A broken cycle?

[Hintergrund]

(07-22-2019, 10:22 AM)David Horn Wrote: The last great monopoly breakup was AT&T in 1984 -- certainly a 3T effort.

If this was the last one, and occurred when the 3T started*, it was rather the last gasp of the 2T.

* I admit that the border at 1984 isn't as clear as that of eg 1929 or 1945/46. Still, good enough.

(07-22-2019, 10:44 AM)David Horn Wrote: A political resolution requires some degree of consensus. How does that occur?

No damn idea for today, but last time, FDR's landslide happened. Check out the reasons for it.

(07-26-2019, 04:20 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Well you can access my most recently published paper here:

Read it. Can big changes not happen until the Unequality goes even higher? We're still under 1929 levels.
Also, didn't Bill Clinton raise the tax rate a bit?

(08-01-2019, 01:11 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: If the bad guys win, the cycle is broken. If the US lost WW2 and the Nazis won then that would've been a broken cycle.

In every Crisis, someone loses. Ask the British loyalists after the ARW or the Southrons after the ACW. But the American cycle still went on.

[Mikebert]

Hintergrund writes: Read it. Can big changes not happen until the Unequality goes even higher? We're still under 1929 levels.
Also, didn't Bill Clinton raise the tax rate a bit?

The cited paper shows how economic inequality (and inequality-promoting beliefs of economists) reflects business/economic culture, that evolves in response to political choices. It presents no view on what may happen.

My next paper (still in manuscript) does suggest a view that in the face of high inequality-generated political stress (which had it own theory--not mine) AND financial bubbles, economic collapse can provide an alternative to state collapse (civil war or revolution), environmental catastrophe, or large-scale war as responses to inequality extremes. This can happen at any time, in the near future or decades away. The theories are not that precise.

Yes, Clinton raised top tax rate from (I think) 33% to 39.6%.

[Marypoza]

(07-26-2019, 08:59 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I have to admit I have been saying the current 4T Crisis is domestic, but what is happening now in the USA resembles strikingly the slide towards fascism and tyranny the world saw in the mid to late 1930s. Along with civil wars too.

There are differences too, of course. The world itself is not as sharply divided, and the tyranny is not as blatantly horrific as Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were. And which side the USA is on is not even clear, or whether there is even anyone on the side of democracy and progress strong enough to resist the current trend. And there is no leader like FDR or even Churchill on the scene to organize and rally the people to the cause of freedom and justice. We just have Angela Merkel and Immanuel Macron, neither of whom are really that stellar themselves. It seems like the new tyrants are riding a wave of admiration for Donald Trump.

The list of reactionaries, tyrants, demagogues, nationalists and dictators who are taking over countries or held off rebellions against them is growing by the day, it seems. It's hard to always remember them all. But it is truly disgusting, and unless Trump is deposed we will have no free world leader to defeat them. If the tyrannies formed an alliance to defeat the democracies this time, the tyrants and reactionaries would win in a cakewalk.

Putin in Russia
Xi Jinping in China
Kim Jung Un in Korea
Maduro in Venezuela
Trump in the USA
Johnson in the UK
Bolsonaro in Brazil
Morrison in Australia
Erdogen in Turkey
Netanyahu in Israel
Sisi in Egypt
Assad the monster in Syria
Duda in Poland
Orban in Hungary
Modhi in India
Deterte in The Philippines
Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran
The 3 dictators in Central America
The regime in Burma
The other backward regimes around the world....
Senator McConnell and the US Supreme Court....

So although we face the same slide into fascism this crisis that we saw in the 1930s crisis, it doesn't look like there's a set of two alliances forming up to fight; there is only the tyrants taking over. The only opponent is the rising regeneracy among the people everywhere against them, the long list of uprisings that have happened in the last decade and continue today, and whether they can ever challenge the tyrannies and the reactionaries. Time will tell, but there's your 4T in a nutshell. No "broken cycle" here; we are in it up to our necks! And if you live on the coast, that's a literal statement.

-- we got Bernie. We just gotta get him elected

[Hintergrund]

Well, if you count Trump as a tyrant...

[pbrower2a]

Despotic behavior and dictatorial style -- or is it dictatorial behavior and despotic style?

[AspieMillennial]

(08-14-2019, 08:55 AM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(07-22-2019, 10:22 AM)David Horn Wrote: The last great monopoly breakup was AT&T in 1984 -- certainly a 3T effort.

If this was the last one, and occurred when the 3T started*, it was rather the last gasp of the 2T.

* I admit that the border at 1984 isn't as clear as that of eg 1929 or 1945/46. Still, good enough.

(07-22-2019, 10:44 AM)David Horn Wrote: A political resolution requires some degree of consensus. How does that occur?

No damn idea for today, but last time, FDR's landslide happened. Check out the reasons for it.

(07-26-2019, 04:20 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Well you can access my most recently published paper here:

Read it. Can big changes not happen until the Unequality goes even higher? We're still under 1929 levels.
Also, didn't Bill Clinton raise the tax rate a bit?

(08-01-2019, 01:11 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: If the bad guys win, the cycle is broken. If the US lost WW2 and the Nazis won then that would've been a broken cycle.

In every Crisis, someone loses. Ask the British loyalists after the ARW or the Southrons after the ACW. But the American cycle still went on.

Someone loses in every cycle but if the bad guys lose it's obviously different than the good guys losing. If the good guys lose it could be catastrophic. This is what happened when communism won in 1917.

[pbrower2a]

(08-20-2019, 12:33 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(08-14-2019, 08:55 AM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(07-22-2019, 10:22 AM)David Horn Wrote: The last great monopoly breakup was AT&T in 1984 -- certainly a 3T effort.

If this was the last one, and occurred when the 3T started*, it was rather the last gasp of the 2T.

* I admit that the border at 1984 isn't as clear as that of eg 1929 or 1945/46. Still, good enough.

(07-22-2019, 10:44 AM)David Horn Wrote: A political resolution requires some degree of consensus. How does that occur?

No damn idea for today, but last time, FDR's landslide happened. Check out the reasons for it.

(07-26-2019, 04:20 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Well you can access my most recently published paper here:

Read it. Can big changes not happen until the Unequality goes even higher? We're still under 1929 levels.
Also, didn't Bill Clinton raise the tax rate a bit?

(08-01-2019, 01:11 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: If the bad guys win, the cycle is broken. If the US lost WW2 and the Nazis won then that would've been a broken cycle.

In every Crisis, someone loses. Ask the British loyalists after the ARW or the Southrons after the ACW. But the American cycle still went on.

Someone loses in every cycle but if the bad guys lose it's obviously different than the good guys losing. If the good guys lose it could be catastrophic. This is what happened when communism won in 1917.

The cycle isn't broken; politics is. American politics has had aligning the money with politicians and policies that the donors want since the Reagan Revolution. The economic elites have their agenda, which includes having the general society rewarding them for doing what they want to do: market consolidation, corner-cutting at the expense of the environment and consumer safety, evisceration of organized labor, and elite indulgence. 3T memes of plutocracy still dominate public life and come to the fore with a President who fits a Marxist stereotype as a political leader in an ultra-capitalist society.

At the least the Loyalists were not strung up from makeshift gallows from Calais, Massachusetts (Maine was then part of Massachusetts) to Brunswick, Georgia. At least the Union did not encourage slave revolts in which slaves took over the plantations, killed the male members of the planter families, and raped the white women. America and Britain chose to treat the defeated Germans and Japanese (except for war criminals) with much more kindness than the leaders of the Axis Powers. 

As for the Bolshevik Revolution -- that was a real horror in the result, far worse in effects than one could have expected. Obviously Lenin had a huge body count, but after him came Stalin who did even worse. The association of much of the core of Bolshevik fanatics as leaders with apostate Jews fed the antisemitism that became a cornerstone of Nazi and other fascist ideologies (including the Hlinka Guard in Slovakia, the Ustase in Croatia, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, the Iron Guard in Romania, and eventually people who would become Nazi collaborators in occupied countries -- and the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists, and the 1915 KKK in America, which did not. Antisemitism would become a part of Italian fascism as Nazi influence became powerful in Italy. 

No Bolshevik Revolution means that Hitler never achieves power. The optimum would have been that Kerensky stayed in charge and an elected parliament guides Russia through some rough times... but that of course did not happen. No Bolshevik Revolution also means no brutal White movement in Russia which itself flooded Europe with refugees from White terror -- including many Jews. 

Who knows? Maybe the cycle will force politics to fit their normal course again and discredit 3T ways in which American politics are stuck. Maybe it will take a damaging recession to compel the breakup of cartels and trusts and encourage small-scale economics again. Small-scale entrepreneurs who must defer to the harsh reality of competition have less capacity to exploit workers and consumers than do monopolistic behemoths with bureaucratic management out for itself at the expense of everyone else.

[beechnut79]

(08-21-2019, 07:22 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(08-20-2019, 12:33 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(08-14-2019, 08:55 AM)Hintergrund Wrote:

(07-22-2019, 10:22 AM)David Horn Wrote: The last great monopoly breakup was AT&T in 1984 -- certainly a 3T effort.

If this was the last one, and occurred when the 3T started*, it was rather the last gasp of the 2T.

* I admit that the border at 1984 isn't as clear as that of eg 1929 or 1945/46. Still, good enough.

(07-22-2019, 10:44 AM)David Horn Wrote: A political resolution requires some degree of consensus. How does that occur?

No damn idea for today, but last time, FDR's landslide happened. Check out the reasons for it.

(07-26-2019, 04:20 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Well you can access my most recently published paper here:

Read it. Can big changes not happen until the Unequality goes even higher? We're still under 1929 levels.
Also, didn't Bill Clinton raise the tax rate a bit?

(08-01-2019, 01:11 AM)AspieMillennial Wrote: If the bad guys win, the cycle is broken. If the US lost WW2 and the Nazis won then that would've been a broken cycle.

In every Crisis, someone loses. Ask the British loyalists after the ARW or the Southrons after the ACW. But the American cycle still went on.

Someone loses in every cycle but if the bad guys lose it's obviously different than the good guys losing. If the good guys lose it could be catastrophic. This is what happened when communism won in 1917.

The cycle isn't broken; politics is. American politics has had aligning the money with politicians and policies that the donors want since the Reagan Revolution. The economic elites have their agenda, which includes having the general society rewarding them for doing what they want to do: market consolidation, corner-cutting at the expense of the environment and consumer safety, evisceration of organized labor, and elite indulgence. 3T memes of plutocracy still dominate public life and come to the fore with a President who fits a Marxist stereotype as a political leader in an ultra-capitalist society.

At the least the Loyalists were not strung up from makeshift gallows from Calais, Massachusetts (Maine was then part of Massachusetts) to Brunswick, Georgia. At least the Union did not encourage slave revolts in which slaves took over the plantations, killed the male members of the planter families, and raped the white women. America and Britain chose to treat the defeated Germans and Japanese (except for war criminals) with much more kindness than the leaders of the Axis Powers. 

As for the Bolshevik Revolution -- that was a real horror in the result, far worse in effects than one could have expected. Obviously Lenin had a huge body count, but after him came Stalin who did even worse. The association of much of the core of Bolshevik fanatics as leaders with apostate Jews fed the antisemitism that became a cornerstone of Nazi and other fascist ideologies (including the Hlinka Guard in Slovakia, the Ustase in Croatia, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, the Iron Guard in Romania, and eventually people who would become Nazi collaborators in occupied countries -- and the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists, and the 1915 KKK in America, which did not. Antisemitism would become a part of Italian fascism as Nazi influence became powerful in Italy. 

No Bolshevik Revolution means that Hitler never achieves power. The optimum would have been that Kerensky stayed in charge and an elected parliament guides Russia through some rough times... but that of course did not happen. No Bolshevik Revolution also means no brutal White movement in Russia which itself flooded Europe with refugees from White terror -- including many Jews. 

Who knows? Maybe the cycle will force politics to fit their normal course again and discredit 3T ways in which American politics are stuck. Maybe it will take a damaging recession to compel the breakup of cartels and trusts and encourage small-scale economics again. Small-scale entrepreneurs who must defer to the harsh reality of competition have less capacity to exploit workers and consumers than do monopolistic behemoths with bureaucratic management out for itself at the expense of everyone else.

Paragraph 1:  It is very obvious that the nation finds itself involved in a power struggle from which there so far seems to be no relief. But aren't we far enough into the 4T that the behavior you describe is seriously post-seasonal? In the book the authors describe in pretty good detail the adverse consequences of post-seasonal behavior.  I also find it quite interesting that it seems more and more obvious that we can and in fact need to be quite discriminating about who you're in relationships with. Possibly a subject for a different thread, but more and more being in the wrong relationships can get you in pretty deep trouble.

Paragraph 2:  Not much response needed here except to point out that some of these global relationships had opposite results of what was originally intended, Castro no doubt being a prime example as we helped him gain power not knowing how much it would backfire.

Paragraph 3:  Same as P2 except to possibly analyze whether a type of Boshevik or Bastille Redux might be looming on the horizon.
I have often felt that we are past due for a modern-day equivalent of the Bastille, Boston Tea Party, Harper's Ferry of the next Rosa Parks, this time who won't go to the back of the bus for the corporate establishment.

Paragraph 4:  There can be endless speculation as to alternative histories, such as if the Confederacy had won the Civil War or even if losing candidates became President. Would Al Gore, a staunch environmentalist, have done more to challenge the naysayers on the global warming issue. Just one example.

Paragraph 5:  Again the deteritus and stalemate caused by the current power struggle is very much in play here. Maybe more mindfulness is needed here, and a recipe for such is enclosed in the link to an article I found. Would even staunch progressives such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, if elected to office, have the balls to break up the corporate trusts of our second gilded age in the manner that Teddy Roosevelt (a Republican BTW) did during Gilded Age I at the turn of the last century? Apparently the damage recession of the last decade was not enough to do the trick. Might it take a depression even worse than the one following the 1929 crash to get the job done? And do you really think there is any way we can return to the days of, say, mom and pop shops on Main Street?

https://www.adoptionstogether.org/blog/2...ndfulness/

[pbrower2a]

(08-21-2019, 09:49 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(08-21-2019, 07:22 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The cycle isn't broken; politics is. American politics has had aligning the money with politicians and policies that the donors want since the Reagan Revolution. The economic elites have their agenda, which includes having the general society rewarding them for doing what they want to do: market consolidation, corner-cutting at the expense of the environment and consumer safety, evisceration of organized labor, and elite indulgence. 3T memes of plutocracy still dominate public life and come to the fore with a President who fits a Marxist stereotype as a political leader in an ultra-capitalist society.

At the least the Loyalists were not strung up from makeshift gallows from Calais, Massachusetts (Maine was then part of Massachusetts) to Brunswick, Georgia. At least the Union did not encourage slave revolts in which slaves took over the plantations, killed the male members of the planter families, and raped the white women. America and Britain chose to treat the defeated Germans and Japanese (except for war criminals) with much more kindness than the leaders of the Axis Powers. 

As for the Bolshevik Revolution -- that was a real horror in the result, far worse in effects than one could have expected. Obviously Lenin had a huge body count, but after him came Stalin who did even worse. The association of much of the core of Bolshevik fanatics as leaders with apostate Jews fed the antisemitism that became a cornerstone of Nazi and other fascist ideologies (including the Hlinka Guard in Slovakia, the Ustase in Croatia, the Arrow Cross in Hungary, the Iron Guard in Romania, and eventually people who would become Nazi collaborators in occupied countries -- and the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists, and the 1915 KKK in America, which did not. Antisemitism would become a part of Italian fascism as Nazi influence became powerful in Italy. 

No Bolshevik Revolution means that Hitler never achieves power. The optimum would have been that Kerensky stayed in charge and an elected parliament guides Russia through some rough times... but that of course did not happen. No Bolshevik Revolution also means no brutal White movement in Russia which itself flooded Europe with refugees from White terror -- including many Jews. 

Who knows? Maybe the cycle will force politics to fit their normal course again and discredit 3T ways in which American politics are stuck. Maybe it will take a damaging recession to compel the breakup of cartels and trusts and encourage small-scale economics again. Small-scale entrepreneurs who must defer to the harsh reality of competition have less capacity to exploit workers and consumers than do monopolistic behemoths with bureaucratic management out for itself at the expense of everyone else.

Paragraph 1:  It is very obvious that the nation finds itself involved in a power struggle from which there so far seems to be no relief. But aren't we far enough into the 4T that the behavior you describe is seriously post-seasonal? In the book the authors describe in pretty good detail the adverse consequences of post-seasonal behavior.  I also find it quite interesting that it seems more and more obvious that we can and in fact need to be quite discriminating about who you're in relationships with. Possibly a subject for a different thread, but more and more being in the wrong relationships can get you in pretty deep trouble.

Post-seasonal behavior most likely intensifies the nastiness of the Crisis. The sexual mores of the next 1T are set -- gay and lesbian are OK, so long as they involve consenting adults, but sexual exploitation of children of any kind is always unacceptable. Mainstream gays and lesbians threw the pedophiles to the crocodiles in concert with mainstream straight people in return for getting same-sex adult relationships accepted. Thus Pete Buttegieg is acceptable and Jeffrey Epstein is not. Also, crank pseudoscience such as eugenics intended to create an economic and administrative elite (a fad of the 1920's in much of the world that morphed into "racial hygiene" in Germany and is part of the Epstein plot) and crank distortions of history for political ends would reasonably give way in a more collegial, equitable, and rational society. 

(So what is the problem with trying to breed a race of leaders? History has shown that highly-competent, imaginative people often come from unlikely families. It is better to find such people even if they come from nasty places, cultivate their rare talents, and adapt to their valid concerns for loved ones who might be left behind in some perverse idea of progress. Adults whose parents picked crops, did domestic work, or worked in sweatshops are more likely to do good for people of their origins than are people raised in the clinical nicety of having had all the advantages and seeing people not so raised as lesser parts of Humanity. The GI boss who knew what life is like on the shop floor might well be a far better executive than some Boom executive who knew enough to never do hard, dirty work. I am old enough to know the difference between GI and Boom bosses... and I generally preferred the GI bosses who may have known hardscrabble poverty by contemporary standards).    

Quote:Paragraph 2:  Not much response needed here except to point out that some of these global relationships had opposite results of what was originally intended, Castro no doubt being a prime example as we helped him gain power not knowing how much it would backfire.

Fulgencio Batista was easy to hate. This man embezzled American aid instead of spending it to crush the Castro revolution. He turned Havana into a pleasure dome for Americans who could get away with things there that they could not do in America, except perhaps in Vegas. Castro knew how to exploit memes of the American Revolution and even Abraham Lincoln with such rhetoric as 

 

Quote:"Workers and farmers, this is the socialist and democratic revolution of the humble, with the humble and for the humble." — April 16, 1961 -- Fidel Castro

Quote:that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

—Abraham Lincoln

[/url]
Castro plagiarized Lincoln's words, adapting them to Marxism-Leninism. 

Quote:Paragraph 3:  Same as P2 except to possibly analyze whether a type of Boshevik or Bastille Redux might be looming on the horizon.
I have often felt that we are past due for a modern-day equivalent of the Bastille, Boston Tea Party, Harper's Ferry of the next Rosa Parks, this time who won't go to the back of the bus for the corporate establishment.

Most Americans would be perfectly happy enough with "capitalism with a human face", adopting language of Alexander Dubcek. The fault with capitalism is not with the profit motive; the faults with contemporary capitalism in America are:

its rejection of competition as a control of gouging 
the merger of Big Government and Big Business (economic fascism)
disdain for the people left behind due to technological and social change
emergence of a bureaucratic elite responsible to none but its bosses
support of politicians of one political stripe -- extreme reactionaries    

Quote:Paragraph 4:  There can be endless speculation as to alternative histories, such as if the Confederacy had won the Civil War or even if losing candidates became President. Would Al Gore, a staunch environmentalist, have done more to challenge the naysayers on the global warming issue. Just one example.

American history shows a tendency for weak leaders in the latter part of the 3T.

Quote:Paragraph 5:  Again the detritus and stalemate caused by the current power struggle is very much in play here. Maybe more mindfulness is needed here, and a recipe for such is enclosed in the link to an article I found. Would even staunch progressives such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, if elected to office, have the balls to break up the corporate trusts of our second gilded age in the manner that Teddy Roosevelt (a Republican BTW) did during Gilded Age I at the turn of the last century? Apparently the damage recession of the last decade was not enough to do the trick. Might it take a depression even worse than the one following the 1929 crash to get the job done? And do you really think there is any way we can return to the days of, say, mom and pop shops on Main Street?

[url=https://www.adoptionstogether.org/blog/2013/01/14/avoiding-power-struggles-by-practicing-mindfulness/]https://www.adoptionstogether.org/blog/2013/01/14/avoiding-power-struggles-by-practicing-mindfulness/

It took the Great Depression to humanize the American economy because everyone had a stake in its humanization. The economic elites of the Gilded Age and especially their successors of the Roaring Twenties saw the rest of Humanity existing solely for the gain, power, and indulgence of those elites. It may also be a catastrophic leader like Trump who forces us to divest ourselves of much of pur collective nastiness.

[Hintergrund]

(08-20-2019, 08:49 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Despotic behavior and dictatorial style -- or is it dictatorial behavior and despotic style?

Maybe he'd like to, but so far, he hasn't achieved what he promised. Hitler had introduced the Nuremberg laws against Jews after two years.