Capital, Civilization, War, Fascism, And Democracy

Capital is intrinsic to civilization: capital makes civilization possible, and, in turn, civilization feeds capital. Capital started with mates, family, friends, territory, flint, obsidian, furs, grains, dogs, etc. Our ancestors, twenty million years ago, already worked to amass capital. Cities could be defined as concentration of lodgings greater than sustainable before the Neolithic (the new stone, when herding and agriculture appeared in the most advanced populations).

The entity with the greatest capital has always been, in the last 5,000 years, the mightiest government, presently the USA. Followed by the People Republic of China. Communists often talk as if they opposed capital, but their leaders often muster more capital than their allegedly more capitalist opponents. It’s Stalin’s greater capital in… tanks which overwhelmed that other (and lesser!) capitalist, Adolf Hitler. Hitler recognized no German anticipated or even could comprehend, that Stalin had a capital of 35,000 tanks. That Franklin Delano Roosevelt had decided that the USA would have 24 Fleet Aircraft carriers was another major capitalist event, with long term consequences, as Japan would bitterly find out. Recently Biden, following Trump, having discovered that most electronic semiconductor integrated circuits were made in Asia, a minute flight time from thousands of Xi’s rockets, decided that it would be a good idea to make those in the good old USA (Trump had already obtained that Apple Inc. would make chips, and in the USA). 

However, war is also intrinsic to civilization, and may well be the fundamental reason why cities got built.

Even when not warring with nomads, civilizations compete: barred from the International Space Station (ISS), China just launched the core module of its own second space station. This sort of competition is of course excellent, and we are very grateful to “Communist” China for producing so much excellent science and technology. The USA would probably scoff at the Moon, but for China’s announced drive to establish itself there (the government of the CCP has not formally said so, but the top Chinese engineers let it be known).

In the past. Civilizations, besides each other, had another problem: nomads. In any case, they had to arm themselves. But it turns out too much of a good thing is not good for progress. 

Exponentials Everywhere:

“Capital” comes from “caput”, the head. Civilization, gathering large populations of people in cities, was made possible from, and necessary because of, the exponentiation of population.

The exponentiating population happened because of exponentiation of food production, thanks in turn to mass agriculture made possible by mass irrigation and other massive structures, which provided with many riches. Those, in turn were defended against scavenging nomads by mass armies (the nomads themselves often doubled as traders, who were indispensable, as they provided with otherwise inaccessible, indispensable goods from far away regions: obsidian, currency shells, metals, furs are examples).

It’s not just Quantum Physics, hence the world, which is entangled, but also all most significant human civilizational notions. Notice that I did not bother with explicitly mentioning religions above, as they are tentacular subsets of fascism.

Armies in turn are organized through command and control, to act as giant bodies with just one head. Naturally power runs in families and the children of commanders end up in command. Thus hierarchies of families ended on top of society. Religions they invented with fascist gods explained that the universe was organized according to fascist principles, very naturally, with a few jealous bloodthirsty maniacs on top. The large populations of civilization insured that they would stay on top of innovation, in particular with the best weapons, and would generally not be conquered by nomads (although there were exceptions, in particular the exposure of China to various invaders, the propensity of various Central Asian nomads to invade, such as the Huns-Avars-Mongols, and of course Islam, a particularly invasive ideology which the Turkish leadership found particularly profitable to adopt).

The gods and their servants adjudicated a morality where most found themselves in abject submission, because their very existence was a sin. Watch Incas sacrificing children: the massive usage of fascism to implement civilization was, and is, a worldwide phenomenon. It is not having an Eurasiatic bias to say this. Human sacrifices and slavery were ubiquitous in Africa, up to the Eighteenth Century. The Incas built a vast empire without the wheel, powerful draft animals, copper, bronze or iron working, coinage or a writing system. But they had fascism. The Inca empire could not have done without fascism.

Thus, fascism arose naturally, as a way to achieve civilization. But fascism is not natural to the human species. Human life may have been brutish and short, but it was not under fascism: human life had to be free for other humans, evolution did not anticipate the human condition to be anything, but a dialogue with nature. Hence, the human neurology of most of the population suffered: most humans did not live in conditions optimal for a full blossoming of their mental systems.

This implies that, if one could somehow tame fascism, one could create a mass society that would be smarter and more motivated to act progressively, rather than being passive, depressed and dumb.

Indeed, Rome, Athens, and quite a few other Greek city-states, found a way to mitigate fascism. They invented Demos-Kratia, People-Power. People voted directly, instead of being submitted to superiors. Laws were decided after direct debate insured by isegoria (everybody can address assemblies) and parrhesia (right of candor). 

Paradoxically that democratic revolution started for military reasons. Civilizations and their agricultural system need to be defended. That’s done with armies. Around 650 BCE, the Greek city-state of Argos on the Peloponnesian peninsula found a new military system. It replaced cavalry by hoplites. Hoplites were heavily armed foot soldiers with lances, swords, and shields. Warriors would protect each other with their shields. Hoplite formations, to be effective, needed extensive drilling, and the equipment was expensive. Thus hoplite armies were made of upper middle class citizens with plenty of time to practice. Cavalry had been even more expensive, only aristocrats could afford it. The switch from cavalry to hoplites enabled city-states to field much larger armies. Intact, disciplined hoplite formations could resist the charges of cavaliers. Thus hoplite upper middle class armies defeated aristocracies and took power. Around 550 BC, during the de facto quasi-Republican rule of king Servius Tullius, a universal levy of eligible (that is upper middle class) adult male citizens was instituted as Rome deliberately copied the Greek heavy armor hoplite army. (Two centuries later, fighting the obdurate mountain people, the Samnites, Rome abandoned the Greek phalanx by instituting smaller infantry units; the next big reform would be Marius, around 100 BCE, switching to a professional army… with catastrophic results; I like Marius, and he had no choice… still it was a catastrophe.)  

Democracy spearheaded by citizen-soldiers hoplite armies was enormously successful on the battlefield. The ancient Greeks suggested that was because citizen-soldiers fought for themselves instead of for a master. But there is more: Demos-Kratia was a better method, a scientific method to establish better truth, hence deeper motivation. Demos-Kratia is empowering in another way as people are free to be free.

However, Athens was conquered by the Macedonian tyrant Antipater in 322 BCE. Antipater had the resources of the entire Macedonian empire, all the way to India, and Athens had still not fully recovered from the Peloponnesian war (which had been fought against the Spartan Alliance, led by enslaving Sparta and financed by the Medes, the Persian empire). Antipater then transformed Athens into a plutocracy (only the wealthiest could vote)… Athens would not be really free for 23 centuries thereafter.

Whereas Athens confronted enormous and fanatical enemies, the Roman Republic’s democracy had a different fate. What happened to Rome is more troubling for us. The Republic kept its hubris in check, most of the time, growing slowly, cautiously, and mostly reactively (defending itself with gusto after being attacked, most of the time… or at least that’s how Roman historians present it… But there is a logic to it: clearly, Rome did not go on a rampage until after counter-striking the Carthaginian coalition). Rome never had to surrender. Her one crazy king, Tarquinius Superbus, was thrown out and defeated. “Sumptuary” laws and redistribution to the Ager Publicus limited the wealth and power of families strictly.

However, the horrendous war against Hannibal killed a lot of the best, brightest, most courageous and morally upright in the Roman elite. Those who had rented space in the fortified cities while Hannibal roamed the countryside dominated the post-war period. That was immediately followed by the Roman version of globalization. Indeed pushing back and defeating Carthage and its allies, left the Republic in control of most of the Mediterranean. Instead of imposing Roman law all over, the Republic opted for local self-management, making often alliances with local elites close to those Rome had just defeated. That sounded a good idea at the time.

So Rome left in place many local laws. That legal localization enabled many of the wealthiest Roman of the topmost classes (Senatorial and Equestrian) to evade the Roman barriers to exponential wealth: they just made their fortunes overseas, and then quickly came back and bought plenty of land illegally, managed by armies of imported slaves. This violence led to increasingly brutal plutocrats paying politicians (especially tribunes). Rome degenerated in a way similar to what is happening now, with holders of capital so wealthy they could also hold public opinion in their claws. Wealth got so great the wealthiest created a legion, and then entire armies. Civil war resulted. Optimates (=plutocrats; Sulla, Cicero) against Populares (Gracchi, Marius, Caesar). In the end an alliance was formed between the most powerful army and the plutocracy, led by Octavian/Augustus.

After this triumph of plutocracy, there was no looking back: the Roman power structure invented Catholicism, which became the state religion in the Fourth Century… Under the penalty of death (basically). 

One may wonder why plutocracy increasingly triumphed after (say) the Third Punic war. That’s because the Third Punic War was a triumph of plutocracy. The Roman optimates (the plutocrats) did not like the power and increased democracy of Carthage. It was a very bad example, just when aristocrats such as the Gracchi and their friends and allies decided that the Roman equity-equality Republican system was broken, and had to be refurbished. Such a situation of aristocrats leading a People’s revolution had been seen before: king Sergius Tullius had instituted the basic Republican structures Rome needed. The Optimates prevailed (Carthago delenda est; Carthage is to be destroyed), and visited a holocaust on Carthage, an acto fmass evil. Now when one has committed one act of mass evil, it is easy to do the next.

Another Sergius Tullius could have turned things around. And one came: Julius Caesar. But he was assassinated when he had barely started his work… whereas Sergius Tullius was assassinated by Tarquinius after he had made his main reform, that of the army. In particular, Rome kept a professional army… Even when said army was insufficient in power, numbers and enthusiasm, to repeal the barbarians. Thus Rome, population sixty million or more, fell to hordes of at most 50,000 warriors. Why? Because the plutocrats in power in Rome feared, first of all, a popular army of We The People (as Rome had for its first five centuries or so).

And when Rome “fell”, Roman plutocracy did not really fall. Rome did not really fall, because it took centuries, and a queen such as Brunehilde, writing in perfect Latin in 600 CE to impose Roman law to millions of “Franks” can well be viewed as a Roman head of state… As Charlemagne would be proclaimed, two centuries after her. Rome did not really fall also because Roman plutocrats made alliances with the invading Germans, Alans (Iran) and Huns (Mongolia)…A good Fourth Century Roman potentate preferred a good alliance with the invaders, rather than befriending “We The People” (an example is Aetius, the last great Roman commander in the West before the horrendous reconquista under Justinian).

So I am saying that what is called WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic) started with Rome and the best Greek city-states. And that was so true that it was not forgotten: by the Fifth Century, the Franks made educational reforms leveraging the church, and that was passed into stiff laws before the birth of Charlemagne. Also many of the Frankish reforms (shown by Lex Salica) were pro-equity and equality (equal mandatory inheritance among children, women not forgotten)… The outlawing of slavery (657 CE, queen Bathilde) was more of the (Democratic) drive towards equality…. And technological progress. Chinese emperors tried to cancel slavery a few times, but it did not stick. When Europeans visited China as soon as the Thirteenth Century, they were struck by the massive usage of human muscle power instead of mechanical advantage, for example to carry the trunks of giant trees.

Thus starting under the Franks, progressive traits of the early Roman Republic were recovered. The effort was not accidental, but conscious and deliberate: a great hope was what was then called the “Christian Republic”. Most of the historical documents may have had disappeared by then, but the essential was left, namely the collective memory of a more democratic past.

So why have the full democratic practices of 25 centuries ago not been recovered yet?

Indeed, we are still victims of the ideology which caused the fall of the Roman Republic, being told that we cannot have democracy. Instead we have representative oligarchy, a few hundred individuals enjoying extravagant powers.

One reason is an enormous inertia of moods and ideas. That can be better understood by looking at China, where the mood of “mandate from heavens” to designate the imperial system was established more than 22 centuries ago… and continues to this day. More basically, the elites in power have had interest to reinstitute as much fascism as they could get away with. For example, after eight centuries of (theoretically and formally) electing kings of the Franks, the king of the Franks decided he was king of France, and his job was hereditary (and a mandate not from We The People, but from the god; Charlemagne was already furious when the Pope pulled that trick on him… Charles wanted to be elected by the army, not god…).

Democracy, if and when one can make it work, is mightier than fascism… And this is because it is ethologically correct. Fascism is also ethologically correct but if, and only if, one is in combat. Thus fascist regimes are implicitly telling the people they subjugate that they are at war, and combat is engaged. 

The consequence of democracy is exponentiating intelligence. The consequence of fascism and its generalizations, oligarchism and “representative” pseudo-democracy, is the degenerescence into stupidity.

Our civilization is in an extremely delicate situation. It has to pilot several raging exponentials, just right, and they are technologically and scientifically dependent. If a civilization collapsed 10,000 years ago, the consequences were insignificant in the fullness of time. However, the destruction of civilization in the present circumstances could well condemn humanity, or what’s left of it, being unable to regain ever again the present level of wisdom and understanding. Cannibalism, though, would have a great future…

Patrice Ayme

ADDED VALUE IN THE XXI CENTURY

PRODUCING SUPERIOR THINKING TO IMPROVE NOT JUST WORLD SOCIO-ECONOMY, BUT SURVIVAL:

Capital Exponentiate, Decapitate Wealth To Feed Minds:

Piketty’s “Capital In the XXI Century” argues that the return on capital is greater that that on labor: r>g. All economists from the pseudo-left fell on their knees, astounded by the depth of that observation. They obviously never studied history, let alone archeology.

In truth, Piketty’s big deal inequality, that r>g has been known for 12,000 years, as I have emphasized in countless essays, for years. I have even explained the mathematical-psychological reasons why r>g. Piketty has smirked that he discovered r>g when he wrote the book. (A case of arrogant ignorance buttressed by colossal stupidity: that r>g ought to have been the first law of economics. That it took centuries for economists to discover this cannot possibly be a matter of stupidity, but of the will, on the part of economists of not understanding how the masters who fed them got their power from.)

So Piketty claims he just discovered that r>g: maybe economists are not idiots, but they play some on TV? (Some are bound to think that Piketty should be my ally, and thus I should be nicer to him; however, correct philosophy tends to be done by being only friendly to truth.)

Homo Thrived In This Cold Climate For 2 Million Years (Georgia, Tusheti NP.) Thanks To Science & Technology

It was so well known, that the return on capital was higher than that on income, r>g, that all reasonably sustained societies had colossal, decapitating taxes on wealth.

By law, hook, or crook. And when this was not the case, when wealth became hereditary in an exponential way, disasters happened. Generally invasion and destruction.

This happened to all the plutocratically corrupt Chinese empires when Genghis Khan’s Mongols came down.

The peaceful variant is revolutions such as 1789 (for twenty years the king had been meekly trying to make the aristocracy pay enough taxes).

When a great Native American, or great Viking chief died, much of their possessions (it could thousands of horses) would be redistributed.

Time to re-learn the wisdom of the ancients.

***

SUPERIORITY OF THE WEST?

Why did the West become so superior? Or China, for that matter?

Technology. Superior technology. Coming from superior thinking. Both the Greeks and the Chinese had colossal contempt for barbarians. (In both cases it went so far that the Greeks lost everything, and the Chinese came very close to annihilation).

Around the year 1000 CE, the Vietnamese (it seems) invented new cultivars of rice, which could produce an entire crop, twice a year. The population of East Asia exploded accordingly.

A bit earlier, the Franks had invented new cultivars of beans. The Frankish Tenth Century was full of beans. Beans are nutritious, with high protein.

Homo is scientific and technological. Thus, two million years ago, pelt covered (tech!) Homo Ergaster lived in Georgia’s Little Caucasus, a pretty cold place in winter. And the population was highly varied genetically (showing tech and travel already dominated).

***

A GREATER OBSESSION WITH FREEDOM MADE THE WEST SUPERIOR:

Here is the very latest. Flour was found in England, in archeological layers as old as 10,000 years before present. It was pure flour: there were no husks associated. The milling had been done, far away. How far? Well the cultivation of wheat spread to Western Europe millennia later. The flour had been traded, and brought over thousands of miles. Most certainly by boat. Celtic civilization, which would rise 5,000 years later, was expert at oceanic travel.

What’s the broad picture? Not just that prehistoric Englishmen loved their flat bread, no doubt a delicacy. Advanced technology has permeated Europe for much longer than is still understood now by most historians. Remember that the iceman who died in a glacier, 5,000 years ago, was not just tattooed, and had fetched in the lowlands a bow made of special wood. More telling: he carried antibiotics.

China and the West diverged, because the philosophies of the Franks and the East were different. The Franks had outlawed slavery four centuries before the great divergence started. This helped freedom, especially the freedom to think of new technology and science.  (Frank = Free.)

The more enslaved a population, the less inventive. It is not just a cultural-psychological phenomenon. It may be epigenetic. The Franks were more ethologically correct, and that enabled to unleash full human epigenetic.

(Being endowed with full human capability, is perhaps why G.W. Bush was incredibly brazen when he became president, going to invade Iraq, whereas Obama was subdued, and just worked, under Summers’ orders, to save the established plutocratic order, like a little boy, obsequious servant of the great white masters; OK, Obama did not descend from slaves, yet he was exposed to the black slave culture, throughout, and somewhat clueless about it.)

The Germans had been obsessed with freedom since ever, and, since in particular, their first contacts with the Romans. All that Germanic freedom led to population explosions, and invasions of Greco-Roman lands, which, for centuries, were systematically cut down by hyper-disciplined Roman armies.

All this was brought into one mold by Consul Clovis, who, as Roman Imperator, and himself son of Roman Imperator Childeric (also elected king of the Salian Franks), made the soldiers of his army understand that they would have to be extremely disciplined too, under the penalty of death (Roman style, a revolting notion for free Germans).

Militarily, the Franks by combining freedom and discipline, were an undefeatable force ever since (the Mongols knew this all too well, thus did not send their scouts west of Croatia; then allied themselves to the Franks to capture Baghdad and Damas).

Free peasants had no slaves, but they needed help: domesticated beasts and mechanical advantage were thus evolved by Frankish society. When Europeans made it to China, they were astounded that people did everything, without using machines or beasts.

So not too many children, but then communal living: Middle Ages villages in Europe were commune-ist regimes. Exploitation of property was divided according to how many could work.

The end result was strong philosophical pressure for ever more advanced technology. Although China was ahead in some tech, as soon as Europe heard of it, it captured it greedily. That philosophy permeated all of Western European society. Peter the Great, emperor of Russia knew this so well, he went to study incognito as a worker in Dutch naval shipyards.

***

AMERICAN ECONOMIC DISCOURSE: A TROJAN HORSE

Does the drive to advanced tech dominate now?

Not as much as it used to.

Why? American plutocracy. And the “Nobel Prizes” of a whole army of obsequious plutophile servants thereof.

Because the spirit of all-conquering technology has been displaced by Capital in the XXI Century. And more specifically its USA monopolistic operators (such as the insufferable Bill Gates, and cohorts of financial operators). Technology is, and will stay, of course, the main and ultimate capital of humanity. That’s how Homo colonized the Caucasus, two million years ago.

Piketty, in his book, brushes technology off. Absurdly, he believes that tech can provide only a 1% return. That’s thoroughly stupid: inventing full Quantum Computers, for example,  would have tremendous consequences, as any device could be made hyper intelligent.

Yet, this sort of attitude makes Piketty an object of admiration in USA Academia.

Why? Because USA Academia is plutocratic through and through. Piketty’s ideas do not threaten plutocracy. Quite the opposite: they will allow it to survive. Diminished, true, but alive. My ideas would destroy plutocracy. Let alone the fact that it would take a long time to implement Piketty’s scheme. My schemes, being multi-dimensional, could be implemented faster, and start to bite right away.

(I do agree with several of Piketty’s propositions, such as a world cadastrum, and progressive taxation on capital: I have advocated them for more than a decade!)

***

PLUS OULTRE:

However, a European solar plane just took off from Dubai. It will go around the world on solar power alone. The main force behind this project, the inventor and pilot, the engineer Picard (scion of ancestors just like him) asserts that the global adoption of such technologies would lower energy waste by half.

Europeans, following the Europeans who had migrated to North America, were the richest, most powerful, better nourished people in the world, for five centuries, because their economies produced more ADDED VALUE than any other economies (in particular, better guns).

To re-establish relative riches, Europeans need to focus on what produced that superiority in added value production. That means technological superiority, and this is fed by a more educated population. More educated scientifically, and thus philosophically.

Philosophy, done in a humanly ethologically correct way, is the metaphysics of science. It all fits together. Anything else is an amputation of the possible. Of the humanly possible.

China understands this very well. At least the science part. (Not too sure about the philosophical part; without it, China may well follow the path of fascist Germany. It’s going that way, with a military budget bigger than France, Britain and Japan combined: $145 billion.)

How to do this?

How to add so much value from mind that superiority is re-established?

Well establish the correct philosophy, put it in power, teach it, finance free maximum quality education, free at all ages.

Pay by taxes on wealth, and large incomes, fortunes, in such a way that there would be a practical cap on wealth, as the Roman Republic used to have, when it really worked.

Decapitating wealth is important for the youth: it will show youth that material wealth to excess is such a bad thing, it had to be made unlawful. It will replace mind at the apex of what youth ought to aspire to, and be programmed by.

***

KEEPING A CIVILIZATION GRADIENT WILL SAVE BILLIONS:

Billions of lives, that is.

The usual partisans of insignificance, nihilism and masochism will no doubt whine that Euro-American economic ascendency is a bad thing. They prefer to be haughty slaves than responsible masters.

European scientific superiority led to a reasonably stabled world order. (Except for some populations of the Americas who got exterminated, thus clearing the lands for Europeans.)

In a world where everybody has the same weapons, and ecology is collapsing (still not raining in California, fourth year in a row, in the greatest drought in several millennia), it is to be feared that disorder will express itself as it has in the past: the sort of massacres that make entire populations disappear. That is what Netanyahu is thinking of…

So defining properly Capital in The XXI Century is not just economically and socially important. It is morally important, in the apocalyptic sense of “moral”.

Superior mind is the ultimate capital. Obviously hardly a notion that comes naturally to economists. As what is called “economics” is mostly a fake science, and famous economists are mostly people who have learned to lie about that fact.

When Piketty claims he just discovered r>g, 10,000 years after most of our ancestors, he demonstrates that. More generally, the same critique can be directed at entire fields such as most of theoretical physics and even mathematics, as funding from plutocrats has become ubiquitous. By buying the hierarchy, the plutocrats bought the thinking. That’s what they wanted. Thinking to be directed incorrectly.

We have see this before: this is how Aristotle, or more exactly his sponsors, nearly destroyed civilization. The difference? The stakes are much higher now.

Can I be more specific in my critique, give a hint of what is wrong with Academia? Most thinkers in Academia are too specialized. Right, much science requires hyper-specialization. Say when one is studying Pluto’s atmosphere (the Solar planet not the god of planet finance). One needs hyper-specialized science. However, there is also the science, and the thinking, about big questions. In those fields, hyper-specialization, unguided by the broad picture, can lead to error: look at much of theoretical physics, much of philosophy, much of economics.

It is precisely because Thomas Piketty is obviously pretty ignorant of history, that he believes he just discovered r>g. After 10,000 human societies made the  notion central to their cultures. It is also why economists do not even know that, during most of humanity’s history, money creation was not farmed out to private individuals (the bankers). So they cannot even feel that there is anything wrong with the present money creation system.

Ignorance allows the devil to hide in the details.

Patrice Ayme’

Picking Piketty Peeks

Thomas Piketty, a young and successful French Science Po economist wrote “Capitalism in The XXI Century”. I bought it ASAP, and then did not read one page. The reason is that there was a waiting list. By the time I got the book, it was clear it was rehashing part of what I have been saying for years.

For example, to my knowledge, I was the first to make the rapprochement between the present situation and the Ancient Regime. The Nobles (2% of the population) did not pay (most) tax.

Piketty recognizes that he just discovered “his book’s principal idea” that the “taux de rendement du capital” (return on capital) was higher than return on work. “Moi je ne le savais pas avant”. I have been pounding that fact for a decade or so.

The Higher The Return On Capital, The Lower the Growth (Piketty)

It is nice to see Piketty saying these things I have been saying, now, but I have moved on, long ago. I condemn the very way money is generated (by the private-public banking system).

It is first obvious to whoever has studied past societies. Plutocracies are basically those societies where, at some point, taxation on the wealthiest has not been applied enough to limit the EXPONENTIATION of capital.

I do not find alluring to listen to my old observations. Not to demean Piketty. Others such as Saez in Berkeley, also French, had published enlightening research on inequality, for years.

I agree with all what Piketty proposes. Yet, many of his answers are all too mild.

In the period from Roosevelt to1981 (arrival of Reagan), the upper marginal tax rate of the USA averaged 82%. It applied above one million dollar income (constant dollars). Growth was maximum.

What Piketty did not say: In the next 20 years the maximum margin on the richest came down to (less than) 15%. Yes, less than secretaries.

Piketty wants to rise the upper margin tax rate of income millionaires to 80% or 90%. I agree.

To this critics of Piketty, in France or the USA, reply that will kill innovation. A French cutie interviewer told Piketty that with rates like that the robot who heads Facebook (OK, she did not use “robot”) would not have been motivated to invent Facebook.

Who cares?

As it is, Mr. Z from Facebook stole an idea from France. Besides, Facebook-like companies already existed (Myspace). There is also plenty of evidence Facebook was a government operation (the protégé of Larry Summers, parachuted to the USA government under Clinton, was parachuted to Google, and then parachuted to Facebook).

Piketty vaguely mumbled something about the research which really mattered was public. But he was weak and indecisive.

Why? Well, after all, Piketty teaches at Science Po, a place full of young arrogant greedsters who think they are becoming qualified to lead the world. They live according to a principle that Piketty himself condemns: politics as a profession. Piketty said that the fact Hollande had been in politics all his life was a problem (the same is true for roughly all politicians).

Professional politicians should not be condemned to clean the toilets exclusively, but certainly ought to be left to sort out the details, of the laws passed by the People, like they increasingly have to, in Switzerland. That’s the only exclusivity they should pretend to.

In truth, business creators are nothing much. Business creators motivated first by money are even less.

Piketty to Bill Gates: ‘If 30 years ago, one would have told you: you will earn one billion dollars, not 50 billion, would you have refused to invent Windows?’ Of course not says Piketty, answering his own question.

Piketty: Without counting that all these innovations rest on an ecosystem of public research.

Piketty missed the obvious remark that France was at the forefront of the electronics age: transistors and CPUs (chips), and even the Personal Computer (PC), were all invented, and produced first in France. He probably does not even know this.

And the fact he does not know is testimony enough to the dirty ways of money.

The hard creative work is from engineers, scientists and the philosophers who back them up, not forgetting the historians, sociologists, writers, artists and poets helping to inspire the preceding crowd.

All the world of lasers and the like came from publicly funded lab in Paris. In 1953, Kastler invented optical pumping:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/genius-irreplaceable-jobs-follow/

The same lab has made more Nobel prize winning work founding outright a completely new field: how to see light with atoms (my own formulation, don’t accuse Serge Haroche!)

Such labs are now starved by austerity.

If you ask people at Apple Inc. why they are so good, they don’t say “Steve Jobs”. It’s not just that Steve has experienced technical difficulties, it’s that Apple engineers feel empowered. Apple has $700 billion in market cap (twice Google).

After a level of inequality, it has no effect on the motivation of individuals: why to pay traders millions of Euros? Say Piketty.

What I say is that much of trading itself, should not exist.

Much of what Piketty says about Europe and the Euro Zone is correct. One should homogenize the core part of the Euro Zone, and those who don’t like it, like Luxembourg, can stay out.

Right now in Europe, large companies pay less tax than medium and small ones. It’s even worse with middle class people versus the wealthiest.

A point Piketty makes is that inequality is not everything, but opacity also matters. He mentioned that Carlos Slims (world’s richest man) obtained juicy contracts from the government. (Piketty is careful not to say that this was a case of obvious corruption; he obviously knows this, but he wants to be keep on being invited in the power circles, and his books to create the buzz that brings millions of sales).

An objection made to Piketty is that the classification of the richest people has changed over 30 years. To this, Piketty has not clear retort, but I do.

That is indeed a silly objection: The founder of Walmart passed away. His heir have, all together, more money than Bill Gates.

More historically, under the terrible Roman plutocracy, the richest of the rich changed all the time, for similar reasons. But, although it was hard to maintain just as high a status, it was easier to maintain one just below. The Curial class (= local plutocracy) survived for 4 centuries.

Karl Marx? Piketty rightly points out that Marx wanted to cancel private property, but did not think about what would happen the next day.

Piketty suggests to create new notions of property, including hybrids between public and private property as conceived now.

Piketty was asked why he was so keen, him, such a young guy, to go all around the world, to be received by Obama, to be admired by all, etc. … Instead of being working hard? Especially with the crisis we have now?

Piketty replied he believed in the power of ideas. He believes politicians are just into doing what they believe is the dominant thinking We The People (he did not use that expression) go by. So, in the democratic debate, one should try to modify this dominant opinion.

Notice the naivety: one is very far here from my Satanic interpretation of common human behavior, especially at the leadership level

The answer to this is simple: some play, some think. Real thinkers are not in the White House, they are in distant caves, watching the sea. Occasionally, when not thinking deep.

Piketty points out that oligarchic regimes bring social problems, thus scapegoats, thus nationalist drift, and then, ultimately, like Hitler, or Putin, war.

All right, truth be told, Piketty did not mention Hitler, but he did mention Putin. Not a word on the problem of banks. Out of 29 extremely dangerous banks, the equivalent of potential super-novas on the verge of explosion, four are French. BNP is roughly the same size as French GDP. Those banks are the main engines of inequality, besides the fact any of them, by imploding would make the situation instantaneously worse than in 2008.

Those banks are still allowed to engage in a form of trading which is the modern equivalent of slavery. Piketty does not mention the problem, which is at the core of the money generating-austerity craze.

And he is not afraid to say that many of the time honored ways of economics are actually outright insanity (he repeatedly uses the word “delirium”). Piketty is no genius, but he makes an excellent impresario.

Patrice Ayme’

Plutocratic Planet

Plutocrats control the thinking, thus the law. In the USA, it is unlawful for Medicare, the public health insurance for seniors, to discuss the price of drugs with (private) providers. If a drug company asks for an outrageous price for a drug, Medicare has to say yes.

However, private insurers can negotiate all they want. I asked a health care executive if this was fair. He smiled sardonically: “It’s the law.”

Krugman is increasingly discovering that plutocracy is a problem (although he is careful to not use the word too much, as it smells, literally, of sulfur). He wrote an excellent editorial in the New York Times, January 2, 2015 (time flies, happy New Year!)

Income to 2008. Return of Feudalism: It Has Got Worse Since.

Says Krugman: “What you see is the surge by the global elite (the top 0.1, 0.01, etc. would be doing even better than his top 1%), plus the dramatic rise of many but not all people in emerging markets. In between is what … I’d say corresponds to advanced-country working classes in general, at least if you add post-2008 data with the effects of austerity. I’d call it the valley of despond…”

I sent a comment putting things in historical perspective. The New York Times censored it (I am on the NYT’s official watch and censor list). Here is my comment below. I will comment more on what Krugman said, after it.

Patrice Ayme (censored by NYT): “Agreed to all. Let me add more perspective. Plutocrats rose after World War One, especially in the USA, by acquiring effective control of Germany, through the good offices of Dr. Schacht (Germany’s top banker, a pawn of JP Morgan), Henri Ford (financing Hitler massively), IBM (monopoly of computing in Germany).

This allowed to turn around the anti-monopoly laws of Teddy Roosevelt. One could argue that Hitler’s Reich was an American plutocrats’ puppet. By 1945, the USA was master of the world.

However, the US army (16 million young soldiers trained to kill), had to be pacified, so GIs were treated like kings (thanks to a 93% tax on the wealthy). The economy boomed.

However, what plutocrats want is to rule: that means they want the Commons despondent. Their world domination could be accentuated by repeating, worldwide, what they had done with Germany, Italy and even the USSR between the wars. They invested far away from Western workers.

The same situation exactly led to the implosion of the Roman economy. But, first, by voiding the core of the empire of work and power, Roman plutocracy insured for itself several centuries of rule.

The same psychology is at work today: plutocrats want to deprive of power who could take it away: the Western Middle Class. “Austerity” is a just a ruse that way. Its true validity is that it diverts money and power from We The People to the richest people in the world, by fiscally means.

Wealth organize its subjects’ minds all over. No hope?”

No hope to see such ideas in the New York Times: the preceding was censored, as deserved for doubting the goodness of the institutions and history our masters have set-up. By censoring such facts, and ideas, the plutocrats insure that their satanic conspiracy can blossom ever more. The facts above are correct, and there are much more, thousand more, like them (I have detailed them in preceding essays).

One can literally said that American plutocrats used Nazism as a tool.

I talk all the time to very educated Americans and Europeans who are persuaded that the USA did all it could against Hitler: the cover-up has splendidly held. So they have no idea of what we see today is a continuation of a process started a century ago. And that it can lead to the worst, because it already did.

Some American friends I had for years called me an uneducated Satan for evoking such facts, and have not talked to me once ever since. It is the world upside down, the inversion of all values.

The collaboration between American plutocrats, and the government they control went on, during and after the World War. Both institutionally, and individually: IBM made itself busy helping the Allies after the Nazis capitulated (they had the monopoly of organizing in Hitler’s Reich). Tens of thousands of Nazis escaped under USA supervision.

The other day, I saw a documentary on TV explaining to me how great the Nazi engineers who built rockets were, and how they got to the moon. Yes, they got to the moon (Saturn V employed more than 100 Nazi engineers). The documentary forgot to mention the tens of thousands of slaves who died in underground rocket factories managed by the same characters.

Klaus Barbie, well known to have tortured to death around 5,000 people in Lyon, personally, and having boasted about it lyrically, was in CIA employ for decades afterwards; the French arrested him in Bolivia and brought him to trial later. Barbie had tortured to death tens of British agents, of both genders, not just the French. Maybe he killed some Americans from the OSS too, I don’t remember. The CIA knew this very well, but it was headed by lawyer Dulles, who represented 1,000 Nazi companies before WWII.

In TWIN PEAKS PLANET, Krugman opines that:

“In 2014, soaring inequality in advanced nations finally received the attention it deserved, as Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” became a surprise (and deserving) best seller. The usual suspects are still in well-paid denial, but, to everyone else, it is now obvious that income and wealth are more concentrated at the very top than they have been since the Gilded Age — and the trend shows no sign of letting up.

But that’s a story about developments within nations, and, therefore, incomplete. You really want to supplement Piketty-style analysis with a global view, and when you do, I’d argue, you get a better sense of the good, the bad and the potentially very ugly of the world we live in.”

The potentially very ugly has been seen many times in the past, all over the world, from Japan to Central America: feudalism, and, or, giant war(s), sometimes for millennia.

Even the Roman Republic, which was extremely aware of the plutocratic problem, and had been built around the idea to not fall into it again, fell into it, after a long degeneracy,  with “Senatus Princeps” Augustus. (Princeps evolved in the word “Prince”).

The rest of Krugman’s essay is a rewording of what I have been saying for more than a decade in writing. A delight to read, and I will comment on it in another essay, because I do not have the time now, and readers tend not to have time for long essays, either.

Krugman finally pays attention to the thought control the greedy oligarchies have achieved. The power is in the discourse. (As Foucault, and others, noticed.)

So see you soon, and, again, Happy New Year!

Patrice Ayme’