Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Civilization for Rent

Today's post from Zman, The Economics of Democratic Empire, is a good read that touches on a few important points while looking at our empire as fundamentally an economic entity. When the benefits of empire outweigh the costs, it grows. When the costs are greater, it shrinks, and may even collapse. This is an important thing to keep in mind, especially when feelings of frustration and even helplessness become burdensome. The idea that the people are going to spontaneously rise up 1776-style and reclaim the government is not realistic. You'll end up like the Malheur boys, imprisoned or dead, with your families left to fend for themselves. More realistic is knowing that the lunatic asylum will eventually collapse on itself. Reclaiming self-determination is a task of waiting for the inevitable, and only acting when the benefits will outweigh the costs. Activism is for liberals, cultural warfare is for conservatives, prepping is for reactionaries. We know the pendulum swings. The proper course is merely to survive, literally, and in the sense of maintaining a community that resists being swallowed up by the modern orthodoxies and pogroms.

His second observation is that since no one has formal ownership of the government in a liberal democracy, no one is held responsible for its long-term prospects. In a sense, Americans rent their government rather than owning it. This follows a pattern I first noticed about two years go in Global reserve currency: army of the modern empire, that Americans effectively rent their money supply, whereas countries like Zimbabwe were salvaging productive assets in order to buy their currency outright (leaving Americans to foot the bill for their Cost of Cash). In many facets (perhaps all) we are becoming a civilization for rent. We all know the perils of renting vs owning. The renter might give the house some fresh paint, but isn't shoring up the foundation. The owner will do the bare minimum to keep rent checks coming in. Even when you rent a car with the best intentions to take care of it, when you hit that pothole or the coffee spills, the reaction is always, "eh, it's only a rental." Everyone knows that this is how things go, which is why homebuyers actively seek out neighborhoods with high ownership rates.

Our political system is a rental. Our money supply is a rental. Our economy is increasingly a rental, with corporate holders squeezing the life out of established companies to boost quarterly returns. What's left? The people, and they're a rental too. Normally, the nation is the owner of its civilization. The civilization can only be as strong as the nation which cradles it. The Mongols were great at conquest but couldn't manage a complex civilization. The Vikings excelled at raiding but didn't engage in nation building until they were Christianized. There seems to be path of nations from tribal raiding/pillaging, to nation building, and, if successful enough, to empire. Empire collapse does not cause a reversion to the nation building state, but comes around full circle back to pillage/raid. (That understanding seems to be a fundamental distinction between reactionaries and the rest.) First the civilization loots itself, and after collapse small-scale localized raiding of the pre-civilized type resumes.

A civilization is the product of a nation. (Surely this is obvious to most people.) Of course, there aren't nations any more, not in these progressive times. Western countries, in their zeal to sustain economic growth and Ponzi welfare schemes, lure foreigners in with benefits. In effect, they are renting their work force, who are not inherently owners of the civilization. This is most obvious in Europe, where millions of foreigners have taken up residence and welfare checks, but largely refuse to work at all. It's actually hilarious, and you must admire the refugees' insistence on calling out stupidity in their particular way.

He notes that "the cost of cheap goods is the loss of community and local control." You get the nation you pay for. If you prefer material wealth to national health, that's what you'll get. Today's politicians are basically selling the nation they inherited for short-term gain. The first three cardinal sins, as listed by Dante, are Lust, Gluttony, and Greed. They're all versions of the same thing, and there's a reason they're listed first. These people were not stupid! They were not backwards or primitive, but possessed a worldly sophistication that modern materialists can only imagine they have when they buy some shiny imported thingy. Greed is demonized because it destroys the civilization. Civilizational collapse is dangerous to the nation, so nations tend to develop religions against greed and materialism as a survival mechanism. Greed is the love of oneself over love of the nation, the natural order, or of God. The modernists are so certain of their superiority that they have constructed a Cathedral of Greed that preaches a system of mutually-assured hyperindividualism. Who would you bet is correct, Dante or Al Gore? (Who became a billionaire by telling scary fairy tales to his countrymen.) The Seven Deadly Sins - the remaining being Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride - are all fully embraced by the radical left who control the mainstream media today. You'd think even a rational materialist would be concerned by such a dramatic turning of traditional wisdom onto its head, if for nothing else but concern for his own well-being in the coming decades, and maybe for his children, if he's a real softie.

Zman makes a final point about the loss of government ownership in the country.
The Russian implementation of democratic communism in an empire became unstable when the proceeds from energy sales could not cover the cost of empire. Like a business with a negative cash flow, it simply ran out of money and collapsed. It’s tempting to think something similar happens in America. After all, government debt at all levels is staggering and is accelerating. That’s a mistake, however, as the state is no longer in control of the empire. Control now rests in private hands.

Proof of that is the inability of the empire to control the borders. Across the West, the voters want to sharply reduce legal immigration and end all illegal migration. Yet, supposedly sovereign governments are unable to do it. In America, the President is stymied at every turn by a system largely controlled by forces that exist outside the government. The reason there can be no border wall is the managerial elite that benefits from and is in charge of the empire, will never permit it.
I don't agree that control now rests in private hands. Which private hands control the empire? The whole point of the essay is that the rental government sells out its own future. The de facto government is the deep state (a mix of private and public actors). Eventually they will lose control of the system they've abused. The cabal he alludes to ultimately loses its influence. Trump's election demonstrates it, as does the Democrats' need to rig their own primary. Power now rests with the mob, which isn't really control in an orderly sense. We can't build a wall, even though voters overall want it, because the progressive faction of the mob believes a wall violates their cardinal sin of racism, and thus are highly energized to stop it. The elected Democrats don't dare contradict them, nor the more spineless of the conservatives. The left's political strength lies in unleashing a mob that they can control...but, like all aspects of our society, it is a mob for rent.

Consider an example from about five years ago...forever ago in political years. Despite campaign promises to end the Bush Doctrine, Obama decided that pre-emptive war against Syria was the correct strategy. I don't know who influenced him to make such a dramatic change in posture. Zman and many others would suggest a shadowy political elite that is quietly pulling the strings, that may have had Obama in the bag from the very beginning. I suspect that the real influence came from his own advisors, people like Samantha Power, who - if Moldbug is to be believed - operate only from the principle of spreading their own influence to every corner of the globe. (There's your Pride, at least.) There was an argument to be made for invading, and one for not. The Obama camp couldn't resist the option of demonstrating power, whatever may have been promised to the voters.

In 2013 Obama and Kerry engaged in a media blitz for a couple weeks pushing for an invasion of Syria. (Liberals have naturally forgotten about this episode, but, surprisingly, so have the conservatives.) The war drum was met with a collective meh, domestically, and also in Europe - which had the most to gain from a Trans-Syrian gas pipeline. Unable to sell the mob on more war, Obama resorted to the old trick of covert warfare and arming these bad guys to go kill those bad guys. Even Liberal Jesus couldn't rally the mob to a desired war, and Syrian operations have now concluded without the desired regime change. It is the mob that calls the shots, and that has only increased in the five years since.

In his concluding remarks, Zman tells us that only a fool would believe the ruling class. Go long on collapse. Even Trump, the first existential threat to the deep state since Kennedy, at least, doesn't have the power to make the needed systemic reforms, and primarily resorts to griping on Twitter. The more irrational the rulers become, the closer we come to collapse. Use the derangement index to guide your own economic decisions accordingly. What happens when a rental neighborhood gets run down? Eventually a patient developer buys it all up on the cheap, bulldozes it, and rebuilds.

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