FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon May 29, 2023 1:30 pm
I wouldn't want to cause further offence by interpreting you in any way for the purposes of presenting a wider hypothesis. But I am interested in the underlying rationale of your tale of woe and gloom here.
Thank you. I don't see this as something that I can demonstrate. And as I said I also see countertrends so I am not sure it is a tale of woe and gloom yet.
Who might this elite "they" be and how did they come to be such a powerful "they", with the power to destroy ' supportinve institutions'.
It depends a bit where we are in the world. And I'd have to do more research then I'm will to do right now to remind myself of things I'd find out before. I think one thing that shifted a lot of power was the financialization of corporations in general. I am probably not using the f word correctly, but here's what I mean. Corporations 40 years ago, say, tended to see themselves as product makers. Certainly they invested and made money off investments, but there has been a large shift in the amount of money they make from investment. This aligns them with Wall St. There was also much more freedom given to banks and other financial type institutions. And while this led to the 2008 recession, and was supposedly taken care of, it hasn't been. The same kinds of financial shenanigans are continuing. And the same 'we have to bail them out' situation has not been prevented or undercut. How did these things happen? They happen because, again focusing on the US, corporations and the finance industry are able to unduely affect elections, oversight, legislation and enforcement. I don't think we have a democracy (or a republic) anymore. The only people who can challenge a Wall st. approved choice between candidates (not choice of candidates, that's not on the table) is if some incredibly wealthy supposed outside like Trump comes in. Otherwise we are dealing with what the financial sector, which now includes corporations in a way it didn't decades ago. (I do not view the 80s as a golden age. Apart from it being a decade that started the neo helping these shifts in power take place, I just don't see golden ages). (A related pattern is the shift from corporations focusing on profits to focusing one stockholders/bonuses)
Much of this requires no 10 guys in a room conspiracy. We've got vulnerabilities in the system being attacked by people with pretty common motives.
Part and parcel with this in my being influenced by Chomsky's and the other guy's The Manufacturing of Consent. They made that argument whenever it was, back in 70s, I think, that corporate influence over media affected media's independence from corporations/finance, etc. The talked about the concentration of media control in a not very large number of corporations. Well, the situation since they wrote that book is much much worse. I also see much of this as creating storms in tea cups. Distracting. Though also suppressing information broadly. It can and will appear but at the fringes. Part of the point of their work was that you don't have to censor, just push things to the margins. You don't have to do what, then, the USSR and CCCP were doing.
Does all of that follow some potential narrative path or do you see no historical sequence of repeating patterns involved. Some sort of rise and fall pattern perhaps?
I don't have a cyclic theory of history. I mean, it may work like that. And I kind assume that lots of cycles are happening. That we must follow the Rise and Fall or Rome or something like that, no, I don't work from that kind of hypothesis. I don't rule it out, but I don't feel like I have the tools to apply, criticize or recognize such a thing. I'm not saying others must lack these abilities. I mean, perhaps a smart person, even me, if one invested a lot of time - and Jesus, I think I'd really have to look at economics in a way that both scares me and bores me in advance) - might be able to say this was likely. But I'm not there in any case.
If we have talk of "they" moving to "open dystopia" while further down the page the rest of us must dine at soup kitchens or bulk purchase gruel ingredients in 50lb bags, does that not relegate the bulk of the populace to the political status of a modern day serf?
As bad as serfs had it, they had a role. Of course Stalin, for example, thought he didn't need so many, and he eliminated vast swathes of them. But in general, they had their place and function. I see trends where people may not have the role of serfs. That they will move outside. Will they be the bottom rung, as serfs were, yes. And I say yes, meaning if those trends and not the countertrends win out. I don't see them becoming argicultural laborers. I'm sure you meant it more broadly and metphorically. So, at a metaphorical level, to some degree yes. But actually more expendable.