Charles Hugh Smith created this chart way back when to show the vast complex dedicated to preserving the status quo and offers this related comment now:
There is a peculiar divide between the conventional and unconventional perception of the resilience/vulnerability of the Status Quo.
The conventional view sees the Status Quo as stable and powerful enough to weather any threat or storm short of a full-scale thermonuclear war (i.e. an exchange of 1,000+ nuclear warheads) or climate catastrophe (meltdown of the Antarctic ice cap, etc.).
The unconventional view is that the Status Quo is increasingly vulnerable to a “Black Swan” type catalyst: disruption in the global oil supply chain, a global climate event, hyper-inflation that destroys the dollar, etc.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much more than that to say, and I think his chart screams for thoughtful analysis. Though he’s not even remotely commenting on Smith’s graphic, Gary North adds pertinent thoughts on the same topic at LewRockwell.com.
I expect most people here are of the “unconventional view” (does that make us conventional then?). But even so there’s still volumes to be said. One detail that jumps out immediately is that certain elements can be both supporters and destabilizers at the same time (e.g. Silicon Valley, where on one hand you have the Larry Ellisons who promote national ID systems and get their start off military contracts, and on the other you have libertarian hacktivists and inventors/promoters of technologies that undermine government’s benign image) or can turn from supporters to enemies in an instant (e.g. the military). Which of course adds to the vulnerability of even the most entrenched-seeming elite.
I’ll leave the rest for you to chew on. Your thoughts?
The “Status Quo”(whatever you consider it to be)-along with other things-is very easily destabilized,much in the same way that one transistor in one integrated circuit in your car’s engine computer goes,and the car stops. The may be hundreds of thousands-or millions-of transistors within the computer,but one goes(or at least, the right one) and that’s it. It all rests with what they’ve(or we have) become too dependent on. Little-even seemingly insignificant things-can have major effects.
The domino effect.
I’m reminded of Butler Shaffer’s institutions in “Calculated Chaos” http://www.amazon.com/Calculated-Chaos-Butler-D-Shaffer/dp/1595263497.
I look at that chart and see that all of them are institutions, or mini-empires, within their own little egotistical worlds.
I often see government entities as classic co dependents. Dysfunctional, and ultimately unstable. …which is good.
Two things leap out to whack me in the nose.
One is the Law of Unintended Consequences. Those who believe they own us (and who do own, say, the major political parties) are simply so arrogant they can’t believe it applies to them.
Of course it does.
Second, the ruling class has literally become decadent. Its members have all the rapacity and ruthlessness of their forebears – but little of the ability. And less of the self-discipline required to refrain from butchering the goose to get at all those golden eggs at once….
It’s often said the dominant power-influence of our time is the Internet. That may be so. As significant to me, if not more so, is the fact that the plutocrats have fallen into a desperate frenzy, in which they swing between the poles of fearing they’re about to lose it all and believing they’re about to gain unbreakable mastery of the world and lesser mortals – both through the medium of technology.
Both extremes conduce to the same behavior: grabbing at all the power and plunder they can.
Whether or not they can actually hold onto it….