Central State

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Upon The Next Crisis, The Rules Will Suddenly Change

For the benefit of the elites; not the rest of us
by Charles Hugh Smith
Friday, September 29, 2017, 8:02 PM

We can add a third certainty to the two standard ones (death and taxes): The rules will suddenly change when a financial crisis strikes.

Why is this a certainty? Human nature, politics and the structure of societies/economies ruled by centralized states (governments). » Read more

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The Rise of New Models of Community

Why they're emerging & what they need to succeed
by Charles Hugh Smith
Wednesday, May 7, 2014, 12:14 PM

In my previous series on the erosion of community, I surveyed a number of conventional explanations for this decades-long trend and discussed 10 other potential factors in the decline of social capital. I concluded that economic need would likely be the driver of a resurgence of community—a need that will only become apparent when the Central State and the debt-based, consumerist-corporate system are no longer able to fulfill their implicit promises of welfare, subsidies, endless credit and secure jobs. In this next installment on community, we look at the possibility that new models are arising beneath the mainstream media’s master narratives that Everything’s fine and The Status Quo is both good and eternal. » Read more

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Promising Emerging Community Models

Real-world examples of success
by Charles Hugh Smith
Wednesday, May 7, 2014, 12:13 PM

Executive Summary

  • The "half farmer, half X" model
  • The "no middleman" model
  • The "15% commission" model
  • The key features of successful new community models

If you have not yet read The Rise of New Models of Community, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

In Part 1, we discussed the potential for new models of collaboration and community enabled by the Web and social media. I proposed a simple metric for differentiating between simulacrum community and the real deal: a community is only a “real community” if the collective actions of its members push the envelope of the material world.

In Part 2, we’ll examine some models that have arisen as people either abandon or are cut out of the Central State/Corporate Consumerism Status Quo and must create new social and economic arrangements to earn a livelihood.  This requires structures that enable self-organizing, voluntary communities to endure and grow.

As Zeus noted in Part 1, The new price of entry is production, meaning that parasitic layers of middlemen have no role in these new arrangements. To participate, one must be productive. i.e. create or add value.

As I mentioned earlier, social media doesn’t change a system’s incentives/benefits and costs/disincentives; the Web is a powerful tool for community building, once the incentives for participating far outweigh the costs.

Let’s start our survey with an example from... » Read more