Actually, it is not difficult to buy nukes.
Clayton,
I'm surprised you even bothered with him as long as you did. Even if you are wrong about which royalty is still a major power (such as the Queen of England), the fact remains that the PTB are people with massive fortunes or groups of people who combine their fortunes in order to increase their power, and they don't necessarily all get along. We only have to look at campaign contributions to see how the PTB support politicians. This is the most obvious way they go about it, but it is not the only way.
Let's just look at Bill Clinton' net worth estimated between $38 million and $80 million. What? How did this man who had less than $1 million in assets back in 1992 come to own $80 million dollars? One way was through giving $200,000 speeches. What does Clinton have to say worth $200,000? Please, this guy is being rewarded by the PTB. It's a quid pro quo. "You do what we want while in office. You say what we want on TV ads (anyone see his ads for Obama? Please, Clinton doesn't give a shit about Obama), and we will reward you with lots of money."
So what about the Crown Estate? Wikipedia says the Queen has some control over it, but it's not entirely hers. So what? Michelle Obama isn't spending her $$$ when she goes on multimillion dollar shopping trips throughout the world. So what if the money she is spending isn't hers? She still gets to spend it.
Maybe that is the situation the Queen finds herself in. It's not properly hers, but she still gets to spend some of it. Maybe it's not. Maybe she doesn't have the power you think she has. But I think that's not really the point. The point is the PTB do have lots of money, and they do reward people for doing what they want, and we are not privy to all the facts, but that doesn't make the PTB any less real. It just means that if you are wrong about the Queen, then it's just some other PTB (whether individual or group) running the show. So what?
better than 50/50 thats a nonproliferation sting.
Did you watch the video? or the back story for it? If it was a sting, they'd have been arressted. Also, what law enforcement agency has jurisdiction in Bulgaria?
gotlucky the shamed! Long time no tattle! Even you can't stand up for him and his baseless assertions. What you said is uncontroversial.
What do I care if I am uncontroversial? Why do you seek controversy? Ever try not being a jerk?
Clayton:But I think that's less important to the Power Elite analysis - most of that wealth is the result of the engine of capitalism: the masses producing goods to be consumed by the masses (I can't remember who I got this quote from... Sowell? Friedman?)
Yes, but whatever the size of the slice of pie which goes to the elite, the pie became enormously larger in the last two centuries than it had ever been before, and the financiers were first to the dinner table. Let me put it this way, if the kings had accumulated 50% of the wealth created from 1000-1800, and the capitalists accumulated just 5% of the wealth produced since 1800, who has more wealth?
That's missing the point.. First of all, all the money in the world won't buy Warren Buffet or Bill Gates an aircraft carrier fleet or a nuke.
No, but it can buy them politicians who do control aircraft carriers and nukes. And if one set of politicians aren't amenable to being puppets, you can always find another set who are, who can use their aircraft carriers and nukes against the first set.
I think that's attributing hyper-competence to the industrial/banking/merchant class. It's "incredible". There's no reason to believe why they should suddenly be so much more competent at the dirty tricks of ruling than the long-established ruling families themselves. I think it's a mistake to think of the wars as a takeover of the ruling class by the merchant class; rather, I see it as a treacherous cannibalism of one segment of the Establishment by another segment, perhaps with the aid and financing of wealthy interests such as the Rothschilds.
If King Jones is dependent on Rothschild's loans to defend himself from King Smith, and King Smith is dependent on Rothschild's loans to finance the attack on King Jones, and if Rothschild can cut the funding to either one at his pleasure, depending on who he wants to win, who's running the show?
Well, I take a more diminutive view of the financiers. The mafia have a word for them: bookies. That's all they are. The ruling Elites are something different and more complex... they're a brand, a genetic club
The financiers as just as much a "genetic club" as the royal and aristocratic families, the only difference being the length of the pedigree. But, as they say, past results do not guarantee future performance. Louis' pedigree was plenty long when his head came off.
territories (which, being perpetual tax-revenue generators, are far more valuable than a big pile of gold)
Pre-modern States generally had ultra-low tax revenues by modern standards. The imposition of more significant taxes coincided with two developments: 1) massive national debts (owed to the likes of Rothschild), and 2) the elimination of monarchy (in all but name) and its replacement with representative government. Take England for example. The Stuart Kings were always short on funds. They were not rolling in abundant tax revenues. One of their major problems was their bad credit, and that situation only improved when parliament became the guarantor, as opposed to the King personally. I see this as the beginning of the ascendancy of the financiers. They created the Bank of England, allied with the parliament, and sidestepped the King. They saw that monarchy was a less efficient form of tax-farming than representative government (and, perhaps even more importantly, uncooperative politicians can be replaced far more easily than uncooperative kings), because the latter can get away with much more than the former, and they made the switch. Obviously the Kings would not have been amenable to this. These same financial interests financed the destruction of the Russian monarchy and quite possibly the French, and certainly the German and Hapsburg. I think there is actually a lot of truth in the whole "making the world safe for democracy" theme, where modern history is viewed as a struggle against monarchy, with the caveat that this fight was being fought by the new gaggle of budding mafiosos who merely wanted to replace the old mafiosos for their own benefit. Just look around, all the real monarchs in the West are gone, all that remain are those who have submitted to parliaments. You might say this is an illusion, but I think it's exactly what it appears to be.
1) I meant "uncontroversial" in the sense that 'everyone in this thread agrees with it'.
2) I don't seek controversy.
3) Yeah, I agreed with you. Even if you were denigrating me in the first sentence of that post...Have you ever tried not being a jerk?
Obviously, King Smith. ;)
if the kings had accumulated 50% of the wealth
But I don't think that Kings were ever big on accumulating money... most of them were spend-thrifts. Why do you think the political pundits have such a hard time understanding the "Ron Paulian" fixation with "hard money"? ... "What's the big deal, money is just a token, anyway. All that matters is real goods. Isn't that even what JB Say himself said?"
And to anyone with the power to nationalize any particular line of production (such as, a King), money really is a pointless nuisance, except for security against deposition and the conspiracies of the nobles, or in payment of foreign bribes or procurement of supplies when the army is overseas. In short, the King really does not have to buy anything within his own territory, except as a matter of trying not to upend the territorial economy.
You might say this is an illusion, but I think it's exactly what it appears to be.
I don't think it's an illusion at all. I just have a different view of the Establishment.
Nobody ever "took over" the Establishment in the history of the world and I'm firmly convinced it will never happen. It's simply the logic of competitive elimination... as the ranks are thinned, you're competing against ever-more-apt opponents. The Rothschilds have clearly meshed with the Establishment to some extent (I think that racism within the ranks of the Elites has tempered a whole-hearted embrace) but that's as far as I see it going.
Clayton -
Yeah, that is why they hold their gold at the NY Fed.
You and I and nobody else in the world has any idea what kind of cash the Vatican has.
Here's a thought:
Increasingly I view the State as essentially a device for coercive cartelization, not actually as a "tax-farm." Taxation is instrumental, not an end in itself. In other words, the State is essentially corporatist in character. That is its nature. Another way of describing this is as a "plantation." In any case, the only important exception to this rule occurred in Europe during the Middle Ages, when for various historical reasons States were restrained from economic intervention to a large degree, what Ralph Raico refers to as the "European Miracle." This involved an explosive expansion of production and capital accumulation outside the domain of the State: off the plantation, so to speak. Hence the independent merchants, bankers, and industrialists gained far more influence relative the State than they as a class had ever enjoyed before. They used this influence to take control of States. Around this same time, States began to reorganize themselves to be more efficient cartelizing machines. Innovations included the introduction of democracy and eventually leftism, which added to the legitimacy of the State, and allowed it to justify far more economic intervention than would have been possible before (i.e. more thorough cartelization). The State apparatus itself was rationalized: e.g. the civil services were professionalized. And so the decline of classical liberalism since the 19th century can be understood as a reversion to the norm that existed prior to the "European Miracle," as the aforementioned merchants, bankers, and industrialists once again closed the door (non-cartelized economy) through which they themselves had walked to power.
Clayton:most of them were spend-thrifts.
Indeed, hence they were always in hock to the bankers. Many a King lost a war or his throne because his creditors cut him off, and/or funded his equally cash-strapped enemy.
I agree with you that tax revenues are not an end in themselves, as that control over the economy (cartelization as I suggested above) is the real prize. However, firstly, the King (in Western Europe in the pre-modern era) didn't usually run cartels directly. Rather, he sold them to others. This was a form of revenue like selling offices or titles. This seems to me sort of like selling off your capital to meet payroll. Secondly, the primary need for cash was war. The King spent practically nothing for any other purpose, a few courts, a few buildings, and maintaining himself in royal style. The King didn't maintain funds to fight a war, he pretty much always had to turn to the bankers, which I think is the source of their influence over the State.
Certainly not, but we do know that the Vatican holds gold at the NY FED. (There is there a signed letter from Paul Volcker stating as much - it is however from the 1970's and does deal with the Vatican selling some of it). Their, and many others, holding their gold in a different vaults than their own reeks...but, it is all for administrative convenience.
Adding to my thesis:
A feature of the European Miracle was political anarchy, i.e. the radical decentralization of Europe. At the same time that States were unusually weak (i.e. unusually restrained from economic intervention), they were also locked into an unusually intense inter-State rivalry. This set the stage perfectly for those independent businessmen (who, given the weakeness of States at that time, enjoyed an unusual ability to amass wealth by the economic means) to use their wealth to gain influence with States by financing their wars.
I pretty much agree with everything Minarchist has been saying in this thread. But I've already had this exact discussion with you Clayton and was obviously unable to sway you, so I don't think there's much point entering into it.
One thing, Minarchist: I think the only pre-modern Eurasian states that were able to approach the cartelization of the modern state were those of Pharoanic/Ptolemaic Egypt, the Late Roman Empire, and Mesopotamian city-states (a case could be made for China, also). I think on the whole, however, that the norm was for proto-state structures to be very weak, in line with the low degree of productivity, and the high degree of the mobility of would-be subjects. The higher the productivity and the lower the mobility of its subjects (which can go hand-in-hand, e.g. a zone of fertile soils), the more able were bureaucratic states to form.
EDIT: Btw Clayton you still haven't answered by question about liberation theology.
I don't think there's much point entering into it.
I can be swayed but I just really think the view that the Rothschilds run the world, or Europe/UK at least, is not tenable given what I know so far.
Yeah, I agreed with you. Even if you were denigrating me in the first sentence of that post...Have you ever tried not being a jerk?
Says the guy who has recently been swearing at Neodoxy and Clayton, unprovoked.
I wasn't taking a swipe at you, I just think everything's been said and you have your own view of it. It's really a verstehende topic, anyway.
"Swearing! Swaering! You swore!"
Grow the fuck up, you woman.
Yup, there it is.
Aristippus:One thing, Minarchist: I think the only pre-modern Eurasian states that were able to approach the cartelization of the modern state were those of Pharoanic/Ptolemaic Egypt, the Late Roman Empire, and Mesopotamian city-states (a case could be made for China, also).
Fair enough.
I think on the whole, however, that the norm was for proto-state structures to be very weak, in line with the low degree of productivity, and the high degree of the mobility of would-be subjects.
I think that describes classical Greece pretty well. Very low agricultural productivity, and very high mobility due to the enormous opportunities in trade and colonization (in turn a response to low agricultural productivity) and political anarchy. And it seems to me the Greek States were less interventionist than contemporary Asian States, which were agricultural, land-focused, few, and enormous.
The higher the productivity and the lower the mobility of its subjects (which can go hand-in-hand, e.g. a zone of fertile soils), the more able were bureaucratic states to form.
Interestingly, it was in those ideal agricultural zones that the first States emerged: fertile river valleys.
@Aristippus: Sorry, 3-to-1 is a bit of a beat-down... lol
1. Catholic population is also falling rapidly in Europe - the former stronghold of Catholicism, where the Vatican itself resides. Atheism is gaining strongly there.
Questions in response:
a) If you and I can see they are losing strength in Europe and the US, do you think that the Vatican can see this? Or do you think they're just too out of touch and deceiving themselves?
b) Given that their strength is declining in Europe/US (and has long been on retreat in the UK since the days of Henry VIII), what could they do about this? That is, irrespective of whether you think deconversion is inevitable in the long-run.
c) Do you think they are doing everything they can do and still failing? For example, many religious organizations have liberalized and agreed that the Bible is metaphorical/allegorical... the Vatican could do this too. That would be a sign of "following" but given that they're losing so much influence and given that changing their teachings might salvage some of that influence, why do you think they haven't done it?
2. The only countries in which Catholicism is not declining are the poor, Third World ones (mostly in Africa and Latin America).
If these countries are so inconsequential, how come the European powers have spilled so much blood - their own, each other's, and the natives' - on their account?
3. In the countries where Catholicism is not declining, it is becoming increasingly infiltrated by Marxist 'liberation theology', especially amongst the Jesuits. Now I've asked you in another thread and I did not receive a reply to this question: is that phenomenon part of the plot or is it an outside influence?
I'm unclear on the origins of liberation theology. I do know that there are sects of the Jews that do infiltrate Christian churches and it is conceivable that this could be the work of such an outside influence.
4. The past half-century has had Catholicism continuously watering itself down and ecumenising in order to follow modern trends. It no longer sets societal trends, but merely follows them.
True, it does not set trends in countries where it does not have significant influence but I think this has been the case for more than a half-century. In other words, Rome has long had to deal with the fact that its dominance is not truly global.
a) If you and I can see they are losing strength in Europe and the US, do you think that the Vatican can see this?
Of course they can. Those who would want to strengthen the Church must take orders from their overlords, who in turn are filtered by TPTB.
b) Given that their strength is declining in Europe/US (and has long been on retreat in the UK since the days of Henry VIII), what could they do about this?
I'm not too sure. Infiltrating the media, the 'education' cartel and politics would be the best strategy, probably. The gate-keepers, however, are pretty tough and the shocktroops are generally anti-religion leftists.
c) Do you think they are doing everything they can do and still failing?
No idea, depends on what you think would be effective strategies.
For example, many religious organizations have liberalized and agreed that the Bible is metaphorical/allegorical... the Vatican could do this too.
Catholics are not really Biblical literalists (at least today). It depends on which parts of the Bible.
That would be a sign of "following" but given that they're losing so much influence and given that changing their teachings might salvage some of that influence, why do you think they haven't done it?
Well, they probably have been doing it more and more over time. The Catholic Church already abandoned a great deal of its traditions in the 60's (after infiltration in the late 50's). There isn't that much left that distinguishes them from the other branches of Christianity, especially compared to the differences a century ago.
Well, they were easier to conquer and control than European neighbours, but they also weren't as valuable. It's a similar situation that regard, but the European empires could at least harvest resources effectively. The Vatican can only draw on the qualities and value of the people, which is pretty low in most of those countries.
I'm unclear on the origins of liberation theology.
Karl Marx, I guess. It's very popular in Latin America, and amongst the Jesuits. The Vatican doesn't seem too happy with it but hasn't had much success rooting it out.
True, it does not set trends in countries where it does not have significant influence but I think this has been the case for more than a half-century.
Yep, ever since it was infiltrated, abandoned its traditions, and ecumenised, alongside the propaganda machine of those same interests who were responsible for the infiltration.
It's really a verstehende topic, anyway.
Agreed. There are multiple, valid points-of-view, unfortunately, due to the highly speculative nature of the topic and the information-vacuum.