10-09-2021, 05:39 PM
(10-09-2021, 11:15 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: I have to wonder about weak 1Ts...are they more "active" or hedonistic than high 1Ts? Or can we anticipate that society will have a sense of exhaustion? Instead of being one of the great barbecues of history, a weak 1T-even without an emphasis on conformity-might be a dull, bland time. Almost a blank turning.
What is likely more important is how destructive the 4T is. If the pre-Crisis institutions are weak, or the enemy in an apocalyptic war is particularly destructive, then it is clear that the 1T will long have survival and recovery -- picking up the pieces -- as the focus. Figure that the countries hit hardest in the Crisis of 1940 (China and Poland) had weak institutions before the Crisis and experienced genocidal enemies. Figure that Polish Jews were the bulk of the middle class of small-business owners, and that their disappearance into gas chambers ensured that the only possible market sector in Poland after WWII was agriculture. The Soviet-sponsored Polish Commies had little difficulty collectivizing industry because much of it was German-owned during the war, including what had been taken from Jews. China experienced a horrific 4T whether under Japanese dominion, the authoritarian regime of Chiang Kai-Shek, or the "communes" or "soviets" of the Chinese Communists. The Republic of China had little authority beyond the cities even before the Japanese invasion. The commies established the institutions that included "socialized" industry,
Crises typically end in one of three ways: euphoria over victory (USA), exhaustion in a hollow victory (Netherlands), and calamitous destruction and dislocation whether in victory (Poland, Soviet Union, China) or defeat (Japan, Germany). Maybe there is a settlement that the result is "the best of all possible worlds" as in Italy or Finland, which is an intermediate.
A 1T is likely to be conformist because a 1T rejects the shady practices, mindless hedonism, and shaky institutions of the preceding 3T. If the 4T ends with the foundations of a new and unprecedented prosperity, then hedonism and consumerism prevail -- but the hedonism and consumerism will not be mindless. Speculative booms that precipitated the financial panic that gutted the economy and destabilized the political scene worldwide will no longer be possible. Large-scale consumer lending, as on housing (if only for white people), will be closely tied to savings. Lenders will be obliged to make conservative assumptions, and so will borrowers. People will not be able to bet on appreciation of value of assets as they might have been during the previous bubble. The sort of fraud in which a real-estate lender sold real estate to someone who could have never paid off the loan barring high inflation in the expectation that the borrower would default and that the lender could sell the property to someone else similarly gulled (Oh, you're making only $25K a year! Just sign here and you get title to an $800K house. Now you are not an accounting clerk; you are an auditor). Negative amortization and predatory lending are frowned upon in a 1T even if they are offered in a 3T because... well, the Good Lord isn't making more real estate, and if the borrower defaults, there will be another buyer paying even more. The lender basically pockets the down payment.
So suppose that we end up in an apocalyptic war that destroys America's large cities and leaves millions of people homeless and hungry. What happens? The first order of business will be to restore the food supply, and people will be drafted for all practical purposes as farm labor. Food production comes first, and illusions about having successful careers as car salesmen, accountants, or K-12 teachers come to an abrupt end. Along with the former middle class also come demobilized soldiers. Once the danger of famine ends (farm labor is a miserable way of life), other things can be put back together. If one is able to do construction labor, then one goes quickly from farm labor to the skilled construction trades that one once did. Society then goes through priorities of importance, like supplies of water and electrical power and motive power for vehicles. At some point people start producing and selling luxuries. Until then it is a harsh 1T.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.