12-19-2016, 10:00 PM
(12-19-2016, 08:30 PM)Mikebert Wrote:[/quote](12-18-2016, 04:19 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: You're ignoring the effect of dividing the world economy on the dominance of existing elites. As Turchin notes, expanding the economy has the effect of diluting the elites. What passes for an elite in a smaller economy - for example with the market power to manipulate prices - may not have the power to act as an elite in a larger economy.
Dividing the world economy into pieces exacerbated the problem of elite dominance within each of those pieces. In the context of the times, that was a big part of the disaster.
You are grasping for straws here and making it way more complicated than it is. Hell you voted for Trump and do not seem to understand where he is coming from.
How often did Trump talk about the stupid people running America? I look at America and our policies seem stupid to me from an engineering/analytical perspective. If I had Trump's ego I would assume this perception on my part arises because I really am smarter than everyone else and that they really were stupid.* But they aren't stupid. To understand these things you have to see things in such a way that what both sides did makes sense and would be what you too would do if you were them (i.e. if you faced the same incentive structure as they).
As Socrates told us about 2500 years ago, the true measure of wisdom is knowing that one is not all-knowing. Much knowledge takes highly-specialized learning, and some sets of learning (let us say at the extreme law and medicine) have such conflicting demands for intellectual attention that practically nobody could master both. So don't go to an attorney for medical advice and don't go to a physician for legal counsel.
For good reason, many of our Presidents have been attorneys, and however much the study of law can hone the intellect, it also forces one to recognize one's limitations of knowledge. Can you imagine Barack Obama, truly a brilliant man, pretending to know more than the intelligence agencies or the senior military officers? Not in the least. He found them exactly the people to turn to for whacking.... well, you know who. I doubt that he would ever contradict an engineer or a physician on their areas of expertise. But Donald Trump, who has an exaggerated conception of his own brilliance, might do so.
Attorneys lose cases, and even judges get their decisions reversed.
Donald Trump has been shielded from failure and its consequences all his life, but the Presidency will not let him get away with much folly. So how does he deal with failure? I doubt that it will be pretty. There will be failures. The seven-year bull market will not last forever. There will likely be some horrible terrorist attack -- all the more likely should he neglect the CIA briefings or shrug them off. We are talking about the CIA which has developed a cozy relationship with a President who has found it useful.
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.