Note: again had intended to post part two of WWG but as progress goes, parts need premise established specifically to explain my way of thinking and logic process for you all to be able to follow along. Due to the complex nature of hybrid warfare and economics and markets these are probably just going to come out in chapters as I can get to them, and I will try to keep them in digestible length. And similar to the first installment, headlines are just impossible to stay in front of.
Identity
One of the logic progressions I believe the most in, and central to the root of much of my thinking, whether its markets, politics, or anything really is that markets are downhill from politics, politics are downhill from social movements, and social movements are downhill from human psychology. There are of course things like technological advancements and other things that flow thru and interact with the entire lot, feedback loops, etc., but this is a basic core logic of mine.
So the first thing to look at in the current hybrid warfare being waged against capital L liberalism is human psychology and how the weapons deployed are specifically designed to create emotional response and create memories, positive feelings, and loyalties around a specific identity.
Most the academic types are very familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and it’s a pretty basic and useful reference, but it’s very wrong. Marketers know its wrong, disinformation professionals know its wrong, financial newsletter sellers on fintwit know its wrong, and all of these actors exploit the mis-perception to maximum effect.
Once past physiological needs of food & water and basic things required to maintain a pulse, there is a psychological need that overrides all others. It’s the thing that governs you & your identity and your willingness to surrender it to somebody else.
It is quite simply the human need to feel special.
In Maslow’s hierarchy this perhaps fits into esteem or love and belonging, but it actually is such a massive psychological need that it could almost fit into the physiological bottom tier. Now, the second piece to understanding this puzzle and how its being used against you and yours is that “normies” are by definition not special. This is one of the paradoxes that has driven the human condition throughout history and also this very moment.
How do not special people, squarely in the normal distribution in all characteristics satisfy this primary need? We have a couple of options, the first rout being the most difficult and path least traveled: high achievement. This requires sustained effort and dedication and in direct competition with everybody else who decided they’d like to be great—it’s hard and there’s no guarantees. They can also satisfy it thru personal relationships and family or even shared fandom of a sports team, shared hobbies, but these don’t have a strong effect on most and wanes. Think back to your mom telling you you’re special before going to school and receiving a contradictory message from your classmates. Or a retired guy who just stormed the Capitol, family life and connections didn’t fill the void.
That leaves organizing.
Organizing creates a sub-group from all the other average people that signifies you’re special, and the more you people you can attract to organize, the more special you are. And if you can attract enough people to the movement that it garners network effects, hierarchies within the organization form and now we have extra layers of specialness to separate ourselves from the pack with.
If you doubt my assertions about the need to feel special, think about the contrarian newsletter writer who is literally selling the worst information possible about the markets at almost all times, and the guy who buys it, and then puts his money into the market and loses it. And then does it again, and again, and again until all of Maslow’s safety needs have been blown to bits. You can repeat the same process with Bitcoin or any other of the techno-utopia scams. They keep paying.
It is simply the price to feel special.
Now the techno-utopian crowd is more than a simple scam to relieve you of your money, they’re part of the big tent fascist organization who want more than your $59.99 per month newsletter subscription fee. They want you to dedicate your identity to their organization, where you are told you are now part of something very special: a movement. We’re gonna write history! You will be a part of it! Your identity is special. This is all base/legacy code in the human operating system.
People care immensely about their identities that fill their need to feel special and will defend them at the expense of everything on the hierarchy chart (up to and including breathing for the antivax identity). So organizing humans IS THE GAME. It’s the key to foundational mythology described in the first WWG post for religion, nation states, political movements, revolutions, quite literally everything. And the fascists want you and your identity badly. They use disinformation crafted to create maximum emotional response (micro targeted to personality type) that cannot be fact checked away once you have incorporated it into your identity and will now defend it at great cost to yourself, in service of them.
Bringing this back to current on-goings in the hybrid warfare we today have an absolute masterclass in executing this process that has led to the election of the fascist Italian project that is Giorgia Meloni. The speech going around post-election is actually from the World Congress of Families event held in Verona from the March 2019 but was where she secured her bona-fides. It is emotional appeal after emotional appeal to members of the movement to defend their identity under attack delivered in a fiery Italian donna caricature.
The appeals themselves are tour de force of lies, victim-hood, and imaginary threats. A finely crafted attack directly on liberalism rated as “spectacular” on twitter by Ted Cruz himself.
I watched the speech, and my takeaway is that Meloni is completely unhinged, but gifted in dark arts and the likely new face of fascism in Europe. She can do what Orban, Le Pen, or Wilders can only dream of. She is the first of the movement’s leaders that combines charisma, intelligence while not being physically repulsive in appearance. I expect a lot of Republicans to jump on the Meloni-train and have more success using her in the US than Orban, who’s face looks like a freshly compacted trash bag. Looks and superficial image are very important to fascists, because like Ted Cruz they also tend to be very pervy. Let’s address some of the key assertions and ridiculous lies from the speech:
“For those who would like us to no longer have an identity”
-This speech is in fact an identity sales pitch in an organizing push. Freedom of association and chosen identity is perhaps the most iron clad tenet of liberalism and is here being weaponized against itself.
“Why is the family an enemy? Why is the family so frightening?”
-Here is an emotional appeal to your existing identity, because everybody has a family. This appeal is crafted to existing common identity between you and her. A buttering up if you will. Thankfully, I remain unafraid of my family.
“the genocide of the world’s Christians? Why?”
-There is no genocide of Christians going on in the world, unless you count in Ukraine since 2014 where the Patron of her fascist movement himself has been murdering Christians at scale. Another victimization appeal wrapped in projection.
“And so they attack national identity, they attack religious identity, they attack gender identity, they attack family identity”
-Here is a rapid-fire repetition of phony attacks on your identity, that people outside your chosen identity that makes you feel special are a threat to you personally—for merely existing of course. The repetition is not accidental.
“I can’t define myself as Italian, Christian, woman, mother. No.”
-And the closer. I cannot express my identity, I am under attack, just like you oh special one in the group who are also under attack. This is closing the deal, talking to you as you’re now on board. Used car sales tactics that work everywhere.
The last bit is designed to get you to see liberalism, the operating system that makes all of this possible as the enemy. Liberalism allowing others to freely organize and identify as other things of course is not a threat at all and explicitly allows her to define herself as: a woman (she/her anyone?), Italian (would miss the cucina), Christian (on new crusades globally atm), Mother (there’s an actual holiday for this).
It is absolute bullshit from start to finish. But the finish has one more spectacular grand finale in store, where the blame is placed on financial speculators trying to turn her and her poor innocent fascist group into slaves (“financial speculators” are funding all of this, she means the Jews).
It’s a bit of an oversimplification, but the end result here is that Putin’s hybrid war has notched a victory like Trump and Brexit and whatever it cost to bomb Syria was a low, low price to pay for Italy.
Inflation
The hottest debate right now from the finance world to the kitchen table in the US is inflation, and there are opinions. Product of financial bubbles, fed money printing? Supply chain disruptions from Covid? Shortages caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Well, its all these things and none of these things at once.
Because we have been operating in broken markets for quite some time. And its in large part from the shift from industrial age to information age as described in the fist WWG post. What has happened is the built-in compounding growth mechanism built into the carbon fueled industrial era broke down gradually and then all at once, while the growth mechanism for the information—wait, wtf is the growth mechanism for the information age? Is there even one?
Carbon era growth was pretty simple, and most everybody knows the history of the US westward expansion and the highway system along with suburban growth that drove the post war boom & boomer prosperity. Now, the thing is, that growth has a compounding factor which also spurs growth elsewhere. And its not petro-dollar recycling back into US markets.
Each new settlement or development requires not just the initial build materials, concrete, asphalt, steel, timber, etc., it also requires services and fleets of trucks, constant supply of fuel, and never-ending supply of consumables tacked onto the baseline infrastructure required to support territorial expansion. Now this isn’t groundbreaking stuff here, but western expansion meant steady, consistent rust belt growth. The growth mechanism however broke when oil got tight, and renewables made foothold at about the same time Los Angeles had built all the way up and into the surrounding mountain ranges.
And the easiest way to think about that broken mechanism is that every windmill farm and every solar installation means we need less of all the consumables required to service feed-stock, tires for trucks, motor oil, etc. Less building materials to continue rust belt growth or even maintain existing housing stock. It’s a massive shock to the system that has been filtering thru for a few decades, and now that China has hit its coal fueled peak of the same kind its an even bigger shock. Now we still need carbon-based fuels to maintain capacity until we’ve transitioned away from dwindling energy supplies, so we are stuck with this is the dance of a broken market in flux until we find a solution or the music stops on its own.
From this perspective, QE and all the other financial engineering takes on a different quality from market manipulation, “fake” or any of the other things angry people have called it. It certainly created a bubble that is currently unwinding and poses contagion risk with the energy market supply shock.
What QE was on paper is one thing but what it was in practice was an organism testing the waters in search of a new growth mechanism for the information age. What it found was mostly scammers, narcissists, and mooning dog money.
So this as the backdrop to our current inflation crisis: base operating system in flux, supply shock to inputs, inputs in process of extinguishing all life on earth—and the fed has done the one thing it knows how to do and hammer the market with rate shocks. The purpose of this is simple, stability in the US home market is gained by smashing emerging markets and making it so Americans are the only ones who can afford gas and drive to McDonald’s for their quarter pounders. It is very temporary.
It’s not an equitable solution for world markets and the damage has already been done globally and will most certainly catch up with Americans. Now the theater where this all really matters is the EU and the ongoing Russian imperialism where energy stocks are their primary remaining physical weapon. In a broken market, where inputs are insufficient, leaders must have crises plans on how to meet the needs of your population to say, get them thru the winter while preparing alternate plans for the future.
Respectfully Mr. Krugman (or disrespectfully), lol
This currency crisis (congrats on inventing it btw) is about raw stocks. The spreadsheets do not matter (except the ones where they don’t have reserves to prop up the currency).
Let’s break it down:
At the very same time the UK is engaged in direct proxy warfare with Russia, an adversary who is trying to extort all of Europe with energy supplies, who manipulated them into Brexit and self-destruction of their real economy—for total financialization, and where laundering money for said Russians was a primary financial income stream—they have no plan, no response, no initiative, no ideas.
In the old days this is when they’d be sending livestock and grain out to the settlements or shires or whatever moss hovels they flavor Scotch with to get thru the winter.
What did the Tories do?
They raided the treasury.
And what did they do next? What’s their plan for getting everybody thru the winter? Oh we’re going to sell a bunch of gilts to cover the infinite costs of purchasing energy in a broken market (after we took all the money that would pay for said expense). Translated: We’ve looted the country and set up a GoFundMe for all you miserable sods stuck in Thunderdome UK, good luck lads.
Bottom line, the GBP is radioactive until a legitimate plan of action is undertaken. Be my guest to go ahead and buy it if your spreadsheet says so. Looting phase two of the Tory plan of action will be to kill off NHS and anything else public serving, and then to spike rates if they manage to stick around that long.
Instability
Times of flux, while also being wildly unstable are also times of opportunity and to shed old and decaying ways. Fascists know this, they’re the ones who understand organizing & narrative intuitively at least if not fully aware—and their game is always to sabotage it for the existing stake holders. But its also the time for new ideas to come forward, for organic ideas to take root with natural organizing picking up around the good ones. This is the strength of the liberal operating system, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of association. People figure shit out and smart people are more or less equally distributed everywhere. People, uh find a way.
In this process, the shaky underpinnings of the organizing that got us into our predicament reveal themselves, similar to bad patches in legacy code showing up when companies attempt to upgrade systems. We get to a place where a realistic, almost Malthusian logic must be applied in taking inventory to even begin formulating a plan of action. As a society we have X many physical resources, and the knowledge base to do Y with them. Malthus’ ideas weren’t completely wrong, its just the carrying capacity of the planet is not a static figure and can easily be expressed: technological capability divided by required technological inputs (TC/TI).
We, in the United States at least have a lot of all those things. Human resources, commodity resources, and technological know-how. Politics is often referred to as the art of the possible, and times of flux where old systems are irreparably broken are the times where the range of what is possible and also socially viable at the same time is the widest. Small thinking and attempts to ride the old systems until the wheels fall off are how fascists assume power—they have answers to people’s problems. They’re bad answers for out group folks, but answers none the less so they get traction.
The fundamental problem for the center right now, for people who are not interested in any of what fascism has on offer, is nobody has answers or even ideas (good ones, not hyperloop stupidity). Green new deal? Infrastructure? OK but these are Band-Aids for a broken body politic and they’re not really designed to do anything other than to keep the old system on life support.
So how do we come up with them? What is our current inventory, what are the current constraints, what are our options and how do we get people on board once we think we have something?
The first thing in my opinion constraining the possible is the social fracturing that 40+ years of financialization and right wing Reaganism has bestowed upon us. How do we break the stranglehold capital has on society? How do we get rural America, traditional minded folks on board? Always somebody like Bernie Sanders offers something like fixing economic conditions for them, but that has been a carrot offered by democrats for 50 years! They don’t want it!
How did we end up where the republican base became completely adversarial with the traditional republican power structure, where they decided they needed to try and take the party over for themselves? Part of it was certainly the arrangement where the business class took all the money and paid only lip service to their base’s concerns was untenable. Yes, much of the the base is very religious and/or racist but they weren’t full on theocrats or radicalized as a force until recently. The bulk of them were on paper just fine being part of the American experiment without the need to dominate it, they weren’t interested in the democrats because the price of admission is being OK with gays and minorities but that exists in every society, everywhere and they got along. In fact they rallied HARD around the American experiment post 9/11.
And then George Bush and the republican party created an absolutely bullshit premise for a war that should have never happened. The US armed forces are highly represented by the GOP base, and the GOP went from ignoring their concerns to shipping them off to a war of choice like they were a bunch of Russian peasants. This is not the deal, the social contract they were a party of. Republicans did this is after they’d also allowed and profited from the Sacklers flooding said communities with opioids. Any surprise these folks were pissed off?
Trump, the idiot savant that he is recognized this. He rode down that escalator and made these folks feel special for the first time probably since the rust belt began its terminal decline. A lot of these folks are lost, maybe some can come back, but at the same time MAGA and Trump’s popularity maxed out already and is waning. We have to try at the very least.
We need to have something on offer to bring these folks back into the American experiment. And we have to have an idea of what exactly can we build that will not only be of service in the future, but is built for the future world we are careening into seat-belts on and bracing for impact in the crash position.
It starts with water.
I nicked the main artwork here from the Brad Sucks album Guess Who’s a Mess. Give it a spin.