Academic study: America is an oligarchy

[doodle]

A 26 foot fifth wheel is tight even for one person over an extended period.  I lived in one off and on for a couple of years, and I learned that.  You also have to keep the guest list for parties very short, though I did enjoy having company.

You two guys are like modern day Thoreaus.....you put me to shame. From chapter 6. Visitors

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another. Many of our houses, both public and private, with their almost innumerable apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear to be extravagantly large for their inhabitants. They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only vermin which infest them. I am surprised when the herald blows his summons before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House,(1) to see come creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous mouse, which soon again slinks into some hole in the pavement.

[MediumTex]

MT,

When I read what you write, I often get the picture that you are this guy:



Who has somehow gotten himself trapped inside of this guy:

There was a time in my life when I thought Hunter S. Thompson was the coolest guy who ever lived. 

When he committed suicide it was a really really sad thing for me because I thought that he had a unique voice that no one else before or since has come close to matching in its intensity.  The problem is that the later HST was a shadow of the writer he was from the late 1960s through the mid 1970s, and I don't blame him for being depressed at the loss of his literary voice that I'm sure he missed as much as his fans did.

I even journeyed to the Woody Creek Tavern in 1991 hoping to meet him.  I did not meet him, but it was still a very worthwhile pilgrimage.

The thing that makes me happy, though, is that instead of merely mimicking HST, I feel like I understand my own voice as a writer (which is, of course, different from anyone else), and thus I am able write many things with almost no thought--i.e., once I understand what MT would say about something, I just say it.  The piece just appears in my head more or less complete (especially its rhythm), and the challenge is just to transcribe it accurately, which sometimes takes some trial and error, but it's always pretty easy to tell when I have it wrong because it just doesn't sound right.

[Pointedstick]

The RV thing was quite the experience, let me tell you. But it woke me up to the real things in life that were making me unhappy, so I've begun to change them.

But yeah, America is an oligarchy. Just align yourself with the interests of the very rich and you'll probably do great; you don't even need to be rich yourself!

[MediumTex]

Pre-Gonzo HST:



This is the dude that I always wanted to understand better.

[MachineGhost]

Im just arguing for concious consumption...not the absence of it. I am arguing that people should think more deeply about their personal wants and needs instead of just going out shopping cause they are bored and need an outlet. And frankly, if there were

The problem is this requires continual effort and discipline, it gets tiring and it gets boring maintaining it all the time.  It is easier to just go along with "The Magic" of biological envy as it is the path of least resistance.  Everyone needs to engage their primitive lizard brain parts to escape from the toil and drudgery of work and shopping is just one of many outlets to do it.  I think people that are Voluntary Simplicity whackjobs are just self-flagellating monk masochists.  No one enjoys poverty unless it is forced onto them by circumstances, in which case then the situation is understandable (though if you ask me, all those Welfare Queens with several cars and fur coats sure are obsessed with showing off that they're not ______ trash.  But rather than sound like a cranky Republican, the fact is the cars and furs are a store of value like gold that are not counted against them for purposes of welfare).

That being said, one of the greatest and wonderful benefits of not having all of your shit bury you is a lot less stress and not having to worry about it or it restricting your freedom/opportunities.  But choosing to step off of or not participate in the Hedonic Treadmill is not the same as ideological masochism like Voluntary Simplicity.  Have you not noticed the #1 problem people have is they're all too ideological???  We're all trying to live up to some metaphysical ideal to deal with the mundane, biological, violent horror of nature and death of the universe that we live in.

How do you live practically in FL without a car?  Are you living in a city like Miami or are you in the suburbs?

[MachineGhost]

The thing that makes me happy, though, is that instead of merely mimicking HST, I feel like I understand my own voice as a writer (which is, of course, different from anyone else), and thus I am able write many things with almost no thought--i.e., once I understand what MT would say about something, I just say it.  The piece just appears in my head more or less complete (especially its rhythm), and the challenge is just to transcribe it accurately, which sometimes takes some trial and error, but it's always pretty easy to tell when I have it wrong because it just doesn't sound right.

See, MT truly IS a Guru.  He transcommunicates directly from the Akashic Hall of Records!!!  I am truly in doe-eyed wonder...

[MediumTex]

The thing that makes me happy, though, is that instead of merely mimicking HST, I feel like I understand my own voice as a writer (which is, of course, different from anyone else), and thus I am able write many things with almost no thought--i.e., once I understand what MT would say about something, I just say it.  The piece just appears in my head more or less complete (especially its rhythm), and the challenge is just to transcribe it accurately, which sometimes takes some trial and error, but it's always pretty easy to tell when I have it wrong because it just doesn't sound right.

See, MT truly IS a Guru.  He transcommunicates directly from the Akashic Hall of Records!!!  I am truly in doe-eyed wonder...

I am just an instrument...a vessel. 

[ns3]

A good article by Pat Buchanan about what it would take for Americans to rise up and throw off the oligarchy.....

http://townhall.com/columnists/patbucha ... e-n1838839

Basically, he is saying we have to stop falling for the left/right, conservative/liberal games that keep us divided and find common ground on issues that really matter. He sounds pessimistic but sees a ray of hope in the way Americans responded to events in Syria when Obama was about to take us to war with the blessing of congress.  He didn't mention it but I would point out that the much maligned Baby Boomer generation once stood up to demand an end to a senseless war and succeeded.

I think it's possible that "Immigration reform" might be the next Vietnam but like Pat, I'm pretty pessimistic about it.

[Libertarian666]

I've been chomping at the bit to post this ever since the forum fell over a few days ago. An adademic study by stats professors at Princeton and Northwestern universities analyzed data on political lobbying, voting, donations, and observed outcomes, and concluded that America is an oligarchy:

https://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/Gile ... 3-7-14.pdf

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
[…]
[W]e have been able to produce some striking findings. One is the nearly total failure of “median voter”? and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.
[…]
In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule -- at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose.

I'm shocked, shocked! that there's elitism going on here.