[dolanbaker]

As it is, a no deal Brexit is looking the most likely outcome on B-Day, the globalists and their supporters are really hating the prospect as it breaks up their globalists business empires. Free trade could become freer as more competition between nations becomes more common after a successful Brexit.

As for the US imploding, I doubt it, they're more likely to unite in the face of an ever expanding Chinese threat to global trade & security.

[evilgenius]

Trouble brewing up in the UK

FORMER Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab has warned that if politicians were to betray Brexit voters and not take the UK out of the EU there would be a “day of reckoning” for them. He asserted on BBC Question Time that attempts to “frustrate Brexit” are nothing short of an “establishment stitch-up”. Mr Raab added that the UK must leave the EU on March 29 and was met with rapturous applause from the audience. The Tory MP was Brexit Secretary from June to November last year, before resigning over Theresa May’s Brexit deal.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/10972 ... -secretary

The People V the establishment - Is democracy dying ? Interesting days ahead in the UK

Gas

I wouldn't say that democracy is dying, so much as that nationalism is on the rise. This is especially true in those countries which have benefited the most from the spread of globalization. Those countries, naturally, had the slowest growth rates as globalization spread, but, also, stable(sometimes shrinking) populations. They also had systems born of their own internal struggle with their own laboring classes which favored and exploited in favor of those at the top. As those at the top won the battle over labor in each of those countries, the people at large in them abandoned their sense of class, which had caused them to struggle, and sought after the philosophy which empowered those at the top. By "top" I'm not referring to some group which either planned this, or definitely seeks to exercise or maintain power. There is no Illuminati. I simply mean the rewarding above all, except for scraps, of those who have power over the system. It's what capitalism does, but the fault is everywhere with the people. The people, eventually, make the laws. And the laws favor those at the top. They favor hoarding of wealth to such an extent that, now, those who have agreed with the systems are feeling the pinch. Up to this time those who would have been considered working class in a prior time, before losing to the capitalists, have enjoyed a great deal of privilege within their countries because the currencies of those countries are what the truly wealthy use to actually measure their wealth. It has been necessary for the wealthy to empower that class with just enough for them to participate, and to succeed to the degree, if they can, that they can join them.

What it is is an individualistic mindset. It's not unlike how the aristocracy in the UK has always been able to sustain its place. The focus has always been upon the heir, in that case. The movement today, however, is one away from family and toward individuality. There may be a focus, still, upon one's own individual family, seen as a possession of sorts. That focus does not extend beyond the immediate family, though. There is huge tension between those countries with the most growth, or potential for growth, and those that are growing very slowly. That tension rests upon the fact that they are the low hanging fruit for exploitation, gathering into the barns, so to speak, by the system, as they have the most potential for growth, and they are also deeply family based. The world that is viable is tribal and honors the extended family over the individual. The developed world has adopted individualism as one of its core precepts. Individualism seeks to organize, and therefore extract value from, that extended mindset as it causes it to conform by means of offering success to those who agree with it.

Something is going on with money. There isn't enough of it in the hands of what I have referred to as the working classes in the developed world to sustain the order. The system has been too successful at extracting and concentrating wealth. In addition, positions in which formerly working class, but now idealistically bound to the system, people work are so temporary in nature that borrowing may see a crisis. People don't have the long term prospects they once had from which to qualify for loans of significant duration. Only those who have figured out how to game the system, while going from one temporary position to another, and those who have figured out how to succeed at a high enough level as self-employed people to qualify may see those kinds of loans that most used to qualify for. The danger is that getting a leg up by borrowing not only benefited those who sought to better themselves, but also those who had the real wealth. The money supply is dependent either upon the government spending money it creates by law, or the level of borrowing done by the people. Usually, it is a combination of both. Wages have been stagnating for decades, as the extraction continued within the developed countries. Now, the last crisis was, however, a borrowing crisis born of an attempt to sustain the money supply levels which would support the wealth of those at the top. The people weren't making enough from what they did in order to support the money supply with what they could afford toward paying off their loans. Wages have to go up, but many of the ways to gain a place at the top cannot endure an increase in wages. There are all kinds of independent contracting dependent and otherwise exploitative organizations which funnel money to those at the top of them which can't exist under a higher wage environment. They only exist now because the people fully bought into the system and supported the laws which were passed that allowed them to come into existence in the first place. The people are not going to see this. Instead, they are more likely to blame the outsider, those who are ripe for exploitation, because they see them as the threat. Really, it is the concentration of wealth which has been embedded within the law and has taken too much from the money supply for it to sustain the levels of wealth. Take those away, however, and you court inflation. The developed countries of the world need more inflation, but they don't need that level of it. The developed world needs to find a mechanism for rolling back enough of its concentration of wealth that its formerly working class people can afford to both take out and pay off enough borrowing to sustain its level of wealth. It needs to discover what kindness means within an economic environment where people are, essentially, asked to eat their young. It won't be easy.

[Newfie]

Evil,

When you talk about giving up class, persuing individualism, I kind of agree but have a slightly different take. Perhaps we are seeing the same thing through two lenses.

For the past upteem thousands of years, hundreds of thousands, the things that most threatened a humanoid, that he could be consciously aware of, were very immediate: snake, spider, wolf, lion, another human. They were right there in his face, he saw them, feared them. Our genes developed strategies for dealing with these threats. And, by and large, these threats were not only immediate, but they were directed at the individual. So we are pretty darn good at avoiding being killed, in the short term, and on our own. We found security in our own tribe, our blood relatives. That group alligence, groip identity, is likely newer but still very old.

Somewhat later we developed agriculture and larger stable societies and the possibility of cooperative planning against future threats, building grainieries, and walls, and such, became a reality. But that is only about 10,000 years of evolution. Extreamly recent.

The renewed nationalisim should not be a surprise. We walk down the street and see folks different from ourselves and it raises primitive fears we may well not be aware of on a conscious level. It is a fear of imminent attack by strangers. It is a individual fear, we experience it on our own person. It encourages us to band together with like critters for mutual defense.

I think what you are describing is just a part of our genetic programming from our collective evolutionary experience.

[Ibon]

We walk down the street and see folks different from ourselves and it raises primitive fears we may well not be aware of on a conscious level.

Tribal alliance does explain the divisions we see but what defines your tribal alliance is vastly different if you are urban or rural.

Folks living in urban areas with a rich diversity of cultures, languages, races and religions end up still having this tribal alliance.... but it is this very diversity that defines their tribal alliance. My daughters are excellent examples. They feel safe and familiar and "at home" in a setting of rich diversity. That is just a product of how they were raised.

In rural areas where there is mono culture, mono religion, mono language and mono race then the tribal alliance is thus defined and there is very little diversity. You feel at home when in a crowd all the same race, language, religion and culture. That is how you were raised.

You really do have a pretty dramatic difference here in terms of day to day cultural experience between this rural/urban divide. Segregated suburbs are also very much included here when compared to urban neighborhoods of rich diversity.

Jobs in urban areas tend to also be more connected with the global economy where as rural areas the only global economy is the export of agricultural products. So urban dwellers tend to support globalization and rural dwellers tend toward more nationalist sentiments.

Urban dwellers are more immigrant friendly as this immigrant diversity just adds to the base line of diversity that already defines their tribal alliance. Rural dwellers are anti-immigrant because their tribal alliance is anti-diversity.

I don't see anything changing up ahead except for a hardening even further of these differences.

It's a tough situation honestly in terms of seeing how these tribal tensions can be mitigated.

[vtsnowedin]

Many young peoples first experience at living with a diverse population comes when they go away to college with most campuses being much more integrated then rural areas of gated communities.
I can't agree about rural areas being more Nationalist then urban dwellers. The products the farmer buys come from all over the world just as the suburban mall rats do. His wife may drive a Camry and some of his tractors or other ag equipment come from other countries either whole or in part.
My own JD tractor was assembled in Pune India with front axle castings made in China and the hydrolic system made in Italy. Also there are numerous small factories scattered around rural America that both sell to and compete with the world market. One near me specializes in safety and diaper pins.

[KaiserJeep]

I would add that the Internet is the great funnel of diversity. Anybody with access to the network can partake of as much or as little as they wish. There are insular communities here in Silicon Valley, clusters of religion and cultures and ethnicities. I have no doubt that there are also local bigots and jihadists networking and sharing as well. My point being that nobody with a network is mono anything, including YOU, Ibon, sitting on your volcano.

It seems to me that although Ibon's analysis was correct for a time, the times have changed. We are a generation into the network, and the changes keep coming. Our politics, our shopping, and our entertainment have all been extensively changed by the network. My siblings and myself are all over the country, but share and interact through social apps on the network.

Perhaps the things we see as constants are now variables, because of the network.

[Ibon]

We are a generation into the network, and the changes keep coming. Our politics, our shopping, and our entertainment have all been extensively changed by the network. My siblings and myself are all over the country, but share and interact through social apps on the network.

The network is an enabler, nothing more. It is an enabler of shit as much as an enabler of diversity. It is an enabler of bigotry, hatred and stupidity as much as it is an enabler of enlightenment.

It is an enabler of misinformation as much as an enabler in how to fix your washing machine.

A louder microphone with a greater reach then the spoken work or the printing press or the telephone. Otherwise it is the same old same old KJ. Nothing all that much has changed.

[Ibon]

In defense of diversity the world before the internet at a time way back in the 70's for example, an international phone call cost you a couple bucks a minute. The world was an exotic place back then, far more diverse.

The internet has been a great force in homogenization, not so much an enabler of diversity.

We are all connected but we are all becoming the same .

It is a giant conduit of mediocrity and a force that is creating a vast monoculture.

In some ways this is good. In some ways it sucks ass.

[evilgenius]

As far as Cog's warning goes that communism could come back, I don't really disagree with that. I think that is a danger in the world today. We are headed for this time when automation will take more jobs than ever, and retraining doesn't seem able to keep up with the pace of change. What we've always called working class people are not going to be happy.

What I'm trying to do instead of becoming alarmist is to find other answers than civil war. I've said in other places that I don't think that some government sponsored universal living wage will work. I think it won't because of the need for the money supply to expand and contract along with the economic activity of the people. I think where the problem lies right now is in low wages. People can't afford to pay off what they are asked by their economies to borrow in order to complete their lives. For decades now, to use the US example, the Fed has raised interest rates every time that worker's wages have begun to see some benefit. They have helped the wealthy concentrate wealth. That, by itself, is not an economic evil. But in doing so they have lost sight of the situation. It can't be fixed with their current set of policies. You can't go back in time and change things, shall we say, by distributing money today. They can't just back off of raising rates right now in order to fix that. The situation has become institutionalized. It has become embedded within the law. It is a big part of the world of memes which run around within the modern mind.

At some point I'm not sure that lower rates are going to help the working class all that much. The working class is on the cusp of a period of uncertainty, such that qualifying for loans may not be easy for many. Soon millions of long haul truckers won't have an entire industry to work in, even though right now there is a shortage and their wages are going up. But how long before big rigs drive themselves? Can we really expect a human to sit as a safety driver backup behind every wheel very many years into that? That's just an example of one segment of the working class which is threatened in that way. Changes like that look set to happen faster than retraining can find a place for everybody who will be displaced.

I think the solution is to set a place for those people who will be displaced at the table, of the ruling class. I don't mean as under communism, where the means of production are owned by the state. I think there ought to be competing classes of stock set up for public companies of some size where formerly working class people are incentivized to buy. I've talked about this before on this site too. If those shares owned by the working class then establish the payment, or bonus, levels of the ruling class, as established by shareholder voting concerning what to do with the money available to those shares - reward the ruling class, management of those companies, or pay themselves, then there would still be room within the economy for the working class. As I said above, they are necessary for any economy, even one of extreme wealth concentration because their level of borrowing helps define the value of the currency which in turn defines how much wealth those who have managed to concentrate have actually got. Using government spending alone, as in a universal basic income, would be more static, like a gold standard, and unresponsive to pressures within the economy. As much as people desire an economy of perception, all equal and everything, any real economy also has to be responsive. If you take the harshest steps, and get rid of money or track its movement to a such a refined degree as to eliminate privacy, I think you will only find that you have to bring it back again. But if you don't fix the systemic problem regarding wages and borrowing the same evil of concentration to such an extreme will lie waiting for you.

[Ibon]

A stronger role in government regulating society is almost a guarantee going forward when the need for stability snd security will demand it. In other words the consequences of human overshoot will demand it.

This is different from communism or fascism or authoritarianism which has always been ideoloigical based and therefore corrupt.

Ecological based management of society due to human overshoot is not avoidable. Once the understanding of this results in the decoupling from communist or socialist ideology we will actually find that the most conservative sectors of society will embrace this.

In China today the reformists still trying to demand democracy are viewed as radicals whereas the majority, the more conservative sector of the citizenry embraces the strong role of government. This is less about a legacy of communism and more about managing 1.5 billion people.

[vtsnowedin]

Ecological based management of society due to human overshoot is not avoidable.

While the need for such maybe unavoidable achieving something on those lines is by no means certain.

[Ibon]

Ecological based management of society due to human overshoot is not avoidable.

While the need for such maybe unavoidable achieving something on those lines is by no means certain.

Of course not certain but if a country and its citizens are looking for a strategy that minimizes suffering and maximizes stability and security then it is pretty much unavoidable.

The alternatives are ugly.

[vtsnowedin]

Ecological based management of society due to human overshoot is not avoidable.

While the need for such maybe unavoidable achieving something on those lines is by no means certain.

Of course not certain but if a country and its citizens are looking for a strategy that minimizes suffering and maximizes stability and security then it is pretty much unavoidable.

The alternatives are ugly.

It is convincing the majority or, the leadership at least ,that it is the best path forward,that this is the problem. You must first convince them that their long held point of view is wrong and it is not just the oppositions actions that are causing the problems they face.

[Ibon]

Ecological based management of society due to human overshoot is not avoidable.

While the need for such maybe unavoidable achieving something on those lines is by no means certain.

Of course not certain but if a country and its citizens are looking for a strategy that minimizes suffering and maximizes stability and security then it is pretty much unavoidable.

The alternatives are ugly.

It is convincing the majority or, the leadership at least ,that it is the best path forward,that this is the problem. You must first convince them that their long held point of view is wrong and it is not just the oppositions actions that are causing the problems they face.

I think it is impossible to convince any fixed culture that is resistant to change. What does the convincing are the consequences themselves. Any attempts of convincing before the consequences will be construed as ideological. Therefore there is no convincing beforehand possible. At least not until 30 seconds before midnight!

[vtsnowedin]

More likely an hour after the next dawn.

[Newfie]

Ibon,

I think you have a very skewed vision of diversity in the big cities. You paint a kind of utopia where every one gets along. That may be what you are seeing in your children but they are not the folks I’m talking about. The various rival gangs should alert you to that. That there are pop up mobs which mug people and stores shows the lack of cohesion. The dialect differences make simple communication difficult. There are strong conservative religious groups, and they can carry very strong race/color prejudice. Then there a simple experiential differences; huge swaths of folks are functionally illiterate, they won’t mix well with others because simply because the are not accessible by writing, influencing them requires face to face contact. One of my kids is a corrections officer, and pretty good with the inmates. He has an understanding of their ways. He will leave immediatly if he is in a store and a gang banger comes in who is in foreign turf. He’s afraid a local banger will come in and bad things ensue.

I’m not denying what you see in your world, just that there is a different area of the world.

[Ibon]

Ibon,

I think you have a very skewed vision of diversity in the big cities. You paint a kind of utopia where every one gets along. That may be what you are seeing in your children but they are not the folks I’m talking about. The various rival gangs should alert you to that. That there are pop up mobs which mug people and stores shows the lack of cohesion. The dialect differences make simple communication difficult. There are strong conservative religious groups, and they can carry very strong race/color prejudice. Then there a simple experiential differences; huge swaths of folks are functionally illiterate, they won’t mix well with others because simply because the are not accessible by writing, influencing them requires face to face contact. One of my kids is a corrections officer, and pretty good with the inmates. He has an understanding of their ways. He will leave immediatly if he is in a store and a gang banger comes in who is in foreign turf. He’s afraid a local banger will come in and bad things ensue.

I’m not denying what you see in your world, just that there is a different area of the world.

My experience is Seattle where my kids went to middle and high school. My daughters are also cultural hybrids and so they naturally gravitated toward others who were similar.

The news is all about the shootings and disharmony. For every one shot dead there are 10,000 acts of kindness and cooperation. This is what is SKEWED. Especially if you are in law enforcement.

Bad shit gets in the news. Good stuff never gets reported.

Think about it. About how overwhelmingly safe our cities are day to day as millions of humans move about and live their daily lives.... So few killed. So few maimed. So few gang shootings. Of course the USA has more than most countries. But relative to the peace among us these events are still miraculously rare.

Compared to historical times down right utopian

[Newfie]

And those bad old times may well return.

I’m not saying every part of the cities are like that, but there are sufficient areas like it to be troublesome. And within those districts the murder rates are pretty high. They are often reported as “drug deal gone bad” but that’s just a tag. Maybe it’s selling drugs in the wrong corner.

We have enough riots to demonstrate the differences.