Nothing can
positively be said of the Federal Court's forcing of homosexual
marriage upon the people. It is an era of concentrating wealth and
political power corrupting the polity, social moral norms and
degrading the prospects and reason of the people. Hitler's S.A. of
led by the homosexual Ernst Rohm had a comparable radicalism. The
Catholic Church in Mussolini's fascist state had a certain perhaps
necessary recalcitrance about expressing anti-fascist policy. A
polity incapable of violent revolt because of the concentration of
military power is inevitably doomed to experience the oppression and
dictates of ruling elites. Americans are permitted to have democracy
so long as they acquiesce in the will of the rich to inimically
degrade and dehumanize them. This is not the first instance of
systematic political corruption that is economically inefficient for
the masses.
Human nature
expressing itself in capitalism substantively co-opts the beneficial
aspects of free enterprise negating the hypothetical inventions and
individual allocations of opportunity and competition with
proprietary exploitation of advantage. The advantaged purge the less
advantaged from the field and import cheap labor not able to expect
government benefits or a right to vote. Serialized social-economic
purges of theoretical political peers permit concentration of wealth
and power in elites. As the broadcast media is controlled by
concentrated power a unofficial yet viable purge of antipathetic
political opinion occurs. Propaganda in support of the new social
order becomes normalized.
Human nature seeks
to totalize advantage over all land. Concentrated wealth would own
every possible place anyone might exist without paying tribute to the
rich power of control. Monarchy and aristocracy had absolute power
over people regarded as subjects. Subjects and those that cannot
exist in freedom any place without paying rent for existing to the
concentrated power are effectively slaves. Though the developing new
planetary slavery may not form on a particularly racist basis with
equal opportunity enslavement for all, may yet be a developing
condition wherein no human might exist free of enslavement to the
Plutonomy.
Karl Barth wrote of
a prior era...quote-
Only the clever
English, perhaps one of the few nations really gifted politically
foresaw in time the folly of this development, though they were just
as penetrated by the spirit of absolutism as the rest, and introduced
checks which spared them the catastrophe to which the system by its
nature must lead.
This political
absolutism from above has, as is known, two variants. They have in
fact crossed and mingled in many ways; their roots are one, but they
may be clearly distinguished. The principle 'through power to power'
had of course also a non-military aspect. This could consist in the
princely display of splendour and pomp at which Louis XIV was so
inventive, even creative, setting a baleful example which was widely
followed. The name of Versailles has thrice had great
historical significance resulting in grave consequences. The first
time it was as the prototype and symbol of a princely attitude to
life and form of life, based on unqualified power. From this life
there flowed a brilliance, like the glory of a god, into
architecture, the gardens and parks, the decoration in the houses,
into comforts and enjoyments of every kind, but above all into the
transitory but all the more intoxicating splendour of the
festivities. Far beyond the boundaries of France there
arose small and miniature imitations of Versailles whose
princely and noble inhabitants attempted, with more or less luck and
dignity and taste, to emulate Louis XIV.
After his death the
Regent Philip of Orleans, then Louis' grandson, Louis XV,
in Germany Augustus the Strong of Saxony, Eberhard
Ludwig, Karl Alexander, and Karl Eugen of Wurtemberg, Max Emanuel and
Karl Theodor of Bavaria, Ludwig IX of Hesse, and many
others, were absolute princes of this kind. The notorious immorality,
even debauchery, the just as notorious financial transactions, and
the scandalous arbitrariness of justice at all these courts, was
perhaps not the necessary, but as has happened in all similar
phenomena in history the practical, consequence of the representation
which one thought to be owing and that not without some logic to the
conception of the prince by divine right.”
“The idea
inevitably presupposed great demands upon the economy of the country,
which were made with an astonishing unconcern not to speak of the
sons of Hesse and Brunswick who were sold out of
hand to America! And ironically enough the command was in fact
often not in the hands of its true possessor, but largely and for all
to see in those of a woman sometimes, admittedly, in those of a woman
far from unfitted for such an office, but only in a derivative sense
can her rule ever have been described as by the grace of God. But all
these things cannot and must not blind us to the tremendous stimulus
imparted to economic and artistic life by the fantastic burgeoning of
absolutism.
Neither must we
forget that the luxury these potentates cultivated, though so dubious
in many respects, acted in practice as a safety valve and corrective
against the possibility of a universal state of war, which should
really have been the logical consequence of the general principle
'through power to power' and of dynastic cabinet politics.
If it had not been
for the Sun-king's notion of the unfolding of power and the relative
enervation which was involved herein, Louis himself and all the other
God-kings might well with the absolute power they had arrogated have
reduced Europe to even greater disasters than those they did in fact
cause. Lastly it should be added that anyone who failed to sense not
only the pathos imparted by lavishness of ideas, space and materials,
but the underlying, unending and truly insatiable yearning in the
midst of sensual delight which emanates from every line and form of
the art of the age would be guilty of badly misunderstanding those
artistic and architectural monuments of that time which still hold a
meaning for us. It is this eternal yearning which is the style's
inmost beauty, a beauty peculiarly moving for all the horror which is
sometimes apt to seize the beholder.
Besides this kind
of political absolutism there was another, going by the name of
enlightened absolutism. It is possible for the 'through power to
power' principle to manifest itself in depth rather than in extent,
rationally rather than aesthetically. In that case it takes the form
of experiments in social reform in the technical advance of
civilization, in agriculture, industry and in the economic sphere in
general, in health measures and policies designed to benefit the
population as a whole. There are attempts to improve the state of the
law, but also to advance the arts and sciences, to raise the general
standard of education in short all sorts of measures tending to the
so-called 'welfare' of the subjects of the state. In chastising a
Jew, Frederick William I says: 'You should love me rather than fear
me, love me, I say! ‘”
“There is no
blinking the fact, either, that Frederick's state had to be a welfare
state a Frederick naturally sees farther than the usual run of
despots in order to be precisely as welfare state a state worshipping
power, an absolute state. The fact remains that the measure of wisdom
and rectitude with which the king happened to be endowed, together
with the limitations imposed upon these qualities by his highly
individual character, his taste and his whims limitations common to
every mortal had the significance of destiny for his people, his
country and for every individual within his realms a destiny which
like God could bless or punish, might cherish or destroy, and could
do so without let of appeal to any higher law.”
It is of course
possible to question whether that other policy, pursued in the Middle
Ages in the name of the imperial ideal, ever became a reality
anywhere. But there was at least a chance that it might be realized
while it was still at least an active point of reference
(question-able in itself but at least fairly well-defined) within the
framework of the imperial ideal. It was when this fell away that the
realization of such a policy became impossible. For when the prince's
power was made absolute, a step which brought with it the death of
the imperial ideal, the prerequisite of such a policy, the very
notion of a concrete responsibility, of a higher authority, was
removed also, and in its place there arose the state without a
master, or alternatively the state governed by an arbitrary master,
beneath whose sway, even if he were the best of all possible
monarchs, justice was a matter of pure chance.
We have taken the
one kind of political absolutist, the absolute prince, as the first
for discussion. The second kind, his perfectly legitimate brother,
his alter ego, following in his footsteps as inevitably as the
darkness following the light, as the thunder following the lightning,
is the absolute revolutionary or perhaps it would be better to say,
since his predecessor was already a revolutionary the revolutionary
from below, the representative of the lower class, who conceiving
those above him to have injured him in his rights, and even to have
deprived him of them, takes steps to defend himself by snatching the
power lying in the hands of the governing princes in order that he
might now determine without let of appeal what is right and just,
because he in his turn has the power in his hands. The roles are
reversed. Whereas before it had been the prince who had declared
himself to be identical with the state, it was now the people, the
'nation', as it at this time began to be called, who assumed the
title by means of a simple inversion of Louis XIV's dictum. This
happened true to type in Paris on the 17th June, 1789.
The representatives of the so-called third estate, who were, be it
remembered, the delegates of that section of the population of
France which was in the overwhelming majority, formed themselves
into a 'National Assembly 9 and three days later declared with a
collective oath, that they were determined in the teeth of all
opposition never to disband until they had given the state a new
constitution.
Everything that
happened afterwards, up to the execution of Louis XVI and beyond, was
a direct result of this event. Its inner logic is, however, as
follows. (We shall restrict ourselves in the following to the two
classic revolutionary documents, the Declaration of Independence of
the United States of America of June 1776 and the Statement
of Human and Civil Rights ratified by the French National Assembly in
August 1789). According to the revolutionary doctrine there exists a
self-evident truth which can and must be recognized and announced en
presence et sous les auspices de verre supreme:
1. All men are
equal, i.e. created with equal rights (Am.), or
alternatively (as
in the Fr.), born with equal rights.
2. These equal
rights are of nature, inalienable, sacred (Fr.), endowed by their
creator (Am.).
3. Their names are
freedom, property, security and the right to protect oneself from
violence (Fr.) or: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (Am.).
The French statement goes on to make a special point of saying that
freedom consists in being able to do anything which does not harm
anybody and is not as such forbidden by law. And it also considers
the right to property important enough to describe it in a special
last article as inviolable et sacral
4. It is in order
to protect these rights that governments are instituted among men
(Am.). Le but de toute association publique est la conservation des
droits . . . de I'homme (Fr.).
5. Governments
derive their just authority from the consent of the
governed. Le
principe de toute souverainite' reside essentiellement dans la
nation. All authority exercised by individuals or corporate bodies
stems expressly from the people.
6. The law is V
expression de la volonte finale so all must have a part in making it,
all are equal in its eyes and every office and honour for which it
provides are as a matter of principle open to all.
7. Whenever a form
of government becomes injurious to the aims
of the state, i.e.
to the upholding of the rights aforementioned it is the people's
right to remove it and replace it by a government more conducive to
their safety and happiness. It will be advisable not to proceed too
hastily in such an event, but once it has become plain that a
government is seeking to establish absolute despotism it is not only
the citizen's right but his duty to free himself of its yoke.”-end
quote
The
Tao of American Capitalism
26 Oct. 2014
American capitalism
in the post-cold war era hasn't evolved felicitously like a
development of four season building interior ecosystems optimally
adapting in each new transformative directed evolution. Instead
capital investment has flowed abroad to new economic frontiers such
as China, India and Mexico as well as relocating production over
there. In the leaky bucket economic criterion for American capitalism
keeping capital investment in the U.S.A. is in opposition to
operative Taoist principles of a watercourse way flowing capital
overseas to the easiest correspondent pool of capital increase.
Corporate revenue
streams may increase in the flow to richer networks downhill drawing
in a thousand rivulets into consolidated corporate flows yet the
redirection of capital tends to dry up the U.S. National economic
opportunities for the majority of the nation whom are poor and middle
class. One might envisage a two-or three stage reformed taxation
principle of progressive taxation on corporate profit yet the
challenges of innovating new forms of enhanced tax structures are
substantial. Unlike interior décor that automatically rearranges
itself and reconfigures itself along Taoist principles at minimal
cost that could be technologically adduced in some futurist scenario
taxation or economic reform by Democratic government becomes
increasingly opposed by the shear power of concentrated capital flow.
As capital
investment has flowed abroad with labor so one might anticipate
intellectual work to flow abroad as well. Globalization of an
intellectual labor pool may find lowest cost intellectual piecework
competition with Americans on a level field with Chinese and Indian
intellectuals. Spanish speaking language requirements will be
outsourced to via Internet piecework bidding for work. Capitalism in
effect will become alienated from the U.S.A. as a nation as it
imports cheap foreign labor to drive down the wage value of remaining
American labor.
A bright spot for
American capitalists is that taxes may be lowered further with the
concept that production will remain or return. Tax rates are perhaps
not as meaningful to the decision to outsource work as labor costs
and market location. As the second and third world nations move up it
would be more efficient to locate production closer to the preferred
market consumers.
American workers
are encouraged to take on student debt training costs for jobs that
may not exist or that will become outsourced. Home mortgages that are
indexed through globalization to rates investors are willing to pay
through derivatives may rise above the ability of the poor and middle
class to afford.
With thirty-year
home mortgages, disruption in quality employment may break the
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase and pay for a home before
old age or death. Plainly divorce and homosexual marriage will change
the dynamics of home ownership and increase of capital by the poor
and middle class in a stable, affordable environment, and that may
well affect the ability for parents to pass on their home as an
inheritance with a modest capital value increase to the next
generation. The default is toward renting and a trickling upward of
wealth from the poor and middle class to globalists' concentrated
proprietary capital. Networked outlets of global capital vacuum up
the financial floor assets of the middle class and poor
redistributing wealth from the nation to a plutocratic global ocean.
Developing of oil
field fracking technology has brought a steady increase in American
oil field production from previously depleted fields. One might
reasonably anticipate global oilfields depleted during the
20th century also will be partially revived by future fracking
and that too will increase production from old fields and lower
global oil costs.
Oil per barrel has
already dropped to the low $90s and one might anticipate a price as
low as $45 to $60 in the coming years. Russia’s depleted Baku oil
fields, Iran’s under-productive reserves and those of Pemex, Saudi,
Nigeria and so forth will get their fracking steroid shots
endangering underground water quality too yet dumping millions and
millions of barrels of effective new oil onto the world market.
Plainly that calls for Congress to swiftly pass a permanent
alternative energy production tax exemption to let solar, wind and
fuel cell power plus remain competitive with fossil fuel burning.
Creating a base
service economy boom in the U.S.A. the next decade with low-paying
jobs as in the Clinton years with increasing deregulation of Wall
Street and the rich may concentrate wealth at an accelerating pace.
Returning global investments to buy up American properties will also
continue as the majority of Americans experience life ruled by a
Plutonomy.
U.S. Public Debt
May Reach $19.9 Trillion in 2016- 51 New American Billionaires in
2014
17 Sept. 2014
Thought the U.S.
public debt is $19.9 trillion…
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
There were
reportedly 51 new American billionaires in 2014 with an average worth
of more than 3 billion each. The world's 2600 billionaires have 7.3
trillion bucks. Its lucky they run personal finance better than the
public sector. President Obama's economic policies sent so much
cash via interest free loans to Wall Street banks their way along
with tax cuts.
