As remarked above, in a typical gift economy, gift recipients are expected to give something in return, such as political support, military services and general loyalty, or even return gifts and favors. This was common in warrior societies where kings and chieftains gave freely to their followers and could expect their loyal service in return. Such systems have social sanctions built in to punish freeloaders or miserly chiefs. A default punishment would be to halt gifts or services from one party to the alleged party in wrong. Typical sanctions might also include a bad reputation, formal eviction from the lord’s hall, a challenge to a duel, or public ridicule. A stingy lord would find it difficult to attract followers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rom_baro

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2008.../11/carnival-culture-05-le-chevalier/
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2008...16/carnival-culture-06-peace-keepers/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collegia

And I can’t believe I didn’t mention sports teams and athletic associations…

That’s what taxes started out as “protection money”

Absolutely, I meant to add these as links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribute
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage

And it’s why groups like the FOP have aggressive phone campaigns to collect money, and then they send you stickers in the mail which award you certain recognition in the eyes of some police officers

There have been powerful families in America all along that never liked democracy. Their mindset was with Europe and England. These are the Anglophiles. Tocqueville talks about this. Its been an ongoing process to transform free enterprise into Corpratism. But it was the goal of the beginning.

Originally people were mostly self employed and slowly most have been turned into workers.

And Empire was never the American mindset from the perspective of regular people. Empire is a British thing a Roman thing.

Democracy really has been a phenomenon here in the US unlike other countries. But yet these Warlord type dudes in the US supress democracy abroad. Its kind of a weird thing. Like for axample the CIA will assasinate some democratically elected leader in Latin America and then some writer from that country will get morally outraged about it and end up coming to the US and teaching at a University and writing books, eventually he’ll acknowledge true democracy, freedom of speech etc. really exists here in the US.

But you should really read Alexis de Tocqueville. He was a true aristocrat, really studying democracy in America as it was unfolding. He even predicted all the pitfalls we later fall into with it, like private enterprise being taken over by corporations.

But anyway one interesting phenomenon, is that in Latin America there are all these indians. But in the US there are hardly any. I think its because Warlordism is a backward mentality, in the sense that it slows progress. What happened in America was that there were all these free and equal, really industrious (greedy) people, creative, moving through the land and rapidly transforming it. The indians were disenfranchised from it, and eventually killed off and put in reservations, because they never really assimilated. Not fast enough anyway. It wasn’t really a fullscale genocide. It was just people transforming the area really fast trying to make a quick buck. Turning all aspects of life into a cash economy, private property etc.

In Latin America its always been huge class stratification. The indians were slowly turned into peasants and the Europeans for the most part remained European in outlook. Progress was slow. Feudalism is slow. It halts progress. People at the bottom give up on moving up in status. The Latin American Conquistador types actually did more deliberate slaughter of the Indians, but yet there are millions of Indians there still.

What it is, is that these Warlord types are like parasites or predators. They don’t produce anything. Its all just a big protection racket. That’s what taxes started out as “protection money”

So Democracy is like a huge garden of creativity. It just blossoms into all this wealth. Warlords don’t create wealth they just fight to control it. So US warlords are more powerful than say Afgani Warlords mostly because they are Warlords over mostly free productive people.

But anyway Freedom and democracy is a real phenomenon that runs counter to this Warlord (really psychopathic when it comes down to it) mentality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/world/americas/17mexico.html?_r=2&hp

Its ironic that really primitive thinking people are in the highest escelons of Global Power.

It’s like you were talking about a while back with the pirate lords…

It doesn’t work with just any group. Hmong and Beduins have a certian mentality. I think they resonate to a certian frequency. This warlike tribal frequency. The people I call “illuminati” can be looked at simply as a dominant tribal group.

These frequencies attract each other. Like for example consider this connection:

The Skull and Bones was behind getting the Chinese hooked on Opium. So basically they were dope dealers.

The Hmong, grew the actual Opium. They moved into Laos and Vietnam from China and there the French took over the monopoly of the Opium trade.

The Hmong are tough as nails fighters btw, way tougher than the lowland tribes. Kind of like SE Asian Beduins maybe.

(incidentally some dumb rednecks here in Wisconsin screwed with a tresspassing Hmong deer hunter and he went all guerilla fighter on their asses and killed a whole bunch of them, right here in the Northwoods. The Hmong were brought here by the CIA.)

So anyway, the CIA connection with Skull and Bones is really strong. So you see these same connections playing out in repeating patterns. The Hmong split up into two feuding factions and the CIA worked with the anti Communist faction.

But it was the other faction that defeated the French Opium Lords.

So, OK, going to your overall thesis, you say your personality doesn’t really fit this Warlord mentality.

Me neither for the most part, except part of me is kind of drawn to it. It just holds my interest.

But anyway IMO, or not so much opinion, but really my conviction, is that this is a passing evolutionary stage of humanity. This Warlord mentality.

Its really a primitive tribal mindset. Its ironic that really primitive thinking people are in the highest escelons of Global Power. Its the archetype of the Lion.

Robert Anton Wilson called it “hostile Strength”

Its on the way out. I really think that. Its reached its apex and is going to decline. There are more highly evolved ways of doing things.

But the combination of an Predatory animal mindset and advanced scientific knowledge is why we have nuclear weapons.