On one level your Rockefeller-Gates types (pick your favorite representative of the cabal. There are about 6,000 to choose from) are correct: the people are not fit to govern themselves.
The people act to the detriment of their own interest and cause loss to others in the process. That meets Cipolla's definition of stupid (The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, by Carlo M Cipolla, PDF). Thus the people have a tendency to be stupid. The people as a group squander their cultural and civic inheritance. Even the ones with brains form a cohort that Nassim Taleb brands Intellectual Yet Idiot.
There is no wisdom of crowds, however much the meme prospers on the Internet. The Wave was an experiment by teacher Ron Jones to show students how the German populace could accept the actions of the Nazi regime during the Second World War. They lapped it up in a way he never anticipated and he hurried to bring the experiment to a close.
Economists have shown that people are hard wired to follow a leader: start a queue in the middle of nowhere and people will tend to line up.
Individually people may deserve hugs but it is risky to generalize. It may broaden your mind to put yourself in a vulnerable position in a foreign land. Sooner or later, at home or abroad, society brings forth those who feed on innocents, on the lost and lonely, on the orphaned, on the euphemistically challenged, and on the down and out.
Furthermore it is organized. Preying on others is a social activity: gangs, robbers and cabals, entrenched bureaucratic corruption, organized crime, corporations that appropriate civic rights and protections and then act sociopathically, putting shareholder value before public interest.
Laws are passed on occasion for the express purpose of harming people. Legislation is passed to enrich corporations and interests at the public expense. More often laws are abused that were passed with claims of good intent: the RICO Act, Internet censorship, Child Protective Services, the Internal Revenue Service.. but they can be and are used to harm people.
The people willfully ignore their own criminal acts and the criminal acts of government. Thus society is criminal or at least an accessory to the crime.
Guilty of playing God, members of the cabal overestimate their intelligence more than anyone. That makes them more dangerous, a greater liability to society.
They are not simply stupid, however. They are not causing loss to society by accident or incompetence. They are acting with intent. That makes them in Cipolla's study of stupid, bandits: he who causes a loss to others with malice and intent to enrich himself.
Given that they have motive, means and opportunity, that makes the Cabal guilty of pre-crime by the same standards that Peter Thiel and friends apply to the rest of us.
Society, at root, is a system by which we protect ourselves from gangs, bandits, organized crime and those who incorporate to pursue selfish interests. We cannot let those very people run society or it has lost its very purpose.
It is not that society is morally superior or inherently good. Nor is government, either. It is a system of mutual protection, first, with the optional extras of mutual support and assistance.
The people may be stupid but there is a danger in our midst. It is time to grab the pitchforks, shake the straw from our sleepy heads and identify the cabal.
And why should we be ashamed of our limitations? Would we remake the universe with 10% more intelligence, or 20%?
We have more than enough intelligence between us to feed and prosper without resort to war. What we have to do is avoid stupidity.
First we must define stupidity. It is not the lack of intelligence. Stupidity is categorically not the opposite of intelligence! As Cipolla shows, intelligent people are perfectly capable of stupid actions.
Instead of shying away from words deemed to be offensive, we should teach ourselves to identify stupid actions: our own and those of people whose stupid actions harm us.
It follows that:
With the intelligence given to us we are capable of bringing the bandits (the plutocrats) to heel. We cannot succeed in that while allowing ourselves to behave in a stupid manner or failing to bring stupidity under control.
The people act to the detriment of their own interest and cause loss to others in the process. That meets Cipolla's definition of stupid (The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, by Carlo M Cipolla, PDF). Thus the people have a tendency to be stupid. The people as a group squander their cultural and civic inheritance. Even the ones with brains form a cohort that Nassim Taleb brands Intellectual Yet Idiot.
There is no wisdom of crowds, however much the meme prospers on the Internet. The Wave was an experiment by teacher Ron Jones to show students how the German populace could accept the actions of the Nazi regime during the Second World War. They lapped it up in a way he never anticipated and he hurried to bring the experiment to a close.
Economists have shown that people are hard wired to follow a leader: start a queue in the middle of nowhere and people will tend to line up.
Individually people may deserve hugs but it is risky to generalize. It may broaden your mind to put yourself in a vulnerable position in a foreign land. Sooner or later, at home or abroad, society brings forth those who feed on innocents, on the lost and lonely, on the orphaned, on the euphemistically challenged, and on the down and out.
Furthermore it is organized. Preying on others is a social activity: gangs, robbers and cabals, entrenched bureaucratic corruption, organized crime, corporations that appropriate civic rights and protections and then act sociopathically, putting shareholder value before public interest.
Laws are passed on occasion for the express purpose of harming people. Legislation is passed to enrich corporations and interests at the public expense. More often laws are abused that were passed with claims of good intent: the RICO Act, Internet censorship, Child Protective Services, the Internal Revenue Service.. but they can be and are used to harm people.
The people willfully ignore their own criminal acts and the criminal acts of government. Thus society is criminal or at least an accessory to the crime.
The Wave - 1981 (HD Better Quality)
The Cabal is an abhorrence, regardless of the above. The people may be stupid but the cabal is venal and has base motives. They are cynics, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. This matters. However much the Rockefeller and Carnegie tax-evading foundations pump relativism into the children's brains, it does matter what you do and why you do it.
Guilty of playing God, members of the cabal overestimate their intelligence more than anyone. That makes them more dangerous, a greater liability to society.
They are not simply stupid, however. They are not causing loss to society by accident or incompetence. They are acting with intent. That makes them in Cipolla's study of stupid, bandits: he who causes a loss to others with malice and intent to enrich himself.
Given that they have motive, means and opportunity, that makes the Cabal guilty of pre-crime by the same standards that Peter Thiel and friends apply to the rest of us.
Society, at root, is a system by which we protect ourselves from gangs, bandits, organized crime and those who incorporate to pursue selfish interests. We cannot let those very people run society or it has lost its very purpose.
It is not that society is morally superior or inherently good. Nor is government, either. It is a system of mutual protection, first, with the optional extras of mutual support and assistance.
And why should we be ashamed of our limitations? Would we remake the universe with 10% more intelligence, or 20%?
We have more than enough intelligence between us to feed and prosper without resort to war. What we have to do is avoid stupidity.
First we must define stupidity. It is not the lack of intelligence. Stupidity is categorically not the opposite of intelligence! As Cipolla shows, intelligent people are perfectly capable of stupid actions.
The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
Instead of shying away from words deemed to be offensive, we should teach ourselves to identify stupid actions: our own and those of people whose stupid actions harm us.
A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
It follows that:
A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. The corollary of the Law is that: A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.
With the intelligence given to us we are capable of bringing the bandits (the plutocrats) to heel. We cannot succeed in that while allowing ourselves to behave in a stupid manner or failing to bring stupidity under control.
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