There is a bit of a paradox within all systems in that the point of the system is to regulate human activity, as well as the activity initiated by humans. At the same time, it is just at the point where they reach that goal where they become obsolete. When the humans can no longer change the system or work around it efficiently, the users of the system start to question the system. The end point of all systems is the point at which it reaches its logical conclusion.
The most obvious is business software systems. A company initially buys a software system because it has logic that will implement the business processes the company seeks to implement. Soon, they begin to tinker with it in an effort to wring out more utility from the system. Maybe that is small modifications to parts of the system logic or additional data items to existing data sets. They keep doing this and over time the system does just about everything the business needs.
At some point, they want to make an additional change, but see that the cost of making this change to the nearly finalized software system is higher than the benefit they will receive from the change. At first this is proof that their long work on the system was a success, but in time it is seen as a defect, a shortcoming. They begin to look for a new system that will allow them to begin the process a new, so they can modify it to slowly make it a perfect tool for the business.
This life-cycle of a software system is not unique to technology. It happens in other systems as well. It is not unreasonable to think of revolution as the replacement of a legacy system with a modern one. Politics in this sense is the software of society, purchased by the elite, implemented by the ruling class and administered by the bureaucracy of the state. It is why libertarianism is impossible, by the way. It requires a society to return to pencil and paper on purpose.
Sticking with the software analogy, another thing that is revealed by revolutions and even the successful reform efforts is something you see with software systems, which is the accumulation of cruft. Much of the “improvement” gained by changing systems comes from abandoning old logic and requirements that never made any sense, but took too much time and money to remove. This often means people whose jobs exist because of that cruft in the legacy system.
The same applies in social systems. A genuine reform effort in America, for example, could simply start with firing everyone from the federal system who has an odd number of letters in their last name. Sure, some genuinely essential personnel would be lost, but the thousands of bits of human cruft would make up the difference. Much of what plagues late empire America is the generations of pointless and redundant code along with the associated people that covers the system like plaque.
Revolutions are cast as revolts by commoners over practical issues. The revolt gets out of hand either by circumstance or some failure by the elites. The result is a toppling of the system. To go back to the software analogy, the revolution is a revolt by users that cannot be addressed by the guys in IT. The system cannot be changed to meet the demands of the users, so the system is removed, the IT department is put to the sword and a new software system is purchased and implemented.
That’s true in primitive societies. The Bolshevik revolution could not have happened in an industrial society. Western Europe did not go from feudalism to industrial communism, because it first entered into a period of limited liberal democracy. The Russians were still operating a social system built for the tenth century, but trying to adapt it to technology and thinking from the 19th century. They went from pencil and paper to cybernetics in one big leap forward.
A better way to think of revolution, using the software analogy, is that point in the life-cycle when the cost of change exceeds the perceived benefit. The French Revolution is a good example of this. The aristocracy could not justify to themselves the cost of changing the system they inherited. The bourgeois revolutionary first started as a reformer, like the quality team inside a company. It’s when necessary change appeared to be impossible that they demanded the legacy system be replaced.
We are seeing this with the political class. The first round of efforts to modify the existing system started in 2016 with the election of Trump. We’re seeing a second round now with the apparent nomination of Bernie Sanders as his challenger. Trump was always a reformer who believed in the fundamental integrity of the system. Sanders is a revolutionary who promises to first remove the legacy system. His platform is mostly about removing the old with promises of something better.
In its response to these challenges, the so-called meritocracy is proving the point made by the reformers and the revolutionaries. They could, in theory, easily adjust to co-opt the reformers and delegitimize the revolutionaries. Yet in both cases they assumed the defensive crouch rather than change their behavior. Like the IT guys maintaining the legacy software system, they see change as a threat, so they make change more expensive than the perceived benefits of those changes.
In 2016, the Republican Party could have easily stopped Trump by moving toward him on immigration, trade and endless war. Instead, they advised the other candidates to move the other way, thus paving Trump’s way to the nomination. Something similar has happened with Sanders. Instead of co-opting his bread and butter issues, the party told the candidates to go extra heavy on wokeness, trannies and white privilege. This has made Sanders the default for those who reject that stuff.
If the political class was a business, senior management would be meeting about why the management and administrative layers have been unable to deal with this problem, despite all of the warnings. It would be time for a major shakeup. The trouble is, the so-called meritocracy that controls politics is the senior management. Only a shareholder revolt, to mix metaphors, is going to change things. Perhaps that is what the 2020 election is shaping up to be, a shareholder revolt.
The trouble with these analogies is that when a company buys a new software system or reorganizes its business processes, they don’t execute the people defending the old way or even have them sent to camps. Those people either embrace the new or quietly go away with their severance. In politics, the old people never go away quietly and instead fight to the last man to defend a legacy system that serves them. The last three years of Trump make that abundantly clear.
For those puzzled by the appeal of Sanders, there’s your answer. American politics is controlled by an elite that keeps one large swath of voters in one party and another large swath in another party, then makes them fight one another. In 2016, the voters in one camp revolted against their camp guards. In 2020, the other camp is staging a revolt. In both cases, it is a revolt against legacy code that appears to be beyond reform. We are living in legacy code that must be replaced, if it cannot be patched.
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The issue we on the Dissent Right face in replacing the system is that those who control said system have made all of their clients dependent upon the system.
If you’re an unskilled immigrant unable to speak English, the current system serves you. If you’re an obese POC working in Corporate HR, the system is your friend. If you are one of the “alphabet people,” the system celebrates and promotes your deviant lifestyle.
This is the Gordian Knot we must solution for in the years to come.
Yup.
And those clients enjoy six-figure salaries, gold-plated benefits, and iron-clad pensions, all thanks to the deplorable taxpayer.
Very good point. However, the issue for the elite is how long the brown horde and the white woke view the elite as the giver of the system. The brown horde and white woke care about the system, not the elites.
That’s what we’re witnessing with Sanders. The elite are telling the masses to back off and the masses are realizing that they don’t need to listen to them.
What did Alexander do to his Gordon’s Knot…use the sword
You do remember how Alexander “solved” the original “gordian knot” problem, don’t you?
A very wise man once wrote about a similar problem, “If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror.” — Mike Vanderboegh
Damn! But I miss that old ex-communist!
Great column.
BernieBroism and Trumpism are expressions of the same malaise, and I suspect the poles of the political horseshoe magnet are starting to touch.
BernieBros are our natural allies: they don’t like neocon wars, they don’t like Wall Street, they don’t like Washington, they hate Hillary Clinton and, most importantly, they’re white. We just need them to realize they’re being puppeteered by the people they profess to hate. I bet we could even come to some kind of understanding on the cookie question.
That’s interesting Felix. The similarities you point out are correct, but you forgot something: the Bernie Bro’s don’t want to dismantle that huge government, but instead give it more power over the rest of us, which would include the middle class, I believe. In fact, they require an authoritarian state to execute their completely leveled playing field for the economy.
In fact, they require an authoritarian state to execute their completely leveled playing field for the economy. But they don’t know that. They think they’re for liberty. And while they’re mostly big government guys (and free dope libertarians), there’s a lot of things we could agree to dismantle, like 90% of the alphabet agencies, not to mention bank bailouts and such. The political system is now designed to split the white revolutionary movement, they pit us against each other by using Alinskyite tactics on wedge issues like guns, LGBT and muh feminism. Let’s join forces with the Bros, drain the… Read more »
What do you make of Bernie’s adoption of those issues (the guns, LBGT+, feminism, and the rest) as his own? Is he just running left in the primary?
Maybe he’s just running woke for the primary. Yet the first thing every new President does is fret over his re-election. Thus a President Sanders who thinks he owes something to the woke may well pursue woke policies even though he knew them not till he decided he wanted to be President.
I wonder whether the “issues” themselves account for Bernie’s attractiveness at this point? Whatever his campaign started out as, it has arguably metastasized into something akin to the Trump “movement” of 2016: a general protest born out of disgust with the party elites. In that sense, there might be one big architectonic issue–with Trump it was immigration, with Bernie resentment about the concentration of wealth (?)–that provides the anchor for support, while the other matters float in a vague constellation that you can take or leave piecemeal. Those constellation issues are the ones that are most divisive; if I take… Read more »
This 1000 times over. There was a time where I would happily debate the merits or lack thereof of a program like Social Security. I just can’t get into it now. Race is the defining issue of our time, I believe. As White people we first need to reestAblish control over our own destiny as a people. I am not saying that I am prepared to make common cause with hardcore communists. But I am also not going to get my nose out of joint because someone thinks that there is merit in debating universal healthcare, as long as the… Read more »
“…but they don’t know that…”
I disagree; they have learned from Machiavelli and from Alinsky.
Felix;
Here’s a field report that tends to buttress your view about Bernie Bro’s from a well experienced (i.e. old white male like me) observer.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/hangin-with-the-bernie-bros-on-nevada-victory-night_3248963.html
Tl;Dr: Bernie Bro’s are fatherless lost boys. Bernie is the father they never had. Electing him is the purpose that their lives have never had before
IOW, it’s not really ideological. To quote The Bad Orange Man: ‘Sad’.
Only a small number of white men throughout history have wanted limited government. Everyone else wants big government.
Even if you want small government, you are going to have to be authoritarian and anti-democratic to prevent the expansion of government.
Embrace this seeming paradox and accept that we must control the state or be subjugated by it.
In an ethnostate, I don’t think most people would mind sacrificing some economic efficiency for lots of government services.
I realized that the only natural libertarians were book-smart straight white men and a few token white females who made a living off videos discussing libertarianism. The cognitive dissonance between observed reality and theory finally snapped me out of that phase.
Yep. Nobody raises their kids that way.
Line – well said. Re your conclusion, I’d add the opposite as well – in an ethnostate, most probably wouldn’t mind sacrificing some government services for a smaller, more efficient, and more authoritarian goverment.
I have my doubts that most of us really fear authoritative government per se. I acknowledge we have been historically less than adequate to articulate what it is that we really fear above all, but authoritarianism doesn’t appear (at least to me) to be a major concern for most of us. What we fear most is authoritarian government of the leftist variety. That is, if we tend to be of a right-leaning world view. And vice versa. This of course means that authoritative government is in our past, our present, and in our future. It might transmutate, or appear to… Read more »
The early US was highly authoritarian prohibiting all manner of things that are quite legal now . That puritan mindset runs thorough our society today resulting in a vast incarceration rate. Its only recently that social changes have forced the state to not prohibit homosexual conduct, porn, adultery weed and other drug use (made illegal a hundred years ago) The US is by no means a freedom driven society What’s really changed is what is tolerated. In the past a certain amount of drunkenness, fisticuffs, disorderly conduct smoking and the like were understood to happen and while you might get… Read more »
My eldest son and I used to get a big kick out of walking into a WalMart, say, or a local “Dollar Store” around the 4th of July and seeing (and reading) all of the Americana stuff – stuff like “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” emblazoned across a depiction of “old glory” on a wooden plank. Neither of us thinks it all that funny at this point. It’s sad and disconcerting to say the least, but not really humorous. It was humorous for us ‘way back when’ because we understood how utterly stupid all of it was.… Read more »
Probably true, thinking back to when I was younger. But I have reached a point in my life where I’m nervous about all authoritarian government processes. Seen too much turn about when authority is ceded.
Up against the wall for inner city youth is so turned into up against the wall for you as well.
To me, to be authoritarian you must have access to coercive power— arms and statutory authority. I hear a lot of comments here talking about ethnostates, and it sounds like a good idea, but how in earth would the authoritarians ever allow such break ups? Authoritarians, like the joke about inviting certain people to a party, “let you in for free but make you pay to leave,“ so to speak. Nobody gets out.
They won’t have a choice any more than the UK Empire did back in 1776 or the old USSR did. Most likely it will happen organically by the state simply being unable to stop it, if we are lucky with little or no violence.
No one really wants this but the US has no other way to resolve its issues since the gap is too great.
This for sure. Getting the white males to step away from the pussy pedestal and embrace just a little bit of their identity is a huge step. I have a really had time seeing how any white man can be a Dem at this point, but I do see that the appeal of ‘burn it all down’ (and cancel my loans!) is a powerful elixir for the nihilism that dominates that cohort. The future for them is obscured from view and the past is full of sin. Of course the best option is to break stuff. But the hate-whitey and… Read more »
Agree that the Bernie Bros could be an ally. They’re woke and immature, but they hate the system. More importantly, they are pro-worker and anti-Wall Street/Big Corporations. It’s not a hard argument to connect immigration and Globalism to exploitation of workers. Heck, even Bernie used to talk about it.
That’s the way to talk to these people.
Agree re Bernie Bros hating the system, but I’m not certain that’s enough. Personal example is my hairdresser (I know, I know) who is both a Bernie Bro and an activist member of the Democratic Socialists. She and I actually agree a great deal on economics at the elite end but she is totally sold on free and guaranteed everything for everyone because “fair.” And by everyone she truly means everyone – despite her almost entirely Norwegian ancestry, she’s married a quarter Nigerian and is extremely hostile to any notion of a limit re who counts as “my people.”
So in other words, we’re F’d! So back to LineInTheSand, “In an ethnostate, I don’t think most people would mind sacrificing some economic efficiency for lots of government services.” Without a doubt. What is not being addressed is a pervasive deep FEAR of creating one’s life. Leftie is afraid and wants Daddy Sam to do all of life for them and save them from their fear. They don’t deal well with reality. Possibly r/K selection theory? Remember, my folks were Trot Commies. Dad couldn’t deal with life. He wanted Utopia….Right Now…provided by someone else. Each time Life offered him Wisdom… Read more »
Look, we wiped out the middle class over the last two generations. The middle class was the center that held the country—once known as America—together. Those Bernie Bro’s we speak about have no future in presently organized America, so they vote for a living. That’s the way it now is. Unfortunately, the person offering them an alternative to their plight is a huckster. It has been ever so with the Left and their revolutions. Should Sanders have his day, we go the path of all these frauds—increased, but equalized misery.
I’m skeptical This sounds too much like a new take on the “Latinos are natural conservatives!” plan. While we may share similar thoughts about certain aspects of the current system, and similar levels of melanin, the underlying motivation for their political aspirations is so far removed from ours that I don’t see a chance for reconciliation. Think about it from their perspective. They might look at the DR and say, “We’re on the same page on many issues. Surely we can recruit them to our side.” What are the odds of that happening? We might peel off a few here… Read more »
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more, no less. Bernie supporters may be useful (or made to be useful), but they are not allies.
Even anti-establishment leftists are hard to turn around so a little sceptical there. But if it could be done, well, maybe.
(Resisted the temptation to pull your leg and say ‘you see, you re too close to marxie bros, have their atheism n all. But just in jest 🙂 )
If there’s anyone saying I’m an atheist, it’s not me. (So I appreciate your not saying it.)
I think the most you could get from your average BernieBro is getting them to say: “It’s the JEWS that are stoking racial animosity so they can line their own pockets and maintain their power!”
Notice that this is the same line they currently have, except at the moment they say “Banker” instead of “Jew”.
My plan for reforming the federal bureaucracy would involve firing everyone whose social security ID ends with a number..
Oligarchy has no natural/divine right over da people they rule, it’s all about the will to power.
The system change is here to produce a zombie mass. Indoctrination of children permits them to create these systematic revolutions till they end up with da ideal npcs & creation of Adam Kadmon(Antichrist).
But in a revolution nothing is really replaced. Sure the Kingdom of France no longer had a king coronated by the Pope, it just had an emperor coronated with the Pope in mere attendance. The fuedal order was gone but it was replaced by the secular version. Everything changed but nothing changed. The same is true of later revolutions. The soviets were just as authoritarian as the czar. The serf was again chained to a farming collective. The emperors were replaced by the authoritarians. This is the problem with trying to remake society. Efficiency is a cruel tyrant. If you… Read more »
Which is why it’s insane when people crow about how good the economy is, the nifty new gadgets, and new conveniences a generation ago couldn’t even dream of.
Most of that economic capital was bankrolled by cashing out social capital like stable, single-earner families, local cohesive communities, and general social trust. The destruction of those basic pillars of society just created the need for new products to buy, hence why people feel so poor when they have so much economic wealth on paper.
Under-rated comment Chet. I never felt as rich as I was as a 25 year old in 1996 making 40k a year, single guy. I could fly around the country cheaply without hassle. I lived well. I could buy what ever I needed. If people wanted to get hold of me, they would leave a message on my answering machine that I would get to when I got home. Life is NOT better at the moment with the exception of my awesome wife and son.
It’s only the most efficient way if you use silly things like GDP as a measuring stick of growth and you don’t count the costs.
Put another way, the system we have is benefiting from things like fat single mothers raising bastard children watching screens all the time.
I fell for the “immigrants are good for GDP” line until someone pointed out that it’s GDP per capita that matters. Only the elite care about total GDP because it’s a bigger pot to skim from.
GDP is the incorrect stat for immigrants as it does not account for welfare in its many forms. If there were a stat, such as “net-GDP”, then we’d see a different picture.
I’m pretty sure that it is not only counted, but actually counted twice. The first time is when they are given the money or food stamps and the second time is when they spend them it shows up in consumer consumption numbers. Of course, nothing beats homeowner’s rent! Our GDP has more than a trillion dollars of fake money in the form homeowner’s rent. This is the rent value of your house that you live in for free because you own it. So if your house is worth 2000 a month on the rental market, the GDP says you are… Read more »
Economic activity is not the purpose of life, it’s merely a by-product of it.
“[T]he most economically efficient way to raise a future consumer-producer is a single mother.”
That might be true if women naturally lusted for intelligent, productive, tax-paying, law-abiding men. But they don’t; most single mothers around here are single because their baby-daddies are marginally-employed, sleeve-tattooed dumbshits who commit petty crimes, get caught, and do time.
I’m sure that if we spent more money on public education, we could turn their little thuglets into productive citizens!
Sanders may not place the same emphasis on degeneracy as the other candidates, but he will not resist it. As the 60’s and the Weimar Republic prove, degeneracy is the artillery barrage used to weaken the culture and render it susceptible to communism.
Ultimately I believe that only a restoration of both throne and altar is the only way to resist communism in the long run.
@TheLastStand, agree. Globohomo must be resisted with something. Is, “Yay, White!” something? I think it’s not, because it’s ultimately just another idol and, therefore, insufficient to fight other idols.
Communism is resisted when the bulk of the people have hope of an ability to improve their lot in life. We successfully beat back communism when we had a middle class with some good jobs. Roosevelt helped avoid the worse during the depression. WWII got us back on our feet. 50’s/60’s was pretty good (economically) despite (?) unions. Then something changed in the 70’s and we started this globalism BS and hollowed out the middle class. Now there is little to hold this nation together. We are basically divided between the haves and the have nots. As I’ve said before,… Read more »
Now, now the have-nots should “muh Capitalism and Freedom” by Milton Fraudman. It is the free market, ya did not know? /sarc
The Federal government is a living thing whose survival imperative is paramount. It doesn’t care what the commoners think or do, it strives to preserve it’s existence by whatever means necessary (like all living things). You cannot persuade a starving man that he is not hungry, and you cannot persuade a government entity to shrink or change. A government feeds endlessly, and will continue to do so until the host is bled dry. The pretense of voting is camouflage to conceal this true nature of government.
Every government program ever created creates a constituency not only for its maintenance, but expansion. If a program is created to solve a supposed problem, and the problem is solved, then the department will just find another “problem” to solve. Also, the bigger the department, the more money the manager makes. They never go away. A friend got his wife a job as an accountant with one of the counties here in NJ. She worked in the morning, finished by lunch and then asked for more work. “What are you trying to do, make us look bad?” She said it… Read more »
You are also describing public education where recent hires merely perform the task of coddling the students psychologically under the straw man concerning suicides.
Ris-
I’ve heard similar stories out of some of the prime defense contractors. Things like a team of a dozen engineers and their supervisor being told to take the afternoon off because they’re too far ahead of that particular task on their Gantt chart.
This story sounds apocryphal. Defense contractors are always behind schedule and over budget.
Voting you up to promote interest in Carl Friedrich Gauss. Yet another guy who came from less than nothing and changed the world.
Everyone agrees ethanol in fuel makes no sense. It raises gas and food prices, and is actually detrimental to the environment. But it has a constituency in Iowa.
Recycling makes no sense. It’s a money loser for recycling centers and harms the environment. Extra trucks and shipping crank out more carbon than is saved by the process. Turns out it was all being shipped to China, and mostly likely buried in landfills over there. But it has a constituency – religious environmentalists.
Further turns out the Chinese aren’t even buying our waste anymore (or at a minimum have have scaled way back)
Stranger, it’s worse than that. “Recycling” is minimally processed in the US. It’s bundled and shipped (fueled by carbon every step of the way) to the Far East where they dump it in the ocean.
Here, it’s been revealed recently that for years there was no market for recycle—except cans. So the city has been paying to have it picked up, sorted (for cans), and put into the dump. Something like $1.5M per year in the red, which through fees and taxes is charged to the residents. No apologies, no firings, no city council discussion, no gratuitous justification, not even a change in process—except bimonthly pickup from weekly.
Pdx?
Steel and Aluminum Recycling actually does make economic sense. Plastic, glass, and paper really don’t. Steel mills use tons of scrap, some even *only* use scrap.
Yes, and because it is worth it, people will actually pay you for metal scrap. If the recycling program has to be subsidized by a tax levy, you know it’s a scam.
Exactly this. We automatically recycle things that still have actual cash value after being used: houses, cars, check Craig’s list for more examples. Nobody will give you their own money for your used paper and plastic containers and so on.
And to prove your point we’ve had junkies stealing the flags off veterans graves for the metal. We need a societal reset.
Steel was recycled during WW II without unstable, blue-haired women with pink hats yelling in the street, which shows it probably still makes sense.
The latest obsession of our local Mercedes Marxist crew is “scrap composting”…because apparently incinerating broccoli stems takes too much energy. So their solution is to contract for a diesel truck to come by each week and pick up your little stinking pail of scraps at $30 a month. I told them my solution was a $60 compost tumbler from Amazon and a $5 bale of straw to mix in with it. (My spouse is a gardener and uses every pound we can produce). That was apparently not a popular solution on the local FB page. But this is how these… Read more »
What’s wrong with broccoli in the landfill?
At least it enriches the soil.
Garbage here gets incinerated…so apparently the water content makes the incineration take more energy. Now the ring leaders of this nonsense here live in 5000 square foot houses. Go figure.
Where is “here?”
I am not aware of anyplace that engages in large scale garbage incineration. Columbus, OH tried to run a trash burning power plant in the ’80s and between the costs of sorting out the safe, burnable garbage and the emissions equipment to filter the toxins from everything that was missed by the first step, then the failure of that filtering, then the EPA fines, it was one of the most embarrassing white elephants in Columbus history.
World-wide, most trash ends up in landfills, and that’s fine.
This is exactly the type of thing that makes me post stuff online like ” Seriously …. WTF is wrong with you?” in response to some of the crap these people propose. Why exactly was it unpopular? Because it necessitated doing some real work? and took away the opportunity to apply for a Federal grant and create another bureaucracy? An Amazon compost tumbler is an excellent solution. You create the compost – then spread it on your lawn or in your garden. You’re therefore doing your part for “soil replenishment”. Picking it up with a truck – when your option… Read more »
All about control and feeling good about themselves. Me? I’m practical. DIY is a 2 month payback period versus the collective solution. But yes, the idea is to apply for grants to run the “composting center” and equipment. Then the grants run out and it ends up directly vs. indirectly in the local tax bill. And yes, they all want to be advocates because that doesn’t involve getting dirty.
The University that I retired from started an in-house recycling program after State law mandated such by all State agencies a couple of decades ago. Initially it was profitable. But then grew to employ 12 or more staff and that eat up all the profits. Then most recyclables were no longer valuable enough in the market to be sold and the program switched to *paying* others to take the recycled paper and such off their hands. Not sure if this recycle project is now just was a fancy and expensive trip to the dump, but it would not surprise me.… Read more »
Compsci Guy….it’s all about virtue signaling and preening. You know that. Who the shit cares if it’s economically feasible. It’s the virtue signaling of the herd animals, man. They recognize each others’ smells, their blue hair, their face fishing tackle. They recognize their Carrie Nation moralizing. It’s tribal.
Damn, wish our Dissident Tribe could signal, wear weird nonsense and tut-tut, but we’re dissidents and not inclined to herd up while shrieking Look at Me!.
You got it. For now we have to be content to suck it up and go to work to pay the bills for all this nonsense. That’s our version of “virtual signaling”. It won’t last.
Sometime back I read that you could not design a worse motor fuel than ethanol if you TRIED! Plus by the time you factor in all the petroleum based fuel consumed to produce ethanol – from growing to distilling – it takes 1.5 gal. of “fossil” fuel to produce a gal of ethanol which has something like 15% LESS energy per unit volume than the fuel used to make it.
And because alcohols are hydrophilic, they play billy hell corroding tanks, pipelines etc. Very high maintenance.
As I understand it, the only stuff that’s economic to recycle is aluminum cans and clean cardboard. So that’s what I recycle and I upset the ladies at dinner parties by telling them I just throw so-called recyclables in the garbage. Who knows, maybe I’ll get a reputation as a bad boy, and get lucky as a old gent!
There are too many perverse incentives in funding government budgets. Your budget doesn’t grow (or gets cut) if you don’t spend all of your previous FY funding (and it doesn’t seem to matter what the spending was for.) Nobody in the Dreaded Private Sector – or in their personal lives – budgets that way.
Yep. I’ve written about this problem a million times before, or somewhere thereabouts (ha, ha). It’s that “use it or lose it” mentality that is pervasive throughout ALL of government entities, from the highest to the lowest levels. I was only in the USAF for four years, and of course mostly confined to a single unit for the bulk of that time. But during that time I saw more FW&A than I care to talk about. As I got older (and hopefully wiser) it began to dawn on me that when you multiply what I witnessed first hand during that… Read more »
The only way to control it or restrain it – is to just eliminate it entirely. I keep saying this over and over and over again – but this problem was solved when the damn country was formed and people were told: This new federal government has certain seriously constrained powers – and everything else you want done is supposed to get done somewhere else. If they get out of control – we let you keep your guns – so you could shoot them. Way way back people understood the concept that there were certain areas of life and society… Read more »
I mostly agree, Calsdad. I say I “doubt” it can be (altogether) eliminated in the same sense that I have always doubted the GWB initiative (following 9/11) to exterpate evil from the world. The EPA is a great example, but I would personally prefer the NEAs. As Noah Webster once articulated, ‘education is more important than the making of laws or the preaching of the Gospel, for it is upon that foundation [education] that both rest for their success.’ We only need to figure out what “education” really means. And that’s a toughy, given that education most likely results in… Read more »
TM-
This mindset has leaked into the defense industry as well. I believe it’s because that industry is a de facto part of the government and military at this point.
As I said, I think (actually know) the mindset is pervasive throughout all government agencies. Part of the reason for this is that government employees tend to remain government employees throughout their “careers.” So, whatever mindset they brought into their careers early on, tends to persist throughtout. You can see this tendency (if you look real hard) as military men exit the military and enter into law enforcement and other government jobs. Bottom line, they’re consumers of weath, not producers thereof. And that’s a BIG problem. It’s a big problem because most of them don’t understand it, and have not… Read more »
Those who can, do. Those who cannot go into government so they do not HAVE to.
Query: When was the last time you encountered a civil servant who was either?
” a revolution is …… a new software system”
But the real revolution was replacing the hardware.
That’s why immigration reform is necessary.
Funny thing is, the elite are surprised that Mexicans are voting Sanders! We’ve been telling them that for years. A Latin American voting for socialism? Who’da thunk?
It’s crazy that people fleeing socialism would vote for socialism. But they are economically illiterate and just want free stuff now. The elite knew the Latins would vote socialist, but only wanted to win the next election, not caring about the long-term effects.
Except that even Hispanics/Latinos whose ancestors have been here generations vote that way. Even Cubans. https://tinyurl.com/tv6ht5p
Hmm. Could it be … biological?
I don’t know what it is, but I don’t really care because the ONE thing that it cannot be is biology or genes or population genetics! RHEEEE!
Yup! Like trying to install new software on an old box. The processing power just isn’t there.
And the new system? No, you can’t buy it. You’ll just pay a fee. Isn’t that great? And, yes, we can cut you off for any reason or no reason at all. It’s in your contract.
Just watched Netflix “The Pharmacist”. Highly, highly recommended. Essentially Purdue Pharma was pumping opioids into communities with the collaboration of sociopathic doctors. Tens of thousands were becoming addicted and thousands, many young, were dying of ODs. In a healthy society the problem would have been addressed with summary executions. A pharmacist, Dan Schneider, saw what was going on and became obsessed with shutting down the local pill mill. The response of the authorities was frustratingly sluggish, to vastly understate. Its clear that increasingly we need to build parallel organizations to protect our communities. Our elites sure as hell aren’t interested.
Netflix? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. Truth is, I don’t trust much of what I see on TV, including Netflix.
I take your point. Netflix is definitely globohomo. Nonetheless with all that money they have they do tend to slip up occasionally and produce something decent.
Fair enough, I’ll check it out.
Try “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” on Netflix.
You know that feeling when your computer screen suddenly goes black? Politically, that’s where we are now. That’s the feeling.
Did you submit a ticket? Nothing can be done until you submit a ticket.
The American Revolution was kicked off by a document that, at least in small part, warned of the evils of revolution. “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Revolution is especially romanticized in America. But revolution is far more likely to produce a Robespierre than a Thomas Jefferson. Revolutionaries imagine they can have a revolution while making only minor changes… Read more »
Tars, so true, and that’s what is so frustrating. The status quo center offers up such awful choices these days. Look at all of the Rep candidates of four years ago, and all the Dem candidates now. Look at all the people associated with the impeachment and Mueller. The problem is not the political center and status quo, per se, but that it is populated by self-interested morons. People consistently run for office positioning themselves as “I am not one of those, which group I seek to join”. How’s that for an indictment of the system, as it now functions?… Read more »
Tars, I agree, but let’s keep in mind that there are a huge range of options between “vote GOP b/c lesser evil” and “violent revolution.” The status quo is a downward spiral that ends in the Great Replacement – not a matter of whether, but when. It’s hospice care rather than a shot at a cure. Some of us need to explore more unconventional options than simply working the existing system – but that need not and should not include violence. Dissidents rely on the goodwill of some plurality of the population and we would lose that rapidly if we’re… Read more »
Happy Mardi Gras.
Hope everyone gets the slice of King Cake with the baby in it
Bernie will mandate that all slices have babies in them. Mardi Gras cake inequality is immoral.
it’s a basic human right…
I knew you were trying to influence this!
Oh, they’ll have babies in them. They’ll just be in parts.
This excellent piece reminded of a bit I’d heard on Radio Derb, but then when I looked it up he was, in fact, quoting you!: “That’s what a revolution is, when you think about it. It’s a lot like the decision to buy a new software system for the company. It’s not that what comes next will be better. It’s that the status quo is so complicated and unpleasant, anything has to be better. Of course, just as new software never turns out as expected, revolutions always turn out to be a lot more unpleasant than anyone imagined … Even… Read more »
Credit to Derb for giving credit to Zman.
Can we remember back to when the Clinton cabal left office and how they played numerous childhood games to undermine the incoming Bush administration.
Now, close your eyes and think about the damage the deep state actors would inflict on the various operating systems they currently control and ‘protect’ when they know they are about to be jettisoned and how that would inflate the costs vs. benefits equation off the charts.
You highlight a key dilemma in any governmental collapse and the ensuing power vacuum reaction. Some of the players will be outright maliciously criminal in their exit and some will think of themselves as noble defenders of realm willing to die in service to the greater good. The former is easy to focus on as a core problem, while the latter are just as lethal but have a Good Guy mindset.
IIRC they removed the “W” from keyboards. And decades on Bill refers to GHWB as “dad” and both families openly support Hillary in 2016. When it comes to IT systems being compromised you have the Awan family scandal. Nothing happened. Did anyone ever question why a Pakistani national (and family) with a “Help Desk” qualification got a six-figure salary over any US citizen? Look over there! Squirrel!
OT, but some of my fellow code monkeys made their fortunes back in the 90s converting gov’t agencies and financial institutions off their mainframe systems (to client-server systems) and then de-converting them back on when production runs took days longer than the mainframe. Good times. I’m sorry I missed it.
“Something similar has happened with Sanders. Instead of co-opting his bread and butter issues, the party told the candidates to go extra heavy on wokeness, trannies and white privilege. This has made Sanders the default for those who reject that stuff.”
Steve Sailer has pointed out that wokeness started shortly after Occupy Wall Street caught on. Specifically, there was about five months between OWS and the Trayvon Martin imbroglio, which could be considered the seminal event of woke.
The wild card in all of this is if civilization is still on the way up. In other words, will things get bigger or smaller? Will this system be replaced or fall apart?
We may be about to find out, courtesy of Corona-chan.
As I said yesterday, the time is long past when a simple reboot (control alt delete) would solve the problem. It’s time to save what data we can, wipe the hard disc and reload the operating system from scratch. Then we load whatever application programs we think we need. When my daughter was still living with us I had to do that a couple of times a year because of the junk and malware she’d accumulate. At the very least we need to restore back to a pre-Marbury-vs-Madison era with a completely rewritten Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 plus… Read more »
You really want to experience a software nightmare? Try being around a hospital when they change systems. All that patient data that’s supposed to get transferred over, the interfaces with all the various other systems and analyzers, etc. Combine that with hundreds to thousands of users with various degrees of computer literacy and competence. Ugh. There’s good reasons why we hang on to old systems for so long. I’ve been through two of those switches and hope to never go through another. Even more fun in the lab, where the Lab Information System (LIS) has to interface with every different… Read more »
Mission critical information is often kept in old DOS architecture, because it is simple, reliable, and stable. The interface and all the whiz-bang stuff you see on your screen is often simply going into a DOS file somewhere and grabbing the data. Much of the drivetrain of your brand new Honda Accord was there on the Austin Mini of 60 years ago, too. Things get built on top of solid existing architecture. It’s when the things built on top of it crash out so much that the underlying point of the process is lost, that’s what Z is talking about.… Read more »
That’s how insurance companies do it. I won’t say where I worked, but all the policy owner data was stored in an ancient massive mainframe running on “Pru BOL”.
A working complex system is invariably found to have evolved froma simple system that worked. Complex systems that are imposed are always disasters.
This, a million times.
I was a desktop support tech during undergrad and one of my background tasks was going around the entire university health system and upgrading everyone’s email client to the new and totally different client that worked with the new email system.
Even at that limited level it was a total nightmare.
You mean the MUMPS system that worked so well? For so long? For so many people? I get it. Tech improves. Nothing surrounding it does.
Bernie is cruft
Well played
Our legacy software was designed and coded to run on a particular machine. Problem is, most Of the machine parts have been replaced, which means that the old software can no longer run smoothly. So now we face a simple choice. Stop replacing the machine parts immediately and patch the old software system as best we can, let the system slowly burn itself out, transistors and diodes flying dangerously in very direction, or go dark, shut the system down and rebuild. Importantly, the hardware needs to be rebuilt first. Diversity is the enemy. Don’t mix tubes and transistors, 8 bit… Read more »
Some stuff—don’t ask me how well—runs under emulation in new software and new hardware. So one progresses up to the minute wrt software and hardware, while programming an emulation environment to ignore most of the progress and keep the old shit running. 😉
The constructing of systems is so ingrained in western thinking that those who oppose any failed or failing order almost always do so by offering alternative ‘isms’ such as Conservatism, Libertarianism or Socialism. But ideology, even good ideology, cannot be the foundation of civilization. The United States of America is proof of that. Even a young extension of European civilization in the new world showed signs of deep cultural formation through regional differences and needs…until they were all shoehorned into a one-size-fits-all constitution. Americans never had the opportunity to become Americans in the way Germans became Germans or the English… Read more »
In fairness, Christianity gave quite a bit of support to liberalism because it was not overtly hostile to religion. Although in the long run, it was just as flawed.
Yves; What you say about Christianity is indeed accurate: Mankind is hopelessly depraved and redemption will *not* come in this life but in the next, unless Christ returns sooner to reclaim His Kingdom from The Prince of This World, i.e. the devil. But Progressivism is better seen as a diabolical secular heresy that pridefully substitutes ‘the anointed’. ‘the vanguard of the proletariat’, etc. that is, special humans, for Christ as redeemers of mankind. So, an honest strict materialist would not fall for Progressivism’s claim to shamanistic power over ‘the arc of history’: If there are no spirits, then no-one can… Read more »
Well systems wise COVID-19 is really laying bare how fragile, weak and vulnerable globalism is – the panic is really about “global supply chains$$”. IE – supply chains from China. Globalism will be seen in retrospect about as smart as the processes that led to the Housing/Finance crisis. You close factories where you live to import from a hostile country on the other side of the planet? Because you wanted to save money? How much did you save? (Here it must be acknowledged it was also to avoid ruin and bankruptcy ala US steel, Woolworths, Detroit. Still- past due to… Read more »
Problem is that it seems too late to reverse course in a timely enough fashion. The second problem is, will the typical American realize just how screwed up this unrestrained globalism is—especially in a nation like ours, that is arguably independent from others wrt all resources necessary for self-sufficiency.
The US is light on things that never were, but are now necessities.
Hence the overthrow of the government of Lithium rich Bolivia. It wasn’t for the Llama shit.
Not sure about Lithium, but there are few things we need. That reduces our must have relationships drastically. Those needs, I assume can be traded for. As for the rest of the empire we keep, it’s for the benefit certain rich SOB’s we can do without.
They make more when they shut down US businesses and farm the work to slave labor overseas.
All the Dem candidates have the same polices, what is different is that Bernie is a true believer and worse, will probably die in office no matter what, so he’s not afraid to go full Chairman Mao on the country.
And his supporters are half-wit nut jobs with entitlement complexes, this makes them dangerous.
a first cut at a bit of rhetoric to help impart understanding of the fake democracy aspect of our two-party system: I’m a super-rich oligarch. I LOVE MONEY ABOVE ALL ELSE! The only other thing that comes close is sportsball. I love sportsball so much that I spent some of my beloved money buying a sportsball team (team 1). Whoever owns the the team that wins the big game at the end of the season gets to put the league victory trophy on their fireplace mantle to show off to all their friends. I’ve grown quite used to seeing it… Read more »
The sociopathic elites love money above all else. However, many elites, once a certain level of wealth is achieved, serve their ethnicity by dispossessing the white race.
If you think greed explains everything then you can’t explain, for example, why Hollywood insists on making anti-white movies that few want to see.
For many, tribe > greed.
So what then explains the virulent anti-white feeling amongst the white (non-Jewish) elite? Reducing everything to race is just as stupid as reducing everything to profits and losses
Field Report; Our now gone (Thanks China-loving/bribed elite) hi-tech firm actually pulled off a pretty complete business software renewal in the early ’80s. How we did it may be of interest as an analogy to follow up on Z Man’s excellent exposition on this subject. *Spoiler: It’s Pinochet.* How we did it: – An overall strategic approach based on historical experience in the field of strategy. – Limited scope; Financial systems only. This enabled… – Maintenance of aim, overall and required a…. – Modular approach: One or two Sub-systems at a time got full attention from developers.* This enabled a… Read more »
Who has the harder job? God creating the Universe, or the programmer updating the accounting system? Answer: God. He doesn’t have to deal with any legacy code.
The one rule I enforced without prejudice back in corporate-land was documenting/commenting code. Who wrote it. When it was installed. What project it was part of, etc. Show some mercy to the folks that get called in the middle of the night.
Shouldn’t that be” Who has the easier job?”
That’s why he needed only seven days!
Great analogy. The weird part is that the Sanders “revolution” promises to replace our current system with a punched cards version of Fortran that was tried and found completely useless half a century ago.
Toilet paper, soap, and booze. If things get that bad the guy with lots if those 3 things will be very popular.
It’ll be medicines. Post WWII Britain declared certain things should be produced in Britain. By Law.
R.O.B.G;
Yeah, the Brits learned the hard way about depending too much on overseas supply chains in the 1940s.
Wonder if they scrapped that traditional wisdom under the influence of Chinese bribery like our ‘best and brightest’ did,
They did. Now we (and they) are learning the hard way.
And to keep those three, he’ll another three: copper, lead and blued steel.
The analogy made me wonder why we aren’t developing automation to replace Congress?
Hysteresis.
The French Revolution would have played out like the German Peasant’s Revolt if not for deep divisions within the French elite, many of whom were swept up in the same republican fervor that would later claim their heads. Too many nobles thought Voltaire was cool, when putting Voltaire’s head on a pike would have been the wiser thing to do.
The GOP candidates could not move toward Trump because no one believed them or would believe them. Perhaps except Rand Paul. It isn’t as if nearly every candidate for office even during Clinton PROMISED to do the things that the people wanted, then ended up just being another swamp as usual politician. It goes back to Gingrich. First the Contract with America. Oh, you stupid voters, did you think we would attach it to every veto-proof bill? How could you be so stupid. We only promised to put it up for one vote in the House of Representatives. Senator Ethanol… Read more »
“Churchill over Chamberlain.”
From the white man’s perspective, particularly the Anglo, Churchill over Chamberlain gets you: a world war, the cratering of your economy, more and more socialism, and the disintegration of your empire and, more importantly, the destruction of your culture
Agree.
Well said
Riiiiight, haha there would have been no WW2 if not for that eeevil Churchill. I am no fan of him, but Adolf was determined to conquer, enslave and genocide the Untermensch of Europe, Churchill or no Churchill.
“This has made Sanders the default for those who reject that stuff.”
Er, Bernie is just as woke as the rest of them. Check out his Twitter feed sometime.
“ Instead of co-opting his bread and butter issues, the party told the candidates to go extra heavy on wokeness, trannies and white privilege. This has made Sanders the default for those who reject that stuff.”
Moreover, that support comes in spite of the fact that he’s now on record supporting all of the latest wokeness. I’d like to see how he squares the circle with:
open borders
Medicare for all
the environment (after all, 100 million new Americans is going to make the carbon footprint a lot bigger)
“At some point, they want to make an additional change, but see that the cost of making this change to the nearly finalized software system is higher than the benefit they will receive from the change. At first this is proof that their long work on the system was a success, but in time it is seen as a defect, a shortcoming. They begin to look for a new system that will allow them to begin the process a new, so they can modify it to slowly make it a perfect tool for the business.” And that’s where the Christian… Read more »
Agree.
Well put.
“ American politics is controlled by an elite that keeps one large swath of voters in one party and another large swath in another party, then makes them fight one another. In 2016, the voters in one camp revolted against their camp guards. In 2020, the other camp is staging a revolt.”
Here ya go, Z. More crap from the biggest fools on the planet:
https://paworldandtimes.wordpress.com/2020/02/22/a-communist-manifesto/
ProUSA, I followed your link and barely lasted 30 seconds before my gorge started to rise and I had to stop. Then I started reading the comments. Aboutthe 3rd one down was from some guy calling himself “Amon Ra”. His comment was “Everyone should type the following words in the WP comment section, notice which words the spell check suggests you capitalize. See something strange ? christian , jewish , muslim , protestant , catholic , baptist, buddhist , mormon , lutheran , hindu , shinto” The spell checker here didn’t make any suggestions I could see regarding corrections but… Read more »
Like you, I reacted with revulsion and stopped watching. As far as the comments, I am too disgusted to bother going back. Hopefully Z watched it and will use his word mastery to comment on it.
Thank you Z. Could of Z’s readers explain libertarians needing a pen and paper system? I don’t follow the logic.
Also, my hypothesis is that Bernie is sort of an Overton window candidate / he is radical for sure, and scaring a lot of people. After a while of Bernie winning a few more states, a moderate will emerge that will seem very appealing because they have some decent middle of the road policies. It could happen though a brokered convention, thus solving the ‘problem’ created by Bernie.
Libertarians are the sort of nerds that want everyone to return to slide rules and hand-cranked calculators instead of using a computer program. The key thing about societal software is that everyone, even the criminally minded, the mentally deficient, insane, suicidal, or women can use it. A DIY, open-source society would work for approximately five minutes before it collapsed under the weight of its own incompetence. Because as much as one hates the way society is right now, imagine trying to negotiate easement rights to drive to work with half a hundred different owners of individually owned roadways. Libertarianism in… Read more »
This is the meta-lesson of game theory: whenever any game approaches equilibrium and the outcome becomes fixed, people start playing some other game.
Team “Reboot America” for me.
Our present divides are urban-rural and regional, having little to do with state lines in most areas. Counties themselves have more coherence in rural America while they’re largely redundant where they overlap municipal spheres of influence. The highway system and modern transportation and communications in general have pushed the old divisions further into irrelevance and promoted these new de facto internal borders.
Second Founding America is a catabolic impossible burger. We’re looking to salvage useful material from the collapsing structure.
“… divides are urban-rural…” I can’t remember the details because it was so many years ago, but I read something about how multicultural Cairo,Egypt was during one of their imperial phases, with all the aggregated jetsam and flotsam of the Mediterranean periphery. Then I read something else from roughly 50 years later and Cairo was 100% Egyptian again. Like so much when attempting to interpolate historical data, the potential for error is great, but I suspect the Gaul, Jews, Romans, Numidians, Dalmatians, etc that left did so after interactions in which they were not asked nicely to frack off back… Read more »
This is just fantastic. We’re not the only country that needs a hard reset.
https://news.yahoo.com/down-syndrome-no-obstacle-aspiring-french-politician-105225136.html
Done “fix-its” for years in the FS industry. In the midst of one now. First thing you do when hitting the ground is sort everyone into “in/out”, there can be a limited third category of problem people that are capable and may get the message when they see what happens to the “outs”. If they don’t it’s “out”. And you make damn sure everyone in charge of a significant reporting chain is a clear “in”. Then you can get things done. Start fudging on the “outs” and you end up with VC inside the wire wreaking havoc.
If you’ll be at CPAC Zman hit me up on email, I’ll get you into parties, events that’ll generate some solid content for your site.
I’ll be at AFPAC, but not CPAC.
Good. I guess there are a couple of anti-CPAC meets going on. Malkin has done more for US tech workers just by tweeting some home truths, than anyone in ConInc.
I wish I could have done AFPAC too but unfortunately this is also a work trip as much as it’s for fun. Still happy to accommodate wherever/whenever you wish, even if it’s coffee hour with Zman and fans.
Speaking of CPAC, who’s going to AmRen this year?
I will be at AmRen.
I hope to make it to. They would be wise to give you (zman) a talk spot.
We’re still talking about it. Waiting to hear back from friends who have a farm nearby the conference site in Tennessee so we could begin the week with them and end it with Amren.
Probably going to AmRen work permitting
I’ll be there. Last year, I got to watch Jared down a shot of whiskey in a very dignified manner.
Trump was no reformer and Sanders is unlikely to be one either, let alone a revolutionary.