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I agree that societal instability stem from problems within the elites, but not sure it's due to 'elite overproduction' necessarily. I think it has more to do w

I agree that societal instability stem from problems within the elites, but not sure it's due to 'elite overproduction' necessarily. I think it has more to do with divergence of interests within the elites. Even without elite overproduction, if the interests of a significant segment of the elites diverged from the interests of the rest of the elites, then you will have societal breakdown, civil war, etc. One example is the american revolution where the one group of elites in the british empire wanted good relations with the indians to protect their fur trade while another group of elites wanted to invade native areas and steal their land. Don't think there was an issue of elite overproduction in the british empire in the mid 1700s. But there was an issue of divergent interests and there was no room for compromise as these competing interests directly conflicted with each other. Another one is the civil war, where the interests of the industrial north ( the desire to protect industry via tariffs ) directly conflicted withe the interests of the agrarian south ( who wanted to remove tariffs ) so they could sell cotton/agricultural goods to foreign markets. Once again, I don't think there was an overproduction of elites in the north or the south in the 1850s. But I guess if the elite overproduction was severe enough, it could structural conflict of interests. But my guess is that conflicts would naturally arise amongs the elites long before elite overproduction.

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
I like this analysis but am missing the next step. What material interests are in play today? David Graeber argued that the people who controlled the two major parties in the United States, until recently, were into Finance, which benefits from deindustrialization and a weak middle class, and that Trump was different because his interests were in Real Estate, which actually requires domestic consumers -- hence trade war and antiglobalism. (For someone as "far left" as Graeber, it sounded more apologetic for Trump than I expected.) Now, I find this theory interesting, but I'm not sure I buy it. Do you have another one?
- jackcosgrove 5y ago
  I see a more meaningful split within the elites between industrial and post-industrial magnates. This maps better onto the positions and preferences of the two political parties.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > David Graeber argued that the people who controlled the two major parties in the United States, until recently, were into Finance, which benefits from deindustrialization and a weak middle class, and that Trump was different because his interests were in Real Estate, which actually requires domestic consumers -- hence trade war and antiglobalism. What does “into finance” even mean? And how can you be in real estate without being “into finance”? The real estate business is all financing.
  - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    I posted the interview in a sibling post to yours. But yeah. What does Graeber mean? The argument would go something like -- Many countries are in debt to the United States (immediate question: Isn't the US in huge debt to China?), which drives up demand for US dollars (since everyone needs to pay those back), which makes the dollar strong. As a result, if you have access to these dollars at low interest rates (i.e, are a bank), you can get lots of stuff from other countries "for free". But a strong dollar also has the effect of destroying domestic industry, because it makes exports too expensive for anyone to buy. So he's saying "finance" is all these institutions with access to dollars, and "real estate" is a bunch of other institutions that are one more step removed from the Fed. Something like that. Like, are you a cloud provider, or do you run a lot of cloud jobs? Either way, you're "into the cloud", but you're on opposite sides. That's about as much sense as I can make of it. Or maybe it's all bullshit. Which would be funny, given the other things Graeber has written. I don't know. I do notice it's weirdly aligned with RT's narrative. Not that that means it can't also be true.
    - slaymaker1907 5y ago
      A big part of the issue is because the US effectively controls the world's money printer due to the use of USD as a reserve currency. This necessitates a trade deficit so that other countries can actually have access to USD.
      - imtringued 5y ago
        The solution to that problem would be the introduction of regional bancors. The EU needs one for internal use. Technically the euro is a very "shitty" bancor which rather than being used as a unit of account, was directly adopted as a currency in each member state. In theory each country should have had its own branch euro which are then exchanged via the bancor. i.e. regional currencies. The bancor is actually just a barter exchange for currency. I mean that is what it boils down to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter#Exchanges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter#Exchanges
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  Here's the interview I was remembering: https://youtu.be/5Gq16RO2XB0 https://youtu.be/5Gq16RO2XB0 I can't tell if there's truth to it or if he's just really good at stringing words together.
- throwaway34241 5y ago
  I think ideology plays a strong role in addition to interests. In my mind (from reading about this a lot) there are roughly four political factions at the elite level (there's probably more variation at the grassroots level). The most interesting is probably the Republican party establishment. I recently read books by two partisans on either side [1] (both prolific authors and MIT PhDs) and they were in almost total agreement historically on the people and timeline. The Republican party starting with Barry Goldwater underwent an internal revolution, and an upstart and more hard-line faction won, driving out the Eisenhowers and Rockefellers. The second author is a member of this group, and he believes strongly in very small government (for example, he is against the post-1950s government and believes America was last America in the 1930s). The other Republican faction is roughly the Tea Party, which this [2] book goes into more detail. It started being a more major force in politics starting in 2010 after financial crisis. I think Boehner who was the speaker of the house at the time has talked more candidly about this period after leaving office. They are angry at the status quo and lean more to the conspiracy side of things. On the Democratic side there are the left (Sanders, AOC, etc) and the center-left establishment. They both generally support social-democratic policies so can work together, but the center-left is more market-oriented (maybe you could also say capitalistic or neoliberal) and they also differ in political style. I think people are pretty familiar with Sanders etc but here's [3] an article by a center-left economist talking a little bit about how the nature of this coalition affects what policies are possible. [1] Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal and Murray's By the People [2] https://www.amazon.com/When-Party-Came-Town-Representatives/dp/1451642091 https://www.amazon.com/When-Party-Came-Town-Representatives/... [3] https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/03/passing-the-baton-the-interview.html https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/03/passing-the-baton-th...
  - FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
    Nice post and references. This is basically how I see it too. You could increase the symmetry a little by adding to the Democrats the ghost of an FDR/LBJ "New Dealer" faction, corresponding roughly to the displaced Eisenhower/Rockefeller faction of the Republicans. You'd have something like: - Eisenhower Republicans : New Dealers - Reagan/Gingrich "small government" Republicans : Clinton/Obama/Blair market liberals - "moderate Trumpists" (if there can be such a thing) : "Progressives" (who, I will add, are somewhat less "left" than Wokeists) They form a 3x2 matrix. Each column represents a side, and each row the spirit of an age. I guess you could call the rows: "Institutions", "Markets", "Movements". Then, breaking the symmetry, the "Progressives" are moderated a little by the ghost of FDR/LBJ, while the ghost of Eisenhower lives on in the Never Trumpers, who... weirdly, might ally with what "respectable" Neocons remain, and turn into some kind of "establishment" figures aligned as much with the center-left market liberals as with anyone. Sort of a "deep state" faction without a party.
mint2 5y ago
> Another one is the civil war, where the interests of the industrial north ( the desire to protect industry via tariffs ) directly conflicted withe the interests of the agrarian south ( who wanted to remove tariffs ) so they could sell cotton/agricultural goods to foreign markets. Of areas where the north and south’s interests conflicted in the civil war that’s not the one most people call out.
- coredog64 5y ago
  Doesn’t mean that it’s not true or wasn’t also a big deal.
  - mint2 5y ago
    What you say is true but the poster didn’t really draw a connection to the main point that showed why this example was chosen so it’s a pretty random example to draw and kind of odd.

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago

I like this analysis but am missing the next step. What material interests are in play today? David Graeber argued that the people who controlled the two major parties in the United States, until recently, were into Finance, which benefits from deindustrialization and a weak middle class, and that Trump was different because his interests were in Real Estate, which actually requires domestic consumers -- hence trade war and antiglobalism. (For someone as "far left" as Graeber, it sounded more apologetic for Trump than I expected.) Now, I find this theory interesting, but I'm not sure I buy it. Do you have another one?

jackcosgrove 5y ago
I see a more meaningful split within the elites between industrial and post-industrial magnates. This maps better onto the positions and preferences of the two political parties.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> David Graeber argued that the people who controlled the two major parties in the United States, until recently, were into Finance, which benefits from deindustrialization and a weak middle class, and that Trump was different because his interests were in Real Estate, which actually requires domestic consumers -- hence trade war and antiglobalism. What does “into finance” even mean? And how can you be in real estate without being “into finance”? The real estate business is all financing.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  I posted the interview in a sibling post to yours. But yeah. What does Graeber mean? The argument would go something like -- Many countries are in debt to the United States (immediate question: Isn't the US in huge debt to China?), which drives up demand for US dollars (since everyone needs to pay those back), which makes the dollar strong. As a result, if you have access to these dollars at low interest rates (i.e, are a bank), you can get lots of stuff from other countries "for free". But a strong dollar also has the effect of destroying domestic industry, because it makes exports too expensive for anyone to buy. So he's saying "finance" is all these institutions with access to dollars, and "real estate" is a bunch of other institutions that are one more step removed from the Fed. Something like that. Like, are you a cloud provider, or do you run a lot of cloud jobs? Either way, you're "into the cloud", but you're on opposite sides. That's about as much sense as I can make of it. Or maybe it's all bullshit. Which would be funny, given the other things Graeber has written. I don't know. I do notice it's weirdly aligned with RT's narrative. Not that that means it can't also be true.
  - slaymaker1907 5y ago
    A big part of the issue is because the US effectively controls the world's money printer due to the use of USD as a reserve currency. This necessitates a trade deficit so that other countries can actually have access to USD.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      The solution to that problem would be the introduction of regional bancors. The EU needs one for internal use. Technically the euro is a very "shitty" bancor which rather than being used as a unit of account, was directly adopted as a currency in each member state. In theory each country should have had its own branch euro which are then exchanged via the bancor. i.e. regional currencies. The bancor is actually just a barter exchange for currency. I mean that is what it boils down to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter#Exchanges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter#Exchanges
FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
Here's the interview I was remembering: https://youtu.be/5Gq16RO2XB0 https://youtu.be/5Gq16RO2XB0 I can't tell if there's truth to it or if he's just really good at stringing words together.
throwaway34241 5y ago
I think ideology plays a strong role in addition to interests. In my mind (from reading about this a lot) there are roughly four political factions at the elite level (there's probably more variation at the grassroots level). The most interesting is probably the Republican party establishment. I recently read books by two partisans on either side [1] (both prolific authors and MIT PhDs) and they were in almost total agreement historically on the people and timeline. The Republican party starting with Barry Goldwater underwent an internal revolution, and an upstart and more hard-line faction won, driving out the Eisenhowers and Rockefellers. The second author is a member of this group, and he believes strongly in very small government (for example, he is against the post-1950s government and believes America was last America in the 1930s). The other Republican faction is roughly the Tea Party, which this [2] book goes into more detail. It started being a more major force in politics starting in 2010 after financial crisis. I think Boehner who was the speaker of the house at the time has talked more candidly about this period after leaving office. They are angry at the status quo and lean more to the conspiracy side of things. On the Democratic side there are the left (Sanders, AOC, etc) and the center-left establishment. They both generally support social-democratic policies so can work together, but the center-left is more market-oriented (maybe you could also say capitalistic or neoliberal) and they also differ in political style. I think people are pretty familiar with Sanders etc but here's [3] an article by a center-left economist talking a little bit about how the nature of this coalition affects what policies are possible. [1] Krugman's Conscience of a Liberal and Murray's By the People [2] https://www.amazon.com/When-Party-Came-Town-Representatives/dp/1451642091 https://www.amazon.com/When-Party-Came-Town-Representatives/... [3] https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/03/passing-the-baton-the-interview.html https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/03/passing-the-baton-th...
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  Nice post and references. This is basically how I see it too. You could increase the symmetry a little by adding to the Democrats the ghost of an FDR/LBJ "New Dealer" faction, corresponding roughly to the displaced Eisenhower/Rockefeller faction of the Republicans. You'd have something like: - Eisenhower Republicans : New Dealers - Reagan/Gingrich "small government" Republicans : Clinton/Obama/Blair market liberals - "moderate Trumpists" (if there can be such a thing) : "Progressives" (who, I will add, are somewhat less "left" than Wokeists) They form a 3x2 matrix. Each column represents a side, and each row the spirit of an age. I guess you could call the rows: "Institutions", "Markets", "Movements". Then, breaking the symmetry, the "Progressives" are moderated a little by the ghost of FDR/LBJ, while the ghost of Eisenhower lives on in the Never Trumpers, who... weirdly, might ally with what "respectable" Neocons remain, and turn into some kind of "establishment" figures aligned as much with the center-left market liberals as with anyone. Sort of a "deep state" faction without a party.

mint2 5y ago

> Another one is the civil war, where the interests of the industrial north ( the desire to protect industry via tariffs ) directly conflicted withe the interests of the agrarian south ( who wanted to remove tariffs ) so they could sell cotton/agricultural goods to foreign markets. Of areas where the north and south’s interests conflicted in the civil war that’s not the one most people call out.

coredog64 5y ago
Doesn’t mean that it’s not true or wasn’t also a big deal.
- mint2 5y ago
  What you say is true but the poster didn’t really draw a connection to the main point that showed why this example was chosen so it’s a pretty random example to draw and kind of odd.