Capital - Part 2
Capital - Part 2
A set of underlying tendencies of our governments cause many of the common issues seen today and throughout our history. The systems all seem sound in theory, but due to nepotism and loss or permutation of meaning in the laws governing life the system changes with the mentalities of those in leadership. There are multiple layers of leadership which consist of:
Military, Judicial, Legislative
And the Mercantile
The effect of the last level of leadership is often overlooked or under-appreciated, while the nepotism and self-serving behaviors seen therein determine the direction of the entire system and the quality of life of its citizens. This combination of an under-regulated governing body as well as the human tendency to favor the familiar through daily demonstrations of nepotism paint a picture which clearly shows not only why we are seeing the trends throughout our societies as they exist today, but also of exactly what we can do to adjust to create stable communities for future generations.
The mercantile branch of government is the strongest branch due to its ability to influence all other branches directly through targeted incentives. This branch is essentially the one that controls the movements and incentivizes the actions of the commonly acknowledged branches of government, directs the lives of the common citizen through the maintence of the job market, provide indirect role models for the youngest generations, as well as set the societal norms for how peoples of various ethnic and economic backgrounds are viewed outside of the merit they earn through their independent actions. The power and reach of 'money' is felt more each year as we see the self-serving tendencies of business in the chase for the next dollar rooting out the safeguards put in place to protect the common people. However, this is often not a symptom of big business in general, but of big public owned business, especially the ones that grow too large to fail. The moral compass of individuals running private businesses differs vastly from those of the money hounds at the helm of public businesses. While the former can plateau and be satisfied, the latter is charged with finding value wherever it may lay and taking it whenever it is in the company's best interests to do so in order to deliver a consistent return to the morally detached and otherwise largely uninterested stockholders.
The term we see today used to label this empirically understood form of government is the “military industrial complex” . The commonly acknowledged levels of government are accounted for by the “military” portion of the complex while the “industrial” side is the mercantile branch of 'government' discussed above. The term and its implications along with this adjusted meaning of the term bring to light many of the problems we see afflicting society today as well as the growing levels of inequality seen throughout. One way of framing the root problem is that there is only so much room at the top and while one person climbs up, several others have to be maligned.
To make a new seat in the box at the top, we must fill a stadium for the new people at the bottom.
The data on who is left in the dust is unsurprising when we consider the nature of the complex. The reason we see a hard-lining of the prejudice experienced in decades past is because nothing ever actually changes in who is at the top of the economic ladder, who is setting the examples for those on all levels of the military branches to form their unavoidable prejudices upon, who the children from all respective backgrounds have to follow subconsciously as examples for who they can aspire to become. Who our youth feel they can become is often the reflection of their composite selves seen in the eyes of their teachers, parents, guardians, and close community adult role models who have taken in prejudice throughout their lives, both good and bad, and boiled it down into mannerisms which our youth tune in and consume instinctively.
More questions arise with these understandings of the system, human tendency, and industry trends. How, who, or what can fix this growing divide? Can and should the divide be fixed or is it just a symptom of the 'best' method of governance we have accepted as a whole? Is there a means of accounting for human tendency in our systems while allowing individuals to rise? Can we allow individuals to rise based solely on merit and passion? Could the proposed adjustments be considered immutable if we attempt to forecast far enough into the future and make the system as abstract in its qualification of inequality as possible? These questions as well as our proposed solution will be presented in the final section of our Capital post.
