From John Robb, a security consultant closely associated with the neofeudalistic nexus that the Bush years in the White House have seen the growth of.
’Security will become a function of where you live and whom you work for, much as health care is allocated already. Wealthy individuals and multinational corporations will be the first to bail out of our collective system, opting instead to hire private military companies, such as Blackwater and Triple Canopy, to protect their homes and facilities and establish a protective perimeter around daily life. Parallel transportation networks--evolving out of the time-share aircraft companies such as Warren Buffett's NetJets--will cater to this group, leapfrogging its members from one secure, well-appointed lily pad to the next. Members of the middle class will follow, taking matters into their own hands by forming suburban collectives to share the costs of security--as they do now with education--and shore up delivery of critical services. These "armored suburbs" will deploy and maintain backup generators and communications links; they will be patrolled by civilian police auxiliaries that have received corporate training and boast their own state-of-the-art emergency-response systems. As for those without the means to build their own defense, they will have to make do with the remains of the national system. They will gravitate to America's cities, where they will be subject to ubiquitous surveillance and marginal or nonexistent services. For the poor, there will be no other refuge.
Until, that is, the next wave of adaptive innovation takes hold. For all of these changes may prove to be exactly the kind of creative destruction we need to move beyond the current, failed state of affairs. By 2016 and beyond, real long-term solutions will emerge.’
(from Fast Company, December 19, 2007)
This is neofeudalism at its most brutal, after the state has withered away, sold out by the likes of the Bush administration.
The Moral Economy of Sustainable and Democratic Societies
This is held to be among reasonable and convincing premises for the long term success and survival of liberal and democratic societies:
’In A Theory of Justice, [John] Rawls defends a conception of “justice as fairness.” He holds that an adequate account of justice cannot be derived from utilitarianism, because that doctrine is consistent with intuitively undesirable forms of government in which the greater happiness of a majority is achieved by neglecting the rights and interests of a minority. Reviving the notion of a social contract, Rawls argues that justice consists of the basic principles of government that free and rational individuals would agree to in a hypothetical situation of perfect equality. In order to ensure that the principles chosen are fair, Rawls imagines a group of individuals who have been made ignorant of the social, economic, and historical circumstances from which they come, as well as their basic values and goals, including their conception of what constitutes a “good life.” Situated behind this “veil of ignorance,” they could not be influenced by self-interested desires to benefit some social groups (i.e., the groups they belong to) at the expense of others. Thus they would not know any facts about their race, sex, age, religion, social or economic class, wealth, income, intelligence, abilities, talents, and so on.
In this “original position,” as Rawls characterizes it, any group of individuals would be led by reason and self-interest to agree to the following principles:
(1) Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.
(2) Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.’
(from Encyclopædia Britannica, on ’John Rawls’)
Taken as an ideal of policymaking, the above stands in stark contrast to the actual policy processes of today, were MNCs and their self-serving CEOs – "the military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower warned against – have pocketed legislative bodies across the globe. This may read like populism, but is intended to make us realize the gravity of the current situation, and open up for a discussion on how to reverse these processes.
Again in Eisenhower's words, so different in profundity from the leaders of today: "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
’In A Theory of Justice, [John] Rawls defends a conception of “justice as fairness.” He holds that an adequate account of justice cannot be derived from utilitarianism, because that doctrine is consistent with intuitively undesirable forms of government in which the greater happiness of a majority is achieved by neglecting the rights and interests of a minority. Reviving the notion of a social contract, Rawls argues that justice consists of the basic principles of government that free and rational individuals would agree to in a hypothetical situation of perfect equality. In order to ensure that the principles chosen are fair, Rawls imagines a group of individuals who have been made ignorant of the social, economic, and historical circumstances from which they come, as well as their basic values and goals, including their conception of what constitutes a “good life.” Situated behind this “veil of ignorance,” they could not be influenced by self-interested desires to benefit some social groups (i.e., the groups they belong to) at the expense of others. Thus they would not know any facts about their race, sex, age, religion, social or economic class, wealth, income, intelligence, abilities, talents, and so on.
In this “original position,” as Rawls characterizes it, any group of individuals would be led by reason and self-interest to agree to the following principles:
(1) Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.
(2) Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.’
(from Encyclopædia Britannica, on ’John Rawls’)
Taken as an ideal of policymaking, the above stands in stark contrast to the actual policy processes of today, were MNCs and their self-serving CEOs – "the military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower warned against – have pocketed legislative bodies across the globe. This may read like populism, but is intended to make us realize the gravity of the current situation, and open up for a discussion on how to reverse these processes.
Again in Eisenhower's words, so different in profundity from the leaders of today: "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
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