We presented John Robb’s take on resilient communities last week. The need for it is based however on his concurrent analysis of p2p warfare trends, which combines a conviction that the current state system will melt down, and that global guerilla’s, i.e. small interconnected groups that can inflict damage way beyond their size, will increase.
In a recent comment, after describing the current and future financial meltdown, he gives an overview of his negative scenario.
Here are the 3 ‘mean trends’ that will make resilient communities inevitable.
There is much to agree on, but also to be doubtful off. While not disputing a scenario where a lot of things could start to go wrong in the future, and feed on each other, I think for example, that far from more privatization, it is on the contrary a rebirth of the nation-state and its regulatory policies, that we can expect. We’ll see how it plays out, here’s …
What Robb totally dismisses is the ability of mass social movements to influence state policy …
John Robb:
“There will be:
* An acceleration in the decline of the state. From financial failures in developed countries (at the gov’t level) to the proliferation of hollow/failed states. Due to financial distress, new black swans (of different types) will create greater levels of dislocation than previously. States will lurch from crisis to crises, undercut by groups emerging below them.
* Widespread economic dislocation. Since everyone is now in competition with everyone else in the world (the state won’t/can’t protect you from that), there will be an accelerated shift towards primary loyalties as people scramble for economic protection (to eat, get energy, and move forward). On the whole, these groups will opt for open source warfare to fight their foes (both states and corporations). IF you don’t have a group (other than the state) to rely upon to back you up, you are vulnerable. The best alternative for those not willing to resort to violence/crime will be to shift towards resilient communities.
* Privatization of everything. The financial distress of nation-states will cause them to enlist allies from the corporate world. Fire sales of state assets and the replacement of gov’t services with corporate services will be commonplace. Everything will be fee-based. Expect a rapid differentiation in all services (particularly those commonly expected from the gov’t) between those that can pay and those that cannot. Increasingly, violence will be between global guerrilla groups (based on primary loyalties) and corporations, with control of a hollow nation-state as the spoils.
John Robb:
“There will be:
An acceleration in the decline of the state. From financial failures in developed countries (at the gov’t level) to the proliferation of hollow/failed states. Due to financial distress, new black swans (of different types) will create greater levels of dislocation than previously. States will lurch from crisis to crises, undercut by groups emerging below them.<
RC:
Well Robb’s statement seems apt only it appears that during the financial collapse of the past week that there has been an historic rupture in the relationship between the power of the State apparatus and those fundamental institutions (Investment Banks) of millennial hyper-capitalism which have hereto been perpetuating the myths of Hayek’s market fundamentalism and its economic certainties of unregulated markets. It is almost as if disaster capitalism imploded and began cannibalizing itself, and there would have only been a pile of bones left which would if the Corporate Welfare State did not step in to prop them up.
That States will lurch from crisis to crisis certainly defines the past decade of global economics is undeniable: The Asian Crisis of 1997, the Russian Crisis of 1998, Argentina Collapse 1999-2002, the Internet Crash of 2000, September 11, 2001, the Financial Collapse of 2008.
Robb:
Widespread economic dislocation. Since everyone is now in competition with everyone else in the world (the state won’t/can’t protect you from that), there will be an accelerated shift towards primary loyalties as people scramble for economic protection (to eat, get energy, and move forward). On the whole, these groups will opt for open source warfare to fight their foes (both states and corporations). IF you don’t have a group (other than the state) to rely upon to back you up, you are vulnerable. The best alternative for those not willing to resort to violence/crime will be to shift towards resilient communities.
RC:
Is something similar not already status quo in the role that ten thousands competing special interest groups play that define the corporatist state?
Robb:
Privatization of everything. The financial distress of nation-states will cause them to enlist allies from the corporate world.
RC:
Well this situation has been dramatically reversed this week. It seems that some new hybrid form of the corporatist state has begun, one which will more completely obscure the separate identities of corporate wealth and state power. Because in fact it is the infusion of state wealth that has now provided the life support for the global financial system of streamed capitalism. Has there been a dramatic reversal of the destiny of the nation state visa vie the corporate state or is this implosion of the global banking system just the beginning of a political system which will be defined by the wholesale plunder of public funding by free market capitalism?
Rich
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