To harp lightly on a favorite theme, there’s Conservative and then there’s conservative. The upper-case Conservative ideology tries to argue that their economic beliefs create a “rising tide that lifts all boats”, and it’ couldn’t possibly be their fault that the rising tide of the Reagan Revolution is drowning the middle class. They believe that with all their hearts, and they know they’re not the villains. A lower-case conservative doesn’t give a rat’s ass and couldn’t be bothered to argue. Lower-case conservatives just know it’s all the fault of libtards, and can’t grasp that there might be things they might not know.

What they both have in common is cognitive near-sightedness. You can’t accuse them of wanting this outcome, simply because they’re not capable of imagining this outcome. History just happens to l.c. conservatives; they’re always caught by surprise. And reliably, in their shock and fear, they turn to demagogues to save them, daddy, save them!

1–”sovereign Bond villains”: It’s uncanny how all non-governmental Bond villains are sovereign citizens. They reject the authority of the state and consider themselves sovereign, answerable to no one. And yet James Bond is the ultimate conservative enforcer, licensed to kill indiscriminately to stop the renegade sovereigns and restore the status quo and the authority of the Crown, the One True Sovereign.

But in my opinion, the modern Conservative movement in the United States has abandoned any pretense of support for government as a guarantor to provide these controls and other public welfare institutions (except, of course, the military, courts and police forces that primarily exist to protect private property and privilege). Their position is essentially to be able to do anything they please without interference from any civil authority. They expect us to accept that somehow the built-in economic and political mechanisms of British economist Adam Smith and the American founders in the 18th century will automatically operate in some magical, unsupervised fashion to provide all the freedom, justice and prosperity a complex modern technological society requires.

Although they certainly would never characterize it in quite these words, (even privately, to themselves) the contemporary American Right instead favors the establishment of what can only be described as a gangster oligarchy run by and for the benefit of a managerial elite and ownership class that fancies itself entitled to do so because of its self-described and self-defined entrepreneurial virtues. Of course, they have convinced themselves they and only they are members of this noble caste. In their opinion, it is self-evident they and they alone have the courage, creativity, self-sacrifice, innovation and work ethic; everyone else is a freeloader and a parasite, too stupid or corrupt to be like them. They are willing to enlist the aid of a much-reduced middle class to assist them in administering their benign fascist meritocracy; but in general, they feel the bulk of the population is inherently lazy, larcenous and violent, not to be trusted to come to work on time, much less pay their bills. In their view, only the poor’s fear of becoming impoverished and destitute keeps them docile and productive, and any attempt by the Liberals to pander to this lowlife scum and reduce that fear is only destined to bring disorder and ruin to the commonwealth.

Those are serious questions. I hope a Conservative will answer them. I suspect someone will drag out a study which says that increased productivity will result in the 99% being able to grow and raise enough food in the cracks of the sidewalks to feed all comers.

Modern economies are buckling under the strains, and the promised fruits of all our new efficiency and productivity don’t seem to be benefiting anybody. What’s more important, none of this is a secret any longer. Any bum off the street knows he’s on his own, now, not a realization you want too widespread among your work force, your customers or your legions. At least Marx gave us an evil cabal we could struggle against, the truth is that those in charge now don’t seem to have a clue what is going on.

“The mutineers finally battered their way onto the bridge, only to find there was nobody there.”

In the meantime, everything seems to be getting progressively entropic, the environment is degrading, the pantry is bare, toxins are accumulating in the tissues and the societal nervous system is under systematic attack by adolescent hackers and commercial pirates who appear to be remarkably successful in their depredations. Half the planet, or at least the half with all the fossil fuels, is being taken over by barbarians and religious fanatics, which the predominant Western Civilization has armed and equipped to the teeth. Don’t blame me if I got it wrong, I just work here.

I’ve been spending my entire life trying to predict the far future with a truly spectacular lack of success. But that has taught me something. It is often possible to make judgments about the very near future with some degree of confidence. That is the period of time I concentrated on in my little list of observations above. My own future is rather limited. I’m not concerned about whether it is going to be a welfare state or an entrepreneurial paradise. I don’t need to see clearly that far ahead. I just need to worry about going faster than I can see.

I’ll leave the long term predictions to the young, or to those concerned about the fate of their children. I did my best to help, but no one seemed to give a shit.

RE work:
Everything that can be automated will be automated. Non-skilled jobs lacking in ‘human contribution’ will be replaced by automation when the economics are favorable. At the hardware store, the guy who used to cut keys has been replaced by a robot. In the law office, the clerks who used to prepare discovery have been replaced by software. IBM Watson is replacing researchers by reading every report ever written anywhere. This begs the question: What can the human contribute? The short answer is that if the job is one where that question cannot be answered positively, that job is not likely to exist in the future.

Let’s look a bit further into the future. Obviously all the memes emergent from the European labor movement of the mid 19thCentury are not going to be applicable. The human “work force” will consist of specialists with extraordinary skills, who will work as freelance contractors. Nothing “lumpen” will remain, and social welfare systems will be expressed as some kind of distributed mediocrity. Human society will resolve into a form of cognitive caste system. Genetic selection practiced by “smart” parents will accelerate this. Remember that in China-India-Russia there is a positive attitude towards eugenics, unlike the frowns in EU-Anglosphere .

The entire world IS at present a confederation of oligarchies. Since Eurasia favors this form (whether through family-controlled business, or through sovereign wealth), it is the form that will continue to dominate. So, to further policy preferences, interest groups will have to nurture dialogue with this confederation, and place people on the inside and the outside, advancing some form of shame culture. The internal affairs of nations will be a potpourri, but as presently in Finland, positioning in global competition will likely pare down ambitions of those interests which favor a big welfare state.

Time for another cup of coffee.

I have the world to save by noon.

Now I do concede its unlikely all of those measures would be adopted by a deeply conservative US administration. After all, some of them are bound to be unprofitable to some businessmen somewhere and they will successfully lobby against them.