THE HISTORY OF CAPITALISM



While this writer insists the first capitalists were
in  England and came with the Industrial Revolution,
let me assure you that the zeitgeist was alive and
well with me in Rome. I invented it. signed, Crassus Emperor

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Crassus

  Historical background – the establishment of capitalist supremacy

  Richard K. Moore

  rkm@quaylargo.com

When the Industrial Revolution began in Britain, in the late 1700s, there was lots of money to be made by investing in factories and mills, by opening up new markets, and by gaining control of sources of raw materials. (i.e. COLONIZING THE THIRD WORLD.) The folks who had the most money to invest, however, were not so much in Britain but more in Holland. Holland was the leading Western power in the 1600s, and its bankers were the leading capitalists. In pursuit of profit, Dutch capital flowed to the British stock market, and thus the Dutch funded the rise of Britain, who subsequently eclipsed Holland both economically and geo-politically.

In this way British industrialism came to be dominated by wealthy investors, and capitalism became the dominant economic system. This led to a major social transformation. Britain had been essentially an aristocratic society, dominated by landholding families. As capitalism became dominant economically, capitalists became dominant politically. Tax structures and import-export policies were gradually changed to favor investors over landowners.

It was no longer economically viable to simply maintain an estate in the countryside: one needed to develop it, turn it to more productive use. Victorian dramas are filled with stories of aristocratic families who fall on hard times, and are forced to sell off their properties. For dramatic purposes, this decline is typically attributed to a failure in some character, a weak eldest son perhaps. But in fact the decline of aristocracy was part of a larger social transformation brought on by the rise of capitalism.

The business of the capitalist is the management of capital, and this management is generally handled through the mediation of banks and brokerage houses. It should not be surprising that investment bankers came to occupy the top of the hierarchy of capitalist wealth and power. And in fact, there are a handful of banking families, including the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers, who have come to dominate economic and political affairs in the Western world.

Unlike aristocrats, capitalists are not tied to a place, or to the maintenance of a place. Capital is disloyal and mobile – it flows to where the most growth can be found, as it flowed from Holland to Britain, then from Britain to the USA, and most recently from everywhere to China. Just as a copper mine might be exploited and then abandoned, so under capitalism a whole nation can be exploited and then abandoned, as we see in the rusting industrial areas of America and Britain.

This detachment from place leads to a different kind of geopolitics under capitalism, as compared to aristocracy. A king goes to war when he sees an advantage to his nation in doing so. Historians can 'explain' the wars of pre-capitalist days, in terms of the aggrandizement of monarchs and nations.

        A capitalist stirs up a war in order to make profits, and in fact our elite banking families have financed both sides of most military conflicts since at least World War 1. Hence historians have a hard time 'explaining' World War 1 in terms of national motivations and objectives.

        In pre-capitalist days warfare was like chess, each side trying to win. Under capitalism warfare is more like a casino, where the players battle it out as long as they can get credit for more chips, and the real winner always turns out to be the house – the bankers who finance the war and decide who will be the last man standing. Not only are wars the most profitable of all capitalist ventures, but by choosing the winners, and managing the reconstruction, the elite banking families are able, over time, to tune the geopolitical configuration to suit their own interests.

        Nations and populations are but pawns in their games. Millions die in wars, infrastructures are destroyed, and while the world mourns, the bankers are counting their winnings and making plans for their postwar reconstruction investments.

From their position of power, as the financiers of governments, the banking elite has over time perfected their methods of control. Staying always behind the scenes, they pull the strings controlling the media, the political parties, the intelligence agencies, the stock markets, and the offices of government. And perhaps their greatest lever of power is their control over currencies. By means of their central-bank scam, they engineer boom and bust cycles, and they print money from nothing and then loan it at interest to governments. The power of the banking elites is both absolute and subtle...

      "Some of the biggest men in the United
 States are afraid of something. They
 know there is a power somewhere, so
 organized, so subtle, so watchful, so
 interlocked, so complete, so pervasive
 that they had better not speak above
 their breath when they speak in
 condemnation of it."
      -- President Woodrow Wilson 

The end of growth – capitalists vs. capitalism

It was always inevitable, on a finite planet, that there would be a limit to economic growth. Industrialization has enabled us to rush headlong toward that limit over the past two centuries. Production has become ever more efficient, markets have become ever more global, and finally we have reached the point where the paradigm of perpetual growth can no longer be maintained.

Indeed, that point was actually reached by about 1970. Since then capital has not so much sought growth through increased production, but rather by extracting greater returns from relatively flat production levels.  Hence globalization, which moved production to low-waged areas, providing greater profit margins. Hence privatization, which transfers revenue streams to investors that formerly went to national treasuries. Hence derivative and currency markets, which create the electronic illusion of economic growth, without actually producing anything in the real world.

If one studies the collapse of civilizations, one learns that failure-to-adapt is fatal. Continuing on the path of pursuing growth would be such a failure to adapt. And if one reads the financial pages these days, one finds that it is full of doomsayers. We read that the Eurozone is doomed, and Greece is just the first casualty. We read that stimulus packages are not working, unemployment is increasing, the dollar is in deep trouble, growth continues to stagnate, business real estate will be the next bubble to burst, etc. It is easy to get the impression that capitalism is failing to adapt, and that our societies are in danger of collapsing into chaos.

Such an impression would be partly right and partly wrong. In order to understand the real situation we need to make a clear distinction between the capitalist elite and capitalism itself. Capitalism is an economic system driven by growth; the capitalist elite are the folks who have managed to gain control of the Western world while capitalism has operated over the past two centuries. The capitalist system is past its sell-by date, the banking elite are well aware of that fact – and they are adapting.

Capitalism is a vehicle that helped bring the bankers to absolute power, but they have no more loyalty to that system than they have to place, or to anything or anyone else. As mentioned earlier, they think on a global scale, with nations and populations as pawns. They define what money is and they issue it, just like the banker in a game of Monopoly. They can also make up a new game with a new kind of money. They have long outgrown any need to rely on any particular economic system in order to maintain their power. Capitalism was handy in an era of rapid growth. For an era of non-growth, a different game is being prepared.

Thus, capitalism has not been allowed to die a natural death. First it was put on a life-support system, as mentioned above, with globalization, privatization, derivative markets, etc. Then it was injected with a euthanasia death-drug, in the form of toxic derivatives. And when the planned collapse occurred, rather than industrial capitalism being bailed out, the elite bankers were bailed out. It's not that the banks were too big to fail, rather the bankers were too politically powerful to fail. They made governments an offer they couldn't refuse.

The outcome of the trillion-dollar bailouts was easily predictable, although you wouldn't know that from reading the financial pages. National budgets were already stretched, and they certainly did not have reserves available to service the bailouts .Thus the bailouts amounted to nothing more than the taking on of immense new debts by governments. In order to fulfill the bailout commitments, the money would need to be borrowed from the same financial institutions that were being bailed out.

With the bailouts, Western governments delivered their nations in hock to the bankers. The governments are now in perpetual debt bondage to the bankers. Rather than the banks going into receivership, governments are now in receivership. Obama's cabinet and advisors are nearly all from Wall Street; they are in the White House so they can keep close watch over their new acquisition, the once sovereign USA. Perhaps they will soon be presiding over its liquidation.

The bankers are now in control of national budgets. They say what can be funded and what can't. When it comes to financing their wars and weapons production, no limits are set. When it comes to public services, then we are told deficits must be held in check. The situation was expressed very well by Brian Cowan, Ireland's government chief. In the very same week that Ireland pledged 200 billion Euro to bailout the banks, he was being asked why he was cutting a few million Euro off of critical service budgets. He replied, "I'm sorry, but the funds just aren't there". Of course they're not there! The treasury was given away. The cupboard is bare.

As we might expect, the highest priority for budgets is servicing the debt to the banks. Just as most of the third world is in debt slavery to the IMF, so the whole West is now in debt slavery to its own central banks. Greece is the harbinger of what is to happen everywhere.

The carbon economy – controlling consumption 

In a non-growth economy, the mechanisms of production will become relatively static. Instead of corporations competing to innovate, we'll have production bureaucracies. They'll be semi-state, semi-private bureaucracies, concerned about budgets and quotas rather than growth, somewhat along the lines of the Soviet model. Such an environment is not driven by a need for growth capital, and it does not enable a profitable game of Monopoly.

We can already see steps being taken to shift the corporate model towards the bureaucratic model, through increased government intervention in economic affairs. With the Wall Street bailouts, the forced restructuring of General Motors, the call for centralized micromanagement of banking and industry, and the mandating of health insurance coverage, the
government is saying that the market is to superseded by government directives. Not that we should bemoan the demise of exploitive capitalism, but before celebrating we need to understand what it is being replaced with.

In an era of capitalism and growth, the focus of the game has been on the production side of the economy. The game was aimed at controlling the means of growth: access to capital.  The growth-engine of capitalism created the demand for capital; the bankers controlled the supply. Taxes were mostly based on income, again related to the production side of the economy.

In an era of non-growth, the focus of the game will be on the consumption side of the economy. The game will be aimed at controlling the necessities of life: access to food and energy. Population creates the demand for the necessities of life; the bankers intend to control the supply. Taxes will be mostly based on consumption, particularly of energy. That's what the global warming scare is all about, with its carbon taxes and carbon credits.

Already in Britain there is talk of carbon quotas, like gasoline rationing in wartime. It's not just that you'll pay taxes on energy, but the amount of energy you can consume will be determined by government directive. Carbon credits will be issued to you, which you can use for driving, for heating, or on rare occasions for air travel. Also in Britain, the highways are being wired so that they can track how many miles you drive, tax you accordingly, and penalize you if you travel over your limit. We can expect these kinds of things to spread throughout the West, as it's the same international bankers who are in charge everywhere.

In terms of propaganda, this control over consumption is being sold as a solution to global warming and peak oil. The propaganda campaign has been very successful, and the whole environmental movement has been captured by it. In Copenhagen, demonstrators confronted the police, carrying signs in support of carbon taxes and carbon credits. But in fact the carbon regime has nothing to do with climate or with sustainability. It is all about micromanaging every aspect of our lives, as well as every aspect of the economy.

If the folks who are running things actually cared about sustainability, they'd be investing in efficient mass transit, and they'd be shifting agriculture from petroleum-intensive, water-intensive methods to sustainable methods. Instead they are mandating biofuels and selling us electric cars, which are no more sustainable or carbon-efficient than standard cars. Indeed, the real purpose behind biofuels is genocide. With food prices linked to energy prices, and agriculture land being converted from food production to fuel production, the result can only be a massive increase in third-world starvation. Depopulation has long been a stated goal in elite circles, and the Rockefeller dynasty has frequently been involved in eugenics projects of various kinds.  

'The War on Terrorism' – preparing the way for the transition 

The so-called War on Terrorism has two parts. The first part is a pretext for arbitrary abuse of citizen's rights, whenever Homeland Security claims the action is necessary for security reasons. The second part is a pretext for US military aggression anywhere in the world, whenever the White House claims that Al Qaeda is active there.

I emphasized the word 'claims' above, because the terrorism pretext is being used to justify arbitrary powers, both domestically and globally. No hard evidence need be presented to Congress, the UN, or anyone else, before some nation is invaded, someone is kidnapped and tortured as a 'terrorist suspect', or some new invasive security measure is implemented. When powers are arbitrary, then we are no longer living under the rule of law, neither domestically nor internationally. We are living under the rule of men, as you would expect in a dictatorship, or in an old-fashioned kingdom or empire.

Part 1: Preparing the way for a new social order 

In a very real sense, the terrorism pretext is being used to undo everything that The Enlightenment and the republication revolutions achieved two centuries ago. The very heart of the Bill of Rights - due process - has been abandoned. The gulag, the concentration camp, and the secret arrest in the night - these we have always associated with fascist and communist dictatorships - and now they are not only functioning under US jurisdiction, but being justified publicly by the President himself.

Is there really a terrorist threat to the homeland, and would these measures be a sensible response to such a threat? People are strongly divided in their answers to these questions. Quite a bit of hard forensic evidence has come to light, including links to intelligence agencies, and my own view is that most of the dramatic 'terrorist' events in the US, UK, and Europe have been covert false-flag operations.

From an historical perspective this would not be at all surprising. Such operations have been standard practice - modus operandi - in many nations, though we usually don't get proof until years later. For example, every war the US has been involved in has had its own phony Gulf of Tonkin Incident, (Captain of warship later confessed in his bio that the ‘shooting’ was just lightning flashes. Lyndon lied to justify war.)  or its Weapons of Mass Destruction scam, in one form or another. It's a formula that works. Instant mobilization of public opinion, prompt passage without debate of enabling resolutions and legislation. Why would the War on Terrorism be any different?

As regards motive: while Muslims have only suffered as a result of these
dramatic events, our elite bankers have been able to create a
police-state infrastructure that can be used to deal with any
foreseeable popular resistance or civic chaos that might emerge as they
prepare the way for their post-capitalist future.

With the collapse, the bailouts, and the total failure to pursue any
kind of effective recovery strategy, the signals are very clear: the
system will be allowed to collapse totally, thus clearing the ground for
a pre-architected 'solution'. Ground Zero can be seen as a metaphor,
with the capitalist economy as the Twin Towers. And the toxic
derivatives illustrate the fact that the collapse is actually a
controlled demolition.

It seems to me inevitable, given the many signals, that martial law will
be part of the transition process, allegedly to deal with the problems
of economic collapse. Perhaps a collapse in the food-supply chain, due
to a collapse in the energy-supply chain. The US emergency responses in
New Orleans and again in Haiti give us more signals, actual test trials,
of what kind of 'emergency response' we can expect.

First and foremost comes the security of the occupation forces. Those
suffering in the emergency are treated more like insurgents than victims
in need of help. In the case of Haiti, the US response can only be
described as an intentional genocide project. When people are pinned
under rubble in an earthquake, the first 48 hours, and 72 hours, are
absolutely critical points, as regards survival rates. When the US
military systematically blocked incoming aid for those critical hours,
turning back doctors and emergency teams, they sealed the fate of many
thousands who could have been saved. One can imagine many nightmare
scenarios, given these various signals, these ominous signs. World Wars
1 and 2 were nightmares that really happened, with millions dying, and
these same banking dynasties orchestrated those scenarios and then
covered their tracks. We must also keep in mind the Shock Doctrine,
where catastrophe is seen as opportunity - when 'things can be done that
otherwise could not be accomplished'. We are still being impacted by the
shock waves that were sent out on 9/11, and again when the financial
system collapsed. And the the really big shock, the general collapse of
society, is yet to come. The ultimate version of the Shock Doctrine: 'If
the collapse is total, we can accomplish any damned thing we want to
accomplish'.

I won't venture a guess about how this transition process will play out,
but I do expect that it will be a nightmare of one description or
another. Already the growing homeless population is suffering a
nightmare, by any civilized standards. One day you're living in a home
whose value is going up, commuting to a good job, and the next thing you
know your family is out on the streets. That's a nightmare. The
transition time will be a difficult time, but it will be a transition,
it will be temporary, like a war. And like a war, it will enable social
and economic reconstruction in the aftermath. Consider how Japan and
Germany were socially and politically transformed by the postwar
reconstruction process. Those were exercises in social engineering, as
were the preceding transformations under Mussolini and Hitler. Although
the outcomes were quite different, in each case a total collapse /
defeat was the preamble to reconstruction. A total collapse of the
capitalist economy is simply the application of a proven formula. The
second part of the formula will be some new social order, or perhaps
some old social order, or some mixture. Something appropriate to a
non-growth, command economy. That's part 1 of the War on Terrorism: it
has enabled the creation of the police-state infrastructures required to
to deal with the collapse of society, and to provide security for the
reconstruction process. 

Part 2: Preparing the way for global domination

Part 2 of the War on Terrorism is about the geopolitical dimensions of a
non-growth-based global economy. Earlier I suggested that geopolitics
was different under capitalism, than it was under sovereign monarchs.
The whole dynamic was different, and outcomes were weighed on a
different scale. Similarly, many things will change in a shift from
chaotic, growth-oriented capitalism, to a centralized, micromanaged,
economic regime. Consider, for example, the significance of control over
oil reserves. In a growth economy, profits were the prize, and
controlling the markets and the distribution channels amounted to
holding a winning hand in the game. The local dictators could manage
things as they pleased, and take their cut of oil revenues, as long as
they honored their contracts with the oil majors, who were happy to sell
to the highest bidders.

In a non-growth economy, where the focus is on direct control over the
supply and distributions of resources, it becomes necessary to secure,
in the military sense, the sources of petroleum, and the routes for its
distribution. It is no longer sufficient to merely profit from unbridled
operations. Securing of the sources, and directly allocating the
distribution, is the foundation for micromanaging the non-growth
economy. This applies to other critical resources as well, such as
uranium, and the rare minerals needed by the 'defense' and electronics
industries.

In fact we are in the midst of a resource-grab war, with China and
Russia making long-term energy deals with Iran and Venezuela, China
buying up agricultural land in Africa, Washington making long-term deals
for Brazilian biofuels, and there are many other examples. In many ways
imperialism is reverting to colonial days, when direct administration
was the model, rather than the capitalist model: profiting from
corporate investments under dictators who suppress their populations.
There is a natural reversion to the dynamics of the 'good old days of
empire' when the Great Powers of Europe focused their economic activity
within their individual spheres of influence. Everyone knows that global
resource limits are being reached, partly from population pressures, and
partly from resource-exploitation practices. For this reason alone, we
have the peaceful part of the resource-grab war.

In Iraq, Afghanistan, and now in Pakistan and Yemen, the US, with NATO
support, is playing a very non-peaceful hand in the resource-grab game.
It's the hand of a bully, 'I have the biggest gun, so I'll take what I
want'. These aggressive actions are very provocative to Russia and
China, and threatening to their vital economic interests. An attack on
Iran would be more than a provocation, it would be a direct slap in the
face, a challenge: 'Fight now or resign yourself to being subdued
piecemeal'. In addition to all this petroleum grabbing, the US has been
surrounding Russia and China with military bases, and has recently
accelerated the installations of anti-missile systems on their borders,
over the strong objections of Russia and China. The US is being
intentionally provocative, and it is threatening vital interests of
these potential adversaries. Alliances are being formed in response, on
a bilateral basis, and in the form of the SCO. China and Russia are very
close in their military cooperation, and technology sharing. Their
strategic planning is based on the expectation of a US attack, and their
strategic response is based on the principle of asymmetric warfare. For
example, a million dollar missile capable of taking out a multi-billion
dollar aircraft carrier. Or perhaps a handful of missiles capable of
disabling the Pentagon's command-and-control satellite systems.

Meanwhile the US is spending astronomical sums developing a first-strike
capability, with space-based weapons systems, control-of-theater
capability, forward-based 'tactical' nukes, etc. The new anti-missile
systems are an important part of a first-strike strategy, reducing the
ability of Russia or China to retaliate. These systems are more than
just provocative. They are the modern equivalent of marching your armies
up to your adversary's border.

If there is a nuclear exchange between the major powers, historians will
cite all of these things I've mentioned as 'obvious signs' that war was
coming. Parallels would be drawn to the pre-World War 1 scenario, when
Germany was eclipsing Britain economically, as China is eclipsing the US
now. In both cases a 'desperate attempt to maintain hegemony' would be
seen as the cause of the war.

There may or may not be a World War 3, but all of these preparations
make it clear that our banking elite intend to preside over a global
system, by hook or by crook. If they wanted a peaceful arrangement, a
splitting of the third-world pie, so to speak, it could be easily
arranged at any time, along with substantial nuclear disarmament. China
and Russia would like to see a stable, multi-polar world; it is only our
elite bankers who are obsessed with world domination. It is possible
that nuclear war is a 'desired outcome', accomplishing depopulation, and
making the collapse even more total. Or perhaps China and Russia will be
given an offer they can't refuse: 'Surrender your economic sovereignty
to our global system, or face the consequences'.

One way or another, the elite bankers, the masters of the universe,
intend to preside over a micromanaged global system. The collapse
project is now well underway, and the 'surround your enemy' project
seems to be more or less completed. From a strategic perspective, there
will be some trigger point, some stage in the economic collapse
scenario, when geopolitical confrontation is judged to be most
advantageous. It's a multi-dimensional chess board, and with the stakes
so high, you can rest assured that the timing of the various moves will
be carefully coordinated. And from the overall shape of the board, we
seem to be nearing the endgame.

Prognosis 2012 - a Neo Dark Age 

2012 might not be the exact year, but it's difficult to see the endgame
lasting much beyond that, and the masters of the universe love
symbolism, as with 911 (both in Chile and in Manhattan), KLA 007, and
others. 2012 is loaded with symbolism, eg. the Mayan Calendar, and the
Internet is buzzing with various 2012-related prophecies, survival
strategies, anticipated alien interventions, alignments with galactic
radiation fields, etc. And then there is the Hollywood film, 2012, which
explicitly portrays the demise of most of humanity, and the pre-planned
salvation of a select few. One never knows with Hollywood productions,
what is escapist fantasy, and what is aimed at preparing the public mind
symbolically for what is to come.

Whatever the exact date, all the threads will come together,
geo-politically and domestically, and the world will change. It will be a
new era, just as capitalism was a new era after aristocracy, and the
Dark Ages followed the era of the Roman Empire. Each era has its own
structure, its own economics, its own social forms, and its own
mythology. These things must relate to one another coherently, and their
nature follows from the fundamental power relationships and economic
circumstances of the system.

In our post-2012 world, we have for the first time one centralized
global government, and one ruling elite clique, a kind of extended royal
family, the lords of finance. As we can see with the IMF, WHO, and the
WTO, and the other pieces of the embryonic world government, the
institutions of governance will make no pretensions about popular
representation or democratic responsiveness. Rule will be by means of
autocratic global bureaucracies, who take their marching orders from the
royal family. This model has already been operating for some time,
within its various spheres of influence, as with the restructuring
programs forced on the third world, as a condition for getting
financing. Whenever there is a change of era, the previous era is always
demonized in mythology. In the Garden of Eden story the serpent is
demonized - a revered symbol in paganism, the predecessor to
Christianity. When republics came along, the demonization of monarchs
was an important part of the process. In the post-2012 world, democracy
and national sovereignty will be demonized. This will be very important,
in getting people to accept totalitarian rule, and the mythology will
contain much that is true...

In those terrible dark days, before the blessed unification of humanity,
anarchy reigned in the world. One nation would attack another, no better
than predators in the wild. Nations had no coherent policies; voters
would swing from one party to another, keeping governments always in
transition and confusion. How did they ever think that masses of
semi-educated people could govern themselves, and run a complex society?
Democracy was an ill-conceived experiment that led only to corruption
and chaotic governance. How lucky we are to be in this well-ordered
world, where humanity has finally grown up, and those with the best
expertise make the decisions. The economics of non-growth are radically
different than capitalist economics. The unit of exchange is likely to
be a carbon credit, entitling you to consume the equivalent of one
kilogram of fuel. Everything will have a carbon value, allegedly based
on how much energy it took to produce it and transport it to market.
'Green consciousness' will be a primary ethic, conditioned early into
children. Getting by with less is a virtue; using energy is anti-social;
austerity is a responsible and necessary condition.

As with every currency, the bankers will want to manage the scarcity of
carbon credits, and that's where global warming alarmism becomes
important. Regardless of the availability of resources, carbon credits
can be kept arbitrarily scarce simply by setting carbon budgets, based
on directives from the IPCC, another of our emerging units of global
bureaucratic governance. Such IPCC directives will be the equivalent of
the Federal Reserve announcing a change in interest rates. Those budgets
set the scale of economic activity.

Presumably nations will continue to exist, as official units of
governance. However security and policing will be largely centralized
and privatized. Like the Roman Legions, the security apparatus will be
loyal to the center of empire, not to the place where someone happens to
be stationed. We have seen this trend already in the US, as mercenaries
have become big business, and police forces are increasingly
federalized, militarized, and alienated from the general public. Just as
airports have now been federalized, all transport systems will be under
the jurisdiction of the security apparatus. Terrorism will continue as
an ongoing bogey-man, justifying whatever security procedures are deemed
desirable for social-control purposes. The whole security apparatus will
have a monolithic quality to it, a similarity of character regardless of
the specific security tasks or location. Everyone dressed in the same
Evil Empire black outfits, with big florescent letters on the back of
their flack jackets. In essence, the security apparatus will be an
occupying army, the emperor's garrison in the provinces.

On a daily basis, you will need to go through checkpoints of various
kinds, with varying levels of security requirements. This is where
biometrics becomes important. If people can be implanted with chips,
then much of the security can be automated, and everyone can be tracked
at at all times, and their past activity retrieved. The chip links into
your credit balance, so you've got all your currency always with you,
along with your medical records and lots else that you don't know about.
There is very little left as regards national sovereignty. Nothing much
in the way of foreign policy will have any meaning. With security
marching to its own law and its distant drummer, the main role of
so-called 'government' will be to allocate and administer the
carbon-credit budget that it receives from the IPCC. The IPCC decides
how much wealth a nation will receive in a given year, and the
government then decides how to distribute that wealth in the form of
public services and entitlements. Wealth being measured by the
entitlement to expend energy.

In a fundamental sense, this is how things already are, following the
collapse and the bailouts. Because governments are so deeply in debt,
the bankers are able to dictate the terms of national budgets, as a
condition of keeping credit lines open. The carbon economy, with its
centrally determined budgets, provides a much simpler and more direct
way of micromanaging economic activity and resource distribution
throughout the globe.

In order to clear the way for the carbon-credit economy, it will be
necessary for Western currencies to collapse, to become worthless, as
nations become increasingly insolvent, and the global financial system
continues to be systematically dismantled. The carbon currency will be
introduced as an enlightened, progressive 'solution' to the crisis, a
currency linked to something real, and to sustainability. The old
monetary system will be demonized, and again the mythology will contain
much that is true...

The pursuit of money is the root of all evil, and the capitalist system
was inherently evil. It encouraged greed, and consumption, and it cared
nothing about wasting resources. People thought the more money they had,
the better off they were. How much wiser we are now, to live within our
means, and to understand that a credit is a token of stewardship.

Culturally, the post-capitalist era will be a bit like the medieval era,
with aristocrats and lords on top, and the rest peasants and serfs. A
definite upper class and lower class. Just as only the old upper class
had horses and carriages, only the new upper class will be entitled to
access substantial carbon credits. Wealth will be measured by
entitlements, more than by acquisitions or earnings. Those outside the
bureaucratic hierarchies are the serfs, with subsistence entitlements.
Within the bureaucracies, entitlements are related to rank in the
hierarchy. Those who operate in the central global institutions are
lords of empire, with unlimited access to credits.

But there is no sequestering of wealth, or building of economic empires,
outside the structures of the designated bureaucracies. Entitlements are
about access to resources and facilities, to be used or not used, but
not to be saved and used as capital. The flow of entitlements comes
downward, micromanaged from the top. It's a dole economy, at all levels,
for people and governments alike - the global regimentation of
consumption. As regards regimentation, the post-capitalist culture will
also be a bit like the Soviet system. Here's your entitlement card,
here's your job assignment, and here's where you'll be living.

With the pervasive security apparatus, and the micromanagement of
economic activity, the scenario is clearly about fine-grained social
control, according to centralized guidelines and directives. Presumably
media will be carefully programmed, with escapist trivia, and a
sophisticated version of 1984-style groupthink propaganda pseudo-news,
which is pretty much what we already have today. The non-commercial
Internet, if there is one, will be limited to monitored,
officially-designated chat sites, and other kinds of sanitized forums.

With such a focus on social micromanagement, I do not expect the family
unit to survive in the new era, and I expect child-abuse alarmism will
be the lever used to destabilize the family. The stage has been set with
all the revelations about church and institutional child sexual abuse.
Such revelations could have been uncovered any time in the past century,
but they came out at a certain time, just as all these other
transitional things have been happening. People are now aware that
widespread child abuse happens, and they have been conditioned to
support strong measures to prevent it. Whenever I turn on the TV, I see
at least one public-service ad, with shocking images, about children who
are physically or sexually abused, or criminally neglected, in their
homes, and there's a hotline phone number that children can call. It is
easy to see how the category of abuse can be expanded, to include
parents who don't follow vaccination schedules, whose purchase records
don't indicate healthy diets, who have dubious psychological profiles,
etc. The state of poverty could be deemed abusive neglect.

With the right media presentation, abuse alarmism would be easy to stir
up. Ultimately, a 'child rights' movement becomes an anti-family
movement. The state must directly protect the child from birth. The
family is demonized...

How scary were the old days, when unlicensed, untrained couples had
total control over vulnerable children, behind closed doors, with
whatever neuroses, addictions, or perversions the parents happened to
possess. How did this vestige of patriarchal slavery, this safe-house
den of abuse, continue so long to exist, and not be recognized for what
it was? How much better off we are now, with children being raised
scientifically, by trained staff, where they are taught healthy values.

Ever since public education was introduced, the state and the family
have competed to control childhood conditioning. In religious families,
the church has made its own contribution to conditioning. In the
micromanaged post-capitalist future, with its Shock Doctrine birth
scenario, it would make good sense to take that opportunity to implement
the 'final solution' of social control, which is for the state to
monopolize child raising. This would eliminate from society the
parent-child bond, and hence family-related bonds in general. No longer
is there a concept of relatives. There's just worker bees, security
bees, and queen bees, who dole out the honey.

Postscript 

This has been an extensive and somewhat detailed prognosis, regarding
the architecture of the post-capitalist regime, and the transition
process required to bring it about. The term 'new world order' is too
weak a term to characterize the radical nature of the social
transformation anticipated in the prognosis. A more apt characterization
would be a 'quantum leap in the domestication of the human species'.
Micromanaged lives and microprogrammed beliefs and thoughts. A once wild
primate species transformed into something resembling more a bee or ant
culture. Needless to say, regular use of psychotropic drugs would be
mandated, so that people could cope emotionally with such a sterile,
inhuman environment. For such a profound transformation to be possible,
it is easy to see that a very great shock is required, on the scale of
collapse and social chaos, and possibly on the scale of a nuclear
exchange. There needs to be an implicit mandate to 'do whatever is
necessary to get society running again'. The shock needs to leave people
in a condition of total helplessness comparable to the survivors in the
bombed-out rubble of Germany and Japan after World War 2. Nothing less
will do. The accuracy of the prognosis, as prediction, is of course
impossible to know in advance. However each part of the prognosis has
been based on precedents that have been set, modus operandi that has
been observed, trends that have been initiated, sentiments that have
been expressed, signals that have been given, and actions that have been
taken whose consequences can be confidently predicted.

In addition, in looking at all of these indicators together, one sees a
certain mindset, an absolutist determination to implement the 'ideal
solution', without compromise, using extreme means, and with unbridled
audacity. World wars have been rehearsals for this historic moment. The
police state infrastructure is in place and has been tested. The economy
is in the process of collapse. The enemy is surrounded with missiles.
Arbitrary powers have been assumed. If not now, the ultimate prize, then
when will there be a better opportunity?

Our elite planners are backed up by competent think tanks, and they know
that the new society must have coherence of various kinds. They've had
quite a bit of experience with social engineering, nurturing the rise of
fascism, and then engineering the postwar regimes. They understand the
importance of mythology. For example there is the mythology of the
holocaust, where the story is all about extermination per se, and the
story is not told of the primary mission of the concentration camps,
which was to provide slave labor for war production. And some of the
companies using the slave labor were American owned, and were supplying
the German war machine. Thus does mythology, though containing truth,
succeed in hiding the tracks and the crimes of elite perps, leaving
others to carry the whole burden of historical demonization.

So I think there is a sound basis for anticipating the kinds of
mythology that would be designed for leaving behind and rejecting the
old ways, and seeing the new as a salvation. There is a long historical
precedent of era changes linked with mythology changes, often expressed
in religious terms. There will be a familiar ring to the new mythology,
a remixing and re-prioritizing of familiar values and assumptions, so as
to resonate with the dynamics of the new regime. The nature of the
carbon economy has been somewhat clearly signaled. Carbon budgets, and
carbon credits, are clearly destined to become primary components of the
economy. As we've seen with the elite and grassroots supported global
warming movement, the arbitrary scarcity of carbon credits can be easily
regulated on the pretext of environmentalism. And peak oil alarmism is
always available as a backup. As elite spokespeople have often
expressed, when the time comes, the masses will demand the new world
order.

The focus on control over consumption, resources, and distribution is
implicit in the emphasis on energy limits, is latent in the geopolitical
situation, as regards depletion of global resources, and is indicated by
the need for a new unifying paradigm, as the growth paradigm is no
longer viable.

The nature of the security apparatus has been clearly signaled by the
responses to demonstrations ever since 1998 in Seattle, by the increased
use of hardened-killer mercenaries at home and abroad, by excessive and
abusive police behavior, by airport security procedures, by Guantanamo
and renditions, by the creation of a domestic branch of the army,
dedicated to responding to civil emergencies, and by the way Katrina and
Haiti have been handled. It would be a major mistake to think of those
last two as bungled operations. They were exercises in collapse
management of a certain kind, to be applied to certain populations,
where the training and equipment appropriate for combat in Afghanistan
is seen as being appropriate for administering aid to civilian disaster
victims. These selected disaster victims will be seen primarily as
threats to civil order, or perhaps undesirables to be incarcerated or
eliminated. They will be demonized as rioters and looters. Assistance
will comes later, if at all. And it can all be broadcast on TV, and
somehow be seen as the way things have to be. These two exercises were
not bungled at all. They were alarmingly successful, most notably in the
case of the real time PR mythology.

The limited role of national governments, being primarily allocators of mandated budgets, has been clearly signaled by
long-standing IMF policies in the third world, and by the way the bankers have been dictating to governments, in the wake of
the over-extended bailout commitments. The carbon entitlement budgeting paradigm accomplishes the same
micromanagement in a much more direct way, and is the natural outcome of the push toward hard carbon limits.

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