|
|
Musings Report 2021-36 9-4-21 Have Our Elites Lost Their Mandate of Heaven?
You are receiving this email because you are one of the subscribers/major contributors to www.oftwominds.com.
For those who are new to the Musings reports: they're a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Thank You, Patrons and Contributors!
Thank you longtime patrons/subscribers Craig P. and William B. and welcome new patrons / subscribers Luca F., Daniel L. and Michael R. -- thank you very much!
Have Our Elites Lost Their Mandate of Heaven?
The consent of the governed and the Mandate of Heaven have an interesting relationship.
In the ancient cosmology of ruler and ruled, the right to rule was viewed as a metaphysical construct: the gods (or God) granted individuals or blood lines the Divine Right to Rule, with the understanding that this right was contingent and could be withdrawn.
The Chinese called this metaphysical approval the Mandate of Heaven, and a series of natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, etc.) were interpreted as the withdrawal of the rulers' right to rule due to their failure to properly comport Heaven and Earth.
(Failures of leadership such as losing wars and exacerbating famines didn't help.)
Once the ruled concluded the Mandate of Heaven had been withdrawn, that was the metaphysical green light to overthrow the existing ruling elite and replace it with another regime.
All nation-states have some version of the consent of the governed, which is based on the idea that rulers are granted authority because they have unique powers that benefit the commoners.
This power might be supernatural, as in a priest-class which claimed that its rituals insured bountiful harvests, or a natural superiority such as being a successful general and compelling leader.
Whatever the source if the elite's power, if the elite failed to deliver the implicitly promised benefits to commoners--bountiful harvests, security from invasion, etc.--then the consent of the governed could be withdrawn, as the elites had failed to hold up their end of the bargain: we grant you authority and in exchange your leadership benefits us all.
In the current era, the ruling elite's claim on superior powers that benefit the ruled boil down to 1) charismatic leadership and 2) difficult-to-acquire expertise that gives the elite an edge in decision-making, planning and innovation.
In many ways, the current faith in technology as the solution to all problems has a metaphysical component: many people are offended if their belief in the supremacy of technology is questioned.
The current technocratic elite is in a sense the modern equivalent of a priest-class with special powers to conjure technological-managerial marvels that carry the implicit promise of delivering benefits to commoners--bountiful yields, increasing security, etc.
As prosperity and security decline, and techno-managerial marvels (Big Data, AI, etc.) fail to fix what's broken, faith in the priesthood of expertise is fading, and the consent of the governed is eroding: the priesthood's incantations and rituals are failing to yield the promised benefits.
There is another factor that causes the ruled to withdraw the consent of the governed: soaring inequality driven by the elites taking a larger share than the economy/society can sustain.
Put another way: if the ruling elite mismanages affairs while increasing their share of the economy's surplus, the decline falls on the commoners.
If the ruling elite manages to expand the economy by 2% but increases their share by 10%, the slice of pie left for the commoners shrinks accordingly.
Ruling elites who make the mistake of believing their own PR (i.e. we deserve our authority and power due to our superiority) lose touch with the day-to-day realities of insecurity experienced by commoners, and this leads to the hubris and magical thinking of "let them eat cake."
This academic study presents the case for inequality bringing down elites and collapsing societies.
Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies.
Given that the top 10% in the U.S. own virtually 90% of all income-producing assets and collect 97% of all income derived from capital, while the wealth and income of the bottom 90% have stagnated or declined, it's self-evident that inequality has reached the collapse / withdrawal of the consent of the governed stage.
It's also increasingly self-evident that the technocracy elite has failed to deliver the implicitly promised benefits across a spectrum of measures of well-being.
The top monkeys are doing very well indeed, while the troop is feeling that the Monkey Gods have signaled their displeasure (no Mandate of Heaven for you) and the erosion of security and well-being are evidence the elite has failed to fulfil its part of the bargain: rather than improve the lot of the commoners, the elite have increased their share of the economy and power at the expense of the many.
The only question is how messy the withdrawal of the consent of the governed and the Mandate of Heaven will be.
Highlights of the Blog
Posts:
The Illusion of Stability, the Inevitability of Collapse 9/3/21
Magical Thinking About Green Energy 9/1/21
The Elites' Battle for the Future America 8/30/21
Do You Live in a Social Capital Desert? 8/28/21
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
We received a box of homegrown mangoes (pirie and mapulehu) from my sister-in-law in Honolulu. sweet and creamy, not stringy--a wonderful gift.
From Left Field
Do We Really Need to Take 10,000 Steps a Day for Our Health? -- 7,000 to 8,000 is optimal...
It is time to end extractive tourism: The pandemic presents us with a great opportunity to do away with the destructive mass tourism industry. -- yes....
John B. Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia Experiment and Reflections on the Welfare State -- a famous study....
All of the World’s Money and Markets in One Visualization -- much of this "wealth" is phantom...
Onslow is a town with seemingly unlimited solar energy, but it's grappling with power supplies -- intermittency and storage are problems with no cheap, easy solution....
An Open Letter to Airbnb: The pitchforks are coming -- well deserved in the view of many...
Can democracy survive peak oil?
Jack Ma’s Costliest Business Lesson: China Has Only One Leader (WSJ.com) -- and his name isn't Jack Ma....
Who can afford to live in the American west when locals can’t? -- housing is scarce in small highly desirable Western towns....
We’re Being Worked to Death by Capital: Long working hours kill more than 700,000 people per year, even as millions are unable to find enough work to survive. The irrationality of capitalism has a human price.
Financial and Total Wealth Inequality with Declining Interest Rates: Lower rates beget higher financial wealth inequality.
China's Marxist "Profound Revolution" Is Here, And Nobody In The West Is Ready. -- This is far from a complete account but it's a good start...
"Wisdom is the daughter of experience." Leonardo Da Vinci
Thanks for reading--
charles |
|
|
|
|
|
