Social Change Will Upend the Status Quo
The nation is fragmenting because the Status Quo is failing the majority of the citizenry.
The core narrative of the Status Quo is that nothing fundamental needs to be changed: all the problems can be solved with more “free money” (borrowed from the future at low rates of interest) and a few policy tweaks such as Universal Basic Income (UBI) (the topic of my new book Money and Work Unchained).
This core narrative is false: everything needs to change, from the bottom up.And that of course terrifies those gorging at the trough of status quo wealth and power.
The power structure can manipulate financial metrics, but it can’t manipulate rising wealth/power inequality or social discord. Whatever you think of President Trump, his election is a symptom of profound social discord–discord which author Peter Turchin explains is cyclical and cannot be squashed with phony reforms like UBI or police-state repression.
The nation is fragmenting because the Status Quo is failing the majority of the citizenry. The protected few are reaping all the benefits of the Status Quo, at the expense of the unprotected many.
As I have outlined many times, this unsustainable asymmetry is the only possible outcome of our socio-economic system, which is dominated by these forces:
1. Globalization–free flow of capital, labor arbitrage (workers must compete with the lowest-cost labor around the world).
2. Nearly free money from central banks for bankers, financiers and corporations.
3. Pay-to-play “democracy”– wealth casts the only votes that count.
4. State protected cartels that privatize gains and socialize losses.
5. A political system stripped of self-correcting feedback and accountability.
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