Thanks for articulating what I have seen and felt for years. My main concern for the giant bureaucracy is the fact that not a single bureaucrat ever is personally responsible for the decisions they force on the rest of us. They don’t even get demoted. Me, I run a small construction company. If I make a bad decision. I pay for it. I am also personally responsible that my people have work in front of them, even if I pay for it myself. Everyone I know that runs a small business does exactly that when they need to.
There is a horse blanket company I used to buy from that was bought by a private equity firm. It was once owned by an Irish family. Great product. Now it is no longer made in Ireland and the thread used is just strong enough to make it through the sawing machines. Damn things now fall apart. This private equity company is only trading on a once proud name and selling everyone garage. They will never sell me another one.
Running a small construction company means you are literally building society. In a healthy republic, whenever anyone ran for political office, one of the first questions they'd have to answer would be, "What have you personally built that people actually use without being forced or subsidized to use it?"
That's sad what happened to the horse blanket company, and sadly there are many such examples. It takes so much to build up a trusted brand that makes quality products, and it takes relatively little to destroy it. Private equity are basically terrorists or enemy combatants, in terms of their effects on society. The amount of destruction they have caused is insane.
There are indeed many examples of the abuse of the private equity firms. Some far larger than this. This one I mentioned was personal. I researched it and found the evil. They are already using slave labor, cheaper cloth, why skimp on the thread? They should know in the best of circumstances, you have a twelve hundred to two thousand pound horse rolling in the mud, these things need to be strong.
Your mention of Sears makes sense as that failure did not make sense to me. I had grown to really appreciate that company. I miss them.
Thanks for the reply. I am glad you are out there. Fact is, you are who brought me to Substack.
Thanks, and glad to know I had a role in bringing you to Substack! Yeah, Sears. One of my children said that Walmart could never go out of business. I said, take Walmart and combine it with Amazon and you basically have what Sears was at its height. Imagine if they had moved the Sears catalogue online in 1994 instead of shutting it down altogether.
I really liked the content, except for the assumption that "no rulers" (anarchy by etymology rather than colloquial misdefinition as "chaos") somehow equates to the bastardized system currently destroying our society.
anarchy fails for much the same reason as capitalism or communism. that being, no matter how sound the rules they find ways around, psychopaths almost ALWAYS float to the top of social power structures, just like loose corpses in the swamp. and said psychopaths will invariably turn whatever system they bullied their way to the top of into a gang/mob system and retain power until forcibly ejected.
Thanks. I don’t think anarchy is possible, given human nature, except in a very small-scale, extremely high-trust society, based on family or religious ties, and even then you will have some people who naturally exert more influence than others. Nature abhors a vacuum is true when it comes to social power. If you remove the government, a new one will inevitably form. So what this means is that if a society (or a malicious group within a society) attempts to deconstruct and destroy legitimate, traditional boundaries (rules and duties) that cohere with human nature, then you wind up with an illegitimate and inverted system that violates human nature. In the long term, the society that maintains respect for legitimate, traditional boundaries is much freer than one that does not.
Our financial system is parasitic and debt-ridden and unstable. Our culture is pathological. Our norms are eroding. Thousands of functional communities have basically disappeared; the people and houses and stores are still there, but we've all been atomized. It's as if I can watch the liberty slowly draining away...
I recently began wondering: what can be done? I began this essay which is meant to be collaborative. I hope you and your readers will review it and give me some input. It's time to start making change in the real world... or nearly time.
"Whoa, that's counterintuitive based on my surface-level understanding of the concepts you are using, and I wasn't able to follow any of the logic you gave in support of your conclusion. Therefore, you must be wrong..." I feel you, man. You are free to dislike it, but it nevertheless remains true that in a lawless society, most people are objectively less free, not more.
Thanks for articulating what I have seen and felt for years. My main concern for the giant bureaucracy is the fact that not a single bureaucrat ever is personally responsible for the decisions they force on the rest of us. They don’t even get demoted. Me, I run a small construction company. If I make a bad decision. I pay for it. I am also personally responsible that my people have work in front of them, even if I pay for it myself. Everyone I know that runs a small business does exactly that when they need to.
There is a horse blanket company I used to buy from that was bought by a private equity firm. It was once owned by an Irish family. Great product. Now it is no longer made in Ireland and the thread used is just strong enough to make it through the sawing machines. Damn things now fall apart. This private equity company is only trading on a once proud name and selling everyone garage. They will never sell me another one.
Running a small construction company means you are literally building society. In a healthy republic, whenever anyone ran for political office, one of the first questions they'd have to answer would be, "What have you personally built that people actually use without being forced or subsidized to use it?"
That's sad what happened to the horse blanket company, and sadly there are many such examples. It takes so much to build up a trusted brand that makes quality products, and it takes relatively little to destroy it. Private equity are basically terrorists or enemy combatants, in terms of their effects on society. The amount of destruction they have caused is insane.
There are indeed many examples of the abuse of the private equity firms. Some far larger than this. This one I mentioned was personal. I researched it and found the evil. They are already using slave labor, cheaper cloth, why skimp on the thread? They should know in the best of circumstances, you have a twelve hundred to two thousand pound horse rolling in the mud, these things need to be strong.
Your mention of Sears makes sense as that failure did not make sense to me. I had grown to really appreciate that company. I miss them.
Thanks for the reply. I am glad you are out there. Fact is, you are who brought me to Substack.
Charles Snead
Thanks, and glad to know I had a role in bringing you to Substack! Yeah, Sears. One of my children said that Walmart could never go out of business. I said, take Walmart and combine it with Amazon and you basically have what Sears was at its height. Imagine if they had moved the Sears catalogue online in 1994 instead of shutting it down altogether.
I really liked the content, except for the assumption that "no rulers" (anarchy by etymology rather than colloquial misdefinition as "chaos") somehow equates to the bastardized system currently destroying our society.
anarchy fails for much the same reason as capitalism or communism. that being, no matter how sound the rules they find ways around, psychopaths almost ALWAYS float to the top of social power structures, just like loose corpses in the swamp. and said psychopaths will invariably turn whatever system they bullied their way to the top of into a gang/mob system and retain power until forcibly ejected.
Thanks. I don’t think anarchy is possible, given human nature, except in a very small-scale, extremely high-trust society, based on family or religious ties, and even then you will have some people who naturally exert more influence than others. Nature abhors a vacuum is true when it comes to social power. If you remove the government, a new one will inevitably form. So what this means is that if a society (or a malicious group within a society) attempts to deconstruct and destroy legitimate, traditional boundaries (rules and duties) that cohere with human nature, then you wind up with an illegitimate and inverted system that violates human nature. In the long term, the society that maintains respect for legitimate, traditional boundaries is much freer than one that does not.
I totally agree.
Our financial system is parasitic and debt-ridden and unstable. Our culture is pathological. Our norms are eroding. Thousands of functional communities have basically disappeared; the people and houses and stores are still there, but we've all been atomized. It's as if I can watch the liberty slowly draining away...
I recently began wondering: what can be done? I began this essay which is meant to be collaborative. I hope you and your readers will review it and give me some input. It's time to start making change in the real world... or nearly time.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/what-can-be-done
"The opposite of Freedom is not Responsibility; it’s Anarchy"
This is nonsensical. That's like saying the best ham sandwich is a vegan ham sandwich.
You seem a bit confused about the meaning of both words, Freedom and Anarchy.
"Whoa, that's counterintuitive based on my surface-level understanding of the concepts you are using, and I wasn't able to follow any of the logic you gave in support of your conclusion. Therefore, you must be wrong..." I feel you, man. You are free to dislike it, but it nevertheless remains true that in a lawless society, most people are objectively less free, not more.