Note: The weekly Taki post is up. It ties in with the post this week. Sunday Thoughts, the weekly podcast for the elect, is up behind the green door. If for some reason you did not notice it, I was on with RamZPaul Saturday and you can listen that here.
A truth learned from the study of economics is that competition between suppliers tends to create better products and services. Better in the economic context does not always mean more innovative or better quality. Sometimes the better product is simply more cost effective than the alternatives. The Wintel computer was never the technologically superior option, but it was the most cost effective. Competition often arrives at the solution that is merely good enough.
On the other hand, when companies or industries are able to shield themselves from competition they tend to decline in quality. The prices creep up as the quality and selection declines. The domestic car makers in America experienced this in the middle of the last century. By the 1970’s, their cars were silly and unreliable. Competition from overseas forced them to compete and that made for better cars. Competition is the economic equivalent of accountability.
The time traveler in the H. G. Wells novel The Time Machine observed that “It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.” A corollary is that responsibility and a sense of duty is the compensation for accountability. A natural consequence of accountability is a duty and obligation to the rules under which you operate. When you are held accountable for your actions, you act in private as if the world is watching.
We see this in the whole “go woke, go broke” meme. The fact that none of these woke firms go broke is the important piece. That is the reason corporate America is rushing to embrace the most absurd things. They know they will never be held accountable for their actions, so they have no duty to the rest of us. The people who made the perverted Twix commercial did it because it costs them nothing. Mars is a massive global enterprise immune from the marketplace.
The tech sector is the most obvious example. They have spent decades colluding with one another to suppress wages and deny people their civil rights because they never have to worry about consequences. They may compete with one another at the fringes, but in essence they are a cartel with monopoly power. It is not as if you are going to build your own internet. The market forces we think should exits to hold these firms accountable no longer exists, so they do as they please.
This has been true of politics for a long time. The CIA put out a report in the late 1980’s claiming that the Soviet Union is getting stronger due to the massive success of the Gorbachev reforms. A few months later the Soviet empire collapsed. No one was ever held accountable. In fact, it is fair to say that the power of the Soviets had been overstated for generations. No one was ever held to account, so this was pushed aside with the other lies and blunders.
More recently, many of the same characters were involved in selling the world on the great Muslim threat. The West was turned into a police state because the Muslims wanted to impose Islam-o-fascisms on us. Trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives were spent on a problem that never existed. Since no one would ever be held accountable for the result, not one felt a duty to be right. They just made up whatever would benefit them at the moment.
Even closer to home, there was a local election last week that got national attention as a referendum on the parties. The Virginia governor race was a big success for the Republicans, who immediately used their new political capital to fink on their voters and support the other side. They did it because they know they will never be held accountable for it. Politics is now entirely immune from the marketplace of ideas, so there is no accountability and therefore no responsibility.
We see the same thing in the media. For half a decade they sold the Russian conspiracy hoax to the public. The recent indictments shows that they knew it was a lie when they were selling it. Everyone involved knew it was fake. No one will resign in disgrace or offer a tearful apology. They simply laugh and move onto the next hoax they are told to peddle. There is no shame because there is no accountability. What are you going to do, build your own mass media?
The lack of shame is perhaps the final stage. A reckless disregard for duty can still elicit shame, even if the person knows they will never be held accountable. Once this lack of accountability is normalized, morality collapses. Without morality, there can be no shame, which is what we see with the media. They are shameless because the people in the media no longer possess the normal moral coding. If they have a moral code at all, it is based in a disdain for the rest of us.
The central question posed by The Time Machine is whether life can go on without struggle and if so, should it? The two halves of future humanity, the Elois and Morlocks were scarcely human. They had reached a point where they had conquered the necessary conditions of human civilization. Once struggle had been eliminated, the skills to win the struggle atrophied. What the time traveler observed was not the apex of humanity, but the end of it.
A similar question can be asked about the collapse of accountability. Can a society survive when the people in charge of it are no longer responsible for it? The climax of the Enlightenment project appears to be a world in which the people at the top have finally been insulated from all accountabilities. Oddly, they are the Eloi ruling over the Morlocks, feckless children oppressing what they view as the lesser beasts. Is this the apex of Western civilization or the end of it?
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After reading this, C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man seems more pertinent.
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I originally didn’t like “That Hideous Strength” because I thought it was too ham-fisted. Ends up being it was right on the nose with regards to our medical-tyranny.
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several of H G Wells’ stories are apropos for today’s bizarre world: Time Machine, War of The Worlds (progs are the bacteria that brings down the Martians/Western civ), and of course, Island of Dr Moureau (coof, Fauci, etc).
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> If they have a moral code at all, it is based in a disdain for the rest of us.
We have a weird, inverse morality where old ladies with barely two pennies to their name are harassed by billion dollar media corporations for being terrible people for supporting Trump or not getting the vax. The online rage-heads, desperate for a taste of that power, then pile-on her. Then in the very next tweet they’ll tell everyone how much they care for the poor.
People have an innate sense that any older appeal fair play is long gone, and going after powerful people in the uniparty, regardless of legality, is going to get you in deep trouble, as O’Keefe has learned for quite some time. Best to get your rush of power from helping destroy the life of a guy defending his daughter from a deranged black guy.
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It has to be close to the end, but what is out there that can truly finish this farce we find ourselves living in? There’s virtually no accountability for anything anymore if you’re one of the beautiful people – though if a dirt person, look out. We all keep wondering if reality is ever going to make itself known again – if so, I wish it’d hurry the hell up.
On another note, wtf was that commercial all about? Holy s*** batman…
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It will finish itself. It’s already starting. Gas is going through the roof, Covid is putting everyone out of work, and the shelves are emptying out, and inflation gave everyone a 5% pay cut. You can’t run a country like this.
Everything is about transition. Trump is a step along, as were the actors in the Virginia election. None of this would have even been remotely possible during The Buckwheat Administration.
Somebody is going to get shot soon, and they will deserve it. Z would be better off having said that ‘nobody is accountable… for now…”
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In his letter to William Smith, Jefferson was a bit surprised that insurrection was not more common. It was vastly more common than today, even though our oppression is far worse. That really is the genius of democracy. It lets people “rebel” in a controlled way that never threatens the system. It is the genius of evolution. No one imagined this outcome, much less planned it.
The whole thing rests on the white middle-class feeling secure. The question is, will the white middle-class rouse from their slumber or will they simply blink out of existence as the system collapses?
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I have no faith in the white middle class. They will do whatever they think they are supposed to do.
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Talked to an American (Republican) on Friday night who said the USA needs more immigrants, because most of them are Cuban and most vote Republican.
If the white middle class does do something, I have a feeling it won’t be due to anybody currently involved in mainstream politics.
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Historically, how have middle class citizens responded to the scenario unfolding before us? Do we have any examples of a successful approach specific to this class of people?
While quite disdained, the White middle class served as an intermediary between the Eloi and Morlochs, an aspirational relief valve, if you will. Now we have Muslim submarine commanders crashing the Empire’s crown jewels into underwater mountains, illiterate university professors who teach African art studies, and hysterical women physicians bungling a relatively benign pandemic.
As the White middle class erodes and disappears, the buffer between the Morlochs and Eloi disappears. The United States would be well-advised to invest in gulags since the D.C. jails are insufficient, but who will design and build them?
The collapse only will accelerate because the White middle class simply will disappear. It is being blinked out of existence and not on its own volition, and the Morlochs see the only aspiration is to destroy the Eloi.
Yes, ironically, democracy might have been the best thing to ever happen to the ruling class.
The greatest trick the ruling class ever pulled was to convince the world through democracy that they no longer ruled.
You are correct that people aren’t about to build their own internet, but a person or persons can think up something even better to replace it. In my youth street corner phone booths were thought of as being wonderfully convenient. Who knows that the next chapter will bring.
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“More recently, many of the same characters were involved in selling the world on the great Muslim threat. The West was turned into a police state because the Muslims wanted to impose Islam-o-fascisms on us….”
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“What are you going to do, build your own mass media?”
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Blab is up and doing well – for now. The rude jokes alone are worth the trip. As for our own internet, we already have one. I am a regular customer of the Z Blog and other crime thinkers and nazis.
I want my own community too. I hate blacks and want them driven out, possibly along with the jews… and that scares the hell out them – the ones that can’t hide behind their money or friends in high places, anyway… and even they are getting nervous – as they should.
The Saxon is beginning to hate again.
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“If they have a moral code at all, it is based in a disdain for the rest of us.”
Exactly. That is their morality – hatred of Bad Whites. Our current rulers show no remorse for lying about anything and everything because they look at those lies as part of a larger, almost holy cause. Lying to defeat an evil enemy requires no guilt.
The question is whether a society can survive when the rulers hate the people upon whom the society needs to function. Feudal lords certainly disdained their own peasants with whom they often had no cultural or ethnic connection, kind of like a certain slice of our rulers.
Our current rulers want a modern feudal state in which the peasants have no alternative and thus quietly toil hoping to avoid the eye and ire of their lord.
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Maybe there’s some accountability. The malevolent, attention whore governor of California has not been seen in public since his booster shot which, of course, he had the media record.
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It is cruel of me, but it would be hilarious if he was brought down by the jab.
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Is it cruel to wish harm and death upon your enemies, especially via the method they attempt to harm and kill you? If it is it’s perfectly natural, but I’m not sure even a saint would be troubled to see someone so vile and treacherous as Newsom get hurt by his own medicine.
The whole point of the Cloud People thing is to be utterly untethered from moral, biological or thermodynamic Truth. Karl Rove was oddly prescient when he said “we create our own reality”. This has become the guiding ethos of all Cloud types.
The lying is a public profession of faith in the new “morality”. All that’s missing is the little red books.
The Coof and Trans stuff are a rejection of biology.
Conjuring paper money and credit out of thin air and pretending Unicorns and Fairies will deliver vital goods, BTUs and services is a rejection of thermodynamics.
It only ends when the Barbarians are at the gates. Oh wait……
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The price for lack of accountability is low trust and eventual collapse.
To focus on several things you mentioned, the Russia collusion hoax has caused me and many others to believe the weapons of mass destruction debacle (this one is huge) just like the claim of Soviet economic supremacy before it were deliberate lies, not monumental intelligence community failures. Who ever again will trust the claims about the United States for the necessity for war?
Long-term, of course, the Eloi cannot control the Morlock. More than a critique of capitalism, TIME TRAVELER is a meditation on hubris and destruction. This is the status of the West.
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Accountability to the Truth before all. The rule of man is a conduit of a higher order, not a construct of his own making. That is the inversion at work.
Time machine had the savages ruling the beautiful ones. But this was still according to the natural order. It was the Eloi, livestock oblivious to the reality of their own experience, who were largely disconnected from their natural world living in an artificial cloud. Molochs harvesting from them what was needed for their survival.
Now our cloud Eloi do not rule us Molochs by reason, as an extension of what is natural and true. They are not accountable to us because they are not accountable to reason at all, but instead rationalism, an ever drifting perversion of reason’s true nature. Which is to serve something higher. This is a transitory condition that will not hold the weight of time.
Our Eloi are just as detached from reality and the purpose of reason as that of Wells’. It is just that the Moloch of our timeline have yet to sound the horn. Maybe it won’t be “us”, as we are just dirt Eloi, but the natural world is quite good at producing savages keen on the natural order.
A lot happened before The Traveller came upon the drowning girl in the river. If nations are full of ruin, the timeline of satanic inversion still has a lot of men with full bellies. Time has a way of fixing things.
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Z,
I read your post at Taki’s and the mention of Alexander Hamilton reminded me of another sex scandal from 1960s Britain, the Profumo Affair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profumo_affair
TL/DR: UK Secretary of State for War John Profumo has an affair with a “bit o’ crumpet” named Christine Keeler, who was also seeing a Soviet Naval Officer on the side. Word leaked out about it, Profumo declared his innocence in the House of Commons, then the police came along and “‘Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello, what’s all this then?” and found out yes, he was having an affair. Profumo confessed he’d lied, resigned, and PM Harold Macmillan got a drubbing in the October 1964 election. This is what John Profumo did after leaving government:
“After expressing his “deep remorse” to the prime minister, to his constituents and to the Conservative Party, Profumo disappeared from public view. In April 1964 he began working as a volunteer at the Toynbee Hall settlement, a charitable organisation based in Spitalfields which supports the most deprived residents in the East End of London. Profumo continued his association with the settlement for the remainder of his life, at first in a menial capacity, then as administrator, fund-raiser, council member, chairman and finally president. Profumo’s charitable work was recognised when he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1975. He was later described by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a national hero, and was a guest at her 80th birthday celebrations in 2005. His marriage to Valerie Hobson lasted until her death on 13 November 1998, aged 81; Profumo died, aged 91, on 9 March 2006.”
A politician resigning and actually performing acts of contrition for the remainder of his career.
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“On the other hand, when companies or industries are able to shield themselves from competition they tend to decline in quality. The prices creep up as the quality and selection declines. The domestic car makers in America experienced this in the middle of the last century. By the 1970’s, their cars were silly and unreliable. Competition from overseas forced them to compete and that made for better cars. Competition is the economic equivalent of accountability.”
Silly and unreliable is being polite. That said GM and Ford have pretty much given up on building cars, and focus on trucks and SUVs/CUVs.