Feudalism is a viable alternative to tolerating a middle class, especially lucrative to the multinational corporations and globalist billionaires that hide this agenda behind a moral masquerade.
A recent column by Victor Davis Hanson titled “Radical New Rules for Post-America” lists “10 new ideas that are changing America, maybe permanently.” Hanson offers a thorough description of what’s wrong: Fiscal and monetary negligence, selective enforcement or nonenforcement of laws, anti-white racism, rights and privileges for immigrants over citizens, an infantilized culture, hypocrisy, urban chaos, censorship and cancel culture, politicized “science,” and “woke” as the new religion, with Big Tech as the clergy.
While there may not be a more succinct description of the new and radical rules Americans face these days, Hanson is covering familiar territory. But what is the cause of these changes?
It doesn’t require a conspiracy theorist to suggest these wholesale shifts in American culture are not happening by accident. Nor are they solely the result of nefarious intent, at least not among everyone occupying the highest rungs of power and influence in America. What motivates members of the American elite, billionaires and corporate boards alike, to approve of these radical changes?
Unsustainable Prosperity for Me, But Not for Thee?
One answer comes down to this: They believe the lifestyle of the American middle class is not sustainable, because the planet does not have the carrying capacity to extend an American level of consumption to everyone in the world. By dividing and confusing the American people, while wielding the moral bludgeons of saving the planet and eliminating racism, policies can be implemented that will break the American middle class and habituate them to expect less.
In the name of saving the planet, for example, new suburbs will become almost impossible to construct. Single-family detached homes with yards will be stigmatized as both unsustainable and racist, and to mitigate these evils, subsidized apartments will replace homes, with rent subsidized occupants. As America’s population grows via mass immigration, the footprint of cities will remain fixed. The politically engineered housing shortage will force increasing numbers of Americans into subsidized housing. All of this is already happening, but it’s just getting started.
Similar cramdowns will occur with respect to all social amenities that consume resources. Land is just the primary example, but water, energy, and transportation will all be affected. This new political economy will also depopulate rural areas—through corporate consolidation of farmland as regulations and resource costs drive small operations under and through punitive regulations and insurance burdens driving people out of the “urban-wildland interface.” Outside of major cities, for the most part, the only people left will be extremely wealthy landowners and corporate employees.
Joel Kotkin, who has studied and written about demographics and migrations for years, recently authored The Coming of Neo Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. Of all the shorthand descriptions for the political economy that is coming, feudalism may be the best fit. As Kotkin puts it:
The new class structure resembles that of Medieval times. At the apex of the new order are two classes?a reborn clerical elite, the clerisy, which dominates the upper part of the professional ranks, universities, media and culture, and a new aristocracy led by tech oligarchs with unprecedented wealth and growing control of information. These two classes correspond to the old French First and Second Estates.
Below these two classes lies what was once called the Third Estate. This includes the yeomanry, which is made up largely of small businesspeople, minor property owners, skilled workers and private-sector-oriented professionals. Ascendant for much of modern history, this class is in decline while those below them, the new Serfs, grow in numbers?a vast, expanding property-less population.
Both Kotkin and Hanson assert that the trend towards feudalism can be reversed if people understand what is occurring and react effectively. To that end, it is necessary to understand that behind the obvious benefit these new rules have in service of the elites and their interests, there is a moral pretext. How solid is that pretext, that America’s middle class is not sustainable?
The following chart shows American energy use per person over the past 20 years compared to China, India, and Nigeria. Although expressed in kilowatt-hours, the chart is referencing all forms of energy consumed, merely using kWh to normalize everything—oil, gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, renewables—into a common unit.
What is notable on this chart is that Americans have successfully reduced their average energy consumption over the past 20 years, although not by much. But where will American energy consumption eventually level off? How much lower can it go? Notice how China, a nation with more than four times America’s population, has tripled its per capita consumption of energy over the past 20 years, yet still only consumes one-third as much as the average American consumes. India, a nation nearly equal in population to China, is way behind but destined to catch up fast. The average Indian today consumes less than one-tenth of what the average American consumes. What will happen in the next 20 years?
If these comparisons aren’t dramatic enough, notice Nigeria’s stats. With a population that has just topped 200 million, Nigeria is the demographic heavyweight in Africa, a continent where the population is projected to double to more than 2.5 billion by 2050. As of 2015, the average Nigerian only consumed one-thirtieth as much energy as the average American consumes.
Addressing Urgency with Reality
Energy is the prerequisite for economic growth. If you have abundant energy, you can have abundant water, transportation, communications, light, heat, mechanized agriculture, refrigerated medicines; everything. And the cold fact confronting America’s elites is this: For everyone on earth to consume half as much energy as Americans consume, total energy production worldwide would have to more than double.
Can America’s middle class sustain its current lifestyle while consuming half as much energy as it does today? Or is it feasible for energy production in the world not merely to double, but quadruple? And if that can be done, is it possible without paying too high a price in terms of environmental impact? And if it cannot be done, can the American experience, which is to enjoy a lifestyle many times greater than that enjoyed by most of the rest of the people on earth, be justified? And if so, why?
These are tough questions. Unequivocal, simple answers to these questions do not exist. But the conventional answer that motivates America’s elites must nonetheless be challenged, because until it is, they will cloak their consolidation of power and their elimination of America’s middle class in the moral imperatives of saving the planet and eliminating racism.
It may seem illogical to suppose the “systemic racism” canard is more easily disposed of, but that’s only because racism, by design, is the ongoing obsession in American media and politics. Despite this well-engineered obsession, resolute opposition to “anti-racist” racism is growing because it is an obvious lie. Racism, from all sources, still exists. But systemic racism against nonwhites, from every angle you look at it in modern American society, simply does not exist. Politicians, journalists, and academics need to find the courage to explain the facts and turn the tide. It can be done.
Saving the planet, on the other hand, is a moral imperative with ongoing urgency.
This urgency may be divided into two broad categories. The first is the traditional concerns of environmentalists, to preserve wildlife and wilderness, and reduce or eliminate sources of pollution. While environmentalists, especially in the United States, often go way too far in addressing these traditional concerns, these are genuine moral imperatives that must be balanced against the economic needs of civilization. This is an important but manageable debate.
The second, new concern of environmentalists, however, is the “climate emergency.” Grossly overblown, hyped for reasons that are transparently opportunistic, fraught with potential for tyranny and punitively expensive, the “climate emergency,” more than anything else, is the moral justification for destroying the American middle class.
In the name of saving the climate, federal and certain state authorities are restricting fossil fuel development, despite the fact that fossil fuels—coal, oil, and gas—still produce 85 percent of worldwide energy, with nuclear and hydropower making up another 11 percent. If energy production is going to double, which at a minimum it must, how on earth will that be accomplished without fossil fuel? It is impossible.
And the planners who are suppressing fossil fuel development worldwide know it. By creating shortages and raising prices for everything, they intend to reduce median rates of consumption in America to a fraction of what it is today, and render a middle-class lifestyle completely out of reach to the average American. In doing so, they’ll amass even more wealth for themselves.
There is another path. By focusing on the most likely predictions instead of the most catastrophic, nations can focus on climate resiliency—something which is a good idea anyway—while continuing to develop clean fossil fuel and also continuing to develop leapfrog technologies such as nuclear fusion. The environmental benefit of this approach is tangible and profound: with energy comes prosperity, with prosperity comes lower birthrates. With energy, inviting urban centers are possible, and urbanization takes pressure off wilderness. In both cases, with abundant energy, people voluntarily choose to limit their family size and move to cities.
A moral case for fossil fuels can outweigh the supposedly moral case against fossil fuel. Americans have to be willing to fight that fight, along with every other tyrannical edict attendant to the “climate emergency,” starting with the restrictions on urban expansion and single-family homes.
With adherence to the principles and culture that made America great—competition, private ownership, rule of law, minimizing corruption, and rewarding innovation—America’s middle class can survive and grow. But feudalism is a viable alternative, especially lucrative to the multinational corporations and globalist billionaires who will never call it by that name, hiding instead behind a moral masquerade.
@ Reader:
People need computers and cell phones. They really need them. Not to mention medical technology and many other things. Can anyone name some> It’s not artificial. Things Marx never even dreamed of. What things will the changed mode of production cause people to need in a hundred years that we can’t imagine? Our needs are not limited to that of agricultural societies, as the physiocrats believed.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Your argument was was that human needs are “not finite”.
Just because many ads advertise PRODUCTS that are necessary, doesn’t mean that everyone NEEDS absolutely every product that has ever been made, or that ads do not serve to pump up demand which without them would not exist.
Needs, wants, and demand for certain products are different from each other.
Maybe there are some people whose desire to possess things, etc. is limitless but it doesn’t mean that human needs (what someone needs to live) are limitless.
In fact, I think that we might live to see how our “needs” are dictated to us by the likes of Bill Gates and Co.
@ Reader:
Well, they are not all artificial and unnecessary. New types of production bring about new types of needs. Old modes are continually being replaced by new.
@ Ella:
The dems want their way and the rest to be submissive!
They never got rid of slavery/racist mentality and want the 99% to be “good socialists’ beneficiaries” so that the 1% can enjoy!
@ Sebastien Zorn:
“needs are not finite”
NOTHING is “not finite”.
What about all those scary TV series and books about hoarders?
What is this “minimalist” movement all about?
How about some books on “decluttering” selling by millions of copies to the clutter sufferers – they should be happy and keep getting even more stuff with their credit cards?
You don’t have to read Marx to know that capitalism does create artificial wants (you are not tired yet of being showered with ads every second of your life? and no one you know has ever used ad blocking software?) in order for the production to keep going and for the markets to expand, however, NOTHING CAN EXPAND INDEFINITELY.
It is interesting that while trying to ex[and the demand, the same people try to shrink their employees incomes and replace people with machinery, and, ultimately, get rid of “the useless eaters” who are no longer needed for work..
For some reason. it doesn’t occur to them that the worker and the consumer is the same person, and if you get rid of most of the world’s population, the demand will dramatically shrink.
@ Michael S:
Yes, that’s why both the Soviet Union and China had to resort to capitalist methods, invite foreign investment and steal foreign technology to develop their infrastructures, not to mention slave labor. Also, what Marx didn’t understand was that needs are not finite and there never will be a time when there is no shortage of anything that is needed or wanted. Marxists say capitalism creates artificial wants to fuel it’s appetite for growth but at the same time he advocated a socialist transition period to stimulate such growth towards fully developed communism which he said the bourgeoisie, seeing what was ahead, refused to continue to do, which actually makes no sense. You’d think he couldn’t have it both ways, but that’s where dialectics comes in.
@ linda goudsmit:
“The will to power and megalomaniacal ambition to rule the world is a reversal back to the binary structure of rulers and ruled.”
I used to think of megalomaniacal ambition as pertaining to individuals, such as Alexander the Great and Hitler. I don’t think that’s changed, even though it now is talked about as belonging to oligarchies such as “The New World Order”, DAVOS, etc. Those are just vehicles to get the maniacs in power. Once there,they will undoubtedly turn on one another — just as the Roman triumvirates did, one after another. You are also spot-on, with,
“Sustainability is the jibber-jabber of globalists intent on installing themselves as rulers…”
@ Sebastien Zorn:
“The Malthusian theory was supported by many people, but 19th-century sociologist Karl Marx claimed that poverty and hunger was a result of the capitalist economy, not population growth. He argued that food supplies would keep pace with population growth if wealth was distributed fairly.”
Thanks, Sebastien. It seems as though Malthus and Marx were equally imbecilic.
Concerning Marx, he had it backwards: Maintaining food supplies requires capitalism to incentivize not only farming, but tractor production, fertilizer production, all the things required. The land, once cleared with human labor and capital, can only expose the plants to the sun. The record of agriculture under communism is Historically large famines in Russia, China and Ethiopia.
So, Malthus is the population control guy? What a charlatan? “Depopulating” humanity to gather wealth into the hands of the few, used to have different names, such as theft, highway robbery, pillaging….
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Thanks for the Dr. Strangelove link.
It looks like a prophecy now.
One of the commenters under the video called it a documentary!
@ Sebastien Zorn:
“To each according to his need” was supposed to be far in the future (“communism”) when the technological development would reach such an extremely high stage and the level of production would be so high that there would be no need for people to work for a living.
In fact, such a stage appears to be not so far away (for a large number of people) but the super-rich who wield all the power are choosing, instead of setting up a new kind of system or at least letting it develop, to kill off “the useless eaters” who are no longer needed to produce goods and services.
Frankly, I am astounded that it came to that – I was positive that no one would be found who is even capable of thinking about such a solution.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
The thing is that there were a couple of very talented people who came up with a pretty good (at least I don’t think there was a better one) theoretical model of how societies grow and develop but when any idea gets down to the masses, it hits the lowest common denominator, and the next set of leaders comes out of this layer.
Trotsky said about Stalin that Stalin was the most outstanding mediocrity in the party.
When Marx’s son in law told him about the discussions which took place in the Marxist circles (these were gatherings in someone’s apartment where young people discussed the latest ideas), Marx responded: “Well, then I am not a Marxist.”
It also turned out that when backward (economically and politically) countries try to skip over stages of development by trying to “build socialism”, it doesn’t work (even though they do manage to speed up up their economic development at first).
So what they call “socialism” is in reality whatever they manage to create with some new ideas based on their old experience.
For example, even Hitler didn’t think Stalin was a socialist.
He said “Stalin is no socialist – he merely revived the Russian monarchy except in its more cruel form.” [cited from memory]
@ Reader:
Your comment reminded me of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybSzoLCCX-Y
@ Reader:
Good point. I remember the formula for the transitional period of Socialism beginning, “from each according to his labor” in both cases, was not “to each according to his need” but “to each according to the value of his labor”. While Marx intended this as an incentive for factory workers to get the education and take the responsibility to be managers, this convenient little loophole became the justification for the creation of the new aristocracy under Communist regimes, and even in bourgeois labor unions under capitalism, the argument being, whose labor could possibly be more important than that of the leaders?
@ linda goudsmit:
You don’t know what you are talking about.
Repeating propaganda is not the same as thinking.
For me, the issue is far simpler.Throughout history the socio-political structure of societies was binary – there were only rulers and ruled. Then came the United States of America, a country that rejected monarchy and established a society based on individual freedoms, where the Protestant work ethic created individual wealth, upward mobility, and a robust middle class. The historical socio-political pyramid had three sections instead of two. The will to power and megalomaniacal ambition to rule the world is a reversal back to the binary structure of rulers and ruled. To do so requires destroying the middle class in America. Sustainability is the jibber-jabber of globalists intent on installing themselves as rulers of a dystopian one-world government. The middle class in America is the bulwark of freedom for the entire world. The war on America’s middle class is a war on national sovereignty and a return to the feudal structure of rulers and ruled on a planetary scale.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Actually. you didn’t have to aplogize for what you wrote.
https://fee.org/articles/marx-was-right-about-redistribution/
Marxism has nothing to do with dividing anyone’s pie.
The question is NOT the need for freedom and incentive to “bake the pie” but WHO POSSESSES the freedom and incentive to bake the pie – the people or only the very few imperialists (the super-rich and their corporations and institutions).
The author wishes to keep thinking well of the super-rich (after all, they are virtuous capitalists!) and he invents some plausible reasons, such as concern about sustainability, for their misconduct .
How about the one very simple reason which is that the super-rich just don’t give a crap about anybody else except themselves and their own desires, wealth, and comfort and they use their almost limitless wealth and power to do whatever the hell they want unimpeded and with impunity?
Melinda Gates confessed recently in an interview that “WE [emphasis mine, the quotation is from memory] didn’t anticipate such an effect [of the pandemic] on the economy.”
Great wealth has nothing to do with great intelligence or great virtues.
The super-rich seem to be very clever IDIOTS who may end up depopulating or otherwise destroying the planet and, as a result, starving and freezing to death in their once comfy bunkers after implementing their and some mad scientists’ all-encompassing initiatives based on a stupid assumption that they already know everything, and that they are the best, the smartest, and the Earth belongs to them alone to do with as they please.
@ Michael S:
Forget I said that. I just google it, and this sounds right.
@ Michael S:
Actually, it’s not Marx but Malthus and Marx argued against him on this point. Marx argued that, if I remember the formula correctly, the relationship between the increase of population and productive forces was geometric, rather than arithmetic, as Malthus stated. It was Malthus who argued that the pie is finite and so advocated population control. Today, the main neo-Malthusian argument is that resources are finite so they should be spread out more thinly and evenly rather than having fewer people, but it’s still Malthus.
the Demo hatr america?
the Demo hatr america?
the Demo hatr america?
Edward Ring is a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness and co-founder in 2013 of the California Policy Center.
Considering the headlong dive California has been undergoing this generation, an architect of “California Policy” should not be emulated.
Victor Davis Hanson, on the other hand, has hit the mark. I was especially struck by
““woke” as the new religion, with Big Tech as the clergy.
Among Ring’s points, was
“One answer comes down to this: They [America’s Elite] believe the lifestyle of the American middle class is not sustainable, because the planet does not have the carrying capacity to extend an American level of consumption to everyone in the world.”
This thinking is the basis of Marxism: that the wealth of the planet is a fixed-sized “pie”; and the problem is in how it is divided. Marxism presumably aimed at dividing it more equitably, whereas this “Neo-feudalism”, advocated by Ring, seeks to divide it less equitably. The flaw in the thinking is not how the “pie” is divided; it’s whether or not the freedom and incentive needed to bake the pie is allowed or stifled.