{"id":54042,"date":"2020-07-09T06:50:47","date_gmt":"2020-07-09T11:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54042"},"modified":"2020-07-09T06:50:50","modified_gmt":"2020-07-09T11:50:50","slug":"the-american-economy-in-four-words-neofeudal-extortion-decline-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54042","title":{"rendered":"The American Economy in Four Words: Neofeudal, Extortion, Decline, Collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The American Economy in Four Words: Neofeudal, Extortion, Decline, Collapse<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Our society has a legal structure of self-rule and ownership of capital, but in reality it is a Neofeudal Oligarchy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that the pandemic is over and the economy is roaring again–so the stock market says–we’re heading straight back up into the good old days of 2019.<\/strong> Nothing to worry about, we’ve recovered the trajectory of higher and higher, better every day in every way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything’s great except the fatal rot at the heart of the U.S. economy hasn’t even been acknowledged, much less addressed:<\/strong> every sector of the economy is nothing but one form of neofeudal extortion<\/em> or another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s spin the time machine back to the late Middle Ages, at the height of feudalism, and imagine we’re trying to get a boatload of goods to the nearest city to sell.<\/strong> As we drift down the river, we’re constantly being stopped and charged a fee for transiting one small fiefdom after another. When we finally reach the city, there’s an entry fee for bringing our goods to market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note that none of these fees were payments for improvements to transport or for services rendered; they were simply extortion.<\/strong> This was the economic structure of feudalism<\/em>: petty fiefdoms levied extortionate fees that funded the lifestyles of nobility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why I have long called America’s economy neofeudal<\/em>: we pay ever higher fees for services that are degrading, not improving.<\/strong> This is the essence of extortion: we don’t get any improvement in goods and services for the extra money we’re forced to pay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American Economy in Four Words: Neofeudal, Extortion, Decline, Collapse Our society has a legal structure of self-rule and ownership of capital, but in reality it is a Neofeudal Oligarchy. Now that the pandemic is over and the economy is roaring again–so the stock market says–we’re heading straight back up into the good old days […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[24078,150,7081,587],"class_list":["post-54042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-charles-hugh-smith-2","tag-collapse","tag-neofeudalism","tag-of-two-minds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54042"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54043,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54042\/revisions\/54043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}