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Financial Feudalism
Submitted by Dmirty Orlov via Club Orlov blog,
Once upon a time—and a fairly long time it was—most of the thickly settled parts of the world had something called feudalism. It was a way of organizing society hierarchically. Typically, at the very top there was a sovereign (king, prince, emperor, pharaoh, along with some high priests). Below the sovereign were several ranks of noblemen, with hereditary titles. Below the noblemen were commoners, who likewise inherited their stations in life, be it by being bound to a piece of land upon which they toiled, or by being granted the right to engage in a certain type of production or trade, in case of craftsmen and merchants. Everybody was locked into position through permanent relationships of allegiance, tribute and customary duties: tribute and customary duties flowed up through the ranks, while favors, privileges and protection flowed down.
It was a remarkably resilient, self-perpetuating system, based largely on the use of land and other renewable resources, all ultimately powered by sunlight. Wealth was primarily derived from land and the various uses of land. Here is a simplified org chart showing the pecking order of a medieval society.
Feudalism was essentially a steady-state system. Population pressures were relieved primarily through emigration, war, pestilence and, failing all of the above, periodic famine. Wars of conquest sometimes opened up temporary new venues for economic growth, but since land and sunlight are finite, this amounted to a zero-sum game.
But all of that changed when feudalism was replaced with capitalism. What made the change possible was the exploitation of nonrenewable resources, the most important of which was energy from burning fossilized hydrocarbons: first peat and coal, then oil and natural gas. Suddenly, productive capacity was decoupled from the availability of land and sunlight, and could be ramped up almost, but not quite, ad infinitum, simply by burning more hydrocarbons. Energy use, industry and population all started going up exponentially. A new system of economic relations was brought into being, based on money that could be generated at will, in the form of debt, which could be repaid with interest using the products of ever-increasing future production. Compared with the previous, steady-state system, the change amounted to a new assumption: that the future will always be bigger and richer—rich enough to afford to pay back both principal and interest.
With this new, capitalistic arrangement, the old, feudal relationships and customs fell into disuse, replaced by a new system in which the ever-richer owners of capital squared off against increasingly dispossessed labor. The trade union movement and collective bargaining allowed labor to hold its own for a while, but eventually a number of factors, such as automation and globalization, undermined the labor movement, leaving the owners of capital with all the leverage they could want over a demoralized surplus population of former industrial workers. In the meantime, the owners of capital formed their own pseudo-aristocracy, but without the titles or the hereditary duties and privileges. Their new pecking order was predicated on just one thing: net worth. How many dollar signs people have next to their name is all that's necessary to determine their position in society.
But eventually almost all the good, local sources of hydrocarbon-based energy became depleted, and had to be replaced using lower-quality, more remote, harder-to-produce, more expensive ones. This took a big bite out of economic growth, because with each passing year more and more of it had to be plowed right back into producing the energy needed to simply sustain, never mind grow, the system. At the same time, industry produced a lot of unpleasant byproducts: environmental pollution and degradation, climate destabilization and other externalities. Eventually these started showing up as high insurance premiums and remediation costs for natural and man-made disasters, and these too put a damper on economic growth.
Population growth has its penalties too. You see, bigger populations translate to bigger population centers, and research results show that the bigger the city, the higher is its energy use per capita. Unlike biological organisms, where the larger the animal, the slower is its metabolism, the intensity of activity needed to sustain a population center increases along with population. Observe that in big cities people talk faster, walk faster, and generally have to live more intensely and operate on a tighter schedule just to stay alive. All of this hectic activity takes energy away from constructing a bigger, richer future. Yes, the future may be ever more populous (for now) but the fastest-growing form of human settlement on the planet is the urban slum—lacking in social services, sanitation, rife with crime and generally unsafe.
What all of this means is that growth is self-limiting. Next, observe that we have already reached these limits, and have in some cases gone far beyond them. The currently failing fad of hydraulic fracturing of shale deposits and steaming oil out of tar sands is indicative of the advanced state of depletion of fossil fuel sources. Climate destabilization is producing ever more violent storms, ever more severe droughts (California now has just a year's worth of water left) and is predicted to wipe out entire countries because of rising ocean levels, failing monsoon seasons and dwindling irrigation water from glacial melt. Pollution has likewise reached its limits in many areas: urban smog, be it in Paris, Beijing, Moscow or Teheran, has become so bad that industrial activities are being curtailed simply so that people can breathe. Radioactivity from the melted-down nuclear reactors at Fukushima in Japan is showing up in fish caught on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
All of these problems are causing a very strange thing to happen to money. In the previous, growth phase of capitalism, money was borrowed into existence in order to bring consumption forward and by so doing to stimulate economic growth. But a few years ago a threshold was reached in the US, which was at the time still the epicenter of global economic activity (since eclipsed by China), where a unit of new debt produced less than one unit of economic growth. This made borrowing from the future with interest no longer possible.
Whereas before money was borrowed in order to produce growth, now it had to be borrowed, in ever-larger amounts, simply to prevent financial and industrial collapse. Consequently, interest rates on new debt were reduced all the way to zero, in something that came to be known as ZIRP, for Zero Interest Rate Policy. To make it even sweeter, central banks accepted the money they loaned out at 0% interest as deposits, which earned a tiny bit of interest, allowing banks to make a profit by doing absolutely nothing.
Unsurprisingly, doing absolutely nothing proved to be rather ineffective, and around the world economies started to shrink. Many countries resorted to forging their statistics to paint a rosier picture, but one statistic that doesn't lie is energy consumption. It is indicative of the overall level of economic activity, and it is down across the entire world. A glut of oil, and a much lower oil price, is what we are currently witnessing as a result. Another indicator that doesn't lie is the Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the level of shipping activity, and it has plummeted too.
And so ZIRP set the stage for the latest, most queer development: interest rates have started to go negative, both on loans and deposits. Good bye, ZIRP, hello, NIRP! Central banks around the world are starting to make loans at small negative rates of interest. That's right, certain central banks now pay certain financial institutions to borrow money! In the meantime, interest rates on bank deposits have gone negative as well: keeping your money in the bank is now a privilege, for which one must pay.
But interest rates are certainly not negative for everyone. Access to free money is a privilege, and those who are privileged are the bankers, and the industrialists they fund. Those who have to borrow to finance housing are less privileged; those who borrow to pay for education even less so. Those not privileged at all are those who are forced to buy food using credit cards, or take out payday loans to pay rent.
The functions which borrowing once played in capitalist economies have been all but abandoned. Once upon a time, the idea was that access to capital could be obtained based on a good business plan, and that this allowed entrepreneurship to flourish and many new businesses to be formed. Since anybody, and not just the privileged, could take out a loan and start a business, this meant that economic success depended, at least to some extent, on merit. But now business formation has gone in reverse, with many more enterprises going out of business than are being formed, and social mobility has become largely a thing of the past. What is left is a rigidly stratified society, with privileges dispensed based on hereditary wealth: those at the top get paid to borrow, and get to surf on a wave of free money, while those at the bottom are driven ever further into debt servitude and destitution.
Can NIRP underpin a new feudalism? It certainly cannot reverse the downward slide, because the factors that are putting limits on growth are not amenable to financial manipulation, being physical in nature. You see, no amount of free money can make new natural resources spring into existence. What it can do, however, is freeze the social hierarchy among the owners of capital—for a while, but not forever.
Everywhere you care to look, the ever-shrinking economy eventually results in populist revolt, war and national bankruptcy, and these cause money to stop working in a number of ways. There is usually devaluation, bank failures, inability to finance imports, and the demise of pensions and of the public sector. The desire to survive causes people to focus on getting direct access to physical resources, distributing them among friends and family.
In turn, this causes market mechanisms to become extremely opaque and distorted, and often to stop functioning altogether. Under these circumstances, how many dollar signs someone has next to their name becomes rather a moot point, and we should expect the social hierarchy among the owners of capital to become unstable and capsize. A few among them have the talents to become warlords, and these few fleece the rest out of existence. But overall, in a situation where financial institutions have failed, where factories and other enterprises are no longer functioning, and where real estate holdings have been overrun by marauding mobs and/or invaded by squatters, one's net worth becomes rather difficult to compute. And so we should expect the org chart of the post-capitalist society, in spreadsheet terms, to look like this. (“#REF!” is what Excel displays when it encounters an invalid cell reference in a formula.)
A good, precise term for this state of affairs is “anarchy.” Once a new, low level of steady-state subsistence is reached, the process of aristocratic formation can begin anew. But unless a new source of cheap fossil fuels is somehow magically discovered, this process would have to proceed along the traditional, feudal lines.
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The new top-of-the-pyramid will be white, middle-aged gun owners with shitloads of ammo and sunken boatloads of pm's.
Where are all the negative rate credit cards?? Shit gets real interesting when that (doesn't) happen....................
Cue Monty Python please.
Zerohedge is banned on Facebook.
zerohedge is banned from facebook just like me...the truth is not welcomed
Zio-Book is banned from ZH!
We have not been living through a period of capitalism.
It is and has been neo-feudalism where central planning and a debt-based slavery money system was utilized to make serfs of everyone.
And this central planning debt feudalism system is now failing.
This is where they reboot the matrix.
The correct Financial Feudalism ladder goes: Oligarch - Politician - Military - Police - Serf
Resistance is futile...
i continue to beleive there was a breif period in history that featured a respite from tyranny and feudalism, as best ensconced in the writings of thomas jefferson.
I beleive a similar brief window was experienced about 2500 years ago by the greeks.
None of us will be alive to see the next window
What comes next? And the dumb shit calls this capitalism? Dafuq did you go to school? Bailing out losers and forcing people to makeeconomic decisions based on government whims, who told you that was capitalism? Government set interest rates and money printing to finance bankrupt zombie banks to keep them afloat and using Dodd frank to attack small banks that didn't destroy the economy and need a bailout? Who the fuq thinks that's capitalism?
Zero interest ( or shit negative rates in Europe).
Where is the Ben stiller going full retard meme cuz that's what this author must look like.
There is no such thing as minimum wage or bailouts or corporate subsidies in capitalism. It is the opposite of capitalism.
You sound like a guy who actually believes in the fairy tale capitalism put out by the Austrians. You probably also believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny as well...
you dis Austrian economics? What, you have a problem with fidelity to mathematics?
So what’s the mathematical formula for capitalism (according to the ’Austrian’ school)? All economic ‘science’ is cloaked in correct mathematical formulas (it’s the a priori assumptions that are wrong – like ‘the trickle down effect’, ‘homo economicus’/’the rational man’, ‘equilibrium of supply and demand’ etc. etc. All interesting hypothesizes that, however, have been empirically proven wrong – but who needs empirical data when you have closed ‘logical’ mathematically constructed paradigms (that serves the interests of a minority)?).
Good thing no one on Zero Hedge gives a fuck about facebook.
facewhat ?
Yourface, mytube.
wrong
Fascinating actually.
I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... www.globe-report.com
OMG! You whore yourself out to strange people for cash?
7K/mo. is chump change! You need to Run for Office!
Back to the Dark Ages of FeudalismWhat has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
.
-King Solomon (2,900 years ago)
Road to Serfdom bitchez !!!11111111
Great Article.
China pledges targeted reform to help RMB included in SDR
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Monday asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to include the Chinese currency in the special drawing rights (SDR) basket.
http://www.ecns.cn/2015/03-24/159146.shtml
http://lh4.ggpht.com/-NdE9TwpBJ1Q/TeUXfk3sUwI/AAAAAAAABJI/S716WehWjP8/Fo...
It wasn't their station in life that kept the Oligarchs in power, it was their ability to unleash violence on other people on a whim - and that is STILL essentially how they stay in power.
Oh - and Orlov might want to read "The Energy Non-Crisis" ....
The response of the people in the middle ages was to kidnap and hold people of power for ransom. That left royalty literally locked in their castles as prisoners only to venture out with armed guards. Which all sounds like Mexico today.
Here I was, just getting used to the idea of a machine overlord. Now, I have to adjust to a tyrant overlord.
Will there be free stuff?
This is what "civilization" is.
The difference between civilization and anarchy.
--
Anarchy = Kill people and steal their shit and look them in the eye when you doit.
Civilization = Kill people behind closed doors by stabbing them in the back, and stealing from people with a smile from behind a desk and a stack of papers.
--
Civilization = People own what they can steal "legally"
Anarchy = People own what they can steal , not by color of law, but by strength and because they are more fit to survive.
--
Civilization is an artificial structure built by weak scared men to garnish the power of strong men by use of mass deception (brain vs. brawn) criminal minds vs. strong individual providers.
Civilization is a monster.
One is forced to conclude that we have two or three species of man, a species that is pre-determined to be a slave race, and a species that is like a criminal vampire race, and maybe just maybe some sub species of strong men who resist the vampires and try to uplift the rest of man out of bondage but are doomed to failure because the slave race is so fucking stupid and brainwashed there is no hope just because of sheer numbers.
Its quite literally van hellsing (say 3% of the population) trying to save 95% of the population from the 2% of them that are fucking vampires.
Civilization is quite possibly the worst thing that ever happened to mankind in terms of social structure formation, under civilized society we are still the same thieving murdering asshole species, but we commit all our dirty deeds with a grin a lie and behind the farce of "law" to make ourselves feel righteous.
Banks pillage the nations of man for private gain leaving death , destruction and starvation in their wake.
Government "officials" profit by protecting said banks under color of law that isn't legal.
And anyone who combats it in any significant way that starts to impact the profits of the farm gets quickly "dealt" with.
Its just the way civilization works.
We need something to replace civilization, you either have Freedom and Anarchy and self reliance, or you have slavery kindly re-branded as "civilized society".
A society where everyone works for them-self, protects them-self, feeds them-self, and builds a future for them-self and chases their own dreams is the scariest thing the "elite" could ever conceive.
Their goal is to keep everyone as desperate as possible, so that they can live on mount Olympus while we all live in Hades, because if everyone drops the mountain, their ivory towers come crumbling down.
Atlas should not only shrug, he is morally obligated to, its his duty.
You have confused anarchy with chaos, and civilization, like freedom, is antithetical to government.
the problem with your 'the strong should dominate' theory is that there are two strains promulgating human evolution: the ability to compete, and the ability to co-operate
the 'civilization' you so thoroughly scorn is simply the structure of those who prefer to co-operate and find strength in numbers
assholes who want to dominate on their own will always be amongst us, but they arent the ones that separate us from the animal kingdom. The co-operators do
Fuck you and your misanthropic selfishness
I disagree, because domination relies on tolerance and the acquiescence of the dominated party.
Its just easier to control someone when you are nice about it and lie to their face... which is in essence what civilization is about . . . a group of people lieing to our face in order for them to get what they want out of us.
A leader has to lie to achieve a desired outcome, because if his outcome was clear and blunt (such as in a more anarchic state) with a low tolerance for (bullshit and bureaucracy and color of law) the leader would be swiftly exiled or worse.
The problem with civilization is, you have to many people willing to cooperate with their own destruction based on lies and political fluff.
Government is a weapon.
You have captured much of the human essence, but cannot agree with every single detail.
A lesson from the Bhagavad Gita is that we should treat evil with complete indifference. This is equivalent to Atlas shrugging.
A social order based on heredity has some advantages: A monarchy doesn't constantly expend blood and treasure deciding who its next leader is going to be, and a king has a strong incentive to tax the peasants lightly (i.e. shear the sheep instead of skinning them) because he hopes to leave a prosperous kingdom for his descendants to rule.
Nor do kings feel the urge to prove how smart they are by writing millions of pages of regulations covering every minutia of daily life and hiring armies of bureaucrats to enforce them. As long as you pay your taxes and don't try to overthrow the king, you can do as you like.
You make a good point. What a waste of time and effort politics are. The constant bullshit and buerocracy is killing us.
Sometimes I think a "King" would not be so bad, if the trade off was cleaning the Buerocracy.
Send 10% up the line, once a year, and leave me the fuck alone.
It may be the natural order of a life form.
Certainly what we have now can't be the pinnacle.
Common law = no injured party no crime. Satautory "law" (not a type of law under the Constitution) = if someone might be injured you may o f broken a law. One is nanny state, one is freedom and liberty.
"Send 10% up the line, once a year, and leave me the fuck alone."
10%?.. yeah right. that would be nice.
I think they'd take a little more like 60%- which I hear happens to be the limit before the riots happen.
"A social order based on heredity has some advantages:"
Notice that all so-called systems of governance place a lot of emphasis on who owns and controls Property. That is because Property is the basis of society, and defines slavery/serfdom. The more control that one that does not produce anything, but on the contrary destroys, exercises over others' Property, the more Life and Liberty he can enjoy at the expense of the producers.
Only a social system based on unhindered ownership and control of Property, including oneself, can foster peace and bear the most fruit for humanity. This is because a social system founded on Property and free exchange of Property is not a zero-sum game like theft and manipulation is.
The banksters need to repay us.
What many can't seem to grasp is that price inflation is but the manifestation of the banksters' and government's prior thefts. Like finding one's wallet has been stolen after the check comes to the table.
Monarchy is a proven form of government.
The problem is the hereditary lineage of the monarchs degrades very rapidly (say every 5~9 generations) the Monarchy turns into a disgusting gene pool of inbred garbage and sociopaths.
All forms of government are doomed to failure.
Because the problem itself is that "government" quite literally means control over people. (Mind Control) quite literally means Instrument of control, or Control of Mind (the root of the word).
Government is not something we all have and participate in, its a weapon used against humans.
No one wants to be controlled or told what to do... which means all governments point guns at their own citizenry . . . and eventually endup growing larger and larger until the expense on the peasentry is so great that it collapses.
Anarchy in which the entire population is intelligent, healthy and capable is the optimal form of governance . . .
Everything volunteer base and incentiveless.
The problem is humanity is flawed, given the opportunity most humans will do the stupid selfish thing at the expense of the group.
Until that changes, until humanity changes, you will have a flawed governmental system of sorts operated and enforced by a flawed greedy people.
The goal is for the entire population to become enlightened , fearless, prosperous, and self-less, without there being a wolf among the flock running around eating the sheep.
If you have a flawed species, you can not expect the social structures they form to be without flaw, in-fact the social structure will always be formed by the worst of the worst , because at the end of the day MOST OF THE TIME its the selfish people who want power the most and endup in leadership positions.
You need a society where people only follow leadership that they agree with. . . what we have now is an "obey the leadership or go hungry or endup in jail model" . . . so people go along with crime and corruption and fraud because to fight it threatens their own bread and butter.
We must revert to------- Anarcho-Socialism!
No, wait, that was Spain in the 30s.
OK, Anarcho-Libertarianism!
local controls, local for-profit guilds and communes, every man a king (thanks, Huey), or at least a free individual.
No Central Govt! Each State is Sovereign. Each state guard is pooled together if invaded. Everyone 16-60 is in the guard.
Sheriff to be the Highest County authority, Governors the highest State authority!
Be productive at something or live in the Obamaville outside town in the woods.
The Big Secret is we do NOT need a "federal goobermint."
Anyone "volunteering" to run for office is Disqualified.
We do NOT need a "private" central bank of thieves!
Each State a Republic!
Agree, but all the really big cities -- Boston, NYC, Chicago, etc. need to be split off into their own states. Otherwise rural citizens won't have the slightest voice in government, they'll be outvoted by the cities.
This is what happened in Greece, Athens pretty much voted to cannibalize the rest of the country with debt.
does that include the mega Trillion dollar war industries/The War Department?-not needing the government i mean
For several years I've said a benevolent dictatorship is the way to go....alas, those words rarely work together.
Pretty sure we've been living under a benevolent dictatorship. The president is not the leader of the free world, he answers to the intelligence angencies who directly or indirectly decide who will and will not hold political office and what their adgendas will be where it maters. (See JFK and Plato's Republic.) The Gaurdian class rule benevolently while the men of Brass are given false choices by which they can be content to ceremoniously exercise their "Freedom".
Where's the benevolence? Because we AREN'T in chains while we work and give ~50% of our production to them?
they are rarely smart enough to look at things that way
yes an 8 pack of razors should cost $32. If you think corporations are piffed, look at revenue less dividends bitchez!
Tyranny or guillotines.
Serf or sovereign.
Livestock or human.
The banksters need to repay us.
Death, Slavery, and Nothing or Life, Liberty, and Property.
Social mobility has been on the decline in the US my whole life, it's always seemed to me. It was about 25 years ago, in my early 20s, that I happened onto the idea that we were reverting to feudalism. For me the realization was triggered by working on some corporate events featuring top executives of a Fortune 500 company. The way people treated them stunned me; it was right out of the Middle Ages. They didn't actually bow and prostrate themselves, but near enough. I'd never seen that before.
Yes, we have a stratified society, and it's not hard to tell who is above whom on the Great Chain of Being. This time around we'll have different titles, but there are definitely Lords and Ladies, a class of retainers to their Eminences, and then a whole lotta serfs whom everyone would prefer to ignore as long as they agree to not cause trouble while their energy is used up to keep the whole thing running. Doesn't matter if it's actual work they do, or just the value of the debt that can be tied to their Social Security numbers.
It's Feudalism.
It is so true what you say. I work for a top 15 Fortune 500 company. When the CEO came around to talk to us, it was as if royalty had entered. I still don't understand that as he is just a man and can bleed and die just like me. Maybe I shouldn't be working in a place like this...
i've posted it b/4, so again.
Fibonacci retrace of human civilazation, soon...7 billion>going back 2000 years>1.75billion(less than 1 b imo)
most likely in low population areas.
1800's lifestyles...
famine top of the list...
1800s lifestyle, with indoor plumbing and solar panels for additional creature comforts (warm water and electricity for basic appliances) is most likely.
Those with education and skills in practical Bio-Chem (for fermented, brewed and distilled foods and beverages), or Electrical or Mechanical Engineering will do well also. Health professionals (doctors, nurses, dentists, surgeons) will always be in demand. As will skilled trades and top-notch teachers.
Lawyers and accountants... not so much, after the Reset.
What an ignorant comment. Lawyers and especially accountants reduce the total costs on an economy. Show me any functioning business without an accounting function. Show me a functioning business community without a mechanism for imposiing liability for negligence, fraud, etc.
You can do the "ism" thing if it makes you feel better.
Those whose brain chemicals thrive on Control, perceived or otherwise, will eventually congregate, and the results will quite naturally reach an inflection point.
That's why we have Rules, and Law.
For when the Controllers ultimately usurp Principle.
MORE ANTI-INDIVIDUAL ANTI-FREE-ENTERPRISE PROPAGADA.
60% OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING IS **** ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS ***.
THE ENTITLEMENT-TIT-SUCKING PROLETARIAT ARE THE MASTERS IN CONTROL.
80% of what the Federal government Activity is to complicate Regulations, Laws, Taxes and Life for Businesses and Citizens while making Education worse every year and empowering Control over the "Free" press. They do this by use of Propaganda, Spin and Information Management.
They deceive people, hide info, and make secrets that support Banking, Corporate, and Monopoly Secrets.
But you are probably in the top 10% or 1% as a Government Contractor, Government Employee, or hereditary wealth or position. But lots of people did well in the 1980s -2010 years so you might just have it made in the shade.
Join the Human Race. Think of the Concept of America. Liberty. Freedom, Equality, and justice for all for your grand kids and children.
Or plan on World War III with a Draft, with slave labor, with nationalization of USA Assets & Industries, think of Metal Scrap Collection Nation Wide, Think of shortages of Clothes, Shoes, Textiles, Batteries, Electronics, Food, Water, metals, and Rare Earth Metals and Mining materials.
YOU are in bottom 1% because YOU are an incompetent failure who must blame others for his failure because YOU do not have brains and balls to stare yourself in the face and accept that YOU live in an environment PLUSH with opportunity for self-improvement but YOU failed to make anything out of those opportunities except envy, resentment, and blaming others to relieve your too-fragile ego of your own responsibility.
I came from no parents and poverty, created businesses and more than 60 products and services, and proudly earned my way into the top 3%. Ironically, YOU probably had MORE opportunity that I did from better family !
Policy should be to recycle all the free-enetrprise failures.
Maybe I'm an Omega and in the top 10%.
You are just a little too Alpha. But I think you probably learn a little here.
This one checks out. Take a look at US Education System:
https://feltd.wordpress.com/2010/09/16/the-prussian-german-educational-s...
The entitlement programs in ALL the developed proletariat "democracies" are the problem, sucking all the earnings from those who earned them and subsidizing laziness, incompetence, and failure. As I previously stated, ** 60% ** of government spending in the USA is for PROLETARIAT ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS - that is what is rocketing up the debt at every level of government - NOT corporations and oligarch boogy men ! The situation is MUCH worse in other G20 countries, eg Europe, where the proletariat-run entitlement state is crushing businesses and the economy.
The proletariat are THE parasitic cancer on legitimate government, business and free-enterprise.
Your point about entitlement spending is well taken, but you fail to consider that the recipients of those entitlements turn around and spend them into the coffers of the corporations who provide the crap sold to the lower classes.
Except for food and fuel, 99% of the "crap" that is "sold" to the lower classes comes from China, a huge portion of it through WalMart, whose explosive growth was fueled by the lower classes who love labor unions and entitlement programs and gleefully raced to WalMart to buy the cheaper imports vs the costlier American made stuff that their own kind used to make. The lower classes impoverish themselves - I grew up among them, I saw every day how they make REALLY BAD choices, have no ambition, and are always eager to get a freebie vs work for gain, and always passionate about blaming "the system", "the wealthy", "the boogey men", etc for their own failures.
I think you need to look at the total dollars the USA spends in Federal Budget on Everything. It is hard to imagine any other country as bad. Someone in ZH pointed out that without Medicare and Medicaid our Health Care would be much cheaper. I think you are making the same good point.
But the money from Medicare and Medicaid really goes to the Corporations, Health or Drug. It is effectively a system that enables higher prices, then transfers the funds to Corporations. So year the people get some work done, but it is 10 times more expensive in the USA.
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2014 = $3.5 Trillion (B. Obama)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2012 = $3.54 Trillion (B. Obama)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2010 = $3.45 Trillion (B. Obama)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2008 = $2.98 Trillion (G.W. Bush)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2006 = $2.65 Trillion (G.W. Bush)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2004 = $2.29 Trillion (G.W. Bush)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2002 = $2.01 Trillion (B. Clinton)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 2000 = $1.79 Trillion (B. Clinton)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 1998 = $1.65 Trillion (B. Clinton)
Total-Federal Government Actual Budget 1997 = $1.6 Trillion (B. Clinton)
2014 Total Medicare/Medicaid = $1,19 Trillion
2013 Total Medicare/Medicaid = $1.1 Trillion
1999 Total Medicare/Medicaid = $390 Billion
Total--Office of Personnel Management Outlays 2014 = $138.63 Billion (What?)
Total--Office of Personnel Management Outlays 2008 = $103.6 Billion
Total--Office of Personnel Management Outlays 2006 = $99.8 Billion
Total--Office of Personnel Management Outlays 1998 = $66 Billion
Department of Health and Human Services:
Administration for Children and Families:
2014 Total Outlays - Payments to States for Child Support Enforcement and Family Support Programs = $4.11 Billion
2014 Total Outlays - Refugee and Entrant Assistance = $1.28 Billion
2014 Total Outlays - Child Care Entitlement to States = $2.8 Billion
2014 Total Outlays - Payments to States for the Child Care
and Development Block Grant = $2.2 Billion
2014 Total Outlays - Social Services Block Grant = $1.75 Billion
2014 Total Outlays - Children and Families Services Programs = $9.4 Billion
-
Department of Education:
2014 Total Outlays - Office of English Language Acquisition = $736 Million
Tax Assistance, WIC, SNAP, TANF, HUD, or MEDICAID,
Really HUD & TANF are flat just need to see the Tax Give-away, SNAP, WIC, MEDICAID. These are the big Welfare growths, but not social security, not MEDICARE, and not Pension Problems, and total Federal Budget Spending Problems related to ... flat wages, lack of demand for skilled & unskilled labor.
- Oh, Obama wants to increase tax credits, he has never seen my work apparently
IRS, Payment where earned income credit exceeds liability for tax 2014 = $60.09 Billion
IRS, Payment where earned income credit exceeds liability for tax 2013 = $57.5 Billion
IRS, Payment where earned income credit exceeds liability for tax 2000 = $26 Billion
IRS, Payment where earned income credit exceeds liability for tax 1998 = $23.2 Billion
IRS, Payment Where Child Tax Credit Exceeds Liability for Tax 2014 = $21,49 Billion
IRS, Payment Where Child Tax Credit Exceeds Liability for Tax 2013 = $21.6 Billion
IRS, Payment Where Child Tax Credit Exceeds Liability for Tax 2000 = $806 Million (Million)
IRS, Payment Where Child Tax Credit Exceeds Liability for Tax 1998 = Zero.....
2014 Federal Outlays for SNAP, Child Nutrition, & WIC = $102 Billion
2013 Federal Outlays for SNAP, Child Nutrition, & WIC = $109 Billion
2008 Federal Outlays for SNAP, Child Nutrition, & WIC = $60 Billion
2004 Federal Outlays for SNAP, Child Nutrition, & WIC = $45 Billion
2000 Federal Outlays for SNAP, Child Nutrition, & WIC = $32 Billion
1998 Federal Outlays for SNAP, Child Nutrition, & WIC = $33 Billion
Department of Health and Human Services (MEDICAID):
2014 Outlays Federal Grants to States for Medicaid = $301 Billion
2013 Outlays Federal Grants to States for Medicaid = $256 Billion
2008 Outlays Federal Grants to States for Medicaid = $201 Billion
2004 Outlays Federal Grants to States for Medicaid = $176 Billion
2000 Outlays Federal Grants to States for Medicaid = $118 Billion
1998 Outlays Federal Grants to States for Medicaid = $101 Billion
BTW How do Government Transfer payments to the rest of the world Peak in 2011, $55.6 Billion, after the Recession, then decline sharply if they weren't pay offs??
Government current transfer payments: Other current transfer payments to the rest of the world (net) 2014: $35.6 Billions of Dollars, Annual, Not Seasonally Adjusted, W017RC1A027NBEA, Updated: 2015-01-30
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/W017RC1A027NBEA
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
climate destabilization? really?
Wait.....what?
The science is settled......would I kid you?
Thank goodness we've figured out the big bang is absolute crap.
He probably hasn't found out yet that the solar weather/activity is a big component of weather, earthquakes, storms, the like.
But, but my puter said I was a Bitcoin Bazillionaire before it went dark
What happens next?
"Fascism is capitalism in decay." - Vladimir Lenin
"capitalism in decay"
aka "American System" economics, brought to you by Whigs & War - © 1860 Republican Party - All Rights Usurped
It's even worse.
This makes sense of the global mess we're in. Goldwater wrote it in his book in 1979 RE: TriLateral C...
Sounds like $$$ will be gone & everything/economy including your NSA dossier will be energy based on your consumption.
Technocracy/Scientism...where Orwell got his info.
It's long. This guy knew Antony Sutton. Well worth the time to listen. 3:27:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7QlOTi86Nk
Good video.
Actually scientism is more like Huxley's Brave New Woe-ld.
It was well worth the time.
I might have gotten Orwell/Huxley bassackwards due to my head spinning in exorcism fashion for connecting what to me, is the final dot. Gold & silver won't help nor guns.
Complete control of both energy consumed & produced.
An invisible mark of the beast where trade will be done with the "credits".
BTW, the military exercise in TX & UT, having been labeld "hostile states" is another push like Sandy/Boston Hoax's to see just how much the folks will swallow.
I do not see good.
This guy says Obama has appointed at one time or another 92% of the US Trilateral Commission Members in his Administration.
He says the Emphasis on Trade started in 1974 after creation of the Trilateral Commission. CAFTA-DR, NAFTA, Free Trade, TPP, TAP, ...
In fact he lists a bunch of programs under technocracy which he says Zbrinksi Stole for his book... and you recognize these programs:
- Agenda 21
- Sustainable Development
- Smart Grid
- Climate Change
- Global Warming
- Cap and Trade
- Carbon Credits
- Smart Growth
- Green Economy
- Human Enhancement
- Transhumanism
- Management of Society by Technical Experts
- A new Economic System
- Reinventing Government under B. Clinton in 1993
"Climate destabilization is producing ever more violent storms, ever more severe droughts (California now has just a year's worth of water left) and is predicted to wipe out entire countries because of rising ocean levels, failing monsoon seasons and dwindling irrigation water from glacial melt."
All of which is factually incorrect, well, other than the completely failed predictions.
Nice try though.
TPTB of the NWO are trying to usher in Feudalism 2.0: Global Fedualism.
The astute an objective observer will note that all 3 Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) have NO problem or issue with "central planning" or with a rigid/totalitarian rule, given that they cite "God" as the supreme dictator/ruler.
If or when they do achieve a OWG, you can expect the Culling of all the useless eaters to begin. I'd expect 70-80% to be gone. Either by bio-weapons that lead to death (the fast-track), or to infertility in large sections of the population (the slow track). I'm guessing that the Debate still rages which Track will be used.
I'd also expect them to marginalize and wipe out religious fanatics of all kinds and faiths, and leave only moderate practitioners -- to ensure world peace and enlightenment.
Article is not bad:
-
- Many countries resorted to forging their statistics to paint a rosier picture, but one statistic that doesn't lie is energy consumption.
- Another indicator that doesn't lie is the Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the level of shipping activity, and it has plummeted too.
- NIRP, interest rates on bank deposits have gone negative as well: keeping your money in the bank is now a privilege, for which one must pay.
- Access to free money is a privilege, Those who have to borrow to finance housing are less privileged; those who borrow to pay for education even less so.
- Once upon a time, the idea was that access to capital could be obtained based on a good business plan, and that this allowed entrepreneurship to flourish and many new businesses to be formed.
- with many more enterprises going out of business than are being formed, What is left is a rigidly stratified society, with privileges dispensed based on hereditary wealth while those at the bottom are driven ever further into debt servitude and destitution.
Some good stuff here.
- new feudalism, What it can do, however, is freeze the social hierarchy among the owners of capital—for a while, but not forever.
@Kirk, watch the vid I linked above, you will see that no religion survives. The religions have beed duped incrementally like the populace...see mega churches.
You'll be forced to worship the newly gubmn't sanctioned "Green Gaia".
I could see a continuation of the slow track with some shocks/disasters along the way to further the agenda story lines (and make a quick buck or two! Cause you know, Hellfire missiles don't buy themselves.)
glad I'm just a peon...
hate to be an un-ref'd serf...
whew...
The relevant dynamics are much simpler.
Human PREDATOR vs human PRODUCER (prey).
-----
Goods and goodies, including energy and all that depends upon energy is not static, and is not limited (until the entire universe is consumed, which won't ever happen). Even on earth, the energy in the volume of earth is enormous, and the energy in the sun is beyond enormous.
What matters is... what is done with the resources?
Human predators are net destroyers, even as they consume and enjoy enormous quality and quantity of goods and goodies.
Human producers are net creators. BUT... if the human producers do not defend themselves from human predators, and allow the predators dominate and misdirect goods and goodies, then then life on earth is net destructive, even in the midst of enormous production.
Predators depend on producers... that's where they get all their food, shelter, clothing, weapons, ammunition, transportation and everything else. The predators doesn't produce it, the producers do, and they steal it.
Producers DO NOT depend on predators. In fact, predators only steal and destroy the goods and goodies they create, and greatly thwart and destroy the efficiency of their production via laws, taxes, regulations and fiat finanical mechanisms.
How can this be fixed?
Only one way. Producers must be willing to DEFEND THEMSELVES. They certainly have the ability to defend themselves, since they produce everything, including weapons, including ammunition, including targeting devices, including all physical devices that cannot be found lying on the ground in the forest or desert.
But increasingly, producers DO NOT defend themselves. But even worse, human predators hand over endless goods and goodies the make trivial the predator job of enslaving and destroying the producers. Why do they do such an unbelievably stupid thing?
FICTIONS.
Endless utterly bogus fictions like "law", "nation", "official", "authority", "government" and so forth. Because the producers never take time to realize these and hundreds of other words are blatant fictions, the producer allow themselves to be utterly dominated.
Unless human producers wake up, get real, identify and distinguish what is real versus fiction, and make the decision to DEFEND THEMSELVES VIGOROUSLY from all predators and parasites.
HUMANS ARE A FAILED SPECIES.
And fairly soon...
HUMANS ARE FINISHED.
For practical purposes, they already are.
A big part of the problem is that so many of us, myself included I suppose, and probably you on some level, are not really producers. We're not predators, but we're not producing anything that is truly needed or wanted economically (and many of us who think we are so awfully necessary, are just fooling ourselves). When people are in that situation, it is harder for them to feel morally righteous; harder to feel as if they should be battling to keep things from predators. Only a small percentage of the population these days produces anything that makes any sense (energy, real health care, real farming, real tending of others, needed repairs). Most people who "work" are just making more physical or virtual crap or spewing silly ideas. If people were, and felt they were, producing something of value, and that some predator was grabbing it, that would make it a more straightforward problem.
Also, in the U.S., predators are not what they used to be, either. In the U.S. they mainly take status objects; they're not taking e.g. food from hungry people in the U.S. (yes, I know they are selling us garbage food, but that is not quite the same). They're not throwing starving peasants off of productive land; they are making sure the plump peasants have plenty of crap food so that the predators can enjoy their status trinkets in peace. When you look at the material goods they have grabbed (one more Tesla; one more big house), it is hard to get excited, and the political power they have grabbed is too abstract for most people to get angry about.
What frustrates people more than having predators grab stuff, is the increasing lack of personal freedom. That is what eventually causes social revolt, if anything does. So it seems that the distinction control-freaks/controlled (in the U.S.) is a better distinction. In other parts of the world predator-prey distinction fits better than it does here.
Damn,
That was a nice post. Precise and logical. I would only add that the theft of wealth is the greatly a part of lack of freedom. Upvote for you.
Sure, that's true of most people who imagine they are producers. In my case, I live in the extreme boonies, grow and raise almost all my own food, installed solar-panels and electronics to provide all my own electric power, installed my own water-collection system and so forth.
But what you say is largely true of most non-predators.
However, I don't have as narrow a definition for "producer" as you appear to have. For example, I consider someone who produces "telescopes" to be a producer. None of us NEED telescopes to survive, or even remain healthy. Nonetheless, given my meaning for "producer", they are a producer.
As are people who produce all sorts of things that humans do not need to survive.
However, I do not consider people who produce products that are mislabeled or misrepresented, which is increasingly common and popular as years go by. Recently someone in the USSA sent me a label from some food that yells "100% organic" in huge bright letters on the front, yet lists several utterly non-organic (and massively revolting) items in the small-print ingredients on the back.
I will admit to being a bit split in certain cases. For example, consider someone who produces weapons? Are they producers? Or are they destroyers? The closest answer I can give is this. They are producers if their customers want those weapons to "feed themselves" (hunt for food) or to defend themselves from predators (human or otherwise). They are producers if a large percentage of their customers want those weapons for these purposes, even if they don't know the exact percentage. They are destroyers and NOT producers if they sell all their weapons to government (military, police, etc), because they are knowingly producing something that will harm, threaten and destroy honest, ethical, productive, benevolent human beings.
I agree with you that a large percentage of goods and goodies humans buy today are rubbish, or of so little benefit that... well... any honest, thoughtful human being would cringe at the waste of time and effort consumed to "produce" them. Nonetheless, if someone understands what they are buying and willingly pays for the goods or goodies, I nominally consider them producers... even as I cringe while doing so.
Note that anyone who takes advantage of special status or situations created by government are NOT producers. This means that almost NOBODY in the so-called "medical industry" is a producer. No cop is a producer. Nobody in the military of the USSA or any aggressive fictional nation is a producer. Nobody who works for a prescription drug company is a producer. Nobody who works for Monsanto is a producer.
To be honest, the distinction can become difficult. And when it does, the way I prefer to deal with those situations is to avoid saying "producer" or "non-producer" and just state the details of the situation... what they are doing right, and what they are doing wrong. Note that anyone who harms anyone else in the process of being productive is NOT a producer. Very few people involved in mainstream media are producers... most are destroyers at the behest of the government or the predators who run the mega-corporations that control the content. But a few exceptions do exist, though fewer and fewer every year.
What makes it more difficult for most people to determine who is a producer is the fact that few people consider what is involved in the production process. If ANYONE is abused in the production process, the result is destruction, not production. Yet very few people look into the actions taken during production, which makes the distinction invisible to them.
Here is what happens next. The greedy elite begin to disagree. The money dries up. Poor people get hungry tummies and the best thing they have to hope for is being a hero. The military fractures. Morality declines among those in positions with access and ability to release biological warfare weapons. Security over critical technology becomes questionable. Nukes go off. Basically the shit hits the fan. After the smoke clears humans begin to implement Q99X2's form of governance by open source software that is constitutionally based and run through referendum. Anyone or any corporate entity caught with more than 10,000,000 is taken to the pyramids and sacrificed. Everybody lives happily ever after until the arrival of the singularity.
When you are at the point of nukes going off or an EMP, then forget about software. Not logical.
I upvoted you only because I think you are silly. Kind of like watching a retarded child.
The system of feudalism never ended. It has been on going and will continue even after a reset.
History repeats.
right-do you really own your land? your house? your car? just try to stop paying the perpetual 'shakedown fees' aka taxes on any one of them and youll see...
Orlov is all wrong!
Capitalism is built financially on private ownership and savings.It worked well without debt.
A debt based system is the antithesis of capitalism. It is only enabled by legal tender laws of the government bought by the banks.
It is fascism what has grown out of capitalism in the last hundred years of the debt based system. It is a variety of socialism, nothing to do with feudalism.
Remove the debt based system and capitalism will thrive again.
What is interesting in my view is this.
Feudalism is a structure of classes. Thus you always have the haves and the have nots. You always have those that have more say and control over others.
Regardless of a debt based, or socialistic or communistic or capitalistic system, you still have the same class warfare - those that have and those that have not. There are always elites in any type of system. There are always oligarchs and corrupt politicians.
Agree. Human nature takes precedence over ideology.
Bullshit. There are three types of men, always have been, always will be: Those who seek to rule, those who wish to be subjects, and lastly, those who desire to be subject only to their own rule.
Any society that is designed to respect the latter is one founded in the principles of LIBERTY. Everything else is just as different shade of tyranny; and don't forget: tyranny is like water, it doesn't matter if it is hard or soft when it is being forced down your throat.
But keep making excuses for whatever type of system exists. Keep drawing an equivalency between communism and capitalism. See what happens.
I would say the biggest difference between capitalism and feudalism is the underlying legal system. The financial system is just the surface.
The US is still have the constitution to return to capitalism. There always be forces to ignore and nullify it. The final outcome will depend on the population.
Every people gets what it deserves!
Remove the debt based system and capitalism will thrive again.
I'm assuming by saying "remove the debt based system" you mean the Fed, Treasury/Congress/Fractional banking crap, the crony capitalism, overhauling the entire mindset and culture of the citizenry, and re-educating the populace on things like capitalism, wealth creation, financial planning, etc etc
Holy shit, we're screwed...
Remove the legal tender laws and all those scarry shit becomes redundant.
The FED the IRS and almost all part of the imperial beast becomes disfunctional.
People don't need them for their living, they will figure out how to live without them.
"All of these problems are causing a very strange thing to happen to money "
Indeed, since it's not money you're talking about, but fiat currency. Also, in next system just replace the $ in pyramid 2 with Au... They who have the au make the rules (just invert exter's inverted pyramid and TA DA...) So I believe there will be new rulers in charge sometimes in the foreseeable future. US can kicking will meet a dead end marked by a yellow BRICS wall.
"Once upon a time, the idea was that access to capital could be obtained based on a good business plan, and that this allowed entrepreneurship to flourish and many new businesses to be formed."
But we are all investors now.
Using money to make money without that unnecessary intermediate step of producing anything useful.
We all want to sit on our arses and let our capital work for us.
Hence the quadrillion dollar derivatives market with not a useful product in site.
Your premise that the only cheap energy is from oxidizing carbon is incorrect.
Detroit — The bodies of two dead children lay inside a freezer for months in a low-income townhouse on Detroit's near east side, while two siblings lived there with their mother, who was handcuffed, taken into custody and questioned by police.
Infanticide/Patricide/Matricide = New Detroit
Founded by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Trilateral Commission openly and repeatedly stated that it wanted to create a "New International Economic Order."
It is plainly evident today, with 40 years of historical examination behind it, that the "New International Economic Order" was really "new" and envisioned historic Technocracy as replacing Capitalism altogether. Technocracy was based on energy rather than money and its system of supply and demand that regulates pricing.
Some distinctives of Technocracy include:
• Elimination of private property and wealth accumulation
• Replacing traditional education with workforce training
• Micromanaging all energy distribution and consumption
• Driving people to live in a limited number of cities and off of rural land
• Enforcing a balance between nature's resources and man's consumption of them.
Are you thinking that this list is vaguely familiar? You should because it represents the modern manifestation of programs like Agenda 21, Sustainable Development, Smart Growth, Smart Grid, Cap And Trade, Climate Change, Common Core, massive surveillance operations and a whole lot more. All of this has been brought to us by the machinations of the Trilateral Commission and its members since 1973, and it is all part of its master plan to completely replace capitalism with Technocracy. This is their "New International Economic Order"!
What does Smart Grid have to do with Common Core? They are both elements of Technocracy. What does Sustainable Development have in common with Smart Growth? Technocracy. Climate change and total surveillance? You guessed it.
It is all part of the same economic coup started in 1973 and if left unchallenged, it is going to deliver us straight into a Scientific Dictatorship from which we will not be able to recover.
http://www.augustforecast.com/endgame_of_technocracy?utm_campaign=die_capitalism&utm_medium=email&utm_source=technocracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul5oQ3wbstQ Very good explanation of where they are taking us! Patrick Wood speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqAn4rRt8_M More after 2 minite silver update, from 2011
http://www.technocracyrising.com/ The dark horse of the New World Order is not Communism, Socialism or Fascism. It is Technocracy.
Georgia Guidestones, yo.
Very well written and thought provoking post.
Soylent Green
Sorry, duplicate post.
If we are lucky we will revert to feudalism. Otherwise, it will be a hierarchy of Warlord / Soldiers / Slaves. Think Golden Horde.
Best article image (almost) ever.
"America is the only nation to go from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between".
- Oscar Wilde
We need a new black plague.
hammer meet nail, yes, but
notice it happens all the
time and every second of
every day; like what they
call "labor".
Also, our checking and savings deposits are not "our" money.
When we deposit money in a bank, we become unsecured creditors, aka, the bottom of the foodchain as far as who technically has to be paid back in the event of default/failure.
yoga man, yea.
beauty is truth.