Regarding the political economy …
It started a while ago when they deregulated the markets . The full court press started with the dot.coms. The introduction of the internet into the fabric of everyday life created the habits, infrastructure and mechanisms, to have a market that radically redistributed wealth from the general populace to a few very well placed elite. “Market Fundamentalism” is as detrimental to our well being and way of life as Islamic fundamentalism.
Market fundamentalist are driving our society towards an eleventh century feudalism where military lords control the bulk of all resources, commerce and information. Think of Halliburton, Black Water and Carlyle Group (Resources, Military, Information)as the primordial troika. As the monopoly on violence is broken, the ability of smaller non-state actors to become sovereign increases relative to the proportional decrease in the ability of the state to secure its citizens from violence.
You now have non-state actors (read major corporations and private equity cartels) acquiring natural resources and vital strategic infrastructure (communication networks, railroads, ports, etc.). The death of the dollar has been driven by a three year last quarter push to bankrupt the United States. We are now here.
- Credit card fascism
- Housing inflation crises
- Asian divestment
- Chinese economic warfare
- The Carry trade wave of debt
(which is the underlying cause of the proliferation and ensuing collapse of collateralized debt obligations) - The destruction of media
- the birth of sentiment analysis
Front page
Feudalism is one of those higher order trends...
The desire to control things may be to some extent understandable.
The desire to wreck everything and be “master” over a post-industrial slag heap isn’t. In fact, it’s not sane at all.
I used to think the oscillation between DINOcrat and Rethuglican administrations resulted from the desire to maintain the quality of the kingdom. But no more.
What these fools are doing will fundamentally change the world they live in to an extent they won’t like. Or survive, I suspect.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
Breaking the monopoly of violence
Good point, but is it different from the Pinkerton strike-breakers in the 19th Century?
Very nice collection of links, there, BTW. Nice to see the small pieces of the big picture coming together.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
The Never sleeping eye
Yep, that’s it. Revenge of the trustafarians. I’m telling you it’s those damn Torries. We should have shipped them out in 1776.
ensuing collapse of collateralized debt obligations
Oh, Xeno! I love it when you talk dirty.
“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead
For years my friend has always said
The only real difference between the Dems and the GOP is how quickly to install the totalitarian dictatorship.
I’ve seen that as being true ever since Bush I controlled the presidency from behind the Reagan puppet in 1980. Bush I was president from 1980 to 1992. And now Bush II is the puppet president.
The Dems are not going to stop Bush because they are all on the same page together. There really are only about 5 actual Democrats in congress today, people like Kucinich and Gravel, and Barbara Lee. Cynthia McKinney used to be one of the few True Democrats, but the pro-fascism Democratic Party destroyed he in the primary in order to install a worthless puppet Dem in her place.