Fell on Black Days
Epsilon Theory
October 5, 2020·27 comments·Politics
The degradation of American life didn't arrive as a sudden catastrophe. It came through a thousand small events, each unremarkable on its own, each building on the last, each forgotten as soon as it passed. We've woken to find ourselves in a fundamentally different world without noticing the moment we fell asleep.
- The system didn't break. It was broken. Something shifted in how our institutions operate, not because of Trump or any single election, but because the underlying rules that held them together have already changed. The Constitution is just paper. Its strength was always the unwritten agreement that those in power would respect small-l liberal values. That agreement no longer holds.
- Voting and elections no longer contain what's broken. The real transformation happened over 40 years, captured in the systematic application of four specific mechanisms across every major human endeavor. The election matters, but treating it as the solution misses the scale of what's already been lost.
- Every institution now operates on the same logic. The Artists Guild, the Bankers Guild, the Doctors Guild, the Lawyers Guild, the entire apparatus of civilization has been remade according to the same pattern. Institutional leaders dream of days gone by while those institutions extract value from everyone within them.
- There's a blueprint to how this happened. Four tools applied systematically: securitization, leverage, scale, and alienation. These aren't random corruptions. They're applied mechanisms. Understanding the process is everything, because it reveals something else.
- If the process is reversible, everything changes. This isn't about which president wins in November. This is about recognizing that permanent structural change has already occurred and asking whether permanent structural reversal is possible. What happens if a majority wakes up to this simultaneously?
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Comments
Can’t wait
https://youtu.be/tKnG06-oYcg
The great dilemma is that untangling the financialization of the nation and the world is near impossible. Stocks go down, layoffs explode, reinforcing why stocks need to go up.
it’s a brutal cycle, that will require a decade or two of unwind.
In a nation with the polarization and discord we have, and the guns, it’s going to be ugly, esp when the people that will be fighting should actually be on the same side, as they’re the ones that got screwed . . .
“We all know what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it.” ~ Jean-Claude Juncker, (as) president of the European Commission
We’re playing the Long Game here, with no expectation that I’ll see this initiative come to major fruition in my lifetime. But I think we can get this social movement on a good track for long-term success.
Sincerely,
The management team of Second Foundation Partners
Ben, is much of this argument also captured in George Monbiot’s commentaries on neoliberalism? Specifically, his article “Neoliberalism - the ideology at the root of all our problems” (from The Guardian) and his book “How did we get into this mess?”
I like how you define society by “guilds,” but I think you’ve missed one. You could call it the “ethical” or “identity” guild. The human endeavor of building tribes that create belonging and define certain behaviors as good and bad. The Church, NAACP/Black Lives Matter, Greenpeace etc…
I agree with Andrew. Not sure what to call it, but there are lots of institutions that are mostly focused on telling us what is moral or good. At one point, many of these institutions had a true north mission for navigating tricky issues. But now, most seem to start with the imperative that the institution is “good” and “important”, then work backwards to develop the optimum message for enhancing the goodness and importance of the institution.
Side note: I think it would help if you could expound on some non-finance examples of leverage, securitization, scale & alienation. I get the gist of what you are saying, but doubt I could explain it convincingly to a skeptic.
Sadly, I consider the Church with a capital C to be part of the Artists Guild.
You missed one. The Media Guild, the human endeavor of deciding which information the people get, how they get it, and how it makes them feel; cannot be disentangled from any of the other guilds as it is the tunnel through which all information about the other guilds flow.
Are we in the midst of the US (Roman) Republic moving towards the US (Roman) Empire? Is our National Debt now our National Asset? Sorry that I have more questions than answers. When did someone’s home change from being shelter to being an asset, in today’s sense of the word “asset”? I’m really afraid we might be in a gradually then suddenly moment. In terms of Leverage (borrowed money), isn’t everything a payday loan now? Home, Car, Student … Debt = Bad, no Debt = GOOD. The debt on corporate balance sheets will never be paid back, it’s a revolving line of credit now. Go get 'em Ben!
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