Imperialism As A Service

Many of us are familiar with the danger of the Military Industrial Complex (a dangerous crossing of boundaries between Government and Industry; for supplementary information check out the books “War is a Racket” and “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”), but we are entering a new age where End Stage Capitalism and Governments are merging. We see two major manifestations of this: the Plutocrat Mafioso, and State Sponsored Capitalism. The former embodied by Donald Trump where commodification has moved beyond the private sphere and into the National sphere, and all our public goods/services/policies are all for sale. The latter is embodied by China, where they’ve put the full power of state resources and sovereign currency behind corporations, to the point they can impose the “Amazon Model”...that is “operate at a loss until all competition is out of business,” but also with the benefit of infinite R&D and capital.

We used to carve out a sacred space in our institutions for our principles and public good, but now all of that has been sold out to global Capitalism. Our laws/militaries/institutions are all now just tools to generate more perceived “economic power.” We have forgotten the essential and practical purposes of our governments and institutions: to reach for our greatest collective aspirations and better angels of our nature, to make all of our lives better, to ensure stability and sustainability, and to progress our civilization/knowledge/technology. Instead, we have created a system that views everything as zero-sum and the goal of which is to own and control everything.

At this very moment the Trump Administration is toying with the idea of the military becoming its own economic entity and directly extracting the economic productivity of other countries' (Venezuela) natural resources. We've always had the "banana republic" model, but this seems to be an escalation in government involvement. Then, of course, there is the expansionist war the US is fighting for Israel. The entire US leadership have been purchased and are dutifully carrying out whatever agenda the lobbyists have paid for. Meanwhile, China’s entire being has become the world’s corporate assembly line, shoving out mass produced junk with no consideration for pollution or overextraction; all to feed this insatiable, infinite-growth/infinite consumption paradigm, all to perpetuate this unsustainable, unequal, zero-sum, childish game of an economic system. It's become common for people in Asia to burn circuit boards to extract the tiny bits of precious metals, releasing massive amounts of pollution into the air, soil, and water. Landfills and plastic islands encircle the planet. People still think these systems are successes, rather than monstrosities.

Now, short-term economic interest is not only endangering us economically and environmentally, it's become a direct military threat; Capitalism is a cancerous religion. We must have the courage to try new things. Reason and evidence must be at the forefront of policy, and the long-term well-being of people must prevail over greed and conventionalism.

You Don't Have To Give Capitalism "Credit"

 

I see this new generation of "Progressives" struggling with the idea of rejecting Capitalism. They all have to say "oh I'm a Capitalist, I just want Medicare for All" or whatever approved slogan they have to say. My response is “yeah... fuck that.” Capitalism isn't a coherent ideology, it is an "economic system" that doesn’t “economize”, and tries to steal the valor of Science and Scholasticism, as well as the shortcut of oil-based work, as its own accomplishments. (Note: If you don't understand my oil comment, it is the classic calculation that one gallon of gasoline provides roughly the mechanical-work equivalent of 100 hours of human labor. Despite our need to move away from fossil fuels, we cannot deny how quickly and how far this resource -not Capitalism- has slingshotted our industries and technological progress in recent history.)

By definition, you only have Capital if you have enough wealth to create more wealth. Capitalists are the Wealthy. Why would you premise your entire economic system on the perpetuation of concentrated wealth... rather than sustainability, societal health, technological progress, ephemeralization (doing more with less), and conservation? From first principles upward it seems absurd to me. We could get into "supply and demand," "private property," "incorporation," "free markets," but honestly Capitalism fails in all of those too... and I don't want this to become a three volume omnibus. Why does THIS system have to be The End of History? They say it's the only one that works... okay, but what if it was less corrupt, focused more on sustainability, or stopped perpetuating inequality... to the extent we can call it "working," would it work any less if we did those things? Whenever anyone tries to make it run just a little bit more humanely, they call it Communism, and reject any progress. Why? We all know why, it's not a logical problem, it's a "I have all the power, and I don't want to give it up" problem.

Then there is the propaganda. They love to perpetuate the narratives of "might makes right" and "survival of the fittest" because they define success as what they have, then proclaim to be superior. Couple that with a system that commoditizes everything, and all the materials, land, ideas, labor (people)... become something they can purchase. They want you to operate alone, constantly feeding you "the hero's tale" and the idea of "rugged individualism" to make you forget that we are all interdependent. To distract you from the obvious truth that sharing ideas and lifting each other up is the only way to flourish. It's not convenient for them if you believe in "standing on the shoulders of giants", open sourcing ideas and processes, and democratizing our economy and governments; they'd rather you "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and get to work for them, get back to the fields, get back in the kitchen, get back to the mines.

I don't know if there is some transitional period or whatever, but I hope sooner rather than later we can collectively just say Capitalism is ridiculous, and not have to fidget and pretend it makes sense.

Serendipity Will Not Save Us

We have little hope that Trump will do anything to solve Climate Destabilization, but in the back of my mind I was hoping that this severe disruption to oil (a la the Iran War), might push nations to move towards sustainable energy sources... sadly, this is far from the reality.

Blowing up oil facilities and tankers just releases a lot of that carbon directly into the environment (pollution + emissions), and the fuel used to launch warships/rockets/etc just adds on top of it all. Meanwhile, China instantly reduced its oil imports by 50% (which is 5% of the world's oil usage) and on the surface that looked amazing...only to find it replaced it with COAL burning.

People...we are out of time for climate action, we are already beyond some thresholds for severe repercussions, and every month we do not act we draw closer to existential ruin. We are still fighting oil and imperial wars when we should be weaning ourselves from all fossil fuels and facilitating world cooperation.

I semi-joke all the time that we're just dumb apes, but can we at least go out with a modicum of dignity, and not from needless stupidity? Can we at least live long enough to create sentient robots to carry on doing science and exploring the Universe once we've desolated our only habitable planet? Or are all of you okay with just flinging feces at one another and having our last accomplishment be the first quadrillionaire.

The Empire Has Fallen

I think Trump has successfully defeated America:

• He has culturally poisoned generations of minds
• drained all our scientists and academics of research positions and funding, causing "brain drain,"
• destroyed the dollar as both the World Reserve Currency and the Petro-Dollar,
• humiliated our military in multiple entanglements,
• despite defunding every useful program, he has still managed to make the government insolvent,
• de-legitimized the Rule of Law and our Institutions,
• sabotaged the relationships with our closest allies,
• shook down the world with tariffs and elevated mafioso politics,
• created supply chain disruptions everywhere,
• exploded the price of everything.

Weep or rejoice, the Empire has fallen. What America becomes (post-empire) is something yet to be written. The rise of STRUCTURALISM must occur! We can't rely on personalities, religions, or these half-baked, social-darwinist economic delusions (i.e. Capitalism) to be the basis of society. We need to base policy on science, the greater-good, sustainability, reduction of suffering, and approach all of this holistically. We need a system that makes good use of evolutionary processes and not constant revolutionary reactions or pendulum swings. We need a system that accounts for the Human Condition, and assumes that it will be challenged by despots, corruption, and zealots... it must be resilient; incentivizing good actors and enabling good outcomes, while mitigating bad outcomes and punishing bad actors. The STRUCTURE of the system -itself- must lead to flourishing.

"Make me do it!"

 

There is a fabled conversation with FDR that goes something like this:
Activists:    “Mr. President, you must do this for the working people.”

Roosevelt:  “I agree. I think you’re right. I want to do it.” (Pause)

                    “But you’ll have to make me do it.”

Now, this is cute story and all, and intends to make the point that the public needs to be involved in civic action... but, well to be blunt, it's a BS excuse for politicians to NOT do their job.

The voters did their job, they voted you in, they raised money, they knocked on doors and had conversations with their neighbors... once you're in office it's YOUR f-ing job to get the stuff written up and passed. It's YOUR job to handle impeachments or keep other branches of government in check. It's YOUR job to convince or create pressure on your "colleagues" to vote your way. It's your job to stop the abuse of power and the abuse to the people.

People are checking out of the political system because no matter who they get in office, things just get worse and they don't want to hear that there "was no mandate from the people" or whatever nonsense is coming out of politicians' mouths. Show us that you've exhausted all your tools before coming back to the people. Sometimes people do need to take to the streets, but I don't think these politicians have wielded the power we've given them to do what we've asked them to do.

Say Everything But The Obvious About Venezuela

Just want to point out a few things that are intolerable about the "war" on Venezuela:

1) Obviously the act itself is a grab for oil and resources, to benefit the President and his rich friends. (This does not benefit the US or Americans.)

2) Senators and House members that say how outraged they are... YOU are the people in the Constitution who are in charge of removing a rogue President! Don't be outraged, do your F-ing job!

3) Elected Officials AND Media pundits whose only criticism is that "they aren't implementing this well," or "we haven't received assurances he will stop at Venezuela." Hmm, how about the fact that Trump is invading a SOVEREIGN country and saying he is going to steal THEIR resources! I'm not sure it's the minutia you should be focused on.