Protecting Power & Privilege Has Doomed Regimes Throughout History

Well No Big Surprises here My ATS Brothers and Sisters. So, this is what The Whole Ball of Wax is all about and we wonder why we feel so crushed by this Meat Grinder they call an Economy. I guess we're just here to be shorn like sheep and make it so The Greediest in our Society don't have to lift a finger to make a living.

Well, I for one would rather live in a hut in a forest than to serve these Scumbags anymore. I think everyone around me knows about this but just doesn't say anything due to the fact that they are so busy just keeping their heads above The Economic Waves.

So, anyone with an opinion? Comments, Answers of just General Rants.

Mods, I have put this in The General Conspiracies Forum, hopefully this is the right place for this. Otherwise feel free to move where this would be most applicable. Thanks You All for taking a look and Peace Guys and Gals Arjunand

The incestuous embrace of privilege and power by entrenched, socially isolated Elites characterizes failed states and brittle, doomed regimes throughout history.

Every system is optimized to serve a specific purpose. As noted in my recent essay What Metric Are We Optimizing For?, what the system optimizes is rarely explicitly stated.

Sometimes this results from not understanding the metric that the system is designed to optimize; but in other cases, explicitly describing what the system optimizes would trigger social instability.

The Status Quo around the world--from France to China to the U.S.--is optimized to protect its Elites and the sprawling Upper-Caste of academics, managers, think-tank toadies, technocrats, apparatchiks, functionaries, factotums, lackeys and apologists who serve the Elites, and are well-paid for enforcing the Status Quo on the disenfranchized castes below.

Demographer Joel Kotkin, author of the new book The New Class Conflict, has coined the word Clerisy to describe what I have been calling the Upper Caste:America's new class system.

Oligarchs are assisted in their control by what Kotkin calls the "clerisy" class — an amalgam of academics, media and government employees who play the role that medieval clergy once played in legitimizing the powerful, and in implementing their policies while quelling resistance from the masses. The clerisy isn't as rich as the oligarchs, but it does pretty well for itself and is compensated in part by status, its positions allowing even its lower-paid members to feel superior to the hoi polloi.

Because it doesn't have to work in competitive industries, the clerisy favors regulations, land-use rules and environmental restrictions that make things worse for businesses — especially the small "yeoman" businesses that traditionally sustained much of the middle class — thus further hollowing out the middle of the income distribution. But the lower classes, sustained by government handouts and by rhetoric from the clerisy, provide enough votes to keep the machine running, at least for a while.

This describes the Savior State perfectly: a centrally planned and controlled government that enforces its absolute control via force, legal regulations and the blandishments of complicity: there's billions of dollars in free money social welfare to buy the loyalty (or at least the passivity) of the disenfranchised and marginalized.

I have often written about the stagnation of social mobility and the rise of a neofeudal arrangement of social-economic strata:

America's Nine Classes: The New Class Hierarchy (April 29, 2014)
The Three-and-a-Half Class Society (October 22, 2012)
The New American Divide (January 25, 2012)
Why Reform Won't Work (February 7, 2013)
When Belief in the System Fades (March 12, 2008)

The political, corporate/financial and National Security State Elites represent a vanishingly thin layer of the American economy and society. America today is the nightmare scenario feared by James Madison and other Federalists: a covertly created monarchical (what I term neofeudal) empire much like the Roman Empire--a republic in name but in reality a highly centralized Empire operated for the benefit of tiny Elites who buy complicity of the masses with free bread and circuses.

The "Monarchical Federalists" Madison and Jefferson feared have indeed established a neofeudal, neocolonialist Empire.

In this context, it is interesting to note that fully 20% of all entitlements (tax credits, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) flows to the top 10%, 58% goes to middle-income households and 32% goes to the bottom 20%. The swag of bread and circuses is remarkably well-distributed, buying off every sector of the populace.

Behind the PR facade of democracy and free-market capitalism, a parasitic Aristocracy extracts income and wealth from a financially indentured class of serfs. This Aristocracy is composed of several Elites which are served by the Upper Caste of technocrats. These Elites and the Upper Caste serve each others interests, a social heirarchy that Hilton Root characterized as a "society divided into closed, self-regarding groups." The slow trickle of the "best and brightest" into the Upper Caste via Ivy League university admission is also a propaganda facade, as Ron Unz ably and exhaustively proves in The Myth of American Meritocracy How corrupt are Ivy League admissions?

The trick is enable just enough meritocracy to support the PR facade. The Ivy League has mastered that balancing act.

These Elites have few if any links to the social layers below. Charles Murray spoke to some aspects of this trend of financial/social Elitist isolation from the debt-serfs and worker-bee class below in Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, but the key dynamic that is outside Murray's sociological purview is the stark reality that the Elite class is devoid of any real feeling for or interest in the common good or public weal.

That is, not only have the key institutions of American governance and power lost the memory and mechanics of good governance, the Elites running the institutions have become an inbred neofeudal Aristocracy characterized by an unexamined (and thus deeply adolescent) sense of entitlement to the reins of power and control of the national income.

It's not just the institutions that have lost any conception of good governance-- the Aristocracy ruling the nation has lost all interest or recognition of the common good. This is of course not unique to America; the same disregard for the common good is at the root of all developed-world and developing-world failed states.

The incestuous embrace of privilege and power by entrenched, socially isolated Elites characterizes failed states and brittle, doomed regimes throughout history.This is what the Status Quo everywhere is optimized for: protecting those who have secured the wealth, perquisites and power by strangling competition, democracy and social mobility.

If you want to pinpoint the one dynamic pushing the global economy into not just a prolonged recession but a parallel period of massive social instability, look no farther than the social and financial stagnation that results from optimizing the system to benefit the Elites and the entrenched incumbents who protect them from competition and the dispossessed debt-serf classes below.

www.zerohedge.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink">www.zerohedge.com... 14-09-26/protecting-power-privilege-has-doomed-regimes-throughout-history

I hear you Brother, even though I had to sound out a few of those words lol....

I would enjoy living in a hut in the forest too but the problem is those bastards you describe own the forest and won't let me.

In America at least the Republican party makes that clear. If you workin stiffs give the rich folk everything they could possibly desire, eventually some money will trickle down to you.

The Democrats like to make you believe they are for the working man, but then openly allow the whole illegal immigrant thing.

I think they all feel themselves as royalty and treat themselves as such.
The same goes for most "celebrities"...
I bet if jay z and beyonce wanted to meet the president they could. If any movie star wanted to fly in an F-16 they could.

maybe I am off track but I read the OP 3 times and still couldnt read it all

a reply to: tinner07
As I see it most celebrities are entertainers who are basically the result of a lot of money, a lot of attention, and an educational background that religates them to be relatively harmless spokespeople. now people in the financial industry, or with a background in dealing with politics or operating big-business are a different story, they're people who can act without a spotlight, and furthermore know what they're doing.

what you want to watch out for is "neoliberals", these are the democrats you're describing, Bill Clinton was a neoliberal, as was Ronald Reagan, and (across the sea) Margaret Thatcher. neoliberals effectively crushed labor unions as being politically effective organizations. and de-regulated various industries, as well as promoting trade policies that exported jobs.

the solution that "all regulation is bad", is a blanket statement without much thought. true, some regulation can be used to hamper competition. However other regulation can prevent terrible externalities from being placed on the population., such as what happened to many people's retirement savings during the financial meltdown of 2008, or a chemical plant poisoning workers due to lackluster safety protocols.

Neoliberals were in favor of de-regulation remember..

You're Right On that Tinner07, They all feel they are Very Special and Privileged People. Deserving of all The Luxuries which denying others of their rightfully earned bread can get them, without any work on their own part that is. I don't know what the answer is, are there some who are so Sociopathic that it is kinder to maybe deny them any contact with the rest of scoiety for everyone's safety and peace of mind. I just don't know but I know which way my thoughts are moving. Peace Brother Arjunanda . a reply to: tinner07