The Pendulum of History

This is Essay #8 in the series Truth Be Told.

A great many phenomena in both Nature and human history follow cyclical patterns, while others form waves. Author David Hackett Fischer (The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History) described the difference between cycles and waves:

"Cyclical rhythms are fixed and regular. Their periods are highly predictable. Great waves are more variable and less predictable. They differ in duration, magnitude, velocity, and momentum. One great price wave lasted less than ninety years; another continued more than 180 years. The irregularities in individual price movements make them no more (or less) predictable than individual waves in the sea.

Even so, all great waves had important qualities in common. They all shared the same wave-structure. They tended to have the same sequence of development, the same pattern of price relatives, similar movements of wages, rent, interest rates; and the same dangerous volatility in later stages. All major price revolutions in modern history began in periods of prosperity. Each ended in shattering world crises and was followed by periods of recovery and comparative equilibrium."

As Fischer observed, waves of human history share characteristics with ocean waves, which can accrete energy and become giant rogue waves that cannot be predicted even as they can be foreseen as recurring phenomena.

Two cycles have attracted much commentary over the past decade: The Fourth Turning posited by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their 1997 book The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy (subtitled What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny) which laid out an 80-year cycle of four generational turnings (High, Awakening, Unraveling, Crisis) that culminate in a system-changing Fourth Turning.

This 80-year cycle aligns with the nation-changing crises of 1781 (the end of the Revolutionary War and the founding of the United States), 1861 (the start of the Civil War) and 1941 (America's entry into an existential global conflict, World War II). This cycle suggests a nation-changing crisis began around 2021.

Strauss and Howe took pains to note that the outcome of each crisis isn't pre-ordained to be positive. Complacency based on the idea that it will all turn out wonderfully due to the nation's destiny could be fatal.

Peter Turchin and his colleagues have mapped out a 50-year cycle based on data ranging from archeological to financial--or in the case of coin hoards buried in times of crisis, both archeological and financial. Turchin's prediction of a crisis beginning in 2020 drew skepticism which then flipped to recognition when the events of 2020 came to pass.

Cycles are generally depicted as some version of a sine wave:



Waves build up and break in irregular fashion. If we discern the forces at work--storms, etc.--we can predict the eventual arrival of waves but not their amplitude. In other words, the outcome of waves cannot be predicted. The complacency lent by cycles--everything will recover in time, etc.--is not possible in waves, as the wave might sweep away the entire status quo.


Moana Jones Wong at Pipeline, North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii

A pendulum offers a third model of history: asymmetries push the socio-political-economic order to an extreme that cannot be sustained, and the pendulum swings to the opposite extreme, for example, from order to chaos and from surplus to depletion.

In my framework, the shared interests of society are always in competition with the private interests of markets. Ideally, these generate a dynamic equilibrium, as adaptive forces provide feedback that counteracts any overreach.

But as I have taken pains to explain, when one set of interests gains the power to override or ignore competing interests and the shared interests of society, their power becoming self-reinforcing, with fatal consequences. When a financial-market elite gains enough wealth to take control of the political machinery, they use this power to increase their share of the economy's output / gains at the expense of everyone else.

From their point of view, this is the natural order of things: we've gained supremacy because we're smarter and therefore deserving of power.

What they miss is that by gaining dominance, they eliminate the adaptive forces needed to maintain systemic stability. The system veers into moral decay as self-interest is deemed all that's necessary for "growth," and rampant corruption / unfairness reigns as the system is tilted to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

The irony is rich: the status quo the dominant few believe is permanent cascades into disorder due to the destabilizing effects of their dominance.

Richard Bonugli and I discuss the resulting potential for nonlinear disruption in our latest podcast: Global Uncertainties may result in Nonlinear, Self-Reinforcing Instability (26:31 min)

This pendulum swing eventually reaches an extreme that cannot be increased or even sustained. The asymmetries imposed by the dominant few reach the limits of the system, and the pendulum pauses for a brief moment before beginning its mechanically inevitable swing to the opposite extreme.

It's impossible not to note the pendulum of wealth and power swinging from the extreme of elites owning most of the wealth and accumulating most of the gains to the other end of the spectrum of a more widely shared distribution of wealth, power and gains. Here we see Peter Turchin's 50-year cycle depicted as pendulum swings.



We are currently poised in that brief moment in which the pendulum has reached an extreme that cannot be pushed any further as the asymmetries have reached their systemic limits. Wealth-power-income asymmetries have reached extremes of concentration that generate instability:



The broad-based distribution of the economy's gains to the workforce has been siphoned off and distributed to the owners of capital in a highly asymmetric power-law distribution: over time, this resulted in the transfer of $150 trillion from the workforce to those at the top:



Wealth, income and power now follow a power law distribution that favors the few over the many due to the self-reinforcing nature of an economy dominated by what's moral is what's legal, and what's legal is for sale:



Life is good for Billionaire Tech Bros and the financial Nobility:



Thanks to the status quo's mastery of The Big Con, the majority have been conned into believing the current moment of apparent stability is authentic stability. But this apparent stability is as fake as everything else in Ultra-Processed Life, as events will reveal.



I don't follow the predictive gambling table in the casino, but I did overhear a peculiarly garbed stranger murmuring, with some urgency, "I bet 100 million quatloos the economy will collapse into disorder and depression by 2032." I think he was given good odds from the gamblers who fell for The Big Con.

The delusion that technology and finance have given us god-like powers that moot the pendulum of history will be revealed as delusion in a most painful manner. A social-economic system in which what's moral is what's legal, and what's legal is for sale generates its own demise, as The Big Con doesn't work on the forces of history.

New podcast: Global Uncertainties may result in Nonlinear, Self-Reinforcing Instability (26:31 min)

---

New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF)

My book Investing In Revolution is available ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free)


Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Paul C. ($300), for your beyond-outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, James B. ($70), for your monstrously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Craig F. ($150), for your beyond-outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Gary F. ($100), for your outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

The Status Quo Is a Comic-Book Parody

This is Essay #7 in the series Truth Be Told.

The sharpest critique of the status quo--and therefore the one most likely to spark spittle-flecked freakouts--is that stripped of self-important spin, it's a comic-book parody of a functional state of affairs. The key to a solid parody is the most absurd exaggerations are taken with the utmost seriousness, as if the participants are completely unaware of the laughable nature of the caricatures they're playing.

So let's conduct a thought experiment: boil off all the grandiose self-importance ("we're serious people discussing serious things," blah-blah-blah) and hyper-stylized spin ("AI will make everything free, or end the world as we know it!"), and then try to parody what's left.

You can't. Everything in the status quo is already a self-parody and therefore impervious to being parodied. Whatever we come up with as a parody is only a pale shadow of what's passed off as "serious people doing serious things."

Consider The Imperial Project (tm) War Room for playing their live-action game War of Choice (tm). This is the pinnacle of "serious people discussing serious things"--what's our next War of Choice (tm)?



It's not ideal, but it's the only war we got.



War generates inflation which creates an illusory "growth" that impoverishes the bottom 90% as life becomes unaffordable, a tragicomic parody of prosperity: as long as this parody of prosperity enriches Wall Street, the status quo cheers.



Our Billionaire Tech Bros have concentrated enough personal wealth to buy political power in unlimited quantities, generating delusions of grandeur and hubris that are now comic-book parodies:



When those we worship as Tech Gods go mad with power, the parody ceases to be amusing.



By turning the hype machinery to 11, our Billionaire Tech Bros have become parodies of themselves. Each AI Tech Bro is now a thinly cloaked parody of a James Bond villain, a fervent believer in their own private religion of PR and delusions that transmogrify the AI Ponzi Scheme credit bubble into the Savior or the Devil, either one works equally well.



An economy dominated by monopolies, cartels and Billionaire Financier - Tech Bro concentrations of wealth / power is a parody of "democracy" and "prosperity": cue the comic-book caricatures of Private Equity:



The core quasi-religious belief of the status quo--that the profit motive drives technological innovation which drives improvements in the quality of our lives--is now a parody, as the ceaseless mania to increase profits by any means available has led to speeding up product cycles with what correspondent Mike Fasano calls overfeaturing, adding complicated features which are parodies of utility and durability, all designed to improve profits, not the quality, utility, value or durability of products and services. Mike described the resulting parody of "innovation":

"Just like with your experience on getting AI customer support, the endless options are never trimmed or even updated. They are only expanded upon -- often described in names reflecting faddish, incomprehensible computer lingo which itself will become archaic in a month or two."

The other driver of the status quo--that novelty drives profits higher by enticing consumers to buy "what's new" on the much-hyped belief "new" is "better"--is also now a slap-stick parody of "innovation" and novelty. Here is the winning recipe from Trader Joe's recent contest promoting novel uses of hoisin sauce: Hoisin Sauce Recipe Contest WINNERS! (note the caps--every novelty is a WINNER!)

And the winner is: Hoisin Caramel Apple Sundae with Black Pepper & Pistachios:



Go ahead and try to parody this parody of "novelty"; you can't. It's already a hokey, trying-too-hard parody of novelty.

This hokey, campy, slap-stick caricature quality characterizes the entire status quo apparatus: 'education" is a parody of useful learning, "leadership" is a comic-book parody of authentic leadership, "innovation" is a Rube Goldberg parody of technological advances, and "novelty" has reached such absurd excesses that it's no longer amusing.

Here's a few of Trader Joe's Fall novelty products. Try to identify my attempts to parody these concoctions. Or try to concoct your own parody products. It's fun for all.

Duck with blueberry favoring (dog treats)
Caramel Creme Scented Body Butter
Candy Jar Flavored Lip Butter Balm Set
Crawdaddy-shaped macaroons with caramel and chocolate
Pumpkin Spice Coffee
Pumpkin and Spice Caramel Sauce
Glazed Pumpkin Pie Spice Donut Holes
Pumpkin Spice Espresso Martini
Pumpkin Spice IPA beer
Pumpkin Maple Bacon Flavored Stuffies (dog treats)
Pumpkin Spiced Teeny Tiny Pretzels
Pumpkin Cream Cheese Croissants

Personally, I found the dog treats the most appealing. I hope Fido won't mind sharing.

What's obvious and therefore verboten to state out loud is this status quo parody of a functional economy and society is not just hokey, campy, slap-stick caricature; it's demeaning, delusional and sad. Acting like it's not a demeaning parody only extends the artifice and delusion.

---

New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF)

My book Investing In Revolution is available ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free)


Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Christine ($70), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Stella N.J. ($70), for your monstrously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Salexander ($70), for your splendidly generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, BonnyBlue2A ($75.60), for your massively generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

Our Vaunted Technology Is Rubbish

This is Essay #6 in the series Truth Be Told.

It's extremely difficult to set aside all the preconceptions we've been given about how the world works, and even more difficult to look at the world around us with a gaze untainted by ideas borrowed from others.

It's equally difficult to recognize these borrowed ideas as beliefs rather than facts.

Let's consider the possibility that all the ideas we've inherited about technology are beliefs, not facts, and these beliefs no longer map what we actually experience. Rather than mediate our experiences with a promotional golly-gee-whiz-this-is-wunnerful filter, let's report our direct, unfiltered experiences.

This is my report of recent experiences with everyday technology, which is ceaselessly presented as awe-inspiring Progress. The unfiltered reality is it's rubbish.

Let's start with X.com, home of AI software Grok. Out of the blue, I start getting promotional emails from X.com addressed to an imposter, who seems to have used my email to open an imposter X.com account.

A human could spot this imposter in three seconds, yet the immense "intelligence" of Grok failed to recognize an obvious imposter account. How difficult is it to compare images, likenesses, email addresses, etc. and note that the new account is a copy of an authentic "blue check" account?

I dutifully filled out X.com's form reporting the imposter, URLs of their posts, etc. X.com responded with demands for more data / busy-work / unpaid shadow-work. I wrote back that they already had more than enough information to delete the imposter account, so please stop pestering me and do your job.

Eventually I received an email addressed to the imposter that "your account has been deleted."

This is not intelligence, this is a parody of intelligence. It's rubbish. A truly intelligent system would have flagged the imposter immediately. So sorry if I hurt Grok's feelings.

Next up, Xfinity. My Xfinity email was hijacked. This is not the first time; Xfinity's security is Swiss Cheese. So I dutifully call the "customer service" number which activates an AI Agent. What can I help you with? My Xfinity email account has been hacked. I'm sorry you're having problems. Would you like an email or text link to our upgraded email service?

No matter what voice prompts I gave the AI agent, all I got was this endless loop. This is a parody of customer service and AI. It's rubbish. Eventually I recalled that Xfinity has a security-service-only phone number, and I spoke with a human being who walked me through the recovery process, which was complicated by the extremely poor design of Xfinity's website.

Arriving at twilight in a city unknown to us, we used booking.com to scan motel options. We were prompted to log in, but given the rarity of our using the site, we didn't have the PW. So we clicked the "reset password" link, which promised to send a link via email. No email ever arrived, even when we used a second email address.

So we clicked the "log in using a different method" link, and were presented with the same screen: click here and we'll send you an email--which never arrived, and no, it wasn't in the spam folder.

Next, we tried to open an account with Wyndham, which didn't like our password, triggering another endless loop, with one twist: the small print indicated that the "reset password" email would be sent within 5 days.

Big Tech is cutting down 250,000 trees in Finland to build more data centers, and Corporate America needs days to send an email that is functionally instantaneous? Once again, this is a parody of functional software / "technology." (A reset email did arrive several days later.)

Google Maps (GM) now integrates Google's AI software Gemini. Here's my experience: it's rubbish. Out of the blue, GM's female voice instructed me to leave the highway going east to 505 heading north. No explanation, just a command, which I ignored because it made no sense. This was the first evidence that GM was now rubbish.

As we attempted to locate a motel, GM directed us on convoluted routes down unlit side streets with instructions like "turn right on Monroe Street." Well, that's just fine in daylight, but it's night, and the streets aren't lit, so we can't see any street signs.

If Gemini were even slightly intelligent, wouldn't it "know" that it was night and these streets were dark / unlit? Eventually I figured out that GM's default settings are--cue the laugh track--to "choose routes that save fuel and time," an absurdist parody given that GM's nonsensically convoluted intructions caused us to waste fuel and time.

After this fiasco, Google Search provided convoluted instructions on how to reset the user parameters of GM to limit its convoluted routes that were supposed to "save fuel and time" but accomplished the exact opposite. Wouldn't common sense suggest the default algorithm be one that selects the easiest to follow, most direct route using primary roadways, and let the user navigate endless menus to choose other algorithms prioritizing fuel and time savings?

How hard would it be to program GM's voice to ask, "would you like a convoluted detour that might take four minutes off your six-hour drive?" This isn't intelligence, it's a parody of intelligence.

I've owned Honda vehicles for 45 years. When we needed to rent a car, we chose a 2026 Accord with less than 8,000 miles on the odometer--essentially a brand-new car. The engine and other basics were fine, but the software was rubbish. Anecdotally, this doesn't appear to be unique to Honda--all vehicle software is rubbish, an accretion of legacy software larded up with layers of so-called "smart software."

I know others would just ignore the nag messages on the distractingly large audio screen, but seeing "would you like to activate Apple Car-Play?" for the 127th time made me think, how hard would it be to add a few lines of code:
1. Is this a rental car, yes or no.
2. If yes, what is the duration of the current rental.
3. Once the customer clicks "no," they don't want to activate Apple Car-Play, do not display the message again.

In a sad parody of droid devotion, the software kept scanning for previous rental customer's iPhones. It also informed us every time we started the car that one USB port was for charging only, and the other was a data port that also charged the connected device.

The software hallucinated various conditions. For one stretch, the software notified us that one of the "driver assist" sensors was not working and needed to be cleaned. I did nothing, and the problem disappeared the next time we drove off.

Then it notified us there was a problem with one of the tire's pressure, via the Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). I had a digital tire pressure gauge, which revealed the tire pressure hadn't changed at all, much less 25%. But to get rid of the nag message, I had to go through a stupidly complicated set of menus controlled by the 27 buttons and scroll knobs on the steering wheel. (OK, slight exaggeration on the number.)

As usual, the instructions delivered by Search didn't match the reality of the steering wheel, despite searching for this specific year and model.

Then the digital display of speed, fuel, etc. inexplicably went dark. Multiple searches online revealed that covering a sensor in the dash near the windshield results in "permanently setting the display" on dark. Maybe I slid a notebook up on the dash for a moment. Whatever the cause, it was brief, and no beeps, squawks or alarms alerted us to "NEVER PLACE ANYTHING OVER THE HIDDEN SENSOR."

Note the word "permanently." This meant that the usual fixes--restoring defaults, brightness controls, etc.--didn't fix the problem. Fixing this failure required more convoluted navigation through menus controlled by the 27 arrows, buttons and scroll-knobs on the steering wheel.

This is a parody of utility and value. Any attempt to argue that all this software is "creating value" is itself a parody--a rather pathetic one at that.

The driver's digital display features a little representation of the car. When you press the brake pedal, the tail lights on the little digital car flash red. What is the point of showing the driver a digital cartoon of the car they're driving? Are we supposed to drive the car, or look at the little car on the screen? Or is the little car on the screen for a backseat driver?

One wonders what data is being collected by the software. The sensors pick up the speed limit signs, but comically get it wrong when the highway is paralleled by a local lane with a posted speed limit of 15 MPH. So the digital display showed I was driving 65 MPH in a 15 MPH zone. Woah. I'm sure whatever entity gets the vehicle's data will have fun with that bit.

Last but not least, Google Search delivered completely wrong supposedly up-to-date information about national and state parks. All flavors of search are untrustworthy; you have to go to the source sites to confirm what "search" reports as "fact."

All this is fun amd games, but there are serious issues hidden beneath rubbish software's farce and parody of utility, value and "intelligence." If drivers start depending on "driver assist" functions, and the sensor or system fails, it won't announce it has failed; you simply won't hear the "beep" when you pull in front of a semi in the blind spot, and that's how you end up in the morgue.

Our 1998 Civic still works just fine. Sure, it's needed routine maintenance and repairs, but it's still a fully functional vehicle 28 years after it rolled off the assembly line. What are the odds that today's software-dependent vehicles will still be functioning with only routine maintenance in 28 years?

Based on the rubbish quality of software, I would put the odds at zero. The fantasy of True Believers is that AI will correct all the rubbish software, but software engineers are reporting that AI is part of the problem, not the solution. The kludgy mess of legacy and AI-coded script isn't attuned to maintenance, much less self-correcting perfection.

All these technologies are rubbish. They don't work, they hallucinate, they're unreliable and untrustworthy, they are parodies of customer service and value. All the examples above occurred over two weeks. I doubt I'm the only one who's experienced rubbish software / technology being the new default.

As I've noted before, what AI excels at is surveillance and malicious hacking / spoofing / ransomware. What it is not good at is defending against AI malware.

Or we can ask AI to answer the question for us:



This is the question we should ask but don't dare ask:

---

New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF)

My book Investing In Revolution is available ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free)


Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Mark H. ($70), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Glenda F. ($60), for your monstrously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Felix O.R. ($100), for your outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Ed ($70), for your massively generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

The Homogenization of Decay

This is Essay #5 in the series Truth Be Told.

Of the many dynamics generating systemic decay, none are more pervasive yet unrecognized than The Homogenization of Decay, which we experience daily but don't notice because The Homogenization of Daily Life is now so ubiquitous that it's the water we swim in.

This homogenization is visible in the physical world, but it happened over enough time we've forgotten a time when life wasn't Homogenized. Every town in America now has a Dollar General store (or duplicate) on the edge of town that looks just like the Dollar General stores on the outskirts of every other town.

Every freeway off-ramp looks the same: gas station, fast food outlets, no sidewalks, no humans on foot except the most marginalized.

Every main street looks the same: the same corporate chains, with the only variation being the order in which they're arranged.

Every Big-Box outlet has the same look, feel and inventory, with the differences so minor they don't count.

Every cold cereal has the same ingredients, with the only differences being the quantity of sugar added: this one has 13 grams, that one has 9 grams, etc.

Every guidebook and tour directs tourists to the same selfie-worthy spots.

Homogenization serves a number of purposes:

1. It enables the profitable optimization of national / international supply chains and centralized corporate controls.

2. It enables easier control of what the populace sees and hears. Once everyone sees and hears the same things, they lose sight of the diversity of perspectives, especially those dissenting from the status quo.

3. It enables the profitable marketing of centrally controllable mass-produced products, services and experiences, the essence of Ultra-Processed Life: we're presented with a limited menu of unhealthy but immensely profitable ultra-processed foods which generate illnesses, which are then treated with costly, immensely profitable pharmaceuticals.

All the services we're offered are equally poor quality, but since there's no option, we resign ourselves to software that doesn't work, products that randomly fail, AI "customer service" that is the opposite of customer service, and so on.

4. This optimization of homogenization maximizes profits by optimizing monopolies that present facsimiles of choice: the same corporation owns all the brands presented as "choices," all the healthcare insurers are functionally similar, all the brands of appliances break down in a few years rather than lasting a few decades, as in the past, and so on.

Unbeknownst to most consumers, the private-public Leadership Class managing all this homogenization are themselves homogenized, as they all attended the same elite universities.



And to make sure they're able to attend these elite universities, the wealthiest few are admitted at much higher rates than the less wealthy:



And what this Leadership Class learns is that all problems are technological or financial, and so all problems can be solved with technology or finance. I call this mental construct The Delusion of Circularity: if we define all problems as technological/financial, then we don't need anything but technology and finance to solve all problems.

And since both finance and technology are incredibly homogenized--take your pick, Apple iOS or Android--solutions are also homogenized, meaning easily controlled to maximize profits for those controlling the "solutions."

This is how we end up with a Leadership Class devoid of any moral foundation, a class of public-private leaders whose moral compasses spin aimlessly while they optimize their personal gains managing global homogenization.



These leaders naturally hire underlings who are equally devoid of any ethics, as who needs ethics when we have the god-like powers of technology and finance at our fingertips? In this mindset, AI offers the power to homogenize everything to the point that no one will ever see anything that hasn't been approved by the leadership.

With AI, we never know what was excluded or edited out of the "answer." This offers homogenized leaders imbued with homogenized, morality-free mental constructs to fine-tune their homogenized Ultra-Processed Life menu of carefully engineered facsimiles of "choices." This system of gearing generates the same Narrative-Control output no matter who is turning the crank.



The machinery of Narrative Control isn't organized into a formal structure, but the structure is well-organized nonetheless, covering the entire spectrum of governance, media, and Privatized Totalitarianism. Informally, we can call it The Ministry of Propaganda, which homogenizes the narratives that offer full-spectrum control.



All this reinforces a focus on the present distractions and pressures to keep our fraying private worlds glued together another day, and this too is purposeful: what was once unacceptable is now so ubiquitous we no longer even notice.



That everything of true value is decaying around us is what we dare not notice. That's the point of optimizing homogenization.

All those engaged in optimizing this Homogenization of Decay will deny it, of course. They will claim they're sincere about finding "real solutions," that they care about the same things we care about, and so on.

Homogenization is decay, on multiple levels. This is inescapable.

So the problem with these claims is if they were true, the individual would be incapable of staying within this system another minute, much less an hour or a day. Sincerity and real solutions only exist outside the system that optimizes homogenization. Everything inside is artifice.

---

New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF)

My book Investing In Revolution is available ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free)


Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, Mark H. ($70), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Glenda F. ($60), for your monstrously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Felix O.R. ($100), for your outrageously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Ed ($70), for your massively generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...

Moral Collapse / Corruption Rewards the Worst and Penalizes the Best

This is Essay #4 in the series Truth Be Told.

Moral Collapse / Corruption are not abstractions. Rewarding the worst (those with zero scruples / moral foundation) and penalizing the best (those with high ethical standards) generates self-reinforcing feedback that dooms the system to disintegration: the worst prosper so mightily that they gain control of the system while the best are exploited / marginalized, reduced to Tax Donkeys or indentured laborers serving the worst.

A society and culture that has lost its moral compass loses more than its principles and soul--it loses everything that underpins a functional society and economy, including social cohesion, shared purpose, civility, trust in leaders, institutions, the judicial system and in the fairness (a.k.a. a level playing field) of the entire system, and critically, the belief that honesty and hard work will be rewarded rather than exploited / looted.

Moral Collapse / Corruption consumes all these foundations as the systemic cost of incentivizing self-enrichment to the exclusion of all else. Every component of society's moral foundation is hollowed out by the artifices of The Big Con, which claims to embody all the revered principles it grinds to dust in its relentless drive to accumulate private wealth and power by any means available.

Every source of authentic value is debased for personal gain as empty cliches--increasing shareholder value--are deployed to mask the monopolizing of power to reward the most corrupt at the expense of those powerless to limit the looting of the worst, who encounter no limits on their corruption in a culture and economy in which everyone has their price.

This Moral Collapse / Corruption is self-reinforcing, as those with any shred of ethics either quit / opt out or are fired / sent to digital Siberia, leaving only those in charge who see everything as an opportunity for self-enrichment, regardless of the consequences to others or the system as a whole.

In their pathological narcissism, they see the system as a bottomless feeding trough for their personal aggrandizement, oblivious to the causal results of everyone with a place at the trough gorging themselves: the system collapses.

This corruptive frenzy for unearned money has infected the entire spectrum of American society, rich and poor and everyone in between. From fake disability claims to fake invoices, every form of fraud flourishes in America. This raises four important points:

1. At the lower levels of the social-economic order, there are still some limits on fraud and corruption. Despite the immense resources devoted to evading oversight and audits, fraudsters and embezzlers are occasionally caught and convicted.

2. There are no limits on the super-wealthy, as they don't need to commit fraud to increase their wealth; they just rewrite the rules to suit themselves with their wealth. $100 million is nothing to billionaires, but it buys the entire political-judicial power of the state.

3. This scale of wealth bypasses the need for the consent of the governed, which is why I call America's current status quo Privatized Totalitarianism: the super-wealthy dictate what's legal to suit their desire for "more"--more wealth, more power.

As correspondent Simons Chase so insightfully put it, "what's moral is what's legal, and what's legal is for sale." These eleven words summarize America's terminal corruption.

4. In this terminal stage of moral collapse and Privatized Totalitarianism, passing more laws will not reverse the unraveling of the moral foundations needed to sustain a functional society and economy. Chapter 57 of the Tao Te Ching describes the core dynamics in play:

The more restrictions and limitations there are,
The more impoverished men will be.
The more arms men possess,
The more disordered the country will be.
The more scheming and deceitful men are,
The more strange things will occur.
The more rules and precepts are enforced,
The more bandits and crooks will be produced.

(Translation by my philosophy professor Chang Chung-yuan)

And Chapter 38: (my free-form version)

When the Tao is lost, we have attainment (optimization).
When attainment is lost, we have benevolence (superficial-phony virtue-signaling).
When benevolence is lost, we have righteousness (political correctness / ideological rigidity).
When righteousness is lost, we have rules (propriety for show).
Rules are the dry husk of loyalty and trust, the beginning of chaos.

In this free-for-all frenzy of fraud and self-enrichment, the best opt out and disappear into the woodwork, stripping the system of any talent other than self-enrichment and Big-Con / Ultra-Processed Life artifice. Self-enrichment and artifice are self-liquidating, for once they consume whatever can be looted, there's no foundation left to support a functional society and economy.

This moral collapse includes an intellectual collapse, as "liberty," "democracy," "innovation," etc., are reduced to parodies of their original substance by the artifices of The Big Con PR. Every statistic is gamed, every market manipulated, every principle debauched, and every bit of adaptative vigor is throttled to maintain a grip on power.

This excerpt from The Fall of the Roman Empire by Michael Grant crystalizes the present moment in American history with remarkable aptness:

"There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. His whole attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.

This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.

This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all."

And so as the worst apply Band-Aids to the metastasizing cancers as "solutions" (AI! Stablecoins! Bases on the Moon!), we stand on the beach as the tsunami of consequences of rewarding the worst and punishing the best races toward us.

In this moment, the future no longer seems real, and in the incoherence of the present, the radical action needed to change the outcome seems impossible. If we cannot run, perhaps we can still walk toward higher ground, leaving footprints in the damp sand few will follow.

---

New collection of five intriguing stories: Jumble Bin Stories (Kindle $6, print $12) read samples for free (PDF)

My book Investing In Revolution is available ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free)


Subscribe to my Substack for free

---

NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency.

Thank you, John W. J. ($70), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.		Thank you, Connor T. ($7/month), for your monstrously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Kathleen C. ($70), for your magnificently generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Thank you, Gilian L.L. ($7/month), for your massively generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.

Read more...