Elites Have Lost Right To Rule
zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-30/elites-have-los...
zerohedge.comPosted Jun 30, 2016, 12:25 PM UTC
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zerohedge.comThey never had the right to begin with.
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I think the idea was if the world was a meritocracy the best people would rise to the top the lead us all to a better place. But the "best and the brightest" go to wall-street to reinforce the chains that bind and to find new ways to bilk people out of their life savings.
The people at the top got there through corrupt processes, look at the political races this year, none of those people are the best at anything, why is that?
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Leaders aren't even required. There are scientifically pre-determined ways to sustainably manage an environment. We just have to listen to physics, chemistry, and biology. And we can listen to neuroscience, psychology, and sociology for ourselves. We don't need people to actually say "I'm in charge" because reality is in charge. We're in trouble because we don't listen to reality.
I've been arguing elsewhere that scientists need to take a leadership role with climate change since the political establishment is worthless, but I don't think anyone should be a leader of society because that just makes us collectively as smart as one egotistical or likely sociopathic fool.
Most (all other?) animals don't need leaders. Why would the supposedly smartest animal need them?
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Animals are more complex than that. I live in a small town, and I watch the crows and the magbpies compete for territory, so race war exists in nature.
I also had some cats, and there are lots of other cats in the neighborhood. The neighbors cat beat up my cat when it was small. Not that it is bigger my cat follows that cat around and gives it the hard eye until it goes away.
I got another cat and it dominated the first cat, and used its size to get the best places to rest and first dibs on the food. Then a wild tom moved into the neighborhood. It started raping the neighbor cat, and tried to drive my cats away. It repeatedly broke into my house and found my pillow and pissed on it.
Another neighbor had a small tom and the Bully Tom kept trying to kill it. That cat eventually started breaking into my house too - to hide from the bully Tom that it knew I hated and would drive away. In short animals are a lot more like people than you would think. Most people don't notice the complexity of their existence.
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Yes, but this is "pecking order" behavior, which humans also engage in (roughhousing play seems to be part of this), but we also have artificially maintained hierarchical structures, including class structures, which are what need to go. Animals can stay organized without such abstractions. Humans - at least some of us - have the self-awareness to be able to override evolutionary behaviors that aren't conducive to maintaining a complex society and understand the importance of doing so. Humans are also highly social and can cooperate in many kinds of non-hierarchical organization schemes.
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"Meritocracy" is another word for "who can steal the most the fastest"
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Sometimes the meaning of words change over time. But the US has always been a pseudo-democracy where the rich casually exploit the poor. What is different now is the scale, and we're a global empire. Truthfully the meritocracy is about a inch deep and has a layer of slime right below it.
Things are still decent where I live now, I lived in North Dakota before this and the businesses there were very exploitative. I had an employer steal my vacation time, I wrote the state about it, the state said if I had a case I could sue them.
The state willing closed their eyes to over a hundred people having weeks of wages stolen from them. I tuned out of the American Dream after that. The job after that was a tyranny of management techniques designed to burn you out. The job after that had no problem working people past the point of injury and then doing everything they can to derail any compensation for that. I caught a lucky break quit before I was permanently injured. They were incredible asses about it when I left, like I was committing a crime or something. Things like this are a clear indicator that the top has too much power and doesn't deserve it, they are very casual about crushing people.
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It's a top-down system that percolates all the way through to the small bizmen and companies, and there is generally little legal redress for being fucked over.
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Came here to say this. Well put, RE.
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It is a cultural conceit that because some people are smarter than other people, they should "rule", or at the very least make more money. Complete nonsense. The society depends on ALL members, and BY DEFINITION 50% have an IQ under 100.
I can give you inumerable examples of why having "smart people" in charge is a really BAD IDEA. Paul Krugman is vey smart. Ben Bernanke is very smart. J Robert Oppenheimer was very smart. None of these very smart guys did much to help the Human Race.
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Well... I've almost never heard of the elite justifying their rule by saying that they're more intelligent. They don't, in my experience, give any justification, or if they do, it's some thin argument about how power is power, and they have the power.
There are smart people who have helped humanity, but many of them made barely above minimum wage working in a lab and their work wasn't even understood or widely known until they were dead.
Elites on the other hand are largely unknown, and their useful idiot puppets prance around on television and have a captive audience. Paul Krugman is a talking head, and I'd be amazed if he has any significant influence, but rather he is given the soap box he has because he says things that align with what the actual elites want him to say. (Paul Krugman also doesn't really seem all that smart...)
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I would argue with most of this post, but this thread is about done here. If you want to continue it, see me on the Diner Forum.
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Jealousy revealed!
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Exact words I was about to write.
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As noted in other comments, the parasite classes never had a right to rule. Moreover, they've never even ruled. They used hired guns to exploit resources and control the population. That's it.
The only way our species can survive long-term is to sustainably manage the planet, which requires multi-disciplinary scientific approaches. This obviously isn't what the so-called "elite" are doing. They have never ruled, have never been leaders, and never will be since management, which has to be local in scale, is completely at odds with what they are. When the resources run out, they go away, and good riddance.
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You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising.
Seems like we picked option "A"
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That line was the hook for me.
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Its a long article but there's lots of good stuff in there.
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There is no such thing as a "right" to rule.
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But there is legitimacy. That's the word they should have used.
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Only according to their own rules, which in the end, isnt very legitimate.
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The elites never had the right to rule. And anarchists and hardcore leftists have been saying all of this shit for ages. The alt right is just catching up. The problem is that the alt right still thinks there is some fair capitalism that can be achieved. Elites will rule you so long as you allow capitalism to dictate the terms of our existence. They will bend your back with financial obligations, containing you in a cycle of endless labor of which they will always take the biggest cut.
And let me interrupt before the alt right comes screaming in; no, im not suggesting a state capitalism either.
Doesn't matter to the slave whether the master has a government agency ID or a big bank account. He's still a slave.
Exactly.
You have a chain around your neck do you?
Nope. The boot of authority.
No one said the elites have the right to rule. Anarchists and hardcore leftists are just whiners without a plan of their own, hell any monkey can chuck feces, how about they come up with their own plan (besides the feces flinging routine) and we'll see what that looks like compared to equal opportunity, with those who didn't seize such opportunity whining about how unfair it is.
From the feces flinging maestro himself.
Good of you to recognize you have no riposte, and go with aimless name calling. I could recommend a decent community college where you might take a class in critical thinking, objective logic, etc etc? Then you wouldn't be so afraid to...you know...think...and then...you know...post about it with someone who just doesn't go for swill with the happy nod of the mindlessness like your peers?
Hows tribal life?