Something's Gotta Give

With each passing day, matters are getting worse, as too many big decisions are being made on behalf of too many by too few.

The American hegemon has long been a source of instability at home and abroad. At home, authorities went from safeguarding a stable constitutional order to becoming debt-drunk activists. Abroad, authorities have thrown around American military weight for decades—with little to show. The Middle East is, and will always be, dry tinder. Eastern Europe and Russia are, and will always be, dry tinder. Uncle Sam is stomping around with lit matches. That great but adolescent power that emerged after WWII went from protecting sea lanes for global trade to playing a world constable devoid of principle. Now we’re staring down 33 trillion in public debt and another World War.

The whole damn thing could come down at any time. That "thing" is the debt-based technocratic world order based on the fiat money system. It seems quite robust but is built upon a precarious power structure—a complicated and fragile system.

Remember, this fragile human system is mainly controlled by elites. And elites are human, too. The system is rigged to their benefit, but only so much rigging can be done in a world of increasing complexity. They are neither wizards nor gods. They eat, sleep, shit, and err like the rest of us.

“Fragile” is the opposite of what Nicolas Nassim Taleb referred to in his famous 2012 book, Antifragile.

Some things benefit from shocks," writes Taleb. "They thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.

Like many other nation-state systems, American society has always been a mix of fragile and antifragile aspects. Among the antifragile elements, the healthier aspects balance local entrepreneurial plans and global emergent complexity that thought curator

Leif Smith

calls freeorder. Among the fragile elements, though, unaccountable technocrats practice dirigisme.

The trouble is, we’re moving toward an antifragile condition. Greater centralization means we’ve become vulnerable to “volatility, randomness, and disorder,” which eventually confounds a centralized system's authorities and, thus, the system itself. America, Europe, and China—all three—are becoming fragile, maladaptive, and top-heavy.

The reason is simple:

The unholy union of political power and corporate influence has spawned something grotesque that the founders hoped the Constitution could never midwife on these shores.

Along critical dimensions, we could be far more resilient, even antifragile. But we’re not. It was once fashionable to pick on Europe and criticize China—the former for being too bureaucratic and the latter for being too fascistic. Despite the spittle-soaked daises of fools declaring their devotion to American democracy, they’re in the process of sinoforming this country.

In a past article, I suggested my concerns are about the black balls Game A creates and the collapse of our current human systems. With this, I wanted to point out that our current human systems create more black balls.

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Whether we’re staring down a Great Depression or Mass Extinction, I cannot say. But I’m an optimist. So I’d say we should start preparing for the former and hope the latter doesn’t arrive in our lifetimes.

A human system can be brought into existence by accident, agreement, or force. As more of our lives are being planned for us by elites drafting blueprints for a new international order, what had once been a socially constructed reality of invisible rules is quickly becoming a great prison with invisible walls. They don’t care much that in these walls are human beings—flesh and blood people who think, feel, and act. They tend to view us as herds to be tended, liabilities to be managed, or multitudes to be controlled.

For better or worse, human systems create channels for how things flow. Because our human systems are almost always invisible, we take them for granted, but they are fundamental to our identities as individuals and as peoples.

We shape our rules, and then our rules shape us.

So, our human story has undoubtedly been about how we have played our parts within different rules of different games.

But time and again, we have seen the great powers rise and fall. This has played out over and over again. In almost every case, a single throughline is revealed.

The Money Shot

Through it all, there has been money. 

One day, a hairless ape admired someone's seashell. Someone admired his smooth stone. They grunted, pointed, and eventually, they exchanged. They soon figured out that to give up one trinket for something you wanted more was better than the risk of having your skull bashed in.

Over time, their respective tribes used these trinkets as mediums of exchange. Some reasoned it's better to trade than raid because everybody’s happier. This simple human system could help more souls satisfy their wants and needs while avoiding bloodshed.

We still use that system today. But we don’t control it.

Maybe there is a rectangular piece of paper in your pocket. It’s elaborately designed but otherwise useless, except you can turn it into a meal. How odd that. It must have something to do with the note's runes, symbols, and esoterica. If you take a dollar in your hand, its markings signify a portal. That portal leads to a group of wizards with enormous power who work in marble palaces.

You now possess their talisman, which affords you a tiny fraction of their power. Give this talisman to a stranger, and she produces hot food for you. These talismans circulate, like blood, through other human systems, such as firms, cities, and global networks, eventually, within vast ecosystems of production and trade.

It's magnificent.

But behind it all, there are always those wizards. What if their power failed one day? What if it’s failing now?

Currently, all of our human systems are connected in one way or another to the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve, which are organs of one Almighty Entity. This point cannot be understated. And though no liminal event has a single cause, that great pyramidal structure depicted on the dollar is not as stable as it appears.

Any collapse waiting in our future is a consequence of a million decisions extending into the past. And with each passing day, matters are getting worse, as too many big decisions are being made on behalf of too many by too few. Most of those decisions originate in New York and Washington, D.C.

Something’s gotta give.