[ralfy]

Parasitism:

Rising health care costs. Doctors get paid in the U.S.A. twice that what other countries get paid, rising costs of prescription medicine and they work the system to get it.

Copyright laws that never expire. Means never ending profit streams for large media companies, and lower competition for media. Keep wanting to extend them too.

College/education costs rising at a fast rate. Everyone looks at everyone else it seems, but no-one claims they are raking in the money and yet the money is being raked in.

Zoning laws designed to prevent development to keep prices up. Massive drain on the economy at ~10% of GDP, and it is a significant reason preventing social/economic mobility for the poor.

Development of new government agencies of dubious benefit. Nice jobs for a certain segment.

Retirement benefits that exceed the money paid in -- Many, but not all baby boomers.

Alimony/Child support payments that are crippling. Shared parental opposed to prevent this gravy train, also means if you hate your job you're stuck in it. Lose your job, but don't lose the payments -- nice... Lifestyle choice for some to find a relatively wealthy guy and get pregnant off him.

Monopoly/Oligopoly companies: Where did anti-trust go? Oh that's right. Lobbied out of existence.

Crony capitalism. Get nice kickbacks if you lobby the right people. You can see it in the excessively expensive contracts. Tell me again why it costs 5* more to build a tunnel in the U.S.A. as compared to Spain, and Spain isn't exactly the lowest graft country out there. Maybe the ones in the U.S.A. are significantly better at it?

Not-for-profit sector: Really cushy jobs, but don't neglect to pay their upper echelons extremely well. Funny example -- our homeless problem in Auckland is massive, but they pay their 'team leaders' over $100,000 and their 'managers' over $150,000 and yet can't afford to paint the front of their building or improve the quality of the beds/expand their services.

Middle class welfare: Essentially transfer payments from the rich to the middle class, but somehow not the poor because they don't vote. Tax credits/bonuses are everywhere, and spending 'somehow' gets captured by the middle classes, wonder why...

Excluded: Poor sobs. They're already miserable enough anyway. If you're on 'disability' and drugged off your rockers on legal heroin then I doubt you're living 'the life'.

Parasitism is an essential part of capitalism because of the use of money combined with maximization of profit due to competition.

[onlooker]

Yes exploitation and ruthless cut throat competition have been a hallmark of modern crony capitalism. Along of course with endemic corruption. All consistent with the underlying ethos of Capitalism being greed

[ralfy]

Parasitism is an essential part of capitalism because of the use of money combined with maximization of profit due to competition.

I would say not at all. In capitalism you're not always going to be the seller, or the buyer and you will not always have power. There are always bigger fish... Until you're Bill Gates. The most important function of government is this: Fixing the prisoners style dilemmas. When people act in their own perceived best interests leads to an unideal equilibrium then the government should step in. What people want is often not what is good for them, and/or society at large. Everyone wants to not pay taxes, but no-one wants to live in a society where taxes aren't paid (most people anyway).

Why do you believe that the governments will step in when they themselves are dependent on capitalist financiers for credit?

How do you think we ended up with a one-percent and a financial crash in 2008?

[KaiserJeep]

-snip-

Why do you believe that the governments will step in when they themselves are dependent on capitalist financiers for credit?

How do you think we ended up with a one-percent and a financial crash in 2008?

Don't deceive yourself, there has aways been a 1%, from human pre-history onwards, as the original 1% was comprised of the clan leader and the witch doctor.

No matter if the economy is enduring Capitalism or some short-term, doomed form of collectivism, the government always preserves itself, and grows in power.

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

- Jerry Pournelle

The United States Government is the biggest bureaucracy in the world, sets itself aside from commercial corporations in a unique category, makes it's own rules for it's own benefit, and decides when to give itself raises and benefits. It comprises the major portion of the top 10%, aside from the 1% that is the topic of this thread.

If you doubt any of that, note that politicians manage to get rich while in office, on salaries that don't compare favorably with equivalent positions in the private sector. Bill and Hill Clinton became multi-millionaires, while Hill made "investments" such as Whitewater, which paid off at $1100 for each buck "invested".

Your Marxist fantasies aside, they are NEVER going away, and when times get tough, they will take more and more for themselves, and if they need to feed you into the furnace to keep warm, they will do that, too. Many more of them will join the 1% than will the 90% Middle/Lower Classes we are part of.

Now for the heartbreaking truth. Your influence begins and ends with your one vote. You can bitch all you want to, and I'll ignore most of the nonsense spouted here as I always have. But the facts are, that money talks and excrement walks, and to members of the 1% and even the 10%, you are excrement, and when the time comes, you will be scraped off their shoes.

Your only revenge is to put yourself in a position where they cannot hurt you. Keep your reported income small, such as Social Security and pensions. Use all of your government "benefits", and make lots of complaints. Barter, rather than buy/sell. Live modestly, always have a year's worth of food on hand, and in a Northern Climate, a year's worth of heat.

I don't want to hear any nonsense about a revolution, either. As I have said before, they have millions of well-armed troops and police. They have an Army, a Navy, and an Air Force. They have spy satellites, they control and monitor the internet, they track every transaction you make using credit or cash, and they maintain a cyber dossier on you that never goes away, even when you die.

Your paltry small arms do not matter, as this is not 1776. I don't care how many AR-15's and AK-47's you have or how skilled you are at using them. Their troops are more skilled, younger, and led by professional killers.

So go keep your head down, and plan to live.

[Ibon]

Sober and good advice from KJ.

[onlooker]

Also, Kaiser you are not looking further down the road when the concept of money (and civilization itself) will have pretty much disappeared and the remaining humans will either be community oriented with a decentralized ruling structure or the power holders will be defined by personal characteristics and not handed down leadership or money

[Ibon]

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.

[Hawkcreek]

Your paltry small arms do not matter, as this is not 1776. I don't care how many AR-15's and AK-47's you have or how skilled you are at using them. Their troops are more skilled, younger, and led by professional killers.

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.

[Ibon]

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.

[onlooker]

Ibon, I did say further down the road. What is more I think I get what Kaiser is referring to, in that our evolution has featured a hierarchic structure that is not going away and our general basic primitive inclinations also argue for this societal structure. You are right anybody who tries to overthrow ruling elites is doing something very risky. I for one am not planning forming any part in such endeavor. But this then brings to focus what you have alluded to in that humans on the other side of this bottleneck may develop a much more altruistic attitude in an almost religious sense. Again, Ibon as you have noted, the catalysts will be there to change the consciousness of what remains of humanity to a much more benign and harmony seeking one. Oh and Hawk, good point as it has been shown that a committed guerrilla force can stand up and eventually defeat a larger more well armored one

[KaiserJeep]

Hawk, you postulate that something which has never happened before, the spontaneous dissolution of the US Armed Forces, will happen at just the appropriate time so that you will acquire more than your share of power and influence, and will happen at just the right time - for you. Then that this new state of affairs will bring about your particular fantasy of a rosy future where your influence and power and prestige will be honored by all around you. Well....

I just don't think so. I believe that 1% which has been in charge since prehistoric times, is gonna persist, and still own and control a lot more than their share, and a lot more than the collective shares of the 90%. Those troops you are speculating about for example, will be bringing their immediate family inside their perimeter, and shooting at you who are outside that perimeter. That's only what the military does, after all - kill at the beck and call of the 1%. Distressed circumstances will make them more determined, and they will kill more of the opposing forces.

Take care of your own. Form a collective. Run a new snail Internet using handwritten notres, and codes. Escape their notice.

[dolanbaker]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-39706765
Could advances in technology, genetics and artificial intelligence lead to a world in which economic inequality turns into biological inequality? asks the historian and writer Yuval Noah Harari.

Inequality goes back at least 30,000 years.
Hunter-gatherers were more equal than subsequent societies.

They had very little property, and property is a pre-requisite for long-term inequality.
But even they had hierarchies.
In the 19th and 20th Centuries, however, something changed.

Equality became a dominant value in human culture, almost all over the world. Why?
It was partly down to the rise of new ideologies such as humanism, liberalism and socialism.
But it was also about technological and economic change - which was connected to those new ideologies, of course.
Suddenly the elite needed large numbers of healthy, educated people to serve as soldiers in the army and as workers in the factories.

Governments didn't educate and vaccinate to be nice.
They needed the masses to be useful.
But now that's changing again.
The best armies today require a small number of highly professional soldiers using very high-tech kit.
Factories, too, are increasingly automated.

....

There are two main ways to upgrade humans.

Either you change something in their biological structure by changing their DNA.
Or, the more radical way, you combine organic and inorganic parts - perhaps directly connecting brains and computers.
The rich - through purchasing such biological enhancements - could become, literally, better than the rest; more intelligent, healthier and with far greater life-spans.
At that point, it will make sense to cede power to this "enhanced" class.

Think about it like this.
In the past, the nobility tried to convince the masses that they were superior to everyone else and so should hold power.
In the future I am describing, they really will be superior to the masses.
And because they will be better than us, it will make sense to cede power and decision-making to them.

There may be a lot of tin foil here, but the possibility is real.

[Hawkcreek]

Hawk, you postulate that something which has never happened before, the spontaneous dissolution of the US Armed Forces, will happen at just the appropriate time so that you will acquire more than your share of power and influence, and will happen at just the right time - for you. Then that this new state of affairs will bring about your particular fantasy of a rosy future where your influence and power and prestige will be honored by all around you. Well....

How did you manage to make my "how it could happen scenario" to be about ME??? I did not postulate any of what you said. Those are outright lies.
If you disagree with what i said, address the points, not some attack on me, please.

[KaiserJeep]

Hawk, I agree that I was mistaken when I made it personal, I apologize. But I attack the idea that the military - of which I was once a member - is anything but the goons of the 1% ruling class.

dolanbaker, I just don't think so. There has continuously been hardship during all of history, somewhere in the world. A few times there were groups of people following a charismatic leader, who advocate peace and some variation of collectivism. These people were named Jesus, the Budda, etc. They undoubtedly had widespread impact on the world of today, millenia later.

But the economy of a world with 7.4 billion humans has never gone sour before. Today with dirt cheap and plentiful energy, we can feed a couple of billion - optimistly three billion - healthy diets, while 4.5 to 5.5 billion humans have less than they need. Those people will be here when energy costs increase 2X, 5X, 10X - and the world economy dissolves in chaos.

I personally believe that this chaos is 3-7 decades away. Momentuum alone will carry us for 3 decades. You are free to make your own dates. If you cash out too soon, the 1% will take everything you have.

[Newfie]

I have to laugh at some of these arguments. We each carry some vision of the future in our head and speak to that. For some it is tomorrow, for others in 10 years, for still others it is even further out.

There is not one way the future will unfold, there are many ways, stages of rise refraction, adaption, cultural evolution.

And it may be geographical with one scenario occurring in DC and Wall Street while something else occurs in Detroit and a third thing in the mid West farmland.

It's quite possible that everyone will be right at some time and place and more things than we can imagine may come about.

How about this,new institute a caste system, kinda like India, so that everyone get to have a job. It keeps unemployment low, self esteem high, and the masses content. Not too far from Brave New World.