George Will, a salaried propagandist of the established order, condemns trains. I must admit that only private jets should get government subsidies, in a plutocracy. Whines Will:
"So why is America’s “win the future” administration so fixated on railroads, a technology that was the future two centuries ago? Because progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior.
Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism."
Trains are a lot more empowering and individualistic than planes, as anybody who has travelled in both will recognize — and planes, not cars, are the main alternative to high-speed rail. Besides, what is empowering at driving a car? One becomes a slave to the art of avoiding accidents and respecting all laws and regulations.
Says Krugman: "And there’s the bit about rail as an antiquated technology; try saying that after riding the Shanghai Maglev."
Will is a clever man, indeed. He goes where the money is, and serves who Adam Smith called \"the masters\" (generations before Karl Marx). Clever he is, but not moral.
American individualism, like American exceptionalism, or Hitler's celebrated attachment to the right of minorities in the name of human rights (one of his main electoral platform points!) are much exaggerated notions. If the American elite is that individualistic, how come most of them think all the same?
By the way, there is a lot of high tech in very high speed trains. Maglev has no advantage over steel wheels, but a lot of disadvantages. Maglev uses a lot of light but flammable materials, and extravagant high magnetic fields, there have been very bad accidents. Whereas steel wheels can go wherever there are rails, not so with maglev.
The maglev speed record is just a mile per hour or so above the (French) high speed, steel wheels record of 575 kilometers per hour. At these speeds non trivial shock waves and resonance have to be solved. Pantographs maintain contact through electronic piloting.
An intermediate technology exists, capable of 250 km/h on conventional lines, where the trains lean in the turns (Russia bought it from French Alstom, which bought it from Italy).
Notice the attack of Will against "progress". This is one of the main point of American plutocratic propaganda: progress itself is the problem. Why so? Of course progress came with laws against slavery, murder and torture all of which handicap the truly wealthy. But there is more. Ultimately plutocracy rests on military force, which rests on lack of progress. Savages need savagery to justify their own existence.
At this point, American technolgical superiority is pretty much reduced to superior people killing technology. No wonder neoconservatives are against progress. more than 50% of the weapons sold, worldwide, are American made. An American president said: "The business of America is business". Does that mean that, nowadays, the business of America has become death?
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Cooking The Numbers
In "Empire at the End of Decadence" (February, 18, 2011), Charles Blow declares that:
"It’s time for us to stop lying to ourselves about this country. America is great in many ways, but on a whole host of measures — some of which are shown in the accompanying chart — we have become the laggards of the industrialized world. Not only are we not No. 1 — “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” — we are among the worst of the worst.
Yet this reality and the urgency that it ushers in is too hard for many Americans to digest. They would prefer to continue to bathe in platitudes about America’s greatness, to view our eroding empire through the gauzy vapors of past grandeur."
And Charles Blow to quote numbers coming from organizations which have interest to exalt the Reagan view of the world. Even these numbers look bad. The real numbers would be even worse.
One has indeed to understand that many of these numbers go first through a dedicated filter of organizations (CIA, World Bank, Bureau of Labor Statistics, the pro-plutocracy magazine The Economist, etc.).
These organizations are determined to prove the superiority of the present American way of exploitation, as their thriving depends upon it.
For example the "percentage thriving" finds 50% more Americans "thriving", whereas only 33% of the French are "thriving". I know both countries extremely well, and I can tell you, it's not the case. What is perceived as thriving on one side of the Atlantic would be viewed as inimaginable misery, on the other side.
The French do not believe it's cool to claim they are thriving. Self glorifications led to sorry episodes such as Louis XIV or Napoleon. They cost millions of dead, and severely weakened the country. As the protestants were forced to flee by Louis the criminal, they enrich Germany, and eported wine making to South Africa. So later nazi germany invaded with some generals bearing French names.
The terrible wars of the Twentieth Century, which left metropolitan France 20% smaller than it would be otherwise (let alone the loss of the enormous empire, not all parts of it should have been disjoined, in a better world) were another case where glory itself came to be viewed as a colaborator of self extermination.
So the French believe, deep inside, that it is better to complain, and demonstrate. Whereas the Americans fear that if they are not perceived as winners, they will be run over.
So to complain about France as loudly as possible is a major French religion (it literraly ties the French together, for example during the ever popular demonstrations). But many major worries Americans have do not even register in France. For example health care, or child care, or education. Although the unemployment rates cannot be compared; as Krugman observed, France has actually a much higher employment rate of the 24 to 55 population.
This being said, the USA has a disease called hubris. The country takes itself for imperial rime, and is the last one to used the imperial system of units. The USA was also the only "democracy" to re-introduce slavery on its own territory, ot its own citizens since Europe had outlawed it, a full millennium before that.
The USA is a time-wrap. Long has been. Why? Because being primitive in some important ways allowed a self satisfied, oblivious mentality to reign, designed specifically to exterminate the natives. And thus gain a continent, making America's fortune.
Notice that the Boers and the British did not exterminate the natives in South Africa.
Now, this American mentality, lost in self grandeur, and oblivious delusion is backfiring, ever since it went on steroids with that mean and short sighted man, Reagan. Reagan' confusion between fortune and merit has ruled the land, in a last, self destructive spasm of a better forgotten past.
PA
"It’s time for us to stop lying to ourselves about this country. America is great in many ways, but on a whole host of measures — some of which are shown in the accompanying chart — we have become the laggards of the industrialized world. Not only are we not No. 1 — “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” — we are among the worst of the worst.
Yet this reality and the urgency that it ushers in is too hard for many Americans to digest. They would prefer to continue to bathe in platitudes about America’s greatness, to view our eroding empire through the gauzy vapors of past grandeur."
And Charles Blow to quote numbers coming from organizations which have interest to exalt the Reagan view of the world. Even these numbers look bad. The real numbers would be even worse.
One has indeed to understand that many of these numbers go first through a dedicated filter of organizations (CIA, World Bank, Bureau of Labor Statistics, the pro-plutocracy magazine The Economist, etc.).
These organizations are determined to prove the superiority of the present American way of exploitation, as their thriving depends upon it.
For example the "percentage thriving" finds 50% more Americans "thriving", whereas only 33% of the French are "thriving". I know both countries extremely well, and I can tell you, it's not the case. What is perceived as thriving on one side of the Atlantic would be viewed as inimaginable misery, on the other side.
The French do not believe it's cool to claim they are thriving. Self glorifications led to sorry episodes such as Louis XIV or Napoleon. They cost millions of dead, and severely weakened the country. As the protestants were forced to flee by Louis the criminal, they enrich Germany, and eported wine making to South Africa. So later nazi germany invaded with some generals bearing French names.
The terrible wars of the Twentieth Century, which left metropolitan France 20% smaller than it would be otherwise (let alone the loss of the enormous empire, not all parts of it should have been disjoined, in a better world) were another case where glory itself came to be viewed as a colaborator of self extermination.
So the French believe, deep inside, that it is better to complain, and demonstrate. Whereas the Americans fear that if they are not perceived as winners, they will be run over.
So to complain about France as loudly as possible is a major French religion (it literraly ties the French together, for example during the ever popular demonstrations). But many major worries Americans have do not even register in France. For example health care, or child care, or education. Although the unemployment rates cannot be compared; as Krugman observed, France has actually a much higher employment rate of the 24 to 55 population.
This being said, the USA has a disease called hubris. The country takes itself for imperial rime, and is the last one to used the imperial system of units. The USA was also the only "democracy" to re-introduce slavery on its own territory, ot its own citizens since Europe had outlawed it, a full millennium before that.
The USA is a time-wrap. Long has been. Why? Because being primitive in some important ways allowed a self satisfied, oblivious mentality to reign, designed specifically to exterminate the natives. And thus gain a continent, making America's fortune.
Notice that the Boers and the British did not exterminate the natives in South Africa.
Now, this American mentality, lost in self grandeur, and oblivious delusion is backfiring, ever since it went on steroids with that mean and short sighted man, Reagan. Reagan' confusion between fortune and merit has ruled the land, in a last, self destructive spasm of a better forgotten past.
PA
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Hold Your Horses About Egypt.
The new ex-NeoConservatives sing song is to say they brought the Egyptian revolution, after trying everything under Bush, from billions to invasions.
However, what Bush's predecessors had tried, and what they had succeeded to do, is to subjugate the Arabs, using a hefty dose of support for old fashion Islam (Salafism) to do so. Bush's feeble efforts were an attempt to recover control. He did not. Nor is Obama (who is using cheaper and craftier methods).
The (present government of the) USA and its People (Peace be Upon It!) do not want a real Arab revolution, because it would mean oil at $300 a barrel. It would also mean that Israel could not afford anymore, its present leaders and their mean policies.
But this is not over. Right now, it is a coup, not a revolution: we were threatened with Suleiman Aleikum, the Moo-Barack from behind, as I pointed out in a somewhat timely manner, 3 days before Suleiman came crashing down.
A last minute change gives us the only serious democratic institution in Egypt, the army. Vice President Suleiman was livid, as he announced that in a 40 second adress, complete with God's mercy, Mubarak's resignation, and his own personal eclipse.
Speaking of mercy, it would be merciful if my incendiary essay on the subject had been read in high places...
However, the Egyptian army is also plutocratic. Generals are paid by Washington, especially when they retire. The Egyptian army controls as much as 15% of Egypt's GDP, and is fully part of the worldwide plutocracy. So this is not over.
It is far from clear that the Egyptian people will come out on top. A fortiori other Arabs. The obscene Mohammed VI is thriving in Morocco, having gathered 10% of GDP all by his little self.
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
However, what Bush's predecessors had tried, and what they had succeeded to do, is to subjugate the Arabs, using a hefty dose of support for old fashion Islam (Salafism) to do so. Bush's feeble efforts were an attempt to recover control. He did not. Nor is Obama (who is using cheaper and craftier methods).
The (present government of the) USA and its People (Peace be Upon It!) do not want a real Arab revolution, because it would mean oil at $300 a barrel. It would also mean that Israel could not afford anymore, its present leaders and their mean policies.
But this is not over. Right now, it is a coup, not a revolution: we were threatened with Suleiman Aleikum, the Moo-Barack from behind, as I pointed out in a somewhat timely manner, 3 days before Suleiman came crashing down.
A last minute change gives us the only serious democratic institution in Egypt, the army. Vice President Suleiman was livid, as he announced that in a 40 second adress, complete with God's mercy, Mubarak's resignation, and his own personal eclipse.
Speaking of mercy, it would be merciful if my incendiary essay on the subject had been read in high places...
However, the Egyptian army is also plutocratic. Generals are paid by Washington, especially when they retire. The Egyptian army controls as much as 15% of Egypt's GDP, and is fully part of the worldwide plutocracy. So this is not over.
It is far from clear that the Egyptian people will come out on top. A fortiori other Arabs. The obscene Mohammed VI is thriving in Morocco, having gathered 10% of GDP all by his little self.
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Friday, February 4, 2011
Will to Intellectual Supremacy
Here is an entire post of Paul Krugman, "Another Kind of Financial Fragility",
followed by my comment, which explains and amplifies what Krugman talks about. Namely, the mental fragility of the top banksters, who are revealing to be affected by the sort of madness hubris leads to:
"Recent events have a lot of economists working hard at trying to determine the causes of financial fragility — the vulnerability of some economies, ours very much included, to disruptive shocks that cause credit and spending to freeze.
But recent events have also highlighted another kind of financial fragility: the sensitive egos of powerful bankers. I’ve been calling this the Ma! He’s looking at me funny! syndrome; it’s quite something to behold.
In a way, it sort of makes sense. Any leading player in the world of finance makes so much money that he more or less literally already has everything money can buy. If he cares about making even more money, it’s purely as a way of keeping score. And once you’re motivated mainly by considerations of prestige, you start to care more about whether the president is saying nice things about you than whether his actual policies are letting you off scot-free from any consequences of your industry’s sins.
Anyway, a good read from Reuters about the fragile ego of Jamie Dimon, who is not only wealthy beyond count but has also received a lot of fawning press. But it’s apparently not good enough."
***
This observation of Paul Krugman is right on the mark.
I hold that there is such a thing as the Will to Intellectual Supremacy in human beings. OK, a number of thinkers, culminating with Nietzsche talked about the Will To Power, and even the Will To Knowledge, as Nietzsche did. But this is still different. The Will to Intellectual Supremacy makes people live and die, by, and for, ideas.
The Will to Intellectual Supremacy is specifically human. (Whereas the will to Power is exhibited by plenty of other species, only human have digitalized ideas, something they are equipped to transmit into a culture. Chimps have also ideas, but they can be transmitted only visually.)
An evolutionary advantage is that this Will to Intellectual Supremacy kicks in only when there is plenty enough ideas around, hence enough people, hence a good reason to find any reason to decrease the number of said people.
More importantly, though, the Will to Intellectual Supremacy creates a highly competitive environment for ideas. It makes ideas go to war against each other, and thus allows a selection of the fittest. Thus the will to Intellectual Supremacy strongly urges forward the evolution of ideas towards superior forms (superior in the sense that the enemy gets eaten, or something akin to that).
So Dimon, the bankster, fights to death to impose his views that plutocracy knows best, and is, overall, best. He goes according to instinct. He incarnates an animal force, with intellectual supremacy pretention.
Reasoning with a deamon such as Dimon is like reasoning with an Aztec priest. It is to others to master his ideas, and put them back in the cage they belong to.
And how were the Aztec priests defeated? By rising an army of their victims, having persuaded them that it was a war worth fighting, and that they could win, if they tried hard enough. And that it was shameful to do nothing, because the Aztec horror, a form of extreme plutocracy, did not belong on this Earth.
And now, in some ways, with thermonuclear nukes looming, the situation is potentially much worse, so the fight against plutocracy has to be even more radical.
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
followed by my comment, which explains and amplifies what Krugman talks about. Namely, the mental fragility of the top banksters, who are revealing to be affected by the sort of madness hubris leads to:
"Recent events have a lot of economists working hard at trying to determine the causes of financial fragility — the vulnerability of some economies, ours very much included, to disruptive shocks that cause credit and spending to freeze.
But recent events have also highlighted another kind of financial fragility: the sensitive egos of powerful bankers. I’ve been calling this the Ma! He’s looking at me funny! syndrome; it’s quite something to behold.
In a way, it sort of makes sense. Any leading player in the world of finance makes so much money that he more or less literally already has everything money can buy. If he cares about making even more money, it’s purely as a way of keeping score. And once you’re motivated mainly by considerations of prestige, you start to care more about whether the president is saying nice things about you than whether his actual policies are letting you off scot-free from any consequences of your industry’s sins.
Anyway, a good read from Reuters about the fragile ego of Jamie Dimon, who is not only wealthy beyond count but has also received a lot of fawning press. But it’s apparently not good enough."
***
This observation of Paul Krugman is right on the mark.
I hold that there is such a thing as the Will to Intellectual Supremacy in human beings. OK, a number of thinkers, culminating with Nietzsche talked about the Will To Power, and even the Will To Knowledge, as Nietzsche did. But this is still different. The Will to Intellectual Supremacy makes people live and die, by, and for, ideas.
The Will to Intellectual Supremacy is specifically human. (Whereas the will to Power is exhibited by plenty of other species, only human have digitalized ideas, something they are equipped to transmit into a culture. Chimps have also ideas, but they can be transmitted only visually.)
An evolutionary advantage is that this Will to Intellectual Supremacy kicks in only when there is plenty enough ideas around, hence enough people, hence a good reason to find any reason to decrease the number of said people.
More importantly, though, the Will to Intellectual Supremacy creates a highly competitive environment for ideas. It makes ideas go to war against each other, and thus allows a selection of the fittest. Thus the will to Intellectual Supremacy strongly urges forward the evolution of ideas towards superior forms (superior in the sense that the enemy gets eaten, or something akin to that).
So Dimon, the bankster, fights to death to impose his views that plutocracy knows best, and is, overall, best. He goes according to instinct. He incarnates an animal force, with intellectual supremacy pretention.
Reasoning with a deamon such as Dimon is like reasoning with an Aztec priest. It is to others to master his ideas, and put them back in the cage they belong to.
And how were the Aztec priests defeated? By rising an army of their victims, having persuaded them that it was a war worth fighting, and that they could win, if they tried hard enough. And that it was shameful to do nothing, because the Aztec horror, a form of extreme plutocracy, did not belong on this Earth.
And now, in some ways, with thermonuclear nukes looming, the situation is potentially much worse, so the fight against plutocracy has to be even more radical.
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Plutocracy Kills Progress
Why has innovation slowed down? It has everything to do with the rise of plutocracy beyond the reasonable, and the promotion of the Dark Side of human psychology, Hades, to the detriment of the Light Side, the Enlightenment of mind, science, and technology..
This is why I like mild inflation: it makes technological implementation more profitable, hence the whole research system behind it, more attractive.
It is also why the prize system for technological innovation is so good: many aviation pioneers went to their death to get prizes, pushing, to do so, weird new machines, with fantastically creative engineering.
Another factor in innovation, sorry to say, is the military, in the technological superiority tradition of the Athenians, Romans and Franks (instead of the brute force of the masses).
The first cars, in the eighteenth century, were actually enormous (steam powered) all terrain vehicles mandated by a French military program. So were the first planes to take off with an engine. So were the first metal monoplanes. All French military programs, and so was initially nuclear energy (Paris 1938, later morphed into the \"Manhattan project\", 1942). Radar (and thus microwave) was also a military program (in many countries simultaneously during WWII).
So what is going on now? Why is innovation dying? Because the USA went from a nation of bold engineers (1941) to a nation of despicable plutocrats (2011). And it has been contagious, at least throughout the West.
Whereas the emerging countries, such as the BRIC, made the correct analysis that the West's superiority was due to science, technology, and many of them, such as now many Arab countries, or India, or Brazil, and China or Russia, in part, from the superiority of the mind, hence communications.)
This is not exactly the first time this sort of devolution, the one affecting the West now, this sort of take over of the Dark Side, happens: it has happened again and again in history. It happened to Athens, it happened to Rome, and there were periodical bouts of it during the European Middle Ages. each time plutocracy took over.
In the case of Athens, the Athenian hyper rich colluded with the thoroughly fascist imperialist Macedonian plutocrats, to crush democracy, and thus science and philosophy.
I use here the concept of \"Pluto\" in its most general meaning, covering the entire Dark Side, not just wealth. But wealth is the greatest facilitator, as it can exploit the exponential growth interest provides with.
The plutocrats themselves are not stupid; they reign through stupidity. Their enemy is intelligence, hence new forms of thinking, hence what feeds them, new philosophy, new ethics, new science, new technology.
If a youth is smart, right now, she will do as Obama does, and extends the hand to plutocrats. And the plutocrats will fill that hand. Thus the smart go to the wolves. And the smartest, like Demosthenes, the philosopher who condemned Macedonia, they may as well swallow poison, before the state police grabs them, as Demosthenes did.
And what is taking poison with them is the highest and best of what makes the human spirit, and stagnation ensues. At best. At worst, great mayhem, as under the Nazis.
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
This is why I like mild inflation: it makes technological implementation more profitable, hence the whole research system behind it, more attractive.
It is also why the prize system for technological innovation is so good: many aviation pioneers went to their death to get prizes, pushing, to do so, weird new machines, with fantastically creative engineering.
Another factor in innovation, sorry to say, is the military, in the technological superiority tradition of the Athenians, Romans and Franks (instead of the brute force of the masses).
The first cars, in the eighteenth century, were actually enormous (steam powered) all terrain vehicles mandated by a French military program. So were the first planes to take off with an engine. So were the first metal monoplanes. All French military programs, and so was initially nuclear energy (Paris 1938, later morphed into the \"Manhattan project\", 1942). Radar (and thus microwave) was also a military program (in many countries simultaneously during WWII).
So what is going on now? Why is innovation dying? Because the USA went from a nation of bold engineers (1941) to a nation of despicable plutocrats (2011). And it has been contagious, at least throughout the West.
Whereas the emerging countries, such as the BRIC, made the correct analysis that the West's superiority was due to science, technology, and many of them, such as now many Arab countries, or India, or Brazil, and China or Russia, in part, from the superiority of the mind, hence communications.)
This is not exactly the first time this sort of devolution, the one affecting the West now, this sort of take over of the Dark Side, happens: it has happened again and again in history. It happened to Athens, it happened to Rome, and there were periodical bouts of it during the European Middle Ages. each time plutocracy took over.
In the case of Athens, the Athenian hyper rich colluded with the thoroughly fascist imperialist Macedonian plutocrats, to crush democracy, and thus science and philosophy.
I use here the concept of \"Pluto\" in its most general meaning, covering the entire Dark Side, not just wealth. But wealth is the greatest facilitator, as it can exploit the exponential growth interest provides with.
The plutocrats themselves are not stupid; they reign through stupidity. Their enemy is intelligence, hence new forms of thinking, hence what feeds them, new philosophy, new ethics, new science, new technology.
If a youth is smart, right now, she will do as Obama does, and extends the hand to plutocrats. And the plutocrats will fill that hand. Thus the smart go to the wolves. And the smartest, like Demosthenes, the philosopher who condemned Macedonia, they may as well swallow poison, before the state police grabs them, as Demosthenes did.
And what is taking poison with them is the highest and best of what makes the human spirit, and stagnation ensues. At best. At worst, great mayhem, as under the Nazis.
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Monday, January 10, 2011
How Economics & Morality Relate
AS CIVILIZATION BLOSSOMS SO DO FASCISM AND PLUTOCRACY.
Economics is house management. Morality is what endures. Yes, that's the origin of the word! Better: it has got to be the origin of the concept: what is right is what endures. If it were not right, it would not endure, indeed. Thus morality contains the concept of sustainability.
Best house management would have to be the one that endures. Indeed, if the economy does not endure, it collapses, thus so does the food production system, and part of the population will not survive.
Hence the best economy is moral, in other words. And redistribution of riches sufficient to prevent accumulation of riches caused by mathematics rather than merit is necessary.
Those who do not believe in redistribution in riches are more primitive that the Neolithics who produced sustainable societies on the scale of centuries. The Neolithics understood the exponential intuitively, and realized that riches brought ever more riches to the very top of society, the more they grew, and that had nothing to do with the merit of the individuals, families, groups or classes thus advantaged.
Piling up riches at the top made society, overall, poorer. Poorer in riches, poorer in culture, intelligence, mind stuff.
The great ages of Athens and Rome, and the Franks, were preceded by revolutions, forced income redistribution, and the destruction of plutocracies. Crete had no extravagant plutocracy (just significant oligarchies). The assassinations (Athens), rebellion (Rome), full war (Franks) turned society upside down, like the plow allows the rich soil down below to come to light.
It was violent, but the best society sprang forth, and made more advanced philosophy the law of the land. All sorts of goodness came out, from superlative economics and military, to excellent poetry, science, and further philosophy and law.
Why such goodness? Democracy blossoms minds in parallel. It is not just the "Open Society" Pericles and his philosophical advisers vaunted, it is the open minds of multitude of minds exchanging thoughts and feeling in an immense eco system of consciousness.
Plutocracy, and its associated fascism is all about a few taking all the decisions. Fascism is not new: it is the number one trick of primate defense. Baboons are expert fascist, when threats appear: they group up behind their most powerful leaders, female with the young hidden inside the group. Then the group does what the most powerful, most decisive males, the Golos, decide to do, and follow them as one: E PLURIBUS UNUM.
A chimpanzee variant of fascism occurs when chimps form a file, behind their leader, stop talking, and stealthily invade another group territory, in the hope of surprising an individual, and killing it. So fascism is so old, at least 40 million years, since there are the likes of baboons, and they thrive, that it has got to have become an instinct.
Plutocracy however is new, it's not in our biological inheritance, but an emerging property: it needed capital to exist. Long ago, capital was a harem, and a territory. But then the genus Homo appeared, and tools became capital too. When the Neolithic started, and the first cities appeared, capital became potentially gigantic: it could be a city, and extend over a country.
Some individuals, families, groups and finally classes were able to exploit the fascist instinct and the exponential, to create the new phenomenon of plutocracy.
The Neolithic was a total success: man took control of the planet. Capital and populations exploded by a factor of 10,000 for population, and much greater for capital.
Both fascism and the exponential exponentiate themselves to ever more tremendous heights as they grow (the growth of exponential is proportional to itself, just as capital and population do before disaster strikes). Thus they have become the nemeses of civilization, the more civilization grows.
Fascism exerts its seduction always. A case in point is what happens in democratic revolutions. They are born out of the desire by the People to redistribute riches. However, as adversity arises, fascism has to come to their defense.
An example is a Corsican artillery captain. Under the vengeful leadership of the British leader Pitt, anxious that France would not become more of a competitor to London after having a successful revolution, as Britain had a century earlier, the plan was conceived to invade France from Provence. Toulon and its two bays were conquered by an army and navy of British, Spanish and French royalists. The commanding republican generals were incompetent. Napoleon schemed to have them replace, then implemented his own plan, and attacked. He was seriously wounded by a bayonet , but the victory was total, and the British fleet, now exposed to French artillery, sailed away the next day. Napoleon was made into a general directly. He would soon lead French armies to great victories (other French generals did too, because, at that point France was republic fighting an obvious coalition of fascists, it was Greece versus Persia, all over again).
Napoleon was a military genius, thus everybody deduced, and especially himself, that he was a genius in all ways: the monkeys, when threatened, love to group up behind a smart, bold warrior. And when not threatened, it is easier to have just one guy doing all the thinking. In the end, Napoleon turned into a bloody tyrant who was still talking to his soldiers as if they were all "comrades" (a trick from Alexander and his "companions").
In the end, intellectual and political fascism led directly to Napoleon's disastrous campaign of 1812, the attempted submission of Russia. Napoleon a giant multinational European army of 700,000 in 5 months, because he was alone to take all the decisions, and thus took a lot of stupid ones. By then he did not have peers to put him back to sanity. That does not mean that plutocracy and fascism can always be corrected for the best. The Mayas collapsed, all by themselves, and stayed 98% collapsed by the time the Spanish showed up, six centuries later.
Right now, as relatively fewer and fewer Americans, go to state of the art schools, American society is ever becoming, relatively speaking, less of a state of the art society. Plutocracy does not mind; they always have India and China to invest in. But beware the history of Germany!
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Economics is house management. Morality is what endures. Yes, that's the origin of the word! Better: it has got to be the origin of the concept: what is right is what endures. If it were not right, it would not endure, indeed. Thus morality contains the concept of sustainability.
Best house management would have to be the one that endures. Indeed, if the economy does not endure, it collapses, thus so does the food production system, and part of the population will not survive.
Hence the best economy is moral, in other words. And redistribution of riches sufficient to prevent accumulation of riches caused by mathematics rather than merit is necessary.
Those who do not believe in redistribution in riches are more primitive that the Neolithics who produced sustainable societies on the scale of centuries. The Neolithics understood the exponential intuitively, and realized that riches brought ever more riches to the very top of society, the more they grew, and that had nothing to do with the merit of the individuals, families, groups or classes thus advantaged.
Piling up riches at the top made society, overall, poorer. Poorer in riches, poorer in culture, intelligence, mind stuff.
The great ages of Athens and Rome, and the Franks, were preceded by revolutions, forced income redistribution, and the destruction of plutocracies. Crete had no extravagant plutocracy (just significant oligarchies). The assassinations (Athens), rebellion (Rome), full war (Franks) turned society upside down, like the plow allows the rich soil down below to come to light.
It was violent, but the best society sprang forth, and made more advanced philosophy the law of the land. All sorts of goodness came out, from superlative economics and military, to excellent poetry, science, and further philosophy and law.
Why such goodness? Democracy blossoms minds in parallel. It is not just the "Open Society" Pericles and his philosophical advisers vaunted, it is the open minds of multitude of minds exchanging thoughts and feeling in an immense eco system of consciousness.
Plutocracy, and its associated fascism is all about a few taking all the decisions. Fascism is not new: it is the number one trick of primate defense. Baboons are expert fascist, when threats appear: they group up behind their most powerful leaders, female with the young hidden inside the group. Then the group does what the most powerful, most decisive males, the Golos, decide to do, and follow them as one: E PLURIBUS UNUM.
A chimpanzee variant of fascism occurs when chimps form a file, behind their leader, stop talking, and stealthily invade another group territory, in the hope of surprising an individual, and killing it. So fascism is so old, at least 40 million years, since there are the likes of baboons, and they thrive, that it has got to have become an instinct.
Plutocracy however is new, it's not in our biological inheritance, but an emerging property: it needed capital to exist. Long ago, capital was a harem, and a territory. But then the genus Homo appeared, and tools became capital too. When the Neolithic started, and the first cities appeared, capital became potentially gigantic: it could be a city, and extend over a country.
Some individuals, families, groups and finally classes were able to exploit the fascist instinct and the exponential, to create the new phenomenon of plutocracy.
The Neolithic was a total success: man took control of the planet. Capital and populations exploded by a factor of 10,000 for population, and much greater for capital.
Both fascism and the exponential exponentiate themselves to ever more tremendous heights as they grow (the growth of exponential is proportional to itself, just as capital and population do before disaster strikes). Thus they have become the nemeses of civilization, the more civilization grows.
Fascism exerts its seduction always. A case in point is what happens in democratic revolutions. They are born out of the desire by the People to redistribute riches. However, as adversity arises, fascism has to come to their defense.
An example is a Corsican artillery captain. Under the vengeful leadership of the British leader Pitt, anxious that France would not become more of a competitor to London after having a successful revolution, as Britain had a century earlier, the plan was conceived to invade France from Provence. Toulon and its two bays were conquered by an army and navy of British, Spanish and French royalists. The commanding republican generals were incompetent. Napoleon schemed to have them replace, then implemented his own plan, and attacked. He was seriously wounded by a bayonet , but the victory was total, and the British fleet, now exposed to French artillery, sailed away the next day. Napoleon was made into a general directly. He would soon lead French armies to great victories (other French generals did too, because, at that point France was republic fighting an obvious coalition of fascists, it was Greece versus Persia, all over again).
Napoleon was a military genius, thus everybody deduced, and especially himself, that he was a genius in all ways: the monkeys, when threatened, love to group up behind a smart, bold warrior. And when not threatened, it is easier to have just one guy doing all the thinking. In the end, Napoleon turned into a bloody tyrant who was still talking to his soldiers as if they were all "comrades" (a trick from Alexander and his "companions").
In the end, intellectual and political fascism led directly to Napoleon's disastrous campaign of 1812, the attempted submission of Russia. Napoleon a giant multinational European army of 700,000 in 5 months, because he was alone to take all the decisions, and thus took a lot of stupid ones. By then he did not have peers to put him back to sanity. That does not mean that plutocracy and fascism can always be corrected for the best. The Mayas collapsed, all by themselves, and stayed 98% collapsed by the time the Spanish showed up, six centuries later.
Right now, as relatively fewer and fewer Americans, go to state of the art schools, American society is ever becoming, relatively speaking, less of a state of the art society. Plutocracy does not mind; they always have India and China to invest in. But beware the history of Germany!
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Good Will Is Not Enough
Is the USA a bystander, or a perpetrator? We all know the answer. The USA is the world greatest polluter and consumer, once the factories working in China for the USA are considered.
As the wise has said, and will say, for evil to triumph, all it takes is for men, and countries, of good will, to do nothing. The USA has done nothing, once again, as happened when fascism rose. And evil will triumph. Again.
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
As the wise has said, and will say, for evil to triumph, all it takes is for men, and countries, of good will, to do nothing. The USA has done nothing, once again, as happened when fascism rose. And evil will triumph. Again.
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
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