So, US Imperalism is Dead

Let us propose the following idea. After the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, the notion of the US as the global guardian of democracy -- er, Democracy -- is dead.

It's the end of the Age of US Imperialism. And Joe Biden did it.

I don't know exactly when the US ruling class decided it wanted to be the Global Hegemon. I'd say the 1845 annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War that followed would be a bit early. And college President Wilson's entry into World War I would be a bit late. Spanish-American War? Maybe.

The point is that when you are a political entity -- whether monarchical or oligarchic or democratic or Soviet or fascist or tin-pot dictator -- the natural, instinctive thing for you to do is to swagger on the international stage: win a nice little war.

Don't try a World War. Not unless your name is Wilson or Roosevelt.

In my view this aggressiveness in political elites is a vestigial survival of the old reality of politics, that of defending the border of your food-growing territory against an "other" that would like to appropriate your food-growing territory for itself.

The food-growing territory thing is just the same as chimp society, where the males defend the border against males from the neighboring band, and the females munch on the food produced by the food-growing territory as they bear and raise baby chimps: the more food, the more baby chimps. That's how Nicholas Wade describes it in Before the Dawn.

You could say that the ultimate description of this ape culture is in Geoffrey of Monmonth's History of the Kings of Britain. Old pal Geoffrey is quite open about kingly conquest and the slaughter and plunder of the defeated. He speaks openly of times when Britain was more or less depopulated after a particularly severe bout on the wrong end of conquest-ology.

But it doesn't matter where the food is grown. Not any more.

But when the universe changes, and owning food-growing territory isn't all that important, then you can expect that the ruling classes will be the last to know. They will still keep on keeping on at their conquest and loot and plunder, because that is all they know.

The point is that it really doesn't matter who owns the food-growing territory any more. Food is for sale; grain from the western Canadian prairies gets put on ships in the harbor of Vancouver BC and gets sent all over the world.

It doesn't really matter where products and produced and manufactured.

Now there are a few caveats. You really don't want to get all your oil from the Arabs in the Middle East. They are a bit late to the modern era and haven't yet cooled their jets in the marketplace. So it's a Good Thing for everyone to do a spot of fracking on their own lands and get the natural gas out and not rely upon the Arabs for their fossil fuels.

You don't really want the Chinese to do all the manufacturing in the world. We need jobs for our kids too.

The point is that expanding your food-growing territory doesn't make you richer any more. It doesn't feed any baby chimps any more. Wealth doesn't come from broad rich acres but from what the World Bank calls "intangible capital." That is to say that wealth is not even the physical capital of buildings and factories. Eight percent of wealth is the intangible capital inside peoples' heads.

So I say that this old instinct needs to be properly sublimated, like with modern business and sports. We don't need men to be strutting the world showing their military stuff. Men need to get their aggressions out on the sports field and as road warriors. And jolly good fun it is for all.

So forget the US Empire. Let's just be a nation state devoted to keeping its people safe and prosperous. And minding our own business.

But whatabout Russia and China? Don't we need to keep them in check? Maybe, somewhat.

But I'd say that what Russia does about Belarus and Ukraine is not really worth going to war over. And I would say it is a good thing for Germany to integrate with Russia on the Nordstream 2 pipeline front.Is Russia really going to threaten to invade Europe as it did in the post-WWII era of the Soviet Empire? I doubt it. But Russia really benefit the more that it gets integrated into the European economy.

And China. China is pretty sure to want to reclaim Taiwan. Because national pride. And it is going to want to bully everyone around the South China Sea. And it seems to want to do a replay of the old China policy of the tributary states around the Chinese periphery, and tie them down with the Belt and Road initiative. Which I expect will be a mixed blessing for the Chinese people.

I accept the need to oppose the Soviet Union and prevent it from its millennial dream of conquering western Europe in fulfillment of Marx's religious prophecy.

But after the end of the Soviet Union the US should have dissolved NATO and gone home. Because the US Empire doesn't make any more sense than the British Empire.

The thing about the British Empire is that is was rather an accident. The Brits and the Portuguese didn't like the high prices for spices and silks available at the western end of the Spice Route and the Silk Road. They figured that they could get a better deal with sailing ships around the Cape of Good Hope and on to South Asia. And they were right.

But then, as they established ports in India and South East Asia, they came into conflict with the local feudal lords, and ended up teaching them lessons. And forming empires. And then they got into the slave plantation thing and set up colonies in South America and the Caribbean, and made a ton of money, for a while.

And, with the instinct to extend the border they established the European colonial empires. But it wasn't the colonies that made them powerful; it was the trading.

And the proof is that after World War II when the European powers gave up their colonies to local native tin-pot dictators the only people that suffered were the locals that got plundered by their new rulers. And a few whites left over in Rhodesia and South Africa. But hey, we got Elon Musk, born in South Africa, and he is reinventing space travel, the rascal, right here in the good old USA instead of in South Africa.

If you look at the awful far-right neo-fascist populist nationalist regimes about which our lordly global educated elite like to expectorate, you don't see anyone bent on world conquest. Not Donald Trump, not Nigel Farage, not Marine Le Pen, not Viktor Orbán. Of course, to our democratic rulers they are all Literally Hitler. But then everything is Literally Hitler to our noble lords of the global elite.

But I admit. A world of nation states run by Trumps and Farages and Le Pens and Orbáns wouldn't be much fun for the educated, credentialed, global elite. Because it would be a boring middle-class sort of thing, with everyone minding their own business instead of strutting out and Changing the World!

The Decline and Fall of the Progressive Empire

Today I am starting a new topic, the decline and fall of the present ruling class. But let's steal the words of Edward Gibbon, he of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Why did the Roman Empire decline and fall? According to academic Michael Mann in The Sources of Social Power, it began to decline when its modus operandi no longer worked. Up until the second century AD the Roman Empire fed on conquest and slavery. Its army would conquer a new province and the empire would feast on the plunder and the slaves. But then the Empire got too big, and the frontiers too far away from the center. And so the potential for conquest and plunder started to dry up.

But whatabout the empire in which we live? And what do we call it, anyway? Liberal Empire? Lefty Empire? White Supremacist Empire? Capitalist Empire? Empire of the Educated?  I think I will stick with Progressive Empire for the time being.

The reason I prophesy the decline and fall of the present regime is that its anthems, its agendas, are getting rather threadbare.

There seem to be two justifications for political power. The first is the promise of physical protection. This obviously goes back to the apes, that the males protect the band and its food-growing territory from invaders. I consider this a male thing. The second is the promise of protection from evildoers within society, the backstabbers and gossipers that are the bane of every woman's life. I consider this a female thing.

In the last century, the century of the educated ruling class, our rulers have heroically defended us -- or rather we have defended our rulers -- from the menace of Kaisers, of Hitlers, or Commies, of oil sheiks. Golly, where would we have been without them! But now our leaders are promising, at enormous expense, to protect us from climate change.

You know what I think? I think our rulers are running out of reasons to protect us. This climate change thingy depends on the predictive computer models of gubmint scientists -- which are completely different from the divinations of the temple priests and soothsayers of old, completely different. In other words, climate change looks and feels like a scam.

In the last century, the century of the educated ruling class, our rulers have heroically defended us -- or rather we have defended our rulers -- from the internal menace of monopolists, exploiters of labor, Southern racists, and now patriarchs, white supremacists and the menace of systemic racism.

You know what I think? I think our rulers are running out of moral menaces with which to terrify us. The proof is in the moral narrative of "allyism," that America is composed of "oppressed peoples, allies, and white oppressors." What "white oppressors?" Educated white liberals in the schools, universities, and journalism? Heavens no, those are all allies. Evil corporate moguls? Heavens no, those all pay their indulgences to Black Lives Matter. Would they be Trump Car Paraders and crazed Qanon cultists wearing viking costumes in the US Capitol? Yep, that must be it.

But why? Why is our ruling class singing such ridiculous anthems to their rule? What is really going on? Is it a conspiracy?

I think it is because the basis of human social cooperation has been transformed.

I think the old system, of male defense of the border, and female defense of the hearth, made complete sense back in the days of the chimps: that's what Nicholas Wade says in Before the Dawn. And more or less sense in the days of the hunter-gatherers, and even down through the agricultural age. You needed brave warriors to defend the food-growing land, and you needed moral arbiters to sort out troublesome youths and quarreling women.

But not any more.

Loot and plunder of the neighbor's lands? But wealth today is in intangible capital, ideas and techniques.  Loot and plunder does not pay, except in the internal taxation and regulation systems by which today's rulers fleece their own sheep, not the neighbor's sheep.

Calling sinners to repentance? But today's market economy rewards trust and names and shames cheaters and defaulters in a hundred different ways. Oh yeah, we need a few cops to crack heads here and there; but the vast majority of people go with the program, because there is a huge benefit in doing so, and a huge penalty for being identified as untrustworthy.

Obviously this new situation is so brand new as to be breathtaking. It has really taken hold only in the last 200-300 years, whereas the agricultural age extended for, say, max, 50,000 years, and the hunter-gatherer age a million or so, and the chimps for tens of millions of years.

We cannot expect our rulers, our neighbors, and ourselves to have suddenly adapted to the new setup. We are programmed for another age.

Instead, we should expect everyone -- from noble lords to cathedral priests to young punks to the nice ladies next door -- to keep punching the old buttons, and being completely flummoxed when the old actions don't have the desired effect.

But, "scientists say," the future belongs to those that adapt. And the number of people adapting, "experts agree," will be a minority. This will mean, "ethicists believe," a profound change in human society.

Because, as I say, every story is a survivor story.

The Third Imperial Age Is (Was) The Lefty Age

A couple of days ago I was commenting on a piece by Financial Times conventional-wisdom journalist John Lloyd that maybe we are entering the Third Imperial Age. His notion is Russia and China taking over the world.

Where the Second Imperial Age was the European imperialism of the last 500 years. But a sharp-eyed reader emailed me to say:

The power seeking imperial types turned their attention from conquering neighbor lands in 1917.  The Russian Revolution launched the third imperial age of socialism.  Power seekers expanded their power and wealth by attacking with taxes the productive endeavor of wealth creators.  Imperial government expanded and their welfare clients bred themselves into over supply.  The peak occurs when government harvests near half of all wealth created.

Hey! How come I didn't think of that! Is he right or is he right?

Yes indeedy. Lefties are all about power, political power, and only power. Talk about imperialism! The worst: the very worst.

Now let us rehearse imperialism down the ages.

First Age of Imperialism. It features chaps like China that believed -- when not distracted by a Time of Troubles -- in conquering neighboring states and making them into tributary states, states that send tribute to the Son of Heaven at the center of the world in Beijing. As it should be. Also Rome, which believed in sending the legionaries out every now and again for a spot of loot and plunder and slaves. But most of the rest of the time they let the folks trade to and fro. Except for the Carthaginians. Carthago delenda est. When the Romans ran out of loot and plunder and slaves they inflated the currency and slowly deflated the Roman Empire so that Edward Gibbon could write a book about the whole procedure.

Second Age of Imperialism. It features European nobodies heading out across the world to trade. Christopher Columbus, son of a Genoese wool-worker that owned a cheese stand. Robert Clive, son of a small landowner. A troublemaker, he was sent out to India and started out "as little more than a glorified assistant shopkeeper." But then he learned a spot of soldiering and went on to win the battle of Plassey. Captain Cook was the second son of a Scottish farm laborer. He began his naval career as a merchant navy apprentice in coasting ships carrying coals from Newcastle. Alexander Hamilton, "bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar,"was a teenaged businessman in St. Croix, and was so smart the local gents sent him to New York to go to school, where he taught the Yanks how to do the National Debt. Cecil Rhodes, son of a curate, was asthmatic and was sent out to South Africa for his health. He and his brother failed trying to grow cotton, but then he headed out to the Kimberley diamond fields. All these nobodies were advancing the frontiers of trade, and if they made a spot of money they often returned to the home country and were stigmatized as "nabobs." Not quite out of the top drawer, old chap.

Third Age of Imperialism. It features rich kids with a faith in the power of politics to bend the arc of history towards justice. It has featured the two biggest slave states in history. Karl Marx, son of the top lawyer in Trier. Friedrich Engels, son of a textile manufacturer. Vladimir Lenin, from "a moderately prosperous middle-class family" got kicked out of university for mostly peaceful protesting. Mao Zedong was the son of "one of the wealthiest farmers in Shaoshan." Frankfurt Scholar Max Horkheimer was the son of "a successful businessman who owned several textile factories." Herbert Marcuse, of "repressive tolerance" was the son of "a well-off businessman." These intellectual giants advanced the idea of societies that were, at very least neo-feudal, with the ruling class taxing 35-50 percent of income to hand out to its supporters, and at the worst, as in the Soviet Union and Maoist China, the most savage slave states in history.

So, on this notion, we would say, pace John Lloyd, that the Putinist regime in Russia and the Xi regime in China probably represent the "Autumn of the Third Imperialist Age" as the internal contradictions of big government and its force and the divisiveness of politics-with-everything combine to inspire educated rich kids in general -- and foolish young women at The New York Times in particular -- to indulge in witch hunts and cancel culture to force the world to bend the arc of history towards justice, or else. Until we normals get a clue and tell them to go drink their fair-trade coffee where the sun don't shine.

See, my impossible dream is that maybe, maybe, we are entering a post-imperial age based on the principle that loot and plunder does not pay. I'd say that the First Imperial Age proved the limitations of the loot-and-plunder model; that the Second Imperial Age proved the potential of the trading model, especially when led by nobodies; that the Third Imperial Age proved beyond a doubt that we humans should be better than loot-and-plunder lefties.

But that's just my opinion. You opinions may differ.

Will There Be a Third Imperial Age?

We are at the end of the Second Imperial Age, dominated by European powers who determined that land "designated terra nullius (“no-one’s land”) could be taken" -- should be taken. Writes John Lloyd of "the Financial Times and co-founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford."

They did so in pursuit of precious metals and stones, for settlement and defence (of other lands already seized), for points of supply to their ships, in order to demonstrate their power, and [to Christianize the heathen.]

Actually, the imperial age started with the Portuguese and the Brits trading with India, because it was cheaper to run the new ocean-going sailing ships around the Cape of Good Hope to India and back than pay for the camels and taxes of the overland route through Arabia etc. Indeed I had it confirmed from a guide in Jaisalmer, in the desert of western India a couple years ago, that the whole place went to the dogs once the Portuguese and the Brits appeared on the scene. Nobody needed their stinkin' camels and gorgeous havelis any more. So John Lloyd got it a bit wrong.

Yes, there was a lot of terra nullius argument where the humans in question were pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers or horticulturalists. But not in India and China.

Where India was concerned the Brits were forever dealing with the predatory robber lords just out of town of Calcutta or Madras. Like the Maratha Confederacy. Or the princes just up the road from Bombay in Pune, who were no doubt advised by the Brahmin ancestors of Seattle Brahmin politician Kshama Sawant.

The point is that the Brits weren't in India to loot and plunder it. They were there to trade.

But, of course, the Brit ruling class still lived in a feudal culture. So in due course you got Brit imperialists in India saying, up at the Royal Simla Club in the usual haze after tiffin, "Good Lord chaps, we've got to pacify Afghanistan before the Russkies get there."

It is my belief that the old order of loot and plunder is over. The reason is simple: wealth no longer adheres in land and "precious metals and stones," but in intangible capital, ideas and processes that create the stuff we buy in stores and the SUVs we take it home in. After World War II the Soviets looted and plundered eastern Germany of all its physical capital, factories and machines, and took the whole caboodle off to Russia. How did that turn out, Tovarich Brezhnev? Yeah. German per-capita GDP in 2018: $46, 241; Russia per-capita GDP: $11,289.

All we need is for our politicians and activists to catch up with us, and stop playing at chimp border warfare.

The point of empires is to send the Roman legionaries out for loot and plunder and bring the plunder and the slaves back to Rome and parade them through the streets in a Triumph. And it worked a treat for the Romans until the borders of the Roman Empire were so far from Rome that the old system didn't work any more, probably because the slaves all died on the journey back to Rome.

Now that the US is withdrawing from its post-WWII imperialism, John Lloyd writes, we may be at the dawn of a new imperial age dominated by China and Russia.

Russia’s authoritarianism and China’s totalitarianism (the second a harder version of the first), now allied, present a formidable front of two states dedicated to increasing their global power, in a fashion increasingly similar to the imperial strategies of Europe.

Now President-for-almost-life Putin is a former KGB guy, and President-for-life Xi is a Commie apparatchik. What the heck do they know about the modern world?

Most likely they are like the Brit chaps at the Club up in Simla in the 1830s worrying about Russkies after tiffin. Or they are like the idiots-all-round in the run-up to World War I. They only know politics and political power. They do not understand that wealth and power do not come from a big fat empire with ostrich-feather hats and impressive parade uniforms, or from regime-sponsored "activists" painting the streets with trite slogans. Or from gubmint programs that take from productive people to give to regime supporters.

But the problem is that, if you are a politician or an activist, the only thing you know is the game of political power. If the game of political power and empire is over, passé mon vieux, what does the poor wren do then, poor thing?

Well, that is what we are setting up the bleachers right now to find out. My feeling is that Russia and China are backing the wrong horse. I think that Russia and China are going to find out that the the whole world will combine against them. Because whether you are Vietnam or the Philippines or Australia or Japan or Crazy Rich Asians in Singapore, or the poor bloody Germans in Central Europe, you don't want to be under the thumb of some thug Commie bastard from Beijing or Moscow.

And, of course, now we don't care about Mid-East oil any more, because fracking. Yay frackers!

No, the Big Problem of the coming era is what to do with people that have a mania for social moralizing. See, I think that primitive men were all about defending the border -- or looting the neighbors -- and primitive women were all about naming and shaming and shunning that awful witch living alone just out of town.

I think that we have about pacified men and taught them to fight for market share instead of their share of slaves. But women? 

The problem is a bit like the problem with Harvard graduates: You can always tell a Harvard man; you just can't tell him anything.

The Domestication of Man

A couple of days ago I read someone talking about the "cult of expertise." Of course, I thought. Why hadn't I thought of that? It's been a Thing for quite a while.

But then I thought about what experts do, especially during the present plague of experts during the Wu Flu.

Experts are prophets; they prognosticate about the future, but from the safety of administrative bureaucracies. Not quite like in the old days when prophets predicted from the entrails of birds. But the fact is that the whole purpose of knowledge is prediction of the future, to understand the behavior of things and agents in the wide world and try to figure out what comes next.

The truth is that the real story of man is his domestication, just as wolves chose to be domesticated into dogs.

Back in the day men were warriors and hunters. They engaged in frightful battles to the death with megafauna and patrolled the borders of their tribal lands to take out any male that dared to present himself on the border. But then humans killed off all the megafauna, and started to get into the domestication of wild animals rather than their destruction.

And war became less of a desperate border battle and more about marching and discipline. High born men started to become courtiers and leave the rough stuff to marcher lords like Harry Percy.

More than that, the deadly business of war and the hunt devolved into sports, probably because men didn't go to war and didn't really rely on the hunt for food. But high-born men needed something to do in between the vital acts of siring the next generation. So war devolved into sports: first the tournament and jousting with lances, and then team sports like cricket and football. And hunting devolved into useless sports like fox-hunting. Heck, we gentry could have left the vital work of the control of foxes or the hunting of deer to underlings. But it was much more fun to go out and ride around the countryside, or get the local yokels to beat the bushes to spring the pheasants and the grouse and bring them before the guns of the gentry.

Notice how there is now a further domestication, driven by women, where "blood sports" are bad, but other sports are OK, for the time being. In Britland the Labour Party when in power recently banned foxhunting. Because. But did they think about poor old Trollope turning in his grave?

We now see an even further domestication of sports. It's not just "blood sports" that are problematical, but now "contact sports," where the players are involved in violent enough activity that they are likely to sustain injury, particularly brain injury. And it is women that are leading the charge against "contact" sports.

Of course the rise of the male "career" is another domestication. Instead of well-born men going into the army they now get credentialed at selective colleges and work at a career, rising up the ranks in some corporate bureaucracy or profession.

There is a further domestication in progress, that occurred to me when I asked the checkout clerk how his friends are doing in the current Wu Flu lockdown. They were doing fine, he said, playing video games all day.

Yes, indeed. Young men are being domesticated from active sports into video sports, where the large-motor activities are reduced to brain function and small motor activities with the joystick control.

Here's another domestication. Used to be that the whole point of men was the war party bent on a campaign of loot and plunder. That's what the Romans were all about, pushing back the boundaries of the Roman Empire and coming home with loot and slaves. That's what the Vikings were all about, too. But then came the Age of Exploration. Now the purpose was not so much loot and plunder as the expansion of the "known world" and the establishment of trading posts. That's what the Brits were up to in India. Of course, the Brits felt honor-bound to civilize the "natives" and bring them the blessings of Western Civilization. What our lefty friends now call colonization and oppression. And of course there was the problem that Kipling raised, about "lesser breeds without the Law" by which he meant empires less civilized than the British: Krauts and Frogs and so forth.

Today, of course, the notion of exploration has become scandalous because imperialism and marginalization. So young men are not supposed to go exploring any more. They are supposed to go a-NGOing or do international development instead.

And don't forget the domestication implied in the notion of the public square, where men can argue and dispute about religion, culture, and politics without resort to fisticuffs. Jolly civilized, if you ask me. The public square is elegantly aligned with the two male cultures, of courage and insult.

The market system is a domestication. Instead of warring, aggressive young men start companies and compete for market share. This was rather shabby back in the day when nobodies were inventing machine textiles and steam transportation. But in our own time we have the "startup culture" in which young men of good families like Bill Gates drop out of Harvard and form new companies and work 24-7 bringing some idea to market and then, hopefully, making a "killing" when they take the company "public" on the stock market. When the whole thing gets going then the young men hire women to run the HR department, and young women like Melinda Gates come aboard and stop the men yelling at each other at meetings.

Now, there is another area of domestication. It is the domestication of the shamans and the priests. Back in the day these shamans were terrifying half-mad creatures that participated in the divine and were almost on the margin of the society of the kindred. But they were seers with an uncanny grasp of the future, and humans sought their advice and their divinations of the future.

In due course these shamans and seers because the priests of the temple culture, more predictable and less terrifying. But they still excelled as prophets and on occasion formed new cults with terrifying predictions of the future to come if we did not repent now. And they often required a constant supply of virgins and eldest sons to sacrifice on the altar of the the vengeful god. What a day it was when Abraham realized that God would be perfectly happy if he sacrificed a neighboring goat instead of the first-born Isaac: call it the domestication of sacrifice.

How domesticated then were the priests of the state church in Jane Austen and George Eliot novels! They could be annoying, like Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice, or wise and gentle like Mr. Irwine in Adam Bede. But really, they were completely domesticated and non-threatening.

A further domestication of the shamans and seers are the scientists and the experts. What is the point of scientists and experts but to divine the future with their mathematical runes? Thus we have scientists predicting doom and planetary disaster unless we act now. Or, as in the present emergency, death and destruction from the plague unless we submit to the experts. Good work, if you can get it.

But these are rather small beer compared to the temple priests of the Aztecs that pulled living hearts out of the still living abdomens of their sacrificial victims.

But, even in our own domesticated time, there is still a need for sacrificial victims.

The question is whether this Domestication of Man has gone about as furr as it can go. Who knows. But it is interesting that wild young men like Elon Musk are bucking for space travel, and want to go to Mars. Because how domesticated can you get and still maintain the male culture of courage and insult?

Now, of course, there have always been counter-movements that have critiqued the domestication process as taking the human out of the human. The Great Reaction of the past century, with socialism a return to slavery and the welfare state a return to feudalism and identity politics a return to tribalism, is one such. And the feminist movement, that proposes to de-domesticate women and make them into fearsome warriors: "I am woman, hear me roar."

But that is another story.

Stop Moralizing About Race, Slavery, Empire

There's a sweet article at The Federalist by Indian-born Paulette Varghese Altmaier who married a white American:

My two daughters, born of my marriage with an Iowa farm boy-turned-Silicon Valley engineer, were brought up with no sense of racial difference, no focus at all on the fact that half their family was white and the other half was not. 

She thought she was living Martin Luther King Jr's dream. So how come "we face a new brand of racism" with whites required to bow to the shame of "white guilt." And then there's slavery.

Altmaier points out that, if you want to talk racism, the Indian caste system is a good place to start. And slavery was going strong in Africa until the start of the 20th century. And imperialism? Everyone was attacking everyone else and didn't think about it.

So what's all the moralizing about?

Well, I suppose it is the self-congratulation of the modern Educated Gentry that thinks that it created the modern moral world and that but for its educated activists slavery, imperialism, and racism would still rule the world.

Allow me to differ. And yes, I come to this with a Nietzschean attitude that says that morality tends to come along after the fact to justify and formalize a new correlation of social forces.

Slavery? How come that slavery was accepted since forever as just the way things are until about 300 years ago? My answer is that up until 300 years ago a feudal system obtained in which the farmers were helpless before any warlike marauder, and had to subordinate themselves to a warrior caste that would protect them. Nearly everyone was a subordinate farmer. And just a few people were proud castellans and warriors. So serfdom, slavery was part of the way things were.

But when a market system arises, with cities and free exchange and trading, then, in my opinion, people start to realize that slavery does not pay and in fact free labor is much more profitable. Sorry, lefties. No glorious moral apotheosis for you.

Imperialism? How come that warfare and empires and subjugation were normal and ubiquitious right through the agricultural age? And why should imperialism suddenly become scandalous? My answer is that up until about 300 years ago the only wealth was in land and gold. If you invaded the neighbor's land and took his land and his gold, you were better off, and never mind about the neighbor's dead and dying.

But when trading takes over the world, and wealth starts to become "intangible capital" it doesn't do you any good to wipe out the neighbor because you also wipe out his "intangible capital." So, the Brits in India were, from the beginning, interested in trading. The expansion of their empire occurred because they were continually annoyed by some predatory prince raiding their trading empire, of which the Maratha Confederacy chiefs were the principal perps. Plus, of course, when you are an industrial power, what's the point of planting your flag in some fly-blown outpost that is 50 years from developing a modern economy? Raw materials? Not really. You can buy raw materials for money. So, in our modern era, imperialism does not pay.

Racism? Again, in the old days when agriculture ruled the world, it made sense to develop a tribal identity of us against the world. Because your food-growing land was life and to be conquered meant being sold into slavery.

But when trading takes over the world, the possession of food-growing land doesn't matter much any more. People are now organized into religions, nations, and corporations. And what matters is not your race but whether you can be trusted. And now, with the 5-star rating system used for just about everything and everyone on-line, it is your reputation not your skin color that matters. And so now racism does not pay.

But, for a season, the accusation of racism, imperialism, and slavery does pay.

Until we Commoners get a pair and tell the lefties to go take a hike.

But here is the real mystery. Why are our lefty friends so intent upon a Great Reaction, in which socialism is the new slavery, the welfare state is the new feudalism, identity politics is the new tribalism? What is wrong with these people?

The End of Wokism Won't Be Pretty

The overwhelming fact about the current left epitomized by the Woke left erupting in the Democratic Party and in SJWs and the cancel culture is that it is not going to go away until the American people strike it on the head, right between the eyes, with an axe.

Here's an American Spectator piece reckoning that the Democrats have No Idea what they are getting themselves into with an impeachment trial in the Senate. Why, the GOP could even order Hillary Clinton to testify. This shows that the young Woke Democrats have not yet developed a strategic instinct that allows them to understand what may well happen around the next corner.

Here's an NRO piece reporting on the Democrats' plans for their next administration.

This president could roll back Trump’s deregulatory efforts, bring backed stalled Obama initiatives, and launch government giveaways and major assaults on business, all without the legislative branch’s help.

Erase student debt, Green New Deal, hit up drug companies. All without a vote of Congress.

There are two problems here. First of all is the idea that the educated and the evolved think we need massive new injections of Force into American life: that everyone should be Forced to enroll in a one-size-fits-all health program; that everyone should be Forced to completely change energy use, etc., because End of the World.

This philosophy flies in the face of the One Big Thing of the last two centuries, that it is amazing what humans can do by cooperating together without the resort to Force.

Now, our lefty friends have seized upon one aspect of this, in their utter condemnation of War and Imperialism. Couldn't agree more, chaps.

But then they amp war up to the limit on the domestic front with class war, race war, sex war, etc. The whole point of leftist politics is to "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Golly Saul. Your Rules for Radicals sounds suspiciously close to War, old chap. Sounds like the first thing you radicals need is an Enemy. Are you telling me that all this stuff about Peace and Justice is just a cunning trick to disarm the deplorables so that you can then drive your lefty SJW panzers into our heartland and enslave us to your fantastical power fantasies?

Still I understand why. If you elevate politics to the status of a religion then you have to have war, and armies, and enemies. Because politics is war by other means.

And indeed, Lenin took the natural tendency of revolutions to end in the frenzy of a witch hunt or a Reign of Terror and made it the central principle of his Bolshevik regime, to use Force to the utmost. To make domestic politics into total war. He understood the internal logic of leftism. That it is all about Force.

But Lenin and all the lefties that come after him, down to the Four Idiots that call themselves The Squad, have completely missed this fundamental lesson, that the whole point of humans is social cooperation, not human force.

Now back in the old days cooperation was encouraged by, e.g., Christianity. Indeed, Nietzsche points out how that works, with his insult that "the priests" taught us to hate each other. Yes, Fritzi, that is exactly the point. Before you plunge your sword into the other guy, you think, hey, maybe I'm the guy that has the problem.

But in the Great Reaction which is the Left, it is always the other guy that has the problem: the bourgeoisie, the capitalists, the rich. And now white supremacists and racist sexist homophobes.

Hey lefties! Suppose the problem was You.

OK. Let's back off a bit. Suppose you lefties are right about almost everything. But what about that one little thing that you got wrong? How would you know?

And, lefties, don't forget that now we have settled science on a lot of this stuff. Economics. Game theory. Prisoner's Dilemma. All of this settled science tends to explain why the last 200 years has been the age of the Great Enrichment, in which slavery and subordination has been radically reduced so that nobodies could invent stuff and get it built and change the world.

And then you lefties came along and built the two biggest slave societies in history.

Yep, that's some achievement. Lefties. Greatest slave societies in history. Put that on a monument!

Hmm. I'd better put that in my Maxims. Lefties created the two greatest slave societies in history.

How about them apples, lefties?

So I say that the current eruption of Wokism is bound to end in tears. The only question is whether the tears will be the tears of all the widows and orphans caused by the lefty Celebration of Force or whether the tears will come from the lefties weeping over the failure of Wokism to win the votes and the hearts of ordinary Americans.

And with everything in this world, the jury is still out.

The Problem of Power in a Looter State

The news this morning is that the armed forces of Zimbabwe have apparently ousted the country's president, Robert Mugabe.

The line seems to be that the corruptocrats around Mugabe's wife (and heir presumptive) were taking out the corruptocrats around the country's vice-president. And the armed forces stepped in to stop that -- and presumably the presumptiveness of the heir presumptive.

Now this gives me the opening to talk about my theory of the state, and the ongoing revolution in the nature of human social cooperation.

Because, of course, all political entities are corruptocracies. Period. That is to say, every sovereign political entity is a armed minority, occupying territory, and taxing the people thereof to reward its supporters. You could look it up.

The only question is the natural limit of the armed minority rewarding its supporters. In an industrial society the limit is probably when the government takes so much in taxes and loot that growth grinds to a halt; then you will find that the voters will decide it is Time for a Change. In an agricultural nation like Zimbabwe I would say that the limit is that people are dying of starvation or that they are leaving for South Africa.

Interestingly, in Saudi Arabia, where the current crown prince is embarking on an anti-corruption drive, this commentator thinks it will never work.

The problem in resource-rich states is that corruption is not marginal to political power, but central to acquiring it and keeping it. Corruption at the top is a form of patronage manipulated by those in charge, to create and reward a network of self-interested loyalists.

In other words, whereas patronage and corruption are a significant factor in, e.g., the United States, patronage and corruption are the entire game in places like Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia.

But there is a complicating factor: the armed forces. When I say that every political entity is an "armed minority" I have to add a qualification. Whereas in the good old days the political leadership was also the military leadership, things have changed. Today the political leadership outsources its military protection to a specialist career military, and the interests of the political elite and military elite tend to diverge.

Specifically, I suspect, the time comes when the corruptocracy starts to loot the military to keep its patronage system going in other areas. You can see that the military might take a dim view of this, particularly if the looting is accompanied by hyper-inflation that makes it difficult to run the military in a good, safe administrative manner. And what about the pensions?

It is interesting to read the statement issued by the military that is taking power in Zimbabwe. It tells the people that Mugabe, the hero of the revolution, is safe and sound. Then it addresses in turn the civil service, the judiciary, the Members of Parliament, the "generality of the people," the political parties, the youth, the rest of the world, the war veterans, the "members of the Defence forces," the "respected Traditional leaders," the other security services, and the media. It tells each of these groups not to worry, everything is under control. So the leaders of the coup have been trying to think around the corner beyond the day of the coup to seize power. Notice who is left out: businessmen and significant economic actors. Maybe that's because they have already been squared and don't need to be addressed. Or maybe it's because they don't count.

It is my contention -- ok, my millennial hope -- that we humans are in a period of transition from the loot-and-plunder model of social cooperation that obtained in the agricultural era to a free-exchange and service model. It is my belief that all use of power and force in economic affairs is a poisoned chalice, and that everyone that deploys political power in the modern economy is cutting off his hand to spite his face. Obviously that is true in the limit cases like the Soviet Union and Maoist China and is proving true in Venezuela. It is less obvious that this applies to a place like Saudi Arabia, because Saudi Arabia gets its money from the oil-export meter, and until the oil runs out the loot-and-plunder game can continue.

Meanwhile, in a country like the United States there are still millions of people -- maybe a majority -- that still believe in the loot-and-plunder game. They will be disappointed.

I am reading volume three of lefty Michael Mann's The Sources of Social Power. He does a good job of describing the late imperialism of the western powers, the British Empire and the abortive American empire with Spanish colonies seized in the Spanish-American War, without really knowing what he is talking about. The British discovered that they needed to rule through local elites, that direct rule was too unpopular. However, their rule was still unpopular because it tended to create an economy parallel to the native economy that did nothing to help the colonial economy. Anyway, as the Brits weren't going to simply loot and plunder the locals, they found that their Empire wasn't really that beneficial to them. The US had the same experience when it seized Cuba and the Philippines. We were not in the plunder business, so what the heck were we doing there?

In other words, the western imperialists found that their empires were a bit of an embarrassment. They got into them often by accident, found that they had no real interest or benefit from good old looting, but could not bring themselves to abandon the whole thing.

That leads to my larger argument, that loot and plunder are yesterday's game. These days, physical loot is not worth that much. The real plunder is obtained by a light taxation of a booming economy. Indeed if you wanted to make the biggest and most powerful country the world has ever seen you would outsource all the usual government activities that we know and love like pensions, healthcare, education and welfare and regulation to remove the dead hand of government from them. But that is something that politicians and activists and most voters don't understand. To them, the economy is like a wild beast that needs to be caged and controlled.

I look forward to the day when they do understand.