THE 3 THINGS IN THE WAY OF CHANGE

The Slog:

Confessions of a non-violent extremist

There are three things in the way of cultural progress, and they all end in ‘y’.

1. Bureaucracy

2. Ideology

3. Money

Bureaucracy is the biggest obstacle by far. It slows everything down, it blocks anything suggesting job cuts, it keeps meticulous records for blackmail purposes, and it produces nothing of any social value whatsoever. There are many dedicated and meticulous bureaucrats, but they are merely following the orders of the bureaucratic élite….and the bureacratic élite is always wrong, because its sole decision-making criteria are self advancement and self protection.

Look around in ClubMed, and you will find one common, unchanging denominator: bureaucratic survival. Start living in France, and you will quickly discover the dead hand of bureaucracy wasting money and creating impasses. In the UK, the Civil Service was the one problem Thatcher tried to solve, and failed.

Bureaucracy nurtures the development of responsibility avoidance…which gradually over time filters down into the rest of the population.

Bureaucracy recognises no code of ethics. The bureaucrat will serve Moscow one week, and Brussels the next. If you want evidence of this, go to Hungary, look at the career of Angela Merkel, study the denazification of Germany during the 1946-49 period, and research the background of most East European politicians.

The bureaucrat has no interest in social change, anthropology, or people generally. Bureaucrats like systems, consistency and certainty, and they will fight to keep them in the face of whole mountain ranges of evidence suggesting that change is required.

An increasing number of bureaucrats are crooked. (See this excellent analysis of London borough corruption)

Most lawyers are vaguely privatised bureaucrats and tax inspectors. In France, the senior lawyers are the tax inspectors.

The overwhelming majority of politicians are thinly disguised bureaucrats, with near-zero appreciation of functional ideology.

Ideology stunts progress because, by definition, it is inflexible. It may seem strange to point this out immediately after saying most politicians have no ideology, but what almost all politicians say is that they have principles (they don’t) and when examined, these turn out to be a dated and dysfunctional ideology….aka, the Party Line.

Old ideology is a curse. Only by dumping old and discredited ideology will we ever get any new ideas. Old ideology killed the USSR, and it will just as surely kill the EU.

Pretending to have an ideology but then embracing another one wholeheartedly means that we go seamlessly every five (or so) years from one group of vote-centric trimmers to another. (See Slogpost re Labour & May 2015)

Ideology produces oligarchy, and oligarchy produces policies designed purely to defend the oligarchy.

The oligarchy – once it is shown to be the only choice on offer – then attracts money. When monied interests are themselves clinging to an unreal ideology, the only possible end-result is disaster.

But while heading towards that disaster, the political oligarchy loses the plot, and starts working for the money….against The People.

Money represents power, production and distribution. In order to have more power – and not be controlled by any other power – money gravitates towards the exclusive power of the oligarchy.

Because oligarchies are undemocratic and terminally boring, involvement in the political process declines rapidly when they’re in play. Thus, oligarchies are always short of money. So sooner or later, a takeover by unelected money is inevitable.

Money comes forth in large denominations from media owners, trade unions, multinational companies, financial centres, and taxation. The need for taxation simply strengthens the bureaucracy, and the need for private sector money strengthens the oligarchy by giving power to the unelected.

The only way we will get back to a democratic system working primarily for the average citizen is to take all monied donation and lobbying off the table for good.

Those who oppose this move are either (a) in the oligarchy or (b) myopically fixated by an objection to “paying for” politicians to exist. We already do this, but we see nothing back for it.

My preferred strategy for achieving this end is a variation on crowd-sourcing – coordinated action via the internet to starve the beast, and make life impossible for those who feed it.

This is a 100% non-violent strategy. It is only extreme because of the extreme power that has been garnered to itself by the élite oligarchy.

But yes, I am a non-violent extremist….and next year, Theresa May wants to criminalise me and millions of others like me.

There are three obstacles in the way of cultural progress, and they all end in ‘Why?’