The Transcendence of the American Dream
Preserve the Republic and Restore the Transcendental Nature of the American Dream.
The post war liberal world order has failed to deliver on the promise of American Dream
The post war liberal agenda told us that free trade and mass migration would lead to world peace. That globalist agenda led to an unelected elite who wrote the rules to benefit the top 20% while the bottom 80% saw their wages fall and their communities fail.
Corporations run by shareholder proxies held by fund managers seek profit restrained only by regulation. Social Culture ceases to be a regulatory force in society and instead is replaced with a profit seeking enterprise that subverts legal tradition.
In a max-profit seeking global homogenized culture, corporations pay high status humans to transmit the most profitable brand messages which are:
- Government oversight: Protect incumbents with regulatory monopoly
- Diversity: Wage suppression through increased immigration
- New Flavor-Same Product: Novelty through attribute differentiation
- Low-Maintenance: Disposability
- Efficiency: More Stuff For The Same Price
- Low Risk profits: Low interest loans for share buybacks and asset purchases that boost stock price
In a local culture, Families seek out the following societal elements which are expensive and don’t contribute to corporate profits:
- Good Schools that educate everyone: It’s cheaper to import new workers than to educate local ones.
- Safe Neighborhoods: Policing costs money and makes politically connected drug gangs and community organisers angry
- Affordable housing: Historical Society, property owners and developers keeps things nice and restrict new housing
- Healthcare: Cures are bad for long term profits.
- Public Transportation: Let’s the poor people move around.
- Family wages and dependable work: Too expensive — bad for profits
- Predictable low cost access to credit and savings options: Fees on Credit cards and asset management keep the financial industry afloat
- Growth and Prosperity: Environmentalism and regulation redirects spending on investment to elites who collect rents)
- Science and enlightenment: Racism and discrimination help control information and keep elites in power
- Education: Certification of conscientiousness and IQ
- Sexual Freedom: Commercialization and fragmentation of gender roles into marketing segment opportunities.
The trade off is between the higher growth of a maxprofit culture and the lower growth of a local-social culture. That trade-off is understood through a shared transcendental understanding of meaning. A meaning that exists somewhere between an 80 hour work week that leads to fame and fortune and a work to play lifestyle of odd jobs and endless parties.
We’ve replaced the more traditional sources of transcendental meaning like religion and community with a corporate profit seeking message of consumer satisfaction. We have fallen so far that we no longer even engage in idolatry, but instead we just worship the tools that made the idol. Where once we delighted in culture, we now delight in code: a digital bonfire of vanities where the right user experience refines all beauty and knowledge into personal data, to be optimized for profit and efficiency.
We’ve made the future of liberal democracy dependent on shareholder capitalism. The market forces of shareholder capitalism drive more and more people into the administrative bondage of high interest debt and poverty level wages. As we can see from this New York Times graph, when we decouple the American Dream from liberal democracy and replace it with shareholder capitalism the majority of people no longer want to live in a democracy. We live in garbage time. The game is over but 18 minutes are left on the clock. The losing team put on a brave face and shouts encouraging words at each other but the spirit of victory has left the building.
We have sacrificed the transcendent idea of the American Dream on an altar of technocratic efficiency. In these burnt offerings, molten analog of all creation, we have digitized the American Dream into a consumer experience that drives shareholder profits. Civilisation ends when they subjugate unprofitable citizens, for no slave will die to protect the Republic.
If we fail to liberate the American Dream from technical bondage and restore it to transcendent glory, then America ceases to be an indispensable force for good among the nations. For without the promise of freedom no hero’s blood is spilled, no citizen is raised to glory, and soldiers claim only treasure as their reward.
This project seeks to preserve the Republic and protect the transcendental nature of the American Dream.
Restore The Transcendence of The American National Dream
In 1990, the average high school graduate made $66,000 in 2019 dollars. Today the average high school graduate makes $35,000. That’s a 40% drop in wages for over 60% of America. If current trends continue in 2025 the average high school wage will fall below the poverty line for the average American family. When more than half the families in the country either live in poverty or can never afford to start a family the promise of the American Dream is over. Today’s America is a corporatist system which if it remains a democracy will flip eventually and turn into a socialist system. We have 5 years to either restore promise of the American Dream or if we fail we need to prepare for a rapid transition to an authoritarian form of corporatist socialism we see in places like China or Russia with a strong possibility of insurrectionist attempt to replace the constitution with a new form of government
If we allow market forces to determine ideal immigration levels in America then immigration will continue until American wages are completely equilibrated with the rest of the world’s wages. These forces will reduce around 80% of the American workforce to constantly falling wages as the pressure from young highly mobile workers willing to accept subsistence wages in order to send home money to feed their extended families drives low skill wages ever downward.
In order to remain a Republic and restore the transcendence of the American Dream the governing class must keep the promise of a middle class life for high school graduates who marry, have children and show up to a job and do the work asked of them. A split shift of 28 hours a week at $15 per hour is a form of administrative slavery where debts and circumstance force people into a life of financial servitude to lenders and landlords. An immigrant worker, desperate to support a family in a far off kleptocracy, will be grateful for a couple of decades of administrative slavery in exchange for an opportunity for his children to escape the misery of his homeland and for some extra food and shelter for his extended family in the country of his birth.
However the American citizenry has no interest in a life of poverty and subjugation and will eventually chose popular revolution over shareholder capitalism.
There are three competing political offerings on offer. The Trump Populist Republicans are engaged in a half hearted attempt to restore the American Dream without too much disruption to economic growth. The reformist Democrats want a Western European style socialist system with a less dynamic economy, more social programs and predictable employment. The wealthy corporate urban centrists are fighting a rearguard action where they maximize their profits as their captive media propagandists decry any opposition to the Liberal world order as either racist, fascist, or communist.
The American people will chose to restore the transcendence of the American Dream before they chose socialism or corporatism. The challenge is to effect a restoration of the promise of America while we preserve the high-growth prosperity and global supremacy of the American Empire.
The Three American Political Choices
The American Dream
Finish High school, find a job, wait until you get married to have kids, stay married and you’ll live a happy middle class life.The Socialist Option:
The state will take care of you if you can get to America. You deserve the same rights and privileges as any American. We’re all the same and we all deserve the same things. We all have the right to live the life we want.The Neo-Liberal Option:
The game is rigged so get your share as fast as you can because there isn’t enough for everyone. Fight like hell and don’t be a loser. Earn a living through connections and hard work — Fuck ’em if they can’t keep up.
So what’s the easiest, fastest and least disruptive way to restore the spiritual promise of the American National Dream?
Localism Can Restore Transcendence to the American Dream
Write a set of policy prescriptions and design a product that supports Local Association Capitalism. Nationalism leads to centralized authoritarian government, whereas voluntary association localism promotes competition between the regions and forces regions to compete in order to retain talent and economic activity while they also promote flourishing and prosperity.
Local Association Capitalism: Deploy capital to achieve economic growth, environmental beauty and human flourishing.
Too often we use the idea of delayed gratification to trade our desire for beauty and happiness for temporary short term efficiency. While short term solutions are great when it comes to curing a raging infection they too often create as many problems as they solve.
When capitalism is transparently regulated at a local level, the local social culture can balance the profit seeking impulses of shareholder capitalism with the social needs of the community. Local capitalism, seeks to make everyone a shareholder rather than try and restrain the shareholder class from their predatory behavior. Once we all become citizen shareholders we can manage corporations that meet the needs of everyone. Polycentric governance uses traditional regulatory methods to manage common resources.
Over the coming weeks I intend to expand on the following list of policy proposals.
- Everyone owns shares in America Inc.
- Apply the regulatory principles of polycentric governance
- Dramatically Expand public markets to all business in America Inc.
- Clearly articulate the promise of the American Dream. (finish HS, get married, have kids, buy a house, have a great middle class life)
- Establish regulatory standards for access to American markets.
- No Administrative slavery
- Local explicit environmental standards
- Extend the American dream to all the corners of the earth
- Local explicit health and safety standards
- Apply tariffs on all goods that do not meet American Regulatory standards.
- Foster cultural practices that support innovation
- High standards for education
- Reward innovators and entrepreneurs
- Regulations must drive healthy growth and beautiful prosperity
- A Local Labor Union as talent agent
- Negotiate a track towards middle class wages for all work
- Exchange job security for wage security
- Act as a talent agent not an employment agency
- Local military service for all who want to work
- Anyone who wants to work and can’t find a job can join the military and help bring peace and prosperity to the world.
- Local Immigration policy
- Focus on skills and productivity
- eVerifiy for all employment
- Education
- National/State certifications for all college — exit exam or keep going until you learn something
- National/State interoperability for certifications for trades, professions and specialties
- National common core standards for high school and publish scores for all test takers
- Debt forgiveness for people who don’t pass the national standards tests
- Health Insurance
- Functional medicine
- Catastrophic insurance
- Healthy choices
- More Local Taxes and Tariffs
- Local Taxes on labor visas
- Local Taxes on outsourcing
- Local Taxes on immigration
- Local Taxes on remittances
- Environment
- Make your neighbourhood beautiful
- Support local shops and services
- Understand local and global supply chain
- Make locally sustainable choices
- Promote Monetary Diversity
- Anyone can securitize their assets on a blockchain and create money called asset drawing rights (ADR) through membership in a mutual guarantee society (MSG).
- Show ownership and depreciation if asset is physical like a car
- Mutual Guarantee Societies confirm ownership and guarantees
- Mutual Guarantee Societies issues token based on asset
- Token floats against asset drawing rights
- Token can be exchanged for USD or whatever when converted to asset drawing rights and sold to a safe asset buyer
- Token acts as a price to show how well run our Mutual Guarantee Society is in comparison to other Mutual Guarantee Societies.
- The total amount of asset drawing rights make or burn Make or burn what? depending on how all the Mutual Guarantee Societies are run
- If asset drawing rights target inflation is ZERO ADR always beats any other currency with an inflation rate greater than zero.
- Fiscal Competition
- Competing voluntary regulatory authorities
- Streamlined One Click Bankruptcy with easy restitution
- Offer an easy exit for citizens with repayment option for reentry
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