Re: <nettime> Katrina: The Spectre of a Soviet-Style Crisis in the U.S.

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@yahoo.com>]

>      American industry has been bled dry and it's the industrial decline that
> above all explains the negligence of a nation confronted with a crisis
> situation:

All this euro-originated doomsday predictions fail to take into account two
things: europe (as in people that hold power) is striving to become america and
america can still fuck up more other countries than anyone else.

There is a good reason for that. What is happening in america is the continuation
of evolution of the kleptocracy from class-based into country-based. Ethics and
morality are immaterial here, this is how societies function.

I am sure that well- and mid-off euros with access to higher education - mostly
the strain that contributes to nettime - have no problem with the fact that less
than well-off classes populate not so desireable jobs. I'm sure they feel fine
that they don't have to slaughter their chicken or dig their steel ores. Or that
prime ministers and many CEOs don't have to drive their cars. That kind of
kleptocracy (euphemistically called 'division of labour') is kept together by
repressive/legal system and feels quite right, right? As long as they are all
french or dutch or whatever.

So what is the only problem here? America surpassed the nation-class-based
kleptocracy. Using the same repressive/legal mechanisms it became the well-off
class while the rest of the world gets to dig ore. So the *real* problem here is
that exclusivity of exploting french or dutch subjects is not any more in
french/dutch elite's hands. Hurts, right?

Ruling classes in the rest of the world don't need 'industry' inside their
families and castes. Not so well-off will constitute the industry, and will be
kept doing that using the old fashioned force monopoly.

The same thing.

America doesn't need industry. It has guns and lawyers to make the rest of the
world constitute its industry.

What do well-off 'produce' in france or anywhere? Nothing - they just reap based
on private property paradigm. What is the deficit within higher classes in france
and italy? Huge. Do minions come to collect? No, because eventually they get shot
at.

The same thing.


There is nothing ethically, morally, civilisationally or whatever you care to call
it wrong with america - it just extended the model to the higher level. The main
irritation from the higher classes in the rest of the world is that they get a bit
more distant from the top of the pyramid. A taste of their own medicine.

What america did is exactly what all other old fashioned ruling classes did:
create excellent repression machine and get rid of the chicken.

When I say 'america' I don't mean the house help - I mean the top few %.

So stop whining about deficit and such - that's so irrelevant, in the past, today
and most likely in the future. And consistently fails to predict the future - in
othervwords a shitty model.

There is no deficit, the property just shifted hands. And unless you come up with
better guns there's zilch you can do about it. Whining ain't it - although I can
understand that ex-empires will be the most bitter ones.

Marx would love this - class struggle turns country-based. 




end
(of original message)



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