One of the more important trends in post-Cold War America is the great consolidation that is going on all areas of life. This past Christmas shopping season, for example, was great for a small number of giant retailers. Amazon certainly had a good shopping season, as well as some giant operators like Walmart. For the small local retailers, Black Friday was not the start of their boom time, but a continuation of a decline that started in the 1990’s and continues unabated.
An adult in 1985 would probably have done business with a dozen different retailers during the season, in order to get the gifts and supplies he needed. He would have gone off to a mall to walk through dozens of shops. He would have hit the bigger retailers, of which there were many. That mall would have had two or three big stores, in addition to many small retail chains. Most people had access to two or three malls, in addition to small retailers operating in older strip malls.
This past Christmas, many people will have done all of their shopping on-line and some of those will have done their business with just one company. You can buy just about everything you want from Amazon. If they are not the direct seller, they are operating as a fulfillment company for others. They also operate storefronts for those who just a few years ago would have had their own web store. Amazon and Walmart are close to owning the entire on-line marketplace in the United States.
Consolidation is, of course, a feature of capitalism. An important thing libertarians always miss is that markets naturally seek to consolidate. No matter what set of rules are agreed upon in the market initially, dominant players will emerge and seek to consolidate their grip on the market. Eventually you end up with a few players that control the supply side of the market, thus turning the market into the modern version of the Bronze Age palace economies.
This tendency toward consolidation is not just turning up in the retail side of the American economy. It is occurring in the wholesale side as well. The industrial supply sector has seen a great consolidation in this age. Regional players have been backed by investment bankers toting unlimited credit money, so they can buy-up the smaller players. The supply chain has also seen a similar consolidation, where local operators are displaced by global operators.
The relentless drive toward consolidation is not just an economic trend but a cultural and political one as well. For the first time in a very long time, the children of middle-class Americans can expect a lower standard of living than their parents. One reason for that is the consolidation in the professional ranks. That great consolidation in the economy has meant relatively fewer jobs in the middle and upper management ranks of American business and in the professions.
That’s something that has gone completely unnoticed. In the 1980’s, going to a top-25 law school meant an upper-middle class life, even for the slacker. If you could not cut it at one of the elite firms, you were going to land in regional or local firm, where you could expect a comfortable life. There is a now a great consolidation in the law that will accelerate in this decade. Not only will the number of spots in the elite get smaller, but the next levels down will disappear entirely.
Another area where this will happen is higher education. In a way, higher education has been a relief valve for the children of the top-10%. Those unable to get into elite law schools or cut it in the law of finance, could land a comfortable life in a university either as an administrator or professor. The number of tenured professors and senior administrative staff continues to shrink relative to overall staffing. Of course, the college finance system is about shrink the whole system.
What we are seeing is something no one worried much over in the 20th century and that is the collapse of the upper-middle class. The focus was always on the working class and the great solid middle. While the working class has been obliterated as a social unit, the middle-class has struggled on. Where there is a crisis is in the upper middle, the class of people who served as the staff for the ruling class of American society in business, the professions and politics.
The great consolidation at the very top, is going to mean a great consolidation in the class that serves the top. In a world of ten thousand local guys like Jeff Bezos, there was demand for ten thousand top assistants. In a world of one Jeff Bezos, there is only one aid and maybe a support staff for that top man. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it reveals just how much damage consolidation at the top does to the next strata of society that exists to serve the elite.
There is another consequence to this great consolidation. The children of professionals, who are unable to find a spot in their class, tumble into the next class. This changes the that class. The radicalization of the white middle-class we see happening is due, in part, to this consolidation. All over in dissident politics are men who would have been in management tracks, partner tracks and tenure tracks. Instead they are working outside that system and exercising their minds in dissident politics.
This will have consequences. One way of viewing the revolutions set off by the Enlightenment is that they were the result of idle smart people. The American Revolution and the French Revolution were led by smart fractions. In a world of global oligarchs, where the smart fraction is coalescing outside the ruling fraction, the result will be increasing social unrest. The great populist revolt of the past decade is probably just an appetizer for what lies ahead in the new world order.
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“All over in dissident politics are men who would have been in management tracks, partner tracks and tenure tracks. Instead they are working outside that system and exercising their minds in dissident politics.”
And that is why I am here. Our ranks are filling.
Somewhere In Vermont tonight a random multi-millionaire banker — with his Xanax-popping kids on break from Dalton in the other suite — on his $15K ski vacation will have a brief nightmare showing him his future. It’s coming.
$15K is a relatively cheap ski vacation. Just sayin’.
Same here, AR. Schadenfreude over a hypothetical banker losing sleep over his fallen soufflé of status is a pleasant bit of daydreaming. But my own 3 AM anxiety over my fledgling household economics of an already displaced tends to overshadow. Most of my old colleagues in the moneyed world don’t seem to be losing much sleep. Sure, they are probably miserable shits most of the time, but they have already siphoned enough from the system to insulate from all but the social tumble of a worst-case scenario. For me, working outside the system has been liberating and spiritually enriching, but… Read more »
Good points, Screwtape. Dissidents have their work cut out for them: a social support network, sure, bring it on. But that’s not enough. A countervailing economy is also imperative. Dissidence cannot live by brotherhood and sisterhood alone. We should learn something from the ’60s counterculture, which I was once part of. I’ve come to despise most of its value system, but (slag me for this if you must) it was successful in one way: as the name implies, it was a subculture, deep and fairly wide. You could believe you were an integral part of something that mattered. You weren’t… Read more »
There are some promising new things that could help detach people from the machine. Re-shoring and decentralizing manufacturing with 3D printing has been talked about but so far 3D printers haven’t been used for much more than making toys and prototypes. That could change as it becomes possible to print electrical circuits into the printed objects. There’s also a new thing that even surprised me which is the “open source hardware” movement and the development of a new open instruction set called RISC-5 for microprocessors. Think of it as the AR-15 of instruction sets. A breakthrough in graphene research could… Read more »
A “made in U.S.A.” only version of Amazon would be nice. A phone, search engine and operating system specifically designed to not follow you around and sell your data would be great as well. These sorts of things aren’t being offered, and a minority of consumers would be all over them, if they were available.
The operating system part is already there. It’s called Linux and I urge everyone to use it. It’s open source so you can check it to make sure it isn’t sending your data to the FBI or Jeff Bezos. If you still aren’t satisfied you can modify it yourself to lock it down more and in fact there are “paranoid” distributions that do just that with security levels turned up to 11 and everything encrypted by default. The only problems are that a (thankfully shrinking) pool of peripherals require closed source drivers to work on Linux. In that case it… Read more »
“The “System” has its tendrils entwined deeply into average jane and joe.”
Jane has the biggest problem and will be the hardest to wean. It never occurs to most men I know to do anything but drive to O’Reilly’s.
Last night I watched a YouTube video before bed about how the Amazon Ring (a sort of talking security camera hooked to the internet so you can watch Tasheeka rob your house while you’re at work earning the money to pay for it) has been hacked. The hackers were apparently more 4Chan than Al Qaeda types and were using it to make rude comments to the owners saying things like “you really need to hit the gym fatso”. A person’s gullibility with regard to inviting the Big Tech octopus into their homes and lives is rapidly becoming a kind of… Read more »
From my working class view the lions share of the smart people are either in the dissident right or moving towards it. The left media, academia and politics “this includes Republican politicians” are morons compared to the people in our sphere. I don’t think this is going to shape up quite the way the oligarchs expect.
Every once in awhile I catch a glimpse of the actors on CNN/MSDNC, or get into a political discussion with a lefty, and cannot believe they are functioning adults. The delusion and idiocy are so amazing you can’t believe it’s real.
It’s because they have resigned themselves to following a script designed to mock and destroy people such as themselves, but they are content to suck the teat along the way. The bit about agreeing to things they know are not true, in order to break their spirit and humanity.
Think football. Which fan gets the camera’s attention, the normal enthusiastic rooter cheering when his team makes a good play, or the otherwise normal guy who paints his face, strips to the waist in sub-zero temperatures and waves some sign while continuously shouting like a lunatic?
Thus, a panel on CNN.
I think there are book smart people in the hive. In my view what they all have in common is that they are sycophants. Dissident nationalists, on the other hand, are what Derb calls rock kickers. People who ask naughty questions when the numbers don’t add up…
Smarts aren’t enough. The Will to Power is needed, and the sociopaths have that in spades.
Everyone, take a moment to shed a tear for future lawyers, professors and middle managers, whose prospects are now diminished to those of mere mortals. The poor dears can no longer parasitically suckle the wealth of others and must become productive.
UNFORTUNATELY, if you want to see another ‘swamp’ created – just think of dumping all those unemployed lawyers on society all at once. It could be more dangerous than open borders to the south of us. Just look at what giving the keys of the House to the Democrats has accomplished for society.
Correct. Karl Marx’s concentration of capital theories have been debunked long ago. In addition, we used to have anti-trust and monopoly laws and they used to be enforced. As we have been seeing lately though, with such things as that fake impeachment, the gun grab in Virginia, and the utter lack of enforcement of our immigration laws – the elites are making new law on the fly, and letting others fall by the wayside – without any regard as to whether it will fly or not. If you keep changing the rules of the game – eventually the people will… Read more »
Well said sir! Shortly before I gave up on Facebook a year ago I posted something like this regarding the then-possible Trump impeachment: ” it takes 2/3 of the Senate to remove from office. If the US Senate ever leans 2/3 Democrats we shall have worse problems than a corrupt president.” 😲
you might as well label them the ass-hole class, since that’s how they all act. I always thought to myself while reading about some insurance company moving their call center off shore — who do they think is going to be buying insurance?!
Not so fast. In a sane world, there would be a genuine honest (just much smaller) place for actual lawyers who practiced actual law, professors who taught real subjects (we will always need properly educated men to pass down real knowledge to younger generations), and managers who sensibly manage real, actual projects. The problem Z describes is not that one; it is the problem that the frauds in each of these professions are consolidating their fraudulent power base over their fellow frauds — viz this culling will not result in fewer professors of nonsense, it will simply produce fewer /tenured/… Read more »
You take your law degree and become a politician or a bureaucrat. The Leviathan grows larger every hour of every day because that’s where the money is. And you don’t even have to be smart or competent.
If they grew up in the housing/education bubble and were promised a respectable career in exchange for good grades in school, then yes shed a tear for them. The mechanics and electricians and carpenters back then were the lazy, dull students who didn’t grind through their classes and were disrespectful towards authority.
Millennials were and are owed good jobs based on the information set they had available growing up. Generation Z has different and better information.
You clearly have never known any mechanics and electricians and carpenters.
Are you actually trying to make the “but that’s what I was promised!” argument? Or are you being sarcastic? Hopefully, the latter.
The kids don’t deserve a living – they deserve the right to MAKE a living. The boomers have pissed that away before they could even vote and now it’s too late. If you look at the billionaires and millionaires responsible… welp… they are all pretty much leading edge boomers, and they are still making the same empty promises to young people. And some of them are so desperate and hopeless that they are getting suckered.
When I was in school, the only people lower than the trade school crowd were the punks who wanted to join the military. Every serious student went to college back then and had every reason to expect to be treated fairly in exchange for their hard work.
People would be far more sympathetic to capitalism if businesses actually interacted with schools, although that’s not even remotely as important now as it was back then.
You come across as having been bitch-slapped a time two by people who work for a living.
Dear Sir, you must be very old school. That was back in the days when colleges or correctly the degree actually meant something. Nowadays It has been watered down so much the college degree doesn’t mean much. Maybe a technical degree but anything else? Unlikely. Trade schools? All those jobs are being done by illegal immigrants or their children. The military? Perhaps long ago it was they recruited dullards, but if you research today they only want smarter people. The military is really hurting for qualified people. About 22% of applicants are too stupid. 10% too criminal. About 50% have… Read more »
all they have to do is to be able to lay drywall, learn basic electrical circuits, and plumbing ….and voila, they can make 100K a year as a handyman….
My grandfather, the young itinerant ranch and farm hand, came out of WW1 as a cavalryman (horse riding soldier—not much call for that), and learned the electrical trade out of a matchbook-advertising correspondence school after the war. Made a nice, but modest, living, electrifying the city of Whittier, CA, as an independent businessman, hiring and directing a small local work force. That kind of work flies under the cultural radar, but it’s out there.
That kind of work is out there, but its done by a contractor named Greg with employees named Pablo and Jose.
True , but for a fair price, EVERY single person I know would rather have the work done directly from an American citizen/resident who is licensed bonded and insured. If Pablo’s work falls apart, there is no one to call. Pablo is long gone. My electrician is booked out 4 months and I practically have to beg him to do anything. To be honest, I give him credit for forcing me to develop basic electrical skills. The shock and awe my fellow doctors had when told hem that I moved an electrical outlet by myself (because I couldn’t get an… Read more »
“shock and awe my fellow doctors had when told hem that I moved an electrical outlet by myself”
Heh. BTD (much less than) T. It was a thing of wonder when I changed a flat tire all by myself, like a big boy in the office parking lot. I could understand (though not agree with) an argument such as “it’s not a good use of my time, economically speaking” but was amused/saddened by the “it’s too complicated/dangerous” excuse.
“Um, you spent last night on call placing freaking hemodialysis catheters. In what possible way is that less difficult/dangerous?”
I can say without a trace of irony that at this moment, it is much harder for me to re-plumb my bathroom shower (using the requisite tools) that it is to do spine surgery.
Then again, a microdisketomy pays $950 bucks via medicare….
a shower remodel is $4000 ….lol!!!
“Handyman” here; that’s the dream but it’s not even close to reality.
fair enough. But would you not agree that more men should consider learning a good trade such as A/c, electrical, master woodworking, plumbing, automotive? Plenty of good work out there.
I will say the carpenter who repaired our library shelving rolls in a beautiful souped up F-150 and is more than likely making 300-400k per year. He’s is the most unreliable guy I have ever met. Fortunately, he is really good at his work and a nice guy….but he certainly is NOT cheap.
This is the typical ‘boomercon civnat’ attitude. Just ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’. Wife and I are friends with a couple who is currently going through bankruptcy because his trades business cannot compete with the guys paying illegals to do the work under the table. He tried to do the right thing, paying Americans to do the work, and now his young children and his wife are going to lose their business and probably their house as well because of people hiring illegal labor. “all they have to do” is easy to say. But try to actually do it,… Read more »
that really sucks. I learned the hard way very early and now I will never get work done without the person being licensed/bonded and insured.
This topic is probably the most important one for heritage Americans and the one that infuriates me most about my generation cohort. Back in the day I attended Ivy League graduate school in the liberal arts area. I came from the lower middle class and a whole new world opened up for me. Long story short the march to PhD, then through tenure indoctrination, to publish or perish began to lose its allure and I left to pursue different fields over the following years. I had always enjoyed teaching so my last FT career was in community college in a… Read more »
Not surprisingly, Kalizuela’s educational system has cratered from the best in the country to the worst. I would say I look forward to Kalizuela’s collapse but the disease that infects that state has spread throughout the country.
Another factor that I didn’t see coming was the zeal that dissident whites are showing in their quest to save western kind. Things become less frightening
and much more clear when you realize you are on death ground.
And not alone.
Once you see it you can’t unsee it.
It’s sad that a large number in the USA, and a vast majority (in Canada) are simply unfit to survive and will be extinct in several generations due to childlessness or genocide.
But you are right, the zealotry of the actual Dissidents suggest that there will be a strong contingent of whites hanging on regardless of what the world does. One can hope that the inherent Anglo obsessive fad mindset (Puritans, Victorians, SJW, diversity) might actually be a good thing for once.
Diversity and SJW are not inherent Anglo obsessions. For the most part they were deliberately inserted into the West by the usual suspects. As someone linked the following the other day. (Sorry, I forget who it was, and too lazy to go search, no slight intended.)
https://www.unz.com/article/modify-the-standards-of-the-in-group/
Puritanism I’ll grant as being a “native” idiocy.
The word “efficiency” has a positive connotation that needs to be reevaluated. Household efficiency is a far different thing from capitalistic or governmental efficiency. Putting all business under the Amazon umbrella or all government under a dictator would be wonderfully efficient when measured in dollars/cents. Efficiency is ultimately a philosophical question for a community and culture; unfortunately American culture has knee-jerk instincts for “cheaper is better” and “my kids need a college education to compete.” As a response to the rush over the efficiency cliff, we dissidents need to steer our smart children toward the trades. Lawyers will consolidate –… Read more »
I agree with the trades track and then opening your own business as the best viable route for most young white males. But there is only so much time. Here in Cali it is getting close to being too late for this. The legal and illegal Latinos started out as trade workers and now many own their own businesses. They, and most of the white business owners, primarily/only hire illegals, pay them little, and usually classify them as independent contractors. Additionally Latinos generally appear to having an aversion to paying taxes, getting insured, etc. There are two sets of rules… Read more »
Brother, we need you in flyover country. I don’t think CA is salvageable without there first being a cataclysmic implosion.
Capt: Cali is gone. I would love to be gone from Cali but I am a new convert to the dissident church and for most of my immediate family this is “problematic” as the academics say. So I stay here to try to protect them. I am making hopeful plans to move but certain economic stars must align first to be able to leave without financially hurting them. So for now my solace is to travel to see a few old friends who are awake a couple of times a year. Growing up I lived all over the US (and… Read more »
You make an interesting point. If it is true, that might be an opening for a enterprising white man with money to hire a Latino to head an 8A firm. You could even insist on some white people being hired. Diversity and all that.
Captain S: Just compared in my phone book (YES! I still use a paper phonebook) the number of attorneys vs. the number of septic pumpers.
Fifteen pages of lawyers, many of them full page ads.
Two small listings of septic pumpers.
Small community, small phone book, but that is a huge difference. The competition in the lawyer business must be brutal.
Similar situation here. My paper phone book is about 3/4″ thick. My son is a piano tech/tuner … he’s the only game in town, and people call him from 90 miles away. Depending on where you live (I think rural flyover country is best) the sky is the limit for the talented young person with a work-ethic.
Absolutely correct about the trades. I have a nephew who started on the college route, with a full-scholarship is sportsball. Finally realized how much he hated college (and didn’t much care for sportsball anymore). Quit. Went the HVAC route, which he loves. Got the necessary certs, excelled at his job and will be opening his own company soon. At the ripe old age of 21, just bought his first (modest, but nice) house and has no financial worries at all. Confident, good-looking, athletic and loyal to those who’ve helped him along the way. Also, the young, smart and very pretty… Read more »
In the STEM field, go for the lab skills, not the report writing. Lab techs are in huge demand, because most college graduates in the hard sciences know their theoretical stuff, but they don’t know how to properly operate sophisticated lab equipment. Lovely Dutch daughter is killing it in high-tech bio lab technical work (the plumbers and, well, linemen, of biology) while most of her schoolmates have nothing going on.
I’m a clinical lab tech myself. We have a very serious shortage of qualified people to fill the available positions. You are completely correct in your assessment about the theoretical science types, even the ones in the applied sciences. To be fair though, nearly anyone who can work with lab equipment of any kind, can quickly learn other kinds. Also, there just aren’t that many schools with clinical laboratory science programs. At this time, most of the qualified lab techs are coming out of the military, who are graduating ~40-50 techs per month combined. Unlike most other college science programs,… Read more »
Link this problem to the tandem problem of roping our women under control. I’m a chick and didn’t start career building until Daughter was on her own out of the house. I was 45 when I hit my stride. Plus I went into The Trades—water treatment-systems water quality-water distribution-hydroelectric dam operator. I tried like crazy to entice other women into these job fields. A few women in water treatment and water quality. Only one nibble for distribution-hydro dam and she hadn’t passed the certifications yet. Women–Raise your children then career build. Plus women freak out about working graveyard shift or… Read more »
RFF, Lovely Dutch Daughter found that the second and third shifts are where all the good people are (these labs go 24/7). Weekday first shift is where all the climbers to management and all the suck up hacks live, and the 2nd/3rd-shift people hate being called in to fix the problems the 1st shifters create. 3rd shift is where the “best”, most dissident people dwell, but going in to work at 10 p.m. is a bit much for her right now.
Good for her! Plus management has gone home so just me moving water around. No maintenance projects Swing and Graveyard. We had 12 hour days/on 2 days off 2 day/Sweet!….the first day is “Monday” and I fix what the 2 day On before me slightly goofed up…the second day is “Friday” time for 2 days off. I was spoiled. No one in Distribution wanted a Mgmt job. A good job was finally getting a transfer to upcountry dams in the Motherlode. If I had started career building earlier, to end career transferred upcountry is very sweet. Working Distribution is like… Read more »
We men dislike that attitude in other men just as much as we dislike it in women. Actually, probably more so, as we’ve had to accept that many women just come with that attitude and current workplace culture requires that we deal with it. Other men? Not so much.
Yes. I know a consultant to Big Oil, a petrophysicist raking home an easy $5 million in a good year. He told me he was on the golf course, playing some dude he’d met in the club house. The guy was a mason, made a grand living by buying houses, fixing them up and flipping them, he had 45 employees. He pointed to a billboard on the edge of the golf course; “That’s my company right there.” That’s what I would do if I got a do-over: learn a trade and how to cook my own book, so I won’t… Read more »
Sounds like a real-life Terry Pratchett’s “Harry King“
Isn’t it interesting how capitalism and socialism lead to the same place? The main difference being how you pick your rulers. Economic power vs. political power.
It’s no surprise there are so many crypto-monarchists on the DR given how it is largely a reaction against economic power. Not judging, just observing.
DR Crypto-monarchists are springing up from a sense of desperation. I can’t blame them.
And I’m willing to listen to their arguments. Supposedly the traditional arrangement is the king & the people opposing the nobility.
Is monarchy democracy in the person of a king? Is a republic rule by aristocracy? The king needs the people to check the aristocracy, the aristocrats want to be the new king. Things I wonder about.
A king is just a random guy born to be king, a natural democrat, rather than a power hungry striver. In a world with weapons of mass destruction, monarchy makes the most sense.
Capitalism enriches the middle class along the way, before it impoverishes most. Socialism enriches the lower class along the way, before it impoverishes most. The end game is the problem, which comes up more quickly and severely under Socialism, but we appear to be in a sort of an end game now.
Its important to note that Marx’s end goal was a bunch of people laying about reading poetry while the robots and crazy gardening lovers worked the commune. Which is exactly what the capitalists want except staring into the idiot box instead of poetry.
Communists are just impatient liberals.
The standard line defenders of liberalism use is, “Democracy protects your civil rights from evil kings.”
Once you realize they were wrong about your civil rights, you question whether monarchy was as evil as its enemies claim it is.
The root issue is the false god of equality and his prophet envy. As C. S. Lewis observed in the Screwtape Lettters, someone who says, “I am as good as you!” does not believe it. Nietzsche would hasten to add that only the weak are concerned with fairness and equality. Accept those 2 truths and we can kill this god.
Either philosophy raised to the height of moral or governmental purpose leads nowhere good. They are ideas about the most efficient way of creating and distributing goods. While goods must be made and distributed that is not the purpose of government, just one aspect of it.
Efficiency loves consolidation, it’s just that efficiency isn’t the only thing important to a safe and prosperous society.
I believe one’s politics comes down to how one makes a living, so unfortunately economics often rises to morality, even erroneously.
Love of money is the root of all evil.
Rivaled only by the love of power.
Anyone else here remember Anti-Trust laws? I seem to recall learning about them in history class; something to do with Teddy Roosevelt as I recall.
Excellent point. In addition to failing on the immigration front, Trump has done nothing to break up huge quasi-monopolies such as Amazon and Google.
Because he’s in their in group.
Agree that this is a great point, but we’ve also learned that it’s pointless to kick-the-can over to the Feds or state government, hoping for reform. Anti-trust can work in a country united by common traditions, common ethics, and common-law, all of which we’ve lost since Teddy’s era. The best anti-trust policy is for individual households to go subversive with their personal economic policy. We can choose online alternatives like Etsy or DuckDuckGo. Subversive households combine to make subversive communities; communities combine to make subversive counties, and counties have the wherewithal to influence a state’s economy. We don’t just need… Read more »
A small aspect of Zman’s larger take and riffing off Capt. S Etsy comment… there is a massive desire for unusual, quality, cottage industry product… particularly traditionally made goods out there. I see it as a bellwether of deeper desires. I’ve a friend who makes leather goods. His spare moments from his low six figure job are filled with hand stitching leather items. He can’t keep up with demand. He committed to so many projects that in an attempt to simply clamp down future orders and get a break.. he raised his prices ridiculously. Or that was the plan at… Read more »
It’s not just the power and wealth concentrating in the hands of the few. It’s that the few either don’t see themselves as part of the masses or are in fact a different tribe than the masses.
Regardless, it’s when the masses start getting 115-130 IQ guys to give them direction that things start getting interesting.
AmRen is filled with exactly what you’re describing. We’ve got some smart folks on our side.
127 IQ checking in.
Still feel powerless. I just subtly drop redpills in social settings to other young white people. Hard to know what else to do. They listen and I try to lead by example.
But you are right. When a white guy of 95-100 IQ sees a guy of 120 IQ is actually in his corner, he fucking listens. They wake up more easily. I know i sound arrogant but it’s true from my experience.
I feel like I’m stalking you today in the comments — not intentional — but what the hell. Now I barely know anything about you, but I would suspect it’s not your IQ but behavior people are responding to. Be the level headed guy who gives honest opinions and straight answers, when he has an answer, and admits it when he doesn’t. Be the guy people can depend on, whose word is known to be good. Help those who ask for help. Make time to listen to people’s problems, but call them on it when they whine, and be supportive… Read more »
This is an excellent point. Be someone that people want to be around and you gain an audience that will listen…
I always marvel at how it goes un-Noticed how many lawyers were in the Sons of Liberty, the jacobins, and the falangists. There is something about practicing law that seems to have a particular likelihood of redpilling our forefathers into hoisting the black flag and applying the National Razor.
I call it the Big Squeeze. Corporate consolidation squeezing out the smaller companies, squeezing out their suppliers’ profits, squeezing out their payroll by hiring cheaper foreigners, squeezing out the tax base for communities, and on and on it goes. But they sure are lean and cost-efficient aren’t they?
I am not as well read as the majority of commenters on this site, being an autodidact without formal secondary education, but what I have to say is a little off topic. I believe that what happens in Virginia in the coming months will dictate the future events in this county for a number of years to come if not indefinitely. If the bluster coming out of the dissident right concerning draconian gun control measures in the state is indeed just talk with no follow up action, then the rest of the states will fall like dominoes in its wake.… Read more »
Initially, I thought the confiscatory laws in Virginia were insane, but now I believe they are a test case. The progs have a wealthy, professional class base in NoVa that will support whatever the government chooses to do, with the proximity of considerable military and agency paramilitary assets (probably more reliable) if they need to go posse commitatus.
How this shakes out will determine much.
Those military assets would have to have the go-ahead from Trump to interfere in Virginia on behalf of the gun-grabbers. That’s not going to happen.
The financialization of our economy is producing monopolies and skimming operations benefiting the international corporations and the elite. Our government not only does not protect our borders it also fails to protect us from predatory capitalism. Here in my midwestern city MasterCard has a huge processing center and middle class American jobs are being picked off and the same job shows up in India. Or Indians with temp visa’s are brought in here to compete for good jobs. Dentistry is another profession that I have noticed that is being consolidated under corporatism. You go in for a dental checkup and… Read more »
As a person working with clients in a “white-collar professional” field (helping them get taken care of without their getting scalped by the corporate behemoth, is how I see my job), the near future is working that interface between the people and the borg. It appears my older lawyer and doctor colleagues are doing the same thing, trying to take care of their clients and patients, while corporate consolidation of their professions claw at their practices from the other side. The long term result and goal of all of this is to take the actual nuts and bolts of our… Read more »
The US federal government has morphed into nothing more than a simple broker transferring tax receipts to corporate interests.
Listened to a number of Millennialyules over the break. There seems to be a white/black pill divide that is reflective of what kind of dissent you are. All of the guys who do this for a living or spend very little time around normies are black pilled. The exception to this is Greg Johnston. Working class guys who’ve had their trade gutted are black pilled but are eager to break out of the catacombs. These are men of action and tired of circling the wagons. They are running out of patience. Mark Collett is curbing this energy into something useful.… Read more »
You can put me in the “Blackpilled because nothing is happening towards a solution” pile
Meme,
We’re literally at the very beginning of a long journey. Think of whites as someone who was in a very deep sleep and are just getting woken up. They barely know where they are. We need to be there at the bedside calmly telling them what’s happening, letting them know the house is on fire.
Btw, we won’t save the house. We won’t even save a good number of whites living in the house. But we can save some so that someday, long after we’re gone, they can build again.
Hear, hear!
Citizen, yes indeed—we must first survive—intact as much as possible. If that can be managed, the superiority of the race wrt life achievement in a highly technical society will win out.
Blackpill comment but Canadians (Ontarians) are just as stupid and naive as ever. However i am encouraged during my trips to the USA. Something is seriously wrong in Canadian and New Zealand brains. Aus and USA brains seem much stronger.
Young white canadians are listening to rap music and doing drugs pathologically. Nothing is going to happen here except a slow (actually, rapid) replacement by chinamen and Indians.
The USA will happily trade your Chinamen and Indians for our melanic hominids. 😀
I vote for “things become so obvious”. It’s been fascinating to observe that many persons, who would have been solid straight-ticket Democrats 20 or so years ago, are now saying, “Trump may be an asshole, but he’s all we’ve got now.” I know many Z readers have problems with Trump, but what these persons are really saying is not about Trump, if you take my meaning. The thing that really has been eye-opening is how many white people are now willing to openly criticize and oppose “affirmative action” and similar race-based (or deviance-based) quota systems. Of course I am priming… Read more »
The most interesting take for me is this:
” All over in dissident politics are men who would have been in management tracks, partner tracks and tenure tracks. Instead they are working outside that system and exercising their minds in dissident politics.”
If so, much to hope for from that.
That’s something I had not put much thought into. It’s one thing for the factory workers to lose jobs, but when it also happens to white collar folks, and their children, that brings a new dimension to the ranks of the disgruntled.
Never trust a person who sees his job as an avenue to a gig in management. Work only with people who actually prefer to do their own jobs, if you want to engage people who do good work.
In the New Old Dominion they are now ensuring the new deplorables of the former upper middle class have more to worry about than organizing… Remember to say good morning to your new neighbors!
https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/23/virginia-house-zoning-environment/
Seems like they are resurrecting Obama policy implemented toward the end of his tenure through HUD. Policy was reversed by current HUD Director under Trump. More magic dirt theory. Poor people will become less dysfunctional if they are introduced to Whites—like next door neighbors. 🙁 This article also seems to dove tail with postings by Z-man concerning the ”monetization of social capital”. There will be no shortage of developers I’m sure who will be happy to built such high density-low cost housing in the middle of once peaceful communities—after which schools will less effective, and more chaotic, neighborhood crime will… Read more »
My county was the one where the County Exec chose to go toe to toe with Obama’s HUD. It was ugly. Our little village was told by HUD that it was deficient by a number of units equivalent to five years total budget. And yes the plan was to supersede local zoning and allow multi-family to be parked anywhere land was available, including purchasing and demolishing single family dwellings.
I have a developer neighbor. We’re on the north side of town. He develops on the south side. Shocking!
I think this issue of state mandated zoning taking over from local zoning control may be where the madness could possibly stop. Because if not here then we become Brazil rapidly. Although the odds are we become Brazil. This is literally the last pretzel bending technique for upper middle class whites to escape diversity while pretending they are living in an area because it “magically is a good area” while not admitting why. If this central state governing takeover happens there are no more places “to white flight to.” I am sure certain places like Malibu has the money and… Read more »
For your amusement here is a slightly humorous essay I wrote on just this topic.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xmHPcwhpV3xpqpDVYwat_ftsYenG_Ghi1ySBx1Fr-Y0/edit?usp=drivesdk
Get woke, go broke VA.
Another thing killing the malls is out of control black youth fighting and causing mayhem in the malls. Women love shopping. They love trying on clothes and do it as a pastime. But a lot of the malls are no longer safe orderly places. The black youth menace these malls more or less unchallenged. No clerk or security guard wants to be the next twitter star picking on black “teen” shoppers for no reason whatsoever. When things get so bad that the police need to be called, the cops round them up, call a bus, put them on the bus… Read more »
You sound like a Colin Flaherty podcast. 😯 These incidents do serve the useful function of red pilling the otherwise sleepy liberal sheep.
Z Man; Another insightful essay with some pretty clear takeaways. Upper Middle Class consolidation might well be the semi-hidden driving factor in the ever-changing SJW virtue stack competition. Likewise it can explain the baffling millenarian cult that is today’s Progressivism: ‘Obey enthusiastically or be forever cast into the outer darkness that is Flyover’. Obey what_? If you have to ask, you’re dangerously close to expulsion. Just follow the school like a good little fish and maybe the barracuda of downsizing won’t get you. In nature fish follow the school by being hyper-alert to and rapidly mimicking the movements of their… Read more »
The consolidation you speak of results in increased inequality. We are familiar with the gap in wealth which grew between the top and the middle from 1980 onwards, but as consolidation accelerates to an extreme stage, the same economic inequality is becoming a feature WITHIN the top 10%. Nine of those ten are feeling their futures fade. The dream of internet wealth via “the killer app” is disappearing if not gone among the young. Today’s info and tech grads are discovering that their jobs are those of drones, not of world saviors who are “connecting people” and “serving all.” Likewise… Read more »
Peter Turchin in his latest book Ages of Discord argues that every 50 years there is a cycle of political instability, starting off with oversupply of labor, leading to falling wages and increasing economic inequality with a growing elite and a resentful working class.Eventually this leads to intense ultra-elite competition with too many people earning degrees, feeling they are entitled to rule but finding shrinking opportunities, fueling intra-elite resentment as well. Making matters worse is when there is governmental fiscal instability and a loss of faith in public institutions. Turchin believes we are close to point for this powder keg… Read more »
Consolidated culture is also a horror. The biggest lines I’ve yet seen in Europe are at the St. Petersburg McDonald’s. Strolled on by for the local market. Like Scandinavia’s pestilent Amer-Irish “pubs,” strip-mall kitcsch and fast-goy-food are invasive cultural species that are choking off the diversity we should really be celerating – the unique fruits of cultures with strong cores and strong fences. At least 50+ lbs. overweight fatties are still thin on the ground here – almost unwitnessed in Scandinavia, somewhat “thicker on the ground” so far here in Mama Russia, where healthy habits are a less-popular import than… Read more »
Scale, scale, a thousand times scale. In any human endeavor, bigger is worse. Yes, NAxALT, but this is a pretty sturdy heuristic. The Outsider Smart Fraction has been the mother of revolutions since revolution was invented. This is why Machiavelli cautioned his Prince to allow subordinates their “liberties,” by which he meant their ambitions and petty fiefdoms, not anything Ben Shapiro is lighting a candle for this season. Keeping the talented tenth inside the Inner Party has historically been the best way to stay on top of rebels deprived of inspired and competent leadership. If Cataline or Spartacus had been… Read more »
What I have learned through my reading of dissident thought is that Capitalism is really just a game. That is it’s problem is that games can be won. Even worse Capitalism seems I lead to a system where the winners of the game get to make the rules for all future variations of the game. What I think is interesting, especially as it relates to Libertarian thought, is that in order to be a viable long term system Capitalism needs an activist government to manage it. Left to its own devices it seems to go to the place described in… Read more »
What’s the saying…”unbridled capitalism will soon be selling human flesh in the meat market.” That I tend to agree with. Rules need to be established and enforced. We don’t have a problem with capitalism, we have a problem with rules and enforcement. Capitalists have been rent seeking from our political class since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, hence Marx. The trick has always been getting human greed/interest to work for both the individual and society. Communism offered the people equality and got generally equal poverty—ruling class aside. After a rough start—when rules were being developed and set—Capitalism created the… Read more »
It is simply the problem of mean regression of available returns in any mature market. So the only means of beating that is rent seeking, now through lobbying for regulation and tax code breaks. Peter Thiel is one of the few that lays this out with no sanctimonious bullshit. You want high returns? Have to create something that is effectively a monopoly for as long as you can sustain it. Then move on to something else. But as Herbert Stein posited…”things that can’t go on forever, won’t”. The reckoning always come. The 2008 crisis was just a prelude. The bankers… Read more »
It becomes the government through regulatory capture.
There are different flavors of libertarianism but the AnCaps have no answer except to say let people figure it out through free association. Which either eventually creates a new government or becomes endless low-level revolution. Maybe other libertarians have something substantially different to say but I doubt it.
Libertarianism is simply a brain-dead ideology.
Another commenter referenced this column several threads back, but it dovetails perfectly with the observations here.
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-real-class-war/
Revolutions are bourgeois.
I’ve always said that until the brown wave starts lapping up on the shores of upper-middle class whites, we won’t see much. But it’s starting. Their kids don’t have the same opportunities as they did. Asians and Indians are starting to move into their neighborhoods. H1-Bs are taking their jobs.
Upper-middle class whites are just starting to notice that their bubble world isn’t as safe as they thought.
And they deserve scorn and derision for being so dense and self-centered.
I thought about you, Citizen, when I read the Z-man’s post. Things may start getting tense when upper middle class white Americans find themselves competing with, and often losing to, clannish Indians and Chinese.
Another factor is automation. A lot of law practice can now be handled by software. Tax preparation software has cut into the need for accountants. There are probably other examples. That’s going to make things even tenser in the competition for the remaining upper-middle class jobs.
There’s a very different look on the faces of upper-middle class whites when an Indian or Muslim or Asian starts spouting off about white privilege, especially when those people live your suburb. They don’t buy it. They also start to notice that they’re getting ganged up on.
Before it was some black lady or maybe a rabbi. But now they’re lining up to tell you how much you suck. And the real kicker: These others don’t let white women off the hook. NWLs are the canary in the coalmine.
Indians aren’t doing themselves any favours with their current behaviour either. For a long time in Canada, they were literally just white people with brown skin. Some people called them paki whatever but nobody really hated them, and they didn’t seem to hate us. In the past 5-10 years they have totally changed as their numbers have exploded. They are now rude, racist, and general assholes. They do bad jobs at work. They seem to hate everything, especially whites. They fuck up companies. Their kids are criminals and drug dealers obsessed with rap music and black culture. They appear to… Read more »
Medicine and surgery[1] training programs are now overwhelmingly Indian or Pakistani. I know I’ve gone on about this before, but do a search on “internal medicine residency program” (or general surgery residency program”) and the name of your local teaching hospital. Not going to comment otherwise, but American (and probably Canadian) society has outsourced its next generation of physicians to the subcontinent. And I don’t so much mean people of Indian or Pakistani ancestry, I mean graduates of medical schools in the subcontinent, who then come here for post-MD (post-MBBS) residency training. Funny thing is, I have begun hearing (and… Read more »
“Funny thing is, I have begun hearing (and hearing of) Indian and Pakistani MDs currently established in the US complaining about “too much immigration”.”
They want to live in a white society, which is why they came here. They don’t want to live with the people they ran away from.
Please to be congratulated for your comment. 😎 Even here in provincial Florida it is amazing how many Patel’s and Shahs there are in the medical profession serving “God’s waiting room.”
“Their kids are criminals and drug dealers obsessed with rap music and black culture.”
Behold, assimilation.
Agree. For decades, upper-middle class whites have been so distracted in their intense competition with one another that they failed to notice or take seriously economic threats from other cohesive ethnic groups.
The Romans had a similar stability problem when the number of elites wanting billets in their Cursus Honorum far exceeded the supply. Many billets like provincial governorships were opportunities for personal enrichment. Only a few men can feast at the trough and everyone else gets crumbs, along with the burning humiliation of the associated lack of social status.
Great post Mr. Z. I am reminded of Peter Turchin’s observation of “elite overproduction”. As Horace pointed out, in Ancient Rome there were too many qualified people seeking too few public posts. Cassius and Brutus found plenty of supporters. In the end, Octavius Caesar came out on top after a lot of the excess “elite” were put in their graves
Here is a link to an article by Peter Turchin https://nationalpost.com/opinion/peter-turchin-how-elite-overproduction-and-lawyer-glut-could-ruin-the-u-s
Tocqueville–Almost all the democratic movements that have troubled the world have been led by the nobility. An elite body can never satisfy the ambitions of all its members; there are always more talents and passions than tasks to deploy and there are bound to be a great number of men who, being unable to rise quickly enough by exploiting the privileges of the group, seek fast promotion by attacking these very privileges.
By 2030 will be looking into a totally different world, Boomers will finally leave politics and the economy, new opportunities will emerge for those who are prepared.
I often ask myself if I’ve really taken the harder path or if I’ve been lazy about doing my own thing. The more I push against boomers, the less formidable they seem. It’ doesn’t sit right to compete with your own in a zero-sum way, but that’s how it often seems they want it.
Exactly!!! I am fully confident that when the Boomers are finally all gone, and more importantly their views on Politics… we can truly start to create a better world for everyone.
20 more years should do it…
This is wishful thinking. When the Boomers are gone, things are going to be even worse. Gen-X, in many ways is worse than boomers. Our views on race are much less realistic than most Boomers. It’s going to be about 60 million fewer white people in the US when the last of the Boomers die.
Brilliant analysis Z. Spot on. Watching my kids live the transition is difficult.
Consolidation isn’t the only mega-trend that is changing next-gen society fundamentally. Young men are increasingly turning to video gaming as a distraction from boredom and lethargy, and the concomitant physical idleness is producing zombified couch potatoes in huge numbers. How long before the majority of our society becomes fat jellyfish? Will the next revolution be fought by dysfunctional transgenders flinging couch pillows? It’s time to turn those vacant retail shops into neighborhood fight club arenas and get the testosterone flowing again.
This is off topic, so please bear with me. I hope Z does a post about it before the event.
Is it just me, or does anyone else have a bad feeling about the event scheduled in Virginia on the 20th of January. I have a bad feeling a present day Lon Horiuchi will spark events that will lead to the G having an excuse for cracking down on Patriots who will be attending the event.
Charlottesville anyone?
A public event in Virginia strikes me as an exceedingly poor idea.
Agreed. Unfortunately a lot…most…gunowners still believe the constitution applies and that they will be treated fairly when they demonstrate…
I don’t see the smartest people being in Dissident politics. Most are still seeking the status of the system. However, Z is partially right in that the number of smart people on our side of the divide is growing and will likely grow exponentially more as Gen Z gets driven out of the elite ranks and middle class. Gen Z males will be really hurt by their replacements (both American born and first generation immigrants) and the anti white jihad
Not sure I’m the sharpest knife in the drawer, or even that such is necessary, for a successful participant in the DR movement, but I am fairly convinced that the depth, breath, and experience of the commentators on this blog are pretty unique. Disagree we may, but it would seem to me that a formidable force, grounded in reason, logic, and science is growing here—albeit currently small. That ain’t going away folks.
The working class in America has been getting fucked in the ass for the last 50 years. We don’t give a fuck about rich kid, college jerkoffs. Overeducated , useless pieces of shit aren’t gonna fare well in the hard times coming.
Overmiseducated.
Dennis, don’t hold it back… tell us how you Really feel.
Amazon today is the Sears of yesteryear, and but for a bit of innovation in the 90s Sears of yesteryear could still be something today. Put the catalog online instead of discontinue it, and it would have been magic.
Amazon is catalog shopping writ large, and the same way Sears anchored shopping malls full of smaller retailers Amazon fulfillment is bring smaller sellers across the internet into people’s homes. Watch the parallels of Amazon’s impact on smaller retailers compared to the impact of the Sears catalog a century ago.
I wonder how many small, local merchants the Sears catalog put out of business.
You could buy a *house* from the Sears Catalog. It was quite something.
“Any of these houses can be arranged with a bathroom for a small additional charge…”
Z-man, I either strongly agree with your post today or strongly disagree. It all depends on what you mean by “capitalism”. I hope that we can all agree that the USA does NOT have a free market laissez-faire economic system and has not had anything close to that since the war of northern aggression at least. Many doubt we ever practiced pure laissez faire other than perhaps in the old west where there was no real State to intervene. If we call our present system “capitalism,” which is OK with me, then we have to say that “capitalism” is really… Read more »
Mark – Defining fascism as a merger of Big Biz and the State is a (((trick))) vulture-capital shills like D’Souza and Shapiro use to make guys like Mitt Romney angels while demonizing any world-view that subordinates Mammon as “collectivist.” This was the classical lolbertarian-Objectivist formulation of angels and devils, the individualists vs. collectivists, with the angels practicing their faith in the Holy Market. In terms of economics, fascism varied depending on time and place but generally it just meant subordinating industry to public interest. It set the boundaries for business liberties, e.g. no porn, no trading with enemies, and in… Read more »
Sorry to take so long to reply, you probable won’t even see this.
My question is: what do you want to call the present system if it is not fascism? The Federal, state, and local governments are closely involved in all aspects of business and commerce. It is not “capitalism” and you say it is not ‘fascism”. OK Then. What will we call it?
How is laissia-faire capitalism Not going result in the same consolidation we have now?
It would take a book length reply to answer your question, but I never said it would not anyway. I am trying to get to definitions. Perhaps I am over-mis-educated or just a dumbass, but I think definitions are important in any serious discussion.
There is only so much room at the top of the heap.
The rest is just fill dirt.
And always remember, the steeper the dirt pile, the more awesome will be the landslide.
One thing that is often missed by people is that Amazon is filled with individuals and small businesses who make nice second incomes all the way to six figures through their fba program and marketplace.
I think Walmart is now doing the same.
The Phd. glut in a number of fields has been an issue for a long time now even in STEM fields. There too many of these people relative to the number of public and private sector jobs available. I have an acquaintance that chairs a public university engineering department. When a faculty position is posted, he easily receives up to 4 or five dozen resumes for an opening. And from really good schools to. Why is money wasted over educating people for jobs that don’t exist?
The colleges do it because it is profitable for them.
For now.
A disaster for the students, though.
I worked in the oil patch of Alberta with Davis Aurini…One of the most interesting guys we had on the crew…funny thing was the guy clearly was bright and had technical savy, but didn’t belong there..The job bored him to no end and he smoked constantly when he wasn’t thinking out loud about the direction the world was going in..I have the feeling there is no shortage of guys like him working to stay alive and playing out the Mechanics of dissident politics in their mind.the wasted brain power will not be used to any end the ruleing class approves… Read more »
Notice the consolidation in thought also. All the leading thought managers in media, the university and Hollywood use coercion, social pressure, and ostracism to enforce uniformity in thought. Independent thought is hate thought and will not be tolerated in polite society. “All men are created equal”. “Diversity is our strength.” “Blank slatism”. “White privilege.” “Race is a social construct.”
Engineering and scientific careers now exist solely to serve either the gubmint or some other facet of globohomo. Those jobs pay very well; it’s not a coincidence that house prices in suburban Maryland and northern Virginia are sky high.
Perhaps the giant crocodile known as government represents the ultimate consolidation, and our consolation is dissident politics, wherever that leads.
Amazon seems like it is going to implode, as it starts being held responsible for all the counterfeit and otherwise shoddy stuff it peddles. Bezos will probably catch a fatal STD from that whoore he is hanging with, and the entire place will collapse. If you were able to organize all the displaced people in a community, and pool all the benes money, you could create a pretty decent society out of that. More hand made goods, more 2nd hand goods, etc. More services too (especially. In a way, people will be given back their time and be provided for… Read more »
For one brief shining moment
And, all this is just one more reason to oppose UBI – Universal Basic Income. It would enable the Elite’s children to loiter around – at OUR expense – fomenting trouble.
Better that the Elite pay for their own kids to lounge around in the basement. After a short time, the embarrassment of having to admit that their Precious is still unemployed should drive them to either hire them in their OWN company, or have them pressure the kid to take a “lesser” job.
Z Man said: “One of the more important trends in post-Cold War America is the great consolidation that is going on all areas of life.”
“The Great Consolidation” is a process to help facilitate the “Long now.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/beware-long-now
That’s an Epsilon Theory term – the long now. He’s definitely worth the read
O/T
For any Exiteers you can cross off New Zealand: 60K guns turned in voluntarily.
https://www.newsweek.com/since-new-zealands-christchurch-mass-shooting-more-60k-assault-weapons-have-been-handed-through-1479135
I’m curious as to the nature or details of the contraction in the law business that Z mentions. Is this the mid-market merger thing on the coasts, or what? Other than the wonderful “2 years experience for entry level jobs” thing, im not cognizant of the spread of financialization to the business of practicing law. Otoh, i hear endless whinging about not being able to find, hire, or retain enough paralegals and associates. What gives, what am i missing?
Previously thriving elite insurance defense firms are now stooping to doing despised divorce work to make the payroll. The competition for legal business is intense.
Z you know Law and Edu are as likely to consolidate as to morph into revolutionaries?
[posted in wrong thread]
Up the Revolution.
But the lawyers and professors ride the tumbrils anyway. They did harm, they crowed about it, let the crows eat them.
Happy New Year
But, the story of the last 200 years and its Great Enrichment is that successive economic and technological revolutions have knocked the economic top dogs out of their comfy niche, but that overall, humans did better.
Maybe this time is different.
But if things are getting tricky for the education “gentry” then the lefty hysteria makes sense.
We’ve done so much better that we’re refusing to breed, overdosing on opiates and making a blood-guilt sacrifice of our patrimony to Team Brown. f this is better, we could stand to do worse. As for knocking the economic top dogs out of their niches, (((some people))) seem to hang on despite all this “creative destruction,” along with goyim vulture capitalists like the Rockefellers and other century-plus robber baron dynasts. Material prosperity isn’t everything. How much of the “Great Enrichment” has really enhanced human happiness in the sense Pat Buchanan and Tucker Carlson have described it rather than in bugman-GDP… Read more »
Gee, the consolidation of the brewing industry didn’t seem to work out so well. From three or four major breweries the country went to thousands of brew pubs and the revival of regional brews. Star brand Budweiser was sold to foreigners that would probably like their money back. There were once three real auto manufacturers in the US and from time to time some minor thing like Hudson or American Motors. Now there’s no end to the marques available, both domestic and foreign.
The fact is that success inspires imitation, innovation and competition.
Craft beer is 13% of beer sales. Much of what qualifies as craft beer is actually brewed by the big brewers under contract. Here in Lagos, there is now one beer distributor that controls something like 90% of the beer sold through stores. The same is true for other food products. Ice cream, for example, in this area is sold by two distributors, each with a monopoly on certain lines.
Constellation bought Ballast Point for big bucks because craft brew was going to be the next big thing. They just sold it out to someone small for (an undisclosed) pennies on the dollar because consolidation and scale in craft brewing is a mirage. We are the craft brewers of politics and culture. Scaling up is hard, but building communities and associating with allied communities appears the way forward. Craft cultural brew is not likely a path to riches and fame, but it might lead to a really good set of choices for the consumers of such things to pick from… Read more »
Said a guy typing this lolbertarian laughing gas on a Windows or Mac computer plugged into a Cisco worldwide backbone eating food he bought from one of five major grocery chains with money from a half-dozen national banks, echoing the neo-liberal agit-prop he heard from one of the media outlets owned by six companies in America.
But at least I still have muh craft beer & muh Gubmint Motors-financed crap-wagon.
How many real domestic marques are there now?
Perhaps not the best example, but I believe in all states that have legal recreational or medical marijuana, it is produced in state, and therefore arguably a local industry. California pot is reportedly so good that they ar even smuggling it into Mexico!