but the thing that gives me pause is the increased need for interdependency that these shifts are going to bring. if we start figuratively cutting throats we have to be very very sure we’re cutting the right ones even assuming the reasons are right.

Controlling the lion’s share of resources that our community has access to and abusing the responsibility that inheres to that control seems like as good a measure of culpability as any.

These folks have been useless and retrograde since their prime. There’s no reason to believe that they will miraculously change so as to contribute anything of any value beyond sheer biomass on which one might posit some degree of future interdependency.

I think it’s very dangerous to be sentimental about identity in the abstract….,

on those issues if we can’t arrive at a consensus we take care of it through political means….then we get together on the stuff that we agree on.

i’m thinking these people are more or less “enemies” period. but the thing that gives me pause is the increased need for interdependency that these shifts are going to bring. if we start figuratively cutting throats we have to be very very sure we’re cutting the right ones even assuming the reasons are right.

this passage you quote from brings up another issue though. i am not sure how well the form of electing representatives we currently employ is going to work given corporate power.

I read an interesting summary analysis on the amorality of CEO’s and it basically posited a similar mechanism at play as regards the motivation and capacity to do differently/do better…, (substitute second-line inheritor leadership for corporate leaders)

As with all complex systems, the leaders of these systems must work with simplifications and control via ‘trim tabs’. But this ‘means-of-control’ only works when things are already in control! Push the system out of bounds and the trim tabs and simplifications are useless. To use a real life example, as part of pilot training, you may be tasked with trying to control the aircraft using only the aileron and rudder trim (to train for the unlikely situation whereby the primary controls are somehow disabled). It is possible to an extent, but only when you don’t need to do anything serious…

I believe that the corporate alphas (using my definition of what constitutes an alpha) are highly intelligent and motivated individuals, in possession of very clear (and sound) visions of the future. But the strategies and behaviors demanded of them by the Corporation oppose this vision, to the extent that some of them may even have trouble sleeping at night. Unfortunately, they have no choice. Dreaming of warm, lazy days in green fields is not acceptable behavior when being sniped at from all sides in a warzone. Over time, through Darwinian selection, the ‘alphas’ will come to resemble the Corporate personality, sociopathic, (and will sleep soundly).

I see the corporate alphas as machine parts. Drones that serve the corporate personality; a personality that is defined by the mob of shareholders (psychopathic, single-minded, ruthless and out of control). An alpha that does not serve the personality is simply replaced with the effect growing more pronounced as the shareholder base grows larger. In other words, the ‘alphas’ are not alphas at all, rather they are simply servants of the corporate shareholder mob.

this is an example of plain old human incompetence. Take the example of Microsoft. The reality of Microsoft is that it is a mega-corporation that is crippled by a ‘meeting culture’ and phenomenal complexity. The product is so hugely complex that control is only available via the rudder trim-tabs (and is therefore inadequate). There has been too much investment of time, energy and emotion and there is just too much complexity to initiate major change. All the Corporation can do is trim to hold an attitude that was set wrongly from the start, and like a huge dinosaur, if the environment changes significantly and the MS organism can’t evolve in time, then it will become extinct.

begs an interesting question about the role of “Black constituents” and whether it is the functional equivalent of “mob of shareholders”? Of course we can generalize from us to the relationship of Americans in general with its own ruthless alpha leadership, flying by the trim as it were….,

so not only will they fight to maintain and grow their resources–something they’ll do anyway because this is the nature of politics–they’ll obfuscate and confuse any attempt to do anything else.

this is nothing new by the way. same thing happened in black spaces fifty years ago. same thing happened forty years ago.

what role do they play now?

how will the powers that be (TPTB) react to an increased level of community based “personal responsibility” and “self-sufficiency”?

I’m thinkin along the same lines as T3 on this one, lotta bread and circus and whistling while Rome burns…,

what are your thoughts?

We know that it is incumbent upon us to make significant changes at the local level, or get caught with our pants down and no wagontrain charter at hand. But in the spirit of E.C.’s concern for the elites, T3’s reportage of what’s coming, and the elections just around the signpost up ahead, what should we be emphasizing in our aggregate politics?