[Revi]

I am reading Dark Money, and it's not the one percent who is running the country. It's the .001 percent! The Koch Brothers and their pals have a lot of power with the new unlimited money pouring into politics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/book ... .html?_r=0

[Cog]

Perhaps you should ask your buddy Soros about Dark Money. He practically invented the term.

[Tanada]

The points I'm trying to get across with my annoying questions are:

We don't really have a democracy, you need a bunch of money to participate
Having money does not mean you are fit to govern
The pool of candidates we have is pretty lame, a lot of broken people there

I don't have a good alternative to our government. My observation is that despite our Lamentations to the contrary, we seem to be drawn to some kind of feudalisim. Left to our own devices it's what we want as a species.

Listen to what a man says, but closely observe where he walks, uou will find his heart there.

In my experience in the working world I observed one thing very clearly. The vast bulk of humanity will go to great lengths to avoid responsibility. That is the 80 percent or maybe more who are the follower personality. They hate being forced to make decisions, because making a decision makes you personally responsible for the consequences of that decision. Far easier to just do what some leader or shaman tells you to do, then if it goes wrong it is not your responsibility, unless you were shirking at your task.

This pattern happens with every groups of humans from every culture I have ever heard of or read about. It has to be a genetic trait that leads to tribal survival being higher. IOW this is the way we evolved and you can't change it.

Think back to when you were working every day. How many of your co-workers were "self starters" who would try and get things done even without close supervision and how many would just loaf around waiting for some authority to come around and assign them a task?

[Ibon]

The vast bulk of humanity will go to great lengths to avoid responsibility. That is the 80 percent or maybe more who are the follower personality.

Far easier to just do what some leader or shaman tells you to do,

This pattern happens with every groups of humans from every culture I have ever heard of or read about.

It has to be a genetic trait that leads to tribal survival being higher.

waiting for some authority to come around and assign them a task?

I just put in quotes the core of your message. I have to agree and this cannot help but get you thinking about the future once the pacifier of consumption culture gets yanked out of the mouths of all those followers who have asked for nothing more than to put in their 8 hours a day, go home, watch TV, and follow the establishment consensus reality.....in the spirit of "just leave me alone and don't force me to take any responsibility". So much of what we defend as the liberty of the individual has really been the liberty to be able to indulge in indolence, being a follower pacified by consumption. Satisfied with so little the elite have been able to have a run with their money. They aren't really taking advantage of anyone though are they? ............because those 80% seem quite content as you say with being wage slaves as long as they have a few dollars to go spend on entertaining themselves in shallow pursuits. You really want to blame the 1%? I can't quite go there. There is indolence that allows one to be content with just being a follower just as there is indolence and shallowness in pursuing the alpha's game of using your wealth and power to control others. Both are dance partners with the same underlying values. That is why I see this as a bit of a false dichotomy. That you are either part of the 80% who follow or part of the elite who exploit.

You mean to say there is no other choice?

I have become somewhat deeply cynical about lifting society at large out of the malaise we find ourselves in.

Let the followers and elite continue their macabre dance. I politely withdraw and choose another path.

[Newfie]

Tanada and Ibon,

I pretty much agree. Humans are basically herd or colonial animals. I don't buy into the conspiracy theory of TPTB or 1% or Bildenbergers or Jews or whatever. It's part of our DNA. Meat robots. We have far less self determination than we think we do. We surely lack self awareness.

There may be a very few of us who are outliers in our crowd. But very, very few are true hermits, loners. I recall reading about one guy who showed up in the Yukon (IIRC) in the early 20th century. He wanted nothing more than to be left alone. That made the Mounties supecious. They harassed the guy, surrounded his cabin, until he shot one. Then they had a manhunt until they fracked him down and killed him. No one ever knew his name, where he came from, or any small bit of his history. He just wanted to be left alone. So we killed him.

[Ibon]

There may be a very few of us who are outliers in our crowd. But very, very few are true hermits, loners.

Hermits place themselves physically in solitude. Then there are those who feel themselves in exile while living in among their fellow humans because they follow a set of values that makes them outliers.

I have felt this way for as long as I can remember. The wisdom about our plight I understood already when I was 14 years old. Already then I rejected the set of cultural values that the mainstream follow. I moved already then in a separate reality.

I came back here to post tonight after spending 4 hours doing taxonomy on the collection here at Totumas of a large subfamily of Lepidoptera, the Geometridae. Immersing myself in the biodiversity here provides more fulfillment then chasing power or stuff.

That is what I meant when I said there are other choices besides either being a follower or an exploiter.

[onlooker]

To see Modern Industrial Civilization in how it has impacted the Biosphere and much resources and waste it uses and produces is to come to understand how ultimately unsustainable it is. That is something few have been equipped to see and few have been motivated to see

[JimBof]

There may be a very few of us who are outliers in our crowd. But very, very few are true hermits, loners.

Hermits place themselves physically in solitude. Then there are those who feel themselves in exile while living in among their fellow humans because they follow a set of values that makes them outliers.

I have felt this way for as long as I can remember. The wisdom about our plight I understood already when I was 14 years old. Already then I rejected the set of cultural values that the mainstream follow. I moved already then in a separate reality.

I came back here to post tonight after spending 4 hours doing taxonomy on the collection here at Totumas of a large subfamily of Lepidoptera, the Geometridae. Immersing myself in the biodiversity here provides more fulfillment then chasing power or stuff.

That is what I meant when I said there are other choices besides either being a follower or an exploiter.

You are not the only one who does not "fit the crowd" I can deal with my fellow human being but sometimes dealing with people with so called normal intelligence is like wading through mush - it is slow, boring and uncomfortable. I have no problems being on my own. I cannot "do" management so I avoided it and ended up with a job where I had to deal with data. My forte is problem solving but does not always play well with others. Then there is explaining to management that they have a small "Hiccup" Tact is not on my agenda. Being right can be a problem. Before I retired they got me to train a replacement, she had difficulty understanding why I had 3 ways of doing the same job depending on other variables. She was smart but a linear thinker but she learned which is all you can ask.

[onlooker]

When Industrial Civilization does finally fall, I think we can throw out some of the projections we make based on past events and trends. Remember, the very painful lesson that humanity will have learned going through the bottleneck of consequences to overshoot. Feudal systems and Tyrannies may arise but I really believe that the mindset of humans will be radically different. We are talking about a worldwide conflagration unlike ever seen before. In its aftermath, humans can and I believe will draw on the glaring and obvious notion that they must live within the constraints of nature and that they must live in relative harmony with each other. I know that our past is filled with the recurring theme of us not living in harmony with each other and of many times going on power projection rampages and of inevitably overpopulating our niche. However, if certain areas can maintain technological complexity, we may have the capacity to once and for good deal with our sexual biological drive to limit over population.
Again, will all this necessarily happen, maybe not, we may once again fall into the familiar patterns described above. However, I like Ibon believe a real possibility exists for the surviving peoples to adopt a much more benign consciousness and attitude that is sacred to them ala religious. If they do they have a chance to forge ahead in a challenging landscape but with certain advantages that our ancestors did not have both in a practical sense ie. knowledge and natural resources and remnants of civilization and also with a profound sentient awareness of our trajectory and how to go along a more sustainable path.

[Revi]

Those of us who work for a living are having a harder and harder time. Meanwhile the uber wealthy have more and more of the pie. They own a lot of the real estate and are getting more of it. They fly from place to place and accumulate art that they put into vaults. Most of their wealth is locked up in various assets while the rest of us make a living off of what drops from their plates. Same as it ever was...

[Newfie]

Revi,
Trickle down, we voted for it, so we got what we wanted, or what we deserve.

Onlooker,
Same question I always ask Ibon, what is the selection process that will bring about this new improved human? I see bias' to create mean nasty selfish oeople who will fight to live. But not much that makes a better, more thoughtful, human.

[Cog]

Want to know what the selection process will produce?

Me

[KaiserJeep]

I have been wanting to speak to this subject for a long time. Please read through the end.

The average American brought home $55,773.00 in 2016. In terms of dollars, that is more money than I earned for two thirds of my life, with an undergraduate EE degree and years of experience as an electronics tech before then. My annual salary as an engineer was $15,000 in 1978. I got regular raises, the company moved me three times during my career, and I never lived or worked anywhere near my hometown. When I retired as a mid-level engineering manager in 2015, I was barely making a six figure salary.

In terms of the current definitions of Middle Class, these are how Americans are distributed between 1967 and 2014, a period of 47 years:



Note that the Lower class shrank from 38.7% in 1967 to 33.7% in 2014, a decline of 5%. Note also that the Middle Class shrank from 53.2% in 1967 to 41.6% in 2014, a decline of 11.6%.

But while the Middle Class was "shrinking", the Upper Class increased from 8.1% in 1967 to 24.7% in 2014 - it more than tripled in size.

YES, these are inflation-adjusted constant dollars.

During the 2015 primary period, Bernie Sanders attempted to incite class warfare in the USA with his Socialist BS. That is what it was, Socialist BS, with no basis in truth. By every parameter that can be measured, the lives of Americans are improving, in spite of the downslope of retiring Boomers.

In terms of relative per capita incomes, US citizens are wealthy compared to other countries (here are the 25 wealthiest in comparison):



In view of these numbers, with all the whining about the "system", the complaints about "the 1%", and the whining of all you LAZY BUMS who think that if you could only VOTE FOR THE RIGHT PERSON, you would be relieved of the inconvenience of working, I unhesitatingly declare you all to be worthless complainers, citizens of the wealthiest large country with (still) the largest Middle Class, which may or may not have peaked in prosperity (the stats don't support that conclusion at all).

You are among the most fortunate of people, living in a golden age of prosperity, and you are complaining. That makes you an incredibly greedy and thoughtless bunch, complaining to no end without any basis for your complaints.



To call you PIGS is to insult pigs, you worthless human scum.

[Ibon]

To call you PIGS is to insult pigs, you worthless human scum.

I thought retirement would sweeten you up?

[Ibon]

Onlooker,
Same question I always ask Ibon, what is the selection process that will bring about this new improved human? I see bias' to create mean nasty selfish oeople who will fight to live. But not much that makes a better, more thoughtful, human.

There is no day without night. Currently the hell we live provides no challenges of survival and the statistics of obesity, drug abuse, neurosis, addictions, bear this out.

You are right Newfie, all those mean and nasty people will be like hungry predators. They will provide an environment for the opposite to also once again have some integrity. In fact they are key components of the selection process you are asking us to identify.

We walk about in our indolence with nothing to fear.

Those hungry predatory ghosts will provide a much needed ballast to hold up the sails of integrity that will emerge as a contrast.

Hell is what we will leave behind. We did not evolve in environments that were easy, safe, secure and that provided satiation of all ones wants and needs. This has been hell. That is the paradox.

Many of you see bleak times ahead. I don't, I see indolence ebbing and integrity on the rise, the deeper appreciation of moving about in a world with no guarantees.

This is hell what we are living in.

Look at KJ, he is retired for over a year and spends his time calling us all scum when he could be skinny dipping in a cold spring stream somewhere in Wisconsin.

So much anger reflects a lack of contentment. I don't single out KJ here, how much of the daily dialogue in the US these days that come through the news feeds supports understanding and integrity and how much indulges in petty anger? Don't we have a president currently that embodies this?

If our grandfathers came back they wouldn't notice so much the content of what we discuss. They would however be shocked by the tone. We don't even see or hear anymore the depth of or discontentment.

Shocking really.

[KaiserJeep]

Where are the threads establishing that the peakoil.com members even appreciate the fact that they are members of the most fortunate class on Earth? Because I don't see any, all I see are complaints. AFAIK all the forum members, if not US citizens as are the majority are in the top 25 wealthy nations in the chart above, and thus about 7/8ths of the world's other 171 countries are worse off. Even 25th-ranked Italy beats out the 3rd world hellholes, along with the two huge countries China and India, comprising half the world's citizens.

baha, I don't have any regrets after 34 years making computers. We had our own computer network and e-mail at my original company, 80-odd computers in 50+ countries, with internet connectivity years away still. My career pre-dated the online world, I remember silly software types printing centerfolds on impact line printers, and attaching image files as text extensions. But when smart phones and texting took over Japan in the early 1990's, we were the server IT provider. When online purchasing made it big, we were the provider of every machine that counted money. NonStop computers run the online world, and I'm proud to have been a part of it all.

You are correct, we Americans are uniquely positioned to prosper when energy gets expensive. Which is what we should be talking about, not the whining of the wealthiest group on the planet because the 1% has more than they do - while they themselves make 700+% of the world's average income.