On the relation of transnational interlocking of directorate to EROI decline

It is better for a corrupt and slimy leadership to remain in place than to remove it so incompetently as to unleash the worst elements of the people. Just look at the chaos which ensued in Libya after their lives were so wonderfully 'improved' by the removal of Gaddafi, who was not a nice man but knew how to keep the situation from spiraling out of control and how to suppress the worst elements.

The present ruling class can neither understand nor manage the world situation, but at least it knows some of the problems it faces and has made some attempt to deal with them. The worst elements of the people would surely arrive in power on a tidal wave of blood and then compound a difficult and challenging crisis by refusing to acknowledge its very existence.

Now, in order to understand a given ruling class or paroxysmal policy, we absolutely must relate these severally to the bottom lines which obtain in the given world-historical period.

Most people do not take EROI decline personally or even notice it. But what if, for the interlocking directorate or ruling class of our times, EROI were like a red hot poker up their bums which wakes them up in the morning and tucks them into bed at night? 

We have looked at the example of Commissioner Lin Zexu's attempt to save the Chinese people from predatory opium-pushing by a British Empire eager, even desperate, to balance its books and avoid financial disaster. Hard bottom lines resulted in two bestial wars. 

The attempt by the Chinese Emperor through this scholar-official to fight a moral scourge that was destroying their people was accompanied by direct appeals to the British public.

Commissioner Lin made extraordinarily moving and eloquent points about the hypocrisy of pushing a terrible evil on the Chinese people. But these perfectly correct and impeccably moral appeals were less important than the hard bottom line financial interests of various nations. These bottom lines translate into terrible suffering at such points in history as then, or as now. 

In Ancient Rome, it appears that the earlier period of the Empire profited greatly from its conquests; but that over time the burden of maintaining the conquered expanse rose in relation to the actual income coming in. This happened even as conquest itself became distinctly less profitable. 

There were terrible periods of instability in Ancient Rome known as the Crisis of the Third Century, and the denouement of this convulsion was a series of exotic reforms in the structure of their State, with one Emperor coming to be one of four: the Tetrarchy. It is very significant that the resolution of the Crisis of the Third Century ended up in close association with ideological restructuration.

The Emperor who established the Tetrarchy in two geographic halves, Diocletian, saw the need essentially for equal decision-making centers each of which was independently to administer a more-than-enough-for-one-pair-of-Emperors zone.

He also made the roughly simultaneous decision to impose an enormously unpopular and disgracefully consequential law called the Edict on Maximum Prices, where he essentially 'banned inflation'; aka nearly destroyed the economy and the Roman social fabric.

We must remember that leadership at difficult world-historical periods cannot remotely be regarded as 'easy'. It is most impressive when the ruling class of a given times is at last able to stay afloat. It is certainly more impressive than a toppling of an increasingly out-of-its-depth ruling class by the worst elements of the people alluded to earlier; with their victorious entry into power without any of that red-hot-poker awareness of hard bottom lines and the relation of these to policy decisions which they simply must have, to some degree.

If there is to be a ruling class, then it will have to supply the moral and logistical substratum for the smooth operation of the world system. Like it or not, we must prefer a slimy ruling class which has the right red hot pokers up its bums to a replacement without any of its, as it were, technical culture of power and its exercise; and of the presentation of information.

And of the bottom lines relevant to whether they retain power.

When there is a moral and/or a logistic abnegation of the ruling class, such that the person on the street sees that the caste in question has lost, in Chinese terms, the 'mandate of Heaven'; then we have the various extremes and potential contenders for replacing them in play. We might have extreme authoritarians of far left (USSR, Maoist China), far right (Nazi Germany, Italian Fascism), or far center (Brazilian military dictatorship; Salazar's Portugal).

To be clear, a moral and logistic abnegation of the ruling class may be witnessed with perfect clarity in the microcosm of Colombia. For we see there a ruling class which historically cannot govern particularly well,  logistical abnegation of the ruling class, alongside a hideous, ideological and bloody period of multipolar civil war.

And just as we witness logistical abnegation or loss of Heaven's mandate; so do we also witness moral abnegation or loss of Heaven's mandate in the behaviour of the Colombian State and military. For the quotas of captured and executed rebels demanded by a government eager for success stories were apparently made up with massacres by pressured local troops. This grave scandal is known there as 'false positives'.

The more there is moral and logistical abnegation of the ruling class, the more there is a feeding of domestic extremism. The ruling class in question will denounce the ideological extremists, not understanding or if understanding not caring that its own loss of Heaven's mandate causes the increased extremism.

It so happens, as we have been referring to hard bottom lines, that just such a bottom line may be seen with perfect clarity in this microcosm, Colombia. For the areas of the country most convulsed by violent confrontations just happen to have been resource-rich. Amid the power struggle that coincides with the loss to whatever degree of Heaven's mandate, the extraordinarily multipolarized field of play necessarily aligns with hard bottom lines like resource-rich areas.

We can, thus, see the crystal-clear outline of a jockeying for position of a contending ruling class in some educated or uneducated relation to the hard bottom lines of its place and times. It must in some way wisely or foolishly relate to those, and these will heavily impact whether it comes into power; and whether it can successfully provide the logistical and moral leadership without which it too will lose the mandate of Heaven.

We have been looking at the replacement of an existing ruling class with one quite like it but in some way ideologically extreme by comparison. But one would carefully note that the replacement of the present ruling class, if such were possible without a disaster akin to a global Libya following Gaddafi's removal, would not be its mirror image of the far right, the center and the far left; but would be a replacement of a qualitative kind, like the replacement of the knight by the technocrat. 

That brings us to the present day and the red hot poker of EROI decline up the bums of the transnational interlocking of directorate independent of nation-states; which has tamed nation-states as previously Kings tamed nobles. This transnationality cannot ignore EROI decline without running the risk of logistical abnegation. But if this ruling class adopts a lifeboat morality, or in fact less than one, then it runs the risk of moral abnegation. 

One has used the lifeboat morality example because it has been used in defense of depopulation proposals. Of course, on lifeboats, people know when drawing lots that one of them is going to be eaten, that someone among them is going to die.

If less than a lifeboat morality obtained in a given ruling class, then it might for instance not note that people playing Russian roulette in some way were in fact doing so.

One returns from the present to Ancient Rome, and to that Edict on Maximum Prices mentioned earlier. Of note, the actual decree was not annuled officially; they simply stopped enforcing a law which remained on the books! Does this sound familiar? Are there perhaps certain unpopular policies and mass suppressions of civil rights in civilian populations recently which remain on the books and yet are no longer stalking the land?

Behold these parallels, for they matter much. They are the key to understanding a perilous situation which is yet freighted with real opportunity; a chance to answer to hard bottom lines in a way that is nobler and wiser because we have dared to consider that both justice and wisdom might be possible. So often the practically idealistic does not get implemented out of sheer, ornery unwillingness to see that a given course may both be more humane AND still profitable. 

An example of this phenomenon may be seen in the model factory community, New Lanark, established by the wealthy experimentalist Robert Owen in the 19th century. He found that his provision of daycare and other very nice privileges and compensations to his workers coincided with a substantial profit, a fact he wasted no time in mentioning tirelessly to the ruling class of his times. 

We return then to the present ruling class and its relation to hard bottom lines of declining EROI. It is this decline which motivates the substantial push behind plant protein, reduction of cattle herds, cricket protein, and the like; not anything whatever to do with climate action. It is this decline which motivates the push behind renewable energy sources. It is this decline which increasingly and inversely correlates with the abrupt tendency for Peak Oil writers to stop dwelling on it in public particularly much.

It has become sensitive to speak of Peak Complex Hydrocarbons because it is too revealing of the motivations behind the most controversial and painful policies of our times, our equivalent of the Edict on Maximum Prices.

If you want to know why cows are suddenly 'double plus ungood', then a wise citizen will look at the comparative energetic cost of bringing a lb of beef protein to your plate; vs bringing a lb of soymeat protein or cricket protein to your plate. But a foolish citizen will get lost in cow farts and other whoppers calculated to achieve specific effects.

One speaks of course of effects in a social engineering way. The ruling class of our times cannot simply tell the people nothing about the serious possibility of EROI decline beginning obviously to bite in everyday life. 

The people must be prepared for the real possibility of a substantial reduction in energy and resources per capita. But doing so must not result in either their hoarding, thus becoming economically-unmanageable and potentially spiraling the economy out of control; or their becoming rambunctious and rebellious, politically unmanageable.

This brings one to the portentous decision on part of world leaders to 'lower carbon emissions'.

This is not a decision. If you expect carbon emissions reductions, then maybe are not hoarding petroleum in your backyard. And maybe you do not burn down the business district and the local mansions. You are supposed to go, 'Cool, we made this idealistic decision. This is what I've been hearing about on the news. Got it.'

Sapere aude. Dare to be wise.

The solution to the present situation is not violence but a complete and devastating deconstruction of the narrative of a ruling class which is both logistically and morally threatening to lose Heaven's mandate; which reaches critical mass among people who cannot simply be prohibited from knowing that EROI matters much more than cow farts. 

If the present ruling class cracks down too much, then it may avert logistic loss of Heaven's mandate; while bringing more negative pressure to bear upon the moral side of the equation, being the more apt morally to lose Heaven's mandate.

You see, Emperor Diocletian at whom we looked caused dreadfully untenable situations for everyday people, something rather lacking in practical compassion all told! This just happened to coincide with a crackdown on Christians. Have we witnessed any persecution of attending religious gatherings in recent times and in relation to draconian policies? We should ever notice these parallels between ruling classes, hard bottom lines, and draconian policies.

In conclusion, the present ruling class must continue logistically to manage the situation efficaciously in relation to hard bottom lines like EROI. Interlocking directory as presently tenanted will have to be preferred to letting the rabble with no conception of the bottom lines and coherent ways of managing them to overturn them; before a ruling class more capable of logistic efficaciousness and moral rectitude can properly and smoothly take its place. 

One has taken a good, hard look at those who are, like modern-day Commissioner Lin Zexu's, against the draconian policies which now obtain due to the reaction to hard bottom lines which they comprise. I am one of them. Unfortunately, one sees a tendency in others of the same rough stripe of disapproval of draconian policies a distressing tendency not to understand or want to understand the real situation in hard bottom line terms.

Because the more unbalanced critics of the present-day ruling class or interlocking directory do not want to acknowledge or understand EROI declines relation to the policies against which they rightfully complain; they necessarily descend into some kind of error and distortion which makes them unsuitable for replacing those whom they correctly and morally condemn. For they would not be able to provide sufficient logistical acumen to accompany their moral rectitude, and thus would not be better able to manage the situation than those whom they criticize. 

This is not to say a critic of power needs to know how to exercise power. It is to say that the overall class of all who critique the draconian policies are, by their determined opposition to perceived injustice, inviting some kind of serious reform up to replacement of those whom they criticize. 

This raises the onus on them of being able, coherently and morally and logistically, to do a better job in the aggregate and in practice as to the exercise of power, in relation to the world situation and its hard bottom lines, than the present ruling class. 

One said that those who critique the present day's more draconian policies while refusing to acknowledge that things like EROI decline matters hugely to policy makers necessarily sink into some kind of error. In support of this, one invites you to note their tendency to denounce the ruling class as inveterately wicked: as "Satanic", as "spiteful mutants", etc. Well, are they? One would argue that there are certainly wicked behaviors and subverted institutions as with egregious regulatory captures, and these are odious indeed; but that the average member of the ruling class is not so wicked as they are caricatured to be because they act out of perceived necessity more so than deliberate insidiousness.

Thus, those who criticize the present-day ruling class run the risk of completely misunderstanding it because of refusal to acknowledge that there can possibly be an end of abundance; and thus of inadvertently undermining their replacement by a less draconian ruling class.

If there is a coherent replacement thereof, then one would suggest that it must be orders of magnitude more capable both logistically and morally if such a complex world system is genuinely to be run both compassionately and in relation to hard bottom lines.

Let us completely abandon the worthless Overton window propagated in subverted media and institutions; and see the lay of the land clearly so as to make wiser and more righteous decisions. Those who turn on the lights can the better avoid bumping into furniture. And all the answers to our civilizational problems may not be solved despite our best intentions and efforts; yet to see things clearly will surely enable us the better to answer these challenges. We need a civilization of Big Truths, not one of Big Lies; just as we need lights on during a math test.

Let us be wiser and more loving.