This is a really interesting point, especially as we watch the return of Barack Obama's Ineptocracy under Joe Biden. Obama and his people were highly credentialed nincompoops who brought us one insanely expensive disaster after another.
Here's another example from yesterday: no, Janet Yellen isn't going to recuse herself from the GameStop thing just because she was lavishly paid off by Robinhood's owner. She's an "expert." Who are YOU to question her integrity?
The obsession with credentials is one of the biggest problems we face, combined with the centralization of power, corruption, elite arrogance, and the Western world's embrace of authoritarianism. Bubbled elites are claiming more power over our lives and demanding less resistance.
The loss of faith in institutions during the Obama years was an entirely rational response by the public. Obama's tenure PROVED the preening elites with extensive credentials and claims of absolute moral authority were A) corrupt as hell and B) didn't know what they were doing.
Credentialism is a great way for elites to make themselves more insulated and tighten their grip on power. Those who control the distribution of impressive credentials control policy even when they're not in office. Everyone "qualified" shares the same dismal ideology.
Of course it leads to immense corruption, as we're seeing with the GameStop stock saga. The inner circle rewards itself and uses all means necessary to keep deplorable outsiders at bay. They design systems that only "work" if the ruling class gets special privileges.
For another example, look at climate change ideology peddled by people with lavish homes and private jets. They would inflict a system upon us that makes YOUR life worse, not THEIRS. It only "works" if the Important People get to have huge carbon footprints.
The really dangerous thing about this obsession with credentials, the reason Obama was (and Biden will be) one idiotic trillion-dollar pratfall after another, is that the elites think reality should be made to conform with policy, not the reverse.
Stock-market short-squeeze games are just the financial manifestation of that mindset. REAL power means forcing the universe to conform to ideology. We shall decree there are more than two sexes. We shall repeal the laws of supply and demand. All that is good must be "free."
The truth is that the distributed intelligence of the public, expressed through their pursuit of opportunity for profit, is VASTLY superior to the ideological obsessions of a tiny gang of highly-credentialed central planners. The Redditors are proving it again.
The elite control us by lying to us, hiding essential information, demanding that we be humble and reverent toward THEM rather than the real world and its timeless truths. They give us an illusion of choice while sweeping choices they don't like off the table.
But look at how fragile all their works are - from the powerful and politically connected stock market players to insane Big Government schemes. All we need is a little knowledge, and a little will to misbehave, and everything the "experts" create comes crashing down. /end
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Xi Jinping's speech at Davos boiled down to: The world has no choice but to do business with China, and if you want to do business with China, you need to stop criticizing our tyranny and questioning our lies about the coronavirus.
Xi's address to the World Economic Forum will serve as well as any other moment for historians to mark the beginning of the Authoritarian Era. He said nothing new, but he restated the narratives and demands of Chinese fascism from a post-pandemic position of aggressive strength.
For the first time, Xi spoke to a world that is beginning to accept the tenets of authoritarianism, thanks to the incredible political and economic damage from China's coronavirus. China's ideals have become as viral as Covid-19.
For most of my lifetime, people on the Left focused on the perils of Big Business while ignoring, or actively embracing, the menace of Big Government. A great deal of the Right did the reverse. Both Bigs are perilous, especially when they fuse into a combined threat to liberty.
The growth of both government and corporate titans was inevitable, especially after a century of industrial and technological revolutions. Technology makes it possible to have larger endeavors, both public and private. Economies of scale bring enormous benefits.
Industrial advancements meant government had to get bigger to handle even its most basic responsibilities, like national defense. The World Wars erased the model of a tiny central government handling a few key elements of defense. Every war became a clash of industrial titans.
The worldwide movement toward "limited authoritarianism," already well under way but dramatically accelerated by the coronavirus, is driven by the elite consensus that ordinary people cannot be trusted with so much freedom.
"Limited authoritarianism" is the best phrase for what the elite have in mind. They have decided that a growing list of topics are simply off the table. Consensus has been reached, and no further input from voters will be permitted on those topics.
This is a natural consequence of the progressive ideology, which is inherently authoritarian, although it peddles itself in the early stage with lots of jibber-jabber freedom and liberty. Progressives by definition believe that the growth of the State can never be reversed.
Why, of COURSE you have freedom of speech! You're just not allowed to say anything the Ministry of Truth has determined to be false.
By the way, the Ministry of Truth has determined that claiming your freedom of speech has been violated is a dangerous falsehood.
Well, of COURSE you're allowed to vote. We love democracy! Anything that makes it harder to vote is a crime against democracy!
You're just not allowed to vote on things the Ministry of Science has determined are too complex for you to understand. The list grows steadily longer.
Of COURSE we want you to prosper! We want to raise the minimum wage. We're brimming with smart pro-business policies!
Be advised that the Ministry of Virtue will decide when your ambitions have curdled into greed and you must be punished with confiscatory taxation.
These details are often cited by those who challenge the election results - how could the cellar-dwelling candidate nobody gave a damn about possibly collect the most votes in history? But I warned all through the election not to underestimate the size of the Weary Biden vote.
All through the campaign, Trump supporters predicted a huge "Shy Trump" vote would turn out on Election Day and confound the pollsters. And they did! But as I feared, it turned into a heavyweight bout between the Shy Trump and Weary Biden votes.
Leaving aside the ongoing debates about ballot irregularities in some states, there was clearly a large pool of Biden voters who didn't care much about him, or even about politics overall. They were just tired of Trump drama, exhausted and demoralized from the pandemic.
Time once again to emphasize the differences between totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and fascism. They're often used as synonyms but they are different, although they do tend to lead to each other. Order one, and the other two are usually delivered soon enough.
Totalitarianism is best understood as the politicization of everything. Every facet of life is infused with political meaning... and subjected to political control. There is little room for privacy or individualism. Every word and deed is seen as a political action.
Totalitarianism does *not* require authoritarian government, although it usually leads to such. You can be totalitarian without having any real government power at all, enforcing your political will through mob actions and corporate power. Examples from recent history abound.