Guest edition
New user? Start here.

Tag Archives: central state

  • Blog

    Upon The Next Crisis, The Rules Will Suddenly Change

    For the benefit of the elites; not the rest of us
    by charleshughsmith

    Saturday, September 30, 2017, 12:02 AM

    20

    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 »

  • Blog
    isak55/Shutterstock

    The Rise of New Models of Community

    Why they're emerging & what they need to succeed
    by charleshughsmith

    Wednesday, May 7, 2014, 4:14 PM

    2

    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 »

  • Insider
    Creativa/Shutterstock

    Promising Emerging Community Models

    Real-world examples of success
    by charleshughsmith

    Wednesday, May 7, 2014, 4:13 PM

    5

    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…

    Enroll Now
    Or Sign In with your enrolled account.

    Read More »

  • Blog

    Acknowledging the Arrival of Peak Government

    by charleshughsmith

    Monday, May 14, 2012, 4:38 PM

    0

    Most informed people are familiar with the concept of Peak Oil, but fewer are aware that we’re also entering the era of Peak Government. The central misconception of Peak Oil — that it’s not about “running out of oil,” it’s about running out of cheap, easy-to-access oil — can also be applied to Peak Government: It’s not about government disappearing, it’s about government shrinking.

    Central government — the Central State — has been in the expansion mode for so long that the process of contracting government is completely alien to the nation, to those who work for the State, and to those who are dependent on the State. Thus we have little recent historical experience of Peak Government and few if any conceptual guideposts to help us understand this contraction.

    Peak Government is not a reflection of government services or the millions of individuals who work in government; it is a reflection of four key systemic forces that drove State expansion are now either declining or reversing.

    Read More »