Posted by
glen ropella on
Jan 10, 2014; 4:17pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/11-American-Nations-tp7584250p7584715.html
On 01/09/2014 07:48 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
> I'm told that in some countries like Sri Lanka, money comes with power,
> rather than power with money.
> Make an appropriate tax table, or send out the military intelligence to
> deal with these people that fancy themselves as the deciders.
On 01/10/2014 07:30 AM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:
> I think this works for awhile but since it's a positive feedback system
> (making the rules gets you more gold) it eventually breaks or has to be
> intervened.
I can't help but wonder what an alternative looks like. It strikes me
that money and power will always correlate. After all, money is really
nothing more than a medium for power. Even if you had some limited
power (say in some limited number of dimensions ... like being able to
lift really heavy objects - Schwarzenegger, or by ... twerking - ??), it
seems reasonable to use that power to make money. Then that money
becomes a medium for other powers you didn't previously have.
So, by my requirements for rationality, I'm way behind, here, because I
can't really imagine an alternative. The people with the money have the
power and the people with the power have the money.
> So when the revolution comes we know who will be first
> against the wall/sent to the guillotine/sent packing. Following an
> undetermined period it starts all over again (Chinese
> commu-plutocrats). May be it even follows the prey-predator model? The
> question I have is where is America in the cycle?
Excellent suggestion. Perhaps what we need to consider are the
_transients_, the amount of time it takes one to turn power into money
or money into power. Herein might lie a significant difference between
information rich cultures and information poor cultures. Information
rich cultures have lots of wiggle room for _dissent_, casting doubt on
any given authority figure. And although on the one hand, it may be
easy to turn some small power you have into a reasonable amount of
money, there's still plenty of inertia between lots of money and making
the rules. Yes, you can almost buy a seat in congress. But that's not
a straightforward transaction. And even once you're there, it's a far
cry from sitting in the seat to getting legislation passed and signed
into law. Obama might be considered an aberration because his rise to
power was relatively quick.
Similarly, Bezos can buy the Washington Post and lobby/bribe various
legislators, but there is still daylight between him and rule-making, at
least the official rule-making. He still runs a corporate empire within
which he writes the rules.
Perhaps this brings us around to a classification of rule types? I
suspect the variety in the rule sets for North Korea is impoverished
compared to the variety in rule sets here in the States.
--
⇒⇐ glen
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