Post-1870 (or post-steam-engine or post-rolling-mill or whatever you want to use as the start point for industrial culture) has the prospect of sufficiency.
Given that prospect, agrarian age insecurity management -- what I have, I hold, because sufficiency cannot be general -- is more of a disaster than it was for the last five thousand years or so. (Incumbents strangle innovation, eventually demand all the money, and collapse the economy. Then your empire goes under; it might go under due to conflict with a marcher state that did innovate, or it may just slump into a heap as the fiction of an economy fails, but it's gone. That keeps happening over and over because trusting the system instead of your own power is too hard for too many people, but also because the system allows individuals sufficient wealth to become oligarchs.)
Today, with not only the prospect of general sufficiency but with many more opportunities to arrange co-operating in groups, the more effective strategy is to just not have anybody who is rich enough to do insecurity management by hoarding or by demanding to get what they want no matter who else suffers. (I mean, hey, that way we can avoid an end-Permian extinction event with us in it!)
When the water comes up -- and that's by 2030 from the current sounds of things -- it's going to be full-on into successor states, with a population too large to sustain with anything but industrial agriculture. I don't have much sense anyone is thinking about that, and I could wish they'd start.
‘Greatest Generation’ survey on race, sex and combat during World War II runs counter to its wholesome image
An online project at Virginia Tech presents the uncensored views soldiers expressed as they served.
Michael E. RuaneDecember 20, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. EST
Soldiers of the U.S. 7th Army march past the entrance of the Burgerbraukeller, site of Adolf Hitler's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich on May 3, 1945, five days before the formal end of the World War II in Europe. (Jim Pringle/AP)
In August 1944, an American soldier finishing up an Army survey was asked whether he had any further remarks. He did.
“White supremacy must be maintained,” he wrote.
“I’ll fight if necessary to prevent racial equality. I’ll never salute a negro officer and I’ll not take orders from a negroe. I’m sick of the army’s method of treating …[Black soldiers] as if they were human. Segregation of the races must continue.”
Late Third Republic America! What a sobering thought. I'm afraid that I share your pessimism about the near future. I'm particularly concerned about the possibility of violence against prominent progressive figures. These authoritarian apes measure their manliness by their ability to intimidate and violently imposed their will. The Republican figures who could decide this seem utterly indifferent to the danger. There were apparently no lessons learned from January sixth.
Post-1870 (or post-steam-engine or post-rolling-mill or whatever you want to use as the start point for industrial culture) has the prospect of sufficiency.
Given that prospect, agrarian age insecurity management -- what I have, I hold, because sufficiency cannot be general -- is more of a disaster than it was for the last five thousand years or so. (Incumbents strangle innovation, eventually demand all the money, and collapse the economy. Then your empire goes under; it might go under due to conflict with a marcher state that did innovate, or it may just slump into a heap as the fiction of an economy fails, but it's gone. That keeps happening over and over because trusting the system instead of your own power is too hard for too many people, but also because the system allows individuals sufficient wealth to become oligarchs.)
Today, with not only the prospect of general sufficiency but with many more opportunities to arrange co-operating in groups, the more effective strategy is to just not have anybody who is rich enough to do insecurity management by hoarding or by demanding to get what they want no matter who else suffers. (I mean, hey, that way we can avoid an end-Permian extinction event with us in it!)
When the water comes up -- and that's by 2030 from the current sounds of things -- it's going to be full-on into successor states, with a population too large to sustain with anything but industrial agriculture. I don't have much sense anyone is thinking about that, and I could wish they'd start.
Again:
"Thu on the one hand the few big slave holders needed to get the real essential benefits for themselves: mastership, domination, and wealth."
They needed also to enlist the poor whites in keeping the blacks inslaved. Fear of the great slave revolt.
Another Persistent Structure:
https://www.eschatonblog.com/2021/12/the-people-who-should-know-better.html
Re: Persistent Structures
Interesting bit of post WW2 in the WAPoop:
‘Greatest Generation’ survey on race, sex and combat during World War II runs counter to its wholesome image
An online project at Virginia Tech presents the uncensored views soldiers expressed as they served.
Michael E. RuaneDecember 20, 2021 at 7:00 a.m. EST
Soldiers of the U.S. 7th Army march past the entrance of the Burgerbraukeller, site of Adolf Hitler's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich on May 3, 1945, five days before the formal end of the World War II in Europe. (Jim Pringle/AP)
In August 1944, an American soldier finishing up an Army survey was asked whether he had any further remarks. He did.
“White supremacy must be maintained,” he wrote.
“I’ll fight if necessary to prevent racial equality. I’ll never salute a negro officer and I’ll not take orders from a negroe. I’m sick of the army’s method of treating …[Black soldiers] as if they were human. Segregation of the races must continue.”
Late Third Republic America! What a sobering thought. I'm afraid that I share your pessimism about the near future. I'm particularly concerned about the possibility of violence against prominent progressive figures. These authoritarian apes measure their manliness by their ability to intimidate and violently imposed their will. The Republican figures who could decide this seem utterly indifferent to the danger. There were apparently no lessons learned from January sixth.