Skyrim: Snaps from a Virtual Holiday.

This summer, in addition to taking a conventional trip to the seaside with the wife and kids, I also splurged on Skyrim - something to while away the insanely hot hours of day. And wow, did I while away some hours - 260 of them, according to my Steam™ library page.

I bought my first console when the SegaMegadrive was the cutting edge. Pixels fighting pixels against a backround of hmm, more pixels. I mean, okay, it was fun, but a very imediate - take it out, put it away - kinda fun. Final Fantasy 7 on the playstation was probably the first game I remember feeling sad when one of the npc characters - you know which one, Aeris I think - died a surprise death.

I usually buy two games a year, a little puritan you might think, until you remember I've a full time job, a wife and two young kids whom I cannot ignore for more than five minutes at a stretch without someone asking me to do something - whether it be putting cream on knees, or fixing the sink. This year it's been Fallout New Vegas (last Winter), and now Skyrim. I'm a fool for a good RPG. The biggest difference with Skyrim is the graphics. Fallout is graphically great, but aesthetically appalling. Endless plains of fucked up burning junk. Skyrim is a beautiful construction. Hell, given a choice, I'd live there. At any rate, it's the first game that's prompted me to take screenshots as mementoes.

To whit, a quick travelogue of my 10 days in Skyrim: (And btw. click for full size, as some of them are worth it).

I dressed like a hippy and bought my first house.

I started out being resolutely good. Well, reasonably good. I didn't kill anyone who wasn't actively trying to cut my balls off with something pointy, or wasn't part of a quest. I was helpful, trustworthy and overwhelmingly nice. Eventually I bought a house in Whiterun, which is just about the first big city you run across in the game. I trolled around the local caves and caverns with a crappy sword in one hand, and a low-level spell in the other, hoovering up anything even remotely valuble like some kind of materialist tornado. Bills to pay, furniture to buy, you know how it is. (An RPG with furniture..? Another first).

I blame two things for my slow descent into evil. The first was this guy:

I tried to explain the theistic fallacies, but he wouldn't listen.

 I know he looks fairly harmless, but he's a preacher. And he preaches. The same damn bullshit everyday on the dot, allll day. Blah-blah-blah top volume, right across from my peaceful abode. And I have to come home to this..? So in a moment of weakness, I waited for him to go home after a hard day's shouting, picked his lock and murdered him in his bed, and snuck home quietly. I had a sleep, and woke in the morning to find the guards completely oblivious to my henious act of the previous night. Phew. I walked past the monument and savoured the silence.

The second thing that pushed me toward the path of evil was buying a bow. Trouble with bows are they are too damn easy. They make you sneak and, as you get better at both, you become completely lethal at a distance. For example: One dead dragon.

Dragon Vs. Bow - dragon loses.

The game kinda pushes you toward them, dragons fly, and tend to toast you on the wing, so the only chance you have to bring them down is with a bow. I mean, okay, you can wait for them to land and whallop them with a sword, but they tend to land waaaaay-oveeeerr-theeeere - and by the time you've run to within striking range they've either (a) buggered off, or (b) you've run out of sufficient puff to do any more than cough and hold onto your knees.

Anyway. Many tens of hours, and many, many more dead, arrow-peppered corpses later, I realised something:

I realized I'd become a mass murderer.

Normally in video games, this wouldn't be a problem. I mean, I've become a mass-murderer in pretty much every video game I've ever played. If you stacked every virtual corpse I've made in the years I've been playing they'd probably reach the moon. Who cares, they're only pixels.

But Skyrim's the first game also where the Npcs are well-enough rendered graphically, to trigger the uncanny-valley response. They have their little lives: they get up, go to work, comment on stuff that's happening, argue with each other, eat dinner, lock their doors, and go to sleep. Even the bandits in the towers, fort and camps have routines, that say stuff like, "when I retire I'm gonna buy me an island..."

And they'd become so easy to kill. It got to the point where I was so good at stealth that they'd be pushing my crouched-form along with their knees while still searching for me - without noticing I was there at all. The first they knew about me was the arrow suddenly projecting from their rib-cage. I started feeling sorry for them, and started trying not to kill them - which was incidentally quite difficult sometimes lol.

I comforted my itching conscience with the fact I'd not killed anyone (erm - except that priest) who hadn't had a weapon in their hands, and hadn't stolen so much as a penny. Positively angelic by video-game standards. Then I got drunk and everything went sideways.

I got into some drinking game in a pub in Whiterun. Then the screen went blank and I found myself in a temple with an irate women scolding me for messing up the place. She gets me to go bring her a girl to be their new high-priest. I exit the temple and zip off to some village in the boonies, convince a mother and father that leaving their daughter in the care of a heavily-armed stranger was the good-parenting thing to do, and set off back to Markath with the cute litte "are we there yet..?" girl in tow. On the way through the city we get accosted by some guard who wants help.

Before I know it I'm in this haunted house, with no way out, and a homicidal guard on my ass. With the little girl still standing next to me saying "Gee - I'm so looking forward to the temple." So I killed the guy before he could harm her. (Looking back, this was probably where I should have realised I was playing too much). Anyway, to cut a long story short, the quest I'd inadvertantly started just got worse. I had to lure a priest (priests again argh) onto the dais above for some horrible elder god type being. No other "free the priest and fight the God" options like I'd been hoping for, just a "beat the priest half to death with this special evil mace, and then after he's sold his soul, beat him all the way to death." option. A little inflexible of the game creators I thought.

This experience weighed heavily upon me. I sought redemption.

It came quickly in the form of cannibals. I wiped them all out this time, rather than having to join them, and saved the priest (what is it with them..?) they'd been planning to have for dinner - thwarting their evil God's plans. I felt new and clean and shiny.

Then while I was in a house in Winterhold, after a quick "sell all the crap in my inventory for money" session in the markets there, I met a little boy doing some kind of ritual. He wanted me to kill a nasty old lady who ran an orphanage. I wasn't into killing old ladies, especially after my recent close shave with being evil, but hell, I went to check her out anyway. Curiousity etc.

And she was evil. She was nasty. No-one had a single good thing to say about her. So, out of sympathy for the plight of the poor children under her care and with only a slight wobble of conscience, I snuck up behind and gave her arrow-to-back-of head behavioural therapy. Jubilant children, smiles all round. Good job.

Until I woke up in an abandoned shack and found out I was being recruited into a bunch of assassins.

Evil Assassin mode.

A bit of a step back I admit. I thought I'd play along for a while, discover their base, then slaughter the lot of them. Unfortunately, I ended up killing the emperor, after piling up a whole other bunch of corpses prior. It was the job see - matched my skill set to a tee. And the money, what with that house I wanted to buy, and all that training... Expensive. You know how it is...

I'd fallen from grace. I did reclaim some honour by slaughtering a whole bunch of evil satan-worshippers halfway up a mountain, who wanted me to bring one of my nice, trusting followers up there to sacrifice to their nameless god. Ironically however, what with my bow and sneaking and everything, I shot then all in the back of the head without them ever seeing me, which impressed said nameless god so much they offered me the same deal anyway, with the promise of some really cool armour to wear if I did it...

I was also really sick of wearing the same damn black robe all the time... And along with the house I'd bought in Marketh there came this bloke/servant/bodyguard - who sat in the living room with big arms, and for some reason wanted to marry me... He didn't fit with the decor.

So... He got the chop, I got the armour. Everyone's a winner. Ebony chainmail complete with special effects. Sneaky-assassin-wise, I'd hit the top of my game. Nothing in Skyrim was safe. Not giants, not mammoths, not dragons. I was the top predator, with the small proviso that they didn't see me first, or catch me without my rings on. But I still felt dirty.

I was determined to turn over a new leaf. So I stopped with the assassin stuff, and got married.

She cooks, she carries heavy stuff, she kills things with a sword.

Ah Lydia. Not a very original choice of bride apparently, but she was there for me in my hour of moral need. A straight up, sword in one hand, shield in the other, face to face with your enemy kinda girl. Pretty much my opposite - in short, I admired her... purity. And she cooked. And she looked good in some armour I'd ripped off the back of a werewolf earlier in my travels, better than me at any rate.

The Happy Couple

We sorted out the mundane stuff like decorationg the house in Whiterun, stored my incredibly bloated inventory in the various chests and bookshelves around the place - and then got down to some serious dungeoneering together.

Bonnie and Clyde with swords.

We tramped around Skyrim and met some strange characters:

That rare friendly giant.

Killed the odd Dragon together:

It's okay husband, I know you tried to help...

The only fly in the ointment was, without my sneaky tactics, and a bow, I sucked. One to one, I got my ass handed to me every time, by everyone. A bit of a downer, especially because I was high level, and training skills wasn't so easy anymore. So I became a Smith. And an Enchanter of objects, and an Alchemist. All skills I'd previously pooh-poohed as a little effete.

Another long story shortened - I learned the secret of the Alchemist/Enchanting loop, and went a bit crazy:

Notice the damage on that bow...

To make up for my lack of skill I made some super-weapons. A sword, a bow, and a pair of gloves that meant anything I created as a blacksmith instantly made me into God.

Pangs of conscience again. I sold all my god-potions at rock-bottom prices, and I threw my super-weapons and trinkets off the tops of random mountains with my eyes shut. Naked and bereft of any items other than those I'd smithed before I learnt the evil alchemy loop, I buckled down and learned how to swing a sword the hard way. I'm sure my artificial wife respected me for it.

I finally stopped killing people from an unfriendly distance,
and got up close and personal, which I think is healthier.

We were happy, we were rich. But there was something missing. We were bored. I blamed her really. Even though we were married, and had spent hours and hours of quality time together; had become property owners, not to mention getting her her own business (which she somehow managed to run even while hacking the eyeballs out of everything in sight) all these things - she refused to take off her pants.

"For God's sake, I have saved your life a thousand times and invested in your shop to the tune of a gazillion gold-pieces TAKE OFF YOUR GODDAMN PANTS."

"I..."

"WHAT..? WHAT IS IT FOR CHRIST'S SAKE..? ARE YOU A MAN IN DISGUISE..?"

"No."

"THEN WHAT IS IT..? IS IT ME..? WAS IT THAT WHOLE SWORD THING..?"

"I can't."

"What do you mean 'you can't' - you just, take...them...off..."

"THEY ARE WELDED ON OKAY..? I HAVE NO GENITALS - AND NEITHER DO YOU!!!."

And she was right - I found I couldn't take off my pants either. The horror.

Luckily, this being the net, and the net being full of hormonal nerds without real girlfirends and too much time on their hairy little hands, a solution was available. A little hacking later and me and Lydia went on a second, more... X-rated honeymoon.

Hot-tubbing Skyrim-style.

"You promise not to facebook this right..?"

It got so bad that soon she was never wearing anything at all, wherever we went. Even with dragons. Nothing could convince her to put on anything resembling armor.

"See husband..? I told you I could kill it in the nude."

But, as anyone in a long term relationship can tell you, there comes a point where constant nudity becomes a burden rather than the initial pleasure it once was. The cake comes to need a little icing before you can eat it again. So...

Finally we compromised on something more practical.

After that problem was solved, it was pretty much all downhill. By this time, I was level 59 - a bit long in the tooth by RPG standards. I trolled through the remaining quests, looking for serious opponents, but didn't really find any, even the last dragon, whatever his name was, died rather quickly, without any more strategy required other than the less than interesting 'get him down and hit him with your sword' variety - don't think I even had to quaff a health potion.

My big responsibilities over I tried to hunt down the Assassins and the Theives guild, to put a permanent end to their tyranny. But the damned game wouldn't let me. I'd cut them down, burn them, fill them full of arrows - nope, they'd just fall to one knee, breath heavily for a while, and then get back up again, as if having all their organs mashed into pulp was nothing very special at all. I even broke my vow, and went back to the Alchemy table to create a bow that would paralyze anything it hit for 251,357 seconds. I headed out, thinking "Okay you fuckers, I can't kill you, but I'm gonna put you all into a persistant vegetative state."

(Again, I should have realised I had played far too much by this point).

In short, that didn't work either. Okay, they'd all be on the floor, stiff as boards with no chance of getting up till next century - game-time-wise - and I'd leave them to it. Then go home, have a bit of a kip and go back to check on them the next day. What happened..? There they all were, sitting about, right as rain, laughing at me.

Bastards. I gave up then. Went home, kissed Lydia goodbye and left. She understood, and gave me a home-cooked meal to see me on my way.

I started a career as a street-entertainer - pulling wheelies on my horse.

All in all, playing Skyrim was the best time I've ever had on the PC. 250 hours well, if a little nerdily, spent. I guess I'll visit the place from time to time, when my son's finished having a go (nude patches removed I hasten to add, and evil quests hacked and locked secretly Mwa-ha-ha).

I leave you with this, my final Skyrim lunacy - a comedy video I cobbled together, though how I did it I don't really wish to relate or remember.

Thanks for reading.

Democracy's Bugbears:

Been reading a lot about failed and failing states in Africa and around the world, and political history in general. Gives you a feel for the common themes between states. On paper, a democracy is the best system of government we've come up with so far: a politically involved and aware populace elects some of its peers to act in their intrests to develop the state for the good of all. However, in practice this is almost always not the case, and the populace no more rule themselves than they did under a kings or dictator. Why..? Where does democracy go wrong..?

To me, the biggest threat to a state's balance between an oppressed or ignored electorate to an empowered and involved electorate, are the self-interested elites. Some definitions:

By elites I'm referring to groups of people who can guarrentee the support/votes of a large number of the population to whomever they may designate. These groups are self-serving, and will ally themselves with the state for their own ends, be they money, power or whatever other reward they may seek.

By the term weak state I'm not referring to a state's GNP, or military stature. A weak state is formed when political parties cannot attract enough support/votes from their populace directly to obtain or stay in power, and as such, are forced into alliances with elite groups to maintain/extend their control.

I hesitate to include this elite, as it is more of a background hum pervading the political scene all throughout history, rather than part of a progression. The state is always bound to pay at least lip-service to the prevailing religion, except in the case of Communism perhaps.

I think Soviet Russia was the first state to ever try to expunge religion totally and replace it with atheism, but you could argue that they had no choice but to do so - as religious faith and a faith in Communism both probably compete for the same socio-psychologic niche in the mass psyche - and as such are bound to come to blows. In truth though all they did was drive religion underground. This also turns it into a seam of buried political gold which will become increasingly attractive to future political parties - the first party to cave in and appeal to religion will possibly recieve a landslide of support - as is seen in modern Turkey for example and the success of the first openly pro-Islamist party after 80 years of strictly secular politics.

Origins: For a quick summary of why religions naturally arise and spread see: Here, and here.

Effects: A political candidate or party only has to appear pious and adopt the vocabulary of whatever the majority religion may be to get the religious vote, all other policies being equal. Tax breaks, donations and other favourable economic sanctions for religious bodies don't hurt either. Build a mosque or two. The downside of trying to secure the religious vote is the backward mind-set behind it, that parties end up having to support, however obliquely. Creationism taught in schools as 'fact' and a general distrust of mainstream science - and the state-wide brain-drain this sponsors, varying degrees of intolerance for other religious and ethnic minorities - intolerance of sexual diversity, abortionist issues, birth-control issues. On the judicial side, the interference between, for example, Sharia/biblical codes with more abstract state law.

But then, how much of this would occur anyway, even without active state support, is debatable, as is the plus side of a religious enviroment - increased moral restraint, not to mention a possibilty of alliance with other states of similar beliefs - the crusade effect/Muslim brotherhood of nations etc. - though such polarization of foreign policy along religious, rather than practical, lines is also a minefield.

Removal: In the sixteenth century Henry the Eighth dissolved the Catholic monastries and appointed himself the head of the new "Church of England" basically for a divource and a whole shit-load of gold collection plates. ie. The grip of a religious elite external to the state can be broken, though usually only by its replacement with another form of religion - or ideology as with communism. However, a democracy does not usually have the brute-power of a king/or totalitarian regime, so the direct "burn the churches" route is closed to them. A quiet emphasis of religion-related atrocity - whether it be fiddling with choirboys, Waco and Jonestown, or historical blooper-reels - in the media will undermine the stature of religion in the group mind; the materialist usurption of religious festivals - Father Christmas and the Easter bunny on every corner; entertaining alternatives to piety, cheap booze, porn and reality tv, all under the pinkly beneficent cloud of "freedom of expression" and "freedom of choice".

Ideally, a nominally religious country, with a very lazy collective congregation and a secular state is the best that can be hoped for.



Pretty much the common theme running through the political development of all countries I've read about is the constant battle between the state and the extended family. These kinship circles can vary in size from a single family to a whole ethnic minority. Ideally in a 'perfect' democracy, voting is absolutely anonymous and peoples' choices are individual and inviolate, in practice however, this is seldom the case. And this is the problem. The situation is compounded once a state ratifies and protects the ownership of land, (usually making it safe from its own arbitrary sequestration, at least without fair compensation).

Origins: With land, as with any economic resource, the ancient rule of "to those that have will be given, to those who have not even that will be taken" means that in practical terms the majority of that land will end up in the hands of the powerful few over time. Basically, inheritance of all assets by the first-born son and judicious marriages between land-owning families will tend to create a rural elite, with large extended families dependent upon them and a number of other tenant farmer families effectively under their control. The landowner-patriarch eventually gaining enough clout to control enough votes in an area to guarrentee the election of whomever he chooses.

Effects: This elite is the most damaging to a country. A corrupt politician has many things to offer:

Jobs: - Members of the rural elite will end up sitting on the boards of state-owned buisness, banks, utilities, institutions as well as in cabinet positions - either doing nothing but drawing (very large) salaries, or worse still, attempting to run ventures they have no idea about running. Much of the infra-structure of South Africa under Mbeki was ruined by completely corrupt and under-educated management recruited from his supporters after the end of apartheid for example.

Government Contracts and loans: - For goods and services either shoddy or non-existant in nature, produced (or supposedly produced) by businesses and factories owned by rural elite families. The loans of course are large, and never repaid.

Immunity: - Are the police hassling you..? Not any more they aren't.

The list is endless. Rural elites are the locusts of politics and the chief cause of failed states.

Removal: - Throughout history, land-reforms - the widespread seiziure and re-distribution or leasing of land - pretty much instantly destroys the powerbases of rural elites. However it takes a strong-state or a military junta to put into effect. Industrialization; urbanization - the movement of the rural populace to cities - also gradually leaches the power of rural elites as families disperse and scatter geographically, and become less reliant upon each other for employment as increased opportunities for education leads eventually to more diverse career choices; the emancipation of women and state control of inheritance laws tends to break up the wealth of any particular extended family over time.

When a state gets into bed with the rural elite it becomes a race against time as to whether uncorrupt sections of the government can finesse a reduction of their power before the entire state collapses.



I'm guessing, but I think in the interim between the fall of the rural elite, and the rise of the workers' elite there is a window for a short golden age of democratic politics where there is no short-cut for corrupt politicians to get easy votes - no elites to appeal to and no-one to force the voting choices of the electorate. So then, in this period, elected politicians are almost by default, of the people and for the people.

After America won its independence I think there was such a period, because the colonists, though rural, were such a heterogeneous bunch - hailing from all ends of Europe - there were no large land-owning extended famillies, able to exert pressure on their members and dependents, for a corrupt politician or party to exploit. So then, the notable politicians of the time were true giants, elected for their own merits, policies and personal charisma. You know the ones - they've got their heads on that mountain that Cary Grant climbed in North by Northwest.

But then of course, these things never seem to last...



Trade Unions are necessary. That said, when they get out of hand, things get economically ugly. If a country was completely self-contained - a closed loop of resource/production/consumption - and global competition not an issue, then screw it, let trade unions take over, but in the real world...

Origins: When a state goes through a period of industrialization - factories popping up like mushrooms everywhere, dark satanic mills etc., it gives a government a huge infrastructure headache. To facillitate industry you need large amounts of electricity, steel, coal/oil, water, transport systems - shipping, trains, canals - and only the government has the kind of money to engineer them en-masse. Giant state owned industries and utilities appear. And whenever you get giant state-owned industries, you usually get unions. Big ones. Big ones which, through union contributions, have big war-chests to support strikes and full-time coordinators. Alone, this wouldn't be so bad, but when they form alliances, and come out in sympathy strikes to support each other, countries grind to a halt. I grew up in 70's England - I remember frequent water-cuts, electricity black-outs and coal-shortages, which meant my family, with coal-fired central-heating, got a bit chilly in Winter.

Unions that big, start dictating government policy, and telling their huge memberships, and their families, who to vote for. A new workers elite for the politicians to get into bed with. Which is bad.

Effects: Out of control wage rises and benefits for workers means more expensive production, which means higher-price goods. Okay if you've no foreign competition, not okay if you do. Exports fall, cheap imports rise and your expensive goods stay on the shelves and in the warehouses and all your money leaves the country. Extravagant pension schemes and golden handshakes are great so long as the average age of the population is low, and the death-rate high, but terrible if everyone's pushing 60+ and fit as a fiddle. Closed shops set everything in cement and rule out competition for jobs, ham-stringing employer recruitment policies. Even if wages stay reasonable, "work to rule" ethics and go-slow policies again make production inefficient. Worked-out, inefficient mines and production facillities that are no longer profitable get kept open, and get subsidized.

Because of the above, a number of things gradually happen.

• People stop building new factories in your country. They outsource as much of everything as they can to cheap-ass sweatshop human-trafficker countries out in the boonies. Good managers and entrepreneurs quietly quit and leave the country. Governments have to start "Buy British/American/[insert country here] campaigns" and impose import tarrifs on goods from other countries which pisses those countries off and provokes tit-for-tat sanctions on your own goods, which screws your exports even worse. Effectively forcing everyone to buy expensive home-grown goods drives up the cost of living, even with the wage rises, and makes everyone poorer. A vicious circle. 
• Investors stop putting their money into things which involve having to give people jobs. Automation in factories increases, because robots don't have unions. Unemployment rises. But then so does the cost to the state for unemployment benefits and subsidized housing. A double-whammy. And of course there are also a lot of poor people with nothing on their hands but time. Which means you need to spend more on police. Triple whammy. Bored people screw more, so either populations rise, or abortion rates do. Condom sales improve perhaps, unless you're a catholic country. This fall-off in the job market and the rising cost of living makes unions even more frenzied. Round and round.
• More kids stay in school by default. Even the thick ones who should really leave and learn a trade, if there were any jobs, which there aren't. These thick kids beat up the smart kids and disrupt the classroom, which means the pace of learning gets slower - which is bad because knowledge in every field keeps on increasing regardless. Teachers get stressed. Thick Mums and Dads get all sad about how their thick children fail their exams and look stupid, so education gets dumbed down by sensitive sociology graduates in the government's education department. University entrance exams also get quietly easier, to lessen the impact of school-leavers on the unemployment figures. University stops being free, and grants turn into loans, which prohibits very-clever people from poor famillies who might have had a chance of flying high from doing so. University diplomas, now more common, and from universities of dubious quality, lose their value as levers into employment anyway, not to mention the 3-4 "I could have been working maybe" years lost to their owners.
• If employment laws allow it, smart employers recruit immigrants who can be threatened into not forming unions, and accepting lower pay. This boosts racial hatred in the host populace. "Those Pakis/Wogs/Chinks stole our jobs".
• I suspect that quietly Stock-market investment starts to balloon, because money also doesn't have a union. I also suspect this quickens the cycle of boom-bust economics as too much money sloshes around the system. Global economic links increase and diversify because the people with the money want to invest it in ventures outside the country.

In short, while an unchecked Worker's Elite doesn't ruin a country as badly as the Rural elite, it does end up hobbling it on the world stage, economy-wise.

Removal: Two words. Margret Thatcher. Less specifically, reforms to employment and picketing laws along with the massive privatisation of state-run assets and industries. This means the state suddenly has a lot more money than it had before - hopefully to do good, wholesome things with - and that the buyers' money is tied to the country. Privatisation has the effect of divide and conquer - instead of large homogenous unions, you get lots and lots of little ones, which you can do deals with and set against each other. Then you hold your breath for 20 years and hope everything gets back to normal.

A final interlude, though not so pink and fluffy this time.

So, the state has dismantled the extended family, has most of its population safely settled in big sprawling cities watching TV and sucking back big-macs. The trade unions have been smashed and the headaches of running much of the infrastructure of the country have been off-loaded onto private companies. The middlemen between the state and the populace it serves have been to a great extent removed. In the meantime technology's given everyone new toys and distractions; public health has improved, populations are booming; nukes have made world-wars extinct and have also failed to turn everyone into radioactive slag. Everything should be hunky-dory.

But it isn't. This is because the price to pay for isolating people from each other, reliquishing control over large sectors of employment into private hands and dumbing down the education system is the loss of means with which to easily appeal to the voting public.

The state can't appeal to family values the way it once could, because families ain't what they used to be. Neither can it simply give people jobs, because it hasn't got as many as it used to have to give away. Neither can it use compelling rhetoric, stirring the masses with speeches like, I dunno, the Gettysburg Address or something, because on average people aren't - pan-demographic-wise - as smart/impressed by fancy words as they used to be either.

Religion, or what's left of it, cancels out like it always has - and cannot be used to stand out from the crowd, unless you're a total raving fanatic or a complete atheist. You might manage to swing a nationalist vote - appealing to the heightened racial tension over employment depending on the ethnic mix in your country, but that would be a wee-bit evil and you'd have trouble booting out all the "foreigners" who were actually born on your soil, have passports and are possibly married to one of everyone's cousins.

And finally, you can't go round and press the flesh in person like you used to either, because there are just too many damn people.

What to do..?

Here we run out of history and begin to speculate a little. Before we start, let's examine the qualities of the naked politician.

 Physical Appearance: Even now, with cosmetic surgery techniques developing every year, your average Joe politician is pretty much stuck with whatever his or her genes gave them. However, as long as they correspond to enough of the concurrent "leader" tropes rattling round the collective psyche, the rest can be taken in hand by careful wardrobing, and maybe a touch of stage make-up and careful studio lighting upon occaison.

Don't underestimate appearance. eg. The Warren Harding Error.

          Warren Harding was – most historians agree – one of the worst presidents in American history. He served for 2 years before dying unexpectedly of a stroke. But how he came to become a presidential candidate holds some crucial lessons and warnings for us: “Why do we fall for tall, dark, handsome men?”
          When Harry Daugherty first met Harding – as they both had their shoes shined one morning in 1899 – Daugherty sized him up and thought: “Wouldn’t that man make a great President?” Or a great-looking President. At the time Daugherty was the Machiavelli of Ohio politics, the classic behind-the-scenes fixer, and shrewd judge of character, or at least political opportunity.
          Harding was worth looking at. At about 35 years old, his features, size and proportion attracted attention. The term ‘Roman’ was occasionally used in descriptions of him. He was classically tall, dark and handsome and appeared courteous, virile, generous, genuine and good-natured. However, Harding wasn’t a particularly intelligent man.
          He liked to drink, play poker and golf, and – most of all – chase women. He was vague and ambivalent on matters of policy. His speeches were once described as “an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea”. In 1914 he was absent for the debates on the biggest political issues of his time – women’s suffrage and prohibition.

          How did this man become President? He looked the part.

Of these four basic attributes, appearance is the most innocent - a makeup artist, hair-stylist or wardrobe assistant would find it hard to get much leverage on the politician they were tending to, much less dictate policy.

  Oration: Voice, body-language, speeches. Here a lot of tweaking can be done. Voice coaching, acting lessons, and a good speech-writer have been the politician's friends for a very long time. (Though a certain base-level skill in communication for all those times when spontaneity is called for sorts the wannabes from the actually will-bees). A politician's speech-writer does put words into a candidate's mouth, but unless the politician is dumb to the point of being illiterate, he still has control over events.

 

  Life History: Okay, so ideally a politician will be a paragon of the times with zero blooper reel content. In real life, there are usually skeletons ranging, from slightly embarrasing to career-ending, lurking in the closet. Here tweaking in the form of spin, concealment and outright fabrication can be applied. Jeffrey Archer's academic credentials spring to mind. This is a minefield, because - if the politician does need something big hiding - it automatically makes him or her the puppet of the ones doing the spinning, or the burying. His or her only hope is to become powerful and popular enough to expose past faux-pas and laugh them off without too much damage being done. There's obviously a limit - reasonably harmless sexual indiscretions, a bit of drunken college tom-foolery are okay but anything bigger...

Wesley Higgins (33) attempted to extort €5,000 from Liam Kelly [Irish Republican party] by threatening to give the pictures to a newspaper. [...] The message continued that Higgins was acting as a "middleman" and the woman wanted €5,000 for the photos. Higgins added that he needed to be "looked after" as well. A later message stated that Higgins was having difficulty stopping the woman going to the newspapers with the photographs. A final message added that the pictures showed the councillor snorting cocaine.  Full story

...and you are going to have big problems.

Personal Wealth:  Ideally - of the people, for the people - anyone should be able to stand for election. However, it's an expensive business. Off the top of my head:

• Support: Can't easily work and campaign, unless you live in a really small place. So you need to support yourself without working for a while.
• Media: At the very least some nice flyers and campaign buttons, maybe a web-page. At the top, national TV slots, polls and market research, and huge rallies/fundraisers.
• Legal: At some point, someone's going to think about saying something nasty about you in public, hopefully false. To deter them, they have to know you've got the money to take them to court, with some serious lawyers behind you, not cheap ones.

For a more detailed example, click here for an expenditure breakdown for Barack Obama 2008. To cut to the chase, a little over 650 million Dollars on media, and about 203 million on campaign expenses.

Of this list of attributes the first three are fairly doable by average Joe/Jane Independent. As long as they are reasonably presentable, don't talk like Donald Duck and have led reasonably decent lives, sans prostitutes and cocaine belly-buttons, they are in with a chance. The real bottleneck these days is how to get yourself noticed by the public. The realy huge, and mainly ambivalent public. ie. The money.

So, assuming average Joe Politician and his party aren't stupidly rich, where does all the money come from..?

Well, donations for a start, which are usually required to be declared - for example:

Note: for the big candidates - donations from large donors, ie. the super-rich - approach 50% plus.

But also the slightly shadier world of loans - which may or may not be declared. How's your credit-rating Joe..?

An article in the Guardian on 21 April 2005 reported:
The Electoral Commission is to investigate political parties receiving secret monies in the form of private loans rather than donations, evading the need to declare them publicly. The Times newspaper today revealed that the Conservatives [England] had received "a number" of £1m loans from wealthy supporters, which were not disclosed as donations. Electoral law states that all donations over £5,000 have to be made public. But the situation with loans is more opaque.

As you may have guessed by now, the identity of the Third Elite is the moneymen - the super-rich - the banks - the media-moguls.

Origins: I think I've covered the creation of the rich in another blog-post - here - so here's some news clippings which testify to their global presence:

in the political process in the UK, according to one watchdog organization.

“When donors are making contributions exceeding £20,000 ($31,000) -- and some are making donations well over £250,000 ($390,000) -- it's perfectly understandable you don't give away that kind of money without expecting something in return,” Chandu Krishnan, executive director of TI UK. In November 2011, a UK advisory body recommended increased public funding as one way to avoid future scandals and limit the influence of big donors in elections, but the three main political parties rejected the proposal.

The Center for Responsive Politics estimates $6 billion will be spent in the U.S. elections by campaigns, political parties and corporations hoping to propel their candidates into the White House. The projected price tag of the 2012 US election dwarfs that of other nations, but corruption monitors from Transparency International (TI) say it's not just how much will be spent but where the money is coming from that threatens the integrity of politics around the world.

For the full article, listing other countries, see here:

Effects: Here, I run out of imagnation, or at least any form of reliable evidence. Off the top of my head, and purely personal opinion:

• Bipolar states, with only two giant parties - the minimum to preserve the illusion of democracy. The money is backing both of them anyway, so to an extent some of the money wins either way.
• De-radicalization of politics, producing parties which are largely homogenous in policy, harder to choose between, which in turn will only increase the amount of media dog-and-pony show required during campaign periods to influence the electorate either way, whihc in turn again will increase the amount of money required to campaign, thus increasing the hold the money will have over the participating candidates and parties. Round and round.
• Supression of paradigm shift technology - electric cars for example and alternative fuels. Money is notoriously conservative with respect to real change - because it costs a lot to switch, and the forerunners, who shoulder most of the R&D costs, make it strategic for others to sit on their hands wringing out the last petro-dollars before eventually adopting a finished product which they won't have to pay to develop, only tweak enough to apply for basic patents.
• Short-term show-off politics. Who remembers the guy who made it a law to have seat-belts in cars..? Even though that single act has saved more lives traffic-wise than any other. But I'll bet everyone knows the guy who pulled them out of the burning wreck of their car, and the doc. who put their face back together. Shock and awe baby.
• Increased surveillence of the electorate, for market research and other purposes - more penetrative advertizing/media probably individually biased by Amazon-like recommendation programs.
• Even greater emphasis on the 'sustained growth' economic paradigm, rather than the simply sustainable.
• Money has no country, I'd expect countries backed by the global Third Elites to act increasingly in unison in the future. New economic crusades, back by state of the art weaponry.

Please feel free to add your own ideas, and you've probably noticed that all of these trends are already happening.

Removal: A toughie. Beyond a Fight-Club-esque destruction of everyone's credit records, a Zeitgeistian collapse of the monetary system, or just general mass-mayhem - The Third Elite are here to stay. I do hava a rather wacky back-door idea though.

If you remember that after the reduction of the older elites - the rural, the worker - the destruction of the extended families and the unions, that the politic parties are faced with the problem of reaching a large and sometimes disinterested public, and that it is the size of the population they need to influence that involves enormous amounts of money. Money which forces them into the arms of the Thrid Elite if they are to have any real chance of running the state.

Well, what if we reduced that population..?  Rendering the money question null-and-void..?   

Okay, before you call me a monster, I'm not talking about killing 90% of the population - though that would sure ease the the whole climate-change-death-and-destruction situation - no, I mean simply how about reducing the number of people eligible to vote in any given election..? If, instead of trying to convince the entire populations of democratic countries:

Why not pre-select a representative few..? And give them the power to elect the next state..?

First selection: Drawn from the last census. Everyone not in jail and/or involved in politics or mentally ill is eligible. A completely random lottery - run by a publicly funded and oversighted institution - chooses (on national TV) 10,000 people. Participation is compulsary. No whining. Each of these people is seriously background-checked for any signs of having been influenced/paid-off/threatened or whatever. Those that fail are kicked off under transparent criteria.

Second selection. For the country concerned an ethnic, economic, religious, and age distribution table is constructed, and a final thousand - randomly chosen from the remaining pool of participants - selected to represent the concerns of each demographic.

These thousand are guarrenteed a continuation of their current income plus whatever benefits they receive, and guarrenteed their current job will be held open for them in the interim they are away. Compensation will be paid to their dependents/family for their relative's temporary absence. The final thousand are taken together into media isolation, though the process itself - reality-TV style - will be comprehensively monitored and televised 24/7.  For X amount of time, the political figures and parties of the time will campaign to this small select few.

And at the end of that time, that thousand will vote, finally and in complete anonymity, and the votes tallied, in front of the nation.

This way, this very cheap way, would cut out the money's influence on politics, opening up politics to all those who are of the people and for the people. And possibly, depending on the reality-TV show's success, maybe educate people about real politics, rather than just the flim-flam.

Thanks for reading.

Democracy Vs. Dictators

We live in an imperfect world, and if we're honest, pretty much all of us are assholes. I mean okay, it's a sliding scale, some of us are less assholey than others, but lurking beneath the skin of every human - not very deep even - is an asshole.

Surely Tab, you say, the world is rife with paragons who betray none of the failings of normal mortals - Ghandi perhaps. But no. Rumours abound. Ghandi used to sleep with some of his prettier followers to er... 'test' his moral rigidity, and if he failed (and tested some other kind of rigidity) well, hey, only a temporary lapse. Seems no-one is immune. Just type "paragon of virtue X + scandal" into google if you want your dreams shattered.

Atatürk was pretty damn good, as defacto dictators go, set Turkey up as a republic after WWI, reformed the dress-codes (goodbye fez) and language to a more European basis, gave everyone surnames, empowered women and banned religion from politics, plus set the military up to continue his legacy as the government's watchdog. Ten out of ten. However, before I shoot myself in the foot, he was a special case - he came to power on a tide of public approval, had no children of his own genetic lineage to tempt him into the serious nepotism so often found dogging your average dictator, and died relatively early at 57 while he was still on top of his game. An exception.

Dictators are like that children's rhyme: When they are good they are very very good, but when they are bad, they are horrid.

Except you have to imagine this angry little girl armed with an AK47, a whole butt-load of bullets and zero accountability.

Which brings me to the title. D is for damage control. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Not sure how much this is true. It's like "Well he was such a nice boy until he became the dictator of a small African country..." I think it's more the case that power attracts a certain somewhat morally wobbly kind of person to begin with, and then just allows them to get worse. I mean you - dear reader - you're almost certainly not a bad person, and I'm guessing that at the same time as being 'not a bad person' you are similarly not the unopposed leader of a republic somewhere out in the boonies, nor have you ever aspired to be such in any meaningful way. There's a reason for this, and I think it's that happy, self-confident, well balanced and tolerant people aren't really interested in power, for them - power over others is all pain and no real gain. They may have power thrust upon them by happenstance, and feel obligated to take on the responsibility, but otherwise they are perfectly content without. Just think of all the ape-shit psycho bosses you've ever had, and tell me it ain't so.

Democracy is the least of all evils because it dilutes power. And as such, it also dilutes the amount of damage one person can do. The leader of a democracy, who gets into a fight in a bar with a gay Jew and wakes up with bruises and a filthy hangover, would find it very hard to implement a spot of ethnic/socio-sexual cleansing against gays and Jews the next day. A dictator with absolute power, well... not so much.

Sure, all governmental systems tend to kill people, it's just that dictators do it so much better:

As a baseline: WWI + WWII - about 70-80 million or so.

Now, dictators in no particular order:

Mao and his great leap forward: estimates differ but lets say 40 million.
Stalin: 20 million.
Jolly King Leopold in the Congo: 8 million.
Pol Pot: 2.5 million. main source

There's more, but hey, who's counting. Dictators = responsible for the deaths of roughly 70 million people. ie. Four fucking guys, managed to kill nearly as many people as both world wars put together. (And that's not even counting Hitler).

As I said: D is for damage control. And...



I'm gonna talk game theory a little. If you want to get up to speed here's a link to an old blog post covering the basics.

The main point in game theory is about iterated (repeated/sequential) games vs. one-offs. In a one-off, winner-takes-all-forever game, it pays no-one to play by the rules, or even to have rules in the first place. In an iterated game of X-duration, you might finish a game today, and play the same guy again tomorrow - who will remember how you treated him, and treat you the same.

Most dictators are usually playing a one-off against the people they dictate to. Their goal is usually simply to stay in power for as long as possible, and usually set things up, ala Kim jong il >> Kim Jong un, so that a son or relative carries on the family tradition of stamping heads. There is no opposing player to force them to play by any rules but transitory and self-derived ones. Like: "I won't kill anyone on days beginning with T unless they really, really bug me."

I'm not denying that a benificent dictator can't do great things for their country, only that in order to do so, they have to stay in power. ie. the 'doing good' part of the equation is secondary to the 'staying in power' bit. And to do this, you have those tried and trusted tools - monopolies on propaganda and organized violence.

But hang on, democracies do this too. Fair point. The difference however is Dictators use violence to silence dissent to a much much greater degree than democracies. And this is what kills people. You see, Mao didn't sit down one day and say to himself: "Fuck I'm bored. I'm gonna kill 40 million people." No. What he said was "I, by hook or by crook, am going to catch up to those damn Brits economy-wise, in fifteen years."

Trouble is, he was a fucking bumpkim from the sticks. A very smart, charismatic bumpkin, but a bumkpin all the same. And knew nothing at all about running just about the biggest economy on Earth, population wise. Classic example: Birds eat grain. Bad birds. So Mao declared war on them. The whole country was set to trapping, killing, poisoning and etc. every feathered friend they could find. It worked, the bird population was pretty much obliterated in a season. Yay. More grain right..? Nope. Because birds also eat insects. And insects eat everything. Result..? Mass famine. Lotta dead people. Another interesting tit-bit. You can boil down your dead granny and spread her on the fields as fertilizer. And your crap too. But if you do this, you also spread horrible diseases. Result..? Lots more dead people. But this is okay, because you've also destroyed most of your houses to make fertilizer anyway. The fuck-up list is endless.

And no-one ever said: "S'cuse me Mao-mate, but your economic policies are total bullshit." Because they'd have been shot.

Democracies, with their umpteen number of barriers to implementing new policies and their tolerence of dissent, don't do this as much. Damage control...

...And everyone else. Because Dictators are playing an exclusive "us vs. them" game, they are not really incentified (horrible word, sorry) to give anyone outside of the priviledged group informed political voice. Bad news for ethnic minorities, religious minorities, or any minorities at all. The only means of political expression left to the people is almost always mass protest, ending up as mass violence in most cases. Doesn't make for a stable country. Nor for an high average life-span. Democracies - even if you just want to cynically classify them as time-share sequential dictatorships - are forced to a much greater degree to curry favour from the various demographics and shape policy around their well-being to gather votes. Okay, you can pull in a lot of votes from the most common demograph, but then, so can the opposition. So then, to tip the scales your way, you have to find some way of appealing to the smaller demographs as well. Ad inifinitum, theoretically right down to demographs of one.

That's not what is important though. Many demographs are diametrically opposed to one another. ie. Political party X can either appeal to one or the other, but not both, leaving the opposing demograph to their opposition. But, if a third party can come along, and find some way of reconciling the two opposed demographs - in order to selfishly harvest votes from both and beat the opposition parties - then they will win outright. ie. In a democracy, there is always an incentive, however minor, on the part of the political factions for them to (a) get everyone taking part in elections, even if only to better exploit them and (b) to reconcile demographs with each other, again even if only to better exploit them. Which is good - well, less fatal anyway. eg. Politicians didn't give the vote to women because they thought "Hey, well, it's only fair." No, they gave the vote to women probably to shut them up. (jk.) No, they gave them the vote so women would vote for them.

Anyway, moving on...

It's not the rule, but it might as well be: Dictators start out as the good guys. And that's the trouble, when you're already at the top of the moral hill, the only way left is down.

Dictators-to-be usually start out as the head of a heavily-armed bunch of guys, either already within the established military, or as rebel groups out in the sticks. Mao was head of the (anti-military-dictator-Chiang-kai-Shek) socialist red army, and a hero to many; or Mugabe, one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white minority rule in Zimbabwe - for example. Good guys fighting for freedom from opression.

Until they won. And that's when the trouble starts - the skill-set for "winning an armed struggle" is pretty much useless when you try to transfer it to "running a peaceful, stable country". And who has the dictator(but not yet) have as a role model to teach him how to run this country they suddenly have come into possession of..? That's right - the complete bastard they just overthrew. They begin their careers as leaders of countries pretty much politically empty.

Dictators are reactive. Their characters and general mindset are batman/joker reflections of whomever they fought against. They are defined pretty much by what they are not: "I am not a white supremacist !!!" "I am not a _________ !!!" Which is fine, when the opposing trope is around to define you, but when it's not, when it's been vanquished, then your mirror is suddenly empty, and you're not there anymore. They begin their political careers as blank canvases, all contrasts sucked away.

Which is bad, because it takes great fortitude of character and political belief to resist the temptations of power.

This of course is further complicated by the implications of their situation. They've won. And not just won something simple and mundane like a game of tiddlywinks, they've freed a whole fucking country. That's like single-handedly winning gold in every olympic event ever in one go.

And what do winners get..? What do they deserve..? Prizes. The biggest for themselves, and runners-up prizes for all their psycho-gun-toting mates. It's feeding time, ring the fucking dinner-gong boys, ring it good and loud.

I'm not going to list all the dictators who turned round and raped the countries they 'liberated' just read this book for multiple modern-day examples in Africa. What I'm going to do is just burble on about the good things of democracy a bit more before closing, though I restate: I'm not saying democarcy is super-duper perfect, just that by its nature it sponsors ruling minorities less likely to be total trainwrecks for the people they govern.

• Power is diluted, divided: policies are opposed, debated, held up to scrutiny by representatives of other factions of the populace before implementation. This obstacle course means that generally the policies surviving to actually affect the masses are universally 'good'. (lol, I can't believe I wrote that). 
• The democratic system provides a mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power between opposing political factions without blowing too much vital infrastructure up. This alone gives democracies an advantage, they do not have to start from square one every time power changes hands, nor go through routine periods of economically ruinous civil war. 
• They allow opposing factions of trained politicians to co-exist within the same political system, which means a faction coming into power knows how to actually administrate institutions and utilities, rather than just how to shoot people. 
• Democracies of fixed-periods of power (that can be repeated) invest political parties in the populace. Instead of thinking "Right - I've won, this is my one and only chance of raiding the cookie-jar, I'm taking every last damn one..." a democratic leader/party thinks "Okay, I've got 4 years to raid the cookie jar, but I better leave some, because I might get to raid it some more later..." Which, believe it or not, is better. Especially if they decide to invest some cookies in making a better cookie-producing jar, if only so they can steal more later.

How Money will Kill You in the Future.

Been giving myself small nightmares again today in the breaks between lessons. I read too much.

Okay anyway, the resource curse. My favourite thing. Africa. Oil, diamonds etc. For a state to have too much of something is bad because it totally fucks the social contract. Why..?

Very simply (and I'm sure you'll forgive me if I'm missing something, or over-simplifying) the populace needs the machinery of the state and its various institutions for (a) defence, and a close second, (b) a stable, and above all predictable, social enviroment within which to prosper and multiply. In turn the state relies, all other things being equal, on its populace for revenue in the form of taxes or whatever, and soldiers.

However, money buys a lot of stuff. And if African Despot X has oil ie. money in abundance - he/she no longer has to depend on his/her populace for income, and since mercenaries abound within Africa, no need for homegrown soldiers either. The market for his/her oil is outsourced also, so he/she doesn't need his/her populace even as customers. The contract is broken, and to ADX, the populace becomes at best a hindrance and at worst a threat, to be subjugated/negated/controlled by fair means or (more usually) foul.

But who cares right..? We're only talking about a bunch of spear-chucker countries in the boonies, and whatever human collateral damage occurs only effects the headlines. Nuffin' to do with us.

Well, what if, now, in the developed West, a new form of resource curse is in operation..?

I'm not talking about the West's addiction to oil, or implying the US has so much as to create a curse in its own right. No, not oil. I'm talking about money itself, no actual physical resource involved. Just cold hard cash (hmm, even though 70% of it is actually virtual cash floating around invisibly).

I watched some bullet point video by some economist guy that said even though the economy of the US has grown like crazy over the last century, your average Joe's wage has remained comparitively flat and the money generated has found its way into the pockets of an elite - the old statistic 1% of the pop. owns 40% of the stuff. 1% though, of the US pop. is still a fuckhuge number. However, like mass, it's not so much how much of it there is, but how densely it is packed. And I'm willing to bet quite heavily that the 1-40 differential also exists, perhaps even to a greater extent, within that super-rich 1% - ie. 1% of that 1% owns a hugely greater part of all that stuff than the remainder put together. And the 1% of that 1% of 1% still more.

Sufficient money in one place, just like mass, causes other money to gravitate towards it - that first million is hard to come by, the next not so much, and the ones after that seem to just appear while you're brushing your teeth (apparently - I wouldn't know - just hearsay :D ). My point is - that super-concentrated monetary mass in the hands of a small numer of people has enough influence to effect a lot more money not directly connected to it, and that money in turn effects yet more. Meaning that maybe, even though that elite only directly controls 40%, that 40% influences/controls another what..? 20%..? 40%..? A controlling share of AmericaCorp™..?

And through the machinations of the stock-exchange, international currency markets whatever, this money simply generates money, without having to actually create anything much at all. It's out of the usual loop of production and consumption. ie. Like the despots in Africa, those who control that money increasingly do not need a populace to contribute to its wealth. Which leaves them with a problem, the only threat left to them, is everybody else.

What about the second dependence of ruler on the ruled..? Soldiers. Still need cannon-fodder to fight those useful market-opening wars afterall, those wars ain't gonna fight themselves. Or are they..? Weapons are a form of military automation, just like machines in factories increasingly negate the need for actual humans. Give a guy a gun, and he beats 20 guys with swords. Give a guy a tank, and he beats 100 guys with guns, and so on. Still need that guy to pull the trigger though, damn.

Look at the trends. Factories are becoming almost totally automated, to the point where it's pretty easy to imagine a near future of completely zero-human-on-site robot production facilites. 3D printers, the works. Push button, recieve bacon. But warfare too, is becoming automated - Nuclear deterent is almost completely hands free - the two guys with the keys, if they still exist, would be easy to retire. The airforce..? How long till the drone-recons and limited-strike pilotless planes grow larger, and more destructive..? That leaves ground forces - how hard would it be to automate a tank..? And with the new combat exo-skeletons and walking machines being developed - how soon till you can simply remove the human from the equation and let RoboGrunt™ run free..?

Suddenly, the money no longer needs its populace for soldiers anymore, it can manufacture, and run its military materiél without them. That will indeed be a dangerous day for average Joe and average Jane, because on that day they will no longer be useful to the ruling elite - but it's a day the proles will still greet with thundering applause because none of their children will have to go and get shot up in the Middle East ever again. Hooray.

And my, my, but aren't we selling a whole bunch of stuff to China etc. these days..? You'd almost think we didn't need to buy anything at all, the economy would grind right on even if we boycotted the entire high-street... Isn't our custom important anymore..?

So what happens to the proles..? I think it is what is happening already. Think about it. New acts run through governments in the US and UK under the cloak of the (in my opinion artificially manufactured to a great extent) "War on Terror" to circumvent freedoms of speech, privacy and trial by jury. Cameras on every street. Dumbass educational systems, intended through neglect to manufacture generations of fat, unhealthy, religion-saturated, narrow-minded, unquestioning and entertainment-addicted bigots, fit only for the ever-enlarging service industry.

Ever thought what an ouroboros the whole service industry is..? And I include media and medical to a great extent in this - the old circular snake biting his tail..? You have humans working to serve the basic needs of other humans in order to earn enough the serve their own. Round and round it goes. It's as if the whole of 'lower' society is being put into a static loop, being rendered physicaly, mentally and politically unthreatening to the real ruling class - the money men, and the increasingly puppet governments they control.

And no-one with the power to reverse this trend, has any reason to do so.

And while we're in screaming conspiracy mode... The deficit, (??global??) economic crisis. Tighten your belts proles. What happened..? Did all the shops, and the crops, and the doctors, and the workers, and the roads and the, Jesus, the *everything* disappear overnight..? Nope, it's still there, all of it, in - for now at least - working order. What disappeared apparently, was the eminence-grise, the invisible grease that kept the engine spinning...

...The money.

That's what suddenly disappeared over the horizon, perhaps to a sunny beach where the drinks are cheap and the women all wear bikinis. And who controls the money..? And why, if everything that is needed to look after society is actually still here, is the situation so unfixable..?

Because fuck you prole is why, you are no longer required.

Ze future, boys and girls, ain't looking all that rosy - well, unless you have an absolute fuckload of cash anyway. Then it looks great.