Western structuring and projection of power
Western societies are structured by two financial thresholds separating the servants from the freemen and the freemen from the vassals.
The former threshold has already been described by Plato in The Laws: The state reserves certain basic rights, in particular the right to settle in its territory, which thus become privileges to be earned; in a financial set-up by paying a licence fee in addition to the market price (often a huge one, like 150 times it, which is how much more a construction site costs than pasture because of regulation in Germany). I'll call this threshold the pressure barrier: It is made up of all the requirements that a society considers appropriate to relent pressure on its citizens. It can be moved by public consensus, and if it is moved the debt that the servants have to pay is either increased or decreased. There seem to be no historical examples of the latter outside of colonisation, which is of course Plato's starting point in The Laws.
The latter threshold is owed to the fact that a certain degree of market power will allow a company to use part of its leverage to maintain its market position, effectively putting it in charge of a fief. But because of competition this fief has to be managed in a certain way, making its handlers no more than vassals of its judges. Still, fiefs come with perks and also constitute a rung on the ladder to greater power. When some banks had carved out a fief for themselves that was powerful enough to challenge some nation states, a deal was struck that would establish those banks as the superior vassals of the United States of America, controlling all other vassals through competition artificially bolstered by low interest rates backed by U.S. tax revenue and thus preventing any vassal from ever climbing to any higher rung of power. Hence this is the last threshold, which I'll call the consideration threshold. There is a recent ballooning of fiefs: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Pfizer, which seems to seek its continued growth in moving the pressure barrier upwards. Of course, under the continued pressure of the concentration of power that naturally accompanies technological progress there may not be any power structure that would not blow up.
The projection of western power relies on a pincer attack: military undermining of beliefs in independent paths and the co-optation of forces critical of independent paths by
The former threshold has already been described by Plato in The Laws: The state reserves certain basic rights, in particular the right to settle in its territory, which thus become privileges to be earned; in a financial set-up by paying a licence fee in addition to the market price (often a huge one, like 150 times it, which is how much more a construction site costs than pasture because of regulation in Germany). I'll call this threshold the pressure barrier: It is made up of all the requirements that a society considers appropriate to relent pressure on its citizens. It can be moved by public consensus, and if it is moved the debt that the servants have to pay is either increased or decreased. There seem to be no historical examples of the latter outside of colonisation, which is of course Plato's starting point in The Laws.
The latter threshold is owed to the fact that a certain degree of market power will allow a company to use part of its leverage to maintain its market position, effectively putting it in charge of a fief. But because of competition this fief has to be managed in a certain way, making its handlers no more than vassals of its judges. Still, fiefs come with perks and also constitute a rung on the ladder to greater power. When some banks had carved out a fief for themselves that was powerful enough to challenge some nation states, a deal was struck that would establish those banks as the superior vassals of the United States of America, controlling all other vassals through competition artificially bolstered by low interest rates backed by U.S. tax revenue and thus preventing any vassal from ever climbing to any higher rung of power. Hence this is the last threshold, which I'll call the consideration threshold. There is a recent ballooning of fiefs: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Pfizer, which seems to seek its continued growth in moving the pressure barrier upwards. Of course, under the continued pressure of the concentration of power that naturally accompanies technological progress there may not be any power structure that would not blow up.
The projection of western power relies on a pincer attack: military undermining of beliefs in independent paths and the co-optation of forces critical of independent paths by
- convincing them that one of its confidants shares a common interest with them,
- financing them so that they can circumvent independent establishments.
Labels: 31, formalisierung, geschichte, gesellschaftskritik, gesetze, institutionen, sehhilfen, wahrnehmungen, zeitgeschichte, ἰδέα, φιλοσοφία
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