[ralfy]

Onlooker and Pstarr, doesn't your ideology trump reality a bit with both your last posts. For the remainder of your lives you have a choice. You place your bets whereby you negotiate your life with the existence of controlling elites or with a world where everything falls apart and money disappears.

By rejecting KJ's advice of basically going chameleon and staying out of debt and not feeding the corrupt elites you basically are advocating active confrontation or wishful thinking that the whole house of cards will fall apart in the next couple of decades. If the latter is the case then KJ's advice is even more relevant. A society cascading down as you both suggest will not weaken the elites I am sorry to say but rather make them more insidious. You under estimate this at your peril.

It weakens the elite considerably because most of their wealth consists of numbers in hard drives.

[ralfy]

I hear this quite a bit, probably because it seems obvious that a 10 million man army on the ground has not chance at all it the opposing force has total control of the air.
But on the other hand---
If a million men do nothing but disrupt the power infrastructure (electric power, petro pipelines, fuel storage depots, refineries, etc), then it would not take too long for the smaller army to be fighting on the same basis as the larger one - mostly small arms.
If you make them use their diesel to run generators, they can't have that diesel for tanks and JP delivery for their jet fuel. And it is very easy to down major power lines with nothing more than a big wrench or bow saw.
If they don't have fuel to get to work on the base, they will have to live in tents or barracks on base.
For family men that would be a big incentive to break away from a force that the majority of the population hates.
So if the majority of the population really wants it, they should start storing survival foods, ammo, etc, pretty much like the preppers do right now. Prepare for a down powered future, which is what it would take to remove the government now.
I don't see this happening soon, but if the gov keeps on with its present course, it is inevitable, in my opinion.
If it does, the 10 million will find that they can become professional killers pretty fast.

"Professional killers" also tend to turn on each other.

[ralfy]

I am going to make a rather frightful prediction. There will be some scapegoats and examples made of any who attempt to directly confront the elites once they are wounded with decline. They will not lie down their privilege lightly. They will look at any resistance to the status quo as a direct threat. They will use the current definition of terrorist and include anyone protesting. They will sell their police state to a population in distress as necessary to maintain stability and security. The masses will eat this shit up and obediently tow the line.

If you attempt any form of direct confrontation you will be vaporized just like they do now with drone strikes in the middle east. They are practicing over there for what one day will become domestic.

Go chameleon, for the love of your children. Read your history.

The elite consists essentially of financial elite, which means their power is based on numbers in hard drives. With a significant economic decline, those numbers become worthless. In which case, going "chameleon" applies to everyone, and the main threat will ultimately be others doing the same. But even that will not allow for long-term survival.

Also, note that this challenges your assertions raised elsewhere concerning "cultural change" and so forth.

[ralfy]

They are more dependant on the will of the people that tend to vote. They tend to be older people with some assets. Governments cannot target the so called 1% because their whole voter base holds a similar class of assets. This is the game being played. What would be good for pretty much everyone -- an inflation jubilee -- is being prevented because it isn't in the interests of those that vote. This is the parasitism that I am talking about, an abuse of power.

How did we end up with the financial crisis? Greed. How did greed affect things so badly? They let those that stood to benefit from the changes to the rules to change the rules.

You are aware that you are now repeating my arguments and countering your own?

[ralfy]

Not all 'elites' want the same things though. We have on the one side the brownshirts of the left in the form of 'antifa' for instance and various other similar organisations. On the right we have those that oppose multiculturalism and immigration as well as various manifestations of post-modernist/feminist thought.

Potential scapegoats:

Muslims
White men (older mostly)
Climate change 'deniers'.
Financiers and/or so called 1%ers.
'wrong thinkers' -- the so called bigots as defined by the left.
Working class white people -- because they're 'iggerants'.

It really depends on 'which' elite group gains power.

Superficial differences based on gender, religion, political correctness, etc. The main goal is the continuation of global capitalism.

[onlooker]

Superficial differences based on gender, religion, political correctness, etc. The main goal is the continuation of global capitalism.-- I have to agree. Whatever the differences and competition among the elite, they are united by this and the desire for the ruling structure to continue as usual

[Ibon]

A huge percentage of the population who are not elites are also nevertheless invested in the status quo because being wage slaves they are highly dependent on the crumbs they receive. These same folks have been disconnected from self reliance and nature and growing food and being resourceful since they bought into the consumer paradigm and they cling to it out of desperation even as the benefits continue to decline. The elites will have a large supply of wage slaves committed to diminishing returns because the alternative for these folks is frankly overwhelming. We can see this in the percentage of the unemployed who instead of planting gardens in their backyards are planting crystal meth in their nostrils.

[Newfie]

Do we have a consistent concept of the elite?

In comparison to my fellow Americans I'm somewhat better than most, maybe about 60-70%.

In relation to the world as a whole I'm probably an elite, +90-95%.

I don't know how to evaluate those comparisons, but I'm pretty sure that we here don't all use the same measure.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Do we have a consistent concept of the elite?

In comparison to my fellow Americans I'm somewhat better than most, maybe about 60-70%.

In relation to the world as a whole I'm probably an elite, +90-95%.

I don't know how to evaluate those comparisons, but I'm pretty sure that we here don't all use the same measure.

I've seen lots of people on the 'net use "elite" as anyone upper middle class or more who they disagree with, politically.

You're right. It's real hard to have a meaningful conversation about something, if people don't agree on its definition (or have a good idea of what the various definitions commonly used even are).

This point has been made for thousands of years, as far back (that I'm aware of), as Plato writing on Socrates being unhappy about his friends wanting to go out and "seek men of virtue" without being willing to even decide on what virtue actually is.

[Hawkcreek]

"Professional killers" also tend to turn on each other.

Yep, that's the way it has always worked. It has always come down to force against force, through all of recorded history.
If anyone thinks that the new information age is going to change all that, good luck.

[KaiserJeep]

I simply get tired of all the nonsense.

About 25% of Americans - comprised mostly of silly young people but also some older fools - believe in some Marxist fantasy. That's a sizable minority but it's shrinking as fewer youths attend colleges and universities, and have their heads filled with foolish notions. Something about working from your late teens onward teaches one the fundamentals of capitalism, and ends foolishness. But Marx was never anything but a fool, lacking an understanding of both 19th century mankind, a species of primate ape, and 21st century mankind, which is a hybrid species of ape and digital electronics.

The haves vs. have-nots thing is also tiresome. There is nobody giving money away, and relieving you from the necessity for decades of labor on your own behalf, unless you are a trust fund baby. I can say with assurance that with the defeat of Bernie Sanders - who shall never rise again - and the ascendance of Donald Trump, you had best get with the program, as his priorities will favor those who earn incomes over bums.

You still have the freedom to live where you wish, how you wish, and with whom you wish, subject to your ability to afford the things you want. This too is at risk, as the coming of expensive energy will do nothing but curtail your present freedoms. You need to make decisions and implement them while some runway remains, and before your dreams become unaffordable within the framework of the system we have, which will outlive both you and your grandkids.

[onlooker]

It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.” Orwell

[ralfy]

That's the point. Political correctness, globalism and people like the silly antifa are all linked. Part of it is divide and conquer because most people have more in common with each other than the elites that set things up to be this way. People spending far too much time on things they disagree with leads to less ability to deal with things people agree on.

Globalism involves the use of oil and other material resources to expand manufacturing, food production, and services across many economies. It takes place regardless of political correctness or what anti-fascists do.

[ralfy]

A huge percentage of the population who are not elites are also nevertheless invested in the status quo because being wage slaves they are highly dependent on the crumbs they receive. These same folks have been disconnected from self reliance and nature and growing food and being resourceful since they bought into the consumer paradigm and they cling to it out of desperation even as the benefits continue to decline. The elites will have a large supply of wage slaves committed to diminishing returns because the alternative for these folks is frankly overwhelming. We can see this in the percentage of the unemployed who instead of planting gardens in their backyards are planting crystal meth in their nostrils.

The arrangement between elites and wage slaves can only be maintained as long as diminishing returns are avoided. Otherwise, at some point, the elite will lose their armed guards. Or the latter will turn on the former.

[ralfy]

Do we have a consistent concept of the elite?

In comparison to my fellow Americans I'm somewhat better than most, maybe about 60-70%.

In relation to the world as a whole I'm probably an elite, +90-95%.

I don't know how to evaluate those comparisons, but I'm pretty sure that we here don't all use the same measure.

This might also help:

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

[Tanada]

It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.” Orwell

Sorry but that is a total fantasy. Somewhere over 80 percent of the human species are natural followers and fall into line with whatever system they find themselves in, good bad or indifferent. It is all part of the instinctive tribal/herd behavior of the species and pretending that if everyone had their basic needs met they would suddenly decide they didn't like the system because someone somewhere was doing even better is to say it nicely, a fantasy based on an imaginary reality. The very vast majority of people do not want to think for themselves, they want to do whatever their culturally appropriate tasks are and go along with the crowd so they don't stick out and become isolated.

A very small percentage have both the talent and ego to want to preform and get attention for preforming. That group is every actor/sculptor/painter/pro-athlete who if you look at their number compared to the size of the population are very few. An even smaller group have the narcissism to stand up in front of a crowd and say effectively "I know what I am doing, follow me".

Intelligence has little to do with it, nor does education. Some of the outright dumbest people ever find themselves in leadership positions, and if you look at human history it never made a difference how educated the mass of the population is, we as a species gravitate to follow a leader type personality.

[Newfie]

Well OK then. I AM the 1%! Y'all can shut up now.