Magic Poriferan
^He pronks, too!
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2007
- Messages
- 14,081
- MBTI Type
- Yin
- Enneagram
- One
- Instinctual Variant
- sx/sp
In a sense, the options we have for our future society can exist only somewhere on a continuum between two points. The official authority in our lives can be more narrow or it can be more encompassing. This is to say, the power of the authority can be placed with a small and/or specific group or within a large and/or eclectic group. The authority can be held to the exclusion of people or to the inclusion of people. These are the two opposite points of the continuum.
It seems to be well known in the USA that the narrow end of the continuum would likely involve a government with highly concentrated powers, no checks and balances, no representation, and no consent seeking. Americans seems considerably less aware that it would also involve a society with a highly skewed, hyperbolic distribution of wealth, but it does. As it happens, the elements of the modern USA's government that normally would have had the effect of being encompassing are now virtually irrelevant due to that concentration of wealth. Your representative will sooner work for a corporation with a giant reserve of cash than he/she will for you. You can vote someone into office, but once that person is in office their vote is up for sale, and very, very few people in the USA have enough money to make a plausible bid. And of course, who you vote for is based only on what you know, and what you know is presented to you by organizations that are rather exclusively owned by a very small number of very wealthy people, usually with the aim of making a profit. So even who you decide to vote for in the first place will be strongly colored by the distorted information that the wealthy elite have prepared for you.
The narrowest part of our society has devoured the most encompassing part of society. It is all narrow now. This never could have happened had the distribution of wealth not become so hyperbolic, and had those entities which concentrate wealth the most, corporations, been more cautiously regarded.
Unfortunately, there is no undoing this without government. Corporate owners will never choose to create a more encompassing society, so they must be forced to, and only government really has that potential power. At the moment, however, government has been allowed to become so week that it no longer has any independence at all. I can hardly imagine an opportunity to empower government, subdue monstrous corporations, and begin leveling the wealth again without some kind of destructive, violent revolution.
It seems to be well known in the USA that the narrow end of the continuum would likely involve a government with highly concentrated powers, no checks and balances, no representation, and no consent seeking. Americans seems considerably less aware that it would also involve a society with a highly skewed, hyperbolic distribution of wealth, but it does. As it happens, the elements of the modern USA's government that normally would have had the effect of being encompassing are now virtually irrelevant due to that concentration of wealth. Your representative will sooner work for a corporation with a giant reserve of cash than he/she will for you. You can vote someone into office, but once that person is in office their vote is up for sale, and very, very few people in the USA have enough money to make a plausible bid. And of course, who you vote for is based only on what you know, and what you know is presented to you by organizations that are rather exclusively owned by a very small number of very wealthy people, usually with the aim of making a profit. So even who you decide to vote for in the first place will be strongly colored by the distorted information that the wealthy elite have prepared for you.
The narrowest part of our society has devoured the most encompassing part of society. It is all narrow now. This never could have happened had the distribution of wealth not become so hyperbolic, and had those entities which concentrate wealth the most, corporations, been more cautiously regarded.
Unfortunately, there is no undoing this without government. Corporate owners will never choose to create a more encompassing society, so they must be forced to, and only government really has that potential power. At the moment, however, government has been allowed to become so week that it no longer has any independence at all. I can hardly imagine an opportunity to empower government, subdue monstrous corporations, and begin leveling the wealth again without some kind of destructive, violent revolution.
