What is a proper disposition towards life? It is to accept God as a loving father, who is full of tenderness and forgiveness for us, despite our willful blunders and hardened hearts. He yearns for us, as a father and mother yearn for the return of their most beloved child. It is to accept that we are not lost, we are not abandoned. We are wandering like a wayward child, full of our own headstrong delusions. And our father waits expectantly, calling out for us through the darkness. Jesse, 2018
The mechanism by which I add links to the sidebar under Matières à Réflexion seems to be broken today. This happens on occasion when the blogger platform software people fiddle with it. I have been waiting for them to repair this, but it does not seem to be forthcoming.
So I will be adding links here in this post throughout the day. As I recall this happened once before.
Gold and silver were drifting today, along with the markets in general.
Risk is low now as measured by the VIX. But it is really not 'risk' that is being measured, but rather 'uncertainty' in the markets.
And since the markets are massively mispricing the real economy and global situation, their certainty about their own ascendancy and the enduring power of paper assets is a little less than reassuring.
"This cartoon by Joseph Keppler, who was the, both the editor and main cartoonist for Puck, which became one of, a very popular satirical weeklies in the post-Civil War period, expresses a general public discontent and concern about the growing impact and power of large businesses in the United States in the Gilded Age, particularly as this indicates, by businesses that have become monopolies in one way or another, and their control over the political process.
This is the period of time when the Senate is beginning to be conceived of as a millionaire’s club, it’s not quite called that yet, but it’s getting there, and certainly the sort of power and influence of business has become palatable.
And this is a wonderful snapshot, if you will, of the relationship between the two, with the bloated figures, having squeezed their way through the door saying, 'Entrance for Monopolists,' and surrounding the Senate with the Lilliputian figures of the different senators, all of whom would be recognized by, by viewers because their faces are, you know, are quite realistic, and the influence is quite clear between the monopolists and their impact on the legislators who are either going to be manipulated by or intimidated by these figures.
The quote from the Gettysburg Address referred to the democracy, 'the government by the people and for the people' as opposed to, in this case, the corruption of it, which is, 'by the monopolists and for the monopolists.'"
Josh Brown, American Social History Project, City University of New York
No limits on political campaign contributions and the direct appointment of Senators by State Legislatures, which was ended by the 17th amendment, created a climate of political corruption during the 'Gilded Age.'
Large corporate combines called 'Trusts' created monopolies using predatory pricing, anti-competitive mergers, and exclusive dealings and business arrangements. They used the power of their enormous profits to buy key State legislatures and thereby control the Senators appointed by them.
The progessives were able to promote both the 17th Amendment in 1913 and the Clayton Anti-Trust Act in 1914, which made great strides to break up the power of the 'Trusts' and put more political power back in the hands of ordinary voters.
"There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past."
Ryszard Kapuscinski
But they maintain a firm grasp on information and power, for their own sake, and sidetrack and stifle any meaningful reform.
In October 2000 Thomas Frank published a prescient critical social analysis titled, One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy.
In the video below from 2015, Thomas Frank looks back over the past 15 years to when he wrote this insightful book, and ends with this observation.
"I want to end with the idea that the market is capable of resolving all of our social conflict, fairly and justly. That is the great idea of the 1990's. And we all know now what a crock that is. I think what we need in order to restore some kind of sense of fairness is not the final triumph of markets over the body and soul of humanity, but something that confronts markets, and that refuses to think of itself as a brand."
The book was not received well at the time in the waning days of the Clinton revolution and the birth of the era of the neo-cons in foreign policy and neo-liberals in economics.
This religion of the markets had yet to suffer the serial failures and decimation of the real economy which it would see over the next sixteen years.
This is an ideology, a mindset, and as Frank calls it a religion, of taking market capitalism to such an extreme that it dispenses with the notion of restraints by human or policy consideration. It comes to consider the market as a god, with its orthodoxy crafted in think tanks, its temples in the exchanges and the banks, and its oracles on their media and the academy.
This extreme form of market capitalism, also called neo-liberalism in economics and neo-conservatism in foreign policy, has worked its way into the mindset of the ruling elites of many of the developed nations, and has taken a place in the public consciousness through steady repetition. I has become the modern orthodoxy of the fortunate few, who have been initiated into its rites, and served and been blessed by their god.
It is the taking of an idea, of a way of looking at things, that may be substantially practical when used as a tool to help to achieve certain outcomes, and placing it in such an extreme and inappropriate place as an end in itself, as the very definition and arbiter of what is good and what is not, that it becomes a kind of anti-human force that is itself considered beyond all good and evil, like a natural law.
It is born of and brings with it an extreme tendency that kills thought, and stifles the ability to make distinctions between things. If not unfettered capitalism then what, communism? The adherents become blind by their devotion to their gods.
This is not something new. It is a madness that has appeared again and again throughout history in the form of Mammon, the golden idol of the markets. It is a way of looking at people and the world that is as old as Babylon, and as evil as sin.
"What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, and the power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing— that resistance has been overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence. The first principle of our humanism is that the weak and the failures shall perish. And they ought to be helped to perish."
Friedrich Nietzsche
There is a range in human behaviours. There may be a baseline, but not all are the same.
And this is why theories that assume that everyone has a basic world outlook that is the same like you, that all people have a natural desire to be friendly, helpful, and sharing falter out of either a good nature or from a good maximizing, selflessly reasoning behaviour, falter so badly when applied to the real world.
When a society fails to restrain the worst behaviours of those who prey on others through the abuse of power or money, their example brings out the worst in a much larger subset of the population. Bad behaviour breeds bad behaviour, and those who profit by it find ways to justify this through self-serving social and political theories. People who have this weakness in their character are naturally attracted to high profile positions of power. Psychopaths breed and nurture sociopaths, imitators who are able to extinguish their own empathy and remorse through ideology and excess.
What would you do to protect your children from people like this? Throughout history people have banded together in order to establish and maintain the rule of law against the tyranny of a few.
This is why romantic notions about markets and societies without law and transparent regulation are so harmful. They turn the power of the markets and the laws over to the least scrupulous and self-controlled in a society. This is why any social system without checks and balances, without transparency and restraints, will eventually deteriorate into a dysfunctional system of self-interest and looting.
People are not perfectly rational angels. It is hard to believe that one must say that to an adult audience, but ideology and conditioning can make people blind to their own faults. 'Men go mad in herds, but come back to their senses, one at a time.'
Society is generally based on consumption, production, and cooperation. A system that has become tainted by the sickness of the disordered mind and soul is based on debt, coercion and extraction, serving only money, power, and itself.
What then are we to do?
Do not spend your time trying to look into the minds and hearts of others at a distance, saying this one or that one is clearly disordered and evil, calling them out for it. Rather, look first into your own imperfectly human heart, and find the fear, selfishness, envy and greed within.
And with open eyes, having seen this inhuman behaviour for what it is, acknowledge it, bring it under your control, subdue it and extinguish it by having remorse for past wrongs, and a sincere desire to act up to your light, more fully and wholly human, in the future.
Put more simply in the words that echo down the long halls of history, see your sins, acknowledge them, repent and ask for forgiveness, ask for the strength to act up to your light, and then go and sin no more. For if the seeds of wickedness and inhuman behaviour are stilled within you, then the madness that roams the world like a roaring lion will not find a way to steal your humanity and your heart.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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