Today’s narrow ruling class is made up of the same families as generations ago. Someone who’s been at the top is barely in the big leagues. And the descendants of someone who barely stayed in the top league have climbed to the top. Someone from the elite dropped out and some new people came in. But overall, it’s the same strata. What’s changed is the way they govern. Instead of all-powerful tycoons, we see managers. Everybody serves somebody. Everybody is reporting for somebody. Anyone can be replaced. No one is accountable. It is always possible to appeal to the market or someone else’s decision. It’s not for people with big egos. But if you learn to live with it, you have even more money and even more power than your predecessors, and little or no accountability to boot.
Instead of all-powerful tycoons, we see managers. Everybody serves somebody. Everybody is reporting for somebody. Anyone can be replaced. No one is accountable.
You need three basic skills to govern like that:
– The ability to manipulate those above you. That is, those for whom you put together powerpoint presentations. It’s not that hard, because they themselves need to make and maintain the right impression in the first place. So it’s not in their interest to ask prying questions. After all, notice how easily and how often “creative accounting” comes through. It is rare that anyone starts digging for details and wants to uncover the reality before the business completely collapses.
– The ability to manipulate those just below you. Balancing the interests of different groups. Sometimes pitting them against each other. To suggest what is expected of whom. To maintain discipline and an air of pretense. And at the same time, to make sure that the senior manager is not opposed by a whole layer of subordinates.
– Determined to stomp the lower classes into the ground. They don’t matter. For them, the aristocrat lackey has only contempt. That’s how we must understand the mainstream media. It’s not about convincing those at the very bottom what to think (they don’t matter anyway). It’s about telling those higher up what to think.
What is Biden’s vision? An America without Trump. And beyond?
So who is in charge? And that’s the point. There is no one to make a clear decision. No one who can stand up to everyone. No one who can take responsibility. Something that is totally out of place in the world of the powerful today. That’s one of the reasons why Donald Trump has caused such a stir. After all, he hasn’t actually endangered anyone or cut anyone off from money. But he gave the impression of an old-style statesman. A statesman who has a vision and goes for it, despite the conflicts. What is Biden’s vision? An America without Trump. And beyond? What is Bourne’s vision for the Pfizer empire? Even higher profits, of course. And beyond? A few phrases prepared by the ad agency. That’s it.
Even Elon can’t sleep well
Trump’s problem was that he couldn’t convince the lackey elite that he was strong enough. He provoked outrage, but he didn’t provoke fear. If they really thought he was the next Hitler and a danger to the world, they would have fallen to their knees before him.
We have reached the stage where the powerful rule through the pretense of service. It comes naturally to them because they have been trained and selected for it since childhood.The guys who are expressive and able to fight a conflict are the ones who are weeded out of the system. It’s the highly intelligent, spineless schemers who go up.
Trump’s problem was that he couldn’t convince the lackey elite that he was strong enough. He provoked outrage, but he didn’t provoke fear.
Isn’t that undignified? I mean, these people don’t know dignity in the old sense of the word. They’ll happily kiss the shoes of gangsters or publicly confess guilt for their skin color if it helps their career. After all, their life is one of grandeur, but also one of constant fear. What if tomorrow a colleague makes up a 20-year-old sexual harassment story? What if there are accusations of racism or Islamophobia? What if a radical environmental group starts attacking the big guy and generates negative media coverage. No one gets a chance to make a fair defense. Every collaborator is also a competitor. The pack will gang up on the weakest one. No one stands above it. Even Elon Musk, Bill Gates or George Soros would become a pariah after a few days of repeated accusations of uncorrectness.
But certainly the new type of governance is effective. The richest one percent are sucking wealth out of the rest of society faster than it has ever been done in history. Piketty correctly points out that the vast majority of corporate profits are distributed in bonuses to top executives. The concentration of wealth is close to pre-World War I conditions, but this time wealth has been concentrated much faster – from the relatively democratic 1970s to today.
