TheCollapseOfTheEmpire

ThoughtStorms Wiki

Context : NationStateUnderAttack, VirtualStates, NetoCracy, RightWingFinanceOnPoliticalTrends

June 2021 : Another recent RightLibertarian take on the theme of NationStateUnderAttack.

The following video from JoeJarvis via : https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2021-06-06/why-nation-states-will-die-information-age is worth a watch.

Comments below.

A couple of interesting / although fairly typical points :

Nation States (and by implication ProjectMan) were created to support large armies to protect industrial production and commodity production that are large, heavy, tied to geography and therefore immobile.
Now "wealth" is in the form of ideas and information, it can move easily, and therefore go wherever it's treated well. This leads to StartupCities, NetoCracy, FeudalismCapitalismInformationalism etc. Private nations of the Moldbug variety. (DarkEnlightenment)

The obvious push-back is whether this "virtual wealth" really IS wealth once the industrial and agricultural hinterland behind it collapses. It's largely manipulating symbols "about" the heavier / less mobile stuff. And without that stuff being there, and the connection being reliable, the symbol manipulation becomes meaningless.

All our virtual products like computer software, brands, data-sets, NonFungibleTokens representing claims on physical stuff etc. are meaningless when they become detached from the real world. We can't all be rich by trading stuff grown and made elsewhere. If that hinterland collapses, then the virtual, DigitalNomads elites on top of it will collapse quickly afterward.

Today's VirtualNations / BitNation style enthusiasts think that money can now survive the collapse of nation states thanks to BlockChains.

But you still need to eat. And just because you off-shored (OffShoring) all your hi-tech chip factories out of sight to China, doesn't mean that they have become unnecessary. Someone still has to look after the heavy, immobile mines and fields and machines that provide all that.

This idea of the nation state dying and being entirely replaced by nomads hopping between nice liberal city-states has a darker underside.

In fact what it implies is even with an elite of global city hoppers, there must also be large tracts of land / mines etc. that still have to be protected in order to be used.

They are not part of a dying order that is due to be deprecated and replaced by something better. But a necessary part of an ongoing system.

It's just that they will be out of sight, out of mind, as will be the people expected to live and work there.

The NetoCracy term of ConsumTariat is perhaps too optimistic. Because that implies the people of these zones will be largely consumers. Even though consumers whose tastes and actions are guided by (and in the interests of) netocratic elites.

But they will still have to be workers. And perhaps still very hard workers. Simply ignored, despised, proletarian.

In fact we have a good body of knowledge and understanding of this situation. These zones are plantations much like those worked by slaves in the US. And historically, Europe had "colonies" across the world.

PostColonialTheory and NecroPolitics might therefore be the better discourse to help us think about this. The US Nation State will not "collapse" into nothing ... into a patchwork of small happy city-states. It will become a huge open-prison / plantation. A "colony" in all but recent origin. Inhabited by internal slaves or peasants. Toiling almost unnoticed by the global / nomadic / netocratic elites of "sovereign individuals".

(In a sense again this is what happens when empires collapse. Citizens of empires becomes serfs of local tyrants and warlords.)

That's what people like ChrisHedges and TheArchDruid are already documenting in America. The decline of small cities and industry. The long-term unemployment, (punctuated by ephemeral BoomCities), drug-addiction, collapse of infrastructure, services and hope.

That's the source of anger against the elites, that RightWingPopulism successfully channels.

And creates a nasty feedback loop as the LiberalElite of the cities in frustration and fear, turn against the rural and internal poor. (See TheToxoplasmaOfRage)

It is surprising, (and perhaps fiendishly clever) of the libertarian rightists (like, I'm assuming, this Joe Jarvis) who totally are in every meaningful way, "liberal elite" (they believe in liberalism, which is individualism and the market; and sure as hell want to be the elite winners of that world) can so successfully portray themselves as opponents of the established liberal elites by adopting an extreme oppositional approach to government (RightWingDeathCult) and SocialJustice

But Netocracy predicts that the meaningful wars are between factions within the Netocratic elite themselves. (And recruiting the Consumtariat onto your side is just one strategy of that.)

More on CyberHarassmentAsConsumtariatPolitics

Counter

Could you actually bring things like food production into the city? UrbanFarming, VerticalFarming. And turn heavy industry into smaller, lighter industry (again suitable for a CityState). (BangTheRocksTogether)

Diminishing rewards of meritocracy in a declining empire : https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/16/taiping-rebellion-addison-rae-meritocracy-exams-rebellion/

UmairHaque : https://eand.co/why-our-societies-are-disintegrating-46ae7f7528ec

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