You know you're getting hustled if you can discern the "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" (FUD) in the sales pitch. IBM computer salesmen were famous (infamous?) for their use of the technique.
Here, FUD is screaming at you:
... “Humanity is facing its greatest emergency, a crisis consisting of many, interlinked, catastrophic risks.
The crisis is already here, and will get worse. Its combined scale and impact are so great that few grasp it. Together, these risks endanger our ability to maintain a civilization, possibly even to survive as a species. Global solutions are now urgent. To act later will be too late.”...Club of Rome quoted at Gateway
(We agree that "conservatives" often use the same technique. Rational, measured debate is a thing of the past in many instances.)
In the same screed, the Club of Rome called for giving the UN authority to emit "binding legislation."
Well, OK. You SHOULD have fears, uncertainties, and doubts about the UN.
There. We did it, too.
No UN
ReplyDeletemore Subsidiarity
Nothing should be done by a larger, more complex organization that can be done as well by a smaller, simpler organization. Thus, if a family can handle a problem, then the family should. If the family can't, then the extended family should. If the extended family can't, then neighborhood should. If the neighborhood can't, then the town should. If the town can't, then the county should. If the county can't, then the state should. If the state can't, then the federal government should. And so on. The larger, more complex entities should leave the smaller alone to their own self-governance as much as is prudent.
Decentralization makes for more effective, more responsive, more humane, and less wasteful governance of a natural institution. Pope John Paul II wrote of this in Centesimus Annus, 1991:
Another task of the State is that of overseeing and directing the exercise of human rights in the economic sector. However, primary responsibility in this area belongs not to the State but to individuals and to the various groups and associations which make up society. The State could not directly ensure the right to work for all its citizens unless it controlled every aspect of economic life and restricted the free initiative of individuals. This does not mean, however, that the State has no competence in this domain, as was claimed by those who argued against any rules in the economic sphere. Rather, the State has a duty to sustain business activities by creating conditions which will ensure job opportunities, by stimulating those activities where they are lacking or by supporting them in moments of crisis.
The State has the further right to intervene when particular monopolies create delays or obstacles to development. In addition to the tasks of harmonizing and guiding development, in exceptional circumstances the State can also exercise a substitute function, when social sectors or business systems are too weak or are just getting under way, and are not equal to the task at hand. Such supplementary interventions, which are justified by urgent reasons touching the common good, must be as brief as possible, so as to avoid removing permanently from society and business systems the functions which are properly theirs, and so as to avoid enlarging excessively the sphere of State intervention to the detriment of both economic and civil freedom.
In recent years the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of State, the so-called "Welfare State". This has happened in some countries in order to respond better to many needs and demands, by remedying forms of poverty and deprivation unworthy of the human person. However, excesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the Welfare State, dubbed the "Social Assistance State". Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.
By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbours to those in need. It should be added that certain kinds of demands often call for a response which is not simply material but which is capable of perceiving the deeper human need.
This was a very helpful post after listening to the Trump/ Musk interview....
ReplyDeletehttps://dad29.blogspot.com/2022/07/defining-deep-state.html
.........In the present age, the managerial class plays an outsized role in picking winners and losers, so there is money to be made exploiting their hopes and fears. This has always been the genius of Elon Musk. His projects all tap into the boutique beliefs of the managerial class. He is a futurist selling futuristic solutions to the problems of the future to people haunted by the prospect they will not see the glorious future. They are willing to spend your money to achieve their dreams.......
..............It's not really "a system." It is a theology. ZMan hints at that reality with his use of the term 'cult,' which almost always denotes a religion--thus, theology is present.
The theology of the Deep State is Gnosticism. Yes, that's a heresy, but like all heresies it is very comfortable with disrupting society and even killing people for The Cause of The Day because the Gnostics simply know best. It is the heresy of choice for Smart People.
That's Deep State. Those who Know Best, no matter how inane, murderous, or idiotic their knowledge really is.............