Power

In the 1930s and 40s we had the New Deal (thanks, FDR!). In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, setting legal limits on the maximum number of hours worked and the minimum wages allowed. Child labor was outlawed, and union laws allowed collective bargaining — resulting in much-needed wage growth and improved conditions for workers.

Republicans fought it then, claiming it was an essentially socialist program, and an economic enemy to business and growth. However, it was the very opposite of that — the war and post-war years were ones of productivity and prosperity, widely and broadly. A strong middle class was formed, changing the life and culture of America forever. The very image of the 1950s Average Family with a white picket fence (emphasis on the white) and 2.5 children the right-wing seems to have nostalgia for was made possible by massive government investments into the US economy and labor force — investments which paid off handsomely and broadly for all, with the notable exception (once again… sort of a theme around here…) of Black Americans, who were largely carved out of the GI bill and given the meagre leavings of the superior education and housing benefits doled out to white veterans.

In the mid-1970s this growth engine finally began to falter, and since the 80s, we’ve instead had the Raw Deal. An ever-escalating version of a Libertarian’s wet dream: deregulation of numerous industries including finance (leading to the housing crash of 2007-8) and energy (leading to the Enron scandal, where traders joked about frying grandmas in CA for fat bonuses), a steadily less progressive tax system (down from a whopping 94% in 1944 down to 28% under Reagan), and endless waves of cuts to social programs that had been designed to level the opportunity playing field after centuries of explicit discrimination.

The thing is, when people feel hopeful, they work harder.

When there is hopelessness, there is less urgency to work hard to maintain the conditions and systems that make one feel so hopeless. If you know the game is rigged, how futile does it seem to keep playing?

Libertarians lament about the size of the pie, which is as good a modern version of “let them eat cake” while the plebes swill McD’s and pay through the nose for health care as any.

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We need to bring the fire down from the mountain. We are not on that project — we are still on the opposite project: keeping the wizards behind the curtain.

Too many of the wizards are male, and are busying themselves in playing petty economic and status zero-sum power games instead of recognizing the context they are in — we are all in — as an infinite game in which the enlargement of the participant group to include and, not just reluctantly tolerate, but to avidly welcome women in to the club will massively benefit all the players. 

Then there are the white wizards who create pseudoscientific rationalizations for wasting time obsessing over 18th century racial animus as a massive distraction from having to do the work of creating anything useful or contributing any value to the world. They’ve taken their centuries of evolutionary advantage and painstakingly developed economic pie to split hairs over who ought to be denied a few of the crumbs, as a cheap method of papering over the deep well of collective insecurity and ego fragility precipitated by a lack of meaningful individuation and their failure to create anything useful or contribute any value to the world.

We could be playing this game together. Instead, we furtively dart about in Plato’s Cave imagining we are still living in a world of scarcity, rather than leveling ourselves up to behold the vision of the new world of abundance we have the capacity to create.

Not Ready Player One.

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EqualitySupremacy
opportunitygatekeepers
democracyautocracy
diversitymonoculture
rule of lawfealty
entrepreneurshipfeudalism
accountabilitycorruption
Golden Rulepersecution
freedomoppression
fairnessarbitrariness
inclusivenessxenophobia
progressiveconservative
legal customsphysical force
creativerent-seeking
noveltystatus quo
favors challengersfavors incumbents
meritocracyaristocracy
holocracyhierarchy
consensusdictatorship
consenttyranny
diplomacyviolence
curiosityfear
toleranceintolerance
flexibilityrigidity
multi-facetedsingle-mindedness
organicbureaucratic
emergentcontrolling
radialtop-down
deliberaterash
carefulreckless
self-actualizedinsecure
logical reasoningmagical thinking
universaltribal
comprehensivedismissive
caretakingmilitaristic
communitygated community
independenceconformity
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Power is the crushing sensation delivered from somewhere vaguely Above.
It is obtuse; inscrutable.
Ever-shifting and mercurial.
Confounding.
Contradicting.
Nakedly self-interested.
Confident. Conscienceless. 
Faceless. Meaningless.
A black hole sucking everything in.
A black boot in every face.
A blackness.
A contradiction; a cognitive dissonance.
The bitter taste on one's tongue.
The gnawing fear.
Capriciousness.
Corruption.
Hypocrisy.
Paranoia.
Bombastic grasping.
A slap in the face.
An endless arms race.
A shallow grave.
A cold stare.
A trap.
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Peter Thiel at Isengaard looking into the Palantir

Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey are a particularly toxic breed of billionaire welfare queen, who outwardly revile government with every chance they get while having both sucked at its teat to make their fortunes, and currently making a luxe living on taxpayer largesse.

Thiel’s Paypal and Facebook-induced riches rode the coattails of the DARPA-created internet, while Luckey had his exit to internet giant Facebook. Now Thiel helms creepy-AF data mining company Palantir, whose tentacles are wrapped all the way around the intelligence community’s various agencies, while Luckey’s Thiel-funded startup Anduril is bidding for lucrative defense contracts to build Trump’s border wall. It’s the stuff of full-on right-wing neocon wet dreams for both men.

They follow in a long line of right-wing denialism in which Austrian School econ acolytes (and trickle down aficionados) have claimed to be self-made men while reaping untold rewards from lucrative military contracts and other sources of government funding or R&D windfall. Barry Goldwater once famously invoked the mythology of the independent cowboy to describe his successful rise (as would union man Ronald Reagan years later) — when in reality he inherited the family department store business that itself became viable only due to the public money pouring in to nearby military installations springing up in Arizona since as far back as the Civil War.

Even without the American government as their businesses’ largest client, the Libertarian ideal of disproportionately enjoying the fruits of public goods while viciously fighting against the taxation required to pay for them puts the lie to these mens’ claims of Ayn Randian moral supremacy. The ritual flogging of so-called “Great Man Theory” animates all sorts of dangerous social projects such as the world’s richest man purchasing the de facto town square and turning it into a right-wing plaything.

If we’re lucky, Luckey will create some sort of VR seasteading community that sucks the Silicon Valley Supremacists right in and traps them in a sort of Libertarian Matrix forever.

More on Peter Thiel and his right-wing political network:

  • Buddies with right-wing Silicon Valley venture capitalist David Sacks — now Trump’s “AI and Crypto Czar” as of December 2024
  • Member of the PayPal Mafia
  • Funded successful Ohio Senator (and now VP) JD Vance‘s campaign
  • Funded loser Blake Masters’ Senatorial campaign in Arizona in 2022
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Dictatorships generally do not foster, or even tolerate, the kind of creative disruption of the status quo necessary to the existence of a dynamic free market. Plus, the economy of the Russian state can best be described as a mafia state, or kleptocracy. Thus Vladimir Putin needs to find other ways to shore up both the national finances and the support of his cronies (much less so, of his people, who are primarily afterthoughts in the Russian power structure).

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the rapid shift to capitalism was done with little oversight and many hands in the cookie jar. The Russian land’s rich stores of minerals, oil and gas, heavy metals, and other natural resources were rapidly privatized and newly-minted oligarchs flexed wealth and power in a way never before dreamed of in the former USSR.

The combination of powerful new gatekeepers who locked up the Russian economy early via capital flight and never let it go overshadowed the capitalistic transition and, in a very real way, hijacked it before it ever really got underway. The result is, some 30 years on, an unpopular creaking kleptocratic regime reviled around the world for its stubborn aggression, subversion of democratic processes around the world particularly in Europe and the United States, support for organized crime, and significant financial crimes on the part of the state itself.

Putin’s autocratic rule from dull to terrifyingly devious has a chilling effect on hope, self-determination, self-governance, and ultimately — on happiness, freedom, and creativity. Totalitarianism is capable of exerting control, but always fails to inspire anything except for eventual revolution against the oppressors.

Here is a granular look at major indicators of the economy of the Russian Federation.

OECD Country Dashboard: Russian economy

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