It looks like Peacenik isn't the only one wondering about how our dystopian present will play out. Yesterday Charles Hugh Smith was writing about a devolutionary spiral. Today Yves Lavinge is wondering when the middle class will snap. Peacenik is finding it curious and worrisome that more and more people are finding it difficult to understand how the sheeple are letting themselves be raped and pillaged....without objection.
It seems to Peacenik that the only thing holding society together right now is society's willful ignorance. The Oil Drum had this interesting post on this the other day, Does knowledge of the collapse contribute to the collapse? What will it take to get you off your ass and into the streets with a pitch fork? Hunger? Homelessness? Sickness? Revenge? Hopelessness? How much longer is society going to hold the illusion together that things are ok....or might be ok? Peacenik doesn't think much longer. Have a good weekend.
Naked Capitalism
A paradox arises to the extent that it is true that the market is dependent on normative underpinning (to provide the pre-contractural foundations such as trust, cooperation, and honesty) which all contractural relations require: The more people accept the neoclasical paradigm as a guide for their behavior, the more the ability to sustain a market economy is undermined. This holds for all those who engage in transactions without ever-present inspectors, auditors, lawyers, and police: if they do not limit themselves to legitimate (i.e. normative) means of competition out of internlized values, the system will collapse, because the transaction costs of a fully or even highly "policed" system are prohibitive. This holds even more so for the regulators that every market requires. If those whose duty it is to set and to enforce the rules of the game are out to maximize their own profits, a-la-Public Choice, there is no hope for the system
Amitai Etzioni, The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics
I’ve been amazed at the complacency of Americans in the face of rape and pillage by the moneyed classes. Of course, I underestimate the impact of overwork and media brainwashing. If you are a member of the dwindling middle class, you are probably devoting all your energies to hanging on to your job and trying to be a decent partner and for those with families, parent. Any kind of sustained political action (unless you grew up with it in a serious way) is unlikely to rate as high as a tertiary concern. In our total information society, protesting has high odds of getting one’s mug in a video that could come back to haunt you. An arrest would show up in a background check. What a great way to keep the peasantry in line.
Read on...
It seems to Peacenik that the only thing holding society together right now is society's willful ignorance. The Oil Drum had this interesting post on this the other day, Does knowledge of the collapse contribute to the collapse? What will it take to get you off your ass and into the streets with a pitch fork? Hunger? Homelessness? Sickness? Revenge? Hopelessness? How much longer is society going to hold the illusion together that things are ok....or might be ok? Peacenik doesn't think much longer. Have a good weekend.
Naked Capitalism
A paradox arises to the extent that it is true that the market is dependent on normative underpinning (to provide the pre-contractural foundations such as trust, cooperation, and honesty) which all contractural relations require: The more people accept the neoclasical paradigm as a guide for their behavior, the more the ability to sustain a market economy is undermined. This holds for all those who engage in transactions without ever-present inspectors, auditors, lawyers, and police: if they do not limit themselves to legitimate (i.e. normative) means of competition out of internlized values, the system will collapse, because the transaction costs of a fully or even highly "policed" system are prohibitive. This holds even more so for the regulators that every market requires. If those whose duty it is to set and to enforce the rules of the game are out to maximize their own profits, a-la-Public Choice, there is no hope for the system
Amitai Etzioni, The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics
I’ve been amazed at the complacency of Americans in the face of rape and pillage by the moneyed classes. Of course, I underestimate the impact of overwork and media brainwashing. If you are a member of the dwindling middle class, you are probably devoting all your energies to hanging on to your job and trying to be a decent partner and for those with families, parent. Any kind of sustained political action (unless you grew up with it in a serious way) is unlikely to rate as high as a tertiary concern. In our total information society, protesting has high odds of getting one’s mug in a video that could come back to haunt you. An arrest would show up in a background check. What a great way to keep the peasantry in line.
Read on...
