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Global Financial Crisis
One of the big problems I’m sort of seeing on the ground in a small way amidst this great economic disaster which is unfurling itself like a flag of surrender across this once great nation is that with major corporations and so-called “respectable” financial institutions stumbling, it gives the ordinary person a sort of emotional free pass to act foolishly when it comes to finances. Not that most people in America aren’t dead stupid when it comes to things like money, debt and credit (myself included), but now that it’s exposed that these behaviors go all the way up the ladder, it seems like the social glue of responsible behavior in times like these begins to come undone.
Another note: remember back in the day when I was doing a whole bunch of research on the shadowy group calling itself “Technocracy”, and that dude Skip Sievert was lurking about? Well, their literature and propaganda kept harping on this one point about the “price system” and how it was all F-ed up. Allegedly, they came about during the last Great Depression, and one of their goons was basically responsible for “Peak Oil” as a concept, Hubbert’s Peak, I believe it’s also called after him. I wonder: was that group really so prescient way back when, or did they just sort of get lucky on all this stuff? I believe one of the other central concepts underlying the switchover to a “technocratic system of government” (in which scientists ruled - openly, that is) was some kind of public catastrophe. Though I’ve moved away from the crash and collapse theory that pervades certain corners of the internet, it occurs to me that the twin terrors of a global financial meltdown, and global warming, etc may very well be enough upon which to predicate such an extravagant mess that people would indeed begin calling for a wholly other system to save us from the mistakes we were lead into making in the past… Not sure I necessarily support their model as a replacement to ours (I actually love the base concept of “America” the beautiful), but pieces are being moved into place which may force the common man to become something of an economic and social philosopher as what was once commonplace and overlooked begins to decay and crumble.
October 7th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
I mean, how seriously can you take your own miniscule credit card debt when shit like this is going on in the world:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/business/economy/08insure.html
October 8th, 2008 at 11:06 am
It’s some bullshit, that’s for sure. Did you hear about how that Dick Fuld guy at Lehman Brothers got punched in the face at the company gym after Lehman annouced they were going bankrupt?
Also of note, in regards to economic crisis + ecological crisis, a new movie. It’s Zardoz without the impotence! =)
October 8th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Short answer: the Technocracy people were that prescient. As was Buckminster Fuller. As were many people. If you haven’t had a chance, read the “Leagally Piggily” chapter in Fuller’s Critical Path. He documents financial shenanigans from the Depression onward. Though the book was written in the late 70s, he advocated using design science to alleviate global problems from the 30s on.
Another good book to read (unfortunately you are not likely to find it in a library) is the self-published Creature from Jekyll Island. This book is about the history of money and specifically the creation of the Federal Reserve. While I don’t agree with the author’s conclusions or political stance the book remains an excellent, accessible introduction to monetary policy and the influence it has had throughout history.
I read Critical Path, Creature and Green Capital in the summer of 2001 and together the books made a profound impact on my understanding of history and current events. They are all worth checking out! Enjoy . . .
October 8th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
PS. After interacting online with many different people who claimed to represent the “true” Technocracy movement, I have to officially say that I don’t trust any of it.
October 8th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
http://technocracy-technate.blogspot.com/
Our political Price System is an antique and barbaric system. Technology destroys purchasing power, by energy conversion, mechanization… making jobs, or so called ‘’work'’ more of a social control mechanism, than something important.
Tim… M. King Hubbert
‘'’and one of their goons was basically responsible for “Peak Oil” as a concept, Hubbert’s Peak, I believe it’s also called after him. ‘'’
M. King Hubbert was… and probably is still, one of the most famous Geo-scientists produced by America. He also was one of several main writers of the … in which the technate design plan is presented.
That plan is and was always secular and humanitarian based. It precludes any sort of special interest groups from controlling citizens with so called morality … ethics.. aesthetics etc. It uses energy accounting and not money.
October 8th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
A main author of the Technocracy Study Course… is what I meant to say above.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Some people seem prescient because they can recognize structures others can’t. They can see trends. Pattern recognition. Its how IQ is measured. Buckminster Fuller is a good example. A designer.
Also most propaganda is designed to hide these structures from the public. So you can’t just buy the mainstream view you kind of have to come up with your own theories to describe these structures. For example Bucky’s “Great Pirate” Theory of history.
Some stuff seems like “conspiracy whacko” stuff when its just people connecting the dots.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:41 am
But basically, the World has been ruled by pirates. The ones that worked their way to the top of the food chain.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:52 am
One thing that is a trick of the way the human mind works, is that people that CAN connect the dots, encounter “fringe groups” like Skip’s group, that confirm some things that you may have always suspected, but that he mainstream media, denies, and because of that, you initially give credence to a bunch of their other theories.
But there is no “Technocracy” secret or otherwise. Scientists don’t rule the world. I say “world” in the Jesus sense “Love not the World” etc.The world is and has been ruled by Pirates, not nerds. Scientists are nerds. Most of them work for the Pirates. There is a big communication gap in this chain of command that has developed over the last hundred years or so. Bucky wrote that this gap was so big that the Great pirates were rendered unable to be in control and had had died out.
I don’t think this is entirely true.
But anyway a Pirate is a person willing to employ violence in order to gain wealth and Status. There are no shortage of people like this. But there are different levels of ability. Levels of organizational skill and more importantly levels of a head start different groups have had in playing the game. But if you under stand how a pimp or a Mafia Don operates, you understand how pirates on an international scale with the worlds largest economies and militaries behind them operate. Its the same animal.
Pirates operates on the basis of the five senses. To get to the top you need to be a “successful psychopath” smarter than the average bear, able to connect the dots, build protection rackets, employ organized violence. But psychopaths, lack the ability of introspection. And they can’t percieve any underlying reality to the world beyond the five senses. They are not spiritual. They are nihilists.
But the pirates figured out long ago to control the nerds and get them to work for them instead of in competition with them. They set up schools, to keep the brightest people studying inside a narrow field and not to stray outside the boundaries of their expertise. The pirates alone could see (and thus control) the big picture.
The Universe is pretty big and stretches pretty far to the really really vast and to the infinitesimally small. So the nerds eventually studdied their way into the infinitesimally small so far that the pirates lost touch with them.
Advanced chemistry and quantum physics has revealed a world, a Universe, structured much the way it had been described by ancient Hindu, Hebrew, etc. Seers and Mystics.
Its not the Five sense perceptual world of Newtonian physics.
So the Pirates should no longer BE ABLE TO control the scientists, but they still pretty much do. Because most scientists aren’t really that brilliant and don’t have much of a backbone or a desire to buck the status quo. Even ones that study fields like quantum physics that has the potentaial to really unite science and spirituality are still married for whatever reason to a materialistic worldview.
At the same time that Republican Administrations have been defunding Universities, Corporations have been funding them and turning them into wings of their own corporations. Phds are bought and sold and working for all the big pirate ruled corporations before they graduate.
So the pirates are smart and powerful, but not all that smart. They still think like pimps and mafia dons, which is basically what they are. And the smart people are willing to go along with their system in exchange for security and being free from the burden of sticking their neck out and bucking the system.
But the whole purpose of the system is for a bunch of pirates to act like pirates. That bit about the plus AIG exec retreat tells the whole story.
Its a system that can’t last forever. The recent financial crisis is just a variation on a theme. Nerds creating complex financial instruments to serve the pirates. The pirates don’t really understand them, the public can’t understand them. The nerds could create instruments that benefiet society as a whole but they don’t. They create things for the pirates. The pirates are insane so obviously this system can’t last and it makes a big mess of the World.
October 10th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
The thing is, these “pirates” don’t know what they’re doing any more. Knowledge has become too complex for any one person to understand anything, we need to be able to rely on each other to be trustworthy sources of information. As people are saying now, it’s lack of trust that’s bankrupting the system. The usefulness of the “pirate” mentality has come to an end.
See Nassim Nicholas Taleb in regards to the misuse of complex financial instrument. Or the New York Times.