The Noeliberalcon Project For A New American Century - The Fruits Of Our Labor...

submitted by BerryBoy1969It's not red vs. blue - It's capital vs. you from sonar21.com

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[–]harrybothered 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A good companion article (that may have already been posted here) is Yves Smith's https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/more-on-the-collapse-of-operational-capabilities-in-the-west-how-did-we-get-here.html She lists several policy and cultural changes and discussed them and how they led to the US decline in competency.

[–]sandernista22 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I have just one note to add to this rather first rate piece:

In a way (a preverse way) we are lucky to live at a time when the world is about to undergo radical change, one of those times that history books 100 years hence will belabor.

That change is the Decline of the West, or as some call them, the golden Billion. The "West" means however an entire civilizational edifice, built upon the evidently false concept that Democracy equals good Governance, virtually by definition. The Democracy we now have is obviously in name only, a thin fig leaf to cover the precipitous rise of the Corporatocratic state, which now rules supreme, even as it continues to rearrange the faux democratic playing field, in such a way as to benefit the very top oligarchic 1%. By the same token in the Economic field, the stakes are continually recast so as to favor a financialized model that begets the ruling rentier class, cf. Neo-Feudalism (cf. Michael Hudson).

In the process cultural, societal and public values are being corrupted, to the point they are hardly recognizable. Yet it's happening in full sight of the public, something that can happen precisely because competence at the highest levels has been compromised irrevocably as Gaius posits.

This, in a way, has already been predicted in Oscar Spengler's famous 2 volumes from early 20th century, called "Decline of the West". His contention, based on review of several past grand civilizations is that they all share a similar pattern of rise up to a peak, then plateau and then a period of decline, as the creative burst of energy that sustained the civilization peeters out. We are now in the decline phase, which appears to be accelerating.

As distressing as being part of such a decline phase, we can take comfort in knowing we are witness to historical tectonic shifts. There's much to analyse during this phase and some, like Gaius, excel in reading the tea leaves, even as many are merely despondent.

Who said "May you live in Interesting times"?

PS I happen to think also that the rise of the smart devices did much to stupefy an ever-increasing cohort of the young. Effectively robbing them of depth of know;ledge, creativity and tyhe very kind of indenpendent, objective thought that tyhe article highlighted as so essential to competence.

[–]BerryBoy1969It's not red vs. blue - It's capital vs. you[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The western purging of competence

Modern western society is from a governance standpoint ideologically motivated and ideologically controlled. It is being pushed in a very clearly defined ideological direction, led by the European Union and the current US administration. This ideology is not the subject matter of this article, but it can be seen everywhere by any rational and independent-thinking person. For the uninformed-curious a good place to start is the website of the EU’s policy-making body; the World Economic Forum.

In order to achieve these ideological goals for the West, two things must happen: a) The right people must be put into power at all levels of society and b) any disruptive elements must be eliminated or suppressed. Since all ideological goals tend to be more or less in conflict with reality, there is no group more disruptive to them than the one who operates objectively and independently. People like that simply cannot be allowed into positions of power, and if they must be, they must be kept quiet and/or forced to toe the line.

The objective/rational/general competence group, whether it is 1.5% or 8% of the population, therefore becomes a problem rather than a resource. This is exactly the situation in the West today.

Many people have noticed that meritocracy has been systematically abandoned in the West and the relationship between competence and reward severed in giant swaths of the economy – and almost completely in government. What few people seem to realize is that this is a necessity for the West’s ideological goals to be reached. High-level competence cannot be promoted because it is a threat. It cannot therefore be rewarded.

If we're honest, we've all seen the "right people" climbing the corporate/NGO ladder on the backs of the qualified/competent workers, who've been relegated to suckass support roles that make the turd on the ladder look good.

[–]sdl5 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Is it good or bad?: that my worst most misanthropic thoughts are repeated WITH MASSES OF LOGICAL SCIENCE to back it up.

Oh god. This blackpill is chokingly hard to finally swallow 😶😕😐

[–]BerryBoy1969It's not red vs. blue - It's capital vs. you[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Don't give up the ghost yet. I think for the U.S. and it's NATOstan vassals, their race has been run.

Let's hope that the rest of the world is learning something from our implosion, and that they're not as vengeful as they deserve to be...

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Let’s take a closer look at how this upward migration of the ideologically pure is managed after they receive their university certifications – and how the 1.5/8 group is systematically blocked. There are five main methods being employed – which together form a long-term takeover process of society. These methods are the following [explanations of each at the link]:

  • Public sector filtering

  • Public sector stuffing

  • Job-creation by decree

  • Private sector filtering

  • Private sector stuffing

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

General competence requires three necessary conditions: a) High general intelligence or IQ, b) the ability to be objective, even in situations where the result of your conclusions may not be to your liking, and c) the ability to reach conclusions without being influenced by others (i.e. independent thinking). The latter two conditions are a direct result of how the human brain interacts with the environment. The mechanism behind it is too complicated to describe here, but in simplistic terms it can be said that humans range in their relationship with reality from the emotional-outward/subjective to the introspective/objective. This variable, like all evolutionary traits, including IQ, is normally distributed. This has rather disturbing implications which may be difficult for some people to understand.

Now let’s take a look at the other variables, i.e. objectivity and independent thinking. Those two are correlated and... are normally distributed, much like IQ, with most in the middle and fewer toward the extremes in both directions. On one side of the distribution are people who, to state it bluntly, are incapable of thinking objectively about any issues that may interact with their personal views about anything at all. They can be competent in a limited field which is “neutral” to them (such as databases), but not involving anything else...They can’t run a city, a country, a military campaign, an economy, or anything requiring general competence, except into the ground, regardless of their intelligence. These people are clearly not suitable for general/high-level competence jobs.

The importance of this cannot be overstated. This group, whether we define it as 1.5% of the population or 8% of the population, is extremely valuable. This is essentially the only group in society that can reliably evaluate complex situations and make subsequent rational decisions. Without it, modern technological society simply cannot be built or maintained – let alone advanced. Let me rephrase this – if we do not identify and utilize this group, we cannot run our complicated societies except into the ground.

[–]3andfro 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That makes eminent sense.

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Any rational person upon hearing a western leader, diplomat or “expert” speak, asks himself this question: “Are they just lying or are they really this incompetent and delusional?” The answer is “both” but the incompetence factor is far greater than most people can imagine.

[–]3andfro 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That was my conclusion when I lived in DC and heard candid comments about their bosses from friends who worked in congressional offices. More among representatives than senators, but enough in both chambers to be both disconcerting and worrying.

[–]BerryBoy1969It's not red vs. blue - It's capital vs. you[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Or, what the rest of the world understands about American Demockracy.

[–]BerryBoy1969It's not red vs. blue - It's capital vs. you[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

The consequences of the bastardization of normal societal structure:

The consequences

The main thing to understand is that western societies and economies have been put on an ideological footing. Productivity, competitiveness, technology and science are simply not priorities anymore in the West. Explaining the consequences of this process for the West would take many articles, or a book of several hundred pages. Still, let’s mention a few examples.

The inverse competence crisis – The goal of this entire project has been to place the ideologically pure in all positions of power at all levels of society. These positions are, in a normal and competitive society, occupied by the highly competent 1.5/8 group. The process has now reached near-completion with most positions of power occupied by the ideologically pure. Some of those people have high IQs but they are neither objective nor independent thinkers. The Ideology they must subscribe to is simply incompatible with those qualities. This has some serious consequences.

Remember that positions of power and influence are more likely to demand general competence than other positions (as opposed to specific competence). The greater the power, the more the position demands general competence. The people in these positons now are selected by ideological fervor and reliability – so the higher you go, the more ideologically enthusiastic the people who hold them. This means that the least objective and independent thinking people hold the positions which require the greatest objectivity and independent thinking. Therefore, in the West incompetence becomes greater and more common the higher you go. As someone said – “a general is an incompetent colonel.” This can be seen absolutely everywhere except in some holdout private companies. Those exceptions are of course being addressed as we speak.

The second problem is that many of the irrational/subjective people holding all the power have reasonably high IQs. That may seem to be a positive thing but it has a major disadvantage. Moderate to high IQ irrational/subjective people are the easiest to brainwash of all people. The reasons for that are complicated and need to be addressed in another article – but what this means is that the top tier in the West is not only the most incompetent it can possibly be in comparison to what their jobs require – but are also the most malleable and delusional.

The cost and debt crisis – The migration of the ideologically pure into the ideological power base and positions of influence has created millions of jobs in western societies which create no value. These jobs are much more numerous and more widespread than most people realize, and I wouldn’t be surprised if something like 20%-30% of the entire labor force of the West could be fired without any adverse effect. In fact, the effect would be positive, especially if those people could be made to work the (mostly menial) real-economy jobs they are suitable for.

Deindustrialization has been blamed for the extreme debt levels and tax burdens of the West. That is, as far as it goes, true – but maintaining this giant group of incompetents in their fake jobs is also placing an extreme burden on the West. Western societies are now completely unsustainable and cannot be run without constant debt increase.

The competition crisis – This crisis can be explained by the following example: Let’s say there are three companies with combined 100% market share in some sector. There is no real competition between them and everybody can just relax because the customers can’t go anywhere else. These companies can get away with absolute incompetence on most levels, including in management. They don’t need to think about efficiency, safety, productivity or costs, except on their websites and in annual reports. However, if a competitor with competent employees manages to infiltrate the sector, those three companies will hit a wall. There will be an enormous crisis and one or more of them will most likely go under.

This is exactly the situation in the western economies now. Monopoly and oligopoly is the rule and the main objective of most large western companies is to prevent anyone from infiltrating their sector – usually by bribing regulators or by buying the competition. This is a necessity because a huge number of western companies are now run by incompetent management and staffed by incompetent people, particularly in support and management functions. The immortal words of the nameless Boeing employee about the 737 MAX apply to most large western companies; “this airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.” Western companies are no longer competitive. They cannot compete with Chinese companies now and soon they won’t be able to compete with companies in general outside the West. They simply can’t function except inside an economic safe-space. In fact, the situation is such that the Chinese already do the real work for many of them and reshoring the work is problematic because of (surprise!) the human capital degradation in the West caused by the repurposing of its education system.

This also applies to western societies as a whole. The entire leadership and diplomatic classes of the West are no longer competitive against the rest of the world for exactly these reasons. They are being outmaneuvered by the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, and everybody else at every turn. Even African leaders are now more competent than western leaders. They have consistently made decisions that are better for their people than leaders in the West – for the last few years anyway.

The complexity crisis – Earlier in this article I stated that the 1.5/8 group is extremely valuable for modern societies and without it complicated modern societies cannot be managed. In the West this group has been successfully sidelined to a great degree and a good part of it doesn’t even bother with university education anymore. The situation, however, is even worse than that. The reconfiguration of the education system and the break between competence and reward in the job market has fundamentally changed the decision making process behind the selection of university education. Why study engineering (which is hard) when you can get an even better paying job with a degree in psychology (which is easy nowadays)? The reconfiguration of the western education system has changed the reward structure, encouraging young people to pursue easy and useless education – simply because the “system” will provide them with jobs.

This has already caused a major crisis in western societies, particularly in the US. The “maintenance” of complex aspects of US society needs a large group of engineers and people with related education. This maintenance is faltering now, and significantly relies on foreign engineers educated in US universities. You see, why would Americans study engineering in a system which doesn’t reward it? If China and India could somehow recall their engineers and others with hard education from the US, the US system could probably not be maintained, let alone advanced. This will get progressively worse and we will soon reach a point where complex systems which underpin society cannot be kept running. That will require some kind of “reset” to a less complex society, with less prosperity of course.

There are far more crises than those four, but I wouldn’t want to sound like a doomsayer by listing more.

This is a good article for those who enjoy reading, and especially so for those among us who look around, and ask themselves "WTF Happened Here?"

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The migration of the ideologically pure into the ideological power base and positions of influence has created millions of jobs in western societies which create no value.

Man, this has the absolute ring of truth and explains so much.

[–]BerryBoy1969It's not red vs. blue - It's capital vs. you[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Man, this has the absolute ring of truth and explains so much.

Our vaunted PMC in a nutshell. Unfortunately for them, capital is almost finished gutting what's left of the middle class. All those millions of jobs that create no value to society, will be the block that supports the F.I.R.E. sector parasites that needs the interest paid by those highly paid workers to support their lifestyles.

They'll become the new "middle" class, until they've been bled out like the rest of us. Being likened to livestock, born and bred to feed the rapacious appetite of our capitalist overlords, seems more like reality than a conspiracy theory to anyone with the time or inclination to pay attention to what's happening around them.

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That really is an excellent piece and I think he has it right, not only where we are but how we got here. I think we're in for a rude awakening and my only consolation is that people like us know it's coming, whereas people like this blogger describes are going to feel like the rug has been pulled out from under their feet. It's not that I wish them ill, but I admit to some schadenfreude for people who have contributed so little of value while enjoying an easy ride.