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https://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec20/cycles-systems12-20.html

Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum

Contrary to first impressions, I am not a doom-and-gloomer; I'm a systems-cycles-er, meaning I'm interested in where systems and cycles are heading.

Cycles work because we're still running Wetware 1.0 which entered beta testing around 200,000 years ago and was released, bugs and all, around 50,000 years ago. Since the processes and inputs haven't changed, neither do the outputs.

Nature is a mix of dynamic, semi-chaotic systems (fractals, etc.) and cyclical patterns which tend to operate within predictable parameters. Why should human nature and human constructs (societies, economies and political realms) be any different?

So longterm success breeds complacency, hubris, economic and intellectual sclerosis, draining political infighting and the overproduction of parasitic elites, to use Peter Turchin's apt description. Consumption of resources expands to soak up every last bit of what's available and then the supply of goodies plummets for a multitude of completely natural and predictable reasons (sunspot/solar activity, El Nino, etc.) and a host of unpredictable but equally natural semi-chaotic extremes (100-year droughts, floods, etc.).

Wetware 1.0's go-to solutions to all such difficulties are rather limited:

1. Ramp up magical thinking. If a couple of human sacrifices ensured good harvests in the good old days, let's slaughter a couple hundred now--and if that doesn't work, then...

2. Do more of what's failed spectacularly and slaughter a couple thousand fellow humans, because darn it, maybe everything will turn around if we just kill another couple dozen.

This requires ignoring the novelty of the current challenges and clinging to what worked so well in the past even as whatever worked in the past can't possibly work now because circumstances are fundamentally different.

3. Seek scapegoats. It's those darn witches. Burn a bunch of them and our troubles will magically disappear.

4. Go take what we need from some other tribe. What's our oil doing under their sand?

5. Consolidate power and wealth in the hands of elites whose failures exacerbated the crisis. Because the obvious solution (to the elites with cushy offices around the palaces and temples) to repeated failures of a leadership that only excels in one thing, squandering rapidly depleting resources on infighting and self-aggrandizement, is to give us all the remaining wealth and power. Hey, this makes perfect sense once you understand #2 above.

6. Demand sacrifices of the many to protect the privileges of the few. The Empire needs some warm bodies to fend off the Barbarians, because it would be a real shame if the Barbarians reached our palatial estates and disrupted the flow of wine and festivities. No worries when you come back on your shield; the bureaucracy will give you a decent burial and your spouse and kids can join the multitude of half-starved beggars waiting for the dwindling distributions of bread and circuses. But never mind that, did you hear about the upcoming games in the Coliseum? Good seats are going fast.

7. Eat your seed corn to keep the party going awhile longer. Not every human group had the luxury of borrowing "money" to keep the fast-unraveling party going awhile longer, so they consumed their seed corn and drained the last of their reserves--which is the same thing as borrowing "money" from a future with diminishing resources and productivity.

8. Maintain supreme confidence that "it will all work out fine because it's always worked out fine" without any sacrifice required of "those who count." What's forgotten is that the luxe greatness that is now teetering on the precipice of ruin was won by the sacrifices of the elites far exceeding the sacrifices of the many.

Back in the day, joining the elite and maintaining one's position required constant sacrifices on behalf of the common good, and strict adherence to public virtue. Now that's all forgotten, and all that remains are elites possessed by the demons of shameless greed and self-interest.

The idea that debt, leverage, speculation, greed, exploitation and parasitic elites can expand exponentially forever is magical thinking. Yet that is precisely what America and the rest of the global economic order insists is true and will always be true, forever and ever.

By all means, reject those horrid, awful doom-and-gloomers who look at systems and cycles. Everything will be fine as long as you secure seats for the next games at the Coliseum--they should be spectacular--but not in the way you expect.  

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56026.htm

America’s Sick Priorities

The US Congress is pushing through another record-breaking military budget this week while tens of millions of Americans are staring into the abyss of Christmas misery from poverty and disease. The twisted priorities of Washington’s politicians show the American political system is sick beyond words.

With hardly a hitch, the Democrat-controlled House voted for a $740-billion military spend for the following year. The Senate is also expected to follow suit and pass the bill in short order. President Trump is griping about it, not because of the increased fiscal largesse, but because the bill contains an add-on measure to rename military bases named after Civil War Confederate generals. Talk about absurd political correctness!

Meanwhile over half the nation’s population of 330 million are haunted by deprivation exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Tens of millions have lost their jobs, and as many more again are facing eviction from their houses due to unpaid debts.

Hospitals in every state are struggling to cope with the surge in people sickened by the Covid-19 virus as the death toll in the US heads towards 300,000 since the pandemic erupted nearly nine months ago. The US has by far the biggest number of deaths from the disease in the world, yet its citizens are abandoned without adequate social welfare and medical care.

Americans are crying out for urgent economic assistance to cope with unemployment and to put food on the table for their families, and yet their Congress is still wrangling and delaying over passing a pandemic relief bill because “it would cost too much”.

One easy fix would be if the US military budget was re-directed to meet social needs and the burgeoning plight of its citizens struggling with poverty and disease.

Another source of relief and possible social reconstruction would be if a reasonable, progressive tax was levied on the inordinate elite wealth in a nation where a handful of billionaires possess as much capital as half of the population.

A study published this week by Americans for Tax Fairness found that US billionaires increased their net wealth by $1,000 billion since the pandemic broke out in March. Yes, that’s right: in just nine months, the billionaire class increased their combined wealth by $1 trillion.

    “Never before has America seen such an accumulation of wealth in so few hands,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness.

He poignantly added: “As tens of millions of Americans suffer from the health and economic ravages of this pandemic, a few hundred billionaires add to their massive fortunes. Their pandemic profits are so immense that America’s billionaires could pay for a major Covid relief bill and still not lose a dime of their pre-virus riches.”

It should therefore be no surprise that the US is collapsing from the pandemic. That society is in death throes because of its endemic pathological political economy which the pandemic is but ruthlessly exposing.

The American political class is bought and paid for by billionaires who want endless wars to feed the military-industrial complex and endless tax privileges to feed their insatiable and irrational wealth accumulation. The political system is divorced from the needs of the vast majority who are left to die in poverty, disease and deprivation.

America is the antithesis of “democracy” despite all the brainwashing to the contrary declaring virtuous “exceptionalism” and “greatness”. It is a putrid plutocracy, run by and for the obscenely wealthy and their political flunkies in Washington, many of whom are plutocrats themselves.

Donald Trump didn’t change the system, and neither will Joe Biden. They aren’t even capable of conceiving of the necessary changes needed. The task is way beyond a mere change in personnel in the White House or in the Congress. What needs to change is the entire system which is organized to function as a plutocratic wealth and war-generating machine. That will require mass action by organized political consciousness. The ultimate priority is delivering for social need over private profit, requiring the breaking of capitalism and its chains on human potential.

Republicans and Democrats, including millionaires like self-declared “socialist” Bernie Sanders and other so-called progressives, are part of the problem, not the solution.

The supposed right-left divide in US politics is a mirage. An absurd illusion. Both parties are two faces of the same gold doubloon that always ends up in the bottomless pockets of the rich – the bankers, corporations and war-racketeers.

When any entity is so absolutely corrupt it inevitably becomes outwardly moribund. The misery of American people is reflected in the death and suffering of so many others around the world from the US wars, from Afghanistan to Yemen and beyond. Sick priorities produce more sickness and death. The evidence is staring us in the face.