The 4th Turning - our current events

[Smitty-48]

In all fairness, the current system is a pretty elegant way to solve the problem of inefficiency when it comes to trying to centrally plan what the mincome should be, and how it should be distributed. Keeping people tired and complacent from spending all their time at unedifying tasks is more likely a happy accident than than the specific goal.

Oh no, they know exactly what they're doing, you think it's a happy accident that Silicone Valley keeps all their employees at work as much as they possibly can? You think it's a happy accident that the Wall Street firms have you on call at all hours to answer the iPhone? You think it's a happy accident that there are enough hours to go around to employ several people, but they dump it all on one person, and then leave the rest out in the cold begging to be the one who gets the firehose of make work down the throat?

You can't be that fuckin' naive, obvious levers of control is obvious, wake up, sunshine, it's a state corporate gulag, and in the future, people will look back on it the way we look back on the gulags in Soviet Russia.

[Smitty-48]

Back in the 1500's when the Calvinists said "lazy good for nothings", that was the same lever of control, they were religious zealots like the Taliban, and the mission from God was to keep the flock in line, and keep them fired up to fight the Papist enemy, and anybody who stepped out of line, got the wrath of God upside the head.

500 years later Americans are trapping themselves in the gulag of a religious zealot from France who was making holy war upon the Pope in Rome, the state corporate entrenched interests simply have no reason to stop you from doing that, since it is entirely to their advantage to keep you in the gulag working all the time, doing nothing.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

My default assumption is that people are not clever or organized enough to pull off grand puppeteer acts on large scales. Humans are pretty biased towards short term benefits, and that alone accounts for a great majority of our actions.

What can I say, I'm an occamist.

[Smitty-48]

My default assumption is that people are not clever or organized enough to pull off grand puppeteer acts on large scales. Humans are pretty biased towards short term benefits, and that alone accounts for a great majority of our actions.

What can I say, I'm an occamist.

Each American is their own puppeteer, like, in France, nobody gives a fuck about the Church Lady and John Calvin, so they barely do any work at all, and there's nothing the state nor corporations can do to change the French attitude of laziness and creativity for the win, but in America, they don't have to, because Americans drink the Calvanist kool-aid without anybody forcing them to. Americans trap themselves in a gulag of their own making, the entrenched interests simply jump on the moving train.

The entrenched interests conspire to make fake work to distribute the mincome, but it's a conspiracy in plain sight, they don't have to hide it, and they don't have to enforce it, the Church Lady says jump and Americans say how high, the entrenched interests simply go along with a good thing for them, so long as the suckers keep showing up for the fake work, why stop them?

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

My default assumption is that people are not clever or organized enough to pull off grand puppeteer acts on large scales. Humans are pretty biased towards short term benefits, and that alone accounts for a great majority of our actions.

What can I say, I'm an occamist.

Each American is their own puppeteer, like, in France, nobody gives a fuck about the Church Lady and John Calvin, so they barely do any work at all, and there's nothing the state nor corporations can do to change the French attitude of laziness and creativity for the win, but in America, they don't have to, because Americans drink the Calvanist kool-aid without anybody forcing them to. Americans trap themselves in a gulag of their own making, the entrenched interests simply jump on the moving train.

The entrenched interests conspire to make fake work to distribute the mincome, but it's a conspiracy in plain sight, they don't have to hide it, and they don't have to enforce it, the Churh Lady says jump and Americans say how high, the entrenched interests simply go along with a good thing for them, so long as the suckers keep showing up for the fake work, why stop them?

Oh, that I can buy. But that is more free riding on the effective scaffolding provided by the 'hard work equals morality' meme, than an active conspiracy.
I've been recommending slothfulness against the puritan work ethic most my life. It is not a popular position in the States, believe you me.

[Smitty-48]

I've been recommending slothfulness against the puritan work ethic most my life. It is not a popular position in the States, believe you me.

Well, I don't care what's popular, leadership is not a popularity contest, It's not a popular position in Upper Canada and the Prairies, that's the stronghold of Canadian Calvanism, but cross into Quebec, and it's Nouvelle France, the French model in America, so I just do as the Quebecois do, Je suis Canadien, Dieu sauve la Reine.

Mind you, even in Upper Canada, you don't get the same sort of hysterical puritan reaction as you do in America, you pretty much have to go to Alberta to find that here, but as I always say; fuck Alberta.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

The biggest problem people have is that they conflate the pleasure that attends struggling to overcome difficult obstacles with 'work ethic.' As if scouring one's soul with misery is a superior application of effort.

[Smitty-48]

The biggest problem people have is that they conflate the pleasure that attends struggling to overcome difficult obstacles with 'work ethic.' As if scouring one's soul with misery is a superior application of effort.

I don't have any problem with what the Workies do, I'm not out to force them to do something or not do something, Anti-Work is all about doing your own thing, and not caring a whit about what the Workies say or do.

Over time, more and more people will come to realize that work is bullshit and jobs are jails, the jig is up, the cat is out of the bag, how ever long it takes for people to accept the truth of it, is how long it takes, but there's no rush, work is going away on its own, one way or the other, they'll figure it out in the end.

Actually trying to force miserable Americans to stop being miserable, would be work, which, that would be defeating the purpose of Anti-Work, let them wallow in misery, you don't have to join them in the wallowing, just ignore them.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Chipping away at the coal face of convincing people they don't need to chip away at the coal face does seem like an own goal.

[C-Mag]

A few quotes from Strauss and Howes predictions in the 90s.
- Note: Most people consider 2008 as the start of the 4th Turning, which means by this theory we are approximately half way through the Crisis Period.

A. Soon after the catalyst, a national election will produce a sweeping political realignment, as one faction or coalition capitalizes on a new public demand for decisive action.

B. The economy will in time recover from its early and vertiginous reversals. Late in the Crisis, with trust and hope and urgency growing fast, it may even achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency and production. But, by then, the economy will have changed fundamentally. Compared to today, it will be less globally dependent, with smaller cross-border trade and capital flows. . . .

C. Fourth Turning America will begin to lay out the next saeculum’s infrastructure grid— some higher-tech facsimile of turnpikes, railroads, or highways.

D. The economic role of government will shift toward far more spending on survival and future promises (defense, public works) and far less on amenities and past promises (elder care, debt service).

E. Regardless of its ideology, that new leadership will assert public authority and demand private sacrifice. Where leaders had once been inclined to alleviate societal pressures, they will now aggravate them to command the nation’s attention.