The Network State

Salon #17: Cognitive Conquest and Thinking the Unthinkable https://t.co/WyeWQSLf9h

— Charles Hugh Smith (@chsm1th) August 14, 2020

Axis of Easy Salon #17

Global Oligarchy

"... a battle is brewing in Europe, one that pits cities and citizens against multinationals and the power of finance."https://t.co/Ug6d8su6fq @TNInstitute.

— Local Futures (@EconofHappiness) August 9, 2020

The Impulse to Decentralization and Devolution of Power

Strategic Culture Foundation: The Face of Post-COVID Geo-Politics by Wayne Madsen
(via ZeroHedge)

In Africa, populations living along the Nile River, where the plague was introduced by slaves and Arab traders, abandoned their river towns, including Asyut, and fled to remote areas up the Nile to escape the pandemic. The Arab scholar and historian, Ibn Khaldun, wrote that a spirit of “asabiyya” protected some North Africans from the plague. He defined “asabiyya” as a communal attachment to the land, whether it was the Sahara Desert or the Atlas Mountains. Ibn Khaldun points out that self-sufficiency and a shared commitment to the tribe is what saved to Bedouin and Sanhaja of the Sahara and the Berbers in the Atlas mountain range. The same degree of self-sufficiency and independence was seen in parts of Belgium, Switzerland, Bohemia, and Poland, as well as city-states in the Bight of Benin in West Africa that owed their allegiance to the Yoruba kingdom of Ijebu. They represented places where the Black Death had little to no impact.

We see the same reliance today on local authorities. Governors of states of the United States, Brazil, and Mexico are heeded by the populace over central government leaders. Regional groupings of American states – in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast – have stepped up to handle Covid-19 policy in the absence of any clear direction from the Trump administration. This support for local government is seen in polling that shows that 59 percent of Americans rate the Covid response by their local governments “excellent” or “good.” The numbers dramatically decrease when asked about the Trump administration’s response.

The same appreciation for local and state authorities exists in India. At the end of April 2020, the states of Goa, Sikkim, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, and Tripura were declared Covid-19 free. These and other Indian states that see a decrease in Covid infections will make every attempt to keep it that way. In India and other nations, internal border controls, health checks for travelers, increased local police authorities, and other measures may become permanent. And with such local and regional control will come a popular insistence on a devolution of other powers to state and local control, including public health, taxation, commerce, residency permits, and other functions.
The “asabiyya” concept of self-sufficiency to guard against repeat phases of Covid-19 and other pandemics may eventually lead to the formation, or re-formation in some cases, of the independent city-state and other polities that would have as their first priority the health safety and security of their compact populations, whether they are urbanized areas like Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Venice, Barcelona, New York City, London, Gaza, Aden, Labuan, Sao Paulo, Istanbul, Mumbai, Karachi, Bangkok, Saigon, Shanghai, and Lagos or distinct regions and territories like the Basque country (which succeeded in surviving the Black Death virtually unscathed), Scotland, Kerala, Flanders, Puerto Rico, Sarawak, Sabah, American Samoa, Zanzibar, and Mindanao.

But what will the response of the elites and oligarchs be? Will they try to prevent this from happening?

A Catholic Liberal

or libertarian... Samuel Gregg.

A true believer in the oligarch's "free markets" and "free trade"...








Law and Liberty podcast

Makes me question if Acton himself was able to make the connection between his brand of liberalism and the loss of political liberty that he supposedly feared. Maybe Acton was just another intellectual whoring himself out for the elites.

Money to be Made All Over the World

Universal Studios Entertainment to invest in Korean adaptation of Chinese drama "Scarlet Heart"

Posted by Soompi on Monday, September 14, 2015

neoliberalism...

The Price We Pay

Twitch review

Does this coarsen Korean culture?

Post by SOOMPI.com.

Related:

Post by SOOMPI.com.

Pravmir: ‘Traditional Values in an Era of Globalization’ Symposium takes place in London

While Metropolitan Hilarion was in the UK:

Post by Orthodoxy and the World.

Pravmir

The Local Bites Podcast

Introducing the Local Bites Podcast - website

Episode 1: Helena Norberg-Hodge On How Corporate “Free” Trade Treaties Threaten Local Communities And Economies Worldwide (mp3)

Two Responses to Globalization

Globalization vs. the Humane Economy by by Ralph E. Ancil
The Next Lesson From Holland: Why Local Money Matters by James Fallows

Let's Bring Manufacturing Home

NPR: Ethical Fashion: Is The Tragedy In Bangladesh A Final Straw?

Chris Hedges: "We are witnessing the collapse of globalization"

Someone posted this recently, on FB - an interview from last year:


Also from last year:




And from this year:

Herman Daly Reviews Paul Craig Robert's Latest

The surprising conclusion to an important new book - The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and the Economic Dissolution of the West (Towards a New Economics for a Full World) (Resilience)

Alas, the English edition is available only in electronic form - is there no paleocon or trad con publisher willing to print it?

Why 20-Somethings are Moving Back Home

Katherine Newman, The Accordion Family

The Aaron Wildavksy Forum - Professor Katherine Newman
Katherine Newman - America's "missing class" presentation
Katherine S. Newman - America's Missing Class
The Urban Agenda: Katherine S. Newman on the low-wage labor force
Katherine Newman - Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America
@fordschool: Katherine Newman: Portraits of the Near Poor in America

Related:
Economic Insecurity and the Great Recession

Where are the right communitarians?

The Age of Consequences by Guy McPherson

Communities grow organically; but what of natural affections and identities?

Governance: Closed and Proprietary, or Open and Bottom-Up? by David Bollier (Bollier comments on "The Commons and World governance. Towards a global social contract" by Blin and Marin)

If the nation-state is waning (this is questionable) does this mean that a global authority needs to step in? Or does it point the direction toward further devolution of authority?

Preface to Sharing for Survival (a new book from Feasta) by Brian Davey (EB)

Other than Lind and Weyrich's Next Conservatism series, I can't think of any writers "on the right" who are articulating a constructive vision of what is to be done. Appealing to states' rights and the Constitution is not enough, if one does not indicate how community and power are to be built up and protected at the "local level." (Or more accurately, at a more human scale.)

Older Jeff Rubin talks

2009:


2010:

Jeff Rubin on Peak Oil

Energy Bulletin - Toronto Public Libary.



The following parts after the jump...

One more from the The Economics of Happness conference

Gustavo Esteva: challenging the institutional production of truth

An appreciation of E. F. Schumacher

The Guardian: Small is beautiful – an economic idea that has sadly been forgotten by Madeleine Bunting

It is chilling that so many thinkers, politicians and academics have signed up to the deadening consensus of globalisation

Those Near and Dear.

Begun on  July 15 at 10:40 A.M.
Generally I have come to detest making examples of blogs or mining articles at certain websites and  posts at other blogs for easy posts focused primarily upon criticism. There are a few that draw my ire or annoyance, and it would be too easy to pick on them for the sake of increasing "original" content on my blog. These days I try to maintain an apathetic attitude to most other blogs and refrain from commenting or responding: what do I have to do with you? I don't even know you.