Prepper-Lords intend to leave us in the lurch... then dominate the wasteland aftermath. Worse - they want it!

Douglas Rushkoff’s book - Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires – describes his encounters with a dangerous trend among many uber-rich lords… as they fantasize about civilization’s fall and their hyper-privileged roles in the horrible world to follow. 

Beyond just prepper-preparedness, this tendency slips over into wanting it to come true. I explored a similar sickness in The Postman and in Earth, where I used stark imagery to help prevent such a calamity. 

Alas, the fellows to whom Doug had the dubious privilege of talking (and I have, too, some of them) are doing a lot more than pondering scary stories. Like my ‘Holnist’ survivalists in The Postman, they are preparing, big time, hiring contractors to build palatial bunkers, both under their urban mansions and way up in mountain stronghols in New Zealand, Patagonia and Zimbabwe.

Indeed, what used to be a secretive – somewhat embarrassed – pastime is now an unabashed industry, lavishly advertised! As in this web site for Oppidum - a Swiss construction firm. Apparently it's all real - unless a very elaborate hoax, one that's validated by this Forbes article.

It's not hard to see how this endangers all of us, especially in light of the immense power that many of these delusional ‘elites’ wield. 

== Some differences ==

I do part company with Doug over the etiology of the illness, which he attributes to the techno transcendentalism of many tech billionaires. But that is an artifact of the circles that he moves in. He circulates among tech elites. So, that's the kind of talkative, gimmick-loving preppers whom he meets.

In fact, far greater fractions of today’s world oligarchy are old money inheritance brats, or hedge parasites, or casino mafiosi, petro-princes and the like - elites who are all considerably more discreet and secretive than the tech-bros. Elites who are far more engaged in a planetary oligarchic putsch, aimed at stifling the Enlightenment Experiment that gave them everything, but that stymies their core, masturbatory fetish – restoring 6000 years of lobotomized feudalism.

Despite that difference in specific diagnosis, Rushkoff and I agree that this trend bodes ill for us all.  In Earth I portray a somewhat better future in which this kind of delusional solipsism, by would-be struldbrug lords, was stymied by a “Helvetian War,” that rendered the Glarus Alps into slag, but finally gave-over to the world the bank records. Who owns what. 

(Universal ownership transparency would not only bring justice and erase national debts, everywhere. It would also truly empower Adam Smith's promise - the version of market enterprise that's flat, creatively competitive and fair.)

Alas, given the Swiss bunker mentality that we see in that Oppidum web site, it seems something like that scenario in EARTH may prove necessary.

Of course, the problem is not with wealth in itself, but human nature.  A tendency by elite humans in all generations… especially males… to attribute their high status to inherent superiority, and thus to surround themselves with sycophant flatterers who benefit by reinforcing those delusions. 

Key to this is the psychotic, oligarch-funded, all-out propaganda war against nerds – against all fact-using professions. The quarter of a billion humans who today actually keep things running. We who keep the lords safe and healthy. Who gave them everything they have...

...but who are also the principal force standing in their way of restored feudalism.

This campaign to discredit nerdy fact-folks extends beyond science, medicine, teaching, journalism, law and civil service. It now even includes hate campaigns against the intel/FBI/military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on Terror… 

...because all of those fact-users dare to say those fell words: “Sir, that’s just not true.”


== What's their agenda? ==

It's not just MAGA dopes they wish to sway, but also convenient fools who can attempt to play as ‘intellectuals.’ 

Here’s an important article -The Return of the Anti-Enlightenment - about ways that our fantastically successful Enlightenment Experiment is under fiercely coordinated attack, even at the level of theory. (And yeah, this thing was published at Cato, an ‘institute’ that long ago became not a promoter of freedom but a shill for oligarchy. Only in this one case... could it be that some, at Cato, are rediscovering their stated mission?)  

“In an age of widespread concern that liberal democracy is increasingly embattled around the world, the twin attacks on Enlightenment liberalism from the right and the left—and not just from the fringes—represent a worrying trend.” 

Okay, sure, there are anti-enlightenment fanatics on all horizons, including - yes - some on the 'far-left.' But these authors have realized what’s abundantly clear. That shrieks from frippy far-left postmodernists are a much smaller threat, driven by sanctimony addictions, yet still rooted in enlightenment goals… 

...while our meme-enemies on the far-right are very numerous and massively coordinated, waging all-out attacks against our every pillar, from science, democracy, merit, and accountability… to, yes, any sort of freedom.

== An end to hypocritical pretense ==

In a worrisome trend, many elements of the oligarchy-funded neo-feudalism movement – that I’ve denounced ferociously elsewhere...

...no longer even try to disguise their intent to end anything like what we call liberty or free speech or open inquiry. Styling themselves as scions of Edmund Burke, their screeds display utter ignorance of human history, or the past thinkers they claim to ‘quote.’ 

For example, as the Cato article points out, these neo-monarchist morons conflate Hobbes with Locke, of all dizzying ineptitudes! While attributing to feudalism virtues that 6000 years of bullying lords always loudly claimed – but never actually displayed – as they preyed-upon and oppressed nearly all of our ancestors.

== Follow-up ==  

Implicit in this cult is their fear for the vast amounts of lucre that have been transferred (grabbed) into oligarchy, across the last couple of decades... that an awakened bourgeoisie and proletariat might join forces to claw some of it back, not through communism, but simply a return to the Rooseveltean Social Contract, in which markets reward productive activities with wealth, even luxury, but NOT outrageous power. 

Hence, this cult's wishful fantasies about The Event. Fantasies that might be relatively harmless, except for a dangerous aspect of human nature. Not wanting an investment to go to waste. 

And thus a noted drift toward wanting The Event to happen! 

And hence - given the power that the world oligarchy has grabbed -  that wish, even subconscious, is dangerous to us all.

See one of many recent observations of this rising rationalization.

… And my own decryption of this mad-growing cult hatred of the Enlightenment Experiment. My novel Existence dived into some of these matters. 

== The Security Staff Quandary ==

Only now it's getting pretty darned explicit and real-world worrisome. Doug Rushkoff is the supposed expert, having written extensively about his consultations with some of these Struldbrugs.  I, too, was asked some of the same questions.

Paramount among their expressed worries? "How do we keep our security staffs loyal after 'the event', when money is no good and there's no law to enforce their contracts?"

Boo hoo. You should see the 'ideas' I've heard some of them float, to solve this problem! Like controlling the staff with remote controlled explosive collars around the guards' necks! Or locking the food store-rooms with secret combinations. Not one of their ideas has been remotely plausible. Indeed - defensively embarassed - they clearly know it. 

Though in fact, I know a method that could work... and I refused to say!  Certainly not at any ‘consultancy fee’ they are likely to pay!

== So... what do you imagine will happen, after? ==

The thing I find amazing is that, except for the short term 'security staff question,' there's almost never any thought about the world that would follow The Event. So let's parse it out.

If the perturbation is mild-to-moderate, as in K.S. Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, just slaying mere millions of people, then the public investigations that follow will not leave many of these castles in the hands of an aristocracy that did little to prevent it.

If it is a truly major calamity... death for most of the world's billions... then perhaps they envision their mountain or undersea fortresses leaving them intact in the aftermath, emerging as mighty feudal lords. 

Maybe an aftermath like in the famed novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, wherein the suffering survivors take out their rage on nerds and books, leaving themselves consigned to ignorance and filth. Whereupon those survivors are soon eager to kowtow low before gleaming, well-fed lords who emerge from their castle bunkers, tanned, rested and ready to rule with all the tools and all the knowledge they hoarded.

That may be the fantasy. Only there's a problem. 

Things won't go that way. Not even close.

== Our best response is pretty simple ==

Okay, here it is.

"You delusional inheritance brats of turpitude parasites rely utterly upon about a quarter of a billion nerds on this planet to keep things going, to keep the peace, to design and make the cool stuff, to implement your palaces and to keep you healthy. And yet, you currently subsidize the greatest campaign of slander the world has ever seen, promoting spite toward all of the fact-using professions, from science, law, medicine, teaching and journalism to several million civil servants, and now even including the FBI-intel/military officer corps in the USA and West. 

"But have you truly thought this through?

"Do you honestly believe those quarter of a billion geeks and nerds and specialists haven't noticed what you are doing? Or that they’ll go down quietly? 

"Or that many, many of us don't know exactly where you have set up your cozy, high-tech bunkers, along with every schematic and every pathetic precaution you have taken? 

"The very same nerds who know nuclear, bio, cyber, nano and all the rest? You really and truly want them as vengeful enemies?"

Of course the would be prepper lords haven't thought it through. Because of the age-old curse of oligarchy. Surrounding yourselves with sycophants and flatterers. With fools.

== Why do so many (not all) fall for this dealy fantasy? ==

Why does this always, always happen? It's a topic to explore another time. But in general...

... male reproductive strategies warp the social behaviors of most animals and most often in ways that benefit individual males, but not a healthy species. In fact, this ranks high on my list of explanations for the Fermi Paradox! 

After 6000 years (possibly 12,000) of feudalism dominating almost all cultures that had agriculture, we are all descended from the harems of SOBs who managed to claw their way atop pyramids and stomp the other 99% down to serfdom. It's effective at gene pushing! But crappy at delusion-resistant governance. 

In fact, even the existence of our current alternative to feudalism - the enlightenment flattened diamond of flat-fair-cooperative-competition and reciprocal accountability - may be a fluke across the whole galaxy. And hence the Fermi Paradox connection.

These rich dopes surround themselves with flatterers and sycophants and ersatz (or real) harems, because that's an irresistibly alluring path for males with that kind of wealth and power, even those who mean well. (Poor Clinton!)

Hence, I think the 'technosolutionist' stuff that Doug Rushkoff diagnoses is just window dressing for much more reflexive, deeply-rooted feudalism-drives. After all, as I already stated, many of these rich nutters aren't tech guys, but plain old inheritance brats, or cheaters, or criminal bosses, mafiosi, casino moguls, drug kingpins....   The tech guys are just the ones who us nerds are likely to meet. Nouveau riche parvenus who don't have the smooth discretion skills of, say, a Saudi prince.

And yes, zillionaires aren't all fools! A few realize what Adam Smith knew and taught... that the market will only provide if it is at least generally fair. I know some who are loyal to this unique civilization that gave them everything. Craig Newmark, Peter Diamandis, Reid Hoffman, Warren Buffett... oh, I could go on listing many counter-examples of grownups... or at least decent people who would be (or already are) on our side.

Alas, though, almost no one actually reads Smith anymore... or Marx... or studies what happens when wealth disparities pass French Revolution levels.

So let me distill it in simple enough terms that even a brat with a flattery-lobotomized brain could understand: 

If you folks don't wean yourselves off your private jets and go back to flying First Class, where you belong, then the vehicle you eventually ride may be a tumbrel.

Simple enough?

Political Delusions - Do we just rationalize our emotional decisions?

I've long maintained that humanity's greatest gift and greatest curse are one and the same - our prodigious talent for delusion.  For believing things - passionately - that are belied by both logic and evidence. This is the wellspring of great art. Indeed, as a novelist* I cater to the desire of my own customers to - temporarily and knowingly - believe they are experiencing other realities and the thoughts of credible characters, engaged in barely plausible adventures.

This gift is what we study at UCSD's Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination.

Alas, the same gift has brought us endless pain. Across time nearly every human culture was dominated by narrow castes of men who ruled according to fiercely-protected delusional systems, crushing voices that might speak up with criticism, or alternatives, or inconvenient truths. Those mostly-feudal societies were very badly governed. All of them combined never accomplished the tiniest fraction of what we have, in just a few generations. We who finally found a (tentative and contingent) way out of the Delusional Trap. 

Gradually, we developed enlightenment methods to reduce the severity of delusion, not by changing human nature but through the simple but daring method of competition. You may not be able to see through your own beloved errors, but your rivals often will! Indeed, they'll willingly (if irksomely) point those errors out to you. And you'll return the favor! This is the magic of our five competitive "arenas": markets, democracy, science, courts and sports. 

Alas, cheaters will always try to ruin these arenas and take us back to olden ways. And so I present to you some of the modern hallucinations that are shared by our fellow citizens.  

Make no mistake, your deluded neighbors are not your foes! The real enemy that threatens your nation, world, species and children is the all-too human drive to clutch (desperately) to reassuring mirages.

Delusion #1 – that authoritarians are your friends.

One of the top cognitive scientists in the world, George Lakoff, scrutinizes the appeal of Donald Trump, showing how finely tuned his positions are, to the “strict father” foundations of American conservatism.  

Consistent with Lakoff's assertion is this other research suggesting that the #1 predictive trait deciding whether you or your neighbor support Donald Trump is Americans’ inclination to authoritarianism.  People who score high on the authoritarian scale value conformity and order, protect social norms, and are wary of outsiders. When authoritarians feel threatened, they support aggressive leaders and policies. Authoritarianism and a hybrid variable that links authoritarianism with a personal fear of terrorism were the only two variables that predicted, with statistical significance, support for Trump.  

(How ironic that "red" Americans in the volcanically re-ignited Confederacy) proclaim quivering fear of terrorists, when a majority live in rural or suburban zones that are utterly-utterly safe.  While "blue" Americans (the Union) largely dwell in cities that are great big terror-targets. Yet, New Yorkers famously stood atop the 9/11 rubble, faced east and shouted: "Iz dat all you got?")

Sure, this much seems obvious. Though I find it hard to believe that Cruz and Rubio supporters are one scintilla less authoritarian than Trump-lovers. And mind you, in my experience, yearning for authority also separates the generally non-authoritarian liberals in America vs. the much smaller but significant clade of actual leftists. The latter share with the right more traits than...

But that’s a separate discussion. For after we deal with the immediate crisis at-hand.

== The Trillies (Alas!) Aren’t Smart ==

Delusion #2: Because you are rich, you think that means you're smart.

Yes, even if your wealth was inherited, that just tempts you to insist that IQ is genetic! This is the rationalization embraced by all feudal oligarchies, across time. So, so convenient and self-serving... and human. And so, so disproved by the blatant historical record of 6000 years, across which insipidly stupid governance was the norm. Indeed only when those flat-fair competitive arenas finally were set up, did that dismal record start to shift, and human civilization really begin to take off.

So, is it that simple?  Oligarchy = dumb and enlightenment arenas = smart?  Well, first, those arenas (markets, democracy, science etc) take real effort to maintain. Left unattended, they'll soon get warped by cheaters... as is happening right now.  It is our job to do another fine-tuning... the kind of gentle, moderate "revolution" last achieved by our parents in the Greatest Generation, led by their beloved hero, the living human they adored above all others, Franklin Roosevelt.

But what if we fail? The way those brief, enlightenment experiments of Periclean Athens and Republican Florence were snuffed out? If we are doomed to go back to oligarchy, is it too much to ask that our new lords at least try to find ways to govern better? To rule with less self-serving delusion?

In Existence I portray an event taking place in the year 2040, high in the Alps – a meeting of the “trillionaire clans,” at which the top planetary aristocrats (and their hired boffins) ask: can we do feudalism better, this time?

It’s a vital question that I never have seen asked, by the forces which are now striving so hard to re-establish the normal human pattern – oligarchy. The facts are blatant, and yet I have to repeat-reiterate them here, for utter clarity.

 The fundamental truths about feudalism are:

(1) that it dominated 99% of human societies and thus seems inherently hard to avoid.

(2) Almost all of those owner-oligarchies governed very badly, bringing progress, science, justice, creativity and adaptability to a near standstill.

(3) The last 200 years offered up an alternative – open/competitive/cooperative/flat-fair enlightenment systems e.g. science, markets, democracy – that has achieved many orders of magnitude more than all feudal societies, combined.

(4) If the Enlightenment Experiment is doomed (as the oligarchy’s boffins keep telling us), then shouldn’t the New Lords be earnestly exploring how to do feudalism much better than before? Is there any hope of getting Medicis and Tangs and Plantagenets - who at least tried - instead of the more typical, stunningly delusional Bourbons, Hapsburgs, Murdochs, Kochs, Hohenzollerns and Romanovs?

Alas, that doesn’t seem likely. There are no such meetings. (I'd have ways of knowing.) Only unsapient reflex-gatherings to scheme short term power grabs and rent-seeking. And those gatherings must seem desperate, right now, as the steed they had been riding -- confederate culture warriors -- has broken loose from their control.  Like the dismayed Junkers lords of Germany in 1933, they are blinking in dull surprise that the beast they cynically whipped into hydrophobic froth has been skillfully yanked away from them by a savanarola-hypnotist.

I could have told them. I tried to. Others have tried. For example, former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich makes this clear in his most cogent missive yet, suggesting to the GOP-owner caste that they have made a series of devastatingly short-sighted and foolish mistakes.  

What Reich leaves out is mention of one portion of the billionaire clade... maybe a quarter of them - who actually got rich by developing great new products and services. In other words the real entrepreneurial capitalists. Almost all of whom are now... democrats. (With a few libertarians.) They already know what Reich wrote here. Given the stunning disparity in outcomes across democratic vs republican administrations, no sapient person who actually believes in competitive enterprise and Adam Smith would touch the GOP with a ten parsec light saber. (Oh, Reich has endorsed Bernie Sanders. Interesting "establishment" figure.)

As Machiavelli wrote, when he surrendered the dream of the Florentine Republic to work for the Medicis…. If we must be ruled by domineering lords, may they at least be smart ones?

Apparently, there’s not much chance of that..

= Are truthy-truisms subject to fact? “Taxes make a state unfriendly to business" =

More delusions?  Got a million of em. 

For example, here's central right wing Catechism 101: “taxing the rich or increasing workers' wages kills jobs and makes businesses leave the state.” 

Ahem? California disproves this year after year, decade after decade.

In sharp contrast, Kansas doubled down on Supply Side voodoo, slashing taxes on the wealthy and giving monopolists everything they asked. The result? State’s finances and services plummeted below the level called “hellish” and businesses are fleeing Kansas in droves.

Now look at Minnesota. “When he took office in January of 2011, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton inherited a $6.2 billion budget deficit and a 7 percent unemployment rate from his predecessor, Tim Pawlenty, the soon-forgotten Republican candidate for the presidency who called himself Minnesota's first true fiscally-conservative governor in modern history. Pawlenty prided himself on never raising state taxes .... as head of Minnesota's state government, he managed to add only 6,200 more jobs.  

Then Minnesotans wised up. “During his first four years in office, Gov. Dayton and his legislature raised the state income tax from 7.85 to 9.85 percent on individuals earning over $150,000 (raising) $2.1 billion. They also raised the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2018. Republicans like state rep. Mark Uglem warned "The job creators, the big corporations, the small corporations, they will leave. It's all dollars and sense to them."

Except… Minnesota now has the fifth lowest unemployment rate in the country at 3.6 percent. According to 2012-2013 U.S. census figures, Minnesotans had a median income that was $10,000 larger than the U.S. average.

Compare your favorite incantations to actual outcomes.  

It's not that all conservative nostrums are always wrong. I am a fan of Adam Smith. Barry Goldwater had some interesting conservative-libertarian suggestions to try and there are others. Heck I have some libertarian-ishproposals! 

But start with this pure fact: every single metric of U.S. national health does better across the spans of democratic vs republican administrations. Every single one. If you are clinging to GOP loyalty, what does that make you?

Probably someone who recites mantras and incantations.  And clings to delusions.

== Political Notes ==

And finally... let's bid fond farewell. His calm-toned demeanor notwithstanding, Ben Carson had a disturbing fixation with knives. He started losing ground in the GOP race after describing attempted stabbing murders in his youth. Now, leading a new Christian Voter drive, he gives as his motive preventing democrats from appointing judges who will "knife our children in the heart."

Yipe! That some obsession.

Why pick on Carson now? Hey, it's not all about the raging lunatics who are still in the GOP nomination race. (And that describes all of them.) Or the raging lunatics who are sniping at Trump from the sidelines - or endorsing him - after spending a generation veering US conservatism down cliffs of anti-science, hate-drenched, corrupt and lazy insanity. No, no. Pay heed to the whole panoply of political rabies.

Arizona is tapping 17.3% of its electrical power from the spinning in Barry Goldwater's grave.

======
* Note we are in the final week to pre-order my new story collection INSISTENCE OF VISION, at steep discount.  Official pub date is next week and your first-week order is appreciated... as well as those Amazon reviews! ;-)  Show the world there are Good Delusions!

International rivalry - is much of it based on theft?

“The Great Brain Robbery”  was the most highly rated episode of 60 Minutes in seven years, about the systematic use of industrial espionage by China and others, featuring interviews based on the work of international tech-econ guru Mark Anderson, whose Strategic News Service is vital for you business-newsletter subscribers, and whose Future in Review” (FiRe) Conference is one of the most important and fun conclaves going. 

Of course the rapaciously insatiable raid on western inventiveness is a case of killing the goose that lays golden eggs. China's rise has been entirely funded by westerners buying stuff from Asian factories. Just as the same raising-up happened in exactly the same way to Taiwan and Korea, to Japan and postwar Europe and many other zones.

How have Yanks been able to afford 70 years of trade deficits that funded this huge project of uplift? By inventing new industries (rockets, jets, satellites, pharma, telecom, the Internet) to replace old ones we shipped overseas, en masse. Our inventiveness is the key ingredient - after Pax Americana peace - that increased wealth in the world, enlarging a positive-sum pie for all to share.

Chopping at the neck of that goose proves that Asian elites are no smarter than those of any other pyramidal-hierarchical, command society across 6000 years.  Here's a hint. Even if it were a smart move... we won't let it happen.

== How might the turnaround begin? ==

Not in Asia, I believe. Remember the “Helvetian War” from EARTH?  It was my forecast (fictional) that the 2020s might feature a consortium of angry developing nations finally getting fed up and declaring hostilities with… Switzerland.  

And other havens for kleptocratic thieves and other cheaters. Cheaters who are the ancient and recurring enemy of not only the poor, but any chance for flat-open-fair-creative capitalism. Now see why this flight of science fictional extrapolation is starting to look ever-more likely:  Follow the money inside the world's tax havens.

From an earlier article in The Guardian: “The world's super-rich have taken advantage of lax tax rules to siphon off at least $21 trillion, and possibly as much as $32tn, from their home countries and hide it abroad – a sum larger than the entire American economy.”  According to one expert:

"If we could figure out how to tax all this offshore wealth without killing the proverbial golden goose, or at least entice its owners to reinvest it back home, this sector of the global underground is easily large enough to make a significant contribution to tax justice, investment and paying the costs of global problems like climate change." 

To be clear, this is a separate matter from tax rates! If you think taxes are too high, you should favor international wealth transparency!  Because tax rates on honest citizens would go down, if all the world's skull-duggerously secreted lucre were announced and tallied.  

Indeed, work it out. Those trillionaires would then join the fight for low rates, instead of (currently) chortling happily that you are paying for the roads they use and educating their workers and protecting them from revolution. Nicholas Shaxson discussed this disruption on our economies in his book, Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens. 

They count on that service lasting forever. But even if money can stifle modest protest campaigns, like that of Bernie Sanders, in developed nations, there is always the chance of what I described in EARTH: 

“The struggles of the authorities in Egypt to recover the vast sums hidden abroad by Hosni Mubarak, his family and other cronies during his many years in power have provided a striking recent example of the fact that kleptocratic rulers can use their time to amass immense fortunes while many of their citizens are trapped in poverty. The world's poorest countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, have fought long and hard in recent years to receive debt forgiveness from the international community; but this research suggests that in many cases, if they had been able to draw their richest citizens into the tax net, they could have avoided being dragged into indebtedness in the first place. Oil-rich Nigeria has seen more than $300bn spirited away since 1970, for example, while Ivory Coast has lost $141bn,” notes Heather Stewart in The Guardian. 

How long before some charismatically smart president in some developing nation discovers how much power he/she would have – legally – as a belligerent in an openly and honestly declared state of war against, say, the Cayman Islands? 

Actually look it up, the inherent rights of belligerent states.  Rights that - say - the Phillipines could apply to seize - say - Luxembourg or Cayman assets anywhere in the world, without a single shot being fired!

 What at first might sound ludicrous begins to sound ever-more plausible, the deeper into it you plumb.

== Theft of our chance to thrive ==

One of the surest signs of the treason called the War on Science has been the obstinate confederate religious doctrine that we must do nothing about improving our energy systems.  

If "climate skeptics" had been sincere, they would have said: "While the jury is out, let's improve efficiency and double research. 

"First: just in case 99% of scientists turn out to be right about the danger. 

"But also because efficiency and research are TWODA -- things we ought to be doing anyway, even if climate change proves false!"

That's what sane "skeptics" would have said. 

The fact that the Koch-Saudi-financed obstruction campaign never once said those things but instead always sabotaged efficiency and research proves that the goal was always to delay efficiency and alternative energy sources and to sell as much coal and oil as possible, till the world awakened. 

(After auto fuel efficiency standards finally passed in 2009, during the brief democratic Congress, every dire prediction failed and every single positive one came true.  We have better, cleaner, smarter, more efficient cars and automakers are selling them very cheap but making profits. Guys, does being wrong EVER change your minds?)

Now Paul Krugman weighs in that it's almost game over, amid low gas prices and American energy independence  - with Saudi political influence in the U.S. at a 60 year low - tech is accelerating, solar and wind and storage are now competitive and costs are plummeting. Despite treasonous delays, a transformation is pulling away from fossil fuels, faster than anyone imagined possible... and all of it despite the continuing-insane mania and anti-science, anti-future hysteria.

Imagine how much sooner and how much better a world, if traitors had not delayed this.

== Class warfare ==

I believe one of our problems is that the Rooseveltean reforms – which historians credit with saving western capitalism by vesting the working class with a large stake, (something Marx never expected) – were too successful, in a way. So successful that the very idea of class war seems not even to occur to American boomers. This despite the fact that class conflict was rampant across almost every other nation and time.  But as boomers age-out, is that grand time of naïve expectation over?

Forbes recently announced that just 62 ultra-rich individuals have as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity. Five years ago, it took 388 rich guys to achieve that status.  Which raises the question, where the heck does this rising, proto-feudal oligarchy think it will all lead? 

To a restoration of humanity’s normal, aristocratic pyramid of power (with them staying on top)?  

Or to radicalization, as a billion members of the hard-pressed but highly skilled and tech-empowered middle class rediscover class struggle?

The last time this happened, in the 1930s, lordly owner castes in Germany, Japan, Britain and the U.S. used mass media they owned to stir populist rightwing movements that might help suppress activity on the left. Not one of these efforts succeeded. In Germany and Japan, the monsters they created rose up and took over, leading to immense pain for all and eventual loss of much of that oligarchic wealth.

In Britain and the U.S., 1930s reactionary fomenters dragged us very close to the same path… till moderate reformers did what Marxists deemed impossible – adjusted the wealth imbalance and reduced cheating advantages so that a rational and flat-open-fair capitalism would be moderated by rules and investments to stimulate a burgeoning middle class, without even slightly destroying the Smithian incentives to get rich through delivery of innovative goods and services.  

That brilliant moderation led to the middle class booms of the 50s and 60s and – as I cannot repeat too often - it led to big majorities in our parents’ Greatest Generation adoring one living human above all others: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

There are some billionaires who aren’t short-sighted fools, ignorant of the lessons of history.  Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and many tech moguls want wealth disparities brought down through reasonable, negotiated Rooseveltean-style reform that will still leave them standing as very, very wealthy men.

The smart ones know where current trends will otherwise lead. To revolution and confiscation. 

Picture the probabilities, when the world’s poorest realize they could double their net wealth, just by transferring title from 50 men. In that case, amid a standoff between fifty oligarchs and three billion poor, it is the skilled middle and upper-middle classes who’ll be the ones deciding civilization’s course. And who do you think those two billion tech-savvy professionals will side with, when push comes to shove?

See my earlier posting: Class War and the Lessons of History. 

== Follow the money ==

The father of the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch helped construct a major oil refinery in Nazi Germany that was personally approved by Adolf Hitler, according to the just-released  "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” by Jane Mayer, a new history of the Kochs and other wealthy families whose meddling in U.S. politics and tax loopholes have netted them billions in returns.  

 Of course there is nothing new about feudal lord cheaters. What is new is our slim but real chance of repeating the miracle achieved by our parents in the Greatest Generation... preserving competition and freedom and a flat-open-fair society, despite every effort to warp it, by short-sighted would-be lords.

How has money warped the political process? In Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections, Richard L. Hasen analyzes the growing importance of campaign financing to modern elections, and three ways in which money has negatively influenced the democratic process, citing electoral outcomes, legislative influence and eroding public confidence.  Hasan proposes reforms -- involving vouchers for citizens to use for campaign contributions and caps on the what a candidate can spend on an election cycle -- that could result in a greater "equality of inputs".