allowed land-owners to vote originally. The last state that removed that restriction (South Carolina??) did so just before..... you guessed it, the Civil War.
The war of property rights.
Junker German Aristocrats worked it like that in most provinces. You got a number of Votes based on how much taxes you paid. How much taxes you paid was based on property or Income I guess.
In some cases the Junker owned all the property so he got all the votes. So the aristocrats with land ran everything, the military & the government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Juncker
I'll probably invite pelters and assassins, but I blame the 19th Amendment.
This is so true. Women have made the government their husband. The social and economic problems in the USA go hand in hand.
Your choice is, exploiter class of permanent landed gentry/aristocracy (America at its birth) or gentry/aristocracy/nobility (most of Europe at that time) - classic top-down domination, or a permanent political war of omnium contra omnes, in which a huge assortment of voting blocs vie for their share of the public largesse against every other bloc, which quickly and easily devolves into a divide and rule scenario, because literally everyone is after your money or out to dictate how you live.
The Founders knew democracy would never work, and they were absolutely correct, but the alternative is no panacea, republic or not.
What if the guy is assuming most people who would bother reading his article would already know he was using the words more as "concepts".
ASS-uming.
Ok, then I'll update the "concept" with modern terms: "Two illegals and a native voting to decide whose property this is."
There are more illegals voting than natives? Besides, when has voting ever mattered? The banks own the politicians, they don't care about voting.
Relax, it's just a "concept" now, a distant memory.
Open Borders
This can be Neofeudalism as well, right?
Bring in more low skilled, low cost labor to Drive down wages for Restaurant Workers, Bartenders, Landscapers, Construction workers, Maids, Hotel Workers, Liquor store workers. And some of those might be college students or College Graduates with Student Debt.
I predict they will all be on welfare(paid parasitic voters). Minimum wage laws will prevent any hires even if they were of age.
One guy is saying down in Texas or within 100 miles of the border there are signs in English, Spanish, and Chinese.
I think there is a story there about Chinese coming in.
If you go to Ecuador, they have whole towns taken over or build by Chinese that come in to work contracts for engineer infrastructure. The signs there are all in Chinese even though it is a Spanish Speaking Country
It is like you could Incorporate a while town or city and fill it with Chinese who could work on US Infrastructure or Engineering Projects.
Well, we are all incorporated.
And Countries no longer have Borders. More like we are part of a Financial Entity. Or a Military Republic Financial Entity.
The Chinese Own US Equity, LT Treasury Notes, so we owe them money and if they sell real fast our Economy Skids.
there seems to be no problem that the US stock market can't seem to "fix" with further escalating stock prices.
I need a gallon of gas...and a zippo. NOW.
Wait, this guy can't be right. You mean self-employment was DROPPING during the 1950's? When we had PURE capitalism and the time everybody wants to return to? What was causing the hard working individuals that made this goddamn country great and glorious to abandon small bidness during peak of capitalism?
Highways.
People abandoned PURE capitalism to commute to their new jobs in large monopolistic corporations? Could be. Sure doesn't say much for the herioc individuals of the 1950's tho. They should have LOVED competing by owning small business.
Highways killed main street when towns and small cities started getting bypassed. Obviously there is more to the decline of small business than that...corporations regulating them out of business etc.... but highways did their fair share of damage too.
RADIATOR SPRINGS
What about cities and suburbs? Didn't the PURE capitalism of the 1950 move to the suburbs where the heroic people of the 1950's moved to on their highways? Highways killed Merican competative individualism that made this great-n-glorious country great-n-glorious? HIGHWAY?
I have been guessing that people were moving off the Farms since 19th Century. That is why a lot of FRED Data is explicit in saying "nonfarm" businesses or employment.
Whites were forced to create the suburbs in the 50's thanks to Shelley vs, Kraemer 1947, which abolished restrctive covenants. This brought us today's Detroit, Philadelphia, etc. My mom lived in DC in the mid 50's. Everyone was leaving and saying they were 'leaving it to the blacks(not the word they used)'. Suburbs were an unintended consequence of 'white flight' caused by FDR's Justice Dept. which brought the original lawsuit. Communism at work.
No living person today has ever seen a pure capitalistic or free market system and the heroic people of the 50's got bought. Health insurance, paid holidays and vacations, retirement plans and most importantly, the sense of security. Small business and self employment is too much damned work. Of course when it pays off, then they are evil fuckers that should be put on the rack, but until then they are simply stupid...like every hard working person today is. Dumb as a rock. You could sneak over the border and sneak back in and qualify for instant goodies. $3.7 billion for 50k illegals, $75k for each one...what a deal! But if you spend your whole life to build a small business and have enough for a nice home and car, you are a fucking leach on society.
The publication in 1955 of the General Location of National System of Interstate Highways, informally known as the Yellow Book, mapped out what became the Interstate System.[10] Assisting in the planning was Charles Erwin Wilson, who was still head of General Motors when President Eisenhower selected him as Secretary of Defense in January 1953.
Pat Boone approves this message.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rreGyA8sMJo&feature=kp
Psssst. Oil and gas industry and its frantic shale activity has risen to eclipse housing at 20% of GDP.
In winter, in NoDak, it stops.
Excuse me, what was Q1 GDP again? And why won't this happen every single winter from now on?
Damn Good Point.
Wally World started around the same time. They're all built on the edge of town.
Property tax is the most REGRESSIVE TAX IN THE WORLD !!!
That would be in income tax; property taxes at least (in theory) go back to pay for schools, roads, bridges.
Income taxes go to the Tresury and the Fed to print umlimited funny money for Wall St speculation and Military conquests.
True liberals and libertarian types should join forces to abolish the taxation on labor, but alas, the propaganda has them arguing over stupid bullshit like gun control.
Property taxes are your feudal tithes. Income taxes reflect the extent to which you are a direct slave based on your percentage bracket. Both are theft, both should be abolished.
Oh, and if you don't pay taxes and actually get aid payments instead, then you are a ward and will be the first to be abandoned to die.
I'm glad somebody's paying attention to "raising barriers to entry" so new companies can't be formed to compete with the old ones. That would totally fuck up the existing companies' plans to invest ZERO in cap ex while spending it all on share buy-backs.
it's only going to get worse until people grow some balls and start forcing these servants in DC to work for them, not the global multi-nationals...i'm guessing we will be waiting a long time
I think they are waiting for YOU to lead the charge. (Make sure you schedule your charge around "Game of Thrones" tho, I hear it's really popular. And you'll need all the peasants you can muster to win the charge.
You're not smart, savvy NOR funny.
Oh, so YOU wanted to lead the peasants. Sorry, and, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out of the trench.
Sure he is... I call him Che Gue-Bania
Thats gold Jerry! Gold!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0qm0KUPeD8
If this is just one big elaborate dream....
why is there sweat running off their foreheads?
Their rent is late.
Precisely why those individuals and communities that take control of their local resources (like water) will be prosecuted by the media and government goons.
Hedge accordingly.
Evil hoarders.
If you live in the west (especially the southwest) water law is fascinating, mostly because the entities controlling water are pseudo-governmental legal entities that aren't federal in scope but have jurisdiction beyond the state level. As a landholder of a ranch with a well in a desolate part of AZ, I routinely get copies of insanely cryptic legal filings that presumably are raping my water rights, but you'd never know it. My lawyer can't even understand them, which is why we have "water law" as a legal specialty now.
Anything that's important or has value has been legally structured to concentrate power and control among a select few decades ago.
The key is TPTB types drink their own kool-aid, in that they depend on things being legal, using the courts to maintain control, etc. They end up forgetting what happens in real revolutions and that such agreements can go up in a puff of smoke if they abuse the people at large too much.
Bechtel Bought up the Water Rights in Bolivia, they even told people they had to buy the rain water for the most part. They must have started with a water project for some city. They raised the cost of water and started a revolution.
Nestle' is taking water out of one of the Great Lakes for Free. I guess it is considered like mining or drilling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_%28company%29 Suez is one of the world biggest water companies.(French)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veolia_Environnement (French)
The privatize Water Systems as a way to fix city water, but then if they can't raise the costs and the water bill rates, they can always abandon the project and leave the city with huge problems.
https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/209/43398.html Privatization of Water (Water Privatization)
Nothing is free... nothing. Life is war against the elements, other people and animals, insects, viruses and sometimes even our own body and mind. You are best prepared if you are prepared for a fight. Our forefathers did us a great service and disservice in forming this country, They sought to set up something that was as close to preserving individual liberty in a single document as possible. The fact that it has worked as well as it has for as long as it has is a testament to their work,but....it also allowed us to become lazy and complacent. Expecting things to simply work because it was so written. We wretch and moan because our leaders are acting unconstitutionally, ignoring the rules. Well, we are now in a tough spot fellows and gals. We have let them slide for way too long and now its really going to get bad. We screwed up, and still are. We are still standing back waiting for those who have enabled our loss of freedoms to somehow go against their own personal interest to win them back for us. It ain't happening. No heroes, no saviors. Just little ole me and you. Water rights, the right to breath, all will be attacked, and if you want to win, you best be prepared to fight, because no one else will do it for you.
Oldwood. A good post, its a lonely road.
we are now in a tough spot fellows and gals - the assault is global but I hoped Americans might stand up unlike the walkover easy nation of Oz. We're fighting conditioning - none of our neighbours realise where this is going.
We call that containing the seeds of your own destruction.
Because the natural enemies of Neofeudalism are murder and assassination. I have no serious doubt in my mind that the schoolyard killings and public acts of random violence are just the ill-tempered staging for a much broader and better focused kind of wholesale class-based warfare. And I'm not the only one thinking it. One of the little backward burgs in my neck of the woods just received free of charge one of those MRAP monster trucks we hear so much about. They had it out for the 4th, rolling around their little town looking like stud monkeys, but people where not liking it one tiny bit no sir. They knew what it meant. These things are popping up all over the place, but only in places you would never expect. I'm sure they come with "training" in their "proper use" (the local police won't describe just what kind of training in what tactics, citing a need to protect police tactical methods, yeah right, go fuck yourself pig) and then they just sort of sit around not doing much. Well isn't that special. Sitting around maybe -- waiting for the day when some local cop gets a call from that guy who comes around once a year to refresh your training, saying you need to roll to say Oakland or Sacramento and wait for orders. Yeah they know what's coming, and they got all the Good Ol' Boys (TM) geared for war, and those guys got special training, a little extra sump'n in their paycheck, and little duty stars they can wear on parade days, and they like that part and so don't ask a whole lot of questions. Later they get to shoot up a bunch of fag protestors camping out on the state capitol steps? Well hell yeah!
Yeah, the oligarchs know what's coming. And they got their merc thugs ready to roll. But I don't think it's going to save them.
And as for the small time cops with their little gold star, it will get them written up in history as very, very badly advised. But that's about all they'll get.
Yes, but I look to Katrina in New Orleans and South Central, LA as an indication of what happens to police forces. At local levels, law enforcement will cease to be effective almost immediately.
There's only one thing left to do. Burn it all to the ground and start over.
You just don't understand. You can't.
There is no starting over. The easy oil is gone.
Forever.
Well said.
I've recently been running into more writers talking about what "starting over" means, on a lot of fronts, and pointing to that as just the next existential crisis to follow on the current one, and how it's going to be like 10x as hard to figure out than any of this other crap. It feels more as if the collective train of thought has realized that we're not going to be able to finesse this one in any shape or form, and we need to start dealing with collapse, but -- oh wait look at that -- we're collapsing from the leading edge of a tidal wave of free energy back into something we haven't had to confront for over 300 years.
All this shit is tied together now. The same collapse in fortunes that is underpinning the financial crisis is also going to underpin the "starting over" crisis that is just around the corner. Getting through one just sets you up for the next.
Nothing like it, ever. Nobody is ready for this chain of events. I wonder if anything we know today (point to anything around you) is going to survive or have any meaning in 20 years.
By Gail Tverberg, July 7, 2014.
Tverberg correctly reviews the consequences of debt insanities NOT being able to be grown out of, and how difficult it will be to "restart." However, in keeping with the tenor of many other comments, I feel that she understates the degree to which the authorities are hubristically mistaken. Rather, my view is that they are evil professional liars, whose immaculate hypocrisies are based on willful blindness.Similarly, she also used the phrase "die-off," whereas, I tend to think there will be more of a "kill-off," because I tend to regard the ruling classes as being evil, rather than being incompetent. However, at the same time, the vast majority of the people ruled over are incompetent, because they have been conditioned want to be. The main reasons why the apparent NeoFeudalism, or inverted totalitarianism, seems to be irreversible are that the vast majority of people have been reduced to political idiots, while, to the degree to which the lopsided capture of the control over the school systems and mass media, and everything else, is a fait accompli, there is no practical way to counteract that. The small minority of people who are "waking up" to some of the deeper problems have no practical ways to do anything about those, within the established systems. Therefore, those problems are runaways!
In my opinion, the best way to over-simply the situation is that the vast majority of people are abysmally ignorant of the limits to growth, and want to stay that way. The ruling classes are more aware of those problems, however their real solutions are being covertly prepared, which are to kill off the majority of the human population. The interaction between the different social classes, in the face of the facts regarding the limits to growth, and the diminishing returns from being able to continue to strip-mine the planet's natural resources, are being manifested inside of the social pyramid systems, which were based on lies backed by violence, in order to keep most people ignorant and afraid, so that they could be controlled and exploited.
Those are the real mechanisms through which the limits to growth will be dealt with. The ruling classes are covertly preparing to mass murder those they rule over. Those who are being ruled over are already too much like Zombie Sheeple, for too long, to be able to do anything about that, if they ever recognized enough of that before hand. We are rushing towards the limits to growth through the ways that social pyramid systems actually operate, which is on the basis of small minorities who specialize in being dishonest and violent, in order to control large majorities, who have adapted to ignorant and afraid, or by existing within ranges of apathy, as various degrees of combinations of ignorance and fear.
Those kinds of political processes have been developing for thousands of years, at an exponentially accelerating rate. Those systems of debt slavery, backed by wars based on deceits, are driving numbers which are debt insanities, which are going to provoke death insanities. In that context, the main ways that human civilization will respond to the real limits to growth are through Peak Insanities, because the fundamental ways that civilization operates is through enforced frauds, whereby the ruling classes use violence to back up lies. Since the whole system is based on that foundation, and has been operating though those means, for a long time, for many generations, that has resulted in social specialization, where there are some basic groups, the ruling classes, Vicious Wolves, directing more Domesticate Dogs (as well as feeding some Wild Dogs), to control the masses of Zombie Sheeple, within whom are some protestors, the Black Sheeple.
In that context, most of the Black Sheeple tend to underestimate the degree of evil in the Vicious Wolves, as well as over-estimate the degree of political awakening possible in the Zombie Sheeple. That makes dealing with the emergence of real diminishing returns, as the various limits to growth, practically impossible to be done in any ways other than through Peak Insanities. It is practically impossible to have any kind of rational political debates with either the ruling classes, or those they rule over, because they are both operating inside of multi-generational social systems, fundamentally based on backing up lies with violence, in which both have their respective roles regarding how they have adapted to continue those systems.
Since the basic structure of Neolithic Civilizations was based on the history of warfare, where success was based upon deceits, which then was the foundation of a financial system which was based on enforced frauds, and since the ruling classes work hard to promote things like false flag attacks, and so forth, to keep the masses ignorantly afraid, it is NOT possible to have any rational public debates about the approaching limits to growth, and their consequences. Instead, we are regressing towards a sort of NeoFeudalism, which is but a phase towards later phases which probably are going to become much worse. I repeat, we are not merely headed towards a great "die-off" due to exponential growth based on strip-mining the Earth's resources having overshot sustainability to an extreme degree, rather, we are actually headed towards a great "kill-off." (The events on 9/11/2001 continue, so far, to be the most spectacular symbol of how the ruling classes are actually responding to problems such as Peak Oil.)
Meanwhile, the Zombie Sheeple are mostly too ignorantly afraid, or apathetically clueless, to be able respond. Furthermore the Black Sheeple who are somewhat aware of these impending problems tend to usually not be able and willing to comprehend the degree to which the authorities are not merely incompetent, but rather evil. Most of the apparent authorities are various degrees of puppets, whose whole careers were based on being professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, which perfected their ability to be willfully blind, or develop attitudes which enabled them to deliberately not investigate things, despite there being indications that they should have. Meanwhile, other real authorities remain more hidden. (It is my opinion that even those pyramidion people have now lost control over the systems that they originally made and maintained.)
Since the fundamental structure of social pyramid systems have become legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, in which context more rational evidence and logical arguments are pretty well irrelevant, that is the lens through which one should focus how that civilization is going to respond to running into the limits to growth, which will be to manifest Peak Insanities, which will accompany Peak Everything Else. The ruling classes are relatively more aware of the real problems than those they rule over. However, their preparations are primarily covert, and directed towards deliberately causing a great "kill-off." (I regard the phrase "die-off" as too abstract and value neutral to capture what will actually happen, within the established social pyramid systems, which were based on thousands of years of the history of backing up lies with violence.)
The people who are ruled over are way too politically incompetent idiots to respond, especially since the various kinds of reactionary revolutionaries, or Black Sheeple, are going to continue attempting to "lead" the Zombie Sheeple backwards, towards becoming better Sheeple, by exhorting them to return to some old-fashioned religions or ideologies, as the "solutions" for these problems of exponential growth overshooting. In my view, because it is almost impossible to overstate the degree to which civilization became based on legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, such as symbolized by globalized electronic frauds, backed by the threat of the force of atomic bombs, it is also almost impossible to overstate the degree to which that civilization is going to respond to the limits to its growth by going through psychotic breakdowns, manifesting Peak Insanities.
Neither the ruling classes, nor those they rule over, are able and willing to develop better death control systems, to back up better debt controls systems, so that there could actually emerge better human and industrial ecologies. Rather, the existing combined murder/money systems are based on a prolonged history of the maximum possible deceits and frauds, in which the ruling classes are relatively more aware of that, but operate those things more covertly, while those they rule over are mostly brainwashed to believe in bullshit, to the degree that they have been conditioned to mostly not want to know what is really going on.
The on-going battles for the control of resources will surely provoke runway Peak Insanities. The only genuine alternatives would require better systems of death controls, because, by definition, that is what the real limits to growth actually must mean. However, since the established systems of death controls were based on the maximum possible deceits, and those are now runaways towards Peak Insanities, there are no good reasons to expect anything better.
Better solutions to these kinds of problems would require a better creative synthesis of the now crazily compartmentalized ways that those problems were resolved in the past. There would need to be intellectual scientific revolutions, to change the basic paradigms in profound ways, from the deeper areas of the philosophy of science, on through politics, into the monetary and military systems. In a sense, that IS going to happen. There WILL be new human and industrial ecologies being developed. However, those will primarily happen through the established systems based on lies backed by violence going through psychotic breakdowns, which may open up some unpredictable opportunities in the future?
Debt? Just quit paying it. They stole it from you anyways.
"Tell 'em that you pinned the check to your guillotine."
For the white, non-Ashkenazi, middle-class, what's left of it, property taxes will be the trigger--the proverbial straw.
I have friends that could care less about my knowledge of what is happening to them and that they should wake up. However, more and more are now beginning to ask me questions that seem to be motivated by their rising property tax bills--"Rent" as I like to call it.
Now all of sudden they are receptive to how they are getting bent over a log and taken. Many of them are pissed that they can't sell their homes for even half of what they could in 2007, but their "rent" bills have more than doubled since.
I am happy to inform and educate them and show them my guillotine.
I recently held one guy in thrall as to how the local corruption is directly linked to the national corruption. I thought that I was boring him. It turns out that, now that his ears were open, he was just amazed as to what I was telling him and how he could have been so blind all of these years. He left with my copy of The Creature from Jekyll Island.
My main message to them, him, and any reading this, is that voting is NOT the answer at this point, but to DEMAND that they, the pols and crats, follow the law, and if they don't...
The Four Rs
Rejection: Quit paying, quit obeying, quit playing
Revolution: It is inevitable, so prepare, as they are.
Retribution: The guilty must answer for their crimes against the American people and the Constitution.
Restoration: Restore the American people, country and Constitutional republic.
It's hard to have a revolution when you can't get gasoline to drive to the riot.
Hard to resist the revolution when it lives all around you.
Just hijack the nearest government or military owned vehicle. It works everywhere else.
Saw an Elizabeth Warren Video last week (few years old)
Something about the Coming Crisis.
5 Big Expenses were getting bigger in the USA. And she researched and found lots of things were cheaper or flat.
1) Mortgages
2) Cars (we need at least 2 for 4 person family)
3) Health Insurance (This was before ACA)
4) Child Care (Since 2 people work now)
5) Taxes (She says they have increased since 1973 and they did after 2008 Crisis, plus ACA now)
I'm in agreement that property tax is the most likely straw to break the camels back.
I seriously doubt it will be gun confiscation (and not because of the Oath Keepers and their promise to not confiscate- they are too busy kicking down doors enforcing the war on drugs, writing speeding tickets, and seizing private assets for profit).
Gun confiscation will be done by Obama's private Federal goon army, not the regular police.
Gun confiscation is coming and fast. That was what Sandy Hoax was all about.
The know that our weapons are our instruments to "...throw off such government" and "...water the Tree of Liberty with the blood of tyrants."
Concealed carry is part of this. They push concealed carry (an infringement of the 2nd.) and then when they come for our long guns ,that they most fear, they will say that it is, "Not gun confiscation because you can keep your handgun (singular) and even carry it in public."
However, their next big move will be against the Internet, as they know, after Sandy Hoax and Boston Boom, that the Internet is too dangerous to leave uncontrolled--too much truth and thinking on the Internet.
“I have planted around my guillotine tall ‘blades of grass’.”
Additional note on my comment:
One guy was telling me what he had figured out after a few years of trying to sell his home:
"Buyers say they can only afford a certain payment, and combined with the local taxes, the selling price is too high. Then they say that at the rate the taxes are going up, the price is still too high. It is like the higher the taxes go the more I have to lower the price."
Bingo, bingo! Looks like someone just discovered "discounting."
He also said, "It is like they're extorting me for the roof over my head." Another “bingo, bingo!”
“Law and looting rhyme.”
+100
Things tend to only be as smart as they have to be. Thinking takes time and energy that could be much better used on reading zero hedge. Once formerly productive people can't make ends meet, they can't afford ac and cable tv, the spouse gets grumpy and all the other pleasantries of poverty people will all of a sudden get very smart very fast, then they will become angry. Once this wave starts no amount APC or stockpiled ammo will save the status quo and the more they fight against change the more painful it will be. ( that might be their idea)
How Neofeudalism differs from the facade known as 'democracy' I've not a clue.
All mobs are controlled by those with resources.
Good point.
It seems to be the natural human order. Anyway, we've never lived otherwise. I guess we managed to fool ourselves for a while is all, now the joke is on us.
Enjoy your 'fair' property taxes, the rich thank you sheep. Keep reading ZH and falling for the propaganda that the rich pay for all. It should be obvious to even a monkey that ALL taxes are paid by low income peasants.
The peasants ALWAYS pay for the LORD's upkeep, but, you can believe the bullshit espoused here that rich pay more than their share of taxes.
If some people have access to "nearly free money" from a central bank or other gov't systems, what you have is not a "free market". The author suffers from an inability to distinguish crony capitalism (aka fascism) from actual free markets.
A free market by definition must have a free market in money, where the monetary commodity is selected by market particpants, not imposed by a violent clique of "rulers". It must also have the price of money (interest rates) set by the market and not by a poitburo of central planners.
(I coined the term tax donkeys on July 7, 2010 and have found no earlier useage.)
I'm officially coining both Tax Dumbass (taxpayer), and Taxing Jackass (government) as of 7/10/2014.
While we're at it, I may as well copyright Fed horse's ass, and tax dat ass up, for Zerocare.
And when there's not enough ass to go around, they'll just rob your ass.
Neo feudalism in action : FED's Fischer says breaking up the TBTF would be counter productive.
Amen! the FED protects its shareholders not the mandate given to it by the US treasury; aka ensuring that money is printed to serve the economy not the crooks.
You can see Janet shaking his hand on that !
Charles, if anyone has ever wondered exactly what Mayer Amschel meant by his boast on controlling a country’s money, you have just explained it.
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws." — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild
Yeah, JR.
Important to emphasize!
In my opinion, there is a consistent theme that almost all the articles featured on Zero Hedge tend to underestimate or understate how bad thing really are. Only a minority of the comments upon those articles appear to "Get It."
To expand upon the reply that I already posted above, as well as to nod in the general direction of some others, I will repeat what I think are crucial points to understand how and why what this article reports upon IS happening.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlons_razor
Hanlon's razor:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Hanlon's razor, like Occam's razor, are good principles, up until the point where one starts to ignore overwhelming evidence and arguments to the contrary. I did not start off with my views as a preconceived prejudice. Rather, I was forced to come to those opinions as unavoidable conclusions that I WISH that I did not believe.
The single simplest symbol was the way that hemp, the single best plant for people, for food, fiber, fun and medicine, was rebranded as "marijuana that is almost as bad as murder," and therefore all cannabis cultivation was criminalized for decade after decade. That was always driven by the international bankers, by their international organizations, from the beginning. The first group to start promoting that was the Egyptian cotton industry. All kinds of other industries also wanted to put hemp out of business, because otherwise they could not compete. The anti-pot propaganda was deliberately delivered with the assistance of racism and sexism. 75% of the war on drugs was the war on marijuana, which never needed to exist all, other than for a lot of evil ulterior purposes.
As I said in my reply already posted above, the single most spectacular symbol was that the events on 9/11/2001 were an inside job, false flag attack, which were deliberately designed to make the war on terror become a vicious self-fulfilling prophesy, the same as the war on drugs was before that. The basic systems were DEBT SLAVERY BACKED BY WARS BASED ON DECEITS. Those did NOT happen by accidental mistakes, nor were they perpetuated with similar attitudes. Rather, those were deliberately designed.
According to my research, over several decades, every area that I have ever looked into revealed that there was NOT incompetence, but rather malice. The presumption called Hanlon's razor is a good idea, as a special case of Occam's razor, when there is NOT enough evidence to conclude otherwise. However, in my view, anyone who believes that the political events are not guided by malice aforethought is looking only at the superficial puppets, while not looking deeper at their puppet masters.
Remember, the oldest book on The Art of War starts by saying that "success in war depends upon deceits," and ends by saying that "spies are the most important soldiers." Thousands of years of history created the War Kings, who survived by following those principles. The sovereign states that were created by those War Kings then had their political processes captured by the Fraud Kings, the bankers, dominating the funding of the political processes, in all possible ways. The only method to understand the otherwise blatant social insanity of the people's representatives giving away the power to private banks to make the public "money" supply out of nothing is to understand the biggest gangsters were the banksters.
Furthermore, all of those kinds of insights actually should be generalized to become universal principles. The ways that general energy systems operate through human civilizations are best described by the principles and methods of organized crime, which fractally repeat their patterns at the different levels, where the lies are different at every level. Human realities are always organized lies operating robberies. All private property is based on claims backed by coercions. Private property does not exist outside of some system of public violence. Money, as the most abstract form of private property, is based on measurement backed by murder. The essential problems that we face are that the biggest bullies' bullshit social stories dominate everything, including some of the basic ways that we think about the philosophy of science. (For instance, as arbitrary minus sign was inserted into the entropy equations in thermodynamics and information theory, so that measurements of power and information would be in positive numbers, while the mathematics itself says that all power and information actually have negative values.)
Thousands of years of controlling civilization through systems of lies backed by violence, which have now become governments, like that of the USA, being almost totally based on legalized lies backed by legalized violence, make dealing with any of the increasingly apparent problems practically impossible, on TWO different levels. The FIRST is that the actual death controls are operated through the maximum possible deceits, which back up the debt controls which operate through the maximum possible frauds. The SECOND is that the controlled opposition groups operate within the same frame of reference as was originally promoted by the biggest bullies. Therefore, the first and foremost problem is that the central features of human ecology are its death controls, which were operated through the maximum possible deceits, which included how the controlled opposition groups to the established systems used the same language of false fundamental dichotomies, and related impossible ideals. However, such impossible ideals always make the opposite happen in the real world, which is what the biggest bullies promoted, as their bullshit, as then parroted by the controlled opposition, who are similarly professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, corresponding to the different levels of the social pyramid systems that they operate on.
Overall, it is impossible to overestimate the degree to which the persistent privatization of profits, along with socialization of losses, has resulted in attitude of profoundly evil deliberate ignorance towards the runaway, apparently irreconcilable social polarization, as well as the increasingly irreparable environmental destruction. In that overall context, people who apply Hanlon's razor are doing so primarily out of ignorance. The FIRST level of that ignorance is to doubt that the pyramidion people are collectively a group of trillionaire mass murderers, who have become criminally insane, because their only qualifications where that they were the best at being dishonest and backing that up with violence, but otherwise, their psychological and political habits are NOT adapted to the development of their globalized electronic frauds, backed by the threat of the force of atomic bombs. The SECOND level of that ignorance is to fail to recognize that such social pyramid systems were sets of expedient solutions to chronic political problems which are inherent in the nature of life. That is to say, FIRST, the actual human ecology is operated through deceitful death controls, which back up the political economy's fraudulent debt controls, and SECOND human systems must necessarily have their murder systems as central to everything else,
The Grand Canyon Paradoxes are progress in various physical sciences, through a series of profound paradigm shifts, which were scientific revolutions, that enabled technologies to become order of magnitude after order of magnitude more powerful and capable, while nothing like that has be able to happen in political science. The primary reasons for that were that warfare was the oldest and best developed social science, whose success was based on deceits, which made it a profoundly paradoxical science, while economics was a science like warfare, in that the foundation of finance at the present time is the fraud of making "money" out of nothing by private banks, which fraud is enforced by governments.
All of the progress in understanding general energy systems better has not been able to be applied to understand human beings as energy systems too, because the biggest bullies' bullshit totally dominates the language that society uses. We live in a Bizarro Mirror World, where governments are the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gang of criminals. Furthermore, that must necessarily be the case, because when one consistently applies the principles of general energy systems to human energy systems, it then becomes clear that human societies actually are best described as operating according to the methods of organized crime.
Human beings, when defined to be subtracted from their environment, so that they can be named, assigned properties, and told stories about, are necessarily operating as entropic pumps. They are taking energy and matter from their environment. Basically, groups of human beings live as gangs of robbers in their environment. The industrial revolutions have merely increased the scope of the hunter/gatherer behaviors, to include more minerals, and fossil fuels, etc., all of which are reaching diminishing returns from having been high-graded to hell, as the planet was strip-mined.
Theoretically, the limits of the environment, which force there to be limits to growth, require human beings to develop a different human ecology, and furthermore, the new kingdom of life that is emerging through industry requires its own industrial ecologies to emerge, IF those are going to adapt, like natural ecologies previously did, to live within their limits. Furthermore, ideally those human and industrial ecologies ought to be reconciled with the natural ecologies which can be saved and fortified. However, since real human ecology is done through death controls based on the maximum possible deceits, while the industrial systems are operated through accounting systems based on the maximum possible frauds, developing any better human and industrial ecologies is extremely problematic. It is impossible to reconcile natural energy systems based on the conservation of energy, with fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems, where "money" is made out of nothing, and can disappear back to nothing! That is made even more problematic by the people who do not perceive and understand how and why the ruling classes became as extremely evil as they actually are, because such a public "money" system was the result of applying the methods of organized crime to capture control over the powers of governments. Those who use Hanlon's razor to presume there was only incompetent stupidity are making at least TWO levels of mistakes. FIRST, they are not thinking seriously about the real history of the combined money/murder systems, and SECOND they are not thinking more deeply about how and why that was the real human history.
Actually, both the empirical and theoretical converge. There must be some murder systems, and the money systems were backed by those. The real history of the combined murder/money systems were the development of expedient sets of solutions to chronic political problems. I repeat the basics: energy systems are controlled by their most labile components, which in human systems are the people who are the best at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence, and energy systems flow along their path of least resistance, which requires the least action, which in human systems means the path of least morality.
It takes organizing resistance to change the path of least resistance. What exists are the dynamic equilibria of different systems of organized lies operating robberies. It is possible to develop better dynamic equilibria, or for those to get relatively worse. Right now, we are in a runaway fascist plutocracy juggernaut, being steered by oligarchical cartels, while the vast majority of people do not understand that, because they have been conditioned to not want to understand that. One of the ways that mainstream morons and reactionary revolutionaries fail to understand the real world is that they continue to be sufficiently ignorant to be able to presume to use Hanlon's razor, that does not perceive enough of the nature of the pyramidion people, despite there being plenty of rational evidence and logical arguments to demonstrate the existence and operation of the social pyramid systems. As I said that is merely the FIRST level of error, which then relates to the SECOND level of error, which is avoid the issue of the death controls as much as possible.
Any system of alternatives must have alternative death controls, as the keystone to hold that arc of possible creative alternatives up, or to act as the lynch pin to hold the components of such a system of alternatives integrated together. After one has life, then that comes as a package deal. The central core to the direction of the evolution of life are its death controls. The production of destruction controls production. That is what drives natural selection, as a real selection force. Human intelligence was the internalization of natural selection. However, along the way there, we developed warfare based on deceits, and finance based on frauds, as the most successful short-term social strategies. Those are the primary reasons why we are so dismally unable to develop better human and industrial ecologies, while, instead, we destroy the natural environment in criminally insane ways!
We have almost inconceivably crazy and corrupt systems of artificial selection, whose success was based on deceits and frauds. The controlled opposition groups against those established systems are already almost totally co-opted and compromised into the same language, and spout similar bullshit that the biggest bullies originally promoted. Therefore, the controlled opposition does not provide better death controls, but rather promotes the absurdities that there should be no death controls, which impossible ideals actually cause the opposite to happen, which are the deceitful death controls, backing up fraudulent debt controls, driving the criminally insane systems that exist today, which depend upon promoting attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance towards almost everything that is really happening.
Relying upon Hanlon's razor is one of the examples of that evil deliberate ignorance towards what is really happening, which then FIRST level of error enables the SECOND level of error, which is to NOT follow through intellectual scientific revolutions in the philosophy of science which would apply to politics, in order to radically change how the death controlling murder systems back up the debt controlling money systems. Indeed, the overwhelming vast majority of people do not, so far, have even the first glimpses of a clue about what kinds of intellectual scientific revolutions may be necessary, to change the philosophy of science enough. As the industrial revolutions created an increasingly technological civilization, the philosophy of science should have been the first priority of that civilization. However, so, far, that has NOT happened. Instead, progress in physical sciences was primarily employed to become better at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence. Since we think about entropy backwards, we understand energy systems backwards, and we understand human energy systems backwards the most of all. Therefore, we understand our death controls the most backwards of anything.
As the limits to growth threaten to reveal debt insanities, which could provoke death insanities, there is nothing more theoretically imperative than to change our philosophy of science, to correct its errors, in order to think in radically different ways about the purposes of the death controls, in order that radically different systems of artificial selection could be developed, for the sake of all aspects of the natural, human, and industrial ecologies. However, in order to do that, enough people have to understand their real problems in enough of a better way to make that possible. At the present time, Hanlon's razor, used to deliberately ignore how the pyramidion people made and maintained the social pyramid systems, is a serious error, which compounds itself on LEVEL AFTER LEVEL, WHERE THE LIES ARE DIFFERENT AT EVERY LEVEL!
Can the path of least resistance in human systems also be described as "business as usual"? I think so, if the industrial ecology of the last few decades is anything to go by, and the milestone event of 2001 which gave birth to "the NEW war" is considered for what it really was. The new war was needed for a reason and as you say the trillionaires weren't doing it for the money. I reitereate that it is a clamp, a control, a death control mechanism, chosen from the "business-as-usual" armoury, because a more severe control was required. Why was a more severe control required at the dawn of the 21st century? Because something had gotten out of "their" control. But what?
One member of the controlled opposition had gone rouge, out of control. The climate scientists. Scientists of all stripes were having a field day but this group started developing theories that the priests of the temple realized spelled trouble for their BAU modus operandi. Problem was that the scientific community overall was enjoying a high degree of freedom (because the elite were too arrogant believing they could keep control?) and power as the public was open to listening to scientists that were helping to deliver some benefits in their post-war world, a world from which the trusty farmer was displaying growing trust in the science of the green revolution.
But as the theory of AGW developed and the data started coming in faster and faster, events started to spiral out of control because those damn scientists started sharing and talking! Next thing you know they're talking "protocol" in Montreal! Well of course it would be political suicide to stand in the way of science but now it's obvious things are starting to get out of control. Within a decade it's obvious that the threat to BAU is real and that means it's time to take control of this opposition to BAU... Corral them into the UN and let the bullshit begin!
When the data showed what was going on, it was clear a control mechanism was required but "path of least morality" was all they knew. The NEW war was their blank cheque, actually the plastic card, to reaffirm control, and debt insanities were reborn backed by the deceitful war.
Those peskie science academies still had to operate within the framework convention so control was maintained as the trillionaires squeeked through the AR4 and Copenhagen. It was a bit nerve-wracking though so obviously it was time to double-down and redouble. Riding high on the victory, they didn't think they had to worry and AR5 was given the green light...
"It takes organizing resistance to change the path of least resistance. What exists are the dynamic equilibria of different systems of organized lies operating robberies. It is possible to develop better dynamic equilibria, or for those to get relatively worse. "
The events of the past few years makes it appear to me that the resistance is organizing. It is in the process of proving itself on the world stage so that when it arrives in Paris in December 2015 it will have a track record and hence a voice. Obviously my hope is that The Resistance will propose the development of better dynamic equalibria. The stakes are high and everyone knows it. No AR6 is the least of our worries...
-------
It's regrettable that it took 25 years and great sorrows to get here. In Paris the Banksters are going to be told by the new gang that they best get on board. Finally radical thinking and a new philosophy of science will take over!
All roads lead to Paris
I agree, MEAN BUSINESS, the emerging prestige of "scientists" became a problem to try to control, for those who were already in control, that wanted to keep that kind of critical thinking strictly compartmentalized. The conflict was intense, due to science supposed to pursue the truth, as best it can, while social control tended to be based on backing up lies with violence.
For instance, in the case of Canada, there developed an entire series of news stories, about which even books were published, that the government of Canada was deliberately suppressing the scientists that worked for the government, due to the government attempting to control public opinions regarding issues that those scientists were experts upon. Ideology was struggling to trump evidence and logic, in ways which it was previously able to do much more easily.
I like to indulge in the relative optimism that the attempts to control scientists have become so bad that they appear to now be backfiring ??? which is what I suspect you meant about the future events, such as in Paris 2015?
Yes, RM, I think there is a mystic rhythm in play. How it plays out is as you say iffy, as in the effort to return balance to the equalibria could backfire and unleash the Insanities.
Instead of working on the climate problem, we were dealing with 9/11. Instead of working on an agreement signed in Copenhagen, we were dealing with the financial crisis, The Arab Spring and OWS, Lybia, Syria, Ukraine, and now Iraq. It almost starts to look as though the rate of increase in the 'facts' regarding the climate situation (especially the spectacular decrease in Arctic ice extent in 2012 and the recent news regarding the West Antarctic Ice Sheet) is being shadowed by the increase in crazy events around the world. Like those farmers always say, "you can't fool Mother Nature".
I don't want to hold the scientists up as gods which is why I too am thankful for all the work of the IPCC and the scientists that give the IPCC their materials. While I would like to think that they find their work satisfying, at the end of the day all they can do is write reports on what they've learned. I might equate them to farmers who can't do really much more than grow the food. It's the chefs that take the food and make something truly amazing out of it and it's the "leaders" who take the science and do something amazing with that. Well, Copenhagen cooked up nothing but split-pea soup (YUK I hate split pea soup!) (as an aside, it would be more "unitary" if everyone grew a little food, did a little science?)
Well I think Copenhagen left a very bad taste in people's mouths. Bitter in fact. (maybe it's just me lol!). But should we direct our disatisfaction at the farmers... or the head chef?
Yes, I'm growing more and more optimistic, as the bullshit gets deeper and deeper, that Chef! is going to arrive in Paris and discover that there is a team of chefs already running the show and the grand feast includes wine and song ; )
viva la revolution? now, about those death controls...
thanks for the reply RM!
That's due to both being the most unstable forms of work.