On Thu, 1 Sep 2016 11:28:38 -0700 Sean Lynch <seanl@literati.org> wrote:
'chaos' is just a propaganda term, at least the way you are using it. If I support 'chaos' then you support the 'ordered' fascism we live in?
The question is always "support" relative to what?
Relative to non-support? =)
I would have to be convinced that any shift I was to help bring about would be likely to eventually lead to something better, preferably within our lifetimes. Making things worse is easy. Making them worse in such a way that they eventually get better is harder.
Well, if we want to achieve a particular result and we do something that ends up causing a change in a direction we don't want, then on purely utilitarian terms, we failed. But that can only be known with hindsight. And utilitarianism is pretty much a bankrupt theory anyway as far as I'm concerned.
Not that this isn't a useful incentive for those who benefit from the status quo to ensure that it keeps enough people happy enough that they don't turn into juans, or at least ensure such people don't have enough power and influence to bring the system crashing down.
The double negative makes it kinda harder for me to parse your sentence...
I'm not sure what incentive you are referring to and what it accomplishes.
Sorry. That's what happens when I try to write out a complicated thought without going back and reediting multiple times. What I mean is that having enough people eventually decide that "anything is better than this" serves as a useful check on those in power.
Ahh - thanks for the clarification.
Can't make things too bad or people band together to bring it down without regard to what follows. No different from an election where a bunch of people vote for "the other guy" even though the other guy is totally unqualified, just because they're so dissatisfied with you, and your own supporters stay home.
Hm, I don't think the analogy is that good. The other guy is no different than this guy. And if anything, in a 'democracy' the winner is always the slighty worse of the options.
Of course, this system will probably bring ITSELF crashing down without needing much if any help.
Why? Didn't you read 1984?
Yes. And Brave New World. We're basically in the world depicted by Huxley already.
Yep. And Huxley's book is the most modern of the two, although it was written almost 20 years before 1984 was. But Orwell got the surveillance part right... =/
The thing that struck me most about Brave New World is that none of the Powers That Be worried about bringing an outsider into the world -- because it was stable! People for the most part liked things the way they were. That scares me a hell of a lot more than 1984.
Well, yes, but apart from the totalitarian indoctrination/education many people were born already mentally maimed thanks to genetic engineering. There wasn't much 'informed consent' involved. On the other hand, people who disobeyed the cops mostly got 'free drugs' whereas people who disobey the cops today get summarily executed, especially in Stephen's Paradise, aka the US. But anyway, totalitarian political systems can be stable both in fiction and in reality, sadly for us.
I believe the system will bring itself down because the financial system of the "developed world" is a house of cards.
Ah yes, the current financial system is a house of cards and can come crashing at any moment, but a reset of the financial system doesn't necessarily mean the political establishment will lose power, again, sadly for us.
There are hungrier nations that are far less vulnerable to the "seizing up" the system will experience when people stop trusting the prices in the market. In order for people to transact in the marketplace, they have to trust that the prices in the marketplace are at least somewhat reflective of value. This is why you saw banks sitting on repossessed houses or holding off on foreclosing on non-performing mortgages; they believed the government would intervene to raise prices, so they were waiting for a better deal. But things have only gotten worse since 2008, and every subsequent intervention will only become more costly and create ever more perverse incentives.
I haven't been paying attention to the post 2008 housing market in the US and finance in general, but what I can see without doing too much homework is that the dow jones has increased almost 3 times since the crisis. Which no doubt some people would say is 'proof' of the amazingness of US free market capitalism and the amazingness of the free planers at the National-Goldman-Sachs-Central-Bank. At any rate, there doesn't seem to be any chaos in the system yet...