The Collapse of The American Kleptocracy
Understanding The Dimensions of Large Scale Systems and How They are Leading to The Inevitable Collapse of The Current American Kleptocracy
We are witness to a titanic societal shift. More and more people are becoming aware of the corruption and dysfunction of modern society and the large scale systems that control it. The public good will towards these systems has all but run dry as the internet has allowed instant access to a seemingly endless mountain of proof for how completely beyond saving it all is. Where once there was hope that the system might be saved internally through democratic means, the undeniable inaction and impotence of politicians who ran on fixing the system has made it clear to many of us that there is no possibility of the system fixing itself.
The logical subsequent conclusion is that the best use of our time and energy is in the creation of alternative systems, starting at the local level where motivated individuals and small groups can have the most effect. This begins with the creation of fraternal networks, groups of competent and ideologically aligned men united in their desire to build and sustain healthy communities such that they can raise families and ensure the success of their children. I have written about the need and strategies for building such networks in my article On The Necessity of Rebuilding Social Structure, and if you are interested in a practical approach to rebuilding local social fabric, I recommend checking it out.
This article is the first in a two part series looking at societal structure at the macro level. This first article will focus on understanding our current Kleptocratic system and why it is falling apart. The second will focus on the system I believe will rise to replace it, a New American Commonwealth. In this article, I will start by outlining the key dimensions for understanding our current system: Incentives Dictate Outcomes, Economic Verses Social Capital, and Long Verses Short Term Optimization, then use these dimensions of understanding to illustrate why the current system is collapsing and necessitating a rise of an alternative system.
Dimensions for Understanding System Structure
Before we talk about our current system and why it is collapsing, we must first establish a framework for understanding these large scale systems. As always, my goal with writing these articles is not only to offer my perspective on the potential solutions, but frameworks with which to discuss this relatively new thought space so these ideas can be better understood and debated, empower individuals to make their own observations and decisions.
Structural Incentives Dictate Outcomes
While the idea that structural incentives dictate outcomes might seem obvious on its face, too often I see people naively thinking that all it takes to enact the positive change of corrupt systems is a couple moral actors brought in to fix everything from the inside. “We just need to vote the right guy in!” The mistake here is not giving enough respect to how powerful the incentives of these systems are and, even more importantly, how every person and function from the top to the very bottom in these systems are already so fundamentally aligned with these incentives that they will fight tooth and nail against anyone who tries to change them. We must accept that willpower and good intentions alone are not enough to change systems from operating how they are incentivized to operate.
Additionally, a system has no incentive to plan for, let alone create, a future in which that system can no longer exist. Meaning even if that system is doomed for failure in the future, that system will hold its course until it either falls apart under its own corruption and ineffectiveness, or is made obsolete by a competitor. As such, the best and possibly only viable ways to proactively “fix” a system is to accelerate its destruction or, more desirably, build an alternative system with the right incentives that can out compete it.
Economic Versus Social Capital
As I pointed out in my previous article On The Necessity of Rebuilding Social Structure, our current society has become warped by what I have termed Hyper Capitalism, where every function of society now runs almost exclusively on economic exchange. You no longer go to your local farmer for produce, you buy from a chain grocery. You no longer find a marriage partner in your local community, you pay for a dating app subscription. The older generation is no longer taken care of by their children, they pay for hospice care. But while this economic approach might have been a benefit in the short term for ease of accessibility and convenience, I would argue that it is not only ultimately inferior to social capital as a means of exchange, but societies functioning predominately on economic capital are inherently less healthy.
While it might be obvious to some of you, let me risk being verbose and define more specifically what I mean by social versus economic capital. Social capital is most simply understood as favors in the form of anything from labor or material goods to information or referrals. You aren’t so much making an exchange as an investment with your friends, family, and neighbors with the mutual understanding that this strengthens relationships and encourages reciprocal behavior in the future. Social capital is arguably superior, assuming you have a system that supports it, to economic capital as social capital does not require an immediate and explicit exchange which is not always easy depending on the form of payment and the methods required to transfer it. Additionally, economic transactions can be taxed, stolen, or the value of the medium of exchange (think fiat currency) inflated away.
It is also not simply a matter of social capital itself being superior to economic capital as a form of exchange, but the superiority of the respective systems required and the inherent incentives of those systems. Social capital based exchange systems require those who participate to be part of an inherently tight knit community as members must know and trust each other as well as have a common interest (typically the wellbeing of the community) in order to feel confident investing social favors in each other. And it is this healthy social fabric that gives rise to often invisible healthy incentives beyond simply the exchange of goods and services.
For example, if the older generation has no other option than to rely on their children for care in their older age, they are inherently incentivized to ensure their children are successful such that they have the ability to provide good care. Similarly, if your only options for marriage are those in your local community and your community is tight knit, you must care about your local reputation, treating those in your social network in a way that when you do date, the community will be supportive of her in choosing you. And assuming it is a good match, the community will support you over the lifetime of your marriage, as everyone in the community has an inherent incentive for happy stable families.
While it is impractical to expect a system to run entirely on social capital, the benefits of converting even a few aspects of our life back to social capital based exchange is immense. Because social capital based exchange requires high trust and strong social cohesion, by making the conscious effort to adopt more social capital based exchange, we inherently start to build the foundations of these healthy networks and start to reclaim the inherent benefits we have lost under the economic capital based system. Not only that, but we free ourselves of the monopoly of the economic capital based system and all the inherent disadvantages that currently come with it.
Short Verse Long Term Optimization
Another key dimension with which to understand system structure is whether it is optimized for short or long term value. Long term optimized systems are by nature generative, sustainably investing in social and economic infrastructure enabling collaborative, efficient, and high trust systems which produce better results over the long term. On the other hand, short term optimized systems focus on extraction, often at the cost of both future opportunity and structural cohesion.
We can even apply the framework of social versus economic capital here as short term optimized systems often take advantage of the high trust necessary in social systems to extract economic capital. Fraud is the perfect example of this where the high trust nature of a long term generative society is exploited for economic gain, resulting in the degradation of trust. These parasitic groups can get away with fraud by moving from one high trust group to another, using people’s instinct to trust to exploit them until they become wise to the scam, then moving on to the next mark who isn’t.
The problem is that short term strategies are (not surprisingly) not viable over the long term as these systems burn away social cohesion, destroying all the healthy hidden incentives I mentioned earlier, and resulting in many of the modern problems we see in our society today. As systems of extraction enter their later stages and start to run out of social trust to exploit, people will inevitably seek long term oriented structures as the benefits of doing so flip and become too strong to ignore. It is therefore the most effective strategy to detach from systems that degrade into short term optimization and be an early adopter of long term oriented systems to secure a position within the winning strategy.
The Collapse of Modern Large Scale Systems
Now that we have established the fundamental dimensions we can use to understand how large scale systems operate, I would like to apply this to understand why our current system is beyond saving, how people will inevitably realize this either by foresight or fallout, and seek viable alternatives.
Kleptocracy
The most damning realization one can have about our current large scale system is it has become irrevocably fixated on short term economic extraction at the cost of social structure and the now ingrained incentive structure will not allow it to change course. More specifically, our current system is optimized for economic profit for those in the highest positions of power and this is increasingly coming at the cost of degrading living standards for the American people.
But if long term, generative strategies are optimal, how did we become stuck in our current, short term, extractive system? Simply put, it was the slow, largely unnoticed replacement of all social capital based systems with economic alternatives. As people adopted economic systems for their convenience, they were unaware that the cost was the decay of the superior social systems with their inherent but invisible long term incentive structures. This also gave the large scale economic based system a monopoly on these services and the lack of alternatives destroyed the bargaining power of the individual. And because the individual has no way to defend their interests, the system can exploit them without need to fear immediate repercussions.
The most obvious example of this is the globalization of the work force. While initially beneficial for the American people in the form of cheap goods and labor, unchecked immigration and the outsourcing of jobs overseas allows companies to pay less for (ostensibly) the same work. In a system built on social capital, it is inherent to the system to want the best for the people around you because you are not simply viewing them as economic units, but members of your community who directly impact your own life. Large companies don’t suffer direct short term consequences for replacing American workers and so there is no incentive for them to care.
This is why the key dimensions listed earlier of Incentives Dictating Action, Social Versus Economic Capital, and Long versus Short Term are so fundamental to understanding our current situation. Once you are thinking about systems along these dimensions, it becomes clear why things are playing out the way they are and why that will not change on its own. Effectively, our current large scale systems are locked into their current incentives to maximize economic capital in the short term at the cost of the social capital and long term health and there is no hope this system will change of its own accord. We will either need to wait for it to collapse under its own exploitative short term nature or work to replace it with a superior, social capital based alternative, or, most probably, a combination of both.
Disillusionment
While most people will not be able to articulate why the system is failing the American people in the way I have laid out, even without that level of detailed understanding, people are viscerally experiencing the repercussions. Whether it is rising housing costs, inflation of the fiat currency that is the American dollar, or the lower quality of life brought on by the degradation of social fabric, we all know the larger systems are on a trajectory that only gets worse and doesn’t end well for us. This is resulting in widespread disillusionment with our current systems and people are looking, consciously, subconsciously, or even out of necessity, for viable alternatives.
I want to take this time to offer another observation in regards to disillusionment. There are two categories of disillusioned people searching for alternatives: those who are forced out of the system by an inability to find success inside it and those who are competent enough to find some success in the current system, but have the awareness to see enough of the bigger picture to understand the system they inhabit is not viable in the long term. I make this distinction because it is a powerful heuristic for understanding the types of people you will encounter in the counter culture space. Not surprisingly, alternative structures (namely fraternal networks) built exclusively of the latter category will find much greater success than with those of the former.
Seeking Alternatives
While becoming disillusioned with the system is the necessary first step to mass exodus to the superior alternatives I will talk about in the next article, the problem right now is few, if any, alternatives are immediately available, let alone exist. Why would the system destroy its own monopoly and offer an alternative or even educate people on how to build it? And this is exactly why so many are hesitant to consciously accept the nonviability of the mainstream system. Without an identifiable alternative, rejecting the system means unmooring yourself in unexplored territory, without external guidance on how to move forward. Most hold on to the hope that the system will fix itself precisely because they do not want to contend with the harsh reality that if an alternative is to be available, we must build it for ourselves.
What Next?
Now that we understand how the incentives of the current system are so ingrained toward short term, extractive behavior and that there is no chance for the normal balancing forces present in healthy social structure to impose themselves on so detached and faceless a system, the inevitable question becomes: what’s next? While many are coming around to the answer of building online and local fraternal networks as these allow for a shift from economic to social capital on a smaller scale, the still unanswered question will be how these groups will organize on a macro level and what will the large scale systems look like. The next article The Rise of The New American Commonwealth will provide a comprehensive overview of what I believe this new rising structure will look like.
