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Guest Post: We Are Not Powerless: Resisting Financial Feudalism
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
We Are Not Powerless: Resisting Financial Feudalism
It's comforting to think "I can't do anything to resist the Central State and its financial Plutocracy," but it's not true. There are many of acts of resistance you can pursue in your daily life; here are 12 perfectly legal ones.
That we are powerless is one of the key social control myths constantly promoted by the Status Quo. What better way to keep the serfs passive than to reinforce a belief in their powerlessness against the expansive Central State and its financial feudalism?
But we are not powerless. Our complicity gives the aristocracy its power. Remove our complicity and the aristocracy falls.
The pathway of dissent is to resist financial feudalism and its enforcer, the expansive Central State. Here are twelve paths of resistance any adult can legally pursue in the course of their daily lives:
1. Support the decentralized, non-market economy. The core ideology of consumerism and financialization is that non-market assets and experiences have no status or financial value. This includes social capital, meals with friends, projects done cooperatively with friends, home gardens and thousands of other decentralized activities that cannot be financialized into centralized market transactions. Identity and social status are established in the non-market economy by collaboration, sharing, conviviality and generosity. Decentralized generally means localized; farmers markets are examples of local market economies where the transactions are in cash (so banks can’t skim transactions fees) and the money stays in the local economy rather than flowing to some distant concentration of capital.
If you start valuing non-market assets and experiences as the most important markers of high status, you are resisting both financialization and consumerism.
Top-down centralized “solutions” imposed by the Central State are the problem, not the solution, as they further the concentration of wealth and power into unstable monocultures. Stop looking to overly complex “reforms” and centralized solutions to unsustainable systems and start exploring decentralized, localized solutions that bypass both the Central State and its financial aristocracy.
2. Stop participating in financialization. Financialization is the insidious imperative of the financial aristocracy that seeks to turn every interaction into a financial transaction that can be charged a fee and all assets into financialized instruments that can be sold for immensely profitable transaction fees.
As the finances of local governments implode under the weight of their protected fiefdoms, many are heeding the siren song of financialization as a temporary (and inevitably disastrous) “fix” to their structural insolvency. For example, the revenue stream from parking meters is financialized into an asset that is sold to a private corporation. When parking fees double, the residents of the city have no recourse via democracy or petition, as the meters in their city are now “owned” by a distant concentration of capital that can double late fees, charge outrageous transaction costs, etc., at will.
This is how financialization inevitably transitions into financial tyranny.
The erosion of America’s middle class financial security has several structural causes, but chief among them was the financialization of the housing market. This led to a bubble of credit and housing valuations and the widespread extraction of equity for consumption—the classic “windfall” that financialization always produces in its first toxic blush. Mortgage debt doubled from $5 trillion to $10 trillion in the bubble, and now America’s indentured homeowners “own” negative equity of $4 trillion. That is, the difference between the market value of the homes they ostensibly “own” and the mortgages they took on to buy the homes is negative $4 trillion.
3. Redefine self-interest to exclude debt-servitude and dependence on consumerism and the Central State. Unless you are long retired and have no other option, minimize reliance on the State. Reliance on the State weakens the correlation between sustained effort and gain, so the work ethic and entrepreneurism both atrophy as they no longer offer competitive advantages in a system where bread and circuses are guaranteed by the State.
4. Act on your awareness that the nature of prosperity and financial security is changing. Dependence on centralized concentrations of power (Wall Street and the Central State) is now an extremely risky wager that what is demonstrably unsustainable will magically become sustainable at some distant point in time via pixie dust or the intervention of aliens from Alpha Centuri. Security flows from resilience, self-reliance, decentralized, diversified sources of income and abundant social capital.
5. Stop supporting distant concentrations of capital that subvert democracy by using their gargantuan profits to buy the machinery of State governance and regulation. For example, stop watching broadcast programming owned by the six global media corporations that control the vast majority of the media/marketing complex.
Stop eroding your health and sending your money to corporate headquarters for distribution to the financial aristocracy—stop frequenting corporate fast-food restaurants and stop buying unhealthy packaged foods from corporate agribusiness.
Close your accounts with Wall Street investment firms and the five “too big to fail” banks that dominate the mortgage, credit and debt markets in the U.S. If you need such an account to transact your business, then maintain low balances so the banks cannot “sweep” your capital for their own use every day.
6. Stop supporting the debt-and-leverage based financial aristocracy. Liquidate all debt as soon as possible, take on no new debt except for short periods of time, explore localized or “crowd-sourced” private-capital loans that exclude the banks and limit the number of financial transactions that enrich the banks and Wall Street.
7. Transfer your assets out of Wall Street and into local enterprises or assets that do not enrich and empower Wall Street.
8. Refuse to participate in consumerist status identifiers and the social defeat they create. Stop admiring and respecting those displaying status signifiers; start thinking of them as pathetic prisoners of a pathological mindset. Stop judging people as “lower value” based on their lack of status signifiers. Free your own mind from the toxic sociopathology of consumerism and social defeat. Stop watching commercial television and minimize your exposure to marketing and consumerist propaganda.
9. Vote in every election with an eye on rewarding honesty and truth and punishing empty promises. Unless the incumbent has renounced corporate contributions, unsustainable debt, financial tyranny and Central State encroachment of civil liberties, then vote against the incumbent, for they are just another lackey of the State-plutocracy partnership. Avoid voting for either the Demopublican or Republicrat branches of the plutocracy; vote for an independent or third party candidate.
Remember that resistance isn’t just about refusing to participate in pathological plutocracy; it’s about establishing a sustainable alternative to the unsustainable State-plutocracy partnership. When people say that voting for a third-party candidate is “wasting your vote,” reply that voting for either of the plutocrat parties is the real waste of a vote because their “leadership” is dooming the nation to destabilization and insolvency. As independents pick up more and more “wasted” votes, they shift from being “marginalized” to becoming powerful voices of honesty and transparency.
10. Stop supporting inflationary policies such as “money creation” by the Federal Reserve and Federal deficit borrowing. Act on your knowledge that inflation is theft and that the Federal Reserve is a private consortium of banks that is the enabler and protector of the parasitic financial aristocracy.
11. Become healthy, active and fit. Refuse to consume unhealthy junk and packaged food, refuse to squander much of your time in sedentary “consumption” of corporate entertainment and digital distraction, and devote your energy and time to mastery, new skills, developing social capital and friendships, projects you “own” and enterprises that benefit your true self-interest. Refuse to follow the marketing/media siren song into chronic ill-health, addiction and social defeat.
12. Embrace self-directed coherent plans and construct a resilient, diverse ecology of identity and meaning. Build a social ecology of positive, active, collaborative, non-pathological people of like minds and spirits. Be powerful via resistance, not powerless via complicity.
It’s easy to confuse faith and political ideology. We resist changing our understanding, as we experience this transition as instability and insecurity. But changing our minds does not require changing our faith; rather, the firmness of our faith—in our Creator, in truth, in prayer, in our ability to help others and prevail—is the bedrock that gives us the discipline and resolve to confront the brutal and unwelcome facts of our circumstances and make coherent plans accordingly.
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It depends on how you define capitalism.
I think you have an issue with definitions. Like, what is a capitalist? How about an Uber-Capitalist? A capitalist is just a guy with money (or other capital) who invests it and gets a return. There are capitalists in Venezuela and Cuba. What thos people lack is freedom.
I don't know about you, but the I want freedom. The bigger the State gets, the worse our lives get.
.
Agreed.
Leave the 'isms' to the 'ists'.
Does that include US Citizenism?
(Whose nature is meta-eternal.)
All citizenism being now leaving to citizenists is.
Relegation of citizenism to exterior is much good fortune and vigor in thought making.
And if I am smarter and slicker, I should be free to steal from you? Allow me to step all the way out of the closet - all value, including the value of capital, derives from natural resources and labor. All finance is parasitic on labor. Ergo, as host, labor is justified to limit/control/reduce the freedom of capital. Does the state do this well? Oh, hell no - but let me be clear, unless you as an individual are ready to strike out against finance, following much of CHS's direction given above or you are among the 1%, you are a host to the financier parasites. Enjoy your freedom.
If you are smarter and slicker, should you be free to steal? Of course not. Who says that?
The value of capital is of course imputed or implied by the value it produces. My definition of capital is anything that can be used to produce stuff (inlcuding other capital) or items that serve as a store of capital, such as gold or silver.
"All finance is parasitic on labor" is silly. That's like saying that if I count my pennies I am exploiting someone. I'm not! Your sentence should read "Parasites are parasitic." There is such a thing as "good finance." It has to do with voluntary arrangements. If you and I volutarily agree to borrow and lend, it's good for both of us. If you force me to borrow and incur an interest expense without me knowing it, like a Marxist central bank (like the Federal Reserve), then that's wrong.
Oh, and by the way, when one says "Ergo," it sounds like the guy from the matrix. You know, the Architecht. He was pretty badass, though, so I guess it's OK.
"Enjoy your freedom," what is that, sarcasm? I don't have it. As long as property isn't private, as long as I am born owing income tax, I am not free.
"All finance is parasitic on labor" is silly. Here we agree. It is patently obvious, so stating it is kind of silly. I wholly understand that in the economy, finance facilitiates the pulling forward of demand and helps create growth, jobs, etc. So, like the bacteria in our gut, finance derives all of its nurishment from labor, while labor benefits quite a bit from finance. But without labor, finance would totally and absolutely die, while labor would struggle but survive absent finance. My analogy was intended to suggest that it is within the rights of labor (the 99 if you will) to control/limit the freedom of capital. I wholly recognize that you disagree, Mars. We might come closer to agreement that labor (or the state) should be cautious not to so tie up capital/finance that growth/production suffers. It is my view that the state has been captured by finance (in the USA) and systems that should prevent the parasite from destroying the host have fallen into disrepair. In short, the problem is political, not economic. Thanks for the conversation.
13. You talking to me? Yeah. You, You talking to me?
luv the nic
Extra Luck To The People's Endeavor! Advance Judiciously!
Here are a few simpler ways to resist:
-Don't pay taxes and encourage other to do so too.
-Don't keep your money in the bank, and encourage others to do so too
-Don't keep fiat money, but gold. If you can't keep gold, keep a currency foreign to your country.
-Don't just vote but seek a position in parliament/congress.
-Write, publish, debate
-Promote lawsuits to the establishment and government
-ALWAYS WEAR A SUIT AND A TIE OR A BOW TIE, SHOW A CLEAN ASPECT, SHAVE, USE MODERATE LANGUAGE: THE ESTABLISHMENT WILL BE BEATEN WITH MORE ESTABLISHMENT.
-Don't just vote but seek a position in parliament/congress.
What? Why would you encourage people to corrupt themselves?
Politics is the smiling face of evil upon Earth. Period.
yes - the political genius class figures we can have continued "austerity" to pay for banker bailouts ... and that we can also have strong fiat currencies WITHOUT debt repudiation and financial asset collapse.
so, in other words, the political genius class is committed to a future of escalating bankruptcy, economic contraction, "austerity", financial repression ...
the beatings will continue until morale improves.
I couldn't agree more with Mr. Smith.
This article obviously wasn't directed towards the 25% of the Spanish who are unemployed. Or the billions of people around the world who do not have investments in Wall Street.
Get with reality dude. Your impact makes no difference. You are a slave and will always be a slave as long as you choose to play the game. And if you drop out noone is going to notice.
So, we should just accept our fate and be happy little sheep?
Men act.
Sounds like if we elect Ron Paul that everything willl be okay. Why do so many Americans enjoy the chains of bondage? Enjoy being serfs?
I call upon all my fellow Americans -men and women -to quit bending over and taking it up the ass from thes syphylitic vampire elites. To men--quit being girlie boy wimps-stand up for yourselves and your wives and daughters. To the women -regain your dignity. The Almighty did not intend for you to become the compliant slave whores of the degenerate elites.
If you think electing somebody will make "everything OK" you are a chump. This is all about self suffiency, not depending on political solutions. Politics at this point is a poisoned well.
of course we are not powerless, we are always able to effect change, we are the people and we are many.
but the question is how long are we willing to suffer at the hands of those who abuse power and how much abuse will we tolerate, what is the final braking point, when does the balance become so one sided that the people simply decide there is nothing of value left to lose or to be taken away?
and how far are we willing to go to re-assert the power that we have? once we withdraw our consent to be governed and dissolve the current system by refusing to recognize it's legitimacy, that's when things get ugly.
we have all the power we need, we just need the cause, the commitment and the will to excersize that power.
Good post, Marcus, but I'd like to correct one thing. You said:
we have all the power we need, we just need the cause, the commitment and the will to excersize that power.
We already have WAY more than enough cause. We are abused daily. What people lack is the exercise of will - they've been taught that acting on their own judgment is forbidden to them.
That's an understatement. Barry spreads his butt cheeks and shits all over America everyday. Our asses are sore from his NWO butt-rape. And, to make things worse, he is a puppet butt-pirate.
Refuse!
The idea that consumerism is bad and to be avoided ignores the fact that the consumer has power regardless of how local or worldwide the market. It is through your purchasing dollars that you affect the decisions of multinational corporations. Your dollars would obviously would have more power in a local market where their purchasing dollars give them a larger "vote." However, in removing yourself from a market you take away your power to affect change in that market.
If you don't like that Apple uses cheap labor in china then first do some research and figure out if that's really a bad thing for those laborers or you are just being fed a line. If you think there's legitimate reason for concern then choose a different product and use your purchasing power to encourage the kind of corporate behaviour you want to see.
I think there are plenty of reasons to participate in local economies, but the overwhelming majoritty of corporations act with the best interest of the consumer at heart. They are just dealing with the hand they have been dealt and trying to survive in a complicated fionancial world where the game has been rigged, and not by them
The game has been rigged by generations of voters who have surrendered their individual rights and power to the state so the state can solve their problems. Then they are dismayed when the power structure they build is abused. You want to affect more and bigger change. Stop voting to solve every problem via government. stop supporting large special interets because they are as corrupt, dishonest, and evil as any corporation. Vote to return power to the individual by taking it away from government. That will have far more impact than removing yourself from the global economy.
Even Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz would not have believed that multinational corporations, working with Fed support, have “the best interest of the consumer at heart.”
Agreed.
"Profit Before People Or Planet!"
The huge multinational corporations are not "most corporations." Most corporations compete with large multinational corporations and are no more happy about the situation than you are.
Seriously, let's just take the bastards out....
If we follow this plan or something similar, we will take them out. Refuse to participate. Use your brain, get creative and get local.
I would, but I understand that Jamie's tastes run to Cristal and White Star, Lloyd won't ride on the back of my scooter, and Brian has eyes for my wife. So, I would need a huge entertainment budget and a substantial cash advance to "take them out."
After point 13....then what do we do?
After point 13....then what do we do?
Pick something, and start ACTING.
Grow some vegetables damnit, I don't care if its a pot of herbs in your tenement window. Support local coop agriculture, drink local beer ( or brew it yourself). Go meet your neighbors, take a first aid class. GET OF YOR ASS AND STOP WHINING! Take cookong lessons from the Hedgeless horseman
I would grow vegtables but the Deer and the Bunnies think that I have prepaired a buffet just for them.
Kind of like over taxation. When you realize that all of your efforts are going to support everyone but you. Then you stop doing what your are doing. Like working for those that do not work and get Welfare. Like just working to support the Governments spending habits. Like working to support Multi Million Dollar Bankers who get Bail Outs and you get the bill thru taxation.
There comes a time when it is better to be the one receiving the Government largess at the expense of others. Rather than the one providing the funding.
You need more than just veggies. Shoot the deer and bunnies. Venison is great and bunnies taste like - I was almost going to write 'pit bulls' - chicken.
Seriously, anyone that meekly surrenders to Bambi and Thumper deserves to be laughed at, loudly and often.
Now moose, on the other hand, are a bit more intimidating.
But even they shy away from having rocks thrown at them --- one just needs to make sure that one is doing so from near a door, to provide instant retreat! The ultimate problem with them, however, is that a moose, like the State, never sleeps.
Moose and squirrel...now you're talking. Or they were when I was growing up...
"Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat. Nothing up my sleeve..."
Thank you for this awesome roadmap back to America’s historic roots! Charles Hugh Smith. You have laid out a constitution for the soul that would revitalize and preserve America’s greatness.
“The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
Snatch the debt associated with ur SS # from my hand grasshopper. Ah, go practice. It takes years of persistent patient to make it dissappear.
Now go and do not return until it is gone!
If you do just one thing, the most important of all is: Get OUT of all debt, by any means necessary. Debt is the collar by which you are controlled.
DEBT is SLAVERY.
out here in the fields we is all capitalists.
but Feudalism is like the corporate supply line, long, vulnerable, subject to assault at the margins, high maintenance cost, and trust issues when the serfs come through the gate to sell their wares. this is why the lords make war on small business, and not each other. we are the terrorists. they don't have anything we need other than protection. they give us lots of protection, even when we don't need it. they encourage us to fear each other. yes those dirty arabs, (born out of real poverty, they are the victims of colonial empires, and exploitation. certainly we have nothing in common with them?)
we have a president who would be king, the last two really. they've outlawed money hoarding, what do you want with all that money, serfs, to pay a mercenary army perhaps? you must continue to spend your idle time chattering among yourselves about your consumer truffles. a quiet man is a dangerous man. as long as he's talking we know what hes' thinking. as long as he's spending there is no time for him to plan his attack on us. yes we must send our tax man out to collect payment. of course there is no payment, so the kings tax collector gives you a bill, indentured servitude for your children. (well you never liked them much anyway).
the lord brings in food and supplies from the next province. and he sends them tribute, things he took from you to sell to them, and it all seems to balance except the things he buys from them aren't as good as yours, and he pockets the difference. in order to keep you subjugated.
then of course you attack his supply lines, and stop giving him your money and the food you grow, you hide it away. nothing to eat sire, no taxes for the tax man, barely enough to live on. he prints money out of paper to destroy the value of the gold you are hoarding.
then you lay seige to his castle, and at least in folklore this is where lords from other provinces, sympathetic to your plight, come to your aid. and there is a lot of intrigue and backstabbing, before we arrive in the modern age (an historical age which has passed, by the way).
but these financial castles aren't real, and could disappear without disturbing the landscape, or shedding one drop of blood. once we understand the process, we can dismantle these electronic monetary castles with a few key strokes. after we toss out the family of lords on Penn Ave, things should start to move.
13. Stop watching TV.
Stop the Debt
You were rolling until this: "Embrace self-directed coherent plans and construct a resilient, diverse ecology of identity and meaning"
Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family.
Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars,
compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good
health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed
interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your
friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a
three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics.
Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning.
Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing
game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose
rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable
home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up
brats you spawned to replace yourself.
Choose your future.
Choose life.
for those who love those words spoken in their original dialect (with music). . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=846KHUIQHeU
". . . I chose not to choose life, I chose something else. . ."
Well, thanks for all great insight and here's my first post. I would recommend getting as much debt as possible when it all becomes worth less and then pay it off.
9. Vote in every election with an eye on rewarding honesty and truth and punishing empty promises.
Laughing out loud.
Yeah, that would make a difference :)
Wasn't this guy promulgating writing to your "representitives", you know, the ones condoning genocide and mass murder.
This writer is either disengenuous or is attempting to maintain the status quo.
If we want change, then we have to *CHANGE* the system, not keep it going.
Just for information, I was delivered into this rotten system, I didn't vote for it.
In other words, as my old lady used to say stabbing a finger at her head, "Use your coconut." Problem is most heads are either empty or full of shit. That's where it all went wrong.
Accept the loss of a middle class lifestyle.