Bad news for those wanting revolution.

[a geek named Bob]

75. WARNING L*O*N*G* POST

Predatory capitalism depends on a few things:
1.) Control of the Government, at Federal, State, and local levels
2.) Tight control of the money supply, and control of the economic activities
3.) Control of the Ideology and the spread thereof

As long as they have controls of these three items, the predatory folks can live fat and happy.

Here's where the post gets long, and I understand if folks wish to drop out here...

Elizabeth Warren's election into the senate is enough to give me pause. She's not a big fan of the FIRE folks (Financial Insurance, and Real Estate). Even if she doesn't get appointed to the SEC or other watchdog groups, it's a sign that the FIRE predators DON'T have complete power. The amount of money spent on the most recent election - if money is the only issue we look at - should have seen plutocrat >ahem< excuse me, "job creator" Mitt Romney elected handily into the presidency. The same thing can be said for Linda McMahon, yet writ smaller. (That last one is actually a twofer, as she had money AND a Media source on her side.) Then there's the interesting point (interesting to me, at least) that President Obama doesn't have to do anything, to have the Bush Tax Cuts lapse. That would suggest that the predators don't have as much power over the government as they posture.

Control of the money supply, and the economic activities thereof, is the lifeblood of the predators. Some folks in Colorado recently started using Pot as a medium of exchange. That's kind of hard to hoard for long periods, and is just about the definition of a "tool of conviviality." Then there's the BerkShares system, Ithaca dollars, and so one. This means that the FIRE guys don't control ALL of the money supply. Add in Gift economies and the various barter systems, and things are obviously out of their control.

Previous to about 1982, I would have said that you could make a case that the FIRE guys were in control of a majority of hte Ideology structure. However (and this is a big caveat), they were not in control of the various sub cultures. The public schools and media were purveying one set of ideologies, and the sub cultures were arguing another different set. With the creation of the hacker nets, a different method of communication was created, later widened to become the Internet. As more and more people move from TV to Internet, the method of the message has changed. Pre-Internet, all you could do was yell ineffectually at the screen of the TV. Now, you can post messages to the other speaker, and perhaps sway the "audience" to a different point of view. It sounds like such a simple thing, but it has its consequences. In my somewhat limited readings on the subject, the first rule of a coup d-etat is to take over the national media, in order to have only "your" message take to the airwaves. That's a tough trick to pull off, when regarding the 'net.

Given the Maker movement, there is a certain level of peaceful disruption to the current social system...

The FIRE predators:
-can't rig all of the elections at this point
-can't control all levels of economic activity
-can't force us to buy only from their dealers (with a 3D printer, I can build you a steam powered car. It just takes time)
-can't control the schools
-can't control the public message

worse, the FIRE predators are losing fear tools. San Berdoo was talking about seizing their foreclosed houses.

Then there's the fact that most of them are old and largely from whites-only clubs.