America Inc.

Note: Behind the green door is a post about grammar robots, a post the general weirdness of dissident politics and the Sunday podcast, which thankfully had nothing to do about Trump or the anti-Trump kooks. Subscribe here or here.


One of the criticisms of the paleoconservatives is that they never got around to formulating an explanation for why the managerial state emerged. They did a good job describing it and how it differed from the straightforward administrative bureaucracies that have been a part of society since Diocletian. How the bureaucracy transitioned from instrument of the ruling elite into a ruling elite itself has remained a bit of mystery, with only some stabs here and there at an explanation.

The fault probably lies with Burnham, who was the first guy to create a political theory from observing the emergence of the managerial system. He wrote his most famous book, The Managerial Revolution, during the Second World War when the Nazis were at the peak of their power. Therefore, his understanding of managerialism was shaped by the militant authoritarianism of it. Burnham was still a communist, so this no doubt played a role in his understanding of managerialism.

The emergence of managerialism in interwar Europe is easy to explain simply by pointing to the conditions that prevailed after the Great War. Fascism emerged on the losing side of the war because of the chaos that emerged as a result of the collapse of the old order and the general lunacy of liberalism and communism as they fought to fill the void left by the old order. Fascism rode the popular demand for a return of order to power in places like German and Italy.

Once in power, the fascists had to actually govern. The existing institutions they inherited were either badly damaged by the war and the post-war chaos or antiquated holdovers from the prior era. Managerialism provided both a blueprint for governing but also a source of authority. Gather up the best people and set them to work rebuilding infrastructure, the economy, and the state. Once they began to make progress, public support for the system provided the necessary legitimacy.

This model for managerialism being a modern, industrial response to both the collapse of the old order and the chaos of the present works pretty well for the emergence of it in communist Russia. The collapse of the tsarist system and the Russian civil war left Russia as a chaotic mess. Into that void flowed Stalin first inside the party and then as something of an industrial age tsar. He gathered up and developed an army of people to manage, govern and control the new Soviet society.

That same process does not work for America, where managerialism emerged at the same time as it did in Europe. Many have noted the parallels between FDR’s New Deal revolution and the emergence of fascism in Europe. Until the war, many New Deal progressives were fans of Mussolini. They never liked Hitler, due to his crudeness and antisemitism, but they liked Mussolini. There was in the 1930’s a great deal of cross pollination between the two systems.

America, however, was not emerging from a failed war and its political order was not destroyed as a result of it. On the contrary, America was remarkably stable in the aftermath of the economic collapse in the 1930’s and the political system seemed to be working very well. There is no doubt that FDR revolutionized the relationship between the citizen and the state during this period, but he did not do so in response to the loss of legitimacy of the old arrangements.

It should also be noted that the managerialism that emerged in America was different from the militaristic version that emerged in the fascist countries, which built upon trench socialism. Similarly, Stalin’s managerialism was a way to recapture the collective spirit of the revolutionary years in which the Bolsheviks finally seized power and won the civil war. The managerial revolution of FDR was softer and an outgrowth of volunteerism of early America.

Therein lies a clue as to why managerialism emerged in America. Through the 19th century, Americans were largely governed by local association. Other than the post office and military service, the typical American had little reason to think about the federal government. It was an abstraction. Even state government played a limited role in his life compared to local government and the community associations that defined the life of most Americans.

The industrial revolution changed America by urbanizing large chunks of the population, thus destroying rule by association for large numbers of people. The shift from industrial work also changed the relationship between the man and his work by making it individualistic rather than communal. The failure of a farmer impacts many more people than the farmer and his family. The failure of a factory worker is a burden only on the worker and his family. Work became a solitary pursuit.

Like the rise of managerialism, the rise of individualism is one of those things that many recognize as a problem, but no can explain. Why all of a sudden did Europeans stop thinking collectively and start thinking individually? Racial solidarity among Europeans was so natural it did not require a vocabulary to describe. Today we have a vast array of labels to describe white ethnic and racial solidarity, despite the fact that it barely exists and only in the virtual reality of the internet.

As work isolated men from one another, the natural response was to think individually and see the man next you as competition. This was obviously good for the factory owner, so work in many cases became a competitive arena, a Hobbesian existence where the owner harnessed this war of all against all to increase productivity, reduce costs and maximize profits. The result was a class of citizen who was no longer defined by community but by alienation from community.

This alienation inevitably led to unhappiness as man is a social animal and evolved to be so within small groups. The emergence of masses of Americans living in big cities fighting one another for wages lead to a disenchantment of the world. The rise of urban political machines was one consequence. Another consequence was a looking inward for spiritual happiness. When community can no longer provide a larger purpose to life, the only option is to seek it individually.

The shift from community man to individual man naturally leads to the individual abandoning his duties to the community. Self-government rests on the assumption that the bulk of the citizens have a moral duty to the whole. Who they are is not just what they have or even what they contribute to the whole. A big part of what defines the community man’s sense of self is the success of his community. Individual man lacks this entirely, so he has no reason to participate.

This is the same void of order into which managerialism flowed in interwar Europe and post-tsarist Russia. The tutelary state that emerged in America in the 20th century was not imposed on an unwilling populace, but simply filled the void left by a growing population of people uninterested in anything outside their window. Urban and now suburban peasants needed the protection of the state because as atomized individuals, they were no longer willing to participate in their own protection.

This is why the state has also become a church of sorts. Much of what the managerial state does is moral guidance. Painting rainbows on crosswalks and then daring anyone to defile them is intended to create sinners so the priests of the system can punish those sinners thus providing the needed moral instruction. What used to be done by community pressure and the local minister is now done by credentialled members of a faceless and remorseless managerial class.

Managerialism is the natural form of government for an industrial people as it mimics the life of the industrial worker. Republican government and aristocratic government reflected the reality of the people, who were primarily organized around communal activities like farming and trade. Twentieth century America turned into a continent-sized business park occupied by one business, American Inc. Like every business, America Inc. needed a management class, so it  got one.

The question is can this model survive the post-industrial age? America began to deindustrialize fifty years ago. The old industrial model of governance has tried to adapt to the transition to the information economy, but managing information is vastly more difficult than managing capital and labor. In fact, it may not even be possible to manage information without poisoning the minds of the managers. The current crisis may simply be due to this problem.

On the other hand, it may be that you cannot have a society organized around marshaling data and data frameworks. Perhaps America Inc. is simply a legacy business parasiting off the societies that continue to make things, fix things, dig things from the ground and invent things. Perhaps the end point of managerialism is the same for all antiquated business models. The current crisis is the struggle to avoid the inevitable bankruptcy of the managerial system.


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TempoNick
TempoNick
5 months ago

“How the bureaucracy transitioned from instrument of the ruling elite into a ruling elite itself has remained a bit of mystery, with only some stabs here and there at an explanation.” There’s no mystery here. Although it’s a big hurdle to get new laws passed, it’s an even bigger hurdle to get bad laws repealed. Bad laws like the creation of administrative agencies. Then political appointees get installed to run those agencies and start pushing the boundaries of laws rubber stamp by compliant judges. I remember back in the day when they passed a long-term care tax and seniors revolted.… Read more »

Last edited 5 months ago by TempoNick
pyrrhus
pyrrhus
Reply to  TempoNick
5 months ago

It seems that Argentina has a superior form of Government these days…Milei just eliminated the Department of Women, genders, and diversity with the stroke of a pen….https://twitchy.com/grateful-calvin/2024/06/09/el-loco-strikes-again-javier-milei-shutters-argentinas-ministry-of-women-gender-and-diversity-n2397119
The US President can’t even do that, apparently…

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  pyrrhus
5 months ago

Anybody who wanted to do that couldn’t get within telescopic distance of the Anti-White House.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

I intend to shamelessly appropriate that term

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

Let it have the widest possible airing.

Spingerah
Spingerah
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

Me too.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  pyrrhus
5 months ago

The problem is—aside from Congressional cowardliness—that the President has little control over the overwhelming workforce in these agencies. Little by little, the workers have been pulled out of direct employment reporting to civil service protection. So the leadership can be replaced and some patronage positions established, but most of the managerial worker bees cannot be touched. Additionally, Court decisions have restricted the president’s authority to hold back funding from these agencies and thus defacto elimination of the entity.

There were pluses and minuses in these changes, we are now living through the minuses.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Compsci
5 months ago

All the worst people are tenured…

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

CompSci: “most of the managerial worker bees cannot be touched” Ostei Kozelskii: “All the worst people are tenured…“ One cannot understand this phenomenon of “Managerialism” without first acknowledging the Hive Mind of Passive Aggression which propels the managerial phenomenon. If humanity is to survive [the prospects for which being very iffy at the moment***], then the Active Aggressives will have to rise up and eradicate the Passive Aggressives. This constant ebb and flow between Passive Aggressive dominance versus Active Aggressive dominance defines the entirety of known human history. And we’re getting way past due for an high-quality first-rate Active Aggressive… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
5 months ago

What were the plusses, again?

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

Waay back when the Federal government was much smaller, the incoming party fire everyone and hired a new crew. This caused disruption and was known as the spoils system. Somewhere there needed to be a happy compromise. So civil service protections were implemented starting at lower level employees and the “automatic” turnover of staff reduced. The exact details are not needed here to illustrate the problem at that time with firing the old crew and changing in a new crew and the learning curve such entailed.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
5 months ago

I was being facetious, but I still wonder, if one must have a bureaucracy, why isn’t it better to have one which more closely reflects the current populace’s views?

Jack Boniface
Jack Boniface
Member
5 months ago

Maybe we should have elected Romney so he could have looted what was left of the equity in America Inc., bankrupted it, and left us to move on to whatever is next.

pyrrhus
pyrrhus
Reply to  Jack Boniface
5 months ago

President Ike once observed that “in the Army, when a General gives an order, something happens…when the President gives an order, nothing happens..” Trump should keep that in mind if he gets in….

Gespenst
Gespenst
Reply to  pyrrhus
5 months ago

Trump learned that lesson on the job when he was president.

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  Gespenst
5 months ago

Arguably Trump’s biggest structural mistake, upon taking orifice in January 2017, was in failing to sack, immediately, all of the Obama generals in the Pentagon. In retrospect, I don’t know that Trump had the correct personalititty for the sort sociological oncological surgery needed to weed out all of the metastasizing tumors in FedGov. Trump won the 2016 election via an highly emotional campaign, but emotion isn’t worth a d@mn when facing off against the myriad Passive Aggressive metastases in FedGov. To excise all of the metastases will require d@mned near infinite patience & determination & autistic spergtardery, but to my… Read more »

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  Bourbon
5 months ago

OOPS: The “Verbal Kint” reference might be a meta-spoiler for anyone who’s never seen the movie.

Sorry if I ruined it for anyone.

But that’s what we’re gonna need to win this thing; upwards of 10 million Verbal Kints, ready & willing & determined to take care of bidness.

Because Nice Guys ALWAYS FINISH LAST.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Bourbon
5 months ago

I’ve got news for you, the General Patton types are weeded out at a very early stage in their careers.
If you want the hardcore types back at the helm, you’re probably going to have to go get a number of names off of the list of people that barry shitcanned while he occupied the Oval Office.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

Renamed the Oval Orifice under Barry…

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

This is easy in concept, perhaps hard in effecting. You shitcan all flag rank officers and only consider colonels for promotion to replace them. Colonels are not poz’d—at least not all of them. Those drinking the kool aide in hopes of a flag rank, can be passed over. Those waiting the few years to mandatory retirement due to being passed over for promotion are what you draw from. There are over 44 4-star generals. In WWIl there were 7!. You can knock these guys out quickly.

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

Steve: “you’re probably going to have to go get a number of names off of the list of people that barry shitcanned while he occupied the Oval Office

Absolutely that’s what we should do, and I’ve thought that for upwards of a decade now.

I don’t wanna tell the JIDF officers reading this thread how I would go about rearranging the pentagon brass, but I do know precisely how I would attack the problem.

Within about 48 to 72 hours, we could completely flip the pentagon.

Spingerah
Spingerah
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

Exactly, if any are still there.
Probably have to reach way down. Get Doug McGregor on the job.
It was over when the cover of stars & stripes had the two faggot marines grabbing ass.
Still gag rembering that.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Bourbon
5 months ago

I can’t reply well to your comment as I’m not at your level, but I think I agree. In my language, Trump “improved version 2” better be a complete rewrite of the software, or he’s toast.

Member
Reply to  Bourbon
5 months ago

One of his most egregious mistakes was appointing General James “Lap Dog” Mattis as Secretary of Defense.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Pickle Rick
5 months ago

Writing was on the wall no later than when he let Pence give the boot to Flynn.

Spingerah
Spingerah
Reply to  Pickle Rick
5 months ago

Married to the corpse ?
Riiighttt.

Arthur Metcalf
Arthur Metcalf
Reply to  Jack Boniface
5 months ago

We’d likely be far more united as a people after 8 years of that greasy serpent’s face on our television screens.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
5 months ago

Mitt the Greasy Serpent–I like that.

stranger in a strange land
stranger in a strange land
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

Thanks clarification as there are so many people who’ve been around 8 years and epitomize a greasy serpent.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  stranger in a strange land
5 months ago

The Power Structure is a pack of rattlers that have been wallering around in bacon fat.

Spingerah
Spingerah
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

You win! Lmao.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
5 months ago

Lots of very deep thought to chew on here. This is among the best takes I’ve read on the reason behind the present turmoil. I’ll add a few thoughts and pose a question or two. The managerial state arose not only with the New Deal but also at the time of a pending world war. It seemed to thrive in war time and thus mutated to be linked with permanent conflict. Ever since World War II, the United States has been in perpetual warfare marked by loss and humiliation from time to time, starting with Korea in the immediate aftermath.… Read more »

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Jack Dobson
5 months ago

The answer is much simpler. Getting new laws passed is a difficult thing to do. It’s much easier to do an end-run around Congress by installing political leadership inside already politicized agencies and pushing the boundaries of their enabling legislation. That’s how we get an EPA, created to clean up our rivers and our smog, going above and beyond their mandate in furtherance of leftist Democrat political agendas. The only answer I can think of is to distribute their work to the states. People at least have recourse at the state level to a far greater extent than they do… Read more »

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  TempoNick
5 months ago

Yes, but it required some competence to pull off what amounted to an administrative state coup. As that competence disappeared, even the EPA resorted to armed enforcers. Resort to crude violence indicates a lack of confidence that stems directly from the lack of competence. This also explains the thuggish nature of the managerial state writ large these days. Runaway trains eventually derail and we are seeing that.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Jack Dobson
5 months ago

Thing is, though, that some demographics only respond to crude violence. The state, in its infinite wisdom, chose to view all demographics as interchangeable nails, so of course every problem calls for a hammer.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Jack Dobson
5 months ago

Or, to borrow a scene from Atlas Shrugged the government bigwig on the passenger train makes the decision to ignore the stop signal and his train proceeds westward at full speed into the tunnel, crashing head-on into the eastbound train loaded with munitions.

Boris
Reply to  Jack Dobson
5 months ago

“Struggle seems necessary to maintain the managerial state, whether the conflict is international or domestic with “war” on poverty, drugs, and so forth”. I think you definitely hit on something here, JD. They need constant conflict to keep the plates spinning and it doesn’t matter if there’s resolution or even “victory”. In fact, it’s probably better for them if there isn’t. All the external conflicts TMS (the managerial state) created since WWII have not been victories at all with the irrelevant exceptions of a few police actions (Grenada!). They left/lost Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. And the domestic “wars”, too (poverty, drugs,… Read more »

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Boris
5 months ago

You put it far better than I, but, yeah. It is little more than a permanent revolution redux while clustering a Gideon Bible and pocket constitution.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Boris
5 months ago

What they did learn from the noted failures of McNamara and Rumsfeld was to fight their imperial wars using other people’s cannon fodder. See Syria, Libya, Ukraine etc. Some would say that’s how they plan to fight the war on whites too.

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  Jack Dobson
5 months ago

Jack Dobson: “Does the managerial state as it evolved from the Thirties through the Forties require constant war or crisis to thrive or grow?” “Peace” seems to be an exceedingly rare state of affairs in the annals of human history. I fear that there are meta-Darwinian phenomena at work here which likely do compel & propel constant war into actual physical existence. I wish it weren’t so, but the ghost of Charles Darwin always has the last laugh. PS: Kinda/sorta related to the above [coming at it from the opposite angle]; there’s a new study out which holds that pretty… Read more »

TomA
TomA
5 months ago

Managerialism run amok is societal entropy. It exists because of prolonged affluence which incentivizes parasitic growth due to over abundance. A lean managerial ladder is effective and efficient when based solely upon merit, but destructive when it becomes bloated and cronyistic. The West is rife with bloated and parasitic managerial deadweght that now infects every branch of government and society. Too many 4 star generals, too many faux college professors, too many lawyers, too many Karens, etc. This will not change until real hardship and deprivation reemerge, thereby forcing merit back into a preeminent driver for promotion. Both community strength… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  TomA
5 months ago

That’s not a given. In most real life phenomena, hysteresis is the law, that is, the path from state A to state B is not just the reverse of the path from state B to state A.

There’s no reason to believe hunger and deprivation is necessary, and, apart from some fraction of the leftist revolutions, is not typically the case anyway. Sweden didn’t pull back from their socialist course because of famine, nor did the US break away from Britain because of some Holodomor.

Spingerah
Spingerah
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

Both of those examples were super majority Caucasian at the time. Do you think that might of had anything to do with it?

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Spingerah
5 months ago

So was the French Revolution.

From what I’m seeing IRL and reading here, I don’t think that’s probably it. The constant complaint is that whites are sleeping or grilling or whatever, which is the exact opposite of whites being quicker to take action.

I think it’s probably more to do with ideology. Both hard times and good times make people more susceptible to the leftist propaganda from the usual suspects.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

The question is can this model survive the post-industrial age? I don’t think very much that is within it survives the post industrial age, which should best be defined as an anomalous state of exception at the end of empire. I could expend a lot of verbiage expanding on that point, but you already get the idea. Post industrialism is best analogized with the hedonistic heir of a great fortune, who is now spending it. That anyone takes the concept of post industrialism more seriously than that is the comedy. The wikipedia page on post industrialism is entertaining, in that… Read more »

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

Yes, well put.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

I maintain, and the current USA illustrates, is that there is no such thing as the “post-industrial” age. Perhaps my (mis)understanding is one of semantics. What I see, and live within, is a society that uses all the products of an industrial society—and then some—but refuses to manufacture them. Through the magic of financial and military chicanery, we’ve convinced the rest of the world to make our goods and accept IOU’s for such. We of course—being post IR, will eventually redeem our IOU’s with our “products of the mind”. Our national debt is testimony to the fallacy. Yes, I know… Read more »

Tired Citizen
Tired Citizen
Reply to  Compsci
5 months ago

“Where do you think this food comes from?!”
Average “Merican”: “The grocery store!”

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Tired Citizen
5 months ago

Average murkan mom: Opens a few cans, adds a few boxes, stirs, bakes, voila! “Home -cooked dinner.”

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  3g4me
5 months ago

Yeah, but that’s not my wife’s fault—it was my fault for being a greedy ass and having her work a full time job so we could have a “life style”. Now we have a life style, the kids are gone, and we sit at home with regrets. Inverted priorities.

Last edited 5 months ago by Compsci
Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
5 months ago

Hear you, bro. Wish someone had reached out you the same way someone reached out to me back in the day. Time with the kids is too precious to squander over material stuff.

At least do someone else the favor, assuming you can find anyone willing to listen to one of the “olds”.

Pozymandias
Reply to  Compsci
5 months ago

The recipe for a post-industrial society is military and currency supremacy. It’s that simple. Once you have that most of your “workforce” can be employed doing whatever make-work strikes your fancy. The global nature of modern corporations means that most of them actually do have productive workers employed in places like China or India. Their workforces in America and Europe can basically be put to “work” doing just about anything. Their salaries are the tribute extracted by the American and other Western states. Their wages are taxed to pay for military hardware and hire useless direct government workers. They are… Read more »

NoLabels
NoLabels
Reply to  Pozymandias
5 months ago

Interesting bit there about post-productive fundamentals. I was intrigued by the Vancouver B.C. luxury apt tower where each unit purchase financed a pre-fab shed or house or whatever overseas (supposedly getting this marketing idea from a shoe brand that “buys a pair of shoes for a poor person somewhere” when you buy it). By this means effectively you are exporting your own proles to Phnom Penh. Stakeholders can be manufactured.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Pozymandias
5 months ago

Gotta say, I’m with Shitavious on this one. I also don’t see how attending 5 Zoom meetings a day and doing a daily Agile scrum stand-up is valuable.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Compsci
5 months ago

Compsci: You expressed yourself just fine. And you are correct. We don’t produce, we consume. We trade. We have a workforce of financial manipulators, content creators, influencers, sportzball noggers, and movie/media thots. It’s a gussied-up game of three-card monte . . . until it’s not. Meanwhile, make sure your 1.2 children go to good skooowz so they can take their place in AINO’s burgeoning economy, because we all know magic democracies are heaven-ordained and will thus continue eternally.

3g4me
3g4me
5 months ago

Zman, to mention industrialization and the changes it wrought without discussing the mass immigration that accompanied it is to paint half the picture. When a quarter of the factory workers are Italian and a quarter are Jews and maybe half speak English, there is no collective ‘us.’ The history of European managerialism is different, but you cannot discuss the changes in American institutions without addressing the changes in the people. Ellis Island was a minimal processing center, and there existed no magic dirt for the disparate European peasants.

Captain Willard
Captain Willard
Reply to  3g4me
5 months ago

Great point. The US is the only major country that industrialized simultaneous with a major immigration boom. I would argue that it led to labor being significantly less powerful in the US versus Europe (obviously Japan is a different story). Managerialism in Germany, for example, evolved with labor having a major say (unions have seats on all the major Boards there) in corporate governance. France and the UK weren’t terribly different. It’s also useful to distinguish between Managerialism 1.0 (pre welfare state) and 2.0 (post Welfare state). Immigration’s impact here has been way more powerful and negative in the presence… Read more »

Gespenst
Gespenst
Reply to  3g4me
5 months ago

When I was a kid–1950s–there certainly was a collective us. It got constructed somehow, but there’s an ongoing 50 year project to destroy it.

steve w
steve w
Reply to  Gespenst
5 months ago

Education in the USA at that time encouraged patriotism, even nationalism. Every classroom had a flag, and we all said the Pledge in the morning to start the day, almost a religious ritual when you think about it. This was universal and it was deliberate. For a time it seemed that all the disparate peoples in our country had succeeded in forging a “new nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” Turned out to be bullshit, but it worked for awhile. It certainly helped us win WW2, a national effort if there ever was one.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  steve w
5 months ago

I went to grade school in the 70s and we were still reciting the Pledge at that point.

DaBears
DaBears
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

I attended tail end of the 70’s. Had the lead role in the annual Christmas play “It Happens Every Christmas.” I played father Crawford and my “wife” was Betty. The play was held in our elementary school auditorium. Jews were excused from class for the day. Our community attended and brought Christmas treats.

DaBears
DaBears
Reply to  DaBears
5 months ago

It was a public elementary school. All white except for the Jewish kids.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

I call your Pledge and raise you ROTC. When I stepped onto the quad my Freshman year, 800 students were marching in uniform.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Compsci
5 months ago

Soon after 9/11 ROTC programs were bannished from many college campuses. In a sane country, lots of deans, provosts and professors would have been strung up on bell towers for doing that.

Scoundrel
Scoundrel
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

Same here.

imnobody00
imnobody00
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

I was an elementary teacher at Houston in the late 2000s. In a bilingual school. We did the pledge every day. In English. Although I was foreigner, I participated. It seemed like basic respect to me.

Zfan
Zfan
Reply to  imnobody00
5 months ago

I taught 4th grade for a couple of years in LA before going back to SED purgatory. We did the pledge each day: in English, then in Spanish. God bless those kids. I hope some of them have been able to get back to El Salvador under Bukele.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  steve w
5 months ago

“I used to sleep at the foot of Old Glory, and awake in the dawn’s early light. But much to my surprise, when I opened my eyes, I was a victim of the great compromise.”
— John Prine (from 1972)

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  3g4me
5 months ago

Zman, to mention industrialization and the changes it wrought without discussing the mass immigration that accompanied it is to paint half the picture.”

I agree with you. Many political thinkers continue to do detailed analysis of our political situation while ignoring racial warfare, which is far more consequential than ideology or religion.

I’ve lost my patience with the people on our side who diagnose our sickness as “Communism” or “wokeness.”

If a person on the right cannot see and say that the real issue is non-whites as a group attacking clueless whites, then that person is worse than useless.

Scoundrel
Scoundrel
Reply to  thezman
5 months ago

The other big thing is that there are still way too many people who refuse to believe that the people who rule over us are a most ungodly form of evil and are hell bent on erasing us from history.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  LineInTheSand
5 months ago

I’ve lost my patience with the people on our side who diagnose our sickness as “Communism” or “wokeness.”

TBH, I’ve lost patience with people who don’t realize these are non-white sicknesses. Yes, they infect whites, but their origin is exogenous.

Captain Willard
Captain Willard
5 months ago

This is a very complicated topic but very fascinating. I hope Zman will continue to explore it. I think Managerialism emerged in each society for different reasons. UK: they had an Empire to manage and the Civil Service emerged from the requirements of Empire. The trading companies (East India etc.) were professionally managed. Germany: Bismarck started expanding the central state to effect Unification (read Steinberg’s excellent biography), but Prussia and other kingdoms had good management to collect taxes and run militaries Italy: it emerged late because Italy unified (1861) and industrialized late. The North got organized to help FIAT and… Read more »

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Captain Willard
5 months ago

No one in the managerial class, or anywhere else in the “mainstream,” considers Bernanke a failure. They gave him a Nobel prize. For printing money. Unlike McNamara and Rumsfeld, who were seen as failures, his lionization spawns imitators. I wonder how different the world would have been if Rumsfeld had been Reagan’s running mate in 1980, (Reagan’s first choice I understand), instead of GHWB. Probably not very. But it might have saved us from the Clintons, in the sense that Rumsfeld, being much more charismatic and better in front of the camera than Bush, perhaps would have defeated WJC in… Read more »

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

True, but the ability to lionize failure is much weaker now. Exhibit A is Anthony Fauci. Despite the attempts to Bernankeize him, Fauci is becoming the face of the failed administrative state to a much wider audience that simply people who think as we do. The proliferation of uncontrolled and probably uncontrollable information makes it all but impossible to prop up failure.

steve w
steve w
Reply to  Jack Dobson
5 months ago

Failure may be easier to identify due to uncontrolled information, and therefore lionization more difficult or even impossible, yet few of these bastards ever lose their positions in high places; when they do, they move to high-paying gigs in media, NGOs, global corporations, etc. I am sure that a complete fool like Mayorkas will never need to worry about money, or Buttigieg, Granholm, Austin, Blinken, or any of them – Fauci included.

Seriously, who in the f*ck are these people?

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

Clinton was given to us via the Ross Perot third party candidate. Dem’s held solid, Rep’s split vote.

Arthur Metcalf
Arthur Metcalf
Reply to  Compsci
5 months ago

How about not voting for GHW Bush in that election, I told people the following year who were grumbling about the loss.

Bush went on to become best pals with Bill within six months, left him a lovely handwritten note in the Oval and ended up traveling the world with him after Clinton’s 2nd term.

The Bushes never had any problems with the Clintons. Perot Buchanan — they had problems with the Clintons and the Bushes.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
5 months ago

Not sure what you are getting at. Bush was riding a wave of popularity due to the Gulf War, but a year or so later, no one wanted to vote for him? Doubtful. One needed only look at the critical States Bush lost and the margin to see what a Ross Perot candidacy meant in that election. Perot, wacky as he was, did predict exactly what the North American Free Trade Agreement would mean. He should have been President in that regard. And yes, Clinton picked up the ball on that agreement and it passed swimmingly in Congress. BTW, it… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Compsci
5 months ago

Had I been Donald Trump, I would have left a note for Joey Depends, alright. And it wouldn’t have been very nice…

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

Yeah, I hear ya. But Biden probably would have used it as a weapon against Trump. These letters are kept quiet/confidential traditionally as I recall. Even at that, the rumor was that the Obama’s could barely restrain their open distaste for Trump when he had his traditional talk/meeting with Obama before the inauguration. The Obama’s were the epitome of “low rent” individuals.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Compsci
5 months ago

Directly Trump won that election, BO and the rest of the Power Structure set about trying to destroy him and they’re still at it.

Captain Willard
Captain Willard
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

Fair enough Jeffrey. But we were never getting saved from Clinton or his ilk. He was necessary to ram home NAFTA, something a GOP Prez may not have been able to deliver.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
5 months ago

I cannot agree that industrialization destroyed communities. In fact, the term “community” is one of the most prominent tropes of postmodern AINO. You have the African-American community, the Moslem community, the gay community, the Jewish community, the trans-community, the Wiccan community, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. Idenitity politics, the chief poltical form of the age, is nothing if not the reification of the community. Of course, these communities are formed and draw oxygen, to a significant degree, from official exhortation and propagandization. The Power Structure gets the communities it wants. It also destroys the communities it fears… Read more »

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

I was thinking that the decline of church attendance did a lot more to destroy community than industrialization did. Although perhaps industrialization had to come first.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

Chicken / egg, so I would modify that to say the loss of church attendance *reflected* the destruction of community.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

No question about it. And, as Putnam demonstrated, diversity was acid on the sinews of civil society, which, of course, was communitarian.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

When people say, “we lost God,” it’s not a metaphysical dispute.
What they are bemoaning is the loss of that sense of community.

mmack
mmack
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

In some cases, industrialism “created” communities, with the caveat that if the inhabitants shared a commonality (like, oh, say, ethnicity) a community could grow up around an industrial base. I think of two examples, copied from a comment I made at Sailer’s site (Yeah, I know, I know, but don’t dismiss it quite yet): Cicero in one way mirrors Hamtramck, MI. Both had large employers located in the town. Cicero had Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works, Hamtramck had Dodge Brothers, later to be Dodge Division of Chrysler Corporation. Both towns boomed with the creation of the factories (Hawthorne Works in 1905,… Read more »

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  mmack
5 months ago

Immigration too probably heavily counted in tearing up the ties that bound townspeople together.

Of course it did. That was the purpose behind it. Those educated children of factory workers might have and probably would have been more prone to return to town if it looked like a decent place to live and raise a family.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

“I  cannot agree that industrialization destroyed communities.” A huge point in Ostei’s favor is that the factory owners built the communities. Examples would be Detroit’s Eight Mile and surrounding towns for the auto factories or Milwaukee’s breweries building communities. Western towns built around a rail depot or mine; Oklahoma, West Texas, and Kansas City stockyards. I was once somewhere in Michigan where the workers literally walked across the street from their homes to the large factory complex there. Those Midwest towns were built by business owners trying to attract a stable labor force; the company built their apartments, bus or… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Alzaebo
5 months ago

You can’t ignore the impact of the usual suspects here. Company towns fell out of favor largely through (((their))) influence with the ideology of “Workers, Unite”.

As you point out, horse-drawn trolleys were commonplace. Workers weren’t generally forced to live in the “tenements”, but had to get from wherever they lived to the trolley, until that area got built up enough to justify extending the route.

The problem is that socialism just is not compatible with an industrial society. It’s not possible for everyone to live at someone else’s expense. Consequently, socialism always ends in a death spiral and de-industrialization.

Last edited 5 months ago by Steve
Nick Note's Mugshot
Nick Note's Mugshot
5 months ago

Individualism is figuratively and in some cases literally killing White people in the USA. Whites NEVER help or support one another. How many videos have you seen of a White kid being beaten in a school hallway by ferals while dozens of other White kids look on and do nothing. I may have mentioned this before but I spoke with a Pakistani multimillionaire who said that unrelated Indians and Pakistanis will by shares in covienence stores. As the money comes in they will buy a larger share in the next store until eventually they are making enough money to buy… Read more »

Guest
Guest
Reply to  Nick Note's Mugshot
5 months ago

Interestingly, my parents were part of a group which did exactly that in the early 1980s to prevent the entry of a chain-style convenience store from entering into the tiny (population <1000) midwestern town in which I grew up. They teamed up with three other local businesspeople (grocery store owner, gas station owner, and telephone company owner) to build a convenience store. It ended up being a good investment, and the profits stayed in the local community.

They sold their interest last year, but the store still operates and the plan was successful. Small victories still count.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Guest
5 months ago

Too bad there aren’t a whole lot more like that.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Nick Note's Mugshot
5 months ago

That’s my complaint, too. Where is our microlending? Why can nogs figure out how to do that, but it’s beyond whites?

imnobody00
imnobody00
Reply to  Nick Note's Mugshot
5 months ago

I have seen once and again here and I have suffered it a lot in my life. Whites are the only non-tribal people in the world. We don”t help each other: we move because of ideology, meritocracy, status, money or power but not because of tribal solidarity. Our history explain that.

The modern world is tribal and we are not. We are getting crushed because of that.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  imnobody00
5 months ago

That’s not true, though. German solidarity was to Germans. That’s why the Schlieffen Plan had them sweeping through Belgium to take out France early in WWI.

“White” has never been a tribe. The winning play was to somehow convince us that it was, despite the fact that historically and genetically, we are not.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

Whites most certainly are a tribe. The genetic distance between an Icelander and a Bulgarian is far less than between a Bulgarian and a Chinaman, let alone a negro.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

And? Much the same can be said about the various black races, but they recognized tribal differences, just as the various Europeans did. And still do, for that matter.

The US Constitution was written mostly with English and Dutch Protestants in mind. To a greater or lesser degree, Nordics, Hessians, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Mediterraneans, Slavs, etc. all faced being the outsiders, despite the genetic similarities.

Gespenst
Gespenst
5 months ago

The old industrial model of governance has tried to adapt to the transition to the information economy, but managing information is vastly more difficult than managing capital and labor.

The trouble with the information economy is, we have a surplus of information, much of it spurious, and a deteriorating real economy, i.e. an economy that produces useful material things.

The financial/managerial class use the phrase “information economy” to con people into believing that the bit fiddlers and manipulators of pretend money contribute things useful to the rest of humanity.

RVIDXR
RVIDXR
5 months ago

I wonder how effective the transition to an atomized society would’ve been if not for the never ending waves of new immigrants causing protestant flight & roaming blacks inducing general white flight. Even things like carpet baggers flooding the south & radical shifts in the economy that caused migration throughout the country that left certain regions in the dust had to have bolstered the atomization. America was a divided country from it’s inception & seemingly everything that followed was one chaotic event after another that had the effect of increasing social instability. It was obviously doomed from the moment the… Read more »

Arthur Metcalf
Arthur Metcalf
5 months ago

The intractable obstacle in the years ahead is that only the people who constructed complex systems are capable of paring them down to their essential parts for those without the capacity to understand the whole of things. Sort of an emergency switch so the monkey can keep the lights on and the water running, and nothing else, until the larger problems can be fixed or the system can be taken in for a soft, final landing like an airplane with half an engine left. Unfortunately, those people are gone. Thus we are going to continue to add layers of complexity… Read more »

DaBears
DaBears
5 months ago

societies that continue to make things, fix things, dig things from the ground and invent things

The managerial class is thwarting those who engage in these productive endeavors. They’re destroying their host. Are parasites so oblivious to the loss of that which sustains them?

Lineman
Lineman
Reply to  DaBears
5 months ago

Yes they are Brother…

WillS
WillS
Reply to  DaBears
5 months ago

They are foolish and stupid parasites. They don’t know they live on a host.

Hokkoda
Member
5 months ago

I use my HOA as an example of how managerialism takes root. A community is formed around the idea of a shared interest: protecting property values. If you don’t agree with that and you don’t want to join an HOA, don’t buy the property. Easy, right? Instead, humans being human, they figure a bird in the hand, right? Buy the land with absolutely no intention of following the community’s well-published rules. Then set about violating them all while complaining about the HOA. The HOA naturally responds with enforcement actions, and things escalate until everyone winds up in courts. There are… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Hokkoda
5 months ago

In his book, “Spiteful Mutants”, Dutton terms this “pathological individualism” which he describes as an affliction predominantly on the Left, rather than Right. Basic premise as I now understand is that individualism is limited to that which does not ignore the group/community goals. Beyond that is pathological. I need to reread at a future point.

Junior Wolf
Junior Wolf
5 months ago

On a simplistic level, humans strive for control. If they can control themselves and the environment, a greater possibility of future survival is enhanced. Extrapolate that out over an ever increasing complex societal population and culture (diversity, technology etc) the natural emergence of a managerial class seems to be a naturally occurring unconscious act of control. Add the feminine angle of safety and equality what could go wrong? We’re now convinced that we can control everything in modernity, but in reality we never could and never will.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Junior Wolf
5 months ago

That’s a very good point. The larger and more complex a society gets, the more rationalized it becomes. And that actually may be one of the best arguments one can make for small, monolithic nation-states.

Junior Wolf
Junior Wolf
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
5 months ago

Great point, it’s all about scale.

TempoNick
TempoNick
5 months ago

One more thought re: “Self-government rests on the assumption that the bulk of the citizens have a moral duty to the whole. Who they are is not just what they have or even what they contribute to the whole.” This still worked until recently in relatively homogeneous societies like the ones in northern Europe. Maybe it’s still even does. It both has to do with the Protestant ethic of honesty and hard work, and not wanting to take more out of the system than you put into it. In America, Inc. it’s grab what you can before somebody else gets… Read more »

Member
Reply to  TempoNick
5 months ago

I’d refine that further- self government rests on the assumption that armed free white men with the maturity and intelligence to handle self government are calling the shots.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  TempoNick
5 months ago

That’s not a classic American attitude, it’s a Jewish one.

Boris
Reply to  3g4me
5 months ago

Damn, right, 3g. It ain’t their country, so they don’t mind trashing it, raping it, splintering it. Look what they, aka the Bolsheviks, did to Russia, and are now doing to Ukraine. Who cares? It ain’t their people. It never is.

Tired Citizen
Tired Citizen
Reply to  Boris
5 months ago

“Is it good for the Jews???”

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  3g4me
5 months ago

There’s a lot of truth to that, but I think homogeneous society is the bigger reason. When you have a homogeneous society, you’re all in it together. Social programs you’re fine with because you’re helping others like you in need who have your values and aren’t milking the system. When you’ve got all kinds of people from all kinds of places, you don’t necessarily have any bond to them. Then I have the fact that they are milking the system and you have our situation today.

Tom K
Tom K
5 months ago

The managerial state couldn’t exist without free money. The U.S. and its tributaries are presently the only bloc that can create free money in the form of the US dollar. The BRICs countries are now trying to break away from this bloc and create their own alternative bloc with its own currency but that has the same inherent problems as the so-called “Eurodollar” (which is an unplanned expansion of the Federal Reserve US dollar.) When this type of financial system fails, the managerial state will also fail. The expansion of free fiat money will fail at some undetermined point and… Read more »

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Tom K
5 months ago

If the population declines like some say is intended, a gold standard could even become viable again. But right now there are too many people in the world for a gold backed reserve currency. Some small nations could pull it off, if they had the gold.

Which illustrates the problem the BRICS are dealing with, that in this age there is no easy answer to replacing fiat. One could even say that it was only fiat that made this age possible. So its end would be the end of the age also, and not just in a monetary sense.

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

Agree with everything you said.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

But right now there are too many people in the world for a gold backed reserve currency.

Why? Other than people insisting trying to tie some value to a given mass of gold, I mean. Avoid that rookie mistake, let it float, and the quantity problem goes away.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

Exactly. There is, as they say, a price that will clear the market. Fiat currency is different than gold backed currency. Gold backed simply means you can convert your paper currency into gold at a set amount of the element. You can use silver as well as was the case up to 1964. Yeah, in the 1930’s you got about a once of gold for your twenty dollar bill. What if that was now reduced to a tenth of a gram? Gold is now about $2400 for one once or about 31.1 grams. Seems that Russia has no problem with… Read more »

WillS
WillS
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
5 months ago

But right now there are too many people in the world for a gold backed reserve currency. It would require an honest economy to get away from the inflationary fiat currency systems being employed around the world today. It seems probable that we have too many people for everyone to be a legitimate productive member of society in our current age of automation and mechanization and that would make an honest economy difficult. I will define an honest economy as one that runs on balanced budgets in the private and government sectors. The benefit of a specie currency over a… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  WillS
5 months ago

Yes, but…

Balanced budgets cannot work for the private sector. Even if you were to build your home out of cast-off pallets you find somewhere, it would take several years to accumulate materials and get the structure set up, and you still don’t have plumbing, electrical, heat, windows, roofing, etc. The only way that works is to borrow from your future earnings to compensate someone else for having done the work you need to have a place to live.

The only reasonable way to get to balanced is Dave Ramsey, and that leaves younger people in the same place.

Last edited 5 months ago by Steve
WillS
WillS
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

A loan you can repay is very different than a loan you never plan to repay. An honest system could never have 0 interest, no savings, no loans.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  WillS
5 months ago

How so? Both reflect consumption of current goods, both are contingent on a particular vision of the future, both are made with the lender expecting repayment. He even put it in his ledger, twice.

But I definitely agree 0% is crazytalk. Even low time preference people like whites have a preference above zero. Might as well have access to those funds in case something comes up.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Tom K
5 months ago

Bitcoin requires faith. A hypothetical gold standard would be, well, not destroyed, but seriously impaired if there were a breakthrough in extracting gold from seawater. Similarly, an breakthrough in computing would impact cryptography, and, given the relatively fledgling state of computing (presumably — odds are good that any technology that young is not at it’s zenith) that’s much more likely than overcoming some of the thermodynamic challenges of gold from seawater.

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

“Bitcoin requires faith.” I think I understand what you’re saying, but it doesn’t require faith in the same way even a 100% reserve currency does, let alone fiat. I don’t know anything about the economics of extracting gold from seawater, but at least it wouldn’t be as uneconomic as extracting it from the core of our planet, or from an asteroid, lol. You might have noticed that the central banks of the world still hang onto their gold reserves — even adding to it in some cases — so that tells me there’s a large element of doubt about the… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Tom K
5 months ago

The faith of Bitcoin seems in the belief another will take it and that you have the ability to use it without the Internet and a slew of technology behind it. A gold coin on the other hand is readily accepted even in darkest Africa.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Tom K
5 months ago

Fiat, yes, you have faith that they know how to manage a fiat currency, despite the fact no one has ever done so yet.

100% reserve, no. All you need is some independent group to do the audits. I guess you need faith that the independent group is being honest, but how does that differ from crypto? Just one of the competing auditors is enough to let you decide.

I agree on the role of gold in central banking. My guess is that they are increasing their positions to blunt the new gold-based BRICS exchange.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

Bitcoin is, from my limited understanding, a *fixed* amount. Yes, they are creating/discovering/mining new Bitcoin, but the mathematics behind it limits this amount and then no more. That was the whole initial point of Bitcoin—it limits the printing press inflation pump.

Seawater mining of gold, or just new discoveries are an unknown.

Please correct me if you know something other.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
5 months ago

No, that is correct. The question is how much computing is required to extend the blockchain. Assuming Moore’s Law holds, the rate newer coins are introduced should stay relatively linear, but as we found when people decided to start using graphics cards for “mining”, our predictions of the future are subject to change.

After the last coin is “mined”, there will necessarily be the transaction fees. No one is going to buy the computers or foot the electric bills necessary to do the exponentially more difficult calculations for free.

Last edited 5 months ago by Steve
Arthur Metcalf
Arthur Metcalf
5 months ago

Fascinating comment from 2003 on Amazon of Pat Buchanan’s book “Death of the West.” It was written by an 80-year-old (in 2003): Piles of books have been written about the “dumbing down” of America during the past half century and particularly about revisionist history, which I did not notice anyone mentioning. I am 80 years old and attended college in the forties. For ten years I worked as a journalist. When I went into teaching in 1955, I was appalled at how much education had changed since the war of “The Greatest Generation.” We weren’t the greatest generation. We were… Read more »

Arthur Metcalf
Arthur Metcalf
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
5 months ago

Back in the sixties I read Stephen Benet’s short story, “Last of the Legions” to my classes. It was about a legionnaire in Britain in the last days of the Roman Empire. It is a deeply moving story, and most of the students were moved. We talked about it in comparison with what was happening to our own civilization. Most were concerned, but three girls agreed that they didn’t care because “We won’t be around anyway.” Here is the difference between our culture today and the civilization which started on the downward path in 1939. Before the second half of the… Read more »

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
5 months ago

I’ve been taking Ag extension classes. They’re all based around the concept of management. Probably where I got the idea it’s a people-farming operation. Farms are businesses— America, Inc. Even civ itself, I’m often thinking. We’re in the retirement home phase. All the wealth we built up over generations is going to the home to take care of us in our dotage. They can’t just sell us to McDonald’s for hamburger or start producing Soylent Green, I hope. Gotta get back your investment. Cull the herd, start a new herd. Muh market wants A2A2 Jersey milk, or whatever trendy beef.… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Paintersforms
5 months ago

We are only in the retirement home phase if we, collectively, choose to be. So long as you can figure out a way to make your fellow man better at a profit, you are not there.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

Yep. We have a higher nature, more than just the material.

Fakeemail
Fakeemail
5 months ago

“You know, we’re living in a society! We’re supposed to act in a civilized way!”-costanza

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Fakeemail
5 months ago

Content advisory! PG-13 for Sex-themed humor. Actually I think it’s a fair commentary on the limits of the managerial state. After all, we’re civilized people!

https://www.oglaf.com/loading/

Sgt Pe
Sgt Pe
5 months ago

So they are jailing Bannon for the entirety of the campaign?

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Sgt Pe
5 months ago

funny the way the timing lined up on that

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
5 months ago

Such a strong start to a Monday. Just excellent, both the question and the answering.

The article’s buildup is the best part; we can readily see that World War II was the Great Reset of its time.

mmack
mmack
5 months ago

As work isolated men from one another, the natural response was to think individually and see the man next you as competition. This was obviously good for the factory owner, so work in many cases became a competitive arena, a Hobbesian existence where the owner harnessed this war of all against all to increase productivity, reduce costs and maximize profits. The result was a class of citizen who was no longer defined by community but by alienation from community. A valid point but I would counter industrialization increased collectivization via unionization. Forget what unions became (“Oh, I always wanted to… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  mmack
5 months ago

Yes. And whence unionization?

Tars Tarkas
Member
5 months ago

“The question is can this model survive the post-industrial age? America began to deindustrialize fifty years ago.”

The question is really can this model of a “new economy” actually function in a post GAE world. Will the world accept this model where they are required to work and Americans are required to consume when they are no longer the “jr partner?”

miforest
miforest
5 months ago

this channel is a great source of videos of people who still do make things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTZ0luCUFTY .the people doing it are low wage , but have deeloped level of skill.

Tars Tarkas
Member
Reply to  miforest
5 months ago

I like repairing old stuff and occasionally watching the restorations on youtube. I like the older styling and most old stuff was built to a much higher quality. So much of what is produced today is just not meant to be repaired or to last very long. You can make something brand new in China for less money than it takes to repair an existing thing here.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
5 months ago

Tell me about it. Seems from most of the info I’ve gleaned, my new EV automobile is a throw away. It’s like those disposable flashlights you buy and then toss after the light dims—and this car cost more than my first home. Even a minor accident has a 50/50 chance of it being totaled by the insurance company. On the other hand, I took a long distance trip the other day and stumbled upon the auto drive, hands free mode. 100 miles up the road, highway speed, listening to tunes and picking my nose all the way. For fun, every… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
5 months ago

Truth. That’s where I think the future lies. Figure out the weak links that planned obsolescence designed into products, then take the cheap shit from China, change out those component(s).

Arthur Metcalf
Arthur Metcalf
5 months ago

Why all of a sudden did Europeans stop thinking collectively and start thinking individually? Racial solidarity among Europeans was so natural it did not require a vocabulary to describe. One possibility (I expect to be “flamed,” as they used to say online, for this): And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. But when… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
5 months ago

Racial solidarity doesn’t mean what you want it to mean, though. Franks fought Germanics from the time they met until shortly after WWII. Angles fought Saxons. Danes fought, well, everyone. Etc.

Horace
Horace
Reply to  Steve
5 months ago

This is true. However, war is the permanent state of mankind. It is also true of everyone else. Mongolian conquest and Jihad both were stopped at least as much by internal infighting than active resistance.

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5 months ago

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